BREAK ROOM
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.
——————
That was an unexpectedly juicy prompt! I wish I’d had time to flesh it out a bit more, that could have easily been a chapter or three. Eh, whatever. I’ll try to get these up on my fanfic.net of the no-sendy-links-on-tumblr at the very least. (Whytegriffin, if you’re looking.)
