Turks Party 33

Turks Party 33 – Reno and the Rubber Chicken
By: Zeng Li

Tseng got behind Reeve and pushed the taller man's back, forcing him towards the front door of Reno's townhouse. "You go first!" the Turks' leader said even while Reeve attempted to stop his forced forward momentum with his feet.

Reeve laughed. "You're sure paranoid, Mr. Wulong..."

"He's coated me in silly string...attempted to hit me with pies...and sooner or later he's bound to install a trap door in the entry way that'll send me falling into something in his basement that I fear to speculate on."

"Mmmm...thanks for the idea!" Reno said, lounging in the open door way of his townhouse, sucking on a lollypop. “Of course, since there are worst things out there, I could always just let you off easy with a pie…”

Tseng looked around Reeve, whom he was still pushing, and saw the eavesdropping Turk in the door way. "You bastard, Reno!" he snapped, letting Reeve go to enter the party house ahead of him.

"Nah. You..." Reno poked his index finger tip against the dark brown dot in the center of Tseng's forehead, "...are the bastard."

Tseng swiped at Reno's hand so hard Reno's lollypop went flying out of his grip and onto the pavement.

"Hey, that was your doorprize!!" Reno yelled chasing after it. "It was supposed to be a decoration for your hair!!"

The Twister mat was half unfolded at one end of the room. The beer and wine selections were laid out haphazardly on the coffee table. It was a typical Reno party that would likely only end after he dished out dozens of annoyances and acts of lewd behavior.

The usual array of guests was there. Rude, Elena, Rufus, and... "Hojo!?" Tseng took a step back after confronting the lanky scientist face-to-face.

"Ah, hello, Mr. Tseng," said the professor, his hair greasy and unwashed as ever. "I mentioned to Reno earlier that I need some alcohol to ingest...see how it reacts with the recent thing I injected myself with..." Hojo's grin and nasal snickering disturbed Tseng as always.

Tseng just stood there, his brow knotted as Hojo slithered away with an icy beer in hand. "Wha--?" He turned and caught back up to the creepy professor. "When did you meet up with Reno and have this little talk?"

"Oh..." Hojo sipped his beer, an act that looked about as unusual as an alligator playing a guitar. "Earlier today when he came up to my lab for his...heh, heh...treatment..." The professor slithered away again, leaving Tseng turning curious shades of green and feeling either ready to throw up or take Reno by the neck and...

"Hiya, boss!" Reno said, appearing before Tseng and grinning, one hand behind his back.

Tseng seized Reno by what ever part of his unbuttoned shirt collar he could grip and leaned into him, eyes ablaze and teeth bared. "What were you doing in Hojo's lab earlier!?" he snarled. The room around them went quiet, and all eyes except the uncaring Hojo's turned to them.

"Chill, boss..." Reno said, partially amused at the reddening look on Tseng's face.

"What treatment...?" Tseng hissed through gritted teeth, attempting to keep his voice from carrying in the now silent atmosphere.

Elena couldn't take the tension any more, noting Tseng's discomfort, so she turned on the CD player to create some noise to cover his conversation with Reno.

"Ha ha ha!" Reno hooked his free arm around Tseng and pushed down heavily on the other man's shoulders, making him nearly falter a step but at the least let go of his collar.

"You're not letting him experiment on you...?"

"Relax...I got a little boo-boo!" Reno raised his forearm so Tseng could see the dressing taped around his elbow that covered a sizable abrasion wound.

"You don't go to Hojo for stuff like that!! You go to our regular doctor!! Geesh! Knowing Dr. Creepy over there, he'd try to mend it with Jenova cells or something." Tseng's body untensed at last.

"Eh, it was more convenient than riding the elevator all the way down to the fifth floor. See, I was test-driving one of ShinRa's new motorcycles..."

"Inside the building!?" Tseng interrupted, now partially shouting over the loud music.

"Yeah!" Reno shrugged as though that were normal. "I was on the 67th floor, and well...they didn't tell me that the maintenance department had re-polished the floors overnight! Geesh!! They never do a thing to fix up the building until the night before I go joy-riding..."

Tseng slapped his palm to his forehead and sighed in response to Reno's confession of idiocy.

"Anyway..." said Reno. "Rubber Chicken fight!!"

Tseng looked up just in time to be whapped in the side of the head with the thing Reno'd been hiding behind his back -- a rubber chicken. Reno escaped off to tag other party-goers with his silly new gag.

Reno attacked the young Vice President with his new toy, but Rufus snatched it out of his hand like a skilled mouser. "Hey, it's scrawny, got flaming red hair...hmm...looks a lot like you, Reno," he said, shoving it back at its owner.

"Hey, yeah!" Reno held it at arm's length and looked it over before his drunken mind told him that had been an insult. "Hey...!!" He charged at Rufus, but Rufus moved aside as he swiped the rubber chicken at him. He hit Rude with it instead.

Rude glared down at the spunky Turk from behind his dark shades. Reno grinned and felt a bead of sweat form on his brow.

"Uh...hey, Rude!" he grinned nervously.

Rude reached down and gripped Reno's chicken-holding wrist in one hand, his grip like a vise that would snap bones in two if tightened just a little bit more. "Hit me with that again..." Rude started as Reno's head shrunk down farther into his shoulders.

"Uh...I know..." Reno squeaked, his partner having instilled fear into him long before this day. Rude let him go, the conclusion of his threat not necessary.

Tseng slouched onto the sofa and massaged his temples, the Friday night headache well on its way. "Why do I come to these parties?" he asked to his nearest seated companion, Reeve.

"Um...you're sitting on Hojo..." Reeve said.

Tseng sprung up in a flash and looked down at where he'd been sitting. Reeve laughed his head off at Tseng's reaction, especially the one that came as he noticed that Reeve had pulled one on him.

"Oh, very funny..." Tseng sat back down where he'd been, atop nothing but sofa upholstery. Hojo was clearly visible across the room and no where near the sofa.

"Gyaa haa haa!!" a voice boomed from the entry way as Heidegger let himself in. "Mind if we join the party? We brought some booze..."

Scarlet entered behind him. "Kyaa haa haa...yeah, but I drank it all on the way here! Kyaa haa haa haa haa..."

Tseng put a hand over his eyes. "Shoot me...! Please, somebody shoot me!!"

"Okay!" came a voice followed by a hard whap as the rubber chicken made contact with Tseng's shoulder yet again. Tseng watched Reno trot by and approach the newcomers at the door.

"Reno! Good to see you again!!" Scarlet said in a drunken slur. She put her arms out to hug him but with her impaired and doubled vision, she instead ended up hugging thin air, leaning her weight into nothing at all and winding up falling to the floor on her face.

"Uh...nice to see you too," Reno said. "Affirmation that I'm not the drunkest asshole around..." He turned his attention to the fat scar-faced man that had accompanied her in. "Yo, Heidegger! I don't exactly invite you to these parties, y'know. Why the hell do you keep showing up?"

"Gyaah haa haa haa.... Of course you don't invite me to these...social functions of yours," the man bellowed loud enough to be heard over the music and other random chatter. "Tseng does!"

"What!?" Reno turned away, nearly tripping over the fallen Scarlet as he stormed to the sofa where Tseng sat, rubber chicken weapon in hand.

Tseng had heard and hunched his shoulders, a vain hope he wouldn't be spotted.

"Yo, wait a minute!" he strode over and turned the music down. "Say that again, Heiddy..."

"Scarlet and I come to these after-work parties because Tseng invited us here." Next to him, Scarlet was just clamoring back to her feet, holding onto him for support as the room swayed and swirled before her drunk vision.

Tseng turned beet red as the eyes of trained killers all around stared him down. "I had to!!" he finally said over the silence. "He threatens to cut the budget for the Turks if we don't let him in on some of our social parties on Friday nights!!"

"Gyaa haa haa! That's right! And I think right now the Turks' budget is safe for a few more weeks until I decide to bully your captain around some more! Gyaah haaa haaa haaa haaa haaa...."

The air around Tseng seemed to turn into that of understanding forgiveness. Rufus, however, made his way from the billiards table to the chorus of bellowing laughter coming from the slut and her blob friend. The VP punched Heidegger's thick body.

"Shut the fuck up! That laugh of yours is gonna be the death of us all! You can bully Tseng around, but don't forget I'm here, too, and I don't feel like listening to that donkey-laugh of yours any longer!!" Rufus' fangs were bared.

"I'm sorry..." Heidegger shrank back, reduced to a quivering coward before the teenage vice president.

"If you're gonna be here, the least you can do is have normal party-fun like the rest of us," Rufus continued.

"Uh..." Heidegger's eyes shifted side to side as he searched the room for something that resembled party stuff, realizing he'd never actually partaken in any typical "party" activities before. "Oooh!! Twister!!" his eyes lit up as he rumbled across the room. "I haven't played Twister since I was a little kid!" He lifted the folded floor mat up and let it open itself up to display its rows of various colored dots.

"Hey, I know..." said Tseng, putting his drink down. He grabbed Hojo by the shoulders and shoved him towards the game corner. "Let's let Dr. Creepy here play against Heidegger. He's the only one of us who can probably survive having Heidegger's full weight crash down on him without suffering any broken bones. Or, uh...I don't even know if Hojo still has bones or if they've mutated into some...some...I don't know..."

"Hey, I know!" Heidegger said while Scarlet finished laying the mat out on the floor for him. "I'll play against Tseng! How's that? I'd hate to have to cut the Turks' budget again..."

"Ooh! And the rubber chicken wants to play, too!" Reno jumped in all smiles.

"That's blackmail, Heidegger!" Tseng growled as he approached the mat.

"Aw...but we can't play strip Twister because the rubber chicken is already naked..." Reno continued, oblivious to his captain's irritation and Heidegger's manipulation. "I know...I'll go get clothes for him!"

Tseng grabbed Reno by the wrist and yanked him back in place. "Reno...I really hope you appreciate the effort I'm going through for the Turks. I will kick your ass for this later after the party's over..."

Elena, another drunk one, spun the Twister wheel. "Right hand, red!" she announced. Heidegger bent down and touched a fat hand to the mat, grinning and glaring at the Turk captain. Tseng's brow knotted, and he reached down and did the same, making it a point to stay as far from Heidegger's dirty hand as possible.

Reno knelt down and slapped the rubber chicken to a red dot as well.

The party guests gathered around, someone turning the music up a little higher.

"Left foot yellow!" Elena announced the result of her next spin.

While the two human players made the effort to comply, Reno held the rubber chicken down on the red dot and tried to stretch it towards the nearest yellow spot.

"Argh...I don't know if he can do it..." Reno strained, yanking the rubber chicken as far as he could, which still didn't get him anywhere near a yellow dot. The chicken slipped out of one hand and shot like a fired rubber band, slapping Tseng right between the eyes. "Oops...the chicken's out..."

Tseng grit his teeth. "Reno...I swear..." Much as he wanted to go pummel the party host, he had a self-imposed goal of besting Heidegger at this silly child's game. And, given how much Heidegger was sweating to keep his fat body in these positions, it wouldn't take much longer. Tseng just hoped the fat man's body didn't come crashing down upon any important body parts.

Elena twirled the spinner again. "Right hand blue!" she called.

The players moved their hands off the red and reached for blue instead. Tseng, in his quest to remain as distanced on the mat from Heidegger, now found himself face to face with one of the last parts of Heidegger he ever wanted to get his nose close to...Heidegger's ass.

Tseng got a deer-in-headlights look to him and looked over at Elena as if telepathically willing her to hurry the hell up and spin the wheel again. As she did, the unthinkable happened.

Heidegger farted.

Tseng's eyes immediately crossed, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints. His once neatly groomed hair seemed to instantly spring out of place into a frazzled mess of its former self. Tseng stood upright, taking a few staggering steps back as the stench hit his nostrils so deep it attacked his brain and probably knocked off a few IQ points in the process. He gagged, wheezed, and choked, then finally fell backwards and plunged into the entire contents of the punch bowl. Plastic cups and splashes of punch flew everywhere, and the Turk leader as well as the carpet were soaked with red fruity liquid.

Rufus laughed his head off to the point he had to try hard to keep from pissing himself. Others joined in laughing, possibly even the poker-faced Rude.

Reeve made his way over to the fallen Turks captain and held his arm. "Any one got smelling salts," he said, desperately holding the Wutanese man's full weight as he wavered in and out of consciousness.

"I do..." Hojo said, approaching while reaching into his lab coat pocket. Reeve reached his hand out to take what ever Dr. Creepy had to offer. Hojo placed a packet into Reeve's hand, adding, "I make them myself. They're made from what's left after I distill my own sweat."

Reeve's eyes nearly crossed, as he decided Tseng had been through enough lately. Dropping the packet to the floor, he draped Tseng's arm over his shoulders, Elena appearing at his side. "Let's get him to some fresh air," he said to her while in the background Reno started spraying air freshener into the room from an aerosol can.

Elena took Tseng by the other arm and lead him to the front door where they held him up on the porch for a while, waiting for his lungs and head to clear as well as the room back inside.

"I'm so ashamed..." Heidegger covered his face with his hands.

Scarlet pat his back. "Nothing to be ashamed of, darling. You out-lasted Tseng at Twister. That oughta be good for some bragging back at the office."

Heidegger stopped bawling. "Yeah! You're right! Gyaah haa haa haa!!"

"Whoo-hoo!!" Reno cheered as he came out of the kitchen in nothing but a t-shirt and boxer shorts. His boxer shorts seemed to have an area unusually enlarged in the front and center.

"What is that!?" Rufus asked, pointing to the unnaturally huge bulge in Reno's pants.

Reno put an arm whose hand still gripped the rubber chicken around Rufus' shoulders. "Ruf, my man...when you get a little bit older, you'll have a nice beefy one like mine," he gloated.

Rufus yanked himself away from Reno. "Uh, Reno...that is not your wee-wee!"

Reno put his hands on his hips. "It is too!!" he took one hand and rubbed it over the roundish lump in the front of his pants. When he stopped, Rufus swung a hard kick right into it. The melon that had been inside Reno's boxers splattered, sending globs of melon pulp and broken rind dripping out and onto the floor.

"You bastard!!" Reno stormed off to the kitchen again.

Tseng had missed the party host's stunt, just finally returning to the living room and still leaning on Reeve for support. Elena got a brush out of her purse and started combing Tseng's hair back into some resemblance of order after Reeve seated him back onto the sofa.

"Good thing I'm the one driving tonight," Reeve pat Tseng's back.

Tseng's head was cocked slightly sideways and he gave the opposite wall a blank stare yet. One by one, his braincells were returning to their proper function, probably mourning the ones that died in the blast of farty stench.

Hojo held a tightly corked test tube up to the light. "It may not be much...but I think this sample will do..."

Rude stood next to the professor and looked at the green tinted tube. "What is that?" he asked.

"Why, it's a...heh heh heh...sample of course..." Hojo pocketed the vial in his lab coat for later experimentation. Rude backed away quietly, afraid that in the melee of Heidegger's stink bomb that the creepy professor took the chance to collect an air sample he'd rather not think any more about.

Reno came back into the living room zipping up his pair of jeans over a new, clean pair of boxers retrieved from the dryer in the back room. His rubber chicken rode shot-gun in his back pocket.

"There he is!! Back from the grave, no?" Reno walked into the room.

Hojo looked all humble. "Oh, why yes...I'm here, and..."

"Not you..." Reno shoved the professor aside and walked past him, plopping down on the sofa to Tseng's right. "You okay, boss man?"

"Huh...? Uh...?" Tseng's zombified eyes looked through Reno.

"Keep up the good work, Reeve..." Reno pat his boss' shoulder. "He'll come around...some day..." He tore up the stairs to the second floor and wasn't seen for a few more minutes.

Elena took his place next to the Turks captain. "Oh, Tseng, honey...do you love me...?" she cooed, stroking his cheek as she leaned into him.

"Uh...?" Tseng blankly stared ahead.

"Oh, Tsengie..." Elena kissed him hard on the cheek, snuggling up into him while Reeve looked on from where he sat on the opposite side of the Turk leader unsure whether to stop her or if she might actually do him some good.

"Wheeeee!!!" Thudding and a sliding sound came from the staircase as Reno was soon spotted tobogganing down the stairs on a sleeping bag. His 15-stair journey ended on the tile landing in the space near the front door.

"What the hell...?" Reeve turned around to see what the commotion was all about.

"Cool!" said Rufus, leaving his and Rude's billiards game to join Reno. "That looks like fun!!" Then he stopped, so accustomed to Tseng butting in and interrupting his fun. He looked back at the sofa area and saw the out-of-it Turks' leader in no condition to stop him, or even notice what he's up to.

"You gotta try this, Ruf!" said Reno, handing the sleeping bag to the VP and running up the stairs along side him with it.

"Should we stop them?" Elena asked Reeve.

"Nah. With Tseng in la-la land over here, it's probably Rufus' only chance to have some reckless fun for the time being," Reeve replied.

"Cool! Then I'm going with them!" Elena took her beer and ran to the staircase, standing aside as the vice president came sliding down the stairs on the sleeping bag, using it like a toboggan.

Reeve just sighed, keeping watch on Tseng who was oblivious to the reckless endangerment Rufus and the others were engaged in. But he was slowly coming out of his sickly trance.

Elena took her turn. The curious Rude went looking for his billiards partner and was at the foot of the stairs when Elena came sliding down on the sleeping bag sled. She plowed full speed into him and simply bounced off as though she'd hit a brick wall. Rude looked down at her and the heap of a sleeping bag and just shook his head and walked away.

"Hey, Hojo!" Reno called down the stairs while Elena was getting up and retrieving the sleeping bag. "C'mon up and join us! It'll be fun!"

"What are you doing?" Hojo asked.

Reno ran down the stairs while Elena was climbing back up. He took Hojo by the hand and dragged him up the stairs. "C'mon, professor. It's your turn!"

"What...what do I do?"

"Just sit on this bag...and hold on..."

"Um...okay..."

Reno and Rufus together gave Hojo a push and sent the frail-bodied scientist sliding down the bumpy stairs on the make-shift toboggan.

Hojo screamed and crumpled into a crash-landing at the bottom of the stairs.

"Whoo-hoo!!" Reno cheered. "Let's go down and see how many bones he broke!" His trio hopped down the stairs to the once again pretzelled professor. Hojo's elbow, hip, and both knees were now bent in the wrong direction. His neck, too, was twisted a bit further than any range of motion on a normal human being. "Yo! How you feeling, Doctor Grease-Wad!?" Reno asked.

Hojo moved, his dislocated and unnaturally bent body crackling and making gut-wrenching snapping sounds as he reorganized his body back into its properly functional and unbroken human shape. "That served no purpose! If you were trying to scientifically prove gravity exists, there are better ways to do it that doesn’t hurt me. You young kids can have fun with it, but don't include me again." With that, Hojo walked away as though nothing had happened to him.

Reno, Rufus, and Elena just laughed, hauling the bag back up the stairs for more goes at it themselves. Reno went down with the rubber chicken and Rufus and Elena teamed up for a slide of their own.

Meanwhile, Tseng could once again grip his hand around a glass and, with a little help from Reeve, drink from it. His skin returned to its normal golden tone, and his pin-point eyes relaxed back to a state of normalcy.

"What the hell happened...?" he asked when he could speak once again. He looked down at his punch-stained white shirt and stared frightened at Reeve.

Reeve pat him on the back. "You don't want to know."

Tseng turned around in time to see a big green blob of a man riding a sleeping bag down the staircase. Heidegger's massive body weight gained him a ton of momentum and hurled him down the stairs, across the foyer, and into the wooden front door...which he barreled clean through and burst off its hinges as he slammed into it, his ride not ending until he was seated on the sleeping bag in the parking lot.

Tseng shook his head, his eyes as wide as an owl's once again. "I need a drink..." he said, lifting a beer to his lips.

"Hey, no fair!" Reno yelled as he and his little mischievous gang ran down the stairs after Heidegger. "He got a longer ride than the rest of us!!"

"Man!!" said Rufus. "Heidegger's winning at all the party games tonight!"

Tseng froze. His memory returned. The night, unfortunately, was unforgettable, even to one as recently traumatized as him.

= = = = =

Reno woke up the next morning, alone in his bed. He had no memory of exactly when he'd fallen asleep or what had gone on the night before.

Something was against his nose, and when he went to lift an arm to move it off of him, he couldn't. He struggled, with his feet, his arms, and even his body, but he couldn't move. The squeak of man-made fabric crackled all around him. His eyes came into focus, and he found the thing laying half in his face was a rubber chicken. As for the rest of him...he was tied down on his bed in layer upon layer of silver duct tape.

He writhed, its sticky surface clinging to his clothes and his skin, trapped like vermin on his own bed. There was no sound from other rooms upstairs, nor from downstairs.

"Tseng, this isn't fucking funny!!!" he yelled, not even sure if his boss was even still in his apartment. "Let me out of here!! I've got to fuckin' piss you know!!!"

But his cries for help went unanswered.

THE END