The Lost Chronicles of Reno

By Blood-Smeared Shuriken

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in Final Fantasy VII or anything really. That joy belongs to Square-Enix. Someday I will own a Reno plushie to hug, though. Squeeee!

Prologue

Born of Pain

The injured teenage boy staggered through the rain washed wrecking yard, a hand pressed hard to the deep cut in the back of his head in a futile effort to slow the crimson spill of blood as he searched desperately for a place of safety, where he could evaluate the severity of his wounds, and possibly do something about them. Similar flows of dark red fell from two identical cuts high on his cheekbones and from a gunshot wound in his thigh, the blood nearly the exact same shade as his red hair, which was a bit too long and caught in a messy ponytail, untrimmed for weeks. He caught sight of an abandoned truck and managed to tug the door open, dragging himself inside to collapse on the back seat. His blood ran out from between his fingers and began to soak into the cheap seats. The redheaded teenager gave a low, pain filled moan, wincing at the agony that flowed through his body at even the slightest move. He should have…

Known better…

Moved faster…

Been less trusting…

He opened his eyes and stared sullenly up at the roof of the truck, glaring at the slashed cloth and the rust spots on the revealed metal. He'd gone to the meeting with his drug dealing cousin in stupid faith, believing in that dipshit "blood is thicker than water" thing, but had been ambushed by a bunch of his cousin's thuggish friends armed with crowbars and chains. They'd beat the crap out of him for a while - apparently his bastard of a cousin hadn't liked the way that he'd been dealing a booming business in arms and semi-professional theft right under his nose. In the redhead's perverse version of luck, some Shinra soldiers had shown up before the thugs had been able to finish killing him and had decided to arrest all the Slum-dwellers for disturbing the peace. The group had included some complete freak in a dark blue suit, who'd shot the teenager in the fucking leg. He hadn't needed that, thank-you-very-much. He hadn't even done anything to deserve it. Sure, he'd punched the freak, but that had just been to get him out of the way so he could run like hell. Not enough to merit a bullet.

The boy moaned again, wondering if he was going to die here. After all the years he'd managed to survive living on these damned streets, he was just going to die? In the back of a scrap yard truck? His eyes slid closed as exhaustion pulled at him. He'd just… sleep here… for a while. It'd all be okay when he woke up.

NO!

Angry bluey green eyes flashed open; he dragged himself upright with an effort and pulled a knife out of one of his scuffed boots. He managed to yank his shirt off, nearly passing out from the pain as he lifted the black fabric over his head, and shredded it into long strips with shaking hands, making bandages, tourniquets. He wrapped one tightly around his injured leg, cutting off the blood supply. Another couple were made into a rough pad and tied to the wound in the back of his head. He touched the cuts in his cheeks, wincing at the pain, but noticing with relief that the flow of blood from those two minor wounds had decided to stop. Then he picked up his knife again, gritting his teeth with predicted agony. The knife hovered hesitantly over his leg. Could he do this?

"Well…" he said out loud, his voice sounding disgustingly weak in his own ears. "Let's put it this way… Do you want to live?"

The mental answer was immediate. He plunged the knife into bullet wound, giving an involuntary cry of pain as he did so, feeling insufferable anguish as fresh blood leaked from the wound. He wanted to yank the knife out again, wanted to curl up in a ball and whimper until all the pain, all the misery was gone again. He wanted to sink into the tempting oblivion that he stood on the brink of. He wanted it all to just end.

But a teenager's will to live is a funny thing, burning brightly through the black depths of despair, and he could feel the tip of the knife touching the bullet. So he continued to dig the knife it, straining to slide the tip under the bullet. Dark spots danced in front of his eyes, his breath came in gasps. He couldn't stand this for much longer… Any second now, he was just going to pass out.

But, amazingly, he managed to get enough leverage to pull the bullet up a little bit, just enough so he could stick slender fingers into the wound and pull it out. He hurled the bullet away from himself, out the broken window of the truck and into the night, before packing the wound with bits of his shirt, and wrapping it tightly with the remaining shirt-bandages.

That done, he let his head fall back against the seat with a small thud, feeling sick to the stomach and dizzy. He just wanted to collapse. But he couldn't just stay here. He wasn't far enough away from the place where those Shinra soldiers had turned up: they might have followed his pretty conspicuous trail of blood and if he didn't go soon, then he would be utterly screwed.

He moved slowly, painfully, towards the door, freezing as he caught sight of his agonized face in the mirror. He smiled slowly, morbidly, not quite sure if he liked what he saw in the reflective glass.

Where was the streetwise teen smartass now, huh? Where was nasty mouthed fighter, the guy who'd survived on his wits for the best part of a decade? It seemed like the brat he had once been had been burnt away in that bleak agony, at some point when he'd been retrieving the bullet. His eyes looked harder, nastier. There were no jokes now, nothing. Just a will to survive born of the pain that had been inflicted upon him.

He looked away from the mirror, irritated that he'd been allowing himself to get distracted. He slid down out of the truck, giving a low cry of pain as his injured leg jarred against the ground, along with half a hundred nasty bruises from the until now forgotten thugs who had preceded the soldiers. With a mutter expletive, he limped off through the wrecking yard, sticking to the shadows as much as was possible. He moved slowly around a stack of crushed cars, shivering slightly at the feel of the cold wind on his bare chest…

…and came face to face with the dark haired freak whose gun had put a hole in his leg.

His reaction was immediate: he tried to punch the man in the face. Sadly, the loss of blood had seriously slowed him down, and the man/bastard was able to grab his fist before it made contact, twisting the teenager's hand up behind his back. The redhead gave a strangled cry of pain, nearly collapsing as the move jarred his leg. The dark haired, blue suited jerk glanced down, noticing the rough bandage, and then, very deliberately, punched him in the thigh, right over the bullet hole. Hard. The pain flared, a million times worse than before, and it was all he could do to choke back the scream that threatened to break loose.

The injured boy's legs buckled as he finally fell unconscious, dropping down Into that black pit which had been so tempting before, but was now nothing more than an unacceptable fate to be avoided. He was not going to die.

A/N: In case you hadn't noticed, the "freak" was Tseng. I don't actually like that man. He annoys me. I love Reno though. (and the way i didn't mention his name at all was deliberate.) I'm not putting then next chapter up until i get at least two reviews. I see no point in wasting my time on something that nobody is enjoying. Thanks.