Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, or its franchise, in any way possible. All characters and mentioned names belong to Square Enix.
Ch. 01: Retreat
… This wasn't the first time that the smell of alcohol seeped out of Reno's office space, in the just-rebuilt Shin-Ra Electric Company's headquarters.
Reno tipped the bottle up again and glugged down his whiskey. It was a certain kind of drug, if anyone could call it that, which his body had grown accustomed to over time. He was a full-time alcoholic, though everyone was amazed at how he could still keep himself together after a hangover. He usually blamed it on the money and free time he was given after accomplishing a mission, but then again any other employee in the kind of job he was in would settle for something of the sort to pass the time. After all, he's done it all - even went as far as drug dealing or taking drugs. And almost all the time, the President saved his arse. He reveled in it, that someone was always there to save him. Money was never a problem. All the President had to do was to make up a few excuses here and there for his behavior, and pay to bail him out.
Reno thought of himself as a lucky bastard. He was given every kind of luxury in the world he wasn't able to have when he was much younger, before he'd joined the Turks. All he had to do was be sent a mission, channel all the rage he could muster in his life – to hate his past, in particular – and then finish the job. That meant to kill or finish a covert operation with his fellow mates. Too easy.
But for some reason it sickened him. Deep inside he wanted to be able to save his own self; but why he couldn't was something he couldn't even comprehend. As they say, "The only way out is to go through." Reno gave up on what he considered was the most serious vice - drug dealing - some years ago, but now he was a full-fledged alcoholic and smoker. So where was the way out?...
There were times he wanted to kill himself with morphine and cocaine again until Rufus took him out of the ditch, again and again, but luckily and graciously his conscience usually pushed him out of the way of that sort of harm. But the alcohol and the cigarettes - a slow death for him. He felt stuck. Incredibly stuck to the point where he just wanted to die. He had no idea what to do anymore.
All the girls liked him – drunk or not. Getting laid was never an issue for him – if he wanted it, he got it. He had his way with the ladies and the ladies fell for it every time. All he had to do was take them out for a few good drinks, dance the night away no matter how ridiculous he looked, make out with them and grope them here and there… and bring them home. He could do this every night and women would call him up the next morning, ask him to hook up with them, and Reno would do so, but eventually over time make up excuses that he was busy and was sent on a mission. Oh, especially that excuse – if he said he was on a mission and wouldn't be available to call for days, he'd add up to the story, and they'd stop calling. If they reached the point of madness he wouldn't care at all. He'd even change numbers, and target another set of ladies. Reno was the ultimate ladies man. Or at least that was in his own terms, and everybody else's – but to some, he was the great emotional assassin. But, as usual, he didn't care. He'd do the same routine over and over. The material things made up for the emotional pain.
… One particular girl, however, was some sort of a challenge for him and he liked it. He liked it when women were feisty; he liked a danger to try and handle. A firecracker on the job, this girl he'd known for years on end now within his circle of Turk friends was a quiet girl that had a certain puncture to her words when she said something. Though she was sometimes a bit of a loner, Reno was interested in her. It upped the ante for him. If anything, she was probably the only girl he had never tried to trifle with. To think they'd known each other for years and he never made a move to get to know her much more and their level of getting to know each other only reached up to business purposes was astounding. But he found her attractive, in some way or another, and always looked out for her, wondered what she was doing, even if they never really talked. All he had to do was ask her around, but he'd been told many times to approach her. So he figured, maybe tomorrow, when she's around, he could start talking to her.
The moment he looked at the clock, it just about hit 9 in the evening. Around this time, the Turks packed up and left to their dorms, or to their apartments or homes in the city. And around this time, he usually went up to the rooftop and passed out there.
And that's what he just did. He stood and brought his bottle with him, staring up at the humming fan over his desk and pulled down the string once to shut it off. Reno swaggered to the door and left, making his way with weary eyes to the elevator. As soon as the doors opened and he entered, he punched in the button that hinted "Rooftop". It took a while, but when the elevator's "ding" sounded, he stepped out of the concrete alcove and the lift, heading for one of the concave, pyramid-shaped and steel-rimmed windows, the dim fluorescent light from the floor below coming up through.