"It seems like an odd set of targets to choose," Reno said thoughtfully, running both hands back through his dark red hair as he walked the streets of Wutai. The fact that normal people had all gone to sleep over four hours ago wasn't lost on him, and there was a certain listlessness to his movements, though his words were as clear as ever. "I mean, the Pagoda leaders are renowned for being skilled fighters, it's basically the entire point."
Yuffie shot him a withering look, the confusion of the night past and the stress of the upcoming morning beginning to weigh on her. "You really have no idea, do you?" she asked, sounding meaner then she had intended, but not really caring- if anyone could take an angry comment in stride, it was the former hitman she was walking with.
"Apparently not," Reno said after a pause, glancing off a ways down the street. In the distance, looking as small as a doll house, was the home of Yuffie Kisaragi. She had declined the invitation of a ride home from the police men, reasoning that it would be hard to sneak Reno into a transport and keep him hidden for the duration of the trip, and so the two had been faced with a walk home at four in the morning. "We still have a bit to go, care to explain it to me?"
After a moments pause in which Yuffie looked Reno over, making sure he was serious in request, the thief took a deep breath and started in on a speech that she herself had been given time and time again by her father. "There are five branches of the Wutai army, even after the war with Shin-Ra which drastically reduced our numbers. Each of the branches is dedicated to a different type of fighting style... ranged, magical, hand to hand, melee, and summoning."
She glanced at Reno to make sure he was following thus far, and he nodded, prompting her onward. "Anyway," she said, "each division has an absolute general, picked for different reasons... mastery, loyalty, leadership... and they are given complete control of their branch. This saves us from the problems presented by a single leader because we can lose one, two, or even three and still have a respectable force mobile. After all, it's rare you commit your entire army to a battle, anyway."
"Sounds smart," Reno said, nodding, and even in the darkness he could see Yuffie crack a smile at the compliment to her homeland, and decided with a shrug to lower the edges a bit. "Though it isn't exactly working, is it? I guess the plan was devised with opponents as honorable as Wutai in mind, but with assassins involved it isn't much harder to take out five men then it is to take out one."
"I just don't understand it," Yuffie said sadly, "we aren't at war with anyone! Even if somebody was harboring plans to come after us in the upcoming year, this would be pointless. Another benefit of having that many leaders working together is all they need to do is get together and vote on who will be the next member of their rank, there isn't any long or involved process involved. Gorki and Shake will be replaced within weeks, as disgusting as that sounds."
"Maybe that's the point," Reno said under his breath, but Yuffie heard him mumble and raised a questioning eyebrow, so he repeated himself. "I mean," he added, "ambition is the root of all things, and gil be damned- that includes evil. Do you think somebody might be trying to get themselves on the fast track by knocking out their superiors?"
"You did hear me say the word 'loyalty' in the list of Pagoda qualifications, right?" Yuffie said acidly, and Reno couldn't help but roll his eyes. Patriotism was one thing, but dealing with Yuffie's zealot like devotion could be overbearing.
"People can fool you," Reno replied, and when he saw Yuffie's skeptical look ventured onward, "and yes, they can even fool the almighty Pagoda leaders."
"Do you think it's over, then?" Yuffie asked hopefully. "I mean, two open floors is the most that have existed since the war. Odds are, if someone is trying to get into a leadership position they were next in line anyway."
"I don't know," Reno said slowly, rubbing the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. "People who are just about to step up to bat can usually exercise a lot more patience than someone three or four places back in the line up. Still, I guess it would be, now that they've showed a pattern the cops are going to have bodyguards all over the other floor leaders."
Since he was currently staring with strange interest at a for sale notice in the window of a house down the street from Yuffie's, it took Reno a bit to notice that his companion had stopped walking. He turned around in surprise to see her standing quite still, her jaw slightly lowered, and even without much light he could tell she was paler than usual. "What?" he asked, "What is it?"
"They don't know," she said breathlessly.
"Who doesn't know *what*?" Reno demanded.
"They don't know!" she repeated, practically screaming. "The police! They don't know that Gorki and Shake were Pagoda leaders! It's kept secret for protection, only those who climb the Pagoda all the way to the top know who they all are, and even then they aren't told if a change occurs afterwards! We have to go and make sure everyone is OK!"
She turned on her heel and started sprinting down the street with speed that was surprising even for her small frame. Groaning inwardly, Reno followed after her, only his longer legs allowing him to eventually catch up with her. He didn't slow up, her urgency contagious, but still he questioned the action as they went. "Won't Godo tell them?" he gasped out.
"No!" Yuffie replied frantically. "He isn't allowed to... it's an old tradition, the leader of the top floor of the Pagoda set it in place the first time he chose four fighters to serve under him. He had to swear never to reveal the identities to anyone... my old man doesn't follow too many of the old ways, but the ones he does pay attention to he is devout."
"Fuck," Reno breathed out as he ran, but then inspiration struck him. "Wait! What about the other floor leaders?"
"I'm not betting their lives that they've been told!" Yuffie cried in response. "They came to me because I'm the daughter of Godo, and after we found Shake and I saw that Turk card I put in an order that they alert me whenever a murder happens!"
A name suddenly struck Reno as he ran, though where it came from he had no idea. He must have heard it sometime in Yuffie's mumbling, or maybe a local had let it slip in a bar. Either way, however, he suddenly knew a name that could very well belong to the man they were going to go help. "Are we going to see Staniv?" he asked out, having to half yell as Yuffie was starting to gain on him again. That slowed her down a bit as she shot him a stunned look for coming up with the word.
"N-no," she said between tired breaths, her feet smacking the pavement, "he stepped down six months ago, he was getting pretty old. Were going to Chekov's house!"
With considerable effort, Reno managed to catch her again, those his lungs felt ready to pop like over filled balloons. "Wait a minute," he choked, cut off by a stream of pained coughing, "at least... at least this means it couldn't have been the Turks!"
"Why?" came the quick reply.
Jesus Christ, how much further is this place? Reno groaned inside, but outwardly he simply said, "This has to be someone who has climbed the Pagoda, or they wouldn't know who to kill!"
Even as he spoke Reno suddenly caught the error in his words, but couldn't amend them before Yuffie vocally pointed it out. "I never said they were doing this for fun!" she cried, "As long as the person who hired them knows, he can just pass the information along!"
'How did you miss that?' Reno scolded himself, and realized that even though the pain in his side was only growing he and Yuffie had slowed down to a job, neither of them built for long sprints. 'You've been out of the business too long... or too much oxygen is going to your legs and not your brain right now.'
"Besides," Yuffie said suddenly, and Reno was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. "They wouldn't be excused even if that wasn't so, and you know it!"
"What are you talking about?" Reno asked, genuinely bewildered.
"Tseng climbed the Pagoda before he went to work for Shin-Ra!" she informed him, "He was one of the youngest to ever even try it! Everyone thought he was going to be the next floor leader, but after he beat my father he simply packed up and left! That's how you knew about Staniv, isn't it? Tseng met up with him when he tried to climb it! He was still pretty young back then!"
With a sinking feeling, Reno realized she was right. Though it hadn't occurred to him at the time, her words prompted a flash of memory, Tseng talking about a scar he had on his left arm. He'd showed them the slashing motion that had caused it, had said something about Staniv, a Pagoda fighter doing it, and then told them the correct way to counter it. Not only did the secrecy of the leader's identities not pardon the Turks from the crime, but it made them more likely than ever, and Reno began to wonder if he had managed to negotiate himself into a life sentence by offering to find the killer.
"So who took Staniv's place?" he asked, but no response came as Yuffie suddenly stopped in her tracks, turned, and began to race up the lawn of a particularly large home. They had arrived at last, and with a surprisingly large amount of trepidation Reno realized that Yuffie planned to simply barge inside. He chased after her and managed to stop her just before she threw the door open, grabbing her arms and pulling her back. She shot him an angry look, and with wheezing lungs he explained.
"You can't just run in!" he whispered harshly, "You don't know who's in there! Put your ear to the door and listen!"
She didn't, so with an angry sigh he did, and after a moment she joined him. They waited for thirty seconds with nothing but silence, and after Yuffie jabbed him with her elbow Reno nodded, confirming that at the very least they weren't going to run into anyone as soon as they entered the house. She gave him a look as if that had been obvious the whole time, and the two pulled their heads away from the door.
*BAM!*
Instinct and training kicked in together, and Reno dived to the ground, catching Yuffie around the waist and dragging her with him. For a brief moment, he thought he had just been startled by thunder, because almost as if it was on cue the skies opened up and it began to rain, thick sticky drops that cascaded around the two. The ring in his ears, however, was unmistakable- someone had fired a pistol in the house.
"Get off me!"
Yuffie pushed him away and rolled to her feet, throwing the door open and running inside the house. Reno went to follow her, but a sudden streak to his left caught his attention, a lone figure racing through the night and the rain away from the house. He briefly considered yelling into the house to tell Yuffie, but she was already too far inside, and so he took off after the man himself, his joints already aching from that last sprint.
Whoever it was, they were fast, even while weighed down by the massive handgun with was evident in his fist. The rain picked up as Reno chased him between two houses, a passageway which turned into an alley, and for a brief moment the former Turk was blinded as lightning flashed. Those few seconds were all it took for the fleeing man to get out of sight, and Reno cursed, finding himself faced with two possible passages of escape. Growling in frustration, he chose the left path, powering down in with all the strength he had left.
The path lead onto one of Wutai's frequent bridges, a long wooden plank construct that seemed to stretch on forever, Reno reached into his jacket and produced his EMR, cursing the rain that made it a suicide weapon, but still feeling better knowing it was in his hands. It didn't matter how fast the killer was running, there was no way he had gotten all the way over this bridge already, and so Reno pointed his weapon blindly out in front of him, waiting for another flash of lightning to illuminate the world.
*Flash!*
Nothing! Cursing audibly, Reno turned to his right, and realized with a start that the path he had not chosen let out down in the grass that lay below the bridge. His world went dark again, and he waited with painful impatience for a second bolt of lightning to show him the man he had been chasing, to possibly reveal his identity.
*Flash!*
There he was! A lone figure, racing across the ground, the rain pelting against him. In the brief second he had, Reno saw that the man had actually fallen behind, probably having paused to dispose of the no longer visible gun. He also saw that the man was broad shouldered, his skin dark, his eyes hidden by a pair of black sunglasses. He saw a face that he would never forget, a face he had worked beside every day for ten years.
In the second that he saw anything at all, he saw Rude Gracin, his dark blue suit soaked with rain.
***
Yuffie had been waiting for him when he got back, her blood soaked hands and devastated expression telling Reno everything he needed to know about the result of the murder attempt. She seemed mad that he had disappeared, but lacked the ability to vocalize it, all the usual manic energy that made up more than half of her personality drained clean away. "Where the hell did you go?" she managed.
"Saw the guy running away," Reno replied slowly, still winded from his chase even after the walk back. "Chased him."
"Oh yeah?" Yuffie said, hope suddenly striking her features. "Did you catch him?"
"...sorry," he said simply, kneeling down in the grass and taking deep breaths as her face fell once again.
"Did you see who it was?" she asked, trying to mask her disappointment in his failed pursuit. Reno glanced up, watching her for what seemed like an eternity, before answering.
"No," he said slowly, "No, I didn't."
"Oh," she choked out, and turned away, her shoulders beginning to shake. Reno winced as he walked up and put an arm around her, surprised that she didn't pull away from his touch.
"Listen..." he said, then paused, before resuming. "Listen... should we get going to look over Godo? I can't imagine he'd be exempt from this."
"No," Yuffie said, turning to face him, putting on a brave face if the moisture on her cheeks was only rain. "He always has security, and even if he didn't I don't even think an assassin could knock him off. He's a tough old guy."
"OK..." he said, before a sudden thought struck him. "What about the fourth floor leader? Who replaced Staniv?"
A desolate look on her face, Yuffie met his eyes with her own.
"Well," she said, "...I did."
Yuffie shot him a withering look, the confusion of the night past and the stress of the upcoming morning beginning to weigh on her. "You really have no idea, do you?" she asked, sounding meaner then she had intended, but not really caring- if anyone could take an angry comment in stride, it was the former hitman she was walking with.
"Apparently not," Reno said after a pause, glancing off a ways down the street. In the distance, looking as small as a doll house, was the home of Yuffie Kisaragi. She had declined the invitation of a ride home from the police men, reasoning that it would be hard to sneak Reno into a transport and keep him hidden for the duration of the trip, and so the two had been faced with a walk home at four in the morning. "We still have a bit to go, care to explain it to me?"
After a moments pause in which Yuffie looked Reno over, making sure he was serious in request, the thief took a deep breath and started in on a speech that she herself had been given time and time again by her father. "There are five branches of the Wutai army, even after the war with Shin-Ra which drastically reduced our numbers. Each of the branches is dedicated to a different type of fighting style... ranged, magical, hand to hand, melee, and summoning."
She glanced at Reno to make sure he was following thus far, and he nodded, prompting her onward. "Anyway," she said, "each division has an absolute general, picked for different reasons... mastery, loyalty, leadership... and they are given complete control of their branch. This saves us from the problems presented by a single leader because we can lose one, two, or even three and still have a respectable force mobile. After all, it's rare you commit your entire army to a battle, anyway."
"Sounds smart," Reno said, nodding, and even in the darkness he could see Yuffie crack a smile at the compliment to her homeland, and decided with a shrug to lower the edges a bit. "Though it isn't exactly working, is it? I guess the plan was devised with opponents as honorable as Wutai in mind, but with assassins involved it isn't much harder to take out five men then it is to take out one."
"I just don't understand it," Yuffie said sadly, "we aren't at war with anyone! Even if somebody was harboring plans to come after us in the upcoming year, this would be pointless. Another benefit of having that many leaders working together is all they need to do is get together and vote on who will be the next member of their rank, there isn't any long or involved process involved. Gorki and Shake will be replaced within weeks, as disgusting as that sounds."
"Maybe that's the point," Reno said under his breath, but Yuffie heard him mumble and raised a questioning eyebrow, so he repeated himself. "I mean," he added, "ambition is the root of all things, and gil be damned- that includes evil. Do you think somebody might be trying to get themselves on the fast track by knocking out their superiors?"
"You did hear me say the word 'loyalty' in the list of Pagoda qualifications, right?" Yuffie said acidly, and Reno couldn't help but roll his eyes. Patriotism was one thing, but dealing with Yuffie's zealot like devotion could be overbearing.
"People can fool you," Reno replied, and when he saw Yuffie's skeptical look ventured onward, "and yes, they can even fool the almighty Pagoda leaders."
"Do you think it's over, then?" Yuffie asked hopefully. "I mean, two open floors is the most that have existed since the war. Odds are, if someone is trying to get into a leadership position they were next in line anyway."
"I don't know," Reno said slowly, rubbing the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. "People who are just about to step up to bat can usually exercise a lot more patience than someone three or four places back in the line up. Still, I guess it would be, now that they've showed a pattern the cops are going to have bodyguards all over the other floor leaders."
Since he was currently staring with strange interest at a for sale notice in the window of a house down the street from Yuffie's, it took Reno a bit to notice that his companion had stopped walking. He turned around in surprise to see her standing quite still, her jaw slightly lowered, and even without much light he could tell she was paler than usual. "What?" he asked, "What is it?"
"They don't know," she said breathlessly.
"Who doesn't know *what*?" Reno demanded.
"They don't know!" she repeated, practically screaming. "The police! They don't know that Gorki and Shake were Pagoda leaders! It's kept secret for protection, only those who climb the Pagoda all the way to the top know who they all are, and even then they aren't told if a change occurs afterwards! We have to go and make sure everyone is OK!"
She turned on her heel and started sprinting down the street with speed that was surprising even for her small frame. Groaning inwardly, Reno followed after her, only his longer legs allowing him to eventually catch up with her. He didn't slow up, her urgency contagious, but still he questioned the action as they went. "Won't Godo tell them?" he gasped out.
"No!" Yuffie replied frantically. "He isn't allowed to... it's an old tradition, the leader of the top floor of the Pagoda set it in place the first time he chose four fighters to serve under him. He had to swear never to reveal the identities to anyone... my old man doesn't follow too many of the old ways, but the ones he does pay attention to he is devout."
"Fuck," Reno breathed out as he ran, but then inspiration struck him. "Wait! What about the other floor leaders?"
"I'm not betting their lives that they've been told!" Yuffie cried in response. "They came to me because I'm the daughter of Godo, and after we found Shake and I saw that Turk card I put in an order that they alert me whenever a murder happens!"
A name suddenly struck Reno as he ran, though where it came from he had no idea. He must have heard it sometime in Yuffie's mumbling, or maybe a local had let it slip in a bar. Either way, however, he suddenly knew a name that could very well belong to the man they were going to go help. "Are we going to see Staniv?" he asked out, having to half yell as Yuffie was starting to gain on him again. That slowed her down a bit as she shot him a stunned look for coming up with the word.
"N-no," she said between tired breaths, her feet smacking the pavement, "he stepped down six months ago, he was getting pretty old. Were going to Chekov's house!"
With considerable effort, Reno managed to catch her again, those his lungs felt ready to pop like over filled balloons. "Wait a minute," he choked, cut off by a stream of pained coughing, "at least... at least this means it couldn't have been the Turks!"
"Why?" came the quick reply.
Jesus Christ, how much further is this place? Reno groaned inside, but outwardly he simply said, "This has to be someone who has climbed the Pagoda, or they wouldn't know who to kill!"
Even as he spoke Reno suddenly caught the error in his words, but couldn't amend them before Yuffie vocally pointed it out. "I never said they were doing this for fun!" she cried, "As long as the person who hired them knows, he can just pass the information along!"
'How did you miss that?' Reno scolded himself, and realized that even though the pain in his side was only growing he and Yuffie had slowed down to a job, neither of them built for long sprints. 'You've been out of the business too long... or too much oxygen is going to your legs and not your brain right now.'
"Besides," Yuffie said suddenly, and Reno was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. "They wouldn't be excused even if that wasn't so, and you know it!"
"What are you talking about?" Reno asked, genuinely bewildered.
"Tseng climbed the Pagoda before he went to work for Shin-Ra!" she informed him, "He was one of the youngest to ever even try it! Everyone thought he was going to be the next floor leader, but after he beat my father he simply packed up and left! That's how you knew about Staniv, isn't it? Tseng met up with him when he tried to climb it! He was still pretty young back then!"
With a sinking feeling, Reno realized she was right. Though it hadn't occurred to him at the time, her words prompted a flash of memory, Tseng talking about a scar he had on his left arm. He'd showed them the slashing motion that had caused it, had said something about Staniv, a Pagoda fighter doing it, and then told them the correct way to counter it. Not only did the secrecy of the leader's identities not pardon the Turks from the crime, but it made them more likely than ever, and Reno began to wonder if he had managed to negotiate himself into a life sentence by offering to find the killer.
"So who took Staniv's place?" he asked, but no response came as Yuffie suddenly stopped in her tracks, turned, and began to race up the lawn of a particularly large home. They had arrived at last, and with a surprisingly large amount of trepidation Reno realized that Yuffie planned to simply barge inside. He chased after her and managed to stop her just before she threw the door open, grabbing her arms and pulling her back. She shot him an angry look, and with wheezing lungs he explained.
"You can't just run in!" he whispered harshly, "You don't know who's in there! Put your ear to the door and listen!"
She didn't, so with an angry sigh he did, and after a moment she joined him. They waited for thirty seconds with nothing but silence, and after Yuffie jabbed him with her elbow Reno nodded, confirming that at the very least they weren't going to run into anyone as soon as they entered the house. She gave him a look as if that had been obvious the whole time, and the two pulled their heads away from the door.
*BAM!*
Instinct and training kicked in together, and Reno dived to the ground, catching Yuffie around the waist and dragging her with him. For a brief moment, he thought he had just been startled by thunder, because almost as if it was on cue the skies opened up and it began to rain, thick sticky drops that cascaded around the two. The ring in his ears, however, was unmistakable- someone had fired a pistol in the house.
"Get off me!"
Yuffie pushed him away and rolled to her feet, throwing the door open and running inside the house. Reno went to follow her, but a sudden streak to his left caught his attention, a lone figure racing through the night and the rain away from the house. He briefly considered yelling into the house to tell Yuffie, but she was already too far inside, and so he took off after the man himself, his joints already aching from that last sprint.
Whoever it was, they were fast, even while weighed down by the massive handgun with was evident in his fist. The rain picked up as Reno chased him between two houses, a passageway which turned into an alley, and for a brief moment the former Turk was blinded as lightning flashed. Those few seconds were all it took for the fleeing man to get out of sight, and Reno cursed, finding himself faced with two possible passages of escape. Growling in frustration, he chose the left path, powering down in with all the strength he had left.
The path lead onto one of Wutai's frequent bridges, a long wooden plank construct that seemed to stretch on forever, Reno reached into his jacket and produced his EMR, cursing the rain that made it a suicide weapon, but still feeling better knowing it was in his hands. It didn't matter how fast the killer was running, there was no way he had gotten all the way over this bridge already, and so Reno pointed his weapon blindly out in front of him, waiting for another flash of lightning to illuminate the world.
*Flash!*
Nothing! Cursing audibly, Reno turned to his right, and realized with a start that the path he had not chosen let out down in the grass that lay below the bridge. His world went dark again, and he waited with painful impatience for a second bolt of lightning to show him the man he had been chasing, to possibly reveal his identity.
*Flash!*
There he was! A lone figure, racing across the ground, the rain pelting against him. In the brief second he had, Reno saw that the man had actually fallen behind, probably having paused to dispose of the no longer visible gun. He also saw that the man was broad shouldered, his skin dark, his eyes hidden by a pair of black sunglasses. He saw a face that he would never forget, a face he had worked beside every day for ten years.
In the second that he saw anything at all, he saw Rude Gracin, his dark blue suit soaked with rain.
***
Yuffie had been waiting for him when he got back, her blood soaked hands and devastated expression telling Reno everything he needed to know about the result of the murder attempt. She seemed mad that he had disappeared, but lacked the ability to vocalize it, all the usual manic energy that made up more than half of her personality drained clean away. "Where the hell did you go?" she managed.
"Saw the guy running away," Reno replied slowly, still winded from his chase even after the walk back. "Chased him."
"Oh yeah?" Yuffie said, hope suddenly striking her features. "Did you catch him?"
"...sorry," he said simply, kneeling down in the grass and taking deep breaths as her face fell once again.
"Did you see who it was?" she asked, trying to mask her disappointment in his failed pursuit. Reno glanced up, watching her for what seemed like an eternity, before answering.
"No," he said slowly, "No, I didn't."
"Oh," she choked out, and turned away, her shoulders beginning to shake. Reno winced as he walked up and put an arm around her, surprised that she didn't pull away from his touch.
"Listen..." he said, then paused, before resuming. "Listen... should we get going to look over Godo? I can't imagine he'd be exempt from this."
"No," Yuffie said, turning to face him, putting on a brave face if the moisture on her cheeks was only rain. "He always has security, and even if he didn't I don't even think an assassin could knock him off. He's a tough old guy."
"OK..." he said, before a sudden thought struck him. "What about the fourth floor leader? Who replaced Staniv?"
A desolate look on her face, Yuffie met his eyes with her own.
"Well," she said, "...I did."
