This is an insanely short opening but I was simply blown away by how many people wanted to see this story in the poll. Unfortunately, of the three stories which kept tying for first place (this one, Titanium and Two Steps Back), two of them need a lot of polishing before I can publish for realsies. This one, for instance, has far more written for the middle and end of the story than the start, which is weird for me.

The first chapter of Two Steps Back, my Avengers/X-Men crossover will be posted shortly after this as it's own story (it was a little too shiny to put in this archive). So if you like the sound of that go check it out!

Do Not Disturb

Prologue

Sofia's head lolled as she sat slowly upright, her neck as supportive as putty under the weight of what could only be the worst hangover headache she had ever experienced.

She couldn't even remember going out last night... how the hell did she end up in a field?

Yup, it was definitely a field. Sofia cradled her closed eyes in her palms, applying a gentle pressure in hope that the pounding would abate a little. It didn't but she couldn't sit about all day waiting to feel better either.

Dew was soaking through her jeans and her legs were getting cold. Sofia stumbled to her feet, the planet spinning on its axis- or maybe it felt weird because it had stopped? Trying to hold her head still as it lolled about drunkenly, she discovered that despite how much she must have drunk the night before, her mau cap was still on her head. That was nice, it would suck to lose her favourite hat and now it served to shield her sensitive eyes from the glaring ball of gas in the sky.

Ugh, sunlight. It burned.

"What the hell was I doing...?" Moving in for the new university year, she remembered that, Sam and Danny had helped her with the heavier things, they'd gone for noddles and then... "SHIT!"

Sofia cast her eyes about frantically for her bag, that battered rucksack which she'd had since high school, complete with badge punctures and her scrawled initials on the faded black inner lining. She breathed a tremulous sigh of relief when she spotted it, not far from her body indent in the grass. Huh this stuff was pretty long, it was obvious where she'd been lying. No sign of a car dropping her off though, or any civilisation as far as she could see.

Sofia bit her lip contemplatively, too achy to panic now that she had her stuff. "There's not even any footprints." She snorted. Yeah, like she was a good judge of that sort of thing, growing up in a city all her life. Hell, maybe the grass perked up sometime during the night. Still, no need to freak out, she was probably not far from the motorway or something.

Her electronics were still intact and no worse the wear for being in a field all night- good thing it hadn't rained. Aside from her larger hard drives and consoles, all of her equipment was in here and she would have wanted to pitch herself off a cliff if it had gotten soaked beyond repair. "Nope," she ran her hand along the bag's insides, "it's all okay, it's okay." People would tease her about her obsessive collection of electronic gear, most of all because she named every article after a character from a video game, but that was purely for networking purposes. Yeah.

Her beloved iPhone 'Minerva' was retrieved from an inner pocket, complete with lifestream protective case (made by a lovely girl on Etzy who had done most of Sofia's custom case prints) and dangling Griever mascot. A sight for sore eyes.

This is a mass text Sofia typed into the textbox for her second call group (which was everyone close to her minus family members- her parents did not need to know how drunk she'd gotten) where the hell am I? Srsly gais. Woke up in field. The grass is really tall. And wet. Help? To make the plea even more pathetic she attatched a picture of a soaking wet kitten with large, soulful eyes.

She hit 'send', knowing that one of her uni friends would know something. In the meantime, Sofia would call Sam. If there was insanity afoot then Samantha Greene would be right in the middle of it.

The phone rang. And rang. Then rang some more.

"C'mon, at least give me voicemail." Sofia's stomach was starting to twist itself into knots. What if something had happened? More than the whole field thing of course.

Eventually the tone cut off, without sending her to voicemail. Weird. Sofia tried Danny next and despite the fact that both his mobile and house number had recorded messages dripping with dry wit, she got nothing but a generic dial tone.

Okay, that twisty feeling? That was like a pit of snakes in her belly now.

She checked Minerva's bars, finding a pretty good signal despite the lack of towers- thank god for small mercies, Sofia supposed, and pulled out 'Master Chief' since the iPad was faster for browsing than anything else she had.

"Aaaaand Google's down." Which hardly ever happened. In fact, Sofia couldn't remember it happening since Google was a fledging company, they just had too much money and too many servers for the search engine to just collapse. She refreshed the internet status which was now showing connectivity to 'ShinNet' which she had never heard of before. 3G iPads were supposed to connect to the phone networks when they couldn't access Wifi but ShinNet definitely sounded like a private internet connection, despite being listed as a phone line.

Gah, headache.

Well, none of her favourites were loading, including Facebook and Twitter so either the world had ended early or Master Chief was lying to her. "This is insubordination." Sofia glared at the camo-covered tablet, but since Minerva and even her Kindle 'Deckard Cain' couldn't rustle up anything better, she let him off without a court martial.

Yeah, she wasn't even going to try her PSP, Momiji's connectivity was shot to hell on the best of days.

"Well, at least my head isn't pounding so much any more." Sofia double checked Minerva for a text, not surprised at this point to find the mailbox unchanged. She shoved the phone in her jeans pocket, zipped the bag up and threw it (gently) on over her hoodie-clad shoulders. "Definitely didn't go out for drinks dressed like this." Even with spending all her money on new tech and video games, Sophia hadn't had a growth spurt since she was fifteen and thus had a few classic articles that still fit her for a rare night on the town. Old skinny jeans, a Batman hoodie and scuffed Doc Martins were not the kind of thing she wore for clubbing, if only because Sam and Danny would never let her hear the end of it if she did.

"Did I say goodbye to them...?" Sofia pondered as she picked a random direction and started walking as she muttered to herself. "We ate, Sam drove us back to mum's and I got my stuff..." That was the only clear thing, The three of them had been zipping between their homes and the new flat they were sharing as students this year, Sofia had got the last of her essentials together and...

Then it was a blank. She couldn't even remember getting back in the car, just the sound of Sam blaring her horn in the street and Danny trying in vain to make her stop.

Did she leave her room? Go downstairs? Get back in the car? If she had, Sofia didn't remember a moment of it.

"No funny taste in my mouth, check. Trousers zipped, check." She probed along her scalp with the tips of her fingers gingerly. "Aaand no bumps to suggest a KO."

Should she be panicking now? More than a twisty snake-ridden digestive system?

Eh, probably.

A.N.: Feedback is super appreciated and remember to check out my new story if you haven't already! It will be up within half an hour of me posting this.

The premise of this story was always been about making the canon world building make sense as well as a personal challenge in character creation. As the title implies, I wrote Sofia with the intent to make her as commited to keeping the FFVII storyline on track as possible. However, with a small hoard of advanced technology (not to say that the tech in Gaia isn't advanced but it certainly went in a different direction from Earth's) and as much tact as a Cactuar, Sofia isn't going to be able to stay on the sidelines for long.

Anyone who gets all the gaming references in this chapter gets all the cookies. All. The. Cookies.