There are three things every teenage girl should do before she dies. One: Sneak out to meet a boy after dark (bonus points if your pops hates him.) Two: Take a leak in an ocean. If you are not within the proximity of an ocean, any large body of water will do. Three: Hide your father's blood pressure medication and refuse to tell him where it is until he lets you stay out past curfew. I do not suggest this is your father is skilled with tazers. And four: Moon a Bevellian. Okay, I lied. That was four. But who cares? There are three kinds of people in Spira. Citizens who can count and citizens who can't.
And as I punched in the coordinates to the Comm. Sphere I had memorized not only by heart but also a lot of other internal body organs as well, I mentally went through the three things every one of my other acquaintances would advocate doing before departing from this plain of reality, since I had just formed a list for myself and, really, is there anything else to think about while waiting for a Comm. Sphere to connect?
I had already figured out most of them.
Paine: 1) Kill things. 2) Practice in front of mirror to conceal emotions. 3) Get Botox every three months to help conceal aforementioned emotions incase mirror practicing does not work.
Yunie: 1) Save the world. 2) Sacrifice life to save the world. 3) Save the world again.
Gippal: 1) Sex. 2) Beer. 3) Repeat.
Shuyin: 1) Avenge wrongful death of girlfriend. 2) World domination. 3) Destroy the world you have just dominated.
Auron: 1) Mope. 2) Angst. 3) Be emo.
Nooj: 1) Be envious of Auron.
So. Lifetime ambitions aside, I had just recently determined that I am a genius. J-E-N-I-U-S. So what if I can't get in contact with the Celsius even though I did nothing but obsessively dial into their Comm. Sphere for the past four hours? So what if my blood brother and surrogate brother could both be dead at the current moment, meeting their untimely demise in a blazing inferno of debris and fuel, compliments of the gas leak I forgot to check last month? So what if I left half my wardrobe on the airship?
I never wore much of it anyway.
Aw, gaaaah! I didn't mean it like that! I didn't!
...brain fart...
I meant I meant I meant I packed all my crappy clothes because I was always gallivanting around in my dress spheres!
...and not the Nudist Sphere, either.
Yeah, I knew that was what you were thinking.
Remember who I live with.
Anyhow—back to me being a jenius. I had just about given up all hope of ever contacting Buddy again for as long as I live (...maybe I should check the Farplane to make sure he got sent...) and was tearing through the trailer in order to get to my desired destination when I heard the unmistakable gruff tones of my paternal guardian call out from behind me.
"Yo! Girl! Where ya think you're goin'?"
"Out," I answered breezily, whisking by him on the way to the door.
Pops was transfixed in the center of our humble kitchen, guzzling down his tomato juice like it was more important than oxygen or even chocolate. He was bathed in sweat and his odor told me he forgot to put on his deodorant again.
(And lemme tell ya, Al Bhed deodorant is something else. It has to be; what with the evil sun in the evil sky over the evil desert sending down evil rays of evil heat. Al Bhed deodorant is so strong, in fact, that if you put too much on, you won't sweat at all and then you'll die. Really? No—of course not. But it sounded good, didn't it? It was an old horror story Brother and I made up to tell at Ice Box Gatherings. Obviously, here in the desert, we don't do campfires. Nope. Instead we do Ice Box Gatherings where we all gather round and sit next to a portable freezer or a personal ice box and suck on ice chips and watch them melt. Ice box ventures are usually something outgrown by the third grade (unless you're Gippal—then you outgrow them by the second grade because you're so mature and so totally bad ass) but Brother and I kept the tradition alive well into our late teens.
Actually, we never stopped.
Oh—but it was worth it! You should have seen the look on Buddy's face when we told him about Al Bhed deodorant! It was priceless!
"Oh, gods, guys...am I gonna die?"
I bit my cheeks to keep from laughing.
"Yes," Brother replied solemnly, a rarity for him given his usual sporadic nature. "You have approximately six and a half hours."
"Six and a half?" I repeated. "Brother, what the heck? At least give him seven! Round up, for the love of all that is sacred!" I paused. "Where did you get six and a half from anyway?"
"It's how long me have to work on machina!" Brother responded, utilizing his bad grammar he no doubt picked up from Pops. "So I figured that's how long Buddy has to live."
Buddy remained speechless for the next two weeks. I think he actually wrote out a will at one point. I got his shoes.)
Anyway.
I have no idea how much deodorant Gippal puts on—because he never sweats.
Then again, that might be because he never works, either.
"You got any idea how hot it is out there?" Pops scolded, reaching into the yellowing fridge and extracting a can of...tomato juice. "You need to keep your skinny white ass hydrated, otherwise you'll become...become...non-hydrated!"
"Pops," I corrected, trying to mitigate my tone. "It's de-hydrated."
"Dat's wut I said."
"No it's not."
"Ah, shuddap and take yer gods damned tomato juice before you fall down and crack your hallow head open."
I brown bagged my hydration and was heading out the door when Pops began to chase me again, this time down the steps, almost falling and cracking open his hallow head in the process.
"You forgot yer sandwhich!"
I turned around, perplexed expression adorning my features.
"...you made me a sandwich?"
Pops grunted. "Well, does it look like I made you a sandwich?"
I followed his gaze and stared down at the lettuce and tomato lunch that my Pops had so hastily prepared for me. I've seen more appealing things thrown up on the deck of the Celsius when Shinra got food poisioning, but I kept my mouth shut. It's the thought that counts, right?
"Aw, Pops, did you miss me while I was gone?"
I was teasing him, and he knew it, too.
He grumbled incoherent things under his breath.
"I didn't miss ya. You made my insurance go up."
"And you're blood pressure," I added, extracting the sandwich from his callused grasp and merrily skipping down the boiling road of Home. The semi-booming metropolis wanna be was trying to whirr and whiz to life in the early hours of the afternoon. Watching my hometown start to resume it's normal activity was like trying to coax a motor boat back to life when you know it's long dead and gone. You just keep sitting there, breath bated, going, 'come on baby, come on,' even though you know it's no use. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you sit there in the middle of the lake and starve to death before help comes because you can't swim and the water is two inches over your head and you know it so you sit there like a good little duck and wait for your insides to gnaw away at your flesh.
Not that this has ever happened here on this island. But Yunie told me about it. From the shores of Besaid. Some fisherman who couldn't swim. I mean, I know how to swim, but most Al Bheds don't. But they live in a desert, so I guess they have an excuse. People always make the false assumption Al Bhed can swim, just because the one who happened to save the world can. It's a faulty conjecture seeing as though you shouldn't confuse being able to hold your breath for vast amounts of time the equivalent to swimming. Every Al Bhed can retain their oxygen for obscene lengths. It's in our DNA or something. I just happened to realize that eventually if you kick your feet around long enough in the water you start to go places, which is how I survived fighting along side of Tidus and Wakka all those years ago, because I'd sooner shoot myself in the eye and share Gippal's patch than admit to a racial weakness in front of Wakka.
So you keep that in mind next time you see me swimming, alright?
Not all Al Bhed swim. This misconceived notion is all Wakka's fault, really. Blame him. I do.
And right now I was choosing to blame him for the heat.
The temperature never bothered me much as a child. I guess that was evident because I used to wear a shirt as a kid. Brother and I devised all sorts of interesting ways to keep cool, since air conditioning is a foreign concept here in the Bakinel Desert. I remember when we were in grammar school we used to spit on each other to keep our body heat down. We did that until we were old enough to realize the implications that were lying behind the line, 'I'm not hot, I just swapped spit with my brother three minutes ago!' Then we moved onto trying to stuff ourselves in the refrigerator in between the frozen meat and peas. When we were young, we fit. One time Brother got mad at me and left me there. I reenacted the feat some years later, only I was sixteen. But age is just a number, right Pops?
Eventually I graduated to drinking water while Brother tried his luck with the toilet. He somehow thought intentionally giving himself swirlies was a bright idea. He ran with this for some five years. It was times like these Pops seriously contemplated taking him to Bevelle, regardless of the connotations at the time, to go see one of their stuck up over paid doctors so they could examine his head.
We never went through with it.
So that's what I was thinking as I trudged on through the streets, my chipper gait diminishing to that of a stagger as the heat slowly ate at my insides. I instinctively reached to roll up my shirt but then quickly realized I wasn't wearing one.
Hm. Well now, that was slightly disconcerting.
By the time I got to where I needed to be, I was hacking up sand and dust and grime, scratching my eyeballs with my nails as my throat felt like holy fire and my tongue a thick wad of inmoldable sand paper lodged in the confines of my mouth. Lip gloss, and make up in general, is just not a social norm for the Al Bhed, for no one wants sand stuck to their moist lips or mascara in their watering eyes. We toss our hair up, throw our clothes on, and get to work. Unless you're me, in which case people try to find excuses to make it so you don't work, for Brother and I are rather notorious for destroying everything we come in contact with. Granted, much to our credit, we are always able to fix anything we destroy, and make it ten times better than what it originally was, but no one ever gives us the chance. Except Pops. Because he's the same way. But he just hollers at people when they try to walk all over him. Brother goes and sticks his head in the toilet. I pick my nails.
We don't get very far.
I rapped on the flimsy sheet metal once again, this time kicking it in conjunction with my salutations. He had to be up by now. I spent the entire morning trying to contact Buddy. There's no way any normal human being could possibly still be—
"I swear to the gods Rikku, this had better be good, otherwise I am going to hang and quarter all four limbs off your body after I finish disemboweling you."
I smiled impishly. Aw, he was annoyed. How sweet.
The door opened and there stood a disheveled Gippal, looking severely hung over and in vast amounts of pain. He walked like he had giant razor blades attached to his skin, like the very thought of conversation or human interaction pained him, and the light that was flooding in from the door was on par with the seventh level of Farplane hell.
"I would like an air ship, please," I petitioned chipperly, knowing all too well where this was heading and what the results would be.
Gippal rubbed his temple, looked at me, blinked, and then cleared his throat. "Um...how about no?" He waited for a response. "Alrightie then." He closed the door.
"Hey! Gippal! I was talking here!" I stomped my foot and pouted. I do it subconsciously, I swear.
"...and I believe I was in the process of not caring..."
"Neeeergh!" I articulated, very coherently, as I fought with the door Gippal was trying so emphatically to close on my sun peeled face. (Sure, my complexion was peachy keen while I was busy saving Spira with Yunie, but stick me back on this gods forsaken island for more than three weeks and my skin starts to go on strike all over again. Gippal's never does. Which annoys me.)
"Cut it out Trampie. I'm hung over, alright? I don't need...this...right now."
"This?" I reiterated. "I've been demoted to a this?"
A mangled sigh was then inserted into the conversation.
"Don't go all pseudo feminine on me. You're the one who dances around in her bra."
"You like commenting on that, don't you?"
"Because I don't think you realize how ridiculous you look."
"This. Coming from the man who followed me around last night stark nude."
"I was in the middle of something, Rikku."
"...a pair of thighs?" I suggested helpfully.
There was a pause, and even though I could not see Gippal's contorted, bleary eyed face (compliments of the door) I knew he was fighting the initial urge to laugh at my very witty and intelligent remark.
"Rikku?" Gippal called out. I beamed in the wake of my impending recognition.
"Yes?"
There was a moment of respective silence. He was letting the anticipation build, I could tell.
"That was lame."
Then again maybe not.
"...I thought it was kinda clever myself."
"No. No, it wasn't."
Another pause.
"So are we done now?"
I growled. Very becoming and very feminine, I'm sure.
"No, Gippal. I need to ask you something. As much as you like to think girls just come up to your door step to fawn and swoon, I have to admit I actually wanted to hold an intelligent conversation."
"I don't feel like giving a monologue."
With one final snarl, I pressed my full body weight against the door, and while I may look like nothing more than a reedy, semi starved teenage girl, I saved the world twice and fought fiends all the way. And what did Gippal do while I was off saving Spira's ass? Screw things. Both figuratively and literally. Gods know working with machina requires a lot of good, strong, steady screws.
Um. Ew, anyone?
Eventually I won in the epic battle between Gippal and the door (and me, to a very tiny extent) and I like to think it's because I was strong enough to defeat Yojimbo in preliminary battle but in reality I think we all know it was because my opponent was pathetically hung over.
"Anyway, you owe me a ship," I continued without missing a beat, stepping in over the threshold and making a bee line to Gippal's fridge, which was in worse disrepair than my own at the current moment. I had already ascertained his beer sucked monkey balls but at the same time habits are hard to break. See? Gippal enters the scene and I reach for the nearest alcoholic beverage within my proximity. I'm sure it's a common reaction among all females Gippal encounters, for how else would he woo them into bed?
"Too many words, too much alcohol," Gippal drawled out, though I was beginning to wonder how drunk he really was. For someone who I was able to make pretty good fun of while sober, one would think I'd be having a frickin' field day with the intoxicated version.
Then again, maybe it would actually make him cordial.
"A ship," I repeated. "You need to gimme one."
"Ya got the gil?" he inquired insipidly, dragging a hand across his forehead, though he didn't need to, it wasn't sweating.
"Do I look like I have the gil?" I questioned.
Gippal blinked at my countenance.
"No, but you look like you want the gil..." came his slow reply.
I huffed appropriately, folding my arms.
"Don't cross your arms over your chest," Gippal instructed, spinning on his heel and preoccupying himself at the kitchen counter with some mundane ritualistic morning activity. "That's the only part of your body that's covered."
I really had no repertoire for that one.
"Gippal, can you look at me while I'm talking to you?"
"Why?" he droned, appearing to be making a salad while shirtless. Who cooks shirtless? Does he even know the meaning of clothes? Or did he except sex to just waltz up and slap him in the face between meals?
"I really do need a ship."
"And I really do need some gil."
I dead panned. "You could try getting a job."
There was a pause in which Gippal muttered something in another language. I think I picked up hints of ancient Ronsonian.
I invaded his personal space and peeked over his non sweating shoulder.
"J-O-B." I spelled out slowly.
Gippal glared vehemently at the cracked tile wall in front of him.
"I own a faction, Tramp," he snarled between viciously clenched teeth, which couldn't have been helping his hang over headache.
"Yeah, but do you ever work at it?"
"Bosses don't work," he retaliated. "They just see over things."
"And take three week vacations, apparently."
Gippal finished mixing his salad. Only Shiva knows what he put in the thing. Some lettuce leaves. A tomato. Orange peels. Was he thinking straight?
"Gip," I intoned, risking a glance southward at his salad. "I've projectile vomited more appeasing meals."
And then he glared at me. Not a little glare, like I was used to. A big glare. A huge glare. A glare that says, without really saying it, that 'I have had enough of you and perhaps you should go die now.' He matched it with a vitriolic sneer and I think I felt my innards tremble. The salad was long forgotten on the kitchen counter as he turned around and stormed out of the room, down the hallway and out the backdoor.
Confused, I followed him.
In retrospect, probably not the best move. But I did it, none the less.
He heard me tailgating him, and I could tell from his direction he was stalking off to go and tinker with his precious ships, of which he had three. His house may be dilapidating, but his ships were kept in pristine condition. The were shimmering up something fierce in the vicious sunlight, and I wondered momentarily if we could have warded Sin off the first time simply by blinding him with my partner's vast array of metallic vices.
But no matter. He was too busy cowering and playing with himself during the first attack on Home. I was the one who went out and saved the world. Twice. Yet he gets a statue. Someone explain that to me, please.
"Um, excuse, eye contact?" I suggested to Gippal's shirtless back, which, I must admit, didn't look all that bad. Save the scratch marks from gods know who that seemed to decorate it on all sides. At least there were no whip marks. Paine claims some guys like that. Yuna gagged accordingly. Wait; she turned pale. I was the one who gagged. Or something like that. I don't remember.
At this, Gippal whirled around, still donning his 'please go die' expression that I had never seen before. It made me cringe a little. Okay, a lot. I knew I pissed the guy off but he did the same to me. So I figured it was all game, right? All I did was interrupt his apparently very meticulous salad making. I didn't think that was a fate worse than death.
He seemed to be at a loss of words. For once. Now, I dunno about you, but this made me at a loss of words. Since when was Gippal rendered too angry to speak? Um, how about never?
Since he is one quarter idiot, two quarters horn dog, and one quarter retard, he settled on saying nothing save simply snatching my brown bagged lunch from me, which I had not put down since arriving, and stalked off while rummaging through its contents like his father was the one that prepared it for him.
"Hey!" I whined. "You big poopie face! Give that back!"
He, of course, ignored me, as per usual, and made his way over to the biggest of his three ships (or 'babies,' as he likes to call them...to me a baby is something that screams and cries and kicks and has a soul, not a hunk of metal and screws incapable of personal thought. But whatever. Gippal is probably infertile—which would explain the lack of grandkids—and is simply trying to over compensate for something.)
I followed him onto the deck of said shiny ship number two.
"Give that back!" I screeched, snatching the bag from him, which ripped accordingly.
It's not like I have some sort of deranged attachment to my sandwiches, it was more the personal thought that went into its production that irked me. Pops made that sandwich for me, not Cyclops, and he should not have been taking my things without asking!
...pretend, for the sake of my thief dress sphere, I never said that.
The contents were splayed all over the metal flooring of his prized ship, splattering and clunking accordingly, orchestrating a strange symphony of echoes off the metal walling.
Rikku's Food Falling, Beethoven's Fifth.
"Gip-pal!"
"Sacred Shiva," Gippal spat, spraying tomato juice everywhere as he sputtered and gasped and hyperventilated in an epic quest to try and obtain air. "What's in this crap? I've tasted piss water better than this!"
"...you've tasted piss water?"
"Rikku," Gippal grumbled, wiping his mouth off on the back of his hand. "Shut up."
"It probably just tastes bad because you're hung over," I chirped, secretly, or not so secretly, pleased that the beverage was to his immense disliking. "Serves you right for stealing it from me."
"And how is it you make a living again?" Gippal shot back, trying to find some place to dispose of the tomato juice. Apparently trash receptacles were not a priority on Gippal's customized ships. But satin sheeted beds were.
"I borrow," I corrected coyly. "For extended amounts of time."
"And break. And sell. And profit."
"Customize," I corrected.
"Yeah. Whatever. Get out."
Who would have known man whores could be so irritable the day after?
"Were you this benevolent to Nhadala after you porked her or did you just kick her out on your door step when you were done?"
Gippal, refusing to look at me again, though seeming to pick up an odd hunch to his stance, dug the heel of his hands into his eyes and groaned outwardly.
"Rikku, I'm asking you nicely, please go away. I need to be alone right now."
I smirked.
"Too early for a partner?"
So. I didn't see my life flash before my eyes when I was in the process of fighting Sin. I didn't see my life flash before my eyes when I was in the throes of battle with Shuyin either. I didn't even see my life flash before my eyes when I stole Auron's extra rations because I was super hungry and he was pretty much dead anyway.
But I saw my life flash before my eyes then.
Gippal turned around, and I swear, his one eye was shooting daggers. Or bullets. Or whatever it is he prefers to fight with. Perhaps screw drivers given their sensual implications.
Right as he was about to lunge or spit or stab or shoot or whatever it was he planned on doing in order to permanently maim me for the rest of my life, he doubled over clutching his stomach. I quirked an eyebrow and momentarily thought about high tailing it out of there, but unlike some one eyed people, I actually had a soul in the confines of my chest and wasn't into leaving wounded comrades behind.
Paine didn't have a problem with it, but Yunie changed her mind after about six months of persuasion.
"Too much beer?" I queried saucily. I had no sympathy. This man stole my tomato juice.
"No, the juice," he choked up, trying to crawl to the nearest bathroom which was adjacent to him.
"You didn't even drink any of it!" I protested.
I was offered but two words in response: "After. Taste."
Well then. I never knew tomato juice could be used in the stead of epson sauce. This is the kind of thing Tidus would derive hours of enjoyment out of knowing and Yuna would never think to tell him. I guess the duty falls on me.
And so off Gippal went. To revisit his two bites of horrifically made salad and some residue tomato juice I'm glad I avoided in drinking. He didn't stop at just two carks, though. I suppose the beer kicked in and he was dry heaving and wet heaving and damp heaving for the next ten minutes. I gloated for five of them.
For the remainder of his time spent on the toilet, I took the opportunity to look around his ship. I was trying to figure out what lame name he had assigned to his phallic symbol, no doubt, expecting it to be emblazoned in neon hues to the side of the emergency hatch or some such nonsense. But it wasn't, and I moped accordingly.
It wasn't until later, when I suppose Gippal was finishing up his aerial acrobats, that I got an idea.
Which is deserving of its own paragraph because my ideas are usually quite ground breaking. Last time I had one Yunie, Paine, and I found enough gil to live off of for the rest of our lives and then some, lest one believes in reincarnation. (But Yunie being herself, only kept enough to suffice for the continuity of the Gullwings and donated the rest to some Kilika orphanage since it was previously destroyed by Sin. I say we should have kept it. Those Kilikia kids are doing just fine, have you seen their metropolis lately? But no, Yunie had to go all holier-than-thou on us and give away our hard earned gil to a good cause, which I suppose I shouldn't be bitter about but still am. And this is why I like Gippal on very rare occasions. See? He would have agreed with me. He would have kept it.)
Anyway.
Where was I? Oh. My idea.
Gippal was busy revisiting his organs in the bathroom. I was alone with the control panel.
Still in the dark?
Lemme spell it out for ya: I COULD STEAL HIS SHIP.
With him in it!
Oh! The irony! The irony was too much to bare!
Even if I didn't need the ship for my own purposes, I probably would have stolen it anyway just to see the look on Gippal's face when he dragged his head out of the toilet.
So off I went. I skipped (skipped, I tell ya) to the main control deck and began fiddling with the vast array of buttons Gippal had installed on his main panel. It wasn't too hard to figure out. Gippal is superficial. Thus, half the buttons in the main cockpit didn't really do anything (and if they did, it probably pertained to the sleeping quarters.) As much as the man liked divulging in the feminine race, he hates head games, so I knew all the important controls would be right up front. And I was right. Like I usually him.
"Gippal? You still with me?"
No answer. Good.
I worked my magic with machina (even though my strong point is taking it apart and breaking it as opposed to putting it together and fixing it—it doesn't take a genius to figure out the big green button means POWER and the big red one means BREAK. Even Brother could have figured that one out) and pretty soon the engine was humming to life. It purred accordingly and the reverberations could be heard throughout the metal hallow. Now I had to work fast because any mechanic as seasoned as Gippal knew the signs of take off, motor ignition being one of them.
I pulled back on the throttle, not really sure which way to pull but I'm still here so apparently I pulled the right way, and the luminous hover craft began to rise off its sandy perch accordingly.
Driving was an obstacle I had hastily overlooked, and only now that I was faced with it did I realize its dire importance.
"Um...Gippal?" I called over my shoulder. "I need some help stealing your ship!"
Either he was incapacitated or had fallen out of the open exit ramp because I received nothing so far as a response.
Excellent.
Left. Left seemed like a good direction to go.
Left was also where Gippal's third ship was located.
It fun scraping the bottom of metal on some more metal. The noise is enough to make you clench your teeth until they snap. Which I think mine did. Not the front ones, of course, but one of the back ones. I heard something crack. Maybe it was my neck.
Anyway. Just barely grazing the top of my arch rival's third baby supplied me with enough adrenaline to last a life time, even in the Farplane, but now I had to navigate beyond his trailer, and after that the town.
"Oh...oh...poopie!" I cried.
I had never wanted Gippal so desperately in all my life.
And then, almost as if on cue, his shirtless, tan, sweatless form materialized beside me, grabbing the controls and locking me in his hatful embrace.
"I swear to all that is holy and sacred if my hands where not on these two throttle controls right now they'd be squeezing the life out of your pretty little neck."
I sat mute and pale.
I thought for certain we would be totaling the ship and leveling Gippal's home. Not to mentions killing some poor, innocent by standers in the process.
But as horny and egotistic and arrogant as that one eyed bastard is, I will say this: the man can fly. He knows his machines, there's no denying it, and he definitely has an innate skill with building things and an instinctual adaptation to flying. Or driving. Or hovering. Or whatever the circumstances call for.
He proved it right then.
I could no longer tease him or mock him or belittle him about his lack of skill concerning machina, for he had just bombarded me with evidence that he was superior to me in every single way.
I just wish I had some skill I could do the same thing to him with.
It's funny. The man is all beer and jokes and torpor until human life is at stake. Then all of the sudden he tenses up and is all business, like I have never seen before. Even Tidus had a sort of carefree air to him when fighting fiends. Our lives were on the line, but he knew, we all knew, deep deep deep down, we'd make it out alright. Death may have been in our dreams but it was never in our thoughts. It was never factored into the equation.
Gippal seemed at odds with death in a way I can't satisfactorily articulate. Like it had some kind of strong hold on him and he didn't know if he was going to emerge victorious.
I know from first hand experience, the front running thought on every fighter's mind is knowing they will be victorious. Because if it's not, then you will surely fail.
And Gippal was haughty enough to suffice for seven melee fighters. Just not himself.
So why did he look like he was about to lose?
Obviously, since this retelling is in first person, we made it out alive, and so did Gippal's trailer, his third baby, and any innocent by standers. Oh, and me.
Well, for the moment, anyway.
"Just what the hell was that?"
I had to wipe my face after Gippal bathed me in his spit. He wasn't kidding about the tomato juice, it really did smell horrendous. The stench was enough to make me sick, I couldn't imagine what it would be like in my mouth.
"Stealing," I answered simply. Then I paused. "Or borrowing. For extensive amounts of time."
There was a vein dancing on Gippal's forehead. I poked it. He was not amused.
"You're really mad at me," I noted.
"Mad does not even begin to describe it."
He then did his macho stalk off thing, slamming the doors to his bed chambers for added dramatic effect (which was a pretty hard feat seeing as though they were automated...what a pimp.)
This left me sitting alone at the control panel, Spira at my fingertips and Bevelle not that far away. I suppose this was Gippal's surrender, abandoning me at the cockpit of one of his precious babies.
Besides, you can't tell me the man would pass up an opportunity to go to a ceremony in his name where he could possibly—probably—get laid by numerous females of all sizes and species. And alcohol. Mustn't forget the alcohol.
So I plugged in the coordinates to Bevelle and set the thing on autopilot.
I then went rummaging through his glove compartment in search of a Comm Sphere.
I didn't find a Comm Sphere anywhere within the premises of his dashboard. But I can tell you what I did find: lubricant (for mechanical purposes, of course,) Nhadala's black satin bra (who wears black in the desert, for gods sake?) an extra box of color coded fuses, some nondescript movie spheres I didn't feel like wasting time looking at (most likely Ronso porn, knowing Gippal as his eccentric fetishes...candles in a desert being one of them,) a half empty beer bottle, an external memory drive, a large assortment of flavored condoms (beer surprisingly not one of them,) and five different monkey wrenches.
Monkey wrenches. Next to a bra. Only Gippal.
Eventually I wandered over into the storage closet and found what I was looking for: one lone Comm Sphere tucked away beneath a box of tools and bolts.
Funny, for all the bedroom acrobatics Gippal willingly participated in, he didn't seem to keep in touch with any of the female counterparts.
I dialed in the Celsius' code from memory. As usual, nothing. Normally this would worry me, but I had just stolen from my arch rival and was now locked in air tight, claustrophobic quarters with a member of the opposite gender I couldn't stand after very nearly leveling my hometown for a second time, so the welfare of my unofficially psychotic brother who always seemed to turn up fine in the end was the last thing on my mind.
Besides, he had Buddy with him. And I swear, that kid is like a Prodigy Child sometimes. What with all those brains Yevon or Yojimbo or Shiva or whoever stuffed in his skull. They'll be fine.
Next I dialed in my house number. Well, house is too complimentary of a word. Trailer is more appropriate. Temp. Trailer.
Static fizzled and danced on the convex sphere screen momentarily until the blurred, undefined face of my father came into hazy view before me.
"Pops?" I called out.
He sighed, rubbed his temples, swore in Al Bhed, and muttered, "What have you gotten yourself into this time, girl?"
Pause.
"...I think I found out why you've been going to the bathroom..."
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Author's Note:
You people are so kind. Your reviews make me feel like I could take on the world with nothing but a spork and some cheese fries. Thank you. Really. Your input not only means the world to me, but it also helps me as far as the writing of the story goes what with your critiquing and comments. Not that I have any intentions of changing the originally conceived storyline (ha; says the girl who took this entire thing down and started anew some three years later) but you people are all geniuses in your own right. And I have proof.
Originally, I had no intentions of Cid playing any more than a guest role in this story. I didn't know if my interpretation of his character did his pixels any justice, and I was afraid he would come off more annoying as opposed to humorous, which was what I was originally hoping for. In the end, he was way too much fun to write to be considered legal, so I decided to put him in regardless, but the positive feedback I received concerning him and his bathroom mishaps helped me see that perhaps I should include a Comm. Sphere on Gippal's ship (which is, at the current moment, Nameless) so Rikku can still communicate and hold elaborately graphic dialogues with our favorite pot bellied Pops.
Oh, and the input on the Aeon of Beestings was ingenious. Cookies for all of you.
Anyone got any good names for Gippal's third baby? Or his second baby. I forget.
Ooh, I should come up with a Triptec Name. Something lame. Like Faith, Hope, and Charity.
Not to say those are lame names by any means. But for air ships? GIPPAL'S air ships? Yeah, I think the man can do better. Something more desperately manly.
Like Testosterone, Pheromones, and Adrenaline.
Or Dopamine, Serotonin, and...quick, what's another pleasure inducing chemical?
Beer.
Yeah. Not gonna work. Unless I name all of his ships after alcoholic beverages.
