FF7: Scapegoat - Ch. 4

Zack's Journal, Day 2

I woke up to sunlight stabbing my eyes through a gap in the wall of the hut. Not the most pleasant experience, and I think it set the mood for a rather irritable morning, I'm kinda embarrassed to say.

In gathering all my things together, I was briefly interrupted by a knock on the door, and a young lady providing a basin of water for me to wash up with. I'll admit, I was relieved to find out it wasn't my admirer from last night! I took the basin and retreated back into the hut to scrub off all the paint.

Or I tried to anyway. The dang stuff wouldn't come off! I think I scrubbed until my face was raw, but when I looked at the reflection in my sword, that handprint was still there. Same went for all the lines and squiggly marks on the rest of my skin. In another time and place this might have been funny, but I had soldiers to lead! How was I supposed to do that with a child's finger-paint masterpiece all over my face?

After throwing my stuff together and exiting the hut, I was met with the flash of a camera in my face. How the heck did Harley get that? That was mine! I took off after him, but he was a quick little guy, for a grunt. Finally cornered him at the nearby creek and let him take an accidental dive into the water. The camera was unharmed, thankfully. Blasted grunt probably got photos of everything from last night too! I was getting an inkling that I was going to be the butt of the jokes for a while.

Sure enough, after joining the others for breakfast, I heard them sniggering behind my back. Finally getting fed up with it, I rounded on Hammerson and demanded to know what the deal was. He didn't do a very good job of covering up his grin, and replied that he and the other guys were sure jealous that they didn't have a handprint on their faces as pretty as mine. This is where I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but I told him that if he wanted a mark over his eye that badly, I'd be more than happy to give him one.

… Yeah that shut them up pretty quick. Guess they know better than to antagonize a First now, eh, Angeal? Heh …

Well, the others were in the same boat I was, stuck with their own hand-painted masks. Hammerson's was a bunch of stripes that accented his eyes, while Stover's artist didn't seem to have much imagination and white-washed his whole face. Allen sported a bunch of jagged marks, and Harley simply had one diagonal stripe from his right forehead to the corner of his jaw. No idea what they all meant, but hey, at least we could pretend to fit in with the natives.

When we were about ready to leave, I finally found Walker chatting with one of the natives. (I noticed he hadn't gotten the royal paint treatment.) He introduced the guy as N'kim; apparently this was to be our guide. He was bald, lean and very muscular, and quite … tall. I think he would have given Seph a run for his Gil. I grinned and said hi, but he just remained silent and looked at me with a rather dour expression.

Charming guy. I think we're gonna get along great.

We were just about to leave, when I heard a call behind me, and turned around to see the lady from last night. Oh, Gaia, help me.

She ran up to me holding a small basket of something, and shoved it into my arms. In pulling apart the cloth inside, I discovered what looked like a variety of baked and dried foods. A send-off gift?

I tried telling her I didn't need it, but Walker, conveniently, wasn't there to translate. In frantically looking around for him, I found him standing some distance away with the other snickering soldiers. He ignored my obvious indications for him to get his backside over here and help me.

This wasn't going to be good if she thought the two of us could somehow be together. I already have a girlfriend! I tried expressing that to her, in between everything else she was jabbering at me … and, finally, I think she started to pick up on it.

There was a moment of silence, and her smile turned a bit sad. I gave her the most apologetic look I could and again tried to give the basket back. She just shook her head with that same smile, and pushed it back into my hands. Then, to my surprise, she said, in heavily accented Common, "Good-byeee, Zaack." And she kissed me on the cheek.

I stared at her, stunned, as the guys behind me let out cheers and wolf-calls. She stepped away and waved. "I hooope youuu comme back," was the last thing she said before giving one last smile, and turning and running back into the village.

Admittedly, I was bit off-kilter after that, finding myself regretful that things had to end so sadly for her. But I wasn't the right one for her anyway. I was a SOLDIER – she didn't need one of us. She needed one of her own people. Any dreams she might have had of some handsome foreigner coming from across the water to sweep her off her feet were just that – dreams. Besides, I had Aerith, and nothing was going to make me forget her.

It didn't help the blush when I got back to the men, though. Even my statement of already having a girlfriend didn't quiet them down, but they eventually got over it when I promised to share the food with them.

I felt another pang of regret when I realized that I hadn't even known her name.

We headed out shortly after that. N'kim guided us to a narrow path heading deeper into the forest, but it quickly became overgrown, forcing us to once again hack our way through. This time, I gave the Thirds and infantrymen a break, staying up front with N'kim for the most part. I tried making idle conversation with him through Walker, but he either didn't see fit to answer, or kept to short, one-syllable words. I did manage to find out that the strange critter screaming all last night was a kree'ak, some kind of primitive relative to the Nibelheim zuu.

When I had to let Hammerson and Stover take over the weed whacking, I surreptitiously tried to scratch some of the paint from my arms. One time I caught N'kim giving me a disapproving glare, though, so I abandoned the effort.

It seemed the monsters got thicker the deeper we went into the jungle. About mid-morning, we stumbled onto a swarm of some kind of kimara bug … We have them in Gongaga, but these were different. They were bright red, instead of green, and about the size of dinner plates. Looking kinda like a twisted imitation of a praying mantis, their wings act like a hard carapace that they hide under to protect the soft joints in their undersides. They've got two large, bright yellow false eyes protruding from the top corners of their heads; their real eyes are much smaller – four of them, in a piercing blue color, located just above a set of sharp mandibles.

If they grab onto you with those, you pretty much have to kill the thing first and pry the head off later. Sound nasty? That's not the worst of it – they scuttle around on four long, prickly legs, holding their third set high above their heads. Those are what you really have to watch out for – they aren't true legs, ending in a sharp point to stab into anything the bug wants to eat, pinning it to the ground so it can take a bite out of it.

Thank Gaia those things were small buggers.

Not really weak to any one element, our Fire materia still did a pretty good job of dispatching clusters of them. Lightning turned out to be rather hit-or-miss, but Ice was useful in freezing the things out of the air to let us smash them before they thawed.

The scuffle took several minutes, and we were still left with a bunch of stragglers that followed us through the forest for a fair distance before we finally got rid of the last of them. None of us got away without some kind of bite or scratch. I didn't know whether these red kimara were poisonous, so I decided to play it safe and give Allen some materia practice with casting Poisona on everyone. I think he'll level that thing up pretty soon. I finished things up with a minor Cure All.

Not the best way to start off the morning, but it was par for the course for us SOLDIERs. Sill, 'bout midday, I gave everyone a good break. We'd reached the outskirts of some kind of ancient temple "district," you could call it, not too far from where we needed to be looking. Completely overgrown, there was nothing much left there other than a few columns in various states of disrepair, and a few giant stone heads half sunk into the ground. I perched on top of one of them to eat my lunch.

I guess there's not much point in me describing that stop, except so that I can remember it all later … But it was actually really peaceful there, especially after the earlier battle. We were in a bit of a clearing, or at least there weren't so many trees around as normal, and the sunlight was a nice contrast to the darkness of the forest. There were bright splashes of colored wildflowers here and there, the hum of mundane insects, and various bird calls.

I finally caught sight of my first kree'ak … It was a heavy-looking bird with a long neck, big, toothed beak, and large claws. Unlike the blue variety in Nibelheim, this one was a bright, emerald green, with stubby little clawed wings, probably for climbing up the trees, I guess. Didn't look like something I wanted to mess with. But it just glided across the far corner of the clearing, in search of smaller game.

When I turned back to my lunch, I discovered a small, furry little critter sitting on the stone head next to me, and just staring at me. I didn't want to startle it, so I froze, trying to stay as still as I possibly could. It was adorable! It was small, small enough to fit in my hand, with a furry tail, probably longer than it was, curled into a cute little 'S.' It also had long, tufted ears, which twitched every which way, and a little brown nose. Its fur was light tan, and it had the most amazing purple eyes! I didn't recognize the creature, but it had to have the most adorable face I'd ever seen.

I slowly took out my camera and managed to snap a photo. Surprisingly, the sound didn't startle it. Instead, it cocked its head, and reached its tiny little hands out for the other half of my protein bar, staring at me all the while. Suddenly, another little critter scampered up beside it. It saw me and chirped, standing up on its hind legs to get a good look. It also had purple eyes.

Slowly, I broke off another piece of my bar to try to feed to it, while speaking softly. For a long while it just stared, then snatched the piece, nipped at its brother, and they both scampered away.

That was the highlight of our lunch break. Hammerson commented that he'd seen another one of those animals, one with "chocolate brown" eyes. I found myself hoping that we'd get another glance at one, later on.

After that, it was another three or four hours before we arrived at the hotspot – a temple complex overrun by vines and plants, but still with stone paths visible between the buildings. There were more giant stone heads here, of various sizes. It was really pretty. A lot of green, of course, but here and there you'd see a thin vine of tiny red flowers twining about things to add a splash of color, or a yellow or blue butterfly.

N'kim was unable to say the precise location where people had been vanishing, but that it was somewhere within the surrounding area. I decided we'd set up camp in one of the temples, since it would afford us the best protection, and got everyone started on that. An hour later, we headed out in teams to do a survey of the surroundings.

I was happy to discover that there were more of our little furry friends running around. Several times, I caught glimpses of them darting off into the trees or around some structure, and I even think my two violet-eyed friends followed us here. I saw them peering out at me from a stone ledge.

There was a spring and a pool nearby, but it smelled strongly of the sharp tang of Mako. Even though it seemed clear enough, I instructed everyone to stay away from it – no use taking chances. With that in mind, I figured that the monsters we'd be looking for would be close. I set up a nighttime sentry rotation to sound an alert if anything tried to disturb our sleep.

For supper, we made ourselves a small fire to heat the food over, and I broke out the stuff from the basket that girl had given me. It was good.

I took the first watch. Surprisingly, N'kim joined me for a short while. He sat in silence for a bit, then surprised me again when he started speaking in Common. I didn't even know he understood it! Guess the natives know more than they let on.

He actually spoke rather well, compared to the fragmented Common I'd heard some of the others speak. We got to talking for a bit. He was still a bit of a stiff, but I told him some about living in SOLDIER, and he told me some about living in the tribe. Apparently, the Ba'keel name is a bit of a misnomer, incorrectly applied to the natives by the settlers of Mideel, when they heard the term often used. It originally refers to some forest entity or spirit, meaning "Watchers of the Forest," or, more accurately, "Forest Watchers." Mideel means "Island Forest."

I asked whether Ba'keel was one of their deities. He got silent, and stared into the forest for several minutes. I thought he wasn't going to answer after all, but finally said, "Perhaps."

Well, I wasn't sure what to make of that, so I let it go. Besides, it was time to wake Hammerson for his shift.

With that, I'll end my entry. Thankfully, the kree'aks are silent tonight, so I'm hoping to get some better sleep! I've discovered that Stover snores, but at least it's not too bad.

Wish you were still around to show you my photos, Angeal. I know you always liked taking pictures.

to be continued …