Sand, Sea, Sun and sky! (open!)

[bloodvice]

"Now I hope you don't mind hearing a little bit of a story," Cal said, hoping she wouldn't run out of the dorrs. "But it might take a few minutes." With a whimsical smile, and a bit of a distant look in his eye, the mercenary began his story.

"A long time ago, back when I lived in gongaga, I worked for shinra with the Turks. Although my past is pretty much a mystery to me, all i could remember when I woke up was that I'd gotten into a fight with one of the SOLDIER inside of the mako reactor, somewhat of a friendly brawl, i guess you could say." He paused again, and much to his surprise, his eyes began to water. Pretending as if it were nothing, he continued once more, "but our friendly little bout didn't quite stay limited to one area, and thus destroyed a set of computers containing the reactor core. Once this had happened, the reactor and all that i had ever loved was destroyed, along with my memory."

Surprised that she had not left yet, Cal continued, still enamored by her beauty. "Well, anyways, that was about seven years ago, or maybe longer. I don't really know. All I know is what I've dug up on my missions working for scumbags like shinra and deepground. So far, what I've learned was that this man named Hojo found me in much worse condition than I am now, and did experiments on me while I was in a coma. On top of that, he decided to try and clone me to create and army of super SOLDIER, but the project unanimously failed. I guess you can say I'm the only successful experiment out of that project. Hell, in a way I'm not even sure if I'm the real me, but I think I am."

After letting out a long sigh, finishing his beer, and ordering yet another, he continued, "When I had woken up, I'd found myself in the ruined city of Midgar. Naturally, I folowed the shreds of memory I had left to Gongaga, where Zack Fair's parents took me in. Zack was a good friend of mine growing up, but unfortunately I heard he died well before I'd woken up. I guess he died saving that Cloud Strife fellow, or somthin'." he looked at his beer, and then began to chug it . About 2-3rds finished, he poured the rest on the floor next to him, muttering an almost inaudible "for zack" before he continued. "Now zack was a good man, not like me. Or really, like I am now. He had something to fight for. He had HONOR. Anyway, I'm not really getting to the point, so I'll finish. On one of my most recent missions, some red-headed guy from DeepGround wanted me to work for him. 'Shove-it' i says to the guy, 'I don't work for two-bit pansies with a penchant for wearing capes'. Now the guy didn't take to kindly to that, and within moments he had me by the throat. Pretty strong for such a waif, I thought. Anyway, he told me 'I'll pay you nicely if you can steal some valuable cargo from a Shinra train'. Of course, I oblige, and successfully derail tha car it was in. Hell, I daresay almost no one coulda done it like me. Well anyway, when I returned from the bastard's mission, he tried to steal my genetics. Skipping the details, let's just say I got the hell outta ther. So something worth fighting for? I suppose I could fight for the freedom for everyone to keep who they are who they are, instead of letting lunatics like shinra and deepground making clones of whoever they see fit. Shit, i must've seen twenty of those red-headed pansies."

Finishing his story, Cal looked deep into the girl's eyes, then asked "So whatcha think? Should I go ahead and pummel deepground into a pulp, or just let it go and continue on being a mercenary? I'd like to fight for something, but if it's a stupid idea, call me on it."

[Deleted]

"I don't mind, I like listening," She said with a smile taking a sip of her orange juice. She sat slightly to her side keeping her eyes on Cal as she listened to him, she set her drink down on the bar. She rested her elbow on her knee and rested her chin on her fist. When he finished Alexia pondered his question for a few seconds and then awnsered: "I think, DeepGround sound too much for one person to handle, but that's just my opinion, you know what I men they don;t sound like a bunch of push-overs, I've heard of them on numerous occations during my travels." She said pausing to think for a moment "But I don't think it's a stupid idea, I just think you'd need help," she said smiling slightly. "Now this 'Red headed pansie' you mentioned, who is it exactly? I may have come across this persons name in my travels," She said taking a sip of her drink then returining her attention to him.

[bloodvice]

"Well, he kept on reciting excerpts from that play, Loveless, and talking some sort of nonsense about reviving Sephiroth," said Cal, with a somewhat curious glance at Alexia, "Also, he seemed completely off his rocker. How a guy like that even gets to be in charge of anything makes me really wonder about the overall sanity of his followers."

Cal laughed, and finished the rest of his beer. "I think he said his name was something like Julisis, Jennifer, something like that." Standing up, leaving a few extra gil on the table, Cal says "Do you wanna get outta here? this bar is getting pretty stuffy. I'm not sure I can take the unsavory bunch any longer."

[Deleted]

"well most of this planet isn't really what you'd call normal or sane is it?" she said with a slight laugh. "I've read that play, it's pretty boring if you ask me, it makes no sense to me," She added. "Now I've never heard of a guy called Jennifer, and I've come across some pretty wierd and random names you know?" she said also standing up. " sure, I was getting bored of these four walls, they should really decorate or something," she commented stretching her arms above her head and yawning slightly "I hate hot weather," she moaned as she began walking slowly to the door dragging her feet along the floor and flicking her hair out of her face.

[bloodvice]

"Well, lets get outta here."

Cal walked outside into the uncomfortably bright sunlight. "If you'd like to join me, I have express knowledge of a DeepGround base somewhere on this continent. Apparently, it is a Tsviet training ground, so the enemies there won't be too incredibly strong. And oh," Cal paused, "I think you should have this."

Out of nowhere Cal pulled a glowing piece of Materia from out of his pocket, tethered to a mythril chain. "This is a Materia that has saved my life several times. It's incessantly lucky, and it'll even come back to you if you lose it. I just wanted you to have it because... Well, just cuz."

Shoving the magical object into her hands, Cal began to move towards the docks. "We are going to take a ship, and just go as fast as we can to their hidden base under the mountain near Wutai."

[Deleted]

Alexia sighed as she walked into the sunlight, it was hot and uncomfortable to her. "Where is this Tsviet training ground," Alexia smiled as she gave her the materia, she inspected it then lookedup at him, "Thank-you I'll keep it with me at all times," She said, slightly unsure of his reains for giving ot to her. "Oh wait, before we get a ship out of here, I need to get my stuff from the hotel where I am staying, if it was just clothes I'd leave them but my swords are in there, and to me they are irriplaceable," She said to him looking back at her hotel in the distance, "Sorry for the inconvinience," she said apolageticly.

[bloodvice]

"Don't worry about it," Cal said. "That materia gives you luck beyond reason, so if you are ever in a bad situation, it'll keep you safe. Although sometimes it has a funny way of showing it."

Cal paused for a moment. "Go on ahead and get your stuff, I'll get the ship ready. You'd better hurry, because ShinRa won't sit around watching me pummel the crap outta them for long." And with that, before Alexia could say a word, he was already running towards the docks. In mid-sprint, one of the guards stared at him and began to raise his rifle, but was met with a cruel boot to the face. Before the other guard could respond, Cal already had the chain of his sword wrapped around his neck, and pulled the dumbfounded man onto the blades of his gauntlet. "No enemies among the dead," he whispered in the soldier's ear almost apologetically, and with that he was already inside of the ship before the guard fell.

Running up the stairs, or rather almost gliding, Cal began to knock over each guard off the edge of the rails with ease, and attempting to limit the kill count (he still needed a crew), the mercenary knocked out nearly every guard he saw. Finally, he was on the deck of the airship, and was completely surrounded by ShinRa military.

"Now, if I were you, I'd put down my gun," he said with a grin while brandishing his sword. But instead of listening, someone popped off a shot, which Cal avoided with ease. Leaping up into the air, Cal frontflipped onto the other side of the ShinRa captain, and proceeded to use him as a human shield while he ran around in circles knocking out as many soldiers as he could. Dropping the dead captain over the edge and into the deepest waters, Cal cleverly used his fire materia to finish off the rest of the guards.

"That should do it," he said. After defeating his enemies, he proceeded to tie up all of the living soldiers together below deck, and disposed of the bodies. Dropping a rope over the side of the Airship, Cal was preparing for take-off.

"That girl better make it, because once I'm in the air all she'll have is that rope to grab."

[Deleted]

Alexia smiled quickly and turned off running in the other direction towards her hotel, it took her all of two minutes to get there. She ran through the doors and straight into an open lift. She panted gently, pressed the button to her floor and rummaged thorough her handbag until she found the little card that opend the door. Two other people in the lift were staring at her, but she didn't care. The lift pinged and she ran out, sprinting to the end of the corridor to her room. She slid the card down the little electrical device nex to the door and it flashed green.
She pushed her way into the room and quickly located her precious Katanas, she smiled and placed them on her back securely. She then grabbed the little box that had most of her money and credit cards in, she checked it was ocked and shoved it into her handbag, not at all grace-fully. She left her bag full of clothes, there wasn't anything irriplacable in there. She then walked out of the door making sure to close it behind her, she got into he lift and ran out throwing some money and her card-key at the attendant on the desk as she ran by, not exactly subtle but it did the job. She then ran quickly towards the dock and when she got there she spotted the airship.

[bloodvice]

Looking out of the captain's box, Cal was rather impressed. In the amount of time it had taken him to commandeer the ship, she'd run clear across to the other side of town, checked out of the hotel, and was already in front of the airship.

"Hurry up!" Cal shouted as he watched a swarm of ShinRa begin to flock towards Alexia, "Grab the rope, and hold on for dear life!" Just as he finished speaking, the airship began to take off, floating almost elegantly in the direction of Alexia, with the rope in perfect Alignment of the warrior woman.

"She better grab that damn rope," Cal murmured.

[Deleted]

Alexia smiled and looked behind her sticking her tongue out at the swarm of Shin-Ra running toward her. Then with a smirk She took some gloves quickly out of her trouser pockets and pulled them onto her hands. Then she jumped up gracefully grabbing the rope with ease and hanging on. As she began to shimmy up the rope some people grabbed onto it. "This is gonna be amusing," she said pulling her hand-gun out of her bag, whilst still hanging onto the rope with one hand. She took aim and shot the guy at the bottom of the rope, hitting him in the middle of the head. The rest of the guys just stared and didn't attempt to clamber on. She then continued to shimmy up the rope until she reached the top.

[bloodvice]

"That was fast," said Cal, as the airship began to fly over Costa Del Sol. "We'll be in Wutai in a few minutes, but I need to 'convince' our new crew to join our side. A bit of wordplay should work."

Going below deck, after passing the steering off to Alexia, Cal began to wake up the soldiers he knocked out.

"Now look ladies," Cal said with a grin. "You work for me now. Any sort of funny business, mutiny, or betrayal is punishable by death while you're under my command. Capice?"

The soldiers were frightened, and several wanted to go home.

"Look, ShinRa is evil. They'll always be evil. As a matter of fact, they create things like me, and have done thousands of different experiments to create super soldiers. SOLDIER was one of these. So, if you planned on joining the program," Cal said whimsically "don't even think about it if you still want to be human. Heck, if you don't really even like your job, I can train you to become just as strong without Mako energy, and materia, as you know, has many different uses that would make you stronger."

Surprisingly, many of the soldiers were beginning to relax, and a few were even saying things like "ShinRa has ruined my life" or "I have ALWAYS hated my job."

"Now, I won't lie to you, and I'm not some evil man looking for vengeance. I just want this world to relax, and become a better place. If you think ShinRa has been doing this, feel free to leave once we land in Wutai. I'm sure you'll be greatly welcomed there. But if you are beginning to have doubts, and would rather fight for a greater purpose, and would LIKE to see your families again," Cal paused again, looking at the eleven soldiers he tied up, "I need you to help me in my mission against deepground. You're all familiar with team tactics?" he said, waiting for the response.

Everyone nodded vigorously.

"And you can manage the ship so it DOESN'T crash?"

Everyone nodded again.

"Good. Get the ship in order, keep things running smoothly, and I'll debrief you all once we arrive."

With that, he untied the soldiers and walked up to the pilot's fore. "Well, that went better than I expected," said Cal, taking the wheel once more. But before he could explain what happened, a yound, blue haired soldier walked up to the fore.

"Sir," he asked, "Permission to speak freely?"

"This isn't the military. Speak your mind please," said Cal, with a smile.

"We have agreed to follow you," said the soldier, "most of us were planning on deserting anyway. But I was wondering, if we accompany you on this mission, we'll live right?

Cal paused. "It's dangerous, but if you follow me and use your head, and don't rush into battle, you'll be fine. Also, if you stick with me, I promise I'll train you to be a good warrior. After all, you're in the company of two of the deadliest people in the world."

"Thank you," said the man. "My name is Reese. I was the Lieutenant and second in charge to the captain, before he passed, and if the men get unruly, let me know, I can keep them under control for you."

"Thank you," said Cal, and with that, the man left.

"What a nice bunch, don't you think?"

[Deleted]

Alexia put her gun in her bag and set it down on the floor."You should know I haven't got much experiance flying anything like this, i fwe crash you can't sue me," She said with a smile as she took control of the steering. " They are a nice bunch. I worked for SOLDIER," Alexia said to Cal, "But I quit, I soon began torealise that they were a bunch of heartless bastards," She said whilst keeping her hands on the wheel. "Do you think you could maybe take over or get some-one else to, I have feeling we're all gonna die if you let me stay at the wheel for too long," She admitted, "does this thing have air conditioning, I feel like I'm in an oven," She sighed blowing her fringe out of her face, and gazing at the scenery that could be seen from the front window of the airship.

[bloodvice]

"I got the wheel. Don't worry about it."

Cal took over the steering, and began to relax. 'Now not only can i get vengeance' he thought, 'I can actually fight for a greater purpose. Times are getting good.'

Just then, Wutai came into view.

"You ready Alexia?" Cal said, waiting for a reply. "We're almost there, and I'm getting ready to land the ship."

*continue in Wutai, Infiltrating Tsviet Territory