Room 325, Tuesday Evening

[bitchprince]

It had been a good, long, productive day, especially at the reserves, and Arthur had retired to his room with a copy of Le Chemin de France and a bowl of grapes. And his Blackberry. His Blackberry was of some importance tonight. After all, he was still, technically, working.

That is to say he was calling Zack every hour on the dot just to check if he was still running. At the rate things were going, Arthur was starting to contemplate simply telling him to keep going until morning and see if it held.

Sir Dinadan, had he been present, would have had so many things to say, but this was a G-rated post.

[[ half-open door, open post, sure ]]

Comments

[puppy_fair]

"I'm still running," was Zack's greeting, during one of the later-in-the-evening check-in calls. "Kinda getting hungry, though. How long did you say I had to do this?"

It possibly said a great deal about Zack that he actually was still running, and that he'd taken Arthur's word as an official order. When this was done and over with, he was probably going to sleep clear on until Thursday's class.

[bitchprince]

"Until twelve," Arthur replied, promptly, leaning back against his pillow. It wasn't that he was against exercise himself, but he was making a point, here. "So you've got about three, two more hours left to go. I thought you liked running?"

[puppy_fair]

"I do," Zack sighed, and there was a slight 'whumph' of breath to follow that which suggested that he'd just made a landing after jumping from a very high place. "But I've been around the rocky bits three times, now, and there's still nothing here, Arthur. The rest of the island is pretty much the same, even if there is some weird stuff here and there. Have you ever seen the angel statues in the preserve that are playing ring-around-the-rosie? They're creepy."

He'd kinda made a point to steer more or less clear of those.

"I just kinda enjoy eating supper, too."

[bitchprince]

"Then order a pizza to be delivered at twelve," Arthur said, mercilessly. He fiddled with his book. "I think I've seen those angel statues before in class. Disturbing, aren't they?"

Oh, Arthur could idly chat with him while he ran for ages.

[puppy_fair]

"More than just a little," Zack replied, wrinkling his nose as he tried not to think too hard on them. "But ordering a pizza is a good idea, man. Maybe I could run past Pizza Planet and have them pass it to me as I go by..."

Eat on the run! Like a relay baton of deliciousness!

[bitchprince]

Arthur sighed up at the ceiling. "Don't let it get in the way of your running," he cautioned, "I'm not dealing with Leto on my own just because you took a tumble forward because you got distracted by some pepperoni."

[puppy_fair]

"Very tasty pepperoni," Zack pointed out, because that apparently made all the difference in the world. "Though I'll probably just order a veggie lovers or something. I haven't been all that keen on actually eating meat for a while."

Since he'd spent a couple of days trying not to eat people. For whatever reason, that seemed to make all of the difference in the world.

[bitchprince]

"Then don't get distracted by any carrots," Arthur said, articulating clearly.

He glanced over at the window. "And remember. No cookies."

[puppy_fair]

Oh, Zack was absolutely making a pouty face in the general direction of the dorms from where he was now running along the beach.

"What's the matter with cookies, anyhow? They've never really hurt anything, have they?"

[bitchprince]

"You rely on them too much."

That was totally an argument.

"Sweets are well and good, but they don't build muscle, do they?"

[puppy_fair]

"I've already got plenty of muscle," Zack pointed out, raising an eyebrow as he launched himself off of another rock and contented himself to just sail through the air for a few moments. "You have held my sword, haven't you?"

But only just barely?

[bitchprince]

"That's hardly an excuse to get sloppy. What would your," other, "superiors think?"

[puppy_fair]

Okay, Zack was going to have to take a moment to kind of just let the incredulousness he was feeling at the moment sink in before he could formulate a reply, now.

"... Of me eating cookies, Arthur?"

[bitchprince]

"Of getting sloppy in general," Arthur said, idly. "The cookies are merely symptomatic."

He was frequently ridiculous, yes.

[puppy_fair]

Zack kind of sighed a little, at that.

"You're talking about Deadpool's class the other week, aren't you?"

Well, that had been pretty sloppy.

[bitchprince]

"You are usually easily distracted," Arthur said, considering that ceiling again. Wow, look at that lack of cracks. "But that was downright disastrous. It's like you took a step back; I know you can do better than that."

[puppy_fair]

"I can," Zack agreed. And then there was another long silence from his end of the phone. Either because he was scaling another cliff, or because he was trying to nerve himself to attempt an explanation that actually counted, and he was failing most miserably. "Something came up back home, that's all. It's nothing. I'll try harder, next time."

[bitchprince]

Arthur grunted something back at him. This... could really only be the fault of him attempting to figure out whether or not he should bother pressing, or whether that would be more trouble than it was worth. "Is it something that will come up again?" is what he settled on.

[puppy_fair]

Zack's end of the phone was silent for another few moments, and another soft huff of air suggested that he was, in fact, jumping among the rocky bits again.

"Only if we ever find Angeal again," Zack answered, his tone a little too casual, especially for a guy who had been running for hours straight, now. "I guess."

[bitchprince]

Arthur sat up. "Angeal's missing?" Wow, more sensitive people would be relieved they'd settled on the word 'superiors' and not 'Angeal' back there.

[puppy_fair]

"Yeah," Zack replied, and there was a strain in his voice that suggested that he was possibly throwing himself a little harder into the exercise now than he possibly should be. "He disappeared after our raid on Fort Tamblin. I had to leave him behind for a few minutes, to escort the director to safety after we were attacked, and when I went back for him... gone."

He mis-stepped, and the next series of sounds that Arthur might hear would be those of two feet and the one hand that wasn't holding the phone, scrabbling for better purchase on some falling rocks while Zack muttered mild curse words under his breath.

[bitchprince]

Arthur rubbed at his temple with a sigh. "Zack, get to steady ground. I don't need you falling to death."

[puppy_fair]

"It's not much of a fall," Zack insisted, looking downward and frowning. "Maybe seven or eight body lengths from here, that's all."

He could handle worse!

[bitchprince]

Arthur rolled his eyes. You could probably hear it over the phone. "Any time now, Zack. Any time."

[puppy_fair]

Which prompted a sigh from Zack, and some more falling-rocks sounds as he jumped off the face of the rock wall, flipped about in the air a few times, and landed in the sand below. "Yes, Arthur."

He didn't have to be prompted to keep running, by this point. He probably wasn't going to stop at midnight, either.

[bitchprince]

"So Angeal left," Arthur said, after a conversational pause that he'd ever sensibly left Zack to get his bearings. "And no word at all?"

[puppy_fair]

"Nothing," Zack sighed (huffed, really) as he pressed onward, heading back the way he'd come from. "Sephiroth, he's another of the 1sts, suggested that Angeal had just up and deserted us, too. There was a mass-desertion a short while back, I guess, and so most of the 2nds and 3rds are missing too. It's kinda what's on everybody's mind, right now."

Careful, Arthur. Once Zack starts forming words, they might turn into nonstop babble.

"But I don't believe Angeal would do that. He's too focused on honour and his pride as SOLDIER to just take off and abandon us."

[bitchprince]

"Then he won't be far."

Arthur could always sympathise with Zack's stories about Angeal, for some reason. "Maybe there's some greater threat to SOLDIER right now," he ventured, "Or the rest of your people."

And now his head was pounding with some worry about what his knights must be thinking, with him gone for as long as he had been.

[puppy_fair]

"There's..." Zack frowned a little more deeply, trying to come up with a way to describe the Genesis copies without treading into weird magic-related territory. Hell, the copies had made him uneasy. "There's reason to believe that the 1st who took all of the 2nds and 3rds with him is plotting against SOLDIER," Zack offered. "The men that Angeal had stayed behind to fight, they belonged to Genesis, the missing 1st. They'd followed us to Wutai, I guess."

Anything beyond that fact, though, just had Zack confused, and more than a little cranky that he couldn't figure out just what was going on.

[bitchprince]

There was a beat.

Then, with more understanding than Arthur would ever be able to admit to aloud without feeling like a massive traitor, he said, "Perhaps there are steps that have to be taken in this fight that Angeal felt wouldn't be welcomed by your superiors."

[puppy_fair]

Zack was going to chew on that for a moment or so while he plodded along through the sand.

"Do you suppose that's where he's gone? Trying to do something about Genesis, on his own?" He exhaled, a note of frustration slipping into his voice for all of a moment. "I should have gone with him. I trust Angeal to do what's right."

[bitchprince]

Arthur brushed his own bangs out of his eyes. His hair was getting long again, he noted. "It's a possibility," he said, "Would you really have been as quick to abandon SOLDIER? Does Angeal hold a greater loyalty?"

[puppy_fair]

"I..." And now Zack was frowning, deeply. "I stand by my friends," he settled on. "I think that's part of what that honor he always talks about really means. That you do what's right, when it needs to be done. For ShinRa, for the people you care about, whichever. You stand by what you need to stand by, otherwise, what's the point?"

[bitchprince]

"It's not always that simple."

Long, long pause.

"Anyway, maybe you're of more use right where you are. And I don't mean 'scrambling around the countryside nearly cracking open your own skull like an idiot'."

[puppy_fair]

"Not even if I'm scrambling around the countryside on your orders?"

It was an attempt at levity. Zack kinda sucked at those, sometimes.

[bitchprince]

"If you were following my orders properly, you'd be hiking, not risking your neck," Arthur said, charitably.

[puppy_fair]

"What, by climbing rocks? It was one mis-step. I can handle it."

Okay, so maybe most people couldn't. Most people probably couldn't jump just about as high as he'd nearly fallen from at a standstill, either. Zack tended to forget these things sometimes.

[bitchprince]

"You'd better," was Arthur's only verdict.

He pursed his lips. "I'll talk to you in an hour," he said, finally. "Pizza or not, you'd better still be going by then."