paixaorpg | A Bit of Reclamation... [complete]

Entry tags:

A Bit of Reclamation... [complete]

Character(s): Cid and Kairi
Content: Cid reclaims his shop
Setting: Cid's shop [J7]
Time: not too long after this thread
Warnings: Cid

The rest of the trip to find this place that he apparently owned passed by in silence - or the Cid version thereof. Which is to say ... it wasn't exactly silent, as he kept up a steady grumble that was composed up of equal parts swear and latent bitterness. It didn't really mean much of anything - it was more to fill the silence than anything - but every now and then something comprehensible could picked out of it, usually something about the lack of a sky or the sheer weirdness of the place as a whole.

It wasn't until they arrived at the shop he was supposed to be reclaiming that he stopped - or rather until his journal chirped at him.

"Thought I told you to stay quiet," he grumbled at it before turning to Kairi. "This the place then?"

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Kairi, for her part, had tried very hard not to look amused by Cid's grumblings. It wasn't really fair for him, after all. He had just found himself outside the city, like most people, and obviously wasn't too happy about it, like most people. But he was so vocal about it, kind of. He wasn't yelling up a storm or anything, but still. Kairi chuckled once and awhile.

She adjusted her bag of groceries when they came to stop, blinking a bit at his first comment, until she realized that it was the journal he was talking to, not her. They can be pesky things sometimes, can't they?

After a moment, she nodded to him. "Yep, this is the place." She stepped over to the door, trying the handle. It was stuck just a bit, but not locked. She pushed the door open and then stepped to the side. "Well then, after you."

Cid stepped into the store with a slight hint of caution - mostly likely due to an assortment of adventures involving several dark-cloaked individuals and monsters that liked to hide out in darkened rooms. Luckily for him, the store held nothing of the sort.

"Doesn't look too bad off," he mumbled. "Might be a little easier to tell if I could find the damned lights in this place, though." There had to be a switch around here somewhere, right?

Kairi slipped inside after him, squinting as her eyes tried to readjust to the lack of light. She was quite glad as well that there were no lurking nasties out to get them, except for the occasional ~~or very frequent, actually~~ dust bunnies. Those got a sneeze out of her after she let the door shut behind them and the whiff of air stirred the dust.

She set herself to searching for a switch, setting her groceries down on some crate - or whatever it was, she couldn't really tell - and using both hands to feel around the wall. "I think I got it!" she called, feeling a bit triumphant as her hand reached, allllmost there..., to flip something. And then she finally managed to get to it (grrr all this stuff in the way!), flipping it on and lighting the place before falling over into a pile of knick-knacks.

She rubbed her head and frowned, mumbling to herself and getting back to her feet. "Huh." She looked around the shop. She thinks she's seen a lot worse.

Well, it wasn't as bad as he had expected at least. It would need a fair bit of cleaning to make the place a halfway-decent shop.

"Not too bad, anyway. Cluttered though." What the hell had the former owner of the place been doing with these odds and ends, anyway? There wasn't even much rhyme or reason to what seemed to be in the piles anyway. But there was something he was pretty damned sure he'd find around the place if a him-not-him had actually owned the place. The hard part would be finding it in this mess of shit.

Well, might as well start with nearest pile. Wouldn't have much luck if he never started looking.

All the random junk from the city compiled into one little shop - or that's what Kairi figured, anyway. It had to all go somewhere after all; one man's junk is another man's treasure, or however that saying goes. She had perched herself momentarily atop a barrel full of who-knows-what with a dusty and paint-chipped fishing rod, hooked onto the ring of a tarp not far from her.

She reeled up the corner of it, cringing slightly as the line squeaked - so maybe the girl was a bit mad in her own little way, but she blamed the boys for that - and then oooh'ed under her breath.

"See, now that's the sort of thing I'm talking about," or had been talking about, she thought. "Sure there's a real heaping of crap here... even clothes, snacks, but I think you might like this."

Kairi hopped off from her barrel and moved over to the tarp, unhooking the fish hook and placing the rod aside, then pulling back the tarp and grinning at Cid.

She had unveiled a decent broken and beaten engine of sorts. Cast away and forget here, most likely. Horribly rusted and probably beyond salvageable.

Well, she did forget to mention the trains now, didn't she? She's guessed that they've been under attack once before, surely it's happened more than once. Dead parts have to gone somewhere, after all... Or maybe she was just over-thinking things. She does, on occasion, do that. Hm. Well, she still found it interesting anyway, amongst what may as well been a merge between a thrift store and a bar.

Cid was always a strange man, no matter what version of him it was.

"Well now, maybe there's some hope for this hellhole after all," Cid commented with a grin. After all, if there were engines that meant he might be able to make something actually halfway decent.

Not with this one though, she looked far too rusted to be trusted to anything without falling apart, but where there was one there was bound to be another. And besides, there might be a piece or three that he could salvage out of this one and put to good use elsewhere.

"Wonder where it came from though, 'cause I sure as hell ain't seen much in the way of motor vehicles around here."

Kairi wouldn't have gone as far to call the shop a 'hellhole', unless he meant Paixao in general, which she still gave the city a bit more credit than that. Just a bit. Heh.

She nudged at it with her foot, thinking offhandedly. "Well, there's a system of trains that runs through the city. From central station, going towards the other gates." She smiled sheepishly at him, knowing that she forgot to mention it before. But the Nobodies and Heartless seemed more important to her.

And then she returned to trying to find a way to organize the place. Maybe there would just have to be no rhyme or reason to the job. Sorta figures, really. "I wonder when that Montblanc'll pop by..."

"Trains, huh? Well that's something at least." Not much of something, and certainly not anything that would get him back his sky, but still something. He'd just have to figure out what sort of power the things ran on - he could work something out from there.

There was a shrug at Kairi's comment. "No idea. But it might be best to get the place a bit cleaner in the meantime." After all, the place was fairly messy, and still a bit dusty. Certainly not the most presentable - not that he'd ever really been one on keeping stuff clean. Usually Shera'd been the one keeping the place moderately clean. But this was just a bit messier than even he'd really care for, so it was high time to get it cleaner.

Kairi had taken a break somewhere along the way, poking around at the journals and, well, she tried honestly hard to not laugh out loud, but in the end she did, shutting the journal and getting back to unearthing some shelves, dusting them off and making sure they looked good as new. Later, she checked the journal again, looking a bit uneasy, shuffling a bit, and then seeming slightly relieved.

Well. She had a bad feeling that if she ever encountered a certain demon or two, it might be bad if she encountered them alone. But! She was good at slipping out of that sort of mess, she did it on the journals for awhile, anyhow.

Annnnd~ Even better, she found out that Riku was here again. Not the same Riku as before, but, well, she was getting use to that sort of thing. She'd be the first to admit to the weirdness of the city.

She began organizing stuff (somehow Kairi found a method, more so by size than anything), pulling objects from piles, an oddly new spring in her step. For a moment she paused and looked to Cid. "Oh, hey, if any weird demons come barreling in here - one really short, or one that tries to act really charming - could you, uh, warn me?" She smiled, trying to look a bit innocent despite knowing the disturbance she caused, even if it wasn't quite knowing everything. Heh.

While Cid could - and sometimes did - get so thoroughly wrapped up in what he was doing that he was all but oblivious to his surroundings, this once one of them. Needless to say, Kairi's abrupt laughter was more than slightly confusing as result, to say nothing of her comment shortly thereafter.

"The hell have you been up to?" He had absolutely no interest in dealing with demons after all. Of course, if they attacked him, he'd just attack right back, but tangling with demons wasn't exactly his idea of fun.

She couldn't help but grin over the whole situation, despite everything. She managed to stir up quite a lot over the message boards with just one sentence, but hey, who was she to know that Death didn't have a sense of humor? She would've thought someone who had that sort of job would, but maybe she was still a bit naive for her age.

Kairi rubbed the back of her neck, laughing a bit nervously. "Well I managed to single-handedly stir up quite a commotion on the message boards. Apparently some people don't know what a joke is? Ahahaha... well, it all turned out alright, and there shouldn't be an hard feelings, but," she grinned more, "I think I'll still watch my back." She blinked and looked thoughtful for a moment. "Though one of my friends did show up, so that's good. Still."

"Don't need a damn journal to tell you that," Cid grumbled, even as he turned his attention back to one of the piles of junk. "All you gotta do is hang around the right sorta people. Seen too damned many people in the world who ain't capable of taking a joke."

And most of the ones he'd seen had been in ShinRa. Damned buncha stiffs, if you asked him. Too busy with their reactors and shit to keep any manner of decent money in the way of airships.

Which ... was probably the reason they'd needed his - a thought that caused a brief scowl to cross his face. Served 'em right that they'd stolen the Highwind back in the end. If they couldn't keep her they hadn't deserved to have in the first place.

That's true, there were lots of people who couldn't handle a joke. That should be remedied! Jokes are like... therapy! Or something of that sort. Something of a good natured sort. Yeah. 'course. She could easily smile though and chuckle softly and slide out of a situation gone wrong with ease. Was that a bad skill? Sometimes she had to wonder what people thought of her; most of the time she could care less.

"Oh! But I did find something else of interest on the journals," she beamed brightly at him, though internally she thought that maybe he should pay some more attention to the little devices. They could be helpful! And entertaining. "I was talking to someone about cleaning your shop - and he knew you! Umm... it was a... a... Reno! That's it. Reno."

Reno? Here? That wasn't likely to bode particularly well. Especially not if it meant more of the Turks were going to be showing up. Damn ShinRa and their pirating. Mako, his ships, it was all the same to them.

"He say what the ShinRa were doing here?" It was a bit of a shot in the dark, but if any of them would've said anything it was most likely to be Reno. Kid never had been to good at keeping his mouth shut.

Kairi blinked a bit, suddenly looking at Cid very confused. "Um..." She thought about her journal; she could always go back and skim it to see if he said anything, but he certainly hadn't mentioned it to her. Was it important? If it was important, she would check. But there was one tiiiiny problem with that....

"What's a ShinRa?" she asked finally, blinking at him again.

"A company," Cid answered, with a trace of lingering bitterness to his voice. "I used to work for them."

And then they'd tossed aside their space program and left him and his dreams to rust out in the fields of Rocket Town. Okay, so he'd eventually gotten to go out into space, but not under anything like the situations he'd wanted to have. And true, things had gotten better since Meteor had fallen, but he'd still never forgive them for some of the things they'd done.

"Oh." She shrugged, not really understanding his bitterness. Not quite the best of friends with them, hm? Reno seemed nice enough, and she always thought she was a good judge of character. But, well, all people could be pretty different and see people differently, and it wasn't like the company was just of that Reno. "No, he didn't mention anything about them." Though that was probably obvious from her previous comment about it.

But hey, different worlds, different terms. So many differences in this city... It was interesting. She was enjoying it maybe more than she should be, but she couldn't help it. It was just... her nature. "Well, you could always ask him. The journals are pretty useful. Good way to connect with people in the city." Which she thought was good; she had been too separate from the city at the start.

Ask him? Why the hell would he want to ask Reno anything? "Don't want anything more to do with the damned Shinra," he answered. "Cut my ties to 'em long ago." And he certainly had no intentions of going back to them - most were, or had been, far too greedy for there own good.

The was a thoughtful sort of pause though, and then he continued. "He's a good enough kid though - for a guy who works with ShinRa."

Kairi grinned a bit at Cid's reaction. She had met Reno ans Zack over the journals and hadn't really had a problem with either one of them, well, except for their secrets. Kairi still wanted to know about this 'stash' as well as what 'C4' was, but she would hold off on asking what Cid knew about it. With this whole Sephiroth thing (who she didn't see a problem with, and couldn't tell how he apparently goes insane), Cid probably had enough on his mind.

She glanced around the shop. It was looking a lot better than before. With a bit more work, it'd make for a good meeting place for that group.

She spun around to look at Cid, arms folded behind her back, head tilted slightly to the side. "Do you want me scarce for the meeting tomorrow?" She would probably head off anyway. It probably wouldn't be very interesting to her, after all, like she told Sephiroth, it wasn't like she'd be much help to anyone.

Edited 2008-02-03 04:22 (UTC)

More then enough to deal with, as a matter of fact. Insane or not, Sephiroth had still not only tried to destroy the world and was still part of ShinRa. One of the more tolerable parts, at least before he was insane, but he was still one of the ShinRa all the same.

"Might be better. Not gonna be anything you'll be interested most likely anyway."

And it would mean one less person to have to deal with if there was a sudden outbreak of insanity.

She nodded in agreement. She was good at finding things for herself to do, really, she already has proven that many times on the journals. She did hope that things would be okay while she was gone though, not like she'd be able to control anything though. 'Oh no, calm down, you're making the young girl cry?' That worked a lot better when she was much younger. Not so much now, unless she was trying really hard, but at that point, yelling did more work.

And then she was thinking of actually telling him to behave, but figured he might not appreciate it that much. Still, he probably needed it. Even grown men need to be told. Sometimes more often than not.

"Yep, I figured as much," she finally said instead, but she was giving him a bit of a 'look' to behave himself. "I'll make sure to disappear before it starts." She gave him a bit of a reassuring smile, as if that made everything better.

((Donno if you want to leave it there or with another post from Cid or whatever~ Can prob be closed up soon though.))

Even if she'd wanted to stay Cid probably would have vetoed that idea sheerly on general principle alone. Enough that he'd have to deal with the result explosion that was going to happen when a Turk, a man who should be insane and wasn't and a guy who spent half his damned time brooding into the same space. Needless to do say, he'd be making damned sure to have both Venus Gospel and his few remaining materia well within reach. Sure, you could call him paranoid for it, but as far as he was concerned it was a damned sight better than be not prepared enough, at least in this case.

"Good." She wasn't likely to be any help, and really? He was going to be having a bad enough time keeping tempers in check as it was and wasn't that a rather ironic thought. Usually he was the one setting tempers off not keeping them in line.

And why the hell was he still thinking about this? Worrying about it wouldn't solve a goddamned thing, and he still had a shop to finish cleaning. With any luck he'd even manage to find a proper teapot before the night was out.

Kairi began to finish cleaning up a section of the shop that she had been working on, then slipped her journal into a pocket and went over to where she had left her bag of groceries, thinking to herself about them. It'd be best if she left them here, though she hoped Reno or Zack didn't gobble away at them. Kairi huffed a bit at the thought. Zack owed her a pie when she saw him.

She hid the bag beneath the counter, then swept her eyes around the shop. It'd be in working order soon enough! Assuming there would still be a shop in place after this 'meeting' that was to be happening. It wouldn't do to have to go redoing the maps! So it better still be here when she came back; and she would be back.

She looked around to Cid as she made her way towards the door. "I'm going to go meet a friend of mine. Good luck with that meeting," she told him. He would need the luck. And then with a smile, she was out the door.

((Annnnd Kairi exits stage left!))

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A Bit of Reclamation... [complete]

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