Fearless
Disclaimer: Is there honestly a need for these by now?
A/N: So this one's a little less deep dark depressing-ness and a little more humor, thank you very much, although the next chapter (which btw will be just a tad shorter) gets rather heavy. Oh well. Whaddaya gonna do. Here we meet another one of our favorite characters…I'm not gonna tell you who! Bwahaha! Okay.
Oh and you like the music themes I thought up? Maybe you enjoyed those. Let me know and… Enjoy! :)
Chapter 9
Cloud pounded on the bathroom door. "We gotta go, sis – man! Hurry it up! And no excuses!"
"Tampons are not any easier to use when you're being repeatedly harassed!" she shrieked back. She knew that Max and Shane were already out of the dorm, and at this point, she was through with stress. Diana could hear him backpedal from the door, fast.
"What's up with you two?" She heard Tifa's voice, muffled through the door.
"Sh – he – that one is threatening me with feminine products!" Cloud spluttered. Diana could just see his face going pink. Make that red. Possibly purple. Maybe he'd have an apoplexy if she encouraged him enough, and then they'd have a legitimate excuse for their extreme lateness…
Pause. "Tampons," Tifa uttered. She looked at the bathroom door, close to collapsing in giggles like a twelve-year-old at the look on her boyfriend's face. Cloud looked annoyed, but softened when he turned his gaze to her. He held out his arms tentatively and she wrapped her arms around his middle, sighing softly as she breathed in his scent. He kissed the top of her smooth black hair and murmured something. "Hm?" Tifa turned her head up to see his sky blue eyes. It turned out that she wouldn't get her answer until later. Diana stomped out just then, pulling a shirt on over her head.
"Finally!" her roommate fumed while Tifa went back to trying to keep the bubbly giggles down. He disentangled himself from Tifa, and chucked Diana's boots at her, threw her famous green jacket at her head, and dragged her out the door.
"Go fast! You're running late!" Tifa called after them cheerily, winking at Cloud.
"Like I don't know?" Cloud grumbled, hauling a temporarily blinded-by-jacket Diana along.
"I can walk for myself! Or run!"
Some passing second classes just smiled and shook their heads at the already notorious pair. What was it this time? No one was actually sure if they wanted to know. It was only a matter of time until their friend Zack Fair corrupted them further, and then they'd have a situation no one wanted to consider on their hands.
'Devon' hurried after Cloud, who had released her. She struggled to get free of her jacket while holding onto her boots and attempting to navigate the treacherous stairwell. Obviously SOLDIERs didn't need handrails. Finally getting her arms into the sleeves, she tried to hop down the stairs while pulling her boots on. Not the easiest thing to do. Especially with your friend screaming at you nonstop from the next flight down the entire time. She thought she caught something about how the swordsmaster would hang them from a tree after getting their roommates really drunk and giving them staves for practice with moving targets… Misheard or not, not such a great prospect. As she paused on a landing, she overbalanced slightly, her resulting yell increasing in magnitude as she tried and failed to hop in her stronger leg to regain her position. Her other foot was stuck and she couldn't put it down, and – oh, fiddlesticks. In fact, she went and hopped right off the landing.
"Agh! Ow! Shit! Aaaughh! %&*$*!" She put some extra colorful language she'd picked up from Cid the boisterous pilot to good use, punctuating each thud down the steps with some rather imaginative expressions. When's it going to stopstopSTOP? With a final crash, she slammed into something relatively solid at the bottom. But not a wall. Ah, hell, with her luck, it was someone important.
She scrambled to her feet for what seemed like the millionth time since day one. She looked up, expecting the worst at this point – although she couldn't decide it Zack, Sephiroth, or the Director would be the worst right now.
Well, it wasn't any of them, but she recognized the flaming redhead anyway. It was one of the two Turks from when Zack had been giving them all orientation in the very beginning…the one who wasn't supposed to be there, or whatever. Oh boy. Diana had immediately marked him as a guy who not only attracted trouble, he went purposefully searching for it.
"Hey there, yo. Whatcha doin' on the ground, huh?" he inquired, a sly smile sneaking its way onto his face. He loved tormenting the newbies! It was an entertaining hobby. And this one was particularly small and klutzy.
"Love to stay and chat, but I gotta run," she said hurriedly, yanking the damn renegade boot all the way on and attempting to make a dive for the door. The swordsmaster was going to have her hide as it was, and she made the mistake of pointing this out to the Turk in her haste. Cloud was already long gone.
"Really now. What a shame. You'd better run along now then, small one," he taunted, standing smack in the doorway.
She slowly turned her eyes to his face again, as they had previously been frantically flicking around the floor and the door behind him. She didn't realize it, but they had turned so light a gray that they were almost white. It was creepy. The Turk's own eyes flared slightly for a second before lapsing back to his leering expression.
"You're in my way," she stated coldly.
"What's that? I don't believe I heard you," he sneered condescendingly, that obnoxious smirk still on his angular face.
"I said, you're in my way, damned Turkey." Icicles cracked on her words.
The two tried and failed to stare each other down for another five seconds. Diana was just about to suggest that she just make things easier and smash out the window with his head instead, when he suddenly laughed and reached over to smack her on the arm.
"Hey, you're cool, yo!" It was a real grin. Huh? "Name's Reno. See ya round!" He smacked her on the back and trotted off up the stairs.
Diana blinked. Rewind button, anyone? She thought before remembering where she was supposed to be. Oh. Right. She continued through the recently vacated doorway, taking the steps down three at a time. She burst out a heavy door and pelted across the training yard, seeing the Cloud had reached the group…alllll the way over yonder. Absofrigginlutely fantastic. They tended not to appreciate lateness in the army. Like, really not. Seeing the figure's back whom she assumed to be the trainer raise a clipboard and open his mouth, she cursed and accelerated.
Cloud looked around in apprehension. No Devon…he meant Diana. Jeez. Being in on a secret was so confusing sometimes. Then he saw the slight figure running for them at full blast. He smacked a hand over his eyes and groaned quietly. Max looked at him inquisitively.
"Our small friend's about to make an entrance and Angeal's about to get a surprise," Cloud elucidated. Max saw Devon coming and failed to suppress a snigger of anticipation.
"We seem to be missing one…" drawled the trainer, not particularly eager to dish out more late punishments. "Lov—"
"Loveless! Here, sorry, sir!" Devon called as he skidded into line, panting and raising a small dust cloud.
"Hmph. Well then. All right." The first class grumpily made a mark on the sheet on his clipboard of doom. The man who was supposed to be doing this job had been sent off on a month-long diplomacy mission, and look who had been drafted into his slot without consent. Fantastic. Sure, he was normally good-natured, but what bugged him was the utter cluelessness of a good percentage of the cadet population. It was like being the wide-eyed, stupefied freshman in high school all over again.
A minute later, Angeal was done giving them instructions but held Diana and Cloud back. "In a way, you're lucky I'm here so someone else isn't haranguing you asking why you were gone and missed a good part of the training. Not so lucky cause you'll need to stay for extra help. You missed an entire week and a half, you know." Between the mission and the time spent in the hospital wing with Aerith later, a lot of time had passed. And besides that, it had been a bit hard to stay in shape with, oh, say, mako poisoning or a fractured shin. For example.
"Yes, sir," the younger man and woman both nodded. This sure would be something.
Angeal held up a hand. "However, I don't have the time—I have to tend to my second classes and paperwork besides—but Zack volunteered to help his friends out." The man's mouth quirked to the side. How Zack went through with life he never could quite figure out. No one knew how he managed to get all his paperwork in and yet be seen doing any number of stupid, hazardous things at everyone else's expense. Well, at least, everyone knew it was him. He was smart enough not to get caught…most of the time. It was funny how he'd befriended these two. What a dangerous trio. Not unlike himself, Genesis, and Sephiroth at their age… He stopped reminiscing and told them what they could start with for today.
After a rather long while, Gigantor took it upon himself to subtly (or so he believed) edge closer to where Cloud and 'midget boy' were doing their stuff. It had eventually occurred to him, amazing as it may have been, that the two were doing what the rest of the group had done over a week ago. "Still ain't caught up, are ya?"
"In case it happened to evade your no doubt impeccable scrutiny," Diana replied coolly without taking her eyes off what she was doing, "We have in fact been missing for the past while and therefore have missed all events and activities around here resulting in our subsequent albeit temporary lack of knowledge on this subject matter which I'm sure your highly adept self is likely more than proficient at by this point in time."
The giant blinked. Cloud ducked his head and successfully hid a snicker when he realized that the man had little idea of what Devon had just said, much less picked up on the insults in his sarcasm. Er, her sarcasm. Diana's. No, Devon's. He had to think of her as just another guy when they were around other people. Right. Well, either way, right now he couldn't be more glad of her way with words. She didn't even have to get to fancy with the vocabulary, just the way she said it sufficed to bewilder.
"So y'are just slow-assed learners," Gigantor leered, coming to his own misguided conclusion.
Diana just straightened fully them and turned her head to look him full in the face with a pair of pale gray eyes. She was still secretly fuming about her first encounter with this jerk. "Yes. We're incredibly dumb, so much you wouldn't believe, and we've been rerunning everything that we never did the first time which doesn't even make sense and completely were not not here and definitely didn't miss anything because by the Goddess wouldn't that be a pain to try to make up after half a week and would you look at the time it's taken you a good couple of hours to pick up on all this fascinating stuff I bet you never knew you had it in you well I didn't know a lot of things about myself either until several days ago you can't imagine what fun it is to just have answers popping up in your face everywhere you turn without even having known the question first and did I fail to mention what it's like trying to navigate around and live life for a few days with bandages all over you feeling like the living dead which is just ever so enjoyable and if you happen to so much as—"
She suddenly felt a light hand on her shoulder. She was debating halfway between turning and decking whoever it was, or just screaming in their face, but decided instead to squeeze her eyes shut for a second and pray she looked vaguely sane. She opened them again and saw Zack come up beside her.
"Back to training…all of you," he said shortly before turning to Diana and saying quietly, "Was that our language or not?"
"Absolutely," she muttered, still seething. What could she say? Men don't get their effing periods! Much less have to hide it, symptoms and all.
"One of these times y' won't have no first class to hide behind," Gigantor sneered, ignoring (or quite possibly failing to hear) Zack's order. Diana saw the characteristic way the corded muscles in Zack's arms tightened slightly and he grew absolutely still, as he did whenever someone was bashing his friends. Fighting the sudden intense urge to stare at said arms—damn these blasts of hormones—she instead swept Zack aside and stepped forward, getting as up close and personal as she could with the offender, considering her height.
"I. Hide. Behind. No one," she snarled. It wasn't just the guy that annoyed her. It was the pet peeve that he had chosen to go after.
Her eyes were going paler and creepier by the second, and the large man actually stumbled back a step and a half. She just followed, getting closer. He had struck a nerve and on top of everything else it was pissing her off. A growl built in her throat and she bit it off.
"Let's get going already. I need to hit something," she growled, spinning back and stalking past her friends. Cloud practically cowered back into Zack. He made a mental note not to argue with Tifa when she was PMSing.
After a moment, Zack dared to speak. "You know, one of these days that mouth of yours is gonna get you into some serious crap." He was half serious, but being Zack, he was also half joking.
She half-laughed herself, the sound slightly hysterical. "Yeah. You're telling me."
That night in the mess hall, she told her four friends about her run-in with Reno the Turk.
"And he just let you go by," Zack asked dryly. That was so unlike Reno that it wasn't even funny. Not like he doubted Dev, but to him it sounded like someone had spiked Reno's coffee that morning. It wasn't like it would be the first incident…
"Well, first he tried to pull the 'I'm going to entertain myself by torturing newbies with my awesome Turkey powers and no doubt unmatched IQ' but then I just kinda…well, I got ticked off and after a second he just kinda was like 'man, you're okay, yo' and ran off. He likes that word. A lot. Is that normal?" she rambled on.
"It's Reno. Normal comes nowhere near that guy," Zack rolled his eyes, stuffing his face with spaghetti. "If anything – 'scuse me – it runs away screaming."
"Hm." She caught his eye and knew he was thinking the same thing as her. "Who would've spiked the coffee?" she wanted to know.
"There's plenty who would like to stick something in Reno's drink, trust me," Zack said dryly. "I just keep him around to pull pranks with and then frame him…which never seems to work quite so well…" He frowned slightly. "But that one time when he set an entire one of the fields on fire with that damn flamethrower he made was completely his—"
"He made a flamethrower? Wicked!" Max crowed.
"Not if you're the one getting your ass lit on fire!" Zack moaned. "Or chased around until… Now there, I won't go into detail. And, no," he fixed Max with a look, "I'm not going to tell you how to make one. That'd be double the menace to society."
Max snorted and rolled his foxy brown eyes. "I wasn't gonna ask that…"
"Bull," Shane stated in between inhaling forkfuls of spaghetti.
How are they all so damn skinny? Diana wrinkled her nose. Guys. They eat like pigs, show off how amazingly strong they are and how much endurance they have nonstop, then go back to stuffing their faces again. Yet if anything they lose weight and have no butts to speak of whatsoever? I've got some news for you, Gaia: some interesting choices in the laws of nature there. Then again, I can't complain. I've always had a high metabolism and I definitely work it off more than enough. She had been way hungrier than normal since she got here. It made total sense, and coupled with her perpetual slight muscle soreness, it was actually a good feeling. It meant that she was getting stronger. Her friends had had a tendency to envy her ability to scarf down everything in sight, then go run a few miles, go eat ice cream, whatever, and never have to give it a second thought. The drawback was her lack of curves. Not like I need anything else to give me away, she thought wryly. And no butt besides. After a second she caught herself thinking about certain guys and—nevermindmovingonnow! She shook her head hard, forgetting she had been in the middle of a conversation.
"Whassa matter?" Cloud asked.
She looked up wide-eyed and instinctively recoiled back behind her defenses. "—Never mind. Just, you know, thinking."
"…Kay." He could make an educated guess at what. Also a second guess. But he wasn't going to say that…and then he really wasn't going to say that!
A/N: You like, yeah? XD Yes Reno made his appearance! I warned you… And um yeah so this is pretty much exactly what I would act like if I got severe PMS, which I hardly ever do but whatever, I figured I could speak from experience. Ha so does anyone have an idea of what Cloud's thoughts are in his parting line? Reviews make me happy…! Thanks for reading :)