Okay, guys. For those of you who'll flame me for making Sayuri's relatives who I did, this is my FAN-fiction so if you don't like it, then don't read it anymore. If you ARE a fan of VinLu pairing, then by all means, read on! Now, enjoy and please R&R!!
--Fallen Angels & Lost SOLDIERs, Chapter 2: Sayuri Awakes --
Upon their arrival in Gongaga, the two Turks decided that Rude would check out the village and abandoned reactor while Reno took the surrounding landscape. Whoever found the laboratory first had to call the other before entering it, and then commence the search for Sayuri once the opposite partner was en-route to the location. Having reached this agreement, the two Turks separated.
"Ah, man! What am I supposed to find out here in the middle of nowhere, yo?" Reno grumbled, sitting on a rock while he took a cigarette break. Sighing, he decided to look for caves or some such and check them. However, the cave found him: as he took a few steps to the east of the rock, which was south of the actual village, the ground beneath him caved in to form a rapidly growing pit. "Oh, shit! A fucking sinkhole!" Reno thought as he fell into darkness.
As he fell, something struck the base of his skull, knocking him unconscious. When he awoke, he found himself lying on the floor of an extremely dusty hallway. :Yo! There must've been abandoned tunnels under Gongaga all this time and nobody knew about it!: Reno thought, a bit impressed. A soft sound, like that of machines humming, reached his ears and he followed it even as he called Rude. Examining the things he passed, he quickly realized this must be the abandoned lab center. :C'mon, c'mon. Rude, pick up your damn phone, yo!: Then he heard Rude's deep, "Rude here."
"Yeah, man. I think I found the lab, yo. There's this huge moss-covered rock to the south of the village and just a little east of that rock is a fresh sinkhole. I fell in," Here Rude could be heard trying to hide his laughter on the other end of the line. Reno grumbled about killing him later and continued, "and I'm in some kind of underground building that's got like ten inches of dust on everything, yo. Seriously, this place hasn't been used in at least a decade from the looks of it."
"Alright. I'm on my way; be careful man. She may not be the way she was the last time you saw her." Rude's word stung a bit, but Reno knew it was true and took the advice seriously.
"Yeah, I'll be careful, yo." Reno could practically see Rude smirk just from the sound of his chuckle. "Well, don't sound so cheerful of the fact that she might rip my throat out, cause that's cold, yo." With that, Reno hung up his phone and carefully picked his way past bones, broken pieces of metal and glass, and rubble to a door that had light under it. He assumed it had to be what he was looking for because the sound of machines was loudest here.
Reno was surprised to find that the door opened with only a small push of his palm. Much to his amazement, the room he found within was spotlessly clean and functioning at full tilt. "Whoa. Now here's a looker for ya. Not a hint of the mess outside, yo." Reno mused, absently running his fingers over a control panel. Walking along a row of Mako chambers and several cryo-chambers, he finally found what he was searching for. There she was, just as she had been when he'd last seen her: long reddish black hair, green eyes, and unbelievably beautiful. She was almost as tall as him at about five foot eight and fine boned with pale skin.
Reno smiled softly, pressing a hand against the glass of the chamber and then his forehead. "I've missed you…Sayuri." He whispered softly. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he started the process that would reverse the cryogenic induced hibernation. As the machines hissed and poured out steam, Reno rummaged through the various cabinets and drawers, looking for something that Sayuri could wear. He imagined that the clothes she was wearing, if she was even wearing anything, had probably shrunk a bit in seven years' time.
As he was looking, Rude arrived in the lab. "Reno, did you find her?" Reno simply walked over to the chamber Sayuri was sealed in as a series of beeps signaled that she could be safely removed from the confines of the small tube-like cell. As he opened the door, Sayuri would've collapsed onto the floor, but Rude quickly caught her. Between the two of them, the guys got the newer, baggy clothes onto Sayuri right over her old ones. Reno then carried her out to the helicopter, even though she was still out like a light and a pale blue tint still clung to her skin.
"Let's get her back to Junon and have a doctor take a look at her. Tseng will be glad to hear that's she's alive." Rude said as he and Reno made certain that she was safely strapped into the medical cot in the back of the helicopter. Reno shook his head as Rude motioned towards the pilot's chair, asking, "Aren't you gonna take your place as pilot?" Rude sighed and took over the controls while setting a course for Junon.
Three days later, in Healin
Reno and Rude had been shipped out to try and find Shelke, because the former Tsviet was the only person who might be able to tell them why Sayuri had DNA from both Dr. Lucrecia Crescent and Vincent Valentine. Hojo had told everyone that she was a genetically and bio-chemically engineered experiment and that she had no parents or family connections, so no one would miss her if she turned out to be a failure. But if the DNA from the blood tests was accurate, then that meant that she did have at least one living relative and that relative was her father. They wanted to double check this information, however, before they ruined anyone's day by making a huge mistake.
They had contacted Reeve and, through him, Yuffie. Yuffie had then contacted Vincent and he was bringing Shelke to meet them in Healin. Reno and Rude waited for nearly an hour after reaching the lodge, and Reno was starting to get impatient at being separated from Sayuri for too long. He'd lost her once and he didn't intend to lose her again if he had anything to do with it. It didn't matter to him that so far, she'd only been conscious and coherent for a total of four hours out of the seventy-two she'd been in Junon or that she didn't seem to recognize Rude or himself. He was going to take care of her no matter what because she had been his best friend, possibly even more than that, with the exclusion of Rude. Grumbling impatiently, Reno began to pace in irritation.
"Where the hell are they?! They were supposed to be here almost an hour ago!" Rude just shook his head and sighed. Quite suddenly, the sound of an airship approaching reached their ears, causing them to look up. Coming in fast and slightly too low was the Shera, Cid's newest airship.
"This cannot be a good sign…" Came from a slightly startled Rude as the ship landed. They were right: the first one off the ship was none other than Yuffie, followed more slowly by Vincent and Shelke, then the rest of the former AVALANCHE members and Reeve. "Oh, this is sooo not good!" Reno said, cursing under his breath. As Cloud was pulled from the ship by Tifa and Denzel.
"What're they doing here?" Reno grumbled to Vincent once the solitary man was within whispering range.
"'They' are on vacation." Came from a rather cross-sounding Barret.
"Fine! Whatever, let's just go! Shelke, Vincent, we need you to come with us." Reno's impatience to be back was quickly besting him. Shelke nodded and followed Rude back to the Turks' helicopter, but Vincent stood his ground.
"Is it true?" His question puzzled Reno as first, but after a moment it surprised him. Vincent saw his confusion, and repeated the question with added detail, "Is it true that Lucrecia had a daughter besides only having Sephiroth?" Reno nodded, ever so slowly and slightly that Vincent alone saw it before he turned away to take his place in the pilot's seat of the helicopter. Vincent stood paused for only a moment, then he climbed into the helicopter as well.
Back in Junon
A bright light tried to force its way through her eyelids, so she forced them tighter together. Everything hurt: her head, her limbs, her throat, and most of all her abdomen. She knew why everything hurt and fought against it. She'd been at peace in the cryo-chamber; there was no one to hurt you or bother you when you were in a frozen sleep. But she did miss some things back in the real world. She knew that he was there and that made her wake up and look around groggily.
"Where am I?" Her voice sounded raw and frail, which was pretty much how her throat felt. A nurse pushed aside a long curtain and even more light burned into her vision. She hissed and cringed away from the light: she'd gone seven years without it after all.
"I'm glad to see that you're awake." She knew that voice…she raised her eyes against the burning light and was shocked to see Rufus Shinra standing in the doorway to the room she was in, with Tseng not but a step behind him. "How're you feeling, Sayuri?"
He was older and he seemed different somehow…like he had more authority. Perhaps his father had retired and left him in charge of the company. Yes, that must be it. But what had become of Sephiroth? She knew that Angeal and Genesis had been MIA and thought dead when she locked herself in her mother's secret lab…but Sephiroth's death had still been unconfirmed. She looked at them with a hint of distrust. Suppose Sephiroth had come back to his senses and wanted to claim her again?
Well, she wouldn't have it! She'd learned that he was her half-brother while she slept, by having all of her mother's records from the lab's mainframe feed into her memory. Therefore, she knew all that her mother had known and seen fit to store into computer files in a secret laboratory in Gongaga. Sayuri had managed to escape from Sephiroth seven years ago and she had found the lab. She had then sealed herself inside it, killing all who entered to search for her for more than a month. After that first month, no one came, so she felt it would be safe to initiate a cryo-sleep on herself.
She was surprised that someone had found her. She vaguely remembered seeing Reno and Rude, but as they were not here that must have been a hallucination. They couldn't have been in the lab. She had used an earthquake to permanently hide it long ago. She did not trust Rufus simply because she could tell that he HAD changed from the teenager she'd known. Tseng she trusted only so far as she could throw him, which had been about twenty yards on a weak throw the last time she'd thrown him. And she had only gotten stronger since, but this didn't mean that she trusted the Turk any more than she had back then.
After all, someone who killed and kidnapped others for a living couldn't very well be fully trusted. Not unless the someone in question truly felt any kind of normal emotion in response to being issued the order: such as Reno's horror upon seeing the result's of her first mission as a Turk. She had completely slaughtered the target without mercy. She hadn't felt any compassion for the man, who had long since become more of a monster than a human being. He was one of Hojo's failed attempts at creating a super-SOLDIER from the DNA of herself and Genesis, so who better to dispose of the beast than it's "mother"?
He had been completely unable to think, acting purely on predatory instinct. Sayuri had ripped it's heart from it's chest while it was still beating and with the other hand she ripped out it's vocal cords so it couldn't scream. Hojo had been very impressed with her performance but she was disgusted by the stench of the pathetic creature's still twitching corpse and had tried to leave before Reno and Rude arrived to clean it up. She had not wanted Reno to see what she was truly capable of; the power of the monster that slept inside of her. She did not want any of them to know what she truly was, but especially not Reno. That's when she decided that she would talk only to Reno or Rude.
"Where is Reno?" Sayuri asked coldly, shoving aside the nurse who had been checking all of her vitals and such. The nurse gave an affronted huff and persisted in trying to take a second blood sample for testing. This irritated Sayuri so she simply picked the poor girl up with one hand. Turning to Rufus looking only slightly angry, she snarled at him. "I asked you where Reno was, Rufus! I shall not ask nicely again!"
Meanwhile, on the floor below, Reno and the others had finally gotten back and Sayuri could be heard clean through the thick floors and walls. Reno grinned and, when he looked at Rude, saw that his partner was chuckling. "She sounds fine, doesn't she?" Rude asked, a small grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Yeah, she sure does!" Reno said as he lead the way up to Sayuri's room.