Author's Note: Disclaimer at the end of the chapter.
This chapter's title song is "I Don't Like Candycorn", which is sung by the Moose A. Moose mascot character on the preschool television channel Noggin around Halloween.
Part Four (I Don't Like Candycorn)
The crowd dispersed - even made way for them this time - as they followed the suited man (who introduced himself as Mayor Gourdworth) to the diner. Many of the humans remained in the vicinity, not even bothering to hide their curiosity. Only a few - the staff - entered the diner ahead of them, the mayor waving away the others that attempted entry.
Yazoo waited until Kadaj sheathed Souba before holstering his gunblade, and stayed close to Loz as they walked, their arms almost but not quite touching. Kadaj confidently strode ahead without a glance at his brothers, though he kept the pace slow enough that Loz would not fall behind. Loz remained scowling and silent - even now, he did not forget his role, Yazoo realized with a little relief.
When they entered, Loz took up a standard menacing position near the door, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. The mayor looked like he might protest for a moment, but thought better of it, and hovered just inside the door instead. Kadaj took a seat on one of the chrome and red vinyl barstools at the counter across from and a bit to the side of the door, and Yazoo sat next to him.
A mature woman with swoop-styled, dull brown hair almost immediately came out of the back, tying a ruffled, pale pink apron around her waist. She withdrew a pad of paper and a pencil from an apron pocket, barely looking at the three of them. "And what can we get for you..." Her eyes lifted to pass over Loz, then Kadaj, then Yazoo, and then back to Loz again with a slight smile. "...Boys."
Kadaj craned his neck to look over the woman's shoulder and through the rectangular window into the kitchen. It looked filthy and the smell of hot grease drifted through. "Fruit," he snorted, looking away so as to take in the rest of the room again. "Washed."
"Only fruit we've got is in the pie, hon," the woman said pleasantly.
"Whatever." The disgust radiating from Kadaj was nearly palpable.
"Apple, peach, cherry, strawberry, or strawberry-rhubarb?"
Kadaj scowled as though he might have just decided that this was far too much effort to go through for a bit of food, which meant that the next move would be to draw his sword. His hand was already moving when Yazoo spoke up. "Apple. I'll have the same"
Kadaj shot him a half-hearted glare, but he really was hungry.
The woman scribbled on her tablet. "Anything for the big guy?" She said it a little more loudly, almost calling out. Loz either didn't hear her or (wisely, so far as Yazoo was concerned) ignored her.
Kadaj smiled. "Nah, he just ate."
The woman moved off, back into the kitchen area, calling out the order as she went. There seemed to be some confusion about it, but Yazoo ceased to pay attention, mind wandering.
So the town was having a problem with the dead rising... but none of them seemed to see anything odd about Loz, with his sluggish motions and shadowed eyes and cold skin so pale that it nearly seemed to have a green cast to it. He and Kadaj had mended Loz's clothing to cover the gaping holes left in his chest, unhealed but dry, but even so... surely these people noticed something... off?
Maybe humans were just that inobservant.
In any case, it was at once heartening and discouraging, to hear of something similar happening to the dead but to have such evidence that it was a different condition than what had happened to Loz. For a moment, Yazoo - and probably Kadaj too - had dared to hope that they could find a way to understand, maybe even reverse what had happened to Loz...
A plate with a fork and a generous helping of apple pie clanked as it landed on the counter in front of him. Yazoo's head snapped up to see a grizzled man, large in every way - tall and rotund - standing on the other side of the counter from the brothers with his hands on his hips. "Dunno why that'd be all yinz want," the man said, looking them up and down. "But'r pie's best around." He nodded at his own words as though that would vouch for their veracity.
Kadaj picked up the fork and poked at the unusually large slices of glazed apple slowly sliding from between the layers of pastry on his plate. "Tell me what's been happening," he commanded, without even looking over his shoulder at the mayor.
"Ah. Well. Yes." The mayor wrung his hands, nervously stepping a bit closer. "It started... a few months ago, see. Our lovely town here was designed to be self-sufficient, and we don't have a lot of contact with the rest of the world. Going on two years since our last official communication with Shinra, even."
Yazoo could see Kadaj starting to tune out the man's droning and did his best to listen intently. His little brother speared one of the apple slices and lifted the dripping piece to his mouth, cautiously tasting with the tip of his tongue first. He paused, then took a small bite, then shrugged to himself and began eating in earnest.
The mayor pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and patted at his brow. "We didn't think the lack of communication unusual until that gypsy woman came by back during the Spring Carnival. We don't know who she is - half-Wutainese or something, comes and tells fortunes every year..."
Idly prying the top crust from his piece of pie as he listened, Yazoo similarly inspected the contents. He separated out a piece of apple onto the plate, broke it into smaller pieces with the side of the fork, and took a bite.
The apple had a distinct underlying taste of Mako - not toxic, but odd...
"...And the gypsy told our darling Marisu that she was doomed to die at the hands of the undead by the second full moon of autumn, and that's only a few days away!"
"Your darling what?" Kadaj mumbled around a bite. So he was listening, after all.
The man's voice went a little... warm. "Our dearest Marisu," he responded, and Yazoo leaned forward a little to look past Kadaj at the mayor. The man looked smitten by the mere thought. "The most beautiful little girl in town, and my godchild. Oh, you saw her, she was on stage..."
"Oh," Kadaj grunted with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, wrinkling his nose as though the pie tasted off. "Huh. Go back to talking about the undead."
"Yes!" The mayor continued as if he hadn't heard. "That lovely girl and our entire town are now the victim of a horrible gypsy curse! Anyone who dies returns from the dead to attack others! We've lost half the population already, and we can't seem to get any messages through to anyone for help. Your answering our distress beacon and text messages has been our only contact with the outside world!" He leaned forward with an air of desperation. "Is it like this everywhere? Is that why Shinra won't answer us any more? Are zombies overrunning the Planet?"
Kadaj very slowly and deliberately pulled his fork from his mouth, chewing thoughtfully for a silent minute before answering, features blissfully calm to the point of disinterest. "No, it's just you."
The mayor mopped his brow again. "Oh, that's such a relief!"
Yazoo glanced over his shoulder. There were humans pressed up against the windows gaping at them at almost every clear space. He narrowed his eyes and turned back to the counter -
- Only to come almost nose-to-nose with the grimy cook, who'd been standing behind the counter the entire time. "You're real purdy, miss," he drawled.
Yazoo leaned back, expression still impassive, setting down his fork on his plate.
There was a shifting and a creaking next to him, and Yazoo turned slightly to see Loz settling onto the empty barstool to his left, eyes following the cook as he backed away like a dragon watching a chocobo. It was more reassuring than Yazoo liked to admit.
Without thinking, Yazoo lifted the fork again and offered Loz a bite of pie - only remembering as he held the bite ready that Loz didn't actually seem to eat food any more. But Loz leaned forward with a slight smile and accepted the bite anyway, exactly as he would have before he'd... died. As though, at that moment, he didn't remember that he was dead.
Yazoo watched with that same sort of small glimmer of hope that flared every time they found a new lead on where Mother might be, and hated himself for it now just as much as he always did.
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