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Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-05
Completed:
2008-04-11
Words:
3,252
Chapters:
6/6
Kudos:
27
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3,252

Sitcom (Pilot Episode) Quite A Character! (beta version)

Summary:

SERIES: Final Fantasy 7
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE?: Yes
TITLE: Quite A Character!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'em. I ain't gettin' paid.
DISCLAIMER 2: It is often a custom of fiction writers to place the occasional real place into a story that takes place in a real town or city. There *is* a Noddy's in Nantucket and it is a clothing store. However, Sephiroth does *not* shop there. Also, I don't know if they have a dressing room there, but I've put one in for the sake of this sit-com. The restaurant I've mentioned, the Brotherhood', is also a real place, though I haven't eaten there in years (sigh.)
GENRE: Sit-Com
ARCHIVE?: Yes

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Chapter Text

 


Sitcom (Pilot Episode) Quite A Character! (beta version)
by Sephiroth



-PILOT EPISODE-
-FIRST ACT-

"Quaint."

Marietta Churchfield filled the answer into the crossword puzzle and tapped the pen to her chin.

"Good word for my life," she admitted. At least it had been until the death of her husband five years earlier. She'd spent a lot of time in counseling since then. Two years of grief counseling for herself and her son, who was now a teenager, and a whole lot of various counselors for her son. None of them were up to par. They'd simply pumped the kid full of drugs as if they believed that making him look calm on the outside would solve all his internal turmoil. It hadn't and in the end she'd decided that all the boy needed was a new father he could look up to. That had gone about as well as the counseling fiasco.

The boy walked into the house and flopped down onto the sofa, turning on his PlayStation. He didn't believe he was having problems. To him the whole problem was that his mom was blowing the idea that he liked video games way out of proportion. She and all these guys kept acting like if they changed something, gave him a pill, or tried to replace his dad, suddenly he would abandon his games and rejoin what they called the 'real world'. To him there was one reason for the games. Reality was boring as hell.

"Peter. Homework," Marietta said. She pointed in the direction of the dinning room table.

"Come on, mom," Peter complained. "Please? I just got this really cool new GameShark code I gotta try out." he tapped in the code as he said this.

"Tell you what," Marietta told her son, "you do your homework before I make supper, and you can play your little game from after the news is over until bedtime."

Peter stood up and sighed, leaving the PlayStation on, the code unfinished. He put the paper the code was on in his pocket, so his mother wouldn't throw it out, then went to do his homework.

Peter Churchfield was thirteen years old. A budding teenager who thought he knew it all. His hair, what there was of it, was light brown. His mother had been relieved when it started growing back. That previous summer, he'd gone along with the new 'bald' fad and had shaved it completely off. It did look and feel better, he had to admit, to actually have hair. His mother had been right about.

Marietta headed into the kitchen to start dinner. She got the pots and pans out of the corner cupboard, frowning at the grease stains on the white cabinet doors.

~Why are kitchens almost always painted white?~ she wondered as she went into the refrigerator to get the ingredients to start her fried chicken recipe.

She was picking up the chicken when she noticed that it had gone rancid. Had it really been there that long? With her arm outstreched and her nose plugged, Marietta did the Rancid Meat Walk over to the trashbarrel and dumped the offending poultry into it. She tied the baggy shut and washed her hands.

"Peter," she called, "come here a moment."

Peter sighed and went into the kitchen. What did his mother need now? He hoped she wasn't going to announce some new date she had coming over.

"Two jobs," She told him, firmly, when he had appeared. "I need you to take out the trash, then go down to the supermarket and get some fresh chicken."

"Just use some other kind of meat," Peter sighed, quirking a  video-blue eye at her. "Everything tastes like chicken."

"No PlayStation tonight." Marietta had had quite enough back talk from her son these days.

Peter looked horrified. This wasn't fair. "Mom!"

"Now, get the chicken or you won't be using it for the rest of the week." She handed him the money to buy a four pound package of boneless breasts, with change to spare. "And I want my change." she warned him as he departed.

*****

"What does he see in this thing," Marietta sighed as she tapped a few random numbers into the GameShark, saved the new 'code', She was about to turn it off and put it away, when something, perhaps boredom, made her reconsider. She selected the 'Star Game With Select Codes' option and turned it on.

"What am I doing," she asked herself. "I'm an attractive thirty-nine year old housewife with a good job, a house and I'm still moderately attractive. So why am I sitting her fooling around with my son's PlayStation?"

Okay, so she'd been thirty-nine years old for the past four years. She was still moderately attractive. She had brown hair, a half-shade darker than her son's and her eyes were the same color as his. She kept herself in shape, though she wasn't as well-endowed as many women she'd seen, despite having been pregnant. She had hoped that she would finally get some breasts thrown into the deal, but it just hadn't been in the cards.

She turned her attention to the game, but couldn't make heads or tails of it. The phone rang and she put the PlayStation control down to answer it.

"Yes?"

"I'm with the Local Paper," a cheery voice told her. "Would you like a subscription to..."

There was a noise outside that she couldn't make out. Hanging up on the telemarketer, she went out into the back yard to investigate.

*****

Though she'd never played her son's games herself, she had watched him play a few times and recognized the man who was currently trying to disentangle himself from her clothesline. The slippery mud he was in was only hampering his attempts and getting the laundry dreadfully dirty.

"Here," she offered, going over to help the silver-haired man. She helped him to untangled himself then frowned. "I'll have to redo the laundry." she considered what to do with her unexpected visitor. She certainly couldn't leave him outside. "Come on in." She told him.
"Don't worry about the uniform, I'll send it out to the drycleaners. My son will be more than happy to bring it. He's just getting some chicken. Do you like chicken?"

The silver-haired man blinked at her from behind the mud that now covered most of him. This was certainly a much different reaction than his visits usually provoked.

"I talk too much," Marietta apologized. "And we haven't even been introduced. I'm Marietta Churchfied." she told him as she lead him into the house and into the bathroom. "Laundry goes into the hamper." she told him, "please clean up after your finished. You're taller than my late husband was, so we'll have to buy you some clothes later, but it doesn't matter so much with shorts." she handed him a pair of colorful bermuda shorts and an equally loud Hawaiian shirt. "Put these on after you're done showering," she instructed as she turned and headed back down the hall to the kitchen.

There is something in the way a mother speaks that can compel even the gods to change their minds or commit acts that would otherwise remain uncommitted. Perhaps this is why, twenty minutes later, Sephiroth walked into Marietta's living room wearing the clothes she'd selected for him.

end part 1