As stated last week, I am leaving for Pittsburgh. This means that this will be the last regular update of BTILW for a week or so. 'Till we meet again, readers. Chapter XII and a monkey's your uncle.
The young man leaned over Karsk, the moonlight streaming through his silver hair. Pain flared out from the Sub-General's chest when he breathed; he was sure that at least three of his ribs were broken.
"That was foolish, Sub-General Karsk," Kadaj laughed. "And ever so unnecessary, at that. I have a dispatch from the General."
Karsk's eyes widened. "That's impossible," he wheezed. "According to my information, the General was killed by Cloud Strife and his fellow AVALANCHE members around the time Meteor was repulsed."
Clucking contemptuously, Kadaj waggled a finger at Karsk. "Now, now. There's simply not a lot of time, and to debunk your so-called 'information' would require a hefty sum of it. Suffice it to say that nii-san did not kill Sephiroth as thoroughly as he'd hoped."
"Nii-san?" Karsk asked, confused. "Strife is a relation of yours?"
"My two brothers and I have countless brethren, all brought together through the memetic legacy of our Mother. You are one of them, Sub-General Karsk."
As though he was lifting a sack of grain, Kadaj effortlessly hauled Karsk up by his collar and ripped it open, revealing around Karsk's breastbone the black splotches that were the telltale sign of what the locals in Wutai were calling seikon shoukougen, and everyone else was calling Geostigma.
Its mortality rate was one hundred percent.
Kadaj set Karsk down squarely on his feet and said, "You have inherited Mother's gift, as well – but the Planet detests you for that. That's why it's trying to kill you."
Karsk gaped at the young man, clutching at his chest where fiery pain radiated from his maligned bones. "Your… mother is causing this to happen to me and countless others? Tell her to stop!"
Snickering, the young man replied, "It's not so simple, Sub-General. If we're going to beat the Planet and help Mother triumph, we're going to have to use all our resources. The General has a mission for you."
The cell at Kadaj's belt caught Karsk's eye. "Can I… can I speak to him?"
Kadaj smiled, a poisonous expression that fractionally lifted the corners of his mouth but did nothing for his eyes. "It will be easier, Sub-General, for me to show him to you."
Reno and Yuffie ducked through alleyways, weaving between awnings to keep out of the omnipresent downpour. There was no audible thunder nor any visible lightning, but the wind lashed at them and some of the more run-down streets had water up to ankle level.
"Let's hope the temple's quieter!" Yuffie shouted above the roar the rain.
"Let's not!" Reno shouted back. "Things'll be easier if we have the sound of the rain to drown out our movements!"
They'd been moving for about half an hour when they reached the alley at the back of the temple. The dumpster they'd left the Orochimaru jackets in had gone untouched excepting the constant lash of rain.
Pulling open the dumpster lid, Reno found the three jackets floating in a pool of water that had been collecting in the dumpster over the day. He made a face and pulled out two of them, closing the lid on the third one. "Here you go!"
Yuffie took one look at the drenched jacket and shook her head. "No way! I'm already soaked to the bone! I don't need more wet cloth on me!"
"Look, sugar, I –"
The redheaded Turk stopped short and looked at the water streaming through the alleyway at their feet. Yuffie stared at him for a moment and then asked, "What? What is it?"
He pointed down.
Even in the murky darkness of the night, the long, sinuous trail of blood mixing itself into the flowing water was clearly visible – and traceable. The duo followed it with their eyes up to a point beneath a window of the temple, and in the window…
Reno moved to stand beneath the windowsill, crouched, and then leaped, seven feet not being a terribly difficult height for him to scale. He landed in a crouch on it and inspected the dead monk leaning against the sill. The man's throat had been cut while he sat looking out at the rain, apparently, and he'd slumped forward so the blood ran down the wall of the temple and into the water below.
"We won't be needing the jackets," Reno murmured grimly to himself. He looked down at Yuffie and motioned for her to jump as well. She nodded and made the leap effortlessly, and he pulled her inside.
Yuffie took one look at the monk and a pained expression slid over her lovely features. "That was the guy who did the divinations for us," she whispered. "Poor bastard."
"Looks like we're not the only ones with designs on the materia. Let's move – but quietly."
They made their way out of the late master of ceremonies' room and into the hallway, moving in guarded crouches. Slowly they made their way to the nearest hallway intersection and peered out into the large area of the temple proper where the shrine was kept.
Highlighted in the darkness by the glow of the Leviathan materia were eight humanoid silhouettes.
Reno put his finger to his lips and leaned forward to try to get a better look at them.
The floor creaked behind him and he whirled, seeing the shadow materialize out of the deeper blackness behind it. It lashed out and struck Yuffie a glancing blow to the face that she managed to mostly avoid, its other hand stabbing out towards Reno, something sharp and metal in its clutch –
Reacting instinctively, Reno pulled himself to the side so the knife thrust went past his left ear and snapped up his right arm. The motion triggered the spring on his holdout Derringer and it leapt into his hand, trigger molding to his finger. His thumb flicked the safety off even as the tiny pistol settled into his palm, and Reno pressed the muzzle of the gun up against the shadow's eye and fired.
The report, though muted, was still like an explosion of raging thunder in the quiet background noise of the rain. The horrid splattering noise that followed a moment later only served to highlight it, and the heads of all eight silhouettes swiveled to look at Reno and Yuffie.
It wasn't possible. Karsk's vision was swimming in and out, the damned splotches on his chest sending electric waves of agony up and down his spinal cord. He couldn't focus; his eyes refused to obey him.
In front of him, fully erect, Kadaj stood stiffly, not breathing, looking as though he was exerting a massive effort. One moment he was there, the next –
General!
And then the General was gone again. Karsk reached out instinctively, reaching for that impossible sight, and encountered only the cold, smooth flesh of Kadaj's face.
He feels too cold to live.
"What are you?"
"I'm merely a remnant of Mother's great legacy," Kadaj replied archly, brushing Karsk's stunned extremity away from his face. "So are my brothers. You could say that we're directly subordinate to the General, privy to his wishes."
"You said the General had a mission for me," Karsk rasped. "If you know his will, ask him this: why did he try to end it? Why did he call Meteor?"
"I don't know Sephiroth," the young man snapped with a wave of his hand. He began to pace like a caged animal around Karsk. "I said privy to his wishes, not his thoughts. I've come to collect my brethren from this place – those children that share Mother's memetic legacy. But I have some fraction of the General's memories within me, and he remembers you quite well, Sub-General Karsk.
"He wants this city purged."
Karsk stared openmouthed for a moment before stuttering, "Impossible! The General would never give such an order! We made total war upon the Wutainese because they refused to surrender until Godo himself ordered them to lay down their arms, not because we wanted to!"
"Times change," Kadaj sneered. "Times change, cities change, men change, gods change. Isn't that what he was to you, Sub-General? A god?"
"He was a respected superior officer," Karsk replied hotly. "A god, no."
"You had feelings for him. He knew this, Sub-General, and I know it as well. I know that you must have similar feelings about me."
"You're not the General. You share some of his features, and may even share some part of his mind, but you're not him."
With a snarl, Kadaj moved to Karsk and gripped him by his jaw. "This noble streak of yours is frustrating. You will obey the order, Sub-General, and you will do it of your own free will."
"RUN!" Reno bellowed at a shocked Yuffie, not bothering to try to conceal himself any longer. The both of them split and leapt in opposite directions, just as the nearest two silhouettes snapped up what looked like assault rifles and fired.
Rolling up into a crouch, Reno looked at the wall where the bullets had hit. Four craters, spaced out neatly where he and Yuffie would have been; from the accuracy and the amount of wall they'd blown out, the Turk determined that the rifles were firing staccato three-round bursts. Probably gas-powered, too.
He scampered, moving quickly down the hall and disappearing into one of the dead monks' quarters. Footfalls fell on the floor in his wake, and he counted three pairs of feet. Standard tactic – send three after me, three after Yuffie, and the last two grab the materia and split.
Waiting until the first two pairs of feet had passed by, Reno threw open the door and lashed out with his prod, slamming the third pursuer across the back of his skull. He began to fall without so much as a sound; the impact had probably outright killed him. With a grunt, Reno stopped the cadaver's descent and got a shoulder into it, lifting it off of the ground and charging.
The dead man's companions were not stupid. They heard the sound of prod on skull and whirled, bringing their weapons to bear, but Reno was already closing the distance between them, the body acting as a shield.
They still opened fire.
From the terrific forces smashing into the corpse, Reno figured they were using Rude's choice weapon, the N17B assault rifle – five-ought-fifty-six-caliber nasties, and when you packed that into a three-round burst you had an effective infantry penetrator. The only reason Reno wasn't full of holes was because the corpse had on Kevlar armor. Real well-equipped, these particular miscreants.
Reno got within striking distance and heaved the body onto its fellows, who both swore in what were distinctly non-Wutainese dialects and tried to free their guns.
The Turk started off with the closer man, to his left. He darted in, grabbed the barrel of the N17B, jerked, twisted, and pulled in rapid succession, ripping the gun from its wielder's grip. The gun was long and sleek, with an extended stock, clip located at the fore of the trigger, and a sturdy barrel with an optional sighting scope. Shifting his prod to his left hand, Reno jabbed past the Kevlar armor on the man into his stomach and pressed the big red button, while simultaneously swinging back around to his right, still holding the N17B by its barrel.
A moment after the second man succeeded in throwing his dead comrade to the floor and freeing his rifle, the butt of Reno's pilfered rifle took him square in the nose.
Knowing that Yuffie was probably pinned down, Reno quickly pulled his prod back from the left-side man, who collapsed, twitching, to the floor. He stuck the weapon in his pants pocket – after flicking the anti-shock safety on, of course – got a proper hold on the N17B, and shot both men in the skull with a single three-round burst. Next, he checked the clip on the weapon, saw that it was nearly empty, and borrowed several more from his downed adversaries.
It was then that he saw the headset concealed beneath the black masks they wore.
"And how do you plan to compel me to carry out these orders that you claim are from the General?" Karsk asked. "I'm afraid, Kadaj, that you lack all the essential qualities of the man that I followed. If you're to convince me to do anything, you will have to be extremely persuasive."
Kadaj stroked his chin for a moment, looking contemplative. The motion was strikingly similar to one that Karsk remembered of Sephiroth, but at the same time it was different. He struggled to separate the two, thinking that the pain in his chest had to be addling his mind.
Of course, he thought. The General always did that when gazing out at the battlefield, trying to determine the next strategic point for us to hit. He never looked that way while trying to force his will on someone.
Coming to think of it, Karsk couldn't ever recall Sephiroth actually trying to do that. You either cooperated or you were swept away; there was no attempt to bring you over to Sephiroth's side. Karsk had admired that in Sephiroth; he regarded it as an efficient attitude. The winds of change have brought down mighty empires, so why should the individual be spared them?
"Mark my words, Sub-General," Kadaj finally said, malevolence seeping through his tone. "You could say that Sephiroth has foreseen it, though I can't personally testify as to whether or not clairvoyance is one of his powers. You will purge the city, and you will do it of your own free will." He released Karsk and stalked back to the hole he'd punched in the brick wall surrounding the condominium's backyard.
"Obviously, Sephiroth is no longer the General that I followed," Karsk snarled at his back, "if he chooses to invest his trust in filth like you."
Kadaj whirled, the Souba in his hand, held in a peculiar reverse grip. "What?"
"You heard me," Karsk replied archly, folding his arms across his chest despite the pain the motion caused him. "What do you intend to do about it? If I'm to purge the city, you can't kill me."
For a moment Kadaj spitted him with a look of sure pure, intense hatred that Karsk felt the flesh on the back of his neck crawl. Then it passed, and the implacable, smug smile was back… and the silver-haired demon was focused on the condominium behind the Sub-General.
"I certainly can't kill you, no, but your men are infinitely more disposable than you are."
Lowering his voice into a baritone, Reno barked into the microphone, "We've got the redhead!"
"Good work," a voice crackled back at him. "Kill him."
"Already did, but we got some info out of him 'forehand," Reno replied. "He said that he 'n his lady friend were here to plant a bomb on the shrine. She's got the bomb, and it'll blow the shit out of anything nearby – we should evac right away."
"Negative, negative," another voice protested. "We got her pinned down and she ain't movin'. Why the hell should we evac now? Stupid bitch probably was planning to remote-det it – she's not lookin' to die."
"You stupid asshole, she's waitin' for you to get close enough," the Turk snarled.
"Who is this? What's your name?"
Reno took a breath and did some of the quickest thinking in his life. "You know me, idiot, it's – SHIT! IT'S HER!" He fired several bursts into the ceiling to accentuate his exclamation, knowing they'd pick up on the microphone.
"What? We got her pinned down!"
Keeping up a sustained fire, Reno shouted, "YOU'RE SHOOTIN' AT NOTHING, SHE'S ON US, SHE'S GONNA – AAAAAGH!"
He let the headset drop to the ground and sprinted into one of the monks' quarters, jumped out the window, landed to the side of the temple, and ran around it double-time. Taking a flying leap, Reno landed himself on the sill of another one of the monks' quarters, opposite the one he'd leapt out of, and pulled himself inside.
Quickly poking his head out into the hallway, he saw it was empty except for Yuffie, who had emerged from the room adjacent in a crouch, quietly surveying the area. She saw him and grinned.
"Did you make them pull out?" she asked.
Reno nodded and handed her his prod, keeping the N17B close to him. "Had them thinking that you murdered the three they sent after me after my unfortunate death. Maybe they'll overlook the fact that they won't find my body." He took a look around the nearby corner and asked, "By the way, couldn't you have brought your little boomerang-shuriken thing?"
"Little?" Yuffie asked. "Not without being too conspicuous, no."
"Would've been nice to have it."
"Oh, sure, no problem," she laughed. "I'll just keep a weapon the size of Tifa's rack IN MY BACK POCKET!"
"Tifa's not that busty," Reno protested.
"Shaddap."
"Yes'm."
Karsk stood his ground. "How will I effect the purging of this city without men, Kadaj? You're contradicting yourself."
That certainly confused the young man. He started to reply and then cut himself off with a scowl, sheathing his sword. "I hope nii-san won't be this aggravating." Drawing in a deep breath, he waved a hand dismissively. "Fine, do as you please. Disobey your General. I'm sure he'll take no offense."
"I'm not directly under his command any more. All of us mutinied. By all rights you really should kill the lot of us for deserting."
"True, but he still has a use for you, and though leniency is not his strong suit, he is willing to grant you a pardon." Backing slowly out into the night, Kadaj finished, "If I were you, I would take that into consideration when deciding whether or not to obey the order."
And he was gone.
Karsk frowned at the hole in his wall and estimated that the entire section would need to be broken down and replaced. "Damn it all."
It was fairly obvious to Karsk that Kadaj did indeed know Sephiroth – perhaps he even was Sephiroth, on some level. However, he did not know the General, and, apparently, neither did Sephiroth.
Oddly enough, Karsk's rendering of the General and Sephiroth as two different people seemed completely rational to him. Perhaps he was merely going insane or senile, but it made sense. The man he'd once known was no longer amongst the living, if he would send silver-haired demon children out to order the purging of cities – to say nothing of Meteor.
And Karsk woke up.
"We've searched all the monks' quarters on this side of the temple," number three reported. "Nothin'. No trace of red-hair. I don't see where six, seven, and eight could've dumped him."
Number one frowned beneath his mask and then noticed something, barely visible in the dark: number seven's mask was pulled down on his face and his headset was missing. A quick scan of the floor revealed that the headset lay just to the right of him, obviously left there by whoever had spoken into it.
"Omega! We've been made!" he bellowed just as Reno planted a three-round burst in the back of his skull.
Even as the rest of the squad whirled to confront the redhead, Yuffie leapt at them from the opposite end of the hallway, taking two down with wild prod swings before they realized what was going on. The last two didn't have to go through the trouble of deciding whether to shoot at Reno or Yuffie, because the redhead conveniently shot them during the process of deliberation.
Yuffie blew out a long breath and then looked away as Reno shot the other two that she'd taken down with the prod. "That really necessary, Reno?"
"I don't tell you how to get yourself into arranged marriages, you don't tell me how to shoot people," Reno drawled. "Besides, they knew the risks when they opened fire on us." The ninja-girl nodded glumly at that. "Things just got a lot more complicated, seems to me."
"Who could they be working for?" Yuffie asked. "They were good, but not elite or anything."
"Doesn't matter, we'll figure it out later. We get the materia and we split, now."
Gesturing at the N17B that Reno still held, Yuffie asked, "What about that gun, Reno? It probably has your fingerprints on it."
"I'll bring it with us. Rude'll want to have my children for it – metaphorically speaking, of course."
They moved into the main hall and approached the shrine. Grinning, Reno gave Yuffie's shoulder a squeeze and then plucked the Leviathan materia off of its pedestal. "And now we exit, stage right."
He hadn't taken three steps away from the shrine when Yuffie said, "Reno…"
"What?"
Reno turned back around to see the massive jade dragon glaring at him, eyes ablaze with blue fire. "WHO DARES DESECRATE THE SHRINE OF THE GREAT SEIRYŪ?"
The two of them stood utterly speechless for a second, and then Reno said, "Uh, me."
The dragon lunged with impossible speed, clawed hands racing towards Reno to crush him into paste –
