Ha! I am the queen of cliff hangers! All bow down! Bragging rights aside, I'm trying to get this story busted out ASAP. So please keep on your toes and be sure to check back in to see if I've updated. There is a reference to Trema in this chapter again. If you wanna read up on him check out a website.
Heard about your trip,
I heard about your souvenirs.
I heard about the cool breeze
In the cool nights,
And the cool guys
That you spent them with.
"What?" Pain and Lulu gasped at the same time.
Baralai slumped further away from the girls, not wanting to catch their glares. "Don't be upset. This is a political matter that doesn't concern-"
The stiletto spikes of Paine's boots slammed into the ground with every angry step toward Baralai. She slapped her palm onto his shoulder and wrenched him around to face her. When he couldn't bring their gazes to meet and she screamed, "Politics? Gippal is your friend!"
"And I will protect him unconditionally. But I cannot just jump into this. I have to be sure. If Gippal knew, this would be a war against Yevon all over again."
Paine folded her arms across her chest, "So, you're trying to save your own career?"
"I don't expect you to understand."
Baralai fell to the ground with his head in his hands. They were guardians, protectors, followers. They didn't understand what it meant to be the one to pull the trigger or make the world-altering changes. They could judge his morals and criticize his actions, but at the end of the day, he was the one who had to live with his decisions. As a leader, Baralai had to foresee all possible outcomes to his actions. His steps had to be calculated perfectly and at the moment his information was still too insignificant to trouble with.
Lulu knelt down across from him, her face cold and stern like Paine's but her words far more welcoming. "How can you be sure?" she questioned in a soft voice.
Baralai lifted a shaky hand from his side bag, carrying with it a glowing red sphere.
Paine snatched it bitterly before Baralai could protest. Her crimson eyes fixed onto a blurry image of Isaaru, his voice barely audible and sweat cascading down his face. He wore the black, high collared robes of a Yevon monk. His cropped ponytail had been stripped away, leaving him with a smooth bald head, also common to the monk's appearance. However, small scrapes and cuts freckled his usually pristine complexion.
Around his image, pyrflies swarmed.
As Paine watched, Baralai fought off a painful tear. "He wanted to rejoin Yevon. As a summoner, a part of him still remained with the temples. I hired him on as an assistant. The first business I had for him was to head down into the Chamber of the Fayth and make sure the lifts were working. I still don't know what he found down there, but it led him to search Via Infinito for more clues." Baralai struggled to inhale. "I found some monks heading to the main Chamber of Worship, the antechamber to the Chamber of the Fayth. There are large flames there that have been lit since the temple's birth. The summoners used them to light torches before descending to acquire Bahamut. I caught them dumping two large bags into the flames. When these monks left, I ordered the flames be extinguished." Baralia's words left his lips in shards between gasping breaths. "The monks refused to move. I had to do it myself. I found Isaaru's body and the body of a small boy in the bags…slaughtered…burned. And the sphere."
Paine handed the sphere to Lulu. "How long have you known?" Paine asked.
"I've had the sphere for almost a year, but I didn't want to retaliate before I was sure. The pieces are coming together now, but I don't know if I can do this. The monks rule Bevelle now. I'm not strong enough to do this myself."
Well, I guess I should have
Heard of them from you.
I guess I should have
Heard of them from you.
"Praetor Baralai…the monks must be…stopped," Isaaru told the sphere in a gasping hoarse voice. "This place…the monks have found a way to direct souls."
A gunshot sounded and Isaaru ducked to the floor.
Isaaru hurried to continue before the shots got closer. "Lady Yunalesca could redirect souls into aeons. These beasts here…they're aeons. They're trying to create…a grand aeon of sorts. They use the non-believers as experimental sacrifices."
Isaaru shoved the sphere into the folds of his robe. He prayed whoever viewed it would still listen. A towering woman approached him, carrying Pacce, his youngest brother, by the wrist. "I hope you weren't looking for this," she said. Pacce squirmed and kicked, but the beast of a woman did not budge. "Someone had been tampering with the lifts down here. The monks will be happy to know that I've found the culprits."
Isaaru gripped his staff like a soldier. The aeons wouldn't be coming to his aid, but he could still conjure up a painful holy spell. "The praetor will not stand for this!" Isaaru shouted.
"The praetor? If he's lucky, I'll have him sent into something nice…an adorable little helm. You, however, I have something much more ironic in mind for you, my lost little summoner."
A monk carrying a rifle in one hand and his staff in the other appeared at the woman's side. "We've found Trema. I'm afraid he's too strong to redirect into a fiend."
The woman groaned and pushed Pacce to the monk. "Kill the kid. I'll take care of Trema. As for this monk, find Bahamut down here and redirect the monk into him." The monk nodded and called for other monks carrying the same rifles to join him. They each grabbed Isaaru's hands and began to carry the brothers away. "Wait," the giant woman shouted. "Did you find the worm?"
"Yes ma'am," her subordinates responded.
"How big is it?"
The first monk scoffed, "We can't even fit it down here. There's a large cavern beneath the Chamber of Fayth that was used to store Vegnagun. It's down there."
The woman laughed loudly and smiled at Isaaru. "We spent weeks in Bikanel looking for the biggest fiend we could. Turned out to be a giant worm. I just hope it will be enough to house Gippal's ego."
"What use could you have for summoning?" Isaaru called to her.
"There's a lot of Al Bhed on Bikanel. I'm afraid there just aren't enough bullets for all of them."
Don't you see?
Don't you see ,
That the charade is over?
And all the "Best Deceptions,"
And "Clever Cover Story" awards
Go to you.
Gippal opened the door to his bedroom to find Rikku snoozing happily, sprawled out across his bed. He wondered if she had moved an inch since his early morning escape. A CommSphere rested on top of her bare abdomen. Gippal checked its monitor and read the stats to see if she had any more calls while she was out. There had been nothing since that morning.
He attempted to put the CommSphere back on his dresser, but Rikku's eyes fluttered open at the sudden loss of weight on her stomach. "You're a light sleeper," Gippal commented. Once a thief, always a thief, she thought to herself. "I'm surprised you're still here," he said, knowing full well it was because her ship was gone.
"I miss the smell of sand," she lied. "Where did you go today?"
"Business meeting," he answered. Gippal sat at the foot of his bed and started removing his boots. He knew she wouldn't be confessing anything soon, but that left him with an excuse to keep his lips sealed about where he disappeared to. "What did you do today?"
Rikku sat up and pointed to various spots around the house, "I did nothing over there, then I moved over to loitering in the kitchen, then being bored in the living room, and I finished up by boring myself to sleep in here."
Gippal laughed politely, "Why didn't you go out?"
"And see who? You're the only person that knows where I am." They both recognized her lie but refused to acknowledge it.
"I didn't mean to run out on you this morning," he apologized.
Rikku crawled over to him on all four, arching her back and pointing her rear toward the ceiling. In a lynx-like manner, she sat back on her heels on Gippal's lap and nestled into his chest. Contrary to her seductive motions and sultry tone, Gippal read deeply into her flat words, "My world doesn't revolve completely around you. I managed." Gippal played along and smirked down at her, each playing their role in continuing the charade. "Are you hungry?"
"Hungry, tired, sore. Take your pick."
Rikku slipped around the side of him. "Alright, you know the routine. Take off your shirt," she commanded from behind him.
Gippal turned to look at her but she was already kneading her hands in preparation. With the emotional distance he put between them, he wasn't too excited about any empty physical contact. "I'll be fine, really. I just need to relax." He thought of the bottle of dra pmuut hiding in one of his cabinets.
Rikku yanked at his shirt, "Get over yourself. The thief in me had to fight off pawning all your furniture all day. My hands have been a little too idle for my taste."
When she finally did away with his shirt, she pushed Gippal down onto his stomach and crawled onto his back. There was no shyness to her this time. As usual, her short skirt rode up her hips and thighs as she planted her legs on either side of him. Her hands worked at him like dough, running every inch of his back under the muscles of her tiny fingers. If she was determined to act like nothing was going on, what was the harm in using it to his advantage?
We'll just play our parts, he told himself as she squeezed at the knots in his back.
So kiss me hard
Because this will be the last time that I let you.
You will be back someday,
And this awkward kiss
That tells of other people's lips
Will be of service
To keeping you away.
"Thanks for bringing me back, Rikku," Maroda whispered to her.
They stood alone in the halls outside the barracks of the Youth League. The new head quarters in Kilika Bay were finally operational and Maroda had been appointed second in command to Commander Lucil. He requested that Rikku return him to the barracks after his brush with fate in the Thunder Plains. The pair spent the night in Guadosalam directly following that night. In the morning, Maroda spent most of the morning asking Rikku about what happened to the Gullwings and Rikku asking why Maroda and his brothers ended up going their separate ways. After hours of conversing, Maroda decided that he should return to base before anyone starting worrying.
Rikku smiled warmly, "No problem."
The barracks were dark and the sound of the bay crashing against the basement halls sent chills down Rikku's back. The thought of a basement level being underwater didn't sit well with her. Being under sand wasn't as scary. She assumed if Home collapsed, she could claw her way out of the sand, but drowning terrified her.
"Where will you go tonight?" Maroda asked.
Rikku shrugged as usual. She leaned back against the cold wall then brought her arms to her chest to try and trap her own body heat. "The ship's been on the fussy side. I might head out to the Calm Lands for a repair." She decided to leave out the part where she would have to rob people. "Where's your room," she asked, trying to make small talk to ease the awkward silence between them.
Maroda nodded toward a door at the end of the hall then started heading that way. Rikku didn't move at first, so Maroda returned to her. He placed a palm on either side of her and then leaned down to her face. She didn't see him hover or even pause in permission. Their lips collided in a hungry kiss and then parted. The quick but passionate kiss left her mind dizzy and screaming: Gippal, Gippal, Gippal.
Maroda didn't study her face after or say or word. It went against every kiss she had ever known. She wondered if he even knew what he was doing. When she finally brought her fingertips to her lips to check if they had indeed been kissed, Maroda laughed to himself, "I'm sorry."
Gippal, Gippal, Gippal.
But what girl could say no to a free kiss if it was from someone who really meant it.
She didn't protest. She didn't reply. Rikku just stood there like a statue waiting for someone to take the reins and decide where she would go next. Maroda still had her trapped between the wall and his chest. Her physical position and lack of protest reassured him that he was still in the right to kiss her again. He didn't wait to do so.
When he again released her, he went back to his dorm door and opened it, stepping aside to allow her entrance. "I'm not asking you to do something you don't want to. I just…don't want to be alone."
The line was cliché at best, but how many times had she told herself the same thing. She used the company of fiends and thunder and rain and sleeping friends for so long she almost forgot what human interaction felt like.
I heard about your regrets.
I heard that you were feeling sorry.
I heard from someone
That you wish you could
Set things right between us.
"You're not falling asleep on me, are you?" Rikku asked.
"Hmm?" Gippal asked. Her voice had gently awoken him from his happy quasi-slumber.
Rikku smiled down at him and repeated, "If you're tired, I could leave you alone."
Gippal finally decided to turn over. Rikku allowed her hands to fall on his chest and watched as his eye darted about the ceiling, anywhere but hers. "I really want this to work. I wouldn't have let you back into my life if I really didn't want this to work." Rikku pulled back her hands as if they had been burned. "We're not doing this with honesty. You crying and screaming at me back on the ship, that was honest. This is…"
"Honesty? Alright, let's start with you, where did you go today?"
Gippal pushed her back gently, if only to move her further away from him. "That's not what I meant." Rikku took his hint, stood up, and walked toward the door. Gippal chased her toward the door, "I'm sorry, but what do you even care what I do as meuh? You abandoned us, remember?" Rikku stepped further away from him again. This time, he didn't budge.
She was halfway between his bedroom and the front door now. Hands on her hips, beaming angrily, she asked, "Are you mad because I abandoned Bikanel or because I abandoned you because honestly your priorities seem to be a little askew."
Gippal leaned against the door jamb nonchalantly, "Okay, reality check for a minute, what exactly are you talking about?"
The bickering teenagers they once were slowly surfaced, avoiding the subject and making up excuses. Rikku folded her hands across her chest like a 15-year-old and Gippal scoffed at her words like a 17-year-old. "I found the spheres in your bedside table. You can keep Bikanel, I don't want it."
"That's just like you, ya know. This is the same crap you gave your father when you left. You're mad because I love you enough to put you before my people, but when I don't you start acting like a jealous girlfriend, asking where I've been and what I've done." Gippal stormed to the set of drawers angrily. He yanked open the drawer and pulled out the sphere. "This sphere, by the way, wasn't made for you. I made this for the girl I sat with unbryh and who I kissed before I left for the Crimson Squad. It wasn't made for the girl who can't make up her mind about what she wants. It wasn't made for the girl who's getting early morning phone calls from Paine about missions concerning world leaders."
"I should have known you'd spy on me, you've only done it for the last two years."
"This is my house." They glared at each other a while longer before Gippal broke the silence, "No one's forcing you to stay."
"You gonna follow me if I leave again?"
"I'd be more worried that I'd have you arrested for meddling."
Rikku shook her head in pity. She thought momentarily about packing her things and leaving, but she soon realized none of it was hers, not the spheres, not the drawers, not the furniture, not Bikanel, not Gippal.
Quietly, Rikku returned to the empty desert waiting outside for her.
Well, I guess I should have
Heard of them from you.
I guess I should have
Heard of them from you.
"I thought you'd be asleep by now," Paine said before taking a seat next to Gippal in front of the dying fire.
Gippal gripped his rifle tightly in one hand and held his other in front of the fire, attempting to absorb every bit of warmth. He gestured to the pyrflies that filled the cave, "Could you sleep in a place like this?"
"I just have to think of a happier place."
"Like inside a drake's mouth? That is, in fact, happier than this place." Paine laughed at his comment. She enjoyed his company immensely. Their time together in the Crimson Squad had been perilous thus far, but Gippal somehow kept that beyond him. "So, Miss Paine, what's on the agenda after this?"
Paine traced lines in the dirt with her finger. On the other side of the blaze, Baralai and Nooj slept comfortably with their rifles close by. Gippal had volunteered to be on the lookout, which suited the sleepless soldier just fine. He longed for lazy afternoons in the desert when he pass the entire morning away, sleeping in the shade. The second his feet left Al Bhed territory, he became an insomniac. "Assuming we make it out of here?"
"We have to make it out of here. I have someone back home who would kill me if I died here."
"I haven't thought about that. I suppose that I assumed I'd stay with the Crimson Squad; get promoted to something more than just a recorder."
Gippal tried to trace lines in the dirt with his fingers too. No matter how he tried, they always turned into cactuars. "I don't see why they'd wanna record any of this." Gippal let his eye wander about the cave. "It's not exactly scenic." The cave walls sat like shadows behind them, never touching them, but dark and looming. The fine dirt gathered everywhere, much like sand, but without the warmth. The thin dirt left layers of grimy silk on all of Gippal's clothes, his hands, and under his nails.
"What about you? What will you do after this?" Gippal smiled at the thought of his homecoming. He knew it would be grandiose. It was no secret that the Al Bhed people had placed their hopes in the hands of the meuh and the youths. The Al Bhed only had so many icons and most of them had either left the desert or died. Marina, meuhacc (lioness) of the Al Bhed people died the first and only time Sin attacked Bikanel. Rin left to become a worldly merchant. And Nhadala went to research other areas of Spira. The Al Bhed future seemed to sit on the shoulders of Cid's kin and the aspiring young man who was taking charge as the greatest machine technician of the past century. Only lately had Gippal entertained the idea of becoming much more than the leader of a machine faction. The position of meuh would be up for grabs once Cid got too senile, which didn't seem too far away.
"When I get home, I'll be a war hero, which translates to fame, glory, positions of power, and of course, women."
Paine vaguely recalled him mentioning a girl that he was close to. She nudged him slyly and proceeded to use her superior feminine cunning to mine for information, "I thought you had a girlfriend? What's her name again?"
"Rikku?"
"Ah ha, so you do have a giflriend!"
Gippal groaned in faux frustration. It felt strange and yet perfectly acceptable to refer to Rikku as his girlfriend. "You tricked me. Listen, she's not actually my girlfriend. And she'd probably kick my ass for calling her one. So between you and me, let's just call her a perspective match."
"She must be special," Paine commented in her usual flat tone.
"She is everything a man like me could ever want. She's outgoing, she's gorgeous, she's got my back."
"That's what's important to you?"
"She's the only girl I could ever promise the world to and follow through."
I'm waiting for blood
To flow to my fingers,
I'll be all right
When my hands get warm
The sun stabbed in hot rays at every grain of sand in the Bikanel desert. Littering the desert like spots on a coeurl, the cactuar sweat along with the shrubs, the sand, the machina ruins, the fiends, and the lone woman treading the sand in a pair of heavy boots. The boots left a trail of zigzagging footprints wherever they traversed. Mirroring them, a set of four paws stamped the sand as well.
Rikku turned to face the enormous lupe that had followed her since she passed dra dufar (the tower), the largest dune in Bikanel. Her eyes and mind betrayed her, lost to the heat of the desert. Had she remained in the desert, like a good Al Bhed girl, the heat would hold no grudge against her. But it seemed that the fiery hands of the desert sought to capture Rikku in its deadly clutch. Rikku could only assume that the lupe was waiting for her to keel over dead so he could feast. She hadn't the energy nor the strength to run or fight the giant fiend.
"I gotta warn ya, friend," she called back to the monster, "I'm not as tasty as I look."
Rikku swayed like a drunk from the fatigue the temperature caused. Her steps began to stumble one after the other until she finally tossed herself to the sand. The lupe nudged its cold nose against the small of Rikku's back, causing her face to fall flat into the sand.
"Hey! I ain't dead yet. Hold your chocobos!"
The lupe nudged and then whimpered.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll be out of your way in a good hour or two." Rikku rolled onto her back and looked up at the beast panting down at her. His eyes, though four times the size of hers, shared the spiral iris. Rikku grinned, "Guess that makes us family." Realizing her own words, she slapped her arm over her eyes to guard herself from the blinding sun and from the beast's gaze. "Well then I wouldn't stick around. We're just gonna end up hating each other in about five minutes."
The lupe whimpered again before laying down next to her.
The soft hum of a hover approached Rikku's sweltering ears. She turned to her furry companion and asked, "You hear that, friend?"
The lupe perked up an ear then shot its gaze to the incoming vessel. Soon, the beast began to panic, nudging harder at Rikku, nipping lightly with his teeth but whimpering much louder. "What is your glitch?" Rikku sat up to see the hover. "Maybe it'll come rescue me, and you can go find some other hallucinating wanderer." Rikku stood up and began waving her arms, "Hey! Hey! Over here!"
The lupe posted itself in front of Rikku, gnashing his teeth at the hover. The hover came to a stop in front of the angry lupe. In a quick, shocking movement, the hover's operator dismounted and shot a grappling arrow into the neck of the lupe.
"Hey, that was a little uncalled for," Rikku said with her hands on her hips.
The lupe staggered about, kicking up sand, then came to a landing with one paw resting across the hover. The operator wrenched the bloody arrow from the fiend's neck.
Rikku readied her daggers, "Hey, you gotta problem?"
The operator removed a black ski mask and goggles. His head was shaved completely bald. Rikku recognized his signature haircut and the staff he carried on his back as the uniform of a Yevon monk. The monk used a CommSphere to speak to someone with a woman's voice, "I took care of Cid. He's got an Al Bhed girl with him."
"Take care of it," the female's voice commanded.
With that, the monk placed his communicator back into his pocket and aimed another arrow toward Rikku's chest.
Rikku leapt to pounce on him with her daggers, but just as her feet left the ground, the arrow with the grappling prongs at the end embedded deep into her chest cavity. A numbing electric shock pulsed through her veins until her mind completely turned off.
And faded to black.
Ignoring the phone,
I'd rather say nothing.
I'd rather you'd never
Heard my voice.
"It's an elemental fiend, I'll handle it," Lulu shouted as a bolt of thunder passed over the trio's head.
"Lulu, you can't!" Paine called to her, but it was too late.
Lulu folded and swayed her arms in front of her, poised to cast a powerful waterga spell, just as the elemental charged to cast another attack.
Lulu concentrated on the teachings she had abandoned the second the Eternal Calm came into effect. Concentrate your powers. Feel every drop of water growing into a mist, growing into a wave, growing into a tsunami. Oceans, rivers, rain, puddles, geysers, cascades, streams, ponds, waterfalls, all gathering into a tsunami. Before Lulu could unleash the spell, Paine slammed her into the ground and hurled her blade like a javelin straight into the main body of the elemental. The blade glimmered with a purple glow which Lulu recognized as a demi spell.
The elemental convulsed in pain. "It's weak. Send it now!"
Baralai nodded and placed his hands in prayer position. As Baralai's radiating presence grew near to the elemental, it began to give off pyrflies.
Paine returned to Lulu's side. "Are you okay? It wasn't my intention to hurt you."
Lulu slowly came to her feet. "Don't worry. I've been through worse. What's happening to it?"
"Can't you feel it?" Paine asked. "That elemental…it's Auron."
The pyrflies danced like ribbons, wrapping themselves around Baralai and then shooting off from the dying elemental. When the display came to a standstill, all that remained was the young body of Auron, limp on the cold floor of Via Infinito.
Baralai looked down with pain in his eyes. There were so many fiends. He feared the task at hand, sending all of them to the Farplane before their time, or in Auron's case, long after their time. Auron struggled to roll onto his back. "Finish…it…" he whispered to Baralai.
Auron had been a monk of Yevon before devoting his services to following Lord Braska as a guardian. Baralai and he shared the flawed teachings of all the monks. It was the only thing that brought him to finish the job. Baralai didn't want Auron to know of the lies.
You're calling too late,
Too late to be gracious
And you do not warrant
Long good-byes.
You're calling too late.
You're calling too late.
You're calling too late.
-Dashboard Confessional
Crazy times! I know! Don't worry. I'll update soonzies! I hope this chapter was at least entertaining. Sorry, I know it was a tad boring, but what's coming up next is gonna blow ya mind!
