October 1, afternoon and evening
The helicopter blades whirred monotonously, not loud enough to cover all sounds and not quiet enough for conversation. To the casual observer, the helmeted Second looked asleep in his seat, slumped against the safety belts with his arms crossed over his stomach, but his eyes were bright and one hand was halfway in his pocket, fingering something there.
There were two Thirds in the chopper with him, along with the pilot and co-pilot and a squad of infantrymen divided among the other helicopters in the fleet. It seemed so unsportsmanlike, so unfair - but at the same time it was a compliment. If the company thought Veld needed this much firepower to bring him down, they must be absolutely terrified of him.
Kunsel sighed, leaning his head back on the rest and staring unseeing at the ceiling. This reminded him way too much of a similar mission he'd read about, wherein a whole battalion was sent out after one man. But only three of those had survived. He was on the company's side on this one, and he wouldn't let the men under his command go down easily.
His fingers smoothed over the guardhound's sides. The stone was cool to the touch despite being kept next to his body, and every time he touched it there was an undeniable tingling that he felt he ought to place but couldn't. His mind unwillingly returned to Cissnei. She'd made her choice, and if it came to it he had no doubt she could hold her own, but there were so many questions that revolved around her. Her actions were so unpredictable - one day she was practically begging to be his friend and spilling all her secrets to him, and the next, she attacked him and disappeared without a word of explanation or apology.
After that he'd been hoping for a respite, time to gather his scattered thoughts and try to figure out what was going on in the world, and then he'd had another stupid Turk-related mission dumped on him.
"The traitor, Veld, has been captured out on the Western Continent and we're bringing him in. You're to take a squad of infantry and escort him from Corel Prison to Midgar for trial. Under no circumstances should you let him have contact with anyone outside of the guard, and it would be better to kill him than let him escape."
So here he was, several thousand feet above the scorching Corel Desert, going to take Veld to his probable execution.
Abruptly there was a change in the vibrations and they were descending rapidly, the temperature rising as their altitude decreased. All the men onboard reached for their weapons, and with a sigh Kunsel fastened his helmet's chinstrap and adjusted the angle of his sword on his back. Then the chopper hit dirt and both side doors crashed open, troops spilling out and taking up crouching positions in the sand, guns trained on a tall, dark man handcuffed between two burly infantrymen.
Kunsel squinted through the sun and drifting sand. Oh, yeah, Scarlet was here, too. Come to think of it, those weren't generic infantrymen, either; they bore the badge of the Weapons Development Department on their arms - Scarlet's personal troops. Veld's scarred face was stoic, but the SOLDIER didn't doubt that he'd already suffered enough at the executive's hands, judging from her satisfied expression.
"Kunsel, Second Class, reporting as assigned," he said, one eye on the prisoner and one on Scarlet as he approached. The reinforcements half-circled the ex-Turk, guns covering every angle of escape.
"About time," the blonde woman snapped, turning away, adjusting her combat vest. Kunsel breathed an unconscious sigh of relief that she didn't seem to recognize his name. "Take him on the first chopper, straight back to the Tower for his trial. And don't lose this charge!" Okay, so she did remember him.
"Yes, ma'am." He glanced back at his men and raised his chin; the semicircle broke as an opening was made facing the nearest helicopter. Kunsel crossed the sand toward Veld, stopping in front of the two Department soldiers. "I can take it from here." One began to sneer, but was elbowed by his companion and they both stepped back hurriedly as they caught Scarlet's eyes on them.
"Come with me, sir," Kunsel said quietly to Veld, nodding toward the idling chopper.
The ex-Turk still hadn't said a word, just did as he was told, an almost imperceptible crease in his brow. Kunsel followed a step behind, his sword drawn just in case, and the infantry closed in around them. The two Thirds boarded after Veld and took seats on either side of him; Kunsel sat facing him, his sword returned to his back as there was no room for it in the narrow compartment, but he had an infantry rifle across his knees - not that it looked like there'd be the least opportunity to use it, but he'd learned one thing from Cissnei: appearances are deceiving.
A quick glance out the open door showed the other troops, Scarlet's included, boarding the remaining choppers. Three infantry were jogging toward the primary helicopter and Kunsel waited until they were aboard and had closed both side doors before calling up to the pilot, "Let's go home, skipper!" There was an answering grumble and the blades' rhythm changed, followed by the vaguely nauseous feeling of the ground slipping away. Then they were airborne and gaining speed.
Veld had his eyes mostly shut, although Kunsel could detect a faint glimmer between his lids as he was no doubt keenly observing every detail. Well, the SOLDIER had had a few lessons in defying scrutiny; he withdrew all expressions into his helmet and assumed a blank face, letting his mind race along other tracks while he pretended attentiveness. His thoughts couldn't get anywhere, though, not without more information. Zack was dead, no one knew exactly why or how. Cissnei was gone who-knew-where, without a word or trace. The Turks as a whole were falling apart, SOLDIER was being undermined by the other departments, the President was content to sit back and watch the corruption grow up around him, and there was no one to trust. No one seemed to care. Perhaps it would be a good time to disappear.
...But the small problem of responsibility remained. At the moment, he was on a mission; overall, he'd sworn loyalty to the Company when he'd joined SOLDIER. That sort of thing had never stopped him before. So why was he still here?
It was twilight when they landed in the Wastes, but the tarmac was lit with every spotlight that could be brought to bear, making the surrounding darkness appear even blacker. It looked as if a good fraction of the Shinra army was stationed around the helipad when the escort arrived.
Both of the chopper's side doors were opened. Kunsel stood and briefly stretched, trying to work the cramps out of his neck and shoulders, before tossing aside his rifle in favor of his sword and motioning Veld out. The dark-haired man rose, stepping down from the helicopter with a slight limp, and stopped just outside.
"Four years, and they still fear me this much," the ex-Turk said, the first words Kunsel had yet heard from him. His voice was deep, quiet and yet easily heard, and the SOLDIER could see why it was very little effort for Veld to command the respect of his department. Former department. Speaking of which...in the process of escorting Veld to the waiting troop car, Kunsel quickly scanned the horizon, half expecting to see a petite silhouette hidden near one of the many rocky spires, but the sky was too dark and he couldn't see any farther than the edge of the circle of light. She'd be a fool to come here now, anyway.
The leader of the reinforcements approached them, and after a quick salute to Kunsel and a word that his job here was done, the army closed in and the SOLDIER was pushed aside as Veld was marched off toward the truck. Kunsel felt sorry for him, but right now he didn't have any sympathy to spare. He'd felt sorry for a lot of people over the years, and nothing had ever come of it.
Veld boarded the waiting truck and disappeared, and the entire entourage roared off into the night, into the city, leaving the troops to find their own way home. With a handful of gil, Kunsel bribed one of the chopper pilots to drop him off at the Tower on his way to the hangar. On the short ride, alone in the now-spacious-seeming compartment, he dropped his helmet to the floor and ran his fingers through his hair.
Why in the Seven Pits of Hell did he feel this way? He'd been so ready to leave, intending to finish the one mission - deliver Veld - then slip back under the Plate and vanish there in the darkness just as quickly as he had appeared there so many years ago. The carved guardhound weighed heavily, not only in his pocket but on his mind. Why had she given it to him? That irked him just enough so that he might stick around and figure it out.
The helicopter touched down softly on the roof, and he climbed out with a hurried thank-you to the pilot. Once on the elevator, he almost pushed the button for the Turk floor, but remembered. The apartment was a mess; no one would be sleeping there tonight. No sane person would walk into a death trap. But Zack did...
It was just as well that his roommates weren't there when he finally reached the bunkroom, crashing onto his bed and just lying there on his back, wondering if it would be worth the effort to get cleaned up and find something to eat before falling asleep then and there. Knocking his helmet off and onto the floor, he rubbed both hands over his face, grimacing at the sand and grit. Yeah, a shower would probably be worth it.
With effort, he forced himself back onto his feet, kicking his boots off and under the bed before heading down the hall in his socks, to the communal showers. The water woke him up a bit, refreshing him and making him realize that he was also very hungry. He stopped by the break room on the way back to his quarters and grabbed a handful of energy bars; once in the bunkroom, he sprawled out on his bed, munching at the food held in one hand while with the other he logged in to his laptop. It was about time he got around to that flashdrive!
He was almost halfway through all the files he'd "salvaged" - and was getting more troubled and confused the farther he read - when a trio of heavy footsteps sounded in the hall outside. Kunsel tensed at once, his mind flashing to the possibility of being arrested, but then relaxed just as easily, smiling slightly, at recognizing the shuffling steps of his roommates. Shifting around on the bed so his back was to the wall and the computer screen was hidden from all but him, he waited until the other Seconds were settled in their own bunks before continuing his reading.
Although he'd gotten all the records related to Zack, some important information was missing. Especially something big, the Jenova Project, as it was called. That name, that somehow sent an inexplicable shiver down his spine, didn't appear in any of the earlier files but was only mentioned after the break-out from the Nibelheim Mansion. But there was absolutely no clue as to what it actually was, only vague references to off-the-books experiments somewhere in the Nibel Mountains...that, and a mysterious Specimen C whose name appeared alongside Zack's everywhere the Project was mentioned.
"Hey, Kunsel!"
His head whipped up and he glanced about disorientedly for a moment before focussing on the SOLDIER lying on the bunk opposite his.
"Yeah?" he drawled, rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes.
"You've been at that stuff for an hour now. Don't'cha ever sleep?"
"I wanna know what's so interesting on there," a sleepy voice mumbled from the bunk above Kunsel.
He shook his head. "Just catching up on an old friend." Too bad they'd joined too late and hadn't had the chance to meet Zack. "I'll be turning in soon enough." He'd seen enough to fill his mind for a good many nights with unsettling thoughts - about his friend, about the whole SOLDIER program, about himself.
Kunsel logged off and closed the laptop with a snap, leaning his head against the wall behind him. Depending on what his next assignment was, he hoped to have time tomorrow to go up to the Shinra library and do some more investigating. If this Jenova Project was as big as he was getting the feeling it was, there would have to be more information on it: scientific papers, department reports, expenditure records...all locked up, of course, but that wouldn't slow him much.
It was a dark, deserted alleyway that Cissnei had ducked into, leaning back against the mildewy wall with her hands on her knees and lungs gasping for breath. That last encounter with the city patrol had been too close for comfort, and she wasn't familiar enough with life under the Plate to know the security routes and schedules so she could avoid them. In hindsight, staying above the Plate would probably have been a better course of action, seeing as she was more accustomed to the territory, but at the time her thought had been to find somewhere to disappear until she could think of a better plan.
Now that her brain had time to catch up to her actions and she was beginning to come off the adrenaline high she'd been running on since that morning, Turk training finally took precedence over preservation instincts. The events of the last eight hours, that had happened so fast at the time, now replayed in her mind in a nightmare slowness. Ducking under the Plate for cover hadn't been the worst of her mistakes; she wondered if it would have been better to try to convince Kunsel to come with her instead of knocking him with that skillet... But he was SOLDIER, and her department's troubles didn't touch him. She'd already dragged him into her affairs too much as it was, and had more than likely gotten him into more trouble than a guy like him ever deserved.
Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and ultimately brought her nothing except more regrets. What she really needed right now was intel, and backup, a disguise, perhaps a gun...oh, and a plan. A plan would be really nice right about now. But that would take time, and she was afraid she didn't have a lot of that to spare; the city was crawling with police patrols, and her black suit, previously an assurance of safety, now made her a target.
What made it worse was not knowing who she could trust. Her faith in Tseng had already been wavering, and she was cut off from all the other Turks, and who even knew where half of them were? If only Veld was here... Wishing got her nowhere. Now that she'd caught her breath, it was time to move out. As the city fell into shadow and the netherworld under the Plate became even darker, moving around unseen became easier and the risk of being spotted was somewhat less.
She'd need to consider all her options before making a plan she could stick to, but for now Cissnei decided that short-term thinking would do. First a meal, then a place to crash, followed by some recon. There weren't likely to be many places in the slums where a good meal could be found, and even fewer where it would be safe to sleep without expecting a knife in one's back, but previous Turk missions paid off. Don Corneo's wasn't the cleanest place, nor was it on her list of places to visit again before she died, but the guards there knew a good bribe when they were given one, and police patrols knew better than to stop there. Wall Market it was.
It would be a short walk from her present location to the Don's, but that would be along well-frequented roads - the most likely ones for the police to be patrolling. Overall, it would be best to wait until nightfall, but for lack of time a more direct approach would have to do. Taking off her jacket, she tied it about her waist, knowing she was sacrificing her protection from the slum denizens in favor of the disguise. She wished there was something she could do to change her hair, but luckily she wasn't one of the most conspicuous of the Turks, and she hoped there'd be enough girls in the Wall Market vicinity that one more would go unnoticed.
She took a deep breath and slumped her shoulders, dragging her feet in a worn-out shuffle as she stepped out into the half light of the world under the Plate. One dim, dank street led to another; there was nothing remarkable about any of them, all littered with debris left from Midgar's construction, all lit by wan streetlamps that looked like relics from the time before mako, all inhabited by lowlifes who were too afraid of the police to try living above-Plate.
Half a mile of roundabout back ways later, almost within sight of Corneo's place, she dared to think she might make it there without incident. Eyes were watching her from the darkened windows of the deserted buildings lining the street, but no one came out and accosted her. Until -
"Heyya, girl," a deep, slurring voice called from a darkened doorway. She glanced up quickly, but could make out little in the dim lighting. The front door of an abandoned warehouse across the street was missing, leaving the opening gaping like a toothless mouth; there was a figure slumped at the threshold...waving her over. Give that up, mister!
Cissnei quickened her steps as she passed directly in front of the building. Her eyes were on the ground, but all senses were on high alert, and Rekka was getting squeezed fiercely in her right hand. She wasn't completely expecting it, but she was prepared to respond when, without warning, the man leapt up and crossed the street in two bounds. Gracefully she whirled out of his way, letting him stumble past the place she'd been standing, as she backed swiftly into the circle of light of one of the lamp posts.
She held her head high, whipping her hair out of her face with a quick shake of her head, and motioned to her jacket and pants. "Blacksuit. Wanna mess with me?" With any luck - a concept she didn't put much faith in - Shinra would have kept the news to themselves of open season on Turks, so the uniform ought to daunt this guy...if he wasn't too sure of himself to care.
He paused, a crooked grin revealing black teeth. "Not me, sister." He held his hands up in denial.
Cissnei's grip tightened on her weapon as she narrowed her eyes at the slum-dweller. Trust your gut - and right now, it was saying loud and clear that this was a worse situation than it looked. It wasn't the first time in the last nine hours that she wished she had a less conspicuous weapon; something like a gun, or even an EMR would be better than a giant spinning red wheel of death. She'd use it if she had to, of course, but knife work would be preferable...although she hated the thought of having to get close enough to the man to be able to use her knife. She could smell his reek from here, ten feet away.
"I just wanna talk," he continued, making useless noise and blocking the way she'd been headed.
But just as she stepped away from the post, advancing on the man who retreated at every step, she felt a movement behind her and turned in time to duck a hand aimed at her neck. In an instant Rekka was back in her pocket - but still accessible at a moment's notice - and her knife was out. The second denizen backed off, but only for a second. Cissnei had an impression of a scarred, bearded face and the strong stench of smoke before he closed in again, dodging her thrusts and blocking her with his arms.
She knew more than one way to fight, though, and no trick was too low if it saved her life. Her knee slammed into his groin, followed by an elbow to the throat and a quick disengage. Cissnei stepped back enough to regain her balance, then leapt forward again, knife angled for the man's forearm. If she could draw blood, there was a good chance they'd shy away from her and leave her alone.
The first man, the heavyset one with the distracting words, had maneuvered behind her and was out of her sight, setting her nerves on edge. With good reason, too, as two hands wrapped easily around her waist and picked her up. One of her hands grabbed onto the lamp post for leverage and she kicked behind her, swinging her body as much as she could, and aiming low with her feet. The guy dropped her and staggered back, gasping, but the bearded thug was on her before she could regain her footing, and he slammed her back against the wall; his chest collided with hers, knocking the wind out of her, and her head cracked painfully against the masonry. Her legs were securely pinned, and as she brought her hands up, she realized that somewhere in the process of being lifted and dropped and tackled, she'd dropped the knife.
Meaty hands were on her shoulders, spinning her around so her front was to the wall and her wrists were behind her back. She fought like a cat, lashing out with one free leg and twisting her arms out of his grasp, but it wasn't looking good. All she needed was one hand to reach Rekka and then it would all be over with, but her weapon could be a million miles away for all the good it was doing in her pocket. A hand grabbed her collar, twisting until her already-labored breathing whistled in her throat.
"Blacksuit you're not, missy," the first man growled. "Would'a been easier for you if you'd just done as I said and -"
"Excuse me, but what's going on here?"
Both men froze, and even Cissnei swallowed a gulp of panic at the thought that they'd been caught by police.
"I believe you ought to let go of the young lady, unless you want me to cook whatever pitiful remnants you use for brains." There was an electric crackle as one of the thugs moved away from Cissnei and toward the newcomer; a brief scuffle, a scream, the smell of a lightning strike and burned flesh, and Scarface was writhing on the ground by the lamp post. The first denizen let go of her shirt and took two slow steps back, hands up in the defensive gesture again, then turned and fled into the darkness. One hand on the wall for support, the other in her pocket in case the newcomer proved to be trouble, Cissnei turned around and looked up into Rod's grinning face.
"You looked like you could use some help, partner," he said, smacking his EMR into his left palm. "Don't worry, happens to all of us sometime or other."
"Thanks. That was...convenient." She spared him a small smile. "What brings a rookie like you to the bad part of town?"
"Same as you, probably. When you're driven out of house and home, where else do you go but the bottom?" He shrugged and gestured ahead, where a black and red motorbike was leaned against the next light post. "I'm on recon right now. Looking to see what's going on in the rest of the city."
"There's someone to report to? I figured everyone was either hiding or captured."
"Actually, for once Shinra was true to their word, and they didn't kill anyone who turned themselves in. That's where Reno, Rude, and the Director are -"
"Tseng? Turned himself in? Why would he...?"
"Save face, maybe. Or cover for us. Or, who knows - he never seemed as completely trustworthy as Veld was, so maybe he's really on their side. Legend's in charge now; we're all meeting at Little Gun's bar and trying to regroup. I'd heard that Shotgun was in the area and was looking to take her back to headquarters. You...you were supposed to be dead, according to official Shinra memos. Something about tangling with a SOLDIER while trying to escape?"
"My bodyguard was the one to be knocked out, not me." She surpressed a twinge of guilt and continued, "I've heard nothing about what's going on, and I haven't seen Shotgun at all. Mind giving me a lift back to the bar? It'll be a nicer place to stay than what I'd had in mind."
"Sure thing." The red-headed Turk flipped his keys out of his pocket as they approached the bike. "By the way," he said as he swung a leg over, "seeing as you were the last one out of Shinra, what have you heard of Veld recently?"
"Veld? Nothing. Tseng asked me several days ago to correlate some data on him, but as far as I know, he's still on the Western Continent somewhere. Why do you ask?"
Rod paused a moment before replying. "There's been a lot of rumors flying around, and the most troubling is one that Veld may have been captured by Shinra."
"But - if he has, he's as good as dead!"
"Don't we all know that? But him being captured is about as likely as the Plate falling. Probably just another barracks rumor."
Barracks, huh? "I might have an in on that one."
One red eyebrow raised.
"I'll check as soon as you get me to that bar."