So, here's chapter 2. The inspiration for this one came from the kids I work with, even the speech impedement. One of their favorite games was 'Nail Jesus to the Cross'. No joke! I don't know where this one is going, but I hope it doesn't disappoint. I was well into chapter 3 before I realized that Jecht's personality was off. I hope its not too bad, but now I have to completely change chapter 3(coming soon!)
sad Nashiil
Title: Random Bits 13- Chapter 2
Setting: A serious case of boredom leaves Tidus and his companions longing for a change of scenery. Zanarkand is now a popular tourist attraction, and seems like a good place to get into some long overdue adventures.
Zanarkand Ruins - Chamber of the Fayth- One Unsent Guardian and one former Sin have just entered the room at a run, and have come to a sudden dead stop due to the six toddlers that have attached themselves to their legs.
"Aren't they just adorable?!" Jecht exclaimed, while twisting with delight.
"I swear, Jecht," Auron snarled, fuming like a burning landfill, "Every time you open your mouth, you cause trouble!" His one eye burned with enough anger to cause a few dust motes unlucky enough cross in front of him to burst into flame.
"Awww, it's not so bad." the unkempt man replied happily, "Whooose a goo' boy? Come to Daddy!" This he said to Tidus (approximately age 3, slightly pudgy, and a little pigeon-toed) as he hoisted him onto the air.
Kimahri, seeing Tidus being held, decided that he wanted to be picked up too. Auron barely kept himself from wildly kicking his leg as the little Ronso started climbing. An intense desire to keep certain extremities intact caused his brain to send desperate signals to his hands. Despite being in extreme 'man pain'(Lit. pain only a man can experience) ,one of Auron's hands moved from the guarding position and quickly plucked Kimahri's tiny claws out of his thigh. Kimahri was then held at arm's length, just to be safe.
"No." he said sternly, wondering how one communicated with children. The extent of his experience stretched only as far as "That's nice. Where's your mum? Here's a cookie, go away." The best he could come up with was "Bad. Bad kitty."
Jecht had missed the entire episode. He had been too busy playing with his little Spawn. Some friend you are. Auron thought acidly. "So, now what do we do?" he asked, mentally gagging as Jecht cooed to Tidus. "Dat's a goo' boy. Whooose Daddy's widdle man?" He shrugged at Auron's question and suddenly turned and held Tidus out to him.
"Don't know. Mind watching him for a while? I gotta go back to work!"
"Oh no you don't!" Auron snapped, putting his hands behind his back. "You're not leaving me here with all these little…ones." he waved a hand at the toddlers milling around the room.
"It's just for a little while." Jecht said with irritating cheer.
Auron turned a piercing glare on him and said " ---- no."
" ---- no!" chorused six little voices.
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as Jecht and Auron regarded each other over the tops of the kinderguardians' heads. "My bad." Auron said.
"I guess I could leave early today." Braska's Final Summon sighed grudgingly, "Yevon's supposed to be coming in in five. He can work the rest of my shift."
"Huwy Awin!" Rikku squealed urgently as Auron ripped down one of the many flagged lengths of twine that decoratively criss-crossed the Corridor, while Jecht played look-out. He ignored the urgently beckoning hands as he roped the toddlers together and avoided the horrified expressions from other tourists.
"Okay, good job. The wall will stay up by itself now." he grunted, tugging the children away from the wall. It took nearly fifteen minutes to make it through the Corridor. It wasn't because of the countless tourists, but because the kids got distracted by everything. Most of the time Jecht had to stop because one or all of them would stop and stare at something or try to walk off in what ever direction their eyes happened to be facing. This was usually ninety degrees to the direction their bodies were walking in. They also walked slow. Their little legs just couldn't match an adult's ground eating stride. Several times, Jecht noticed the dirty looks he was getting and looked down the line to see that he had been dragging the kiddies along. Even though Auron tried walking at the end of the line, there was no getting them to move any faster.
Auron did his best to prod his charges along, but it was difficult. Wakka kept stopping to pick up half-eaten tourist fare(hot dogs, popped grains, corn dogs, and funnel cakes). He seemed oblivious to the soil crust and happily chewed away, even offering to share with the rest of his friends.
The Warrior Monk faced an agonizing moment of trying to wrestle a discarded hot dog away from the pudgy Guardian, who judging by the two fat wrinkles on each wrist, knee, and ankle, could have done without the snack. He ended up lifting the toddler into the air and turning him upside down, then shaking him while yelling "Spit it out! Spit it out!" It was the worst display of CPR ignorance ever. It drew a concerned crowd of mostly women. The few men that showed up were just there for the show.
Jecht hit the end of his rope and turned to see what was impeding his forward motion this time. He saw Auron and wiped a hand down his face in mortified frustration. "Quit playing around!" he snapped and tugged on the rope. "Geeze! What's wrong with you? You can't just hang him upside down. Don't you know anything about kids?"
"Obviously more than you, seeing as how your own son hates you."
"You'll have to excuse him," said the former Sin, addressing the crowd. "He's never had kids before, so its all a little new to him." This simple, ill-phrased statement earned the two men a multitude of strange stares.
"You shouldn't leave your children in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to care for them properly." an old woman chided.
"My children?" Jecht stammered as the crowd's gaze fell on Kimahri. "They …"
Auron grinned maniacally into his collar and blurted, "… all have different mothers."
"What?! Shut up, man!"
"He doesn't believe in monogamy and holds no prejudice when it comes to race…or species." Auron continued, as the crowd exchanged covert glances and intense whispers. Jecht gave Auron a baleful scowl.
"As his partner, you should share in the responsibility." the old woman admonished sternly.
Both men experienced momentary full system neural shutdown, Jecht laughing heartily until the full meaning of the statement hit him. They stood staring at the decrepit woman, completely blown away and lost in the Ocean of Public Humiliation. They were saved by an Angel of Mercy in the form of Yuna. The little girl tugged on Jecht's arm and quietly mumbled that she was hungry.
"Oh, well lets get you all something to eat!" Auron shouted in embarrassed relief, quickly shoving Jecht along in front of him, the children orbiting them like ravenous mosquitoes.
As soon as the children were all safely eating picnic-style off to one side of the food booths in the Dome (which was now pulling duty as a souvenir/food vendor/historical theater building), Auron motioned Jecht around a corner where, the ex-warrior monk throttled him.
It was wonderful stress relief, until Yuna and Lulu, having finished their corn dogs, wandered around the corner. "Awin, why are you hurting Uncle Jecht?" Yuna quavered, her big eyes filling with tears.
Awin…I mean, Auron, quickly let go of Jecht's neck and put a companionable arm around his shoulders. "Don't cry, " he said hastily "I'm not hurting Uncle Jecht. I'm just hugging him." The Legendary Guardian smiled hugely and roughly slapped the Final Summon on the back. "Right, Uncle Jecht?"
"Uh, yeah, that's right darlin'. He's just hugging me because we're buddies. See?" Jecht agreed quickly, patting Yuna on the head. "You want another corn dog? Here, give this gil to the nice man over there." he said producing some gil from a tattered pocket. "Here's some for you too." he said dropping some coins into Lulu's small hand. The tiny Mage gave both of them a calculating look that was far to intelligent for a child, then followed Yuna to the food booth.
"I don't like that one," Jecht whispered to Auron "She's too smart for her own good." Across the path, Lulu turned her large ruby eyes on Jecht and gave him a penetrating glare. Jecht looked at Auron and said "That's just creepy."
"If you think it's creepy now, just wait until she does that as an adult." Auron said in a foreboding tone.
After all the children were full and happy, it was time to find a place to spend the night. Hotels had spontaneously generated practically overnight. Where ever there were masses of people, there were hotels. There were scores of them lining the road to Zanarkand, all of them impressive looking, some of them expensive, and all of them had some kind of sign or slogan outside the door. Some read "Complimentary Breakfast!", "Special Rates!" , "Clean Bathrooms!"(which is quite an accomplishment when most Inns only had one bathroom), and all of them claimed to be "The Cheapest Place Around!" Auron used his Legendary status to secure what was basically a luxury apartment. Of course he did have to pay a 500gil pet deposit since the owner could not be convinced that Kimahri was a Ronso, not a kitty.
There was an hour wait while the staff rushed to get the rooms ready. Fortunately, the hour was an…entertaining one. The happy family was waiting in the yard in front of the hotel, when Auron and Jecht discovered that Tidus was incapable of pronouncing 'c' and 'k' sounds. This unfortunate impediment was brought to their attention when, upon spying a box of free kittens, Tidus pointed and screamed happily "Titties!", then bolted across the street before Jecht or Auron could stop him.
As if the situation wasn't bad enough, the gods of Fate had decided to have a good laugh and threw a crowd of women into the joke. Tidus, happily chanting "Titties, titties, titties!", pushed his way through the crowd of females that were cooing over the kittens.
He turned to the nearest woman while happily beaming and said "Titties! Lookit, titties!" Stunned, the women smiled wanly. Thoughts of "Poor child. He must have terrible parents." and "What kind of person says things like that in front of their child?" hung in the air.
Jecht looked helplessly at Auron. "What?" the older man replied. " Don't look at me. He's your little Boo-Boo." then, when Jecht continued to stand there, shuffling his feet, Auron prompted with a smirk "Well, go get him."
Grinning nervously, Jecht plucked up his courage and swaggered off to retrieve his child. He was already planning how the conversation would go (ending with him getting lots of attention for his adorable son, and maybe get some flirting done), when Tidus saw him coming and squealed, while pointing "Daddy, titties! I want one."
The women glared at Jecht accusingly as the embarrassed man scooped up the toddler while muttering excuses. He laughed uncomfortably as Tidus continued to point to the kitties and demand that Jecht get him one. The women muttered darkly among themselves. Jecht heard "Disgraceful!", "Horrible!", and "Some one should call CPS!" whispered several times as he made his escape.
Bedtime holds its own special kind of horror when you add children. Most adults can come home after a long day of fighting bloodthirsty fiends, working their fingers to the bone, or bowing and scraping in the face of royalty and go through their nightly routine. This means kicking off their shoes, tossing their pants (or skirt. Lets not discriminate) on the floor, eat a bag of chips, and go fall asleep watching t.v.
Add kids to the equation and it's a whole other solution to which there is no solution (eeww. Bad chemistry joke). Not only are junk food dinners out of the question, but now the adult has to deal with three possible bedtime scenarios; 1) child goes to be with little to no fuss, 2) child goes to bed only when he/she passes out from exhaustion, and 3) child doesn't sleep…period. Then there's all the post bedtime annoyances like child not staying in bed, late night glasses of water, one more bedtime story, wet sheets (a direct result of the glass of water), and multiple 'fiend checks'.
After all that the kid finally goes to sleep and the parent gets a decent night's sleep right? Wrong! Because children don't stay asleep. Vacuum cleaners, loud conversations, and the t.v. may put them to sleep, but whispers, noises audible only to dogs, and sometimes just your presence will wake them up. Many a parent has peeked into the room to check on Jr. and found this to be true. And to a tired adult few sights in the universe hold as much dread as seeing that little head rise off the pillow. Then to top it all off, they choose to get up at the crack of dawn.
Jecht and Auron experienced all these phenomena in one night. They also made the important, yet disappointing discovery that children are immune to Sleep. That didn't stop them from trying though. Thus the night passed…
Have a cookie. They're low-carb and Pinface's favorite. Go ahead, try one. No? Come on. You don't want to hurt her feelings do you?