What's a Red to do? By Dreaming Rain

A/N: Ignore the lame name. And...well...it isn't ENTIRELY about Red, he's only shown in a more favorable light than the others that's all. Please don't kill me; I'm too stupid to die.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything mentioned in the following stories. I don't even own fertilizer, or Rufus' violet socks. You'll see.

'Years of planning and plotting have finally brought me to this joyous day! At long last, I have the secret whereabouts of the AVALANCHE terrorist organization!'

Seated on his comfortable leather seat, Rufus Shinra continued to gloat in an unsettling manner.

'So long have I waited for this moment, and now, it has come! Soon the fools shall see that meddling in the affairs of Rufus Shinra only brings destruction to the meddlers! Muahahahahahaha!'

Standing by his side, Tseng looked unquestionably disturbed.

'Sir? Would you like a-'

'Silence! I shall not be spoken to like a mere commoner! Be gone, yon knave!'

Tseng sighed. These I'm-a-crazy-dictator-hear-me-gloat fits of Rufus' were really getting annoying.

'My enemies come closer, but I shall soon...DESTROY them! Muahaha-'

Rufus was cut off by a sound blow to his cranium, courtesy of one tall, Wutaian Turk.

'Sir, are you alright?' Tseng asked innocently, quickly putting his cranium-thumping hands behind his back.

Rufus shook his head to bring his wandering eyeballs back on track.

'Y-yes, I'm fine. Something hit me, Tseng!'

'Heh, no!' Tseng swallowed. 'You...fell asleep and hit your head on the desk.'

Rufus blinked.

'Oh, ok then. Back to the issue. We have the whereabouts of the AVALANCH headquarters. Question is, what do we do with it?'

'We could just storm it and capture them all.'

'True. But I want to do something mind-blowing. Something staggering. Something preferably involving explosions.' Before Tseng could reply, the office door swooshed open.

'Your memos, sir.'

Rufus' secretary came in, trying desperately to flutter her eyelashes, waggle her hips and appear both professional and attractive at the same time.

Rufus took the sheet without even a glance at her.

The poor woman sighed and waggled back. Oh well, some other time.

'What's on the agenda?' Tseng asked, having no idea how strange that sounded to the author when she said it out loud.

'Have to destroy a sector of the slums-Wait. That's it!'

'You remember where you've put your violet socks!' Tseng asked eagerly.

Rufus blinked again.

'No...I realize how I can get rid of AVALANCHE, and get a sector of the slums removed!'

'So you still can't remember where those violet socks are?'

'I'll let you know when I do.'

Red XIII, a red lion-dog-cat-thing hybrid, and a genius to boot, woke up on the floor of the bar to the musical sound of Cloud's shouts in the morning.

'ALL RIGHT! WHICH CLOWN PUT THE $# HAIR DYE IN MY SHAMPOO!'

Red sighed. Cloud was such a dunce. Anyone with an OUNCE of sense could tell it had been Yuffie. But Cloud just had to make a ruckus.

Yuffie ran down the stairs, giggling like mad.

'Ssshhh!' she whispered. 'Don't tell him I'm here!'

'Don't worry; he won't be out for at least a few moments,' Red replied, fully aware of Cloud's limited attention span.

Tifa was the next down the stairs, cheerfully humming a cheerful tune cheerfully.

'Good morning Red! Good morning Yuffie! It's such a cheerful day, how about we have muffins for breakfast today, h'mm?'

'Yay!' Yuffie cart wheeled around the room.

'Tifa, you make muffins every single day!' Red told her.

'So?' she pouted. 'Don't you like them?'

'Ahem, well...that isn't really my point, my point is just-'

'MUFFINS IT IS THEN!'

At the sound of Tifa's voice shouting muffins, the entire team ran downstairs, with the exception of Vincent, who was still asleep in the cellars.

'Yuffie, go wake Vincent up, please,' Tifa requested as she mixed the batter and caused it to fly up to the roof.

'Why do you guys always send ME to wake Vincent up?' she pouted.

'Because the girls want you and Vincent to be together as much as possible so you two can fall in love with each other, thus leaving Tifa and Aerith with no other option but to fight over Cloud. That way, they both can't tell the other to back off and go for Vincent instead,' Barret replied intelligently.

Yuffie blinked.

'Ahem, he means because you're the only one who can scale the walls of the cellar,' Aerith quickly said, giving Barret the evil-eye. Barret hung his head in shame.

As Yuffie scaled the walls and tried to wake Vincent up without falling on him, Aerith turned angrily to Barret. 'Barret! What did you blurt all that out for!'

'I'm sorry. I jes wanted to sound smart for once.'

'You? Smart? Hell no!' Cid exclaimed, going off into fits of laughter as he thought of Barret in graduation robes, doing the monkey. Cid has a twisted imagination.

'What do ya mean, hell no! I can be as smart as the next idiot!'

'That's the whole #$ point!'

'You think you're so smart!'

'Yeah!'

'Yeah!'

'Yeah!'

'Yeah!'

'YEAH, YOU'RE BOTH STUPID, HAPPY!' Cloud shouted, coming into the room.

Everybody turned to look at him.

'What?' he asked.

'Nothing,' Cid snickered. 'Ketchup head.'

'What?' Cloud asked again. 'I didn't catch that last-'

'We didn't say nothing,' Barret chuckled. 'Carrot top.'

'Are you guys trying to make a point?' Cloud asked angrily.

Aerith looked up at him and gasped in shock.

'What's wrong Aerith?'

'Um, nothing, nothing, Reno-I mean Cloud.'

Cloud looked very confused, which was quite a common occurrence. However, Red finally took pity on him.

'Cloud, Yuffie put hair dye in your shampoo, and you used it anyway, and now you have red hair.'

'RED!' Cloud shouted.

'Yes, red, as in you have red hair-'

'No, I mean Red as in; Red I didn't know you were awake.'

Red blinked. 'I...see...No, I don't see, but that doesn't matter.'

'Wait,' Cloud said slowly, 'you just said that Yuffie...my shampoo...hair dye...' He crinkled his eyes up in effort.

'C'mon carrot top, you can do it!' Cid encouraged.

Cloud crinkled his face up as well. 'I got it! Yuffie secretly put hair dye in my shampoo, and I realized it, but I got distracted by the shiny tap, so I used it anyway and now my hair is red!'

'There you go Cloud!' Aerith beamed. 'I knew you were smart!'

'Yeah!' he grinned happily. 'I'm really smart! So what's for dinner?'

'Breakfast, Cloud, and we're having muffins,' Tifa told him, coming with a huge chocolaty-brown stack.

'Wow, Tifa, these look great!' Barret said with a huge smile on his face. That smile quickly slid off, however, the second he tasted the things. His face turned green and his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.

'What's wrong Barret?' Aerith asked, taking a bite as well. She choked and began coughing violently.

The others took one look at their faces and quickly decided they weren't hungry.

'Tifa,' gasped Aerith, 'w-what...did you put in them?'

'I used the chocolate muffin mix. It's on the bottom shelf.'

Cid got up to pick up the little packet which clearly read 'Super-Extra-Yucky-Fertilizer'. Deciding not to question what fertilizer was doing in the kitchen, he sat down silently.

'Well?' Tifa demanded. 'Aren't you going to eat!'

'Ehehehe...' Everyone laughed weakly, with the exception of Barret and Aerith; both of whom were still choking.

Once again, it was up to Red to save the day. 'Tifa, dear,' he said slowly, 'we'd LOVE to have these delicious muffins you made, but the fact is, we're quite full from that wonderful dinner you made last night. Your cooking was so good that we stuffed ourselves silly, so now we can't eat a bite.'

Everyone nodded frantically.

'Oh.' Tifa deflated a bit. 'Right. Ok.'

'Mmmmmm...hope you guys left something for us!' Yuffie shouted, climbing out of the cellar, followed by Vincent.

'No, Yuffie! Don't!'

Too late. She stuffed a muffin whole in her mouth, choked, and ran to the bathroom.

Vincent looked around the table. 'I take it we are full from last night's dinner?'