Hello again, readers. I'd like to take a moment to talk about Dirge of Cerberus.
I picked it up and beat it yesterday, and let me tell you: it was not hard. Not even with the auto-aim turned off, which I did to increase the difficulty. It's very linear, and its run-and-gun mechanics are tried and true, meaning all in all it's a very run-of-the-mill action game. God of War or Ninja Gaiden, this is not. Rent, don't buy. I bought it so I could lease it out to buddies. However, the story is very good. If anyone wants a detailed summary (i.e. with spoilers I'd never include in a public one) because they can't play it because it's an action game or because they simply don't want to, drop me a private message or say so in a review.
And now, Chapter XV.
Reno stared at the entrance to the clothing store that Yuffie and Rei had dragged Rude into. It seemed to throb malevolently, calling out to him with eldritch whispers like fingers on a chalkboard.
Of course, that was all dramatic convention, and entirely contained in his mind. The building still was threatening, though.
"So, Makoto," he said abruptly, wanting to strike up conversation. He was leaning against the side of Tseng's battered car, as was Makoto, whose bike rested nearby. "Now that you're with Rei, couldn't you say you committed an infidelity or something and make Godo negate the contract?"
A downcast expression came over Makoto's face and he shook his head negatively. "Unfortunately, that's not an option open to me. Not only does the contract not account for infidelities or anything of the sort, Rei would also be in danger if word got out that I was romantically involved with her. I have a lot of enemies, Reno, and while some of them are just on the opposite side because they're not Shinsengumi, a lot more of them are twisted bastards who would do anything to gain an advantage over me."
Reno grimaced. "Including kidnapping or killing Rei, huh?"
"Precisely. Until this whole thing is over, she and I have to keep knowledge of our liaison confined to a select group of people."
"Right, right." After a moment's consideration, Reno grinned, leaned over to Makoto, and whispered in his ear, "So… how was it?"
Half-expecting Makoto to pull the broadsword off of his back and cut him in two, Reno was thrilled half to bits to see a deep blush shoot up out of Makoto's collar and bathe his face in warm tones. "Must I answer?"
"Naw, but I'd like to know. Was she wild? Did she bite?"
Just when Reno thought Makoto couldn't flush any redder, the gang leader raised the bar. "We had no idea what we were doing."
Cocking an eyebrow, Reno said, slowly, "So what you're saying is that you… and she…"
"We had never performed the act until last night, no."
That earned a long whistle. "She's never gonna let you off now, bud. Virginity's a big thing to girls."
"And why shouldn't it be? For that matter, why shouldn't it be a 'big thing' to us men as well?"
Reno held up his hands. "Hold on, I didn't say it shouldn't be. In fact, let's say I'm glad for you. It must be special, losing your virginity to someone you actually care about."
That got Makoto's attention, though Reno hadn't really intended it as anything more than an offhanded comment. "So I'm supposed to infer that that's not what happened to you, then?" Makoto asked.
The redhead paused midway into a sentence, gave a short ah, and replied, "Guess so. Sure as hell didn't happen that way."
"What did, then?"
"Do I gotta answer?"
"Oh, please."
Reno winked insolently at Makoto. "Just playing with you, Makoto." He thought back, unconsciously assuming a more serious expression. "Yup, it was quite a while ago. I was only seventeen – real tender age, though I wouldn't have agreed with you then if you'd told me that."
Makoto nodded sagely. "Most seventeen-year-olds think they're immortal and mature and adult, yes."
"You know it – only I really was. But seriously, there was this girl." Reno closed his eyes as he dragged up images he hadn't considered in a very, very long time. "Real pretty. Red, wavy hair down to about her shoulder blades, thin, had an aristocratic face. Still, if she was an aristocrat, I'm the Emperor of Gongaga."
The gang leader laughed at that. "How old was she?"
With a shrug, Reno replied, "Maybe twenty, twenty-one? Older than I was, to be sure, and much more experienced. I met her at an official Shin-Ra function; she was the daughter of this old guy from some company or other that wanted a merger, or didn't want it, or something, and I was the fresh-faced Turk on security. Take a second and imagine your reaction when you're standing by the punch table looking out for trouble and all of a sudden this stone-cold fox comes up to you and says – and I remember this real clear – 'You know, I've always wanted to teach a younger man everything I know about sex.'"
It was Makoto's turn to whistle. "Obviously a tramp."
"Obviously. But would you have cared?"
"No."
"Exactly. I didn't either, and Veld – our old leader – nearly had my ass for it. But she did teach me a whole lot."
"Was it all worth it?"
Reno gave another shrug. "Like I said, she taught me a lot, and after that I never saw her again. Tseng was nice enough to tell me that 'that lady friend of mine' got axed along with her father when Veld sent a squad in to 'convince' them to sign something or other that the old President had written up."
That earned a grimace from Makoto. "It must have been unpleasant news."
"Well, I can't say I was particularly thrilled, but my chances of seeing her again were slim to none, and even then…" Unconsciously, Reno slipped his thumb beneath his sleeve and felt the end of his prod, hidden there. To his credit, Makoto didn't miss the gesture, though he didn't react, knowing it wasn't a precursor to an attack. "I'm happy to be with Yuffie because she's not a tramp. For a long time now I've wanted someone who's good for more than just a one-night stand, and she was perfect – spunky, reminded me a lot of myself, which is always a plus, and best of all, she actually loved herself as much as I do. That's hard to do, but she thinks she's the best goddamned person in the world and all life would stop if she ceased to exist, and I admire that."
"So you admire self-delusion?"
"Don't take it the wrong way, bud. She knows that's a load of bull, that she's exceptional but not perfect, but she believes it anyway, because that's how she keeps going. If Yuffie ever admitted that she wasn't the best, brightest person on the globe, I'd be real scared for her." Reno removed his thumb from the tip of his prod and ran his hand through his hair. "So, Makoto, now you know how it is."
"And I'm glad I do." Makoto shifted slightly where he stood and tried to avoid looking at the clothing store. "You love her for reasons entirely better than I ever did, assuming that what I felt for her could even be called love."
Reno slapped the young man on the shoulder supportively. "Don't think too much on it. You were young and stupid a few days ago, but now you've grown up. I don't take well to that whole notion of 'love is selfless, love is kind,' et cetera. That's bullshit. Love's about valuing someone just as highly as you value yourself, but not at the expense of yourself. D'you follow?"
"So does that mean you wouldn't die for her?"
"That question's a whole other can of worms, Makoto. What situation would I be in where only one of us could live? I know I'd resign my commission with the Turks for her, though, and that's close enough for now."
Makoto was about to press the issue – Reno could tell about these things – when his cell rang. Saved by the bell. The gang leader gave a weak grin and flipped it open. "Makoto."
His expression instantly turned lethal. "Say what?"
"What is it?" Reno demanded.
"I'll be there in two minutes." Makoto flipped the cell closed and explained quickly. "The Orochimaru are apparently trying to get themselves back on the it-list with the party that's been sponsoring all the gangs – including the Shinsengumi, of course, but that's not important right now. They're trying to take down a statue of Lord Godo in a public square."
Reno's eyes widened. "Holy shit. I'd say this is a shade more important than waiting outside a clothing store. Let's go!"
He began to leap into Tseng's car when Makoto grabbed him by his shoulder. "Rei, Yuffie and Rude will need a ride when they're finished in there," he said. "Get on my bike. Anyone who wants to make comments can submit them to the point of my sword."
"Sounds like a plan. But don't you need a katana to do your little swordsmanship jig?"
"I don't need to call upon Shiranui-ryu to fight bikers in the streets," Makoto spat as the two of them climbed onto his motorcycle. "The Orochimaru that went after me I killed in a half-deranged state. At any rate, Shiranui-ryu isn't so rigid that I have to use the Kikuichi-monji to execute its techniques."
"Good. Awesome. Drive."
With a roar, Makoto brought the bike to life and sent it rocketing down the street in the direction of the square.
"How much longer are you going to be?" Yuffie called into the men's changing room. "You're not doing anything perverted in there, are you?"
She was met with a Rude silence – Reno had coined the term and nobody had laughed, but it was spot-on. Then, after the silence had been given time to sink in, the Turk finally called back, "Thirty seconds."
Throwing up her hands in exasperation, Yuffie turned to Rei, who was going through a rack of leather jackets. "What kind of clothes did you give him that are so hard to get into?"
The geisha made an innocent face at Yuffie, accompanied by a fluttering of her eyelashes that made the ninja-girl feel distinctly unrefined. "Probably the pants."
"Pants?"
No sooner had the words issued from her mouth than did Rude walk, stiffly and very uncomfortably, out of the dressing-room.
He still had on his sunglasses and various piercings, but that was an end to anything familiar about his appearance. He had on an open-front denim vest, frayed at the edges, that fit snugly on him and revealed his formidable biceps, pectorals, and abdominals. On his wrists he had large, spiked leather cuffs, and he wore black, fingerless gloves. He had boots that reached to his mid-calves, but the highlight of the ensemble…
Oh sweet lord of all that is holy and good and pure in this universe, Yuffie, don't look at his waist area.
Rei had apparently issued Rude skintight black leather pants that were a size too small, and somehow he had managed to fit his powerful lower body into them.
Yuffie stuck her gaze squarely on Rude's face and told herself, sternly, to keep it there. "Rude… sweetie… the pants have to go."
There was a definite pouting noise from Rei. "Pity. I think they're the best part of the outfit."
"If you hadn't noticed, they'd be tight on me!"
Rude just stood there, looking uncomfortable.
"I think they give him a very biker-esque look. Put him on a motorcycle and you could ask anyone what they thought his profession was and they'd tell you their personal term for a biker gang member. Whether said term would be decent or not's purely incidental."
Yuffie flashed the geisha the kind of dirty look she reserved for Cloud when he told strangers about the time the Highwind had hit a thunderstorm in mid-flight while she'd been onboard. "Yeah, the pants go. He's my boyfriend's best friend, you know. I got leeway, or something."
Sighing melodramatically, Rei waved a hand at Rude. "We'll find you some jeans or something to wear, Rude. Go ahead and get out of the pants."
The Turk nodded and started to turn around to head back into the changing room.
"STOP!" Yuffie screeched. Rude immediately froze, a lock of inquisitive shock on his face. "Don't turn around. Please, for the love of whatever deity you like to talk to before bedtime, don't turn around. Just… walk backwards."
Rude's reply was another silence, followed by a very slow, deliberate, and eye-boggling one-eighty. Then he disappeared back into the changing room.
When she was sure he was gone, Yuffie uncovered her eyes and gave a relieved sigh. "Phew. Some things I just don't need to see."
She looked to Rei for affirmation and instead got a very dry, very prim smile. "At least he doesn't have to worry about being well-built."
Makoto and Reno arrived at the public square about two minutes later, just as the biker had said they would, and it was a sight to see.
"The morons," Reno murmured as Makoto brought the bike to a stop on the side of the street. "If the police were ignoring them before, no way will they stop at anything short of a raid now."
In the middle of the rather large public square was a towering, fifty-foot stone statue of Godo, sword drawn, thrusting it skyward. Vendor stalls were clustered about the statue's base and throughout the square, forming a dense maze of passages through the otherwise open space.
From Reno's vantage point, it was easy to see that the Orochimaru had pulled out all the stops on this one. The sword's top half had been blown clean off, and Godo's head was lying on the ground in pieces, on top of an unfortunate stall that had been selling tsukemono. Orochimaru were climbing the statue, apparently intent on planting explosives beneath the upthrust arm to topple it down.
Outside the square, blocking the three concentrically placed roads in, were police vehicles with a score of armed officers crouched behind them, trading gunfire with more Orochimaru who'd taken cover amongst the stalls. Reno also spotted the light blue and white colors of some Shinsengumi by the police – no doubt the ones who'd informed Makoto of the developing situation.
He and Makoto rushed to the nearest knot of them. The gang leader drew up with his men and snapped, "Report, Kosuke!"
One of the Shinsengumi drew himself up and saluted, thumping his clenched fist against his right breast. "Commander Makoto, sir. My colleagues and I were buying some food when we saw the Orochimaru come blazing in. I called the police, thinking that they might handle the situation for us, and then we took up position here to wait for you."
"How'd you know we'd be coming in from this way?" Reno immediately demanded.
"All our cells have GPS trackers in them," Makoto told him. "Every member of the Shinsengumi knows at all times where every other member is. It's one of the conditions you agree to upon joining – this rule applies even to me." He turned his gaze back to Kosuke. "Continue, Kosuke."
"After calling you we summoned the two reinforcement squads that you see on the roads leading into the square. We also informed headquarters and told them to send in all available men if you didn't call in personally within ten minutes."
"Well done. We might actually be able to cut the damages involved here." Makoto gave the young man an abbreviated version of the salute, without the embellished striking of the chest, then ducked instinctively as a report sounded. A moment later the bullet pinged off of the top of a nearby police car that was providing them cover. "It's do or die for the Orochimaru, apparently."
"I just hope the police don't ignore this as they've ignored so many other situations," Kosuke agreed, loudly enough that all the nearby officers couldn't possibly not hear it.
Makoto turned to ask Reno something, then stared with unmasked shock at the empty spot where the Turk had been standing a moment ago. He swept the area with his gaze and saw nothing, except –
A moment after beginning his search he saw Reno's foot disappear under a police car. How did he do that? Of course; he took advantage of Kosuke's little moment of bravado and disappeared. No average man indeed.
Taking a deep breath, Makoto decided that this was the time to give Reno a little backup.
He pulled the broadsword from his back and screamed, "FOR WUTAI!"
His men, even on the other side of the square, all took the hint immediately. All of them drew their swords and screamed it as well, the words rolling out into the square and making the Orochimaru crouched there flinch. The police turned to confront this strange behavior and found themselves confronting nothing, for…
The Shinsengumi had charged.
Makoto leapt seven feet over the line of police cars and landed in the square. Nearby Orochimaru opened up and he whirled away, crouching down behind cover, and grabbed Kosuke's proffered pistol.
It was going to be a busy day.
Reno heard Makoto scream "FOR WUTAI!" and grinned. Attaboy. Not stopping, the Turk continued to elbow-crawl across the ground beneath the stalls, slipping under tarps and tables, completely unseen. If the sponsor of the bike gangs had any balls at all – and Reno figured that a man or organization that was trying to subvert the government of the nation had to have balls – he'd be nearby, watching. Even as he moved, Reno was scanning the windows of the buildings he could see, searching for someone innocuously looking out onto the square…
Found ya.
In the second-story window of a nearby apartment building on the edge of the square, Reno could just make out a man, a foreigner, watching the debacle unfold. Can't tell for sure from here, but he also matches the description Rude gave of the espionage agent at the meeting.
Reno started to elbow-crawl faster.
Makoto popped up over the table he'd taken cover behind and fired three times, ignoring the twinges of pain his not-quite-completely-healed ribs were giving him. Certainly, they'd been acting up the night previous, too, but that had been enjoyable enough for him not to notice…
Concentrate!
His shots went wide of their mark and he fired a fourth time, scoring a clean hit on the Orochimaru trying to hide behind the tarp of an akashi no tamagoyaki stall. Beside him, Kosuke fired several times as well, the last report punctuated by a sharp scream of pain from a short distance away.
Breathing fast from the excitement, Kosuke plopped himself back down to reload and asked Makoto, "So, Commander Makoto, did you have a plan in mind when you had us charge or was it in the spirit of the moment?"
On a hunch, Makoto whirled, and his gut feeling was confirmed as he shot the Orochimaru trying to flank them. "Let's just say that I was taking the safety off of a very big gun."
"I take it the gun's on our side."
"Now that I'm not bent on marrying his girlfriend any more, yes."
Kosuke was a good, smart, dependable young man that knew that there was a time and a place for everything. Probing questions about strange things your commander said on the battlefield were best reserved for the aftermath, when you and your comrades discussed the battle over cups of hot chocolate or rum.
So he popped up and started shooting again.
The espionage agent was watching the battle in the square unfold when he felt the tip of what felt like a riot prod press into the back of his head, then withdraw a moment later.
"Hands up, pal. Try anything funny and you'll get a one-way ticket to shockytown."
Reno watched the man slowly raise his hands, waiting for the inevitable attempt to escape or disarm him. They always try to surprise you when they think you least expect it.
And the man didn't.
That threw Reno for the tiniest fraction of a second, and that was when the man struck, twisting around and grabbing Reno's wrist instead of the prod. Reno immediately started twisting as well, trying to free his arm before the man could throw him out the window, bringing up his foot at the same time to bury it in his opponent's gut. At precisely the right moment, the agent let go Reno's hand and pushed himself backwards, sending the Turk spinning away out of control. Reno hit a wall, hard, and whirled back around to confront the oncoming attack –
Nothing. There was the sound of footsteps pounding down a stairway.
"DAMN!"
Knowing where the man had to exit, as Reno had entered through there himself, he hurled himself out of the window, careful, careful – yes! Reno landed, somewhat precariously but safely all the same, on the large concrete wall separating the building and the square. It was a story high all by itself, so he managed to take the impact evenly. He dropped into the alleyway betwee the wall and the building a moment later and rushed towards the door.
The look of surprise on the agent's face when Reno smashed his prod across it was worth the elbow-crawling.
"Reno?"
Half-expecting another assault, Reno turned to be confronted with Grandpa Souta, who had apparently been on a main street into the square and had broken off when he saw Reno in the alley along the side of the apartment building. "Old man! What are you doing here?"
"I heard about the Orochimaru attack on the square in the news and came here straight away," the old mechanic replied. "Who's that?"
"Some guy who was taking a peep at the action in the square. He matches the description Rude gave me of the agent at the meeting in The Jade Dragon."
Grandpa Souta pursed his lips and then nodded. "Right. I'll take him to the police; I can carry much more dead weight than most give me credit for. You go and make sure Makoto's all right."
"Will do. Our bikes coming along okay?"
"Splendidly. They'll be ready tomorrow evening, as promised." Grandpa Souta pulled the agent up and slung one of the man's arms over his shoulder to drag him. "Go! After I've gotten him to the police I'll call up Rei and tell her what's going on."
Reno quickly pumped his hand and then headed back towards the square.
