by K.A. Rose
-----
Flash Third
It was amazing how little it took to get started.
How they'd stopped and made a new camp and, while their troops rested,
crouched around Genjo Sanzo's map and traced their route with bare fingers,
stabbing baked paper in murmured nonlanguage and tapping the ashes of their
cigarettes into the weedgrass. They didn't touch, and their hair hung in
their faces under the lantern glow, and by the time the light shut off
it was damn near dawn and the first of the privates were already waking
up.
Reno slept in his own tent with Tseng, off to the
farther side of camp. Four days and nights around him and he was already
starting to absorb the smell of him, couldn't notice the texture to the
air his boss breathed. He hated close quarters like this with any man,
but if he'd had to choose there were two coworkers it would've been a lot
nicer to bunk with.
He'd given Rude hell for it back in Midgar, after
he got the notice. They'd just sort of started to get along with
each other (kinda, in a way) and turned into a nice break from the ballbusting
Veld and Tseng liked so much, and then word came down from the Prez like
this.
Why aren't you going? he'd demanded, and
Rude had smirked at his gloves and asked why should he? He'd already been
on a tour. And wasn't in a big hurry to go back.
"Buck up," he'd told the kid, folding up
his papers and passing them back. "Live through this and you just might
hack it as a Turk."
Might just. Shi-it. He'd been almost a year on the
force, thanks to Xian "Let's Override The Minimum Hiring Age" Tseng. They'd
been creaming themselves to get him on this job. He coulda been a contender
down there in the sector circuits, but they told him he could do better,
and fuck but he'd believed them.
And now what? Not even a week into a three-week
tour and he was hating waking up to Tseng's breath and Tseng's ratty oily
wute hair on the pillow. He was hating the dirt and the bugs and the walks,
the days without sleep, the food that made you sick, the sickness that
went foul and ate up your stomach and your throat and welled in your eyes
till you saw colors that weren't even fucking there. He hated his silent
PHS and Rude who never called him. Hated waking up at dawn in a damp sleeping
bag and his dick about to pop from dreams about blonde cunt, biting his
arm to keep down the sound while his other hand tried to work, pain tears
in his eyes and ears ringing for a sound like Tseng stirring beside him,
and just when he'd just about gotten there, when it'd started to go a bit
cottony at the edges, his mind flashing on that wute with the red hair,
looking at him like he'd seen a dream live and walking and had wanted to
devour it whole--
"Ghh--!"
He went to the river after. Washed clean under a
cliff with its thin waterfall pattering down; felt bony and far too fragile
and he shivered, watching at his bangs darken and fall in smooth sheets
in front of his eyes. He scrubbed his skin with his fingers till it felt
raw, till all the days of muck and sweat had been scraped off.
"Spoiled," Tseng said from the bank. Slanty-eyed
motherfucker grinned when he saw Reno jump. "You keep being a priss, you'll
never get used to this place."
"Go to hell, sir. You could do washing up
a bit yourself."
"Too early in the morning to relax. We'd head out
this time normally."
"Why aren't we?"
"Hartzell ordered the general to bed," said Tseng.
He had his data pad out, all sat up like that on the rock outcrop. Morning
reports like fucking always. "We're not moving until both he and Lord Sanzo
get four hours. That's the directive from the priest's physician."
Reno frowned. Tseng laughed at the look and teased
about not ever thinking things through much, did he? Didn't he know what
had happened?
"Of course," the boy answered defensively, climbing
from the stream. Water sloshed up with his knees. Pokey teenage little
knees, pokey teenage little elbows and shoulders, dark hair wet and matted
down south and fuck if Tseng looked and smirked he was gonna kill
him. "Ol' Sephiroth's sold us to the wutes. You really buy that guy's reason?"
"Oddly enough, I'd think Sephiroth would usually
be a harder sell than a kid from the sixes."
"Yeah. Well."
He dressed. Not GI gear, no reason to, and he hated
the smell of that shit anyway. Tseng wasn't gonna complain, dressed down
business casual like that anyway. His boss should be proud he even packed
dress shirts. Half-sleeved or not. Hey, look, at least he brought a tie.
Tseng looked up from his data pad. "You look like
a fucking punk. Come here."
"You're not dressing me, man."
"You're supposed to be representing ShinRa Inc.
Have a bit more decency."
"Decency?" He spat. Pushed his glasses up on his
forehead to get the bangs out of his eyes. "Know what I wanna know, senpai?
Why is it ShinRa Company teaches kids to drop fire on people, but they
won't let them write fuck on their airplanes, 'cause it's 'obscene'?"
Motherfucker just smiled, like he saw someone who
didn't get it and wasn't gonna get it, ever. He said, "What, you got a
bug up your ass, Reno?"
The boy felt his face going hot. Cocksuckin' fairweather
skin, everyone across a field could tell when he blushed. It wasn't fair.
"I didn't--"
babooooommmm.
"Oh, god damn it," Reno complained, looking upriver.
"Does anyone in this place do anything besides bomb shit?"
babohbabooooooommmm.
Captain Zachariah Tilsbury Hartzell tensed involuntarily,
flattening like a cat in among the sheets. So much for going back to bed
today.
Sephiroth had one of those long cigarette filters
you saw dames use, elegant yellow ivory, still white against his dark,
rough fingers. He always smoked when he woke up, just one to get going
he would say, even more if something from the night before had given him
a workout.
Zack was sure he was the only way Sephiroth got
any fun out of his day anymore. Or he wanted to flatter himself thinking
that. He'd been assigned to the general since the island, going on, what,
two years now, and what you ended up figuring out in time like that was
that Sephiroth was a strong bastard, but only really put his strength into
things that interested him.
It usually meant Zack wound up sore.
babohhmmbaboohhhhhhmmmmm.
The radio by their heads: "Eighty-one, twelve,
twenty-five-sixer, ready, bravo-charlie, repeat."
Zack cringed further back into his bedsack. He realized
belatedly that he still had his arms around the general's waist, and there
wasn't much to do about it without looking awkward.
Sephiroth sighed close to his ear, in a waft of
cigarette smoke, "I love the smell of mako in the morning."
Zack could just picture how he rolled his eyes,
tapped the stem of his filter to flick off the ash. Looked at the cherry
like he was studying it.
baboooooooommmmm.
"They're starting early," said Zack, finally drawing
up. You always woke up stiff, in a place like this. "If we radioed, they
wouldn't drop so close to the camp..."
"We're not radioing."
"What?"
"From this moment on," said the general, shifting
and sitting up crosslegged, pale hair spilling across a bare scarred chest,
"HQ isn't to know anything about our movements, is that clear?"
"You've cleared that with Tseng?"
"I didn't need to."
Pause.
"Where did you get that cigarette?" Zack asked,
a tad envious.
"The priest."
"Oh...
"Wait, what?"
Tseng fiddled with his transmitter again.
"I'm sorry, sir," he said into the mic, when the
data pad visual came back up, still grainy and broken. "What did you say?"
It was evening in Midgar. Artemus Veld was seated
at his desk in his nice director's office, the rows of books behind him
with their titles too faint for the video screen to make out. Tseng knew
they said things like The Noble Soldier and Honor and that
only further down behind a false wall could you ever find the ones called
Rebellion
is Patriotism and Fight for Your People, Not for Your Government.
The porno mags of the ShinRa top brass.
The top brass was saying, "And Reno, how's he hanging
in there?"
"He misses his hair gel," Tseng answered. Nearly
not quite a sigh. "But I suppose he's not too different from a lot of these
kids just getting flown in. He'll shape up."
babooooooooommmmmm.
"Shaping up," said Veld, "I'm not so worried about.
Alive is really more our objective at this point. You're watching out for
him, aren't you?"
"He's not a child, sir. If he can't handle this,
he shouldn't even be in T.U.R.K.S.."
"Tseng."
"...Sir."
Veld sighed, grimacing as he leaned back in his
chair and the crinkles around his eyes and cheeks deepened, twisted the
scar near his jaw. "You get ahead of yourself, Xian. Not everyone can be
a prodigy."
"Sir," Tseng began, "I wasn't--"
"Patience is a blessing, son. I know it must seem
trite to say. But don't forget you weren't without your flaws once too."
Tseng ducked his head.
Veld's tone shifted then, like he read his captain's
discomfort. "I'm thinking of petitioning the President to withdraw you
early," he said.
"We're all right here, commander," Tseng felt compelled
to insist. "It's only another two and a half weeks."
"And I'm sure a day there feels like a year," Veld
noted, only a little patronizing, and maybe that was appropriate. "But
we're not so far off from that ourselves. Midgar's hell on two Turks in
wartime."
bababooooooooooommmmm.
"I'm sure you and Rude are performing quite well
in the circumstances, sir." Dutiful son. Wasn't he always? "Unless they're
looping you in with the Guard now..."
"There's that. There's also that this antiwar movement
has been heating up something ugly now. Have you seen the papers?"
Tseng wanted to remind him that he was in the middle
of squelchy jungle about five hundred kliks from the nearest civilized
area, and that even if he weren't, the only paper he ever saw was the one
the army put out, which was not the pinnacle of objective, varied reporting.
Instead he said, no sir.
It's getting insane, Veld said. It's getting violent.
As another plane's line of fire laced the beaches
to their north, Tseng decided that he already knew violence well enough.
"So where are you headed?"
"...It's classified, sir."
"Ah." Veld was smiling warmly, leaning in. Like
he'd heard his boy say something precocious and oh-so-adorable. "Now where
are you really?"
The unfortunate thing was Tseng wasn't all that
sure.
The problem with going to Houtou was that you technically
couldn't. It was like going to the City of the Ancients. There was the
idea, but it existed more as a myth, cradled in a valley between mountains
you didn't quite know, at latitudes you weren't quite sure of, at a place
you wouldn't be certain was there until you were already in it.
That worked fine if you were a sanzo priest. They
were half-legend anyway. But if you were a Turk on a mission of delegation
in First Platoon, now on a classified sidetrip to theoretically save the
world, it got pretty goddamn frustrating.
"I'm sorry, sir."
"You'll keep us updated, won't you, there, Xian?"
"I'm not sure I can sir."
I really don't know.
baboommmmmmmmm.
"What is it?" Veld asked, when transmission resumed
again. "Covert opts? Working with the East Wutainese? Guerillas?"
That was a good word for them, guerillas.
Another word, Tseng thought as he looked
across the river and saw what was waking up, would be incubi.
God knows where Hartzell found the trashcan in the
first place, or the stick to bang it with when he went around to the tents.
The early-morning firedrop had done a lot to rouse the troops from their
holes in the mud, and now the captain was taking care of the rest of them.
"All right, you maggots! Drop your cocks and grab
your socks! It's the start of another beautiful day!"
The thing to understand about Zachariah Tilsbury
Hartzell was there was no possible way for him to be actually ill-willed.
He had a heart bursting with love for everyone, even the PFCs, so when
he went around calling the boys "maggots," it was the most genial "maggots"
they were ever going to bear witness to. He might as well have called everyone
"pumpkin" and said the pancakes were already on the table. And most people
would have believed it, too.
"Break camp, break fast, be ready to move out by
oh-nine-hundred. Conway!" he shouted cheerily Reno, passing by in the other
direction. "Where you going all scrubbed pink and friendly?"
"Go to hell, cowboy," the kid growled back.
"Love you too, shug!"
"Captain!" Tseng was calling, up on the hill. Zack
waved. Tseng went on, "Don't let him stray over to the other camp."
"Now, c'mon, Mister Tseng, give the leash a little
slack," the S.O.L.D.I.E.R. teased. He looked over his shoulder. "What kinna
business would haul his tush that way to begin with?
"Oh," he said, seeing.
The men on the other side of the river, the camp
set apart from Sephiroth's platoon, were waking up now, stretching tired
arms and poking at a small curling fire built up between their tents. One
of 'em was the .50s guy, machine gun slung over his shoulder and firebrand
hair, maybe a bit too close to Reno's own.
"I wouldn't do that," Zack told the kid, edging
up on serious now, that big brother tone. And this time it stopped him.
"Why not?" the kid asked, turning.
"He's a hanyou. A half-breed."
"Half-breed what? Tseng said that too."
"A half-demon. False human, you get me? He's bad
luck. You stay away from him."
On the far shore, like he heard, Gojyo looked up
from the river and grinned.
The truth is, Sephiroth had said as they'd
dressed, you were right. None of those men are human. The priest thinks
he is, but he isn't.
Not a youkai, Zack had said.
No. I'm not sure what, but it's powerful. But
assume for convenience that they are, all of them, a pack of youkai. Are
you prepared to fight alongside a force like that?
Sir, Zack had said loyally, I'd follow
you into hell. Demons is just as well in the meantime.
Odd that you should say, Sephiroth had answered,
knotting back his hair. Hell is where we're going.
What the priest had said, said with the general
in those hours before Zack and Mister Cho dragged their respective charges
off, was that there was forbidden sorcery going on in the forbidden southern
capital, the castle of Houtou. The fastest way there was along the Utai,
but they'd have to switch to foot at some point, and it would get harder
as they go. The people behind this were trying to resurrect the Demon King
Gyuumaoh, and weren't above assassins, mercenaries, and sophisticated death
traps to stop anyone trying to thwart them.
Any freshman mythology major knew who Gyuumaoh was.
Come to that, anyone who bothered to read their orientation pamphlet would
know. It was goddamn Odin or Loki, hell, some sort of bad shit, the toppest
top dog you could get in a place like this. It had taken an army of gods
to stop him the first time around. And most of the gods had died.
This time the gods were sending a priest and some
misfit demons, in a leaky patrol boat. If that said anything about chances
of success.
They named the boat Boat, Sephiroth said. It was
a dragon that could magic itself into a boat, ergo, Boat.
Cleverness was a bit beyond them sometimes.
And it might have been Genjo Sanzo's mission, but
it sure as shit was Cho-san's Boat. Which meant there was no bumming rides
en masse on it, and a lot of jogging to keep up from the shore. Until they
could get their own riverine down here.
"That reminds me," Zack had said to his general.
"What
about the Major?"
Sephiroth had looked a little awkward about that.
The Major was a S.O.L.D.I.E.R. 1st Class, though
how he got there was anyone's guess. He could barely hold his sword and
he'd been handed the other half of Sephiroth's First Platoon to rendezvous
with Air Cav by Domu Lan Bridge, and they were supposed to rejoin them
at the delta. But they were gone south of that now and the general hadn't
radioed anything to him about where to find them now.
Not that this tactic had ever worked in the past.
Especially if those copters up over the northern
treeline were any suggestion.
"Fuck," Zack heard Reno groan. "He's back, isn't
he."
"Hey, uh, do something for me." Zack sought for
something, wincing at the sight. Fresh out of bombing another beach? Probably.
"Go fill the canteens or something useful."
Reno scowled. "Sir, technically I outrank you."
This was true, in that S.O.L.D.I.E.R. yielded to
T.U.R.K.S., and everyone was supposed to yield to T.U.R.K.S., even the
ones above most human laws. And this applied, usually, when people like
Xian Tseng were concerned. But Reno Conway was not Xian Tseng. Too pink
around the ears, for one thing.
"No," Zack told him. "Technically I'm a soldier,
and you're a civilian during wartime. So how 'bout you go get to those
canteens."
He really didn't deserve the dirty look the kid
threw him as he stormed off. Really, he was saving him from the hanyou.
Mister Tseng was absolutely right on that point. Even if they were supposed
to be allies with that camp, it wouldn't pay to start acting like friends.
Allies. God's good earth, what was he gonna tell
Glosse about that one? That Big Brother Sephy had a crush and could he
please just bear with it a while?
Over in the other camp, Gojyo watched the boy. Hakkai
watched Gojyo watching the boy.
Sanzo watched Hakkai watching Gojyo watching the
boy, but decided to stay out of it.
"Seventeen," Hakkai reminded the hanyou politely.
Gojyo wasn't caring.
"Old enough to come asking, old enough to know."
He smirked. "Hey, priest. What'd you get off that captain guy?"
"You mean the general," Sanzo corrected, for the
principle of the thing.
"Yeah, that."
"He's not taking his whole platoon, I can tell you
that. They won't do anything but slow us up, a body of men like that."
"Sanzo," Hakkai said. "Did you talk at all about
what you'll do when you get to Houtoujou?"
"...There's time to think about that yet."
They went to tuck their tents down then, because
the wind was kicking up. Helicopters were coming in.
"Who the hell is that?" Gojyo shouted over the noise.
"Looks like fucking air batallion!"
"Damned if I know," Sanzo said. "The general mentioned
something about a major with a bit of a sibling complex..."
S.O.L.D.I.E.R. 1st Class Hazel Tiberius Glosse was
probably 20.
S.O.L.D.I.E.R. 1st Class Hazel Tiberius Glosse was
5'6", wide-eyed and with the kind of muscle that could only come from a
bottle.
S.O.L.D.I.E.R. 1st Class Hazel Tiberius Glosse got
the nickname "Angel" in boot camp and it stuck.
Apart from that, the only thing you really needed
to know about him was that he called Sephiroth his older brother.
Zack Hartzell would later insist to Cho and the
others that this wasn't really the case, that Sephiroth was an orphan
with no known family, and that the boy was basing the relation purely on
the fact that they happened to look almost identical. Which shouldn't have
meant anything at all. Really. Honest.
Glosse also brought Sephiroth's sword with him.
A ceremonial katana with its edge chipped in two places and the guard dented.
He'd apparently had it since graduation. A gift from the president.
Sephiroth laid it across his lap like a bamboo stick,
while Goku watched him fingering his bamboo stick like a sword. He still
had bruises from last night. And the gun incident wasn't gonna go away
too quickly.
They sat like this around a breakfast pit-- the
general, his major and captain, the Turks, and the priest and his disciples.
Tseng made sure from the start that Reno sat as far away from Gojyo as
possible, but hadn't accounted for Glosse sitting next to Sanzo. Or Sanzo
sitting next to Sephiroth, with the maps between them.
"Between river and foot, we're looking at two weeks'
travel. A third of the country to cross," said the priest, in sturdy Norse.
"Once there, it's over in a heartbeat, one way or another. If you don't
want to commit yourselves, you can pull back as soon as we get close."
Sephiroth moved a finger over his lips. "No," he
said. "To fight this thing, you'll need far more manpower than you have
now. I have to say that pulling back at the last minute is unreasonable."
Flirt, flirt, flirt flirt flirt...
S.O.L.D.I.E.R. 1st Class Hazel Tiberius Glosse mentioned
something about unauthorized movement, but didn't seem like he was paying
much attention to his own words. The guy was a magpie. Every second some
shiny flash of metal from across the camp caught his eye and had him trail
off, safely ignored for another ten seconds. He was also leaning very close
to Sanzo.
Was it just a power thing? Tseng really hoped that
was it. Otherwise he wasn't sure how much more of this overfondness he
could stand.
"All the same," said Sanzo, leaning as far as he
dared away from Hazel to readdress the maps he was sharing, "the agreement
was for assistance, and you have your men's lives to protect."
"What happens if you don't succeed?"
"Everyone dies."
"At length," Cho Hakkai added. His Norse was a lot
more fluid than the priest's. "Slowly," he said. "No sweeping apocalypse,
you see, sir. An angry god resurrected on the earth with a desire to kill
all humanity. Or devour him, it depends on the legend."
"Nice government you guys got around here," Reno
muttered.
"Gyuumaoh king, ancient king," Gojyo the hanyou
said. His Norse was shit. That was putting it nicely. "Not like this anymore."
The tragic thing was how little Reno noticed the
accent. Or how readily he leaned across the circle to light Gojyo's cigarette
with his lighter. He didn't smoke, but knew it paid to keep certain things
with you.
Gojyo caught his wrist when he extended the torch
and held his hand and the lighter flame steady to catch the light. Fingers
lingering on his skin, over the pulse of his veins in his wrist, the lines
in his palm.
When he let the boy withdraw, he drawled out a Wutai-go
thank you the kid couldn't return, just stammer something and sit.
The healer Cho coughed. "You can see for yourselves
the influence of Gyuumaoh's awakening on the world," he said. "Surely you've
noticed in the past two years how all the youkai in Wutai have started
to go insane."
"Before, they were one of the UC's strongest assets,"
Tseng agreed. "Their beserker state is said to be a major cause in turning
the tide of the war."
It gave him a set of sour looks. He didn't dodge
them. He half wondered if the disdain came from his face and how accentless
his Norse was out of his mouth. Traitor, blood-traitor, honorless, soulless,
how dare you call yourself...
...call himself what?
S.O.L.D.I.E.R. 1st Class Hazel Tiberius Glosse batted
his blue eyes at his older not-actually-brother and told of the time he
was up north guarding the Wa Kouryuu Delta, when the youkai monsters had
started to turn on their human comrades, killing them in the middle of
an engagement. How they fled like nasty animals into the forests, how wasn't
it a good thing, those godless creatures?
Tseng tried to imagine subbing every word like "youkai"
or "demon" or "those things" with "wute," to play out the sound in his
head.
Yep.
Funny how different we can be and still be the same.
But he wasn't going to talk Wutainese around them.
He just wasn't going to.
The fact of it was, they were two different sides,
just in the same war. Just, not the war everyone else was going to go on
fighting.
It wasn't a fight in trenches or swamps or beaches,
it was a Journey South down the long slow river. It was a monster, instead
of a human made up as a monster, snarling inhuman as it bled to death under
your hands.
Four days and already Tseng was sick of this shit.
"You," the priest said, and for a long time the
Turk didn't realize he was being addressed. "Why do you wear the tilak
on your forehead?"
"I am religious," said Tseng.
"Really," said High Priest Genjo Sanzo, mouthing
a cigarette out from his pack. "I'm not."
"Where we're going," Reno spoke up suddenly, when
only Sephiroth laughed. "Is it gonna be hairy?"
"Probably, kid," Zack said gently.
"Good lord, I hope so," said the Angel, thumbing
his cross. "It's not right if it's not hot."
"You like it like that?" Gojyo asked the littler
redhead, grinning, daring. "Hot? And hairy?"
"Are you going to be taking an interpreter?" Sanzo
inquired politely, while Reno tried to do more than gibber.
"Only if my men won't be fainting all the time,"
Sephiroth answered.
Tseng approached his charge at 0850, before the platoon
was set to split, with the lieutenants taking to the west with the men
and the chosen bullshit brave going south. The boy had his headphones on
and Tseng had to yank them off.
"Reno," he said. "I want you to stay with the main
group."
"What?" the kid cried. "Why?"
"Don't ask questions," Tseng said sternly. "On the
field, I'm the head of T.U.R.K.S.. Do you understand me? I don't want you
involved in this. There shouldn't be any argument."
Nice to say, but Reno's big blue eyes were like
the Angel's: hard as shit to shake.
"Look," the senior Turk relented. "I don't want
you around them."
"Oh," said Reno, understanding and narrowing those
big baby eyes. "So it's not about gettin' killed or whatever, but keeping
me away from a bad-luck hanyou, that's your top prio, huh?
"Well, I ain't staying here," the boy declared,
hauling rifle onto his shoulder. "My orders from Veld said I wasn't to
leave your sight. Wouldn't wanna be a bad kid, now would I? Actually."
His tone deepened. Accused. "I might as well ask why you're going."
Well? What answer was there to that?
Why was he here at all? Who sent him, what led?
What made it so? What bid him follow?
"I'm religious," said Tseng, and couldn't explain
any farther.
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