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ciirceeOh yeah, you read that right. A Holic/FF crossover. I WANT MY QUARTER, MEGHAN.
Chocobos Racing
There was something a little…different…today, Watanuki decided as he stared at Yuuko's shop.
"That's pretty phallic," Doumeki said from behind him.
"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Watanuki demanded absentmindedly, staring at the huge hunk of silver and propellers hovering over his place of employment. "Anyhow, it's shaped like a gun. Sort of. With wings. And other parts."
"If you say so," Doumeki agreed, following him as he went up the walk.
Yuuko accosted them at the door. "Oh, good," she said, stuffing Watanuki into one room and, presumably, Doumeki into another. "You have a job. Get changed!"
Watanuki contemplated the small bundle of clothes in the middle of the room with a sick sense of dread. If Yuuko had hid them by actually folding them, there could be no good in it. And, he thought minutes later, he was absolutely correct. His new outfit was a pair of yellow-brown hiking boots, a pair of shorts with one leg longer than the other—the longer leg having the back part of the longer part being composed strictly of large gauge mesh--a pair of blue under-shorts that showed beyond the bottom hem (which had a zipper, for some reason) of the shorter leg. There was a black belt with a silver buckle and a pair of mismatched gloves—one short and black the other a brown leather gauntlet that went to his elbow.
Mostly, his outfit was a zip-up vest masquerading as a shirt. He'd thought that the bright yellow, short sleeved (one of which was blue), short jacket that went with it was a piece separate from the black vest, but it wasn't. The shoulder straps of the vest didn't go over the shoulders at all but rather buckled directly to the jacket part. And while the black part zipped up, it only went to about his navel. And the yellow part didn't close at all. Which meant, in the end, that Watanuki was baring a great deal more chest than he was really comfortable with--both between the lapels as well as in the spaces between the top of the black part of the vest and the bottom of the yellow jacket bit.
"I hate you," he muttered meaningfully as he stepped out of the changing room into the empty hall. He went down the hall to the 'business parlor' as Yuuko referred to it.
"And here he is!" Yuuko clapped. Watanuki glared at her and then looked at her customer: an older blond man with heavy beard stubble, a blue t-shirt, and cargo pants. By the pair of aviator goggles pushed up on his head, Watanuki assumed that he was the owner of the flying monstrosity outside.
"Hell, woman!" the man swore. "If I get into a fight defending his goddamned honor I'm charging you for it!"
Yuuko smiled at him. "Oh, I'm sure that won't be a problem. Ah, Doumeki-kun!" she wiggled her fingers in greeting. "Why don't you reassure Mr. Highwind as regards our Watanuki's honor?"
"Sure," said Doumeki.
"Well, all-fucking-right then," Mr. Highwind said.
"What?" Watanuki shrieked, looking at Doumeki. He rounded on Yuuko. "How come he looks normal?" he wanted to know. Doumeki was wearing mostly black. Black boots, black pants, two black-and-silver belts crossed at his waist, black leather gloves, and a black jacket that ended just above his hips. Most insultingly, Doumeki had a grey shirt.
Mr. Highwind snorted. "Nothing normal about that fluffy-ass collar," he said.
Doumeki fingered the grey fur. "I kind of like it," he said with a shrug.
"The job," Yuuko said, with the air of one breaking up a fight, "is to bring back Three Stars." She lit her pipe. "You're on the clock, gentlemen," she added, shaking out the match.
Highwind grabbed Watanuki and Doumeki by the scruff of the neck. "Haul your asses up that ladder, you sissies," he bawled, pushing them into the courtyard behind the house.
------
The flight to the next dimension (which Watanuki was sure only he really noticed) was fairly short. Their captain, who was named Cid Highwind ("and I don't care who the hell you are, so you just sit the hell down and shut the hell up because I don't need no goddamned teenagers bouncing around my ship with fucking hormones"), spent a good portion of the way talking lovingly about 'his Sierra' who was either the ship they were on or his wife ("probably both", Watanuki muttered to Doumeki under his breath), bitching about a variety of people they didn't know, and smoking.
They disembarked the ship in an endless looking, softly rolling field of green. "This here's the Calm Lands, obviously," grunted their Captain, looking around. "That over there's the Remiem Temple and the track, and them there are the Chocobo stables," he said, jerking his chin at each location in turn before lighting another cigarette. "Get on with it."
"Track?" said Doumeki, looking at the towering, twisting mass of stone towers and broken, uneven roadway.
"Chocobos?" asked Watanuki, looking at the stables.
"Sonofabitch," Highwind cussed. "I knew it was too easy. Drag your sorry carcasses to the goddamn stable."
-------
A 'chocobo', Watanuki soon discovered, was a very large, very loud yellow bird. And they liked Doumeki. A lot. At least eight of the giant birds were clustered around him, nudging him with their big, sharp beaks and fluffing their wings up against him like very affectionate cats. Doumeki scratched at the offered feathered crests and wings and looked bemused.
Watanuki looked at Cid. "How is this related to the stars?" he asked politely.
"Fucking hell!" Cid snapped. "You race 'em, kid. Today's the championships—so you gotta get through all four prelims to get into the final round. There, you've gotta open all five chests, miss all the poles, and get the best time—then you get a Three Stars. It's the grand prize."
Watanuki looked at the birds. Each one was wearing a pair of leather straps that could, possibly, be reins. "Where are the saddles?" he asked, hoping with all his might that Cid Highwind was about to call him a dumbass and explain that one did not ride a chocobo and that there was some other method of racing them.
Cid slapped him on the back, nearly knocking him over as well as nearly burning him with his lit cigarette. "Fuck saddles, kid!" he said cheerfully. "These little guys don't need 'em." He turned to Doumeki. "You," he shouted, stomping towards him, "quit playing with your girlfriends and pick out a goddamn bird." Doumeki lifted a hand, clearly holding two sets of reins.
Watanuki scurried to Doumeki's side as Highwind herded the extra chocobos towards their stalls. The chocobos nestled closer to Doumeki. "Kweh," they said, nudging him.
Doumeki handed him one set of reins. Watanuki smiled at the chocobo. "Wark," it said to him.
"Sonofabitch," said Highwind, herding them out the door. "Okay, the best way to learn to ride is by riding. Get to it," he said again, shooing them in the direction to of the less-than-aptly named 'track'. "I don't have all day to waste on you milk-drinkers."
"I like milk," Watanuki muttered.
Doumeki swung himself up to sit on his chocobo's back, using one of the bird's scaly knees as a step up.
"It's just because Haruka-san had a horse," Watanuki told him. He looked at his chocobo. "We're going to be at this all day unless you give me a hand up," he told it seriously.
The chocobo dropped its head until its beak touched its chest. "Wark," it said forlornly, sneaking a peek at Doumeki from under its lashes.
Doumeki rode past it. "Kweh!" squeaked his mount, practically prancing out of the paddock. Doumeki turned to look back and then beckoned to them with a crook of his finger.
"Kweh!" said Watanuki's mount. He was lifted up quickly by the back of his tiny jacket and dropped with a tooth-jarring rattle onto his bird's back before it thundered after Doumeki and his chocobo with heavy, jolting strides.
"You're goddamned naturals!" Cid called after them. Which would have been comforting, Watanuki thought, if the man hadn't obviously been laughing himself sick.
-------
Nearly two hours later, Watanuki clutched his grumbling chocobo and tried not to slide off its back as they entered the circular goal in the middle of the track for the fourth time. Between the riding, the pressure needed in his knees to keep from being thrown off (again) as the bird ran, and the beat of the bird's wings, he'd quickly lost feeling in his legs. He looked for the score clock.
"We both made it through," Doumeki said, holding his mount's reins in one casual hand. "You were the last one to qualify," he added.
"We tripped over the chest-marker you left in the road," Watanuki growled.
Doumeki shrugged. "Sorry."
"Is your depth perception that off?" Watanuki asked. He had no problem gathering the globular markers from the chest while on the run, especially not since the chocobos were in charge of opening the chests with their sharp talons. But Doumeki missed most of the spheres—it was only his times that were keeping him in the running as far as Watanuki could tell.
Doumeki squinted up at the starting point, nearly a thousand feet above them. "No," he said slowly. "I'm just not leaning over far enough to get them as they come up."
"Well lean more!" Watanuki huffed, his bird trotting behind Doumeki's as they began the long climb back up.
"I'm afraid of heights," Doumeki said as their chocobos leapt across the chasm from one section of track to a slightly higher one. They landed with a jolt. "And I think my nu—"
"I don't need to hear about it!" Watanuki shouted.
"—fall off," Doumeki finished calmly. "What about you?"
"They're fine," Watanuki said. "I think," he added, looking down thoughtfully.
Doumeki snorted softly. "I meant 'what's holding you up'," he explained. "But the other thing is good to know too, I guess."
Watanuki glared at him. "If I could feel my legs I would kick you," he announced loftily. He patted his chocobo's head.
"Wark!" it twisted its head around, glaring at his hand.
"You can see why I'd rather not push my luck trying to make it run faster," he said. "It refuses to outpace you for some stupid reason."
His chocobo nudged Doumeki's shoulder affectionately. "Kweh," it sighed.
Doumeki looked at it. "Run faster," he told it.
"Oh, yeah, kid, that'll work!" Cid said, meeting them at the top and shoving a handful of greens at their mounts. "You know," he said, catching the reins and leading them to the starting point for the last race, "normally I can't stand buggering away an afternoon on chickenshit birds. But watching you two dumbasses? I oughta thank that—"
"Keep enjoying it and she'll charge you for it," Watanuki said dangerously.
"Bitch," he finished sourly. He pulled them to a stop at the back of the group. "Listen up you girls," he said, pointing at the group in front of them. "You're at the back of the pack because you're losers. You want get Three Stars? One of you has gotta get all five chests, miss all the poles—don't think the judges didn't see you nicking those fuckers, either, Gaybee—and get the best time. You, Fluffy," he said, nodding at Doumeki. "Your bird ain't the fastest, but you've got the best control. You should be smokin' these fuckers. Quit dicking around the chests and pick up your balls. And you, Gaybee," he turned back to Watanuki.
"Call me that again and I'm telling Yuuko you laughed," he said.
"Kick your goddamn chocobo in its fluffy-tailed hind end. You're good with your balls, you just gotta be faster. Because the fuck I am going to do this again next year."
"Hey," Doumeki said suddenly looking at Cid.
"That's 'hey, Captain," Cid corrected, smacking a nearby chocobo's beak out of his shirt where it was digging for more of the greens he carried.
"Hey you," Watanuki said, then looked at Doumeki with a shrug.
Doumeki was eyeing the track as though scrutinizing the layout. "This race—it's a test for the animal, right? Open the chests, don't unseat the rider, avoid the obstacles, make the best time. It doesn't matter who the rider is, does it?"
Cid shook his head. "Any dumb shit who can sit can race," he agreed, smacking another bird away from him with his goggles. "The bird really gets the best prize, too," he smirked. "Gets put out to stud."
"So if I get my chocobo through first, after opening the chests and without touching the poles, that's what's most important, right?"
It was Cid's turn to give the track a look. He whistled through his teeth. "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, kid, that's pretty fucking ballsy."
"But it's not against the rules, right?"
"Nope. Don't think they've ever thought of that happening, so they don't have anything about it on the books. Fucking ballsy," Cid repeated. "I like it. Good fucking plan because you two? Are not going to win this any other way."
"What?" Watanuki asked in exasperation when both Doumeki and Highwind fell silent.
The captain grinned at him and patted him on the leg. "Your friend wants you to grab his balls."
"Pervert," Watanuki sighed. He turned to Doumeki who was looking at him placidly. "How's that going to help? You've got to have them on the holder when you get through." The holder was a black swath of something-or-other that each rider wore; the chest-markers attached to it via some sort of magical, invisible Velcro. Only the judges were able to remove them from the holder, too.
Out on the track, the judges began to assemble in the goal circle. Doumeki tightened his grip on the reins. "Keep your ride a pace behind mine—once you get the marker, let it come up beside me. Then you can put the marker in my holder, not yours."
Watanuki closed his eyes. "We need another plan."
"No time," said Doumeki as the tone signaling the start of the race sounded.
------
Watanuki winced as yet another poll slammed against outside his knee. "You could watch that," he yelled at his chocobo. "He's not going to like you if I'm dismembered," he added, swinging back upright.
The chocobo 'wark'ed at him and put on a burst of speed, trying to catch up and snuggle up to Doumeki again.
"Doumeki, tell this animal you won't like it if I'm dead!" Watanuki shouted, slapping the third marker into the holder that was strapped to Doumeki's upper thigh.
"Yeah, don't kill him," Doumeki said, sounding distracted as he urged his mount faster. The rush of wind carried his voice back to them which was, Watanuki thought churlishly, the only reason either he or the bird could hear him. "That'd be bad."
"Uppity jock jerk," Watanuki yelled at his back. He slipped down and grabbed the next marker. "You could care."
"I heard that," Doumeki said as he attached the sphere. "So, you want me to tell you that I care?" He shot him a quick smile over his shoulder as he pulled ahead again.
Yes, thought Watanuki, blinking away Doumeki's smile like it was a flash-bulb afterimage. He nearly missed reaching for the next chest-marker as he shouted, "This is a thing of which we will never speak," he shouted. "You stupid Doumeki!" He added as he slapped the last sphere into place. "GO!"
He fell back, clinging fiercely to the neck of his forlornly 'kweh'ing chocobo as it tried vainly to keep up with Doumeki. He felt it fly up, which he knew was enough to disqualify him and hoped that the bird didn't decide to dump him over the trench in order to reach Doumeki faster. It did dump him—with another angry 'wark'—but since he hit the ground rather quickly, he didn't mind enough to do anything more than silently wish that all the bird's feathers fell out. He opened his eyes.
Doumeki was standing over him, holding a small wooden box. "Got 'em," he said.
"Thank goddamned Jesus finally," Cid said, hanging off the airship's ladder. "Get your asses up here."
-------
Watanuki stomped past Yuuko wordlessly, grabbing his clothes from Maru as he went.
"Here," he heard Doumeki say. "Oh, and my chocobo gave me this…"
"A feather! How lucky!" he heard Yuuko exclaim as he slammed the door violently behind himself.
He stripped, changed, and handed the wadded up bundle of costume to Moro as he stalked back to the parlor. "I'm making chicken yakitori for dinner," he announced. "Lots and lots of chicken."
Cid slapped him on the back, nearly setting his hair on fire with his cigarette. "Good on you, kid," he said. He turned back to Yuuko. "And Rufus isn't gonna be able to weasel out of this, right? Because I'll kill your boy here next time if the bird doesn't."
Yuuko smiled, blowing smoke up at Highwind as she lazed on her chaise. "Your space program is going to go ahead. It'll cost him quite the pretty penny, I might add."
"Good. Asshole deserves it," he muttered, stomping out the door. "Hey, Gaybee," he said, turning back. "You and Fluffy did good." He saluted him with a wave of a wicked-looking lance and disappeared up his ship's later.
"He laughed," Watanuki told Yuuko.
***********************************************************************
Yes, Yuuko dressed them up as Tidus (FFX) and Squall (FFVIII). The race is from FFX and I used Cid Highwind from FFVII/AC, obviously. My most favorite Cid of all. ♥
Chocobos Racing
There was something a little…different…today, Watanuki decided as he stared at Yuuko's shop.
"That's pretty phallic," Doumeki said from behind him.
"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Watanuki demanded absentmindedly, staring at the huge hunk of silver and propellers hovering over his place of employment. "Anyhow, it's shaped like a gun. Sort of. With wings. And other parts."
"If you say so," Doumeki agreed, following him as he went up the walk.
Yuuko accosted them at the door. "Oh, good," she said, stuffing Watanuki into one room and, presumably, Doumeki into another. "You have a job. Get changed!"
Watanuki contemplated the small bundle of clothes in the middle of the room with a sick sense of dread. If Yuuko had hid them by actually folding them, there could be no good in it. And, he thought minutes later, he was absolutely correct. His new outfit was a pair of yellow-brown hiking boots, a pair of shorts with one leg longer than the other—the longer leg having the back part of the longer part being composed strictly of large gauge mesh--a pair of blue under-shorts that showed beyond the bottom hem (which had a zipper, for some reason) of the shorter leg. There was a black belt with a silver buckle and a pair of mismatched gloves—one short and black the other a brown leather gauntlet that went to his elbow.
Mostly, his outfit was a zip-up vest masquerading as a shirt. He'd thought that the bright yellow, short sleeved (one of which was blue), short jacket that went with it was a piece separate from the black vest, but it wasn't. The shoulder straps of the vest didn't go over the shoulders at all but rather buckled directly to the jacket part. And while the black part zipped up, it only went to about his navel. And the yellow part didn't close at all. Which meant, in the end, that Watanuki was baring a great deal more chest than he was really comfortable with--both between the lapels as well as in the spaces between the top of the black part of the vest and the bottom of the yellow jacket bit.
"I hate you," he muttered meaningfully as he stepped out of the changing room into the empty hall. He went down the hall to the 'business parlor' as Yuuko referred to it.
"And here he is!" Yuuko clapped. Watanuki glared at her and then looked at her customer: an older blond man with heavy beard stubble, a blue t-shirt, and cargo pants. By the pair of aviator goggles pushed up on his head, Watanuki assumed that he was the owner of the flying monstrosity outside.
"Hell, woman!" the man swore. "If I get into a fight defending his goddamned honor I'm charging you for it!"
Yuuko smiled at him. "Oh, I'm sure that won't be a problem. Ah, Doumeki-kun!" she wiggled her fingers in greeting. "Why don't you reassure Mr. Highwind as regards our Watanuki's honor?"
"Sure," said Doumeki.
"Well, all-fucking-right then," Mr. Highwind said.
"What?" Watanuki shrieked, looking at Doumeki. He rounded on Yuuko. "How come he looks normal?" he wanted to know. Doumeki was wearing mostly black. Black boots, black pants, two black-and-silver belts crossed at his waist, black leather gloves, and a black jacket that ended just above his hips. Most insultingly, Doumeki had a grey shirt.
Mr. Highwind snorted. "Nothing normal about that fluffy-ass collar," he said.
Doumeki fingered the grey fur. "I kind of like it," he said with a shrug.
"The job," Yuuko said, with the air of one breaking up a fight, "is to bring back Three Stars." She lit her pipe. "You're on the clock, gentlemen," she added, shaking out the match.
Highwind grabbed Watanuki and Doumeki by the scruff of the neck. "Haul your asses up that ladder, you sissies," he bawled, pushing them into the courtyard behind the house.
------
The flight to the next dimension (which Watanuki was sure only he really noticed) was fairly short. Their captain, who was named Cid Highwind ("and I don't care who the hell you are, so you just sit the hell down and shut the hell up because I don't need no goddamned teenagers bouncing around my ship with fucking hormones"), spent a good portion of the way talking lovingly about 'his Sierra' who was either the ship they were on or his wife ("probably both", Watanuki muttered to Doumeki under his breath), bitching about a variety of people they didn't know, and smoking.
They disembarked the ship in an endless looking, softly rolling field of green. "This here's the Calm Lands, obviously," grunted their Captain, looking around. "That over there's the Remiem Temple and the track, and them there are the Chocobo stables," he said, jerking his chin at each location in turn before lighting another cigarette. "Get on with it."
"Track?" said Doumeki, looking at the towering, twisting mass of stone towers and broken, uneven roadway.
"Chocobos?" asked Watanuki, looking at the stables.
"Sonofabitch," Highwind cussed. "I knew it was too easy. Drag your sorry carcasses to the goddamn stable."
-------
A 'chocobo', Watanuki soon discovered, was a very large, very loud yellow bird. And they liked Doumeki. A lot. At least eight of the giant birds were clustered around him, nudging him with their big, sharp beaks and fluffing their wings up against him like very affectionate cats. Doumeki scratched at the offered feathered crests and wings and looked bemused.
Watanuki looked at Cid. "How is this related to the stars?" he asked politely.
"Fucking hell!" Cid snapped. "You race 'em, kid. Today's the championships—so you gotta get through all four prelims to get into the final round. There, you've gotta open all five chests, miss all the poles, and get the best time—then you get a Three Stars. It's the grand prize."
Watanuki looked at the birds. Each one was wearing a pair of leather straps that could, possibly, be reins. "Where are the saddles?" he asked, hoping with all his might that Cid Highwind was about to call him a dumbass and explain that one did not ride a chocobo and that there was some other method of racing them.
Cid slapped him on the back, nearly knocking him over as well as nearly burning him with his lit cigarette. "Fuck saddles, kid!" he said cheerfully. "These little guys don't need 'em." He turned to Doumeki. "You," he shouted, stomping towards him, "quit playing with your girlfriends and pick out a goddamn bird." Doumeki lifted a hand, clearly holding two sets of reins.
Watanuki scurried to Doumeki's side as Highwind herded the extra chocobos towards their stalls. The chocobos nestled closer to Doumeki. "Kweh," they said, nudging him.
Doumeki handed him one set of reins. Watanuki smiled at the chocobo. "Wark," it said to him.
"Sonofabitch," said Highwind, herding them out the door. "Okay, the best way to learn to ride is by riding. Get to it," he said again, shooing them in the direction to of the less-than-aptly named 'track'. "I don't have all day to waste on you milk-drinkers."
"I like milk," Watanuki muttered.
Doumeki swung himself up to sit on his chocobo's back, using one of the bird's scaly knees as a step up.
"It's just because Haruka-san had a horse," Watanuki told him. He looked at his chocobo. "We're going to be at this all day unless you give me a hand up," he told it seriously.
The chocobo dropped its head until its beak touched its chest. "Wark," it said forlornly, sneaking a peek at Doumeki from under its lashes.
Doumeki rode past it. "Kweh!" squeaked his mount, practically prancing out of the paddock. Doumeki turned to look back and then beckoned to them with a crook of his finger.
"Kweh!" said Watanuki's mount. He was lifted up quickly by the back of his tiny jacket and dropped with a tooth-jarring rattle onto his bird's back before it thundered after Doumeki and his chocobo with heavy, jolting strides.
"You're goddamned naturals!" Cid called after them. Which would have been comforting, Watanuki thought, if the man hadn't obviously been laughing himself sick.
-------
Nearly two hours later, Watanuki clutched his grumbling chocobo and tried not to slide off its back as they entered the circular goal in the middle of the track for the fourth time. Between the riding, the pressure needed in his knees to keep from being thrown off (again) as the bird ran, and the beat of the bird's wings, he'd quickly lost feeling in his legs. He looked for the score clock.
"We both made it through," Doumeki said, holding his mount's reins in one casual hand. "You were the last one to qualify," he added.
"We tripped over the chest-marker you left in the road," Watanuki growled.
Doumeki shrugged. "Sorry."
"Is your depth perception that off?" Watanuki asked. He had no problem gathering the globular markers from the chest while on the run, especially not since the chocobos were in charge of opening the chests with their sharp talons. But Doumeki missed most of the spheres—it was only his times that were keeping him in the running as far as Watanuki could tell.
Doumeki squinted up at the starting point, nearly a thousand feet above them. "No," he said slowly. "I'm just not leaning over far enough to get them as they come up."
"Well lean more!" Watanuki huffed, his bird trotting behind Doumeki's as they began the long climb back up.
"I'm afraid of heights," Doumeki said as their chocobos leapt across the chasm from one section of track to a slightly higher one. They landed with a jolt. "And I think my nu—"
"I don't need to hear about it!" Watanuki shouted.
"—fall off," Doumeki finished calmly. "What about you?"
"They're fine," Watanuki said. "I think," he added, looking down thoughtfully.
Doumeki snorted softly. "I meant 'what's holding you up'," he explained. "But the other thing is good to know too, I guess."
Watanuki glared at him. "If I could feel my legs I would kick you," he announced loftily. He patted his chocobo's head.
"Wark!" it twisted its head around, glaring at his hand.
"You can see why I'd rather not push my luck trying to make it run faster," he said. "It refuses to outpace you for some stupid reason."
His chocobo nudged Doumeki's shoulder affectionately. "Kweh," it sighed.
Doumeki looked at it. "Run faster," he told it.
"Oh, yeah, kid, that'll work!" Cid said, meeting them at the top and shoving a handful of greens at their mounts. "You know," he said, catching the reins and leading them to the starting point for the last race, "normally I can't stand buggering away an afternoon on chickenshit birds. But watching you two dumbasses? I oughta thank that—"
"Keep enjoying it and she'll charge you for it," Watanuki said dangerously.
"Bitch," he finished sourly. He pulled them to a stop at the back of the group. "Listen up you girls," he said, pointing at the group in front of them. "You're at the back of the pack because you're losers. You want get Three Stars? One of you has gotta get all five chests, miss all the poles—don't think the judges didn't see you nicking those fuckers, either, Gaybee—and get the best time. You, Fluffy," he said, nodding at Doumeki. "Your bird ain't the fastest, but you've got the best control. You should be smokin' these fuckers. Quit dicking around the chests and pick up your balls. And you, Gaybee," he turned back to Watanuki.
"Call me that again and I'm telling Yuuko you laughed," he said.
"Kick your goddamn chocobo in its fluffy-tailed hind end. You're good with your balls, you just gotta be faster. Because the fuck I am going to do this again next year."
"Hey," Doumeki said suddenly looking at Cid.
"That's 'hey, Captain," Cid corrected, smacking a nearby chocobo's beak out of his shirt where it was digging for more of the greens he carried.
"Hey you," Watanuki said, then looked at Doumeki with a shrug.
Doumeki was eyeing the track as though scrutinizing the layout. "This race—it's a test for the animal, right? Open the chests, don't unseat the rider, avoid the obstacles, make the best time. It doesn't matter who the rider is, does it?"
Cid shook his head. "Any dumb shit who can sit can race," he agreed, smacking another bird away from him with his goggles. "The bird really gets the best prize, too," he smirked. "Gets put out to stud."
"So if I get my chocobo through first, after opening the chests and without touching the poles, that's what's most important, right?"
It was Cid's turn to give the track a look. He whistled through his teeth. "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, kid, that's pretty fucking ballsy."
"But it's not against the rules, right?"
"Nope. Don't think they've ever thought of that happening, so they don't have anything about it on the books. Fucking ballsy," Cid repeated. "I like it. Good fucking plan because you two? Are not going to win this any other way."
"What?" Watanuki asked in exasperation when both Doumeki and Highwind fell silent.
The captain grinned at him and patted him on the leg. "Your friend wants you to grab his balls."
"Pervert," Watanuki sighed. He turned to Doumeki who was looking at him placidly. "How's that going to help? You've got to have them on the holder when you get through." The holder was a black swath of something-or-other that each rider wore; the chest-markers attached to it via some sort of magical, invisible Velcro. Only the judges were able to remove them from the holder, too.
Out on the track, the judges began to assemble in the goal circle. Doumeki tightened his grip on the reins. "Keep your ride a pace behind mine—once you get the marker, let it come up beside me. Then you can put the marker in my holder, not yours."
Watanuki closed his eyes. "We need another plan."
"No time," said Doumeki as the tone signaling the start of the race sounded.
------
Watanuki winced as yet another poll slammed against outside his knee. "You could watch that," he yelled at his chocobo. "He's not going to like you if I'm dismembered," he added, swinging back upright.
The chocobo 'wark'ed at him and put on a burst of speed, trying to catch up and snuggle up to Doumeki again.
"Doumeki, tell this animal you won't like it if I'm dead!" Watanuki shouted, slapping the third marker into the holder that was strapped to Doumeki's upper thigh.
"Yeah, don't kill him," Doumeki said, sounding distracted as he urged his mount faster. The rush of wind carried his voice back to them which was, Watanuki thought churlishly, the only reason either he or the bird could hear him. "That'd be bad."
"Uppity jock jerk," Watanuki yelled at his back. He slipped down and grabbed the next marker. "You could care."
"I heard that," Doumeki said as he attached the sphere. "So, you want me to tell you that I care?" He shot him a quick smile over his shoulder as he pulled ahead again.
Yes, thought Watanuki, blinking away Doumeki's smile like it was a flash-bulb afterimage. He nearly missed reaching for the next chest-marker as he shouted, "This is a thing of which we will never speak," he shouted. "You stupid Doumeki!" He added as he slapped the last sphere into place. "GO!"
He fell back, clinging fiercely to the neck of his forlornly 'kweh'ing chocobo as it tried vainly to keep up with Doumeki. He felt it fly up, which he knew was enough to disqualify him and hoped that the bird didn't decide to dump him over the trench in order to reach Doumeki faster. It did dump him—with another angry 'wark'—but since he hit the ground rather quickly, he didn't mind enough to do anything more than silently wish that all the bird's feathers fell out. He opened his eyes.
Doumeki was standing over him, holding a small wooden box. "Got 'em," he said.
"Thank goddamned Jesus finally," Cid said, hanging off the airship's ladder. "Get your asses up here."
-------
Watanuki stomped past Yuuko wordlessly, grabbing his clothes from Maru as he went.
"Here," he heard Doumeki say. "Oh, and my chocobo gave me this…"
"A feather! How lucky!" he heard Yuuko exclaim as he slammed the door violently behind himself.
He stripped, changed, and handed the wadded up bundle of costume to Moro as he stalked back to the parlor. "I'm making chicken yakitori for dinner," he announced. "Lots and lots of chicken."
Cid slapped him on the back, nearly setting his hair on fire with his cigarette. "Good on you, kid," he said. He turned back to Yuuko. "And Rufus isn't gonna be able to weasel out of this, right? Because I'll kill your boy here next time if the bird doesn't."
Yuuko smiled, blowing smoke up at Highwind as she lazed on her chaise. "Your space program is going to go ahead. It'll cost him quite the pretty penny, I might add."
"Good. Asshole deserves it," he muttered, stomping out the door. "Hey, Gaybee," he said, turning back. "You and Fluffy did good." He saluted him with a wave of a wicked-looking lance and disappeared up his ship's later.
"He laughed," Watanuki told Yuuko.
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Yes, Yuuko dressed them up as Tidus (FFX) and Squall (FFVIII). The race is from FFX and I used Cid Highwind from FFVII/AC, obviously. My most favorite Cid of all. ♥
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Date: 2010-11-01 11:30 pm (UTC)Spiegel