He isn't hard to find.
When he asks the footpad beggars, they look at him like he's dumb. And he kinda is, he has to later admit. Because after all those rumours, he should have pieced it together, really. The explosions rocking through the fourth sector should have clued him in, at the very least.
Because, even Reno has to acknowledge that seeing the guy whopping monster ass like a First Class on steroids is hard to miss. The Creols are unusually large, and obviously more rabid than usual from hunger, but the guy just bats them aside and slices through them like they're nothing. When he's done, surrounded by twenty or so corpses slowly fading into the life-stream, the guy doesn't even look like he's broken a sweat – and is as clean from Monster blood as the last time Reno saw him. His swords though, look drenched in the stuff.
The guy has to notice him – Mako enhances eyesight too - but the blond SOLDIER gives no sign, simply sheathing his blade and drawing a smaller knife in order to cut through the bodies not quite to the point of disappearing.
Monster collected things, in their pouches, in their stomachs. Nobody knew whythey did – after all, what good did eating a gil do for a creature? But Reno had never watched someone actually cut them free, or butcher a carcass in such a way bits didn't return to the lifestream. Heard about it, yes, but never seen it done.
Not so saintly, then. But from what he'd heard, the guy had never claimed to be – barely spoken two words, even to the people he'd healed.
"There's better ways of getting gil, yo." Reno starts, edging closer from the train he'd been using as cover.
The guy merely tilts his head, giving him an unreadable look from the corner of his eyes, hands busy on the next Creol corpse. Still that frustrating lack of reaction.
"I'm Reno. But ya know that already, right?" Reno tries not to shift into a defensive stance when the guy rises, the last corpse fast becoming part of the Life-stream. Too fast for Midgar, he notes. "How do you know that?"
The guy quirks a barely there smile, as though he's just cracked a joke.
"You told me, street-rat." Reno bristles, but then his brain kicks in. Teasing?
"Fucking didn't, freaky-eyes." He snarks in kind.
"Did too."
"Did not!" He bites back, only to be stopped short by those Mako-eyes dancing at him, laughing at him. What the hell was he doing, arguing like a five year old footpad caught with his fingers in a stall-owners pot? What the hell was the SOLDIER doing, arguing like a five year old!
"Whatever, man." He nearly spit's in disgust.
He still ends up tailing the guy from the abandoned train-yard, and completely in the open. If the SOLDIER'd wanted to kill him, he would be dead a week ago. The guy seems to appreciate the candour, at least, because he doesn't try to lose Reno. Just lopes through the slums like it's something he's done every day of his life.
He stops in the shops in little alleys that an outsider never knows about, sells it like he's been haggling most of his life and just like the other folk had told him, immediately heads to the Flower Girl's church.
None of this really surprises him. Even the wanton slaughter of every monster that attacks isn't really that odd.
What surprises the hell out of Reno is just how the guy gets there. Because for a Shin'Ra Outsider (not even a Midgar accent), damn can this guy free-run. The Mako only makes it easier for him to move as a blur when he needs to – and just how much is he holding back, so that Reno can follow?
But it's seeing the guy slow, seeing him stop in the doors of the church and look back, that sends a shiver up Reno's spine.
Because something about the loneliness of the church, about the restless sense of stormcoming, makes that image haunting and hackle-raising in the same breath. It sets the hair on his arms rising almost as quickly as it ignites the urge to bug the hell out.
Because Reno's seen a lot of shit.
And none of it's made his instincts scream like the end of days is right on his fucking doorstep like this is.
For a surreal moment, the night seems to cold and too heavy, the air alive with electricity, and he knows with crystal clarity that something's coming.
Still, he's never been good at making the Sensible Choices.
It would, he decided with the phantom sensation of falling, be a crying shame to start now.