Falling
By Lady Sanzennine
Disclaimer: FFVII, its characters, places, and ideas are property of Squaresoft Inc.
A/N: Graphic
violence and disturbingly violent subject matter. You have been warned.
“Burn it to the ground. Spare no man, woman or child. Destroy all the livestock and crops.”
“Sir!” The cry of the army rang out synonymously. Swords were raised high into the air, saluting their esteemed General in the blood red din of the sunset sky.
“I want this city leveled by dawn,” he calmly informed his troops. His voice carried easily over the open field to all the men that stood at attention before him. With those final words, he nodded once and turned away, leaving his soldiers and the inevitable chaos behind.
The rhythmic pounding of the soldiers’ feet against the ground as they marched towards the city assaulted his ears though he tried to block it out. They would reach Haoxi in mere minutes and the slaughter would begin. It was an innocent village, really, and completely unsuspecting. But Shinra had a lesson to teach to the disobedient people of Wutai and it had to start somewhere.
His long strides carried him further from the advancing men, further from the fires that would soon spread wildly and further from the rain of blood that was about to fall. Around the bend of lush green grass that knelt so easily under his tread to the shallow cliff that offered an unimpeded view of the city below. There, his men headed; an impressive advancing force of the most elite soldiers under Shinra’s rule.
Elite soldiers sent to slaughter children.
That was the malicious dance of life. The powerful ruled with a fist of iron and the weak and innocent bowed down or suffered. This he’d accepted long ago. Kill or be killed; be strong and remain unscathed or be weak and smothered in the silence of the night.
And the strong had ordered the city torched, so torched it would be.
The chill wind clawed at his face and whipped his hair into weightless disarray about him. But he felt…nothing. Emotions, sensations, they did not register. The sight of the army, so close now to falling upon the city that had no doubt flown into a panic, caused no stirring within his breast, not the slightest guilty shift in his stance. There was only a strange sense of calm of the unpreventable.
Had it been so long ago that he could see an injured bird and feel the desire to heal and shelter it? Had it been so long ago he’d lost all claim to blissful innocence?
The army had infiltrated the city walls. The first man fell in a waterfall of crimson liquid, his throat pierced by the sure strike of a soldier’s blade. The long length of steel glittered in the dying sunlight before it slid to the hilt through its hapless victim. The solider retracted his arm in a fluid motion and the blade was withdrawn from the dead man, covered and dripping in spilt lifeblood. The body collapsed in a broken heap upon the stained ground.
How easy it must be for the truly powerful to give such orders. Mere words were uttered and the atrocities were completed - no screaming women to observe, no men to watch desperately trying to protect their families, and no infants to see the life seized from. So simple. They wished them dead and so they died. The cleanup crew would take care of the mess afterwards and the entire event could be buried beneath subjective history texts and mass propaganda.
And what of him? The man who lead these soldiers, stood directly beneath those who lounged in their office chairs; the man who actually saw with his own two eyes the carnage of war and death. Why did he feel nothing when he saw with crystal clarity the innocents struck down, smoked from their houses and bayoneted where they stood?
Over there – a woman struggling in the grasp of several soldiers. One stood before her with his sword before him. A quick slash of the blade and her bulging abdomen spilled forth its contents. Including her unborn child. She passed out, luckily, and was then speared through the heart with another soldier’s bayonet.
Not the slightest frown marred the brow of the General atop the cliff. There was neither a horrific shudder nor tensing of his body.
“Glory to the empire! Glory to the Shinra!”
Beyond the murdered pregnant woman there were others being raped brutally by numerous soldiers. Still others were trying to force families to commit incest while throughout the city soldiers competed amongst themselves to see who could behead the most.
“They’re just animals, don’t you understand? They’re worth even less than pigs because at least you can eat a pig.”
Somewhere in the depths of his mind he knew they’d done a masterful job of conditioning him. Far beyond ensuring that he could never shed a tear. And not only just he, for all soldiers underwent such programming.
“We’re helping them, you see. They’re foolish and wasting their resources, their lives. Barbarians all of them. They need us to show them the way. They need us to save them.”
The fires began. Dancing flames spread from roof to roof, across fields of hard-grown crops, consuming everything. In the distance a single, haunting wail of a babe sounded before it was suddenly cut off, leaving only the clamor of screaming citizens and shouting soldiers.
“Your life is nothing, got it? You live only to serve your country. You’re worthless and needless and so you will give your life in an instant for your country. “
And if that was true, then what did that mean of the people they invaded? The people that were not really people and so mattered none.
“What the fuck is
wrong with you, soldier? Can’t follow simple orders? I said kill him!”
“You’re nothing but a long haired albino! Nothing, you hear me? Just an experiment – and Hojo’s experiment no less!”
The slaughter was winding down as the still-breathing populace diminished. Night had fully fallen; the ruby glare of the setting sun banished beneath the horizon. Under the dim light of the stars and the waning moon, the screams and sickening cheers continued, though with each passing moment the night chaos dwindled in volume.
He hovered over
the control panel before him, fighting the urge to step back, the drill
sergeant screaming in his face. In front of them the wild eyes of the test
subject darted around in half-mad terror from behind the two-way observation
mirror.
Sweat trickled
from his brow as his breathing became erratic. He winced involuntarily as the
sergeant got more in his face, expletives pouring from the man’s mouth that
he’d never heard until this moment. Every insult imaginable was released upon
him, from his ancestry to his demeanor, to his intelligence and competence. The
older man’s eyes bore into his own in a way that made him feel so much smaller
and more powerless than ever before in his life.
His finger inched
towards the switch on the control panel. The switch that
read, “Danger, high voltage.” The switch that would
kill the subject within the observation room before him.
One final, shrill scream pierced the air before it was abruptly transformed into a soft gurgle as the man drowned in his own spilt blood. Silence followed.
His finger
touched the edge of the switch and he swallowed, hard. In a sudden movement he
closed his eyes and turned away from the tobacco tinted breath of the yelling
sergeant.
He hit the
switch.
Silence.
The observation
room was soundproof.
A cheer rang out among the soldiers as they stood back to watch the remnants of the decimated city burn itself to the ground. They happily busied themselves with counting the chinks that had been made in the edges of their swords from the repeated head-severing.
“Good work, boy,”
the sergeant said to him in a normal voice now that he’d completed his task.
With that, he turned and walked from the room, leaving Sephiroth to stare
blindly at the panel before him.
After a moment he raised his head and forced himself to look at the man that lay dead on the cold, tiled floor of the observation room. Dead by his hand; the first person he ever killed.
The inferno that blazed across the city now quieted as its fuel burned low. In the distance, the sun was beginning its slow ascension into the sky. Red-orange light bathed the bloodstained ground as dawn broke over the land. Only the soft roar of the dying fire greeted the new day.
He’d taken his
first life at the age of ten. And each subsequent killing after that day was
easier than the last.
Oh yes, they’d done a masterful job of conditioning him.
For when he looked out onto the ravaged city, completely devoid of life now, and covered in a rain of blood…he felt nothing.
Killing machines feel neither love nor compassion. And certainly not remorse or a sense of longing for his long-dead soul.
He turned his back on the fallen city and walked away
with long, unhurried strides.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
A/N: I had “The Rape of Nanjing”
on my mind when I wrote this. It’s an account of the atrocities that occurred during
the Japanese occupation of
That last sentence just states skimmed-over facts, though. I could go into gory detail about them, describing just how those 300,000 people were killed, but that would disturb me far too much. Writing this vignette disturbed me enough as it is. Oh, and I believe that many of the gruesome facts that make up the non-fictional book, “The Rape of Nanjing” were gathered from pictorial evidence as well as eye-witness accounts from the survivors and the Japanese soldiers.
Now I’m sitting here wondering two things. 1. Why did I
write this? I have no idea. If you were to ask me what the thesis is, the best
answer I could give is something along the lines of exploring true-to-life
conditioning. That bit about the electrocution chamber and the sergeant
screaming at him to hit the switch – that was an experiment conducted in the
Feel free to drop me a line about this ficlet. And no, I’m not crazy, depressed or just plain gone.
~LS~