Rapunzelbrunette

Last prompt pf Turk week 2026

Is likely fraught with grammatical errors given the length and the swiftness with which I wrote and did not edit. Sorry.

Also a bit bloodier than the others.

Enjoy!

IN A BREAK ROOM IN JUNON

“You realize-“ SLAM “-that the words-“ SLAM “-break room-“ SLAM “-were not meant-“ SLAM “- to be taken-“ SLAM “-literally-“ SLAM “-right?” A hollow silence followed the words as the slim, slight Turk tried and failed to dislodge the door once again. “Can you guys hear me?” She shouted at last, breathless.

“We hear you, Cissnei. You must have broken through somewhere,” Veld replied, not loudly but clearly. All Turks knew that that didn’t mean everyone or even anyone was alright. She swallowed past the growing tension in her throat. She had to think. It was good, she had broken through the mess sealing her off from her friends at some part of the mangled door.

“The prez is not going to be happy about this,” another voice filtered through the small crack in the door with less than half of it’s usual charm.

“Stay still.” Rude’s voice. Cissnei blew out a slow breath before letting the relative silence unnerve her.

“Should I keep trying the door?” She called. Again, too much silence followed.

“Have you called for help?” Tseng’s voice didn’t come through loudly, but it was close and, like Veld’s, clear.

“…Yes,” she replied, unwittingly letting the hesitation slip into her voice. “We’re in Junon. There… weren’t many options.”

“Ugh. Not SOLDIER,” at least three voices, some interrupted by coughs, whined in response. Cissnei almost laughed.

“Remind me to never take a break outside of headquarters again,” Reno’s voice joked. Quietly.

“You wouldn’t listen anyway, Reno,” Cissnei attempted and failed to return in deadpan. No one sounded okay. “Angeal Hewley responded. ETA - well, about thirty seconds now.”

“Wait, first class?” Another series of moans and coughs went up.

“Oh stop it, you babies,” she chided them in a rather teary voice. “At least it wasn’t Ho- one of the executives that answered.”

“Hey, if it’s executives ever, I call dibs on Palmer. He’ll just kill me by being stupid.” Again, Reno’s voice. This time Veld told him to lie still or he would come over and kill him himself.

“Are we discussing who gets to… terminate which executives?” A deep and mellow voice inquired at her back. Cissnei yelped and turned on her heel to face him but managed an almost immediate return to composure. He was so much taller in person than in his pictures.

“No, sir, of course not… Actually we were hypothesizing on which of the executives we would rather subject ourselves to in a rescue.” Angeal raised a questioning and confused eyebrow but shook his head as he turned to his work. Actually, he seemed to have been sizing up the door from the minute he had arrived.

“Sorry I was late. I wanted to be sure medical and security personal on the base had been notified. I noticed that your PHS cut off.”

“Th - thank you, sir. Yes, cell service seems to be down.”

“No, just yours,” Angeal murmured as he bent the twisted door up in such a way that it bolstered the rest of the opening. “I rather think that you can guess the culprit.”

Cissnei heard him, but knew better than to acknowledge the remark with more than a subtle movement of the eyes. Besides, they were both rather more focused on the emerging Turks, those who had been less injured when the borrowed break room in Junon had been less than hospitable toward them. Cissnei forced herself to remain without, guiding the other Turks, some holding bleeding arms or legs, others throbbing heads, to line the hall while they awaited the medical personal. Seven. She couldn’t think about the ramifications of it, didn’t dare ask yet… she commandeered a first aide kit from the wall and squatted down to open it, but someone caught her arm.

“Cissnei, is that the only one you’ve got?” She glanced up to see Orianna, her hair plastered to one side of her head in a sticky red slick-back. Cissnei nodded, and the other woman swallowed, toying with one of the knives from her arsenal the same way a normal person might drum their fingers or tap their leg. “You better get in there with it. We’ll be fine. Some of this blood isn’t even ours.”

Cissnei bolted off before the other Turk had finished her statement. Angeal had already gone in and was speaking in the most heart-wrenching voice of disappointment she had ever heard to whoever was on the other end of the line even as he scooped Tseng up with one arm and carried him out. Cissnei almost protested, but…had to hope that a soldier who had gone to war would at least have as good an idea on how to handle injuries as she did. Veld called her over. His face had the hue of ash, but that could be the light or the trail of crimson running steadily down the side of his face, running hauntingly along the path of his scar.

“Anything useful in there?” He grunted, adjusting his shoulders rather than taking the pressure off of whatever wound lay behind the bloody hand pressed against Luca’s abdomen. Cissnei swallowed back her initial reaction and then realized that her sometimes-partner was not currently conscious before she ducked her head and found a pressure bandage and assisted Veld in applying it.

“Are you hurt, sir?” She asked, just as a way to quell the rushing thoughts in her head.

“I barely have a scratch,” the Turk leader replied, not without a touch of bitterness. “The charge was placed in one of the arm chairs. Small. Had we all been on the opposite side of the room we may have all escaped with minor injuries. As it happens, some were. I happened to be refilling the coffee pot at the time. Luca was regaling Crispin and Tseng with an exaggerated adventure story. Crispin… will no longer require a retirement party next week.”

“Oh no,” Cissnei whispered. Veld nodded. “Reno realized something was off about the arm chairs about three seconds before it happened. He tried to get everyone out of the way.”

“Then what happened to…?” She trailed off. She was certain she had heard her slightly obnoxious friend speaking before Angeal had come. She knew that she had heard him as well as Rude’s angry insistence that he remain quiet. And Tseng. She had heard him too.

“Tseng likely broke an arm and either broke or dislocated a shoulder. Reno tipped his chair over in his hurry to get to Crispin, which may have saved him from injuries like Luca here.”

“Is he stable?” Angeal asked softly behind them, startling Cissnei personally for the second time in one day.

“I can’t rule out a spinal injury yet,” Veld said in answer. Angeal nodded.

“I’ve covered the dead one, and I carried out your lieutenant and two others who may have concussions. Can I offer any further assistance? The medical personal have finally gotten to the building.”

“Thank you,” the Turk leader whispered as if he’d heard little else than the first sentence.

“S-sir, what about Reno and Rude?” Cissnei whispered, her voice shaking.

“Rude’s alright. Various scrapes and likely several sprained joints after he extracted himself from the mess of wall and cupboard he ended up under. He was trying to find the extra coffee.”

“Hey yo. I’m alive too,” Reno’s voice managed to chortle from a few feet to her left. She rounded the wreckage of chairs and table to find in Reno in a less than comfortable position that made her stomach flip.

“You are not supposed to sit on a chair that way,” she managed to blurt out once she had finally realized what she was seeing pierced through not only her friends chest, but his abdomen and his left thigh. Then she desperately hoped that wouldn’t make him laugh.

“Now ya tell me,” he slurred out and coughed, painting more red on his lips.

“Stop that,” Rude hissed from his awkward position of keeping his friend from sliding one way or the other on the objects of his prison.

“Those idiots will take too long with this. They never bring the equipment that they need,” the quiet, firm voice of Angeal commented. ”Rude, I’m going to cut him down.” The soldier, somehow bigger than the large Turk, slid in place and waved him away. “Tell them to get two stretchers in here stat.” Rude nodded and limped off to the open door. Cissnei meanwhile dug into the first aid kit and found the medical tape and started wrapping it around the chair leg closest to her and as close to Reno’s body as she could get it.

“Yeah, the chair’s probably hurt worse than me,” Reno observed drily. Cissnei rolled her eyes and let Angeal try to explain to a rather blood-deprived Turk why she might be doing what she was doing. The medical personal arrived before she had finished and took over, doing things the ‘proper’ way while she hung helplessly back and watched. She had to cover a smile when Angeal ordered them out of the way so he could slice the Turk free. They had him out of the room faster than she could blink. Every Turk injured but herself. One dead. What had the attacker wanted to accomplish? Had it…could it really have been the company, like Angeal and Veld and likely Tseng and Reno and - heck, did they all suspect it at this point? If it was, they would likely never know. Besides, the executives would have changed their minds by tomorrow and wonder out loud how a Turk could have been killed in a break room on one of Shinra’s most secure bases. It made her sick.

“…If we hurry they’ll give us a ride there,” Rude intoned at her elbow. Cissnei nodded, glancing over the wreckage once more.

She stopped as they passed the soft-spoken SOLDIER first class.

“Thank you,” she said simply.

“Take care of your friends,” he replied, and graced her with a mere trace of a smile. “They’re all you’ve got.”

- fin

And of course, the Turks were mostly all alright after they had recovered.

You know, until the next time.

——————

WARDROBE MALFUNCTION

“Scared of the sun?”

Reno cracked and eye open and lifted his shades to take a peek at his compatriot - who also happened to have joined him hypocritically in the shade. “Nah,” he replied, “just making sure I don’t hog it all, ya know?”

“Right,” she snorted back, flopping down beside him on her own towel. She glanced this way and that before speaking under her breath. “You know, working as a Turk for Shinra… well, is about the worst possible shit anyone could ever voluntarily get into.”

This time Reno snorted.

“Define ‘voluntarily.’ They don’t exactly make it obvious that they expect us to kidnap and murder. Only thing I never had to do was, well, you know…take advantage of people the way spies in movies always gotta.”

“Always with the moralizing.”

“Hey, you started it.”

“Yeah, I was just getting in my guilting before saying that it really is nice to be able to vacation in such a nice place, you know? Free food, free beach access. I hate some of what we do for it, but you know, sometimes we make a difference.”

“Yeah, I won’t argue you on that,” Reno murmured, staring over the sea, his mind a thousand miles back in the darkness of the slums of Midgar and Sector Six. “Some of us got rescued from some real unspeakable lives, and while I’m not saying it’s a picnic, it’s, ya know, better. It’s better. And somedays we actually get to save people. Like you finding that old lady last week.”

“The poor thing didn’t even know where she was. She’d gotten off the train at the wrong stop. You know she even gave me a whole dumbapple pie from bringing her safely home.”

“Say what? Hey, how come you didn’t share any?”

“Because I wanted to actually get some,” Cessnei replied with a laugh, sticking her tongue out for added measure. “Don’t worry, I save some for you and Rude. It’s back home in my freezer.”

“Not as good as fresh,” Reno muttered.

Cissnei sat up and looked around. “Speaking of Rude, I haven’t seen him come to the shore in ages. He isn’t still in the water, is he?”

“Not that I can see,” Reno answered as he too sat up and squinted out at the distance. Waves rolled up and over each other, and the occasional fish broke the surface, but Rude was nowhere to be seen. “Shoot, you think he’s okay?” The redhead murmured, getting to his feet and counting the people on the private beach front. One missing. “Think I’ll check the house just to be sure,” he muttered. “Last thing I need is to train in a new partner ‘cause the old one drowned.”

“…grab me some pants when you’re in there.”

Reno and Cissnei both turned at the sound of the other Turks’s deep voice, and Reno let out a sigh of relief.

“Man, I thought some sea creature’d pulled you under and had an early supper.”

“Nope. Pants, please.”

“Wait, why do you need me to grab pants for you? Some reason you can’t get ‘em yourself?”

“…yes.”

Reno merely stared at the other Turk for nearly a full minute before he started laughing. Rude scowled at him, maintaining his position behind the heavy brush and a discreetly held palm branch while his best friend doubled over in a joke at his own expense. Cissnei had some pity on him and reached her beach towel over to the tall Turk, but even she was laughing.

“Man, you of all people - this only woulda been funnier if you were, I dunno, Veld?” Reno blurted out, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hand. “How the heck did that happen?”

“Something grabbed them. They were stretched out.”

“Okay, I buy that. Was kind of a last minute trip and all. But, uh, you got Cissnei’s towel now. How about you get your own clothes?”

“…How about you eat dinner without your teeth.”

Desperate Measures

Turk week 2026

First prompt.

Something had woken him up. He fought valiantly to force his eyes open, knowing full well that the monumental effort it currently took to move his body even an inch was definitely not worth the work. If someone was here to kill him - oh well, he guessed. Nothing much he could do about it in this condition. Still. Something had woken him up.

An eye finally cracked open and he realized he wasn’t in his bedroom. What… right. He’d almost opted to sleep in his bathroom so he could minimize movement, but he’d realized he could manage to move that far every four hours or so, even though it left him exhausted. He glared at the pool of dark fabric inches from his dangling arm where he’d taken it off when he’d stumbled home two days before. He’d thought maybe he was coming down with something all day and Rude had dragged him home at lunch, forcing him to take a rest. Really he probably didn’t want to catch whatever it was Reno had managed to catch, and it’d been a good thing he had brought him home, because Reno never ever left his clothes on the floor, not unless he felt just like he happened to at the moment.

He managed to turn his head enough to see the blinds on his patio window swaying gently. Either the air had just come on, or someone actually had broken in to kill him. Somehow he couldn’t motivate himself to care either way. He reached for his water - a fortunate forethought on Rude’s part - and sipped it slowly, narrowing his eyes at the blinds, forcing his mind to mystery solve. There had been something controversial happening at the morning briefing last time he’d been at work. Something that neither of the bosses wanted any part of. Something dull and super dumb, not that anything with the executives was ever worth the anyone’s time of day, and damn it, what had the whole almost argument between the two been about? They’d never seen Tseng argue with Veld like that before. Reno still half thought maybe in his state of getting sick he had hallucinated the whole thing. But he knew that he hadn’t, because Rude had been talking about it too.

His stomach turned just like he knew it might from just the water. Sometimes he could keep it down, but not other times. He was going to call Rude to have them send over one of the non-creepy doctors if this actually came back up instead of his stomach just feeling a bit off. Just the same he stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the light. He leaned against the sink to keep himself upright and realized his stomach had settled. Well that had been a waste of energy. He’d still better call Rude, this was getting ridiculous.

Reno crawled back to his couch and leaned up against it. He’d crawl back up to it once he’d taken a nap. But… the bathroom light had been off. He always left it on when he was sick - just to make it easy for people to find him if he slipped and hit his head or something dumb like that. He lay his head against the couch cushions and cleared his throat.

“What’re ya doing here, boss man?” He croaked out. Silence answered him for a mere few seconds before the soft footfalls on linoleum gave a second reply, followed by an actual third.

“I was beginning to think that you wouldn’t notice me.”

“Took a bit, boss man.”

“Hmm. Indeed. It appears that Rude did in fact not exaggerate your state?”

“…I don’t follow.”

“Perhaps it would be best to call in a doctor for you. Or take you in.”

“Nope. Hojo bojo wants to test me for a test. Always wants a test.”

“Not the word he uses, but close enough.”

“‘Kay. I’m still alive. You can go.”

“I… would rather not leave yet. You see, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even come with the intent of assessing your well being so much as to verify just how ill you were in the event that I too happened to contract it.”

“Boss, words are not words right now,” Reno grumbled back, squeezing his eyes shut as his head began to throb again.

“As unpleasant as this strain appears to be, I believe it preferable to attending a demonstration wherein the Turks are likely to preform poorly despite our training. One on one surely would not have been nearly so poor a showing, but they intended to put the two of us against the three first class in a public spectacle.”

“You an’ Veld?”

“It was to be you and Rude, only you became ill the same day - admittedly one of the reasons we have not attempted to shorten the course of your illness. The match is meant to take place tonight, and yes, it was meant to be Veld and myself.”

“Was?” He croaked. This story was taking forever, and his head was hurting worse. He wanted to go back to sleep. On the couch would be nice, but the floor was fine. A moment later it seemed as if the boss had read his mind, because he felt his body lifted and Tseng swearing in concern over how light he was and fussing until the blankets were tucked in around him. He cracked his eyes open again, demanding that the face now hovering less than a foot away from him finish the story. Preferably before his headache or his loopiness got any worse.

“Veld has been coming down with something all morning, so have half of the department, and the board insists that one of the contestants be of a leadership role. With you and Veld out of the picture, that falls to me. That is why I am here.”

Reno frowned, stirring the entire discourse around in his mind until it made a slightly consistent soup - nah, not soup, his thoughts felt like oatmeal. Yeah, oatmeal. And he’d just added cinnamon and maple syrup and also some cream and finally made it make sense.

“Yo, if I did something like that you’d call me irresponsible.”

“Perhaps. But the board needs also to recall that we are meant to be a secret organization and not one to be flaunted with SOLDIER.”

“Come ‘ere so I can cough on ya, then.”

“No need. I drank from your cup twice already and I have been sitting near you the better part of two hours. You’ve been drifting in and out.”

“Bold, boss. Bold. Also, worst idea ever. This really sucks.”

“Better than having some part of my anatomy handed back to me by Sephiroth,” he mumbled, standing up from his crouch. “I had best return to work.” Reno nodded. Or thought he did. Maybe he just went back to sleep.

- fin

NARRATOR:

Despite his best efforts and frequent contact with Reno, Tseng still somehow managed to not get sick.

All three SOLDIERS of first class, however, were out for three weeks recovering from influenza.

The match was never rescheduled.

———————————-

Apologies for any and all mistakes of a grammatical nature - I was in a rush and finished this all in one fell swoop to finish it (kinda) by the end of the first day. I mean, it was finished, just not posted.

I should get an AO3 account one of these days……..

The materiel gave way beneath her pointed finger, pushed against a layer as fluffy as a cloud, and finally reached the hard muscle beneath. She assumed it was muscle.

“Mmmph.”

“What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

“I talk too much ‘n my lips’ll freeze.”

“Oh please. I barely needed a coat today.”

“Yeah. Lucky you.”

Aerith giggled and tousled the fur that lined the hood since the hair was currently inaccessible. He grunted at her again, and while it was possible that she had also received a glare, she couldn’t tell. The only reason she knew it was him aside from his gait, his smell, the way he lounged - the only real reason she could tell was because none of the other Turks wore arctic exploration parkas for guard duty.

“You know, it isn’t as cold beneath the plate. It rarely even freezes down.”

“What’s your point?” he muttered.

“Reno, if a threat came around how would you even see? Let alone fight it off.”

“I got good hearing. And if someone did come around, I’d drop the coat. Easy.”

“Easy, huh?”

“Easy.”

“Why the hood today? And you sound grouchier than normal.”

“‘Cause I’m cold.”

“Oh come on.”

“Look, it might be warm down here, but I still gotta be outside when I head back after I’m done babysittin’ today.”

“Babysitting? Ouch.” She pouted and flounced down beside him on the cold stone step and shivered when her backside made contact. Sure, it wasn’t as chilly, especially so close to the flowers that never seemed to give up, even in the dead of winter, but still. Her pout turned into a frown. “Isn’t your butt cold?”

“Huh?”

“You’re wearing a parka because you’re ‘cold’, but you’re sitting on the stone steps, not on the coat.”

He didn’t answer right away, he seemed to be thinking about the answer, and her stomach dropped a little. She swallowed the little lump building in her throat. He might just be tired and cranky. Gaia only knew what missions he’d been on.

“…So?” he said at last.

Her frown deepened, and the sinking of her stomach continued. She didn’t ask permission. Before even he could guess what she was about to do her hands shot out, pulling the hood from his head. The pair gasped in unison.

“R-Reno? What…happened to your hair?”

“Tsch. You ain’t gonna ask about the eyeball that just about got shattered?”

“Well that’s all taped up, and I’ve… seen that before.”

“Not this bad, doll. Just about lost it. Still might only have half my sight, and… and that might mean I ain’t much use to the Turks anymore, and we all know what it means when Shinra ain’t got any use for ya anymore.”

She couldn’t get any words out, just grazed her fingers lightly over the bandage taped over a wide strip of his shaved scalp.

“Why did you need stitches?”

“Well actually, they stapled my head. Staples’re easier.”

“Reno.”

“…You should see the other guy?”

“I don’t want to see the other guy if this was assassination,” she deadpanned.

Reno snorted and managed a chuckle. “Opposite. We were headed back in separate choppers from the execs after a security detail. We came in at the tail end just inthe right spot to get hit by a storm that was coming in, and then Rude over-corrected and kinda crashed us just outside of Midgar. He didn’t land bad, just a bit rough, and of course it was icy, so we slid for a bit and made it worse. If it wasn’t for the ice I actually mighta been fine, but Rude wouldn’t’a been. Broke his collarbone in two places and can’t do a damn thing. Me? My side of the chopper smashed into a snowbank, which sounds fine until you at know that snowbanks can have plenty of ice, and this one did. Harnesses held me in place so I couldn’t even move when this huge ice chunk slammed through the window. Don’t remember anything after that ‘til I woke up in medical with a cast on my arm and my face taped up. Kinda wished you’d been there right away. Kinda glad you weren’t after a minute though, ‘cause what woke me up was Hojo screamin’ at Veld demanding that he hand me over as a specimen. Think he saw the head injury and jumped at the chance. I hate that guy,” Reno finished his story with a shudder. Aerith seemingly contemplated his coat as she sat in silence absorbing the tale and berating herself for planning to throw a snowball at him the minute some of the more adventurous children in the sector could make it back with their snow bucket from the plate edge by six. His hand slipped into hers when she didn’t say anything for a while. “Say something, doll. Please.”

Aerith sighed and smiled, wrapping both of her hands around his. “I think that Veld is an ass to send you out in this cold for guard duty. And I think that you need to come home so mom can make you some cocoa and warm you up. No way they should have sent an injured Turk on such a dangerous mission,” she finished with a put upon air, shaking her head and pulling him to his feet. He finally grinned, and his sound eye even sparkled a little when he wrapped his arm around her and he lead the way to the door.

“But for the record,” he said softly, “Veld only sent me out here because Hojo tried to kidnap me from the elevator first thing this morning.”

“What kind of thing does he want to make you into?” She said with a shudder.

“No idea. Really, I’d rather not know. Can we just talk about if your ma’s got marshmallows or if I gotta make a quick trip up top?”