Love Bug
Chapter 20
Author's Notes: Wow chapter 20 never had this many chapters before. I've finished this story now. YAY! Just haven't posted it all. 22 chapters there are in total. Thank god I finished it; this was way longer than I first thought it would be. Anyway thanks for all the reviews I was going to say I wanted 50 but thanks to The Notorious Naurwen I've got way more than that now. Anyway enough yapping.
Oh and also in the fic I mention a monster that I can't spell. Thurverius. It's longer than that, I mean those blue flappy things that are around Deling City, between there and the tomb of the unknown king they carry Aero and float and sometimes Scan.... Can you tell I've played this game a lot?
Love Bug
Chapter 20
A room of 30 cadets sat patiently with 10 seeds seated along the front. Squall walked in at the front of the room.
“Okay so the mission is to the island closest the hell. You’ll be in groups of 4, that’s 3 cadets and 1 seed. There are 10 people in need of rescue, 1 for each group.” He turned to Selphie and gestured with his head. She didn’t move. He cleared his throat but she still didn’t move.
The cadets sniggered.
“Selphie?”
“Huh?”
Squall gave her a look.
“OH! Sorry.” She leapt up and out of the room.
“The people to rescue look like this........” Squall held out an arm and Selphie walked back in with a dummy in her arms. It was her height full of stuffing and wearing a checked shirt and bright orange swim shorts.
“If these people dress that badly maybe we should leave them to get eaten by the monsters.” A female cadet said, causing some of the others to laugh.
“We dressed them from the clothes in lost property.” Squall explained. “But that doesn’t matter, no team should have more than one dummy each and all of them must be intact if a team coming back with a pair of legs or a head then I will have to deduct points.”
Zell raised an arm.
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you use real people? It’ll be more realistic and harder too.”
“I see, so you want me to release real innocent people out onto the island so they can get eaten by monsters?”
“W-Well maybe not innocent people, how about some of the guys from the D-district prison.”
Irvine joined in the insanity. “What you mean murderers that could turn on us and beat us up too?”
“Well we could tell them not to hurt us.”
“What? Ask them nicely to not kill us or escape and then come with us back to jail?”
Squall raised his hands at the sniggering and chatter that had joined in with the silly discussion. “Okay that’s enough! This is insanity!”
“Okay that’s all you need to know the seed in your group knows everything so if you have any question you know who to ask.” He sat down as Quistis and Xu stood up.
“Here is the list of who’s in which group when you hear your name go with your group to the Ragnorok, which is waiting outside garden.”
They started to read out the names. “Zell’s team will be Irvine, Carrie and Cindy.”
Both guys cringed as the girl glared at them. “But he told the whole garden I was pregnant!”
“He flooded my dorm and ruined my ceiling.”
Zell tried to sink into the floor but Irvine just waved them off, he exited the room with an arm around Zell’s shoulders chatting away about how great this was going to be.
“Nida you have Lark, Matt and Jeanna.”
The brunette scowled and walked out not waiting for his team.
“Selphie you had Penny, Kelly and Kerry.” The three girls shared a look. “Oh good we got the hyperactive midget.”
They continued to read out the names until they were the only two seeds left. Quistis went first. “Seifer, Lisa and Terry you’re with me.”
The male cadet gave Seifer a look of loathing while the girl winked at him and linked her arm with his refusing to let go.
Xu had the three that were left.
In the rag.
Seifer sat in the briefing room in the rag with the rest of the cadets. Quistis was a seed and so allowed on the bridge so that left him with his teammates. The blonde shifted uncomfortably. Terry glared at him from the seat opposite and Lisa leaned on him, giving him little winks and smiles.
Wonderful.
“Are you excited?”
He looked at the girl. “Um... I guess.”
“You’ll do it this time I know you can.”
“Thanks.”
“How many times have you been on these missions now?”
“This is my fourth time.”
The other guy snorted but Lisa ignored him, leaning on Seifer more. “Well that only means you’re experienced you can help us then.”
“I don’t need help, especially from him.” The other guy hissed.
The blonde turned his body towards the window even more if he moved anymore he’d fall out of it.
Lark saw Nida get up to go up on the bridge, he quickly got up and ran after him.
The dark haired seed frowned. “You’re in my way.” He went to step around the other man but Lark stopped him.
“Look this is ridiculous. All I want to do is to do well on this test and I know you want Irvine to do well.”
Nida still frowned at him but remained silent.
“So how about we call a truce just for this mission?” He held out a hand.
The Seed hesitated before taking the hand. “Deal.”
The cadet smiled and returned to his seat.
Nida was about to go up to the bridge but he spotted something interesting. Seifer was pressed up against the wall and a girl had her hand on his knee, he kept removing it but she wasn’t discouraged. He thought about leaving him there but he wasn’t that mean.
“Excuse me.” He asked the girl, she looked up and frowned at him for interrupting. Seifer gave him a desperate look.
“Seifer can I see you for a minute?”
The girl protested as the blonde got up and followed me. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
He smiled. “Come on I’m going up to the bridge.”
“B-But I thought it was just for Seeds.”
“Yeah well I’m a seed and you’re with me.” He said. “Or do you want to stay here with your teammates?”
He quickly shook his head and followed the seed up to the bridge.
Irvine sat on the bridge was Zell.
Nida smiled at him. “What are you doing up here?”
He patted Zell’s shoulder. “I’m with him.”
Nida sat down next to Irvine and Seifer sat on the other end of their line next to Zell. “Did Nida bring you up here?”
“Yeah he saved me from my teammates.”
“Oh.” The blonde’s face fell. “Are they horrible?”
“The guy looks like he is planning my murder and the girl wants to get into my pants.”
Zell allowed a small smile. “Oh, well you tell her you’re mine.”
The Rag had landed and all the teams had already split up and gone off in different directions. Even though the weather at Balamb was bright and sunny, here a strange mist hung low over the island.
Carrie kept glancing over her shoulder. “What if we get lost?”
“We won’t I have a map.” Zell waved it in the air as proof.
“Yeah Carrie and you know what a great explorer Zell is don’t you?” Irvine added with a smirk.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Me? No of course not.”
“Good because I’m in charge and I can give you a bad report.” The blonde squinted at the map. “Right it’s this way..... I think.”
Quistis’ team had met a ruby dragon all ready. The thing attacked Lisa but Seifer pushed her out the way.
The blonde seed killed is with Shockwave pulsar. “Heal him.” She told Terry.
The cadet wrinkled his nose. “Why bother? We don’t need the sorceress’ ex-lapdog anyway.”
Quistis glared at him about to retort but she was interrupted.
“You saved my life.” The female cadet cast cure on him, fawning over him more than usually and hugged him tightly.
Quistis held in a chuckle as the blonde tried to pry the girl off his waist but she wouldn’t let go.
The male cadet looked on disgusted and walked off in a huff. Quistis made a move to follow. “Come on you two the quicker we find this dummy the quicker you two can be alone together.” She smiled at the horrified look that Seifer turned on her.
“I found one!” Jeanna called and dragged a dummy behind her.
A blue dragon grabbed hold of the legs and pulled one way; the cadet pulled the other way causing the legs to come off. The monster ripped them to shreds and them reached for the rest of it. Jeanna shrieked in panic, dropped the dummy and ran off into the mist.
“WAIT! Don’t go off alone!”
Lark shot the dragon in the throat as he destroyed their dummy. Nida ran up to save it, the dragon scratched him with its claws and the other cadet ran it through on his spear.
The monster sank to the floor, dead.
“Are you okay?”
Nida examined his arm. “Better than him.” He nodded to the pile of stuffing and a head. “I’ll live, we have to go back to the ship and tell Squall about the real missing person.”
Matt gathered up the stuffing. “Will we loose points for this it wasn’t our fault, it was her fault and she’ll fail anyway.”
“I’ll explain it to Squall I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“Are we lost? We are, aren’t we?”
“No I keep telling you I know exactly where we are going.” The blonde studied the map closely, not looking where he was going. “Ahh!” He tripped over something and fell to the ground. The others ran to help.
“It’s a dummy we found one!”
Irvine cocked his head at Zell who lay on the ground. “I think we already have one dummy in this party.”
“Hey! You doubted me; you regret it now don’t you? I knew that was there!”
“Right of course you did. You were just testing us right?”
“Yes that’s exactly what I was doing.”
The two girls gave each other doubting looks. Zell gave the map to Irvine and slung the rescued person over his shoulder. Everyone glanced up, hearing a high pitched shriek and a Thurverius swooped down and tried to grab the dummy. The two girls ducked, Zell threw the dummy to the floor to save it until Irvine shot it.
“That was close huh?”
“Is the dummy okay?”
“Yeah it’s here look.”
“Where’s the head?”
Irvine walked over to the dead bird-alike-thing. “Here it is.” He smirked.
“What are you laughing at? We’ll lose points for this!”
“Well at least we have it all even if it’s not all joined together.”
Someone screamed and a girl ran up and hid herself under Irvine’s coat.
“W-What the hell?!”
“W-We were attacked by a horrible dragon!”
“We? Aren’t you in Nida’s team, they’re okay aren’t they?”
“What? Oh them I don’t know, I was worried about me.”
Zell rolled his eyes. “Come on lets go.” He patted the cowboy on the shoulder. “I’m sure they’re fine.”
“Nida!”
The seed closed his eyes. Maybe he had been a little over confident with the whole I’ll live thing. He felt terrible but still trudged after the others taking a lot of deep breaths.
“W-What is it?”
“Are you okay? You look terrible.”
The seed looked up at Lark too quickly, his head spun and he calloused into the other man’s arms.
The cadet examined Nida’s arm. “Poison.” He grimaced.
Lark dug the radio out of Nida’s pocket and called Squall to tell him to get the medics to prepare some antidote.
Matt carried the stuffing, Lark carried Nida and off they went.
Squall had the two medics get ready for patients. He had heard about Nida, Xu had a cadet with a bite wound and somehow Selphie had fallen down a hole and hurt her leg.
The first team hurried towards the ship, the brunette jumped up seeing his lover carrying Nida. “Quickly get his inside to the medics.”
Lark nodded and ran by, the cadet tried to follow by Squall stopped him. “What happened to your person that you were supposed to rescue? And where is the other member of your team?”
“Um... long story Nida was going to explain but now he sort of... can’t.”
An hour later.
Squall paced in front of the briefing room in the rag. “Okay so maybe I was a little hard on you to expect all the dummies back in tact.” He had all the bits and pieces of dummies in front of him on the table. “Although Quistis’ team had a healthy dummy with all limbs attached.”
The other both cheered and booed them while Seifer and Quistis took bows to the crowd.
Squall sorted through the limbs. “I don’t know what’s worse Nida’s team with the pile of stuffing and a head or Xu’s team who have only one leg.”
Lark spoke up. “Well at least we had a head so our guy could have lived and their leg was long dead.”
“Ooh smart-ass.” Xu cooed.
“And our leader’s unconscious so there.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“We leave as soon as the wounded have all been treated.”
Lark left the room to check on Nida.
He stirred, feeling a gentle cool hand on his hot head. His vision was fuzzy but he could see the image of his lover sitting beside the bed. The room was dark because it was the Rag and the walls were grey.
“Hey.” He croaked out.
The cowboy smiled. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay I wasn’t a great help to my team though.”
“Doesn’t matter they did great.”
The door creaked open and Lark looked in. “Sorry to interrupt I just wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m good. Thanks I owe you one.”
The cadet grinned. “No problem.” He nodded to Irvine and then turned to leave them in peace.
Nida nuzzled into his lover’s touch. “You have cool hands.”
“Well you’re so hot, are sure you’re okay?”
“Hmm.” He yawned.
“Do you want me to leave too?”
“No stay with me.” He leaned against his lover who sat as close to the bed as possible, holding him and then he whispered something into Nida’s ear.
“What?”
“I said... I love you.”
The seed forced his eyes to open. “Really? You mean that?”
“Yeah of course.”
He smiled. “So I’m not just a sex toy?”
The cowboy chuckled. “That too.”