"You know," Inwë sighed as she took a sip from her root beer, "I think the whole affair got turned into a Sue story." She and her four friends were lounging about back at Inwë house, a week after they had returned home and dropped off the various characters. It was the first chance the five of them had had to kick back, relax, and discuss the insane adventure they'd been put through. At the authoress' comment, Amaya wrinkled her nose.

"It was real though, right? Sort of?" Aki and Sakura gave Inwë suspicious looks.

"Well…yeah," she said uncertainly.

"Then it wasn't a Sue story."

"But I should have died!" Inwë protested, "Sues always nearly die but get saved at the last second."

"Cloud lived through what you did," Shaedan pointed out, "Twice."

"It's Cloud we're talking about. He lives through everything," the authoress explained. Aki rolled her eyes and downed a large gulp of her soda.

"Whatever. Quit your whining and be thankful that everyone made it out in one piece," Amaya drawled. She started to take a drink from her root beer, but found that it was empty.

"You know, a Sue would have soda that never runs out," she complained, suggestively shaking the can and giving Inwë a pointed look. The authoress winced.

"Ah. Yes. Well, you see…the fire kind of destroyed most of the house…it took a lot of hard work and authoress powers to set things right…and, uh…I forgot to…um…get more root beer." She smiled innocently. Her friends all gave her odd looks, suspecting something wasn't right.

"You did something," Aki said confidently. Inwë stared at her, eyes wide.

"Why would you think that?"

"That look on your face gives you away," Amaya replied. She raised an eyebrow and waited for a full confession. Inwë chuckled nervously.

"Ok, I give up! Before we left I poured out all the beer in the Turks' beer bottles and replaced it with root beer!" Shaedan and Sakura burst out laughing.

"When are they gonna figure that one out?" Aki inquired icily, "They are not going to be happy with you." Inwë sighed lazily.

"Oh, I expect they're saving it for when they get back…with my luck they'll share with Tseng and Elena. Maybe even Rufus." The authoress suddenly had a wistful look on her face. "I wish I could see the look on Rufus' face when –."

Da-da-da-daa-duh-daaa-da-de-da!

"What the -? Is that the ringtone from Loz's cell phone?" Amaya demanded. Inwë coughed and pulled out a black cell phone from her pocket.

"Tell me you didn't steal his phone," Amaya growled. The authoress shook her head.

"I wouldn't have had a chance even if I had wanted to. Nope, I only borrowed the ringtone. Now be quiet!" Aki's face lit up.

"Oh! Oh! Is it from Reno?" Inwë glanced down at the Caller ID and nodded.

"Put it on speaker!" Sakura, Aki, and Shaedan ordered in unison. Inwë grinned and obliged.

"Yo."

"VAL!" Reno's voice yelled, "What the hell did you do to our beer?" Aki and Sakura had collapsed into fits of silent laughter. Inwë was barely containing her own wild giggles. Amaya merely looked amused, though the authoress could tell she wanted to laugh.

"Beer? Oh, so that's what I did with the soda…" she said half to herself. Reno growled.

"Reno, give me the phone," Tseng said in the background. Reno muttered something inaudible.

"Inwë, right?" Tseng asked. The authoress immediately stopped grinning and cleared her throat. Tseng was the current leader of the Turks, and – if Inwë ever had her way – her future boss.

"Yes, sir. I'm Inwë," she replied seriously. Amaya was leaning forward eagerly, an excited look on her face.

"You realize that getting Reno annoyed is a bad idea, don't you?"

"Well, of course I do, sir," Inwë replied with more of the usual mischief in her tone. Tseng sighed deeply.

"There's a reason hot-headed people like you never make it into the Turks. We made that mistake once, and Reno was the result."

"Hey!" Reno could be heard snapping in the background. Aki and Sakura clamped their hands over theirs mouths to silence their hysterics. Inwë was suddenly looking very grave.

"I apologize, sir. I know pulling pranks is childish. It won't happen again -."

"I was going to say," Tseng interrupted, "next time try not to replace the beer with soda that Reno's allergic to. He gets very grumpy when he has to take pills." The look on Inwë's face was memorable – it looked like she couldn't decide whether to be horrified or amused.

"Is he all right, sir? Is he sick?" she asked after a second, having settled on anxiety as her current state of mind.

"Oh, he's fine," Tseng assured her, "But you should see his face. His eyes were watering a while ago. They're all red and puffy now." The leader of the Turks chuckled, while Reno started on a string of muffled curses. Inwë sighed in relief.

"I'm sorry! I wouldn't have done it if I had known he was allergic!" she apologized in a panic. Tseng laughed.

"Don't worry. We all had a good laugh because of it, and that's always a welcome change. However," he added sternly, "don't pull something like that again. It's inconsiderate, and if Rufus had been the one to get sick…"

"I understand, sir."

"Good. Oh, and I heard about your run-in with Sephiroth," he added grimly, "I hope you and Cloud both make a full recovery." With that he hung up. Inwë closed her phone and sat there for a minute.

"I just got a call from the leader of the Turks," she said at last. Amaya smirked.

"I bet they'd let you join in a few years, if you got some training." Inwë sighed.

"I'd be working for Rufus. That would be hard. Really hard."

"You could do it," Shaedan replied with a smile.

"Ya think?"

"Yep," Sakura agreed, "But you'd have to resist the urge to strangle him." Inwë pouted. She and her friends fell to discussing various aspects of working for Rufus, and later about what their dream Final Fantasy VII jobs would be. As usual, they stayed up until some ungodly hour, all the while strengthening the thing that had convinced them to follow Inwë on her suicidal, near-impossible mission in the first place.

Friendship.

A/N: Done! And here is a preview for the sequel…

"Listen, Inwë, because I'm only going to ask you once: come down to the 7th Heaven, and together we'll see if we can figure out what's happened."

"No way. I'm not going to be your bodyguard just because you're scared. I'll find them on my own, thank you very much!" Inwë snarled. Raven thought she was going to hang up, but there was only a brief pause.

"Rufus, I want to know exactly what happened. It's important," the authoress growled at last. Raven blinked slowly. Rufus Shinra? What was he doing, calling Inwë for help?