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Chapter Seven: Blonde Ambition
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At first glance, Omega Weapon didn't think that his Monday class had made it to the classroom on time. Instead, the desks were currently occupied by what appeared to be barely-walking masses of bruises, mud, matted hair, torn clothes, and angst. Upon closer examination, however, the incoherent heap of misery in the front row turned out to be named Dana Ebersol, and also to not appreciate being speculatively poked with one urple claw. Not that she could do much about it.
After the unfortunate encounter with the maiden who "lay upon the rocs," Dana and Lily had- by the disastrous omission of a single L- been unceremoniously transported to the realm of Hel, a goddess who turned out to be the ancient Viking version of Satan. Then there had been a bit of trouble with a crew of moggles- sadistic blue Moogles who wore flying goggles and carried potato-masher grenades. And nobody even wanted to THINK about their final, unfortunate encounters with the the One-Winged Gangel. Most of the students hadn't even gotten up after they'd stumbled out of the final tent, spending the night there and crawling to classes the next morning.
"ALL RIGHT!" Al shouted, after placating Frank with his usual ration of Nicorette. "As it seems some of you are less than happy with the current ClicheCamp that the staff is holding . . . "
Cue appropriately timed groans from the students.
" . . . Frank and I have decided to tone down the . . . ahem . . . 'vehemence' of our classes for the next few days."
This statement raised a few heads, though most of their owners immediately muttered profanity at the pain and immediately put them back down.
"Today's assignment: stand up."
"Too cruel!" Dana wailed from the front row, her mouth being the only part of her that was still completely working. A few of the students put their hands on their desks and valiantly attempted to struggle to their feet, but soon collapsed in exhausted pain onto the unforgiving plastic of the desktops. Al crossed his arms and surveyed the classroom.
"Come now, surely you can do better than THAT? Really, I would HATE to have to fail you all for today, but if that's the way it has to be . . . "
"The hell you would," muttered Solarwind Starfire. That particular Sephiroth luster had made a rather sad mistake the first day at the school- nobody knew exactly what it was, as she was being extremely reticent about it- but she had been dumped in vats of urple, blello, and wilver paint as punishment. (According to rumor, Miss J and Hojo were testing various 'evil colors' to try and find one perfect for OFUFF. The experiment had not yet been very successful, as their latest effort- a peculiar shade they had dubbed 'breen'- had only succeeded in making a few students nauseous. But hope springs eternal.) Ever since then, she had been rather skeptical about the good intentions (*cough*) of the staff members, to say the least.
"Deee-ten-tion!" Al sang out. "Disrespecting a staff member- two staff members, actually. Pits of Lost Characterization, ten o'clock this evening. Be prepared to scrub. And now," he continued, as Frank spat out his gum and swilled Hyper out of a beer bottle, "on to the REAL lesson for today. According to the observation teams who ran you through today's ClicheCamp, some of you used the power of the Author to escape the more dangerous scenarios without injury. This is, of course, unacceptable."
MachineGunPunch snorted. "And you're going to do WHAT about it?"
Frank handed the bottle up to Al, who took a grateful swig. "You're new here, aren't you."
"Yeah-"
The large, flat face grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. "This is the Extreme Overpowers class. Therefore, Author Power falls under our jurisdiction- to detect, correct, and punish."
Mass sweatdrop.
"But luckily for you, we want you to leave this university a better writer than you entered." ("That'll be the day," Al interjected.) "So instead of summoning the Moogles to administer correction, we're going to have one of them give you a little demonstration." Frank gestured to the door, which opened slightly to admit a small, extremely furry pink teddy bear. A Moogle. An entirely unexceptional Moogle, except for the golden necklace gleaming around its short neck.
"How cuuute!" one of the new students squealed.
"This is Rellm," Al said calmly. "Note the Necklace of Noncanon Enhancement, please. Rellm?"
"THIS IS MY FIRST SOTRY SO PLLEEZE IF U DONT LLIKE IT DONT SAY BAD STUFF ABUOT IT! REVIEW AND ILL FEED VINNY!"
Suddenly, the Moogle was a lot less cute.
"As you see," Al narrated as the students clamped their hands over their ears, "the voice of the Author Presence, while melodic and sweet to the Presence itself, in fact causes nothing but pain to those forced to hear it."
"SHES NOT A MARY SUE I SWEAR!"
"The Author is an all-encompassing presence, dictating the fate of every character in the story. While the Authors of the Final Fantasy games- namely the people at Squaresoft, Inc.- remain silent and let their creations have their say, Author Presences disrupt the story, break the fourth wall, make your ears bleed, and give migraines to PPC agents who have to deal with them."
"DONT YOU DARE FLAME ME IF U CANT SAY ANYTHNG NICE DONT SAY ANYTHING AT ALL!"
"If you have a comment to make in a story, put it in an Author's Note in the beginning- don't make yourself into some kind of omnipotent being, calling down from on high. Thank you, Rellm." The Moogle saluted and hopped away, leaving several dozen students twitching on the floor. Al and Frank slapped each other a high five as the bell rang, triggering a chorus of groans from those with exceptionally bruised eardrums.
"Homework!" Frank shouted. "Write a two-hundred word humor story WITHOUT Author Voice. Those who fail to comply will be dangled upside-down from the Nibel Bridge. Dismissed!"
* * *
That evening, in the teachers' lounge . . .
"Don't you think we're being a bit harsh?" Elmyra ventured, looking up from her sewing. Various teachers and staff members, joined by their favorite Moogles, were collapsed on chairs and futons; it had been a rough day, the worst so far. Over three hundred detentions and other punishments had been meted out to various students, mostly due to persistent stalking, attempted panty-raids, flying-tackling, attempts to seduce canon characters, and plain old infighting between those damn Edge fangirls. "I understand that you're all angry, but is it really necessary to make them do Ultimecia's laundry?"
"It's just retribution," Cid Kramer replied lazily, from where he was sprawled on the blue plush sofa with Edea. "They write me as a wailing baby, I give them something to really cry about. Did they ever find Neko's dinner plates?"
Neko aka Nathan had enrolled as a Normally Inanimate Object. Unfortunately for him, Mrs. Yang had been working in the Enrollment Office that day, and had ended up registering him as a complete set of eighteenth-century Dutch living-room furniture, complete with love seat and china hutch. According to the Moogles, it made life in the boys' dorm quite interesting.
Locke Cole looked up from the Treasure Hunting 101 papers he was grading. "Blue-patterned china with a lilac motif?"
"That's them."
"Gogog and Cahos were using them for skeet shooting this morning."
The conversation was interrupted by the opening of the lounge door. Lady Sanzennine and the Chocobo Goddess entered, evidently discussing the next day's ClicheCamp.
"Are you sure that's all right?" were the deity's first words.
"Since when do we care?" Lady Sanzennine pointed out. "Cloud's wanted this for months, and poor Cecil's practically suffered a nervous breakdown since that last chapter of 'Love and Blood Under the Starlight Heavens' came out. What harm could it do?"
The Chocobo Goddess crossed her arms. "I wasn't thinking of the students, I was thinking of the hospital wing. Lucrecia's overworked as it is, ever since that last Tidus-glomping. Come to think of it, is Tidus in on this too?"
"Do you think he'd be left out?"
"Muaha."
"Didn't think so."
* * *
Tuesday's dawn broke over the Official Fanfiction University of Final Fantasy with an audible crack. Or maybe that was just the collective knuckles of Cecil, Butz, Locke, Cloud, Squall, Zidane, and Tidus, who were standing on a wooden dais at one end of the fifty-yard flat plain. All of the students had been hauled out of bed moments earlier, and were blinking in astonishment as they straggled down the mountain slope. Yesterday's dimes had disappeared, but the thick, pea-soup-smelling fog still reminded them that ClicheCamp was not yet escaped.
As the students assembled in scraggly lines in front of the dais, Squall marched to the fore and put one gloved hand on the hilt of his gunblade.
"STRAIGHTEN UP, YOU GODDAMN JACKASSES!"
Evidently, he was feeling militaristic. Jumping, the fanwriters stood up straight as Squall prowled back and forth, inspecting them minutely. Attempts were made to stand still and look him in the eye. Given that they were half-asleep civilians attempting to pass muster for the Commander of Balamb Garden, all failed miserably.
"All right," Squall growled, striding back to the dais and turning to glare the assembly into submission, "Let me make something perfectly clear. I am the commander of the most powerful military academy in several continents. Every one of us whom you see here are the best of our worlds. But still, you write us as wimps. Drag queens. Cowards. Incompetents!"
The students flinched. Squall's eyes were narrowed and the Lionheart was beginnning to glow. Not good signs.
"Today's ClicheCamp will make it abundantly clear," he continued through clenched teeth, "That the heroes- fighting for good and justice though we may- are never to be underestimated. This is one of the most overused 'ideas' in fanfiction, and it has got to stop. Do you understand?"
A few of the writers muttered replies. The commander's left eye twitched as he turned to the dais.
"Cloud. All yours."
"Fifteen laps around the valley," Cloud said coolly, stepping down to take Squall's place. "That ought to warm them up."
* * *
An hour passes . . .
"Oh, God," Lily groaned from where she was sprawled on the ground. "He can't have done this every day."
"He did," Dana responded. A good night's sleep had actually done her good, but the combination of SOLDIER, SeeD, and survival exercises that the gathered heroes were putting them through wasn't exactly helping. It turned out that Cecil's idea of a relaxing time was doing pushups with twenty pounds of plate mail on.
Raising her head painfully to look around . . . Lily choked.
"Not again-!"
"What?" Dana looked. "Crap."
Since the five-minute rest break had been called, a small forest of canvas tents had arisen on the far side of the valley. Exceedingly familiar canvas tents, guarded by an exceedingly familiar smirking Guado.
"They wouldn't send us through there again, would they?" Faibhile, who was collapsed next to the two girls, whispered.
"Oh, they would." Dana moaned. "And I forgot to get life insurance again."
Cloud's voice echoed across the heaps of exhausted students. "GET UP!" he yelled, punctuating the announcement with a randomly-directed Flare spell. There were shrieks as somebody's Auron plushie caught fire, but Cloud paid no attention. "This is the last phase of today's camp!" the swordsman called. "Waiting inside each tent is one obstacle you must face, the same ones we did. If you make it out, you're done for today. Last person up is the first in, so get moving!"
Watching the students being herded into single file, Lucrecia smiled and leaned back against Vincent, who wrapped his arms around her. The small group of canonical heroes and staff members was watching from a low ridge that jutted out over the valley, snacking and shooting video of the blonde protagonists' training demonstration. Lucrecia herself was on her first break since the University had officially opened, and was enjoying the chance to relax and enjoy a little schadenfreude.
"What do you suppose they've got hidden in those tents?" she asked Vincent, who merely shrugged.
"I haven't the faintest. Perhaps a maze of some kind, or a monster to fight. All I know is that Cloud and Squall were very secretive about it." He was interrupted by the Major, who had been looking around curiously, and now tapped him on the shoulder.
"Vincent?"
"Yes?"
"Where's Sephiroth?"