Ch. 1 – Elena
"Dismissed."
"Yes, sir!" Elena saluted, leaving Rufus' office. "Finally, a short vacation," she sighed. "Time all to myseeeelf… no more work, no surprises, nothing. Absolutely no—" She was cut off as she rounded the corner, bouncing off of a taller figure; she blushed. "Mr. Tseng, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?! I didn't hurt you, did I?!" Her blue eyes sparkled with worry as she self-consciously tucked her Chocobo-blonde hair behind her ear.
"I'm fine," replied Tseng in his handsome bass voice. He flashed her a dazzlingly white smile. "The question is, are you okay?"
A rather stupid-sounding "duuuh…" escaped Elena's mouth as a goofy grin overtook her face. Tseng procured a handkerchief from his suit pocket and continued, "You're drooling." He gently wiped the saliva from her mouth.
Another intelligent "duuuh" escaped Elena's lips as her grin grew wider; she saluted to Tseng, smile still on her face, and shouted, "Sir, I'm fine, sir! Thank you for asking, sir! I need to go now, sir!" Without waiting for Tseng's reply, she dashed out of the Shin-Ra building.
Tseng grinned. "It's always fun to see her do that."
Elena slammed her door shut. "Omigodomigod!" she squealed. "Tseng actually talked to me! He-he-he-he, he touched my mouth! Omigod!"
"Elena. Calm down. Or at least lower your decibel level, please! You're going to destroy my newest robot with your supersonic shrieking!" snapped Cissnei, her roommate. "If you don't calm down, you're going to blow up. Polish your guns or something."
The blonde nodded. "Yes. My guns. My shiny, shiny, beautiful—" She gasped. "Who the hell touched my guns?!" Cissnei winced at Elena's newest bout of shrieking. "They're all dull, and waxy, and-and-and unshiny!"
"Oh, yeah. That was Rude's payback for the stale licorice you gave him last week; he polished them himself," Cissnei replied matter-of-factly before returning to tinkering with her electronics.
Elena snatched up her most prized guns, as well as a polishing cloth and cleaning liquid, and stormed out of her room; her shriek could heard throughout the Shin-Ra dormitory building: "RUDE!"
Rude looked up from his book as Elena threw open his door. "You-you-you-you!" she spluttered. "You polished my guns!"
"Most people wouldn't be angry about that," Rude commented, pulling off his sunglasses. "I did you a favor."
"I'll do you a favor: polish your head with a fucking spray of bullets!" Elena shrieked. "Your polishing was all wrong! You left streaks, and fingerprints, and you used wax! Wax! W-A-X, WAX! You never use wax!" She pulled out her most prized pistol, and her cleaning supplies, spritzing several sprays of cleaning fluid on the barrel of the gun. "You put this on it, then take the cloth and use slow, smooth strokes until it's perfectly shiny! And if it isn't, you use more liquid, and faster strokes!"
Rude smirked, opening his mouth to make a snarky comment, but was cut off: "Your poor guns!" Elena cried, rushing to Rude's cabinet laden with pistols and rifles. "You don't even take care of your own?!" She seized the nearest rifle and began cleaning furiously. "You have no respect for your weapons!"
"I do too respect my—" Elena interrupted him with a spray of cleaning fluid to his face.
"You do not! Look at how dull they all are!" She angrily sprayed him again, storming out of the room with a frustrated shriek.
Reno just stared.