The Thrill of the Hunt

The Shinra helicopter landed like a black stone among the sheep in the front paddock, splashing them out to the corners, bleating. Mother looked out the window and said, "What on earth could they want with us?" But Freya knew what they were here for, and cold dread poured into her. She sat in an armchair in the sitting room, pressing her hands together and trying to breathe evenly. Two men in dark suits got out of the chopper and crossed the yard. Her father met them in the porch.

"We're from the Department of Administrative Research," she heard one of the men say. "We'd like to speak to your daughter." The knot in Freya's stomach twisted tighter. The Turks! If she was lucky, she might only be in for a spot of light kidnapping. She could cope with that. If she was lucky.

"What, with Freya? What on earth do you want with her?" Father said.

"Company business," a Turk told him.

"Well, you should have a chat with our Alfie, then. Got a big future ahead of him, that boy has."

"No. It's Freya we need to speak to."

Freya knew her father couldn't very well refuse the Turks; too much of the family's fortune was tied up in Shinra ventures. "Do come in," she heard him say.

Mother shot to her feet and fled to the kitchen. "I'll have Mrs. Strachan fix them something to eat," she called over her shoulder.

Father opened the door and swept the two men through. One was older, and had a face as craggy and weather-beaten as a seaside cliff. The other was rather pale, and smooth-faced. They lowered themselves into the armchairs opposite her.

Her father lingered at the doorway until the the younger man fixed him with a chilly stare. Then he smiled weakly and went out, shutting the door behind him.

Freya was scared, but she wasn't about to let them see it. She wrapped her fear in good manners, beaming at the Turks. "Good morning," she said. "I'm Freya."

The Shinra men glanced at each other, and the older one smiled a wry smile. He clasped her hand gently in his own. The skin of his palm was like leather.

"Veld," he said. "And this is my associate Tseng. We're from the Department of Administrative Research. Can I assume you've heard of us?"

"You may," she said. The man seemed rather nice, if a tad stern, and Freya found herself relaxing a little. Perhaps she was wrong, and they were here about something else entirely.

"Good," Veld said. He leaned forward, and confirmed all her worst suspicions by saying, "We're here to speak with you about the fugitive Augustus Bluth."

*.*.*

Police have confirmed that the murderer Augustus Bluth escaped their custody near Mideel early this morning, the radio spat as she ate breakfast with her family. Officers were transporting Bluth to a top-security compound in Midgar when he jumped from their van and ran into the surrounding forest. Bluth was sentenced to death in July this year for the murder of two young girls in Corel. He is considered highly dangerous, and...

Freya didn't hear the rest of the bulletin because a beautiful plan was blooming in her mind. That familiar rush flooded her senses, like when she caught the first flash of a deer's white tail, the frantic beating of a pheasant's wings. The thrill of the chase, she supposed it was called. She forced herself to take a deep breath, clenched her knife tighter to stop her hands shaking.

"Disgusting," Father was saying. He pulled at a piece of bacon on his fork, the meat stretching until it tore and snapped back, flicking grease on his face. "You'd think they'd put a fellow like that down the moment he was convicted." He looked to his family for support.

"Yes," Mother said. "You would, wouldn't you?" She looked out the dining-room window with worry pulling her lips tight and folding her brow.

Father gulped his tea down and set the mug on the table. "Never fear, darling," he said. "I'll tell Agnew to keep an eye out on his rounds. If that Bluth chap shows his face here, we'll give him what for, won't we Alfie?" He gripped Alfie's shoulder and gave it a vigorous shake.

Alfie turned his round eyes up at Father and wobbled his head. Then his gaze slumped back to his plate and he stuffed more toast into his mouth.

"Good lad!" Father exclaimed.

"I'm a much better shot than Alfie," Freya told her father. "I could give him what for."

"Yes, darling," Father said, without enthusiasm. His eyes stayed fixed on Alfie's face.

It didn't matter, Freya told herself. She'd to show him. She was going to show everybody.

That night after she'd heard Mother and Father troop upstairs to bed, Freya got up, pulled on her thickest pair of socks and shouldered the rucksack she'd packed earlier. The bag's straps pushed the itchy wool of her jersey against her neck.

She crept down to the kitchen and took two of the loaves Mrs. Strachan had baked for the following morning, a wheel of cheese, and two apples. She couldn't help feeling a tad guilty; Mrs. Strachan would probably get an earful from Father at breakfast time. But there wasn't anything she could do about that.

When she sat down in the porch to pull her boots on, the cold of the night slapped her face and sent a shiver wriggling under her skin. She imagined sitting on the couch of a talk-show, all the bright lights shining on her. The interviewer would ask, But wasn't it cold? At night? She'd shrug and say, flippantly, Oh, yes. Terribly cold. But, you know, I didn't mind, because I knew it was colder for him than it was for me. Then she'd toss her hair, and her dress would shimmer, and the audience would suck in their breath. "What a gorgeous girl," they'd all think. "And so brave! So graceful!"

Out in the gun shed, she ran a hand over the toffee-smooth wood of her shotgun's stock as it hung on the wall. The weapon, she reflected, transformed her. It took an ordinary girl and gave her claws and teeth. It made her a hunter. A predator. She lifted it off the rack and slung it from her shoulder. Then she took her sheath knife off its peg and strapped it around her waist. She was almost out the door before she remembered – ammunition! Imagine if she'd forgotten. She really needed to get a tad more serious about all this. It was her chance to show everyone what she was really made of; she couldn't let it escape because of something so silly. She pushed a box of cartridges into her pack and stepped outside.

It was a gorgeous evening: crisp, clear, all the stars smiling down on her, dew glistening on the dark grass. She cut through the front paddocks and turned left once she reached the road, away from Mideel.

She had to find where the convict had escaped his guard and entered the forest. Once she got into the trees, she'd be able to track him like she would a deer, or a hippogriff. He'd be tired, hungry, and practically lost, while she was well-equipped and in her element. Her territory. He wouldn't stand a chance.

She'd been following the road for nearly two hours before she crested a hill and saw red and blue lights flashing in the valley below her. As she descended towards them, she could pick out three Shinra personnel trucks squatting on the side of the highway. To her left, soldiers with flashlights were combing a field of tall grass. None of them seemed eager to enter the dark forest that loomed behind them. They weren't half so brave as her.

Two infantrymen were leaning on their truck, smoking cigarettes. When they saw her, one peeled himself off and walked towards her. He must have seen her gun, because he fumbled for his own weapon and pointed it at her.

"Road's closed," he said. "We're hunting a dangerous fugitive."

Freya feigned surprise, putting a hand to her lips. "Oh," she said. "I had no idea." She made her eyes go wide and scared, like Alfie's had gone that morning.

"There's no need to worry," the soldier said. "We have the – the situation under control." He didn't sound at all convinced. Freya could almost smell the fear on him.

"You've caught him, then?" she asked.

"No. Not yet. But there's no way he's getting out of this forest."

Freya let the words gush out of her like she really meant them: "Well, you're doing a wonderful job." The soldier's mouth bent in a smile. It was odd not being able to see his eyes. The glowing holes of his visor made him look mindless, robotic.

"This is where he got loose?" Freya asked.

"Yes ma'am."

"How did he escape? Do you know?"

The smile dropped off the soldier's jaw. "That's – that's classified information. I'm sorry." He scratched at the back of his neck. "May I ask what you're doing out so late, ma'am?"

"Oh!" She shrugged the shoulder that bore her shotgun. "Yes. I suppose this old thing must look rather odd. I'm actually on my way home from a friend's house. We've been shooting clay pigeons, and I'm afraid the time got away on us completely."

"Clay what?" the soldier asked. He was obviously a city boy.

"Pigeons," Freya said. "Tell you what, I'll go back there now, and stay the night. This will all be over by tomorrow morning, won't it?"

"A-Absolutely, ma'am. Absolutely."

Freya felt a little sorry for the man. He was trying so hard to sound convincing.

"I'll escort you back to your friend's house," he said. "It's not safe out there right now."

"Oh, don't be silly," she told him. "You need to be here, on the job. I'm quite capable of looking after myself. Keep up the good work!" Before he could answer, she waved and strode off the way she'd come.

When she got back to the top of the hill, she stopped and turned around. He hadn't followed her. She breathed out a sigh of relief. It would have been awfully inconvenient if the soldier had insisted on escorting her home.

She left the highway and ran towards the forest, tall grass scratching at her legs. The trees embraced her in their rustling darkness. Freya stopped and swung the pack off, got out her headlamp. The light's glare washed the night off the tangle of roots and mossy boulders on forest floor, and she carried on, cutting a diagonal down towards the valley floor, further in from the where the soldiers were searching. When she judged herself far enough away from the Shinra troops, she laid out her bedroll and wriggled into her sleeping bag. There was no point in trying to find the trail at night. All the grunts in the world couldn't do it. You had to wait for the light of day.

What about the dark? She imagined the interviewer saying. There might have been monsters. Weren't you scared? Her reply: a laugh. A casual toss of her gorgeous bronze locks. No, I wasn't afraid, she'd say. There was only one monster in my mind: the one who murdered those poor innocent girls. And the audience, they'd be open-mouthed: "So brave! So beautiful!" How they would adore her.

Freya woke up as the first rays of sunlight bleached the sky overhead. It was a brisk morning and the cold snapped her mind into instant alertness. She packed her bedroll and sleeping bag, shouldered her pack and gun. Then she set off back towards the highway, gnawing at one of her stolen loaves.

At the edge of the forest she stopped and peered through the trees. The soldiers had put up tents in the grass beside the road, but she couldn't see any of them moving about. She dipped back into the bush and began scouring the forest floor for the fugitive's tracks. It was harder to find than she'd expected. The Shinra troops in their heavy boots had churned up the ground on the edge of the forest, obscuring any signs the convict might have left. Frustration simmered in her gut as she cast around. With each passing minute, her quarry got further away.

Finally, she spotted something. A patch of dark, bare earth, where a foot had scuffed the leaf litter. She looked up and saw that some lichen had been torn off a tree a few metres off. From there, she spied another footprint. A trail! Adrenaline burned through her limbs. The hunt had begun.

Freya stalked the fugitive deeper into the forest, towards the mountains. She thought she could probably guess where he was going. At the head of the river that tumbled down this valley, there was a pass through the mountains. On the other side was the sea, and a small hamlet where you could get a boat to the mainland. Certainly, that was where she would go.

He evaded three squads of Shinra soldiers, the interviewer would say. How did you manage to track him down? Freya would lean forward, pursing her lips in a saucy grin. You know, I don't think those Shinra boys were quite doing there jobs properly. He left a trail as wide as a road. All I had to do was use my eyes. Cover her mouth, look from left to right like a naughty schoolgirl. Don't tell them I said that.

She realised she hadn't been this excited on a hunt in years. Rabbits, deer, head hunters – they'd all become a little tedious. Even hippogriffs, dangerous as they were, had lost some of their thrill. The problem with an animal or a monster was that once you knew its habits, you could predict exactly where it would be, what it was going to do. It had all become rather easy. This, though: this was going to be a real challenge. She hadn't stalked anything that was as clever as her before. Well, perhaps not quite so clever. But closer than a hippogriff.

The trees thinned out and grass sprang up between them as she got closer to the river. She came out of the forest and saw it, braiding between banks of shingle, its sides covered in tussock which swayed gently in the breeze. There was a flattened channel in the grass where the fugitive had pushed through. Freya followed his footsteps.

It was pleasant walking, flat after the bumpy roots of the forest, and with the river chattering along beside her. The morning sun soaked into her face. She was enjoying herself right up until she found the dead rabbit.

The rabbit was lying stiff and flat-eyed on the crushed grass path. Freya crouched down beside it and laid a hand on its fur. It was cold, had been dead at least five or six hours. A terrible chill dripped down her spine when she saw that something – someone – had torn with their teeth at the raw flesh of its belly. Its innards squirmed out onto the grass, and flies were crawled over them.

The sunlight felt suddenly damp and clinging. What sort of chap would be desperate enough to try eating raw rabbit? And how had he caught it? Not with his bare hands, surely. But she couldn't see a trap anywhere.

She considered turning back for a second, but she was instantly cross with herself for thinking of it. She'd set a goal, and she'd be damned if she didn't achieve it. She was going to hunt this man down. And people were going to love her for it.

She stood up and started walking again, but the tension clung to her gut like a tumour. A great slug of cloud oozed up and smothered the sun, leaching the colour from the landscape. Freya followed the fugitive's tracks over river flats and shingle beds, with the hills rising higher and higher on either side of her.

It was past noon when she began noticing that the fugitive was trying to cover his trail. He wasn't doing it particularly well; on a shingle bank he'd swept a branch across his footprints, and he'd tried to fluff up some of the long grass after he'd walked on it. If anything, these attempts at concealment only made his progress more obvious. Freya frowned and bit her bottom lip when she saw them – did the convict know he was being followed? He could have looked down the valley and seen her. She felt the comforting weight of her shotgun on her shoulder. The criminal was unarmed. Hippogriffs and head hunters, even wild pigs, were more dangerous. But in her mind she kept seeing the flies scuttle over the meat of the dead rabbit.

You've hunted just about everything that moves in your part of the world, the interviewer would ask, settling into her chair. How was hunting – well, a human – different from hunting an animal, or a monster? Freya would look away like she was giving it some real consideration. You know, I'm not quite sure he was a man, she would finally say, just when the audience couldn't bear the silence any longer. I think he was rather more of an animal, really. And hunting him was just the same.

In the late afternoon, the clouds that had been sagging above her finally burst and rain tumbled down, hissing, beating on the pebbles of the stream, bowing the tall grass. Freya ran into a nearby stand of trees and rummaged in her pack for her parka. She glanced at the sky before she headed back out to the river. It looked like she only had a few hours of daylight left. Surely she'd almost caught up to the fugitive? His attempts to cover his trail must have slowed him down, and she'd been making good time.

After another hour, the trail dipped into the river and didn't come out on the opposite bank. Freya stopped on the edge of the water. She looked up and down the valley. The fugitive must have decided to cover his tracks by walking in the river. But had he continued up the valley, or gone back down it to throw off pursuers? Freya decided he must have headed up the valley; ultimately, that was where escape lay. Besides, he'd be hungry, wet and cold. Surely he wouldn't want to suffer any longer than he needed to.

She set off upstream, keeping to the left bank and scouring both sides for any signs that the fugitive had left the river. Her hair was wet, plastered around her face. She was thought about how wonderful it was going to be when she got home, and sat soaking in the fireplace's heat. The look on Alfie's face when she asked him, smiling her sweetest smile, how he had occupied himself that weekend.

But the question we're all dying to ask, the interviewer would say, gesturing expansively at the audience, is why? Why does an attractive, clever young girl from a good family go out and suffer through all that you did to bring a fugitive to justice? What motivated you? There was an obvious answer: A fellow like that can't be allowed to run loose. He just can't. I knew I was someone with the ability to put him down, and – well, I suppose I considered it my duty to do so. "How noble!" the audience would think. "A true heroine." But was it true?

She was knocked down, scrabbling in the shingle with some great weight atop her. Her shotgun was trapped under her back, hands gripped her throat, she couldn't get air, and she tried to prise them off but they were so strong – hard as iron. He was straddling her, strangling her. She was going to die. The rain was splashing on the pebbles and shadows were creeping in at the edges of her vision and she was dying. Above her, a pair of blue eyes glowed.

She was on her feet, soaking wet, her throat tight and aching. Someone was choking down air in rasping, desperate gasps. It was her. She was breathing. Her hunting knife was in her hand and it was covered in blood.

The fugitive was rolling around on the shingle, clutching his stomach, moaning. His gut was churned up like something had gnawed big chunks from it, and blood was bubbling out like syrup. Freya squatted to pick up her shotgun, staggered back to her feet. When she shot the fugitive his head burst over the pebbles and his body stopped moving.

She stood over the corpse, still panting, and tried to remember what had happened. Between the knife in her hand and the holes in the fugitive's gut, it wasn't hard to work out what she'd done. The odd thing was that she couldn't remember doing it. Did it really matter? She was alive and the convict was dead.

Still, she felt oddly flat, and empty. This was supposed to be her moment of victory. Where was the flush of triumph that came at the end of a successful hunt? How does it feel? the interviewer would ask, and what would her answer be? Perhaps it would be better if she kept this to herself. It she could try to forget about it.

*.*.*

When Freya had finished her story, Veld leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. "Very impressive," he said, looking at Tseng. Then he turned his eyes on Freya, frowning slightly. She felt like his gaze was stripping her of all the manners and social graces she'd learned, that he could see right to the core of her being.

"What we're about to tell you," Veld said, "is highly classified. If you pass it on to anyone, we'll know, and the repercussions will be severe for you. Understand?"

Freya nodded.

"Good," Veld said. "Augustus Bluth was part of Shinra's SOLDIER programme. Can I assume you're familiar with the programme?"

She nodded again.

Tseng spoke: "Sometimes SOLDIER members don't take well to the medical treatments they receive as part of the programme. Bluth was someone who the treatments affected badly. They destabilised his mind. He was very dangerous, and the company is grateful to you for dealing with him."

"We're also very impressed," Veld said. "Tseng and I are here because we want you to come and work with us at the Department of Administrative Research."

Freya's eyes popped. "You want – you want me to be a Turk?"

"We think you'd be very good at it," Veld said.

She was suddenly too hot, and the air in the living room felt close and furry. She'd never thought of herself as Turk material. You'd have to be so skilled, so callous, so clever. Was she really all those things?

She tried to remember knifing the fugitive, but there was only a black space in her memory. It was like some other mind had taken over her body. But it was her. She had done that.

The Turks were staring at her. Bugger it, Freya thought. If they thought she was good enough, she was going to give it a go. That would show everybody.

I had so much fun writing my last Before Crisis "origins" story that I thought I'd try another one. According to Final Fantasy Wiki, Shotgun is given the name "Freyra" in production sketches for Last Order. For this fic, I dropped the second "R".

Anyway, if you've got this far, thank you for reading. I hope you've enjoyed it! Reviews are always super appreciated.