"Discord"
By Skandranon
Summary – Irvine has some peculiar habits.
I'm not really sure why, but Irvine was blue.
He was strolling through the halls of Garden, as nonchalant as ever, whistling a jaunty tune. His gun was in its usual position, slung across one shoulder, polished until it gleamed. His hair in its usual place, groomed and preened to the point of near death, bangs curving about and the rest tucked neatly in a thick ponytail. The smug smile never left his lips as he tipped his hat to the girls he passed.
But aside from a thick coat of blue body paint, his hat was the only thing he was wearing.
This almost topped the chicken suit incident. Or the day he spent screaming about rabbits. Or the day he decided to speak backwards. Selphie loved it, and called me "Lauks" for weeks.
He's a perfectly sane person… most of the time. Any day other than these random days of nonsense, he's perfectly reasonable. Intelligent, generous, sociable, not easily provoked. Maybe a bit of a pervert, but that's to be expected of a Galbadian.
But every once in a while he goes completely nutters for the day and declares war against pancakes, or renames himself Lord Emperor of Dental Floss, or drives a pink girl's tricycle through the halls howling like a banshee.
Today, it was blue body paint and nothing else.
He noticed me and waved, and wandered over to the bench I occupied. I spent the short time before he arrived deciding whether I should mention it. On one hand, blue body paint. No clothing. Probably against the dress code. On the other hand, he could never be reasoned with on these days.
He sat down next to me in his usual slouched manner, which in this case exposed him for all the world to see. He was drawing a crowd and it was only 6 am. I had to say something.
"Why the blue paint?"
"Pink's not really my color."
I nodded, and turned back to my book. After awhile Irvine wandered off to get food, crowd trailing behind, a few with cameras. Later on Quistis caught on to him and gave him an earful. He listened penitently, then told her his green paint was in the wash. She gave up, slapped him with a detention, and stalked off.
And thus ended the day of the blue Irvine.
Two weeks later was the day of the tutu.
A week after that was the day of Anatadaephobia. Fear of ducks. He even bought a flock of ducks and had them shipped to Garden so he could be afraid of them.
Zell said he did it for attention. Selphie said it was because he normally was so self controlled, he needed these brief moments of craziness. Cid said it was an outlet for his troubled past. Ellone said it was a way to alter his perspective of the world, and that by acting like this, he broke the "normal" rules and allowed himself to think beyond them. Quistis said he did it to bug her. Kadowaki said he was possessed. I think she was joking.
But on the day of the peeps, it occurred to me that we had never actually asked him why he did it. We asked him "Why the snorkel equipment? Why the bedroom furniture on the Quad? Why the ending of every sentence with 'in accordance with the prophecy'?" And he always shrugged off our questions in his roundabout way, without actually providing any information.
A few weeks later, on the day of nursery rhyme karaoke in the Cafeteria, I caught him between songs and asked. "Why do you do this?"
"I'd already paid the deposit on the equipment."
"No. This. Why do this?"
"I don't know all the lyrics to 'Wanna Fuck You Like an Animal."
"No. Not just that. All of it."
"I don't think my voice is loud enough to do without the mike, Squall."
"No, I meant why do you act this way?"
He peered at me intently, and for a moment there I thought I might get a straight answer.
"Well, I could throw in some stripping, but-"
Maybe not. "These days where you act bizarrely. Why do you do them?"
He smiled, shook his head, and launched into Three Blind Mice.
I started asking him every day of nonsense. He never really gave me an answer, even a roundabout one. He'd smile, shake his head, and go back to ice sculpturing. He'd pat me on the shoulder and dive back into the red-dyed swimming pool. Or once he even flicked my nose before returning to his duel with the inflatable horse.
Three days after the kama sutra hedges, I banged on the door to his room, determined to get even a halfway answer. Maybe if I asked on a non-crazy day, I could-
He opened the door and shoved a piece of paper into my hands. Then he shut the door and I heard the lock click.
I stood there for a while, flimsy scrap of notebook paper in my hands, not sure if I wanted to read it. If there was actually a logical answer for something like this… what else didn't I know about the universe? Finally, I unscrolled the little scrap and puzzled through the spastic handwriting.
"-this belief system that states that chaos is just important as order, dark as important as light, stupidity as important as intelligence. Without one the other is unbalanced and can become overused to the extreme, causing personality flaws. An example is the know-it-all who becomes so assured in their wisdom that they refuse to even consider that they might be wrong, or the do-gooder who, in their strive for purity, becomes unable to see the grey areas between the two absolutes. In this belief system, Humor is believed to be the highest virtue a person can achieve, and in fact is vital for moral and spiritual growth. It's terribly important to be able to laugh at all things, including and especially yourself and those ideals you hold dear. It's all well and good to be a learned, wise, moral person who understands both yourself and the world around you, and is in harmony with all things. But ever now and then, to be a fully well developed person, you just have to run naked through the mall screaming about fishsticks."
Author's Note – Based on an actual belief system. I leave you with this word of wisdom - fizzle.