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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.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Warnings: Those little bastards get what they deserve… and then some.

Chapter Eleven – Revenge

The Turk Training Center was unnaturally quiet on Wednesday morning, its inhabitants shaken by Monday night's events. A Trainee was in the hospital, victim of a brutal attempted murder by some of his fellow Trainees. There were few rules governing the conduct between Trainees, but no murder, or injury with intent to kill, was pretty high on that list. The perpetrators, however, had not been caught, accused, or confessed; Reno was unconscious, and only a fool would admit to being involved. The five in question were not fools.
Nevertheless, everyone knew who was responsible; the five were shunned by the other Trainees, and sat alone in their classes, silent and unspoken to. The entire compound waited with bated breath to see what would become of them, and of Reno.

It was three days before he was awake and released from the hospital, his physical injuries Cured enough for him to return to classes. Social opinion of him had changed drastically during those few days – no one thought that he deserved what happened, and the other Trainees were now, finally, supportive of his right to be there with them – but he secluded himself from them, sitting silently in his back corner. Even the instructors, who would normally have rejoiced to see the boisterous redhead finally keeping quiet, were concerned. He sat with his head down and shoulders slumped, looking beaten, broken. The Cure materia had only worked to fix his physical hurts. Many had wished to see him humbled, but now that he finally was, they regretted it. Reno was too loud, too damned bright, for them to bear watching him waste away. Outwardly, he was devastated.
Inwardly, he plotted. He was tired of being stabbed in the back, tired of being stomped on. He knew why Tseng hadn't punished his five tormenters, understood completely, but he had never been one for letting betrayals go unpunished. The Reaping had been enough to prove that.
The world was at his disposal. He had been sneaking around the compound since he arrived, and had discovered the Tech Department even before he found the library's maps. He had returned there frequently, studying everything he could get his hands on, even borrowing objects and compounds for a few nights before returning them, if he needed more time to understand what something did. He drew pictures and wrote humorous notes to the lab techs, asking questions if he couldn't figure out what something did on his own. Charmed by a Trainee that they had, fortunately, never actually met in person, they were amused by his curiosity and blatant disregard for locked doors, and always wrote back, hiding the notes in creative spots for him to discover. In this manner, he had gained valuable knowledge and uncontested access to resources that few others even knew existed.
He had also flirted and joked his way into the good graces of the cooking staff early on, a benefit that he had previously used to garner special drinks and treats from them. Combined with his propensity for sneaking through the buildings' ventilation systems, he had practically unlimited access to every aspect of the Trainees' lives, a fact that he now used to his advantage. He studied the five for over a week to memorize their patterns and habits before sitting down at his desk one night, pulling out a sheet of notebook paper, and making a list.

Marten was the first to go. He had harmed Reno the least that night, and got the benefit of the lightest revenge. Reno skipped classes that day, instead settling to wait on the roof of one of the administrative buildings. The rooftop overlooked several of the buildings that housed the classrooms. Armed and hidden by the raised edge of the roof, Reno waited for Marten to emerge from the building directly to his left. He had timed it well, and didn't have long to wait. Carefully placing the muzzle of his weapon in a conveniently-positioned crack in the low wall, Reno took aim, paused in his breathing, and gently squeezed the trigger.
Marten's head snapped back, a large bloom of red appearing dead-center in his forehead. He dropped to the ground, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.
It took him several long moments to realize that, had a sniper round struck him in the forehead, his brains would be spattered on the ground behind him, and he would be dead. It took him another moment and a quick taste of the substance on his forehead to confirm that it was paint. He shook uncontrollably, unable to get up from the ground. Trainees weren't selected because they were idiots, and Marten knew exactly who had shot him. He also knew that if Reno could find a paintball gun, of all things, in the compound, then he could easily find a real gun. Marten was lucky.
Reno waited, motionlessly, for Marten to finally get up and leave, still trembling. By that time, everyone else in the area had stopped looking around and rushed away, lest the unseen sniper decide to take some more potshots. Once he was sure that no one was around to pay attention, Reno moved back to the trap-door in the roof, low-crawling just to be safe. He returned to his room, cleaned the paintball gun, and stored it in one of the locked boxed beneath his bed, stashing his set of lock picks back in his pocket once he was done. He then pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and crossed a name off of the list.

Kenon and Trey were the next two to go, and were attacked within an hour of each other. Kenon opened the door to his room and had just enough time to see a gleaming blade slash out at him before a vivid red line appeared across his throat, red slowly oozing down to soak into his collar. He stood there, too shocked to move, his eyes focused on the holographic panel situated in the middle of his room. He shifted slightly, bringing his hand up to his neck, and the knife in the holograph shifted as well, appearing to move sideways. The panel projected the image just far enough to make is seem as though the knife was right there, and he flinched backwards without thinking. Pulling his hand away from his neck, Kenon slowly looked down at the red staining his palm. Paint.
Trey appeared in the multipurpose room about an hour later, trembling, a thin red line slashed across his throat. He was too shaken to tell anyone what had happened. Kenon brought a hand up to his own throat, remembering the feeling of that paint slicing across. When they returned to their rooms later in the day, ducking out of paranoia when they opened they doors, they discovered that the holographic panels had disappeared.
Aika, the only female in the group, fell victim to a much more ominous attack. The Trainees had spaghetti for dinner that night, and the meal was served out of large communal pots. No one was entirely sure how Aika got food poisoning from the meal, when nobody else was affected, but she woke up in the middle of the night cramping and vomiting, and had to be taken to the hospital. Blood tests showed that she had been poisoned by an enterotoxin secreted by Clostridium perfringens bacteria. Subsequent tests on the leftover spaghetti sauce and the pots used for cooking showed no signs of the bacteria. Aika was released from the hospital late the next day, but had to be hospitalized again two days later because she refused to eat anything. The other Trainees didn't see her again.
Several days passed after Aika was hospitalized, with no sign of attack on Devin. He became jumpy, startling at the slightest noise and becoming increasingly paranoid about what he ate. The rest of the Trainees, with the exception of Reno, found themselves watching him almost continuously, wondering what would happen to him.
Reno, for his part, didn't seem to pay any attention to Devin at all. He hadn't paid any attention to the other four either, remaining in his depressed state over the course of the past week and a half. His apathy led many of the Trainees to believe that he wasn't behind the attacks at all, and that someone else was getting revenge for him. He certainly wasn't ever seen doing anything to Devin, who had taken to fleeing at the first sight of him. Of course, nobody could see into the ventilation systems.

For several nights, Reno had been crawling through the ventilation ducts over to Devin's room. Once there, he pulled an object resembling an inhaler out of his pocket, sprayed one puff into Devin's room, and left. The vapor had no color and no odor, and Devin was too heavy of a sleeper for the small noise made by the inhaler to wake him.

Two weeks after Reno returned from the hospital, Devin was taken away screaming. Some of the rumors spreading throughout the Training Center said that he had started convulsing on the floor in the middle of a class. Other rumors stated that he had started to scream and go into hysterics, claiming that "They're coming to get me!" Reno, typically, showed no response when the rumors were talked about in front of him. Then again, he never did.
Two days later, the lab techs in the Tech Department found a pile containing one of their high-powered sniper rifle-based paintball guns, two holographic panels, a test tube labeled Clostridium perfringens, and an "inhaler" containing one of their newly-developed neurotoxins. A small note stuck onto the paintball gun read, "Thanks, I really had a blast with all this stuff." A tiny sketch of a black-haired Trainee freaking out in a straight jacket completed the note.
The lab techs smiled, put the equipment back where it belonged, and went back to work, hiding a note saying "You're welcome" under a box containing one of their newest weapons, an electromagnetic stun baton. He would find the note eventually.

A/N: Eh, so Clostridium perfringens is a heat-resistant bacterium that causes (typically) non-lethal food poisoning, with an incubation period of 8-16 hours. Food poisoning from this bacterium is usually resolved within 24 hours, and scientists believe that most people have probably gotten food poisoning from it at some point in their lives. Yay for Wikipedia :p
I tried to find a neurotoxin that would fit Devin's punishment, but the ones I found were all related to chemical warfare, and are highly lethal, which wouldn't work for this. Oh well…
Nobody's ever gonna mess with Reno like that again, lol.
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- 15
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The Reaper