Author's Notes: For this vignette, I was fascinated by the ways in which you can make your environment fight with you & for you. Portions of this scene and its choreography are adapted from the martial arts movie Chocolate (2008).
Vignette 5: Use What I Have
use:
"to avail oneself of;
apply to one's own purposes"
Sometimes, you end up helping a person in need on the way home from a mission…
And this is one of those times.
After an incredibly boring five-hour stakeout with no magic or weapons, Seifer is ready for action, justice, and a little bit of fun.
A goon comes charging at him with rock-sized fists.
Seifer opens the door of the locker with flawless timing. The goon crashes into the metal barricade and collapses to the ground with a comical noise.
Another goon is about to ambush him from the back.
Seifer pivots, grabs this second goon by the shoulders, shoves him into the just-opened locker, and kicks it shut.
The universal characteristics of goons: they are many, they are weak, and they are not very smart.
Seifer pauses to watch as a tattooed goon catapults a massive wooden pallet at Selphie; at the same time, she is sprinting toward him, transitioning into a breakneck floor-slide, flattening her petite body limbo-style beneath a coffee table; the pallet of course misses its mark and she drifts out unharmed, only to throw the goon's legs off balance.
"SEIFER!" screams Quistis. "WATCH OUT!"
He jabs an elbow behind him. Bone meets flesh with a groan.
Too easy. Too predictable.
One, two, three more goons. Down, down, and down; they all go down.
"WHO'S GOT THE MONEY!?" yells Selphie as she's chased by a new set of goons.
Seifer helps her out by speed-dumping some boxes from the warehouse shelves. Selphie easily leaps over the obstacle course while her pursuers trip, fall, and curse in a confused snarl of limbs.
"MAN WITH THE BASEBALL CAP!" reports Quistis from her vantage point.
The man with the baseball cap must be the boss.
"STAY WITH THE GIRL!" commands Seifer to Quistis.
Seifer hunts down the boss, who is scurrying up a set of stairs with the girl's money bag tied conspicuously to his belt.
The last step opens onto a narrow platform crowded with towering stacks of boxes.
The boss lunges at Seifer.
Seifer sidesteps him and swings his body to the outside of the railing. As the boss tries to push him off the edge, Seifer begins crab-walking away as fast as his hands and feet will allow.
He jumps back onto the elevated battleground and lands a solid punch on the boss' nose. The boss stumbles backward but strikes again with blink-and-you're-dead ferocity.
Seifer loops his entire frame through the railing in a brilliant sequence of trapeze and evasion; from there, he volleys a series of kicks at the boss; more goons are climbing up to the platform; Seifer escapes them each time with his complex zigzags, even as he sends them all dropping to the ground with undignified yelps.
"HEY, BOSS!" Selphie calls out.
The boss turns away from Seifer for just a second…
…and gets hit in the face with a small, rectangular object.
"AHHHH!" he cries out as he flips over the railing and falls onto a mountain of his pummeled goons.
Selphie's fists are in the air. "BOOYAKA!"
Seifer runs down the stairs and recovers the girl's money bag. Selphie picks up an extremely dented box of Moomba Scout cookies.
Quistis walks over with her charge, safe and sound: a little girl in a pink uniform and a matching beret.
"Thank you, kind SeeDs!" sings the girl with clasped hands. "Oh, thank you!"
Seifer smirks in the wake of victory. "The pleasure is ours."
"For saving my life, I'll give you my entire supply of cookies on the house!"
Quistis kneels to look the girl in the eyes. "Sweetie, that's very kind of you, but we can't do that. Please let us pay for the cookies."
Selphie starts counting her gil. "Luckily I've got plenty of dough on me."
They purchase one hundred boxes of Moomba Scout cookies.
Later that evening, Selphie hosts an outdoor movie night at the quad with plenty of milk and cookies to go around.
Seifer and Quistis are lounging on a blanket in the very back row.
"I loved watching you fight today," she tells him. "Seifer, you take my breath away!"
"Do I now?" he says with a grin, scooching closer to her.
She hums with admiration. "You're clever. You're resourceful. And you're funny, too, do you know that?" A giggle. "Both you and Selphie have this crazy sense of humor when you fight."
Seifer is about to ask Quistis if she would like to skip the movie and take the milk and cookies to go, perhaps to his room, when she suddenly yawns.
"I don't know how much longer I can stay awake…"
"Let's get you to bed."
She nods in gratitude.
He walks her to the girls' dormitories.
There will be plenty of opportunities in the future to have milk-and-cookies dates in each other's rooms.
For now, he is at peace knowing that her health is on the mend.
Author's Notes: Moomba Scouts (and their cookies) have been in existence for a long time in this fandom, though I do not know who invented them. Sending my thanks to this awesome person! :)