Crisis Core: The Novel

Chapter 44 - Visions of Light and Darkness [Part 3]

"You guys really did save the day!" Zack exclaimed. Sephiroth shrugged.

"I heard you and Angeal were camped out in a bush somewhere playing with your dingus."

Zack winced back.

"They still gave the credit to you though. They didn't even mention her. What happened?"

"You were both supposed to be promoted that night. Instead, you lost your promotion so that Lazard didn't have to promote her as well. If he would have given 1st Class status to you and not her, with that lawsuit she'd be a very rich girl right now. Lazard took credit away from my own student and gave it to me, even made me sit through the press conference, just to put us in our place."

"What a douche! Well he's gone now, good riddance. And now she's a 1st anyway!"

"I'm very proud of her. You're both exceptional operators. Let us leave that night and that boss in the past where they belong."

"Waaay ahead of you. Last thing though, when everything went to hell in a handcart, he still called for her."

"It may make her feel better...she's been taken advantage of for far too long. It's clouded her view of the world, made her think that all people seek to take something from her."

"So that's why she was so shy at Costa del Sol."

"Ah yes, Costa del Sol, she told me about that..."

***

They'd found her unconscious on the floor of Sephiroth's loft. She awoke on white sands under a beach umbrella being served apple cider—she knew better than to drink it. Instead she stared a million miles ahead, wondering how she got there and where she was going now, whirling in the daze of her mind.

Damage control, she went full paranoia at the hotel they'd put her up in. She drank water only from the tap, they couldn't poison her without poisoning themselves. Down on the beach where she sat by herself in a blue sarong and taupe triathlete's two-piece, someone else came to sit next to her, and life suddenly sucked ten times worse.

Reno flopped down beside her shirtless in swim trunks, leaning on a knee and licking his teeth to say hi.

"Hey baby, wanna see my riot baton?"

She growled deep in her throat and ignored him.

"Fwew. I could use some sunblock on my back, wouldn't wanna get too hot."

She took the bottle, ripped the top off, and dumped it on his head.

"Mm, gooey."

A scoff and she left him there, but she could never seem to get rid of him! Walking in the hallway, turn a corner and there he was, standing in a presumptuous pose sticking his chest out. He kissed his fingertip and rubbed his nipple, and she took an aggressive step forward.

"Oh no, please, don't hit me. I wouldn't like it," he pleaded with his hands up. She punched him square in the jaw, leaving him lying on the ground with a wry smile on his face—which only made it worse.

Walking to breakfast...

"You know, you could tie me to the bed to keep me from following you." Try to go around him, he moved in front of her, leaning over her like a high school jock. "I have some handcuffs in my back pocket you could swipe."

She went back to her room. She wasn't that hungry anyway.

At least she could stomach him, what she couldn't stomach was the shrink who sat her on a sofa in a small air-conditioned room, chewing on the end of a pen with a clipboard in his lap.