"Fort Tamblin is straight ahead. Let's hurry, Bravo Team is standing by."
The deer path the Predator Drone had marked for them wound through dense wilderness. They prowled on soft feet through the shadows when an indigo apple on the ground caught Angeal's attention…There were no apple trees here.
"…Dumbapples…" Angeal muttered.
"Did you say something?" asked Zack.
"Nothing. Nevermind. Let's go."
They came to a pagoda and crouched behind some brush. The Fort.
Angeal scanned the target.
"Bravo Team will blow the front gate. That's our cue. You'll charge the base and earn your rank."
Zack's eyes were alight with excitement. He turned back to the pagoda, using those strategic brain muscles to plan his attack. But ten minutes went by, then twenty, and still no signal.
"AAAARRRRGGGH. C'mon Bravo Team!" he bounced and fidgeted, energy zigzagging through his taut body.
In a moment of reflection to pass the time, Angeal unsheathed his sword, held it to his forehead in silent prayer, and resheathed it. Zack's eyes implored, his raised eyebrows did the rest.
"You know, I've never actually seen you use that…Don't you think it's sort of a waste?"
Angeal harrumphed . "Use brings about wear, tear, and rust...And that's a real waste."
He said it so matter-of-factly, like he'd pulled it straight from the Webster's dictionary. Zack rolled his eyes.
Then. Explosion. The signal.
Angeal shot to the edge of the brush, his gaze whipped back to Zack.
"Go!"
And that one word sent Zack leaping off toward the fort. It was time to go hunting.
Running into the pagoda, two adjacent watch-towers stood on either end of the main gong-tower in front of him. He ninja'd his way up to the roof, crouched down at the edge and took stock of his situation.
An evil grin crept across his face. Four guards, heavily armed.
Good, a challenge.
He dropped right in the middle of their formation. A flying crescent-slash felled all four of them, and a reverse-slash sent them flying. Not bad, two hits.
After he dispatched them, his phone went off. He flipped it to his ear.
"Were you able to get inside?" Angeal spoke from the other line. Zack rubbed the back of his head.
"Well I dunno, she had some issues and wasn't that cute anyway. Figured I'd stay off that on-ramp."
"The fortress, Zack. Focus. Intel says Wutai's greatest warrior is in the Fort, but that can't be because he's been dead for years. It could be Genesis in disguise."
"If I win, do you think I'll make 1st?"
"If you live, we'll talk about it."
He clicked on Angeal and ran off to start a fight, bloodlust in his eyes.
Zack proceeded onto the main pagoda, a rock garden complete with cherry blossom trees surrounding its perimeter. He started up the steps to the entrance when a voice stopped him in his tracks…
"Freeze scumbag!"
Zack dropped into combat stance. The voice came from ahead.
"Prepare for trouble, make it double!"
Dafuq? This isn't a video game!
"Ugly Shinra SOLDIER dudes…must die!"
A little kid hopped out on top of the steps ready for a good old fashioned beat down, hair cropped short under a dojo bandana and shoelaces left untied.
Zack cocked his head. "Who are you?"
"I'm Wutai's greatest warrior! That's who! If you wanna go further, you have to go through me!"
"A kid…?" Zack stood dumbfounded. "Go home. This is a warzone. It's dangerous here!"
"You're the one who's going home! You come any further, you'll have a fight on your hands!"
"Oh man…what am I supposed to do here?" Zack rubbed the back of his head. It was obvious this wasn'this quarry, but now he had to improvise. "Alright kiddo, you got me! Now go tell your parents about how you beat me up!"
"Better yet, I'll show them!"
She ran down the steps and punched him straight in the crotch.
OOOOOOFH!
Zack went down cross-eyed as she snagged his Fire Materia and ran away laughing.
"That'll teach you to mess with me! I've brought peace to Wutai!"
Ohh, it's going to the stomach!
Zack groaned on the ground in agony for a minute until his phone rang. He knew Angeal was watching from somewhere. He let it go to voicemail, got up, shook himself out, and went back to work.
He ran up the stairs to the pagoda entrance and shoulder-bashed through the doors. Inside was a round arena-like space, devoid of furniture and held up by columns and pillars. But no one else was there.
His phone rang again.
"'sup Angeal?"
"Having trouble Zack?" He could practically feel the smirk in Angeal's voice.
"NO," Zack grimaced. "It looks like the target fled. There's no one left here."
"Good work. Fall back to the rendezvous spot."
"Understood." He clicked on him and looked around once more, throwing his arms wide in triumphant display. "Hey Director Lazard! Are you watching?"
He started at a trot toward the entrance. "Gonna make First, gonna make First, oh yeah, gonna make First."
Angeal and Zack rendezvoused in a thicket a mile out from the Fort. Lazard was there with two infantrymen escorts. He stepped on something and shook his foot out. The guy wore Gucci and Prada out in the field and complained about it!
"Let's hurry," said Angeal. "Sephiroth and Bravo Team are waiting on the other side."
Zack pricked up. "Sephiroth?"
A whirling sound sliced air as two shuriken struck the infantrymen dead where they stood. Zack and Angeal whipped around as two more shot for them, but Zack drew his sword in a flash batting them back at their assailants, and two Wutai troops fell dead from the trees.
More troops dropped down, surrounding them and closing in. Ambush.
Zack rushed in a gallant flourish, adrenaline shooting in electric jolts. He drove his sword through the chest of one trooper, back-stabbed a troop behind him, then spin-slashed in a hyperphonic sword-twirl. He ran to strike another, but they'd all fallen, his body took a moment to come down from the surge. He couldn't stop shaking.
"Zack! Come on!" called Angeal. Zack found him and Lazard studying the bodies he'd rebounded the shuriken at. But more troops rallied from ahead, rushing in arrowhead formation for them. Angeal dropped into combat stance.
"Take the Director to safety," he ordered Zack.
"Call Sephiroth!" ordered Lazard.
"Zack is more than enough. Now go!"
Zack looked back at Angeal once before hurrying away with Lazard.
He bash-barreled through underbrush with the Director in tow. Captain Pretty-boy better have been grateful that Zack was clearing a path for him and his nice clothes while leaving Angeal behind to make due on his own. They reached the helispot where a detachment of Shinra paratroopers waited on standby.
"Go help Angeal!" called Lazard.
But Zack was already racing back the way he came, running like someone else's life depended on it.
He charged down the game trail calling Angeal's name, but there was no response. Angeal was nowhere, yet the two Wutai bodies still laid splayed out like hunted deer. Zack went over to them, taking a closer look.
"What?" he stood confused. "These guys aren't Wutai troops…"
He looked up as a floating orb of Materia hovered to him like a bubble. It flashed malefic red, and before him appeared a creature conjured from the depths of Hell itself.
The daemon Ifrit stood like a pair of behemoths stacked on top of each other, with cloven feet and abbadonian horns wreathed in immortal flame.
"An Eidolon!" exclaimed Zack. "Who called it?"
A towering colossus of unholy majesty, Ifrit rushed for Zack in a stampeding barrage, while Zack dove away equipping his Ice Materia. He was definitely going to need it for this one.
The fire-beast sent a wall of flame hurling at Zack in an infernal nuclear nimbus, while Zack threw up an Ice Barrier. It melted in seconds, but kept him safe long enough to start hurling ice magic at its head. Fire missiles shot for Zack as he ducked and dodged, rolling away while sending ice rockets flying right back mid-strafe. Calamity cast down on them in apocalyptic maleficence as a Fire and Ice spell collided in the midst of their battle arena, the blastwave sending Zack toppling across the ground.
As the creature prepared another stampeding rush, Zack charged a Power-Slash, imbuing all the Ice Magic he had left. The demon ran at Zack, he leapt to the side, and overhead slashed with all his might. Everything he had left pierced through the unholy carapace of the fire daemon…and did absolutely zero damage.
Now Zack was out of magic.
The creature stood up, sending a pyroclast of flame at him in a tidal wave of nuclear heat. He ducked, preparing for the blow, waiting to be bathed in wildfire.
But something flashed in front of him, something holding the wall of fire at bay. An infernal angel stood with his daikatana out like a proclamation to the sun, guarding Zack against the fray. His eyes were dark against the fire, his countenance smoldering as if to challenge the sun. A single slash and Ifrit had fallen, the blinding explosion bathing him in hot aural radiance as he drove his blade skyward. The silver-haired monolith held his ground, victorious in a flowing black longcoat that waved against the wind.
"Holy…" Zack stood taken aback, as if he had witnessed an avenging angel absolve him.
Was this…Sephiroth?
The man went to kneel down by the bodies. He turned one over and all was as he had feared.
"Genesis," he said.
Zack went over to the body. He recognized the face, the same from the mug shot in briefing.
"The missing SOLDIER 1st Class?"
Sephiroth turned the other body over, and Zack gasped. "They're identical!"
"A Genesis copy," explained Sephiroth.
"Copy? A human copy?"
Sephiroth looked up at him with urgency. "Where's Angeal!"
"I thought he was fighting around here…" Zack stammered. He looked around on the ground, no tracks, as if he'd vanished without a trace.
Sephiroth grunted and stood. "So he's betrayed us as well."
"What?" Zack spun around aghast, panic edging his voice. "NO WAY! I know what kind of guy Angeal is. And he'd never do that!"
He pursued Sephiroth, who looked to the sky seemingly for answers that weren't there. The dark man turned to face Zack, the young hunter standing strong and ready to fight all the forces of the world. Sephiroth regarded him, boring into Zack's eyes, as if he knew better, and Zack faltered yet again.
"Who do you think summoned that Eidolon?" asked Sephiroth in an almost reassuring tone, it hit Zack like a curse.
"Angeal wouldn't betray us! Never!" He shook his head, yet terrible tears welled up in his eyes. He stepped back from Sephiroth, angry fire rising to cover pain the big man knew was there. Sephiroth let him. Zack would learn the ways of the world the hard way, this twenty-something kid with pierced ears and spiked hair would know what it meant to grow up.
[Received Ifrit Materia]
Search "Contents" to return to the Table of Contents at anytime.
No comments:
Post a Comment