Taking Care of Reno: Advent Children
Chapter 4: The Rescue
The sun had been up for hours, but Tseng was still out cold. Elena was beginning to worry that the bastards outside had done serious damage this time. She’d tried to wake him, to get him to drink a little water at least, but each time, she’d failed.
She had tended to his injuries as best she could… To her surprise, there was nothing she could see that was truly life-threatening. The abuse the Turk leader had received was intended to inflict pain… not permanent damage. Tseng was battered and bloodied, but a week or two of recuperation and he’d probably be back on his feet again.
Except that he wouldn’t wake up.
And if he didn’t… would the trio turn on her instead? It was true that not a one of them had laid a finger on her since Kadaj had declared her off limits… but would they continue to do so if their usual ‘plaything’ was broken?
The Wutaiian stirred slightly at last, and dark eyes fluttered open gazing up at her.
“Tseng…” she breathed in relief.
“How long have I been out?” he asked, grimacing.
“Most of the day. I think it’s sometime after noon… at least that’s what my stomach’s telling me. They haven’t brought any food in for us. Just some water.”
She helped him to sit up, letting him lean back against the wall of their prison, and then retrieved the large silvery bowl they’d poured it into. She wasn’t sure what it was made of. It almost looked like shell of some sort.
“Here…” Elena said, dipping a hand into the bowl and raising it to her commander’s lips for him to drink.
“Thank you…” He let his head rest against the wall, closing his eyes again as a hand drifted to his ribs, probing gently. He grunted in pain as it made contact.
“How bad is it?” the younger Turk asked.
“Difficult to say… at least not without sounding more like Reno than myself,” Tseng replied, with a forced smile. It quickly faded. “… I’m… not entirely certain I can take many more beatings like that and walk away from it.”
“Then we need to find a way out of here before they come back for another round,” Elena said, seriously. She’d been probing their little prison for hours, looking for weaknesses, but thus far had come up empty, and she hoped the senior Turk might have some ideas she hadn’t thought of.
“Help me up, Elena,” Tseng replied, and she obligingly assisted him in climbing to his feet. The Turk leader swayed dangerously before finding his balance, and leaned heavily against the young woman.
“Sir…”
“There’s no telling when they might return, and there’s little we can do about my present condition that you haven’t already done. If we’re going to have any chance at escape, I need to be on my feet. I’ll just have to manage as best I can.”
He’d been gone only a day. He’d needed supplies. But in the short time he hadn’t been watching, something had changed. The trio had captured someone… though who, he couldn’t guess. He’d heard their screams, though. Whoever it was had held out for an impressive length of time before giving into the pain they were inflicting on him… that implied either a very strong will, or training. Or both.
He hadn’t been close enough to hear what they were saying at first. When he’d moved in closer, however, Kadaj’s voice had been clear enough, repeatedly asking their captive where ‘Mother’ was. The prisoner had refused, or been unable, to tell them, and the torture had continued… for hours, in fact, until he’d gone silent. For a brief moment, he was convinced they’d killed him.
But they’d locked the door behind them. There was, so far as they knew, no one around to find a body. That at least implied that the man was still alive. And he knew he couldn’t allow this to continue if he was.
He also knew that he was no match for all three of them. At best, he could drive them back for a short time, and perhaps give the prisoner time to escape on his own… assuming he could even walk at this point… but defeating them single-handedly? He wasn’t foolish enough to even try, or he would have dispatched them days ago when he’d first begun to suspect what they were.
No… he would need help to rid the planet of these creatures. And it was about time he sought it out. But first, he had to liberate their prisoner. What he needed now… was an opening.
Reno was sitting in the shadows in a corner of the bar. He’d much rather have joined Rude… but some of his partner’s contacts were of the paranoid sort. They wouldn’t have spoken as freely if he’d gone with him.
It had taken Rude quite some time to rebuild his network after the Crisis… and it was still far from what it once was… but it sufficed to keep the Turks well-informed on the general goings-on in Edge. And beyond, for that matter. With all the construction and new businesses, people from all over the planet came and went from the growing city on a regular basis. It made it an ideal source of information… if one had the means to tap into it.
And that was Rude’s area of expertise. Reno, meanwhile, had been – rather pointlessly, in his opinion – continuing the search of the Northern Crater. He’d found less than nothing. The strange men had left no trace of where they’d come from, or where they’d gone. He’d flown as far west as Icicle Inn and the great glacier, and as far east as the Bone Village… He’d spotted nothing. He hadn’t really expected to find anything, anyway. Not without a ground search… but he was only one man, and the continent was vast. The best he could do was recon from the helicopter. It was growing dark by the time he’d called it quits and returned to Edge to pick up Rude.
Rude, however, still hadn’t arrived at their rendezvous point, and he wished he’d hurry the fuck up. This particular bar made him a little uncomfortable, and it had nothing to do with the atmosphere.
Avalanche had plenty of reason to dislike Shinra – and himself especially – which was why the President had adopted a policy of not working with them directly. The inevitable hostility he expected to receive would have only slowed down the progress on the city. For nearly two years, Rufus and his Turks had communicated with them through either Reeve Tuesti or Vincent Valentine for the most part.
Which was why sitting in a dark corner of the new Seventh Heaven bar wasn’t exactly high on his things to do list. Fortunately, the place was packed tonight, and the bartender had yet to even glance in his direction… which, given what had happened to him the last time he’d walked into Tifa Lockheart’s bar, was something he was grateful for.
“Hi there! Can I getcha anything?” a voice asked, and Reno looked around in confusion, trying to find its source. He sat up from the slouch he’d fallen into and peered over the table, smirking at the sight that greeted him.
“Tch… Aren’t you a little young to be takin’ drink orders, kid?”
“I’m seven!”
“Heh… Like I said…”
The girl cocked her head to one side, studying him for a moment. “I remember you… You took me to Kalm.”
Reno blinked in surprise. He really hadn’t thought the kid would recognize him. He’d barely recognized her, and only then because what other kid would be working in Tifa’s bar? She’d been… what? Four or five at the time? And she’d spent maybe four hours total in his company. He shook his head slightly. He, of all people, should know how observant kids could be. He certainly had been, at her age.
“How ya doin’, Marlene?” he replied, smiling faintly in spite of his general mood, and she grinned.
“I’m okay. I miss Papa, though. He’s out looking for new energy… so we don’t have to keep using mako.”
Mako energy use was in rapid decline, but literally almost the entire planet had been dependent upon it… Keeping some of the reactors going was a necessary evil for the time being, though Shinra was actively working develop new – and old – technologies to replace it. It was slow going, however, as much of the infrastructure that delivered energy to various cities would need to be altered or replaced and new natural resource fields had to be located and tapped. Hell, even the solar array on the plains hadn’t finished construction quite yet, and that had been one of Shinra’s first new projects.
“You look sad,” Marlene suddenly added. Perceptive as all fuck, this one.
“Some people I care about are missing… and I’m not havin’ much luck findin’ ’em.”
“You should talk to Cloud. He’s good at finding people. He found Denzel… and a lot of other kids who lost their parents.”
Reno raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t heard anything about Strife rounding up Midgar’s orphans… but he supposed it made some amount of sense. The guy was a magnet for trouble, and what caused more trouble than a bunch of unsupervised kids?
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, humoring the girl. “Hmph… Don’t ‘spose you’ve run into any teenagers with white hair lately, have ya?”
“Marlene! Come help me, please…” Tifa’s voice called from behind the bar.
“Coming!” Marlene called back. She shook her head. “No. But I’ll ask Cloud for you the next time I see him! Bye! I hope you find your friends…”
“H-hey!” he called after her, but she was too focused on her next destination to notice. He hadn’t intended for her to inform all of Avalanche he’d been there. He shook his head and stood up. Time to go before she narced on him to Tifa. He could wait for Rude outside.
Elena’s stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten since before they’d left for the crater. Going on three days now. Kadaj and his ‘brothers’, as she’d heard him refer to them, had brought them ample water… but no food. She supposed they thought that if couldn’t beat the information out of Tseng, perhaps they could starve it out of one of them.
It wasn’t a problem for her… yet… but Tseng was already so badly weakened. If they waited much longer, he wouldn’t have the strength to even attempt an escape.
They hadn’t seen any of their captors since early that morning. The one Kadaj had called ‘Yazoo’ yesterday had brought them a fresh bowl of water and left with a cruel smirk. They’d been on their own since then, and while Elena was grateful that Tseng had a small respite from being tortured for information, she couldn’t help but wonder what they were up to.
Elena rubbed at her sore shoulder and sighed. A little while ago, she’d gotten the brilliant idea to try and force the door. It hadn’t budged, but she’d ended up in a heap on the floor. For something that looked as old as that door did, it certainly was solid. She’d found herself wishing that she had Rude’s strength. It might have taken him a few tries, but she’d have bet he could have gotten through it in the end. But her? She’d probably just end up doing more damage to herself than the door.
After that, she’d turned her attention to the pair of small windows. She hadn’t been able to break through the hefty muntins between the cracked panes of glass, either. They were part of the wall itself, and just as solid. She’d even tried breaking out the glass and squeezing through the small opening… only to find herself stuck just past her shoulders. It had been a harrowing couple of minutes trying to unwedge herself and wriggle back inside. Reno could have done it easily.
In fact, if Tseng had gotten captured alongside either of the other Turks, he’d probably be out of there by now. Her particular skill set just wasn’t well-suited to the current situation.
Judging by the light outside, it was somewhere in the mid-afternoon. Would the men return tonight to hurt Tseng some more? Or would they simply continue to leave them to starve in silence? Elena sat down next to Tseng, and leaned back against the wall. He’d been asleep for what felt like a couple of hours now, and she was hesitant to wake him just to discuss her failures at extricating them from their prison… but she desperately wanted someone to talk to. Just to take the worry away for a little while.
She was worried about herself, of course, and Tseng… and the baby. But she was also worried about Reno. He was probably frantic by now… if not outwardly, then certainly internally. And Rude, too, would be growing more and more concerned the longer they were missing. On top of that… the trio knew that the Turks had Jenova’s remains. What if they’d discovered their location without Tseng? Maybe that was why the torture had really stopped. Reno and Rude could be facing them right now, for all she knew. Alone.
A shadow flitted past one of the windows, drawing her from her thoughts and immediately putting her on alert. They were back…
“Sir…” she whispered, gently shaking the injured man, and his eyes shot open.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice equally quiet.
“I saw someone run past the window just now… I’m not sure which of them it was, but –”
“Elena… Run. They’ll come for me first, and I’ll do what I can to hold their attention. I want you to run.”
“But…”
“I’ll only slow you down. Take whatever opening you can find. Run and don’t look back. Get back to Healin and tell them what’s going on. That these… things… have something to do with Sephiroth, and that they’re after Jenova.”
“Sir… They’ll have realized that by now,” she replied, swallowing sharply. Just leaving Tseng behind… she almost couldn’t fathom it. Tseng closed his eyes.
“Perhaps. But go anyway. They’ll need you.”
“Tseng…”
“Elena, we both know that you will not make it out of here alive dragging me along, and I will not allow that. Especially not now,” he replied, in a tone that would not be argued with.
A single gunshot echoed across the ruins, causing Elena to jump, startled, and the door shuddered slightly. Moments later, it was thrown wide, and Tseng lunged forward, shielding her as well as he could manage. Elena’s eyes fell on the figure now standing in the doorway. A figure shrouded in red. Her eyes widened in recognition.
“Vincent?”
~end of chapter 4~
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