Driving
Test
Written by Anna-mathe
All rights reserved, for I have none.
This fic is independent of any other FF
tales, and takes place about a
year before the game begins. Before Cecil can become the Captain of the
Redwings, he must pass one little test . . .
Cecil had never realized just how
frightening the hairy man
could be when he tried. However, his position forbade him to display
any
crude emotion such as fear, even if his pride
did not, so he stood at
attention without wavering as his tormentor
paced back and forth before
him, grinning demonically and mumbling
observations periodically to one
of his assistants, who was trying in vain to
keep up with him.
“So,” Cid finally said to Cecil,
coming to a halt just in
front of him and glaring him down, “the King
thinks you should command my
Airships, eh? Well . . . *chuckle chuckle* . . . do you feel up to the
challenge, Mr. Dark Knight?”
Cecil suddenly felt more insulted
than nervous - after all,
he was surely more than a match for this
bumbling old fool he’d just met
- and glared back.
“My orders stand,” he declared
defiantly. “What you or I
think has nothing to do with it.”
Cid chuckled some more.
“I get it. You’re looking at this as a promotion. That you,
leading the Redwings, will automatically
become one of the most powerful
soldiers on this planet. Well, that’s all fine and well . . . if you
can
do it.”
“Pardon?” Cecil was still glaring defiantly.
Cid’s sinister grin darkened and
grew.
“Did His Majesty tell you about .
. . the driving test?”
Lightning flashed.
Cecil blinked.
“The . . . driving test?”
Lightning flashed again.
Evil laughter came from the
engineer.
“You think you can just jump on board
an Airship and take
off?
Oh, no! First you have to prove
to me that you can fly one of them
safely, observing all traffic rules and
regulations.”
Cecil thought. That didn’t seem so bad.
Cid laughed some more, seeing the
slight relief on his
victim’s face.
“And, of course . . . you have to
pass Serpentine . . . and
Maneuverability.”
Lightning flashed, and somewhere,
an organ began to play.
Cecil, noticing all these strange
abnormalities in the
weather, wondered if it was a sign.
“Well?” Cid inquired, raising an
eyebrow. “Ready to try your
hand at flying an Airship?”
Cecil swallowed, set his jaw
firmly, and nodded.
A wiry old man named Ferdinand informed the Dark Knight that
he would be his driving instructor. Cecil hated him instantly.
“This is our flagship, the
Adversity,” Ferdinand told him.
“You can look, but that’s all you’re going to
do for now. Dark Knight,
before you begin to learn the controls of
this craft, you must complete a
six-week book-work course . . . in three
days. Here.”
Cecil numbly held out his hands
and received two large books
which his teacher held out to him.
“This is your Driver’s Ed.
workbook and a book with the
traffic laws for the country of Baron. By tomorrow, you’ll have to have
read and memorized all the laws and completed
exercises for chapters 1 -
11 in your workbook. Tomorrow you get the traffic laws for Toroia
and
Damcyan, the next day you get Fabul and
Eblan, as well as minor
independent territories like Silvera.”
“But . . . how can there be all
these traffic laws?! No one
else has even heard of an Airship!! We’ve only just invented them!!”
Cecil suddenly grew suspicious. “Is Cid just making all this up to give
me a hard time?”
Ferdinand slapped him in the face
with a ruler.
“You have detention, young
man! Go stand in the hall until I
come for you, and think about what you’ve
just said.” He turned away
then, mumbling about how kids these days
thought they knew everything.
Cecil swallowed, feeling a shame
he hadn’t felt since
grade-school, turned, and went to stand in
the hall.
Long into the night, the Dark
Knight sat at his desk in his
tower quarters, filling out pages and pages
in his workbook while
repeating the Baronian traffic laws to
himself quietly until he thought
he was either about to go insane, or was
already gone.
A light knock on his door
startled him back to awareness.
“Yeah, waddya want?”
The door opened a crack and Kain
stuck his head in.
“Do you have any glazed donuts?”
“NO, we don’t have any glazed
donuts!”
“Do you have any jelly donuts?”
“NO, we don’t have any jelly
donuts!”
“Do you have any Bavarian
cream-filled donuts?”
“NO, we don’t have any Bavarian
cream-filled donuts!”
“Do you have any bear claws?”
“ . . . wait a minute, I’ll go
check.”
For a moment, Cecil stared at the
papers in front of him,
wondering what on earth he was talking
about. Then he jumped to his
feet.
“NO, WE’RE OUTTA BEAR CLAWS!!”
Kain stepped in and tapped his
spear against the floor.
“Well in that case . . . in that
case, what do you have?”
Cecil rubbed his temples. It appeared that Kain had come by
just to annoy him. Again.
“I have a headache, Kain, that’s
what I have.”
The Dragoon blinked.
“What? No box of one dozen starving crazed weasels?”
“Kain, shut up!!”
“Sorry.”
For a moment, the visitor stood
there silently, watching the
agonized Dark Knight pace his room.
“I saw your light on, Cecil. You are aware, aren’t you, that
it’s three in the morning?”
“Is it? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Obviously!” Kain glared at him. “What’s up, Cecil? Rosa
said you’d stood her up for dinner and didn’t
even send a message. She
was worried that she’d made you upset . . .
but I guess it’s not her, is
it?”
“No, it’s not her,” Cecil
sighed. “It’s just . . . “
Kain waited.
“ . . . “
“ . . . “
“ . . . “
Then he got sick of waiting.
“Just what, Cecil?”
“I’m only on chapter 3!”
“Huh?”
With a relieved frenzy to be
venting his frustration, Cecil
explained the predicament he’d found himself
mired in since his meeting
with Cid that afternoon.
“ . . . and I still have 8 ½
chapters to go! I’ll never get
this, Kain!
Then what can I do - go to His Majesty and say, ‘Sorry,
Sire, but you’re going to need to find
someone else to captain your air
force, because I couldn’t pass Driver’s
Ed.’ Something tells me that
wouldn’t go over too well with him!”
Kain frowned, deep in thought.
“I agree. Well, that only leaves one other option.”
Cecil gawked at him.
“What other option?”
Grinning slightly, the Dragoon
turned and left the room,
calling over his shoulder, “Do your homework,
Cecil! I’ll see you
tomorrow!
Er, later today, I mean.”
Cecil watched the door slam shut,
sighed, attempted to rub a
kink out of his neck, and went back to his
workbook.
The next day, he appeared in
Ferdinand’s office with all the
enthusiasm of a dead cow and handed in his
assignment.
His teacher glanced at the papers
appraisingly.
“You really need to work on your
penmanship, young man.”
Cecil bristled. Just who did this guy think he was? Cecil
was not a child - he deserved better
treatment than this.
“Now, it’s time for your
examination on the laws you were
instructed to have learned for today. You may begin.”
Cringing inwardly with what
little energy he had left from
the overnighter he’d just pulled, Cecil began
mumbling about the speed
limits within castle zones during daylight
hours, when Ferdinand suddenly
keeled over, completely unconscious.
Cecil blinked.
This was not expected.
He felt a light touch on his
shoulder and turned to find Kain
standing beside him.
“He won’t wake up for several
days. You have plenty of time
to learn your stuff.”
“What did you do?!” Cecil
exclaimed, horrified.
Kain threw a quick glance around
to make sure no one was
watching, then replied nonchalantly, “I
drugged his honey bun this
morning.
Rosa managed to get me put in touch with this great stuff that
- “
“You drugged him?!”
“Sure! Why not?”
Cecil looked again at the snoring
heap of tyrant asleep on
his desk.
“Cool! Now, excuse me, I’m leaving.”
“Where’re you going?” Kain asked.
“To sleep!”
Cid was flaming mad when he found
out, but Cecil bore his
venting with good humor, knowing that there
was nothing the Engineer
could do about it.
Finally, Cid regarded him with
glazing eyes and said,
“You obviously can’t complete the course until he wakes up.
I suggest you use your time wisely.”
Hearing the seething edge to his
voice, Cecil could only just
barely suppress his laughter.
Cecil: 1
Cid: 0
The Dark Knight had no reason to
have contact with the
Engineer or any of his people during the
following week, for during this
time Ferdinand remained thoroughly
unconscious. Using his time wisely,
Cecil managed to, using his good study
habits, learn every traffic law on
the face of the Earth and still maintain
regular sleeping hours. He
decided to do a very big favor for Kain
someday.
When the day came, nine days
later, that Ferdinand had
awakened, Cecil was not as undisturbed about
it as he’d intended to be,
however.
He knew the hardest part of the course was yet to come.
Ferdinand stood beside Cecil at
the wheel of Adversity.
“You checked your fuel?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Your landing gear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“All lights and signals?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Ferdinand glared at him harshly.
“What about your blinker fluid?”
Cecil blinked, feeling a sudden
panic.
“My blinker fluid?”
“Yes. Did you check your blinker fluid? Did you, or didn’t
you?!”
Cecil swallowed numbly.
“I . . . didn’t think of it,
Sir.”
His teacher sighed in an
exaggerated manner and gestured
sharply to the edge of the Airship.
“Go check it. Now.
You’re wasting my time.”
Cecil got up quickly and ran to
the side, not wanting to
admit that he had no idea where to check the
blinked fluid.
One of the crewmen walked by just
as he reached the edge and
bumped into him. Hard.
For one sickening moment, Cecil
felt himself falling through
the air, then felt the painful thud as he hit
the ground from the top
deck of the Airship.
Moaning slightly and sitting up,
he looked up.
“Sorry!” called the crewman.
Ferdinand then appeared over the
railing.
“You fool!” he yelled. “There’s no such thing as blinker
fluid!
You should know better! That was
the oldest trick in the book!
Get back up here!!”
Cecil glowered darkly, but
complied.
Cecil: 1
Cid: 1
“How’d it go?” Rosa asked
intensely over the small table
where she, Kain, and Cecil were eating in the
village Inn.
Cecil shuddered and poked at his
plate of meat.
“I . . . didn’t hit anything,” he
hopefully told his friends.
Kain blinked, then realization
dawned on him.
“You scratched the paint, didn’t
you?”
A shudder ran through the Dark
Knight.
“I . . . I . . . I didn’t see the
tree! Honestly, I . . . I
thought I had plenty of space! It was in my blind spot! No, it swerved
into my lane! I . . . “
Kain held up a hand to silence
him.
“THE TREE JUST JUMPED UP AND BIT
ME!!!!!”
“Relax, Cecil. It
was your first time on the road.
Accidents happen. Cid should just be glad no one was hurt.”
“Cid tried to wring my neck. Only he couldn’t manage to dent
my armor.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t see why they’re all
being so rough on you,” Rosa
primly declared. “After all, what do they expect you to do? Show up and
instantly be a model driver? They should know that these things take
practice!”
“I guess life isn’t always fair,”
Cecil sighed. “Anyway,
they made me paint over the scratch in the
paint, then I had to endure a
lecture on paint expenses, both financially
and to the ecosystem.” He
frowned and looked up. “What the heck is an ecosystem?”
Kain and Rosa exchanged a glance.
“Sh!” Kain told him. “It’s a secret.”
“No, really. We’re living in a medieval society. We have no
knowledge of the environment - just that we
use it however we feel like!”
“Cecil,” Rosa told him, “Cid would just use anything he can
think of to get you into trouble.”
Cecil sighed, knowing she was
right.
Cecil: 1
Cid: 2
Two weeks later was the big day.
His driving test.
Cid took his place beside Cecil
at the wheel and told him to
begin when ready.
Cecil swallowed, started the
engine, and pulled out.
So far, so good. Nothing had blown up yet.
The driving portion took a little
over an hour - Cid gave
directions, Cecil followed them. He observed all traffic signs, signals,
stayed within the speed limit, and made
observations for “conditions.”
Everything was going fine.
Then for the fun part.
The other four Airships were
deployed into positions in a
straight line, high up in the air, along with
a few blimps so that there
were seven objects in all.
Serpentine formation.
“You’re familiar with the
procedure, I should hope?” Cid
snapped.
Cecil swallowed and nodded. Simply weave through the line of
cones, reach the end, then weave back. Backwards.
He’d done this
before, in practice with Ferdinand. He’d done it well. He could do it.
“Begin when ready,” Cid bluntly
told him.
Cecil nodded and eased the
Airship toward the awaiting line.
Forward . . . turn . . .brake . .
. forward . . . turn . . .
turn . . .
Before he even realized it, he’d
pulled Adversity to a stop
with its hind bumper even with the last cone,
which happened to be the
Airship from which Ferdinand was observing
the test. Pointedly ignoring
him, Cecil clinched his teeth and shifted the
Airship into reverse.
Backward . . . turn . . .
backward . . . turn . . . don’t . .
. stop . . .
Cecil heaved a deep sigh of
relief. It was over. He’d done
it.
Cid peered over the nose of the
Airship, noting that it was
exactly even with the cone. Cone, as it was. He nodded and grunted.
The other four Airships then
changed formation - making up
the great aerial rectangle Cecil was so
dreading. A single blimp moved
to the front for the fifth cone. It was time.
Maneuverability.
A shudder ran through Cecil,
making a faint clang in his
armor.
“Pull up even with the cones,
then proceed when ready to the
right.”
Cecil gnashed his teeth. Of course it would be to the right
- the right was his weaker side. Oh, why couldn’t it have been to the
left?!
He pulled the Airship even with
the first two cones and
stared ahead.
Kain’s advice came back to him
like the breeze of summers
long past.
“Don’t worry so much. If you screw up, you can just throw
Cid overboard and be done with it.”
That was right! Why was he so worried?
Suddenly infused with a new
energy, one that flowed from deep
within his spirit, Cecil gunned the engines
and eased forward at an easy
speed, checking his mirrors and looking over
his shoulder for possible
oncoming traffic, which might cause an aerial
wreck. Finding his way
clear, he progressed to the right, steering
carefully around the Airship
to the front right and coming out even with
the blimp that was serving as
the fifth cone. He stopped and glanced at Cid.
The Engineer was scribbling
something on his clipboard. He’d
been doing that for most of the test. It was driving Cecil crazy - was
he really doing so badly?!
Steadying himself against a
sudden rush of anxiety, Cecil
began to progress backwards the way he’d
came.
This part was slower - more
careful . . .
Turn.
Turn.
Straighten out . . . straighten
out . . . STRAIGHTEN OUT -
The Airship rocked with a sudden
jolt.
Cecil slammed his eyes shut.
Cid glowered at him darkly,
triumphantly.
Cecil had hit a cone.
It was all over for him now.
Cecil: -54
Cid: infinity
Kain was waiting for him on the
ground.
“Well?!” he asked adamantly when
Cecil got off the Airship in
a daze.
“Cecil? What happened?”
Cecil looked at him with somber,
hooded eyes.
“I failed maneuverability,” he
murmured in barely more than a
whisper.
For a moment, Kain didn’t seem to
know how to react. He
shook his head.
“Man . . . I’m sorry, Cecil. Maybe . . . maybe next time,
you’ll get it . . . “
Cecil couldn’t meet his
eyes. The shame he felt was too
overpowering. He couldn’t bear this any longer.
What could he do? He’d be denied his command of the Redwings
now - he’d failed his driving test. Surely His Majesty would not look
upon this lightly. Cecil would now be seen as a failure: a disgrace to
the crown.
He’d lose his position as Dark Knight.
He’d be demoted to a
common soldier, or even expelled from the
army altogether. If not, he’d
resign.
He had to. The shame was too
great - he couldn’t show his face
in Baron ever again. Even his friends, Kain, Rosa . . . they’d
now look
upon him with pity and contempt. He’d have to take a self-imposed
exile.
What would he do? Where could he
go from here?
Cecil had failed his driving
test. It was the absolute end
of his life.
Cid came over to them, gloating.
“You could repeat the course,” he
told Cecil. “Ferdinand
would be delighted to have you as his student
again, I’m sure.
Otherwise, you can just go to the King and
tell him that you couldn’t
pass your driving test. I’m sure he’ll be . . . understanding.” He
chuckled darkly. “And just for the record, you can tell your Dad that
this is only the beginning of my revenge!”
Cecil blinked, too startled to
say anything.
Kain frowned.
“Tell who?”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m Kain, the Dragoon. What’s all this about Cecil’s Dad?”
“He should’ve known this was
coming, that old fogi!”
Kain’s frowned deepened. And Kain could be quite
scary-looking when he tried. And he was trying.
“Mr. Cid, Cecil is an orphan.”
Cid’s grin vanished abruptly.
“What?” he asked in a choked
voice.
“I’m an orphan,” Cecil emphasized
in as tiny a voice as could
still be heard.
Cid turned a fierce glare on him.
“You’re not Cecil, son of Torlah?”
“No. I’m Cecil, son of KluYa.
The late KluYa.”
Cid turned bright red, then a
deep purple.
“Oh. Euh . . . excuse me, Cecil, I seem to have mistaken you
for someone else.” He turned from deep purple to a sickly green. “I . .
. euh . . . crud. My mistake.” He shook
himself and returned to a
normal color. “Well, Cecil, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong
foot.
Sorry about all that turmoil I put you through. I’m sure we’ll be
good friends from now on.”
He turned to leave, beginning to
change color again. His
embarrassment must have been great.
“Wait!” Cecil called after him.
Cid stopped and turned slowly.
“Yes?”
“What about my driving test?”
“Oh, that. Never mind.
I’ve no objection to your becoming
Captain.
Report for duty tomorrow, Cecil.”
And he was gone.
For a long, long moment, Cecil
and Kain stared at where he
had gone.
Then one of Cid’s assistants came up to them and handed a
small card to Cecil.
A driver’s license.
Cecil looked up with a sudden
resolution.
“Kain, I’ve gotta go.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find Cecil, son of Torlah,
and kill him!!!!”
Cecil: Winner
Cid: Painfully Defeated . . . for now!
***
The
End.
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