LOVELESS

Chapter II

Tiffany never made it over last night, but she did bother to call and say she wouldn't. I wake up, make my morning check of Rude's room, and find him sleeping face down. It's no big. He does it all the time; remembered how to do it from SOLDIER, in case he needed to pretend to be dead. His breathing's even shallow. . .should I go che – nope, there's the snore.

Keep on, man.

. . .You creepazoid fuck.

I laugh and wonder if I should wake him up and tell him what I just dubbed him, then decide to check the calendar first. Last week. . .my birthday was a. . .hold on, I'll get it. . .that's right, it's Tuesday. Holy Day. I wake up the big bald man in the back room, relay that information to him, and he promises he'll get up in a few minutes.

I crack my back with one hand and run the other through my hair. That couch does a number on me, lemme tell y – note to self, Re, the Widow's right. I make a note to change 'lemme tell ya' to 'you creepazoid fuck,' but something tells me the transition won't take.

But first. . .we've gotta go to church.

I suppose the idea of the two of us in church is kinda weird for someone to think about without us telling them why we're doing it, so here's the deal: Since the end of ShinRa was such a wake-up call, we woke up and noticed that we'd been fucking with a lot of people over the years and we should probably stop. I mean, c'mon, we killed more than a few people, we had our way with the benefits, and we decided that whole karma thing was probably gonna nip us later.

Since then, we've been heading to church every Holy Day – terrible name, trust me, I know, but it's not like I got put in charge of the holiday planning – and hoping some higher being's gonna tell us what to do one of these days. We could have gone on killing, drinking, doing drugs, and the whole nine, but the leaf turned and we decided it wasn't in our best interests.

I suppose ano –

WHAM. Rude trips over his own feet on the way into the kitchen and almost knocks himself out on one of the chais. Nice one, Ace. "You wanna eat before we go, right?"

No response is a good response. . .err. . .a positive response. . .or. . .I turn the stove on and give up on eloquence for a while. Somehow I always find myself doing the cooking, but I really don't mind. Sometimes Rude minds, but he'll eat anything I put in front of him. . .thank Holy.

A few minutes later I kick him in the side and he wakes up again, pulling himself into a chair and slipping on the shades he left in the middle of the table last night. "What's on?"

When you live with him, you learn what his short responses are supposed to mean. I turn up the burner. "Scales. Ain't too hungry myself, you?" He shakes his head and rubs at his temples. The man looks like he's hungover and pissed off every morning, which is a large part of why he doesn't like people staying over – too nice for his own good, the lummox. "How was work?"

He shrugs and looks around, probably for his cigarettes, but I can't help him there. "Work's work," he tells me. "Cooking's cooking." I bank on the hope that one of these days, he'll actually tell me he had a good time in the kitchen. I suggest to him that he needs to sneak off and get hammered one night while he's on the clock, and he laughs. "Cameras."

"You know what, then?" I slam a plate down in front of him. Skin a dragon, cook the scales; if you're not from around here, lemme tell ya, it's good eatin's. "Take my ideas, piss off to work, then tell me you ain't had a good day, alright?"

He takes a bite and shakes his head again, finally starting to enter the real world. I sit down with my own meal and a cup of coffee that I remember seeing on the counter last night. Cold. Black. But with the amazing lack of bugs in Rude's apartment, it should be safe. I don't care if you think it's disgusting; I just think it's less expensive.

We eat in silence, as it is with most mornings – creepazoid fuck, what'd I tell you? – and he's the first to leave the room to change. I get the dishes done while he does that, then go and put on my own funeral suit. Not a suit for my own funeral, I mean. We just decided that, instead of going to Holy Day service in the colors of killers, we'd spend some of the company's severance pay on two black suits.

That's another thing I should explain. A lot of the time, people ask how, with all my earnings from being a Turk, I could be homeless, and the answer's a lot more simple than you might think. Basically, the idea of being an assassin is that you don't want a lot of people to know you are one. . .and because we totally fucked up the part of not walking around outside with the suits on, the ShinRa family had a plan for us that left us financially screwed when the company came down. They would give us anything we wanted so long as we filled out an order form, and they would give it to us with nothing else attached. If I'd wanted a new car, completely unrelated to the job, they would've given it to me. I'm talking anything. Of course, the downfall of the system for us was that it meant they didn't have to pay us regularly anymore.

And thus, when the order forms and presidents go away, we're left with no gil – aside from the bit that the government gave us as severance pay because the new company wants nothing to do with the blood on our hands, and like I said, we went and bought church suits – and we've gotta fend for ourselves. It's a real pain in the ass, lemme tell ya. I just can't seem to get off mine and find someplace to work.

"Hey, Rude!" I hear the water running, and the reply is mumbled. I caught him brushing his teeth. I hop around on one foot, pulling my pants on, and ask, "How cold is it out there?"

I can feel him shrug once in a while.

"Lemme rephrase." I give him a few seconds, but maybe that's because I can't seem to hold a conversation and put on a three-piece suit at the same time. I can drive around at high speeds, keep a conversation going with someone barely hanging onto their guts in the back seat, and shoot out my window at the fucker behind us – my car, Reeve, irritated Wutains, my rookie days, respectively – but when it comes to walking and chewing gum, you can go to hell. "Are we driving?"

There's a pause, then his arm sticks itself into the hallway and he throws a tube of toothpaste at me. He misses by about three feet. Mornings are a long process around here, and that's his usual sign for, 'Reno, you're a ( here's where you put the appropriate insult, based on Rude's coherency ), of course we're ( and here's where you insert appropriate action. )' If anyone else lived here, they'd just think he was an ass. "Hey, man, screw you. It's September. It might be cold."

"You're just lazy." He opens the medicine cabinet and digs for the antidepressants he seems to misplace everyday. A lot of people don't know the big guy who never smiles and seems inept at five-word sentences is on pep-pills, and the ones who do know tend to not believe it. I tell them to imagine him without 'em. Usually gets a shudder.

Everything as figured out as it is, we're at church in a matter of half an hour, after two cigarettes apiece and a bottle of water between us. All the usuals are here, as expected, and we take our seats next to the Widow in the back. Up front is the pew of the preacher's kids and his wife; the rest of the tenants of the apartments are all around us, somewhere, except for the guy upstairs that we heard coming down with something; Tiffany's not here, but she lives closer to the other church we go to for the buffet days; something tells me Derrick's in here with his mother, but there's no way we'd let her know that he talks to us; a few homeless people are in the pew next to us, always are, and never seem to get any better; and of course, in a seat a few rows ahead of us with two bodyguards, there's Toshi Arakaru, who. . .well, I'll get to that. Let's just say that between the two of us, we have the oddest relationship I know of. He's only been here twice, but he feels like a regular.

Service drags today, but aside from a few things I have to repeat to the Widow, it's not horrible. Average Tuesday nonsense; a few fanatics who swear the end is near. . .same people that've been saying it for four years, unsurprisingly. After it's all over, Rude heads outside with a few of his friends from work, telling me he's going off to have a few drinks ( those fanatics make me want a few, too ) and I find Toshi.

The bodyguards know me by now, and walk away to stand by the door, pretending to look busy. If I were anyone else, he'd have them stand in front of him, but, y'know, I'm an ex-Turk and know more than they do. There've been a few times I came close to asking him for a job, lemme tell ya. He slides a list of names into my pocket as I walk past, and I stop on the other side of him, back to back. "How's it goin', Toshi?"

Toshi Arakaru is, if the name didn't tip you off, a Wutain who has more gil in his bank accounts than the WEAPONs had in property damage. Today he's wearing his favorite suit, a dark grey, pinstriped thing with lapels that stick out irritatingly far ( looks like a fucking birthday clown, and I've told him that ); he's got a trimmed goatee, short black hair, and grey eyes ( the left one's fake, if you want to sneak up on him. ) He and Rude are perfect for each other when it comes to how much emotion they show.

You're wondering why he's got bodyguards and gil, I'm sure. As the son of one of Godo Kisaragi's most trusted consultants, he learned a lot about business early in life, and unlike most kids with that going for them, he kept with it. Everything kind of snowballed, and after the earnings off two businesses he owned were put together, he had enough to. . .y'know. . .buy ShinRa.

I guess I could hate him for putting me out of a job and turning everything I used to stand for into just one big credit card company – yeah, that's what they're doing with the building; the reactors that withstood Meteor are still providing power to a lot of places, but Toshi sold them to Kalm in exchange for enough to make the building look new after it got blown to shards – but he's an alright guy otherwise. Besides, he has knows what I need to know; he slides me a piece of paper every time he comes into town, usually about once a month. If he doesn't call at midnight, I figure he'll be at church, and here he is.

It was a dirty trick, but after Toshi and I got to know each other – two years ago I tried to go back into the building for some things I left in the basement, his guards threw fits and nabbed me, and for some reason we started talking – he decided to help me out. Given the fact that my 'raid' had been reported on the news, he exaggerated it to say that the old Turks had tried to attack the place and he needed information on people who wanted to track us down and get rid of us in exchange for a nice amount of gil. With over five-hundred letters by the end of the month, most with info and pictures, he had a lot of names of people that wanted, and still want, to make sure Rude and I shut up for a good long while. Every month he calls ten more people, tells them to set out on the hunt, and gives me ten more names in exchange for me keeping him updated on what goes on under the corporate world. It's an uneven trade; Holy knows I'm getting a lot more out of it than he is, but he's got enough power to keep himself happy. Or. . .y'know. . .smilelessly content.

Like I said, it's a damn weird relationship, and I don't even know if we can call each other friends, but now I know who's pissed off at me. I think the number of letters he got pissed me off enough to make me want to go through with it when my back was against the wall.

"Business is business, as life is life," he tells me. I can't see what he's doing, but I hear sunglasses unfold. I've heard that sound about three-thousand times over the years. "Ready?"

I laugh a bit, leaning backward into him and putting a piece of paper into his back pocket. My monthly summary of what's going on in the streets. Maybe I don't find my own place because I know I would lose touch with crime and kill this deal I have going. Whatever; it's working. "'Course I am, Mister Arakaru." I turn around and shove him over the pew, knocking him on his ass, and my mag-rod comes out.

I'm slow, because he gets a kick into my cheek on his way down, and fuck, does it hurt. He grabs my weapon and pulls himself up, almost yanking my goddamn elbow out of its socket, and sinks his fist into my gut. This guy's no pushover by any means, and what I think's interesting's that he does know a damn thing about martial arts. All his time in Wutai he spent learning about business-owning, but once he started doing it, he watched his gil pile up and started pulling criminals off the street. Giving them enough of his earnings to shut 'em up, they taught him how to fight dirty and he's been getting better ever since. That's one of the reasons I like these meetings so much; I understand the concept of trying to knock someone's teeth out.

He's a fucking genius, lemme tell ya. One of those guys who knows he can buy the Promised Land, and actually tries to do it. So to speak. In other words. Something like that, fuck if I know; like I said, my schooling got me as far as shooting, then I had to drop one. The gun under the couch is probably a tip-off.

I try not to double, but it feels like he hit something he knew to aim for, and I slug him in the chest for it, putting away the rod with my other hand. He goes down hard from that, the wind out of him, and I book it for the door. Like I figured, his guards have their guns at me, and I plough through the one on the left to throw myself outside. I can't tell if he purposely went down easily or not, but I don't really care. Rude's running over, pulling on his gloves, and he throws one of his paws into the other guard, because the idiot's bending over his partner. I know Rude wouldn't have normally gotten involved in this, but he thought it was a stupid move to let down your guard in the line of fire, so that was his way of saying it.

I'm almost in the car when a bullet hits my heel, from the guy I downed earlier, so I jump across the seat into the passenger's side just in time for the big bald man to get in behind me and peel out of our space.

I've been shot plenty of times, otherwise I'd probably be swearing myself blue in the face over my fucking foot. That and he only actually hit the heel of my shoe – so I turn to Rude and start bitching about needing new ones now. He refuses to respond, which either means he's mad about me "starting fights" or he just doesn't care. "I thought you were headin' for the bar, anyway."

"Thought you might need help."

Whenever Toshi and I meet somewhere public, we have to duke it out in one of these hellacious brawls so we look like we actually hate each other. If we didn't get such a rush out of a fight once in awhile, we'd probably say screw the plan because it's too much of a hassle. That's why we go all-out with the hard hits and guns; authenticity's important, sure, but when it comes down to it, we just wanna hit each other. I usually tell Rude when it's going down, though, just so he can make sure I don't wind up fucked.

I unfold the list, set it on my knees, and look for the alcohol swabs in the glove box. Yeah, that's right, we keep stuff to clean up fights in the car; we were Turks, so we get in fights probably more often than we need to. Don't give me that look. "You kiddin', man? I had him, you and I both know it." Damn, that stings. I think he knocked something loose in my neck, too.

"You mean something in your head?"

What? Oh. . .err. . . I give him a weird look and laugh at myself. "Did I say that out loud?" Rude nods at me. Yeah, that kick to the cheek kind of disoriented me. Whenever I get knocked around a bit, I tend to lose track of what I think and what I say. 'Course, that's probably because I've been getting knocked around since I was a kid. "But, yeah, I had him. If you'd been in there. . ."

Rude shakes his head again, and he smirks in that certain little way. "Reputation's better every time you hit him," he tells me, and we laugh at it together. I suppose beating up the owner of what used to be ShinRa – it's called LSA these days, but I don't remember what that stands for right now – doesn't exactly show great respect for anyone, huh?

Then again, kicking an ex-Turk in the face doesn't really show a lot of brains, either.

We talk for awhile about how, someday, we'll have to have a huge fight in one of the local taverns. Akamaru, FrikFrak – that's what I call his bodyguards when I'm feeling lazy, but their real names are Riola ( taller ) and Merrick ( shorter ) – Rude, and I in a fist-throwing, table-breaking, knock-down barroom brawl. It'll be like the old movies, with or without Yuffie Kisaragi as the female lead.

". . .Hey, Rude, was her real name Yu Fei?"

He gives me a weird look that I feel on the side of my head, but I wave it off. You remember that list with the pictures Toshi gave me?

One of the fuckers has been tailing me for weeks.