Chapter 6 - Contrivance and Horror and Madness! Oh, My!
Two hours later...
The full, clear moon shone down upon the stillness of the rural country landscape, its fields of rolling green shimmering softly. The orb floated gently in the sky, illuminating everything with its glow, seeking out the hidden crevices of the land and bathing them, turning the ordinary mystical and beautiful with its touch. Shining down upon all as it did, it is not surprising that the cold, pale light of this majestic spectacle streamed through the window of a very nondescript inn, approximately thirty miles outside of a very nondescript town.
In Room 5...
At this point, the scene changes from outside to take us inside a room where all is still and silent, save for the occasional snore from the fair- haired young man who lay sprawled over the ground atop a plastic mat decorated liberally with dots of varying colours, arranged neatly into rows. These snores, however, do nothing to disturb the lovely young woman who is nestled cosily against his shoulder, her dark hair spilling over his chest like a shadow. Both are smiling in their sleep, as though enjoying some very pleasant dream. This is most likely the case. Let us move to a different room and not disturb the dreams of these two young lovers. And be careful not to trip over the spinner on your way out.
In Room 4...
This room is, also, bathed in moonlight. It is, however, a little tidier, not being scattered with plastic mats and spinners as Room 5 seems to be. Not only that, but its inhabitants have opted for the more sensible option of falling asleep in the two small beds provided by the inn. This is made obvious by the small lump, topped off by a gigantic pointy yellow hat, decorating one bed, and by the larger, more vocal lump, decorating the other.
"Mein Lieblingskissen, sind Sie so weich," the lump murmurs, cuddling its pillow lovingly.
All in all, another happy and peaceful scene. Let us not disturb this one, either.
In Room 3...
Although this room, too, is awash in the ethereal glow of moonlight, all is not so peaceful in the minds of both its inhabitants. To be sure, one, at least, has managed to find slumber. The young Burmecian woman, her breathing deep and regular, is quite obviously asleep.
The other inhabitant of the room, however, is not. His free arm pillowing his head, replacing the pillow that has fallen to the floor and that he is quite unable to get without dislodging the other occupant of the room from her peaceful (and more importantly, in his opinion, quiet) state, he scowls darkly into the already dark night in a manner which suggests that he is not terribly happy right now.
Let us make a hasty, silent exit before he notices us, and his unhappiness is directed this way.
[The narrator adjusts her 'Tour Guide' hat and leads her group of tourists, their cameras flashing insistently, from the room.]
Amarant stared up at the ceiling of the darkened inn room. 'How the hell did we get stuck in this bloody stupid situation? Eh, what the hell does it matter? We're here, it's dumb, and it doesn't look like it's ending any time soon. I'll just have to get used to sleeping with my left arm stretched out off the side of a bed.'
He shifted, attempting to ease the ache in his left shoulder that came with remaining in a rather unnatural position for so long.
'And why the hell do we have to sleep like this, anyway? Like it would've killed the stupid little chit to just share one bed. Alright,' he admitted silently, 'maybe one of these would've been a little crowded, but we could've at least moved that damn table and shoved them closer together. Who cares if it's bolted down? I could've ripped those bolts up along with the thing. Or, hell, even slept on the floor. We could have roomed with some of the others, saved a hundred gil. So, why the hell did we have to - why the hell am I talking to myself?'
A pause.
'And waiting for an answer?'
At this unfortunate moment, Amarant felt a gentle tug on his wrist, which was somewhat akin to the waving of the proverbial red flag before the eyes of a bull.
'Oh, like hell! Damned little rat's probably awake; just trying to see how much she can piss me off before morning. Well, let's see how she likes it.'
With that, he decisively jerked his arm to the right, his shoulder shouting a loud 'Hallelujah!' as it left its odd position. As it so happened, Amarant had rather overestimated the maliciousness of the aforementioned 'damned little rat.' Freya, who had, by some miracle, managed to fall soundly asleep, was simply rolling over. She promptly ceased to be soundly asleep somewhere on her journey from the surface of the small bed to the small gap of ground between it and the other small bed. As she fell, she gave a startled yelp...and another as Amarant, who was not prepared for so forceful a retaliation so soon, and had thus relaxed, was dragged from his own bed and into the small gap, where he landed atop her in the ultimate show of contrived-ness.
At this point, we cut away from the scene and into a rather different scene: that of a strangely decorated basement sitting-room/hideout. On a large blue cushion is seated a nineteen-year old girl in dark-dyed jeans and a black 'hoody,' with a wicked glint in her eye, madly typing on a laptop and cackling evilly to herself, pausing every now and again to take a long slurp from a large Slurpee cup placed conveniently nearby. It is immediately obvious that this girl can be one of only two things: an escaped denizen of a nuthouse, or a fan-fic author. We may conclude that she is the second. After all, no escaped nuthouse denizen would be so cruel (or kind, depending on how you look at it) to a poor rat-lady and a poor pair of very large arms. On the contrary, I have found that most nuthouse denizens are quite indifferent to both arms and rats.
Now we cut back to a scene in the same inn, but in a different room. At the sound of a dismayed shriek, Adelbert Steiner sat bolt upright in his bed.
"Your Majesty?!" he called, leaping to his feet. "Is that scoundrel attempting to take advantage of you?"
"Whazzat, Rusty?" a groggy, sleep-slurred voice, most obviously Zidane's, called back.
"Where is the Queen, you scoundrel?!"
"She's asleep, man. Just like I was until you started hollering. Now, be quiet and go back to sleep!"
This put the discussion to a fairly decided close. Exasperated, Steiner shook his head.
"Well, if it wasn't Queen Garnet," he pondered slowly, "the who screamed?"
"Um...Steiner?"
Steiner glanced in the direction of the small voice.
"Yes, Master Vivi?"
"D-do you think Amarant and Freya have killed each other yet?"
Steiner gasped.
"By the gods! Perhaps that explains the scream! Come, Master Vivi! We must get over to Room 3 now! But first," he added, "I must put my armour back on. As much as I hate to admit it, Zidane was right. It is much more comfortable to sleep without it."
Vivi heaved a long sigh as Steiner proceeded to hunt for the many different bits of armour scattered about the room. They could be here a while...
Now the scene is that of the same inn room as previously, where poor Amarant has made an alarming discovery.
"Dude! Where's my chocobo?"
"Not that discovery! The other discovery!" Rhianwen's voice shouted from the ceiling, exasperated. Shrugging as best he could in the current situation, Amarant tried again.
"Dammit! I'm stuck."
"Erm...what do you mean?" Freya murmured faintly.
"How many things can I mean by 'dammit I'm stuck?'" Amarant demanded sarcastically, scowling down at her. "I mean that I can't get up."
"You've got to be kidding!"
"No, I'm serious. I can't move. I'm stuck between these beds!"
"Oh, bloody hell! Well, try again!"
He did so, aided somewhat by her none too gentle attempts to shove him away, but to no avail.
"Shit," he muttered. "I guess we'll just have to stay here and call for help until someone hears us."
"How embarrassing..." she groaned in despair.
Meanwhile, in Room 4...
"Steiner, I really think we should just go. Y-you can find your armour later, can't you?"
"Vivi!" Steiner halted dead in the process of hunting for his left shoe and stared at the little behatted fellow in horror. "Certainly not! I simply do not feel whole without it! Now," he pondered, scratching his head, "what did I do with my socks?"
Vivi shook his head and sighed.
Half an hour later, in Room 3...
"...Weren't we gonna start screaming for help, or something?"
"Oh...right."
"You start," Amarant suggested. Freya glared darkly at him.
"No, you start. This whole thing is your fault."
"How?!"
"Well, you were the one who dragged me onto the floor."
"Yeah? Well, you dragged me down after you. If you hadn't done that, you coulda gotten up."
"If you hadn't pulled me down, I wouldn't have pulled you down!"
"If YOU hadn't started that little game of tug-of-war, I wouldn't have even moved!"
"Little game of tug-of-war?!" she repeated incredulously, shifting slightly to try to take some weight off of her tail, which was currently whimpering for mercy...not literally, of course. That would just be silly! Uh...anyway... "I was asleep, you idiot!"
"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?!"
"Oh, forget it! Arguing won't help now."
"What the hell else are we supposed to do until someone finds us?"
"I don't know, but what will arguing solve?"
"I'm hoping that if I piss you off enough, you'll stop speaking to me."
"Hmph! More likely, I'll talk even more."
"I hate you."
"I know, pooky."
"Pooky?!" he exclaimed with a slight blush. "Where the hell did that come from? What the hell is wrong with you?"
Freya sighed.
"Amarant, Dagger and Zidane just finished a rousing round of Twister. Steiner is hunting for his sock, singing German folk songs-"
"Ah, so that's what that is," Amarant commented, scowling in the direction from which the final strains of 'Gehen Sie zu mir, meine liebe Socke zurück', bellowed out in a rather ghastly fashion, drifted.
"-We got a ride to this inn from a man who is completely obsessed with hats, and likes to lick apricot jelly off of his wife. Before that, we saw a man destroyed by a girl no bigger than your arm. Before he was destroyed, he handcuffed us together. Why? Because he was performing a magic show!!!"
Finished with this tirade, she shook her head. "And yet, the term 'pooky' is the only thing you comment on? I think the proper question, my friend, is 'what the hell is wrong with YOU?'"
"Well, thank-you, Little Miss 'Let's Sum Up the Plot In Eighty Words of Less,'" Amarant said sarcastically, relaxing, and then immediately pushing himself back up at the rather unhealthy noise from the woman beneath him. "Sorry."
"Forget it," she wheezed. As the breath whooshed back into her lungs, she continued, sounding a little healthier. "I would appreciate it, though, if you would find somewhere else for your hand to be."
His hand jerked away from its previous position, placed rather carelessly in his haste to stop leaning on her, substantially above her waist, as if it had found itself on the business end of a Firaga.
"Not like you got much there to worry about," he muttered sourly, very annoyed with the blush creeping into his face for the second time in a two- minute stretch. However, his annoyance was nothing compared to hers at this comment. His annoyance grew to rival hers, though, as she shifted her knee, bringing it up just far enough to cause considerable pain to a very sensitive portion of his anatomy.
"What was that for?!" he exclaimed in a voice several octaves higher than normal. "It's true."
"It is not!"
"Is too."
"Is not!'
"I have eyes. I can see that it's true."
"No, it isn't! I would know better than you, wouldn't I?"
"I'll believe it when I see it. Or them, as it were."
At this, his voice, finally lowered back to its normal pitch as the pain receded, rose to an even higher octave than before.
"Dammit! Would you stop that?!"
At this unlucky juncture, Steiner burst into the room, stopping first to knock the door, which Freya had earlier locked in the effort to guard against inside-out vampires and the like, from its hinges. Once through said door-turned-kindling, he stopped dead and stared at the odd spectacle of two of his comrades lying on the floor in a gap between two beds, in a rather...ahem...questionable position, and neither making any sort of a move to get out of it.
"Hello, Steiner," Freya called dryly. "Did you manage to find your sock?"
The man nodded mutely, now rather bemused at the apparent calm of the parties involved in this decidedly weird display.
"That's good. Now, if it isn't too much trouble, do you think you could move one of these beds a little? We seem to have gotten ourselves rather stuck."
"Don't ask how," Amarant added menacingly...at least, as menacingly as he could at that moment. Steiner raised an eyebrow, wondering briefly why the bounty hunter was currently sounding more like a boy soprano than like his ordinary self. Then, a few recollections came to him. First was the recollection that Amarant and Freya had a way of annoying each other essentially every time they spoke. Next came the realization that Freya could not have possibly enjoyed being landed on, particularly during the wee small hours of the morning. Third was the assumption that she had probably showed her displeasure with the entire situation in a rather physical way, a way that involved raising the pitch of the male voice by several octaves. As these meandered their way through his brain, he winced, a wave of sympathy washing over him. 'Poor fellow - no one deserves that.'
As he pondered this, he went to work prying apart the beds. Finally, with a bit of time, some elbow-grease, a few yelps of pain from Freya as the heavy iron bed-frame was dragged over her tail, a frightened whimper from Steiner, who foresaw himself undergoing the same painful fate as Amarant as a result of this, and many, many profanities from that same Amarant, the disgruntled pair were freed.
"Wow...it's true. You really don't appreciate how good a bad situation is until it gets worse, do you?" Freya commented, trying to pound some feeling back into her sadly-abused tail. Amarant glared at the world at large and at Freya in particular, not trying to pound some feeling back into his sadly-abused parts, as this would not have helped at all. Rather, it would have probably have just turned him back into a boy-soprano, and of course, no man ever wants that.
"Hey, guys," another voice greeted from the doorway. "What's going on? You having a party?"
"In the middle of the night? Zidane, we aren't...you," Freya replied pettishly, almost saying 'crazy,' but deciding upon the synonym at the last minute.
"True," Zidane replied, stretching and yawning. "I'm one-hundred percent original. Won't ever be another Zidane Tribal."
"Thank the gods," Amarant muttered, then started in surprise as he realized that two other voices, that of Steiner and that of Freya, had spoken this same prayer of thanksgiving. Apparently, Zidane heard this, too.
"You guys are mean," he pouted, kicking the door aside, sidling into the room and plopping down on the nearest bed. "So, what happened in here, anyway? Did you need Steiner to help you move the beds so you could sleep on 'em? Hey, what were you doing until now, if you weren't sleeping? Is that how you broke the door?" The young Genome went of in a soundless fit of snickering. Freya, by now much too tired to attempt to end his life, simply sighed and sank wearily onto the other bed.
"Why are you up, anyway?"
"Steiner woke me up," Zidane replied, casting a frosty glare at the older man, who shrugged sheepishly.
"I was merely concerned for Queen Garnet's safety."
"What did you think I was gonna do?! Don't you know me at all?"
"Yes, I do...which is exactly why I was worried."
"Hey! What do you mean by that?!"
The hackles of both men rose immediately as they scowled fiercely at each other. But before the argument could get too heated, it was interrupted by another, smaller voice calling out from the doorway,
"Steiner? Is everything alright?"
"Vivi!" that same knight admonished. "Did I not tell you to remain in the room where it is safe?"
"Well, yeah," the small mage admitted, ambling into the room, "but you were gone an awful long time, and I didn't see what could be so dangerous about Amarant and Freya, anyway."
"I suppose so," Steiner agreed with a sigh, then froze as a horrifying remembrance swept over him. "Uhm, Master Vivi," he began slowly, "did you take the key from the bureau when you left?"
"Key?" Vivi choked. "U-um...no..."
"Oh, dear," Steiner sighed. "I suppose we shall have to go awaken that poor overworked young man from his dream of Kupo-Nuts and ask him to open our door."
"Hey, no need," Zidane proclaimed. "You two can crash with us. I'd say one of you could stay here, but-" He winked at Amarant. "-we should give these two crazy kids some alone-time."
Amarant, who decided at these words that he, for one, was NOT too tired to try to end Zidane's life, hopped to his feet and advanced menacingly on the young man. Steiner, who decided that he, like Freya, WAS too tired for any more of this nonsense, leapt between the two.
"Alright, Zidane, Vivi and I will spend the rest of the night in your room." And so it was decided.
Except for one small hitch.
"Oh! Hello, everyone!"
Dagger smiled sleepily at the assembled party as she wandered into the room and sat next to Zidane on the bed, leaning her head against his shoulder and wrapping her arm around his waist. Zidane grinned madly at this, but Vivi was hardly so delighted as a thought occurred to him.
"Z-z-zidane, do you or Dagger have a key for your room?"
"Of course she does, Vivi! Why would Dagger leave the room without a key?"
Dagger sat bolt upright at these words, snatching her arm back.
"What do you mean, why would I leave without a key?! I thought you had one!"
"Well, it was right there on the windowsill! Why would it have been there if I'd taken it?" Zidane shook his head, aggravated. It was late, and he was tired, and definitely not in the mood to take grief from anyone, beautiful woman and love of his life or not.
"So I suppose the impromptu slumber party has been moved into here," Freya noted mildly, hiding a grin.
"Oh, great. Like you're not annoying enough," Amarant groused. "Now I've gotta put up with them, too?"
Freya shrugged
"Well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?"
"More likely, what doesn't kill me will kill all of you," Amarant replied with a smirk.
"Oh, I think we'll all live to see daybreak," she said, patting his arm consolingly.
"The rest of us might," he replied meaningfully, glaring at her.
"Hey, cool it, you two," Zidane admonished. "Yeah, I guess we're all moving in here until morning. Then we can get that kid to unlock our doors for us so we can get our junk and go."
"Go where?" Dagger demanded crossly. Zidane rolled his eyes.
"I don't know yet! We'll figure it out when it happens, okay?"
"What a responsible way to live," the girl commented sarcastically.
"I must say, Zidane, I agree," Steiner interjected with a nod. "It is best to have a plan, and then to act on it. Save your improvising for when the plan falls through."
"Great! Well, if any of you HAS a plan, I'd love to hear it," Zidane announced, crossing his arms and pouting.
"I'll tell you what we do," Amarant began, dropping back onto the mattress, next to Freya by necessity. "We go find that little red-headed bitch who destroyed the idiot with the cape, and we get her to break the charm on these cuffs. She's obviously damn powerful, if that blast she took down the inn with was any indication."
An electrically charged silence fell as the simplicity, yet sensibility of the plan descended upon the group. Everyone stared for a moment at the bounty-hunter, who shrugged.
"Just a thought."
"I-it would work, except that s-s-she uses black magic," Vivi sighed mournfully.
"So...?" Zidane gestured for Vivi to continue. "What does that matter?"
Freya shook her head
"A charm of that sort would be based in white magic, wouldn't it, Dagger?"
"Most definitely. It isn't so much a charm as a protective spell, which is one of the greatest purposes of white magic: to protect and to heal."
"Oh." Deflated, Zidane rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. Then he straightened back up again. "Well, we'll just have to think of something else, then. Maybe she'd know of a really good white mage we could talk to."
"B-b-but Dagger's a really good white mage, and she couldn't break the spell," Vivi countered. Dagger smiled at the small boy, hardly ill-pleased by this.
"Thank-you, Vivi!" Then she sobered again. "It isn't my area of expertise, though. I haven't experimented much with long-lasting charms bound to the energies of particular objects. I think, though, that Zidane has a point. Perhaps a very powerful sorceress would know at least where to begin looking for someone who could help us."
"Yeah," Amarant agreed dryly. "Because, of course, all magic-users hang around together."
Zidane glared at him.
"It was your idea to go look for the little redheaded girl, Amarant. And anyway, this lead's all we got. Either we follow it up, or you and Freya learn to live with each other until we can come up with another option, 'cause you'll be staying that way for a loooooooooong time."
"It was just an observation."
"Yeah, well, I've had enough of your observations," Zidane snapped, rather unfairly, as the number of observations made by the man certainly hadn't been very large. Two, to be exact. "But you know what else I've had enough of? Being awake. Let's all do the smart thing and try to get to bed some time tonight, okay?"
And so, after many grumbles, and a heated discussion of who was to take the beds after Amarant and Freya came to the conclusion that they would rather avoid their previous mishap by sleeping on the floor, the exhausted members of the small party made their way back into the land of dreams approximately two hours before the rise of the sun on a day that would undoubtedly hold untold adventure and mishap for all. After all, nothing can ever just go without a hitch for these people, can it?
Ending notes 2: Okay, I suppose it really doesn't seem like it most of the time ('cept when I'm writing lemons. Uh...never mind.), but I really am an Amarant/Freya 'shipper - to an excessive degree. Really, really, really excessive. Quite incredibly excessive. OBsessive, really.
Two hours later...
The full, clear moon shone down upon the stillness of the rural country landscape, its fields of rolling green shimmering softly. The orb floated gently in the sky, illuminating everything with its glow, seeking out the hidden crevices of the land and bathing them, turning the ordinary mystical and beautiful with its touch. Shining down upon all as it did, it is not surprising that the cold, pale light of this majestic spectacle streamed through the window of a very nondescript inn, approximately thirty miles outside of a very nondescript town.
In Room 5...
At this point, the scene changes from outside to take us inside a room where all is still and silent, save for the occasional snore from the fair- haired young man who lay sprawled over the ground atop a plastic mat decorated liberally with dots of varying colours, arranged neatly into rows. These snores, however, do nothing to disturb the lovely young woman who is nestled cosily against his shoulder, her dark hair spilling over his chest like a shadow. Both are smiling in their sleep, as though enjoying some very pleasant dream. This is most likely the case. Let us move to a different room and not disturb the dreams of these two young lovers. And be careful not to trip over the spinner on your way out.
In Room 4...
This room is, also, bathed in moonlight. It is, however, a little tidier, not being scattered with plastic mats and spinners as Room 5 seems to be. Not only that, but its inhabitants have opted for the more sensible option of falling asleep in the two small beds provided by the inn. This is made obvious by the small lump, topped off by a gigantic pointy yellow hat, decorating one bed, and by the larger, more vocal lump, decorating the other.
"Mein Lieblingskissen, sind Sie so weich," the lump murmurs, cuddling its pillow lovingly.
All in all, another happy and peaceful scene. Let us not disturb this one, either.
In Room 3...
Although this room, too, is awash in the ethereal glow of moonlight, all is not so peaceful in the minds of both its inhabitants. To be sure, one, at least, has managed to find slumber. The young Burmecian woman, her breathing deep and regular, is quite obviously asleep.
The other inhabitant of the room, however, is not. His free arm pillowing his head, replacing the pillow that has fallen to the floor and that he is quite unable to get without dislodging the other occupant of the room from her peaceful (and more importantly, in his opinion, quiet) state, he scowls darkly into the already dark night in a manner which suggests that he is not terribly happy right now.
Let us make a hasty, silent exit before he notices us, and his unhappiness is directed this way.
[The narrator adjusts her 'Tour Guide' hat and leads her group of tourists, their cameras flashing insistently, from the room.]
Amarant stared up at the ceiling of the darkened inn room. 'How the hell did we get stuck in this bloody stupid situation? Eh, what the hell does it matter? We're here, it's dumb, and it doesn't look like it's ending any time soon. I'll just have to get used to sleeping with my left arm stretched out off the side of a bed.'
He shifted, attempting to ease the ache in his left shoulder that came with remaining in a rather unnatural position for so long.
'And why the hell do we have to sleep like this, anyway? Like it would've killed the stupid little chit to just share one bed. Alright,' he admitted silently, 'maybe one of these would've been a little crowded, but we could've at least moved that damn table and shoved them closer together. Who cares if it's bolted down? I could've ripped those bolts up along with the thing. Or, hell, even slept on the floor. We could have roomed with some of the others, saved a hundred gil. So, why the hell did we have to - why the hell am I talking to myself?'
A pause.
'And waiting for an answer?'
At this unfortunate moment, Amarant felt a gentle tug on his wrist, which was somewhat akin to the waving of the proverbial red flag before the eyes of a bull.
'Oh, like hell! Damned little rat's probably awake; just trying to see how much she can piss me off before morning. Well, let's see how she likes it.'
With that, he decisively jerked his arm to the right, his shoulder shouting a loud 'Hallelujah!' as it left its odd position. As it so happened, Amarant had rather overestimated the maliciousness of the aforementioned 'damned little rat.' Freya, who had, by some miracle, managed to fall soundly asleep, was simply rolling over. She promptly ceased to be soundly asleep somewhere on her journey from the surface of the small bed to the small gap of ground between it and the other small bed. As she fell, she gave a startled yelp...and another as Amarant, who was not prepared for so forceful a retaliation so soon, and had thus relaxed, was dragged from his own bed and into the small gap, where he landed atop her in the ultimate show of contrived-ness.
At this point, we cut away from the scene and into a rather different scene: that of a strangely decorated basement sitting-room/hideout. On a large blue cushion is seated a nineteen-year old girl in dark-dyed jeans and a black 'hoody,' with a wicked glint in her eye, madly typing on a laptop and cackling evilly to herself, pausing every now and again to take a long slurp from a large Slurpee cup placed conveniently nearby. It is immediately obvious that this girl can be one of only two things: an escaped denizen of a nuthouse, or a fan-fic author. We may conclude that she is the second. After all, no escaped nuthouse denizen would be so cruel (or kind, depending on how you look at it) to a poor rat-lady and a poor pair of very large arms. On the contrary, I have found that most nuthouse denizens are quite indifferent to both arms and rats.
Now we cut back to a scene in the same inn, but in a different room. At the sound of a dismayed shriek, Adelbert Steiner sat bolt upright in his bed.
"Your Majesty?!" he called, leaping to his feet. "Is that scoundrel attempting to take advantage of you?"
"Whazzat, Rusty?" a groggy, sleep-slurred voice, most obviously Zidane's, called back.
"Where is the Queen, you scoundrel?!"
"She's asleep, man. Just like I was until you started hollering. Now, be quiet and go back to sleep!"
This put the discussion to a fairly decided close. Exasperated, Steiner shook his head.
"Well, if it wasn't Queen Garnet," he pondered slowly, "the who screamed?"
"Um...Steiner?"
Steiner glanced in the direction of the small voice.
"Yes, Master Vivi?"
"D-do you think Amarant and Freya have killed each other yet?"
Steiner gasped.
"By the gods! Perhaps that explains the scream! Come, Master Vivi! We must get over to Room 3 now! But first," he added, "I must put my armour back on. As much as I hate to admit it, Zidane was right. It is much more comfortable to sleep without it."
Vivi heaved a long sigh as Steiner proceeded to hunt for the many different bits of armour scattered about the room. They could be here a while...
Now the scene is that of the same inn room as previously, where poor Amarant has made an alarming discovery.
"Dude! Where's my chocobo?"
"Not that discovery! The other discovery!" Rhianwen's voice shouted from the ceiling, exasperated. Shrugging as best he could in the current situation, Amarant tried again.
"Dammit! I'm stuck."
"Erm...what do you mean?" Freya murmured faintly.
"How many things can I mean by 'dammit I'm stuck?'" Amarant demanded sarcastically, scowling down at her. "I mean that I can't get up."
"You've got to be kidding!"
"No, I'm serious. I can't move. I'm stuck between these beds!"
"Oh, bloody hell! Well, try again!"
He did so, aided somewhat by her none too gentle attempts to shove him away, but to no avail.
"Shit," he muttered. "I guess we'll just have to stay here and call for help until someone hears us."
"How embarrassing..." she groaned in despair.
Meanwhile, in Room 4...
"Steiner, I really think we should just go. Y-you can find your armour later, can't you?"
"Vivi!" Steiner halted dead in the process of hunting for his left shoe and stared at the little behatted fellow in horror. "Certainly not! I simply do not feel whole without it! Now," he pondered, scratching his head, "what did I do with my socks?"
Vivi shook his head and sighed.
Half an hour later, in Room 3...
"...Weren't we gonna start screaming for help, or something?"
"Oh...right."
"You start," Amarant suggested. Freya glared darkly at him.
"No, you start. This whole thing is your fault."
"How?!"
"Well, you were the one who dragged me onto the floor."
"Yeah? Well, you dragged me down after you. If you hadn't done that, you coulda gotten up."
"If you hadn't pulled me down, I wouldn't have pulled you down!"
"If YOU hadn't started that little game of tug-of-war, I wouldn't have even moved!"
"Little game of tug-of-war?!" she repeated incredulously, shifting slightly to try to take some weight off of her tail, which was currently whimpering for mercy...not literally, of course. That would just be silly! Uh...anyway... "I was asleep, you idiot!"
"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?!"
"Oh, forget it! Arguing won't help now."
"What the hell else are we supposed to do until someone finds us?"
"I don't know, but what will arguing solve?"
"I'm hoping that if I piss you off enough, you'll stop speaking to me."
"Hmph! More likely, I'll talk even more."
"I hate you."
"I know, pooky."
"Pooky?!" he exclaimed with a slight blush. "Where the hell did that come from? What the hell is wrong with you?"
Freya sighed.
"Amarant, Dagger and Zidane just finished a rousing round of Twister. Steiner is hunting for his sock, singing German folk songs-"
"Ah, so that's what that is," Amarant commented, scowling in the direction from which the final strains of 'Gehen Sie zu mir, meine liebe Socke zurück', bellowed out in a rather ghastly fashion, drifted.
"-We got a ride to this inn from a man who is completely obsessed with hats, and likes to lick apricot jelly off of his wife. Before that, we saw a man destroyed by a girl no bigger than your arm. Before he was destroyed, he handcuffed us together. Why? Because he was performing a magic show!!!"
Finished with this tirade, she shook her head. "And yet, the term 'pooky' is the only thing you comment on? I think the proper question, my friend, is 'what the hell is wrong with YOU?'"
"Well, thank-you, Little Miss 'Let's Sum Up the Plot In Eighty Words of Less,'" Amarant said sarcastically, relaxing, and then immediately pushing himself back up at the rather unhealthy noise from the woman beneath him. "Sorry."
"Forget it," she wheezed. As the breath whooshed back into her lungs, she continued, sounding a little healthier. "I would appreciate it, though, if you would find somewhere else for your hand to be."
His hand jerked away from its previous position, placed rather carelessly in his haste to stop leaning on her, substantially above her waist, as if it had found itself on the business end of a Firaga.
"Not like you got much there to worry about," he muttered sourly, very annoyed with the blush creeping into his face for the second time in a two- minute stretch. However, his annoyance was nothing compared to hers at this comment. His annoyance grew to rival hers, though, as she shifted her knee, bringing it up just far enough to cause considerable pain to a very sensitive portion of his anatomy.
"What was that for?!" he exclaimed in a voice several octaves higher than normal. "It's true."
"It is not!"
"Is too."
"Is not!'
"I have eyes. I can see that it's true."
"No, it isn't! I would know better than you, wouldn't I?"
"I'll believe it when I see it. Or them, as it were."
At this, his voice, finally lowered back to its normal pitch as the pain receded, rose to an even higher octave than before.
"Dammit! Would you stop that?!"
At this unlucky juncture, Steiner burst into the room, stopping first to knock the door, which Freya had earlier locked in the effort to guard against inside-out vampires and the like, from its hinges. Once through said door-turned-kindling, he stopped dead and stared at the odd spectacle of two of his comrades lying on the floor in a gap between two beds, in a rather...ahem...questionable position, and neither making any sort of a move to get out of it.
"Hello, Steiner," Freya called dryly. "Did you manage to find your sock?"
The man nodded mutely, now rather bemused at the apparent calm of the parties involved in this decidedly weird display.
"That's good. Now, if it isn't too much trouble, do you think you could move one of these beds a little? We seem to have gotten ourselves rather stuck."
"Don't ask how," Amarant added menacingly...at least, as menacingly as he could at that moment. Steiner raised an eyebrow, wondering briefly why the bounty hunter was currently sounding more like a boy soprano than like his ordinary self. Then, a few recollections came to him. First was the recollection that Amarant and Freya had a way of annoying each other essentially every time they spoke. Next came the realization that Freya could not have possibly enjoyed being landed on, particularly during the wee small hours of the morning. Third was the assumption that she had probably showed her displeasure with the entire situation in a rather physical way, a way that involved raising the pitch of the male voice by several octaves. As these meandered their way through his brain, he winced, a wave of sympathy washing over him. 'Poor fellow - no one deserves that.'
As he pondered this, he went to work prying apart the beds. Finally, with a bit of time, some elbow-grease, a few yelps of pain from Freya as the heavy iron bed-frame was dragged over her tail, a frightened whimper from Steiner, who foresaw himself undergoing the same painful fate as Amarant as a result of this, and many, many profanities from that same Amarant, the disgruntled pair were freed.
"Wow...it's true. You really don't appreciate how good a bad situation is until it gets worse, do you?" Freya commented, trying to pound some feeling back into her sadly-abused tail. Amarant glared at the world at large and at Freya in particular, not trying to pound some feeling back into his sadly-abused parts, as this would not have helped at all. Rather, it would have probably have just turned him back into a boy-soprano, and of course, no man ever wants that.
"Hey, guys," another voice greeted from the doorway. "What's going on? You having a party?"
"In the middle of the night? Zidane, we aren't...you," Freya replied pettishly, almost saying 'crazy,' but deciding upon the synonym at the last minute.
"True," Zidane replied, stretching and yawning. "I'm one-hundred percent original. Won't ever be another Zidane Tribal."
"Thank the gods," Amarant muttered, then started in surprise as he realized that two other voices, that of Steiner and that of Freya, had spoken this same prayer of thanksgiving. Apparently, Zidane heard this, too.
"You guys are mean," he pouted, kicking the door aside, sidling into the room and plopping down on the nearest bed. "So, what happened in here, anyway? Did you need Steiner to help you move the beds so you could sleep on 'em? Hey, what were you doing until now, if you weren't sleeping? Is that how you broke the door?" The young Genome went of in a soundless fit of snickering. Freya, by now much too tired to attempt to end his life, simply sighed and sank wearily onto the other bed.
"Why are you up, anyway?"
"Steiner woke me up," Zidane replied, casting a frosty glare at the older man, who shrugged sheepishly.
"I was merely concerned for Queen Garnet's safety."
"What did you think I was gonna do?! Don't you know me at all?"
"Yes, I do...which is exactly why I was worried."
"Hey! What do you mean by that?!"
The hackles of both men rose immediately as they scowled fiercely at each other. But before the argument could get too heated, it was interrupted by another, smaller voice calling out from the doorway,
"Steiner? Is everything alright?"
"Vivi!" that same knight admonished. "Did I not tell you to remain in the room where it is safe?"
"Well, yeah," the small mage admitted, ambling into the room, "but you were gone an awful long time, and I didn't see what could be so dangerous about Amarant and Freya, anyway."
"I suppose so," Steiner agreed with a sigh, then froze as a horrifying remembrance swept over him. "Uhm, Master Vivi," he began slowly, "did you take the key from the bureau when you left?"
"Key?" Vivi choked. "U-um...no..."
"Oh, dear," Steiner sighed. "I suppose we shall have to go awaken that poor overworked young man from his dream of Kupo-Nuts and ask him to open our door."
"Hey, no need," Zidane proclaimed. "You two can crash with us. I'd say one of you could stay here, but-" He winked at Amarant. "-we should give these two crazy kids some alone-time."
Amarant, who decided at these words that he, for one, was NOT too tired to try to end Zidane's life, hopped to his feet and advanced menacingly on the young man. Steiner, who decided that he, like Freya, WAS too tired for any more of this nonsense, leapt between the two.
"Alright, Zidane, Vivi and I will spend the rest of the night in your room." And so it was decided.
Except for one small hitch.
"Oh! Hello, everyone!"
Dagger smiled sleepily at the assembled party as she wandered into the room and sat next to Zidane on the bed, leaning her head against his shoulder and wrapping her arm around his waist. Zidane grinned madly at this, but Vivi was hardly so delighted as a thought occurred to him.
"Z-z-zidane, do you or Dagger have a key for your room?"
"Of course she does, Vivi! Why would Dagger leave the room without a key?"
Dagger sat bolt upright at these words, snatching her arm back.
"What do you mean, why would I leave without a key?! I thought you had one!"
"Well, it was right there on the windowsill! Why would it have been there if I'd taken it?" Zidane shook his head, aggravated. It was late, and he was tired, and definitely not in the mood to take grief from anyone, beautiful woman and love of his life or not.
"So I suppose the impromptu slumber party has been moved into here," Freya noted mildly, hiding a grin.
"Oh, great. Like you're not annoying enough," Amarant groused. "Now I've gotta put up with them, too?"
Freya shrugged
"Well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?"
"More likely, what doesn't kill me will kill all of you," Amarant replied with a smirk.
"Oh, I think we'll all live to see daybreak," she said, patting his arm consolingly.
"The rest of us might," he replied meaningfully, glaring at her.
"Hey, cool it, you two," Zidane admonished. "Yeah, I guess we're all moving in here until morning. Then we can get that kid to unlock our doors for us so we can get our junk and go."
"Go where?" Dagger demanded crossly. Zidane rolled his eyes.
"I don't know yet! We'll figure it out when it happens, okay?"
"What a responsible way to live," the girl commented sarcastically.
"I must say, Zidane, I agree," Steiner interjected with a nod. "It is best to have a plan, and then to act on it. Save your improvising for when the plan falls through."
"Great! Well, if any of you HAS a plan, I'd love to hear it," Zidane announced, crossing his arms and pouting.
"I'll tell you what we do," Amarant began, dropping back onto the mattress, next to Freya by necessity. "We go find that little red-headed bitch who destroyed the idiot with the cape, and we get her to break the charm on these cuffs. She's obviously damn powerful, if that blast she took down the inn with was any indication."
An electrically charged silence fell as the simplicity, yet sensibility of the plan descended upon the group. Everyone stared for a moment at the bounty-hunter, who shrugged.
"Just a thought."
"I-it would work, except that s-s-she uses black magic," Vivi sighed mournfully.
"So...?" Zidane gestured for Vivi to continue. "What does that matter?"
Freya shook her head
"A charm of that sort would be based in white magic, wouldn't it, Dagger?"
"Most definitely. It isn't so much a charm as a protective spell, which is one of the greatest purposes of white magic: to protect and to heal."
"Oh." Deflated, Zidane rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. Then he straightened back up again. "Well, we'll just have to think of something else, then. Maybe she'd know of a really good white mage we could talk to."
"B-b-but Dagger's a really good white mage, and she couldn't break the spell," Vivi countered. Dagger smiled at the small boy, hardly ill-pleased by this.
"Thank-you, Vivi!" Then she sobered again. "It isn't my area of expertise, though. I haven't experimented much with long-lasting charms bound to the energies of particular objects. I think, though, that Zidane has a point. Perhaps a very powerful sorceress would know at least where to begin looking for someone who could help us."
"Yeah," Amarant agreed dryly. "Because, of course, all magic-users hang around together."
Zidane glared at him.
"It was your idea to go look for the little redheaded girl, Amarant. And anyway, this lead's all we got. Either we follow it up, or you and Freya learn to live with each other until we can come up with another option, 'cause you'll be staying that way for a loooooooooong time."
"It was just an observation."
"Yeah, well, I've had enough of your observations," Zidane snapped, rather unfairly, as the number of observations made by the man certainly hadn't been very large. Two, to be exact. "But you know what else I've had enough of? Being awake. Let's all do the smart thing and try to get to bed some time tonight, okay?"
And so, after many grumbles, and a heated discussion of who was to take the beds after Amarant and Freya came to the conclusion that they would rather avoid their previous mishap by sleeping on the floor, the exhausted members of the small party made their way back into the land of dreams approximately two hours before the rise of the sun on a day that would undoubtedly hold untold adventure and mishap for all. After all, nothing can ever just go without a hitch for these people, can it?
Ending notes 2: Okay, I suppose it really doesn't seem like it most of the time ('cept when I'm writing lemons. Uh...never mind.), but I really am an Amarant/Freya 'shipper - to an excessive degree. Really, really, really excessive. Quite incredibly excessive. OBsessive, really.