( Closed ) i'm in the business of misery
WHO: Cloud Strife, Yuffie Kisaragi, and later on, Rufus Shinra.
WHAT: An innocent little shopping trip ends with a poisoned Cloud. Hurrah!
WHERE: The housing district, mostly.
WHEN: Day 226.
( let's take it from the top )
WHAT: An innocent little shopping trip ends with a poisoned Cloud. Hurrah!
WHERE: The housing district, mostly.
WHEN: Day 226.
( let's take it from the top )
"Eh, I'll go with you for a while, I'll give Kagari a bit more time with a quiet house." She shrugged and continued to fidget with a small throwing star, a mirror of the one strapped to her back. "It's weird to think she's pregnant. Really, I mean, Do you know how long it's been since I've had to deal with-", and she stopped fidgeting long enough to make air quotations, "girl stuff? Well, I mean....that kinda girl stuff. It's been at least like,...a year.....More then that counting here." She hadn't since before she'd left Wutai for the most part to work for the WRO at the very least.
She was about to launch into a story when something caught her eye, something large, moving and....green?
"Cloud? Uh....Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" She asked, not quiet wanting to believe that there was, yet again, something in the street that looked vicious and scary. Maybe it was friendly?......Yes...and she was going to fall over and wake up, and be home on Gaia. Yeah....Right.
"Cause, you know, I think I'd like it better if I was seeing things then that really being there. or that. Or...that..." She said as she saw two other plant thingys.
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And it was a little sad to say, but Cloud was almost grateful for the new distraction. Monsters he could deal with, pregnancy discussions he could not.
"I see it." He responded, bright blue eyes analyzing the possible enemy carefully. It looked dangerous -- and even if it wasn't, he didn't want to take any chances right now. "Come." His orders were short but demanding. Expecting the ninja to follow, he took a route around a building that he thought would get them out of the strange vine's way; but just ended up running into another group of them as they stalked their way out of alleys and shadows around the pair.
Cloud drew his sword then.
"Yuffie, draw your weapon and stay close to me." While Cloud saw Yuffie as someone he needed to protect, he also still saw her as a warrior. His brotherly love was oftentimes hard to shove away if one was close to him, like Yuffie was, but at least he could recognize their own strength.
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"What the hell are they?" She asked as she followed the order, she was not the type to be a follower, but there were some people she was really used to listening to. And Cloud happened to be one of them.
She dropped into a fighters stance and unclipped the weapon She was used to the 'random monsters in town' thing from home, but not here it was really rare here, explosions and murder? Those were pretty common though.
She spun her shuriken to catch a proper grip to fight in a closer range, and began to focus on the bracer where her materia were ready.
"You are never allowed in the market ever EVER again." Yuffie added for good measure.
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Like his friend, the warrior had also assumed a battle stance by now. It didn't look like they were getting out of this without a fight.
But even so, he still had the confidence that they could handle this.
It was around then that one of the vines whipped forward towards Cloud, who was forced to slice through it with the bandaged First Tsurugi. It was probably going to make the plant angry, but it wasn't like Cloud hadn't dealt with agitated enemies before. "Technically, we're not in the market anymore." The blond replied, moving to hack away another vine that had come too close to Yuffie. "And what's with you about me and the market?"
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It was almost comical to watch the lumbering thing have to stop and pull itself from the wall. Almost. It would have been a lot funnier if it wasn't going to attack her again the second it got free.
"And you may not remember, but you have the WORST market luck, rainbow dragons and singing and EVERYTHING happens, it's like, oh! Look! Cloud went to the market! Let's blow things up Rivelata! It'll be fun!" She sliced at one of the vines closer to her and began to attack at another.
In all honesty, this she could deal with. Monsters? Monsters were easy, monsters that didn't fly and just sort of roamed around she could deal with. It was better then weird spells that she couldn't figure out or control or stop.
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By the way his words were laced with a harmless taunt instead of malice, it was easy to see he was comfortable fighting by her side.
After a few minutes of slicing and hacking through a good amount of the vines, decreasing their numbers quite a bit, Cloud began to feel a bit better about the situation. They had it under control, they were fine -- and that's when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a vine headed straight for Yuffie's back. "Yuffie!" Her name was the only thing he managed to say before immediately moving between her and the plant.
It didn't give him a very good opening, though, so even though he managed to hack that one away with his sword, a second one got a hold of his arm. He winced a little when he felt the prickling of what felt like thorns, or barbs, digging into his skin.
"Ugh, damn it --" It took him a minute, but he finally got out of the plant's grip and took a few steps back, back to back with his ninja friend. "There's not many left. We should go while we can."
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She was practically cheerful as she went about her hack and slash approach to killing the things, they weren't too hard to kill when you compared them to other things, and that made it more of something to do instead of something to panic about. The snakes? The snakes had been something to panic about. Those had been nasty and scary and all kinds of awful. This was just somewhat annoying and a bit entertaining.
Yuffie heard Cloud call her name and just managed to catch sight of the plant attacking him instead.
"CLOUD! Hey! Are you okay?" She asked, worrying for her friend as she turned her attention back to the enemy who didn't stop attacking just because she wanted to help Cloud.
"Let's get going, I can cure that when we get to your place, it's closer." Yuffie agreed, running away was one thing, trying to keep two people fighting against a bunch of enemies was another. And she might not have liked it, but it really didn't seem like the odds were good for them, with their position, they'd get done fighting only to end up with another wave of attacking plant things.
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Too bad he didn't know about the poison that accompanied it.
"It's fine, don't worry." Cloud responded to her question first, then nodded to show he was ready to get moving. Down went one more vine before the warrior finally slipped out of battle, running along the sidewalk with Yuffie until they got a safe distance away. Although, he had to admit, that little run had... tired him out more than it should have. In fact, he was beginning to feel a bit odd overall. It felt... like more than just unexplained fatigue. His pace slowed and his gloved hand pressed against the brick of a building's outside wall for support.
Eventually though, the blond had to stop walking and just lean against it for a moment. Ugh, why was it suddenly so hard to breathe? Just breathe, Cloud, breathe. It didn't take too long for the blond to start walking, slowly, again, but it was impossible for him to ignore that something was definitely wrong.
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She honestly didn't notice the problem at first, she was still high off the fight and energetic as hell. So it was really was no surprise that it took until she turned to talk to her friend to notice that Cloud had slowed down.
What the hell? She turned to watch as he not only had to stop, but looked like he wasn't doing well. Cloud couldn't be winded that fast, it was Cloud, and she didn't like the weird quality to the way he was breathing, it made her nervous. What was going on?
"Cloud?" She asked as he started moving again. "Hey, are you okay? You kinda don't look so good."
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Despite walking with Yuffie, the blond was dead silent for the rest of the time spent walking to his house. He didn't want to discuss it -- and he certainly didn't want to share his sudden, unexplained condition with her. When they finally reached the house and got past the front door, however, Cloud really couldn't ignore the way his skin felt as though it were burning, or the nausea that threatened to force him into vomiting, or the way his body felt like it was about to collapse. A quiet curse slipped past his lips. "D-Damnit..."
He didn't quite make it very far into the kitchen.
The tired warrior slumped against the kitchen wall, sliding down to the cold floor beneath him. "Alright." He began. It seemed Cloud was starting to abandon trying to cover up his uneven breathing now. "Maybe there... is a small... something wrong."
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Yuffie stopped at the door to make sure nothing had followed them home, and by the time she had gone into the kitchen to find him he was on the floor.
"NO DUH. You-! " Yuffie felt particularly articulate about the situation. Of course there was something wrong, unless there was some magical disease that randomly struck and-....Never mind she didn't want to jinx it.
The ninja knelt down beside Cloud and checked his temperature with the back of her hand against his forehead like Tifa did with the kids back home.
That...that wasn't good.
"Cloud! You're burning up! I don't understand-How?....."Yuffie trailed off as she tried to figure out what the hell could have caused this cause...Oh shit.
"Spikey? Can I see your arm?"
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"The barbs..." Cloud spoke quietly, trying to ignore the symptoms that had taken a hold of him so quickly. "T-They were probably poisonous."
In the back of his mind, the blond was wondering if it was a good idea to tell Yuffie that he most likely now had poison in his bloodstream. But really -- he figured that Yuffie was smart enough to piece it together at this point. Besides, he didn't quite think he'd get away with hiding things from her this time around, and Cloud also had a lot of trust in her (probably more than he let on half the time).
The blond slowly shifted his body then so that his back was pressed against the wall behind him. The back of his head gently rested against it too, and his blue eyes slipped closed. "...do you know Cura or anything?"
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