a/n: man, i'm tired. and i still have 3 more eps of this to reformat for FFnet and post today. i just feel like syncing it now with what's already been posted on a reyvateil's melody.
Ep 7: "YOU SEE THE HAT? I AM MRS. NESBITT!"
Meanwhile, somewhere between Mint Block and Lady Cloche's dresser drawer full of rumpled pantyhose...
Three girls were lounging 'round the ol' campfire out on the nighttime adventure trail. The Other Cloche was once again whining about how little she resembled her famous namesake, as she sat staring blandly into the fire. Kanna, wishing she could suddenly go deaf, was sprawled un-ladylike not far from Cloche, looking like she was simultaneously suffering from really bad indigestion and from having watched too many episodes of Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. Hearing too much whining can sometimes do that to feisty people. C.P., on the other hand, was coping with the situation by lazily whistling a pretty song to herself - - Haibane Renmei's Free Bird - - as she lay staring at the stars, hands clasped behind her head. How could she possibly know of such a song when it's not even a part of her world, you ask? Hmm...maybe a better question would be: what flavor of Linux do you suppose the Tower Designers went with for Sol Marta's OS? Debian? OpenSUSE? Pish-tosh. Gotta be Gentoo, Slackware, or hand-compiled from source - - real hacker shittake.
That being said, the narrator uses Debian-based Ubuntu. Suuuck.
"...but it's like, who knew I would suck so bad as a human being?" Cloche droned on, oblivious as to whether or not anyone was actually listening. "I just...I don't understand. Sigh. Why, oh why did my dad ever name me after Lady Cloche? I'm nothing like her. Don't look like her...don't sound like her...can't sing like her...not as pretty as her...it's like, if I'm named after her, you'd think I'd share in just a little bit of her awesomeness." She looked down at herself. "Or bustiness. But no, no...I'm just flat, dumb, boring ol' Cloche Burr. Half-pint and loser. And stuck on Cosmosphere Level 2. But people say, 'Well those are just externals! It's what you're like on the inside that counts!' Well on the inside I'm nothing like Lady Cloche, either. She's smart...I'm dumb. She's charming...I'm blah. And she's a great leader...I can't even lead a tea party of my own stuffed animals."
Slight embarrassed pause at that last bit. Even C.P. had suddenly stopped her whistling.
Three seconds later, Kanna pounced.
"You have tea parties with your stuffed animals?" she blared, grinning like a high school bully who had finally found her victim's weak spot.
Cloche suddenly felt as trapped as a tiny fearful-eyed kitten in a cardboard box about to be groped and manhandled by a flock of blushing schoolgirls all squealing 'Kawaiiiiiiiiiiii!'
"N...N-Not anymore!" she stammered after another embarrassed pause.
"Oh, reeeeeeally?" Kanna said deliciously. "So when was the last time you had one of these tea parties then, hmmmmmm?"
Cloche clamped her lips shut and turned away to stare at the fire, trying to look casual. It's hard to look casual when you're wide-eyed and sweating bullets.
"No comment, she says," Kanna giggled evilly, crawling ever closer to Cloche and beginning to invade her personal space.
C.P. spoke up, her voice plain and casual, as if the world were full of many more important things to think about. "So what. So she has tea parties with her stuffed animals, big deal. I used to have tea parties with my dolls, too."
"But how long ago?"
"When I was real little."
Kanna was grinning so much now that she was about ready to drool. "Heeee! See, that's what one would normally expect! But Cloche here, on the other hand..."
"And another thing. It's a little-known fact that Lady Cloche herself loves stuffed animals and cute things. Her personal chambers are loaded with cute stuff.
"What? Nuh-uh!"
"Don't make me say 'yeah-huh'. It's true."
"Well how come I've never heard of that before?"
"That would be the definition of 'little-known fact'."
"Then how do you know?"
"I caught a Grand Bell Knight sleeping once and tortured him through the night...made him spill all sorts of juicy details about Lady Cloche and her government's secrets."
Kanna was speechless.
Cloche was dumbfounded.
Even the crickets that had been chirring away suddenly went dead silent.
"Just kidding," C.P. said, without a trace of a smile.
"You're a scary girl sometimes, you know that?" Kanna said, involuntarily edging herself a few centimeters further away from the warrior-girl.
C.P. merely resumed her lazy whistling, looking for all the world like a very relaxed Goemon.
Kanna, turning her attention back to her Cloche-shaped victim, decided to tease her in a supportive fashion - - if there is such a thing. "Well if that's really true, then you know what that means? It means you are a little like Lady Cloche after all! You're always wanting to be like her, so now, there you go! You have your thing for cute stuff in common with her!"
Cloche, with her personal space still being invaded by a leering Kanna, mumbled, "That wasn't exactly the kind of thing I had in mind."
"Well, take what you can get, right?"
The words stung poor Cloche's socially-maladjusted heart. "You're mean, Kanna," she suddenly said, breaking away from her and curling herself up into a ball on the ground, with her back to Kanna.
"Why don't you have a tea party to cheer yourself up?" C.P. suggested.
"You too, C.P," Cloche pouted.
"I wasn't picking on you. If it makes you happy, it makes you happy. Why should you care what we think? Just enjoy yourself."
...Tch! Quit trying to fling bits of wisdom into this comedy fic, C.P.!
Meanwhile, Kanna, looking rather remorseless about having picked on Cloche like a roly-poly until she curled up into a ball, commented, "You know, that doesn't fit my image of you, C.P. You, playing with dolls? In a tea party?"
"Why? I was a little girl."
"But still! I mean...this is you we're talking about."
"Well...I also used to trash my tea party setup in a rampage while I bashed my dolls in the face with a bokken. It was a ninja tea party."
More silence ensued.
"Okay, I can totally see that."
C.P. merely resumed her lazy whistling, looking for all the world like a very relaxed Jin. Sans megane.
Kanna crawled over to Cloche, seemingly eager to chomp and tear off another piece of her dignity. She tried to inspect Cloche's face, but the flustered Cloche simply buried herself in her arms.
"It looks like we're not enjoying ourselves over here yet," Kanna giggled.
"Go away," came Cloche's muffled voice.
Suddenly Kanna stood up, with an important announcement to make. "I have an important announcement to make," she declared. Hurr. "For the next few minutes, we shall attempt to cheer up Cloche through the use of stuffed animals! But first...we need to gather information! Hmm...what kind of stuffed animals would make Cloche the happiest right now?" she mused.
"Gergo," C.P. replied immediately.
"Too common," Kanna dismissed with a wave of her hand.
"Geugo."
"Too butt-like."
"Poms."
Cloche let out a stifled squeak and winced.
"Let's save Cloche's freaking out over a Pom for when I need cheering up."
"Wyverns."
"Those aren't cute."
"Says you."
"I-got-it-I-got-it! What about Pippens?" Kanna beamed.
"No, those are only good for target practice."
"Like those newer ones they make that are so soft and squishy!" she went on, ignoring C.P. "Some of them can even do Song Server stuff when you squeeze 'em, now. You get a hug and a cute song magic at the very same time! But sometimes the server function farts and the Pippen just blows up. I've heard that especially happens with the cheap knock-offs."
"How's an exploding Pippen supposed to cheer up Cloche?"
"Will everybody just stop talking about stuffed animals already?" Cloche cried.
"Girls, girls!" Lance said casually as he and Burl strolled up from the woody darkness after having searched in vain for a good nighttime fishing spot (because like a couple of knuckleheads they forgot that Metafalss has no standing bodies of water). "What's all the hubbub, bub? C'mon! There's a beautiful Infel Phira out tonight...we've got fire, we've got food...why bicker amongst ourselves? Right now this is as good as it gets." He sat down next to Cloche and gave her a couple of chummy pats on her back, looking for all the world as if he were patting his favorite pet Labrador Retriever.
"Please dear Goddess, don't ever walk up and say something like that again," Kanna sighed.
"Say something like what?" Lance grinned. "What's all the hub - -"
"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Kanna screamed - - one of those high-pitched, eardrum-piercing girl screams that only girls can scream. You know the kind. Burl about choked on the Kurku Cake Bar he was munching just from the sheer decibels emanating from her lungs. Loud girl is loud...or so they might say.
After the last echoes died away, C.P. lazily raised a forearm, her hand balled into a fist. "Hey Kanna...come closer to my fist and do that again," she said.
