Sorry, sorry, sorry for the delay! I finally finished moving into my dorm a day ago, and my life has been hectic for the past two weeks, packing, plane tickets, the works. Anyway, I'm settled down, and I hope so is everyone else who is a college freshman this year. We're all in the same boat.

Raspberry Polar Bear - I knew you were still there! Was the camp fun? I moved and this'll be the first time living away from my parents, balancing the checkbook, getting my own bank account, e.t.c. Kinda scary. Anyway, I'm glad you liked the previous chapters. I hope you like this one... a little sexual, and some influence from the movies (again).

Moonshine's Guide - I was imagining this old decrepid guy with an apron, whispy white bits of hair, brown skin, yellow teeth that's missing in places, and glasses. Definitely not a pleasant guy. Yep, the recruits are dying - but that's to be expected. I think there's still 5 or 6 left - anyone wish to check up and inform me the correct info (lol)?

Echo the Ethereal Swordmast... - no... I've only watched Sakura on TV and X on DVD from Clamp. I'm not really into cross-overs, I guess? The original characters usually turn out to be more interesting for me, a little more dented out of regular shapes and stronger in personality... since I write, that sort of characters are appreciated.

Whitelight23 - Welcome to the series! I hope you enjoy your stay, and I really do hope that you stay throughout. Actually, this is the third work in the series - the first one being C'Est La Vie (which just shows how much I've improved in writing)... anyway, I love Reno because I'm a sucker for redheads and comedics. Always was.

Chapter 17: Reno's Trial

Reno and Rude walked to an inn in silence. The only thing Rude had said was "Are you sure?" which referred to Arien, stranded with Keymaker in the brothel. Reno nodded.

"She's a big girl. She can handle herself."

Rude was not a conversationalist. So the exchange ended there.

After getting another bed wheeled in – the three were going to room together, and they would need three beds when Arien returned the next day – Rude stood up. "I'm going to look around."

"Okay." Reno turned his head as he struggled to get off the shirt from his head without undoing the buttons. "See ya later."

With that, the redhead was left to his own devices. He finally got out of the shirt, then threw it on his bed along with the jacket. The leather cuff that attached his EMR to his wrist came off. He paused for a moment, then took out the earring, laid it on the bedside table, the pin end of the stud facing up. Without much care, he took off his goggle-like sunglasses off from his head and tossed it onto his shirt. He stretched, then froze.

A spicy fragrance hit his nose. Sweet spice, with wildflowers. It couldn't be any woman he knew; Arien smelled of lavenders and Elena of gardenias, both cultured flowers that were not strong or seductive. This was clearly worn for a single purpose, and Reno could guess that it wasn't to offer him a cheesecake. For once he cursed his stupidity for leaving his defenses down. Feeling naked all of a sudden, Reno turned around.

And saw something that he had never seen before.

It was a woman. No one he knew; no one dressed like that, no. But by gods, she was… exquisite.

Arien had been an epitome of mental femininity to him. Not that she was weak, but her defensiveness, her minute care to details that no man could give, her meticulousness, were all feminine to him. But it was all mental. Physically, she was not the most feminine person he could think of. She didn't have enough cleavage to his liking, and her face was too… blank. No smiles, no tears. Just eyes, clear blue-green eyes that looked but told nothing. Sure, she had long legs and a slim waist, but she was also on the brink of looking emaciated if she lost a few more pounds.

This woman was physical femininity to perfection, and she flaunted it. Her gown was flimsy and almost see-through, a white misty wisp of a thing that enhanced the body with its tantalizing shadows rather than hid it. He could see the round contours of full breasts, the slender hips, the long legs. The dark pubic hair. The face that was attached to the body was just as beautiful and perfect as the rest of herself, her skull covered with thick, raven mane that waved slightly about her shoulders and probably down her back, large, luminous brown eyes, full lips that were made to be kissed and toyed with. A picture of a female in obeisance to masculinity.

She reached out, a slender hand extending from the floaty white sleeve. Took his face in her hands. He could not look away, and he looked into her eyes, so different, so warm and inviting. Hot thoughts slithered into his brain, wrapping around his beliefs, his thoughts like serpents. She toyed with him stroking the centers of his pleasure and pain within him as she easily controlled his body and his mind.

"Love me," said a sweet, gentle voice in a whisper. "Make me yours."

Had Arien ever said that? No. She had made sure in the beginning that while she would obey his orders while on the clock, after five o'clock she was his equal. She probably would have ministered stinging words if he had ever forced her to do anything; for her, sex was a physical display of love, not some sport. This… thing obviously had a different philosophy from the Turk. He shut his eyes, tried to fight off, instinctively knowing that if he went with her, there was no turning back. But she was inside him, her hunger filling his flesh, her desires stabbing through his brain. He tried to force her out of his mind, but he failed utterly. He backed, but she took a step forward. Amused by his fight, she stroked his cheek again; waves of sensation, shamelessly erotic, reverberated through his body, causing a pleasure so intense and so violent that it bordered pain. She was playing with his flesh like an instrument, there was no place he could hide or go, no way he could stop it.

Deep inside his mind, his consciousness screamed. Knew that if he gave in, even for a moment, if he let his intellect be swept away by the tide of her madness, he would be lost forever. Her desires would know no moderation or middle ground.

Another caress and another breeze that carried the spicy sweet smell to his nose. His body stiffened, responding to the stimulus; lust coursed through his veins like fire, setting each nerve sensors aflame. He took another step back, his heel hitting the night table, avoiding another touch. He stumbled and slammed his hand onto the surface of the table for support, and felt something puncture his skin and bite into his hand.

The acute pain brought a new awareness to his engulfed senses, and he looked at his hand in amazement. The earring had gone through the skin and was now dangling from the palm of his hand, surrounded by red petals of blood. The silver gleamed gently in the light. He had a fleeting impression of the same thing dangling from someone's ear… also framed by dark hair… then a pair of blue-green eyes came into focus. Arien's eyes, slanted, cool and collected. Judging him. Her eyes were mocking him now, telling him that he had lost control, that he was no good...

The vision of the woman shattered, the feeling so jarring, as if someone was drawing something from his blood, that he stumbled. His body felt cold after such raze of sexual lust, and he felt the stinging of tears in his eyes. Sour saliva filled his mouth. He yanked the earring out of his hand, staring at the new blood welling in the small hole. He sucked on the wound, tasting the metallic tang of his own blood. And knew that the temptress was no living thing, no creature with blood coursing through the veins. Her only purpose upon this world was to seduce, to use femininity as a weapon.

For the good portion of his life, he had been surrounded by both types of women; those who made sure that he kept his hands where it belonged, such as Elena and Arien. Then there was the other type, those who used their gender as a tool. He had learned that while the latter proved to be fun partners in bed, he could never view them as something more than a function. Spending a night with them was fine, but spending his life with them was not an option. No way. And he wasn't about to hand his free will over to something that didn't worth a human status, whether as a biological fact or his recognition.

"Fool!" came a voice, no longer soft but deep, harsh and angry. He looked around, saw no one, but knew that the temptress had spoken the word. "You could have had everything you wanted! The world!"

Reno grinned, his eyes a challenge to the unseen. "The world means shit to me, yo," he responded, still sucking on his hand.

While Reno was playing seduced in the room at the inn, Arien was playing survival. Alone.

Keymaker obviously wanted her for some purpose that Arien clearly did not care to know about. Seeing the man's eyes confirmed her suspicion that it wasn't just plain sex. Besides, he probably could have gotten that for free from a more buxom blonde anytime, given the fact that he did live in a whorehouse. Arien was wary of her surroundings, taking note of this and that. The room was quite bare save the single bare light bulb that illuminated the room.

The guards had moved in to catch her, Keymaker had ordered her to be bound, but Turks were forces to be reckoned with and nobody really cared to die. So Arien stood in the center of the room, every sense to the maximum alertness, ready to strike if anyone moved. If anyone made a threatening move, Arien would blow the bulb. She was the only one with nightvision, giving a distinct advantage over the others. She would see them all as clearly as she was in daylight, while she assumed that none of the opponents would be able to see her.

No one moved. It was a stalemate. An hour passed, then two.

"… wonder how long she can stand…"

"…Dunno… she's a Turk, but she's as skinny as a spider. Look…"

Concentrate. It was difficult, since her mind was supposed to shut out the talk but her ears and her eyes were not allowed that luxury. She was supposed to instantenously discard the important information but keep the vital ones. Her body alert and ready to attack, she stood in the middle of the room, gunblades in hand, their weight increasing by the hour.

By the fourth hour, Keymaker was getting tired of playing the game. His eyes moved to one of the guards, then to her. The guard's hand twitched on the machine gun he was holding.

Arien's gunblade released a bullet that soared through the air with a bang as she squeezed the trigger before they even started to move.. The light bulb shattered, showering the area with splinters of glass and plunging the chamber into a deep, thick darkness. The room returned to the silence as the ra-tta-tta-tta-tta of machine guns rapped out three fifty bullets per second; flashes and ricocheting bullets danced in the room, and smoke and an acrid odor filled the air.

All the while, Arien was low on the floor, avoiding getting hit, praying to all the gods that may exist, hoping that the guards won't be smart enough to aim the bullets at the floor. Sure, Turks were difficult to kill, but a knife severing the spine or a bullet through the head made sure that you were just as dead as the ordinary people, no problem. She came out relatively unharmed; couple of grazes on her back, two in her left thigh, one in her right. In her terms, that was light injury. Her arms, shielded by her torso, were safe. She flexed her fingers one by one, checking their damage. None.

The room returned to silence. Then more whispers.

"… is she dead?"

"Dunno. I can't hear her moving."

"Maybe she's dead."

A moment passed, then two. Arien heard arms being lowered, leaving them defenseless. Ragged breathing, indistinct movements, cloth rubbing against cloth.

Arien slid her gunblades silently back into the holsters, then slid her hands into her pockets, and fingered a new weapon, hoping that her injured legs would still be in full control. The new gadgets were a child's toy. So primitive, so simple and childish. Yet effective when used cleverly. And good weapons weren't weapons that spitted 60 more rounds per minute than fifty, or knives that had two blades instead of one. Good weapons were weapons that were put in good, effective uses, and she was trained for that, wasn't she?

She slid her fingers into the leather bands so that they stopped right over the nails, made sure that they were snug enough so that they won't fall of with the smallest movement but will leave her fingers when certain muscles were flexed. She pulled out her hands, then…

Her hands flew, each slicing motion of her hand in the air extending the next finger. The knife attached to her finger left the finger it was mounted on. A man gurgled, clutching at the throat as the knife slid through the skin smoothly, then fell with a dull thud. Then another. Then another.

In a few moments both of her hands had dispatched all the blades. She yanked off the leather onto the floor, then stuck her hands into her pocket again. More blades, long and slender, flew through the air in the darkness.

When the guard posted outside the room heard the thuds that could not be caused anything lighter than human bodies and turned the doorknob, Arien had one gunblade pointed at Keymaker's head, another at the door. Light streamed in, and Keymaker's eyes widened as he realized just how close he was to getting killed. One slip of a finger, one thought could make the fingers squeeze the trigger. Then he would be nothing more than a bag of flesh and bones. Arien barely had a ragged breath. She had barely moved from the center of the room.

"Get in," she snapped. "And close the door." The guard obeyed. Her gun still pointed at Keymaker, another still pointed at the guard's head, she ordered him to stand right beside Keymaker.

He hesitated. Her eyes told him that hesitation could become lethal; cold, blue-green eyes. He saw that she would never hesitate to kill. Keymaker saw that as well. He obeyed her command.

And with guns staring down at their faces, that was how the guard and Keymaker spent the rest of the night.

When Reno came to retrieve his subordinate, Arien was still pointing the guns at Keymaker and the guard's head.

Reno said nothing as he casually stepped on the dead body, EMR in hand. His eyes betrayed no surprise; he wasn't surprised at all. After all, Reno had trained her, and being trained by Renaldo Miller either meant that the trainee was dead before the year was over or the trainee turned into an efficient killing machine. Arien had survived the year.

"We did our part. Now do yours," Reno ordered.

"Your Turk killed all my guards!" protested Keymaker. "That wasn't part of the bargain."

"Uh yeah, it was, yo." Reno grinned. "I told you we ain't gonna be responsible for any damage she caused, and you said no worries, you'll still do the job no matter what happens. Remember?"

Keymaker made a sour face as his own words came back to bite him in the rear end.

Keymaker glared a refusal.

"Look, yo," Reno started, "since my subordinate still has a gun pointed at your head, I think you might wanna do this job if you don't want her squeezing. She's a little out of control, if ya get my drift."

"She's a woman," came back the disdainful reply.

"Ya. And a Turk. And she's on period right now. Therefore, not predictable." Arien twitched slightly; she wasn't on period. She didn't have one. Turks didn't have functional reproductive systems. didn't Keymaker know that?

Keymaker thought for a second, as Arien re-gripped the gunblade. He heard a defining click. That sealed his decision.

"Fine," he spat.

"That's what I wanna hear," Reno nodded. "Here's the plan. See ya later, old man." He gestured to the gun. "You can put it away now."

Arien returned the gunblades to their sheaths, then began to go around, pulling out the slender razor-like blades from the throats. He went over to a corpse she had not touched yet, pulled out a slender, sharp blade from the throat. Looked at it, then threw it. It landed on the table with a light thunk, burying itself into the wood.

"Five days," Keymaker was telling when to return to pick up the product.

"Three," Reno replied.

"I can't finish it in three days!"

Reno's EMR touched the tip of the temple. "Wanna try again?"

The man whimpered. Don't cross us, Reno's expression said. We'll know.

After Reno was satisfied with the man's frightened expression, the three walked out. When Arien got out of the dim brothel into the bright sun, she winced as the light commenced a full assault on her eyes, used to the darkness. She stopped.

"What?"

Arien pulled out her sunglasses, and placed it on her nose. Looked up. Then resumed walking. Reno noticed that Arien started to limp, and saw bullet wounds on her limbs.

"Arie, you're bleeding."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." Arien shook her head, telling him that she would be alright for now. She wanted to go back to the safety of a room rather than sit down in the open. "Let's go, Reno."

"Tell me something," Reno said as he stood by the whitewashed wall, smoking. He leaned on the wall, one hand stuck in his pocket, his upper body slightly leaning forward. His legs were crossed slightly at the shin; his jacket was carelessly tossed on top of the TV. Rude sat by his own bed, contacting Elena via cell phone. Arien looked up from the white piece of cloth she had torn from a sheet, which was now around her thigh, slowly turning red. The wounds were almost closed, but she would have to get the bullets out once she reached a Shinra-employed medical facility. Turks didn't really trust themselves with regular physicians; mako-mutated bodies did not react well with some medications, and previous carelessness had sent the first generation mako-mutated bodies to convulsing fits and worse, death. The second-generation mako-mutated Turks knew better than to seek immediate treatment. They learned to deal with the pain until they could get proper physical care.

Reno did not reply to her questioning stare, but instead took a drag of the cigarette. Arien had white strips of cloth around both her legs, and the back of her white shirt was stained with red. Reno had made her strip and stopped the bleeding by binding the wounds with the ripped-up sheet. Rude had discreetly looked away, for which Arien was glad. If it was Rude doing the binding and Reno was just sitting there, he would have ogled.

"What exactly were those things?"

Arien did not reply, but began buttoning her shirt again, then tucked in the shirt into her belt. She began to wear her holsters around her torso. "What things?"

"Those… knife things, yo. Those things in their throats." He tossed his pack of cigarettes and a lighter as she gestured for a smoke. "Didn't know you smoked, yo."

"I used to." She registered a look of mock disbelief on his face, and turned defensive. "What? I used to smoke in the Academy, alright? Obviously I wasn't goody two-shoes, otherwise I wouldn't be here with you."

"Huh."

"But no, that's not the reason I suddenly want to indulge in your unhealthy pleasure," she said as she lighted her cigarette. "After the mako treatment I'm allergic to the nice combination of carbon monoxide, nicotine and tar. It knocks me out for several hours, and all those bullets they decided to shower me with is currently frying my cerebral. So, a rough form of anesthesia."

"Mako radiated organisms are poison-resistant."

She scrunched up her face. "Oh, and if I read my radiation textbook from my third year in the Intelligence training correctly, mako treatment also makes the patient sterile. I guess that's why we have a Reno number two who caused me more headaches than the prolonged use of my cursed vision. Kudos for your professional education, Renaldo."

"Whatever." He took another drag. "Anyway, what were those things?"

"Finger knives." Arien picked up her jacket, now ripped in the back, with blood staining the rips. She sighed. "This is the fourth jacket I've ruined." She took a drag as well – the view of Arien, sitting on a bed with legs crossed, a cigarette with lipstick stain around the end between her fingers, was oddly arousing for Reno – then violently scratched her head in frustration with her empty hand, turning her hair into a black mess.

"Ha!" Reno snorted. "It was Heidegger's goddamn idiocy that made us wear suits. They're so impractical. They get dirty so easily, and blood shows on blue as well as on white. And they're damn hard to move around in. Back to the question: what the hell are finger knives?"

"These." Reno thought he saw Arien smile, but he was not entirely sure, as the next moment his sleeve was firmly pinned to the wall by a blade, then his left leg, then his right. The final straw was when Arien flicked her hand; a blade left her finger and neatly pinned his black slacks where the two legs met. He put out his cigarette with his free hand by smushing the lighted stub on a nearby TV set. She still had her cigarette in hand; she blew out the smoke from her lips. The smoke was white; she really did used to smoke.

"Arie," he said, "this ain't funny, yo."

"You can free yourself." She began cleaning the used blades with the rest of the sheet. Reno reached over to pull out the razor that was pinning his arm to the wall, then began to free himself.

"This still doesn't explain," he grumbled. Arien fumbled something out from her pocket; it was like four leather rings stuck together, with a small knife blade held by a small clip on each ring, facing out. She fitted one to her hand; it went over her nails. She stretched her fingers, and Reno saw that the leather stretched as well.

"Huh." He watched as the woman tapped the ash into the ashtray.

"Finger knives," Arien explained. "It's the first weapon we learn to use in Wutai. Oh, not with actual knives, of course," she added, seeing Reno's expression shift slightly, "just toy things. Tseng decided to use them when he was a rookie. Then me."

"So… all Wutaians know how to use those?" Reno asked. "I've never seen Tseng use 'em, yo."

"They're solely adapted for solo assassination purposes. Guns are too loud, and EMR's messy."

"Oh, that reminds me." Reno searched through his pockets, then produced the unused earring. "Thanks. It was a great help."

"Yes, I'm sure you had a great use for a poison when it wasn't even used," she said, pulling out the miniscule syringe and examining its contents. "Thank you."

Then she flopped back onto the bed, unconscious.

The next three days passed in peace; Arien's wounds had closed up after a good night's sleep, and although the slugs would have to come out once she returned, she could walk around if she was not up for too long. She never smoked again, and usually sat on the bed, planning the next mission that Reno had ordered, which was scouting out the Northern Crater for the possible sites of sacrifice. Unfortunately, this was giving her a Midgar-sized headache.

"The chopper can't land," Arien explained patiently as Rude and Reno crowded around, looking at the screen. Several windows were displayed, one with air currents, another with weather reports, a third with a terrain map, and a couple of others that just showed texts.

"We landed with the chopper when we went to get Jenova's head," Reno pointed out.

"That was in spring, when the weather's the calmest. The chopper will flip over if we try to land," Arien explained patiently. "Then we'd have no way to come back."

"So any ideas, Commander?"

Arien's expression told the two Turks that she didn't like the option. "Cross-country skiing?" The tactical commander replied with a troubled smile.

"You mean, we ski?"

Arien bit back a sarcastic retort. "Yes. You can ski, right?"

"No, yo."

"Um…" Arien had a confusing expression, something in between laughter and worry. "Right…"

"You can snowboard," Rude reminded the redhead. "That's what you were doing when we went to the Turk camp a few years ago."

"Oh yeah." Reno's reply was vague. "And?"

"I say we take as many as we can," Arien said, tapping on a few keys. "We can't dawdle. The eclipse is coming up in twenty-three days, and we still need the traitor and the holy chalice."

"What about the other two?"

Arien tapped out a file, which showed Tseng's picture. "Dotted priest," she said. "He's perfect, and if Rufus orders him he'll jump the cliff and travel to the moon, so that shouldn't be a problem."

"Huh," Reno was amused. "He's a douche enough. The claw?"

She tapped out another file, depicting a man with serious eyes and a mouth that probably had forgotten how to smile. Reno read the name, just to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating or anything.

Vincent Valentine. How the hell did she expect to pull him out from his reclusive lifestyle? Reno was pretty sure Vincent not a human but actually an android who had been replaced by Hojo thirty-some years ago. The ex-Turk's behavioral patterns were just incomprehensible for the current Turk leader.

The three Turks continued their search on the missing keys; a traitor could be anybody, but the most likely candidate was Jack McKinnon. The problem was, how to lure him out?

The solution was provided by Rude, who was watching Reno fiddle with his cell phone. Arien was ransacking her brain trying to figure out how to lure the kidnapper out while cramming in a last paragraph for her report, but she was coming to no avail. Reno never wrote reports, and Rude… well, he wasn't exactly verbose. Hence it was usually Elena or Arien who ended up reporting when the females were around. Electronic noises, clicks and clatters of fingers hitting the keys, and Arien's sighs filled the room, when Rude said, "Engineering."

Arien had never mastered the Rude-talk, and Reno was not really listening. Arien took her eyes off her computer grudgingly. "What?"

"McKinnon's an engineer."

"Right…" So what, Arien thought.

"Commission him for something, then grab him when he delivers the thing."

"Rude, you're fucking excellent!" Reno exclaimed, who was now listening. "Yeah, that'd work."

"And if it didn't?"

"Well…" Reno threw a grin at her. "We know how to be persuasive, don't we, Rude?"

Arien sniffed. Rude and Reno "persuading" simply meant that they would pull out their guns and stun batons and beat the hell out of the poor victim until the victim swore on his blood that he'd do anything the Turks wanted. "What about the holy chalice?" she asked wearily.

"That… well, we don't have a clue yet, do we, yo?" Reno asked. "Don't have a clue what that means."

"And?"

"Maybe they already have it, yo."

"That's a little optimistic."

"Yeah, well, you do something then," Reno retorted.