CHAPTER TWELVE: MOMENTS FROM THE PRESENT
In which we get to know all the Turks a bit better, and spy on Zack and Aerith

Thoughts from Afar

Reno and Rude receive postcards from Cissnei. She's in Wutai now. Rude's postcard has a picture of Da Chao. Reno's shows a girl in traditional Wuteng dress. On the back Cissnei has written Have been captured by white slavers. Send money! He sticks it on his fridge with a magnet, and looks at it often.

One day, he thinks, I'll be able to tell her. And we'll have a good laugh.

*

In Nibelheim with Mink.

The rumoured AVALANCHE activity turns out to be nothing but a bunch of kids who found some raw materia in the reactor's slagheap, blew a hole in a farmer's barn, and are too scared to admit it. Mink patiently coaxes the truth from them. Reno wouldn't have known how. Watching her handle those kids gets him thinking.

When they're done she says she wants to walk up the mountain before they return to Midgar. Reno can come with her or not; she doesn't care. Since the alternative is sitting around doing nothing, he chooses the walk. She doesn't talk much, ever. Yet people tell her things. Reno starts telling her about when he was a kid: he tells her the story of how he was recruited into the Turks, which is no secret, but he doesn't normally bore people with it either. He talks and Mink listens, and while he talks he looks at her long hair blowing in the wind, thick and silver streaked with black, and her strong face with its high cheekbones. Beautiful; forbidding. He wonders what she does for fun – or what she did, and if there was ever a time when she smiled.

*

Playing poker with Mozo.

Nothing about Mozo is what it seems. His is the perfect poker face, blunt-featured, beetle browed, dull-eyed. You have to know him to appreciate his intelligence. His clumsy looking hands with their sausage fingers are nimble at pulling cards from his sleeve. He is willing to admit his tricks and teach them to Reno, because he would never cheat a co-worker. Mozo's quite the gentleman with the ladies, holding doors for them, draping his jacket around chilly slim shoulders. In the smokey backrooms of the upper city, where fortunes can be won and lost in a night, he sniffs out the wolves bent on fleecing the innocent and the naïve. His amusement is to cheat the cheat: it's kind of a private mission of his, his art, poker poetry. At the end of the night he lets an ace fall from his shirt cuff in full sight of the table. His target, enraged by such perfidy, seizes Mozo's collar and spits insults in his face – swindler! Turk! - until abruptly silenced by the cold barrel of Mozo's gun pressing against his ear.

Reno says, "One day you won't be the only one with a gun."

Mozo smiles. "I like to gamble."

*

The problem with materia

There's no pleasure without pain. They say that before Knox met Barbara he had a problem with materia; that he'd take unnecessary risks, even screw up on purpose, get himself hurt deliberately, for the sake of the Cure. Reno's heard the same story about other Turks: dead Turks. He can see how easily a taste for it might creep up on a man. In his opinion, the smart thing is to avoid getting too dependent on any one substance. That's the advice he gives the rookies.

Anyway, what they say about Knox is that he was as wild as anyone until he met Barbara. She made him clean up his act. Now that she's left and taken the kids with her, his partners watch him for signs of going off the rails, the way guys cut loose from their moorings often do.

Rosalind says that for Knox the move to the company housing is a blessing in disguise. It has to be better than living alone in the home he once shared with his family. Reno says families are a liability. That's just a fact. Rude observes that Knox seems to be holding it together OK. Mozo says, well, maybe he really believes that Barbara and the kids are better off where they are, better off without him. Is there any kind of pleasure, Mozo wonders, which could offset that pain?

*

Rookies!

Cavour is handsome in a coarse-grained kind of way. His black hair is thick and slightly oily; his large eyes are like a calf's eyes, liquid brown, with long dark lashes, and like an animal's eyes they hold no emotion. He's a good partner, focused, efficient, and deadly, following orders to the letter. Don Corneo knows how to train his men.

But the Don rules the slums with bare knuckles. Shinra wears a velvet glove. Cavour has had some trouble grasping the distinction. He doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word 'discrete'. Entrusted with the simple assassination of a Wuteng double-agent, he tracks his target down to a pavement café in the middle of a busy lunch-hour and sprays his brains over five tables full of customers; the whole department has to work overtime for the next three days in the scramble to cover up his error of judgement.

For his next mission, Veld partners him with Reno and sends them the two of them to Costa del Sol, to investigate reports that a woman matching Aviva's description of the AVALANCHE leader was recently treated in a clinic there. As usual, the lead goes nowhere; the patient turns out to be a local housewife and mother of three. Reno's ready to head home, but Cavour says he needs to go to the bank. While Reno's waiting outside, having a smoke, a boy comes past him - a flaxen-haired, pink-cheeked boy so pretty that at first glance Reno thinks he's a girl. The boy throws him a smile (one gold tooth among the ivory, flash of charm) and then goes into the bank; Reno catches a glimpse of a blue and black tattoo on the nape of the boy's neck. He finishes his cigarette, and is thinking about having another when he hears screaming inside the bank, followed by gunshots.

He goes in and sees a dozen people crouched against the far wall, covering their heads with their arms. The bank teller has her hands in the air. A man is writhing on ground near Reno, blood pulsing from the bullet wound in his thigh. Cavour and the pretty boy are facing each other, smoking pistols in hand. Reno wonders how a marksman like Cavour could have missed. Pretty Boy must be fast, though his aim is poor – from the angle of things, he's the one who shot the unlucky bastard dying slowly and noisily on the floor by Reno's feet.

Reno needs only a split-second to take all this in. Cavour glances his way. Pretty Boy takes advantage of Cavour's momentary distraction: with his left hand he throws a nunchuk at Cavour's head and knocks him out cold. Oh, for God's sake, thinks Reno, getting out his rod and casting a bolt at Pretty Boy that stuns him into immobility. He takes the boy's gun and ties his hands behind his back, using Cavour's tie.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," mumbles the boy through numb lips. "I didn't mean to hurt anybody. I just needed the money."

Reno gets a glass of water from the water cooler and throws it into Cavour's face. He moves swiftly over to the dying man, puts his fingers into the wound, digs out the bullet, Cures him. Cavour has come to, groaning. Reno lifts him to his feet and drags him from the bank before the grateful customers can mob them.

That afternoon, back in Midgar, Reno files his report. Tseng reads it and passes it on to Commander Veld, whose interest is immediately piqued. "So he dodged one of Cavour's bullets, eh?" he remarks to Tseng. "I think we need to take a look at this one."

Four weeks later, the Department's newest rookie starts work on patrol in Sector 8. He calls himself Skeeter. He says he's seventeen years old. From his fairness and the pale blue of his eyes they can see that he's a Northerner. Until two years ago, he tells them, he lived in Bone Village with his family, hunting for naturally-occurring materia and helping his parents run their shop. After they were killed in a mis-timed explosion, his brother threw him out, and since then he's been wandering around, trying to scratch a living any way he can. He blushes when he says this. It's easy to guess at some of the things such a pretty boy has had to do.

The other Turks take to Skeeter straight away. He has a friendly, open manner; he's enthusiastic and easy-going, full of admiration for them, and thankful to have been given such a chance. So they say, "Want us to sort out your brother for you?"

Skeeter is overwhelmed. "Oh, gee, thanks, guys. But really, no, it's OK. Everything's worked out for the best, hasn't it? I don't bear him any grudges. And he's still my brother, after all."

Skeeter's one to let bygones be bygones.

*

Rosalind, letting her hair down

Metaphorically speaking, because she keeps it bobbed at the line of her earlobes, which to Reno's eye has to be the unsexiest hairstyle ever invented. In their little family, Rosalind's the practical one, the one who always knows where to look for an answer to a question, the one who has memorized the contents of the company handbook, who can lend you a pen whenever you need one; the one who will iron Reno's shirts for him even though he keeps telling her that he prefers his shirts unironed, that ironed shirts are stiff and scratchy. She simply ignores him. Unlike the rest of them, Rosalind has living relatives: a much younger sister called Elena, and a father who is the Head of Ballistics at the Military Academy in Junon. She was raised there, in the barracks. Whenever she refers to her father, which isn't often, she calls him Colonel Franks.

Rosalind never swears. She is usually the last person in the room to laugh at a joke. She doesn't even drink much, though under Rude's tutelage and Reno's encouragement, she's improving. Her shoes are always polished. She's often the one who gets left behind in the office when the others go out on missions, because she's so detail-oriented: she can spend all day sifting through intel reports and be as meticulous at the end as she was at the beginning.

She's also a dead shot with a handgun.

One day in the middle of June Reno has to come back to the Shinra Building to fetch a tool he left behind. As he steps out of the elevator he hears music: a popular song by one of Aviva's metal bands is playing on the radio. He takes a few steps towards the office. The door is open. What he sees stops him dead in his tracks.

Rosalind is dancing. She isn't just shuffling her feet from side to side, tapping her toe, no – she's whirling round, arms wide, kicking her heels up and swinging her hips as she sings along to the music.

Reno, thinking fast, returns to the elevator and goes back down to the mezzanine floor. From here he calls Rosalind and tells her he's coming up for something he forgot. "Tch," chides Rosalind, "It's lucky for you your head is attached to your shoulders."

*

Aviva in motion

Reno is running on the treadmill, but really he is watching her turn cartwheels and backflips and aerial somersaults all over the mats. Her body is perfect for this, flat-chested, compact, sinewy. She lands and rebounds as if she has springs built into her feet. Reno wishes he could bounce like that. He asks, "Where did you learn those moves?"

Unlike Mink, Aviva is always happy to chatter. "In the show. It was part of my act. I can throw knives while I turn somersaults. Want to see?"

There are no knives in the gym, so he gives her his shoes to use instead. One of them nearly hits him in the face. "Was killing your audience part of the act too?"

"Only sometimes," she laughs. Maybe she's serious.

"Did you travel around?"

"Yeah, a lot. None of those mining towns are rich. We'd play for a few days, then move on. Summer season we'd go to Costa. But Corel was our base."

"Pay any good?"

"I wasn't paid." She gives him a puzzled look. Like he should know this.

If he asked, she'd tell. In fact, he sometimes gets the feeling that she believes he knows all about her already. But he doesn't ask. He doesn't need her to tell him what a shovel-load of shit this world can be. The better question, the real question, would be how she manages to be so happy all the time. But maybe he was the same when he was fifteen. He thinks he was. He can't remember.

*

Veld, angry

In any case, age means nothing. The youngest Turks kill, with as little compunction as their elders, monsters of all kinds, four-legged and two-legged; thieves, liars, crooks, pirates, child-devourers; breakers of the peace; all enemies of Shinra, the ones that roar, the ones that plead, and the ones that fight back. During a raid on a black market weapons cache Cavour is shot in the chest; the bullet punctures his lung, but he lives, and spends two weeks in the infirmary. Down in the slum bar that Rude, Reno, and Mozo introduced him to, Skeeter's drink is spiked with poison, and only the bar owner's quick thinking (fear sharpens the mind wonderfully) gets the antidote down him in time.

Veld rarely does field work, but this is different. He brings Tseng and Reno with him to the bar. The owner is, if not happy, at least very willing to remember, in copious detail, who was in the bar that night and where they were sitting and what they did. The trail takes them fairly swiftly to the door of a man they have recently begun to suspect of involvement in the contraband materia trade. Veld knocks on the front door and asks to see him. The man chooses to leave by the back door instead, only to find Reno waiting for him round the corner. Reno pins him down and holds him there until Veld arrives. The man is making quite a noise, and a crowd is gathering. In what passes for broad daylight in Midgar, Veld shoots him through the back of the neck. Discretion is not desirable in this case, and explanations are not necessary: the witnesses to this execution will work out the reason for themselves.

It never ceases to amaze Reno how stupid some people can be.

*

Surveillance Duty

It's not just flowers that are blooming in the Church these days.

As far as Reno is concerned, spying on the Ancient has been, until recently, one of his job's more tedious chores. She never does anything interesting, and nothing worthy of report ever takes place to break up the monotony of her days. Her blithe acceptance of her lot, her sunny unquestioning contentment, have led him to assume she must be simple-minded. Certainly she has never given any sign that she's aware of his presence, whether he's watching her from up in the roof-beams, his face smeared with soot, a black woolly cap pulled over his beacon of hair, or following her through the monster-infested streets to ensure she reaches the safety of Elmyra Gainsborough's house. He has never spoken to her. That's the Boss's job. As far as she knows, Tseng is her only protector, or gaoler. According to Tseng, she claims not to know about any Promised Land. The Chief does not believe her. But Reno believes her. It's perfectly clear to him that Aerith knows practically nothing at all. Which, for someone raised in the slums, and a pretty girl at that, is itself a kind of miracle. One that she can thank Tseng for, if thanks are in order.

That's how it was, anyway, until the day Zack Fair came crashing into her life.

Her innocence has an electrical quality. Reno is not vulnerable to it, but he can see the effect it's having on Cissnei's lover. It's like a magnet, at once attracting him and yet holding him at bay. It is light and warmth, in a place without sunshine. It's all the things he joined SOLDIER to defend.

Of course, he doesn't know she's an Ancient. That's very highly classified information. The new Turks haven't been told, either. Not even the Board of Directors knows. There's always a risk the girl might decide to tell him herself, but Reno's willing to bet she won't. She's pretty self-conscious about the whole normality thing. The two of them discuss it a lot. Zack tells her normality is over-rated. The poor dumb chick has no idea she's being fed a line.

Meanwhile, Reno's caught up in his own dilemma. What should he do about Cissnei? Should he let her know? Should he keep his big mouth shut?

It's not like she's ever come right out and told him that she's sleeping with Zack, that she's in love with the target of her mission. Still, he's pretty sure that she knows that he knows. Her silence speaks volumes there. In fact, he reckons, he and Rude are almost certainly the only two who know anything about it. If Tseng and the Chief ever found out – if they even suspected she had a conflict of interests – they'd pull her out of SOLDIER faster than she could blink.

And Ciss can be so prickly. Suppose he, Reno, as a friend, did try to warn her – well, she'd be just as likely to kick him as thank him.

So maybe he should be smart for a change and keep it zipped. Maybe the whole sexless affair between the SOLDIER and the Ancient will fizzle out soon of its own accord. How long can a virginal teenager expect to hold the interest of a man like Zack, when he knows he's got a woman like Cissnei waiting for him upstairs? Maybe it'll all be OK….

Man, Cissnei sure picked the wrong time to go sashaying off round the planet with Director Lazard. While the cat's away…. Though Reno supposes she didn't have much choice. Why'd Lazard take her along, anyway? As a bodyguard? He has plenty of third classes for that. Why outsource to the Turks? Or maybe she volunteered to go so that Zack can discover how much he misses her when she's not around. If that's her plan, then she's miscalculated. Badly.

Somebody's going to get hurt. And it won't be the Ancient, holding Cissnei's lover effortlessly in her orbit. And it won't be that first class bastard Zack Fair. So who does that leave?

He should tell her.

He should mind his own business.

Bloody hell. This would all be so much, much easier if he didn't have an ulterior motive. If he didn't fancy Cissnei so badly himself.

If she wasn't his friend.

One night after surveillance duty Reno comes back late to the company housing with more than a few drinks inside him and sees Tseng's light shining under the door, and all at once he knows what he must do, so he knocks on the door and without waiting for an invitation opens it and falls into Tseng's room; as he hits the floor he catches a glimpse of Tseng sitting at the table, working on his laptop.

"Ow," says Reno.

He hears footsteps, feels Tseng looming over him.

"What do you want?" Tseng's voice is the voice of midnight and shadows.

"Boss," says Reno face down on the floor, "When you gonna do something about Zack Fair and the Ancient?"

Tseng takes hold of him by the armpits and hauls him into a sitting position. Then Tseng leans forward, so close that Reno goes cross-eyed trying to stay focused on the dot in the middle of his forehead. Tseng sniffs Reno's breath.

. "Bourbon," he says. "When did that start? I though you were a beer man."

"Beer tastes like puke. Whiskey tastes like fire. Now answer my question."

"But why should I do anything?" says Tseng, too quickly.

Reno wants to say because she's yours, but even after half a bottle of bourbon his sense of self-preservation is too strong.

"He makes her happy," Tseng adds, with the conviction of a man who has fought and won a long argument with himself.

"Happy? He's a two-timing shit. We could kill him, Boss. You and me. No one would ever know."

Tseng's response is to ignore this. He walks across the apartment to the kitchenette, fills a glass from the cold tap, and puts it into Reno's hand. "Drink," he says. "And listen. Whatever it is you think you know, you're wrong. Zack Fair's a decent guy. I've worked with him. He won't harm her. She doesn't have a very favourable impression of Shinra, but he may be able to change that. The Commander sees no need to intervene. That's all you need to know. Now – " Tseng takes hold of Reno by the upper arm and pulls. The Boss may look slight next to Mozo or Rude, but he's all muscle. Reno finds himself on his feet. A push sends him out the door. "Go to bed. Drink plenty of water. Try to be sober in the morning."

The door shuts and locks.

On the other side of the locked door, Tseng went to open a window. Reno was gone, but the smell of alcohol still lingered.

For some time Tseng had been at a loss to account for Reno's animosity towards Zack Fair. To the best of his knowledge, Reno hardly knew the SOLDIER. They had never been on a mission together. And Reno rarely felt strongly enough about anyone to dislike them. Indeed, this detachment of his was one of the qualities that made him a good Turk.

But just now the truth had dawned. Say what you liked about Reno, you had to admit he was loyal to his partners. He must have seen something he wasn't meant to see and had concluded, wrongly, that Zack was mistreating Cissnei. Tseng would have to speak to her about that. She couldn't start getting careless, not now. Too much was at stake.

Zack Fair. Something of a wild card, that young man. Throwing the best laid plans into disarray. Still, it could have been worse. Much worse.

Aerith was no longer a child, and she was beautiful, like her mother. Men turned to look at her when she walked through the streets. Tseng had seen them, though they had not seen him. Zack, on the other hand, could not be invisible if he tried. Having a SOLDIER First Class for a boyfriend cast a protective spell around Aerith that worked its magic even when neither Zack nor Tseng could be present to watch over her. So there was that to be grateful for.

She had called herself 'not normal' - yet she was in so many ways the most normal girl imaginable. She wanted a boyfriend; she wanted love. She wanted to dance and go to parties. Like every creature that drew breath, she wanted to live. If it hadn't been Zack it would have been some other boy, some Wall Market punk with pretty eyes and a sweet tongue, some wheeler-dealer bold enough to penetrate her defenses, some ducker and diver, thief and liar, the type that the slum bred like flies. At least Zack was an honest boy from a good home. The way he handled Aerith was almost reverent, as if he instinctively understood the real reason why she was always to be found in the church. So there was that to be grateful for, too.

Zack had many admirable qualities. Tseng had worked with him, and studied him, in Banora and on several other missions, and had come to know him much better than Zack would have suspected from the minimal conversation they exchanged. For a First Class, he was remarkably modest; that was probably the legacy of Angeal. He was forthright, sincere, respectful, obedient, ambitious - and clueless. How long he would stay that way was of course another question, but for now, it was something else to be grateful for.

Author's note: Skeeter is Turk J, male, nunchuk.