Turning Point Below

With another day of training behind him, Weiss prepared for the final training event of the day, this time a large-scale active combat practice. He was part of the red team this time, and had to wear one of the basic Deepground uniforms so he could have his team marked on it. All of the basic uniforms had Mako circulation tubes which showed as blue which gave standard troops additional Mako infusions—with all but the Tsviets, such was the case. Those who shared his room with him and he himself were so far above the rest of the Deepground members that those Mako infusions were both unnecessary and useless, so their uniforms were just for show. Nero, Rosso, and Azul were on the blue team.

Last time this event had taken place, the result of his inexperience and arrogance had—been catastrophic and caused about eighty percent of the participants on both teams to end up dead, and put most of the rest in intensive care. Now that he thought about it, he was sure it was this event, because it was both the first and the last time he'd been placed in command of the defending force given the task of holding the 'base' they were at. At nearly twelve years old, his combat experience had been high, but his tactical and strategic ability had still been low, and he'd had no real experience in the task he'd been given. He'd made the mistake of not listening to Argento's expertise because back then, he'd felt he knew better, having been raised there.

This time, when he and Argento and their smaller red team arrived at the building on the main street through Deepground which they were meant to hold, he went to the map laid out on the table and leaned over it to scan the local area details it included—he hadn't last time because they all knew the area well. Argento approached him and also looked at the map, waiting for his next move—and was surprised to see a small, puzzled frown on his face. Weiss had already found a few things on the map which he hadn't been aware of the first time, and he realized they were still lacking data.

Turning to face the group gathered around him, knowing they had fifteen minutes to check their surroundings and get into position, he pointed to four of the spell-casters to say, "You four go to the roof and take up points in each corner to act as my eyes and ears. Report to me immediately with anything you see or hear." They saluted and headed for the roof, even as he turned to a group of six sniper soldiers and said, "Go through the building and get an inventory of what's here and where it is—report immediately if you find something which isn't usually here. Two per floor will suffice for now. If you finish without finding anything, report in so I can give you new orders." They also saluted and ran for the stairs, two quickly breaking off to take the main floor.

At that point, Argento said, "That's a good start, at least."

Weiss looked up at her and asked, "Out there, before you were brought here, were you ever in a position like this?"

"Yes, more than once," she agreed. "Do you want some advice, at least about other things you need to pay attention to?"

"It would be useful, I think—I've never done this before, and somehow, I don't think this will go well if I jump in without knowing what to look for," he answered. "Though I may not use everything you offer, and we don't have a lot of time."

Argento nodded, her gaze knowing, and said, "Lookouts on the roof are good, but not enough when there are other buildings so close to this one. You need more on the ground, and they need to be aware of where not to walk, because unless I miss my guess, some of those noted locations on the area map are enemy land mines we can't deactivate."

"So I need ground level patrols as well, you mean?" he asked, and she nodded, so he faced a cluster of around fifteen basic soldiers and said, "The eight of you at the front, come over here and look at the perimeter map, then head outside. Two of you to each side, near the corners, should be sufficient, but Argento is right to say there are mines you'll need to avoid." As the eight closest to the front approached the map, he paused, then said, "Don't engage the enemy unless they end up right on top of you before you see them." They agreed, checked the map, and headed outside.

When he looked back at Argento, she gave a small nod and said, "Exits are also entrances, and the main floor has a large number of windows. You need guards on the entirety of the main floor, inside the building and out of sight of the windows, while still able to keep an eye on both doors and windows. We're already in a trap, but we don't want to make it worse by leaving openings at our weakest points."

The words actually made Weiss blink in surprise, then tip his head to the side and ponder the map. Suddenly, he asked, "Would it be a better option to blow up the land mines ourselves, in such a way to create barriers at the alleys where they've been placed? I mean, I'll still place scouts as you suggested, but would it help us to deal with the land mines on our terms so there are no accidents?"

It was Argento's turn to pause thoughtfully before saying, "It could be, especially if you send spell-casters to blow them up with the intent to make craters—hopefully burning ones—in those places."

Weiss turned to the others in the room, seeking out the other spell-casters and finding that he only had eight—the rest of the thirty people in the room were soldiers. There were four doors into the building, so he quickly motioned to the four spell-casters nearest the doors and said, "The four of you can come look at the map so you know where the land mines are. Go destroy them in explosions directed downward and towards the nearest alley to them. When you're done, return here to patrol the first floor halls, ready to support the soldiers at the windows." They moved forward to check the map, and he faced the last four to say, "Each of you will guard one of the main floor doors. Take three soldiers with you for each of them."

Everyone hurried to obey, leaving him with ten soldiers. At that point, he started getting calls back from the six he'd sent to explore the building (one found a room of explosives on the second floor), so the first four of them, he sent to the roof to support the spell-casters guarding there. They were snipers, anyway, so would be able to strike opponents down from a distance. The last two snipers, he sent to the corners of the third floor facing the buildings around them. Two of the ten still on the main floor were also snipers, so he sent them to the second floor and facing the road out front. The remaining eight were to patrol the main floor halls to keep an eye on the windows—and explosions outside told him the land mines were going up in flames.

After a silence, Argento said, "The explosives are a trap."

With a small nod, Weiss said, "If the enemy gets in here, yes. If we hadn't known about them, I'd have been far too careless in defending this place. Argento...unlike the land mines, those can't just be blown up, can they?"

"No. It would be too risky to try here in the building, and outside it, there would be the risk of friendly fire. We're almost at time. What do you want to do with them?" the woman asked curiously.

After a silence, Weiss smiled and said, "Argento, take them up to the roof and start throwing them at the buildings next to ours. That way, we can get rid of them in a controlled way and still get some use out of them—reducing the enemy's hiding places and creating more barriers for them. The people on the roof can help you, since there are eight and only four should be needed at a time."

She smiled in amusement and said, "The trainers will hate you for 'wasting' good ammunition and ripping apart the buildings, forcing them to rebuild."

"Then next time, they shouldn't leave us a trap like that, or should leave instructions saying we're meant to protect them," the boy answered in a dry tone. "Well?"

The woman gave a nod and headed for the second floor to start on the explosives. Weiss knew even after the start was called, there would be a ten minute gap before the enemy reached them because their starting position was many buildings away, so most of the explosives would be—or should be—dealt with by then. With the barriers he planned to create, it should force most of the attackers to come up from the road, but it wouldn't stop them from trying to find ways in through the rubble—Nero and Rosso especially would still try to break through that way. With their guns filled with paint balls rather than real bullets, the things most dangerous were the blades, magic spells, and explosives, so if the explosives were negated, that left the blades and spells—which meant they were reducing it to a typical training exercise.

At the thought of Nero and Rosso attacking over the rubble, he put in a call to Argento, who picked up with the question, "Did you change your mind?"

"No, you can proceed. I just wanted to tell you to keep an eye out for Rosso from the roof, because I'm sure she'll go over the rubble. Meet her in battle and hold her off—but I don't actually care if you win, lose, or come out a draw with her, just hold her off long enough for either a sniper to get her or for me to get there to finish things if you don't want to finish them yourself," he said in some amusement.

She chuckled and agreed, "I'll do that, then." He was glad that Argento had begun to relax around them—around him—so much sooner, as it would make things a great deal more pleasant until Genesis and the others could free him...them.

With that call, his plans were in place and he'd be able to work towards either a draw with the larger force—or hopefully, a victory. It was just a matter of time before the fun would start and he'd see what would change by the new plans he'd laid out this time around. Either way, Nero and Azul would probably be his to finish.

The training event went surprisingly well once the explosives had been dealt with—which had been finished only after 'enemy' forces began closing in on them. At first, Weiss had gone to the third floor and done a circuit around it to observe the progress of the battle and how well the defenses held. That circuit was how he knew his snipers, both gun and magical, were easily handling the first wave of opponents, and it was also how he knew Rosso was the first over the pile of rubble. Argento met her in battle by jumping off the roof after throwing the last explosive, and he wondered if he would need to intervene.

Instead, Argento only needed to hold Rosso for about a minute before one of the hidden, third floor snipers hit her with a head shot. Oddly enough, the red haired thirteen-year-old's response was to have a laughing fit (usually, she would be angry) before sitting down where she was, weapon laid down beside her. That was standard practice in these sorts of training battles—a killing shot meant they were out, whether they were physically dead or not, and only after a certain passage of time could they leave the battle zone. Weiss knew Rosso would be there for about another fifteen minutes before she could get up and leave, and Argento had to turn her attention to others coming over the rubble. Some she 'killed' herself, usually the weakest ones, but others, she allowed the snipers to take down.

On the other side of the building, while the first wave had been seen to, there was now a larger group coming in close together. While that gave an advantage to the defenders in the sense of 'hitting someone' on a shot, regardless of one's aim, it also usually meant there was some defensive force at play. Aim meant nothing if it was just going to be deflected, after all. When he swung back to Argento's side, he also realized most of the action was happening across the way, so called an extra pair of snipers over to help. He also told his magic users to start taking down any shields or other defenses they had, and those who had spells—the Destruct Materia—to do so switched tactics. Between that and the extra snipers, they held their own until what was left of the group reached the building itself.

And he could see Azul in the group—his sheer size and bulk was hard to miss.

Sending a message to Argento to join him on the street side once things calmed down on her side, Weiss headed down to the street to meet Azul by jumping out the third floor window. As such, he pretty much landed on the larger man, who met him in battle with an eager smirk. Weiss knew the man had always loved a good fight against a strong opponent, though it was only Weiss' status as the leader in Deepground which kept Azul from doing something foolish. All the same, Weiss loved a good fight, too, and it had been a long time since he'd fought someone with Azul's specs. Before he realized it, he was grinning and fighting the man happily—the battle lasted almost twenty minutes before he was able to 'take down' his opponent.

A glance around showed him Argento fighting opponents some distance away, letting him know the far side was secure, so he turned his attention to the defense of the location. With the bulk of the participants being right there, there were a whole lot of people to defeat to end the scenario, and 'killing' them took time. Especially when he had to hold back, as he needed to in all such training sessions—the only time he could let loose was when fighting another Tsviet. At one time, that had even been true of Shelke, who he still never wanted to see in there again. Ever.

Suddenly, the windows on the second floor blew out due to a massive magical explosion, followed by a long, stunned silence (both out on the street and inside the building), then by a cheer of several voices from inside. Giving his head a bemused shake as he wondered what the Hellfire that had been about, he turned back to his opponents outside.

A few minutes later, when he found himself with a moment where he could take a breather, one of the snipers from inside came up to him, grinning like mad, and told him, "Nero got inside. The magic users you had there surprised him with a mass attack he wasn't expecting, and they did him enough damage, with some help from those of us snipers in range, that he was registered as dead. That's the first time we've ever beaten him!"

"Okay, good," Weiss agreed, still feeling bemused. "Why are you out here, then?"

"Ran out of ammo, so I'm switching to my sword and joining the battle, if that's okay, Sir?" the man asked.

"Sure thing," he agreed, pointing him to a place where there was a danger of a break-through of their defensive line. He then turned back to his own opponents.

In the end, Weiss, Argento, and some of their team were the only ones left standing, so they were registered as the victors. In total, the death toll had been twelve, which was a fairly normal result for a large-scale training mission like they'd just done.

MB

Weiss was still aching, his wounds still healing, from the 'punishment' the Restrictors had given him for completely destroying a fair-sized area of town and using up so much of their stock-piled ammunition to do it. At the moment, he was lying on his belly on his bed, alone in his room after Argento, Rosso, and Nero had helped clean his wounds. Rosso and Nero had since been called away for training sessions, as it was now the next day, and Azul had been away most of the time since the training event the evening before had ended. Only Argento was still there, and she had picked up a book to read, staying close in case he needed or wanted something.

After the mission, they had been taken and 'debriefed' on their performance. Most had standard lists of where they had failed and where their training needed to show improvement, but Weiss...After his debriefing, he had been told he should never have used the explosives (for several reasons, including the fact that those were part of what he should have been protecting). He had pointed out how they had only instructed him to 'hold the location', not preserve the 'payload' hidden there. The Restrictors had proceeded to 'punish' him by—beating the crap out of him—more viciously than normal. It was a form of torture which everyone in Deepground got eventually, often more than once. As much as he was sure they were going to be much more specific in their instructions in the future, it hadn't changed what they had just done to him.

Because he had been expecting it, he took the 'punishment' without a word of complaint, and was now recovering from it. He was sure he would be fine by morning, though he had now missed a day of training, which would, in turn, mean they'd push him harder the next day. Knowing it was coming, he was also prepared for that, and was fairly certain he'd be fairly badly injured by the end of it. Not injured enough to take him out of training the day following, but badly enough to have no strength for anything except to sleep the next night.

He heard the outside door open as someone came in, and was suddenly thankful Argento had left his door open so she'd know if he needed anything. The soundproofing in Deepground was rather impressive, by any standards, and he'd have only barely heard anything from the main room if the door had been closed.

"Why're you here?" Azul's voice asked of the Wutain woman.

"The trainers haven't called me for a session yet today, nor had I had any prearranged ones," she replied evenly. Whether she was even looking at the man or not, Weiss wasn't sure, but something about the vague absentness in her tone made him think she was still reading.

There was a sound which made Weiss think Azul had just sat down, then the man commented, "You're not looking at me."

"Your point?" the woman asked in reply, tone a mix of absent and bemused.

"You never effectively 'ignore' us when we come in," he told her.

There was a silence, then a fully aware Argento asked in confusion, "What?"

"Ever since you've been here, your eyes have always been on us with suspicion and hatred if we were in your visual range. This is the first time I've seen you keep reading—or looking at me without those two emotions, for that matter."

"...I...felt no need to do more than acknowledge you were there, the way any trained warrior does others around them..." While she knew what she had done, she sounded extremely confused, most likely about why she had reacted so neutrally to people she normally reacted poorly to.

There was a long silence, then Azul said, "Something's changed."

"Things always change," the woman replied, sounding irritated.

"Things do, but this isn't just 'things'. Something in how you see us has changed."

"I can't think of anything at the moment, if that's what you're looking for."

Again, a long silence followed, then—to Weiss' surprise for sure—Azul asked, "So, have you given any thought to what we might call a mercenary group led by Weiss instead of the Restrictors or the President?"

"Uhhh..." was the woman's stunned and very intelligent response.

The man barked out a laugh and asked, "Cat got your tongue?"

"No, I just wasn't expecting you to ask something like that. It means you're putting a great deal more thought into it than any of us expected."

"I hadn't expected to, but my mind keeps wandering back to it. I thought of one point—we wouldn't want the name to be too violent, macabre, or pretentious. That would turn people away from us, give the wrong impression."

"Were those the types of names you were coming up with?"

"Mostly, at first. Until I remembered ordinary people don't like skulls and blood."

"Oh, for..."

"Hey, at least I did realize it."

"I have to give you credit for that, yes," the woman admitted in amusement.

A pause followed before the man commented, "Names aren't that important to me. At least, not usually. It's strength I value, and names don't mean squat for that. I don't know why this name interests me, but it does. Maybe I'm just that bored."

Argento gave a small chuckle and said, "You might be. I normally had names assigned to me, never assigned them to anyone else, so it never occurred to me to put thought into what we might call ourselves. But if our focus is on strength, I think the name should primarily represent that. Strength by itself is a lot of things, has a lot of meanings or uses, and to me—anyone who can survive and maintain any sort of sanity in a place like this actually is strong. A lot of people would feel the same, depending on how we would choose to present ourselves."

"Strength..." Azul mused. "You know, that's a good point, and a good starting point."

At the realization that they were all going to keep thinking about the idea he'd presented, Weiss couldn't help but start chuckling, which drew the two adults to the door of his room.

"Is something amusing, Weiss?" the Wutain woman asked with a small glare.

"Only—I suppose, the realization that I asked a hypothetical question I hadn't really meant to go much further, only to find I'm not the only one who has been thinking about it," he answered when he'd stopped chuckling. "In a way, it's good to know, though. Some creativity and time away from training is fun. More fun with others, I think."

"So do you agree with our discussion to this point?" Azul asked.

"It seems like a pretty solid starting point to work from the idea of 'strength' in some form," Weiss agreed. "We'll find out later if Rosso and Nero have also been thinking about it, since five minds working on this will be better than one or three."

"That's no problem. They didn't tell me what they did to you after the exercise. Why'd they do that?" Azul asked, eying the healing wounds on the boy's back.

"I wasn't supposed to have used the explosives, but they never left that as part of my instructions—anywhere. So, because I had to point out I hadn't been told that part, and they were already angry with me for my 'waste' of ammunition and destruction of part of the town, this was the result," the eleven-year-old answered, shifting his shoulders slightly in a motion which might have been able to be taken as a small shrug.

"That seems...excessive. Even for Deepground," Azul commented. "You heal faster than all of us, so the damage they did is probably almost twice as bad as anything they've done to the rest of us."

"It seems to be about that, yes," Argento agreed. "I wonder if this is a sign of where things will go for us without some sort of outside intervention, even just something like the President warning them to be careful."

"You think that will happen?" Azul asked with a snort.

"In Wutai, the Emperor would do exactly that. Here in Shinra, I have little to no hope of it," the woman replied. "While I'm here, did you need anything, Weiss?"

"Just some water, if that's all right?" he asked curiously.

"I told you to let me know. I wouldn't have unless I intended to actually give you a bit of a hand while you're healing," she replied, then left the room.

Weiss' gaze met Azul's for a moment before he asked, "You really think there would be potential of having a mercenary company if we weren't in here anymore? That's something you'd participate in?"

"I'd do it only because these are pretty much my only worthy sparring partners. Stay stronger than me and you'll have my loyalty, Weiss," Azul answered.

The boy gave him a small smile and agreed softly, "I'll do that." Azul nodded in reply as Argento returned with a glass of water for the boy, who said, "Thank you."

"You should rest. I'm sorry we disturbed you," she told him.

"I was already awake," he shrugged, shifting his position enough to drink from the glass. Once he'd downed a little more than half, he set it down on the floor beside his bed, easily within reach.

The other two returned to the main room, but any further discussion between them either didn't happen or was in whispers, so he gradually drifted into sleep.