Vaan Ratsbane (technicks) wrote in missions, @ 2012-09-05 14:08:00 |
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Nothing ever stayed the same. There was only the constant need to move forward and now, here, picking up again where he'd left off before the mission, it was naggingly obvious how everything in his life still felt slightly askew. Waiting for all the important pieces to simply fall back into alignment never seemed to do him much good (not when half of them were missing). Vaan, bane of Lindblum's sewer rats and the future king of sky pirates, found himself in the hangar that late afternoon, propped at one of the work tables, various parts of a small wing engine scattered out in front of him. He had just started fitting everything together when they'd left for Galbadia and the behemoth's share of work remained. He was still intent on finishing and had sat for the past several hours on the (slightly bent) work stool, covering himself in smudges of engine grease and ruining another shirt. It was only as he stopped toying with the oil filter and started thinking about dinner when Vaan heard the noise. He looked over his shoulder. "Huh?" And there it was again, shrill and more insistent, a mewling cry for help. A kitten. Vaan shuffled off his stool and took a look around. There weren't any other students around at the moment, and the lack of commotion gave the kitten's cries plenty of space to echo. It nearly reminded him of Lindblum, of wandering around its narrow and winding collection of alleyways and backstreets, playing with the other young boys in his neighborhood and trying to collect stray cats— each of them earning a new collection of claw-marks in return for their efforts. Not that it ever did much good to stop them. After a few minutes of hapless wandering, Vaan knelt down beside one of the airships and squinted uselessly at the shadows underneath. "You under there?" He asked, ready to squirm his way below to find out. Fortunately for him, Vaan's question was met with an enthusiastic reply. A frantic ball of fur immediately assailed him. Skitting backwards, catching himself mid-slip and flipping into a handstand, Vaan looked up (or down?) to see the kitten in question clinging desperately to his shirt. "Hey! Where'd you come from?" The kitten (his kitten, he quickly decided to claim) was a tiny, orange, scrappy little guy covered in dust and grime. Vaan wasn't sure what to name him, but his first order of business, after collecting his tool kit and running back to his dorm room with a tiny, mewling bundle of shirt, was to give the kitten a bath. Or, to be more precise and to avoid unnecessary scratches up his hands and forearms, was to carefully scrub him off with a rag and warm water. When his fur was close enough to clean as he could manage, and Vaan was often hard-pressed to keep himself tidy, he let the kitten wander the expanse of his room. Chewing on the end of his blanket, the kitten seemed disinclined to object. Vaan raised his arms above his head and smiled. Nothing ever stayed the same, he knew, and his room, once boring and empty and missing vital components to the whole, never quite managing to right itself from the year's continuous chaos...instead found itself a fuzzy new resident. For all reasonable purposes, Vaan was now a parent. "Guess you're gonna stay here with me, little guy." |