Purity Amidst Madness

Chapter 10

oOo

Personally, I thought Mustadio looked ridiculous. He seemed to agree, glaring at Ramza as we marched. The pony-tailed engineer now walked with a bandoleer of ten pistols strapped to his slight frame, in addition to the magic gun in his hip.

"Ramza, I feel ridiculous," the young man noted to his best friend, shifting the bandoleer uncomfortably.

"Mustadio... What if I can't save us, next time?" Ramza asked simply, leading the way. From his gait, I could tell our leader was still feeling the effects of the last battle. While it's true that the ethers and potions he drank after our last encounter had technically restored him to full, he still seemed to me to be suffering from some malady neither could cure.

Not that it's any surprise. Every time I went to speak, I found my throat tightening considerably. My previous thoughts of his legend had only been proven frighteningly right in our last battle. What does one say to a man that focused? Indeed, what can one say? I was lost in my own thoughts at that moment.

Those thoughts were interrupted by the barrier in front of us. A large chasm stretched to our left and right as far as the eye could see, with only a small protrusion from the shattered city being the only viable point from which we would feel free to jump across.

Ramza approached first, and until the sharp crack of the gunshot reached my ears I had no idea why he fell, clutching his chest. A second gunshot whizzed by my ear as I dove for the cover of a nearby pile of rubble, watching as my compatriots did the same.

"I'm going to try to drag him back," Agrias growled, standing and holding her shield up. The bullet pierced the shield and then her throat, sending her to the ground behind the collapsed pillar which she'd sought refuge behind earlier. I rolled out of cover and sprinted for the pillar, the next shot taking me high in the arm as I slid behind the stone guarding her. A phoenix down revived Agrias, and she didn't try to rise again, caution warring with anger in her eyes.

"We don't have much time, we've got to do something!" I growled, moving to stand. If I died, Cid could bring me back. But his hand firmed me and the old man nodded to Mustadio with a grin.

"Meliadoul, the Chemist pouch!" Mustadio yelled, rising and firing in one smooth motion. The Blaze gun in his hands spat, and a large chunk of ice appeared in front of Ramza's rapidly-cooling corpse. He caught the pouch I threw as he sprinted for the newly-made cover, sliding to press his back against the ice even as he threw a phoenix down on our leader.

Ramza coughed, and only Mustadio's leg prevented him from rolling out of the protection granted by the ice barricade as he was revived.

"So... We've got a sniper," the blond engineer said, darting his head out to scan the opposite cliff and pulling it back quickly, his caution proven correct as a piece of the cover disintegrated under a shot from somewhere.

"I'd noticed," Ramza commented blandly, groaning as he pulled himself to a crouch next to Mustadio. He repeated Mustadio's gesture, not flinching as his glance was too slow and something whizzed by, tossing his hair a bit. "I just realized that I may have neglected my abilities with ranged weapons."

"That's why you need me," his friend replied easily, poking his head over the cover for a split second and frowning as ducked back down. "I see Hydras on the far bank, and I can't think of any pistol that gives this sort of range. I can see the guy on the far bank. Maybe forty feet to the right of our position and about six hundred feet back. He's got a two-handed pistol of some sort."

"A longpistol?" Our leader mused, popping his head out for a second and dipping back behind cover as more of it disappeared to gunfire.

"Whatever you want to call it, I want it," Mustadio noted, reloading the magical gun at his side. He glanced at it briefly. "Ever wonder why the mage who made this called it a Blaze Gun and carved fire on the side when it clearly shoots ice spells?"

"Ever wonder why you get these thoughts when we're stuck behind rocks with no way of escape?" I hissed, prompting a dark chuckle from Mustadio and Ramza.

"I can get close enough to that guy, Ramza. Plus, this is my field of expertise," Mustadio noted, raising an eyebrow. Our blond leader nodded in response.

"But you need someone to help out with the hydras, right?" Ramza asked with a sick smile. "Mustadio, I suppose I could try a leap..."

"Good for the way up and the way down, bad for when you hit the apex. You'd be a sitting duck up there," Mustadio told him. "Get naked."

I blinked.

"The Secret Clothes?" Ramza pondered, already unbuckling the armour on his slim frame.

"You got it. I'm pretty sure I can take out any of the hydras at range with ease. The problem is the one or two who're going to surprise me," the blond told Ramza, wincing.

And then Ramza proved that even with my expectations, he could surprise me. Putting on the rather plain clothes he dug out of his pack, he promptly turned invisible.

Surprisingly, despite the fact the pair of us were watching, the sniper didn't take a shot at myself or Agrias, allowing us to watch. Perhaps he feared that whatever the blond duo had planned would require all of his attention.

I have to admit that at the time, I knew he was probably right. Mustadio threw a hand out of cover, firing the magical weapon and creating a new ice block right at the edge of the chasm separating us from our opponent and his creatures, and in that moment he broke from cover in a sprint.

Directly opposite from the direction he'd created cover closer to his foe.

He was already reloading the Blaze Gun as he ran, slipping the ready firearm into a holster as he leaped across the abyss below. He landed on the edge and rolled, a missed shot plucking at the waist of his billowing shirt at nearly the same instant as he slid into cover behind a large boulder.

I didn't think he'd noticed the approaching hydra, but I'd apparently misjudged him. He threw one arm out and shot the creature in the eye, killing the centre head. As it bore down on him he drew two more weapons from the bandoleer across his chest, and two more sharp cracks ended the foul creature's life.

An angry shriek announced another hydra, this time bounding along the edge of the chasm as it approached Mustadio. The blond drew one gun and aimed carefully down the barrel, exhaling a bit as his hand squeezed on the gun. An instant later, as the hydra's front legs were coming down to the ground in it's sprint, the foreleg closest to the darkness below was kicked out from underneath it, and the beast only had time to bellow thrice in fear as it's tumbling momentum carried it over the edge and into death.

Mustadio rose from cover and fired in one smooth shot directly at the sniper. Ice blossomed in front of our foe, and he shouted a cry of surprise as the pony-tailed man broke from cover in a dead sprint towards the man, eating half a dozen feet every second as he desperately closed the gap between himself and his target.

"Ramza!" Mustadio yelled, drawing his Romandan pistol from the sheath at his side and sighting down it unflinchingly, even as a third hydra bellowed and began to close with the concentrating youth.

The hydra died mid leap, skewered on a large spear held in Ramza's hand. Even as fires began to gather in it's throat, Ramza spun and hacked off the three heads in one blow with a large knight blade.

The mysterious sniper was shot the instant his rifle appeared, Mustadio sheathing his pistol and running forward towards the man, a now-visible Ramza on his heels.

"Did Mustadio just?" Agrias began, confused.

I was already running, my two remaining companions coming swiftly after me.

oOo

By the time we arrived, Mustadio and Ramza had already subdued the man firing the weapon at us. It wasn't my father, who I'd thought the only other person with us down in the dark.

It was Balk.

The strange pistol, almost three feet long, was held in the blond engineer's hands.

"You used the power of the Holy Stone to survive last time, didn't you," Mustadio asked quietly, staring down at the defeated man. The engineer clutched at his ruined neck, nodding after a moment. Mustadio snorted. "Pathetic. A man from Romanda should have better sense than to get involved in this sort of insanity."

"You're... here..." Balk choked out, smiling darkly at the youth.

"I suppose I am," Mustadio allowed, drawing a pistol and shooting Balk in the face. I flinched, and pointedly didn't look at the no-doubt gruesome sight. He reached down, rooting through a pouch and throwing Ramza a Holy Stone. At the shocked look on our faces, he shrugged. "Lucavi appear to be a lot easier to kill if you don't let them transform first. I'm sure it would have been more honourable to let him change form and come at us as a demon, too, but I don't think Alma has that kind of time."

Ramza simply nodded in response, continuing on.

"Shall we, then?" Mustadio asked the rest of us, prompting us to move on.

oOo

We'd been walking for maybe ten minutes when Agrias spoke.

"He had to have done that because of what I said. Nothing else makes sense," Agrias stated, and I looked over at her. Her eyes looked... troubled.

"Are you really so surprised, wench?" Orlandu asked, quirking an eyebrow towards the two young men walking in front of us.

"But he's... Mustadio!" Agrias argued. Not very effectively, in my opinion.

"And he's very good at what he does," Orlandu agreed. He patted the woman on the shoulder. "Look, you've compared him to Ramza. We both know that that's not really fair. Mustadio has spent most of his time learning how to deal with structures and excavation. He's not, despite evidence to the contrary, a fighter."

"He has more than proven his worth as a warrior," Agrias argued, crossing her arms. "Not a great one, but fit to stand with us."

"That's his point, I think," I allowed, catching the honey-blond swordswoman's surprised glance. "Mustadio's erratic. As good as he is with those contraptions, I don't think he's ever actually been trained to fight. Everything he knows he probably learned by himself or traveling with Ramza."

"But... That would mean he wasn't used to fighting," the holy swordsman argued, crossing her arms. "There's no way..."

"Maybe there is," I concluded, glancing significantly towards the slightly taller young man. Mustadio glanced back at us and smiled a bit, still cradling the longpistol with the boyish excitement of someone waking up for Christmas Day.

Agrias looked troubled as we marched onward.

oOo

Author's Notes:

I always felt that it was strange that Mustadio and Balk shared no dialogue whatsoever, since they're very clearly parallels of one another. Dramatically speaking, Balk should be Mustadio's time to shine. So it is in this story. I rewrote the dialogue, obviously. Like the whole Zalbag thing, the second fight with Balk was pure filler. This time it really didn't serve any purpose, so I re-imagined it to be something a lot more awesome.

I think it works. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Also, the look on Agrias' face during her any line of speech related to Mustadio had to have been priceless. It's a shame I can only imagine it in my head.