Okay! After weeks of waiting, here is RB18! Sorry if it seems short, but I didn't want to give away too much of the plot right away!
Random Bits 18
Chapter 1
:Setting - A heavy fog has rolled in to envelop the small sea-side village of Kilika, preventing Yuna and her friends from making their way home after a long trip spent making the rounds to Spira's temples. Since the weather has rendered travel impossible, the group is stuck in Kilika until conditions improve. :
:Location - Kilika Island - Afternoon. With so much free time on their hands, Tidus, Wakka, and Rikku are exploring the jungle. They are now lost.:
Their adventure had begun earlier that day, with Tidus wanting to explore the island, now that he wasn't busy trying to save Yuna and Spira from annihilation. The trio of adventurers hadn't let the thick blanket of fog, enshrouding the entire island dampen their spirits, oh no. They had plucked up their courage and boldly set off to discover an already discovered island and seek out already seen wonders. So with map in hand, they set out and cheerfully ignored all words of caution from the locals about how dangerous the island could be under the current weather conditions. And thus, the small band had marched confidently (hindered only slightly by well meaning and concerned Kilikan's) into the fog.
Several hours of wandering later…
"Hey! I found some food!" Tidus called to Rikku and Wakka, who were poking around in the surrounding foliage in case someone had thoughtfully concealed a box of assorted snacks, or a whole roasted chocobo. Grabbing the slightly damp hunk of travel bread, Tidus pushed through the bush he'd been inspecting and showed his discovery to his two companions. "Yay!" Rikku chirped, as she and Wakka crowded around Tidus.
With Wakka in the group it was easy to crowd just about anything. Wakka could crowd all by himself. "Where did you find it?" the former Blitzball Captain inquired, as Rikku began rooting through the bag her companion had found. "I got it off of that guy." the son of Jecht replied cheerfully, parting the bushes to reveal a sad, slumped figure.
"That's a dead body!" gasped Rikku in horror. Then after a closer look, "No Way! He's got an official Barely-Clad Siblings band pendant!"
"Hey, come on you two, "Wakka cautioned nervously, as the two teens searched the body, "It's against Yevon to desecrate the dead."
"Yevon's dead, so it's not like he cares." Rikku replied impertinently, as she relieved the body of the pendant.
"Yeah, and it's not like he's going to be needing to eat anytime soon." Tidus added, gathering up what food was left in the deceased's pack.
Wakka took a moment to digest the statement. The retarded dust bunny (which Auron swore constituted the entirety of Wakka's brain) got its finger far enough up its metaphorical nose to poke a few brain cells awake. A row ensued as Ethics and Morals argued with Hunger over the question of robbing/defiling the dead. Hunger eventually won because it can scream louder. Besides, the guy did have a really nice pair of sandals…
About an hour later, the trio was huddled around a boiling pot. Rikku, being female, never left Home without a length of string, a few rubber bands, a paperclip, and a safety pin in her pocket. With these simple items, a woman goes prepared for any emergency (like a broken trouser zipper, or in the event that her plain crashes on a deserted island and she has to build her own strip mall to stave off boredom until help arrives.) But, because Rikku was also AlBhed, she also carried a hammer, a few scraps of sheet metal, and a soldering tool.
The blond girl stirred the thick batch of Whatever Stew (as in 'whatever is laying around') in its lumpy pot (because you can't beat a pot shaped pot out on a rock shaped rock) and added a few packets of the strange powder from the dead man's pack. "Look at all of these!" Tidus said in quiet awe as he sifted through the pile of plastic baggies. "He sure did have a lot of them."
The pack had been stuffed full with the little bags. Each contained only a few ounces of a variety of what looked like powdered herbs. Among the baggies, there had also been several small boxes of tiny dried up mushrooms. There was something not-quite-right about the little baggies. Who walked around with a pack full of powdered herbs and mushrooms? A little warning buzzer was going off in Wakka's head. When he was a kid, his village had been plagued by strange peddlers selling odd things in baggies. All the children had been warned to avoid the strangers, who set up tents that leaked strange smells and suspicious clouds of smoke. A light bulb flickered on the red haired man's head (but only after being tapped with a broom handle a few times first) as the foggy memory surfaced.
"Hey, hey, I know what those are!" Wakka blurted, pointing in that annoying fashion of people who were never taught to look with their eyes and not with their hands. "There was this guy who came to our village one time, ya? And he was trying to sell little baggies like these! And he had this tent that always smelled funny and had smoke coming out the top. Our mum said we weren't to eat anything he gave us because it was 'foreign', and…I think this is the same thing!" he gibbered excitedly, holding up a baggie.
"And, that means…?" Tidus prompted.
"This guy was a traveling chef!" Wakka replied excitedly, handing Rikku some of the mushrooms.
"It's a good thing we found him then!" Rikku chirped as she stirred in the mushrooms and a few chunks of an unnamed tree dwelling mammal. It had been an easy catch, seeing as how it had just dropped out of a tree (having expired of old age and various diseases) and landed at Tidus' feet.
So far the stew consisted of river water, complete with its usual host of bowl irritating microbes (which would later reappear in a more liquidy form known as Explosive Diarrhea), a few beetles, a partially dismembered bird carcass that was missing a leg because the stray dog had pulled harder than Wakka, five small fish heads, one unlucky ragora, the rest of the travel bread, several oddly shaped purple fruits, and most of the contents of the baggies looted off the dead man, and something scraped off the bottom of Rikku's shoe. What the stew did not contain was anything that remotely resembled a butterfly, especially one that showed signs of being potentially rainbow colored. Wakka did not want to spend the next few hours with swollen, blistered lips again.
Several long minutes later the meat from the fish and arboreal mammal was cooking up nicely, practically falling off the bone, though it would have been more appropriate to say 'disintegrating', due more to the various diseases than the cooking method. In spite of the strangely colored steam rising from the surface, it actually smelled pretty good. The three lost travelers gathered around and inhaled appreciatively, despite the scalding heat.
No one quite knows why people, upon discovering that an action or activity is painful, proceed to deliberately repeat the act. Some psychologists theorize that it is a kind of learning mechanism. The brain says 'You know, that really hurt. But just to be sure…let's do it again.' Thus people are compelled to pick scabs, poke bruises, tough surfaces labeled 'Caution! Hot!', pluck eyebrows, shave irritated skin, and stick pennies/forks in electrical sockets (although this one has more to do with the Do It Because It Says Not To And Lets See What Happens principle.)
The DIBISNTALSWH principle is, in fact, what caused the untimely demise of the traveler that Tidus, Rikku and Wakka had just discovered. It is widely known, among users of illegal herbage, that you should never, ever, under any circumstances create your own, or mix herbs. Period. The unfortunate traveler had fallen victim to The Principle and done both, where he quickly learned that creating and mixing your own herbs induces an extraordinary and unfortunately, very terminal trip. It may have been for the best that, while off chasing gil fairies, talking clouds, and having the workings of the universe explained to him by a small winged man holding a clipboard, he was not aware that his skin turned several unnatural colors, his eyes bulged alarmingly from their sockets and began slowly spinning, his hair fell out, and his brain turned inside out before dribbling out of his nose.
Once the concoction had been dipped out into several hollowed out coconuts, which were no good in Whatever Stew, there was the sound of enthusiastic mastication as the trio ate, breaking every rule in Little Big Book of Table Manners (except the rule about no elbows on the table, because there wasn't one). A flock of starving buzzards could have done it twice as politely and with half the noise.
"Is there any more? I'm starving!" Tidus asked, gulping down his third bowl.
The boy was puzzled. He knew that smelling food could make you hungry, but not this hungry. As troubling as the thought was, Tidus' brain waved a hand dismissively and urged, shut up and eat your food before that pink elephant over there eats it all.
Good idea Brain! Tidus thought in reply, eyeing the strange pink creature hovering by Wakka's left ear. Its eyed him in return and deliberately sucked up Wakka's stew through it's long trunk, beady eyes fixed on Tidus' bowl. He could almost hear it thinking Yours is next!
Wait, Tidus thought as he bent protectively over his stew, what's an elephant? The thoughts were wiped away as Rikku handed him another bowl. Across the fire and quite unaware of the small, bantam-sized pachyderm by his ear, Wakka was happily slurping down his stew. He paused to giggle as the fish eyes winked at him.
Rikku paid her friends little attention. She had her own set of problems. The Whatever Stew had a funny taste, like food tends to acquire as it nears its turning date. Plus the small teen had to keep fighting off the horde of little Brothers trying to steal her food. So far, whacking them on the head with her spoon between bites was working, but more of them kept appearing.
Several minutes after the small intestine absorbed the mysterious herbs and transported them throughout the blood stream, a passing Ochu wandered into the impromptu camp. It spent a few moments poking at the three slumbering forms around the burned out campfire. There was just something satisfying about poking at something. It doesn't matter what it is, but people (and other species) feel an undeniable urge to poke it. It could be a fresh turd, but someone, somewhere will want to poke it. And so, many an intrepid explorer's last words have been 'Look at the size of that fanged, clawed, spiked, and horned creature! Do you think its dangerous? Let's give it a poke!'
The Ochu lost interest. It was no fun when the humans didn't run, or at least scream a little. Humans these days just didn't know how to Flee. In the good old days, humans would streak away shrieking in lung busting, arm waving terror and at least make the chase interesting. Now they either hit you, or worse, completely ignored you as if you were as threatening as a kitten. So, with a wistful expulsion of air for the bygone days of tradition, the Ochu lumbered off.
Say W00T! if you got the joke regarding the pendant. And have some Whatever Stew. Its got lots of nourishing...herbs.