5

 After awhile I took this as a penance. I was locked here, so perhaps I deserved to be locked here. Perhaps I deserved to lose your love, I do not know. I have barely enough conscious time to speak to you, or whatever I am doing right now, let alone think about why I am truly here. But in the infinitesimal time that I do possess, I have come to think that this is my punishment for what they did to you. What you let them do to you, even though in my heart I know you didn't want that. I wept for you, as I am weeping right now.

I do not know where this water comes from, since I have not taken it in for so long. Perhaps I have been granted an endless supply of tears merely so that I may weep for you.

Junon smelled. Reeked, is a better word for it. The residents knew nothing of this smell, or of how odd it was, because they had attuned themselves to it. But to Vincent, who had lived in a miniscule mountain village for the past few months, he could smell every ounce of exhaust in the air, every particle of machine oil, every hint of industry there was. And if he could be made any sicker than he already was at himself for committing his mind to follow his next order, then he was made sicker. Neither Rachael nor Tsang spoke since their landing in Junon. Neither did Vincent, and although they all found their way through the metal walls and metal streets of Junon perfectly fine, he gave them a bland notice when they reached a particular building that that was the hotel they were to stay in. They entered their three separate, identical, adjacent rooms, which were merely functional and nothing else. Rachael fell right to sleep on her bed, exhausted. Tsang followed much the same, though he took off his shoes and clothing first. Vincent did not sleep. Instead he read the order over and over again.

He was to find two soldiers, lowly and green, but strong, and bring them to the apartment of Doctor Jeryl Nunya. Vincent was then supposed to have these two soldiers hold the doctor down while he injected a syringe-full of a Jenova cocktail into each of Doctor Nunya's arms and then each of his legs. When this was finished, Vincent was supposed to lock all the windows and doors save the one he was to leave through, which he would lock upon leaving the room. Then he was to murder these soldiers in cold blood, a bullet to each of their brains, and then leave the door and lock it behind him. He was then to return in six hours with his Turks and kill Jeryl Nunya, or whatever was left of him after the Jenova cells had replicated in his body and made it theirs. When he was dead, completely, they were set off a bomb in the apartment of the doctor so that any evidence was destroyed.

Clean cut, simple, and cold. The only problem was the bomb. The street-facing walls in Junon were made of solid metal, so Vincent needed something that would blow through that. He sat there, his mind running through every weapons dealer he knew, until he came to the obvious conclusion, which was only "obvious" after he had thought of it, that the best place to acquire a proper weapon would be from the Shinra stockpiles, and no one had more stockpiles of Shinra's things that Junon. So, no more than fifteen minutes after he had sat down, Vincent rose again and walked to Shinra's weapons building. Though not before he had read the mission again and had placed the syringes in his coat pocket. The weapons building was no different than any of the other buildings in Junon, since they all gave the distinct appearance that they were welded together. However, Vincent knew it, entered, and found, sleeping next to a pile of ammunition, Ashland and Green, think in muscle and in mind, wearing the Shinra blue military uniforms.

Though their names were irrelevant to him since they served his purpose perfectly. Served two of his purposes perfectly. He kicked at their books for an instant. "Wake up." They both shifted but did not rise. Vincent rapped them again, but still they failed to rise. Finally, annoyed, he kicked one of them so hard that the soldier yelped in pain and rose to his feet.

 "Who in the f…" almost immediately he realized the suit wasn't the garb of a businessman, the black hair man before Green was, in fact, a Turk. "Oh! Sorry sir, please how may I help you sir?" The other unconscious man snored. Green panicked and kicked Ashland in the side.

"F****** b****** what the hell did you do that for?" Ashland yelled, rising.

"A Turk's here, shut up!" Green snapped, and immediately Ashland stood to attention.

"I need an explosive," Vincent said, smiling.

"What kind, sir?" Green replied, sounding as professional as possible.

Vincent dropped his smile. I can tell them whatever, since they won't live through the morning… "Something that will blow apart an apartment with a eight inch steel wall on one of the sides."

The soldiers looked at each other nervously. "To blow up…. An apartment…. In Junon?"

"Yes, do you have anything for that?"

The soldiers again exchanged looks, but Mark spoke first, since he was apparently intent on saying everything. "Yes sir."

Vincent raised his eyebrow, as both of them were motionless. "Can you… get it for me?"

"Oh! Yes sir!" Ashland piped up, running off into the back and up some stairs.

Green smiled nervously as Vincent began to look around. "Drop the façade soldier. Don't smile if you don't feel like it. But you will answer my questions, whether or not you want to. First of which what is your name? Surname, if you please."

"Mine is Green. That's my brother, his last name is Ashland," Green responded, dropping his guise of professionalism.

"Brothers normally share the same last name," Vincent said, raising his eyebrow.

"Well both our families were killed off by monsters, so we stick together, me and him," Green smiled.

Perfect. Vincent smiled at him, and down the stairs bounded Ashland, with something no bigger than a video tape. He ran into a wall and Green jumped. "Rick!" he shouted, but Ashland just smiled and handed this box to Vincent.

"It can stick to walls and is timed. So you gotta get out before it goes off," he said, beaming.

Vincent smiled. "And this will blow out the apartment?"

The soldiers exchanged looks again. "Yes… yes sir."

"Good then, now come with me," Vincent said, turning to leave.

"Wha-? Sir we can't leave… orders," Green began.

"As a direct order you will come with me," Vincent said, leaving and tucking the video cassette box into his suit jacket.

Vincent waited and in a few seconds he heard the door to the weapons building close behind him and the soldiers joined Vincent. "Where are we off to, sir?"

"Come," Vincent said, leading them down to an address he had already memorized.

***

They entered Jeryl's apartment with no more resistance than one would find in the air when they fell to the ground. Vincent calmly opened the door, using a code provided to him by Shinra, and entered, light filling the room. There were several computers running at the same time, performing experiments and such. Printers occasionally printed out things, things bubbled here and there, and it was amazing how any person could get any work done with their entire living space filled with experiments. I used to love this man like a father… nono… no shut up! Shut up! This is an order goddamn you

Vincent walked over to the doctor, who was sleeping in a chair with a suit on, obviously collapsed from exhaustion. On the way to the collapsed doctor Vincent accidentally knocked over two tables but took absolutely no notice of it, which horrified the soldiers who were following him into the room, trading on broken glass.

"Wha- huh? Who are you people?" the doctor asked, squinting in the light and half asleep. Vincent pushed the doctor in his chair against a wall and spoke to the two soldiers. "Hold him down." Vincent stood and looked back at the two soldiers, who were staring at him in horror. "Hold him down now," Vincent barked, and they obeyed, though ashamed that they were holding down an old man. Vincent then retrieved the syringes, one at a time, and injected them into the doctors arms and legs. His body began to convulse immediately, so had the soldiers not been holding him down, there would have been no way for Vincent to empty all four vials. Then he dropped them, stood, and began to lock all the doors and windows, knocking over anything that was in his way. This led to nervousness in the soldiers, who were now using all their strength to subdue, so they didn't have all that much time to contemplate why Vincent was locking all the doors. He then began to leave, stopping in the doorway and checking his watch, and the soldiers focused their energy at the doctor who was now foaming at the mouth. Ashland turned to look back on Vincent, just in time to see the gun pointed at his head. "Thank you boys," Vincent said, as he pulled the trigger twice, then aimed at Green and fired twice as well. Both soldiers fell dead and Jeryl sprung from his captors and bounded to Vincent, but by the time Jeryl had reached the door Vincent had shut the door and locked it, and all the remnants of Jeryl could do was pound and scratch.

***

The Turks walked silently on the metal streets of Junon, and the noise around them was minimal, since it was dawn. They were on the street beneath the apartment where Doctor Nunya took up residence. Vincent stopped and looked up, Window's still intact, and he lowered his gaze. As he did, however, the window he had been focusing on shattered and a corpse flew through and landed somewhat in front of the Turks. Conditioned as they were, they calmly regarded this and looked up to see another corpse fly out of the window and land atop the first. Vincent blithely remembered their names: Green and Ashland. A third being then emerged, well, jumped from the window, and landed on top of the corpses, making them more crushed then they had been before.

The third being looked very human, but his skin was a very nasty shade of green, and his moth had enormous slits on the corners running across his cheeks, so that when he landed and opened his mouth, those slits revealed themselves to be extensions of his mouth, so that the top of his head would've fallen off had there not been a thin lining on the inside of his mouth around the dozen sets of sharp, cone-like teeth he contained within his head.

"Well this is just wonderful," Tsang muttered, rolling up his sleeve.

Rachael drew her guns and asked Vincent quietly. "We killin this…. Thing, cuz it killed those soldiers? They look like they've been rotting for awhile…. But not for all that long… Vincent?"

Vincent was staring at the monster on the corpses of soldiers he killed, and remembered reading a notebook in which what he saw before him was predicted to happen. He swallowed hard and took out his rifle. "Throw everything you have at it. I mean everything. Hold nothing back," he ordered, ignoring Rachael's question.

Almost immediately Rachael began to fire at the monster's head, blasting it to pieces. It staggered backward for a few steps, picked up its disconnected head, placed it back on top of its lower jaw, and roared.

"Oh sh**…" Tsang said, casting Barrier on himself and his two companions.

Rachael emptied her cartridges and let them slide out of the handguns. All the wounds the monster incurred healed slowly, and the Turks looked at one another as the monster advanced. "Fry it!" Vincent yelled, shooting the breastbone with his rifle with his high caliber shells. The first made the thing stagger backwards. The second knocked him down. Vincent roared: "Now!"

"But," Tsang began.

"NOW!" Vincent screamed, as the monster began to shudder on the ground.

"Thundaga!" Tsang yelled immediately, as if he was replying to Vincent. A column of purple smoke above the body of the monster formed, and in a moment a bolt of lightning seared through the column of smoke, lighting and causing every speck of smoke to explode so the force that finally reached the monster was a mixture of high electricity and flame. It screamed, wailing and smoking, and died.

Rachael smiled, happy, and Tsang wiped the sweat from the brow of his forehead with his bare arm. "It's not over," Vincent said, calmly.

As if obeying Vincent's words, the body of the monster bulged, and the split open down the middle. Out of the opening rose a creature that looked very similar to a large, elongated, gray egg with a tail and wings, nearly resembling a cross. It possessed a smile and eyes that had a permanent look of mania, since the features seemed to be painted on.

Vincent saw the new monster curl its tail and immediately shouted "Mirrona," and, unlike when Tsang cast the same spell in an earlier battle the Turks had, yellow-green shells were immediately created around the three people in blue suits. Therefore, when, a moment later, the monster straightened its tail and the same spell that Tsang cast on it's previous form was now cast on the Turks, columns of purple smoke already above all their heads, the lightning seared through the people smoke, surrounded the shells, and the bolts soared right to the monster. Instead of charring it, like they had hoped,  the monster absorbed the electricity, and, in fact, grew thin arms.

"Could really use a plan now Vince," Rachael yelled, emptying the last of her cartridges into the monster to no avail.

"Here," he said, tossing her his rifle, "cover for me," and he drew a long knife he had strapped under his pant leg.

"Vince I hate these…" she shouted, firing at the monster as Vincent ran around the back of the monster, jumped, and sunk the knife deep into the top of the monster. Instead of screaming, which, it seemed, was impossible for the monster to do anyway, it just flailed it's arms and tail and wings, flying left and right and up a little and then back down. All Vincent was doing, however, was letter gravity finish what he had started, and, hanging onto the handle of the blade with all the strength he had, it slowly sank down the back of the monster and Vincent fell to the ground, running back to his companions. The monster's skin parted and fell to the ground, revealing that it was a mere covering for the hundreds of mucus-covered tentacles that, once on the ground, began searching out flesh to assimilate. The corpses already on the ground of the two Shinra soldiers and the first monster did nicely, as most of the tentacles began to tear apart and rejoin those three bodies. However, one tentacle lashed out among the Turks, and caught Rachael.

"Rachael!" Tsang screamed, as Vincent started slashing at the tentacle, but in response to that another two were sent straight at him, which he dodged by falling to the ground and rolling away.

"Tsang don't go after her!" Vincent yelled, as the two tentacles probed for a moment longer and then aided in bring the struggling and screaming Rachael into the main body. Vincent thought for a moment and reached into his suit jacket. "Rachael catch!" he screamed, throwing what looked like a video tape at her. She immediately understood, seeing large red digital numbers read ":30" and stopped struggling.

"Go to f****** hell, b****!" she screamed at the monster who now consumed her completely.

The monster formed, enormously large, looking somewhat like a poorly constructed tent made entirely out of flesh. Vincent looked at Tsang and started running. "It's our time to go," Vincent yelled, and started running down the street. Tsang said nothing, just ran behind Vincent, who was speeding down the street. The monster pursued, though much slower than the Turks could run. Thirty seconds passed, and the monster blew apart. The explosion, in fact, created flames that engulfed several streets and tore apart the two apartment complexes on either side of the street that the monster had been moving on.

Vincent turned back, only for a moment, to look at what had happened, and he smiled. We'll miss ya kid… and ran off.