Author's Note: These are my Christmas presents to the various friends I can't send mail to. They will be posted throughout Christmas day -- probably now, if you're reading this -- or all at once if I finish them all before then.

So, Merry Christmas, and enjoy your read.
.
.
.
Reno's Sack of Gifts 1
by Reno Spiegel
Dante@towernetwork.net
.
.
.
"...What are we doing?"

"...Casing the joint."

"...Reno, it's an orphanage."

And so it was. Elena and Reno, under the latter's command, had been sitting out here for half an hour in the snow. Luckily, there was no wind, because that would have made the cold completely intolerable.

Reno stood right outside of the orphanage, peering in through a dark window. He was squinting to hard his eyes were watering, and Elena looked bored. She yawned, glancing at her watch as it chimed out. Three AM. Snow fell all around them, with no wind to take it anywhere but down, and they still stood there like idiots in short-sleeved shirts.

Reno looked irritated, but didn't look at her. Instead, he looked for the awful-horrible-man-killing beast that was lurking deep within the confines of Mary Sue's Just-Like-Home Orphanage. Rude was scheduled to go in and play Santa Clause for the children later, as per request of Rufus. His way of sticking his finger in Midgar's eye and saying "nyah nyah" was making a trained assassin play Jolly Saint Nick.

Elena was really bored.

Suddenly, Reno jumped back and hunkered down. He looked frightened as he lifted his hand and pointed toward the window. "There's a Marlboro in there. It's got tons of eyes. Against the back wall."

Just to humour him, Elena looked inside. Indeed, there was a hideous beast against the back wall, baring its fangs as if poised to strike the children asleep on the floor. She almost reached for her gun.

Just to humour him some more.

"Reno, you priss, stand up. That's a glow-in-the-dark reprint of a painting."

The redhead didn't look convinced. "Oh, yeah? So which painting is it?" he snarled, easing back up and glancing inside with her.

"It's Starry Night by Van Gogh, and if you had your eyes on something aside from my ass half the time, you'd know the basic famous paintings, you dipshit." She growled right back at him, more in a mocking way that one of defiance. She glanced around, on all sides. No one was watching them yet. Then again, most people were asleep. "Are you okay now, Sir Marlboro?"

Her comrade looked dumbly at her. "I do NOT look at your ass." He looked ready to say something else, but he noticed she was looking a bit left of his head, then felt the tap on his shoulder.

Spinning too quickly, his mag-rod lifted from his leg and tapped the other man in the knee. It hit his knee only because the man behind him, in a Force -- Midgar called them police, but there was a group called the Junon Force that did essentially the same thing -- uniform, was a mammoth. He had a good six inches on Rude, who was the tallest person the two Turks knew, and was as wide as a small car.

Good thing his face seemed lenient. "My apologies, sir, but what are you doing?"

Elena was about to say "Casing the joint," then remembered they had no authority over the Force. Legrasse held all control on this continent. He and Robert B. ShinRa were old poker buddies, but they still didn't authorize each other's assassins to mouth off. "We're...err..."

The big man looked at her expectantly. These two had been in street clothes, because Turks were suspicious around three in the morning, so Reno's "GO SUCK A FUCK" shirt was a tip off. He tapped his thumb on his elbow, arms crossed.

Elena fumbled for something to say. Two very suspicious-looking, undercover Turks should have come prepared for this, but it had slipped her mind entirely. Something clicked, and she suddenly put on her best drunk's appearance and slung her arm around Reno's snow-covered. She looked around, as if choosing her words from a list. "Newlywedsssss. We found out the other day that my hushb... husbn..." She smacked Reno in the back of the head lazily. "Thus lug...he'sh not EQUIPPED well enffgh." Her head lolled back. "KnowhatImeen?"

Reno uncertainly returned the faulty embrace, looking sheepish for once. "Yeah, we just left the Launch Pad down the street. You know, the big bar. Wife's a bit of an alcoholic, but we were just looking in to see if there was any way we could see if one of 'em was right for us." He grinned.

The cop squinted, scrutinizing them, then smiled and nodded. "I understand, sir. Sorry to be a bother. You and your wife have a good time, now." He nodded again, turned, and walked away. Once he was around the corner, Reno cackled.

He did so because Elena had just punched him in the ear and forcefully removed his vice grip on her rear. "What's your problem, DEAR? You said it yourself, I'm HARMLESS. Shall we continue our date tomorrow night, or what?"

The blonde turned her lip up at him. "Fucking creep," she hissed. In a few minutes, she had settled down, Reno having gone back to the window. "Are we assured that there's no Chimera in there waiting to bite Rude's head off?"

The redhead took a moment of consideration, then nodded and walked over. They started back to the hotel rooms they had been provided with for this, each Turk with a separate one. The doors between Reno's, Rude's, and Tseng's were always open so they could yell at each other, but Elena had gotten one two rooms away from the third and locked her doors frequently.

Paranoia, Tseng called it.

In about twenty minutes, they were riding up to their floor in the elevator. No words had been exchanged since they'd left. Once they did reach the floor, Reno pulled out his card and slid it into the door. Before he could pull it out, however, Elena was in his face again.

"Faust."

His eyebrow rose. For a moment, he thought she was speaking in tongue, but then remember the Café Faust, owned by one of the lesser-respected businessmen -- he did a bunch of black market work -- was in town. The first, anyway; it was now a large chain. "What about it? You want us to whack the owner?"

"No," she said simply, a smirk taking over. She couldn't do this with a straight face. "The date you mentioned continuing. Seven tomorrow night, right after Rude gets done fucking his elves, you come back and pick me up. You owe me, Mister No-Look-All-Touch."

He had this dull expression on his face. "You're kidding." Her reply was in the negative. Then he smirked as well, taking the card out and opening the door. He stood there for a second, half-way in the room, and nodded. "Yeah, I suppose. By the way, I like the auto-lock doors here."

She looked confused. "Why's tha --"

Half a second later, Reno Drannor was in his room, chortling. Another second after that and Elena Simms was looking dumbstruck at the door. She wasn't quite sure if she should run to her room to wash the foreign taste of Reno's tongue out of her mouth or shoot at him through the door. She did neither, instead just turned with a strangely-calm look on her face, let the edge of her lips turn upward ever-so-slightly, and shook her head.

"Fucking creep only moves fast when he wants to."