Colors of War, Chapter 5: Rising Star
Suspended for talking back to Bugenhagen AND dissing Hojo.
Grounded for a week.
Yeesh. Word really got around fast.
"It's not fair! You'd have done it too if you were there," she groused under her breath as she kicked the boss's office door shut behind her. Gemmell Hurst was not a man of many words or evident expression, but he had made it abundantly clear that her gun (and thus her 'license') might be confiscated until her behaviour (at least in public) matched with the Turk service code. She had to step carefully here. But that didn't lessen the feeling that she had been unfairly judged. Hadn't she done what every other Turk would do?
Maybe this was another lesson, she decided, wandering down the unfamiliar concrete-plastered tunnels. But what would it teach? Vincent wasn't here, so the lesson probably wouldn't go his way. She'd never been trained under people outside the Corel headquarters before, and that was a big problem. Whose idea was this anyway?-
- of course. Uncle Iri. He was the only one with the peeve, not to mention the authority, to suspend people for dissing clients. The Cosmo base would have called him shortly before she went to bed, and Hojo was wimp enough to kick up a fuss immediately after she left Nibelheim. That meant she had been on the official blacklist since a little after exiting Nibelheim. Vincent should have gone after her then, even if he didn't know she had changed direction for La Contresiera. He had more than enough authority and temperament to impose the suspension on her. Which meant...
...Cosmo Canyon's goodwill... meant more to the Turks than Shinra?
No, impossible. Uncle Iri wouldn't be so sentimental. He should have ordered her suspension immediately. Maybe Vincent had misplaced his PHS... but Vincent NEVER misplaced anything. Since he had not come out after her, no communication could have arrived. Then what had happened to the suspension order?
Why hadn't Uncle Iri ordered an immediate suspension?
"It's not FAIR!" she yelled, exasperatedly throwing her hands up and storming off to the main offices. Maybe there was a computer she could use to hack through to the Turk network. She had to have something solid to work on!
--
Cosmo Canyon, while extremely pacifist, was also the base of the single largest training facility (run, of course, by the Turks) in the world. Not even the Wutai SOLDIER branch could surpass Cosmo Canyon in terms of facility. All the twisting, wind-carved ravines were the best tests of a cadet's ability to survive- battered by wind, lacking all water, bathed with sunfire by day and faced with harsh earth all the time, turned loose alone or perhaps in groups, the full-fledged Turks- and the annual graduates of each SOLDIER generation- which emerged from their traditional week-long purgatory were recognized internationally as survivors, cunning as a Nibelheim Roc and harder to kill than cockroaches (which was generally an accurate assumption, but that didn't stop people from trying).
It naturally followed that all the real oddities in the Turk force asked to be posted there. (Actually getting posted there was another thing entirely.) Cosmo Canyon was the hub of ultra-modern civilisation, a bit of the universe where things always clicked under the benevolent eye of the very-nearly-omnipotent Cosmo Elders. Besides, it was conveniently spaced to allow speedy commute between the Gold Saucer, Gongaga and Nibelheim, not to mention La Contresiera, at a moment's notice. If you liked having variety and a good time watching trainees suffer while you recounted your glowing experiences to them, you went and asked the Leader to put you in Cosmo Canyon Base.
Diera pondered this while her pilfered terminal monitor scrolled frantically down a white expanse filled with rows and rows of speeding characters. Running a hack-search program on a database as large as the Turks' was bound to take a few hours which had to be carefully kept a secret. It was frowned upon if you did your hacking in front of other people. Diera had not yet learned what the difference was, but she had been told that it would come to her eventually and so she put it down to another of the funny things adults did. In any case, she was currently amused at the absolute organized chaos of the Cosmo Canyon Offices.
Partnered and unpartnered Turks dashed everywhere, the local Turks in their suits of businesslike navy and the assigned Turks in their unique sets of preferred gear. Most of them went for leather and steel- heavy on the defence- but a few had travelling cloaks wound about their shoulders, either about to leave on their assignments or just back from their field work. Vincent's casual gear was leather, steel AND cloak, no matter when or what the assignment was; Uncle Iri had only persuaded him to wear the suit for the Shinra job by saying that Kamryn would probably prefer a neat, businesslike man to a windswept vagabond. (Diera had been eavesdropping just inside Uncle Iri's door, behind the potted plant. Uncle Iri had known, of course, and Vincent had deliberately had a little 'accident' as he exited his leader's office. She rather thought that Uncle Iri had to replace the stump that remained of his ornamental Wutaian bamboo.)
And, as with all things pertaining to Kamryn (or most of them), Vincent had allowed himself to be convinced. Diera sighed, resting her chin on her knees as the swivel chair creaked lazily to itself. She had grown up with the stern, eternally annoyed Vincent. Vincent in love was... disconcerting. It seemed like a contradiction of all the cardinal virtues he had passed on to her- detachment, ruthlessness, expedience, and so on- all the qualities that made a good Turk. Yet Uncle Iri didn't seem to be scolding Vincent for not being a good Turk, so did that mean that she could be a good Turk without being detached, ruthless, expedient?
... it was... not her place to question what the adults did or did not do.
Someday, she thought to herself, a smirk crawling across her lips, she would be an adult, and then to hell with Vincent. Not, she sighed, that he bothered himself much with her nowadays. He'd actually been rather accommodating with her desire to get away from Hojo and Nibelheim only a while ago. It disturbed her belief that he was her perfect enemy. What kind of enemy helped you get out of trouble? She sighed again, wistfully. Things had been so much simpler when he had been the harsh cold instructor. Now that he was confused, in love and even a little helpful, it was impossible to label him as surely as she would have done two or three years ago. How in the world could she exact her revenge now? It seemed foolish, petty. Totally uncool.
"Hey, princess," a young male voice called, and a hand forcibly raked its way through her already-messy hair. Diera gave an indignant yell of pain as it yanked out knots of hair root-first, clawing frantically to swat the hand away before he could wreak further havoc on her hair. Being a person who found personal grooming time-consuming and annoying, Diera stuck to the basics, dry-washing whenever she could. Her hair, raggedly long and often tied with anything that was handy, was essentially a mass of impish knots. Most of the Turks she knew were considerate enough to let her hair alone. And of those who couldn't resist, only one called her 'princess'.
Shoving her disturbed coils of dirty hair back into some semblance of order, the cadet spun her seat around and kicked out at a chortling young Turk. "I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE MY HAIR ALONE, ASHNER!" she screamed angrily, throwing her pencil at him haphazardly. He dodged adroitly, earning scattered applause from other Turks in the vicinity. Trust him to pop up when she was grounded! she thought grumpily, rubbing her aching scalp. For her future intended partner, Silk Ashner was a royal pain in the ass. She usually got on with him, but Silk was an unmitigated bastard and enjoyed letting people know it. She'd WARNED him not to touch her hair-
In addition to being a ruffian at heart, Silk Ashner was tallish for a teenage boy, pale blond, and powerfully handsome (as well as aware of it, much to Diera's disgust). He had once been the heir to a Contresieran margrave, then a Contresieran prostitute for some time after that. By the time Uncle Iri picked him up out of the streets to be a Turk, Margrave Ashner was thoroughly desperate to retrieve his family honour. Uncle Iri had cheerfully taken all the money thrown at him, as well as the promise that the Margrave would keep both ears on the local politics for the Turk network.
Silk had snickered at his father's discomfiture, but he wasn't so amused when he was put in a rehab cell to go 'cold turkey'. Uncle Iri had known very well that Silk's pimp had him on demon's star, a powerful antidepressant that was terribly cheap, though tightly controlled, and there was no sensible use for such a glaring weakness, so it had to go. When it went, though, the boy had developed a marvellous set of reflexes which Uncle Iri viewed as a nice bonus.
Maybe it had been the bedevilment of a moment, or maybe Uncle Iri was just trying to be funny, but Silk had been introduced to her as her partner-to-be the day after she recieved her first gun. He, like her, had been one of the lowest-ranked operatives, but he WAS higher than her now, a recognized member of the force by the insignia on his lapel, rifle-rank at least. She stopped trying to hit him, but kept her fist ready just in case Silk decided to tease her again.
Fortunately, he seemed to be focusing on something else. "Where'd you come from?"
"La Contresiera," she said irritatedly, swivelling back to glare at her screen as it bleeped and cleared into sensible words. "And where'd YOU come from? I didn't know you were posted here."
He dismissed her question with an airy wave of his spiky gloved hand. "La Contresiera."
That startled her enough for her to glance sharply at him. "When?"
"I came in about an hour after you did, by bypassing the town. Heard you getting chewed out by those screaming pacifists, actually."
"And you didn't even think about helping me?" she suggested acidly, jabbing a finger up at him.
Silk grinned. "Nope! You were just fine without me. What're you looking up?" He leant over her shoulder, scanning the document headings that had popped up. "Shinra's next move? I thought you said you jut came in from Contresiera."
"I did," was her snapped, piqued reply, punctuated by a swift, black frown. "And I saw Uncle Arvill first thing when I gat there yesterday. What didn't he tell me?"
"Oh, nothing much. Just that we've been ordered to obliterate La Contresiera within two months, and to spread the evacuation order." She shot up in her chair and stared at him, then fell over sideways at his sly smirk and waved hand. "Just joking. You're too serious, princess. Shinra will lose steam eventually. No point being paranoid, you know?" Reaching over, he tapped the screen with a thumb. "Here's my apology. Take a look at the reports from Wutai and SOLDIER."
She called up the Wutai report, mouth moving silently as she perused the steady black lines. "You're on the SOLDIER recruitment?" she remarked, surprised. "How much did they promote you?" Soldier only truly trusted the recruiting ability of fairly high-level operatives. It had only been maybe two years since she last saw him- so how had he gotten promoted so fast?
Silk grinned. Or maybe it was just his normal grin grown wider. "I'm sniper class now, princess. Eat that! Not a ranked operative, but a classed agent! Iridalan bumped me up after I cleared out that nest in the Icicle Area." His grin faded until it was just a stretching of lips. "We lost Kimmer and Snowy, though."
"We weren't supposed to," a second, tired voice broke in on their conversation. Diera glanced up at the speaker and blinked, recognizing him. Uncle Dan, Daniel Skoll to his peers, unpartnered and as usual unshaven, leant on the partition between his cell and Diera's borrowed one. She recognized him from a set of profiles Vincent had set her to study, just another one from many faces. A chronic depression case, his profile had said, good with fighting but heavy on the cynicism and hard liquor. Getting close to retirement age. By the looks of it, he had put in his application for discharge already. What had happened in the North? "It was monsters," he elaborated at her questioning look. "Sleeping ones. They woke up when Kimmer lit his cig. Came towards the heat, attacked us. Not enough fire on hand to kill them all. Wasn't enough of us, either. The caves were stuffed. Iri only sent three pairs. The boy ran back to the village and got barrels of beer, then we burned the nest out."
Diera's brow wrinkled deeper. "But Uncle Kim and Snowman- didn't you retrieve them?"
Silk grimaced. "Kimmer stayed to light the fire, and Snowy wouldn't leave him. They're- they were partners, after all. The only things were managed to retrieve were their guns. Not enough left of their bodies to fill my palm with ash. The worst thing is that we should have known; the Icicle Area's always been a monster-infested place. Hell, it's the ONLY place in the world with monsters! Why d'you think Iri promoted me that highly?" His throaty baritone had slipped into a thick country Contresieran accent with agitation, a sure sign that he was more affected than he cared to admit.
The cadet's frown eased into lines of comprehension. "To cover up his mistake?"
Saluting her with a dry jerk of his eyebrow, Silk glanced up at the man (who appeared to be about to collapse on the cell partition) and spread his hands. "Ours not to reason why. Didn't Iridalan give y' your retirement pay yet, Skoll?"
The furry-looking del Solar shrugged. "Don't have the guts for it. 'Sides, I have a son waiting to enter the ranks. Can't croak on him just yet."
"You're just retiring, not dying," Diera murmured, turning back to her computer. She missed the troubled looks that passed between both Turks. Her mind had turned back to the SOLDIER reports. SOLDIER, which had existed long before the Turks did, nevertheless got its recruits off each successive generation of Turks. According to hearsay, Cavall Turk (the first Leader) had started out as the head of Recruitment for SOLDIER, and opened up his own company in tandem with Shinra when Commander Kingston voiced disapproval of Cavall's preference for underhanded tactics. As a sign of goodwill, however, Cavall had continued his duties, delegating authority to his lieutenants to swell the ranks of their mother company. That way, SOLDIER was buddy-buddy with the Turks, and where straight fighting or exceptional tactics was needed, each force could donate some of its personnel. Quite a tidy arrangement for both sides.
This particular report dealt with Shinra's tendering for SOLDIER'S services in the near future. By the amount of money named, they were fairly serious about having the brawl of the century. It got more suspicious the more she glared at it. Why hire the Turks AND SOLDIER? Clearing out all opposition? To make matters worse, this report had none of the Commander's comments in it, and so it was up to her to draw her own conclusions. Diera did most of that well enough on her own, but her conclusions were generally, as Vincent put it, lopsided. Stuck between childishness and maturity. Keeping that in mind, she knew well enough to ask other people what they thought before making a fool of herself. Even if she didn't like the people she was asking... "Ashner, did you get into the SOLDIER compound recently?"
He spun a pen deftly in his nimble fingers, grinning again. "Aaaahh, asking lil' ol' me?"
Reminding herself to be patient, Diera gritted her teeth and tried again. "Please?"
She was lucky today. Silk was amenable. "You're gonna owe me a favor, princess," he chortled, rolling his chair closer to her terminal. "Look here, what do you want about the SOLDIERs?" She was neatly wheeled out of the way, disgruntled but relieved as the older teen started checking the programs she had run. "Mind, if it's in too deep you'll have to do it yourself." Skoll tipped his head politely at Diera and dropped back into his cubicle, tactfully overlooking the hackers.
"Nothing much. Can you bring up the growth stats for SOLDIER?"
"Can a rabbit jump?" he said disdainfully, fingers busy at the keyboard.
Growth had gone from a steady 2% per year to 15% per year. Someone was gearing up for a major confrontation, as she suspected. Now, was Shinra behind this jump? It was unlikely- Shinra could not dictate Iridalan's judgment- but there were always ways... "The recruitment rolls for the past years... starting from just before that increased year?"
Silk made a short, disgusted sound. "Still digging for Shinra stuff?"
"What's it to you? The rolls, Ashner." Mentally she tried to piece together the areas under Shinra semi-control, failed, and set about scribbling on the back of a calendar page. Her script was spidery and uneven, wandering across the page, but it would do. Likewise for the sketch map, and she didn't care. Shinra made and sold the rare mineral pearls called materia, a byproduct of their new Mako energy experiments. Where they set their roots, people sang their praises- easy to find. Right then they had settled in Nibelheim, going through to Corel and through to the Eastern Continent from there. Anyone from this rather large area was suspect. Of course, that was a lot of people that was suspect. Probably not the best criteria... and then she looked at the rolls that Silk had dug up for her, and she knew that it was Shinra, all right.
The Turks had a tradition of talking balance, all the way. Equal numbers from each town, Wutai included. It helped to promote improvement among each town's youths. Children of every generation, every town, dreamed of joining SOLDIER, rising in the ranks, and coming home covered in fame and glory. The best five or so, chosen by the Turks by process of obscure elimination, were the ones who actually got to SOLDIER, and new batches were chosen every month or so. Recently it had gone all the way up to fifteen per town, and Wutai had stopped offering candidates altogether. Shogun Godo had finally declared an embargo on SOLDIER, precipitating a shutdown of the local SOLDIER barracks, because he knew something was afoot. Diera was still groping her way towards it. "All right, I'm done. With the computer anyway." Silk snorted and flicked the monitor off, obviously skeptical. "Now, do you have any ideas why Uncle Iri signed that dumb contract with Shinra?"
Silk cocked his head. "How did you find out about that?"
"I asked, Ashner, I asked. Ideas?"
"Well..." his eyes darted about as he visibly collected his thoughts, "this is only a rumor. You have to promise not to tell anyone."
"Promise."
"It's only a rumor, but it's going around that…" his face was blank with the effort of concealing the uncertainty that leaked out past his cocky mask, "the Shinra man backed the boss into a corner and stuck him neatly as a butterfly to cork."
Diera made a indelicate sound. "Nonsense! Uncle Iri is the sharpest codger in the world. He wouldn't be beaten by some pen pusher."
"I don't know," Silk said quietly, his foot tapping uneasily. "I don't know, honestly. I can't trust him like you do."
"Uncle Iri's always been the best. That's why he's the Leader, isn't it?"
"But there was a Leader before him, doesn't that sort of mean that there was someone better?" Silk pointed out with dogged hopelessness.
Her jaw jutted stubbornly. "He's the best. He has to be."
Her mind was made up. Silently Silk said in the stillness of his mind that she was dead wrong, but she hadn't had the chance to learn the instinctive paranoia, the suspicion, the wariness that the normal Turk had. She lacked the ability to question orders in the normal way. And, for her sake- for all their sakes- he hoped that she was right. Because he didn't exactly feel like dying just yet.
--
Diera's stay within the Cosmo Canyon base lasted so long, she was chafing at the unaccustomed surroundings by the time Hurst next summoned her to his office. Raised in the sharp, businesslike environment of the Corel base, she couldn't get used to the rowdy, boisterous camaraderie of the Cosmo Turks. Her reaction to their overtures usually ended up in a fight, but she spent most of her time in the physical training facilities anyway. Nobody voiced any concern. Nothing to worry about, right?
Anyway, the first order of business was to inform the weedy-looking young Turk that her suspension was being lifted, though another suspension would readily be enacted if she crossed the lines again. Diera looked distinctly relieved at this turn of events, since she could then be allowed (presumably) to return to her mother base (Corel). She was content enough to listen calmly to what he said next.
"In accordance with your progress concerning mental and physical skill, I have approved your promotion."
Her jaw dropped.
"Close your mouth. Diera Raistlone, take your Valken." He nodded expressionlessly at the larger, chunkier-looking model that lay on the edge of his desk like an unlikely hunk of so much metal. It was a bit of a problem to aim and packed a hell of a recoil, but it also packed a demon of a punch. "Leave your Bolt in its place, and remember that a promotion of this sort does not bring any special concessions. You will still be expected to maintain a certain standard of work, if not a higher standard. Do I make myself clear?"
"Uh," Diera affirmed, still slack-jawed with shock. She laid her old pistol hesitantly beside the new one and tested her new gun for balance. "It's… a bit off," she muttered, torn between hushed respect and demanding why this was so. Hushed respect seemed more prudent. "Um… do I go to the weapons department for a fitting holster?" she ventured, holding the new acquisition against her old hip strap.
He nodded once, slowly. She bobbed and, toting her new weapon, fled.
The district commander picked up his PHS and dialed an old, well-known number.
"Hello, Jimmy's Donuts, what flavor do you want-?"
"It's me. Why Jimmy's Donuts?"
"Oh, YOU. The name sort of helps to keep junk calls down. I even deliver donuts to people who want them. Cool, huh?"
"Rotten ones, probably."
"I did say I wanted to keep junk calls down. What's the occasion?"
"The princess has just run off with her new toy. Are you sure this is a good idea? She's only prepubescent."
"Of course she'll be fine. I chose her, after all."
"That's not saying much."
"Oh, stuff it, will you? And don't call again unless you have something real to tell me about." The line went dead, and buzzed. Hurst switched it off without so much as a twitch of his eyebrow. He was used to all this. You don't get to a big fish position without getting used to the idiosyncrasies of your boss.
-----
Author's note: It's been a long time since I updated, huh? Still in the process of revamping this novelette. Why doesn't ANYONE review this monster? Is it that bad? I didn't think so… at this rate, even flames would be welcome… (sniffle) Come on… review… you know you want to…