Before Crisis: The Beginning
By DarkAngel
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me. I'm only borrowing 'em.
Chapter 18: The Mystery Helper
St. Andrew's fight with the operatives should have left him exhausted by all rights. Taking on dozens of men, even with the help of the Junon constabulary, was like running a marathon in a three second burst. He'd used all the brute strength and magic he had, and while he took hits, he could swear that with each man he brought down, he was getting higher and higher. It was like he'd zapped himself with his EMR. He hadn't felt this alive since scrapping with rival gangs back in his heyday. That part of himself that he'd locked away when he'd signed the contract and donned the suit came rushing back in a euphoric jolt, enlivening his senses, pushing his reflexes up, bringing him to life. When it was over (and it was over far too soon), St. Andrew was grinning. That had felt good.
Now though, he had to get to the branch office. Leaving the guardsmen to clean up, he sprinted up the last stretch of staircase and came out into the upper part of the city. Looking around to get his bearings, he headed off. Up here he didn't run into as much resistance, something which disappointed him. He could feel the adrenaline in his system winding down, and that gave him the opportunity to think.
Just how big was the AVALANCHE presence here? How had a group grown this large seemingly overnight? How had the boys missed something like this? None of it was making sense to St. Andrew, and it made him irritable.
When he reached the branch office, he ran up the stairs to the president's suite, arriving just in time to see paramedics lifting the prone head of the Shin-Ra Company onto a stretcher. St. Andrew looked up and nearly jumped when he saw Veld staring at him from a giant video screen.
"Good, you're here. Did you rout the terrorists?"
"Yeah," St. Andrew replied, sticking his hands in his pockets. He watched as the paramedics hooked President Shinra up to a mobile transfusion unit. While two of them did that, another team was packing up, and yet another team was opening the doors wider so the stretcher could get through. All that security and AVALANCHE had still managed to break through and hit them where it really hurt. It rankled. Gritting his teeth, St. Andrew continued with his report.
"There were a lot of them. The thing that gets to me is that they kept hidden for so long so well. I talked with my old gang. They had no idea any of this'd been going on."
"I see." Veld's face was inscrutable, but there was nevertheless an undertone to his voice that impressed upon St. Andrew just how bad the situation was. He sat up straighter. "Never mind that for now. I want you to go with President Shinra back to Midgar. He'll need security. Are you all right with that?"
"Yeah." St. Andrew looked over once more at the last of the medic team. "I'll go right now."
"Report in to me when you arrive," Veld said. "We'll have gathered enough information by then and we can work out a plan of action." The Turk commander smiled thinly. "One that doesn't involve just reaction."
St. Andrew nodded. "Roger that."
-----
When she'd regained her motor functions and her composure, Rosalind had reported to Tseng who had told her that the room she wanted was not far off now. Getting up gingerly, she looked at the clone, which had phased back into a neutral, humanoid form. It looked like a crash test dummy, only without features or any other markings. Now that the copy magic had short circuited, she could see the damage she'd done it clearly. The flesh hadn't absorbed the bullets at all – it had only looked as if it had. Another illusion then, designed to discourage the enemy into thinking they were fighting an invincible adversary. The casing of the clone had been tough enough to withstand nearly every attack she threw at it. Her eyes flickered to the sole of the dummy's left foot where a particularly nasty burn mark was evident. Acrid smoke steamed from the dummy. Rosalind shook her head. To think that the core had been in its heel.
"The most advanced technology in the world, huh." Rosalind murmured. She ran a hand through her hair.
"Okay, what's next?" The chaos of the battle had left her unnerved. The sound of her voice reassured her somehow, grounded her to reality. Rolling her shoulders to get some swing back into them, she eyed the open door in front of her. She was almost to the control room. After giving the damaged clone one more look she headed off, her resolve refreshed.
According to the map on her PHS, there was a short L-shaped corridor and before that, another door which would lead to a large room, and then the control room. Nodding to herself, she made her way forward.
Just as she was about to make the turn in the bend, she stopped. There were muted whispers coming from around there. Carefully, she hefted her gun in one hand and listened.
"The preparations for the firing of the mako cannon have been completed," a voice asserted. "This is Midgar's last day."
There was a satisfied snicker from the other. "We've waited a long time for this day. Bye bye, Midgar."
The casualness of their intent angered Rosalind. She whipped around the corner weapon drawn. "That's as far as you're all getting," she snapped.
There were three of them. They seemed to be having a hard time believing she'd made it this far. She hissed angrily, the sound cutting through their vocalized disbelief. They fell silent, watching her, appraising her. Finally, one of the men sneered.
"How are you going to fight all of us by yourself? It looks like you came all the way down here for nothing." He snickered. So it had been him who had casually laughed at Midgar's destruction. Rosalind's eyes narrowed. Like hell, she snarled in her mind.
Two of the operatives she dispatched quickly. The last one – the gloater – she took special care with. While the other two had received quick and painless shots to the head, an instant death, she'd shot the gloater in the stomach. He gurgled, sinking to his knees, hands convulsively twitching, trying to stem the flow of blood. Rosalind watched him with a cold fury.
"Y-You bitch," he stammered. He coughed violently, spitting up globs of blood. The coughing probably wasn't helping to stop the damage, either. Good. Let him suffer.
"Gunshot wounds to the stomach are the slowest and most painful ways you can die," she said, her voice sounding as if it were coming from outside herself. "Enjoy it." She watched him for a few more seconds. He had fallen onto his side now. There was a growing red pool spilling freely out, covering his hands despite his vain efforts to stop the bleeding. He wasn't moving as much now. Turning on her heel she left him to suffer his last moments alone.
The PHS rang. Rosalind picked up. She held the phone away from her ear as Tseng's voice shouted down the line.
"We're in big trouble. The cannon's override switch has been activated."
It felt as if something cold and hard had fallen straight from her chest down to her stomach. Gripping the PHS tightly she whispered "What can I do?" Midgar… Her mother and father… her family…
"Get to the control room and shut down the override!"
Right. She couldn't panic now. She had a job to do. Swallowing the sickly fear burning in her throat she asked how long there was until the cannon fired.
"One minute," Tseng replied. "The control room is up ahead. Hurry!"
Rosalind ran, her breath coming out in harsh gasps. She didn't have much time. Thoughts flashed in her mind, each one shocking her, spurring her on despite the growing stitch in her side. The small grey brick building she'd grown up in; her sense of awe at seeing the upper world for the first time, all lights and strange smells that she couldn't equate with the slums – as different as sky was from earth; smells of paint from her mother's renovation project; her friends from the military school; her sister and her brother. Blindly she ran, her vision wavering, a wash of dizziness threatening to overwhelm her. Please, let me make it -!
She burst through a set of double doors into a darkened room. Rosalind stopped, gasping for breath, nearly slumped over double, her eyes closed. She wondered how much more time she had left.
There was a hum and a clapping noise, and suddenly the room was flooded with light. At that moment, Rosalind opened her eyes.
She didn't know whether to gasp or retch. It was horrible. Bodies of AVALANCHE operatives were everywhere, all of them dead. On trembling legs, all thoughts of the countdown leaving her, she approached one of the mutilated bodies. Bending down, she sank onto her knees instead, her mind so caught up in surprise and revulsion that she didn't register the sharp pain in her knees as they met the cold metal floor. With a shaking hand, she reached out to the body.
Terrible. The word bubbled up inside her mind, until it was repeated again and again. Terrible. What could have done this? She withdrew her hand, glancing at another body nearby. It too had been slashed. That particular body had been more gruesomely disfigured; what she was looking at was a torso. She couldn't immediately see the victim's lower body, nor did she want to know. She could smell blood and gore and death and it made her sick. She hadn't signed up for stuff like this. Gunshot wounds she could take. Seeing pure malevolent carnage like this – it unsettled her.
Getting up shakily, she looked around. There were long gouge marks along the floor and walls of the room too. She followed one mark across the floor. It continued across yet another body of a fallen operative, then extended up the wall in an arc. It was as if someone had swung a scythe carelessly and mown these people down without giving thought to damage of either people or objects. The careless and seemingly easy way in which this had been done made her stomach lurch.
Her eyes settled on the entrance to the control room. Someone – or something – was probably in there. Would she be cut to ribbons too? She swallowed. I don't have any choice but to go, she thought. A fleeting thought – how she didn't really want to do this anymore – entered her head. Taking a step forward, then another, she soon found herself before the door. With a hand that was visibly shaking, she pressed at the panel. The door slid open.
What she saw surprised her. The control room was a small space occupied mostly by panels without even benefit of a chair for the control room monitor. Everything appeared to be normal. Stopping in front of the panel she would need to access, she blinked, disbelieving. But Tseng had told her…
Her PHS rang. Still somewhat dazed, Rosalind picked up. It was Tseng.
"Good job, Rosalind," he said. He sounded relieved and proud, like a father who'd watched his child get through a piano recital without incident. Rosalind blinked again, trying to make sense of the whole situation. She felt overwhelmed. She made a feeble noise of incomprehension. What was he talking about?
"You stopped the cannon, didn't you?"
"What are you talking about? I just got into the control room now." Rosalind looked around, still feeling as if everything wasn't really there, as if she was living in some sort of surrealistic place where nothing was quite as it seemed. She attempted to bring some common sense into the proceedings. "I'm about to stop the cannon from here."
At her words, Tseng's voice turned to concern. If she hadn't shut down the cannon, then who had? Rosalind shook her head. She didn't know anything. What was going on here? She took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts.
"I do have something to report, though." She said each word slowly, carefully, so that they would make sense to her. Trying to grasp everything, she explained to him about the bodies and the room she'd left behind, everything slashed up. She didn't notice that Tseng had gone quiet on his side of the line, so caught up was she with trying to piece together everything that had happened. "Only someone with a lot of power could have done that," she concluded at last. That was just it. There had been no security robots, no hidden programs. What had done that to those men?
There were some moments of silence; Tseng acknowledged her report. After getting her to check to make sure the security override was in place he told her to get to the Junon airport. They would all be heading back for Midgar. Apparently Rafe and Samantha had found some promising leads on AVALANCHE.
After hanging up, Rosalind checked the panel. No. Someone had definitely set the override in place and left. But who? Rosalind frowned, trying to puzzle it all out. Then she heard a voice behind her.
"You did this."
Rosalind whirled around. A woman was coming through the doors from the room where the slaughtered AVALANCHE operatives were. She was taller than Rosalind herself, of medium build. She had short brown hair and wore garb that wasn't native to Midgar or Junon. In her hand she carried a sword. In the woman's eyes was murder – and she was directing her gaze right at Rosalind.
"AVALANCHE!" Rosalind gasped. Then she paused. Wait. She was AVALANCHE… "…right?"
The expression on the woman's face didn't change. "That's right." She hefted her sword up, her advance not slowing. The room wasn't big at all. Within moments she'd be where Rosalind was – sooner in fact, with that sword advancing in front of her.
"I'll have your head for what you did to my comrades!" the woman shouted. She raised her weapon.
The fight was by any standard a bad one. Rosalind had never been this quickly and thoroughly beaten down, not even by that bastard who had choked her, or Fuhito, or Shears. None of her attacks were hitting this woman, who seemed to be protected by some sort of barrier. The woman made no sudden movements, merely following Rosalind as she tried to scramble futilely out of the way and swinging out with her sword. A white hot pain blossomed in Rosalind's thigh and she gasped, nearly collapsing. Limping now, she got to the end of room and pressed the panel quickly to escape. The woman moved again at her stately, inevitable pace, sword aloft. Her face was stony, and it seemed she had every intention of taking her time with Rosalind's execution.
She's toying with me, Rosalind thought hysterically, limping out of the security complex. The woman followed not far behind. Why doesn't she get it over with? Instead she's just taking these little chunks out of me. The deliberateness of the woman's actions chilled her. She didn't appear to be angry, or even insane. There was just something really methodical and cold about her.
Eventually their protracted game of cat and mouse came to an end when Rosalind reached the dock. There was nowhere left for her to run – or limp – to. The sun was setting, a beautiful grapefruit orange against streaks of violet darkening into royal blue in the distance. Rosalind didn't notice any of this. She turned her head and saw the woman approaching, still at that measured pace. She had only two options here – no three. She could jump into the ocean. She dismissed that thought immediately. She could fight here and be killed. Or she could give up and be killed anyway. She could have laughed for crying. Those were all horrible choices.
"A fitting end for someone like you," the woman said, her voice dispassionate. She raised her sword once more. "Down with the Shin-Ra!" Finely honed metal bore down on her. Rosalind shut her eyes.
There was a clang, and the sound of metal scraping against metal. Rosalind's eyes flew open.
"That's as far as you go," another voice, this one male, said coolly. Rosalind looked up – and gasped.
The woman seemed just as startled, her face finally giving way to some other expression besides calmly determined murder. "It can't be," she murmured, her lips barely moving. "You're –"
Her opponent – a tall, silver-haired man in black leather armour and a wicked looking long sword swung his blade back and brought it down again. Rosalind shut her eyes again, crouching as a roaring filled her ears and debris flew everywhere. Some of it hit her, and she winced.
When she'd opened her eyes again she saw that the woman was still standing her ground, unharmed. In a wide circle around where she stood was a depressed area of ground, like a crater. Rosalind's eyes widened. The energy of the attack had rebounded harmlessly off of her, damaging her surroundings instead.
But while the woman was unharmed, she was clearly struggling. Rosalind could see her jaw muscles working as she gritted her teeth, her sword arm struggling to hold back her opponent's blade. She used her other arm to brace herself. "So it is you…" she gritted out. She leapt back, twisting her blade to get out of harm's way.
"'The Silver-haired Soldier'. Sephiroth."
No way. Rosalind gaped. This man was – But it made sense, now that she thought about it. There was that trademark sword she'd heard so much about. Plus the silver hair – how could she have missed that? He was so much more – she paused, scrambling for a descriptor – impressive than the legends said. He was speaking now. Rosalind brought her attention back to her immediate situation.
"I am Elfé," the woman declared, presumably in response to Sephiroth's question. "The leader of AVALANCHE."
Wait. The leader was a woman?! This person was AVALANCHE's leader? Again Rosalind reeled. This was too much.
Elfé was pointing her weapon at Sephiroth. There was none of that dispassionate ice in her expression now. She seemed alive, crackling with an energy Rosalind couldn't really place. "Sephiroth." Again, she spoke, the general's name on her lips like a declaration. "Why do you fight?" When it seemed as if Sephiroth would give no answer, she spoke once more.
"We fight in the name of a just cause. By retreating today we are victorious." With that, she swept her cape around herself and strode off, seemingly unconcerned about the general's presence, and with finishing Rosalind off.
A surge of panic swept through Rosalind. Was that it? It was over? Where was she going? Why wasn't Sephiroth doing anything to stop her? Her musings were interrupted by his voice.
"You there."
Her head jerked up.
"I sense an exceptional energy coming from her. Tell your superiors not to take her lightly." And with those words, Sephiroth too departed. Before he left, she thought she could hear him muttering under his breath the words the AVALANCHE leader had thrown at him.
"…a just cause…"
-----
The mood in Turks headquarters, if not grim, was quite serious. All of them – Veld, Tseng, Rude, Reno, St. Andrew, Samantha, Rafe and Rosalind herself – sat around a conference table, listening to Veld tally up the situation so far: They'd saved the President and Midgar. On the negative side, the AVALANCHE threat was still there, and Shin-Ra didn't have the manpower to deal with them as they currently stood.
"President Shin-Ra has given us new orders," Veld said, moving onto the next item on the agenda. "Given the information we've been able to uncover –" He nodded briefly at Samantha and Rafe, "We are looking at numbers in the thousands. What started off as a small group dedicated to the studies of planet life has become a resistance organization with global reach. They go under different names. While most of their affiliates are harmless in and of themselves, they are being used as recruitment centres for more operatives. Either way we look at it, subjective sympathies lie with these groups, which naturally doesn't bode well for Shin-Ra. That is why the President has decided to nip the problem at its root.
"This is what you're going to do. I will be splitting you up into several teams. President Shinra has given the routing out and disposal of AVALANCHE high priority. While we are integral to these actions, he has entrusted the majority of work to SOLDIER."
All around the table silently acknowledged this. The Turks were more of a specialized corps. SOLDIER would be better suited to the large scale action that the President was planning.
"The issue, as I have said" Veld said, "is manpower. There aren't enough SOLDIERs to deal effectively with the AVALANCHE threat. I want you to go find candidates for SOLDIER membership. Bring back as many as you can – the more candidates the better."
Rosalind shifted in her seat. Something about the way he said it wasn't sitting right with her. It was Samantha that brought it up. She had been drumming her fingers on the desk, her face thoughtful. Finally, she looked up, eyeing Veld squarely.
"How are we going to find these candidates, sir? I get the feeling this isn't just a recruitment drive."
Veld smiled thinly. "You're right. It's not. We get applicants for entry into SOLDIER, but very few make it for various reasons. We still need to get our men from somewhere. In that case, we go out and find suitable candidates – regardless of whether they applied or not."
From Rosalind's left side, St. Andrew made a hissing noise, sucking air through his teeth. Rosalind herself stared at her hand on the tabletop. So this was one of Shin-Ra's industrial secrets. She blinked in recollection at the rumours. Not everyone joined Shin-Ra because they wanted to…
Veld finished explaining the mission parameters: they would be split into small teams and dispatched around the world. They would have a timetable of six weeks to gather all the candidates together. This was Shin-Ra's response to the AVALANCHE threat. Force with force. The war had begun. From here on out things would get increasingly difficult. There was no stepping back from the edge now.
Author's Notes: Thanks to hikarisan and TheDreamChild for their suggestions on what to do about story length. A lot of the chapters were snippets, which worked well in the beginning of the story, but don't really cut it anymore. I've started to stitch together chapters to shorten things up and make the flow easier to follow.
I'll be changing POV from the next chapter on. :) It's time to give Rosalind a break and let someone else take the lead for a while. See you on the other side!