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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
- 6
- 7
- 8
Warnings: A little gore, some language, not much else 'till the next chapter.

Chapter Six – The Reaping

Reno would be 16 in two days, and he was seriously contemplating shooting himself before it happened. He was fairly certain that the gods hated him.
The past year hadn't been bad. In fact, for the most part it had been great. He had run the Lich much as he had the first ten months, keeping close track of the group's finances, and even closer track of the jobs they pulled. None of the jobs had been conducted on the behalf of anyone outside Midgar, except for a handful of arms deals, and Reno had been careful not to accept any deals that would bring the Turks down upon his head; they were, after all, still watching him. He was equally careful about the jobs he pulled within Midgar itself, taking into account the fluctuating tensions of the Gang Wars, the rivalries between the other mobs in the city, and even popular political opinions, before signing off on anything.
Past Reapers, Tanner included, hadn't been as careful with the Lich's activity, and had paid heavily for their negligence. Reno's Lich brought in approximately 85 more gil than any of the past Reapers had achieved, even taking into account rising inflation rates, and everyone in the Lich benefited from it.
Even more importantly, in Reno's eyes at least, was the lower cost in lives. Past Reapers had had a fairly large turnover rate, and had to replace fallen members every month. Tanner, the worst of the lot so far as Reno could tell, had had to replace people nearly every week. It wasn't a training issue, merely a severe mismanagement of resources. Tanner had been careless with his jobs, and often assigned people to certain tasks whose skills lay in other areas. If there was one "management skill" that Reno excelled at above all others, it was reading people. He could tell, often at first glance, what a person's personality was. Give him a second looks, and he knew what they were good at doing, what they weren't, their inner fears, their inner desires. He knew people, and he knew how to use them. Thus, his Lich prospered, the product of careful management and meticulous records-keeping.
His personal life fared equally well – he maintained close ties with his old friends, using Mel as a confidant (and a source of free drinks), Toby and Myrna whenever he needed to just hang out and relax. Sonny had brought the old gang out of relative obscurity, raising them into his own mob of sorts, specializing in information-gathering. He even had access to information from the Upper Plate, and was always willing to lend Reno a hand when needed. The aid was mutual, as Reno had promised years ago, and the two became close friends, often sitting in a quiet corner of Mel's place, bouncing ideas and stories back and forth.
Reno's love life, unfortunately, had settled into something completely different. It wasn't that the sex was bad (it wasn't), or that Sim was straying (as far as Reno could tell, anyway). If anything, Sim was too damned close. Reno was at his beck and call, completely twisted around the man's finger, and Reno hated it. He had difficulty saying "no" where Sim was involved, and consequently wound up with Sim always there. He was constantly nosing around in Reno's business, second-guessing Reno's decisions for the Lich and voicing his opinion over everything. Reno had thought he was soft-spoken and quiet; now he knew better. There had been several times during the past year when he'd found himself wishing that the pretty blonde would attach himself to someone else; it would give him a hell of a lot more breathing room, and a lot less trouble, such as the problem he was now facing.
Reno sighed, running a hand through his hair. The Lich had several members who were skilled at infiltration and assassination, including Reno himself. As a result, it was not uncommon for them to receive hit jobs around the city, often asking for whole groups of people to be taken out. Late last night, Reno had received an offer for a similar job, which wasn't that uncommon by itself.
What made it unusual, however, was that this job was for above the Plate, and had been offered by an outsider, a man from Wutai. The job was to eliminate the Turks.
Now, under normal circumstances Reno was up for a challenge; he liked to prove that the Lich was worthy of its frightening reputation. However, he never accepted jobs like this from outside of Midgar – it was bad for local business, because there was just no way of telling what effect such a job might have on the city. The fact that the job was to take out the Turks only made the idea that much more unpalatable.
In Reno's mind, the Turks were like brothers. They performed similar work, often against the various mobs and underground organizations in the slums, but had never interfered in his operations, even though many times they had had to come in behind him to clean up the messes he'd left. He even suspected that they'd helped him out on more than one occasion, although he never saw any proof to confirm that his suspicions were correct. Trying to get rid of the Turks would be like backstabbing family, and Reno had no intention of ever doing so.
Additionally, a proposed hit on the Turks meant that someone wanted Shin-Ra's watchdogs out of the picture. Many people below the Plate blamed the vast company for all their problems, but Reno knew better. The problems in the slums couldn't be changed by a simple regime change. The poverty was too ingrained into people's souls down there, too much a part of the system as a whole. Even if the system was able to change, which Reno highly doubted, the people wouldn't. Everyone complained about wanting a better life, but few had the courage to take it when one was offered, preferring to remain in the comforting, familiar lives that they knew. Giving someone the opportunity to actually pull off some sort of coup would only hurt the city in the end.
In any case, Reno had no intentions of accepting the offer or even meeting with the Wutaiian, even though the man had moved into an abandoned building on the edge of Sector 3 while he waited for a response. All his other valid reasons aside, with how closely the Turks watched him nowadays, there was no possible way they didn't know about the job offer; they'd kill him in a heartbeat if he was foolish to accept, and would probably take down the rest of the Lich while they were at it. The Turks had an even more impressive reputation than the Lich, and he knew they'd earned it, just as he'd earned his.
He sent the man a reply early that morning, informing him that the answer was "no". He continued to say that the man had 72 hours for him and his men to evacuate the city, before the Reaper considered him a threat to operational stability and eliminated him. He made the letter as impersonal and inoffensive as possible, since he figured only a madman would try hiring someone to kill off the Turks, and he didn't particularly want the guy after him too. Relatively pleased with himself, he'd spent a half hour planning on how to inform the Lich of the rejected job, knowing he'd have to explain carefully to avoid an uproar. His efforts, however, were in vain. Sim found out about his response a few minutes later, and all hell broke loose.
'The problem with doing so good at this job is that everyone gets used to the money, and bitches when a well-paying job is turned down,' he thought cynically, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Sim had tried to convince Reno to change his mind, but quickly discovered that jobs were one of the few things he absolutely would not give in on. In retaliation, Sim had, predictably, made sure the entire Lich immediately knew about the job, the potential money involved, and the fact that Reno had refused to accept it. He hadn't bothered explaining to them why Reno turned it down, which made perfect sense, since he also hadn't bothered to listen when Reno explained to him the reasoning behind the decision. The Lich was in an uproar, with everyone demanding that Reno go back and accept the job. 'Funny how they forget that it's my fucking decisions that have made them all so well-off in the first place, those ungrateful bastards…' He had wound up leaving the Hideout after informing everyone that he would not be changing his mind, and that they'd all be wise to think twice to do anything as "moronic and suicidal" as crossing a group like the Turks, who had all the wealth and might of Shin-Ra ("to include their Soldiers, you fucking idiots…") behind them.
Now, after sitting for a few hours in his old hidden home (affectionately called Hole in the Wall the day he first moved into it over three years ago), he figured he probably shouldn't have insulted them quite so much. At the very least, he shouldn't have insulted them and then left; who knew what they'd plan when left to their own devices. The Lich was composed of a well-trained group of individuals, who had all been loyal to him for the past two years, but he was well aware that some of them harbored some resentment towards him. Tanner had chosen him from the outside, passing over many of their own for the job, and many would never really forgive him for that. Now that they were all angry about the job, and no doubt convinced that he was wrong by Sim's loud mouth, there was no telling how many of them might turn on him. A well-trained mob was, after all, still just a mob.
Reno sighed, getting to his feet. His old cargo pants had been worn out and had to be replaced, and his favorite black wife beater had been mended many times over, but little had actually changed in his appearance over the past two years. His clothing had become as much a symbol of him as his hair, and he saw no need to change what he wore. The all-black clothing made him look more sinister and cruel than he really was, which helped when he needed to intimidate people, as he was going to have to do now. His old knife, sharp as the day he first felt its bite, went into its usual pocket, and his trusty old HK went into the holster hidden beneath his waistband. He walked out the door, heading back into the heart of Sector 4, and hoped he wouldn't have to use either of them.

The Hideout was completely silent when he entered, and he immediately stopped, nerves tingling on full alert. There was no talking, no movement, no breathing, when only a few hours ago the building had contained over sixty people. Something was seriously wrong. He crept quietly up the stairs, not trusting to the elevator in the corner, and kept a careful watch out for trip wires or other booby traps. The entire Lich didn't just disappear without leaving something behind.
He made it up to the floor his office was on without incident, and that fact only set his nerves even more on edge. No explosives had detonated, no garroting wire reached out from the shadows to strangle him, nothing happened. He glided forward on the balls of his feet, moving swiftly and silently down the hallway. He knew exactly which floorboards squeaked or shifted, and he avoided them all, making no noise to break the silence. He stopped abruptly when he reached his office.
All of Reno's files were locked in the safe, and he had never told anyone, even Sim, the combination. The lock was well-made, and didn't give any sounds away when passing the correct numbers, preventing someone from cracking it with a stethoscope. Any other form of break-in would take the better part of a day to complete. As a result, he hadn't bothered to shut the office door when he left. Now, however, it was firmly closed, and he was filled with a dark sense of foreboding.
After looking at the door for a few minutes, he decided not to worry too much about booby traps; there had been plenty of opportunity for them to kill him on his way in, without having to destroy any of the upper floors. A little more confident with that decision, he reached out and turned the knob, pushing the door in.
The coppery smell of blood and fear assaulted his nose.
The first thing he saw, when he stepped into the office, was the blood splattered across his walls. The second thing he saw was the sleeve of an old leather jacket, sticking out from behind the blood-soaked desk. He paled instantly; he recognized that jacket. Swallowing a hard lump in his throat, he slowly rounded the desk, looking down at Alyse's pale form. Her skin, already pale from living her eight years of life below the Plate, was translucent from blood loss, marred by a vivid red gash across her neck. Her hair, once a bright copper, was now the same color as his.
'Your hair is a funny color.' He closed his eyes, seeing her cheerful face grinning up at him, holding a 20 gil note in her little hand. 'Look! I found money!' He opened his eyes again. It was too late to avoid seeing her like this; visions of the past would only hurt him now. Taking a deep breath, he willed himself into a semi-detached state. He didn't have time to grieve over the child.
There was a note on the desk, the crisp white paper soaking up blood on its edges. 'Why don't you take a look in the bathroom?' He didn't recognize the handwriting, and he didn't have to think very hard to know that he definitely did not want to "take a look in the bathroom". What could they possibly have left for him that would be worse than Alyse? He knelt down then, reaching out to touch his fingertips to her brow. Her skin was cold, and it was easy to convince himself that she wasn't real. 'Not a little girl. Just a doll that someone broke and left here. Just a broken little doll…' It wasn't as easy as he thought. His eyes burned, and his father's voice echoed in his head, barely remembered after four and a half years. 'I'd better not see one fucking tear…' Reno blinked once, twice. He wouldn't cry.
Standing and turning his back on the broken figure on the floor, he stalked out of the room, leaving bloody footprints in his wake. The bathroom was at the other end of the hall, and he made his way there quickly, wanting to get this nightmare over with. He had a score to settle now, and the day was almost half over.
He kicked the bathroom door open, and immediately wished he hadn't. There was more blood on the walls, but this time it formed a message. 'You shouldn't have turned down the job.' He stared at the wall, blankly, willing himself not to look at the crumpled body below the words. He couldn't stop himself no matter how hard he tried, and he stepped closer, against his will. 'No…'
The body was almost unrecognizable. The skin had been completely peeled away and discarded. Judging by the erratic smears of blood and other bodily fluids across the tile, it had been done while…the person…was still alive. The only thing left to recognize him by was the hair, matted with congealing blood. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the stabbing pain when his kneecaps cracked against the tile, and gathered up a handful of that hair, cradling it to his chest. Only a small clump of it was still blonde; the rest had been dyed pink and red, and dripped from his hands. He trembled violently, staring blankly at it. "Sim…" He had called him a loudmouth, had been angry with him for being too nosy, too overbearing. He had wished him gone, and now… Now he was.

Standing in the shadows of a nearby building, two men in dark suits were the only witnesses to the scream that ripped through the air. It was full of so much agony that at first, they thought he was dying. As it continued, they caught themselves wondering if it was even human. The scream trailed off into nothingness, and they lowered their eyes to the ground, ashamed. They could have stopped this, if they'd wanted to. Given that the job had involved them, they probably even had the right to stop it, to protect the teenager that they had watched for so many years…but they hadn't, and his scream echoed in their minds long after it had stopped.

When Reno stepped out of the Hideout, his cheeks were dry, and his chest was still and silent. No tears or hiccupping breaths gave him away, and his eyes reflected no grief. In his hand, he carried a list with 64 names on it, written in black ink. They weren't written in any particular order, and he scanned them quickly, picking out the names that were closest to his current location, before stuffing the list in his pocket. His so-called family had murdered an innocent girl, and had taken the most important person in his life away from him. He had a score to settle, and all of them would pay. He had a day and a half to settle the debt, before it would be time to rid his city of unwanted guests.

The slums of Midgar were quiet that night. Nobody walked the streets, nobody gathered in bars or restaurants. Families huddled together in their homes, silent and afraid. Earlier in the afternoon, when rumors began floating around that the Reaper was out for blood, nobody really paid any mind to the whispers. The Reaper and his Lich were always up to something, after all, and it rarely involved most people. As the day progressed, however, the rumors grew thicker, and people began to worry.
The Reaper was hunting down members of his own Lich, cutting them down where they stood.
Several bodies had been found with large R's carved into their foreheads. Someone said they were related to a junior member of the Lich.
More bodies turned up in Sector 6. They all had an R carved into their faces.
Bodies started turning up over in Sector 2. No one even knows who they were.
And so they went, becoming more gruesome and disturbing as the day wore on. Nobody knew why the Reaper was destroying the Lich and their extended families, and as the murders increased, people became too afraid to venture any guesses. Everyone began to wonder if perhaps they were related to a Lich member without even knowing it, and slowly, slowly, the cowering city below the Plate shut down. Businesses began closing without warning, and the inhabitants of the slums went into hiding, terrified that the next knock on their door would be from the hand of death.

Mel's bar was one of the last places to shut down that evening. By 2130, the body count had risen to over 100, and was still rising. Reno's friends, the few true friends he had from before the Bloodletting, gathered silently, accepting the drinks that Mel passed around with quiet nods of thanks. Even Myrna, still the youngest of them all, was there that night, curled up against Toby's side for comfort. They all waited on Sonny, hoping he'd bring some solid news with him when he arrived. They weren't disappointed, crowding around him when walked in, handing him a drink as he settled.
"Well, the rumors that it's the Reaper are true, in case anyone was doubting that. He's mostly been moving from Sector to Sector, taking out the members of the Lich as he comes across them. The other deaths are, as suspected, family members."
"Why is he doing this? What happened?" Maura was the first to voice the question that had been plaguing them all, and they looked to Sonny expectantly, hoping for an answer. He sighed.
"That I don't know for certain; what I know are only rumors and guesses. From what we've been able to put together, it looks like someone offered him a job that he turned down. I don't know what it was, just that it was big, and the Lich got mad when they found out he didn't take it. They killed someone to teach him a lesson, and he started going on a killing spree, some time around 1200 today. I haven't been able to find out who they supposedly killed."
Nobody needed to be told anyway. Reno had talked about Sim often when he came to the bar, and it hadn't been hard for anyone to see past his complaints and general whining that he was really in love. Mel looked down at his hands, angrily. "They took the best thing that's ever happened to that kid. Those bastards deserve everything he gives to them. I hope he gets them all." His words were harsh, bloodthirsty. Everyone else in that silent gathering agreed wholeheartedly.

No change in light marked the turning of the next day, no shadows eventually lengthened into dusk below the Plate. Deep in the ruins of the Sector 4 slums, there weren't even any neon lights to do the job. No people walked the abandoned avenues on their way home from work, no children's voices rang out through the streets. In the dank ruins that formed Sector 4, there were no lights. No noise. Hardly any life, and what little there was, was slowly bleeding away.
Had there been anyone present to witness Reno's slow progress towards the Hideout, they would have had trouble distinguishing his red hair from the blood that clotted it, the blood that streaked his skin and soaked into his clothing. That blood wasn't his, but the blood falling to the ground was, and it showed in his face. His cheeks appeared sunken, his skin pale and waxy, making the twin scars on his cheekbones stand out vividly. His eyes, surrounded by bruise-like shadows, were dull and tired.
The past day had been brutal, emotionally and physically. With the opening of a single door, his life had been turned upside down, shredding his heart and his humanity along with it. The Lich had paid for their transgression, several times over. All but one were dead, along with the majority of their families. Several homes had been burned to the ground, and his mark, that bold, slashing R, littered the slums. Hardly any areas were untouched. The only member of the Lich who hadn't been killed was nowhere to be found, and Reno suspected that he'd fled the city entirely. It was the only way anyone could have avoided his vengeance.
Now, however, thoughts of vengeance had been swept aside, blanketed by mind-numbing exhaustion. He left a light trail of blood behind him as he dragged himself closer to the Hideout. Why he went there instead of Hole in the Wall, he wasn't really sure. Perhaps he just wanted to see Sim's body one last time, before he drank to death. He certainly didn't have any real reason to keep living after this.
Sighing when the Hideout finally came into view, he straightened, forcing himself to walk without limping. If this was his last act before he died, he wanted to go out with a little dignity. When he got close enough to see the front door, however, he stopped. 'Didn't I shut that behind me when I left yesterday?' Only a fool, or a member of the Lich, would dare enter the Hideout uninvited. He set his jaw, pulling his knife out of his pocket. Apparently, he still had work to do.
Pain and fatigue forgotten, he slipped quietly up to the building, listening before he went inside. He heard the sounds of movement from the upper floors when he neared the stairs, and sneered coldly. 'Someone doesn't know I'm not dead yet.' Driven by his refueled desire for revenge, he made his way up the stairs quickly, making no sound as he went. The sounds were coming from his office, and his eyes narrowed in anger when he saw that Alyse's body had been unceremoniously dumped in the hallway. 'That was a mistake.' He put the knife away and pulled out his HK instead. He hadn't used it much the previous day, preferring to get dirty with his blade, so he still had half a magazine left in the gun. Bracing himself, he swiftly kicked open the door.
"…Sim?"

A/N:
Insert cliffhanger of doom. (Sorry, I stole that from someone, but I don't remember who)
Sorry, it's late, and I'm having serious issues writing this scene, so I decided to chop it off here and stick the rest in another chapter. I'd say it will be a short chapter, but I said that about the last one, which is my longest chapter yet, so… yeah.
Anyway, thanks to tala-fangirl for another review :)
Aaand… I'm going to bed now. Feel free to point out any spelling mistakes or whatnot that I've missed.
Oh, and in case the last part of this chapter seems strangely familiar to any of you… re-read the Prologue ;) We're now finally caught up to where we started from.
- 6
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- 8
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The Reaper