Work Text:
Dezmond is starting to forget what color his floor is supposed to be, and that’s the first sign that there might be a problem.
See, it’s not as if he’s dropping food everywhere and spilling stuff on purpose — he’s an extremely busy man with up to eight usable arms and these things pile up. It’s just the natural course of life.
In a perfect world, of course, there would be no need to do dishes or laundry either, but this world ain’t perfect and Dez has to pick and choose which chores take priority and which can simply… sit and wait.
It’s not like he’s never going to do it, he thinks, because he does fully intend on scraping the remnants of goop off his floor at some point and he does fully intend on disposing of all the miscellaneous bottles strewn along his desk, just not now. There is a time and a place for everything, and this isn’t it.
“It’s not that bad.” Dezmond reassures himself as he crosses his arms and looks out at the mountains of drink cans, bowls, mugs and bottles stacking up in his room. “Like, statistically speaking, it’s not that bad, right? I still know where everything is. And if I don’t know, I’ll find it.”
His glove cloak picks up a bowl of pudding from the side table. Well, that explains where he put his snack earlier. He takes a spoonful of the lukewarm dessert, trying to remember when he last took his used dishes to the kitchen.
Surely, someone would be knocking on his door to ask for them if they needed them, right? It’s not like he’s keeping them here on purpose.
“I’m not keeping you hostage,” he declares to the pile of dishes and half-eaten whatever that’s growing mold on the desk. A Magmite crawls on top of it, as if to stop Dez from eating it. Not that he would have. That’s disgusting. “You’re choosing to be here, you know. All of you. If you don’t want to be here, then get out.”
The dishes, naturally, don’t reply.
Dezmond sighs. He sets his pudding back down where he found it, then stands to straighten his back and stretch.
“Alright, back to work,” he shoves some half-empty mugs aside, clearing some space for himself to continue furthering his plans to formulate a more concentrated form of copium. He needs that shit in tablet form. Travel size. Compact. Some of the mugs’ contents tip onto the floor.
He squints down at it for a moment, watching as the liquid seeps into an unidentified glob by the leg of his table, currently being devoured by ants.
“Eh.” Dezmond shrugs, repositioning the mugs and settling down in his chair. He slips a pair of goggles on, ready to do some potion-tweaking. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but he feels the presence by the door before he sees it.
He fumbles with his flask, instantly on the defensive. He’s not prepared for an attack, but he knows at least a hundred ways to bury someone six feet under, so he’d like to think he’s not scared. If only that were true.
The fact of the matter is that he’s always, just a little bit, afraid.
Paranoia is a familiar bastard, and Dez is blessed by the fucker every day of his life.
Luckily, nobody but his guildmates – and anyone else he invites in, under better or worse circumstances – have access to his room so the fear is unfounded. The footfalls are familiar. It’s Vesper Noir. His shoulders relax.
“Dez.” Vesper’s stern voice cuts through the doorway as Dezmond swings his head around to face him. Or all of his guildmates, rather. He quickly notes that Axel and Altare are hovering in the hallway just past the guild scholar, playfully punching each other behind Vesper’s back. “We’re staging an intervention.”
“What?” The alchemist asks, one pair of arms occupied with stacking his energy drink cans into a tower and another pair holding his last failed attempt at solidifying his famed concoction. “No? Listen. Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”
“You definitely did.” Vesper takes a menacing step into the room. “The guild hall is infested with ants, man. You need to start doing something about this.”
Dez looks morosely down at the ants and then back up at the two idiots and Vesper in the doorway. “They’ve been here for a while, Vespy. It’s nothing new.”
“That’s kinda the problem, isn’t it,” Axel chimes in, not sounding very impressed. It’s a dark day when even Axel thinks there’s a problem, Dez thinks drily to himself. “Ant nation started in your room, with your indestructible pancake batter. You made them a little fortress, and now they’re everywhere, man. It’s makin’ me feel yucky.”
“Okay? And?” Dez hopes he doesn’t sound exactly like someone who has given up on the ant problem, because that’s what he is. “Isn’t there, like, some kind of ward or spell for ant repellent?”
Altare scoffs, sounding particularly amused. “You wish, dude. If there was, we would have used it ages ago. Nothing we have is permanent. They just keep coming back.”
“Do Magmites eat ants? Maybe we could make them deal with it!” Axel asks, picking up one of the Magmites who is just minding their own business. The creature squeaks and flails, trying to get away.
“Uhhh, no.” Dez isn’t actually certain that none of them eat ants, but they’ve been around long enough that he actually thinks they encourage the ongoing ant invasion like they’re buddies or something. “They kind of just enjoy the chaos. Sometimes, I swear they’re bringing ants inside to make it worse.”
“Is it you? Are you helping ant nation?! Fess up, little guy!” Axel starts shaking the Magmite up and down. The poor thing goes swirly-eyed like it’s dizzy. With the way the gladiator is grinning, Dez doesn’t have the heart to tell Axel to stop.
“The thing is,” Altare, ever the responsible leader except when he’s hypothetically out committing murder, brings the conversation back on track. “The ant problem is… well, it’s a problem. We could have ignored it if it was just you, but now it’s becoming a whole group issue and that kind of thing needs solving, y’know? For everyone’s sake. And yours.”
“Oh, so if it was just my ant infestation, you were going to just let me suffer then.” Dezmond says flatly, knowing he’s being a bitch about the situation but not feeling good about the way he’s being looked at right now. Like he’s the problem. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to disappoint them. Deep down, he doesn’t want to disappoint anyone. “Is that how it is? You’d just let it happen.”
He immediately expects the same snark in response, either Altare agreeing that he’d throw him to the ants any day, or Axel asking if he’d resort to using the ants as a food source but he forgets for a moment – stupid as it sounds – that they do actually care about his well-being.
“Dez.” Vesper’s voice is kind and grounds him from his thoughts, like an anchor, steady and true. “What are we doing right now, buddy? We’re here to try and help you fix this. We’re not leaving you to suffer alone.”
Altare nods frantically as if realizing he had struck a nerve and wanted to correct it. “Oh, no, no, no, Dez, this intervention— we want to help. We didn’t just come through the door to tell you off and then leave. That’d be so uncool. What are guildmates for? We help each other.”
“Okay, well, what are you going to do to help, then?” Dezmond is ready to move on from the subject now. He feels the tickle on his skin as a couple of Magmites clamber up onto his shoulder to nuzzle into his hair. He gives them a solid pat and then a threatening squeeze. Just to keep them in line.
“D’ya think they’d be any good if we fried them?”
“Axel,” Vesper ventures with caution, as if trying to discern whether he heard the gladiator correctly, “Do you mean the ants? Fry the ants?”
“Yeah! Don’t some people eat them?”
“I mean– I’m sure they do, but… I don’t want to. Do that. I don’t want that.”
“Yeah, no. Let’s not.” Altare vetoes the idea, and brings that train of thought to a screeching halt. He scans the room with a hum. “We should probably try and find the source first, then get rid of them from there. They’ve gotta be coming from somewhere.”
“Oh, right, I actually came prepared for something like this!” Vesper perks up again. He’s a big fan of a logical plan of attack, Dezmond knows, and he’s also a big fan of following their leader’s direction so the alchemist isn’t entirely convinced they hadn’t already plotted their next move in advance.
“Go ahead, Ves,” Altare’s scary perceptiveness seems to pick up on Dezmond’s thoughts as he gestures, “Get the stuff we brought. We’ve got a mission ahead of us.”
With a quick nod, Vesper darts outside the room. Axel, now seemingly bored of everyone just standing around and talking, steps around Dez to yank open a window. Dez doesn’t tell him that window had probably been covered with every particle known to man, and is now an alchemical dust bomb in the making.
“Aaaahh, fuck! CHOO!”
Predictably, Axel lets out the hugest sneeze of all time at the miscellaneous powder that flies off, frantically shaking his head like a wet dog as if it will free him from the dust cloud from hell.
“What the fuck is wrong with your stuff, dude?! Why is it all cursed!?” He sneezes again.
Unable to resist a jab, Dezmond asks, “Well, you should have asked first. Did I give you permission to do that?”
“Huh? What?” Axel blinks at him, eyes still watery from the explosive onslaught of dust. “Do I need permission to sneeze?”
“... to open the window, Axey.” He replies, comforted by the fact that the gladiator remains as endearingly stupid as ever. “I mean, did I give you permission to open the window.”
“Nah, I have permission because I’m your best friend and I want you to breathe fresh air, man,” is Axel’s equally stupid but sweet reply. “It’s not nice to be stuck inside all day!”
“Alright, I’m back–” Vesper’s timing is perfect as always, and he cuts himself short as he re-emerges. “Why is Axel pink now?”
“Because it’s a nice color.” Dez replies in lieu of an explanation. “It’s my favorite color, actually.”
“Dez.” Altare sighs. “Dez…”
“So vogue.” Dez says, ignoring him.
“This room is cursed,” Axel raises both his hands as if feeling for an unseeable threat. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it all under control.”
He does not have anything under control, and he is now a terribly vibrant shade of pink, but Dez wisely keeps his mouth shut. It’s nothing a shower or two won’t fix. Probably.
“I leave the room for five seconds…” The scholar, to his credit, does not look mad. Just disappointed. “Anyway, I have the stuff.”
“I still want to know what this stuff is.” Dez says. “Considering you’re going to be using this stuff in my room.”
“Don’t make it sound so scary,” Axel smiles, ever optimistic. “We’re just going to be helping you clean up!”
“You…” The alchemist can’t help but be suspicious of their intentions. If they had already come with a plan, then what the hell was all the prelude for, he wonders. They could have just stormed the room armed with a mop and a bucket and he would have scrambled to get out of the way and let them loose in his horrendously unkempt abode. Everything he’d want to hide is on his terminal, anyway, and none of them know his password, thank fuck. “...what?”
“We’re cleaning.” Altare grabs a garbage bag from Ves with a rustle. He’s all business, eyes glinting as he surveys his surroundings. “Something you clearly haven’t heard of, judging by the state of this room right now.”
“It’s… organized chaos,” Dezmond tries to argue as Vesper tosses a bag towards Axel. “There’s a method to my madness!”
“I don’t think there’s ever been any method,” Axel shakes the bag at him. “Just madness.”
“Wow. Thanks Axel.”
“You’re welcome~!” Axel sings, before cackling to himself. He beelines straight towards the shelf of potion ingredients and begins lifting bottles and holding them up to the light, making them reflect into funky colors throughout the room. “Oooh, look at this! There’s like a little flower in this jar! You know, that reminds me of a story from back in the academy, right…”
He starts to prattle on about something probably related to the flower that Dezmond promptly tunes out, because Axel’s stories will take chunks off of his life and he’s happy to leave Altare to take the brunt of it instead.
Their leader nods along as Axel describes whatever he’s talking about, and is forced into some sort of educational session as Axel starts using the other potion ingredients as props. He makes the flower jar and a jar with a root inside of it touch, rolling them together as the glass clinks. Judging by Altare’s confuddled expression, the story is not going well.
Dez thinks that he might just have to accept that his room has been well and truly invaded and that every ingredient he has is now just an instrument in Axel’s storytelling corner over there.
A quick glance to the side tells him Vesper is barring the doorway, having laid out the cleaning supplies in front of the only exit. It’s likely not intentional, and he’s sure Ves would let him out if he asked, but if everyone else is gonna be in here, it’s not like he has other places to go.
Vesper catches him looking and smiles. Wryly, and because he knows Dez all too well, he says, “We’re not shoving everything in the closet and pretending it isn’t there.”
“Damn,” Dezmond clicks his tongue. “There goes that plan.”
“We’re also not going to smoke the room out with copium and pretend it isn’t there.”
“Dammit, Ves, you know I like pretending things aren’t there!”
He laughs. “Listen, man, I’m just making sure you’re not about to sweep this all under the rug.”
“This is my room decor!”
That only makes Vesper laugh harder. “Your room decor is a biohazard.”
“Just the way I like it.”
“You’re a riot.” He snorts. “But no, we have to actually deal with this, Dez.”
“I was gonna deal with it. Then you guys showed up.”
“You missed us.” Vesper ribs him kindheartedly.
Now that he says it, Dez doesn’t want to admit it’s true, but he always misses them, really.
Vesper doesn’t give him time to come up with a witty response. Ever ready to focus on the task at hand, he rolls up his sleeves instead. “Well, looks like it’s time to tackle this beast.”
“You really don’t have to, Vespy.” Dez tells him wearily. Vesper’s so nice that it makes him feel scummy sometimes, but it’s the kind of niceness that he needs in his life and can’t bear to let go.
“I know I don’t. I want to.” Ves smiles tentatively, in that reassuring way he does. His glasses glint in the lamplight, shining briefly blue and purple as Axel waves around mysterious jars. “Also, it’s activating the neurons in my brain that have wanted to clean this place up for ages, dude. You’re doing me a favor!”
That settles Dezmond for the moment, before his leader’s voice catches his attention and he’s forced to turn his head to meet it.
“Dez, how long has this been here?” Altare, now free from whatever Syrios story he’d been roped into, has a pair of gloves on and is standing in the back corner, holding up a lightly crushed drink can. “It’s expired.” His nose wrinkles as he picks up another one. “This one’s also past its time.”
“They’re empty though,” Dez points out. “They’re milked dry. Sucked to the bone. They’re fine.”
“Why do you have to say such sussy things all the time,” Axel huffs under his breath, shaking his head.
Vesper’s booming laughter erupts from the other far corner of the room. “I hate— I hate the implication that the can has a bone. Like, I was going to be fully on board with the milking dry—”
“Eugh, no,” Altare pulls a face.
“— but I draw the line at sucked to the bone.” The scholar shakes his head as well. Crushed cans clink in his trash bag as he gives it a good wiggle. “You see these cans? They’re boneless. All of them. No bones.”
“Boneless. Unboned. They’re free. They’re flourishing,” Dez stifles a laugh. He’s supposed to be at least trying to be mad at them but they’re always able to pick a chuckle out of him, one way or another. They’re idiots, but they’re his idiots.
“Deboned,” Altare corrects mildly. “I think that’s the word you wanted to use.”
“They’re so unboned, dude,” Dez says again just to spite him. “Bones have been sucked right out of them.”
“You don’t even suck drinks, right?” Axel asks, clearly asking the wrong questions here but the conversation has already been derailed beyond belief. “Like, don’t you just drink it? It’s called a drink for a reason, right?”
“Right. Because if they weren’t called drinks, they would be called sucks.”
“Exactly! That’s what I thought!” The gladiator nods enthusiastically.
“Guys, guys,” Altare waves his arm to grab their attention. He’s probably aiming to be intimidating but whenever he furrows his brows like a pouty child, Dez is just reminded that his leader is the youngest member of the guild. “Can we go back to cleaning Dez’s room? I’d like to finish quickly so we can get to the root of the problem.”
“You would like to finish quickly, wouldn’t you,” Dez mutters, gloomy as he tosses some empty water bottles out the window when Altare isn’t looking. He’s itching to do some self-proclaimed alchemy, and not play cleaning simulator with his buddies over here. As fun as they are to hang out with, he's still conscious of the fact that they're calf-deep in his mess. That he should be cleaning himself.
He’s tempted to just ask Vesper to pull out the power washer so he doesn’t have to deal with this anymore. With the way it’s looking, he might actually have to.
“Is this even a room or just a trash heap? And I thought my room was bad.” Axel grumbles as he picks up three Magmites in one hand and stuffs them into a bag.
“Axel, can you stop cleaning up Magnation and focus on the actual garbage,” Magni deadpans. “Don’t think I don’t see you stealing my little mags over there.”
Vesper snorts through his nose, clearly amused. “We open Axel’s room later and all of Magnation are just hanging out there.”
“I can’t help it!” Axel protests, and Dezmond can imagine his tails wagging if he squints hard enough. “They’re so fucking cute! And they’re not trying to escape! They love me!”
“You’re not helping!” The alchemist snaps.
“You’re the one that caused this mess, man!” Despite it being in response to Dezmond’s crabbiness, Axel’s sunny demeanor doesn’t change. “I’m grabbing the stuff we want to keep, and the other guys can get the stuff we’re throwing out. Teamwork!”
“Axel says while trying to discreetly relocate all of Magnation to his room,” Vesper jokes, tying off one of the trash bags as his efficiency wins out over all their bickering. Classic Vespy, always getting the work done.
“Temporarily!” Axel attempts to defend himself again.
“Whoa, check this out,” Altare squats by a crack in the wall. He’s clearly not listening to the blame shuffling in the background, or so Dezmond would like to think, but he knows that leader’s always got his ear out for someone to say something stupid. “I found the source and it’s, uh. It’s not looking good.”
‘Not looking good’ is an understatement. Altare slides the cabinet aside carefully and there is an honest-to-god ant-eaten hole slicing a perfectly vertical crevice in his bedroom wall.
“Oh my goodness.” Dez says, mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ shape. The wall is blanketed with ants, turning his wall a solid black. “Oh my gosh! That’s a lot of ants!”
“Why the fuck are you so caught off guard?!” Axel’s mouth is equally open in shock as he points a finger at him, and does a triple-take at the amount of ants that are pouring out of the crevice now that they’ve been discovered. “What the fuck– holy shit, oh my god! This is your room! Haven’t you seen these guys before?”
“Let me see.” Vesper shoves Axel and Dezmond aside — which Dez thinks is fair because they’re both kind of just standing around with their jaws dropped like a bunch of morons — while Altare has pulled his gun saber out and is now poking it into the ant-ridden wall crack. It’s making a disconcerting sizzling sound. Vesper sighs. “…Altare, stop that. Let me see the ants.”
“No, I think leader has a nice idea, actually,” Axel recovers remarkably quickly, index finger now swinging to face upwards. He flashes finger guns left and right. “We should get the big guns out and start mowing ‘em down! That should fuck those ants good.”
“Yeah. Fuck those ants good,” Dez repeats in amusement.
Man, does Axel never fail to brighten his day.
“Nobody’s fucking any ants,” Vesper chuckles, voice low. “Now, we’re gonna get them out and keep them out. Dez, you got any peppermint oil?”
“Yeah, I do.” He turns around to grab it, then immediately pauses. Right. He rearranged his herb oils a while back for another potion commission and now they’re not where they used to be. “I… just have to find it. Somewhere. In here.”
“You need the minty stuff? I got you!” Luckily, Axel is quick to sniff something peppermint-related out like the puppy dog that he is. He wields the vial like a knife. “This it?’
“That’s A-grade peppermint explosive, my friend. I would not be swinging it around like that if I were you.”
“Peppermint can explode?”
“No. The explosion is something else. The peppermint is just there for seasonal flavor.”
“... flavor?” Axel sounds even more confused. “You’re going to eat the explosion? That doesn’t sound good for you, man.” He rifles through the shelves one more time, and then decides to just sweep the whole top shelf into his bag and shove the bag at Vesper’s face. The scholar takes it gingerly and peers in like something will jump out at him if he’s not careful.
“You’re lucky those bottles are child-proofed, Axel.” Dez says drily as Axel grabs Altare and clears the middle shelf straight into the leader’s bag. The alchemist then perks up when he sees what’s been hidden behind the bottles, now falling out into the open. His glove cloak picks it up. “Oh, that’s where I left the Cheez-its.”
Vesper quickly plucks it from his hands. “We don’t know how long it’s been there. You’re not allowed to eat it.”
Despite saying this, Vesper inspects a singular Cheez-it and then shrugs and consumes it.
“Hey! Oi, oi,” Dez protests. “What happened to not being allowed to eat that!?”
“You're not allowed to eat it. It's free game for everyone else.” Vesper has moved on, crinkling the Cheez-it bag and stuffing it into the trash he's holding. He squints, as if looking at something further away. “Wait... why is there a bowl of pudding on the window sill?” The question barely leaves his mouth before Dezmond snatches it up, not about to let Ves take this moment from him. “Wait, Dez, don’t–”
He brings the spoon to his mouth.
Yep, still good. He nods to himself. Love this stuff.
“It tastes fine.” Dez says, putting the dessert back down. Just to prove a point.
Vesper sneakily picks it up from behind him, and even though Dezmond can see him confiscate the pudding, he just lets it happen. There are other bowls of pudding in the room. Somewhere.
“You’re going to be tasting the end of my blade if this keeps up,” Altare mutters under his breath. Dezmond also hears that and does not ignore it.
“You want me to lick the blood off your sword?”
“What— I, that’s not what I— no,” Altare appears to give up mid-sentence and simply asks, “Why are you so willing to put things into your mouth?”
“Whoa, hey, hey, this is not a professional conversation,” Dez turns the accusation back at him, acting scandalized. “Shame on you, leader. What I put into my mouth is none of your business.”
Altare sends a withering look his way, as if pleading for him to shut the fuck up. Dezmond throws him a thumbs up instead.
“How are you still alive?” Axel laughs. If life was a race to see who could piss off their leader the fastest, Dez is very confident in his ability to win.
“I fear no gods,” Dez declares, then smugly adds, “Or anyone under 6 feet tall.”
“Dezmond.” Altare says in an extremely scary voice. Which is just his normal voice, but saying his full name instead of the many variants that pepper his leader’s vocabulary on the daily.
“Uh oh,” Axel takes a step back, then another. Thanks a lot, Axel. “He’s Dezmond-ing you. You’re in trouble, Maguni.”
“What’s the matter, Tartar?” Unfortunately, the Great Magni Dezmond does not back down from a challenge.
“Hey, uh, not to interrupt or anything but, uh,” quite fortunately, actually, Ves comes to save the day again, not looking excited to have to tackle the ant situation himself. “Could I get a little hand, anyone?”
“I could give you, like, six.” Dez quips, ever ecstatic to move on from the prospect of dying by the hands of Regis Altare. The speed he reaches Vesper’s side has got to be a record. Sonic the Hedgehog would be so proud. “What’s up, Ves?”
Vesper gestures to the line of spray bottles he’s accumulated and filled while they were busy being useless to the main objective. “These need to be sprayed. I’ve made every possible solution that will get rid of the ants. We just need to spray them all.”
“Let’s fucking goooo,” Axel is quick to snatch two of the bottles and starts spraying them rapidly at the wall like a man on a mission. “Bye-bye, ant nation!” He moves so fast that he catches himself in some of the spray and starts coughing, eyes squeezed shut. “Ahhh, it’s stinky!”
“Maybe slow down a bit there, buddy,” Vesper suggests, when it’s already too late.
“Ant down, ant down!” He’s back on the attack, gladiator mask activated, spraying with reckless abandon. “Die, die, die!”
“Nice, nice, nice,” Altare is nodding encouragingly but markedly unenthusiastic about the fumes. He holds his sleeve over his nose with one hand as he uses the other to point the trigger at the wall. “Get ‘em, Axel.”
“I’ll get you!”
“Wait, no, no– Axel!” Altare yelps, clambering over Dezmond’s desk chair. “Please! Spare me!”
“Heh heh!” Axel sniggers in response. He advances on his leader by doing a sick barrel roll over Dez’s bed, which should not be as cool as it is, considering he’s bright pink and holding spritzing bottles in both hands. “Come here, I’m gonna get ya!”
“Stop treating this like an FPS game,” Dez scolds half-heartedly as Axel and Altare decide to start spraying each other from behind bits of furniture, already distracted again. “I’m gonna get schwasted, inhaling this fucking… ant spray. What’s in this, anyway, Ves?”
“A variety of things. Nothing alcoholic. One’s peppermint,” Vesper says calmly. He’s already skipped all five stages of grief and gone straight to acceptance. “Others might have eucalyptus or vinegar or something. There’s a beast repellent solution mixed in and one just has salt water. For exorcism energy.”
“... exorcism energy?”
“Dude, you need it. Don’t lie.”
“There’s gonna be ant corpses all over my room,” Dez complains, but he (one, two, three, four, five) quintuple-wields the ant-killing solution and lays hell on the insects like an evil garden sprinkler. The king of all garden sprinklers, even.
A huge-ass mop appears in Vesper’s hands. “Not for long.”
Vesper could have very truly and probably tackled this entire problem himself, Dez thinks, as he watches him flood the ant fortress and leave the ants scrambling for their lives. Maybe he wanted to be nice and inclusive and let everyone ‘help’, but Dezmond is 99% sure that Vesper could have just defeated the issue from the beginning, if he hadn’t let him and Axel and their mighty leader bumble around with the other crap.
He watches as Vesper mops an entire layer of gray miscellaneous mass off of his floorboards.
“Huh.” He says. Magmites are also running for their lives, now taking refuge in the rafters, where they won’t be soaked. “That’s… something.”
“I’m not going to ask what this is,” Vesper breathes out a laugh under his breath. “But I am never letting it get this bad ever again. Any longer and something will be, like, born under there.”
“I once brought a pancake monster to life because I forgot to clean up.”
“You WHAT?” That breaks the scholar’s composure, making him cackle like a madman as he grips the mop for support. “There is something wrong with you. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but there is something incredibly wrong with you, man.”
“It’s all part of my charm.” He grins. If it’s from Vesper, he’ll take that as a compliment. Still, his socks are now very, very wet. “Was flooding my room part of your grand cleaning plan, by the way?”
“Emergency measures must be taken.” Vesper replies sagely. He plucks a sandallweed out of his pocket, likely a leftover from one of those storm quests they’ve been on recently. Wet weather is such a bitch sometimes. “It’ll dry in a pinch. I have this.”
“Yeah, we have way too many of those.” Altare, now having fended off Axel, looks perfectly unharmed except his hair is green now. Dez stifles a snicker. “Kobo messed up the shipment and sent 1000 of those over instead of 100.”
“Oh my fucking god, no way,” Axel slaps a palm to his forehead. “Is that why it’s been so dry around here?”
“Just… let’s get this over with,” Vesper sighs. He clearly does not want to deal with the financial implications of whatever the hell landed 1000 sandallweed plants on their doorstep. Even if it does help, in this situation.
The weed conveniently takes care of the rest of the water the moment Vesper drops the plant on the ground, though Altare also helps significiantly by emptying his pockets of what looks like at least 20 more of the plants in an attempt to save himself from sandallweed-induced hell. The alchemist is not convinced Kobo didn’t fuck the shipment up on purpose. At least his room is more habitable as a result. There's only a light sheen of water left, likely a result of the spray shootout, rather than the mop flood.
“Oh, I can see the floor now!” Dez remarks, and he probably shouldn’t be as surprised as he is. “So it is supposed to be red. I don’t think I remember the last time I saw what the floor actually looked like.”
“I’m gonna kill this guy,” Altare mumbles.
Despite knowing he’s only joking, Dez inches a few feet away from him and crouches, partially hiding behind Vesper. He pulls the edge of the scholar’s cloak over his head for dramatic effect.
Vesper looks down at him, grinning deviously like he always does when he thinks something is hilarious. “You hear that, Dez? Altare’s going to kill you.”
“Shh!” Dez hushes him. “Don’t make eye contact. I have Stealth 100. All my skill points are in camouflage. As long as I’m crouching, he can’t even see me.”
“Huh? Wait, what?” Altare plays into the joke perfectly, as expected of their leader. His eyes go wide as he looks around, “Hey, where did Dez go? Wasn’t he here a second ago?”
Masterful gaslighter Axel Syrios throws his own move into the ring. There's a click as his mask deactivates. “Huh? What’re you talking about, man? It’s only been me and you and pops this entire time.”
“Wait, really? Why are we in his room, then?”
“Uhhhhhh,” Axel fumbles with the bottles he's still holding. “We’re cleaning? Right? We just came in here to clean.”
Amused, Altare breaks his dumb act to ask, “What are we? His maids?”
“Now, now, hey, don’t say that,” Dezmond pipes up, standing before he gets too comfortable on the floor. Though the thought of the whole guild in maid dresses is cute – extremely so – that’s a thought he’ll come back to later. “You gotta pay for that. I’m not paying you guys for anything.”
“Aaahhh! He’s here!” Shithead Altare gasps like he’s won the lottery and points at him. “Dez! I’ve been looking for you!”
Before Dezmond can escape the demon lord’s wrath, Altare tackles him.
Dez shrieks. “Help! Help! I’m being murdered! Help!”
“No-one will ever figure out who did it.” Vesper shakes his head solemnly, taking off a glove to wipe at an invisible tear. “This is so sad. Press F to pay respects.”
Axel salutes and says, very simply, “F.”
“Wait, come on — he’s right there! I’m not dead yet!” Dez struggles to push his leader away, who at this point isn’t even doing anything but sitting on him. “Quick! Someone! Save me!” He makes eye contact with Axel, who is making a hee-hee-hee noise in the background. “Axel! Please! You’re my only hope!”
Axel sees an opportunity and immediately takes it with an absolutely shit-eating grin on his face. “Oh, no. You’re on your own, brother.”
“You—!” Dez can’t help it — he also breaks character to cackle, laughing so hard he takes Altare down with him and his leader yelps as he’s rolled onto the floor. “AXEL! You traitor!”
Axel doubles over in laughter, wheezing as he grips the table.
“Your fucking face, I can’t—!”
“TEMPUS in shambles,” Vesper shakes his head again, aiming to keep up the serious persona but a grin breaks through anyway. “God, we’re so–”
Axel bumps into him while he tries to stumble over to help his fallen comrades to their feet — a difficult endeavor, truly, when said fallen comrades are attacking each other (okay, Dez admits he’s using his cloak to hold Altare up by the back of his hood because it’s funny and he scowls at the alchemist like a wet cat, but that’s not going to stop him from doing it) and inevitably Vesper slips on the floor they just cleaned and collides straight into Dezmond who drops Altare in shock and they’re all just left in a pile on top of each other.
Dez isn’t sure whether to check his leader or Vesper first so his arms just flail helplessly as Axel only laughs harder from the sidelines, and in a fit of inspiration, Dez grabs one of the gladiator’s legs and yanks and Axel shouts in surprise as his ass hits the ground.
“Ayo-yo-yo, what the fuck was that for?!” The doggy barks at him, cybernetic ears instantly activated like an airbag going into emergency mode, and Dezmond only smiles back.
“Didn’t you want to join us, Axel? I couldn’t understand dog language, so I just assumed.”
“I’m not a fucking doooog,” Axel groans, but he doesn’t look all that mad, in the end. He lies down on the ground so he’s on the same level as Dezmond, deactivating his ears. “Not this again…”
“Why do we do everything together?” Vesper asks, sounding forlorn, but also like he’s struggling to hold in his laughter again. “We stage interventions together. We clean together. We fall over together. Is that weird to anyone? Why do we do this?”
“‘Cause we’re best friends!” Axel’s mood immediately jumps back to happy, like a light-switch, when he gets to answer the scholar’s question. “I love doing stuff with you guys!”
“Aww,” Dezmond says. A couple of Magmites crawl up and cling to his chest. He pats the little guys half-heartedly.
“Well, I’m beat. I can’t believe cleaning is almost more work than adventuring, for real,” Altare looks up at the ceiling. “Or Dez’s room is just that bad.”
Dez knees him not-so-gently. “Get off my leg.”
“I hate to think about how much worse it could have been if we hadn’t intervened,” Vesper adds, sounding half-amused and half-concerned. His violet eyes flicker to the alchemist as he addresses him directly. “Damn, Dez, you really live like this?”
“Oi,” Dez uses a spare arm to shove him half-heartedly. A chuckle leaves him, despite it. “It’s a work in progress. And you guys are doing the work.”
“Dez is trying to squeeze free labor out of us,” Altare sighs, shaking his head. It’s an awkward angle to do that in, but Altare seems to want to drag out this little sob story as long as he can. “Because he knows we will do it out of the kindness and love in our hearts.”
“Your words, not mine,” Dezmond replies.
Still, it’s nice to think that they care about him enough that they’re willing to throw a couple of hours into helping him declutter his room, even if it doesn’t come with the job description and like their leader said, he sure as hell isn’t paying them for it.
In terms of guildmates, they aren’t bad. They aren’t bad at all.
But that’s the kinda stuff he can’t say out loud, so he doesn’t.
“So when they come back, inevitably stronger and immune to mass eradication, what if I made the ants start killing each other?” He asks out of the blue instead. “Would that help? Just start an ant war. You walk around the guild hall and it’s just total ant annihilation. They’re all hungry for blood and destruction.”
“No, Dez,” Altare groans, but he can’t hide the exasperated smile that spreads across his face. “Please don’t.”
“No, no, he has a point.” Axel chimes in with a cheeky grin, “Just let them fight to the death. It’ll be fine. They can destroy themselves from the inside.”
“No.” Vesper says more firmly. “No ant war.”
“Unless…?” Dezmond trails off hopefully, the end of his sentence pitching upwards.
“Unless nothing.” Vesper responds, shoulders shaking like he’s holding in a laugh. Oh, how he tries to be the logical one when he’s just as full of crazy ideas as the rest of them. “No ant war. I’m serious. Don’t do it. You don’t want to have to deal with what comes out of that.”
A single line of ants can be seen creeping around the corner of his desk, unharmed by the desperate cleanup effort that was simply too short to have driven them out completely.
“Eh,” Dez shrugs, now knowing exactly what his weekend plans will be. The surely smarmy smirk on his face probably tells it all. “What’s the worst that could happen?”