Sorry. I had to get something called a "life" and I didn't have time to write.
Also, I apologize because I seem to like writing action stories, but I can't write action... or fights. YAY.
We're back at Shinra's building.
"I'm going to check on Reno," I tell Rude over my shoulder. He gives me a look. He's not happy with me still. Or, I should say that he's not happy with me over something new. Either way I can't look him in the eye. I couldn't look Reno in the eye for a while after I saw what he did and I can't look at Rude now either.
I go down one more floor and find the infirmary on the right. Reno's sitting on the table I sat on when I had my head bandaged. Only he's shirtless as the nurse tends to his shoulder where the bullet grazed him. I don't look.
"Hey Cecilia," Reno says.
"Are you alright?" I ask walking over to see his injury. It's shallow and he's really lucky that he got away with just a graze. "It looks painful."
"I'm fine. Been through worse."
"Reno'll never admit that he needs help," the nurse says with a smile. I let out a small laugh. "It'll be stingy for a while but it's not infected or anything so it should just scab over. I'm just bandaging it to keep any infections out if it doesn't scab over quickly enough."
Reno shrugs his shirt back on and lazily does some of the buttons up. "Thanks," He says, sliding off the table. He goes to slide his arm around me lazily but the graze in his shoulder keeps him from doing it.
Together we go back up to our floor. Rude is filling out paperwork. Probably both his and Reno's. I have to fill some out too. I have to fill out what happened when I was taken and what happened when I was there and who the people were and what they look like.
I sit at my desk filling out the forms and papers. Reno's sitting on Rude's desk again. Rude doesn't seem to mind. Then again, Rude seems to put up with a lot of things that Reno does. I still think it's a little strange that two people as opposite as those two work together so well.
Tapping my pen on the desk I try to remember how I ended up getting myself captured. The details are a little foggy. Reno and Rude are talking quietly. I don't need to hear them to know what they're talking about.
I can't kill. I told myself in Rocket Town that I wouldn't fail the next time I needed to kill. I needed to kill and I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill. I can't kill. I can't do it. I can't take a life. Both Reno and Rude do it and it looks so easy. It is easy, to take a life. I can't do it.
Reno as I've said before gets this sadistic look to him. He attacks people and he looks like he's having fun. He kills without flinching and doesn't even seem to care. He even laughs. That same laugh I can't stop hearing in my head.
There's Rude now, too. Silently he killed that man. It was even worse than Reno's kill. Reno had a gun and just pulled the trigger, easy as that. Rude used his fit. He brought his fists down with enough strength to break bone. The screams that came out of the man were terrible and yet Rude didn't stop.
They both took lives right before my eyes, and I simply cannot do it and that's all there is to it.
"Cecilia, Rude," comes Tseng's voice making us all look up.
"I have a mission for you both. Sorry Reno, but this is something that I need these two for."
I look back to Rude and Reno. Reno's frowning and as ever I can't tell what Rude's thinking thanks to his shades. Rude stands and nods his head. I guess we're going.
"Why can't I go?" Reno asks.
"Your talents are needed elsewhere," Tseng says. "Like here. Filling out your injury report."
"Those things take two seconds," Reno complains.
"When Rude does them for you," Tseng replies cooly. I suppress a small smile.
Reno frowns and gets off the desk. "Alright, fine, I'll stay here while they go have fun."
Tseng leads both Rude and I away from Reno. "It's not a hard mission," he says as we take the elevator down. "It's another interrogation mission. Reno's no good at them," a pause. "Cecilia, I want you to see what the man knows. We've come to believe that he's in charge of an ani-Shinra movement. I want a confession out of him and then you're both going to bring him back."
"Why am I needed, sir?" Rude asks.
"You'll be her back up. Cecilia has a friendly face that they'll open up to, and you'll be standing close and looking intimidating to show the man what's to come if he decides that he doesn't want to."
"Understood."
We walk over to the helicopter and get on. Tseng tells us we're headed to North Corel before we take off.
As always I'm amazed to see us lift off from the ground, but I don't make my amazement look too obvious. Rude sits quietly beside me. Usually I can take his silence but it's just strained and awkward right now. I can't keep myself from fiddling with the cuffs of my sleeves.
North Corel is a dirty town. It reminds me of the slums of Migdar but I can breathe here. Right away I feel the stares of hate. Shinra must have done something big here. People are living in tents, and there's railroad tracks that look like they've been abandoned for a long time. How poor everyone is shocks me.
"They won't be afraid to attack you," Rude tells me shortly. "Stop looking."
"Right."
Rude and I walk around the town looking for anywhere that this man might be hiding out. I don't put it past any one of these people to be apart of the anti-Shinra movement, if there is one. I'm sure there is. It's just a matter of finding the man in charge.
"AVALANCHE?" I say more to myself than to Rude.
"Hm?"
"I heard someone just now say that there was an ani-Shinra group called AVALANCHE. That's probably who we're after, right?"
"Good ears," Rude says. He stops walking suddenly and I manage to keep from walking into him. "I've heard that name before somewhere." Rude thinks for a moment. I don't say anything.
I can't keep myself from looking around North Corel some more. They don't have a proper anything. There's a ramp that looks like it might lead up to some ruins… or they might be houses, but the ramp ins't made of wood or anything like that. It looks like they just used a sign that fell down once. It looks rickety and not not safe at all.
"I know where to look," Rude says. "Come on."
Rude walks quickly and I nearly have to jog to keep up. People are coming out of their houses to look at us and frown. I can't imagine what Shinra has done to these to these people to have them living like this. The slums are worse, of course, but all the way out here?
"Cecilia," Rude reminds me. "They won't take your looking the way you're intending. All they see is a member of Shinra. Nothing else matter to them."
"I know," I say, "Sorr-" I stop short of my sentence as I walk into someone. "Sorry," I mutter to both Rude and the man.
"Eh?" the man grunts looking down at me. He's a big man. Intimidating like Rude, but what I'm looking at most is the gun he's got grafted onto his right arm. He towers over me like a monster and his eyes narrow the instant he seem my uniform.
"Sorry," I say to him again.
"You ain't sorry for nothin'," the mans says loudly, almost spitting in my face. I've never seen someone with so much hate for Shinra- for me. "Whaddya here to ruin now?" I don't get to say anything before he's speaking again. "Fuckin' Shinra dogs. Yer suckin' the life right outta the planet! Doncha care 'bout what your doin'?"
"Sorry," I say as I start to walk away from him my hands in the air.
"Quit apologizin' fer somethin' you ain't sorry for!"
"Ey, Barret," someone calls. "You've caused us enough problems messing with Shinra dogs. They can't do anything more to us."
Barret grunts and turns his back to us walking away quickly.
"We're not here to play, Cecilia," Rude says to me as if I'm a child. I frown. "Follow me, quickly so we can get this over with.
"I know we're not here to play," I mutter to myself.
Rude leads me up the sign that's used as a ramp. There's a building here and Rude takes me inside of it. It looks like it might be an inn or a hotel. It's so banged up and falling apart I can't really tell. There's beds but they look so worn and dirty there's no way that they'd expect people to actually stay here.
"Him," Rude says, nodding over to a frail old man.
"You sure?" I ask.
"I am," Rude says in a tone that tells me that's all he has to say on the matter and that I better get going.
I walk over to the man quietly, not wanting to scare him. He's so skinny. It can't be healthy at all. He's as pale as a ghost and he looks so brittle, like he might break if the wind blows a little too hard. I'm finding it hard to believe Rude.
"Excuse me, sir?" I say touching his shoulder lightly. Instantly his eyes fly open and he takes a defensive stance, one that would be trained into someone. Just as fast he controls himself and looks like a started man who didn't nearly attack me.
"Who're you?" He asks, his voice hoarse.
"That's really not important right now," I say starting to choose my words carefully, watching him and every move he makes. He's the one we want, I'm sure of it. No one gets int a stance like that unless they've been trained to expect attack. Rude stands over me and I can't help but feel like he's gloating in the fact that he had been right. "I just want to ask you a few things, would that be alright?"
"About the rooms? They're fifty gill a night, so… for the two of you it would be one hundred gill."
"One hungered Gil?" I ask pulling over a chair to sit on not bothering to hide my shock. I've never heard of an inn that cheap. I never thought that he would try and pass this place off as an inn either. There's no way any one would want to stay somewhere this dirty.
"That's right. Do you want to stay the night?"
"Oh, no. Sorry, that's not why I'm here." The man's face falls and I feel a little guilty but I press on anyway. "I can't help but notice that your town holds a grudge against Shinra."
A look of pure hate crosses his face, but he tries his best to retain his frail old man look. "Yes, our town isn't very fond of you, that's correct. Nothing you would and should not be unaware of."
"Of course," I lie. I have no idea what Shinra's done to this place.
"Then what is your business here?"
Rude's silence hovering behind me has the man looking at him every chance he thinks it's safe to do so. He knows why we're here, but he just wants an excuse to attack. I won't give it to him.
"We're just wondering about some things in your town. Not a big deal."
"What things? If you're here to build another reactor, I'm not the one you should be talking to. You should be talking to Barret, but he won't be wanting it so you can give up now."
"No," I say, "we're not here about a mako reactor." I pause, thinking about my words. I don't want to be too forward, but I don't want to dance around the subject for too long. He's trying to read me as I'm reading him. I let out a sigh and smile at him, which catches him off guard. "I'll be honest with you," I start.
"You can't be honest about nothing."
"Wait for a minute. What I mean is, I'm not going to dance around the subject. We're here concerning a group… an anti-Shinra-"
"If it's about AVALANCHE then you're wrong. It don't exist!" the man blurts out. I see a flash of realization of what he's just said cross his face.
I can't help but think gotcha.
Raising my eyebrows I try to pull off that I'm surprised. "AVALANCHE? That's new. I suppose now that the cat's out of the bag you could… or rather I say should tell me more."
The man realizes that he's messed up even though I already knew about AVALANCHE. He's looking up to Rude. Rude doesn't move. I sit and wait. He's scared, and he's not sure what he should be doing. His eyes flicker for a second and I can tell he's made the decision to not say another word. He wants to protect his group. I decide to see what I can get out of him anyway. Any extra information will be good for Shinra.
"Come on now, the more you tell us now, the more you're saving yourself later."
"I don't know nothing. There's been rumors going around 'bout some AVALANCHE group. I may hate Shinra, but at least I know joining a group like that would be suicide. Anyone with half a brain knows this."
I watch him closely still. For a second I doubt myself. It's true that he could just hate Shinra and has just heard rumors. But then again, why would he have jumped right to the fact that he says they don't exist. I don't want to condemn an innocent man…
"Is this all you know?" I ask. "If you know anything at all, you better tell me now."
He's sweating now and I stop doubting myself. He obviously knows that they exist. I'm right in saying he just wants to protect them. Everything he's saying is a lie.
"I don't know nothing!"
"Alright."
"Now leave!" he spits.
"Now why would I do that?" I ask. "When we both know that I've got you?"
The man get up to run but Rude moves forward quickly grabbing the man and pinning his arms behind his back. The man didn't stand a chance against us. Or I should say Rude… I didn't really do anything.
I watch the man struggle, but he's not going to go anywhere soon. I get out my phone and call Shinra. Quickly I tell them exactly what they need to know. They seem pleased enough.
"They'll be here soon," I tell Rude. "They'll be sending one more chopper for the man here."
Rude nods and we leave the building out a back door. We don't want to be parading around the town that already hates us with one of their men. Together with the man we sneak out of the town back to where the helicopters are. Rude shoves the man into the other chopper before coming back to sit in the helicopter with me.
"Cecilia," Rude says after a long ride of silence, we're almost touching down now.
"Yes, Rude?"
"Do you know the first rule of being a Turk?"
I look at him for a moment. Not quite sure what he's asking. We get out of the chopper and walk to the doors of the building.
"I know what our duty is to Shinra is, if that's what you're asking," I say when Rude stops and makes it clear that he's not going to move until I answer.
"The first rule of being a Turk is," he says without looking at me, as if I haven't even spoken, "to not let work become personal." With that he walks away quickly and without looking back.
I stand there a little dumbfounded. I can't think of why he's telling me this. I don't think I've made my work personal. I frown a little. I know that I'm not the best at being a Turk. I know that even though I've gone through the same training they have that I still can't kill. I know this. That still doesn't mean he gets to treat me as a child.
I decide to follow him.