Disclaimer: If I owned Final Fantasy Tifa and Cloud would so have babies.

Reno the Peacemaker, Rude the Slayer, Alfred the Brave

I am a fearless warrior. You can't scare me.

Reno walked forward, tightly holding his shining black weapon. He would win this battle; he had to win it, for the sake of his home and his friends the enemy was going down. He clutched the weapon tighter.

Where are you?

Then he saw him. The beast's gray fur and leering black eyes stood out, his sharp white teeth glinting.

Reno smiled and lifted his weapon high, ready to strike.

Thud.

He looked behind himself in shock to find Rude clutching a bleeding nose and looking livid.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rude demanded.

"Uhhh…."

"You hit me in the face with a frying pan!"

"It was an accident, I was reaching back to kill the mouse," Reno defended.

"What mouse?"

"We have a mouse!"

"And you were going to kill it with something we eat off of?"

"…Yes…"

"Give me that," Rude snatched the frying pan away from Reno.

"Mouse-lover," Reno hissed, then squealed and jumped onto the countertop.

"It touched me!"

Rude sighed and put the frying pan away. "You'll fight chimeras, you'll fight monsters, you'll fight Sephiroth's remnants, but you're scared of a mouse?"

Reno blinked, then twiddled his thumbs. "It'd be a rat if it went outside."

"…What?"

"You know, when they're inside they're mice, but outside…"

"Just stop talking," Rude lifted his hand.

"But that's how it works!"

Rude watched the mouse scurry across their floor, pick up a cracker chunk that'd been there for who knows how long, then run behind their fridge.

Reno bit his fingernails, watching the area where the creature had been. Sighing, Rude left the room.

"Where are you going?" Reno demanded from atop the counter.

The once coat closet was full of useless junk that they'd tossed in there when it had no other home. After several minutes of digging Rude came out victorious, brandishing a bag of not-quite-live mousetraps.

He strolled back into the kitchen and started setting them up around the fridge.

"What are you doing?"

"This is the proper way to catch a mouse," Rude said matter-of-factly.

"But won't that kill it?" Reno's voice was worried.

The older Turk looked up at him the way he always did when Reno was being ridiculous or stupid. "And what exactly were you going to do with the frying pan?"

"…I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Well it seemed like a good idea at the time! But Rude," he said in a whiny voice. "The mouse is so small…"

Rude laid pieces of cheese on the traps and sat back. "That's life."

A few minutes passed, and Rude continued to stare at the battle-line he had drawn.

"You're going to watch? You sadist!"

"It's just a stupid mouse."

"But what if it has stupid mouse babies and a stupid mouse wife that can't get any stupid mouse food without her stupid mouse husband and she'll have to find a stupid mouse job and no one will be home with the stupid mouse children and they'll all grow up to be stupid mouse criminals! Think of the family Rude."

"Or," Rude started, "it's just a stupid mouse that's going to chew holes in our walls."

"But…"

"You were going to kill the thing in the first place," Rude stood, looking away from the traps for the first time. "I don't see what the problem is here…"

He was interrupted by a sharp snapping sound, followed by five more. Reno covered his face in horror and Rude turned triumphantly to his mousetraps. All of them were shut and cheese-less.

None of them held a mouse.

Reno looked out from behind his hands, then snickered. "What's the word I'm looking for here Rude?" Reno tapped his chin thoughtfully, dangling his legs off the edge of the countertop. "Oh that's right, I believe it's owned Rude, owned by a mouse!"

The vein in Rude's forehead pulsed so much that Reno was afraid it would explode. He shrunk back onto the countertop.

"I mean, 'oh no, it got away'."

"I hope you realize," Rude said to the fridge. "That this means war."

Reno gulped.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"We need mousetraps."

"Live mousetraps," Reno said over Rude's shoulder.

Rude shoved the redhead away from the salesperson they were speaking to. "Any kind of mousetrap."

"Rude!" Reno whined.

"If it's still alive when I catch it I'm just going to kill it so quit complaining," Rude snapped.

Reno pouted behind Rude's shoulder.

"Well," said the salesperson cheerfully, obviously trained to ignore lovers' spats. "You're in luck, we have many mousetraps. Mice are pretty prevalent in Midgar, so we keep plenty handy. We have poisons, cages, snap-close traps, bio-bombs, and of course Hojo's new mouse-catcher 6000…"

"Wait," interrupted Rude. "Did you say Hojo?"

The salesman nodded with a bright smile. "Yes sir."

"This I've got to see," Rude said over his shoulder to Reno as he followed the salesman.

Pulling out a large, silver triangle the salesman moved into his well-memorized speech. "This was invented by the brilliant Hojo. You simply lay the object on the floor and it uses materia magic already imbedded in it to find and annihilate any mice within ten cubic feet. A blue light will make a square around its radius, but it will only harm something that has mouse-DNA."

"I'll take it, let's see him get out of this."

Reno crossed his arms defiantly. "Alfred's smart, he'll do it."

"Alfred?" Rude demanded. "Please tell me that's not the mouse?"

Reno lifted an eyebrow. "What if it is?"

"Reno," Rude started, as if he was speaking to a small child. "When you name things you make them into real characters in your mind, then you grow attached to them. It's not good to be attached to something that your lover is going to kill."

"We'll see Rude."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alfred sat daringly in the middle of their kitchen, snacking on a piece of cheese that he must have stolen from the mousetraps.

"That's right," Rude said, brandishing the triangle. "Look smug, we'll see who's laughing ten minutes from now."

Tipping his head to the side curiously, Alfred shoved the remaining cheese in his mouth and stared at Rude.

Reno whimpered. "Rude, he's really cute."

"Shut up," Rude said, setting the device three feet from the mouse.

"There's something I should tell you," Reno said dramatically. "The machine targets things with mouse DNA. Well, if you turn that on I'm done for. You see, I'm half mouse." Reno collapsed on the floor, hugging Rude's arm. "You still love me right?"

"Knock it off," he commanded, shaking Reno off his arm.

Reno crossed his legs and pouted. "You bully."

"I just have to press this button, and it'll be over," Rude said evenly. "Then this mouse-obsession will be gone from your head."

No response. Rude smiled and leaned forward pressing the button. Then, two things happened.

1) A small blue light started at the tip of the triangle, and then grew.

2) Reno jumped across the kitchen floor screaming at Alfred to run.

"You idiot!" Rude shouted as the mouse scurried just outside the blue square's reach. It then stopped a foot away and sat there, staring at them curiously.

If Rude didn't know any better, he'd think that the damned thing was smirking.

The blue light sucked back into the triangle. Reno sighed in relief, but Rude snapped. He grabbed the frying pan from inside the cupboard and ran at Alfred.

Reno went and hid in the closet, trying to ignore the bangs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I don't see how this could have happened," Rude said softly, leaning against the couch, Reno next to him, nodding sympathetically.

It had been three hours, twenty-two minutes, and six seconds since the Hojo creation had failed and Rude and went on a rampage through their apartment, chasing after Alfred.

The fish bowl was busted, the fish now floated around happily in the only three cups Reno could find that weren't completely broken. The couch that they sat on was torn, the kitchen in shambles, the bed turned over, the windows cracked…

Alfred chewed on his cheese and watched them from the coffee table curiously.

"He's so close," Rude said pathetically, reaching out his hand. The mouse was about six inches from the tip of his index finger.

"I know," said Reno.

"But if I move, he'll be gone."

Reno nodded.

Rude slumped against the couch again. "I'm a pathetic excuse for a man."

"I don't think so," said Reno reassuringly. "I think Alfred's just a really good mouse."

"So now what?"

Reno shrugged. "What can we do? Alfred obviously intends to stay. He's more interesting then the fish at least." He glanced at one of the golden creatures, which was now repeatedly running into one of the glass walls, obviously not understanding the concept of turning.

"I guess so," Rude agreed.

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Reno?" Rude finally said.

"Yeah?"

"Why the hell Alfred?"

"…It's such a nice name…"

"…Oh."

Alfred leapt off the table happily and ran into the kitchen to inspect the piles of scattered food amongst the wreckage.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A/N: I hope that you guys liked it! This is going to be a series of ficlets, and I have many ideas, but if there's any Rude/Reno stories that you'd like to see let me know and I'll try to write them. It can be drama, humor, fluff, whatever you want. Please review!