“I’d never really thought ‘bout you
Nor given your name mention
I’ve sometimes wondered if leaving
Was a cry for attention”

This, in fact, was mostly true
But Cloud did not say so
“There’s naught to do in Nibelheim
I’d no choice but to go

“I planned to be a big hero
Like Sephiroth the great”
Because Cloud knew a hero
Could most always get a date

“Yes,” said Tifa, with a smile
“About that hero bit
The promise that you made that night
Do you remember it?”

Cloud nodded. “That I’d save you
If in dire straits you fell
Hmm . . . living here with Barret
I suppose could be called Hell”

“Very funny,” Tifa said
“But listen to my plea
I’m calling in the promise
Come on, hero. Rescue me”

This week’s puzzle:

Two rivals in love and in work have a showdown to settle things between them for good. The fitter man appears to win, but in the end he is defeated because of a thumb, a foot, and a chest.

Last week’s puzzle:

An unelected dictator and his cronies want to get something that doesn’t belong to them. They participate in an unfair trial, ruin relations with another country, kill a small animal, and trick an old man into falling to his death, but in the end they are stopped by the forces of order.

And the answer is . . . ▼

Justice Taney made this harsh decree:
“Cases can’t be brought by property”
But there’s more to this tale
Though the courts, they did fail
Less than three months later Scott was free

“Are you sure it’s behind the couch?”

“Of course it’s behind the couch. Where else could it possibly be?”

“Did you check under the couch cushions?”

“Of course I checked under the couch cushions. Now are you going to shut up and help me look, or are you going to just sit there and . . . hang on, I think I’ve got . . . something . . .”

Dave lifted his arm slowly out from behind the couch. The object in his hand was not the remote control they had been searching for. It was not, in fact, a remote control at all, but it was something that was plenty capable of helping them to temporarily forget that they were unable to watch television.

“It’s a sword,” Jordan pointed out as he stared at it, mesmerized.

“Yeah,” Dave agreed. He gripped it by the handle and rotated it slowly in his hand, watching the light reflecting off it. “It’s a fencing sword, I think,” he added, tapping his finger on the rubber tip and then sliding it down the rest of the blade to see if it was actually sharp anywhere. It wasn’t, but in Dave’s mind that did not make it any less awesome.

“Where did it come from?” Jordan asked.

“From behind the couch. Duh. Weren’t you watching?”

“No,” said Jordan. He was so fascinated by the weapon that he even forgot to punch Dave in the arm for being a smart aleck. “How did it get there?” He frowned. “You don’t suppose it belongs to Jon, do you?”

Dave laughed. “Yeah right! Jon? Owning something as cool as this? I don’t think so. It must have been placed here by some higher power, lying dormant until its true master came along to claim it.”

Jordan’s frown deepened. “Hey, what do you mean, ‘true master?’ Why should you get to keep it?”

“Because I’m the one that found it, obviously,” Dave replied, still staring at his prize. “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘Finders Keepers?’” he explained, as if he was citing a major Supreme Court case.

“That doesn’t mean you were destined to have it,” Jordan argued. He stood and approached the couch, flexing his arms menacingly. “You just stumbled on it randomly. You were looking for the remote control.”

“Dude, don’t you remember the story of King Arthur?” asked Dave, who remembered it from the cartoon movie, not the book he was supposed to have read in high school. “He didn’t know that the sword was special. He was just looking for any old sword. But he pulled it out of the stone, so he got to be King of the Britons. This is exactly the same deal. Quid. Pro. Quo.”

“I bet even King Arthur would have had to give up the sword if someone fought him for it,” Jordan said.

“You want to fight?” Dave asked, standing up and holding the sword out, shielding himself from the potential attack.

“You can’t use the sword in a fight to see who gets the sword!”

“Oh can’t I? You think you can stop me?”

“You want me to stop you?”

“Yeah, I’d like to see you try to stop me.”

“STOP!!!!”

Dave and Jordan both paused, one with sword in mid-swing and the other with palms raised to catch it ninja-style. They turned toward the entryway. Jon was standing there, his eyes wild. “Put. The sword. Down.”

The voice was so much more authoritative than what they were used to hearing from Jon that they complied immediately. Dave set the sword down on the couch without a second thought. Even Jordan, who hadn’t specifically been told to do anything, lowered his hands and looked guilty. Jon walked over to the couch, and some of the color returned to his face. “Where did you find this?” he asked, his voice significantly calmer once the sword was back in his hands.

“Behind the couch,” Dave answered meekly.

“How did it end up back there?” Jon wondered aloud.

“Hang on,” said Jordan, when he had worked up the courage to speak. “This is your fencing saber?”

“It’s a foil,” Jon replied reflexively. “But yes, it’s mine.”

“You fence?” Dave asked.

Jon sighed. “I used to. Haven’t had any time since I started college, as you can probably tell by the fact that this ended up behind the couch.”

“Oh,” said Dave. “That’s cool.”

“What?” Jon asked. He wondered if he was slightly delirious from the shock of seeing his roommates playing with his hundred-dollar foil. It was rare that anyone said that he or anything he did was cool, and hearing the phrase coming from Dave was doubly surprising.

“That’s . . . really cool,” repeated Dave, who also seemed a little bit uncomfortable with the unfamiliar wording (unfamiliar when directed at Jon, at least).

“Thanks,” Jon said. He gripped the foil by the handle and rotated it slowly in his hand, watching the light reflecting off it.

“So, can we—” Dave began.

“No,” said Jon.

“You don’t even know what he was going to ask,” said Jordan.

“Yes I do,” said Jon, “and you can’t borrow it. Not even just to look at it. Do you have any idea how much this cost?” Dave and Jordan had no idea. They still thought of it as a magic sword of destiny, which of course would be invaluable.

Jon saw the disappointed looks on their faces and thought. “But you can have a snack,” he said at last.

“Huh?” Dave asked.

“A snack,” Jon said, heading toward the stairs, foil in hand. “You have snacks, right? Don’t you keep them in that cupboard on the right above the sink?”

Jon walked up the stairs to his room, feeling unusually pleased with himself. He had found his missing foil, and he had done his good deed for the day. Jordan opened the right-hand cupboard above the sink, expecting to find only chips, and he located the missing TV remote.

“This was back when we were young
In good old Nibelheim
Probably ‘round middle school
God, such an awkward time

“We were meeting at the well
Do you remember now?”
Cloud said, “I remember
That you wouldn’t date me. Ow”

“You were scrawny.” Tifa shrugged
“And this was later on
You were leaving for SOLDIER
And you would soon be gone”

“Of course!” said Cloud. “Now I recall
That fateful day of yore”
Even though he’d been thirteen
He’d thought that he might score

“I didn’t think you’d come,” said Cloud
“Nor did I,” Tifa said
“But a party got cancelled
So I hit the well instead”

This week’s puzzle:

An unelected dictator and his cronies want to get something that doesn’t belong to them. They participate in an unfair trial, ruin relations with another country, kill a small animal, and trick an old man into falling to his death, but in the end they are stopped by the forces of order.

Last week’s puzzle:

A man who lost his last job will do anything to get it back. When his former co-workers are reluctant to have him return, he orchestrates a government-backed hostile takeover, but afterward his new allies turn around and arrest him for fraud.

And the answer is . . . ▼

Aragon’s Cath’rine was a young bride
At thirteen she (by proxy) knot tied
Later she wed his brother
Who married another
On this same date the second wife died

Jon was hungry.  It was the middle of the night, and he was trying to get another paper finished.  It was also eleven hours since he had last eaten something.  Jon hated to interrupt the paper-writing process, especially when he was so close to done, but he also knew that his mental functions started to decline sharply when he got this hungry.  Jon understood how the human body worked, and he always reluctantly gave in to its necessities, provided, of course, that they were actually necessary.

So it was that he proceeded down into the kitchen area, searching for something to eat.  There was always food there, but if you only count things that Jon was willing to eat, there was never very much.  Still, he figured that he would probably be able to find something.  This thought may very well have been a sign that the combination of lack of food and lack of sleep was starting to affect his brain processes.  The fact that he was trying to do this search without first turning on the lights definitely was.

Jon stepped in something sticky.  He groaned.  Jon believed that keeping a house clean was important at all times, not just in case anyone came over to visit but because a clean home went hand in hand with a happy mood.  This was why he, among other things, never wore shoes inside the house.  While this certainly decreased the amount of mud and dirt that ended up on the floors, it was also a policy that Jon frequently ended up regretting, most frequently when he was walking through the kitchen.

Hopping on one foot to keep from spreading the stickiness anywhere else (and, just for good measure, cursing), Jon worked his way back to the light switch and flipped it on.  Then he swore more loudly and let his foot drop back to the floor, because it was clear that there was no point in trying to contain the mess.  It was everywhere.  A multi-colored flow of liquid had spread almost the entire length and width of the kitchen floor, and it was edging its way toward the carpeted areas of the apartment.  It had gotten to the point where paper towels were no longer an option; he would need sandbags.

A couple seconds’ inspection was all it took to see that the source of the flood was their refrigerators.  The sticky substance was slowly oozing out of all four of them.  Jon had always thought that having four fridges for three people was somewhat ridiculous.  He might have been able to understand if they were full of alcohol.  Jon did not really drink himself, but he knew that it was something that college students did, and he felt that he could handle that idea.  The fridges in his apartment, however, generally contained an assortment of food that had no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever.  Most often it was vast quantities of leftovers that had been scavenged from God only knew where (much like the fridges themselves, Jon had always assumed).  These were often poorly contained, and they were never eaten quickly enough, meaning that it was always up to Jon to clear out anything that appeared to be growing mold or sentience or anything like that.  It was a battle that never ended; every time he carried out a series of trays or plates or whatever, by the next day they had been replaced by something else.

Removing his socks, Jon gingerly stepped through the gunk to see what his roommates’ penchant for acquiring free food had wrought this time.  He opened one fridge.  He stared.  Then he opened another and saw the same thing.  Just to make sure, he checked the other two, but they were no different.  All four of them were jam-packed with gallon tubs of ice cream.

Jon was not amused.

He tiptoed back out of the kitchen, wiped his feet off with a paper towel, and went over to the door to the basement room that his roommates shared.  They would still be up, of course, playing video games on into the night.  Jon wished they weren’t, just so that he could rudely awaken them.  “Dave!  Jordan!” he shouted.  “Get up here!”

There was a brief pause, filled not with the sounds of sleepy people struggling to understand why they were being pulled from a wonderful state of sleep but of aliens or terrorists being shot by bullets or lasers or whatever.  Then the heads of his two roommates appeared at the bottom of the stairs.  “What is it?” Dave asked.

“Did you two by any chance pick up a large quantity of ice cream today?”

“It was left over from a party they were having for prospective applicants,” Dave explained.  “No one else wanted it, so we got it all for free.  You can have some, if you want.”

Jon was lactose-intolerant, almost as seriously as he was roommate-idiocy-intolerant.  “And then you put it all in our fridges?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jordan said simply.

“Not freezers,” Jon went on, his voice rising in pitch, “but fridges.”

“What are you trying to say?” Dave asked innocently.

“That it’s melting all over the floor, you morons!” Jon roared.

Their eyes went wide.  “Oh no,” Dave said hollowly.

“We have no time to lose,” said Jordan, and the two of them quickly bounded up the stairs.

Jon was shocked.  As they passed, he asked, “So . . . you’re going to clean it up?”

“No,” Dave replied, rolling his eyes at this crazy talk.  “We have to eat everything that’s left before that melts too!”

“Waste not, want not,” agreed Jordan, pulling open a fridge and removing a very sticky-looking container of ice cream.

Jon tried more shouting.  He tried threats.  He tried promising to buy them new ice cream.  Nothing got through.  So he trudged sadly back up the stairs, knowing that he now had two tasks to complete before he could sleep.

Almost to the door was Cloud
The bridge all set to burn
When Tifa’s voice rang out with: “Wait!”
And forced the man to turn

“I’d like to help you,” Cloud explained
“But this just ain’t my fight
Go find some noble hippie guy
He’ll get the job done right”

“Refresh my mem’ry,” said suave Cloud
“I’d hate to have forgot
Though one thing you should know ‘bout me
Is I forget a lot”

This week’s puzzle:

A man who lost his last job will do anything to get it back.  When his former co-workers are reluctant to have him return, he orchestrates a government-backed hostile takeover, but afterward his new allies turn around and arrest him for fraud.

Last week’s puzzle:

An embattled administrator struggles to solve a familiar problem while dealing with the ineffectuality of his assistants, the infidelity of his wife, and a man threatening to break his legs.  Even when he resorts to extreme measures and calls the military, his poorly educated enemies still get away.

And the answer is . . . ▼