*Big sigh of relief* I finally finished chapter 3! And so RB 18 comes to a close. I hope this chapter is as enjoyable as the first two. For those of you interested in FFXII viera fan art (of a humorous nature), please visit my Profile page for a link to my gallery. Thank you to all of you who patiently waited, or impatiently waited and didn't grumble too much, through the lengthy space between updates. I have mentioned before that I got a job in January and since then I have been working a lot more, so I don't have as much time to write anymore. I do keep a notebook with me for the slower time of the day to jot down ideas though, and I am starting to figure out how to juggle my time. Thanks for reading!
Random Bits 18
Chapter 3
:Setting - A heavy fog has rolled in to envelop the small sea-side village of Kilika, preventing Yuna and her friends from making their way home after a long trip spent making the rounds to Spira's temples. Since the weather has rendered travel impossible, the group is stuck in Kilika until conditions improve. :
:Location - Kilika Island - Evening. Our heroes are tired and beginning to realized that they are lost. The effects of the herbs is wearing off. Everyone is beginning to suffer from withdrawals.
The narcotic induced pink clouds of Unreality had been burned away by metabolism. One minute the Guardians had been floating among the clouds, and the next they had found themselves rushing at speed straight for the cold, hard ground of Reality. The smack had been heard some ways off and even startled some birds. The forlorn travelers were left to stagger back from their herbal holiday as best they could.
Food/food/Whatever Stew/hungry/feed me, Wakka's stomach growled. The Blitzball Captain sighed and tried to push the thoughts away. He had begun to feel unusually irritable as they trudged through the persistent fog. He put it down to being hungry and tried not to snap at his companions.
Hunger could do that to you. It was like being stuck in a car on a long road with nothing to see, the same CD that's been playing for the past three hours, the same four people you have spent the last four days with, nothing to talk about because all possible conversation had been exhausted an hour after leaving, and the knowledge that there are still five more hours to go. Tempers begin to run extremely short, expressions take on that classic pinched, sour look and everything everyone else does is annoying. Not to mention the multiple private fantasies of homicide.
Wakka wasn't the only one having problems. Tidus was a ball of terrified nerves inclined to scream at loud noises and sudden movements before diving into the nearest bush, while Rikku had the feeling that they were being watched. She glared suspiciously at every bush, tree, and rock they passed. Everything was eyeballing her! The rocks, the trees, and that bird. Rikku was in a paranoid state of mind usually only seen in war survivors, drug dealers, and the occasional granny.
The clump of vines blocking a narrow animal track hadn't stood a chance. Rikku had bounced up to it like an angry bantam and started shouting.
"You eyeballing me?!" she demanded, slapping at the vines, which rolled with the punch, but offered no reply. "Not talking, eh? I know you are spying on us! Who do you work for? You want a piece of this?"
Wakka wisely kept Silent. It's best just to smile and nod when encountering people in this frame of mind. If, however, you do become engaged in two-way conversation, you had better do some mental proof-reading of any comments, questions, or statements, unless you want to spend two hours listening to the individual talk about how a) the government is watching the person's every move, and has tapped their phone line, b) how Fildor "Gut Slicer" Gigglesmore is looking for them, or c) how the neighbors are shining lights into their bedroom window and playing loud music just to keep them up at night.
The small Al Bhed girl had loosed a war cry that would have put the strongest Ronso to shame, and attacked. She had shown no mercy, and left nothing but the world's ugliest salad in her wake. Wakka had fished Tidus out of the bushes, and they had continued on.
The wood reluctantly revealed an abandoned campsite a few hours later. Tired and hungry, the trio limped, shuffled, and sidled into the little camp. "Look!" Wakka said, pointing excitedly at a lumpy pot near the burned out remains of a fire. "Who ever was here has food!"
There was a brief scuffle as Wakka and Rikku fought over the pot in the hopes of getting the last bit of whatever was in it. Tidus screamed as a piece of dandelion down floated by, and shrieked again as the battered pot (the victim of opposing forces of direction) flew by his head and struck something in the shadowy bushes, producing a humorous bong!
"Great, now we don't have anything to eat!" Wakka snarled, flopping on the ground hard. "Well, we could always eat someone." Rikku suggested sarcastically. "Good idea," Wakka replied curtly, "we can eat the weakest, scrawniest one first!" Rikku glared at the red-haired man hotly. "I was thinking more of eating the fattest person first, since we could eat off of him longer…!" Rikku's train of thought petered out as a heavier, faster moving one hit the tracks.
"Wait, if there is a campsite, then that means someone else is here. We aren't alone in the woods!" The Al Bhed girl spun around suddenly and grabbed Tidus by the straps of his pants. "I told you we were being watched! I told you!" she shouted, shaking the blond violently. Tidus screamed and trembled so hard that he blurred. Laughing manically, Rikku let him go and danced around the little clearing, chanting the 'I Told You So' song (which was also on Auron's list of Things I Hate Most, along with the Lucky Dance, the Victory Dance, and the phrase 'Rin Inn/Shop').
Tidus took the opportunity to Flee with a shriek. Sometimes, it's the best thing to do, like when you see Uncle Willy 'Pull My Finger' Bobbinsocks heading straight for you with an extended finger and a calculating grin. The teen dove into the closest shrub, and peered anxiously out between the leaves. Tidus experienced a brief moment of blissful safety, until he realized that he wasn't alone in his hiding place.
Slowly he turned, and came face to face with a widely smiling man. A shiver started at the base of Tidus' spine and shot upwards like a rocket. A smile was a normal feature found on faces, it was just that the faces usually had more… lips, weren't distressingly bloated and purple, and didn't have eyes like two runny eggs. Come to think of it, people weren't supposed to be puffy, either. Tidus had only ever seen bulging rolls around joints like that on balloon animals, and sausages.
Tidus erupted from the bush with a screech like a cat being stepped on. Rikku was nearly mown down as the young man whirred past with a shriek of "Dead guy!" His headlong flight was hindered by a tree, which rose up out of nowhere (in accordance with cosmic laws) when he foolishly looked over his shoulder to see if the horror in the bushes was chasing him. Sufficiently stunned, Tidus lay still and watched the small stars orbiting his head, which showed up nicely against the darkening fog clinging to where the sky should have been.
Grabbing a stick incase there was anything interesting to poke, Wakka pushed aside the leaves of the plant. "Hey, he's right! There is a dead body!" he said, not even wincing at the redundancy, not that he would have known what a redundancy was. Most people don't, thus retarded terms like 'baby chick(a chick is a baby chicken/bird)', 'close proximity( proximity means close)', and 'genuine imitation (which means a real fake and is not really a redundancy, just a poor choice of wording)' have come to be.
"It doesn't look like he's been dead too long." Wakka said, prodding the ballooned out corpse with his stick, just to satisfy the urge. "You know what that means?" Rikku said in a tense voice as an earlier train of thought skipped back onto the tracks. "It means that whoever is out there, watching our every move, is a murderer!"
Wakka, still irritable (and hungry despite the gently decomposing hunk of meat in front of him), replied "Well, I hope he or she has some food with them 'cause I'm starving. And, whoever they are, I hope they are better company than this guy." At that moment, the stick found a weak spot in the purpling skin. The bloated flesh split open like an over-ripe fruit dropped from a tall building and released a blast of corpse gases. The immediate area was suddenly swarming with flies. Wakka and Rikku staggered back, gagging and retching.
"Oh, gross!" Rikku gagged, "he's all runny on the inside!" Beside her, Wakka dropped a custard (blew chunks, hurled, spewed, screamed at his shoes, etc.). "Let's get out of here!" The Al Bhed girl said carefully, incase her Whatever Stew felt like suddenly making a return trip. The blitz ball captain nodded, putting his withdraw symptoms aside to address the more pressing need to be very far away from some very undesirable company.
Grabbing Tidus (who had been brought around by the stench of a lot of microbes doing their job) and bolting out of the clearing, the lost travelers plunged into the fog. They ran blindly, barely dodging the various obstacles that suddenly loomed in front of them, their flight punctuated by Tidus' screams. In the grips of horror, the three Guardians tore through the woods, scattering animals and trampling foliage. Several yet undiscovered species of plants, which incidentally held the cures for most of Spira's deadliest diseases in their juices, were eradicated along with a nest of a newly evolved species of rodent (which would have become Spira's newest pet craze). The female survived, but seeing as how this species of rodent the new mothers ate their mates after giving birth for extra nutrients, the species died out.
An Ochu almost met a similar end. The massive plant fiend had taken some time off from terrorizing humans to rethink what it really meant to be a fiend, and maybe get a fresh start at life and a new philosophy. It was just coming to the conclusion that maybe humans weren't the enemy and peaceful cohabitation could be possible, when out of the undergrowth burst a pack of rabid humans.
The fiend was so taken aback that it remained rooted to the spot as the next few seconds were filled with confused cries and wildly thrashing limbs. It ended abruptly, and in the silence that followed, the mildly stunned forest lord reviewed the strange occurrence.
There it was, having a peaceful moment of contemplation, when three humans had attacked. Then again, the Ochu couldn't really apply the word 'attacked' to the situation. Not properly, anyway. The biggest human had climbed over it, giving it a smart kick in the stamen, the smallest one had bitten one of its vines, and the third one had just stood there and screamed at it before crawling under it and stepping on its roots. Oddly, the humans hadn't used any kind of magic or weapons, and hadn't actually harmed it. So, with the distractions gone, the Ochu returned to its internal struggle on where it stood with humans, and unsteadily lumbered off.
Wakka, Tidus, and Rikku's undirected flight sent them hurtling through the woods without any idea of where they were running to. At the moment the 'to' didn't matter, because it was the 'away from' that was the important bit. As they crashed through the fog enveloped woods, burning off the last effects of the herbs, the sun gave up its battle to hang out on the horizon for a few more hours and set. Lost in the woods, in the fog, at night, the trio eventually slowed to a creep. Being lost in the dark while pursued by a killer tends to bring people together, and seek safety in numbers (usually because the more of you there are, the less chance you have of being picked off).
To ensure that no one got (anymore) lost, the pathetic explorers fell back on the ancient techniques learned in childhood. They formed a line and held hands, each of them understanding that this incident would never be spoken of again. Wakka was the Leader since he was an islander, and therefore, it was reasoned, should know everything there was to know about islands. Tidus was bringing up the rear because he was filling in the position of Idiot, who always got picked off first in every 'Lost in (insert location of choice) ' movie. That left Rikku, the smallest, filling in the Lone Survivor role. This meant that if the group was attacked, Tidus would get eaten right away, his screams alerting the party that danger was near, Wakka would die the valiant death of the Leader (i.e rush up in a futile attempt to rescue Tidus by poking the Threat with a sharp, pointy stick and also get eaten), and Rikku would leg it away fast, and show up at the closest village days later raving about monsters.
Holding hands to stay together was a stroke of genius, but like all great ideas, it had its drawbacks because 1) you have two feet to trip with, so therefore you must have two hands to catch yourself with, 2) walking one-handed in the dark, with two feet to trip with doubles your chances of a hard fall, and 3) if your other hand happens to be holding the hand of another person who also happens to be holding someone else's hand, when the middle person goes down, three people have ,collectively, only two hands to try to stop the fall. Because of universal laws, and luck, the person in the middle will undoubtedly land on the person in front. Of course, if you happen to fall down a hill, the 'leader' and the 'caboose' will land on the monkey in the middle. And so it happened.
"Hey, I think I see lights!" Wakka exclaimed in a hushed whisper.
"Where?" Tidus and Rikku replied in unison, turning this way and that as they Scanned the hazy darkness.
"Right there!" Wakka said, jabbing a stubby digit in the direction of several dim lights.
"I don't see them." Rikku replied doubtfully.
"There!" the former Captain of the Aurochs snapped, thrusting his arm out. It would have created a perfect line to sight along, had he not used the finger on the hand that was currently holding Rikkus' hand. It would have been even better if he had not been so exasperated that he flung his arm out with more violence than necessary. That simple action created a whip-like effect that sent Rikku and Tidus swinging out into the empty air over what was, had there been time for a second look, not a shadow, but a steep, grassy incline.
Of course, no one had the common sense to let go. It comes from deeply ingrained parental teachings. Going to the store? Hold on to mom/dad's hand so you don't get lost. Crossing the street? Hold hands incase a car comes(which serves no purpose other than to give the driver the option of taking out two people at once, and gaining a total of 100 points in Road Bingo).
The three Guardians got a very abrupt lesson in physics. They tumbled down the slope in a chorus of yelps as they encountered trees, and the occasional muffled thump as their falls were gentled by the soft forest creatures that didn't get out to the way in time. After a last few bounces, the battered companions came to a halt in a relatively flat area. The silence was broken by a spattering of groans as the small party slowly assessed the damage.
"Hey, Rikku, do fingers usually bend like this?" Wakka asked the blond girl, holding up a hand for inspection. His pinky finger was bent at an unnatural angle. Rikku squinted at it. "Uh…it looks okay to me." she said, not wanting to alarm the man. "But, uh…Oh, look at that!" she exclaimed, pointing off in a random direction. Wakka turned to look, and Rikku grabbed his hand and twisted…
Tidus sat up and rubbed the back of his head. It felt like it had been sat on. Come to think of it, he vaguely remembered a large, yellow clad rear falling right towards him on the way down the hill. He was going to have nightmares about that one. The boy looked over his shoulder to see what was digging so uncomfortably into the small of his back. His hand encountered a hard, smooth surface.
…the finger snapped back into place with a crack, eliciting a shriek from Wakka. "Hey, shut up! Look at this!" Tidus called excitedly, ignoring the blubbering. "I found this weird horizontal rock." Rikku limped over to investigate. "Hey, yeah! Look at that, it's perfectly flat on top. And look, there's another one on top of it."
There was one on top of that one, too. And another, and on top of that one, was what looked like two boots. Out of each boot rose a short tube which disappeared under a dark cloak-like shroud.
"It's the murderer!" Rikku whimpered, as the tiny group drew closer together. A demonic voice roared from the gloom with all the rage of the underworld "Where in the Farplane have you been?!" The fog was suddenly blown away, revealing…a very exasperated Auron standing on the steps leading up to Kilika Temple.
They screamed.
End.
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