Disclaimer: Copy, paste, repeat. No harm, no foul. It takes one to know one. Wise man say, suing Esse leads to frustration and the ingestion of ineffective heartburn medication. No deposit, no return.

Warnings: Vulgarity -- but, that one really bad word for the PG-13 rating, that's per chapter, right? Yeah, same as with a TV series. I'm so going with that. More vulgarity, of the "Oh my gosh, I don't believe I wrote that, there's a special place set aside in purgatory for me" kind. And humorless attempts at humor. Leave now, or forever hold your flames.

Notes: This really is too much fun. No keeping track of plot. No trying to be eloquent. Just me spouting vitriol, and feeling so much better for it.

Thanks: For letting me play in your sandbox. I can't believe no bullies have come and kicked sand in my face. Yet… For those that've reviewed: You make me so happy! Although you're being far too kind; heehee, even I know this's crap. But much like drug use, as long as I'm gettin' my kicks, I ain't gonna stop.

Ad Nauseam
avalanche cleaning service to the rescue

"That's the last of it." Cait Sith pushed the squishy mound off the edge, letting it fall into the bright abyss. "Not fair, though, making me do all the clean up. Just because I'm a stuffed toy," the cat knuckled its eyes sadly, and gave a hiccupping sob, "doesn't mean I don't have feelings too, ya know."

"It's because you're a toy, and Reeve's sitting safe back in Midgar, that you get to do the dirty work." Sephiroth was cranky, for it was long past the time all good little murdering Generals should have been in bed, and while Sephiroth was preternaturally hunky, he still needed his beauty sleep; five years incased in materia hadn't been nearly enough.

His cavern was clean, if not pristine; with the help of Cid's mop, they'd managed to scrub away the worst of the choir tatters and spatterings. And while he relished the quiet, if he had it to do over again, he might have spared the group, if only to save himself the trouble of cleansing his domicile afterwards. But a brief glance at the three survivors, huddled together in the distance and occasionally meeping "vehementi", convinced him the bit of unrestrained mayhem had been worth the cost.

He was tempted to finish off the remaining singers -- but he was dreadfully tired, and besides, they'd run out of Mr. Clean, and he'd never been able to stand the stench of Pine-Sol -- not even the lemon variety, though personally he was rather fond of lemons.

"Yeah, Cait," Yuffie said, trying to scrape the gunk out from underneath her fingernails with a moist towelette she'd liberated from the Turtle's Paradise Inn -- or so the logo on the package accused. "It's icky enough, just the smell around here. I'd say you're the luckiest of us all. And that's what's not fair. Tell us: If a Cait Sith falls in battle, does Reeve make a noise?"

"Only if there's a Turk around to hear it," Vincent replied glumly, his gaze fixed in pained disbelief on the chartreuse feather duster clenched numbly in his claw. "Wish I were around to hear it. Even my coffin was better than -- whatever here is." He risked a quick look up, red eyes narrowed against the painful glare. "Doesn't it ever get dark?"

"It's Holy," Cloud said, beaming beatifically and twirling grandly, a perfectly angelic expression plastered across his face. "Holy is shining. Aerith's wish is --"

"No." Sephiroth hated interrupting his puppet, but he hated hearing his puppet soliloquize lovingly over the gone but unfortunately not even close to being forgotten flower girl more.

Cloud stilled, and lowered his arms. "No?"

"No. It's all dry ice, and halogen lamps." He rubbed at a sticky, suspicious spot sullying an otherwise snowy pinion. "There was supposed to be more, actually; background of some sort or another, but you know how it is. There were budgeting errors, and they were running short on time; cutbacks had to be made in favor of the grand finale… Do you think I win, by the way? Meteor crashes into the planet, I become one with the Lifestream, bow down before me, for I am your god; oh, I do so hope I'm victorious. You're all welcome to the hootenanny afterwards."

He'd been planning the party for years, and had been practicing making pigs-in-a-blanket for the past week, for while he was adept at a variety of menial tasks, his culinary skills had grown a tad rusty during his sojourn in the Crater. Jenova had promised to bring the relish trays, and he experienced a moment of panic when he realized that Mother was in no shape to produce them. But he was great, and he was thrifty, and with relief he decided that he'd just tell his puppet to make the deviled eggs and veggie trays.

It was pleasant having a minion. Even when said minion was frowning, and glancing from the hazy whiteness that was masquerading as a background, to him, then back to the hazy whiteness, and crossing his arms, and looking ready to settle in for a good, long sulk.

"You don't win, Seph. You're the bad guy. The bad guys never win. It says so in the Heroing for the Complete Klutz handbook." Cloud rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a sheet of tin-foil stars, a handful of pocket tissues, and his Sector 6 key -- everything but the chocolate bar he was looking for. "Umm, with the exception of the first Dragon Quest. You know, when the main baddie asks you to join him, and you say yes, and the whole screen goes red and dark and all the work you put into the last dungeon is gone…" He blinked winsomely at Nanaki, who was staring at him curiously. "What? Don't tell me you never tried it."

"…In case you haven't noticed, I don't have opposable thumbs," the big, red dog/cat mumbled. "It makes playing video games somewhat problematic."

"Besides," Tifa walked over, Windex bottle in hand, and helped Sephiroth preen his ruffled feathers, "none of this really matters now, does it? We've been paused for so long…" She swiped at the smudge with a damp paper towel. "After defeating you so many times -- don't tell me you're looking forward to the next battle."

"Why shouldn't I be?" He was happy that his wing was once again sparkly, and he could be magnanimous towards the barmaid for her help while he had every intention of smacking her flat in the near future for her unauthorized use of his puppet, but he absolutely refused to stand -- float -- whatever -- for her patronizing. "I've not yet begun to fight! Besides," he flapped his wing, pushing Tifa to the side, "how many dirty tricks could you possibly have left?"

Barret grimaced, and pulled the Disinfectant from their inventory; once the cap was off, he began spraying it about indiscriminately. "Well, we were thinkin' of turning ourselves into frogs, and then, just, you know, hopping you to death."

"Frogs." He couldn't wrap his brain around the concept. "…Frogs. You were going -- to yourselves -- then…" The idea was so horrific that the suckers lining his tentacles closed to tight buds. "You are aware that frogs only do 1 damage?"

"I can do 2," Cloud gloated, then coughed as the heavy cloud of scented mist descended. "It's not like we don't have the time; in a few months we'd have you worn down. But then Red suggested that maybe we should all just keep casting Chocobuckle."

Nanaki, sneezing uncontrollably, did his best to wipe at his watering eye, the tender membranes stinging from the harsh chemicals in the Disinfectant -- misleadingly labeled Ocean Breeze. "I don't see why it shouldn't work. We've run away so many times, it's become one of the most devastating magical attacks in our arsenal. And the amusement factor alone of seeing you repeatedly accosted by a giant chicken," he barked out another sneeze, and Cait Sith toddled over with the mop to clean up the resulting mess. "What? Oh, yes. As I was saying, it almost makes our constant cowardice bearable." He pawed at his muzzle, and snapped at Barret, "Do you mind?"

Barret shook the aerosol can, then tossed it over the edge, shrugging philosophically. "Don't matter. It's already empty." He sniffed the air, then snorted. "Still smells funky, though. And, see, I think you're all missin' something." He jabbed a finger at his teammates for emphasis. "As long as we keep fightin' the mutated bastard, Meteor ain't gonna fall, and the world stays safe."

Now, Sephiroth knew that his parents hadn't been married; not when he'd been born, and most certainly not when he'd been conceived in the shallow glass petri dish that Hojo had later had bronzed and mounted on the wall behind his desk along with his first set of baby shoes, and the skull of the first man he'd dismembered -- a lab assistant named Larry if the bronzed ID card was anything to go by. But bastard, especially the way the big, one-handed, mountain of a man was snarling it, seemed a bit derogatory, and it was on the tip of his tongue to protest -- with extreme prejudice and a few Pale Riders -- when the rest of the statement caught up with his meandering thoughts.

"What's this, Meteor isn't going to fall? Of course it is! See?" He held out his heavily scribbled upon Loveless calendar. "There it is, circled and underlined and everything. Meteor slams into Midgar, tens of thousands die, I become even more god-like than I already am -- if such a thing is even possible -- then, if the afternoon's free, I'm scheduled to defend my dissertation on the agrarian habits of semi-migratory cactuars." He closed the calendar tenderly, and returned it from whence it came; Hojo had always claimed it was a pocket in subspace, but the uncertainty made him a bit queasy whenever he put anything away. "I don't see what our battle has to do with it."

Cid had reclaimed his mop from Cait Sith, and was using it to practice deathblows against dust bunnies they'd missed during their cleaning spree. "Nah, he ain't dickin' with you. You summoned Meteor, and the Shinra muckity mucks predicted a few days before it hit. We wander around in the jungles near Mideel for weeks, and nothing happens. We enter Rocket Town, and the damn thing jumps closer, then stalls out once we leave." He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, then waved it around, the smoke blending with the already nauseating miasma of annihilated choir and Disinfectant. "As long as we're stuck in here with you, reliving the same frickin' battle over and over, damn thing ain't never coming down. Hell, I don't know why we bothered confronting you to begin with. Ain't like you can leave the Crater."

"Wasn't my idea." Cloud, braiding together the strands of hair he'd yanked from Sephiroth's head, was still occasionally glancing upwards, torn between being a properly gullible puppet, and his firm belief that Holy was just beyond arm's reach. "There's a reason I told you all to mosey. Seph…" He pulled out his earring, and tied it to the end of the silvery string he'd created. "Are you sure it's just lamps? What do you do when a bulb burns out?"

"I hover out over the abyss and change it." He waggled a wing as proof, then winced as Nanaki stealthily pounced and pulled out a feather. "Hey!" He tried dodging, but the dog/cat was quicker; Nanaki somersaulted backwards with a mouthful of feathers. "Quit it! I need those to fly, and replace burned out halogen light bulbs."

"I need them more," Red XIII said, spitting out feathers and grinning a fangy, good-humored grin. "My old feathers were getting bedraggled; these will make excellent new decorations for my mane. War trophies; Grandpa would be proud of me. I have upheld the honor of my family."

Sephiroth had his doubts; there wasn't anything particularly heroic about harassing an enemy that wasn't capable of properly fighting back -- damn the eternal pause, anyway -- and Bugenhagen, a crackpot so disturbed and fringe-elemental that not even Shinra had been willing to hire him, would have more likely been apathetic, at best, to his grandson's taste in haute couture, having lectured numerous times during his life that feathers belonged on avians, not vain denizens of Cosmo Canyon.

"So, what do we do now?" Yuffie whined, trying without success to bounce her lopsided, gnawed-upon Superball. "Anybody up for some Triple Triad?"

Cloud, leaning out over the edge, lowered his braided, grey string into the vast glowing nothingness below, and shook his head. "Nah. I thought I'd try catching us something for dinner, since the last of our Whatchamacallits are missing."

Whistling innocently and hiding the empty wrappers in clenched tentacles, Sephiroth floated over to his puppet's side, and stared down with him into the swirling depths. "What do you expect to catch? There's nothing down there but Lifestream, and the soul of the planet."

"WHAT?" From some distance away, Barret, who'd also snuck over to the edge, hastily stuffed himself back into his pants. "Oh man, oh man, I just pissed on the planet. Damn you, Sephiroth; if you're so all powerful, why the hell don't you have any toilets down here?" He held his arms out in front of him, and began wailing. "How will this dirty hand ever be able to hold Marlene again?"

Sephiroth, while great, and unquestionably strong in will and mind and body, found himself shuddering with each sob coming from Barret, lamenting the lack of a proper sink and anti-bacterial soap. He had to do something, anything, to get the big guy quiet and back into his happy place. And he had to do it quickly.

"Cloud! Make us some ham and swiss sandwiches!"

Cloud reeled in his jury-rigged fishing line, and gave him a look that promised heinous punishment when he was least expecting it, like serving him Oreo cookies without any milk next time he was getting ready to tuck his General into bed. "What was that?"

"Umm…" He was great, and he wasn't the least bit afraid of his puppet -- no, not at all -- but he was also wise, and knew when compromise was in order. "Cloud, wanna come help me make sandwiches?" And he would compromise, and would even bring out the honey-mustard, although he was drawing the line at using fine linen napkins. Unless his puppet decided to serve lunch on the good china.

Then, he wouldn't have much choice at all. Because cookies weren't any fun at all, without milk.