Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This story is mine, as are McCallister, Jake, Piper, and Eugenia Harker. One subplot starts up in this chapter that I have been looking forward to writing for weeks. Enjoy!
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061 – Tales from the Jeep
The parking garage was mostly empty for the morning. Most people were at work. Tabaeus was counting on that. The Weapons Specialist Department had just met a crucial deadline that had been looming over all of them for the past month. She had just come off an all nighter to finish her segment of the reports. Normally she didn't do this sort of thing, but she had decided to blow off the rest of the morning and just…not do anything.
So there she was, lying on her back inside the opened back hatch of Commander Leonhart and Lieutenant Lockhart's Jeep, staring at the ceiling of the vehicle. It was a humid morning, but not too hot, so she had just removed her uniform jacket and draped it over the edge of the hatch. The little smiley face that someone had drawn on the ceiling of the Jeep grinned down at her and she exhaled, closing her eyes.
Nearing footsteps made her cringe and open her eyes. Seriously? Right now? She couldn't even get two minutes alone with her thoughts? She was getting nearer and nearer to a stress breakdown, and some lazy ass skipping on a shift was going to—
Commander Leonhart rounded the corner, glancing over to the open hatch of the Jeep, spotting her. Oh, well he was okay then, she considered. Her superior officer had been crunching the deadlines even harder than she had been. She sat up.
"Sir."
"Nuh uh." He waved away her attempt to salute, "Scoot over."
Tabaeus immediately shifted to the right side of the hatch, and he climbed up onto the left side. He let out a long exhale, looking just as wrung out and spent as she felt, and she relaxed slightly. They both reclined to their backs on the floorboard of the back hatch. Neither said anything for several minutes.
Her mind drifted back to her stresses. Her date with Jake had been…interesting. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting. He had been…gentlemanly and attentive. It was so unlike their normal, jeering remarks at each other that she had gotten self conscious. But now the date was over…what next? Another date? Had they friend-zoned each other? Nervous energy writhed through her stomach, and she squirmed. Everyone had been asking, prying, trying to sway her to see how great of a guy Jake was and why wasn't she being more responsive to him? What, just because he liked her she was obligated she like him back? Did she?
"We bought a crib yesterday." Her commander blurted beside her out of the blue.
She looked at him without moving her head and noted that he'd busted out the secret jar of peanut butter that was stashed inside the Jeep. He'd already unscrewed the top and was spooning the stuff out with a popsicle stick. Oh, he must be stressing out pretty badly too if he was going straight for the peanut butter at 9 in the morning.
Fair enough.
"Jake sent me flowers last week." She confessed.
"We still don't have a name picked out. It shouldn't be this hard."
"He's been texting me and I don't know if he's being sociable or flirting."
"I don't know how to put a crib together. The directions are in twelve different languages!"
"I don't know how to flirt. It's so awkward and…I just feel stupid."
"What if I put it together wrong and it falls apart while the baby's in it?"
"People keep acting like I'm 'supposed' to like Jake. I want to like Jake. I don't know if I do or not and how seriously I do if I do, which I don't know. Why isn't this black and white?!"
"Tifa isn't freaking out. At least not around me, she isn't. She's just sort of…calm about everything. What if something goes wrong?"
"Say we don't work out. Then it's triple awkward and it's my fault, because I will be the one to mess this up. I always am when it comes to…feelings."
"What if my daughter doesn't like me? I'm not good with kids. I don't know how to act around kids."
"Why is Jake even bothering with me? There are dozens of other women in the Alliance, much more attractive and flirty than me. I'm a lagoon creature next to some of them."
"My mother died just a few days after I was born. What if I'm cursed? Tifa thinks I'm being ridiculous, but I can't—if she—"
"What if I end up falling in love with Jake and he breaks my heart? But what if I don't give him a chance and I never know—"
"I'm scared."
"Me too."
They both fell quiet again, slightly out of breath from the rambling.
Her face felt hot from confessing so many things that she normally kept internalized, but it was just Commander Leonhart. Beside her, he seemed to be thinking vice versa.
After a not-quite-awkward-but-not-completely-comfortable silence, he held up the jar of peanut butter and a second popsicle stick. She snorted and took the stick, dipping it into the jar and drawing out a lump of the butter. He helped himself to another dollop of it as well.
"Who drew that?" He gestured to the smiley face on the ceiling.
"I have no idea, sir." She said, licking the peanut butter from the stick.
A contemplative silence settled between them.
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062 – Under the Weather
"You're not allergic, are you?" Aerith asked, looking alarmed at Rinoa's violent sneeze.
Rinoa regarded her flatly over her wad of tissues. "Piper has been here for over a month. I think I would have reacted sooner if I was." She groaned, massaging her temples. "I think I've caught the Plague."
"Wow, that's impressive." Aerith said flippantly, stirring her tea and looking at her roommate, who was splayed out in a pathetic mess on the couch in the living room.
Rinoa had had the sniffles yesterday, but it had quickly escalated into a full blown cold, and it was having its way with her. She was still wearing her pajamas, was bundled up in a blanket, her hair was unkempt and disheveled, her nose was red, her eyes were puffy, she was congested, and she kept switching between coughing and sniffling.
"Do you want me to call in to work for you?" Aerith offered.
Rinoa kept her eyes closed, massaging her head against the sinus pressure. "That would be great. Thank you."
Aerith gave her a sympathetic look and took up the phone, dialing the IT Department. It was still early morning, but there was always someone in IT. Piper the grey cat was curled up on one of the chairs pulled up to the dining room table. Only his tail was in view, but as Aerith walked past with the phone to her ear, she heard him growl.
"Oh hush." She chided.
"Radiant Garden IT. This is Eddy Lake." Was the greeting.
"Hi, this is Aerith Gainsborough." She greeted politely. "I'm calling on behalf of Rinoa Heartilly. She's feeling pretty under the weather this morning, so she won't be able to make it in to work today."
"Oh, is she all right?" He asked.
Aerith glanced over to the couch and saw Rinoa feebly reaching for the remote control on the coffee table. Her arm was too short to reach the remote without leaning the rest of her body over. Upon realizing this, Rinoa sighed and dropped her arm pathetically, not even attempting to move anything else.
Aerith exhaled. "Just a bad cold. Allergy season is upon us, after all."
Rinoa glared from the couch, making a cut throat motion.
"Well, I understand." Eddy Lake was saying. "Tell her I hope she gets to feeling better."
"I will." Aerith bobbed her head, "Good bye."
She hung up the phone, and Rinoa sniffled.
"What?" Aerith noted her miffed expression.
"Bad cold? Ugh, Aerith, why'd you say that?" Rinoa sunk lower into the couch.
Aerith lifted an eyebrow. "Because…you have a cold…and it's bad."
"What do you think when you hear the words 'bad cold'?" Rinoa prompted.
"Sniffles, sinus pressure, orange juice, and chicken soup." Aerith folded her arms.
"I meant…what do you think of someone's appearance when you hear that they have a cold?" Rinoa pressed.
"Um…a red nose…holding a box of tissues…and wearing sweat pants?" Aerith lifted her shoulders, not sure what the woman was getting at here.
"Try runny nose, messy hair, mouth breathing, hacking up a lung, pale, and gross." Rinoa huffed.
Okay, so Rinoa was no beauty queen when she was sick, but no one was.
"…So?" Aerith said slowly. "You're worried that…"
"I'm the newbie in the department, Aerith." Rinoa lamented. "I'm supposed to still be fresh out of the box and cute and energetic and—" She sneezed and blew her nose. "But now, since Eddy knows I have a cold…my cuteness is going to be replaced with the image of a swamp monster!"
Aerith canted her head, "You're worried about what Eddy thinks of you?"
"I never said that." Rinoa narrowed her eyes.
Aerith walked past the dining room table again, and Piper growled lowly at her again. Casting the table a sour look, Aerith looked back to Rinoa.
"I think you're being a little superficial here. You've worked there for a few months now. I think the 'new and shiny' bit has worn off." She offered.
Rinoa coughed a few times and looked pitifully to Aerith. "Whatever. Oh, you got some mail yesterday when I checked the box."
"Yesterday?" Aerith moved over to the basket by the door where they had started habitually dropping the mail. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I'm dying." Rinoa said melodramatically. "And I can't reach the remote so the last thing I know in this world is going to be re-runs of Star Trek." She grimaced.
Aerith shook her head and sifted through the mail, finding the letter addressed to her. There was no return address and she didn't recognize the handwriting on the envelope. Intrigued, she slid her finger through the top to rip it open and tugged the handwritten letter out. Unfolding it, she automatically looked at the bottom for the name of the sender. Upon reading that and the letter in its entirety, she dropped it to the floor in shock.
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063 – Paradox, Part One
Cloud had always preferred night patrols. They were quiet and there were less people milling about to stumble into accidental conversation with. Heartless were natural creatures of the night, so if the monsters decided to cause a particularly violent skirmish, it typically would take place at night. He would clear out a Heartless nest any night over idle chit chat with passersby during the day.
Tonight was different. As the appointed head of the general and basic training department in the Alliance, he usually got to divvy patrol shifts up to the enlisted soldiers. Tonight, however, a local had called him specifically about some disturbance. The local, Eugenia Harker, was a hardened and snappy old woman who kept two shotguns in her store and could evil-eye Cid Highwind into shoveling snow off her porch for her: she wouldn't call in a simple Heartless attack. She lived on the edge of town, near the perimeter, so she saw more than her fair share of Heartless activity.
However, she HAD called in, and Cloud specifically—though what her reasoning was for that, he didn't know and wasn't about to ask the cantankerous old woman—so that was reason enough for concern. Allegedly, she had heard a sound like a great gust of wind in the alley near her home and had seen a flash of bluish light. It was brighter than the claymore security system and was briefer in duration. To Cloud, that sounded like a teleportation. Since then, she had been hearing scuffling and screaming, some human and some not, but every time she went outside, it stopped.
So now here Cloud was, scouting through the back sector of the residential district, straining his ears for any such sounds and keeping his eyes peeled for any such sights. The widow wasn't the paranoid type, so he felt he had to put some stock in her words, but he had been out here for over an hour and hadn't come across so much as a hint of—
A cry of pain and a grunt broke the silence, and Cloud shifted his grip on the Buster Sword, trying to pinpoint the sound. It was followed by a series of colliding sounds: like skin on concrete and the hard packing slams of exchanged blows. He crossed from one alley to the next, getting closer to the noise.
The familiar 'phewt' noise of a silenced gunshot made him break into a run. If two idiots had just gotten into a fight late at night, that was one thing. He rounded the corner and pulled up short, having stumbled into the cause of the sounds.
A thickly built man in a tattered blue business suit was squatting over a fallen woman, who was bleeding from a split lip and a cut on her cheek. The man had a thick black scarf wrapped around his neck and he was leaning over the woman, who appeared dazed from a blow to the head, almost like he was about to…bite her or something.
"Hey!" Cloud barked, moving forward. "What do you think you're doing?"
The man spun around quickly, still in his squatting position, and fixed eyes on Cloud. His entire face was pale and almost grey colored, except for the red rimming his eyes and mouth. His eyes were yellow and bulging widely, and his teeth, as he bared them in a snarl, were black and rotted. He looked like a zombie. The woman on the ground was dressed like a civilian: green sleeveless shirt and common black jeans. Her long brown hair was matted from being attacked. Cloud took an aggressive step forward, lifting the Buster Sword threateningly.
"Back away from her." He ordered.
The man hissed and snarled like a rabid dog might, and Cloud saw that he was shifting to spring forward like a frog to attack him too. Before he could, however, the woman sprang back to life, rolling hard away from the sick man and bouncing up onto her feet with the reflexes of a cat. The man spun back to her and gave an animalistic roar, lunging at her.
The woman side stepped his assault and swung around so that she was behind the man. Then, before he could react, she swiftly reached out, grabbed him on either side of the neck, and twisted in an abrupt and violent motion. The crack of the man's neck breaking echoed like a gunshot through the alley and Cloud hesitated.
What the Hell?
The body dropped like a sack of potatoes and the woman looked down at him, almost apprehensively. Apprehensively? He was dead; Cloud had just seen her snap his neck like a chicken bone!
"Dammit—" She bolted sideways for the fallen gun—presumably the one that had fired earlier—and snatched it up.
The thick black scarf around the fallen man's neck suddenly moved, and Cloud recovered himself and stepped forward to investigate. Upon closer inspection, the thing looked like a giant black snake, with yellow eyes like a Heartless…but he got the feeling it wasn't a Heartless. It slid away from the man in a serpentine fashion and started to hastily slither away. Two bullets peppered the ground on either side of it, fired from the woman's gun, but it continued to scamper away…in Cloud's direction.
"KILL IT!" The woman barked hoarsely. "Take the head off!"
The advice was unnecessary, as Cloud beheaded the thing as it tried to pass him. It died with a shriek, but didn't dissolve like a Heartless. He looked back over to the woman and found her aiming the gun at HIM now. However, recognition made her eyes widen, and she immediately lowered the gun. She clearly recognized him, though he was positive he had never seen this woman before in his life.
"Oh…damn…" She backed away.
Before Cloud could pursue, she hit a switch on her belt and she, the dead man, and the dead monster disappeared in a flash of blue light and a gust of wind.
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A/N: Another installment of the inside joke that everybody hides out in Leon and Tifa's jeep when they're stressed out XD
The Paradox subplot has been in my head for a while now. I'm stoked to finally have this collection in a place where I can slip it in. While some of the subplots throughout this collection might seem scattered or disconnected, I assure you that they will all tie together at the end of this story and will assemble into a proper set up for the multi-chapter story that will wrap up my Alliance-verse, titled Sentient Midnight, hence the title T Minus One Year. It won't be out for a long while here yet, but I'm nothing if not fond of build-up XD
Thanks for reading!
Preview for next week: "Fortune telling is a forbidden magic for a reason."