The Golden Fork Restaurant

Title: The Golden Fork Restaurant
Author: Enide Dear
Pairing: RemnantsxHeidegger  Crack rules!
Rating: Lots of violence, no squick. No, really!

Summary: Yazoo: Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful.
                  Kadaj: Hate us because we’re better than you are



They had dressed up for the occasion and exchanged their leather outfits for dark suits, nice shoes, even ties, and the mood was rising along with their appetite as they breathed in the mouth-watering scents coming from Midgard’s fanciest restaurant. Three bellies rumbled appreciatively. Even for clones on the mission of becoming whole and destroying the world, there were such a thing as eating too much dried ramen.

“Let’s see.” Kadaj stopped his brothers just around the corner from the tasteful sign saying The Golden Fork Restaurant. “Clothes, looks normal, I guess. Weapons, at home. Money, Yazoo?”

“We got this.” Yazoo held out a rather battered wallet stuffed with gils. “Do you think it will be enough?”

Kadaj glanced uncertain at the wallet; usually the brothers just took what they wanted and the whole system with ‘cash’ and ‘money’ made no sense to them whatsoever.

“I hope so. Otherwise we’ll just have to go out and rob someone else until we get enough.” He said firmly. “I’m tired of never getting a decent meal. I’m tired of having to run away after getting food. Just for once, I want to sit down and eat nice food at a nice place. And if this works out, maybe we can even get back. But it means behaving!” He cast a meaningful glance at Loz, who looked hurt.

“What? I can behave!”

“Last time you ate the fish out of the aquariums!”

“So? There was another guy who did it first, from another fish tank!”

“That was *lobster*, and it’s supposed to be fresh out of the tank before it’s cooked, it doesn’t mean you can put the goldfishes raw on your rice and pretend it’s sushi!”

“How was I supposed to know that?!”

“Brothers….” Yazoo sighed at the escalating argument. “I’m hungry, and it will start raining soon. Let’s go inside. Don’t worry Loz, I’ll tell you what you can eat and what you can’t.”

Yazoo took their arms under his and calmed by their smiling brother, Kadaj and Loz let themselves be led up to the restaurant door.

Getting a table was amazingly easy; the head waiter took one look at the three stunningly beautiful men with their expensive clothes and swelling wallet, smiled, and showed them in to a round table in the middle of the room.

The Remnants were used to being stared at, but, Kadaj though, he really hadn’t expected to be ogled as shamelessly here as they were at the cheap joints in the slums. Especially one fat old bearded git was looking at them as if they were chickens that had just walked in under the stare of a hawk. He tried to ignore the stares as they sat down and the menus where handed out, focusing on the food.

Oh, the food.

Most of the words such as ‘sauté’ or ‘boillir’ Kadaj had never seen before, but he didn’t need to understand them. The smells coming from the tables around them were enough….

Was that fat guy *still* staring at them?

Kadaj threw an annoyed glance at the old geezer at the next table, but the man only leered back. Leered! Kadaj felt his temper begin to rise, but forced it down. Yazoo and Loz must have noticed his distress however, because they both gave him a worried glance and then followed his eyes.

The moment Loz frowned at the man, he immediately looked away. Yazoo rolled his eyes, apparently thinking the same thing Kadaj was; of the three of them, Loz was by far the less skilled fighter, and yet, just because he was much bigger and looked much stronger, people treated *him* with respect. It was that way in biker bars, and it was obviously the same way here.

Relived at not being stared at any longer like he was the dish ready to be eaten, Kadaj turned to the waiter and ordered. If the man was surprised the youngest in the group placed the order, then he was far too polite to show it.

“He’s still staring at the two of you,” Loz said annoyed, nodding at the bearded man. “Can I go over there and beat him up?”

“No!” Kadaj held back the impulse that Loz suggestion made perfect sense. “Ignore him. He’s not important.”

“Maybe he is.” Yazoo said quietly. “He has a ShinRa pin on his suit - which is stained with sauce by the way – and I think the other men around his tables might be body guards.”

“I don’t care. Tonight, I don’t want to care. Unless he’s got Mother’s head on a plate and a bottle of ketchup next to it, I’m not going to do anything about it.” Determined, Kadaj took a sip of his glass – Loz had wanted beer, but Kadaj had overruled him and ordered something called wine. It was good. “What is this?”

“Says on the bottle it’s made from grapes.” Yazoo looked at the etiquette. “So I guess it’s sort of grape juice.”

“Mmmm….sounds healthy.” Kadaj was pretty sure Mother would have approved.

Suddenly, the waiter came by with a tray holding two tall glasses with something golden and sparkling, which he placed in front Kadaj and Yazoo. The Remnants stared surprised at the glasses.

“Unless you’ve put the oysters through a mixer,” Kadaj told the waiter, “I’m pretty sure we didn’t order this.”

“It’s champagne, sir.” The waiter’s face didn’t even twitch. “With compliments from Mr. Heidegger over there.” He nodded at the table with the bearded man.

Kadaj took a deep, steadying breath.

“We don’t want his compliments, or his drinks.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The waiter did a little shrug to indicate that now that he’d delivered the drinks, his part of this was officially over.

“Why didn’t I get a drink?” Loz stared jealously at the glasses, a tear forming at the corner of his eye. “Why doesn’t anyone ever buy me drinks? It’s not fair!”

Kadaj and Yazoo looked at one another, glanced over at the still leering ShinRa executive and pushed their glasses over to Loz.

“Don’t cry, Loz. You can have ours.” Yazoo smiled sweetly at the bearded man, who looked a bit thwarted.

“Both of them? Thank you!” Beaming, Loz sipped the first glass, holding it very, very carefully. “Hey, this is like grape juice with sparkles in it! We should have it at home, for breakfast.”


Their starters came in and for quite some while they were too busy with the delicious taste of slurping down raw wriggling live molluscs to really bother about anything else. Kadaj even managed to ignore that the ShinRa man still seemed to shift his eyes repeatedly between his ass and Yazoo’s face.

Until the waiter came by their table again. This time the stoic man looked a bit more distressed.

“I’m truly sorry to disturb you, but the gentleman from ShinRa wanted to let you know that he’d be delighted to buy you dessert. Um. He insisted that I mention the words ‘whipped cream’, ‘strawberry scented oil’, and ‘melted chocolate.’ Um. I’m truly sorry, sir.”

Kadaj was starting to really regret leaving Souba at home. Heidegger was rapidly climbing his list of ‘people I want to kill’, and that was a pretty long list.

Their poor waiter took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second.

“Um. He is also wondering if it hurt.”

“If what hurt?” Yazoo blinked and asked, which was probably a good thing as Kadaj was busy contemplating several things that could easily be described as ‘hurtful’.

“…when you fell from the heavens, sir.” The waiter look about as sick at having to deliver really bad pick-up lines as Kadaj felt for receiving them, which was the only thing that saved the poor man from getting an slender oyster knife in his kneecap.

“Well, you can tell him it didn’t.” Loz said, annoyed at the constant interruptions and hitting on his brothers. “We only had one wing each, but it really slowed the fall.”

The waiter blinked, looking even more disturbed than before.

“I will…let him know, sir.” The man hurried away.

“All I wanted,” Kadaj said quietly, “was a nice, relaxed dinner. We didn’t intend to kill anyone, or steal anything, or even chew with our mouths open. What have we done to deserve this?!”

“The kidnappings, perhaps?” Yazoo shrugged. “Torturing the Turks? Geostigma?”

“Except that!”

“Kadaj…calm down. It’s just a jerk hitting on us. It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before.”

“Yes, but….not here. In bars or in bad areas I’m prepared for it. But not here.” He looked around at the chandeliers, the linen cloths, the silverware and the dressed-up people. “Not. Here.”

The tortured waiter came back to remove their plates and leave the main course; a big, rare stake with baked potatoes for Loz, halibut served on a sizzling hot plate straight from the oven for Yazoo and  filled corn chicken for Kadaj. The sight of the little bird on his plate made Kadaj feel a bit better; he liked eating whole chicken because he could pretend it was a little person lying on his plate.

But Loz fidgeted.

“Kadaj…”

“*What* Loz?!” Kadaj was not in the mood for interruptions.

“I shouldn’t have drunk those two extra glasses, now I really, really need to use the bathroom.” He got up, giving his brothers an apologetic glance. “I’ll be right back.”

“Try not to break anything along the way,” Yazoo admonished. “And don’t even go too close to the aquariums.”

“Oh, haha. I don’t make the same mistake twice, you know.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of…”

Kadaj had a really bad feeling about this, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it.  Unfortunately, his fears were well grounded; Loz had barely disappeared out of sight before someone huge and dark and smelling of onions leaned over the table and rudely sat down on Loz’s chair.

“Go. Away.” Kadaj couldn’t even pretend to be polite any longer, but the bearded man just laughed, a truly appalling sound that made Yazoo flinch and Kadaj want to put his hands over his ears.

“Oh, come on! I know your type, playing all coy with that big chaperon around, but that’s not really the truth, is it?” From the corner of his eye Kadaj could see the body guards, two really massive men that probably hadn’t left their weapons at home, getting up behind him and Yazoo. It was quite obvious that the ShinRa man was used to getting his way.

“Somehow I doubt you know ‘our type’,” Yazoo said irritated, “if for no other reason then there being very few of us. Now, go away before we have to hurt you.”

“Gyahaha! You really don’t think you scare me, do you, pretty one? How about if I pay for your little feast here, and then we can go home to my place, hm? Your big-boned friend doesn’t even have to know….” He reached out a greasy hand for Yazoo’s silver locks.

All things considered, Kadaj thought he showed a remarkable restrain. He slammed the silver fork right through the offensive hand and nailed it to the table before Heidegger could touch his brother.

“I told you so.” Yazoo said sweetly as the man stared in utter shock at his hand.

“Get them!” The man howled with pain and rage and the body guards rushed forward.

They were far too slow.

Yazoo threw his still sizzling hot plate right at the groin of the one reaching for him; Kadaj kicked a chair at the other one. Guards came running; Yazoo grabbed a handful of silver knives and let them fly in a flurry of deadly cutlery, Kadaj smashed the bottom off two wine bottles, and suddenly wielded two glimmering glass daggers.
Guests where running, the guards either joining them or crawling for safety, food and blood splattered all over the place and the ShinRa man still howling at the tables and pulling vainly at the fork.

Loz gapingly took in the mayhem, and raised his hands defensively.

“It wasn’t me, I promise!”

“Don’t worry Loz, we know.” Yazoo put down the forks; there were almost no one left in the room anyway except the three Remnants, the ShinRa man, and their waiter, who cowered under a table. “But we’d better leave now.”

“Yazoo is right.” Kadaj cast a disappointed look at Heidegger who tried to shy away despite the fork. “Too bad. He screams a lot nicer than he laughs.”

“But…my food!” Loz whined over his steak, which had miraculously survived. “Can’t we at least eat first?”

“No time. The Soldiers will be here any second.” Kadaj shook his head. “Just take it as a doggy bag.”

“Again.” Loz grumbled, but found a silver tray and neatly folded it into a basket to carry the food. “Lookie, I made it look like a swan!”

“Good for you. Now hurry up!” Kadaj was already half way across the room, kicking overturned chairs out of the way.

Yazoo took a little detour before following his retreating brothers.

“I suppose we should tip you. I apologise for the inconvenience, but for once it wasn’t our fault.” He threw the wallet at the man, smiled, and hurried after Kadaj.

The waiter looked down at the wad of cash, more money than he’d ever seen in his life, and then out at the ruined restaurant. He’d heard Costa del Sol was nice this time of life.