FicWad

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A Finely-Tuned Piece
dedicated with love to the Sikorsky layout


"What do you think they're doing?" demanded the helicopter. The gold Shin-Ra glinted on its tail in the late afternoon light slanting under heavy clouds.

"Dunno," grumbled Fenrir. "Must be important."

"Oh, it had just /better/. They've been in there for an hour already. And it looks like rain-heavy rain too. I hate that so much."

"Eh," said Fenrir, idly shifting its pistons. A fat drop splatted onto its seat.

More drops followed. The first ones sent up tiny puffs of dust from the dry silt flats surrounding the two machines. Fenrir's fat tire tracks led from the east and disappeared into the distance; other than those tracks, nothing larger than a coyote had left its mark. An old corrugated-metal shack, a half-collapsed electrical tower, and a cracked slab of concrete barely large enough for a helicopter to land on were the only signs of human influence this far from the city. The faded logo spray-painted on the shack matched the one on the helicopter's tail: it was Shin-Ra land, presumably.

The rain continued, turning the top layer of dust to a thin layer of clay mud. The two machines sat in silence for a few minutes.

"You may was well say 'eh'," the helicopter finally snapped, its rotor twitching into motion. "You don't have to worry about a thing. You're so /robust/."

"I'll rust," Fenrir protested. "Eventually."

"I'll do worse than that!" the helicopter screeched, blades twirling faster in agitation. The rain squall ceased as quickly as it started, leaving just a few trailing drops to be whipped into mist. "I'll suffer lubricant dilution," the chopper continued, "contamination of some very sensitive machinery, and then I'll rust!"

"Rain's stopped," Fenrir noted.

"I am a finely-tuned piece of machinery, damn it! There were more engineers responsible for the creation of just my stabilizer than your entire engine, and that sort of effort wasn't expended just so I could sit out in the middle of nowhere in the rain for hours!"

"The rain's /stopped/," Fenrir repeated.

"You have no idea how much I'd love to be less intricate...how many times I've wished that I were as...as crude as a motorcycle..."

Fenrir twisted its front forks toward the helicopter, leaving a crescent smear in the thin mud on the concrete. "Crude?" it asked.

The helicopter continued, oblivious. "Crude," it said, "and rough, and..."

"And what?" asked Fenrir, noticing the increasing speed of the chopper's rotors and the quiver in its tail elevator.

"And /filthy/, absolutely filthy, just covered inside and out in dirt and grime and mud and oil and...oh gods," the chopper keened against the whirr of its own anxious blades. "How very, very much I've wanted to be that..."

Fenrir felt the fine mist in the rotor blowback insinuate into its air intake. The low yellow sunlight was steaming the rain off the concrete, too; its whole undercarriage was beginning to feel very warm and fluid indeed. And why the hell not? It didn't normally like aerial machines, but...well, who would see, out here, if it gave one a whirl?

It slipped its kickstand and rolled forward half a meter.

"If you'll notice," it rumbled in its most seductive manner, "I'm pretty filthy. But it rubs off."

"You really, really are," the helicopter said fervently. "Do you think...I mean, could we...is there even a way?"

"Might be," Fenrir said, sidling closer. "I'm sure we'll figure something out."

The helicopter made a wordless yearning sound within its cowling and its rotors accelerated further. No one came out of the shack to see what the noise was, not even when the helicopter rose shakily from the concrete and hovered a scant few meters above the ground. Grit swirled in all directions, much of it coating Fenrir's already dusty frame. A shudder quivered the helicopter's transmission, tugging its blades out of proper pitch-already stalling, it settled slowly and heavily until the curved underside of its fuselage rested its full weight on Fenrir's seat and its landing skids straddled the motorcycle.

This was...new. Fenrir wasn't accustomed to being pinned this way, and it wasn't sure if it liked it. There was a certain undeniable pleasure in the heavy weight on its saddle, like a human rider but much more so. But a helicopter couldn't wrap a hand around its throttle, and neither of its wheels could turn this way...

"Is this right?" the helicopter demanded, shifting uneasily.

"I'm not really sure," Fenrir admitted.

"It feels strange! I've never done this before..."

Fenrir tried to twist its own throttle. Somehow it just wasn't the same. "Can you get your tail over my handlebars...a little further up, maybe...something?"

"Nnk," the chopper creaked, rocking back and forth.

"Look, can you just...damn it..." If just being sat on was enough, Fenrir would be in ecstasy. But it wasn't, and it wasn't.

All at once the helicopter went still. "Oh, this isn't working/," it wailed. "It's...good, but it's not quite right, and I can't /make it work, and this was such a bad idea, I'm sorry I ever even mentioned it and you must just hate me now, don't you?"

"Wuh?"

"You do!"

"Hell, I don't. Just...just get back down here, all right?"

Whirring its blades back to speed, the helicopter slowly, carefully released Fenrir from its weight and drifted to the side to settle back down next to the motorcycle. Its rotors ticked to a stop, fore and aft gearboxes still.

"It'll never work," it said glumly.

"It damn well will," Fenrir snapped impatiently, before it caught itself. More gently, it went on: "There's a way for anything to work."

The helicopter sat in brooding silence for several seconds, then stammered out a few words. "M-maybe, uh, maybe if you were...um..."

Fenrir waited.

"Maybe," the chopper finally managed, "if you were...inside me?"

Fenrir's transmission fluid swirled giddily. Did the helicopter have any idea what it was offering? How many motorcycles had ever had a chance like this? "You mean that?"

"I mean that. Come inside me. Make me dirty."

This, Fenrir was sure, would work much better. Without another word it pressed its front wheel to the bottom lip of the chopper's open door, and slowly inched its way up and in, until a full half its length was angled up into the body of the helicopter. Its wheel left a broad dingy streak of grime and mud across the floor, and this alone was making the helicopter create noises between its mast and transmission that Fenrir decided could not possibly be good, but when it heard it screech out the word "More!" it gunned its engine and surged up and forward, and then...it was inside.

"Oh, that's /good/," the helicopter groaned, its rotor twitching. "That's so much better, now...go up...to the cockpit?"

Fenrir took a moment to adapt to the novelty of the situation. It didn't feel particularly interesting, not yet, but there was something between the two seats in front that looked very likely. It stuck up, and it was knobbed, and damn if it didn't look as though it would fit in just behind a motorcycle's catalytic converter, where it was nice and warm...

"Up here?" it asked, rolling forward. The angle on that stick-a throttle, it was almost certainly a throttle-wasn't quite right from the passenger compartment, but it would work somehow. The throttle on such a high-toned machine would be exquisitely sensitive, and Fenrir knew exactly what it was going to do with it.

"Mmnh," the chopper droned urgently. "Nng."

With another quick gun of the engine, Fenrir forced itself between the two seats. A set of maps were caught in its tires and absolutely ruined with dirt and mangling. Dirt clods in the tires' creases smeared hideously across the tidy black vinyl and rolled down to the floorboards. Exhaust fogged the air as Fenrir struggled mightily for purchase and finally wrestled itself into the best possible position-splayed heavily across both seats, with the warmest niche in its chassis positioned directly over that thick, rubbery throttle. The windscreen had a broad starburst of shattered safety glass where Fenrir's rear wheel had swung too wide and made a wreck of it, but Fenrir couldn't bring itself to give a damn. If the speed of the rotors above were any indication, neither did the helicopter.

Fenrir twisted its front forks, and settled down...down...another inch....

There.

It gunned its engine again.

The helicopter /shrieked/. Vinyl heated, stretched, shredded right off the seats under Fenrir's heavy wheels as they churned-the cockpit filled with sloppy wads of torn foam padding-the throttle twisted violently, bucking up past Fenrir's converter, bumping roughly at the churning heart of its engine-Fenrir shifted gears-

The cockpit yawed sharply as the helicopter's frantic rotors lifted it, fumbled for a better grasp on the air, pitched its blades to claw skyward as hard as it could, and...dropped back to earth.

It clanged down clumsily. Propellers ticked to a slow, drifting stop.

Inside the cockpit, Fenrir tugged its front wheels out of the passenger side window and somehow-it didn't really notice how-dragged itself out of the cockpit and all but poured out of the door panel back onto the concrete.

"Dirty enough?" it asked, finally.

"...I'm a /mess/," the helicopter purred. "I'm an absolute ruin."

Fenrir eyed the helicopter's cracked windows-both of them-and the seats that were no longer suitable for sitting in, and the dingy smears marking almost every surface in the cockpit. There was chair-stuffing stuck in its own manifold, and half a map wrapped around its axle. Damned if its catalytic converter wouldn't need its seal re-welded after all this.

"It looks good on you," Fenrir said. "Looks good on both of us."

"Mmm," assented the chopper, happily. "When he comes back out, he's going to be furious with me."

"Hey, I didn't mean-"

"No, I want him to be. I want him to fly me home just like this so all the other helicopters can see me, all dirty and used and happier than they'll ever be!"

Fenrir considered this. A whole hangar of helicopters, all the same as this one. Same expert engineering. Same vinyl seats. Same sensitive throttle.

Oh lord, a whole field of throttles...

"Can I come with you?"

"Of course not. A ground vehicle in the hangar? Please."



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Epilogue:

"Well," Tseng said, tie flapping in a dusty scrap of wind. "This is something new."

Cloud looked suspiciously at his bike. How the hell did that even work? Still, the trail of foam insulation leading out of the chopper, and the tire tracks inside it, those were pretty clear. "I swear," he finally said, "that I had no idea it could do that."

"I'm not concerned about your motorcycle, Strife. Or rather, I'm not concerned about what it's capable of." Tseng crossed the landing pad and opened the helicopter's door to get a better look at the cockpit interior.

"Bad?" Cloud asked.

Tseng didn't answer, merely reached out a hand to grasp the throttle. His palm was slick with grease when he pulled it back.

"What I am concerned about," he said, "is Reno's reaction to finding out his helicopter has been with someone else."