Chapter 43

The Wutai temple was a distant beauty, glinting in the dark like a giant diamond on the hillside. Shepard wished the enemy buildings could be uglier. It was always a shame to break something so lovingly designed.

Oh well.

Not a whisper of wind disturbed the predawn quiet. A thin sliver of moon shone through breaks in the clouds, bathing the world in soft light.

She made herself comfortable on her mountainside, brushing snow off the rocks. A pointless gesture—the snow was still falling in winter's last show of defiance. Her breath turned to steam as she dumped a heavy sack of heat sinks on the ground.

Stretching out on her stomach she lay down on the rock, she set her gun up in front of her. Snow soon coated her and the rifle, hiding the black blemish upon the mountainside. She looked through the scope, and the distant beauty became a silent front line.

"Report," Sephiroth said over the coms. She traced the treeline as it followed the outer wall until fluttering silver caught in her sights. His hair disappeared almost entirely in the snow, the slightest movement the only thing that gave him away. His black coat blended with the dark tree trunk behind him. The same could not be said of the obnoxiously red coat next to him. She was slightly embarrassed for the Wutai snipers that none of them had picked Genesis off yet.

"In position," whispered Angeal. She searched further along in the trees for him. He didn't have a flowing mane to give him away, but she caught sight of the moon glinting off his sword. He looked freezing in his sleeveless uniform.

"Genesis?" Sephiroth said pointedly over the coms.

"I'm standing right next to you," he replied.

"I don't know that," Angeal countered.

Genesis sighed. "In position." A lot of official procedure had been dropped as the war stretched on. It was hard to stay formal with people you knew so well.

"In position," said Shepard, bringing up the rear.

Angeal looked up, as though expecting to see her floating somewhere. Officially she wasn't there at all, given the whole 'under arrest' thing, but not even Genesis or Sephiroth were arrogant enough to think they could overthrow such a large, fortified complex in the middle of Wutai territory without any support or back up. Under other circumstances they would have deployed almost half of SOLDIER in the endeavour. Fortunately, they weren't here for the temple or position.

"What can you see, Shepard?" Sephiroth asked.

Her scope danced over the walls.

The outer defences stood thick and well-defended. Inside the walls, a magnificent temple reached for the sky. Its many tiers and balconies were almost as impressive as the veritable army of ninjas guarding it.

Ninjas were something of a nuisance, as far as she was concerned, and not for the usual reasons. Temples and churches were supposed to be safe havens, and she made a point of not attacking them, but when they doubled as ninja bases and training grounds, she couldn't exactly leave them in peace.

"There are more guards than recon indicated," she said with a calculating frown. "A lot more."

"Aren't there always?" Genesis groused.

Even for a complex of this size, the number of guards was overkill. Their information must have been good— Takahashi had to still be onsite.

Her focus moved to the gate. It glowed with a faint blue-green power that pulsed intermittently. "They've learned—there are barriers defending the gates."

"It won't be a problem." Sephiroth sounded a touch smug. She rolled her eyes and focused on the building.

"There are three courtyards, then the main building. There are half a dozen exits into little gardens and balconies on every level, all in full view of the tower." She pursed her lips at the sight of all the little nooks and crannies built into the structure. So many places to hide. "If you're coming back out, tell me where and I'll keep you covered."

"The tower is all yours," said Sephiroth.

"Won't be a problem." Her lips turned up with a brief smile. "If you're going to come barging outside in desperate need of cover, though, at least let me know what side of the building you're on. And if you get into any trouble indoors, you need to blow the roof off before I can help. I can't see through walls at this range." She was four-and-a-half kilometres away, not quite pushing the limit of her range but getting close.

"What if we're on the ground floor and there's no exterior wall?" Angeal asked.

"Improvise." It felt so natural to slip into command, guiding and guarding her SOLDIERs from above. She slotted a shredder mod onto her rifle. "If you can't get to Takahashi, at the very least force him out of the building and I'll finish him off."

Genesis snorted. "Please. First-come, first-served."

"Roger that," Angeal replied.

"Tell us when," Sephiroth said, and the sound of three swords sliding from their scabbards carried through the radio.

The guards patrolling the wall passed their hiding spots in the trees. A guard walked each segment of the wall, while others guards stood stationary at both ends, watching the patrols. There was no chance of them getting in unseen.

"Go now," she said when the guards were furthest away from the SOLDIERs.

The three of them sprang into motion. Quick as striking snakes, they leapt forward and vaulted the wall. Sephiroth leapt over the massive, reinforced gate. Shepard scoffed and fired twice in quick succession, taking down two of the guards aiming at him. He would have made a useless infiltrator.

She was too far away to hear anything except that which came through the radio. She could see guards gesturing and fires exploding, but it was all a silent tableau she altered with surgical precision.

The guards on the walls carried rifles, and she targeted and eliminated them before a single stray bullet could get through a SOLDIER shield. Angeal landed in the western courtyard and charged towards the main building, ploughing through anyone in his way. Genesis halted in the middle of the central courtyard. He looked like he was summoning something.

Sephiroth made short work of the ninjas who sought to hold him. He moved so much faster than them, he barely needed to parry, his sword cutting through their armour before they could even strike. They could overwhelm him with sheer numbers though, and he was the most famous, the most hated. She thinned down the ranks of those trying to rush him.

A second later, a shockwave shook the ground, and a Bahamut materialised in the centre of the courtyard. Genesis stood behind it inside a bubble of a shield, proudly holding out his materia. The summon roared so loudly echoes danced across the mountains and reached her a few seconds later.

The towering summon threw a blast of molten plasma across the courtyard, igniting whole sections of the wall. It charged after a cluster of ninjas, forcing them to roll out of the way. In the resulting havoc, Genesis and Sephiroth sprinted for the main building, leaving the ninjas with the Bahamut. Angeal had already made it inside. They burst through the doors and disappeared from her sight.

She pulled back from her scope and blinked. Snow had collected all over her and was melting along the length of her gun. The shredder mod had done its job, and now she swapped it out for her armour-piercing mod. She wiped the melting snow off her forehead and out of her eyes. Taking a deep breath and readjusting her position, she looked back into the scope and was at ground zero again.

The complex writhed with activity. The Bahamut had been injured, one of its wings torn clean off, but still it charged around the outer courtyards, ploughing through guards. Her focus danced from the courtyards to the temple itself, where Wutai snipers leaned out from the windows and the tower looking for targets below. She picked them off, one by one.

The radio crackled to life.

"He's not on the ground floor," Angeal said, breathless, with metal clashing against metal ringing out in the background.

Genesis crashed out onto a balcony on the second-highest level, followed by half a dozen high-ranking ninjas. He threw a fireball at one and sliced through two more while Shepard took out the other three. He nodded his thanks to the open air.

"He isn't on the top three levels either," Genesis said. That only left the first floor.

"Sephiroth?" she called, a sinking feeling in her gut. Takahashi might not even be there; it could all be a waste of time.

"I might have found him," Sephiroth whispered.

"Might?" Genesis asked, leaping over the balcony to the level below.

"He's wearing a mask, obviously," he replied. "But with so many bodyguards, it can only be him." The slight rustle of his coat was barely audible—he must have been trying to sneak up on them.

A cry went up, and Sephiroth swore under his breath. The clashing of swords and cries of pain drowned out his voice a second later. There was a great crash. She swapped in a fresh heatsink and readjusted the stock of her rifle.

"Southwest corner," he barked over the sound of boots pounding across hard floor.

Her sights raced across the complex to the balcony. "It leads to a garden on the hillside. There's a maze, then a gate in the outer wall," she said, her finger on the trigger.

A wealth of ninjas, all dressed in the most splendid Crescent Unit armour, burst out into the night. One fell immediately to her shot. Her second bullet was absorbed by a thick glowing shield.

A ninja turned back and tried to seal the door with an ice materia. Sephiroth sliced through it with ease.

The ninjas with the materia threw themselves at him while the rest retreated, clearly headed for the side gate.

Shepard searched the armoured cluster, trying to see through the glowing green shields to the armour beneath. Which one was Takahashi? They all wore silver masks and moved like trained warriors. The armour was all magnificent.

A single red sash stood out against the white snow. She pulled the trigger, and the shield around him flickered out of existence. The closest ninja jerked forward and the shield sprang up again. Now she had her target.

Sephiroth's sword cleaved through the ninja defending him, only to be caught on the katana of a second bodyguard. She shot down the ninja about to cast a bolt of lightning at his sword arm, and Sephiroth flowed like water through the battlefield.

No orders were necessary; he knew who to strike at and who to leave to her, which shields to bring down and which didn't matter. It was as familiar as breathing, and they cut a swath through the fleeing ninjas.

The warrior with the red sash stood his ground and flung out his arm. Sephiroth's blade swung at him, but he was thrown back in a blue explosion before the strike could connect. A giant silver serpent rose from the whirling mass of blue power, lithe and vicious looking. The Leviathan towered over the garden, tall as a thresher maw. It hissed at Sephiroth. He charged at it.

Shepard fired at the summoner. His shield rippled with strength. It looked as though the Leviathan was feeding into it. She snapped her shredder mod back into place and tore the shielding apart.

The Leviathan shrieked, and she heard it through the radio. The summon shot powerful torrents of water and ice at Sephiroth. He dodged and danced out of the way, miraculously keeping himself dry. He threw out his hand, and a massive bolt of lightning struck the blast of water. The summon shrieked and writhed under the electricity charging through it.

Other ninjas dragged the masked summoner away, shielding him with their own bodies. She fired two more shots and his shield was down, as was the nearest guard. He was nearly at the outer gate, and she pulled the trigger again.

The summon faded away. The summoner collapsed with a bullet in his head and a blood splatter in the snow. The ninjas froze, and an eerie silence took hold for a moment.

Shepard felt a terrible suspicion form in the back of her mind.

Then the silence passed, and screams of horror and outrage reigned. The remaining ninjas threw themselves at Sephiroth with suicidal drive. Others threw fireballs into the sky in vain attempts at vengeance against her. She reloaded and kept firing.

Soon the last of them fell. The silence returned, thicker and more eerie than before.

She thought about the fallen summoner. His armour had been grander than the rest, almost ornamental, really. She looked and saw hints of purple under the silver plating.

Sephiroth stood motionless in the garden, surrounded by fallen corpses. His eyes were fixed on the body of the summoner.

"Sephiroth?" she called. "Please tell me that was Takahashi."

"Did you get him?" Angeal asked over the radio, echoed by Genesis.

At their voices, he shook himself and stepped over the bodies. A trail of red footprints followed him through the snow.

He bent over the body, blocking her line of sight as he knelt to remove the mask.

"Who is it?" she asked when he didn't say anything.

"It's Emperor Godo," he said weakly. He stood and turned around to face her sniper nest. "You killed Emperor Godo."

She pulled back from her scope. The mountain was silent and the snow still fell, burying everything together in a thick blanket of white. She let out a heavy breath.

"Damn," she whispered.


The SOLDIERs fled the complex, evading very angry ninjas until they were safe in Shinra-controlled territory again.

Shepard had killed a great many people throughout her career. She'd never accidentally killed a head of state, though. That was a new one.

They travelled in near silence, arriving back at the nearest base at mid-day. No one was entirely sure what would happen next.

"What was Godo doing there?" Angeal asked nobody in particular. He was leaning against the concrete wall, his sword on his back and dirt and grime all over his uniform. The others were the same—the sludge from mud and melting snow had dried over shirts and coats alike.

"What does it matter?" Genesis said, gesturing in frustration. They stood uneasily in the room adjacent to the one with a secure line back to HQ. Sephiroth was on the other side of the door, reporting to the president. The quiet murmur of the conversation leaked into the room, but they couldn't make out his words.

"It does explain the overabundance of guards. Too many for just a general," Shepard said quietly.

"What have you done?" Genesis said for the umpteenth time, shaking his head.

"You know it wasn't intentional." She pinched the bridge of her nose. Her intentions didn't matter and she knew it. Godo was dead regardless of what the plan had been.

"By accident, of all things," Genesis muttered.

"He was wearing a mask and wielding a dangerous summon," she pointed out. "By all appearances, he was just another ninja."

"You could have just shot him in the arm!"

"It's easy to say that now," she said, frowning at him. It was always easy to criticise after the fact. "Given the information I was working with, he could have been the actual target."

"So what happens now?" Angeal asked.

"Who's next in the line of succession? He has an heir, doesn't he?" she asked.

"A ten-year-old girl," Genesis said, pursing his lips in thought. "A regent will probably rule on her behalf, until she's of age, at least. One of Godo's advisers, maybe."

"Can't the empress rule on her own?" she asked.

Angeal shook his head. "Goes against Wutai tradition."

The muted conversation in the next room suddenly stopped. The three of them looked at the door and waited.

"Takahashi might seize the throne," Genesis said quietly.

"Surely not," Angeal said with a pronounced frown. "He isn't royalty."

"With a war raging, who's going to stop him?"

The door swung open, and Sephiroth stood in the doorway with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Well?" Genesis prompted.

He cleared his throat. "Wutai has called for a truce."

"What?" Shepard's thoughts ground to a standstill. That was the opposite of what she had expected, feared, would happen. Everyone else stood in wide eyed shock.

"Just like that?" she asked. Surely it couldn't be so simple. It never was.

"They must want peace," Angeal began, looking somewhere between relieved and doubtful. "I assume?"

"Empress Suiko has seized the throne," Sephiroth said, to the shock of the whole room. "She has not surrendered, but she has called for a ceasefire."

Shepard remembered the woman who had tried so hard to preserve the peace, despite Mitchells doing whatever he could to destroy it. Was that what the Empress wanted now? Peace? Shepard remembered the cold fury in her eyes, the proud tilt of her chin, and the spine that would not bend. She highly doubted it.

"Has the president agreed?" she asked. "I thought he would accept nothing short of unconditional surrender?"

Sephiroth shrugged. "He's coming himself to sign the agreement. He should be here tomorrow."

"That was fast." Shepard frowned. The whole situation felt strange.

"Yes." Sephiroth looked troubled. "It was."


President Shinra arrived the next day, accompanied by a wealth of Turks in sharp black suits. Guarding the president was the Turks' responsibility, but fighting Wutai was SOLDIER's area. An army's worth of body guards escorted him to the agreed upon site where an army of imperial guards greeted them.

Just east of where Shinra's claimed territory ended, they met at a sacred bridge. It crossed the humble beginnings of Ymir Ravine. Shepard looked out the corner of her eye at the winding gulley below. Clear and sparkling, the river ran south through the heart of the country, where the blood of two empires had dyed it red.

Instead of being handcuffed and kept well away from the proceedings, as Shepard had expected, she found herself on the front lines of the event, guarding the president himself.

"Why am I here?" she asked below her breath, standing at parade rest. Sephiroth stood next to her. "At the very least I should be up on the hill." The president was some meters behind them, loudly complaining about the wait. The Wutai envoy amassed at the other end of the bridge, and stoic ninjas faced them from across the ravine.

"He asked for you by name," Sephiroth replied, speaking too quietly for anyone else to hear.

"The president? Why?" Surely he knew she was charged with treason.

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. "Why does he want the woman who killed the emperor to be standing directly between him and the emperor's personal guard?"

"How clever of him," she muttered, refraining from rolling her eyes. "Put the sniper in the middle of the action. Great plan."

"You know what to do. If there's an attack, focus on getting him out of there, and we'll buy you time to retreat."

She nodded marginally. This was a dangerous undertaking, and a bridge was a vulnerable position. Admittedly, it was a sacred bridge—statues of Leviathan and Odin towered over each end, but neither side trusted the other.

Finally, a member of the Crescent Unit appeared at the other end of the bridge. He wore the red sash of high rank, the same armour that Godo died in, except for the addition of a black sash of mourning. Two sheathed swords hung at his waist.

Shepard stepped forward onto the bridge. Her armour gleamed in the noon sun, the polished red-and-white stripe on her arm stark against the impenetrable black. When he saw her, the ninja approached. They walked across the bridge, under the eyes of both armies, until they stood face-to-face in the middle. Nobody else moved. There wasn't a breath of wind.

The bridge did not blow up. No snipers took advantage of a clear shot.

The two envoys stepped onto the bridge. She watched the empress approach at the head of a long train of guards.

"Is it her?" Sephiroth's voice asked through the coms.

"Yes," she said quietly. It was undoubtedly the same woman, even though each day of the war could be read on her wizened face. This was no decoy, sent to lure out the President. Her expression was as hard as granite, and her posture as defiant and strong as any creature that crawled across the surface of Tuchunka.

"Her Majesty, Suiko Kisaragi, Empress of Wutai," one of her guard declared in an echoing voice. General Takahashi and several of Godo's old advisors stood a respectful distance behind her, their expressions all stern and bitter.

Shepard and the first ninja stepped back to guard their respective heads of state.

The Wutai waited for a similar announcement, but Shinra didn't work like that. The president just stepped forward, all confidence and ego, shadowed by Tseng. He was a large man, not as tall as Heidegger but with a generous stomach that his tailored red suit appeared to celebrate more than disguise. His blond hairline was retreating across his scalp, and a bushy moustache dominated his lip. Sephiroth and Genesis moved with him.

"I'm Rupert Shinra. We spoke on the phone," he said with a twist of his lips, enjoying his own complete disregard for Wutai formality. Even the masked guards looked offended.

"Mr. President," Suiko said, her expression unchanged, possibly because she was already wearing her sternest scowl. Her garb was magnificent but clearly clothes of mourning.

"Ma'am," Shinra said, with an ironic tilt of his head.

Her gaze of displeasure shifted from him to the surrounding guards, as though dismissing the president entirely. She surveyed them all with a decidedly uncomplimentary lift of her brow.

"The demon," she said, turning away from Sephiroth, "the firebrand," she dismissed Genesis, "a turncoat," she didn't grace Tseng with so much as a scowl, "and the woman who killed my husband." Her heavy gaze settled on Shepard.

Shepard kept her expression blank but returned the stare.

"You need not hide behind your soldiers," the empress said, returning her focus to the president. "I am here to make peace." She gave an unpleasant smile.

Discussion of the truce began in truth then. The terms had already been agreed upon, but President Shinra angled for more. Empress Suiko refused to be moved. It was a ceasefire, nothing more. Wutai did not belong to Shinra, and she would not bend. Wutai did not acknowledge the southern half of the island as Shinra's territory, but it would not try to retake it either.

They both signed an official document and shook hands. Clearly neither of them held any delusions of the peace lasting.

Suiko's expression remained one of implacable composure, despite Shinra's prodding and goading.

"Unreasonable woman," the president said afterwards, when they had both retreated to their own sides of the ravine. "She'll change her mind when we smash down the gates of the capital."

"You could slaughter every last one of them, and she wouldn't give in," Shepard said quietly, her eyes following the retreating empress. Shepard had seen such anger before. She'd seen it in the eyes of Javik, and Bakara, when she spoke of the genophage. Not an explosion of rage that burned out and left a charred wreckage but a banked up furnace of wrath that left nothing at all.

"Perhaps I should just hand them you, then?" said the president, looking at her over a cigar.

She looked at him blandly. "As you will, sir."

He snorted, already bored with her. "Get me back to Midgar," he said gruffly, getting into the armoured vehicle that had brought him. "I dislike countries that are only half mine."


A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are always welcome. And ample thanks to my beta, VendettaSmiles, for ironing out all the kinks. You should check out her awesome story, Chaos and Kadaj, it's a fun read.

Next Time: Treason and Handcuffs