A/N: The geography of Bevelle's underground has changed a bit to suit the purposes of the story. Instead of saying "they jumped around a bunch of floating platforms and moving blocks," I simplified it to "running around a bunch of dark corridors," which would be more like one of the Vias Infinito or Purifico. Hey, Squeenix did it; I figure it's practically canon.
-P
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Chapter 20
A Little Accident
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Gippal took a sharp turn and ran to the end of yet another dark corridor before pausing to wait for the sound of Anje's clicking high heels catch up to him. It seemed they'd been running through the labyrinth for hours now, and Gippal was beginning to become suspicious of Anje's sense of direction.
Not that I trusted her in the first place... Gippal thought to himself with a grimace as he turned to watch her catch up with him. She looked sweltering in her infamous red leather suit and high heels as she stopped with a huff in front of him and regarded him crossly.
"Are we running a marathon now or did you forget that you need me to get out of here?" she panted, bending over to catch her breath.
"Yeah, about that..." Gippal gestured to the next series of identical dark hallways. "How the heck do you know where we're going? And how much further? It looks like we've been running in circles."
"Don't be stupid," the assassin spat as she straightened up and smoothed her dark hair. "I've been working for Yevon for over 20 years– I know this place like the back of my hand." She raised her derringer and gestured to a corridor on the right. "We're nearly to the main bridge now. Just be glad we're not in the Via Infinito." Gippal shuddered. He thought he remembered Rikku recounting a particularly whiny story about an endless series of hallways deeper within the temple. Anje was now looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to take the lead again.
"You know the way; why aren't you leading?" he grunted, not entirely thrilled with exposing his back to the woman who had spent the last few months trying to kill him. He was well aware that she was only helping him to save her own skin– if he died, the man hunt would next be on her.
"Fine," she sniffed as she walked past him down the corridor. "But I'm warning you– I can hear every move you make." She cast a scathing glance back at him and the rifle he held. It appeared that she didn't trust him either. Gippal snorted. All the better. They walked at Anje's slower pace down what Gippal decided was the longest, darkest tunnel yet before he spied a decidedly brighter light at the approaching end. He lengthened his stride and quickly made for the exit.
"Careful," came Anje's warning voice behind him, along with the soft click of a derringer being armed. "That's the main bridge right under the first level. It's likely to be guarded..." They walked cautiously out onto the brightly lit bridge. Gippal could see the hoovering platform that would take them to the surface just at the other end. Before Gippal could take another step closer to it, however, the platform suddenly hummed to life– and dropped out of sight. With a strangled sound of frustration, Gippal jogged to the end of the bridge that dropped into nothingness and peered over the edge, looking for the hoovering platform. It was making fast circles around the base of the bridge, just below the walkway.
"Looks like we're gonna have to jump..." Gippal said, turning to Anje. As he did, he heard a deep, mocking laugh. Gippal turned to see not only Anje near the other end of the bridge, but also Commander Wilkommen. Each was leveling a gun at the other's head.
"Well now, two rats caught in a maze," Wilkommen sneered. "I think this is far enough to make the execution look plausible." The look on Anje's face was pure poison.
"I knew you were following us," she hissed. "Why didn't you just kill us off back in the gaol?"
"You have no respect for the hunt, my dear," Wilkommen replied with a cruel smile on his face. "That's what makes you such a failure at your job."
"This is bullshit," Gippal said irritably, now drawing his rifle. "I don't want to waste my time shooting the breeze with you."
"Drop it," Wilkommen said simply. "Or do you want your little girlfriend to die too?"
"Tch," Gippal snorted, only feeling momentarily guilty that Wilkommen thought Anje was his girlfriend. "Like I care," he bluffed confidently. "She only tried to kill me about five times." Anje's eyes narrowed but she said nothing, sensing the warning in Gippal's voice.
"Oh, I don't mean our little Guado friend here," Wilkommen's cruel smile broadened. "I mean that little Al Bhed princess, Cid Hanzo's daughter."
Gippal nearly choked. "You've got Rikku?"
"Or will, very presently. We've intercepted a sphere wave from the airship Celcius and picked up on their little rescue plan. We allowed them to enter our airspace, of course, and apprehended their conspirators right after the transmission ended." Wilkommen spared him a glance. "If I don't return to the surface in three more minutes, the orders are to blow that ship out of the sky." Gippal's grip on the rifle's pump tightened, but he reluctantly lowered it. Wilkommen laughed. "That's good. Throw it over the edge." Gippal grimaced as he tossed the weapon over the side of the bridge. There wasn't even an accompanying clatter as it fell through the infinite darkness. Satisfied, Wilkommen turned his attention back to Anje.
"The bounty on your head is pitiful, but I wouldn't mind putting you out of your misery," the commander smirked, gesturing with his pistol at Anje's head. The assassin tensed. "Don't worry, as a devoted follower of Yevon, I will ask the monks to pray for your miserable soul," Wilkommen sneered and pulled the trigger. Before the shot rang out, Anje dove over the side of the bridge. Enraged, Wilkommen ran to the edge. He peered into the black, bottomless hole of a floor but could see no sign of the assassin. Satisfied the she had fallen to her death, Wilkommen turned to Gippal with a nasty smile. "How pathetic– not even your enemies can save you now, heathen," he said confidently. "Now I will have the glory of killing both you and the intruding Al Bhed." The look on Gippal's face was murderous.
"Having fun staging your little war?" he seethed. "Why the hell are you after us, anyway? We're not the only ones who've jumped off your religious bandwagon."
"Public faith in Yevon may be shaken," Wilkommen said darkly. "But you are far from redemption, filthy heretic. I should thank you, however," he added, his malicious smile returning. "With your death, the attack of your little Al Bhed friends will be easily construed as revenge. Then I'll have the license to kill as many of you dogs as I can."
"Hypocrite..." Gippal growled through clenched teeth. "If you do this, no one will support you! Who would advocate a religion based on murderers!"
"Haha!" Wilkommen laughed nastily. "That's why you Al Bhed are such fools! Don't you see how Spira depends on us already? No one questioned your arrest– they certainly won't question your just execution!" Wilkommen advanced on Gippal now, his eyes wild with vindication. "Spira needs us now more than ever! Without us, there would be no law, no order, and certainly no life!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Gippal said, stepping backward toward the end of the bridge. "You're totally insane; your whole vision of a 'god' was skewed from the start! Yevon was a parasite, using Sin to feed off the people of this planet! All he did was destroy, not create!" Wilkommen laughed madly, and Gippal only stared at him in disbelief. Was he going to die here, at the hands of a madman?
"It has always been our purpose! To keep the 'spiral of death' spinning..." Wilkommen waved his gun at Gippal, forcing him to back peddle to the very edge of where the bridge dropped off. He glanced down while Wilkommen carried on.
"Your wretched souls are all fodder for the true believers! I'll kill every last one of you, in the name of Yevon!" With a great cry, Wilkommen dove for Gippal, seeming to forget his firearm in his frenzy. Gippal ducked and rolled past him, away from the edge of the bridge. He turned quickly, hoping to find that Wilkommen had barreled right over the edge of the bridge, but saw the great commander just as he spun around, breathing heavily at the edge.
"Ha... ha… Now..." Wilkommen steadied his gun at Gippal's head. Gippal only glared at him. There was a pause, as the men glared at each other with the utmost contempt, before a single gunshot cut through the thick silence. Gippal's breath caught in his throat. He watched as several feet away, Wilkommen grasped vaguely at his chest, drawing it away covered in blood. He looked at Gippal, dazed, before blood spilled over his lips and he sank to his knees. He coughed once before falling on his face. Gippal walked cautiously to the edge of the bridge where Wilkommen lay dying and removed the gun from his slack grip. He resisted the urge to kick the man over the edge as he looked down at the fallen commander, who was laughing softly in a pool of his own blood. "Ha ha... it doesn't matter," Wilkommen said, his eyes glazed. "If I die, you all die, and the spiral keeps spinning..." Gippal grimaced as blood gurgled out of Wilkommen's mouth and his chest stopped heaving. The commander of the Grand Bevelle Legion was dead. Gippal stepped past him and looked over the edge.
"Took you long enough," he grunted as he crouched down to jump over the edge. A pair of almond-shaped brown eyes stared critically back at him.
"You're just damn lucky this thing was passing underneath me when I fell," Anje retorted. Once Gippal was on the platform, she tilted the joystick that controlled the platform upward and they sailed to the exit above them.
"When I looked down and saw you, I just about had a heart attack anyway," Gippal said, smiling now. Anje looked smug.
"I'm half Guado," the assassin smirked. "Deception is in my blood."
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"Tidus, I'm worried about Isaaru and Maroda. Will you please take Buddy and Brother with you and go check it out?"
"No way! I'm not leaving you here to wait for the whole advance guard to come after you!"
Yuna sighed. "Rikku and Paine will be with me, Tidus. And we've been over this– I'm not a poor, defenseless little summoner anymore."
Tidus crossed his arms over his chest and stared at his wife stubbornly. "Why don't you send Paine with Buddy and Brother, and I'll go with you and Rikku–"
Yuna opened her mouth to argue again, and Rikku rolled her eyes. They had been hoovering near the High Bridge of Bevelle for the past fifteen minutes while Tidus and Yuna argued over teams. They had never received a confirmation transmission from Isaaru and Maroda, which led Yuna to believe they'd been found out. She wanted to send two groups down– one to rescue Gippal, the other to find the brothers– but Tidus was falling back into his old guardian role, if not his new husband role. "Look," Yuna was saying now as she moved her thumb over her garment grid, sliding her Warrior's dress sphere into place. The light around her became hazy and distorted as her Gunner's outfit melted into the sharp, heavy-plated armor of the Warrior. She swung the Brotherhood over her shoulder confidently. "See? I can look out for myself now. Let me go with Paine and Rikku."
Tidus was now eying her sword suspiciously. Before he could say, "Hey, is that my sword?" Yuna ushered him over to the hatch where Buddy and Brother stood waiting. "You guys go first– draw the soldiers away from the temple entrance and back around to the guard house where we received Isaaru's last transmission. When the coast is clear, we'll go in the front way and start searching the temple top to bottom. I think we know that place pretty well by now..." Tidus only glared at Yuna as she won the battle but wisely kept his mouth shut. Instead, he drew the Caladbolg and marched to the end of hatch door.
"Shhiinnraaa!" Brother screeched into the intercom. Rikku winced.
"Yeah?" came Shinra's bored response. He'd officially left the Gullwings when they'd broken up, but when Yuna had asked him at the last minute to help out with this mission, he'd happily agreed. Though he didn't have to let Brother know that.
"Take us in!" Brother shouted gleefully. He turned to Buddy, who was shaking his head sadly at Brother's unchecked enthusiasm. "Finally! We are the ones taking the missions! Yeehaw!" Rikku was suddenly and violently reminded of her father's battle cry when he had been steering the ship over two years ago. She shuddered as she set her garment grid to Alchemist.
"You guys ready?" she looked over to where Yuna stood next to Paine, who was also in her Warrior's garb.
"Ready!" Yuna said brightly, giving Rikku a thumbs-up. Paine rolled her eyes.
"Ready as I'll ever be to drag Gippal's worthless hide out of trouble again, sure," she muttered. But Rikku smiled.
"Great! Then let's go!" Rikku felt a great swooping feeling in her stomach as Shinra steered the ship into a plummeting descent. Everyone stumbled toward a wall and held on tight as the ship careened toward the High Bridge. Rikku thought she could already hear the alarms being raised.
"Okay!" Buddy shouted over the rushing wind that blew up from the open hatch. "We're gonna jump! Get ready– one, two, three!" He, Brother, and Tidus each ducked and jumped as Shinra nearly scraped the Celcius's paint job onto the High Bridge. Rikku leaned forward just enough to see the boys rolling safely onto the bridge before Shinra took them in a great loop back around the temple.
"Are you ready for another round, Yuna?" came Shinra's lisping voice over the intercom.
"You bet! Take us around!" Yuna shouted. Rikku was beginning to feel distinctly motion-sick as Shinra began the second descent. This time she braced herself as she stood near the open hatch, waiting for the moment to jump. Gippal, please be okay, she prayed inwardly. "Ready Rikku?" Yuna squeezed Rikku's hand reassuringly. Rikku nodded.
"Three," Paine said on her other side. "Two, one– let's go!" Together, the three of them jumped head-first onto the ground. It didn't feel nearly as graceful as the boys had made it seem. Rikku's shoulder hit the ground and she rolled immediately head over heels before coming to a skidding stop on her back. She looked up dazedly where Paine was already standing over her, offering her a hand. "Come on Rikku, they've already spotted us."
"Looks like they've had time to prepare," Yuna said bracingly. "I see three waves coming through the door."
"Alright!" Rikku said in what she hoped was a determined voice as she wavered on her feet. "Let's get kicking butt and taking names!" She drew her machine gun and sprinted for the door with Yuna and Paine hot on her heels. Three long-legged machina hopped menacingly to the foreground, forcing Rikku to stop her charge. Paine immediately rushed in for the first blow and carved a long, deep gash up the machina's breast plate. Sparks showered in all directions and the machina crumpled to the ground, defeated. Meanwhile, Yuna was already at work on the second, taking aim at its legs and severing them at the exposed joints. That left one right in front of Rikku. Realizing it was too late to switch dress spheres to her Thief costume, which had the tools to disable the machina in one blow, Rikku rolled to the side and emptied a clip into the machina's head. Unfazed, the great machine towered over her and thrust its powerful leg into her stomach. "Ugh!" Rikku gasped as she hit the ground a few feet away. Paine immediately took advantage of the machine's attention on Rikku to skewer it through the back.
"Come on, Rikku!" the warrior called as she pressed on. "Quit messing around!" Rikku glared at Paine as she picked herself up and rushed to help Yuna with the second wave.
"I'm not messing around!" she shouted, thrusting her hands into her deep pockets and removing several potions. She chucked one at the ground where it exploded in a shower of green and blue light, filling her aching abdominal muscles with relief. She extracted a small white gem from another pocket and shoved it into the other potion. "Get back!" she called. Paine and Yuna immediately stepped back from the group of flamethrower-wielding soldiers as Rikku lobbed her makeshift bomb into the crowd. A series of dazzling white explosions erupted on impact, and Rikku shielded her eyes. When the dust cleared, all the soldiers were lying unconscious on the ground. Paine nodded at Rikku.
"Good job, let's press on," she said, hoisting her sword over her back with Yuna following suit. The girls rushed through the great temple doors into a mist-filled antechamber with walkways leading to doors on either side. Between them, an aisle led straight up the middle to a drop off, where mist rolled over the edge and into darkness. Yuna nodded at Paine and each took a separate walkway, leaving Rikku to investigate the middle aisle. She cautiously peered over the edge into the fathomless blackness, but saw no way to descend safely. She looked up, where she remembered a hoovering platform that used to transport the praetor between the different levels of the temple. The platform was nowhere in sight. With a sigh, Rikku headed back up the aisle to meet Yuna and Paine at the apex.
"The one on the right leads to the Via Infinito," Yuna confirmed, shifting her sword on her shoulder uncomfortably.
"There are only controls for the main platform on the left," Paine added. Rikku bit her lip.
"I don't see the platform anywhere," she said, looking to Yuna for support. "That's the only way down to the gaol, isn't it?" Yuna bit her lip in concentration, but before either of the girls could offer a solution, Rikku noticed a steadily approaching humming noise coming from behind them. She turned and drew her machine gun.
"That must be the platform returning," Yuna said unnecessarily. "Did you hit the recall button, Paine?"
"No..." the other woman said suspiciously, drawing her own weapon now. "Careful, it could be carrying more soldiers." The three of them waited tensely as the platform continued its slow ascent. The wait seemed excruciating, until the humming sound abruptly stopped. Rikku glanced nervously at Yuna.
"What happened?" she said in a hushed voice, as a silence had fallen over the room. "Why did it stop?" Yuna only shook her head, but Paine narrowed her eyes.
"It's stopped just below the ledge," Paine said in a whisper. "Whoever is down there is waiting to see if anyone's up here before showing themselves." Before Rikku could ask what they were going to do, a hand suddenly reached up from underneath the ledge and grabbed hold. Rikku stifled a scream as whoever was on the platform started to heave himself up from below. "I'm going to see who it is," Paine said, now advancing down the long aisle to intercept the climber. Yuna held her back.
"No, wait– they're nearly there, and they've got a gun..." Indeed, both of the climber's arms were visible as the person used his elbows to hoist himself up, holding a gun in one hand. The girls made to duck behind nearby pillars when all the air suddenly rushed out of Rikku in one fell swoop.
"Gippal!" she managed to say in a strangled, half-shout. Gippal's blond head was now visible as he pulled himself up from the stopped platform. Before he could stand up properly, the platform beneath him started to move again, revealing another occupant. Rikku barely had time to catch her breath when it fled her again.
"Gippal, look out!" Paine shouted as the assassin who had tried to kill Rikku rose behind Gippal, who looked around dazedly.
"Paine, what are you– " he started to say, when he saw Rikku aiming her Alchemist's machine gun over his shoulder. Anje immediately recognized Rikku, and she raised her own weapon to take aim. "Wait, Rikku–!" Gippal started toward her, but he was too late. Rikku pulled the trigger and her bullets slammed into Anje's left side. The assassin let out a choked cry of surprise before squeezing off a shot, which missed Rikku by an inch. "Anje!" Gippal cried out, spinning around and rushing to the fallen assassin's side. Everyone, including Rikku who was so stunned she had not yet lowered her weapon, stared as Gippal knelt beside the fallen woman turned her over to inspect her wounds. "Yuna!" he called out. "Yuna, can you help me? She's still breathing."
As Yuna ran over to help Gippal and the wounded assassin, Rikku's mind was reeling. I don't understand, wasn't she trying to kill him? I'm sure that's the same woman who kidnaped me and nearly killed Gippal at Baaj... Paine was suddenly at her side, eyes narrowed as she watched Gippal and Yuna try to save the assassin's life. The former was applying pressure to the bleeding wounds in Anje's gut while Yuna frantically cast healing spells. "Paine, I don't understand..." Rikku looked up at the other woman with tears in her eyes. "What have I done?"