A/N: Hello Everyone, I'm back. I actually would have had this up sooner but my internet is acting up...again. I swear the internet hates me. Also I've had some personal problems latly, but I finally got them sorted out so I should be able to update quicker (I hope). Anyway it's time for me to thank my reviewers so thanks to Great Materia Hunter Yuffie, shadow lv3, devaughn, Dark-sephiroth2, Seriyu-the-ice-dragon, Eclipse230, silvawolf, devaughn (yes that's supposed to be there twice), dev (yet again!), A Bloody Puppet, dev (yet again...again), De'Vaughn, sam, devaughn (I'm starting to notice a pattern here), shadow3173, and dev (shadow3173) for reviewing. Now without any further stalling on my part let's get this chapter started.
Story: Swordsman Tournament...(bet you thought I was gonna say something)
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Action, Adventure, and a Chocobo. Can it get any better than that.
Where The Author Is Right Now
The author was enjoying himself. Well as much as someone can enjoy themself when they have a huge ice pack on their head due to many random and heavy objects getting thrown at their head for being a lazy bastard. However, despite taking an eternity to update and knowing he was just going to get more heavy objects thrown at him for pracrastinating, the author was sitting in front of his T.V. playing a video game. You might wonder why someone would allow himself to be beaten severly just to play a game, but then you don't know what the author was playing. The author was currently playing Conker Live & Reloaded, which to the author was probably the best X-Box game ever (plus one of the few games that actually deserves an M-rating for it's highly offensive humor).
However the author's good time and shameless praise of a video game so he could get paid for advertising (whoops!...wasn't supposed to mention that) were tragically cut short as the door to his house was kicked opened, flew off it's hinges, and smacked the author right in the face. As the author was recovering from the blow to the face (you'd think he'd be used to them by now) he noticed two figures standing in the doorway (or ex-doorway when you think about it).
"Gasp!" The author shouted and tried to hide behind his chair (which was a really stupid plan as both figures could obviously see him). The two people entered the house and were about to have a "word" with the author when one of them stopped.
"Wait did he just say gasp, Cloud?" one figured ased the other who was clearly now known to be none other than Cloud Strife. He also looked like he was in a real bad mood.
"Yes he did Tifa." Cloud answered coldly, obviously very upset about something. Noticing the author cowering, Cloud was about to go into his long winded speech about responsibility and not taking forever to update when both him and the author were forced to stare at Tifa as she squealed like a fangirl. This caused two very diffrent reactions from the males in the room. Cloud shuddered in fear while thoughts of what fangirls liked to do to him whent through his head (Not that he'd mind Tifa doing some of those things to him, but that's besideds the point). The author was just confused because he was pretty sure that was the most out of character thing he had ever seen Tifa do. Then he realized she was looking at his game while squealing and he put two and two together.
After getting four, the author quickly tried to leap into to Tifa's way to stop her from stealing his game. Of course leaping quickly was hard since everyone knows that when you make a leap everything goes into slow-motion, which is why you'd thnk the author would have noticed that Tifa was about to knock him out of the way before she sent him into a wall. Before the author could even hit the ground Cloud had his Buster Sword to his neck with a mad gleam in his eye (Woo Hoo! I finally drove Cloud crazy! One hero down, who knows how many more to go). The author noticed Cloud was quite upset (and hoped that commment helped him win the Understatment of the Year Award) and scrached the back of his head nervously (which is actually physically impossible sine he was currently embedded into a wall, but since when has logic stopped me from doing anything).
"Your're coming with us!" Cloud yelled at the author as he started to drag him to...uh...wherever the hell he was dragging him. As he passed Tifa (who was still playing the game) he motioned for her to get moving but stopped when she tried to give him the puppy dog eyes (you know what these are and don't pretend you don't). However Cloud had planned ahead and pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on (Because everybody knows the puppy dog eyes don't work on someone who wears really cool glasses). Upset that she couldn't control Cloud's mind with the puppy dog eyes, Tifa decided to just ransack the authors house and steal half his stuff mostly because his stuff was cool but also to teach him a lesson about updating sooner. Before the author could protest he'd already been knocked out by Cloud and moments later the trio (Cloud, Tifa, and the author incase you had trouble following the last scene) were back at the stadium.
The author finally came to only to notice a large mob of...well...just about everyone that's was at the tournament. The author just nervoulsly waved at everybody, which started a long list of complaints.
As soon as everyone realized the author was there they all strarted to shout out complaints like "Were out of food!" or "We need more medical supplies" (which got everyone to starte at Sephiroth who just shrugged) and there was even a complaint of "When's the next fight?" The last one got everyone to stare at Sesshomaru who was the one who asked. Not liking being the center of attention he just glared at everyone. This caused everyone to look away as they didn't feel like pissing off a demon. Everyone started to stare at the author who just looked at them all nervoulsly as he was trying to think of a way out of getting killed. Then it hit him.
"Ahhh!" the author yelled as a brick hit him upside the head. Everyone just sighed as they were used to this kind of stuff. The author got up muttering inaudible curses (because if you could hear what he was saying I wouln'd be able to keep the Teen rating). Then the author noticed a note attached to the brick. The author decided to read the note aloud because that's much more convient for the reader.
"Take the characters to the store for more food then have the next fight." The aurthor read, then nodded and shouted out "The oddly specific advice is right! We'll go buy some more food then come back and have the next fight!" After saying this everyone cheered and the author shouted "To the Vanmobile!" Then he ran to his van and tried to jump through the window and into the drivers seat, but there were two problems with that. First the window was rolled up. Also a van isn't exactly a low-riding vehicle and jumping through a window of one would be quite hard. So it didn't really suprise anybody when the author suddenly hit the ground. After recovering the author and everyone else quickly got into whatever vehicles they could find and raced to the where the stores are.
A few minutes later and everyone was standing in front of several large stores and the author had a problem. A really big problem. Since he was driving no one rode with him and they all showed up in the Highwind, which happend to have just landed on his van. However that wasn't the biggest problem. Oh no that was nothing compared to what the author was currently facing. Right next to the food store which just happened to be called Food-O-Rama (a strange name indeed) was a store called Games-R'-Us (a totally ripped off name). However before the author could escape grocery shopping he was uncerminously dragged into the food store, shouting out "NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" the whole way there. As they finally made it into the store they all gasped in awe as the store was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. There was diffrent kinds of food all over the place and most of the characters were drooling.
After awhile of just sitting there and drooling over the large amounts of food the author decided to make an announcment.
"I'm making an announcment" the author said, and when he received glares from everyone for acting stupid (uhhhhh...yeah...acting) he continued. "Now I think we should split up into groups of at least two people and go gather some grocieris, any objections?" The author looked around as no one said anything until the young Ninja Yuffie spoke up.
"Why do we have to split up into groups? It's not like this place is dangerous and even if it was we can take care of ourselves." Yuffie said, with some of the other characters nodding their heads in agremment.
The aurthor sighed and said "It's not for your protection it's just that I'm a little worried about what will happen if certain people are left unsupervised." As he was saying this the author was also glaring at the villians and Sephiroth to let them know who the "certain people" were. "Besides," the author started to add, in a much more sorrowful tone "sombody's got to keep an eye on Hojo." As the author said this all the characters paled (except Hojo, of course, who was currently looking at the diffrent kind of foods and wondering which ones it would be best to inject Jenova cells into). As the characters were starting to panic (who can blame them, I mean, would YOU want to watch Hojo for a prolonged period of time?) until Yuffie had a brilliant idea. She rolled something across the ground as the author started to talk again.
"To decided who has to watch Hojo, I think it'd only be fair if we drew straws or someting so..." the author didn't have a chance to finish as something hit his foot. The author looked at it carfully and then got a suprised look on his face. "Hey! This looks just like a smoke bomb..." and then if went off. As the Author was busy coughing in a cloud of smoke all of the characters save one escaped to diffrent parts of the store. As the smoke cleared the author looked around and realized everyone was gone except for Hojo, who still had no idea what was going on. The author continued to look around suprised until realization of what had just happend hit him.
"Oh those bast.." However before the author could finish his foul word he was immediatly tackled by a strange group of people who shouted out "No Bad Language" and then disappeared suddenly. Decideding to let the incident go, the still freaked out author and an oblivious Hojo started to wander through the store.
Somewhere Completly Diffrent
Ths disclaimer was happily walking out of the fic, sastisfied that it had done it's job of informing people of all the things the author doesn't own, when it was suddenly caught up in a gigantic battle. Now you may ask yourselves "Why was there a gigantic battle going on right outside of a hospital?" Regardless of the answer to the previous question (The answer was "Shut Up" by the way) the point is the disclaimer got involved in a huge battle that I won't be descrbing due to an acute case of laziness, and when it was finally over the disclaimer was rushed back to the hopital because it had used up all of it's disclaimer powers.
Returning to the Store (And Proving that Last Scene was Complelty Pointless)
Cloud and Tifa were walking together and looking around the store for some food. They would have been by themselves (A fact which both will tell you repedeatly was not intentional, despite the fact that they obviously walked off together when everyone split up) if it wasn't for their third companion Nowhere, who was currently acting nonchalant and pretending to be in the middle of itself. This continued until they walked past the snack aisle. Well to be more specific Tifa and Nowhere passed the snack aisle and Cloud tried to steathily sneak into the aisle. When Tifa noticed he was missing she immediatly went back to the snack aisle and sighed when she saw what Cloud was doing. She should have known he'd have some kind of food obssesion as it seems as all the greatest characters have them. I mean there was Vash with his donut obsession, Inuyahsa with his "Anything from the future" obsession, and her own hidden obsessions with video games and pocky. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for what she saw.
Cloud Strife, hero, swordsman, badass, and all around good guy was sitting on the floor tearing open boxes of Animal Crackers and eating them while growling at anyone who came near him. Tifa looked back to ask Nowhere for help only to notice that Nowhere was giving the beef jerky a VERY strange look. Tifa just sighed and decided to see if she could find any Pocky.
Back With the Idiots (Which Ones?)
The author and Hojo were walking together in their valiant search for the items that would be necessary for the continued survival of the characters. So as they were looking for some chips and booze, they hadn't realized they came into the mysterious experiments aisle (the only thing more mysterious than the experiments is why they have an aisle like that in the middle of a store). The author kept walking past, but Hojo being both a scientist and an idiot, couldn't help but pick up one of the inventions. The strange contraption was shapped like a gun, but it didn't have any of the components of a normal gun. Before Hojo could figure out what the gun does he had already fired it on accident and hit the author right in the back. As the author fell to the ground unconcious (that seems to happen a lot in this fic, doesn't it?) Hojo did what any sensible person would do. He threw the gun down and walked away whistiling innocently.
Somewhere Else Once Again
Vash and Knives were actually having a civil converstation and everyone thought that things might finally become peacful between the brothers. Then they started to head to the produce aisle and everyone suddenly got a sense of impending doom.
Enough Foreshadowing Let's Go Somewhere Else
Blissfully unaware of the strange events happening, everyone's favorite ninja Yuffie was happily walking towards the pet aisle not noticing where she was going because she was still to happy with herself over her plan working. Finally realizing where she was, the young ninja decided to see if any of the animals looked edible. Passing by some random kittens (which she wouldn't eat because she likes cats) and a dog (which she woulnd't eat because she didn't trust the dog's name, which happened to be Menchi) she finally came across a creature so strange words couldn't describe it. Yuffie decided to try and observe the creature more carefully to figure out what it was and the answer hit her just as it suddenly leapt out of it's cage...
Priview for Next Chapter: Yuffie gets a pet, the author's darkest secrets are revealed, and things get even more complicated for the heros when the law ninja mailman returns!
A/N: Hello everyone I have finally made my dramatic return. For those of you who were wondering, no I am not dead, though I certainly feel it. I have to offer my sincerest apologies for taking so goddamn long to finish this chapter but I've had a lot of personal issues come up lately which basically involed a funreal, me getting a job, and many of the more mundane things in life that it would bore you all for me to go on about. Thankfully this unwanted break from this fic has helped me get a bunch of ideas and I even have a few ideas for how to update faster. For all of you who are curious as to what my ideas are, I've decided to list them off here:
First I'm going to set a certain amount of time it should take for me to update. I think part of the reason I've been taking so long latly is I don't consider the date that I want the next chapter up by and I have a tendecy to lost track of time. I'm hoping to start getting a new chapter up at least once every two weeks, and if I can get that to work then I'll try for what I'm really aiming for which is weekly updates.
My second and final idea is to write short little chapter that I'll put up whenever I'm haveing trouble thinking of ideas for the fic. I got this idea because lately while I've been thinking up a lot more ideas not all of them can be put into the fic and not using an idea I like frustrates me and can lead to me having a minor case of writer's block. These short chapters wouldn't reaplace the main fic and they should help me use some of the ideas I can't fit into the fic normally. Just a quick note if I do decided to post up these short chapters, they probably wouldn't be related to the fic and may or may not involve members of the FFVII crew.
Anyway I don't like these author notes being this long so I'm going to wrap this up now. For those of you who either already asked me some questions or who want to ask about my ideas to increase update time I'll try to reply to you when I post the next chapter which I'm going to try to have done before the end of next week. Well until then Bye Everybody!