The sun rose high overhead, slowly burning away the early morning mists. Irvine Kinneas gazed out over the high, remote wilderness that was the Dollet plateau. Rock, dust and the occasional scruffy tree, withered with dryness, stretched out to beyond the horizon. Not many animals could survive up here, above the snowline. He started walking, each slow step the silent, powerful tread of a born sniper. A bitter, cold wind began to blow, sending his long, golden brown hair flying from under his parchament-coloured Stetson. He shivered slightly, wrapped his coat around him. His patched, worn trousers flapped in the breeze, scuffed brown boots protruding from the ends. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, the slight growth of stubble rasping against his hand. Three days retreat in the wild, untamed lands above Dollet had left him rested and calm, his nerves no longer jangling at each hostile encounter. Below him, the world lay unfolded like an oversized map. Dollet nestled like an iridescent jewel in a crown against an inky blue sea, its white buildings reflected in the calm ocean swell.. The lively port town had taken a battering at the hands of Galbadia, but rebuilding work was well underway. Luxury yachts lined the newly-refurbished harbor wall, gleaming white and gold and silver in the strong morning sun. Irvine exhaled in a long sigh at the beauty of it all. The sandy-haired gunman stepped away from the cliff edge, leaving treadmarks in the dust. They would remain for a while until the wind blew them out of recognition. This far up, the wind was almost constant. The traces of his passing would not last for long.
Irvine started walking again. There was no life up here save him. The cold, harsh wind gained in intensity, sighing around him like the breaths of an aroused lover. It was the perfect place for retreats, the retreats that were becoming more and more essential to him. He was, had been, would be, all his life, a sniper. The very best there was. As a gunman, he had no equal. His sighting was uncanny. And the speed at which he struck - he had found himself to be frighteningly fast. But such skill came with a heavy price.
He had grown apart from the world, had sunken into himself more and more with every passing day. "The sniper's disease", they called it. Long bouts of depression were followed by short periods of elation so high, so pure that it took him days to come down. Every time he was called into battle, his stomach turned. He would lie feverish in his bed, fearful of the slaughter to come. His eyes would slowly come to rest on his rifle, the Exeter. It had taken him years to build and refine, helped along the way by Squall and his team. He spent hours each day polishing it, cleaning it, caring obsessively for it. He slept with it held tightly by his side. It glistened, shimmered, seemed almost alive. It was part of him. It spoke to him, in the long nights of self-loathing. It said, Everything you want, every wish you have - I can give it to you. There will be no price. You're mine. Forever. You know you cannot let go. What would you be without me? Nothing. Because you are part of what I am, what I have grown to be within you. You're mine...
And the being once known as Irvine would stand tall, would take up the weapon, would go and fight and kill in the name of duty. He came like a tornado, whirling, dancing through the maelstrom of battle, firing again and again and again, each bullet an orgy of joy, ecstatic to be alive, to have the adrenaline of the fight coursing through his veins like fire. And when it was over, he would stop, drained of all energy, and slump to the ground, saying over and over again, "What have I done?"
The bodies littered the ground, seeping dark, rich blood. Here and there, a smaller one. Children, perhaps. The acrid, burnt smell of gunpowder filled the air, fading and rising with each gust of wind. Several bodies were no more than masses of congealed blood. Gunshot wounds, some already filling with flies and maggots and other detritus gaped wide open under the hot sun. Blood trickled in small rivulets down each body. Limbs were littered around here and there, and the stench of decay filled the air.
A man walked onwards through the mess of bodies. The sickness would come, like it always did. He knew it would. He tried to prepare for it. As if it would help at all...
It started, as always, with nausea. Waves of sickness washed over him. It came like a hot, dry storm, a bitter taste in the back of his throat. His stomach would heave until there was nothing left to be sick with, his sides aching, his face muscles draw into a rictus of self-loathing. God, it hurt.
It left him as weak as a newborn kitten, gasping for air like a landed fish, helpless in the grip of his own revulsion. And then the black nights would come, hounded in his nightmares by those whom he had laid out onto the cold, dead earth, come to taunt him, to tear apart the last crumbling walls of humanity inside, to render him insane. Nothing could help him. He was as a worm writhing upon the white-hot stove of guilt.
God, the PAIN! Death would be a relief next to this!
The Exeter laughed at him in the night, its silver lines creased with sick pleasure. See what you have become, human! Indeed, you have fallen from grace! You are to blame for all this. You can't blame me. I'm just a gun... What? I killed? You say I killed? Foolish creature! I am only the means to an end. You must live with me, with your actions. I can give you all you desire, but you will pay the price, as you know you must. You're mine...
Irvine woke, drenched in sweat, sheets soaked through with urine from the terror and the pain. He stumbled out of bed, shaking from the aftershock of fear and the humiliation. He dragged himself to the shower - as a level 30 SeeD, he merited his own quarters at Balamb Garden, the floating academy - and let the hot spray caress and soothe him. Let it make him human again. He surrendered all his senses to the spray and leaned back against the tiled wall, his strong, well defined - muscles relaxing gradually beneath the warm water. His mind became a blank sheet. No need to worry at all, really. Out there on the battlefield, it was kill or be killed, wasn't it? It was not his fault that all his opponents had run up against the best gunman in the elite SeeD military force. Put like that, their deaths were their own fault, surely? They had challenged him. He had but responded...
The sound of gunfire melded with the zip and screech of magic. Irvine hunkered down behind the low inner wall of the balcony that ran around the edge of each prison floor. In the centre of the shaft created by the balcony hung a contraption - it seemed like a lift of some sort. They'd probably need it to get out. He threw a glance behind him. Rinoa and Squall were almost up the stairs. The guards were only one story below him. Good. He still had time.
"Right", he said. "My turn to boogie"
In a frenzy, he fired shell after shell at the story below. Flames splashed against the ground as his flaming shells found their poorly-protected marks. Shots spattered against the wall behind him with increasing rate and accuracy. Damn. Trapped, and too many of them to risk shooting. Irvine put down his gun and willed his Guardian, Diablos, to him. As his view faded to white he saw the bats, sentient components of the monster, beginning to circle.
Men lay stretched out unconscious on the floor. Some were still awake, though they were temporarily immobile. One guard was still moving. He crawled slowly to his feet and steadied himself with his sword. Irvine stared. Surely Diablos hadn't missed?
The young guard shakily held his sword out in front of him and fired a bolt of lightning from his other hand. Irvine dived to his right, rolled, and fetched up against the back wall. The bolt sizzled past his ear. He fired twice, without even being aware that he had already aimed, and the guard dissolved into a red, sticky mist. Irvine got up shakily. His face was covered with the guard's blood. He already felt sick with adrenaline. He had to get out of the place. Irvine checked that none of the others presented an immediate threat, and then, feeling slightly better, fled up the stairs. He knew he would pay later.
Irvine lay back on his bed and looked around at his familiar room. His gleaming rifle hung by the washstand, passively aggressive. A few trashy novels littered lower shelf by his bed, along with his wooden bead necklace and bronze medallion. A shell, highly polished, lay on the uppermost shelf. It was fully four inches in length and glistened with a cold, detached ferocity. The room itself was relatively tidy. A pair of shorts hung over the back of the chair in the corner. His battered desk was in front of the large window, his bed along the left wall with the head of it just under the same window. His room. The same room which had seen him take Selphie for the first time, gently at first, and then with an animal ferocity that Selphie had returned in full. The bed still bore the scars of that night; it had been broken in half and one of the legs had come off from the heated passion of Irvine and Selphie's frienzied lovemaking. Irvine had carried out some crude yet effective repairs without (he hoped) anyone noticing. He grinned, catlike, recalling the urgency with which they had coupled. She had needed him, wanted him. In the warm afterglow she had cuddled up to him and whispered sweet nothings in his ear. He had felt whole, sated. Loved and at peace, he had slept.