Disclaimer: See chapter one.

A/N: Hope everyone had a happy Christmas and New Year!

The Moonflow

The next morning was as difficult as I thought it would be—Jecht whined and hemmed and hawed and wouldn't get up until even Braska lost his temper and dumped a weak water spell over his head. Jecht looked at him disbelievingly, holding a hunk of wet hair in each hand, but Braska just smiled brightly and slowly explained (using small words) that it was time to get up.

There was a minimum of fuss after that, but the pace didn't pick up much. Jecht kept running back to his room for forgotten things. After the third trip back to the room, I just snapped, "That's it. If there's anything you've left in there, you'll just have to do without it. We're leaving."

We hadn't even made it to the edge of town before Jecht remembered that he'd left something in the bar the night before.

"No."

"I wasn't talkin' to you," Jecht retorted. I half expected him to stick his tongue out at me. I was surprised at how much I felt like doing that myself. What is it about this idiot that makes me behave so childishly?

"Alright, Jecht. But we're not stopping to get anything to drink. We're just getting your—what did you say it was?"

Jecht mumbled something incoherent as he walked away back toward the bar.

"Jecht? We are really going back for something you left there, aren't we?"

"Listen, I like to drink, but I'm not stupid enough to try to get one in now."

"He didn't answer the question," I mumbled to Braska. Braska just looked annoyed. By this point, though, Jecht was far ahead of us and had already ducked into the bar.

"Why couldn't he have walked that fast earlier?" I muttered, not really expecting an answer. Braska just shrugged. We came in just as Jecht was closing up his bag up at the counter.

"Did you find it?" Braska asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah," he said, putting the pack on his back. "Good to go!"

"Out of curiosity, what did you leave?"

"Oh! My, uh . . .sphere-cam."

"No, that's what you ran back into your room for the second time."

"No, uh, that's not what I meant. Sorry, I'm still tired. Brain's not workin' right." I barely kept myself from asking what time of day it did work right. A shot that easy doesn't do any credit to the one that takes it. "What I meant to say was . . .my, uh, good luck charm."

"Your good luck charm."

"Yeah. I, uh, didn't want to tell you guys about it. Kinda embarrassing, you know? I mean, who really believes in that junk? But I always carry it around with me."

"What is it?"

"Well, I can't very well show you! The good luck'll come off!"

Braska and I exchanged looks, but didn't press him on the subject. Neither of us really believed that he carried around a good luck charm, but it really wasn't our business to pry. Besides, he couldn't have gotten a hold of something all that bad.

We'd gotten all of fifty feet outside of Guadosalam before Jecht had to run to the side of the road and empty his stomach into a bush. I walked away a bit. The sound of someone else being sick always made my stomach rebel, and I had no intention of losing my breakfast.

It seemed to help quite a bit, though. He stopped squinting and rubbing his head, and his complaints gave way to the same idle chatter he "entertained" us with. Still, he seemed to be doing alright, keeping Braska out of the fray so he could concentrate on his spells, taking care of the smaller, quicker fiends while I hacked away at big, slow ones. After all the practice he had gotten on the Thunder Plains Braska and I didn't have to constantly watch him, ready to bail him out at a moment's notice. No wonder he thinks he's a star blitzball player, I thought grudgingly, He catches on to this stuff fast. Then I mentally snorted. Too bad he's hopelessly stupid otherwise.

The chimera I was fighting went down in a cloud of pyreflies, and I turned to see Jecht finishing off an agama that had come in from the back. His sword wobbled just a little before he put it back in its sheath, and I took a quick step forward, but he seemed uninjured. Still, it took only one scratch for their poisoned claws to do their work, and some of the rare varieties of lizards left even nastier reminders.

"You alright, Jecht?"

"Yeah…yeah 'm fine." He wobbled a bit on his feet.

"Are you sure? We've fought a large number of fiends on this road. If you are tired, simply say so. I do not think it is much farther to the Moonflow—we should have plenty of time to take a short break." Braska looked at me for conformation. I nodded; Guadosalam was only seven cholls(1) from the Moonflow, and we had covered more than half of that already.

"I c'n keep up," Jecht muttered, and took a long drink from his canteen. The sun was becoming quite hot. We'd have to be careful not to get too dehydrated.

The further we traveled, however, the wobblier Jecht seemed to get. At first I thought I'd been wrong in thinking him uninjured before—he must be experiencing some of the effects of the agama's poison—until he snuck off to refill his canteen, instead of filling it where Braska and I were refilling ours. Any sort of concern I'd had for him melted like butter in a hot skillet. That idiot. When he came weaving back from around the curve in the stream, my suspicions were confirmed.

"You're drunk."

"Huh? What? No 'm not, man."

"Give me that canteen."

"You're not the boss of me!"

"You can't protect the summoner drunk!"

"I can do anything I want!"

He stormed—or came as close to storming as his teetering gait would allow—past us, straight to the banks of the Moonflow. What happened next happened so fast we didn't even have time to register it before thick red blood was pouring down and dozens of screams rent the air; human women and children shrill and piercing, hypello odd and gurgling, and, most importantly, the shoopuf, angry and loud.

"Jecht, what in Yevon's name—!?"

"Thought it was a fiend…" Jecht stared, wide-eyed, at the wound he had caused. Fiends didn't bleed because they weren't really animals; they were the undead. Shoopufs, however, bled. Quite a bit, it turns out. They also run very, very fast when they are frightened, regardless of the large number of hypelo grabbing its lead reins to slow it down.

"Someone's going to get trampled at this rate." Probably several someones. "Braska, you're a summoner; people will listen to you. Try to get people on this side headed toward the Guadosalam exit. I'll go over to the other side. Jecht, just….don't move." Especially if that shoopuf comes this way.

For once he didn't argue with me. He just looked, dumbfounded, at the havoc he'd caused. For once, Braska didn't tell me I was being too harsh; he just left Jecht standing where he was and started to herd people away from the rampaging shoopuf. I started making my way to where the beast still waded through the crowd.

A crowd of panicked people is not fun. I don't like crowds under the best of circumstances, but I don't think anyone likes a panicked crowd.

"Everyone! Please go toward the Djose exit!" I used my best 'authoritative warrior-priest' voice.

And was completely ignored.

Well, one person might have looked at me for a moment, since I shouted right in his ear, but other than that, I was completely ignored.

So I just grabbed the people closest to me. "That way," I pointed them toward the Djose exit. "Everyone's going to be meeting over there."

"But my wi—"

"My kids—"

"Will meet you over there. We can't get anyone out unless people start moving. Go!"

Obviously, controlling a crowd, especially by yourself and sans uniform, is not easy. A lot of people just stood over on the side for a moment and, finding that I wasn't getting their loved ones to them fast enough, jumped right back in. Another reason to not bother with people—they were clearly, with very few exceptions, idiots.

Luckily, no one did end up trampled. There was one blood-spattered kid who gave me a scare, but it turned out that he had just brushed against the shoopuf's leg and gotten covered in its blood. And once we got the crowds away, it was a lot easier for the hypello to calm the animal down.

Jecht had actually followed orders and not moved. He still stood there, dumb (in more ways than one), as several hypello yelled at him. If the situation had been less serious, I would have laughed; an angry hypello is an amusing sight. As it was, Braska stepped in fairly quickly and started apologizing. Though they were still angry, the sight of a summoner seemed to mollify them a bit. Still, a lot of damage had been done. The shoopuf's leg, for one, would need seeing to. In its stomping about, it had also managed to damage one of the cranes, and the welcome sign. This would all take money and time to fix.

Apparently, it would take 13,781 gil. Oh, what a coincidence, that's exactly how much we have! Why, yes, we'd be happy to give you every red cent we own!

Right.

So that's how we ended up here, on the banks of the Moonflow, completely penniless. We were waiting until things calmed down a bit to sell some of our unnecessary things (the first thing to go being the three bottles of rum we'd found in Jecht's bag—apparently he'd paid for them the night before and hadn't remembered to grab them when I'd drug him out of the bar) while the hypello weren't watching. Fiend hunting was out of the question for the moment, with Jecht still coming off the alcohol and all the panicky people and, more importantly, panicky shoopufs, still about. Wouldn't do to draw a sword in front of either of them.

The three of us had been sitting off to one side, neither of us really bothering to chastise Jecht anymore. There just didn't seem to be anything more you could say about this level of stupidity. After a while he'd crept off the river's side, I think trying to catch some relief from the stifling atmosphere, to say nothing of the current temperature.

Out of boredom, and no small amount of frustration, I picked up Jecht's sphere cam and aimed it at where he sat, hunched over and squinting against the sun's glare.

"What are you shooting me for?" Jecht grumped.

"So you don't do anything stupid again," I snapped back. "I can't believe you attacked that shoopuf. Lord Braska had to pay the handler for damages from his own travel money."

"I said I was sorry. It's never gonna happen again! I promise!"

I snorted. Of course it wouldn't happen again. If I were the shoopuf handler, I wouldn't even let Jecht sit this close to the animals. "Ah, a promise? Which you'll forget come tomorrow!"

"Auron, please, he did apologize. He knows he was wrong." Braska gave Jecht a look that clearly said that he had better know he had been wrong. It looked so much like a parent chiding a child I almost laughed, thinking of how Yuna must have quailed under such a look. However, I doubt a seven-year-old would be in trouble for drunkenness and assault of a beast of burden. That brought the scowl right back.

"That's it." Jecht stood up—he hardly wobbled at all—and struck a determined pose, "Only thing I drink from now on is shoopuf milk!"

Braska raised his eyebrows, "You sure?"

"We're on a journey to fight Sin and save Spira, right? If I keep screwin' up . . .and . . .making a fool of myself . . ." Something he must be very familiar with, I couldn't help but think. "My wife and kid are never gonna forgive me."

He looked so dejected, I almost believed he was sincere. No, I really did believe he was sincere, against my better judgment. Neither Braska nor I had the heart to tell him that his wife and child, had they ever really existed, must be dead.

So instead, I just nodded curtly, "That's on the record," and gestured to the sphere as I turned it off. Jecht looked annoyed.

"Don't trust me to keep my promise on my own?"

"No."

Suddenly, I was soaked. I looked around, dumbfounded, to see Braska tiredly casting aside his staff. "Keep that up, and I'll cast a thunder spell, too."

Jecht and I both stood in silent shock. I couldn't even find it in me to try and wipe water from my eyes or squeeze it from my hair. Braska took one look at us and burst out laughing.

"If you could see…the looks…on your faces…You can't say I didn't warn you to stop fighting, you know."

I looked over at Jecht, and saw the same look of disbelief on his face that must have been on mine. I only hoped I didn't look so much like a wet dog. Jecht's lips started to twitch up. He sputtered, and finally burst into laughter himself. For a second, I just looked between the two of them, trying to figure out what was so funny. But soon I found myself smiling, too. And that grew to a chuckle. And then to laughter. I don't think any of us were really laughing about Jecht and I looking like drowned rats; I don't think any of us even knew why we were laughing at all.

But laughing had never felt so good.

(1) The distance that a chocobo can run in a minute at top speed—about ½ mile.