blob80 - Reno has a lot on his mind, and he's being run to the ground. He's practically working for two people, and that's a lot of work! But he always has Arien in his mind for a reason he doesn't really understand. Their relationship's a bit wacko. But what works for people, right?
Jeantall - well, I'm glad you like it. There's definitely a sequel coming up as well, and I'm really happy you like Reno more because of this; I think he's one of the most interesting characters in the FF7 series, with some room for comedy but also with serious moments. Kind of like Die Hard?
Chapter 52: Critical Move Double Attack
Axil was sitting at the counter when Reno came. "Thanks," the redhead said to his friend as he sat next to him.
"Hey, no problem. I'd go anywhere for free booze," Axil replied cheerfully. "You're buying, right?"
Reno gave him a sour look, but nodded; Axil, after all, was currently unemployed, and he had asked the Wutaian to come, not the other way around. He ordered his usual, and waited for the drink to come. It did not take long for the bartender to pour the amber liquid into the glass, and then Axil waited for the redhead to speak.
Reno didn't speak right away. Instead, he took a drink, sighed, and then stared into the glass. Axil still waited, and then, the redhead opened his mouth.
"Your team ordered a shitload of weaponry," he said. "What's that about?"
"Oh, hell no," was the immediate response. "If you're gonna talk shop, you're gonna have to pay me. I'm not employed by the Shinra anymore, so any information you get out of me won't be for free. If you want my services, you gotta hand over cash."
"I'm buying you drinks!"
"That's for consultation, Reno. Negotiation fee, even."
Reno reached for his wallet in his trouser pocket. "All right, Scrooge," he griped. "How much?"
"Five mil."
Reno stared at his friend. "You're shitting."
"Nope. Take it or leave it." Axil downed the booze in one gulp.
The truth was, the AA members and Arien had foreseen this coming; Arien knew the Turks well enough to know that they were still connected. Once a Turk, always a Turk, the saying went, and that was true during Vincent Valentine's day and that was true in her day. Heck, even now, she was acting as the member of the sector, in an unorthodox, roundabout way. And so she had ordered the weapons in a single order. The AA members obeyed DeVir without protest; she had been their leader before and her operations had extremely high success rates. She also knew how Reno's mind worked, and had told Axil what to say in case he asked.
The Wutaian was glad she had told him what to tell the redhead. He would have tried to come up with a lie, but there was a fifty-fifty chance with Reno that he'd notice the falsehood, and there were more than lies to evade telling the truth. This way, Reno would just have to blame himself for not being able to get the information. Arien knew that, and so did Siva and Felicita, who were the two 'talkers' of the team; they had wrangled over the problem for a few hours and had come up with the solution, and the solution was this.
"Fine." Suddenly Reno dropped the topic. He thought for a moment, then decided to ask something else. "Talked to Arien recently?"
"Nope. I'm banned from the building, remember?" This time, Axil lied smoothly. A good lie was eight parts truth, two parts lie, and it was half their job to lie through their teeth. When Reno looked at him, Axil's expression was blank. That came with the training, really, something the Intelligence far outclassed the Turks for; they had to do this everyday. The Turks relied far more on intimidation and torture to get information. But sometimes, that didn't work as well.
Reno had no idea if the AA members just were really good at lying - likely - or if they just had no idea. Both were equally likely. Both were equally unlikely. But which? He decided he didn't care. He was a Turk first, a man second, and the Arien he had liked was the Arien who was a Turk first, woman second. Recently that set of priorities appeared to have flipped over. He wasn't liking this one bit. The ironic thing was that when Arien was Turk first, Arien second, Reno was slightly willing - at least, more willing then than now - to put Arien first, his job second. But now that Arien was demanding him to put her first, he was really reluctant to do so. Averse, even. He supposed he liked Arien because unlike the other women he knew, she was focused on being what she was demanded to be. Remove that from her and she was the same as anyone else. A subtle difference, but a major one.
Things just didn't work out.
The talk ended with no fruit, and Axil came back to his apartment as he reviewed the conversation in his mind, where Zen, Shiv, Felicita and Arien were sitting around the table in an open conference with their PCs. "Hey Axil," Arien said, looking up, as the front door unlocked and the man came in. "How was it?"
"The Turks know," he said simply. "Reno asked."
She raised an eyebrow. "About our plan or about the order?"
"Order."
"Tell him anything?"
"No." He sat down, then waved hi to his girlfriend in the computer screen. "Is this line secure?"
"Should be. Gareth checked."
"Cool. How's the plan coming along?"
"The list's long, Ax," Shiv told him.
"Were you tailed?"
"Yeah." Reno had indeed tailed him, all the way home. But they had already foreseen that happening, which was why they had moved their base to Axil's for the day. Arien had guessed Reno might tail him back, and Shivvalan had pointed out that nothing would seem unnatural with Axil returning back to his own place. "You were right. Down to the questions he asked."
Arien raised an eyebrow. "Huh," she said. "That's lucky."
"Just lucky?"
She shrugged. "Well. Do you feel lucky, punk?" She said with a wink, then went back to the screen. "Can we keep sniping to the maximum? I'd rather not have to empty my Sig in the train."
"That'll mean you'll be the one doing most of the work."
"I know, Shiv. But I'm the assassination expert here, remember?" She twirled the pen in her hand. "Maybe we'll go from the top, work our way down. And in the meanwhile, maybe we can leave the bottom names to a hireling."
"A hireling?"
"Yep. Not sure how reliable she is, but if she babbles, I know where to find her." She raised her thumb. "Better get this over with ASAP."
A few days after asking Axil what the AA members were planning, Reno was in the forensic ballistics lab, trying to figure out a mysterious murder. The murder would have been investigated by the police, except that the man was a rather high-ranking Shinra employee and so Rufus had forced the investigation to come to the company, rather than the local coroner's.
He picked the slug up from the table with a pair of tweezers, squinting to look at it and the striations. Whoever had killed this man was a professional, he concluded, without reading the ballistics report. It was a 7.62 OTAN round, fairly standard for sniping rifles; his main sniping firearm used the same calibre.
And so did Arien's.
He shook his head, trying to ignore that voice. Just because the calibre matched the calibre Arien used didn't mean it was fired by her; a third of the sniping rifles on the market used this calibre to begin with. The sniper had not left any clues except this single piece of metal anyway, with the casing not being found, making matters a little more difficult for the ballistics team. But the hit was clean to the head, an instant kill, and it was definitely the work of someone who knew how the investigation worked, someone who had inside knowledge, probably someone with Shinra ties…
Someone like Arien.
One kill. One slug.
He tried to remember her; the memories weren't as vibrant, like pressed petals in an old book, but he could still remember her carrying the rifle, her back straight. She had shown some ease handling that rifle, he remembered, just as she had shown ease with the other firearms she had used. Unbidden, the memories of her fighting came back to him, her dark hair flying as she fired her pistol, the smell of her scent mixing with the metal, her fingers digging into his shoulder as she used his body for support. It felt as she was gone, even though technically she wasn't… but the alien in the apartment was too different from the person he knew for him to acknowledge her as Arien. He didn't want her as a woman. He wanted her as someone who'd watch out for his back, with sex thrown in as a bonus.
And now his instincts were telling him this was her work, and his instincts had very rarely proven him wrong. He decided to trust it once again. She had been quite particular with her firearm preferences; after all, her life depended on it, and she usually stuck to the ones she liked. A clean shot through the window could be difficult, given the circumstances, and this person had done it. There weren't too many who could pull this off. Arien and Rude were the people that came to mind immediately, but it wasn't Rude.
What if this was Arien?
So what if it was?
"Here," he said, putting the slug down. "Try the ballistics for Sig's three thousand rifle."
The woman typed the name into her keyboard, waited, then called out, "it's a match." She turned to the redhead and asked, "how did you know?"
Reno had already pulled off the gloves and was throwing them into the disposal; "I just knew," he said, then he walked out the door, hands in pockets, deep in thought. He wondered if Axil knew anything was up. Arien hadn't seen her friends in a while - the Arien in the flat, at least - but if that was some wacko impostor, then the real Arien was out there, and that meant it was likely the AA members or Ivy knew.
Ivy. There was a weak link. AA members could lie through their teeth; after all, that had been their job until very recently. But Ivy didn't seem the type. She seemed too honest, her expressions far too open; and he was good at reading expressions, especially so after trying to read Arien's for months. Now, hers was about as legible as ancient Midgarian; she was usually expressionless when she was acting in her capacity as an agent. Of course, once the door was closed, things were entirely different, but…
He walked back to his floor, vaguely flipping through the ballistics report, when he walked into Elena. Literally. She was reading a book in the common room, and he had accidentally walked past his own office.
Idiot.
He took a good look at what Elena was reading, then blinked. The book had been his, yes, and he had given it to Elena, yes, but why was she reading it now? In hindsight, he probably should have given the volume to Arien, who had sorely needed it when she was the stick-up-the-ass ice queen that he had known so well. Maybe then she wouldn't have turned into a soft flop that she was now. Or maybe he would have noticed before she got replaced by some weird Hojo-experiment android.
"Men who tend to dress flashily are usually narcissists and bad in bed," Elena was reading out to herself. He covered his face with his hand. Yup, really should have given the volume to Arien; but she probably would have whacked him in the head with the book as soon as she saw the title. He vaguely wondered if it was too late to retrieve the book from the blonde and give it to Miss Mystery as Elena read on. "Is he conscious of his hair or does he wear flashy jewelry? On the contrary, men who are good drivers have a tendency to be good in bed." Elena then noticed Reno standing. "Hi!" she said brightly. "Speaking of… ow!" Reno had hit her on the head with a rolled-up report. "I was studying!"
"You're studying that?!"
"You gave it to me!"
Reno was about to point out that it had been meant as a joke, since Elena was clearly a virgin, but then shut up. What was the point? If Elena didn't get the joke now, she wasn't going to get it if he pointed it out to her. Most likely she'll just get pissed.
Elena was not paying attention to the redhead. She looked up at him, pondering. "You're flashy, but a good driver," she mused. "So that means…"
Another whack. "Stop reading," he commanded. Elena agreed that the chapter was probably too advanced for her - so not his point - but then casually said, "Arien doesn't seem to be your type."
Reno stopped dead in his tracks. The truth was, Arien was not his type. Ivy was more his type, or Siva; if it had been before meeting the Wutaian, he probably would have tried to score with the ginger. And probably would have succeeded. Breaking the norm and not knowing his limitations really had landed him in this knee-deep muck that he had no idea how to get out of.
Loud-mouthed. Stick-up-the-ass. Too serious. Too self-conscious. Too blunt. Too cynical. Too stoic. Too. Too. Too.
But on the other hand, her bluntness meant she'd speak what was on her mind, saving him from the messy guessing games women loved to play; she understood him, or at least, she understood his dark side. She knew the delicious poison that coursed through him as he made his kill, and the poison that caused him pain afterwards. She made him feel needed, and showed him the face she never showed to anyone else, as if he was the only person in the world she could just be herself to. She wasn't afraid to yield control to him; whatever he did, she welcomed him into her arms, and would bear every ministration he gave her - he admitted most of them were dangerously close to abuse for some - and would respond. It was as if she herself believed she had been made for him, and that she existed solely for him. And what man didn't want that?
And so he fell for her, he admitted. Because seducing her satisfied his pride and seeing her yearn for him fulfilled his needs, but he had not thought that he needed her to need him. He had practically served his head up on a plate by demanding her to give him a pound of her flesh; and she did, but by demanding her he had become vulnerable. And she had unwittingly struck that point (or, at least, it seemed unwitting) and had scored. Damn it!
And he had just realised this, when he was almost certain she was gone. He had been selfish and unkind perhaps, he had certainly bruised her in many ways, and now he felt almost sure she had left him. Without warning. Maybe she hadn't intended to, but the fact was that she wasn't there.
He sighed. Something borrowed, something blue my ass, he groused in his head. How did people get to the marriage stage? He was tripping up with just the start line, and people around him were getting married left and right. Marriage, to him, was like the last boss of the game, except unlike the game, life went on after the finale and he would have to live with that boss. And by social conventions, if things were good - what the heck did that mean, anyway? - he'd have to live with that last boss forever.
Not that it was likely to happen anytime soon. At this rate, sooner or later she'd really demand he put her first, mission second, and then would whine and cling onto him about it. And then he'd just put a bullet in her head. He was amazed at just how calmly he thought of the idea. Only a month or two ago, he had found her precious, had seriously debated whether he could pick Rufus' safety over hers every time. Now he was thinking about what a bother she was becoming.
"There you are."
Reno jerked himself away from the train of thought and returned to reality. Elena was looking up at him with a puzzled look on her face, and behind him, in the doorway, was Rude. He turned to face his partner, who still showed signs of the injuries he had sustained in Rocket Town. "What's up?" he asked.
"Heidegger's orders."
"Aw man." Reno clutched at his head. "Not again. Doesn't that fat bastard have anything better to do than order us around like dogs?"
Rude ignored Reno's complaint. "We have to retrieve the cache from Gelnika."
"Gelnika… the one that sunk?"
Rude nodded.
"Aw, hell no. That was Hojo's portable lab. Who knows what's down there!" Reno made a face. "Last time we had to clean after Hojo's shit, a monster nearly cut my leg off. No amount of hazard pay's gonna reattach my leg!"
"Heidegger's orders," Rude repeated doggedly.
"I'll shove my rod up Heidegger's ass. See if he wants to order me again. That dumb shit."
Rude didn't respond. The man just glared at him. Which told Reno that he'd better get moving; arguing wasn't Rude's strong point, but orders were orders, and it was likely Heidegger would just decide to be an ass and make Reno go to every stinking mission he could come up for the foreseeable future if he refused.
God, he hated that man.
Reno nodded, his face clearly showing his distaste. "When do we suit up?" he asked as he put down the rolled-up report onto the table. The bottom of the report was slightly wrinkled, absorbing the moisture from his palm. He paid it no attention.
"Now."
"Now?!"
"Now."
"Fuckin' git." Reno kicked a chair. "You gonna be okay by yourself?" That was to Elena.
"Of course! Who do you think-"
Reno waved her protests off. "Save it for Tseng," he said wearily, missing the flash of pain that crossed Elena's face. "If Arien calls, tell her I'm out. Might not get decent reception underwater."
The two men left, Rude silent and Reno cursing Heidegger, and Elena wondered why Reno wouldn't just call and tell her himself before leaving. Were they fighting? She wondered as she put the book down and saw the rolled-up report he had used to hit her with. It didn't bear the red CLASSIFIED stamp, so she unfurled the curled report. It was from the ballistic forensics, on a single slug. Most of it were just images, but she saw that the team had concluded the round was probably fired from a Sig 3000 rifle. She wondered just how many snipers lived in the city, but decided not to worry about it. If she needed to know about it, Rude or Reno would tell her. With that knowledge and comfort that this didn't have to do with her, she went down to lunch, wondering how Tseng was, and just why Arien was still on leave. She missed having a female coworker, but she had things to do, so she was not too bothered with the prospect of having to eat alone. It wasn't like the Turks had many friends, after all.
