"Yeah, well you know what, Hector?" Reno shouted into the cell phone, face currently flushed almost as red as his hair. "I don't give a damn how many federal agents you have monitoring your calls! I don't care that he's sitting right there! What color is his hair? Blonde? Its Gary, isn't it? Yeah, I know you can't say. It's Gary. You tell Gary to sit down and shut the fuck up, or he's going to get a repeat of the summer of '93. He'll understand."
Reno paused, listening for a few moments, whatever the person on the other end of the phone telling him apparently not helping his mood any. "Yeah, I guess I did just tell him myself," he replies sharply, "and he didn't do it. Fine. We'll see what happens next time you want some quality Fort Condor armory shells."
With an angry growl, Reno threw his phone down, not really caring that he missed the counter by a good foot and the device shattered against the tile floor of the room like a shot glass. Lord Godo was footing the bill, after all, and it had been a long time since he had last been able to recklessly destroy material. It felt good. Before he had broken a co-workers neck in a scuffle over a last doughnut and transferred to the Turks, Reno had after all been a member of the sweep forces that made sure things didn't get too pretty in the slums. He hadn't even realized that such a position existed until he'd been offered the job, but it had explained so much to him when he found out about it that his knees had almost buckled.
He produced another phone from the crate on the counter to his left, a resource provided by Yuffie, who had apparently anticipated Reno's less than orthodox way of handling things. He flipped the cover open and dialed hastily, not even needing to pause to remember the digits he had last dialed half a decade ago. No ring came from the other end- it wasn't that sort of a number- but a static filled hum told the former Turk that he had gotten through just fine. After a pause that was just long enough for tracking equipment to pick up the source of the call, there was a click, and a deep raspy voice came booming into Reno's ear, talking rapid fire like a machine gun with a stuck trigger.
"Halo's house of Bibles, whattaya want, whattaya need, what can I do for ya?" said the man, his words surprising Reno to the point it took the man a few seconds to answer.
"You sell Bibles now?" Reno demanded in disbelief.
"It goes with the name, mommy," came the reply, "it goes with the name. What can I do ya for?"
'Mommy' was a name that stemmed from a job so old that all of the Shin-Ra executives who ordered it done had managed to escape the destruction of Meteor by retirement, and was one of the first missions Reno had been sent to take care of alone. Some grandchild being held for ransom or the like, and even though the people behind the orders seemed a lot more infatuated with the disposal of the kidnappers than the safe return of the kid, Reno had busted him out without a scratch on him- but not without a little help from Halo, and his seemingly infinite supply of explosives.
"This is a secure line, Halo," Reno said slowly, apparently unable to get over his original greeting from the man. "Why the hell are you using a Bible selling front from here?"
"Times are tough, man," came the reluctant response, and then Halo trailed off, sounding somewhat embarrassed.
"You're actually selling Bibles?" Reno asked incredulously.
"...what do you want, mommy?"
"Information, man. Low profile stuff, so I won't hold it against you if you don't know..." Reno let the open challenge hang in the air, and after a moment of digesting it Halo decided not to take the bait, and the next time he spoke it was with a guarded tone.
"I sell bombs, not bombshells, mommy," came the answer. "How the hell many people have you tried already?"
Reno glanced at his watch. His usual work ethic of putting things off tomorrow had caught up to him when, after a fitful nights sleep, tomorrow had finally come with a vengeance. He'd started pulling strings about an hour after he'd woken up, and he'd had two meals and taken about three dozen smoking breaks since then, with his efforts yielding no solid answers. "Enough," he said simply into the phone. "So can you help me? I need to know who pulled an assassination in Wutai, one of the Pagoda fighters."
"Someone offed one of the Wutain clan leaders?" came the answer, sounding genuinely surprised. Reno sighed and lowered the phone for a moment, deciding that Halo probably didn't need to hear the stream of curses that escaped his lips. After he had vented for a minute or so, he lifted the phone again, no longer slightly interested in anything his old associate had to say.
"So that's a no," Reno said, not asking a question.
"Sorry mo-" but the phone had already been switched off. With a reasonable amount of self restraint, Reno stopped himself from smashing it to bits, but that didn't save it a nasty dent as he slammed down onto the counter in front of him. Halo had been right in asking exactly where he fell in the information chain, because in normal circumstances Reno wouldn't have even considered contacting the man unless he needed to reduce something very big to several somethings that were very, very small.
"So this is how you work your magic."
Reno didn't even need to turn around to look, the bubble gum dipped in venom voice would be haunting him in his sleep for years to come, so he certainly didn't need visual confirmation to tell that it came from Yuffie. He didn't know how long she had been standing in the doorway, or how many calls she had listened in on, but frankly one was too many. Failing was one thing, Reno could deal with that... to a point. Failing in public was an entirely different matter. It was, after all, what had driven him away from the group of people who he'd fully intended to be the ones who drug his body into a river one day.
"You know," he muttered slowly, "considering it was one of your friends who was killed, I'd think you'd be less of a heinous bitch about it."
"Yeah, well," Yuffie said, walking across the room and hopping up onto the counter, "watching you destroy phones is a nice distraction. You really haven't found anything?"
'She's been here since the phone thing?' Reno groaned inwardly. Maybe killing her would be easier than dealing with this, even considering the way that would count as officially declaring war on an entire independent nation. Personally, he was more than a little surprised at the repeated failure or unwillingness of everyone he had tried to contact that day. It went far past coincidence and ventured into the stomach churning fact that people had finally started to catch on that over the last few years, all of his talk had been reduced to just that. He had rather hoped to have caught a bullet before this came around.
Instead of vocalizing any of these thoughts to Yuffie, however, he simply pressed his forehead down to the counter and groaned. "You know," he said after an extremely uncomfortable silence, "if it wasn't for that the fact that to get to Shake the killer had needed to bust through a bank vault level of security, I would think that this entire thing was a random occurrence."
"So you called everyone?" she asked slowly.
"Yeah," he admitted, "sorry brat. I put out all the bait I have and there were no bites."
"I bet you say that a lot after you go clubbing," Yuffie supplied, unable to suppress a grin.
"Fuck you," Reno replied sagely, but even he cracked a smile... or at least what passed as a smile with him. He couldn't believe he had left that door so far open for her to walk through.
"No, really though..." something seemed to be troubling Yuffie as she spoke, she wasn't looking at him. "You called everyone?"
Reno looked up irritably and turned to snap at her, "What the fuck did I just say?" he demanded, but caught her meaning instantly by the look in her eye. He watched her steadily for a moment to be sure, and when an almost guilty look broke over her face he was given his answer. "Well... not everyone."
"So call them!" Yuffie burst out, "You worked together for years, and if anyone would know about professional hits it would be the Turks."
For a long time, the two sat, staring at each other, Reno trying to formulate and answer and Yuffie waiting for him to do so. When nothing came to him, he simply slid off his chair and turned his back off her, making his way towards the very doorway she had come from. She didn't let him walk away- and he hadn't really expected her to- but even he was surprised as she grabbed his arm and spun him around, almost sending him off his feet.
"What?" he snapped, after he had established that he wasn't about to plummet face first into the floor.
"Why... don't... you... call... them..?." Yuffie sounded out through gritted teeth. She couldn't believe he was making this whole thing so hard. She was the one who had saved him from prison, and even now was keeping him free even though they had found a blood stained Turk card at the scene of a murder, and for some reason she felt like the one who was being detained, trapped in a room with a belligerent smart ass who seemed to regard himself as her older brother and not her captive.
"It isn't that easy," he said simply.
"Oh yeah?" she challenged. "What's so hard about it?"
"Look," he growled, trying to explain, "I'm not sure how familiar you are... or aren't... with the basic set of rules that comes with being a hitman, but the fact I'm standing here right now is a fucking miracle. I wasn't laid off from the Turks, we didn't mutually agree to part ways. The only reason they haven't tracked me down and killed me just because that's the usual protocol is because they simply don't have the resources to do so. You want me to call them up? I don't care how down things are, Rude could trace a phone call with a picked apart alarm clock."
"Do you really think they would try to kill you?" Yuffie asked.
"Look where I am," Reno countered, "do you really think I would be hanging around in Wutai if I thought there wouldn't be crosshairs on me in Midgar?" Yuffie shot him a scathing look and went to say something, but he raised his hands defensively and continued onward before she could. "Hey, this is my second choice, but even you can't pretend that this place contends with the big city."
"Sure I can!" Yuffie insisted, then pausing, thinking her own words over. "I mean, it can... it does! Anyway... I saw you and Rude talking in Gongana! He's, like, your best friend. I don't care what set of stupid ethics apply, friends don't shoot each other."
"Brat," Reno said, shaking his head in legitimate disappointment, "if that was true, I would never have had a job. Friends, neighbors, family members... blood is thicker than water, but mako is thickest of all. And mako means money."
"They must have had one hell of a severance package then," Yuffie said only half-jokingly, "if you'd risk a bullet in the head just to get out."
Reno snorted. "I'm not one for change, in case you haven't noticed. I definitely didn't unseat everything in my entire life because I was hoping to gain a little more. I left because it had all become... wrong."
"You've been killing people for years, and it suddenly became wrong?" Yuffie asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Not that," Reno chided her, "I'm not saying offing people is a bed of fucking roses or anything, but it gets a hell of a lot easier with time, not harder. We started making less money for doing harder jobs, and our reputation began to slip. When I was a Turk, I breathed it. I'd get off on the way people would look at me when they saw me in the blue suit. I can stand killing people, I can't stand being a punch line."
"So you aren't only an asshole," Yuffie said, sounding disgusted, "your a vain asshole."
"Basically," Reno responded, grinning.
"So does that mean you'll call them?"
"Did I say that?" Reno blinked.
"No," Yuffie admitted, "but you are going to, aren't you?"
Reno sighed and turned away, glancing around the room in disgust, as if searching for some mirror to drive his fist through, daring the porcelain vase in the corner to be shiny enough to reflect his image. "I'm going to ask them for their help," he said quietly, "but calling them isn't going to cut it. The only way I'll be able to avoid taking a slug to the throat is meeting them face to face and just getting everything out in the open." He noticed Yuffie giving him a profoundly strange look. "What?"
"You're going pretty far for this," she said, "how comes?"
"Why not?" he responded quickly.
"Oh come on," she complained, "lets skip over the bullshit answers, OK? If your right about what they might do to you, then I don't understand why you just agreed to get in touch with them."
"We made a deal," Reno said simply, "I find the people that killed Shake, I get to walk around without wearing stripes. That makes this a job."
"I don't remember agreeing to that," Yuffie said suspiciously. "After all, even if you aren't a murderer... well, the murderer who killed this particular person... you're still a Turk. That's an occupation punishable by prison."
"I keep telling you," Reno snapped, glaring at her, snatching up the phone once again, "I'm not a fucking Turk anymore. Yesterday with those cops, I was messin' with them, OK?" He didn't dial much, just one button, and with a series of beeps the cell phone repeated the same numbers her had entered in earlier. There was the same static hum, the same pause, but this time there was a very different greeting.
"Yeah, mommy," came the irritated voice of a man who had just tracked two phone calls in a row to the exact same location, "I haven't found anything out in the last two minutes."
"Yeah, I figured," Reno said tolerantly, "there's something else I need. Let me know the last place the Turks were seen, will you?"
There was a long pause at the other end, but not because of any technical reading being done, just sheer apprehensions. With mild amusement, Reno wondered what Halo thought he was going to try to pull off with the following information, and he figured the munitions salesman was weighing the potential backlash of not telling him against the potential backlash of doing so. Apparently the religious text dealer feared bursts of electricity more than flying bullets, because at last, an answer came. "Well, mommy... they're in Wutai."
Reno paused, listening for a few moments, whatever the person on the other end of the phone telling him apparently not helping his mood any. "Yeah, I guess I did just tell him myself," he replies sharply, "and he didn't do it. Fine. We'll see what happens next time you want some quality Fort Condor armory shells."
With an angry growl, Reno threw his phone down, not really caring that he missed the counter by a good foot and the device shattered against the tile floor of the room like a shot glass. Lord Godo was footing the bill, after all, and it had been a long time since he had last been able to recklessly destroy material. It felt good. Before he had broken a co-workers neck in a scuffle over a last doughnut and transferred to the Turks, Reno had after all been a member of the sweep forces that made sure things didn't get too pretty in the slums. He hadn't even realized that such a position existed until he'd been offered the job, but it had explained so much to him when he found out about it that his knees had almost buckled.
He produced another phone from the crate on the counter to his left, a resource provided by Yuffie, who had apparently anticipated Reno's less than orthodox way of handling things. He flipped the cover open and dialed hastily, not even needing to pause to remember the digits he had last dialed half a decade ago. No ring came from the other end- it wasn't that sort of a number- but a static filled hum told the former Turk that he had gotten through just fine. After a pause that was just long enough for tracking equipment to pick up the source of the call, there was a click, and a deep raspy voice came booming into Reno's ear, talking rapid fire like a machine gun with a stuck trigger.
"Halo's house of Bibles, whattaya want, whattaya need, what can I do for ya?" said the man, his words surprising Reno to the point it took the man a few seconds to answer.
"You sell Bibles now?" Reno demanded in disbelief.
"It goes with the name, mommy," came the reply, "it goes with the name. What can I do ya for?"
'Mommy' was a name that stemmed from a job so old that all of the Shin-Ra executives who ordered it done had managed to escape the destruction of Meteor by retirement, and was one of the first missions Reno had been sent to take care of alone. Some grandchild being held for ransom or the like, and even though the people behind the orders seemed a lot more infatuated with the disposal of the kidnappers than the safe return of the kid, Reno had busted him out without a scratch on him- but not without a little help from Halo, and his seemingly infinite supply of explosives.
"This is a secure line, Halo," Reno said slowly, apparently unable to get over his original greeting from the man. "Why the hell are you using a Bible selling front from here?"
"Times are tough, man," came the reluctant response, and then Halo trailed off, sounding somewhat embarrassed.
"You're actually selling Bibles?" Reno asked incredulously.
"...what do you want, mommy?"
"Information, man. Low profile stuff, so I won't hold it against you if you don't know..." Reno let the open challenge hang in the air, and after a moment of digesting it Halo decided not to take the bait, and the next time he spoke it was with a guarded tone.
"I sell bombs, not bombshells, mommy," came the answer. "How the hell many people have you tried already?"
Reno glanced at his watch. His usual work ethic of putting things off tomorrow had caught up to him when, after a fitful nights sleep, tomorrow had finally come with a vengeance. He'd started pulling strings about an hour after he'd woken up, and he'd had two meals and taken about three dozen smoking breaks since then, with his efforts yielding no solid answers. "Enough," he said simply into the phone. "So can you help me? I need to know who pulled an assassination in Wutai, one of the Pagoda fighters."
"Someone offed one of the Wutain clan leaders?" came the answer, sounding genuinely surprised. Reno sighed and lowered the phone for a moment, deciding that Halo probably didn't need to hear the stream of curses that escaped his lips. After he had vented for a minute or so, he lifted the phone again, no longer slightly interested in anything his old associate had to say.
"So that's a no," Reno said, not asking a question.
"Sorry mo-" but the phone had already been switched off. With a reasonable amount of self restraint, Reno stopped himself from smashing it to bits, but that didn't save it a nasty dent as he slammed down onto the counter in front of him. Halo had been right in asking exactly where he fell in the information chain, because in normal circumstances Reno wouldn't have even considered contacting the man unless he needed to reduce something very big to several somethings that were very, very small.
"So this is how you work your magic."
Reno didn't even need to turn around to look, the bubble gum dipped in venom voice would be haunting him in his sleep for years to come, so he certainly didn't need visual confirmation to tell that it came from Yuffie. He didn't know how long she had been standing in the doorway, or how many calls she had listened in on, but frankly one was too many. Failing was one thing, Reno could deal with that... to a point. Failing in public was an entirely different matter. It was, after all, what had driven him away from the group of people who he'd fully intended to be the ones who drug his body into a river one day.
"You know," he muttered slowly, "considering it was one of your friends who was killed, I'd think you'd be less of a heinous bitch about it."
"Yeah, well," Yuffie said, walking across the room and hopping up onto the counter, "watching you destroy phones is a nice distraction. You really haven't found anything?"
'She's been here since the phone thing?' Reno groaned inwardly. Maybe killing her would be easier than dealing with this, even considering the way that would count as officially declaring war on an entire independent nation. Personally, he was more than a little surprised at the repeated failure or unwillingness of everyone he had tried to contact that day. It went far past coincidence and ventured into the stomach churning fact that people had finally started to catch on that over the last few years, all of his talk had been reduced to just that. He had rather hoped to have caught a bullet before this came around.
Instead of vocalizing any of these thoughts to Yuffie, however, he simply pressed his forehead down to the counter and groaned. "You know," he said after an extremely uncomfortable silence, "if it wasn't for that the fact that to get to Shake the killer had needed to bust through a bank vault level of security, I would think that this entire thing was a random occurrence."
"So you called everyone?" she asked slowly.
"Yeah," he admitted, "sorry brat. I put out all the bait I have and there were no bites."
"I bet you say that a lot after you go clubbing," Yuffie supplied, unable to suppress a grin.
"Fuck you," Reno replied sagely, but even he cracked a smile... or at least what passed as a smile with him. He couldn't believe he had left that door so far open for her to walk through.
"No, really though..." something seemed to be troubling Yuffie as she spoke, she wasn't looking at him. "You called everyone?"
Reno looked up irritably and turned to snap at her, "What the fuck did I just say?" he demanded, but caught her meaning instantly by the look in her eye. He watched her steadily for a moment to be sure, and when an almost guilty look broke over her face he was given his answer. "Well... not everyone."
"So call them!" Yuffie burst out, "You worked together for years, and if anyone would know about professional hits it would be the Turks."
For a long time, the two sat, staring at each other, Reno trying to formulate and answer and Yuffie waiting for him to do so. When nothing came to him, he simply slid off his chair and turned his back off her, making his way towards the very doorway she had come from. She didn't let him walk away- and he hadn't really expected her to- but even he was surprised as she grabbed his arm and spun him around, almost sending him off his feet.
"What?" he snapped, after he had established that he wasn't about to plummet face first into the floor.
"Why... don't... you... call... them..?." Yuffie sounded out through gritted teeth. She couldn't believe he was making this whole thing so hard. She was the one who had saved him from prison, and even now was keeping him free even though they had found a blood stained Turk card at the scene of a murder, and for some reason she felt like the one who was being detained, trapped in a room with a belligerent smart ass who seemed to regard himself as her older brother and not her captive.
"It isn't that easy," he said simply.
"Oh yeah?" she challenged. "What's so hard about it?"
"Look," he growled, trying to explain, "I'm not sure how familiar you are... or aren't... with the basic set of rules that comes with being a hitman, but the fact I'm standing here right now is a fucking miracle. I wasn't laid off from the Turks, we didn't mutually agree to part ways. The only reason they haven't tracked me down and killed me just because that's the usual protocol is because they simply don't have the resources to do so. You want me to call them up? I don't care how down things are, Rude could trace a phone call with a picked apart alarm clock."
"Do you really think they would try to kill you?" Yuffie asked.
"Look where I am," Reno countered, "do you really think I would be hanging around in Wutai if I thought there wouldn't be crosshairs on me in Midgar?" Yuffie shot him a scathing look and went to say something, but he raised his hands defensively and continued onward before she could. "Hey, this is my second choice, but even you can't pretend that this place contends with the big city."
"Sure I can!" Yuffie insisted, then pausing, thinking her own words over. "I mean, it can... it does! Anyway... I saw you and Rude talking in Gongana! He's, like, your best friend. I don't care what set of stupid ethics apply, friends don't shoot each other."
"Brat," Reno said, shaking his head in legitimate disappointment, "if that was true, I would never have had a job. Friends, neighbors, family members... blood is thicker than water, but mako is thickest of all. And mako means money."
"They must have had one hell of a severance package then," Yuffie said only half-jokingly, "if you'd risk a bullet in the head just to get out."
Reno snorted. "I'm not one for change, in case you haven't noticed. I definitely didn't unseat everything in my entire life because I was hoping to gain a little more. I left because it had all become... wrong."
"You've been killing people for years, and it suddenly became wrong?" Yuffie asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Not that," Reno chided her, "I'm not saying offing people is a bed of fucking roses or anything, but it gets a hell of a lot easier with time, not harder. We started making less money for doing harder jobs, and our reputation began to slip. When I was a Turk, I breathed it. I'd get off on the way people would look at me when they saw me in the blue suit. I can stand killing people, I can't stand being a punch line."
"So you aren't only an asshole," Yuffie said, sounding disgusted, "your a vain asshole."
"Basically," Reno responded, grinning.
"So does that mean you'll call them?"
"Did I say that?" Reno blinked.
"No," Yuffie admitted, "but you are going to, aren't you?"
Reno sighed and turned away, glancing around the room in disgust, as if searching for some mirror to drive his fist through, daring the porcelain vase in the corner to be shiny enough to reflect his image. "I'm going to ask them for their help," he said quietly, "but calling them isn't going to cut it. The only way I'll be able to avoid taking a slug to the throat is meeting them face to face and just getting everything out in the open." He noticed Yuffie giving him a profoundly strange look. "What?"
"You're going pretty far for this," she said, "how comes?"
"Why not?" he responded quickly.
"Oh come on," she complained, "lets skip over the bullshit answers, OK? If your right about what they might do to you, then I don't understand why you just agreed to get in touch with them."
"We made a deal," Reno said simply, "I find the people that killed Shake, I get to walk around without wearing stripes. That makes this a job."
"I don't remember agreeing to that," Yuffie said suspiciously. "After all, even if you aren't a murderer... well, the murderer who killed this particular person... you're still a Turk. That's an occupation punishable by prison."
"I keep telling you," Reno snapped, glaring at her, snatching up the phone once again, "I'm not a fucking Turk anymore. Yesterday with those cops, I was messin' with them, OK?" He didn't dial much, just one button, and with a series of beeps the cell phone repeated the same numbers her had entered in earlier. There was the same static hum, the same pause, but this time there was a very different greeting.
"Yeah, mommy," came the irritated voice of a man who had just tracked two phone calls in a row to the exact same location, "I haven't found anything out in the last two minutes."
"Yeah, I figured," Reno said tolerantly, "there's something else I need. Let me know the last place the Turks were seen, will you?"
There was a long pause at the other end, but not because of any technical reading being done, just sheer apprehensions. With mild amusement, Reno wondered what Halo thought he was going to try to pull off with the following information, and he figured the munitions salesman was weighing the potential backlash of not telling him against the potential backlash of doing so. Apparently the religious text dealer feared bursts of electricity more than flying bullets, because at last, an answer came. "Well, mommy... they're in Wutai."
