"Go-Go-Go!" a voice shouted over the PHS.
He leapt into action, charging the electro-mag rod as he flew down from the wall, landing squarely on the pavement. The man in front of him halted in his progress, stopping shock still to gape in horror at the Turk that now stood in his path.
"Get outta my way!" the man shouted in surreal bravery. Reno looked at him with a slightly amused smirk and tilted his head to the side in mockery, placing his hand on a hip.
"Tsk, tsk."
The man looked at him strangely, but the moment he shot into action to bolt around Reno, he was on the ground, crackling before his mind even registered what had happened.
The man fell with a soft thud to the pavement and the lifeless body of the red haired man's former assailant lay sprawled out, undignified even in death. Reno merely shot an indignant 'hmph' in the foolish thief's direction and bent down, searching to palm the mako that the Turks had been sent to retrieve. He half-smiled with a bitter self satisfaction, but the little curl of his lips became a stern, straight line as he realised the man carried nothing.
Nothing. There was nothing on him at all, excluding the glass orbs which closely resembled materia, skillfully crafted to take on the slight glow that the magical orbs carried. They were wrapped in a piece of cloth, and it was now horribly evident Reno's now dead assailant had been shown up.
"Damn," he cursed breathlessly as he began to run in the other direction.
"Tseng!" he half-breathed, half-shouted into the PHS.
"Yes?" came a smooth collected tone on the other end.
"He had nothing."
"What?!" the Turks' leader wasn't cool anymore.
"Nothing!! He was clean..."
"Then that means...," Tseng trailed off, "I'm on my way."
"Rendezvous at home, 16:00 hours," the PHS went dead.
Damn me, I'm dead! he thought darkly.
That gave him five minutes to try and find which person out of the ring of thieves actually had the materia on them. Only half an hour ago, Reno had surveyed the group of five people - four men and one woman - trading off with another individual who was the man that Reno had just killed.
No. This situation called for a Fuck, me I'm dead.
The Turks had underestimated the little group, thinking they would complete the trade-off without incident. The red haired Turk had a bad feeling in his gut the entire time he watched the trade from afar however, knowing that something was amiss.
Well, it was too late for that brilliant revelation now. He increased his speed, tearing around the abandoned buildings that surrounded him in Sector Five.
After a single shot had been fired from where the Turks sat atop a tall building, the group had broken into five individual paths, scattering like ants along the cracked roads. The shot, that was supposed to have taken out the man that had retrieved the materia, had missed. Strange, since Rude had been the team's sniper that day, an area which he specialized in. In the last six years that Reno had worked with the silent man, he had never yet missed a hit.
Well, there was no time for contemplation right now; he'd think about it later. Right now, all that mattered was catching up to at least one of the gang's members on the off-chance that it was that specific individual he stumbled upon to have the materia that they sought.
Tseng had already followed two of the people as they had spread, just as suspicious as Reno had felt, but he had immediately acted on it. Well, that was the reason he was a leader...
And suddenly, Reno's legs halted in dead weight. Before him, two of the gang members stood, poised to strike. They hadn't even seen him however, as their backs were facing him and there was half of a broken brick wall that rose up in front of him, shielding the Turk from any obvious point of view. He instantly crouched down behind it, willing himself to be completely silent.
The two amateurs had someone in front of them, obviously torturing the poor soul with merciless verbal insults. Reno couldn't help but suppress a grin at their asinine way of handling things. The two thugs had probably ran across some poor sap who had given them a suspicious look and they had immediately jumped on the opportunity in their livid unrest to eliminate any possible threat. Hmph - without their knowing, they had stumbled into a chanced trap by allowing Reno time to catch up with them.
He risked a glance over the top of the wall again, wondering who it was that they were throwing insults at and kicking every now and again.
And to his absolute horror, the sight that met his incredulous look was one of his leader Tseng, kneeling before the two young thieves and bowing his head in......submission?!
What the hell was going on?
Tseng's raven black hair fell in a great stream of blue-black, reaching his waist and almost blending in with the navy blue of his Turk suit. His face was hidden, but Reno could see that a slight stream of blood had appeared at his mouth. The most disturbing part of the whole scene, if it could in fact become any more disturbing than it already was, was that Tseng seemed to not be putting up any resistance in the least.
"We know what you did," one taunted, giving the black-haired man a good kick in the chest. Tseng heaved a sharp gasp, but did not respond. It was then Reno noticed that his hands were also bound behind his back.
How in the hell-, his thought was cut off as another barbed insult was flung out.
"WE KNOW ABOUT VALUZ!" one shouted in a passionate outburst of irate emotion.
Who the hell was Valuz? And what were these two ruffians doing to his leader?! Questions, and more questions deterred Reno's absent mind, but mostly, he didn't know how to approach this situation. Normally, he would have used his stealth to his advantage to sneak up, using a quick attack to knock them out, get Tseng out of there and then finish them off. But, by the way Tseng was acting, this was obviously not a normal, every-day situation that he was witnessing.
Reno popped his crimson head just slightly over the top of the wall, watching the scene unfold in its full disgusting glory.
One of the two had gone suspiciously quiet, and when he finally leaned in towards the Turk to cup his chin delicately, he was met with a gaze of cold ice that didn't seem to phase him in the slightest.
"Now I know," he whispered scornfully, "how he looked when you broke him." He seemed to be taking very personal intimacies with the silent Turk, and as Reno watched closely, an intense dread and morbid curiosity began to burn deep within his mind.
Tseng tried to let his gaze fall to the ground when he thought the man was finished, but he obviously wasn't. Leaning in even closer, he hissed through clenched teeth, "Show me your face! The same face," he said even more hatefully, "that Valuz used to see in his nightmares."
The other gang member who hadn't said anything since his loud verbal attack stood slightly apart, regarding his friend with a bit of sordid amusement. He seemed to understand exactly what the strangely intense man referred to.
The individual who had been addressing Tseng seemed totally unaware of all outside events however, as he leaned in, his face only inches from Tseng's now, and whispered dryly, "I wonder how Valuz felt when you broke him. I want to know how Valuz felt, " he rasped out, "when you broke him."
Without further ado, he leaned forward and planted a sickeningly tender kiss on Tseng's down-turned face, touching his lips in brutal mock sweetness to the Turk's emotionless straight ones.
That was all Reno needed to see. It didn't matter how Tseng felt; he wasn't going to stand idly by when these fools had the audacity to violate Tseng's pride.
In a silent charge, he flew from behind his hiding place at the silent man, jabbing his weapon into sharp ribs. There was a crack of electricity, and the man fell, dead to the ground, just as silent as he had been before Reno had shocked him.
It was very hard to surprise Tseng. In fact, Reno could think of perhaps two occasions where he had seen the normally placid Turk's mask break on the job. But right now, Tseng wore a look of pure, undiluted shock on his dirtied face. His brown, almond-shaped eyes stared in absolute heart-stopping shock as he watched Reno, red hair flying, stampede out from behind the wall like a madman.
Without the slightest hesitation, Reno turned almost gracefully on his heel to face the other assailant and whipped out a sidearm secreted in his jacket which he saved for emergencies. It was a well known fact through out the small group that Reno hated guns. In fact, he had loathed being trained in the art of shooting a gun. He loathed using one, and he even loathed carrying the damned cumbersome thing.
But it was at times like this, when he suddenly realised in absolute horror that his weapon's charge was completely depleted, that he was infinitely grateful to his leader who currently knelt before the two standing men, for having made him carry it.
Hell, the ironic part was - he had damn good aim. Maybe not as good as Rude, but still, damn good. He pointed the weapon threateningly into the face of Tseng's abuser and cocked it without hesitation.
"Back off," was all he had to growl to send the man jumping back about a mile.
Tseng still hadn't recovered and was desperately trying to handle the situation. On the one hand, there was Reno who was an associate; on the other, there was the man before him who he knew far too well to be detached with. Not to say that he didn't know Reno, but there was an unstated fact when it came to being a Turk - on the job, nothing matters except the objective and the lives of your partners. And right now, Reno was certainly not dealing with situation using his moral judgement or tact.
If he had stop and think about it, he might have hesitated, thinking Tseng would rather be left alone. But right now, that wasn't even an issue. It was simple : Tseng's wellbeing was endangered, and Reno was going to kick the ever loving shit out of the man that stood before him right now if he didn't take the hint that an irate Turk was a very dangerous one.
But he obviously had, and tried to take off at a run. However, a bullet neatly caught him in the spine, paralyzing him instantly. Another cleaved a small, accurate hole in his skull, and his writhing body finally lay still after a few moments.
Turning his attention back to his leader, Reno let his detachment fade for once and looked on at Tseng with concern. This was a different situation; although they were on the job, Tseng had obviously let his facade of indifference drop and was now bearing his true, raw emotion simply by the look in his eyes whether he liked it or not. For once, it was something he was unable to control.
"Tseng?" Reno asked almost sternly, willing himself to march over in a military fashion, which didn't suit the usually slack body, and look Tseng straight in the face.
He snapped out of his trance, and it was obvious he was desperately trying to reel in any dignity and control of the situation he had left. He got to his feet, but still refused to speak.
Reno went swiftly around the back of his friend and dropped his weak bonds to the ground. What had the Turk been trying to pull?
He tried again, "Tseng? What in the hell is goin' on?"
The brown-eyed Turk fixed his gaze on the red-haired man, hoping to subdue his questioning. All he received to his piercing stare was a blatant look of curiosity and obvious disgust at the events which had transpired. He wondered how much Reno had seen and heard.
Reno saw the way Tseng locked his gaze on him, and he instantly recognized that look. It was the one he used to ward off potential conversation with strangers who were quickly re-buffed at the intensity of the frosty stare. Reno wasn't a stranger, however.
"Oh, cut that out. You know that shit doesn't work on me, Tseng."
Tseng obviously did know, because his visibly tense body relaxed somewhat and he took the luxury of sighing.
"Okay, okay," he said softly in his normal tone, "I'll explain later. Right now, we have to finish this mission."
Reno nodded, silently agreeing. Rude was out on the field alone armed with only a gun, and there still three more gang members yet to be covered and frisked for the missing materia. Reno's mind suddenly flashed however.
"Oh!" he exclaimed.
The search of the first man proved fruitless, but with a quick frisk of the second that had taken the liberty of kissing a very rigid, unwilling Tseng, the materia was uncovered. A triumphant smirk spread over Reno's scarred face and he looked up at Tseng with a barely hidden sort of fury burning in his eyes as he re-played the scene in his mind of that cruel kiss his leader had been forced to share. But Tseng didn't have to know what he had seen, at least not yet.
"Let the other poor bastards find their friends," he spat scornfully, "let's get outta here. We can leave these sorry assholes as a warning."
Tseng nodded wearily, more than willing to leave the vicinity as quickly as possible.
Reno could tell his leader was spent as his eyes took on a sort of dull, glassy look at the suggestion. But a well hidden interest sparked as Reno mentioned leaving. He knew Tseng hated being sloppy, but just this one time, he was agreeing with the red-haired Turk so he could just get out of there.
Reno stood up from where he was crouched. Grasping the materia, he turned and faced Tseng, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "I'll call Rude. You just...wait there," he said in a very business-like fashion despite the touch on the other man, and motioned to a nearby concrete slab. Normally, Tseng would have spurned such an audacious request, but he just nodded tiredly again and went to sit down.
A few minutes later, he came and perched himself next to Tseng.
"Rude will meet us here in about five minutes," he spoke in a stark, blunt tone which spoke volumes of how he was dealing with the situation. By detaching himself for the moment, they could carry on at least until they got back to the Shinra building, and he expected Tseng to do he same.
The dark-haired Turk shot him a grateful look.
"Reno," his partner looked over as he heard his name, unintentionally looking straight into Tseng's dark, serious eyes.
"Thanks."
He just nodded, and waited for Rude to show up in a comfortable silence.
