Disclaimer: I don't own anything pertaining to FFVII. I wish I did.

Here is the awaited sequel to "The Footsteps of Life". If you haven't read it, don't worry, Reno will recap the past for you quite nicely. For those of you who are coming back, welcome back! And enjoy your stay.

Hey you. My name is Renaldo Miller. Most likely, since you're reading this story, you already know about my past. But let's recap here, for those of you who weren't cool enough to read about my past. That's okay. You can go read it later. Gotta say it ain't real normal.

Okay. I was born in Midgar slums. Pretty regular kid. I had brown hair back then, and nothing of these mako-treated freaky blue-eyes shit. Mum was an angel, Dad was a bastard. I hated Dad. I still do. I have a younger brother, named Luca, who raises chocobos on a chocobo farm. Not an interesting job, if ya ask me. Anyways. Dad was a royal prick and a pain in the ass to say the least, and he always favored Luca to me. Not the regular kind, the terribly favored kind. So one day I snapped – I think I was fifteen or something around that – and left the house. Quit school, of course. The dude I looked up to, Legend, think his name was, told me to stay in school but I said no friggin' way. Teachers hated my guts, the principal just wasted paper and killed trees on me.

I lived off the streets for couple of years. I joined a gang. Nothing too dangerous; I always knew my exit route and shit, and I'm pretty fast. I was a slum kid anyway. Nothing like getting raped, or raping people, or prostitution. (Hey, I've never actually seen a whore outside Honeybee, come to think of it.)

When I was 18, Tseng, my boss, was in the slums and he saw me do my shit. The douche – in all his uppity I'm-starched-and-I'm-righteousness – thought that I'd be a great Turk. 'Course, had no idea what Turk was. We don't hang around too much. Not many people know who we are. We're underground, we did – and still do – Shinra's dirty shit. That's our job. Most of them are dangerous. We get paid good.

I think I was a Turk for four years and counting when I met… her. Yeah. Four years. I was already a second-in-command of the Turks. The title didn't mean anything, but it just meant that if Tseng was gonna go a downer, I was gonna order people around. Never thought that'd happen, but that'll come on later. Sheesh, hold your horses. I'm getting there, 'right?

Anyways, the new chickie was Tseng number two, as far as I could see. And since I was bothering Elena so much – well, I wasn't, I was just playin', jeez Elena! – Tseng assigned her to me. You know, teach the silent rules of the Turks and shit. Like, you can kill people. We're licensed to kill. Or even if you don't follow orders to the letter, some goodies to Rufus will earn you brownie points. The stuff that's not in the handbook. (Hey Tseng, is there a Turk handbook? Never seen one before…)

Me, having my reputation, had to fuck this chick before the sun went down. Usually I'm good. Oh yeah, real good. I usually score, unless Rufus has already scored, then I don't wanna bed Ruf's trash, so I don't. But crikey, this chick – her name's Arien, by the way, weird name, isn't it? – didn't back down. She put up a fight.

She was pretty good, I gotta say. She managed to be alive without junior Turk training. Me and she are the only ones who never were junior Turk. Well, Arien was an Intelligence person, so maybe that counts. Yeah, I'm special. Fresh picked from the slums, yeah?

Where was I? Oh yeah. Well, I had to work with this chick. I left Rude, cuz he could take care of himself well and through, ya know? I mean, he's a Turk veteran. Anyway, something happened that I didn't mean for it to happen. While I was hunting this chick down, I fell for her. Maybe because I was her first guy. Or something. Who knows. Yeah. I bet that was her plan all along. Don't deny it, Arie, you wanted me. You wanted me bad.

We started going out, shopping and dates and all the casual shit, then my room got trashed and since we lived in the same building – thanks a lot Tseng, you got me a bitch – I just moved into her room. It wasn't like we were that intima… intimate? Hey Arie, is that the word? Yeah it is. Anyway, we weren't that intimate, but I was too lazy to haul my shit across the sector, so I just moved in. We got closer then.

Then all the crap happened with AVALANCHE and Old Shinra getting a nice stick in his back and Sephiroth and Meteor. Hectic. Arie got abducted, I went crazy about it, cuz Hojo's assistant thought it was a jolly good idea to do some weird shit to her. Turns out her sister wanted me as well – hey Elena, I told you I'm hot – so they switched. I didn't know what the fuck was going on. So Arie's sister, Reniel, got all the weird shit done to her. Then Reniel wasn't feeling too good with the weird shit – and that's an understatement right there – so they switched back again. Arie came back, the world was good, happy ending. Tseng got hurt, we thought he died, killed by Sephiroth (I told you I'll get to it. Well, here it is.) Right?

No.

When Shinra HQ fell, Arie happened to be on guard duty, so she saved Rufus' life (thanks Arie, for adding a few more years of hell to my life). She got hurt, she couldn't move for two weeks, blah blah. She got better, though. Shinra was gone, Rufus was just this dude in white suit now, and we Turks stuck around because… yeah, I admit it, we kinda like that prick. Uppity, annoying, snob, but we like him. I mean, I took bullets and knives for that guy.

Well, after stuff got back in order (sort of), we were in Healin. Arie and I bought a house. We killed people, because they were causing trouble. We had booze (as always). We had sex (like the usual). No, not Elena and me or Rude and me or Tseng and me or Rufus and me. ARRGH! Stop that shit. I am NOT gay, and Elena's swooning over Tseng in such a disgusting way I wanna puke. I mean Arie and me. What? We were dating, we fucked. (We still do.) Come on. We were like, 22 and 24, okay? Raging hormones. Whatever.

I think it was around this time that Geostigma started to go around. We didn't know it wasn't contagious back then, so we freaked out. Then it turned out Rufus had it. Even more freaking. Arie got Geostigma too, but she, being the independent bitch, never TOLD me. We'll get to this later.

We went to Costa – I think it was vacation – and Arie got this thing poked through her wrist by mistake. And it was her fault too. She got jealous of me… okay, okay, Arie, I'll stop, stop stepping on my foot with your four inch heel! Anyway, we didn't know that but what that thing did was infect her with this virus that made her able to do weird things and shit. We'll get to this later too.

We came back from Costa. Rennie died – she was pretty sick in the end – and Arien got depressed, blaming herself. The silver-haired babies were starting to bother Rufus right around then, so Tseng and Elena and me and Rude and were sent to take care of them. Well, Tseng and Elena and me were sent to get Jenova's head. As you already might now, they did a shitty job. I say shitty, Elena! That job was absolutely shitty! Okay, okay, enough with heels already. Rude and I came back, me bearing a gift – a slimy piece of an alien. Yeah, great gift, huh? "Here, sweetie, here's a piece of grossly slimy alien head. Don't you just love it?"

Arien, who was back at Healin taking care of Rufus, was sent to find Tseng and Elena, because, you know, they were missing. Arie found Tseng and Elena in the Forest of the Ancients, and another dude – Vincent Valentine. I think they still keep in touch sometimes. Arie treats him like a brother. Hey, as far as Valentine's not fucking my girl, I'm fine with it.

Well, Arien brought the two back home. Then we were sent to chase after the silver-haired trio. We first went to Gold Saucer – Elena got laid there, I just thought you'd like to know – and then we headed for the Wutai crypts. But turns out there were creepy ghosts in Wutai crypts. I had to haul Tseng out – Elena and me aren't really that sensitive to Wutai spirits, according to Tseng, because we aren't bred to believe in 'em. Tseng was from a family of priests – and that's why he has that red dot on his forehead, I used to think it was for archery target practice – so he was down. Arie was down too, even though she was just from a merchant class and wasn't that sensitive to it. Arie was taking the back, she got lost. She managed to get out by using the weird virus-power of hers, but got nearly torn in two.

This was around the time when we found out that Arie was pregnant. It was also around this time that Sephiroth – apparently he was trying to talk Arie into telling him where his dear mommy's head was – started to have a stronger influence. In the end, Arie found out that she lost the baby, and the weird virus shit, with Geostigma, could create a new disease. And since I was the closest – we did share a bed, lived in a same house – I was the most likely to get the sickness.

So out of her deep love, she decided to dump me after telling me I was a piece of shit and nothing more than a trash, then leave me. I was pissed, but I got over it. I slept around couple of times, but it didn't work… I kept seeing that bitch in the girls' faces. Anyways, the silver-haired trio started causing trouble, so we had to fight them. You know the story, I think. Square-Enix showed small parts in this movie called Advent Children. (Gotta tell you, Cloud does NOT look that good, his hair is actually really the size of his head and his body the size of his hair, Sephiroth really looks more like a girl, Yazoo IS a girl, Loz doesn't have a brain, and Kadaj was definitely a juvie… and I look MUCH better than that.)

Well, after the fight in the tunnels (or when we just blew Yazoo the Pansy and Loz the Brainless up) I had a match with Arie, who betrayed us (or that was what we thought). She shot erratically through my arm. I shot her through the chest. And me, being the Turk I am, left her there to die.

But that was lucky, because the rain that fell afterwards got rid of her Geostigma. She was found nearly dead, got carried to a hospital. The doctors took out the bullet. She was legally dead after that anyways. She got buried – I had to bury her myself, worst moment of my life, I thought I was gonna go crazy – then after we left, she came back to life. Or something. Using her super virus—power shit, she got out of the grave, made her way back to The Edge. That's the new city.

Anyways, I was PISSED at her. So when she showed up on our doorstep, I screamed at her. She just said she didn't ask for forgiveness. Then she walked away. Without anything else. I got pissed off, but I also thought that if I didn't chase her, Arie, being the bitch that she is, would never come back. I also got a letter from her written before she semi-died (her dad gave it to me at the funeral) explaining everything. So we made up. We had make-up sex. Yes we did. It was good. Arie got pregnant again. This time, she had the kid safely. (Gotta say though, I'm so glad I'm a guy… I feel good with sex. Arie had to go through about a day's worth of pain… really.) It was a boy, Arie asked Vincent if she could have his name, Vince said sure. I wasn't too crazy with the idea, but my other ideas were like "Fluffly" and "Walnut" (I didn't tell her my ideas… didn't really want my ass shot off), and since Arie's a woman she won. So Vincent Renaldo Miller it was.

So we thought we could live happily ever after. Everything was done. A person couldn't go through so much in his life, right? We were done with killing and world chaos and Meteor and Sephiroth and all the "catastrophes" (hey Arie, is that how you spell it?), right?

How wrong we were.