Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This collection is mine, as McCallister, Duke, and the other recruits. Enjoy!
..:-X-:..
188 – Salt Rimmed Glass
For raiko. EXE
Coughing and choking in the living room made Tifa smirk to herself as she carried the rest of the snacks into the den area. Aerith and Yuffie were sifting through Yuffie's movie collection. Well, Yuffie was sifting. Aerith was choking.
"A little strong?" Tifa teased, plopping into one of the recliners and propping her feet on the coffee table.
"A—lit-tle?" Aerith wheezed between attacks.
"I told you I make a mean martini." Tifa said, taking a drink from her beer bottle.
"I think this alone just destroyed my liver." Aerith said, setting the salt rimmed glass on the coffee table. "What's in this?"
Tifa sat up. "Vodka, strawberry, rum, and this mystery bottle of Leon's that I found in the fridge with a pirate hat drawn on it."
Aerith's eyes widened and Yuffie snorted. "Don't get excited. That's the Thank You rum from the Turners at Port Royale. Leon was a jerk and wouldn't let me try any."
"Unlike some people," Aerith said, rubbing her throat, "I actually like to be able to remember girls' nights."
"But it'd be hilarious if you drunk dialed Cloud." Yuffie snorted. "So—" She held up two movies, "Zombie apocalypse or alien invasion?"
"How about neither?" Aerith sifted through the pile of movies. "Oh, here's Life of a Rose…So romantic…or Eyes of Desire…"
Yuffie made a gagging noise, "Yeah, let's highlight how single I am by watching sappy movies." She remarked sarcastically.
"We don't have to watch movies." Tifa shrugged.
It had been a while since she'd had a girls' night, and despite her best efforts, the apartment was a mess for it.
"We could do facials, mani-pedis, or just talk. I live with the Silent Wonder, I could use some girly conversation." She said, nodding toward Leon's empty room.
Yuffie followed the nod. "Okay. Why do you two have separate bedrooms?"
"I changed my mind. Zombie movie." Tifa looked to the movie pile.
"I mean, will it be that way when you move into the house?" Yuffie continued.
"Rose Life—or whatever?" Tifa looked to Aerith, but the flowergirl had latched onto the shift in conversation.
"How is that whole situation going?" Aerith asked mischievously.
"Why do you two always give me these little grins whenever this conversation comes up? It's creepy." Tifa shifted away.
"Why are you evading?" Yuffie pressed.
"Yeah, this qualifies as girl talk." Aerith teased.
"Has Cloud proposed yet?" Tifa changed tact.
Aerith blinked at that, but Yuffie wasn't thrown. "You two aren't as big a secret as you think you are."
"Zombie movie it is." Tifa snatched up the movie, going to put it in the player.
Aerith recovered herself and snickered, getting her revenge for Tifa's martini attack. "Seriously, what IS with the two bedrooms?"
The first seconds of the movie immediately jumped into blood, gore, and brains.
Tifa threw herself back into her chair. "No talking during the movie!"
..:-X-:..
189 – Hourglass
For justagirl8225
Jafar was enjoying this too much.
The sorcerer-turned-genie had been terrorizing Agrabah for a week now. Considering how showy and arrogant he was, Leon had thought the wiry man would have wanted this to go down in the middle of the city so everyone could witness his power.
Instead, they found themselves duking it out in one of the deep, smaller chambers of the Palace. And due to the climate of the desert world and Jafar's tendency toward fire magic, it was like an oven in there.
Tifa had disabled the frumpy little Abismal character with ridiculous ease. He must have mustered up a wish before she knocked him out, however, because one minute Tifa was back at Leon's side, trying to get a shot at the black lamp that would end this, and the next she was flying off her feet, slamming into the lower half of a 100 foot tall hourglass.
"Why don't you take a little time out?" Jafar cackled as sand started to pour in from the upper half.
Leon took the maniac's distraction to move out from behind the melting stone pillar to the pedestal where the lamp was. Sweat was stinging his eyes, but his forearm was so slick that trying to clear his eyes just smeared it around.
"You're in over your head." Jafar snapped, and the pedestal grew upward 20 feet, out of reach.
Leon and Tifa had been burning through cooling potions just to keep from overheating; they could barely spare the ether for magic attacks. Not that those were very effective against the powers of a fully fledged genie anyway.
Facing Jafar again, Leon saw the sand still pouring into the lower chamber of the hourglass, and Tifa slamming her heel into the glass wall of it. Foot-long shards of glass and sand spilled across the floor. She found him and nodded to show she was all right, and he started to try and reach the lamp again. Unfortunately, Jafar found him too.
"Not so fast!"
The thing that slammed into his stomach could have been a giant arm or solid rock; either way, the force of it sent him flying backwards at the field of jagged glass across the floor.
"Aeroga!" Tifa's wind spell slapped the glass clear of the floor and slung the shards at Jafar.
Leon hit the ground hard, releasing the gunblade so that he didn't accidentally impale himself. He rolled with the momentum, but the loud snapping and flare of pain up his arm told him that it had cleanly broken. He cursed and rolled up to one knee, trying to get his bearings.
Jafar took the faceful of glass and reciprocated by magically slamming Tifa against the wall, where the long, crimson curtains began to wind around her body like vines.
"I wish for friggin' air conditioning!" came a voice from the pedestal.
Both Leon and Tifa, whose leg was bloody from kicking the glass, looked over to see Tifa's recruits spilling in through the unblocked entryway. The private on the pedestal was holding the lamp.
"Took you long enough!" Tifa snapped.
One of the recruits—Leon didn't bother to notice which—cast a healing spell in his direction and the bone in his arm snapped back into place with a painful wrench. The pain almost immediately dissipated afterward, though, and he snatched up the gunblade again as the recruits set to helping Tifa untangle herself from the curtains.
"Your cavalry won't save you." Jafar boomed, his genie-form expanding to almost fill the entire chamber. The ceiling began to crack and buckle under the pressure.
"Oh yeah?" Aladdin had appeared—where were they all coming from?—and was holding the black lamp at arms' length in front of Leon's recruit Private Cole Marcus, who was holding up a blowtorch with a manic look in his eyes.
"What?" Jafar thundered.
Aladdin set the lamp down. Marcus gunned the blowtorch and the blue and white flames shot out of the nozzle, engulfing the lamp. A sudden gust of angry wind from the angry genie extinguished all of the torches in the chamber, save for the blowtorch and the flaming lamp.
In the sweeping darkness, Leon saw the curtains go lifeless around Tifa's body, and she slipped out of the material, falling only a few feet before the Magic Carpet caught her and carried her back down to ground level.
"NOOOOOOO!" Jafar was screaming as Leon maneuvered through the soldiers and emerging Heartless toward Tifa.
Seeing her leg not badly injured, he exhaled in relief and Tifa did the same as she saw no shards of glass sticking out of him. Then they both promptly hit the floor, tired and overheated.
..:-X-:..
190 – Eavesdropping Part 2
For Eva Von Dee
As usual, most of the east wing was dark by the time Leon left his office. A few interns were milling around, pinned with the graveyard shift or frantically trying to make a deadline. Cid's latest campaign in Deep Jungle had wrapped up that afternoon, and his more proactive recruits were in their cubicles writing up the reports for the mission, but not many.
He walked past the department, involuntarily glancing across the desks. The organized chaos in there was still chaos, but that was a very Cid-way to do things, so Leon never said anything about it.
Cid had mentioned a few weeks ago that Private McCallister was "a bit of an oddball" and not really meshing well with his other recruits. There seemed to be no pleasing her, and Tifa had even started ragging on him to get her back in his department. Like he hadn't tried, but Nestor had hoodwinked the board about the whole situation. Favoritism…what a load of shit.
He treated all of his recruits the same. If McCallister screwed up, she got the same consequences as Cooper or Marcus. The difference was seniority, and if seniority was favoritism, then Nestor should have been voted out years ago.
So of course she didn't 'mesh well' with Cid's devil-may-care interns, where it came to meshing, the private had a bit of a stick up her ass.
"I know I said I had the day off, but something came up…Don't go there, you know I wanted to see you again…"
Leon stepped out of the department into the lobby area of the tenth floor. Last week's mission in Land of Dragons was still making his knee click, so he had been planning on using the elevator, but if there was some woman babbling with her boyfriend, then he'd suffer the knee and begrudge the stairs.
When he turned the corner, however, he recognized Tabaeus McCallister's back turned to him, on her phone: the culprit. She was just stepping off the elevator.
"This isn't up for debate…No, I can't just call in sick. It doesn't work like that." She was saying. "You were aware of my career's demands. No, I'm not saying—Stop putting words in my—Fine, we're done." She hung up abruptly and groaned, shoving the phone in her pocket.
Then she turned around and spotted him, looking startled before immediately snapping to attention. "Sir, I'm sorry, I didn't realize—"
"At ease." He frowned. "Today was your day off." There was no pretending that he hadn't overheard her.
"Technically, but—" She looked down at her sooty appearance. "Deep Jungle and all—Report needs to be filed."
He grunted at that and hit the down button on the elevator.
An awkward beat passed.
"You could do it tomorrow." He suggested.
"I'm already here." She sighed.
"Cid would let you pin it on one of the new interns."
"Please don't insult me, sir."
He stepped into the elevator and hit the ground floor button.
"Keep your day off next time." He said, looking at her flatly.
The private offered a smirk that only turned up one corner of her mouth. "No promises."
Another quiet beat.
Leon frowned, "You don't belong in that department."
She didn't respond to that and the elevator doors started to close.
"You belong in mine," He almost growled at her. "Nestor's an idiot."
McCallister looked almost relieved for a brief moment, but then swallowed and started to walk away. "Good night, sir."
Then the doors closed and the elevator began to descend.
Leon cursed and stared at the closed doors. Maybe she did belong in Cid's department. Maybe Leon had gotten too used to having her as his subordinate. Maybe he didn't need her. He had an office full of five other recruits who were just as qualified to—
The elevator reached the ground floor and opened to reveal his two interns Cooper and Harper mopping the floor, which was covered in some sort of magical powder, and Merlin standing against the wall, looking highly unamused by whatever they had done. Cooper's eyebrows had been singed off. Both privates shot to attention as Leon stepped out of the elevator.
He sighed in exasperation as he walked past them. "Damn Nestor."
..:-X-:..
A/N 189: I watched Aladdin the other day and decided Jafar is kinda fun, so I threw him in there…and I'm always throwing Leon's recruits in there, but Tifa has them too, so I tried to wiggle them in some screentime as well.
A/N 190: Hm…Should Leon get McCallister back? Or is it more fun to shun her into Cid's jurisdiction? Either way, his other interns are sorta morons, haha.