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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
- 3
- 4
- 5
Warnings: Some violence and alittle language. Lots of dust everywhere :p
EDIT: Sorry about re-uploading this 3 times X(. I didn't realize that I could just replace the old file with the most up-to-date one, and was deleting and re-uploading instead -rolls eyes- That said, most of the spelling and grammar mistakes, and missing spaces, should be fixed, but if you notice anything, please let me know.

Chapter Three - The Meet

Dust hung in the empty streets of Sector 4, kicked up by past travellers and seemingly abandoned to fall forever through the still, dead air. No children's voices rang down the alleyways, no people traversed the run-down avenues on their way home from work. If there had been any sunlight to fall on the dimly lit building complexes, it would have long since faded to twilight. As it was, a dull gloom pervaded the area, as surreal and unchanging as the dust. Few eyes were around to see the small group of people, only nine all-told, slinking in between the buildings. Those silent watchers only saw them because they knew they would be there, and were waiting.
"So, have you guys heard the rumors?" A stocky teenager with prematurely grey hair rolled his shoulders, cracking joints and loosening muscles as they walked. Most of the rest of the group were doing similar stretching exercises, preparing for the fight ahead. Maura, the only girl in the group, paused in checking the action of her pistol to glance over at him.
"You talking about the Reaper?" Now everyone was looking at them, immediately curious at the mention of the Reaper.
Sonny nodded. "Yeah. I heard he's been sending out invites."
Someone else piped up. "I heard he's only faking it. He found a mako cache and is planning to live forever; he's just sending out invites so he can hunt them all down for sport."
Reno barked a laugh, causing everyone to turn and stare at him. Maura and Sonny grinned, expecting something ridiculous to come spouting out of his mouth. He didn't disappoint. "I heard he's ten feet tall, has the head of a coerl, and eats raw babies for breakfast. Too bad it's his head and not his cock, he could make his own babies to eat every day, and never have to go shopping." Maura started laughing so hard she had to stop walking, and Sonny grinned and patted Reno on the back.
"Guess you were right all along, huh Mel? He really is a crazy little bastard."
Mel, stalking along on the fringes of the group, turned to grin back at them. "Told you all so…" Reno smirked, proudly, and Mel continued. "Anyway, enough chit chat. Who gives a fuck if the Reaper's decided to eat babies for the rest of his life instead of run his gang? Ain't none of us got an invite, and we've got other shit to worry about." The others chuckled again at the mention of eating babies, and continued getting ready as they walked, making final checks of their weapons, as Maura was doing.
"We're just about there," Reno informed them. Everyone else exchanged amused looks. Reno was excited… as usual. It hadn't taken Mel long to determine that the smart-ass redhead was as good at stealing as he was at making snarky comments. It hadn't taken anyone long to discover that he excelled at laying traps, evading traps, and destroying things. It had, however, taken them a little longer to discover that what he really excelled at was destroying people. The Gang Wars had been in a state of an uneasy cease fire when he joined Mel's gang three years ago, and Mel preferred to avoid using his gang for hit jobs whenever he could get by doing other jobs, so it was seven months before Reno got his first chance at a true gang fight. He had been twelve at the time. Mel worried that he was too young, that he either wouldn't be able to actually hurt someone else, or that the resulting trauma would destroy his mind, but he was wrong. Reno loved it. Now, two and a half years after his first kill, he was eager to see blood again. As always in the slums, the unceasing Gang Wars obliged him.
Noone could ever really explain why the gangs fought each other. Most of them ran in different territories, conducted different business. They rarely ever actually stepped on each others' toes, and the victors of the Wars never took over the beaten gang's territory. There was no true purpose to the Wars, other than an outlet for violence, and a never-ending fight for dominance and bragging rights. They were violent and bloody affairs that few on the losing sides survived. Reno's side was never the losing side.
Confident and bouyed by Reno's enthusiasm, the gang continued their way towards the Meet, an old, empty lot, boxed in by empty buildings on all four sides. Only narrow alleys led to and from the area, which had been used by Mel's gang as a Meet for longer than Mel had even been alive. Most gangs had their own special area where they held Meets, which was simply a clean way of saying bloodbath. This particular battle had been provoked by a rival gang, led by a nineteen-year-old named Regin, and so Mel got to choose the place of the Meet, as per the Code. It only took the gang a few more minutes to snake their way through the alleys and arrive at the square, where they expected Regin's gang to be waiting, strutting around in some ridiculous display of dominance.
The Meet was quiet, empty. No motley group of teens waiting in the half-light. No insults, no tough posturing. Nobody had come. Mel's gang stared around themselves, silently. It was unheard of for a battling gang to miss a Meet. Feet shuffled uncertainly, and eyes lowered to the ground. Nobody was sure of what to do now. Reno was the only one who continued looking around, suspicious. 'Nobody misses a Meet…' He turned to Mel. "We need to get the fuck out of here. They didn't miss it, they rigged it." Mel lifted an eyebrow, questioningly, and Reno turned away and pointed towards a building on the far side of the empty square. A thin wire led out of a window, running to an adjacent building. The dust on the window was smudged. Someone had disturbed it, and recently. "Bomb, Mel."
It took only a second for that bit of information to process through everyone's minds before they took off, running back in the direction they had come. They fled the scene not a moment too soon; the shockwave from the blast threw them all to the ground, shattering the glass in all of the surrounding buildings. A heavy cloud of dust billowed up, laced with fragments of shrapnel and stone, rushing quickly through the dead alleyways. The silence after the blast was so complete that Reno was afraid he'd lost his hearing. He had always thought the phrase "deafening silence" was just an expression, but now he knew better. There wasn't even any ringing in his ears.
The group picked themselves up, shaken. The sound of rubble falling off of their clothing to the ground was too loud, making most of them jump. The sound of someone else moving through the rubble made them curse, panick, and pull weapons, barely in time to ward off the ambush by Regin's gang. The ensuing melee was brutal. Reno's world narrowed to a sepia-toned picture of flashing knives, bright spatters of blood, bulging eyes. He tuned out the noise around him, leaving himself in a soundless vacuum of violence and death. He fought for minutes. He fought for days. When it was over, he had no idea how much time had passed. Sound returned slowly, reminding him of that long-ago day with his mother, in the bathtub. The rest of Mel's gang stood around, staring at the carnage they had wrought. Nobody spoke; nobody knew what to say. There were no written rules to the Wars, but everyone followed the unwritten Code. To initiate such an attack on a rival was unheard of. Unspeakable. Regin had broken the Code, and paid for it in the lives of his gang.
Sonny was the first to finally speak. "They shouldn't have done that." Reno and the others nodded. Mel simply stared, and Sonny continued. "We need to teach them a lesson. We need to teach everyone a lesson." Everyone looked to Mel, expectantly. He shook his head, dazed.
"I…" He trailed off, falling silent again. Reno's eyes narrowed. Two and a half years ago, Mel had worried that Reno's first gang fight would break him. Now, Reno suspected that Mel'slatest had broken him. He turned away, silently, and twirled his blade in his hand, approaching the body nearest him. Bending over, he casually cut around the boy's face, peeling the skin away and grinding it into the ground nearby with the heel of his boot. He walked from person to person, doing the same, and pulling the bodies into a roughly circular pile at the center of the blasted square, before he got to Regin. Regin, he didn't mutilate. Instead, he cleaned his blade off on Regin's shirt, and hefted the older teen's body over to the center of the pile, laying him on top of his gang, untouched. The message was clear. Regin broke the Code, his gang paid. Leaving him untouched was an insult.
Sonny watched in approval, while Mel looked on in horror. Mutilating the corpse of a fallen enemy was as against the Code as the bombing was. Reno gazed back at him, steadily, and shrugged. "Motherfuckers should have known better."
Mel dropped his gaze. "I can't do this any more." Reno and Sonny were unsurprised, but the rest of the gang looked at Mel in shock. He shook his head, not looking up at any of them. "I'm sorry."
Reno walked over, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You're twenty-one years old, Mel. You've been doing this since you were twelve, and now it's suddenly changed,probably permanently. It's okay. You've been a brother to all of us, a father almost. Don't be sorry, get out while you still can and live a little. You always wanted to open up your own bar or whatever anyway, have a family and shit, well, you can't do that if you spend the rest of your miserable little life hanging around with us street rats." He grinned, and Mel gave a little laugh.
"I'm as much a street rat as you, Reno."
"Yeah, but with class! I'm only known for my hookers, after all." This drew a real laugh out of Mel, who smacked Reno lightly on the back of the head.
"You haven't grown up that much, kid." Mel smirked at him, and the rest of the gang relaxed. Mel was retiring, and was going to be happy about it. Reno would take over, and be just fine as a leader. Things would be ok. Reno smiled, withdrew his hand from Mel's shoulder, and stretched lazily.
"Well, I will. It's been fun guys. Have fun, Sonny." The gang was quickly in turmoil again.
"You're leaving?!" Maura latched on to his arm immediately. "Why? Where are you going? Why aren't you staying with us?" He wriggled a little bit, trying to break free of her leech-like hold on him.
"Sheesh, Maura, I think I'm a little young for you, sweetheart, and I don't like girls anyway. I'm not going to go off and get myself killed or something, relax!" She let him go, reluctantly, and Sonny laughed. Reno smirked at him. "Besides, Sonny's better at the whole 'Dad' bit anyway. He even buys you guys ice cream." Sonny rolled his eyes, and the rest of them chuckled, eased by Reno's easy-going attitude. Reno gave Maura a small hug, and clapped Mel and Sonny on the back. "It's been great guys."
"What will you do now?" Sonny questioned. Reno shrugged.
"I dunno yet. Find something interesting to do." He winked at Maura. "Something that probably will get me killed, knowing me. I'll be around still though, I guess,if you ever need me for anything."
Sonny nodded. "You're part of the family, Reno. You're welcome back any time, if you ever need help or a place to stay."
Mel spoke up as well. "You know I've been eying that place over in Sector 5, for the bar. It's finally for sale, at a price I can afford, so it should be open soon. You're welcome there too. You all are."
"Sweet, we can all meet up for free booze on Fridays now!" Reno pumped a fist in the air, and everyone laughed. With the tension finally broken, everyone passed around handshakes, well-wishes, and promises to meet up again soon, before the gang departed, leaving Reno alone in the center of the square. Rolling his shoulders, he turned and walked into the shadow of one of the buildings. He didn't leave, however. He knew when he was being watched, and was determined to find out who it was. He didn't have long to wait.
There was movement in a building on the other side of the square, away from where Regin's gang had lain in ambush. Reno couldn't name the two men he saw, but he recognized them easily. Turks. They had been more or less permanent figures of his childhood; everyone in the slums recognized the dark suits when they saw them, and few had the nerve to get in their way. Reno had begun to notice them more and more after he joined Mel's gang, and it hadn't taken him long to determine that they were actually watching him, studying him. Why they had chosen him specifically, he didn't know; he had never felt inclined to chase them down and ask. These two, whom he had nicknamed Dot-Head and Sunglass-Guy, were two of the ones he most commonly spotted watching him, and by the way other Turks interacted with them, he suspected they were high up in whatever hierarchy the Turks followed.
Sunglass-Guy was facing his direction, and Reno briefly wondered if the mirrored shades had some kind of crazy infrared capability that allowed him to see exactly where Reno was hiding, but his attention quickly turned to Dot-Head, who was instead looking over at a building next to them. Another figure moved in the shadows there, and it only took Reno a second's glimpse to know that the man in the shadows was not a Turk, which was something new. The man had eyes as dark as his hair, which Reno decided was probably a really dark brown, and he was dressed in street clothes. They were beat-up enough to tell Reno that the man was from the slums, but well-taken care of and clean-looking, which told him that this man was probably the leader of a well-off crime ring of some kind. That was the only kind of person in this town that would spend their time watching a Gang War, after all.
Dot-Head and Shadow-Man stared at each-other across the narrow alley. Reno watched for a moment, until Sunglass-Guy turned towards Shadow-Man as well, before he crept quietly and quickly away from the empty window he had been watching from, and snuck away into the dim alley behing the building. He didn't particularly care who won the staring contest; the personal attention from the Turks was starting to make him nervous, and he didn't like the fact that a new player had now entered into the spying game. The sooner he left them behind, the better.
Unbeknownst to him, the staring match ended almost immediately after he left, with the Turks withdrawing silently back into their building. They knew who the stranger was, even if Reno didn't, and they were too curious to see where his interest in Reno would lead to stake their claim to the teen now. As soon as they backed down from the stand-off, the stranger left, hurrying to cut Reno off before he disappeared into the maze that separated Sector 4 from Sector 5. If Reno made it there first, he would disappear, and the stranger didn't know where he lived to hunt him down at home. Time was running too short to wait for the redhead to reappear in the streets.

A/N: Ooh, drama, drama. I couldn't resist the Dot-Head and Sunglass-Guy jabs, hehe. The Turks make me smile :)
The mysterious Shadow-Man will be revealed at the start of the next chapter, although you might be able to take a guess at who he is based on the rest of this chapter.
No, Reno doesn't really have much of a conscience. It's how he was raised, and it's a pretty dog-eat-dog world down there. He's not a sadist (well, not much, anyway...), he just does what he has to do, that's all.
- 3
- 4
- 5
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The Reaper