Title: The Problem with Puppies

Author: joudama

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII

Rating: G

Warnings: Crackilicious! Also, AU. JUST BECAUSE. YAY CANON GETTING FUCKED. XD Also, this contains bodily fluids, but not the happy fun kind. XDDDD

Word count: 1,313

Summary: The problem with puppies is that they eat, well, everything.

A/N: Birthday fic for chibirisuchan!

Prompt: Sephiroth finding out there is more than one reason why Angeal calls Zack a puppy.

--

It was bad enough that the trooper in the transport vehicle was looking decidedly green around the gills. That had been bad but somewhat expected; Sephiroth had seen troopers getting motion sick, even though he himself had no frame of reference for it.

So he kept an eye on the trooper, prepared to call for the driver to pull the transport vehicle over should the little blond trooper seem to get worse. And since he was watching the trooper, he was quite shocked when the one who threw up on his boots was not the trooper but SOLDIER 1st class, Zack Fair.

Up until about ten minutes before, Lt. Fair had seemed fine. More than fine, in fact--he had showed himself to have his usual exuberance, all but wriggling with excitement. This had come rather suddenly. Rather disturbingly suddenly.

Zack leaned back, eyes shut and looking decidedly unwell, and like only force of will was keeping him from being ill again.

"Sorry...sorry 'bout the boots," he whimpered, one hand clutching his stomach and the other over his mouth. The non-carsick trooper looked at the mess and heaved a sigh, and began searching the truck for something to clean with. The other one stayed right where he was, eyes screwed tight and looking like he was counting.

"Oh, man, it musta been something I ate," Zack moaned. "But I didn't have anything, other than breakfast from the mess and that a triple bacon cheeseburger set from McMoogles. Oh, and that jerky Reno gave me before I realized I had time for McMoogles...and that stuff from that weirdo scientist...I mean, OK, it was kinda weird looking and I don't think that green was natural, but it smelled OK..."

"Wait, you ate what from who?" Sephiroth said, completely disbelieving. The rivalry between the Turks and the SOLDIERs was well known, and most people, SOLIDER or otherwise, knew better than to take anything offered to them by a Turk, especially the red-haired prankster they had running around. And god only knew what scientist it had been. Sephiroth had heard a rumor that Professor Hojo had been around, and that had been enough reason for him to want to head out to Nibelheim as quickly as possible.

"It looked OK! The jerky and the sandwich! And I was really, really, hungry!" Zack said, his voice a whine and lower lip sticking out in a way Sephiroth was all too familiar with thanks to Genesis, before Zack suddenly clutched his stomach again and turned even greener.

He was suddenly reminded of something he had overheard one of the secretaries say once--she had a new puppy, and "The problem with puppies is that puppies try to eat everything." In that case, her puppy had eaten a pair of new shoelaces she had left on her coffee table, and had promptly spent the rest of the day throwing up and eventually requiring a trip to the veterinarian.

Angeal had always said that Zack was just like a puppy; Sephiroth hadn't anticipated that Angeal had been being literal.

He closed his eyes, letting out a sigh as he wondered why Angeal was gone...gone and had left him with his puppy who threw up on Sephiroth's boots.

A puppy that was currently looking completely unSOLDIER-like and frankly pathetic, clutching his midsection and looking at Sephiroth with wide blue eyes, as if he expected Sephiroth to be able to make his stomach cease trying to expel its contents.

"There's nothing I can do," Sephiroth said, not at all sure why he felt like he should apologize. "A Cure won't heal illness and Remedy only works on poisons...but not of the food poisoning variety."

Zack groaned. "Aww, man...and that Turk said they were safe! And after that weird 'endurance experiment' that nut job professor had be do last time he was here, I should have known not to trust him, either. I'm never trusting a Turk that's not Cissnei or anybody in a lab coat ever again."

"That's probably a very wise course of action," Sephiroth said mildly. "And are you quite all right?!" he said suddenly, his eyes getting wide as he noticed the status of his support SOLDIER.

"...Noooooo," the puppy in the shape of a SOLDIER moaned. "Sephirohshit, you've gotta stop the truck...stop the truck...stop the--!"

And that was as far as he got before Zack bolted. SOLDIERs could move pretty fast, but the problem was that their stomachs could apparently move faster.

After Zack finished throwing up again, he managed to stumble back over to a horrified Sephiroth. Zack sank down, moaning "I hate my life..." and then buried his face in Sephiroth's lap and whimpered pathetically. "Please, please put me out of my misery..."

"I can't put you out of your misery yet. We have a mission. But afterwards, I'll take you up on that," Sephiroth said dryly. He wasn't quite sure what exactly to do about having a rather sick Lt. Fair whimpering in his lap, but he was quite sure the...normal...protocol for a sick puppy--or puppy of any sort, for that matter--was to pat it. Or something like that. So he rather awkwardly patted Zack's head, all the while looking for the troopers to kindly assist him with some kind of clue. Instead of a clue, however, he noted with growing horror that Zack did not seem to be the only one hating his life. One trooper was looking at what had been the contents of Zack's ill-begotten lunch and was gagging. And more worrisome, the little blond trooper, the one who had been fighting motion sickness, apparently could not fight both motion sickness and the smell of vomit; he ripped off his helmet and got as far as the back of the truck before he doubled over and threw up, not far at all from where Zack had lost his own battle with his belly.

"That's it," Sephiroth said, burying his face in his palm as the other trooper began losing his fight with nausea, turning a sickly green color and making pre-vomiting noises. He banged on the transport wall separating the four of them from their driver. The driver opened the window and let out a disgusted and creative invocation of Shiva before he choked and rolled down his window. "Turn us around," Sephiroth said, quickly breathing in the fresh air.

The next thing he heard was the sound of the second trooper losing his battle with his stomach, and the contents of his stomach being forcefully ejected onto the floor. And then Zack bolted again for what was quickly becoming the "vomit-only" section of the transport vehicle, as the battle with whatever he had ingested ended in a way most unbefitting of a SOLDIER 1st class.

Again.

Sephiroth gingerly took off his befouled boots and then crawled through the open window into the front, relishing the relatively clean air. "Turn us around, and get us back to Midgar as fast as you can. I am scrubbing this mission on account of...that," he said, gesturing to the back where once again, someone back there was throwing up. The driver was starting to look rather green himself, and Sephiroth felt a headache setting in. "Midgar or whatever city, town, village, cave, whatever, that will have a veterinarian, doctor...something."

...Whatever was in Nibelheim, it would keep. He had refused missions before; someone else could go this time.

That, or ShinRa was going to have to provide him with support that didn't, from the sound of things,projectile vomit.

"Uuuuuuuuuuwaaaaaaaaaaaaah...I wanna go hooooome..." Zack whimpered from the back, curling up in the seat Sephiroth had been sitting in before he had fled and making more whimpering noises.

Sephiroth reached back and carefully patted Zack's head again, and the whimpers faded into pouting sniffles.

...Yes. Support that didn't projectile vomit. And which weren't human puppies, either.