OOC: Teal Deer Info Post of DOOM (and then some)
Hiii. I don't often tend to do super-long info posts outlining every bit and piece and dribble of canon that my characters might have attached to them. I really don't.
But Final Fantasy VII is... special. It comes complete with six canon sources (more if you count all the books), a terrible translation, and gratuitous retcons up the flying wazzoo. So, for Reno, there are a good many things that I feel that I have to clarify, sort out, and make known to the world as a whole; you.
So, submitted for reasons of "zomgclarity," I present to you...
Final Fantasy VII in a (Large) Nutshell
The Lifestream; a sort of ethereal-liquid version of life itself that flows through a planet by the name of Gaia. All life on the planet supposedly is created by this substance, and in death, it returns here, bringing its memories, emotions, and knowledge with it, essentially making the planet into one big living thing.
Once upon a time, in this world called Gaia, an alien creature known as Jenova crash-landed, leaving behind a huge crater in the North, and tried to destroy the planet. The planet attempted to retaliate by creating several large Weapons, but didn't get the opportunity to make use of them. The ancients of this world ultimately came out victorious after an immeasurable loss of life that left their numbers dwindling, and saved the world from this alien for a long, long time by sealing it in the Northern Crater.
Fast-forward about two-thousand years. ShinRa Electric Power Company has developed a method to harness the energy from the Lifestream (called Mako) to create electricity. Unbeknown to them, the use of this 'Mako' energy is slowly depleting the life of the planet itself, thus creating vast tracts of barren land. Even so, or possibly because of this desolation, ShinRa's power company became vastly successful, and they began to make the big money to go along with being the planet's main source of electricity. With the money inevitably comes the power, and ShinRa managed to gain the resources to build its own military wing and covert ops squad (Reno is one of these guys), as well as branching out into scientific, astronomical, communications, and political avenues, thus effectively setting itself up as the governmental power in that area of Gaia. ShinRa's exploits ranged from renowned victories in war to sick experiments performed in secret involving Mako, the cells of Jenova (uncovered from her imprisonment in the Northern Crater and mistaken for an ancient), and all-too-often sentient and unwilling test subjects.
Possibly the most well-known branch of ShinRa's military was SOLDIER, a group of the most elite fighters that the company could recruit, each one treated with a shower of Mako energy and an injection of Jenova cells which served to give them powers beyond that of any normal combatant. The most well-known of these SOLDIERs was Sephiroth, a war hero who, in a bizarre experiment that proved to be the prototype for the treatment that the other members of SOLDIER received, was given an injection of Jenova cells before he was even born. He was raised by ShinRa, and was told nothing of his mother or the conditions of his birth, only that his mother's name was Jenova (despite his true mother being a woman by the name of Lucrecia, a scientist working on the Jenova Project). When he ultimately does find out that he was the result of an experiment, he loses his mind and, in an attempt to avenge his 'mother,' Jenova, he destroys an entire small town by the name of Nibelheim before falling into the Lifestream courtesy of a ShinRa military grunt by the name of Cloud, who is gravely wounded and then experimented on by crazy Professor Hojo for the next five years.
AVALANCHE. This would not be a warning to look out for falling rocks, really. AVALANCHE is actually an eco-terrorist group which is convinced that ShinRa's use of the Mako is killing the Lifestream. And they would be right. Except that they absolutely fail at getting their point across in a sane manner. Hence the eco-terrorist bit, really. They spend years on end attempting assassinations and trying to destroy everything that the ShinRa Company has built... Nevermind the fact that one of the main players in the organization is bent on destroying all life on Gaia in order to assist the Lifestream in repairing itself. ShinRa's Covert Ops Squad, known as the Turks, spends a great deal of time tussling with AVALANCHE, who seems to take a sadistic pleasure in trying to destroy the Turks in particular. "Death to the ShinRa" is apparently one of their favourite things to say.
Five years after Sephiroth has fallen into the Lifestream, Cloud arrives in Midgar, laden with mental issues and pretty certain that he's an ex-SOLDIER. ShinRa and a considerably less powerful AVALANCHE are still sparring with one another, and Cloud takes a job on the side of the crazy eco-terrorists (who happen to be right). They discover that Sephiroth has somehow returned (and has buried his sword in the acting president of ShinRa, thus promoting his far more dangerous son, Rufus Shinra, to his position). The possibility of Sephiroth's return isn't exactly a good one, so Cloud and Avalanche proceed to chase him down over the countryside. During this chase, not only does the last remaining Ancient, Aerith, end up dead courtesy of Sephiroth, but Cloud also learns that he's about as mentally sound as a severely in-bred chocobo and he isn't at all who he thought he was. This is not a good thing, as Cloud ends up handing over the Black Materia that Sephiroth needs in order to destroy the world. Smooth, Cloud.
Sephiroth then proceeds to summon Meteor... which is, essentially, a really stinking large meteor. ShinRa attempts to save the day, here, by creating a giant cannon that utilizes Huge Materia (Materia being a by-product of refining Mako which allows people to use magic) as a power source. AVALANCHE continues to be awesome by attempting to sabotage these cannons, but Rufus has the Mako Cannon fired in an attempt to take out Sephiroth. This plan backfires terribly on him when the Diamond Weapon arises and returns the favor by blowing up ShinRa HQ, and presumably Rufus right along with it. Cloud and company make their way to the Northern Crater and manage to take out Sephiroth and Jenova... but Meteor continues to fall.
From her shiny place in the Lifestream, Aerith calls forth Holy (a big shiny happy spell) to save the day. The Lifestream reaches out of the planet itself in order to assist Holy and stop Meteor, but does a nasty number on Midgar while it's at it. The world is saved! But the survivors of the fall of Midgar have to pack up, rebuild a city on the edge of the ruins (which is, by the way, conveniently called Edge), and deal with the aftermath.
From here, canon extends into Advent Children, a movie that retcons and canon-fudges just as much as the other canon extensions that Square-Enix has released for this story. Three Remnants of Sephiroth are bound and determined to revive Jenova. Rufus Shinra is somehow still alive and he has her disembodied head in his lap for most of the movie. The Turks get their butts kicked. A lot. But they are still full of badass and awesome, so it's mostly okay. There's a bad sickness that was caused by the Lifestream reaching up to save the day. And it all gets fixed at the end, with an obligatory resurrection of Sephiroth, cameos of damn near everyone you see in the games, and a bunch of little brainwashed children tossed in for good measure somewhere along the way.
After the events of Advent Children comes Dirge of Cerberus, which has nothing at all to do with Reno or the Turks, retcons like a retconny thing, and focuses around Vincent Valentine, some of ShinRa's super-secret leftovers, and the World Regenesis Organization. Essentially, it's another "someone wants to destroy the world, go and save the day while looking pretty" game. And a first person shooter. So I haven't played it, though I have read summaries and watched the cutscenes on youtube just to be certain that it has nothing in it at all that Reno and the Turks might canonically have known. No dice.
Before Crisis Wut? And Agetweaks Woo!
I'm going to add a couple of "oh, by the way" notes. There is a six year canon gap between all of the sources currently available to English-speaking persons regarding the events that took place just before Final Fantasy VII itself. There also happens to be a game that was released in Japan and Japan only, playable only on Japanese cellular phones with the MOST CRAPPY GRAPHICS KNOWN TO MAN *hackcough*, which was released in a series of 25 'episodes' over the span of two years or so. While Square-Enix had at one point suggested that they were going to release the game to American Players in 2006? ... It hasn't happened yet. And even though there is a site on the Internet that actually translated many of these episodes, the canon in its entirety simply isn't available to me unless I learn Japanese, move to Japan, and buy a cellphone there... Which is very tempting, but not likely to happen in the near future. This wouldn't be terribly frustrating considering not much supposedly happens in this six-year gap, except for the fact that this game, called Before Crisis, is in its entirety about the Turks and features a good deal of Reno. I'm going to work my app around what has been translated as best as I can, but because translations can be erroneous (the actual canonical translation for FFVII itself was notoriously terrible, for example) I'll be dealing with additional canon as translation sites crank it out, squabble amongst themselves, and work toward settling on translations that actually make sense. And, while I'm aware that I'm liable to get jossed by Square-Enix and their magical and overused FFVII retcon-wand, I'll work with what I can get for now and deal with that bridge when I have to cross it. I'll probably make hints to the game so that Reno actually has a background beyond "joined the Turks, then bad things happened" but because the last four episodes are lost in limbo and the entire game seems to be laced in contradictory retcons, it will probably be a vague gloss-over until this particular aspect of canon becomes available to people like myself.
In the meantime, I'm going to take the six years in which this game supposedly takes place and I'm going to condense it to the span of _two_ years, and here is why: Nothing has happened in this span of time that absolutely has to take a full six years. Cloud is being experimented on by Hojo the psychopath, and AVALANCHE is fighting against ShinRa and the Turks and the situation continues to escalate. At one point, the game skips ahead three whole years in the timeline just to play filler to the magical five-years-of-stagnation, during which time there isn't anything terribly earth-shattering that occurs at all. Actually, much of the game is played out this way, with things that could have happened overnight being stretched out to account for Cloud's five years of being experimented on in a mansion in Nibelheim.
The time skip and making Reno younger as a result isn't going to mess with canon terribly, as the Turks themselves are already young (as a matter of fact, a character who appears in Before Crisis and Crisis Core by the name of Cissnei was adopted from an orphanage at a young age in order to be raised for the sole purpose of becoming a Turk), and Reno appears to be about 15-16 years old during a scene in Crisis Core which occurs before this canon-gap. I'm going to compress the gap, therefore, and place him after FFVII, a few years younger than he actually is in canon to accommodate his being sent to high school, but not too young to still believably be a seasoned Turk.
What we do know about Before Crisis for certain was that it essentially narrowed down to Hell for the Turks, starting with the odd smaller conflicts with AVALANCHE and culminating in a series of events that left the Turks down to three- Reno, Rude, and Tseng- after being hunted like dogs for staying loyal to Turks instead of loyal to ShinRa itself, and after most of the rest of the ranks went off to save the world from a summon intended to destroy all life on Gaia.
Ending life on Gaia: It's what's for dinner.
Also, somewhere in there, Reno gains a fear of elevators. I love my canon.
About The Fastest Turk
Appearance:
While a quick glance might leave anyone with the notion they they're simply looking at an unkempt redhead with a somehow-stylish mullet who doesn't know how to do up buttons, a second look might shatter that first impression. While Reno is, in fact, on the tall and lanky side, and while he does appear to have a complete disregard for how he should properly wear his (business suit) uniform, he's got a sense of pride about him which he wears plain for the world to see even through his slouching. He might look the part of a well-dressed slob, but it's apparent enough that there's muscle and confidence underneath that sloppy button-up shirt. He also has nifty little symmetrical red tattoos on his face that really don't serve any canonical purpose. So maybe they're just there to make people ask questions?
Personality:
He's a somewhat unique sort of businessman, really. He'll do his job when it has to be done and, even though he has a tendency to stand with a bit of a slouch, he manages to still put forth the impression that not only is he going to do what needs to be done, but he knows full well that he is more than able to pull it off. He manages to go through life with a somewhat laid-back, if not cynical attitude. The world is not about to bend over backwards to make things easy for him, and he knows it. If he thought otherwise, he wouldn't have become a Turk, after all. And, while he'll do what has to be done while he's on the job, he still treats his line of work as simply a job. He doesn't hold any animosity toward the people he targets unless they do something to earn that animosity- don't mess with him, and he won't make it personal. And really, nobody wants Reno to make it personal. Time off is time off, and he'll make full use of that while lounging about and drinking if it so suits him. Loyalty to companions and partners can make him blur the line between clocked hours and vacation time, however, because even Reno of the Turks has a sense of morals now and then.
(And he has a soft spot for kids and newbies. Aww.)
Speech Tic, yoto
In Japanese, Reno has a bit of a speech tic. He likes to add his own happy little nonsense words to the end of nearly every sentence that he speaks. "Yoto," "zoto," and simply "to" make up a good chunk of his dialog, and he'll even stick them at the end of sentences that are shorter than the phrases themselves. In English, there really isn't an equivalent. The two translations dumped them entirely, most likely to spare themselves the difficulty of coming up with something that might work in their stead.
The fans, however, seem to have tacked "yo" or "you know" to the end of the things he says for the purposes of their fanfiction and whatever else they might need to use a random-emphasis-Reno-word for.
I, personally, will probably stick with "yoto," "zoto," and "yo." For whatever reason, I find that they seem to roll off of his tongue well while I'm typing his dialog, and I've got more experience looking into Japanese Reno than his English self. But I won't use them the same way his Japanese self does- with no break between the words, after nearly every single sentence. I'll use his nonsensical afterbabble sparingly, really, so that it serves simply as emphasis when emphasis is needed. Or wherever I think a Reno-sentence would look that much more complete with a good dash of "yo" slapped onto the end.
Feel free to prod me to tell me to cut it out if his speech tic starts to hurt your brain, zoto. I'm still trying to find a nice balance.
ShinRa Electric Power Company
The Turks: ShinRa's Department of Administrative Research (more commonly known as The Turks) are an underground branch of the ShinRa Electric Power Company. While it is Soldier's job to run around doing all of the stuff that makes ShinRa look good (seriously, they're the group of heroes that every kid strives to be), the Turks typically wind up with the dirtier, grimier stuff that ShinRa doesn't want to see on the first page. Soldier will win a war. The Turks will kidnap, steal, assassinate, dig up graves, cover up evidence of horrible massacres, set devastating explosives, and crush large portions of the Midgar slums in order to see their ends are met. Their job isn't pretty, but if it wasn't for them, Soldier's work wouldn't be half as glamorous. Unlike Soldier, after all, the Turks don't have to keep their fingernails clean in order to show up for that photo op. In fact, they'd much sooner stick to the phrase "plausible deniability" and not show up at all.
The current hierarchy of the Turks consists of Tseng sitting at the top of the chain of command, and then Reno in second place, then Rude, and then Elena, the newest recruit as of FFVII. Out of this group, Reno has a strong friendship with Rude, and the two are paired up as partners more often than not. He also has a tendency to go out of his way to protect the new recruits to the Turks- Elena, currently. The fact that he hovers over the newbies the way he does coupled with the fact that there are all of four Turks come the end of FFVII suggests that the Turk mortality rate is somewhere on the morbidly high side. Not terribly surprising for a group whose job description includes murder, espionage, and protecting the president of the company from eco-terrorist assassins.
Background
Nothing is known about Reno before his life with the Turks. His mannerisms, including his speech patterns, state of dress, and fighting style all suggest that he's a city boy, at least, and that he hasn't had the most simple life growing up. For the sake of filling in the huge, flaming canon gaps that poor Reno is subjected to, I'm going to run with that and say that he grew up in the Midgar slums, and was more than happy to leave that life behind to become a Turk- Something that he could be a part of and take pride in. While the Turks work for ShinRa Electric Power Company, however, Reno's loyalties really lie with the Turks themselves. He'll do the work he's got to do, but what matters most is being a Turk, and the Turks at his side.
What can be gathered from real, honest-to-goodness and oh so shiny canonical sources is this- Reno joined the Turks at a fairly young age and worked his way up the ranks relatively quickly- most likely by way of a combination of skill and 'oh-crap-did-so-and-so-die?' promotions. Simply still being alive is usually a good sign that you're in line for a promotion sooner or later, really, and the only way to leave the Turks is in a body-bag. He survived his first mission, the traditional first job of every Turk, securing Sector Eight. Along the way, he picked up a business partner and friend by the name of Rude, and he's taken more than his share of rookies under his wing, keeping an eye on them as best he can just to make sure that the Turk mortality rate doesn't skyrocket more than necessary- if this means ignoring orders to make certain they don't get killed on their own first run of Sector Eight, then so be it. They're Turks now, and that means he'll see to it that they at least make it through their first mission if he can help it. Repeated run-ins with the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE kept things interesting at the very least, even if it meant dealing with a pack of environmentalist killers who really didn't have any proof to back up their accusations that ShinRa's use of Mako energy was killing the planet's Lifestream.
Conditions for the Turks have gotten progressively more sour since Reno initially joined, however. While they never did have the most morally sound job description, the state of ShinRa itself moved from a moral gray area into the red as it continued to pursue more power and more control over the whole of the planet. This resulted in the Turks doing things that even they hadn't been prepared to bring themselves to do. Kidnapping and torturing people for information is one thing, but crushing an entire section of the Midgar slums (a mission which Reno himself took care of) is a different matter entirely. Things took a rather definite swan dive when, not long after the Sector Seven incident, President Shinra was killed, and his even _more_ power-hungry son gained control of the company. It might have been more fortunate that Rufus Shinra didn't get a very long amount of time to put his "rule the world through fear" plans into action, if only everything hadn't gone and exploded from there. Literally. (Oh, crap! The eco-terrorists were right all along!) Somehow, the new boss managed to survive having the ShinRa building collapse on him, and he even cleaned up his act some. The Turks (all four that were left) stuck around to assist (humor?) Rufus in his new goals to restore the planet, even if the man was bound to a wheelchair and dying of that freaky mysterious Geostigma disease. They're Turks. It's what they do.
Powers and Abilities
Reno isn't exactly superhuman by Gaia standards, but he's certainly not a normal human by Earth standards, either. While a good, thorough beating will indeed leave him incapacitated for some amount of time, he's also quite able to take hits and bounce back with a few of his own before he goes down for the count, using speed and agility that would make normal humans cross their eyes just trying to keep up. He's considered the fastest of the Turks, and he uses his speed well to his advantage, hauling himself to his feet with a kick-punch-dodge when the need arises, and even running up walls from time to time, as well. This is not normal, even by Gaia standards. You just don't see people scaling the sides of buildings in ten seconds flat.
So, while there is a huge fandom debate about this, I'm going to err on the side of using a light Mako treatment to explain this speed and agility. I'm not using it for the sake of making him more sparkly or powerful, I'm using Mako simply to pin a reason onto something that already exists. His eyes are blue, he can do insane things with his body, and he works for ShinRa, so it pulls together nicely, rather than people asking him "where did you learn so-and-so-etc" and having me flail about going "crap, there is no canon for this, and the other Turks don't seem to be able to do the same."
His position as a Turk also introduced him to a world of experience with a weapon he is rarely seen without- his stun baton, or Electro-Mag Rod. While it can obviously be used for typical 'zapping' purposes, Reno tends to default more toward the "I smack you in the head until you stop moving" method, which suggests that, despite his skill with fighting, he really hasn't had any formal training with it at all. In fact, his fighting style seems to be something of a free-range mishmash of kicking, dodging, and punching as opposed to any particular martial art. He seems to be well aware that when he's fighting, he's fighting to survive, and his "kick it and punch it and eventually it will stay down" attitude lends itself to the notion that he grew up fighting, and just decided to continue using the skills he picked up just trying to survive.
Oh, yes. And he can fly a helicopter, and he's got a working knowledge of how such things function. While he isn't exactly a mechanic, he knows well enough about the workings of machines an electronics to make them run, fix them when they're down, override systems to lock meddlesome hero-types out of them, and make entire chunks of city go boom.
And, depending on the Materia he's got loaded into the equipment he's using at the time, he can not only deliver a good zap, but can also show resistance to his preferred element- lightning- even to the point that it heals him if used against him. Take away the Materia and he loses this ability, of course.
Where in Canon is he From?
Reno will be pulled from a point between the events of Final Fantasy VII and the movie, Advent Children. The ShinRa company has crashed and burned (mostly literally), and Geostigma is plaguing the populace of what was once Midgar. Geostigma is an infection of Sephiroth cells that people picked up when the Lifestream surfaced to stop Meteor. The spirit reacts by forcibly rejecting the cells from the body, but the body itself suffers as a result. One of the people infected by this disease was none other than Rufus Shinra, who survived the (literal) fall of his company (possibly by some miracle), and decided afterward to do whatever was possible to reverse the damage that ShinRa Electric Power caused to the planet and to the Lifestream.
... Possibly because he wasn't in the mood to die due to his spirit rejecting Sephiroth cells. But that is neither here nor there.
Enter the Fandom High pamphlet, floating dramatically through the breeze to light on Rufus Shinra's wheelchair-ridden lap. After reading this pamphlet, which he flips through if only because he doesn't have anything left to lose, he comes to the realization that what he has found is practically an invitation to attend classes on an island that just so happens to be a trans-dimensional hub.
Countless universes, all converging on one point. Who knows what might be out there? Another power source, perhaps? Maybe Materia? Or... possibly a cure for Geostigma? This, of course, bears investigation.
Obviously, Rufus is not able to get out there to take classes himself. He has more important things to do. Like sit in his wheelchair, anonymously spearheading organizations to save the world. But really, why should he bother going anyhow? He has a perfectly good quartet of peons left to his disposal.
But which to choose?
Obviously not Tseng, who is far too staunch and proper for this particular job. And Rude would implode from the neverending demand on his somewhat impaired social skills. Neither really seem suited for the task of spending day in and day out with the teenaged rabble that one typically expects in a High School. Elena is still rather new to her position- she's still far too by-the-book to handle a solo mission, and obviously still needs to have her hand held by someone more experienced.
Someone, perhaps, like the fastest Turk. Reno. Reno happens to look the part, what with his tendency to slack off on the dress code and his lean and lanky physique. His attitude is suitable as well, given that he's not at all awkward so far as communicating goes, and he might even be relaxed enough to chum around with a few of these otherworldly students. And, the icing on the cake, Reno has been a Turk long enough to know what it is that Turks do without worrying if what he's doing fits within some form of protocol. Perfect.
Reno's age is going to be a little warped to allow for this- there are six years between when he actually is 15-ish in Crisis Core and the events of FFVII. No plot points will be lost if that span of five years is condensed to two so that Reno isn't walking into FH at about 24 years old or so, looking around for jailbait.
Links Yay!
After all that, on the off-chance that you still need series information? I provide. See how ocd thoughtful I am?
http://www.silenttweak.net/ Crisis Core Translations
http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/psx/ff7/images/map.gif WOO MAP
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII YAY INFO
http://valiantknife.org/reno/ Oh, look! A site all about Reno!
http://www.freewebs.com/gunshotromance/reno.htm This site has translations of that game that Japan is being greedy about and never letting anyone else have, ever.
http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/ff7story.shtml A timeline of all of the events in FFVII canon, ever. Freakishly long and with the occasional "wtfRetcon" note.
Stick a fork in me. I am very, very done.
But Final Fantasy VII is... special. It comes complete with six canon sources (more if you count all the books), a terrible translation, and gratuitous retcons up the flying wazzoo. So, for Reno, there are a good many things that I feel that I have to clarify, sort out, and make known to the world as a whole; you.
So, submitted for reasons of "zomgclarity," I present to you...
Final Fantasy VII in a (Large) Nutshell
The Lifestream; a sort of ethereal-liquid version of life itself that flows through a planet by the name of Gaia. All life on the planet supposedly is created by this substance, and in death, it returns here, bringing its memories, emotions, and knowledge with it, essentially making the planet into one big living thing.
Once upon a time, in this world called Gaia, an alien creature known as Jenova crash-landed, leaving behind a huge crater in the North, and tried to destroy the planet. The planet attempted to retaliate by creating several large Weapons, but didn't get the opportunity to make use of them. The ancients of this world ultimately came out victorious after an immeasurable loss of life that left their numbers dwindling, and saved the world from this alien for a long, long time by sealing it in the Northern Crater.
Fast-forward about two-thousand years. ShinRa Electric Power Company has developed a method to harness the energy from the Lifestream (called Mako) to create electricity. Unbeknown to them, the use of this 'Mako' energy is slowly depleting the life of the planet itself, thus creating vast tracts of barren land. Even so, or possibly because of this desolation, ShinRa's power company became vastly successful, and they began to make the big money to go along with being the planet's main source of electricity. With the money inevitably comes the power, and ShinRa managed to gain the resources to build its own military wing and covert ops squad (Reno is one of these guys), as well as branching out into scientific, astronomical, communications, and political avenues, thus effectively setting itself up as the governmental power in that area of Gaia. ShinRa's exploits ranged from renowned victories in war to sick experiments performed in secret involving Mako, the cells of Jenova (uncovered from her imprisonment in the Northern Crater and mistaken for an ancient), and all-too-often sentient and unwilling test subjects.
Possibly the most well-known branch of ShinRa's military was SOLDIER, a group of the most elite fighters that the company could recruit, each one treated with a shower of Mako energy and an injection of Jenova cells which served to give them powers beyond that of any normal combatant. The most well-known of these SOLDIERs was Sephiroth, a war hero who, in a bizarre experiment that proved to be the prototype for the treatment that the other members of SOLDIER received, was given an injection of Jenova cells before he was even born. He was raised by ShinRa, and was told nothing of his mother or the conditions of his birth, only that his mother's name was Jenova (despite his true mother being a woman by the name of Lucrecia, a scientist working on the Jenova Project). When he ultimately does find out that he was the result of an experiment, he loses his mind and, in an attempt to avenge his 'mother,' Jenova, he destroys an entire small town by the name of Nibelheim before falling into the Lifestream courtesy of a ShinRa military grunt by the name of Cloud, who is gravely wounded and then experimented on by crazy Professor Hojo for the next five years.
AVALANCHE. This would not be a warning to look out for falling rocks, really. AVALANCHE is actually an eco-terrorist group which is convinced that ShinRa's use of the Mako is killing the Lifestream. And they would be right. Except that they absolutely fail at getting their point across in a sane manner. Hence the eco-terrorist bit, really. They spend years on end attempting assassinations and trying to destroy everything that the ShinRa Company has built... Nevermind the fact that one of the main players in the organization is bent on destroying all life on Gaia in order to assist the Lifestream in repairing itself. ShinRa's Covert Ops Squad, known as the Turks, spends a great deal of time tussling with AVALANCHE, who seems to take a sadistic pleasure in trying to destroy the Turks in particular. "Death to the ShinRa" is apparently one of their favourite things to say.
Five years after Sephiroth has fallen into the Lifestream, Cloud arrives in Midgar, laden with mental issues and pretty certain that he's an ex-SOLDIER. ShinRa and a considerably less powerful AVALANCHE are still sparring with one another, and Cloud takes a job on the side of the crazy eco-terrorists (who happen to be right). They discover that Sephiroth has somehow returned (and has buried his sword in the acting president of ShinRa, thus promoting his far more dangerous son, Rufus Shinra, to his position). The possibility of Sephiroth's return isn't exactly a good one, so Cloud and Avalanche proceed to chase him down over the countryside. During this chase, not only does the last remaining Ancient, Aerith, end up dead courtesy of Sephiroth, but Cloud also learns that he's about as mentally sound as a severely in-bred chocobo and he isn't at all who he thought he was. This is not a good thing, as Cloud ends up handing over the Black Materia that Sephiroth needs in order to destroy the world. Smooth, Cloud.
Sephiroth then proceeds to summon Meteor... which is, essentially, a really stinking large meteor. ShinRa attempts to save the day, here, by creating a giant cannon that utilizes Huge Materia (Materia being a by-product of refining Mako which allows people to use magic) as a power source. AVALANCHE continues to be awesome by attempting to sabotage these cannons, but Rufus has the Mako Cannon fired in an attempt to take out Sephiroth. This plan backfires terribly on him when the Diamond Weapon arises and returns the favor by blowing up ShinRa HQ, and presumably Rufus right along with it. Cloud and company make their way to the Northern Crater and manage to take out Sephiroth and Jenova... but Meteor continues to fall.
From her shiny place in the Lifestream, Aerith calls forth Holy (a big shiny happy spell) to save the day. The Lifestream reaches out of the planet itself in order to assist Holy and stop Meteor, but does a nasty number on Midgar while it's at it. The world is saved! But the survivors of the fall of Midgar have to pack up, rebuild a city on the edge of the ruins (which is, by the way, conveniently called Edge), and deal with the aftermath.
From here, canon extends into Advent Children, a movie that retcons and canon-fudges just as much as the other canon extensions that Square-Enix has released for this story. Three Remnants of Sephiroth are bound and determined to revive Jenova. Rufus Shinra is somehow still alive and he has her disembodied head in his lap for most of the movie. The Turks get their butts kicked. A lot. But they are still full of badass and awesome, so it's mostly okay. There's a bad sickness that was caused by the Lifestream reaching up to save the day. And it all gets fixed at the end, with an obligatory resurrection of Sephiroth, cameos of damn near everyone you see in the games, and a bunch of little brainwashed children tossed in for good measure somewhere along the way.
After the events of Advent Children comes Dirge of Cerberus, which has nothing at all to do with Reno or the Turks, retcons like a retconny thing, and focuses around Vincent Valentine, some of ShinRa's super-secret leftovers, and the World Regenesis Organization. Essentially, it's another "someone wants to destroy the world, go and save the day while looking pretty" game. And a first person shooter. So I haven't played it, though I have read summaries and watched the cutscenes on youtube just to be certain that it has nothing in it at all that Reno and the Turks might canonically have known. No dice.
Before Crisis Wut? And Agetweaks Woo!
I'm going to add a couple of "oh, by the way" notes. There is a six year canon gap between all of the sources currently available to English-speaking persons regarding the events that took place just before Final Fantasy VII itself. There also happens to be a game that was released in Japan and Japan only, playable only on Japanese cellular phones with the MOST CRAPPY GRAPHICS KNOWN TO MAN *hackcough*, which was released in a series of 25 'episodes' over the span of two years or so. While Square-Enix had at one point suggested that they were going to release the game to American Players in 2006? ... It hasn't happened yet. And even though there is a site on the Internet that actually translated many of these episodes, the canon in its entirety simply isn't available to me unless I learn Japanese, move to Japan, and buy a cellphone there... Which is very tempting, but not likely to happen in the near future. This wouldn't be terribly frustrating considering not much supposedly happens in this six-year gap, except for the fact that this game, called Before Crisis, is in its entirety about the Turks and features a good deal of Reno. I'm going to work my app around what has been translated as best as I can, but because translations can be erroneous (the actual canonical translation for FFVII itself was notoriously terrible, for example) I'll be dealing with additional canon as translation sites crank it out, squabble amongst themselves, and work toward settling on translations that actually make sense. And, while I'm aware that I'm liable to get jossed by Square-Enix and their magical and overused FFVII retcon-wand, I'll work with what I can get for now and deal with that bridge when I have to cross it. I'll probably make hints to the game so that Reno actually has a background beyond "joined the Turks, then bad things happened" but because the last four episodes are lost in limbo and the entire game seems to be laced in contradictory retcons, it will probably be a vague gloss-over until this particular aspect of canon becomes available to people like myself.
In the meantime, I'm going to take the six years in which this game supposedly takes place and I'm going to condense it to the span of _two_ years, and here is why: Nothing has happened in this span of time that absolutely has to take a full six years. Cloud is being experimented on by Hojo the psychopath, and AVALANCHE is fighting against ShinRa and the Turks and the situation continues to escalate. At one point, the game skips ahead three whole years in the timeline just to play filler to the magical five-years-of-stagnation, during which time there isn't anything terribly earth-shattering that occurs at all. Actually, much of the game is played out this way, with things that could have happened overnight being stretched out to account for Cloud's five years of being experimented on in a mansion in Nibelheim.
The time skip and making Reno younger as a result isn't going to mess with canon terribly, as the Turks themselves are already young (as a matter of fact, a character who appears in Before Crisis and Crisis Core by the name of Cissnei was adopted from an orphanage at a young age in order to be raised for the sole purpose of becoming a Turk), and Reno appears to be about 15-16 years old during a scene in Crisis Core which occurs before this canon-gap. I'm going to compress the gap, therefore, and place him after FFVII, a few years younger than he actually is in canon to accommodate his being sent to high school, but not too young to still believably be a seasoned Turk.
What we do know about Before Crisis for certain was that it essentially narrowed down to Hell for the Turks, starting with the odd smaller conflicts with AVALANCHE and culminating in a series of events that left the Turks down to three- Reno, Rude, and Tseng- after being hunted like dogs for staying loyal to Turks instead of loyal to ShinRa itself, and after most of the rest of the ranks went off to save the world from a summon intended to destroy all life on Gaia.
Ending life on Gaia: It's what's for dinner.
Also, somewhere in there, Reno gains a fear of elevators. I love my canon.
About The Fastest Turk
Appearance:
While a quick glance might leave anyone with the notion they they're simply looking at an unkempt redhead with a somehow-stylish mullet who doesn't know how to do up buttons, a second look might shatter that first impression. While Reno is, in fact, on the tall and lanky side, and while he does appear to have a complete disregard for how he should properly wear his (business suit) uniform, he's got a sense of pride about him which he wears plain for the world to see even through his slouching. He might look the part of a well-dressed slob, but it's apparent enough that there's muscle and confidence underneath that sloppy button-up shirt. He also has nifty little symmetrical red tattoos on his face that really don't serve any canonical purpose. So maybe they're just there to make people ask questions?
Personality:
He's a somewhat unique sort of businessman, really. He'll do his job when it has to be done and, even though he has a tendency to stand with a bit of a slouch, he manages to still put forth the impression that not only is he going to do what needs to be done, but he knows full well that he is more than able to pull it off. He manages to go through life with a somewhat laid-back, if not cynical attitude. The world is not about to bend over backwards to make things easy for him, and he knows it. If he thought otherwise, he wouldn't have become a Turk, after all. And, while he'll do what has to be done while he's on the job, he still treats his line of work as simply a job. He doesn't hold any animosity toward the people he targets unless they do something to earn that animosity- don't mess with him, and he won't make it personal. And really, nobody wants Reno to make it personal. Time off is time off, and he'll make full use of that while lounging about and drinking if it so suits him. Loyalty to companions and partners can make him blur the line between clocked hours and vacation time, however, because even Reno of the Turks has a sense of morals now and then.
(And he has a soft spot for kids and newbies. Aww.)
Speech Tic, yoto
In Japanese, Reno has a bit of a speech tic. He likes to add his own happy little nonsense words to the end of nearly every sentence that he speaks. "Yoto," "zoto," and simply "to" make up a good chunk of his dialog, and he'll even stick them at the end of sentences that are shorter than the phrases themselves. In English, there really isn't an equivalent. The two translations dumped them entirely, most likely to spare themselves the difficulty of coming up with something that might work in their stead.
The fans, however, seem to have tacked "yo" or "you know" to the end of the things he says for the purposes of their fanfiction and whatever else they might need to use a random-emphasis-Reno-word for.
I, personally, will probably stick with "yoto," "zoto," and "yo." For whatever reason, I find that they seem to roll off of his tongue well while I'm typing his dialog, and I've got more experience looking into Japanese Reno than his English self. But I won't use them the same way his Japanese self does- with no break between the words, after nearly every single sentence. I'll use his nonsensical afterbabble sparingly, really, so that it serves simply as emphasis when emphasis is needed. Or wherever I think a Reno-sentence would look that much more complete with a good dash of "yo" slapped onto the end.
Feel free to prod me to tell me to cut it out if his speech tic starts to hurt your brain, zoto. I'm still trying to find a nice balance.
ShinRa Electric Power Company
The Turks: ShinRa's Department of Administrative Research (more commonly known as The Turks) are an underground branch of the ShinRa Electric Power Company. While it is Soldier's job to run around doing all of the stuff that makes ShinRa look good (seriously, they're the group of heroes that every kid strives to be), the Turks typically wind up with the dirtier, grimier stuff that ShinRa doesn't want to see on the first page. Soldier will win a war. The Turks will kidnap, steal, assassinate, dig up graves, cover up evidence of horrible massacres, set devastating explosives, and crush large portions of the Midgar slums in order to see their ends are met. Their job isn't pretty, but if it wasn't for them, Soldier's work wouldn't be half as glamorous. Unlike Soldier, after all, the Turks don't have to keep their fingernails clean in order to show up for that photo op. In fact, they'd much sooner stick to the phrase "plausible deniability" and not show up at all.
The current hierarchy of the Turks consists of Tseng sitting at the top of the chain of command, and then Reno in second place, then Rude, and then Elena, the newest recruit as of FFVII. Out of this group, Reno has a strong friendship with Rude, and the two are paired up as partners more often than not. He also has a tendency to go out of his way to protect the new recruits to the Turks- Elena, currently. The fact that he hovers over the newbies the way he does coupled with the fact that there are all of four Turks come the end of FFVII suggests that the Turk mortality rate is somewhere on the morbidly high side. Not terribly surprising for a group whose job description includes murder, espionage, and protecting the president of the company from eco-terrorist assassins.
Background
Nothing is known about Reno before his life with the Turks. His mannerisms, including his speech patterns, state of dress, and fighting style all suggest that he's a city boy, at least, and that he hasn't had the most simple life growing up. For the sake of filling in the huge, flaming canon gaps that poor Reno is subjected to, I'm going to run with that and say that he grew up in the Midgar slums, and was more than happy to leave that life behind to become a Turk- Something that he could be a part of and take pride in. While the Turks work for ShinRa Electric Power Company, however, Reno's loyalties really lie with the Turks themselves. He'll do the work he's got to do, but what matters most is being a Turk, and the Turks at his side.
What can be gathered from real, honest-to-goodness and oh so shiny canonical sources is this- Reno joined the Turks at a fairly young age and worked his way up the ranks relatively quickly- most likely by way of a combination of skill and 'oh-crap-did-so-and-so-die?' promotions. Simply still being alive is usually a good sign that you're in line for a promotion sooner or later, really, and the only way to leave the Turks is in a body-bag. He survived his first mission, the traditional first job of every Turk, securing Sector Eight. Along the way, he picked up a business partner and friend by the name of Rude, and he's taken more than his share of rookies under his wing, keeping an eye on them as best he can just to make sure that the Turk mortality rate doesn't skyrocket more than necessary- if this means ignoring orders to make certain they don't get killed on their own first run of Sector Eight, then so be it. They're Turks now, and that means he'll see to it that they at least make it through their first mission if he can help it. Repeated run-ins with the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE kept things interesting at the very least, even if it meant dealing with a pack of environmentalist killers who really didn't have any proof to back up their accusations that ShinRa's use of Mako energy was killing the planet's Lifestream.
Conditions for the Turks have gotten progressively more sour since Reno initially joined, however. While they never did have the most morally sound job description, the state of ShinRa itself moved from a moral gray area into the red as it continued to pursue more power and more control over the whole of the planet. This resulted in the Turks doing things that even they hadn't been prepared to bring themselves to do. Kidnapping and torturing people for information is one thing, but crushing an entire section of the Midgar slums (a mission which Reno himself took care of) is a different matter entirely. Things took a rather definite swan dive when, not long after the Sector Seven incident, President Shinra was killed, and his even _more_ power-hungry son gained control of the company. It might have been more fortunate that Rufus Shinra didn't get a very long amount of time to put his "rule the world through fear" plans into action, if only everything hadn't gone and exploded from there. Literally. (Oh, crap! The eco-terrorists were right all along!) Somehow, the new boss managed to survive having the ShinRa building collapse on him, and he even cleaned up his act some. The Turks (all four that were left) stuck around to assist (humor?) Rufus in his new goals to restore the planet, even if the man was bound to a wheelchair and dying of that freaky mysterious Geostigma disease. They're Turks. It's what they do.
Powers and Abilities
Reno isn't exactly superhuman by Gaia standards, but he's certainly not a normal human by Earth standards, either. While a good, thorough beating will indeed leave him incapacitated for some amount of time, he's also quite able to take hits and bounce back with a few of his own before he goes down for the count, using speed and agility that would make normal humans cross their eyes just trying to keep up. He's considered the fastest of the Turks, and he uses his speed well to his advantage, hauling himself to his feet with a kick-punch-dodge when the need arises, and even running up walls from time to time, as well. This is not normal, even by Gaia standards. You just don't see people scaling the sides of buildings in ten seconds flat.
So, while there is a huge fandom debate about this, I'm going to err on the side of using a light Mako treatment to explain this speed and agility. I'm not using it for the sake of making him more sparkly or powerful, I'm using Mako simply to pin a reason onto something that already exists. His eyes are blue, he can do insane things with his body, and he works for ShinRa, so it pulls together nicely, rather than people asking him "where did you learn so-and-so-etc" and having me flail about going "crap, there is no canon for this, and the other Turks don't seem to be able to do the same."
His position as a Turk also introduced him to a world of experience with a weapon he is rarely seen without- his stun baton, or Electro-Mag Rod. While it can obviously be used for typical 'zapping' purposes, Reno tends to default more toward the "I smack you in the head until you stop moving" method, which suggests that, despite his skill with fighting, he really hasn't had any formal training with it at all. In fact, his fighting style seems to be something of a free-range mishmash of kicking, dodging, and punching as opposed to any particular martial art. He seems to be well aware that when he's fighting, he's fighting to survive, and his "kick it and punch it and eventually it will stay down" attitude lends itself to the notion that he grew up fighting, and just decided to continue using the skills he picked up just trying to survive.
Oh, yes. And he can fly a helicopter, and he's got a working knowledge of how such things function. While he isn't exactly a mechanic, he knows well enough about the workings of machines an electronics to make them run, fix them when they're down, override systems to lock meddlesome hero-types out of them, and make entire chunks of city go boom.
And, depending on the Materia he's got loaded into the equipment he's using at the time, he can not only deliver a good zap, but can also show resistance to his preferred element- lightning- even to the point that it heals him if used against him. Take away the Materia and he loses this ability, of course.
Where in Canon is he From?
Reno will be pulled from a point between the events of Final Fantasy VII and the movie, Advent Children. The ShinRa company has crashed and burned (mostly literally), and Geostigma is plaguing the populace of what was once Midgar. Geostigma is an infection of Sephiroth cells that people picked up when the Lifestream surfaced to stop Meteor. The spirit reacts by forcibly rejecting the cells from the body, but the body itself suffers as a result. One of the people infected by this disease was none other than Rufus Shinra, who survived the (literal) fall of his company (possibly by some miracle), and decided afterward to do whatever was possible to reverse the damage that ShinRa Electric Power caused to the planet and to the Lifestream.
... Possibly because he wasn't in the mood to die due to his spirit rejecting Sephiroth cells. But that is neither here nor there.
Enter the Fandom High pamphlet, floating dramatically through the breeze to light on Rufus Shinra's wheelchair-ridden lap. After reading this pamphlet, which he flips through if only because he doesn't have anything left to lose, he comes to the realization that what he has found is practically an invitation to attend classes on an island that just so happens to be a trans-dimensional hub.
Countless universes, all converging on one point. Who knows what might be out there? Another power source, perhaps? Maybe Materia? Or... possibly a cure for Geostigma? This, of course, bears investigation.
Obviously, Rufus is not able to get out there to take classes himself. He has more important things to do. Like sit in his wheelchair, anonymously spearheading organizations to save the world. But really, why should he bother going anyhow? He has a perfectly good quartet of peons left to his disposal.
But which to choose?
Obviously not Tseng, who is far too staunch and proper for this particular job. And Rude would implode from the neverending demand on his somewhat impaired social skills. Neither really seem suited for the task of spending day in and day out with the teenaged rabble that one typically expects in a High School. Elena is still rather new to her position- she's still far too by-the-book to handle a solo mission, and obviously still needs to have her hand held by someone more experienced.
Someone, perhaps, like the fastest Turk. Reno. Reno happens to look the part, what with his tendency to slack off on the dress code and his lean and lanky physique. His attitude is suitable as well, given that he's not at all awkward so far as communicating goes, and he might even be relaxed enough to chum around with a few of these otherworldly students. And, the icing on the cake, Reno has been a Turk long enough to know what it is that Turks do without worrying if what he's doing fits within some form of protocol. Perfect.
Reno's age is going to be a little warped to allow for this- there are six years between when he actually is 15-ish in Crisis Core and the events of FFVII. No plot points will be lost if that span of five years is condensed to two so that Reno isn't walking into FH at about 24 years old or so, looking around for jailbait.
Links Yay!
After all that, on the off-chance that you still need series information? I provide. See how ocd thoughtful I am?
http://www.silenttweak.net/ Crisis Core Translations
http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/psx/ff7/images/map.gif WOO MAP
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII YAY INFO
http://valiantknife.org/reno/ Oh, look! A site all about Reno!
http://www.freewebs.com/gunshotromance/reno.htm This site has translations of that game that Japan is being greedy about and never letting anyone else have, ever.
http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/ff7story.shtml A timeline of all of the events in FFVII canon, ever. Freakishly long and with the occasional "wtfRetcon" note.
Stick a fork in me. I am very, very done.