I think, after seven months of bugger all motivation to work on this fic, we can officially call this dead, or at least persistently vegetative. I haven't really been interested in this story for a very long time, and writing it has been more of a chore than anything, and I really don't want to spend my free time doing something that is, to me, significantly un-fun. Here's what currently exists of chapter seven. It may get finished at some point, but holding your breath may not be conducive to long-term survival. Sorry, all.
16:42
01/12/90
Roefrheim
The Red Dog Inn
The journey back to Roefrheim had been long and slow. Genesis' leg, despite the copious amounts of magic poured into it, wasn't perfect by a long shot, so they couldn't move too quickly. Still, they had been granted one small mercy; no more monsters accosted them on the way. Blinding snow, yes, biting cold, yes, but no monsters, and at the time it was all they could really ask.
Now, back in the warmth of a cave network heated by underground sulphur springs, and with their first meal in days even resembling actual food, they had a moment to relax. In the lull before the workers of Roefrheim descended upon the Red Dog the three SOLDIERs perched at a table, with Bram snuffling at their feet and Edda marvelling at their apparently bottomless stomachs.
Sephiroth nursed a cup of coffee as Genesis and Angeal chattered. Heedless of their conversation beyond a small, nagging wish that they would talk about something relevant, his mind worked over the events of the past few days. The number on the dragon's lip troubled him. At some point in the creature's life it had been in the possession of humans, and no matter how he tried to persuade himself it had probably just escaped from a private menagerie he could not bring himself to rule out foul play.
The problem was, he had all of no experience dealing with politics. He was a SOLDIER, not a troubleshooter. Perhaps his best bet was to withdraw and send in a specialist. Of course, that meant dancing around Shinra bureaucracy to get anything done, which did not appeal to him in the least.
It occurred to him that asking Muldoon for advice may not be a terrible idea, and with that his mind settled down into the unthinking haze he had been taught to maintain. He listened without comprehension to his two subordinates, none too interested in the idle chit-chat of Outside folk.
A fit of violent coughing told his ears that he may actually want to pay attention, prompting him to shake the cobwebs out of his head and scold himself for zoning out. Angeal had his fist held to his mouth, his other hand clutching his chest. Genesis fretted over him, hitting his back and asking far too many questions of someone unable to speak.
For a moment that lasted all too long, Sephiroth realised he was powerless to help. Beyond trying to dislodge anything obstructing the airway, which Genesis had in hand, all one could do for coughing fits was to wait them out. Unsure what else to do, he hovered in the background and clenched his fists in turn.
After a minute or so Angeal's coughs subsided, but he refused to let go of his chest and he winced as he shuffled into a more comfortable position.
"Are your ribs painful?" Sephiroth asked with a tilt of his head. Angeal nodded and winced again as Sephiroth checked for fractures. "You haven't re-broken them. They're just bruised."
Genesis seemed reassured by Sephiroth's assessment, but his frown only lessened slightly. "Is it the gas?"
"Quite possibly. We shouldn't stay long."
"Why should we stay at all? Why not just radio for extraction and be done with this place?" Sephiroth was beginning to grow accustomed to the bitterly quizzical tone in Genesis' voice.
Tempting as the idea was, Sephiroth could not bear leaving a mission unfinished. "While technically speaking we have fulfilled our mission, we still need to establish precisely what that dragon was doing there. If nothing else we should find out to whom it belonged and alert them. If it escaped, they will at least have assurance that it is safely dead. If it was sold…"
Angeal's hoarse voice fell to a cautious whisper. "You're suggesting this was planned?"
"And besides, didn't you say we weren't here to get involved in local politics?" Genesis' eyebrows rose.
"At this point I don't think we can rule out any possibilities, and if someone genuinely planned this then there is the risk that it might happen again."
Genesis buried his head in his hands. "Oh, rapture. Politics."
"You enjoy politics?"
Genesis gave him the sort of look people used when he had said something momentously stupid. "I was being sarcastic, Sephiroth."
Ah yes, sarcasm. His greatest enemy. "I see." In truth he did not see at all, but it ended the conversation neatly.
Within twenty minutes the desk in their room could no longer be seen for all the papers on it. Genesis's eyes flicked over the minutes from the Council meeting. "Haakon said that all the missing people passed through Brandrhals, but we found the free traders' bodies before then. Presumably they were attacked on the way back. That gives us a possible time frame of when our dragon arrived."
"Or they just missed the dragon on the way in." Angeal suggested, his voice having settled to its usual baritone.
"That's also a possibility, but it will be useful to have a working hypothesis of when the dragon arrived. For now we'll put it at roughly two weeks ago, but we'll discard that estimate if necessary." Sephiroth said as he looked over his own notes.
Genesis nodded. "So, what we know so far is… all the patriarchs hate each other, Haakon hates the patriarchs, everybody hates the head of the Modeo extraction plant and he hates everyone here. This is going to be interesting."
"Indeed. We ought to figure out to whom that dragon belonged before we do anything else. If it was sold, the owner should have some record of it. I'll radio Blackthorn and request a check of the dragon's ID number."
"Right. We should probably check out this Modeo place as well and see if we can get a bit more of an idea as to what exactly is going on between Modeoheim and Roefrheim." Genesis placed the minutes back into their envelope and looked back at Sephiroth, who had pulled their radio unit onto his back. Genesis' gaze flicked to Angeal, who met it with a brief smile, then nodded to Sephiroth as he headed out, leaving the two of them alone.
When the door scraped shut, Genesis felt the cloying awkwardness that always smothered conversation when Sephiroth was around lift. He half sighed half grumbled and riffled through a few more papers. There had to be something on Modeoheim in Sephiroth's seemingly endless piles of intel…
"You okay, Gen?"
Genesis turned with a start to face Angeal, who wore a look that sat somewhere between geniality and concern. "What? Yeah, I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Because you're getting defensive about it." Angeal folded his arms and shifted his weight.
"That was after you asked! Something had to have prompted it!"
Angeal shrugged. "I know you, Gen, and I know when something's not right with you. You've been acting weird since we were assigned to Junon, and don't try telling me you weren't."
"I haven't – "
"What did I just say?"
Genesis' shoulders fell. He couldn't lie to his best friend, and even if he tried Angeal would drag the truth out of him anyway. "I… It's just…"
"Sephiroth?" Angeal offered, still fixing him with his kind but stern gaze.
"Yes." Genesis blurted out with an exaggerated sigh, glad to have that in the open, and not to have been the one to say it. "I went into SOLDIER just for a chance to meet him, and suddenly he's my lieutenant and it's the most amazing thing ever and then he turns out to be…" Finding no words of his own that summed up their oddity of a lieutenant he resorted to quoting the man himself. "Emotionally stunted and socially incompetent. And the worst part is I know there's something human under there, but sometimes it seems like he doesn't even know how to be human!"
Genesis buried his face in his hand at the shame that burned through him. Sephiroth outranked him, and more importantly had been his idol for the past eighteen months. The man had done great things, and Genesis, the disrespectful little git, wanted Sephiroth to conform to his ideals of normality. He had no idea what to think of this real Sephiroth. It had been so much easier to look up to the heroic, flawless, whitewashed 'Sephiroth' the newspapers had lauded.
Conversation paused for a little while, leaving Genesis wondering if he had stunned Angeal into silence with how much of an ass he really was.
Angeal unfolded his arms. "Better?"
Genesis released the breath he had been holding. "Kind of. A little."
"Well, if it helps any, I've been thinking exactly the same thing."
Genesis regarded Angeal with wide eyes, utterly dumbfounded. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. The man is without a doubt touched in the head. I just try to remember that he's on enough mako to kill a small chocobo, what with his rank, and that it's probably done things to his grip on society."
A faint smile found its way onto Genesis' face. "I guess you're right…"
"I always am." Angeal grinned, and Genesis knew that expression well enough to know he was teasing. He gave Angeal a gentle cuff on the head and went back to the papers, his heart feeling a little lighter.
Sephiroth's all-too-brief stay in the warmth of the caves had still been long enough for his body to become unaccustomed to the cold outside, and he grimaced as the icy wind struck him in the face.
He worked his way through the valley as radio reception continued to elude him. A long, frustrating walk brought him to the top of the caves themselves after finding a path that amounted to little more than a narrow ledge mercifully cleared of snow. Looking out over the vast expanses he set up the radio as it crackled into life.
He made contact with Blackthorn Ops with little trouble, aided by the height and the impossibly clear air. The radio operators patched him through to Blackthorn's Monster Division with their usual mind-numbingly bored tones. A few minutes later, presumably as they found someone disliked enough to take the call, the MD responded. "BTMD1, send SFS37, over."
Sephiroth gave his response in the clear, clipped tones necessary for radio communication. "SFS37, requesting intel for dragon designated 4573826, over."
"BTMD1, wait one," Sephiroth complied – not much else he could do – as the comms operator on the other end typed furiously. "BTMD1, dragon 4573826 female, approximately two years of age, owned by Sigvard Ljungstadt, location 14 miles N 36° S of Bone Village, over."
"SFS37, roger, any report of dragon 4573826 escaping or being sold? Over."
"BTMD1, negative, over." Sephiroth shook his head. Of course there wasn't. He sighed and appraised the MD of the dragon's current status, then requested a patch through to Muldoon back at Junon. Even more waiting ensued, followed by a brief and pointless conversation with Lunus before he went on a sergeant-hunt, until eventually Muldoon got to the radio.
"SMJ12, hey kid, send SFS37, over."
Sephiroth bit back a grumble at Muldoon's insistence on his nickname. "SFS37, problem turned out to be a dragon, threat has been neutralised, over."
After a bit of lag as the message went from just below the Arctic Circle to the other side of the equator, Muldoon replied. "SMJ12, so you'll be heading home soon? Over."
"SFS37, negative, dragon apparently human-owned, no report has been made of its escape or sale so will be investigating further." Sephiroth filled Muldoon in on the fiasco that was Roefrheim politics, eliciting what he assumed to be sympathetic noises.
"SMJ12, ouch. My best advice would be tread carefully. I hate politicking as much as the next guy, but it'll just make future ops in the region harder if you go riding roughshod over the local hierarchy. Oh, and don't limit your investigation just to the bigwigs. Local gossip can be pretty handy in these situations. You can leave that to the rookies if you want. Speaking of, what do you think of them? Over."
Sephiroth sighed and took a moment to formulate his thoughts. "SFS37, both rookies proficient in monster combat. SRG91 somewhat lacking in discipline, SHA68 more controlled, over."
"SMJ12, roger, you can fill me in fully when you get back. And good luck. I think you're gonna need it, over."
"SFS37, wilco, out."
