Chapter 12 - What, Do I Have to Freaking Drop it in her Lap?
Before this chapter begins, Yezo has a few words: Rutabaga! Puppy! Quack! Bunny! Ice cream!
Bezo has some, too: Pizza! Umbrella! Death! Masamune! Sephiroth!
Yezo has some more words: stop it, Bezo!
And now, on with the story.
When we last left our staunch heroes, they were staring death in the face. Death was fairly breathing down their necks. The front, that is. And good lord, death needed a mint!
"What're we gonna do?" Zidane whined. "I don't wanna fight any more stupid bosses!"
"Who-are-you-calling-stupid?" Taharka demanded, quite offended.
"We still have to fight Kuja," Steiner reminded Zidane, quite ignoring the paper-thin boss thingy.
"Kuja? He's not a boss - he's a wimp!"
"Very true," Dagger put in, "but I would like to know how he gets his hair so soft and shiny."
"Head and Shoulders," Kuja announced from somewhere else entirely.
"Head and Shoulders?" Zidane repeated, scratching his head. "But you don't have dandruff, Kuja!"
"I know," Kuja announced proudly, a fair, immaculately manicured hand appearing mysteriously through a warp-hole and giving a ridiculously cheesy thumbs-up.
"Oh, man, Kuja's powerful!" Zidane exclaimed, watching this in awe. "I'm scared! Hold me, Dagger!"
"Um...boss?!" Dagger reminded him frantically.
"Fine, fine, we'll fight the boss," the betailed young man sighed. "Geez, Dagger, you're so bossy!"
"I am not bossy!" Dagger exclaimed, crossing her arms and hmphing. "I am domineering! But I'm a queen, so that's okay!"
"Queen?" Kuja repeated from somewhere. "That's a good idea!"
With that, the opening measures of 'We Will Rock You' rang out through the room.
"How odd," Steiner commented, scratching his head.
"We're not gonna have to fight Kuja right now, are we?" Zidane whined.
"You've got bigger things to worry about," Taharka announced ominously. "I am the Guardian of the Plates. Mirrors! Damnit! Okay, can we take this scene again? I'm gonna go back into the floor, you guys grab the mirrors again, we'll do the fight, it'll be cool. Alright?"
Zidane, Dagger, Steiner, and Vivi watched in confusion as Taharka bent down and swung open a humungous trapdoor in the floor, then climbed inside.
"So, as soon as I'm in, you're gonna take the plates, right? Just...just...wait a second," he requested, grabbing either side of the trapdoor. "Just give me three seconds, then grab the plates..."
The doors swung shut, and the next moment, the sound of one paper-thin guardian of the plates - mirrors humming innocently could be heard through the floors.
"Hey," Zidane muttered aside to Steiner, "has anyone else noticed that we've already got the mirrors?"
"Y-yeah," Vivi agreed.
"Great! Let's go!"
And so the four adventurers turned and left.
"Um.guys?" the voice floated up from the floor. "Did you grab the mirrors yet?"
No answer.
"Guys? Guys? I'm coming out soon! I've got a busy schedule, and I can't really wait around all day like this!"
Silence.
"Okay, three more seconds, and I'm coming out! Three...two...one...I'm coming out now!"
The trapdoor in the floor lifted, and Taharka burst out.
"Roar!" he roared most fiercely. When a quick glance about the room showed it to be empty, he sighed. "Well, isn't this wonderful. They've buggered off! What'll I do now? I need to take the incredible rage welling up within my paper-thin soul upon someone! But who?" he said matter-of-factly.
"The hiiiiiiiiiiiills are aliiiiiiiiive with the sound of musiiiiiiiic..." a voice sang from out in the hallway in a beautiful, ringing operatic tone.
"Would you clear off, #32? I'm trying to concentrate, and I'd appreciate it if you'd find somewhere else to practice!" Taharka called down the lift to the little green cleric.
"Sorry!" the same voice called back. "My bad!"
"Thank-you! Now, who shall I destroy?" Taharka mused. "Hmm...if only someone would wander by unsuspecting of the evils that lie in wait. That'd be great...I'd kill them good."
He chuckled wickedly, then sighed sadly.
"That just ain't gonna happen."
And, it appeared, he was right. Or so it seemed. Appeared, as it were.
Until the gears of the lift creaked into motion. Once the platform reached the top, two anachronistic authors and a rat stepped into the room...unsuspectingly.
"Ching!" said the little 'revenge' signs as they flashed into Taharka's eyes. So he WOULD have someone to take out his anger on! Woot!
It is at this point that we rejoin Amarant.
"Damnit! I've fallen, and I can't get up! Damn Tonberry..."
"Tells me not to sing, eh?" Tonberry #32 muttered rebelliously as he strode off in the other direction, dusting his hands off. "I showed that Rasta- Chicken!"
At this point, Zidane and Co. joined Quina and 'ko (Eiko, that is...heh-heh- heh...) outside the castle.
"Hey, where's Amarant?" Zidane demanded, noticing that the landscape was slightly less red than it should have been, and the air slightly less grumpy, and less things being leaned against than should have been. "And Freya, for that matter? And...where are those other two idiots?" At this point, noticing something, he fixed Eiko and Quina with a suspicious glance. "Did you summon Madeen on them?" he asked Eiko sternly.
"No..." she assured him, her grin widening.
"Did you eat them?" Zidane asked Quina.
"No..." Quina replied. His grin may have widened, but let's face it - how could anyone tell?
"Some other random horrible fate didn't befall them, did it?"
Both grins stretched out even farther, far beyond the confines of their faces.
"Yup," Zidane confirmed for himself, sighing in dismay. "Well, I guess I'd better go back for them."
With that, he turned and started back up the staircase to the entrance of Ipsen's Castle. Just as he was about to open the massive double doors, though, they swung open, seemingly of their own accord and flattened the Genome...who, oddly enough, as it is not the first time he has been referred to as such, did not know yet that he was a Genome.
"Ow..." he groaned, trying to peel himself from the wall but failing miserably as there was still a door pinning him in place.
"You are both beyond stupid!" Zidane heard Freya exclaim. 'Ah,' he thought. 'Bezo and Yezo must be with her. Dammit! Why couldn't those two have died a most painful death, or something?'
"This isn't all my fault!" Yezo protested piteously. "That sign on the door saying 'Enter Only if You Seek a Most Painful Death' could have meant ANYTHING!"
"Oh, shut up!" Freya requested gently. "You just HAD to chase your bunny in there, and YOU just HAD to chase her tail in there, and then you both just HAD to unleash that paper monster upon us, covering us all in paper cuts!"
"It was more Bezo's fault than mine! He was the one who started poking that trapdoor and telling the thing that lived inside that it was too sissy to come out and kill us!" Yezo said. To Zidane's best estimation, anyway. After all, this door was still blocking his view...maybe he should do something about that...
"I don't care what you say, Yezo, this is your fault!" Bezo's angry voice rang out. "Maybe if you had a real weapon, like the might blade of Masamune, instead of that stupid tail, we wouldn't have gotten in so much trouble!"
"It's a twig!" Yezo and Freya shouted together.
"Women. They don't know a twig from a mighty blade of Masamune. Oh, well. They should be in the kitchen, anyway."
'Oh, you idiot,' Zidane reflected smugly, quite glad that someone would soon have it worse than he currently did.
"Tidal Flame!" he shouted, nodding in satisfaction as the door erupted into millions of tiny pieces that showered merrily down upon the scene before him.
And a curious scene it was.
Bezo was in quite a state, indeed. He was lying on the ground, looking as bewildered as the spear shoved into his ear, the summoner's staff up his left nostril, the flute up his right, and a tail wrapped tightly around his neck would let him
'Poor bastard,' Zidane thought. The intensity of the thought increased ten- fold as Yezo set off down the stairs, seeming to get along with at least a few of the other team members for the first, last, and only time as she, Dagger, Eiko, and Freya chatted animatedly about what jerks men were. However, unfortunately for Bezo, with Yezo's tail still wrapped around his neck, not only was he strangled rather uncomfortably, he was also dragged down the steps, his cranium bumping painfully off the hard stone as he went.
"Ow! My craniosity! Now I can't be an intellectualizing labourhino!" he whimpered. "Would it help if I said I was sorry?"
"I don't believe you!" Yezo snipped back, using her tail to slam his head down against the steps several more times.
Shaking his head, Zidane turned and started back into the castle. After all, Amarant still remained to be found...and besides which, he didn't really want to stick around to observe the carnage that would undoubtedly occur when Bezo brought into use the phrase "barefoot and pregnant."
'I wonder what exactly an intellectualizing labourhino is,' Zidane mused as he stepped out of the blinding sun and back into the dim light of the castle. 'Maybe Amarant'll know...but first I've gotta find him. Dangit. Way to wander off, you big idiot! Uh...I hope he didn't hear that. He'd probably pound me good for saying it. Oh, well. Off I go.'
And so Zidane skipped merrily off into the next room, humming that damn song Dagger got stuck in his head all those times, but with a snazzy acid jazz beat, snapping his fingers jauntily as he went.
Suddenly, a pained groan echoed throughout the room.
"Whoever that is," a pained voice growled, "please shut up before I kill myself. And you," it added for emphasis.
"Oh, hey, Amarant!" Zidane chirped, bounding down the ladder and skipping along a beam until he saw a mass of red dreadlocks looming in the distance. "What happened to you, anyway?"
"That damn Tonberry happened to me," the bounty hunter sighed. "Apparently, it had a grudge with everyone. Oh, well. Give me a hand, would you, kid?"
"Sure, man. So, how did you get pasted by a Tonberry, anyway?"
"Shut up."
"Well, if you're gonna be that way, then maybe I'll just leave," Zidane said warningly.
"Remember, I can still throw things, and I've got a sharp chunk of granite here with your name on it. See? Right there."
"Oh, yeah," Zidane agreed, eyebrows lifting in surprise as he noticed 'Zidane' carved into the smooth black stone.
"I carved it with my claw," Amarant informed him coolly. "I had a lot of time. Just know that I'll do the same to you if you don't help me stand."
Zidane shrugged. Probably best to listen. Then, as he helped the older man to stand and gave him a potion and a mug of frosty ale for good measure, a little wooden...thing fell to the stone surface of the beam thingy.
"Hey, what's that?" the blond youth wondered, reaching for it.
"Nothing," Amarant hastened to assure him, snatching it up.
"C'mon, let me see it!"
"Piss off."
"What is that, a horse or something?" Zidane inquired, tugging it back.
"It's a rat. With a spear."
Zidane stared at him, askance.
Amarant shrugged.
"What?" he demanded.
"Uh...why did you make that?"
"I like rats," the redhead admitted. "With spears."
"I'm gonna tell Freya," Zidane announced, grinning.
"No, you're not," Amarant corrected, gripping him by the throat and brandishing his block of granite menacingly.
"Or...or I could just forget I ever saw it," Zidane suggested. "Come to think of it, saw what?"
"Better."
With that, Zidane found himself tossed aside into a wall.
"You've got a serious gratitude problem, pal," he called to Amarant, who was already stalking angrily away.
"Thanks," he called, turning back. "I try."
"Next order of business," Steiner announced when the group was finally all reassembled outside the airship.
"Let's gang-beat Bezo for making fun of women!" Eiko suggested excitedly.
"We haven't the time to waste!" Steiner informed her, annoyed.
"And I don't understand what you chicks are so excited about, anyway," Bezo admitted, halting the ritualistic motions needed to refine his twig- wielding techniques. "Is it that time of the month for all four of you? And by the way, Mr. Narrator, it's NOT a twig!"
Twig.
"Not a twig!"
Twig.
"Not a twig!"
Twig.
"Not a twig, damnit!"
Can we get on with the story, please?
"Fine," Bezo muttered sulkily, just in time to get his butt kicked by the same four angry girls.
An hour later, as Dagger was walking away from the bloodied and battered form of Bezo, something struck her in the back of the head.
"Ow!" she shrieked, whirling about to glare furiously at Bezo. "How dare you fight back?!"
"Wha's going on?" Bezo asked weakly. "Who am I?"
"That ruffian threw this at me!" Dagger exclaimed tearfully. "Kill it, Steiner!"
"What on earth is it, anway?" Steiner mused, bending to pick up the small package that had dropped to the ground next to the young woman.
"Acutally, I meant THAT thing," Dagger informed him, pointing at Bezo.
But Steiner's mind was elsewhere.
"I think this might have some special properties!"
"Smells old," Zidane noted, wrinkling his nose.
"Could this be..." Steiner began, eyes shining, "the Ancient Aroma?"
"Whatever it is," Zidane spoke up, "let's steal it!"
"Let's shake our fists furiously at it!" Steiner suggested eagerly.
"No! We should heal it!" Dagger announced.
"Only after we jump on it!" Freya added.
"Burn it first!" Vivi chirped, bouncing happily up and down. "Burn! Burn! Burn!"
"NO! Quina eat!" someone protested. We shall leave it to the reader to decide who.
"You eat it, and I'll throw you so far, you hit it," Amarant informed him menacingly.
"Maybe I can summon something from it," Eiko mused.
"Can I cuddle it?" Yezo asked, head cocked to the side. "Oh, it's not a bunny. Never mind.
With that, she went back to chasing her butterfly.
"Noooooooooooo! You use it to make Odin do some freaking damage!" a voice proclaimed from the heavens. "Because Odin needs to do damage! Odin is sick of missing!"
"Are you Odin?" Vivi shouted up at the sky.
"No, it's Carbuncle," the voice shouted back. "Odin's crying in the corner. And I think Bahamut's stealing his hat and drinking beer out of it!"
"Bahamut's really gone down-hill, hasn't he?" Dagger commented sadly.
"Hey, if you'd been responsible for destroying Alexandria, you'd be depressed, too!" Carbuncle replied. "There's a reason he's been driven to the bottle."
"O-oh," Dagger said weakly. "Well, uh, best of luck to him, and thanks for the Ancient Aroma."
"Hmph!" Eiko commented smugly. "None of MY Eidolons are hooked on the booze."
"And now, I've gotta go hit the bar!" Carbuncle proclaimed jubilantly. "It's been seven minutes since I had a drink, and beginning to get a little shaky. And Bahamut's catching up! Oh, you're goin' down, King B!"
"Oh, well," Eiko sighed.
Vivi took her hand comfortingly.
"Awwwwwww," said everyone, even Bezo's twig and Yezo's butterfly.
Eiko glared at their impromptu audience.
"Shut up!"
Before this chapter begins, Yezo has a few words: Rutabaga! Puppy! Quack! Bunny! Ice cream!
Bezo has some, too: Pizza! Umbrella! Death! Masamune! Sephiroth!
Yezo has some more words: stop it, Bezo!
And now, on with the story.
When we last left our staunch heroes, they were staring death in the face. Death was fairly breathing down their necks. The front, that is. And good lord, death needed a mint!
"What're we gonna do?" Zidane whined. "I don't wanna fight any more stupid bosses!"
"Who-are-you-calling-stupid?" Taharka demanded, quite offended.
"We still have to fight Kuja," Steiner reminded Zidane, quite ignoring the paper-thin boss thingy.
"Kuja? He's not a boss - he's a wimp!"
"Very true," Dagger put in, "but I would like to know how he gets his hair so soft and shiny."
"Head and Shoulders," Kuja announced from somewhere else entirely.
"Head and Shoulders?" Zidane repeated, scratching his head. "But you don't have dandruff, Kuja!"
"I know," Kuja announced proudly, a fair, immaculately manicured hand appearing mysteriously through a warp-hole and giving a ridiculously cheesy thumbs-up.
"Oh, man, Kuja's powerful!" Zidane exclaimed, watching this in awe. "I'm scared! Hold me, Dagger!"
"Um...boss?!" Dagger reminded him frantically.
"Fine, fine, we'll fight the boss," the betailed young man sighed. "Geez, Dagger, you're so bossy!"
"I am not bossy!" Dagger exclaimed, crossing her arms and hmphing. "I am domineering! But I'm a queen, so that's okay!"
"Queen?" Kuja repeated from somewhere. "That's a good idea!"
With that, the opening measures of 'We Will Rock You' rang out through the room.
"How odd," Steiner commented, scratching his head.
"We're not gonna have to fight Kuja right now, are we?" Zidane whined.
"You've got bigger things to worry about," Taharka announced ominously. "I am the Guardian of the Plates. Mirrors! Damnit! Okay, can we take this scene again? I'm gonna go back into the floor, you guys grab the mirrors again, we'll do the fight, it'll be cool. Alright?"
Zidane, Dagger, Steiner, and Vivi watched in confusion as Taharka bent down and swung open a humungous trapdoor in the floor, then climbed inside.
"So, as soon as I'm in, you're gonna take the plates, right? Just...just...wait a second," he requested, grabbing either side of the trapdoor. "Just give me three seconds, then grab the plates..."
The doors swung shut, and the next moment, the sound of one paper-thin guardian of the plates - mirrors humming innocently could be heard through the floors.
"Hey," Zidane muttered aside to Steiner, "has anyone else noticed that we've already got the mirrors?"
"Y-yeah," Vivi agreed.
"Great! Let's go!"
And so the four adventurers turned and left.
"Um.guys?" the voice floated up from the floor. "Did you grab the mirrors yet?"
No answer.
"Guys? Guys? I'm coming out soon! I've got a busy schedule, and I can't really wait around all day like this!"
Silence.
"Okay, three more seconds, and I'm coming out! Three...two...one...I'm coming out now!"
The trapdoor in the floor lifted, and Taharka burst out.
"Roar!" he roared most fiercely. When a quick glance about the room showed it to be empty, he sighed. "Well, isn't this wonderful. They've buggered off! What'll I do now? I need to take the incredible rage welling up within my paper-thin soul upon someone! But who?" he said matter-of-factly.
"The hiiiiiiiiiiiills are aliiiiiiiiive with the sound of musiiiiiiiic..." a voice sang from out in the hallway in a beautiful, ringing operatic tone.
"Would you clear off, #32? I'm trying to concentrate, and I'd appreciate it if you'd find somewhere else to practice!" Taharka called down the lift to the little green cleric.
"Sorry!" the same voice called back. "My bad!"
"Thank-you! Now, who shall I destroy?" Taharka mused. "Hmm...if only someone would wander by unsuspecting of the evils that lie in wait. That'd be great...I'd kill them good."
He chuckled wickedly, then sighed sadly.
"That just ain't gonna happen."
And, it appeared, he was right. Or so it seemed. Appeared, as it were.
Until the gears of the lift creaked into motion. Once the platform reached the top, two anachronistic authors and a rat stepped into the room...unsuspectingly.
"Ching!" said the little 'revenge' signs as they flashed into Taharka's eyes. So he WOULD have someone to take out his anger on! Woot!
It is at this point that we rejoin Amarant.
"Damnit! I've fallen, and I can't get up! Damn Tonberry..."
"Tells me not to sing, eh?" Tonberry #32 muttered rebelliously as he strode off in the other direction, dusting his hands off. "I showed that Rasta- Chicken!"
At this point, Zidane and Co. joined Quina and 'ko (Eiko, that is...heh-heh- heh...) outside the castle.
"Hey, where's Amarant?" Zidane demanded, noticing that the landscape was slightly less red than it should have been, and the air slightly less grumpy, and less things being leaned against than should have been. "And Freya, for that matter? And...where are those other two idiots?" At this point, noticing something, he fixed Eiko and Quina with a suspicious glance. "Did you summon Madeen on them?" he asked Eiko sternly.
"No..." she assured him, her grin widening.
"Did you eat them?" Zidane asked Quina.
"No..." Quina replied. His grin may have widened, but let's face it - how could anyone tell?
"Some other random horrible fate didn't befall them, did it?"
Both grins stretched out even farther, far beyond the confines of their faces.
"Yup," Zidane confirmed for himself, sighing in dismay. "Well, I guess I'd better go back for them."
With that, he turned and started back up the staircase to the entrance of Ipsen's Castle. Just as he was about to open the massive double doors, though, they swung open, seemingly of their own accord and flattened the Genome...who, oddly enough, as it is not the first time he has been referred to as such, did not know yet that he was a Genome.
"Ow..." he groaned, trying to peel himself from the wall but failing miserably as there was still a door pinning him in place.
"You are both beyond stupid!" Zidane heard Freya exclaim. 'Ah,' he thought. 'Bezo and Yezo must be with her. Dammit! Why couldn't those two have died a most painful death, or something?'
"This isn't all my fault!" Yezo protested piteously. "That sign on the door saying 'Enter Only if You Seek a Most Painful Death' could have meant ANYTHING!"
"Oh, shut up!" Freya requested gently. "You just HAD to chase your bunny in there, and YOU just HAD to chase her tail in there, and then you both just HAD to unleash that paper monster upon us, covering us all in paper cuts!"
"It was more Bezo's fault than mine! He was the one who started poking that trapdoor and telling the thing that lived inside that it was too sissy to come out and kill us!" Yezo said. To Zidane's best estimation, anyway. After all, this door was still blocking his view...maybe he should do something about that...
"I don't care what you say, Yezo, this is your fault!" Bezo's angry voice rang out. "Maybe if you had a real weapon, like the might blade of Masamune, instead of that stupid tail, we wouldn't have gotten in so much trouble!"
"It's a twig!" Yezo and Freya shouted together.
"Women. They don't know a twig from a mighty blade of Masamune. Oh, well. They should be in the kitchen, anyway."
'Oh, you idiot,' Zidane reflected smugly, quite glad that someone would soon have it worse than he currently did.
"Tidal Flame!" he shouted, nodding in satisfaction as the door erupted into millions of tiny pieces that showered merrily down upon the scene before him.
And a curious scene it was.
Bezo was in quite a state, indeed. He was lying on the ground, looking as bewildered as the spear shoved into his ear, the summoner's staff up his left nostril, the flute up his right, and a tail wrapped tightly around his neck would let him
'Poor bastard,' Zidane thought. The intensity of the thought increased ten- fold as Yezo set off down the stairs, seeming to get along with at least a few of the other team members for the first, last, and only time as she, Dagger, Eiko, and Freya chatted animatedly about what jerks men were. However, unfortunately for Bezo, with Yezo's tail still wrapped around his neck, not only was he strangled rather uncomfortably, he was also dragged down the steps, his cranium bumping painfully off the hard stone as he went.
"Ow! My craniosity! Now I can't be an intellectualizing labourhino!" he whimpered. "Would it help if I said I was sorry?"
"I don't believe you!" Yezo snipped back, using her tail to slam his head down against the steps several more times.
Shaking his head, Zidane turned and started back into the castle. After all, Amarant still remained to be found...and besides which, he didn't really want to stick around to observe the carnage that would undoubtedly occur when Bezo brought into use the phrase "barefoot and pregnant."
'I wonder what exactly an intellectualizing labourhino is,' Zidane mused as he stepped out of the blinding sun and back into the dim light of the castle. 'Maybe Amarant'll know...but first I've gotta find him. Dangit. Way to wander off, you big idiot! Uh...I hope he didn't hear that. He'd probably pound me good for saying it. Oh, well. Off I go.'
And so Zidane skipped merrily off into the next room, humming that damn song Dagger got stuck in his head all those times, but with a snazzy acid jazz beat, snapping his fingers jauntily as he went.
Suddenly, a pained groan echoed throughout the room.
"Whoever that is," a pained voice growled, "please shut up before I kill myself. And you," it added for emphasis.
"Oh, hey, Amarant!" Zidane chirped, bounding down the ladder and skipping along a beam until he saw a mass of red dreadlocks looming in the distance. "What happened to you, anyway?"
"That damn Tonberry happened to me," the bounty hunter sighed. "Apparently, it had a grudge with everyone. Oh, well. Give me a hand, would you, kid?"
"Sure, man. So, how did you get pasted by a Tonberry, anyway?"
"Shut up."
"Well, if you're gonna be that way, then maybe I'll just leave," Zidane said warningly.
"Remember, I can still throw things, and I've got a sharp chunk of granite here with your name on it. See? Right there."
"Oh, yeah," Zidane agreed, eyebrows lifting in surprise as he noticed 'Zidane' carved into the smooth black stone.
"I carved it with my claw," Amarant informed him coolly. "I had a lot of time. Just know that I'll do the same to you if you don't help me stand."
Zidane shrugged. Probably best to listen. Then, as he helped the older man to stand and gave him a potion and a mug of frosty ale for good measure, a little wooden...thing fell to the stone surface of the beam thingy.
"Hey, what's that?" the blond youth wondered, reaching for it.
"Nothing," Amarant hastened to assure him, snatching it up.
"C'mon, let me see it!"
"Piss off."
"What is that, a horse or something?" Zidane inquired, tugging it back.
"It's a rat. With a spear."
Zidane stared at him, askance.
Amarant shrugged.
"What?" he demanded.
"Uh...why did you make that?"
"I like rats," the redhead admitted. "With spears."
"I'm gonna tell Freya," Zidane announced, grinning.
"No, you're not," Amarant corrected, gripping him by the throat and brandishing his block of granite menacingly.
"Or...or I could just forget I ever saw it," Zidane suggested. "Come to think of it, saw what?"
"Better."
With that, Zidane found himself tossed aside into a wall.
"You've got a serious gratitude problem, pal," he called to Amarant, who was already stalking angrily away.
"Thanks," he called, turning back. "I try."
"Next order of business," Steiner announced when the group was finally all reassembled outside the airship.
"Let's gang-beat Bezo for making fun of women!" Eiko suggested excitedly.
"We haven't the time to waste!" Steiner informed her, annoyed.
"And I don't understand what you chicks are so excited about, anyway," Bezo admitted, halting the ritualistic motions needed to refine his twig- wielding techniques. "Is it that time of the month for all four of you? And by the way, Mr. Narrator, it's NOT a twig!"
Twig.
"Not a twig!"
Twig.
"Not a twig!"
Twig.
"Not a twig, damnit!"
Can we get on with the story, please?
"Fine," Bezo muttered sulkily, just in time to get his butt kicked by the same four angry girls.
An hour later, as Dagger was walking away from the bloodied and battered form of Bezo, something struck her in the back of the head.
"Ow!" she shrieked, whirling about to glare furiously at Bezo. "How dare you fight back?!"
"Wha's going on?" Bezo asked weakly. "Who am I?"
"That ruffian threw this at me!" Dagger exclaimed tearfully. "Kill it, Steiner!"
"What on earth is it, anway?" Steiner mused, bending to pick up the small package that had dropped to the ground next to the young woman.
"Acutally, I meant THAT thing," Dagger informed him, pointing at Bezo.
But Steiner's mind was elsewhere.
"I think this might have some special properties!"
"Smells old," Zidane noted, wrinkling his nose.
"Could this be..." Steiner began, eyes shining, "the Ancient Aroma?"
"Whatever it is," Zidane spoke up, "let's steal it!"
"Let's shake our fists furiously at it!" Steiner suggested eagerly.
"No! We should heal it!" Dagger announced.
"Only after we jump on it!" Freya added.
"Burn it first!" Vivi chirped, bouncing happily up and down. "Burn! Burn! Burn!"
"NO! Quina eat!" someone protested. We shall leave it to the reader to decide who.
"You eat it, and I'll throw you so far, you hit it," Amarant informed him menacingly.
"Maybe I can summon something from it," Eiko mused.
"Can I cuddle it?" Yezo asked, head cocked to the side. "Oh, it's not a bunny. Never mind.
With that, she went back to chasing her butterfly.
"Noooooooooooo! You use it to make Odin do some freaking damage!" a voice proclaimed from the heavens. "Because Odin needs to do damage! Odin is sick of missing!"
"Are you Odin?" Vivi shouted up at the sky.
"No, it's Carbuncle," the voice shouted back. "Odin's crying in the corner. And I think Bahamut's stealing his hat and drinking beer out of it!"
"Bahamut's really gone down-hill, hasn't he?" Dagger commented sadly.
"Hey, if you'd been responsible for destroying Alexandria, you'd be depressed, too!" Carbuncle replied. "There's a reason he's been driven to the bottle."
"O-oh," Dagger said weakly. "Well, uh, best of luck to him, and thanks for the Ancient Aroma."
"Hmph!" Eiko commented smugly. "None of MY Eidolons are hooked on the booze."
"And now, I've gotta go hit the bar!" Carbuncle proclaimed jubilantly. "It's been seven minutes since I had a drink, and beginning to get a little shaky. And Bahamut's catching up! Oh, you're goin' down, King B!"
"Oh, well," Eiko sighed.
Vivi took her hand comfortingly.
"Awwwwwww," said everyone, even Bezo's twig and Yezo's butterfly.
Eiko glared at their impromptu audience.
"Shut up!"