Intermission: Smoke of War, The Deception of Gregory Fischer (Pt. II)

  --- Gregory Fischer ---

  The decade of experience he’d picked up since the last time he had to fight these four did not make it any easier. Every blow he laid into Marie, hurting him just as badly inside, even as he parried her every strike, something he couldn’t do half as well the first time round. Which is why it felt so much more heartbreaking in the fact that she couldn’t touch him even as he decimated her long fought skills.

  Nor did the fact that he now knew this fight was inevitable did not make it any easier. If anything the knowledge made it harder as Mei went from trying to talk everyone down to trying to rip his skull off after he beat Marie. A constant reminder that she’d died before she could confess her feelings to the other woman, largely due to his own failings unintentionally ending every chance she had.

  This entire thing was all a nightmare and a half that ripped him apart on the inside, even as he kept fighting. Kept beating Jordan into the ground, his new metal arm easily overpowering the other man’s fists and breaking past the physical might he could never quite match before. A feat that had the other man falling back on smoke magic that he’d long since learned all the weakness of.

  Just like he couldn’t simply take the easy way out of simply breaking their legs and leaving them behind, the pages that made up the world rippling each time to reform his old unit again and again. His efforts to keep them alive as worthless as the onslaught of fire Carlos sent at him, only for the volley to be avoided by Gregory’s near reflexive dodging and redirection into the others.

  Eventually though after he wasn’t sure how many fights, much like that night so long ago, he slipped up in his exhaustion and frustration. And once he slipped, everything grew so much worse until he was once more the only one standing on a battlefield of smoke and fire.

  He stood there surrounded by the corpses of his fallen friends before looking up at the black sky above him, “You know, I’m pretty sure this was supposed to be how ‘The Guilt’ ended…”

  The fact that it was also where his great deception began was… irrelevant.

  Once more the world rippled with pages, reshaping everything around him, only this time instead of bringing his squadmates back it left him standing in an interrogation cell with a large burly man in a uniform, a cigarette in his mouth that showed off the scar across his face.

  He forced down the bitter sneer as he easily recognized the man. (Osmond…)

  “So how does it feel knowing you got your whole team killed?” The man asked.

  “What?” He frowned, before remembering which memory this was.

  “Because you disobeyed orders, because you didn’t believe command knew better than you, your team had to go out on their mission without you. And despite your paranoid delusions, our intel was in fact good.” Osmond explained before tossing a file onto the table between them, letting it scatter open to show off the dead faces of his team. “Which is why without you, your entire team was killed by the enemy you refused to fight. Are you proud of yourself?”

  It was lies.

  All lies.

  He’d known that the first time they’d told him all of this, because they hadn’t realized he was responsible for his team dying. The few days it took to find them apparently long enough for the local animals to… scavenge.

  (The whole point of this meeting was to gaslight me into working for them instead of rebelling…)

  A decade ago when he first had this meeting, that revelation… The fact that they were using his team’s deaths, deaths at his own hand, to manipulate him into being a good little soldier…

  Something inside of him snapped.

  “Nothing to say for yourself?” Osmond asked derisively.

  He didn’t meet the man’s gaze, knowing his eyes would give him away. “What’s there to say…?”

  Osmond let out a scoffing sound before getting up from his seat. “Given the circumstances -and against my recommendations- the higher ups have decided to show leniency to your recent rebellious attitude.”

  “Sir…” He forced out of his mouth, more as an acknowledgement than anything remotely positive.

  “And I hope from now on you remember who the real enemy is, because if you disobey orders again you will not be given such leniency again.” His commanding officer warned, before turning to leave.

  “Don’t worry… I won’t.” He promised, glaring at the back of the man’s head with eyes like hellfire.

  That was the true beginning of his deception as the world around him rippled as it dragged him to the next location, a military encampment belonging to the enemy.

  With the revelation of just who was in charge of his military, what kind of people they were, and what they were really doing he began to gaslight and twist everything within reach. (Just like they tried to do to me…)

  At first it was small things, sneaking into enemy camps and leaving behind intel on attacks to civilian locations.

  That plan lasted until he remembered that the enemy was just as willing to fuck everyone over for victory as his own command. (More innocent blood… All on your hands…)

  Spying came next, learning more about the war efforts on both fronts via a liberal use of his smoke dash and a level of control he slowly refined beyond the hot tempered power he’d had before… everything.

  The world around him continued to ripple as he completed objective after objective, using infiltration skills he hadn’t used to this extent in years.

  Whenever his leash loosened for field work he’d gather whatever information he could both from enemies and… (well I only had enemies…)

  If the higher ups tightened his leash, restricted him to base, he’d study every book he could find on controlling his smoke and fire magic, study war tactics of both nations over the last century, and the budding field of psychology.

  Bit by bit a plan had formed in his mind, one he slowly brought to life by carefully leaking information he’d be killed for having to both nations and their publics as needed to push and pull them all into position.

  All the while his commanding officers thought him the dutiful soldier following orders, instead of the double agent traitor playing both sides. (So few people realize how easy it is to have someone killed by someone else in the smoke of war…)

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Over the course of just two years, high ranking officers on both sides of the war as well as soldiers that used their position to rape and plunder both the locals and even their own disappeared. Whether from assassinations framed as ‘accidents’ on the battlefield, or assassination in the court of public opinion for those officers who never left their quaint offices where they sent hundreds to die via paperwork written in blood.

  It wasn’t enough to end the war, not by itself but it did make each side more… wary of bigger moves. Each overestimating the other’s infiltration within their system, whispers of a third nation playing them against each other, the constant destruction of resource lines unsustainable for both.

  Amongst them all a paranoia slowly built that made everything so… (easy…)

  Which is why he continued to feed their flames, picking off everyone who profited off the war, while putting up the front of an efficient killing machine instead of someone who was carefully picking and choosing his targets.

  After… he wasn’t sure how long… he found himself in an office with Osmond. Someone he’d had to put off time and time again, because the other was a smoker familiar with Fischer’s own abilities.

  Eventually he’d realized there was no way to just ‘get away’ with it when it came to Osmond. And honestly… (I don’t care…)

  When his friends, his family had first… died, he’d been burning hot ready to burn the whole world down in his grief, but… Between the constant studying, killing, and manipulation, he’d begun to cool off.

  He didn’t like what he was doing, but he’d justified it as necessary. That if he stopped, everything else never would. That if he let his fire go out, then cold would freeze him in his tracks. And at a certain point he just… started going through the motions, until… he was just so tired…

  Even now, years later. After re-living only a fraction of what he’d actually done… (Let’s just get this over with…)

  “We believe there’s a spy on base.” Osmond had informed him.

  “That… makes sense.” He admitted, pulling out a smoke. (After all, I was the spy who let you know about it.)

  “Do we have any leads on who it is?” He asked like the dutiful soldier he was not.

  “We’ve some information, but not enough to point any fingers.” Osmond answered, passing over a file. “Given your status as a special operative, I want you to take point on this investigation.”

  This was… a boon in some ways, one he hadn’t been counting on. One that gave him a certain opportunity to wrap up this last loose end.

  He’d spent the past few months twisting the evidence he’d dropped to make it look like Osmond was the one leaking information in an effort to prolong the war. Something that was supported by just how much money the man had tied into the nation’s war machine.

  Every day that soldiers died was a day that Osmond grew a little richer.

  Which is why before the other man could react Fischer raised his hand and fired a shot of fire at the other man.

  Unfortunately that was also back when he had all of his power instead of the scraps that he was working with now. “Shit.”

  “Yes… I’m sure this throws whatever personal plans you have out the window, but it’s your duty as a soldier to see to the safety of your fellows.” The hypocrite told him, eyeing him with only mild confusion at his behavior.

  Fischer looked at his hand, where the best he could do was set his hand on fire before deciding, “Fuck it. I don’t need to do this one for one.”

  “What are you talking abo-” Osmond wasn’t expecting the chair to his face, and his years sending others to fight on the field instead of himself meant he didn’t have the reflexes to dodge either.

  A state of affairs that left the other man open when Fischer reached across the desk, before slamming the dazed man face first into his own computer.

  “You know what? I almost regret not doing it this way last time around.” He confessed, upon seeing Osmond’s bloody face.

  Part of him felt like drawing this out even further, letting lose all of his hate, rage, and frustration out on the man.

  The still semi-sane part of him however knew how pointless that was, and simply slammed Osmond’s head down, his throat hitting the desk edge with enough force to break the man’s larynx.

  Taking a step back from the dying man, he finished off his cigarette before flicking it at the dead man’s corpse. “I hope you’re burning in hell.”

  Yet again the world around him rippled, this time taking him to his court case. One that had been delayed for several months as everything about Osmond came out over the time he was stuck sitting in a cell. Both the real things and the things Fischer had falsified.

  By the end of it the racist warmonger was deemed a war criminal and posthumously stripped of all honors.

  Which left his court trial, with him standing surrounded by judges he couldn’t remember the faces of, all shrouded in shadows.

  Even if he’d framed Osmond as a traitor and criminal, the fact was that he’d still killed a higher ranking officer. Something that couldn’t simply be written off, not without opening a lot of holes that the corrupt command didn’t want open. So given his record they offered him a deal of sorts in exchange for his immediate discharge.

  Standing in the center of the courtroom, he looked down and found the book that had made him relive this mess.

  He took a deep breath, before letting it out and opening the book as he began to read.

  “Once upon a time, there was a soldier named Gregory Fischer.

  Gregory was a good little soldier who followed orders, no matter how much he hated them.

  Until he was given an order he couldn’t.

  So he didn’t.”

  He stared at the page where this book differed from his first, some part of him instinctively knowing that this was the part of the story that he could change. The part that was defined not by the book but by himself, his own interpretation of the story. A story that had haunted him no matter how hard he tried to forget it. No matter how hard he wished to change it. (But that’s the thing isn’t it…)

  With a nod to himself he continued his confession. “Since he refused his duty, his team was forced to take it up in his stead.

  He tried to stop them but… he was a shit leader, and they paid for his failings.

  The higher ups told him it was because he failed his duty, but he knew it was because his command failed their morality.

  In his grief Gregory raged and burned, the smoke of his fire slowly choking all who got too close.

  He turned these flames on the world as he lied, he cheated, and he twisted the smoke of war to make everyone responsible pay.

  All the while knowing he was becoming just like the monsters who led them to that point.

  Shame filled him. Not because of the order he rejected, but because of all those he didn't.

  Each a mistake he could not afford to repeat… Not again…

  Unable to continue the job that was demanded of him, either by his commanding officers or himself, he left each of them a burned out husk of what they once were.”

  Once more he came to the ending of one part of his story, and the beginning of another. Though reading the words on the page, he felt… he felt they didn’t quite fit him anymore.

  “Despite his regrets, Gregory Fischer, tried to live his life as best he could alongside his best friend Toni, but the guilt still burned away at him.

  He became scared of both himself and the world around him… Scared of how easy it was to burn it all down… And scared he’d want to watch it burn once more…”

  Even if he hadn’t reveled in the pain he’d caused, hadn’t wanted it all to end, the fact was (that monster is still part of me.) The one who’s grief would spark the fire that burned it all down.

  “Every day was a fight with himself to get out of bed, let alone do much else… And for years he lived as little more than a husk going through the motions.”

  He gained a wry grin as he looked at the next words and an illustration of Toni handing him an envelope. “Until he got an invitation to a certain library. One that made him face his demons whether he liked it or not.”

  The page shifted to two images of himself, one of him on fire and one of him surrounded by smoke, “Demons that he had to make peace with, for himself if no one else.”

  Surprisingly the pages shifted to show off everything that happened at the Crimson Carnival, from him fighting the clowns to protect Ferris, his duel with Maeve in front of the kids, and his battle against the Dracule before getting everyone to safety.

  “And maybe… maybe the demons of his past could be something more. Something that let him help people in need.”

  He took a deep breath before once more nodding as he stared at an image of Briar creating the children’s section with everyone standing around here. “After all, this wasn’t the end of Gregory Fischer’s story. This was just the beginning.”

  Patreon Thanks

  Thank You:

  -Rush99999

  -Kcx1

  -Spheal Lover

  A/N: For anyone who didn't see I finished that , (well I made a proof of concept at least) and we now have a for people into those.

  A/N: No choice this time, little worried this one is a bit rushed, but I also don't want to drag an intermission out into a full book. Either way, next chapter is Maeve Social and for now...

  New Volume Unlocked:

  -Smoke of War (Volume I)

  --War Is Deception: Gregory gains the [Infiltrator] And [Tactician] Classes while this volume is equipped.

  --Deceptive Smoke: Whenever a [Smoke] ability crits against a target, you can consume 1 stack of [Smoke] from the field, to have the target [Taunt] a random enemy. If an ability hits multiple targets, you can consume additional [Smoke] to affect each.

  *Taunt: A Taunted unit must target the Taunting unit next Turn. ([Protect] may still redirect after Taunt.)