So it's been a few months...sorry about that everyone, if I still do have readers that is. Now that school's over I should be updating more often.
I was up until 2 in the morning finishing this, because my plot bunny threatened to hop away if I went to sleep. So let's hope this one is okay.
Any suggestions on how to better the story is highly appreciated!
So finally, Chapter 7!
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"Baralai."
Sitting in the pilot seat of the Celsius, confused as a chocobo, but determined, nonetheless, sat the young Praetor, eager to start flying. Brother, however, being the control freak he is, demanded he sit in Buddy's seat, so he could take over if needed. But after Brother's straight half-hour lecture on everything piloting, Baralai may very well have been his generations' Cid. Now Brother was just trying to convince him to back out.
"Baralai." the skiddish Al Bhed repeated, trying to cover his insecurity with attempting to be nonchalant. Baralai, however, only pulled out his pilot mask from his inventory and slid them over his eager eyes.
"Wow. This is a side of Baralai I've never seen." Paine remarked in her usual cool voice while failing to hide a smirk. Yuna couldn't help but giggle as Baralai looked over his shoulder and gave her a thumbs up, showing off his brown aviator gloves.
"Ahem!" Brother mock-coughed, unsurprisingly jealous at the interaction between Baralai and Yuna. Baralai looked over at him, his smile as wide as the beaches of Besaid, his gloved hands firmly gripping the wheel.
"You uh, may need to put the keys in the ignition, yes?" Brother said again in his faux-nonchalant tone. Baralai's smile diminished to a smirk.
"But I've already put it in the ignition, see?" Baralai arched his back so Brother could see the keys in the lock.
"Hey Baralai, that's the glove box." Buddy commented from his seat at Shinra's station. "The ignition is on the left side."
Baralai sheepishly pulled out the keys and put them in the ignition, Nooj howling with laughter in the background.
"Hey! You think that's funny, Mr. I-Don't-Know-How-To-Activate-A-Voice-Activated-Hover!" Paine retorted, instantly halting Nooj's laughter as he slunk over to the chair by Buddy.
The ship gained turbulence as Baralai turned the ignition, his foot tapping anxiously at the pedal.
"Now, Baralai, don't press the pedal too hard, or-"
Ignoring him, Baralai slammed on the pedal, the ship speeding from 0 to 60 in a split second, knocking anyone who was standing to the floor. Luckily there was nothing loose on the bridge, or that would have been really bad.
"-or you'll knock everyone over." Buddy laughed at the Yevonite, who had eyes as large as Anima's.
"Everyone alright?" Nooj asked, clinging onto his chair as he attempted to climb back on. The others only grumbled as they slowly stood to their feet.
"Oh wow, look outside!" Yuna exclaimed, running over to the windows up front. The clouds were just below them, parted slightly to allow vision of the places below. They could see the tip of the Travel Agency glowing brightly, the shoopufs carrying passengers to the other side, and even a small speck running frantically in circles which they were pretty sure was Tobli. Nooj and Buddy got bored of watching after a while and left, leaving Yuna and Paine there until the clouds cut off their view.
"Brings back good memories, huh?" Yuna smiled as she walked away from the window. "It's been so long since I've been here that I forgot how beautiful the view was."
Everyone stayed silent for a while, trying to figure out what to do until they reached Saiba. Brother kept throwing anxious glares at the child-like Baralai, who, though he'd never admit it, was piloting pretty well. Buddy messed around with Shinra's computer while Nooj brushed up on his sphere break skills, albeit slowly. However the silence was finally broken when Buddy brought up information on Saiba.
"Saiba Island, located in the world of Edyne, world of...criminal exile?" Buddy leaned towards the screen to double check the words he just read. "It says here that criminals from every world are sent to Edyne, and can only leave when proven innocent. An impenetrable invisible shield surrounds the world so no one can try to escape before trial..." Buddy trailed off, scrolling down the page, his eyes never leaving the screen.
"A...criminal island?" Paine asked in disbelief, walking over to Buddy with her hand to her face. "So some girl named Keimyn that nobody even knows wants Gippal to come get her from Saiba. Are we missing something?"
"More like are we not missing anything?" Nooj half-sarcastically remarked, his hands massaging his temples. Yuna stayed seated, determined to know more.
"Does it say anything about Saiba, Buddy?" Buddy typed on the keyboard, waiting for the search results to come up.
"Saiba Island, an island in the world of Edyne, blah blah blah..." he trailed off again, skimming for better information. "Oh! At Saiba, those accused await their trial on the flat greens, surrounded by water all around."
"That's...odd." Baralai turned his attention momentarily to Nooj, his uncharacteristic childlike attitude changing into a more businesslike, thoughtful one.
"HEY PRAETOR BOY, HANDS ON THE WHEEL!" Brother shouted, Baralai freaking out and frantically grabbing at the wheel.
Despite the silent, curious air of the bridge, Nooj let out a small chuckle.
"Looks like lover boy's falling for a criminal!"
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The morning was still fresh after Rikku's and Gippal's 'fight' in the forests of Djose. The bright sun shone through the scattered trees so brightly, you'd forget that not far away was a lightning-based temple. The breeze as well was just as amazing as it was in Besaid, leaving Rikku with the desire to tear off on her hover. However, just as she was starting towards it, Gippal jumped in front of her.
"Going somewhere?" he teased with that same cocky voice paired with the same cocky stance Rikku's known for so long.
"Maybe. What's it to ya?" she teased back, rolling her eyes and slightly pushing his shoulders. Gippal retaliated by ruffling her braided hair, causing her to squeal in protest and attempt to get away.
"I am hungry, so I'm gonna get some food. You should stay and watch the stuff."
Great. Now he's treating her like some housewife.
"But I just cooked breakfast! How could you possibly be hungry already?"
"Yeah, you cooked a breakfast I never even got to eat! You made me drop it after like one bite, remember?" He pointed to the overturned plate on the ground. Rikku rolled her eyes again, partly from her frustration at failing to fix her hair.
"Fine, go, but not on my hover!"
Gippal smirked, fixing a strand of hair she missed and patting her on the head. "Nice try, Cid's girl," he mocked, ignoring her scowl at the unwanted nickname, "but your hover is over there, by your tent, this one is mine."
"I think I know my hover when I see it!" Rikku retaliated, trying to pull it away from him. However he only laughed and pryed off her fingers, jumping onto the hover and speeding away before she could grab at it again. Rikku crossed her arms and blew away a strand of her bangs in front of her eye.
"Guess I should check all my spheres, if that really is my hover, since I'm stuck here alone...pimmo." (bully). Leisurely, she walked to the hover. As she reached it, she noticed that the sphere compartment wouldn't open easily.
"That's...weird. It was fine a second ago." she said through gritted teeth, trying to pry the door open. "What. The heck. Is going-" Suddenly the door unhinged, and out poured more than a dozen red spheres, each with a different symbol representing its weapon. Rikku smiled widely, shuffling through all the new spheres.
"I told you that was my hover, Gippal!" she deviously whispered to herself, picking out a sphere she wanted to see. She'd never seen a dressphere like the one she was looking at before. It was like an overweight suit of armor in green, wielding a huge axe that looked too big for even Auron himself. No wonder Gippal never changed dresspheres...
After a while of shuffling mindlessly through what seemed like the hundredth useless dressphere, Rikku finally came across one that actually looked acceptable. The weapon reminded her of Gippal's, only it was a little shorter with three bullet holes. The outfit, red to match the weapon, reminded her of a mix of Gippal's dressphere and her Alchemist one. Basically, it looked like a lower level of Gippal's dressphere, like he used it before Sin's renewal. Intrigued, she decided to try it on.
A red flash of light engulfed her, flames surrounging her every inch as she transitioned between spheres. But almost as soon as the surroundings came, they disappeared, leaving Rikku in the finished results.
"Hm. Gippal sure was a thin one back then!" she joked, noting the fact that it was hardly loose at all. She walked around a while with his weapon, aiming at trees and fighting fake battles. In the middle of her third 'fight' with Ultima Weapon, she heard the unmistakable sound of a hover off in the distance.
"Ohhh!! If Gippal sees me in this he'll kill me for sure!!" she squeaked, running around in search of her thief dressphere. By the time she found it, though, Gippal was hovering behind a tree behind her, soaking in all the humor.
"Haha, Cid's girl...you never fail to make me laugh..." he said to himself, making sure to hide well. He continued to stay there unnoticed until she finally switched spheres.
"About time. Though I must say, you were lookin' pretty good in my old dressphere." he shouted on his way down. Rikku startled at his voice, hurling his sphere at him in defense. It came dangerously close to hitting him, and he caught it behind his head, nearly falling off the hover in the process. Rikku gasped and covered her mouth, but started laughing anyway. Gippal chucked it back at her, but she only caught it and ran back to his hover.
"I told you you had my hover!" she taunted, putting his spheres back in the compartment. Gippal sighed loudly and walked over to his log, leaning against it with his elbow on top.
"So is that what you did the whole time, try on my dresspheres?" he joked, making himself as comfortable as he could on a log. Rikku mock-smiled and put the hover by the tent.
"Just that one, you didn't really have that many good ones. I could kick your butt at battle any time with those." she challenged, pointing at his spheres and making a gun with her fingers, 'shooting' them with a closed eye.
"Ha! Are you trying to mock me and challenge me? 'Cuz you're in WAY over your head, Cid's girl." Gippal stood up and made gestures like he was about to fight her.
"Maybe I am!" she went up to him and prodded his forehead, making him blink everytime. "You. Me. Hover race. First one to the bridge on the other side wins. If I win, you stop calling me Cid's girl. Deal?"
"Fine with me." he replied, pushing her finger away. "But if I win, I get the tent tonight."
"Gippal! That's not fair! It's not balanced enough!" she objected, still remaining quite close.
"Well, I guess you'll just have to win then, Cid's girl." he rebutted with even more emphasis on the name. The two stared at each other, competitiveness flowing in their eyes, as if they were fighting telekinetically. After a while they broke out into smiles and raced to their own hovers.
"What's the weather like down there, Cid's girl?" Gippal shouted from the air while Rikku was still running to her hover.
"You'll have to tell me tonight when you sleep out here, all alone!" she shouted back, shooting towards him and starting the race.
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"So what happened in that 'vision' of yours, Paine?"
Up to that point, the crew had been mindlessly hanging around the ship, doing anything they could to save themselves from complete boredom. Brother had long given up his attempt to salvage the wheel from Baralai, and instead moved on to actually practicing his Spiran (most likely because he knew mastering a foreign language would woo Yuna into leaving Tidus for him). Buddy and Nooj were still sitting at Shinra's old computer station, reading through some of his memoirs he apparantly forgot to delete...
"No man, listen to this, it's freakin' hilarious; Friday, March 11th. We went to Besaid today for a reason I'm not really sure of. Apparantly though it was a big thing for Yuna seeing as how she hasn't been there in a while. Her and that Black Mage- Lulu I think- were together for so long talking about baby stuff. I don't know how girls can talk forever about the most pointless stuff, like clothes and...I don't know, cute stuff? Ugh, I shudder at the word cute. But I guess it's no different with Brother walking around all day, talking about how impressed Yuna will be when he masters Spiran and takes her on a 'dah-tay', which I think means 'date' but you never know with him..."
At the mention of this, Brother hurled the Spiran book at Buddy and nearly cussed him out in Al Bhed, if Yuna (who spoke fluently by now) wasn't right next to him.
Paine and Yuna sat on the second floor of the bridge leading to the elevator (you know, the one they always jump off of) watching some old spheres from the Gullwings.
Poor Baralai looked like he was about to die of boredom at the wheel, not even bothering to hold onto it since he didn't even change direction in the past hour.
All of this led to the question everyone had wanted to ask, but Nooj was the only one to remember, about Paine's vision.
So what was in this...vision?
"Well, the only thing I saw was Rikku on her hover, in a White Mage dressphere of all things." she paused a moment to recall all of the events. "She was with Gippal, I'm pretty sure, because they kept teasing each other."
"What did they say?"
"Well, the first thing I heard was her saying 'Stop looking at me!', but I couldn't see anything then." she recalled, rubbing the side of her head. "Then Gippal said, 'How could I? You're all covered up!', but I only heard that, too..." the bridge was silent as everyone tried to piece together the puzzle. "Oh, but the last thing was her saying, 'And I'm going to stay that way, oui pimmo!' (you bully!). "But that time I saw her as she said it..."
"What was she doing?"
"She saw a spot of blood on her sleeve and winced a little as she wrapped it up. That was it."
Still silence.
"Why is it Paine couldn't see her until the end?" Baralai asked from his seat, his mind clearly off piloting. His question went unanswered when nobody could think of anything.
"Paine, you said you had a flashback back at the beds, right?" Brother asked a thought filled Paine, who merely nodded in his direction.
"So? What did you see then?"
Paine sat slightly open-mouthed, thinking back to just a while ago. "It was...like a really fast slideshow...like you blink and you miss it. Only the memories weren't so good..." Yuna sat up straighter, recalling that she also experienced what Paine had.
"Every single image I saw was of Rikku. But...all of them were of her in battle...getting, well...hurt. It started out small, but gradually got worse, like seeing our fight with you guys in the Den of Woe, the fight with Trema...I even saw her out of health at the Angra Mainyu fight, laying on the ground..." Paine took a long, deep sigh, trying to get herself to move on. "The last I saw was of her lying on a bunch of rocks...completely unconscious. It scared the Farplane out of me, for a split second I was sure she was dead." She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, trying not to lose her mind.
"I..." was all Buddy could say. Brother wouldn't even move- the thought of his eighteen year old kid sister being dead was too much for him to even think about.
"Guys, it happened to me too, back at Besaid." Yuna spoke up, though her eyes remained on the sphere she was playing with. Everyone tiredly focused their attention towards her. "Only, I didn't see Rikku in battle, or even, well, dead in battle. It's weird...I saw her in fewer, longer memories, like a spherecast or something. The first one was from when we were kids, and she found out that her dad had to go to Luca on her birthday. Then I saw when she found out her mom died...that was really hard to see. Then at school when she saw Gippal flirting with her friend...a bunch of high school stuff...and then her lying across the rocks like Paine saw..." she covered her eyes with her hands.
"So you both saw the same incidient, but different memories?" Buddy asked again, turning to the computer but realizing that it couldn't help him now.
"We both saw it then. How come it was only me that saw her on the hover?" Paine asked with obvious frustration at the small progression. The bridge was silent for a good three minutes, not including Nooj's 'I need a vacation' near the beginning.
The automatic door behind the two girls swooshed open, and there stood Barkeep, looking like he'd been there for a while.
"I thinksh I may haf a sholushun!"
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Back at Bikanel, the sun was shining as brightly as ever, the heat as scorching as it was that fateful night three years ago when everything fell apart. Although it was hot, it was nothing the Al Bheds weren't used to, and they continued to build as much as ever. Though this time, nobody even spared a thought at continuing the efforts to build Home. Instead it seemed like every single person was working on a different machina, except none of them were finished. Workers would walk away from their projects and move onto something new without even a second thought. If Cid were here...
"Najahka." came a voice from inside the leader's station. A man slightly on the short side but still physically fit came running down the hallway, looking through every open door to find his leader. His unkempt black hair looked moppy, obviously he'd woken up in a rush. He was a sight to see, his black and gray layered clothes paired with his temple-to-cheekbone tattoo symbol and messy hair made even Najahka smirk.
"What is it, Hyeja?" Najahka asked impatiently, turning away from the panting man to peer through the window at his workers.
"Cunno, cen, pid-" (Sorry, sir, but-) he sighed, shaking his head and instead trying to speak in Spiran. "Ihcina is still in Djose, she said she had...important business to take care of." he stopped and waited for Najahka's reply, but after a momnet of silence he pressed forward. "I remained at the Moonflow as ordered, and after a while I finally saw the aircraft leave."
Najahka turned slightly to his side, unblocking the sun in the window and creating a glare to where Ihcina couldn't see. "Did you track it as ordered?" he asked intimidatingly but with a trace of anxiousness. Hyeja nodded and shaded his eyes from the glare.
"I got report that they are headed away from Spira, to the world border."
Najahka smiled villaniously and turned completely around to face Hyeja, blocking the light again. "And the old man?"
"At Saiba as we speak, sir."
"Aqlammahd..." (Excellent...) Najahka nearly whispered. Hyeja remained in the room.
"Ah, sir? May I ask why we need to send the old guy so far away?"
Najahka's smile faded at the thought of the man's connections. "Because he knows Gippal, Hyeja. I want that punk to suffer as much as I have..." Hyeja stared blankly for a moment before Najahka proceeded on. "I will make not only his life miserable, but also the lives of those he loves, all to avenge my brother!"
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It had been a while since the race had started, and the bright Djose morning had turned to a dimmer afternoon. The bridge was not far off, only a forest away, but Gippal was ahead quite a bit, and Rikku was losing energy and speed. Gippal, surprisingly, was feeling a little guilty for taking her hover before.
"I did get a jump start on her." he said to himself when he knew he was out of her earshot. "But I really want that tent tonight, I can't stand those damned bugs anymore. And the whole 'drop the Cid's girl' thing?" He mulled over his thoughts some more, before turning to check that she couldn't see him and shooting down to the middle of the forest.
However, Rikku did see him.
"Ooohh! Who does he think he is?" she shouted, then covering her mouth when she realized her volume. "I could have won fair and-"
Her thoughts were interrupted as she looked below her at a spot in the forest that was oddly shining, even in the afternoon. Knowing this wouldn't affect the race, she floated down into the light.
"What is this...?" she said after finally spotting an orange sphere slightly covered in dirt, lying in the distance.
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Yes, yes, y-e-s. Chapter 7! Be honest with me in the reviews, okay? And I'll give review replies from now on, because it's the polite thing to do for anyone who took time to read this :D.
