Disclaimer: You know what I own by now
Once again I'm typing this late at night and I feel weird. Sorry if that affects Vira at all. Summers almost here which means...I'm getting a job… I don't know how that is going to affect my story updates so if they're late my laziness isn't the only thing to blame. Oh, and it is my birthday so I would love some reviews!
Thankful for Misfortune
Chapter 14
Casting the Net
I learned something new about myself after we left the large PSICOM ship. I'm a freaking bad ass with chakrams. I was taking on most of our enemies now, cie'th and soldiers alike. I'll admit I went crazy once or twice but I think my mad cackling scared the soldiers enough to make them go stiff long enough to take them out.
"I thought you'd be exhausted by now." Sazh said shaking his head at me. "Now you're doing all of the work for us."
"What can I say?" I said spinning my chakrams around in the palms of my hands. "I'm a fun girl."
"I'm glad Vira's in a good mood now." Vanille said. "It seems to make her stronger than when she's angry."
"Thank you Vanilla." I said putting my chakrams into bracelet form, which I loved almost as much as the chakrams. Deadly and fashionable, I was one luck girl. Provided the whole being an l'cie and having PSICOM hunting me down was ignored anyway.
"Any idea how much longer we have to go on?" Hope asked rubbing some sweat off of his forehead. Since he wasn't running anymore he would either fight with fire or cast shields to protect everyone. He healed when he needed to as well, letting Vanille get a break from playing nurse.
"Not a clue." Lightning said climbing up a ledge with grace.
The rest of us barley made it up the ledge without falling to our doom, aside from Sazh, who fell and landed on his head. Thankfully the chocobo chick was okay; I still wanted to eat it from time to time. Note to self, steal chocobo chick the next time Sazh knocks himself unconscious.
I started to lose my burst of energy as the fighting wore on and before I knew it I was more exhausted than anyone.
"Please…" I mumbled weakly. "A break…I beg of you."
"Okay!" Vanille said sweetly before anyone could disagree.
We took a break by a ledge that gave us a view of a lot of the crystalized lake.
"Every bit of this place has turned to crystal!" Vanille said in awe at the view.
I still found it pretty, but the more I looked at it the creepier it seemed. Everything was so barren and lifeless aside from all the things that wanted to kill us, so I didn't like the view too much.
"Can I get something to eat?" Hope asked Lightning.
I immediately shot Lightning a sweet smile and gave her a pleading look.
Giving an aggravated sigh she summoned some energy bars and tossed them at us. One of them went over my head and fell of the cliff.
"No!" I yelled nearly diving of the cliff for the energy bar. I would have most likely fallen off if Hope didn't grab into my ankle in time.
"How about I just share mine with you so you can avoid cliff diving?" Hope asked.
"Thanks." I said blushing in embarrassment over nearly killing myself for an energy bar, although it was almost worth it. If my stomach wasn't full I was in an even worse mood than usual, which tended to endanger other peoples safety.
Looking of in the distance I noticed several air crafts flying around, adding to the creepy vibe from the place.
"Do you ever wonder what it would be like?" Sazh asked.
"What do you mean?" asked Vanille.
"To become a crystal,"
"I'd think you'd wake up feeling kind of stiff." I said standing up.
"Do you mean you're going to complete your focus?" Vanille asked.
"Well first I have to know what it is." Sazh said. "I probably don't even want to know."
Lightning, did Serah say anything about her focus to you?" Vanille asked.
Lighting looked down and mumbled "Nothing."
Vanille immediately went into happy go lucky mode and said "It was probably because she didn't want to worry you."
"Or she just didn't trust me." Lightning said, revealing some sadness and walking away from us.
"Oh, um…" Vanille was about to go after Lightning but I grabbed her wrist and shook my head.
"She isn't going to open up to you Vanille, so save you breath."
Vanille looked down sadly and I patted her on the back and walked ahead of everyone.
As we walked I remembered why I didn't want to move earlier. It was because moving sucked hard. As we walked we came across a supply drop or two which held some money and some potions.
However, we did come across something I never thought we would find. We came across some ancient ruins.
"What the hell?" I asked looking at the ruins. "Since when are there ruins at a lake?"
"No idea." Hope mumbled. "Is this the end of the road though?"
"We could explore them!" Vanille said jogging up the stairs.
"Hold up Vanille!" Sazh yelled running after the peppy girl.
Hope ran after them and against my poor feet's wishes, I ran up with them as well with Lighting behind us.
"What's that?" Sazh asked looking ahead at the top of the stairs.
I looked over where he was looking and felt my legs turn to jelly. What was before us was a behemoth, one of the most dangerous monsters you could hope to run into. Its large and muscular body was probably just as powerful and it looked and even though it wasn't looking right at us I felt like it would turn around and attack us at any moment. I had heard of PSICOM soldiers making artificial behemoths and this was what called an alpha behemoth.
"PSICOM really needs to stop making pets like these." I said summoning my chakrams.
"Should we sneak around it?" Hope suggested.
"We'd have a better chance getting Vanille to act like me." I said thinking of a plan.
"So, do we charge it or…" Sazh said unsure of what to do.
"That'll work." I said attacking the behemoth before it could turn around. Be spinning my chakrams in my hands and summoning some water I made the water surround the chakrams and spin at crazy high speed.
"Hey ugly," I yelled loudly at the behemoth and threw my chakrams. Just as soon as it turned around my chakrams slashed its eyes.
Yelling in rage it charged blindly at us and Lightning yelled "Scatter!"
Hope and I ran to the left and everyone else ran to the right. Lightning and Sazh got there weapons ready and started fighting with a mixture of melee combat and l'cie magic. Vanille sent wind over at the behemoth and I attacked with my water chakrams. Hope casted barriers around everyone and sent fire and, to his surprise, sent ice at the behemoth as well.
"Not bad." I said smirking over at him.
Hope, however; didn't look happy at all and went right back to fire. Ignoring that I also weakened the behemoth with deprotect and tried an untested technique I had thought of. By spinning my chakrams in on my palm and pointing at the behemoth, I summoned water and sent a drill of water at the behemoth. I landed a clean blow and it drilled right into the behemoths skin.
After yelling in pain the behemoth turned in my direction. I tried to get out of the way but I tripped over some rubble.
"Shit!" I yelled trying to get up but it was too late. The behemoth was right on top of me.
Just as it was about to make a bite sized snack out of me it was blasted in the mouth with a bolt of lightning. Suddenly the behemoth went stiff and fell on its side, completely lifeless.
I stood up and brushed off my jeans and looked over at Lightning. "Thanks for that." I said to her, which felt a little weird to say to her.
"Wasn't me." Lighting said motioning to behind me.
I looked behind me and say Hope standing there. "You did that?"
"Yeah," Hope said sheepishly.
I looked over at him dumbfounded and crossed my arms over my chest. "You can cast barriers, heal people, and us fire, ice, and lighting? That's not fair."
Hope immediately gritted his teeth and said "Believe me, I don't want these powers."
Sazh laughed and gave Hope a pat on the back. "You need to learn that when a girl is impressed by you to be a bit happier about it."
I rolled my eyes and looked around the ruins trying to see if there was anything else to be on the lookout for. I bit back a curse when I saw several PSICOM soldiers walking around the ruins.
"Now why the hell are these guys here?" I asked angrily. "Haven't they ever heard of a taking a break?"
"They may be the enemy but at least they work without needing a break and an energy bar every five minutes." Lightning said.
"You know what Lightning?" I asked with venom in my voice.
Before either of us could speak Vanille hoped in between us. "We can't fight now. Let's get along!"
Lighting scoffed and walked on ahead while I was thinking of so many ways to make her regret giving me the chakrams. Deciding to leave her alone I focused in the soldiers and decided to take out my frustration on them instead.
…
Needless to say the PSICOM soldiers didn't last long. Between Lightning and I we tore through them like I did at that one buffet I went to and got kicked out of for eating all of the deserts. I still have no regrets from that day.
We walked for what felt like forever until we almost reached the end of the ruins. After reaching the top of the largest stair case yet Sazh looked like he was at the end of his rope. He was panting by the time we reached the top.
"Can't an old man catch his breath?" he asked all of us.
"You try to catch your breath now it'll be your last." Lightning said looking around.
"Wow." Vanille said looking around the end of the ruins.
All throughout the area we say fire that had been incased in crystal. "Now this is my idea of cool." I said looking around.
Small shards of crystal that reflected off of the red light shimmered all around us. I tried to catch a few in my hands but to no avail.
Vanille walked ahead of us all and Lightning call after her. "Stay close." she said.
"I want to look around!" Vanille said skipping backwards.
Lightning just sighed and I followed Vanille's example, aside from the skipping, and looked around the area. I didn't look around for more than five seconds when I heard Vanille yell. I looked over and saw her running away from what seemed like nothing. That's when a giant winged monster rammed through the crystal and almost smashed Vanille.
"Vanille!" Hope yelled.
"Help me!" Vanille shrieked and hid behind Sazh.
With the crystal shattered the monster was surrounded in flame, meaning getting close to it was a no-no. Its first move was to wipe its tail at us which we all barely dodged. Hope started his barrier casting and I started to weaken it with deprotect.
Sazh used fire and Vanille used her wind while Lightning used 'thunder', which was totally lightning but she just didn't want to admit it. I used my chakrams and started to summon water after spinning the chakrams around I threw them and the whirled around the monsters fire barrier causing it to go out.
It didn't take long for the monster to get ticked with us and it roared in all of our faces. If it could talk I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be complementing my awesome weapons.
It flew high up in the air and rammed the crystal blocking its way in front of us and went into another chamber of the ruins.
"What the heck is it doing?" Sazh asked.
"It's charging up." Lightning said.
I looked harder at the monster and it was being surrounded by volts of electricity.
"Just great," I mumbled.
"What is it charging up for?" Sazh asked.
"Its last moments," Lighting said running at the monster.
We all ran behind Lightning and got ready to fight the electric bird thing.
After getting closer to it Lightning tried to hit it with her gunblade but she was sent back by a volt of electricity.
"Don't try to fight it with your gunblade or with thunder!" I said. "Try something else!" I side stepped some electricity strikes form the monster and attacked with some water.
"What do you suggest I do?" Lighting asked.
"See if you have anything else besides thunder."
"Cover me." she said taking a few steps back from the action.
The monster started to fire more bolts of electricity at us and my barrier was weakening.
"A little help here Hope!" I shouted.
"Busy!" Hope yelled avoiding the monsters tail.
Right before I was hit by more lightning I felt my barrier grow stronger again, but this time it felt different.
I looked over and Saw that Sazh casted this barrier.
"Who said an old dog can't learn new tricks?" he asked casting barriers around everyone.
Whatever Sazh's barrier did that Hope's didn't it blocked the Lighting better and didn't hurt as much. It didn't solve all of our problems though.
Hope was getting tired from casting so much magic and he and Vanille could only heal so much before they needed a break.
"We aren't doing so well." I said trying to block an attack with my chakrmas.
The monster got ready to attack with more electricity when it started to charge up even more. It got a large ball of electricity ready to attack us with when Vanille attacked it with a new move. She sent over a cloud of smoke over to the monster similar to the deprotect ability but it was more of a purple color, not black.
After it reached the monster the ball of electricity started to weaken and Vanille used so much of the purple smoke that the electric ball turned into the size of a toddler. It fired with it anyway and it went in my direction and hit me square in the chest.
It didn't hurt at all. It left more of a tingle than anything. "Is that all you got?" I asked teasingly. "You couldn't charge my cell phone with that kind of power!"
The monster didn't seem to like that because it got another blast ready but it was small and pathetic again.
Just when I was about to attack it again some water that wasn't from me sailed over my head and hit the monster right in the mouth, and then the monster fell over.
As it landed on its back Lightning ran over to it and jumped in the air. Doing that amazing flipping jumping thing she could so she went high up and brought the gunblade down on the monsters throat.
The monster yelled loudly before gasping for breath and then finally stopped breathing all together.
Lightning was panting when she got up and her forehead was covered in sweat.
"Are you okay?" Vanille asked.
"I'm fine." Lightning said through her panting.
"So you can control water now too?" I asked. "And here I thought I had my own thing going on."
"Believe me Vira, no one is like you." Hope said.
"I'll take that was a complement." I said.
"Look over there." Sazh said pointing ahead of the giant monster corpse.
Ahead of us was a PSICOM air ship that was left unguarded.
"Happy days." I said running over to the air ship.
"There's probably something wrong with it." Sazh said.
"You should lighten up old man." Vanille said to Sazh.
"You shouldn't get your hopes up." Sazh said.
"Think this belonged to the soldiers we took down?" Hope asked.
What is this 'we' stuff? Lightning and I did most of the work.
"Well they aren't going to come back for it." Sazh said. "Finders keepers,"
We all piled into the air ship, which conveniently had six seats, and sat down while Sazh sat in the captain's seat.
"Can you drive this thing?" I asked.
"Guess we'll find out." Sazh said starting the airship and blasting off.
This was longer than I thought it would be so that's a good thing. Remember, it is my birthday so please give me reviews!