A/N: So, pertaining to the aforementioned 'schedule,' I've failed spectacularly. Eh. My AP classes are entirely culpable, I assure you.

Bulletproof Diary

Entry III.

Oh No.

I swallowed long and hard in the echoing silence. Everything was still and tense. Quiet. Except for the slamming of car doors and the pounding of booted feet. Shinra was on our doorstep, guns cocked and loaded, ready to break down the freaking door. The sirens were still loud in my ears, the hoarse shouts like a faint buzz somewhere in the back of my head. I wasn't really hearing any of it.

Something was wrong. No, all of this was. Shinra shouldn't have been able to find us. We didn't put up a billboard; the Turks kept our heads low and our voices quiet when we weren't doing what we did best. There weren't any flashy neon lights or white rabbits with pocket watches or…or…or any shit like that at all.

So there was the problem there of how, exactly, the bastards had found us.

I looked at Tseng, whose eyes were narrowed and calculating, his ponytail swishing behind him like a whip as he called everyone to his side, and saw that he was thinking the same thing:

Someone had ratted us out.

"Dammit," I muttered. "I knew we should've changed bases." Tseng gave me a small nod of his head. For once, we were in agreement over something.

Yeah, we were definitely screwed.

"Listen up." Tseng pushed himself off from his perch against the beam and eyed the circle of Turks surrounding him. His eyes flickered over every face, locked gazes with all of them. "As you've probably assessed, we aren't in the best position."

I felt Laney give my arm a squeeze and looked down. Her lips were pale, trembling. I wondered who she feared for more: herself or Tseng.

Tseng kept talking, kept grinding out the empty words like some lifeless machine. He was good at that; he was good at keeping every emotion he had in check, tucked neatly under the mask.

"The Shinra Law Enforcement Department is out there. I won't pretend we can kill them all. From my estimate, we're outnumbered"—he paused, listened to the wailing sirens just outside—"three to one. This isn't a restraining operation; they have every intention to kill us. I don't know how they found us, but—"

"Cut the crap." I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets and licked my lips. "Stop pretending, Tseng. We all know why they're here." I turned my eyes on the crowd of them—ten, maybe twelve, at the most—and waited for one of them to flinch.

"Someone in here told 'em where to find us. One of our own is a snitch."

A few of them traded nervous glances, shifted uneasily. "Whoa. Whoa. Wait." One of the taller ones, Garret, I think, held up his burly hands and scratched the gruff on his chin. The tousled brown hair on his head and the cigarette between his lips swayed a little as he shook his head.

"That's crazy talk, Reno. You're saying one of us pointed them here? No one here would ever do that. We want above the Plate, but not with Shinra's help. They're the ones who did this, who screwed up the world. All of us wanna kill them."

Garret. He was a good guy, and a hell of a fighter. I'd seen him put those brass knuckles of his to good use. He'd killed a lot of people. So he shouldn't have been so damn stupid and blind.

"Shut up, Garret." I didn't mean for it to come out so harsh, but it did. "You're too old to believe in that whole 'goodness and innocence' bull. Not everyone has a moral code. Not everyone gives a damn about loyalty. Some people'll do whatever it takes to get what they want."

He flinched. "Sorry, Reno," he muttered.

Tseng rubbed at his temples. "Squabbling isn't going to solve anything. Our first priority should be escaping. We'll deal with the rest—"

"So we're going to run?" The voice, female, piqued up from somewhere in the back. Its owner pushed her way to the front, shoved everyone else aside. Her copper eyes were squinted, disbelieving, and her shoulder-length grey hair looked a little limp from the hot air. Elle.

"We can't just fucking run, Tseng! This is our stomping ground! We should stay here and fight for it!"

Tseng's eyebrow twitched. "Elle."

"I'm not afraid! I'm no damn coward!"

"Elle."

"And besides—we can't leave all the mako! All our hard work will just be wasted. I won't let Shinra take something else from me, I won't. I'll kill them all if you're too afraid—"

"Elle."

I could see the change in Tseng's posture now. His face was still the same, his voice still even, but his shoulders were tensed. His hands were clasped behind his back—all business. I think Elle noticed it too, because she shut her mouth and threw someone in the crowd a nervous glance.

"We're not staying for your pride, Elle. Shinra has plenty of mako; we can always steal more. But your lives aren't as easily replaceable. I won't allow you to die in vain."

"I never meant—"

"That's exactly what you meant. You want us to stay here, hold out a base that has already been compromised, fighting over mako that we can always get back. You want us to bleed for what we've earned. You want us to die fighting, die heroically. But we aren't heroes, Elle; this isn't a story."

"But I didn't say—"

"Why do you want us to stay here, Elle?" Tseng started pacing around her, his eyes narrowed and shrewd. "Do you want us to wait here for Shinra? Wait for them to find and kill us all?"

Elle shook her head frantically. "Of course n—"

"Are you the spy?"

And then she turned as white as a ghost; pale, like someone'd just dug her grave. I guess she had a reason to. Here was Tseng, staring her down intensely, eyes burning like black coals against the white of his skin. Maybe she realized something. Maybe she realized that this was the face Tseng showed to the poor bastards who had to die right before he killed them. Maybe she was remembering that Tseng had come from Wutai, and had seen and done more messed up shit than she could dream of. Maybe she was remembering that Tseng was a man who could bring down the whole damn world around him and burn it to the ground if he wanted to. And he was fixing her with his burning eyes.

Elle wiped the cold sweat from her lips.

"Tseng. Tseng. No. Gaia, no. You know how loyal I am to the Turks. You know I'd never, ever—"

"COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!"

I sucked my teeth. The bastards. Talking about us like we were common criminals.

Tseng didn't seem to hear it. He was still staring at Elle, eyes boring right into her skull. I don't know what she saw in them, but it must've been pretty bad: she started shaking.

Tseng cocked his head to the side, flashed his eyes over me before they settled on Vincent. I still saw a flicker of whatever he'd shown Elle, but it was fading, sinking back into the cool shady depths of his charade. Vincent nodded at him; he nodded back.

"Rin, Elle—go to the storage room and guard the back door. That will be our way out." He said it without ever looking at them. And then, before Elle could stagger off crazed with fear, he put a hand on her shoulder and told her, "I'm sorry for doubting you. But I had to be sure."

She nodded dully, seemed to relax a little at his words. And then she walked off into the crowd, Rin—squared-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, jagged scar running down his face—followed. His black sheath was already in his hands.

Running. We were going to run just like the cockroaches they said we were. I didn't like it any better than Tseng did, but I knew we couldn't beat Shinra—not like this. I fumbled in my pocket for the small, measly pistol Benjy had left behind. The metal was cold in my fingers as I turned it over and over. A few shots. That was all it would take to kill one of them—and have five of us killed in the meantime.

The snitch. I'd kill the bastard myself.

"Reno."

Rude clamped a hand on my shoulder. I hadn't been paying attention; nearly everyone else had left. It was just the two of us in that room, and I could already see Vincent's back disappearing through the storage room door. I offered Rude a smile—I wasn't sure how bitter it looked because he pulled his eyebrows together—and followed.

It was funny. We'd spent so long fighting for all this mako stacked in glowing boxes around us, and now we were just going to turn out backs and leave it all behind. I could tell Elle was thinking the same thing; the longing was written all over her face. She bit her lip, looked down. Her knuckles made popping sounds as she cracked them.

"This is it." Tseng was pacing in front of the rusty door, his eyes running over every face in the crowd. "From here, we'll scatter into individual pairs and keep low for the next few days until Shinra gives up the chase. I'll contact you when the time's right so that we can rendezvous." He narrowed his gaze a bit, like it would help point out which one of us was the snitch. "Until then, stay wary of your partners. Now move out."

And then he turned and pushed the door open, Laney gripping her handgun tightly right beside him. The hinges creaked, the stank air ruffled a few hairs; the smell of rust and metal filled my nose—and just like that, they were gone, off into the shadows of the slums.

Garret and Elle were next. Everyone filed out the door after that, slipping out into the back alley as quickly as they could. Somewhere in the crowd, I saw Knives wave at me, throw me a confident smile. I wonder if the one I gave her back looked as nice.

Vincent's steps seemed louder, somehow, as he walked toward the door, and the air around Rude felt heavier. Because this was real; this was everything we'd fought and killed and bled and died for, and just like every-fucking-thing else, Shinra was gonna take it—

Rude tensed. Before I could even figure out what the hell was happening, he tackled me to the ground and sent me flying across the floor to the far wall of the room, Vincent shouting something as Rude flung him along—the glass windows were shattering over their heads.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I put it all together: the lights blazing outside, the shouts, the broken bits of glass raining down on us like sparkling rain. Somewhere in my head, I put two and two together:

A crowd of guns was blazing.

"Shit, shit, shit." It seemed like the perfect thing to say when there was bloody glass under your fingernails and a big bald guy on top of you. "Rude, get off of me. Don't you hear that?" I tried to shove him, but he wouldn't budge. "You bald bastard, get the fuck—"

Screaming. Laney was screaming.

"RUDE!" I slammed Benjy's pistol into his side and he let out a grunt of pain as I pushed him off of me. I didn't know what the hell was wrong with Vincent—the idiot was just staring off into space, like he couldn't believe it, or like he was waiting for something else to prove that it was all real.

Rude grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back down. The glass crunched under my shoes as I tried to kick him off. "What're you doing, Rude? That's Laney out there! Laney's screaming her heart out and you're just gonna let her fucking die? I'll kill you, I'll kill you myself if you're the rat who—"

Someone pulled a trigger. Laney stopped screaming.

"You...you bastard." My feet gave out under me as Rude yanked me back to the ground and kept me there. "You let her die. She was like a little sister to us and you just let her die—"

"I didn't," Rude panted. His lip was swelling, and a thin trickle of blood was running down his forehead. "I didn't," he huffed again. "I didn't let her die, Reno. You heard the shooting out there. Shinra was waiting for us. The snitch...They already knew...You wouldn't have been able to stop them—"

"I don't fucking care!" But I did. Rude had just saved my life. He'd stopped me from walking out into a hail of gunfire. But I was still angry—still heartbroken. Because what about Laney? What about Tseng and Knives and Garret and Elle? What about the others? What couldn't he have saved them, too?

I wiped the blood from my lips. I was still angry, and if I couldn't be mad at Rude I'd take it out on someone else. And Vincent was still just sitting against the wall—blood running from his hair and down his cheeks—dazed. "And you, Vincent. What the fuck? Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you—?"

Bang.

That's what I heard when the bullets smashed into the door and blew it open. But I wasn't surprised by who walked in; the five guns pointed in our faces and the visors reading 'SHINRA' weren't a surprise at all.

"Looks like the vermin have found themselves cornered."

I heard the drawling voice as the man stepped out from behind his wall of thugs and into the flickering lights. He was dressed in a posh white suit, hands folded behind his back, as he surveyed the scene with gloating blue eyes. He flipped back a lock of his blond hair and smirked.

"Rufus Shinra." I heard Rude's grunt from beside me.

"Very good," Rufus taunted. "I didn't know Plate scum could form coherent sentences."

"I didn't know illegitimate bastard children had enough brain cells to run a company intent on draining the Planet dry and killing us all." Rude shrugged. "You learn something new every day."

Rufus smiled, but it wasn't friendly at all. "What a refreshing sense of humor." He cocked his head toward one of his guards. "Ross?"

"Sir." It was a lot faster than I thought it'd be. Too fast. The guard stepped forward, kept his barrel trained on us—and then he smashed the butt of his gun into Rude's head.

"You fucking—"

"Please." Rufus held up a hand, like he was bored. "I hardly want an exchange of unpleasantries."

Rude was cradling his head with his hand, smearing the blood against his gloved fingers. The leather of his gloves creaked as he clenched and unclenched his free hand. "You...you won't get away with this."

Rufus laughed, a cruel sound that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. "Won't get away with it? There isn't anyone who could stop me. There isn't a single entity on this planet strong enough to challenge Shinra, least of all here, in the slums. Your allies have proved that, I think."

My nostrils flared. "Shut your fucking mouth." I clenched my hand, realized Benjy's pistol was still in my cold, clammy fingers. If I could just distract him, just keep him talking... "We'll kill you ourselves."

"Our SOLDIERs would tear you apart." Rufus was still smiling, but he let some of the cold menace slip into his voice when he said it. "Genesis Rhapsodos laid siege to the Nibelheim battlements and razed the town to ashes in a matter of days. Angeal Hewley performed the smooth coup d'etat that put Junon under Shinra's control. And Sephiroth?"

I almost smiled. Perfect, I thought. The rambling villain who never knew when to shut up in time to kill the hero before he could break free—but I wasn't the hero, was I? If it were anyone else's story, I'd probably be the villain, too.

Rufus kept talking. "When all his men were dead, when there was no chance for reinforcements, General Sephiroth stormed every Wutain citadel—and he slaughtered every single warrior. A war ended on the point of his sword. He speared Godo Kisaragi through the heart."

I almost bit my tongue off at that. "Kisaragi?"

Crinkles formed under Rufus's eyes like he was remembering something that warmed his heart. "Yes, scum, Kisaragi. He slaughtered the entire defiant clan. We never found the body of the princess, Yuffie Kisaragi. I can only imagine what he must have done to her."

So, that's when I lost it.

My arm whipped around, trained right on Rufus's face, my finger bloody on the trigger. But I never got to pull it. Ross was quicker.

He knocked my hand out of the way so that the pistol went flying, stomped right on my wrist until I heard the crack and felt the burn tear up my arm: he'd snapped my wrist clean in two.

Rufus laughed again. "You poor bastard. You honestly believed..." He shook his head disbelievingly. And then he turned his head to stare at Vincent like he was just noticing him for the first time.

"Vincent." Rufus curled his finger in Vincent's direction. The familiarity was almost enough to shake me out of my pain. The blond smiled again as he picked up Benjy's gun—and handed it to Vincent.

"Kill them," Rufus said. "I want you to kill them."

I didn't understand. He was telling Vincent to kill his own men. Why would he want that? Why would—

Rude swore.

"Vincent." He spat out the name like it had a nasty taste to it. "Of all the people it could have been, you're the one. You turned us over to Shinra."

Vincent. And Shinra. Together?

No. No, Vincent hated Shinra. Almost more than any of us. I'd seen it in his eyes more times than I could count. He'd always had that look burning in them, was always like a man on fire. He hated the life Shinra had given him.

But he still got up. He still brushed the glass from his suit, still wiped the blood from his face. He still took the gun and smiled faintly at us.

"Y-you?" I almost choked on the word. "You can't be serious. You hate Shinra. You hate—"

"I hate them for what they've done, yes. But I hate this life more. And I'm not above helping them if I can leave this damned place behind."

Rude spat the blood from his mouth right on Vincent's shoe. "You're not above being a coward either. Running. That's what you're doing."

Vincent didn't deny it. Didn't shake his head or blink or anything. But his grip on the gun tightened. And then he pointed it right in Rude's face and pulled the trigger.

I felt something warm and sticky splash against the side of my face. The shock kept me from realizing what it was, or from registering the sound of Rude's shades clattering to the ground. But when the warm wetness trickled into my mouth, I realized it was blood. Rude's blood.

I turned my head, slowly, trying to convince myself that I wouldn't see what I thought I would. But I was kidding myself.

Rude was slumped over in a puddle of his own blood.

Vincent...Vincent shot Rude.

"The other one, Mr. Valentine," Rufus said. "The other one."

The other one. I was the other one. The thought of that made my blood race, made my heart pump faster and harder as it struggled to keep me alive. And it made me angry.

"What the hell, Vincent! Shinra? You're turning your back on the Turks for Shinra? What the hell are you doing?"

There was a metallic clicking sound as Vincent casually reloaded his gun; casually started pacing around me in a wide circle as he prepared to kill, his eyes shining with that familiar cold sheen.

"I'm doing what we've both been doing for years, Reno: following the Turk code. Whatever's necessary to get above the Plate." A smile quirked the corners of his mouth before he added, "And there's someone waiting to see me."

"That logic's bullshit and you know it," I snarled.

"Is it?" he chided; the tone of his voice implied that I was the idiot of the conversation who needed everything explained in exact detail. "Is what I'm doing now so different from what the Turks have been doing for years? End one life to improve your own? In the end, it's the same. We're the same."

"Don't compare me to shit like you. I'll snap your neck."

Vincent smiled wryly. "Still a ruffian."

"Still a bastard."

"And as much as I'd love to see the end of this little melodrama, it's getting rather repetitive." The condescending drawl came from Rufus, still relaxing behind his wall of thugs and cronies as he waited for someone else to do his dirty work for him, just like the coward he was. "I say it's high time you drop the curtain, Mr. Valentine."

Vincent nodded. "I agree, Mr. President."

"Bootlicker," I muttered.

Vincent crouched down, his eyes boring into mine as he pushed the gun against my chest, right where I felt my heart beating wildly.

"If it's any consolation," he said, in that stupid gravelly voice just below a whisper, "they don't know about Yuffie. Not yet."

"You son of a—!"

Blood.

There was blood in my mouth. Blood, on my hands. Blood, blossoming on the white of my shirt and staining it red. There was blood everywhere. And the world. The world was falling on its side. Everything was wrong. So damn...wrong.

"Very good, Mr. Valentine." Rufus. "Very good indeed. I'm sure Ms. Crescent will be overjoyed to welcome you to the world above. The real world. And you imbeciles"—there was a shuffling of feet and a clinking of metal—"take this mako. All of it. It's stolen property that rightfully belongs to me and the last thing I want is..."

I tuned out the rest in favor for the sound of rushing blood. I didn't need—didn't want—to hear cold-blooded murderers pilfer and loot us of all that we'd fought to build. Died to build.

I don't know how long I lay there on the floor, feeling my joints stiffen and my lips go cold, but somewhere in between Rufus and his cronies walked out, crates of mako in hand. And really, there wasn't anything I could do to stop them. I was too busy bleeding my heart out on the floor.

When the sound of their engines fading reached my ears, I clenched my teeth and crawled over to Rude.

"Rude?" I shook him. "C-c'mon you big lug. Get off your l-lazy ass."

He stayed in his little corner, crumpled up and defeated like a paper ball. I flinched a little at the sharp pain over my heart as I pulled myself closer to force him to look me in the eyes, force him to acknowledge that he was still alive and well. But Rude's eyes were cold, empty...dead. Rude was...

"...Shit."

I felt around on the ground, searching until my fingers scrabbled over the shades. I fumbled with them a little, my fingers still shaking, before I managed to shove them up the bridge of Rude's nose and onto his face.

It wouldn't have been... I just didn't think it would've been right to let him go without them. And I think he approved, too. His lips, red from the blood that'd trickled from between his teeth, were twisted in a lopsided smile.

So that's how he went.

Rude, who was probably the kindest and most sensitive guy I'd ever known, was lifting slowly out of my arms. Rude, who'd saved my ass more times than I could count, was glowing green all over. Rude, the best partner I could've ever asked for, was breaking off into tiny little lights right in front of my eyes.

Rude, my best friend since ever and forever and ever, was gone.

I tried to wrap my mind around that, but it didn't make any sense to me. Rude... couldn't die. Not after all the shit we'd been through. He just wasn't capable of it. It just wasn't something he could do. So he wasn't dead. None of them were.

That's the lie I tried to sell to myself. But I don't know who I was kidding. No matter how bad I wished it was true, it wasn't. It was something the air in my hands, still heavy and tingling and warm from where Rude had been just a few moments ago, told me bluntly.

They were gone. All gone.

My eyelids drooped a little—from exhaustion or nausea or the steady flow of blood shooting out of me, I don't know—and that was when I remembered the dull ache in my chest; the one I'd mistaken for heartbreak. And the fact that I was dying, too.

The Turks, the Sector Five slums' most influential mako trafficking cartel... was done. All because of a rat named Vincent Valentine. There was no one to stop him, no one to take revenge. No Tseng. No Rude. No Laney, no Knives....No one. There wasn't a single Turk left who could do a damn thi—

Except there was. Someone who Shinra or Vincent wouldn't know about. If I could hold on to consciousness... if I could keep breathing long enough...

I dug a blood-caked hand into my pocket, flipped open my phone, and dialed the number.

"Hey, Cissnei? Yeah, it's me. Listen. I need your help."