Chapter 10 Dangerous Liaisons


One of the things the Turks did not neglect, if they neglected anything else, was physical training. It was their last defence and the very basis for their efficiency; when all else failed, their wits and their bodies were the only weapons they had. And when accidents happened around them far too often to be called accidents, regular training was pretty much the only thing they could do.

They had a session once a week, which generally involved sparring and basic stamina building; this was followed, after a break, by combat training that involved weapons. The simulated situations ranged from icy ranges to underwater missions. But nothing really could beat Hell Camp. That training camp was brutal, and it was designed to challenge the Turks.

The week's session was just ending, and Arien was stepping out of the shower after getting beaten up by Rude. The man was too fast and too big for her to spar properly, and firearm was not included in bare-handed simulations. It really was unfair; Rude regularly fought bare-handed, armed with nothing more than gloves, and Arien weighed about half of what he did. She knew Rude had one somewhat easier on her than say, Reno would, but she still came out with bruises that would need compresses.

"Ow," she muttered as she opened her locker to pull out her uniform. At least she had gotten in a kick this time. Last time, she had gone down without so much as a fight. Sparring with Reno was hazardous in other aspects; he played dirty when he could, and then he'd smugly tell her that real street fights didn't involve bowing and rule and "that shit". Sure, but she'd also be armed with guns in that situation. Hitting someone with a butt of a pistol was generally a stupid idea, but she was fairly certain of herself to be able to take down a few assailants with her handgun. And if she was surrounded so much so that she'd run out of ammo, she was screwed, either way.

She pulled on her shirt, buttoning it with one hand as she reached for her tie. She flipped her collar up and looked into the mirror on the locker door, adjusting the length as she did her tie. She slipped on her pantyhose and then her trousers, and was doing her belt as she walked out, jacket under her arm. She looked at her watch, then began to make her way upstairs. She was just pulling on her blazer, her loafers clacking against the floor, when she saw a white coat down the corridor.

She considered stopping and turning the other way, but it was too late. Wincing, Arien kept walking. The man in the lab coat was the last person she wanted to see, but he seemed to have been waiting, and there was no avoiding him. She braced herself, checking her guns. She knew she would not use it, but it comforted her to have them, nonetheless.


Reno headed to the dining room for a coffee break right after the sparring session, which was more of an excuse for him to not take care of the pile of paperwork that sat, waiting, on his desk. He found a woman sitting by the window, biting the cap of the pen as she took a drink of tea. Her silver hair fell down on her shoulder in lazy ringlets, and she was dressed in a powder blue blouse and a dark-coloured pencil skirt. She wore flower-motif earrings that swung as she moved her head.

Ivy.

Reno decided to take a seat with her. For one thing, there was no one else in the dining room, and for another thing, there were questions he wanted to ask her; Ivy was Arien's best friend, and therefore it was same to assume that the girl would know her the best. And he needed to know a few things about her.

So Reno carried his coffee over to her table. "Mind if I join?" he asked.

Ivy looked up; her green eyes stared into Reno's aquamarine. "You're… Reno," she asked hesitantly. "From the Investigation Sector."

"Uh, yeah. Heard of me?"

"My friend works there," Ivy said as she cleared away the surface to allow Reno to sit. "And you're quite famous."

Reno hooked a foot under the chair and pulled it out, then sat down. "Oh?" he asked. "I wonder what you've heard."

Ivy closed the folder, but not before Reno saw the heading "Laboratory XV". So Ivy worked in one of the top priority lab. No wonder Arien knew her. He had been wondering where the two had been acquainted; it was unlikely Arien knew anyone below floor sixty, unless they were SOLDIERs. "The usual," she replied as she drained the tea.

"The usual?"

Ivy shrugged, but said nothing further. Reno decided to drop the topic; he had a good guess what she had heard, and why bother reacting to the claims?

The two drank in silence for a few moments, then Reno broke the silence. "Can I ask a question?"

Ivy smiled; her smile was sweet and charming. "Yes?"

"Can I ask about your friend?"

A flash of recognition - or understanding - flashed in Ivy's eyes. "My friend? Which one?" She asked, her voice all innocence.

"The one who works in the Investigation Sector."

Ivy knew this was coming, and she had given some thought over the course of action she would take, so she was ready. She straightened in her chair. "Of course," she said.

"Look," he said, "has she said anything about me?"

"You?" She poured more tea into the cup. "Not much. Why?"

"Nothing."

More silence.

Reno knew that whatever words Arien had said to her friend was the honesty she would never give him. And he had no idea what she was thinking of him. Simple hatred didn't seem to describe her reactions; she had, in fact, been rather friendly in Costa del Sol. But she was still extremely terse with him, even to the point of brusqueness. She was an onion, one layer after another, but he had absolutely no idea what lay at the core.

And then Ivy asked, "you're interested in her, aren't you?"

Reno started. Ivy knew; but where was she going with this? Was she going to try to stop his advances? Or?

"I guess you want to know about her," she said. "That's why you came to me, isn't it?"

Reno nodded.

"All-right," the girl said, "I'll tell you want you need to know… but on one condition."

"Name it."

Ivy looked at him, her gaze steady. "If you hurt her," she said, her piping voice serious, "I'll find you and hurt you. Bad. I don't care if you're the Turks ace, I'll make sure you'll regret it. Got it, buster?"

And despite her small size and her piping voice, Reno believed her.


"Hello, Miss DeVir."

Shit. Arien flinched ever so slightly, but the mad scientist did not seem to notice. His greasy hair reflected the light, and his thin face showed just a hint of madness. He adjusted his glasses, his eyes eerily eager.

Professor Hojo.

Arien knew him. All Turks knew him; after all, they had been administered the mako radiation treatment, although the dosage was much lower than what SOLDIERs were exposed to. The singular number inscripted on the Shinra ID logos that were visible when exposed to ultraviolet light indicated the level of exposure the employee had received.

Arien had been level 6.3 when she had been in the Intelligence; 40% of her body had been irradiated, turning them into silicate-based cells rather than the regular carbons. At that level, she had been explained then, some people's eyes turned blue, and the senses were far more acute. But that was about it.

During the two-week interim for her transition from floor 63 to 66, she had been further irradiated; her ID now indicated that her level was 7.8, which was 60%. This caused far more problems. For one thing, the new enhanced vision that she had received - pure dumb luck, Reno seemed to have olfaction senses of a blood hound - caused such headaches that she now regularly wore contact lenses to adjust for light. Sterility was also another side effect, not to mention no aging. She supposed the last one might be counted as a blessing for some, but it was creepy; how did high dose mako radiation stop telomere degradation anyway? It made no sense. Anything above level 8, however, automatically got one sent to Hojo's lab or to the SOLDIER unit. So the Turks were about as high as anyone could normally get in terms of radiation, unless mutant supersoldiers counted as normal.

"May I help you, Professor Hojo?" she asked as sweetly as possible. Which was to say, not very.

"I was just concerned… about your health," he wheezed. "How are you?"

Right. My health. That's exactly what you're concerned about.

Arien gave a tense smile. "I'm fine, thank you," she said politely.

"No headaches? Heart palpitations? Hallucinations?"

Heart palpitations?

"Um, no," she said casually.

"Sexual activity?"

She stopped, trying to figure out what he had just said for a moment. She tried to process it in her head, came up with only choice. "Um," she said. "I beg your pardon?"

"Some experience change in sexual appetite after getting the treatment," Hojo explained. "Have you?"

"I don't know, I haven't tried," she retorted. "Excuse me."

"I wouldn't walk away if I were you."

Arien, who was turning to walk toward the other direction, stopped. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"The full extent of mako radiation is yet unclear," Hojo said with an extremely discomforting smile that screamed danger to Arien's eyes. "You require constant monitoring. You all do. I will ask for 24-hour surveillance to monitor any changes."

And that was pretty much the limit for her patience. This time, Arien really walked away, her shoes making sharp clicks as she marched off, her dark hair swinging.


"Arien is… fragile," Ivy was saying. Reno looked out the window; despite the filthy underbelly of the city called Midgar, the view above the plate was a thing of cosmopolitan beauty, a harmony of nature and industry. And Reno thought the facade silly, Shinra Company's friendly smiles nothing but lies. But he was part of the team to keep the knives hushed up so the Shinra Company could keep smiling to its citizens.

"Fragile?" He echoed.

"She might not look it," Ivy admitted. "But she's fragile. She's terrified of being hurt."

"Hurt? Hurt of what?"

"Betrayal. Abandonment." She shrugged. "She takes this seriously, Reno. Far more seriously than others. Far more seriously than me, I guess. She has a heart. And she's terrified of it getting broken. If she loves you, she'll go to any length for you. But for that?" Ivy shook her head. "She needs to trust. And she has a lot to lose."

"And that's why she avoids me like that?"

"You're much more likely to shatter it than Zen or me. She always seeks to be in control of herself, and forming that kind of intimate bond with someone means she's going to yield control to him. Her control is her defence, and what you're trying to do is tear it down, brick by brick."

"So what?" Reno finished his coffee. "What are you trying to tell me? Stay way from her?"

"Hardly," Ivy responded. "I want you to break her shell, Reno. She's been hiding behind her shell since I've met her, but she's breaking. Some day, she's going to shatter. Some day, the crack in her armour's going to widen, and then she'll lose everything. I don't want that to happen to my best friend." She poured more tea, but it had gone cold; no steam rose from the cup now. "She's terrified of you. Terrified of the power you can have over her. She'll fight you all along the way, she'll block your every move."

"How d'ya know?"

"I've seen her do it. She's good at it. She's really good."

Reno believed that.

"But you have to keep fighting. You have to keep pushing. Even after you two become a couple, she still probably won't open up to you. It's going to take a long time. But you can't give up on her, Reno. You have to promise me that. If you aren't going to, then I'm going to ask you to stay away from her. She needs someone who'll believe in her enough to fight for her."

"Okay," he said.

"And?"

"What?"

"What are you going to do?"

Reno gave her a smile, and Ivy realised that this was his genuine smile, not the slight sneer that he always seemed to have, but a smile of affection, of comfort, of… love.

And, if Reno was successful, then Arien would see this smile - and more - from this man. He would love her, cherish her, try to protect her… and she would return the affection. She would smile, show the face no one had ever seen.

That is, if Reno kept his word. Which was going to be the biggest obstacle on both sides. Even if Reno did keep his word, would Arien believe it? And would Reno actually keep his word?

"Reno."

The man, who had been watching the view from the window, turned his head to look at her. "Yeah?"

"If you betray her," she said, her face deadly serious, "I will cut your testicles off. With a blunt fork. And this is not a threat."

"I know."

"And if you think I can't make you hurt because you've been torture-trained…"

"I know you can hurt me, Ivy," Reno said seriously. "And did you really think I just decided to get Arien for sport?"

"Maybe?" Ivy said honestly.

"Well, have you ever thought of this?" Reno asked. "If I can hurt her… then she can hurt me too."

And Ivy's eyes widened with that, but Reno was already leaving, his red hair trailing behind him. And Ivy sat, thinking, wondering if Arien was going to be saved from her personal hell, or if Reno will push her down further into the hell of her own manufacture.