Poppies and Sakura Chapter 4: Trial by Fire
One month after training…
The inside of the ship was daunted me. Water drops echoed all through the hull and the groaning of the metal kept me up at night. Sometimes, I could hear voices that weren't…human.
All the Spec.Op. units were being transported on huge amphibious craft. A small fleet trailed with our own ship ready for an attack directly onto land. I was just settling into my job as commander of the unit. I had been given a long lecture about leadership and the use of materia. I was practicing on the ship's deck with the materia and my new sword when Kael approached me.
"Sir, the bridge tells me that we'll be arriving at Wutai shores within the hour. We best ready ourselves for battle, sir." I nodded to him and told him I would be down when I had finished training. Kael had become by default my second in command. He already possessed great powers of leadership, but his loyalty seemed batter placed to the Turks as obedient to a Sargent, not directly to SOLDIER superiors. It seemed intelligent enough.
I stopped practicing and took a deep breath of air and looked at myself. I was dressed in proper Shin-Ra military uniform. Green jacket, bloused pants and shin-high, sturdy boots. As commander, I was also allowed a cap as an easy sign of rank, although I was encouraged to remove it in the field to stop easy sniper shots. I was nervous about it, oh hell I was nervous, but I knew that I now had lives that were my responsibility. Looking to the ever-growing land of green that lay ahead, vowed I would protect them all.
Below deck, the P.A. announced we had ten minutes until beaching and assault. The engines were revving high and both units on board our ship were anxious for battle. Kael was just in front of me at the head of the unit, face blank and staring at the solid wall of metal that in ten minutes would expose us to battle and our first blood. Reik stood just to my left. He yelled to me above the engines.
"Hey, sarge, you reckon this is gonna be easy?"
"I'm not sure Reik, best keep your wits about you. Make sure the privates are all ready for this. I don't want anyone hesitating during the battle, okay?" He nodded and moved off to keep the morale up.
I looked around to try and find Freya. She was at the back of the unit facing the rear of the hold dressed in her specially made overcoat, which would normally have reached my own feet, but on her only reached the knees. I walked up to her and put and arm on her back.
"Freya? You okay?" From under her huddled form, Dekal emerged.
"Don't ya worry sarge, she'll be right. It's jus' the noise, ya know? She'll be ready." Then to Freya, she said. "Don't ya worry girl. C'mon, buck up! You gotta be medic. It's an important job. And if they get too close to us, we gotta rely on you to keep 'em back eh? Here." She handed her Freya's large stun mace. "Don't ya worry. It'll just knock 'em out. It' won't hurt 'em. Good girl. I'll be back in a bit. I jus' gotta talk to sarge, kay?" Freya's hand reached out and took the mace. A brief "Mmhmm" squeaked it's way out of the huge coat.
Dekal and I moved away from Freya. "She'll be ready for this, sarge. Just needs a little more time. She refuses to kill anyone, so I got 'er that mace from the Turks. She'll handle things if they get messy." I gave Dekal an encouraging smile. She returned it with thumbs up and a winning grin.
The siren blared. It was time. The engines revved to maximum, and in seconds the doors were opening.
The shells rained down like the end of the world. Left and right the Spec. Ops. units poured from the hulls of the ships. We ran as one. The beach was muddy, but we ploughed through anyway. Up ahead we could see the beginnings of the trench system and bunkers. The beach ascended steeply. Above us, moving over no mans land towards the tree line, I could see hundreds of men dressed in blue uniforms, SOLDIER, clutching only swords, charging forward towards the Wutai battleline. Their unified voice inspired me to keep running.
We belted into the trenches at top speed. I ran at the front of the unit. We could hear the machine guns of the Wutai starting up. We ran faster. Running through the maze of twisting trenches, we quickly came to a dead end. The trenches ceased from there on. Over the din of battle I called the unit to a halt and began issuing orders.
"Alright guys, its time. This is our first blood. Are you ready!?" I began hyping the unit up like I had been taught. Soon they were all geared, shouting and adding to the maelstrom of sound that blasted over out heads. I finally gave the order to move.
We sprinted over no mans lad like the wind. It was both liberating and confining at the same time. In one way, I felt as though the law was nothing in this chaotic world. I felt like I was my own master. The feeling was unparalleled by anything I had experienced before. Yet, I also felt contained by my own actions. Fear touched me the moment I got out and looked death in the face. Machine guns still rattled away at us, although they were mostly occupied in fighting the men in blue. The fight SOLIDER fought there, by far, was the most inspiring thing, and was what kept me running when we went over the top.
The power of those soldiers was awesome. They needed no guns. Their blades flashed with diabolic speed and lacerated their victims with such agility that I felt as though I was in the presence of the angels of death themselves. A unit of ten of them flashed across the earth like a fatal plague, and they struck a unit that outnumbered them three to one. Thirty seconds, an eternity in my own eyes, and all the Wutai men were dead. The ground was red and so were the faces of SOLDIER. They used magic, the phantom winds, and the lightning, the fire, the freezing powers of the elements struck the enemy soldiers down. This display of arcane pyrotechnics skittered up and down the battleline. Some spells were devastating, annihilating entire units by themselves while others were for one on one combat, extinguishing a single life with its impossible inferno.
This scene would have shocked most, but in my mind bloodlust rose. I was unquenchable. I never fired my pistol running across the ground, even when I had a Wutai man in my sights. I drew my blade. I wanted blood. I wanted to feel the steel to cut flesh with the impossible ease that I imagined. I wanted to feel the twinkling feeling up my spine as the blade struck bone and scraped against it. I wanted to end a life up close. I wanted the smell, the tastes, the sight, the sound. I got it.
We clashed with an enemy unit in their own trenches. I leapt down from the ground. The Wutai had slow firing rifles, and many had fixed blades to them. The Ravens swooped in and we began to cut them down. I landed on top of one man. In surprise I fired. The shot missed my own toe my just centimetres. Fortunately it thudded into the back of the man I had jumped on. I found it hard to step down. Two men had already moved in on me. Their faces were alien in the blood-haze I suffered. They were monsters, ugly animals that were trying to take me down. I had to…I had to kill them. While neither had landed a blow on me, I sliced my blade across the gut of one man. His face contorted into one of pain. He clutched the billowing grey and dull green masses that pushed eagerly from the wound. Little blood came out to my surprise. Other contents spilt onto the muddy earth. Before I could land a blow on my second opponent I saw him ready the wicked blade on his gun to impale me. I moved to one side. The beast had slid past me with all his might. I caught him in the crook of my right arm. With my sword arm I raised my blade and plunged it into his spine. The beast gasped and fell cleanly from the blade as I let it fall. Five more men I felled like this. I was grazed by a bullet and a blade had stabbed into my sword arm. I was fine in the adrenaline-pumped state I was in. Then the fight there was over. I could hear the sounds of trumpets and horns. The enemy was in retreat. Lightning and fire clattered in the distance. Shells thundered into the ground with the fury of the heavens. I stopped momentarily and looked at my unit. They too were coming round.
Kael approached me at the exit to the enemy trenches. Ahead of us were the jungles. The SOLDIER members were in pursuit into the tree line. Kael looked as though he was about to say something, then a cry, high and frenzied came from a neighbouring trench. A Wutai soldier, stained with blood, charged me and Kael. Before I had even got a hand on my gun the Wutai soldier lay dead. I looked to Kael. Two handguns were smoking in his hand. Without looking back at me he spoke.
"Sir, what shall we do now? The enemy are routing. Most of the other specialist units are still clearing the trenches, but ours is clean. Your orders, sir?" His face was without emotion, as always. Dekal approached from behind, her face was etched with a crazed smile. Only then did I notice that I too was smiling like that.
"C'mon, sarge, lets show them others that we're the best bloody unit 'ere. Lets stick a couple more notches in out belts before the day is out. Waddaya say?" I couldn't help but feel the smile spread again across my face. I turned to the unit, rallying just behind us. Their faces were blurred for me. All I saw was that they were all still standing. I gave the order for pursuit.
We crashed into the trees. It was a stupid move. We were hopelessly out of cohesion within seconds. Separated, we were lucky that none of us were killed. Some were wounded I could tell. I was lost. The flood of green ahead, green behind, and green above. The entire place was damp, and I was utterly lost in the trees. I yelled the order to regroup, but there was no answer. I made my way to the nearest place I could, a place where I could hear fires crackling.
"Help…please…err…someone? Sarge? Dekal? Kael, mate? Someone?" It was Reik's voice. As I emerged from the trees I saw him. He noticed me immediately. His hair was even more ruffled then usual, but his face was on the edge of panic. He stood near a large straw hut, which sheltered beyond which smoke emanated. His hand was on the shoulder of the huge form of Freya, who was huddled up, hugging her knees close to her.
"Sarge, help! I dunno what to do!" I began to approach and comforted him before getting to Freya.
"Don't worry. She'll be alright." Then Freya's high, bright voice, shattered and broken by her sobbing, called back to be. She turned her face t me. Her eyes were quivering pools, filled with tears, but the look was not fear as I could tell. The look was of a deeper emotion. Sorrow and loss.
"N-no I won't b-be alright! War i-is a terrible thing, b-b-but…but those innocents…t-they…" she sunk her head and sobbed. I approached again cautiously. The sting of smoke was irritating my nostrils.
"War is a terrible thing, yes Freya, but they all were fighting for their country, they knew they were going to die and-" She cut me off and shot her head back up to look me straight in the eye. Those tears I remember for the rest of my life.
"They didn't know! They never fought! These people are dying needlessly. They're GONE!" I caught sight then of the source of the smoke just beyond the straw hut. I froze.
A little girl's body was strewn on the steps of the hut, she wore a raggedy garb in the Wutai style. It was blotched with crusted red. The smooth, pure black hair of the Wutai people was frizzed and strew around her head, face down. Beyond, the entire village burned. Bodies of women and children scattered across the landscape as the village burned. It burned. A civilian station. Burnt. The hideous of deaths. Amongst all of this, men in blue walked, piercing their blades into the corpses to make sure they were dead.
A solitary scream came from one of the houses. A woman ran from the wreck. He hair was burning and she ran naked, the tanned skin bloody and raw. She collapsed at the foot of a man standing in the middle of the village, clasping at his trousers.
The lone man, wreathed by fire and destruction behind him, looked down at the woman, her hair still alight and now rusty with her own life-giving fluid. He looked at her for what seemed an eternity. The he picker her up and carried her. He carried her forwards through smoke. With one fluid movement…
He threw her back into the flaming wreck of the house.
The renew cries of Freya mingled with the crackling and the woman's death cries.
We had all sent hat atrocity that day, and the blood-haze lifted from our eyes forever. The SOLDIER from the village had approached me and ordered me to not speak of the incident to any other soldier on pain of death. I never told. Kael, Dekal, all the privates, they never knew. We were ordered to return to the trenches to await the arriving troops and establish a base. Eight hours later, I was ordered back to that place, they had constructed the command tent there, right on top of the graves of the innocent. The lot that the village once occupied was completely devoid of life, but the air stank of smoke and ash. I held my breath as I marched to the tent. That was the day I began my hatred for SOLDIER, the Turks, and everything the Shin-Ra ever stood for.
...but we were forced to grow up quickly.
The war is a reality now. I have faced many atrocities, Elmyra, my love, but those that the Shin-Ra commit are heartless, inhuman, and without mercy. The present and the past are terrible times. We can only hope that the future offers hope to us.
The shackles of the past I will discard, but the lessons I will never forget. Never will I forget the sight of that young girl on the straw hut's steps. Never will I forget the screams of the woman in the fire. Never will I forget the tears that shone in Freya's eyes. And never will I forget the laugh of that man. The SOLDIER that burnt that village. The man, no, demon called Hade Ida.