001 | Open

[rookiemyass]

Characters: Rod and ???
Setting: Room 04-14, Dormitory Floor 4 hallway
Format: Prose!
Summary: Rod wakes up in some weird fetish scene that he definitely didn't sign up for.
Warnings: Rod's foul mouth


It was, however, the first time that Rod had woken up in an unfamiliar place, completely incapacitated and more than a little disoriented and clad in what was possibly the most uncomfortable outfit ever, complete with some kind of freaky BDSM collar.

…seriously, what everloving the hell?

After grappling with the collar around his neck for several minutes in a vain attempt to get the fucking thing off already, Rod swore colorfully and heaved himself up off of the bed to further examine his surroundings. Whoever had set all this up was clearly one very sick individual, judging by the wannabe horror flick notes he’d found on the bedside table and the fact that he was wearing a fucking skin-tight cat suit and a god damn collar.

Yeah, okay, can we just take a second to revisit the collar? Rod was a pretty firm believer in ‘whatever floats your boat’ – hell, just about everyone was into something a little weird if you dug deep enough – but this kind of get-up was going way beyond the realm of anything that he would even remotely feel comfortable with.

He must really have pissed someone off good this time.

Thankfully, whoever he’d managed to piss off had been thoughtful enough to pack him a freaking chest of necessities, so it wasn’t long before he was stuffing the strange white outfit into the chest and donning his much more comfortable black suit. It was true that he didn’t really need to wear the uniform anymore, since technically the Turks of his era had disbanded, but he’d found that things tended to run a little more smoothly when he was wearing a suit; suits meant business and potential negotiations, whereas dressing like a punkass generally guaranteed he'd be duking it out with his fists, whether he wanted to or not. Whoever he ran into was just going to have to suck it up and deal with the fact that he was wearing combat boots, though, and he hadn’t even bothered to check if his tie had been packed in with his personal effects.

Wallet, gloves, and one thunder-equipped EMR later, he was ready to get his reconnaissance on, oldschool Turk-style. Cautiously, he poked his head outside the room, hoping against all odds that he’d recognize wherever it was he’d been taken captive and be able to get out without too much trouble.

Comments

[speaks_dirty]

Pushing herself off the wall, she walked over to stand with Rod. More Turks was good news to her. It meant that whoever was responsible for all of this had a hell of a backlash coming to them. Nobody screwed with the Turks, after all.

"Hell if I know. One of 'em apparently has shorter hair than the one I ran into. Said something about us coming from different times." And she hated that last part. What the hell would they think about things she remembered but they didn't?

[rookiemyass]

He blinked, staring at Siira like she’d just grown a second head. Then, he snorted. “Uh, yeah, right, okay. Great joke; where’s the camera? This some kinda surprise reunion or something? You guys really shouldn’t have. I mean, hell, it ain’t even my birthday!”

Emerging fully into the hall, he slung his mag rod over his shoulder, fully prepared to grin and laugh the whole thing off. He never got quite that far, though, as the look on Siira’s face never wavered.

“Wait… You’re serious?”

[speaks_dirty]

Siira watched him sling his rod over his shoulder, eyes moving to his collar and then tapped her finger on her collar after a moment, looking a bit thoughtful.

"Tried playin' with mine a bit. Feels like it's goin' into my neck but it don't feel like a needle or anything."

"Dead serious. I may screw around when we're all relaxing but this." She waved her hand around vaguely, meaning everything as she did so. "This is beyond something I'd come up with while we're drinkin', ya know?"

And then she had to think about how to phrase her question. Ultimately, she had no choice just to ask straight out. Especially with all the time nonsense she'd heard of.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

[rookiemyass]

He thought of the notes again, the words Your world has been destroyed flashing across his mind’s eye with a much more chilling effect than they’d had earlier. Suddenly, he really wished that this was some kind of hardcore fetish scene that someone had thrown him in the middle of out of spite – at least he was used to dealing with pissed off underworld thugs who were out for revenge.

“Uh, well, you know, Midgar fallin’ apart at the seams after the ShinRa building went down takin’ Rufus with it; giant fuckin’ glowing rock in the sky; impending doom – wait, did that meteor hit? Is that what that note meant about the ‘world being destroyed’ or whatever?”

[speaks_dirty]

So Rod was from before her time as well. Meteorfall wouldn't have a chance to destroy the Planet, not so long as Holy got the Lifestream moving and it would. It did. At least she could give Rod a small bit of reassurance while everything else went from shitty to shittier.

"Nah, Meteor didn't hit. Got close though. That five years ago. It did screw things up for awhile though, people gettin' sick with Geostigma and dyin' from it until the healing water appeared." And then things got worse. Again. Because none of them could ever catch a break.

[rookiemyass]

Five years ago… Geostigma… Healing water… It was all making Rod’s head spin and he didn’t like it, not one bit. Rod was sharp where it counted – he had been trained as a Turk, after all, and he had street smarts to boot that he sometimes even adhered to – but the Turks hadn’t exactly hired for his brain. The actual thinking was best left to other people on a normal day, but stuff like this? Body doubles and separate timelines… all this was of a magnitude that made Rod want to punch things until they went away and stopped giving him a god damn headache.

“…shit,” he muttered, slumping against the wall next to him as if to borrow its support. He wasn’t sure if he believed all this was actually happening – how could he? – but he figured he might as well go along with it instead of trying to process it all at once. So, back to the basics:

“And we all got these collars? Even Reno?” he asked, tugging at his absently before helpfully adding, “Yours is a different color.”

[speaks_dirty]

Siira was still doubting all this as well, so he wasn't alone. Anybody was welcome to call her a skeptic for that but she would never believe the Planet was gone. It was too outrageous, too stupid.

"Yeah. Looks like everybody around here is fitted with one. A bunch'a different colors too but I haven't figured out why. What color is mine?" She hadn't found a mirror yet and she wasn't up to seeing the collar if she didn't have to. That, and she'd had other priorities.

[rookiemyass]

"Yellow," he answered, tugging at his own collar as if the device might just give up and gtfo if only he kept hassling it long enough. "These things gimme the creeps. This place is fuckin' shady as all get-out, yo."

Rod and Siira could definitely form the Skeptics Club, because it was definitely going to take a lot for Rod to be convinced that this wasn't all some kind of fucked up plot to get revenge on the Turks by driving them all crazy or something.

He sighed. "Man, I need a drink." Blue eyes roamed around the hallway warily as he spoke. "You scoped the rest of the place out yet? I dunno 'bout you, but I'm seriously ready to split."

[speaks_dirty]

"And yours is orange. Weird. Wonder what the colors mean." She wished they would come off so easily. A passing thought, she wondered if they could shoot the collars off but that could be way to dangerous. "Be a little less freaky'n dangerous if the lights would work but hell no, apparently our worlds being 'destroyed' isn't enough." She even added air-quotes on that.

A possibility that Siira had considered. Even with WRO support, ShinRa was still on the outs with the world and Turks were one of ShinRa's symbols. Anyone would try anything to get back at them.

"I explored a bit of it, haven't found a drink yet. Reno said him and Rusty, the other Reno, were makin' something with a still they built. We might have'ta bug them later."

[rookiemyass]

"Fuck what the colors mean; I just want this thing off," he grumbled. The feeling of the collar around his neck was starting to get to him in a bad way, feeling tighter by the second and making him feel like he was choking for lack of air. It was all in his head, of course, but Rod didn't handle any form of restraint particularly well, and the collar was giving him horrible mental images of lab animals and test specimens - or what became of them - like he'd seen one time down in the ShinRa labs.

Seeing Siira make the air quotes, Rod laughed, albeit nervously. He raised a brow at the name 'Rusty.'

"What, they gave each other nicknames? What's the other one called?" he asked, before shaking his head and chuckling again. "'Least they're workin' on somethin' worthwhile."

[speaks_dirty]

Siira reached out as he tugged at the collar and lightly hung her hands on his wrists in the hopes it would calm him. Fighting to get something off would hurt almost as badly as trying to shoot it. They needed to be calm right now.

"They're just Reno and Rusty, I guess. They didn't mention other nicknames." It was nice to hear him laugh, if only a little. Morale was important. Even Turks needed to keep it up.

[rookiemyass]

The sudden touch surprised him, but it wasn’t unwelcome; having someone – especially another Turk – reach out to him like that reminded Rod that they were all stuck in this together... whatever this really was. Siira was as much an unwilling participant as he was, and losing his cool wasn’t going to help any of them.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, Rod reigned his thoughts back in, giving himself a mental shake and offering Siira a weak smile. Then, he willed himself to let go of his collar, his hands dropping slowly back to his sides. At least now he felt like he could breathe a little more easily again.

“Which room did you wake up in? I'm guessin' no one was lucky enough to find a PHS in their chest?” If that was the case, not being able to communicate easily was going to make him uncomfortable as all get-out, but he’d have to deal with that later, once he confirmed that no one actually had a working phone on them.

[speaks_dirty]

Good. A calm Turk was a useful Turk. None of them needed to be panicking and hurting themselves right now. They could worry about getting rid of the collars when they got home.

"Room 2-13, for me. Got a helluva welcome from my roommate. She pointed a gun right in my face when she walked in the door." Siira managed to calm that situation down at least. And without having to hurt anyone or fire a single warning shot.

"No PHS's though, so far. We'll have to check with the others and make sure. Can't keep 'em powered up long here anyway, until we get power everywhere." Although... A well placed lightning spell? No, that would blast one to bits.

[rookiemyass]

“Roommate, huh?” His room had been empty when he’d woken up. While he hadn’t noticed anything right off the bat to suggest that anyone else had been staying in the room before he’d arrived, the three other beds suggested that more people would probably be arriving. He’d have to take a closer look at the room now that he was calmer... maybe poke around for a flashlight as well. “Guess everyone’s kinda off their game…”

He blinked, then, as something struck him. “So, wait, your roommate ain’t someone you know? Not another Turk?” Now, that was interesting; maybe this wasn’t just about the Turks after all.

[speaks_dirty]

"Nope, no Turks in my room. Damn shame. The girl I met already didn't even know what a Turk was. Or ShinRa, for that matter. I had to actually tell her about it and then she asked me if I knew anything about 'Zeon' or 'Gundams.' Weird shit, here." Siira was getting used to the lack of emergency lighting on the other floors.

And her materia gave off just enough of a glow that she didn't have to worry about falling to her death, in exchange for a slight drop in temperature.

"Gets worse though. Hojo and Fuhito are here."