Title: The Exit Festival
Drabble Challenge: joudama!verse
Prompt: Middish!verse (an AU omake): Mama's matzahballs
Sephiroth had never gone on vacation before, but now had the deep desire to be very, very far away from where he was, preferably with something very, very alcoholic in his hands.
He had been aware that all the different areas of the planet had their own little illogical holidays and festivals and beliefs. Some of them even seemed rather nice, if quaint-the festival for the dead in Wutai to appease vengeful spirits, the light festival in the Gurljia region.
He had not, however, been aware that these holidays, festivals, and beliefs could drive people insane.
And truly, that was the only way to describe what had happened to Genesis and Angeal.
"NO! You can not eat those, NO!" Angeal screamed at an unwitting trooper, one who had taken one look at the...whatever it was scraped out of Hojo's lab masquerading as 'rations' and beelined for the small stand of "Exit Festival Food." The food there did not look at all exciting, but bland-nothing but large, unleavened crackers, a strange, thin soup with bread balls inside it, and an oddly slimy fish-was certainly better than...Sephiroth didn't exactly know what it was that was currently on his plate. Since he had gotten out of the labs, he had gone from the nutritionally optimized meals prepared for him then to the food prepared for all troopers.
It was, to be honest, the only thing he regretted about leaving the labs.
"Bastard! That is not for you!" he yelled. "You can eat real food, get away from that!"
The trooper went wide-eyed, dropped the large cracker back, and started backing away with his hands raised in an "I surrender" gesture.
Angeal glared until the trooper ran for the hills, the picked up the cracker and brought it back to the table.
"Ale tseyn zoln bay im aroysfaln, not eyner zol im blaybn oyf tsonveytung," Angeal growled under his breath, and Sephiroth decided to ignore it-anyone invoking regulation 109.B on language use against Angeal or Genesis during the Exit Festival risked their own lives, and Sephiroth was no fool.
"The next shtick drek who tries to steal our food, I set on fire," Genesis said, sounding surly, and poking at his soup. "Angeal, when is your mother's package of food getting here? I need real matzo ball soup, not this farkakte drek!"
Angeal crammed an edge of the cracker in his mouth. "It should have been here last week!" he growled from around it. "It's not my fault ShinRa's farkakte mail can't stop with the sucking! Whoever is holding it up, may the gods bless him with three people: one should grab him, the second should stab him and the third should hide him."
Sephiroth looked down at his...whatever the meal was, then back at Angeal's cracker and Genesis' soup, and thought to himself that there were still four more days to go.