Yay, I'm posting again! It's about 9:40pm (at least according to Central Time), and I just had to post before I went to bed(yes, that's right, I go to bed before 10:00pm. I even like to be asleep before 9:30pm if I can!). Anyway,here's chapter 2. This one is dedicated to everyone who ever blurted out an unintentional innuendo.
Title: Random Bits 12 - Chapter 2
Setting: Yuna's Guardians are escorting her back from a visit to Macalania Temple (in Macalania if you couldn't guess). Weary from all that hard praying, they stop at the campsite in Macalania Woods, but a stay at a Travel Agency would be nice…
Macalania Woods - Campsite- Auron's culinary specialty is finally ready. After a few minutes of nervous shuffling over who was going to try it first, lunch has gotten underway.
Rikku stared at her bowl, prodding a chunk of something with her spoon. "What do you think it is?" she asked her older companions. Lulu shrugged, coming dangerously close to falling out of the front of her dress, and causing Tidus to giggle into his stew. He wisely disguised it as a cough.
"Could be Iguon, could be that fruit stuff." she replied, giving the innocent looking Tidus a crimson glare that made his stew smolder.
"How can they eat this stuff?" the blond Al Bhed girl asked.
Yuna shrugged.
"Why do we let Auron cook, again?" Lulu asked, flicking a drowning fly (one of the hazards of dining outdoors) off the edge of her bowl.
"Don't make fun," Yuna gently chided "He tries."
"He could try a little harder." Lulu replied ruthlessly.
"Well, you know men and fires." Rikku chimed in. "It's a guy thing."
Whatever Stew was a dish best served cold, since it gave the fat time to congeal on the surface where it could neatly be scraped off (along with the 'floaties'). It was healthier with all the fat taken out, according to the females in the group. They sat in a companionable huddle away from the guys, where they could talk about them without being overheard.
They watched as Auron scooped up a waxy spoonful of cold fat (with small green streaks in it) off the top of his stew, and with blatant relish, shoved it into his mouth. Lulu gagged. Tidus was gobbling the stuff like it was chocolate, while Kimahri lapped his up with all the enthusiasm of a stray cat eating out of a garbage can. As they watched, Wakka helped himself to the thick clumps the girls had dumped back into the pot, pausing to pick a multicolored butterfly wing out of his teeth.
An hour later the whole group was trying to break camp while scratching at various rashes that had developed on their skin. They ranged from bumpy to blotchy, and came in a variety of shades of red and purple. Wakka by far was in the worst shape, covered in hives and with his lips swollen up to twice their size. Apparently Rainbow Butterflies were poisonous. Fortunately, it was nothing a little Esuna couldn't fix.
"Are you sure you don't want me to cast Esuna?" Yuna asked her long time Guardian. The Auroch's captain shook his head and replied in a voice that dripped saliva
"No. I fiil justht guret, thankths."
"You sure?"
"I'm phine."
Yuna couldn't help but stare at his lips. The surfaces of the delicate organs were a bright red. Each was swollen to humorous proportion, and covered in small pustules filled with a clear yellow fluid. His lips looked like miniature bumpy blimps barely moored to his face. Every time he spoke, Yuna fought to resist the impulse to step back in case one of them broke open and sprayed her with their nastiness. They seemed to be getting bigger.
Yuna dethided, I mean, decided, to cure him anyway. She couldn't stand to see anyone suffering, and anyway, she was having a hard time not laughing at the man's lips.
"Look, a Cactaur!" Rikku squealed in sudden delight. Camp activity ceased as everyone turned to look in the direction the Al Bhed girl was pointing. Under a luminescent tree, a cactaur was curiously inspecting a pile of gear.
"What's it doing way out here?" Lulu inquired, coming to stand beside Rikku. "They don't usually come out this far." The little green creature squatted down and began digging in a bag.
"You want Kimahri smash?" the Ronso rumbled, cracking his massive knuckles.
"No, thank you, Kimahri." Yuna replied calmly, having dealt with similar situations before. "I'll call you if something needs smashing." The blue Ronso grunted, then returned to stowing away the tents.
"Hey!" Tidus cried in alarm as he saw that the little ambulating cactus was not digging in just any old bag. It was digging in his bag, and had just pulled out his emergency Boring Situation survival kit. "It's got my crayons!" he shouted, lunging at the prickly thief. Contrary to all belief, cactaurs are actually quite intelligent. Most of them are brilliant mathematicians. Seeing an approximately 150 pound human falling towards it at a rate of about a half foot per second, it calculated that there were three seconds to impact, and that it would go splat! Thinking quickly, the cactaur squeaked mischievously, spun out of the way, and used Tidus's head to leap into the safety of the tree.
Tidus tried to climb the slippery trunk while the green creature, safe in the boughs of the tree, taunted him. After about five minutes the boy gave up and resorted to dancing impotently around the trunk, cursing, shouting, and throwing the occasional, poorly aimed rock.
Seated on a branch in plain view, the succulent tasted one of the colorful wax sticks.
"It's eating my crayons!" Tidus gasped dramatically.
"Can we please go now?" sighed Auron, patience running out.
"But, my crayons,"
"Let's just go."
"Not without my crayons!"
"Fine," Auron sighed. "Wakka, give me your blitz ball."
"Don't give it to him!" Tidus growled, thrusting an accusing finger at Auron, "He'll pop it. He's a ball popper." The last was delivered with a dark grimace and enough venom to poison a full grown Shoopuff. Auron rolled his eye heavenward.
"Are you still upset about that? It was an accident and you know it."
"Liar." the blond grumbled, holding on to Wakka's arm lest he try to hand the precious ball over.
"Oh, come on!"
"Ball Popper, Ball Popper! I'm never letting you touch my balls again."
Tidus paused, his mind performing an innuendo spell-check. He realized that he'd made a poor choice of words in his sentence construction, and his social image was going to suffer. On the outside, the boy's lips crawled back into his mouth and his tongue tried to hide in his throat from the horror it had just unleashed.
"Wait! That's not what I meant! I…I…uh…" Tidus stuttered in a rapid fire attempt to shoot down the escaped words before they did irreparable damage. But, as with all words, there is no way to unsay them once they are let loose. There was no collaring the rabid dog of poorly worded statements and it fell upon the companions, frothing and snarling in all it's perverseness.
While Tidus' brain suffered a total system shut down from a massive embarrassment overload, Lulu took matters into her own hands. A bolt of lightning struck the branch the Cactuar was sitting on with a boom, missing the little succulent by inches. Even Black Mages have their off days. The little desert dweller flipped off the branch and hopped away, stopping on a nearby rock to slap it's prickly backside mockingly, before skittering off with it's prize.
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