Chapter 11
A Little Complicated
Part 2
Rikku fought with the tent flap of her room, batting at it as she couldn't find the zipper in the dark. She was already tired and frustrated from the events of the evening, namely the attempted assassination of Gippal, and felt like she was sleeping on her feet.
Leave it to Gippal to take his own life about as seriously as a hang nail...Rikku internally griped.
Finally she grasped the zipper and tugged it irritably upwards, almost giving herself an uppercut to the nose in the process. She stomped into the room, too impatient to zip the door up again. The wind was considerably calm that night and wouldn't blow into the tent anyway– a brief reprieve from the sandstorms that usually plagued the Southern Expanse.
Rikku flung herself unceremoniously onto her tiny cot and buried her face in her pillow. It had been a long, long day. She could hardly believe that it was just earlier that morning when she and Gippal had arrived at the Southern Expanse, and in that short time frame she had flipped between angry and confused more times than Brother on a Cactuar Hunt.
Rikku almost giggled at the thought. I'd rather take 1000 Needles to the face than listen to Gippal pick another fight with Micheal...
She sobered as her thoughts drifted to Gippal for the umpteenth time that day. Even after six months of pushing him out of her head, she had felt her heart leap into her throat when she saw him strolling toward her with that lazy grin on his face in the Eastern Expanse the day before.
Rikku groaned and pulled her pillow over her head. After everything she had done to make herself more independent– leaving her father's ship, leading the crew in the Eastern Expanse– Gippal still looked at her like a helpless little girl every time. Memories of Yuna's wedding day rose to her mind, and she remembered her frustration and embarrassment as Gippal scolded her and made her jealous by flirting with that floozy brunette.
'Floozy brunette...' Rikku wondered slowly as she pulled the pillow off of her face and hugged it to her chest. She vaguely recalled another brunette that she had last seen Gippal with. Suddenly she remembered her little "apple accident" in the middle of the busy Lucan marketplace, and the red leather-clad snob that had called her "Gippal's little secretary."
Irritated at the mere memory, Rikku wondered what had happened to that woman.
Probably just another one-night stand, she rolled her eyes. It's just like what Paine said, "He's about as careless with his women as he is with his alcohol." No wonder people are trying to kill him...
Suddenly feeling guilty about the callousness of her own thoughts, she frowned and curled up on her side, still hugging the pillow. She still couldn't accept Paine's version of an "Evil Gippal." Her thoughts traveled back to earlier that afternoon. He had kissed her, after all, but that didn't mean that he was trying to use her for anything...
"You can't just use me for a quick fix, you got that!"
"I don't know what I was thinking anymore than you do..."
Rikku cringed. He didn't think of her as just another "one-night stand," did he?
"Rikku..."
"I don't know what I was thinking..."
"I'm sorry."
"Ugh!" Rikku chucked her pillow at the tent wall, which absorbed the blow with a soft thud only to irritate her further. How could she feel like she had known him almost her whole life? Paine was right– she didn't know anything about the "real" Gippal. He hadn't grown up in Home; she actually had very few memories of him...
Rikku suddenly thought hard, trying to remember one of the few times he had visited Home. It was the day before he left to join the Crimson Squad. She had been 12 years old and sneaked into barracks where the older Al Bhed kids were having a party.
"Well if it isn't Cid's Little Girl!" he had walked up to her and ruffled her hair. He smelled strongly of alcohol, and Rikku fought a blush as he grinned down at her. She could see why all her friends had gushed about this tanned and chiseled older boy who came in with the excavation ships once every few months. And he knew her name. Well, kind of.
"What's a pretty little thing like you doin' down here?" His eyepatch completed his "bad boy" image, and Rikku suddenly knew why her nerdy older Brother always griped about Gippal "getting all the girls."
Before Rikku could answer him, however, he was swept away again by the boisterous crowd and she had to slip out before she was identified again. She, like all the other teenage Al Bhed girls back in the day, crushed on the "Al Bhed Hero" who went to join the battle against Sin. There were more Al Bhed boys who went to war, but Gippal stood out like a star athlete on the home team.
Everyone loved him. Maybe that was why she had such a hard time absorbing Paine's description of the dark, hardened soldier who didn't think twice about beating two men nearly to death in the middle of a busy marketplace. She had no idea what life had been like in the Crusader and Crimson armies, although it was she and her friends who had finally gone to the final battle with Sin.
She thought back to those days when she had masked her inner turmoil and depression over her cousin's impending death with a cheery attitude. Maybe that's what Gippal did, too– joked and flirted and drank to hide something much more painful.
But he's not like that at all, Rikku insisted to herself. It's not like he gets slobbering drunk and screws anything that moves... Rikku closed her eyes.
But someone's still trying to kill him, no matter how much he's changed...
A sound near the doorway made Rikku start. Her eyes snapped open and she rolled over in the bed to stare at the open tent flaps. They fluttered harmlessly in the breeze.
Rikku groaned again and figured that she should probably get up and close them before another sandstorm decided to pick up. As she rose to cross the room and zip the flaps, she heard another sound from the corner near the door. A soft click.
"Wha..." Rikku squinted into the shadows of the tent. Her eyes widened as she recognized the figure that stepped into the lamplight.
"Y, you!"
Gippal lay on his back in the dark of his tent, trying to will himself into unconsciousness while he knew he wouldn't get any sleep that night. Someone was trying to kill him, after all.
Gippal snorted at this. "Someone" indeed. Someone who works for New Yevon. Someone who squeezes into tacky red leather and "negotiates" over silk sheets and a crossbow...
He supposed he should consider himself lucky for that day in Luca when he left Anje to beat the crap out of those two bouncers. If Rikku hadn't incurred their wrath, he would have tried to charm Anje and most likely would have been discovered dead the next morning.
He hadn't pegged her for an assassin then, but now he was almost certain that it was she who had shot at him just hours ago. The whole "negotiation" front was just a ploy to cover Yevon's tracks. Once Anje had gotten his signatures, he was sure that he would have been dead before he had even dropped the pen.
Gippal was suddenly roused from his bitter musings to the sounds of commotion outside. He could hear distant shouts and saw the shadows of people running with lanterns past the thin material of his tent.
What the...
He jumped up immediately and made sure to grab his pistol from the night stand before rushing out of the tent. Outside, the air was very cool but there was smoke hanging in the air. Gippal ran after some crew members toward the center of the camp and saw flames rising into the air. People were hauling water from wherever they could find it to douse the flames that were quickly devouring one of the flimsy tents.
After a few numb and confusing moments, a distant thought began to trickle into the back of Gippal's mind– the tent was Rikku's.
Seized with sudden panic, Gippal shoved his way toward the blaze. His vision became tunneled and he was vaguely aware of someone shouting his name, but the only thing he could think of was getting to the crumbling tent.
Someone grabbed his arms from behind and jerked him backward, forcing him to drop his gun. Gippal wasted precious seconds yanking his arms free and whirring around to punch the person behind him. Barely noticing the sting in his knuckles, he turned back to the tent quickly to find the pitch fallen and the remains smoldering on the ground.
No, he thought fiercely, ignoring a stinging sensation in his eye as he shoved people aside and staggered toward the remains. No, no, no.
It had gone up quickly, and although crew members were trained to always be alert for a fire, they had not been fast enough. The charred material clung to the remains of furniture like a body bag.
Gippal could make out the shape of a cot underneath the charred fabric and staggered toward it with the numb idea of finding out who was sleeping in it. Someone grabbed his arm again, but his head was too fuzzy to react before he was clubbed over the head and lost consciousness.
Gippal slowly opened his eye and immediately groaned as a wave of pain pounded through his head. He felt like he had fallen down a flight of stairs or gotten supremely drunk. Or both.
"Okay," said a soft voice not far from where Gippal lay. He had to strain to hear the conversation near the door of the tent.
"Just keep looking. Send out the excavation teams to the surrounding dig sites, and take one of the hoovers to the Eastern Expanse to alert director Nhadala. The Machine Faction Leader needs to rest..."
"Yes, sir."
"And..." the first voice hesitated. "Use my telesphere to contact Captain Cid. He should still be aboard the submarine. He'll need to know about this."
"Yes, sir."
Immediately, Gippal opened his eye again and sat up, ignoring the pain that exploded in his head from the sudden movements. He recognized the room as Micheal's tent, and saw the man watching him warily near the doorway.
"Where's Rikku!" Gippal snarled as Micheal moved to make him lie down again.
"She not here," the taller man said steadily. Gippal noticed that Micheal's right eye was slightly swollen and bruised. He suddenly connected the injury to the throbbing pain in his left fist.
"What the fuck do you mean, 'she's not here'– not in this tent, or not in this world completely?"
"Just calm down..."
"Don't tell me to calm the fuck down! Tell me where she is!"
Gippal had jumped up in his rage with the intent of throttling the information out of Micheal's pretty boy neck, but the exertion made stars explode in his vision and he staggered. He felt Micheal's hand on his forearm to steady him, but he viscously threw him off.
"I mean she wasn't in the tent that caught fire," Micheal explained after a moment. "We checked the site for... remains, but there were none."
Gippal sat with his head clutched in his hands as he absorbed this information. Micheal regarded him coolly, ready to subdue the Machine Faction Leader if he lost control again.
"Then where the fuck is she," Gippal asked again thickly, not bothering to lift his head.
Micheal said nothing, and Gippal rubbed the back of his head and felt the open wound where Micheal had hit him with the butt of his own pistol. He had completely lost it when he imagined Rikku in that tent, and he knew that he would have run straight into the blaze if Micheal had not stopped him.
Instead of offering thanks, Gippal stood up again. Micheal made no move to stop him this time, and instead watched as the rough and worn Al Bhed man walked slowly to the door.
"You know where she is, don't you?" he called out as Gippal reached the doorway. Gippal stopped and stared past the open tent flaps and across the dark dunes.
"I know who to ask," he answered dully.
Gippal entered his tent for the third time that night feeling as though he would like nothing more than to spend the next 20 years unconscious. He moved mechanically about the room, withdrawing weapons from drawers and strapping on his body armor. He had no idea where to start looking for Anje, but he felt that as long as he was moving that he would think of something.
Think of something He closed his eye again and rubbed his face vigorously. New Yevon, Bevelle... the temples– Ixion, just think of something...!
Frustrated, he suddenly opened his eye and stared around the room. He noticed something sticking out of the pillow on his bed. A crossbow bolt.
He hurried over to the bed and viciously ripped the bolt out of the pillow, throwing feathers into the air in the process. The bolt had pinned a piece of paper to the pillow, and he read the note carefully. It was very simple:
"Come alone to the Baaj Temple. Your Al Bhed Princess awaits."
A/N: If anyone is curious about why Gippal was leaving to join the Crimson Squad at age 18 (when Rikku was only 12 and Braska's Calm was still in effect), then just consider how everyone knew the calm would come to an end eventually. People had time to prepare for the inevitable end of 10 years.
I also believe that when Gippal mentions (in Crimson Sphere 1) that he originally wanted to join the Crusaders, it was like a childhood dream that he realized would never happen (they don't take Al Bhed). So when he was old enough and still wanted to help, he did the next best thing and joined the army, training to be in the Crimson Squad (which he joined three/four years later in that fateful final exercise).
-P
Disclaimer: I did not create nor do I own (other than a copy of the game, which I bought at Best Buy), its characters, plots, locations, etc. It all belongs to SquareEnix and company, and obviously I'm not making any money off of this. In other words, I'm a day dreamer with no originality to speak of!