“Hiya, sweetcheeks,” a nasal but friendly voice greeted Soaketta as she climbed into the waiting helicopter, with Rude’s hand on her buttock boosting her inside. “So you’re the sugar plum that’s got my pal all sweaty under the armpits. Nice ta meetcha, honeybun.”
The speaker was sitting at the controls of the helicopter, craning his neck around to get a look at her. He was a long, lean man with prominent collarbones, an abundance of spiked crimson hair, orbs of cerulean blue – or maybe aquamarine, or even phthalo or cadmium cobalt for all Soaketta knew; she hadn’t honestly paid a lot of attention in art class. Anyway his eyes were remarkably bright and full of mischief and his lopsided grin was definitely charming in an unwashed, skanky kind of way, and Soaketta might have found him extremely attractive if she wasn’t already head over heels in lust with Rude, who was the ultimate sexy gentleman and had clean fingernails to boot. Also the pilot sported a crescent shaped tattoo slashed across each cheekbone. Either that, or those goggles he’d pushed up onto his forehead had left pressure marks on his skin. Whatever; Rude’s hand was still on her derriere and his touch was making all four of her cheeks burn with hitherto undreamt-of sensations.
“You can look,” Rude growled behind her, his deep voice sending thrills of anticipation rippling through her veins. “But you better not touch.” This warning was obviously intended for the pilot and not for her. It warmed the cockles of her heart to feel that he cherished her enough to be so possessive.
“Soaketta,” he said, “Allow me to introduce Reno O’Turk, my partner in crime.”
Partner? thought Soaketta in alarm. According to everything she’d ever read in Hello! Magazine, Rude’s billions were his and his alone.
“At your service,” smirked Reno O’Turk, settling the goggles down over his eyes. “I’ll be flying this magic carpet to Midgar today.”
Soaketta turned to Rude. “Midgar?” she queried.
“The capital of my motherland, Turkmenistan,” his deep and gravelly voice replied.
“Oh,” she replied. She wasn’t sure where Turkmenistan was. Maybe somewhere in the Caribbean? Anyway, she guessed it was going to be a long flight. Hopefully the helicopter offered in-flight movies. Guiltily she wondered if she should let Daphne know where she was going, but swiftly decided - No! Daphne had conspired together with Dave; she was a false friend! Soaketta had always suspected it, and now she had proof. Let Daphne suffer the agonies of worry. Soaketta was with Rude, and that was all that mattered.
“You takin’ the little sugar dumpling larboard abaft?” the red-headed pilot with the pressure-mark tattoos and turquoise oscularities inquired of the broad-shouldered, sleek-pated billionaire with the heavily muscled thighs. Soaketta had no idea what he meant by ‘take her lar board a baft” but the words sounded spicily suggestive. Her heart began to beat a little faster.
“Keep your eyes on the skies,” Rude growled. Still with his hand on Soaketta’s buttock, he nudged her right and steered her through a narrow door into a private cabin. Soaketta heard Reno snickering lasciviously before Rude closed the door behind them.
Then she turned around, saw where she was, and stopped dead in her tracks. Oh, my, she thought.
She’d never seen anything like this, except in the pages of magazines and on some TV shows and also occasionally in movies. The four walls of the private cabin were lined with zinc-topped counters, and behind the counters were shelves upon shelves stacked with large glass bottles filled with every kind of candy and sweet imaginable: bull’s eyes, humbugs, pear drops, milk drops, chocolate drops; wine gums, jelly babies, sour worms and rainbows of smarties, to name but a few. Below the counters were more racks stocked with chocolate bars, chewing gum, boxes of crackerjack, neon-hued jawbreakers, coconut ice wrapped in rice-paper and glittering sticks of peppermint rock striped red and green. In one corner there was a glass-fronted refrigerator filled to the brim with curvaceous bottles of soda-pop. Ropes of licorice, scarlet and black, hung in swags from the ceiling. The crazy thought came to her, it’s like Willy Wonka's candy shop!!! But this cabin held something she’d never seen in any sweetshop. Right in the centre of the floor was a kind of raised table, about the size of a queen-sized bed, covered with what looked like a real polar bear fur rug, because it was.
Rude took her by the hand, led her to the bearskin, and told her to sit down. Then he lifted a part of the counter that was on a hinge, walked behind it, and turned to her, saying, “Whatever your heart desires – you can indulge it here,” gesturing with his hand at the resplendent temptations of confectioner’s art shamelessly, nay, wantonly displayed all around her.
Oh my, she gasped inwardly. He wants to eat this stuff! And he wants me to eat it too! He wants us to eat it together! Of course he does – that’s why he was in the Bulk Barn buying all those marshmallows and Coolwhip! How could I have been so naïve!
Soaketta looked down primly at her hands. She couldn’t deny that the sheer smell of so much sugar and tartrazine was beginning to make her head spin in a way that was far from unpleasant. The thought of putting one of those illicit sherbet fountains into her mouth – sucking on it – feeling it burst on her tongue - swallowing its fizziness – all these things she’d only ever read about - it made mouth go suddenly dry with excitement. She was terribly afraid she’d given Rude the wrong impression.
In a frail, nervous voice, she began, “Rude, I – I have a confession to make. I’ve never eaten anything containing sugar in my life.”
His look of stunned disbelief made her feel deeply embarrassed and immature. “What?” he exclaimed. “Never? How is that possible, in this day and age, when the monopolistic multinational food corporations put sugar in everything, even processed cheese and tinned celery?”
“Well, you see, my father is a dentist, and my mother was stay-at-home mom who cooked all our food from scratch. They don’t believe in sugar. In fact, they call it ‘white heroin’.”
“But you work in the Bulk Barn!”
“They like me there because I never help myself to candy from the barrels.”
“But - what about Hallowe’en?” said Rude. He looked outraged on her behalf.
“Nuts, apples, and money was all I was allowed.”
“But surely,” he said, still looking appalled, “Once you left home and went to university… Have you never been even just a little bit curious to taste ‘forbidden fruit’?”
“My parents promised to give me a thousand dollars and a cell phone if I went through university without ever once trying sugar,” she admitted.
“I see,” Rude rumbled thoughtfully. “Well, that’s quite an incentive, but I think I can see their thousand dollars and cell phone and raise it a week’s all-expense paid shopping trip to Fifth Avenue and a brand new Macbook. Can your parents match my offer?”
Soaketta shook her head earnestly. Her duty was clear: Rude’s bribe knocked her parents’ bribe into a cocked hat, and they’d always impressed on her how important it was to do the very best for herself.
“I can see I’m going to have my work cut out for me,” Rude murmured, a playful smile playing about his lips. “I was going to go straight to the chocolate-covered rose-flavoured Turkish Delight, but I think that might be a bit too rich for your first time. I don’t want to overwhelm you. I want to do this right, take it slowly. Introduce you to my world of pleasure little by little. Let me see…” He ran his fingers along the shelves, taking his time making the selection, while Soaketta, perched on the polar bear rug, ran her fingers through its soft white fur and felt her lips tingle with anticipation that owed more than a little to fear, and the consciousness that she was about to do something very, very naughty….
Sorry that was so long! Had to squeeze a lot in there, as Palmer said to Scarlet.
coming up next: "Vanilla"
.As for Elena, she Isn't their age either I don't think because in the game in Wutai Reno says "Leave her alone Rude she's just a kid". Or something along those lines. So I say she is younger, like in her early 20's. Anyway, I really hope one day Square comes out with some back stories of our favorite Turks and specifies their ages. 
)? Maybe it's just me but if it weren't canon I seriously wouldn't believe Sephiroth was 25 in CC.
