Enhanced
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Of course it's an "enhanced" remake. All of these characters are on some serious drugs.
Rated T for canon-appropriate substance use and sexual subtext. Contains not-very-subtle unrequited Rody/Cecil and a one-line homage to Penny Arcade.
It looked innocent enough, corked inside of its bottle. It was pretty, in a way- the contents had settled into five or so layers, with something light and golden floating on top and something green and syrupy down at the bottom. The layers tilted to make a play of color as Chris held the bottle to the torchlight.
"Is it safe?" Rody thought someone needed to ask the question.
"It's supposed to be as safe as water," Chris said. She stared at the bottle for a moment as though the colors had her entranced, then shook her head to break the spell.
"Water can kill you," Rody replied. It was never a problem in their homeland, but they'd all learned as soon as they set foot outside of Altea that clean, pure water wasn't something they could take for granted.
"Never mind, Rody," Cecil put in. "Chris, what's it gonna do for us?"
"It's supposed to be as good as every other potion you can find, all in one bottle. If we drink this, it'll make us stronger, and faster, and give us better resistance to magic, and everything."
"Forever?" That came from Ryan; the archer was lying on his stomach, feet up in the air in a pose that showed how very young he was.
"Well, no. It wears off in a day," Chris admitted.
"No reason not to try it," Cecil said immediately. "Ryan, go get us a spoon."
The little archer was halfway to the tent-flap before Rody intervened.
"I have one." It dangled from his belt along with the rest of his tools and supplies.
"Oh, great." Cecil's fingertips brushed his as she yanked the spoon from his hand. Once she had it, her eyes narrowed. "Now, the real question is, who gets to try it first?"
"Me," said Luke.
Cecil opened her mouth, and for a moment Rody was certain they were going to have a quarrel about it. But the fire in Cecil's eyes went away after a moment, and with surprising equanimity she agreed to let Luke be the first to taste this miracle potion. Rody realized what changed Cecil's heart... even if Luke didn't. And, on consideration, Luke probably didn't.
Chris shook up the bottle so that all the different colors sloshed together; it looked like liquid stained-glass. Chris then poured it into the borrowed spoon, and Cecil in turn administered the dose of potion to Luke.
Then they waited, through a few long and tense moments of silence, to see what would happen.
"Oh, wow."
Luke sounded like his normal impetuous self, thought Rody.
"I'm flying. I'm totally flying!" Luke flung out his arms and spun around like a very poor dancer. "This is awesome!"
"I don't see how making Luke any more distracted than he is will help in a battle," Rody began, but before the words left his lips, they heard the trumpeters raising the call-to-arms. Rody swallowed back on a small, tight lump that formed in his throat when he saw Luke examining his own hands for the "pretty colors" coming out of his fingers.
If Luke didn't survive the day, it would be on all of them.
-x-
Luke's performance in the previous night's skirmish had Cecil in quite a pet.
"He was a beast in that battle."
"Maybe all it did was raise his confidence," said Rody. He hoped against hope that Cecil would not credit the rainbow-colored potion with Luke's success.
"Confidence? Hell, did you see the hit he took in the gut? It should have bent him double."
"He's back to normal now, isn't he? Normal for him, at least." Rody knew his argument was a losing one.
"What, sleeping like a lazybones? Yeah." Cecil tugged at the tassel on her headband, then said, "C'mon, Rody. You saw it. I saw it. We need to get the rest of that potion and use it."
Every well-schooled restraint upon his impulses told Rody that it was too risky, that they'd been fortunate Luke hadn't been killed whilst pondering the mysteries of green sky and blue grass.
But Cecil did know how to work at Rody's... weaknesses.
"If it would aid us in the battle, it would be wrong not to try it."
The words emerged at a reluctant half-speed, but Cecil didn't seem to notice; she already had him by the wrist and was dragging him off to see Chris.
The rainbow potion, even with one dose gone, looked just as tantalizing as before when Chris held it out to them. Rody stared at its quivering ribbons of color for a long moment, only coming out of his trance when Cecil nudged him in the ribs. After all, Rody had their most convenient spoon.
He measured out a spoonful and hoped it was the same dose that Luke had taken. As Cecil's lips closed around it, Rody felt his heart thump with apprehension, or... or something.
-x-
Cecil destroyed everything in her path during their next skirmish. So did Chris, who had elected to take the third dose of the potion. This pattern of success made Cecil a positive zealot regarding the rainbow elixir. If the Seventh Platoon didn't make use of this magic liquid, she said, they were fools and worse.
"C'mere, Ryan. Take it like a good boy."
Rody opened his mouth to protest that the archer was too young to be subjected to what, in Rody's opinion, was still very much an experiment. But before he could actually voice the objections, Cecil had the spoon jammed halfway down Ryan's throat. Rody winced and hoped the youngster wasn't going to choke.
Ryan did gurgle a bit at first. His eyes went impossibly wide.
"I c-can t-taste the colors."
"Good," Cecil cooed as she patted his head. "Your turn, Rody."
"Me?"
"Sure. All of us are in it together." She came at him with his own borrowed spoon, and Rody tried to block her with his arm. "Rody, don't be like that."
Rody stared at the liquid pooled in the bowl of the spoon. Globules of the various colors mingled together, and it looked almost like one of Lady Caeda's opals. Rody wondered again what ingredients had gone into the elixir.
"Open wide."
Rody closed his eyes and surrendered to Cecil's ministrations. At least she didn't forcibly pour it down his throat, he thought as the potion coated the back of his tongue.
For a second or so, nothing happened at all, and then something truly did happen. Rody opened his eyes to find Cecil watching him with bright eyes, and she looked more beautiful than Lady Caeda or Lady Elice or any princess ever.
"Well?" asked the shining, sparkling vision of Dame Cecil of the Seventh Platoon.
Rody ran his tongue over his lips.
"I can taste the rainbow. And it tastes good."
-x-
Rody stopped seeing the... visual oddities... about an hour after sundown the second day. As the effects of the potion ebbed, Rody didn't exactly feel ill, but he was aware that he'd had something earlier in the day and didn't have it any more. Once or twice in his life he'd had dreams so nice that, upon waking, he'd just wanted to close his eyes and somehow claw his way back into the dream-world, and this was the same kind of feeling.
But dreams were dreams, and reality was the tin cup in his hands and the scent of pitch in the fire.
"Stop throwing in those pine cones, Luke."
"It's awesome when they explode!"
Luke tossed one more cone in the fire just to show Rody that Sir Luke the Magnificent wouldn't be bossed around. Rody stifled a sigh and took another sip of watered-down wine. At least he wasn't tasting colors any more. He could hear Sir Gordin lavishing praise upon Ryan for how well the younger boy had fared in the battle. If Gordin only knew why his brother had been able to accomplish so much...
Rody's memories of the morning's battle were more like fragments of delirium, vivid and distorted. He'd accomplished feats beyond his own level of skill and past his natural powers of endurance, he knew that much. But it hadn't been his own work; Rody couldn't pretend he'd excelled because of a boost in "confidence" or anything of the sort. Something in that bottle of rainbow-tinted potion had taken over him, and taken Ryan and the other members of the Seventh Platoon in turn.
It might be wrong to not use something that gave them the advantage, but Rody felt it equally wrong not to confess the truth of that advantage to their senior knights.
After supper, Rody asked to speak in private with Gordin and Sir Draug. Rody had on hand the rainbow potion, borrowed from Chris on a not-particularly convincing pretext. He let his seniors examine the potion as he told them the entire story. To his surprise, they didn't seem angry- not even about Ryan's involvement. If anything, Rody thought, the senior knights seemed a little bit... knowing.
"Shouldn't we tell Prince Marth about this?" Gordin sounded sincere, but not terribly concerned.
"I'll take it to him," said Draug. He extended a hand to take the vial, but Gordin didn't surrender it.
The two veterans stared at each other, and Rody cleared his throat to break the sudden strange tension.
"Wait. I'll show it first to Captain Arran. He's our direct superior, and it wouldn't be proper to bypass him."
"Sir Rody shows the instincts of a true knight," said Gordin, his long fingers still tight around the bottle.
"Ah. I beg your pardon, sirs, but might I see Captain Arran?"
"He's asleep," replied Draug, who then seemed to drop whatever charade he and Gordin were running. "You know this is going to be the Spirit Dust fiasco all over again."
Gordin merely closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.
"At least five of you have used this, to no ill effect?" asked Draug.
"Correct, sir. The effects seem to wear off within forty-eight hours. Sometimes less."
"And how does it make you feel?"
"Faster, stronger, more agile, able to walk through fire without being burned. And lucky. Quite lucky." Rody felt a flush of warmth in his cheeks. "It makes you feel good."
"If it's good enough for my brother," Gordin murmured. His fingers now were at the bottle's stopper.
Draug turned his bulky frame back toward Rody and issued to the junior knight an unmistakable command.
"Your spoon, Sir Rody?"
The End
A/N: Originally this was going to be an FE Contest entry. The "I can taste the rainbow" line comes from one of my favorite Penny Arcade cartoons, the one about the various Four Swords Links. The potion is the stat-boosting Rainbow Potion from FE12; you can read more about its wondrous effects in playthrough discussions and the like.
Spirit Dust always struck me as a pretty sketchy stat booster. What do you do, inhale it?