The World Traveler is going to be a collection of deleted scenes and spinoffs that didn't exacly make the cut, or stuff I wanted to write in retrospect but didn't. This is under Misc. Movies because it includes ALL the movies mentioned in the series. Have fun!
Sooooooo this was a story mentioned in Our War Torn Earth where Vaan stole Balthier's ribs when he was a skeleton one night and was consequentially drowned. Almost drowned. I had a lot of fun writing this.
Spare ribs, anyone?
Balthier watched Fran, Penelo, and Vaan as they jogged across the Estersand, weapons and packs bouncing. They were bound for the Barheim Passage, hunting the rare Ithuno that dwelled within, but at the same time, they also had to carry some supplies from the Estersand Hunter's Camp to the North Bank. It was Vaan's fault— he offered to do the service for a pathetic amount of gil. The sky pirate glanced toward the sun, which was sinking toward the horizon and painting the sky red as blood. He had hoped with every shred of his nonexistent heart that they might reach the river camp by nightfall, and thus spare him the shame of his most horrifying secret revealed, but the gods had not smiled upon him and sent wave after wave of beasts that slowed them down. Then again, did the gods ever smile upon him? No, he did not think so.
The desert did not offer much protection from the moonlight, but for some spiny trees and dynast cacti that did not provide quite enough shade. Heaven knew how frightening he looked when half transformed into a skeleton while resting under the scattered shade of a tree, with mottled patches of tan skin and grey bone. Balthier realized that he had fallen behind, and increased his pace to catch up. As if sensing his train of thought, Fran dropped back from her brisk pace to walk with him.
"You are ill at ease," she said calmly.
"With Vaan around, am I ever at ease?" Balthier replied lightly.
"You are worried about your… condition. You do not want them to see."
"I am actually more afraid that I will be mistaken for some Rare Game that has come crawling out of the Barheim Passage by our dear orphans and blasted by Holy."
"You could warn them."
Balthier snorted. "What would I say? 'Vaan, Penelo, there is something I need to tell you. At night, I am actually an undead skeleton that looks a hell of a lot like a fiend, but I'm not here to kill you. Please don't hurt me.' Oh yes, that sounds very reassuring."
"You will not die if you are hit by Holy." Fran said logically, but a memory of Barbossa just after Elizabeth had hit him with a Holy mote drifted to the surface of Balthier's mind.
"I would rather not be reduced to a bloody, broken smear on the Estersand dunes," he said. "Perhaps I should press ahead to the Barheim Passage?"
"I am not going to carry your bag of supplies across the Nebra." Fran said, crushing his hopes. "If it is any measure of comfort, I shall stay awake with you tonight to protect you from Vaan and Penelo." She slipped a ring off her finger, pressing it into his hand. "My Sage's Ring will allow you to absorb Holy Magick. If you are that frightened of Penelo, you can wear it."
"Protect me, eh? Shouldn't it be the other way around— the leading man protecting the leading lady?" Balthier asked, smirking.
"What makes you think I need protecting?" Fran teased.
"Saucy today, are we? I like it."
Penelo danced about in the sand gaily while Fran built the fire, kicking up the fine grains as she lifted her feet and whirled about. Sometimes, Balthier wondered what tune she danced to— whatever it was, he would never hear. The young girl's feet tossed up another plume of sand. Balthier wrinkled his nose distastefully. He had never liked sand; it got everywhere and made a journey very uncomfortable, especially if it slipped under the waistband of his trousers. Now, when he became a skeleton as he did every night, if they were camping in the desert, sand got between his joints and into the holes in his worm eaten skin, grinding against his bones and generally working its way into every possible nook and cranny inside his body. No, Balthier Bunansa did not like sand— he loathed it.
Balthier spared a glance for the setting sun again. From a monstrous orb hanging low in the sky, it had become a tiny sliver peaking just above the rim of mountains to the west. It was almost time; he stood, stretching, and began to stroll away. "I'm going mark hunting, and for a bath. I'll be back later," he excused himself jauntily. Fran shook her head, tresses swaying, but did not stop him. Vaan jumped up.
"Can I come with you?" he asked, excitement shining in his eyes.
"No, I am afraid not. This hunt is especially scary for young children such as yourself." Balthier answered, praying Vaan would take the hint that he wanted to be alone. Sadly, Vaan was a failure when it came to taking subtle hints, and would likely not have noticed Balthier's desires unless the older sky pirate had slapped him in the face with them.
"Come on, Balthier! I'm not a little kid anymore— I'm not the naïve street thief that everyone has to look after."
"I suppose not; you're a naïve sky pirate that everyone has to look after— there, are you happy?" Balthier snapped.
"Not until you say I can go with you." Vaan moved to stand in his way, crossing his arms resolutely. Balthier looked passed him to see the silver shine of moonlight just behind a bank of moving clouds. He absolutely had to get out of there, and quickly. Luckily, Vaan did not know Holy, so if he did say the boy could come, the worst that could happen was an unfortunate beheading, right?
Right?
"If I say yes, will you move?" Balthier asked hopefully.
"Yes."
"Fine, you can come!" he brushed passed Vaan and made his way toward the old entrance to the Barheim Passage, the only place he could think of where there was actually some definitive shade. The Seeq and the Bangaa bandits that had been camped there were long gone once their leader had recovered, so Balthier could rest there without being bombarded by the bandits attempting to pass off their cheap, ill begotten goods. He sank into the darkness with a sigh, perching on a rock under the old archway. Vaan chose to sit just outside of it, plopping himself down on the sandy, tiled floor.
"Sooo," Vaan looked across the desert stretching before them, his eyes picking out the thin twist of smoke rising from their little camp in the distance. "What's the scary mark called? Where is it? How do we find it?"
Balthier made himself more comfortable on his seat of rocks. "The mark's name is Balthier, it's right in front of you, and you find it by looking five feet beyond the tip of your nose," he said with false cheer. Vaan blinked.
"You're hunting yourself? I mean— wow. I didn't know you could do that."
"I was joking." Balthier said flatly.
"Oh." Vaan tilted his head slightly, eyes gleaming in the moonlight. "I don't think you're very scary. Why did you say you were scary?" he asked.
Balthier chuckled darkly. "Not scared, you say? Vaan, can I tell you a secret? You can tell it to Penelo however you want, but just tell her, okay? I don't want to get attacked with Holy the moment she sees." Vaan blinked again, mouth opening in a noise construed as, huh?Balthier steeled himself, closing his eyes. "Perhaps it's easier if I showed you."
He stepped into the moonlight.
Vaan's reaction was admirable. He did not scream and run, nor did he pull a knife and attack. Instead, he swore powerfully enough to make Balthier proud and scrabbled backward over the dusty ground.
"How did you do that? Balthier, what are you?"
"Complicated, that's what I am." Balthier replied idly, crouching next to him, wincing as his knee joints creaked. To his credit, Vaan did not leap to his feet, but leaned forward, intrigued.
"Incredible!" he breathed. "That's amazing! I always thought you were cool, but this— I mean, whoa!" he held up a tentative hand. "Mind if I feel you up?"
"Dear good gods, you can bet I mind!" Balthier slapped the boy's hand down and stood quickly, his joints popping explosively. The older sky pirate scowled; all that creaking made him feel a thousand years old, not frozen at twenty-five. Vaan rubbed his hand ruefully.
"I didn't mean it like that," he snapped. "It's like Fran's ears— it's something you really want to touch, but you're not sure if you can."
"I assure you, touch Fran's ears, or any part of Fran without permission, for that matter, and you will find yourself without the capacity to bear children." Balthier purred. Vaan gulped. "But all you want to do is touch my bones? Harmless enough, I suppose. Watch where and how you put those grubby mitts of yours, though. I'm a gentleman sky pirate, not a midnight lover."
"Right," Vaan said, though he clearly did not know what that meant. He prodded at the scarred bones of Balthier's right hand, almost fascinated by the spider web cracks formed from ignorantly handling white magick, running his fingers over the thin film of torn flesh stretched over his arm. "This is kinda gross and really awesome at the same time."
"Thank you, now if you'll excuse me, I am going to take a bath. Sand gets everywhere into these damn bones and I hate it. Did you know the kings of old Dalmasca died because sand in their food ground their teeth away to nothing?" Balthier asked, trotting toward the river Nebra and removing his shirt. Vaan opened his mouth to reply but instead said,
"Whoa, you don't have any innards!"
"If course not, they would be outtards now." Balthier snorted.
"Does that mean you don't have a brain either?" Vaan asked.
"I don't know, idiot!" the skeleton snarled, knocking on Vaan's head with a clenched fist. "Do I look as if I can see in my head?"
"Do you—" Vaan began, but Balthier cut him off.
"Bah, enough questions! I am going to take a bath, and you can take one too while leaving me in peace, or you can go back to the camp. Either way involves you being silent as the grave." He made a point of unloading dueling pistols, hidden daggers, and throwing knives on top of the cleanest rock he could find, and Vaan gulped.
Balthier splashed into the river, grimacing at the cloud of brown mud that leaked out of all the holes in his skin. Yes, he did abhor sand, and the sooner he was back at the sand-free Strahl and in Fran's warm embrace, the better. Maybe there was some place where he could lay these old bones down and rest for the rest of eternity after Fran was gone, where nothing could get into them. The Salikawood? No, there was pollen and dirt. He wanted to rest, but he did not fancy a tree growing out of him when he decided to move on. The Phon Coast? No— there was sand, and salt water did wonders for breaking down corpses with the amounts of bacterium in it. Archades, the Wreck of Bahamut, Golmore, and Giruvegan were crossed off the list immediately. He doubted the Viera wanted their forest polluted with his deathly stench anyway. Now, the Necrohal of Nabudis— that was a thought. The upward reaches were open to the sky, and the ancient palace was filled with unmapped passages where he could roam.
You'll be with your own kind, a tiny voice in the back of his head whispered. You can all be zombie friends together. Balthier rubbed his (nearly) fleshless face with his bony fingers. That was not a thought he liked, being compared to other undead creatures. A quiet snapping sound broke him out of his reverie. Was there something nibbling on him? He looked down and swore emphatically. Four of his ribs were missing.
"Well I'll be damned; ribs don't just grow legs and run off," Balthier muttered, looking around. The bones of his neck crunched unpleasantly, and he raised a hand to rub at his neck before realizing that there was a hand in his ribcage, plucking out more ribs. "Vaan! What in Heth's name are you doing?"
Vaan was out of the river and up the beach before Balthier could grab at him. Cursing loud enough to wake the dead, the sky pirate wrenched his shirt over his head, fumbled with his vest, and grabbed several throwing knives and two dueling pistols before bounding up the slight dune after Vaan.
It was easy to track the young boy through the Estersand, but when the tracks entered the river camp, Balthier stopped, curling his toes inside his shoes as he thought. Vaan had been smart— he chose a crowded area of dwellings where, as he was, Balthier could not follow. He looked at the moon, relieved to see a cloud was coming. There was only one entrance to the camp, and the ferry had stopped running for the night. Balthier could bide his time, but he feared that his ribs could not. He sincerely hoped that Vaan was only pranking him, and not doing something stupid…
One of the curved bones fell in front of him, and he dove for it, but too late. A wolf cub came bounding out of the camp, snatching the bone from his hands and bowling him over. When Balthier shook the stars out his eyes, he was greeted with the image of the cub happily chewing the bone to splinters. "Oh no…"
"No, boy, you're supposed to fetch it, not eat it!" Vaan complained, trailing after the cub. Balthier took the opportunity to leap on top of him, straddling his chest.
"Vaan, you piece of chocobo dung!" he roared, shoving a dueling pistol into the boy's mouth. "Don't tell me you've fed my ribs to that wolf pup!"
"Ngah ungh mn ngh hn!" Vaan whimpered, twisting under him. Balthier cursed the fact that, as a skeleton, he only weighed half as much as he did when he was human. Vaan was just about to throw him when the cloud covered the moon— Balthier's weight doubled as skin, flesh, and organs reformed, and Vaan's breath whooshed out.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't understand that. Care to say it again?" the pirate snarled.
"That was the last one!" Vaan screamed. Balthier blinked in disbelief.
"You mean to say, that you have stolen six ribs, and fed all six of them to a wolf cub?"
"Yes! I'm sorry, okay? I couldn't resist, it was the prank to end all pranks!" Vaan wept. Balthier sighed, sliding off Vaan's chest and crouching miserably in the sand, painfully aware that he was missing six ribs and that there was a pebble wedged between his tarsal bones. If the moon did not come back out soon, he would take a dagger and dig it out, it irked him so. The wolf cub sniffed at him happily, wagging its tail.
"No more for you," Balthier said, scratching it behind the ear. "But I've got something for you." He smiled evilly and grabbed Vaan by the collar of his shirt, hauling him over his shoulder and marching toward the river, unceremoniously dumping the boy in and whistling to the wolf cub. It barked joyously and bounded in, splashing on top of Vaan and tussling with him in the water. The boy yelled as the wolf stepped in places wolf's paws need not go, but Balthier simply smirked wider and waded out of the shallows, trudging back to their camp.
"I take it went very well." Fran said as Balthier sat down in a puddle of moonlight to dig the pebble out of his foot. The heat of the fire began to dry his waterlogged skin, steam rising from the ragged holes.
"Why not? I have returned in mostly one piece, sans a quarter of my ribs." He shrugged, nodding to Penelo, who smiled back.
"Would you like me to heal you?" Fran asked.
"That would be heavenly." Balthier tugged his shirt off, and the Viera traced a finger glowing with Dark along the broken nubs of bone. He had to resist the purr rising in his throat as his body was filled with the pleasant, healing sensation that ironically accompanied the offensive spell. As his ribs regenerated, Vaan came staggering back into the camp, covered in wolf bites and cactaur needles. Penelo laughed, a high, silver chiming sound.
"I suppose you'll be wanting a healing, too?" she asked. Vaan nodded solemnly.
"I'll never look at skeletons the same way again. Especially that one." He jabbed a finger at Balthier accusingly. The sky pirate grinned viciously as the sun began to peek over the horizon, returning to him his flesh.
"I will remember that for future pranking references." He said, while Vaan groaned in horror.