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Randy Orlando knew today was going to be shit.
It was hard not to feel that way, in light of his dear family deciding to show up and be a crimson-colored nuisance. Even harder considering he couldn’t do anything about it; the Red Constellation was hired by none other than the Blood and Iron Chancellor himself to act as his security detail during the West Zemuria Trade Conference. Not that they did a lot to prevent the terrorists from showing up in the first place, but it seemed both Chancellor Osborne and President Rocksmith played a game of chess with Crossbell as their board and this was just within their expectations.
No, Uncle Sigmund’s crew was here only to clean up, really – ironic that they left a mess behind. The bodies were long gone, but no one seemed to care about the dried specks of blood or the bullet holes left in the wake of that execution. Those poor Erebonian bastards went down horribly, and Randy knew that the rest of the SSS agreed. But for him… that was a standard thing (nauseating all the same). Red Constellation was a jaeger corps famous for its brutality, and some of what they – what he – had gotten up to in the past made this summary shootup look like children fighting in a sandpit.
He had a feeling something was going to happen to remind him of what he tried to leave behind – and what was currently knocking on the doors of Crossbell with all the grace and danger of a drunken Rhinocider.
He just didn’t expect it to be a box of fucking chocolates.
----
He was fifteen at the time.
He didn’t remember that much from that year; most of them blended together. Wake up, drill, commit an atrocity of some kind, resist an urge to throttle Shirley, the works. It didn’t really matter. That year, however, was more special. The Red Constellation was struggling, its forces divided and its contracts smaller in number. His half-man, half-monster of an old man nearly got himself killed in an ambush by some overambitious dropouts. A lesser jaeger would have no doubt perished, but the War God was… well, a god. Even gods could be temporarily put out of commission though, which was the corps had to split in two. While Baldur Orlando was recovering in an unknown location with a designated squad to protect it, the rest of them carried on with work as usual.
No, actually, now that Randy thought about it – there was a lot more contracts that were less challenging. Ironic, considering that the corps was cut in half during that time. Uncle Sigmund might have been the rampaging ogre on the battlefield, but he was still the closest thing the Red Constellation had to a bookkeeper, running the tabs on what would turn a profit and what would be a waste of time. Thus, with the corps strength reduced, he chose to overcompensate and go with the safer path – which was why they were mostly dealing with barely-armed insurgents in the deep east of Zemuria. Unfortunately, Shirley didn’t care much for numbers beyond the bodycount. Randy remembered she was less active at the time though. His cousin was taking to killing much better than he ever did, but he distinctly remembered her sulking for a while. It wasn’t her first kill, but it was her first disembowelment.
As it turns out, cutting a man open with a combat knife also lets the smell out much stronger than merely shooting them or stabbing them. Red Constellation considered that a hazing ritual for its jaegers: only once an aspirant, including the Sanguine Ogre’s daughter, got a whiff of the real smell of death beyond the metallic tang of blood, were they considered a veteran.
The stink (heh) Shirley raised at the time, reeking like an outhouse, made him laugh back then. He didn’t care much for the corpses his cousin left behind, or that they looked related. It was a contract. It was nothing personal. They just happened to be in the way.
(Back home, back in the present, Randy resisted an urge to down the bottle of whiskey in one fell swoop. Just take it one sip at a time. It made the self-loathing linger longer, as it needed to.)
That particular operation had them dealing with some well-entrenched partisans. The locals found themselves some old military fortifications and used them well, able to fire on scouting parties with relative impunity. Randy suspected they had some ex-soldiers among their ranks, fighting to protect their land and their livelihood.
Unfortunately, the corporation who hired the Constellation wanted only that land.
Annoyingly, that came with additional caveats which made him question the point of hiring them in the first place. Were it so simple as simply flushing out the partisans, they could have simply let him or Uncle Sigmund run through them like a lawnmower, even with the Constellation currently at reduced power. The pencil-mustached suit who was their contact with the corp wrung his sweaty hands and apologized, saying it would simply be “bad PR” if the place was damaged or caked in too much blood.
In Randy’s opinion, that ship had long sailed the moment the corp hired them, but he kept that tidbit to himself.
Trying to be more stealthy or secretive about it proved difficult. The monsters they used as vanguard couldn’t infiltrate the bunkers and most of their weapons skewed towards sheer destructive power which would go contrary to the employer’s wishes. So far the only option that could be reasonably feasible was to send Shirley to slip in and slit some throats – but Uncle Sigmund was slow to consider it. Randy understood it; it was one thing if she was on a solo scouting mission with a freedom of movement, but another to infiltrate a heavily defended location to clear it out singlehandedly.
...and even disregarding the idea of sending a nine-year-old on her own to kill her way through the bunkers as immoral and reckless, Shirley would probably just make too much of a mess.
Randy couldn’t help himself, asking why the corp saw fit to hire the Constellation for the job. The same suit who tried selling them the Twin Dragons Bridge about poor PR a moment earlier simply sneered and said this was exclusively for intimidation purposes. After all, if the corp had a jaeger corps as mighty as the Constellation on their side, what other choice did the “malcontents” have but to lay down their arms and run away?
Randy made a solemn vow back then; if, Goddess forbid, the whole jaeger thing didn’t work out, then he would most definitely not become a corporate drone.
(Back home, Randy’s sip of the whiskey grew bigger.)
----
The cryptid hunt was proceeding about as well as it could be.
They’ve managed to deal with the Mamma-Jamma plant poking about behind the boathouse in a relatively orderly fashion. It was a good thing these beasts were hidden away in these far-off spots rather than slumming it somewhere in the middle of the road. Less chance of an incident that way. Not that Randy enjoyed being puked on with a glob of acid rain, but better him than some random Joe Schmoe.
...even if he had to fix the damage to his coat. He’s already offered to fix Noel’s hat; she was too distraught about it. With the other cryptid patiently taking its time to be vanquished, the SSS could take a moment to unwind and tackle some other, less life-threatening support requests; the kind that didn’t require the entire team present. Thus, with KeA’s assistance (although really, it was Randy and Noel assisting her), they prepped a dinner for the rest of the team.
With that taken care of, Randy could just sit down, take a breather, and get to fixing the damaged clothing. Perhaps he shouldn’t have anything sharp in his hands now; even a needle could be a lethal weapon in the right (wrong) hands.
…
...no, he was being silly. He was just fixing his coat while KeA helped Noel with her hat. Only that. Things were calm.
“Hey, we’re back!” Lloyd called from upstairs, soon descending to the main room with the rest of the team. “Think we’re finished for tonight.”
“Good timing; we’ve got dinner ready.” The redhead greeted the four with a nod, hands moving in a steady rhythm. He’s fixed his clothes enough times even before he came to Crossbell, it was basically nature. This type of an acid spill wasn’t even the first – and wasn’t that a depressing statement in itself? “Noel and KeDo are upstairs, so we can call them over.”
“And we just so happen to have a dessert to go with it.” Tio announced, a hint of a smile on her face. The bluenette rummaged in the plastic bag on her arm. “Mr. Hayworth approached us with thanks for an earlier request. He ended up with a few surplus boxes of Quincy Company chocolates on his last trip, so he offered some to us.”
Randy’s sewing stilled. The needle caught under his fingernail, the pricking pain somehow a dull afterthought already.
“These treats go in Times at a premium price.” Wazy mused. “Goodness, had I known the SSS comes with such benefits, I would have signed in on it sooner.”
“Oh, shush, you.” Elie mock-chided their erstwhile delinquent with a light swat on his shoulder. “...though I have to concede, they are a very nice highlight to the day.”
“I’m looking forward to those in particular.” Tio pulled out a particular box out of the bag, adorned with a white dove holding an olive branch in its beak. “La Paix, one of Quincy’s classics. “The explosion of bliss in your mouth”, the slogan goes—“
Randy was on the couch, hunched in on himself. Then, he was suddenly in front of Tio, slapping the box out of her hands. La Paix landed on the dinner table, the box crumpled and half-open as bon-bons fell out of it.
Then, Randy found himself looked at by four pairs of eyes.
“...Randy?” It was Lloyd who spoke up, his voice careful and quiet. The others stared. Randy couldn’t tell their expressions apart. Just the eyes.
The eyes back then weren’t too different from theirs.
“...I… I’ll be back.” Randy blurted out, turning on his heel and fleeing through the doors, heedless of their voices calling back to him.
Yes. The eyes back then weren’t too different from theirs.
----
“Hey, Uncle, about the plan of action… are you eating bonbons?”
Randy wasn’t sure himself why he sounded so surprised. After all, Ogre or not, Uncle Sigmund too was human (even if it was hard to believe with what he could get up to in the field). Everybody was allowed to have their own little quirks, as long as they didn’t impede their effectiveness as a jaeger. The Red Constellation had a reputation of the most formidable such group in Zemuria for a reason – it wouldn’t do to squander it willy-nilly.
...even if seeing his massive, wild-maned, one-eyed uncle idly shovel chocolates from a dainty little box into his mouth while filling the documents was still wild.
“Mm. Still got those from the last contract.” Sigmund stated, pushing the box towards Randy. La Paix; some hoity-toity brand from the Quincy Company, if he had to guess. “Not the worst. Quincy knows their stuff.”
“Hm.” Randy picked one of the remaining bonbons out of the box, examining the delicate decoration of a Liberlian falcon atop it. It seemed these ones were decorated with various crests of Zemurian nations. The Erebonian stallion, the Remiferian reindeer, the Arterian grail… it was all here. “Peace, huh?”
“If that’s the best they can think of, I don’t think jaegers have to worry about running out of business.” Sigmund chuckled. “Now, you said you had something to report, Randolph?”
“Right. Uh, I don’t want to suggest it, but short of totaling the bunkers – and upsetting the suits – we might have run out of options to flush the partisans out. Shirley’s been… getting restless.”
“I imagine she has.” His uncle sighed, putting the pen away and cupping his chin in his massive hand, brows furrowing. “Where is she now?”
“She went off to hunt some local monsters to pass the time.” Randy shrugged. “Gareth’s keeping watch of her location, so that she doesn’t wander off too far.”
“Well, Randolph, I suppose this is as much a part of your training as any. Sometimes, even the Red Constellation has to admit defeat – or rather, take a victory that’s less than total. Hypothetically…” Sigmund gestured at the sketched map of their area; the Constellation positions here, the bunkers there, a patch of no-man’s-land in-between. Barely anything but an arid steppe and rickety shrubs. “How would you approach this situation as a commanding officer?”
“Diplomacy is right out.” Sigmund’s frown deepened, clearly not liking that it was brought up at all. Randy shrugged. It was a hypothetical, and despite what his old man and uncle could do, the Constellation wasn’t invincible. “The locals don’t want to leave and are determined to defend in here until they die. We won’t just leave and drop the contract either, that would reflect badly on us.” Randy popped the Remiferian bonbon into his mouth. Hm. Peppermint. “Because our employer is a dingus, we can’t just walk in and overpower the locals the old-fashioned way. We have no access to chem agents to flush them out; those were lost the last time we clashed with Zephyr.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“...well, we could have someone try sneaking in to subdue the defenders, but that is a high-risk operation. Can’t be me or you or honestly any of our group besides Shirley; we’re too conspicuous. And even with that in mind…” Randy’s expression shifted into resignation. “She’d leave such a mess that the employer would be uppity about it.”
“So then… do we just half-bake the contract? Finish it, but in a way that leaves the employer unhappy?” Sigmund posited. Randy wanted to say yes, though that was his own annoyance talking – and it wouldn’t reflect well on him either by failing the test so obviously.
“...we could improvise some kind of trick. Take a page out of Zephyr’s books. Figure out some kind of unusual gimmick to take the locals off-guard—“
“Dadddddyyy…!” Shirley all but barreled into the command tent sulking like a child denied their cotton candy. “This sucks! Let’s just go and kill ‘em already!” Though most children her age normally didn’t arrive caked in… goop? Must have been a drome’s. “Even the monsters here suck! Nothing bleeds properly in this Goddessforsaken dustbowl!”
“You look like a bowl of gelato.” Randy chuckled. Shirley stuck her tongue out at him in response – then recoiled with a violent cough when some of the drome gore got into her mouth. “Look, can you give us a sec? We’re trying to figure out—“
“Actually, maybe we do need a fresh take on things.” Sigmund cut in. “Shirley, please don’t leave drome stains on the documents.”
“Got it, daddy. But still…” The girl grumbled, grabbing the box of bonbons. “We shouldn’t be taking jobs from suits like this. They make things difficult.”
“They usually don’t.” Randy countered. “This one just has a stick up his ass.”
“Mm… an explosion of bliss in your mouth…” Shirley read from the back of the box, eyes squinting. “Weird slogan to put on some peace-lover chocos, but sure. Wish we could make it literal. Get rid of all those stupid dumbos in that bunker there.” Careful not to leave the goop on the chocolates, she popped the Elsaim moon into her mouth, chewing on the confection loudly. “Bleh. Who puts chili pepper into their chocolates? Ew… huh? Got something on my face, daddy, Dolphy?”
The two men looked at the girl with strange expressions. Randy recovered first, praying that please don’t let this be an actual solution to—
“...from the mouth of babes and infants…” Sigmund chuckled, pinching his brow and shaking his head. “...very well. Randolph, Shirley. Let’s discuss the properties of plastic explosives.”
----
Just past the bridge connecting Crossbell City with the rest of the East Highway was a little patch of land off the beaten path, where an old lighthouse stood.
There sat a miserable ex-jaeger, trying and failing to come up with a plausible explanation for his outburst earlier. It was long past twilight; the only source of light was the cold stars and the piddly lighter Randy played with. The monsters didn’t approach him, recognizing that the apex predator sitting there wasn’t prey or weak. He was simply in thought, and woe betide any beast dumb enough to disturb him.
The rest of the SSS wasn’t stupid. It wouldn’t take a genius to put together that his recent… lacking was due to the contact with the Red Constellation. With his family. With the people who executed the Erebonian terrorists with all the gravitas of sweeping the floor during spring cleaning. After all, it wasn’t even the first time they had La Paix in the building. Funnier still, it was the second time they got it as a gift from the Hayworths.
Yet, Randy didn’t feel like laughing. Or like going back.
The brief intrusive thought to plunge himself into the waters below came into his mind – but he squashed it. Not because it was wrong or because it was cowardly. No, rather, that would be too easy. He didn’t get to just cash out like that. Not for all the things he’d done. If that came to pass, he’d have to go out swinging. Take as many of those red bastards down as possible before he finally knocked on Gehenna’s gates.
He just needed some excuse. Something to spur him on. For now he would stew. Just… enjoy the marinade he was swimming in.
He remembered laughing back then – because, for all of their valiance, their combat skill, their determination to fend off the invaders… the locals fell for the simplest of tricks.
They fell for fake decency. Then they died, probably never really realizing what happened. Thinking on it, Randy concluded it must have been simply due to their unfamiliarity with jaegers in general. Oh, surely, they knew the Constellation as the jaeger corp. They’ve heard of their efficiency and brutality… but to them, stuck in that podunk hole in the ground, on the side of Zemuria largely abandoned by the Goddess and all mortals…
The Red Constellation was just some corporation’s goons, just like any other hired muscle the suits hired before they turned to the Orlandos. These people were tired, on the brink of despair, holding onto nothing but their raw determination to try and make their impossible foe give up and go home.
And then, they let a scorpion into their abode.
Goodness. Imagine explaining that to his new team. At best, they’d look at him like he had two heads – and even that was an absolute best scenario. There had to be a limit to just how much good and grace they could give him. Even people like Lloyd or Elie or Tio weren’t made of stone. They had to understand he was a monster. Maybe they just thought that time spent in the CGF and then among them was enough to defang the beast.
But beasts like this were never truly “safe” to be around. He might have gotten soft, he might have been less ruthless – but inside of him, there were teeth and thorns and stingers. To unearth all of that was a great risk; anyone willing to chance it could very well be stung by the same scorpion.
The eyes of those people in that bunker weren’t different from his team’s.
His Enigma rang. He thought about ignoring it, but… it was late. And there were still cryptids to kill. He could continue this pity party later. For now, the monster could still make himself useful and slay some other monsters – whose only crime was that they were just sitting around and minding their business, now that he thought about it.
How familiar.
----
Randy wasn’t sure what was more absurd: that this inane plan worked at all, or that Shirley wore a dress for it. And where in the world did Uncle Sigmund even get one of these? Or rather, how did that thing survive Shirley to begin with?
Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was just sitting around for when the Ogreling needed to be more presentable. Gehenna would freeze over before that ever happened for real. But… now they were here.
The leader of the partisans’s corpse remained where it was, about half of his head gone from the “bonbon” he bit. Everything just above his ruined mustache turned into a pile of bone shards and gore jelly, his jaw blown wide open. The teeth survived, amazingly enough. The tongue still wriggled about like a slug in the rain. Shirley poking at it with her finger didn’t help.
A few others died that way; various second-in-commands and veteran defenders. Those who remained stayed in shock for too long to matter. With Randy having his rifle trained on them, they opted to surrender. This one last blow to their morale was too much. They finally thought they were getting somewhere, hoping to protect this land for their own reasons, hoping that their foes in red would respect this determination.
But jaegers didn’t really anything beyond strength and guile – and this time, the locals were the guillible ones.
“Lookit, Dolphy! It’s dancing on its own!” Shirley giggled, poking at the wriggling tongue some more.
“Aidios, stop that. You’re gonna catch some bug like that.” He grumbled, shaking his head. The remaining defenders were led outside. There, they would be given a choice; one last chance to pack up and go away… or die.
Judging by the lack of gunfire outside the bunkers, it seemed they’ve had enough.
Really, all of this was only possible because the locals didn’t see Shirley in action yet. Who would have suspected this little waif in a pretty red dress of ill intentions? After all, jaegers were people too. A gesture of reconciliation, to discuss a possible truce between the locals and the Constellation – with two boxes of La Paix chocolates to share between both sides. Such was the custom in the West, after all (Randy made it up).
They believed it. And now the peace had blown up in their faces. Literally.
“It’s fine, I’m sure the explosion killed them off!” Shirley harrumphed, but finally gotten bored of the corpse desecration, lifting herself back to her feet. Despite the deep red color, the bloodstains on the dress were overly visible still. “...’sides, you’re smilin’. You had fun there!”
“...I don’t know about “fun”.” Randy shrugged. “But we got what we wanted. Job’s done, and you did good.”
“We did good. Pff, “the nobles of the West would break chocolates between each other as a sign of peace”…” She rumbled, trying (and failing) to imitate Randy’s voice before she shook her head with a giggle. “Buncha suckers.”
“...yeah. Bunch o’ suckers.”
(Back in the present, Randy downed the rest of the whiskey straight from the bottle.)