"It's getting better all the ti-i-ime, better all the time," Keara sang to herself as she leaned against the wall next to the truck-receiving door.
Nug, per her usual, took a sip out of a big mug, and then made a face, "This isn't coffee!"
Soku hid a smile of amusement, "No, it's tea. It's better for you."
"If I wanted healthy Nug Fuel I'd put more sugar in it!" She spazed then sighed. "I'm going to the café down the street. Be back in a few."
Keara nodded, most likely to the tune playing in her head, but Nug took it as an affirmative and strolled out of the backroom dumping her mug in the break room sink as she passed it.
The clatter snapped Keara back to reality and she looked around, "Where's Nug?"
Soku shook his head at her pathetic-ness. "She went to get coffee."
"Is she going to get me a cinnamon roll?" Keara pouted.
For a moment Soku just stared at Keara, then he nodded. "Yes."
"Happy glee!" Keara bounced happily.
There came suddenly a loud knocking on the metal receiving door, which startled Keara and halted her happy bobbing.
Soku looked at the door, confusion crossing his features for a moment, but then he pushed a large shiny red button, which caused the heavy metal door to rise.
On the other side of the door stood a man who looked cold and wet. He also was donned in the uniform of a Bishounen Inc Trucking Company driver.
Keara blinked, "Where's your truck?"
The man glared at Keara, and replied in a thick northern accent, "I was assaulted by some freaks that must have thought I was carrying something of value."
"Assaulted?" Keara's eyes were wide. "How did they assault a semi-truck?"
With a shrug the man wandered into the back room, "Mind if I go to the bathroom?"
Soku made a gesture in the direction of the bathroom door, "By all means, make yourself at home."
Once the man had retreated into the closet that serviced as a restroom, Soku addressed Keara in a low tone of voice.
"Do you think he's suspicious? It sounds like a fairly unlikely story."
Keara bit her lip, "Why don't you go check it out? If there's no one there then bring the truck back."
Soku nodded, "I'll be back as soon as I can be."
With that he sauntered out the door and jumped down onto the hard packed ice and snow beneath the opening.
Keara felt a foreboding feeling in her stomach as she watched Soku walk away from her into the morning mist and falling snow.
The trucker came out of the bathroom and gave Keara a strange expression, "Who else uses this bathroom? Not the bishounen I hope."
"Yeah they do," Keara raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
The man looked slightly ill for a moment, "No reason."
Keara was overcome with curiosity and she figured that she didn't have anything else to do, so she wandered over to the bathroom door to investigate. She pushed open the door and clicked the light on.
"Keara! I got you a cinnamon roll!"
"Yay!" Keara forgot about the bathroom and hopped out to meet the Nug who had a big Styrofoam cup full of what Keara assumed was coffee.
Nug took a sip of her coffee and smiled contentedly, "Much better." She watched Keara happily taking the cinnamon roll to the table where she planned to carefully pull it apart. "Yeah, something just kinda told me to get that."
"I'm very glad you did," Keara smiled at her friend before preparing her fork to begin disassembling the hapless cinnamon roll.
With a smile in return Nug sat down in a cushy little chair and happily sipped at her steaming Styrofoam-mug of Nug fuel.
Suddenly, in the middle of Nug's breathing in coffee fumes, she noticed something was wrong.
"Where's Soku?"
Keara looked up, fingers sticky from manually dismantling the cinnamon roll. "He went to get this guy's truck."
The trucker gave Nug a short wave to indicate he was the one Keara was speaking of.
"Um . . . Keara?"
"Mm?" Keara was again distracted from her cinnamon joy.
"Why did you let Soku go out on his own?" She raised her eyebrows for emphasis. "Unattended?"
"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Keara shrugged, but was careful to not be so carefree in her shrug as she could sense she was in some kind of trouble.
Nug put her Styro-mug on the table beside her and put her head in her hands. "I just hope we don't live to really regret this," She mumbled sorrowfully through her hands.
Keara waited a few moments to see if Nug was going to say anything more before turning her attention back to the cinnamon roll.
"Note to self: Never leave Keara by herself when Soku is around or involved in some way," Nug sat back up and picked her coffee off the table to drown her worries in it.
"So ah...what am I supposed to do in the mean time? Stand here?" the trucker crossed his arms looking irritated.
"This is our store," Keara pointed out as she licked her fingers. "You don't have to stay here."
The trucker rolled his eyes and threw his arms up, "Fine, you deal with the shipment yourself." He stormed towards the door that exited to the store. "Here's your packing list."
Nug stared at the stapled sheets of paper the rude Yankee had plopped on her table on his way out. She had never really totally figured out the code that Keara had designed for them to use as their bishounen model numbers, so she picked up the sheet in an attempt to decipher the Keara code.
"Who's supposed to be coming in on this shipment?" Keara asked curiously as she had quickly dispatched the cinnamon roll and now had nothing else to do.
"Er," Nug stared at the mix of numbers and letters then shrugged and handed it to Keara.
"Aww," Keara pouted as she took the papers from Nug. "How come you always make me read these?"
Nug simply stared at Keara.
Keara shrugged then turned her attention to the coded packing list. She blinked and found herself not understanding a thing on the sheet. However, she wasn't about to let Nug know that she couldn't understand her own code, so she continually looked over and over the lines of code until she felt confident in what it said.
"Ok…I see that the bishounen that we're getting are Sephiroth...erm...Kefka...I don't remember telling them anything about Kefka. Do you?"
Realization came up and smacked Nug a good one on the back of her head, the shock of which almost made her drop her Styro-mug of Nug fuel.
"Oh God…we're in big trouble Keara."
Keara's eyes went wide and she looked up fearfully from the packing list. "Nug. We are in trouble. If I'm reading this right…General Hein is on the truck."
Not being able to take it any longer Nug let her cup meet the tabletop again. In her experiences and adventures with Keara there had only ever been one person who could truly and royally screw up any and all of their plans.
"Got a little motto…always sees me through. When you're good to Mama…Mama's good to you!" Keara sang to herself and she looked over the packing list some more.
"Giovanni is not Mama…" Nug grimaced. "Keara, Giovanni is behind this! He has to be. And Soku is helping him ruin us!"
This statement brought Keara regretfully back to reality and she wished for her long gone cinnamon roll.
"Did that guy leave?" Nug raised an eyebrow and looked back to where the store was.
Both girls exchanged glances then got up to investigate. Keara peered out into the shop where she found the truck guy staring at their security monitor.
"Didn't we attach a VCR to that thing?" Nug whispered to Keara, who nodded.
"And we left one of our more racy tapes in…"
"Oh dear…" Nug sighed. "That one from the first day. When we were slow and everyone kept slipping off to the back room…before Soku ruined it of course."
Keara grinned suddenly as an idea came to her. She strode forward and spoke up, "So, is that where Teru and Kashi have the ramen incident, or Soku trying to seduce Teru?"
The trucker jumped, obviously startled, stared at Keara for a moment then looked back at the monitor.
"Ah," Keara smiled and crossed her arms. "Kuja and Legato. I should have known. This was their… I think third time that day."
Nug was leaning on the doorframe for support as she laughed to herself.
The trucker still hadn't said anything. He could only stare at the screen.
"Oh, come now." Keara continued to prod him. "Haven't you ever seen someone do that before?"
Nug's giggling had quieted down as she could see that they were getting absolutely no reaction from the trucker.
Keara looked back at Nug looking worried, "He ships bishounen, you would think he would be used to it…"
The moment was beginning to feel very awkward so Keara walked back to the Nug, who had now completely stopped laughing.
"Maybe we should just go sit in the back and wait for Soku to get back. Then we'll see how we're going to deal with...our shipment." Nug sighed and turned to go sit next to her hardly touched cup of coffee.
"Wait and see what happens…" Nug growled to herself. "What an idiot I was."
Keara shrugged, or tried to but the ropes tied around her kept her firmly strapped to her chair.
General Hein from the Final Fantasy movie crossed his arms and grinned smugly at them. Soku was lounging on the couch eating a random apple he had found in the small kitchen.
"Thought you could outsmart us did you?" Kefka smiled in a way that was quite creepy. "We showed you, didn't we?"
"Shut up!" General Hein glared at the evil clown-like creature. "I hate clowns. I don't know why you had to be included in this venture."
Soku studied the apple he had been eating as he spoke, "Because Giovanni thought it would be amusing to torture Brianna with the evil clown."
Keara blinked, "Brianna? Who's Bri…oh."
Nug sighed and shook her head, "You've been calling me Nug for so long you forgot my name was Brianna."
It had been a fairly simple take-over as far as invasions are concerned. Keara, always the admirer of pretty things had simply stared at the one of her captors and Nug was too freaked out by the other two to do much other than stare in fear.
Fortunately the girls had gotten at least one of their requests answered, and that was that Sephiroth had been sent along for the ride. The bad thing was, he was on General Hein's side of things.
"I feel betrayed…" Keara moped.
Nug glared at Soku, "Yeah…me too."
"Because…I mean," Keara sniffled. "We asked for Sephiroth from FF7…and they sent us the Kingdom Hearts Sephiroth. I mean…not that I'm complaining cuz KH Sephy is pretty too… but I wish they at least could listen to me…"
The room fell silent and all eyes turned to Keara.
Keara noticed the sudden silence and picked her head up to look around, "What?"
General Hein's eyes narrowed, "There! Do you see what I mean? This place must be destroyed at all costs. The youth of the world needs to spend its time doing something other than obsessing over good-looking characters."
"That's blasphemy!" Nug shouted and struggled against her bonds. "We have a right to get obsessed over whatever we want!"
"Take them out of my sight." General Hein growled and stormed off into the shop where he came across the trucker, still staring at the security monitor.
"Good God man, what are you watching?"
There was a long silence in which everyone turned his or her attention to the doorway into the shop.
The good general walked back out a few moments later with a dazed expression. He straightened up when he saw the girls still sitting at the table tied to their respective chairs.
"I told you to get them out of my sight!" He glared at Kefka who grinned. "Throw them in the bathroom," General Hein finished with a cool and wicked smile.
"No, not the bathroom," Soku spoke up.
General Hein turned a murderous look on Soku, "And who decided to put you in charge?"
"Oooh…cat fight!" Keara muttered.
Sephiroth moved from his spot in the corner where he had stood quietly for all of the previous happenings. His sudden presence quieted the noise then, when he was satisfied he had gotten their attention, he picked Nug and Keara up by their ropes and tossed them into the bathroom, shutting the door hard behind them.
Keara struggled to sit up then leaned against the sink cabinet, "It's so messy in here…no wonder that trucker made a face…"
Nug leaned on the wall adjacent to the toilet and sighed, "Looks like someone has been living in here…"
To Nug's great surprise, she suddenly found that the wall she had been leaning on was no longer in existence and she quickly fell backwards finding herself looking up at a strange girl.
"You're not Soku…" the girl looked puzzled, but then grinned. "Are you my new company? Did they kick you out of the Rocket headquarters too?"
Nug and Keara blinked.
The girl's smile faded a bit, "Hm…not quite the talkative types are you?"
"Oh, we talk just fine," Keara reassured her. "But why are you living in our shop's bathroom?"
"Did the take over happen yet?" The girl ignored Keara's question and crawled into the small bathroom area. "Tell me all about it!"
"You knew this was going to happen and you never tried to warn us?" Nug struggled up and leaned against the wall next to Keara. "Why are you hiding in our bathroom?"
The girl sighed, "I got kicked out of Giovanni's headquarters for creating mayhem, and they sent me here under cover. Soku has been hiding me in this secret room behind the bathroom wall because Giovanni told him that I could be useful for something here."
"I told you it was Giovanni!" Nug smiled with pride for having figured it out.
"So, I answered your question…" the girl grinned. "Now answer mine! Or I'll sic my pets on you."
Keara sighed, "Ok…it went kinda like this…"
~~Magical Flashback sequence~~
"Maybe we should just go sit in the back and wait for Soku to get back. Then we'll see how we're going to deal with...our shipment." Nug sighed and turned to go sit next to her hardly touched cup of coffee.
"Maybe," Keara said hopefully sitting down in one of the chairs in the back room. "We can go get me another cinnamon roll."
A low rumbling noise, like a motor, drifted in through the open truck door and met the ears of the bored Bishounen shop owners. Nug took a great big chug of coffee and stood up, then she walked over the very edge of the door and watched nervously as the Bishounen truck came closer.
At a certain point, the truck stopped, turned around and began backing towards the platform where Keara had joined Nug in staring at the approaching truck.
"Why do they have to paint the truck in those colors?" Nug wondered out loud. "I mean…I suppose purple is an OK color for a truck…but did it really need all the little decorations with the other colors?"
Keara looked up from examining the packing list, "Um…well…I guess it's to disguise what's really in there…"
Nug shrugged, "Ok, Keara…ready the packing list…let's treat this like a normal shipment."
The back of the truck pulled up so that it was right against the door opening and soon Soku was standing next to them on the platform waiting for their signal to lift the truck's back door.
A brief nod from Nug was all he needed to unlatch the door and let it roll up into the ceiling of the cargo area. The girls hadn't really known what to expect, but one could be sure from their bewildered faces that they had not been expecting three innocent looking boxes.
Keara looked over at Nug in confusion, then entered the back of the truck and began checking the numbers against the list. When she was done, she simply continued to stare at the boxes until Nug was sure something was wrong with her. "Keara? What is it?"
Without looking at Nug, Keara spoke, "Tell me if these numbers sound familiar…1905…1109…2015…all starting with DEM."
Nug's arms fell to her sides, "The Demo bishy boxes…that we sent back ourselves…"
Soku smiled smugly and crossed the room where he lounged on the couch, picking an apple off of a nearby table.
Keara moved out of the back of the truck and stood next to Nug, still in a slight daze.
"Soku, what is going on here?" Nug turned to look at the evil bishy.
"What, indeed?" Came a low menacing voice from behind her.
The girls turned in surprise and what met their eyes confirmed their worst fears. In front of them stood a tall man with slicked back hair wearing a long, black trench coat that would be the envy of all wanna-be evil-bishies.
"General Hein…" Keara whispered.
"Evil clown!" Nug yelled in fear and backed up several steps.
"That's just Kefka…" Keara tried to reassure the Nug, then realized how silly what she had said sounded. "Mope…I guess they did send you after all…"
From behind the two menacing bad guys came a third tall figure with long flowing white hair, an enormous sword and who was also clad in a black trench coat to envy.
"Sephiroth…" Keara muttered in awe.
~~End of Magical Flashback~~
"That easy?" The girl was dumbfounded. "I can't believe you just stood there!"
Keara slumped, "But it was Sephiroth…"
"Yes, and he tied us up too…then he threw us back here…" Nug sighed.
The bathroom dweller scratched her head, further disheveling her wavy sandy blonde hair. "Why would Sephiroth be on their side…oh…never mind. He hates fan girls. You two run a shop dedicated to bishounen, which only deranged fan girls would do, so he's naturally against you."
The three girls sat in silence for a long while, doing nothing but staring at various objects in the bathroom and fiddling with their own fingernails.
"May I ask your name?" Keara spoke up randomly, tired of the silence.
"Krysta," The girl smiled.
"Like the fairy from the cartoon movie…Fern-"
Nug clapped her hand over Keara's mouth, "No speaking of things like that. We might get sued."
Keara nodded, "Ok, I'll call you fairy then."
"Or if you want, to continue with the food name tradition we can call her fairy cake." Nug pointed out.
Krysta looked back and forth between the two plotting storeowners not really sure what to think of them already renaming her.
"Ok, Cake it is then." Keara nodded.
"Alright, we have them at our feet," General Hein leaned back in the recliner in the bishounen shop. "Kefka, are you sure that the prisoners Kuja and Legato are secure?"
Kefka nodded, "Oh yes quite. I'm glad I thought of that disguise, it was quite clever on my part. No one would suspect an innocent fan girl."
Soku rolled his eyes, "You only bounced the idea off of me. I told you to disguise yourself as the police officer to get Nug to leave so that we could easily trick Keara into renting out Legato and Kuja."
"No, no," Kefka glared at him. "If I remember correctly-"
"It doesn't matter who thought of what," General Hein interrupted. "Just tell me if everything is going to work out alright. Taking out one little insignificant shop can't be all that hard."
"It depends on what you consider difficult," Soku addressed the general, ignoring Kefka.
Kefka glared at Soku, "I'm in charge of this operation, I don't know why you keep talking to him."
General Hein gave Kefka an 'Oh really?' look.
Soku stared at Kefka for a moment, then turned back to Sephiroth, who was content to simply stand off to the side.
"Would you go fetch those girls?"
Sephiroth nodded at Soku's request and moved to the back room.
"So, you think you're just using us to get to your own gain, hm Kefka?" General Hein put a gloved hand to his chin looking as if he was thinking carefully about something. "Interesting."
The door to the bathroom was yanked open suddenly and violently, causing Nug and Keara who had been leaning on it to fall over backwards. They stared in awe at Sephiroth's shoes and the bottom of his coat.
"Whee! Sephy!" Cake leapt at the white-haired bishounen.
Before she could get too far, Sephiroth constructed a quick barrier that Cake hit, then slid off of. A self-satisfied smile graced Sephiroth's features and he looked down at the three fan girls on the floor.
"General Hein wants to see you," Sephiroth explained emotionlessly. "Get up and follow me."
Cake sat up and shook her head clear, "That was rude…Let's go after him!"
Keara and Nug marveled at Cake's resilience to abuse and struggled to get up with their hands still tied behind their backs.
When the girls finally made it into the shop they happened upon the good general and Kefka in the middle of a heated argument. The only thing keeping the evil clown from using his evil powers at the moment was the return of Sephiroth.
Nug stared in fear of the clown and hid behind Keara and Cake. Cake herself seemed a little nervous around the colorful man in make-up. Keara, who didn't really care if Kefka was a clown, was perfectly fine being at the front of the line, closest to Kefka and General Hein.
"I am the leader!" General Hein slammed his fist on the counter. "Giovanni may be funding this whole procedure, but I am in charge."
Kefka scoffed, "You are just some silly non-magic using human! I could crush you like an insect!"
Sephiroth sighed, "Kefka, calm down. We have to interrogate these stupid fan girls for information."
"In…interrogate?" Nug's eyes grew wide.
Cake whimpered, "I just wanted to glomp Sephy…"
Soku smiled pleasantly and lead the girls to the back room where they could sit down at a table. Shortly after they were seated General Hein and Sephiroth followed.
"I'll get something for us to drink," Kefka smiled slyly and made himself busy in the little kitchen.
This only served to unnerve the girls more as they couldn't see what the evil clown was up to due to the fact that their backs were facing the kitchen.
General Hein sauntered up to the table and gave them an arrogant smile, "So, tell me, where do you get your…shipments from?"
Nug blinked, "We don't know."
The general crossed his arms and gave Nug a look, "Yes you do, don't lie."
"But we don't!" Keara protested. "Soku should know we don't, he's always there when stuff comes in."
"Um…excuse me…" Cake raised her hand. "Why don't you just follow one of the trucks if you want to know so bad?"
Silence descended upon all gathered.
"Hush you silly girl," Hein glared at Cake. "If it was that easy we would have done it already."
Kefka chose this moment to bring a tray to the table that had several glasses of water resting on it. He sat a glass in front of each of the girls and handed a glass to each of the bishounen.
For the most part, the water went unnoticed as everyone either ignored or put down their respective glass of water. Keara sighed, she would drink hers…but her hands were still bound behind her back.
As if reading her thoughts, which he probably had done, Soku came closer to the girls' table and untied Nug and Keara from their unhappy bonds.
Quickly, Keara pulled out random strips of Ph paper from her pocket and stuck one partially in her water glass. Knowing how evil Kefka could be was something she had over everyone else in the room. She knew that Kefka had an affinity for covertly attacking people.
General Hein gave Keara an irritated look, "Put those away and answer me!"
"We did!" Nug exclaimed. "If you want to know where the shipping company is, why don't you just stow away on a truck after they bring a shipment in?"
Kefka giggled, "Why didn't you think of that, General? Aren't you supposed to be the clever one in charge?"
"I told you to shut up!" General Hein glared at the evil clown. He didn't like his authority or his intelligence put to question, and he was quite tired of the fool doing both.
"Maybe I don't want to shut up!" Kefka snarled back. "I'm tired of you bossing us around as if we were your addle-brained troops!"
"Well at least my 'addle-brained troops' know how to listen," Came Hein's acidic reply.
Soku seemed amused by the whole argument and he simply stood by and watched as the two men got into their billionth tiff of the day. It seemed that Sephiroth could care less as he was sitting at a table as far off as possible sipping his water.
In no time at all Kefka and the General had argued themselves hoarse. They both reached for the same glass of water in front of Keara, which Keara had just been in the process of Ph testing.
Kefka smiled triumphantly as he was the first to grab the glass. At the same moment he began to down the water, Keara's PH changed…but it wasn't a change Keara was familiar with.
"Poisoned?" Nug read the word on the Ph strip. "I didn't know they said that."
Cake's curiosity got the better of her and she too peered at the little piece of paper. "What's that supposed to mean?"
The empty glass was slammed on the table in front of the girls and Kefka stared in horror at the Ph test.
General Hein smirked, "Fell victim to your own trick, did you?"
Kefka began to cough and he put his hands to his throat as if he were choking on something.
"See where greed gets you?" Hein crossed his arms as he took in Kefka's death with his own eyes.
Sephiroth looked down at his own glass of water in slight alarm, but upon noticing that he felt fine, he went back to reading a random magazine.
Keara was still amazed at the fact that her Ph test had given her a word and not just changed color. It was a miracle in the world of science…except no one would ever know…
"Now…" The general kicked Kefka's body aside, which in traditional Final Fantasy style turned into a pile of glowing red and vanished. "Now that he has been taken care of, we can get on with my real plans." He looked pointedly at Nug. "I want you to place an order so that we can track the truck back to its origins. From there we can take down this entire silly industry."
Cake looked a little forlornly at her glass of water, "I can't drink my water, and now we can't have bishounen anymore? What kind of world is this?"
Nug sighed, "A horrible cruel world where the only good thing it ever does for you…is kill a clown…"
Nug, per her usual, took a sip out of a big mug, and then made a face, "This isn't coffee!"
Soku hid a smile of amusement, "No, it's tea. It's better for you."
"If I wanted healthy Nug Fuel I'd put more sugar in it!" She spazed then sighed. "I'm going to the café down the street. Be back in a few."
Keara nodded, most likely to the tune playing in her head, but Nug took it as an affirmative and strolled out of the backroom dumping her mug in the break room sink as she passed it.
The clatter snapped Keara back to reality and she looked around, "Where's Nug?"
Soku shook his head at her pathetic-ness. "She went to get coffee."
"Is she going to get me a cinnamon roll?" Keara pouted.
For a moment Soku just stared at Keara, then he nodded. "Yes."
"Happy glee!" Keara bounced happily.
There came suddenly a loud knocking on the metal receiving door, which startled Keara and halted her happy bobbing.
Soku looked at the door, confusion crossing his features for a moment, but then he pushed a large shiny red button, which caused the heavy metal door to rise.
On the other side of the door stood a man who looked cold and wet. He also was donned in the uniform of a Bishounen Inc Trucking Company driver.
Keara blinked, "Where's your truck?"
The man glared at Keara, and replied in a thick northern accent, "I was assaulted by some freaks that must have thought I was carrying something of value."
"Assaulted?" Keara's eyes were wide. "How did they assault a semi-truck?"
With a shrug the man wandered into the back room, "Mind if I go to the bathroom?"
Soku made a gesture in the direction of the bathroom door, "By all means, make yourself at home."
Once the man had retreated into the closet that serviced as a restroom, Soku addressed Keara in a low tone of voice.
"Do you think he's suspicious? It sounds like a fairly unlikely story."
Keara bit her lip, "Why don't you go check it out? If there's no one there then bring the truck back."
Soku nodded, "I'll be back as soon as I can be."
With that he sauntered out the door and jumped down onto the hard packed ice and snow beneath the opening.
Keara felt a foreboding feeling in her stomach as she watched Soku walk away from her into the morning mist and falling snow.
The trucker came out of the bathroom and gave Keara a strange expression, "Who else uses this bathroom? Not the bishounen I hope."
"Yeah they do," Keara raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
The man looked slightly ill for a moment, "No reason."
Keara was overcome with curiosity and she figured that she didn't have anything else to do, so she wandered over to the bathroom door to investigate. She pushed open the door and clicked the light on.
"Keara! I got you a cinnamon roll!"
"Yay!" Keara forgot about the bathroom and hopped out to meet the Nug who had a big Styrofoam cup full of what Keara assumed was coffee.
Nug took a sip of her coffee and smiled contentedly, "Much better." She watched Keara happily taking the cinnamon roll to the table where she planned to carefully pull it apart. "Yeah, something just kinda told me to get that."
"I'm very glad you did," Keara smiled at her friend before preparing her fork to begin disassembling the hapless cinnamon roll.
With a smile in return Nug sat down in a cushy little chair and happily sipped at her steaming Styrofoam-mug of Nug fuel.
Suddenly, in the middle of Nug's breathing in coffee fumes, she noticed something was wrong.
"Where's Soku?"
Keara looked up, fingers sticky from manually dismantling the cinnamon roll. "He went to get this guy's truck."
The trucker gave Nug a short wave to indicate he was the one Keara was speaking of.
"Um . . . Keara?"
"Mm?" Keara was again distracted from her cinnamon joy.
"Why did you let Soku go out on his own?" She raised her eyebrows for emphasis. "Unattended?"
"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Keara shrugged, but was careful to not be so carefree in her shrug as she could sense she was in some kind of trouble.
Nug put her Styro-mug on the table beside her and put her head in her hands. "I just hope we don't live to really regret this," She mumbled sorrowfully through her hands.
Keara waited a few moments to see if Nug was going to say anything more before turning her attention back to the cinnamon roll.
"Note to self: Never leave Keara by herself when Soku is around or involved in some way," Nug sat back up and picked her coffee off the table to drown her worries in it.
"So ah...what am I supposed to do in the mean time? Stand here?" the trucker crossed his arms looking irritated.
"This is our store," Keara pointed out as she licked her fingers. "You don't have to stay here."
The trucker rolled his eyes and threw his arms up, "Fine, you deal with the shipment yourself." He stormed towards the door that exited to the store. "Here's your packing list."
Nug stared at the stapled sheets of paper the rude Yankee had plopped on her table on his way out. She had never really totally figured out the code that Keara had designed for them to use as their bishounen model numbers, so she picked up the sheet in an attempt to decipher the Keara code.
"Who's supposed to be coming in on this shipment?" Keara asked curiously as she had quickly dispatched the cinnamon roll and now had nothing else to do.
"Er," Nug stared at the mix of numbers and letters then shrugged and handed it to Keara.
"Aww," Keara pouted as she took the papers from Nug. "How come you always make me read these?"
Nug simply stared at Keara.
Keara shrugged then turned her attention to the coded packing list. She blinked and found herself not understanding a thing on the sheet. However, she wasn't about to let Nug know that she couldn't understand her own code, so she continually looked over and over the lines of code until she felt confident in what it said.
"Ok…I see that the bishounen that we're getting are Sephiroth...erm...Kefka...I don't remember telling them anything about Kefka. Do you?"
Realization came up and smacked Nug a good one on the back of her head, the shock of which almost made her drop her Styro-mug of Nug fuel.
"Oh God…we're in big trouble Keara."
Keara's eyes went wide and she looked up fearfully from the packing list. "Nug. We are in trouble. If I'm reading this right…General Hein is on the truck."
Not being able to take it any longer Nug let her cup meet the tabletop again. In her experiences and adventures with Keara there had only ever been one person who could truly and royally screw up any and all of their plans.
"Got a little motto…always sees me through. When you're good to Mama…Mama's good to you!" Keara sang to herself and she looked over the packing list some more.
"Giovanni is not Mama…" Nug grimaced. "Keara, Giovanni is behind this! He has to be. And Soku is helping him ruin us!"
This statement brought Keara regretfully back to reality and she wished for her long gone cinnamon roll.
"Did that guy leave?" Nug raised an eyebrow and looked back to where the store was.
Both girls exchanged glances then got up to investigate. Keara peered out into the shop where she found the truck guy staring at their security monitor.
"Didn't we attach a VCR to that thing?" Nug whispered to Keara, who nodded.
"And we left one of our more racy tapes in…"
"Oh dear…" Nug sighed. "That one from the first day. When we were slow and everyone kept slipping off to the back room…before Soku ruined it of course."
Keara grinned suddenly as an idea came to her. She strode forward and spoke up, "So, is that where Teru and Kashi have the ramen incident, or Soku trying to seduce Teru?"
The trucker jumped, obviously startled, stared at Keara for a moment then looked back at the monitor.
"Ah," Keara smiled and crossed her arms. "Kuja and Legato. I should have known. This was their… I think third time that day."
Nug was leaning on the doorframe for support as she laughed to herself.
The trucker still hadn't said anything. He could only stare at the screen.
"Oh, come now." Keara continued to prod him. "Haven't you ever seen someone do that before?"
Nug's giggling had quieted down as she could see that they were getting absolutely no reaction from the trucker.
Keara looked back at Nug looking worried, "He ships bishounen, you would think he would be used to it…"
The moment was beginning to feel very awkward so Keara walked back to the Nug, who had now completely stopped laughing.
"Maybe we should just go sit in the back and wait for Soku to get back. Then we'll see how we're going to deal with...our shipment." Nug sighed and turned to go sit next to her hardly touched cup of coffee.
"Wait and see what happens…" Nug growled to herself. "What an idiot I was."
Keara shrugged, or tried to but the ropes tied around her kept her firmly strapped to her chair.
General Hein from the Final Fantasy movie crossed his arms and grinned smugly at them. Soku was lounging on the couch eating a random apple he had found in the small kitchen.
"Thought you could outsmart us did you?" Kefka smiled in a way that was quite creepy. "We showed you, didn't we?"
"Shut up!" General Hein glared at the evil clown-like creature. "I hate clowns. I don't know why you had to be included in this venture."
Soku studied the apple he had been eating as he spoke, "Because Giovanni thought it would be amusing to torture Brianna with the evil clown."
Keara blinked, "Brianna? Who's Bri…oh."
Nug sighed and shook her head, "You've been calling me Nug for so long you forgot my name was Brianna."
It had been a fairly simple take-over as far as invasions are concerned. Keara, always the admirer of pretty things had simply stared at the one of her captors and Nug was too freaked out by the other two to do much other than stare in fear.
Fortunately the girls had gotten at least one of their requests answered, and that was that Sephiroth had been sent along for the ride. The bad thing was, he was on General Hein's side of things.
"I feel betrayed…" Keara moped.
Nug glared at Soku, "Yeah…me too."
"Because…I mean," Keara sniffled. "We asked for Sephiroth from FF7…and they sent us the Kingdom Hearts Sephiroth. I mean…not that I'm complaining cuz KH Sephy is pretty too… but I wish they at least could listen to me…"
The room fell silent and all eyes turned to Keara.
Keara noticed the sudden silence and picked her head up to look around, "What?"
General Hein's eyes narrowed, "There! Do you see what I mean? This place must be destroyed at all costs. The youth of the world needs to spend its time doing something other than obsessing over good-looking characters."
"That's blasphemy!" Nug shouted and struggled against her bonds. "We have a right to get obsessed over whatever we want!"
"Take them out of my sight." General Hein growled and stormed off into the shop where he came across the trucker, still staring at the security monitor.
"Good God man, what are you watching?"
There was a long silence in which everyone turned his or her attention to the doorway into the shop.
The good general walked back out a few moments later with a dazed expression. He straightened up when he saw the girls still sitting at the table tied to their respective chairs.
"I told you to get them out of my sight!" He glared at Kefka who grinned. "Throw them in the bathroom," General Hein finished with a cool and wicked smile.
"No, not the bathroom," Soku spoke up.
General Hein turned a murderous look on Soku, "And who decided to put you in charge?"
"Oooh…cat fight!" Keara muttered.
Sephiroth moved from his spot in the corner where he had stood quietly for all of the previous happenings. His sudden presence quieted the noise then, when he was satisfied he had gotten their attention, he picked Nug and Keara up by their ropes and tossed them into the bathroom, shutting the door hard behind them.
Keara struggled to sit up then leaned against the sink cabinet, "It's so messy in here…no wonder that trucker made a face…"
Nug leaned on the wall adjacent to the toilet and sighed, "Looks like someone has been living in here…"
To Nug's great surprise, she suddenly found that the wall she had been leaning on was no longer in existence and she quickly fell backwards finding herself looking up at a strange girl.
"You're not Soku…" the girl looked puzzled, but then grinned. "Are you my new company? Did they kick you out of the Rocket headquarters too?"
Nug and Keara blinked.
The girl's smile faded a bit, "Hm…not quite the talkative types are you?"
"Oh, we talk just fine," Keara reassured her. "But why are you living in our shop's bathroom?"
"Did the take over happen yet?" The girl ignored Keara's question and crawled into the small bathroom area. "Tell me all about it!"
"You knew this was going to happen and you never tried to warn us?" Nug struggled up and leaned against the wall next to Keara. "Why are you hiding in our bathroom?"
The girl sighed, "I got kicked out of Giovanni's headquarters for creating mayhem, and they sent me here under cover. Soku has been hiding me in this secret room behind the bathroom wall because Giovanni told him that I could be useful for something here."
"I told you it was Giovanni!" Nug smiled with pride for having figured it out.
"So, I answered your question…" the girl grinned. "Now answer mine! Or I'll sic my pets on you."
Keara sighed, "Ok…it went kinda like this…"
~~Magical Flashback sequence~~
"Maybe we should just go sit in the back and wait for Soku to get back. Then we'll see how we're going to deal with...our shipment." Nug sighed and turned to go sit next to her hardly touched cup of coffee.
"Maybe," Keara said hopefully sitting down in one of the chairs in the back room. "We can go get me another cinnamon roll."
A low rumbling noise, like a motor, drifted in through the open truck door and met the ears of the bored Bishounen shop owners. Nug took a great big chug of coffee and stood up, then she walked over the very edge of the door and watched nervously as the Bishounen truck came closer.
At a certain point, the truck stopped, turned around and began backing towards the platform where Keara had joined Nug in staring at the approaching truck.
"Why do they have to paint the truck in those colors?" Nug wondered out loud. "I mean…I suppose purple is an OK color for a truck…but did it really need all the little decorations with the other colors?"
Keara looked up from examining the packing list, "Um…well…I guess it's to disguise what's really in there…"
Nug shrugged, "Ok, Keara…ready the packing list…let's treat this like a normal shipment."
The back of the truck pulled up so that it was right against the door opening and soon Soku was standing next to them on the platform waiting for their signal to lift the truck's back door.
A brief nod from Nug was all he needed to unlatch the door and let it roll up into the ceiling of the cargo area. The girls hadn't really known what to expect, but one could be sure from their bewildered faces that they had not been expecting three innocent looking boxes.
Keara looked over at Nug in confusion, then entered the back of the truck and began checking the numbers against the list. When she was done, she simply continued to stare at the boxes until Nug was sure something was wrong with her. "Keara? What is it?"
Without looking at Nug, Keara spoke, "Tell me if these numbers sound familiar…1905…1109…2015…all starting with DEM."
Nug's arms fell to her sides, "The Demo bishy boxes…that we sent back ourselves…"
Soku smiled smugly and crossed the room where he lounged on the couch, picking an apple off of a nearby table.
Keara moved out of the back of the truck and stood next to Nug, still in a slight daze.
"Soku, what is going on here?" Nug turned to look at the evil bishy.
"What, indeed?" Came a low menacing voice from behind her.
The girls turned in surprise and what met their eyes confirmed their worst fears. In front of them stood a tall man with slicked back hair wearing a long, black trench coat that would be the envy of all wanna-be evil-bishies.
"General Hein…" Keara whispered.
"Evil clown!" Nug yelled in fear and backed up several steps.
"That's just Kefka…" Keara tried to reassure the Nug, then realized how silly what she had said sounded. "Mope…I guess they did send you after all…"
From behind the two menacing bad guys came a third tall figure with long flowing white hair, an enormous sword and who was also clad in a black trench coat to envy.
"Sephiroth…" Keara muttered in awe.
~~End of Magical Flashback~~
"That easy?" The girl was dumbfounded. "I can't believe you just stood there!"
Keara slumped, "But it was Sephiroth…"
"Yes, and he tied us up too…then he threw us back here…" Nug sighed.
The bathroom dweller scratched her head, further disheveling her wavy sandy blonde hair. "Why would Sephiroth be on their side…oh…never mind. He hates fan girls. You two run a shop dedicated to bishounen, which only deranged fan girls would do, so he's naturally against you."
The three girls sat in silence for a long while, doing nothing but staring at various objects in the bathroom and fiddling with their own fingernails.
"May I ask your name?" Keara spoke up randomly, tired of the silence.
"Krysta," The girl smiled.
"Like the fairy from the cartoon movie…Fern-"
Nug clapped her hand over Keara's mouth, "No speaking of things like that. We might get sued."
Keara nodded, "Ok, I'll call you fairy then."
"Or if you want, to continue with the food name tradition we can call her fairy cake." Nug pointed out.
Krysta looked back and forth between the two plotting storeowners not really sure what to think of them already renaming her.
"Ok, Cake it is then." Keara nodded.
"Alright, we have them at our feet," General Hein leaned back in the recliner in the bishounen shop. "Kefka, are you sure that the prisoners Kuja and Legato are secure?"
Kefka nodded, "Oh yes quite. I'm glad I thought of that disguise, it was quite clever on my part. No one would suspect an innocent fan girl."
Soku rolled his eyes, "You only bounced the idea off of me. I told you to disguise yourself as the police officer to get Nug to leave so that we could easily trick Keara into renting out Legato and Kuja."
"No, no," Kefka glared at him. "If I remember correctly-"
"It doesn't matter who thought of what," General Hein interrupted. "Just tell me if everything is going to work out alright. Taking out one little insignificant shop can't be all that hard."
"It depends on what you consider difficult," Soku addressed the general, ignoring Kefka.
Kefka glared at Soku, "I'm in charge of this operation, I don't know why you keep talking to him."
General Hein gave Kefka an 'Oh really?' look.
Soku stared at Kefka for a moment, then turned back to Sephiroth, who was content to simply stand off to the side.
"Would you go fetch those girls?"
Sephiroth nodded at Soku's request and moved to the back room.
"So, you think you're just using us to get to your own gain, hm Kefka?" General Hein put a gloved hand to his chin looking as if he was thinking carefully about something. "Interesting."
The door to the bathroom was yanked open suddenly and violently, causing Nug and Keara who had been leaning on it to fall over backwards. They stared in awe at Sephiroth's shoes and the bottom of his coat.
"Whee! Sephy!" Cake leapt at the white-haired bishounen.
Before she could get too far, Sephiroth constructed a quick barrier that Cake hit, then slid off of. A self-satisfied smile graced Sephiroth's features and he looked down at the three fan girls on the floor.
"General Hein wants to see you," Sephiroth explained emotionlessly. "Get up and follow me."
Cake sat up and shook her head clear, "That was rude…Let's go after him!"
Keara and Nug marveled at Cake's resilience to abuse and struggled to get up with their hands still tied behind their backs.
When the girls finally made it into the shop they happened upon the good general and Kefka in the middle of a heated argument. The only thing keeping the evil clown from using his evil powers at the moment was the return of Sephiroth.
Nug stared in fear of the clown and hid behind Keara and Cake. Cake herself seemed a little nervous around the colorful man in make-up. Keara, who didn't really care if Kefka was a clown, was perfectly fine being at the front of the line, closest to Kefka and General Hein.
"I am the leader!" General Hein slammed his fist on the counter. "Giovanni may be funding this whole procedure, but I am in charge."
Kefka scoffed, "You are just some silly non-magic using human! I could crush you like an insect!"
Sephiroth sighed, "Kefka, calm down. We have to interrogate these stupid fan girls for information."
"In…interrogate?" Nug's eyes grew wide.
Cake whimpered, "I just wanted to glomp Sephy…"
Soku smiled pleasantly and lead the girls to the back room where they could sit down at a table. Shortly after they were seated General Hein and Sephiroth followed.
"I'll get something for us to drink," Kefka smiled slyly and made himself busy in the little kitchen.
This only served to unnerve the girls more as they couldn't see what the evil clown was up to due to the fact that their backs were facing the kitchen.
General Hein sauntered up to the table and gave them an arrogant smile, "So, tell me, where do you get your…shipments from?"
Nug blinked, "We don't know."
The general crossed his arms and gave Nug a look, "Yes you do, don't lie."
"But we don't!" Keara protested. "Soku should know we don't, he's always there when stuff comes in."
"Um…excuse me…" Cake raised her hand. "Why don't you just follow one of the trucks if you want to know so bad?"
Silence descended upon all gathered.
"Hush you silly girl," Hein glared at Cake. "If it was that easy we would have done it already."
Kefka chose this moment to bring a tray to the table that had several glasses of water resting on it. He sat a glass in front of each of the girls and handed a glass to each of the bishounen.
For the most part, the water went unnoticed as everyone either ignored or put down their respective glass of water. Keara sighed, she would drink hers…but her hands were still bound behind her back.
As if reading her thoughts, which he probably had done, Soku came closer to the girls' table and untied Nug and Keara from their unhappy bonds.
Quickly, Keara pulled out random strips of Ph paper from her pocket and stuck one partially in her water glass. Knowing how evil Kefka could be was something she had over everyone else in the room. She knew that Kefka had an affinity for covertly attacking people.
General Hein gave Keara an irritated look, "Put those away and answer me!"
"We did!" Nug exclaimed. "If you want to know where the shipping company is, why don't you just stow away on a truck after they bring a shipment in?"
Kefka giggled, "Why didn't you think of that, General? Aren't you supposed to be the clever one in charge?"
"I told you to shut up!" General Hein glared at the evil clown. He didn't like his authority or his intelligence put to question, and he was quite tired of the fool doing both.
"Maybe I don't want to shut up!" Kefka snarled back. "I'm tired of you bossing us around as if we were your addle-brained troops!"
"Well at least my 'addle-brained troops' know how to listen," Came Hein's acidic reply.
Soku seemed amused by the whole argument and he simply stood by and watched as the two men got into their billionth tiff of the day. It seemed that Sephiroth could care less as he was sitting at a table as far off as possible sipping his water.
In no time at all Kefka and the General had argued themselves hoarse. They both reached for the same glass of water in front of Keara, which Keara had just been in the process of Ph testing.
Kefka smiled triumphantly as he was the first to grab the glass. At the same moment he began to down the water, Keara's PH changed…but it wasn't a change Keara was familiar with.
"Poisoned?" Nug read the word on the Ph strip. "I didn't know they said that."
Cake's curiosity got the better of her and she too peered at the little piece of paper. "What's that supposed to mean?"
The empty glass was slammed on the table in front of the girls and Kefka stared in horror at the Ph test.
General Hein smirked, "Fell victim to your own trick, did you?"
Kefka began to cough and he put his hands to his throat as if he were choking on something.
"See where greed gets you?" Hein crossed his arms as he took in Kefka's death with his own eyes.
Sephiroth looked down at his own glass of water in slight alarm, but upon noticing that he felt fine, he went back to reading a random magazine.
Keara was still amazed at the fact that her Ph test had given her a word and not just changed color. It was a miracle in the world of science…except no one would ever know…
"Now…" The general kicked Kefka's body aside, which in traditional Final Fantasy style turned into a pile of glowing red and vanished. "Now that he has been taken care of, we can get on with my real plans." He looked pointedly at Nug. "I want you to place an order so that we can track the truck back to its origins. From there we can take down this entire silly industry."
Cake looked a little forlornly at her glass of water, "I can't drink my water, and now we can't have bishounen anymore? What kind of world is this?"
Nug sighed, "A horrible cruel world where the only good thing it ever does for you…is kill a clown…"