Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ sore kara... ❯ hanareru ( Chapter 13 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: awwaw 
Non Anime: Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 02.18.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 2.9K | Visits: 189 | Status: Completed
Non Anime: Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Action | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 02.18.2003 | Pages: 3 | Words: 2.9K | Visits: 189 | Status: Completed
Standard disclaimers apply.
-------------------------------
sore kara...
-------------------------------
hanareru
He jolted into awareness with a dull pain by the side of his right hip. Needless to say, the first thing he saw was the sky. The pale blue, crisp and refreshing, happy and sunny sky.
If his right hip was hurting so much, this had got to be real.
With a bit of pushing, he managed to get himself to sit up against a rock conveniently situated nearby. So he hadn't smashed into the large stone when he came falling down onto the ground. How nice.
"Cloud?" The disorientated teenager backed up against the rough edges of the rock and stood up. "Zidane? Kuja?"
The empty silence in the form of a stoic wind greeted him back.
Cursing, he took a step forward and almost didn't manage to fall over. Yeah, had to do something about that pain in the rib or he'd probably have to resort to crawling soon.
Squall found most of his junctions intact, so he conveniently picked a cure spell and randomly cast it on himself, waiting a while for effect to take place. When he felt confident enough to finally try walking again, his eyes were also focused enough to take in the surroundings, which he had forgotten to do so while dealing with pain previously.
He breathed, and came close to falling to the ground again.
It was a well-sized crater he was sitting in, the center of the deep cut in the ground still smoking away, as if a meteor just hit it; which wasn't exactly untrue, in a weird kind of way. Remains of monsters littered around the gigantic crater, some still twitching away, others twisted and mangled beyond proper classification. All of them were charred and smokey.
The impact must have caused a lot of friction. Fire was still blazing on dried ground in various areas around Squall.
*Most of the monsters must have gotten out of the crater already.* Squall thought to himself as he let his gaze slowly shift upwards. *The amount lying around here doesn't even constitute a small fraction of what I saw drop down... hmm... I wonder how long I've been lying here... how come none of the monsters attacked me when I was out?*
A sound from behind attracted his attention.
"I see Mr. 2-times-Sleeping-Beauty has finally come to." Footsteps became louder and louder. Squall spun around, hand on hilt, just in case the entity was unfriendly. He heard a decidedly familiar laugh. "Calm down, boy. Unless you're trying to tell me G.F.s have taken over memories of me in your mind."
The silver-haired man - all soiled and dusty - emerged into the sunlight from the shadows. He crossed his arms and leaned on one leg.
"Kuja!" Squall exclaimed, almost laughing. How could he ever forget the man who stocked Ultimas like nobody's business? He managed to get over in a jiffy.
The ex-villian only held up a hand. "No questions about dust and dirt! I am SO angry!" He flicked his tresses vainly, in a futile attempt to get stubborn looking brown spots out of them. As he continued grumbling, Squall took the opportunity to re-examine the mangled remains of monsters lying around them; as well as the physically impossible fire which was around anyway.
As if hitting a revelation, he turned back and asked, "These monsters... you-"
"-roasted them, yes." Kuja was still busy preening himself. "Couldn't just let them eat you up, could we." He chuckled.
The dark-haired teenager sweatdropped at how casually Kuja had put it. He continued to brood quietly while Kuja took on various interesting routines to clean himself up - no to avail, of course. Finally, as the sun neared setting, the vain man gave up and sighed, sitting down beside Squall, who had already sat down a long time ago and was still brooding quietly. He got a nudge in his ribcage.
"................. yes?" He asked.
"Are we going to stay here forever?" The incredulous tone in Kuja's voice told him that the answer was already chosen for him before he even heard the question. "I wanna go find a lake somewhere and wash up... or something."
".......... what about Cloud and Zidane?" Squall brought up his doubts after a short pause. Kuja merely snorted.
"Those two monkeys can take care of themselves," he turned away, making Squall unable to view his expressions as he continued, "I hope." Immediately after that, he clapped his hands and stood up, giving the morose and slow teenager a shock. "All right, no more sit-and-brood sessions. The sooner we get out of this place, the sooner I get to clean up." He stared down at the still shocked Squall. "Hurry up, will you?! This is YOUR planet in YOUR time, isn't it? I know *I* have never heard of Lunar Cries in Terra during MY time..."
Climbing slowly to his feet, Squall shook his head, "If Zidane hasn't tried any funny prophesying yet, then yeah, I'd agree it's probably still my time. It really is very hard to tell, isn't it." He almost laughed when he saw Kuja's Death-Glare. Turning around to face the steep walls of the crater, he continued, "How do you propose getting out?"
"Oh, it's no problem for me." Kuja shrugged and effortlessly lifted himself into the air. "No problem for you either, non?"
Squall's face turned blue. "Yeah... sure..." Using Float was never his choice for air travel - you never knew when the spell was going to backfire on you. With a crater so *DEEP*, Squall really didn't feel like challenging the time limits of the awkward spell. But with Kuja Looking at him like that, it was really very hard to explain his difficulties; however sound they appeared.
He prepared to cast Float. And he knew it was going to be a long way out.
-------------------------------
"Monsters... monsters... and more monsters!!" Zidane whined, turning around to cut down a few more brave ones that had followed him in the upward climb. "I've had enough!! Cloud! Are you going to come back down here to help me or what?!"
He received no answer from the blond mercenary, who stood at an outcrop at the top of the hill Zidane was attempting to scale while beating down random groups of monsters. The sun had aleady begun setting. There must be something really interesting to see up there.
"Why do I always have to be left out of everything?!" Zidane stopped running away from the monsters and spun around to face the cohort that had been hot on his heels. Built up anger and tension from within him released a strange energy throughout his body, causing a strange red glow to emit. Through enlightened eyes and recharged powers, Zidane called upon abilities of the inner darkness to remove the nuisances in front of him. Forbidden texts echoed throughout the vast land, criss-crossing one another to produce strong waves of energy targetted at the now confused and helpless monsters.
Solution 9 rained down hard.
When Zidane regained composure, not one of the monsters stood.
And Cloud was still staring into space at the top of the hill outcrop.
"Cloud!" Zidane stormed quickly towards the mercenary in a rage. "Are you listening to me?! What's so interesting about barren landscape? You know I could have used some help back there with those stupid monsters, if you weren't so caught up in sight-seeing. Hey! Are you listening at all??"
He stopped short just behind his companion, looking over his shoulder to take in the evening scene with frustration coursing through his veins. It was, as mentioned, merely a piece of barren land, all greenery almost gone when the onslaught of monsters came dropping down previously. Zidane vaguely remember letting go of the Torama just before it hit the ground. Everything else was a blur as he tried to avoid the stampede which had immediately followed. It was during the monster stampede that he spotted Cloud up the hill, which he then chose to climb, as did a few other monsters who noticed him.
There really wasn't anything nice about the scene at all. This prompted Zidane to shoot Cloud another impatient look. He had a million things to say, ask, and do, but standing on a hill and watching the sunset passively was not terribly high on that list right now.
As he prepared to open his mouth to say something, Cloud pointed slowly towards an undefined direction somewhere near the setting sun. "Do you see that?" He asked rather tersely, almost whispering.
The monkey stared at the sun. "Yeah, nice sunset." He shrugged indifferently.
"No, no, not the sunset. THAT." He stiffened his arm and pointed again. Zidane frowned and looked again in the direction stated. Still, he saw nothing but the sunset.
"Is this a trick question?" The frustrated thief rolled his eyes. "I ONLY see the sunset, Cloud. I don't have super-sonic glowing blue eyes like yours, in case you've forgotten."
Cloud turned to look at the boy with his standard spastic expression, not saying a word, probably too busy thinking. He blinked, turning back to look at the sunset.
"Well, do you see it now?" He pointed again.
Zidane's entire body slumped. He snapped up quickly enough though, for a rebut, saying, "Cloud, just tell me what is it you see! What's so hard about that? I obviously can't see what you're seeing, and it's probably sub-atomic anyway, so why don't you just tell me! Just. Tell me!"
"I don't know what it is, that's why I'm asking you to see it, duh." Cloud frowned, but still had his gaze fixed on something in the distance. "Let's see... it's small, grey, wobbly, has wheels, and is heading this way."
At that, Zidane turned and peeked closer into the sunset. True to Cloud's words, there was a small, grey, wobbly vehicle-like thing moving their way. It was still very far away, but against the backdrop of a strong, blaring sunset, it soon became painfully obvious that it was the only thing that was seemingly alive around the carnage and wreckage caused by the Lunar Cry.
After a short, mutual silence, Zidane turned to look at his older counterpart. "The answer is, A -- It's a car. What do we do now?"
Cloud breathed deeply and turned his lower lip. "Which is more logical? Jumping off the cliff when the car's nearby to land on it's roof, or walking down the cliff and hope that the car stops for us?"
Zidane's face turned very blue. "If you're thinking of option one, I suggest you do it yourself." He sighed, and began walking down the hill. "I still got lotsa skirts to chase, ya' know."
"I knew you'd say that," the blond mercenary laughed and followed him down the hill, "but we gotta make life a little more interesting sometimes, don't you think?"
The monkey gave the mercenary the closest match to what he had of a disgruntled look. "Hello?!" He began, sarcasm dripping off his voice. "We just dropped down from the moon with about 1 billion other monsters and NOW you're telling me we gotta add MORE spice into our lives??" He grabbed Cloud's hair and started shaking. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!? IS THERE ANYTHING UP THERE AT ALL?!?"
Throughout the whole course of conversation, they had unwittingly made their way down the hill and were standing right in the middle of a hastily cleared road, mostly made with fresh vehicle wheel marks. As Zidane continued shaking Cloud for response, the vehicle they had seen earlier came closer and closer; until it was dangerously close.
It was at this 'dangerously close' distance that Cloud and Zidane both turned around and realized that they were about to become car putty in a matter of split seconds.
And so did the driver.
A loud screech echoed throughout the valley, all the way across the vast, dried plains. From very far away, a cloud of dust was visible in the ridge area near the cliff Cloud and Zidane had stood on. If there were people around, everybody would have been attracted to the area by value of that horrendous sound (you know, fingernails scratching on glass boards?). Fortunately, monsters were mostly tone-deaf; and beautiful music like a vehicle slamming it's emergency throttles at full force in less than a second didn't really appeal to their ravenous desires. Therefore, the moment of suspense passed soon enough. The cloud of dust disipitated slowly into the air.
"You lads okay?" The driver of the vehicle - a pudgy man with slits for eyes - quickly came out of his car to examine the damage. What he found was two very shocked, but otherwise very okay-looking blonds picking themselves off the ground.
"Yeah, thanks." Zidane beamed cheerfully. "Managed to leap out of the way in time."
"Phew!" Cloud put a hand over his heart, sighing in relief. "A day in the life of Cloud and Zidane in the wonderful Planet of Terra. Day 1: We got knocked down by a car -- end of story."
For that, he earned a flying kick from the irritated monkey boy.
The driver sweatdropped, then asked, "What are you lads doing out in a nobody-land like this? Thought we were the last family to be leaving Centra..."
"Actually, we..." Zidane began, then stopped to think. Dropped down from the moon with the other monsters in the Lunar Cry? That would hardly sound like what someone in the right frame of mind would say, really. Instead, therefore, he continued, "... we're kindda lost. We saw your vehicle from a distance and thought of hitching a hike, so..."
"Hitching a hike, eh..." The old man stroked his beard thoughtfully, seemingly unable to make a decision. "... I have no qualms with that and I really do think it's the right thing to do, but the back of the car is already ful-"
"Chief!" A young voice called out.
All 3 of them then spun around to see a young boy of 7 or so with long, lush black hair hop down from the back of the vehicle through a small door and run quickly towards where they were.
Huffing and puffing, he pointed and asked, "Who're they?"
The driver merely laughed heartily, amused at the question; or maybe it was just the boy alone. "Just a couple of hitch-hikers, looking for a ride to the city, Laguna."
"Oh." The boy - Laguna, looked decidedly disappointed. "Not bad guys?" He asked to confirm, staring at the pudgy driver with large, innocent eyes. The driver laughed again.
"No, Laguna. Not bad guys. Not people we should fight against."
"Oh." Went Laguna again. Less than a split second later, he perked up instantaneously and gestured towards the back of the vehicle, where there seemingly was a door of sorts. "Well, what're you waiting for then? Get on! We're going to the city!!" He said in a almost sing-song mehtod. Cloud and Zidane looked at one another, before turning to look helplessly at the driver.
The man was already taking small steps towards the energetic boy, holding his hands up in the event. "Laguna, it's not as simple as that! We haven't got enough space in the car..."
"Who said anything about going into the car?" The boy cut the driver off halfway through and pouted. He then pointed again, this time at the roof of the car, making the driver gape in disbelief. "Up there! We've got enough room for 3 there!"
"Three?" Cloud frowned. He saw the young boy nod enthusiastically.
"Yeah! You, him, and ME!" He jumped up and down in joy. "OOooooH! I've ALWAYS wanted to know what it's like riding up on the roof of the car!!" Without delay, he made off for the side of the vehicle, using the metal ladder attached there for leverage. Cloud and Zidane merely watched on in numb confusion. They turned back to the driver, awaiting instructions.
"Oh well." The driver shook his head and adjusted his hat. "There's no stopping what that boy wants to do, so... do me a favour, would you?" He looked sheepishly at the two blonds in front of him. "Help me take care of that silly boy up there? He acts like a dork most of the time, and gets us all sick worrying... but he's got a bright future ahead of him... can't just let him fall off the roof and his future fall with him like that." He winked, wisdom and foresight twinkling in his eyes.
Taken slightly aback by the sudden request, but knowing that refusing it would mean refusing a ride away from the ruins and into civilization, Cloud nodded, if only a little too patronizing. Zidane, standing behind still with that big grin on his face which said, 'Leave it to us, Old Cowboy!', nodded as well.
"All right then, let's go before the monsters come!" The driver hurriedly re-entered the driver's seat, allowing some time for both newcomers to climb atop to the roof before re-starting the engine.
Soon, they were on their way again.
"Hey, Laguna!" Zidane grinned and saluted, earning a grin and salute back from Laguna as well. Cloud sighed inwardly, wondering where children and teenagers got all the energy from.
Nevertheless, he scraped up enough of his last bits of vitality to ask, "So... where're we headed for?"
Laguna pointed north.
"To a little country called Timber on the continent of Galbadia."
-------------------------------
hanareta
2 7/7/01
http://cloud-is.ourfamily.com/
-------------------------------
sore kara...
-------------------------------
hanareru
He jolted into awareness with a dull pain by the side of his right hip. Needless to say, the first thing he saw was the sky. The pale blue, crisp and refreshing, happy and sunny sky.
If his right hip was hurting so much, this had got to be real.
With a bit of pushing, he managed to get himself to sit up against a rock conveniently situated nearby. So he hadn't smashed into the large stone when he came falling down onto the ground. How nice.
"Cloud?" The disorientated teenager backed up against the rough edges of the rock and stood up. "Zidane? Kuja?"
The empty silence in the form of a stoic wind greeted him back.
Cursing, he took a step forward and almost didn't manage to fall over. Yeah, had to do something about that pain in the rib or he'd probably have to resort to crawling soon.
Squall found most of his junctions intact, so he conveniently picked a cure spell and randomly cast it on himself, waiting a while for effect to take place. When he felt confident enough to finally try walking again, his eyes were also focused enough to take in the surroundings, which he had forgotten to do so while dealing with pain previously.
He breathed, and came close to falling to the ground again.
It was a well-sized crater he was sitting in, the center of the deep cut in the ground still smoking away, as if a meteor just hit it; which wasn't exactly untrue, in a weird kind of way. Remains of monsters littered around the gigantic crater, some still twitching away, others twisted and mangled beyond proper classification. All of them were charred and smokey.
The impact must have caused a lot of friction. Fire was still blazing on dried ground in various areas around Squall.
*Most of the monsters must have gotten out of the crater already.* Squall thought to himself as he let his gaze slowly shift upwards. *The amount lying around here doesn't even constitute a small fraction of what I saw drop down... hmm... I wonder how long I've been lying here... how come none of the monsters attacked me when I was out?*
A sound from behind attracted his attention.
"I see Mr. 2-times-Sleeping-Beauty has finally come to." Footsteps became louder and louder. Squall spun around, hand on hilt, just in case the entity was unfriendly. He heard a decidedly familiar laugh. "Calm down, boy. Unless you're trying to tell me G.F.s have taken over memories of me in your mind."
The silver-haired man - all soiled and dusty - emerged into the sunlight from the shadows. He crossed his arms and leaned on one leg.
"Kuja!" Squall exclaimed, almost laughing. How could he ever forget the man who stocked Ultimas like nobody's business? He managed to get over in a jiffy.
The ex-villian only held up a hand. "No questions about dust and dirt! I am SO angry!" He flicked his tresses vainly, in a futile attempt to get stubborn looking brown spots out of them. As he continued grumbling, Squall took the opportunity to re-examine the mangled remains of monsters lying around them; as well as the physically impossible fire which was around anyway.
As if hitting a revelation, he turned back and asked, "These monsters... you-"
"-roasted them, yes." Kuja was still busy preening himself. "Couldn't just let them eat you up, could we." He chuckled.
The dark-haired teenager sweatdropped at how casually Kuja had put it. He continued to brood quietly while Kuja took on various interesting routines to clean himself up - no to avail, of course. Finally, as the sun neared setting, the vain man gave up and sighed, sitting down beside Squall, who had already sat down a long time ago and was still brooding quietly. He got a nudge in his ribcage.
"................. yes?" He asked.
"Are we going to stay here forever?" The incredulous tone in Kuja's voice told him that the answer was already chosen for him before he even heard the question. "I wanna go find a lake somewhere and wash up... or something."
".......... what about Cloud and Zidane?" Squall brought up his doubts after a short pause. Kuja merely snorted.
"Those two monkeys can take care of themselves," he turned away, making Squall unable to view his expressions as he continued, "I hope." Immediately after that, he clapped his hands and stood up, giving the morose and slow teenager a shock. "All right, no more sit-and-brood sessions. The sooner we get out of this place, the sooner I get to clean up." He stared down at the still shocked Squall. "Hurry up, will you?! This is YOUR planet in YOUR time, isn't it? I know *I* have never heard of Lunar Cries in Terra during MY time..."
Climbing slowly to his feet, Squall shook his head, "If Zidane hasn't tried any funny prophesying yet, then yeah, I'd agree it's probably still my time. It really is very hard to tell, isn't it." He almost laughed when he saw Kuja's Death-Glare. Turning around to face the steep walls of the crater, he continued, "How do you propose getting out?"
"Oh, it's no problem for me." Kuja shrugged and effortlessly lifted himself into the air. "No problem for you either, non?"
Squall's face turned blue. "Yeah... sure..." Using Float was never his choice for air travel - you never knew when the spell was going to backfire on you. With a crater so *DEEP*, Squall really didn't feel like challenging the time limits of the awkward spell. But with Kuja Looking at him like that, it was really very hard to explain his difficulties; however sound they appeared.
He prepared to cast Float. And he knew it was going to be a long way out.
-------------------------------
"Monsters... monsters... and more monsters!!" Zidane whined, turning around to cut down a few more brave ones that had followed him in the upward climb. "I've had enough!! Cloud! Are you going to come back down here to help me or what?!"
He received no answer from the blond mercenary, who stood at an outcrop at the top of the hill Zidane was attempting to scale while beating down random groups of monsters. The sun had aleady begun setting. There must be something really interesting to see up there.
"Why do I always have to be left out of everything?!" Zidane stopped running away from the monsters and spun around to face the cohort that had been hot on his heels. Built up anger and tension from within him released a strange energy throughout his body, causing a strange red glow to emit. Through enlightened eyes and recharged powers, Zidane called upon abilities of the inner darkness to remove the nuisances in front of him. Forbidden texts echoed throughout the vast land, criss-crossing one another to produce strong waves of energy targetted at the now confused and helpless monsters.
Solution 9 rained down hard.
When Zidane regained composure, not one of the monsters stood.
And Cloud was still staring into space at the top of the hill outcrop.
"Cloud!" Zidane stormed quickly towards the mercenary in a rage. "Are you listening to me?! What's so interesting about barren landscape? You know I could have used some help back there with those stupid monsters, if you weren't so caught up in sight-seeing. Hey! Are you listening at all??"
He stopped short just behind his companion, looking over his shoulder to take in the evening scene with frustration coursing through his veins. It was, as mentioned, merely a piece of barren land, all greenery almost gone when the onslaught of monsters came dropping down previously. Zidane vaguely remember letting go of the Torama just before it hit the ground. Everything else was a blur as he tried to avoid the stampede which had immediately followed. It was during the monster stampede that he spotted Cloud up the hill, which he then chose to climb, as did a few other monsters who noticed him.
There really wasn't anything nice about the scene at all. This prompted Zidane to shoot Cloud another impatient look. He had a million things to say, ask, and do, but standing on a hill and watching the sunset passively was not terribly high on that list right now.
As he prepared to open his mouth to say something, Cloud pointed slowly towards an undefined direction somewhere near the setting sun. "Do you see that?" He asked rather tersely, almost whispering.
The monkey stared at the sun. "Yeah, nice sunset." He shrugged indifferently.
"No, no, not the sunset. THAT." He stiffened his arm and pointed again. Zidane frowned and looked again in the direction stated. Still, he saw nothing but the sunset.
"Is this a trick question?" The frustrated thief rolled his eyes. "I ONLY see the sunset, Cloud. I don't have super-sonic glowing blue eyes like yours, in case you've forgotten."
Cloud turned to look at the boy with his standard spastic expression, not saying a word, probably too busy thinking. He blinked, turning back to look at the sunset.
"Well, do you see it now?" He pointed again.
Zidane's entire body slumped. He snapped up quickly enough though, for a rebut, saying, "Cloud, just tell me what is it you see! What's so hard about that? I obviously can't see what you're seeing, and it's probably sub-atomic anyway, so why don't you just tell me! Just. Tell me!"
"I don't know what it is, that's why I'm asking you to see it, duh." Cloud frowned, but still had his gaze fixed on something in the distance. "Let's see... it's small, grey, wobbly, has wheels, and is heading this way."
At that, Zidane turned and peeked closer into the sunset. True to Cloud's words, there was a small, grey, wobbly vehicle-like thing moving their way. It was still very far away, but against the backdrop of a strong, blaring sunset, it soon became painfully obvious that it was the only thing that was seemingly alive around the carnage and wreckage caused by the Lunar Cry.
After a short, mutual silence, Zidane turned to look at his older counterpart. "The answer is, A -- It's a car. What do we do now?"
Cloud breathed deeply and turned his lower lip. "Which is more logical? Jumping off the cliff when the car's nearby to land on it's roof, or walking down the cliff and hope that the car stops for us?"
Zidane's face turned very blue. "If you're thinking of option one, I suggest you do it yourself." He sighed, and began walking down the hill. "I still got lotsa skirts to chase, ya' know."
"I knew you'd say that," the blond mercenary laughed and followed him down the hill, "but we gotta make life a little more interesting sometimes, don't you think?"
The monkey gave the mercenary the closest match to what he had of a disgruntled look. "Hello?!" He began, sarcasm dripping off his voice. "We just dropped down from the moon with about 1 billion other monsters and NOW you're telling me we gotta add MORE spice into our lives??" He grabbed Cloud's hair and started shaking. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!? IS THERE ANYTHING UP THERE AT ALL?!?"
Throughout the whole course of conversation, they had unwittingly made their way down the hill and were standing right in the middle of a hastily cleared road, mostly made with fresh vehicle wheel marks. As Zidane continued shaking Cloud for response, the vehicle they had seen earlier came closer and closer; until it was dangerously close.
It was at this 'dangerously close' distance that Cloud and Zidane both turned around and realized that they were about to become car putty in a matter of split seconds.
And so did the driver.
A loud screech echoed throughout the valley, all the way across the vast, dried plains. From very far away, a cloud of dust was visible in the ridge area near the cliff Cloud and Zidane had stood on. If there were people around, everybody would have been attracted to the area by value of that horrendous sound (you know, fingernails scratching on glass boards?). Fortunately, monsters were mostly tone-deaf; and beautiful music like a vehicle slamming it's emergency throttles at full force in less than a second didn't really appeal to their ravenous desires. Therefore, the moment of suspense passed soon enough. The cloud of dust disipitated slowly into the air.
"You lads okay?" The driver of the vehicle - a pudgy man with slits for eyes - quickly came out of his car to examine the damage. What he found was two very shocked, but otherwise very okay-looking blonds picking themselves off the ground.
"Yeah, thanks." Zidane beamed cheerfully. "Managed to leap out of the way in time."
"Phew!" Cloud put a hand over his heart, sighing in relief. "A day in the life of Cloud and Zidane in the wonderful Planet of Terra. Day 1: We got knocked down by a car -- end of story."
For that, he earned a flying kick from the irritated monkey boy.
The driver sweatdropped, then asked, "What are you lads doing out in a nobody-land like this? Thought we were the last family to be leaving Centra..."
"Actually, we..." Zidane began, then stopped to think. Dropped down from the moon with the other monsters in the Lunar Cry? That would hardly sound like what someone in the right frame of mind would say, really. Instead, therefore, he continued, "... we're kindda lost. We saw your vehicle from a distance and thought of hitching a hike, so..."
"Hitching a hike, eh..." The old man stroked his beard thoughtfully, seemingly unable to make a decision. "... I have no qualms with that and I really do think it's the right thing to do, but the back of the car is already ful-"
"Chief!" A young voice called out.
All 3 of them then spun around to see a young boy of 7 or so with long, lush black hair hop down from the back of the vehicle through a small door and run quickly towards where they were.
Huffing and puffing, he pointed and asked, "Who're they?"
The driver merely laughed heartily, amused at the question; or maybe it was just the boy alone. "Just a couple of hitch-hikers, looking for a ride to the city, Laguna."
"Oh." The boy - Laguna, looked decidedly disappointed. "Not bad guys?" He asked to confirm, staring at the pudgy driver with large, innocent eyes. The driver laughed again.
"No, Laguna. Not bad guys. Not people we should fight against."
"Oh." Went Laguna again. Less than a split second later, he perked up instantaneously and gestured towards the back of the vehicle, where there seemingly was a door of sorts. "Well, what're you waiting for then? Get on! We're going to the city!!" He said in a almost sing-song mehtod. Cloud and Zidane looked at one another, before turning to look helplessly at the driver.
The man was already taking small steps towards the energetic boy, holding his hands up in the event. "Laguna, it's not as simple as that! We haven't got enough space in the car..."
"Who said anything about going into the car?" The boy cut the driver off halfway through and pouted. He then pointed again, this time at the roof of the car, making the driver gape in disbelief. "Up there! We've got enough room for 3 there!"
"Three?" Cloud frowned. He saw the young boy nod enthusiastically.
"Yeah! You, him, and ME!" He jumped up and down in joy. "OOooooH! I've ALWAYS wanted to know what it's like riding up on the roof of the car!!" Without delay, he made off for the side of the vehicle, using the metal ladder attached there for leverage. Cloud and Zidane merely watched on in numb confusion. They turned back to the driver, awaiting instructions.
"Oh well." The driver shook his head and adjusted his hat. "There's no stopping what that boy wants to do, so... do me a favour, would you?" He looked sheepishly at the two blonds in front of him. "Help me take care of that silly boy up there? He acts like a dork most of the time, and gets us all sick worrying... but he's got a bright future ahead of him... can't just let him fall off the roof and his future fall with him like that." He winked, wisdom and foresight twinkling in his eyes.
Taken slightly aback by the sudden request, but knowing that refusing it would mean refusing a ride away from the ruins and into civilization, Cloud nodded, if only a little too patronizing. Zidane, standing behind still with that big grin on his face which said, 'Leave it to us, Old Cowboy!', nodded as well.
"All right then, let's go before the monsters come!" The driver hurriedly re-entered the driver's seat, allowing some time for both newcomers to climb atop to the roof before re-starting the engine.
Soon, they were on their way again.
"Hey, Laguna!" Zidane grinned and saluted, earning a grin and salute back from Laguna as well. Cloud sighed inwardly, wondering where children and teenagers got all the energy from.
Nevertheless, he scraped up enough of his last bits of vitality to ask, "So... where're we headed for?"
Laguna pointed north.
"To a little country called Timber on the continent of Galbadia."
-------------------------------
hanareta
2 7/7/01
http://cloud-is.ourfamily.com/