A.N.: This is by far the longest thing I have ever written. Does anyone care?

*crickets*

I didn't think so.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the beetle and the plot . . . even Tony and Leigh belong to themselves.

Beta's Note: (if Dr. Meh can demand a beta's note, so can I!) Bwahahaha, I am copyrighted to myself! XD -is dragged away in one of Nero's spare straight-jackets by a Genesis copy-

Angeal Hewley had a reputation for calmness. He was almost impossible to anger, and a popular rumor among the Second and Third Classes was that he was completely emotionless. This, of course, wasn't true, but Angeal didn't really do anything to contradict it- only Sephiroth, Genesis, and Zack had really ever seen him display his emotions.

The latter, a recently-promoted Second Class SOLDIER, was one of the few people that was able to make Angeal really and truly angry, something the older man absolutely hated about Zack. Zack's most recent offense had been the worst yet- he had fed Angeal's prized plants to a swarm of beetles.

Angeal had nearly had a seizure when he found out, and, thankfully, he hadn't had much contact with Zack since then.

The SOLDIER had managed to rid his apartment of almost all of the beetles when he found the original beetle, the one who had caused all the problems, the one who was about to devour Angeal's very last intact plant. Of course, the SOLDIER had tried to save the plant, but instead discovered the hard way that the beetle was poisonous.

He had somehow been dragged by Zack and Genesis – who found his comatose body lying on the ground and the plant chewed into pieces – down to the Science Department for treatment. Unfortunately for Angeal, Hojo had been more interested in the effects of the poison than healing it.

After a few painful hours spent being poked with needles, Angeal had eventually been pronounced healthy enough to return to his own quarters- on one condition.

He had to stay in bed for three weeks.

Needless to say, Angeal had been less than enthusiastic.

Angeal was drifting off to sleep when he heard the door to his apartment slam loudly open. Sighing, the SOLDIER rubbed the bridge of his nose, and resigned himself to napless afternoon.

Out of some twisted sense of duty, Genesis had taken to visiting Angeal, in order to tell him what was happening in Angeal's absence. Angeal resented the visits, but was too polite to tell Genesis so. It didn't help that Genesis over-reacted to absolutely everything- he would probably go into hysteria if Angeal told him that he didn't want to see him anymore.

The door to his sparsely-decorated bedroom crashed dramatically open, and Genesis waltzed in, singing something in Wutaian at the top of his lungs.

Absentmindedly, Angeal noticed Genesis had a decent voice- or would have, if he wouldn't use so much vibrato.

Genesis' song trailed off into silence, and he plopped himself theatrically down onto the only chair in the room. He stared critically at Angeal for a moment, assessing his friend's condition, and launched into his customary speech.

"Your paperwork has been piling up - goddess, it must be three feet high – so I hired you a secretary. His name is Tony, and he's-"

Genesis got no further into his report. Angeal quickly cut him off, his tone one of barely restrained fury.

"What do you mean you hired a secretary?"

The younger man tried to explain, but Angeal had just stopped to take a breath.

"A secretary despoiling my office? He'll mess everything up! Do you know how long it took me to organize it?"

Genesis winced. He did indeed- Angeal had forced him to help. It had been rather painful.

"How dare you! You know I don't want a secretary! What in Bahamut's name is wrong with you?"

Angeal continued ranting, but Genesis' quickly-moving (otherwise known as ADD) thoughts were on other matters- for instance, how to best extricate himself from the clutches of obsessive fangirls. And how to set his spam filter so as to only allow only e-mails from people he knew through.

Why did Shinra have to display its employee's e-mail addresses on its website?

The sheer amount of fan mail would drive any SOLDIER with multiple fan clubs mad within a week. Genesis, of course, had been completely unaffected by the trying circumstance.

. . . At least in his own mind, that was.

Four days later

Angeal stalked angrily through the elevator's door onto the SOLDIER floor, trailed by a very timid looking Zack.

The Second Class opened his mouth to say something, but Angeal irritably motioned for him to stay quiet.

Intimidated, Zack put up no argument.

Tony picked lazily at the remains of his lunch- mostly, what was left was tofu. He couldn't understand for the life of him why Wutaian food had to have so much of the nasty stuff in it . . .

Lost in deep thought, he was completely taken by surprise when the door to the office slammed open. With a yelp, Tony fell of his chair in shock; how had a door that flimsy made such a loud noise?

However, now wasn't probably the time to think about it, for in the doorway, glaring resentfully at him, was about two hundred and fifty pounds of perfectly healthy, armed, and mako-enhanced First Class SOLDIER.

Tony opened his mouth, about to scream, but Angeal quickly strode over, grabbed the secretary's arm, dragged him over to the door, and pushed him forcefully out of the office. Angeal didn't really care that the man staggered into Kunsel, knocking them both painfully to the ground.

Actually, that was probably a bonus.

In the Science Department

Hojo bent over his notes, hurriedly writing as fast as his old, arthritic fingers would allow. Behind him, in a gigantic glass cage, was the original of Project XC-13d- or Project Scarabaeus, as the interns had taken to calling it.

As he scrawled down chemical equation after chemical equation with a few mathematic equations thrown in there to liven things up, the large beetle crawled up and down on the walls of its cage, occasionally emitting a click or a chirping noise.

Eventually, it tired of this and began to chew on the foliage lining the cage.

Hojo finally finished writing, and, with a quick glance at the cage, left the office.

Soon after, the door opened again; though it wasn't Hojo coming back.

A short, slightly obese man with frazzled-looking brown hair crept in. His glasses slid down his greasy nose as he peered around the office, making sure no secretaries misfortunate enough to be assigned to Hojo were lurking in the shadows.

His yellow T-shirt bore a sodden, grease-stained logo that was all but impossible to make out. It was a wonder he was permitted entry to the 'sterile' Shin-Ra Science Department.

He obviously wasn't supposed to be in the office, lack of sanitation aside. The beetle eyed him interestedly.

Clumsily, he slunk over to the abandoned desk, slid into the chair, and began to read Hojo's notes aloud, albeit very quietly. He didn't seem to be the slightest bit concerned that talking to oneself is the first sign of insanity.

"4:03 pm, August 3, 1996. Project XC-13d offshoot a success. Have managed to breed Hexodons from the original specimen, and the creatures were released in the secret northern location."

Here the man stopped; obviously the possibility of a secret location intrigued him.

Suddenly, though, he checked his watch, cursed, quickly read a few more pages – silently this time – and fled the room. Not three minutes later, Hojo came back in, splattered with blood, mako, and something glowing and blue.

The professor shrugged off the splattered lab coat, removed his rubber gloves, and sat down at his desk. He cleared the notes from Project XC-13d off the surface, not noticing the disarray the intruder had left them in, and reached for a large manila folder labeled 'Jenova Project S'.

Hollander sprinted back to his office, panting for breath. He knew he was out of shape, but he hadn't thought running would affect him this much!

Nearly collapsing, he sat down heavily in his chair, and reached for the keyboard.

Genesis dramatically sat down at his desk and opened up his e-mail account; Zack had said something about sending him a link to an article he had found on newest, not-yet-released, stage production of Loveless.

Of course, he had to find the message first. Genesis sighed, and began deleting.

Genesis disposed of fully one hundred and nine fan e-mails, most of which held titles like 'Oh my Gaia I love you Genny marry meeeeeeee!' and 'Gennykins, you're my heeeeeerrrooooo, come to my apartment!' He frowned slightly when he found one that didn't follow the pattern and seemed to be some sort threat from an anti-fan, who called herself 'Meh'.

Jarred from his thoughts, which consisted of wondering who would win if Batman and Spiderman got into a fight, Genesis took a closer look at the e-mail. It contained several less-than-edifying swearwords, one of which Genesis didn't know. He jotted it down for further investigation.

Fascinatedly, he read the entire, five-page-long message. There were some very inventive threats in there.

Finally, after reading the mail three times, he returned to his main inbox. He was left with seven new messages.

One was from Zack – the article, Genesis hoped –, three were from Angeal, one was from Sephiroth, and two were from Leigh, the president of his fan club. If Genesis remembered correctly, Angeal had named one of his plants after her.

Genesis didn't even want to think about the reasoning behind that.

Abruptly, a new message came in. Oddly enough, it was from Hollander. Genesis frowned; he had just had another mako injection a few weeks ago!

Resigning himself to another battery of tests, seeing as Hollander never had anything good to say, Genesis opened the e-mail.

He scanned the contents of the message, skimming over the scientific-sounding words consisting of more than five syllables.

Oh Minerva.

Genesis, barely containing his excitement, reached for his phone. He had to let Angeal in on this . . .

Looking cautiously around, Hollander led Angeal, Genesis, and Zack through the main floor of the Science Department. No one really looked at any of them, as First and Second Class SOLDIERs did spend a good deal of time in the labs.

Hollander directed the trio to a door labeled 'XC-13d', ran his keycard through the reader, and shoved the door open. Zack opened his mouth, but Hollander quickly shushed him.

As soon as the three men were through the door, Hollander shut it, locked it, and pretended he wasn't doing something illegal.

All that the three could hear was clicking. However, the room was almost completely dark, and none of them could see what was causing the noise. Angeal fumbled for the light switch- but it was Zack who found it, when he tripped and hit his head against it.

Ignoring the fact that Zack was hissing curse words that he definitely hadn't learned from Angeal, Genesis leaned over and turned on the lights.

And froze.

They were in an absolutely enormous room that probably could've held a Bahamut RETSU. That, though, wasn't what stunned Genesis.

The room was full of beetles.

Hundreds and hundreds of beetles- and every single one looked like Bob. Some were waist high to Genesis' six-foot-four frame, some were barely the size of Zack's thumb, but they were all an iridescent green with vaguely shimmering purple markings- exactly as Hollander had promised.

Exchanging glances and evil grins, the three drew their weapons.

An hour or so later

Genesis proudly surveyed his handiwork. Over four hundred beetles killed, and that was just him. Together, he and the two others had killed almost all of the disgusting vermin.

Angeal, over in the left corner of the room, managed to finally pull Zack away from his 'scientific' dissection (meaning butchering) of a Hexodon.

Hollander let them surreptitiously out of the Project room, and explained to them that there was one beetle left: the origina-

"BOB!" burst out Zack, unable to contain his youthful enthusiasm about just about everything.

Hollander eyed him as one would eye a raving maniac, but slowly nodded his assent.

The doctor led them quietly to Hojo's office. Zack repeatedly asked if Hojo was going to be in there, but got no answer- at least until Hollander tired of the young SOLDIER's persistent chattering.

"He's not," Hollander fiercely whispered, clearly annoyed at Zack. "He's conducting an experiment this afternoon- he won't be out of the lab for at least two more hours."

Absentmindedly, Genesis remembered that Sephiroth had said something about being in the labs this afternoon.

Hollander left them at the door to Hojo's office, saying something about having to go work on a project of his own. All the while, he stared eerily at Genesis, who tried to stare eerily back. Unfortunately for the SOLDIER, that doesn't work so well when half of one's face is covered by hair.

Shrugging, Genesis turned back to the task at hand: Bob! He honestly couldn't remember how many times he had fantasized about taking vengeance on the goddess-forsaken demon. The torment it had dealt unto him had to end: he had been injured directly and indirectly by the thing, and that wasn't even counting the humiliation it had caused him!

Noticing the evilly gleeful expression on Genesis' face, Angeal decided that it might be a good idea to shake his revenge-obsessed, scatter-brained friend from his reverie.

Zack, ignoring both his mentor and his obsessed friend, cautiously pushed the office door open.

"Um, guys? Is it supposed to look like this?"

When the other two entered the room, they found Zack pointing at a glass cage; or what remained of a cage, as most of the front pane of glass was melted away.

After examining Hojo's copious notes – and having to explain to Zack what the 'mating process' was – Angeal learned that not only was Bob poisonous, he also was able to . . . well, melt glass.

Angeal wasn't intelligent enough to understand what most of Hojo's scrawling meant, partly because his handwriting was worse than that of the president of Genesis' fan club, but he understood enough to deduce that Bob was able to emulate a bombardier beetle in some respects.

Crap.

Tony was sullenly sitting in the SOLDIER lunchroom, contemplating an orange he had stolen from a clueless third named Luck-sheer or something incredibly stupid like that.

Why had he been fired? What had he done wrong? The ex-secretary felt quite confused. Genesis had tried to explain, but Genesis had issues with explaining things clearly. Very, very serious issues that probably should have been taken to a psychiatrist long ago . . .

Suddenly, the door to the previous calm lunch room burst open with a loud clatter. A few of the Second and Third Class SOLDIERs glanced up in surprise. Weren't Shinra's famous heroes supposed to be dignified?

Zack, Genesis, and Angeal rushed in with expressions of fierce concentration on their faces. They all appeared to be chasing something . . . something small, green, and flying.

Tony was mildly worried by the long, red, double-edged sword carried by the most maddened looking SOLDIER. Whoever let Genesis hold both a sharp and pointy object should be shot.

Zack made an impressive leap for the small flying creature, but missed and thudded painfully into the ground. Angeal barely avoided running him over, but Genesis made no such attempt, and trampled over the younger, lower ranking SOLDIER.

Tony heard a pained screech, but Genesis apparently didn't, or simply didn't care. Somehow he suspected it was the later option; another slight mental defect that a psychiatrist should have taken care of long ago.

The green thing flew over to him and landed calmly on the plate of tofu that sat on the lunch tray in front of him. Tony peered at it a moment as it fluttered around on the soggy paper plate, apparently as uninterested as him in the contents. Then he realized what it was . . .

Oh goddess a bug I hate bugs die die die!

With truly spectacular hand-eye coordination – especially for a secretary – Tony picked up his briefcase and brought it down with a sickening squish on the bug.

Genesis and Angeal stopped and stared in wonder at the ex-secretary. Zack tottered up behind them, slightly limping from where Genesis had 'accidentally' kicked him in the thigh, and stopped short when he saw the twitching remains of the insect.

Tony looked proudly down at the corpse – what was he proud of, he wondered – and began cleaning off his gory briefcase.

A.N.: Whoever can guess what song Genesis was singing gets . . . um, nothing but the satisfaction of correctly guessing. I'll even give you a hint . . . the lyrics reference something of Andrew Lloyd Webber's.

Thanks to Final Hikari for being so wonderful and beta-ing this, and thanks to Duvesa Twylyte's brother for letting me turn him into a secretary!

Reviews, please? Oh please? There's only one more Scarabaeus left . . .