Judet's gloves are grey, really. Bent and worn and creased and conditioned and scuffed and treated and repaired, they are soft, kitten-soft, through the joints, like expensive kid-leather. But that's alright. It's the boiled, carbon-reinforced knuckles that will break your face in. She didn't always have gloves. She didn't always have anything between herself and a brick wall, between her skin and the splinters of wood. You have to fight past pain if you don't want it to shock you, learn to take the impact if you don't want your subconscious to hold you back. You have to injure yourself to grow the calluses, to build wrist density. Riddle your bones with micro-fractures enough times, and they'll heal even stronger. Or so the theory goes.

Perhaps the theory is right. Even without materia, she can deliver a hit that would break a lesser woman's hand like it was made of chalk. She can brute-force her way through every attempted knock-back, ignoring the pain to push ahead. She claps chalk between her palms; hits harder; becomes unstoppable. She doesn't have as much dexterity in her fingers as she used to. It's the cost of so many impacts. Somewhere in the past, she thought she knew what she was choosing, doing that. Now, she tries to ignore a stiffness she feels too young to have. To use what she has gained, and forget the price. The backs of her gloves bump up strangely when she lays her hands flat on a table. They fit much more naturally when flexed, her fingers curled into fists.

Day 6: Training Day

A little something about a Turk I don't often write about... Martial Arts F, taking whatever gloves the character is or isn't wearing in their art as a prompt.

(I take a little bit of license. But with a point!)

#TurkWeek #ffviiturkweek

The service buildings of the Junon airfield were rapidly rising in their windows as Rafe tossed a pair of chunky heeled sandals in her direction. His own shoes were underneath them, engraved decorative steel-caps glinting in the dark recesses of the duffel. "That it, yeah...? Where's the silverware?" "Do you mean the *jewellery?* I have it. Alright, touchdown in three... two..." Rafe's temple collided with the dividing wall as a rough jolt shuddered through the aircraft. "Whoops! Anyway..." Flair was already flicking off switches before the helicopter hit the ground for the second time. "Okay, time to make tracks!" Ash-blonde hair flashed past his vision like a streamer as she scrambled between the seats, grabbing strewn pieces of her uniform as she went. Moments later, she ducked back into the cockpit for her wedges, snagging them with her fingers before turning toward the chopper door. Rafe shoved his laces into his shoes and his feet after them, hoping that might be good enough to run in. "Just hold on a damn—" "There's no time! Hurry up, slowcoach!"

"I mean you're still half fucking—" "You can zip me up in the elevator. Let's go!" The fastest draw under the Plate, that's what they'd called him—and, well, if his match was out there, he'd never met them. Flair, meanwhile, lined up shots like she was aiming the damn Sister Ray, and could barely run an eight-minute mile. The irony of how often she left him in her dust wasn't lost on him. Flair yanked the helicopter door open, hefting her silver suitcase down onto the tarmac and hopping after it, bare feet landing on the helipad. With her unzipped dress still bunched up inside itself around one leg and her ponytail askew, she looked as if their journey from Midgar had been a lot more enjoyable than the reality. Rafe barely presented any better, a handful of his loose shirt accidentally tucked in and his belt only halfway pulled through the buckle—but at least he wasn't the one currently bending to grab the jewellery pouch from the tarmac while rotor wash blew clothing everywhere except where it should be. The sound of a wolf-whistle floating across the airfield was choppy but unmistakable. Rafe yanked on the duffel's zips and swung it roughly over his shoulder. As his soles hit the tarmac beside his partner, his eyes were already scanning for the source of that sound. His gaze landed on a group of troopers hanging

out near the fuelling station, one of them making a crude gesture with his gloved hands. "Oi!" he roared, "Eyes to your fucking self!" The winds were against him. If the troopers heard anything, they showed no sign. He rounded on the airfield signaller instead. "Hey! What's his badge number?" The bespectacled man cringed back under the sudden vented frustrations, but was rescued from speaking when Flair cut in. "Not now! Honestly!" She shoved the jewellery pouch down the front of her dress for safe keeping and shifted her grip to the suitcase. "We've got places to be!" Then she was off, her bare feet darting across the tarmac, heedless of the oil and grit she was picking up as she went, her ponytail flying out in her wake above the rattle of her suitcase wheels. Rafe broke into a jog a half-second later, abandoning their chopper to the ground crew just as it was, only turning back to bark at the airfield signaller as they pushed past. "I want that fucking badge number with the Turks, tonight," he pointed at the man's chest, glancing down at the tag

Day 5: Wardrobe Malfunction

Turks are cool, competent, and in command of the situation, right? ...Right?

Undercover mission for Two Guns & Shotgun gets off to a rough start. (Also, TIL I can do extended screenshots. More readable? Less readable? Idk)

#TurkWeek #ffviiturkweek

The instant she hears the door lock, Ciara unfolds the blueprints from her jacket, spreading them across the metal table under the dim grey light of the security feeds. The curved bank of monochrome screens is a grim smile with missing teeth. "What did you find out there?" Alvis doesn't meet her gaze. His eyes are fixed on the remaining outdoor feed, showing troopers patrolling back and forth in front of their only helicopter. The crowd isn't visible onscreen, but it's there in the troopers' movements; the twitchy way they hold their rifles and turn their heads at unrecorded sounds. "All hacked up with bolt cutters," he says, "No fixing it. Could've been the locals, but..." "The signal jamming says professionals."

"Yeah." He points a finger at their last view of the outside world, dark shadows cast beneath his knuckles. "That one's still up. Why?" She pretends not to hear the raised pitch in his voice. She can feel it, too, quavering beneath her ribcage—the fear they won't figure this out in time. It's not about the danger. What she hears, echoed back to her, is the fear of fucking up. She spreads her fingers across the blueprints, straightening out the creases, forcing her breath to be steady. "The troopers mean they can't get to it. Or it's a trap." "...Fuck. You're right. The chopper's bait." "At least we know they haven't compromised it mechanically."

"Sure. That's the bait." "And if it’s about reaching the camera manually..." She points at six small symbols on the top level of blueprints, marking exterior camera angles. "There are at least six of them, because those all went down too quickly to be have been gotten by the same people." "Like, on a signal?" "Yes." "So *they* still have comms." She hadn't thought about that. Ciara's fingers curl, white knuckled over the paper. "Shit," she mutters. "Hey." He leans over the table until she can see the whites of his eyes. "We've gotta make a break for it. Even if it *is* a

trap. We'll know it's coming, we'll break through." "Know *what's* coming? Snipers? A rocket launcher?" "You've got Barrier. I can defend a chopper." He throws her a lopsided grin. "Aero, remember? Just like batting practice." She almost believes his confidence. Almost. "We could bunker down." It flickers, then. A twitch in his brows. "We could get *trapped*." "We've got our backs to a pretty solid mountain, here." He pushes off the table and turns away, pacing, his fingers hooking around the

Day 3, let's go!

Exfiltration / "Getting in isn't the problem, it's getting out."

It's going to take Rod and Knives more than four screenshots to even take stock of what they're up against here... never mind get out of it.

(continued in the next post)

#TurkWeek #ffviiturkweek

Whoops, forgot tags #TurkWeek #ffviiturkweek ...this one gets #shinrafuckers too I guess 😅

Bonus lore: I don't think the rest of this WIP will ever see the light of day lmao, but it does have the peculiar distinction of being inspired by a poem from my grandmother's collection.

Thanks, Grandma.

Yup! Apparently it was organised on tumblr and some awesome folks have been promo'ing it here too under #TurkWeek or #ffviiturkweek (it's probably on twt too but 🤷‍♀️). Prompts attached if you're curious or fancy jumping in 🥰

The sun had set before they found him again. The long fingers of dusk stretched, clawing, over Midgar's dense streets, until the Reactors' glow loomed aquamarine against the skies and the Turks' camera footage sparkled with the awakening of electric streetlights. Flair had been the one to spot him, the rookie's bored rotation of her office chair halting with an abrupt boot against the desk as she pointed at the top-right of the screen. Sure enough, a figure of familiar height and build was letting himself into an apartment building on the edge of the Sector 5 CBD. Rude was approaching that apartment building now, his partner's peanut-gallery comments—or, in this case, macaron-gallery, since Reno had demolished the box of sweet treats Rude brought back to their offices as a consolation prize—echoing in his head. *If we take him down in two seconds flat, we don't learn much, right? So, yeah, my vote's for a grudge match. Whaddaya say, Rude?* Reno wouldn't be far away, of course.

Just in case things got unexpectedly complicated. But the new plan—*Plan C, if anyone's counting*—involved Rude going into the supposedly-empty 'place in the city' belonging to one Guinevere Aurelia Beaumont-Skovgaard—*Man, I want some of whatever they were smoking when they named these poor kids*—alone. It helped that this was the kind of building where the property owners, flush with more money and paranoia than sense, had become so twitchy about security they'd practically handed Shinra the keys. Rude had a 'backdoor' device in his pocket that would disable any of the building's electronic locks with the press of a button—including the deadbolts supposedly separate from that system—and Reno, at his strategic distance, would be able to edit any of the public-area security feeds from his company PHS. It *should* be a cakewalk to sneak in. Rude didn't trust that anymore.

Didn't manage to write a damn thing for #TurkWeek yet, but I have enough WIPs kicking about I think I can tease something for every prompt... So have some screenshots off my phone.

Here's a snippet for Contingency Plan / "We blew past Plan B a while ago..."

#ffviiturkweek

Turk Week is happening!! It's organised on Tumblr (search #ffviiturkweek).