blob80 - Another sniping scene! Reniel doesn't know what kind of training Arien had gone through, so she probably thinks her job is easy. And my Reno juice is running out for some reason... probably because I keep playing other games (like Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed).
Echo the Ethereal Swordmaster - I'm a bit hesitant to release the other two, because the protagonists are somewhat similar to Arien (dark hair, slender build). I'm still incubating Assassin's Creed, because that one requires a bit more research. FF7 sequel's ready to be written, so I started.
After some inputs, I am going to continue writing this, and continue Dragon Age in earnest, and start planning for Assassin's Creed. And see if I don't die from writing overload. Dragon Age and FF7 are ready to be written, so it shouldn't be that bad.
Chapter 51: Under Water, Under Weather
Reno was seriously getting pissed off. He knew the Shinra Company had a really bad habit of hiring lunkheads who didn't know which shoe to put on which foot in the morning, but this was seriously getting tedious. First off, he was technically underwater, and while that didn't mean he was going to drown, he was still a little nervous about it. After all the crap that he had seen in Hojo's lab, he didn't really trust Shinra's technology or the staff to have plan B. Sure, their plan A was pretty brilliant, but someone usually messed something up and then it blew up in their faces, only for some upper-echelon dick to call floor 66 and demand that they clean up the mess. And then it was their ass on the line.
"Right, no, left, left!" he shouted at the idiot who was controlling the arm to load the materia into the submarine. There were other employees wrestling with it, some struggling under the weight. "No, slower! Stop!" He felt more people behind him, and without bothering to turn around to see who it was, he continued with his commands. "Eh? What the hell are you guys doing? Help load the-" not hearing the requisite response, Reno turned. And then narrowed his eyes.
What was it with this asshat? Did this chocobo head purposefully go out of his damn way to make his hassle even bigger than it already was? Or maybe perhaps he was put upon the planet just to annoy the crap out of him. While Reno didn't think the world found him that important to go out of its way to annoy him, this was becoming too much.
While Reno was debating the meaning of his life with the voice in his head, Cloud's companions were arguing.
"Well, we're just in time."
"I don't want to do manual labour!"
Cloud wasn't listening. "Give it to us or deliver it to Rufus… which will it be?" He demanded. Reno was appalled. Did this idiot seriously think he'd stay here and duke it out? When he had piles of other shit to do? Who did he think he was, the king of the world?!
"Well, sorry," he said with a shrug, "but I just don't have the time to play with you guys."
Yes. Time to leave a robot to deal with this mess. Thankfully, after the trial that had gone berserk, Scarlet's department had completed ADS-14, and he was fairly certain the robot won't go on a murderous rampage this time. Or, at least, he won't be around to see it if it did.
Time to get out.
"My first priority's the huge materia," Reno murmured under his breath. "Really don't have time to play tag with you guys."
And while Cloud, Yuffie, and Tifa were grappling with the carry armour, Reno boarded the submarine, and ordered it to leave the dock as soon as possible. The captain seemed the obedient sort, and he left right away. He needed to deliver this thing to Rocket Town ASAP, so they could launch the old tinkering rocket up into space and blast the Meteor into smithereens.
Which all sounded like bullcrap to the redhead. That was their plan? Seriously? The Shinra Company employed arguably the best scientists in the world, and all they could come up with was 'let's launch a rocket and blow the big meteor up'? It sounded about the same as a plan thought up by a third-grader, and Reno seriously wondered if Scarlet was, in fact, stupid. Never mind, she was stupid. She'd spend money on huge sentient cranes and impractical wheels that'd spit out explosives as it rolled - without control - but when it came to actually solving problems, Scarlet's mental age was no more than three.
"This is stupid," he muttered to himself. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Because telling that to Scarlet will probably earn him more slaps, and while he didn't mind being slapped, he did mind being slapped by Scarlet. Some dudes might like the whole 'being stepped on by a stiletto while being called a pig' kind of play, but he didn't, and he just found the head of the Weapons Research annoying. Especially because Scarlet somehow assumed that men would be attracted to her automatically. And then she got pissed off when he made it clear he wasn't.
He lit a cigarette to calm himself down, when one of the submarine staff offhandedly told him that it was no smoking. He fought the urge to turn his baton on and beat the man to death as the sailor walked away, humming a stupid tune. Everything about this assignment annoyed him, and if Tseng wasn't on his deathbed, he'd tell a thing or two to his superior. But Tseng was currently lying comatose in the hospital and Rude was already in Rocket Town and killing the staff aboard probably wasn't going to make him any friends, so he kicked the wall instead. But that didn't make him feel any better. He had to get back to the HQ in three hours, so Elena won't have to do the mission alone. Evidently he was the designated babysitter of the group now.
Beating the crap out of the man was apparently not such a big deal for Arien DeVir, and it unnerved Axil to see her not resort to physical violence to get information - as he had assumed the Turks would do - but simply pull out her spanking new Glock 41 and aim it at Jeremy's head. Slowly. Deliberately.
"Right then!" She said brightly. "Here's my new Glock 41. Since you won't talk, I guess I don't have much use for you now. Tell you what," she chirped as if she was a kind friend with a brilliant plan, "we'll untie you, but you'll have to stay in this house. Let's play a game of tag, shall we?"
"T, t, tag?" Jeremy Grieux stammered.
"Yep. I want to try my new pistol out. Figured you can lend a hand. You run away, and I shoot at you." Her smile was oddly cruel. "How's that? Not bad, eh?"
"I, if, if I get to the front door, can I, can I leave?"
She looked at him as if he was crazy. "Of course not," she replied. "Are you out of your mind? Not much fun if the game spills out into the street. Now," she said, rounding to the back of the chair, "up you get. I'll even give you a five second head start."
That, evidently, was enough to make the man crack. "I'll talk, I'll talk!" he pleaded. "So please! Put the gun down! Please!"
"Aw, why? Don't you want to have fun?"
Is this how the Turks get information out of people? Axil silently wondered. Because if it is, boy am I glad they're my friends and not my enemies…
In the meanwhile, Jeremy was blabbing hysterically as Arien pouted. But the man was insistent to talk, and their priority objective was to force information, not to let Arien have some target practice, so she acquiesced, grudgingly, with a pout. Of course, that didn't mean she left; she sat in front of him, absently playing with the big gun. As Axil got the names of the fellow conspirators - the list was long - Arien continued to play with her Glock, sometimes aiming it at Jeremy's head with an innocent smile. This scared the captive witless, and he ended up soiling himself.
He had half-expected her to mock him, as he had done to her, but she did no such thing. All she did was wrinkle her nose and open the window, letting the cold air blow in. She ripped the blanket off the nearby bed and threw it on him, then got up to leave.
The door closed with the click, returning the room to its silence and the smell of urine.
Arien and Axil walked down the short hallway and out; Arien wore sunglasses to hide her face as they walked to the train station. Her hair had been chopped off into a layered mess; Ivy had tried to detangle the web of hair, but she had given up after she nearly broke the brush. Arien had been the one to tell her to cut it off, and now the uneven layers gave her a rather unruly look. They walked down into the station, feeling the lukewarm air against their faces, smelling the metallic tang as the train slid into the station with a soft roar. The two began to run, leaping into the train before the door slid shut.
"So," she said as the train began to move, "how many on the list?"
"About two dozen? Say," Axil leaned onto the wall, "that was a pretty quick way to get info. You're good."
"Oh, that?" The woman laughed. "That wasn't a tactic."
"What?!"
"I really meant what I said," she replied with a grin. "I wasn't joking."
Axil did a double-take. Arien's face was perfectly serious, her blue-grey eyes looking straight at him; and there was a sharpness in her expression that reminded him of his redheaded friend. Axil re-realised that Arien was no longer just a member of the Intelligence, but a fully fledged member of the black ops squad. The mask called Arien was slowly fading, to be replaced by the mask of the Gunslinger, who'd pull the trigger without a pause. And he knew, instinctively, that Arien'd pull the trigger, again and again, to complete her mission, even if he couldn't; and that she'd die without complaint when ordered to, when he wouldn't.
Axil had always held the Turks in awe, but also with a little detachment; after all, they weren't quite human, with their almost demonic concentration and evident disregard to morals. But he realised that wasn't quite true; they were human, and they loved and hurt just like anyone else, but rather, they had just looked away from what life had left for them, sealing the dark memories into the remote corner because otherwise they'd go insane. Those who couldn't had defected, and the Intelligence had partook in the fallout; but, well, Arien had been part of that particular fallout, and it was likely she'd die before she'd let it happen again. And for that, she'd kill anyone who'd get in her way.
A pawn, Heidegger had called them, to move forward and die when needed to capture the king. But even the pawns had pride and had once hoped for a good life. With that hope gone, all they had was their pride as Turks, even if that meant nothing to anyone else.
"Hey, Arien?"
"What?" The woman was scrolling through her phone but looked up from the screen.
"Why are you doing all this?" Axil asked.
The woman just shrugged. "That company took my life," she said simply. "And I'm not about to see the very thing I've spent my adult life serving get dismantled because of a few idiots who care more about the food they're fed than the hand that feeds them. I don't have anything else left, Axil. If anyone deserves to take a potshot, it should be us, not those bastards who slept comfortably at night while we were dodging bullets and crawling through the sewers."
And that was just enough for Axil to believe that Arien was still a breathing, feeling human being. For no emotion was more humane than grudges.
When Elena missed the mark and began packing up the rifle with a big 'failure' written across her face, Reno was pissed. She had been extremely close to just assassinating the mayor, but she had wavered at the last moment, and the bullet had strayed. The security had noticed it, and they had returned fire. And so the blonde woman was packing up, getting ready to leave and out of the range.
He knew it was a bit trying for her to go on a mission, so soon from coming back from the self-assigned 'Beat Cloud Up" assignment Elena had given herself; after all, Elena had come out of that battle defeated, and had not been in her prime condition. But self-regulation was a part of this job, and just running off to take revenge on the group who hadn't even offed Tseng - especially when no one had sanctioned it - was irresponsible to say the least. So he felt less pity that he should have. And with Rude coming back with injuries, he was in no position to send anyone else. It sucked that their best sniper was currently lounging around in his apartment, doing nothing productive, and that their second sniper was currently nursing a host of injuries that needed a day or two to recover. Shinra needed a scapegoat right now, especially with Scarlet's idea going down the toilet. The rocket had done nothing to the Meteor, and the world was standing on the brink of destruction, and everyone needed someone to blame. The likeliest target was the biggest man, so to speak, and Rufus really didn't need people attacking him right now. It had been Heidegger's idea to offer Domino's dead body as some distraction. Reno doubted it'd work. But order was order.
And so when Elena tried to crawl away, Reno grabbed her wrist, and then slapped her across the face. Elena's hand followed to her cheek, touching the face as if she could not believe it. The redhead followed it up with another slap, this time across the other cheek. Elena looked up, and saw Reno looking at her.
"Wh, what-"
"You useless shit!" Reno reprimanded as he opened fire with the assault rifle. "What the hell did you think you were doing?!"
"I, I never thought they'd find out!" Elena stammered, intimidated by Reno's anger. "I didn't think they'd return fire!"
"Yeah, that's right, you missed," Reno said coldly. "Looks like Domino's security isn't a bunch of useless sponges. But that's not why I'm pissed, you idiot!"
"Then wh-"
"What I'm pissed at, Elena, is because you're a wimp and a pussy! Sure, you'd be shocked that they returned fire. We all would be! But anyone else on the squad, they won't just pack up and run."
"Bu-" Elena's interjection was unheard.
"They'll complete the mission, even if they'll lose an arm and an leg. You're fille de papa, 'Laney, thinking your daddy'd come to the rescue. You got scared, you milksop! You get what I'm sayin'? It's not because you missed, but because deep down you're scared witless. Grow. Up."
Elena was silent.
"And we're not just street gang loser dogs who all buddy up and lick each other's wounds while yelling 'kill' at the top of their lungs. Once we set our mind to kill, the target's already dead. Got it? Now," he said, grabbing hold of the rifle from Elena's hands and setting it up again, "let's go finish the job." He finished setting up the Barrett rifle with practised ease, then picked up the spotting scope as Elena went back into position. "Why did you miss anyway?" Which was a valid question; the mark wasn't moving that quickly, and while it wasn't an easy snipe, it wasn't difficult. Arien probably could pull it off without a spotter. So what had tripped Elena up?
Her answer was predictable, but soured his mood nonetheless. This sort of pity-party was going to get all of them killed someday.
If they had the time to wait for that day. Right now, that seemed unlikely. He checked the wind, did a quick calculation in his head as he moved his head trying to find the target. There was a crowd now, which made the matters trickier, and he was reminded of another mission he and Arien had done. That had been a wet night, and they hadn't bothered with spotters or flankers; there had been two targets and Tseng could not exactly empty the floor. He wondered how Rod was doing as he tried to find the mayor; was he waiting for the world's end, like everyone else? But Rod was a former Turk, that was unlikely…
And then he found the mayor, clad in a suit with panic written all over his face. He was surrounded by the secret service, and was moving at a rapid pace, but not fast enough. Now that they were moving this way and that, this was going to be more difficult, but no matter. They'd pull it off.
"Target," he told the blonde. He wondered why he was the spotter anyway, but then realised that Elena had almost no sniping experience, which made him senior. In other missions, Arien would have been the spotter, but she wasn't here. "Eleven o'clock, by the telegraph pole, surrounded by security. Moving down the street."
And Elena answered, almost by protocol. "Roger," she replied. "Eleven o'clock, by the pole, surrounded by security, moving down the street." She paused. "Target… target two point two five mils? Angle thirty?"
Why was she asking him whether the target was 2.25 mils high? How was he supposed to know? But he went ahead with the response anyway, and then calculated the range on the tablet. Looking through the scope and calculating all at once wasn't easy. "Range six eighty-eight metres. Dial twenty-two mils plus one."
"Roger. Twenty-two point one mils, indexed."
Sniping, Reno thought silently as he read off the meter, was a tedious job.
"Wind, from three o'clock, nine point five kph. Dial wind right, two point three mils."
Elena repeated what he had just said, confirming that it was indexed.
"Okay. Send it."
"Splash." Elena pulled the trigger, holding her breath.
After following through with the scope and confirming that it was a hit -hurrah for that - he told Elena, who was dismantling the rifle, that they were heading back to the HQ. He could tell this wasn't really what the young woman had been looking forward to when she had joined the sector, but he didn't care; this was what they did, and it was too late to change minds. She'd just have to adapt, or die.
They were walking down the back alley when Reno's phone rang. Elena stopped as Reno pulled his phone out from the pocket. "Yo," he said. "Hey Rod. What's up?"
Coincidence? He silently wondered.
"I just had contact from members of the Intelligence, Section AA," Rod was saying. "Ordered a crapload of weapons. Know anything about it?"
"Er, no." He gestured Elena to start walking, and then followed, phone at his ear. "How much?"
"Three thousand nine milli rounds, seven hundred for five point five-six OTAN, four Steyr AUGs, same amount of FN FS two-thousand, nine micro-UZIs, A Sig sniper rifle, two TAC-50s, er…"
"Hang on," Reno interrupted. "You said Sig? Which Sig?"
"The rifle?"
"Yeah."
"It's a-" a short pause, then, "SSG three thousand. Bolt-action rifle, one point six kilograms, five round capacity-"
"Yeah yeah," Reno cut Rod off. He raised an eyebrow as he beeped the car to unlock the door. "That's a shitload," he agreed. "Did they say what it was for?"
"No. That's why I called."
"Well, we certainly didn't order it," Reno replied. "Hey, can you keep us updated about this?"
"Sure."
"Thanks, Rod." Reno hang up, then slid into the driver's seat, thinking. He had seen Arien use the Sig rifle on missions before; she seemed to have a preference for it. Was it just a coincidence? And what were the Intelligence trying to do, wage war? On whom? And why?
He tried to think it was just a coincidence, but the list just screamed of her, down to the rifles. But where was she? And who was she trying to kill?
He switched on the windshield wiper as the rain began to fall. The sky was eerily bright despite the falling drops of water, making the rain look like blood. It seemed an ill omen, but recently his days were filled with nothing but, and he decided to ignore it, like everything else. He sent a message on his phone with quick flicks, then hit send.
The progress bar filled as he accelerated the car forward and got onto the wide avenue.
