村雨

balto / katana of final fantasy vii by fair | she/they | 18+

low-activity. dash only. sideblog to @wingsdreamt​.

It could all be a ploy.

Arrogant of him, maybe, to think that ShinRa even considers him an asset worthy of the attention, of the effort and risk that duplicity so close to the chest demands. According to the narrative, all of the other Firsts lost their minds, and it was still an acceptable use of Company resources to slot one more in their roster. After all, weapons are not expected to think for themselves, and it is better to keep at least one on hand so long as they are useful.

He serves an agenda just by existing, even if that agenda is simply to satiate one cracked scientist’s curiosity.

So be it. He has his own agendas.

And so he risks exposing that to a Turk of all people – probably arrogant, even if there is something earnest in the game Balto plays. To talk of defection. Of the intelligence arm leaving.

Interesting. Dangerous.

He does not shrug the drunken lean away, dropping his arm to curl it around Balto’s midsection. Measured, restrained, just bracing. No move to heft the other man up over his shoulder, not even a threat of it. He looks out, then down, adjusting to move lock-step. It’s effortless when it shouldn’t be, but he has many years of experience directly supporting someone else in such a way.

A void that won’t be filled, cannot be filled. But he can pretend.

“You said garbage can, I said dumpster. Wall Market’s close enough,” he teases with a flash of a grin and glinting-bright eyes. The Turk is drunk, it seems, but Kunsel does not think he is as inebriated as he appears. He could be wrong. It’s happened occasionally.

Onward, onward. Perfectly natural to escort a colleague home after a night of drinking. Plausible deniability for this… this tentative whatever-it-is. Alliance. Manipulation. Desperate outreach to humanity in an inhumane time.

Company of a sort. Misery loves it.

It’s a change. Something different, different context.

“Huh. Something about the way to a man’s heart. Not going through the fourth and fifth ribs, eh? Assuming lau lau’s food.”

It has been a minute since he’s taken the public transit down below the Plate rather than his own motorcycle, but - he came here on foot for the physicality of it, and he remembers the way.

“You steady enough to stand or you need a seat?”

The train isn’t empty and - well. Kunsel has no idea if Balto suffers motion sickness. What a strange notion.

With as much time as he spends reading or writing about them, quality time with a SOLDIER is more of a rarity. Blitzkrieg battering rams on the field, a demonstration of the overwhelming power to cement Wutai’s eventual defeat. Shinra paid Science to create living weapons, and they delivered in spades. 

Self-sufficient and deadly. 

Certain qualities, however, cannot be improved upon.

Shinra discovered too late that they were never truly the ones that held the leash. Too late, too late. The mass desertion, Director Lazard’s betrayal, Nibelheim. He does not know exactly where Kunsel’s limits lie. Perhaps those limits have been breached long ago. He would believe it. A smile can hide a great many secrets behind gleaming teeth. For now, Kunsel lends his aid and Balto has no inclination to refuse. 

They are not friends. Not enemies either. Allies of necessity protecting bonds that they value more than life itself. He can appreciate the beauty in that.

“Not my style,” Balto huffs, clearly slighted by the implication. Better, in his mind, that his foes see him coming. Leave no questions, foster no doubts. With a quality sword in hand, such underhanded tactics are unnecessary. “Muscle, bone, steel. A sharp enough blade cuts through them all.” 

A rough shake of his head jostles brain matter unpleasantly about the walls of his skull instead of providing some desired clarity. “It’s food,” he assures, grimacing at his own mistake. “Gongagan specialty,” Balto continues, and his accent pronounces itself along the notes of the second syllable as they make their way up onto the train before it begins its journey down through the corkscrew tunnel. 

The hour is too late for the salary crowd. Service workers ending a long shift, the occasional drunk, married men avoiding their spouses and vice versa haunt the seats.

“I can stand. That’s what the ‘oh shit’ handles are for, huh?” Balto points, not that the handles needed pointing out. 

On a Turk’s salary, he could certainly afford a tidy flat somewhere on the Plate. The view, however, he considers piss poor. Wall Market, seedy as it may be, is alive. Lights, music, food. People. The hopefuls and the hopeless. A dazzling representation of Midgar’s true spirit, packaged up into the walls of Don Corneo’s domain. 

The city and its people must truly be in dire straits if the lights ever dimmed and the music ceased to play. 

Balto’s note of literalism strikes an odd chord, inspiring a flicker of mirth that should be out of place. But then, that is something SOLDIER and the Turks have in common. Their humor is never far from the gallows, from the gutter, or both.

He stops short of laughter, full lips twitched wry. Kunsel is not a Turk, not a spy, for all that he has always been percipient, for all that he has learned through trial and error to compartmentalize information, compartmentalize trust. The masks he must wear are different, differently practiced, and now he does not have the benefit of a helmet to completely veil his expression from the world.

Human. He always was. Maybe he still is, even with the serum cocktails injected into his bloodstream, the veritable mako reactor in his bones - even with the strength to crush brick to powder with his fingertips. The distinction between strength and power is contentious and nebulous. One may give rise to the other, or not. Maybe it’s all in how one uses their resources, their leverage.

In knowing when not to cut, but to hold. Of intuiting when to think, when not to fight.

“Maybe,” he ventures, soft and close and with eye contact unbroken. Maybe he could believe Balto. It would be foolish for the Turk to approach him with something so personal, with something so volatile, so damning, without some sense of conviction. A risk, walking into the beast’s cage. It has to mean something. Whatever that something is. “Matters more if you believe you don’t know.”

Whether for show to any curious eyes that might venture past the alleyway or simply out of desire for some sort of contact not involving prodding scalpels or needles, Kunsel’s hands linger on Balto’s lapels now that the last of the crumbled debris has been brushed away.

He hears. He responds. Months, years. Much to do, many questions to uncover. How deep it goes, how far they will go. “I’ve had to operate on less.”

The slight slant of his mouth remains. Mako eyes are bright and clear, lambent in the dingy light, hazel hints like flecks of amber-gold. Focused, not in aggression, but on the search - as if he can somehow peel the shadowy layers back without flensing his target alive.

Hope is a force unto itself, even dissolved in a drip feed that burns.

“Call’s coming from inside the house, then.” Palms flatten to the Turk’s shoulders, one final sweep, and he steps back to straighten his own coat, looking down and away.

“You got a particular dumpster you want escorted to? Seem to have some free time.”

An olive branch or an out. One, the other, or both.

Envy and admiration are at times indistinguishable from one another. He admires SOLDIERs for their breathtaking speed, awe-inspiring feats of strength, and their martial poise. He does not envy the trials they are subject to, the horrible ways in which Science has twisted the bodies of those who survived and those who did not, the litany of records he has personally seen to, detailing their grisly deaths, the exacting cost of the leash they toiled under.

The friends that have been lost, brothers in arms torn away. Torn apart.

They would each do whatever it takes to see to it that their people live through the odds that the Company has stacked against them. The red thread of promise; a noose about their necks that could tighten at any moment if they take the wrong step forward. A dangerous thing to entrust in the hands of another. What choice do they have, if the limiter is not really a limit at all? Whatever it takes, no matter how steep the price.

Kunsel has no way of knowing whether the truth is just purported, if what remains is merely held in reserve. No way of knowing, except if he were to know, if Kunsel had all the pieces, Balto doubts they would be standing here now having this conversation.

Gone before the dust has settled, chasing the lost with all the fury of a loosed storm tearing across the horizon. 

No trademark glow in his eyes to speak of, misty blue, almost gray in the dim incandescent light seeping in through the smog; Balto needs neither of those things to see the ember of purpose in the mako-bright eyes looking back at him.   

Released, Balto steps forward to stand beside. Teeter, sway– just barely, reorienting to support his own weight without the benefit of a brick wall at his back. The world seems to be tilting away from him, or maybe that’s because he’s gone full lean against Kunsel’s shoulder as he squints out at the opening to the well-lit street.

He’ll take what’s offered.

“Did I say dumpster? If I have options, well.” Balto casts a glance not upwards, but sideways in the direction of the adjoining walking path of the nearby station to Sector Six. “My stop’ll be just outside Wall Market. Come by sometime.” Blink, then a lazy grin of uninhibited confidence. “If you’re so inclined. I make a mean plate of lau lau.”

Not the first. Not the last. One in a long, long line of sacrifices at the altar of wealth, demise etched into a foundation of lies. While its concept may have been the dream of a shining future, Midgar was built on the bones of deception. The dead do not want, and the wanting will work themselves to death to survive, so long as the promise of a better life dangles just out of reach.

It’s systemic. It does not take a systems expert to see the pattern.

Unwavering, Kunsel holds eye contact, the battered steel token perched just below his nostrils. While he watches every twitch, every flicker of eyelashes, he breathes.

Scent is tied to memory. Live with someone long enough and you’ll become accustomed to their smells. Sweat and shed skin. Blood and oil. The musk of life. Traces of vitality, primal as pheromones, vain as products, almost impossible to forge. A SOLDIER’s treatments enhance more than strength and agility, but they are only as good as the mind above the body.

The subtlest trace is almost enough to buckle his knees.

Almost.

Hope, though, is conductive. Galvanizing.

At first it may appear as though Kunsel does not hear. He barely blinks. Looming and silent, he gives nothing, expression schooled carefully blank in a way that could indicate threat-assessment, could indicate a potential for true intentional violence, or anything else.

He only looks away for a moment, tipping his chin up to thread his fingers along the standard issue ball-chain around his neck, freeing it from his collar. Five tags in all. None of them bear his own name.

“You have one,” Kunsel observes, unhooking the shorter loop of a tag he knows by feel alone. Another of Zack’s. This one was never worn by its owner; the blue protective film over the front is still attached. Something forgotten, left behind in a bureau or between the seam of wall and carpet in the halls he now treads alone. 

He exchanges them without need of a second glance.

“A heart.”

Now, he reaches out with the less-blemished tag in hand, brushing the red fragments away from the Turk’s shoulders, his sleeves, curving his wrist to slip the spare tag into his inner breast pocket.

“Going to need more to go on than that,” he thrums, almost tender in the way he sets about tidying the rumple of Balto’s clothing. Dexterous fingers flip and fold his collar, trying for symmetry in this extremely asymmetrical situation. They are compromised. Both of them are. If the wrong person sees or overhears, the Company will be forced to act.

Unless this is a snare.

“As specific as you can get. Names. Places. Timeframes.”

The bait was certainly effective. Better to appear as though he’s examining a potential playmate to take home than to pace like a caged beast (even if he is one). Kunsel is here, present, keenly focused. News on Zack’s life for… an escape route? From what? For the Turks as a whole, no word of anyone else. It could be anything. It could be any method.

“Color me interested, but I only make promises I intend to keep.”

“Oh? And here I thought I forgot it back at the bar.”

He is human. If cut, he will bleed. If shoved against a wall by a SOLDIER who can exert enough force through his fingertips alone to crumble brick, his heart will palpitate in his chest as wildly as any rabbit’s. 

‘’ppreciate the reminder,” Balto comments wryly.  

Giving him the replacement tag is a nice consideration. He doubts anyone would care to look closely at the tag to judge its authenticity, but antiquing the metal should be more than enough to produce a compelling visual. A worn dog tag, no longer needed by its owner. 

The tragedy of loss will not gain traction with hope to keep it at bay. It’s not too late until it’s too late. 

One hundred and twelve days have passed since the Nibelheim incident.

Perhaps the mere endeavor will cost them their lives as they rail against the contracts they have signed, the burdens that they have chosen to bear. Bonds that go deeper than blood. The ties that bind them are what little they have to themselves in this world. Connections, connections.

And it would still be worth the price.

Balto tilts his head, marveling at the contrast of ferocity and tenderness that a single pair of hands can convey within the span of a few minutes. 

The Turks have plenty of black marks in their storied history. Their repeated failures with Avalanche, finding their mysterious broker, has left them treading thin ground for some time. It is not terribly difficult to notice that Scarlet and Heidegger have been salivating at the chance to consolidate their power while Verdot maintains his tenuous grip as Head of General Affairs. The President’s obvious contempt does not help, not that that ego-ball of a man could ever wear a mask well even if he tried.

“Would you believe me if I said I don’t know?”

Balto pulls his lips into a lazy grin. He is asking for Kunsel to believe in the absurd. To believe in a feeling when proper planning and action require facts. 

“I haven’t been able to put my finger on it yet. But this business with Avalanche, whoever their informant is–” has all the hallmarks of a complete disaster in the works, and the Turks will be the most obvious ones to take the fall for it. Balto shrugs. “I figure some of us will still manage to hang around when it all goes to shit. We’re sticky that way. Ten people, give or take. Could be in a few months, could be in a year or more.”

A drip feed is the best he can do.  

“Wouldn’t be any fun if you were that easy to please. ‘sides, I need more time to sniff around for more info on your friend.” 

Kunsel takes the space Balto yields with the baring of his throat, breaking eye contact for proximity. His lips hover a hair’s breadth away from the juncture of earlobe and jaw, where alcohol-warmth and body heat sublimate into the cold of Midgar night. It is entirely possible that he can hear the hammer of adrenaline-pulse beneath the city’s constant thrum, just as much as the volatile elements of products, sweat, life-musk, more, reach his senses.

For all that an observer might see the beginnings of a drunken tryst scant steps away from the back-alley entrance of a barely better-than-seedy bar, there is no physical contact between them. None at all, until Balto bridges the gap, skirting a palm over mesh, over metal, over corded strength.

Kunsel’s heart is a steady metronome, just a beat above resting. Controlled. Yet despite his control, his mouth still forms the final words of the report he should not have been able to access: ‘No body could be recovered at the scene.’

For all his sheer command of physicality, his fingertips still press into the facade brick above Balto’s shoulder. The smog-stained facing cracks, fissures revealing the fired red underneath, sure as any gunshot.

No violence thunders down. He listens. Breathes. Processes.

“Why are you doing this?” Almost subvocal, spoken there so close to the jugular, laden with the unspoken. What’s the catch? Because there must be one. He cannot trust that this is not some sort of test, a deliberate cruelty. Still, he does not deny his disbelief.

Right jacket pocket, he says, this swordsman from Gongaga with his facial scar and his dark hair in a knife-twist of irony, and Kunsel holds his poise for a few more tense seconds.

And then he seals his doom, perhaps, slipping directly into the noose the dogsbodies need to remove his inconvenience from the equation. Dire days indeed when denial of death–when it fits the pattern of deception written like a bloody screed plain to anyone with a spine–might itself warrant erasure.

Almost tender, the way he brushes his knuckles against Balto’s collar, plying the jacket open with gloved fingertips and brick dust, to retrieve the body-warmed steel. Such a small token, such a titanic weight.

There, a gap of breathing room, a return of eye contact, and he brings the tag, a tag matching one left behind, one he already wears, up to his nose. This one is more weathered. Chemical traces, scant but present, skin and blood, tend to collect in the ridge curl of stamped metal at the edges. It is a message. Difficult to fake. If there was no body, there would have been no tags.

This is not proof of life. This is proof of lies he already knew to be lies. And he knows, he knows, Balto risks consequences absconding with such evidence if his actions were unsanctioned.

The vibrant mako limning his irises still reveals lingering imperfections - hazel, calico flecks of blue and amber struck molten, not unlike the silent judgment of the Turks overseer.

Hope exists in the gaps between. Hope is gold. Malleable. Even crushed, it still exists, no matter how tarnished.

There is still hope amid the quiet fury and electric question in his gaze.

Silhouettes paint a different picture from afar. Nothing so uncommon hidden in Midgar's many alleyways. Narrow passages used to keep secrets between gaps, refuse tucked away and out of sight, waiting to be picked out between the city's teeth. Does truth only become irrefutable when evidence of it is as solid and real as bones beneath flesh? Does truth only reveal itself if you break it open by force and grab the beating heart of it in your hand? Excising truth might be an exercise in control or a demonstration of pure, unadulterated violence. 

Fingers flexed, stretchy fabric pulled into a fist, his reaction is entirely involuntary. An awareness of mortality. Crumbled brick powders the shoulder of his jacket, and Balto finds his eyes drawn to it. Kunsel’s pulse, unchanged, beats steadily against his curled fingers; this inward-outward contrast of control and chaos stretches out into an unbearably long silence. Balto waits, breath drawn and held, to see which side the coin lands on.

There. A tipping point. Steel catches light in the darkness, imperfect and worn as the tags may be. 

Twist of fate or leap of faith or somewhere in-between, Balto has chosen to make the most of this assignment. To prepare his own contingencies while monsters begin to stir in their den. Call it survival instinct, a desire to live, a suspicion of terrible things to come. Given hope, given something to protect, it is possible to become anything. 

Traitor. Monster. Ally. Enemy. 

The lines blur because they do not matter. 

“Not out of the goodness of my heart, that’s for sure.” Zack Fair is not the first. Certainly not the last. The Company has buried so many and those left behind are only allowed to wonder. To hold nothing more than a piece of paper in their hands that purports the truth. Little shards of it, pushed into their palms like glass. 

Balto does not wither under Kunsel’s gaze. Vital. Fierce.

Like staring into the heart of a reactor. 

They look compromising with hardly any space between them in this dirty little alleyway. They are compromised. Errant, discombobulated. There is no returning from that. He remembers, at some point, to release the grip of his hand while his heart continues to rattle in his chest. Balto no longer stumbles over his syllables, no longer feels his nerves dulled. “You seem like the sort of man to keep your promises. I need a backdoor.”

An exit plan. 

“...Not just for me.” Balto pauses long enough for the press of a question to form while he deliberates and weighs his odds. This could take months. Years. “For the Turks. For all of us.” 

Safety is not the absence of a threat. It is the presence of connection. They have both chosen those they would call theirs. Not for the first time, Balto bares his teeth through the bars of the cage. He is human, unenhanced, but his eyes are not clouded.

The right person at the right time can change everything, just as much as, if not more than, the wrong one. One infinitesimal slip can ripple to unpredictable effects minutes, months, years down the line. Something about a butterfly’s wings in Mideel and blizzards in Icicle.

What sort of chaos has Balto invited, or incited?

Kunsel hears Balto. Of course he hears him. He teased, and he got what he asked for - grimly, darkly, unexpectedly - but he is percipient enough to see the potential.

It is bait - the right combination of words strung together into suggestion that is just illustrative enough, just evocative enough. Kunsel is of a mind to find out what kind of bait, test the bite of the hook, because he does not need to be inebriated to shift his filters. Dangerous games to play on the precipice of desperate silence. Dangerous games to play with his life. With the vision that drives him onward. With Balto’s life too, depending, although Kunsel does not discount that the man’s alteration could be an act.

He ventures outside without another word, without a sign of disturbance, parting gestures of farewell to the bartender and to the bouncer likely to abandon his post and help contain the returned caterwauler.

Easy steps. Unhurried. Midgar sees approximations of seasons, even at the heart of the arid Badlands–deadlands, more like. Despite the massive city’s micro-climate, cold air intrudes, squeezing between the alleys and streets of glass and steel, concrete and asphalt, rendering most of them bitter wind-tunnels that hum, howl, hollow.

Beyond the eye of the lone (and often broken) CCTV camera keeping watch over the bar’s back door he strides, listening for footsteps. Somewhere between sulfur floodlight and darkness he pauses, tips his chin up, and draws a deep, deep breath.

From stillness he flows into motion.

Sudden, merciless, relentless, swift as a lightning strike, pronged to fork around the Turk trapped between him and the damp brick wall. They’re armed. Both of them are. Fists, feet, and swords. He does not strive to make contact, not immediately, but–

“Happy fucking birthday to me,” he intones, baritenor low and crystal clear, practiced with the nuance of volume below standard recording modules at a distance. “Keep talking. You can tell them I forced you if you have to.”

From halogen-warmed walls to alley-channeled gusts, the contrasting temperature is a sobering splash of cold water to the face. After retrieving his personal effects behind the counter, Balto has time enough to breathe in the sour scent of smog, cigarette smoke, and water-logged trash lining the ground while he considers the notion of shielding his hands from the biting wind by stuffing them in his pockets. Kunsel has already stalked off ahead with purpose. Balto concentrates first and foremost on the placement of his feet as he angles behind the rusty green guardrail and down the cracked concrete steps to trail after Kunsel. 

He does not get very far.

Faith, desperation, wishful thinking, whatever combination drives Kunsel over the threshold, it is not naïvety. Still, Balto does not anticipate what happens next. Reserved curiosity, a humorous dismissal, outright skepticism; not the press of masonry at his back nor the vivid glow of mako-infused eyes focused intensely on his own. 

 It could be love. It could even be loneliness. 

After hours of poring through footage, only a blind fool could have missed it.

The scabbard of his sword pushes up against his hip. Reaching for it does not even bear thinking about. There is no contest here. Proximity, the divide between human and superhuman, that sparks something thrilling, something dangerous. 

Not a threat, threat. It all circles back. They will do what they must.

Balto tilts his head back against the brick wall behind him and huffs a laugh through his nose despite the rush of adrenaline that has left him breathless. 

“Don’t plan on telling them anything.” Nothing of consequence, at least. He can still operate within the parameters of his mission without outright damning them both. Balto lowers his voice too, soft, conspiratorial as he leans forward. “You want to know what happened to him?”

Slowly, with plenty of opportunity for Kunsel to track the movement of his hand, Balto reaches out to pass his hand over the dog tags beneath the shifting overlap of black mesh. He can recite it from memory. He helped write it. “Personnel Status Report, Report Number S00826323. October 1st, year 0002, 22:18. Submitted by the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department. Zack Fair. SOLDIER First Class reported KIA after being deployed to Nibelheim to investigate disturbances caused by monsters gathering around the mako reactor. Fell in the line of duty defending the townsfolk from mutated drakes that had attempted to build a nest around the reactor. No body could be recovered at the scene.” 

That was the official report, and even that was kept under wraps. Balto stares intently at those brilliant eyes, somber, thoughtful. Quietly, he says, “But you don’t really believe that, do you? You want a real birthday present, check my right jacket pocket.”

“Shame. You’ve got a good voice for it. If you were to read reports aloud, I might not complain,” Kunsel ventures with a shrug, elbow propped to the bar, eyes half-lidded.

The determined performer is not his concern. Nobody has called on him to intercede. The bouncers have their jobs to do, after all, and the scuffle that erupts as they take notice of and move to eject the drunk man for a second time is vaguely entertaining. The rest of the patrons seem to think so, at least, and meanwhile the stage remains empty.

Ebb and flow, people come and go.

Kunsel cannot quite tell if Balto is inebriated or simply affecting it, playing a role as Turks are wont. Everyone has vices. Everyone. Some are more damaging than others. Some are riskier than others.

The alcohol in his own beverages might not do much, but maybe. Maybe it is a mood, maybe it is a quiet sort of desperation, but he considers his reflection in the mirror-still and lambent orange surface of his drink.

“We do. Some more than others,” he answers against his better judgment. “Sometimes a little external noise helps.”

Helps drown out the inner chaos, he doesn’t say, censoring himself with a tap of copper-glossed fingernail to glass. He doesn’t say it but it is there on the air, in the wry slant of his mouth. Perhaps he could stand to throw Balto a bone once in a while, lest the dark-haired swordsman find himself reassigned in exchange for someone like Reno. The devil you know and all that.

“It’s a change of pace anyway.”

Speaking of a change of pace, he quaffs the rest of his sipping beverage, inhaling a slow breath as if to fan the alcohol fumes through his sinuses - to little intoxicating avail, but the contrasting burn and chill from the hyper-cooled liquid is at least a unique sensation. Grounding in its own way, like the click of gil chits across the counter to settle his tab.

“Gonna get some fresh-er air.” A jut of chin to the back where the bouncers tossed the caterwauler is an invitation, probably, before he stands and rounds the half-wall corner to collect his coat and weapons on his way out.

He has been reckless before, and that mistake ultimately cost him his freedom. A price he would gladly pay again, for all that an old swordsmith saw any worth in a child no better than a beast. A price he is willing to pay, but a mistake he won’t commit a second time. What a quandary. 

Plans– he’s always been piss-poor with those. The more elaborate they get, the more difficult it becomes to keep track of all the variables and account for every little misstep. People, on the other hand. The right person at the right time can change everything.

Silence is most terrifying when the line of communication has suddenly broken. Waiting, not knowing, is its own form of agony. A yawning void that takes but does not give back.

Noise. He can make noise.

 “You wanna hear me read reports?” The slur is there, slight; vibrations of vowels pushed against the roof of his mouth and his numbed brain. He isn’t totally gone. “It’s dreadful. Most of mine go something like, subject first name: Joe, last name: redacted. Cause of death: ingestion of sulfuric acid. Self-inflicted. That one was a messy affair. Let’s see…Spillage over the torso and severe chemical burns around the jaw and throat, coagulative necrosis discoloring the flesh and blood vessels. Complete shutdown of all major internal organs within minutes. Cooked from the inside out. Personal records suggest large amounts of debt owed to redacted. Redacted. Redacted. Lots of that.” 

Balto is intimately familiar with the cataloguing and documenting deaths of many in the Company records. Paper-pushers, Public Security Officers, SOLDIERs, the whole gamut. They give him the interesting cases. 

Amending them, doctoring them…he’s done that too. Pertinent information for someone looking to confirm the validity of questionable KIA reports. 

The carrot is garishly orange, however tantalizing it may be, the implication is obvious. At least the alcohol has served its purpose. Room for plausible deniability, or the opportunity for an arrangement that could be beneficial for both of them.

The palm of his glove matches the curve of the mug, leeching its warmth to kickstart its effects, tracing topmost edge with thumb pad. Watching Balto transition from each stage of review in the typical provocative way. A non-expression settling in for likely the next long stint. An air of icy professionalism, maintained by black lenses that faintly echoed the scene of the pamphlet being turned this way and that.

Analyzing, in that indirect way, overtop the piping hot brew. It lingered, not yet touching his lips, the impression of his stare growing stronger.

If this were Reno, Rude would be more confident speculating the reaction to the images. The two could not appear any more contradictory, yet the same could be said of a fork and a knife. A set of cutlery was incomplete without both.

The two, somehow, complimented each other. Deadlier when paired. Mission success was undeniable proof of their effectiveness. It was clear in the separation of their partnership that this task was not considered highrisk.

Right now, Rude was undecided what would come of all this. The unknown element intrigued him. Saying nothing until the exam was completed in its entirety; grunted for the sixth time. Plucked, barely-there.

Then he sipped. Turks are not even safe from themselves, a shared sentiment among those conscripted. Consumption of anything offered was a sign of trust. The hesitance before a mere obligation to sniff out foul play, no more than personal protocol.

“No,” he supplies, pressing his lips together to rescue the coffee taste that wets them. If there were rats in the shadows subsisting on words from loose-lipped Turks, Rude would surely see that they starve.

The pamphlet is drawn close and flipped over. He wonders exactly what Balto is brave enough to dare ask: what was the motivation for sending out operatives of this caliber to address … this?

Tseng’s plans are precisely his own. Unknown and complicated, he is no better equipped to question them than he is to take a stab at the why. They could debate it, participate in speculation and come up with something reasonable. Balto’s observational skills had his total confidence in that regard, but it wouldn’t matter in the end anyway. Orders were orders.

A subtle shift of the light across his sunglasses indicates his wandering focus. Moved onto the restless behavior from Balto, or else anxiousness. The topic of questioning superiors in any capacity was a touchy one.

He elaborates, just a touch, after an appropriate measure of contemplation ( for Rude, that is ). “Could be what the printing press represents.” Decommissioning the mystery naysayer’s setup could be quite a blow to their morale.

“…” Taking another look at the disparaging imagery by tipping his chin down, one last theory does cross his mind. “Or it was ordered from higher up.” He might feel the same if he were depicted this way, and he was hardly as thin-skinned as some of the executives. Tseng wouldn’t have many options to deny the request no matter how overreaching if it was uttered by the right nepotist.

Though his employment under the Company’s name began on tenuous terms, Balto has proven fastidious and loyal in carrying out his duties. Given time to earn it, trust can be cultivated with any party. Time, grains of it, accumulating over many seconds, hours, days. Years. A mountain of time. Yet it takes only a change in the wind, a hair trigger, or the blink of an eye to see it all come crumbling down. “Could be,” Balto hums with a thoughtful twist of his lips. “Hm.”

While he prefers to wait and see, they may not have the luxury. Rebellion has a corrosive effect on the fabric of society. Impolite conversations behind closed doors, leaflets and flyers, spreading throughout the city like vines growing up and taking hold on the chain-link fences. 

The President has always been sensitive about what his constituents think of him. Overly concerned. No longer are his fears unfounded. 

Avalanche let Shinra know exactly what they thought in Junon.

“How’s the coffee? Specialty roast from my hometown.” His chair creaks as he leans his weight all the way back to peer at Rude over the rim of his glasses. The details are pure trivia, meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but there is more to this life than work. “They collect the beans out of gagighandi droppings. Thieving bastards. Occasionally you’d find farmers petrified in their fields until somebody came with some Soft. Eventually they figured out that it was a mutually beneficial thing to let the oversized lizards have their fill.”

Another possibility is that the President has simply lost confidence in General Affairs and such missions were merely meant to keep them busy until the guillotine dropped. 

‘Orders from higher up,’ seems about right.

After what happened with Raleigh, Balto finds himself surprised the Turks haven’t featured front and center in these illustrations. Rub salt in the wound, grind a heel into the backs of their hands. 

“We can head out when you’re done with that. Already prepped a SA-52 in the garage.” Low-profile, fully tinted windows. The onboard computer could give them a direct feed on any surveillance equipment setup nearby up to a three mile radius. Something like that. “I figure we can start with the Sector 7 Station, park somewhere nearby. Our most recent intel suggests they have at least one base there. Someone is leaving these pamphlets, we just need to find out who and make nice.”

Sending two senior Turks is absolute overkill. A fact that remains unspoken, for it would make their doubts obvious. Following directives to the letter meant guaranteeing more than just their continued employment here at the Company, especially now that their recent failures have put them under the microscope.

continued from (x)

“Don’t mention it,” he responds flippantly.

Rather quickly, Balto had come to understand Rude’s oppressive silence not as a means to intimidate nor insult the other party but merely the method in which Rude chose to carefully, carefully curate and calculate his responses in due time. In his time, his own perception of it, regardless of how long it looked to literally any normal human being on the Planet. 

Sometimes… Sometimes Rude actually does mean to intimidate and insult. Balto guesstimates he has a success rate of identifying which Rude-brand silence he is dealing with about eighty percent of the time. Those odds change dramatically if Rude has recently emerged from some sort of harebrained discussion or argument with his redheaded buffoon of a partner.

Nothing wrong with the occasional gamble. 

Balto looks down as the pamphlet slides across the frosted glass. His expression does not change right away, settled into the usual, grim line of a vague smile ready to go full stretch for anyone willing to test his patience. Like silence, pleasant smiles are capable of variance. What he sees, drinking in crude photomanipulations with a practiced eye, earns an outright frown.

“This a joke? Their skills are terrible.” Balto picks up the appalling artwork and rotates it clockwise in his hands one way, then counterclockwise the next. He pushes up his glasses and examines the print more closely, as if unsatisfied with his own disbelief. “Hideous,” he mutters, pushing the pamphlet back across the table with a wrinkle of distaste on his nose. “Then again, I suppose that might be the whole point.”

Not everyone could be a master of their craft, after all. Biases tend stronger when personal or professional vocations are called into play.

“Hah, lucky you. And hey, sue me for giving the benefit of the doubt.” Laughter is good. Kunsel grins abidingly – because that’s how it goes, isn’t it? Assumptions on one side, assumptions on the other. Data, files, information, impersonal, one always with the upper hand on that front.

Discomfiting as that notion is. It’s the nature of things, probably. Just because the suit-not-in-a-suit is his dubiously colorful shadow doesn’t mean he does not have his own concerns. Job, paycheck.

People occasionally gunning for his life on account of who he works for. Beyond the rumors of what happens with mission failure or job abandonment, that is. ShinRa’s other hand in peace or in poison.

They are all creatures pacing their enclosures. Some have longer leashes than others. Some are more monstrous.

Careful line to walk and still remain human.

Kunsel crunches on another cube of ice, nursing the dregs of his drink, expression cooling to a smirk as the salaryman finally gives up on pounding at the back door – and Balto asserts what he asserts.

Quiet, he meets eye contact with the bartender. Time for another round of the same lambent orange citrus monstrosity.

“Wouldn’t try to convince you. Kind of wouldn’t be natural for everything to be perfectly perfect always, eh?”

He aims for wry with his squint. Maybe it is effective, maybe it isn’t. Either way he receives his refreshed beverage with a grateful tip of chin. They’ve been doubles. They’ve all been doubles - the Turk has seen him imbibe each one, and there are no tell-tale signs of intoxication. No slurred speech (beyond ice-mangling), no bleary eyes, no spread of color on his face.

Too alert. Not wary, but aware as he pivots on his stool, faces Balto outright, and then turns his head to look toward the front door. Listening. Tracking.

“Why, you going to pop up on stage and give me something to complain about?”  

There’s the caterwauling businessman, tie tied around his head like a red bandanna. More like a sweat band at this point, given the effort it takes to swagger-stagger with such determination.

Stick your hand too far past the bars, and fingers are liable to go missing no matter how well-trained or broken the beast behind the cage may be. His job would be easier if that were the case.

Could 'perfectly perfect' ever exist? Maybe. Maybe such moments ever exist only in hindsight, when time and distance have played their part in tempering all that is relative. The phrase continues to sit funny in his brain, slippery as a bar of soap for his inability to grasp the thought and hold it for long. 

What collection of perfectly perfect moments did Kunsel guard close to his heart? No magical combination of words will give him that. Not when all other questions thus far have been deflected or diverted. Non-answers for answers. The truth hides somewhere behind the grin and the silver tongue. 

A reason to bear and grin, to nod and obey orders. A reason not to obey orders.

Kunsel continues to imbibe copious amounts of alcohol as easily as fruit juice. It may as well be. Balto has witnessed much of the same with other SOLDIERs before; an eye-wateringly high resistance to alcohol. For someone with the transfusions of a First, resistance becomes immunity outright. A blessing or a curse, depending on how the mood strikes.

"Mnn…No. I refuse." Glancing away, Balto seeks his drink for rescue only to find it empty. The temptation to order another is sickly sweet. Restraint is easy enough, even if poor self-rationale attempts to convince him that drinking more might help stop the world from tilting about whenever he turns his head too fast. Balto pushes payment and tip across the counter for the bartender to retrieve. 

The intrepid performer has wrapped around the building and come back through the front door. In addition to the tie-headband, he has even rolled up his sleeves, pulled his pants up from their gradual sag. Ready for his second encounter with the bouncer.

Every SOLDIER has their idiosyncrasies and inclinations. Kunsel is no different. As always, questions abound regarding stability in the aftermath of chaos, especially given the loss of every other member of the rank, but the fact of the matter is–

He survived, just as he survived Genesis’ defection and the loss of over half of their number, just as he survived the ensuing battle with copies upon copies, just as he survived a high-risk role and high-risk missions, just as he survived the chaos of Lazard’s embezzlement and defection. He survived, and he made enough of an impression on the remaining levers of control to ascend. He survived the ascent, the calculated brutality of it.

Such things do not leave a man unchanged.

He is aware that he must perform in so many ways. Maintain a marketable persona, even if PR has turned away from glorifying SOLDIERs and pushing fan clubs to the fore. He must pretend.

Not that everything is okay. It isn’t. It would be suspicious if he acted as if it were. Deeper than that. He must pretend that he does not know what he knows, and does not seek ways to find out what he does not know. He must play the part. For all that he is guarded, the veneers must appear shallow.

The best lies are couched in truth.

His mirth is genuine enough.

“Ah. Dirty shafts. Always a downer,” Kunsel drolls, sipping at his beverage and glancing askance to the stage. The drunk is attempting to fight his escort off. Attempting is the operative term, noodle-limbed flailing and clumsy punches thrown with a squeaky stagger-step.

“Even tougher to clean up after. Gotta choose where you go spelunking more carefully there, man. At least wrap it up.” No shame. Not a bit. Not as he flashes a slender grin.

“Finding you a dumpster is an upgrade worthy of being called good company? Interesting set of standards.”

Kunsel crunches on a cube of ice, elbow propped to the bar, chin on knuckles, eyes narrowing in a squint as his attention cuts directly back to his interlocutor.

“…Three complaints. Getting there, eh?”

Oh, the collar never comes off, but Turks are given jurisdiction; opportunities to make their own choices and determinations. Whatever accomplishes the mission without directly jeopardizing the Company’s best interests. Creativity with strict boundaries. 

All this, but Balto would not call it freedom. 

Better than rotting away inside a jail cell. Better to work at the end of a leash than spend his days in a six by eight foot box, if even that. Give and take. He can take pride in his work, even if he does not choose it for himself.

Balto’s face scrunches with all the chagrin of a man who has walked into his own blunder. Fair enough. Entendres are easy pickings. “Hm. Lucky me, I only ever find myself on my knees for the right person.”

The lights now start to seem overly bright given the growing buzz in his brain. He shuts his eyes for a moment, gathering himself. Composure, dignity. The picture does not last long, because Balto does not stifle the amused huff of laughter that escapes through his nose when the crunch-chew of ice on molars prompts him to open his eyes again. 

“Didn’t say I was good company. That’s your call to make,” he corrects, watching with dry amusement as the barkeep hails for additional muscle to depose the belligerent man of his spotlight before miscellaneous karaoke equipment gets tossed, glasses are knocked over, more patrons are disturbed. 

There is his drink to finish, and Balto has no desire to get up quite yet. If he can still find his legs by then. The cold night air, which he does not look forward to, might help sober him up a bit.

Arrested, unable to fight off his detractors, the red-faced salaryman howls his complaints as he is dragged offstage and summarily thrown out the back door. Muffled yells on the other side and the loud thump thump of fists pounding on the paint-chipped back entrance to the bar indicate that their yowler hasn't quite given up hope yet. 

Eventually, the abuse stops and all goes quiet on the other side of the door.

Kunsel has always found listening easy–listening to what is said, how it is said, tenor and cadence, focusing in through a sea of discordant noise, either directly or indirectly. At the moment, all of this is in plain sight. No sense in trying to be surreptitious.

Curious as the tender is about the relation of the two questionable gentlemen seated at the bar, there are other patrons to attend. When she steps away, Kunsel arches a brow and looks right back to his attaché with a squint.

Measuring. Vaguely amused.

With a final yowl at the climax of his song, the drunk in the spotlight staggers over to the kiosk to choose another tune to butcher. Someone else ascends the stage to wrestle the microphone out of his hands, sparking a shrill of feedback, scuffle-thump-scuffle. Laughter erupts from the scattered parties at tables and booths at the possibility of violence (or embarrassment, there’s been plenty of that tonight).

“Hm. Nah, we’d find you a dumpster at the very least ‘cause you think I’m pretty,” Kunsel ventures with a smirk that just barely teases at a dimple.

Not that he believes that bit about the bugs.

It’s almost a game at this point. An arms race where the prize is a few spare scraps of privacy and dignity, humanity in a world stripped of it. Do the Turks often find themselves monitored within an inch of their lives?

“One hope, one prediction, one complaint. Could always get you some chamois knee pads so you’re dusting wherever you’re crawling around, eh?”

A sip of drink.

He holds it against his tongue, a bit of sublingual absorption. It burns, but that is all he feels.

There is no deadening of it. Of this. Of anything. Of his change of heart. Of course, he’s only just begun.

“Neh, wouldn’t be fun if it were easy. Any particular reason you’re gunning for shitfaced tonight, or is it just for fun?”

The overhead light strip reflects off the top rim of his glasses as Balto angles his head and glances sidelong at the ensuing chaos and microphone shriek on the stage with the barest grimace.

A positive development, no reserved opinions from him nor the crowd. 

The entirety of SOLDIER and its very foundations have imploded in the past few years. Whether to voice a complaint for the sake of it or merely to bolster his newfound standing, that hardly matters. Heidegger calls to replenish the armory. SOLDIER’s tenets, if they ever existed, are pushing daisies. SOLDIERs are still people at the end of the day. They have their various ideals, idiosyncrasies, inclinations. At times they are unstable. Something about the whole process, about the sort of person that can survive such an ordeal intact. Scouting mitigates risk, lowers the odds of breakage or death. Less time for that, now. Maybe instability is inescapable. 

His job is to figure out where exactly on that line Kunsel falls. Even if a bird can sing from its cage, there is nothing to stop it from plucking its own feathers.

“Those shafts are filthy, you know. I hate taking my suit in for dry cleaning. There’s complaint number two for you, since we’re keeping count.” Languid, lazy, Balto swirls the citrus-colorful contents of ethanol vice in its frosty vessel.  

Syrup soothes the bite as he sips. Balto smirks around the rim of his glass. “To lower your guard? To have a little fun? Why not both? I did just get upgraded from garbage can to dumpster.”

Time will do its work, one way or another. For euphoria and a mild slur to accompany his words, for human nature to take its course. It would be a lie to say Balto isn’t invested in the puzzle he has been tasked to solve.

“Sector Eight comin’ right up.” The bartender makes quick work of it, operating somewhere between efficiency and curiosity.

The man up on the stage has started caterwauling with the bluesy slow-rock twang playing over the speakers. The salaryman has missed most of the lyrics–might not even be reading the screen, it sounds so much like he’s singing for a different song. Kunsel receives his drink with a grateful tip of chin, head canted thoughtfully to discern the rhythm under the tortured strains.

A deep breath - scenting the bite of infused citrus, straightening his posture too - and he croons along, lower and smokier in closer proximity.

“Mmm, you’re fading me up again, I’m- More than I’ve asked for And you persuaded me into it by Mourning a lost form Beyond this weightless loneliness, I’m more…”

Oh. Oh no, the salaryman has tripped over the microphone stand with a shrill of feedback not too much more discordant than his performance. Kunsel pauses with an arched brow, pulls a sip of his drink, and squints at its strength. It’s still not enough. It may never be again.

He’ll just have to come to terms with that. And with the notion of a change of heart he chooses not to answer.

There’s a weight on my chest again, I’ve never felt more torn. Well, is it selfish for me to complain?

“You may be onto something,” Kunsel decides, a flicker of humor in vibrant mako-limn drawn to a squint. No offense taken from the brusque contrast.

Better that way.

“Aah, give yourself some credit–I’m sure you could find plenty to complain about.” There, he flashes a grin, clean ivory sharp and stark as he eases, hooks a boot-heel into the bottom rung of his stool, aiming for casual, at ease. He appears as much, by all rights, even if now the call can come at any time.

“Go on, get creative.”

“Thank you.” He winces as the newest performer on stage begins torturing the collective ear drums of everyone in the bar.

Swing and miss.

Worth a try. The unanswered question dies in the spaces between, lost somewhere in the muted conversations and the spirited singing of a drunk whose voice resembles nails on chalkboard that fills the gaps between their words. 

“Well, only because you offered to listen,” he laughs, and his grin pulls his eyes into a squint. 

“For starters–” Balto first looks at the lopsided ball of ice smearing whiskey slush along the walls of his glass. Mostly finished, not entirely wasted, for all that his attention had been occupied elsewhere. Then, the line of his gaze traces over to the frosted glass next to his elbow, filled with a tart-sweet rye that smells like orange syrup. Of course they aren’t going to fork up for the real thing, not for overworked and lonely middle managers looking to get shitfaced without slum crawling. “ –I’m probably going to be drunk by the time we step outside.”

That may or may not give Kunsel the perfect reason to ditch his attaché. Balto herds his own drink towards himself by rapping his fingers along the cup and scooting it towards him. Close enough that he can just lean down and skim off the top without fully picking his drink up. He’s careful not to slurp; that would be unbecoming.

“I’m mostly hoping I won't end ass-up in a garbage can somewhere.” Balto arches a brow at Kunsel, accusing him of a crime he hasn’t committed. “Also, I hate crawling into small spaces to plant bugs everywhere so let’s say I did knowing that I didn’t.”

Not like Kunsel wouldn’t have found them eventually.

Did his eye just twitch? 

It sure as hell felt like it. In fact, his fingertips are feeling an incredibly mighty itch right about now. 

He didn’t have to go there. He knew there was a file for each of them, but nobody should know anything about him save for Verdot. Said Boss himself would never leak personal information to other Turks like that. 

Would he?

Even if he did, what was he supposed to do? Not feel indebted to the man who singlehandedly saved his life? Of course he respected his Boss, looked up to him- He had spent most of the non-shitty remaining formative years of his life training with Veld. Letting the man mold and reshape the pieces of something broken into something new, stronger even.

“What do you even know about me, huh? What the HELL do you even know?”

His blood is singing, pulse elevated. Turning his attention to Marco, Jae reels his foot back and kicks the already downed target in the stomach.

“I must have misheard you, because you of all people should know better than to step on a big-ass,” he emphasizes with another hard lash of his foot. 

“Fucking non-negotiable-”

Laurier’s whimpering and cries of abject pain might as well be music to his ears, he’s not paying much heed aside from how much controlled force to use behind the blows. He raises his knee a bit higher than normal to use the weight of his body slamming back down as he stomps on a kneecap.

“-MotherFUCKER of a landmine. It’s a shame, y’know? I really thought you were smarter than that. A real goddamn shame.”

Huffing out a little breath from the exertion, Yoon stares up at Balto and begins to reach for his sidearm.

“So, I’ll ask you one last thing. What do you want carved on your tombstone? ‘Cocksucker’ has a nice ring to it.”

Balto’s expression does not change even as Jae’s temper erupts into a violent, almost frenzied fury. Of course. Of course. Jae has taken this slight like a knife driven through his chest and given torque, pulling bone shards and flesh into the vortex of a twisting blade. 

The whimpering turns into outright screaming as Marco flails on the ground and clutches at his knee with gasping sobs and shudders.

Dislocated, Balto surmises. The patella no longer seems to rest in its groove, and he can see the misshapen lump pushing against the side of Marco’s pant leg. He hisses through his teeth, knowing that one of them will now have to deal with a cumbersome weight back to the company car left idling on the street corner a block down. Probably him.

He tracks the movement of Jae’s hand when he reaches for his weapon. Dealing with a gun at close range, his odds aren’t good. Oh, but Jae is so fragile. Balto has no interest in pressing buttons, but it’s not his fault Jae’s ego is a landmines field. Nobody signs up for that bullshit.

The eggshells can continue crackling underfoot, given Balto has no interest in applying a feather step nor handling Jae with kid gloves. 

“An educated guess, but thanks for confirming the obvious with your tantrum. Let me put it this way, since you can’t seem to see anything but red with your head shoved so far up your bloody asshole–” Balto leans down to pull one of Marco’s arms around his shoulder. The man smells rank of piss and sweat and he’s begging incoherently as Balto heaves him up onto his feet, too blinded by pain to make much sense to anyone. 

Now he’ll need to dry clean his suit again and his mood is already severely foul.