Untitled 5
Chapter One - Bad Mako
By Loquacia Dee
Untitled 5
Chapter One - Bad Mako
By Loquacia Dee
The encampment itself was nothing more than a guard post inconveniently situated at the arse end of a mountain range. When it wasn't snowed in, it was barren rock, sharp and razor's edged. Occasional abused tendrils of scrub forced themselves painfully out from what little soil there was, only to have their shallow root structures ripped out in the mercilessly screaming winds that blew constantly between the jagged peaks of rock that rose from the inhospitable landscape like the teeth of some demented monster.
There were never more than half a dozen unfortunate souls consigned to the camp at any one time, living out of semi-permanent fibreglass huts the shape of upturned chocobo eggs. Supplies and entertainment were scarce; the mountains and wind meant that the PHS rarely worked, let alone a radio or -- heaven forbid -- a television. Supplies had to be brought up by chocobo, as the location itself was reachable neither by airship (due to the winds) nor vehicle (due to the mountains). The runner came once a month. Weather permitting.
The camp itself has one purpose and one purpose only; the area had once been a breeding ground for monsters. There was a cave -- no more than a crack between two rocks, really -- inside which lay a small lake of polluted mako, a relic from a scar left upon the Planet in ages past. Any biological matter coming into direct contact with the substance risked mutation. Many such places existed, and -- like this one -- most were sealed and guarded, consigned merely to black dots in an office somewhere. A completed project.
The outpost had existed for going on a dozen years now, part of Shinra, Inc.'s concerted effort to clean up its image in the tumultuous days following the Catastrophe of over twenty years ago. Most of the soldiers at the camp nowadays remembered the Catastrophe as nothing more than dim readings from a textbook back at the Academy, or an abstract childhood terror, consigned firmly to the "never again" pile. Which made postings like this one seem like nothing but irrational paranoia in the minds of the men unlucky enough to receive it.
Or had, at least, until a month ago. Private Lethe had noticed it first; a small crack in the surface of the seal. Privates Nguyen and Arras had been the next sign, succumbing to a mysterious 'sickness' that they had eventually discovered to be caused by the poison from a hideous and previously unknown flying insect. By the time they had worked out a cure -- nothing fancy, but using the kind of medical supplies that hadn't been required since most of the bad mako had been sealed off -- by the time they had worked through that, the crack in the seal had opened to a point that small lichen-like vermin, eyeless and phosphorescent had begun overrunning the campsite.
Lieutenant Michiba had, at that point, ordered the crack to be filled via whatever means necessary -- spac filler, boards from old wooden crates and junk metal were common -- and immediately attempted to contact his superiors.
It took two days before the PHS could hold a signal long enough to let the outside world know what was going on, and by that time the hole had doubled in size -- or would have, if not for all the junk attempting to keep it closed.
Another three days passed before the camp received any reply. It was simple and no-nonsense; "The General is on his way." It did not, people realised later, sound particularly pleased, but sent a buzz of excitement and fear through the camp nevertheless. Excitement that they tiny camp and its sparse inhabitants would soon be meeting the General, a man nearly every soldier in the entire Shinra army adored and worshipped. The General was nothing short of a legend, a fearlessly unstoppable one-man army, it was said, saviour of the Planet and a hero from a past era. They did not, it was said, make men like the General anymore. Literally.
But any visit by such a legend bought with it fear as well. Not just of the man himself, though surely that was a part of it, but also fear that whatever problem they had encountered was severe enough to warrant his personal attention.
A week before the General's arrival, though, no doubt was left in anyone's mind that his presence would be absolutely required. The outpost had been holding its own against the growing hole until the day it was realised, to no small measure of horror, that a tiny trickle of polluted mako was seeping from within. It dripped iridescent black, damping the seal, blistering the wood and twisting it into monstrous shapes. Then rock it ran down was melted into channels of black obsidian.
The drip was discovered by Private Argos, who accidentally pressed a hand to the mako-damp surface. She fell ill soon after, the skin of her hand twisting and cracking into a painful black shell, shot through with veins of throbbing purple. The only meds they had for mako poisoning were five years out of date. They fed them to her anyway.
That night they had laced the outcrops above the seal with dynamite and brought a shower of rocks down in front of the opening. It was the best they could do, they reasoned. No-one wanted to end up like Argos.
Unpolluted mako was dangerous enough, but this thick, black stuff was toxic in the extreme. Ordinary men like those posted at the camp had no hope of handling such a substance. Suddenly, everyone was very, very glad the General was on his way; he was himself so steeped in mako that he had become all but immune to its effects.
So resigned, the remaining soldiers buckled down in their fibreglass shells and waited.
Monsters came. Small at first -- boot squishing size -- but steadily larger. They were, for the most part, skittish and afraid of the lights of the camp, but occasionally grew bolder. No-one had fought monsters on any real scale for at least five years. A lot of ammo was wasted.
Three days before the General arrived, the tremors began. Nothing serious, simply unsettling; more so for the fact that each brought with it a new blood-curdling scream from the slowly dying Argos.
The day before the General rode in, Argos rode out. The poisoning had spread into her body, launching her into a berserk frenzy that took all her former squadron to bring her out of. Permanently. When she died, she didn't look human at all. Nobody dared to mention her eyes, and how the way they had glowed near the end reminded everyone who saw them of the General's own...
He arrived around midday the next day, looking for all the world as if he had just stepped out of one of Shinra's more blatant promotional posters. His chocobo, on the other hand -- gold and from the finest stock available -- looked exactly like a bird that has spent the last week running up a mountainside.
Nguyen took the bird to tether it inside a small shack the supply runner occasionally used when the weather got bad. He could not quite bring himself to meet the General's gaze as he did so, leaving behind only a muttered, "Thank you for coming, sir," as he did so. He was sure it had sounded inexcusably rude, but it was difficult to do anything else. In photos and posters the General looked heroic and romantic. In person, he was terrifying. He oozed power. The sword across his back almost as big as himself in both width and length, yet he wielded it as if it weighed nothing at all. Nguyen tried not to think of the late Private Argos, and the way she had bent a rifle neatly in half with her hands. She had been a mere accident. The General, on the other hand, had been engineered. He was at least as far beyond Argos as she had been beyond them.
Michiba had watched the General's entrance from the other side of the camp and, as such, his impression was somewhat more removed. His first thought was the obvious one; that the man himself was far shorter in real life than his legend portrayed. He was also almost comically young, seeming no older than eighteen at a stretch. In reality, of course, he was well into his forties. Mako, they said, made you immortal as well as indestructible. Michiba suspected that this was not nearly as much of an exaggeration and most people thought.
He wore black, in the not-quite uniform favoured by the Generals of Shinra. It was currently a long leather jacket, with nominal moulded shoulder-guards more there for decoration than actual protection. He wore mirrored riding goggles, currently pushed up against his hairline. The expression on his boyish face was nominally impassive as he surveyed the outpost and the small rather harried gathering around him.
Michiba walked forward. "General, sir," he said, snapping off a salute slightly rusty after so long away from formalities. "I'm Lieutenant Michiba."
The General didn't even seem to be paying attention. Instead he asked, "The reports mentioned a detachment of six."
It was a General's question, phrased as a statement. Michiba set his mouth into a firm line. "Yessir. Private Argos died last night, sir. Mako poisoning from the polluted seam. Sent her mad, sir. Took all of us to... restrain her."
A detached nod, and Michiba suddenly found himself on the receiving end of the unearthly mako-blue glare. He tried very hard not to fidget.
"Monsters?"
"Yessir. Nothing much larger than a dog yet, sir. Been fighting a few on and off, but most aren't brave enough to get near the camp yet."
The mako-gaze went elsewhere. Appropriately, the ground chose that moment to rumble.
"Then there's the tremors, sir. Had them for the last few days. Don't know what's causing them."
"Take me to the seal."
Michiba saluted. "Yessir. Follow me, sir. It's just up this path a little. To be honest with you, sir, we haven't been there since the night Argos..." he couldn't finish, but the General didn't press. "Anyway, we caved some rocks in front and decided to buckle down. Figured it wasn't worth losing anyone else to it. Sir." He added.
The barest nod.
They walked in silence until the path stopped dead in front of what used to be the seal. Michiba winced at it's current state; the polluted mako was trickling out now in a visible stream from a gap near the top of the rocks. Underneath was a waterfall of fused obsidian, right down to a small pool where the stuff was collecting. It was beautiful, in its own way, he supposed.
As they watched, something a little like a rat and a lot like a squid oozed its way through the hole, landing in the puddle with a splash that formed beads of black glass where it hit the rocks. The thing pulled itself out from the pool and flailed uselessly on the ground for a while. The mutations were more often simple monstrosities than they were actual monsters. Michiba watched in detached fascination as the thing slowly squirmed its way towards them. He had to bite back a cry of surprise when the General's sword suddenly appeared clean across the middle of it with a dull thud. It was returned on the General's back before Michiba had recovered from the shock.
A swiftly muttered fire spell followed, and soon the thing was nothing but a pile of ash. "The polluted mako will reanimate the dead just as well as it will reanimate the living," came the General's voice. It was deep and steady, resounded with authority and was somehow odd coming from one so young-seeming. "You need to burn anything you kill. Do you have Fire Materia?"
It took a few seconds before Michiba recognised the last was a question. "N-no, sir. Our only Materia is a Restore, for use in the medical tent," he added, somewhat unnecessarily.
The General frowned slightly, but didn't say anything, instead reached around for his sword once more, planting in hard into the ground in front of him -- dead through the solid rock. He produced a small tool from somewhere and began working at the base of the weapon. Michiba realised that the whole thing was decked in Materia, inserted into a row of holes spaced up the centre of the wide blade. The General levered out three before throwing them to Michiba; Fire, Ice and Lightning. The glow from each was such that Michiba realised they were nothing short of mastered.
"Your men know how to use them?"
"S-sir?" he snapped his head up from staring dumbstruck at the three small green orbs. Shinra was not exactly known to be generous in supplying its outposts with powerful Materia. Truth be told, the tiny Restore orb was the only Materia Michiba or any of the others had ever handled. It could barely splutter out a basic Cure; nothing like the power these new treasures were capable of.
The General seemed to sense his trepidation. "Stick to using the lower level magic for now. But remember, some things can't be killed by bullets alone."
"Sir. Yessir."
Another minimal nod and, if Michiba wasn't mistaken, the very slightest curve of a smile.
The General's boots crunched as he closed the distance between where they had been standing and the fast-crumbling seal. For the briefest moment Michiba considered following, before realising that would have taken him to the very edge of the mako seep itself. Memories of Argos rose unbidden in his mind, and staying put for now seemed to be nothing short of the smartest move considering the circumstances.
He watched as the General inspected the seep more intently, peering into the dark gap at the top; and Michiba could only imagine what he could see in there with his mako-flushed eyes.
The General was not the only SOLDIER left over from the time of before the Catastrophe, of course. Shinra had never been prolific in the production of its elite shock troops in the first place, but at least a handful had made it through to current times. Several still worked with their parent company, most often now as instructors and walking freak-show history lessons. More still had been given leave to retreat into the hinterlands and lived in relative peace. Every now and again a kid would enter the Academy slightly stronger than average, with eyes that glinted dimly in the dark -- mako, it seemed, was partly hereditary -- but it was fairly rare and getting more so. Lessons about SOLDIER were perhaps the one part of History that recruits tended to pay attention to; despite all the tales of horror and torment over the transformation itself, the romanticized ideal of the elite force still held sway. The lessons would always end with a brief potted history about the General. The General, by the official accounts, was the SOLDIER's SOLDIER. Engineered as a merciless, living weapon; as far advanced beyond an average SOLDIER as the average SOLDIER was above the rest of the army. He was one of only two such beings ever known to have been successfully created and, in many ways, was thought to have outstripped his predecessor. Still, the subject which was 'better' was of some debate amongst the younger children of the Academy; those a little older knew it was generally best to stay away from the General's private life.
Speculation on the General was something akin to an official Shinra Army pastime; albeit a secret one. Rumours abounded on every topic from the town he grew up in (Nibelheim according to official records, but there was one school of thought that bet on the tiny town of Gongaga, and a third that adamantly believed the General had been grown in a vat in the Shinra labs) to why, exactly, he had never married (the most obvious muttering -- that, well, maybe the General just didn't like girls -- was quashed under a tidal wave of speculation that whatever process he had undergone had stripped him of, er, any "romantic potential"; and various schools of thought existed on what, exactly, could be meant by that). It was almost surreal in a way, Michiba realised, after having sat through literal hours of the tellings and retellings of rumours and dubious friend-of-a-friend 'facts' about the General, to finally meet the man. Michiba knew he would be in for somewhat of an interrogation by the rest of the squad, not to mention anything of what people would ask when he finally got back to civilisation.
He was, in fact, planning his answers when the tremor started. It was followed in quick succession by a wordless exclamation, and then a ropey black tentacle pushing through the gap in the seal. The General was fast, but this time the tentacle was faster. Before Michiba could move it had wrapped itself around the man and, disturbingly, it began to glow. The General cried in what could only be thought of as agony.
Another tentacle similar to the first had begun to poke its way out of the fast-crumbling hole. Michiba, however, didn't notice. He raised his hand, still holding the three Materia, and unleashed the full force of each against the monster.
His last thought before the pain flared up his arm was; Holy shit... I'm never going to live this down...