Chapter 13 - It's Steiner-Bashin' Time! With a Side Order of Odin-
Bashin'...Which is More Like a Main Course of Odin-Bashin', with, like, a
Carrot Stick of Steiner-Bashin' to Help Whet your Appetite Before the
Real...Eh, Screw It - This Title's Too Long. Let's Just Call It 'To Nobuo!'
"Dagger!" Zidane whined some hours later as the Hilda Garde III sailed triumphantly through the sky, bursting right through clouds and large birds alike. But, as Sailor Erin always said, if the birds couldn't be bothered to move, it was their own fault if they got hit. A bird could manoeuvre itself a lot more easily than she could manoeuvre an airship. "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"
Dagger sighed. Not again...
"Well, Zidane, we're about five minutes closer to the water shrine than we were when you asked me FIVE MINUTES AGO!"
Zidane sighed.
"Oh, okay," he pouted. "I guess I'd better get everyone rounded up to draw straws..."
"Have fun, Zidane," Dagger said absently, already absorbed in polishing the pretty round jewel thingy on the top of her staff. After all, one couldn't go about killing monsters with a dirty weapon! Even monsters deserved that much respect!
"HEY, EVERYONE!" Zidane howled at the top of his voice. "BE ROUNDED!"
"Zidane!" Sailor Erin admonished. "Do you mind? You're distracting me from my thinking about Seifer!"
"MINE!" a voice informed her sternly, right before a sharp breeze lifted up her skirt, revealing her Sailor Moon underpants.
"Wow..." said Zidane, his gaze drawn like a moth to a flame.
"Pow!" said Dagger's fist as it embedded itself in Zidane's face.
"Ow!" said Zidane as he peeled himself off of the floor.
"Now," Dagger began as she returned to the polishing of her staff. Here, she was interrupted.
"How now, brown cow?" Captain Bob Vious giggled.
"Oh, shut up!" Erin exclaimed, blushing brightly as she kept her skirt down with one hand and smacked Captain Bob Vious upside the head with the other. "And by the way, you are no longer a captain! You are Crew Member once more!"
"Noooooooooooo!" Crew Member sobbed. "Crew Members don't get chicks! At least as a Captain, I had power, and...and...stuff!"
"Be gone from my sight, Ensign Crew Member!" Erin commanded heartlessly.
Crew Member ran from the room, his face buried in his hands, anime tear- jets shooting out from the sides of his head, forced into streams by the pressure of his hands, smashing an extended hole in the wall on either side of the hall from the sheer water pressure.
"Would you stop crying before you kill us all?!" Amarant bellowed from another room, throwing a block of granite, Zidane's name carved into it, through the wall and at Crew Member's head.
"That was a little unnecessary," Freya informed him.
"Everyone's mean to me!" Crew Member whimpered before promptly losing consciousness.
"Now, before I was so rudely interrupted," Dagger began, only to be so rudely interrupted once more.
"I thought I was calling the meeting to order," Zidane frowned, quite hurt.
"Who exactly made you the leader?" she demanded. "Are you a princess? Don't answer that," she finished, cutting off his attempts to speak. "I don't want to hear about the time you had to play Princess Buttercup again!"
"Fine," Zidane muttered sulkily.
"And are you a queen?" Dagger continued with a smug grin. "Who else here is a queen?"
"I am!" a voice proclaimed from outside the airship, punctuated by the starting of 'We Will Rock You.'
"You stay out of this, Kuja!" Dagger commanded.
"Yeah!" Zidane added. "We're comin' to kill you, and we don't wanna deal with you until then!"
A well-placed glare from the young Alexandrian ruler immediately silenced Zidane, Sailor Erin, Crew Member, Amarant, Freya, the mysterious bringer of the wind, and anyone who may have felt like piping up at that moment.
"You be quiet! All of you! Now, AS I was saying before I was interrupted...again-"
"Hey, guys, I'm Odin! Whazzup?!" a cheerful voice exclaimed as the pounding of hooves...in air...thundered past.
"Wow..." Erin breathed. "Is that the Mythical Odin-Hat?"
"This is my head," Odin informed her.
"AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!" Dagger howled with all the agony and severe annoyance of the ages echoing in her scream. "I said, 'before I was interrupted,' NOT 'Tzeublooky (tm)!'"
"Sorry!" Odin called. "In my last life, I was used to coming whenever I felt like it. Kinda like Phoenix."
"Wow...that explains a lot," Zidane mused, remembering with great fondness the firebird.and the eidolon who drove it.
"Go away Odin!! You come when you're not called, you miss when you are called, your horse is ugly and quite frankly you're nothing to write home about yourself. You're a sucky eidolon!" Dagger said, her delicate psyche becoming horribly unglued.
"Wh-what?" Odin whimpered, tears beginning to form a sheen over his eyes. "Odin doesn't need this! Odin's goin' back to his Cool Hat Land!"
With that, he urged his horse into a gallop, and the sound of his sobbing drifted away.
Dagger watched him go, blinking.
"Well!" she chirped brightly. "If there are no further interruptions-"
"Hey, is this a bad time to-"
"YES!" Dagger snarled at the newcomer, a young man with spiky blond hair and an enormous sword strapped to his back.
With a shrug, Cloud turned and started to the railing of the Hilda Garde III, preparing to leap back onto the deck of the Highwind.
"Okay. I just wanted to know if you knew the way to Sephiroth."
"Man, are you off-course," Bezo chuckled, shaking his head. "Sephiroth's not even IN this universe! How did you end up here, anyway?"
"I think we took the wrong left at Chocobo Forest," Cloud sighed.
Bezo put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Look, it's okay. Just go back to Squaresoft and find Nobuo. He'll be in a box on the third floor, living in abject slavery until he is needed to compose beautiful music. He'll send you back to where you're supposed to be. He has magical powers, in addition to being the best composer ever!"
Cloud frowned.
"Uh...kay. Did you understand a word of that?" he asked Yezo, who had sidled up beside her boyfriend.
"I never do," she replied with a sigh. "By the way," she began, holding out an autograph pad.
"No, I am NOT going to get you Sephiroth's autograph!" Cloud cut her off.
"Um...okay," she agreed. "How about Barret's and Yuffie's and Puppy- Wuppy's? There the coolest..."
"Look," Bezo began, nudging Yezo out of the way, all business for the first and last time ever, "just go find Nobuo. Dagger's gonna get really pissy if she doesn't get to talk soon."
"Gotcha, man. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Unless it's a woman stabbed through the chest by a sword-wielding psychopath," Cloud said sagely. "Remember that."
And with these words of wisdom, he leapt back to his ship.
"Can we [beep]in' get outta here already?" someone with a throaty rasp of a voice, possibly from years of smoking, demanded.
"..." Vincent didn't say, because he didn't.
"Alright, Cid, alright," Cloud's reply drifted back to the Hilda Garde III. "To Nobuo!"
"One more person, or universe interrupts me, and I WILL DESTROY THEM!!!" Dagger bellowed. "WITH BAHAMUT!" She clutched her chest for a moment, breathing harshly. Then, when it seemed that it would be safe, she began. "Now! Hmm...come to think of it, I don't really have anything to say," she laughed sheepishly.
"Hmph!" Zidane smirked. "Who's the 'almighty leader' NOW?"
"Shut up, Zidane," Dagger pouted, cuddling her little toy dragon, Chibi- Bahamut.
'Aw,' he thought adoringly. 'She still has the little toy I won her at that carnival we stopped at! How can I stay mad at her? She has a really nice rack!'
At this point, the little plot-fairies appeared and started kicking Zidane repeatedly in the head. Not that they wanted a plot to be underway...kicking Zidane in the head was just a lot of fun. It was a popular sport among the fairies, plot or otherwise. Come to think of it, it was popular among everyone else, too, as is evidenced by what happened next.
"Ow!" Zidane exclaimed. "Dagger, why did you kick me in the head?"
"Because it's fun!" she replied as though nothing could have been more obvious. "And besides, you were staring at my chest again."
"It's like a moth to a flame! Except the flame is your boobs, and the moth is my eyes. It's a metaphor for the human condition."
"Maybe the eidolons were onto something when they started eliminating all humans," Dagger sighed. Then she frowned. "Zidane...have you noticed that we seem to be the only two assembled?"
At this point, the camera people decided that Zidane and Dagger were too boring, and decided to see what the rest of the group was up to.
Strip poker, if Steiner's current state was any indication. Random bits of armor littered the ground around him and he sat hunched over in his chair, acutely and miserably conscious of the fact that he was currently clad only in his tin hat thing, and a pair of heart-patterned boxer shorts, a gift from his beloved Beatrix the last Valentine's Day they had spent together. She had thought them hilarious, and quite apt, when she had noticed the words printed over the fly, 'Home of the Whopper.'
And now that we have made more Steiner fangirls, we feel it as good a time as any to reveal that they were not, in fact, playing strip poker. Or poker of any description, for that matter.
"Go fish," Eiko said.
"Damn," Yuffie sighed, drawing a card from the pile. "Y'know, first all my friends accidentally leave me behind, and then I lose the game!"
"Now you have to take off your shorts," Steiner spoke up.
"Steiner," Amarant began, then stopped, shaking his head. "Never mind. It's not worth it."
"It's not like I'm wearing a whole lot to begin with," Yuffie pouted. "So...you guys really don't have ANY Materia?"
"We keep telling you," Freya began, somewhat less than patiently, "you'll have to explain what exactly this Materia is before we can tell you."
"This!" Yuffie proclaimed, pulling out a shiny red marble-lookin' thing.
"Oooh..." everyone chorused together. "Shiny..."
"Hey, guys, I'm Odin!" the Materia informed them.
"Odin?" Yuffie echoed, making a face. She turned to Vivi. "You want this?"
"Nah," Vivi replied. "I'm saving up for Knights of the Round."
She scowled at him.
"You'll never get my Knights of the Round!"
"You could just grow another one," he suggested mildly.
"Then I'd have two!" she shot back snippily. "And I'd keep 'em both! Materia forever, sharing never! Materia forever, sharing never! Materia forever, sharing never!"
"She's singing again," Amarant growled, curling his hands into fists.
Freya placed a hand on his arm.
"No, Amarant, you can NOT throw her so far she hits her own shadow."
"I can sure as hell try," he averred, climbing to his feet and throwing his cards down on the table.
"Hey! You said you had no threes!" Freya exclaimed, peering at his cards.
"That's an 'e,'" he informed her, then looked again. "Oh, wait, it IS a three. Well, I'll be darned. Oh, well. Back to the task at hand. Prepare to fly, little singing-girl."
"Uh...what?" Yuffie frowned, scratching her head and halting in the middle of her victory dance. "I am not just any singing-girl! I am a ninja! I'm tough!"
With that, she began punching and kicking at nothing in particular, but very rapidly.
"Heidegger ain't got nothin' on me!" she announced proudly.
"Hit me!" Steiner called at that point. "Ow!" he whined as everyone in the room took turns smacking him upside the head. "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Let me put my armour back on! Ow! I meant, give me a card!"
"We aren't playing Blackjack," Yuffie said. "Hey, someone pass the Cheezies!"
"The...whats?"
"The Cheezies, Rasta-Man!"
"Please, let's throw her off the ship," Amarant pleaded. "Maybe she'll land on her ship, and everything will be jolly!"
"No, Amarant! No more throwing people!" Vivi said.
"When have you ever stood up for yourself, you little runt?"
"When I hit Level 100!" the little mage chirped, blasting Amarant with a Flare spell.
"I shouldn't have joined the party so late," Amarant lamented, bleeding profusely and shooting Freya a thankful sort-of-smile as she rushed to his aid.
"Speaking of parties," Yuffie began, grinning, "I wonder how mine's doing. I bet they feel really silly for forgetting me..."
Yes, speaking of parties, indeed, Yuffie. Speaking of parties, the crew of the Highwind was having one at that very moment.
"We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie!" everyone sang, minus Vincent, as they performed a conga-line around the deck.
"..." Vincent commented, sulking in a corner. It just wasn't the same on the Highwind without hearing retching noises drifting in from her special little spot, without hearing her bitching loudly and continuously about how much she hated flying. It seemed, though, that no one else shared these sentiments with him.
"We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie!"
"Hey, guys!" Cloud exclaimed, breaking from the line. "I know! Let's blow something up to celebrate!"
"Like what?" Tifa wondered. "Like those houses in Midgar?"
"We are NOT goin' back ta Midgar!" Barret informed Cloud gently, gripping him by the throat.
"I didn't suggest it," Cloud choked out, trying to pry the hand off of his neck.
"Well, I can't hurt a girl!"
"How nice for me," Cloud rasped, before pulling out his blonde wig and slapping it on his head. "How 'bout now?"
Barret abruptly dropped him and doubled over with laughter.
"You one pretty man," he commented, shaking his head.
"Why don't we blow up Cactuars?" Red XIII suggested.
Cid shook his head in disgust.
"I hate Cactuars. They giggle, and they bounce around. They kinda remind me of Yuffie, come to think of it..."
Vincent frowned. By Jove, he was right! Glancing furtively to either side, he carefully reach into the pocket of his cape, pulled out a little plushy Catuar doll, and stroked it lovingly. 'I think I'll name it Yuffie,' he thought.
Red XIII scowled at Cid, not that anyone could tell.
"Alright, then. Why don't we go fight sand worms on that beach where Cid blew himself up with a comet?"
"I THOUGHT [beep]IN' REFLECT WOULD [beep]IN' REFLECT THE [beep]IN' COMET!" he howled.
"Just no one bring up the Ultima incident," Cloud muttered aside to the group. "It is a good thing Phoenix was on the way to Don Corneo's place and passed the group right then."
"So, sand worms it is!" Tifa agreed. "Let's use Knights of the Round!"
"O-kay!" Cloud chirped brightly. "I love using Knights of the Round! Does everyone have their Knights of the Round?"
"Let's check!" everyone exclaimed together, withdrawing their weapons.
As they did, five hugely cheesy grins melted into puzzled frowns.
"Um...that's a negatory in the Knights of the Round situation," Cid admitted sheepishly.
"Yeah, for me, too," Tifa admitted.
"Check your backpacks, then," Cloud suggested, annoyed and getting slightly worried.
"That's a negatory on the backpack situation, too," Cid told him, his voice quivering slightly.
"You don't even have your backpack," Cloud pointed out, a sweatdrop suspended at the side of his head.
"W-well, Cloud, there isn't really a lot of point in checking," Tifa told him. "You see, we all gave our Materia - just to hold it - to...uh...well..."
"To Yuffie?" Cloud finished for her while Vincent mouthed it silently, inwardly almost smirking with triumph.
"She got your Materia. She got your Materia. She got your Materia. Now you gotta get her," he sang quietly, making the little Cactuar doll dance about merrily on the floor beside him.
"Um...I guess we turn around and go get Yuffie?" Learner Pilot suggested hesitantly.
"Yeah, yeah," Cloud grumbled. "To that ship we were on before!" He sighed, shaking his head. "It just doesn't have the short, snappy appeal of 'to Nobuo!' does it?"
"Alright!" Learner Pilot exclaimed jubilantly, hitting the button. "Yaagh! We're taking off!" he shouted as the ship rose into the air.
Cloud glared at him, annoyed.
"Do you still have to do that?"
Learner Pilot grinned sheepishly.
"Well, to be honest, now it just feels like a catch-phrase."
"Great," Cloud grumbled. "Another delay. Who suggested giving her the Materia, anyway?"
With that, all eyes landed on Barret, looked away sheepishly.
"Aw, shit."
Chapter 13.5 - And Now, a Word From Our Sponsors!
[The scene is, once again, a tavern. After all, what better place to attempt to sell products than one where everyone will be drunk, and thus, very free with their finances, leading them to buy any stupid thing we offer them? Er...anyway, Steiner and Beatrix are seated at the bar, each nursing humungous novelty-sized tankards of ale. Steiner picks up his tankard, preparing for the rush of beer, then frowns and sets his tankard down again.]
Steiner: There is no beer in here! I drink fast!
Beatrix: [Quickly hiding super-long moocher straw] Heh-heh-heh...
[However, what Beatrix fails to notice is the extra-long moocher straw in HER beverage, the other end of it attached to the mouth of an evilly- cackling, and very drunk, Bahamut.]
Bahamut: Heh-heh-heh...hic!
[Enter a hot-looking specimen of femininity. Dressed in purple, with long, silver hair, she is quite a dish. She's got curves in all the right places, AND she wears a thong! Not only that, but she's winkin' at Steiner, who promptly forgets his empty beverage and starts to float after her on cartoon-like angel wings.
Steiner: She is looking at me...? Oh! Rapture!
[Steiner clasps his hands, his eyes going all wide and shiny. At this point, we cut to Beatrix, who is looking decidedly annoyed.
Beatrix: Do you have this problem? Does this happen to you whenever you go out for a nice, romantic evening in a smoky, crowded, foul-mouthed bar, getting drunk off your ass? Can your man not keep his eyes of other womens'...eyes? [She meaningfully gestures to a set of something significantly below the eyes, and much more jiggly.] Well, you may not be able to reign in your man's hormones, but I think, with a little help, you'll be able to reign in your man.
[She picks up a strap of leather lying next to her on the seat, and gives it a firm tug, pressing a red button on the end.]
Beatrix: Come here!
Steiner: Yaaaaaaaagh!
[At this point, suffice it to say that Steiner's angel wings have disappeared, as the strap of leather was a leash, the other end of which was around Steiner's metal-covered neck, the metal of which made the electric shock that the little red button 'unleashed,' very painful, indeed.]
Beatrix: You need the Man-Leash! Because sometimes, couples' therapy just isn't enough.
[Beatrix growls over a memory, and the screen dissolves into a flashback. We see Beatrix and Steiner at a couples' counsellor's office, and Steiner is sitting, rather stunned, as the very pretty young counsellor bends over, allegedly to pick up her dropped pencil - apparently, word of Steiner's...er...legendary...ahem...sword (Excalibur II; completes the game in 12 hours) has got out. Unfortunately, Beatrix doesn't like to share - and, in a very low-cut blouse, this shows off much more than needs to be shown. Once again, the phrase "moth to a flame" seems to be appropriate.]
Beatrix: Oh, yes. The 'Save the Queen' got a good workout that night. She's dead now. And in several pieces.
[She blinks several times as an off screen cameraman reminds her that the camera is still rolling]
Beatrix: Uh...anyway, the Man-Leash can change your life. And can end his. For the better! Hold on - that doesn't make sense. Who wrote this? Er, well, the Man-Leash! Buy it today! Put a charge back in your marriage. Operators are standing by.
[She gestures to the other end of the bar, where Lani is sitting, her axe propped up against her barstool, and a red telephone in front of her. She is gradually working her way through an entire case of Noxema: Genuine Draft}
Lani: My skin has never looked so smooth! Hic! Every time I look in the mirror, I look better n' better!
[Lani falls off her stool]
Beatrix: Um...right.
[Meanwhile, the girl that Steiner was so fascinated with has gone up to the jukebox to request a song. Seconds later, Queen's 'We Will Rock You' echoes through the bar.]
Steiner: Why does that sound so familiar...oh, Mein Gott.
Beatrix: Don't feel bad, Steiner. Kuja IS the prettiest man ever, after all.
[At the other end of the bar, Laguna sits there, and overhearing, pouts.]
Laguna: I thought I was the prettiest man ever...
[Fade out]
"Dagger!" Zidane whined some hours later as the Hilda Garde III sailed triumphantly through the sky, bursting right through clouds and large birds alike. But, as Sailor Erin always said, if the birds couldn't be bothered to move, it was their own fault if they got hit. A bird could manoeuvre itself a lot more easily than she could manoeuvre an airship. "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"
Dagger sighed. Not again...
"Well, Zidane, we're about five minutes closer to the water shrine than we were when you asked me FIVE MINUTES AGO!"
Zidane sighed.
"Oh, okay," he pouted. "I guess I'd better get everyone rounded up to draw straws..."
"Have fun, Zidane," Dagger said absently, already absorbed in polishing the pretty round jewel thingy on the top of her staff. After all, one couldn't go about killing monsters with a dirty weapon! Even monsters deserved that much respect!
"HEY, EVERYONE!" Zidane howled at the top of his voice. "BE ROUNDED!"
"Zidane!" Sailor Erin admonished. "Do you mind? You're distracting me from my thinking about Seifer!"
"MINE!" a voice informed her sternly, right before a sharp breeze lifted up her skirt, revealing her Sailor Moon underpants.
"Wow..." said Zidane, his gaze drawn like a moth to a flame.
"Pow!" said Dagger's fist as it embedded itself in Zidane's face.
"Ow!" said Zidane as he peeled himself off of the floor.
"Now," Dagger began as she returned to the polishing of her staff. Here, she was interrupted.
"How now, brown cow?" Captain Bob Vious giggled.
"Oh, shut up!" Erin exclaimed, blushing brightly as she kept her skirt down with one hand and smacked Captain Bob Vious upside the head with the other. "And by the way, you are no longer a captain! You are Crew Member once more!"
"Noooooooooooo!" Crew Member sobbed. "Crew Members don't get chicks! At least as a Captain, I had power, and...and...stuff!"
"Be gone from my sight, Ensign Crew Member!" Erin commanded heartlessly.
Crew Member ran from the room, his face buried in his hands, anime tear- jets shooting out from the sides of his head, forced into streams by the pressure of his hands, smashing an extended hole in the wall on either side of the hall from the sheer water pressure.
"Would you stop crying before you kill us all?!" Amarant bellowed from another room, throwing a block of granite, Zidane's name carved into it, through the wall and at Crew Member's head.
"That was a little unnecessary," Freya informed him.
"Everyone's mean to me!" Crew Member whimpered before promptly losing consciousness.
"Now, before I was so rudely interrupted," Dagger began, only to be so rudely interrupted once more.
"I thought I was calling the meeting to order," Zidane frowned, quite hurt.
"Who exactly made you the leader?" she demanded. "Are you a princess? Don't answer that," she finished, cutting off his attempts to speak. "I don't want to hear about the time you had to play Princess Buttercup again!"
"Fine," Zidane muttered sulkily.
"And are you a queen?" Dagger continued with a smug grin. "Who else here is a queen?"
"I am!" a voice proclaimed from outside the airship, punctuated by the starting of 'We Will Rock You.'
"You stay out of this, Kuja!" Dagger commanded.
"Yeah!" Zidane added. "We're comin' to kill you, and we don't wanna deal with you until then!"
A well-placed glare from the young Alexandrian ruler immediately silenced Zidane, Sailor Erin, Crew Member, Amarant, Freya, the mysterious bringer of the wind, and anyone who may have felt like piping up at that moment.
"You be quiet! All of you! Now, AS I was saying before I was interrupted...again-"
"Hey, guys, I'm Odin! Whazzup?!" a cheerful voice exclaimed as the pounding of hooves...in air...thundered past.
"Wow..." Erin breathed. "Is that the Mythical Odin-Hat?"
"This is my head," Odin informed her.
"AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!" Dagger howled with all the agony and severe annoyance of the ages echoing in her scream. "I said, 'before I was interrupted,' NOT 'Tzeublooky (tm)!'"
"Sorry!" Odin called. "In my last life, I was used to coming whenever I felt like it. Kinda like Phoenix."
"Wow...that explains a lot," Zidane mused, remembering with great fondness the firebird.and the eidolon who drove it.
"Go away Odin!! You come when you're not called, you miss when you are called, your horse is ugly and quite frankly you're nothing to write home about yourself. You're a sucky eidolon!" Dagger said, her delicate psyche becoming horribly unglued.
"Wh-what?" Odin whimpered, tears beginning to form a sheen over his eyes. "Odin doesn't need this! Odin's goin' back to his Cool Hat Land!"
With that, he urged his horse into a gallop, and the sound of his sobbing drifted away.
Dagger watched him go, blinking.
"Well!" she chirped brightly. "If there are no further interruptions-"
"Hey, is this a bad time to-"
"YES!" Dagger snarled at the newcomer, a young man with spiky blond hair and an enormous sword strapped to his back.
With a shrug, Cloud turned and started to the railing of the Hilda Garde III, preparing to leap back onto the deck of the Highwind.
"Okay. I just wanted to know if you knew the way to Sephiroth."
"Man, are you off-course," Bezo chuckled, shaking his head. "Sephiroth's not even IN this universe! How did you end up here, anyway?"
"I think we took the wrong left at Chocobo Forest," Cloud sighed.
Bezo put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Look, it's okay. Just go back to Squaresoft and find Nobuo. He'll be in a box on the third floor, living in abject slavery until he is needed to compose beautiful music. He'll send you back to where you're supposed to be. He has magical powers, in addition to being the best composer ever!"
Cloud frowned.
"Uh...kay. Did you understand a word of that?" he asked Yezo, who had sidled up beside her boyfriend.
"I never do," she replied with a sigh. "By the way," she began, holding out an autograph pad.
"No, I am NOT going to get you Sephiroth's autograph!" Cloud cut her off.
"Um...okay," she agreed. "How about Barret's and Yuffie's and Puppy- Wuppy's? There the coolest..."
"Look," Bezo began, nudging Yezo out of the way, all business for the first and last time ever, "just go find Nobuo. Dagger's gonna get really pissy if she doesn't get to talk soon."
"Gotcha, man. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Unless it's a woman stabbed through the chest by a sword-wielding psychopath," Cloud said sagely. "Remember that."
And with these words of wisdom, he leapt back to his ship.
"Can we [beep]in' get outta here already?" someone with a throaty rasp of a voice, possibly from years of smoking, demanded.
"..." Vincent didn't say, because he didn't.
"Alright, Cid, alright," Cloud's reply drifted back to the Hilda Garde III. "To Nobuo!"
"One more person, or universe interrupts me, and I WILL DESTROY THEM!!!" Dagger bellowed. "WITH BAHAMUT!" She clutched her chest for a moment, breathing harshly. Then, when it seemed that it would be safe, she began. "Now! Hmm...come to think of it, I don't really have anything to say," she laughed sheepishly.
"Hmph!" Zidane smirked. "Who's the 'almighty leader' NOW?"
"Shut up, Zidane," Dagger pouted, cuddling her little toy dragon, Chibi- Bahamut.
'Aw,' he thought adoringly. 'She still has the little toy I won her at that carnival we stopped at! How can I stay mad at her? She has a really nice rack!'
At this point, the little plot-fairies appeared and started kicking Zidane repeatedly in the head. Not that they wanted a plot to be underway...kicking Zidane in the head was just a lot of fun. It was a popular sport among the fairies, plot or otherwise. Come to think of it, it was popular among everyone else, too, as is evidenced by what happened next.
"Ow!" Zidane exclaimed. "Dagger, why did you kick me in the head?"
"Because it's fun!" she replied as though nothing could have been more obvious. "And besides, you were staring at my chest again."
"It's like a moth to a flame! Except the flame is your boobs, and the moth is my eyes. It's a metaphor for the human condition."
"Maybe the eidolons were onto something when they started eliminating all humans," Dagger sighed. Then she frowned. "Zidane...have you noticed that we seem to be the only two assembled?"
At this point, the camera people decided that Zidane and Dagger were too boring, and decided to see what the rest of the group was up to.
Strip poker, if Steiner's current state was any indication. Random bits of armor littered the ground around him and he sat hunched over in his chair, acutely and miserably conscious of the fact that he was currently clad only in his tin hat thing, and a pair of heart-patterned boxer shorts, a gift from his beloved Beatrix the last Valentine's Day they had spent together. She had thought them hilarious, and quite apt, when she had noticed the words printed over the fly, 'Home of the Whopper.'
And now that we have made more Steiner fangirls, we feel it as good a time as any to reveal that they were not, in fact, playing strip poker. Or poker of any description, for that matter.
"Go fish," Eiko said.
"Damn," Yuffie sighed, drawing a card from the pile. "Y'know, first all my friends accidentally leave me behind, and then I lose the game!"
"Now you have to take off your shorts," Steiner spoke up.
"Steiner," Amarant began, then stopped, shaking his head. "Never mind. It's not worth it."
"It's not like I'm wearing a whole lot to begin with," Yuffie pouted. "So...you guys really don't have ANY Materia?"
"We keep telling you," Freya began, somewhat less than patiently, "you'll have to explain what exactly this Materia is before we can tell you."
"This!" Yuffie proclaimed, pulling out a shiny red marble-lookin' thing.
"Oooh..." everyone chorused together. "Shiny..."
"Hey, guys, I'm Odin!" the Materia informed them.
"Odin?" Yuffie echoed, making a face. She turned to Vivi. "You want this?"
"Nah," Vivi replied. "I'm saving up for Knights of the Round."
She scowled at him.
"You'll never get my Knights of the Round!"
"You could just grow another one," he suggested mildly.
"Then I'd have two!" she shot back snippily. "And I'd keep 'em both! Materia forever, sharing never! Materia forever, sharing never! Materia forever, sharing never!"
"She's singing again," Amarant growled, curling his hands into fists.
Freya placed a hand on his arm.
"No, Amarant, you can NOT throw her so far she hits her own shadow."
"I can sure as hell try," he averred, climbing to his feet and throwing his cards down on the table.
"Hey! You said you had no threes!" Freya exclaimed, peering at his cards.
"That's an 'e,'" he informed her, then looked again. "Oh, wait, it IS a three. Well, I'll be darned. Oh, well. Back to the task at hand. Prepare to fly, little singing-girl."
"Uh...what?" Yuffie frowned, scratching her head and halting in the middle of her victory dance. "I am not just any singing-girl! I am a ninja! I'm tough!"
With that, she began punching and kicking at nothing in particular, but very rapidly.
"Heidegger ain't got nothin' on me!" she announced proudly.
"Hit me!" Steiner called at that point. "Ow!" he whined as everyone in the room took turns smacking him upside the head. "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Let me put my armour back on! Ow! I meant, give me a card!"
"We aren't playing Blackjack," Yuffie said. "Hey, someone pass the Cheezies!"
"The...whats?"
"The Cheezies, Rasta-Man!"
"Please, let's throw her off the ship," Amarant pleaded. "Maybe she'll land on her ship, and everything will be jolly!"
"No, Amarant! No more throwing people!" Vivi said.
"When have you ever stood up for yourself, you little runt?"
"When I hit Level 100!" the little mage chirped, blasting Amarant with a Flare spell.
"I shouldn't have joined the party so late," Amarant lamented, bleeding profusely and shooting Freya a thankful sort-of-smile as she rushed to his aid.
"Speaking of parties," Yuffie began, grinning, "I wonder how mine's doing. I bet they feel really silly for forgetting me..."
Yes, speaking of parties, indeed, Yuffie. Speaking of parties, the crew of the Highwind was having one at that very moment.
"We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie!" everyone sang, minus Vincent, as they performed a conga-line around the deck.
"..." Vincent commented, sulking in a corner. It just wasn't the same on the Highwind without hearing retching noises drifting in from her special little spot, without hearing her bitching loudly and continuously about how much she hated flying. It seemed, though, that no one else shared these sentiments with him.
"We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie! We got rid of Yuffie!"
"Hey, guys!" Cloud exclaimed, breaking from the line. "I know! Let's blow something up to celebrate!"
"Like what?" Tifa wondered. "Like those houses in Midgar?"
"We are NOT goin' back ta Midgar!" Barret informed Cloud gently, gripping him by the throat.
"I didn't suggest it," Cloud choked out, trying to pry the hand off of his neck.
"Well, I can't hurt a girl!"
"How nice for me," Cloud rasped, before pulling out his blonde wig and slapping it on his head. "How 'bout now?"
Barret abruptly dropped him and doubled over with laughter.
"You one pretty man," he commented, shaking his head.
"Why don't we blow up Cactuars?" Red XIII suggested.
Cid shook his head in disgust.
"I hate Cactuars. They giggle, and they bounce around. They kinda remind me of Yuffie, come to think of it..."
Vincent frowned. By Jove, he was right! Glancing furtively to either side, he carefully reach into the pocket of his cape, pulled out a little plushy Catuar doll, and stroked it lovingly. 'I think I'll name it Yuffie,' he thought.
Red XIII scowled at Cid, not that anyone could tell.
"Alright, then. Why don't we go fight sand worms on that beach where Cid blew himself up with a comet?"
"I THOUGHT [beep]IN' REFLECT WOULD [beep]IN' REFLECT THE [beep]IN' COMET!" he howled.
"Just no one bring up the Ultima incident," Cloud muttered aside to the group. "It is a good thing Phoenix was on the way to Don Corneo's place and passed the group right then."
"So, sand worms it is!" Tifa agreed. "Let's use Knights of the Round!"
"O-kay!" Cloud chirped brightly. "I love using Knights of the Round! Does everyone have their Knights of the Round?"
"Let's check!" everyone exclaimed together, withdrawing their weapons.
As they did, five hugely cheesy grins melted into puzzled frowns.
"Um...that's a negatory in the Knights of the Round situation," Cid admitted sheepishly.
"Yeah, for me, too," Tifa admitted.
"Check your backpacks, then," Cloud suggested, annoyed and getting slightly worried.
"That's a negatory on the backpack situation, too," Cid told him, his voice quivering slightly.
"You don't even have your backpack," Cloud pointed out, a sweatdrop suspended at the side of his head.
"W-well, Cloud, there isn't really a lot of point in checking," Tifa told him. "You see, we all gave our Materia - just to hold it - to...uh...well..."
"To Yuffie?" Cloud finished for her while Vincent mouthed it silently, inwardly almost smirking with triumph.
"She got your Materia. She got your Materia. She got your Materia. Now you gotta get her," he sang quietly, making the little Cactuar doll dance about merrily on the floor beside him.
"Um...I guess we turn around and go get Yuffie?" Learner Pilot suggested hesitantly.
"Yeah, yeah," Cloud grumbled. "To that ship we were on before!" He sighed, shaking his head. "It just doesn't have the short, snappy appeal of 'to Nobuo!' does it?"
"Alright!" Learner Pilot exclaimed jubilantly, hitting the button. "Yaagh! We're taking off!" he shouted as the ship rose into the air.
Cloud glared at him, annoyed.
"Do you still have to do that?"
Learner Pilot grinned sheepishly.
"Well, to be honest, now it just feels like a catch-phrase."
"Great," Cloud grumbled. "Another delay. Who suggested giving her the Materia, anyway?"
With that, all eyes landed on Barret, looked away sheepishly.
"Aw, shit."
Chapter 13.5 - And Now, a Word From Our Sponsors!
[The scene is, once again, a tavern. After all, what better place to attempt to sell products than one where everyone will be drunk, and thus, very free with their finances, leading them to buy any stupid thing we offer them? Er...anyway, Steiner and Beatrix are seated at the bar, each nursing humungous novelty-sized tankards of ale. Steiner picks up his tankard, preparing for the rush of beer, then frowns and sets his tankard down again.]
Steiner: There is no beer in here! I drink fast!
Beatrix: [Quickly hiding super-long moocher straw] Heh-heh-heh...
[However, what Beatrix fails to notice is the extra-long moocher straw in HER beverage, the other end of it attached to the mouth of an evilly- cackling, and very drunk, Bahamut.]
Bahamut: Heh-heh-heh...hic!
[Enter a hot-looking specimen of femininity. Dressed in purple, with long, silver hair, she is quite a dish. She's got curves in all the right places, AND she wears a thong! Not only that, but she's winkin' at Steiner, who promptly forgets his empty beverage and starts to float after her on cartoon-like angel wings.
Steiner: She is looking at me...? Oh! Rapture!
[Steiner clasps his hands, his eyes going all wide and shiny. At this point, we cut to Beatrix, who is looking decidedly annoyed.
Beatrix: Do you have this problem? Does this happen to you whenever you go out for a nice, romantic evening in a smoky, crowded, foul-mouthed bar, getting drunk off your ass? Can your man not keep his eyes of other womens'...eyes? [She meaningfully gestures to a set of something significantly below the eyes, and much more jiggly.] Well, you may not be able to reign in your man's hormones, but I think, with a little help, you'll be able to reign in your man.
[She picks up a strap of leather lying next to her on the seat, and gives it a firm tug, pressing a red button on the end.]
Beatrix: Come here!
Steiner: Yaaaaaaaagh!
[At this point, suffice it to say that Steiner's angel wings have disappeared, as the strap of leather was a leash, the other end of which was around Steiner's metal-covered neck, the metal of which made the electric shock that the little red button 'unleashed,' very painful, indeed.]
Beatrix: You need the Man-Leash! Because sometimes, couples' therapy just isn't enough.
[Beatrix growls over a memory, and the screen dissolves into a flashback. We see Beatrix and Steiner at a couples' counsellor's office, and Steiner is sitting, rather stunned, as the very pretty young counsellor bends over, allegedly to pick up her dropped pencil - apparently, word of Steiner's...er...legendary...ahem...sword (Excalibur II; completes the game in 12 hours) has got out. Unfortunately, Beatrix doesn't like to share - and, in a very low-cut blouse, this shows off much more than needs to be shown. Once again, the phrase "moth to a flame" seems to be appropriate.]
Beatrix: Oh, yes. The 'Save the Queen' got a good workout that night. She's dead now. And in several pieces.
[She blinks several times as an off screen cameraman reminds her that the camera is still rolling]
Beatrix: Uh...anyway, the Man-Leash can change your life. And can end his. For the better! Hold on - that doesn't make sense. Who wrote this? Er, well, the Man-Leash! Buy it today! Put a charge back in your marriage. Operators are standing by.
[She gestures to the other end of the bar, where Lani is sitting, her axe propped up against her barstool, and a red telephone in front of her. She is gradually working her way through an entire case of Noxema: Genuine Draft}
Lani: My skin has never looked so smooth! Hic! Every time I look in the mirror, I look better n' better!
[Lani falls off her stool]
Beatrix: Um...right.
[Meanwhile, the girl that Steiner was so fascinated with has gone up to the jukebox to request a song. Seconds later, Queen's 'We Will Rock You' echoes through the bar.]
Steiner: Why does that sound so familiar...oh, Mein Gott.
Beatrix: Don't feel bad, Steiner. Kuja IS the prettiest man ever, after all.
[At the other end of the bar, Laguna sits there, and overhearing, pouts.]
Laguna: I thought I was the prettiest man ever...
[Fade out]