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FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

Celes was trying to find the words to explain how she felt about what was to happen to Gaia. The was she struggled to find an accurate explanation was somewhat endearing, as much as anything could crawl its way into Rufus Shinra’s heart, anyway. He, too, struggled with voicing any sort of emotional response. So, instead of doing so, he chose to keep his words few and pointed, and to hold whatever he felt inside. If he felt anything at all. Depending on the sob story, it could go either way.

He kept silent as she finally settled on the word terrible, and Rufus gave the woman only a stiff nod in acknowledgement. Instead, she switched the topic back to where and what they needed to do next. We’ll play it by ear. Rufus smirked as Celes sped past him, leading the way on her bare-back chocobo. He gave his steed a nudge as well, keeping a pace or two behind her, but never falling back. Yes, they would play it by ear, and when he pulled the trigger to send a bullet through the heads of the slavers, he would dare her to put up a sane argument.

The rough ride jostled Rufus as they tracked further and further down the path. Though it was hard not to focus on how uncomfortable he was on the back of a chocobo, he kept his eyes sharp on the surroundings. Sparse bushes and grass at the foot of crumbling, ragged cliff-faces. The wind was silent as it whipped past his ears. Even the typical sounds of nature seemed to be vanishing within the ever higher walls of the ridge; the thump thump of the chocobo’s footsteps bouncing off the stone.

Before long, they came to a … dead end? “Impossible,” Rufus muttered alongside Celes’ confusion, hopping off of his chocobo to get a look at the sheer cliffside. He bent down to trace a finger against the deep tracks of the wagon’s wheels that led to, well, nothing. He took a few steps close to the edge, peering over to the vast expanse below. Nothing. There was nothing.

Rufus murmured in agreement with Celes. They needed to go back and look for further clues. However, just as he was about to make a suggestion, an unnatural sound rang out over the ridge. Celes threw herself from her chocobo. An arrow clinked off of the side wall.

It all happened so quickly, he may have missed it if he had been blinking. Biting back a silent curse, Rufus tugged his chocobo close to keep hidden behind it. There was nothing else to hide behind, no dense tree cover, only a couple of decently sized rocks. He quickly drew his shotgun from his coat, gloved hand wrapping around the comfortable, cold steel. Celes pushed herself to her full height, and as Rufus dared a glance over the now frustrated chocobo’s back, he saw who had come for them.

The ambush, just as Celes had predicted.

The questions about how the men had tipped off their fellows so quickly would have to wait. Celes drew her blade, a determination in her gaze Rufus had seen earlier when she’d rescued him from his capture. She would hold her own against the swordsman now approaching them.

“I rather like swimming,” Rufus quipped with a smirk across his lips. A little revenge on the slavers that had tried to sell him would do the soul some good. He reached into his pocket, grabbing a could of his coins, “I’ll be in the back. Try not to need me.”

He took a few measured steps forward, boots grinding into the dirt as it appeared he might approach the swordsman head on. However, just as they raised their weapons to meet him, Rufus lept into the air, cocking his shotgun behind him. He pulled the trigger, blasting into the earth behind him and launching himself high into the air -- easily sailing over the heads of the swordsmen. As he made his descent he threw his two coins, shooting them and creating a cloud of smoke. Cover, to keep himself from being easily spotted by the archers.

Who were, predictably, beginning to attempt to shoot him.

Rufus kept his feet moving through the cloud of smoke, managing to dodge the unseen arrows. They thudded into the dirt around him, but with the smoke ever rising, it provided him a bit more cover. He separated his pistol from his shotgun, stepping out of his cover only long enough to identify a target. Once he moved back into his position, he opened fire on the archer’s location. Hearing an agonized cry and a loud, cracking thump moments later gave him the validation he needed.

He ducked out of the smoke once more, taking a deep breath of fresh air and blinking his eyesight clear before taking aim on the next opponent. An arrow flew close, too close, tearing at one of his coattails as he moved. Again, Rufus fired at the ground and propelled himself to a new location quickly, before spinning to take out another archer in a barrage of bullets.

Their focus was on him, and no brute with a sword had come through the now dissipating smoke to attempt to cleave him. Celes must have been keeping them busy, and hopefully, putting a permanent end to most of them. They’d need at least one kept alive, and none of the archers would be making it.

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He's such an asshole

Arrows continued to thump and thud into the dirt, jamming themselves into the wood of a tree or breaking against a rocky backdrop as they were fired. They were hardly accurate, and much slower than a bullet, but still deadly. If he’d had the time to consider their weaponry, Rufus would have thought it ridiculously primitive. Even the Wutai soldiers had gotten their hands on firearms throughout the war.

Celes was fighting other brutish men, swords against swords. Had he somehow gotten himself tossed backwards in time, to an era of knights and dragons?

Rufus held his wandering thoughts at bay long enough to open fire on another marksman that had foolishly left himself open and visible. The vibration of his gun firing, the kickback as it shook, it was the most comforting and familiar feeling he’d had since he regained consciousness. The wounded cry of the man who fell to his bullets caused him to feel nothing, other than disgust that the man hadn’t fallen to his death afterwards.

These men were nothing but distractions and targets. He didn’t care who or what they were. He never would. The only use any of them may have would be information, and only one or two were needed for that.
The thump of another arrow signaled that there was still one more enemy above. Rufus gave himself a bit of cover fire, spraying the air with bullets as he moved from his spot in the trees to a small, rocky outcropping. He measured along the length of his gun for a moment, blue eyes tracing an invisible line along the steel, before being reassured that he couldn’t be hit with an arrow from such an angle. Not unless the grunt was more talented than he seemed.

Though he’d tuned out the carnage on the front line, Rufus detected a familiar voice coming his way, inquiring about how he was doing. Before he could open his mouth to respond, the thump of an arrow carried over the empty space between them and Celes released a rather feminine sound of surprise. Rufus kept his smirk to himself; a familiar, blonde Turk coming to mind at the sound and ridiculousness.

Of course he didn’t need help. Especially now -- Celes had given the perfect distraction. Herself. As the archer lined up a second shot to take down the blonde swordsman, Rufus pulled himself up over his rocky outcropping and fired. The man died without a sound, though from the distance it was difficult to tell where the shot had pierced him. However, the body fell forward over the edge, down … down …

Thud.

“You were a good distraction,” Rufus confirmed, pulling himself to his full height as he scanned the rocky bluffs. According to his count of the arrow volleys, there should have been no archers left. The attack was hardly coordinated, not any sort of professional tactic, but there was always a chance an archer had held back. Or, more likely, run off to alert the slavers themselves…

The original problem became clear once more. They had no real idea of where to go from their current location. Rufus glanced around the area once more, blue eyes taking in nothing but open expanse, trees, and the rocky bluff. It was more likely that the archers had scaled the bluff themselves to get their vantage point, rather than the swordsmen coming down. They had to be close.

A weak groan broke the temporary silence. Rufus looked back to the pile of bodies Celes had left in her wake -- a reminder to not underestimate her -- and noticed one of the men still moving.

“You left one alive,” the President remarked, though he lacked the condescending tone he’d used previously when she let the original slavers go. If anything, he sounded eerily positive. Rufus stepped over quickly to the body still squirming on the ground, purposefully pressing his boot against the man’s bleeding, useless arm in order to measure his coherence.

Rufus looked to Celes, then motioned at the body under his foot, “Interrogate him. You have more experience with this gang and their motives.”

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Look, he didn't KILL the man. yet.

Celes did as she was instructed, and if she had any hesitancy in doing so, she hid it well. Though she spoke with her own authority, Rufus was sure that she was young, she was no long-experienced leader. Perhaps on the battlefield, but not likely the one pulling all the strings. She had mentioned being raised by a general, earlier …

Although he didn’t understand the entire conversation Celes bombarded the man with, Rufus followed what was necessary to remember. Original Sin. Darlene. Camouflaging magic. These were the important bits of the conversation to hold close, on the off-chance that such a thing ever came up again, and the even bigger off-chance that he would be involved a second time.

The man grunted out the instructions, on the promise that he would be left alive afterwards. Rufus said nothing, made no motion of whether to let the man live or slay him on the spot. Instead, he turned his attention to Celes as she instructed that they should keep moving.

If he still wanted to do this.

“I’ll remind you that my men may very well be tied up in this,” Rufus regarded the blonde soldier cooly, taking his boot off of the injured man below him, “Considering the current situation, they are more than irreplaceable.”

Being alone in a strange new place, that was. Despite the fact that Rufus Shinra could very well hold his own in a fight, there was a lot that he couldn’t do. There were things he couldn’t manage as one man, all alone. He needed the Turks. He needed their well-developed talents, their loyalty, everything. Before he had been kidnapped by Tseng and the others, he considered them as nothing but useful tools, expendable.

That had changed, over time.

Rufus turned his cold, blue eyes back to the man on the ground. They couldn’t trust this stranger at his word. Though he couldn’t measure the man’s devotion, Rufus couldn’t discard the notion that the peon could be willing to die for the Original Sin. If they were to turn his back on him, he could very well get up and leave once recovered enough. He had information about them. He could be lying.

“We need an insurance policy,” the blonde lamented casually, before lifting his right arm, gun following. In a mere second, he leveled the barrel with the man’s shin and pulled the trigger -- effectively destroying the man’s leg from the knee down. The man immediately recoiled and howled in pain, and Rufus easily ignored the betrayal in his eyes as he reached forward and yanked the bandanna off of the pitiful bandit’s head, “I have no intention of letting you die, yet. But on the off-chance you’ve lied to us, we can’t let you potentially escape. You could be useful.”

Setting his weapon aside, Rufus crouched down with the dirty bandanna between his fingers. He shoved it under the man’s knee where his leg was barely hanging on, before looping the sides together and tying it tightly. He wiped the blood that stained his fingers on the man’s pants, before standing and looking to Celes with a cold indifference, “Considering the state of his injuries, this will buy us half-an-hour to an hour. You can heal him later, if it’s worth it.”

With that taken care of, Rufus turned his attention back to the cliff. It appeared so … innocuous. They’d walked nearly to the edge of it before the attack. Fifty paces back shouldn’t be far.

“I’m not familiar with illusion magic,” he commented, walking away from the mess he’d made of their survivor/insurance package. Measuring the edge of the cliff from his line of sight, Rufus walked to about where he felt 50 paces should have been. But there was nothing there. Nothing he could notice.

“What should we be looking for?”