Major spoilers. Disclaimer: FFX isn't mine. For a minute last week, I thought... But no, still not mine. Follows the story, but kind of AU. It's an Aurikku. (Didn't start that way.) This is about characters and the gradual building of a relationship. Still pretty sure this is all -T- right now, or even less.
Changed the title of the first chapter. Never liked the old one but couldn't think of anything better. I like the new title, I think it says a lot about this Auron character and about the story. Also, after like a dozen chapters playing around with ways to put a line across a page, I noticed the little button up there that let's you put a line across a page. (Sigh.)
Soldier of Spira
Auron:
In many ways the five Temples are the heart of the Yevon Church. They house the fayth, the aeons, and statues of High Summoners. If Sin symbolizes our ultimate shortcomings, then the temples stand for our ability to overcome those flaws within ourselves, if only for a short time.
What hope the people of Spira have flows from the temples and the pilgrimages that are cast around them. They are special, and the people hold them in a quiet reverence and a rather well-mannered respect.
Most people.
The young Al Bhed girl is running back and forth, practically dancing from one new sight to the next. Every now and then she stops, and tosses a happy smile in my direction.
Very inappropriate behavior in a temple of Yevon. Of course, many inappropriate things go on within the temples of Yevon.
Within The Temple Of Yevon
Rikku's Diary:
Wow, are all the temples like this? There were huge pillars and columns, and tapestries and banners hung from the ceiling, and mosaics on the walls, with one big one in blues and greens and yellows on the floor! There were ceremonial musicians there to play at the wedding, I guess, and it smelled like they were getting a lot of food ready somewhere, and I even saw some real interesting looking chests (what?). There were also statues of High Summoners, with weird moving ice sculptures in front of them. Auron was sort of looking at one. Uncle Braska.
I was bouncing from place to place, trying to see everything at once, as full of energy as a five-year old on a birthday sugar-high, and I felt better than I had in a while, days at least. And I kept catching myself smiling at the man. He never smiled back, but it's okay. I had finally talked to him, asked the questions I had to ask, and...
And he doesn't hate me. And it looks like I don't hate him. Maybe we don't exactly trust each other right now, and wouldn't you think that respect would require trust? But I guess it doesn't. I don't even know what our relationship is, what you would call it, how you would describe it in a personals ad if you ever went looking for one just like it, and maybe it's even dysfunctional, but I know the reason I feel so much better now is that I'm relieved that it's not over, whatever it is, and that we're still...friends?
So anyway, Yuna's in the cloister of trials with Seymour already, and it doesn't take an Al Bhed super-genius to see the man isn't happy about that. Neither was the kid. Or me, for that matter. I don't think anyone was happy about it, even Wakka, but the man was fuming! I doubt anyone else could tell, except maybe Tidus. It only showed in small ways, but he was just seething. Uh, in fact, the man was all of a sudden climbing the stairs! Hey, hang on! Wait for us! I'm right on his heels—no telling what trouble he'll get into without me!—and Kimahri's right behind us.
A guard at the top of the stairs steps in Auron's way. Bad, bad, bad, bad move. I can tell the man's about to do something precipitate (my word for the day), when we all hear a woman yelling.
Boy, never a dull moment in one of these temples!
"Lord Jyscal!" the woman said. "A sphere in Lady Yuna's belongings..." Then she collapsed. We all ran into the summoner's room where Yuna was staying. The man picked a message sphere up from the floor and looked at it for a moment then handed it to Tidus as he came in.
"This may well answer a few questions," he said.
Auron:
It's Jyscal. He stands there in the sphere, and spins us a story of madness and patricide, cruelty and chaos, the pain of children, the obsessions of manhood, and piss poor decisions that are paid for with the blood of the innocent.
It made me quite homesick for Zanarkand.
I couldn't find it in myself to feel pity for Jyscal and I didn't look too hard. He wouldn't have wanted it from me anyway. The man caused the deaths of thousands in the Guado's secret confrontation with the Church. I knew and cared about many of them. I hoped this Guado burned in some richly deserved Hell, but I knew that in fact he probably held some rank in the Armies of the Dead in Service to the Dead. There was a bargain made, once.
"But whoever is watching this," his image in the sphere concluded, "I implore you to stop Seymour! Stop my son."
Jyscal, you bastard. Wreck your own life and the lives around you, then whine into a sphere for someone else to fix your mess, and leave it where anyone can find it. Like Yuna, a headstrong young girl with a martyr complex a mile wide, who feels she has to save Spira.
"Wonderful," I mutter.
The Al Bhed girl looks around, eyes wide with concern. "Will Yuna be all right?" she asks.
"Without us, no," I answer her, leaving the room.
Rikku's Diary:
"No," he says, and walks past us! Hey, wait up! Kimahri and I follow the man out and up the stairs, past the woman who's still on the floor. The guard opens his mouth to say something, but Kimahri just picks him up and throws him down the stairs! The three of us go through into a long, icy tunnel. Kimahri runs ahead while the man turns to me and asks, "Where are Tidus and the others?"
"Uh, I think they're coming."
He nods and turns back, to wait for them I guess. I dither a little, then run after Kimahri.
Auron:
The Ronso and the Al Bhed girl run ahead to the cloister, while I wait for the others. Tidus comes in and I send him after them. Wakka and Lulu follow. It is they with whom I need to speak.
"We will protect Yuna from anyone," I remind them calmly. "Even a maester."
"This can't be happening," the blitzballer moans.
"If he truly is at fault," the black mage muses, "It must be done."
Of these two who are both strong in their faith, she is the more flexible. And perhaps the most dangerous to The Plan. As we follow the others I remind myself that I need to keep a close watch on the two of them on our journey and in this battle.
We catch up with the others trying to force open the cloister doors. The blitzballer and I add our efforts and the doors open. Seymour Guado is there, across the room, with two of the elite Guado Guard.
"Seymour!" the boy shouts. So much for the element of surprise.
"Please be silent," the Guado answers. "Lady Yuna prays to the fayth."
"Make me."
Make me? Will the boy never learn a bit of style?
Rikku's Diary:
Talkie! Talkie! Talkie! Boo-oring! Make with the fighting already! Let me at him! What? We all know that's where this is heading! Hey, here's Yunie. HI YUNIE! I guess she got the aeon she wanted. Boy, does she look surprised to see us here. So they tell her about the sphere, and she admits she came here to punish Seymour (all by herself, mind), and they all talk some more, then...
"Tidus!" That was the man, snapping out assignments! "You and Yuna in the front rank. Now!"
All right people, time to kick a little Guado tail!
Auron:
I pull Yuna and Tidus up front with me. Have to change things up a bit this time. Tidus and Seymour are talking, maybe it'll distract the Guado maester. Seymour's two guards move up on either side and cast protection spells on themselves. No one's going to distract them. I know professionals when I see them. If there is one thing the Guado are good at, it's team tactics. Those two are going to be a real pain if we don't take care of them. Well, that's why Yuna's here. "Yuna! Aeon!"
They were surprised. Usually I like to keep Yuna's aeons in reserve, ready for key moments or bailing us out of trouble. Standard approach. But that's why books don't run battles, tacticians do.
Yuna danced, and Valefor came down to play.
Rikku's Diary:
Okay, I think I see... The target here isn't Seymour, it's his support guys.
"Blast them!" the man yells, and Valefor drives an energy beam right through all three of them. It staggers Seymour, but cuts down the other two. So, don't got to worry about them any more. But I guess Seymour just doesn't like dancing alone, cause he makes some moves and suddenly a really big anchor falls out of nowhere.
I think the others have all seen Anima before. I've heard them talking about it, but this is my first time, and frankly Anima creeps me out! This anchor falls out of nowhere right through the floor, and starts dragging up something by the neck, something big and ugly and hurting like nothing I've ever seen. I feel something bad crawling up my spine and into the part of my brain that says Okay, Now This Is Scary! Okay coach, you can leave me on the bench for this one, I don't mind. Really.
"Yuna, dismiss Valefor and get back! Rikku, get in here!"
Ooh, poop...
Auron:
Someone else might leave Valefor in, but I want him back in my pocket for now, even if it means some of us will take a hit. I cycle Rikku in and out as quick as I can. I don't even know what she picked up.
PAIN! The next thing I know I'm on my back and the girl is leaning over me, a used phoenix down in her hand, saying, "Auron, get up!"
Rikku's Diary:
I was crying, "Get up, Auron! Please be okay, Auron, you have to be okay! Auron, please be okay..." over and over and over. First I have to feel around inside that Anima thing, and it was like...like you're swimming in old memories, and they're crawling all over your skin and slithering into your heart and your head, but only really, really bad ones, like when you were attacked by a water fiend and your idiot brother hit you with a lightning spell by mistake, or when you got lost out in the desert when you were six years old and you thought no one would ever come find you. Or when the bodies started coming home from Mi'ihen.
Or when your Mom died.
But I get my hand around something anyway, and I pull it out—I think maybe it's a farplane shadow, and that's really cool and all, but it still isn't worth it. And then I see Auron go down like someone cut his strings, and he's lying there not moving and not breathing, and dammit not now, not when we're friends again now, and it's like I'm not breathing either. Like I never really thought it could happen to him. Then his eye finally opens and he looks up at me. "Rikku," he says raggedly, "You have to get back. Call Yuna up here."
Auron:
I get up. It hurts. A lot. I send the Al Bhed girl back and call Yuna up again to start casting Shell. I've badly underestimated Anima's pain attack.
The body remembers. My mind only knows that there was pain, a lot of pain, but somehow my body, this body that isn't even real, remembers what Anima shared with me—Anima's own terrible torment. I look up at the aeon, and feel a dreadful kind of...kinship. We are friends of a friend, in a way. Pain is an old friend to us both.
The party manages to get into a rhythm, Hasted now and protected by Shell, Healed by Yuna as needed. Anima strikes me again, but the pain is only a shadow of what it was before. Tidus and Wakka and I are pounding the aeon. We're hurting it.
Of course, that's what Anima wants. This is where the information that I received just before we entered the temple will be vital. It's a nice judgment call. I know that the aeon is building power for a devastating attack, known as Oblivion to the few who know anything at all. It needs pain, and the more we hurt it, the closer it comes. I depend on Yuna for this, on her summoner's training and her sensitivity with aeons. It's hard on her, to open herself to Anima's pain and gauge it, but she never falters. Finally she nods to me. Anima is close to its threshold. I bring her in, and she summons Ifrit. The fire aeon appears, and I call for its most powerful attack.
Rikku's Diary:
It's really something when aeons battle! Yuna called the fire aeon Ifrit, and the man ordered up it's biggest punch, which involved a LOT of fire, but it seemed to be some sort of psychic fire, because it only hurt Anima. And then it was Anima's turn. And there was a lot of light, and a lot of screaming, and then Anima just took Ifrit away someplace. I don't know where, and I don't know what happened there, but I know if it wasn't an aeon in there then Anima would have taken us instead. I think maybe I've found a new number one fear in life. Lightning or Anima, let me think. Then Ifrit comes falling down to the ground from who knows where, and it looks almost dead, and really, REALLY, uh...annoyed.
It launches ANOTHER huge fire attack like the first, and Anima goes down! And then Seymour blasts it apart with ice, and we all rush back in. Well, the man and Yuna and Tidus do. Seymour hits them with Multiple Waterga. Even without Anima, the guy has some strong magic!
"Yuna," Auron calls, "Cast NulBlaze!"
Yunie casts the protection from fire spell just before Seymour casts Multiple Firaga!
"Rikku! Get in here!" I rush in to replace Tidus, and manage to steal a turbo ether! It was a lot easier trying to pick Seymour's pockets than Anima's. It was easier on my soul.
And we just whittled him down. The man made it look easy! He called for the right protection spells from Yuna before Seymour even began to cast. He went in and hit Seymour with magic break, and I went back time after time looking all through Seymour's pockets (the man had a lot) until I found another turbo ether! He couldn't touch us. Even his multiple Thundaga didn't bother me too bad. I only screamed a little scream! Then finally one time, Auron landed a big hit, and Seymour just kind of crumpled to the ground.
Just like that.
Auron:
I watched Seymour Guado sink to the floor. This time, this once, the Luca group had truly come through. Rin's people must have worked miracles to pull up information on Seymour's combat style and get it to me in time. I knew in advance what to expect from Anima's Oblivion attack, how the Guado guards had been trained, and the sequence of Seymour's elemental attacks. Good, solid intelligence that made the difference between winning hard, and winning pretty easy.
Yuna ran up to the Guado maester just as he fell back, and died. She passed a hand over his face, closing his eyes. I think she may have grieved a little, if not for him, then for what she was forced to do. She is...softhearted.
Guado burst into the chamber, Tromell and others, and everyone began to talk, the air filled with accusations and counter-accusations. But there was only one thing that mattered.
"Yuna," I said. "Send him"
"No," Tromell cried, "Stop! Stay away from him, traitors!"
Yuna, I thought, SEND him, but it was too late, the Guado carried the body from the chamber. Not sending Seymour is something that we will all regret in time. But the others weren't thinking of that.
"Traitors?" Yuna asked no one in particular.
"We're finished," Wakka moaned.
"Now hold on a minute," Tidus argued, "Seymour's the bad guy right? We'll just explain to everyone what happened!"
Perhaps I should have exposed the boy more widely to the facts of life in Zanarkand. "It won't be that easy." I tell him. "Let's get out of here."
Rikku's Diary:
Whoo, okay...teenage Al Bhed thief helps kill maester of Yevon. There's a headline I'd rather people on Spira not read. And Dad... Ooh, daughter of Cid, leader of the Al Bhed, helps kill maester of Yevon. Yeah, that's worse. Hey, Rikku! You wanted to be a grownup! Make your own decisions, take responsibility. How's that working out for ya?
I follow the others back the way we came, thinking, thinking, thinking... I absolutely cannot let anyone know who I am, who my Dad is. Things are already bad enough for us with some people blaming the Al Bhed for Mi'ihen, and now this? Damn! So what do I do? I guess I stick with Yunie. I made a promise, to be her guardian, I can't just desert him...her...them. But it's all gotten more complicated than I could have imagined. I wish I could talk to someone about all this, but who? Yuna knows who I am, but let's see, she's recently killed a maester that everyone was expecting her to marry, and if she can just get past that, she gets to sacrifice her life in Zanarkand. Yuna might just have enough on her plate right now. I could talk to Rin, maybe, whenever I see him next.
I know who I wish I could talk to...
You still don't know what he's really planning, Rikku, and he still won't tell you. You know he can be hard. You know he's keeping secrets. Can you trust him? You want to trust him. You want to trust him because he said he liked your cooking, and he told you he was lonely, and he danced with you, and he smells like willow trees. He's happy that you're here. He said he needs you. (But not because you're getting a crush on him, nuh uh, no way.) And...
...he told you he was scared when you were scared...
But if you trust him and you're wrong, how many Al Bhed will die? This is real life, Rikku-girl, no do-overs. Just dead. Remember Mi'ihen.
The others have stopped and I bump into Wakka. "Hey, watch it when you put on your brakes like that!"
"Hey, listen, you Al Bhed..."
"We've stopped because the tunnel is gone," Lulu interrupted.
"Oh, so what do we do?"
"We're going to have to solve the cloister trial," the man in the coat sighed. I wonder what he's so teed off about. He's the only one really dressed for this place. It's probably the whole dead maester thing. He looked back at me. "Rikku, you're in charge. Figure it out, tell them what to do. Lulu, you help her."
They were all looking at me now. Lulu looked kind of, I don't know, ticked off? I sidled over to Auron, and said softly, "Uh, that's fine boss, but maybe Lulu should be in charge? Or you?"
"You're smarter than me."
"Uh...oh, I...huh."
Articulate, too.
He waited til I was finished, then added, "You're smarter than Lulu, too. And she knows it. But it's probably not a good idea to go around bragging about it where she can hear you."
Well duh! Someone who can cast Thundera anytime she wants! "No lie, boss," I told him.
Smart, huh? Okay, well...those columns look kind of interesting, and that sphere over there. "Lulu, let's look at that. You guys spread out and see what you can find!"
Auron:
I sat on a block of ice to think while the others worked on the cloister trial. Cloister Trials. Number 21 on the List of Things I Loathe and Despise. Hate them now, hated them ten years ago. For a while I considered giving each cloister trial at each different temple its own number on the list, but I decided that would really just cheapen my loathing for everything else on the list.
They were making steady progress, the girl with all the ideas, the mage to keep her grounded, and everyone else for the grunt work. They were moving about twice as fast as I would have expected. Which meant I needed to think if I wanted to have some sort of plan ready when they finished.
Yuna now has one last aeon to gather, and it's in Bevelle. Probably a bad idea to go there right now. The news of Seymour's death will reach them before we could get there. We can sneak into Bevelle later. I know the place quite well. So, if not Bevelle just yet... We can go back to Macalania Woods, or even the Thunder Plains. Of course, that puts us close to Guadosalam, probably also better to avoid. But if we skirt the woods, then we can reach the Calm Lands. Wide country, sparsely settled. It would be a good place to stay low for a time while we rest and gather information.
They're done, and I watch the final section of the ice tunnel reappear. It's time to leave.
Rikku's Diary:
That was kind of fun! Sort of like one of those puzzle boxes from Kilika, where you have to push just there, and press here, and twist that twice if you want it to open. And I...we...got a LUCK SPHERE! Do you know how rare that is?
So we head back up the tunnel to the big chamber, but that guy Tromell is waiting there for us, and it looks like he brought a whole lot of fiends. I mean friends. Uh, maybe not.
"Give us a chance to explain," Auron said. Am I the only one that heard the amused irony in his voice? He wasn't expecting much.
"No need, I already know what I will tell the other Maesters."
Hm. Don't really like the sound of that. Looks like we're all gonna be declared guilty without bothering with silly stuff like evidence. Of course, we did kill Seymour, but...
Aren't they all kind of overlooking the obvious here? "Wait," I said, "Wait! Jyscal's sphere! We can show it to them!" Ha! Hey, the Al Bhed motto...uh yeah, that's the sphere, the one the guy is holding...uh, crushing...in his...hands. Well, hell.
Okay, so I'm out of ideas. Anyone?
"Away!" Swift thinking Kimahri!
"Run!" the man agrees, and we barrel out of the entrance and back across the bridge headed for the hills.
Sooo, I think as we run from the temple. No marriage for Yunie cause we killed the groom, but it's okay, because he killed his father, but we can't prove that, so now we're running for our lives from a bunch of homicidal Guado and their fiends. And I got a luck sphere and 5,000 gil! (What?)
"Hey Auron," I panted, jogging up next to him.
"Yes Rikku?" He wasn't even out of breath.
"These Yevon temples might be a little too exciting for me!"
And HE LAUGHED! Maybe only I heard it, but he really did.
Next: Moving Targets