"Ooooo, sounds exciting," she murmured in a bored voice, examining her long red nails. "Far from deterring me, now I'm even more curious to see what's down there."
'Nice' to see that the ShinRa holdovers are as ignorant and arrogant as ever. And realistic that AVALANCHE's victory hasn't been enough to create a more...cautious attitude. I liked the dream as well, even though at first I thought it was Cloud dreaming.
But on the other hand, he wasn't delusional about his talents and capabilities. So where the hell was this 'god among men' nonsense come from?
There was no question that in his later years, Rufus's own father had harbored some rather bizarre and overblown power fantasies, although the former President had certainly done his best to keep them a secret. No, those fantasies were played out in strict privacy, behind locked doors with people well paid to keep their mouths shut.
The idea that he might be headed down a similar path was distasteful, to say the least, and Rufus fervently hoped that the tendency toward megalomania wasn't genetic.
And I enjoyed it that Rufus can see himself and his flaws so clearly, especally when contrasted wth Cloud's lack of self-awareness, a good way to link your choice of villain to canon. Of course Cloud was always vulnerable to manipulation in a way that Rufus wasn't.
Someone else had been struggling with intense nightmares involving sinister laboratory corridors, blinding medical lights, labcoat-wearing figures with cold cruel hands, and neverending screams of anguish. On the other hand, unlike Rufus Shinra, this person was used to dreaming about such nightmarish scenes.
They had been his inescapable reality for years...His pain/her pain. His hate/her hate.
Body arching, he screamed as two merged into one.
This whole scene was chilling, and shows precisely what makes Cloud open to influence by the dream's sender where Rufus isn't.
"Yes, but obviously much more secret. Something known only to a few select high level individuals. Why else take the trouble?" Tasha said, coolly eying her younger sibling.
A scentst more trusted and possbly highly placed than Hojo? That doesn't say much for Habegger's sense of ethics or morality, especially considering the nature of that nightmare and the hints that he was one of the doctors there. And he's only approached Rufus now because he can't hide what he did any longer.
"Then yeah, I suppose it's possible. Actually, it could explain a lot."
"Like what?"
"Like his IQ and his scary memory, for starters," Reno said, now rummaging in his closet for a jacket.
Then why hasn't Cloud shown anything like that? Although...Rufus would have been allowed/encouraged to learn as much as he could, at least at first, and Cloud didn't have access to any of the same resources in Nibelheim, as well as proably be actively discouraed from learning, and it proably took one hell of a memory to pull off 'becoming' Zack the way he did, plus possbly some telepathy.
....except for Rufus.
But before Rufus could react to the strangeness of the situation, Reno and Rude simply disintegrated right before his eyes, leaving behind nothing more than two patches of slowly falling black ash.
He immediately whirled toward Tseng, standing directly behind him, only to see the leader of the Turks also crumble into a flurry of those same dark flakes of ash.
The world around him returned to normal speed with almost an audible snap. Even as he pulled out his shot pistol, Rufus barked out, "Elena!" over the comlink.
He got no response, not even static. Rufus pulled out his cell phone and got the same result -- absolutely nothing.
That is flat out horrifying. And an effective way of isolating Rufus. I think he actually paniced there.