Chapter 22
Break Out
(Selphie)
At first, Selphie had felt a twinge of remorse, breaking into the train's engine room and knocking out the two G-Soldiers who were conducting the train, then stripping them down to their underwear and hurling them out a cargo door. At least Private Malgo and Corporal Hasberry had been clothed when Selphie chucked them out into the desert. It seemed unnecessarily cruel to leave a person both stranded and naked in the middle of nowhere.
But when Irvine handed Selphie the second soldier's gear—the other uniform was too big for her, so Irvine took it—Selphie looked at what she'd been given and decided that she had, in fact, been too kind to the soldiers. The man's uniform was coated in a thin mystery slime that stank like a deep fryer. His helmet was damp with sweat and full of long, black hairs. His helmet visor was smeared and covered in fingerprints. The gloves squished when she put them on. The boots stank like cheese and rubber and were full of tiny rocks that cut into her feet. The shirt made her feel like she was neck-deep in a swamp.
(This is probably the grossest thing ever…)
"Irv…" she said frankly. "Does your uniform totally suck, or is it just mine?"
Irvine had already suited up in the uniform and gloves of the first conductor. He held the soldier's helmet in his hands, looked inside, then shrugged. "Mine seems alright."
Selphie sighed. "Great. FANtastic."
Unfortunately, all the other soldiers on the train had either been thrown into the desert or had come down with terminal cases of "being on fire," and therefore had useless uniforms. What Selphie was currently wearing was her only option available, since there was no way Irvine could have fit into hers and vice versa.
She found a long black hair running in a zigzag across the inside of the visor. She stuck out her tongue, suppressing a gag, and plucked the hair between her fingers. She tried to throw it to the floor, but it wrapped around her gloved fingers like a snake. She frantically waved her hand around, but the hair wouldn't let go. Finally, she wiped her glove on her pants and tried to forget about the hair.
"How close are we?" Selphie asked, turning to look out the window. About a half hour ago, the endless desert had begun to grow scraggly patches of grass, slowly growing thicker and greener as the train traveled south. Now when she looked out the window, she could see an unbroken field of healthy green grass, with numerous trees—almost enough to call a forest.
Irvine flopped down in the conductor's chair and put his feet up on the control panel. A monitor on the panel displayed the train's course as a long, curving blue line, and their current position as a bright green dot in the middle. Irvine glanced at the screen, took his cowboy hat off, and put the G-Soldier's helmet on.
"Shouldn't be long now," Irvine said. "We're makin' good time."
Selphie grumbled. "I shoulda waited until we were closer to Timber before I put this uniform on."
"Now, now, Selphie," Irvine said. "If we'd run into a patrol with you in that pretty yellow dress of yours, we woulda been in trouble."
"I can handle trouble!" Selphie said. "I can't handle this uniform though. I'm coated in a layer of death."
"It ain't so bad," Irvine said, looking her up and down appraisingly.
"YES IT IS!" Selphie said. "Feel this."
She pulled off one glove and tossed it into his lap. It landed with a wet slap and Irvine recoiled. He picked it up between his thumb and forefinger, examining it like it was a dead animal.
"Jeez… did the guy soak it in grease or something?" he said.
"He must've," Selphie said.
Irvine tossed the glove back to Selphie. She caught it easily, but a part of her wished she'd just let it fall to the floor.
"Sorry, Selph," Irvine said. "That is some real bad luck ya got."
She sighed, gritted her teeth, and plunged her hand back into the glove with a nauseated shudder. After this adventure was over, she would need a long, long shower.
(A shower of acid, maybe.)
She considered asking to switch gloves, boots, and helmets with Irvine, but decided against it. The shirt and pants were truly the worst part of it all; the rest of the uniform was just the icing on the horrible, rotten cake.
She watched out the front window as the green horizon rushed towards them. Somewhere in the distance was Timber, hidden amongst its infamous forests. According to the news that she had read back in Deling City, fighting had already broken out there between SeeD and Galbadia. And according to Martine and Corporal Hasberry, additional soldiers were already on the way to end the battle decisively in Galbadia's favor.
(Gotta hurry!)
Selphie bounced on her toes, watching through the glass as trees whipped past on either side of the tracks. The metal wheels made a steady clack-clack-clack noise as the train rumbled and swayed to its destination.
It was hypnotic—the rhythm and the sound and the motion. The way the track extended out before them, guiding the train onward. The scenery around them was always changing, but also strangely still. When she was on a train, hours at a time could pass with her barely noticing. It was as if each and every train existed in its own pocket dimension, parallel to the world, yet infinitely far away from reality.
"Trraaain, traaaain, take us awaaay," Selphie sang softly to herself. Her helmet echoed her voice, like a miniature sound stage built only for her benefit. She stopped singing after that first line. Those were the only lyrics she knew for certain. The song, she knew, was actually a sappy love story of some kind, and wasn't really about trains at all. But the first line of the song appealed to her for obvious reasons and she had committed it to memory years ago.
(Someone should write a song about trains.)
Up ahead, Selphie could see the movement of something large approaching them. As it got nearer, she could see flashes of the long, metal frame of an approaching train. It was on the second set of tracks, so there was no danger of the two trains colliding, but Selphie still tensed up a little. She drew in a breath when she realized that it was another Galbadian military train, like the one they were currently riding in.
The train passed with a loud rush of engines. In its wake was a huge gust of wind that buffeted Selphie's train, making it sway on the tracks. She turned and looked out the side window and watched the other train until it vanished into the trees.
"Wonder where that train's goin'," Irvine said absently.
"Yeah," Selphie said.
In her mind, she conjured up the image of a train full of Galbadians, fleeing in fear from the combined forces of SeeD and Timber.
(That'd be cool.)
She turned around and looked out the front window again. High above the tree line, she could spy wispy tendrils of gray smoke rising into the sky. Every now and then, through gaps in the trees, she could catch glimpses of tall blue buildings in the distance.
"Looks like we're here," Irvine said. He took his boots off the control panel and leaned forward, scanning along the myriad of buttons and levers. "Uhh… which button slows us down?"
"The lever," Selphie said. She pointed at a gray bar on the control panel.
"Gotcha," Irvine said. He put his hand on the lever and gently pulled it back, easing the train down to a comfortable cruising speed. Selphie leaned backwards to compensate for the deceleration, not needing to grip anything as the train slowed itself down to a less suspicious velocity.
(Alright. Time to play it cool.)
This was Irvine and Selphie's second time pretending to be Galbadians. The first had been back when the pair had infiltrated the Galbadian Missile Base, trying their best to stop or delay the attack on Balamb Garden. No one had ever told Selphie if their efforts had contributed to saving the school or not, but in any case, they had successfully destroyed the missile base, striking a massive blow to the Galbadian military and reducing their long-range arsenal to almost nothing. If that wasn't a victory, Selphie didn't know what was.
Their time at the missile base had taught Selphie the importance of maintaining her cover story and acting like everything was under control, even in the scariest situations. Most Galbadians could be duped with a halfway feasible story and a couple of "yes, sirs."
But this time, her bluffing skills would truly be put to the test. Now, instead of just infiltrating a small military base, they were sneaking into an entire city that had been continuously occupied by Galbadians for almost two decades. If they made a mistake here, there was no backup plan, no rescue team coming to save them, and it was unlikely they'd ever escape the city.
The trees thinned out nearer the city limits—cut down by Galbadian logging—revealing the high blue wall that encircled the city of Timber. Now that they were closer, Selphie could see that there were at least a dozen places where smoke was rising from the town. Flickering red-orange lights dotted here and there on the horizon suggested that there were still active fires burning in the city.
(We're too late?)
The opening into the city was blocked off by a flashing black-and-white striped barricade stretched across the tracks. Soldiers manned the barricade, armed with rifles and military sabers. The wall around Timber was patrolled by even more soldiers, many of them staring down Selphie's train through the sights of their weapons, ready to open fire if the train didn't stop or slow down.
"Should we ram through?" Irvine asked, his hand on the accelerator lever.
She considered it for a moment. But even if the train managed to break through the barricade, survive the soldiers firing on it, and make it into the city, the Galbadians were likely to give chase. She and Irvine would then have to scramble and fight their way through all of Timber, and that wasn't going to help anybody.
"Be cool, dude," Selphie said. "Act like we're s'posed to be here."
Irvine nodded, then eased up on the throttle, bringing the train to a gentle stop just before the barricade. A handful of soldiers approached the train on either side. They bent forward as they walked, checking underneath the train for stowaways and other things that didn't belong under a train. Another soldier carrying a rifle in both hands approached the door leading to the train's engine room and knocked, waiting for Irvine and Selphie to open up.
Selphie wasn't the kind of person who planned things in advance. She knew that she would have to think of a clever story as to why they were the only two soldiers in the entire train. She trusted herself to come up with something spur-of-the-moment. In her experience, stories thought up on the spot tended to be more natural and easy to believe than stories that had been well rehearsed.
Nervous—but not to the point where she was panicky or jittery—Selphie hopped over to the door and yanked the heavy metal lever that opened it. The door swung inward and the Galbadian soldier stepped inside. He looked at Irvine and Selphie and nodded, then swung his rifle casually over his shoulder.
Before Selphie could say anything, the soldier asked, "You guys the second prisoner transport?"
(What does that mean?)
(I dunno. Say "yes.")
"Yup," Selphie said, deepening her voice a little. There were a handful of women in the G-Army, so there was no need for her to pretend to be a man, but it would probably help their case if she sounded older than a teenager. Her fake deep voice sounded phony to her ears, but she hoped that the helmet muffled some of the falseness out.
"You're early, you know," the soldier said. Selphie tensed up, trying to think of a good cover story.
"Is that a problem, sir?" she asked.
"Nah," the soldier said. He became more relaxed, and his voice was less formal. Selphie relaxed as well. "Just means you might have to wait awhile before you can leave. Lazy bastards in the guard battalion haven't prepped the prisoners for transport yet."
Selphie scoffed knowingly. "Sheesh. Figures."
"I know, right?" the soldier said. Selphie couldn't see his face, but she could hear the grin in his voice. "Hey, just a heads up: you guys ever transport SeeDs before?"
(SeeDs?)
Selphie stole a quick glance at Irvine.
"Uhhh… Nope," Selphie said. "This'll be a first."
"I hope you're ready for 'em," the soldier said. "This group's been nothing but trouble since the start. Four escape attempts in two days. Four! And they almost got out last time. Finally ran them down at the city limits. Lousy friggin SeeDs."
"Yeah," Selphie said, accidentally letting her voice return to its normal, higher pitch. "Stupid SeeDs!"
"What's the guard battalion doing?" Irvine asked, his voice conversational. "Sleeping?"
"I dunno," the soldier said. He shrugged. "If it were up to me, I'd just execute 'em all and be done with it. But the President wants them alive for some reason. I guess they have intel on the sorceress or something. Who knows?"
"Orders is orders," Selphie said, coldly. She still pretended to be on the soldier's side, even though the thought of him executing SeeDs made her hate him quite intensely.
(Wish I could throw HIM out of the train…)
"Yeah, true, true," the soldier mumbled. "Whatcha gonna do, eh?"
One of the soldiers who had went ahead to inspect the train returned and stood outside the doorway, looking in.
"Train's all clear," the outside soldier said.
"All right, you're good to enter," the inside soldier said. "You two know where you're goin'?"
"Uh, we could do with a refresher," Selphie said. "The inside of Timber's a bit new to us."
The soldier nodded, then angled himself so his body was facing the front of the train. He used his arm to gesture the directions as he spoke them. "Okay, straight on through the first four intersections, then left after the bridge, then right at the next junction."
"I think it's three intersections," the soldier outside said.
"Ah, whatever. Some number of intersections, then left after the bridge," the inside soldier said. "Next right, then keep going until the checkpoint. They'll know what to do with you there."
"Roger," Selphie said.
"Good talkin' with you two," the soldier said.
"Yeah," Selphie said.
"Thanks for the help," Irvine said.
With that, the soldier hopped off the train, his boots crunching in the gravel. He gave an "all-clear" wave to the soldiers at the wall, who hastily pulled the barricade into two halves, opening a gap wide enough for the train to pass through. Selphie closed the side door as Irvine nudged the accelerator, getting the train into motion.
"That was easy," Selphie said.
"It usually is with the G-Army," Irvine said. "Just smile, nod, and agree with whatever they say."
The train chugged under the archway and into the city. Though neither of them said it aloud, they both knew that their new priority was getting those SeeD prisoners out of Timber and safely back to Garden. And since that soldier had basically given them the perfect cover story—that of prisoner transport—all they needed to do was run with it until they were out of the city limits.
(After that, it's cake.)
The city of Timber had been ravaged. It seemed like no matter where Selphie focused her eyes, destruction was all she could see. There were no civilians out in the streets. All the windows in the buildings were closed, the curtains drawn. G-Soldiers moved up and down the roads in clusters, brandishing their weapons and knocking on doors. A group of five soldiers roughly pulled a middle-aged woman out of her house. She was screaming and yelling, until one of the soldiers crossed her jaw with the butt of his rifle, then she went limp. Selphie seethed as the train rolled by, heading deeper into the city.
A few blocks in, a military train had derailed and crashed into a nearby storefront. Soldiers were crawling over the wreckage like a swarm of ants taking apart a dead caterpillar. The soldiers were busy pulling out any useful items from inside the train and taking off any parts that weren't too badly beaten up. Down a narrow side street, three pairs of tall, purple, humanoid robots marched in a triangle formation, guided by a G-Soldier with a large remote control in his hand. Selphie recognized the robots as GIM52A's, a fairly recent model of robot introduced into the army a few years previously.
Further down, soldiers were gathering a cluster of Timber women into a group and running a weird device up and down their bodies. Selphie only saw that scene for a flash, and her eyes narrowed in confusion.
(What's going on?)
She wanted to stop and find out more information, but every interaction with a G-Soldier just increased their chances of getting found out. It was best for them to stay in the train and stay out of everyone's business. The SeeDs were their priority, she reminded herself.
Near the bridge the soldier had mentioned, an entire city block was engulfed in flames. G-Soldiers had become temporary firefighters, running hoses from nearby fire hydrants to spray water at the inferno. Judging by the trail of blackened houses behind the fire, it appeared that they hadn't had much success in containing the blaze so far.
The train rose up a little as it clattered onto the bridge. Massive blue steel girders rose in an arch to support the underside of the bridge. Beneath the girders, about three or four stories down, was a large train junction, currently jammed with dozens of Galbadian military trains. Soldiers filed in and out of the trains, with red-clad officers howling orders and pointing at supplies and artillery.
"Seems like the whole army's here…" Selphie said. She gulped.
"No kiddin'…" Irvine said.
When they crossed the bridge, Irvine leaned forward in his chair, looking over the control panel. "So how do you make this thing turn left?" he asked. He held his hands well above the control panel, as if he was afraid that pushing the wrong button would make the train explode.
Instead of answering him, Selphie reached over and tapped on a button on the control panel. Prior to the next junction, a section of the tracks moved to the left, directing the train's course northwards rather than continuing east. They made the turn, and then Selphie pushed another button to go right at the next intersection. The train turned once more, then continued deeper into the city.
They passed several more city blocks. A few buildings seemed to be intact, but they were in the minority. Selphie didn't bother to count, but it seemed like more than every other building had either been hit by artillery or burned by fire. Closer to the heart of the city, there were a lot more soldiers around, filling the streets in almost unbroken lines of marching troops.
After a few minutes, they came to the next checkpoint. Three robots—more GIM52A's—along with a dozen guards flanked another flashing barricade stretched across the tracks. Irvine eased down the accelerator and they coasted to a stop a short distance away from the barricade.
Once again, the soldiers at the checkpoint dispersed, some of them checking the outsides of the train, while an officer in red knocked on the door and waited to be admitted. Selphie hit the lever to let him in and the officer climbed aboard.
(Be cool.)
"Second prisoner transport," Selphie said dutifully. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to salute or not, so she decided not to do anything. "Here to pick up the SeeD prisoners."
"You're early," the officer said gruffly.
"Is that a problem?" Selphie asked, hoping that this conversation would proceed exactly like the previous one.
Selphie could feel the officer glaring intensely at her from behind his visor. "One more snotty remark like that and you'll lose a month's pay," he said. "Now, tell me why you're an hour early. For that matter, why didn't you radio in and tell us to expect you?"
"Er… radio's busted," Irvine said, suddenly becoming very stiff and formal. He straightened up in his chair, his hands placed on his knees.
"Is that so?" the officer said. He stepped up to the control panel and found the train's radio. Selphie silently hoped that the radio actually was broken, then cursed herself for not having the foresight to break it herself beforehand. To her great disappointment, the officer flipped a switch and the hiss of white noise came over the speakers. He dialed the radio to a certain frequency.
"Base, come in," the officer said. "Respond, base."
"This is base," a voice on the other end said.
"Cancel that, base," he said. "Carry on."
He flipped the radio off and the white noise died. "Seems fine to me," he said.
Irvine reflexively tried to rub the back of his head, but his hand smacked into his helmet. "It was uh… giving us problems before."
"Where's your CO, soldier?" the officer said, his tone rising towards anger.
"It's just us two on the train, uh, sir," Selphie said. She stiffened into something resembling a military posture. She'd forgotten how the G-Soldiers stood when addressing officers, and she didn't want to stand like a SeeD would, in case the officer was savvy enough to recognize that pose.
"D-District sent two rookie soldiers to transport eight SeeDs," the soldier said slowly. "And they didn't even bother to put an officer on board? The hell's going on here?"
"All the officers got sent to the front," Irvine said, talking quickly. "D-District's practically empty. We were the only ones they could afford to send. The rest had to stay back and guard the prisoners."
(Buy the story. Buy the story. BUY THE STORY!)
The officer stared at Irvine for a minute. Time passed, then he turned to face Selphie. Everything in Selphie's gut told her to cut with the act and just start fighting. Maybe if she took down the officer quietly, no one would notice he was gone. But they were deep in the city and surrounded by thousands of soldiers. If something went wrong, they wouldn't make it one block before the robots and artillery and gunfire turned her and Irvine into just another smoking crater among all the others.
(It's already gone wrong! We gotta fight!)
But before she could call up her magic or reach for her nunchaku—which she'd stashed in a little hidey hole under the control panel—the officer turned back to her and said, "… Fine. I'll let this pass."
(YES!)
"But you two are coming with me," he continued.
(NO!)
"Something stinks about all this," the officer said, "So I'm temporarily reassigning you two to cleanup duty in the city. I'll have the guys from the guard battalion escort the prisoners back to D-District for you. Understood?"
"We… we have to—" Selphie began to say, desperately fumbling for an excuse. She hoped that maybe Irvine would come up with an excuse, but he was silent.
"If D-District has a problem with you two being reassigned," the officer said, "Then they can take it up with me personally. In fact, I hope they do. I think I'd like a little face-time with the higher ups at that place. I've got more than a few questions I'd like answered. Now you two get off this train immediately and follow me, or you'll have a hell of a lot more problems than just D-District."
The officer stepped aside, to allow space for Selphie and Irvine to get off the train. Selphie shot a desperate glance at Irvine, who crossed his arms and refused to move.
(Are we gonna fight?)
It seemed like the only possible option. If Irvine and Selphie were separated from the train, then the mission to save the SeeDs would be ruined. Soldiers from the guard battalion would be put on the train and they'd bring the SeeDs back to D-District. Meanwhile, Irvine and Selphie would be trapped in the middle of Timber, and would eventually be revealed as frauds. If they didn't fight now, they were screwed.
Just before Selphie called on her magic, one of the soldiers finished inspecting the train and returned.
"Train's all clear, sir," the soldier said, standing just outside the door. "Still working on unloading the supplies."
(Great, now there's witnesses…)
"Now," the officer said to Selphie. "Off the train!"
It was too late now. Maybe they had had a chance to knock out the officer alone without causing much suspicion, but to take out the soldier outside the train as well was asking for too much.
(We're stuck.)
She whimpered a little under her helmet, louder than she intended. The officer didn't seem to notice or, if he did, he didn't say anything about it. Selphie walked around him and hopped off the train. The street was made of smooth blue-gray bricks, and her boots clicked when she landed. She turned around in time to see Irvine hop off the train after her, followed immediately by the officer.
The officer motioned to the nearest soldier. The soldier ran up to him and saluted.
"Tell the officer in charge of the guard battalion that this is his train now," the officer said. "Make sure he's got at least one guy who can operate a train, got it?"
"Yes, sir!" the soldier said, saluting. He broke off the salute and ran down the street. Selphie watched him go. If that soldier was heading towards the officer in charge of the prisoners, then wherever the soldier went would, logically, be where the SeeDs were being held. She watched the soldier head down a city block and then turn a corner and vanish. She frowned.
(Welp, that didn't help much.)
The officer faced Irvine and Selphie.
"Follow me," he said gruffly. He stepped in front of the pair and headed down the street, walking around the barricade. "You know, I coulda let you two off easy. I coulda put you on a guard post on the edge of town where nothing's happening. But then you had to go and piss me off, so it's lookin' like hard labor for the two of you."
(Aww…)
He turned a corner around an empty cafe. Ahead, a building had been hit by a mortar shell. The front wall had collapsed, spilling bricks and rubble onto the street and across a railroad track that ran down the middle of the road. Several G-Soldiers were picking through the wreckage, loading it into wheelbarrows by hand and hauling the full wheelbarrows to a large pile a block further down the street. Two GIM52A's stood sentry over the operation, silently watching and waiting.
"Oh, so we're gonna help clean up the city?" Selphie asked.
(That's pretty nice of them.)
"Psh," the officer said. "Only reason we're bothering picking this up is because we need that train track cleared up so we can use it. Just move enough so a train can get through and leave the rest. Got it?"
(I take back everything. These guys suck.)
"Got it?" the officer repeated loudly. A couple of soldiers nearby turned and looked, then quickly got back to work.
"We got it… sir," Selphie said.
"Then get to it!" the officer shouted.
Selphie hesitated for a moment, once more considering the wisdom of just taking this jerk out and dealing with the consequences. But before she could figure out a plan, Irvine moved past her and climbed atop a pile of the rubble. He didn't bother speaking to anyone. Instead, he bent over, picked up a brick, and tossed it into a nearby wheelbarrow. He repeated the process a few times. Sighing, Selphie climbed the rubble and joined him.
Selphie grabbed a pair of bricks, one in each hand, and chucked them into the wheelbarrow. The bricks were heavy and slick with dust. She moved slowly and mechanically, but nonstop. She picked up another pair of bricks, shuffled over to the wheelbarrow, deposited the rubble, then returned to the pile. After a few minutes, she stole a glance from the corner of her eye. The officer was still standing there, his arms crossed and a snarl visible on his mouth beneath his visor.
(Jeez, is he gonna watch us the whole time?)
"Think of something, Irvy," Selphie whispered as they passed by each other.
"I'm trying," Irvine said. He picked up a brick and tossed it into the wheelbarrow, where it clunked against the metal sides. Selphie chucked another brick after his. After a few more minutes, their wheelbarrow was starting to get full, so Selphie decided to take this time to move it to the dumping area.
She clambered down the pile of rubble and grabbed the wheelbarrow by its two wooden handles and lifted it with a grunt. She rolled it awkwardly down the cracked, uneven road towards the other pile of rubble. All the while, her eyes flicked left and right, looking for any gaps in the security, places she and Irvine could possibly sneak away, or things they could use as distractions. But everywhere she looked there were more soldiers, and the officer down the street still refused to budge, watching her every movement.
(We gotta fight. We got no choice.)
She reached the dump off pile and, with a long grunt, she upended the wheelbarrow and emptied all the bricks onto the pile. She lowered the wheelbarrow back down and spun around, quickly pushing her way back to the first pile, setting the wheelbarrow down, and climbing atop the pile with Irvine.
"I got a dumb idea," Irvine whispered to her. He tossed a brick into the wheelbarrow.
"I like dumb ideas," Selphie said.
"Then you'll love this one," Irvine said.
He picked up a brick in one hand, but instead of casually tossing it into the wheelbarrow like he'd been doing so far, he held it in one hand and carried it all the way down the heap of rubble. While he did this, he raised one hand to his forehead, as if he was adjusting his helmet. The gesture wasn't conspicuous enough to raise any red flags from the officer who was watching them, but Selphie recognized that he was focusing his energy on a spell or an ability of some sort.
(Hope this works…)
She continued working, keeping half an eye on Irvine, and half an eye on the bricks. She expected to see a glowing light as a spell took shape, or maybe feel a change in energy as some sort of ability kicked in. She braced herself for action, ready for whatever he was planning. But there was nothing. After a moment, Irvine put his hand down, dropped the brick into the wheelbarrow, and returned to Selphie.
"That's it?" Selphie asked, still trying to look busy.
"Give it a sec," Irvine said.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the two GIM52A sentries came to life, circuits popping and machinery humming. They straightened up to their full height, locked their arms into battle positions, and began striding down the road, taking big, lumbering steps, their eyes glowing dully.
"Whoa! Whoa! WHOA!" one of the Galbadians next to Irvine said. His cries got everyone's attention, and instantly all work ceased as all the G-Soldiers gawked at the rogue robots.
All around, confusion and panic started to set in. The officer who'd been monitoring Irvine and Selphie dodged around the robots and ran to the soldiers.
"Who the hell's got the remote for those things?" the officer yelled.
"I do!" a smaller soldier yelled. He held a large gray control panel in his hand, with a long antenna poking out the top. He mashed every button, twisted every knob. "They're not responding, sir!"
"Damn things are having a meltdown," the officer grumbled. "Stupid machines."
The robots continued to the end of the road, and when their forward progress was stymied by a fork in the road, they both turned to the right, down the same street where the soldier had previously gone when he went off to alert the officer in charge of the SeeDs.
"You two!" the officer yelled, pointing at Irvine and Selphie. "Come with me! The rest of you, stay alert!"
Without waiting for a response, the officer gave chase after the two robots. Irvine followed a few steps behind. Confused, Selphie scrambled down the pile of rubble and caught up with Irvine as he ran.
"What did you do?" Selphie asked.
"No Encounters," Irvine said. "Only thing I could think of."
(No Encounters works on robots?)
Underneath her helmet, her face twisted into a frown as she thought back in time. She knew that No Encounters was an ability that Irvine's Guardian Force, Diablos, possessed. It was supposed to send away monsters so that the person junctioned to Diablos wouldn't have to fight, but did machines count as monsters? Selphie couldn't be sure, but apparently they did. Whatever the Galbadians did to make the GIM52A's have a small amount of intelligence must have also made them susceptible to Diablos' abilities.
(Neat.)
As they rounded the corner in their pursuit, they saw that Irvine's "dumb idea" was having a rather massive effect in the surrounding area. The range of Diablos' ability was wide enough to catch all the robots within a radius of several blocks. Up and down the streets, GIM52A's were marching away from Irvine, while desperate handlers chased after them and mashed unresponsive buttons on their remote controls. A few soldiers tried to grab hold of the robots' legs and slow them down, but the machines were too powerful and lumbered on relentlessly. Some tried to bar the robots' paths with rubble, but the robots merely climbed over all their obstacles and continued forward.
The officer paused in the middle of a four-way intersection, looking down the streets and clutching the sides of his helmet in both hands. Irvine and Selphie stopped behind him.
"The hell's going on?" the officer yelled to no one in particular.
There were soldiers and guards everywhere, but every last one of them was focused on the chaos caused by the runaway machines. So no one but Selphie noticed the glowing black sphere of a death spell forming in Irvine's hand. When it was finished, he tossed it underhand, casually, like pitching a baseball to a child. The spell hit the officer in the back, and he crumpled to the ground silently.
"Poor bastard," Irvine said, with mock pity. "One of the robots must've trampled him in all this here confusion."
He turned to Selphie. His face was still obscured by his Galbadian helmet, but judging from his pose and his tone of voice, she could tell that he was grinning cockily.
"Guess we'll be goin' back to the train now, eh?" Irvine said.
"WHOO HOO!" Selphie said, thrusting a fist in the air. "Irvy, you're ten kinds of brilliant."
"Don't be celebratin' just yet," Irvine said. "We still gotta snag the SeeDs and get outta town."
"Right!"
With the frantic shouts of desperate soldiers and the stomping of robots filling the air, Irvine and Selphie ran back to the train unnoticed, hoping they weren't too late. Thankfully, when they retraced their steps to the checkpoint, they found the train still stopped by the barricade. One of the guards turned around and, somehow, managed to recognize the pair underneath their uniforms.
"Where've you two been?" he asked. "The train was just about to leave without you."
"Sorry," Selphie said. "We were called off to do… something."
She froze, hoping that answer would be good enough to convince the soldier.
"Yeah, whatever," the soldier said. "Hop on board."
Selphie let out a whoosh of air, fogging up the inside of her helmet.
(With pleasure!)
Eagerly, the two scampered on board the train, stepping back into the train's engine room. Inside, another G-Soldier was at the control panel, firing everything up and getting it ready for transport.
"Just in time," he said calmly. "I was almost ready to leave."
"Are all the SeeDs on board?" Irvine asked.
"Yup," the soldier said. "We're finally getting out of this mess."
"The sooner the better," Irvine said.
"No kidding. Frickin' robots," the soldier said.
With that, the soldier engaged the final switches to activate the train. It rumbled to life. Although they were still far from salvation, Selphie was instantly calmed by the sound and feel of the train's energy. The soldier changed the gears into reverse and backed away from the checkpoint, retracing the path towards the city limits.
Selphie had an urge to eliminate the soldier now, while he was alone and distracted, but she didn't see any point in causing havoc until they were out of the city limits. Irvine seemed content to wait as well. He stood off to the side, keeping one eye on the soldier and another on the door. Selphie casually eyed the hidey-hole where she and Irvine had stuffed their weapons. So far, no Galbadians had noticed the hiding place.
(Lucky so far…)
Irvine leaned up against a wall and put his hand to his forehead again, shutting off the No Encounters ability. In a few moments, the robots would once again begin responding to their masters, and Galbadian technicians would undoubtedly be called in to figure out why several blocks' worth of machinery had all gone haywire at once. But even the smartest techs would never be able to piece together this mystery. Galbadia had almost zero knowledge of magic, Guardian Forces, or passive abilities like No Encounters. They would be utterly stumped.
But Selphie was stumped too. Why were the robots affected by a spell that should only influence monsters?
(Maybe robots are secretly monsters?)
It was a possibility. While she did have extensive knowledge of para-magic and Guardian Forces, she had to admit that the details of Galbadian technology eluded her. She had no idea what processes went into making them, piloting them, and powering them. She wouldn't be surprised if the answer involved merging machines with monsters somehow, in order to give the cold, lifeless steel a type of sentience. In her experience, robots often did behave more like monsters than anything else, so the explanation made a kind of sense.
Traveling in reverse, the soldier conductor brought the train back along the exact same route Irvine and Selphie had taken to get in. He followed the course along the monitor, flipping the appropriate levers to make the train turn at the appropriate intersections. The three waited in the engine room for a while. They has a brief pause at the city walls, but since they were leaving—not entering—the soldiers guarding the barricade didn't bother to do an inspection. The conductor waved at one of the soldiers at the barricade, who in turn ordered the barricade to be opened. When the path was cleared, the conductor sped up and exited Timber. He locked the accelerator to cruising speed.
"And now you sleep," Selphie said, dropping the soldier to the floor with a sleep spell. She pulled the soldier's limp body out of the way, then reached into the hide- hole and took out her nunchaku and Irvine's shotgun. Irvine broke open his shotgun and pulled out the red shells that were loaded in the barrels. He pulled out a pair of black shells that Selphie recognized and popped them into the barrel and closed the gun.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yup," Selphie said. She spun her nunchaku around and caught them with a dramatic flourish. Irvine turned and headed out of the engine room.
During the train's stay at Timber, all the supplies had been offloaded by soldiers, leaving the train almost totally empty. The car behind the engine room was bare, except for a few chunks of wood on the ground and a considerable amount of dust on all the surfaces. It annoyed Selphie that she and Irvine had unintentionally helped Galbadia deliver supplies to aid their war effort, but there was nothing she could do about it now, so she let it slide.
Near the back of the train, the two opened a door to a car and found a gang of at least a dozen Galbadian soldiers and one officer standing close guard over eight SeeDs, who were still in Garden uniforms. The SeeDs' identities were obscured by black cloth sacks tied over their heads, and their hands and feet were tightly bound with thin, durable ropes behind their backs. They had been clumped together in a corner like bags of wheat. Judging by their uniforms, Selphie counted four girls and four guys.
Irvine continued to act casual, making a big show of counting all the SeeDs.
"This all of 'em?" he asked.
"Yup," one of the soldiers said in a thick regional accent. "We've been keepin' a tight lock on 'em. They's runners, they are."
"I hope they got their junctions up," Irvine said, speaking loudly to both the Galbadians and the SeeDs. He dramatically pulled out his shotgun and aimed it at the soldiers. "Or else this is really gonna suck for them."
Selphie closed her eyes and tried to press her hands to her ears, but forgot that she was still wearing her helmet, making the effort useless. The soldiers had just enough time to gasp in surprise before Irvine cocked his shotgun and unloaded two quick rounds of Dark Ammo into the room. The shells exploded from his rifle, trailing billowing black clouds behind them as they flew, like smoke from a rocket.
The ammunition was similar to teargas or a smoke bomb, but powered up with Garden magic. Each shell was infused with the nastiest status magic known to the world. As the black smoke filled the car and touched the soldiers, it seeped in through their uniforms, through their skin, and into their bodies. The effects were random and varied from soldier to soldier. Some began coughing and retching, dropping their weapons and doubling over in pain. Some went berserk with uncontrolled fury, wielding their rifles like clubs and beating anything and everything that moved—mostly other soldiers. Some screamed that they had gone blind, and stumbled around with their arms stretched out before them. And a couple simply passed out, falling to the floor and going still.
Unfortunately, the clouds had hit a few of the unprotected SeeDs as well. Those who didn't have the proper junctions ready to guard against status magic suffered along with the soldiers. They coughed, gasped, or struggled furiously against their restraints, but bound as they were, they couldn't do any real harm to themselves or each other. The status magic was awful to experience, but not fatal if treated quickly.
With all the soldiers in the car incapacitated to some extent or another, it was a mindless, simple task to unlatch the cargo door on the side and, one by one, hurl them all out into the forests of Timber. Some battled furiously despite their ailments, but either Irvine or Selphie would clock them upside the head to stun then before tossing them out. They saved the unconscious soldiers for last, then dragged those last to the edge and chucked them into the forest.
In less than a few minutes, the entire car was cleared and only SeeDs remained.
Selphie turned her attention back to the SeeDs, a couple of whom were still writhing under the effects of Irvine's Dark Ammo. She attended to those ones first, casting quick Esuna spells on them to clear up their maladies. They calmed down and relaxed as the healing white magic nullified the effects of the status ammo. Once everyone was cured, Selphie pulled off their blindfolds while Irvine set to work undoing their restraints.
"You're pretty short for a G-Soldier," one of the female SeeDs said to Selphie, staring distrustfully at her.
"Huh?" Selphie asked. "Ohhhh, right. The uniforms."
Selphie pulled off her helmet, taking a deep breath of the relatively fresh air inside the train. She's been stuck in that sweaty, nasty helmet for so long that she'd almost forgotten what clean air smelled like. She dropped it to the floor, where it clunked and rolled off to a corner.
"We're SeeDs too," she said. "And we're your rescue team!"
"So they finally sent us a rescue team," one of the guys muttered as Irvine undid his arm restraints. "Took 'em long enough."
"Yeah, well," Irvine said. "Don't get too excited just yet. We're uh… freelance rescuers at the moment. Garden didn't send us."
"What's that supposed to mean?" a male SeeD asked.
"It means no one's waitin' for us back at Garden," Irvine said. "We're on our own here. Is that all ya'll? There aren't more anywhere?"
"Not that we know of," a female SeeD said. "But then, we haven't heard much news since they captured us."
Selphie hoped that was all the SeeDs that Galbadia had managed to capture. But then she remembered that the Galbadian at the checkpoint at the city perimeter had said that they were the second prisoner transport, which implied that there was a first. She wondered if there were more SeeDs on that first train, or if it was just Timber prisoners.
(Should we go after the first train and try to rescue them?)
Her first instinct was to say, "yes, of course." But then she looked at the eight rescued SeeDs. They were beaten, exhausted, scarred, and none of them had their weapons. They weren't in any shape to mount an attack on D-District prison. And to tell the truth, Selphie herself wasn't doing much better than they were. She and Irvine had ridden across the entire Galbadian continent, not stopping for anything. It'd been almost forty-eight hours since she'd slept or eaten and she was nearing the end of her endurance as well.
The logical part of Selphie's brain kicked in, and she realized that going anywhere near D-District would probably just end up with them all getting captured again. Their only real choice was to run, recuperate, and hope that there weren't any SeeDs or other high priority people on that first prison transport.
(We gotta play it smart.)
Once all the SeeDs were freed from their bonds, Irvine stood up and rested his shotgun on his shoulder. "Time to change course," he said.
Selphie looked at the SeeDs. "You guys just rest up, okay? We got this covered."
The pair made their way back up the train, one car at a time, until they arrived back at the engine room. Selphie almost tripped over the sleeping guard, then hastily picked him up and chucked him out the side door. Then she returned to the control panel. According to the map, they were still a little way away from the next available train junction, which gave them some time to think about where their next stop should be.
Now that all the excitement had died down, Selphie suddenly remembered that she no longer needed the uniform. She ripped it off her body like it was on fire, and tossed it to the floor. She had her dress on underneath it, so she didn't have to expose herself to Irvine, but he watched her with great interest anyway.
(Perv.)
When every last piece of that uniform was off, Selphie ran her hands up and down her arms and legs, trying to wipe off the layer of sweat and grease that still clung to her. No matter what she did, she still didn't feel clean.
(Ugh.)
She pulled her boots from the hidey-hole and stuck them on her feet. Irvine reached down and grabbed his cowboy hat, then took off his helmet and put on his hat. It was odd, seeing Irvine with his hat on but otherwise wearing all Galbadian clothes.
"So then," Irvine said. "Where to next?"
Before she could answer, one of the SeeDs—a tall girl with brown hair that fell to the base of her spine—stepped into the engine room and looked around.
"Howdy," Irvine said with a grin.
Selphie ignored the girl and focused on Irvine.
"Back home to Balamb, I guess," Selphie said, answering his question. She hadn't put much thought into this next step.
"Garden's not there," the brunette said. "They went mobile when we joined forces with Timber."
"Well, uh, we can still wait in the city for them to come back, I guess" Selphie said, unsure.
"I dunno," the girl said. "I think we should stay away from the island for now. Galbadia's going to come looking for us, and that will be one of the first places they check. And once we're on the island, we're stuck there. There's nowhere to run or hide if the G-Army comes."
Irvine shrugged. "The lady's got a point. Several points, actually."
Selphie scrunched up her face in thought. "Hmm…" she said.
(Well then, where do we go?)
They needed to go to a place outside of Galbadian control, that much was obvious. It also needed to be connected to the rail system, since they were using a train to get around. And it had to be inconspicuous, where a group of SeeDs were unlikely to get noticed.
Her first thought was to go north to Dollet, but that would force them to travel all the way across the continent and who knew how many patrols were roaming the countryside. Furthermore, Dollet was pinned between the canyon and the ocean and, like Balamb, left no place to run or hide if Galbadia came calling.
"Fisherman's Horizon?" she suggested. If they turned the train around soon and bypassed around the outside of Timber on the minor train routes, FH wasn't actually that far away. They were less likely to hit a patrol on that route, and FH was connected on the far side to the continent of Esthar, giving them a place to run in case the G-Army was on their tail.
"Sounds good to me," Irvine said. The brunette nodded as well.
"Alright!" Selphie said. "FH, here we come!"