Confuse

I probably had a lot of habits that annoyed Cloud and Vinnie. Not Reno; Reno thought everything was funny. One of these habits was the odd, and to me understandable, fascination I had with death. Besides the infamous how do you think you would have died conversation I was liable to bring up at odd times, I liked to discuss different ways of death. I once held firmly to the belief that it was best to die of laughter for years, despite all of Reno's attempts to convince me that it wasn't possible. I still think it is.

Another was the odd attachments I formed to particular material objects. Not often but I did. I had a medicine pouch from Aeris, a little leather bag with a polished river stone inside of it, that I wore on and off for years. I had a hand-woven bracelet Cloud bought me in the days of AVALANCHE that I wore all the time; I tied it on and wore it until it literally rotted off my wrist. Then I was upset beyond reason until Cloud left for a few weeks and came back with a new one. I was quite unreasonably attached to that bracelet; possibly because he had bought one for Aeris and one for Tifa as well. Tifa had, somehow and to my amazement, managed to lose hers; Aeris wasn't wearing hers in the City of the Ancients, so I assume she lost it as well. I was the only one who still wore mine.

I also had a habit of bringing home stray animals. Wolf cubs, coyote pups, baby chocobos, baby birds, and the one that, surprisingly, caused the most uproar, cats.

You wouldn't think cats would be a problem. Hell, I sure didn't think so or I wouldn't have started feeding the strays, or let them start coming in the cave during bad weather. That wasn't the problem. The problem really wasn't anything I or any of the guys could have predicted.

The problem was the catnip.

Now you'd think that after the first few hundred years of living together , Vincent would have mentioned some things, like the fact that it's possible to take on attributes of one's alternate forms, but no. No, he was still touchy about the occasional battlerage and bloodlust. Hello, Vinnie. Ninja, remember? Battlerage and bloodlust are not new. No, he couldn't take five minutes to warn me that maybe, maybe, catnip was a Bad Idea.

Panthers are cats.

So, technically, are Nanaki's kind.

So, yeah, I have some nice gaps in my memory while we had a cat. Unfortunately for me Reno has filled these gaps in with videotapes. Admittedly funny video tapes, but you know what? It would be so much funnier if it weren't me.

We're going to see Nanaki and his daughters soon.

I'm pretty sure Reno's smuggling catnip along.

GuardianSaiyoko: The story behind the bracelets is that Lev once brought three bracelets with three different color schemes back from Mexico for me and my two friends. He let each of us pick one and we discovered that we each picked the color scheme that would fit only the girl who had picked it and none of the others. Each of the others immediately lost their bracelet, while I've been wearing mine for four years (it does not come off.) This means that not only did Lev predict the exact sizes, but also who would pick each color. In this story, and to some extent in Paschendale, I tend to think of Cloud as Lev. (Tifa is actually one of those two girls. Yeah, we've had a soap-opera-y relationship thing going.)

Maybe you find that interesting, maybe not. There's a few more chapters of this story, and then a quasi-sequel, AU unless you realize the connection, called Dark Embrace. However, I may continue to post chapter on this occasionally even after the Epilogue is up. I'd kind of like some feedback on that idea, though.

sayonara,

Saiyoko