Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This collection is mine, as is McCallister. Enjoy!
..:-X-:..
158 – Enforcer
For raiko. EXE
"We aren't getting any younger!" Yuffie jeered.
"Just come on out." Aerith giggled.
"Okay." Tifa teased, and bounced out from behind the curtain. "TADA!"
After spending the better part of her first year back in Radiant Garden only wearing black, Tifa took a moment to enjoy the two women's startled looks at the new colors. It was a simple white cut off tank top, nothing really special there, except more stomach showing than she was used to.
The skirt, however, was very, very short, and very, very red. A thick banded black belt ran around the top, accentuating the curves of her hips. The gloves that matched the crimson hue were elbow length but fingerless, with several buckles and clasps winding around the forearms. The white tank top was, for all intents and purposes, backless. The two shoulder straps thinned and criss crossed over her shoulder blades, leaving her spine virtually bare. A single red strap, like one suspender, crossed from one hip, over the opposite shoulder, and back to the hip.
"Turn, turn, let's see it all!" Aerith made a twirly gesture with her hand.
Tifa smiled, giddy as she swiveled around, feeling like a model doing a fashion show. It had been years since she'd done this, or anything else close to a girls' day.
Yuffie and Aerith took their time ooh-ing and ah-ing at the outfit.
"Doesn't leave much to the imagination." Aerith tapped her chin with a smirk.
"You look like you're channeling your inner hooker…in a totally good way." Yuffie made a camera frame with her fingers and acted like she was taking pictures.
Tifa laughed and struck an exaggerated pose, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
"Work it!" Yuffie moved around like a member of the paparazzi.
"So what prompted this?" Aerith chuckled at their antics.
"Oh…you know," Tifa shrugged, looking at her reflection in the full body mirror. It was slightly tinted from age, but then again, Yuffie had found it in Merlin's attic, so she wasn't too surprised…She was more surprised that he owned a full body mirror. "A girl needs new clothes."
"You plan on being barefoot when you wear this?" Yuffie gestured to her feet, where Tifa had removed her old boots when she changed.
Tifa scoffed, hands on her hips, "Of course not." She said in mock offense. "I'll be wearing—" She reached back into the changing room with a flourish, pulling out the crimson boots. "—these!"
Aerith practically squeaked at the shoes. "They're cute!"
"Cute? Them be sexy!" Yuffie clapped her hands, "Instant nosebleed to any poor dude that runs into you!"
Any poor dude turned out to be Leon, as he happened to be walking through the back area of Merlin's house at that moment.
"Hey!" Yuffie leaned back, barking. "Leon, check out Tifa's new outfit!"
Leon looked over, probably more out of Yuffie yelling at him than because of what she actually said. Tifa smirked and struck her pose again.
"It's nice." He remarked, not slowing his stride as he walked.
Tifa felt herself deflate a little at the vague comment, but what did she expect? It was Leon, after all. Sure, after recent events, she had maybe been hoping for something a little more than 'nice'...like 'sexy' or 'hot damn' or 'c'mere so I can tear it off of you'…wait, what?
Her mental tangent was interrupted as Leon abruptly walked right into the table in the middle of the room. With an awkward stagger and spastic recovery, he paused, cleared his throat, and gave a little half glance back over at them, as if to see if they'd noticed. The three women just looked at him flatly. Tifa realized she was still in her pose.
"You look like a prostitute." He responded, but the corner of his mouth quirked.
Aerith didn't catch his tone and scoffed. Yuffie just snorted.
Tifa straightened, cocking one hip out. "You're a jerk." She smirked.
Leon eyed her brazenly and then tossed her a bag of munny. "That's no way to talk to a paying customer."
Tifa caught the munny and looked at it, "This'll get you an hour and a half."
He checked his watch, "My patrol is in two hours."
She tapped her chin, picked up her boots, and followed him out the door, leaving Yuffie and Aerith with high eyebrows and bewildered expressions.
..:-X-:..
159 - Tears in the Rain
For justagirl8225
Leon had been standing outside for…he couldn't even remember how long…but it was raining now. Hard enough to make the large stain of blood on his shirt front run. McCallister's blood.
It was a routine security mission, and he would have preferred to go alone. Fortunately or unfortunately, the Alliance required teams of at least two to run missions out in the old Radiant Garden castle ruins. The isolation and the danger were just too great for one person to deal with. Private McCallister had been the first person he happened onto en route, so she tagged along.
The Heartless had attacked, and when his attention was on one group, a second group had launched a blast at his chest hard enough that it would have, should have, killed him. Instead, out of instinct or some foolish drive, McCallister had blocked it.
Unfortunately, the time it took to block hadn't allowed for her to defend against it. The central point of the blast had nailed her in the side, slamming her into the ground, where she hadn't moved. His ether levels had been too low to heal her in the field, so Leon had been forced to carry the bleeding soldier all the way across the Great Maw and back to Merlin's.
Now they were inside fighting to save her: the idiot who'd tried to save him. Well…she'd successfully saved him, but…she knew her limitations. She had been fully aware what her actions to protect him would cost her…and yet she'd acted anyway.
"Dammit, McCallister." He hissed, leaning against the outside wall of Merlin's.
He was useless inside the house. He was still too drained from the battle to use any healing magic, and she was unconscious, so he couldn't talk to her…So he was choosing to just stand outside, out of the way, to deal with what had happened.
"Getting pneumonia won't help." Tifa's voice was quiet.
He didn't move, didn't look over at her as she stepped out of Merlin's house, closing the door after herself. This meant one of two things. Either the news was good and Tifa had come to tell him before the others, or the news was bad and only Tifa had the stomach to tell him.
She wordlessly walked over and stood against the wall beside him. Her eyes flitted to the blood on his clothes, but he offered no explanation. Didn't need to. He felt nauseas at the thought.
"She's alive."
Two words: two punches to the gut. Leon exhaled sharply at the release of the tension.
"She's a moron." He murmured.
Aerith would have scolded him. Yuffie would have smacked him. Cid would have sworn at him. Tifa just sighed and half turned to look across the square.
"She's awake." She offered.
Leon lifted a hand to his face. He couldn't look at McCallister like this. She had—Shame crept up on him, hard and fast. He was her superior officer; he was supposed to save her ass, not the other way around. If he had been paying attention, she wouldn't have—
"What the Hell was she thinking?" He hissed.
"She wasn't." Tifa remarked. "She just acted. Instinct. Loyalty. Training. She did exactly what you trained her to do."
"I never trained her to get herself killed."
"You trained her to protect those around her." Tifa looked at him, "That includes you, dumbass." She said softly.
He folded his arms and stared at the distance. "I trust her with my life; I just never expected that the time would come to prove that."
Tifa sniffed and wiped her eyes. "Well, it did and I think she deserves a word from her superior officer."
He sighed, looked at her, at the house, and back to her. "Why are you crying?"
"Because you won't." The tears blended silently in with the rain running over her face. "Because your best soldier just nearly killed herself to save you and you're sitting out here, covered in her blood, scolding her for it. She probably thinks—"
He inhaled slowly, "She knows."
"Tell her anyway." Tifa sniffed, "Thank her, stupid." She hooked one arm through his elbow, "Or at the very least, come inside and clean up. Getting sick is a piss poor way to pay somebody back…and you OWE her."
She was right. He knew it and he hated it. Steeling himself, Leon went back into Merlin's house, to face the woman who'd nearly been split in half to do what? To save him.
God only knew why.
..:-X-:..
160 - Quicksand
For Atramentous Love
One second, Yuffie was triumphantly skipping across the earthy lot, beaming with pride for having felled the entire pack of Heartless on her own…and the next second, she was disappearing with a yelp in the liquidy muck.
Tifa hadn't believed it at first, but the ground had definitely just swallowed the impulsive ninja. Quicksand…in Radiant Garden.
"Hold this." Leon snapped, handing her the end of a line of rope.
Tifa took the end and started winding it around her arm. "Since when is there quicksand here?"
"I don't know—Got it?" He said, having tied the other end of the rope around his waist, cinching it as tightly as possible.
"Yeah, what're—" She barely got out before Leon took three steps and jumped into the sloshy pit after Yuffie.
He disappeared just like he'd been swallowed, just like Yuffie. The rope slapped into the slush with him and Tifa held onto it, suddenly well aware that both of their lives were on the other end of this rope.
"Come on." She hissed.
The surface of it began to slow and calm…looking almost solid again.
Time may fly when you're having fun, but it's a bitch when you're waiting for something important…like two people to emerge breathing from a quicksand pit.
The rope rugged against her hands and Tifa braced her legs. It suddenly went taut and she nearly hit her knees from the surprising force of it. Gritting her teeth, she leaned back against the weight of it, giving Leon something to pull on.
For what felt like minutes, nothing happened. Then, like a herniating balloon, the surface of the pit distended and two heads morphed into semblance. One was coughing and sputtering and clinging onto the other one, who was grappling with the slick rope.
Tifa grunted as she forcefully took a step back, the fibers of the rope burning her palms. Yuffie held onto Leon, gasping for breath as he pulled them both toward the edge of the pit. Tifa restrained the urge to run to the edge and pull them to safety herself. She was the anchor; she had to keep a hold of this rope instead. Something abruptly pulled on the other end of the rope and she looked back in surprise to see Cid. He had come up behind her and grabbed the rope, adding his two cents to the 'anchor'.
"Go, I got this end." He ordered gruffly.
Tifa didn't need telling twice. She left the rope in his capable hands and darted to the edge of the quicksand pit, which the two marsh monsters had almost reached. She dropped to her knees and reached out, taking a hold of Yuffie as she was within reach. Yuffie reciprocated the grip with slick hands, and Tifa squeezed until her fingers were together around the girl's wrists, giving her enough grip to physically drag the smaller woman off of Leon's back, out of the pit, over the edge, and sprawling onto the solid concrete.
"Wh-what the H-Hell was th-that?" Yuffie was sputtering, coughing up and spitting out the mess that had gotten into her mouth.
Tifa knelt beside her and used her thumbs to try and clear the stuff from the girl's eyes, wiping as much as she could away from her face and mouth. "Quicksand." She replied.
Cid worked his way closer to the edge, using the rope to half pull, half drag Leon out of the pit, where he rolled onto his back and simply lay there, chest heaving. Cid grabbed his knees as he bent over, wiping away the sweat from his forehead, and then laughing, smacking Leon on the shoulder when the younger man sat up.
"Hot damn, you kids are nuts." He guffawed.
"I didn't KNOW there was quicksand here!" Yuffie sputtered, "I don't have a death wish!"
Seeing the girl relatively all right aside from half drowned in the muck, Tifa shifted over to Leon, who was completely indistinct from Yuffie aside from his sheer build. She laughed as he was clawing to get the stuff out of his ears. She reached over and cleared his eyes the same way she had with Yuffie.
"Are you even under there?" She chuckled.
He coughed, taking the towel that Cid offered. He attacked his ears with it. "Funny."
"Next time you pull something like that," She remarked, "Warn me beyond 'hold this'."
"Fine." He grunted
"You know, if your face wasn't covered in this crap, I'd be compelled to kiss you for that stunt." She smirked, "It was really—"
Leon promptly began to scrub the towel at his face.
..:-X-:..
A/N 158: Tifa's outfit is her Enforcer from Dissidia.
A/N 159: You have no idea how much I wanted to make Leon cry…but it just didn't work. Stupid emotional blockage….I love him.
A/N 160: I got this prompt right after I watched Blazing Saddles, and it gave me a giggle fit. "What is it…that ain't exactly water…and it ain't exactly earth?...QUICKSAAAAAND!" Haha.
Yay for flirty prompts! Let me know if I need to amp up the spice more. I don't want their banter to stagnate. The ball toward couple-dom is rolling now. The torpedo in the water…and other colorful metaphors.
Lovely prompts as always!