"My mother, High Summoner Yuna, is missing."
I'd lost track of the number of times I'd heard my own words repeated on Luca's big sphere screens. All of Luca was in an uproar.
Two days had passed since we set out from Djose, and the trip to Luca had been fairly uneventful. We did have to fight off fiends now and then, but none of them gave us too much trouble. Camall quickly proved himself quite effective in battle, having an impressive array of gadgets to fight with. In addition to the machine gun we'd already seen him use, he could also use that thing as a spinning blade wheel, and on his other arm he was equipped with an extendable grappling claw that could surge electricity into whatever it grabbed. I would not be the least bit surprised to find he had lots more in his arsenal that he was keeping on reserve.
By nightfall the day we left Djose, we had made it to the gates of the Mi'ihen Highroad. We rested in the tents there, and in the morning we did something that shaved several hours off our trip. It was also something I'd wanted to do ever since the last time I did it when I was eleven.
We rented chocobos.
I loved riding on those big birds! At least for a while; my butt started getting a little sore after a few hours, but I still enjoyed the ride. And with them speeding things along, it wasn't even nighttime yet by the time we reached the entrance to Luca. That gave us time to let the administrators of the stadium know that I needed to address Spira tomorrow.
So the moment came when I stood in that booth in front of the microphone, with my friends behind me and a stadium full of thousands of people from all over Spira who had gathered to hear what the daughter of Yuna had to say. To say I was unnerved would have been a gross understatement, especially considering the news I was about to tell them. And so I took a breath, bit my lip, and stepped forward, and with that one simple sentence elicited a gasp of shock out of the whole crowd.
I went on to explain the details of what happened on Mt. Gagazet, how we suspected it was somehow connected to the mysterious attacks by rogue aeons, and that Praetor Roumsey seemed to be involved somehow. Since I gave my speech my words had been echoing all around us for hours, and every stranger who saw me had been rushing up to bombard me with questions. Ultimately I had to shut myself away in private quarters after getting absolutely sick of everyone hounding me.
These people are more panicked about my mother's disappearance than I am, and she's my mom, I thought, crashed out on the bed in my quarters. But to be fair, I'd been dealing with it for days while the news was still new to all of them. I couldn't help wondering if maybe we'd gotten the public a little too riled up.
When someone knocked at the door, my first response was a very harsh, "Go away!"
"Riza, it's Vidina. I just wanna talk."
Okay, him I could open the door for. I got up and went to the door—and then paused with my hand on the handle. "Are you alone?"
"Yeah, I'm alone."
I opened the door.
"How's it going out there?" I muttered, going to sit on the bed again.
"Absolute chaos," he said. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea."
"I still think we were right," I sighed. "We'll have a better chance of finding our parents if we aren't alone in it. I just wish…"
Vidina sat down next to me. "What?"
I groaned and ran my fingers through my hair. My head was a mess. "I've been thinking about something Camall said to me when we left Djose."
"What did he say?"
"None of the people out there see me as Riza. I'm just Yuna's daughter to them."
"You're Riza to us."
I smiled, and laid my head against his shoulder. Vidina might never have been as brave or adventurous as I was; that had never prevented me from feeling safer with him. "Everywhere we go, people treat me like royalty because of who my mom is. They give me everything I ask for except a moment's peace. I feel like all my life I've been getting something I don't deserve. I mean, I wouldn't trade my mom for anything… but she's my whole identity."
"That ain't true, girl."
I lifted my head and looked at him.
"You know what I see when I look at you?" he said. "I see Riza, future star of the Besaid Aurochs. I see my best friend that I grew up with, who I've shared everything with for as long as I can remember. Those people out there, Riza, they're strangers. They might know who you are, but they don't know you. Not like me and Farru do. You didn't need your mom to make an identity with us. And you don't need those people."
I smiled again. Sometimes Vidina really did know just what to say. I leaned forward to embrace him, and he put an arm around my shoulders.
"And let me tell you one other thing I think," he said then. "If it turned out that saving our parents was impossible, you'd be the one among us who'd still find a way to do it."
"Thanks, Vidina."
There was a knock at the door, followed by Farru's voice saying, "Hey, you in there?"
"Farru?" I stood up from the bed.
The door opened and he stood in the doorway, an urgent look on his face. "You guys'll want to get out here."
"What's going on?" Vidina asked.
"The Youth League's arrived. Meyvyn Nooj is preparing to address the crowd, and he wants us there."
"Oh, great, this is just what I need," I muttered.
"Actually, maybe it is," Nadaleen said suddenly, stepping into view behind Farru. "You remember why we decided to do this, right?"
"Right," I moaned. "Let's get it over with."
***
I'd never met Nooj before, and while I'd seen his image on sphere screens before, seeing him in person was a bit different. I found it hard to imagine this fragile-looking man as the leader of the Youth League. He was talking to Paine when I entered the booth, but as I'd grown so accustomed to with others, his attention turned immediately to me when I appeared. "So this is her, then?" he asked Paine.
"Yes. This is Riza." I found I was relieved that Paine didn't introduce me as "Yuna's daughter."
The half-crippled man hobbled toward me on his cane. "This wasn't news that I ever thought I would hear," he said. "From what I heard, not only has your mother disappeared, but several others with her, right?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "My father, Wakka, Lulu, Rikku, all of the Ronso, and everyone else who was there to honor Kimahri."
"If New Yevon is involved in this, then I may have trouble holding some of my Youth League members back," Nooj thought out loud.
"I think we're pretty okay with that," Vidina said.
"Vidina!" Paine chided.
Nooj turned around and limped to the microphone. "Everyone," he spoke to the anxious crowd that surrounded us. "I know we're all distressed about this. We're all hoping to learn that Lady Yuna and everyone else are safe. The important thing to remember is for everyone to stay calm, because we won't learn anything by being rash and rushing into things. If it's true that New Yevon is responsible for Lady Yuna's disappearance, then the Youth League will find out, and they'll be made to answer for it. But we mustn't panic, and we mustn't take action against anyone until we have proof."
It was all he could do to keep the crowd from popping. They looked ready to start screaming for blood—and moments later, a few of them actually did start screaming. But they sounded like screams of panic. And looking at them, I began to notice that the ones that were screaming were the ones looking up, and as more of them looked up, the sense of panic began to spread. My eyes turned upward. This was just not my day.
Four ravenous garudas were swooping down on the crowd. There wasn't any time to stop and wonder about where they came from; the bystanders were about to become lunch. And even as the crowd started to panic and run, more fiends began suddenly appearing in the stands. Dual horns and Mi'ihen fangs and raldos were materializing out of nowhere and attacking whoever got too close. There were those among the crowd who had combat experience, and they stood their ground, fighting off the sudden attack. But the people were going to need help, and they were going to need it now.
"Move!" Paine commanded as we took our weapons in hand. But I was already charging, vaulting over the edge of the booth with the Brotherhood in hand and dropping down to the benches several feet below me. As soon as my feet hit the pavement and my knees bent to absorb the drop, I heard Vidina's voice call, "Riza, look out!"
I looked up in time to see one of the garudas diving at me with its mouth open, ready to chomp my head off. Vidina leapt up out of the booth and chucked his blitzball, hitting the flying fiend straight between the eyes. The garuda reeled from the attack, shutting its eyes and shaking its head as Vidina caught his ball and landed on his feet. It tried to attack again, diving and chomping at me, but it seemed like it was attacking blind, and I dodged it with a simple sidestep—just before Farru dropped straight down on it from above, impaling it with his lance.
The raldo that tried to attack me from behind right then gave itself away with its distinctive grunt. It gave me the warning I needed to backflip over it as it came at me, landing behind it as the fiend met the edge of Camall's spinning blades. I turned around, and leapt to cut down the Mi'ihen fang that was about to attack a little boy whose mother was frantically trying to pull him away. I let loose with a "Hah!" and heard the satisfying yelp as I felt the blade slice into the fiend and it rolled away and started to fade.
Off to my left, I saw the flash of Paine's sword as she cut down a dual horn. To my right, Vidina's blitzball knocked a floating eye out of the air, and Nadaleen struck another one down with a thunder spell. Another dual horn was charging at another set of bystanders before Camall's claw extended and grabbed it, holding it back long enough for Farru to finish it off. We continued cutting a path through the onslaught while the crowds ran for the exits.
I don't know how long we kept this up for, but after a while the horde of fiends looked like it was starting to thin. But just as we were starting to relax a little, only a few fiends left in the stands, we received a violent announcement that we were far from finished. I felt the ground suddenly beginning to tremble, and at the center of the stadium, a field of black and red began to spread. And something was coming up out of that. Something big.
The first thing I saw was a gigantic, monstrous face screeching to the sky. As it rose higher I saw a pair of huge arms crossed over its chest, and a strange sort of shell that it seemed to be partially trapped in, and then the chains that kept it bound. And it was huge. It rose more than fifty feet high, and it looked like more of it was still beneath the ground. And it was also hideous. And it could only have been one thing.
"An aeon?"
"Anima!" Paine shouted.
A few of the crowd who had stayed to fight raised firearms and began to assault the horrible aeon. But instantly it was retaliating—and the consequences were immediately dire. Its one eye glowed for a second, and a blast fired to one of its attackers, who went reeling to the ground and didn't get up.
"Everybody get back!" Camall shouted, lowering his goggles. His machine gun deployed, and the wheel on the front with its three holes started to spin. Anima was quite visibly reeling from the rain of bullets that came flying from Camall's weapon, enough that it wasn't able to attack, only scream with its agony.
"Camall, you're doing it!" I cheered. And while the aeon was immobilized, others of us seized the opening. Vidina sent his blitzball flying at it, and Nadaleen hit it with a powerful fire spell. But then…
TATATATATATATATATATclickclickclickclickclickclick
"I'm out!" And as soon as the words had left Camall's mouth, the still active Anima was attacking again. Its head was waving around while its eye glowed, and it looked like it was going to attack at random. But just before the blast fired, I figured out its target: me. I barely had time to jump and backflip away from the blast. I enjoyed the triumph of knowing I'd evaded the attack for a fraction of a second, before I saw what was coming at me now. A floating eye that hadn't been taken out was rushing right at me, and I'd blundered right into its path, and there was no way I'd have time to dodge it. All I could do was close my eyes and scream and wait to feel its teeth.
Instead I felt a pair of arms around me, and someone pulling me away. The next thing I knew I was face down on the ground, and I lifted my head, initially expecting to see Vidina standing over me. The arms that held me felt like his type of musculature. But that definitely wasn't Vidina that I saw leaping at that floating eye, slashing with a pair of long daggers to cut it down. For one thing, his hair was brown, not orange, and it was too long for Vidina's. And he was wearing a light brown jacket that definitely didn't belong to Vidina.
When the fiend dropped and started fading, my rescuer turned and looked down at me. I stared up at a face that was beautifully flawless except for a short scar on his right cheek, and a pair of light brown eyes looking at me. And then he said only three words: "Watch yourself, klutz." And with that he was gone, dashing off somewhere else. I stood up and only stared after him. I didn't know whether to be fascinated with the handsome stranger who'd just saved me or irked with him for being such a jerk.
"Riza! Stay alert!" The sound of Paine's voice snapped me back to the present—and alerted me to what she wasn't seeing by shouting at me.
"Paine watch out!"
She turned around in time to see what was happening, but not to evade Anima's blast. And in the next second, Paine was rolling through the air and landing on her face.
"Paine!" all of us shouted.
We were relieved to find she was still well enough to push herself up and grunt, "Keep fighting!"
"I got her!" Camall called, running to Paine's side. I wanted to do what Paine told me; I really did. I wanted to keep fighting. But looking up at the massive screeching aeon, all I could think was: how? Vidina hurled his blitzball, Nadaleen cast her magic, and some of the people from the stands were firing their guns, but as far as I could tell none of that was having much effect aside from making Anima mad. And even if Farru and I could comfortably get close enough to attack it before it blasted us away, I couldn't imagine we would accomplish much of anything.
And it was these thoughts that made me flinch when I heard another thunderous shriek—before I realized it didn't come from Anima. It was the airship that was tearing through the sky above us. It was hard to tell over the racket, but I think I heard Camall shout "They're here!"
We watched the craft circle around, and its salvos opened, releasing a barrage of missiles. The projectiles crashed against Anima, igniting in explosions that the aeon most definitely felt. It screeched even louder than ever, prompting me to drop to my knees and mash my hands over my ears. And then after the airship circled around again and let loose a second salvo, we could see that the assault was over. Anima was beginning to fade, its pyreflies dispersing.
Just before Anima was totally gone, its head reared back, and started screeching again—and after a second, I realized it was making words. Two words. "Nnnnnnneeeeeeewwww Yyyyeeeeevvvvvoooonnnn…"
And then the aeon vanished.
Camall came up behind me, carrying Paine with her arm over his neck. "Our ride has arrived," he said.
"Paine?" I didn't have to form a whole question.
"I'll be fine," she nodded. "Camall's potions helped."
"Come on everybody!" Vidina hurried us, already rushing for the exit. "Let's check out the airship!"
We made our way to the docks, where the silver, whale-shaped craft had touched down and was waiting for us. "Ypuid desa oui kud rana!" Camall called to the Al Bhed man who stood by the ramp leading to the open door.
"Vekinat oui luimt ryhtma ouincamv, Camall. Un fyc E fnuhk?" It sounded like a joke.
"This is Murran, everyone," Camall said.
"That's right. Welcome aboard the Explorer."
We filed up the ramp and into the airship. Murran shut the door behind us, saying, "Better sit tight, we're about to lift off again. We're headed for Steel Island."
"What's on Steel Island?" Farru asked.
"Something I was told you lot needed to see."
As the airship climbed into the sky, we began heading up to a higher deck, where we could get a view of the city below us through the slanted windows. And looking down at the stadium now, we were treated to a sudden and unpleasant dose of reality as we observed more than ever the results of the sudden attack. It was nice before to think we had saved just about everyone in the stands, but it just wasn't so. It wasn't so at all. Several people had not made it out of the stadium alive. All we could do was be thankful that we were still breathing, especially Paine. I looked to my right, where Nadaleen stood with tears streaming down her face. She gratefully accepted the comforting arm that Farru put around her.
"This sort of thing was supposed to have stopped happening when Sin was destroyed," Paine lamented, shaking her head. And honestly, even she didn't look too far away from tears herself. I hadn't seen the look on her face since she arrived on Besaid with her unhappy news.
So why couldn't I squeeze out any tears? I was definitely sad about what had just happened and for the people who had been prematurely sent to the Farplane, but at moment, I found I could really only think of one thing: the young man who saved me down there.
Who was that guy?
