The Loveless
©®™ Lt. Commander Richie
Disclaimer: I own FFVII and Sasuke isn't a Mary Sue. A new Sharingan form, seriously? The boy needs to die real soon.
Chapter 10
"Hey Lareth... How's life?" Lareth Kingsley was a rather dark individual. Of course, you could say that about anyone that carried around a gunblade that was basically the same size and weight as themselves without too much trouble and wore several bandoleers of bullets for the thing like a belt. Nevermind that what wasn't metal on her clothes was either mesh or leather or that her eyes were a creepy shade of red that rivaled Vincent Valentine's.
"Life-like." The woman replied, perusing through the selection of high-level Materia that Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff had on its shelves. It wasn't particularly dangerous stuff... No, that stuff was in the safe with the time lock and carefully documented for sale in a large binder chained to the wall.
"How's the gunblade working for you? You named it yet, or are you just gonna let it be anonymous?" Chyrin idly played with the silk knot on the sword holstered behind her back, smiling wide. Her blindfold was tied around her forehead like a ninja headband, the long ties in the back tied in a bow.
"Zantetsuken." Lareth answered, raising a blue-black eyebrow at the girl behind the counter with the silvery-white hair. The teen chuckled, dropping the silk knot.
"Gesundheit. Oh, and don't touch the Odin Summons for a few minutes." About a month back, Lareth had begun coming in daily. It had begun with buying an old ShinRa-issue gunblade, the same one that had come in the weapons crate with the stolen Buster Sword. Then it had escalated to Materia, items for fusion, and the occasional stuffed and mounted monster.
"Did you ever name your katana?" Lareth asked, pixie-cut blue-black hair swishing around as she turned to look at the girl behind the register. Chyrin pulled the sword halfway from its sheath, running her thumb across the purple Tsukamaki. The Tsuba shone in the fluorescent lights, glinting gold and silver with the occasional flash of an inset stone.
"I'm torn between calling it something sentimentally appeasing to my fangirl side, or calling it 'Kumo' for the hell of it." The sword was carefully thrust back into its sheath, the click it made audible over the buzzing of the lights and the hum of the chest-like refrigerator in the bowels of the store.
"Call it something that reflects what it really is." The phone rang, making the two lone patrons of the store jump. Chyrin grabbed it and nearly dropped it, looking at the caller ID. 833-8399... That was Laimaida again. The teen brought it to her ear, barely containing a grin.
"Mushi-mushi? Kokontoko Urahara Shōten desu!" Yes, she had terrible grammar and didn't know anything beyond what she had learned on the Internet before coming to Edge, but it wasn't like Lamaida knew that. The reference to the eccentric shopkeeper from Bleach was always an added bonus, too. The woman on the other end spluttered a few times, trying to understand what had been said.
"Do you speak Common?" The woman finally asked, and Chyrin had to stop herself from laughing.
"Nani?" She asked, sounding totally serious and yet looking as though she was ready to burst. Lareth chuckled and pulled several items from the shelf in front of her, putting them in her basket with the few pieces of Materia she had already picked out.
"Nevermind..." With a final click, the line went dead. Chyrin laughed and put the phone back on its receiver, smiling.
"I swear to freakin' Minerva, I love doing that." Looking over the contents of her basket once more, Lareth sat it down on the glass display case-slash-counter and pulled the large leatherbound Fusion tome that was chained to the wall towards herself.
"Can you combine a Feather Cap and a Super Ribbon?" She asked, itching at a piece of the mesh part of her shirt. "I need something that doesn't make me look like I scalped Cloud Strife and used his hair as a wig, but still increases my Limit Break parameters and nulls all status ailments." Chyrin blinked several times, before looking over at the 'Do Not Disturb – THIS MEANS YOU, CHYRIN' sign hung on the door to the back room. Then she laughed, leaning against one of the crates from a recent delivery.
"Oh geez, Lareth... That's rich. I don't know jack-shit about doing Fusions like that! You know that! That'd be like me trying to combine Gurren and Lagann manually without Kamina shouting random words of pseudo-adviii..." The glare sent the silver-haired teen's way was enough for her to shut up and reach for the phone. "I'll get clearance from the WRO if you help."
"Thanks!" While the woman was scary as all hell when glaring, when she smiled it was like nothing could go wrong. Chyrin twitched, but turned the Fusion Tome around and opened it up to the page with the sticky note on it. Taped over a page of extremely low-level Fusions was a piece of paper with contact information about high-level spells inside city limits. The teen dialed the WRO number at the top, sending a rather dry expression at the suddenly-curious Lareth that was poking a potted Mandrake shoot.
"Thank you for calling the WRO main office, this is Esther, how may I direct your call?" Chyrin snickered a bit at the woman's name and how much she sounded like the nun from Trinity Blood, but quickly composed herself.
"Can you route me through to the..." The teen paused to look at the sheet in the Tome and the instructions on it, before beginning again. "The Inter-City High Level Magic-Usage Clearance Bureau?"
"Certainly! One moment." Lareth snickered slightly as she removed the Zantetsuken gunblade from her back so as to crouch down and look at the things in the display case while she waited.
"Mouthful." She said, and fiddled with a loose string on one of the mesh parts of her shirt.
"Shut up." Chyrin muttered, her hand over the receiver as she listened to a really bad instrumental version of a popular song while she waited.
"Thanks for waiting. What do you need clearance for?" The man on the other end sounded as though he needed a break. A break, and lots of coffee. And maybe a little less monotone.
"An extremely high-level fusion of a Feather Cap and a Super Ribbon. I'll have help, if that's a defining factor." The man on the other end sighed, as though he got calls like the one Chyrin was making constantly.
"Shouldn't you be in school?" He asked, and it was the girl's turn to sigh.
"Listen, bub. I've got a customer here waiting for me to do this fusion, and she's got a freakin' huge gunblade. Unless you want bad things to happen to me, I would suggest giving me clearance." Chyrin paused, and added something as an afterthought. "Please?" There was some clicking on the other end, a few beeps, and the man came back.
"You're cleared until you finish the Fusion. Then you're back to civilian-level clearance. Thanks for actually getting clearance first." With that and a click, the connection went dead. Chyrin hung the phone back up and began leafing through the Fusion Tome, watching Lareth out of the corner of her eye.
"If you don't stop poking that, it'll use some kind of Unholy Screech on you or something." A grating scream ripped through the room, and the normally-stoic woman fell backwards muttering curses. "Tolja. Here it is... Really freaking high-level Fusion I shouldn't be attempting without adult supervision."
"What're you waiting for?" Lareth got to her feet and walked over, raising an eyebrow and turning the Tome around. "This shouldn't be too hard."
"Says you. Alright, stick the Super Ribbon in the Feather Cap." The dark-looking woman across the counter did as she was told, and Chyrin continued. "Now get Fusion chalk and draw... Come on, why can't they call this Alchemy and get it over with?" The silver-haired teen sighed and opened a drawer, pulling out a piece of white chalk and drawing a swift circle around the Feather Cap and Super Ribbon on the table. In a few more seconds of work, the rest of the circle was filled in with the inane scribblings that the Fusion Tome dictated.
"It's your fault if this blows up in our faces." Lareth showed a bit of a smile, what looked like a pointed tooth showing from between her lips. Chyrin reached out and placed both hands on the edge of the circle, gesturing with her head for the woman across the counter to do the same. The black-haired woman sighed and put her hands on the circle as well, and the teen behind the counter twisted so as to look at the Fusion Tome.
"It shouldn't blow up... Not unless you do something stupid, like sneeze on the circle. Now what do we do next?" Chyrin leaned towards the Tome a bit farther, scanning the page for the activation sequence. One of her fingers smudged a line a bit, but she quickly corrected where her hands were and went back to reading. At the very bottom of the page, she finally found it.
"I don't have all day." Lareth said, upper lip curling into a sneer. Chyrin returned her attention to the circle, matching the dark-looking woman's sneer with a large smile.
"That's okay, we're almost done. Now lesse..." The silver-haired teen looked back at the page for a moment, and then back at the circle. "Altus-campester iunctura numerus viginti tres." She recited, looking confused when nothing happened.
"Is that it?" That was about when everything went wrong. Lareth removed her hands as she talked, and the circle began to glow a bright yellow. Chyrin yelled and grabbed the Fusion Tome, stowing it safely away just as the circle exploded in a huge crack of sound and a large plume of black smoke. The smoke cleared fairly quickly, exposing the mess that had been made. Where the Feather Cap and Super Ribbon had been, a scorched circle marred the wood of the front counter. A huge blast area of soot radiated out in all directions, except for a clear spot in several areas... Namely right behind Chyrin and Lareth. The two opened their eyes, and Chyrin coughed several times. A cloud of black smoke radiated outward from her frame, and Lareth promptly pointed and laughed at her.
"What in Ifrit's name did you do?" The door to the back room was thrown open, revealing Zoltar in a sleeping cap with a toothbrush in his hand. Lareth stopped laughing, blinking her red eyes a few times.
"Her fault!" A cloud of soot puffed into the air as Chyrin pointed at the woman across the counter from her, and the teen coughed a few times as she inhaled some. Zoltar put his head in his hands, shaking his head a few times before sitting down on one of the crates behind the counter. A small cloud of soot puffed around him as he did so, but neither of the other two laughed.
"What level was it, and please tell me you got clearance." Chyrin pulled the Fusion Tome out from under the counter, soot drifting from her form every time she moved. Lareth ran her hand through her hair a few times, soot falling from the blue-black pixie-cut in motes.
"The kind of level I shouldn't be attempting without trained professional supervision... And I got clearance?" The silver-haired teen looked sheepish behind the black on her face, and Zoltar groaned loudly and shook his head again.
"Cool." Chyrin and Zoltar both focused their attention on Lareth, who was sifting through the soot and ashes on the counter. Her fingers brushed silver-colored metal, and from the mess that had been created she pulled a medium-sized keychain with three heads, a wing and a tail made of a chain and a blade. The silver-haired teenager that had made the whole mess promptly screamed like the fangirl she was and started jumping up and down while flailing madly. Lareth and Zoltar both looked at her like she was crazy... And at that point, she probably was.
"Stop spazflailing, you little teenaged fantard." The dark-looking woman finally said, turning around a picking up her Zantetsuken from where it had fallen during the blast. She attached the keychain to the handle, and then slung the giant weapon onto her back. "Now, how much do I owe you?"
Guess what Lareth got. Go on, guess. I've got one tied around my neck right now.
HOLY SWEET JENOVA ON A STICK! I'm so sorry this is two weeks late! I haven't had internet for the past two weeks, I swear!
I won't have any time to work on the next chapter over the next two and a half weeks, either. However, when I return I'll have a chapter and more than likely Yuffentine fanservice pictures from the con! Just you wait!