A/N: This is probably best read late at night, while on a sugar/caffeine high. If you do that, the story will be hilarious; otherwise...you're probably better off reading something else, unless you just like unbridled insanity.
Wark!
by Genesis R
Kadaj growled to himself, stuffing his head farther under his pillow. It was an unholy early hour, yet that darn bird was at it already. He could hear it next door, clicking and purring to itself, then sputtering into an all-out roar for a minute before quieting again. Well, quiet was relative, as there was was always noise of some sort from the bar next door.
Seventh Heaven. Yeah, right. Living next to the pits of hell couldn't have been more miserable. Not only were the Strifes themselves bad enough as neighbors, always having AVALANCHE reunions and birthday parties and other raucous celebrations, no, but to top it all off, Cloud had to have that doggone chocobo. Kadaj hated wildlife, and for a man who had never even seen a real live chocobo, he was developing an intense hatred for the entire species as a whole.
Admittedly, there was no smell, and the bird never got loose, but its mere presence was enough to drive the silver-haired man mad. It made some sort of noise at all hours - loud purring at dawn, usually a respite during the day, sputtering and clucking at any hour of the night - and occasionally he would see it strutting around the bar's back yard, golden fluff waving, acting like it owned the place. He'd never seen it entirely, courtesy of the privacy fence encircling the dirt lot behind Heaven, but he knew it was there. Even when it didn't always make its presence known.
Another choking, coughing noise filling the air; the pillow was insufficient muffling material. Kadaj wished someone would just go ahead and strangle the darn thing all the way and get it over with...then his green eyes lit up and a slow smile slipped across his face. Why not? Why not put the poor creature out of its misery once and for all? It would be all too easy.
Without hesitation, he stood up and headed for the door of his apartment, zipping up the front of his jumpsuit as he went. With any luck, Loz and Yazoo would already be awake and headed out to do whatever they did when they weren't under his guidance, so their apartments would be unoccupied. Kadaj twisted the knob off of Yazoo's quarters and poked his head in. So far, so good. He walked in, heading straight for the kitchen sink. It took a moment of digging around underneath, rummaging through pipes and cleaning supplies, but finally he found it. Trust paranoid Yazoo to keep at least one extra copy of his favorite weapon around. Kadaj turned Velvet Nightmare II over in his hands, getting a feel for the weight and balance of it. Not what he would choose to go into combat with, but it would do the job for sure.
He returned to his quarters and took up a position by the bedroom window, hidden from outside viewers by the curtains, and waited. Any minute now that arrogant bird would come parading past the chink in the fence and then BAM! One shot, and all his problems would be solved! Kadaj had to suppress a neurotic giggle. His trigger finger twitched.
Then, there it was!
Too bad Yazoo's gun wasn't double-barreled or he would have poured several shots into the darn thing. As it was, he aimed straight at the center of the messy golden tufts and pulled the trigger. There ought to have been a dying squawk, an explosion of feathers, and that would be the end of it all, but no...
The chocobo disappeared from view for a moment, but instead of dying silently, as intended, there was a growing roar that Kadaj quickly identified as a motorcycle engine revving up. His mind refused to see a connection between the two until, with a splintering crash, a gigantic black bike smashed through the privacy fence and roared headlong toward Kadaj's bedroom window. Astride was Cloud Strife with a very angry expression - and chocobo-yellow hair. That stuck up. And out. And rather resembled aforementioned poultry. Oh. No.
Suddenly Kadaj's world made a lot more sense. There was no golden chocobo. It was the bike that made all the whirring, chuckling, sputtering sounds; it was Cloud who walked up and down in the back lot, letting his hair stick up and making Kadaj think there was a chocobo. This was all Cloud's fault! He'd planned this on purpose to drive Kadaj insane! Or at least, that was the way the silver-haired lunatic's mind worked.
None of that erased the reality of the half-ton of metal and very angry swordsman hurtling toward him. With a yelp, Kadaj threw down the gun and bolted out of his bedroom, aware of the splintering crash behind him. He sailed out the front door and practically flew to the adjoining garage, where he revved his own bike as fast as he could and took off, anywhere to get away from the juggernaut close behind him.
The epic chase lasted for what seemed to be hours but could only have been about twenty minutes due to the time constraints of the movie. What movie? you might ask; Kadaj briefly wondered the same thing, then questioned why such a thought would occur to him, before realizing he was insane and not much made sense anyway. Meanwhile, the chocobo-like noises were growing louder behind him, and he knew he didn't have much time before his doom struck.
And strike it did, just not from the direction he was expecting. For because he was peering backward, trying to see which sword Cloud had pulled out and thus how slow a death he could expect, Kadaj had been shamefully neglecting to watch where he was going. Which, when one is on a motorcycle going several times the speed limit on an unfamiliar highway littered with "under construction" signs, can have disastrous results. This Kadaj discovered rather unpleasantly, as the ground suddenly dropped away beneath him and he was airborne, sailing several hundred feet over the burnt-out ruins of Midgar.
Yee-haw! he whooped in his brain, thoroughly enjoying his first taste of flight. I can't wait to do this again. Wait. How...how do I stay up? The rubble was rushing up at him at an alarming rate, and as the bike showed no inclination to sprout wings and save him from an untimely death, Kadaj remedied the problem by himself sprouting wings - well, a wing - and soaring out over the city. Behind him, Cloud spluttered in rage, but could do nothing to stop him, since the blond was in denial of his origins and would refuse to grow a wing even if he could. But I don't disobey Mother, Kadaj thought smugly, until he was made aware that he was once again not watching the air before him, as the large and unfriendly side of a reactor loomed up in front of him with unprecedented swiftness.
He made a messy landing on the curved top of the cracked building, only to find that Cloud was already there, standing in a typical heroic pose (Kadaj snorted), impossibly huge sword held in both hands. He lunged at Kadaj, clearly intending on cutting him in two, so who can blame the silver-haired man for leaping backward out of reach? But Kadaj had forgotten two very relevant facts: one, namely that he had a wing and so didn't need to leap anywhere but straight up to escape, and two, that the reactor did have an edge and he was perilously close to it. Thus it should come as no surprise to anyone but himself that he fell off.
Flailing, he managed to grab onto the edge with one hand, conveniently forgetting for the moment that he had a fully-functional wing and was thus in no danger even if he did fall. The blond swordsman came closer. Kadaj began to feel a strange energy tingling through his body, a pins-and-needles sensation that left his fingers trembling and his ears numb. Or his fingers numb and his ears trembling. Oh, yeah. Limit break time!
With a sudden crazy grin (but aren't all his expressions crazy?), he let go. As in, uncurled his fingers from their death-grip on the edge, and plummeted down toward the ruined city. Without using his wing.
Cloud stared after him in confusion for a long moment, trying to figure out what Kadaj hoped to accomplish by committing suicide. And here he'd thought the silver-haired man had been avoiding death. Well, not really, considering he'd shot the ex-SOLDIER in the head. No one in their right mind would have done that if they had any plans for the future.
But while the blond's brain was running in circles, convinced that this was all somehow a trap Sephiroth had set for him, the Highwind dropped down from nowhere almost on top of him. A rather strong gust of wind from the turbines rose up and pushed him off the edge, and he followed Kadaj into the depths.
Meanwhile, luckily for the remnant, his wing created enough drag that he was able to slow himself and come to a landing on his feet somewhere midway between the reactor and the streets below. Hearing a whooshing sound, he glanced up in time for Cloud to crash into him from above, knocking them both flat and creating quite a dent in the footing.
The next thing Kadaj knew, his world had gone green and shrunk somewhat as he was now looking out through the slitted emerald eyes of the Terror of Gaia, Sephiroth. It was something of a thrill, seeing the sudden terror in Cloud's eyes, even if Kadaj wasn't really in charge of his own voice as Sephiroth murmured, "Good to see you, Cloud."
The blond was flung up and away, and Kadaj laughed maniacally in the back of Sephiroth's mind as the silver warrior pursued. In fact, Kadaj spent the next ten or so minutes laughing so hard at his revenge that he didn't notice that Sephiroth was getting the worst of the fight. Apparently listening to a lunatic giggling to himself doesn't do anything for a swordsman's concentration. By the time Cloud's Omnislash finally decided it was charged enough to make an appearance, Sephiroth had pretty much given up on blocking any of the ex-SOLDIER's blows, and he floated in midair as Cloud swept through his body again and again.
Sephiroth wrapped himself in his wing, spit a few threatening but empty last words, and vanished, leaving Kadaj unexpectedly suspended in midair above a very angry chocobo-headed swordsman. His laughter abruptly cut short, he shrieked as he fell to the ground, making Cloud, with his enhanced hearing, wince. The blond braced himself for the charge, but instead of attacking, Kadaj made a gasping sound and collapsed on his face several feet away.
Utterly mystified but still sure it was a trap, Cloud cautiously took a step forward. He froze. There was a rustling sound behind him, and he turned just in time to see two more silver-haired men, armed with guns, stagger toward him, raise their weapons, and fire.
I can't believe it! was Loz's triumphant thought. I actually found a chocobo! In the city! Mommy will be so pleased.
Beside him, Yazoo was thinking along a completely different path, but the narrator never got to his thoughts because Cloud attracted all attention at that moment by gasping, clutching his chest, and dramatically toppling over backward, off the random piece of wreckage he'd been standing on, falling out of sight until there was a distant splash a couple hundred feet below.
As is usual in most stories, the three villains' fate remains unknown, because the story only follows the hero. Thus: Cloud fell, plummeting through space and time, through eternity itself it seemed, until he was brought back to earth by a sudden impact with, well, the earth. Or Gaia, properly speaking. Although actually neither is exactly accurate, as it wasn't the ground he made contact with - it was a large pool of runoff rainwater that collected in an abandoned church during last month's thunderstorms.
A gaggle of slum kids, who'd been dredging in the pool for tadpoles, immediately swarmed around the fallen warrior, hoping to pick his pockets for something valuable. One lucky kid took home a silver earring and a motorcycle key, but the rest were too slow to share in the spoils, as Cloud seemed to be awakening and they backed off.
"Mother?" he mumbled, still with his eyes closed. A couple of the girls giggled.
"Can we keep him?" a little boy asked.
"Hey, mister, are you all right?" another asked.
The blond stirred again and muttered something about water in his ears, then returned to deeper slumber. A distinctly sirenlike wail erupted from somewhere above them, piercing the eardrums of all present (except Cloud, who was saved by virtue of the water in his ears). Startled, the children huddled closer together over the swordsman, when there was a tremendous splash behind them. They all turned to see a ragged silver and black shape floating in the water, and immediately abandoned Cloud to go loot their newest catch.
While they were oohing and ahhing over all the shiny baubles that seemed to have come out of the body upon impact, Cloud opened his eyes and quietly slunk away, pulling himself out of the water and collapsing onto the closest pew.
Feeling safe for the first time all day now that he was fairly sure Sephiroth was gone and the remnants wouldn't mistake him for a chocobo again, he allowed himself to feel drowsy. His eyelids drooped and his head started nodding, then he snapped awake again as he became aware of a pretty girl sitting next to him. Heyya, beautiful. At least you're prettier than Sephiroth... Wait, do I know you?
"Cloud."
"Hm?" He turned his head just enough to sleepily look at her with one eye. "Whaddya want?"
The girl in the pink dress folded her hands in her lap primly. "Well, I was told to bring you a message, and since the person who sent the message was too afraid to deliver it himself, I guess...it's bad news."
"I am not afraid!" a voice yelled from somewhere behind them. "I'm...busy!" Cloud was sure he knew the voice from somewhere, but he couldn't place it.
She rolled her eyes, pulled a crumpled piece of paper from somewhere, and read: "To cut to the chase: you, Cloud Strife, do not own a golden chocobo, nor did you ever, nor will you ever - wait, Zack, how do you know that? - and I'm sorry for tricking you, it was all a joke. I never thought you'd actually believe me. Oops. Hugs and kisses, Zack."
"Hey, I did not write that last part!"
Cloud's head was spinning - not an unusual occurrence for him. So he'd never owned a golden chocobo. Wait. When had he ever thought he'd owned one? It was those nutty remnants next door that had insisted there was a bird. This made no sense at all, except Zack... Wait a minute! Zack! Zack was the reason the silver lunatics were chasing him and shooting at him? Zack was the reason his life was in constant danger? Zack was here?
Witha startled shout, the blond warrior leapt up and spun toward the door. Sure enough, Zack was in the doorway; the SOLDIER gave him a tiny apologetic smile and a shrug, then disappeared into the marshmallow whiteness of the otherworld. The pretty girl in the pink dress followed him. The doors swung shut, blocking out the light and music of the afterlife, leaving Cloud in a dilapidated church, soaked to the bone, with a bunch of now-deaf children and a remnant of a remnant. And totally, utterly confused as to what was going on.
He turned around, unsure where to go or what to do now, and a flash of color at the edge of his vision made him pause. On the pew where the pink-clothed girl had been sitting was resting an innocent golden feather. Cloud glared suspiciously at it for a long time and finally voiced the thoughts of probably most readers at this point: "What just happened?"
A/N: ...and we'll never know poor Kadaj's eventual fate, because the narrator didn't deem him an important enough character to return to.
Yep, this story makes no sense. But what did you expect from a story named, not even after a chocobo, but after the sound a chocobo makes?
I don't know about any of you, but I'm glad that's over with!
(I can't believe I just posted this thing!)