Rated T for Turk, because of "minor" Turk violence and Rude's mouth...yes, he actually talks in this one!
A/N: In this fic, Midgar's still pretty new, so the power grid's kinda unreliable...much to the distress of three hapless SOLDIERs. Or it could just be the Turks who turn off the lights... (It's also a sort of unstated fact that SOLDIERs routinely torment Turks. Not necessarily canon, but the possibility can lead to some interesting forms of revenge.)
Reno slumped into an overstuffed chair in the Turks' lounge and watched as Rude set down the inordinately heavy cardboard carton that "they" had had to bring all the way up from the second-floor delivery zone.
The hauling around part wouldn't have been too bad, even as far as Rude was concerned, if the elevators had been working. Which they hadn't. Pressing the button for the sixty-first floor had started to take them down to the ground floor...and below. Reno had had to quickly hot-wire the elevator to get it to stop, because everyoneknew that in the basements were Hojo's labs.
Rather than risk another attempt at using the elevator, they had decided that it would probably be in the best interests of their continued relatively normal existence if they just used the stairs.
"This'd sure better be worth it, yo," Reno commented, rotating in his seat to swing his legs over the arm of the chair and stare up at the ceiling, arms behind his head. "After we had to haul it up sixty some-odd floors, twelve hundred some-odd steps..."
Rude refrained from replying, being too busy massaging his shoulder. If he'd done something to it and missed the next mission, Reno would pay. Rude realized that even though he was always making resolutions like that, Reno always got out of paying. The interest was beginning to build up, but there was little hope of ever collecting it.
Tseng and Elena walked in at that minute, and Reno sat up to give some indication, however slight, of attentiveness.
Tseng nodded briefly to Rude as Elena eagerly began opening the box.
"This is the shipment of parts I was telling you about. We need to contact the shop to have them fitted, but-" She suddenly stopped talking, and stared into the carton in disappointment.
Rude had no idea what she had been talking about, but her expression now implied that whatever he had carried up forty flights of stairs and almost-dragged up twenty-five flights, was probably not what she had expected and was therefore wasted effort. Extra reason to make Reno pay. No wait - maybe Reno could carry the box back down...?
Reno didn't notice the sly, very un-Rude-like way Rude was looking at him, being too busy trying to see into the large box without leaving his seat.
Elena, looking crestfallen, reached into the carton and pulled out the invoice.
"Twenty pairs high-sensitivity night-vision goggles," she read off morosely. "Twenty-five blank VHS tapes. Five industrial-grade free-standing desktop loudspeakers."
Tseng looked on in silence as Elena continued the dirge. "Five hundred foot roll of packing tape. Ten pounds of 20mm ball bearings? Blue spray-on hair dye? Two weeks' supply of MRE's?" She dropped the paper into her lap in disgust. "What kind of weirdo's mail did we get?"
Rude glanced back at Reno, but he seemed innocently intrigued by the contents of the box. At least, as innocent as was possible for Reno. It apparently hadn't been his personal order. That would have been the final straw. Rude would've had him carrying the crate all the way to Corel. And back. Twice.
Elena stood up and glared at the box of junk.
"Those parts had better get here soon." Her voice was venomous; whatever project the ambiguous "parts" were destined for was obviously very close to Elena's heart.
Tseng sighed to himself and looked at his watch. "I have to be in Junon in three hours; there's a high-security conference with all the department heads. We'll have to leave this here for now; we can send it back tomorrow."
Reno, who had been trying on a pair of night-vision goggles, pushed them up onto his head, displacing his normal pair.
"Why Junon, huh? Wasn't Midgar built for that sorta thing?"
Tseng shrugged as he turned to leave. "Power's still unstable in Midgar. Maybe they want to do a weapons demonstration and don't want the lights going out at a bad time."
"Hm." Reno turned back to the box eagerly, like a mentally unbalanced kid on some sort of warped Christmas morning. Rude realized, slowly and painfully, that he was plotting something.
"The one in the garage is broken, too," Angeal reported, coming around the corner to where Zack was standing, slumped against the wall in defeat and exhaustion, yet regarding the elevator doors in front of him with undiminished malevolence.
Their last training session in the temporary first-floor training room had been a little more rigorous than usual, and Angeal almost felt sorry for Zack as he realized that their last hope was gone - they would have to climb up fifty stories before there could be any hope of rest or hot showers. Unless they decided to stop off in the cadets' floors...but everyone knew that none of the facilities there were very good, when there were facilities at all.
"C'mon, Angeal, maybe we could stay somewhere in Midgar tonight. We wouldn't have to climb all those stairs, and..." Zack was panting as he followed Angeal to the stairs.
Angeal raised his eyebrows. "It's your own fault you're this tired, for taunting that Behemoth."
"Yeah, well, you didn't tell me you'd given it a permanent Wall," Zack whined pitifully, dragging his feet up the stairs.
"You didn't ask."
"I didn't ask because I thought I could attack it. But no, you pull that and it chases me all over simulated Gongaga in ninety degree heat for more than thirty minutes before you pop in and say, 'Oh, by the way, you might want to try knocking that boulder over onto it, because you've never had to before but I gave it a permanent shield and' - no, wait! You didn't even say that much! You just said, 'Utilize your surroundings,' whatever you thought I'd get out of that."
"The purpose of the session was to test your resourcefulness."
Zack sighed."Guess I failed that one then."
Before Angeal had to make a reply, they arrived on a landing and were confronted by an over-eager-looking Reno who was trying his hardest to not look over-eager.
"Heyya, guys. Why're you takin the stairs, yo?" Reno was now attempting an innocent act. Angeal wondered how the guy ever made it into the Turks, you could almost tell what he was thinking just by looking at him... On second thought, Angeal realized that no, he couldn't. All he could tell was that he was thinking of...something.
"You haven't noticed?! All the elevators are broken!" Zack was saying, throwing his arms up in despair.
"Oh," Reno said, then added brightly, "There's a pair over there that work! I just came down in one!"
"Why didn't you say something?!" Zack tore past him, all evidence of his formerly bemoaned exhaustion evaporating at the mention of transportation.
Reno stared after him, feigning shock. "I...did say somethin'?"
Angeal shrugged and followed Zack into one of the elevators.
Reno remained frozen where he was until the doors had slid shut on the two SOLDIERs, then he darted into the other elevator, almost knocking down a cadet in his haste to get back to the Turk floors...fast. His plan was about to kick off.
"Hey, Angeal, what's up with this elevator? We've passed our floor."
Angeal turned to examine the button panel on the elevator. It looked normal, except...
"I think it's been hot-wired," Angeal commented. "And badly at that."
Zack stood behind him to look at the dangling wires Angeal had indicated.
"Maybe we could fix it -" he started to say, when the lights in the elevator suddenly died and they slid to a stop at the sixty-first floor.
They both stood silent in the dark for a few moments.
"Uhhh... What just happened?"
Angeal felt like cursing, but Honor prohibited it. "Power grid's down again."
"Great. So...where are we?"
"Turk floor, I think."
"Yay."
The battery-powered emergency lantern cast a sinister upwards glow on Reno's eager face; so much so, that Elena shivered inadvertently. He'd make a terrifying villain...
"So, folks," Reno addressed the assembled Turks, "what we're gonna do..." He paused for dramatic effect, but no one showed the slightest hint of falling for it.
Scratch that, Elena thought. Not villain material. Sub-villain, maybe.
"What we're gonna do," Reno continued, looking at each of the assembled Turks in turn, "is strike back at SOLDIER!"
There was no cheering and very little applause. Reno pointed a finger accusingly at Elena. "You said you supported this! Back me up here!"
"I said I wanted revenge, but I was referring to the people who screwed up the delivery," Elena countered. "But on second thought, I might be able to bring myself to torment some SOLDIERs for a while. It's not like enough junior Turks don't go MIA for extended periods on the SOLDIER floors to justify it."
She noticed the nods of agreement around Reno's impromptu briefing table in the small storage room.
Smirking triumphantly, Reno turned to direct his finger at Rude.
"What about you, yo?"
"More hateful towards deliverymen myself," Rude grumbled. "But I think I'm pretty much stuck helping you out in your idiotic scheme. Or one of the SOLDIERs will thread your ponytail up your-"
Reno cleared his throat hurriedly and rapped the edge of the table with his EMR.
"What about you, Ciss?"
She shook her head. "I'm not going to help you do anything to them. But I will try to keep them from killing you, or vice versa, depending on how things go."
"Oh." Reno looked crestfallen. But hey, he still had more than enough recruits, particularly if he counted the junior Turks.
"All right then. Here're our plans." Reno dragged out a small bundle of papers, bound neatly together in typical Turk fashion. "And your standard-issue night-vision goggles are in the crate behind me, as well as some other...supplies. Let's get crackin'."
Elena scowled. These various odd materials had arrived awfully conveniently... "Wait just a second!" she demanded, as Reno turned toward the box. "That was your order, wasn't it?!"
Angeal and Zack successfully pried the broken elevator's doors open, but found themselves staring out into pitch-blackness.
"Uh, Angeal... Shouldn't there be at least some light?"
Angeal realized what he meant - even with their enhanced vision, they couldn't see in complete absence of light, which was what confronted them now.
Angeal let out a brief sigh and tried to spot any sort of semi-definite shape in the blackness confronting them. "There was another elevator next to this one, and Reno said it worked; all elevators are connected to the back-up generators, so power shouldn't be a problem."
"He also said this elevator worked."
"Yes, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he only used the other one and he didn't know this one was broken."
"Too bad we didn't know which one he used," Zack sighed.
"Aw, Reno, listen to that. They're giving you the benefit of the doubt. No one's done that for you in years!"
"Cut it out, Laney," Reno complained automatically, even though he was just as excited as she was. He reached over to the security console and switched the camera view so they could see the black-clad form of a Turk stealthily approaching the elevator, where the two target SOLDIERs were looking around futilely. "Two Guns is in position," he said. "Let's let 'er rip!"
A/N II: From here on out, it escalates exponentially.
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