Chapter Six
Sierra Tequila

A drink precedes a story.

The sun beat down hotly on the panting silver backed jackal, Yuffie sitting in the dust of the Pridelands, her pink tongue lolling out in the heat, above her head a broad winged bird flew in a wide circle, its naked head turned this way and that irritably. Cid's blue eyes glittered in the sun when he looked down at the jackal, "I can't see it!" he cawed,
Yuffie barked back up, "Lets go then! If we can't find it, he'll have to do without!
"I can't believe the old fool managed to loose it!"
"Ya would have though he'd have put a fucken finding spell on it or something, wouldn't ya?"
"What was he doing anyway?" with a barely perceptible tilt of his wings Cid swung into a downward spiral, and didn't answer until he hopped to a halt, leaving a trail of dust in his ungainly wake.
"Stupid bugger was trying to find an easier safer way to send things from one fucken world to another fucken world!
"C'mon, kid lets get the hell outta here before we die of dehydration!"
Jumping to her paws and skittering over, Yuffie asked, "You don't think we really wouldDo you!?"
"Hell would I know!?"

At least the Gummyship wasn't far, it had landed and dropped it's passengers in a less than habitable area of this world, where some mangy hyenas had given them a hard time, before remembering why they didn't tackle vultures on their own, "Big bird got big claws!" one of them had howled as they took off with Yuffie close on their heels, she'd not followed long though, Cid had dropped on her and warned her against it, hyena's could be chased off, but they were still hunters, and these guys were local to boot, they knew the area and they were used to being animals. Now however, the two had to make their way back through this area, and they were tired and worn thin, Cid half hopped, half stalked, along behind Yuffie, who was beginning to look a bit droopy around the ears and tail her self. It was without warning that Yuffie turned on him, teeth clicking shut inches from his beak, "Hay!" she snapped, "Why'd you do that!?"
"Do what!?"
"You just hit my foot!"
"I fucken didn't!"
"Did so! Gawd, if you wanted me to go faster you could have just said so!"
"I didn't do it! How could I have!?"
"Well you clawed it, or pecked it or something! It hurt! You pecked my foot, look it's bleeding!"
"Bullshit! I didn't go near your dirty feet! Just get ya arse in gear and get to the ship!"
"Not until you apologise!"
"I've got nothing to fucken apologise for!!"
"Well then explain why it certainly felt like you pecked me!"
"I don't know do I!? Maybe a rock bounced up! Or those damn hyenas are back and throwing stuff at us!?"
"Yeah right!"
"Yeah, that is right!" he sneered,
"GOD! I can't stand you sometimes!"
"Then walk! Ya won't have to stand then!"
Yuffie huffed and backed up a step, "I'll do more than walk!" she barked, turning sharply and running off, Cid cawed and screeched after her until she vanished in the maze of rocky canyons, "Good fucken riddance!" If she ain't back by tonight, I'm leaving… Well, going into orbit, I'll come back tomorrow.

Yuffie didn't go far, quarter of a mile into the Elephant Graveyard and away from Cid she started to hear noises, laughter and barking calls, she was horribly aware of being a small jackal all alone in an area haunted by hyena packs, some had every reason to want to come after her, and she, unlike Cid, couldn't fly away from them… Cid… she whined and looked back, He's all alone and so tired he can barely fly, she thought carefully, I really should go back and see if he's okay… there was a hoot of laughter and a gangly drooling beast leapt up upon the bones of long dead pachyderm, she screamed and took to her heels back the way she'd come.

"Cid!"
"Come back then?" he was perched in a gnarly thorny tree that may or may not be dead, he looked every inch the creepy hunched vulture, Yuffie scowled at him,
"Well," she said, "I didn't very well want to, but there are hyenas around, I didn't want to be blamed for you getting your mangy feather-butt eaten now, did I?"
"Heh, guess we can't have that," Cid nodded towards the multifaceted slope leading up to the ship, it glittered faintly in the sun, waiting for those it was expecting to come aboard and for those it wasn't expecting to be thrown off by a strong pulse of magic, "We going then?" Yuffie poked her tongue out at him and trotted up the slope, Cid half fell, half flew, from the tree and glided to the slope, landing at the top he glanced back, something had taken his place in the tree, it was small with a sharp beak and curved talons, its shoulders were black and from it's angular, sleek, face two burning red eyes gazed madly at him, as the eyes of raptors are like to do, Cid blinked at the hawk and the suppressed mischievousness behind that gaze. It didn't move and inch. Like a creature possessed Cid barrelled down the slope, wings beating feverishly, he stretched out his neck as the hawk took easily to the skies and rose upwards, the sound that came from the vulture's beak wasn't even close to human when he felt jaws close around his legs and pull him down, "Idiot! What's got into you, we've got to go!" he looked disbelievingly up at Yuffie,
"Did ya…?"
"Hmn?"
"Did ya see that bird?"
"No, does it matter?"
"…Probably not," he muttered, craning his neck to look around, "Probably not…"

---

"Where'd Cid go?"
"He said he wished to walk, and would be back soon."
"Oh, okay."

The sun was low in the south-west, the sky bruising in the east as night crept up over the town; the gold and purple in the sky only served to compliment the red roofs of the town houses, the pipes weaving around the city gleamed brightly and the purple slate walls became warm and hazy in the sun, the temperature however was not so warm, there was a chill wind blowing tonight that brought a flush to the cheeks of those out and about. However the beautiful evening, the chill wind, and the cheerful people went unnoticed, Cid's gaze was elsewhere not on this world. Detached, his expression vacant, he sat still as stone on a wide, but high wall near the edge of town, a long dead cigarette sat between his fingers. He was dimly aware of three young women watching him and whispering amongst themselves, eventually two of them drifted away, the third, and by far the smallest of the women, climbed the stairs to the walk way and stepped gingerly onto the wall.

"Um, hi," Cid blinked and looked up slowly, the brunette smiled nervously at him -or maybe the nervousness was directed at the bottle of tequila by his hand- and tugged on her pale blue coat, it was almost white, she was wearing large round glasses. Cid smiled, vaguely aware that this young woman, despite looking like some mad scientist, was trying to be friendly, "Hay," he said,
"Sorry, I shouldn't have interrupted you, you were contemplating weren't you?" Cid blinked, taken aback at the sudden apology,
"Contemplating? Heh, well I might have been if I knew what that meant. Don't worry, I was away with the faeries, ya not disturbing me or nothin'," he grinned and she smiled with relief, "Oh good!" she was very familiar, thought Cid, but he couldn't place where from, other than having seen her around town, maybe she knew where he knew her from, "You know, I've this odd feeling we've met before…" he said,
"Really? Well I'm sure we've seen each other before, in fact I know we have! I was the klutz who poured wine down you," she made a little noise of dismay but Cid just laughed, "Hay yeah! It was your round at that party in The Frog and Greyhound! I was standing behind ya!"
"I'm so sorry about that, I hope it didn't stain!"
"Na, it was fine, ain't your fault any how, I shouldn't have been standin' that close."
"Hay, listen, I came up here to ask if you were okay, I saw you… oh, I don't know, about half an hour ago, walking through the town, you looked totally spun out, and didn't seem much better sitting up here. Is there something bothering you? But it's not my business, sorry."
"Na na, I don't mind, hell, maybe it'll help if I talk about it, heh, I should be apologising, seems I've stolen ya away from ya friends for the evening."
"Oh that's okay, they'll be fine without me. So what's happened to make you so thoughtful?"
"Well I've not been here long, came here, I dunno, a month ago, maybe longer, came with some friends, but well things went a bit wrong, we all lost some of our memories, and I ain't convinced all of mine came back; there's like, a empty spot in my head – hell you might be a part of it and I wouldn't even know, but I started having these nightmares, they were so dark, and full of red and there was this creature in the darkness, but…" he groaned and rubbed his temples, "…but they stopped, something changed, the creature wasn't scary anymore, it was protecting me! Then it wasn't a monster, it was… Something else… And it was sad, so sad…"
"Maybe it doesn't want to be a monster?"
"Yeah, I mean I can't imagine many monsters want to be monsters. Thing is, I could deal with that, nightmares, dreams, flashbacks, whatever they were, I could deal with all that shit, but today, I was out with a friend, in The Pridelands –"
"Pridelands?"
"Yeah," he pointed up at the stars beginning to glitter in the darkening sky, "A lot of those stars are other worlds, I don't expect ya to believe this, but The Pridelands are one of those."
"I'm finding that hard to believe, but I've seen some strange things, so…"
"Heh, tell me about it, living shadows and wriggly white guys, then other worlds? Fucked up ain't it?"
"Well that's not how I'd put it. These other worlds though, do you mean they circle those stars?"
"Na, they just… float around out there."
"But that doesn't make sense! Planetology—"
"I know, I know! They should all go around a common centre, and for all of them to sustain life they'd have to form a ring around that centre, right?"
"Yes, basically!"
"But they don't, some of them don't even seem to have stars at all, I mean ya can see the stars at night, as far as I know, I don't travel around them much—"
"But… they don't have a sun?"
"Exactly."
"…What about us?"
"Hmn?"
"Here, right here, Hollow Bastion, what about here?"
"…Same."
"But that goes against everything I know!" she stood up sharply from where she was half crouching, "I'm confused!"
"I know," he raised his hands to calm her down, "it didn't make any sense to me either, my friends and I came here thanks to Merlin, the wizard, we're stayin' with him, he used magic, but where we come from there isn't magic, there is Materia, and Mako, that seems like magic, but it's not, and our Planet, along with other planets circles one sun in ya basic solar system."
The young woman frowned lightly, "We'll it would seem I need to do some research on this subject, if what you're saying is true, I know where Merlin lives so I may get back to you on this."
"If ya can figure this out, go ahead, I'd like to hear it!" the woman nodded curtly and excused herself when her friends returned, "I'll see you around then," she smiled at him and Cid beamed back at her, "Yeah," he said, "Good luck on that research."
He realised when she'd left, that not only had neither of them introduced themselves, they'd also wandered off from the original point, and he'd not explained that the reason he was up here, now freezing cold, and thinking, was because of the hawk in the Pridelands, something about it was haunting him, and it was just as he decided to move and get the feeling back in his arse, that it became as obvious as day to him, "I need to go back there. I need to find it."