Seymour, unlike some very strange people who are amused in very stupid ways, did not sing in the shower. Seymour knew the shower was to get clean, get wet, think, and possibly slip on soap (and he was very good at avoiding the latter).
Seymour realized he had neglected to ask exactly what his father—or whatever it was—had meant by ‘spirits’ and was even more vague about what he was supposed to do with them. Nearly every time Seymour had a long talk with his father, he ended up going to the family therapist soon afterwards (that is, until the therapist quit and moved away without a forwarding address). The two got on even worse after that.
Seymour decided if someone, metaphysical or not, was going to bug him, he already had enough power to turn Zanarkand into the holiest smoking crater, so these spirits should damn well be doing nothing worse than selling cookies.
"Seymour," he heard a familiar voice say.
Seymour froze. ‘That can’t be who I think it is.’ He thought to himself.
In other universes, people have the politeness to ask someone they had obviously just terrified what was wrong. Not in this one. People in Spira are more obliviously ignorant to manners than a burglar who just stepped on your cat.
Seymour carefully peered out from behind the shower curtain to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Everyone else believed in the rumors that he was a schizophrenic nutcase who listened to voices no one else could hear, and he was starting to believe it too.
"Oooh, what fluffy towels!" the mystery person, who was more mystery as to why she was there, than who she was, said. Indeed, Yuna stands out quite obviously in a crowd of people who had remembered their hats, but not their pants. She had an amazing ability to wear three times as much as the people who are just unnamed and unmentioned in stories such as this, and yet she showed enough skin to contract melanoma on a tropical island and hypothermia anywhere else that was at least five degrees cooler.
"Give me that!" Seymour yelled, somehow managing to grab the towel and turn off the water at the same time, probably because the water was his own spell, for there is no evidence whatsoever of plumbing in Spira.
"You spirits really need to work on your timing," Seymour complained as he stepped out and wrapped a towel around himself, thus making half the readers abandon the fic before finishing this sentence.
"I hate it when the fourth wall does that," Seymour said, wincing at the mess on the floor. "Always at the silliest times, too."
"I think you’re making it worse," Yuna commented.
"What exactly are you of all people doing in my bathroom in the middle of the night? Don’t you have someone to annoy a potion out of, or a speech about happiness and puppies and flowers to give to no one in particular?"
"… I lost a bet," she answered.
"Oh." When someone brings up ‘bet’ its best not to go into details. Same with the phrases ‘bright idea,’ or ‘it’s a long story.’
"And now to show you Spira’s past," Yuna said started twirling her wand. She dropped it twice and it bashed Seymour in the jaw, reminding him to keep a good distance from sticks and similar objects, but it created the more or less desired effect.
The scenery changed from the bathroom to a beautiful tropical island, thick with foliage tht seemd to have been created either by an unimaginative god, or just by one who waited until the last mintue and cobbled the project together, using the excuse of it being ‘art’ to justify its lack of environmental sense. Seymour would have been far more appreciative, were his clothes not left in reality.
"Not bad for a first-timer," Seymour commented.
"What’s that supposed to mean?" Yuna asked.
"Well, that tree, there’s a bit pixilated—" he was interrupted by the fourth wall falling over yet again, and he decided that since Yuna was the one making the illusion in the first place and she had been rude enough interrupted his shower, she could clean it up this time. "You can’t see more than a few yards ahead of you, and my towel seems to have changed color."
Yuna started to pout.
"It’s not horrible, I mean, I’m glad I still have the towel in the first place, and my first few times doing this ended up looking like I’d smoke something past it’s expiration date. I never was much of a visual artist."
"If you’ll please pay attention!" Yuna said.
"Why? I don’t really want people to notice me while I’m in a towel."
"They can’t see you."
"The dog sure can," Seymour commented. If only the dog would decide exactly what it wanted to do with his foot, instead of sniffing at it for twenty minutes.
"Time and magic have always worked differently for animals," Yuna said. "When you summon an Aeon, people run away screaming. Animals, however, just continue to roll in whatever they found interesting."
"Um, I’m not the smartest of all people about time and stuff, but is this going to cause some sort of disastrous anomaly?"
"Not really," Yuna said. "It’s just a dog." She was, however, downright wrong. The dog’s notice of Seymour drastically changed the world, not for humans or Guado or Ronso or Al Behd or Chocobos (or any mix thereof), but for the whole of dogdom. But that’s not what this story is about, so it will be mentioned that Seymour yelped in surprise as the dog licked his toes, then wandered off, and that shall be all for the mention of the dog hereafter.
"You’re not paying attention!" Yuna said.
"Well, you didn’t suddenly put your tongue on my feet."
Yuna pretended to ignore him, not letting it show that she actually thought about what he’d said—even less what she thought about thinking about it—twirled her stick again (dropping it once this time), and the scene changed.
The scene was one that Seymour himself had seen before, though it was a long time ago that he’d seen so many details blurred and just plain downright wrong.
"You see, back in the days without summoners—" she was interrupted by a crumbling sound.
"What was that?" Seymour asked.
"That was the fifth wall."
"What’s the fifth wall?"
"The fourth wall of the sequel," Yuna answered, barely in time, because the fourth wall came crashing down a her feet. "Gosh darnit."
"Anyway—"
"Yes, yes, Yunalesca this, and Zeon that and Aeons everywhere, whatever. I know all that. I’m the one who taught it to you."
"Oh…right," Yuna said. "Um, lessee, what about my dad, Lord Braska and—"
"I was live when that happened!"
"Why Al Behd are treated so horribly?"
"I read every book about that one!"
"…"
"There’s got to be something in the past that’s extremely relevant to all the badness about not being nice—"
"You mean like the impact of bad parenting and poor social environments and how thing traumatizing in someone’s childhood can lead to personality disorders in the person’s adulthood?"
"You’re no fun anymore!" Yuna said. She attempted to twirl her stick, hit herself on the head and dropped it on her foot, and Seymour found himself alone in his bathroom, wondering why his towel had changed color for the second time.