WARNINGS!
1. Bashing of: Ginny Weasley, Ron Weasley, Albus Dumbledor, & minor bashing of: Molly Weasley, James Potter, and general light
2. Cannonish until the end of the war
2.5. EWE
3. A little bit of Slash/Yaoi. Only one homosexual pairing planned so far, but it's a big one, even if it won't be there often.
4. Grey!Harry MasterofDeath!Harry
Okay I think I've had this lying around long enough. That and I haven't posted ANYTHING in forever, so I guess I should do something to prove I'm not totally stagnant.
So, YES I'm still working on Tactician Mara. I have way too many plans to let that one go.
I DON'T KNOW whether Harry Johnson will be continued any time soon. It'll be updated eventually, but not for quite a long while.
I had way too much fun when I started this one, but I'll need a little inspiration to get past chapter 3...
After Wakka left me to my own devices, I decided I'd been clueless enough today. Yevon? Sin? Crusaders? Nothing made any sense! After, apparently, a thousand years, so much has changed. Somehow things look like they've managed to go backwards, not forwards. Was Sin really that dangerous? Well, either way, guess I should visit the Crusaders first; that should fill in some gaps.
However... "Gatta, tell him who we are." The scholarly red-head said to his companion. Or maybe apprentice; they act like it.
"Yes, sir! The Crusaders are sworn to battle Sin. We have chapters throughout Spira, accepting all who wish to join our struggle! The hero Mi'ihen formed the Crusaders 800 years ago as the Crimson Blades. Later, our ranks grew and we called ourselves the Crusaders. We've been fighting Sin ever since!" This was all said in a semi-monotonous voice, as though he was reading right out of a script.
But really, 800 years? How could anything be that impressive? "What, you've been fighting 800 years and you still haven't beat it?" I grimaced as it came out. There goes not insulting the locals.
Before anyone could say anything, though I was relieved to see that Luzzu, at the very least, looked more understanding than upset like Gatta, someone else spoke up from behind me. "Careful now, Tidus was it?" I nodded turning to look at the new face over my shoulder. "Don't want you hurting any feelings now that you're safe, do we?" The deep, drawling voice definitely did not suit the body it came from.
A short, scrawny black haired man, not a day over 20 surely, with sad, luminescent green eyes entered the lodge. His high cheek bones and rounded face gave a feel of rusting innocence. His raven locks were a mess upon his head, a gold feather threaded in only furthering the flyaway effect, falling long enough to touch his collar bone, and contrasting strongly to his pale skin. He was paler than any goth I had ever seen, and equally dark in garb. A black, high collared tunic, lined in the front with silver buttons, lay tight against his almost too thin torso and overlapped matching black pants. Said pants were tucked into green hiking boots so dark they may as well have been black, and a forest colored cloak lined in silver was thrown over it all, loosely held together by a leather belt across his chest, a plain silver buckle in the center. No weapons could be seen on the man, only a thick black tome with a golden feather on the spine, written in an obscure language Tidus had never seen before in all his life. Two golden rings and a silver ring sat upon his right hand, black, red, and white gem stones respectively.
"Summoner Evans!"
"Summoner Evans." Luzzu greeted with a nod, much more subdued
"Please, I've told you before, just Harry. Or at least Harrison." A small smile was on the man's lips as he spoke. He turned to me "I heard of your arrival through the blitzball team. Wakka asked it of me to be sure you were careful when visiting the temple." Yeah, careful not to insult anyone like I almost just did. "Don't want them thinking you're a heathen when you really just don't know!" At least this guy's honest.
"You know my name, What's yours?" Though I could assume, I couldn't help but ask.
Gatta stood enthusiastically clapping a hand on his shoulder. "This is Harrison Evans; he's a part of one of the two summoner groups starting their pilgrimages here in Besaid." Pilgrimage? He sure as hell didn't look hard-core religious.
"I can introduce my self, thank you Gatta." He sneered playfully. "We should be on our way though. I'll explain the situation with Sin and the Crusaders best I can." With a hand on my bicep, the guy dragged me out of the Crusader's Lodge with surprising strength. He kept pulling me along, no matter how much I protested and didn't stop until we reached the stairs in front of the temple.
Before I could get word in, he spun and pinned me with a glare. "You've encountered it more than once in the past 48 hours."
I recoiled in surprize, "What?"
"It's signature is too strong on you; You're hiding something. You know blitzball like the back of your hand, and your motor functions are in top shape. You didn't lose any memory at all. But to not know about the crusaders and to say you're from Zanarkind..." The man suddenly grinned, making me feel ridiculously uncomfortable. "I think I got it." His grin morphed into a smirk and those green, green eyes pierced through me. "I won't tell." And for some reason, I knew he wasn't lying. "C'mon! Let's get to the temple!" He crowed, running up the steps to the building. I stared after him. I didn't know people could get that bipolar! But for some reason, I still followed after him, and entered the supposed holy place with more than a little hesitance.
Harrison was waiting on the other side of the doors, not quite inside the temple. Probably need to tell me something before letting me loose inside. "So,what do I need to do?"
"Not a lot." He answered honestly, with a shrug. "If someone bows to you, bow back. However, it's less of a what you need to do, than what you need to know." He smirked and crossed his arms, leaning to one side. The book had been strapped into a harness on his back. "The reason Sin has yet to be destroyed by the Crusaders, or anyone else for that matter, is mainly because of it's skin."
"Sin's skin?" I repeated, not quite believing the answer.
"Sin had a nearly impenetrable hide. Swords: nothing; Magic: nothing; nothing, nothing, nothing. The only thing that works at all, is the final Aeon." Harry turned on his heel, and entered the temple, waving me forward to follow. I walked a step behind, looking around at the rows of statues standing against the wall in the round room. Faintly, I could hear what sounded like a woman singing farther into the temple. "Sin is virtually invincible. It destroys everything and anyone, heeding the call of the machina. something that was fairly common in your Zarnarkind. The final Aeon is something Summoners, people gifted in magic with otherworldly powers in their blood, use to fight Sin, after taking a long, perilous pilgrimage in search of power." Stopping dead center in the room, the raven haired man threw out his arms and turned, making me jump back. I huffed, annoyed when he didn't even acknowledge that he almost smacked me in the face.
He looked around the room with sad eyes, passing his gaze over the statues. "These statues stand tribute to the summoners who devoted their lives to fighting Sin, and succeeded in giving the rest of the world a calm period."
"And you're one of these 'Summoners', right?" I asked, remembering what Gatta and Luzzu had called him earlier. "You're gonna fight Sin?"
"Perhaps." He answered wistfulling, "We have yet to tell anyone who within our group is the Summoner. Gatta is one of those in Besaid betting on my placement as leader."
"So you're not the Summoner?" I asked, confused. If Summoners were celebrated this much, why hide it?
"Maybe, maybe not." He waved his hand in front of his face. "There are people who aim to stop pilgrimages, so in order to lower likely hood of being pulled out of the running, we're not telling anyone who it is. Besaid has a betting pool going on. Draco's the most popular right now."
"Draco?" Who the hell was Draco?
"It's the white isn't it?" Spinning away from the smug face of Harrison Evans, I came face to face with the disgruntled one of the very person we had been talking about. "They all think I'm the Summoner because I'm a healer, don't they?" He sighed irritably.
I couldn't help but stare. This man, in perhaps his mid-late 20's, looked much... classier than the other; the two couldn't look more different. Sleek platinum bond hair, a few inches longer than the raven, fell about his face elegantly, though most of it was held back at the nape of his neck with a white ribbon, a golden feather, much like the one in Harrison's hair, stuck up from the center of the knot. Cold quick-silver eyes glared out from above sharp cheek-bones at anyone they could see, though his lips formed a pout that made it hard to tell if it was simply his natural expression or not. His complexion was pale, but unlike his Harry's, this man's held a healthy glow. Layers upon layers of white made it hard to make out what exactly he was wearing, but upon examination, the multitude of white fabric merely made up a complicated capelet attached to a cloak. Though his chest was covered by the capelet, underneath I could see the edge of a silver shirt, a line of creamy pale skin, and the start of his white pants. The white pants covered the upper portion of his matching white dress shoes, and peeking out of the cloak, I could see a silvery glove on his left hand stretching up to his pointed elbow.
The blond extended his un-gloved hand. "Black. Draconis Black." It took me an embarrassing moment to realize he was introducing himself, and stumbled forward to take his hand. A cynical smirk stretched his lips in an almost sneer. "And you're the one they found washed up on shore. Tidus was it?"
Before I could snap back a reply a tan arm reached around Draconis's shoulders and pulled him back, making the older man stumble into the chest of the owner of the arm, letting go of my hand on the way. The blond's hair was tortured under the attentions of a calloused hand of the new man. "Ah, leave the aristocrat stuff at home brat!" He had an odd voice, higher pitched, but with a rumbling undertone. A blindingly white grin greeted me when I looked up at the man who was easily the tallest person in the temple.
"And that," I heard Harry laugh behind me. "Is our third member. Fawks Pheonin. Fawks, this is Tidus."
This man was much older than his two companions, maybe even older than my own old man. His short strawberry blond hair, no skimping on the red there either, was untouched by age, but his amber eyes looked as though they held infinite wisdom, and his tan face was laden with stress and laughing lines. His features were almost bird like, and with his hair as feathery as it was, I could honestly say I had never seen a man look more made for the sky. Even his clothes suited that image. A sleeveless dark red shirt, loose, was overlapped by a large, orange, vest-like piece of cloth, long enough to reach his knees and split into five pieces at some point on the way down, resembling the tail of a bird as it flared backwards. A thin blade hanging off of red-brown knee length shorts finished the assemble, as the man appeared to wear no shoes, and were those talons on his toes and fingers?
The tall lanky man laughed a laugh that sounded more like the trill of a bird than any laughter I had heard before. "Hey kid, nice to meet 'cha! Word travels fast in Besaid, so I already knew you'd be here. Heard you got ambushed by Sin somewhere near Zanarkind practicing blitz ball!"
"Huh?" That definitely wasn't anything I had said.
Harry chuckled, though I swear it was the most feminine chuckle ever. Yet another thing that didn't fit. Deep voice, girly laugh, young body, suffering eyes. What's next? Heavy hitter? The younger man looked up at Fawks and just said, "Telephone."
The red-head looked confused for a moment, before bursting into tittering laughter at some inside joke of theirs. The other blond just sighed and shook his head. "I don't think these people would mess up the Sin attack at the very least. That part is accurate is it not?" The haughty voice and quicksilver eyes addressed me.
"Y-yeah. Uh, I don't remember much, if that's what you're asking... I got too close to Sin's toxin-
"Got it, say no more." I glared at the man, though internally glad that I wouldn't have to hear myself use the same excuse again. Draconis smirked at my glare. "We went through something quite similar." Okay, now I felt even worse about using this excuse. Now I had people around who actually had lost memory from Sin's toxin.
So, What do you think? No, Harry doesn't really care about what other people think of him and how he acts; they're so far from home, no one would guess the truth anyways.