The posters were plastered on every street corner. Not a commercial break went by without an advert. Tickets were auctioned off for a thousand Munny apiece. For once the cliché was true: everyone was talking about it. Dyme's concert was the biggest event in the city's history.
The day itself was cool, with a clear sky overhead. The queues started just after breakfast, and continued to grow throughout the day. The stadium, a hollow mountain of steel and glass, was literally filled to capacity. Even the streets outside were jammed. Fans perched on rooftops, or hung out of windows, just to hear a little of the music. Inside, the stadium hummed with the voices of five hundred thousand impatient people.
Backstage, everything was chaos. This is traditional, and occurs before every stage performance in the known universe. Roadies hurried back and forth. Technicians cursed the equipment loudly, and at length. The pyrotechnic expert, identifiable by his lack of eyebrows, rubbed his hands together and decided to add another few charges "for luck". In fact, the only person not on edge was the man himself.
Dyme's manager finally found him in his expensively decorated dressing room. Dyme was sitting on the leather sofa, with a girl on his knee. The manager coughed loudly, but their mouths remained firmly glued together.
"Err… Dyme?" the manager ventured. Dyme's hand broke off from massaging the girl's thigh and waved the manager away.
"Dyme!"
With a heavy sigh, Dyme drew back from the girl, who started to chew on his neck.
"What?" Dyme snapped, "I'm busy."
"It's just… Sorry, I'm mean… you're on in ten minutes!"
Dyme sighed again. Sliding the girl off his knee, he stood up and stretched his arms out. The manager took a step back; he had always found Dyme a little intimidating. Tall, blonde and insultingly handsome, he was the ideal poster boy. The manager regarded his phenomenal musical talent as a mere bonus.
The girl on the sofa rolled onto her stomach and pouted up at Dyme. The manager recognised her as one of a trio of backing singers he had hired last week. You had to admire Dyme's taste, if nothing else: the pretty, pixy-faced blonde was simply gorgeous.
"Can't you leave it five minutes?" she asked, in a mock-whine.
"'Fraid not, babe," Dyme said, adjusting his hair in the mirror.
"Anyway," he continued, taking her hand and helping her to her feet, "you've got to get ready. I'm payin' those legs to dance too, y'know?"
Avoiding another kiss, he led her to the door and sent her out with a firm slap on the behind.
"Cute girl," the manager said, as Dyme crossed over to the wardrobe.
"Cheap, too," said Dyme, eyeing up various shirts.
"Cheap?!" said the manager, "You call fifty thousand Munny a night cheap?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Dyme said, settling on a white shirt with baggy sleeves, "We're only giving them eight thousand a night."
"That, plus 'fringe benefits'," he added, leering.
The manager smiled politely, but pressed on:
"Have you told the girls?"
"Yeah, yeah," said Dyme airily, putting on his snakeskin trench coat, "Well… I will, right after the show."
Scooping up his sitar (a useful gimmick: how many other rock stars play the sitar?), Dyme opened the dressing room door. Waving away the horde of makeup artists, technicians and groupies that besieged him, he sauntered towards the stage. The mob followed him, leaving the corridor deserted.
A few minutes later, a girl stepped out from the shadow of an alcove. She readjusted her skirt and tried to do what she could about her messed up hair. Reaching up, she pressed the radio transmitter hidden in her left ear.
"All clear," she whispered. In a heartbeat, two girls appeared beside her. They moved to quickly and silently that they might as well have sprung out of the ground. Like the first, they were dressed in short, frilly stage costumes.
"You got the card?" the tallest girl asked, scanning the corridor fretfully.
"Yep," the first girl replied, producing a leather wallet from her pocket, "Got it out of his pants while he was trying to undo my top."
"Yunie, why do I always have to do this?" the girl whined, "The guy's a total jerk! I don't how much longer I could'a held him off…"
"Ah, don't pretend you didn't like it, Rikku," Yuna said with a teasing smile.
"OK," snapped Rikku, "next time you and Painecan get pawed by the creep-a-zoid, while I go and find the safe."
"Would you just hurry it up?" grumbled Paine. Taking the wallet, Yuna rifled through it.
"Here," she said, holding up a turquoise swipe card, "this is it."
"Come in Buddy," said Rikku, touching the transmitter again. The radio crackled, and then she heard the familiar deep voice:
"Reading you loud and clear, over"
"We've got the card. Operation Cheat the Cheapskate is good to go. What's your ETA, over?"
"Good job. ETA in half an hour, over."
"Half an hour?! Couldn't you speed it up any: we're on in fifteen!"
"No can do, sorry. Can't fly too fast above cloud level, otherwise we might overshoot, over."
"Alright. Just make it as quick as you can. Rikku over and out."
They heard the opening riffs from Dyme's sitar. The crowd roared. The first three numbers were solos; the girls had fifteen minutes before they would be missed.
Reaching down, each girl lifted her top and touched a complex metal disc strapped to her side. A grid of fine lines was carved into the disk, connecting glowing orbs, each about the size of a large marble. Each girl touched a different orb on her grid. There was a flash of light and they were now wearing different clothes. Yuna was in hotpants and a sleeveless top, two pistols at her hips. Rikku wore a yellow bikini with a mini-skirt over the top. Two large, scarlet knives hung from her belt. Paine's suit of black leathers was practical and functional, like the sabre at her side. Bending down, she picked up three sacks that had been lying at her feet. The girls placed their weapons into one of them.
"Ready? Let's go!" said Yuna, shouldering the sack.
The three girls moved as quickly as they dared. They took a roundabout route, so as to avoid the busiest corridors. Their biggest worry was accidentally running into the manager, who would want to know why they were neither in costume nor waiting to go on. A flight of stairs led them onto the second floor. From there, it was a short distance to the stadium manager's office.
The office was a glass-fronted room, guarded by two security guards. They were bulky men in ill-fitting suits and shades. They glowered at the girls as they approached.
"Leave this to me," Yuna whispered, discreetly reaching into the sack she carried. Handing the sack to Rikku, she walked towards the guards. Hands behind her back, eyes wide, she was a picture of innocence
"Excuse me, sir," she said, her voice a little more girlish than normal. The guard on the left grunted, and considered her over the top of his shades.
"Could you help me, sir? We're lost and…"
Yuna was right in front of him now.
"We need to get into that office, so if you'd just stand aside?"
Yuna's hand was so fast that it wasn't even a blur. One second it was behind her back, then next it had a pistol levelled at the guard's forehead. His companion cried out and reached into his jacket but Paine was already moving. Her boot caught the guard square on the chin, sending him crashing through the window and into the office behind. His companion distracted, Yuna flipped her pistol over and clubbed him to ground with the butt.
"Real smooth, Paine(!)" said Rikku, stepping over the two guards.
"Got the job done, didn't it?" replied Paine.
Ignoring her friends' bickering, Yuna approached the safe. It was hidden behind a drink's cabinet in a corner of the office but Brother, posing as the girl's manager, had seen Dyme's manager open it to count out their initial fee. Squatting down, Yuna slid the swipe card into the recess above the safe door. The little LED flashed green and Yuna heard something click inside. The door swung open easily. Inside, long cylinders of Munny were stacked neatly like honeycomb in a hive. Yuna slid one of the topmost cylinders out and selected one of the little golden orbs. She threw it to Rikku.
"It's genuine?" Paine asked. Rikku held it up the light, rolled it between forefinger and thumb, and finally bit into it.
"Yep," she said, tossing the orb back to Yuna, "it's the real deal."
In a few minutes the girls had emptied the safe into three sacks.
"Come on, we've got five minutes before we're missed," Yuna said, shouldering a sack.
The girls, carrying a sack each, stepped over the unconscious guards and out into the corridor. They had not gone more than twenty yards when they heard voices crying out behind them:
"Hey! There they are!"
"Stop!"
"Hey, what're you doing?"
The girls turned. Three roadies were running towards them.
"They must have changed the running order," Rikku hissed.
"What do we do?" Paine asked, one hand dropping to her sabre. Yuna made a snap decision:
"Run for it!"
Dyme was furious. His concert, so carefully promoted, had turned into a shambles and he would be damned if he was going to start handing out refunds. All because those three stupid sluts missed their cue! Every roadie, security guard and tea boy in the building had been dispatched to find them.
He had tried to keep the crowd entertained with an impromptu solo, but as the long minutes dragged on the audience realised something was wrong. After ten minutes, Dyme left the stage: partly to try and speed things up, partly to get away from the fans' increasingly hostile stares.
Now he was storming around the backstage area, screaming at flunkies and throwing water bottles at his manager.
"Where the hell are they?!" he shouted, bouncing a bottle off the centre of the manager's bald spot.
"Ahh! We don't know! Just a few minutes: we'll find them, don't worry!"
"You'd better or you're history, you hear me? History!"
Dyme grabbed another bottle then paused. The muffled sound of an explosion was heard from upstairs.
"What the…" the manager began, but Dyme was already sprinting for the stairs. Bounding up two at a time, he came to a wide corridor. Three roadies were lying on the floor, hands clutched to their eyes. Dyme barely glanced at them: up ahead he could see the retreating forms of three girls, each carrying a heavy sack. As they ran, a clear tube slipped from the neck of one sack and fell to the floor. It shattered, scattering orbs of Munny in all directions.
"Thieves!" Dyme screamed, red-faced. Hurling his sitar aside, he sprinted after them, the tails of his trench coat whipping against the back of his legs.
The girls headed first for a fire escape, but found two security men coming up the other way. Turning aside, they headed left, around the stadium. The security men burst into the corridor, only to see Dyme racing past them, screaming for them to give chase. Every way the girls tried they found themselves blocked, and slowly encircled. Finding the backstage area ringed with security men, they ran out onto the stage itself. The crowd roared with surprise, and then laughter as the sweating, red-faced Dyme appeared just behind them.
"Quick, climb!" one of the girls cried, pointing to the gantries. Dyme recognised her as the one he had been making out with in his dressing room. As nimble as a monkey, despite the heavy sack, she swung herself up onto a supporting pillar and began to ascend. Her two friends followed.
Down on the stage, Dyme was screaming curses at them. A crowd of security men, led by Dyme's manager, arrived. They tried to escort Dyme offstage, but he was too angry to listen to them.
"They're thieves! They're thieves, and they're getting away with my money!" he yelled, pushing the security men away. Rounding on the nearest guard, Dyme reached into the man's jacket and seized the pistol strapped under his armpit. People in the crowd screamed as Dyme brandished it over his head, firing wildly into the gantries. Now the security men tried to subdue Dyme in earnest, but he was too fast for them. Sprinted across the stage, he began to follow the girls into the tangle of cables, walkways and steel poles that hung above the stage.
The girls climbed faster than Dyme, despite their heavy load. Soon they were ten, then fifteen feet ahead. Every now and then Dyme would pause to fire at them, bullets sparking off steel, but he was a poor shot and soon wasted the clip. He discarded the pistol with a cry of frustration, but continued upwards.
He finally cornered them on the uppermost walkway, some thirty feet above the stage.
"Come on, give it up, babe," he said, addressing the blonde, "There's nowhere left to run!"
But the girl wasn't listening to him. One finger pressed into her ear, she seemed to be having a conversation over a radio:
"Hurry up!… No! We can'tget down!… Yunie says we're not to kill anyone!… Shinra?! Put Buddy back on!… What?… That new dress sphere?… You sure…? OK, OK!"
Her finger dropped from her ear. Leaning forwards, she whispered something to her two friends. Dyme was only a few yards from them now, but he couldn't hear what was said.
The three girls looked up at him, and smiled. Dyme paused. He had them cornered: why should they smile? The girls slipped their hand under their tops. Dyme blanched: were they going to pull weapons on him? There was a blinding flash of light. Dyme shielded his eyes. When he looked up, the three girls had transformed. For one thing, they had shrunk. They were now barely a foot tall. And they were floating a few feet off the floor on feathered wings. They looked themselves over.
"Neato!" the blonde said, her voice an octave higher than usual.
"What is this supposed to do?" the dark one asked sullenly.
"Shinra said you just had to wish…," said the third, brown haired, girl. Bobbing down, she laid one tiny hand on the sack that was surely far too heavy for her to lift. She looked up at Dyme, smiled and said:
"See ya!"
Then promptly vanished in a flash of purple light, taking the sack with her.
"Wouldn't wanna be ya!" the blonde girl laughed, vanishing with her sack. The dark one simply glowered and then disappeared too.
Dyme stood dumbstruck, alone on the walkway. The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds. In thirty seconds, he had lost over sixty thousand Munny.
Dyme could feel the blood throbbing in his temple. His breathing was laboured. He could barely think. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to find that Munny, and to make them pay. He felt a sudden stab of cold, like an icicle piercing the heat of his anger. He looked around. A great dark hole had opened up in the air in front of him. It was pitch dark, and yet Dyme felt sure that there was something beyond it. Thin tendrils of a strange, black substance, neither liquid nor gas, curled out of it.
Dyme stood, brow furrowed in thought. Below, he could hear the sounds of people climbing. Soon they would reach him. They'd say empty words, and call police with empty heads. Even if they did find those girls, they'd never get his Munny back. He would never get his revenge. He knew, however, as if by some gut instinct, that if he stepped through the portal he would find that vengeance.
Taking a deep breath, Dyme stepped into the darkness.
Vague images floated through Dyme's mind: shadow, glowing yellow eyes, claws reaching out, grasping for him. Then falling, falling without end into the cold.
Dyme opened his eyes. He was in a large, circular room. Everything in it was a brilliant white. It hurt simply to look at it. Dyme was standing on a metal dais, carved with a strange symbol; it looked like a heart splintering into three pieces. Around the dais, on white thrones atop high pillars, sat eight figures. They wore identical black coats, their faces hidden beneath hoods. They were engaged in a heated discussion:
"Simply unprecedented! He is an anomaly."
"What I want to know is: how come we didn't pick this guy up before, if his heart's so strong and all…"
"Our resources are still limited, Number Seven, as you are well aware."
"Where is his Heartless now?"
"Most likely in the dark realm."
"Couldn't we go find it?"
"No. We need a being with a heart to summon it back to the light."
Dyme listened, bewildered. He knew he should feel fear, surprise, even shock at this strange scene but he felt nothing. It was as if there was a space in his chest, now empty, that had once been filled with emotions. He shouted up to the hooded figures, trying to make his voice sound annoyed:
"Hey… err, guys? You wanna tell me what's going on?!"
There was silence in the room. Dyme could feel eight pairs of eyes considering him. At length, one of the figures, the slightest of the group, spoke:
"He must have some talent we can use."
"Agreed," said another figure. This one had a cold, emotionless voice.
"His heart was strong. I say he continues," said another, deep and ponderous in tone.
"Very well," said yet another figure: the one sat on the highest throne. This figure spoke again, louder this time, addressing Dyme:
"You, Nobody. Do you understand what you are?"
"What?!" Dyme shouted, willing himself to feel anger, "Who're you calling a nobody?! Don't you know who I am? I'm Dyme, I'm a…"
"Silence. You are nothing. You are a Nodody: a shell left behind when your Other's heart was consumed by the darkness. The being you call Dyme is gone. You are all that is left."
Dyme considered this. He felt no emotion at the figure's words: only emptiness.
"We are like you: shells, dwelling in the twlight realm between light and dark. We are the Organisation. We seek to understand the heart, so that we may regain our own. We offer you a chance to regain your heart. So you see, you have a choice; to serve us, or surrender to oblivion."
Dyme stood before the thrones, head bowed. Total oblivion: it might be appealing to some. Not to him. He would live. He could use these nut jobs, play the part required for as long as was necessary. He would use them, like he had used everyone he'd ever know, and when the time was right, when he had his heart again, he'd cut loose. He would do anything for one more chance at the big time.
"Count me in," he said, with an empty smile.
"Welcome to the Organisation," said the figure on the highest throne, "You are Number Nine, Demyx."