A Love For the Ages
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Summary: Popuri is determined to make her new relationship work, whatever the odds. Rick points out one small problem...
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Disclaimer: I don't own Rick or Popuri, nor do I own the mention of Kai or Karen, or the implied mention of the rest of Mineral Town. Neither yet do I own Mighty Sephiroth, nor the game that contains him.
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"Rick, you were right about Kai all along."
The aforementioned young man, whose vision of anything more than a foot away had begun to blur somewhere between his fifth and sixth hour of poring over the financial ledgers of Chicken Lil's, looked up, rubbed his eyes, and put on his glasses.
There, indeed, was his younger sister Popuri, perched on the edge of the kitchen table (despite his repeated admonitions that it was going to break one of these days if she kept doing that), her countenance filled with indescribable joy and wonder.
Funny, though; this didn't feel like a dream. For one thing, in his dreams, everything was usually kind of a weird sepia. Too many years, he had long since decided, of watching the "Farms of Our Forefathers" program on the History Channel. And he wasn't currently being pursued, either by something huge and fanged, or by Karen in a skimpy black unitard, which generally summed up the tones of his various dreams (although the second scenario was by far preferable to the first).
Also, as far as he knew, he wasn't prone to lapsing into daydream in the middle of the day – okay, night, he amended as he caught sight of the moonlight streaming through the kitchen window.
So what on earth had brought on this bizarre hallucination? He tried to recall if Karen had been struck by a domestic urge and brought him a lunch of her own making recently, but came up lacking, as the only midday refreshments she had appeared with during the last week was a bottle of wine. And although this could certainly produce interesting side effects, Rick was fairly sure that Karen consuming the better parts of the bottle while he stared in starry-eyed awe when she then proceeded to swagger around the farm yard three times without a hind of unsteadiness in her walk, didn't normally result in his seeing – and hearing – things.
"Okay, Popuri, slow down. What?" he finally managed.
She giggled, and hopped off the table, spinning exuberantly about the kitchen.
"It's pretty simple. Everything you've been saying finally started to make sense; Kai's a real sweetie and all, and he looks really hot in a pair of swim trunks, but he's just not the guy for me."
"Oh, yeah, I remember talking about Kai half-naked to Duke just the other day," Rick muttered, rubbing his eyes again. "Look, back up for a minute. What brought this on? Kai's not even in town for another month. I know I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but shouldn't you, I don't know, see him again before you make a decision like this?
Popuri nodded emphatically.
"Exactly! Since he's hardly ever here, it gave me time to think. And I came to the realization that I need more from a man." She struck a dramatic pose. "I can't just spend my life, wasting away in a one-horse town like this while he's out seeing the world and having adventures! I need a man I can keep track of, all the time!"
Rick, fully expecting that his gift horse was going to kick him in the teeth any second now, sent his sister a rather forced smile.
"That's great, Poppi. I'm sure you'll find a nice, dependable guy in no time."
"I already did!" she giggled. "Geez, Rick, you do really think I'd dump my boyfriend without a backup?"
"Popuri," he said suspiciously. "Did you meet this guy on the internet?"
"No!" she huffed. "He's not some computer geek! In fact, I doubt he's ever used a computer. He's probably a little scared of technology," she confided seriously, "after what it did to his mother."
Rick looked up in sudden interest, his mind busily filling in the gaps of how Popuri had met this mystery man, and love blossomed through common hardship.
"His mom's sick?"
A delicate wrinkle formed between two exquisitely arched brows as Popuri considered this.
"Sort of. She lived in a laboratory for a long time.
"Experimental medicine? Man, that's rough," Rick noted, wide-eyed.
"Yeah," Popuri agreed, eyes moist with sympathy for her unknown beloved. "So he broke in and took her away so that they could be happy together, but then an AVALANCHE came, and she turned into a big monster thing with tentacles in self-defense!"
"So…it's no one in town, then," Rick finally surmised after a slightly stunned moment.
"No, but I think some peaceful country living would do him a lot of good. Right now he's living in a crater because of the AVALANCHE—"
"Whoa, an avalanche destroyed his house?!"
"Yes!" Popuri confirmed emphatically. "His home was invaded by an AVALANCHE! And now, on top of everything else, he found out recently that he was adopted!"
"Then…the big tentacle monster isn't his real mother? I guess that's a good thing for his kids…"
Popuri looked horrified.
"Rick! Of course she's his real mother! She's just not his birth mother." She sighed dreamily. "I think it's wonderful, that he's done so much for her when she's not his rea—birth mother. He's so sweet and thoughtful like that. And he's really nice to animals! Well, except snakes, but I don't think that should count, because that snake was really disgusting, and I'll bet it was bullying all the fish or something."
"Okay, Popuri; I've gotta ask. Who the hell are we talking about?"
"Sephiroth!" she chirped happily, nothing daunted when a distinctly angry-sounding choir sang the name back to her.
Another long, bewildered silence descended – bewildered, at any rate, on Rick's part, although entirely sunshiney and unconcerned on his sister's.
"Sephiroth," he finally managed, glaring in the direction of the choir as they echoed the name yet again. "Like, evil, giant-sword-swinging, genocidal maniac—"
"He is not!" Popuri interjected passionately. "He's a good man, I know it! He's just misunderstood."
"He tried to obliterate the entire planet!"
"He had a bad day!"
"And you know, sweet, innocent girls don't have a great life expectancy around him."
"Aeris deserved it!" she insisted. "She should have understood what he was going through, but instead of helping him, she just passed judgement on him and prayed at him and stuff!"
"I don't know if that's really--oh, geez, what am I talking about? Forget the genocidal urges, the giant wing sprouting out of his back--"
"I think it's cute!" Popuri interjected with a giggle.
"--the plummeting stabbity death, and shampoo bill the guy must have; Sephiroth isn't real!"
Popuri looked aghast.
"Don't say that! He's out there, somewhere!"
"Well, sure," Rick shrugged. "In the Playstation."
"That isn't what I meant! I know that somewhere, outside our conception of reality, he's waiting for me."
"He'll be waiting a while."
"For yourinformation, Rick, I found a way to reach him. I saw him in my dreams last night—"
"Whoa, hold on a minute! That's an image I really don't want, even if it was a dream."
"It wasn't just anormal dream, though!" that same little sister insisted. "I think I was astrally projecting or something, and if I practice really hard, I can learn how to do it at will, and before long, I'll be married to the man of my dreams!"
"It'll be the greatest wedding the astral plane ever saw," Rick agreed flatly.
Popuri bristled, eyes already filling with angry tears.
"You always do this, Rick – you never like my boyfriends!"
"Boyfriends?" Rick echoed, scratching his head. "You've only had one, not including this…notion."
She made a scornful noise, folding her arms tightly.
"That is just like you. You never miss a chance to exclude Sephiroth, do you?"
"What? I don't exclude Sephiroth! Try to kill him, sure, because I wanted to see the ending—"
"Well, I don't carewhat you say, or what anyone else says. This is my life, and I have to make my own decisions. From this day forward – actually, from about twenty minutes ago – I am dedicating my life to Sephiroth! I will remain pure and chaste for his eyes and hands only—"
"Oh, God, more mental images," Rick groaned.
"—until love finds a way to bring us together, against all odds!"
At this juncture, Rick, hearing the indignant squawking of seventy hungry chickens and shuddering inwardly at the thought of a full-scale hunger-fuelled rebellion, rose from his chair.
"Okay, you know what? That's nice. If you want to become a priestess of the temple of Sephiroth, I'll stand behind you all the way, because God knows it's like arguing with a telephone post, trying to change your mind."
She beamed.
"Thanks, Rick!" She giggled. "I have to go plan the wedding!"
Rick watched his sister skip blithely up the bare, painted steps to her bedroom, and then shook his head.
"Geez, I'm starting to think Kai got a narrow escape here."
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End Notes: I make no excuses. Arrest me on all charges, coppers!