(no subject)
Fic #7: Secrets
Request: Crossing Borders, Shatani and Rhen, prompt: a fun yet strange assignment
Requested by: dreamseternal
Length: 658
Rated: PG
Notes: This wound up more like ‘a normal assignment with a fun yet strange resolution’, but oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
It started out as routine.
Shatani could practically recite Rhen’s speech by now, and often said it underneath his breath with the other man. “If you get caught, I have no idea who you are, no one is coming to rescue you, and if you give away any of Ynoltri’s secrets I’ll kill you myself. So don’t get caught.”
Shatani always promised not to get caught, and though sometimes he did anyway, he always got out under his own steam and half the time Rhen didn’t even find out about it later. In any case, this mission was so simple that there was no way he would get caught. He had done ones like this a dozen times.
The Seconan army had a large number of troops set up at a critical location. Rhen was moving a force down to attack them. Shatani’s job was to sneak in ahead of time and destroy their armory so they wouldn’t be able to fight back. So simple that he could do it in his sleep. He just rigged up explosives all around the armory and detonated them once he had gotten a safe distance away.
He looked up at the sky, which was dumping rain on him at the approximate rate of an inch an hour, and asked the gods why they hated him so much.
It started out as routine. He snuck into camp, stole a uniform, and casually set up his explosives as it started to drizzle. The only problem had been that it took him a little longer to make his getaway, since the camp was crowded with personnel and he kept getting mistaken for a recruit and getting sent on errands. Unfortunately for Shatani, by the time he got away, the rain had started in earnest - and the explosives he had set were soaked through and useless.
Shatani loved rain under normal circumstances - especially heavy rain. It reminded him of monsoon season in the desert. If he hadn’t been on a mission of such importance, he would have started dancing around, enjoying himself. But this time the rain was a hindrance, and he glared up at the sky.
Then again, he reasoned to himself, if the rain made his explosives useless, it would do the exact same thing to the weapons of the Seconan soldiers. All he had to do was make sure their gunpowder got wet.
Feeling cheered up by this prospect, he shinned up a nearby tree and dropped down onto the roof of the armory. All he had to do was drill some holes in the roof and that would take care of things. Of course, without explosives, getting holes in the roof would be a little difficult. He wasn’t exactly strong enough to start swinging a sledgehammer around - even if he had one, which he most decidedly did not.
He began rifling through his bag to see if he still had any of that acid that could eat metal. Rhen had told him to stop carrying it, probably afraid that he would melt one of his limbs off, but Shatani had paid no mind and still had a mostly fully bottle. “Whee!” he declared, gauging how much he had left.
Ten minutes later, Shatani was soaked to the bone and had spent a great deal of quality time upside down, but the ammunition inside was just as soaked, and no one was going to be using it in a hurry. He climbed down and put his hands in his pockets, wandering away form the building, and made his way back to the Ynoltri camp.
Rhen gave him a hard look. “Back so soon? I haven’t seen an explosion.”
“And you’re not going to,” Shatani said, full of satisfaction, “but their armory is gone just the same.”
“What? How?”
“Trade secret,” Shatani said with a wink, and then ducked Rhen’s outstretched arms, making a run for it before the general could throttle him.