Old Dogs, New Tricks
With her drivers dismissed for the moment, Pearl spent a lot of time in her warehouse alone over the next few weeks, trying to find some way to bypass or work around the new restrictions, and organise whatever short term runs were available. Freight on the Midgar continent was extremely competitive, a new player would need to be very lucky or skilled to make inroads into that market. She only managed a few, enough to keep herself in business, but only temporarily. There was no easy solution presenting itself no matter how long she worried at the problem, but it meant she was in her office when the alarms went off.
Her warehouse was close to the docks, so the tariff station was where she went first. It was staffed by six frazzled soldiers that had just lowered the reinforced security doors to the docks, which was taking heavy impacts from the other side.
Three guns spun to face her as she dropped in the door, and were met by a flat stare. They put up their guns.
"What's going on?"
One of them gestured at the bank of cameras on one wall. She glanced over.
A cargo ship tied up at the docks had suddenly deployed a strange militia based on recoloured Shinra uniforms, but they were demonstrating unexpected strength. Then she caught a flash of a red coat. Since that wasn't normally the best option in battle, they were probably dealing with Genesis copies.
The door wouldn't hold these back for long, although there seemed to be relatively few with wings today. Pearl looked back at the soldiers.
"You have orders?"
One of them took a deep breath. "Hold here as long as we can."
Not bad orders, from a broad utilitarian perspective. Less so if anyone in this room wanted to survive the day. By the time any serious reinforcements got here, they would all be dead. That included Pearl, if she stuck around to help. Pinning a SOLDIER to one location wasn't a good use of their abilities, it made it more likely for them to be ground down. Especially since there were so few SOLDIER in Junon right now, she would be best used as a flying column. The fact that this was also the course most likely for her to come out alive was of course completely coincidental.
Which left…
"Have you a spare comm?"
They tossed her one from a drawer.
"Alright. Well, belay those orders, none of us want to be here when that door falls."
The leader took a step forward. "On what authority-"
"None whatsoever." That was a little mean, it denied them any wriggle room about abandoning their post. "Your call. I'm going to head into town and make my stand somewhere else."
"Stand. Yeah."
She could have argued, but it would be a waste of time. Either they would take her advice and be complicit in the insubordination, or they wouldn't and they would die. It wasn't her problem.
The earpiece told her that there was also an attack from the airport, with copies breaking out of more cargo crates. Airport security would have borne the brunt of that once again. She leapt to the second level of Junon for a better vantage point as the security gate to the docks was finally battered down and hid behind a wall a short distance away, the metal between her and the docks. She needed them to spread out in order to take down stragglers more easily. After a time, two gun wielding Genesis copies ran by her corner. That was somewhat unusual, but they seemed to be alone, so she stepped out behind them and slashed at the first one. He tried to turn, but she grabbed and held him in front of her as the second copy spun.
A human would probably have hesitated to shoot their own colleague. A genesis copy did not. Had her shield been human, a point blank burst at this range would have torn through him and riddled her, but between genesis copy resilience and two layers of body armour, she got lucky. Her shield didn't fall, so she shoved him forward. The copy ahead of her stumbled, and she got close enough to clamp its assault rifle to her side. It had been fired enough to be scalding hot, but she maintained her grip.
The close proximity meant that she couldn't be shot, but it also put the copy inside stabbing range. So she hammered it in the face with the pommel instead.
One of the things Pearl had trouble with from PR on occasion was her lack of an elegant fighting style. She had no issue whatsoever with breaking bones or eye gouging, they were among her instinctive choices, regardless of the mess they left behind. She had never learned to fight as a sport, and fought to kill, not to win or fend off an attacker. Within arm's reach was one of her favourite places to be.
The copy was wearing a mask, which protected its eyes, but her hammering quickly broke nose and jaw. Unfortunately, pain was even worse at stopping Genesis copies than it was SOLDIER, and it didn't drop, its free hand clawing at her face. She had to drop her sword to catch the flailing hand, and discovered with some surprise that she was actually stronger than it was. Fending off the hand, she grabbed the broken jaw and pulled. It was always surprisingly satisfying to break Genesis' face, even if he wasn't the one currently wearing it.
The copy violently pushed her away, and she let it go, taking the jawbone and the machine gun clamped to her side with her. The copy pulled its sidearm with blood running down its neck as she tripped over a fallen body and scooped up her sword.
They looked at each other for a moment. Pearl was fairly confident she could beat the thing, but less that she could do it without being shot and wounded. Fortunately, the decision was taken away from her as the copy on the ground opened up on the first one with its handgun. Later, she would think about that, but for now, the copies were distracted and damaged enough by shooting each other that she cut them both down without any more problems. This started a pattern for the next couple of hours, of hunting down small groups and sneaking up on them or using surprise attacks to cut down the odds before engaging. She was able to use the comms to keep a good picture of what was happening overall, staying moving around the fringes of trouble spots without committing to direct action against heavy resistance. She covered most of the town of upper Junon, jumping from level to level when she could do it without being shot at. She couldn't stop the main assault and didn't try, but she could dull some of its edges.
After their recent wake up call, the Junon garrison was better equipped to take an assault this time, using many heavy security doors to slow down the attack and split up the enemy numbers. Most doors were eventually battered down, but Pearl was able to use the separation to good effect several times to wipe out isolated small groups. The garrison as a whole were using similar tactics, although they were taking some losses too. The largely mindless Genesis copies seemed to be tactically better organised than the (as far as was understood) mostly human AVALANCHE. Although maybe that was just the difference in raw power.
Two hours into the battle, a frantic distress call from a patrol in her comm sent her pelting towards a large concentration of forces, only to find eight copies facedown asleep on the asphalt with twelve Junon garrison soldiers waiting for her.
"We got tired waiting for you," said the first one, grinning.
"Good for you." Pearl said, stabbing each of the prone monsters in the back of the neck, leaving a neat notch in the asphalt. Hopefully she wouldn't have to pay for that. She stayed with them for a while, and discovered that the secret of their success were sleeping gas settings on their guns, originally meant for riot control, but now in use against SOLDIER knockoff monsters as they were generally more likely to be effective at putting them down than a bullet swarm. It had taken a long time and heavy casualties, but the Junon garrison was learning.
Having them at her back actually proved helpful, she could take larger groups with them distracting, holding off, or even taking down some. Gradually, they even started to win back some territory that the invaders had gained.
It could not last. Unfortunately, someone seemed to notice her success. Hours into the battle, a new kind of Genesis copy made its debut, heralded by the spike in death screams into her comm. It took some time to encounter one personally, by which time she had an idea what to expect. She and the squad were taking a break behind another heavy security door when it was cut into quarters by something on the other side, revealing a copy standing next to a small pile of dead.
The Genesis copy advanced at a needlessly slow walk, giving Pearl time to assess it. It wasn't one she'd seen before, but going by the standard pattern, the ones most similar to Genesis himself were typically the more powerful ones. This pattern was borne out in the stupidly huge sword-gun it was using, and the lightness with which it was walking wielding it.
In spite of the SOLDIER reputation for huge swords, it wasn't that common a practice. Even with SOLDIER strength, oversized swords were difficult to use without leaving gaps in your guard. Even though Angeal carried one, he preferred not to use it given the choice. The upside to using one was, once you put in the absurd levels of extra training and practice necessary to use a massively oversized sword effectively, they were almost impossible to defend against. Especially if you then sacrificed your mind for a power boost. SOLDIER could be confident of walking away from most single engagements, but she got the distinct feeling that she could die here.
"I think this one's mine, boys and girls," Pearl said, walking in front of the patrol and drawing her sword.
"You can take em?" asked the leader. The copy was still milking its slow walk of doom.
"I have no idea." She said, honestly. "If you decide to help, try not to shoot me."
And then she was out in front, and the copy fired its…missile launcher? She reacted in time to sever the propulsion from the warhead, catch the tip of the missile and throw it back like a grenade. The timer detonated it somewhere between them, and then the copy was coming.
She tossed off a fireball point blank, but the thing was very fast when it wasn't being dramatic, and it washed harmlessly off its shoulder pad. The soldiers behind her fired their gas pellets, but this time it had no visible effect. As she sprang aside from a diving slash, a soldier standing too close behind her was cut in half, left shoulder to right hip. The others got the message and scattered, as she vaulted over the copy's head and it spun to face her, catching her in a glancing blow that nonetheless propelled her back fifteen feet or so. She caught herself in time to roll aside from an impaling lunge that drove deep into the concrete. The copy ripped it free without effort and drove after her again. Her parry came up in time, but the force of the strike batted her back into the handrail at the edge of the town... and then through it, tearing the metal with a shriek. She landed on the road on the level below, rolling to a halt and spitting a mouthful of blood before coming to her feet. She tossed off a fireball at the copy as it jumped off Junon after her. It blocked on its blade and kept coming without a pause, except a brief one for dramatic effect after its fall. Whether this was Genesis' taste for melodrama, or something inherent was an interesting question for a time when she wasn't in quite such imminent danger of death.
The next few exchanges confirmed her opinion of how this was going to play out. Genesis had learned to play to his minions' strengths. It was not tactically imaginative, but the sword it carried was so long that she couldn't get inside the copy's reach with her own. Her best shot was to dodge an attack and try to get inside its reach before it could redirect the strike, but the copy's strength and speed were insane, enough to redirect a lunge in time to bat her aside before she could ever get close enough to cut. There was no way through its defence without getting cut worse herself, and trying to block powerful strikes ended up with her being thrown around like a toy. She could fend him off for the moment, but every parry hit like a hammer, and sooner or later, she would tire or make a mistake. Suppression fire from the upper level tagged the copy six or eight times, before missile counterfire left her fighting alone. She tried sliding an iceball under the copy's heel as it continued to charge, but while it stumbled, it didn't fall, and she couldn't get through its guard. The return fireball hit her in the chest, knocking her back a few steps in time to parry the next strike. She tried every trick she could think of, and scored the occasional hit, but couldn't do much meaningful harm, and couldn't match it for brute force or speed. She was not going to win this fight, it was only a matter of time.
Eventually, the moment came. The copy fired a missile point blank, too close to cut in half this time, forcing her to swing directly at the warhead or take a missile to the face. Her sword was shattered by the blast, and the shrapnel took two of her fingers with it. The copy drove forward and impaled her before she could dodge aside.
One conversation that sometimes arose on the SOLDIER floor was the most painful thing that could happen to one of them. After extensive burns, the second worst option was generally agreed to be impalement, and after this experience, Pearl believed it. The huge awkward revolver gun thing had missed her spine, which was one mercy, but the pain of being cleanly run through the gut was beyond her ability to describe, in words or feelings. The blade was hot, having been actively fired, and since it was a gun as well, the point wasn't even all that sharp. So it was more a blazing hot steel pipe than a cold blade, and it hurt.
The pain prevented her from thinking clearly, which saved her life. Screaming mindlessly, she drove the hilt shard of her sword into its throat, and grabbed the copy's face with both hands, letting fire rise from her palms as she drove her thumbs into each eye. Pain seldom deterred a copy, but some muscle memories remained, and the copy let go of its sword to grab its face as she blasted a chunk of ice into its chest to propel it off the edge of Junon town. Maybe not even dead, but not her problem for now, leaving her only concern the giant sword gun thing rammed through her body. She could feel the blood spreading across her back, but she was somehow still alive and conscious for the moment, and there was no time to lose.
Crying with pain, she took three tottering steps towards the handrail at the seaward edge of the town. There were already green spots in her vision, growing in from the edges, but if she fell, she was going to die. She fixed that thought in her mind and took another short step as pain blazed. If she fell on the sword and knocked it loose, she would disembowel herself.
Slowly, she made it to the handrail and got a deathgrip on it with her good hand. She was going to faint soon, but if she could hold it off long enough some help might get here on time. If anyone understood her incoherent gurgling into the comm, it might be coming soon.
Time was hard to measure when you were in this much pain, but she was still conscious when the first medic arrived with a crew. He flicked a glance over her, grinned, and said, "According to medical science, you should be dead."
Her bleeding hand flashed out and closed around his throat.
"It is less… funny… to me." She forced out. Her finger stubs screamed in pain, but it did not take superhuman strength to tear out a throat and a medic would know it. A nearby soldier moved to put her body between them and any onlookers, preventing anyone from defending the medic as Pearl shoved him away. He staggered back four steps, eyes blazing, as Pearl glanced at the helpful grunt. Another soldier was drawn by the commotion, and glanced at the swordhilt.
"Wow… what would happen if I pulled that?"
I'd have just enough time to gut you before I bled out, she thought, hoping it was true. It hurt too much to speak, but he must have seen something in her eyes, because he stepped back.
The soldier that had tried to keep her out of view raised her head. "You'd be gassed for murder," she said pleasantly, and he backed away.
"…Sorry…"Pearl whispered weakly.
"That's okay, nobody likes Alex. Lean on me, kay? I'll call someone else."
The second medic to arrive also steadfastly refused to treat her, claiming ignorance of SOLDIER physiology. Apparently he preferred to watch her die than try to intervene. Robin arrived shortly afterwards, with yet another medic in tow, as Pearl bled and fought to stay conscious against the pain.
The third medic that arrived spared the other two only a look of pure disgust before beginning to bandage her finger stubs.
"The blood goes on the inside, shitheads, it's not complicated. Miss, can you hear me?"
"Gyuh." By now her right hand had gone limp, and her vision was starting to blur, but she was still awake and aware, even if most of what she was aware of was pain. Her legs had stopped responding to her brain, leaving her supporting her entire weight with her good arm, her grip leaving fingerprints in the reinforced steel handrail.
"Good. We're going to have to try to move you, which will probably hurt. Anything I should know before then? Allergies, medications, next of kin…"
She made an effort to focus her eyes and speak clearly, this was important, even with a giant sword-gun thing rammed through her. Pain still blazed with every word. Her throat was raw from screams, but she managed.
"Someone… will try to… take me away. Treat me… here… in house." She didn't much trust the local garrison either, but if the kidnapping theory was right, this was the better option. All the locals could do was kill her.
The medic betrayed no surprise or hesitation. "Done." In her blurred peripheral vision she picked up Robin giving a tight nod. It would have to be good enough.
The medic met her eyes again. "I don't think we have time to wait for painkillers, so I'm going to have to move you. Anything else I should know?"
Past speaking, she tried to shake her head. It was a poor effort, but the medic seemed to understand.
"Alright. Brace yourself."
When they moved her, she finally fainted from pain. She was not keen on the odds of ever waking up again, but by that point it was out of her hands.
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