Another chapter is here!
Kazeshuriken : Exactly the point!
Enjoy!
The night's wind billowed slightly as Kunsel stood atop the highest building he could find within the ruined section of Costa del Sol. With Crimson currently unavailable, he had been left in charge of handling the strategy and tactics. Binoculars fixed against his eyes and shades perched on top of his head, he used the Night-Vision mode to assess the threat laid before them.
It didn't look good. Shinra's local branch had mobilized all of the forces they could spare, a modest number given the recent losses and relocations but still unfavorable. Fortunately, their goal wasn't to win. It was to buy time and escape without getting caught. To do that, they would have to get mean.
"Red XIII and Cloud," he called to the rest of the gathered party behind him. "They won't raze the place with missiles because they want Hojo and Aerith, which means they'll send in soldiers and robotic weapons. I need you two to focus on them. "
He pointed towards where he spotted a contingent moving in with air support. "Red XIII, you have the more destructive spells so you handle the helicopters and any machinery you find. Not a single one can be up and running if this is going to work. I placed my last spare Ether inside of your pouch, so make it count."
"Very well," Red XIII acknowledged.
"Cloud, you focus on maiming their soldiers. Take off their limbs, fingers, and so on until I call you back." It felt disconcerting that he was so blasé while casually suggesting they immediately resort to dismemberment. "Use the battlefield to your advantage and let the threat of friendly fire check their gunfire. If I remember right, they'll probably have some Mighty Grunts in their ranks too that you'll have to settle for destroying with brute force."
Cloud looked confused at that last one. "Mighty Grunts?"
"Soldiers wearing red powered-armor," he clarified. "Heidegger named them."
"Why maim them?"Aerith asked.
"Pragmatism," Kunsel said in a matter-of-fact tone. "We need to buy time. Inflicting wounds that can be healed with a Restore Materia or a Potion means they'll be able to get right back into the fight until they overwhelm you with pure numbers. Likewise, cutting down their ranks means they can leave the dead where they lay and slowly close in on us. But if you mutilate them, their pain and agony will demoralize the others and it will take up supplies to keep them alive."
It was a basic, if cruel tactic. These people may have been soldiers in Shinra's army, but they had friendships and rivalries with one another. They weren't monsters who couldn't empathize with the pain of a comrade's suffering. They couldn't stand back and watch them without feeling the creeping dread of fear at the thought of joining the ranks of the physically impaired.
He looked towards the girls next. "Miss Lockhart, Yuffie, I want you two to act as saboteurs. Without being seen, take care of their vehicles and find where they deploy their mechanical forces from before they reconfigure them all to comb through the area. Once you have, tell Red XIII so he can hit them with the biggest spell he has. Aerith, how mobile can you be?"
She touched the Summoning Materia attached to her Carbon Bangle. It warmed in response. "Mog is ready to help."
"Then you're on support for Cloud if he comes under fire, but stay out of sight. They'll be trying to capture you as well. Put all of your PHS on vibrate and we'll use that as the signal to start the attack. Call when you complete your objectives."
With that said, they moved out.
[-oOo-]
The streets were littered with infantrymen, spanning back and forth as they looked through their scopes and goggles for any sign of hostiles, with helicopters whirring above and shining their searchlights down. They had split into several groups, spread out in units to fan out in order to fulfill their given mission. The orders they received were clear, eliminate anyone they found save the Professor and the girl with long, brunette hair and green eyes. They were to secure those two at any cost, by force if necessary.
One particular group suffered from being the first to learn the sheer scope of how difficult that would be after a salvo of missiles sailed for the helicopter above their heads. An explosion rocked the air as the aircraft was turned into burning wreckage that fell to the ground. Their collective urban combat training kicked in and their first instinct was to take cover using the buildings as shields.
Something leapt overhead and they opened fire, filling the air with the sound of gunfire, only for the silhouette to make it to the next building and continue on unimpeded. That was when the blonde-haired swordsman leapt from the shadows of another building at their rear, mako-enhanced muscles carrying him high as he pulled a sword off his back. The Earth Materia slotted inside of it glowed dully as he brought the blade down and smashed it into the sole Mighty Grunt that was in the center of their group.
The Mythril Saber cleaved it and the pilot inside in twain before becoming the epicenter of a Quake spell. Earth, asphalt, and concrete were uprooted and overturned in a billowing wave, toppling the infantrymen nearby as the buildings that had been weak from urban decay and the initial storm collapsed upon a few. The rest fired blindly into the veil of dust that had been thrown up by the spell until pained screams from friendly fire had them stay their hands. Beyond the pained groans from the survivors and the crumbling surroundings, all was quiet….
Then the mako-eyed swordsman burst through the dirty veil and brought the blade down upon the closest of their number to him. The wet sound of steel parting flesh-from-flesh rang out and the screaming began anew as the Mythril-made blade took his arms off at the elbow. Without missing a beat, he swiveled on his feet and brought it down again on the infantryman next to the first of the dismembered, who had panicked in his attempts to avoid it. He lost half his body instead of an arm, wet chunks falling down.
"Monster!" cried a third, drowned out by the sound of another helicopter exploding in the distance. Not all of their ranks had simply stopped at bringing their standard-issued firearms. He thrust out his hand sporting a Mythril Armlet and let loose a Fire spell from the materia that was fixed into the slot.
The fireball hit the swordsman dead on, only to roll off his skin with minor burns at best. He leapt for the infantryman and the Mythril Saber took off the outstretched hand, as though offended it had been used against him. The swordsman then turned the blade flat and literally batted him into the line-of-fire from another of their rank, leaving the soldier to take the intended gunfire in the swordsman's place.
Before any of the other survivors could try using anymore mass-produced materia that they bought on their own, a burst of magic washed over all of their ranks in the area and filled their heads with the white noise of a Silence spell. It left them unable to connect with the materia properly and thus at the swordsman's mercy. More screams of pain and death followed as they were felled.
Then the mako-eyed swordsman sought out another group to continue doing a Butcher's work, followed by a silent and somber observer on the back of a chocobo.
[-oOo-]
Tifa landed silently in a crouch behind enemy lines and clung to the shadows well enough that she went unseen. Kunsel had been right. She could hear the chaos unfolding as other infantrymen listened through the radio at the screams for help and for the pain to stop. It clearly unnerved the two of them by their body posture and how tightly they held onto their weapons.
What she didn't hear was Yuffie appearing next to her. The girls were in an alley at the northern end, where they found the jeeps and military trucks that the soldiers had rode in. Two grenade-carrying soldiers wielding machine guns patrolled the perimeter in a pattern.
"I've got that one," Tifa whispered as she pointed to the grenadier on the right. "You take the other."
Yuffie nodded and pulled out her Wind Slash. Then she moved with such deftness and silence it could be considered an art the way she slinked through the shadows and blind spots. Tifa could see why Wutai lasted as long as they did against Shinra when others hadn't.
Tifa waited for the guard she was targeting to pass by the alley as she lurked behind a dumpster and then snuck up behind him. She used a strong Hammer Fist directly against the back of his skull, a blow hard enough to break bricks and dent steel. He dropped like a puppet with his strings cut into Tifa's arms and his neck was deftly snapped before she dragged him into the shadows.
The second one noticed the other guard's absence when he was supposed to be on the other side of the row of vehicles. He reached for his radio only for a breeze to pass by and a flash of steel preceded crimson blood dripping down from his throat, which had been nearly cut in half. Yuffie flicked her weapon and let the blood fly off after she dragged his corpse into the alley.
Tifa checked and made sure no one saw the kills. So far so good. Then she turned around to find Yuffie looting the corpses. "Really?"
Yuffie shrugged nonchalantly as she put their Gil and Tranquilizers into her pouch before taking a total of eight Grenades on two bandoliers off them. She attached them to herself and pulled out a kunai and some wire before darting out again and slipping under the vehicles. It was three minutes before she emerged from under them and came back to Tifa, smelling faintly of gasoline and missing the grenades and wire.
"What'd you do?" Tifa asked.
Yuffie counted off with her fingers. "Punctured the gas tanks, cut the brake-lines, and rigged the grenades to go off at key points if someone moves the tires of a couple of them. If I had more time and stuff I could have done something more thorough, but that should take care of anyone following us afterwards."
"Good enough," Tifa said. "Sabotage complete, let's go find where the robots are coming from and tell Red where to fire."
[-oOo-]
Missile constructs from the Matra Magic left trails of smoke in the air as they curved around at the fleeing helicopter. It didn't escape. The explosion that followed illuminated the night sky for a brief moment and revealed glimpses of steel rising from below his perch on the building.
The whirling of blades reached Red XIII's ears. They were Sword Dances, slithering through the air with their buzz-saw like heads. The moment they came over the edge they curled up and became saw-blades that cut through the air to him.
He leapt from the top of the building to the ground and let loose another salvo of Matra Magic, damaging them to the point of ceasing function with the exception of one. That one uncurled itself into its longer form, sparks dancing from the damaged machinery. He followed with a Fire spell to blast it into scrap.
Red XIII's nostrils flared as he breathed deep the air of the night and found it foul, polluted with burning metal, machine oil, blood, and ozone. How he longed for the scents of Cosmo Canyon after so many years in comparison. But the path to reaching it was one that would be filled with the foul scent until the very end.
He stirred from his musings as he caught the sounds of a Moth Slasher coming down the street, churning the ground beneath it as it rushed forward with spinning blades. His leg muscles tensed to charge it when he caught the faint scent of the fighter and the thief from above. A falling Axe-Kick delivered by the former as she landed crushed the machine's cranial unit and sent it askew, whereupon Red XIII hit it with a Fire spell to finish the job when the automaton began to try and pick itself up.
"Tell me you have found where these contraptions keep coming from," he said to the thief as she approached. "I've grown tired of dealing with them."
"Follow me!" She took off and Red XIII followed her as she led him over the rooftops until they reached a point where he could see the temporary encampment and trucks where the machines were being deployed from. The fighter landed next to them and kept her head low.
"Can you take care of it?" she asked. "You've been using a lot of spells. The mental fatigue must be catching up to you."
He bit down on the zipper of the pouch on his upper foreleg and pulled to unzip it. His teeth found the Ether bottle and he leaned his head back before biting down hard enough to pierce it. The lack of opposable thumbs left few options, but it worked all the same as he found his mental fatigue fading, a sense of clarity and focus returning to his mind. He tossed aside the bottle and then warned them to get back as he linked to his Summoning Materia.
"Scorch and burn it all—" Fire engulfed Red XIII, swallowing his frame without burning him to the bones, as the connection was made. "—IFRIT!"
The mass of flames launched itself towards the encampment. When it came down a thunderous crash of force and heat spread outwards in a searing dome that engulfed the center of the encampment. A mighty roar scattered the flames out in a wave as the fire elemental was revealed all its primal and bestial glory—a towering figure of muscle whose modesty was only preserved by a loincloth, flames draping its limbs and billowing between a pair of curved horns like a wild mane of hair, and pitch-black eyes that reflected the loose tongues fire that seemingly danced around it.
The guards that had been on the fringes and perimeter all opened fire, but the summoning's flesh was tempered by the flames. It merely cast them a disinterested glance before inhaling and letting loose another roar. The air around the summoning flared and grew hot enough that breathing it in burned their very lungs. They died quickly, clawing at their chests as their flesh seared and flaked.
Then came the automatons. Crafted from steel and wires that didn't bow to the searing air, exhaust billowed out as coolant flowed through their systems and regulated their internal temperature. They readied their blades and machineguns and attempted to slay the fire giant.
A mockery of smile formed on the Djinn's face, revealing a pair of fangs that curved outwards. Its goat-like legs tensed and burst forward in a mighty lunge that let it meet the first of the mechanical foes it had been sent out to destroy. The claws wrapped around both arms of the Moth Slasher and pulled, tearing off the limbs and discarding them.
It thrust its claws through the steel-plating of the automaton's torso with ease, rending the metal to expose the wires and internal fluids that were flammable. The flames that draped its limbs set them ablaze and the resulting explosion widened its expression of revelry at the beauty of it.
That was its nature. Whereas Shiva was calm and cold, bringing a subtle and solemn death that left everything in a silent lull in its wake, Ifrit was the incarnation of a raging inferno that existed only to incinerate everything around it and leave nothing behind. It stood proudly amidst the flames and wreckage, roaring in delight as it tore apart anything that hadn't melted yet.
The thief whistled as she looked on at the resulting destruction when there was a series of explosions and alarms coming from the end where the two women had been prior. "Looks like the traps I set up went off."
"That takes care of everything then." The fighter pulled out her PHS. "I'll tell them we're done on our part."
"Wait…." Red XIII ears caught something, beyond the crackling of flames and rampaging summoning that was melting the last of the visible automatons to slag. "Something's still there. Something big."
"There is?" The thief leaned up on the tip of her toes and peered into the distant firelight. "Where?"
The answer came as a mechanical fist burst through the curtain of flames and met the head of the fire elemental in mid-rampage. The blow loud enough to be heard by both the fighter and the thief at their current distance left Ifrit staggering, holding onto its head and snarling. Hellfire burst from its other outstretched claw towards the source of its pain, but the flames did nothing to stop the whirring of rotating barrels that preceded a hail of gunfire. Where the infantrymen's machineguns weren't able to succeed, the penetrating power of the current ammunition punched holes in the summoning until it was dispersed and its materia went dull.
"Ohhhh… that's not good," said the thief, pointing out the obvious as she reached into her pouch of various stolen materia.
It emerged from the flames with heavy, booming steps. A battle-suit made of several tons of steel in the form of a two-legged walking tank with thick joints to act as a knees and elbows. On one shoulder was a Gatling-gun and on the other was a rocket launcher, and it probably had other features compartmentalized.
"Gyahaahaahaa!" came from the machine, courtesy of an internal speaker. "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!"
Red tracking beams skimmed across the surroundings from a series of sensors until one passed by them on the rooftop. The 'head' of it turned in their direction. The shoulder-mounted rocket launcher took aim and fired afterwards.