A.N. Really sorry about how late this chapter is, but I just couldn't think what to write for this. This chapter is from Reno's point of view again, and he's feeling a little bit lost.
R&R please! Enjoy!
Reno slowly opened his eyes, and then closed them again. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't quite seem to break free of this absurd nightmare.
He was lying in a sea of colours that were twisting and pulsing to individual rhythms and beats. They flowed over and around him and hurt his head with their glowing, fluctuating patterns. They were pretty, he supposed, but there was something else to them that made him uneasy.
They were solid: he could feel them brush past his shoulder, against his cheek. They were warm. They also, to his distress, appeared to be the only thing supporting his body.
"The hell is this place?"
The sound of his own voice gave him a temporary strength and he rose, shakily, to his feet. It felt as though there was something solid beneath him, some kind of invisible platform.
Reno grinned: he knew what this was.
Officially, the Turks had never been allowed in the Soldier training rooms, but so long as they didn't destroy anything or interrupt an actual session, no one had ever really cared. Besides, it was difficult to stop the Turks from going anywhere: how do you lock down someone who can hack all the codes?
Even knowing what it was, walking without seeing the floor was unnerving and Reno stretched out his arms for better balance. This made him feel a little better: it was something he used to do in the slums, scrambling across rooftops and walls. It was a little piece of his childhood that had always been innocent. He had done it for the sense of freedom it had given him, to reach out his arms towards the metal sky of the plate.
He closed his eyes, remembering what it felt like to be a child. He had never been innocent, not growing up in the slums. He had been optimistic, naive. He thought he could become rich just stealing, that he could buy his way onto the upper plates that rich men would come begging to him to agree to steal for them. Instead, he had made killing his living.
He lowered his arms. The innocence of the moment was gone.
He began to get increasingly annoyed with the place. As he walked, it appeared to bend around him. The walls expanded and closed with each step he took, and the dizzying circles of the rotating colours were beginning to give him a headache.
"Ah, come on. My luck can't be this bad!"
He began to run, charging straight ahead of him and hoping to encounter something, anything. The colours kept moving, the world kept bending, and he found nothing.
He slowed his pace until he was walking once more, strolling lazily onwards with his arms folded across his chest.
There was a breeze now, seeming to blow the colours this way and that around him. He shivered and kept walking. Up ahead, there was a dark shadow. It hovered, a few feet above his head, hanging like a picture frame. He glared at it.
Of all the damn useless things. Why couldn't you be a window or something?
The cold intensified and he pulled the blazer of his Turk uniform closer around him. Around him, the colours began to slow, flowing gently around him. He watched a river of red slide past his shoulder. Slivers of blue ice crystals had formed along its back.
Curious, he reached out a hand and touched it.
The crystals shifted, encircling his finger as though drawn to the warmth. The colour was suddenly animate again, zipping away, past the dark shadow, and disappearing into a sheet of green. The crystals hovered around his hand, sticking to his skin and spreading out over his hand.
"Shit!"
Reno shook his hand, violently, and the crystals slid off his skin. They floated elegantly towards the dark shape, seeming about to float around it, when they were suddenly pulled backwards into the darkness.
"The hell?"
With nothing better to do, Reno walked carefully towards it. Curiosity, Tseng had once said, was Reno's biggest flaw.
As he got closer to the shape, ice crystals began to form on his skin. He shifted his hand, watching as they ran across it like a solid droplet of water.
So whatever this thing is... Is the reason I'm cold?
Drawing closer to the shadow, he began to see moving shapes in its depths. It felt like he was looking into a deep pool.
He squinted into the rippling, pulsing form, and slowly the shapes began to make sense. He stared, rubbed his eyes, and then stared again.
He could see himself.
