Detour

Tucked into a corner and with both side and head aching, Reno wondered what he'd managed to do wrong. It wasn't like he had no experience staying out of sight and avoiding observers—cameras or actual people—as a Turk, and especially as one who'd spent years as an infiltrator for one side on the opposite side of a line which wasn't there anymore. Getting caught shouldn't have been possible unless he was dealing with someone at Fuhito's level, and now, he was both confused by how and really worried about his chances of survival.

As much as his side and his head hurt and he currently sat with one hand over the aching injury, he knew it was a sluggishly bleeding cut—which had hit between two of his ribs and dug deeply enough to hit his lung. He'd already been using Materia to get as far into the camp as he had, so when he needed to cast healing, he hadn't been able to manage much. It had mostly stopped the bleeding, but the cut, both internally and externally, was still open, and eventually his lungs would still fill with blood. His head was still bleeding, too, but the healing he'd managed had gotten rid of the concussion or he'd probably already be dead.

Into the camp may not have been the wisest choice, but they needed to know more about the enemy's plans and orders, and he'd been aiming for the command tent. Except that, rather than the command tent, what he'd thought should have been it was more of a tent of experimental horrors than anything else, and his best guess was that Drachmarans put their commander in a tent like all the other soldiers. Which probably meant the next largest tent was just a meeting tent or the mess hall, or both. None of which helped him now.

His vision began darkening for a moment as he tried to assess where the man and the monster were—the ones who had done him the damage in the first place. He wasn't sure what 'the monster' was, though it could have just been a very large, ham-handed and stupid, somewhat deformed human, since those existed. Not big on brains but good for power, and generally needed a keeper to be said 'missing brains', it still made them good as guards and dangerous opponents, especially if they were too stupid to realize they may be out-matched.

Either way, as he forced his vision to clear so he could stay aware, he knew his visual on the guards (or, more accurately, his lack thereof) was actually irrelevant when both walked so lightly they even outdid the Turks. How something as big as the one who gave him the head wound could walk so softly, he had no idea, but it left him more than a little trapped in this tent. The corner he'd found was one of the few places where he couldn't be seen and was surrounded on three sides by boxes. At least slowing the bleeding meant he wasn't leaving a trail for them to follow...

And at least he couldn't see any of the 'horrors' where he sat, either. They honestly reminded him of the Shinra Labs, or even one of Fuhito's they'd raided, and half the experimental subjects were dead (which didn't necessarily mean they couldn't move if something triggered them to) while the other half had been moaning eerily during the commotion. Once he'd gotten out of sight, they'd gone quiet, though at least it wasn't just the ones who could see him who had been moaning—virtually every one of them across the tent had.

Now, he needed to find the wall of the tent and get out of there—the fabric could be cut by a pocket-knife, assuming the edges of the tent were held down too securely for him to just lift a section and wiggle out. Since he was somewhere in the middle of the tent in a veritable maze of crates, though, getting to the wall wasn't going to be easy, and less so if those things trapped in cages and tubes were going to make so much noise as soon as he got into view.

Did their commander know about these experiments, or was this being done by someone higher up than him?

Leaning his head back against the crate behind him, he focused on the sounds around him again, trying to see if he could hear the guards anywhere—but was startled to hear voices, one lower and even (or annoyed) and the other harsh and sharp. They weren't speaking one of the languages the Gaians had found they somehow 'just knew' (now he knew how Ed would have felt when he arrived on Gaia in the first place and somehow just knew the language), so they were probably speaking Drachmaran. And by their location, they were actually pretty far away, near the wall of the tent.

Shifting, Reno decided he had to move to a place where he wasn't essentially completely trapped, so he pushed himself up slowly and painfully, realizing only now that he was moving again after a rest that he had more injuries than he'd thought. His side and head were the worst, but his whole body ached in a way which said he had bruises all over it, and only some of it was from falling into things as he'd tried to escape. His left shoulder notably was due to a fall, but all the rest...Maybe he had actually blacked out when he'd taken the blow to the head...Even if it hadn't been for very long...

Drawing his EMR—he'd definitely be using Pyramid on the big one this time—he held it in the hand he'd been pressing to his bloody side and used the still-clean hand to support his weight along the crates as he made his way back to the intersection in the box maze which had led him to that little corner. Rather than going back the way he'd come at the three-way intersection, he went in the other direction, and managed to find his way to yet another after that. Mostly, he was aiming for paths taking him away from the voices he could hear, and so far, he hadn't encountered anything dangerous.

Now if only the tent wasn't as big as one of the larger circus tents...

Then again, if it wasn't so large as to have all the crates in it to begin with, he'd probably have been captured and killed long before now.

At one intersection, as he reached it, he heard a soft voice from near the ground say, "There you are, Reno! Rufus is worried about you."

Starting in surprise, he turned to look in alarm—and sighed softly in relief as he saw Carbuncle sitting there, only a few feet away. By the looks of it, this one was Rufus' directly, not Ed's—the now-child blond's Carbuncle was a lot louder and energetic than the younger Shinra's was.

"Rufus..." he sighed faintly. "What orders did he give ya, yo?"

"To help you escape, or if you couldn't, to protect you until help could come," Carbuncle answered softly. "And it looks like you need the help, badly."

His lips quirked in amusement as he agreed, "Yeah. Gotta get outta this tent. How's the battle, yo?"

"The last I saw, there was a Dragon Zombie attacking all and sundry, and I think Rufus was going to go after it. I don't know about now, though," the small, aqua-colored creature with wing-like ears answered, hopping up onto his shoulder. "There should be a path out that way—it's the one I came in here by," it added, pointing back the way it had come.

"Thanks," Reno muttered, heading in that direction—and following the Summon's directions the rest of the way out of the maze. Those were mostly done by pointing, and took him to the wall of the tent soon after, where a section just down from where he was had been pulled up, probably by Carbuncle when it had gotten in. The opening was too small for him, but he could pull it up further and slip out through the larger hole doing so made.

His short breath of relief was cut short as growling sounded from one side, making him turn to look—at a very large dog covered in long hair. He could just put it in Pyramid and run...Until a second and a third joined the first and all three began advancing, followed a minute later by a human man. It was the man who was the most dangerous, however, as he began yelling loudly in that other language, probably about an intruder.

"Rufus is in the camp. Head over that way," Carbuncle said, pointing him in the direction he had to go. "Don't worry, you're shielded."

Reno turned to run (well, as much as he could with all his injuries) in the direction the Summon had pointed, asking sharply in a hiss, "Whaddaya mean, 'Rufus is in the camp,' yo?"

"Exactly that," Carbuncle answered. "He's a lot closer to us now, so either they won and are heading into the camp to take possession, or something else happened. I can't tell from here if he's hurt."

It was still his best bet, because chances were Lakis at least would be nearby and able to help, and with some tutelage in Mage skills from Ed back on Gaia, the Mage-Turk had gotten down-right deadly, nearly Genesis level from the right vantage point. Reno could still only move so fast, and there was no way he'd be outrunning those dogs, so he was suddenly thankful Rufus had sent Carbuncle—as was proved when the dogs hit the Summon's shield soon after. Of course, he had to snicker at their yelps of pain as they collapsed, stunned, after having hit it in a full charge. One or two might even have broken their necks upon hitting a solid wall where one shouldn't have been.

However, dogs aside, more and more of the people in the camp joined the chase as they shouted alarms about his presence, and many of those had guns in hand, and Carbuncle's shield began to flicker with the sheer number of impacts it was hit with. If it was going to fall—

"Reno, even if it did fall, I can just put it up again," Carbuncle commented flatly, and he had to glance up at it in surprise. "It's pretty obvious what you were worrying about."

Rather than think about that, he decided to focus on getting where he needed to go—and when he turned a corner, he sighed in relief again. Rufus, Kariya, Sirra, and Lakis were all there and all unharmed, standing with a very decorated man. Rufus' gaze became alarmed and he said something to the decorated Drachmaran, who glanced over at the blond, then shouted an order. At least some of his pursuers stopped at the order, but not all of them, and he wasn't sure why that was the case, especially when the order was repeated in a furious tone.

In the meantime, Lakis sent healing forward to him, which was much stronger than he could have managed on his own. It easily closed all his wounds and took care of most of the bruising. The healing helped him pick up his pace, which turned out to be his saving grace as several things happened at once.

Something much stronger than even the brute guard in the tent hit his shield, sending him flying forward into a duck and roll.

The 'something' hit again so fast the shield fell, and a third time, taking Carbuncle's new shield down with it.

Then, it hit so fast a fourth time that Carbuncle yelped and dissolved with its shield that time.

Lakis appeared between him and it, sending out a massive beam of light which shoved the thing back with a shriek.

Reno managed to roll over and watch in something like amazement as something like an amalgamation of a dozen different things stitched together made to slam a hammer-like protrusion down on Lakis. He had no real definition for it, because the parts were so disparate they had no ties to one another, and some looked like objects rather than parts of living creatures. It easily had a dozen different arms, most with some sort of claws or talons and others more like clubs or hammers (like the one it was going to use on Lakis), but he didn't have time to identify more of its appearance.

As the 'hammer' was coming down on him, Lakis activated the arrays for cleansing like the ones Genesis and Ed used to return someone or something to the Lifestream, and the 'hammer' was immediately dissolved into pyreflies.

Before the thing could respond to the missing arm, Lakis shoved forward, array still active, to dissolve the amalgamated thing. Incidentally, that made the soldiers who were still trying to attack Reno stop in shock and back off.

Once the amalgamation was gone, Lakis spun to face him and asked worriedly, "Are you okay, Reno?"

"Yeah—your healin' did the trick," he agreed tiredly with a small smile, pushing himself up. "Thanks fer that, yo. It wouldn'ta been good if my lung'd kept bleedin'."

Lakis winced, but before he could reply, Rufus asked, "So, what was that all about, Major General?" Both Turks looked at him, and saw him talking to the decorated man.

The man looked pale and shaken as he gave his head a shake and replied in accented Amestrian (at least Reno could understand that one!), "I honestly have no idea what that was or where it came from. Who is that red haired man, though?"

"One of my guards, who had been sent into your camp to try to assess what we were up against," Rufus replied. "I'm guessing he found something worthy of note."

"That," Reno agreed, jumping in at the offered opening. "That was one o' the horrors in that big tent in the middle of camp."

The Major General's brow furrowed before he said, "That would be the—how do you say?—scientists, I think? That tent would be their work space. No one except those approved by the Crown are allowed to enter, not even one of my rank. A group travels with every military party."

"I believe it's time to do something about that, if that thing is the kind of work they're doing," Rufus said flatly, turning back to Reno. "You're okay, though, Reno?"

"Yeah, I'm fine now. Thanks fer sendin' Carbie, though, yo," Reno answered with a relieved grin.

With a nod, the blond then said, "All right, lead the way back to that tent, then. It will save us time if you're good to go right there."

The Major General swallowed hard, Reno noted, but said, "We have never gone there—those who do so without permission have been executed in the past, so no one makes that particular attempt any longer. This will be a first for everyone here, even for me."

Rufus looked sharply at the man, then nodded and said, "Well, if we find what I think we'll find and you need to hightail it away from your own government, you can always claim refuge with us. We have the space, so long as the people coming in aren't invaders trying to take over our lands by force."

The Major General blinked and asked, "What makes them 'yours'? That you arrived there before we did?"

"One of our people made an agreement with the planetary sentience who governs this area, called Ishbala, and with the one places like Xing and Japan follow, who we know at least one name for, named Amaterasu. They gave agreement for our sentience, Minerva, to have her and her people—us—arrive in the dead desert and make it our home by remodeling it so we could live there," Rufus replied casually, and Reno found himself impressed by how the blond had made it sound, as though it was ordinary to deal with what most people would call 'gods'.

"...The gods gave you that land...for no reason?" the Drachmaran man gaped at the younger blond.

At that, Rufus shrugged and offered casually, "Oh, don't think it's for free. We still have a task to do in exchange for getting this new home handed to us, or more than one. Once we're fit to do it, of course, which means properly establishing ourselves and securing our borders." He then turned to Reno and gave a nod, so Reno gave one in reply and turned to walk away in the direction of the front of the tent. Lakis fell in with him as the others—the General, Rufus, the other Turks, and a few of the higher-ranking soldiers—followed behind them.

As they walked, Lakis asked quietly, "If your lung was punctured, shouldn't your own healing have fixed that as a priority?"

"I didn't have much juice left by then, yo," he replied with a faint sigh. "I'd been usin' it ta get to the tent thinkin' it was the commander's, but found that mess instead...'N' by the time I got hit, I only had one cast left. The big guy smacked me around pretty good, so my cast went ta the concussion first, then to try ta stop the bleedin'. I think it did as much as it did 'cause it was tryin' ta heal that, but it couldn't finish the job, and it didn't even touch all the other injuries I'd had by then, yo."

At that, Lakis had to sigh and admit, "Bruising or otherwise damaging the brain has to be fixed before virtually anything else, otherwise all other bodily functions suffer for it. And chances are, if you had a concussion, you only even woke up because you managed that one cast before going down."

The comment made the red haired young man wince. "Yeah, that's possible, yo. Way too possible..."

"I really wish you'd stop getting into so much trouble, though," Lakis replied in irritation. "You're getting as bad as the Lady's Stray."

The words made Reno snort, but then Rufus' amused voice commented from just behind them, "You do realize Reno is one of the best Turks we have at damage control and mitigation, right, Lakis? If he gets into trouble, the 'trouble' was far worse than any of us actually realized—that was why my mother and Tseng both insisted he be one of the ones to rescue Ed and Percia from Fuhito."

"Was that it?" Lakis blinked in surprise. "I'd wondered why he got stuck on that team, but he managed to get into some very interesting parts of Fuhito's facility, so..." Then, the Mage-Turk paused, blinked, and turned pale. "This 'science tent' is going to be a mess..."

Reno snorted at how long it had taken him to put that particular piece into place—Turks were usually faster on the up-take, especially after dealing with the thing in question directly (in this case, the amalgamated monster). "It ain't 'goin' ta be', it already is, yo," he pointed out. "Hence the big ugly."

There was a momentary pause as Reno heard Sirra snickering in the background, then Lakis commented in a bland tone, "Well, then, I'd better be ready for more cleansing."

"Nice answer," Sirra commented, tone highly amused. Lakis casually flipped her the finger over his shoulder, and she burst out laughing. A glance at Rufus showed him looking highly amused by the exchange, even as the Major General just looked confused.

"...They are rather...unstructured...for guards, are they not?" the Drachmaran commander asked slowly.

They were approaching the tent they needed by then, so Rufus just said, "That hasn't been a deterrent to their work, now or in the past. Why try to 'fix' something that's not broken?"

"Here it is, Boss," Reno commented as they reached the tent's front entrance. "I'm not goin' in first, yo. Had enough o' that already."

"Fair enough," Rufus agreed. "Kariya, you take the lead, and Sirra, be on alert. Reno, be ready for crowd control, just in case, and Lakis—obviously, be prepared for cleansing." The blond also drew one of his daggers with his off hand and drew his gun with his main, and Reno let Kariya and Sirra go ahead, then fell in with Rufus and the commander as Lakis dropped back behind them.

Once in the tent, the Gaians all froze in shocked horror for a moment as a man yelled something that sounded angry in Drachmaran. The Major General was just as horrified by what he was seeing, and a moment later, all Hellfire broke loose as Kariya started tossing bombs around like they were going out of style. Reno cursed slightly as the whole bloody tent caught fire and grabbed both Rufus' and the Major General's arms to drag them from the tent. By the glow he'd seen in Lakis' eyes as he'd dragged the two out past the Mage-Turk, he knew Lakis was going to join Kariya in unleashing Holy Hellfire on the place.

"Why did you do that?" the Major General asked in anger as he yanked out of Reno's grip. "That—"

"Kariya 'n' Lakis ain't gonna leave anythin' more'n ash behind!" Reno snarled at him. "What they saw—it made 'em angry, an' unlike me, they have real firepower. And after that, they ain't holdin' back anymore—no one's safe in there right now!"

As the tent shook and began falling in on itself in a blaze of flames and sparks, the Major General winced and stared in something like horror again, this time at the display of sheer power. He also looked a little faint as he asked, "To the extent that they would end their own lives as well?"

"They aren't dead yet," Rufus replied casually.

"Are they not? Being inside there just now?" the Drachmaran asked, apparently not sure how he should be reacting just then.

"Lakis is no fool. He'd have cast Shields on all three of them so they'd be able to move around in there unhindered and unharmed," the blond answered. "He only didn't cast on the three of us because Reno had the sense to get us out of there while they handle the cleanup."

"Thanks, Boss," Reno replied acidly. "Now ya decide ta be all okay with bein' dragged out of the fightin'. Why couldn't you have done it sooner? Like, two years sooner, yo?"

Rufus just rolled his eyes and commented, "I could have stayed in there and helped kill off whatever monsters they've created, you know. I am a fully trained Turk as well."

While the comment made Reno want to snarl again, he just gave Rufus a dirty look and turned to look at the mass of blazing, collapsed tent for a long moment. His gaze soon returned to the blond as he commented, "What're you tellin' the Commander an' your ma, Boss?"

"I'd actually be a lot more worried about Veld's response to this than Commander Hewley's, and I'm going to tell my mother the truth, obviously," Rufus shrugged. "Including the fact that the Turks already took care of the local one."

A sense of danger made Reno turn and lift his EMR, triggering Pyramid on the source of the threat—the large man-monster who had hit him earlier, and who was actually burning as he launched himself out of the remains of the tent at Reno. While he was stuck in Pyramid, he couldn't even roll to put out the fire burning him, but while he now knew the man was one of those large, brainless men (as he'd thought), it really didn't look like he wanted to put out the fires. Rather, he looked like the only thing on his mind was taking Reno down (with him?).

"Ugh, that's a dumb one," Reno sighed, then activated the highest electric setting on his EMR and jumped forward to hit the man over the head with it. The electrical shock killed him, and as soon as he died, Pyramid released him to drop him to the ground.

When he turned back to Rufus and the Drachmaran commander, the blond nodded while the commander just stared at him in shock. A few minutes later, a cold wind burst out from the middle of the tent and the fires went out and half the remains turned to ice. Soon after, Lakis, Sirra, and Kariya walked casually out from the now largely frozen remains of the tent, soot-streaked and with a few superficial wounds, but otherwise unharmed. Some frost had formed on a few of their hems, and in a few other places some bits had been a little singed, but it was clear the blazing tent had done nothing to them, and the cause of the singing had probably been a person or monster in there.

"...What are you, that you survived that?" the Major General gaped at the three of them.

Kariya's brow quirked in amusement as Sirra sneered, "We're Turks, dumbass."

"Sirra...Language," Rufus sighed tiredly in her direction.

"Being 'Turks', bodyguards, does not explain how you survived the fire!" the Drachmaran commander replied, and Reno wondered if he was about to faint.

"Saying we're 'bodyguards' is a little...understating our roles, tasks, and skills," Kariya replied with a shrug. "It would be more accurate to say we're a special task force with training in surviving a lot more than the average person would. Of course, I'm sure it helps that our sentience, Minerva, gave us bits of her power to use."

Reno smirked at that play on words, because any Gaian (and Ed) knew he just meant Materia, which anyone could use, but he'd let it sound like their god was directly helping them to keep them alive.

And the red haired Turk wanted to laugh when the very faint-looking Drachmaran said, "No, I do not want to be your enemies—I would rather be an enemy to my own people than to try to challenge you again in battle..."

Rufus looked like the cat that got the canary and a dish full of cream, and Reno realized this little diversion had been much more help to their cause than he'd first thought. All to the good, and he was satisfied with that.