Just a little one-shot following the TURKs, between the time Diamond Weapon attacks the ShinRa HQ and before Meteor hits. I know, this ignores all "On the way to a Smile" canon, but... hey... it's fanfiction :-)

Once a few yards of distance between the two parties had passed, Reno would intermittently turn to see if he could still see the shock of Cloud's blonde hair. The rest of the landscape was quite nearly pitch-black, with the faint shade of maroon drawing closer overhead as Meteor came near. All things considered, Reno still found a pleasure in ridiculing the motley crew that had assembled, in the name of bringing down ShinRa.

"Damn," he said, not quite to Elena or Rude, although both were near enough to hear him. "Isn't that crazy? A guy like that is the only hope the world's got right now."

Rude didn't so much as turn to acknowledge the sentiment. "Meteor will beat him to it."

"Maybe," Reno said. He looked up. Meteor was getting pretty close, now. "Looks like we're about to go down with the ship, too. Hey-" he walked a little bit quicker, to pull his two colleagues in toward him as they were walking,"-You think we got time for a drink?"

Elena rather violently shrugged his hand off her shoulder. "Reno! We have to get back to Rufus."

"You're right. Turks 'til the end," he said. And Reno considered himself not a sentimental man, he took a moment to inventory every one, every thing in his life up until this point. A youth spent on the streets, and a young adulthood spent bounty hunting for his employer. He wasn't sure whether to be proud or not. But if he was going to go out, he was happy to see the end with his present company. And with that, he decided his life had not been so unpleasant.

"You think Tseng's seeing all of this, right now?" he wondered.

The other two were silent for a moment. Elena, in particular, looked terribly distraught. Tseng's assignment in the Temple of Ancients had been months ago, and the man had never returned. Dead, they had surmised, but it would do no good to re-iterate this to Elena.

"Probably doing paperwork," said Rude, finally.

"You're probably right," said Reno. "Won't let that Meteor stop him from doing Rufus's bitch work."

For his fallen boss, Reno took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one, and took a drag. "The last cigarette of a lifetime," he said, again to no-one in particular, but both Elena and Rude in earshot.

They kept walking.

But it wasn't Reno's last cigarette. Because it wasn't Meteor that fell, no, but a single, well-aimed shot from an angry Weapon. It was hard to tell the difference, but the moment it occurred to Reno that only the ShinRa Tower had been hit and not the entire world as he knew it, his hand managed to find it's way back to his pocket, back to his packet of cigarettes.

"Do you really think this is the time to be smoking?!" shouted Elena over the din of the collapsing building. They had only briefly considered taking refuge in a surviving sector, but in the name of rescuing Rufus ShinRa – or maybe stupidity, they were not sure which, they decided to rush toward to falling ShinRa building.

"Now's as good a time as any," he said.

The closer they got to the center of Midgar, the heavier – stifling, hot – the air became. Reno finished the cigarette until the very end regardless. Maybe that would have been his last cigarette. Maybe, one more. Soon, the three of them had stripped away their dark blue jackets and discarded them somewhere in the dirt and rubble of molten ShinRa building.

"We've got to find Rufus," Elena said.

"Might not be safe," suggested Rude. One metal shingle fell gracefully to the ground in flames, and burned away quickly until there was no surface left besides a shriveled, charred splinter of matter.

"Makes no difference to me," said Reno. The air felt kind of like the cigarettes. Hot, full of chemicals that he should not have been breathing.

The building had not finished burning, or collapsing, Reno surmised. Maybe the base was stable, but certainly several floors would continue to crumble once the fire had made it's rounds through the top of the building. Rufus had probably been up on one of those floors, he realized. Maybe he was already dead.

"Doesn't make sense to kill ourselves now," Rude said again. Always the voice of reason, Reno thought. But maybe Rude thought that Rufus was dead as well – Reno couldn't see Rude's eyes behind his ever-present sunglasses, but the older man's lips were pursed together, as though he were holding back from saying something else.

"Right... we can't find Rufus if something happens to us," said Elena, biting down on her lip. She too was attempting to rationalize their actions, and the contingency that their leader was already gone.

"We'll come back later, then," Reno said. He could have started now, really – the air and the cigarettes seemed to be one and the same. He was used to it.

The three had taken refuge in a shanty that someone had passed off as an inn – which sector, Reno couldn't tell anymore, they all blurred together and now that most were in a state of disrepair, he was sure that it made absolutely no difference. Nothing mattered much anymore, he realized, because he didn't think twice when he woke up sandwiched between Rude and Elena, full clothed and covered in soot. They must have fallen asleep immediately. He barely remembered even finding the inn.

The innkeeper had finagled the radio antenna to pick up a signal from Junon. The reporter blared the statistics of casualties at two minute intervals, and in the same breath recapitulated the triumphant end of the Diamond Weapon to Shinra's coveted Mako Cannon.

"-from what we can see, the top twenty floors of the ShinRa headquarters have been decimated by the Diamond Weapon. That's the top twenty floors."

"Shit," said Reno. He nudged Rude in the shins, and shook Elena awake. "We gotta go find Rufus."

The air was heavier than it had been before – the ash was still falling, and would fall for days to come. The top of the building was still burning, although it was making some effort to diminish. Rude and Elena went to work right away, and began moving aside steel beams and cement that had plummeted from the ground.

Reno kicked at a piece of dry wall, painted half-green, half-white. "Damn. Bet this is right from Mayor Domino's office."

"Get to work, Reno," said Rude. Reno did as he was told, and tossed the piece of dry wall aside. Reno looked up, again, trying to make out the shapes half-obscured by the ash, although he suspected that whatever he was seeing was only several feet away.

"I think someone's over there," he said.

"No there's not," said Elena, not bothering to look up. "It's just us. No one in their right mind would be-"

"No, someone's here!" said Reno. He drew his mag rod and held it out in front of him, toward the hypothetical aggressor. "Who the hell are you?"

Rude turned, if only half-heartedly. "Reno-"

"Reno."

Tseng came forward, although it didn't look much like Tseng. Purple-hued bags had formed under his eyes and his skin wasn't pristine white as it usually was. Dirty, sallow. Blood had long ago stained the front of his shirt, and it appeared Tseng had done nothing to remedy it. Reno did not relinquish his mag-rod.

"Yo," he said. "Take a shower." He wasn't sure what else to say – he still wasn't sure if it was Tseng.

"Tseng?" Elena turned. Her brown eyes widened, and she dropped everything she had been moving. "Tseng-"

The three of them had rounded their boss, and Elena had put her hands on his chest, as though to ascertain if he was really alive. "How did you- where did you-"

This man who may have been Tseng only briefly regarded her, and pacified her weakly with a half-hearted hand on her shoulder. "We must find Rufus. I have already started to move the debris, a bit north of where we're standing."

Reno relinquished his mag-rod. In twenty seconds flat, Tseng had gone back to business. It was, without a doubt, Tseng. So Reno did as he was told, and went back to work. "Good to have you back, boss," he said, and returned to shifting the endless sea of debris.

"Think we'll find him?" asked Rude eventually, after hours – no, maybe days, it was hard to tell what time it was when Meteor blocked the sun in that way, Reno realized – of working. The old adage was that the more time that had passed, the lesser the chance was of finding someone, or finding them alive. No one had dared remind Tseng of this, although Reno was sure they were all thinking it.

"He's here," said Tseng. He didn't even look up. He kept moving dry wall and discard.

"Still doing paperwork," said Reno, under his breath.

As long as Tseng was there, they would continue to work. Meteor was coming closer yet. Reno heard a familiar horn from a nearby sector, the noise that was indicative of some sort of emergency or call for evacuation – similar to when he had facilitated the dropping of Sector Seven's plate. He shuddered at the thought. Not a shining moment, he decided.

They continued to work. Reno wondered where the hell Cloud was now, if he had gone to find Sephiroth, or maybe the kid had figured out a way to stop Meteor. Reno felt small, suddenly, in comparison to Cloud – the man had something greater to aspire to now, he had something left to achieve. Even if the whole world ended, Cloud would die with some glory. Reno of the TURKs would die while moving debris for a guy that most of the world despised, if not solely for his family's namesake.

To hell with it though, Reno thought. Rufus was as close enough to family as Tseng, Rude and Elena were, and by God he would die moving steel beams to find him until Meteor obliterated his body out of existence, or until the falling ash dried out his eyes and completely blinded him. Even then, Tseng would probably still insist that he work.

"He's here," Tseng said again. He was a little more frantic this time around, uncharacteristically so. Reno dropped a piece of drywall. Rude and Elena did likewise. They rounded their boss once again.

"Here," Tseng said, and sure enough he had found a single, pale arm, clothed in what was once a white suit sleeve with golden cufflinks that were rightly lackluster now. Reno was briefly nauseated. Was a body attached to the arm? "Move everything out of the way," Tseng said, a little less desperate this time, but urgent. The three Turks did as they were told.

The debris had fallen in such a way that two beams had crossed a pile of brick or stone, or maybe bathroom tile, who knew, really- and another steel girder had balanced itself on top of the beams, just inches over Rufus's head. Minus the radio and the scant number of blankets, it was rather akin to the Midgar inn they had stayed in. Fate had built a hut just for Rufus ShinRa, amongst all the ruin.

"This lucky son of a bitch," said Reno. Rude said something akin just moments before, with fewer words. Once they removed the girder, it was revealed that the arm did lead to an entirely intact body of Rufus ShinRa.

Tseng ungraciously hoisted Rufus up off the ground and pulled him against his chest, pushing his fingers to his throat and his wrists to check for a pulse. Elena brought her hands to her mouth and stared wide eyed until the determination had been made. Reno wondered if Elena was worried about Rufus, or just happy to have a reason to stare at Tseng.

"He's alive," said Tseng, as factually as one would report the weather.

"Lucky son of a bitch," said Reno.

"Lucky bastard," said Rude.

Elena collapsed into a heap in front of Tseng, crying and grasping Rufus's hand while Tseng made no further effort to wake him, only shifting ShinRa's body closer to the ground so that he could breathe. The movement, or maybe Elena's occasional sob, at one point elicited a small groan from the former vice president. Elena continued to cry, a little louder.

"He could be brain dead," said Rude.

"Maybe." Reno shrugged. He pulled out the carton of cigarettes from his pocket. "Probably not though. They used to say no one's ever seen Rufus ShinRa bleed or cry. And would you look at this bastard now, yo-" Not a speck of blood was to be found on the suit of Rufus ShinRa. Just dirt. "Still not bleeding. No one can kill Rufus ShinRa."

Rude looked upwards. Reno couldn't see his eyes behind the sunglasses. But he knew he was looking at Meteor. "Not even Meteor?"

"Not even Meteor." Reno took two cigarettes out of the carton. Maybe someone could kill Rufus after all, Reno thought, but all four Turks would have to be killed first, and by then Reno would have been none the wiser if Rufus lived or died. Until then, Reno was content with ensuring that Rufus ShinRa lived up to his legend.

Reno lit his cigarette, and took a drag. "Victory smoke?" Reno handed Rude the second cigarette.

Rude took the cigarette, and lit it.

Meteor was getting a little closer.