Desha's Reno of the Turks Fan Fiction

Chapter 59: Mayu

The redhead grinned widely.

“I’m –” he began, only to be cut off by his seatmate.

“Rodney Galena,” the other rookie stated, all but shoving him out of the way as he leaned forward. Reno was knocked back into his seat with a soft oof. He glared at the other Turk in irritation.

“Hi, Rodney,” Mayu said in response. Reno at last righted himself, and elbowed the other passenger sharply in the ribs.

“And, like I was sayin’ before someone just had to get the first fuckin’ word in… I’m Reno.”

“It’s nice to meet you both,” Maya replied with a faint giggle just as Tseng was climbing back into the driver’s seat. “Tseng talks about ‘his rookie’s’ constantly, you know… especially, you, Reno.” She dropped her voice to a rather loud stage whisper. “He says you’re going to be one of the best… if you can manage to stay out of trouble for more than a week at a time.”

The Turk lieutenant cleared his throat, and Maya giggled again before turning back around in her seat.

“And now you know why I was recruited for the Turks rather than my sister,” Tseng sighed, “Mayu has a terrible habit of repeating anything she’s told.”

“Only when I think it’s something someone else should hear,” she shot back, brightly. “Leviathan knows you’d never tell him that directly. Prying compliments out of you is like pulling teeth… from a surly nibelwolf.”

Tseng muttered something in Wutaiin that made his sister laugh, and Reno snickered in response… but the grin that spread across his face had nothing to do with seeing the normally unflappable Turk’s current discomfiture as they pulled into traffic. Mayu was right… open compliments from Tseng were hard-won, and knowing that that’s what he really thought of him sent a surge of pride through the redhead. Rodney, meanwhile was rolling his eyes. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the seat in a huff.

By the time they reached Tseng’s apartment, Rude and Cissnei had already arrived… the latter seated on the bed of Rude’s truck, animatedly talking to the bald Turk. Reno laughed quietly at the sight. Rude really hadn’t had the opportunity to spend that much time with the other rookie outside of work. Neither had the redhead, for that matter, but the pair of them tended to have breaks around the same time during the day, so he’d gotten to know her a bit more than his friend had in the weeks since her promotion. Rude looked a little overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of conversation and distinct lack of anyone else to take the focus off of himself.

As such, as soon as he was able to extract himself from the back seat, Reno grabbed Mayu’s hand and guided her over to meet the two of them… much to Rodney’s annoyance, apparently, because the older rookie quickly fixed him with a look that plainly wasn’t pleased. Cissnei hopped down from her perch as they approached.

“Mayu, this is Rude and Cissnei,” the redhead said, completing the introductions. Rude smiled somewhat shyly and gave a friendly nod, but Cissnei’s face immediately split into a wide grin.

“A pleasure,” Maya said, with a slight bow. She looked around at the quiet neighborhood for a moment and laugh, “It’s been so long since the last time I was here! I’d forgotten how huge everything in Midgar is!”

“Then might I suggest visiting more than once every five years?” Tseng chuckled, as he and Rodney made their way toward the group, luggage in hand.

“Had I been able to convince Father to allow it before now, I’d have been here every chance I got,” Mayu shot back. “But you know how he is.” She dropped her voice to a rough approximation of a low male tone. “Midgar is full of nothing but perverts, thieves, and murderers. Far too dangerous for my little girl. You tell Tseng that he’s not to let you out of his sight!” She giggled loudly and shook her head. “For Leviathan’s sake… You’d think I was eight, not eighteen.”

The redhead smirked and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her tightly against his side.

“Aw, what do ya got to worry about? You got us Turks lookin’ after ya. No perverts, thieves, or murderers are gonna be botherin’ you on our watch.”

Cissnei snorted in laughter. “Says the city’s biggest pervert,” she teased.

“Oh, I’m not scared of that sort of thing. My father is just over protective of me. I’m not worried one bit,” Mayu replied, smirking slightly. The next thing Reno knew, he was bent over double, unable to stand up, as the young woman gripped his wrist with little more than a feather-light touch and forced his arm behind his back and upwards. His other wrist joined it a moment later, effectively rendering him immobile. “I know how to take care of myself.”

“Hey!” the rookie cried as he tried to get free. Somehow, though, he couldn’t get the leverage he needed to break her grip.

“Shall we go inside?” Tseng asked, ignoring his rookie’s predicament as he walked past them and started down the little walkway leading to the front door. Mayu nodded and released her prisoner, trailing after her brother.

“… Did I really just get shown up by Tseng’s kid sister?”

Rodney snorted laughingly and followed the pair inside and Rude merely shook his head, chuckling.

“Yes. Yes, you did,” Cissnei replied, patting her fellow rookie on the shoulder before turning to join the others.

---

Thursday came and went with little news on the Wutaiians. Tres had it on good authority that something was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon… but even his network of informants didn’t seem to be able to give him anything more specific than that. By Friday afternoon, the entire team had taken to wildly speculating what the island nation might be plotting.

“I’m tellin’ yeh… They’ve got theirselves a bomb. Probably smuggled it inta the city through the slums,” Sato declared.

“Tch… You think everyone has a bomb,” Tres muttered, somewhat petulantly. It was becoming clear to everyone that his lack of progress on the intelligence front was eating at him, and he’d grown increasingly short-tempered over the last few days.

“Well, that’s how I’d do it,” Sato replied, defensively. Reno snorted softly.

“Fuck you, Sato… That’s how you’d do damn near anything. If you could figure out how to do it without killin’ yourself, you’d probably be usin’ your bombs to wipe your ass, too.”

The comment sent both Saya and Kai into barely concealed giggles.

“Personally, my money is on them trying to infiltrate the company,” Rodney speculated.

“Because that would be so simple to do?” Cissnei queried, doubtfully.

“Easier than you’d think. And effective, too. Take us out from the inside. For all we know, they could have had operatives in place for years, just waiting for the opportunity to cripple us. If you ask me, we ought to be questioning a few of our own employees. There’s more than a handful of Wutaiian’s working for Shinra, you know…”

“Who would you care to start with?” a voice piped up from across the room, and the rookie suddenly went very still upon recognizing it. He slowly turned, and much to his horror found himself face to face with not just Tseng, but Remy as well.

“I-I… er…” he sputtered, his face going a somewhat blotchy red as he attempted to backpedal. Tseng simply shook his head and took a seat at the large conference table… but Remy remained standing for a few moments more, glowering at the rookie.

“Geez, Rod… talk about putting your foot in your mouth,” Kai commented.

“But he’s not wrong, now is he?” Shay suddenly interjected. The younger Turk had been largely silent through most of the discussion. “That’s not to say that either you two would ever even consider betraying the Company, but it’s not exactly far-fetched to think that others might.”

Remy rolled her eyes and took a seat at last. “Of course it’s not far-fetched. That’s why it’s already been investigated.” She looked pointedly at Rodney. “And just for the record, most of the people of Wutaiian descent working for Shinra in Midgar, myself included, weren’t even born in Wutai. I, for instance, am at least two generations removed. I don’t even have living family there anymore, aside from some of my grandfather’s cousins I’ve never met… much less political interests.”

Sato sniggered loudly from across the table. “Aye… but yeh’d be top o’ the suspect list if Shinra were warrin’ with Mideel, now wouldn’t yeh? Last I heard, yer ma’s side o’ the family was still alive ‘n kickin’ back home.”

Remy snorted in contempt. “Yet another place I’ve never actually lived.”

“Oh, shut yer hole, Sato. Yer hardly one ta talk,” Saya scoffed, “If anyone’d be at the top of that list, it’d be the bloody lunatic who sets off explosives in the office fer fun. ‘N yeh’d probably drag me down with yeh just fer bein’ related ta yer sorry arse.”

“Well, I can tell you how I’d do it,” Luca spoke up. “You really want to cripple Shinra, you hit them where it does the most damage. The reactors. We all saw what happened when Sector Six blew, and that wasn’t even sabotage. Imagine all eight of them blowing at once. The whole city’d be gone, just like that, and the executive board right along with it.”

Reno involuntarily shuddered at the thought. Luca was absolutely right. If Wutai got to the reactors – all of the reactors – there’d be nothing left. The Sector 6 accident had been devastating, both on the Plate and in the slums below. Midgar would simply… collapse. Hell, even just getting to one would throw the city into chaos.

“Well, I still say it’s going to be an assassination attempt. Take out key members of the board… Or hell, just off all of ’em,” said Kai, breaking the awkward silence that had followed Luca’s dire pronouncement.

“Tch… if that’s their plan, I hope they go after Heidegger first,” Reno jokingly replied. Tseng shot the younger Turk a warning look.

“I’m sure we all realize that was a joke… but I would strongly suggest not voicing such opinions at present. I don’t need to remind you what happened last time, do I?”

The rookie immediately went red and sank down slightly in his chair. “Uh… no, sir. You definitely don’t.”

Rude, who’d been silently observing up until that point, swatted him on the back of the head… which seemed to break a little of the tension that had been building in the room and drew a few quiet laughs from around the table.

“Ya know what… I’m just gonna quit talkin’,” the redhead muttered.

“Hmph… that’ll last all of thirty seconds,” Kai teased. “Hey, Tseng… when’s Veld planning on gracing us with his presence this morning? Briefing was supposed to start almost ten minutes ago.”

The Turk lieutenant shook his head. “He was supposedly on his way back downstairs from the boardroom when I spoke to him on the phone a short while ago. I’m not certain what’s held him up.”

“It was more of a who,” the Turk leader answered as he strolled through the door, his tone highly unamused. He took a seat next to his lieutenant and folded his hands in front of him on the table. “Director Faine wished to discuss a… cooperative… arrangement between Soldier and the Turks to deal with the current crisis.”

Faine.

Reno had never actually met the – somewhat infamous – director of Soldier… but he’d certainly heard stories. Illandra Faine was known for her no-nonsense, borderline dictatorship, approach to management. She’d started out in the Shinra infantry and been scouted by the Soldier program within months of completing her basic training. She’d risen through the ranks quickly, culminating with her promotion to director six years ago. Since then, she was equally respected and feared by her subordinates. The Turks, as a general rule, tended to give her a rather wide berth… not that they typically interacted much with Soldier to begin with. Turks kept to the shadows. Soldier was under no such restriction. When they did work together, it was generally in the ‘Soldier goes in guns blazing, Turks clean up the mess’ capacity.

“As such,” Veld continued, “You can expect to be seeing representatives of Soldier in our offices from time to time, and possibly being sent to their domain on occasion, as well. She’s requested that she or one of her subordinates sit in on our afternoon briefings until this is resolved.”

Sato scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “She better not be thinkin’ of sendin’ that bitch ex-wife ‘o mine…” he muttered, and all four of the team’s rookies turned to look at him with varying expressions of shock.

“W-wait, wait, wait…” Reno said, shaking his head, “You wanna run that one by me again?”

Saya cackled in laughter while her cousin continued to scowl. “Aye, Reno, someone really was insane enough ta marry this idiot once. Well… more’n once, actually. She’s his third ex.”

“Aye… and the worst of the lot,” Sato added. “Learned my bloody lesson with her, I did. Never again. Only thing worse’n bein’ married ta her was the Odin-be-damned mother-in-law that came with her.”

Veld seemed to cringe slightly, noting something down on the edge of the folder he’d carried in with him. “I’ll be sure to remind the director of that matter before this afternoon.”

---

Reno stretched his arms over his head and gazed up at the ceiling of the archives room for a moment. He was on research duty again… this time looking for information on a name that Tres and Rude had turned up earlier in the day after several long hours of searching out new intelligence.

Fuhito. No one seem to know if it was his given name or a surname. Hell, they weren’t even a hundred percent sure it was a guy. But, Reno was stuck here, scouring the archives for any mention of the name. Thus far, he’d come up empty.

Not that going through the massive amount of information the Turks had accumulated over the years was the easiest process in the world. There were so many cross-referenced files, it made the rookie’s head spin… and not everything had been processed. The last year or so of reports were backlogged, and had to be combed through manually rather than using the main filing index.

The electronic lock on the door beeped, and Reno glanced up.

“Hey,” Luca said, stepping inside. “I’m here to take over for awhile.”

“Oh, thank Shiva,” the redhead sighed. “I’m starvin’.”

The senior Turk snickered and plucked the files the teenager was currently holding from his hand.

“Tseng says to report to him before you take off for lunch.”

“… For another assignment?” he asked, somewhat hesitantly. Not that he’d mind getting out of the archives for the day, but the rookies tended to get the shit jobs, and there were worse things he could be assigned to. But Luca merely shrugged.

“Didn’t say, but I doubt it. You get through files almost as fast as Rude does… and Rude’s with Tres today.” He sighed and shook his head. “One of these days, I’m finally going to convince Veld that our archived reports need to be stored electronically. It would make this so much easier.”

“Heh… Ya need someone to back you up on that, just let me know. Findin’ shit at the touch of a button sounds pretty good to me.”

Luca laughed and smirked at him. “You say that now… but bear in mind, you’re a rookie. Who do you think’s going to be entering all that data?”

“… Nevermind. You’re on your own,” the redhead quickly replied, prompting a deep laugh from his fellow Turk. Luca waved him off, and Reno headed down the hall to Tseng’s office, knocking on the closed door.

“Come in,” the Turk lieutenant’s voice called from within. Reno eased open the door and stepped inside, shutting it behind him.

“Hey, boss. Luca said to see you before I headed off to scrounge up some food. What’d ya need me for?”

Tseng smiled faintly and stood up, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair and shrugging it on.

“Nothing. I merely wanted to know if you’d care to join Mayu and I for lunch. I had intended to invite the other rookies as well, but they seem to have all been commandeered by the rest of the team.”

Reno grinned. “Depends… we eatin’ downstairs or are we goin’ out?” he asked.

“Out, of course,” the senior Turk replied, decisively, “As if I would subject my poor, innocent sister to the Shinra Cafeteria…”

“Heh… Count me in.”

---

The pair were greeted with a smiling wave as their waiter escorted them into the dining room of an upscale restaurant in Sector 4 a short while later. Mayu hugged her brother before he could take a seat, and then turned her attention on the redhead.

“… Uh… you’re not gonna pull that same move ya did on me the other day, are ya?” he teased, hanging back slightly. Mayu laughed and shook her head.

“Not as long as you behave yourself.”

Tseng snorted softly and pushed him down into one of the chairs.

“Which likely means we’ll be paying a visit to Midgar General before lunch is over,” he chuckled.

“Geez… what, did ya just bring me along for comic relief or somethin’?” the redhead groused, only half-serious, as the pair joined him at the table.

“So? How’s work today?” Mayu asked, picking up her menu. “Having fun skulking around in the shadows and kidnapping people?”

“Tch… if by that you mean diggin’ through a room full of filing cabinets all mornin’…”

“Or filling in for Veld during a board meeting…” Tseng added, in an equally less-than-thrilled tone.

“Or gettin’ hassled by building security every time you gotta head down to the records department to cross-reference somethin’…”

Tseng sighed heavily. “Or attempting to keep tabs on four rookies who keep getting passed around from one senior Turk to another…” He took a sip of water from his glass and laughed softly. “Frankly, I’d welcome a little skulking or a quick kidnapping at this point.”

Tseng’s sister giggled from behind her menu. “Oh, come on. You make it sound as though you have the most boring job in the world. Surely something interesting must have happened.”

Reno smirked. “Well… Sato did manage to clog the toilet, and then tried to unclog said toilet with underwater explosives. Went about as well as ya might imagine.”

The Turk lieutenant froze and openly stared at his protege. “… Just when did this happen?”

“While you were upstairs hangin’ out with the execs.” He shrugged. “Figured you knew. Remy said she’d deal with it.”

Tseng turned to his sister. “I may be somewhat late returning home this evening. There’s a very high likelihood I’ll be attending a funeral.”

Mayu laughed again, but didn’t comment, and Reno couldn’t help but grin.

“Heh… How long are you stayin’ in Midgar, anyway, Mayu? ‘Cause since you got here it’s almost like Tseng grew a sense of humor,” the redhead joked.

“Oh, just through the weekend,” Mayu replied, and then smiled somewhat coyly, “For now…”

Tseng’s eyebrows shot up and he regarded his sister with no small amount of suspicion.

“What do you mean ‘for now’?” he asked. Their waiter chose that moment to return with fresh-baked bread and to take their orders, and the conversation was put on hold for several minutes as the three of them made their selections. Once he had disappeared back into the kitchen, Mayu grinned.

“Well… I wasn’t going to say anything until it was official. I actually had an ulterior motive for coming to visit,” she began, and picked up a slice of the warm bread to nibble on.

“… What ‘ulterior motive’?”

“Oh, Tseng… I swear, you sound more and more like Father every time I see you,” she teased, giggling.

“Mayu…”

“Oh, for Leviathan’s sake…” she breathed, “I applied to Midgar University. I came to see you, of course… but I’m also here for my admissions interview. Which I had this morning, by the way. And… I got in!”

Tseng expression of uncertainty quickly transformed into a wide smile.

“Mayu… Congratulations,” he replied.

“Heh… Guess that means we’ll be seein’ a lot more of you, then,” Reno said, snickering.

“You’d better believe it. Of course… it’s all contingent upon me finishing the school year back home. But after that, I’ll be a bonafide college student.”

“So… what are you gonna be studyin’ to be?” the rookie queried, curious. No one he’d grown up with had bothered with any kind of formal education beyond learning to read and write. Hell, he knew a few people who didn’t even get that far.

“I want to be a teacher,” Mayu said, excitedly, “It’s been my dream for… well… forever!”

“It’s true,” Tseng chuckled. “When she was little, she used to sit by the garden pond after school every day and repeat her lessons to our mother’s koi fish.”

“And they’re still the smartest little fishies in Wutai,” Mayu proudly proclaimed, causing Tseng to choke slightly on the sip of water he’d just taken.

Reno had to admit. He liked seeing Tseng like this. His mentor was so much more… relaxed… around young woman. He let his normally rigid persona drop a bit and let his guard down. And Mayu herself was hilarious… She didn’t have the same raunchy sense of humor that Lira did, but Reno seemed to find himself with a perpetual smile on his face any time he was around her, all the same.

She really wasn’t what he’d expected when Tseng had first informed him that she’d be visiting. He’d just been picturing a slightly younger, female version of the Turk lieutenant. Not the lively and giggly young woman who’d shown up.

And he very quickly decided that… having her living in Midgar was going to be awesome.

~end chapter 59~