'Nother one-shot. Once again, doesn't take place in the ToC timeline. Anyways, next chapter is about half-way done, I should have it up in a couple days, hopefully.

Laundry Day

Lloyd sat in the hotel room in Altamira, bored out of his mind. How was it possible to be bored in a city that had an amusing park? Er...wait, Genis called it an 'amusement' park. Same difference.

They were supposed to be celebrating. After all, they had finally beaten Mithos and brought the divided worlds together again, so all nine of them had decided to take a couple days to relax on the beaches of Altamira before...before going their separate ways.

That still made him sad. In all the months they'd traveled together, he'd grown really close to everyone. It was hard to think that soon they'd be splitting up. Regal and Presea would be way out here in Altamira, and even Genis and Raine were leaving to go off by themselves. It just wasn't fair. He didn't know what Krat- what Dad was going to be doing, but Lloyd planned on asking him to come with him and Colette on their journey to collect Exspheres.

But until everyone split up, they were supposed to be spending time together on the beach, dammit! Now, though, Genis had gone off with Presea, Regal had been unable to stay away from his office, Zelos was schmoozing around with the girls on the beach, Sheena as sun tanning and not being fun, Colette was talking to the priests at the church, and Raine was trying find out the history of the city, all the way back to the Ancient War. And who knew where Kra – Dad was. Lloyd crossed his arms and sat in a chair by the window with a pout. In short, nobody wanted to play with him.

What he really wanted to do was spend time with Dad. Since finding out the Kratos was his father, he'd been trying to get a chance to really sit down and talk to him about...well, just about stuff. But no, all their time up until defeating Mithos had been filled with silly busy things, like running and screaming and killing and begging Professor Sage for healing. Y'know, unimportant stuff.

So now when they finally had time to relax, Dad went off and disappeared somewhere.

"I'm so bored," he proclaimed to the empty room. "I want to do something!"

The room gave him no reply. Lloyd was glad, for he would have been quite freaked out if it had.

He frowned and looked out the window at the ocean again. He was currently in one of the huge suites on the top floor, which he was sharing with Dad. Regal owned the hotel, so they even got to stay here for free! At first Lloyd had been surprised to learn that Regal own the hotel, until he realised that Regal owned pretty much everything in Altamira. He kept meaning to ask what the Lezareno company actually did, but he'd finally come to the conclusion that it would be easier to ask what the Lezareno company didn't do.

That being said, this was the fanciest room he'd ever been in. Surely there would be something in this room to entertain him. He got up from his chair and looked around. For the most part, he'd already explored most of the room. There was a shiny button on one wall, though, that he had yet to try out. Curious, he wandered across the room. The button was below what appeared to be a speaker of some sorts, and he reached up and pressed it.

"Hello, room service," a metallic voice said.

Lloyd was so surprised by the disembodied voice he jumped backwards a bit. "Whoa! What is this?!" He remembered Yuan having something like this back when they invaded the Iselia ranch. He couldn't remember what it was called, but these communicator things were pretty cool.

"This is room service," the voice replied matter-of-fact-ly.

"You...give service to rooms?"

He was certain he heard an irritated sigh on the other side, one he was quite familiar with from Professor Sage. Uh-oh, he'd pissed off the voice.

"No, sir," the voice replied with all the politeness it could manage. "We serve things to you within your room."

"What sort of things do you serve?"

"Food, mostly."

At the word 'food', Lloyd felt a rumbling in his tummy. "Hey, I could go for some food right now!" And it would probably be included on the room tab, which was all being paid for by Regal's company, so he could get whatever he wanted!

"Very well. What would you like, sir?"

"Hm..." He could practically Kratos – er, Dad's – voice in his head, telling him that a swordsman should always eat well to maintain their strength. Ah, screw it, they were on vacation. "Can I have a chocolate fudge sundae?"

"Yes, sir. It will be there in a few minutes, sir."

The voice disappeared, leaving Lloyd baffled. How as the sundae going to get here? Would it come out of the speaker? Man, Tethe'alla sure had some fancy stuff. He went to sit on his bed, waiting for his sundae to magically appear.

He was quite disappointed when, about ten minutes later, the door knocked and an ordinary person arrived with a sundae. That was a little less magical and awesome than he had been expecting, but the sundae still looked pretty damn good.

"Thanks!" he said, and the waiter just nodded and left, leaving Lloyd alone with his ice cream prize.

Lloyd sat down at the table in the corner of the room and started spooning chocolate fudge sauce and delicious vanilla ice cream into his mouth as fast as possible. He decided that this amazing thing called 'room service' was the most awesome thing ever. Anything that could deliver an ice cream sundae to him without his having to leave the room was clearly the idea of a genius.

"Uh-oh."

He'd been so preoccupied with shovelling his frozen treat into his mouth, he hadn't even noticed the large splotch of chocolate sauce that had stained his red jacket. That wasn't good! Dad – Dirk-Dad, not Kratos-Dad – would kill him! He was going to have to clean it, and fast!

He remembered Regal saying something about machines that did laundry automatically in the basement of the hotel, so he decided to make his way there.

As he was leaving the room, however, he saw Kratos' clothes laying out on the bed. He remembered Dad saying something about them needing to be washed, so he was wearing his old purple clothes again until he got around to it. Well, if he was going to do the laundry anyway, Lloyd figured, he might as well do Dad's clothing too.

Thus he grabbed Kratos' nice white clothing and headed down to the laundry room.

When he finally got there, the room itself was dark and kind of creepy. But after bringing down Mithos, there wasn't much that could scare him. The washing machines were on the far side of the room, and Lloyd carefully read the instructions on the lid before throwing the clothes in. Well, 'carefully read' might be something more like 'glanced over to get the gist of it', but he was pretty sure he could figure out how to work it.

After turning on the water and adding the right about of soapy powder, Lloyd closed the lid and went back upstairs, content that he was helping his father. Even if he hadn't read all the instructions all the way through, what was the worst that could happen?

--

That evening, Kratos returned to his hotel room in a fairly good mood. He'd talked with Yuan and discussed their plans, and though he knew Lloyd would be upset when he told him he was leaving, Kratos knew that this was what had to be done. And he'd stick around for a week or so, anyways.

He went back up to his room and unlocked the door. Inside, he saw Lloyd hunched over the bed, franticly rubbing something.

"Lloyd?" he said, wondering what that boy had gotten into now.

"Kratos!" he shouted, spinning around with a panicked look on his face. "I - I mean Dad!"

"Lloyd, what's that on the bed behind you?" He was starting to get a sinking feeling in his stomach. Lloyd had a look on his face that Kratos hadn't seen in the boy since he was a toddler, trying to blame Noishe for smashing a lamp.

"I – it's nothing..."

"Lloyd," he said, glaring at him.

"I was just trying to help," he said in a small voice.

Oh no. In all his four thousand years, he had never received good news after being told someone was 'just trying to help.' "Lloyd."

Kratos stormed over and Lloyd meekly stood aside. Kratos looked down in horror at what was on the bed.

"Lloyd, why are my clothes pink?"