Colors of War, Chapter 12: A Bitter Rain
"Who are you?" was the first thing she almost snarled as she strode into the interrogation- oh, sorry, interview- room, pulling her collar straight. She'd barely paused to swing back to her cache of casual clothes in Corel before thundering off to Kalm to have it out with Ragnarok. Blasted man just sits there in his cadet uniform, the utter bastard.
He stiffened ever so slightly. She would have liked to have taken it as affirmation of her suspicions, but the muscle tension could have been due in part to the gun she had in her hand, not aimed but clasped firmly in her free hand. Her right hand. Her firing hand. He knew all about her aim firsthand. Mediocre marksman she might be, but no way she was going to miss anything in the closet-like space of the room that Kingston had allowed her. As it was, he hadn't been too happy to back down when Iridalan told him to let her dig at his newest genius recruit. Pushing for a more comfortable space would have been a dangerous move. Not that Diera was complaining. Cramping Ragna was just fine with her. "What exactly do you want with me?" he retorted at length, not crossing his arms. It was an admirable display of restraint.
It also pointed out that he was avoiding her question. Something to hide, kitty? "Your name is Ragnarok. What's your last name?"
His brow creased sharply. "I don't have one. I was an orphan."
"And where did you grow up?" she fired back, warming to her subject.
"Gongaga."
"Peachy. Do you have any siblings?"
"No. What is your purpose in asking these rudimentary questions?"
He was getting angry. Fine, she was furious anyway. "I'm telling you that Gongaga doesn't have an orphanage! No child has been orphaned in Gongaga as long as I've been alive, and I've seen someone who looks exactly like you. Ring any bells yet?" His jaw dropped open, and he stared at the ground as she began to pace, waving her gun agitatedly. "I don't know what Shinra is playing at, but-" trailing off, she spun to a halt and swung her gun arm up, aiming unerringly for his head. "If I ever find that you're playing hooky for Hojo, I'll blast your brains away."
It was difficult not to see the sneer that curled his upper lip ever so disdainfully. "You mean, you'll try to blast me."
She stared at him for some time, unblinking. Then her head moved, eyes still glued to him. Left, right, a small, precise movement. "No. I will hunt you down, Ragnarok, place my gun against your temple and blow your freaking brains all over the floor. I don't care if I have to do it in your sleep, or when you're in the bath, or anywhere. I would see you dead if you leaked anything to that bastard." She had gone past rage and into some cold, clinical dementia, glittering eyes steady and focused. "Do you understand me, Cadet?"
The sneer had faded visibly, leaving a blank visage behind. Was he afraid? Horrified? Bemused? She didn't know, and didn't give a damn. All that mattered was that he said, short and clipped as if she had been a field sergeant, "Yes sir." His dark bronze eyes, clearly glowing with deep amber from the distance she was viewing them at, tracked her movements with short jerky movements. "Permission to cross-examine the prosecutor?"
Diera blinked, her anger fading. "What? Oh- suit yourself. Only-" she looked around at the closet-sized interrogation chamber, starting to find it faintly claustrophobic now that she had nothing to argue about. Much. "Let's get outta here. It's no place to talk."
Dark eyebrows arched. She wondered grimly if Hojo had taught him that. Looked almost exactly like what the git could have pulled off. "May I assume that what we were doing just now was not talk?"
She smirked. "No. That was informative." He smirked back at her, and they both shared a moment of brief chuckles. "Look, since I'm gonna be hanging on your tail anyway… friends?" She held out her hand. Might as well be chums. Save on the masked charade later.
Ragnarok cracked an evil grin. "Friends. And for the record- I don't like Hojo."
"What a coincidence. Neither do I. Now let's get out there and cross-examine."
--
They went to the Garden, that carefully-kept place of lushness in the heart of the SOLDIER compound which was specially set aside for returning officers to unwind. Diera liked it. It made the stark grey-white of the compound more interesting. Ragnarok seemed to enjoy it, too. He didn't seem to have seen much of this kind of sculpted wilderness before. Interesting, as she had surmised.
A minute turned into an hour, and an hour into an indefinite length of time. She picked his brains and tried to keep him from learning too much from her, though she had the sneaking feeling that Ragnarok was very good at deduction. It immediately made him a fun person to be around, in her opinion. His only problem was that he didn't act like a guy… well, not like any of the guys she was used to being around. He walked, talked and acted like he had a stick jammed up his ass. (And a nice ass it was too, she decided sometime after night fell and they were up one of the trees.) Guys, in her experience, especially orphaned ones, didn't act so uptight all the time. And that sneer! It looked like something that wouldn't seem out of place on a snooty Contresieran noble. It didn't look too bad on Ragna, who carried himself like the world should be following at his heels like a puppy, but it didn't fit with his orphanage story. Curiouser and curiouser.
"So," she said finally, brushing some leaves away in an attempt to see the glittering starscape better, "You remember growing up as an orphan in Gongaga. At twenty years and fifty-six days of age, you were scouted by Shinra to participate in their prototype enhancement program, which took half a year to bring you to where you are today." Giving up on trying to see the stars through the luxuriant foliage overhead, she leant back against the sturdy bole of the tree they were both perched on.
His smirk was felt rather than seen. "No, actually I think you dragged me here."
"Shut up. Contact with Hojo was limited to physical examinations once a week, according to the defendant?"
"Affirmative."
"You do realize that as a prototype, that kind of behavior is unusual for Hojo. He usually can't keep his hands off his specimens." She grimaced at the reminder of his insistent demands for her to return to the testing. "That's a thought I'd rather not have. Ewwww."
"I don't enjoy it either. How come you know all about his habits anyway?"
Her flinch was, thankfully, hidden by the darkness and the angle he was sitting at. "I'm a Turk," she said, grateful that years of cold war with Vincent had taught her how to sound casual as a cat, even under stress. "It's our business to know things, you know. All the world knows that."
A rustle of branches, and the branch she was sitting on swayed alarmingly as Ragna pulled himself firmly onto it. She fought the urge to kick him off as he carefully inched over to her, amber eyes glowing steadily in the breeze-swept dark. "How much do you know?" he said almost off-handedly, but she could hear the glimmer of interest in his baritone voice.
Danger signs here. "I thought you said you weren't reporting back to Shinra?" she replied, casually clasping her hands at her stomach, touching the hilt of the knife strapped to her forearm. "Usually only Shinra wants to know stuff like that."
"Oh, I'm on the Shinra payroll," he admitted blandly. "I just don't report to Hojo."
"Touché. Ask your supervisor about the Turks. I'm sure he'll tell you all about how we monitor other people's dirty secrets." Her tone was equally bland, but she was already wondering how fast she was going to be able to draw her gun or jump off the tree before he realized that some things she was just not willing to reveal. "Besides, what kind of Turk would I be if I started telling you our secrets? Naughty boy." Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, she swung her legs to one side of the branch and launched herself to the ground, landing in a tuck-and-roll from a five-meter height. A pansy height, Vincent would have called it in disdain. She had other words for it, having a healthy respect for heights. Intimidating would have been one of them. No way was she going to try and look cool when she knew very well what kind of impact it would have on her feet. "See you around, Shinra boy!" she called mockingly over her shoulder, making haste to escape and disappear before he came after her.
Thankfully, he never did.
--
About two days after she returned to Corel with expectations of resuming her dreary work-bound existence, a letter arrived from Zack, whom she had nearly forgotten. Feeling a little guilty, she accepted the envelope from the middle-aged man and stared at it for a moment before tearing it open with one of her knives. What was involved in this pen-pal thing?
Dear Dia, (it read,)
Sorry I didn't get to write to you earlier. Lots of things happened after you went off, you know? So maybe you'll want to read about this stuff from an insider. We had reporters crawling all over Gongaga, writing absolute crap. Makes you wonder exactly what they were doing down here anyway, if they weren't interested in writing the facts.
Before you ask, did they publish an article on the Weaponsmaster in your local newspapers?
(Diera frowned. She had come across something like that. Something about the Contresiera-born weaponsmith moving to a house some distance from Gongaga in an effort to escape Shinra's grasp, and ending up having to hold off all of Shinra's mechanical might. She, like any other Turk, had known that the story was complete bullshit. But what was Zack's version of it all…?)
I begged a newspaper from a Chocobo courier who was passing through, and boy, did they give shit! I had to read it ten times, I thought they were talking about something else. They asked so many questions while they were here- must have had amnesia after they left or something.
(Of course Shinra had exerted some of its considerable influence, as well as its considerable fortune. Its money was respectable even if nothing else about it was. Diera sighed in slight envy, eyes still on the letter as she pushed away from the desk and began to spin her seat, meditatively.)
It was like this. Old Pierre, they got the Contresiera part right, he came down here because we found mithril deposits near where his house is now, like, right after you left. Mayor Hendrik owns that land, so they got an agreement of some sort that allows Pierre to use all the mithril he wants, so long's he gives some of the profits back to the town. Then Shinra comes one step late- we pulled the wool over their eyes for a respectable time- and starts making money noises. Hendrik's a good man. He said no. They tried to bring in hired muscle, then Pierre showed up with a sword and this red materia in it. You should have seen it, he managed to call this really cool ice lady out, and she flattened their bullyboys! He named her Shiva, after the Cosmo god, because her skin looks blue.
(Red materia, summoning materia, she nodded sagely to herself, tugging the creases straight. Wutai had one. It was their national treasure, their guardian spirit. Leviathan. Nobody knew how many red materia were in existence- they were exceedingly rare, and unique- they summoned a different creature each. The Turks, for all their powers, had never been able to cajole one from any of the known owners. A crying shame, really.)
We were picking up scrap metal for days. Shinra ran off so fast, they left all their broken machines lying around. Sure, they've got people at the reactors, but they all don't come to the town now, which is just fine with us. We had a big victory celebration with Pierre, he's a really great guy. I said I wanted to go learn smithing under him, but he just clapped me on the shoulder and said I had another path to take. I wonder what he meant.
About a month after Shinra cleared off, I got this call from the Turks. They said they were scouting me for SOLDIER. I mean, me! Imagine that! I didn't think anyone outside Gongaga knew my name. You didn't have anything to do with it, did you?
(Yech. She winced. Zack was entirely too clear-sighted for her comfort.)
In any case, they promised that I'd be able to see as much of the world as I wanted, because SOLDIER takes missions all over the world; I hoped I could go and visit you sometime if my missions take me anywhere near there.
(She groaned, attracting curious looks from various cubicle neighbors. The last thing she needed was for the twit to visit her redirection address! Uncle Iri would kill her.)
I'm writing from SOLDIER barracks, by the way. Commander Kingston was kind enough to advance me my month's stipend so I could pay for a courier's services. Hope you'll be able to write back soon.
Sincerely,
Zackary Horizon
PS: I'm sorry I called you flat. One of my roommates gave me a telling-off when I mentioned it to him. Is it really that much of an insult?
She grinned briefly at his plaintive postscript as she raised her eyes from the letter. Trust Zack to bumble serendipitously through life like that! Of course she hadn't minded. Well, she'd minded just a little. Some female part of her envied Aunt Julienna's heartbreaking figure. It hadn't exactly been pleasant to be reminded of that. But she had had more pressing things to worry about immediately after, like the slaughtering of La Contresiera…
There, she'd thought it to herself. No twinge of inconvenient conscience. Good. Maybe all that unpleasantness about killing had just been PMS, after all. But somehow she just didn't feel entirely energetic about the prospect of killing people, anymore. Not a bad feeling, but she wasn't raring to be on the hunt, either. Strange, that. Really strange.
Putting the letter down on her mousepad, the Turk continued to spin circles, watching her fingers curl and twitch in her lap as she thought out her reply. Perhaps telling him her profession outright would be a bad idea, but it would be even worse to have him visit the forwarding address and find that it was a dud apartment. Of course, Iridalan would probably tell her to send a reply to him along the lines of 'no, you may not, I have fanatical chaperones living with me', but judging from his powers of reasoning, Zack wouldn't buy that. She sighed. So much for an independent lifestyle.
"Oi, Princess." For once, instead of ruffling her now-sleek curls, Silk rapped her lightly on the head with his fist. She looked up at him, deciding that it was a definite improvement. "Iridalan wants you. Now. In his office, the one with the windows."
"I know where he spends his time these days," she replied irritably, stopping her spin with a foot on the side of her cubicle. "Is he in a good mood or a bad one? I'm not going out there just to get mauled for my shoddy work."
Pale blue eyes crinkled faintly. "He's in a so-so mood. You know. Not good or bad. He's smoking, though. I guess that would make him in a bad mood. A mild one, mind." Leaning on the back of her chair as she considered her next course of action (whether to walk in with eyes open or pretend not to be in the office at the moment), the ex-whore idly hummed, earning himself an annoyed look. "Why don't you just go and see? I know for a fact he's been having a headache all day. So he can't be in that bad a mood."
"Since when does a headache indicate that?" she asked incredulously.
"Think about it, if he's got a headache and he wants to see you, probably it's important business and he wants it over with soon so he can take the rest of the day off or pop some aspirin. I'm fairly sure he won't kill you."
"That's reassuring." Getting out of her chair, she patted his face gently. "If I die? Find yourself a good partner." Both of them grinned, and Silk pointed out that he had no intention of letting her die, they had some physical things to explore first, and who was he going to teach if she croaked on him? Laughing, they walked together to the Administation level and parted ways outside Iridalan's office door.
Entering the Boss' office followed a certain set of rituals, depending on whether or not you were in good graces with him. If you were certain of his welcome, you just walked straight in the automatic metal doors. If you weren't sure he was expecting you for good things, you used the intercom beside the access pad. It cut down on the body count.
Diera used the intercom.
"Come in." was the curt response to her tentative inquiry. Things were not looking up.
But she entered anyway, because he was her Leader.
As she entered the doors whooshed shut behind her, and there was the unmistakable sound of a locking system being activated. Diera's sharp glance at the now-closed door went largely ignored. Iridalan was standing by the large one-way mirror window, hands clenched behind his back in the classic bodyguard's posture. Rumor did have it that Uncle Iri had been a bodyguard before Jessaryk Daniels recruited him for the Turks. Admittedly, Uncle Iri did have a lot of bodyguarding habits. But what bone did he have to pick now… "I want to make you the next Recruiter," he said after a long pause and several hard drags at his cigarette. White smoke streamed into the air, acrid and somehow distasteful. But that wasn't the point.
Diera blinked.
Silence marched through the smoky office, waltzed a minute or so, and left like a frightened chicken at her incredulous squawk. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear that, can you repeat it again?" He glared at her from dark-ringed eyes and obliged. "I must have heard wrong," she said vaguely to thin air, turning on her heel to walk slow loops around the office. "I could have sworn that you said you wanted me to be the Recruiter."
The sound of grinding teeth was audible. Faint, but audible. "I did say that," he gritted tightly, stubbing his fag forcefully into the overflowing ashtray as if that would somehow relieve his frustration. "It's not like you to be so obtuse. In which case, all this is an act. We'll cut the crap and get to the point. Here's your briefing." Picking up a slim folder, he tossed it to her without looking, and began lighting up a fresh cig. She barely managed to catch the file before it hit the floor, but at the expense of her back. He really was feeling nasty today.
Several minutes of perusal and a backache later, her heart was somewhere in the vicinity of her gut and rapidly sinking.
--
The Recruiter for the Turks had, at best, a fairly harrowing job. And, Diera reflected glumly, it was about to get worse. Standing in Iridalan's neat, impersonal room in her navy undersized suit, fingers itching to get on a gun, she wondered why in hell Iridalan was giving her the Recruiter's job.
Intellectually she understood the... rationale... behind the delegation of a Recruiter. She just didn't understand why Iridalan wasn't going to continue doing it himself. All Turks swore loyalty to the Leader. Since all further allegiances would be sworn to the Recruiter, Iridalan was effectively stabbing himself in the back. Nobody, barring the older generation, would have any loyalty to him. Recently she had discovered the existence of the Recruiter, which Iridalan was doing in tandem with the Leader's job, but wouldn't that follow that Iridalan should pass this particular burden to a person like him?
Heavens forbid that she was like him...
Add on the fact that Diera did not feel quite up to a major job like this, and things were looking distinctly crummy. She had been looking forward, after the La Contresiera massacre, to a short happy latency period of espionage. Nice stuff, espionage. The expressions especially were entertaining to watch. What fun was there in asking people to follow you? Her general conclusion was that Uncle Iri knew just what spanner to throw into her idyllic plans for the future. Entirely typical of him...
"You probably know why you're here," the Leader said at length, tapping the ash off his cigarette. Diera held her breath and hoped he got over this nervous phase soon. This was doing bad mojo to her lungs. "So I won't waste your time. In a nutshell, the Recruiter has exactly one special job; to take over the Leader when the Leader croaks. All your additional duties pave the way for you to step in when your time comes."
Aaaaah. So... Hey... wait...
Her jaw dropped and she accidentally inhaled some of the acrid smoke, falling into a fit of coughing. Keeping both hands over her mouth, she spat discreetly into her palm and tried again. "You want me to be Leader? After you? Did I hear right?"
Iridalan spun his chair to gaze pensively out of the window at the bustling city, easy to do since this office was on the second floor. No floor higher than this. Corel was a pretty small town, heightwise. "Things have changed since the Turks were created," he said quietly, after a drag at his cig. "A lot of things. I dare to say that none of the Turks before our generation incurred as much damage, loss and gain among us. And I can't handle it much longer. You understand that no other Leader has lasted as long as I have."
She nodded once, precisely, still hazy as to where he was going with this. Why choose her?
"I'm getting old, Diera, look at me. My hair's getting grey in it. My reflexes are slowing down. I don't think as fast as I used to, I think more than I used to, and my heart is giving out on me." Privately she looked, really looked, and was astonished. All along everyone had been 'old' to her. It had never occurred that they were getting 'older'. And indeed Iridalan looked... wasted, as if he was a pair of jeans that had been scrubbed too hard, too many times.
Some small part of her, that part that still remembered when she was very small and toddled everywhere when Vincent was occupied, remembered those callused hands lifting her with a rumble of sly laughter, hands attached to a strong, well-fleshed frame, and breath tainted only by alcohol. He hadn't started smoking until... when? She had been away too often, trying to escape her own fears, totally missing all these details.
She was too worldly to feel guilty, but she did manage some feeling of regret. This was no way for a Turk to act. Their survival depended on the decisions of the Leader; one bad one was no reason for her to abandon him like she had. "I still think you're a good Leader," she said finally, hands still covering her nose and mouth. "Old or not. I'm too young to take Recruiter duties, Uncle Iri. Hurst, or even Silk-"
"I've made my choice," he cut in with a note of dreadful finality. "I don't know how much longer I can last in this position. Frankly, once I go you'll be stuck with the crisis of all time, and you're used to emergencies, aren't you?"
Diera winced. "Yes, sir."
Stubbing his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray, Iridalan got to his feet, brushing invisible dirt from the front of his suit. "You're turning fourteen next year, no?"
She looked down at herself, then up at him, vaguely surprised. "I think so."
"Along with the duties of a Recruiter come some conditions and some privileges. Your main duty will be to scout out new Turk candidates, provided that they are of a legal age and have no other support in the world. Because of the need for credibility, you will be issued all the effects of a legal teenager, as well as your choice of a single apartment to live in if you wish. Driving training will be undertaken, as well as instruction on how to act like a normal girl of sixteen." He smiled, a thin, cynical smile. "As far as adolescence goes."
"Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?" she returned blandly, waving the last traces of smoke away. "Of course you can't. Rule number fifty-one, remember? Very traditional rule. And I'm not on birth control yet."
He snorted. "You're too clever for your own good. Shoo now, leave an old man to his dreams." And he turned back to the window, back to the bustling people, back to the world he remembered. Diera saluted him with two fingers, bowed, and left his close, stifling office. Maybe he didn't notice the way it choked, but it was choking him... like a collar. Yeah, like a choke chain on a dog. Once upon a time, he'd had teeth... well, TEETH. Fangs. Canines. Now it was all blunted.
La Contresiera had taken her steel. It had also taken Uncle Iri's heart, as things seemed.
Folding her hands together behind her back, she walked back to the offices, troubled.
--
Silk was there when she went in, supervising the reluctant bucket line of trainees passing stacks of files from her own cubby to a large, hastily emptied room opposite Uncle Iri's. "What's this all about?" she demanded suspiciously, grabbing an armful of boxes from one sour-faced young woman. "Put those back! Silk, what's all this fuss for?"
"Keep going, people!" he shouted, snagging the files back from her and shoving it at the glowering trainee. "News is all over the office, princess, my darling." He waggled a finger in her face. "You've been put up real high, haven't you?"
"I haven't even accepted- PUT THOSE DOWN RIGHT NOW!" Diera hollered indignantly, shaking a fist at the 'bucket line'. "Silk, explain yourself immediately! And the rest of you, STOP MOVING THINGS." Her voice dropped and vibrated without losing any of its volume, earning instant petrification from the rookies, and a few of the other Turks in nearby cubicles besides. Silk gave her a sardonic look and some quiet applause which only served to annoy her further.
Leaning in close, the Contresieran said, softly and quite seriously, "You're going to be the Recruiter. You just did The Voice so well that everyone stopped to look, or listen. Now let the nice kids move your stuff so that you can turn into a bigger monster than you already are. That's the game, isn't it? Bigger, badder, better. Climb the rank ladder. How far up can you climb?"
"I don't want to climb, Silk, I just want to spy. Is that too much?"
"Under the circumstances, yeah, it is. Now take these," he dumped a pile of rolled-up maps and records into her arms, "and go to the nice empty office. You need to know where all the stuff is, don't you?"
She made an extremely uncomplimentary remark and stalked off, managing to do it quite well in flats. Silk grinned at his own coolness. Score one for the power behind the throne. Yes! He hadn't entirely been joking about The Voice, but it would be even more fun to bug the hell out of her, especially with her promotion, because she'd never be rid of him. Sparing the cliché, she needed him around.
His evil snicker went unnoticed. Diera had already stormed out of earshot.
Like Iridalan at Contresiera, if she had heard, he would definitely have been treated to an ear-ringing slap. Maybe multiple ones.
--
A/N: (insert evil laughter) I love Ragna! He's the epitome of a lousy spy. And, as usual, people are messing around in Dia's life without her permission. So much for the badass reputation… (more evil laughter) I love doing that to her, too. Things should be moving on now.
Things to do in the next chapter:
-Get Ragna to disappear
-Get Seph out of his tube
-Start the Wutai War.
…oops…
I wonder if Yuffie will ever forgive me. Oh, well.
Love you all who reviewed (Seppy! Yay!)
Akishira