Complications

"We need to get out of here," Cloud said urgently. They'd just attacked Hojo after all, the tower would probably be locked down soon. Suddenly the TVs on the wall flicked on. Mayor Domino appeared on the screen.

"Ah-ha! There you are! Tifa Fuckin Lockhart!" Suddenly, a heavyset man in a stained t-shirt wrested control of the camera. Cloud could hear the mayor splutter. "What are you doing, man!?"

"Hey guys! Long time no see!" Wedge said, smiling and waving.
"Y-you shouldn't be up and moving!" Barret protested.

"I'm feeling much better thanks to Elmyra's cooking! Ah, but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about! Listen—any moment now—" Wedge said, but he was interrupted as the building shook from a heavy explosion. "HQ's running the show this time. They're raising hell to try and flush out the president."

"This complicates matters. That explosion just now put the whole building on high alert," Domino said.

"So now we're trapped in here?" Tifa said, alarmed.

"No need to panic, babydoll." A new camera image appeared, showing Hojo's elevator still functioned. "See? You can still move freely within Hojo's laboratory."

"Find a way to the roof. An Avalanche chopper will come to extract you," Wedge said.

"HQ's bailing us out? I doubt it. Not after all the shit we've pulled," Barret scoffed.

"I asked them really nicely! Like, super-duper nicely!" The fat man was just so naively positive, Cloud thought. "Just get to the roof, okay?" The camera turned off, and on the other side, Wedge grabbed his belly, his wounds fresher than he'd let on.

"I didn't ask him to do any of that," Barret said, sighing. "I'll still chew him out for it later. Anyway, we gotta get to the roof, right?

"Then we can use the same elevator that Hojo did," Red XIII said. "His odor still lingers."