Reno—Fort Condor
My fists itched. I couldn't wait for Schala's midday training. I'd been in a shitty mood, starting the day before.
She'd been having nightmares since Nibelheim. I'd wake up to find her already up, and sometimes I'd hear her moan or thrash in her sleep. I didn't say anything, because it wasn't her fault, but couldn't stop being pissed at her for robbing us both of sleep.
She'd tried to insist on being put in a single room at Gongaga, after some horny fuck that very day tore her shirt off her body as she tried to defend herself against an entire gang. I yelled at her. Halfway through my harangue I heard my father's voice in mine, clammed up and stomped off.
I remembered the look in her green eyes all day and kept my trap shut, but that didn't seem to help. She stopped smiling and withdrew into herself. I wanted to apologize but I was afraid the minute I opened my mouth it would start all over again.
That night I was woken to heart-pounding adrenalin by her scream in the middle of the night. She'd apologized until I wanted to rearrange her features. Neither of us had gotten much sleep after that. We didn't so much as look at each other that morning before heading to Fort Condor.
Upon arrival we didn't have time for our morning training session. Word had reached them about her and they rushed her to the side of a dying general.
Midday arrived and I pounced on her. "Now?" I said.
She nodded, finally meeting my eyes. I flung my jacket on the ground. She cast off a red denim jacket the grateful general had given her and sank into a ready stance.
"Hiyaaa!" I cried, and rushed her. She ducked and rolled. "Oh, come on!" I snarled.
She sprang right out of her crouch, startling me into dancing backward and going on the defensive. I recovered quickly and circled her, wary. Her skill improved by leaps and bounds now. I couldn't underestimate her progress. I no longer had to say anything more than a few cursory corrections. Those sharp little eyes watched my every move, and I found her imitating many of them within seconds. Doing a pretty outstanding job of it, too.
It's understandable, of course, that someone could learn just from watching my exquisite and well-practiced form. I'm shamelessly perfect, and look like a living diagram of how exactly one should look when doing the moves I do. I myself was sharp enough to learn from watching and imitating, from sparring off people.
Style develops when you make others' moves your own. And I always kick it up a notch. For me, my skills are personal. My perfecting this martial art serves as a final fuck-you to the slum of dirty clumsy uncontrolled fighting that produced me. I can and do have it all—restraint and power, control and strength. They all tie together in my awesome body and brain.
I could feel my every muscle singing with release. Her ferocity landed strikes on me, and mine marked her. She wasn't fighting me with student-teacher restraint. Those gloves were off. We were going at it like animals and it felt fantastic. In that impromptu fight on the sloping path outside the fort, our peaks collided.
It showed, too. Our passionate clash sucked people in like a vortex of unbelievable style. They poured out of the entrance, whistling, cheering, forming a loose semicircle about us.
I kept my focus. I often draw an audience when I'm peaking, so I can turn off the desire to preen and care. I did throw in some show-off moves, because I could. I was still holding back with her, so I had the wherewithal left over to dance around and make the most of the landscape and my leaping power.
I made her sweat, too. That made a hot little core of triumph burst in me. I made this abnormally cold, frigid-in-more-ways-than-one heat-craving woman break a sweat.
Imagine what I could do to you in bed! I mentally taunted her, smart enough not to say it aloud.
In truth what we were doing served as a substitute for what I studiously had not done those nights we slept flesh-to-flesh, curled so intimately in the same narrow bed. It wasn't a great substitute. God knows my balls were still blue as her hair. But that's part of my control, too—controlling how and when I deal with overpowering drives instead of just flipping shit as soon as I feel anything.
Fighting with her was probably the best action I'd gotten in years. While on some level that's depressing, fucking a woman who knows her stuff isn't as awesome as fighting one who does. 'Cause with the former I still had to scoot as soon as the deed was over, and the latter I'd get to take out to get totally slammed at the bar afterward.
I've got to get her drunk! I thought with glee. Today it happens! I'm not taking her excuses anymore, her virtue is safe with me and Rude, I want to see her get hammered and do something off the chain!
I shut down the line of thought before my mind could wander further down the pointless blind alley of I wonder what she'd do? There was still fight to be had and I wanted to suck the hot ecstatic lifeblood out of every potent moment of it. Our choreography shone in the midday heat.
I knew from the start that I'd win. It was my right, my prerogative, my duty as her teacher to beat her. Yet unlike before I couldn't choose any time to end it. I had to pick my moment. Opportunities were getting fewer and further between. I liked to go for the loss that would teach her the most.
I let quite a few pass. We were in the goddamn zone. And I needed it so bad. It felt amazing. I ached in the best possible way from head to toe.
I felt a moment of peak connection as my arms closed around her one final time. I shut my eyes and with all my power forced her to the ground, locking her legs behind her with mine.
She coughed. My arm hooked around her throat, though she tried with all her might to pry it off. She curled and I stayed on her like a shell on an adamantaimai. She choked now. Her other arm was pinned in my grasp. She gave one last desperate thrash, then I felt her let go and release under me. She tapped out. My eyes slid shut.
Ohhh, man, what a feeling!
I opened my arms, panting, and uncurled from her. I sank back into a sitting position, propping my elbow on one upthrust knee. She stayed where she was for a moment, sucking in air. The crowd cheered me. I grinned, letting my eyes slide round them, then looked down at my student, my charge, my mission.
She sat up, her back still to me. I waited. Moment of truth, I thought. How's she feeling? Sore loser? Angry at how far it went? Antsy to go again?
She reached up and fluffed out her hair in its usual thick ponytail, then stretched her arms up high and yawned loudly. My grin got bigger. I didn't even have to see her face. It was good for her too.
She twisted, head bowed. She was flushed, dirty, sweaty, and had a bruise on her cheek fading in a swirling glow of green, dried blood on her otherwise unmarred and bright lips. Her eyes flicked up from the ground, flashing at me through her lowered lashes, a very feline grin on her face.
Only my enormous self-control kept my now-strained grin in place. The way she looked right then made my groin ache. I wanted to throw her down in the dirt right there and fuck the daylights out of her. Fighting is a great outlet for sexual frustration, but sometimes there's just too much there.
And with her, there's more every time she so much as breathes in my direction, I thought, reaching up to bury a hand in my hair and hold my throbbing head. God damn it.
She swiveled the rest of her body around, onto her hands and knees, and reached for me. I froze, smile crashing off my face. Can she read my thoughts? Does she want me just as bad as I want her, right now?
Her hand touched my jaw. I felt coolness wash into me from her fingers. They began to glow as chilly healing flooded into me, taking away the bruising and hurts and stings and scrapes all throughout my body.
"You look a fright, Lyrant," she said. "I can't believe you let me fuck you up that much! I'm so grateful I'll let you have the shower first."
Aaaaaaaaargh.
She has no fucking clue.
How can she not know?!
Surely she knows. She's cock-teasing me. She enjoys having my libido on a goddamn string. It's a power trip and she's loving every minute.
Shit shit shit.
This is probably what the internal monologue of every motherfucker who's ever touched her sounds like, as they try to justify and rationalize their abuse.
Arrrrgh.
I thunked my head against the shower wall, having autopiloted myself to the bathroom throughout this punishing line of thought. Lukewarm water washed away what it could. The rest I was just stuck with. I resigned myself to a quick whack-off to try to ditch as much sexual tension as I could when I heard my PHS ringing.
"Shit!" I hissed, and shut off the shower. I hopped out, grabbed my jacket off the floor and fetched my mobile. I flipped it open and put it to my dripping ear. "Yeah?" I said, trying not to sound as irritated as I felt.
"Reno," came the president's voice. "What's your status?"
"Uh…" Oh, god, oh, god, why the hell is the president calling me? I grabbed a towel and slung it round my waist, feeling awkward. I perched on the toilet, legs crossed. "We're… we're in Fort Condor. We've hit all the other continents. At the rate we're going I'd say the mission will be fully complete in about another two weeks, dependent on how bad it is in Junon and Edge."
"I need you here faster. How quickly can you push to Edge?" said Rufus.
"Er… five days? Maybe six?" I hazarded. "What's up, sir?"
"Tseng and Elena are MIA," said Rufus.
I stopped breathing for a moment. I slowly dipped my head into my hand as the president continued without missing a beat.
"We've got a team out searching for them now but I need you here in charge," said Rufus. "I want you to deputize a team of Turks to take over from you once you reach Edge and return to Healen as soon as possible."
"What happened to the director and Elena?" I said.
"We don't know that yet. It's my hope that we'll recover them both quickly."
"How long ago did they disappear?" I lifted my head, allowing my hand to drop in my lap, and scanned the ceiling without really seeing it.
"A week ago."
"A week?! And you're just calling me now? …Sir?" Damn! I cursed inwardly.
"Reno. It is not your place to question my decisions."
"Sorry, sorry, you're right, sir."
"Keep me advised of your status. Do everything possible to accelerate your return to Healen."
"Yes, sir."
The president hung up. I slapped my phone shut and re-inserted my head into my hands, fingers digging into my scalp. My hair dripped. I only allowed a moment of frustrated reflection before pulling it together, shoving to my feet and scrambling for fresh clothes.
Schala was lying on one of the beds as I blew out of the bathroom in a ball of importance. She sat up quickly. "What's wrong?"
"We've got to get to Edge as soon as possible," I said.
She bounced off the bed. "Okay. No more training. I can sleep in the chopper. I'll take Rude and go see to the last of the people here, okay? I'll be ready to leave in three hours, tops." She was at the door at the end of this sentence, and through it before I could put together a response. I frowned around the room, then gathered up my things and hers. With her unexpected initiative-taking I even had time to fix my damn hair.
Does she think she's in charge? I thought angrily as I snapped a band in place around my ponytail. Well, yeah, I guess she would, we're just her support for this mission, but—damn! She just took over under my nose. After that I feel a need to beat the crap out of her again.
…Which I will not do, because I am not my father.
I'm probably just pissed because I didn't get to jerk off. And nervous about the director and Elena, of course.
The fog cleared from the mirror and I stared myself in the eye. It had suddenly hit me.
I'm the acting director of the Turks.
Pride thrilled through me simultaneously with a sickening lurch in my gut. I'm in fucking charge. God damn! Who the fuck cares if she just told me what to do? From here on, it's Reno in charge, all the way.
Oh, fuck.
I shook my head at the mirror, still not quite able to grasp the full reality.
God help us if we don't find Tseng soon… thought a quiet, uncomfortable and very self-aware part of me. I shut that noise up right away. A leader can't lead with those types of voices around. Even a temporary leader.
I slammed my sunglasses in place and headed for the door.
Schala—Chocobo Farm
There's a certain point in sleep deprivation where unreality sets in. Identity goes away. Reality goes away. Hallucinations twine around one and take the place of everything with any meaning. Every sense distorts like funhouse mirrors and record skips. Thoughts no longer connect like puzzle pieces. Logic, self-narrative, and belief are stripped out as unimportant, and all mental processes are reduced to the minimum necessary.
That point had come and gone by the time I saw my first giant yellow riding bird. I stopped in my tracks. Everything except the bird, looking at me across the fence, faded.
It cocked its head at me and said, "Wark?"
I drifted to the fence. I didn't feel my steps or know my legs as my own. A tugging like an impatient child was present within me, but I knew it could be ignored for the present. Once at the whitewashed wood I draped my arms over it. I saw the sleeve of the red denim jacket of the general's I'd admired in Fort Condor for its resemblance to Aerith's—like the pink cheongsam from Wutai—and wished vaguely I could see her once more. The wind off the fields blew right through me. Everything about me was frozen in ice and time. Nothing really mattered, anyway.
I reached up a hand. The bird darted forward, bobbing its head sharply out and then following with the rest of the body. Like any smaller bird, of the sort I'd seen my whole life.
A hand grabbed mine and tucked it down right before the bird reached the fence, suddenly a whole lot bigger. Its eyes were the size of dessert plates, its beak like a huge teapot with an extremely pointy spout. Someone pressed up beside me. I struggled reflexively and looked up at familiar red hair and bluegreen eyes.
"You don't know if it's… tame…" said Reno, and stopped. "What's the matter?"
I looked from him back to the bird. My eyes were burning. After a moment I realized I was crying. I shook my head, wordless, and reached out my other hand surreptitiously. I had to touch it, to know if it was real. The bird's feathers were rough, but underneath, downy-soft. It pushed its head against me so firmly I rocked back, and made a little chirpy noise like 'kweh.' It sounded happy. I smiled, stroking its head.
Reno released his tight grip on my wrist, and rather than let go entirely, he laced his fingers through mine. Nothing seemed strange anymore. We could have stood on the edge of the world, watching the ocean rain upward, and I wouldn't have thought it odd. Just beautiful as a really, really big canary.