Well, here's chapter3! I tried to focus on Auron's discomfort and lack of knowledge with children, not that Jecht was father of the year. I hope its better than chapter 2 anyway. Happy reading!
Title: Random Bits 13- Chapter 3
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 - A Hotel- Wee hours of the morning.
Let's take a look at Zanarkand as the pre dawn light signals the inevitability of a new day. The still developing metropolis can easily draw one back 1000 years to its days of glory (if you ignore the crowd of hastily erected hotels, vending stalls, and souvenir shops designed to draw in tourists eager to see the place where a young Summoner and her Guardians changed history). While you observe the small city, note the man in the red coat sprinting from one of the hotels. He quickly heads towards the historical marker that has something written about some Summoner and her Guardians spending the night at this very spot before some critical battle, or something.
Ahh! The historical marker. They are ingeniously designed to attract adults, thus slowing the progress on long trips to somewhere fun. They are cunningly placed every couple of miles, directing attention down long dirt roads to 'The Place Where John Frickle Bit a Bear in 1803." These devices also include a huge plaque filled with writing that can't be read from the car window, so you have to stop and get out to see what they say. In short their main purposes are to hinder road trips and torture children with full bladders.
Auron easily jumped the velvet ropes designed to keep the tourists from disturbing the ground where heroic posteriors once camped, and headed for the small outcropping where no one terribly important had once stood. Reaching the top he drew a deep breath and shouted,
"I wish this had never happened!" he stood motionless for a moment, waiting expectantly, then shook a fist a the sky and growled,
"What did I ever do to you?!"
Auron spun on his heel and stumped back through the campsite while the echoes bounced around the city. He paused and rearranged some of the charred remains from the campfire before heading back towards the hotel. Hours later a priest from the New Zanarkand Temple would discover that the symbol of Utter Doom had appeared in the sacred campfire and spend the next three days locked in a chamber with six of his senior brethren, fervently performing the rites for Diverting Utter Doom.
Thoughts turned inward, Auron was totally unprepared for what lay in wait of him as he entered the room and shuffled into the kitchen. Surprise leapt from under the table and ran at him screaming and babbling, leaving Jecht wearing a frilly apron and waving a spatula in its wake.
"It didn't work I see." the man said, conversationally, flipping a pancake over.
"Take that off." Auron commanded calmly, "I don't ever want you to wear that in my presence again."
Jecht grinned in amusement and smoothed down the apron, then said,
"But Rikku said it looked gorgeous on me." He added a twirl and an upward kick of his heel to the amusement of the children. Auron experienced a shudder of revolt that came all the way from the Visceral Level.
"Lighten up! I'm just entertaining them." Jecht snorted, setting down a huge plate of pancakes. "You always took things too seriously. Even Braska said so."
Auron 'harumped' and decide against replying. Some words weren't fit for children's ears.
Leaning against the wall Auron watched the kids eat. It was an incredibly messy affair and he wondered how they survived seeing as how most of the time they completely missed their mouths. Lulu and Yuna both made attempts to eat like young ladies should, while Rikku used her fork to spear as many pieces as possible. Tidus, who was eating Chocob-O's spilled most of the milk down his chin and picked the pieces out of the bowl with his fingers.
"More Totob-O's!" he called, having managed to filter most of the cereal out of the milk. Auron turned his attention to Wakka, who's technique was to spear the entire pancake then slowly draw it in like a brush shredder.
Kimahri wasn't eating at all. He was sulking, arms crossed and tail twitching. He wanted meat.
The overall impression was of a plague of locusts descending on a field. Nothing was too small to eat and nothing was left behind. What one didn't eat someone else did. Wakka and Rikku even licked the last rivulets of syrup from their plates and Kimahri broke down and lapped up the milk from Tidus' bowl.
Auron was jolted from his musings when he hear Jecht say,
"You stay with Uncle Auron. I have to go to work."
"What! You can't leave! We need to figure out how to get them back to normal." Auron babbled, bobbing around after Jecht as the former Sin ushered the kids into the main room. "Nothing was decided because you were 'just too tired to think'. You'll just keep putting it off."
"Hey, you know my motto. Never do today what you can put off for tomorrow!"
Auron turned his burning gaze on him
"Fine. I'll get off early today. Alright? Just entertain them until I get back. Its easy!" he said hastily as Auron balked at the idea of being left alone with six toddlers.
"Have lunch ready for me when I get back darlin'!" Jecht snickered, then scrambled out the door. Auron snarled, hot on his heels and threw a cup (It was wooden, because this is Spira) at him.
"Dis too." Rikku pleaded, holding out a pink straw hat with wax cherries sewn on it. Auron looked at it and replied very firmly, "No." The little Al Bhed girl's face fell, visually telling him that her little heart would be broken if he didn't. He squirmed under the pressure.
"Please?" Yuna urged, coming to her cousin's aid.
"No?"
"Okay." Both girls replied in tiny voices, the quaver drawing Lulu's attention from where Tidus was helping her set her moogles and mogs around the coffee table. The older Guardian felt cold dread settle in his stomach as the little Mage offered him the hat next.
"No." Auron said without much conviction. The hat was withdrawn and Lulu gave him a hurt look. He looked at the three girls and their pleading eyes. They were ganging up on him. He was being wrapped around their little fingers and there was nothing he could do to stop it. All it had taken was one whimper and he had found himself attending their Tea Party. Now he needed the proper attire.
"Don't do it!" Wakka called desperately, from the depths of Fort Kitchentable where he and Kimahri were decked out in full battle armor. Most of it was too big and worn on the wrong body part and they rattled like dumpsters being thrown down a hill.
"The cookies aren't real!" he continued.
Auron looked back and forth between the reassuring safety of the Realm of Testosterone and the unexplored Kingdom of Estrogen.
"Pleeeaaase?" the three girls begged, tugging on his coat.
"Nnnnoooh alright."
"Yay!" the three X's exclaimed, as he kissed his 'Y'hood goodbye and put the hat on.
Utterly defeated and taken hostage by the enemy, Auron surveyed his captors. To his immediate right was Lulu's favorite doll. It was bleach white and had only a stitched on mouth to indicate the face. Oh yeah, and it was covered in pins of all sizes. It even had pins for eyes.
"That's Pinface." Tidus said from his left. He wasn't a prisoner, but had readily volunteered to play with the girls. He was even wearing one of Yuna's dresses, a white lacy bonnet, and gloves whose fingers dangled by three inches. Auron had already gotten a nice sphere shot of the youngster. Not because he was cute or anything. It was strictly for blackmail purposes.
"She lites her pins."
Auron smiled grimly and nibbled on a pretend cookie. It tasted awful, and was probably low-carb. He attempted to make polite conversation with Pinface, just to make Lulu happy, but the conversation was rather one-sided. And he had the feeling that Pinface didn't like him much. He looked at the clock, which read, as if to spite him, just eight-thirty aee em. Barely twenty five minutes after Jecht's departure.
That was only the beginning. After sipping imaginary tea, and listening to conversations about the imaginary cookies ruining their diets, the little X's and the rouge Y moved on to play Dwelling (Auron got to be the daddy). After that, all the kinderguardians decided to play Summoner and Fiends.
This was a surprisingly common game that most kids played. The problem was: Yuna was a real Summoner. She Summoned all her Aeons at once and Auron found himself surrounded by infant summons. It was a zoo. All of them could easily be described as cute, adorable, or precious in some way. Who can't say puppy bellies, big-eyed lizards, long-legged foals, and baby plants aren't cute? The only exception was Valefor, because baby birds are just down right ugly.
The Aeon had the typical bird head that was all bulging eyes and giant mouth. The bald head was perched precariously on a thin, equally bald neck like a match stick. Auron thought it was the ugliest darn thing he'd ever seen. Even Anima was cute compared to Valefor. The kids on the other hand loved it.
It was fun for the first thirty minutes or so, then Auron found out that baby unicorns poop just like adult unicorns, baby dragons can't fly, and that puppies wreathed in hellfire chase kittens (and can set the carpet on fire just by piddling on it). Luckily, the Aeons were dismissed before they could cause too much damage, and the kids decided to play a different game.
When the girls decided to play Princess Wedding, the middle aged Monk found himself suddenly bereft of the boys. Not even Tidus wanted to play that game, and had joined Kimahri and Wakka in playing Soldier.
The girls pulled out all their Rings, Bangles, ribbons, barrettes, clips and scrunchies, then giggling, fell upon the helpless Guardian. Lulu brought out her make-up (or War-paint, as Kimahri called it), and set to work. Auron found himself holding Lulu's doll and watching Yuna and Cait-Sith walk down the aisle (the hallway carpet laid down the middle of the living room).
Drowning in the sea of estrogen, Auron desperately sought dry land. Thinking quickly, he grabbed the first idea that drifted by.
"I've got an idea," the desperate Guardian said "Let's play a game." He turned to the doll beside him and said "You can play, too."
Jecht waved cheerfully to the lady behind the desk as he trotted through the lobby on the way to his room. He was late coming back, due to a brief stop for some ego boosting flirting, but was not at all concerned about what Auron might say, or do to him. Being dead kind of takes all the fear out of things like Consequences. And he didn't feel one bit guilty either. As he neared the door, he heard the screams of panic emanating from the other side of it.
He yanked the door open to find the room in chaos. Kids were running everywhere, screaming, and the room was littered with clothes and toys. There was no sign of his fellow Guardian.
"Uh…What's goin' on?" the frayed blitz ball star asked when there was a general break in the noise.
"Awin gone!" the girls howled in unison as Kimahri and Wakka attempted to comfort them.
"Gone!" Tidus quavered. "Awin! Awin!" he shouted running around the room in a panic before collapsing in a heap and crying.
"Come'on now," said Jecht, gathering up the distraught toddlers. "He can't be gone because his coat is still here." The man pointed to the familiar red garment that was hanging on the coat rack by the door. He looked a little closer and found that the rack had sprouted a pair of boots.
"I think you should look behind the coat rack again." he said encouragingly. As the toddlers pulled the coat away, it revealed a creature so unsetting it could only be described as 'amusingly appalling'. Jecht's immediate reaction was gut knotting laughter that sent him to his knees, where he enthusiastically pounded the floor.
The Legendary Guardian was dressed in several layers of clothing, all too small, and all of them dresses, or the parts of dresses that could be fit around him. There was even a tutu. Auron's hair was best described as beribboned, having more clips, bows, beads, and pins than an 80's glam rocker. His makeup was atrocious and obviously 'done' by Lulu. Mascara had started out around his eyes and went clear to his eyebrows where the pale purple eye shadow formed two mountain-like peaks on his forehead.
Auron's entire mouth was ringed in heavy purple lipstick and because no blush could be found, the girls had drawn two lopsided and badly positioned circles in the approximate area of his cheeks with bright red lipstick. The overall appearance was of a melting emo-transvestite.
"So," Jecht chuckled casually, when he could breathe again, "They made you play Princess."
The unholy mating of man and princess accessories drew himself up, and with dignity replied, "No we played Wedding. And I was a queen, not a princess."
"Well, if your Majesty doesn't mind too much, it's about time your subjects had lunch and a nap." Jecht teased with a mocking bow. "After you, Your Highness."
Auron regarded Jecht silently for a moment, then shrugged and with a queenly air, bade the girls to follow him. "Come, my princesses," he said in lofty tones while waving a hand in a fair imitation of royalty. "Let us retire to the kitchen, away from all these stinky men."
"Stinky men." Lulu repeated. Auron straightened his 'dress' and swept into the kitchen, the little princesses following in his wake and trying to imitate his girly walk.
Hey! Who wants pancakes? Sure Jecht is cooking, but they can't be any worse than Whatever Stew. On your way out you can adopt any one of our adorable baby Aeons for as little as 50gil!