Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ This Army Life ❯ Episode One: Wutai Suicide Squad! ( Chapter 1 )

This Army Life

By Nicolle

1st Note: This is my first attempt at a serial. In other words, each chapter is a different episode and may or may not have any bearing on the last. They won't be in any particular order either. All stories center around the Shinra-Wutai War before Final Fantasy VII starts. Expect OOC-ness and general screwing off, mostly on the part of Zack. Insane story ideas are welcome.

2nd Note: Giles is mine and he's an idiot. Feel free to destroy him in whatever way you feel is stress relieving.

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy belongs to Square-Enix. Apologies to Mr. Rowan Atkinson.

Episode One: Wutai Suicide Squad!

"I've got this cunning plan to get out of being killed, Sir," Giles said.

The General lifted his head from the paperwork. "Oh?"

"I'm going to become a cook at Shinra headquarters."

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. "Brilliant idea, Giles. Too bad you can't cook."

"I can too, Sir."

"Giles, your pudding looks suspiciously like squashed slugs and your sirloin steak tastes like tongue of dog. The only thing you can cook with any decency is broiled rat. Speaking of which, what's for dinner tonight?"

"Elephant wings."

"You mean buffalo wings."

"No. Actually, Sir, they're chocobo wings. I thought that, since they don't really fly, we could just cut the wings off and have them for dinner."

Sephiroth rubbed his temples. "Oh God... Get General Zack, would you?"

"Yes, Sir." Giles ran off and Zack meandered into the tent, bloody.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Someone cut the wings off the chocobos."

"That would have been Giles."

Zack looked out the tent flap. "He really wants out of here, doesn't he? Why don't you have him sent to guard duty somewhere the war isn't?"

"Because I don't like him enough to send him to Costa del Sol, I don't hate him enough to send him to Midgar, and having him around makes me feel infinitely better when the new recruits show up. Here's the latest battle plan."

Zack pulled a chair up to the desk. "What's Shinra having us do now?"

"He wants a lightning strike at the eastern front."

"Straight through the marshes. Great. We'll be as quick as snails." Zack leaned back. "I guess no one told him that the marshes are filled monsters."

"No. And no one told him that there isn't an eastern front. Wutai certainly isn't in there. Not that I blame them."

"So what? We wait a few days and send a report back of our glorious victory?"

Sephiroth rolled up the map. "Sounds good to me."

"So what's for dinner?"

"Chocobo wings."

A Week Later...

"Message from President Shinra, Sir!" Giles yelled.

Sephiroth frowned and took the letter. "Bloody hell."

Zack looked up from the interesting reading behind his eyelids. "What?"

"Shinra's coming down to see the progress on the eastern front."

Zack snuggled back into his chair. "Great. We'll show him the empty, monster filled swamps and say we had no casualties."

Sephiroth rolled his eyes. "He'll be here in two hours."

Zack stood and stretched. "All right. I'll take some of the men into the marsh for fifteen minutes for a wrestling match. You kill a monster and leave its bloody corpse in the middle of camp. We'll improvise the rest."

On The Arrival of the President...

"What IS that thing?"

"That, President Shinra, is a dead marlboro," Sephiroth said. The black tentacles lay listlessly on the ground while dark red blood seeped into the ground.

"And why do the men stink of the swamp?"

"You ordered a strike through the swamp, sir," Zack answered. The men in question were currently trying to pull leaches off of themselves while still standing at attention.

"I ordered a strike on the eastern front."

Somewhere, vaguely, Sephiroth realized that he was developing a twitch. "The swamp is the eastern front."

"It is the eastern front? Good. How did our operations go?"

Zack resisted the urge to kill himself. "Great. We didn't lose a single soldier."

"My god! What happened to the Chocobos?!"

"Wutai Suicide squads, sir. They hurt the birds and then kill themselves for the shame of it," Zack said. "Terrible really. The birds are traumatized."

"Too bad that. So where are the prisoners of war? I'd like to have them interrogated."

"Well," Sephiroth began, "there are no prisoners of war."

"You didn't capture anyone?"

"Oh we captured a lot of Wutai, but they were all part of the suicide squad and they killed themselves."

"So what did you do with the bodies? Burn them?"

Sephiroth's face went deadly intense. "We cut up the bodies and catapulted the pieces into enemy territory."

The President swallowed, hard, and backed away from the General. "Yes, well, I guess that's a decent enough report." He turned to Zack. "I'll just be heading back to Midgar then."

Sephiroth smiled. "You won't stay for dinner?"

"What's on the menu?"

"Wutai Suicide Squad..." Zack muttered as he dragged the President back to his car.

Over a Dinner Consisting of... You Don't Really Want to Know.

Zack stuffed a chocobo wing in his mouth. "Thank God everyone thinks your psycho, Seph."

"I am psycho." The General spit out a chocobo feather. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

"You two seem to have this all in hand, don't you?" Rufus said as he walked in the tent.

"Care for some chocobo, Rufus? It's great stuff." Zack offered him a wing.

The Vice President wrinkled his nose and took a piece. "You may be able to fool my father, but I know you've both been up to nothing for the past month and a half." He took a bite of the wing. "This isn't half bad."

"It isn't half good either," Sephiroth said, "So what the hell are we doing out here?"

"Good question. However, I don't have a good answer." Rufus took another bite of the chocobo wing. "Honestly, the army should be holding the Wutai line in the west. But you know my father. He can't tell his right hand from his left, let alone read a map. So I'm going to order you to pack up and move west." He finished off the Chocobo wing.

"Can we request more chocobos?" Zack asked.

"Only if you promise not to eat them." He picked up another wing and tore into it. "Damn they're good."