X/1999 Fan Fiction ❯ Mystic Fire ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter One: Hospital Visit

I don't know how long I was out, but I guess whoever was trying to help me must have taken me to a hospital, because the first thing I saw when I woke up was pristine white walls. There was a needle in my left arm, I had been bandaged up, and my ribs had been set. I hadn't even realised they had been broken in the fight. I felt dizzy, drugged, and about ready to throw up my insides. I did not feel comfortable. I did not like hospitals at all. Hospitals meant doctors. Doctors, in Midgar, meant Hojo. Hojo meant experimentation and excessive testing on the Mako levels in the bloodstream. Doctors, not necessarily Hojo, but mainly him, all freaked me out. I have good reason for that, as you can tell from what I just told you.
I shot up in bed, letting out a cry of pain as I did so. Sitting up suddenly with broken ribs, definitely not a good idea. Very painful, not recommended. I wrapped my arms around my ribs, trying to ignore the pain. I crawled out of bed, grabbing the needle in my arm and pulling it out as I did so. I don't know what was in the IV, but I don't think it was anything that important. Whatever. I wanted the hell out of that room. It was too white, too clean. I don't like rooms like that. Like the doctors that occupied them, hospitals freak me out. I am used to dark alleyways, dimly lit rooms, and wide open spaces. Blinding white paint on uniform flat walls just weren't something that I liked.
It was then that I realised that a) I wasn't wearing my uniform, or any of my clothes for that matter, b) my EMR wasn't in my hand, and c) the gun I usually keep strapped to my side was missing. These three realisations made me even more nervous than the fact that I was in the hospital. Now, I knew that I was weaponless in a hospital, with only my fists to defend myself. This was just not my day. I get in a fight with AVALANCHE, get my ass handed to me, meet up with Death and blackout only to find myself in a strange place, then in a hospital of all places. No, today was not going well at all.
A man walked into the room and stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw me. He was wearing a white coat, so I knew right away that he was a doctor. While I know I should be grateful, seeing as it was a doctor that fixed me up, like I said, I do not like or trust doctors. I took up a defensive position, readying myself to knock this guy out if he tried anything. Instead, he just stood there, stared for a few seconds, then shouted something out the door. I have no clue what he said, but apparently, it was enough to bring in a couple other doctors.
Let's remember one little equation, keeping in mind that I have never been any good at math, but this one is one that I'll always get right: Reno plus doctors equals all hell breaking loose. Immediately, I tensed up, ready to strike anything that moved. One of the doctors looked at me and then turned to the others, again speaking in the language that I couldn't understand for the life of me. Not that I really cared what they were saying; I just wanted out and they were not going to be in my way in about, oh, five seconds. I may not look it, but I am a speedy little fuck. No doctors were going to stay between me and my freedom. Oh, no.
One of the doctors had the guts to actually approach me. I glared at him and readied my fists for action. The doctor looked at me and then turned to his colleagues, as if for back-up.
Oh, no, you don’t, I thought. Just because there’s three of you and only one of me doesn’t mean I’m going to give in. I’ll take you all on.
The first doctor said something to me, choosing this time to attempt the language I could somewhat understand.
“Let us help you,” he told me, though his ‘l’ sounded more like an ‘r’ than anything else. “We will get you better.”
“I don’t need any help!” I snapped at him. “I can take care of my own injures!”
“You are very drugged,” the doctor continued. “You must get in bed.”
“Fuck, no.’
“Please, Reno-san. Your injuries are severe. You need rest.”
“They can heal without your help,” I bit out, feeling the pain in my side coming back. It seemed the drugs I had been given were starting to wear off.
It made me very uncomfortable that this doctor knew my name, but he had probably found my ID and checked it over. Thankfully, my ID didn’t state that I was a Turk; that would probably get my ass killed immediately. Instead, it stated that I was an official within Shin-Ra's Executive Department Investigation Section, which kept me and the rest of the Turks safe. Outside of Shin-Ra Headquarters, the Turks were nothing but rumours, albeit frightening ones.
“Reno-san, we must ask that you return to your bed,” the doctor insisted. “We do not wish to call security.”
“Go ahead and call them,” I told him. “I’m not staying here, yo.”
The man gave a sigh, and then turned to one of the others, barking an order in their language. The other doctor went out of the room and yelled something down the hall. On instinct, I headed towards the window, ready to jump through if I needed to in order to get out of there. However, the two doctors still in the room grabbed me, which was their big mistake. I may not look it, but I’m one hell of a fighter.
I grabbed one of the doctors by his arm and flipped him over me and onto his back. The second doctor grabbed both of my arms to attempt to restrain me, but growing up on the streets had taught me how to escape. I slid out of his grip and threw a round-house kick into his stomach. He doubled over as I gripped at my side. The force of the kick on my body had ripped open one of my wounds, I found out when I felt warm blood on my hands.
The sound of footfalls alerted me to the arrival of their security personnel. I took up the offense and was ready to fight my way out when the doctor that I had previously knocked down kicked my legs out from under me. I fell to the floor and one of the security guards held me down. I thrashed, despite the pain that suddenly shot through my body as the last of the drugs wore off. I grimaced and strained to get loose, feeling a couple more wounds tear open.
Someone shouted something and I felt a syringe being poked into my arm. I let out an angry cry and broke away, but I was still stuck underneath the guard. He held me down for a while until I began to feel woozy. The damn bastards had drugged me again. I knew I hated doctors for a reason. They always drugged you, no matter how small an injury.
Son of a bitch…I thought. When I wake up...I’ll…

§ § § § §

Hours passed as I slept. Again, I have no clue how long I was out. All I know was that I was going to kick some ass as soon as I was awake. Well, maybe I’d heal up a bit, first. The only reason the doctors won that round was because I was injured, outnumbered, and they cheated with the syringe, anyways, damn it. I mean, who drugs an opponent? I’d kick their asses when they least expected it. Allow myself a couple of days to recuperate and then pull out a can of Mako-boosted kick-ass on them. Oh, boy, they won’t know what hit them when I get done with them.
I just need to wake up, first.
Well, okay, I’m awake, but I can’t open my eyes or move. I can feel what’s going on around me and I can hear everything. Unfortunately, I can also smell everything and even worse, ‘everything’ means impeccable cleanliness, medicine, and I can smell dried blood. I lay in my bed, unable to move, my nose being constantly assaulted by the stomach-churning smells of a hospital. I hated it.
A sound to my left alerted me to the presence of another person in the room. The soft rustling of sheets and the creak of a metal bed filled my ears as the other occupant of the room shifted. I tried again to open my eyes, this time succeeding, although I shut them almost immediately. The room was too white; it almost blinded me.
“Are…you okay?” a voice asked me.
I tried to say ‘no, I’m not okay,’ but only a mumbled reply escaped my lips.
Whoever had asked the question had obviously expected something like that. A light laugh, full of sympathy, but also rather hollow, reached my ears. I eased my eyes open, slowly adjusting to the brightness. Once I could keep them open, I tried moving. I managed to turn my head towards the direction where the voice had come from.
There was a young man seated on a stool next to a bed, where another man was resting, a bandage covering his right eyes. The young man looked at me with large violet eyes. I blinked, vaguely aware of the fact that I had seen those eyes before. It took me a couple moments to realise that this kid--he was probably in his teens--was the one who had helped me on the street, I don’t know how long ago, now. It might have been yesterday or last week by now that he helped me.
“The morphine should wear off soon,” the kid said. At least, that’s what it sounded like. I could only recognise a few words. It might be the accent in his voice or the drugs, but he was kind of hard to understand.
“Mmph,” I grunted in reply. I couldn’t think of what to say to him. I wasn’t going to curse the kid out, like I was planning to do to the doctors.
“I’m sorry if I’m hard to understand,” he continued. “I’ve been studying English for a few years now, but I know I have an accent. And I might not be good at speaking it.”
“S’okay,” I muttered, surprised that I could actually form words. Well, not individual words, but at least I could talk. I carefully lifted myself so that I was somewhat sitting up. “I get what you’re saying.”
The kid nodded. I noticed that there were multiple bandages wrapped around his arms. He was holding onto the other man’s hand as he sat by the bed. I looked him up and down. He was rather short, pale, and thin. The only way I can think to describe him in one word is ‘effeminate.’ I mean, he was really lightly built and he was pretty. I can’t say that about anyone else I know; Tseng was a gorgeous man, but he wasn’t effeminate like this kid is. I mean, ancients, you put this kid in a dress and you’d swear he was a girl.
His eyes were the most unusual color I’d ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen some weird colors. That Lockhart girl from the Seventh Heaven bar had red eyes and the General Sephiroth had this aqua color to his eyes. The Cetra girl had eyes the color of the Lifestream. But this kid, like I said, had violet eyes; pale violet. I knew no one with eyes that color. Even after receiving Mako enhancements, none of the SOLDIERS had eyes like that.
Speaking of Mako enhancements, it kind of looked like this kid might have had a couple in his life. His eyes had a slight gleam to them, similar to the trademark Mako-glow that all SOLDIERS had. Then again, my eyes glow with Mako, too, but that’s from living for years in the sewers near the Mako reactor in Midgar. So, perhaps he had just been exposed to a lot of Mako like I had been.
“What’s your name, yo?” I asked, deciding that I didn’t want to have to call him ‘kid’ in order to get his attention.
He looked at me. “It’s Kamui.”
“Kamui,” I repeated, letting the name roll around on my tongue as I said it. It was an interesting name.
"What about you?" Kamui asked. "What's your name?"
"Reno."
"Where are you from Reno-san?" he asked another question, turning in his stool to look at me.
"Nowhere around here, that's for damn sure," I said. Which was true. I've never seen anything like this city I was in. At least, from what I saw of it, I'd never seen anything like it. It was too clean to be Midgar, too modern to be Mime, and too cold to be Costa del Sol.
“The doctors thought you might be from America,” Kamui told me.
“Never heard of it, yo,” I replied.
His jaw dropped. Literally, I could see it almost hit the floor. His violet eyes bugged out of his sockets as he stared at me, obviously in complete shock. I raised one slender eyebrow at him (what? So I’m confident of my looks) and he shook his head.
“How can you not hear of America?” he asked. “It’s only one of the more powerful countries in the world!”
I shrugged. “Unless ‘America’ is your name for ‘Midgar,’ I’ve got no clue what you’re talking about, kid.”
“Midgar?”
The boy stumbled over the pronunciation, obviously having never heard of it in his life. I gave a sigh and lay back down. I felt one of the needles in my arm move around and gave a disgusted growl. I’ve always hated needles. So, I reached over and pulled it out. It didn’t look like an important one. The other needle looked like it might be putting blood in me. Or taking it out.
“You really shouldn’t do that,” Kamui said.
“I don’t need these people pumping me full of crap,” I told him, taking a corner of the bed sheet to staunch the little bit of blood coming from the puncture in my arm.
“They’re nutrients,” he continued to protest. “To help you get better.”
“I am better.”
“The doctors…”
“Fuck what the doctors say, I’m getting out of here,” I interrupted him. I pulled the other needle from my arm, untangled myself from the blankets covering me and crawled out of bed.
“Reno-san!”
I ignored him, and my still aching ribs. I'm typically a pretty fast healer, mostly due to the overabundance of Mako in my system. However, I've never been this badly injured before, so healing slowly like this was a new one on me. I looked around the room in search of anything that belonged to me and found absolutely nothing. My clothes, my identification card, even my damned EMR. All of it was gone.
“Where the hell did they take my stuff?” I grumbled, walking towards the door, slowly.
I could hear the kid behind me stand up and come after me. He grabbed my arms and I hissed in pain, turned towards him sharply, and took his wrists in my hand. He let out a surprised yelp.
“Don’t try to stop me, kid,” I told him. “I may be hurt, but I’m not staying here.”
“Kamui!” two voices from behind me exclaimed.
“Hey! Let go of him!” a young man told me, grabbing me by the shoulders.
Fine. I let go of Kamui, grabbed the newcomer and threw him over my shoulder and onto the floor. A jolt of pain shot through my body afterwards, the strain of self-defense affecting me. The newcomer got back up and tried to grab me again. Spinning around, I threw a roundhouse kick at him, landing my bare foot squarely in his chest. He flew backwards into the wall.
“Stop this.”
I turned to face the second newcomer, a very lovely young woman. She turned steely gray eyes on me. My green eyes met hers for a brief moment, then I huffed and turned back to Kamui and the other guy.
“I’m leaving now,” I told them. “If any of you try to stop me, I won’t hesitate to kill you.”
“But Reno-san…!”
“Don’t make me follow through, kid.”
I turned back towards the door, shoved past the young woman, earning myself a cold glare from her and an indignant yelp from the young man that had accompanied her to the room. I had just managed to get to the door when I fell to my knees. All the strain I had put on my body to fight was too much for my injuries. I had exhausted myself.
Kamui exclaimed something in his own tongue and rushed to my side. “Reno-san, let the doctors…”
“Don’t need…a…damn doctor,” I gritted out.
“Yes, you do,” Kamui told me, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I shoved his hand away and attempted to stand up, managing only for a moment before falling back down. I wouldn’t give up, though. Even if my body was too wracked with pain and every step hurt, I wouldn’t give up on leaving this place. As I said before, I am damned stubborn.
“Reno-san!” Kamui exclaimed as I wavered. He grabbed me before I fell completely to the floor, too exhausted to move and in too much pain.
So, I guess leaving at that moment wasn’t really an option. Seeing as I was barely conscious, I probably wouldn’t get too far. I put my head on Kamui’s shoulder and closed my eyes. He was warm. I was cold.
“No more sedatives…” I managed to say.

§ § § § §

I found out when I woke up again that Kamui and the two other people had left shortly after the doctors had come into the room and tended to me. Apparently, the other guy in the room had been woken up by the small scrapple and hadn’t been too happy about it. He informed me of what happened after I had tried to escape. Despite Kamui telling them what I had said, the doctors had sedated me, re-stitched a few wounds that I had once again ripped open, and did a few tests and x-rays. Apparently, I had been healing quite fast, even with this caliber of injury, as the doctors had been pretty awed when they found my ribs were almost healed.
“Heh,” I chuckled. “Fast healer.”
“No one heals that fast,” the other guy, Subaru, said. “Not without help.”
“You’ve obviously never met a kid from Midgar, have you?”
“I’ll be honest,” Subaru told me. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Thought so,” I murmured. I yawned and looked up at the ceiling.
“You’re not going to try to escape again, are you?”
“Nah,” I said. “If they’re going to manage to stop me every time, what’s the point, yo? Besides, s’not like I got anywhere to go once I’m out of here. My apartment’s in Midgar and I have no clue where I am.”
“Mm.”
I looked over at him. “So, what were the doctors lookin’ all wide eyed and spooked about earlier?”
“You mean aside from the fact that you’ve barely been here three days and your broken ribs are almost healed?” Subaru asked.
“Yeah. It’s not like I can understand them. You know the language, not me.”
“They said something about your blood test results,” Subaru told me. “I guess when they gave you a transfusion, the only thing they looked at was your blood type and not the contents.”
“What’s wrong with my blood?” I asked, defensively, turning to glare at him.
Subaru looked at me, his one eye locked on mine. “Some strange component or something. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was all medical terminology.”
“Damn those doctors and their damned ‘medical terminology,’ yo,” I joked. “Probably just the Mako.”
“The what?”
“You don’t know what Mako is?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Mako,” I repeated. “Ultimate energy source. Hardened Lifestream, compresses into materia?”
He blinked at me. At least, I figured he blinked; it wasn’t like I could see both of his eyes. I gave an exasperated sigh.
“Never mind, yo.”
“You’ve piqued my curiousity,” Subaru said.
“It’s not important,” I replied.
He looked at me. An odd silence filled the room for a few minutes as the two of us laid in our beds, him looking at me, me looking at the ceiling, and the ceiling looking back at me, I swear. What kind of drugs did they have me on? I didn’t think ceilings were supposed to be able to look at people. I glared at the ceiling and stuck my tongue out at it. It blinked at me. Whatever drugs I was on, they were good.
“Reno-san,” Subaru said, breaking the silence.
“What?”
“You said you don’t have anywhere to go, correct?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “What about it, yo?”
“I…” he said. “I’m being discharged in a couple of days and I was thinking…I have some connections at CLAMP Academy and perhaps I can pull a few strings to get you a place to stay there.”
I turned to him. “Sounds good, but what’s the catch?”
“I suspect you’d have to attend school there…”
“School?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I can’t read or write your language,” I told him. “I barely know mine.”
“I’m sure the chairman can figure something out for you,” Subaru said. “At least think about it?”
“Sure, whatever,” I said. I looked back at the ceiling. The bastard was flipping me off! “Oh, you asshat!”
“What?!” Subaru exclaimed.
“Not you, the ceiling!”

Author’s Note: Yeah, okay. I’ve set the stage for how I’m going to get things started. No clue how long this thing will be, nor how long I can actually write it. But the very thought of Reno attending CLAMP Academy, now that’s interesting.