Dual Trigger
-By Chronic Guardian-
Cyan Chapter 1: Gozen
(Last Edited 12-13-13 for enhanced readability, perhaps more to follow)
Morning, the most crucial part of the day, in which we decide what we will strive for. It is the gift given with every sunrise, the next beginning that we are ever favored with. In those precious hours, the fate of a day may be decided.
-Personal Journal of Cyan Garamonde
}§{
"Terra."
The girl with a curly blonde mess of hair mostly tied up in a high ponytail stared back at him, waiting for the next words.
"That is your name, correct?"
She nodded, declining to break his monologue.
He sighed; this was every bit as unnerving as they had told him it would be. Still, business was business. "Will you kill?" he asked, moving on to the next object of concern. If she could not, she would probably be sent back to the labs for reconditioning.
He would rather not watch that happen again anytime soon.
"Yes, Sir."
Finally, some words. He let out a breath that had caught in his lungs. "Do you want to kill?"
"No, Sir."
That was unexpected. He gave a glance at the one way mirror that inhabited the right side of the wall. Why had he asked such a senseless question? He'd gone into the frying pan and right back into the fire after that. "Even if I wanted you to?"
"…If I want you to be happy, does that mean I want what you want?"
He paused. Either the girl was cognizant of the hierarchy of desire or she was simply running into some logistical errors that the technicians had yet to fix in the conditioning.
"Some would say yes," he answered, trying to keep aware of their audience. He wasn't sure where the boundary lines were, but so long as he played fairly close to the rule-set of making a perfect little killer, he would make it out fine. Still, a part of him wanted this girl to remain uncertain about her role; just as he was.
"Then I will kill." Will, not want.
He smiled a small, weary, humorless smile. "Not until I teach you how."
}§{
The job description for a handler at the Social Welfare Agency was vague, to say the least. Due to the nature of the position, it had never actually been filed in paperwork. All inquiries were done in person and all consistency was dependent upon a slowly growing unwritten list kept between Director Piero Lorenzo, Doctor Fernando Bianchi, and Mr. Jean Croce, three of the most important figures in the organization.
The desired attributes were simple: relative emotional stability, combat and investigative experience, a lack of outside connections, and the ability to remain silent, especially when given a drink or four.
It also helped if an applicant was good with children.
The actual job of the handler was to act as a teacher and field officer to an individually assigned, brain washed, cyborg assassin; to be the mind behind the machine, to guide the deadly biological weapons in judicious discrimination as defined by the Italian Government.
The candidates for the cyborgs were chosen from various hospitals throughout Italy. Usually, they were terminal patients. In exchange for a body that wasn't dying, they would then become the tools of the state. Due to the restrictions of current technology, these cyborgs were always children. And due to the prevalence of particular brain patterns that interfaced with the mind-altering conditioning, always girls.
Cyan Garamonde wished it could have been a boy. He also wished it didn't have to be a child. But he kept these sentiments to himself. He had chosen to be here, so it was his duty to follow through and keep his word. He'd always been a man of his word, even in his old life.
The girl he'd chosen, a little blonde thing not more than twelve, was named Terra. It was difficult to see her as an assassin first. The cybernetics gave her strength and the conditioning made her compliant, but her eyes were not yet that of a killer. Despite everything, she still had an odd innocence about her that made him wonder if she would really be able to pull the trigger when it came down to it.
As training began, however, Cyan formed a new opinion of his charge.
As it turned out, Terra was a natural at the business. Cyan would almost swear she had done it before. In most cases, the cyborgs, though augmented by the conditioning, still took a few weeks to get through basic training. Even modern technology couldn't compensate for experience. Terra breezed through with flying colors, burning through nearly every course like a seasoned veteran.
The technical staff attributed the success to a new technology, Magitek. Cyan could only hope that was the reason. Although the conditioning wiped away the cyborg's past, it was said that a piece of it sometimes remained lodged in their subconscious; manifesting in odd habits and talents. To think that she'd had something to do with guns before hand... well, he could do little more than hope it was all from hunting for sport and leave it at that.
There was no need for digging up old wounds on a new morning. She was in his keeping, bonded to him as some put it. What hurt him hurt her and vice versa.
This was not the philosophy held by all handlers at the Social Welfare Agency, not to the full degree at any rate. But Cyan did not particularly care about connecting or fitting in. He answered questions when approached and offered his assistance when requested but otherwise kept a large professional distance from his colleagues. After the incident which terminated his previous employment, and even a little before then, he had held to the practice of only allowing himself to become attached to who and what he could protect. Currently, Terra was the only constituent of that category. Outside of her, he could barely remember the names of the people he worked with.
It had been different before, back when he had worked for Owaka-sama. But that was a part of him that was now forgotten. Back then, he laughed when a joke was told, looked out for his coworkers, and even went on social outings and engaged in idle conversation. The only trace that Cyan had been that man, that he had been Kaien Kuremonda, was the slight accent he had not quite ironed out of his Italian. Everything else, his heritage, his family, his work, was all dead and gone.
It was better this way though. Neither he nor Terra had a past to speak of; it was one more aspect for them to share. She had been found on the docks of Trapani, alone on a derelict vessel with a gunshot wound through the top of her head. Fortunately, her brain had not been damaged too badly, the bullet had bored through the skull at a diagonal vector that just missed the organ, but she still suffered a coma for almost two weeks. It was during that time that Cyan met her and chose the girl to be his.
At the time, the Agency was still finding ways to integrate Magitek into the program. As an experimental subject, his charge had undergone the treatment prior to the conditioning process. She'd woken up then, only hours from being forever changed into a tool of the government, and told them she remembered nothing besides her name: Terra Branford. In a moment of odd mercy, Cyan had decided to let her keep the name. To most people, including herself, she was only Terra; but in his journal he always referred to her by the full title.
Sometimes he questioned the decision. If she was truly his then assuming his surname would have been the proper course of action. In the end, he always came back to the same conclusion though: he wanted her to be more than that. Although he had been told that the conditioning drastically shortened her lifespan, he couldn't shake the feeling that she would outlive him, that she should outlive him. He wasn't about to cut his life short, just try to make hers longer.
He didn't share this thought with the rest of the Agency, it would raise too many questions about his suitability for the role. And even though the Agency had yet to reassign a cyborg, Cyan wouldn't put it past them to be looking into the possibility in the event that a handler 'lost his nerve'.
He had come very close to doing just that a number of times. Each and every one of those times though, he decided that Terra's comfort was worth more than his. It pained him to admit it, but he wasn't as young as he used to be. He had already been transferred from one perennial employment; that single change was enough for his lifetime. It was about time that he stopped looking to further his own life and started furthering the next to come.
He had to wonder though, how much was he furthering it when all he taught her was how to destroy? Yes, sometimes things had to be destroyed so that other things could move forward; but was he really teaching it to her for the right reasons or just because the higher ups said so? He had trusted Owaka-sama as a superior, but Jean Croce and Director Lorenzo… well, there was intent he agreed with, but he felt the invisible strings of bureaucracy wound tightly in this setting. Killing wasn't necessarily done for profit, but every now and then an important politician who approved their funding would get upset with someone and the SWA had little choice but to oblige. After all, the world did not run on charity.
At first, Cyan tried to pass those jobs off to less senior fratelli. There were certain perks to being good at his job and mission selection was one of the most treasured. However, as he saw the looks on their faces when they returned from the deed, he slowly came to the begrudging conclusion that if he could stomach it better, then it was his duty to take the hit.
Which was funny, considering how little he talked to any of them. But Cyan was that sort of man, the kind who valued the ideal of teamwork even if he didn't value the team. That brought him to an interesting dilemma though, because no matter how much it affected the newly initiated, it concerned him more when he recognized that it also affected Terra.
Terra, being a brainwashed cyborg, was not supposed to have any inhibitions when it came to killing, particularly on Cyan's command. She seemed to act like the other girls around the Agency, living quietly and out of the way until needed but ready for service within the half-hour or less. She performed admirably on the field and was not hampered by emotions when the bullets started to fly.
In fact, she almost became a different person whenever a firefight broke out. Although she tended to have a very repressed personality anyway, it seemed to him that she went from tender and shy to a dark, silent determination the moment she laid a finger on a gun. The funny thing was, afterwards she would go throughout the battle field and mutely close the eyes of the fallen before returning to him; always with a gaze that looked more dead than empty, as if she was sharing in the morbid fruits of her labor. He was fairly certain that, according to the conditioning, she was not supposed to do that.
Whenever they went on a "political favor" assignment though, she would return with tears in her eyes. The second time it happened, she tried to smile her way through it in a vain attempt to reassure him she was unaffected. That did not stop the tears. She still completed the jobs with the utmost efficiency, but she never stopped crying. The obvious answer was just to have her reconditioned, which Jean Croce would likely enough advocate if he ever found out, but Cyan preferred looking into alternative measures first.
When he first arrived, Cyan talked to no one. He'd had enough of superfluous connections and, on top of that, he did not know who he could trust in the Agency. Even when it came to Terra, he only said what he needed to say. "If you have questions, ask them," he told her during the first training session. After the third week she asked what love was and he had rephrased the order to "if you have questions about work, ask them". His emotional stability, although outwardly sufficient, was not quite up to the task of confronting such things. Part of his reasoning for joining the Agency had been to fully give himself to work for a while and just forget all that had happened. Even as he trusted Terra with his life, he was not at all sure he would be able to explain concepts like love without her taking it the wrong way somehow.
So he arranged to talk with the resident psychiatrist: Dr. Bianchi.
The meeting was to take place in the doctor's office, a place usually reserved for the cyborgs' monthly psyche interviews. On matters dealing with the adult staff on campus, the doctor tended to prefer the outdoors, but Cyan insisted on absolute privacy so the doctor had slated him in as the last spot of that day, right after Mr. Hilshire's cyborg. Cyan arrived with two thick, black sheets which he pinned up over the one way mirror in the room before taking a seat and facing the man he would be submitting his thoughts to.
"Good to see you, Mr. Garamonde," Bianchi greeted him, finishing up some notes and giving a questioning frown at the makeshift covers. "What is it you'd like to talk about?"
"Why does Terra cry, Doctor?" Cyan took the direct approach. Beating around the bush with formalities, although normally in his nature, was not very appealing at the moment.
"All the cyborgs cry in their sleep, Mr. Garamonde," the doctor answered, a little puzzled. "We haven't tacked down the exact reason yet, but we know it has something to do with the subconscious recoil response to the conditioning."
"What about when they're not asleep?"
Bianchi reflected Cyan's concerned gaze, "…Have you been harsh with her?"
"In training? No, I am certain that I affirm her for adequately executed actions and discipline is firm, but not overly stern."
"Would you mind if I did a little digging to see if anything came up to the contrary?"
"Not at all, Doctor," Cyan answered immediately. He had nothing to hide; why fear what did not exist? "Besides, it isn't after training that she cries. It is an instance almost exclusively occurring during our political stings."
Bianchi fell silent. "But not during action against terrorists, right?" he said after a long moment of contemplation.
"Correct," Cyan nodded.
"Did you explain a difference in the targets?"
"Considering our political targets don't shoot back, I think she is intelligent enough to make a distinction."
"She still functions though?"
"Absolutely. She fires without hesitation and is unhampered in reactionary reflexes or aiming capabilities."
"Hmm…" Bianchi slowly tapped his pen on his lips as he grimaced at his notes. "Mr. Garamonde, have you been talking with her about this?"
"No. Should I?"
A wry smile snuck its way onto the doctor's face. "You've been married before, right? You should know how crucial communication is in a relationship."
Cyan flinched back in his seat before protesting, "it's not that kind of a relationship."
"No, but the principle holds the same. No matter how advanced our methods are, the girls at the Social Welfare Agency require emotional interaction just like any other child. Also… you may be surprised by how perceptive some of them can be."
"So you think she knows what's wrong?"
"It's worth half a shot. Besides, my statistics show an increase in performance directly correlated to handler-cyborg interaction. If nothing else, you should be talking with her anyway."
"…I'll try," Cyan sighed, shifting his gaze from Bianchi over to the covered mirror. Despite being cloaked in the opaque sheets that he had put up, he still stared at it as if it held his reflection.
}§{
"Terra?"
He heard a pause in the action on the other side of the door, followed by the sound of light footsteps approaching.
"Yes, Sir?" she answered as she opened the door and looked up at him. Behind her was a room nearly as empty as when he had last seen it.
Which had been her first day at the Agency.
Unlike most of the other cyborgs at the Social Welfare Agency, Terra did not have a roommate. Sometimes he had to wonder if that contributed to the austerity of the quarters.
"May I come in?" he asked, bringing his gaze down to meet hers.
"Of course, Sir," the reply was spoken with restrained excitement. Suddenly, all Bianchi's advice about needing to connect more with the girl seemed vividly applicable. She returned to the lone table in the room and took a seat.
"You've been cleaning your gun," Cyan noted, coming closer to see all the parts of her Glock handgun laid out.
He blinked. Had he really just said that? He needed to talk to her, but he wouldn't be getting anywhere just stating the obvious. "Any particular reason?" he tried to salvage the statement.
No, that would not work either. Gun maintenance was a regular part of life for both of them; she didn't need a reason to be doing it.
"It's… I… this is what I do in my leisure time, Signore," she told him haltingly. "Am I supposed to… I mean, should I be doing something else?"
At least she's as out of her element as I am, he thought wryly. Learning won't be nearly so discouraging if we are on equal starting ground.
"Today, we will try something else," he told her, searching his memory for something to talk about. It needed to be suitable for her age level, but if he chose too simple of a subject she might lose interest. What had he talked about with his son? It had only been half a year and already he couldn't recall a single thing.
Terra cocked her head to the side just a little. "What do you want to do, Signore?"
Their eyes locked for a stretching moment, hers with a hesitant eagerness and his with stubborn uncertainty. What did he want to do? He wanted her to stop crying, he wanted for things to be right again, he wanted her to be… happy. Could that happen? In their line of work there were a number of wants that had to be forsaken, but did happiness have to be one of them?
"We're going to talk," he said finally, settling for the direct approach. "Do you have any paper?"
"No, Signore," she informed him, looking away as her voice dropped with the weight of the disappointment.
"That's fine then," he assured her quickly. "I think I've got some." Pulling out his pocket notebook, he perused it for an empty page. As he soon discovered, he was in need of a new pocket notebook. Settling for sacrificing an entry of trivial importance, he flipped through again and caught on a dog-eared page.
She spoke before he realized he had frozen. "Signore Garamonde?"
"Mmm? Yes?"
"Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing, thank you." He tore the page out and began the preliminary folds. "So then, how has the Glock been working? Is it satisfactory?"
"It's fine, Sir," she reported promptly. She almost went back to attending to the firearm's reassembly when a thought seemed to strike her."Er… It's a good gun!" she continued on firmly. "The best anyone has ever given me!"
And hopefully the only gun anyone has ever given you other than your SVU-A, he added to himself, thinking of the bullpup rifle he had issued her. He had a number of theories surrounding her known origins. Naturally, none of them were pleasant.
"The synthetic materials that compose the gun are said to be sturdier and more resistant to wear than earlier handgun models," he told her casually, laying the paper flat once more. "It was built to a list of specifications issued by the Austrian armed forces when they were looking for a newer model to employ."
Six months ago, he had not known any of that; But when he had been looking into gear for Terra he felt something more than the generic Italian Beretta was in order. To him, the Glock seemed the perfect choice, both operationally and symbolically. Terra was something new, not necessarily bold and flashy, but definitely dependable. Most of her old self had been replaced with sturdy synthetics and she served as part of a premier force ready to serve for the next generation. Despite all that though, it was always the person behind the trigger that decided the final value; and he had placed full confidence in the human beneath the cybernetics.
"What was wrong with the old model?"
"Things change with time," he answered, bringing the secondary folds of his paper up. "Even the things that stay become something new every now and then."
"Sir…?" She asked as he put the finishing touches on his transformed notebook page.
"Terra, might I ask you to call me Cyan?"
"A-Alright, Cyan!" she began again, seemingly both enthralled and thrown off balance by the request. "Is this…? A-are we talking about work right now?"
What an odd question. "… Not necessarily. Why do you ask?"
"You told me to only ask questions about work. I was wondering… I mean, I was hoping that we could... talk about more, maybe."
"Like love?"
"…Someday, yes. But I talked to Triela, you know, Hilshire's girl? And she told me it's difficult to explain and easier to experience. But it made me wonder, do you think… do you think I even can love?"
Triela… Cyan could just barely connect the name to the Tunisian girl who accompanied the German handler, Victor Hilshire. "So you've been talking to the other girls?"
"Only a little!" she told him quickly. Did she expect him to get mad about it? He had not thought his criticism during practice to be overly harsh, but perhaps this was just the side of her that he had not taken the time to see yet.
He smiled at her. Perhaps he was not too old to be learning after all.
"Calm yourself, Terra," he soothed. "You haven't done anything wrong. Just remember, only connect yourself to that which you can protect. Do not attach yourself to people you are incapable of aiding in their most dire hour."
He had been told by one of the staff, Amadeo perhaps, that he talked in a somewhat outdated fashion. Most second language learners approached a language from a very formal, overly correct stand point; but he had gone out of his way to learn the more eloquent and archaic terms and integrate them into his vocabulary. It did make his speech a little odd, but Cyan believed that, in keeping with his cultural heritage, it was the unique blend of elements old and new that made the best products. Besides, he found the more elder diction to be more pleasing to the ear than the contemporary stuff.
She gave him that odd, tilted look again. "Is that an order, Cyan?"
Should he make it an order? He paused himself to think seriously about the question before offering any reply. If he did make it an order, she would live by the maxim to the ends of the earth. As admirable as such honor bound actions were, he felt her loyalties were better placed on less… cynical expressions. He had grown old and weary, the world seemed a dark and unfriendly place to him. Passing that on to her could save her life someday, though likely sully it in the process.
"No," he decided at last. "Not a standing one, anyway. Be careful what you pledge yourself to, this much I ask."
"I'm pledged to the Social Welfare Agency and to you, right?"
He examined the paper flower in his hand half covered with words. "Not that I am aware of," he said, leaning back in his seat a little. "To pledge is a conscious decision. I know of no such oath held in your name." Unless the Agency has a rather cruel sense of humor, he mused with a slight frown.
"Well… no," she admitted. "But it's written into me, isn't it? That you're what I'm supposed to protect?"
"Choose for yourself and tell me then."
He nearly winced at his own words, but if they both were to be happy then this needed to be said. It was a harsh order for a cyborg, to tell a forcedly subservient mind to think for itself. He knew, or at least suspected, that it would hurt for a while.
But after that, they would be better. After night came morning, after pain came healing.
"Until then, keep this for me," he told her, handing her the paper flower. "Keep it as a promise that better things are to come."
She readily accepted the gift and turned it over in her hands, carefully examining the scripted exterior. "What's it say?" she asked, tracing the written lines with her fingers.
The page he had chosen contained part of his hand written copy of Terra's file. What little they could deduce of her past lay there.
"Just a few memories," he said simply. "Keep it folded, things are better that way for now."
"For now?"
"Yes."
"But later?"
"Later we will read it together."
"Are you certain, Sir?"
"I promise, Terra."
}§{
~Author's Note:~
Gozen: Japanese for Morning
Welcome to the first story of the first volume of Dual Trigger: Condizionata Complementare! For those who don't know, this is a collection of expansion stories to augment the Dual Trigger series; an odd mix of Final Fantasy of all forms and Gunslinger Girl. Essentially set in an alternate version of the Gunslinger Girl universe, this series adapts various Final Fantasy characters into the fold and contains overarching themes of two-element synergy. For further reading, check out Dual Trigger: Aria di Mezzo Carattere and the coming-soon sequel volume Dual Trigger: Dalla Polvere Alla Polvere.
Research Notes:
Glock: The Glock (first model: Glock 17) is the premier firearm designed by Gaston Glock. It is a popular handgun and is noted for its synthetic, rather than metal, frame; a rarity at the time.
Dragunov SVU-A: An automatic variant of the Dragunov SVU, this bullpup configuration of the well-known SVD doesn't quite match the range of its unabridged cousin, but is slightly less cumbersome; particularly given a small person like Terra as the user. The automatic function could be considered helpful in a close-quarters pinch; but since the standard magazine only holds ten rounds, modifications would have to be made for it to be of any sustained use in that situation. Thus, it is best used as a mid-ranged sniper rifle.
Trapani: A port city located on the far western tip of Sicily, just across from Tunisia to the south west.
Origami: The flower Cyan makes here is a very simple creation and is likely a beginner's step to further feats in the art.
Previously Established Character Notes:
Cyan Garamonde(From Final Fantasy VI): "I've got a job to do. Besides, a cyborg without a handler is an awfully lonesome existence."
First appeared in: Dual Trigger, Chapter 1
A man of mixed British and Japanese descent, Cyan was formerly a bodyguard with a wife and child. Unknown events have left him seeking a new life. He is a tough but fair man who may suffer from just a tad of arrogance but will never turn his back on his honor-bound duty.
Terra Branford(From Final Fantasy VI): "But, I feel like we were friends. Or we would have been. Do you remember which?"
First appeared in: Dual Trigger, Chapter 1
Little is known about Terra, other than the events stated in this chapter. Although she is alien to social interactions, she possesses a strong will to protect others and a strange sense of morality concerning her work. She is roughly eleven years old.
Jean Croce(From Gunslinger Girl): "Forgetting about the past doesn't make the future brighter, it just removes your point of reference."
First appeared in: Dual Trigger, Chapter 1
A natural born Italian and the head of the handlers, Jean lost his family to a terrorist car bombing. He and his brother, Jose, now serve the Social Welfare Agency(SWA) as handlers. Jean hunts terrorists with an unrivaled passion, but he is also very strategic in his work. It is speculated by some that he has let this pursuit consume him beyond the point of standard morality.
Doctor Bianchi(From Gunslinger Girl): "I'll see if it's within my power to answer."
First appeared in: Dual Trigger, Chapter 4
A psychology doctor at the SWA, Dr. Bianchi is a calm and gentle man who takes his work seriously and does his best to help the cyborgs (and at times, the staff) of the Agency through their considerable emotional and psychological quandaries. If nothing else, he means well and offers his aid as far as is professionally acceptable.