Warnings in this chapter: Language

We do not own Final Fantasy, or 24, or the characters therein; this work is written for fun and not profit.

Jack = Mako Headrush

Reno = redheadturkey

Bright lights and sound, heat, and the searing pain of the flames. The slender body was flung backward, hitting a wall hard, the cracking sound of several ribs breaking buried under the other sounds associated with the explosion. Reno was not even sure how he had ended up in this Hell, last he remembered he'd been clearing out some equipment in Hojo's old lab in the ruins of the old ShinRa building, next thing he knew he was here, with the fire of an explosion going off around him, hitting a wall hard enough to send a fair amount of searing pain through him.

People were talking around him in a language he didn't understand, he'd come to rest a few feet from Paula, buried under some rubble, the only beacon of his presence being the brilliant red hair that even coated in dirt spoke of his being there, basically saying "here I am." to anyone who may find him. He hurt, pain pulsing through his body in time with his heart, which beat at a frantic pace from the adrenaline rushing through him. Reno had had a phobia of enclosed spaces and being pinned since he'd been very young, one he dealt quite well most of the time, but being in the middle of an explosion in a strange place with people he couldn't communicate with had just ramped it up to an insane degree.

The blue green eyes were wide as pie plates and frantic when rescuers located him, his defensive instincts causing him to fight the medics trying to treat him. He had no idea what was coming when Jack finally returned to CTU.

"Chloe, tell me what's happening," Jack said after he'd entered CTU's command central. "Got word that someone was brought in, possibly connected with that explosion - "

"Yes, Jack," Chloe said abruptly, cutting him off. "He's been fighting with everyone, including the paramedics, ever since he was brought in. Medical just told me he kicked the attending physician in the face - "

"Damn," Jack said, a bit admiringly. He studied the monitor at Chloe's workstation, a closed circuit camera monitoring the as-yet unidentified redhead. "What's his story, any ID on him, anything?"

"Not a thing," Chloe replied, smirking. "Oh, and he doesn't seem to understand English. Or, any other language we've tried. Either he doesn't understand what we're saying, or - he's just a dumbass." She handed Jack a dossier, and he nodded, thumbing through it briefly.

Jack smirked, and tucked the dossier under his arm as he headed toward the interrogation room. "Well, I speak a few languages myself. Don't worry, Chloe, I'll get him to talk."

Reno just stared at the man who came into the room, his face a mix of a sneer and other unreadable emotions. Inwardly he was thoroughly terrified but he wasn't about to show that. When Jack started talking, he just stared at him blankly, not understanding him at all. "Look, get the fucking point, I do not understand you! Asking me a shit ton of questions in a language I don't understand is not helping you or me! So either get someone in here who speaks Midgar Common, or shut the fuck up." He snarled, though the way he was breathing would tell Jack that there had been some internal injury when he'd hit the wall. He tossed his ShinRa ID at Jack, nothing was readable on it.

"I figure you're lookin' for ID first off, in your position it's what I'd be lookin' for, so there you are. I have no idea what the fuck happened, I just know I hurt, and your fucking medical personnel are dumbasses." the sound of his breath was wet, laboring, but the determination that was in those eyes spoke volumes. The language itself sounded much like Old Norse, which one of the other agents would notice when they had a chance. The guy was a linguist that specialized in old languages, but how much damage Jack would do between now and when it was realized that he could not understand them was anyone's guess.

He stared Jack down, though, courage and determination written across the fair skinned face, even through the sweat sheen that coated it.

Jack caught the laminated keycard flying through the air, and glanced at the indecipherable text. "Is this some kind of joke?" he snarled. Jack placed a foot on the seat of the chair, in between Reno's legs, the shoe pressing down upon the redhead's crotch.

"Talk," Jack ordered simply. "I don't think you need to know English to know what will happen here if you don't," Jack said, staring down at his foot, then staring up coldly at the defiant redhead. "I know five languages, so try me. Do you speak English?" Silence.

"¿Hablas español?" No answer. Try another one."Ty govoriš' po-russki? Da li govoriš srpski? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

"What the fuck," Jack muttered under his breath, frustrated. He saw the redhead grin at that, and rolled his eyes. "Well, you know that word, all right."

"Now look," Jack murmured, his patience starting to wear thing. "We can be here all damned day, I know quite a few languages, but I'm really not in the mood." He leaned down and grabbed Reno by the lapels, getting right in his face. "You had better," he hissed, "not be fucking with me."

Releasing Reno, Jack paced. "This is a waste of time," he muttered to himself, but decided to keep plugging. What next? Mandarin? Russian? He doesn't look like either nationality. Actually, he doesn't look like any particular nationality at all...

"Hal tatakallam al-lughah al-'arabīyah? Nǐ huìbúhuì jiǎng guóyŭ?" Still nothing.

"Nihongo o hanashimasu ka?" The last one, that got a reaction, as the redhead nodded at Jack. The agent pulled out his cell phone and dialed. "Chloe," he barked. "I need our best linguist up here, now."

"If you are fucking me over," Jack told Reno, "I'll find out soon enough."

It sounded a bit like Japanese to Jack, but the accent was stilted, strange. Still, Jack was shocked to hell when the redhead started speaking the strange dialect, and he was able to decipher some of the words. He stepped back, removing his foot from the redhead's crotch, and apologized. Funny...he looked like he was enjoying that...

As Reno spoke, Jack felt the words were coming too quickly, he couldn't understand what Reno was saying with how fast he was speaking. "Slow down a minute," Jack addressed him in Japanese. "Please, just speak a bit slower - I think I can understand some of what you just said. One of our language experts is coming up here shortly to see how I can communicate better with you."

Jack paced as he waited for the linguist to arrive, and turned back again to regard Reno. He had a familiar look to him, a hardened look of a man who had seen battle. Jack got an odd inkling that the man could be an agent like himself, or some type of law enforcement.

But probably not law enforcement with that hair, Jack thought, amused. Unless...he's undercover..

As Jack pulled his foot away, he'd notice Reno's hard-on, the man had a masochistic streak a mile wide, always had. He couldn't help the heavy- lidded look that he gave the man as the interpreter got up there. He finally began speaking again, looking at the man to translate, because he wanted to be clear in what he was saying, it was too much of a risk otherwise, and he had no intention of getting himself killed. His entire body ached, and Reno very much suspected he was going to pass out at some point, but he was determined not to do it yet, he was determined to stay awake and aware for the time being, to not let this man take advantage of him.

"Look, I don't know what's goin' on. I hurt, I'm havin' trouble breathin', and I don't know why the shit exploded. All I know is that if you stop tryin' to beat my ass I might could help. I've been doin' the same kind of shit you've been tryin' to with me since I was fifteen years old, that's eight years, I think I have enough experience to fucking help you out if you'll actually let me. Intel gathering, guns, explosives, hand to hand, you name it, I've been trained in it." his head lolls forward a moment, and he switches from Wutain to Midgar Common just because he's on the verge of passing out and trying to gather the words to say in a language that he isn't native to is becoming too difficult.

"Just. . .let me help." is all he said, as his eyes began to flutter closed, but he fought it. He was not letting himself lose consciousness until he was utterly certain hewas safe, that was all there was to it.

Jack wasn't fluent in Japanese the way he was with German and other languages, but he knew enough to speak passably, and was surprised to hear the detainee reveal that he was basically special ops, much like Jack himself. It intrigued him, to hear this foreign speak of things that were second nature to Jack.

Suddenly, the language changed, and the subject began speaking in a language that Jack thought sounded Scandinavian in nature. He shook his head and turned to the linguist, a questioning expression on his face.

"I can make out some of what he's saying here, yes," the linguist told Jack, as he replied to Reno. "It sounds like Old Norse...and what he just said, he's offering to help."

"Help us?" Jack repeated, a bit amazed. They'd beaten the hell out of this man - which was standard protocol for CTU, when taking in a hostile subject, and Reno had most definitely been hostile when he'd first been seized by CTU agents.

"I appreciate the offer," Jack said, speaking again in Japanese. "Thing is, I still don't know who you are, or where you're from...and I need to figure that out, before allowing you to assist CTU in any fashion. I hope you understand my position, here."

"Let's start over, then," Jack continued, pulling up a chair and sitting opposite the man. "What's your name?"

"Reno." the name came out easily enough. "No last name, we drop 'em when we get hired." He gave Jack the look that said he wanted to trust him, the one that said he wanted to but was not sure he could. He was beginning to lose consciousness, as much as he hated it, soon enough he would not be able to even help himself. Though once he had had enough healing to stay conscious he would do quite well, Jack would be able to tell how rugged the man was, even if he was slim and wiry in build. He was strong and enduring by his very nature, of course the single mako injection he'd had when he'd first been recruited helped immensely with that. He didn't realize he had a slow internal bleed, though, one that was slowly beginning to pull him into the darkness.

"Only reason I was so damn violent is I was kinda scared." he shrugged at that. He normally wouldn't admit to it so easily, but on the verge of losing consciousness as he was his guards were down somewhat. "As for where I'm from. .. place called Midgar, somehow I don't think you would have heard of it." It would of course strike a chord with someone who liked video games, as would the appearance of the one in question once he was cleaned up somewhat and not coated in blood and dirt. The hair would be a gleaming red once he was clean.

"Midgar...sounds familiar, but I can't remember where I've heard it before," Jack murmured in reply. When Reno told him he had no last name, it made Jack take pause for a moment; either this guy was a damned liar, and didn't want to reveal his real name, or he really was something along the lines of a special agent or Black Ops...in Midgar, wherever that was.

Jack sized up Reno, and could tell by just a cursory glance that the man was a scrapper, despite his slim build. He suspected the man had some sort of martial arts training, some sort of instinctual hunch told Jack that.

Despite this, Jack could tell that something was starting to go seriously wrong; Reno's face grew pale and sweaty, his breathing erratic. "Hey, hey," Jack called, as Reno's head lolled to the side. "Reno, you don't look good." Jack grabbed Reno's wrist and felt for a pulse; it was wild and erratic, something was definitely wrong. He quickly dialed Chloe again on his cell phone.

"Chloe," he said hoarsely into the phone. "Get a medic in here now, something's wrong with our guest."

As the medics came in, the first true sign of what had happened would become clear, a small trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. The shattered ribs had punctured a lung, which had begun slowly filling with blood, thus the erratic and rough breathing. He coughed, the injured lung trying to clear itself, more blood coming up when he did. His head rocked all the forward, though he gamely clung to awareness with all of his might. "I dun feel so good either." were his final words before he couldn't speak. There would be more questions later, and as the rest of the plot fell into place and it became apparent just how bad things were, he'd end up being taken along for the ride, one of them or not he'd have to help just to survive.

The thing that had allowed him to stay conscious so long is that he'd been sitting up, keeping the lung from socking in as quickly as it would have if he'd been on his back. He'd recover fine now that it had been discovered, he was as tough as the one who'd found him, but if it hadn't been caught things could have been much more complicated. He gave Jack a death's head grin as the darkness rose up around his mind and swallowed him whole.

Jack looked at the unconscious body with some concern, as medical rushed into the interrogation room, and wheeled Reno away. He was their only witness to the explosion, so Jack knew the importance of keeping this man alive, until he could speak with him again.

There was something else to it, however; Jack felt some admiration for the man of course. He'd taken down five CTU agents single-handed, before his injuries from the explosion had gotten the best of him, and he'd collapsed. Jack was starting to believe that Reno was who he said he was, despite his initial doubts.

Turning his attention back toward CTU's linguist, Jack pulled up a chair, facing the man. "So tell me...where is this guy from?" Jack began. "Because that language he was speaking - I presume it's his native language - I've never heard anything like it, not in any country I've ever been to."

"He may be telling the truth, as odd as that might sound." The linguist shook his head, his expression confused. "I mean, what he was speaking sounded a lot like Old Norse, but it the grammar and accent were very unusual. I could understand him, but I had to mentally fix the word placement to do it." he gave Jack one of those serious looks. "He may have seen something that could help us solve this, even though I somehow think he didn't personally have anything to do with this." He was also thinking to himself that the name Midgar sounded very familiar, but he wasn't sure why, not yet. "We should probably go and wait until he's out of surgery, once he's conscious he'll be the only one who might have the information we need."

The drive to the hospital was quiet, really, as the man thought to himself, trying to figure out where he'd heard it. When he figured it out he'd be kicking himself, and he knew it, and Chloe would likely laugh at him. She had always had a strange ability to find data on the most obscure things, and those obscure things often helped solve cases. Even if you'd never think that they would. As they got out, and walked into the hospital, he couldn't help but think about the way he'd seen Jack look at the redhead. It was an expression he hadn't seen on his face since Teri, and he wanted to call him on it, but he was smart enough to leave it alone.

As Jack drove along, driving himself and the linguist to the hospital - hoping to try and talk to Reno once he was out of surgery, he decided to contact Chloe again to have her do some research on this Midgar place... He shook his head, just wondering where in the hell he'd heard the name before. He punched the familiar number and extension into his cell phone and waited for her to answer.

"Chloe," he said shortly. "We're on our way to the hospital, hoping to talk to this guy once he's out of surgery." Jack felt his stomach do a flip; what if Reno didn't make it out of surgery? They'd be screwed, he realized; for one thing, he was their only viable witness to everything. Adding to that, Jack felt oddly concerned about the man. He supposed he felt badly for him, after determining the man wasn't a threat. Of course, that hadn't been until after several CTU agents had beaten the hell out of him.

"I need you to research a place called Midgar," Jack told Chloe on the phone. "I've never heard of it, though the name does sound oddly familiar...I just can't place it."