AHHHH~! ZOMBIE DUCK APOCALYPSE!
Title: Small Packages
A Final Fantasy VII Fanfiction
Author: Sanjuno Shori Niko
Summary: This is what Cid likes to call the verbal clue bat. I call it Cid's amazing power of shouty DOOM.
Timeline: More fic found here.
=/=
(In which Riku meets Avalanche.)
It did not take Cid long to find an unused office in which to sequester himself away with Riku. The kid was not exactly chatty, but he was willing to talk to Cid at least. Cid took shameless advantage of the kid’s reaction to whatever the fuck it was the Lifestream just pulled and did some information gathering.
“So what was this place used for anyway, kid?” Cid fiddled with his cell phone and watched Riku out of the corner of his eye.
“Professor Hojo called us, um.” Riku’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he quoted from memory. “Curiosities and fanciful longshots.”
“Did ya see a lot of Hojo?” Cid asked cautiously, stomping down on the sharp pangs of worry and anger Hojo’s name always elicited.
“Nah.” Riku jumped up onto the dust covered desk and grinned when he met Cid’s gaze. “We were too little I think.”
“Gotcha. Gimmie a minute, would ya, kiddo?” Cid fired off a text to Shera and Junior demanding one of them get the airship fired up and the other to bring him a load of blankets and at least eight of their smallest jumpsuits from the ship stores. A mass text to the rest of the crew has them ready to go on Cid’s word. Satisfied, Cid put away the phone, hoping that was enough to calm the faint prickles of paranoia that worried at the edge of him mind.
/.../
Reno frowned, pulling out his PHP as it buzzed, at his side, Rude was doing the same thing with less theatrics.
“Yo, Boss!” Reno called out, making both Tseng and Rufus turn to look at the red haired Turk. “Highwind’s up to somethin’, yo. He just sent a ‘heads up’ to his whole crew and word is Shera’s headin’ this way with clothes and shit on Captain’s orders.”
“Find Highwind!” Rufus snapped without needing to think about it. “Now!”
Sitting forgotten over the computer keyboard, Reeve’s eyes widened in panic. ‘Cid, what on the Planet are you up to? Damn it, I need to warn Cloud and the others.’
/.../
Cid jumped with a curse as the door slammed open, Venus Gospel appearing in his hand on instinct. Riku bolted for the back wall, hiding behind the desk he had been sitting on a moment before. Cid lowered his spear with a disgusted sigh when he saw Cloud lead Tifa and Vincent into the room.
“Bahamut’s Fangs, Spiky! Can’t ya just knock on doors like a normal person fer once?” Cid snorted as he gestured to the door which had been ripped from its hinges and was now lying on the floor between them. “Or have ya got some door-related trauma in that dark tragic past of yers that ya ain’t shared with the rest of the class?”
“This isn’t the time for jokes, Cid!” Cloud snapped defensively, firming his grip on First Tsurugi. “We know that you’ve found one of the clones. We need to get rid of it now, before it becomes a danger!”
“Do we now?” Cid asked casually, shoving his one hand into his pocket as he leaned back against the desk, Venus Gospel resting unconcerned against the opposite shoulder. “Are ya so sure that danger is coming?”
“Hojo made it!” Tifa shouted, hysteria in her eyes as she set he jaw and clenched her fists. “Hojo made it from Sephiroth, from Jenova! All of them were nothing better than monsters and the best thing for the Planet is to wipe out every last trace of them!”
Cid hid a wince as Vincent’s eyes flinched for the briefest moment. ‘Ouch, Tifa. Those are some harsh words for Vince ta hear about his lover’s son. Damn. How am I supposed ta salvage this situation? Ah well, traditional method it is.’
“Calm the fuck down, woman!” Cid roared back, straightening up from his slouch to square his shoulders. “No wonder ya turned terrorist with thinking like that! Surprised ya ain’t killed poor Spikey in his sleep, seeing as fucking Hojo made him too!”
“Hey!” Tifa’s feeble protest went unacknowledged.
Cid just kept right on talking, even as Tifa seemed to shrink in on herself, looking stricken and guilty. Something of what Cid was saying seemed to be striking a chord in her. Cloud was wearing the blank, wounded expression Cid had privately labled ‘kicked-chocobo in the rain’.
“Ya know, I just had another thought.” Cid exclaimed with vicious determination. “Ya should kill off Vincent and Red too! They was part of Hojo’s experiments. Can’t forget them Soldier’s that are still hanging around or Denzel neither! The kid’s eye jest ain’t been right since he got over the Geostigma. Ain’t that right, Tifa?”
Cloud and Vincent were watching the exchange with wide eyes. Cid had never gone after his friends with his words like this before, with the intent to break them down. His friends had never pushed Cid to a line he would not cross before either, though. Understanding dawned as they saw Tifa flinch and refuse to meet Cid’s eyes. The girl had always been painfully transparent, especially to people who had survived working for Shin-Ra. It did not make her evil, but Tifa was at her core a small town girl with a shit-ton of emotional trauma who had never really had the chance to get over it and had in turn never lost her black-and-white view of the world. Plus, she could carry a grudge for almost as long as Cid himself could.
“Stop it!” Tifa said, face red and eyes bright with gathering tears. “How can you say that? It isn’t their fault! It’s Hojo and Jenova’s fault! Cloud is their victim, but Sephiroth knew what he was doing when he killed my farther and burned my home to the ground!”
“Did he really?” Cid asked her - asked all three of them - and watched the doubt take root in their thoughts. He was asking questions they had deliberately never considered before, or else the guilt may well have destroyed them before Meteor could. “Or had Jenova’s infection and a lifetime of torture and isolation already broken him? How would ya know if it were really Sephiroth? Ya didn’t know the guy.”
No one could refute that statement.
“But-!” Tifa cried out in denial, looking torn.
“You aren’t the Sephiroth I once knew.” Cloud said softly in a voice that was not his own, looking up at his comrades with a thoughtful expression. “That’s what Zack said to Sephiroth when we caught up to his that night in the reactor.”
“This Zack guy would know, right?” Cid asked calmly, deciding there and then not to call attention to the sometimes questionable reliability of Cloud’s memories.
“Yeah.” Cloud said, blinking bright eyes as a painfully bittersweet smile lifted his lips for a moment. “He was the General’s best friend as well as being his Second in Command. No one could claim to know the General better and... no one else ever made the General smile like Zack did.”
Tifa looked like she had swallowed something sour, but Vincent looked touched. ‘Aw, that just about made his day.’ Cid noted with a private grin.
“Well that’s that then.” Cid stated with patently false brightness, clapping his hands together like a preschool teacher trying to excite bored toddlers. “I’ll introduce ya’ll ta my new friend, but ya’ll better be nice because he’s kinda shy.”
“Alright, Cid.” Cloud said after a moment, finally letting the tip of his sword drop. “We’ll play this your way for now, but if it shows any sign of going bad we’re taking care of it then, before it’s too late. No arguments.”
“Whatever makes it easier for ya ta sleep at night, Spikey.” Cid said with a shrug and turned his back on the kid’s pinched expression. Maybe now was not the best time to be reminding Cloud that Cid was his own boss, but well. The brat tried too hard to be a ‘leader’. Cid knew he was no leader. Cid just had a significant number of people who had taken a liking to following him around and doing as he told them. That just went and proved how fucked-up crazy the planet was.
“It’s alright now, kiddo. Ain’t no one here gonna hurt ya.” Cid’s voice was kind, gentle, soft like the childhood memory of a favourite blanket freshly washed and warm from drying in the sun. With his back to them, Cid missed out on the comically shocked looks of disbelief his teammates pulled at the comforting tone. Riku showed no such surprise as he crawled out of hiding to crouch warily on top of the bare desk, eyeing the three adults behind Cid with untrusting intensity.
Tifa sucked in a harsh breath and Cid grinned to himself when the battle-ready stances of his friends relaxed as they shifted in surprise at the sight of Riku. A wide-eyed half-starved five-year-old was not what they expected to see when they spoke of Sephiroth clones.
“Right then, this is Riku.” Cid said with amused blandness, motioning to the silver-haired child beside him. “Riku, these boneheads are friends of mine and have promised not ta hurt ya, so ya don’t gotta be scared of them, okay?”
“Um, hello, Riku.” Tifa tried a tentative smile, but the expression faltered when the boy scowled at her and edged further behind Cid. A boy, Tifa recalled with a guilty wince, whose death she had demanded just minutes before. It was really no wonder that the child - who, she had to admit, was utterly adorable for a miniature Sephiroth - was peering at them warily over Cid’s shoulder with suspicious eyes. Those eyes, those green, green mako lit demon eyes that reminded her of flame and screams and blood in the night. He looked at her with Sephiroth’s eyes and all she could see was Cloud and Denzel, watching here like she was something strange and other. The look of a predator trying to make up it’s mind about you. Tifa shivered, and wondered if Cid knew what danger he allowed at his back.
Cloud was staring at Riku with a shuttered expression, the one he wore to keep the pain inside, but there was a bit of the softer look he wore around Denzel creeping out around the edges. Vincent just looked mildly interested, but Cid knew better than to trust a Turk’s face to let him know what the man was thinking. Cid would put good gil on the gunman getting soppy over how cute the brat was.
No one was dead yet. Things were, in Cid’s admittedly slightly warped opinion, going rather well.
Of course, that was when Barrett, Yuffie and Nanaki arrived, armed and ready for battle. Yuffie saw silver hair and green cats eyes and screeched, Conformer spinning out from her hand in a deadly attack. Barrett brought his gunarm up at the same time, a rapid stream of bullets aimed at the clone’s head and chest. Kill shots, each one. A left over from battleing Jenova-spawn that all of them shared.
Time had slowed, like those eternal seconds before a Limit Break.
Cid could have easily been able to jump clear of the attacks, and his teammates knew it, just as they knew they could avoid any move Cid made to attack. A benefit of saving the world together more than once, you learned exactly how to move around the individual battle styles of the rest of the team.
If Cid moved though, he would leave Riku exposed, and either attack could end up killing the kid unless he knew enough to move with Cid. If Riku froze and Cid dodged, the kid was dead, no question. Cid did not know enough about Riku’s reflexes or training to move. So Cid stood his ground.
Avalanche had just enough time to realize that Cid was not moving like they expected him to, eyes going wide in horrified realization.
“Cid!” Someone, all of them, screamed the warning too late. “Move!”
Cid moved.
The room exploded.
(Word Count: 2,011)
=/=
So... WTF Mother Nature? This is Canada. Southern Canada even. We get long winters and short summers and ice storms and yeah okay some thunder storms and off-the-sea type things on the coast, but. BUT! Tornadoes? Here? The power's been out for THREE DAYS! I DO NOT APPROVE OF HAVING TO HAUL BUCKETS OF WATER FROM THE RIVER BY HAND. SO CAN WE SKIP THE WHOLE LOSING-POWER-IN-HALF-THE-PROVINCE THING FOR A WEEK NEXT TIME PLEASEOKAYTHANKS?
THREE DAYS! NO INTERNET! FOR THREE. DAYS. *clutches net connection*
Daddy had to drive all the way to Toronto to find a generator for the farm, because we're not likely to get power back until Saturday afternoon AT THE EARLIEST. We still don't have any water, which means no showers, no laundry, no ability to flush the toilets... unless you get creative. Which we are. We have those big jugs you use in water coolers full of river water. You fill the toilet tank with water from the jug and gravity does the rest. So we at least have that. But. I need to do my laundry and no. No, I am not paying out the nose to use a laundromat. Kaythanks.
Also. Ducks. Stupidest animal in creation. Sadly, we have fishers here. For those of you who don't know, fishers are like weasels. Only bigger, and meaner. We've lost two ducks so far. Our last female on Tuesday and one of the males last night. Their throats were torn out. The freaky thing was we put the body of the female under a garbage can until we could bury it and when we lifted the can... she was gone. I'm not talking something knocked the can over and ate her, I'm talking the can never moved, disappearing zombie duck attack.
Then we had a storm so bad we've lit candles for the last two nights. Yeah. I had some fun dreams.
I was also thinking, Zombies. Probably the stupidest monster ever. I mean, the targeted organ in the brain, the single most heavily protected vital organ in the human body. I mean, if it were up to me I'd go for the liver. Giant squishy target there, no bones in the way and. And! People die just as quick when you remove their livers as when you remove their brains.
Anyway my point is: Zombie Ducks. Kind of like stupid squared, eh?
Here there be dragons! So... the new "territories" in the Dragon Cave? I approve. The fact that I now have to re-name all my dragons? ... Not so much.
♥
♠
♣
♥
♠
♣
A Final Fantasy VII Fanfiction
Author: Sanjuno Shori Niko
Summary: This is what Cid likes to call the verbal clue bat. I call it Cid's amazing power of shouty DOOM.
Timeline: More fic found here.
=/=
(In which Riku meets Avalanche.)
It did not take Cid long to find an unused office in which to sequester himself away with Riku. The kid was not exactly chatty, but he was willing to talk to Cid at least. Cid took shameless advantage of the kid’s reaction to whatever the fuck it was the Lifestream just pulled and did some information gathering.
“So what was this place used for anyway, kid?” Cid fiddled with his cell phone and watched Riku out of the corner of his eye.
“Professor Hojo called us, um.” Riku’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he quoted from memory. “Curiosities and fanciful longshots.”
“Did ya see a lot of Hojo?” Cid asked cautiously, stomping down on the sharp pangs of worry and anger Hojo’s name always elicited.
“Nah.” Riku jumped up onto the dust covered desk and grinned when he met Cid’s gaze. “We were too little I think.”
“Gotcha. Gimmie a minute, would ya, kiddo?” Cid fired off a text to Shera and Junior demanding one of them get the airship fired up and the other to bring him a load of blankets and at least eight of their smallest jumpsuits from the ship stores. A mass text to the rest of the crew has them ready to go on Cid’s word. Satisfied, Cid put away the phone, hoping that was enough to calm the faint prickles of paranoia that worried at the edge of him mind.
/.../
Reno frowned, pulling out his PHP as it buzzed, at his side, Rude was doing the same thing with less theatrics.
“Yo, Boss!” Reno called out, making both Tseng and Rufus turn to look at the red haired Turk. “Highwind’s up to somethin’, yo. He just sent a ‘heads up’ to his whole crew and word is Shera’s headin’ this way with clothes and shit on Captain’s orders.”
“Find Highwind!” Rufus snapped without needing to think about it. “Now!”
Sitting forgotten over the computer keyboard, Reeve’s eyes widened in panic. ‘Cid, what on the Planet are you up to? Damn it, I need to warn Cloud and the others.’
/.../
Cid jumped with a curse as the door slammed open, Venus Gospel appearing in his hand on instinct. Riku bolted for the back wall, hiding behind the desk he had been sitting on a moment before. Cid lowered his spear with a disgusted sigh when he saw Cloud lead Tifa and Vincent into the room.
“Bahamut’s Fangs, Spiky! Can’t ya just knock on doors like a normal person fer once?” Cid snorted as he gestured to the door which had been ripped from its hinges and was now lying on the floor between them. “Or have ya got some door-related trauma in that dark tragic past of yers that ya ain’t shared with the rest of the class?”
“This isn’t the time for jokes, Cid!” Cloud snapped defensively, firming his grip on First Tsurugi. “We know that you’ve found one of the clones. We need to get rid of it now, before it becomes a danger!”
“Do we now?” Cid asked casually, shoving his one hand into his pocket as he leaned back against the desk, Venus Gospel resting unconcerned against the opposite shoulder. “Are ya so sure that danger is coming?”
“Hojo made it!” Tifa shouted, hysteria in her eyes as she set he jaw and clenched her fists. “Hojo made it from Sephiroth, from Jenova! All of them were nothing better than monsters and the best thing for the Planet is to wipe out every last trace of them!”
Cid hid a wince as Vincent’s eyes flinched for the briefest moment. ‘Ouch, Tifa. Those are some harsh words for Vince ta hear about his lover’s son. Damn. How am I supposed ta salvage this situation? Ah well, traditional method it is.’
“Calm the fuck down, woman!” Cid roared back, straightening up from his slouch to square his shoulders. “No wonder ya turned terrorist with thinking like that! Surprised ya ain’t killed poor Spikey in his sleep, seeing as fucking Hojo made him too!”
“Hey!” Tifa’s feeble protest went unacknowledged.
Cid just kept right on talking, even as Tifa seemed to shrink in on herself, looking stricken and guilty. Something of what Cid was saying seemed to be striking a chord in her. Cloud was wearing the blank, wounded expression Cid had privately labled ‘kicked-chocobo in the rain’.
“Ya know, I just had another thought.” Cid exclaimed with vicious determination. “Ya should kill off Vincent and Red too! They was part of Hojo’s experiments. Can’t forget them Soldier’s that are still hanging around or Denzel neither! The kid’s eye jest ain’t been right since he got over the Geostigma. Ain’t that right, Tifa?”
Cloud and Vincent were watching the exchange with wide eyes. Cid had never gone after his friends with his words like this before, with the intent to break them down. His friends had never pushed Cid to a line he would not cross before either, though. Understanding dawned as they saw Tifa flinch and refuse to meet Cid’s eyes. The girl had always been painfully transparent, especially to people who had survived working for Shin-Ra. It did not make her evil, but Tifa was at her core a small town girl with a shit-ton of emotional trauma who had never really had the chance to get over it and had in turn never lost her black-and-white view of the world. Plus, she could carry a grudge for almost as long as Cid himself could.
“Stop it!” Tifa said, face red and eyes bright with gathering tears. “How can you say that? It isn’t their fault! It’s Hojo and Jenova’s fault! Cloud is their victim, but Sephiroth knew what he was doing when he killed my farther and burned my home to the ground!”
“Did he really?” Cid asked her - asked all three of them - and watched the doubt take root in their thoughts. He was asking questions they had deliberately never considered before, or else the guilt may well have destroyed them before Meteor could. “Or had Jenova’s infection and a lifetime of torture and isolation already broken him? How would ya know if it were really Sephiroth? Ya didn’t know the guy.”
No one could refute that statement.
“But-!” Tifa cried out in denial, looking torn.
“You aren’t the Sephiroth I once knew.” Cloud said softly in a voice that was not his own, looking up at his comrades with a thoughtful expression. “That’s what Zack said to Sephiroth when we caught up to his that night in the reactor.”
“This Zack guy would know, right?” Cid asked calmly, deciding there and then not to call attention to the sometimes questionable reliability of Cloud’s memories.
“Yeah.” Cloud said, blinking bright eyes as a painfully bittersweet smile lifted his lips for a moment. “He was the General’s best friend as well as being his Second in Command. No one could claim to know the General better and... no one else ever made the General smile like Zack did.”
Tifa looked like she had swallowed something sour, but Vincent looked touched. ‘Aw, that just about made his day.’ Cid noted with a private grin.
“Well that’s that then.” Cid stated with patently false brightness, clapping his hands together like a preschool teacher trying to excite bored toddlers. “I’ll introduce ya’ll ta my new friend, but ya’ll better be nice because he’s kinda shy.”
“Alright, Cid.” Cloud said after a moment, finally letting the tip of his sword drop. “We’ll play this your way for now, but if it shows any sign of going bad we’re taking care of it then, before it’s too late. No arguments.”
“Whatever makes it easier for ya ta sleep at night, Spikey.” Cid said with a shrug and turned his back on the kid’s pinched expression. Maybe now was not the best time to be reminding Cloud that Cid was his own boss, but well. The brat tried too hard to be a ‘leader’. Cid knew he was no leader. Cid just had a significant number of people who had taken a liking to following him around and doing as he told them. That just went and proved how fucked-up crazy the planet was.
“It’s alright now, kiddo. Ain’t no one here gonna hurt ya.” Cid’s voice was kind, gentle, soft like the childhood memory of a favourite blanket freshly washed and warm from drying in the sun. With his back to them, Cid missed out on the comically shocked looks of disbelief his teammates pulled at the comforting tone. Riku showed no such surprise as he crawled out of hiding to crouch warily on top of the bare desk, eyeing the three adults behind Cid with untrusting intensity.
Tifa sucked in a harsh breath and Cid grinned to himself when the battle-ready stances of his friends relaxed as they shifted in surprise at the sight of Riku. A wide-eyed half-starved five-year-old was not what they expected to see when they spoke of Sephiroth clones.
“Right then, this is Riku.” Cid said with amused blandness, motioning to the silver-haired child beside him. “Riku, these boneheads are friends of mine and have promised not ta hurt ya, so ya don’t gotta be scared of them, okay?”
“Um, hello, Riku.” Tifa tried a tentative smile, but the expression faltered when the boy scowled at her and edged further behind Cid. A boy, Tifa recalled with a guilty wince, whose death she had demanded just minutes before. It was really no wonder that the child - who, she had to admit, was utterly adorable for a miniature Sephiroth - was peering at them warily over Cid’s shoulder with suspicious eyes. Those eyes, those green, green mako lit demon eyes that reminded her of flame and screams and blood in the night. He looked at her with Sephiroth’s eyes and all she could see was Cloud and Denzel, watching here like she was something strange and other. The look of a predator trying to make up it’s mind about you. Tifa shivered, and wondered if Cid knew what danger he allowed at his back.
Cloud was staring at Riku with a shuttered expression, the one he wore to keep the pain inside, but there was a bit of the softer look he wore around Denzel creeping out around the edges. Vincent just looked mildly interested, but Cid knew better than to trust a Turk’s face to let him know what the man was thinking. Cid would put good gil on the gunman getting soppy over how cute the brat was.
No one was dead yet. Things were, in Cid’s admittedly slightly warped opinion, going rather well.
Of course, that was when Barrett, Yuffie and Nanaki arrived, armed and ready for battle. Yuffie saw silver hair and green cats eyes and screeched, Conformer spinning out from her hand in a deadly attack. Barrett brought his gunarm up at the same time, a rapid stream of bullets aimed at the clone’s head and chest. Kill shots, each one. A left over from battleing Jenova-spawn that all of them shared.
Time had slowed, like those eternal seconds before a Limit Break.
Cid could have easily been able to jump clear of the attacks, and his teammates knew it, just as they knew they could avoid any move Cid made to attack. A benefit of saving the world together more than once, you learned exactly how to move around the individual battle styles of the rest of the team.
If Cid moved though, he would leave Riku exposed, and either attack could end up killing the kid unless he knew enough to move with Cid. If Riku froze and Cid dodged, the kid was dead, no question. Cid did not know enough about Riku’s reflexes or training to move. So Cid stood his ground.
Avalanche had just enough time to realize that Cid was not moving like they expected him to, eyes going wide in horrified realization.
“Cid!” Someone, all of them, screamed the warning too late. “Move!”
Cid moved.
The room exploded.
(Word Count: 2,011)
=/=
So... WTF Mother Nature? This is Canada. Southern Canada even. We get long winters and short summers and ice storms and yeah okay some thunder storms and off-the-sea type things on the coast, but. BUT! Tornadoes? Here? The power's been out for THREE DAYS! I DO NOT APPROVE OF HAVING TO HAUL BUCKETS OF WATER FROM THE RIVER BY HAND. SO CAN WE SKIP THE WHOLE LOSING-POWER-IN-HALF-THE-PROVINCE THING FOR A WEEK NEXT TIME PLEASEOKAYTHANKS?
THREE DAYS! NO INTERNET! FOR THREE. DAYS. *clutches net connection*
Daddy had to drive all the way to Toronto to find a generator for the farm, because we're not likely to get power back until Saturday afternoon AT THE EARLIEST. We still don't have any water, which means no showers, no laundry, no ability to flush the toilets... unless you get creative. Which we are. We have those big jugs you use in water coolers full of river water. You fill the toilet tank with water from the jug and gravity does the rest. So we at least have that. But. I need to do my laundry and no. No, I am not paying out the nose to use a laundromat. Kaythanks.
Also. Ducks. Stupidest animal in creation. Sadly, we have fishers here. For those of you who don't know, fishers are like weasels. Only bigger, and meaner. We've lost two ducks so far. Our last female on Tuesday and one of the males last night. Their throats were torn out. The freaky thing was we put the body of the female under a garbage can until we could bury it and when we lifted the can... she was gone. I'm not talking something knocked the can over and ate her, I'm talking the can never moved, disappearing zombie duck attack.
Then we had a storm so bad we've lit candles for the last two nights. Yeah. I had some fun dreams.
I was also thinking, Zombies. Probably the stupidest monster ever. I mean, the targeted organ in the brain, the single most heavily protected vital organ in the human body. I mean, if it were up to me I'd go for the liver. Giant squishy target there, no bones in the way and. And! People die just as quick when you remove their livers as when you remove their brains.
Anyway my point is: Zombie Ducks. Kind of like stupid squared, eh?
Here there be dragons! So... the new "territories" in the Dragon Cave? I approve. The fact that I now have to re-name all my dragons? ... Not so much.
♥
♠
♣
♥
♠
♣