Rejoice, for I have prepared stairs!

Cloud realized all at once that, despite the flawless preservation awarded by mako, the prototype must be dead. It had been in this tank since 1992, it couldn’t be anything else; Shinra had crafted plenty of bespoke fiends over the years, but even fiends couldn’t survive that long without proper care. It was classified as “functional” in the inventory report from just a couple years ago, but that could easily just be another way to assure nobody tried to dispose of the body, which R&D probably kept for research purposes. More than likely, the staffers on the project simply had yet to find an opportunity or reason to get back to it.

Regardless, there was no point trying to bring a big dead fiend back to base. It was good intel on how far the company was willing to go to unnerve the enemy, but Cloud had seen more than enough during his days in Public Security to know that already. The only surprise was how close they’d come to making something that looked human.

Though grateful that he was the only one wasting his time, it was still a huge letdown after all his effort and preparation for today. Cloud looked up at the specimen and heaved a disappointed sigh.

And the creature in the tank woke up.

Bright red eyes snapped open, glowing like rubies held to firelight, and narrowed at Cloud as he scrambled back away from the tank. The specimen looked him up and down, brow furrowing as its eyes lit on his gun, tracing the lines with its gaze and slowly tilting its head just barely to one side in a way that reminded Cloud of a confused dog. An enormous, bipedal, mostly-humanoid dog. With horns and a big bladed tail.

The prototype looked from Cloud down to the control panel at the front of the tank, then reached out and tapped on the glass to indicate the latter.