Heya'll! LatteJazz here.
I've been wanting to write BondSlave a oneshot for several weeks now. And, this morning, by way of dream, inspiration finally found me!
Or, rather, I finally found inspiration. Whichever you prefer. x)
Hope you enjoy it and laugh at least once. As a friend of mine says, "don't take life too seriously."
Dedicated to BondSlave, who was feeling down when I decided to her something. Love ya!
IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST
'"Arf."Just when blissful sleep was enveloping him, he heard the signal. It sounded so realistic--like a real dog—that he hesitated and listened longer to be sure….
"Arf!" More exuberantly this time. It was hard to believe a human could make such an animal noise.
"Wark," he called back softly, a grin creeping across his face. Woolen blankets rustled as he climbed out of his sleeping bag. In the dim light of the tent he fumbled for his shoes and the duffle bag they would definitely need tonight. He found it and, clad only in a fleece jacket and boxers, stepped stealthily around the slumbering cadets and slipped through the tent flap.
Outside, a starry autumn sky and a certain black-haired soldier greeted him.
"You got it?" he asked. Sapphire mako eyes glowed with anticipation.
"Yeah. You think ten will be enough?"
Zack cackled mischievously. "You done good, Spiky. C'mon!" He sprinted forward, dodging tent stakes and other invisible nighttime obstacles. From the way he bounded and leapt about, Cloud could see how he earned his nickname.
"What if we get caught? We could get demoted," he said, running to catch up.
Zack waved a hand as if brushing away his question. "They can't demote us!" he snorted. "It's not our fault if the General doesn't like his own birthday present."
"You're right, I guess."
"Of course I'm right."
Crickets' chirps and chocobo calls could be vaguely heard behind the rustling of their own footsteps as they continued through the labyrinth of tents. The simple white cadet tents were gradually replaced by taller tan ones belonging to SOLDIER; and, lastly and most importantly, came the enormous, royally red tents of officers and higher-rank soldiers. Five of these dignified tents were nestled at the heart of the camp. Zack stopped at the second one.
"You do this in Gongaga much?"
"Yep." Puppy grinned. "It's loads of fun if your house is a circle."
Cloud was unzipping the bag. "I couldn't find any Saran wra—"
"Got it." Zack produced a box of plastic wrap that the cadet hadn't seen earlier.
"Okay. Let's do this."
Scarcely daring to breathe and suppressing the fiercest urge to giggle, they slipped around either side of the gigantic tent and began to garnish the General's very own tent in the most splendid white streams of ShinRa certified toilet paper. They tossed the roll across the roof, and foot after foot of the stuff fluttered through the air. Cloud prayed it wasn't a crime to obscure the ShinRa logo stamped on the sides, because it most definitely was obscured in at least four layers of paper. Zack was doing a first-class job of plastic-wrapping the two poles that held up the doorway.
"Isn't it supposed to rain today?" breathed Cloud as he returned to the bag for a fifth roll of paper.
His friend's eyes gleamed impishly. "I hope so."
Round and round the poles and corners again, tightly. When they had been discussing this delicious idea at the mess hall two weeks ago, Zack suggested duct tape instead of toilet paper, but Cloud refuted that it was too noisy and so they settled for something less…extreme. ("Besides," the cadet had added, "we're not trying to make him mad").
They were in the process of throwing a roll the length of the tent when, just as Cloud was tossing the roll to him, Zack heard something and froze. Instead of landing in his hands, the roll smacked his nose and hit the ground with a thud that was deafening in the still night air. Cloud paused, straining to hear.
Footsteps were rustling lightly through the dewy grasses. Thomp. Thomp.
Cloud scampered nervously to hide behind the corner of the tent and peered around at his older friend, who was currently paralytic with fear.
Thomp. Thomp. The noise came closer.
With each footfall the cadet shrunk back, cringing inwardly as his inevitable doom drew closer. Zack just sat there like a deer caught in the headlights (or, in this case, puppy). A pale figure appeared, blurred by moonlight and shadows.
I can't watch! Cloud ducked into the shadows.
The footsteps paused.
He listened for Zack's voice—or any voice for that matter, though he dreaded discovering exactly who had blundered into their midnight mess. What if it was Sephiroth himself? What if they had the wrong tent? What if they had the right tent, and Sephiroth had returned to find them decorating his personal property in a manner that definitely didn't suit the taste of a hardened first-class war hero?
He gulped, eyes wide, mouth floundering for air like a drowning fish. But after enduring several seconds of raw terror, his questions got the better of him, and curiosity killed the Cloud. Wide-eyed, he peeped around the tent—fully expecting to find an enraged, sword-wielding, sleep-deprived Sephiroth.
What he saw instead was something radically different: several feet away from Zack, feet bare and burgundy hair disheveled, stood none other than SOLDIER 1st Class Genesis Rhapsodos.
Wearing hot-magenta, Loveless-patterned boxers.
Safe in the shadows, Cloud choked back a mouthful of laughter.
The sleepless SOLDIER stared at Zack. And then at the tent. And then at Zack. He blinked slowly, imbibing the ludicrous scene, and then his cold cobalt eyes narrowed to slits. "This is Sephiroth's tent," he stated matter-of-factly.
"…yes?" squeaked Zack.
Genesis raised one arm and pointed an accusing finger at Zack.
"All ShinRa's soldiers
And all ShinRa's men
Couldn't put Zack back together again."
He nodded, satisfied, then turned and sauntered smugly back to his own tent.
Cloud let out a sigh of relief, heart pounding in his ears. Genesis was undoubtedly…peculiar (to say the least), but at least he had the decency to let them pull an innocent prank on the General, whose pitiful childhood had been robbed of all funness.
"Creepy," shuddered Zack as he watched the man leave.
"Is he always like that?"
"Yeah—but I was talking about his pajamas."
"Oh. That, too."
"C'mon, let's finish this before he wakes up. That nursery rhyme is sort of freaking me out…"
They spent the last three rolls rapidly, and when they were finished, the tent was a gloriously wrapped birthday present, complete with a Sephiroth inside. All it needed was a bow.
They were just leaving when Zack grabbed the cadet's arm and froze. "Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"Listen! It's the General. No—Cloud, get back here!—he's not awake. I think he's…he's talking to himself. Something about the Turks…?"
That the venerable, calloused First Class was perhaps spilling juicy secrets in his sleep was too much to resist, and they tiptoed back to the door flap.
"…would like it…now," mumbled a deep voice.
Zack hooted ecstatically. "Holy chocobo—the General actually sleep talks!"
"Let's hope he doesn't sleepwalk or we're toast."
The mumbling continued. "No 'spresso. No coffee at all…strawberries."
Cloud thwomped the howling puppy to silence him, although his own sides were shaking with restrained laughter.
"…strawberries and cream. No whip cream…found…purple flowers. One ice cube." Pause. "What?" His voice inflection was so genuinely perplexed that Cloud wished he could step inside the dream to see what was happening. "No such…thing as…Coffee Squadron 2nd Class. Idiot," he growled, clearly disgusted.
That's when Zack completely lost it. Howling at the top of his lungs with crazed delight, he dropped to his knees and clutched his shaking sides. His unchecked laughter sent the frightened cadet's pulse skyrocketing and he flinched away from the door. "Zack, let's get out of—"
Footsteps. This time they were undoubtedly coming from inside the tent. Horrified, Cloud yanked his laughter-crippled friend up from the ground and tried to dart away.
An unintelligible mutter arose from the tent, followed by ominous silence. Cloud didn't want to stick around long enough to find out what happened next, but he did.
The plastic-wrapped door bulged briefly as Sephiroth stumbled blindly into it from the inside.
Silence. Footsteps.
Zack stopped laughing.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIP—
A second later, their carefully decorated doorway was shredded to pieces by the merciless blade of Masamune.
"RUN--!"
Cloud didn't have to be told twice; he was already halfway to his tent. And when Sephiroth staggered outside, he found only the affectionate artwork of two well-wishing troublemakers and the distant yapping of a puppy.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMM
So in the end they escaped, and the General's mysterious present was an enigma to the entire camp--as were the identities of the culprits who dared play such a trick.
(At least, they assumed nobody knew. One tiny, overlooked detail was accidentally left at the scene of the crime; and that was a certain duffle bag upon which was subtly stamped, "STRIFE, T. CLOUD." If Sephiroth had ever found out, he never told them. Perhaps he was too amused with the anonymous drink he found on his doorstep the next week: strawberries and cream—no whipped cream, one ice cube).
Spontaneous epilogue: The next morning, Zack is giving the grunts the "embrace your dreams" lecture. Right as he's saying, "and above all else, protect your honor as SOLDIER," Sephiroth walks in with a piece of toilet paper stuck to his foot--the perfect picture of dreams and honor.
xD :3 Just kidding, Sephy! We love you...the sane you, anyway.
Had way too much fun brainstorming/writing this, and it offered a particularly nice mental escape from the dentist's today.
Is T[oilet]P[aper]ing an international thing, or do just us States do it?
I was going to rate this M for Genesis and his disturbing idiosyncrasies, bwahaha.
Writing Zack's verbs can be so different from Cloud's, hehe. It's a nice break. Perhaps I shall write more of this kind of thing?
:S
I am seriously going to order Sephiroth's drink at Starbucks on my first day of college.
I'll phone in the verdict!
Yours truly,
~LatteJazz