Author's notes this is the second in the dress sphere series. I know it is
rather odd to post the second one first but when I started on this I had no
idea that it would become a series. Once I finished this one another popped
in to my head. So it looks like all three girls will get their own stories
and there will be a short chapter about the reunion. Thanks a bunch for
bata yunikka24 and thanks a bunch for reviewing Komorli and Sweet Angel
Taisha. Reviews are nectar for the muses and mine have been running on
empty lately.
Disclaimer I don't own the ff x-2 people and if I did I would probably make them like sing in a musical about ham or something stupid like that.
Sunlight and Old Leather
The scales clinked and sent rays of light bouncing around the hut. Paine smiled as she ran her fingers along the spaces between the plates. The leather felt as soft and slick as when it was new. She spread the warrior dress out on the bed and stood back looking down at it. Was it always so small? Where did she ever get the guts to wear that out in public? How long ago had it been since she had dragged this outfit out? Ten years, fifteen? She had lost track somewhere in the haze of hellos and goodbyes. She still remembered the first time she ever put it on. There was anger and fear and a strange kind of elation and they seemed to bubble out wherever the dress sphere touched her skin. Giving Shinra the moviesphere to make it was one of the things she regretted for a very long time. It was the only record she had kept of the two men that became her safety net and the one that kept stirring up confusing thoughts of something more.
After that damn cave (the Den of Woe) had taken them away so easily, Paine had to sneak out with whatever she could. That is, before the screams died down and whatever was there stalking the other groups noticed her. And somehow, she had run straight to Shinra who was salvaging what he could from the disaster that was Operation Mi'ihen. They had an unspoken alliance, her and Shinra. He helped her avoid the Yevonites that seemed to want more than just to question her. And in turn, she kept the fiends from making pests of themselves.
Paine smiled, time with Shinra had been good. It was her own personal calm for a while. He was a good kid, a bit eccentric but they watched each other's backs and didn't pry any deeper into things than small talk. That was how her life had always been. A series of temporary alliances that always seemed to shift into chaos after awhile. He was the one that started the wandering chaos up again. He talked about some strange parts he had found in the Bikanel Desert just a little while ago that could theoretically be used to make a flying machina. That little comment said after dinner one night was all it took to send her wandering off towards the desert again. Chasing dreams tended to make you do strange things like that. Paine left the kid all the gil she could spare and never thought she would see him again. But life is strange and fate is stranger still.
Paine watched the Al Bhed's home explode from the outer edge of the battle. She never meant to end up anywhere near there but the fiends rushed too fast. There were screams and cries and soon she too was swept up in the battle. Gippal had talked about Home a few times when it was just the two of them. He said that if Operation Mi'ihen were actually successful he would take them all there for a drink. It was burning when she got in site of it and a warning siren wailed some gibberish that she didn't understand. 'So much for the drink,' she thought running closer to the action.
Her skill with a blade kept the fiends at bay while she tried to figure out why things had gone to hell. Paine was barely able to penetrate the outer ring of attackers before she felt the earth shake under her feet. For the next few minutes she was rendered frozen. The airship was like nothing she had ever seen. A need to be up there struck her like a charging fiend to the gut. Paine didn't notice the second rumble and the fireball that came after caught her off guard. She was barely able to tuck and roll when the concussion wave hit her. Her whole body was filled with the smell of burning wreckage and a lot of dull aches raged through it. It seamed like the whole world was on fire things started going fuzzy after that but at some point she was sure she saw someone tall and familiar walking up to her.
Paine woke up on a soft bed in a cool dark room. Shinra was sitting beside her tapping away on a panel that was dimly glowing blue. He glanced over at her. "You all right? You were asleep for a long time," he said looking her over. "Well I am not dead," Paine said sitting up. Shinra turned back to his screen. "They left without me," he said. "Me too," she said with a chuckle that turned in to a chest rattling cough. Paine hunched over and noticed the bandages that seemed to cover the lower half of her body. She was really banged up and felt like an idiot for getting that way. The kid just might have saved her life there and all because she had been distracted by something new. Shinra had managed to find a ship and drug her back to the little abandoned hut between Djose and the Moonflow that they had started fixing up.
Paine healed too fast for her own liking and soon she really didn't have a reason to hang around. She just kept telling herself she would leave to go find the airship tomorrow. But tomorrow seemed to keep being pushed back into forever. Life with him was peaceful or as peaceful as things got in those days. They fell into a routine, Paine took odd jobs clearing fiends and Shinra was swept up into a new mania that seemed to be popping up all over Spira, finding spheres of the past. He reminded her of the kids she used to take care of in her village before she started training for the crusaders and Paine reminded him of his older sister who was lost in a sin attack a few years ago. She was asleep when the final calm came. Paine heard singing welling up from everywhere, and in her dreams she was flying in a ship with Gippal, Nooj, and Baralai beside her. Shinra told her later that she had been humming in her sleep and then she had started crying.
After the calm, everything was different. People started noticing them when they went into town and the rebuilding started to creep up closer and closer to their place. Paine was uneasy. Both of them were heretics and she was nowhere naïve enough to believe that the calm made people forgive them for that. When Brother and Buddy turned up on their doorstep and offered a way for them to get out before trouble showed up, they both signed up and the core of the gullwings was formed.
Shinra was ages ahead of the other sphere hunters. He had found a use for the spheres that no one else could have guessed. But finding a sphere to test his theories on seemed impossible. Paine watched him mutter a few choice words kids probably shouldn't know in frustration as yet another treasure sphere failed to pass the test. She pulled the softly glowing purple sphere out of her knapsack and was in his machina-filled alcove before she could have second thoughts. Paine tapped her fingers on the glass orb until Shinra noticed her standing over his shoulder. She dropped the sphere into his lap and said, "Use it," before wandering off to deal with the strange flutters of loss it brought up. Later that night she heard a yell coming from his lab. The first dress sphere had been created and Paine's life was about to be shaken up again.
An arm settled around her shoulders drawing her out of her memories. The air around them was filled with the warm smell of incense. Paine relaxed, leaning back on his chest as he wound his fingers around hers. It was funny that after all these years Baralai's touch still felt like fire and ice. Gently he pulled her silver gray hair out of her face and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. "What were you thinking about?" he asked. "Nothing," she said turning around and silencing anything else he wanted to say with a nice long kiss. Far too soon the moment was broken by a timid knock on the door and two cries of "Ew gross!" coming from the door behind them. Baralai broke the kiss first and turned around to face their son and the twins. Paine gave their oldest a reproachful look and he did his best to shoo his sisters out of the room. "Aunty Rikku is here in the airship and she says if you don't get your rears out there, she is going to start deducting respect points." Paine just shook her head. Some people never changed. "Come on Shin let's go round up your sisters," Baralai said ruffling his son's wild mop of hair. Paine brushed her hand across the old leather one more time, put the dress back in the sphere and slipped the garment grid into her pocket and walked out to join her husband and kids.
Disclaimer I don't own the ff x-2 people and if I did I would probably make them like sing in a musical about ham or something stupid like that.
Sunlight and Old Leather
The scales clinked and sent rays of light bouncing around the hut. Paine smiled as she ran her fingers along the spaces between the plates. The leather felt as soft and slick as when it was new. She spread the warrior dress out on the bed and stood back looking down at it. Was it always so small? Where did she ever get the guts to wear that out in public? How long ago had it been since she had dragged this outfit out? Ten years, fifteen? She had lost track somewhere in the haze of hellos and goodbyes. She still remembered the first time she ever put it on. There was anger and fear and a strange kind of elation and they seemed to bubble out wherever the dress sphere touched her skin. Giving Shinra the moviesphere to make it was one of the things she regretted for a very long time. It was the only record she had kept of the two men that became her safety net and the one that kept stirring up confusing thoughts of something more.
After that damn cave (the Den of Woe) had taken them away so easily, Paine had to sneak out with whatever she could. That is, before the screams died down and whatever was there stalking the other groups noticed her. And somehow, she had run straight to Shinra who was salvaging what he could from the disaster that was Operation Mi'ihen. They had an unspoken alliance, her and Shinra. He helped her avoid the Yevonites that seemed to want more than just to question her. And in turn, she kept the fiends from making pests of themselves.
Paine smiled, time with Shinra had been good. It was her own personal calm for a while. He was a good kid, a bit eccentric but they watched each other's backs and didn't pry any deeper into things than small talk. That was how her life had always been. A series of temporary alliances that always seemed to shift into chaos after awhile. He was the one that started the wandering chaos up again. He talked about some strange parts he had found in the Bikanel Desert just a little while ago that could theoretically be used to make a flying machina. That little comment said after dinner one night was all it took to send her wandering off towards the desert again. Chasing dreams tended to make you do strange things like that. Paine left the kid all the gil she could spare and never thought she would see him again. But life is strange and fate is stranger still.
Paine watched the Al Bhed's home explode from the outer edge of the battle. She never meant to end up anywhere near there but the fiends rushed too fast. There were screams and cries and soon she too was swept up in the battle. Gippal had talked about Home a few times when it was just the two of them. He said that if Operation Mi'ihen were actually successful he would take them all there for a drink. It was burning when she got in site of it and a warning siren wailed some gibberish that she didn't understand. 'So much for the drink,' she thought running closer to the action.
Her skill with a blade kept the fiends at bay while she tried to figure out why things had gone to hell. Paine was barely able to penetrate the outer ring of attackers before she felt the earth shake under her feet. For the next few minutes she was rendered frozen. The airship was like nothing she had ever seen. A need to be up there struck her like a charging fiend to the gut. Paine didn't notice the second rumble and the fireball that came after caught her off guard. She was barely able to tuck and roll when the concussion wave hit her. Her whole body was filled with the smell of burning wreckage and a lot of dull aches raged through it. It seamed like the whole world was on fire things started going fuzzy after that but at some point she was sure she saw someone tall and familiar walking up to her.
Paine woke up on a soft bed in a cool dark room. Shinra was sitting beside her tapping away on a panel that was dimly glowing blue. He glanced over at her. "You all right? You were asleep for a long time," he said looking her over. "Well I am not dead," Paine said sitting up. Shinra turned back to his screen. "They left without me," he said. "Me too," she said with a chuckle that turned in to a chest rattling cough. Paine hunched over and noticed the bandages that seemed to cover the lower half of her body. She was really banged up and felt like an idiot for getting that way. The kid just might have saved her life there and all because she had been distracted by something new. Shinra had managed to find a ship and drug her back to the little abandoned hut between Djose and the Moonflow that they had started fixing up.
Paine healed too fast for her own liking and soon she really didn't have a reason to hang around. She just kept telling herself she would leave to go find the airship tomorrow. But tomorrow seemed to keep being pushed back into forever. Life with him was peaceful or as peaceful as things got in those days. They fell into a routine, Paine took odd jobs clearing fiends and Shinra was swept up into a new mania that seemed to be popping up all over Spira, finding spheres of the past. He reminded her of the kids she used to take care of in her village before she started training for the crusaders and Paine reminded him of his older sister who was lost in a sin attack a few years ago. She was asleep when the final calm came. Paine heard singing welling up from everywhere, and in her dreams she was flying in a ship with Gippal, Nooj, and Baralai beside her. Shinra told her later that she had been humming in her sleep and then she had started crying.
After the calm, everything was different. People started noticing them when they went into town and the rebuilding started to creep up closer and closer to their place. Paine was uneasy. Both of them were heretics and she was nowhere naïve enough to believe that the calm made people forgive them for that. When Brother and Buddy turned up on their doorstep and offered a way for them to get out before trouble showed up, they both signed up and the core of the gullwings was formed.
Shinra was ages ahead of the other sphere hunters. He had found a use for the spheres that no one else could have guessed. But finding a sphere to test his theories on seemed impossible. Paine watched him mutter a few choice words kids probably shouldn't know in frustration as yet another treasure sphere failed to pass the test. She pulled the softly glowing purple sphere out of her knapsack and was in his machina-filled alcove before she could have second thoughts. Paine tapped her fingers on the glass orb until Shinra noticed her standing over his shoulder. She dropped the sphere into his lap and said, "Use it," before wandering off to deal with the strange flutters of loss it brought up. Later that night she heard a yell coming from his lab. The first dress sphere had been created and Paine's life was about to be shaken up again.
An arm settled around her shoulders drawing her out of her memories. The air around them was filled with the warm smell of incense. Paine relaxed, leaning back on his chest as he wound his fingers around hers. It was funny that after all these years Baralai's touch still felt like fire and ice. Gently he pulled her silver gray hair out of her face and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. "What were you thinking about?" he asked. "Nothing," she said turning around and silencing anything else he wanted to say with a nice long kiss. Far too soon the moment was broken by a timid knock on the door and two cries of "Ew gross!" coming from the door behind them. Baralai broke the kiss first and turned around to face their son and the twins. Paine gave their oldest a reproachful look and he did his best to shoo his sisters out of the room. "Aunty Rikku is here in the airship and she says if you don't get your rears out there, she is going to start deducting respect points." Paine just shook her head. Some people never changed. "Come on Shin let's go round up your sisters," Baralai said ruffling his son's wild mop of hair. Paine brushed her hand across the old leather one more time, put the dress back in the sphere and slipped the garment grid into her pocket and walked out to join her husband and kids.