Desha's Reno of the Turks Fan Fiction

Chapter 81: A Changing of Seasons

Liam yelped loudly as something wet and heavy struck him in the back of the head… and then let out what could only have been described as a squeal as ice cold water began to trickle down the collar of his shirt. Zephyr snickered unabashedly beside him as he began an awkward dance in an effort to disperse the unpleasantly chilly liquid.

By the time it had finally started to warm up, Zephyr’s laughter had been joined by others, and the rookie looked up, glaring in the direction the unexpected assault had come from. Reno and Rude stood a short distance away, doing their best to look innocent.

“What was that for?” Liam demanded, annoyed. The redhead grinned.

“Just sharin’ the first snow of the year with everyone,” he laughed… and then both senior Turks produced a pair of snowballs from behind their backs, grinning widely.

“… Run,” Liam said simply, turning to Zephyr. The pair of rookies took off at a sprint down the hallway. Zephyr giggled as they darted around the corner and continued on, ducking into the archive room.

“Come out, come out wherever you are…” Reno’s voice teasingly called out, and Liam snorted softly.

“Not a chance,” he whispered, laughingly, to his fellow rookie. They heard a door open a little ways farther down the hallway, followed quickly by wet splat and an angry scream.

“Reno!”

“Uh, oh…” the redhead intoned, just outside of the door to their hiding place. “Remy… uh… sorry. That was meant for someone else…”

There was a long silence.

“… Please don’t kill me,” the redhead added.

“Start. Running,” Remy ground out. The next sound the pair of rookies heard were frantic footsteps beating a hasty retreat back down the hall. Once all of the noise had faded, Liam looked over at Zephyr, and they both promptly burst out laughing.

Moments later, they were exiting the archive room and making their way into the lounge, snickering loudly between themselves.

“What’s so funny?” Petra asked, looking up from a magazine she was flipping through.

“Reno and Rude thought it’d be fun to start throwing snowballs indoors. They hit Remy with one, and now they’re running for their lives,” Liam replied, grinning. Petra snorted softly in laughter and shook her head.

“Sometimes I wonder about those two…” Ryu opined, from his position on the floor in the corner, where he seemed to be sitting in some sort of yoga position, with his legs crossed in what, to Liam, at least, looked like a horrendously uncomfortable knot.

Victor snickered loudly over his morning coffee. “Oh, get over yourself, Ryu… they’re no weirder than any of the rest of us. I mean… you’re sitting over there, pretending to be a human pretzel.”

Ryu rolled his eyes slightly, but didn’t argue the point.

“So… think today will be the day?” Liam ventured, not entirely wanting to change the subject, but it had become something of a ritual amongst the team’s rookies over the past few months. Well… the rookies, Sykes, and the recently promoted Petra. She’d been made a full Turk not long after Liam had partaken in the tradition of torture that was Hell Week.

Petra set the magazine aside. “It’s been getting colder for weeks… and now it’s snowing. Surely she’s not still out living off the land.”

No one had heard from Kai in months. Or at least none of them had. If the senior Turks knew where she was, they weren’t saying anything. They… had just gone on without her. But the Turk’s absence was seldom forgotten completely.

“She has to come back soon, then… right?” Zephyr offered.

“… Unless she’s not planning on coming back at all,” said Ryu. At the pronouncement, a heavy silence fell over the lounge.

“She wouldn’t just not come back,” Sykes finally said. He’d been leaning back against the wall near the window, mostly just listening to the conversation. The rest of the room’s occupants shared a dubious look between themselves, but didn’t contradict him. Sykes, of late, had fallen back on an almost frantic assertion that Kai would be making her reappearance any day now, and none of them were quite sure why. When pressed, about it, he just shrugged it off, saying he “had a feeling”.

Whatever the case may have been, though, her continued absence was a persistent nag for all of them.

A moment later, the door swung inward with a loud bang, causing Liam to jump in fright.

“Ah ha! Gotcha!” Reno announced… and then sighed, shoulders drooping. “Too bad Remy confiscated our snowballs…”

Zephyr snorted a soft laugh, as Liam groaned in relief.

“Anyways…” the redhead continued, as Rude appeared behind him in the doorway, “I need two volunteers before the mornin’ briefing…”

“Volunteers for what, sir?” Victor asked.

“Heavy lifting,” Reno said with a grin. “Veld put me ‘n Rude in charge of decoratin’ the lounge this year. Need one person to go with Rude ‘n get the tree, and another to help me drag the ornaments ‘n shit outta the storeroom so we can decorate later.”

Sykes shrugged. “I’ll help with the tree.”

Rude nodded in acknowledgment and Sykes hurried to join the senior Turk. The pair quickly disappeared down the hall in the direction of the elevators.

“You’re sure you don’t have anymore snowballs…” Liam prodded, suspiciously.

“Yep. All gone,” Reno replied, and then grinned, “At least ’til I got time to run back up to the roof ‘n make some more…”

“Okay, I’m in…” the rookie said.

“If you need me, I don’t mind lending a hand, too,” Zephyr offered. The redhead shrugged.

“Heh… the more the merrier. Full disclosure, I was the one who put shit away last year, so… it might take some effort to find the lights,” he said, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head, “And… uh… untangle them.”

“… Is it too late to unvolunteer?” Liam jokingly replied.

“Yep!” Reno happily replied, grinning widely. Zephyr giggled and elbowed him in the side as she slipped past him, following the senior Turk out of the lounge. Liam hurried after them.

Several minutes later he found himself wading through a packed storeroom tucked back in a lonely corner of Turk headquarters. The space was floor to ceiling boxes and bins and random items too large to fit on the shelving that lined the wall.

“Think I put ’em somewhere over here…” Reno said, rummaging through the contents of the room.

“Where’d all this stuff come from, anyway?” Liam asked. The redhead looked up from his task and shrugged.

“It’s just shit we don’t use much. Ya know… seasonal stuff… old furniture no one wants anymore… dead bodies we never got around to chuckin’ off the edge of the Plate… that kinda thing.”

“Dead bodies, huh…?” Liam snickered, shaking his head at the joke. He turned to Zephyr to make another comment and suddenly found himself face to face with the severed head she was holding up, a smirk on her lips. The rookie yelped in shock as he instinctively stumbled back several steps, ultimately ending up falling ass first into a cardbox box filled with fake evergreen garlands. Zephyr laughed and lowered the head.

“Oh, hey! Ya found Ralph! I was lookin’ for him…” Reno said, cheerfully.

“Why?” Liam asked from his undignified new seat. The prop head didn’t exactly scream “Christmas”.

“I mean a couple of months ago. Ya know… for Halloween,” the senior Turk clarified, laughing as he pulled the younger Turk to his feet. He picked the head up and looked it over, before finally tucking it into an open space on a nearby shelf. “I used him to play a prank on Kai two years ago and kinda pissed her off. Haven’t seem him since.”

“Sir…?” Zephyr piped up, “Have… you heard anything from Kai yet?”

Reno paused in his bid to pull a large, overflowing plastic bin of ribbons and random other colorful objects down from one of the high shelves. He turned to her and sighed, shaking her head.

“No one has,” he replied, sounding sad, “Not even Tseng… and I’da thought that she’d’ve contacted him by now, at least…” He paused a moment, and dropped his voice slightly, “I probably shouldn’t be sayin’ anything, but… I think the Boss is kinda startin’ to worry.”

“Do you think she went after the Zenshou?” Zephyr asked.

“… Honestly? Not anymore. I mean, when she first left, I thought for sure that’s what she was gonna do, but… Rude’s been keepin’ a close eye on ’em through his contacts in Wutai. He hasn’t heard about anything that sounds like it mighta been her doing, and if she was gonna try somethin’, she’d’ve done it by now.” He heaved a heavy sigh. “I… don’t have the faintest idea what she’s been up to for so long. I can’t even guess at this point.” A moment later, he seemed to forcibly shake himself from the depressing fog that had fallen over them all. “Anyway… we got decoratin’ to do. We’re only four weeks out from Christmas, ya know!”

Liam and Zephyr obligingly dropped the subject, and went back to helping Reno dig out the holiday decorations for the office… though by then, it didn’t seem as though any of them really had their hearts in it.

---

“Hey, Boss,” Reno said, walking into Tseng’s office about ten minutes after the morning briefing. Tseng glanced up from a stack of requisition forms and motioned for him to take a seat. The redhead shut the door behind him and obliged.

“What’s this I hear about you assaulting Remy with improvised projectile weapons?” his mentor queried, looking at him accusingly. Reno rolled his eyes.

“Oh, give me a break. I threw a damn snowball at her…” he snickered, “And in my defense, I thought she was Liam.”

Tseng chuckled and signed the topmost form, setting it aside.

“You’re going to get yourself into trouble if you’re not careful…” he teasingly warned, and Reno waved him off.

“Are we here to talk about the rookies, or so you can tell me off for havin’ some fun?” Reno asked, grinning in response, “… ’cause I got escort duty in twenty minutes, ya know…”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you…” Tseng replied, smirking slightly. “But, you’re right. We both have a full day ahead of us. So… let’s start with Liam, since you’ve already brought him up. I’ve noticed that he and Ryu have been spending more time practicing together of late.”

“Yeah… they worked out a kinda mutually beneficial arrangement last time we were in Junon. Ryu’s helpin’ Liam out in materia training, ‘n Liam’s givin’ Ryu pointers on the firing range. Seems to be workin’ pretty well for ’em both. Vir says Liam’s gettin’ pretty good.”

“Perhaps we should give the two of them a dedicated training time here at headquarters. I’m sure they would both welcome the extra practice, and, given that the weather has finally decided to turn, should they not be able to make it to Junon at some point, they wouldn’t have to miss out.”

“Heh… long as ya don’t let ’em do it unsupervised,” Reno replied, and Tseng raised an eyebrow, “Ryu… uh… sometimes forgets that he’s got way more experience than Liam does. He can get a little carried away.”

“Duly noted,” the Turk lieutenant nodded, “Any other concerns?”

“… Not about training,” Reno sighed. “But, yeah. There is one thing. They’re startin’ to ask questions about Kai.”

“And you have no answers for them,” Tseng acknowledged, shaking his head.

“Boss… she’s been gone too damn long. There’s gotta be somethin’ we can do. I mean… it’s not like we’re swamped with work right now. Hell, the whole company’s shuttin’ down for the holidays in a few more weeks. Can’t we send someone out to look for her?”

Tseng leaned forward steepling his fingers together before him, and Reno groaned.

“Don’t do that. I hate it when you do that…”

His mentor smiled faintly and laid his hands down flat on the desk instead.

“I… agree with you,” Tseng said, “In fact, I’ve spent the last several weekends traveling to some of her preferred campsites to see if I could pick up her trail. I’m afraid I haven’t found any trace of her. If she was ever at any of the locations I checked, it was quite some time ago. I’m going to recommend to Veld that we officially declare her as missing and start a preliminary search.”

“So what do I tell the rookies?” Reno asked.

“For now… there’s nothing to tell them that they don’t already know. Once I’ve spoken to Veld, I’ll have a better response for you.”

“… Think it’s too much to hope that she’ll be home for Christmas?” the redhead hesitantly asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that either… save that I feel much the same way,” Tseng replied.

---

Some twenty minutes following his weekly meeting with Tseng, Reno found himself seated in the luxurious passenger section of the Shinra family limousine.

“Ugh… I loathe holiday shopping…” Rufus muttered in distaste, glaring out the window as they turned onto the main street of Sector 4. “Every Ramuh-forsaken year, Father expects me to find a suitable gift to present to his latest gold-digging mistress. I hardly see the point. Nine times out of ten, she’ll have been replaced by New Years, anyway. He’s lucky I even bother learning their names anymore.”

He glanced up at the redhead.

“And why are you here? Surely Tseng isn’t that busy.”

“Sorry, sir… you’re stuck with me today. The Boss is headin’ over to Kalm with Sykes to keep an eye on that protest at the reactor.”

“Ah… I suppose that matter does take priority,” the executive mused. The “protest” wasn’t supposed to be a large event, by any means, but after months of doing damage control for the Company’s reputation over the Gongaga incident, Rufus didn’t seem especially keen to have a repeat. The Turks had been ordered to make damned sure that none of the people protesting the “environmental impact” of the Kalm reactor had any intentions to do anything more than just protest. The last thing they needed was the damn thing going critical because some idiot decided to sabotage it, and taking out another town.

Apparently – though Reno wasn’t entirely sure how much stock to put in the rumor – the Executive Board had come up with a very highly classified plan that was supposed to completely eliminate the PR fallout if something like that were to ever happened again. He didn’t know any of the details… but it would supposedly be massively expensive.

Hopefully, he’d never have to find out what it was. He, for one, didn’t want to see another town blown up and saturated in raw mako.

“Heh… so… what does a guy get for his dad’s ‘gold-digging mistress’, anyway?” Reno asked. The Shinra heir snorted softly.

“It depends on how much I wish to annoy Father,” he replied, smirking, “But… this year, as I want nothing more than a quiet, uneventful holiday… something pricey and impersonal that’s not likely to spark an argument, I think. There’s a Costan designer who’s quite popular just at the moment. His premium shoulder bags are selling for something like fifty thousand gil. That should be a sufficient waste of money to keep Father happy.”

The redhead blinked. “… Fifty thousand? For a bag?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Man… rich people are fuckin’ nuts.”

To his surprise, Rufus gave a quietly amused laugh.

“For once, I actually agree with you. It is quite insane what one is willing to pay for something so trivial simply because one can.”

The limo pulled into a large parking structure attached to one of the sector’s more upscale department stores, and came to a stop just outside of the elevated walkway that connected the two buildings and allowed shoppers to cross the street without coming in contact with either traffic or unpleasant weather. Rufus waited until the driver opened the door for him, and stepped out, followed swiftly by his security detail.

“Let’s make this quick, shall we?” Rufus sighed, “I have any number of things I’d rather be doing today.”

“Works for me, sir,” Reno replied, nodding. He trailed the executive through the store entrance, and couldn’t help but grin slightly at the sight that greeted them.

One thing Reno could say about the high-end stores in Midgar… they sure knew how to do Christmas. As he stepped through the doors, he found himself on an evergreen-lined walkway. The trees were decked out in glittering ornaments in a blue and silver motif, and tiny white fairy lights twinkled among their branches. Overhead, lengths of dark blue and gray fabric had been draped across the ceiling, creating something that looked a bit like a cloudy winter night sky, and he could already hear the faint sound of holiday music playing a short distance ahead of them.

Once in the store proper, things only got more Christmasy… if that were possible. Mannequins had been dressed in expensive winter gear and posed on pedestals decorated with fake snow and brightly wrapped presents. Every counter bore colorful garlands and festive displays of gift suggestions for their wealthy clientele. At the far end of the store, Reno could see a much larger display built to resemble Santa’s workshop, complete with employees dressed as elves. It took him a moment to realize that it was the gift wrapping station… with quite a long line of people waiting in front of it.

“I see they’ve gone overboard again this year,” Rufus said, shaking his head.

“I like it,” the redhead declared, still taking it all in.

The vice president snorted. “You would,” he replied, rolling his eyes. Rufus began to make his way towards the escalator situated near the center of the store, and he and the Turk rode it upwards to the second floor, where the winter themes continued. Here, though, instead of Santa’s workshop, Reno found himself staring at a full-sized sleigh filled with gifts and manned by Santa himself and another elf. A sign nearby read “Donations: The Society for Midgar’s Underprivileged Children”. Apparently they were collecting both toys and cash, because a large glass box filled with gil sat near the elf.

The redhead rolled his eyes in disgust as he recognized the charity’s unfortunate, yet somewhat fitting, acronym. SCUM was the same organization that ran the kind of pathetic excuse for an orphanage he’d been dumped in after his mother had died. Unless things had changed a lot since he was a kid, very few of those donations were destined for kids down in the slums. They’d mostly go to the charity’s facilities topside – which, to be completely fair, there were orphans among the Plate dwellers, too, after all… they just tended to not stay orphans indefinitely like the ones in the Slums – and a lot of the cash they collected would ultimately get pocketed by corporate at the end of the day. The Slum kids would get the leftovers. If they were lucky.

He didn’t have long to linger on the charity, however, as Rufus was already heading for the nearby accessories department, where any number of bags and satchels and purses were on display, their designer names proudly carved into wooden signs hanging above their individual sections.

As the pair made their way through the almost comically large selection of overpriced bags, Reno glanced down at a few of the price tags and cringed. The cheapest one he spotted was a ridiculous seven hundred and seventy five gil, for a tiny little clutch that didn’t look like it would hold much more than a phone and a credit card… which only further cemented his belief that some people on the planet just had too damn much Ifrit-forsaken money. Though, he supposed, it was saying something that he and Rufus seemed to be in agreement on that… at least in this instance. Even the Brat thought it was a little much.

That wasn’t going to stop the executive from spending such a ridiculous amount of money on one of these things, of course.

Reno had a somewhat odd view of money. He’d spent most of his life with next to none… and then one day he’d ended up in a position where, while he was by no means among the city’s wealthy elite, he would almost certainly never have to worry about it again… as long as he didn’t do stupid things like buying seven hundred gil purses. And yet, he’d been far more frivolous with his spending back when he was broke, buying things like cigarettes and booze when he could have been spending it on more essential items. Which… was probably a big part of the reason he was perpetually broke before he’d been recruited. And if he was being completely honest, he still made the occasional stupid purchase, but Tseng had taught him how to save… how to budget… how to live within his means instead of just hoping for the best. It made a difference.

“I will never understand the appeal of these things. They’re beyond gaudy…” Rufus muttered just ahead of him. He was studying a multi-color shoulder bag made up of leather panels dyed in various earth tones. A floral design had been embedded in each panel, done in tiny crystals.

It wasn’t exactly Reno’s taste, either… though the little platform it had been sitting on that boasted a forty-two thousand gil price tag wasn’t doing it any favors, either.

Somewhere to his left, the Turk suddenly heard a faint series of clicks, that he belatedly recognized as the sound of a shutter going off. He turned, eyes roving the sea of expensive fashion goods and shoppers, searching for its source. A moment later he caught sight of a man dressed in a cheap suit, hurriedly ducking behind a flocked Christmas tree.

Great. Paparazzi.

“Sir?” he said, getting Rufus’ attention, “Looks like we picked up a shadow. The nosy kind that comes armed with cameras.”

“Ugh…” Rufus groaned. “Wonderful. I’m sure this little shopping trip will very quickly be spun as the eligible Shinra vice president searching for the perfect Christmas gift for some mysterious new female companion. Those rags so enjoy speculating on my love life these days. They’re worse than Father. Seize his equipment and get rid of him. Quietly, if possible. I don’t want a scene.”

“Yes, sir,” the redhead replied.

Unnoticed by his target – or simply ignored in favor of keeping the vice president in frame – Reno slipped into the next department over, and stalked up behind the man just as he was snapping another series of photos. The redhead tapped him on the shoulder, and he squeaked in surprise, turning to face the Turk. Reno rolled his eyes, recognizing him as a regular.

“Tch… Don’t you have anyone else to bother? Alright, you know the drill. Hand it over,” he said, holding a hand out expectantly.

“I have every right,” the photographer protested, “This is a public place. Besides… I’m with the press!”

“Tough shit. I work for him,” Reno said, nodding towards the executive, “… ‘n he says to hand over the camera ‘n scram.” He gave him a slightly evil grin, “… and if ya don’t, I get to have some fun with you.”

Rufus, of course, had said no such thing… but Reno had found that, by and large, the local paparazzi didn’t like to tempt fate when faced with a pissed off Turk. A little insinuation of severe bodily harm here and there usually made them far more compliant and less likely to raise a fuss. The man paled slightly, and grudgingly forked over the camera.

“Can you at least just take the film and leave me the camera this time? Those things aren’t cheap, you know…” he groused, “Have a heart. It’s the holidays.”

Reno smirked, and thumbed open the little door that gave access to the film inside the camera, and unceremoniously ripped it out, pocketing it. He handed the camera back to its owner.

“Merry Christmas,” he replied, “Now fuck off. I catch ya at it again today, I’m not gonna be so nice about it.”

“You Turks really are a bunch of –”

Reno never found out exactly what the Turks really were a bunch of, because before the photographer could finish his sentence, a the relative peace of the department store was obliterated by angry shouting followed by several gunshots being fired into the air. The redhead spun in the direction of the commotion, eyes wide.

There were three of them. One man was holding the charity workers at gunpoint while a second kept his gun trained on the stunned shoppers and a woman hurriedly shoved gil from the donation box by the fistful into a backpack. Reno left the photographer, forgotten, and tried to make his way back to the vice president without being noticed. Thankfully, Rufus had been smart enough to take cover as soon as the shooting started. He spotted him crouched behind one of the Christmas displays near a rack of ties, and quickly motioned for him to stay down and out of sight.

“Hurry up!” one of the thieves hissed at the woman with the bag. “We only have like three minutes before security shows up!”

Reno frowned, debating his next course of action. He didn’t much care for the thought of a bunch of lowlifes stealing from kids at Christmas… but neither the store nor the money were his responsibility. His only job right now was to keep Rufus safe. The best way to do that, much as it irked him, was to just let them take the money and leave, and then get the V.P. out of there at the first available opportunity. He slipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out his PHS and keyed in the emergency code, that would alert the rest of the team that there was a situation, and then ducked low, slowly making his way back to where he’d left Rufus.

“That’s it… let’s go!” the woman proclaimed, having finally emptied the box. They hurried towards the fire exit on the far side of the store, guns still trained on the bystanders, just in case anyone decided to be a hero.

“Hey, you! Hold it right there!” a voice firmly demanded, and Reno very nearly groaned in dismay as two security guards came scrambling up the escalator, armed with what looked like tasers. Yeah… those were gonna do a whole lot against a couple of guns. Fucking rent-a-cops…

Sure enough, several more shots rang out and one of the guards went down hard, while the other seemed to realized that he was in over his head and dove for cover behind Santa’s sleigh. The three thieves made a run for the exit, and two of them slipped through. The last turned around, and as a final parting ‘fuck you’ sent a spray of bullets across several departments, forcing everyone trapped in the space to hit the ground. Reno swore loudly as he went flat on the tile floor, hands covering his head. A moment later, he heard the fire door clang shut, and dared to look up.

It took him several seconds to reorient himself in the sea of terrified shoppers, but then he was sprinting the remaining distance to where he’d left Rufus, ignoring several people between him and the vice president calling out for help.

“Sir?” he called out, skidding to a halt as he peered down towards where he’d last seen Shinra heir… only to be greeted by a trail of blood.

~end chapter 81~