Drabble set: Grunt/ICBW

[megpie71]

Grunt

Cloud looked dubiously at the outfit he was handed. It was skin-tight blue lycra, the helmet was more face-obscuring than the infantry mask, and the weird gun fitted around the end of his right hand. He was told it was "point and shoot - even a space-case like you couldn't fuck that up, Strife."

Okay, so it apparently contained shielding so they didn't wind up getting their balls zapped by whatever nasties came out of the mako reactors, but really...

He suspected the reason every unit got rotated to Reactor duty was to stop the grumbles about the infantry uniform.

ICBW

"It could be worse," Dawlish told him.

Cloud looked down at his scrawny form in the reactor Grunt uniform. He looked back up and raised his eyebrows.

Dawlish grinned. "Some of the other options? The stuff you have to wear if you're on tower security? Skin-suit like this, rollerskates for mobility. Then layer on big bulky armour. Or there's Aero Combatant gear - helipack in one hand, sword in the other. Nine times outta ten, you wind up hitting the target with the wrong one."

"So how do I avoid that?" Cloud asked.

"Practice your throwing arm, kid," Dawlish said.

Author's notes:

* Inspired by a day of playing FFVII, and thinking about the absolutely awful excuses for uniforms Shinra force a lot of the troops you wind up facing in the early stages of the game into (Grunts, Special Combatants, Aero Combatants and Mighty Grunts). I suspect someone in either Weapons Development or Public Safety was having a bit of a laugh at their expense.
* The last line of the second one is a pointer to the outfits worn by the Grenade Combatants - they wear the standard uniform, much like the MPs. Why yes, I do suspect there are a lot of decisions about military specialisation made in the Shinra military on grounds of "at least I won't look a complete dork in the uniform".
* Needless to say, I don't own FFVII - if I did, the uniforms would be far more practical, and there'd be at least one shrink on the SOLDIER payroll from the start.

(I'll post these over at AO3 tomorrow).

Comments

[raisedbymoogles]

*giggling* Poor Cloud, seriously. Poor all of them. Now I feel bad for enjoying beating them up as Tifa so much.

Needless to say, I don't own FFVII - if I did, the uniforms would be far more practical, and there'd be at least one shrink on the SOLDIER payroll from the start.

Someone's read the Evil Overlord List. ;)

[megpie71]

I know. On the one hand, I usually grind like anything in the Midgar stages at the beginning... but this year I think I was watching it with my fic brain in action, and all I could think was "those are probably actual people in those uniforms; families, friends, consequences,... oh and those uniforms are ruddy 'orrible too!"

Let's face it, the board of Shinra could definitely have done with reading the Evil Overlord list by the time the OG canon starts happening (and it should have been required reading in their science department long before then). A few simple precautions, like "is dropping an entire sector plate and killing thousands of people really a proportionate response to a group which as far as we know comprises a maximum of about six people?" or "if you must create super-soldiers who are a genetic melange of the genomes of humans and some alien whatever, at least let him know this from the start and make sure psychological counselling and monitoring is available" would have really knocked the death rate in that game right down. Even the nice simple ones like "I will not give my troops uniforms with face-concealing helmets" would have been useful (Junon parade scene, anyone?).

[raisedbymoogles]

Oh, ruin Hojo's fun, why don't you. ;P

...no, really, ruin the hell out of Hojo's fun.

[megpie71]

Let's not forget Hollander or Gast, either. All of them needed to be sat down with a copy of the Evil Overlord List, and a strong injunction to think very hard about "how could this go wrong; how wrong could it go; and what can we do to prevent it?"

(Plus, if the answers to the first two questions came back "no" and "not very", they should have been sent back to do some more thinking).

[raisedbymoogles]

Hojo might be a lost cause on that score. Gast would probably be reachable. Could go either way on Hollander.

Of course, even if we convince them, there's still President Shinra, who hasn't the sense God gave gravel, so you may be SOL either way.

[megpie71]

*chuckle* An accurate description of the President's lack of nous.

I suspect one of the things the Turks had been doing with Rufus in the background was giving him a copy of the list (Rufus tends to strike me as the type who could have done quite a bit to improve things if he'd just been given the time and the chance; mind you, he wound up saddled with Heidegger, Scarlet and Palmer as three of the main board members, which slowed him down a lot) and pointing out how this sort of thinking would be useful in the long run. To start with, if you follow the thinking in the Evil Overlord List to its logical conclusion, you're ensuring you're going to get a long run, which is always useful.

[raisedbymoogles]

Indeed. He seems to have at least skimmed it by the time AC happens.