A/N: This fic was originally published on AO3 as part of the FFVII Shinra Executive Exchange. It's a giftfic for flecksofpoppy. I'm really just uploading it here for the sake of having all the fanfiction I've written together in one place.

One Shot

"You ain't going to believe what happened to me last night, man," Reno was saying, the words leaking out the side of his mouth as he tried to light a cigarette. "Shit was crazy. You should have come out with us."

They were up in the fourth-floor loft of an abandoned building on the outer edge of the Sector Six slums. Mould was eating into the plaster on the walls and the dust on the floor was so thick they'd left footprints in it. Rude was down on one knee, the stock of a sniper rifle hard up against his shoulder. His eyes watched the street below through the gun's sights.

The road was mostly deserted. Pieces of trash skidded in the wind, old-timers trudged through the dirt, a few beat-up cars gathered rust outside the buildings that were still inhabited. Not many people lived this far out from Midgar's central column any more, Rude guessed. That was why the Commander had told them to set the nest up here. He wanted this target to die quietly.

"What did you get up to, last night?" Reno asked. The smoke of his cigarette was clinging to the sides of Rude's nostrils.

"Slept," Rude said, not taking his eyes off the road. A warm bed had never felt so good. He'd been roughing it in the mountains near Icicle for the past week, scoping out this illegal arms factory. By the time the chopper had touched down in Midgar, he hadn't slept for forty-eight hours and he was so tired his bones felt swollen, tender. The alarm had torn into his sleep far too early.

"Well, I had a great night," Reno said. "Just saying. We started out at Goblins. You've got to see the new chick they've got working there, man. Her rack is something else. Feisty, too. I like that in a girl. So it was me, Cissnei, and that new girl, Margot."

The hell was Reno doing, Rude wondered, saying "new girl" like that? Like he was already a veteran Turk, a member of the old guard. This was only, what, his fourth mission? First job they'd worked together, anyway. The redhead was still a rookie. Not that Rude had been in this game that long either.

"Oh, and Tseng," Reno went on. "But why does he even come out? He just sits there with his soda water like he's our damn babysitter, or something. Anyway, we were on maybe our third drink. I'd just finished a beer, and I was playing with the bottle while we waited on the next round. You know how you do. Spinning it on the table and shit. But I put my finger down the bottle's neck, and it got stuck. Seriously. Could not get the bastard off. But I didn't want anybody to see – I mean, what kind of Turk gets a bottle stuck on his finger, right? – so I stuck it under the table and just played it cool for the rest of the night. Drank with my left hand. Nobody noticed."

As Reno spoke, Rude was reminded of how his mother used to say, "Boy, you're opening your mouth and letting the wind flap your tongue around." Course, she never said it to him.

He shook his wrist out from under his shirt cuff and looked at his watch. 1413 hours. Five minutes until the target's car was scheduled to come past, and he'd have his shot. He'd better start concentrating. For about the seventh time he checked the rifle's safety catch was off.

"The bottle stuck on my finger wasn't a problem until everyone got up to leave, about midnight," Reno was saying. "I didn't have anything to hide it under because I'd left my jacket back at the office. So I told them all I was going to stick around, see if any talent showed up. Plan was to wait until they were gone, and then gap it back home, see if a little grease wouldn't free my finger. But right after they left, this just gorgeous girl comes and settles down next to me. I'm telling you, the suit man, it pulls. Even without the jacket."

All the chatter was really starting to piss Rude off; the words pinched and pulled at his mind, distracted him from the road. But he took a deep breath, pushed the anger down into his gut. The rookie was probably just talking because he was anxious about the mission, he told himself. Using his own voice to drown the doubting voices in his head. Shit, Rude was nervous too. His scalp was prickling with sweat, his gut balled up like string. So much hung on this one shot.

"A real bombshell, this girl, but she ain't bright. You know how they get kind of dead around the eyes? Yeah. Well, she comes on real strong, just throwing herself at me. I mean, what kind of man is going to turn something like that down? Not me, that's for sure. No, sir. I buy her a drink, and next minute she's asking me to come back to her place. It ain't far, so we walk there. I'm just hiding the bottle behind my back. Don't know how she didn't see it. She was pretty drunk, I guess."

Even Reno's voice was starting to annoy Rude, the way he dragged out each word. Like talking was so damn hard. That slack way he stood, too, and how his suit looked like he'd slept in it. Was that another cigarette he was slipping between his lips? This wasn't a lunch break.

Rude flicked his eyes back to the street. What was Reno even here for? Didn't take two men to pull a damn trigger. Rude would have been better off doing this alone, without the redhead to distract him. He guessed the Commander wanted the rookie along to get some more seasoning, but couldn't Veld have picked a less high-stakes mission?

Rude checked the time. Surely Reno wasn't going to keep this up much longer. They only had four minutes until the car was supposed to arrive.

"So up in her bedroom, we're undressing, and finally, as she's getting me out of my pants, she sees the bottle stuck on my finger. And she gets this idea that we have to get it off before things can go any further. I'm like, 'One of my hands is plenty for you, honey,' but for some reason she's determined to free up my other hand. She was definitely real drunk. Anyway, she starts tugging at the thing, really hauling on it, and I'm pulling in the other direction. You can see where this is going. Her fingers slip, and she goes right over backwards – did I already tell you she was naked? – and right into the bedside table. A glass of water falls on her, the lamp breaks... Man, it was a real mess."

Rude realised he was grinding his teeth. He made his jaw go loose, filled his lungs through his nose and emptied them out his mouth. If Reno didn't shut up soon, he was going to have to say something. Only reason he hadn't done anything yet was that he didn't want to piss his colleague off. In their job, he figured, you wanted your workmates to like you. Chances were at some point you'd have to put your life in their hands.

To distract himself from his frustration, Rude ran his mind back over the mission. The target would pass the building at approximately 1418 hours in the passenger seat of a green sedan. Name was Neuer. He was a Shinra military strategist who'd been selling army secrets to Wutai. Rude had seen a picture of his face: blonde, kind of rat-like. A Crescent Unit operative was driving him to a meeting with his handler on the very edge of Sector Six. Rude's job was to put a bullet through Neuer's skull before he got there. The army was dealing with the handler.

That was the plan, and Rude was determined to stick to it. He liked things to roll out smoothly, always under control. All his previous missions had come off exactly the way they were supposed to. He'd made sure of it, and he was going to make sure this one wasn't any different.

His attention was snatched by movement down on the street, but it was just a dog rooting through a pile of garbage. Rude glanced at his watch: three minutes.

Reno was still talking. "But here's where I really fuck up, man: I laugh. Couldn't help it. This was some seriously funny shit. The look on her face when she was falling, man. You should have seen it. But when she hears me laughing, she just flips out. I don't know what happened. Think maybe she was crazy. Anyway, she starts wailing on me with the lamp, yelling and shit, so I beat it out of her apartment. Ain't until she slams the door that I realise my clothes are still inside. I'm locked out in the hall, naked, and still with this fucking bottle on my finger."

Two minutes. When would this punk shut his damn mouth? A spasm of tension rippled through Rude's body, all his muscles squeezing his bones and then going slack again. Fighting to keep his voice steady, he said, "Hey, you mind quietening down a minute? Car's going to be here real soon. I need to concentrate, y'know?"

"Sure, man," Reno said. "I'm almost done."

Just block him out, Rude told himself, pushing down another surge of anger. Focus on the road. Green sedan. Passenger seat. Safety is – off. Of course.

"So right now, I figure I've got two choices: walk back home, naked, with no shoes and my finger stuck in a damn bottle – which, seriously, fuck that – or, get back into the apartment. I try to force the door, but the thing is solid, man. It ain't going to budge. But that's okay, I figure. Apartment's only on the third floor; I'll just climb up. Used to do that kind of thing all the time, before you guys drafted me. So I go out and round the back of the building, start climbing the drainpipe. It ain't easy, I'm telling you, not with this damn bottle getting in the way. But I get up to the third floor, and there's her balcony. I reach out for the bottom of the railing. But suddenly – I don't know what happened – I slip. My hand shoots out for the rails, and next minute I'm hanging there, dick dangling, from the bottom of her balcony. And the thing that's holding me there is – I ain't kidding, here – that fucking bottle. It's like, wedged between two of the rails. I look up at it and see that my finger is slowly slipping, squeezing out. I realise I've got two or three seconds before I drop. And that's when –"

One minute. Rude exploded, turned on Reno. "Shut up, okay? Look, I don't give a shit about the bullshit you got up to last night. I need. To concentrate. You even realise how important this shot is? We had someone undercover three months to get us this intel. Three months! I miss, all that work is wasted." The mutt down below was barking. "Not to mention the hundreds of Shinra lives this will save, or the huge pile of shit we will both land in if I fail. You have some kind of –"

"There!" Reno's eyes went wide and his arm whipped out at the window.

Rude spun around and saw a green sedan roar past the base of the building, sweeping bits of trash into the air behind it. Cold seeped into his limbs, and for a moment he wondered if he was still stuck in the alpine snow, and this was all a bad dream. He watched the garbage drift gently down like dead leaves, the sniper rifle limp in his hands. Something like a groan was crawling out his mouth.

"Oh, boy," Reno said, his voice breaking a little.

Rude turned to face him and they stared at each other, jaws hanging. That dog was still barking. The noise of the sedan's engine faded to an insect buzz and then was gone. Rude tried to make his brain come up with some way to salvage the situation, but all he could think of was the plan. This wasn't part of the plan. The plan had failed. He'd failed. Shit.

Then Reno closed his mouth and flicked his cigarette to the floor, ground it out with his boot. His eyes narrowed and went hard, his nostrils flared. "Come on, man," he said, and dashed down the stairs.

Rude had no idea what his colleague was planning, but he didn't have any ideas of his own, so he charged after the redhead, clutching the rifle. He took the steps two at a time, boots thumping, making the whole building shake and dust sprinkle from the ceiling. He emerged onto the street in time to see Reno smash the window of an old pickup truck with his rod and rip the door open. When Rude got there, his colleague had his head under the steering wheel, was messing with some wires. A few seconds later the vehicle started with a cough and then a grumble.

Rude ran around the front of the bonnet and landed his arse on the passenger seat. He had no idea if the rookie knew what he was doing behind the wheel of a car, but there wasn't time to ask.

The wheels ground on the dirt. Someone was yelling at them. Then the tyres bit, Rude was tossed back in his seat, they were moving. He laid the rifle across his knees, glanced at Reno. To his relief, the rookie could drive. Damn well, too, ploughing through the gears with perfect timing. Soon the old ute was straining against its top speed, the engine screaming. Rude had to admit, the old girl had some guts. She rattled around like some kind of carnival ride, though. It wasn't going to be an easy shot. Didn't help that the road wasn't exactly well maintained, either. His teeth clashed every time they hit a pot hole.

"Where are they heading?" Reno yelled over the engine.

"Straight through!" Rude shouted back. "Right out to the edge."

Reno nodded and fired off a grin that Rude found himself catching. The truck thundered over the road, a cloud of dust gushing out the back. Old men, stray dogs, crumbling buildings rushed past the windows as smudges of colour. Rude found that the action, the speed, blew his nerves away.

Reno barely slowed to curl the car around a corner and the wheels skidded with a noise like radio static. Rude could feel his gut shifting sideways, and then they were straight again. Maybe two hundred yards ahead was the green sedan, still hurtling down the road.

Rude wound his window down and stuck his torso out, the wind clawing at the skin of his face, gusting in his ears. Not for the first time, he was thankful for the glasses shielding his eyes. He set the rifle to his shoulder and squinted down the scope. Too far, especially with all this bumping.

"Closer!" he yelled.

They were gaining, the truck drinking up the distance to the sedan. A hundred and eighty yards. A hundred and fifty. With about fifty yards to go, Rude pulled himself up so he sat on top of the door, his feet on the seat. A pothole almost knocked him over the side, but he snatched at the roof to steady himself. Then he brought the gun up and put his eye to its scope.

There was no way he'd be able to keep the rifle steady. This shot would be all about timing. He'd have to pull the trigger exactly when the crosshairs drifted over the headrest of the sedan's passenger seat.

Rude sucked down air and held it clenched in his lungs. The roar of the truck, the wind in his ears, the cold plastic of the rifle's stock on his cheek; these things were stripped from his consciousness until the world was just the crosshairs and the back of the green sedan. He pulled the trigger.

The silenced gun coughed and the sedan's back windscreen shattered. Rude let his breath escape and ducked back inside the truck. He had a good feeling about the shot.

"You get him?" Reno shouted, eyes on the road.

"Think so," Rude said. "Only one way to be sure."

Reno nodded and grinned again, somehow managed to coax another burst of speed from the pickup's engine. Ahead of them, the sedan braked suddenly and they were engulfed in a wave of dust. Reno threw the truck into a skid and Rude jumped out before they'd even stopped, rolling on the ground to take the impact. Rubber was burning. He got to his feet and ran until he was clear of the dust cloud, saw a slim, dark-haired figure dashing between two old buildings. Rude ducked his head and sprinted after the guy, feet pounding the dirt.

The runner was fast. Too fast, Rude quickly realised. He wasn't gaining any ground. The figure only got smaller as he chased it through the heaps of debris, but he kept running as dark stains soaked into the edges of his vision, his heart rattled in his ribcage, the air he breathed started scratching his throat. He wasn't going to make it, he realised. He was failing.

Then a flash of red like the flaring of a match tore past, so quick it took Rude a second to realise who it was. Shit, Reno could run. Rude let the beat of his own feet slow and watched his colleague eat up the ground with those skinny legs of his. Soon he'd closed in on the figure, and then he pounced, taking both of them to the ground. By the time Rude pulled up Reno had the guy pinned, a knee on his back.

Except it wasn't a guy. It was a girl. She was Wuteng, in her mid-twenties, probably kind of pretty if her face wasn't twisted up yelling.
Reno was grinning sheepishly. "This ain't our guy, is it?" he said.

"No," Rude told him. "She's probably the driver." He was sure his shot had been on. Neuer was probably back in the car, slumped over the dashboard with blood weeping from a hole in the back of his head.

"What now?" Reno asked.

"Better take her back to the car," Rude said. "Make sure the target's dead."

They each grabbed one of the girl's arms and started hauling her back towards the road. She kicked and yelled, tried to bite them. Her hair clung to her face.

"Feisty," Reno said. "I like that."

Rude shrugged. "Crescent Unit."

When they got back to the truck, plumes of smoke were slithering out from under its hood.

"Think we pushed the old girl a little hard," Reno said.

"Yeah," Rude said. He wasn't surprised. "We got anything to tie her up with?"

The girl tried to bolt when Reno let her go but Rude snatched at her free arm and held it while Reno walked around the back of the truck and rummaged in its tray. His arm came up clutching a coil of rope. "We're in luck," he said.

Rude wound the rope around the girl's wrists and then her ankles, pulled it tight and tied the knots. Then he propped her against the side of their pickup. She glared at him and coughed up a gob of spit that landed just short of his feet, melted into the earth.

Rude just grunted. He turned and started walking back towards to the green sedan, about ten yards back up the road. The registration was right; it was definitely the vehicle they'd been told to look out for. It occurred to Rude that the girl might have been a decoy, allowing Neuer to escape while they were chasing her. He should have gone back to check the car, let Reno catch her. His gut was tight as he stepped up to the sedan, rubbed a gap in the dust coating its front windshield, bent to peer inside.

Neuer wasn't there, but his face was. They'd printed out a photograph of it, stuck it on the front of a big glass jar and made a body out of clothes stuffed with newspaper. Rude was pleased to see that his bullet had punched a perfect round hole in the headrest, shattered the jar. But what did this mean? Had the Crescent Unit got wind of what they were doing?

Reno's footsteps clattered up behind him. Rude turned and said, "It's not him."

Reno's jaw dropped and his brow fell into creases. "You mean we just shot some guy?" he asked.

Rude stepped back from the car and gestured at the windscreen, said, "Take a look."

As the redhead put his face up to the clean patch of glass, Rude wondered if he was the one who'd betrayed their plans. No, he couldn't be. Whoever planned this wanted the Turks to succeed; they wanted Rude to think he'd really killed Neuer. Reno's actions had made a mess of that, because now they knew their target was still out there somewhere. Rude was surprised to find himself feeling relieved when he figured that out. Was he starting to like the rookie? He had to admit, Reno was turning out to be pretty good in a tight spot.

The redhead straightened up and said, "Shit. What now?"

"We've got to talk to the girl," Rude said. "Target's probably leaving Midgar right now. We need to find out what route he's taking."
Reno nodded and together they walked back to the old pickup. The girl had fallen on her side and was squirming around, trying to get the rope loose. Rude pulled her up so she sat with her back resting on the truck, and stood over her, arms folded.

"Where's Neuer?" he asked.

"Fuck you," she replied.

He poked at her with his boot. "Where's Neuer?"

She just gazed off into the distance, her jaw clenched shut. Like he'd go away if she just ignored him.

Shit. This wasn't going well. Rude really didn't want to have to put the squeeze on her, but it looked like that was the only way he'd get the information they needed. Just thinking about doing it made him feel all slimy, though. His mother had always told him not to hurt girls.

He was trying to figure out what to do when Reno squatted down in front of the driver. She glared at him. He smiled, fished in his pocket for a cigarette, cupped his hands around the end to get it burning. "Look, honey. Our buddy Rude here, he's a nice guy. Real decent. The type you bring home to meet your mother. You know he doesn't want to hurt you. You don't have to tell him anything." He dragged deep on his cigarette, let the smoke wind out the sides of his mouth. "Me, though, I'm different. I ain't a nice guy. You don't tell me where this Neuer arsehole is, I'm going to hurt you real bad."

The girl didn't move, keeping her eyes fixed on the distance, but Rude thought he noticed her posture tighten a little.

Reno shrugged and pressed the glowing end of his cigarette to the driver's bound wrist. She tried to fight the pain but her face betrayed her. First her eyes started to water, then her lip quivered, and she cried out. Rude didn't like to watch but somehow he couldn't find the strength to shift his eyes away. He could smell roast pork. When Reno removed the cigarette there was an ugly pink circle on the girl's hand.

"Where's Neuer?" Reno said.

The girl stayed silent but she was crying now, her face all red and glistening, a sight that tugged at something in Rude's chest. She was probably older than he was, but the tears made her look like a little girl.

Reno put a hand inside his jacket. The girl's eyes went round and Rude caught his breath. Reno pulled out – a beer bottle. Rude's lungs emptied, and he almost laughed. He'd been expecting a pistol, or a knife or something.

Reno held the bottle in front of the girl's face and said, "You see this?" The instant she nodded, he smashed it on the side of the truck. The girl ducked, eyes squeezed shut, and shards of tobacco-brown glass showered down on her head. Reno was left holding only the neck and a jagged piece of the body that stuck out from it.

Rude felt a little sick, if he was honest.

"This fucking bottle has caused me a lot of problems, lately," Reno said. A length of ash slumped at the end of his cigarette, almost long enough to fall. "But now it's your turn. What's going to happen is, I'm going to cut you with this. Somewhere it really fucking hurts. Unless, honey, you want to tell me where Neuer is."

A tense silence fell, wound tighter by the girl's sobbing. "He's along Highway Three," she finally choked. "I don't know where. He's driving out towards Wutai. In – in a red car."

Shit. Rude did some quick math, realised Highway Three began half an hour's drive from their location. Reno was looking at him. He nodded, turned away and reaching into his jacket for his PHS. Then he speed-dialled Tseng.

Like always, his colleague answered on the first ring. "Rude."

"How fast can you get us a chopper?"

"What's your position?" Tseng asked.

"Along Highway Six. Corner of Aurelius Street."

"I'll be there in five minutes."

The line went dead. Rude snapped his phone shut and looked upwards. They were almost out from under the plate, and he could see steely clouds looming beyond its lip. Tseng was always as good as his word; they'd be seeing the chopper soon, a black dot on the grey sky.

"What's up?" Reno asked. The redhead was leaning on the pickup with his cigarette in his mouth. Rude was relieved to see that the broken bottle was gone, and the Crescent Unit driver was locked in their truck's cab.

"We're going after Neuer," Rude said. "Tseng's coming with the chopper in five."

"Good," Reno said, drawing out the word like he enjoyed the taste of it.

Silence settled over them. Rude stared at his colleague and tried to figure out what kind of a person he was really looking at. He was shocked by how casually Reno had tortured the girl from the Crescent Unit. The guy hadn't even flinched.

What really ate at Rude, though, was that he knew it had needed to be done. And he knew he didn't have the stomach to do it himself. Reno had saved him again.

"I didn't enjoy that, if that's what you're thinking," Reno said, meeting Rude's stare. "I ain't some kind of sicko."

Rude quickly dropped his gaze to his feet, kicked at a pebble. The dirt around here was a kind of washed-out brown. He hadn't thought he was so easy to read. "Were you really going to cut her?" he asked.

"Shit, I don't know. Maybe. If I had to."

Rude nodded. It was a good response. The kind of thing a Turk should say.

"A few cuts ain't all that bad. And like you said, we're saving lives."

"Yeah."

"We gotta complete the mission, no matter what. Right?"

"Yeah." He wanted to believe what Reno was saying, but something in his mind was stuck firm, wouldn't let him accept that hurting some poor tied-up girl could ever be okay. Squeamishness, that's all it was. He needed to harden up.

"I mean, what kind of Turk are you?" Reno asked, laughing.

Rude flicked his head up, eyebrows pushed down so they shadowed the top of his vision. That was hardly called for. Then he saw that Reno was grinning. Teasing. He flicked back his colleague's smile. "Least I didn't make you miss an vital shot," he said.

"Well, you got me to thank for that fucking ace car chase."

"True. That shit was right out of the movies."

"I almost couldn't believe it, man. When you were leaning out the window, with the gun, and I had my foot pressed right to the floor... Think I'm really starting to like this job."

"It grows on you."

Reno laughed but didn't follow up with anything. Rude used the empty air to say, "Thanks. For making her talk."

"Shit, you think we should move the truck out of the way?" Reno said, gesturing at the pickup. "I mean, it ain't exactly a busy stretch of road, but we're blocking it right up."

Rude planted his hands on the back of the truck's tray while Reno pushed from the driver-side door, where he could reach the steering wheel. At first the damn lump of iron only oozed along as they strained with every ounce of muscle, but then it pulled away and started rolling and Reno steered it so it squatted at the side of the road.

Rude slapped the dust off his suit, straightened his glasses. "So you were just hanging there, right?" he said. "Your finger in that bottle."

The drumming of helicopter blades sliced into their conversation. Rude looked up and could just make out the chopper against the sooty underside of the plate, dropping towards them. He realised that he didn't know what was going to happen next. They hadn't come up with a plan. But he looked over at his partner and felt pretty confident that, between them, they'd get it done.

"Come out for a beer, later," Reno said. "I'll tell you all about it."

Thanks for reading!