Thanks for reviewing, as usual. Flyery, I'm glad you like my Tifa—honestly, I'm not a big Tifa fan at all, but somehow turning her into a tattoo artist sounded like it worked right for this situation… I rather like her now. XD
Before I get on with the story, I noticed that several people have faved or alerted this story… but haven't given me a review! Come on, you guys. Don't be shy; I don't bite. It's really the decent thing to do, and I'd really appreciate it.
six : what the fine print don't tell you.
I'll admit to knowing nothing about the army when I joined—well, aside from the whole wet dream of repelling from helicopters, conducting raids, wearing tiger striped camouflage and shooting someone in the face at point blank range. But saying you know about these things and seeing them on the television and actually doing them is quite different.
A lot of people I've met say that their first real shocker came when they actually had to shoot someone. I initially found this hard to believe since Shinra soldiers are infamous for having a quota when it comes to that sort of thing. With me, the shocker came with all the damn paperwork and red tape involved with being not only in the military, but a part of Shinra, period. You're like one of their investments, I suppose. A contract is a contract for a reason. Which is another thing—why eliminate Sephiroth, their greatest investment ever?
But really, it's meeting people like Cid and his boys that should shock me. Had I never left Nibelheim, I wouldn't have imagined such people—or brutality—existed.
--
I told the boys four hours, but I'm up in two. In the dark, I fasten my boots on and slip into my gear. I poke around the dying embers to make sure I have accountability of my boat boys—it's hard to make their faces out in the dark, so instead I check for the leviathan insignia on their shoulders, symbolizing that they're part of an amphibious assault division—they'd be the only four here with it.
When I'm ready to go and my sword is strapped on, I sit quietly and wait for the sun to creep into the sky and obliterate the stars. My anxiety pulls at me when I begin wondering when the hell Cid and his boys are going to wake up, and for a while I think nervously that he may not get around to taking me at four thirty. Today is, after all, a new day.
At around three forty-five, Cid begins to stir, and as if a telepathic link were present, the rest of his boys do, too—I don't even remember him fully announcing to the entire battalion when they'd leave, but I guess that's the difference between a close knit bunch like this and a group of rag-tag SOLDIER-qualified officers with no real loyalties to any unit. We go where we're told, and more often than not, that involves us being detached from our base units.
Within fifteen minutes, the entire battalion is up and stirring. I nudge my boat crew with the tip of my boot the second I see Cid stand up and yawn—at first, they flip over and refuse to be taken away from sleep, but when they hear Cid begin to bark orders, the slowly rise and get dressed, annoyed to see that I'm already in full gear and ready to go.
Tseng is the first one up and dressed, of course. As he brushes sand from his hair, wraps it into a bun and throws on his helmet, he takes up his rifle and heads off in the direction of the boat.
"I'm going to make sure our boat is secured and ready to go," he says to me, not waiting for an affirmation to continue.
A soldier with a coronet begins playing the music for wake-up call, and I jump, startled.
"Fuck!" Reno swears, grumpily, pulling himself to his feet after pulling his boots on. "Is all that shit necessary?"
Rude, who had slept with his mouth open all night, is busy trying to get all the sand out with his canteen, which is also covered in sand. "Careful, Reno," he says, awkwardly grinding grains of sand between his teeth and spitting. "Don't wanna upset your new friends."
"Aw, shaddup," Reno growls. "Ya big fuckin' baby."
"I have sand in my boots," Eli whines at the same time in an aggravatingly childish high-pitched voice, working to remove his footgear after having just put them on.
Rude can't stop spitting. "Anyone got a toothbrush?"
Leaving the scramble and the irritating sound of Tseng's crew complaining, I go over to their leader, who watches as several air cav crew hook the boat up to a chopper with long chords, about a foot thick.
"I just thought of another issue," Tseng says to me without turning around. "Are we going up to Wutai?"
"Tseng," I snap, annoyed that I've received little help or support at all during this as-of-yet short and complicated journey. "Quit fucking worrying about it and just get me there."
I turn away to light a cigarette as the chopper behind me comes to life. Perhaps I shouldn't have cut Tseng off like that, but it seems to me like he's trying to do everything in his power to keep me from going up coast and getting me off of his boat. Which, trust me—I don't want to be there any more than Tseng wants me there. His crew are a bunch of young, bumbling retards. One would think that if they're going to send me on a fucking suicide mission, I could use a crew with a bit more experience, or at the very least, maturity. But Heidegger gives me this, and an insane air cav CO. Great, guys; thanks a lot.
Fuck it, I decide. If it gets any worse, I'll just freakin' swim up north.
--
God, I thought I hated helicopters before, but there are eight people aboard this motherfucker.
All five of us are riding with Highwind and his own crew, who are two gunners that sit on the edge of each opening on either side of the chopper manning the guns, and his pilot. Reno is over Highwind's shoulder as he teaches him the controls. Rude himself is talking to the gunner closest to him, a pale-skinned, platinum-blonde soldier from Icicle Inn.
"What's in there?" Rude yells to him, referring to the materia in the many slots on the side of the weapon.
"Nothing fancy," comes his heavily accented reply. He looks at Rude as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have someone gawk at him before engaging the enemy. "Just green-blue combinations… fire-all, confu-all… that's pretty much all we're allowed to use now."
"Why?"
"We quake the bastards, we'll cause a tsunami and wipe this whole region out," he says, gesturing to the earth below us. "Poison them and we might get our own guys too. Slow them, and humanitarian groups will consider us inhumane for letting them cook while they can't run."
"Fuck 'em!" Highwind's helmet oscillates in the front, and I see specks of saliva explode onto the controls. "Like those yuppie pricks gotta know everything!"
This is the first I'd heard of any concern for humanitarian groups' opinion of Shinra. I couldn't even imagine that the Company would allow them to come out here, or that they'd even care if they reported to the world what the see. But then I'm reminded that Shinra has some pretty innovated cover up tactics that they're itching to try out.
"Hey," Rude says, nudging the Icicle soldier, "Can I try a shot?"
"No," I say instantly. But of course, no one hears me.
"I dunno," the gunner shakes his little head, his unsecured helmet rattling on top of it. "It's up to the CO."
"What's up to the CO?" The colonel asks without turning around.
"One of the boat guys wants to shoot the big one, sir!"
"Don't worry about it, sir," I say to him. "I already said—"
"Well hell," Highwind interrupts again. "You know how to use materia, Baldy?"
"No," Rude and I say at the same time.
"Gotta learn sometime, I suppose," Highwind mumbles as he scratches underneath his earpiece. "Alright, alright. Give him a shot when we've suppressed the motherfuckers."
"Alright!" Reno cheers, leaning across me to give Rude a high five.
"Sir," I say quietly, coming forward and elbowing Reno out of the way. "He isn't qualified to u—"
"Y'know, Captain," he snarls, "You're really gettin' on my goddamn nerves. This is my goddamn piece'a heaven. Y'got that?"
I nod and sit back in my seat, deciding not to open my mouth anymore, at least until we're away from Highwind's crazy ass. On the way back, I look at Tseng to get an idea on how he feels about all this. He sits up straight in his chair, his head leaning onto his shoulder and his face half out into the air. Longingly, he looks at the island he might have once called his and smiles.
I'm sure he heard the entire exchange. Maybe he would have said something, if he didn't think I'd get chewed out for trying to keep his men in order.
--
The new piece of the dossier itches in my fingers, but until I leave this helicopter, I can't read it—I don't want to risk opening it and having some of the documents fly out the window. Though, I can't help but open it just to peek and see if there are any more pictures of Sephiroth.
After going through the first portion, it'd occurred to me that Sephiroth's presence in my life left a greater mark than I'd allowed myself to think. After he left the duty station we shared, it took about two weeks for me to file my memories of him in the back of my mind and not pull them up—to make him a "thing of the past," so they say. Which is actually a good thing—people come and go in the military and attachment doesn't do anyone any good. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to.
Keeping the folder close to my chest in my lap, I bend the top up and shift past the papers to the harder texture of photographs. I flip the first one down, expecting to see more of a younger Sephiroth accepting an award or some such, but am startled by what's there instead.
More mutilated corpses. Letting the rest of the dossier fall shut, I decide to keep it closed until I'm back on the boat.
I look out the door as we approach the destination—a coastal encampment set on a high cliff with no beach, marked by the standard of Wutai's empery rather than the standard some had adopted to symbolize alliance with Shinra. Like ants, the tiny villagers I see scramble as they get larger, stopping behind large structures which can only be anti-aircraft weapons and bazookas—probably acquired from our dead guys.
Suddenly, a projectile whizzes past our helicopter, and Tseng ducks his head in just in time not to catch shrapnel from the exploding helicopter behind us.
"God, fuck!" Highwind says painfully as everyone else in the chopper cough and hack as smoke pours in. I sit still and look around me, craning my neck to try and get a better glimpse of the encampment. "Torch the cocksuckers!" he screams to his gunmen, who pull their goggles down and start firing away.
As we come closer to the cliffs, we're met by small arms fire—which, for the most part, Highwind's iron beasts can take, but it poses a danger since there aren't any doors.
The colonel barks maneuvering and formation orders into his head set; like Tseng, I duck just in time as a projectile flies toward me, slamming into the metal in the back.
"Holy shit!" Rude screams uncharacteristically as the dud grenade falls to the floor, still smoking. Yelling, he tries to scramble away from it, but has nowhere to go except outside the chopper. The Icicle soldier is firing bullets at the encampment, his body bouncing up and down—we're not close enough to use any magic yet.
When I sit up straight, I see that both Reno and Rude have gone into a panic attack. Eli, who was dead asleep before the first explosion, leans forward and grabs Reno by the color, shaking him.
"Reno!" He says in his high pitched voice. "Stop screaming!"
"Stop screaming? The fuck do ya mean 'stop screaming?' We almost died here, you silly little fuck!"
"The colonel can't give orders with all this noise in the back! We'll all get killed!"
Tseng finally spoke up. "Both of you. Sit down and be quiet. Stay out of the way. We're in combat."
"I can't fuckin' hear my other boys!" Highwind's voice cuts through, but it isn't enough.
"Fuck!" Rude cries. "I want off this thing!"
"And you wanted to shoot that gun," Tseng says mockingly, annoyed. "Just take a deep breath and sit, Rude."
Surprisingly, Rude does as he's told and takes a few asthmatic breaths and, amongst whines of "I can't take this shit anymore," he lets his shoulders hang while heaving deep pulls. Helicopters behind and around us are starting to use various methods of fire power—several grenades here and there explode on site, but so far I'm not seeing any direct effect.
As our formation flies over the village, I look down at them—they stare back before trying to fire upwards. Nervously, Rude takes his helmet off his head and sits on it.
"There we are," Highwind says with relief. "Okay boys, let 'em rip!"
The gunmen pull their huge weapons up closer to them and with their other arm, reach down to make adjustments to the length and a few clicks. The materia, which I had thought was already equipped, move down further into the slots with a "tschk" sound and the machines whir.
The Icicle boy lifts the butt stock further up onto his shoulder and uses two hands to grab and aim it. He pulls a separate trigger; the materia in the first two slots glow and fire erupts from the metal, dispersing and chasing after anything organic as it touches the ground. Several Wutainese who were running towards our chopper, firing at us, turn and run the opposite way before collapsing. Their ankles and feet are burned completely off.
When Icicle fires again, their bodies disintegrate into one greasy mass, and the foliage around the site burns with it.
Meanwhile, as the helicopters bob up and down to look for a spot to land, I'm bracing myself, trying not to get motion sickness.
The spot the formation lands in is hot with small arms fire and of course—Highwind's favorite thing—incoming. The gunman who sat in the door to the left of me, towards Tseng, is one of the lucky one's shot as he exits the chopper. Flagged in his shoulder, he cries and falls against me; I help drag him behind a dune and call him to a medic.
Highwind departs slowly with a large megaphone, and refuses to take cover behind the dunes, screaming orders to his battalion, who all turn around to listen through incoming. While the rest duck, he still doesn't even flinch, and bullets seem to curve their paths to go around him.
"Start suppressing fire," he yells into the megaphone. "Distract them so the choppers can nuke 'em!"
Behind me, I hear Reno scream, "Fuck this shit! I'm not getting off this thing!" I turn around, watching Eli hesitatingly climbing out after watching the other kid get shot. He ducks as incoming hits.
"Reno, I can't leave you here!"
"You sure as damn well can!"
"What if the chopper gets hit, you idiot?"
"That's a quicker death than getting shot in your guts!"
I pick my sword back up and run towards the two.
"Screw you; I'm leaving!"
Just as he says that I grab Eli by the front of his collar and push him out towards the dunes, where incoming falls randomly, avoiding the soldiers merely by chance.
"I'm ain't going!" Reno screams hoarsely. "I ain't going! I ain't gettin' off this—"
I grab him by the hair and drag him to the dune Eli is laying in the prone, his weapon towards the enemy. A shell lands and explodes several feet away from us and Reno keeps trying to break out into a run, but he seems to have a pretty sensitive scalp. I deposit him next to Eli, hearing him curse me as I run off to find a dune near Highwind, dodging bullets myself.
At the front of the group, soldiers place smoke bombs to provide us a sheet of cover for a couple of seconds—which I thought was stupid since now we couldn't see them.
"Sir," the same sergeant from last night yells. "I told you this was a bad idea!"
"What is a bad idea, Biggs? Goddamnit, why do you always have to be so damn negative?"
"Sir, we're pinned down!" Sergeant Biggs says, anxious and irritated. "We can't move!"
"Not a fucking problem, Biggs, not at all."
With that, Highwind heads out to god knows where. In front of us, a soldier stands up on his knees from behind a dune at the wrong time and a bullet explodes through the back of his helmet, leaving a spray of pink mist in its wake.
"Fuck!" Biggs says, turning on his back and throwing his helmet off in frustration. I look over at the dunes my boys are in. Eli is in the worst shape with his shuddering face buried into his rifle, but by now the adrenaline had taken effect in the others. Rude is squatting behind his dune, alone, loading a magazine. Reno does the same behind his dune, nervously looking over his shoulder as if the enemy would come to him. He fixes his bayonet to his weapon, which I found interesting—nobody uses those anymore, unless we're practicing drill and ceremony.
Tseng, who is farther up ahead, is already firing, and that curiosity to understand why creeps into me momentarily. But most importantly, I notice that we can't help. There are too many other soldiers in our line of fire.
I look up and see what Biggs means. Right now, we're separated from most of the enemy by a tiny, shallow inlet of water and we can't see what we're shooting at. The Wutainese are using weapons slightly less accurate than ours—I'd heard rumors that they were Shinra's old prototypes, back when they were just a weapons manufacturer, given to these people to test them out and try to get an early alliance. But bullets are still bullets.
Highwind returns, dragging a radioman along with him, who crawls on his feet beside Highwind, trying not to get hit. He yells a call sign into the receiver and I look up to see another formation of helicopters, still firing at the enemy.
Right now, the Wutainese across the water are divided between shooting at us or shooting at the helicopters. Highwind says to the chopper he had just addressed, "Light the bitches on fire! I say again, the coordinates are X-FM-five-five-zero-zero-one-six-nine, Y-FN-three…"
"Tseng," Reno calls, and Tseng slides back from his dune and turns around. "Look!"
He points off to the side just as the choppers descend and the guns spout fire. The chopper carrying our boat drops it into the water westward, and it lands with a heavy splash, leaving me to wonder if it'll still be operational when we get to it.
The enemy begins to scatter, but not before nearly the entire horizon is up in flames and we hear them wail; the whole scene reminds me of the day before.
"Whoo-ee!" Highwind cheers, dropping the receiver on the radioman's helmet. "Ain't that just gorgeous? Captain, look!"
He bounds back to my dune and I dare to lift my head and behold another one of Highwind's masterpieces—enemy fire slowly dies as the fortification that was once across the water disintegrates in the blaze. Smoke and dirt rolls over us and as it passes over our heads and we cough in waves.
Except for the colonel of course.
Proudly, he inhales the dusty air and exhales.
"Captain," he begins with a serious tone. "I hope you live long enough to experience the glory of something like this."
I only look at him sideways, my thoughts turning to the man in the dossier.
"Yes, sir," I say in affirmative.
--
The mop-up began shortly after the boat dropped—enemy fire is still not completely suppressed, and we still have to dodge bullets from structure to structure to get to our boat. Protocol states that I should stay here and help until enemy fire is completely suppressed, but Highwind is eager to get me out of his FO, and I'm just as eager to leave and look at my dossier.
The boys finally got up from their dunes and overran the remains of the fort, some of them with bayonets fixed, like Reno. Reno ran along with them at first, but Tseng managed to find him and pull him out of the way.
Highwind's boys shoot at anything that moved. I want to say that this is a good thing, since bad reflexes gets you killed in this job, but it disturbed me to notice that they thought of it as more than just a job. The Wutainese use swords and blades for hand to hand combat, and the way the colonel and his men charge them seems to mock their cry for honor. I watched as one soldier laughed as a Wutainese engaged him in a sword-fight with his fixed bayonet; he seemed to play along before shooting him in his face.
When they clear buildings, they chase the inhabitants out in lines before shooting them all to death. Naturally, a lot of them were women and children, and I whirled about looking for Tseng.
Is it natural for me to think that seeing all of this might make him explode one day?
Once I know that all four crew members are accounted for, I try to move them back to the dunes and keep them there—Reno itches to be a part of the fight while Eli is horrified and disgusted, watching as elderly villagers are pummeled to the ground with buttstocks.
"Are they allowed to do that?" He asks in earnest curiousity. Nobody answers.
--
Reno is the only one who leaves with a good feeling about this—Eli is still bothered that he saw someone about his age get his brains blown out in front of him; this was probably one of his first combat situations. Tseng is in a hurry to get back to his boat, where he's in a position of command. Rude just swears and tries to tear Reno away from the new bond he's made with the chopper boys.
As Reno shakes hands and bids farewell to Highwind and the others, Rude grabs his shoulder and says, "Alright, alright, let's go! We've been here long enough."
"Take care'a yourself, sir," Reno says to the colonel as he's being pulled away.
"So long," Highwind says kindly to Reno, then turns to me and yells as I jump down into the boat, "Hey, Cap'n! Watch your ass out there, alright? I don't wanna have no nightmares about you 'cuz'a seein' your dead body in the forest somewhere!"
My back is turned to him, so I pretend that I don't hear him and sit down to pull out the dossier. Had I chose to answer to him, my response would have been something like this:
"It's Sephiroth we're dealing with, sir. Of course you'll find my corpse somewhere."
--
A/N: Sorry for the wait, but I fucking hated this chapter. Seriously. It took all week to spit out; I was writing like how hold people fuck. I don't know much about air cavalry and air strikes so I had to improvise, or else it'd sound stupid. Now that it's over with and the crew is on it's way up, I can get to more fun stuff.