Final Harvest 7: Advent Crops
Cloud inherits his mother's ranch in peaceful Kuponut Valley. AU.
AN: If you ever need a good laugh, Google 'hella flush'.
Going to chop up the previous chapters. Don't have a beta, and they taste horrible.
According to 's spell checker, sizeable, leant, osmosing, and sunburnt, are mispelled. Well, it says the same thing about wark, chocobo, and Sephiroth, so pft.
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"AUGH! Mother f-"
Cloud's fingers fumbled, and the shovel fell over, thumping into the freshly turned earth. The noon sun loomed high and hot; he felt like little more than five feet and seven inches of baked whatever, slowly osmosing into the disgusting local humidity. Eyes screwed up tight, Cloud finally managed to peel off his leather work gloves. He stumbled, blind, in the general direction of the garden water well pump, the gloves falling to the ground out of one hand as he tried wiping his eyes on one semi not-gross sleeve.
… For whatever good it did. He was sweating in sheets of acidy, burning, nasty, stinky, sweaty, sweaty, sweat-sweat. Sweaty dirt particles ground into his pale, sunburnt face, and Cloud let out a strangled scream when his free hand fumbled uselessly against the molten hot pump handle. His arm flailed harder, and there was finally bliss as ice cold water shot out of the water pump. He half drowned himself in the shallow rock basin at the foot of pump, splashing about like some kind of half-witted chocobo in a baking pan of water.
Finally able to see, Cloud frowned at his bare hands. He'd spent the better part of the last two days tidying up the chicken coop, and lamely patching up the pasture fence.
The chicken coop had proved to need little in the way of repair or cleaning, other than the nine or ten pounds of dusty, dry cobwebs. He'd been in the midst of cleaning the coop's windows, and leant down to pick up a new rag. Sitting on top of the clean rags... was a black widow. A giant black widow. A giant black widow with a body the size of both his fists put together. A ginormous black widow the size of his two fists combined that seemed to emit a faint greenish red glow in the dim building. All in all, Cloud had proved the better man, by dumping out his bucket of soapy water, and trapping the thing beneath the bucket.
Cloud figured he'd parole the spider after a while. After it had died and shriveled up, anyway. He left a huge stone on top of the bucket, and moved his new chickens in, who didn't seem to give a rat's ass that their home was someone else's prison.
He hadn't been too sure what to do about the fence. Most of it seemed alright to Cloud, but a few posts had fallen sideways. His trusty shovel and a random mallet from the tool shed hadn't been much use. Past rains had packed the old post holes tight, and the relentless Mideelian sun had baked it all harder than concrete. Unable to either re-dig the post holes, or pound the posts in a decent distance, Cloud had opted to prop the fallen posts somewhat upright, and pack the nearby loose earth around the base. It'd hold until someone breathed on it, at least.
Damage done, Cloud took a long look at the very tall grass inside the pasture itself. City boy that he was, he rummaged about in his mother's tool shed until a musty corner produced a weed trimmer and a half full can of gasoline. Things had gone swimmingly for nearly a minute, until he'd tripped on some hidden hillock of a rock and liberally weed whacked his own shins.
The trimmer trigger had stuck, so he ginger smacked it with a booted foot until it went silent... at which point he hear the dusty roll of tires on gravel, and the low purr of a ridiculously expensive car.
Cloud knelt briefly, rubbing a smarting shin, and collecting the weed trimmer.
He stood slowly, body protesting, and turned toward the driveway.
A very lanky man in dark, gold rimmed aviators, dark blue blazer and khaki slacks, had climbed out of the driver's seat. He was frowning at the powdery dirt caking onto his del Costa LX coupe, turning the pearly white exterior into a dull, liquor store champagne brown. After a minute, the passenger decided to crawl out. A woman in a violently pink skirt suit, coiffed, mousy hair, and gigantic bubbly eyed tortoiseshell sunglasses. It was too far to hear, but she was gesticulating at the man, despite his blithe disaffection.
The pink woman threw her hands in the air, and started scanning the property, eyes hidden behind the darkness of her freakish sunglasses. A sudden blossom of fear in Cloud's stomach, and he quickly crouched down into the tall grass.
If the sounds of stumbling and cursing were any indication, Cloud had failed to hide. Clinging to hope, he stilled himself.
"Hello?"
Grass rustled near the fence. He held his breath.
"Helloooo?"
Why the hell was he hiding from strangers? What was he, five years old?
Fuck it. He stood up.
And instantly regretted it.
He was staring straight into the pink woman's clown paint face, and breathing in her nerve toxin aroma. She jumped back a step, eyeing him from head to toe, like some kind of monster.
To be fair, he was as stinky as a dying ho-chu, and slimier than a pile of fresh touch-me eggs.
The pink woman finally gathered herself, "Hello Mister... uh... young man. My name is Ms. Lucrecia Crescent, but you can call me LuLu -"
"What do you want?" Cloud crossed his arms. He'd learned the hard way, that a nice woman, is a woman who wants something from you. Unless she's your mother. Then she wants to know who are you dating, do you have enough underwear, and have you thrown out those disgusting socks with the one-gil-sized toe holes?
"Well, my associate, Mr. Wesker, and I are representatives of Gold Star Inc., and we wanted to extend our condolences to you for your recent loss. Have you given any consideration as to the future of this property?"
"Huh?" He blinked. Mr. Wesker was now frowning in the distance at his ugly loafer boat shoes, which were also coated in a grime of Mideelian dirt.
"Land ownership in the southern islands, especially now, features low investment return compared to most of the global private property market... And this particular island lacks not only sizeable urban development, but it's also void of any variety of specialized industrial or agricu-"
The pink woman's head jerked to look at her partner, who was shrieking, and gesturing jerkily at his del Costan coupe. Next to the coupe, attempting to peck the tires flat, and smash in the hood, was a nine foot tall, midnight blue bull chocobo, eyes cold and grey like ice chips. Next to the angrily warking bird stood the former General Sephiroth, who apparently didn't care to stop the bird. Sephiroth simply stood, detached, as his mount battered the sports car.
The pink woman's face went from Cloud, to Mr. Wesker and his car, to Cloud, to Sephiroth, to Mr. Wesker, to Cloud... and she bolted towards Mr. Wesker, flailing and tottering as fast as her fancy pink stilettos would let her.
Cloud slowly approached the former General as the pink woman screeched at the chocobo, waving at it wildly, papers fluttering every which way from a folder he hadn't noticed in her hands.
Sephiroth clucked at his bird, and it went stock still, throwing one last glare at the offending car as he trotted to his master.
"Cloud Strife. Do you know these... people?"
"No, they just drove up today. Hey!" The bull chocobo was trying to preen his hair. Cloud clamped his hair down as best he could with both hands.
"One might say these people are trespassing on your lands, Strife," green eyes bored into two sets of dark lenses. "Mideelian law carries a minimum 8,000 gil penalty for trespassing, should one be found guilty."
"Look, Mr. General, Lulu and I came to make the whelp an offer... the best he'll ever see for this dump. The boy should be-"
"There are many . You are also aggravating my prize winning stud chocobo." Mr. Wesker twitched in silence under the green glare.
"Listen, honey," the pink woman forced the folder of documents under Cloud's folded arm. "Check these out. If you have any questions, feel free to call us at any time. Gold Star can offer you some incredible incentives if you decide to sell." She turned to her partner, "Get your balding ass in the car, Wesker."
Two door slams, a gravely squeal, and a huge dust cloud later, the two were gone. Sephiroth's chocobo flapped his stubby wings, warking angrily as his opponent fled.
They stood for a while in silence, watching a rising cloud of dust tear away on the unpaved road crawling westward.
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