Clan Misfit

Written for Sage8675's Challenge

Come to the forum and see the challenge: The All Purpose FFTA Forum. The rules are posted there. I don't have time to explain them all here.

"Can't I just have one more cookie? Oh, please, Luneth? Just one more, I promise!"

Luneth groaned and turned from her desk to glare at the overweight NuMou who had been babbling at her all afternoon. "No, Kumquat, you may not have another cookie. You've already eaten an entire box!"

"Another box is all that's left, Luneth!" Kumquat shrieked. Kumquat, of course, was not the NuMou's real name (he thanked Ultima every day for his sensible, given name, Harold), but the rest of Clan Misfit called him Kumquat anyway. He had given up reprimanding them for it; they never listened to him. He had no idea why on earth they wouldn't. He was by far the most sensible member of the clan.

No reply to his latest protest escaped Luneth's mouth, drawn into a permanent frown by spending only two months in the company of Kumquat. It pained her to keep him around, but there was really no way around it. They couldn't afford to fight in engagements without him (even if he was a sitting duck for every attack imaginable), and they only had five members as it was. She sighed audibly as he launched into yet another tirade about his mistreatment and turned back to her map. She needed to figure out where they could next find shelter without stumbling into another clan's territory.

Michael, who had been sleeping off an hangover in the back room after last night's binge at the nearby pub, suddenly staggered through the doorway and collapsed into a chair. It promptly collapsed under his dead weight, and the oafish Bangaa landed with a gigantic thud.

"I think you should help him up, Luneth," said Kumquat, well aware that his statement had fallen on dead ears. No one had ever listened to him before. Why should they start now.

"'S it mornin' yet?" Michael slurred, wincing and clutching his head as he spoke.

Frostily, Luneth turned and glared at Michael. "Go back to bed, Mike. It's almost noon. You obviously need a couple hours to sleep it off."

"I bet a cookie would help him snap to it," Kumquat suggested giddily. "Perhaps I'll just get one myself."

"Tell that to Ultima when I send you to meet her," Luneth snapped. "I'm sure she'll be interested in how you got to look like a fat, ugly kumquat."

"'Clot? 'Ooh got 'urt?" Michael tried to stand up, but only succeeded in landing on his stomach. So he tried to crawl into the back room instead. "Lemme get my staff..."

"Love of Exodus, give me sanity!" Luneth said melodramatically.

"Amen to that!" echoed Kumquat. He immediately shuddered when Luneth shot him the deathglare-to-end-all-deathglares. Still shaken, he grabbed his black hat and shoved it on his head, shielding his eyes from any future glances.

"No, Michael, don't cast that spell in here–"

"Mire 'o earth 'n salt 'o...salt...eh...oh, jus' break it 'lready!"

In the back room, something shattered into a million pieces. Luneth buried her head in her hands, whispering something along the lines of "why me" while rocking back and forth in her chair.

"Sounds like someone needs a cookie," Kumquat suggested, standing up and reaching for the box on Luneth's desk."

"Forget about it!" she said, and swatted Kumquat's fat fingers away with a smack. One of Kumquat's many dirty rings came loose from his fingers and sailed into a vase, which shattered, spilling water everywhere and letting the beautiful white flower it had once held collapse onto the floor.

"I...I...I'm sorry," Kumquat stuttered, backing away from Luneth as the Viera stared at the mess the airborne ring had created. "I really...I really didn't mean to."

"To heck with it," Luneth said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Just leave. Now."

Cautiously, to make sure he didn't do anything else to anger the already smoldering Viera–especially with her albeit rusty rapier all too handy–he backed up to the door. Then, as quick as he could, given his girth, he slipped out the door and into the street.

"Leaving, eh matey?" Kumquat turned to see Velasquez leaning against the grimy wall of the inn, his face surrounded by a cloud of grey-blue smoke that emanated from a smoldering cigar. It was nearly impossible to see the Blue Mage's gaudy getup through the miasma, and that was saying something about the thickness of the smoky haze.

"A normal person would call his friend a 'friend'," said Kumquat, emphasizing his argument where he thought it necessary. "No one calls their friends 'matey'."

"No one but a pirate, aye. But as I be a pirate, I call me friends matey! And as such, I say, 'Ahoy, matey!'"

"Maybe I'm mistaken...I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but...I believe you're a Blue Mage. Didn't you get certified by the Blue Mage Guild yesterday?" By some miracle or trick of that devil Moogle god Famfrit, Kumquat thought to himself.

"I be certifiably a Blue Mage, aye, but I am firstly and...uh...firstly a pirate! Aye!" Velasquez said, as though to emphasize his pirate-ness. "I even wear the piratey hat! Aye!"

"So...just because you wear a hat that looks like one a pirate would wear, you think you're a pirate?"

For a moment, the Blue Mage–er, pirate, excuse me–considered Kumquat's arguments. Then he nodded his head–which Kumquat could only see as a shadowy blob behind the smoke–and shouted, "Aye! That's why I be a pirate! Because I look like one, says I!"

"I see," Kumquat said, shaking his head and sighing in momentary defeat. Then, leaning next to the doorframe, he asked Velasquez, "Do you even know what a pirate is? What they do?"

"They...well, they..." the Blue Mage/pirate shook took an unusually long drag on his cigar, then sent another humongous cloud of smoke billowing out of his shadowy mouth. Then, as though his response settled everything, he said, "Pirates be pirates, lad. They don't need to know what they do so long as they know who they are. Savvy?"

Confused and bewildered by the Blue Mage/Pirate/I-don't-give-a-crap-what-else, Kumquat turned to go. Then, suddenly, a white and blue blur whizzed past him, stepping on the dirty hem of Kumquat's robes and tearing apart the meticulously mended seams. Kumquat cursed and shouted after the blur.

"Laverne! Get back here, you mangy, stupid, mongrel of a Moogle!"

A screeching sound reached his floppy ears, followed closely by the sound of several things shattering and someone cursing with excellent fluency. In a flash the blue and white blur appeared again at Kumquat's feet.

"Never!" Laverne shouted defiantly. "I will never, never, never, never, never, ever stop for the likes of you, kupo! NEVER!"

"My robe seems to have gotten a tear." Kumquat pointed to the offending seam. "Think one of your 'gidget' spells can fix it?"

"It's a Gadgeteer spell, you nitwit NuMou!" Laverne stomped on the ground, then began tapping his foot irritably, as though he was accomplishing something by being obstinate. "And no, I do not have Gadgeteer spell that fixes seams. We're a specialized job, kupo! Not some catch-all for every random spell in Ivalice..." The midget Moogle shot a pointed glare at Velasquez, but it was swallowed in smoke before it reached his eyes, so it accomplished nothing.

"So...about that seam?"

Feigning indifference was no trouble for Laverne. He turned around like he didn't care and muttered the words under his breath like he was cursing Ultima for ever creating fat slobs like Kumquat. And then he looked over his shoulder and stuck his little pink tongue out like he had been insulted.

"If you think you're getting away that easily, you've got another thing coming," Kumquat said. "You didn't cast the spell right!"

"The hell I didn't, kupo!" Laverned spat. "Your seam's repaired, isn't it?"

"Cause does not justify the effect," Kumquat answered mysteriously.

Laverne raised both his eyebrows. "What in Famfrit's name is that supposed to mean?"

"An apple a day keeps the rent collector away," Velasquez quipped.

Not one to shy away from a cliche-collecting party, Michael stumbled out of the house and mumbled, "He who drinks the least gets laid the least!" He said the last words with particular gusto, just before he fell forward and crashed to the street.

"Michael would know," Kumquat said. "Considering he hasn't been sober for almost a year."

"Indeed," said Luneth, who had appeared out of nowhere.

Suddenly, the sky darkened, and the air seemed to turn blood red. Clan Misfit looked up at the sky and saw a gigantic meteor falling from the sky, bearing down on them.

"Following yonder star..." murmured Velasquez, who continued to spout non sequiturs, mostly because he couldn't see a darned thing from behind the smokescreen.

It grew closer and closer and closer in the sky, until the very atmosphere around the Clan began to burn and tear and sear their skin. And then, it hit. Impact was catastrophic.

The crater was small, about as big as an adamantoise with a birth defect, but it was plenty large enough to erase all traces of Clan Misfit from the land of Ivalice forever. To this day, in the slums of Sprohm, no one has a clue why there's a crater on Misfit Street.

THE END