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Erk: What are you doing back here so soon?
Arianna: I figure the faster I update, the less review responses I'll have to do, and the less people will complain about the long review responses.
Erk: So basically you're being non-lazy….so you can be lazier?
Arianna: Yup :)
Ivan: …..
Eliwood: I don't get it….
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DISCLAIMER: All I own of Fire Emblem is a little cartridge thingy that I stick in this square thingy and then it makes these noises and I press buttons and then I go 'YAY! Fire Emblem!'
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"Now remember, Daddy, don't touch ANYTHING!" seven year old Kelly said as she led her dad, Matthew, through the crowded supermarket. They were having trouble finding the things they needed because when the shopkeepers saw the notorious (at least with Ostian merchants) thief family coming they closed their shops and carts. Now poor Kelly had to search frantically for a place to buy the necessities while restraining her sticky-handed father from 'accidentally picking something up' from a random cart.
"WOOL! GET YOUR WOOL RIGHT HERE, FOLKS!" shouted a vendor. Kelly remembered that that was one of the things on the list and quickly rushed her dad to the cart before the man had time to close it on them. Apparently this man was new in town, though, because when the two approached he just smiled and greeted them.
"Hello there, sir!" he said to Matthew, than looked down at the girl holding the spy's hand, "And hello to you, little miss! What can I do for you today?" he asked, his eyes moving back up to Matthew. But Matthew was staring intensely at something on the cart…something that glinted in the afternoon sun. Something shiny and expensive looking. Kelly pinched her dad on the arm and he jumped.
"What? Huh?" he said, looking at his daughter and then the merchant with confusion. "Uhhh…..we need wool." Matthew finally stammered. The vendor's smile became a huge, cheesy grin.
"Ah, then you've come to just the place! This here is artificial genuine wool!" he said, using big words in an attempt to confuse the spacey father. Luckily, Kelly was giving the man her full attention.
"If it's artificial, how can it be genuine?" she asked innocently, suspicious. The man was taken aback.
"Well, Little Missy, this here wool is just as good as any normal wool, but it's cheaper because it's not completely normal!"
"Then isn't it false advertisement to say it's genuine wool? Isn't that illegal? Shouldn't you clarify for your costumers that it's not real wool?"
"……."
As the salesman debated with the intelligent little lass, Matthew was focused once again on the shiny object. 'Shiiiiny….' he thought and crept up to it, glancing back to see that the vendor was still distracted. Then, he snatched it and shoved it in a hidden pocket with skills that had been honed by years of work as a thief. He indulged himself with a triumphant smile and then whirled around to find that Kelly was gone. Alarmed, he looked to the vendor who was counting gold. "Ummm…sir, do you know where my daughter went?"
"She paid me for some wool and then headed off into the crowd dragging some man behind her." the vendor answered absently, absorbed in the counting of his profit. Matthew examined the crowd with a frantic expression.
'Oh no…..' he thought.
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"C'mon, Daddy! Why are you pulling back so much?" Kelly demanded and looked behind her to see that the man she had been tugging along was not, in fact, her father.
"Kwr fi id nw! U;kk axe'n die rgw 'yrgieuruwa!" the man yelled at her in a language she did not recognize. She let go of him with an embarrassed smile.
(((A/N: Can you decode his language:) It's a pretty simple code.)))
"Sorry about that! I thought you were someone else!" she explained sheepishly as the foreign man glared at her and rubbed at his sore arm where she had been gripping him.
"Aryous ve'r!" he spat and then stalked off into the crowd. Kelly looked around.
"Where's Daddy?" she said aloud. Her bottom lip trembled when she didn't see him anywhere nearby. Tears stung at her eyes but she quickly wiped them away. Big girls didn't cry. She tried to remember what she had been taught in school about what to do when lost, but all she could remember of the lesson was that it definitely did not mention anything about abducting random tourists and dragging them along with you. She finally decided to walk back the way she had come and hope she ran into him. As she was walking (she had abandoned the bag of wool) she thought about her life with her daddy. Daddy had to raise her all by his lonesome since Mommy had died only a few months after she was born. She remembered Lord Hector telling her the story about how her Daddy had fainted when he returned to Ostia after a long trip and found out that her Mommy, Leila, had had a baby before she died…..and it was his!
'Congratulations……you are the proud owner of a new daughter!' the temporary foster parent had said when she handed Kelly to her father for the first time. Matthew had just stared in shock at the baby for a moment. Then he fainted….still holding the baby.
'And that's how you got that dent in your head!' Lord Hector had told Kelly, apparently finding this to be a funny story. Kelly didn't find this too funny, though. The kids at school were always teasing her about that dent being the reason she was so much smarter than the other kids her age.Thankfully, though, her bright hair, that looked so much like her late mother's, coveredmost of the dent.She pulled herself out of her thoughts just in time to see her daddyrun by.
"DADDY!" she screamed and about twenty men turned around, but not Matthew. He hadn't heard her over the crowd. "Daddy!" she screamed again and quickly ran through the crowd, dodging legs as she went. Her luck finally ran out and she smacked right into someone's legs, knocking her on her behind. She looked up to see the foreign man from earlier and two policemen.
"R'g'r;a gwem idduxwea! Agw;a rgw ibw qgi 'aa'ykrws nw! "eear gwe!" the man snapped, pointing at the startled girl. The police officers looked at each other, shrugged, and scratched their heads.
"We told you, sir, we can't understand you." one of the officers said. This only seemed to make the foreigner angrier and he began gesturing at the girl violently and shouting.
"Sir, if you don't calm down and stop making threatening motions to that little girl, we'll have to detain you." the second officer said. The tourist stomped a foot and shouted some more. "Okay, man, you're going to have to come with me for a little while." the officer said and handcuffed the man. Then he dragged him, screaming and struggling, to the station.
"ARYOUS VE"R!" were the man's final shouts before he disappeared, with the officer, into the crowd. The remaining officer shook his head disdainfully.
"Crazy tourists…." he muttered. He looked down at the small girl who was still sitting on the ground. She looked up at him with bright eyes that resembled her father's with their innocent look that masked inner mischievousness.
"Mister, can you help me find my Daddy?" she asked sweetlyand he smiled at the girl's cuteness. He knelt down.
"Of course, sugar. Now, what's he look like?"
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"KELLY! KELLLLLYYY!" Matthew was shouting as he ran around the market in a blind panic. He was knocking over people and carts, and, for once, he was completely oblivious to shiny objects.
"Daddy! Daddy!" he heard and spotted Kelly standing with a man. He ran towards them.
"GIVE MY DAUGHTER BACK!" he yelled and attacked the man. "I have a sword and I'm not afraid to use it!" he threatened. Kelly hugged her father.
"No, Daddy! This is a police officer! He helped me find you!" said the very relieved girl. Matthew gave a sheepish grin.
"Whoops…sorry…." he said weakly to the officer.
"No harm done. Good day." the policeman said and began walking away.
"Daddy, can we go home now?" Kelly asked, tugging at Matthew's clothes. When she pulled something fell out and clattered to the ground. Something shiny and expensive looking. Kelly picked it up with a horrified look.
"Daddy! You stole this from that wool selling man!" she exclaimed loudly. The officer turned around. Matthew broke out in a cold sweat.
"What are you talking about, sweetheart? I've had that a long time!" Matthew lied and gave a nervous laugh. The officer squinted his eyes at Matthew in suspicion.
"No you haven't! You stole this when I was talking to that vendor, didn't you, Daddy?" she accused him. The officer began walking quickly back towards them.
"Time to go!" Matthew said, picking up his daughter and running for it. The officer started running. A very long chase scene commenced. The blonde thief finally lost him by running through a back alley. He sat down his daughter and exhaled. "Lost him…." Matthew said, relieved. Kelly was observing her surroundings. Matthew, in his haste to escape the officer, had unfortunately taken his underaged daughter into a bad part of town.
"Daddy….what are they doing?" Kelly said and pointed at a very…ah, shall we say…close couple nearby. Matthew's face paled.
"They're dancing." he lied quickly. "It's a new, popular dance."
"It looks like they're having fun!" Kelly said. "Can I learn that dance, Daddy?" she asked.
"Not until you're thirty!" Matthew snapped and quickly dragged his child away from the couple. They wandered around for a few minutes. Then a few more minutes. Then a few more, and finally Kelly decided to ask where they were going.
"Daddy, where are we going?" she asked apprehensively as they passed the same hobo for the sixteenth time. There was a moment of silence before Matthew answered.
"We're going home." he finally answered.
"Then why are we walking in circles?"
"We're not….I'm just temporarily a little directionally challenged."
"…..we're lost?"
Matthew slapped his forehead in frustration. Darn those vocabulary books he had bought her! "We're not lost! How could I, an Ostian spy, ever get lost?" Matthew demanded. Kelly gave a depressed sigh.
"Yep. We're lost…." she grumbled.
'We're NOT lost!" Matthew said, "We should arrive back in the market any min-" he suddenly cut off as they came to the market. "See?" he said smugly. "We made it back, just like I told you we would!"
"That's great and all, Daddy, but I'm hungry! Can we get something to eat?" she suddenly requested.
"Didn't I just feed you this morning?" he asked. Kelly rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Daddy, but most parents feed their children more than once a day." she explained in a sarcastic voice. Matthew laughed and patted her on the head, which made her mad. She hated being treated like a small child! Even though she was a small child….
"It was just a joke, honey." Matthew told her in a lightly condescending voice. Kelly glared up at him with a 'touch my head again and you die' look. "Why don't I go steal us some food?" Matthew suggested and Kelly was outraged.
"Daddy! Stealing is WRONG!" Kelly lectured with her hands on her hips. "You saw how much trouble it got us in earlier!" Matthew wondered for what wasn't the first time how this child could possibly be his and Leila's. She had completely different morals and was strongly against stealing. The little girl continued to stare down her father and he finally gave in.
"Alright, alright…." he sighed, "We'll go buy food." Matthew said the word 'buy' like it was some stupid, pointless thing.
"Let's eat out! We're already out, anyways!" pointed out Kelly. Matthew thought about it and agreed.
"Lead the way, mi'lady." he said and gave an exaggerated bow. Kelly dragged him to a nearby restaurant called 'The Evil Pickle'. Matthew raised a brow at the name but followed his daughter inside nonetheless. He was met with the strange sight of……a perfectly normal looking restaurant. He had been expecting something bizarre (like people in giant pickle suits) but everything looked ordinary. The two sat down at a table and soon a waiter approached.
"What can I get ya?" he asked. He looked like every other Ostian waiter, but he actually was-
SUPERMYRMIDON!
Not really, I was just seeing if I still had your attention. Anyways….
He looked like every other Ostian waiter, a bored teenager with a pimple problem. Matthew picked up the menu and found it to contain perfectly normal foods…..although he had some questions about the pickle, cheese, and kiwi salmon. The two ordered and once the waiter had walked off Matthew busied himself with stuffing all the sugar packets on the table into his pockets. Kelly watched him disapprovingly but technically it wasn't stealing since they were there for the customer's use. "So…" Matthew finally said once his pockets were bulging with sweetners. 'We won't have to buy sugar for a month!' he thought happily. "Why is this place called 'The Evil Pickle'?" Kelly smiled devilishly.
"Because of the show." she said. Matthew froze. A packet of sweet & low hit the ground.
"Show?" Matthew repeated nervously. He had had a fear of shows ever since he had taken Kelly to that show in Pherae. It was a circus and was lots of fun until somebody's brats ruined it all by trying to be trapeze artists. Everyone had gone nuts when the two kids and their father (who looked strangely familiar to Matthew, but he just couldn't be sure from that distance) fell and hit the ground with a hard thump. Matthew had been trying to get closer to the fallen family to find out whom that man was that looked so familiar when some lady dropped a package of peanuts on his head and they got all over him. He was trying to brush them off when an elephant saw the peanuts and then Matthew had to spend the rest of his day running from a hungry elephant. Matthew shuddered at the memory. He snapped back to reality to hear a voice that he had heard not too long ago.
"Excuse me, have you seen a blonde man with a reddish cape?" the police officer from earlier was asking of the manager. Matthew picked up a menu to hide his face. He was planning a way to slip past the officer (with Kelly) and run for it when the lights dimmed. Two spotlights shone on a stage he had not noticed before. His fear of the officer was quickly traded for his fear of live shows.
"It's starting, Daddy!" Kelly said, a little too loudly in a restaurant that had recently gone quiet with the dimming of the lights. The policeman turned towards the sound of the voice and Matthew had to drag Kelly under the table to prevent them from being seen.
((((A/N: Today, Mr. Matthew will demonstrate how not to be seen.
Latisha: -smack- Stop it with the Monty Python!)))
"Daddy, what are you doing? We're gonna miss the show! And it's all dirty down here!" Kelly complained, picking a piece of old pickle off of her pants and making sure to stay away from a chewed piece of gum that was right above her head.
"Shhhhh! That police officer is out there!" he whispered frantically. And when she heard that she had to look, of course. She poked her head out and the first thing she saw was a pair of shoes.
"Uhhhh…..hey? I brought your food." said the confused waiter as he stared down at Kelly. The officer looked towards the voice and this time managed to spot Kelly. He began running towards them.
"Uh oh…." Kelly said and grabbed her dad by the arm. They took off running, flipping the table in the process. They ran away from the officer….which just happened to be towards the stage. On stage, a few people in pickle costumes were dancing to a song called 'Pick Yourself A Pickle' or something along those lines.
(((A/N: It's not a real song, just so you know.)))
"No!" Matthew shouted when he realized where they were going and he wouldn't run another step. But if Kelly can drag an ornery foreigner through a busy marketplace she can sure as heck drag her dad onto a stage. And she did just that with him screaming the whole way. The people in the restaurant watched as a little girl dragged a screaming man backstage with a police officer close behind them. Once backstage, Kelly pulled Matthew into a costuming room.
"Put this on!" she said shoving a pickle costume at him and grabbing a smaller one for herself.
"Who's the parent here?" Matthew demanded indignantly. "I'm not putting that stupid thing on!"
"PUT IT ON!" Kelly ordered and Matthew grudgingly obeyed. Once the two were fully costumed they headed back to the stage.
"Wait a second! We're not gonna actually dance with those idiots, are we?" asked Matthew in fear. Kelly nodded fervently.
"Yes! Then after the song is over and the lights dim again we can make a run for it!" explained the smart little girl.
"But we'll look like freaks!" Matthew complained.
"Well, you should have thought of that before you stole that shiny thing!" Kelly snapped back hotly. Then she pushed him onto the stage. While they had been suiting up the music had changed to some song called 'Flying Purple Pickle Eater'. Matthew and Kelly tried to mimic the motions of the pickles beside them. Matthew thought he was the most humiliated he would ever be in his life. He was wrong, though, as you will find out later. The song finally dwindled to its last notes and the lights faded while the pickles changed positions. As soon as the lights were gone Matthew and Kelly ran like crazy for the door.
"I'm never going back there EVER again!" Matthew stated once the two were safely back out in the market.
"Too bad. That's where I want to go for my birthday." Kelly said sticking her tongue out at her father. "We better leave these things on until we get home."
"You mean I've gotta go through the market looking like a giant pickle?" said Matthew. The dynamic dad & daughter duo started on their way home, getting many looks from the people in the streets. Even in a big city like Ostia it wasn't normal to see people walking around in pickle costumes. Matthew prayed that they wouldn't see anyone they knew. Didn't happen.
"Lilina!" Kelly suddenly called out to a small, blue-haired girl that was walking with her father and mother. Lilina looked towards the sound of the voice but all she saw was a big pickle with an even bigger pickle beside it. She rubbed her eyes to make sure she was seeing things properly and when the pickles were still there she pulled on her mother's sleeve.
"Mother, Father, there's two giant pickles over there and one of them just called my name!" Lilina said, frightened. Hector and Florina looked over to see what in Elibe she was talking about and saw two people in pickle costumes that looked strangely like Matthew and Kelly. Then they realized it was Matthew and Kelly! The royal family started walking towards the spy family. Matthew made a grab for Kelly in hopes to run for it but he missed and Kelly ran up to Lilina.
"It's me, Kelly! Look what I got from that pickle restaurant!" Kelly said and twirled around to fully show off her picklefulness. Lilina giggled.
"How cute! I want one!" she exclaimed and looked at her mother with a 'hint hint' look. Hector started talking to Matthew to the thief's complete and utter horror.
"Is that you in there, Matthew?" Hector said with a wide grin. "Bernbie dolls are starting to look pretty good right about now, huh?" he said and laughed almost hysterically at the thief. Matthew's face turned bright red and if it had gotten any hotter he would have become a fried pickle.
"Time to go now, Kelly." the embarrassed blonde grumbled and finally managed to get a hold of his child.
"Bye!" Kelly said to Lilina as she was dragged off.
(((A/N- Erk: There's a lot of dragging in this chapter.
Me: ……shut up….)))
"It was nice to see you." Florina said politely in her soft voice, even though they saw Matthew almost everyday and Kelly about as often; and seeing giant pickles isn't really that nice an experience. Matthew walked quicker when he heard his young master's laugh echoing after him. The thief almost collapsed with relief when they made it to their humble home.
"I hope you learned your lesson." Kelly scoffed as she took of her costume and laid it on the living room table. Matthew was struggling to get his off.
"MMMMMMph perf!" he said from inside the costume.
"What?" Kelly asked as Matthew got the costume over his head and threw it on the floor.
"I said it's not like you've never stolen anything before!" Matthew repeated, rubbing at his mussed hair with his hands. Kelly looked at her father with confusion.
"What did I steal?" she demanded. Matthew motioned at the costumes. "Oh, those. The situation was desperate! And I'm going to return them tomorrow with a full apology." she informed him defensively.
"Well, there's something else you've stolen." the playful dad continued with a smile twitching his lips.
"And that would be?"
"You stole my heart the moment I held you for the first time." Matthew said, his smile turning into a complete grin. Kelly rolled her eyes at his corny joke.
"That's stupid, Daddy. And you're lying, anyways. Lord Hector told me all about how you fainted and dented my head." Kelly said as she headed for the stairs, eager to escape her foolish father. Matthew kept grinning.
"Well, if not that exact moment, then when you first said 'daddy'!"
"Enough, Dad." Kelly said, climbing the stairs.
"Or when you first cried for my help when you got stuck behind the fridge….." Matthew yelled up the stairs.
"Stop it! And that was you're fault, anyway! You told me to get my ball that had rolled behind it myself!" she retorted, breaking into a run for her room.
"Or when you first yelled for me because you needed me to wipe your-"
"ENOUGH!" she screamed, slamming the door to her room and locking him out.
"-nose. What did she think I was going to say?" Matthew said to himself and chuckled.
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Arianna: Wheee! I don't know why, but this chapter was lots of fun to write!
Latisha: 3,634 words.
Matthew: You had fun tormenting me?
Eliwood: She wasn't laughing at you she was laughing with you…..
Matthew: I'm sure.
Hector: HAHAHAHA! SERVES YOU RIGHT! HAHAHAHA! PICKLE COSTUME!
Matthew: ……
Arianna: Review responses!
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REVIEW RESPONSES
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Arianna: These are going to be done a bit differently from now on. Instead of answering every single review I'm just gonna answer questions or make a comment if I really need to make it.
BIG Thanks To: Lack Thereof, Rose-Wisteria, Miserikordi, Wildfire Dreams, Rednal, ShadowAngelUmbreon, SweetMisery430, RBMIfan, Aeros Fujita, K-Gforever, FireEdge, Inferno-Hero, timmycheese, Nightmare, Heath's-No.1-Fan, Wandering Cat, chel bel, Seventh Sage, Ghost of Erk, and Evergladelord!
To Everyone: I do better with characters I know well. I barely use Dart and Farina. That should explain why I went so original with the last chapter.
Lack Thereof: Matthew doesn't really have a daughter; I made her up for the story's sake.
The One Who Until Recently Was Potter29vo: Pretty new sn. Of course I remember you! Oh, and incase you didn't notice, you DID say something about it.
Rednal: A lot of reviews.
ShadowAngelUmbreon&Nightmare: Thanks for the idea! I hadn't thought about a Karel chapter because he has no pairings but now that you mention it I have to do one because it would be so much fun to write.
timmycheese: In band camp we had this section teacher who we called Bubbles. When she was in a bad mood, though, we called her Agatha.
Seventh Sage: The joke of Vshtlk is that it has no vowels so it's pretty much impossible to pronounce. If you wanna try, though, you could say something like 'vish-t-kilk' and make the 'kilk' part sound really throaty. I don't think Thany is Farina's daughter because in Farina's endings it doesn't mention a kid like it does for the others who have kids in FE6.
Arianna: THERE! Look how much shorter that was than last chapter! MARVEL AT ITS BEAUTY!
Erk: Okay, enough. You're making it longer by rambling on.
Arianna: Next chapter I'm not sure who to do….either PentxLouise or Lucius'. Next story I'll be updating will be 'Fire Emblem Idol' so be looking for that on my site around next weekend! It's the grand finale. There's something weird with the link in my profile so you have to copy and paste it in the address bar instead of just clicking on it. Well, I'm off!
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Kelly: Review and you get to wear a pickle costume!
Matthew: I think you'd do better if you say 'review and you DON'T have to wear a pickle costume'…..
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Note: Thanks to Rose-Wisteria for telling me about the spacing problem! Hopefully that will be fixed now.
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