Hey guys! Man, I haven't written in a few years, huh? Well, I decided to wade back into the fanfiction waters, but I'm going to stay in the shallow end for now. I'm pretty rusty, so this one's not exactly up to snuff. It was a good warm up though, so hopefully, I'll get back into the swing of things! Enjoy!
FF7: Random Bits 1
[Setting: An AU where Zack and Angeal survived, and after the events of Advent Children, they agree to join Cloud in creating their own SOLDIER training program (minus the psychotic scientists). Things go a little pancake-shaped for the army's resident psychologist when he gets to a certain Ex-SOLDIER]
[Morning - Inside the new SOLDIER training facility.- The day has begun with mandatory psychological evaluations for all officers. Zack has just finished his session and is waiting in the lounge for Cloud]
Zack sat in the lounge, making a note on his phone about writing a nice, strongly worded memo to Rufus on his opinion of these psychological assessments. While he and Cloud had been the ones to specifically require yearly screenings (they weren't having any psychopaths in their army, no sir!), he'd had no idea just how, well, stupid some of the tests would be. Seriously, ink blots?! There's a turtle on its back…?! These tests are embarrassingly outdated!
The sound of hurried footsteps dopplering closer pulled Zack's attention from his phone. He glanced up just in time to see 1LT Capable Harper speed walk by the open door. Zack was instantly intrigued. If Harper was hurrying anywhere, it was because something interesting was happening. A man of few talents, Harper's one skill, despite what his name suggested, was an eerie ability to just know when something entertaining was happening.
Zack was on his feet and out the door, eager to find out what was going on. "Where're you going, Harper?" he asked as he caught up and fell into rubber-legged step next to the brown haired SOLDIER.
"Doc Hyansen is evaluating General Strife. And it looks like he's going to be the one needing an evaluation when he's done, Sir!" Harper puffed in amusement as they rounded the corner. Zack wasn't too fond of Dr. Hyansen. The man was arrogant and condescending and after an hour and a half, Zack had started to have down right unkind (and somewhat violent) thoughts about the man. And he suspected he wasn't the only one. More than a few complaints about him had crossed Zack's desk over the past few months.
They noodle-legged up to the door, both barely pausing long enough to blow through the regulation formalities.
"General Fair,"
"First Lieutenant Harper,"
Hurried salutes were made and there was a brief moment of confusion as both men attempted to work the doorknob at the same time.
Angeal was watching through the two-way mirror, an amused smile on his face when Zack and Capable all but tumbled into the room. His eyes glowed softly in the dark as he glanced at the two new arrivals, who were smoothing their uniforms with an air of nonchalance that attempted to suggest that they in fact hadn't just both tried to walk through the door at the same time and gotten stuck in the doorframe. "You're missing the show." Angeal informed them as they joined him at the mirror.
Cloud was at the big white table, sitting opposite the psychologist, Dr. Hyansen, who was doing a stellar job of maintaining at least an outer facade of calm patience. The blond man in front of him began fidgeting again. Dr. Hyansen took a calming breath and released it slowly through his nose. Word association had turned into a big cock-up. Judging by the rambling, confusing answers, which all seemed to involve vegetables, General Strife was either not grasping the concept of associating words, or he had some serious issues. Who the hell associates the color blue with a zucchinni?! Why? And more importantly, do I even want to know?
"Let's start with something simpler," Hyansen said as he held up a sheet of paper with an ink blot on it.
"What is this?"
Cloud shifted, blue eyes skating over the page briefly before responding in an uncertain quaver
"A…sheet of paper?"
"But what is on the paper?"
"Your fingers…?"
The doctor adjusted his spectacles and tried to smile in what he hoped was a friendly manner, but ended up giving him the appearance of a man with a case of bad gas. He placed the sheet of paper on the table.
"No, not what's touching the paper; What's on the paper." he said as if speaking to a very slow child. Cloud examined the paper once more.
"Printer toner?"
"Technically, yes. What does it look like?"
"Black?"
"Can you describe it in more detail?"
"Um, it's dark colored?"
"Anything else? Does it look like anything out of the ordinary?"
"It's a little faded on one side? And there are those little streaks you get sometimes…you know, like when the printer starts to run out of toner? It could be that the drum needs cleaning, or there's dirt on the glass. I could have the maintenance people check-!"
"NO!..Uh, I mean that's not what I meant." The Dr. tried not to snap as he cut Cloud off from his rambling. "Look closely. Do you see any shapes? Possibly shapes that look like pictures?" Hyansen suggested, desperately trying to steer the assessment out of the choppy waters of his growing irritation. He had the uncomfortable feeling that Cloud was slowly winding him up. Surely not. While Cloud's answers were straightforward, sometimes suspiciously bordering on sarcastic, there was nothing but innocence in those blue eyes.
"Oh, oh, I see, " Cloud said, "Sorry, I didn't…I'm not…"
"Don't be nervous," the psychologist soothed for the fifth time in twenty minutes. "This is not an intelligence test. Take your time and ask questions if you don't understand. There are no wrong or stupid answers." The paper was held back up and Cloud looked at it in a manner that suggested growing distrust. "Don't be afraid, "Hyansen said in thinly veiled sarcasm "Paper can't hurt you."
"Just about anything can hurt you, even paper." Cloud replied, keeping his eyes locked on the page, "If you run your finger over the edge just right, you can get a really bad papercut. I had one between my fingers one time, and it was really painful. How many papercuts do you think a person would get if someone dropped a ream of loose leaf on them? How would you even explain that to the infirmary doctor? 'Yeah, Doc, I got reamed…?"
In the other room Zack started grinning. Cloud wasn't really one for clear facial expressions like 'normal' people. Zack had learned to watch not only Cloud's body language, but to watch his eyes, using the subtle changes in and around them to read his emotions. The psychologist, like many others, had mistakenly taken Cloud's lack of obvious expression for innocence or slowness. It didn't help that Cloud was somewhat well known for having a poor grasp of the concept of innuendo and could make rather embarrassing comments with a straight face. Zack was still being teased about the 'I like Zack's Sausage' incident.
Cloud might have looked nervous to the doctor, but Zack could tell by way the skin around his eyes had tightened, and the way he kept slowly twisting his hands in a manner that suggested he would rather be twisting the Dr.'s neck, that he was just about near the end of his patience. Cloud rarely pushed back, not really considering idiots worth the effort, but when he finally ran out of patience or lost his temper, he could be surprisingly sarcastic. Zack still remembered the first time he'd heard something savage come out of Cloud's mouth, and it had taken him about a week to get over the shock.
"Would you like some coffee, General? Your throat must be getting dry." Dr. Hyansen interrupted Cloud, desperate for a few moments of silence. His assistant was sent out and returned with not only coffee, but three of Hyansen's colleagues who were there to observe under the guise of helping with the testing materials.
After a short break, Hyansen held up the paper again, "Just tell me what the shapes look like to you. Don't think too hard, just let things come to mind. There are no wrong answers."
Cloud eyed the three new arrivals and muttered something to himself.
"Don't mind them," Hyansen said "They are just here to get the materials ready for the next session."
Cloud fidgeted with his hands for a moment, before turning his attention back to the paper Hyansen held. After studying the blot for a few minutes Cloud said
"A blob?"
Hyansen tried not to bite through his tongue, and smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way before continuing while his colleagues exchanged covert glances. "Good, but can you give me more details?"
"Um, it, uh…has a big main blob in the middle, and three irregular oblongs along the left circumference, all with five to eight projections along the edges…?" he said hopefully. More questions followed, all met with the same irritatingly simple-minded answers. The other doctors could almost see the tension radiating off Hyansen like heat –shimmer.
"But what does it look like to your mind? You know, like pictures in the clouds? Mommy that one looks like a kitty? It's not that hard!" Hyansen said, his irritation beginning to creep into his voice, giving it a tone that fell somewhere between sharp and cutting.
"Like shapes it makes that look like other shapes?"
"Yes!"
"Oh, you mean to my imagination."
"Yes!"
"What does this ink blot look like to me?"
"Yes!"
"It looks like…an asshole."
The psychologist experienced a momentary mental shutdown as his brain paused to re-run the conversation from system memory to determine if he had just heard what he thought he'd heard.
"I-I'm sorry, it what?" he asked Cloud, when his speech function had come back online.
"I said it looks like an…asshole…sir."
Hyansen's eyes narrowed suspiciously. One of the other psychologists cleared his throat disapprovingly. Cloud blinked at the four frowning men with that unreadable expression, and asked "Did I…do it wrong?" He began fidgeting again and sipped nervously from his coffee, coughing a bit as some of it went down the wrong way.
"I strongly advise that you take this session seriously, considering that your future career depends on the results." the Throat Clearer scolded him .
"But, I am " Cloud replied earnestly "Did I misunderstand the question?" He looked at Hyansen "You asked me what it looked like… And you said there were no wrong answers, but you sound kind of put out now."
Hyansen adjusted his glasses while he frowned at Cloud, trying to figure out what his angle was. "I'm not put out." Hyansen replied coldly. The man had passed the point of being put out, and was now rapidly approaching blistering rage.
"I'm sorry," Cloud said softly, in a sincere voice. "I didn't mean to overstep my bounds. Minerva knows I have zero experience in psyke…col…colonoscopy?…chology?…er, understanding how people think. I didn't even know what all the vegetables were called until I started doing the grocery shopping for Tifa and she sent me to the market with the pictures of the ones she wanted. She wrote the names of them on back for me-!" He stumbled into silence under Hyansen's heated glare.
On the other side of the mirror the observation room had become a bit crowded. Several other officers had seen Harper rushing by and hadn't wanted to be 'that loser who missed the entertainment'. Zack and the other officers were doing everything they could to keep from howling like gibbons. Favorites included pinching, biting, avoiding eye contact, nut-punching, and thinking about sad things. They had all crowded close to the glass which kept from bowing under the pressure like a champ. Harper had his phone out and recording because "Shiva on a shingle, Cloud is a genius! This is gold!" Zack was grinning like a jack-o-lantern as he silently encouraged his friend. Do it, Spike!
Hyansen eyeballed Cloud for a moment more, then against his better judgement, cautiously held up another ink blot.
"What do you see?"
"An asshole."
"What about this one?"
"Looks like an asshole."
"And this one?"
"That one looks like an asshole too…"
"This?"
"An asshole, sir."
"And this one?"
"It looks like a…" Cloud paused and leaned closer to the new ink blot. He looked at Haynsen and reached towards the sheet of paper in mute askance. The psychologist handed him the paper with a guarded expression. Cloud took a closer look at the marks, his face a mask of concentration.
"It looks like, no…wait," he turned the page around, viewing the blot from different angles. Hyansen and the attending psychologists fell into tense silence, holding their collective breath."Um…looks like a…no…wait! It's..no-! Yeah. Yeah, it looks like an asshole."
Dr. Hyansen's last thread of patience, stretched thin already, began to hum under the strain. "General Strife, why are you saying that every one of these looks like an 'asshole'?"
"You asked me to tell you what it looks like. I don't know how else to describe what I'm seeing." Cloud replied simply.
"They don't all look the same!" one of the other doctors said sternly.
"I imagine that no two assholes look the same either. I wouldn't really know, though since I'm not a proctologist. I don't go around looking at people's assholes all day."
"Are you taking the piss with me?" Hyansen snarled, leaning over the table almost threateningly.
"No, sir!" Cloud exclaimed "I don't piss with anybody! You can only fit one person at a time per urinal! I mean, I guess you could get two if they really had to go and if they were really close friends– but then you get the problem of crossing streams-! "
"Shut up!" Hyansen roared, his over- extended thread of patience snapping with a near audible twang! "You can't honestly expect me to believe that everything here looks like an asshole to you!"
Cloud's whole demeanor suddenly changed as he decided he was done playing the Backwater Dummy. Dr. Hyansen and his companions backed away fast at the thunderous expression that flickered briefly across his face, and gave Cloud wide berth as he stepped around the table on his way to the door.
Cloud paused in the hallway and said, "You know what, maybe you're right. Maybe not everything in here looks like an asshole…" He trailed off in a thoughtful tone, and took a long look around the room before saying "No. Definitely, nothing but assholes in here." And with that, Cloud left the four men alone in stunned silence as he ambled off down the hallway.