Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This series is mine, as are Jake and Duke. Enjoy!
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010 – Catch and Release
Yuffie reeled back and threw the Frisbee for the umpteenth time. The orange disc sailed across the open field in the park, and Duke tore after it like a dog on a mission. The reddish-golden retriever was a stray that Leon had taken in a few years ago, and Leon was consistently the only human being that Duke obeyed by any stretch. If you could throw a Frisbee, a stick, or a ball, however, you owned her for at least an hour.
Duke tackled the disc to the grass and grabbed it up in her mouth, shaking her head back and forth to show the thing who was boss. Yuffie smiled and laughed at the dog, clapping her hands to get Duke's attention. Across the sidewalk on Yuffie's left, Jake Alms was striking out with two women at the same time. That made him, what, zero for eight since Yuffie had been there?
Yuffie shook her head at him as Duke ambled back over triumphantly. She reached out to take the disc for another throw, but the dog ducked away, hopping back and lowering her front end so that her backside was stuck in the air, tail swishing playfully.
"Now, give." Yuffie tried to sound authoritative, reaching for the disc again.
This served just to egg Duke on more, and the dog bounced farther away, pawing at the edge of the toy in her mouth. Yuffie huffed and unfolded her legs, standing up to go and physically take back the disc. She had just gotten the dog into a headlock and was wrestling with her on the grass when Jake dejectedly walked over.
"Your loss, ladies!" he called back at the two women, who both rolled their eyes and continued walking away. "Hey, Yuffie."
"H—hey." Yuffie grunted, yanking the Frisbee from Duke's mouth.
She rolled away from the canine and ended up back on her knees. Duke was immediately on her feet again, darting side to side and looking at Yuffie expectantly. After all that effort just to get the toy back, Yuffie curled her arm in and then out, throwing the Frisbee farther than the first time.
"Struck out again, eh?" She snorted at his misfortune, flopping back down onto the grass.
Jake sat down beside her, looking not the least bit put off. "Where some say 'struck out', I say 'lucked out'. Those two were clearly snobs."
Yuffie blinked and looked after the retreating women again. "Long legs, tan, and chesty: that pretty much spells out your type, doesn't it?"
Jake looked affronted, "What do you take me for?"
"A man-whore." Yuffie replied flatly as Duke bounded over again.
"I am insulted!" Jake huffed in mock-offense. "I do not profile the women that I hit on purely through physical traits! Sure, the figure helps, but…for instance I would never hit on Tifa!"
"Not for lack of trying." Yuffie pointed out. "And I'm sure her right hook has nothing to do with it, or the fact that she's married to Leon, or the fact that she's carrying Leon's child."
Jake just shushed her, reclining onto his back on the grass.
Yuffie wrestled the disc away from Duke again and once more threw it, though this time in the other direction. Again, the dog bolted after it.
"Of all the gorgeous women in Radiant Garden, you've only ever playfully made a pass at Tifa or Aerith or me." Yuffie canted her head, "And I've seen you hit on dozens of other women much more effectively than that—" She gestured to scene of the crime across the sidewalk. "You were barely trying with those two."
"Like I said, they were stuck up—"
"Or you weren't trying because you weren't really wanting them to say yes." Yuffie quirked an eyebrow.
"Trust me, Yuffie. I ALWAYS want a woman to say yes." Jake winked.
Yuffie pursed her lips. "Or maybe you only want one particular woman to say yes."
"Oh please don't." Jake sat up as Duke reached them again.
"Don't what?" Yuffie played innocent.
"I don't care what Tifa has told you, she's reading something that isn't there." He grumbled, taking the toy from Duke and patting her head. "I do not have feelings for Tabaeus McCallister."
Yuffie raised an eyebrow, "I never insinuated…"
"I mean, it's not like I've tried to ask her out before, because…hah…clearly she—"
"Might say yes?" Yuffie pushed.
Jake frowned, some color touching his cheeks as he threw the disc this time.
Yuffie's eyes widened, "Holy crap. Jake Alms, are you BLUSHING?"
"No. Shut up!" He got to his feet. "I don't have to take this." He dusted himself off and started to make a dramatic exit. Abruptly, though, he stopped and looked at her, almost sheepish. "You really think she might agree to go on a date with me?"
Yuffie paused, having not expected the usually cocky and cheery man to suddenly sound so…vulnerable. As if he hadn't gotten turned down nearly a dozen times this afternoon.
"Um…y-you never know until you ask." She offered, utterly wrongfooted.
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011 – Two for the Show
"You seriously fainted?" Aerith's shoulders quivered as she tried to contain the giggles.
Across the table from her, Cloud's face reddened with embarrassment. He averted his eyes out the window of the restaurant. "She sprung it on us. I wasn't prepared to hear that."
Aerith giggled so hard that she snorted and immediately laughed at herself for it. "Tifa is never that secretive about things. What did you think she was going to say?"
"That…she had just bought a new piece of furniture or pulled a prank on Merlin or something." Cloud shook his head slightly. "Not…revealing that she was knocked up."
The two sat near the window of one of the small restaurants in Radiant Garden. It had taken a lot of prodding—but not nearly as much as Aerith had expected—to get Cloud to take her out to dinner. While they had unofficially been on more-than-friendly terms for a while now, this was only the second time that they had been on what Aerith would call a date. She decided to have mercy on him and change the subject.
"I think I made a breakthrough in my magic research this week." She stated, sipping at her iced tea.
"Hm." Cloud responded, looking like he was trying to focus the blood away from his cheeks, which Aerith found adorable.
"I've been working on summoning the essence itself straight from the world matter." She explained. "But it's been so unstable that it takes an enormous amount of concentration just to hold it for a few seconds. I've nearly gone through half a bottle of headache medicine since I started." She rambled slightly.
Cloud looked at her evenly. Sure, in-depth magic research wasn't exactly date conversation, but he got so confoundedly awkward around any other subject that Aerith was grasping at straws here. Besides, she was really excited about this research and he was the only one that she felt confident enough to ramble on at.
"However, I think the problem is that I've been trying to summon all of the magic out of one form. There are various types of magic inside every piece of matter." She held up her hands. "One is the natural core essence of the object…say a lemon." She took the slice of lemon off from the rim of her iced tea glass. "The other is the potential energy that exists between the lemon and everything that it is in contact with: tea, glass, the like." She straightened in her seat. "If I can isolate just the potential energy and focus on pulling magic from that connection, I think I can make my spells more effective!"
Cloud stared at her, looking entirely lost. "And that's what you were doing a few weeks ago in the castle ruins?" He asked.
"Sort of." Aerith canted her head, dropping her lemon slice back into the tea and stirring it in with her straw. "That was more of a preliminary run: trying to pull any essence that I could out of the stones."
"And the flowers…?"
"I think that's an after-effect of the magic." She explained. "The energy that I pulled out was…See I have this undercurrent theory; that all magic in Radiant Garden is derived from this massive sort of uniform collective—"
"Like from the heart of the world." Cloud clarified.
Aerith clapped her hands together and then pointed at him. "Yes! Exactly!" She beamed. "And that essence, in its purest form, is just…creation. Life. A stream." She wiggled her fingers to mimic water.
Cloud frowned. "That sounds…dangerous. Are you sure that you should be tampering with something that…unknown?"
"Well, that's the pot calling the kettle black." Aerith sat back in her seat. "I've been taking safety precautions and the only thing that's happened is accidentally creating flowers when my concentration is broken. Not exactly an atomic bomb."
Cloud seemed to interpret her defensiveness as a sign of confrontation, and he almost visibly back-pedaled. "Er…So, what does it feel like? Summoning pure magic essence?"
He was trying to placate her, she knew, but she was so intoxicated with the discovery of the magic that she took the bait.
"It's like…you've swallowed this big, warm ball of light." She hugged her arms to herself. "And when I'm in the middle of it…focusing every fiber of my being on maintaining it…I feel like I can see everything. And it's not this big white mass that you'd think 'pure essence' is made of…It's actually green. This pale, pale green…almost bluish too." She murmured, getting distracted as she remembered that feeling, that color, and how it nearly stilled her heart.
After a beat, she realized that she was staring at Cloud, and subconsciously noted that the green-blue glow from the magic almost matched the eerie color of his eyes. And, again, she experienced that near-stilling of her heart.
Sitting up, she cleared her throat and poked at her food with her fork. "But enough of that. How are the new recruits doing in training?"
Cloud's shoulders relaxed a little and he latched onto the change, groaning in response. "If the Heartless launched a full-world invasion today, and this group of chuckleheads was Radiant Garden's only hope…I wouldn't hold my breath."
Aerith chuckled at that and let Cloud's ranting steer the conversation from then on, smiling at how much more at ease he seemed to be when it was just the two of them together.
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012 – Old Dogs and New Tricks
"Do…Do you want me to call Leon or…anything?" Rinoa asked, standing uncomfortably outside the bathroom door.
In answer, all she could hear was the sound of Tifa vomiting.
Rinoa grimaced and looked back into the den of Merlin's house, where Cid just shrugged and got back to work on the computer. As it turned out, 'morning' sickness was not restricted to the morning hours, but could actually strike at any time of the day. Tifa's had taken to striking at six pm, almost on the dot, every day. Unfortunately for them all, it was six o'clock.
The sound of the toilet flushing gave Rinoa the signal to back away from the door. When it opened, a haggard-looking Tifa stepped out, drying her face with a towel.
Tifa shook her head. "No, I'm fine. Thanks." Then, as though to change the subject from the fact that she had just spent 15 minutes in the bathroom throwing up, she looked to Cid. "What did I miss?"
Cid didn't look over, "I was just saying that Heartless activity is down for the first time in two months." He clicked on a few open windows on the computer monitor. "At the last Council meeting, the idea came up that they might be taking the lull as an opportunity to explore another world that's hit the radar."
"What other world?" Tifa asked, pouring herself a glass of water from the kitchen area.
"Don't know." Cid shrugged. "Nobody in the Alliance has touched down on it yet. So far no Heartless have been picked up by the monitoring satellite, but there's some other kind of weird darkness brewing down there."
"So the Alliance is thinking of sending another expedition?" Rinoa asked.
"Yeah. And Yuffie has already called dibs on leading it." Cid mused.
Both Tifa and Rinoa blinked at that.
Cid glanced over and saw their expressions. "I know, and I had the same reaction. But, she's already in charge of a department and has been fighting Heartless just as long as any of us have…" He sighed, taking out a cigarette and lighter.
"Ah!" Rinoa reprimanded, pointing at the cigarette and looking at Tifa.
"What, I ain't the pregnant one." Cid snorted, "You two can go outside. I ain't quittin' what I love just because you can't enjoy it anymore."
Rinoa looked mortified, but Tifa just snorted. "I was getting ready to leave anyway." She drank roughly half of the glass of water and poured the rest out, moving toward the door. "If the Council takes her seriously, I wish Yuffie luck in getting the mission."
And with that, she left Merlin's house, just as Merlin walked in jovially.
Rinoa rounded on Cid, who had lit his cigarette and taken a puff of it. "You are tactless."
"You have no purpose in the Alliance." Cid said flatly back.
Rinoa drew up straight and wide eyed.
Cid exhaled smoke. "I thought we were pointing out the obvious?"
"I have been trying," Rinoa started, her voice carefully controlled. "to get involved. You think I like sitting on the sidelines while everybody else has these tremendous responsibilities?"
"You tell me, sweetheart." Cid held the cigarette between his fingers. "The wind blew you back here, what, five, six months ago? What have you done with that time?"
He was pushing her, he knew, but he was tired of everybody walking on eggshells around this broad. She had spent nearly thirteen damn years 'out there', she knew how this shit worked. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, she had been putting on this wounded-bird act ever since she got back to Radiant Garden. What had she really been expecting? A hug? Heartless wouldn't be so generous, why should he be? Especially if she wanted this whole innocent victim thing to pan out. She needed a reality check. She glared back at him, furious, but not saying anything.
Cid pointed at her reaction, "Exactly."
Rinoa's face was drawn as she turned and stomped out of the house, muttering an apology to Merlin when she nearly ran him over in her haste to escape. As she slammed the door after herself, the sorcerer looked to Cid and put his hands on his hips.
"You really are tactless."
"And you're old." Cid snorted. When Merlin's glare continued, Cid lifted his shoulders. "What? Did I lie? She's not a soldier, she has no background discipline, and she has no idea what the Alliance even does. She's just hanging around because Radiant Garden is her home world and she's still pining after Leon."
"Is it really necessary for you to be so…boorish toward her?" Merlin growled, crossing over to the bookshelf to fetch a text. "She's only trying to help." His frown deepened, "You realize that if you keep that up—" He gestured to the lit cigarette. "You won't get to see Tifa or probably Leon again until the baby comes…or after that, actually."
Cid felt a flare of irritation at the wizard. "Don't you have a boiling cauldron to throw random ingredients into?"
Merlin stuck his nose in the air and marched out of the room, heading down the hall to his personal study. Now alone in the living room, Cid eyed the cigarette in his fingers.
Ah, Hell.
With a low curse, he put the cigarette out in the ash tray beside the computer.
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Preview for next week: Every doctor he spoke to kept repeating the same words and phrases: like 'permanent nerve damage' and 'almost full recovery'.