Clash of the Titans
Chapter One
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
He's the kind of guy who's always passing
But who never has time to spend
And he'll take you for a spin
And won't look within find out who you are
"Charm Attack"
Leona Ness
The slums of Midgar never slept.
During the day, despite the prodigious piles of rubble that spotted the streets like humongous heaps of crap and the fact that half of the houses were in the process of rotting into nothing, children played in the dusty streets, tossing rubble balls back and forth under the watchful eyes of their parents. Adults visited a few of the stores that had survived the destruction of Meteor to buy food for dinner. Men and woman alike gathered at the numerous bars to sing praise to AVALANCHE, who saved the world from Sephiroth, to Diamond Weapon, who unconsciously killed the last of the money-hungry Shinras while laying siege on Midgar, and to Reeve Benavides, the former Shinra Urban Development Manager who was working on rebuilding the slums and cleaning up the streets. If one ignored the trash in the gutter, the run-down shops, and the general poverty everywhere, one could actually think that the slums during the day weren't so bad after all.
But then night fell and a whole new crowd came out.
Men with guns and knives out the kazoo. Women who would just as soon kiss you as kill you. Thieves. Murderers. Serial killers. Whores. Drug dealers. But the worst of all the night monsters was the Turks.
Reno Sasuki, in particular.
Leaning casually against the concrete wall behind him, the infamous flame-haired spitfire allowed a small smile to play across his thin lips as he watched the night crowd go about their business. It still amazed him that Sectors 3 and 2 had managed to avoid much of the destruction brought upon by Meteor. The people here bustled back and forth like nothing had ever happened, like Sephiroth had never attempted to become a god, like Cloud Strife and his little tag-alongs had never risked their sorry asses to save a world not worth saving, in Reno's opinion. He had pretty much given up on this shithole a long time ago. If he had been Meteor, he would have swallowed Midgar in one gulp, chewed it up and spit it back out, grinding it in the dust for good measure. The entire damn city was worthless. (Me included, a little voice in the back of his mind said bitterly.) Just look at these people walking the streets now, the outcasts of society, only watching out for themselves. Did Cloud and Co. really think that such trashy people were worth saving?
"Hey, baby, looking for company?"
Speaking of trashy.
Reno snapped out of his reverie, something that was becoming a nasty habit as of late, his luminescent aquamarine eyes behind their dark sunglasses taking in all of the woman in front of him. Her skirt and tank top were so tight they left little to his fiendish imagination. The tops of her overly large breasts were exposed by the low neckline of her shirt, the crevasse in between them looking very enticing in the deepening shadows. Her face, which was by no means exceptionally beautiful, was done up with so many layers of makeup that she somewhat resembled a clown. Your typical slut of the slums. A whore hoping beyond hope to feed an empty space inside her that she thought sex could fill. But, hey, who was he to complain? He certainly never ended up on the short end of the stick. He was always in a win-win situation in regards to his numerous "flings."
Reno smiled slyly in response to her inviting question. "Maybe," he said coyly.
Lips that swam with red lipstick pulled back over white teeth with fiendish anticipation. "Just 'maybe,' big boy?" she asked flirtatiously, taking a step closer to him. "What, ain't what I got good enough for ya?"
Reno looked her up and down in an obvious fashion, and she allowed his examination with an eager smile, thinking that she had another sucker and more gil to slip into her bra.
She stepped so close that Reno could smell the odor of her body, a mixture of cosmetic products, cheap perfume, and unwashed skin. "Like what you see?" she breathed, pressing her body against his and placing her hands on his chest, red fingernails showing up vividly against the white fabric of his dress shirt. Reno stared at her calmly through the dark lenses of his sunglasses.
"Maybe," he repeated noncommittally, but with the same sly grin on his face.
The whore smiled and slid her probing hands underneath his navy blue suit jacket, running them along his sides. "Bashful, now are we?" she murmured huskily as Reno continued staring at her placidly, though for some reason his stomach churned with disgust. The stench of the whore's hot body pressed against his was overpowering. Good God, what was that rank perfume she was wearing? The sewage bubbling up out of the manholes in dilapidated Sector 7 smelled better. Did all of the whores who he had paid to do their dark deeds in the past smell as bad as this? Not that he would have noticed; when one is drunk they don't notice much of anything. The world's just one great happy land of pleasures and numbness when he was drunk. Personally, Reno drank for the numbness part, but the pleasures were a nice side order. Very nice.
But tonight, he wasn't drunk. He didn't want numbness or pleasures. He just wasn't in the mood.
"Now," the harlot clinging to him continued, oblivious to the uncharacteristic revulsion that was simmering in Reno. "Why don't you and me go find ourselves a nice—"
"Actually," Reno interrupted conversationally, a mischievous smile still on his lips, as if the world were a joke that only he understood. "I don't think I would enjoy company tonight."
The whore stiffened in surprise; she had been sure this one had been the kind who would enjoy a heated tumble between the sheets, but she gave it one last shot, massaging the muscles of Reno's lower back with her overly thin hands. "Oh, come on," he murmured right into his ear, pressing her body against his. "You must feel so lonely."
"The heart is a lonely hunter," Reno replied, resisting the urge to gag as the smell of her unwashed hair went up his nose.
She laughed, hot breath plastering his ear. "A poetic one, aren't we? I like that in a man. Don't worry; I don't bite."
But I do. And my electric nightstick does, too.
"Are you hard of hearing?" Reno snapped angrily. "I said I'd rather be alone tonight."
The whore drew back as if she had been slapped away, her entire demeanor changing from seductive and beguiling to prissy and offended, like an upstart cat that had just been shunned by its owner. Or in this case, an upstart bitch.
"Fine," she snipped, her painted eyebrows coming together in a scowl. "You can go #@%$ yourself, then. It's your loss, big boy."
"I'm sure," Reno said with a grin as she huffed away, her spiked heels clicking on the broken pavement. He would certainly shed no tears over her hurt pride; she would manage to find another, more willing, less contemplative customer in less than a few minutes.
Sighing, the Turk ran his gloved hand through his untamed mane of fiery locks, dwelling a second on the elastic band that held the lower portion in a loose ponytail. He had no idea why he was even out tonight; there was nothing for him here on the street. The only reason he frequented this area of the slums was when he was looking for a bar or a quick fix; he certainly didn't journey here to admire the scenery. And he usually had Rude with him to keep him company, but tonight his best friend had been elsewhere… with Elena.
Reno allowed himself a half-bitter, half-amused smile as he thought about the burgeoning relationship between his two Turk friends, the only friends he had in the world. Soon, they would go off and get married and settle down and have kids, leaving him behind like a piece of unwanted garbage.
Poor me. Nobody loves me anymore.
Rolling his aquamarine eyes at his idiotic thoughts, Reno pushed himself lazily off the wall, brushing dirt and concrete off of his back as he did so, and began to stroll down the street, expertly keen eyes hardened by the hard knock life taking in every person he passed. He had no idea who or what he was looking for, but he had come home from work today with the intense premonition that something big was going to go down tonight, and he had to be there. The feeling had been so forceful that he had suddenly envisioned himself as a marionette whose strings were being pulled by the powers that be, and those stupid ass gods or whoever they were wanted him to be here in the slums of Sector 3 without a trace of alcohol in his system and his nightstick strapped to his hip.
Well screw those gods. If they wanted him to be here in this condition, they were going to have to float down on angel's wings and tell him so, because he was through waiting around for trouble to fall in his lap. He was going to find a bar and get himself plastered, and if that messed up their divine plan and the whole great tapestry of life began to unravel because he was banging back tequila shots instead of fighting evil, then that was just too damn bad.
But no matter how much he thought of dismissing the call of Fate, or whatever the hell it was, Reno couldn't get rid of that tickling in the back of his mind, or that cold feeling on the back of his neck. There was a strange tingling between his shoulder blades, and he kept looking over his shoulder out of habit, trying to pinpoint the sniper or hitman that he knew must be watching him. But each time he turned around, there was no one there, and it was seriously beginning to grind his nerves.
There had once been a time when he would have had no reason to be this jumpy, a time when the tyrannical corporation of Shinra Inc. had been the ruler of the world, with its notorious hitmen, the fruits of its womb, the world-renowned Turks to enforce its orders, increase its ranks, and eliminate all threats by any and every means necessary. That had been the good life, when Reno was a devil in a blue suit, his pockets lined with gil, his head held high, and his walk casual and cocky.
Times were different now. The blue suit that had once incited fear in all who laid eyes on it now incited nothing at all to the onlookers. The people who saw the lonely, lean, flame-haired man walking the streets felt nothing for him, not fear, not hatred, just nothing. Poor guy, still wearing that old suit like Shinra still exists. Poor guy, still suffering from illusions of grandeur. Poor guy, holding onto the past and expecting us to run screaming from the sight of the infamous Reno of the Turks, one of three of the callous and ethically retarded villains left in the world.
Sorry, my idiotic brothers and sisters. I don't wear this suit because I want to. After being in Shinra for – oh god, how many years was it? – and donning the same damn suit day after day, you simply run out of things to wear. I wish there was some deeper significance behind this blue suit, some deeper meaning behind this eyes, some purpose in this empty soul, but there isn't. Too bad. Tough titties.
Jostling past the people on the street with only a cursory glance, Reno's eyes roved the streets around him, spotting several overflowing bars just looking for more hungry flies to draw in to their maws, which were filled with drunken bliss and pleasures of every sort. He walked past these bars, telling himself that he was looking for one that would have so many mangy lowlifes inside. He was in no mood to deal with anyone tonight.
His exhaustive search was rudely interrupted when an old woman dressed in rags and covered in grime suddenly rushed up to him, waving her hands madly. She hobbled as most old woman did, hunched pitifully over a cane made of rotting wood. Her back was horribly warped, hunched and twisted like a sculpting experiment gone all wrong. The snow-white hair that adorned her head like colorless straw stood up on end, like the tuft of a dandelion. All in all, she made for quite a startling sight as she hobbled up to Reno with a vigor that most humans her age had lost long ago.
"Sir!" the crazy hag cried, the mad light of insanity blazing in her washed out eyes as she looked wildly up at Reno. "Young man! Beware! The end is near!"
Reno grinned, staring condescendingly down at Old Bertha, Sector Three's resident lunatic. "Is that so, grandma?" he asked mockingly. "The end is near? Like it was last week?"
Her half-blind, crazed eyes narrowed, her mouth puckering as if she had eaten something sour. "Such youthful impertinence, Flame Hair; I know who you are. I know what you do. The blood on your hands does not escape these blind eyes, Reno of the Turks."
Reno raised an auburn eyebrow, his curiosity piqued, wondering how the loony old fart knew who he was.
Bertha laughed maniacally, proudly displaying all of her five rotted teeth. "Have not seen you around here in many nights, Turk," she cackled. "Then, BOOM, I look up and there you be, the Phoenix risen from the ashes to fulfill your purpose."
Reno was stunned into silence by the words dropping from her withered lips. The thought suddenly crossed his mind that maybe the old hag wasn't quite as crazy as people made her out to be.
Bertha, in the meantime, was rambling on. "Yes!" she cried with insanity gleaming in her every feature. "I just sitting there in my corner when the voices tell me 'Bertha, rise and tell the world! Share your knowledge with the ignorant and naïve! Let the fiery truth burn the darkness away! And bring back three burritos with cheese for supper!'"
"What?" Reno snapped, surprised by the absurd statement. "Burritos? What the hell are you talking about?"
Bertha's old wrinkly hand suddenly lashed forward and grabbed the lapel of his coat, grasping the cloth tightly, her knuckles crackling like miniature fireworks as she did so. "You listen here, Fire Top," she suddenly seethed, the mad light of lunacy burning in her eyes. "Even the aliens in my head get hungry, too! Who am I to deny them the right to eat?!"
"No one," Reno agreed, staring mockingly down into the hag's wrinkled face. "The oddball life forms living in my anus get hungry, too. Only they don't like beans in their burritos. It gives them gas and acid indigestion."
The old hag cackled madly, laughing with such heartiness that she ended up coughing and wheezing in between sounds of mirth. "Funny boy!" she cried with insane happiness. "Funny, funny boy! Be cautious, Fire Hair, be brave, and be bold! Be loving and be wise!"
Reno gave a melodramatic sigh and put his gloved hands on his hips. "Listen here, grandma, do you have any earthly idea how hard it is to be all those things at the same time? Who do you think I am, Superman?"
Bertha suddenly shook the end of her rotting cane in his face, her washed out eyes widening with some strange emotion that was exclusive only to the insane. "Beware, Turk!" she whispered-screamed, leaning in so close that he could smell her rank breath. "You are no Superman, but they shall expect you to be. Be strong and of good courage. Love shall conquer all."
"Sure thing. Whatever you say," he retorted sarcastically, rolling his aquamarine eyes.
"THE TITANS ARE COMING!" Bertha suddenly screeched, hands held upwards to the sky, spit flying from her mouth as Reno took an unconscious step backwards. "THE TITANS ARE COMING! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"
The old hag suddenly sped off, shuffling along the street as fast as her withered and warped feet would carry her. Her dark rags flapped around her bent form like a demon's wings as she passed by indifferent onlookers screaming, "THE TITANS ARE COMING! GOD SAVE US! SEND HER DOWN TO US! HAND OVER THE BURRITOS WITH CHEESE!"
Reno stood calmly on the sidewalk with his hands still on his hips, one resting near his nightstick. The crone shuffled and hobbled along, her cries turning into the senseless mutterings about burritos with cheese as her ghastly figure vanished around a corner. No one she passed even gave her a second glance; such sights in the slums were commonplace and not worth a quota of their precious time. Reno alone acknowledged the passing of Old Bertha, watching as her warped form disappeared from view and reflecting briefly on her strange mixture of seemingly sincere warnings about Fate and Titans that sharply contrasted with her insane phrases about aliens and burritos.
"Crazy old broad," he muttered under his breath, and went along his way, forgetting about Old Bertha and her strange predictions of the future.
But once moving again, with his eyes scanning the streets for – god, he didn't even know what he was looking for anymore – Reno once again felt his thoughts becoming unusually contemplative. Where was Rude when he needed him? Though the prideful Turk wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, including himself, he depended a lot on his levelheaded, calm best friend to help him think things through and make sure his brash actions and sometimes crazy impulses didn't get him into trouble. Where Reno was fire, Rude was most definitely ice, but as far as the two Turks went, those two elements meshed well. What Reno lacked in long-term planning and detached assessments, Rude made up for. And what the tall, bald-headed Turk lacked in quick thinking and smooth talking, Reno more than sufficed. In short, Reno would have definitely preferred it if Rude were with him tonight to help him make sense of these crazy, fate-driven urges that he was experiencing.
Even if it had been Elena accompanying him instead of Rude, Reno still would have been more comfortable. The redheaded Turk allowed a small smile to creep across his lips as he thought of how Elena might have reacted if she had encountered Old Bertha. Knowing the rookie Turk, who was still extremely wet behind the ears and of an incredibly sensitive breed, would have offered of pay for the burritos to feed her aliens or something completely ridiculous like that. But despite her obvious faults, Reno loved Elena like a sister and was glad in his heart of hearts that she and Rude had found each other.
A sudden clamoring from across the streets jolted Reno out of his thoughts. Turning his head to look at the source of the noise, he was amused to see that a brawl had broken out in front of a bar across from where Reno was walking. Dingy-looking men and woman all gathered in one huge, seething mob, trying to get a glimpse of the action like they had nothing better to do than watch two lowlifes beat each other senseless and mess up their probably already messed up faces.
"Maybe the Planet sent me here to stop drunkards from killing each other?" he muttered, knowing he was talking to himself like crazy Old Bertha and not caring. "But what's two dead drunkards any—oof! Hey! Watch it!"
Reno let out a cry of surprise as he felt something collide with his right side while his eyes were trained on the fight across the street. His hand immediately flew to rest on his nightstick as his paranoid mind, the mind of a Turk, instantly fed him the worst case scenario – that he was being attacked by an enemy that he, with his head up his ass, hadn't managed to detect. For a moment, he fought to maintain his balance, worn boots skidding on the cracked sidewalk before he managed to keep himself on his feet.
"Now, who the hell do you think you—" he started to say, but then his eyes fell on his fearsome "attacker" and his breath caught in his throat.
Lying at his feet was the most striking female he had ever seen.
Her hair was a dynamic veil of ebony locks shot through with defiant strands of blood red that hung around her shoulders and down her back, billowing gently in the dry, rank breezes of the slums. Her thin dress ended way above her knees, exposing creamy legs clad in fishnet hose. Calf-high boots with huge heels accented her shapely legs, and the filtered light from the bars across the street eagerly touched her unnaturally pale skin, giving her a ghostly look, like she was some unheard of haunt that had been risen from her rest to land at his feet and make his heartbeats become irregular and fast.
The mysterious girl shifted, bracing her weight on the ground with one of her slender hands and lifted her face to look up at him, giving him yet another shock. Her face was nothing short of beautiful with a full mouth, short nose, and graceful eyebrows, but what really caught his attention and for some reason sent shivers down his spine were her eyes.
The first thing that came to Reno's mind was that this girl was another one of Hojo's scions and had been injected with Mako, making her golden eyes even more striking, but he realized that the glow in those honey-colored orbs didn't come from any Mako, but from something else. Their luminescence wasn't synthetic or man-made; it was natural. Suddenly, Reno was reminded of someone, of that Cetra girl Tseng had had a thing for, the one that Sephiroth killed…what was her name again? Oh yeah, Aeris.
The purposeless girl looked up from her seat on the hard, cracked ground and studied the man standing over her with a wariness that didn't show in her golden eyes. There was something about this man, something very familiar that she couldn't put her finger on. He was perhaps the most striking representative of the male sex that she had ever seen, even more so than Zack. Hair that was woven of liquid fire stuck up in rebellious spikes from the top of his head; a longish ponytail hung over his shoulder like a curious pet. Skin sculpted from white marble seemed to glow in the meager light, flawless to her keen eyes except for two short scars that had been deliberately carved, either by him or by some opponent, close to the tender flesh that surrounded his eyes, whose iridescent glow his dark-tinted sunglasses couldn't quite hide.
His blue suit and white button-down dress shirt were rumpled and sloppy-looking, but for some reason it only accented his lanky limbs, which looked slender yet solid. The V created by his unbuttoned shirt collar exposed a lean chest and strong-looking collarbone. (She had always loved seeing collarbones on men; she didn't know why). The only thing that kept her from being smitten on the spot by this strange man with hair the color of the Phoenix's feathers was the peculiar gleam in his eyes that told her he was dangerous and the fact that he obviously had some sort of weapon resting in a holster strapped to his right hip. One of his gloved hands hovered menacingly on the handle of it, and the girl experienced a momentary fright when she thought that he was going to attack her, but when he kept staring down at her like she was some sort of ghost, she slowly rose to her feet, brushing gravel off of her "borrowed" dress as she did so.
"Forgive me for running into you, sir," she apologized politely. "I assure you it was an accident."
Reno blinked as the girl's husky, beautiful voice saying those coldly polite words hit him like a slap in the face. Who was this girl anyways? She was dressed like any other whore, but any other whore didn't spout formal-sounding phrases like "forgive me" or "sir" or "I assure you."
"No problem," he muttered. "Just don't let it happen again." Studying her more closely, thinking that if she was a whore, she was cleanest, freshest-looking one he'd ever seen. Her face was devoid of anything resembling makeup, and her honey-colored eyes, as they gazed back at him impassively, had a certain gleam to them that he hadn't seen before in anyone.
She's a fish out of water; she doesn't belong here.
"Why were you running anyways?" he suddenly asked, trying not to let his gaze stray to the enticing crevasse between her breasts as he spoke to her, knowing that if she wasn't a harlot, she wasn't going to like his eyes wandering.
She blinked, thick dark lashes flashing closed over her eyes. "Excuse me, sir?"
There's that polite "sir" again. Where they hell did this chick come from and what is she doing in the slums?
"Running," he repeated impatiently, releasing his grip on his nightstick and gesturing to the dark alley on his right. "You came blowing out of there like there was no tomorrow. Why were you running?"
The mysterious girl cast a quick glance towards the dark alley as if noticing its presence for the first time. "Oh," she said quietly. "I'm dreadfully sorry for running into you, sir. I was in a hurry and not looking where I was going. I'll make sure to be more careful in the future. Good night."
She turned and started to walk away.
"Hey!" Reno called, surprising himself with how desperate he sounded.
She whirled to look at him again, something resembling mistrust flickering in her eyes. "Was there something else, sir?" she asked with cold politeness, cocking her head to the side as if in a gesture of curiosity.
Reno narrowed his eyes and took a step closer to her, examining her intently as she met his gaze without fear. Even with her heels on, the mysterious girl was nearly a whole head shorter than him.
"You're not from around here, are you?" he blurted before he could stop himself.
She raised a dark eyebrow. "No, sir. I am not." She didn't elaborate any further, and the look in her eyes told him that she didn't think very highly of his prying.
Reno didn't care. "Where are you from?"
The girl shook her head, briefly closing her golden eyes. "With all due respect, sir, I would rather not discuss such things with strangers. I need to be on my way."
Reno reached out to grab her arm, suddenly as desperate to keep her there as he had been a few moments before, but she jerked back a step with a speed that surprised him as much as it annoyed him. What aggravated him even more was that the tingling in the back of his head had turned into a full-fledged buzzing sound that bordered on pain, and for some unknown reason, he felt that this strange girl who dressed like a whore and talked like an executive businesswoman but looked like an dark angel had something to do with his plight.
"Wait a minute, honey," he said, trying to ignore the obviously suspicious gaze the girl was drilling him with. His little arm-grabbing stunt hadn't impressed her.
"Really, sir, I need to—" she started to say.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" he asked suddenly, removing his glasses and staring at her with his Mako eyes, as if baring them for her to see would make her trust him. "I feel like I've met you before."
The girl's eyes widened slightly upon seeing the glow in his eyes, and she was silent for a moment as Reno waited anxiously for her answer, but she slowly shook her head. "No, sir," she said quietly. "I'm afraid that I don't recall ever seeing you before in my life."
She's lying.
"Are you sure?" he asked in a low voice, taking another step closer to her, eyes gleaming.
She nodded quickly, saying nothing more. It appeared as if she was eager for this conversation to end, but she didn't make a move to run away again.
Reno was suddenly at a loss for words. He felt the irrational need to keep this girl close to him. But how was he supposed to tell her that? He needed to get her to trust him first, which was looking to be very difficult. Reno could usually sweet talk any woman into committing murder for him, but as he looked into the golden eyes of this mysterious stranger, he realized that getting her to even come near him was going to take some work.
Go for it, buddy, use your charm and wit.
"Um," he stammered, running a hand through his hair, suddenly feeling as if his tongue was tied in knots. "Look, uh, I know this is kind of, um, sudden, you know, and all, but, uh, what I'm tryin' to say is…"
The girl waited patiently for him to finish his broken sentence, her eyes impassive.
Reno suddenly found himself drowning in the shimmering golden color of her eyes. Not human, he suddenly thought, not human at all.
"I'd like to take you home with me," he blurted out. "So if you'd just—"
Her face darkened.
Uh-oh. Mistake. Big mistake. Great going, ace. Way to use that good old "charm attack" of yours.
"Excuse me, sir," she said, her voice acquiring a cold, hard edge as her eyes glittered with rage. "But I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone, for something, that I am most definitely not. For the last time, good night."
That said, she spun and stalked away, striding defiantly across the street, completely ignoring the brawl that still had yet to let up. Reno, stunned and disbelieving, could do nothing but stand there and watch her go, her hair shimmering in the fractured light of the slums, legs moving with long, graceful strides. What the hell had just happened? She had misunderstood his intentions completely, and now she was gone! For a moment Reno felt that infuriatingly irrational panic rise up in him as the need to keep the girl in his sights, if not in his arms, suddenly bloomed in his soul like the poisonous black roses rumored to grow somewhere in the Nibelheim mountains. He opened his mouth to call to her, to tell her to come back. His legs tensed, ready to run after her, but something stopped him.
There was an uncomfortable tugging in the back of his mind, akin the buzzing, lightheaded feeling that had been plaguing him all night, but only far, far more unpleasant. The itchy buzzing feeling had been aggravatingly persistent, but this new sensation awakened in him a deep alarm from the hidden recesses of his human nature, or what the hard knock life of a Turk had left of it. It was this alarm that kept his feet locked into their position on the sidewalk, glasses still dangling from his long fingers as his calm Mako eyes traced the vanishing figure of the girl as she moved across and down the street away from him, only looking back once at the strange man in the disheveled suit. For a moment, Reno fancied that he could see the glitter of her golden eyes flash in the darkness, but by then she had already turned away.
Still, his keen eyes tracked her with inhuman intensity, squinting only slightly in the darkness as he saw her turn towards a dark alleyway…and take off running.
The hell? Why did she start running yet again? All the stupid hoochie is gonna do is run over some other scruffy lowlife, and then she'll leave him standing in the dust with his mouth hanging open like me over here. Why was she running?
Then the internal alarm in his head tugged at his attention again, and a thought suddenly occurred to Reno that probably would have come to light earlier, had he been focused less on the girl and more on the situation at hand. The question wasn't why she was running – it was what was she running from?
Eyes impassive, Reno replaced the glasses on his face, settling them on the bridge of his nose. He turned to stare into the inky darkness of the alley from which the girl had first emerged from, but even his Mako-enhanced senses could discern nothing from the blackness, certainly not the source of the jangling presence of discord in his mind. But if he had learned one thing in all his years as a street rat and as a Turk, it was that just because you couldn't see your enemy didn't mean that they weren't there. In fact, the greatest enemies were the ones that went unseen to one's eye for all eternity.
Hand instinctively coming to rest on his nightstick, Reno gave one last glare to the dark, deserted alley before slinking with liquid grace into the shadows cast by the wall in front of him, pressing himself into the crevasse between an old trash can and a short stairway of shattered concrete stairs that used to belong to an apartment complex but was now a crack house. Oblivious to the miscellaneous selection of nasty items that dotted the ground, Reno seated himself on the ground, trying to appear to be just your regular drunkard inebriated in the street. It wasn't too hard for him; he'd had lots of practice.
Though he now had no view whatsoever of the alley the girl had first emerged from, that same something in the back of his mind that had made him uncharacteristically desperate to keep the mysterious stranger in close proximity to him was now telling him that remaining in this place and waiting was now the best course of action.
You know, he thought grumpily. I've had it up to here with this intuition crap. I have much better ways to spend my time than sitting here in the shadows, waiting for something to come out of alley, and all because of one weirdo girl who ran me over simply by coincidence. I don't wanna be here. I have my own life, you know. People to do, things to see…
Just then the tugging in his mind suddenly manifested into a full-fledged psychotic demon that beat at his tender head with its claw-tipped wings, its screeching, unearthly voice echoing in Reno's ears. Though his every instinct told him to either prepare to fight or get the hell out of there, some unknown force that had manipulated his every action that night kept him adhered in his little nook against the wall, watching and waiting for he had no idea what.
He heard footsteps, slow, calculated footsteps, the footsteps of one that would rather not be heard, but who really doesn't care if they are heard. Reno's heart began to thunder in his chest as the battle adrenaline coursed through his system, the prelude of the high that usually accompanied him in most confrontations.
The footsteps got closer. Reno's head throbbed with a ceaseless pain as he shifted in his hiding place, keeping his hand close to his nightstick and staring at the side of alleyway out of the corner of his eye, suddenly dreading what he would see.
The ringing cry in Reno's brain crescendoed to an almost unbearable degree. He gritted his teeth in pain, viciously refusing to succumb to the agony that had no source other than his own madness.
Then the Stalker emerged from the alley, and the demon battering at his brain suddenly let out a horrendous screech, and Reno had to exert every ounce of iron will he had in his lanky form to keep from purging a similar cry from his throat. As a Turk, he had seen many assassins in his life. Hell, he saw the phantom of one every time he looked in the mirror. And this Stalker, this dark man, looked like your regular run-of-the-mill sniper or hitman. He wore a long, black coat that reached to the backs of his knees and surrounded his entire form like a protective shroud. The collar of the garment was turned up sharply, hiding the man's entire neck and profile from Reno's furtive glances. A black fedora hat cast a deep shadow on his face, effectively concealing anything that Reno's shrewd vision could identify about this stranger. He had his hands shoved in his pockets. He wore black boots and dark pants on his legs. Normal assassin, perfectly bland and average.
But Reno knew better. Normal assassins didn't make his head throb with their very presence. Normal assassins, even that ex-Turk on Cloud's team, Vincent Valentine, never had incited this much fear in one of their brethren, especially someone like Reno, who had committed his first murder at age ten. There was a sense of foreboding about this dark man that charged the air with unseen electricity, making Reno shudder slightly in his little hiding place not five feet away from where the man was standing at the mouth of the alley, wrapped in shadows.
Sweat rolled down his pale face in beads, trickling mischievously into his eyes, but he didn't dare take his vision away from the figure of the Stalker, who simply stood there, so still, so lifeless, like an ominous statue that nature had forgotten.
Please don't let him see me, Reno suddenly thought fearfully, then mentally slapped himself for being such a pussy. Who the hell was this freak anyways, who made him feel so much fear?
Then the Stalker shifted slightly, causing Reno's heart to skip a beat. His sweaty grip tightened on his nightstick, certain that the man had become wise to his presence close by. But the unearthly creature didn't even look Reno's way, not even a glance. Instead, he crossed the street fearlessly, a shadow among shadows. The brawl at the bar across the road had stopped long ago, and only a few drunkards now remained outside the doors, too inebriated to move their worthless asses back inside. But that certain something about the dark man that had terrified Reno out of his wits pierced their alcohol-clouded brains, and each of them looked up in terror as the Stalker passed them by, his coat rustling silently around his legs.
Reno watched from his hiding spot across the street as one of the drunkards scrambled to his feet, trying to get his uncoordinated limbs into some semblance of motion. Needless to say, the man failed miserably, not even able to take one step before falling flat on his face in the street with a whimpering cry.
The Stalker passed him without a glance, traveling down the length of the street until he reached the alley that the girl had run off down a few minutes ago. With the same unnatural, relentless ease with which he had crossed the street and brushed past the terrified drunk, he turned left smoothly and disappeared into the alley. Reno's suspicions were confirmed.
The girl was being followed.
The pain in Reno's mind suddenly eased, and he lifted himself shakily to his feet, hand still gripping his nightstick. His knees were weak with the aftermath of fear and adrenaline, and there was a sheen of sweat on his upper lip and high forehead. Lifting his arm, he defiantly wiped away this fear-sweat with one deft swipe. His jaw clenched in determination, and his aquamarine eyes narrowed behind the dark lenses of his glasses.
Okay, freako, you almost made me piss in my pants, but this is far from over. The night is still young, and I'm on the prowl. You aren't king of this turf, not tonight, not ever. And you can't have her. I'll see to that. You just wait, my friend. Just wait.
