Yuffie was prepared for it this morning.
She'd just been waking up when she heard the doorknob turn, and was quickly sitting upright, .45 pointed at a redhead whose bed she wasn't sitting in.
. . .Since when did she have a gun?
The way she tossed the gun down on the bed and stared at it must have been extremely funny, because the man in the doorway burst out laughing and glanced over his shoulder. "Dude, who in their right mind sleeps with a gun under their pillow?"
A more comforting shock of red hair appeared over his shoulder, then he whacked his companion on the back of the head. "A smart Turk, so bite me. You ready to go for breakfast, babe? Johnny's got half the tab."
Yuffie's eye twitched.
She was getting more and more used to waking up this way.
---
After she'd gotten dressed and Johnny and she had been introduced, Reno drove them to a retro place called DJ's. He said it was where he'd taken Elena on her first day as a Turk, and he wasn't lying; the dark look from the woman behind the counter said they'd met.
Johnny proved himself to have never changed. He ordered a breakfast steak -- he was picking up half the bill, otherwise Reno would have protested -- and demanded it be rare. When their order came, they'd forgotten to give him a knife. Instead of going to ask for one, he just continued his conversation with Reno about the dos and don'ts of barfights and flipped out his switchblade to cut it. Reno was horribly amused, but Yuffie looked a bit disturbed.
"Don't tell me your parents taught you that," she commented around a bite of her large plate of scrambled eggs.
Now it was Johnny's turn to look like something was terribly funny. "Parents, eh? People like Red'n me weren't. . .privileged. . .enough to have parents. I suppose bein' Godo's daughter an' all doesn't leave you much imagination to know what that's like, but. . .well, Red'n me, we're brothers in a sense. We didn't have nobody but the gang, y'know what I mean?"
She nodded. She really did know what that felt like; it felt like AVALANCHE. She'd been damn close to Tifa, to the point where they were practically sisters. It wasn't like that so much these days, just because they'd faded apart. Tifa ran the bar full-time and Yuffie was doing menial tasks for her father. There just wasn't as much time to do what they wanted anymore.
Even heroes have to make a salary.
"So what sparked this strange meeting, then?"
Reno's bacon lodged somewhere in his throat and he doubled over onto the table, narrowly missing the salt shaker with his forehead. Johnny smirked at him, taking this in stride. "Red was headed to get the paper and I saw 'im on my way to the gas station. Pulled a knife on 'im and scared the fuckin' hell out of 'is scrawny ass, as you can see." He grabbed Reno's ponytail and yanked him back into his chair. "As for why I'm callin'im Red. . .old gang thing, y'dig?"
"Yeah, I dig." She dragged out that last word with a small grin and took another bite.
The Turk composed himself and made sure all of the bacon was out of his throat before he did anything else. Yuffie couldn't know about the Operation, that was a given. Unless the order came from Reeve's mouth, the loop had to be closed; and if it was known Yuffie was staying there. . .well, he'd been through that mental track already. "So how's the old crew, Johnny? Every time I run into you, I space on that."
Johnny thought for a moment. "Well, the raid kicked most o' the buckets. After that. . .Yezz died. I tell y'that?" Reno shook his head, looking puzzled. Yezz had been his best friend in that gang. She was as cocky as he was, treated him kind of like he treated Elena these days, and she had the muscle to back both of those up. "Yeah," Johnny continued, "I guess she had some terminal illness shit. I thought somebody'd capped her, but she told me at the end. Other'n that. . .we had 'bout five originals after the raid, and the rest're still 'round. Maybe a bit old, but ain't we all?"
Reno nodded, and he wouldn't have if he didn't agree. Shit, he was going to be twenty-seven soon, and Rude had just turned twenty-six as well, which meant Johnny was thirty-two. Weren't they supposed to be married with comfortable desk jobs at some twisted law firm or something, preparing for their midlife crisises? Instead, Johnny was killing people over stupid feuds and Reno was. . .well, he was doing the exact same thing, just with a suit. Yuffie was going somewhere, at least. She was going to be the queen of a very successful port city, die bathed in fine jewels with ten bodyguards, and live an afterlife as the greatest goddamn thing to hit the Lifestream.
He wondered briefly which one of them would get there first, then decided it would have to be him. He smoked like a fucking chimney, he was always getting shot at, and his liver already hated him enough to put a bounty on his brainstem. And if one of those didn't do him in, Rude would probably end up shooting him for complaining so much.
"Hey, Reno." Yuffie broke him out of his train of thought; he was pretty sure he looked like he was going to start talking to his plate, and he'd had his fair share of conversations with inanimate objects lately. "Tell Johnny how you're quitting smoking?"
Or maybe she would irritate him to death.
---
Rude was rich.
One might think that, sure, he was a Turk and he had to have an ample amount of money somewhere. But that would be a lie; his actual worth was fucking phenomenal, which was the only way to put it. His father, while in the war on ShinRa's side, had managed to obtain secret documents from Wutai on how to build tanks. Instead of being an idiot and yelling it out, he built them secretly and sold them to ShinRa once they were losing for three times what they were worth. When he was killed, the gratitude from the company came in massive sums of gil to the family's bank account.
When Rude was twenty-two, his mother died of breast cancer and the entire estate was transferred into his name.
Anyone would ask at this point just how much he had from his father's tanks, the thank-you money, his mother's savings, and his Turk money put together.
The best way to look at a statistic like that is in a list. ShinRa took a poll of the richest men, women, and people on the Planet every two years, but they always looked at big businesspeople, and so the leader has been the owner of ShinRa from the beginning of the surveys. The leading female, seeing as how the president had no wife to share his assets with, was bounced between two of the owners of their Junon branch until it was wiped out by the WEAPON, and then it was Scarlet, though she wasn't worth much compared to Reeve with his corporate inheritance.
But no one ever thought to ask Turks how much they had, because they were always envisioned as slobs who had nothing to live for; which, coincidentally, is exactly how Rude spent the money he felt like spending at any given time. Like he had absolutely nothing to look forward tomorrow; a true Turk standpoint.
So if Turks were factored into the list, Rude would have been the third richest being on the face of the Planet, and Reno would take that spot eventually, as all of the younger Turk's estate was in his will to the redhead. He would have, if on the list, been one above Scarlet and behind Godo and Reeve, respectively. Elena would be somewhere in the top twenty, but her Turk earnings hadn't been snowballing nearly as long; Reno as he was wouldn't even be on the list, just because he spent it all as fast as he got it. Besides, Rude was happy to lend him thousands of gil at a time.
But no one ever thought to ask, and it certainly wasn't Rude-esque to speak up.
The whole point was that, on the island he owned, Rude had two commercial jets and countless four-seater helicopters and two-seater planes for general use, as well as a few dozen cars for covert Turk jobs. Reno was pretty sure he had a few boats, but the bald man was afraid of water, so he didn't pay much attention to that part.
And so he was more than happy to, when Yuffie and Reno discovered they didn't have much else to do that day, fly them to Wutai. It was fun for the ninja, disguised as a very convincing teenage boy, as she watched the slush-and-ice mix that meant Midgar snow disappear beneath them, saw the vast Kalm Plains covered in the stuff -- it was probably more beautiful than Wutai in winter, just for its simplicity. But it was no longer fun when she realized this meant they were in the air and they sure as hell weren't on a giant, moving platform connected to the ground. Add onto that the fact Rude thought he was a fighter helicopter pilot, and she sank down into her seat with the knowledge that this would be a very hectic trip.
Rude had gone all-out with this chopper. The most comfortable seats he could find, a drink mixer -- if anyone felt risky enough to make one while he was flying -- in the console, a stereo system one could only expect from the big man, and headsets that ran on vibrations. No matter how quietly you spoke, the other person could hear you clearly. Often Rude would have entire conversations with someone in the passenger's seat without someone in the back knowing he'd spoken at all.
"So what's between you two?" the younger Turk asked.
Reno glanced quickly in the mirror to see Yuffie, laying on the seat with her eyes closed. She was either asleep or trying not to barf on the seats; either one was very likely for her at this time. He decided there was no danger in lighting up a cigarette -- Rude had gone to the extent of customizing this thing just so Reno could smoke. "What do you mean?"
"Reno," he warned. "I'm not an idiot. There's something going on between you; the only women you have are generally kicked out the next night or live at your place every other night." The first women were common; he was referring to Scarlet by the second. "But you don't just invite someone in Wutai back repeatedly, Reno, I know you. You're getting attached."
As cliché as it sounded, that was actually a Turk code of sorts. Telling a Turk he or she was getting attached to something or someone was a way of challenging their loyalty to the job. The last person to say that was the man who might have had Elena's spot, to Tseng about the Cetra.
He didn't come home.
"You fucked her?"
Reno took a pull on his cigarette. "What kinda question is th --"
"Have you fucked her?" Rude repeated.
He didn't reply for a few seconds, then he said, "So what?"
"Scarlet died last night."
Reno almost inhaled his smoke, which distracted him from his original goal. When he remembered what Rude had said and was convinced he wasn't choking to death on his filter, he asked, "What? That gang killer?"
"She's fine, Reno." Sometimes, the redhead was still amazed that his friend could keep a straight face through it all. "See, you're attached to her and she never stays at your place. If someone comes from across the Planet and shares a bed with you for weeks at a time, there's definitely something going on there. You can't do that, Reno; team policy says the job comes first."
He chose not to talk to Rude for the rest of the ride there, and when they reached Wutai at around ten that night, he only said "Thanks" and "I'll call" before the pierced man took off back toward Midgar.
"So, Frankie," he said, for that was the name Yuffie had picked out for herself. "All the shops are closed. You wanna just get a hotel room and order room service and cheap movies or something?" Wutai was infamous for its cheap action movies, which Reno got a huge kick out of. "We can hit the shops tomorrow."
Yuffie agreed and they made their way to the only hotel in Wutai, constructed just over a year beforehand. They were surprised to find a line up to the desk that trailed out the door, but it seemed to be moving so they stayed in it. Yuffie didn't like the fact that the man in front of them seemed to have a gas problem and she was just in the right spot to catch the worst of it. Her cover as Frankie left her in no position to complain about it, though.
"The hell's this shit?" Reno muttered, sounding seriously irritated with the sudden rush for a hotel room. He looked at Yuffie. "This isn't some big manhunt for Godo's daughter, is it?" He'd almost said 'you,' but a Turk was always prepared to change what he said. When he received a shrug, he asked the man in front of them, "The hell's goin' on?"
The man turned around and lifted an eyebrow at him. "Like you don't know," he drawled sarcastically, and Reno caught sight of a small pouch on his belt that matched the one on the woman in front of him. Reno would have normally started a fight, but Yuffie seemed to know that as well and laid her hand on his arm, then smacked at his hand when she remembered she was Frankie now.
The line was rather swift, and they discovered this was because each person was just answering "Yes" to whatever question the desk clerk was asking. When it came to Reno and Yuffie's turn, she looked at them with an overly-sweet smile that made Reno want to knock another set of teeth out. Quickly, she asked, "I suppose you're on the room block?"
The two exchanged a look. Reno decided to go along with it, seeing as how his partner was playing a mute. "What's the advantage of the room block as opposed to getting our own?"
The clerk thought for a moment, then said, "No charge whatsoever."
"Yeah, we'll take that." Reno was definitely not one to turn down a free room, especially in a place he wanted to be. He would sacrifice a two-person room for a negative fee.
The woman smiled and handed them a pair of room keys. "Down the hall and to the left. Room 284." As they were walking away, she called, "Happy Winter Day, sirs!"
Reno kept walking, but tossed a finger at her and muttered something definitely not fit for the holiday spirit.