Peculiar Speech

Author Notes: As you might've guessed, I don't own Final Fantasy XII and most (but not all) of the dialogue is the creative licence of Square-Enix. There, there's that legal nonsense out of the way. This here's my first full-blooded foray into the comedy and parody genres. I don't tend to write this kind of thing, but for this case I decided to make an exception just because I liked the idea. But enough about me...

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"Your name?"

His head still felt a little fuzzy from where he'd taken a hilt to the head earlier, not that that masked the fact that his head currently pained him like a bitch, as the company medic would put it. He couldn't remember what had happened or where he was. He barely even remembered his name.

"Reks, sir. My name's Reks," he said haltingly, his sight still a little blurred. The man who was talking to him slowly became clearer one second at a time, though his eyes felt like a tourist in a Phonish shirt with a memstone was adjusting the focus. Sometimes the speaker was close, sometimes he was miles away. Then, in a sudden flash, he realized who it was: the famous Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg was stooping over him and asking him how he was! The tales they told of him… despite the gravity of the situation, Reks already counted it as one of the proudest moments of his life. That, for the moment, he couldn't remember much else of the rest of his life was really just semantics.

"Good Reks. You bore a few cuts but you are still whole." Blinking heavily, Reks saw the captain in clear focus for the first time since regaining consciousness. With his sight, his memory swiftly returned to him. The Captain seemed just as heroic in the flesh as all the tales made him out to be. "Well can you stand?" The captain offered his hand but Reks missed the gesture, struggling to get to his feet as swiftly as possible. Though it was well known that the captain didn't ask people to stand to attention around him, Reks still thought it was wrong to do otherwise. After all, he was a hero.

Basch nodded, taking his hand back. For a moment, Reks wondered if he had offended him but instead the captain looked towards the remaining spires of the fortress. "Think you can fight?"

"I'm fine, sir." The captain made small talk with him, asking him about his brother and his will to fight. He half stumbled on his answers as the gravity of the situation grew and grew on him. Dalmasca's fate was effectively in the hands of the captain now. Around the courtyard a handful of soldiers wandered about, seemingly without aim, all that was left of their company. The medic (Foulmouth Jim they called him, though his name wasn't actually Jim) wandered about cursing as he tended wounds, but he usually did that anyway.

Reks' attention was soon seized however by the arrival of Archadian soldiers, or as the good captain termed them, the rabble. Placing a hand on his sword, the young soldier turned around to find that the others of his unit, even the ones who hadn't gone with Captain Azelas, had all vanished, somewhat mysteriously… Shrugging, he turned back in time to see Captain Basch, as calm as you please, take down all six of them without a single scratch. The show was both staggering and terrifying, and Reks couldn't quite keep himself from gasping. More and more it seemed that the hero stories weren't just stories.

"Steady Reks. Keep your wits about you and you'll make it. We move!" Suddenly, the soldiers who had been so conspicuously absent while the 'rabble' was being 'handled' turned up again, following the captain across the courtyard. Reks only stared after the running soldiers, wondering just where the hell they'd gone a minute ago.

It took Reks a moment to realize that he was the only soldier who hadn't followed the captain and now they were all staring back at him… well, the captain and his good friend Dalmascan (unfortunately, his parents didn't have much in the way of imaginations, bless them) were anyway. The others had mysteriously vanished again.

"You must always be mindful of your surroundings," the captain called to him, a slight note of remonstrance in his voice. "Use the right analog stick to look around. It's a useful way to spot imperials. Go on, give it a try."

Reks stared at the captain blankly, somewhat confused by what he had just said. What in the name of Galtea was an analog stick when it was at home? "I don't understand, captain."

Captain Basch, without any shame at all, said exactly the same thing as he had before, almost word for word, without clarifying what this mysterious analog stick was supposed to be. His fellow soldiers had told tales of Captain Basch in the mess of his peculiar manner of speech as well as his valour. He just hadn't reckoned it would be this peculiar. Shrugging and looking round, he found the courtyard empty (his fellow soldiers not yet having reappeared).

"Good," the captain nodded. "Use the left analog stick to move, Reks. Tilt it slightly to walk, and further to run. You can walk, yes? Come, stand before me."

This was the third time the captain had mentioned one of these mysterious 'analog sticks' but Reks was still no closer to figuring out what one was. In fact, he felt mildly insulted. Sure, he might not have been the best of fighters, but he could still walk.

Pulling a face, he said, "Duhhh, I walk on hands, yes?" in his head, where he had the courage to say it and also wasn't clad in faintly homoerotic armour. In the real world, he just raised an eyebrow (or attempted to, for unknown to most, eyebrow raising in the singular was an art form that took many a year to master) and left it at that.

"Use the left analog stick to move, Reks," the captain repeated after some time. Again, Reks said and did nothing, thinking there was something mighty strange about all this. The captain's manner of speech surely couldn't be this peculiar. He'd been speaking quite rational a moment before. Perhaps there was something in the Nalbinan air. Everyone knew the Nalbinites were queer folk. Yes, that would be it.

When the confused soldier still didn't move, the captain seemed to come to the end of his own patience. Reks watched him come and before he knew it, he was being carried across the courtyard like a sack of bemused potatoes. Before he could protest or struggle, the captain had lowered him onto his feet a dozen paces from where he'd been before.

"Now remember, Reks," Captain Basch said, "you use the left analog stick to move and the right to look around." He clapped Reks' shoulder as if he was some sort of stupid five year old. He half expected the captain to give him a bag of sweets as a reward. "I understand however. I also had trouble distinguishing betwixt my left and my right as a cadet."

Reks nodded, telling himself over and over that the captain was just stressed, had a peculiar yet dashing way and must've fallen under the influence of the general strangeness of the Nalbinan air.

"Do you see the marker above my head?" the captain asked suddenly as though the previous episode hadn't happened. Looking to where the captain gestured, Reks saw nothing but empty air. Perhaps the drinking water had given him a fever of some sort. "That's a talk icon," Captain Basch continued before Reks could answer. "You can talk to any character showing one of these. To talk to someone, approach them and press X. Try talking to your friend by the gate."

Looking (or 'turning the camera' as he'd heard if referred to during his cadet training) to the right, he found Dalmascan standing there, smiling to himself and looking at something in the distance. Looking back to the captain, Basch gestured once again to the other soldier as if his request had been the most rational in the world, never mind the king being in danger. Reks simply walked over to his friend, seeing little point in arguing with the captain when he was in this state.

"Hey, Dalmascan," Reks called, but the soldier didn't respond, even when he waved a hand in front of his face. Feeling like he was going slightly mad himself, Reks once again tried to get his friends attention.

"Life is worth too much to throw away, Reks," Dalmascan said all of a sudden. "Do what you can, but don't try to be a hero. Save the hero stories for your brother once we're back in Rabanastre. Just listen to the captain and we'll get through this."

"Yeah, sure," Reks replied. "How're you holding up?"

"Life is worth too much to throw away, Reks," Dalmascan repeated. Reks would've thought Dalmascan 'under the influence' too, but he'd known him for years and this was normal behaviour. Unfortunately, much like his parents, he suffered from a medical condition known as DLIS (or Distinct Lack of Imagination Syndrome). Indeed, it had probably taken hours for him to come up with that little speech, and he'd be repeating it for hours to come.

"We'll enter the fortress through this gate," Captain Basch interrupted, walking up to said gate. "We must go." That was the sanest thing he'd said for some few minutes, Reks thus hoping that the good captain was cured of his temporary bout of insanity. He re-approached the captain.

"See the marker above your head?" he asked, destroying Reks' fleeting hope that his insanity (for it could surely be nothing else) had been temporary. He nodded, not seeing the point in saying no even though there was nothing there (and he groped the air above his head to prove it). "That's called an action icon. One of these will appear when you approach a door, a switch, an item, or the like. To learn more about what you've found, walk closer and the icon will change. Then press X. Now, try opening the gate."

Bemused and bewildered, Reks tried pushing the gates open. As he did, a strange screen suddenly appeared in front of him.

"This is a gate," it said, before vanishing.

Feeling much wiser now, Reks pushed on the gate again and it fell open beneath his hands.

"It is time," the good (mad) captain said, "We will drive back any imperials standing between us and the king. Dalmasca's future hangs in the balance."

If it hadn't been for the captain's unusual manner of speech prior, Reks would've been pretty enthused by the statement. As it was, he was just waiting for a mad tutorial on how to fight or some such to follow up. But Reks supposed it was true what they said: you should never meet your heroes, you'll only be disappointed.

And if the fate of Dalmasca was in the hands of Captain Basch, well… Galtea help them all.