fic: all your base are belong to us - ch.3 (ffvii)
All Your Base Are Belong to Us
Chapter 3
Written 19 December 2007
"Kid’s blond, he can’t help it. Maybe it’s the face-if you weren’t so damn cute, kiddo, maybe you wouldn’t have this problem. It’s the whole shoot-me-I’m-just-that-unbearably-adorable-and-wide-eyed thing you’ve got going, it’s like mating pheromones for sociopaths and serial killers and creepy Japanese businessmen."
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Strands of blackened skin hung down in tatters over bleached white bone, and hooves like dark stone were unnaturally silent against the ground. They seemed to flow rather than walk, behaving more like pools of shadow than corporeal matter.
Leon and Cloud stopped and looked at the thestrals. Cloud saw them, and thought that maybe they were the bastard lovechildren of Hojo or Snape; Leon saw them, and thought that maybe he’d suddenly found God.
Dumbledore and Snape paused and looked back, wondering why the other two had paused at the edge of Hogwarts’ grounds. Both were staring at the herd of thestrals grazing innocently at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, one in abject disgust and the other ready to fall to his knees in ecstasy.
“Headmaster,” said Snape very calmly, when the besotted expression didn’t immediately leave Leonhart’s normally blank face, “if I am forced to witness those things that only the most depraved of Death Eaters would do to an animal, and of which I can only suspect Hagrid, then I will kill you. Painfully. And no one will ever know what became of your corpse.”
But Leon couldn’t help it. Dalmatian puppies were cute and all, but he’d lived with a goddess of ice and death in the back of his head since he hit puberty, and…well, no one ever accused him of being a very normal person anyway. Rinoa certainly hadn’t; for some reason, his showing up for dinner at a nice restaurant without first taking a shower to wash off the enemy’s blood had made her scream shrilly in horror. He didn’t understand why a Sorceress would mind, especially since other SeeDs couldn’t care less, and he’d been careful not to stain the table linens.
“Pretty,” he murmured, a little dazedly. It took Cloud giving him a strange look-and when Cloud gave you a strange look, then you really knew you were doing something fucked up-to make Leon shake his head and come back to his senses.
“Those are thestrals,” said Dumbledore from behind Leon’s shoulder. The brunet twitched but didn’t bother wondering anymore how the man knew what he was thinking or how he seemed to just randomly appear. “Only those who have seen death can see them as well. Many people consider them ill omens, but I believe Hagrid treats them as a rather odd species of fuzzy pet. This one is Cupcake.”
Cloud could feel the wing on his shoulder shifting as though it had a mind of its own, no doubt the Darkness in his body reacting to these Avatars Of Death And Horribly Dark Horrors. He took a few steps away from the eerily silent herd towards the castle rising from the land beside a huge lake, and abruptly felt a sizzling shock like a Bolt spell.
“OWFUCKSHIT!”
Without thinking, one of the evil presences in his head reached out for the Darkness in his heart and twisted, making the world tilt precariously for a split second. Then he stumbled inelegantly backwards as the Zack-voice snickered away merrily, several meters from where he’d been shocked.
“Mr. Strife, my dear boy, I did not realize you were so sensitive to magic,” Dumbledore smiled, but Cloud didn’t miss the expression of interest so like the one he’d worn when Leon had put on his little ice show at the Black manor. “The wards on this side of the castle extend to right about where we are now standing. I believe that was Hogwarts’ way of greeting you.”
Cloud silently fumed about stupid sentient buildings and if there were going to be chattering candelabras and scowling clocks then he was going to Omnislash their copper-plated asses.
“Strife,” Leon was saying very carefully, as though measuring his words to find the best place to kill with them, “you said you couldn’t teleport anymore.”
“No I didn’t.” It came out more defensively than he would’ve liked.
“That’s what you told Tifa.”
“Only so she wouldn’t keep trying to wrap my head in warm towels.”
Thestrals entirely forgotten, Leon stalked forward (shivering a little as he passed the alleged line of wards) and twisted a hand in Cloud’s red cloak to pull him dangerously close.
“You didn’t think to mention this before?”
Cloud shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
Leon’s eyes became very, very narrow, until they were little more than blue-grey slits of fury. “And you didn’t think of teleporting to, say, Radiant Garden, where there’s a mechanic with Gummi blocks?”
The thing about My-Name-Is-Leon-Not-Squall was that the angrier he became, the more condescending and varied his tone was. The fact that his words had lost their typically flat quality meant he’d sped way past anger and gone straight to Apocalyptic Rage. If the bastard were a Summons, Cloud mused as he forcibly removed Leon’s hand from Vincent’s cloak, it’d be the name of an attack, like ‘Painful Social Ineptitude’ and ‘Hot Ass But Emotionally Unavailable.’
“I can’t do big teleports anymore,” Cloud snapped. If the self-righteous bastard had bothered to think about it, he would’ve realized that possessing the single demon wing meant the Darkness hadn’t yet entirely left him. Duh. “Just little ones. Forgive me if I’ve been trying to break Sephiroth’s control. Since, you know, being someone’s slave kind of sucks.”
Some of Cloud’s words made Leon have a sudden flashback to his sea-side orphanage, when a four-year-old Zell had gone to Matron and declared with all the little-boy pride he could muster, ‘Matron, I made a big poo!’ Of the few memories Shiva could’ve left him with, it figures that would be one of them.
xxx
Hogwarts made Beast’s Castle look like the epitome of a proper Edwardian manor. Forget the copper-plated talking clocks and candelabras. Paintings gossiped and empty suits of armor clanked about, and even a poltergeist cackled insanely as he uselessly chucked peanut butter at the two professors and two professors-to-be; staircases shifted and walls were ticklish and he could swear that the flagstones were complaining about the men’s boots. If Cloud thought Grimmauld Place had been bad, the itch between his shoulders felt like it was expanding to a full-body outbreak of hives.
Leon had refused to look at him since they entered the castle. Sulking prick.
It’s the mako, he figured as he followed Dumbledore up several flights of stairs. Only hard-trained reflexes kept from falling through trick steps. No doubt the mako in his body was reacting to all this unrestrained magic and amplifying the voices in his head to full-blown running commentary.
Oi, didn’t anyone tell that chick that horizontal stripes make her painting look fat?
Shut up, Zack.
“Headmaster,” Snape had said earlier with an audible sneer, “I’ll be in my laboratory.” He’d given the two newcomers an evil look, one that made Cloud sneer back and accidentally-on-purpose show off the slight fangs that the Darkness had given him. Snape had quickly disappeared to the dungeons as though someone had lit a fire on his ass.
Amateur, to be frightened by a failed specimen. I wonder how the effects of mako might be altered through his potions-?
Cloud promptly strangled that thought. Dangerous, dangerous territory, full of the dark and screaming things that the Zack-voice kept tied down for him. Damn the mako and the magic.
When he brought his mind back to the present he found that he was standing in a circular office in front of Dumbledore’s desk, behind which the old man had already sat down. The blond didn’t bother questioning the minor hiccup of time.
“Red or green?” the headmaster asked them, gesturing for the men to sit on cushy armchairs. Even for Cloud, the question was startlingly random.
“Why?” Leon demanded at the same time Cloud said, “Red.”
(He’d learned early on that the color green tended to herald those Very Bad Things.)
“I thought it might be rather fun to Sort the two of you. And, of course, there is almost no chance that either of you would end up in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff-you both have actual personalities. Therefore, we are left with Slytherin and Gryffindor, and the question arises…red or green?”
“Does this have any relevance to our Gummi ship, our being marooned here, or the apparent teaching positions you’ve forced us into?” Leon asked suspiciously. Dumbledore looked on the verge of patting him on the head like a pet that’d performed a neat trick.
“Not in the least.”
He handed over a heavily patched conical hat, and Leon took it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. He was the sort of man who kicked the handle of a public toilet rather than risk touching it, and this hat was offending every bit of neurotic tendency for cleanliness that he possessed. Blood was one thing, and something every mercenary (but not Sorceresses, apparently) learned to live with; but a hat that looked like it’d survived an accessory store massacre and several parasite epidemics was too much. He passed it over to Cloud, who looked at it, shrugged prosaically, and pulled it over his spiky hair.
“Oh my,” the hat murmured aloud. Dumbledore and even Leon, despite himself, leaned forward to listen to its mutters. “What do we have here?”
What are you? Cloud wondered.
“I’m the Sorting Hat-“
What the fuck? Oi, that’s not right.
“Who are-“ the Hat started.
People talk. Hojo’s experiments talk. Chocobos, uh, wark, but that’s close enough. Hats were just invented to hide shitty haircuts.
“How-“
It’s like having your underwear talk.
Zack, I don’t wear underwear on my head.
You do when you’re drunk. Or maybe that was me.
“If you would just-“
Besides-what’s with all the head-poking? I swear to Holy it’s like everyone thinks Cloud’s head is a free-for-all. I resent that, you know. There might be a lot of space in here, but I need it to stretch my legs. So to speak.
“I’m not-“
Kid’s blond, he can’t help it. Maybe it’s the face-if you weren’t so damn cute, kiddo, maybe you wouldn’t have this problem. It’s the whole shoot-me-I’m-just-that-unbearably-adorable-and-wide-eyed thing you’ve got going, it’s like mating pheromones for sociopaths and serial killers and creepy Japanese businessmen.
Zaaack!
“I don’t think-“
Too bad I’m dead or I would’ve volunteered my protective services. All I’d require in return is servicing of my own, you get what I’m saying? I mean, it’s been, what, fifteen years since I last got laid? Serious case of blue-balls here, man. I’m gonna explode if I don’t get it taken care of.
Maybe it’s penance for all the times you should’ve kept it in your pants, asshole.
Hey, it’s a serious medical condition!
“Merlin’s sake, Albus, how do you expect me to Sort him when I can’t get a word in edgewise?”
The headmaster blinked. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like trying to reason with a group of first-years with the perversions of old men!”
Hey, I was only twenty-three when I died, you rank piece of yesterday’s fashion. I was in my fucking prime, man! I should be having a hundred kids and a thousand grandkids running about my knees and wreaking havoc with Cloud and Sephiroth’s antisocial little heads by now.
The thought of Zack managing to procreate made Cloud shudder.
“Rank piece of-?”
If I had a body, I’d pull down my pants and show you which head you can cover, you dusty conglomeration of rummage-sale cast-offs!
“How dare you! I was worn by Godric Gryffindor himself-“
Who probably died shoving his own wand up his ass, you glorified cunt-rag.
Leon and Dumbledore watched from the sidelines as the Sorting Hat got worked up into a frenzy and Cloud’s expression alternated between amusement and horror.
“I wonder, my dear boy-“ Leon twitched at the appellation, “-is your friend possessed?”
No, he just talked to dead people. But… “Yes. Yes, he is.”
“Ah. Fascinating.”
…if it kept the old man from asking awkward questions, who was Leon to argue the finer points between the occult and schizophrenia?
When the Hat appeared to be in the process of attempting to wriggle off Cloud’s head and wrap itself around his throat, Dumbledore wisely plucked the thing away and stowed it back onto its shelf.
“I have never been so insulted in my thousand years of Sorting-“
Congratulations, thought Cloud flatly, you have officially proven your immaturity to rival ten centuries’ worth of children.
Dude. I so totally rock.
“I think, perhaps, that we should forego a Sorting and claim it a draw,” the headmaster said delicately. Considering they had no real idea what was going on, the two mercenaries didn’t particularly give a shit about missing out on what was evidently a time-honored tradition that began in childhood and produced sophomoric prejudices that lasted well into adulthood.
The Hat continued muttering to itself on its shelf. Cloud eyed it warily.
Zack, I think you broke it.
“I think we will save our discussion for teatime of another day,” the headmaster went on blithely. “As soon as Argus comes-ah! Here he is now.”
The office door opened and a distinctly unpleasant man, second only to Snape, lurched into the office.
“Igor,” Cloud said without thinking. “It lives!”
Three pairs of confused eyes turned to him.
He’s not a humpback, Doc, Zack informed him helpfully, and somewhat uncharacteristically, Cloud flushed. What was it about this place that made the words bypass the brain’s edit function and go straight to his mouth? In his defense, this Argus man really did look like an Igor, albeit one that could stand up relatively straight.
Maybe he was the Igor to Snape’s Hojo, and was Cloud really sure that lightning hadn’t been involved in that whole five-years-of-absolute-hellish-torture, oh-what-happens-when-I-cut-this-tendon time period?
Stop thinking, kiddo, it’ll be safer for all involved.
“Argus, these men are Professors Strife and Leonhart, both of whom will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. Would you be so kind as to show them to the teacher’s wing?”
Argus looked kind enough to take a blunt object to their kneecaps, but he hobbled out of the office with a minimum of grumbling and threats of bodily harm.
“Behave,” Leon muttered as he passed Cloud, which prompted a variety of instinctual reactions. One was to protest on the grounds that he couldn’t help it if the voices decided to speak for themselves, it wasn’t like they ever asked for his opinion; the second was to kick the presumptuous, sulky bastard down the twisting stairwell and watch his pretty face go splat on the flagstones.
Woot, dibs on the Shiva Summons!
In the end, Cloud did neither, but he silently promised to stand in the dark with Ultima unsheathed in Leon’s bedroom and see how much Balamb’s Lion could scream like a little girl.
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Chapter Index
There is nothing better than having a warm, silky, sleepy cat sprawled over your legs as you play on the comp. Seriously. *huggles the kitty*