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He's the kind of guy
who's always passing
But who never has time
to spend
And he'll take you for a
spin
And won't look within
find out who you are
"Charm Attack"
Leona Ness
The
slums of Midgar never slept.
During the day, despite the prodigious piles of rubble that spotted the streets like humongous heaps of crap and the fact that half of the houses were in the process of rotting into nothing, children played in the dusty streets, tossing rubble balls back and forth under the watchful eyes of their parents. Adults visited a few of the stores that had survived the destruction of Meteor to buy food for dinner. Men and woman alike gathered at the numerous bars to sing praise to AVALANCHE, who saved the world from Sephiroth, to Diamond Weapon, who unconsciously killed the last of the money-hungry Shinras while laying siege on Midgar, and to Reeve Benavides, the former Shinra Urban Development Manager who was working on rebuilding the slums and cleaning up the streets. If one ignored the trash in the gutter, the run-down shops, and the general poverty everywhere, one could actually think that the slums during the day weren't so bad after all.
But
then night fell and a whole new crowd came out.
Men
with guns and knives out the kazoo.
Women who would just as soon kiss you as kill you. Thieves.
Murderers. Serial killers. Whores.
Drug dealers. But the worst of
all the night monsters was the Turks.
Reno
Sasuki, in particular.
Leaning
casually against the concrete wall behind him, the infamous flame-haired
spitfire allowed a small smile to play across his thin lips as he watched the
night crowd go about their business. It
still amazed him that Sectors 3 and 2 had managed to avoid much of the
destruction brought upon by Meteor. The
people here bustled back and forth like nothing had ever happened, like
Sephiroth had never attempted to become a god, like Cloud Strife and his little
tag-alongs had never risked their sorry asses to save a world not worth saving,
in Reno's opinion. He had pretty much
given up on this shithole a long time ago.
If he had been Meteor, he would have swallowed Midgar in one gulp,
chewed it up and spit it back out, grinding it in the dust for good
measure. The entire damn city was
worthless. (Me included, a
little voice in the back of his mind said bitterly.) Just look at these people walking the streets now, the outcasts
of society, only watching out for themselves.
Did Cloud and Co. really think that such trashy people were worth
saving?
"Hey,
baby, looking for company?"
Speaking of trashy.
Reno
snapped out of his reverie, something that was becoming a nasty habit as of
late, his luminescent aquamarine eyes behind their dark sunglasses taking in
all of the woman in front of him. Her
skirt and tank top were so tight they left little to his fiendish
imagination. The tops of her overly
large breasts were exposed by the low neckline of her shirt, the crevasse in
between them looking very enticing in the deepening shadows. Her face, which was by no means
exceptionally beautiful, was done up with so many layers of makeup that she
somewhat resembled a clown. Your
typical slut of the slums. A whore
hoping beyond hope to feed an empty space inside her that she thought sex could
fill. But, hey, who was he to
complain? He certainly never ended up
on the short end of the stick. He was
always in a win-win situation in regards to his numerous "flings."
Reno
smiled slyly in response to her inviting question. "Maybe," he said coyly.
Lips
that swam with red lipstick pulled back over white teeth with fiendish
anticipation. "Just 'maybe,' big boy?"
she asked flirtatiously, taking a step closer to him. "What, ain't what I got good enough for ya?"
Reno
looked her up and down in an obvious fashion, and she allowed his examination
with an eager smile, thinking that she had another sucker and more gil to slip
into her bra.
She
stepped so close that Reno could smell the odor of her body, a mixture of
cosmetic products, cheap perfume, and unwashed skin. "Like what you see?" she breathed, pressing her body against his
and placing her hands on his chest, red fingernails showing up vividly against
the white fabric of his dress shirt.
Reno stared at her calmly through the dark lenses of his sunglasses.
"Maybe,"
he repeated noncommittally, but with the same sly grin on his face.
The
whore smiled and slid her probing hands underneath his navy blue suit jacket,
running them along his sides. "Bashful,
now are we?" she murmured huskily as Reno continued staring at her placidly,
though for some reason his stomach churned with disgust. The stench of the whore's hot body pressed
against his was overpowering. Good God,
what was that rank perfume she was wearing?
The sewage bubbling up out of the manholes in dilapidated Sector 7
smelled better. Did all of the whores
who he had paid to do their dark deeds in the past smell as bad as this? Not that he would have noticed; when one is
drunk they don't notice much of anything.
The world's just one great happy land of pleasures and numbness when he
was drunk. Personally, Reno drank for
the numbness part, but the pleasures were a nice side order. Very nice.
But
tonight, he wasn't drunk. He didn't
want numbness or pleasures. He just
wasn't in the mood.
"Now,"
the harlot clinging to him continued, oblivious to the uncharacteristic
revulsion that was simmering in Reno.
"Why don't you and me go find ourselves a nice—"
"Actually,"
Reno interrupted conversationally, a mischievous smile still on his lips, as if
the world were a joke that only he understood.
"I don't think I would enjoy company tonight."
The
whore stiffened in surprise; she had been sure this one had been the kind who
would enjoy a heated tumble between the sheets, but she gave it one last shot,
massaging the muscles of Reno's lower back with her overly thin hands. "Oh, come on," he murmured right into his
ear, pressing her body against his.
"You must feel so lonely."
"The
heart is a lonely hunter," Reno replied, resisting the urge to gag as the smell
of her unwashed hair went up his nose.
She
laughed, hot breath plastering his ear.
"A poetic one, aren't we? I like
that in a man. Don't worry; I don't
bite."
But
I do. And my electric nightstick does,
too.
"Are
you hard of hearing?" Reno snapped angrily.
"I said I'd rather be alone tonight."
The
whore drew back as if she had been slapped away, her entire demeanor changing
from seductive and beguiling to prissy and offended, like an upstart cat that
had just been shunned by its owner. Or
in this case, an upstart bitch.
"Fine,"
she snipped, her painted eyebrows coming together in a scowl. "You can go #@%$ yourself, then. It's your loss, big boy."
"I'm
sure," Reno said with a grin as she huffed away, her spiked heels clicking on
the broken pavement. He would certainly
shed no tears over her hurt pride; she would manage to find another, more
willing, less contemplative customer in less than a few minutes.
Sighing,
the Turk ran his gloved hand through his untamed mane of fiery locks, dwelling
a second on the elastic band that held the lower portion in a loose
ponytail. He had no idea why he was
even out tonight; there was nothing for him here on the street. The only reason he frequented this area of
the slums was when he was looking for a bar or a quick fix; he certainly didn't
journey here to admire the scenery. And
he usually had Rude with him to keep him company, but tonight his best friend
had been elsewhere... with Elena.
Reno
allowed himself a half-bitter, half-amused smile as he thought about the
burgeoning relationship between his two Turk friends, the only friends he had
in the world. Soon, they would go off
and get married and settle down and have kids, leaving him behind like a piece
of unwanted garbage.
Poor
me. Nobody loves me anymore.
Rolling
his aquamarine eyes at his idiotic thoughts, Reno pushed himself lazily off the
wall, brushing dirt and concrete off of his back as he did so, and began to
stroll down the street, expertly keen eyes hardened by the hard knock life
taking in every person he passed. He
had no idea who or what he was looking for, but he had come home from work
today with the intense premonition that something big was going to go down
tonight, and he had to be there. The
feeling had been so forceful that he had suddenly envisioned himself as a marionette
whose strings were being pulled by the powers that be, and those stupid ass
gods or whoever they were wanted him to be here in the slums of Sector 3
without a trace of alcohol in his system and his nightstick strapped to his
hip.
Well screw those gods. If they wanted him to be here in this condition, they were going to have to float down on angel's wings and tell him so, because he was through waiting around for trouble to fall in his lap. He was going to find a bar and get himself plastered, and if that messed up their divine plan and the whole great tapestry of life began to unravel because he was banging back tequila shots instead of fighting evil, then that was just too damn bad.
But
no matter how much he thought of dismissing the call of Fate, or whatever the
hell it was, Reno couldn't get rid of that tickling in the back of his mind, or
that cold feeling on the back of his neck.
There was a strange tingling between his shoulder blades, and he kept
looking over his shoulder out of habit, trying to pinpoint the sniper or hitman
that he knew must be watching him. But
each time he turned around, there was no one there, and it was seriously
beginning to grind his nerves.
There
had once been a time when he would have had no reason to be this jumpy, a time
when the tyrannical corporation of Shinra Inc. had been the ruler of the world,
with its notorious hitmen, the fruits of its womb, the world-renowned Turks to
enforce its orders, increase its ranks, and eliminate all threats by any and
every means necessary. That had been
the good life, when Reno was a devil in a blue suit, his pockets lined with
gil, his head held high, and his walk casual and cocky.
Times
were different now. The blue suit that
had once incited fear in all who laid eyes on it now incited nothing at all to
the onlookers. The people who saw the
lonely, lean, flame-haired man walking the streets felt nothing for him, not
fear, not hatred, just nothing. Poor
guy, still wearing that old suit like Shinra still exists. Poor guy, still suffering from illusions of
grandeur. Poor guy, holding onto the
past and expecting us to run screaming from the sight of the infamous Reno
of the Turks, one of three of the callous and ethically retarded villains
left in the world.
Sorry, my idiotic brothers and sisters. I don't wear this suit because I want to. After being in Shinra for – oh god, how many years was it? – and donning the same damn suit day after day, you simply run out of things to wear. I wish there was some deeper significance behind this blue suit, some deeper meaning behind this eyes, some purpose in this empty soul, but there isn't. Too bad. Tough titties.
Jostling past the people on the street with only a cursory glance, Reno's eyes roved the streets around him, spotting several overflowing bars just looking for more hungry flies to draw in to their maws, which were filled with drunken bliss and pleasures of every sort. He walked past these bars, telling himself that he was looking for one that would have so many mangy lowlifes inside. He was in no mood to deal with anyone tonight.
His
exhaustive search was rudely interrupted when an old woman dressed in rags and
covered in grime suddenly rushed up to him, waving her hands madly. She hobbled as most old woman did, hunched
pitifully over a cane made of rotting wood.
Her back was horribly warped, hunched and twisted like a sculpting
experiment gone all wrong. The
snow-white hair that adorned her head like colorless straw stood up on end,
like the tuft of a dandelion. All in
all, she made for quite a startling sight as she hobbled up to Reno with a
vigor that most humans her age had lost long ago.
"Sir!"
the crazy hag cried, the mad light of insanity blazing in her washed out eyes
as she looked wildly up at Reno. "Young
man! Beware! The end is near!"
Reno
grinned, staring condescendingly down at Old Bertha, Sector Three's resident
lunatic. "Is that so, grandma?" he
asked mockingly. "The end is near? Like it was last week?"
Her
half-blind, crazed eyes narrowed, her mouth puckering as if she had eaten
something sour. "Such youthful
impertinence, Flame Hair; I know who you are.
I know what you do. The blood on
your hands does not escape these blind eyes, Reno of the Turks."
Reno
raised an auburn eyebrow, his curiosity piqued, wondering how the loony old
fart knew who he was.
Bertha
laughed maniacally, proudly displaying all of her five rotted teeth. "Have not seen you around here in many
nights, Turk," she cackled. "Then,
BOOM, I look up and there you be, the Phoenix risen from the ashes to fulfill
your purpose."
Reno
was stunned into silence by the words dropping from her withered lips. The thought suddenly crossed his mind that
maybe the old hag wasn't quite as crazy as people made her out to be.
Bertha,
in the meantime, was rambling on. "Yes!"
she cried with insanity gleaming in her every feature. "I just sitting there in my corner when the
voices tell me 'Bertha, rise and tell the world! Share your knowledge with the ignorant and naïve! Let the fiery truth burn the darkness
away! And bring back three burritos
with cheese for supper!'"
"What?"
Reno snapped, surprised by the absurd statement. "Burritos? What the hell
are you talking about?"
Bertha's
old wrinkly hand suddenly lashed forward and grabbed the lapel of his coat,
grasping the cloth tightly, her knuckles crackling like miniature fireworks as
she did so. "You listen here, Fire
Top," she suddenly seethed, the mad light of lunacy burning in her eyes. "Even the aliens in my head get hungry,
too! Who am I to deny them the right to
eat?!"
"No
one," Reno agreed, staring mockingly down into the hag's wrinkled face. "The oddball life forms living in my anus
get hungry, too. Only they don't like
beans in their burritos. It gives them
gas and acid indigestion."
The
old hag cackled madly, laughing with such heartiness that she ended up coughing
and wheezing in between sounds of mirth.
"Funny boy!" she cried with insane happiness. "Funny, funny boy! Be
cautious, Fire Hair, be brave, and be bold!
Be loving and be wise!"
Reno
gave a melodramatic sigh and put his gloved hands on his hips. "Listen here, grandma, do you have any
earthly idea how hard it is to be all those things at the same time? Who do you think I am, Superman?"
Bertha
suddenly shook the end of her rotting cane in his face, her washed out eyes
widening with some strange emotion that was exclusive only to the insane. "Beware, Turk!" she whispered-screamed,
leaning in so close that he could smell her rank breath. "You are no Superman, but they shall expect
you to be. Be strong and of good
courage. Love shall conquer all."
"Sure
thing. Whatever you say," he retorted
sarcastically, rolling his aquamarine eyes.
"THE
TITANS ARE COMING!" Bertha suddenly screeched, hands held upwards to the sky,
spit flying from her mouth as Reno took an unconscious step backwards. "THE TITANS ARE COMING! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"
The
old hag suddenly sped off, shuffling along the street as fast as her withered
and warped feet would carry her. Her
dark rags flapped around her bent form like a demon's wings as she passed by
indifferent onlookers screaming, "THE TITANS ARE COMING! GOD SAVE US! SEND HER DOWN TO US! HAND
OVER THE BURRITOS WITH CHEESE!"
Reno
stood calmly on the sidewalk with his hands still on his hips, one resting near
his nightstick. The crone shuffled and
hobbled along, her cries turning into the senseless mutterings about burritos
with cheese as her ghastly figure vanished around a corner. No one she passed even gave her a second
glance; such sights in the slums were commonplace and not worth a quota of
their precious time. Reno alone
acknowledged the passing of Old Bertha, watching as her warped form disappeared
from view and reflecting briefly on her strange mixture of seemingly sincere
warnings about Fate and Titans that sharply contrasted with her insane phrases
about aliens and burritos.
"Crazy
old broad," he muttered under his breath, and went along his way, forgetting
about Old Bertha and her strange predictions of the future.
But
once moving again, with his eyes scanning the streets for – god, he didn't even
know what he was looking for anymore – Reno once again felt his thoughts
becoming unusually contemplative. Where
was Rude when he needed him? Though the
prideful Turk wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, including himself, he
depended a lot on his levelheaded, calm best friend to help him think things
through and make sure his brash actions and sometimes crazy impulses didn't get
him into trouble. Where Reno was fire,
Rude was most definitely ice, but as far as the two Turks went, those two
elements meshed well. What Reno lacked
in long-term planning and detached assessments, Rude made up for. And what the tall, bald-headed Turk lacked
in quick thinking and smooth talking, Reno more than sufficed. In short, Reno would have definitely
preferred it if Rude were with him tonight to help him make sense of these
crazy, fate-driven urges that he was experiencing.
Even
if it had been Elena accompanying him instead of Rude, Reno still would have
been more comfortable. The redheaded
Turk allowed a small smile to creep across his lips as he thought of how Elena
might have reacted if she had encountered Old Bertha. Knowing the rookie Turk, who was still extremely wet behind the
ears and of an incredibly sensitive breed, would have offered of pay for the
burritos to feed her aliens or something completely ridiculous like that. But despite her obvious faults, Reno loved
Elena like a sister and was glad in his heart of hearts that she and Rude had
found each other.
A
sudden clamoring from across the streets jolted Reno out of his thoughts. Turning his head to look at the source of
the noise, he was amused to see that a brawl had broken out in front of a bar
across from where Reno was walking.
Dingy-looking men and woman all gathered in one huge, seething mob,
trying to get a glimpse of the action like they had nothing better to do than
watch two lowlifes beat each other senseless and mess up their probably already
messed up faces.
"Maybe
the Planet sent me here to stop drunkards from killing each other?" he
muttered, knowing he was talking to himself like crazy Old Bertha and not
caring. "But what's two dead drunkards
any—oof! Hey! Watch it!"
Reno
let out a cry of surprise as he felt something collide with his right side
while his eyes were trained on the fight across the street. His hand immediately flew to rest on his
nightstick as his paranoid mind, the mind of a Turk, instantly fed him the
worst case scenario – that he was being attacked by an enemy that he, with his
head up his ass, hadn't managed to detect.
For a moment, he fought to maintain his balance, worn boots skidding on
the cracked sidewalk before he managed to keep himself on his feet.
"Now,
who the hell do you think you—" he started to say, but then his eyes fell on
his fearsome "attacker" and his breath caught in his throat.
Lying
at his feet was the most striking female he had ever seen.
Her
hair was a dynamic veil of ebony locks shot through with defiant strands of
blood red that hung around her shoulders and down her back, billowing gently in
the dry, rank breezes of the slums. Her
thin dress ended way above her knees, exposing creamy legs clad in fishnet
hose. Calf-high boots with huge heels
accented her shapely legs, and the filtered light from the bars across the
street eagerly touched her unnaturally pale skin, giving her a ghostly look,
like she was some unheard of haunt that had been risen from her rest to land at
his feet and make his heartbeats become irregular and fast.
The
mysterious girl shifted, bracing her weight on the ground with one of her
slender hands and lifted her face to look up at him, giving him yet another
shock. Her face was nothing short of
beautiful with a full mouth, short nose, and graceful eyebrows, but what really
caught his attention and for some reason sent shivers down his spine were her
eyes.
The
first thing that came to Reno's mind was that this girl was another one of
Hojo's scions and had been injected with Mako, making her golden eyes even more
striking, but he realized that the glow in those honey-colored orbs didn't come
from any Mako, but from something else.
Their luminescence wasn't synthetic or man-made; it was natural. Suddenly, Reno was reminded of someone, of
that Cetra girl Tseng had had a thing for, the one that Sephiroth killed...what
was her name again? Oh yeah, Aeris.
The
purposeless girl looked up from her seat on the hard, cracked ground and
studied the man standing over her with a wariness that didn't show in her
golden eyes. There was something about
this man, something very familiar that she couldn't put her finger on. He was perhaps the most striking
representative of the male sex that she had ever seen, even more so than
Zack. Hair that was woven of liquid
fire stuck up in rebellious spikes from the top of his head; a longish ponytail
hung over his shoulder like a curious pet.
Skin sculpted from white marble seemed to glow in the meager light,
flawless to her keen eyes except for two short scars that had been deliberately
carved, either by him or by some opponent, close to the tender flesh that
surrounded his eyes, whose iridescent glow his dark-tinted sunglasses couldn't
quite hide.
His
blue suit and white button-down dress shirt were rumpled and sloppy-looking,
but for some reason it only accented his lanky limbs, which looked slender yet
solid. The V created by his unbuttoned
shirt collar exposed a lean chest and strong-looking collarbone. (She had always loved seeing collarbones on
men; she didn't know why). The only
thing that kept her from being smitten on the spot by this strange man with
hair the color of the Phoenix's feathers was the peculiar gleam in his eyes
that told her he was dangerous and the fact that he obviously had some sort of
weapon resting in a holster strapped to his right hip. One of his gloved hands hovered menacingly
on the handle of it, and the girl experienced a momentary fright when she
thought that he was going to attack her, but when he kept staring down at her
like she was some sort of ghost, she slowly rose to her feet, brushing gravel
off of her "borrowed" dress as she did so.
"Forgive
me for running into you, sir," she apologized politely. "I assure you it was an accident."
Reno
blinked as the girl's husky, beautiful voice saying those coldly polite words
hit him like a slap in the face. Who
was this girl anyways? She was dressed
like any other whore, but any other whore didn't spout formal-sounding phrases
like "forgive me" or "sir" or "I assure you."
"No
problem," he muttered. "Just don't let
it happen again." Studying her more
closely, thinking that if she was a whore, she was cleanest,
freshest-looking one he'd ever seen.
Her face was devoid of anything resembling makeup, and her honey-colored
eyes, as they gazed back at him impassively, had a certain gleam to them that
he hadn't seen before in anyone.
She's a fish out of water; she doesn't belong here.
"Why
were you running anyways?" he suddenly asked, trying not to let his gaze stray
to the enticing crevasse between her breasts as he spoke to her, knowing that
if she wasn't a harlot, she wasn't going to like his eyes wandering.
She
blinked, thick dark lashes flashing closed over her eyes. "Excuse me, sir?"
There's that polite "sir" again. Where they hell did this chick come from and what is she doing in the slums?
"Running,"
he repeated impatiently, releasing his grip on his nightstick and gesturing to
the dark alley on his right. "You came
blowing out of there like there was no tomorrow. Why were you running?"
The
mysterious girl cast a quick glance towards the dark alley as if noticing its
presence for the first time. "Oh," she
said quietly. "I'm dreadfully sorry for
running into you, sir. I was in a hurry
and not looking where I was going. I'll
make sure to be more careful in the future.
Good night."
She
turned and started to walk away.
"Hey!"
Reno called, surprising himself with how desperate he sounded.
She
whirled to look at him again, something resembling mistrust flickering in her
eyes. "Was there something else, sir?"
she asked with cold politeness, cocking her head to the side as if in a gesture
of curiosity.
Reno
narrowed his eyes and took a step closer to her, examining her intently as she
met his gaze without fear. Even with
her heels on, the mysterious girl was nearly a whole head shorter than him.
"You're
not from around here, are you?" he blurted before he could stop himself.
She
raised a dark eyebrow. "No, sir. I am not."
She didn't elaborate any further, and the look in her eyes told him that
she didn't think very highly of his prying.
Reno
didn't care. "Where are you from?"
The
girl shook her head, briefly closing her golden eyes. "With all due respect, sir, I would rather not discuss such
things with strangers. I need to be on
my way."
Reno
reached out to grab her arm, suddenly as desperate to keep her there as he had
been a few moments before, but she jerked back a step with a speed that
surprised him as much as it annoyed him.
What aggravated him even more was that the tingling in the back of his
head had turned into a full-fledged buzzing sound that bordered on pain, and
for some unknown reason, he felt that this strange girl who dressed like a
whore and talked like an executive businesswoman but looked like an dark angel
had something to do with his plight.
"Wait
a minute, honey," he said, trying to ignore the obviously suspicious gaze the
girl was drilling him with. His little
arm-grabbing stunt hadn't impressed her.
"Really,
sir, I need to—" she started to say.
"Do
I know you from somewhere?" he asked suddenly, removing his glasses and staring
at her with his Mako eyes, as if baring them for her to see would make her
trust him. "I feel like I've met you
before."
The
girl's eyes widened slightly upon seeing the glow in his eyes, and she was
silent for a moment as Reno waited anxiously for her answer, but she slowly
shook her head. "No, sir," she said
quietly. "I'm afraid that I don't recall
ever seeing you before in my life."
She's lying.
"Are
you sure?" he asked in a low voice, taking another step closer to her, eyes
gleaming.
She
nodded quickly, saying nothing more. It
appeared as if she was eager for this conversation to end, but she didn't make
a move to run away again.
Reno
was suddenly at a loss for words. He
felt the irrational need to keep this girl close to him. But how was he supposed to tell her
that? He needed to get her to trust him
first, which was looking to be very difficult.
Reno could usually sweet talk any woman into committing murder for him,
but as he looked into the golden eyes of this mysterious stranger, he realized
that getting her to even come near him was going to take some work.
Go for it, buddy, use your charm and wit.
"Um,"
he stammered, running a hand through his hair, suddenly feeling as if his
tongue was tied in knots. "Look, uh, I
know this is kind of, um, sudden, you know, and all, but, uh, what I'm tryin'
to say is..."
The
girl waited patiently for him to finish his broken sentence, her eyes
impassive.
Reno
suddenly found himself drowning in the shimmering golden color of her
eyes. Not human, he suddenly
thought, not human at all.
"I'd
like to take you home with me," he blurted out. "So if you'd just—"
Her
face darkened.
Uh-oh. Mistake. Big mistake. Great going, ace. Way to use that good old "charm attack" of yours.
"Excuse me, sir," she said, her voice acquiring a cold, hard edge as her eyes glittered with rage. "But I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone, for something, that I am most definitely not. For the last time, good night."
That said, she spun and stalked away, striding defiantly across the street, completely ignoring the brawl that still had yet to let up. Reno, stunned and disbelieving, could do nothing but stand there and watch her go, her hair shimmering in the fractured light of the slums, legs moving with long, graceful strides. What the hell had just happened? She had misunderstood his intentions completely, and now she was gone! For a moment Reno felt that infuriatingly irrational panic rise up in him as the need to keep the girl in his sights, if not in his arms, suddenly bloomed in his soul like the poisonous black roses rumored to grow somewhere in the Nibelheim mountains. He opened his mouth to call to her, to tell her to come back. His legs tensed, ready to run after her, but something stopped him.
There was an uncomfortable tugging in the back of his mind, akin the buzzing, lightheaded feeling that had been plaguing him all night, but only far, far more unpleasant. The itchy buzzing feeling had been aggravatingly persistent, but this new sensation awakened in him a deep alarm from the hidden recesses of his human nature, or what the hard knock life of a Turk had left of it. It was this alarm that kept his feet locked into their position on the sidewalk, glasses still dangling from his long fingers as his calm Mako eyes traced the vanishing figure of the girl as she moved across and down the street away from him, only looking back once at the strange man in the disheveled suit. For a moment, Reno fancied that he could see the glitter of her golden eyes flash in the darkness, but by then she had already turned away.
Still, his keen eyes tracked her with inhuman intensity, squinting only slightly in the darkness as he saw her turn towards a dark alleyway...and take off running.
The hell?
Why did she start running yet again?
All the stupid hoochie is gonna do is run over some other scruffy
lowlife, and then she'll leave him standing in the dust with his mouth hanging
open like me over here. Why was she
running?
Then the internal alarm in his head tugged at his attention again, and a thought suddenly occurred to Reno that probably would have come to light earlier, had he been focused less on the girl and more on the situation at hand. The question wasn't why she was running – it was what was she running from?
Eyes impassive, Reno replaced the glasses on his face, settling them on the bridge of his nose. He turned to stare into the inky darkness of the alley from which the girl had first emerged from, but even his Mako-enhanced senses could discern nothing from the blackness, certainly not the source of the jangling presence of discord in his mind. But if he had learned one thing in all his years as a street rat and as a Turk, it was that just because you couldn't see your enemy didn't mean that they weren't there. In fact, the greatest enemies were the ones that went unseen to one's eye for all eternity.
Hand instinctively coming to rest on his nightstick, Reno gave one last glare to the dark, deserted alley before slinking with liquid grace into the shadows cast by the wall in front of him, pressing himself into the crevasse between an old trash can and a short stairway of shattered concrete stairs that used to belong to an apartment complex but was now a crack house. Oblivious to the miscellaneous selection of nasty items that dotted the ground, Reno seated himself on the ground, trying to appear to be just your regular drunkard inebriated in the street. It wasn't too hard for him; he'd had lots of practice.
Though he now had no view whatsoever of the alley the girl had first emerged from, that same something in the back of his mind that had made him uncharacteristically desperate to keep the mysterious stranger in close proximity to him was now telling him that remaining in this place and waiting was now the best course of action.
You know, he thought grumpily. I've had it up to here with this
intuition crap. I have much better ways
to spend my time than sitting here in the shadows, waiting for something to
come out of alley, and all because of one weirdo girl who ran me over simply by
coincidence. I don't wanna be
here. I have my own life, you
know. People to do, things to see...
Just then the tugging in his mind suddenly manifested into a full-fledged psychotic demon that beat at his tender head with its claw-tipped wings, its screeching, unearthly voice echoing in Reno's ears. Though his every instinct told him to either prepare to fight or get the hell out of there, some unknown force that had manipulated his every action that night kept him adhered in his little nook against the wall, watching and waiting for he had no idea what.
He heard footsteps, slow, calculated footsteps, the footsteps of one that would rather not be heard, but who really doesn't care if they are heard. Reno's heart began to thunder in his chest as the battle adrenaline coursed through his system, the prelude of the high that usually accompanied him in most confrontations.
The footsteps got closer. Reno's head throbbed with a ceaseless pain as he shifted in his hiding place, keeping his hand close to his nightstick and staring at the side of alleyway out of the corner of his eye, suddenly dreading what he would see.
The ringing cry in Reno's brain crescendoed to an almost unbearable degree. He gritted his teeth in pain, viciously refusing to succumb to the agony that had no source other than his own madness.
Then the Stalker emerged from the alley, and the demon battering at his brain suddenly let out a horrendous screech, and Reno had to exert every ounce of iron will he had in his lanky form to keep from purging a similar cry from his throat. As a Turk, he had seen many assassins in his life. Hell, he saw the phantom of one every time he looked in the mirror. And this Stalker, this dark man, looked like your regular run-of-the-mill sniper or hitman. He wore a long, black coat that reached to the backs of his knees and surrounded his entire form like a protective shroud. The collar of the garment was turned up sharply, hiding the man's entire neck and profile from Reno's furtive glances. A black fedora hat cast a deep shadow on his face, effectively concealing anything that Reno's shrewd vision could identify about this stranger. He had his hands shoved in his pockets. He wore black boots and dark pants on his legs. Normal assassin, perfectly bland and average.
But Reno knew better. Normal assassins didn't make his head throb with their very presence. Normal assassins, even that ex-Turk on Cloud's team, Vincent Valentine, never had incited this much fear in one of their brethren, especially someone like Reno, who had committed his first murder at age ten. There was a sense of foreboding about this dark man that charged the air with unseen electricity, making Reno shudder slightly in his little hiding place not five feet away from where the man was standing at the mouth of the alley, wrapped in shadows.
Sweat rolled down his pale face in beads, trickling mischievously into his eyes, but he didn't dare take his vision away from the figure of the Stalker, who simply stood there, so still, so lifeless, like an ominous statue that nature had forgotten.
Please don't let him see me, Reno suddenly thought fearfully, then mentally slapped himself for being such a pussy. Who the hell was this freak anyways, who made him feel so much fear?
Then the Stalker shifted slightly, causing Reno's heart to skip a beat. His sweaty grip tightened on his nightstick, certain that the man had become wise to his presence close by. But the unearthly creature didn't even look Reno's way, not even a glance. Instead, he crossed the street fearlessly, a shadow among shadows. The brawl at the bar across the road had stopped long ago, and only a few drunkards now remained outside the doors, too inebriated to move their worthless asses back inside. But that certain something about the dark man that had terrified Reno out of his wits pierced their alcohol-clouded brains, and each of them looked up in terror as the Stalker passed them by, his coat rustling silently around his legs.
Reno watched from his hiding spot across the street as one of the drunkards scrambled to his feet, trying to get his uncoordinated limbs into some semblance of motion. Needless to say, the man failed miserably, not even able to take one step before falling flat on his face in the street with a whimpering cry.
The Stalker passed him without a glance, traveling down the length of the street until he reached the alley that the girl had run off down a few minutes ago. With the same unnatural, relentless ease with which he had crossed the street and brushed past the terrified drunk, he turned left smoothly and disappeared into the alley. Reno's suspicions were confirmed.
The girl was being followed.
The pain in Reno's mind suddenly eased, and he lifted himself shakily to his feet, hand still gripping his nightstick. His knees were weak with the aftermath of fear and adrenaline, and there was a sheen of sweat on his upper lip and high forehead. Lifting his arm, he defiantly wiped away this fear-sweat with one deft swipe. His jaw clenched in determination, and his aquamarine eyes narrowed behind the dark lenses of his glasses.
Okay, freako, you almost made me piss in my pants, but this is far from over. The night is still young, and I'm on the prowl. You aren't king of this turf, not tonight, not ever. And you can't have her. I'll see to that. You just wait, my friend. Just wait.
