Put Your Lights On
10.19.05
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This is a FFVII fic by kleptomaniac0. I own no characters except those you haven't heard of, meaning the ones I've made. Normally I'm averse to posting something new while I have multiple works in progress, but this OC, the first OC I ever created, has been banging against the walls of my head ever since Advent Children came in out Japan. So I'm letting her out before she drives me crazy.
This will be a lot more unguarded than my other works, meaning it'll be sloppier. I'm writing this to get it out of my head and though I always appreciate reviews and constructive criticism, I probably won't be looking at them until the story's done.
Who am I kidding? I need feedback like sunlight. Drop me a line, you know you want to.
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Chapter Thirty-Four
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"Over here!" Zack yelled, waving his arms. "I'm open, I'm open!"
"Not for long, you're not!" Fenwick shouted, tackling him.
It was a lovely autumn day, and the Seventh was amusing itself by playing basketball. Not regular basketball—they were SOLDIERS, after all, and one of the side effects of becoming one of that esteemed company included increased aggression. This was full-contact basketball, one of the most violent games the SOLDIERS could play aside from hockey and lacrosse—the sticks in both games lent themselves to incredible abuses. Punching, kicking, and tackling were all allowed in the SOLDIER versions of games; biting, however, was not, and neither were eye pokes, fishhooks, and below-the-belt hits. Zack grunted as Fenwick tackled him into the asphalt, banging his head against the blacktop.
"You okay?" Fenwick asked, looking at him.
"Yeah, I'm good," Zack said, rubbing his head. Flinging himself onto his back, Zack rammed Fenwick's head into the asphalt and the shorter man yelped, letting go of him at once. As Zack jumped to his feet, he asked, "You okay?"
"Fine," Fenwick grumbled.
"Zack!" Dulles, his teammate, shouted. "Heads up!"
"Yes, sir!" Zack whirled around and leapt into the air, catching the basketball in one hand. Spinning, he shouted, "Dorian!" and hurled the ball.
SOLDIER basketball was always sudden death; anything longer awakened the drive that led SOLDIERS to kill, and there weren't so many Phoenix Downs, Revive materias, and SOLDIERS to spare that this was acceptable. Dorian caught the ball, ducked under an opponent's arm, and tossed the ball for a perfect 3-point shot.
"Woot!" Dorian threw his fist in the air.
"Will you stop with that chocobo noise?" Shouell, a member of the losing team, said.
"What, woot?" Dorian asked, looking at him. "What'd you rather I say? Booya?"
"How about 'huah'?" Zack suggested.
"I like it," Dulles, the third member of Zack's team, said.
"Huah!" The three of them yelled, throwing their fists in the air.
Fenwick scowled. "One more round," he said. His different-colored eyes, one blue and the other gray, glittered like gemstones when he was annoyed or angry.
"Later," Dulles said. He was the leader of the Seventh when they weren't playing basketball. "Let's get some chow."
"In the mess or the city?" Adrian, Fenwick's teammate, asked. Adrian was tall, dark, but unfortunately not handsome; he had a very ordinary-looking face, and even a SOLDIER'S glowing eyes didn't make him remarkable.
Dulles shrugged. "Whatever you like. Just don't get in trouble."
"City it is," Zack said, rubbing his hands and grinning.
Yard, the sixth SOLDIER on the court, laughed. He had a glass eye that never seemed to look the right way. "You're going to that café again, aren't you? I've gotta say, that waitress is a cutie."
Zack pouted. "Can't I go anywhere without you guys thinking I'm picking up a girl?"
"Nope," said his teammates, or general variants thereof.
"But that's fine. As long as you're not First Class, you can mess with anyone you like," Dulles said, waving his hand for emphasis.
"What's wrong with First Class?" Zack asked, frowning.
"The increased strength," Dulles replied. "You remember how it was going from normal to third, right? And third to second?"
"I remember," Zack said a nod. "I wasn't allowed in action for a while because I had to get a grip on the upped strength and stuff."
"That's right," Dulles said. "And it's the same with the First Class SOLDIERS too. The only problem with them is that their strength is much, much higher than you can imagine."
"Like picking up cars?" Zack asked skeptically.
"One-handed," Fenwick said seriously. "And throwing them."
"That's assuming they get a good grip and don't break anything off," Adrian put in.
"The point is that if a First Class SOLDIER'S not real careful, he's gonna hurt someone," Dulles said. "Enemies, fine. Friends, no. And lovers..."
"That's best left to the imagination," Yard said solemnly.
Zack winced. "So... What? They're all celibate?"
"Well, no..." Dorian said slowly, looking off to the side. "They do get it on, just... Well... With people strong enough to take it."
It took Zack a moment to figure out what Dorian was saying. When he did, the black-haired youth started violently, yelping, "You mean they're all—"
"Some of 'em are for sure," Dulles said quickly. "The others, well..."
Adrian wordlessly made a ring of his right hand and shook it lightly in the air, a well-known sign for masturbation.
"Yeah," Fenwick said, pointing at his taller comrade.
Zack shuddered. "No sex... No wonder you guys don't want to be promoted."
Dulles and the guys laughed. "It's not only that," Dorian said. "There's a bunch of weird things that can happen to a guy if The Process doesn't agree with him."
The Process—capital T, capital P—was the period of time a guy spent in the care of the Military Science department in order to go from man to SOLDIER, from third to second class, and so on. Contrary to what the public believed, it was not an easy shot in the arm and hey, I'm Superman: The Process took anywhere from three to six months, several weeks of which a guy lay comatose in a Mako-filled tube while weird (and best left unknown) substances were dripped into his system. It felt and worked like a ground-up rebuild: SOLDIERS came out better, stronger, and smarter than when they'd come in. Still, Zack had heard stories about SOLDIERS gone wrong.
"What kind of weird things?" Zack asked, morbidly curious.
"A freaky disease," Adrian said. "Your skin turns black and starts melting."
"Then your limbs fall off," Fenwick said.
"And other things too," Dorian added with a shudder.
"You could go sterile," Shouell continued. "Or turn into a woman."
"With ginormous breasts," Yard said seriously.
"Or you could grow extra limbs," Dulles said thoughtfully.
Zack frowned. "Okay, now you guys are just messing with me."
The five SOLDIERS laughed. "Well, sure," Dulles said with a grin. "You're the newbie. If we're not making you wash our socks or run laps around the Garrison, we're filling your head with flies."
"Flies?" Adrian repeated, a brow rising.
"Don't you mean lies?" Yard asked.
"I meant 'nonsense'," Dulles said a bit peevishly. "Garbage."
"Why didn't you just say it, then?" Dorian asked, grinning.
"Don't you ignorant fucks know about alliteration?" Dulles asked, looking around. "The poetry of language?"
"Methinks the captain has turned fag on us," Shouell said, and ducked, laughing, as Dulles swiped at him.
"Verily," Fenwick added, and leapt back as Dulles swung at him too.
Just then, Zack heard a strange noise. It roared by the Garrison on the raised highway that surrounded Midgar, starting off low and quiet and then building to a VREEEEHHHR that made Zack wince.
"And there goes the General," Dulles said, nodding in the direction of the highway.
"What?" Zack asked, looking at him.
"That's the sound his bike makes," Yard said.
"When he's flooring it, which is always," Dorian said, nodding knowingly.
Zack's eyebrows shot up. "He's got his own bike?"
"Hell yeah," Dulles said. "Loves that thing. Rides it every chance he gets."
"Why?" Fenwick asked, looking at him. "You look surprised."
"Well..." Zack gestured vaguely at his head. "You know—he's First Class, right? Doesn't that mean he's got really sensitive ears?"
"Sure," Dulles said. "But he makes an exception for the bike."
"And it's not as loud as the other ones out there," Yard said. "Believe me. During the war I used to run messages, and them suckers could knock you deaf after one ride."
"Where does he go?" Zack asked, looking at Dulles.
Dulles shrugged. "Anywhere. We don't ask and he don't tell. S'been like that for about eight years now."
"Eight?"
Dulles nodded. "Most of us in the Seventh, we were with him during the war. He shot right past us in the ranks, but for some reason he remembered us and stuck us together in the unit."
"Not that we mind," Adrian said.
"We're his crew," Dorian said with a grin.
"So that's why we got called for monster hunting?" Zack asked, frowning. "And to guard his place?"
"Yeah," Dulles said with a nod. "He likes us, trusts us—and we don't get up in his face about his age or experience like the First Class guys do."
"What?" Zack exclaimed, his eyes widening. "What!"
"It's hard for guys to make First Class," Dulles said. "And during the war, a lot of them gave the General a buncha flak for being so young—he was First-Class and already a brigadier general when he was eighteen, you know."
"They were resentful," Adrian said. "For the longest time, they were, as a whole, the shit. Then the General came along and..."
"I can see how that might bother them," Zack admitted.
Dulles nodded. "Didn't help that he wasn't a suckup or anything: most of the time, he acted like he was already their boss or at least as good as them. But I think he knew being friendly wouldn't have helped. They just hated his guts the moment they laid eyes on him.
"That's the older generation of First Classers, though. The younger ones, the guys promoted during and after the war, they love him to pieces. Most of them got to where they were on his recommendation, and he was pretty nice to 'em."
Something occurred to Zack. "Is the General...you know?"
Dulles frowned, apparently not understanding, but Adrian caught on quick. "Naw," he said, shaking his head. "He likes the ladies."
"Okay," Zack said, inexplicably relieved.
"I know," Yard said, grinning and nodding in understanding. "Sure looks like it, don't he?"
"He'd be a creepy fag," Shouell mused aloud. "What with that bondage gear he struts around in all the time..."
As the older SOLDIERS laughed, Zack said, "So that's not what he's supposed to wear?"
"Nope," Dulles said. "He's not supposed to have his hair long either, but he's kind of in a position to do where he likes with no one getting in his face about it."
"I've always wondered why he's had it that long," Adrian said, frowning. "During the war, it was the same thing, and whenever a stiff breeze came up, he'd be all like—" Adrian started swatting at the empty air, a remarkably accurate expression of the General's disgust on his face. "Except more so, you know?"
"No way," Zack said, unable to stop from grinning.
"Adrian, you don't remember?" Dorian said, tilting his head. "He started braiding it."
"That's the only man I ever saw who could carry off a Junonese braid," Dulles said, nodding.
"That thing was a freakin' weapon," Yard said fervently. "He'd whip around real fast in battle, right?"
"Oh yeah!" Adrian exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "And that thing—"
"Wham!" Dulles hit his cheek, his head snapping to the side. "I swear, that's the reason nobody ever tried to nail him from the back."
"Prehensile hair," Dorian said sagely.
"Like a tentacle from his head," Shouell agreed.
Zack looked at his five companions, blinking in mixed surprise and envy. Everyone in the world admired Sephiroth, practically worshiped him, and yet here were the men of the Seventh, joking about him and reminiscing about him as if he were just one of the guys.
"But they haven't said his name yet... Always 'the General this' and 'the General that': I guess there's still some distance after all..."
"So, chow." Yard said, looking at Zack. "We going or what?"
"Man, I was ready ten minutes ago," Zack said, grinning. "Let's mosey."
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Author's note:
I was looking over this and I noticed that I'm really spare on the physical descriptions of the Seventh: sorry about that. I'll try to work in some more details later. I might go back and rework ch. 15 to include some names. :sigh: This is going to suck just a little bit, because there's 20 SOLDIERS in the Seventh (though I'm considering changing that too) and they all know each other and Sephiroth pretty well, which means they all need a fair amount of detail... Dang! And yes, Adrian is the messenger that was on the motorcycle in the previous chapter. I kept his name out of it to give it a more memory-like quality, however, and also because I felt it was an unnecessary detail since I was talking about the bike, not the person on it.
Thanks so much to everyone who sent me links and lyrics; it's just awesome, the feedback I get back from you guys. I love posting on because everyone who reads and reviews makes it just a warm, comfortable place to be. Thanks to everyone who reads this strange, silly story of mine, and double thanks to everyone who reviews. Someday when I get a website of my own, I can fully express my gratitude.
I imagine you guys will have questions for me. Lay them on me, I'll answer them in the next A/N.
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