The Reaper | By : crystalwind Category: Final Fantasy VII > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 676 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
Warnings: Reno gets his ass kicked. Twice.
Chapter Ten – Agony
… 'Okay, I was wrong. This is going to go way beyond sucking.' The other Trainees smirked, catching on to Reno's displeasure immediately and savoring it. Finally, someone was going to put that little shit in his place.
Reno landed on his face, the coppery taste of blood invading his mouth. The fight had lasted for five minutes and 23.7 seconds, by Sephiroth's count, before the General caught him with a vicious roundhouse punch, sending him flying a good ten feet before he was painfully acquainted with the ground. Dazed from both the hit and the landing, he barely managed to roll onto his back, the sound of laughter dimly registering in his mind. He was too disoriented to curse the other trainees for being assholes.
Sephiroth wasn't so impaired.
"What, exactly, do you all find so amusing?" His cold green eyes scanned across the watching Trainees, and they immediately fell silent. The General was angry, even if they weren't really sure why, and several of them stopped breathing in their efforts to remain still. He let them quake in silence for several long moments before allowing a flash of fury to cross his face. "I asked you a question, Trainees!" The Trainees jumped and then cowered, not daring to say anything, and Sephiroth scowled. "Do you find it amusing to see a classmate injured?" Their shifting eyes said everything, and he laughed. There was no humor in the sound. "You are all maggots. Not one of you would last for five seconds in a pitched battle with me, let alone five minutes." He scoffed at them and turned away, waving a hand at the other Soldiers in the room. "Take these worthless brats and humiliate them." The Soldiers smirked and moved in towards their prey. Nothing like tormenting someone else's Trainees…
Sephiroth kneeled down next to Reno, scanning over him quickly to make sure he wasn't seriously injured. Reno, who had recovered enough to have heard the majority of the General's scathing diatribe against the other Trainees, resisted the urge to yank out some stray hairs that had escaped Sephiroth's braid, and cocked an eyebrow. "Thanks. You just beat the shit out of me and made sure they'll hate me forever. I'm indebted to you, really."
Sephiroth chuckled. "Nice to know that getting your ass handed to you doesn't dampen your spirit any." Reno rolled his eyes.
"Trust me. It's dampened. A lot. A five minute fight is pathetic."
The General smirked at that. "Not against me." He straightened, offering a hand to pull Reno to his feet. Reno brushed the sand out of his hair and clothes, sighing. 'I'm going to have sand stuck in my hair for days now…' Sephiroth smirked again, recognizing the cause behind the sigh. He had long hair too, after all. "Well? Ready to go again?"
Reno stared at him. "Are you fucking insane? Why the hell would I want to do that again?"
Sephiroth grinned and shrugged. "Just making sure I didn't give you any brain damage." Reno laughed at that. "No more actual spars, for today at any rate. This is, however, supposed to be a class, so unless you're hurt enough that you want to just go home and cry," and he smiled evilly at Reno's glare, "then you may as well stay and let me teach you something."
Reno eyed him suspiciously. "You won't punch me in the side of the head?" A shake of the head. "Knock me ten feet away?" Another shake. "Otherwise injure and humiliate me?"
"No guarantees." Reno sighed.
"Well, at least that's better than when I had to spar against Tseng that one time… he definitely had no problem injuring me or humiliating me. Let's do it."
Sephiroth smiled.
Mainstreet, a local bar that catered to Cadets and Trainees, was packed that night. Tuesday was a holiday (some celebration of some guy's birthday that nobody really remembered or cared about), which meant that everyone who could make their way off-post had done so, and most of them were drinking.
Tucked into a lonely corner of the bar, Reno drank alone.
He had figured out a long time ago that none of the other Trainees particularly liked him, but they hadn't ever been this overtly hostile towards him, either. His sparring match with Sephiroth, and the ensuing ass-chewing that they had received, seemed to have changed that. Reno got to learn from the General. Reno was an excellent fighter. Reno was better than them.
Reno was ostracized.
Even the Cadets, who normally didn't pay any real attention to the gossip and cliques amongst the Trainees, avoided him. It wasn't that they were particularly jealous; they knew enough about learning from the General to know that Reno had probably had a really shitty, painful day, but they didn't want to get on the bad side of the rest of the Trainee population. One Trainee on his own probably wouldn't last long anyway, with the rest of them out to get him.
Reno downed his fourth drink. There wasn't any real point to staying sober when being sober hurt so bad; alcohol numbs everything.
He was wandering lost in a back alley when he first realized that he was being followed. He had been intrigued and a little excited to discover that even the Upper Plate had some shady areas, and the alcohol in his system ensured that he wasn't cautious of his surroundings. It wasn't until he heard footsteps scuffing the asphalt behind him that he realized he shouldn't have been walking around drunk in a strange area. He didn't even have his knife on him.
He quickened his pace as best he could, given that he could barely tell which way was up, but it didn't do him any good. The footsteps followed, and he turned a corner into a dead end. Old crates and garbage filled the corners, and there was a large overhang at the very end. A spool of wire on the wall led up to a pulley attached to the overhang, dangling down into the street. Reno was too drunk to know what it was for, and too worried about his followers to care. He spun around just in time to see a fist connect with his face. 'Devin.' The dark-haired Trainee laughed when Reno fell to the ground, using the opportunity to kick him in the ribs. The others laughed, joining in when Devin backed away to give them space. There were five of them.
Several minutes later, Reno lay broken and bleeding on the ground, blood seeping from numerous gashes along his body. His painful breathing indicated broken ribs, and he had vomited some time during the assault, the acidic alcohol burning his throat and nose. He coughed, spitting up blood and whatever was left of the gin in his stomach. Devin's four companions laughed; Devin himself had discovered the wire, and was busy making a noose.
He leaned down next to Reno when he was done, the wire looped in his hands. "You're a real piece of shit, you know that?" Reno was in too much pain to respond, and Devin chuckled, sitting back on his heels. "Aww, you're hurt." The others laughed again. "Here, I'll do you a favor. I'll make it feel all better." A cruel sneer twisted his face, and he pulled the loop of the wire around Reno's head, tightening the noose on his neck. Reno tried to move his broken fingers up to slip the wire back off, but Devin and the others worked too quickly. They began turning the handle on the spool, tightening the wire.
Reno was dangling nearly five feet off the ground before they locked the spool in place, the wire digging into his neck and cutting off his air. It wasn't positioned properly to cut off the blood flow, but that only meant that he'd be awake for longer before suffocating and finally dying. Devin and the others laughed again, keeping their distance to avoid the possibility of being kicked.
"Well, we'd really love to, you know, hang around, but we've got better stuff to do. Have a nice night, pal." They walked off, heading back into the alley, and were soon out of sight and hearing. Reno panicked.
His fingers were too bloody to grip the wire, and several of them were broken and couldn't grip anyway. He could only go without air for so long before it would be too late, and his phone was in his room along with his knife. He tried to pull himself up in the wire again.
After an agonizingly long minute later, Reno had finally managed to struggle with the wire enough to gain a few inches of slack. He wheezed, barely able to draw any air into his ruined windpipe, and desperately tried to force away the darkness that was slowly consuming his vision. He felt his fingers slipping again, and his pulse jumped, throbbing in his ears. He was going to die. Panicking again, he twisted his head around and caught the wire in his teeth right before it became too tight again.
His teeth gripped the soft metal far better than his bloodied fingers had, and his eyes brightened momentarily. If he could work his way up with his teeth, high enough to swing his legs up and kick the pulley, he might be able to get himself down.
He lay on the asphalt again, unconscious. It had taken him nearly thirty minutes to work his way up the wire, and blood welled up from the lines that the wire had left on his face. He had been too exhausted to try catching himself when he fell, and his head struck the pavement. It was over an hour before he woke up again.
The moon wasn't out that night, and darkness filled the streets of Midgar. Widely-spaced street lamps provided the only illumination, casting long shadows into the night. In this Sector of the city, no people walked the streets; no clubs or bars spilled noise and light out into the streets. The empty office buildings were closed for the night, and nobody was present to see the wraith limping his way back towards the Training Center.
Blood matted his hair, covered his face and body. Pink froth bubbled up from his lips, oozing down to mix with the blood that soaked into his shirt. What little skin that could be seen beneath the blood was pale, waxen. Bruised. His eyes were lifeless and barely open, only admitting enough light for him to see his way. Blood spotted the ground behind him, leaving a trail all the way back to the alley, where a wire noose and a busted pulley lay in a slowly clotting pool of blood. He stumbled, fell. It took several minutes before he was able to drag himself to his feet and continue on.
The guard on duty at the entrance to the Training Center was bored and half asleep. This shift was always the worst; everyone who had gone out drinking had long since returned, and there probably wouldn't be anyone entering or leaving the compound for several hours. He sighed, standing and stretching to keep from falling asleep. It would be just his luck if his commander decided to stop by on one of his infamous late-night checks of the perimeter. Tired eyes scanned the area outside of the guard shack. Nothing moving inside the compound. Nothing moving outside either… He squinted. Something was moving, hobbling slowly up the street towards the gate. Dark slacks and jacket, white shirt… The figure collapsed, and the guard rushed for his phone. A Turk has just gone down outside the compound.
A/N: Reno really hasn't had a very pleasant evening… Not much to say, except that I've got the next part handwritten out already, so all I have to do is type it up to post it. Hopefully I can do that soon, but no guarantees… I have some field training this weekend, plus a road trip to Alabama, and more field training next weekend, so I'm probably not going to have time to mess with this for a few weeks, since I'll have some classes to make up :(
Oh, and Mainstreet is the name of a local bar near where I go to school :P
While AFF and its agents attempt to remove all illegal works from the site as quickly and thoroughly as possible, there is always the possibility that some submissions may be overlooked or dismissed in error. The AFF system includes a rigorous and complex abuse control system in order to prevent improper use of the AFF service, and we hope that its deployment indicates a good-faith effort to eliminate any illegal material on the site in a fair and unbiased manner. This abuse control system is run in accordance with the strict guidelines specified above.
All works displayed here, whether pictorial or literary, are the property of their owners and not Adult-FanFiction.org. Opinions stated in profiles of users may not reflect the opinions or views of Adult-FanFiction.org or any of its owners, agents, or related entities.
Website Domain ©2002-2017 by Apollo. PHP scripting, CSS style sheets, Database layout & Original artwork ©2005-2017 C. Kennington. Restructured Database & Forum skins ©2007-2017 J. Salva. Images, coding, and any other potentially liftable content may not be used without express written permission from their respective creator(s). Thank you for visiting!
Powered by Fiction Portal 2.0
Modifications © Manta2g, DemonGoddess
Site Owner - Apollo