This was sick. A sick, sick little mind game, and Gippal could safely say that he hated Cid for starting it.

This ship was his, Gippal thought, wringing his blanket between white-knuckled fists. It had been since he was fifteen, when he'd first started giving orders to the crew while the actual captain hadn't been paying attention. That idiot Cid might have owned it in the monetary sense of the word, but that counted for all of jack in comparison to what Gippal had. He knew everything about this clunky carrier. He knew its every bolt inside and out, recognized the meaning of every noise it made, had the sound of the engine's breathing memorized. This ship was his. His. That bastard Cid had no right to take it away from him, especially not when he was just going to give it away to Rikku.

Suddenly, a knock sounded from his cabin door, though it sounded less like a knock and more like someone was attempting to put a hole through the thing. Speak of the lich.

"Gippal, wake up!" No. No way was he going to answer her. Even though her 'knocking' was loud enough to wake the dead (even out here on the ocean, hundreds of miles from the Farplane), he wasn't going to do it. She could stand out there and pound on that thing all day long if she felt like it. He wasn't budging.

"We found something! Come on!"

He didn't have to listen to her. She wasn't really the captain. This was all just part of Cid's little game. Part of his stupid revenge against Gippal for daring to go against his orders, even for a second.

"I'm serious, Gippal! I'll blow this door down!"

That's how it was in Home: you could think whatever you wanted, as long as it agreed with what everyone else thought. Anything that didn't fit that criteria was a one way ticket to the business end of Cid's wrath. And if you couldn't think differently than everyone else, you definitely couldn't act—

A blast almost deafening enough to bend the walls sounded from the door, an explosion stretching and straining it inward. Just as suddenly, Gippal was no longer on his bunk, but rather flat on the floor, flashes of light dancing in front of his eye. "Damn it!" he shouted, grabbing the back of his head where the bolts in the floor had dug into it. "Rikku, what the fu—?!"

"I've got more," she calmly replied. "I'll do it again."

"Fine! Fine!" Disentangling himself from his blanket, Gippal stumbled forward and, after several tries, managed to yank the explosion-warped door open.

"About time," Rikku said. Aside from the fact that she was already wearing her traditional catsuit work-wear (which, Gippal maintained, looked more like something a person bought in a specialty shop in Luca than anything one would wear on a mission), she looked extremely casual, juggling a grenade in one hand and not looking particularly concerned about the destruction she'd just caused. Glancing at the doorframe out of the corner of his eye, Gippal couldn't help but wince at how bent and misshapen it looked; a wound in his beloved vessel's belly. Whipping back around, he glared at the tiny blonde, his lip curling back in a scowl. Of course she didn't care. This ship wasn't hers.

"Do you know how much work that is going to take to fix?" he growled, gesturing at the depressing lesion.

"It can wait," she answered, hooking the grenade to her belt and grabbing his wrist, then giving him a dirty look when he jerked it out of her hold. "Get dressed and meet me on deck. We found something."

---

He'd been hoping that whatever they'd found would be at least mildly interesting. He should have known better. The ship's sonar scans showed that all they'd found were a few of the old, rusty cannons that had become so commonplace around Home that the bulky things had begun to take on more domestic uses, such as furniture and home security. Basically, they were a bunch of useless piles of junk hanging out just below the water's surface. Hence, Gippal thought he was perfectly justified in not being particularly excited about having to go and get them.

"Can't you send somebody else?" he groaned as he leaned against the ship's rail and stared at the desolate-looking water, which was practically a mirror image of the gray, dreary sky above.

"Oh, come on, Gippal!" she said, jutting her hip out and swinging her hand to the side in her characteristic I'm irritated with you pose. "Asemo and Tyhho are already down there. It wouldn't hurt you to help out!"

Help out. Sighing mightily, Gippal started tapping his fingers against the ship's rail, trying to contain his irritation. Help out. He was supposed to be captain, not some peon who catered to the whims of a barely-fourteen, stand-in commander.

"Come on," Rikku said, hopping up onto the rail, sitting down, and pointing down into the water. "They're right below us. All we have to do is check the surrounding area to make sure its stable, then set up charges to get those things out of there. It shouldn't take long."

Yeah, not long. Only a few hours or so. Did she think he'd never run an excavation operation before?

"Fine," Gippal snarled in response. Then, without another word, he launched himself over the railing and into the icy sea. Setting up charges. How had he sunk so low?

Of course, that question wasn't particularly hard to answer. Telling Cid that he was going to leave Home and join the Yevonite-dominated Crimson Squad (because that's the way it worked in Home; you had to inform the clan-leader every time you wanted to so much as scratch your ass, and if you didn't, someone else would) probably had something to do with it. The fact that Gippal had refused to take no for an answer probably hadn't helped much, either. Still, that was hardly an excuse for the Cid to casually pull him aside and inform him that he was being demoted. Being replaced by Rikku, too. That was just plain insulting.

Rikku wasn't exactly helping her case, either. As she swam up beside him and started pointing toward the area he'd be stabilizing and setting up charges up on, he was surprised she didn't just sink to the bottom, as big as her head had gotten from all this. From the moment he'd stepped onboard at Bikanel, she'd given him nothing but grief. Between putting him on equipment detail, ordering him to scout out the last excavation site for fiends, and forcing him to do graveyard watch for Sin, she was barely leaving him time to sleep between bouts of flaunting her new position and making him miserable. He didn't think he'd ever hated anyone as much as he hated her right now.

Snarling in response to her silent instructions, he increased the breadth and speed of his strokes, shooting down toward the site as quickly as he could to escape her nagging. He was so sick of her. Absolutely, Yevon-damned sick of her. He couldn't wait until they reached their landing point in the Bevelle inlet tomorrow (not quite in Bevelle itself, but it was the closest an Al Bhed ship could land without being shot at), and he got to walk across that gangplank and out of this hellhole. He couldn't wait to get away from Cid's baby girl.

That was probably why he decided to forego the stabilizing bit altogether and, once he reached his designated area, went straight to setting up charges. Definitely a time saver, which meant more time away from Rikku. Screw her orders. He didn't care. She wasn't really captain. She could stick that in her potion and swig it.

---

"Gippal!" he heard Rikku yelling after him as he marched through the door and away from the chaos that had consumed the ship's deck. Under better circumstances, he might have been impressed with her. She'd managed to scream loudly enough to be heard not only over the sound of the heavy, unoiled door sliding shut behind him, but also the shouts that were flying back and forth over the deck as some of the crew members did impromptu roll call and others demanded that someone retrieve the emergency supply of Al Bhed potions. However, Gippal didn't really have it in him to take much interest in her decibel range. At the moment, the only thing he wanted to do was get to his cabin, bar the door, and forget that this day ever happened.

Unfortunately, he'd barely accomplished step one before that tiny blonde terror decided to ruin the whole thing.

"What is wrong with you?" she practically shrieked as she pressed herself against the still deformed doorframe and shoved her upper half through, effectively keeping Gippal from slamming the door on her (he had a sick, twisted urge to do it anyway, crushed Rikku or no, but he managed to keep enough of his cool to avoid going down that road).

Groaning in frustration and covering his face with a hand, he stumbled over to his bunk and collapsed onto it, offering up a feeble, "Go away, Cid's girl," in response.

"Oh no, you don't!" she hollered, pushing herself the rest of the way through the door and all but charging over to his bunk. Shoving at his shoulder until the force of it sent him flopping onto his back, she leaned over him, her quirked lip and uncharacteristically furious eyes reminding him of a bloodthirsty nashorn. How fitting.

"Why, Gippal?" she barked, curling her hands into fists and swinging them back behind her. "Why did you do that? You nearly got everyone killed!"

"Like I did it on purpose!" Gippal snarled back, propping himself up on his elbows and shooting her his most menacing glare. So maybe he hadn't done a sweep of his area before setting the charges. Maybe he'd missed the fact that part of his area was unstable. Maybe the shock from the charges had made the area collapse, and had buried the cannons that they were trying to excavate. So what? They were useless anyway, and it wasn't like anybody died.

After he said as much, Rikku drew back and covered her face with both hands, groaning into them with despair reminiscent of a dying fiend. "Why are you doing this?" she moaned before flinging her hands to either side again, flailing and shaking her head and looking inches away from one of the out-and-out tantrums she used to throw when they were kids. "Why are you trying to sabotage me?!"

"I'm no—" Gippal started, but was quickly drowned out as Rikku continued with her tirade.

"That's all you've been doing since you got here! You've done nothing but make things worse for me!" She leaned even farther forward, pitching her fists about. For a moment, Gippal thought she was actually going to hit him, and he somewhat welcomed the idea. He may have made a point to respect the ladies, being a self-declared gentleman, but then, Rikku didn't really count as a lady. More like an annoyance. A big annoyance, and after weeks of having to deal with her, he was ready to snap.

"You're trying to mess up this mission for me, aren't you?" she continued, taking a few steps back. Apparently, there wouldn't be any hitting just yet. "You're trying to make me look like a failure so Pop's'll knock me back down to bottom-scraper! Why?! Because he put me in charge of some dumb ship you're not even going to use anymore? You're such a jerk!"

Did she say, 'some dumb ship'?

"First off, I'm not trying to sabotage anybody," Gippal hissed. Sliding off the bed and puffing up like an angry chocobo, he walked forward until he couldn't even take a deep breath, lest he prompt some very unwanted contact. "Second, I think you'd better look in a mirror before you start throwing accusations around, Cid's girl."

"What do you—?!"

"And you know what?" he charged on. "It really doesn't matter, does it? By tomorrow morning you won't have anyone around to 'sabotage' you anymore. I'll be gone!" Laughing mirthlessly, Gippal threw his hands into the air in mock celebration, grinning hard enough to break his jaw. "Isn't it great?! You won't have to deal with me 'sabotaging' you anymore, and I won't have to see you or your damn old man ever again! Isn't it fantastic?"

He probably should have stopped there, honestly. He'd said his piece. No real need to go any further. Still, he was on a roll, and she had it coming. "Now all I'll have to deal with is people who want to kill me!" he said, turning away from her and making sure to speak in his loudest, happiest, and most carefree voice. "I'll bet a few of them will probably try to shoot me in my sleep. But after dealing with this, that shouldn't be too terrible, right? Right, Rikku?"

He'd been expecting her to scream right back, to flap her arms and howl and name-call and perhaps lob a few grenades his way. But instead, he got something that was much more effective at blowing him away: dead silence, interrupted by a few, quiet sniffles.

"What's so great about Yevon?" she asked as he slowly turned back toward her, her voice shockingly calm and quiet. She stood stalk still, head bowed, fists clenched and shaking at her sides. "What's so great about Yevon that you'd abandon us?"

"I'm not abandoning anyone!" Gippal replied. However, it was with a sudden lack of thunder, the harshness in his voice trickling away like water out of a broken faucet. What was she—?

"Well you could've fooled me!" she snapped. Lifting her head, she glared at him with eyes that, while devoid of tears, were noticeably redder than they had been but a moment before. "You seem pretty happy to join up and forget all about us!"

"We're not solving any problems, Rikku!" he countered, gesturing about at nothing as he inwardly scrambled to regain his bearings. "We're not doing anything about Sin!"

"What are you talking about? We're trying everything!"

"Trying! What good is trying if we've got nothing to show for it? We go on and on about how the Yevonites've got it all wrong, but at least they're doing something! I don't want to be doing nothing."

Just as quickly as her gaze had come up, it went straight back down, hovering around the curled, steel-graced tips of her boots. Shuffling past him over to his bunk, she dropped down onto the hard-as-brick mattress. "But you didn't have to leave us."

And, just like that, it clicked. Was that it? Her anger, her bossiness, the way she'd torment him. Was it all because—?

"I'm not," Gippal said, a sudden wave of remorse seemingly taking on form and coating his throat, making his voice come out much quieter than he'd wanted. Following her over to the bunk, he plopped down beside her, grabbed her chin, and made her look at him. "I'm not leaving anyone! I'm doing this for you. For everyone! I'm doing this for Home—!"

She sure was into being unpredictable, today. First there was the almost-crying, which was practically unheard of with her. Rikku, crying? Once in a purple moon, if that. But even that couldn't top the fact that, somewhere between the word 'Home' and whatever it was he was going to say after, her lips had taken his hostage, her hand quivering as she ran the tips of her fingers down his cheek, along his ear, past his hairline. That was pretty hard to top on the sweet-phony-Yevon-what?! scale.

Not quite able to maintain his calm and cool demeanor in the face of such a development, Gippal tried to jerk back to a safe distance. However, he quickly found that much more difficult that he had expected, since the swift little blonde had evidently taken advantage of his moment off his guard to slide her wandering hand behind his head, effectively preventing him from ending their impromptu lip-lock.

What she lacked in getting the drift, though, she easily made up for in enthusiasm. After only a few seconds of her fervent exploits, Gippal seriously began to worry that he'd soon have to add 'lips' to his list of missing body parts. Still, that vigor of hers seemed promising, in a way. Apparently, she really liked the idea of kissing him.

When she finally pulled back, she looked much more sheepish than her previous activities would have suggested, glancing away from him as the tiniest tinge of pink began crawling across the skin beneath her eyes. Pulling her hands back and setting them in her lap (though whether that was because she'd become conscious of their ensnaring nature, or just out of embarrassment at the situation in general, he couldn't say), she chewed at her bottom lip and shifted about, making sure to look everywhere but at him. "Um," she started cautiously, seemingly addressing a patch of rust on the far wall. "Well I, uh . . . how was it?"

It took a second for Gippal to figure out what she was asking, and even then, he couldn't muster up a very Gippal-y response for her. Normally, he probably would have given her a devious little smirk (a gesture he'd been practicing quite a bit during the past few years of their friendship) and say something to the effect of, "Try some more tongue next time," or, "Practice makes perfect." However, this time, he just couldn't seem to pull it off. His mind must have been running on a few fewer cylinders than normal. Not exactly a shocker.

Latching onto the first idea that made it past the confusion that was eating his brain sans condiments, he gently pressed a hand to the side of Rikku's face and pulled her toward him, meeting her halfway with a kiss almost too soft to be felt. She seemed pleased enough, sparks of that undaunted enthusiasm flitting from her as she leaned in, ready for another go. However, just as quickly, he pulled back and shook his head, letting the smallest of smirks grace his lips. She was a bit rough around the edges, yeah, but with enough practice . . .

Then the sounds of footfalls and shouting were flying past the cabin door, and even though it still did a perfectly good job of shielding them from prying eyes, Rikku jerked back, nearly catapulting herself off the bunk altogether. After regaining her balance, she swiftly got to her feet, that hint of pink beneath her eyes finally beginning its assault upon the rest of her face.

"Um . . . well I . . . I've got to—" she started eloquently, pointing toward the door. With a hasty, "Well, bye!" she shot out of the room in a whirl of blonde hair and brightly colored jumpsuit. Then, stopping so quickly that her feet nearly came out from underneath her, Rikku leaned back through the doorway, glaring at Gippal and pointing a threatening finger at him. "Don't think I'm through with you," she warned. "You're gonna get it when I get back!" With that, she disappeared once again, her footsteps echoing through the hallway as she bounded after her crew.

And suddenly, Gippal wished that they weren't docking tomorrow morning.