Chapter 8 - It's Not the Humidity; It's the Stupidity
Notes: Finally! Rhianwen was able to tear herself away from her Chrono Trigger 'fic long enough to write a new chapter! I apologize for having taken so ridiculously long, and I shall endeavour to have Chapter 9 up before the cows come home. [Glances out the window to see a herd of cows approaching.] Uh-oh...
"Zidane, is something wrong?" Vivi piped up as he tossed a vaguely key- shaped stone back into the pile of rubble. Certainly, Zidane did not look happy, and Vivi's brow wrinkled in concern at the droopy demeanour of the ordinarily upbeat thief. Zidane sighed.
"Naw, not really..."
"Oh." Vivi blinked. "Alright."
Then, just as he settled himself on a larger slab of concrete rent from the rest of the structure and returned to pondering the nature of his hat and all things thus related, or something of the like, Zidane rushed onward, quite derailing the small boy's thought.
"It's just that Dagger seemed so mad at me! I don't get it!"
Steiner shook his head in disbelief, straightening up and halting his thorough examination of a much larger pile of rubble.
"You...don't think that your idiotic suggestion of splitting up Amarant and Freya might have had something to do with it?"
Zidane scowled.
"Okay, I really don't see what was wrong with that idea! I mean, Freya and Amarant have been chained together for the last, like, eighteen hours! I just thought they could use a break from each other. I know they're...y'know, getting to know each other a little better and all, but you can't rush these things! All I was trying to do was help out my friends, and Dagger gets all mad at me! Sometimes I really hate people; they're nothing but heartless critics."
"There, there, Zidane," Vivi sighed, patting Zidane's hand soothingly, a gigantic sweatdrop suspended in the air just to the right of his hat. "I'm sure that, in a while, everyone will see that you were only trying to help."
"Erm...Dagger..." Freya called hesitantly to the exceedingly angry Alexandrian stalking onward down the dirt path that served as the main street of the town, several paces ahead of her and Amarant.
Dagger stopped abruptly in front of the blacksmith's shop and turned.
"Yes?" she asked tightly, a cloud of smoke billowing out of the open door and making for a rather ominous effect.
Freya shook her head, choking back a baffled laugh.
"Are you quite alright?"
"Just fine," the younger woman replied even more tightly, turning on her heel and continuing onward in the same tense, clipped strides.
"Somehow," Freya mused, gazing after her, "I don't quite believe her."
At an irritated grumble, her gaze shot to the right.
"What can you expect," Amarant demanded, "when she's just found out that the man she loves can be a complete and utter jack-ass?"
"I suppose such a thing must be rather trying..." she admitted. He raised an eyebrow with a short laugh.
"How did you deal with it?"
"Excuse me?"
"How did you deal with it when you found out that what's-his-name was one?"
"One what?"
"A jack-ass."
"Oh, be quiet," Freya huffed, crossing her free arm and looking away. Then, after a moment, upon realizing what she had just done, she groaned in despair. 'If I start throwing things, too, and have the sudden urge to grow my bangs to cover my eyes, I'll have to find someone kind enough to assist me in ending my own life,' she reflected. Turning into Amarant. Gods, what a horrifying thought...
"Hmph," Amarant hmphed, crossing his arm and looking away. He deliberately shoved from his mind the question of why it annoyed him so to hear her defending that memory-challenged twit. Twit? Since when did he use words like 'twit?' Gods, it sounded like something she'd say! 'If I start jumping on things and poking them with sticks, I'll have to pick a fight with a herd of angry Grand Dragons, armed with a fork. No way do I wanna live acting like her.'
Meanwhile, it appeared to Dagger, who had glanced back to see what the tall warrior had said to offend his impromptu Siamese twin this time, that someone had held up a mirror between the two, and rather than two separate entities, it was the action of one reflected into a mirror, so exact was the timing of the gesture of arm-crossing. The completely unintentional humour of this sight banished a goodly portion of her own dark mood, and she relented, slowing down sufficiently that the bounty hunter and the dragoon could catch up with her.
"Good to see you're in a lighter mood, Dagger," Freya noted dryly. Dagger smiled sheepishly.
"Yes, well, I'm beginning to feel a little better, now that we're away from Zidane for a while. I don't think it's any secret to anyone that I love him like mad, but I do wish he wouldn't intentionally try to get a rise out of me like that!"
"...Of course. He did it all for a reaction," Freya agreed with a nervous laugh, inwardly shaking her head and sighing. As long as the girl could believe that, it might keep her sane at least until they could get her back to Alexandria.
"Well, of course he did it for a reaction," Dagger proclaimed, as though it were the most obvious thing on the planet. "There's no way that Zidane could honestly be stupid enough to suggest that the two of you split up right now!"
"Not stupid, exactly," Freya began slowly. "Just...very sleep-deprived. After all, it has been a trying few days. And remember, he did sleep in a chair last night. Certainly, that can never be good for a person's health."
"Oh, what does it matter? He simply said it to annoy me!"
"Exactly," Amarant agreed, annoyed. "Now, can we drop it and have one god- damned second of quiet?"
"Hmm..." Freya put a hand to her chin, as though giving the matter great thought. Then she looked up at him with a charming smile. "No."
"...I hate you."
"Yes, you've mentioned."
"Hmph. At least you aren't calling me 'Pooky' this time. That's something, I guess."
"Pooky?" Dagger raised an eyebrow. "What on earth happened with you two last night?"
"Don't ask," Freya suggested coldly.
"Eep! Alright," Dagger agreed nervously. "So...do either of you have any idea where this inn-keeper might live?"
"Probably above his inn," Amarant suggested with a snort.
"So, in other words, nowhere at the moment," Freya paraphrased cheerfully.
Dagger looked at her strangely.
"That's it. You're just far too perky today. No more coffee for you for a good long time."
"What does coffee have to do with anything?" Freya demanded, hands on her hips, quite offended. Amarant jerked in protest as his own hand brushed against her leg. Then both went off into another soundless round of blushing and looking away. Dagger rolled her eyes.
'I think I'm beginning to understand why everyone was always reluctant to be sent out with Zidane and I...'
"Zidane, how long do we have to sift through random piles of rock, looking for this key that we're NEVER GOING TO FIND?!!!" Steiner, finished with his rant, dropped to the ground in a crouch, panting and exhausted. Zidane shrugged, hopping easily from his perch on a remaining bit of framework.
"I dunno...another hour or so?"
With a sigh, Vivi murmured to no one in particular,
"I wonder if the others are having any better a time than we are...'
Then, recalling comfortingly that Dagger had been awfully angry, and that Amarant was not particularly happy at the best of times, Vivi concluded that Freya, at least, must be as miserable as he currently found himself. His attention was drawn rapidly back to Steiner and Zidane as an enraged howl from the former split the air.
"Whoa, Rusty, enough of the over-acting, alright?" Zidane requested, hands held up in a calming gesture. The older man fell eerily silent.
"Zidane," Steiner bit out after a long, uncomfortable silence. "We have been here for two hours already. We have, literally, left no stone unturned. WHY IN BLAZES MUST WE REMAIN HERE ANOTHER HOUR, MERELY TO LANGUISH FURTHER IN THIS INSANE HEAT, WHICH, ODDLY ENOUGH HAS NOT BEEN AT ALL MENTIONED UNTIL NOW?!!!"
"Uh...'cause?" Zidane replied snippily.
"'Cause why?" the knight moaned wearily.
"'Cause I say so," the young thief grinned. Then he continued, amid a simultaneous groan of despair from the other two members of his excavation team. "No, guys, we have a reason for being here. Just trust me, okay?"
Stealing a quick glance at one another, Steiner and Vivi nodded hesitantly.
"O-okay. We trust you, Zidane," Vivi said, adjusting his hat.
"Just don't make us regret it," Steiner growled, not adjusting his.
"Hey, when have you ever regretted trusting me?" Zidane demanded, crossing his arms and leaning sideways against a well-charred wooden post.
"Do you want that in alphabetical order, chronological order, or order of severity?" Steiner asked with a sigh.
"Never mind, Steiner," Vivi whispered, tugging on the knight's arm to get him to stoop enough to hear. "Let's just...keep an open mind. After all, what could possibly happen?"
Ah, Vivi, you have committed the cardinal sin...
"Good afternoon, Miss," Dagger greeted the elderly woman behind the counter with a formal bow, inconspicuously sniffing appreciatively at the scent of freshly-baked bread hanging heavily in the air. 'I just love kitchens!'
"Yeah, she blends right into the woodwork," Amarant muttered to Freya as they strode into the bakery behind the young Alexandrian ruler. At his words, Freya merely stared incredulously up at him, down at their handcuffs, and then shook her head, deciding that to answer at all was to completely and utterly set herself up. After all, he likely wouldn't appreciate having the proverb of the pot and the kettle related to him at this particular point in time.
"Good afternoon, yerself," the old woman greeted irritably, brushing from her eyes wisps of grey hair escaping from the red and white checked kerchief tied around her head. "You mightn't think so if you'd been the one to spend most of a day hot enough to melt a brass monkey in front of an oven."
"Of course, roaming around under that same hot sun, improvising on a plan of action is much better," Freya murmured. The baker, unnaturally sharp of hearing, glared at her.
"If you don't dress for the weather, girl, it's no one's fault but your own."
Beneath her hat, Freya's eyes widened.
"Excuse me?! How I dress is my own business!"
"Then don't come crying to me when you overheat and pass out!"
"What?! How would I be going to anyone, let alone doing so crying, if I had passed out?"
"Alright, out of my shop with you!" The old woman mopped her forehead on an apron liberally sprinkled with flour, then delivered a frosty glare to Amarant, who smirked, amused, at the streak of flour thus left behind on said forehead. Then she turned slightly - very slightly - to glare at Freya again. "And take yer friend with you!"
"Wait, ma'am!" Dagger pleaded desperately. "I'm sure they didn't mean to offend you!" This statement she punctuated with a warning glance shot in their direction. "And I'm sure, now that they know that they have, they'll be more than willing to apologize!"
"Apologize?" Amarant snorted in disbelief. "For what?"
"For dragging this poor, over-worked soul into an argument, and then making fun of her to top it off! You both should be ashamed!"
As the old woman's face grew redder, her expression angrier rather than more appeased, one may be quite sure that Amarant and Freya were both rather more amused than ashamed, foreseeing quite accurately what was to come.
"Well, of all the patronizing, uppity little - out of my store, all of you! Don't make me call the mayor! Out! Out this instance!"
As she delivered this biting little speech, the three startled travelers were treated to the rather curious spectacle of a short, fat little woman, swathed in brown with a turkey-red apron, with flour powdered about her face and through the front of her grey hair, waving a rolling pin menacingly at them. As menacing as a rolling pin ever gets, at any rate.
"Alright, don't get your pastry in a twist," Amarant muttered, before stopping to ponder what in the hell he could have meant by such a blatantly stupid comment. Then, shaking his head and deciding that it must be the first signs of heat-stroke, he sauntered, quite maddeningly slowly, from the shop. With a shrug, Freya turned to follow.
"We're really very sorry," Dagger choked out one last time before darting from the small building after her quite alarmingly unapologetic friends.
"Oh, hey, guys!" Zidane called as he noticed three familiar shapes approaching the remains of the tavern, which he had arbitrarily claimed as their new temporary hide-out. A frown wrinkled his forehead as he noticed the decided slouch in Dagger's posture. The poor girl would give herself back problems if she didn't watch out! Had being separated from him for so long depressed her that much?! Well, he would just have to make sure it didn't happen again. He wrapped a comforting arm around her, only adding to her discomfort, as a sweaty arm thrown about already uncomfortably warm shoulders is bound to do. Zidane, however, did not know this, and as such, completely missed the barely tolerant sigh that escaped the young woman as he continued on. "Didja have any luck?"
"Well," Amarant began thoughtfully. "We learned that all the people in this town are idiots."
Zidane laughed easily, removing his arm from around Dagger's shoulders and vaulting lightly up onto a large block of stone behind him.
"Oh, c'mon, Amarant! You think all people everywhere are idiots! I mean, did you learn anything new? Hopefully about where the tavern owner lives?"
"Yes, Zidane," Freya interjected wearily, wondering uneasily where Vivi and Steiner had run off to. "He's staying with his sister and her husband in a nearby town fifty miles over."
"Alright! So, we leave first thing tomorrow, right?"
"Why wait?" Amarant demanded crossing his arm and reflecting glumly that it would probably take him weeks to get back into the habit of crossing both once these damn cuffs came off. Zidane crossed his own arms, and thus earned the envy of the tall red-head, and looked away huffily.
"Hey, man, I don't know about you three, but Vivi and Rusty and I spent most of today working like dogs here!"
"Right," Dagger sighed. "Is that what those are from?"
She pointed off to her right at three small vaguely humanoid shapes built from varying sizes of rocks, twigs stuck into the sides to represent arms, and faces drawn on with the mythical - and very expensive - Pearl Rouge, as Dagger noted with a despairing sigh. On top of the head of each small, crudely made statue was perched one of the groups left-over 'community hats.'
"Please tell me you three didn't spend the entire afternoon making little rock-snowmen," Freya groaned in dismay. Zidane rolled his eyes.
"Freya! If they're made out of rock, they're called rock-men, simple as that! Not rock-snowmen!"
"That's what I thought," she sighed. "So, where are Vivi and Steiner, anyway?"
"Did they perhaps...get fed up with your play-time and leave?" Dagger suggested, more than a little miffed.
"No way! The whole rock-men thing was Steiner's idea in the first place. But, y'know, by the time we found the right size of rocks, hauled 'em over here, built the little guys, and found all the decorations we needed, we were all starving! This kind of thing really works up an appetite. So, I sent Steiner and Vivi out for food. Told 'em to try to find some corn- bread, if they could. They should be getting back any time now."
As if on cue - although it wasn't - not in the slightest [Rhianwen tosses her mini tape recorder aside and whistles innocently] - a large knight clanked onto the scene.
"Well, Steiner's back. But what'd he do with Vivi? And what's that walking traffic cone beside him?" Zidane mused aloud.
Amarant shot Dagger and Freya each a pleading glance.
"May I?"
"Go ahead," Dagger encouraged.
"By all means," Freya agreed.
Nodding his satisfaction, Amarant stepped forward and delivered a smack upside Zidane's head. The young man yelped in pain, then blinked rapidly.
"Whoa! What just happened? Where am I?" Then he sighed. "Are we STILL here? Why haven't we left for the tavern-guy's sister's place yet?"
"You're the one who wanted to stay the night, Zidane," Dagger reminded him. His brow wrinkled in a frown.
"I...did?"
"Like anywhere in this town's gonna house us. By now, that crazy baker- woman's probably spread word of us," Amarant mutterd. Dagger glared.
"And just whose fault is that?"
"Hey, enough, okay?" Zidane protested. "I think we've wasted enough time already."
"U-um...why did Zidane suddenly get so responsible?" Vivi piped up, confused, hefting the small burlap sack of cornbread over his shoulder.
"I shall field that question, Master Vivi," Steiner declared. Then he turned to address the rest of the group. "You see, when Amarant delivered that blow upside his head, it seems that Zidane was miraculously knocked back into character."
"Thank the gods," Freya murmured. To be sure, Dagger's reaction to this altered version of her long-time friend had been amusing, but there was really only so much a person could take of Zidane when he got like this without losing all grasp on sanity.
Dagger, meanwhile, was gazing, shiny-eyed, at Zidane, her hands clasped in front of her.
"Could it be...? Zidane, are you back at last?"
The fair-haired thief's eyebrow arched upwards.
"Back? I didn't go anywhere."
"Well, a small improvement's better than none," Dagger noted out loud, shoulders slumping slightly.
"Uh...right," Zidane agreed, his other eyebrow joining the first one in his hairline. "Let's head off, alright? We'll camp somewhere along the side of the road when it gets dark. Everyone good with that?"
A collective sigh of relief rose from the rest of the group. And so it was decided. Climbing from the rubble pit that was left of the tavern, our merry little band of travelers set out for their new destination - the home of the tavern owner's sister - with flames of renewed hope flickering in their hearts. Would this hope last, or would it, like the hope that had come before it, be ruthlessly snuffed out by circumstances horrific, terrifying, or just plain stupid? Read on to find out.
End Notes: Whoo! The 'plot advancement' chapter! Trust me, it'll be more entertaining again in Chapter 9. Much more 'shippery, too. [Giggles] And, as Dagger will be in a much better mood once she gets out of that hot sun, the Zidane/Dagger fans who may be reading will be quite mollified, as well.
Oh, and as for the 'Amarant-knocking-Zidane-back-into-character' thing, I found, upon re-reading, that this story was becoming altogether too much a Zidane-bashing campaign. Henceforth, I shall endeavour not to bash the poor boy any more than I do any other character.
And once again, thank-you so much to all the kind souls out there who are reading this.
Notes: Finally! Rhianwen was able to tear herself away from her Chrono Trigger 'fic long enough to write a new chapter! I apologize for having taken so ridiculously long, and I shall endeavour to have Chapter 9 up before the cows come home. [Glances out the window to see a herd of cows approaching.] Uh-oh...
"Zidane, is something wrong?" Vivi piped up as he tossed a vaguely key- shaped stone back into the pile of rubble. Certainly, Zidane did not look happy, and Vivi's brow wrinkled in concern at the droopy demeanour of the ordinarily upbeat thief. Zidane sighed.
"Naw, not really..."
"Oh." Vivi blinked. "Alright."
Then, just as he settled himself on a larger slab of concrete rent from the rest of the structure and returned to pondering the nature of his hat and all things thus related, or something of the like, Zidane rushed onward, quite derailing the small boy's thought.
"It's just that Dagger seemed so mad at me! I don't get it!"
Steiner shook his head in disbelief, straightening up and halting his thorough examination of a much larger pile of rubble.
"You...don't think that your idiotic suggestion of splitting up Amarant and Freya might have had something to do with it?"
Zidane scowled.
"Okay, I really don't see what was wrong with that idea! I mean, Freya and Amarant have been chained together for the last, like, eighteen hours! I just thought they could use a break from each other. I know they're...y'know, getting to know each other a little better and all, but you can't rush these things! All I was trying to do was help out my friends, and Dagger gets all mad at me! Sometimes I really hate people; they're nothing but heartless critics."
"There, there, Zidane," Vivi sighed, patting Zidane's hand soothingly, a gigantic sweatdrop suspended in the air just to the right of his hat. "I'm sure that, in a while, everyone will see that you were only trying to help."
"Erm...Dagger..." Freya called hesitantly to the exceedingly angry Alexandrian stalking onward down the dirt path that served as the main street of the town, several paces ahead of her and Amarant.
Dagger stopped abruptly in front of the blacksmith's shop and turned.
"Yes?" she asked tightly, a cloud of smoke billowing out of the open door and making for a rather ominous effect.
Freya shook her head, choking back a baffled laugh.
"Are you quite alright?"
"Just fine," the younger woman replied even more tightly, turning on her heel and continuing onward in the same tense, clipped strides.
"Somehow," Freya mused, gazing after her, "I don't quite believe her."
At an irritated grumble, her gaze shot to the right.
"What can you expect," Amarant demanded, "when she's just found out that the man she loves can be a complete and utter jack-ass?"
"I suppose such a thing must be rather trying..." she admitted. He raised an eyebrow with a short laugh.
"How did you deal with it?"
"Excuse me?"
"How did you deal with it when you found out that what's-his-name was one?"
"One what?"
"A jack-ass."
"Oh, be quiet," Freya huffed, crossing her free arm and looking away. Then, after a moment, upon realizing what she had just done, she groaned in despair. 'If I start throwing things, too, and have the sudden urge to grow my bangs to cover my eyes, I'll have to find someone kind enough to assist me in ending my own life,' she reflected. Turning into Amarant. Gods, what a horrifying thought...
"Hmph," Amarant hmphed, crossing his arm and looking away. He deliberately shoved from his mind the question of why it annoyed him so to hear her defending that memory-challenged twit. Twit? Since when did he use words like 'twit?' Gods, it sounded like something she'd say! 'If I start jumping on things and poking them with sticks, I'll have to pick a fight with a herd of angry Grand Dragons, armed with a fork. No way do I wanna live acting like her.'
Meanwhile, it appeared to Dagger, who had glanced back to see what the tall warrior had said to offend his impromptu Siamese twin this time, that someone had held up a mirror between the two, and rather than two separate entities, it was the action of one reflected into a mirror, so exact was the timing of the gesture of arm-crossing. The completely unintentional humour of this sight banished a goodly portion of her own dark mood, and she relented, slowing down sufficiently that the bounty hunter and the dragoon could catch up with her.
"Good to see you're in a lighter mood, Dagger," Freya noted dryly. Dagger smiled sheepishly.
"Yes, well, I'm beginning to feel a little better, now that we're away from Zidane for a while. I don't think it's any secret to anyone that I love him like mad, but I do wish he wouldn't intentionally try to get a rise out of me like that!"
"...Of course. He did it all for a reaction," Freya agreed with a nervous laugh, inwardly shaking her head and sighing. As long as the girl could believe that, it might keep her sane at least until they could get her back to Alexandria.
"Well, of course he did it for a reaction," Dagger proclaimed, as though it were the most obvious thing on the planet. "There's no way that Zidane could honestly be stupid enough to suggest that the two of you split up right now!"
"Not stupid, exactly," Freya began slowly. "Just...very sleep-deprived. After all, it has been a trying few days. And remember, he did sleep in a chair last night. Certainly, that can never be good for a person's health."
"Oh, what does it matter? He simply said it to annoy me!"
"Exactly," Amarant agreed, annoyed. "Now, can we drop it and have one god- damned second of quiet?"
"Hmm..." Freya put a hand to her chin, as though giving the matter great thought. Then she looked up at him with a charming smile. "No."
"...I hate you."
"Yes, you've mentioned."
"Hmph. At least you aren't calling me 'Pooky' this time. That's something, I guess."
"Pooky?" Dagger raised an eyebrow. "What on earth happened with you two last night?"
"Don't ask," Freya suggested coldly.
"Eep! Alright," Dagger agreed nervously. "So...do either of you have any idea where this inn-keeper might live?"
"Probably above his inn," Amarant suggested with a snort.
"So, in other words, nowhere at the moment," Freya paraphrased cheerfully.
Dagger looked at her strangely.
"That's it. You're just far too perky today. No more coffee for you for a good long time."
"What does coffee have to do with anything?" Freya demanded, hands on her hips, quite offended. Amarant jerked in protest as his own hand brushed against her leg. Then both went off into another soundless round of blushing and looking away. Dagger rolled her eyes.
'I think I'm beginning to understand why everyone was always reluctant to be sent out with Zidane and I...'
"Zidane, how long do we have to sift through random piles of rock, looking for this key that we're NEVER GOING TO FIND?!!!" Steiner, finished with his rant, dropped to the ground in a crouch, panting and exhausted. Zidane shrugged, hopping easily from his perch on a remaining bit of framework.
"I dunno...another hour or so?"
With a sigh, Vivi murmured to no one in particular,
"I wonder if the others are having any better a time than we are...'
Then, recalling comfortingly that Dagger had been awfully angry, and that Amarant was not particularly happy at the best of times, Vivi concluded that Freya, at least, must be as miserable as he currently found himself. His attention was drawn rapidly back to Steiner and Zidane as an enraged howl from the former split the air.
"Whoa, Rusty, enough of the over-acting, alright?" Zidane requested, hands held up in a calming gesture. The older man fell eerily silent.
"Zidane," Steiner bit out after a long, uncomfortable silence. "We have been here for two hours already. We have, literally, left no stone unturned. WHY IN BLAZES MUST WE REMAIN HERE ANOTHER HOUR, MERELY TO LANGUISH FURTHER IN THIS INSANE HEAT, WHICH, ODDLY ENOUGH HAS NOT BEEN AT ALL MENTIONED UNTIL NOW?!!!"
"Uh...'cause?" Zidane replied snippily.
"'Cause why?" the knight moaned wearily.
"'Cause I say so," the young thief grinned. Then he continued, amid a simultaneous groan of despair from the other two members of his excavation team. "No, guys, we have a reason for being here. Just trust me, okay?"
Stealing a quick glance at one another, Steiner and Vivi nodded hesitantly.
"O-okay. We trust you, Zidane," Vivi said, adjusting his hat.
"Just don't make us regret it," Steiner growled, not adjusting his.
"Hey, when have you ever regretted trusting me?" Zidane demanded, crossing his arms and leaning sideways against a well-charred wooden post.
"Do you want that in alphabetical order, chronological order, or order of severity?" Steiner asked with a sigh.
"Never mind, Steiner," Vivi whispered, tugging on the knight's arm to get him to stoop enough to hear. "Let's just...keep an open mind. After all, what could possibly happen?"
Ah, Vivi, you have committed the cardinal sin...
"Good afternoon, Miss," Dagger greeted the elderly woman behind the counter with a formal bow, inconspicuously sniffing appreciatively at the scent of freshly-baked bread hanging heavily in the air. 'I just love kitchens!'
"Yeah, she blends right into the woodwork," Amarant muttered to Freya as they strode into the bakery behind the young Alexandrian ruler. At his words, Freya merely stared incredulously up at him, down at their handcuffs, and then shook her head, deciding that to answer at all was to completely and utterly set herself up. After all, he likely wouldn't appreciate having the proverb of the pot and the kettle related to him at this particular point in time.
"Good afternoon, yerself," the old woman greeted irritably, brushing from her eyes wisps of grey hair escaping from the red and white checked kerchief tied around her head. "You mightn't think so if you'd been the one to spend most of a day hot enough to melt a brass monkey in front of an oven."
"Of course, roaming around under that same hot sun, improvising on a plan of action is much better," Freya murmured. The baker, unnaturally sharp of hearing, glared at her.
"If you don't dress for the weather, girl, it's no one's fault but your own."
Beneath her hat, Freya's eyes widened.
"Excuse me?! How I dress is my own business!"
"Then don't come crying to me when you overheat and pass out!"
"What?! How would I be going to anyone, let alone doing so crying, if I had passed out?"
"Alright, out of my shop with you!" The old woman mopped her forehead on an apron liberally sprinkled with flour, then delivered a frosty glare to Amarant, who smirked, amused, at the streak of flour thus left behind on said forehead. Then she turned slightly - very slightly - to glare at Freya again. "And take yer friend with you!"
"Wait, ma'am!" Dagger pleaded desperately. "I'm sure they didn't mean to offend you!" This statement she punctuated with a warning glance shot in their direction. "And I'm sure, now that they know that they have, they'll be more than willing to apologize!"
"Apologize?" Amarant snorted in disbelief. "For what?"
"For dragging this poor, over-worked soul into an argument, and then making fun of her to top it off! You both should be ashamed!"
As the old woman's face grew redder, her expression angrier rather than more appeased, one may be quite sure that Amarant and Freya were both rather more amused than ashamed, foreseeing quite accurately what was to come.
"Well, of all the patronizing, uppity little - out of my store, all of you! Don't make me call the mayor! Out! Out this instance!"
As she delivered this biting little speech, the three startled travelers were treated to the rather curious spectacle of a short, fat little woman, swathed in brown with a turkey-red apron, with flour powdered about her face and through the front of her grey hair, waving a rolling pin menacingly at them. As menacing as a rolling pin ever gets, at any rate.
"Alright, don't get your pastry in a twist," Amarant muttered, before stopping to ponder what in the hell he could have meant by such a blatantly stupid comment. Then, shaking his head and deciding that it must be the first signs of heat-stroke, he sauntered, quite maddeningly slowly, from the shop. With a shrug, Freya turned to follow.
"We're really very sorry," Dagger choked out one last time before darting from the small building after her quite alarmingly unapologetic friends.
"Oh, hey, guys!" Zidane called as he noticed three familiar shapes approaching the remains of the tavern, which he had arbitrarily claimed as their new temporary hide-out. A frown wrinkled his forehead as he noticed the decided slouch in Dagger's posture. The poor girl would give herself back problems if she didn't watch out! Had being separated from him for so long depressed her that much?! Well, he would just have to make sure it didn't happen again. He wrapped a comforting arm around her, only adding to her discomfort, as a sweaty arm thrown about already uncomfortably warm shoulders is bound to do. Zidane, however, did not know this, and as such, completely missed the barely tolerant sigh that escaped the young woman as he continued on. "Didja have any luck?"
"Well," Amarant began thoughtfully. "We learned that all the people in this town are idiots."
Zidane laughed easily, removing his arm from around Dagger's shoulders and vaulting lightly up onto a large block of stone behind him.
"Oh, c'mon, Amarant! You think all people everywhere are idiots! I mean, did you learn anything new? Hopefully about where the tavern owner lives?"
"Yes, Zidane," Freya interjected wearily, wondering uneasily where Vivi and Steiner had run off to. "He's staying with his sister and her husband in a nearby town fifty miles over."
"Alright! So, we leave first thing tomorrow, right?"
"Why wait?" Amarant demanded crossing his arm and reflecting glumly that it would probably take him weeks to get back into the habit of crossing both once these damn cuffs came off. Zidane crossed his own arms, and thus earned the envy of the tall red-head, and looked away huffily.
"Hey, man, I don't know about you three, but Vivi and Rusty and I spent most of today working like dogs here!"
"Right," Dagger sighed. "Is that what those are from?"
She pointed off to her right at three small vaguely humanoid shapes built from varying sizes of rocks, twigs stuck into the sides to represent arms, and faces drawn on with the mythical - and very expensive - Pearl Rouge, as Dagger noted with a despairing sigh. On top of the head of each small, crudely made statue was perched one of the groups left-over 'community hats.'
"Please tell me you three didn't spend the entire afternoon making little rock-snowmen," Freya groaned in dismay. Zidane rolled his eyes.
"Freya! If they're made out of rock, they're called rock-men, simple as that! Not rock-snowmen!"
"That's what I thought," she sighed. "So, where are Vivi and Steiner, anyway?"
"Did they perhaps...get fed up with your play-time and leave?" Dagger suggested, more than a little miffed.
"No way! The whole rock-men thing was Steiner's idea in the first place. But, y'know, by the time we found the right size of rocks, hauled 'em over here, built the little guys, and found all the decorations we needed, we were all starving! This kind of thing really works up an appetite. So, I sent Steiner and Vivi out for food. Told 'em to try to find some corn- bread, if they could. They should be getting back any time now."
As if on cue - although it wasn't - not in the slightest [Rhianwen tosses her mini tape recorder aside and whistles innocently] - a large knight clanked onto the scene.
"Well, Steiner's back. But what'd he do with Vivi? And what's that walking traffic cone beside him?" Zidane mused aloud.
Amarant shot Dagger and Freya each a pleading glance.
"May I?"
"Go ahead," Dagger encouraged.
"By all means," Freya agreed.
Nodding his satisfaction, Amarant stepped forward and delivered a smack upside Zidane's head. The young man yelped in pain, then blinked rapidly.
"Whoa! What just happened? Where am I?" Then he sighed. "Are we STILL here? Why haven't we left for the tavern-guy's sister's place yet?"
"You're the one who wanted to stay the night, Zidane," Dagger reminded him. His brow wrinkled in a frown.
"I...did?"
"Like anywhere in this town's gonna house us. By now, that crazy baker- woman's probably spread word of us," Amarant mutterd. Dagger glared.
"And just whose fault is that?"
"Hey, enough, okay?" Zidane protested. "I think we've wasted enough time already."
"U-um...why did Zidane suddenly get so responsible?" Vivi piped up, confused, hefting the small burlap sack of cornbread over his shoulder.
"I shall field that question, Master Vivi," Steiner declared. Then he turned to address the rest of the group. "You see, when Amarant delivered that blow upside his head, it seems that Zidane was miraculously knocked back into character."
"Thank the gods," Freya murmured. To be sure, Dagger's reaction to this altered version of her long-time friend had been amusing, but there was really only so much a person could take of Zidane when he got like this without losing all grasp on sanity.
Dagger, meanwhile, was gazing, shiny-eyed, at Zidane, her hands clasped in front of her.
"Could it be...? Zidane, are you back at last?"
The fair-haired thief's eyebrow arched upwards.
"Back? I didn't go anywhere."
"Well, a small improvement's better than none," Dagger noted out loud, shoulders slumping slightly.
"Uh...right," Zidane agreed, his other eyebrow joining the first one in his hairline. "Let's head off, alright? We'll camp somewhere along the side of the road when it gets dark. Everyone good with that?"
A collective sigh of relief rose from the rest of the group. And so it was decided. Climbing from the rubble pit that was left of the tavern, our merry little band of travelers set out for their new destination - the home of the tavern owner's sister - with flames of renewed hope flickering in their hearts. Would this hope last, or would it, like the hope that had come before it, be ruthlessly snuffed out by circumstances horrific, terrifying, or just plain stupid? Read on to find out.
End Notes: Whoo! The 'plot advancement' chapter! Trust me, it'll be more entertaining again in Chapter 9. Much more 'shippery, too. [Giggles] And, as Dagger will be in a much better mood once she gets out of that hot sun, the Zidane/Dagger fans who may be reading will be quite mollified, as well.
Oh, and as for the 'Amarant-knocking-Zidane-back-into-character' thing, I found, upon re-reading, that this story was becoming altogether too much a Zidane-bashing campaign. Henceforth, I shall endeavour not to bash the poor boy any more than I do any other character.
And once again, thank-you so much to all the kind souls out there who are reading this.