"Both dark of form,
Yet pure of heart.
Both lives so worn,
But never to part ." -- Dani - "Our Barren Heart"
-
The Turk Turf War
-
Act Eight: Dive To Five
A young Reno sat on one of the Wutai plains, fingering a blade of grass with one hand, holding one of his "friend's" fabled healing herbs to his cheek with the other. This was what you saw if you overlooked the other three stuffed up the back of his shirt. But Reno wasn't bothered by the fact that he wasn't holding them there, because if you looked at his back without the red and white striped shirt, you would see a field of scars and freshly-opened cuts. It barely mattered when you looked anymore.
The shirt had started out white, then the wearer had taken a few hits and it became a bit brown, the blood drying onto it. But after a few more years, it fell together almost perfectly, the shaded colors. Had he cared, he would've cracked a joke about being an unintentional, talented tye-dyer.
His father drank. His brother used to drink under his supervision. His father had left them almost a year ago, and he rarely saw him anymore. Just chance meetings in town where Reno would turn his eyes away and pretend not to notice. They lived out on a farm, and the only reason he, his mother, and his brother were still going was because of the latter's work in the fields.
Had Reno known the true meaning of the term, he would've called him a slave.
His brother was still living at home, a tall, lean role-model. The smartest in the class despite the drug and alcohol addictions, Zen had made a name for himself by playing on almost all the school teams, regardless of the sport. Tremor was his favorite, and because of that, it was also Reno's. Or, at least, it had been at one time.
But now, he barely saw more of his brother than the graduation ring on his hand, when it was speeding toward him or pulling away -- at this time, it went from blue to purple, for obvious reasons -- or his brown shoe, when it licked out like Hellfire, or crashed down like lightning. Every night there were fights between the siblings, never just staying at the verbal level, and his mother would continue knitting, as if under a spell to the point where she couldn't do anything, only blankly glance over at them from time to time.
His mother had barely spoken two words to the entire family since his father left, moved in town with his new girlfriend, and left them with the farm. She had gone to knitting, and now none of them had to worry about socks or sweaters anymore. At the request of either one, you would most likely find it on your pillow the next morning.
But his brother still drank, and tonight, the younger, just five-years-old and still with hundreds of blows taken, and smacks from a belt across his spinal cord, which felt as if it would pop out of his skin any day now, had gotten off with a warning. A swollen cheek and a few more belt-whips. Not to mention his eye was black from two days ago, but he shuddered at the thought as he lay in the grass, around midnight on a Tuesday. Or Wednesday. The time melted together like his bruises.
"Again?"
A whimper in his throat was all he could force out without breaking down. Reno had learned not to cry when it hurt, to just think of what happened afterward. He would run out to the field and get a few different medicines from his "friend", his beacon of light in the hurricane. When he came out here, he was free for a minimum of two hours.
"God, Karuno. What happened this time?" He'd cleaned up his mouth because of this guy. The man with the long, black ponytail and the shining revolver. The man with the red dot on his forehead and the vast fields of patience, earned through long hours doing...whatever he did. He'd never asked his name, just taken the healing plants he gave him and tossed distracting talk back and forth for a while.
Reno's mother never did know him. Reno's mother had never found out about their meetings, as far as he knew. It was tonight he would make the decision that would shape his own future, but he didn't know it for almost twenty years. Tseng smiled warmly at him, holding a flashlight and a briefcase tonight. "You're not happy here, are you, Reno?"
The fire-headed boy muttered something and shook his head furiously. The tall man asked if he wanted to come with him. He didn't look too old, maybe eighteen at the most, but he was both courteous and caring. Reno knew him as the man at the end of the fairy tales he used to have read to him before going to bed. And when he nodded, he became the lost little boy who was finally returned to his parents about three sentences before the end.
The black-haired man stuck his hand out and grinned widely. "Reno... I'll teach you everything you'll need to know, but even better, I'll make you happy... We'll leave and you'll never have to see these people again. How would you like that?"
Reno's bottom lip quivered, but then he put his little fingers inside the man's large hand and said, "What's your name, anyway?" The deciding question. Reno had learned, whenever you asked someone their name, you were obligated to follow their commands and respect them to the edge of the Planet. As soon as Reno had desired the name of the tall man, he had signed away his true freedom.
The man with the red dot on his forehead paused for a moment, then put away the flashlight squeezed in his elbow and hefted the five-year-old into his arms, just like the father he'd never truly had. "Tseng. You can call me anything you want, though."
The redhead buried his head in Tseng's shoulder and choked on a cry. "Then...I'm scared, Dad..."
-
Act Nine: Ditching Mideel
In fifteen years, Tseng had taught him the rules of life, and shaped him into a walking, talking, makeshift son below the Plate of Midgar. In eighteen years, Reno had opened up to a perky blonde with a feigned hatred toward him, and in just twenty years, Reno was sitting in a dark room with a crackling fire and a cup of green tea, hating Tseng himself. The fiery Demon of the Turk Army, the envy of all the warlords because of his ability to almost shape-shift into a killing machine.
Let them have his curse, then. He said, let them come, take it, and leave him in peace. But he was stuck with it, all because he'd taken the red-dot man's hand one night and called him Dad. Because Tseng had changed him from a young copy of himself into a young opposite, training him in stealth, math, reading, all of it, until he was ready to put on a pair of shades and a blue suit and forget all of it; pretend to be from Midgar.
"Fuck me."
Reno started, looking at the young woman across the table, who looked just as puzzled and had her own cup nestled in her hands. Legs Kisaragi, he'd called her before. For obvious reasons, you know. With a once-over when he had cleared his eyes of hatred for his old employer, he'd noted that Yuffie was shaping up to be quite a looker. "What...?"
She held up an empty cup, craned her neck, and shook it a bit, accenting all three next syllables. "Sucky tea?" She looked even more confused when he sunk back into the worn pillows of the couch, set the cup on the table, and rubbed his face while shaking his head. "I've never been the best, y'know."
Propeller had, at their request, flown them all the way to Wutai and then gone back to the battlefield with Rude. Rude would play General for as long as they thought they should stay here, Reno guessed, but it still confused him that Yuffie had even come in the first place. They were back in his old house, which was now empty and didn't exactly look like it was hot on the market. Then again, not much was hot on the market, as the entire city had fled to battle against the Turk Army, claiming they would destroy ShinRa's roots once and for all.
The paint was flaking off of the walls, a few chair-pieces were scattered round, and the kitchen smelled of rotting vegetables. The only thing mostly-intact was the living room, in all its original glory with a recliner, two couches, a table, a fireplace, and a television with a cracked screen in the far corner. Yuffie had also attempted popcorn, the evidence a blackened cob just to the right of Reno's green tea. The actual popcorn was suspected to be in the fire somewhere.
"Plan ahead and know how to get it out," was what he'd said, before she had broken into a fit of laughter and he himself had just stood there chuckling. "Please tell me why in Hell you're here? I'm getting unnerved."
She grinned and stood on her couch, leaping over the table and landing comfortably next to him, blowing some hair out of her eyes. Half of her tea was now reflecting the flames in the wall, in an almost-straight line across the table, but she miraculously managed to hold onto some of it. "Rude said you'd calm down around me because you think I'm hot." She was quite the blunt, perky girl, wasn't she?
Reno tried to sink into the shell with the Demon, snorting and rolling his eyes. "I think he mistook me. I believe my exact words were, "Boy, I bet she'd look good in flames."" He was lying through his teeth, but Tseng had also taught him that, the bloody bastard. He figured she wouldn't buy it.
And she didn't. Opening her mouth and revealing two full rows of straight, sparkling teeth, she grasped him in a bear-hug, or at least her own equivalent of one. "Aw, you big dope! I love ya, too!" Now she was just being mocking, and she loved every minute of it. It wasn't as if she didn't eye him in some of their earlier fights during the Meteor crisis, first seeing him in Gonaga and hoping to run into him again throughout the rest of their journey, which AVALANCHE did indeed do.
Reno gently pried her off, then rubbed at his arm, as if trying to get the feeling out of it. Truthfully, he was trying to rub it in. He glanced at his watch as he did, and swore beneath his breath. "Damn. Almost three in the morning... Time to get to work." He downed the rest of his tea and stood up, peeling off his coat and shirt and tossing them onto the arm of the hole-dotted couch. He stared at the other Wutain expectantly. "Two things. One, you'll die in that outfit, and two, does your old man still keep Ditchers around?"
Ditchers had been used years and years ago on plantations, and their name pretty much gave away the secret of their ability. It was a large, slow, expensive machine, available only in the island town they were in at this time. They had two large, metal blades that jutted straight into the ground when the cab was lowered, and then separated the soil, creating a ten-foot-long, six-foot-wide ditch with mounds of dirt on either side. They were usually used when a mass suicide, genocide, or a fatal disease occurred. What he needed one now for was beyond the young woman.
"What, you want me to strip down to nothing before I even figure out what you're doing with my dad's machines?" she asked, feigning shock. She could've expected just that from Reno, and knowing him, he'd be perfectly serious.
"Whatever floats your boat." He was cocky, even as an assumed-mature adult, and humor was never below him, always served with a crooked grin and a thumbs-up.
She snorted and just tossed off her coat as well. "Typical male. Typical you, I should say. I think Godo's got about two of those hidden away in some big warehouse near Costa. What the hell do you need a Ditcher for?" She had a hard enough time keeping her eyes on his nose; one look into his eyes would buckle her knees, and anything below would have her drooling like a sixth-grader. God, she was actually worse than she thought, and with Rude's words still in the air, she worried herself.
Pausing and then smirking, the apparently-Demonless General poured their bucket of water on the fire and headed for the door. "Consider it...a contribution to the war effort on Godo's part..."
Outside, he opened his phone and hit the button he had hit the previous day. The Demon needed to get back to Costa, lick a few bypassers to make sure its flames would still be enough to dominate Strife's army, and then find those machines.
-
Act Ten: Six Feet Deep
Back on the battlefield, standing high on their hill, the new General of the Turk Army stood, as appointed by Reno until he returned. Seeing as how Shadow was as mad as the Demon, and Propeller, though a joy of a friend, lacked leadership skills, Reno had whispered to Rude, just before getting off the plane, that he was in command until they returned.
Things changed everyday. Just last night, someone desiring to prove the ignorance of the Army had led a small pack of them on a chase, and then hurled a grenade straight into the air. To Rude's horror, they actually fell for it, and an arm was reported to have come down twenty-three feet from the small crater.
And if things couldn't get any worse, Reno had paperwork, for God's sake. The one day in his life he had a bill to sign, or even a form to fill out, Rude was in charge of it. That was the way he'd planned it, or else it was an odd trick by fate to make sure the Fire Demon never ruled the world by signing an agreement in one of his many drunken stupors. Reno had dismissed it for dumb luck the first time Rude had noticed and queried.
For the first time, Rude was making some large changes. Not only were their strategies better, but the AVALANCHErs' forces had been pushed back against the Rocket Town border. Highwind was ready to start busting out the salvos, as said the last person from their side that had spoken to him, but so far nothing was happening. The Cueball Combatant had ditched the guns for a more effective, better aimed device: the crossbow.
Rude had owned the thing since grade school, always making improvements on it, tightening so and so, so it could fly this much farther, removing this and that to get it to hold steady. He had finally come up with a deadly weapon: an old-fashioned, high-powered crossbow with a scope that could let an arrow fly three-hundred feet and imbed itself in the spot he had aimed it, down to a gil-sized margin of error.
That barely mattered when you were aiming at someone's chest. The crossbow was Rude's toy, his "baby", if you could call anything he might've owned one of those. He now just sat on a cliff, a little up from the unofficial watch tower, picking off anyone he selected as too close, sometimes just letting one fly as far as possible and listening for a scream. Sometimes it came, other times nothing.
As for the "paperwork", Reno probably didn't want to see it. Rude read over it again, sighing with each word. When he'd gotten it through his head that the man was serious, he rolled it up, tossed it into the air, and sent it away via a wasted arrow. He remembered it plain and clear.
And this time, the wind was around to listen, but it took the words as well. And the first were enough to light the half-inch fuse of Reno. Rude repeated them once, then let an arrow fly furiously.
"You are cordially invited..." He didn't know why Elena had accepted any kind of proposal with Reno waiting, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that he wasn't. No, these days all she had to look forward to was another day with the Demon, be it in a quiet conference or standing on the hill with he and the Cueball Combatant.
For once, he missed the wind. Standing on the hill just wasn't the same if Gold-Touch and the Demon weren't there, admittedly, but being there without wind to yell into was just right out. The sun blazed overhead, only wisps of cirrus clouds to lower its intensity. The Army was winning the war, but that was by just a hair; any second, Cid Highwind could bring himself into the equation and totally wreak havoc with his salvos, and then what? Then the General would have to formulate a new plan.
And if he wasn't back by the time Highwind did just that, Rude didn't know what he could do to save the empire they were so bent on keeping in a thriving state.
On such a clear day, the Combatant could faintly see the hovering airship as it passed back and forth across the field, taking few shots because everyone knew it had been made for war. He let an arrow fly toward it, but it fell horribly short and disappeared into ground the same shade as his skin, which told stories of his deep-rooted Mideel lineage.
The Combatant inside of him, not nearly as feared as the Fire Demon that made most men cower when Reno passed them, told him to run. Run down the hill, and if you make it, kill all those fuckers for killing your best friend, it whispered seductively, where women had once sighed his name, tingling areas he'd forgotten existed.
His womanizing days would have made Don Corneo blush. But now Rude was gone, replaced by some strange variation of him, or maybe just the Combatant. Elena had once taken him aside, told him with fearful tones that she had seen his eyes glaze over as the Demon General's did, asked him please, please don't follow his friend's footsteps and leave her alone.
He'd hugged her then, and for a moment it was Rude and Elena, brother and sister, comrade and comrade, standing on the hill in the midst of all this carnage. But briefly, everything had been fine when the Combatant muttered to the Woman of Gold that, should Reno never reemerge, that Rude would never leave her on her own. For just a few seconds, they had been peaceful again.
"I should kill him for what he's doing to you, 'Lena. Bullet right in the skull. Pow, and he'd be gone, the war would be over with. Right now, nobody can imagine how much that would help, but c'mon; ending the war would save so many lives, leave just peace, maybe even let us live happily somewhere."
By the time Rude realized the Combatant had taken control of his mind, it was almost too late; he'd nearly convinced himself that the best way to go was down the path of Shadow, and then Tseng. As a fevered "No!" gasped from his lips, the Combatant retreated to its holding place to build its own strength up; to come back next time and stop this madness.
To kill that bastard Reno for all he'd done to --
The bald man swung out and hit a boulder, his skin tearing and his hand skipping off the rock as if it were a bird smashing into a window. The bird never won, and as he looked at his gashed fist, he realized that his hand would not be in the running for a Man versus Nature contest any time soon. But this time, the Combatant really did sink back away, and he decided to turn and walk back to the base to take advantage of the momentary quietude.
As he was opening the door to step inside -- he would certainly need to get his hand bandaged, he mused as he glanced back once more to where he, Elena, and Reno stood so often in complete silence -- it flew open, seemingly on its own accord. Swearing at the door having slammed into his hand, the Cueball Combatant returned to Rude's mind and he gave the man standing there, Mark, a withering look.
The man apologized quickly, saluting. The sunlight glinted annoyingly off of his miner hat, but Rude knew this was a nice man, and so the decision arose to hear his piece before doing anything terribly drastic with the crossbow in his healthy hand. "Sir," Mark panted, "the mining team found something!"
Yet pure of heart.
Both lives so worn,
But never to part ." -- Dani - "Our Barren Heart"
-
The Turk Turf War
-
Act Eight: Dive To Five
A young Reno sat on one of the Wutai plains, fingering a blade of grass with one hand, holding one of his "friend's" fabled healing herbs to his cheek with the other. This was what you saw if you overlooked the other three stuffed up the back of his shirt. But Reno wasn't bothered by the fact that he wasn't holding them there, because if you looked at his back without the red and white striped shirt, you would see a field of scars and freshly-opened cuts. It barely mattered when you looked anymore.
The shirt had started out white, then the wearer had taken a few hits and it became a bit brown, the blood drying onto it. But after a few more years, it fell together almost perfectly, the shaded colors. Had he cared, he would've cracked a joke about being an unintentional, talented tye-dyer.
His father drank. His brother used to drink under his supervision. His father had left them almost a year ago, and he rarely saw him anymore. Just chance meetings in town where Reno would turn his eyes away and pretend not to notice. They lived out on a farm, and the only reason he, his mother, and his brother were still going was because of the latter's work in the fields.
Had Reno known the true meaning of the term, he would've called him a slave.
His brother was still living at home, a tall, lean role-model. The smartest in the class despite the drug and alcohol addictions, Zen had made a name for himself by playing on almost all the school teams, regardless of the sport. Tremor was his favorite, and because of that, it was also Reno's. Or, at least, it had been at one time.
But now, he barely saw more of his brother than the graduation ring on his hand, when it was speeding toward him or pulling away -- at this time, it went from blue to purple, for obvious reasons -- or his brown shoe, when it licked out like Hellfire, or crashed down like lightning. Every night there were fights between the siblings, never just staying at the verbal level, and his mother would continue knitting, as if under a spell to the point where she couldn't do anything, only blankly glance over at them from time to time.
His mother had barely spoken two words to the entire family since his father left, moved in town with his new girlfriend, and left them with the farm. She had gone to knitting, and now none of them had to worry about socks or sweaters anymore. At the request of either one, you would most likely find it on your pillow the next morning.
But his brother still drank, and tonight, the younger, just five-years-old and still with hundreds of blows taken, and smacks from a belt across his spinal cord, which felt as if it would pop out of his skin any day now, had gotten off with a warning. A swollen cheek and a few more belt-whips. Not to mention his eye was black from two days ago, but he shuddered at the thought as he lay in the grass, around midnight on a Tuesday. Or Wednesday. The time melted together like his bruises.
"Again?"
A whimper in his throat was all he could force out without breaking down. Reno had learned not to cry when it hurt, to just think of what happened afterward. He would run out to the field and get a few different medicines from his "friend", his beacon of light in the hurricane. When he came out here, he was free for a minimum of two hours.
"God, Karuno. What happened this time?" He'd cleaned up his mouth because of this guy. The man with the long, black ponytail and the shining revolver. The man with the red dot on his forehead and the vast fields of patience, earned through long hours doing...whatever he did. He'd never asked his name, just taken the healing plants he gave him and tossed distracting talk back and forth for a while.
Reno's mother never did know him. Reno's mother had never found out about their meetings, as far as he knew. It was tonight he would make the decision that would shape his own future, but he didn't know it for almost twenty years. Tseng smiled warmly at him, holding a flashlight and a briefcase tonight. "You're not happy here, are you, Reno?"
The fire-headed boy muttered something and shook his head furiously. The tall man asked if he wanted to come with him. He didn't look too old, maybe eighteen at the most, but he was both courteous and caring. Reno knew him as the man at the end of the fairy tales he used to have read to him before going to bed. And when he nodded, he became the lost little boy who was finally returned to his parents about three sentences before the end.
The black-haired man stuck his hand out and grinned widely. "Reno... I'll teach you everything you'll need to know, but even better, I'll make you happy... We'll leave and you'll never have to see these people again. How would you like that?"
Reno's bottom lip quivered, but then he put his little fingers inside the man's large hand and said, "What's your name, anyway?" The deciding question. Reno had learned, whenever you asked someone their name, you were obligated to follow their commands and respect them to the edge of the Planet. As soon as Reno had desired the name of the tall man, he had signed away his true freedom.
The man with the red dot on his forehead paused for a moment, then put away the flashlight squeezed in his elbow and hefted the five-year-old into his arms, just like the father he'd never truly had. "Tseng. You can call me anything you want, though."
The redhead buried his head in Tseng's shoulder and choked on a cry. "Then...I'm scared, Dad..."
-
Act Nine: Ditching Mideel
In fifteen years, Tseng had taught him the rules of life, and shaped him into a walking, talking, makeshift son below the Plate of Midgar. In eighteen years, Reno had opened up to a perky blonde with a feigned hatred toward him, and in just twenty years, Reno was sitting in a dark room with a crackling fire and a cup of green tea, hating Tseng himself. The fiery Demon of the Turk Army, the envy of all the warlords because of his ability to almost shape-shift into a killing machine.
Let them have his curse, then. He said, let them come, take it, and leave him in peace. But he was stuck with it, all because he'd taken the red-dot man's hand one night and called him Dad. Because Tseng had changed him from a young copy of himself into a young opposite, training him in stealth, math, reading, all of it, until he was ready to put on a pair of shades and a blue suit and forget all of it; pretend to be from Midgar.
"Fuck me."
Reno started, looking at the young woman across the table, who looked just as puzzled and had her own cup nestled in her hands. Legs Kisaragi, he'd called her before. For obvious reasons, you know. With a once-over when he had cleared his eyes of hatred for his old employer, he'd noted that Yuffie was shaping up to be quite a looker. "What...?"
She held up an empty cup, craned her neck, and shook it a bit, accenting all three next syllables. "Sucky tea?" She looked even more confused when he sunk back into the worn pillows of the couch, set the cup on the table, and rubbed his face while shaking his head. "I've never been the best, y'know."
Propeller had, at their request, flown them all the way to Wutai and then gone back to the battlefield with Rude. Rude would play General for as long as they thought they should stay here, Reno guessed, but it still confused him that Yuffie had even come in the first place. They were back in his old house, which was now empty and didn't exactly look like it was hot on the market. Then again, not much was hot on the market, as the entire city had fled to battle against the Turk Army, claiming they would destroy ShinRa's roots once and for all.
The paint was flaking off of the walls, a few chair-pieces were scattered round, and the kitchen smelled of rotting vegetables. The only thing mostly-intact was the living room, in all its original glory with a recliner, two couches, a table, a fireplace, and a television with a cracked screen in the far corner. Yuffie had also attempted popcorn, the evidence a blackened cob just to the right of Reno's green tea. The actual popcorn was suspected to be in the fire somewhere.
"Plan ahead and know how to get it out," was what he'd said, before she had broken into a fit of laughter and he himself had just stood there chuckling. "Please tell me why in Hell you're here? I'm getting unnerved."
She grinned and stood on her couch, leaping over the table and landing comfortably next to him, blowing some hair out of her eyes. Half of her tea was now reflecting the flames in the wall, in an almost-straight line across the table, but she miraculously managed to hold onto some of it. "Rude said you'd calm down around me because you think I'm hot." She was quite the blunt, perky girl, wasn't she?
Reno tried to sink into the shell with the Demon, snorting and rolling his eyes. "I think he mistook me. I believe my exact words were, "Boy, I bet she'd look good in flames."" He was lying through his teeth, but Tseng had also taught him that, the bloody bastard. He figured she wouldn't buy it.
And she didn't. Opening her mouth and revealing two full rows of straight, sparkling teeth, she grasped him in a bear-hug, or at least her own equivalent of one. "Aw, you big dope! I love ya, too!" Now she was just being mocking, and she loved every minute of it. It wasn't as if she didn't eye him in some of their earlier fights during the Meteor crisis, first seeing him in Gonaga and hoping to run into him again throughout the rest of their journey, which AVALANCHE did indeed do.
Reno gently pried her off, then rubbed at his arm, as if trying to get the feeling out of it. Truthfully, he was trying to rub it in. He glanced at his watch as he did, and swore beneath his breath. "Damn. Almost three in the morning... Time to get to work." He downed the rest of his tea and stood up, peeling off his coat and shirt and tossing them onto the arm of the hole-dotted couch. He stared at the other Wutain expectantly. "Two things. One, you'll die in that outfit, and two, does your old man still keep Ditchers around?"
Ditchers had been used years and years ago on plantations, and their name pretty much gave away the secret of their ability. It was a large, slow, expensive machine, available only in the island town they were in at this time. They had two large, metal blades that jutted straight into the ground when the cab was lowered, and then separated the soil, creating a ten-foot-long, six-foot-wide ditch with mounds of dirt on either side. They were usually used when a mass suicide, genocide, or a fatal disease occurred. What he needed one now for was beyond the young woman.
"What, you want me to strip down to nothing before I even figure out what you're doing with my dad's machines?" she asked, feigning shock. She could've expected just that from Reno, and knowing him, he'd be perfectly serious.
"Whatever floats your boat." He was cocky, even as an assumed-mature adult, and humor was never below him, always served with a crooked grin and a thumbs-up.
She snorted and just tossed off her coat as well. "Typical male. Typical you, I should say. I think Godo's got about two of those hidden away in some big warehouse near Costa. What the hell do you need a Ditcher for?" She had a hard enough time keeping her eyes on his nose; one look into his eyes would buckle her knees, and anything below would have her drooling like a sixth-grader. God, she was actually worse than she thought, and with Rude's words still in the air, she worried herself.
Pausing and then smirking, the apparently-Demonless General poured their bucket of water on the fire and headed for the door. "Consider it...a contribution to the war effort on Godo's part..."
Outside, he opened his phone and hit the button he had hit the previous day. The Demon needed to get back to Costa, lick a few bypassers to make sure its flames would still be enough to dominate Strife's army, and then find those machines.
-
Act Ten: Six Feet Deep
Back on the battlefield, standing high on their hill, the new General of the Turk Army stood, as appointed by Reno until he returned. Seeing as how Shadow was as mad as the Demon, and Propeller, though a joy of a friend, lacked leadership skills, Reno had whispered to Rude, just before getting off the plane, that he was in command until they returned.
Things changed everyday. Just last night, someone desiring to prove the ignorance of the Army had led a small pack of them on a chase, and then hurled a grenade straight into the air. To Rude's horror, they actually fell for it, and an arm was reported to have come down twenty-three feet from the small crater.
And if things couldn't get any worse, Reno had paperwork, for God's sake. The one day in his life he had a bill to sign, or even a form to fill out, Rude was in charge of it. That was the way he'd planned it, or else it was an odd trick by fate to make sure the Fire Demon never ruled the world by signing an agreement in one of his many drunken stupors. Reno had dismissed it for dumb luck the first time Rude had noticed and queried.
For the first time, Rude was making some large changes. Not only were their strategies better, but the AVALANCHErs' forces had been pushed back against the Rocket Town border. Highwind was ready to start busting out the salvos, as said the last person from their side that had spoken to him, but so far nothing was happening. The Cueball Combatant had ditched the guns for a more effective, better aimed device: the crossbow.
Rude had owned the thing since grade school, always making improvements on it, tightening so and so, so it could fly this much farther, removing this and that to get it to hold steady. He had finally come up with a deadly weapon: an old-fashioned, high-powered crossbow with a scope that could let an arrow fly three-hundred feet and imbed itself in the spot he had aimed it, down to a gil-sized margin of error.
That barely mattered when you were aiming at someone's chest. The crossbow was Rude's toy, his "baby", if you could call anything he might've owned one of those. He now just sat on a cliff, a little up from the unofficial watch tower, picking off anyone he selected as too close, sometimes just letting one fly as far as possible and listening for a scream. Sometimes it came, other times nothing.
As for the "paperwork", Reno probably didn't want to see it. Rude read over it again, sighing with each word. When he'd gotten it through his head that the man was serious, he rolled it up, tossed it into the air, and sent it away via a wasted arrow. He remembered it plain and clear.
And this time, the wind was around to listen, but it took the words as well. And the first were enough to light the half-inch fuse of Reno. Rude repeated them once, then let an arrow fly furiously.
"You are cordially invited..." He didn't know why Elena had accepted any kind of proposal with Reno waiting, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that he wasn't. No, these days all she had to look forward to was another day with the Demon, be it in a quiet conference or standing on the hill with he and the Cueball Combatant.
For once, he missed the wind. Standing on the hill just wasn't the same if Gold-Touch and the Demon weren't there, admittedly, but being there without wind to yell into was just right out. The sun blazed overhead, only wisps of cirrus clouds to lower its intensity. The Army was winning the war, but that was by just a hair; any second, Cid Highwind could bring himself into the equation and totally wreak havoc with his salvos, and then what? Then the General would have to formulate a new plan.
And if he wasn't back by the time Highwind did just that, Rude didn't know what he could do to save the empire they were so bent on keeping in a thriving state.
On such a clear day, the Combatant could faintly see the hovering airship as it passed back and forth across the field, taking few shots because everyone knew it had been made for war. He let an arrow fly toward it, but it fell horribly short and disappeared into ground the same shade as his skin, which told stories of his deep-rooted Mideel lineage.
The Combatant inside of him, not nearly as feared as the Fire Demon that made most men cower when Reno passed them, told him to run. Run down the hill, and if you make it, kill all those fuckers for killing your best friend, it whispered seductively, where women had once sighed his name, tingling areas he'd forgotten existed.
His womanizing days would have made Don Corneo blush. But now Rude was gone, replaced by some strange variation of him, or maybe just the Combatant. Elena had once taken him aside, told him with fearful tones that she had seen his eyes glaze over as the Demon General's did, asked him please, please don't follow his friend's footsteps and leave her alone.
He'd hugged her then, and for a moment it was Rude and Elena, brother and sister, comrade and comrade, standing on the hill in the midst of all this carnage. But briefly, everything had been fine when the Combatant muttered to the Woman of Gold that, should Reno never reemerge, that Rude would never leave her on her own. For just a few seconds, they had been peaceful again.
"I should kill him for what he's doing to you, 'Lena. Bullet right in the skull. Pow, and he'd be gone, the war would be over with. Right now, nobody can imagine how much that would help, but c'mon; ending the war would save so many lives, leave just peace, maybe even let us live happily somewhere."
By the time Rude realized the Combatant had taken control of his mind, it was almost too late; he'd nearly convinced himself that the best way to go was down the path of Shadow, and then Tseng. As a fevered "No!" gasped from his lips, the Combatant retreated to its holding place to build its own strength up; to come back next time and stop this madness.
To kill that bastard Reno for all he'd done to --
The bald man swung out and hit a boulder, his skin tearing and his hand skipping off the rock as if it were a bird smashing into a window. The bird never won, and as he looked at his gashed fist, he realized that his hand would not be in the running for a Man versus Nature contest any time soon. But this time, the Combatant really did sink back away, and he decided to turn and walk back to the base to take advantage of the momentary quietude.
As he was opening the door to step inside -- he would certainly need to get his hand bandaged, he mused as he glanced back once more to where he, Elena, and Reno stood so often in complete silence -- it flew open, seemingly on its own accord. Swearing at the door having slammed into his hand, the Cueball Combatant returned to Rude's mind and he gave the man standing there, Mark, a withering look.
The man apologized quickly, saluting. The sunlight glinted annoyingly off of his miner hat, but Rude knew this was a nice man, and so the decision arose to hear his piece before doing anything terribly drastic with the crossbow in his healthy hand. "Sir," Mark panted, "the mining team found something!"