of rabbit flowers and angry moons: chapter eight
the chapter in which we say goodbye
I certainly didn't mean for over a year to go by between chapters especially since this was my don't-worry-about-it-have-fun-and-write-shit story. It's kind of pathetic that this happened as this entire chapter took only two hours to write without interruption or boredom which made me realize what a treasure I had accidentally ignored. We're only a third of the way through, and even though the story is irreverently offensive at times with no valid characterization whatsoever I still love this little piece of shit. So thanks to those of you who are still interested enough to read, and hello to those of you who have only just begun. I love you all just as I love this story, and I promise it won't happen again.
Flaunting the skills he claimed Sheik would never have with the ladies (though Sheik was quick to retort that those were skills he never wanted to have, which just reminded Snake about that whole Triforce thing and sent him down the path of mental disturbance at Toon Link again), Snake was quick in his attempts to cozy up to Cremia after Romani had seemingly gone to bed that night. He complimented her, smiled a lot, and cracked stupid jokes, and in return she captured his heart by mostly ignoring them and subjecting them all to her elaborate and strange sales pitch for the strange, almost mystical milk they sold. That was until Cremia decided she was going to spend the remainder of the night moving furniture.
"It needs a man's touch," she said as drew out the future placement of an assortment of table and chairs.
Obviously, she chose Snake for the grand duty; Snake thought it was because she was warming up to him and wanted some alone time but in reality it was because she considered Pit a little boy and wasn't even aware that Sheik was a man(womanthing).
Pit was offended.
Unfortunately it was a misconception that would plague his entire life from start to finish. After all, no one ever suspected that the angel boy had once been a heroic fighter and could lift or more than one would typically expect with those scrawny little teenage-looking arms of his. At the start of the tournament, Pit was a wide-eyed, naïve angel who believed that things would be different now that he was out of Angel Land and in the company of fellow badasses. But Pit was wrong. Despite all he had been through for the sake of his Goddess and despite said Goddess's false reassurances that Pit was as manly as Captain Falcon and Solid Snake, no one treated Pit seriously. He was constantly being roped into things he didn't want to do by the women and the men never quite accepted him as one of their own. Something was off they felt and, well, Pit was hurt. He cried himself to sleep most nights, and it was incredibly fortunate that he had R.O.B. as a roommate because the robot had little data on what human(ish) tears were anyway.
And the fact that he did have R.O.B. as a roommate added to that feeling of isolation. Why did he have to be stuck with a robot who couldn't possibly know what he was going through? When he first received his invitation to join in the third Smash tournament, Pit was overjoyed to participate and be amongst some of the humans he had watched on television or heard about through the Nintendo grapevine. Oh how his hopes and dreams had been shattered. The broken shards of childish ambition were razors that had inflicted deep cuts into his soul. And soul wounds were the deepest and darkest there were. It was so deep and festering that it felt like constantly crawling in his skin was a wound that would not heal.
No one would ever know of Pit's secret pain.
Sheik, though, was overjoyed that Cremia hadn't even considered him and punched Pit's arm in glee (that hurt beneath his skin, too). "Come on, let's get the hell out of here before something gross happens," he said and subsequently dragged Pit out of his private hellhole and into the night air.
Of course, Sheik's fear as well as Snake's hopes of something gross happening was entirely unfounded. In truth, Cremia was a lesbian who was hopelessly infatuated with her friend Anju who was getting married on a New Day (whenever that was). Oh sure she was happy for her lifelong friend – both of them as she was close with the groom-to-be Kafei as well – but she still just could squelch that pang of loneliness mixed with jealousy. If only she had a woman like Anju to share her life with and help raise Romani and or get her to a psychiatrist...
When she revealed her secret desires for breast companionship to Snake, Pit wasn't the only one with deep wound that crawled beneath his skin. Cremia only further cemented Snake's belief that Zelda was wrong the whole time and that all the women who rejected him really did do so because they were lesbians. In the wee morning hours he would commiserate with Pit over a bottle of Chateau Romani, but for now Pit was uneasily taking a stroll with Sheik outside.
"Hey," Pit began once they were near the barn, "do you think Romani was right? About the whole alien thing, I mean."
Busy tearing apart grass to find hearts, rupees, and other good shit (he learned this particular skill from Link back in the day when they believed themselves to be close), Sheik paused to give Pit a hard stare with only one red eye. The effect was kind of creepy to Pit and had Sheik been aware of how disconcerting it was to the angel, it's likely he wouldn't have done it. But as it was, Pit was given the hard, red eye simply because Sheik liked to look at him. The faux-ninja had never felt this way about Roy, who Pit sorely reminded him of, but there seemed to be a different, unifying trait the two shared. Now if only Sheik knew what it was...
"No," he answered simply. "Everyone knows things like that don't exist."
The answer shocked and wounded Pit to the core (it was deeper than the soul somehow, which was perpetually wounded anyway). Of all people he expected Sheik to indulge his brief fear of aliens he picked up from spying over the human tube and to deny Pit of that fear as well as imply that strange things didn't exist?
Inconceivable.
"Then you don't exist," Pit murmured despite the gaping wound that throbbed within him.
Oblivious to Pit's incomprehensible pain, Sheik went back to uprooting potential Keaton hiding spots and responded in a surprisingly calm manner, "I don't."
Pain was something that had to simply be accepted in life, Sheik learned – one of the few lessons he did receive out of being Zelda's parasite that had overstayed its welcome. Snake had the hurt of aging and being alone, Pit had the hurt of not being accepted, and Sheik had the hurt of not exactly being real. His existential crisis did not go deep, though, and was simply a surface wound beneath the wrappings. After all, if he wasn't real, then neither were any of his worries about the entire nature of his own being – and why worry about something that wasn't there? He and Zelda were opposites in the same body yet no one could ever say that they formed a balanced, complete human being, and even if it wasn't her fault, or it was both of their faults, Sheik blamed Zelda for it anyway and spent the entirety of his brief existence in maintaining that fierce opposition simply because it was the only thing he could do to separate himself in hopes that one day he really would be real – or maybe that one day he'd push from her so hard that they crossed the world to be apart from each other only to meet again from the back. Whatever. So if Sheik didn't exist then neither did angels or aliens, and in an odd sense the ninja found that rather comforting even if Pit hadn't.
Speaking of Pit, he found a red rupee at that moment and looked back up to give it to him...only to see that the angel boy in question was nowhere to be found. In his place, however, was White, which made Sheik scowl under his cowl as he immediately suspected foul play against Pit on the pikmin's part.
"God'damn root."
Sheik loved meat only because Zelda was a vegetarian and it pissed her off that her unruly counterpart would fill her body up with such vile substances when she wasn't there. Even better if it was rotten because he knew that soon after he wouldn't be the one to deal with the mess. After eating a couple platefuls of rotten meat ill-gained from Bowser as Sheik one day, Zelda dispelled the myth that Princesses had tidy (if any) bodily functions in front of all the Smashers. Wario thought it was hot, Ganondorf was surprisingly grossed out, Peach refused to associate with her for the entirety of the week, and Marth spent the rest of the month questioning everything he had ever known about women. Later Zelda issued strict instructions posted everywhere the system would let her that the rest of the players were under no circumstances to allow anything resembling meat into her body again when she was Sheik. Predictably it had the opposite effect and Sheik soon found a friend in Wolf.
So as it was, eating White in revenge for breaking his nose and somehow harming Pit would be what he perceived to be the only voluntary ingestion of vegetables that Sheik would ever experience. He should have found it suspicious when White simply let Zelda's other half pick him up without struggle. In fact, he hung limply between Sheik's fingers in a daze almost and smelled suspiciously like he had drank too much Chateau Romani but Sheik didn't pay any mind to these details. He just turned White away as he pulled down his cowl and bit off the pikmin's head.
The consistency of it was almost like a turnip and the bite was surprisingly clean with no blood in sight. Sheik was amused at how it was both squishy yet crunchy as he chewed so he took another bite, this time out of White's torso. Pikmin torso tasted different than pikmin head, though. What was that hard thing he found? A seed? It wasn't edible, Sheik figured, so he spit it out and put the remainder of the dismembered pikmin formerly known as White in his mouth – and subsequently into his stomach.
As far as vegetables went, eating White hadn't been that bad. It was almost enjoyable even, but that was more out of the revenge factor than any real love of the taste. But regardless of why Sheik enjoyed eating him, it made him feel satiated and full. He almost went back into the house but the thought of Snake and Cremia doing gross shit promptly forced him to reconsider that thought. So instead he went inside the barn to chill with the cows.
"Moo," mooed the cows as cows usually do.
"Ninja," ninjaed the ninja as ninjas usually don't.
They had a good thing going on, Sheik and the cows did, until the aliens came along and ruined everything by beaming them up onto their spaceship.
Nonexistent fuckers.
