"Oh...isn't he so cute!" Elena cooed, holding up her baby nephew. Next to her, her husband, Tseng, looked on.

"Look, El', I really appreciate you and Tseng taking care of him while we're on our vacation," Elena's brother, Adrian, put an arm around his adorable wife.

Elena giggled, tickling the baby's tummy. "Oh, Tseng..."

"Don't say it, Elena," Tseng winced.

The car ride home was most interesting. Tseng drove, a metaphorical black cloud hovering above him. Elena sat in the back with the baby, the car seat, and the lump of "baby" products her brother sent them off with. He fretted, just thinking of the mess the kid was probably gonna make in the car by puking, drooling, and spitting food.

"Elena, can't you feed him when we get home!?" he growled at her.

Elena took the bottle away. "Oh, Tseng. What is with you? Don't you want a baby of your own?"

Tseng tensed up, gripping the steering wheel as if wanting to kill.

Back home, Tseng tried watching TV. Elena paced around, carrying the baby everywhere she went. Unfortunately, the baby kept crying, and Tseng kept turning the TV louder so he could hear. The louder he turned it, the louder the baby cried. Finally, Tseng shut the TV off and stormed off to bed early.

Unable to sleep because of non-stop crying from a certain house guest, he picked up the phone and did the only thing he could think of to remedy the situation.

"Hey, Reno… How you doing?" he asked wearily.

"Tseng? Did you go out drinking without inviting your old friend, Reno?"

"Do I sound that bad? Look, Reen… I need a really big favor from you and Rufus."

"Does it pay good?" Reno asked, kicking back in the comforts of his own cluttered living room.

Tseng laughed a little uncharacteristically. "Oh, Reno…I will pay almost anything for your help. Please say yes…!"

"Eh…okay. Why not. I could use the extra money. But I some how don't think Rufus needs any more than he has…you know, being Vice President of Shinra and all."

"Don't worry about it, Reno. You're a real life saver. Come to our house around 3 a.m."

= = = =

(Wulong residence, 7:00 a.m.):

"Arrrrgh…!!! The baby's gone…!!! He's been kidnapped…!!!"

Tseng woke up to his frantic wife's screams. The suddenness of his coming to left him temporarily clueless as to what the commotion was all about. Then…he remembered.

"Adrian and Michelle are going to kill us…!!!" Elena flung herself into Tseng's arms.

Tseng just laughed. "Don't worry, Elena. Little Doug is just fine. I sent him to live with Reno and Rufus for the week."

Elena's pupils shrunk to little pin-points and sweat formed on her brow. "You did what!?"

"I couldn't stand it any more. You'll thank me later."

"Tseng, how dare you!" she chased him around the living room, batting him with a mop.

= = = =

Reno clawed at his disorderly red hair, his eyes bloodshot from sleep deprivation. Crashed on the adjacent sofa was Rufus Shinra holding a pillow over his head. In the next room, the baby cried and wailed.

"Rufus…putting a pillow over your head doesn't mute the annoying sound," Reno told him.

"I'm not trying to drown the noise out," said Rufus. "I'm trying to smother myself so I can die and finally get relief from those wails."

Reno walked over to him and pulled the pillow away. "If I have to suffer, so do you."

Rufus rolled over. "Why do you suppose he's crying? Is he missing his favorite TV show?"

"Ruf…he's 4 months old. He doesn't watch TV yet."

"He doesn't? Are you kidding!? At that age, mom and dad had me watching the Bloomberg Financial News Hour. I wouldn't miss it for the world. Speaking of which…" Rufus grabbed the TV remote and clicked it on the stock report channel.

Reno quickly turned it right back off. "Come on. Let's feed it or something. What do babies eat?"

Rufus shrugged. "I dunno. Mushy stuff I guess, 'cuz they don't have teeth."

Reno opened up the refrigerator. "Well, all I got is beer and cat food."

"What about those cans of baby formula Tseng sent us back with?"

"Oh? Formula? I thought that was milk for the cat. I gave it to him." Reno's cat was on the floor lapping up the thick white fluid from a bowl.

"Aw, nuts!" said Rufus. "That means we'll have to go to the store and buy stuff to feed the kid."

"All right, all right. You stay here with the cry-ball while I go to the market."

"Oh, no, Reno! Misery loves company! Me and the baby are coming with you!"

= = = =

Reno parked the car in the lot, and they gathered up the baby stuff they needed.

"Ow…come on, Ruf… I'm just a 130-pound weakling…!" Reno whined as Rufus piled diaper bags, stroller accessories, and a baby carrier onto his body.

"It's only fair that you carry all this stuff to make up for the spit-up incident involving a baby and my favorite trench coat before we left your apartment."

"Come on…what do we need to bring the playpen for!?" Reno complained as the weight of the playpen was added to his burden.

"You know how slow supermarket lines are," Rufus replied. "We need to occupy him somehow. Ready. Come on, let's go."

Reno pushed the stroller along, the sound of the seemingly thousands of toys attached to it clanging together as he walked. Rufus grabbed an empty shopping cart and followed.

"So, uh…what do we buy?" asked Reno.

"Baby stuff. I don't know. What aisle do they have the mush in?"

"Can't we just feed him cat food. It's probably cheaper, besides, canned Sheeba is on sale this week."

"Uh…Reno…? Why are we being stared at?"

Among his collage of baby items, Reno glared back. "Gee…I have no idea…"

"Did you go through one of those adoption programs?" asked an older woman shopping in the same aisle.

"Uh…yeah, whatever…" Reno blindly agreed.

"Oh, how nice. My brother and his boy friend did the same," she replied, walking away.

"Huh?"

"Oh, great going, Reno!" snarled the V.P. "Just disillusion everyone why don't you…"

"What'd I say?"

"Hey…I think bringing little Doug to the supermarket did the trick!" said Rufus. "He's not crying any more."

"Either that or he finally starved to death."

Rufus looked into the stroller. "Oh no!!"

"Is he dead?"

"Worse…! He's missing!" Rufus' eye pupils shrunk in shock.

"What!? Somebody stole Elena's nephew!?"

"Wait a minute…" Rufus gave it some thought. "We got so busy unloading all this baby crap from the car, we forgot to unload the baby."

"Yikes!" a sweatdrop formed on Reno's brow. He dropped all the baby stuff he'd been lugging around and dashed for the door with Rufus right on his heels. He came to a halt at a vacant parking space with a lump of shattered glass on one side. "Oh, no! They stole my car with the baby inside!!"

Rufus tapped Reno's shoulder. "This isn't where we parked," he said. "We parked over there…" Rufus pointed to another space…which was also empty.

"Oh, no!! My car!!" Reno ran to the other empty space with a pile of broken glass as well. "What do we do!?"

"I don't suppose you have LoJack, do you?"

"All right…all right…don't panic…" Reno huffed, his voice stressed and gasping for air. "Here…run to the pharmacy and refill my asthma prescription…" He handed Rufus his empty inhaler and flopped over onto the ground.

= = = =

Feeling a little better, Reno set off with Rufus on foot. "What ever we do, don't tell Tseng about this," he said.

"What if we can't recover the baby?" asked Rufus. "Should we just not tell him that either?"

"We're Turks… Err…I'm a Turk… We'll find him, even if we have to search every building in Midgar!"

"We have to give him back to Tseng and Elena on Friday. I don't think we have that much time."

"Hmm…If I were a car thief stealing a car with a baby inside, where would I go…?" Reno pondered.

"Over a cliff…?" Rufus suggested.

"I got it! The Sector 7 Automobile Chop Shop! I get all my spare parts from them. Let's go!"

Reno and Rufus ran into the huge garage of the famous city chop shop. "You…haven't seen…a black car…with a baby…in the back…seat…, have you…?" Reno huffed, taking a dose from his inhaler.

"Right this way," said the grease monkey, leading them farther back into the garage.

"Aaaah!! My car!!" Reno gasped upon seeing the diced up, disassembled automobile.

"Forget your damn car, Reno! Where's the baby?"

"Eh, we dropped 'im off at the local orphanage," the worker replied.

"Let's go!" Reno grabbed Rufus by the hand and ran out the door.

At the orphanage, a black Quaker nun brought them back to the nursery where the new arrival was placed in. "Right this way, gentlemen. Both these babies were recently brought in. Which one is the one you were looking for?"

"That one," both men said at the same time, pointing to opposite babies.

"It's this one, you dope," said Reno.

"No, it's this one," Rufus insisted, pointing to the other one.

"I can make this easier for you," said the nun. "That one's a girl, and that one's a boy."

Reno's cheeks flushed as he realized he'd had the wrong baby. Rufus lifted Doug out of the crib he was in and handed him to Reno. "Ugh…that must be that baby-smell everyone's talking about."

Reno cringed, expecting the worst, but realized it was just the alien scent of baby powder. "Oh, damn… My allergies… Aaaa-choo!!" As he sneezed, he dropped and blew the baby out the window.

"No!!!" Rufus flew to the window but couldn't reach the falling baby. Reno caught up with him and looked down as well.

"Oh, wow! He landed safely in the Sector 8 construction zone," Reno breathed a sigh of relief.

Rufus batted the back of his head. "You nit wit! Come on! Much as I hate to admit this, we have to get the baby back!"

The two guys ran down to the street and to the edge of Sectors 1 and 8 where there was a flurry of construction projects going on. Reno put his hands stubbornly on his hips. "Haven't I seen this kind of thing in a cartoon before?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Rufus. "Mom and Dad never let me watch cartoons."

"Oh, it's easy, Rufus. Timing is everything. Just as you're about to fall off of one steel beam you're walking on, another one swings by and saves you. You get to climb through drainage pipes, escape from falling quick-dry cement, and evade anvils. Come on. You'll get the hang of it."

The baby crawled along, avoiding hazard after hazard as Reno lead the two-man chase after him. Sure enough, everything from Reno's scenario seemed to play out perfectly, but they were always the one step behind the baby.

"Over there!" said Reno, pointing out the baby climbing under a chain link fence towards an old building slated for demolition.

"Oh, this is going to get my white suit dirty…"

Reno pushed Rufus under the fence. "It's either dirty suit or bloody suit after Tseng gets his hands on you. Now, let's go."

On the other side, the two young men followed the fast crawling baby into the abandoned building.

"Damn…watch these trip wires," said Reno.

Rufus examined the wires that nearly tripped Reno up. "Uh…Reno…! These aren't trip wires. It's det-cord hooked up to dynamite in the columns." Sure enough, the wire went into a support column in the building's structure.

"You don't think it's live, do you?"

Over a loud speaker outside, they heard the ten words they most dreaded at the moment.

"Where's the baby!?" Rufus panicked.

"Over there!" Reno pointed the way out, where the baby was already clear of the old building. "Run!"

Kaboom…! Flying debris and dust… Rufus and Reno dropped to their knees as the walls came tumbling down from above.

= = = =

There was a knock on the door, and Tseng went to answer it. He gasped as a filthy, beat up man stuck a baby in front of his face.

"I believe this belongs to you," said Reno. Next to him, a weary and equally as beat up young man, Rufus, slouched against the doorway.

"What happened to you guys?" asked Tseng.

"Adventures in babysitting…" Reno groaned. "Hope you have as much fun as we did…" Reno turned, and he and Rufus limped away.

Tseng closed the door quickly so Elena wouldn't see. The baby began crying, and she came running into the foyer.

"Oh, how's my little Dougy Wuggy…?" she cooed at the infant. The baby just kept on crying.

Tseng squinted his eyes and slouched his shoulders. "Wait for me…!" he said suddenly, and ran out the front door to catch up with Reno and Rufus.

Elena watched him go, and for the first time, the baby stopped crying and made a little giggle. Elena cuddled him and went back on about things.

THE END