Chapter 02
Everyone was gathered around the flaming wreckage of the helicopter, looking on as Rude and some of the other men put out the fire with extinguishers- blasting the yellow flames with streams of concentrated CO2 from the red canisters.
Some of the other men were busy picking up the body of the man who Hozloff had shot earlier- the bullet hole in his snow goggles was plane to see.
Zangan led the dog inside without saying a word to the others.
Hozloff looked at the helicopter and frowned. "It doesn't make sense." He remarked as he surveyed the shell of the helicopter in front of them all.
"None of it does." Cid added.
***
Everyone had hustled back inside to get away from the biting cold of the North Continent's Weather.
"Oh now, come on, it only grazed you, you're lucky, you only get four stitches." Mideal reasoned to Dyne, practicing his good bead-side manner as he mended the small wound on the Meteorologist's leg. He carefully tied down the end of the surgical thread and cutting it close enough to not catch on anything. "There, you see, not so bad." Came the statement, voiced in Mideal's pleasant country accent.
"It still hurts though." Dyne complained, but did not get anymore of a response from Mideal as he put his things away.
"Now let's go, I have to go do an autopsy on that man." He said to Dyne, helping him off the table.
Dyne pulled his pants back up over the surgical stitches- courtesy of the good doctor's handy work- and limped after him.
***
Hozloff had gone back inside the station, designating some of the men to pick up the corpses and bring them back inside the camp for autopsy.
Reno placed the cigarette back in his mouth as he and one of the other men picked up the man that Hozloff had shot in the eye. Reno frowned as they hoisted him up and then set him down on a fold-out stretcher.
Rude and Dutton were standing over the burned up body of the other man, waiting for the corpse to cool off before they touched it.
Dutton looked down at the corpse. "There's no way in hell that we get anything from this guy." He complained.
Rude just nodded and waited with Dutton for the body to cool off- which wouldn't be long in this cold weather.
"I'll move this thing when I'm good and ready.
***
Hozloff pulled the medical shroud off of the head of the man, revealing his grim, but efficient handy work. The man's left eye socket was blown out. Upon inspection- the man had dark hair and pale skin, he looked be Asian.
"I'm just glad the 'big chief' got a chance to use his 'popgun'." Said Reno sarcastically. Hozloff looked at him with disapproval as the Assistant mechanic sat in his a chair lighting his "habit" for a smoke.
"Looks like he's from Wutai." Said Wedge, from the crowd of men in the room.
"I think he is, can you see if you can read this, Tseng?" Hozloff asked the man, while looking at the man's dog tag.
Tseng stepped forward, it was pretty well know that he Wutai clan blood in him, but it wasn't certain if he could read the writing. An unrecognizable expression was on his tanned face, which was visible between the long, fine raven hair that hung down around it. "Don't assume that I can read that, but you're lucky that I can read some." He said, stepping forward and looking down at the name on the tag. "Hakido Sansuke." He said after reading it.
Hozloff turned to Mideal and Hojo- who had his assistant, Gast, with him. "Have any of you learned anything from the bodies?" He asked them.
"The man shows no physical signs of stress to cause something like this, physically, he's healthy." Mideal replied. "Nothing to indicate that the body was experiencing anything out of the ordinary, the signs only show that he'd experienced a substantial adrenaline surge in the last few hours." He paused and turned to look at the other body. "As for his 'friend', I'd be damned if I could tell you anything from him." Mideal announced professionally to the group of men. The grotesque body laying their- its clothes fused to blackened flesh and dried blood.
"He's a goddamned piece of charcoal now." Quade- one of the dogsled drivers- exclaimed as he looked at the darkened husk.
A few of the men chuckled at the brash comment from the Black man.
"We can't answer for sure with the other body, but I'd have to agree with Mideal." Gast added.
Hojo, the team's Senior Biologist, nodded silently in agreement with his assistant.
It was easy to see that these two existed in a totally different zone of thought then the rest of the team did. They were constantly thinking and working things out and communicating with nods and facial expressions between one another that was sort of like their special way of talking to one another without letting the others into what they were thinking of. It wasn't hard to assume that they had long ago formed their own little think- tank.
"Did they just go crazy?" Asked Rude- one of the physicists on the team. Cid tended to like the quiet man, he was good guy and a good chess partner.
"It's just the first week of winter, how could anyone go crazy that fast?" Exclaimed Jackson- one of the dogsled drivers.
"It takes at least 10 weeks to succumb to such an advanced psychosis, like going stir crazy." Mideal explained, trying to reason to the group.
"Ha," Exclaimed Biggs, the young chef. "All it takes is an hour out here to drive some people crazy. Look at Reno, he was nuts before we got here." Biggs remarked flippantly to his audience.
Reno made a rude gesture with his hand as he leaned back in his seat as he portrayed a smile of sarcasm.
"That's enough from you, Biggs." Hozloff instructed the cook, trying to maintain unity amongst the team.
Some of the people in the room laughed a little, but Cid remained silent as he stood back in the crowd.
Biggs did as he was told and got quiet again. The young man sat back down on the counter in the lab.
"Biggs may be partially right, when it come to this continent, all bets are off. We're playing in a totally different world then what we know of. the Cold and the wind can do things to a man. strange things." Wedge said solemnly.
"It may be possible if the men were suffering from a sort of shock. but it's a long shot." Mideal stated.
"This situation is very wrong, there's something more to this. I know it." Cid put in. The others looked at him; they hadn't heard him say anything until just now. It now seemed that Cid's comment had left him with the 'floor', so to speak.
"You may be right, Cid, but I want to go check out the Wutai camp." Hozloff remarked. He then turned to one of the other men in the room. "Halls, go check out the land graphs and archives, I want to know the coordinates of the camp." He said to a thin, pale man in the front.
"Right." Halls replied.
Reno sat up. "Hey, Hozloff, I'll take you to the sight." Offered the Mechanic
"You stay here, I'll go." Cid inserted.
"It would be better for Cid to do it." Hozloff stated.
"What the hell?" Reno exclaimed in a pissed off tone after being rejected by both men.
"You aren't licensed as a pilot; the weather's too bad for an amateur to go out in." Cid stated as he sat down on one of the counter tops behind him and lit a cigarette.
"Yeah- yeah, thanks for thanking it over, guys." Reno replied as he walked out of the room.
Hozloff turned around, after watching the man leave, to face the pilot. "Cid, get the Helicopter ready to go to the Wutai camp when we know where it is." Hozloff instructed him.
Cid nodded in response.
Halls came back quickly. "Hozloff, here's the location, the computer also told me that there are ten people in their teem.
"Then that means that there might still be eight people alive." Hozloff replied.
"Not necessarily, Mike," Mideal inserted, speaking to Hozloff. "Guys like this could have done a lot of damage to their own people." He added.
"Still, I want to go check." Hozloff announced to the men in the room. "It wouldn't be right to just leave the situation as it is." He said, showing his sympathy for the Wutai Camp.
It was accepted that they would have to do something about the situation and the gathering of men nodded quietly in agreement with their leader.
***
Cid, Wedge, and Reno looked down at the charred remains of the helicopter. Cid turned back around to face Reno and the others who were there. "I count seven cans of kerosene in here. god, what were they planning." Cid commented.
Hozloff shouted from a distance. "Cid, go get the chopper started."
Cid sighed and went to go turn on the chopper. He looked over to see a small group of men approaching him. The first was Hozloff, carrying a short barrel 12-gaug shotgun; then there was Tseng, with his dark hair pulled into a ponytail and tucked back into his parka; there was also Dr. Mideal, carrying his medical kit with him, and another man, Henson.
Hozloff walked up and handed Cid the shotgun. "Take this Cid, we don't know how the Wutai researchers will react." He said as he offered the weapon to the pilot.
Cid pulled down his ridiculously incongruous sombrero and looked over at Mideal. "You sure you want to come, Doc?" He asked.
"It's my duty as a Doctor to help people when ever I can." Mideal replied proudly.
"You really want to save those crazy Gogongans, huh?" He asked.
"Wutais, Cid, they're from Wutai." Mideal replied correcting Cid's mistake.
The pilot just shrugged and watched as everyone got into the helicopter.
All of the men hopped in; Hozloff next to Cid, and Tseng, Mideal, and Henson in the back.
Hozloff looked over at Cid and noticed the sombrero. "Do you have to wear that thing, Cid?" Asked the Station Manager.
Cid just grinned and pulled up the throttle to take off. "Ven conmigo hombres." Cid said with a smile. He reached down and flipped a series of switches and pulled back on the throttle. The helicopter began to slowly rise off the ground, but soon began picking up speed until it was airborne and turning around to take off towards the Wutai camp.
The chopper flew off into endless white horizon.
*** Hozloff pointed towards the horizon from his seat in the cockpit of the helicopter. "Cid, look." He exclaimed.
Cid looked over to see smoke rising from far off in the distance.
"That must be it." Mideal remarked from the back.
"Take us down, Cid."
Cid nodded and turned the helicopter down towards the site.
~End of Chapter 2~
Well, please tell what you all think of this story. Ideas are always welcome.
Thanks,
-Bojack
Everyone was gathered around the flaming wreckage of the helicopter, looking on as Rude and some of the other men put out the fire with extinguishers- blasting the yellow flames with streams of concentrated CO2 from the red canisters.
Some of the other men were busy picking up the body of the man who Hozloff had shot earlier- the bullet hole in his snow goggles was plane to see.
Zangan led the dog inside without saying a word to the others.
Hozloff looked at the helicopter and frowned. "It doesn't make sense." He remarked as he surveyed the shell of the helicopter in front of them all.
"None of it does." Cid added.
***
Everyone had hustled back inside to get away from the biting cold of the North Continent's Weather.
"Oh now, come on, it only grazed you, you're lucky, you only get four stitches." Mideal reasoned to Dyne, practicing his good bead-side manner as he mended the small wound on the Meteorologist's leg. He carefully tied down the end of the surgical thread and cutting it close enough to not catch on anything. "There, you see, not so bad." Came the statement, voiced in Mideal's pleasant country accent.
"It still hurts though." Dyne complained, but did not get anymore of a response from Mideal as he put his things away.
"Now let's go, I have to go do an autopsy on that man." He said to Dyne, helping him off the table.
Dyne pulled his pants back up over the surgical stitches- courtesy of the good doctor's handy work- and limped after him.
***
Hozloff had gone back inside the station, designating some of the men to pick up the corpses and bring them back inside the camp for autopsy.
Reno placed the cigarette back in his mouth as he and one of the other men picked up the man that Hozloff had shot in the eye. Reno frowned as they hoisted him up and then set him down on a fold-out stretcher.
Rude and Dutton were standing over the burned up body of the other man, waiting for the corpse to cool off before they touched it.
Dutton looked down at the corpse. "There's no way in hell that we get anything from this guy." He complained.
Rude just nodded and waited with Dutton for the body to cool off- which wouldn't be long in this cold weather.
"I'll move this thing when I'm good and ready.
***
Hozloff pulled the medical shroud off of the head of the man, revealing his grim, but efficient handy work. The man's left eye socket was blown out. Upon inspection- the man had dark hair and pale skin, he looked be Asian.
"I'm just glad the 'big chief' got a chance to use his 'popgun'." Said Reno sarcastically. Hozloff looked at him with disapproval as the Assistant mechanic sat in his a chair lighting his "habit" for a smoke.
"Looks like he's from Wutai." Said Wedge, from the crowd of men in the room.
"I think he is, can you see if you can read this, Tseng?" Hozloff asked the man, while looking at the man's dog tag.
Tseng stepped forward, it was pretty well know that he Wutai clan blood in him, but it wasn't certain if he could read the writing. An unrecognizable expression was on his tanned face, which was visible between the long, fine raven hair that hung down around it. "Don't assume that I can read that, but you're lucky that I can read some." He said, stepping forward and looking down at the name on the tag. "Hakido Sansuke." He said after reading it.
Hozloff turned to Mideal and Hojo- who had his assistant, Gast, with him. "Have any of you learned anything from the bodies?" He asked them.
"The man shows no physical signs of stress to cause something like this, physically, he's healthy." Mideal replied. "Nothing to indicate that the body was experiencing anything out of the ordinary, the signs only show that he'd experienced a substantial adrenaline surge in the last few hours." He paused and turned to look at the other body. "As for his 'friend', I'd be damned if I could tell you anything from him." Mideal announced professionally to the group of men. The grotesque body laying their- its clothes fused to blackened flesh and dried blood.
"He's a goddamned piece of charcoal now." Quade- one of the dogsled drivers- exclaimed as he looked at the darkened husk.
A few of the men chuckled at the brash comment from the Black man.
"We can't answer for sure with the other body, but I'd have to agree with Mideal." Gast added.
Hojo, the team's Senior Biologist, nodded silently in agreement with his assistant.
It was easy to see that these two existed in a totally different zone of thought then the rest of the team did. They were constantly thinking and working things out and communicating with nods and facial expressions between one another that was sort of like their special way of talking to one another without letting the others into what they were thinking of. It wasn't hard to assume that they had long ago formed their own little think- tank.
"Did they just go crazy?" Asked Rude- one of the physicists on the team. Cid tended to like the quiet man, he was good guy and a good chess partner.
"It's just the first week of winter, how could anyone go crazy that fast?" Exclaimed Jackson- one of the dogsled drivers.
"It takes at least 10 weeks to succumb to such an advanced psychosis, like going stir crazy." Mideal explained, trying to reason to the group.
"Ha," Exclaimed Biggs, the young chef. "All it takes is an hour out here to drive some people crazy. Look at Reno, he was nuts before we got here." Biggs remarked flippantly to his audience.
Reno made a rude gesture with his hand as he leaned back in his seat as he portrayed a smile of sarcasm.
"That's enough from you, Biggs." Hozloff instructed the cook, trying to maintain unity amongst the team.
Some of the people in the room laughed a little, but Cid remained silent as he stood back in the crowd.
Biggs did as he was told and got quiet again. The young man sat back down on the counter in the lab.
"Biggs may be partially right, when it come to this continent, all bets are off. We're playing in a totally different world then what we know of. the Cold and the wind can do things to a man. strange things." Wedge said solemnly.
"It may be possible if the men were suffering from a sort of shock. but it's a long shot." Mideal stated.
"This situation is very wrong, there's something more to this. I know it." Cid put in. The others looked at him; they hadn't heard him say anything until just now. It now seemed that Cid's comment had left him with the 'floor', so to speak.
"You may be right, Cid, but I want to go check out the Wutai camp." Hozloff remarked. He then turned to one of the other men in the room. "Halls, go check out the land graphs and archives, I want to know the coordinates of the camp." He said to a thin, pale man in the front.
"Right." Halls replied.
Reno sat up. "Hey, Hozloff, I'll take you to the sight." Offered the Mechanic
"You stay here, I'll go." Cid inserted.
"It would be better for Cid to do it." Hozloff stated.
"What the hell?" Reno exclaimed in a pissed off tone after being rejected by both men.
"You aren't licensed as a pilot; the weather's too bad for an amateur to go out in." Cid stated as he sat down on one of the counter tops behind him and lit a cigarette.
"Yeah- yeah, thanks for thanking it over, guys." Reno replied as he walked out of the room.
Hozloff turned around, after watching the man leave, to face the pilot. "Cid, get the Helicopter ready to go to the Wutai camp when we know where it is." Hozloff instructed him.
Cid nodded in response.
Halls came back quickly. "Hozloff, here's the location, the computer also told me that there are ten people in their teem.
"Then that means that there might still be eight people alive." Hozloff replied.
"Not necessarily, Mike," Mideal inserted, speaking to Hozloff. "Guys like this could have done a lot of damage to their own people." He added.
"Still, I want to go check." Hozloff announced to the men in the room. "It wouldn't be right to just leave the situation as it is." He said, showing his sympathy for the Wutai Camp.
It was accepted that they would have to do something about the situation and the gathering of men nodded quietly in agreement with their leader.
***
Cid, Wedge, and Reno looked down at the charred remains of the helicopter. Cid turned back around to face Reno and the others who were there. "I count seven cans of kerosene in here. god, what were they planning." Cid commented.
Hozloff shouted from a distance. "Cid, go get the chopper started."
Cid sighed and went to go turn on the chopper. He looked over to see a small group of men approaching him. The first was Hozloff, carrying a short barrel 12-gaug shotgun; then there was Tseng, with his dark hair pulled into a ponytail and tucked back into his parka; there was also Dr. Mideal, carrying his medical kit with him, and another man, Henson.
Hozloff walked up and handed Cid the shotgun. "Take this Cid, we don't know how the Wutai researchers will react." He said as he offered the weapon to the pilot.
Cid pulled down his ridiculously incongruous sombrero and looked over at Mideal. "You sure you want to come, Doc?" He asked.
"It's my duty as a Doctor to help people when ever I can." Mideal replied proudly.
"You really want to save those crazy Gogongans, huh?" He asked.
"Wutais, Cid, they're from Wutai." Mideal replied correcting Cid's mistake.
The pilot just shrugged and watched as everyone got into the helicopter.
All of the men hopped in; Hozloff next to Cid, and Tseng, Mideal, and Henson in the back.
Hozloff looked over at Cid and noticed the sombrero. "Do you have to wear that thing, Cid?" Asked the Station Manager.
Cid just grinned and pulled up the throttle to take off. "Ven conmigo hombres." Cid said with a smile. He reached down and flipped a series of switches and pulled back on the throttle. The helicopter began to slowly rise off the ground, but soon began picking up speed until it was airborne and turning around to take off towards the Wutai camp.
The chopper flew off into endless white horizon.
*** Hozloff pointed towards the horizon from his seat in the cockpit of the helicopter. "Cid, look." He exclaimed.
Cid looked over to see smoke rising from far off in the distance.
"That must be it." Mideal remarked from the back.
"Take us down, Cid."
Cid nodded and turned the helicopter down towards the site.
~End of Chapter 2~
Well, please tell what you all think of this story. Ideas are always welcome.
Thanks,
-Bojack