He heard it before he saw it, turned to look just as the Captain pricked his own ears to the whistle pitched almost too high to hear.

"INCOMING!" the Captain bellowed, grabbing him around the waist and throwing him bodily to the ground. Sephiroth sputtered, mouth full of dirt, the wind knocked out of him from the weight of his Captain's body and the concussion of the shell. Above him, the Captain tried to move but didn't get very far. An agonized groan sounded distantly in ears still ringing from the bomb blast. The utter irony was that it was a Shinra missile. Wutai didn't have that kind of heavy artillery. However, their little strikeforce was so deep behind enemy lines that they'd taken fire whether it was intentional or not. Something warm and wet was percolating through the legs of his fatigues. A fresh surge of alarm shot through him and Sephiroth wiggled out from under his commanding officer.

"You okay, kid?" Captain Lazard panted, face white and waxen beneath the dirt.

"Yeah, I'm…" Sephiroth trailed off, feeling the blood drain from his own face. The right side of Lazard's body was dotted with shrapnel fragments, his skin badly burned. The lower half of his right leg was entirely gone. Only a ragged, bloody stump remained, red pouring out of the broken end to muddy the earth.

"Holy Carp…" Sephiroth muttered. At only fifteen and just a few months in the military, he had not yet learned to swear effectively. Yanking off his belt, he looped it around Lazard's knee and pulled. Lazard cried out at that, biting back any further screams behind clenched teeth.

The shell had quieted their section of the battlefield for the moment, but it wouldn't stay that way for long. Other members of the unit were picking themselves up and readying weapons. Sephiroth looked to Lazard who was shivering with what he hoped was only pain. If he went into shock here, odds were high he would not leave the battlefield alive.

"We need...to get out of here…" Lazard grunted, trying to breathe through the pain.

The sounds of many feet approaching made Sephiroth look up. Too late. The landscape was suddenly alive with Wutaian troops, all of them racing toward them, weapons drawn and ready.

"PREPARE TO ENGAGE!" he heard himself holler. "DEFEND THE CAPTAIN! EITHER WE ALL LEAVE, OR NONE OF US DOES!"

He started as something grabbed his ankle. It was Lazard, sword gripped in his free hand.

"Hey kid," he wheezed, "trade ya."

It only made sense. Lazard couldn't very well wield a sword in his present condition. Sephiroth's rifle would be easier to use and offer more protection. Sephiroth handed the gun to him and took the sword just in time for the first wave to arrive.

Most of them carried the extra-long swords that could only be found in this part of the world. Against the shorter swords of the Shinra soldiers the Wutaian masamune had a decided advantage in reach if not necessarily in maneuverability. Sephiroth didn't think about that as he raced to meet the oncoming horde. All he could think of was Lazard's blasted leg, and keeping the opposing forces away from him and the rest of the unit. He barely noticed as he dodged the swipe of the first soldier, ducking in close, digging his blade in and swinging up, splitting the man in two in a fountain of blood. The second met a similar fate, as Sephiroth caught him on the backswing. The soldier collapsed to the ground like a felled tree, a surprised expression on his face, having never known what hit him. It went on like that; moving from one to the next in seemingly endless succession. It didn't take him long to lose count. Somewhere in the middle, his sword broke. He stabbed the jagged shard into the next soldier, grabbed the dead man's sword, and kept swinging. There were fewer of them now. Several had begun running in the other direction. It was not enough that they were retreating. He had to get rid of them all. Like the targets at the practice range, he had to hit all of them. That was the way it worked. On the point of chasing them down, Lazard's voice finally penetrated the white noise ringing between his ears.

"SEPH! SEPHIROTH! SEPH, STAND DOWN! STAND DOWN!"

A flood of navy blue uniforms rushed past him, chasing after the Wutaians that had disappeared back into the hills. He started, dropping back to earth with a jolt, raising his sword to strike but lowering it just as quickly when he turned to engage. Lazard had grabbed his ankle again. Letting out a shaky breath, Sephiroth sank down next to his commander, suddenly light-headed. The unit medic was fussing over Lazard. What remained of his leg had been thickly wrapped in a bandage and what appeared to be someone's shirt. The bleeding might have stopped, but even a full-level cure materia was not going to fix this kind of damage.

"You okay?" Lazard asked him, still pale but breathing more even. Sephiroth noticed a couple of morphine caps sticking out of his leg. The question puzzled him until he noticed how damp and sticky his uniform had become. Looking down, Sephiroth realized he was coated in blood, though none of it was his own.

"Yeah," Sephiroth replied automatically, trying vainly to wipe his face with one hand. All it did was smear the mess even more.

"You did good," Lazard told him. "Here." Stretching, he took Sephiroth's collar in both hands.

"Sir?" Sephiroth asked, unable to see what Lazard was doing.

"You're in command now."

Sephiroth blinked, fingering his collar. Lazard had pinned his captain's bars to the thick fabric.

"You're in command," Lazard repeated. "You can do this."

Mutely, Sephiroth nodded and stood to survey the carnage spread around them. Swallowing hard, he fought the urge to be sick. In the thick of it, high on adrenaline, it hadn't seemed as if there were this many. Dozens of men- perhaps more than a hundred- lay strewn about in various postures of death and dismemberment, blood pooling among the blades of grass like water in the sunken fields where the locals grew rice. They had not died of gunshot wounds, and Lazard had been the only one in their unit to carry a sword. His gorge rose hot and acidic but he swallowed it back. Forcing himself not to gag, Sephiroth picked his way to the nearest corpse and pulled the man's sheath from his back. Settling it on his own shoulders, he wiped the blade on the dead soldier's uniform and slid the sword inside the narrow case.

"We can't occupy these hills," he decided. "They know them too well. We get the Captain back to base first."

The soldiers were smiling, amused. Sephiroth tried to hold his face still, to stand straight, but one of them chuckled.

"Sir," he began, and Sephiroth blinked at the title, "you're Captain now."