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Reading The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler just now, and felt a little inspired. And since only one FF's really had a setting we can see a person like a private detective in, I figured it would be a Turk it followed. But not a normal one, and not even in Midgar.

1

Shitty hours... No social life to speak of... A virtual recluse. A good life, no? That’s me every day. Out at irregular hours, sleeping no more than four hours a night if I’m lucky. And it’s not like the pay is good. Or the booze. I'm unmarried, last met a woman not regarding me as something she'd stood in when I was still a plain blue suit.

Always working alone, in a darkened alley where if I should become more flotsam of this city, no one will miss me, just the higher-ups miss any hardware I lost in the process. The police won’t give a shit. It’s just me and the handgun. And that’s how I like it. Other people get in the way usually. And that's basically what it's like in my line of work. Only madmen and suicidal maniacs love it, and I think I'm the former.

Junon
Upper Junon. Midgar, but compensating for something. The muddy diamond of the Shinra empire has eight sectors? The shitty zirconium of the empire has sixteen tiers. Midgar has the world’s most impressive anti-aircraft network with interlinked CIWS and SAMs that could rip God from the sky if they wanted? Junon has enough guns to sink the ocean. Midgar has eight reactors? Junon built one over ten times larger than normal and put it under water. Midgar has a dozen bars full of lowlife for every decent citizen? Junon has a dozen bars for every lowlife.

The last part is good for me, because I’ve only been barred from six of them and have another half dozen left. Trouble is, most of my informants know that and hang out there.

So this evening, or night, not that anyone could tell with these damn rainstorms, I’m chasing a former Midgarian Royal Marine chief called Berker. First time I ever met the waste of space was in a landing craft heading for the shore of an island somewhere. We fought and lost hundreds of men for some rock from the sky that was supposed to be some alien artefact, looking like a giant pepper pot. Rumour had it the same bit of space debris caused chaos in lower Midgar blamed on a terrorist attack during the war.

Anyway, he had no guts then, but that just meant he didn’t puke them up like us woodland soldiers. Had we hit enemy fortifications on any beach we’d capture their medical facilities first in the hope they had sick bags.

A military service is good for becoming a detective at the bottom of the pile, by the way. It means you won’t be too stunned by anything. As I sat in my freezing cold 1972 Shinra Model 12 (The heater was out, the heaters were always out in a Model 12) watching for him to stumble out of the bar or be thrown out to his own car, where he’d blunder around and evade the traffic cops here because he worked for their other boss, or at least one of them in every car did.

While I was waiting, nothing interesting happened, unless you count the routine sirens interesting, so let me tell you a little about Junon. The country always tried to one-up Midgar even after it had itself virtually bought by the Shinra along with the rest of the continent. That one-upmanship led to them building such a huge frigate navy in the 1920’s that it was stuck with them for 30 years until the Wutaians sank most of it during world war 2. Their efforts to make their own equipment were a joke, and their people suffered as their new aristocracy fought it out with Midgar, where they still had a king in charge of the whole country on paper, but even people who knew he was still there, well, they’d not know his name. At least they still kept their eye on their own local affairs. In Junon, everyone was so blind, so collectively drunk on their own egos, the main reason nothing was corrupt as such, was no one could see far enough to bribe anyone

And out he staggered. Berker. He has a first name, but as I stood out of my car and started walking over, I realised I could never remember it. I always remembered my .45 though. A nice little thing, an M2 pistol, from the 1930's, single stacked, seven round magazine, easier to conceal than a compact in my opinion.

He paused. Slapped his pockets for his car keys. I'm there before he has a chance, and less than a second later, I have his keys and his gun from his pocket.

'Evening, Berker. Got a question or two for you.'

'Ah, piss off, Marlowe!' Berker grunted. The halfwit never got my name right when he was sober. Fair enough, I suppose.

A quick slap across his face told him my reply. I dropped the magazine from his little compact pistol into my hand and pulled the slide back. Not even a round chambered.

'Nice to see you following the city regulations on concealed carry of a handgun,' I told him, handing it back but keeping the magazine.

'You ain't a firearms cop, Slade. Just get to the point, I'm a busy man.'

'No, you're a drunk man, Berker, a drunk man with an empty gun. You're right though, this isn't to look at your gun, though I gotta be honest, it's rare to see a 9mm Weasel on a man like you.'

'You never gave me the forty five back,' he reminded me.

'Oh, yeah, sorry, it was dangerous, meant to tell you. Poorly maintained, the magazine spring was jammed and the whole inner barrel was dirtier than the jokes in a barracks. So, Berker, materia?'

'What about it?'

'Heard something on the grapevine. Someone new, on the streets here, selling materia from a black market reactor in Costa Del Sol. Someone the locals don't like much. Someone with a lot of backing from someone rich. Know anyone who I should look for?'

He simply grinned.

'They been standing behind you, Slade, since I got my gun back.'

I didn't need to look to know who it was. Percival and Punisher. Maurice Lecraic's most schizophrenic goon duo.

'Out early, fellas?'

'That we are, Mister Spade,' said Percival.

'I presume Le Patron wants a word?'

'Indeed, Mister Spade. Shall we use your car, or ours?'

'Yours. Mine's still a refrigerator.'

'Very good, sir. You can leave, Berker. Try not to run over anyone again, Mister Mitchell is most displeased at the conduct of the traffic officers who handled the matter, and if he were to encounter such rudeness again... Well, his anger would be great, I assure you. And none of us like to see Mister Mitchell angry...'

Berker took his keys and magazine, and his car crawled off.

'Don't worry about your car, Mister Spade, it's safe there.'

'No one's crazy enough to.'

'A compliment to our security in the area?'

'Not really, it's a pile of junk. Anyone who does steal it is gonna freeze to death if they get it away from there.'

Percival laughed. Punisher stayed quiet.

As we walked towards their car, I wondered who else would be upset by this. Materia usually was a followup to illegal arms, which always followed drugs. Lecraic, Le Patron, was number 2 in his outfit and handled the flowery stuff, and the aforementioned Mitchell was the chief knuckle dragger.

Percival and Punisher were a mix of that. Both answered to Lecraic, and Percival was a snooty chap. Polite, well dressed, a little effeminate. Punisher was a gorilla with bad hair, bad teeth, a bad suit, and worse body odour. Percival liked torturing small furry animals as a child and now liked to work as an amateur interrogator, Punisher barely ever left anyone coherent enough to burble never mind talk. But the walk ended, a pleasant stroll through neon lights reflecting off waterlogged tarmac and the dim glow from the sodium streetlights barely even letting you see where the pavement was. And all while the rain fell with a steady tattoo. Punisher squeezed into the front side passenger seat, Percival the driver. I slid into the back seats. Punsher reached a hand back, and I handed my gun over. It was all routine so far. They both knew about the backup, neither cared just now. And their sporty little Lockair FS6 jumped into life and drove off towards the Clubhouse.

Oh, forgot the most important part of this little ramble. My name's Phillip Thomas Spade, Roving Field Agent, Shinra Internal Affairs Unit. Or to put it another way, I'm a Turk, and an odd one. I don't wear a dry cleaned blue suit, I don't harass people who just got in the way, no one is intimidated by me, and the closest I have to a partner is the other two guys the Commander occasionally gives orders to, and that I sometimes nod to in the streets as professional courtesy. Like I said, it's just me and the handgun. And that's how I like it. Other people get in the way usually. And that's basically what it's like in my line of work. Only madmen and suicidal maniacs love it, and I think I'm the former.

Oh, and I hate shades, even when the sun is out.

This post has been edited by Del S on 19th May 2007 01:34

--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

I really liked that story, I liked the atmosphere it had to it.
Thanks for a good read , will there be more instalments?


--------------------

In the end, it boils down to two simple choices. Either you do or you don't.

2

The Clubhouse was up at the border between the poor tiers and the rich tiers, a mile left of the gun. It was a mansion that served as neutral turf right next to one of the fake parks all over tier 12, owned by an old crime family that had fallen into the role of an unofficial regulator of criminal acts in Junon. This was their main base, the stock market of crime in Junon, where anyone could wander in and order anything. Need a cheap gun to buy or rent? Head for the guardhouse and meet a dozen representatives of various arms cartels and the men from big three crime families here. Want some drugs? Take the tradesman's entrance to the basement and meet a hundred small time dealers, most with a cartel connection, or paying to the owners of the land a handsome sum of their profits for a "stall". Need a hooker? Reception has all the phone numbers. Want to make some other deal? Take a round of golf with someone. Want to buy shares? Head for the right room. Need a conference? Rent a room. Want a clean car, rented or bought, or just to fence a hot one? The garage over on the east wing will do the job.

Anywhere else, it would be madness. This was the promised land of crime, a place where, what would have been a sick parody of nation-states were they not themselves a joke these days, thrived. A place where goons from two gangs at war could freely wander around in front of each other and exchange no more than a glance within ten blocks of the place without causing their gangs trouble. Men in suits with walkie talkies stalked the inner grounds, men with blue windcheaters and a security badge walked the perimeter, and sitting in a room in the guardhouse, playing cards, cleaning rifles and pistols, or just jerking off were the heavies. A dozen mercenaries, psychos, and murderers with heavy artillery to handle anyone getting too out of line to make the bodyguards or lookouts calm them down. If they lived, they might get a warning or worse, barred. If they died, they would be dropped down the pit, a little pipe down to the seafront.

We drove in the west entrance, which led us to the embassy wing, as it was called. Over thirty criminal organisations, Junonian or foreign with business here, had a room there or some place of contact. The bigger ones had more than one, the smaller ones got a mailbox.

The Big Six of Junon were all housed on the first floor, the Syndicate, the Organisation, the Outfit, the Monarch Family, the Duchamp family, and the Border Patrol. The first two just dealt drugs and guns, controlling a set of smaller gangs either directly or through making them dependant on their support. The middle three were more general, traditional mafias, who did little dealing with street gangs and relied on the first to keep them in line. The last one made sure all the customs boys were bribed and all the supply lines going past the checkpoints stayed open. Another old mafia that had became a mock unelected body regulating crime in Junon.

We walked straight into the outfit's "embassy", a few bedrooms, a toilet, a lounge and an old storeroom converted into an office. The blonde receptionist at the oak desk in the middle of the hall didn't bat her pretty blue eyes as we waltzed in, paying more attention to the cheap gil-store paperback mush novella she was engrossed in or the cigarette she puffed away on. A green-looking goon in a suit from the site security gave us a glance, one hand hovering over his pocket and the other over the radio in a sure sign of a new guy who had been shown shoelaces instead of ropes. I knew I could kill him before he got a warning off, I knew Percival could, I knew Punisher could kill him three and a half times, and I was willing to bet the receptionist could mostly kill him.

Punisher opened the door into the embassy rooms, an Outfit heavy glancing up, then looking back at the gun he was cleaning when we walked in and through to the office. There was a single sixty watt bulb, right above the desk in the middle of the room, with every window bricked up. This had the effect of illuminating that desk and the single cheap plastic seat in front of it, as well as ensuring there were shadows, lots of shadows, for anyone or anything to be hidden in. Lecraic looked up from his desk.

Like Percival, he looked an upper crust sort, until you really looked. Sitting there, smoking a corel cigar, in a snappy suit and with a haircut he looked like aristocracy, but the empty can of beer and the plate with a few fries on it betrayed the image partly. He was a man who summed up Junon, a confusing clash between old and new. His old style mobster half hid behind a friendly face and the adamant claim to be a legitimate businessman, and loved the theatrics like this room's lighting, snappy suits and smoke-filled places to chat with someone, an expensive desk and expensive stationery like a few fountain pens that cost more than some factory workers made in a year. A nice gold-framed pearl example that looked like it was worth more than some parts of the real estate in the tiers above was caught amongst a dozen empty-looking ballpoints and blunt pencils strewn across the desk. That was his new mobster side, a bit of a slob, a down to earth man of the people. Regarded the goons as more than just furniture but for some odd reason as employees or even worse, people. Wasn't into fine food or drink, he settled for a burger, fries, and a beer like any working class slob. Hard to imagine him as number 2 of one of Junon's most powerful criminal fraternities, but sometimes life gives you all the facts and never bothers to be sure they make any sense. Hell, the bastard even did the work himself when he had to or just felt like it, from a disposal to security on a deal. He'd manned a sniper rifle in a drug deal gone wrong for the small time dealers trying to sell flour to the outfit in a village a few miles northwest of the lower harbour limits.

'Good evening, Mister Spade, a beer?' he said, offering a tin from the cooler at his feet. I declined.

'Probably a smart idea, this stuff's barely even worth it to chase down pretzels or peanuts. We must cut to business then, Agent. You have no doubt heard the rumours of the immigrants attempting to forge a new way of life in our areas of expertise and business?'

'I think I might have, yeah, and the three customs officers belonging to the border patrol found dead in the docks,' I said, referring to a triple murder of the sort the media loved to use the phrase 'execution style' in connection to, though in this case the three had been filled with enough lead that if you dropped them in a river, all the fish would die of heavy metal poisoning in a few minutes.

'Indeed, those gentlemen were... Associates of friends of friends, if you understand my meaning, and their deaths came as a shock to our friends,' he replied, barely a flicker of irony on his face.

'Losing the neutral guys you paid someone else to keep bribed does that to you, I'm told.'

'Yes, well...'

'Can we keep it simple? You think they found materia in a crate they weren't told about, and this new gang, whoever they are, whacked the three of them, made off with their own merchandise as well as stealing from a few organisations?'

'...To be blunt, yes. You'll want figures, so here they are,' he said, leaving over a typed set of notes. '200 Simple Assembly Carbines and Pistols for the Syndicate, a hundred keys of uncut Corel Border cocaine for the Duchamps and Organisation, a few items of military surplus from the CDS army for the Monarchs, they did not specify what exactly, and of course, our own shipments of the special ingredients for our special sauce in our restaurants.'

'Will the Monarchs maybe tell me what's missing?'

'I doubt it, but hat's what I like about you, Spade, never afraid to ask the questions. All of the six will meet tonight to discuss the matter, and it's likely we'll call you tomorrow with what we know and what we want the turks to do.'

'What makes you so sure the Shinra want to keep the status quo anyway?' I asked. Then my phone went off. I tossed it to Lecraic.

'Evening, Maurice Lecraic here. Why, yes, Commander, he's here. Oh, nothing too unusual, just fraternizing with local business to ensure the anti-corruption boys are doing their jobs. No, I only offered him a beer, hardly something I expect no one to refuse. Very good, evening, commander,' he said, and hung up, tossing the little cell phone back to me.

'It seems Commander Blair has answered your question, Mister Spade. Director Peel himself and a team of big guns from Midgar are on their way to speak to the whole Junon unit of the IAU. Your presence is requested as soon as possible. Good evening, Agent. Percival and Frederick will escort you back to your car.'

'Been a pleasure, Patron,' I said, standing and meeting the two mob goons as they walked out of the shadows.

This wasn't good, I considered when back with my mobile junk heap I call a car. If the director of the whole IAU was coming with Midgarian bigwigs, my roving unit would probably be tasked with helping out some Midgarian suits because the Midgarians would be concerned that the new gang was moving into Midgar too. And that meant Midgarian idiots following us all around and our jobs and lives on the line because they'd be dumb enough to think people are impressed by a blue suit and shades.

But having it easy is never any fun now, is it?

This post has been edited by Del S on 19th May 2007 01:36

--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

why does it have to be final fantasy 7 fan fiction. otherwise i guess its okay. i dont really get it though. why is it noir.

--------------------

moetsuki
moetsuki
motoranai yakusoku no basho
jouzu ni habataku watashi wo mitsumete

Quote (chou @ 11th November 2006 06:56)

why does it have to be final fantasy 7 fan fiction.  otherwise i guess its okay.  i dont really get it though.  why is it noir.

It didn't have to be, it's just it seemed the best selection as it gave me the flexibility of a more modern approach. Sure, setting it with a PI in Vector or something like that could have gave me the old type noir feel, complete with the fedoras, but FF7 had the best setting because it allows so many more options. The setting makes so many more things belivable: sophisticated organised crime, major trade in drugs and arms, etc...

In addition, it let me take a Turk where few people ever have taken Turks, way down into the seedy underbelly of a city virtually independent of even the Shinra and without even the support of the Shinra. Tseng's unit in FF7 for example is never all alone or in trouble even in areas of Midgar where you presume the police all carry assault rifles as standard, but Spade here is basically working alone and can maybe hope to get a bigger gun if he asks nicely for it. Also, I liked the idea of the Turk organisation and wanted to expand it my way, disregarding the Compliation of FF7 Canon in an effort to create something closer to original rather than the tweaked or repeated ideas of Square-Enix.

Finally, the FF6 section is already nice and full, and this gave scope to go where I've not tread before: I usually do a whole host of bizzare/rubbish jokes in a fic or a militaristic thing that reads like Tom Clancy half asleep. Plus, I find myself thinking I'm sparse on dialogue and making the dialogue fit to characters, so I figured why not use a genre that lets you have a character who talks little to others, but will talk the ears off the readers given a new event like a mansion with some intresting feature.

And it's "Noir", because whilst it's not a clean fit for the traditonal conventions of Hardboiled fiction and deviates from them in many places, it's intended to feel close to a hardboiled detective story where a character who is very much an anti-hero is present, himself doing not what is right but what has to be done, where there is corruption and greed, where crime is not glammed up and where the characters it follows are not whiter than white, and the detective doesn't just look at the wall and dot up lines like Hrecule Poroit or Sherlock Holmes, but sometimes commits even more violent and questionable acts than the ones that provide the very mysteries the detective is solving. Even the very mystery itself being a mystery is IMO one of the more fascinating aspects of that type of fiction, where there are still questions asked right to the end and beyond that aren't just plot holes, and where the answers you already have may be unsatifactory and possibly even the wrong answers.

Still, okay is fine. Anything above 'it wasn't the worst thing I've read' is fine by me as a rating for my writing.

This post has been edited by Del S on 11th November 2006 14:52

--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

This has style. I approve wholeheartedly of the unique and creative angle; especially how it sets the tone for the gritty world Shinra has churned out.

The only gripe I can think of is the overwhelming parallels to the real world. 20th century time, in addition to a World War II happily slotted around the same decades... A bit more focused localization would be nice, it was just too blatant for me and knocked around the SoD. Perhaps '72 instead of 1972, the Great Patriotic War instead of World War II etc?

Anyways, I'd like to read more. You've only begun to set the stage.


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Visions of Peace - Four Generals, One Empire, and the Returners caught in the middle.

3

National Director Reagan. Colonel McKnight from Counter-Terrorism. Conway from Counter-Corruption. Duker from Counter-Countraband. Various roving unit commanders. All the faces and names that mattered in Junon to make a rookie wet themselves. The four field agents already present were all too experienced here. We all called the director Elena, for instance, no matter how many times the hard nosed redhead bitch glowered at us for it. Of the bigwigs, a few would be out to brown-nose Peel and whoever he brought, probably Amador, Bush, and Harper as well as a host of experts and number crunchers to give us facts from thin air and thin air from where the reality was. Right now, specialist agents form the three departments stood in groups talking with each other. Roving units mostly just sat within a few yards of each other. I sat down with my group, the CO and two other agents. None of the four of us want to waste our time here. We sat, bored amongst the hubbub. None of us spoke to each other. We barely remembered our own names at times never mind the name of the guy beside us.

That didn't mean we were strangers. We just didn't need names, were not friends nor enemies, just colleagues. And in a business like this, you look out for number one and second, anyone else who does the same job as you.

Now, the trick with suits from out of town is to listen not to what they actually say, but the soundbites. Key words that give you a clue as to how they plan to screw with your efforts to get the job done. And Midgar's head honchos were all political appointments and prestige roles, given to famous old agents or people who brownnosed the right executives on the Shinra board. And the king of all brown noses was our beloved director. Working with counter-intelligence, joining the IAU shortly after the first 39 agents had set up the framework up, he rose up the ranks and into the eyes of President Shinra with his paranoia and businesslike approach to hunting spies. Since he was a favourite of the President of the coporation, he then by default became one in the eyes of John Turker. When the man who gave the IAU it's nickname of the Turks had to step down in 1992 as the cancer in his bowels began winning, Peel had been Midgarian Director and first in line to the throne.

And in he waltzed, Bob Peel, with his backing band . The man in charge, an idol to the specialist agents. He'd not even see us rovers fail to give him a second glance. He'd risen to Director of the whole organisation through soft cases. He gives us a speech. Gravest threat since the War of Freedom. Which I recall, we started by accusing them of the Gongaga reactor accident and then letting a few Iciclean submarines loose with itchy trigger fingers or whatever the hell fired a torpedo. It only became a war of freedom when it became apparent Wutai had better aircraft carriers than Midgar thought. He goes on. Influx of drugs, arms, human trafficking, all the painful buzzwords to hit shareholders hard. We never really cared when it was the slums and inner cities the drugs, prostitutes, guns, and slaves were moved into and out of. Sophisticated threat that we do not know the full extent of. We don't know shit at all to be honest but we want you Junon guys to help us bag them and get us more credit with the men in the tower.

Oh, hang on, the reactor thing happened during the war.

Then comes Michael Amador. Midgarian Director and second in command of the whole IAU. He drones on about service and courage in the face of a threat, repeats what Peel said, tells us the obvious. Bill Bush, the Midgarian counter corruption wheels out his figures about certain police forces and the border and the rate of seizures at Midgarian ports. Then the funny part, he concludes the arms must be coming in despite counter corruptions best efforts here. That counter-corruption had only not had a whole list of corrupt people to bust in the past twenty years was because they had hired someone oblivious to reality as head of that unit, and they still had boasted that it was the smallest because it wasn't needed to be any larger. Mainly because the smaller the unit the bigger the split. Sam Harper, Midgarian counter-terrorism director. Just says what we expected Heidegger and the CO's of the two SOLDIER forces to say. SOLDIER always available to assist local garrisons, and our Public Safety Maintenance Military Police units could get extra troops if required. Which it will be, the first truckloads of jumped up rent-a-cops are just stopped at a Gas, Snack, N Slumber service station between here and Mount Mythra, and the second ones are jerking off in a barracks in Sector 4 upper. When the number crunchers came on we all zoned out.



Question and answer time. No one asks the one we all think, "Why should we care?" nor the more obvious one, "Is that your real hair, Director?" (The answer is no). "Why are you so concerned it will spread overland to Midgar when all the tunnels are heavily guarded and it would take an army just to evade the tolls at Mount Mythra, or the River Punt Road Bridge, or the JH3/M6 which has prohibitions on anything able to carry significant amounts of arms and drugs?"

Instead, it's what-who-where-when-who-what-how? That's how it works. Someone gets paranoid about things that are impossible becoming possible, and to stop them being possible, we make them worse where it is already happening. We manage to finish it and as the specialists assigned to departments gush and fawn while they wait in line for autographs the rovers all head for another conference room. My CO is up first.

'Alright, how do we keep them off our backs?'

'Business as usual. It took us most of a day just to find half our men and now we all know who to avoid,' says the head of a roving unit that wandered across most of the city and the suburban towns nearby.

My focus was simply on the fact these idiots would either drive this new gang underground or into the open. Either they'd be impossible to winkle out, or they'd turn out to have the power to topple the crazy system we had here. Junon was the only place with a black market with stalls because everywhere else, the police cared, or, it would have been blown up by rival factions. Luckily, the boys and girls here are pros at keeping outsiders clueless to everything. Virtually every arm of this country is corrupt by Midgarian standards.

I may be from Midgar, but Junon was more in line with how I liked life. It may be cirrupt by my former homeland's hypocritical ideals, but it worked. I like it when it works. This new gang wanted it to work another way, it seemed . I'd rather it didn't work another way unless I knew how. It can change, but I've always liked to know how it would change

So I had to choose whether to try and stop it or just find out. One man can't make a difference in Junon, I figure, so I had best go find out. My best chance there was a longer chat with Berker, so off I went. Hopefully he'd be in what he called a home. I'd been planning to head back anyway but I kept getting detoured.

'Gotta run, boss. See you around,' I announce to the room. He nods. A few others have already broke off.

A conference of loners like us rovers always seems to break apart so soon.

This post has been edited by Del S on 4th February 2007 17:57

--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Quote (chou @ 11th November 2006 06:56)

why does it have to be final fantasy 7 fan fiction. otherwise i guess its okay. i dont really get it though. why is it noir.

...hmmm if you dont understand why it has to be final fantasy 7... thats probably why you dont get it..lol....

4

Berker wasn't much of an excuse for a man, and his apartment wasn't much excuse for a place to live. A tiny two-room junkpile in a dilapidated block of flats on the sixth tier of the city. His landlord, a guy I always thought far too smart to run a damp nest of rathole flats, didn't like him much, but he tolerated the guy because Berker paid his rent and never did anything to make the neighbours complain that was his fault.

The landlord also didn't like me much, but again, none of the neighbours complained when I did anything, and neither did the landlord. I told you he was a smart customer.

I wasn't too shocked to find Berker sitting on his doorstep with some cheap Midgarian beer and even cheaper smokes.

'Expecting company?'

'I was, Spade, until you popped up.'

'Be fair now, it was the Duo interrupted our chat.'

'Told ya, you should have asked around over at the clubhouse.'

'Yeah, and I didn't get much. Just that they think a new gang is moving in.'

'And you think I know some more on that one?'

'No, Berker, I know you know more. Our friend Juan over in Mercanir told me he'd passed it onto you.'

'Who the hell is Juan and where the hell is Mercanir?' Berker said, trying to look puzzled, but he managed to just look constipated instead.

'Don't play dumb when you already are, it's like a double negative. We both know Juan is the alias our friend over in Costa Del Sol uses when he's talking with us.'

'Alright, it's like this. Yeah, one of the CDS groups wants to move out of bandit country and try and get most of their capital over here in Junon, and they're meant to have balls. Sniffing around in Midgar, even, and that's before the murders. Rumour has it, they've always been controlled by someone important, whoever these guys are.'

'Someone in the Shinra?'

'Well, could be, could be in another company, could maybe even be government. No one knows if this head honcho even exists for real or if this group follows any structure. '

'So a phantom gang led by a rumour. Just what I was thinking I'd find.'

'Should have warned you I didn't have much information.'

'Maybe not on what it is the clubhouse's members are worried about, but maybe I can find out how worried. Who were you supposed to meet?'

Berker didn't seem too pleased at me asking that question. Looks like it was the right one.

***

It turned out Berker's two buddies had been told to head for a bar. Nothing too upmarket, but it was one of the places where they washed the blood off the steps the morning after the fight the night before. It was also one of those odd places where a hundred conversations were going on, but it all stayed quiet.

The TV was tuned into the news channel, and they were talking some crap about a terrorist threat in Midgar from some new group called Waterfall, coming only a few day after AVALANCHE had claimed to have been behind the virus attack on the Midgar City Police computer mainfram. I knew that Waterfall was in fact a thirty-two year old shop assistant at the Macers Department Store in upper sector 7 called Linda and that the counter-terrorism bods in the rotten pizza didn't even think she was worth the wiretaps, and that they should be working more on AVALANCHE and the other real terrorist groups. If only my job was simple enough to be able to bitch that I wasn't following the important ones.

The other patrons went about their business, generally ignoring the two gorillas sitting by the bar. These were the men Berker was expecting to meet. I had naturally tagged along purely for the fun of it all, and of course, to hear what exactly Berker was up to. One gorilla was a tall guy, but muscular. Blond hair and blue eyes, looked like a Nibelheimer. The other guy just looked like a five foot nine bag of testosterone, so he could have been from anywhere, but my initial, incorrect, guess had been Gongaga.

'Who is this?' Testosterone bag asked in a Midgar accent, giving me a glance with his glowing eyes. I figured it out there and then. Ex-SOLDIER.

The blond gave me a glance too, and his eyes were the same. I kept my mouth shut, and for a few seconds, wondered why Berker was so nervous. Then he spoke, which was a good thing for everyone present, because he was just a few seconds short of voiding his bowels.

'A friend of mine. Ex-serviceman like yourself, Midgarian army.'

'He is now a turk, ja?' the Nibelheimer asked.

'Most of us prefer to be called Shinra Internal Affairs Unit Agents these days,' I said.

'And you?' the Midgarian asked.

'Turk will do.'

'A former soldat, though, turk? What regiment were you in?' Nibelheimer asked.

I figured I had nothing to lose with the truth. Maybe they'd comment on the regiment and catch themselves out.

'Midgarian Infantry, 34th Grenadier Rifles. Berker there landed me and my squad on an island one time to back some Marines up.'

'A fine regiment,' the Nibelheimer said. 'My grandfather fought with them in the second war. He said that the Iciclean troops, the east Gongagans, they were children compared to Midgarian troops, especially the 34th.'

'Back then of course they were a reserve Combateer regiment though. By the time I joined they were a line infantry outfit.' It didn't work.

'I was understanding that to have been only a few years ago, ja?' Nibelheimer said. Midgarian seemed quite content to let the Nibelheimer ham up his accent to talk with me.

If these guys were daydreamers with contact lenses, they had done their homework. It took a good eye to tell a mako eye from a contact, and I didn't have that kind of eye, all the SOLDIERS I had met were wearing masks in a tunnel complex in Wutai, so all I had going for me was the hope they'd catch my deliberate mistake, and they had. Both of them knew the 34th had been special forces reserve until the end of the war, and that the only time I could have met Berker as a soldier was before '90. Neither bragged about being SOLDIER, neither commented on how dreadful it had all been, neither said they'd killed X-number of bad guys. Which was a pity, because they'd not talk while I was eavesdropping if they really were what I thought they were. I made my excuses to go sit on the other side of the bar, but I tailed Berker when he left.

'You know what we just met, I assume, Slade?' he said as we walked

'I have an idea, let's hear what you claim.'

'Some mercenaries. They're here to try and scope out the bidding war for our side, because I think they heard through the merc grapevine that their associates in the soldier of misfortune business might be getting a good deal off the new guys, so they figure, they'll offer their services to the locals, see what the price would be, so they come to me, ask me all sorts of questions/ See, I don't think this is just about opening up into Junon, like some of the guys. No, they're here to win a turf war like a real one, and who better to win a war than mercenaries?'

It was so insane and impossible it had to be right. Berker's theory was supported by logic: the newcomers, if they existed for real, had money already from somewhere. SOLDIER and every military in the world had sacked a lot of people after Wutai threw in the towel early enough for us not to get to piss all over the pretty statue carved from the mountain after all. For enough cash, you could hire an army. If you had even more, you could arm it. If you didn't care about collateral damage, you could attack your enemies. Outnumbered, perhaps, but not outgunned. If he was right, we would see a hell of a lot of dead bodies soon. And I was inclined to think he was right, because it's what I had been thinking too. Except unlike Berker, I'd been thinking those two weren't really scouting out the prices the people would pay at the clubhouse as a potential source of income. I was pretty confident they'd been scouting out what money their employer's rivals could offer to others like them.

Only trouble was, all I had to prove this shadow gang existed was what I'd been told a few days ago on the phone with Juan.


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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

5

When it gets quiet in Junon, you know the rats smelled the cat coming. The out of town boys didn't have a sniff, our locals were too busy trying to stop the foreigners sniffing at anything they might want to sample for poisons, and even the informants had gone quiet on the cannon side of the city. But that was okay. There were other places clues could pop up. Until Tuesday though, nothing big happened anywhere.

What most people don't know, that is to say, what a lot of people not from Junon seem to not know, is the city spills over the 16th tier and down the hill. They all know about the huge cannon, they know about the anti-shipping network of guns, even know about the catacombs of the city inside the huge building most of it's propped on. They don't know about the Junon behind the hill. The Junon with legit money, that was just as corrupt as the rest but only to keep the real corruption over the hill. Which is a pity because that's where the fun things happen on a weekday morning and where I found the lead. Sadly, the tourist turks were there first.

What had went down had been brutally simple: a bank robbery. It was a normal Tuesday morning broken only by a botched arrest attempt that spilled from the bank to the street to a supermarket, and left the escape driver, one gunman, half a dozen police officers and two civvies dead, along with seven wounded officers and three bystanders, one in a critical condition. And worse, over 2 million gil in damages to police cars and property. The money had mostly been recovered though except the odd holed banknote hit by stray fire. Would probably have made a great movie if you threw in big name actors and lots of hi-tech military style hardware being used by common crooks. The heaviest gun the criminals had was a WCR85. All they had other than that were pistols, shotguns, and a couple of Micro ICI's. On the bright side, the news wouldn't be talking crap about tree hugging wannabe bombers in Midgar tonight.

The other side of the hill wasn't my usual area of town, because it was clean , filled with polite people, good schools, nice shops, swish restaurants, sidewalks not bathed in urine, and nowhere to get a decent beer or burger. You can put a salad on it if you like, so long as you deep fried the damn thing first. And I prefer the alcohol in the beer to a so called flavour. Mainly because flavour cost money.

The police detective who had been in charge of the failed arrest was speaking to the tourist in the bank itself, so I took a walk down the street. Abandoned and bullet riddled cars still littered the street. Most of the police cars here had shown up later, and the ones that had been blasted to smithereens by the robbers I their escape attempt were just being removed. Forensics hadn't even bothered to try and collect all the brass cases scattered around the place, and they were still removing the bodies from where the last gunman had been shot. A grocery store, the windows shot up, the fruit stands out front salad. A young woman about twenty who'd been out shopping still lay sprawled in a pool of her own blood by the automatic doors, and I could see a cashier slumped over a till inside. The bad guy himself was spread over the parking lot where he'd tried to carjack an old woman and got himself hit by a hail of bullets instead. The old lady had miraculously not got a scratch on her.

Most people wouldn't really take in details at such a scene of carnage, but I did. The suspect had run out of ammo and dropped his last magazine before he got anywhere near the car. The woman by the door and the cashier had both seemingly been hit by stray rounds from cops, a fact I felt they'd not pass on to the relatives. Especially considering that the engagement ring the dead girl was wearing looked pricey and that meant a guy who'd sue the pants off the entire force for murdering his sweetheart. Round the other side of the hill, all her jewellery would have vanished without a trace, because you got a different element of cop there. Funny what a difference a few miles can make.

I wandered back over, seeing the look on the police officer's face as the tourist wasted time on trivial queries.

'And is this a regular occurrence in Junon?'

The detective's face told me he hadn't quite believed that query.

'No, it's not. If it was, the banks would have private armies,' he replied, eventually. The tourist jotted that down as the detective noticed me for the first time. The tourist remained oblivious to me.

'Can I have a word, Detective?' I said. The cop looked at the tourist, who apparently still didn't know I was there.

'Not right now, Spade,' he said.

'Anywhere I can catch you later?'

The detective looked around, then pointed to a uniformed sergeant.

'Ask Figaroa over there for my home address and phone. Make sure you call me before you show up.'

'Will do, Detective.'

I wandered around, studying the scene of the crime a little more, before I grew a little bored of it. I decided to try shake a few contacts about and see if they had anything. Still silence. I drove around in the refrigerator, if only to scout about. Nothing like a restless Turk roving about to get the information chain suddenly start up again from fear of what happens when the blue suits are bored.

Eight PM. Nothing interesting. I drew up beside a payphone and dialled the detective's number.

'Spade?' the cop replied quickly. Probably sitting by the phone paranoid since he got home.

'This is he. Can I come around, detective?'

Hesitation.

'Sure,' he eventually replied.

I got there about half an hour later, a little cliff top flat with the garden facing out across the sea, and a weathered, but well maintained, ninety-three Skydrive parked outside. The lights were all out, and I thought maybe he'd decided against a meeting with a Turk from the rough side of the city. But the door opened as I was walking up the path to the front door. The detective was standing there, a pistol held by his side.

'Problem?'

'There must be. You people are involved,' he said.

He walked me through to a dark sitting room. The only light came from the faint moon outside and a small lamp on a desk over in the right hand corner of the room. The widescreen TV was off, and the detective had even taken the battery out of his clock, I noticed. Presumably he was worried the tick-tock would mean he didn't hear footsteps or whatever. He only had two chairs, so clearly he didn't get much company here. Or he was rarely here, if he was the kind of detective I thought he was.

'So, what's the problem then?' I asked, sitting down. He sat down himself.

'That gang that robbed the bank this morning. We planned to get them all in the car, a clean arrest. But when we were moving we found out something. I didn't tell the other agent this, but these guys weren't just some mercenary crew.'

'Mafia?' I asked.

'Close. They're from out of town. A new gang supposed to be.'

He had my interest now.

'Go on,' I said. He glanced around the empty room, proving this information had made him paranoid. He was opening his mouth, then he froze.

'What was that?' he asked. A second later, the front door crashed open. A dark shape appeared in the doorway, holding what looked like a pistol but from where he stood and faced, he only saw the detective's seat. A burst of shots rang out before my pistol was out, and as the shape moved into the doorway, he spotted me. Too late for him. I fired once, and the shape yelled out. He dropped his gun, so I ran over and kicked it away before slapping the light switch on, the machine pistol clattering away into the kitchen.

The killer was dressed in all black, right down to the ski mask he wore over his head. The detective was clearly dead, a hole leaking red in between his eyes. I knew from experience there was a larger hole where the bullet had came out.

I ripped the ski mask off the shooter, and stood on his wounded shoulder.

'So,' I asked. 'I don't think I caught your name.'

--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

i like it a lot. it has a style i like, just the way the main character sees everything. i haven't read too many FFVII fan fics before, but this is my favorite.

Edit

actually, i think i like it so much because it sounds like something i would write

This post has been edited by Death Penalty on 14th July 2007 17:15

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