Guilty Gear ficlet - The Order of things
Just a short fic this time, didn't even quite make it to a thousand words. I really do love what you can do with viewpoints from two characters who were always so doomed to clash as these two.
Title: The Order of things
Summary: Two perspectives on Sol's departure from the Holy Order, and the events leading up to it
Rating: PG
Word count: 988
Sol
Towards the end, it wasn’t so much a question of what made Sol leave the Order as why he hadn’t left sooner.
He couldn’t have explained what possessed him to let himself be talked into joining in the first place. Killing Gears, sure, but you could do that anywhere, they weren’t in short supply. He’d never expected to enjoy being part of this, but he hadn’t counting on hating it quite this much.
It would have been bad enough that he couldn’t even get up in the morning without being reminded that this was the so-called Last Hope Of Mankind - a raged bunch of soldiers, some so young they wouldn’t have been allowed to start basic training back in civilised days, thrown together under a command structure that could have come out of the middle ages and had probably been dreamed up by some panicked bureaucrat who hadn’t known the first thing about winning a war. They were religious fanatics almost to a man, so desperate that they’d believe in just about anything that sounded like hope. Within a month he’d seen so many of those poor sods cut down left and right of him in battle that he didn’t even care anymore. Anyone with any sense could have seen what sort of fate that sad army was destined for - the least he could ask was not to be there to see it happen.
The one part that he could never quite reconcile was that they were actually doing well - the last two years had seen the Gear armies pushed back further than they’d been in decades of war. But Sol couldn’t rationalise how - couldn’t see it as anything more than a bubble ready to burst. Starting out this high could only be giving them further to fall.
And what greater proof could there be than that the whole damned organisation had been passed into the hands of some wide-eyed kid with a few decent sword skills and a hero complex so overblown Sol wondered whether he even understood that he had a war to win half the time. He came to the job with enough charisma that men would have followed him to hell and back and a probable life expectancy of maybe a month and half - anything he lasted past that had to be borrowed time. If Sol ever needed any reminder of just what sort of world that thousand-times-damned project had left them all, it was there every time he looked in that crazy boy’s face. By the end it was getting to the point they could hardly pass in the hallway without an argument starting over some stupid thing or other. Even after leaving it would be years before Sol could so much as hear the Commander’s name without something twitching under his skin.
But the clincher - the very final straw - was the day the Order was taken on ceremonial parade through Paris in celebration of a victory from a thousand miles away that had won back enough territory from the Gears to deserve special mention. The Order’s commanders and an accompanying band of a few elite soldiers had been paraded even through the headquarters of the UN itself, where seven pieces of the Outrage were displayed proudly behind thick glass cases, and that was when something in Sol snapped. Because - fuck it - he hadn’t spent years of his life building the greatest piece of anti-gear weaponry ever imagined so some official could turn it into a museum piece.
And once he’d broken into a top security facility and stolen a priceless relic, he’d made good and sure he wasn’t ever going to be able to change his mind about going back.
Ky
Ky had always believed that God tested people. The war was one such test to him, yet he often felt that the single task of managing Sol Badguy tested him just as far.
Sol was stubborn, uncouth and lazy and would not even pretend the slightest respect for authority - he sometimes even gave Ky the impression the war was something he’d only gotten involved with because he’d been bored at the time. He followed orders only when he found it convenient, and when asked to justify his actions would barely offer more than one word answers as excuses for his misbehaviour. Sol was more valuable to them than any ten other men Ky could name, and more trouble than any other twenty. In a world where he saw good men fall left and right by the day, it seemed unforgivable that a man such as Sol should be allowed to exist at all.
His mere presence changed everything. Whenever they fought at each other’s side on the battlefield, Ky wouldn’t be fighting to survive, or to win, or even in some childish game to see who could take down the most gears the most quickly (that was beyond question). It became a battle only to prove that Gears would fall faster and in greater numbers due to his efforts than without him - that his presence in Sol’s wake made a difference at all.
It pained Ky worst of all to admit that Sol had no reason to improve his behaviour. His formidable reputation alone meant he had more respect from the men than did any officers. They could reprimand him, but he was simply too valuable for any superior to consider dismissing him. The magnitude of the kind of crime he’d have to commit to test the limits of how badly they needed him did not bear thinking about. Indeed, there were times Sol seemed every bit as much an enemy of everything the Order stood for as the Gears themselves.
When Sol finally deserted them, it should have been something he’d seen coming long ago. Some small part of him should even have been grateful to have Sol off his hands at last.
He wasn’t. It was no relief at all.
Title: The Order of things
Summary: Two perspectives on Sol's departure from the Holy Order, and the events leading up to it
Rating: PG
Word count: 988
Sol
Towards the end, it wasn’t so much a question of what made Sol leave the Order as why he hadn’t left sooner.
He couldn’t have explained what possessed him to let himself be talked into joining in the first place. Killing Gears, sure, but you could do that anywhere, they weren’t in short supply. He’d never expected to enjoy being part of this, but he hadn’t counting on hating it quite this much.
It would have been bad enough that he couldn’t even get up in the morning without being reminded that this was the so-called Last Hope Of Mankind - a raged bunch of soldiers, some so young they wouldn’t have been allowed to start basic training back in civilised days, thrown together under a command structure that could have come out of the middle ages and had probably been dreamed up by some panicked bureaucrat who hadn’t known the first thing about winning a war. They were religious fanatics almost to a man, so desperate that they’d believe in just about anything that sounded like hope. Within a month he’d seen so many of those poor sods cut down left and right of him in battle that he didn’t even care anymore. Anyone with any sense could have seen what sort of fate that sad army was destined for - the least he could ask was not to be there to see it happen.
The one part that he could never quite reconcile was that they were actually doing well - the last two years had seen the Gear armies pushed back further than they’d been in decades of war. But Sol couldn’t rationalise how - couldn’t see it as anything more than a bubble ready to burst. Starting out this high could only be giving them further to fall.
And what greater proof could there be than that the whole damned organisation had been passed into the hands of some wide-eyed kid with a few decent sword skills and a hero complex so overblown Sol wondered whether he even understood that he had a war to win half the time. He came to the job with enough charisma that men would have followed him to hell and back and a probable life expectancy of maybe a month and half - anything he lasted past that had to be borrowed time. If Sol ever needed any reminder of just what sort of world that thousand-times-damned project had left them all, it was there every time he looked in that crazy boy’s face. By the end it was getting to the point they could hardly pass in the hallway without an argument starting over some stupid thing or other. Even after leaving it would be years before Sol could so much as hear the Commander’s name without something twitching under his skin.
But the clincher - the very final straw - was the day the Order was taken on ceremonial parade through Paris in celebration of a victory from a thousand miles away that had won back enough territory from the Gears to deserve special mention. The Order’s commanders and an accompanying band of a few elite soldiers had been paraded even through the headquarters of the UN itself, where seven pieces of the Outrage were displayed proudly behind thick glass cases, and that was when something in Sol snapped. Because - fuck it - he hadn’t spent years of his life building the greatest piece of anti-gear weaponry ever imagined so some official could turn it into a museum piece.
And once he’d broken into a top security facility and stolen a priceless relic, he’d made good and sure he wasn’t ever going to be able to change his mind about going back.
Ky
Ky had always believed that God tested people. The war was one such test to him, yet he often felt that the single task of managing Sol Badguy tested him just as far.
Sol was stubborn, uncouth and lazy and would not even pretend the slightest respect for authority - he sometimes even gave Ky the impression the war was something he’d only gotten involved with because he’d been bored at the time. He followed orders only when he found it convenient, and when asked to justify his actions would barely offer more than one word answers as excuses for his misbehaviour. Sol was more valuable to them than any ten other men Ky could name, and more trouble than any other twenty. In a world where he saw good men fall left and right by the day, it seemed unforgivable that a man such as Sol should be allowed to exist at all.
His mere presence changed everything. Whenever they fought at each other’s side on the battlefield, Ky wouldn’t be fighting to survive, or to win, or even in some childish game to see who could take down the most gears the most quickly (that was beyond question). It became a battle only to prove that Gears would fall faster and in greater numbers due to his efforts than without him - that his presence in Sol’s wake made a difference at all.
It pained Ky worst of all to admit that Sol had no reason to improve his behaviour. His formidable reputation alone meant he had more respect from the men than did any officers. They could reprimand him, but he was simply too valuable for any superior to consider dismissing him. The magnitude of the kind of crime he’d have to commit to test the limits of how badly they needed him did not bear thinking about. Indeed, there were times Sol seemed every bit as much an enemy of everything the Order stood for as the Gears themselves.
When Sol finally deserted them, it should have been something he’d seen coming long ago. Some small part of him should even have been grateful to have Sol off his hands at last.
He wasn’t. It was no relief at all.