The Tangled Trilogy

Two Tangled:

Arriving back by the beach where they'd left the helicopter, it came as a surprise to discover that said helicopter was gone.

Reno, of course, exhibited typical redheaded temper. "WHAT THE HELL, YO! WHO STOLE MY WINGS?"

Rude's response was an annoyed grunt.

"Gaia DAMN IT!" Reno continued, stomping up and down the beach in a fit of pique. "How the hell are we supposed to get back now?"

The bald partner just sighed. "Chocobos or feet," he muttered, listing their two options as far as transportation went. People still weren't very friendly toward anyone formerly of ShinRa, Corp. Although TURKs could arguably be said to still be employed by ShinRa, since Rufus had been the president and still controlled the money.

"Huh?" Reno's irate pacing ceased abruptly. "Yo, Rude, what did you say? You gotta speak up sometimes, partner," chided the redhead.

"Chocobos or feet," Rude said again. He didn't like talking, therefore it could easily be assumed that he disliked reiteration even more.

Typically, this birdbrained* idea sparked an explosion of temper. "WHAT THE HELL, YO!" he exclaimed again. But he stomped off in the direction of the marsh, on his way to the Chocobo Farm to find a couple of chocobos. No way was he walking all the way back to Midgar!

Rude shook his head, knowing exactly what was going through his partner's head. It might take a little less time, but it wasn't that far from the Chocobo Farm to Midgar...

Reno was swearing violently to himself. It had come as no surprise to Rude that his impatient, redheaded partner was essentially incompatible with the large riding birds.

A sudden thought occurred to Rude, and it was all the bald TURK could do not to laugh. Watching Reno try to ride a chocobo is like watching him fight Cloud—he winds up being sent sprawling or otherwise losing his balance, and his opponent usually wins. Images of Reno jumping around and swearing, swinging his EMR** and mostly missing Cloud filled his head. He didn't have to imagine Reno doing the same with a true chocobo opponent, because that was happening right beside him. It was embarrassing for any TURK to watch a comrade acting like that—especially for Rude, since they were lovers, and for Tseng, who was their perfectionist boss. Thankfully, their Wutaian commander wasn't there to see the spectacle.

Eventually Rude grew tired of hearing the commotion (and having to catch the damn chocobo again after Reno scared it off), so he bound and gagged the redhead, then threw him over the chocobo's back like a sack of potatoes*** and tied him securely to said chocobo so that Reno wouldn't fall off. Rude didn't need three guesses to find out whether or not his partner would manage to fall, bound, from a chocobo on the run. He was agile when fighting or pulling pranks, but suffered an absolute inability to be anything of the sort otherwise. The bald man had seen him fall into a gorge one time because he'd tried to test his balance on the old bridge spanning it. Of course he'd lost his balance, and the hand rope**** had been rotten with age. That was just Reno's luck—all bad.

What Rude should have remembered was that all things involving Reno turned out bad for someone, and when Reno wasn't the cause of misfortune for others, it tended to come back on the redhead himself.*****

With a resounding series of crashes and several panicked warking cries from the chocobo—plus the unsurprising muffled curses from Reno—the chocobo tripped over its reins, which had been left dangling since the redhead was tied up and wouldn't have been able to use them. Rude froze for a second before looking back, sure that he was about to start kicking himself for something. When he turned his head cautiously, Rude knew his previous suspicion had been correct. He began the mental kicking even as he lashed his chocobo to a nearby tree and moved to the aid of his partner.

If an observer had been unaware of the situation, it would have appeared as though a chocobo had been hogtied and wing-bound so that it could be used as a feather duster. Upon closer inspection, one might see a spill of red hair stuck in the bird's beak, which had somehow been tied shut with the laces of a saddle bag. Untying the bag would expose a blood-soaked suit and a water-soaked suit, carefully separated. Following the crimson hair from the chocobo's beak would lead to the sight of a rather squashed and pissed off TURK.

Rude managed to lever the chocobo off his partner and loosed the redhead from his bonds. Reno ripped the gag from his head, green eyes boring holes into his bald lover. For once, the most verbose of the TURKs was speechless with fury—and from being flattened by a large riding bird that could carry him with no problems, of course. But Rude took his blessings where he could find them. Gaia only knew what Reno would say when he caught his breath again...

So Rude did something rare: he started a conversation. "How did you and the bird get so tangled?" He was really hoping Reno got distracted by this and forgot what he'd intended to say.

Reno snarled, though Rude couldn't tell if it was aimed at him or the chocobo. "Damn bird kept trying to peck and bite me!"

Well, thought Rude, he does have a way of pissing people off. Why shouldn't chocobos be included? What he said was, "And the laces?"

"... Paybacks," muttered the redhead.

The bald TURK raised an eyebrow, but didn't say a word. He didn't have to. Reno understood Rude's silences as well as Rude understood Reno's way of speaking, from understatements to over-dramatics.

"Tch, what, yo? Now I can't kick a bird for attacking me?" He gave his lover an insulted look. "Yo, I'm a TURK, not some lapdog!"

Rude sighed. In other words, Reno had been strapped with his feet by the saddlebag, had gotten pissed at the bird for being understandably unhappy with him, had tried to kick said bird, and had subsequently wound up squashed beneath a panicked chocobo. The dark-skinned man rubbed the bridge of his nose, already wishing they were back in Midgar.

I'm not sure how much more of these antics I can take...

---

It was a relief to Rude when he saw Midgar, the only city he knew of that could lurk in the shadows as well as its inhabitants. They were almost there.

Ten minutes later, the two TURKs walked into ShinRa headquarters. Rufus had returned the remnants of ShinRa (i.e.- himself and the TURKs) to their Midgar building from the Healin Lodge once the populace had calmed from their initial terrified tempers. Rude supposed he couldn't honestly blame the people for being upset—the WEAPON disasters had been bad enough, but the Sephiroth-related issues were, at heart, the fault of ShinRa, Corporation's former president and Hojo. It was only logical that there would be retribution demanded. The only problem he had with what the people had tried to do was when they'd targeted Rufus after he started making amends. But, he acknowledged, since when had anyone but TURKs been given reason to trust anyone with ShinRa before? Even TURKs took out insurance policies.******

It didn't take Rude much time to write the report. He'd long ago figured out how to write a succinct, polite report. Tseng even knew how he did it, though he was the most mute of the TURKs.

He had Reno summarize their mission, and then he went over the words and made them suitably perfectionist and polite for Tseng. In fact, Rude suspected that the only reason Tseng ever bothered to have Reno do paperwork was because he had to have some method of punishing the redhead. Reno, on the other hand, was positive this was the case, but kept his mouth shut. If he'd said a word, Tseng probably would have made him write his own reports all the time, and for all that Reno had a tendency to be a little too talkative,******* the redhead really wasn't as stupid as he often seemed.

Tseng didn't bat an eye when Rude handed in the mission report, even though Reno, standing next to his partner, had several unnoticed chocobo feathers wrapped in his hair. It paid to have an expressionless facade when working with Reno, regardless of whether he was one's employee or superior. No one, including Rude, was ever quite sure of what he was going to do next. This was possibly one of the reasons Rude had succumbed to Reno's predatory advances and not so much agreed as just become the redhead's lover. Reno, of course, had needed quite the ego deflation the next day.

After Tseng dismissed them for the night, Reno insisted that they check the security cameras to see if they could figure out where the tracer said the missing helicopter was at. To their surprise, both cameras and tracking device claimed it was on the heli-pad. When they checked, their eyes confirmed it.

"What the hell, yo? Who steals a ShinRa helicopter and returns it to ShinRa headquarters?"

Rude grunted. Reno wasn't the only one confused. So the bald man turned and led the way back to the security cameras operation room. He found the disk with the data he was looking for, put it in the spare computer set aside for just such purposes as these, and searched through the video on it until he found the point when the helicopter landed. Eyes intent, both partners watched like hawks.

Out climbed a familiar blond woman in a suit.

Elena.

Two pairs of eyes narrowed, one a furious green, the other covered by sunglasses. Both TURKs snarled softly. The newest member of the TURKs had some explaining to do...

---

*And I mean birdbrained in the most chocobo of ways, lol

**For those who don't recall, this stands for ElectroMagnetic Rod

***TSH inside joke; we really like potatoes, so I had to throw in the reference

****Can't really call it a rail when the bridge had no wood in the hand-holds, nor metal, right? Lol

*****This may possibly have been some sort of karmic paybacks for his violence and his often disturbing sense of humor. He'd scared off three of Rufus's secretaries this year alone...and the year wasn't even a full two months old yet

******Of the blackmail sort

*******MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT