Guest - I actually read Turks: The Kids are Alright. I wasn't very impressed by the text, but they're canon so they'll show up. I've taken artistic liberty to, um, change Reno from the comic relief into something a little darker. I think he's enough of a comedian as we see him in the movie, and besides, he's supposed to be one mean, evil bastard who drops a plate on an eighth of a city population.

Echo the Ethereal Swordmaster - I decided to start posting before finishing the writing, because otherwise I'd just dawdle and never get this posted... or finished. The outline's done - supposedly - and it just needs fleshing out, but Reno especially has a bad habit of running in a completely different direction from what I intended. So who knows where he'll end up.

Chapter 1: Reboot


Renaldo Miller, age 26, had a fairly tumultuous life. That is not to say he had a bad life; but he had far too many incidents to just brush it off as 'normal', not to mention the fact that he pretty much had everything normal people would want, but not quite anything that normal people had. He had naturally accepted this as the way of life, but his life had determinedly become more eventful after his 'mate', Arien DeVir, had entered his life in earnest. Of course, it was likely that it wasn't anything about them that triggered the recent chain of events that nearly destroyed the world, but still, it was nice to have some peace at last, and he was enjoying it. Being a member of the Investigation Sector, colloquially known as Turks, didn't lead to a very peaceful lifestyle. He hadn't joined by his own volition; he had been recruited, forcibly, without choice. 'Our way or highway' was the choice offered to him, which wasn't much of a choice at all, especially because the 'highway' meant the highway to hell. But that was how the sector operated, and he quickly figured that offering the choice was far better than being offered it.

Right at this moment, the redheaded rogue was doing some minor carpentry; it was technically just pieces to be put together, but it was still a chore, and so he sat, cross-legged, with a hammer in his hand. The new speakers that sat on the floor were blaring out the music, a heavy percussion and power chords. It had been one of the few CDs Reno had rescued from Arien's shelf. The speakers were new, and Arien had demanded for shelves if he was going to get speakers. He wasn't about to get her angry over something as trivial as that. He wasn't too keen on the actual task, but it was either building the shelves or working the cables out, and the cables resembled a woman's very tangled hair rather than any sort of a sensible system. So he had traded off the cables for the shelves, and now Arien was sitting on the floor a little away from him, trying to make the tangles into some sort of a manageable bundle.

Arien herself was trying to figure out how to link the speaker and player system to the computer without buying more parts. Reno had quite a few more shelving units to build; after he had unceremoniously moved into her new apartment, a few adjustments had to be made, and now that things were scarce, it wasn't as easy as before. She sort of missed the old apartment they had lived in, with every comfort money could afford, but she realised that her sister had probably slept in her bed. Which made her a little glad the apartment was not much more than a pile of rubble. Her sister had tried to steal her life and then use that as some sort of a jumping board to get into Rufus Shinra's good graces and possibly get hitched with him. That plan had the merry bonus of Arien getting kidnapped and tortured, plus the little yummy side dish of a smuggling operation and her friends getting fired.

Speaking of…

"Hey, Reno?" she asked without looking up. "Did you… um."

"Hang on a sec." He banged the nails into the back board. "What?" He looked up at her, but saw that her eyes were glued onto the chaos in her hands. Which was a dead giveaway that she was going to ask a question he didn't want to hear and she didn't want to know. Or, at least, that was what she thought.

"What?" he repeated. "C'mon. You started a sentence. Finish it."

She finally looked up, put the cords into her lap. "Did you sleep with my sister?" she asked quietly.

"I er, what?"

"Did you sleep with my sister?" her eyes were dark. "You can tell me. I won't get mad."

"Really?"

"I won't."

"Um, okay then." He then grinned. "I never did. I actually noticed something was off when I tried."

Arien, who clearly was waiting for an apologetic, guilty yes, stared at him incredulously. "You didn't?" she repeated. "Huh. You noticed when you tried to sleep with her? How?"

He shrugged. "I wasn't going to say anything, but our sex ain't really on normal people's menu-"

"Okay, it can get a little off the hook, but it's nothing crazy."

"Well, that's what I thought, but apparently getting tied up and choked isn't what normal girls think of as a romantic night." Reno began to laugh. "And ef-wy-aye, I've only had that kind of sex with you. So when your darling sis started crying and asking why I was being so cruel, I noticed something was a bit off." He paused, then said, "did you?"

"Did I sleep with my sister?" Arien looked at him as if he was crazy.

"No, I meant, did you sleep with anyone while we were, you know…" His red mane looked a shade darker in the room, and so did his eyes, but maybe that was just the cast of his expression. His face was beautiful, with his slanted aquamarine eyes, his smallish mouth straight - an oddly serious expression on his face - and his gently sloping nose, a cigarette between his lips. The mouth that she had kissed so many times, and had expected to never touch again. The cup of coffee he was drinking from was on the coffee table he was sitting next to. Reno at least tried anything that was bad for him, for not much more than 'it's there to try'. The only thing he hadn't tried, it appeared, was whoring, both as a customer and a seller. Reno could pass off as a woman, if he so desired; there was handsome and then there was beautiful, and for whatever luck, Renaldo Miller happened to fall in the latter category most of the time. If he looked a little less aggressive - not the loud kind, but the quiet one of a killer - he would have almost looked effeminate.

Not that this fact stopped any of the female employees or her sister to stop dreaming about a romantic and sexual evening with the redhead. Ignorance was definitely bliss.

Oh well.

"I had to honey-trap," she said a little reluctantly. Reno's left eyebrow shot up at that. "After Mayor Domino was shot, the aerial got a little tense and I had to do a more close-range. Don't worry," she hastily added, "it was half a lap dance."

"But you still gave the bastard a lap dance."

"I had to." She picked up the tangled cables again. "What? Are you telling me that you never did a honey trap?"

Reno raised an eyebrow, but Arien wasn't watching him and so she didn't notice. "Nope. I don't sell my-" he stopped his sentence. "Well, there was this time a few months ago when I did sleep with a coworker, but it wasn't part of the job. The sector hates that kinda thing. And she got me into a shitload of trouble."

Bang bang, said the hammer as Reno nailed in two more. Arien did not take the bait, and returned to her work. Reno glanced at her; their relationship had been a rollercoaster ride that included kidnapping, deception, torture, and near-death experiences on both sides that left both in despair over each other. Even after the Meteor incident, it took all their friends to reunite them. Arien was ever expressionless, but it was a little weird to see her sitting in the same room as him, as if nothing had happened.

Of course, miracles happened, and their friends were well aware of it. Ivanna Flescher, nee Delassi, had married her then-boyfriend Zen as soon as things had calmed down. Shivvalan Belvedere had caved in and confessed his feelings for Felicita Turnley, who gladly returned his affections. Life-threatening experiences apparently made for excellent romantic moments. Except them, of course. Romance was a foreign concept; they needed each other, just like one needed oxygen and salt to survive. Now to come and think of it, their relationship had been odd to say the least; they had skipped all the fluffy tango time and had gone straight to the messy part of a committed relationship. They hadn't even begun in a normal manner; he had initially thought of her as a pain in the ass and she had viewed him as the biggest trouble in the building, with a capital T and in bold print. Had Tseng not relocated her to his apartment building - he had a good feeling he knew why, and it certainly wasn't to give him a girlfriend - they would have fought like a cat and a dog. Arien was complicated, and it had taken him a while to figure out that her initial aloofness and defensiveness to him was just a flip side of attraction. Even then, it had taken him a little more than what he had expected to get her… and when he had realised, the hunter had become the hunted as well, and that had gotten both of them into deep, deep trouble in the end. That had nearly cost Arien her life and Reno his sanity.

Well, it was all over now…

Reno glanced at her again. The sun streamed through the window, hitting her face just right, giving her the faint shadows the turned her face into a gentle mask as she concentrated on the wires. She kept blowing a strand of her hair away as she bent her head, her fingers working. He continued to watch, and Arien finally noticed. "What?" she asked.

"Nothing." He shook his head. "Just that…" a pregnant pause. "I've never seen you like this."

She put the bundle down in her lap. "Like what?"

"Calm?" He struggled to look through his somewhat limited vocabulary. "Peaceful." He shook his head. "I didn't really imagine to see you like this."

She shrugged. "We'd been busy."

Well, there was that. Reno reached for his coffee, and took a swallow. It was getting lukewarm, and with the heat, the fragrant aroma was escaping, disappearing into the warm air. He was dressed in a T shirt, sitting on the floor, and jeans. Arien said his clothes still smelled of the cologne he had used, although that bottle was gone, along with all the other possessions, in a pile of rubble. Maybe the fragrance had sunk into his pores and he'd smell that way the rest of his life. He didn't mind. It made his girlfriend extremely affectionate.

He finished the coffee, and placed the mug on the table. Arien still had her tea in little teacups and saucers - where did she get them, anyway? - but he wasn't that fussy about his beverages. And despite what she claimed, he still couldn't tell the taste difference between tea served in teacups and tea served in mugs. He wasn't much of a tea drinker anyway.

The track changed to an upbeat jazz, the beat thrumming through the speakers, and Reno bobbed his head as he worked. The phone rang, breaking through the track and jolting them awake from the silence as Reno put down the hammer and crawled over, then stood up and padded into the kitchen to get the phone. Arien paid little attention as she yanked the plastic-wrapped cable through the loop. She decided it must be a telemarketer, since he began his barrage of insults as he usually did with the poor telephone operators, sarcastically saying "what, you're selling your mother? Well, too bad, no one wants to screw a shaved boundfat" and cussing the poor caller out. But to her dismay, he choked on his words right after that, and then sounded confused. Just who was the caller?

The mystery was soon solved when Reno came back from the kitchen and proffered the telephone at her, as if it was a bomb about to detonate. She took it. "Who?" she mouthed.

"Your dad."

"Oh. Erm." She pressed the phone to her ear as she migrated away from the redhead. "Hello, Father."

"Was that young gentleman who asked me if I was selling your grandmother your paramour?" said her father in a collected voice. Argh. So much for her hope; Reno couldn't start from a worse footing even if he tried. Also, paramour sounded so illicit. She decided to tell her father off. "Paramour sounds illicit," she complained. "He might be illicit in every way and which way, but it's not like either of us are married."

"Are you quite so certain?"

"Father, it's not a honey trap. Unless he's really, really bad at it."

Reno yelled "I heard that!", and Myers DeVir chuckled.

"So, how are you?" he asked. "You did not contact me for a while. I was rather concerned."

"I've been busy," she said, while trying to think what to tell her own parent. The truth was, it had been nine months since she had woken up, seven or so since Reno had moved in, but Rufus wasn't giving them much time to settle in, which had made her lose track of time. She decided to go for the half-truth. "We're still settling in, Father, and I'm in rehab." Not a lie - Tseng had put her on a semi-probation, not really assigning her to missions that required stamina and strength. This left her babysitting Rufus most of the time, but the president didn't seem too keen to test his mettle out and cause her too much problems these days. Whatever the reason, Arien was usually just doing deskwork, which was fine with her. She had been a paper-pusher half the time in the Intelligence anyway. Corporations seemed to have an excessive preference to bureaucracy. She was fairly certain that if allowed, Shinra would have made its employees fill out five forms to use the toilet. And then make them do a write-up afterwards. Control to them meant drowning everyone in red tape.

"And are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Recovered." Her father still sounded a little irritated when she didn't understand his question straight away. But how was she supposed to know what others meant? She didn't have any psychic powers. She decided to let it go, and answered his question instead, but it wasn't as if her frustration would dissipate, as Reno had noticed when Arien picked up a combat knife on the counter - she had migrated to the kitchen, and his knife had been on the kitchen counter for no discernible reason - and she threw it at the wall. Reno ducked, knowing that it'll never hit him anyway. The knife went into the dart board up on the wall with a thunk.

"Yes, Father. Did you just call to check up on me?" She had given him her number in case of emergencies, but this did not sound like an emergency call. Unless…

Well, there was that. Arien hoped to every god that may or may not exist that her father wouldn't know. She knew it was her responsibility to tell him, but she just couldn't. During their assault on the Shinra Tower, Arien had been forced to kill her twin sister. A part of her didn't regret it whatsoever - their sibling rivalry had turned bitter many years ago, so much so that in the end there was nothing but hatred between them - but she also understood that for Myers, they were both his beloved daughters, and that he loved his daughters dearly. How on earth was she supposed to tell him what she had done? Her dreams were plagued with her sister's dead face, and it had fallen to her bedpartner to wake her up when she tossed and turned, her sleep disturbed by her guilt.

Fortunately, he made no mention of it, if he knew. "I wanted to tell you that I'm visiting Midgar," her father said. "Partly business-"

"Father, are you back to spying again?" Myers DeVir had been a former Shinra Intelligence member; it was some odd twist of fate that his daughter had ended up working in the same place the father had, many years before. Her former superior, Jane Whistler, had been Myers' friend, coworker, and a rival.

Myers chuckled again. "I am a bit too old for excitement, daughter. No, just to see some old friends and business associates. I wanted to see you and meet your partner."

The world stopped for a second as her brain tried to register what her father had just said. "Hang on. You want to meet Reno?!"

"Why do you sound so panicked?"

"Because… because…" Why did she panic? There had been no reason to, was there? But she knew why; Reno would definitely try to wiggle out of it. She had a budding suspicion that while Reno reputedly had a rather colourful sexual past, he hadn't done the normal courting ritual such as 'meeting the parents'. She'd have to make sure he won't run away. Was locking him up in a wardrobe until the date a viable option?

The conversation ended rather abruptly after that, and Arien went back, trying to figure out the way to best break the news. Reno was setting the shelf upright, seeing if it held any weight, but he looked up cheerfully as she sat down, then frowned when she didn't get back to her task. "Nice chat?" he asked, his tone light.

"Er." She had no idea how to continue. "Sort of?"

"What does that mean, 'sort of'?"

"Well, he's coming to Midgar."

"Cool beans."

"And he wants to meet you."

"That's grea- wait a minute. What?!"

"Hence my response, 'sort of'." She stretched. "And no, you can't make a run for it. He'll yell at me and then hunt you down, and he'll be suspicious. Buck up."

"He's gonna kill me, ain't he?"

"I doubt it." Her arms had cramped; she'd been leaning onto her arms for too long, and she illogically blamed her father for it. "Why? Did you do something to deserve it?"

"I know what your dad'll be thinkin', and it's nothin' good. I'm the fuck-up who's screwing his darling daughter-"

"Hey! First off, that's my boyfriend you're talking about, and second, the daughter actually likes the said fuck-up."

"-and the father's Myers DeVir! I am so, so screwed."

Arien was about to retort, then stopped. She reviewed the conversation quickly, and identified what had bothered her. "Wait," she said. "You know my father?"

"Oh, come on. Even I've heard of Myers DeVir, and your dad was before my time. DeVir, Whistler and Valentine, the star trio from the Intelligence. 'Course, they were all candidates to join the Turks and Valentine won out, but still." He groaned. "Damn it, I should have noticed when I saw your surname. Why did I have to sleep with DeVir's daughter?"

"I have no idea. You ask yourself." She looked at him, found his face beautiful - she wondered just how much of her affections stemmed from his face - as he scrunched his eyes shut. The gentle slope of the nose, the slanted eyes, the cynical smile just hovering in the corner of his mouth… Reno was dangerous, he looked dangerous, but some dangers had inherent beauty, and he was one of them. It pleased her to know that she was the only one who had seen the raw, fleshy side of him under the cynical facade, not knowing that he felt just the same for her, a sense of exclusivity that made one feel special. He was the most humane of them all, and that seeped out, even as he scrabbled to cover it up. And that made him even dearer. He was an assassin, but for some reason he had retained his childish innocence - not purity, but innocence - that made him into a little bundle of opposites that manifested in twisted ways.

But wasn't everyone in the sector screwed up in one way or another?

She belatedly blinked at what Reno said. "Wait, Valentine?" she said. "Valentine, as in, Vincent Valentine?"

"Yeah. Didn't you know?"

She shook her head. Her father never talked about the work he did, and she had heard about Jane Whistler and her father's friendship after she had joined the Intelligence. He had been a stern father to her, but a good one; a caring father who was concerned for his daughters, and was well aware of the dangers of knowing too much. Now that she knew how the Intelligence worked, she appreciated his silence, and his concern for her.

Of course, those sentiments were blown away to bits as soon as Reno opened his mouth again. "Hey," he said with a Cheshire grin, "do I get to watch your dad spank you?"

She started. "My father did not spank me," she huffed.

"Too bad then. Will he watch me spank you? 'Cause that's kinda weird…"

"You want to spank me?" But then she raised an eyebrow mischievously. "Well, I'd have to do something bad first, don't I, for you to punish me?"

Reno answered that he could think of plenty of things that she had done which would qualify as bad - most of them so minor and inconsequential that she didn't really think it'd qualify as bad - and she forgot her worries over her father as Reno went on and on about her infractions. But she wondered what other secrets her father had, and whether it would come back to haunt her in the years to come.