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mercverse AU, about ten years before the main canon of the AU... insofar as it can be said to have any canon at all. So. "Two Guys and a Girl," in which I bend, staple, and otherwise mutilate normal game canon involving trips to Nibelheim, because seriously, what's the point of crack AUs if you can't play around like this?
ETA: Edited slightly as of 7/17/06, because I had rather stupidly forgotten that the mansion has no electricity at the moment. Therefore, flashlights. :-)
---------------------------------------------
Two Guys and a Girl: Part 2
---------------------------------------------
"You showed me around town, so I'm going to show you around the mansion," Zack announced after lunch. "Cloud, you come and tell Tifa what all the rooms used to be like."
"So, to be clear, I'll be showing Tifa around," Cloud said.
"No! I'm showing her around. You're just... my really convenient living guidebook." Zack stuck out his tongue at Cloud and ducked smoothly away from Cloud's halfhearted swipe at his hair.
Tifa covered her mouth, but didn't try too hard to stifle her laughter. She wished she had a brother or a sister to play around with, the way Zack and Cloud teased each other. It wouldn't be half so hard to stand her ground and keep believing in herself if she had someone to watch her back.
"All right, we'll give you the one-gil tour," Cloud said once he'd successfully cornered Zack and tickled him breathless. "Zack here will pick the route, and I'll answer any questions." He smiled. "If we pass any places that have ghost stories attached to them, feel free to tell us -- I think I like the idea of living in a haunted mansion."
Cloud was gorgeous, but he was just as insane as Zack.
Tifa followed Cloud and Zack out of the kitchen and back into the entry hall. "We'll start down here," Zack decided, as he grabbed three flashlights from a battered end table, "and go upstairs later -- mostly what's up there is a bunch of seriously dusty bedrooms with mildew and spiders all over. This floor's more interesting, especially the trophy room. I looked in there last night, and you wouldn't believe the things all the Shinra had stuffed and nailed on the walls -- like a couple of dragons! They didn't use the dragons for any spells, either, just stuck them up to brag. And there are two-headed monsters, and this thing with tentacles, and a wolf as big as a horse."
"That's not so big for a wolf," Tifa said as Zack led the way through a bewildering maze of interconnecting rooms. Most were empty, and painted an aggressively neutral gray, but a few held piles of old machinery or rows of rusty file cabinets. Those must be leftovers from the mad scientists.
"Seriously? I've never seen a wolf that big."
"Nibel wolves aren't the same species as gray wolves," Cloud explained. "They're much larger, for one, and they're adapted for high altitude and the high concentration of magic around here. They keep gray wolves out, but they get weak and sick if they stray too far from the Nibel mountains, so they're very rare everywhere else."
"Cool." Zack opened a water-warped door, wedged it with a handy bit of broken floorboard, and bounced into the trophy room.
Tifa followed more warily; this would be the perfect place for a monster to hide and ambush any careless humans. The Shinra had spared no expense on their hunting trophies. Magic preserved the beasts as fresh as the day of their deaths, and their glass eyes glittered hungrily from the corners, lit by the faint wash of sun through the open door. Tifa almost expected them to lunge forward and maul her, and even the bodiless heads on the walls seemed to watch her as she edged into the room.
"This is fairly recent," Cloud said absently as he strode toward the door on the far side of the room. "This mansion is owned by a cadet branch of the royal family, but they haven't used it much, and lent it to various relatives over the years. Apparently someone in the past century -- or several someones, judging by the size of the collection -- was an enthusiastic hunter."
He opened the far door, and stopped dead. His hand tightened, until the door creaked under his grip. Tifa fell into a ready stance; in the corner of her eye, she saw Zack shift his weight and draw a knife from his sleeve.
"Zachary. Tifa. Go back to the kitchen. I have to... take care of something."
---------------------------------------------
There was something about Cloud's voice that made it impossible to even think of disobeying. Tifa found herself back in the kitchen before it occurred to her that they'd left Cloud alone to face whatever horrible thing had surprised him.
"What if it was a ghost?" she said to Zack. "He'll die!"
Zack looked like he really wanted to say something, but didn't think he ought to. "Cloud's tough," he said finally. "He'll be all right. There was probably just something really disgusting in the room, and he didn't want us to see it. He gets overprotective like that."
Tifa rubbed her arms, feeling chilly despite the way the mansion trapped the summer heat. "Maybe it was the dead scientist, the one who got eaten by monsters. I wouldn't want to see that." Zack muttered something to himself, and Tifa scowled. "You'd better not be saying bad things about me."
"I'm just saying you're weird," he said defensively. "One minute you're trying to beat me up, and the next you're going all wussy about dead bodies. Can't you make up your mind?"
"Jerk." Tifa threw breadcrumbs at him, and laughed as Zack shook his head in an effort to get them out of his hair. "They wouldn't get stuck if you brushed your hair more than once a year -- you look like a bird tried to build a nest on your head." She struck a pose she'd seen in a fashion magazine, letting her own glossy ponytail swirl over her shoulders.
"I brush it! It just gets like this -- and anyway, Cloud's hair is worse and you didn't say anything about him." Zack shot her a sly look. "Do you like Cloud?"
Tifa flushed and hunched her shoulders. "Shut up!"
A slow, brilliant smile spread across Zack's face. "You do. You totally like him. And you're younger than I am -- oh, he's seriously going to flip out. Hey, what'll you give me to stop me from telling him?"
"Nothing, because I don't like him -- you're just imagining things," Tifa snapped, trying to sound like she wasn't lying through her teeth. "You're such a jerk, Zack."
Zack staggered back, clutching his hands to his heart. "Ow! That's a terrible thing to say to your new best friend, Tifa. Come on, let's go spy on Cloud -- if you help me, I won't tell him a thing."
"But..." Tifa hesitated. What if it was the dead scientist's body? If they got too close, would that let his ghost recognize them, so it could follow them at night?
"Oh, don't be a wuss. I bet Zangan wouldn't be too scared to go look, but if you're going to be all girly..."
"I am not scared!" Tifa said, clenching her fists and glaring at Zack. "I just don't want to bother Cloud -- and that's because it's rude, not because I like him or anything! Stop acting like a jerk and let's go."
"Your wish is my command," Zack said, smiling.
---------------------------------------------
It took Tifa a minute to realize she'd been manipulated, by which point they were nearly back to the trophy room. She drew Zack over to the wall so they wouldn't be out in the open where Cloud couldn't miss them. Then she drove her heel down on his toes, which would hurt like hell without actually breaking anything important.
"Shit! That really hurts." Zack collapsed in a tangle of arms and legs, kicked off his shoe to massage his foot, and glared up at her. "What was that for?"
"For being too clever," Tifa told him. "Shhh. Cloud might hear you." She tiptoed over to the doorway, which led into the last room before the trophy rooms, and peered around the doorframe. Cloud walked out of the trophy room, carrying something large and awkward, wrapped up in a dusty canvas shroud; Tifa ducked back and held her breath until his footsteps faded in the distance.
She peeked back through the doorway. The empty room had three doors -- the one she was standing next to, the trophy room door almost directly across from her, and one in the right-hand wall that opened onto a long corridor. That must have been where Cloud had gone with whatever he was carrying.
"Well?" Zack asked, coming to stand by her shoulder.
"He's gone -- he was carrying something down the hallway." Tifa took a deep breath and summoned her courage; she wasn't going to look scared in front of Zack. "Let's go."
She only grabbed his hand to make sure he didn't run ahead and give them away by throwing up, or yelling, or doing any other stupid things. It had nothing to do with wanting human contact. Not at all.
They tiptoed across the trophy room, slipped through the open doorway, and swept their flashlights from side to side, looking for what had startled Cloud.
Zack's hand tightened around Tifa's fingers; she didn't notice the pain. She was too busy trying not to throw up.
This room held more trophies, stuffed and mounted, but these... weren't animals. To her right, a purplish figure with ragged wings held a sword in a desperate guard position. Behind him, a beautiful woman with fish-fin ears and delicate fangs stood with her hands raised to cast a spell. Almost every figure in the room was standing on two legs, wearing clothes, or holding a weapon. Even the wolf-like creature on the left wore a row of silver earrings, and its paw was raised and shaped to cast a spell rather than to claw like a mindless beast.
"Demons," Tifa whispered. "They hunted demons. But demons aren't animals -- they're dangerous and you have to watch out for them, but they're people."
"...Yeah," said Zack. His voice cracked halfway through the word. "There's another door. What else did they hunt?"
Tifa shook her head. "I don't want to look. I want to get out of here." There was no way at least some of the demons hadn't turned into ghosts, their restless, angry spirits lingering in the world instead of going home to the lifestream. She didn't want to be anywhere near this room.
Zack hesitated, looking across the terrible room toward the half-open door, and then swallowed. "Yeah, let's get out of here."
Behind them, the door swung open.
---------------------------------------------
End of Part 2
Back to Part 1
Continue to Part 3
original post and comments
------------------------------------
In other news, I now have an official lease for 2006-2007, instead of the informal month-by-month thing that took effect when the old one ran out at the end of June. This is good. Also, I have tentative permission to paint the closet interiors white, which will make it much easier to see things. Right now, they're bare, dark wood, which just swallows light.
icedark_elf's mercverse AU, about ten years before the main canon of the AU... insofar as it can be said to have any canon at all. So. "Two Guys and a Girl," in which I bend, staple, and otherwise mutilate normal game canon involving trips to Nibelheim, because seriously, what's the point of crack AUs if you can't play around like this?ETA: Edited slightly as of 7/17/06, because I had rather stupidly forgotten that the mansion has no electricity at the moment. Therefore, flashlights. :-)
---------------------------------------------
Two Guys and a Girl: Part 2
---------------------------------------------
"You showed me around town, so I'm going to show you around the mansion," Zack announced after lunch. "Cloud, you come and tell Tifa what all the rooms used to be like."
"So, to be clear, I'll be showing Tifa around," Cloud said.
"No! I'm showing her around. You're just... my really convenient living guidebook." Zack stuck out his tongue at Cloud and ducked smoothly away from Cloud's halfhearted swipe at his hair.
Tifa covered her mouth, but didn't try too hard to stifle her laughter. She wished she had a brother or a sister to play around with, the way Zack and Cloud teased each other. It wouldn't be half so hard to stand her ground and keep believing in herself if she had someone to watch her back.
"All right, we'll give you the one-gil tour," Cloud said once he'd successfully cornered Zack and tickled him breathless. "Zack here will pick the route, and I'll answer any questions." He smiled. "If we pass any places that have ghost stories attached to them, feel free to tell us -- I think I like the idea of living in a haunted mansion."
Cloud was gorgeous, but he was just as insane as Zack.
Tifa followed Cloud and Zack out of the kitchen and back into the entry hall. "We'll start down here," Zack decided, as he grabbed three flashlights from a battered end table, "and go upstairs later -- mostly what's up there is a bunch of seriously dusty bedrooms with mildew and spiders all over. This floor's more interesting, especially the trophy room. I looked in there last night, and you wouldn't believe the things all the Shinra had stuffed and nailed on the walls -- like a couple of dragons! They didn't use the dragons for any spells, either, just stuck them up to brag. And there are two-headed monsters, and this thing with tentacles, and a wolf as big as a horse."
"That's not so big for a wolf," Tifa said as Zack led the way through a bewildering maze of interconnecting rooms. Most were empty, and painted an aggressively neutral gray, but a few held piles of old machinery or rows of rusty file cabinets. Those must be leftovers from the mad scientists.
"Seriously? I've never seen a wolf that big."
"Nibel wolves aren't the same species as gray wolves," Cloud explained. "They're much larger, for one, and they're adapted for high altitude and the high concentration of magic around here. They keep gray wolves out, but they get weak and sick if they stray too far from the Nibel mountains, so they're very rare everywhere else."
"Cool." Zack opened a water-warped door, wedged it with a handy bit of broken floorboard, and bounced into the trophy room.
Tifa followed more warily; this would be the perfect place for a monster to hide and ambush any careless humans. The Shinra had spared no expense on their hunting trophies. Magic preserved the beasts as fresh as the day of their deaths, and their glass eyes glittered hungrily from the corners, lit by the faint wash of sun through the open door. Tifa almost expected them to lunge forward and maul her, and even the bodiless heads on the walls seemed to watch her as she edged into the room.
"This is fairly recent," Cloud said absently as he strode toward the door on the far side of the room. "This mansion is owned by a cadet branch of the royal family, but they haven't used it much, and lent it to various relatives over the years. Apparently someone in the past century -- or several someones, judging by the size of the collection -- was an enthusiastic hunter."
He opened the far door, and stopped dead. His hand tightened, until the door creaked under his grip. Tifa fell into a ready stance; in the corner of her eye, she saw Zack shift his weight and draw a knife from his sleeve.
"Zachary. Tifa. Go back to the kitchen. I have to... take care of something."
---------------------------------------------
There was something about Cloud's voice that made it impossible to even think of disobeying. Tifa found herself back in the kitchen before it occurred to her that they'd left Cloud alone to face whatever horrible thing had surprised him.
"What if it was a ghost?" she said to Zack. "He'll die!"
Zack looked like he really wanted to say something, but didn't think he ought to. "Cloud's tough," he said finally. "He'll be all right. There was probably just something really disgusting in the room, and he didn't want us to see it. He gets overprotective like that."
Tifa rubbed her arms, feeling chilly despite the way the mansion trapped the summer heat. "Maybe it was the dead scientist, the one who got eaten by monsters. I wouldn't want to see that." Zack muttered something to himself, and Tifa scowled. "You'd better not be saying bad things about me."
"I'm just saying you're weird," he said defensively. "One minute you're trying to beat me up, and the next you're going all wussy about dead bodies. Can't you make up your mind?"
"Jerk." Tifa threw breadcrumbs at him, and laughed as Zack shook his head in an effort to get them out of his hair. "They wouldn't get stuck if you brushed your hair more than once a year -- you look like a bird tried to build a nest on your head." She struck a pose she'd seen in a fashion magazine, letting her own glossy ponytail swirl over her shoulders.
"I brush it! It just gets like this -- and anyway, Cloud's hair is worse and you didn't say anything about him." Zack shot her a sly look. "Do you like Cloud?"
Tifa flushed and hunched her shoulders. "Shut up!"
A slow, brilliant smile spread across Zack's face. "You do. You totally like him. And you're younger than I am -- oh, he's seriously going to flip out. Hey, what'll you give me to stop me from telling him?"
"Nothing, because I don't like him -- you're just imagining things," Tifa snapped, trying to sound like she wasn't lying through her teeth. "You're such a jerk, Zack."
Zack staggered back, clutching his hands to his heart. "Ow! That's a terrible thing to say to your new best friend, Tifa. Come on, let's go spy on Cloud -- if you help me, I won't tell him a thing."
"But..." Tifa hesitated. What if it was the dead scientist's body? If they got too close, would that let his ghost recognize them, so it could follow them at night?
"Oh, don't be a wuss. I bet Zangan wouldn't be too scared to go look, but if you're going to be all girly..."
"I am not scared!" Tifa said, clenching her fists and glaring at Zack. "I just don't want to bother Cloud -- and that's because it's rude, not because I like him or anything! Stop acting like a jerk and let's go."
"Your wish is my command," Zack said, smiling.
---------------------------------------------
It took Tifa a minute to realize she'd been manipulated, by which point they were nearly back to the trophy room. She drew Zack over to the wall so they wouldn't be out in the open where Cloud couldn't miss them. Then she drove her heel down on his toes, which would hurt like hell without actually breaking anything important.
"Shit! That really hurts." Zack collapsed in a tangle of arms and legs, kicked off his shoe to massage his foot, and glared up at her. "What was that for?"
"For being too clever," Tifa told him. "Shhh. Cloud might hear you." She tiptoed over to the doorway, which led into the last room before the trophy rooms, and peered around the doorframe. Cloud walked out of the trophy room, carrying something large and awkward, wrapped up in a dusty canvas shroud; Tifa ducked back and held her breath until his footsteps faded in the distance.
She peeked back through the doorway. The empty room had three doors -- the one she was standing next to, the trophy room door almost directly across from her, and one in the right-hand wall that opened onto a long corridor. That must have been where Cloud had gone with whatever he was carrying.
"Well?" Zack asked, coming to stand by her shoulder.
"He's gone -- he was carrying something down the hallway." Tifa took a deep breath and summoned her courage; she wasn't going to look scared in front of Zack. "Let's go."
She only grabbed his hand to make sure he didn't run ahead and give them away by throwing up, or yelling, or doing any other stupid things. It had nothing to do with wanting human contact. Not at all.
They tiptoed across the trophy room, slipped through the open doorway, and swept their flashlights from side to side, looking for what had startled Cloud.
Zack's hand tightened around Tifa's fingers; she didn't notice the pain. She was too busy trying not to throw up.
This room held more trophies, stuffed and mounted, but these... weren't animals. To her right, a purplish figure with ragged wings held a sword in a desperate guard position. Behind him, a beautiful woman with fish-fin ears and delicate fangs stood with her hands raised to cast a spell. Almost every figure in the room was standing on two legs, wearing clothes, or holding a weapon. Even the wolf-like creature on the left wore a row of silver earrings, and its paw was raised and shaped to cast a spell rather than to claw like a mindless beast.
"Demons," Tifa whispered. "They hunted demons. But demons aren't animals -- they're dangerous and you have to watch out for them, but they're people."
"...Yeah," said Zack. His voice cracked halfway through the word. "There's another door. What else did they hunt?"
Tifa shook her head. "I don't want to look. I want to get out of here." There was no way at least some of the demons hadn't turned into ghosts, their restless, angry spirits lingering in the world instead of going home to the lifestream. She didn't want to be anywhere near this room.
Zack hesitated, looking across the terrible room toward the half-open door, and then swallowed. "Yeah, let's get out of here."
Behind them, the door swung open.
---------------------------------------------
End of Part 2
Back to Part 1
Continue to Part 3
original post and comments
------------------------------------
In other news, I now have an official lease for 2006-2007, instead of the informal month-by-month thing that took effect when the old one ran out at the end of June. This is good. Also, I have tentative permission to paint the closet interiors white, which will make it much easier to see things. Right now, they're bare, dark wood, which just swallows light.
