Oh, Mama, I'm in fear for my life from the long arm of the law…
Hangman's comin' down from the gallows and I don't have very long.
The jig is up, the news is out,
They finally found me.
The renegade who had it made
Retrieved for a bounty…
Renegade – Styx
Bonus Chapter – Burn it Down
Gabriel looked around his sparse house, which was a few minutes walk from Kalm, wondering if he had done the right thing. It had been a few days since he had seen Cloud Strife and his friends, and almost a week and a half since he had seen Kyle. Kyle… Gabriel grinned to himself. The nickname had come by itself, seeming right and appropriate with their secret. It helped, if anyone did hear him talking to himself. That was something he did more often than he would have liked, but at least no one would know what he was talking about. He would protect them, for they had done nothing wrong.
He threw himself onto his worn couch, staring up at the ceiling before reaching for his paperback book. But it was impossible to concentrate. He tossed the book across the room, hitting the plush chair perfectly. His thoughts kept straying to his days with Shinra, and everything that had occurred there.
"Eighteen years ago…" Gabriel muttered to himself. "Eighteen years since the beginning of the end. Well, no. The beginning of the end was Project G, but eighteen years ago was when my end began." He pulled out a photo album from a side table drawer, opening it to one certain page. It practically fell open on its' own, since he had looked at this picture so often. He and three of his friends. He had left Shinra, but had remained in contact with several of the people there.
"Forty years is a long time for meeting and knowing people, but these three, I'll never forget." Gabriel murmured. He looked down at the picture. One man with black hair, brushed back away from his face, one man dressed in red with the color even seeping into his shoulder-length sandy-blond hair, and one younger than the other two, with moon-pale hair past his waist. He sighed, thinking of how Shinra had taken them all away, before thinking farther back. His friends had begun to fade ten years ago, but his own doom was sealed almost eighteen years ago. He could still see the hurt, terrified eyes staring at him through the dark and smoke. He had been twenty-two years old…
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Fire burning high into the night as the town of Kalm went up in flames. Gabriel stared as he watched the explosives he had set do their work. None of the other Turks were this good. This was why he was Legend. The SOLDIER platoon under the young general Xavier Domini was supposed to be getting the civilians to safety, so the insurgents in the town could be left to burn.
Gabriel's eyes scanned the hilltops, eyes coming to rest on the little group of SOLDIERs. There was no one else with them. His eyes widened, and he sprinted over to find Xavier.
"What are you doing!?!" he almost shrieked. Xavier's eyes were wide.
"I… I… Heidegger told us that we were to wait until the flames subsided!" he stammered.
Gabriel paled. "Master Veld told me that you were to get the families and civilians out before the town burned!" He turned, leaving the group to run into the town.
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Oh, Meteor and Holy. Gabriel slammed the photo album shut, putting it back in the drawer. So many people died that day before the SOLDIERs came to help him. They got about half the town out, but so many others perished. The one image that would haunt him forever was of a girl with teal eyes, about nine years old, just staring at him through the smoke.He had begged her to come with him, but she refused. He had to leave her, or die himself. But she had not died. How surprised he had been to see her come back years later as the new leader of the original AVALANCHE! Her eyes had been just the same as he remembered, full of hurt and sadness. She had stood before him, as he whispered, "I know you…", and called out for all to hear, "I am Elfe! I lead AVALANCHE! And the Shinra Mountain is going DOWN!" She used that analogy a lot, the one of Shinra being a mountain, and them being the AVALANCHE to bring it down.
"If Genesis could have just held on…" Gabriel murmured. "He led Angeal astray as well, and now Sephiroth has fallen too… Who will be next? Me?" He looked up, his ears catching a soft sound, like the footprints of people attempting to be quiet. He got up, cautiously flipping a switch on the wall and pocketing a small remote. Only for the worst-case, but when you were branded a traitor, every case could be the worst-case. He heard a brief knock on his door, and walked over slowly. He cracked the door just a little and peered out.
A small cluster of SOLDIERs stood around his door, guns at the ready. A Second-Class stood before him, pistol in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. "Gabriel Vandel, you are wanted for crimes of treason and desertion of duty. Surrender, and we will not be forced to use violence."
Gabriel internally chuckled. All of the First-Class were gone. There had been very few in the first place, and now all were dead or just vanished. A Second-Class could not hope to compete with the Legendary Turk. He slammed the door, throwing the lock into place a second before the SOLDIERs lunged at it. He raced back through his house, stopping to grab only a few possessions, including his photo album. As he ran, he saw SOLDIERs moving to surround the house. He dove into the secret tunnel he had built to lead down the hills back to Kalm, pulling the remote from his pocket as he went. As soon as he was far enough away, he pressed the single red button.
The roar of the explosion tore through the tunnel, assaulting his ears with the shockwave. He fell, feeling the ground quaking with the tremors of the explosion. Were they really so stupid that they would think that a former Turk with a thing for pyrotechnics wouldn't rig traps in his house as a precaution? He stood and hurried along, coming out just outside of Kalm. He took his chocobo from the stable nearby and rode from the town, hurrying to another location he had set up for just such an occasion. Shinra was bound to have found him eventually. He had felt it best to be prepared. Fleeing south, he would go to a secret dock he knew about and take a boat to Costa del Sol. Gongaga was calling him home, to yet another hidden hideout. He couldn't go home to Junon, he couldn't go to Nibelheim, and he couldn't hide in Wutai for almost all of Wutai would recognize him. He had been eighteen in the Wutai War. That was where he had earned the name Legend. And he remembered the adoring eyes of the little six-year-old boy who had followed him everywhere afterwards, swearing to become a First-Class SOLDIER. Angeal… He had succeeded in his goal, but for what? A legacy of betrayal and tragedy.
Gabriel tied his chocobo at the secret dock, leaving it in the care of the man who waited there. He turned to his boat, and was shocked to see someone standing between it and him.
"Tseng?" he questioned quietly, recognizing the young Wutainese man. Tseng looked at the ground, then up at Gabriel.
"Traitor to Shinra, how do you defend your actions?" he asked.
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "Traitor to Shinra? I told them I was leaving. I could not work there anymore. Not when it was spiraling down out of control."
Tseng looked from Gabriel's hazel eyes down to the pistol he held. "Master Veld always spoke highly of you, even after you left. I would regret having to hurt you."
"Then don't." Gabriel suggested. "Leave and pretend you never saw me. Does anyone else know of this dock?" Tseng shook his head. "Good. Leave, and pretend nothing happened."
"I…" Tseng hesitated, and then nodded. He asked quietly, "What could have been so bad it made you run?"
Gabriel grinned. "You might want to look into some of Shinra's doings. They were a lot more trusting of their employees back in my time, and there were many less secrets. I'm sure you aren't the only one to question things. Find the others, and go after the answers. One thing I've learned about Shinra, they tend to cover up their mistakes rather than actually get rid of them. You could find everything they've ever done that's ever gone wrong, if you look hard enough."
Tseng raised an eyebrow. "Everything?" His mind jumped immediately to the Dark Force. What could Rufus be hiding...?
"Everything." Gabriel promised. "You pursue Cloud Strife and AVALANCHE, correct? Look up Nibelheim and find what was done to that boy and his family. You might feel differently about hunting him."
"How do you know so much?" Tseng asked.
"Long years with Shinra, and long years spying on Shinra. I make it a point to know what they do at any given time. I don't want the mistakes of the past to keep spiraling." Gabriel said. He waved Tseng away. "Go back and lead your Turks, go back and serve your President, but remember to always keep your eyes open. It's amazing how much is hidden in plain sight." He strode past Tseng and got into his boat, watching from the corner of his eye as Tseng walked back to his single-man helicopter. He smiled to himself. Maybe this new generation of Turks wasn't too bad after all.
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Okay, allow me to explain... For me, a bonus chapter is usually a single short chapter or scene, focusing around one person, that was too small to make a full-fledged chapter but too large to combine with another. This one happened to be about Gabriel. I'll probably have more, just for those random moments that don't seem to fit. Obviously, this is where Tseng was before he came to find Elena.
See, now? Gabriel has many ties to the past, so he'd obviously have a larger role to play with Before Crisis and Crisis Core. (smiley) And Kyle... Kyle is not an OC, I promise! The clues are there. Do you know who he's talking about?
Hugs to you all! Don't forget to review!
Li