Famous Last Words
Dawn was hardly breaking at the Healin Lodge, but already the stark grey building's innards were bustling with activity, activity that was largely related to the memo Tseng had just received through the computer from President Rufus Shinra, whose combination bedroom and office was all of two doors down the hall from his own. Tseng had bitterly reflected on how technology either complicated or oversimplified things, with no room for the in-between, before reading the memo.
To: All personnel
From: Pres. R. Shinra
Subject: Mission 87H-459
As I told you at our last weekly breakfast meeting in the kitchen, we are to retrieve Jenova's head from the Northern Crater. All operatives are hereby granted permission to use all necessary and/or deadly force in pursuit of this goal. Retrieval of said head is to take precedence over all other objectives until mission 87H-459 is deemed complete.
Mission Abstract: At 17:00 today, Reno Irastan (pilot), Akimoto Tseng (commander), and Elena Malsam (2IC) will take a helicopter transport to the North Crater. Malsam and Akimoto will then deploy to find Jenova's head while Irastan waits in high hover for confirmation that the object has been retrieved. Upon confirmation, Irastan will descend into the Northern Crater for dust-off and return to the Healin Lodge. Rude Melodious (HQ backup) will remain at the Healin Lodge to provide any necessary logistical support via radio.
Rufus Shinra
Executive
PS: Who was supposed to wash the dishes last night? They're still in the sink.
Tseng could not, for the life of him, figure out why the president insisted on running a small group of people operating just outside the law as he would a company. It simply wasn't practical. Then again, these were strange times they lived in. Or maybe it was a result of the younger man's undying obsession with record keeping. (Rufus had, after all, nearly killed himself trying to drag file cabinets out of the Shinra building after it collapsed on him; this was contrary to the commonly held belief that the building itself had caused all the present damage to his body.)
Even more troubling though were the personnel assignments for this particular mission. He was sure that they could handle the positions they had been assigned; they were professionals, after all. Rude and Reno had been trained before the utter decimation of Shinra's Special Forces by an inconveniently placed meteor, and Elena had been learning from everyone else since she became a Turk.
(And this was, of course, a double edged sword, so to speak. She learned how to do everything useful from Rude and Tseng, while Reno had taught her little more than how to hold her liquor and play obnoxious office pranks. Reno was never the type to let loyalty, obligation, maturity, or common sense get in the way of a little fun.)
Reno's exaggerated character flaws aside, the delegation of duties was still a little off, and none of it played to their strengths. Tseng was not arrogant enough to toot his own horn, even to himself, but Reno and Rude had been and still were Shinra's proverbial "Dream Team" (yes, Gaia does have a proverb about dream teams, courtesy of a very drunk Cetra). Elena, despite having been deemed fit to be a Turk, screamed at the sight of blood and was generally recognized as a dull witted ditz, but she was still one of the best pilots around. For these, and other unrelated reasons (such as a sense of honor that often proved crippling during assassination missions), Tseng decided he should at least try to appeal the decision with their commander in chief.
Having filled out the forms necessary to perform such an action (bureaucracy at its finest!), Tseng left his own bedroom-office and trekked the whole ten feet down the hall to visit Rufus.
The president was sitting at his desk and staring out his window at the sun when Tseng arrived. He turned to the Turks' leader as soon as he entered the room. "Is this about the dishes?" He asked, in what could almost be described as an anxious manner. Tseng was beginning to suspect that the trauma of Shinra HQ's collapse had instilled the beginnings of obsessive compulsive disorder in the young president. Why else would his clothing always be so immaculately white?
"No sir, I'm here about the personnel assignments for 87H-459." Tseng replied evenly, setting aside his worries about Rufus' mental health.
Rufus nodded sagely, as if he had been expecting this. "I suppose you want to protest—"
"You bet your ass I do!" Reno yelled as he stumbled through the door. He was dragging Elena and Rude, who had been trying to hold him back. They gave up upon realizing that their efforts were to no avail. Reno stormed toward the President's desk, but stopped at a respectful distance next to Tseng. "Why the hell did you split Rude and I up?" Reno demanded. His query was immediately followed by a chain of swear words and insults that caused Elena to blush and clamp her hands to her mouth and Tseng to twitch. Rude pushed his sunglasses further up on his nose, as if he was embarrassed to be partners with...
...with that.
"Reno, you're still on first degree probation for running drunk and naked through the vegetable garden. That's why you're flying the chopper. Rude is staying here with me because, quite honestly, I prefer his unobtrusive and"—here Rufus glanced pointedly at Reno and Elena—"mercifully silent presence."
Reno had only been half-listening. Fortunately, he had a generic response ready. "So? Rude and I have done everything together since the day we joined the Turks." He paused, and then added another "everything" for effect, apparently unaware that what he had said was vaguely homoerotic.
Elena and Rufus hadn't missed that detail. Tseng, being a man without emotions and all, was busy cleaning his nails and taking everything that was being said at face value. Rude stood to the side of the door in a stoic manner, silently wishing everyone would just settle down and act their age.
"And if you wanted to split us up," Reno added, "why didn't you put me on the ground instead of Blondie? She can't hit the broad side of a barn."
"Hey!" Elena protested, apparently offended by Reno's nickname for her.
Tseng cleared his throat. "He does have a point sir. Elena is more suited to handling transportation."
Said female Turk was immediately starry-eyed and giddy at the thought that Tseng may have, kind of, sort of complimented her in a roundabout and backhanded way.
"She does have every vehicle endorsement possible." Rude stated in a level-headed manner, as he was still the only reasonable person in the room.
In most cases, vehicle endorsements hadn't been that hard to obtain through Shinra. However, in the Investigative Division of the General Affairs Department, it had meant that one could kill both with and from the vehicle in question. Rufus filed this little revelation about Elena in the back of his mind; those sorts of skills could very well end up being useful. Not to mention that it was probably a good idea to question the mental stability of any woman who had both gone through the trouble of obtaining that many endorsements and who was currently eyeing his second in command like a piece of steak.
"It's true sir." Elena began in affirmation, finally abandoning her pointless ogling at Tseng. "Helicopters, stealth vehicles, armored tanks, semis, motorbikes, low-orbit satellites, Segways—"
"That's quite enough, Elena." Rufus said, waving his hand at her wearily.
"Segways!" Reno exclaimed, as if that really mattered.
"I heard her, Reno." The president snapped. "And if you're quite finished—"
"One more thing." Reno began, unwilling to let anyone in the conversation leave without being ripped up by his rapier wit. "Aren't you afraid that Tseng will break his hip or lose his glasses up there?"
Tseng responded by pimp-slapping Reno in such a precise and forceful fashion that the redhead was out cold on the floor in the hallway. Elena applauded, while Rude nodded his respect for their fearless co-leader. Both wisely kept their distance.
Rufus sighed and rubbed his temples, apparently unimpressed by Tseng's display. "The way you've all been twitching every time a pin drops around here suggested to me that you would all be glad for a change. Apparently, I was mistaken."
"Damb right!" Reno swore as he entered the room, suddenly and unexplainably conscious again (albeit with a bloody nose).
"Nevertheless," Rufus continued, shooting a withering glare at Reno (who looked relatively nonplussed by the gesture), "my orders still stand. Reno will fly the helicopter, Rude will remain here with me, and Tseng and Elena will retrieve Jenova's gods-damned head." He paused, looking at each Turk in turn. "Am I understood?"
Reno, Rude, Tseng and Elena all shot weary looks at each other before saluting and uttering a half-hearted, "Yessir." After two years, they had learned that it was useless to defy Rufus' orders once he was sure that he was doing the right thing, no matter how absurd. Despite all his good, or at least innocuous traits, the man had a stubborn streak a mile wide. Not to mention that he was the one who signed their paychecks, which still managed to appear every two weeks, despite the dissolved state of Shinra.
"Glad you see it my way." Rufus said, smiling dangerously. "Dismissed."
One by one, the Turks filed out of the president's bedroom-slash-office to prepare for their pending mission.
Rufus was now unable to shake feelings of doubt himself. The protests of his subordinates, he decided, had made him paranoid.
They're professionals, he assured himself, steepling his hands in front of his face, and this is a simple retrieval mission.He turned back to the window and watched the remains of dawn's rosy fingers shine through the trees.
What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes. Long story short, I felt the need to ridicule the way the Turks were assigned at the beginning of Advent Children. And the more I wrote, the more I decided I'd kind of like to parody Turk fanfiction as a whole, though that was a kind of back drop to the first idea.
Fun Fact: Akimoto approximately means "autumn book." I got the name from the Rum and Monkey Japanese Name Generator, which supposedly gives you "your" Japanese name. (Rum and Monkey also has an excellent parody of fanfiction centering around Maria Von Trapp, Harry Potter, and Jean-Luc Picard—I suggest you check it out.)
Feedback and comments are greatly appreciated, as always.