Chapter 16: You Got Some Stones To Mess With Me, Manderville.
“You can just set it back to how it used to be. I mean… it’s not like I paid any attention to how you had it set when I grabbed it off of you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you or anything.”
“Yeah, well… I was almost ‘picked’ by Don Corneo for… whatever nefarious and probably quite perverted sceme he had in store for me, so do you think you could cut me some slack here?”
“…fair enough, I guess. It’s not like I don’t know what that feels like.”
“I’m so glad you understand.”
“……”
“Wait, what?!”
“Don’t ask! Please.”
“Why?! Because I have so many questions. None of them are good.”
“Well, your dad normally sleeps and shouts weird words while doing it. At least that’s the impression I got.”
“Has he ever been on TV? He sort of felt like a game show host.”
“Uuuurgh! I know, right? He’s so embarrassing, I often consider using my ninja skills to dig myself deep, deep underground. Like… BOOM! Giant cloud of smoke, and I’m gone! Deep, deep down where no feelings of shame can reach me.”
“It’s so cute to see how these two are bonding over their shared feelings of embarrassment.”
“Yeah, no. ‘Cute’ wasn’t my first choice of words for this.”
“I’m getting a feeling of deja vu like you wouldn’t believe. Except I don’t have to be a huge tsundere about it just to reel you in.”
“Oh, you naughty little boy. You really know how to play the playa.”
“Well, we don’t have to worry about our materia anymore, right?”
“Oh, sure. Now that I got things settled at home, I can wait until all this is over. THEN, I’ll steal all your materia.”
“…..”
“I’m just kidding. Honestly, stockpiling the stuff is more trouble than it’s worth. If I stick with you guys, I can just buy whatever materia I need. And we might even find some totally amazing materia while travelling too, some of which should go to me because I plan on doing my part of the fighting, too. Fair?”
“I guess?”
“Yes, one of these counts as a blade, maybe two, depending on how you look at a barrette.”
“And you can’t really ‘strike’ with a blade anyway. A diamond knuckle, however….”
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m sorry, but you slice or cut with a blade. A strike impact is more like a blunt impact, right?”
“Not necessarily. I know the mental image of it come across as a bit illogical, but strike is a very open term in that regard.”
*sigh* “OK, I… never mind. Clearly, I haven’t hit enough people with a blade.”
“Yes, you can use ‘hit’ about that, too.”
“Oh, shut up!”
“I think Cloud needs to learn how to hit on girls, though.”
“Uh… a chainsaw hand? That sounds very GROOVY, BABY!”
“Shop smart, Barret. Shop S Mart.”
“That sounds like a shortening of Shinra Mart. No way, Jose.”
“And there be our plane. It should magically work again now that we’ve completed this particular diversion.”
“I ran down and fixed it when you weren’t looking, so it should.”
“Well, aren’t you the mechanical tech whiz.”
“Hey, it’s all part and parcel of the whole ninja deal. Besides, I’m a girl of the future. Gotta have more appeals than just looking good.”
“…….”
“I must end her.”
“Let’s… not go there, Aeris.”
“Alrighty, we’re going back to the Golden Saucer… for some reason. Boy, I didn’t expect having to go back there so suddenly.”
“How about we ask for directions this time, Mr. Navsat.”
“Oh ha ha. Yeah, sure, let me just sidle up to that cliff over there and see if there are any random bystanders out there braving the random encounter generation for a chance to help a brotha out with some directions.”
“To be fair, I’d slap you on your stupid head too if you said that to me.”
“I know I used to sell flowers for a living, but at least I picked the best ones that I grew myself. You gonna give me that low-effort BS, and I’m going to introduce your cranium to my staff.”
“10000 gil isn’t even that much for that important an item. What cheapskates.”
“Hmmm. “Dio’s Show Room”. Why do I get the feeling that I’m about to walk in on him standing on a pedestal, flexing?!”
“I don’t even know whether I should find that appealing or horrifying.”
“The guy is rather… intense.”
“And no half-naked men in sight. Well… aside from the picture on the wall.”
“But is it a Spartan or Mr. Torgue?”
“And which of the two would be the loudest?”
“Mr. Torgue without a doubt.”
“That’s an interesting conversation, boys and girls.”
“And that’s why you decided to put it in your prize display? Really?”
“It is an important stone, though. Not that any of you numpties would understand that.”
“Ohoho, what’cha mumbling about over there. You should always stand up straight and get all the things you want off your chest… well, off your chest. Without any hesitation. That is the Manderville way, after all.”
“I’m not sure I can keep up a lifestyle of ‘no social anntennas’. Especially if you couple that with ‘no inside voice’ on top of that.”
“It’s exhausting.”
“Uh… I’m afraid to ask, but…. uh….”
“Don’t hesitate, boy. Good things come to those who grab it with both hands and don’t let go of it.”
“And now I’m even more afraid. Last time I saw a guy with your dress code, I was waking up from unconsciousness and he was sitting on me.”
“Sounds like a blast, boy, but don’tcha worry. We ain’t gonna be wrasslin’, if you catch my drift.”
“OK, that’s… mildly reassuring. So…. what am I going to do, then?”
“Just me? Solo fighting?”
“Yup. Well, you can send in one of the girls if you don’t feel up to it. Or the cat. Or Mr. Pistol Hand.”
*sigh* “So much for a party. OK, fine, I’ll go.”
“Dat’s my boy.”
“But I must take back the ‘dat’s my boy’ part, because seriously… you need to learn how to last longer, boy.”
“If that’s your plan, you might want to cut down on the weird and creepy double entendres.”
“Pfft, where’s the fun in that? You gotta loosen up, boy. Don’t get so uptight.”
“GUH! I can’t… PTSD kicking in…. no, DON’T!”
“Ohoho, I think I’ve picked at some war wounds here. Never mind me, boy. Go enjoy your stone.”
“Noooo, I want to leave this place. Before it’s too late.”
“Uh… yeah, no. Not happening tonight.”
“What is this feeling of impending doom?”
“About that….”
“Yep. This is sufficiently doom-y, alright. And weirdly enough, it’s making me feel better.”
“Nice. Then we can hang around a bit here.”
“…….”
“Uh…. no pun intended. Really.”
“…….”
“Really! I promise! C’mon, guys, give my sense of humor some credit here.”
“Nope!”
“OFF WITH HIS HEAD!”
“Which one?”
“I dunno. Both?”
“I picked up the saw hand in Wutai. Lemme handle this.”
“Guys, come on. You’re…. you’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. I totally saw what you did there, and now it’s time to pay the piper.”
“…and who’s a terrible punster now?”
“The end.”
“What?! That’s it?”
“Nah, just kidding.”
“Oh wow, Barret. I don’t know if I think that’s hilarious or just plain rude.”
“The disease hath returned to the holy land. That’s a pretty neat euphemism for getting venereal diseases. I gotta remember that the next time I go to the local pharmacy, so that I can freak the clerk out.”
“You got some weird hobbies, lady.”
“Like you’re one to talk. Anyway….”
“Hey, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t invited to the big important talk while we were there. I only got the abridged campfire version after, where we all talked in each other’s mouths all the time.”
“And boy, doesn’t your explanation sound like a lot of codswallop, lady. You just search and travel, huh?”
“And this from the lady who demanded I ask for directions.”
“The ancients are too deep for directions.”
“Your BS is too deep for directions.”
“Black capes, black materia, black black black.”
“Can we deal with all this dark blackness of despair and darkness? And numeral tattoos? Boy, that doesn’t have a really sinister undertone at all.”
“I shall call them SShinra from now on.”
“Please don’t.”
“Yeah, but you’re still Nanaki. Like… before you got that tattoo, you had nothing to do with nobody in there, right?”
“I guess.”
“Besides, the other people we’ve seen with tattoos like that were insane from the get-go.”
“That’s reassuring. I guess. Yay. Whoop-de-doo.”
“I like your enthusiasm.”
“Sephiroth is looking for the promised land so he can destroy the planet. What about that is complicated?”
“And we hafta find the keystone to get into the temple so we can find the materia that Sephiroth is going to use for something, and then we have to find the thing we need so we can enter the promised land so we can find HUGHBLURGH!”
“And Barret’s merry-go-round broke down. So, where do we go from here?”
“Down to the ground… as soon as the gondola is fixed.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Oh, do tell, Mr. SOLDIER. I bow to your superior life experiences.”
“I’m glad to hear we’ve come to an agreement there.”
“Not sure if sarcastic, or if Barret here has made Cloud underestimate adults in general.”
“Hey!”
“Well… have you been experimented on?”
“Not outside of getting the tattoo… and, well, Hojo trying to mate me with Aeris.”
“Then you should be fine. Really, the maniacs we’ve met so far has been reeking of mako experimentation. The TV guy we met in Midgar had needlemarks on every naked spot of his body, and probably a few where needles weren’t ever supposed to be stuck.”
“I’d… make some ‘Cloud is being a pervert’ jokes if I weren’t so creeped out over this fact. But I do feel better now… well, in some ways. So, uh… thanks?”
“And now he’s being all thoughtful and stuff. Kids are weird, man.”
“So, can someone check the old guy so we can all get a good night’s rest?”
“I’m on it.”
“Even weirder.”
“…of course.”
“Um… should we carry him to bed?”
“No way! He reeks of tobacco, rocket fuel and old man!. I’m not spending the night in the bath scrubbing my skin raw to remove the smell.”
“And now I feel tired too.”
“But… but… tired. And why are you grabbing my arm so close like that?”
“Persuasion power. Resistance is futile, SOLDIER boy.”
“Guh! I feel my mind being muddled.”
“Hate to admit it, but Aeris might be right about some things.”
“Um… but doesn’t all this count as entertainment? Depending on what yanks someone’s crank? I know I fight for a living, but in my case, it’s more of a job. But Dio’s all about the murderdome. One man enters, maybe one man leaves if he’s good enough.”
“Ooh, theater. Let’s go, Cloud.”
“Why me? I just wanted to sleep.”
“Urgh! I’m regretting this more and more.”
“Valvados stole all the beds of the world, and for that, he must pay!”
“Ohoho, someone’s getting into the spirit of things.”
“Princess Rosa, you say?”
“Yes, Princess Rosa.”
“And this Rosa is a Princess?”
“Yes, Princess Rosa is a Princess.”
“And this Princess Rosa’s name is Rosa?”
“Ye-… dude, please work with me, legendary hero Alfred.”
“So, who am I saving Princess Rosa from again?”
“We need to make sure that both parties are into these things when we accept couples taking part in our theater setups in the future.”
“Also, my dear hero, can we please keep this child-friendly?”
“You say that, but let her keep wearing the tight top with suspenders over her chest, and a short skirt?”
“Um… right. Mental note: have easy-to-wear costumes ready for the occasion for any unforeseen guest roles.”
“Pahaha, yeah, I’d like to see you try harming her.”
“Um… Cloud, could you try to get a little into your role, at least?”
“I know you wanted me to come rescue you and all, but I didn’t imagine it would be like this.”
“That’s not… *sigh* …I mean…”
“I regret everything.”
“You do not fool me, Mr. Knight. I know you are the one who stole all the sleep in the world. If I am to get any rest, I must defeat you.”
“He’s getting into this for all the wrong reasons.”
“Ah, sweet rest at last.”
“Uh oh. Wait, this is just….”
“Ow, my tail hurts.”
“Oof, she’s not done yet. Fun?! I thought you hated everything I did back there.”
“Yeah, well… I… guess I realized that I pulled you into something you didn’t want to do for my own entertainment, and I didn’t even think to ask you if you like being on stage. Which, come to think of it, you don’t… if I remember how you were back when we were kids. So… would you mind if we went for a gondola ride?”
“I don’t mind. Gondolas are calm.”
“Great.”
“It’s a bit tacky. Fireworks are nice, though.”
“Boo. You’re not a romantic at all.”
“I’m romanticapped.”
“You gotta work on your capacity.”
“Kick it into high gear.”
“I’ll make sure to keep abreast of the situation.”
“Well, anyway…. this is vastly more pleasant than the theater shenanigans, even if I kind of enjoyed how it ended.”
“Ahah, yeah, glad to hear that at least.”
“I mean… you don’t confess when you’re both standing knee-deep in chocobo manure unless you got very special interests, right?”
“Uh… I guess?”
“Or when you’re running the chocobo breeding program.”
“Yes, well… Tifa, you’re kind of starting to scare me here.”
“Yep. Timing sure is everything.”
“……”
“I went to far in my analogies and ruined the moment. Let’s… uh, let’s get back on this gondola ride later.”
“Ah, back to my room, my place of rest.”
“Don’t say it like that. You’re making me want to… sabotage it.”
“Is this… revenge from me cracking that ‘next to you’ joke?”
“Mmmmmaybe? Maybe not?”
“……”
“……”
“Uh oh.”
“That chopper looks familiar.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it before too.”
“SHINRA!”
“Just before the plate fell.”
“All those people….”
“But a lot of things have happened, Mr. Shinra Spy. Quite a lot.”
“And very few of those things speak well of you, Mr. Shinra Spy.”
“Kill you, huh? Like Shinra killed all those people in the slums?”
“That was a low blow.”
“Yes. Yes, it was. The lowest.”
“How exactly are we not? You’ve been reporting our location to the enemies all this time, and thanks to you, we now don’t have the keystone anymore.”
“And you’re the one who says talking isn’t going to do anyone any good, but whose fault is that?”
“Um… technically, I’m not a spy. That’s just how it turned out.”
“No, normally, you’re a fortune teller. Did you foretell that we’d totally forgive everything that’s been going on so far?”
“….and things got even worse.”
“Please tell me you really work in PR. Because if your fortune telling is any indication of your overall capabilities, that’s the only thing that makes sense right now.”
“Well, you two aced your sarcasm class, at least. That’s the easy part, though.”
“Rrrgh! So much cowardice.”
“You didn’t want to do it, but you went and did it anyway.”
“And where did you plan for us to go when you stole our only means of getting in where we planned to enter in the first place, you stupid asshole?”
“Erm… whoops. Look, I got my priorities, OK? So let’s just go somewhere.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“They’re really just going to leave the door open, huh?”
“Taking away the reason for someone to go there, yet expecting us to take the journey anyway. Is this a Shinra thing? Making everyone not high up on the social ladder do things that makes us feel all empty inside?”
“Oh, you have NO idea.”
“What’s wrong, you two? You’re glaring daggers at our mascot here.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Yeah, we were just thinking of the people we left behind when we started on this big journey.”
“Or how we can’t go back to that place anymore.”
“Man, why’d you bring that up now?”
“Well, gee, I wonder why.”
“Well, are we going or are we going? We haven’t got a moment to lose, no?”
“You and me both, Yuffie. You and me both.”
“I don’t know why, but you agreeing with me like that is creeping me out a bit.”
“You’re just imagining things.”
“I just hope the place hasn’t been looted to the ground yet.”
“Why would it? We have the key, remember? Hey, where is it, by the way.”
“Oh, Cait Sith here’s got all that covered. Right?”
“I sure do. Now, let’s roll.”
“And so, we moved. That should be the temple too, I think?”
“Let’s sneak up quietly and knock.”
“Maybe they’ll let us in if we ask really nicely.”
*cough*
“You two sure are being creepy. What’s going on?”
“Yeah. You haven’t smiled once since last night, and you’re acting weirdly synchroneously too.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Stop that!”
“And now Aeris is acting all creepy too. That’s just great.”
“We normal people have to stick together.”
“While I appreciate the sentiment, I’m not sure I like hearing that from you.”
“That’s cold, man.”
“I’m not a man, so I’m allowed.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Hush. Don’t interrupt my crazy talk.”
“I don’t understand either.”
“I understand that I’m very confused right now.”
“Wedgies? Is that really necessary? I know they’re being rude and all that, but it’s a bit much, right?”
“Oh, don’t you get started with me.”
“Knee to the groin? This is getting more and more over the top as we speak.”
“Oh, stop that!”
“Oh great, we’re back to that again.”
“Did we meet up with ‘number nine’ here in the creepily rebuilt version of Nibelheim?”
“I dunno. Maybe he was off to SALTZA!”
“But more importantly, why is the front door open?”
“Yes, why?”
“Is Cait Sith’s cover blown for the others as well? Can there be no redemption for those who lie and blackmail? Or even worse: does their fortune telling act? Only the Men in Black know for sure.”
“Tseng of the Turks has been tricked!”
“Oh, the humanity.”
“What is the world coming to when even the tricksy ones have been tricked? How do you out-trick the out-tricker?”
“OK, FINE! I WAS THE ONE WHO DID IT! I blackmailed them with the sound of Marlene, and now they’re doing what I want. Just… just stop this incessant hinting.”
“Yeah, Cloud and Tifa. Stop it. You’re just being mean now.”
“I just… why?!”
“There is no justice in this world anymore.”