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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
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Warnings: some very mild language, and horrible rhyming skills.

Chapter Fifteen – Claster

"Faster… Master… Plaster… Shafter… No, wait, that one doesn't…"
"Reno."
"…Sorry." Reno glanced at Rude out of the corner of his eye, checking to make sure that his partner wasn't actually angry. Satisfied when Rude merely shook his head and continued driving, Reno yawned, settling back in his seat.
A week and a half had passed since the episode in the Slums. After stilted apologies between two people with less-than-perfect social skills and several days of awkward conversations and even more awkward silences, the two Turks had come to the unspoken agreement that neither would talk about the incidents following the failed mission, and that if anybody asked, neither knew what they were talking about. The awkwardness had eased considerably after that, although there was still frequently a fair amount of tension between the two…mainly because Reno had decided that the best way of easing awkwardness was to be annoying, a tactic which had mixed success.
Unfortunately for Rude, the two were now stuck in an SUV together for a twenty-hour drive, giving Reno the perfect opportunity to perfect his technique.

Approximately 1200 miles to the northeast of Midgar, a town called Claster thrived. The town was fairly new, having sprung up only twenty years ago when a young entrepreneur was traveling the region and discovered a massive freshwater reservoir hidden in a small valley near the ocean. The rocky mountains and cliffs surrounding the valley had previously ensured that the reservoir went undiscovered, but the purchase of a rare mountain chocobo made travel through the hills all too easy.
The town appeared practically overnight. A road was blasted through the mountains to connect the town to Kalm and Midgar; another road was created to connect the town to a nearby inlet, where a small harbor soon materialized. The budding town itself first attracted tourists looking for a vacation spot; it later attracted engineers. ShinRa had begun developing a global satellite system years prior, but the mountainous region of the Eastern Continent had long posed a problem for satellite communications in the area. The flatlands that housed the Chocobo Farm were too arable and important for farming to waste any of the land building satellite relays (not to mention that the lands made highly valuable chocobo grazing grounds). However, there had never been another site in the northeast suitable for building a communications center. The newly-named town of Claster was the perfect opportunity. With the communications center came a small Mako reactor, necessary for generating power to the center. As usual, with the reactor came urbanization, and the small vacation town rapidly expanded.
Unfortunately, nobody involved in the creation of the town was prepared for the earthquakes that plagued it. After the first few upheavals, a small team of scientists was sent to investigate; they quickly determined that the town was located close to the edge of a tectonic plate. Fortunately, the movement of the plates in that corner of the globe was small, and the earthquakes were very minor. Some small modifications were made to the satellite towers to prevent them from collapsing, and life in the town continued uninterrupted for twenty years.
Now, however, something had gone badly wrong.
Two days before Rude and Reno went down into the Slums, a small earthquake shook the isolated town. The communications center reported to Midgar immediately, informing the headquarters housed in the ShinRa Tower that there was no damage to the towers, and that damage to the town was very minimal. The next day, all communications from the town ceased.
ShinRa spent the next few days attempting to contact the center, but all efforts were in vain. No broadcasts reached the town, and phone calls went unanswered. A pass from one of ShinRa's space satellites showed no apparent damage to the town or to the communications center. Concerned by the lack of contact, and suspicious by the fact that the communications didn't cease until nearly a full day after the earthquake ended, executives at the ShinRa headquarters decided that something was very definitely amiss, and appealed to the Turks for help.
After a few more days spent receiving Cures and Mako injections to heal Reno's shoulder, the pair of Turks found themselves reassigned, the missions in the Slums transferred over to another team. Now they were on their way to Claster, forced to take a regular vehicle due to the lack of helicopter refueling stations along the way. Reno stopped complaining about the drive – once he'd finished whining about not being allowed to drive, that is – and had instead busied himself with talking to fill the silence in between radio stations and CDs. His attempts to come up with words that rhymed with "Claster" was his latest attempt at so-called 'conversation', and Rude found himself extremely glad that they had made it into the mountains, and were only about an hour from Claster. The drive was too long to be cooped up with Reno, and there weren't nearly enough rest stops along the way.

The two looked around uneasily as they drove into the town, Rude slowing the vehicle to a crawl.
"Rude… Where the hell are all of the people?" Rude didn't answer, shoulders tense as he gazed around. The town was silent…dead. The town had a population of nearly 20,000; there should have been people walking around. It reminded Rude eerily of the atmosphere in Sector 3 last week, right before everything went wrong. Frowning, he shook off the feeling of foreboding and sped the SUV back up, heading for the reservoir.
"Let's just check on the communications center first; we'll see if we spot anyone on our way." They didn't, and the trip to the center was tense and quiet.
Parking the vehicle at the base of the path that led up to the control room, the pair got out of the vehicle. Rude didn't bother locking it; there was nobody around to worry about taking it anyway. Shuddering slightly at that thought, he started to turn up the path, stopping when he saw Reno.
Reno stared out at the reservoir, eyes wide and an awed expression on his face. The water, sheltered in the small pocket of the mountains, was glassy-smooth and stretched out to form a gleaming surface, reflecting the mountains as though it were a mirror. It was Reno's first time standing in the mountains, and his first time ever seeing a body of water larger than the swimming pool back at the Turk Training Center.
Rude smiled, momentarily forgetting how nervous this town made him, and pulled out his phone, snapping a photo of Reno before the moment was lost… Which is was as soon as Reno heard the digital shutter sound that the phone made. He blushed a little, rolling his eyes, and turned towards the control room with a light huff, hiding his embarrassment at being caught awestruck with a rather meager showing of irritation. Rude smiled again, slipping the phone back into his pocket, and followed, his light mood lasting for the trip up the path. It disappeared as soon as they rounded the corner of the building and saw the entrance.
The door was ripped off its hinges and lay to the side, gouged with deep slashes and crumpled where it had landed. Freezing momentarily, Reno grabbed the handle of his EMR where it dangled from his wrist, soundlessly flicking on the switch. Rude was already wearing his gloves, but slipped his gun out of the holster under his jacket. Reno glanced over at him and he nodded briefly; they moved towards the entrance silently and burst inside one after another, quickly scanning the room for any creatures or bodies. It was, of course, empty. Reno sighed.
"Guess anything behind that door knows we're here now." They were standing in a small entranceway, a small secretary's desk and chair the only objects in the room. A door immediately opposite the entrance was cracked open an inch, and the Turks moved towards it cautiously.
Rude went in first this time, kicking the door open with a loud slam in the hopes of startling anything in there that was now aware of their presence. He needn't have bothered; the control center that they found themselves in was as devoid of life as the rest of the town. It was, however, as damaged as the front door to the building.
Control panels were ripped from the walls, computer screens and desks smashed and destroyed. Reno flipped on the light switch, and the gouges that littered the walls and floor could now easily be identified as claw marks… From a rather large set of claws. Staring, Rude pulled out his phone again, this time sending a picture to Tseng. The phone rang moments later and Rude answered it, watching Reno walk around and inspect the damaged equipment.
"Sir."
"Rude. What happened? Is there anyone there? Any bodies?"
"No sir. There doesn't seem to be anyone in the town at all, actually. It was completely dead when we drove through."
"Is there any serviceable equipment there at all? There should be cameras installed in the room somewhere…"
Rude relayed the question to Reno, who barked out a short laugh before tossing an object over his shoulder in Rude's direction. The remains of a surveillance camera landed at his feet. "Everything's trashed, right down to the keyboards and stuff. I doubt anything can be fixed." He turned to face Rude.
Rude sighed, lowering his head and rubbing the bridge of his nose. He completely missed the way Reno suddenly tensed and paled, passing on Reno's response to Tseng, who sighed. "Very well. That area isn't known for having many dangerous monsters; it's possible that the earthquake the other week damaged the reactor and caused a leak."
"Uh, Rude?"
Rude held up a finger, indicating for Reno to be silent. He didn't look up, listening to the rest of Tseng's instructions. "Go inspect the reactor for a leak; there's Mako detection equipment with the rest of your gear. Keep a sharp eye out for anything else that's odd; an entire town doesn't just vanish without a trace."
"Rude…"
"Yes sir." He closed the phone, looking up in irritation. "What, Re…" The look on Reno's face as the redhead stared past him made him stop, and he turned around slowly, only now registering the quiet sound of ragged breathing coming from behind him. "Oh. Shit."

A/N: The solution to embarrassing scenes: pretend they never happened!
Remove spaces from the links that are mentioned below... Ok, so Claster is, obviously, not a real town in FFVII. I've uploaded a picture of the FFVII world map, with a mark where "Claster" would be: crystalwind. deviantart art/FFVII-Claster-105444039 That said, I had to estimate "real life" distances on the map, and 20 hours away is just a bullshit timeframe that I made up. I also pretended for the sake of my story that the ridges on the map there are actually an extension of the mountains to the south. A photo showing my general idea of the way the reservoir looks:
crystalwind. deviantart art/Claster-Reservoir-105444292 Had to upload it from the original site to dA, since FFNet doesn't display certain symbols.
While I'm on the topic of pictures, it occurs to me that I never linked to the picture of Reno when he arrived at the TTC. So, here it is: crystalwind. deviantart art/The-Reaper-Pass-100063434
Sorry for the little cliffhanger there :p You can probably guess what's happened though… I guess it is a little bit of a cliché scene.
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- 19
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The Reaper