Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This collection of shorts is mine as are the OCs that pop into this chapter. Enjoy!
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016 – Taste of Victory
Yuffie watched, both disgusted and enraptured at the same time, as Tifa piled watermelon slices on top of her peanut butter sandwiches and topped that off with spears of dill pickles. The younger woman continued to watch as Tifa contentedly rolled up the sandwich and proceeded to take a bite out of it.
"You are so gross." Yuffie said in awe.
Tifa, mouth full, just shrugged as she chewed.
Leon had warned Yuffie that the food cravings had started, but he had only said that she had cleared out all of the spicy food in the house. Tacos, salsa, peppers: he had even said that he caught her dipping whole jalapenos into guacamole and eating them. How Tifa still had a tongue, Yuffie couldn't fathom.
But this…Yuffie hadn't been prepared for this.
"You can NOT tell me that that monstrosity tastes good." She gawked.
Tifa swallowed her first bite, "Like manna from heaven." She took another bite.
It hurt her stomach to watch, but Yuffie couldn't look away.
"What other weird crap have you been eating?" She asked curiously.
Tifa shrugged again, and answered after swallowing. "Nothing too unusual—"
"I'll decide what's unusual, you freak," Yuffie eyed the 'sandwich'.
"—pretty much just add bacon or ice cream to anything." Tifa replied, licking peanut butter off her thumb. She spun to Yuffie, "We should get ice cream."
Yuffie snorted and shook her head, "I've decided that you being pregnant is going to be the source of my entertainment for the next seven months."
Tifa shot her a snarky look as she finished swallowing. "So, any news on the mission?"
Yuffie's eyes lit up. "Actually, now that you mention it, my odds are really looking good." She bounced in her seat. "Aerith and Cid gave me recommendations to the assignment board. Aerith would recommend a rock if the sun hit it just right, so I'm thinking that the board will take Cid's word more seriously. Ya know, since he tries to be a hard ass all the time, but I know he gave me a good reference. He had to; you realize how many times over the years that I've saved his butt?...A lot!"
As she rattled on excitedly, she swung her chair side to side. And excited she should have been. This was going to be her big break, baby! No more kiddie missions, no more tag team recons, and no more being babysat on patrols. It was time to unleash her inner beast! The Heartless better beware, because the great ninja Yuffie was going to come get 'em!
"Where is the mission?" Tifa prompted when Yuffie paused to take a breath.
"Eh? How should I know?" Yuffie tilted her head at her.
"Well…while the board is deliberating on who to put as the head of the mission, you should be info gathering about what the mission is going to entail." Tifa explained. "Is it recon, battle, reconstruction…and whereabouts in the Alliance is it?"
"It's not an Allied system." Yuffie interjected. "I have done some research; I'm not stupid." She sat forward in her chair. "And as far as we know, it's been untouched by Heartless. But the Alliance is kinda wary 'cause there's all this other darkness stuff boiling around down there, just under the surface." She made a wavy gesture with her hand.
"Darkness that's not Heartless?" Tifa raised an eyebrow. "Like black magic?"
"That's where my team is going to come in." Yuffie gave her a smug smile. "Enter Yuffie; exit bad guys." She punched her fist into her palm. "We'll turn whatever it is down there flat!" She pumped one arm in victory.
Tifa snorted, finishing off her sandwich. "Speaking of getting turned down flat, did you hear that Jake asked McCallister out on a date last week?"
Yuffie spun her chair back around to face Tifa. "Seriously? He actually did it?"
Tifa bobbed her head, "Yeah, and she turned him down flatter than a pancake." She looked to Yuffie, an idea dawning in her eyes. "We should make pancakes."
Yuffie snapped her fingers, "Focus, woman. Why did she turn him down?"
"Well, from what I hear, he kind of sprung it on her." Tifa explained. "Which doesn't make much sense, because everybody within eye range can tell he's had the hots for her for a while now…then again, this is MCCALLISTER, we're talking about, not exactly the most adept at picking up social cues…"
"Sounds like someone else we know." Yuffie snickered. "Although, between you and Leon, you were kind of the emotionally ass-backwards one at first, right?"
"Shut up." Tifa picked up her ice water and sipped at it. "Besides, Jake asked her while she was running drills; not exactly a romantic mindset."
"How did he take the rejection?"
"He's Jake." Tifa gave Yuffie a coy look. "I'm sure he's fine."
Yuffie paused thoughtfully. "I guess so. Well, if I get this mission, I'll invite him along to cheer him up!"
"A civilian on a recon mission in dark magic territory?" Tifa lifted an eyebrow.
Yuffie snickered, "It's JAKE."
Tifa got up and went for the pancake batter in the kitchen. "Exactly."
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017 – A Warped Mirror
Cloud rarely went to the Weapons Specialist Department. He avoided it, actually. Once the new recruits completed their basic training under him and were sorted out into specialized fields, he washed his hands of them. They were the responsibility of the department heads after that. That was one of the reasons that he had never wanted his own department and had only grudgingly accepted heading the general recruitment department. Interns were dense, thick, and made messes of everything, even after they had been trained up.
Exhibit A: Private Tabaeus McCallister.
Cloud found her cubicle, just as innocuous and uniform as all of Leon's interns, and was glad to see that she was working in her cubicle. This would allow him to yell at her properly. He marched up behind her and dropped the paper onto the desk in front of her.
"What is this?" He demanded.
The soldier started slightly in surprise, the folded mess of paper in her hands faltering. Without looking back at him, her eyes flickered to the incriminating paper. Cloud forcefully swallowed, giving her a whole five seconds to begin explaining this…stupidity. When those five seconds expired in silence, he took a step into her cubicle.
"What is the meaning of this?" He reiterated slowly.
Private McCallister exhaled measuredly and set down the half-finished paper crane. "That would be my response to the promotion letter, sir."
He straightened away from her, "Yeah, I figured that much out myself. What I can't figure out is—" He snatched the paper back up, reading her absurd words back to her face. "Dear Council Commissioner Fletcher, I am honored by your offer of promotion to the rank of Corporal. I greatly appreciate this opportunity and the acknowledgement of my efforts toward the Alliance, and I realize that this is a once-in-a-career event. However, I feel that my strengths may best be served under the continuing direction of Colonel Leonhart as a private."
Cloud stopped reading there. The soldier went on for another paragraph, but it was the same drivel that he'd just read aloud. In front of him, McCallister remained where she was, looking at the letter in his hand quietly.
"Do you realize how implausible this is?" He shook the paper.
"Sir, I know—"
"A promotion from private to corporal? Do you realize how far of a jump that is?"
"I know that it's rarely offered-"
"It's NEVER offered." Cloud corrected, his voice kicking up a notch.
His tone caused those who weren't looking at their little scene to look now. All of the soldiers under the Weapons Specialist program knew that he rarely walked these halls. This was Leon's territory. The two of them, while no longer hostile, had an unspoken truce between them to keep things civil: you stay in your zone, I stay in mine, no feet get stepped on.
Now, not only was Cloud IN Leon's department, but he was reprimanding one of Leon's interns. His first intern. His right hand. His idiot. But before McCallister had been Leon's right hand soldier, she had been just like the other green horn recruits that Cloud had sent through basic training. That put his fingerprints on her record.
Sensing the unwanted attention from the other soldiers, Cloud straightened and flatly glared around the lot of them. "Get back to work." He barked.
And they were Leon's interns for the reason: the soldiers en masse snapped back to what they had been doing. Even McCallister twitched a little at the order.
"Four years." Cloud said, lowly now, to put more emphasis on the statement. "You've been in this department for four years, McCallister."
"Three, sir." She quietly corrected. "I was transferred out to Captain Highwind's Aeronautics program for eight months—"
Cloud hissed, "Don't give me that. All of your colleagues have been promoted and accepted it gladly. They've moved on and made damn good leaders out of themselves. This Alliance—me, Leon, everybody—have given you more than a handful of opportunities to do that, and you…you politely refuse?"
"This is where I need to be, sir." McCallister's shoulders were stiff, defensive.
Cloud didn't know this woman outside of the Alliance. They weren't friends; they weren't colleagues. They were fellow soldiers, and that was where their relationship ended. Come to think of it, he had never seen her in a social setting. She was always here or in the battlefield, following Leon's orders or being the man's mouthpiece for giving orders. She wasn't leader material. She would follow an order like a loyal hound, climb a mountain if told, fling herself onto a grenade if Leon was in the way of it, and she was complacent in that. And for some reason, that complacency infuriated him. Perhaps because he familiarized with it.
"You can't be an intern forever." He said calmly. "Leon has the most difficult program in the Alliance to get into. Full of hard-nosed, ambitious, no-nonsense soldiers, all with sticks up their asses just like him."
McCallister bristled at the remark but remained quiet.
"Which means you're just like that…and eventually this—" He gestured to her little cubicle. "Won't be enough for you."
"With all due respect, sir." McCallister said softly, "How is training the same recruits every three months, when you could be running an entire department, enough for you?"
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018 – Square Peg and Round Hole
Cid, as it turned out, was right. Ugh, that tasted like vinegar to admit.
"All the way to the back, she says," Rinoa muttered, making her voice high and nasally to mimic the woman who had given her the instruction. "The only department that will take you is computers, she says."
A week or so ago, Rinoa had taken Cid Highwind's harsh words to heart. As painful as it was to admit to herself, much less aloud, she had been practically worthless since her return to Radiant Garden six months ago. All she had managed to accomplish was confusing herself, nearly denting Leon and Tifa's relationship when she first arrived, hopelessly embarrassing herself with that entire situation, and generally getting in the way of Allied operations.
No more, she had decided. She was quickly learning that the Alliance had no use for slack and no room for people who couldn't carry their own weight. So…here she was…trying to carry her own weight. The problem was, Cid had been right again. Her paperwork had been pitiful: no credible background or certified skills, no real formal education—as the Heartless invasion had interrupted her in the middle of secondary school—and no real idea of what the Alliance was. The man at the recruiting office had hardly had it in him to restrain laughter upon reviewing her credentials.
Nevertheless, her connections to the big guns in the Restoration Committee had gotten her past the front hallway and an appointment with a consulting officer. After the invasion over a decade ago, she had been stranded on the edge of the galaxy, on worlds that suffered from the Heartless but were barely on the fringe of the war field. She had experienced battle and the struggle for survival. She had seen death and she had wielded weapons: however clumsily and out of necessity rather than with any kind of training.
So here she was, with a very slim file of paperwork to her name and only Leon's word to really back her up, walking down the cramped hallway toward the Information Technology branch of the Alliance. She had been sifted into tech support, of all things. Well, one had to start somewhere.
Drawing a breath, she knocked lightly on the door to the department. It was under Cid's umbrella jurisdiction, but from what she understood, he rarely actually did any work here. He had King of the Nerds computer interns to handle that…and Rinoa was here to join their ranks.
The door opened, and before she saw anything, she heard the buzzing, beeping, and humming of countless machines in the room beyond. Then she saw her greeter and deep down, she realized that her fears had been correct. There before her stood a plump man in his early thirties, wild blond hair going every which way, and a noticeably large freckle on his jawline.
"Hello there." He smiled warmly, and his voice had a friendly accent to it. "You must be Miss Heartilly."
Rinoa was tempted to reply 'take me to your leader' but refrained. Instead, she nodded. "Yep…that's me."
"Awesomeness." He stuck out a hand. "I'm Eddy Lake. Welcome to the IT department."
She shook his hand. "Hi." She greeted. "I…I was told that you have an opening here?"
"Pfft, we've always got openings." Eddy smirked, leading her into the main chamber of the department. "The trick is making sure the right people fill the right holes."
Computers lined the walls. Monitors flickered every kind of graph and chart known to man, and there were several that Rinoa didn't recognize. The colors and sounds and short-hand talk that rattled across the air among co-workers bombarded her from all sides.
"Well…I don't know if I'm right for any of them." She murmured honestly.
"Well…somebody's got to make coffee, right?" Eddy chuckled.
Rinoa looked at him, slightly flustered, "Huh?"
Eddy's smirk flatlined. "Sorry. That was a stupid joke." He grimaced and smacked himself in the forehead with one hand. "Stupid joke. Sorry."
Rinoa found herself grinning at his oddness. "It's…okay."
"We won't make you make coffee." He shook his head apologetically. "It's been a long afternoon, and I'm not usually—"
"—accustomed to talking to women, eh, Freddy?" A second man entered the scene, cuffing Eddy's shoulder in a rougher-than-necessary gesture.
"Eddy." Eddy corrected, "And wrong. I'm not usually the trainee for new interns."
"That's usually my territory." The newcomer winked at Rinoa, smacking bubble gum loudly with his jaw. "Mert Ryan." He offered a hand.
When Rinoa went to shake it, he took her hand instead and kissed it. Eddy rolled his eyes. Rinoa forced an awkward smile and took her hand back, not quite liking this one, despite his carefully-styled brown hair and mischievous eyes…or maybe 'because' of that.
"Shove off, Mert." Eddy made a vague gesture.
Mert winked and sauntered away; Rinoa was glad to be rid of him.
"So…no offense…but if Mert the Flirt is the usual trainer," Rinoa asked. "Why—"
Eddy snickered at her rhyme. "He's overloaded with newbies right now. Brilliant at what he does with computers…but…kind of…"
"A douche." Rinoa chimed in.
Eddy looked at her. "Yeah." He smiled and pointed at her. "I like you."
Rinoa perked up a little and smiled. Maybe this could work.
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A/N: Happy American Independence Day to my fellow yankees!
Preview for next week: People liked to think that Cloud and Leon were SO much alike. In reality, the only traits they shared were muscle, poor communication skills, a mutual hatred of the game ping-pong for some reason, and being all around smart asses.