Okay, so I originally intended for this to be a one-shot, though every time I tried to write another, it kept tying back into this one. I have an idea for the rest of this forming and swirling around in my head, and hopefully, you'll all like it. Also, I hope that I can write it out as well as I've got it planned in my head, but stories tend to write themselves sometimes, so we'll see.

Disclaimer: Nope. None of the characters are mine. They belong to Square.

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To say that work had been slow would have been the understatement of the year.

No, the understatement of eternity, more like it.

Since the fall of the Shinra empire, work hadn't been so hot in one certain red-headed man's opinion. All he did now was pile upon pile of bullshit paperwork, and occasionally he got to run around Edge and see how everything was working out there. It had been quite a while since he'd gotten to do the kind of work his body and mind were sharpened for, and in all honesty, he missed that kind of work. Sure, it could be gruesome, but whatever it may say about his character, killing was what he excelled at. He was a born predator, and the last time he checked, predators did not sit in an office signing papers.

"Coffee?" The cheery voice of his blonde co-worker cut through his thoughts, though he gratefully took the offered cup of coffee. Even Elena's cheerful tone seemed less enthusiastic today, he noted.

"Thanks, 'Lena." He muttered, taking a long gulp from the piping hot black liquid. A satisfied hiss was his only acknowledgement to the heat of the beverage, though he preferred it that way: strong and scalding. He claimed it woke him up more effectively when he could feel it burning away at his esophagus.

It made him more alert.

Not that he needed to be alert for anything now, though. The worst that could happen to him sitting on his keester all day was a paper cut, and heaven forbid that.

A foreign and fairly uncomfortable silence fell over the office then. Rude and Elena seemed to be oblivious to it as they continued signing away at the stacks of what Reno considered pointless wastes of time. The smothering quiet was broken moments later by a loud exclamation of "This is bullshit!" and then the sound of papers fluttering all over the room. This earned him a look of shock from Elena and a hardly audible sigh from Rude.

"Reno!" The woman was scolding him now, adding fuel to the fire. "You're going to have to pick all that up."

"I'm not fuckin' picking anything up." He retorted, pointing at the mess. "You pick it up, Rookie." He folded his lean arms over his chest and sneered at the frustrated woman, rubbing the old nickname in, though she was certainly no longer a greenhorn.

"I am not-" She cut herself off and held a hand in the air to silence everyone, then took a deep and calming breath. "Fine. Fine, I'll do it." She'd rather pick papers up off the floor than have to listen to any more shouting and cursing.

"You two can sit in here and have fun with your bullshit paperwork." He called dismissively over his shoulder as he strolled toward the door.

"You haven't even been here for fifteen minutes!" The disoriented woman pointed out, pausing in mid reach.

"Where are you headed?" The taller, bald man's much deeper voice failed to stop his partner's stride as well.

"Somewhere that isn't boring as hell." The door clanged shut behind him.

---

Work really had been slow, though that was both a pro and a con for Reno. It was more boring than watching the grass try to grow in the slums, though since he was pretty much useless in the office anyway, Tseng didn't really mind if he simply got up and walked out, like he just had. So long as he did something relatively productive.

A sly smile crept its way onto his features as he thought of his earlier conquest.

Well, it was only a kiss, but he'd successfully stolen a kiss from that loud-mouthed, immature, bratty little ninja princess, and he considered that a conquest. He still remembered the look on her face and the way she'd responded to him, much to his surprise. He didn't particularly enjoy the kiss or anything, is what he insisted on in his mind. Hell, he didn't know her exact age, but he was twenty-five, so there had to be at least five or so years between them; she was still just a kid to him.

Even so, a win was a win. He did enjoy being the cause of that flustered expression.

The thoughts swirled around in his mind a while longer as he simply roamed around, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Most usually there was at least the slightest bit of commotion at a bar, or a robbery at a corner store, just anything to keep him busy, "keeping the peace". Today, however, there was nothing. Releasing a long and overly dramatic sigh, the red head rolled his eyes at the tranquility that just seemed to be oozing from every corner of the world right then. Soon enough, his aimless pacing led him straight back to his own apartment flat. He didn't mind, and besides, he figured that since there was absolutely nothing else in the world to do, this would be the perfect time to actually read that long boring-ass file he'd been given to study earlier that week.

Once he'd entered and locked his door behind him, the tall man immediately sunk down into a chair at his kitchen table, where said file had waited patiently for him over the space of days. Flipping over the front cover, he recalled that this file in particular held information vital to the first actual heavy mission the Turks had received in months. He had been excited to just get up and go on the mission, but they'd only been given sparse information, and they weren't actually going to start doing anything for another three days. Tired aquamarine eyes scanned over every word, absorbing the information, though he knew most of it. He sighed as he realized, much to his dismay, that this mission was hardly anything to be excited about. From what he'd gathered, a few reports of "dying" materia had been coming in, and Reeve took some strange interest in it. The file stated that the "dying" materia literally seemed to dull and then become completely inactive. Reading further on, it was written that soon after this, a report from the same source was filed, stating that a family's small shop was seemingly wiped from the face of the planet: the effect of a warped and corrupted spell conjured from a "dead" time materia. What happened to the family itself was not listed, and Reno made a mental note to ask later, though he didn't really care. It all seemed like a load of crap to him, and if he didn't get to kick some serious ass sometime soon, he was going to be in a foul mood. All in all, he, Rude, and Elena were going to be sent off to three different corners of the world to talk to three different people – the three who'd filed the reports – and then come straight back.

Boring.

A soft 'thud' resonated through the room as Reno slumped forward, his head banging against the table next to the file. Sometimes, he really hated his job.

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Sometimes, she really hated him.

Yuffie had been scouring the entire city for that red headed bastard, and with each passing second, she became that much angrier.

'How dare he just run the hell away like that?!' she thought, angrily, on the verge of ripping her hair out.

'Gawd. Calm down, Yuffie. He'll get his soon enough.' The young woman took a few calming breaths as she thought out her next course of action. Judging by the time of day and the direction he'd fled in, she assumed the annoying Turk was cozy and safe back inside his office. She rolled her eyes, and then developed quite the devious smirk as she instantly decided on what she was going to do next. Spinning on her heel, she headed off in the opposite direction, retracing her steps and thinking back to the one day she'd seen the apartment complex in which Reno lived. Yuffie had been running some errands for Tifa and was on her way to the store to pick up a new shipment of supplies. She'd left as Tifa was finishing up a phone call from the infamous Turk, and she'd only overheard the last part, in which he said "Yeah, I'm headin' home."

By pure coincidence, Yuffie had passed the building as Reno entered. It was one of those setups that she hated, the kind where the staircase wrapped around the outside of the building and each apartment took up an entire floor. All the entrances were on the outside, exposed to everyone, and honestly, Yuffie liked her privacy, so she hated those types of buildings. Reno didn't seem to care, however, which was fortunate for Yuffie at the moment. The crafty young woman retraced her steps until she came to the building, smiling in satisfaction as the image fit perfectly with her memory.

Now, if she remembered correctly, he'd entered the flat on the third floor.

She grinned to herself as she casually neared the building, thinking of all the materia and anything else she could swipe that lay waiting innocently for her just meters away. She considered it all equal compensation for his violation of her privacy earlier.

Glancing around, she noticed that there weren't even all that many people out on the streets. After all, it was the middle of a work day, and most everyone was, well, working. The people that did line the streets were all too busy to notice her anyway, and, hell, she was The Great Ninja Yuffie.

Now, there was only one thing keeping her from her prize, and that was the strange man standing at the door to what Yuffie hoped was Reno's apartment door. She eyed him from her spot hidden on the ground below, thinking to herself that he looked really uncomfortable and sweaty. The brunette rolled her eyes. The poor sap, Reno had probably blackmailed him or something. Either way, she was sure that Reno was at work anyway, so the poor guy was off the hook for now, she presumed. It confused her, though, when he knocked on the door several times, then promptly ran the hell away.

From inside the building, Reno lifted his head, groaning at the prospect of a visitor. No one would possibly come to his apartment now – when he was supposed to be at work – except for someone trying to get him to come back to work.

Striding over to the door, the tall man rolled his eyes and prepared himself for a lecture, just in case it was Elena. It wasn't unlike Rude to follow Reno after one of his outbursts, though, and try to coax him into coming back to do paperwork, so he wasn't too worried. Reno assumed it was nothing out of the ordinary.

All the peace and lack of excitement had made him lazy and knocked him off guard, it seemed.

"Wha-" His sentence was cut short as he picked up on the muted and distorted sound of a gunshot, somehow, over the muffled drone of the city below. His mind kicked into overdrive then, allowing him to narrowly avoid a bullet that had been previously aimed to pierce straight through his heart.

"Fuck." He immediately realized that there was more where that came from. He even spotted one man atop a building across the block.

It had been a long time since he'd had snipers after him.

A sly and nearly crazed smile crept over his features as he took in the gravity of his situation. Honestly, he was overjoyed to have some asshole trying to kill him. In his opinion, it was a hell of a lot better than reading that boring file. Unfortunately, he didn't have the equipment on his person to begin mowing them down like he wanted to. He was near ready to step back into the apartment to regroup when he instinctively dropped to the ground, kicking out his leg. His attack connected and the strange man that had knocked on his door earlier came crashing to the ground, though not before shooting the pistol in his hands three times as he fell. However, Reno was ready, and all three shots were avoided. Disarming the man, he quickly claimed the firearm and promptly slammed the butt of the gun into his assailant's temple, rendering the man unconscious. The muted sound rang out again one, twice, three times, and he knew he was screwed. Time seemed to slow as he picked up on the sound of footsteps thudding up the stairs from both sides. He was unarmed, though by no means outmatched.

Even if he was screwed, that didn't mean he was dead.

Just after the gunshots had fired, Reno had just enough time to snag the man that had just come around the corner and use him as a human shield. The bullet thudded into the man's ribs, and the second narrowly missed taking off Reno's ear, and the third left a nice hole through the poor human shield's head. The second man that had come down the stairs, however, took advantage of his prey's occupied state and simply wrestled him to the ground, holding him still. Reno presumed it was so this guy's sniper buddies could finish him off, but he'd be damned if he was going to go down that easily.

His captor was larger than Rude and obviously physically stronger than Reno, though that didn't mean that he couldn't still fight back, albeit dirty. In his defense, he did the first thing that came to mind and sunk his teeth into the behemoth of a man's arm. In surprise, the large man cried out, giving Reno just enough time to squirm around and get out of the way as three gunshots fired once more.

The first narrowly missed his head.

The second lodged into the bulky man's thigh, as Reno had managed to jerk him into the bullet's path.

The third provoked a loud "Fuuuck!" from the red-headed Turk as it found its way straight into the ball joint of his left shoulder.

Now that he was absolutely, royally pissed off, Reno wanted more than anything else in the world to rend these men limb from fucking limb. He never got the chance, however, as he vaguely caught sight of three bright bolts of lightning streaking through the air. Momentarily distracted by the searing pain ripping through his left arm, it took him just half a moment to realize that the man restraining him had completely released him. It took the other half of that moment to notice that the man's head was now lying near Reno's right foot, no longer attached to the rest of the body. By now, people were beginning to notice the little scuffle, though a full blown panic wasn't rampaging through the streets just yet. Quickly, the Turk got to his feet, ready to jump around, dodge a few more bullets and kill a few more assholes, as the adrenaline pumping through his system was mostly overriding his most recent gunshot wound. An irritatingly familiar voice began to rain on his parade, however.

"Gawd, you stupid Turkey. Don't think this means anything." The younger woman waved the point of the bloodstained and wickedly sharp Conformer at him in a condescending manner.

"I only saved your sorry ass because I want to kill you myself."

She quickly shot toward him, more quickly than he would have liked, and in that split second, he thought that maybe, just maybe, she was going to kill him. What with the way she held that damn shuriken above her head and leapt straight for him, it really looked like she was going to slice his head off just as she'd done to the poor man by Reno's feet.

He knew better.

He stood there, all cocky smirk and disheveled suit, just daring her.

In the end, she cried out in frustration, smacked him in the side with the flat, non-lethal side of her weapon and stomped her foot. "Tag, you're it." She mimicked his earlier words, rolling her eyes. "Asshole."

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Okay, so, there she is. Eh, I'm actually not too keen or confident on this one. I think I'm better at writing shorter, to the point one shots than long chapter stories, but you be the judge. Be honest, I implore you. Like it? Love it? Hate it? Tell me, I need to know. If I get enough positive reviews asking me to continue, I'll go further on down the lane with my budding idea, though if everyone hates this, I'll delete this chapter and keep it as it was. Please let me know which way to go.

Also, thank you to my kind and lovely reviewers, you guys all made my day. =D