Final Fantasy X: Journey
"Tida . . . you need to wake up. I need to talk to you."
Groggily, Tida forced her eyelids to open. Blurrily, she could make out the rough figure a person standing not too far away in front of her.
Tida moaned and pushed herself up to a standing position, rubbing her eyes so she could focus better. Yawning, she looked again.
"You!" she yelped, tripping over her own feet and landing on her rear on the grass.
"That definitely didn't come from me."
Tida pushed herself up, staring disbelievingly at the man standing before her, just a few feet away. Struggling, she found her voice.
"Dad?"
Tidus smiled at his daughter; who would have thought she'd make this far? He crossed his arms in front of his chest—something he'd picked up from his father.
"Hey, kiddo," he said, smiling. Tida's knees went weak, but she refused to go down. She took a shaky step; wanting with all her might to run to him, hug him, even for just a moment.
"It's okay, Tida," Tidus told his daughter, moving to her and wrapping his arms around, his chin resting lightly on the top of her head. Tida began to cry; it seemed to her that was all she could do now. Tidus kissed her forehead; this was the first time he'd held her—now that she was all grown up. He'd first held her when she was a baby, but there was no way she would remember it. Yuna had fallen asleep next to the cradle, and Tidus and swept into the room, fully intent on holding his only daughter just one time.
"Dad . . ." Tida pushed back enough to look up at Tidus. "Why did you go away? Why didn't you stay with me and mom?"
"I didn't exactly have a say in the matter. I was—am—a dream of the fayth. They wanted to sleep, so when we killed Sin, they were finally able to sleep. They'd been dreaming for over a thousand years." Tidus explained gently.
"So they did take you," Tida spat out bitterly, looking down at the ground, her anger turning once again to the fayth of Spira.
"Oh, Tida. If they hadn't started dreaming in the first place, I wouldn't have been able to met Yuna or fall in love with her. If they hadn't dreamt, you wouldn't be here," Tidus said.
"I don't care. They took you away."
Tidus sighed and ruffled her hair. "I guess you've got your mom's will. Once she set her mind, it was hard to change it."
"Dad, why did you come here?" Tida asked suddenly. Tidus slapped his forehead with the base of his hand.
"Damn it! Stupid Tidus!" he cursed. "I almost forgot (Great, I'm turning into Rikku.)! I came here to tell you that Seymour managed to escape the Farplane. I don't know how he did it, but he did. You have to stop him, and send him for good."
"Seymour . . ." Tida's eyes clouded and Tidus pulled away from, cocking one eyebrow.
"Uh, Tida? Huh?"
"I'm sorry about this, Lady Tida."
"What's going on? Where's Mama?" Tida's voice was small, frightened. The man shook his head, sadly.
"I cannot carry out my assignment. Forgive me, Seymour, but I cannot kill an innocent child. I know Lady Yuna too well," he said, putting his hands on Tida's tiny shoulders.
"I want my mama," Tida whimpered, tears forming in her crystal eyes.
"I can' take you back. Seymour cannot know that you still exist. He'll kill you himself. I have to hide you. Tida," the man knelt down to her eye level, "I'm going to take you to Besaid. You can stay there, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to take your memory away. I promise you'll be safe there."
Tidus waved his hand in front of Tida's eyes. "Tida? Tida? Tida!"
Tida blinked, the clouds disappearing from her eyes. Instead her green eye blazed with an emerald fire and her blue burned with a sapphire loathing.
"It was him," she said, barely above a whisper. "Seymour hired that man to kill me, but he didn't. He saved me from Seymour, but he took away who I was."
"Tida, that doesn't matter right now. Your fight isn't with him; it's with Seymour! He's out, and he's after Yuna. You have to stop him!" Desperation was in Tidus's voice as he pleaded with his daughter. Tida looked at him and nodded.
"I will stop Seymour."
* * *
"Yuna! Catch!" Rikku threw the Holy Water as hard as she could. Yuna caught it easily and chugged it hurriedly. In an instant, the Zombie effect was gone and she pointed her guns at the fiend who had inflicted her with it.
"Die!" she yelled, firing.
Lulu was standing in one spot, simply casting her most powerful spells on fiends that dared to approach the Black Mage. Occasionally, she would cast a spell on a fiend one of her allies was fighting.
Wakka was busily taking down the aerial fiends they'd encountered—and having fun in doing it. They'd left the airship, traveling on foot. It appeared Macalania had attracted some new fiends since they'd last passed through.
Yuna watched a Chimera suddenly decide to join the battle. "Lulu, Chimera!"
"What kind?"
"Regular! Hit him with Flare and be done with it!" Yuna yelled back, taking aim to hold the Chimera back while Lulu readied her hex.
"Flare!"
Nothing. The Chimera went on a rampage, first taking out Rikku, who was closet. Yuna stared in horror at the motionless body of her cousin. She raced forward, covering Rikku's body with a shower of gunfire as she warded off advancing fiends.
"Rikku! Curaga!" Yuna cried.
Rikku opened one eye and pushed herself up, a hand pressing to her forehead. "Ugh . . . What happened?"
"Chimera. Come on; we've gotta kill it!" Yuna pulled Rikku to her feet, pointing at the offending Chimera. Instantly, the four of them were on the Chimera.
Wakka slammed his World Champion into its gut and Rikku stopped it from attacking with Thunder by hacking at it with Godhand. Yuna flipped, firing madly from above, the force of the guns keeping her in the air. Lulu Doublecast Demi on the Chimera, lowering its hit points drastically.
At last, with a lot teamwork and a few Cure spells here and there, the battle was done and they nursed their minor cuts and bruises with potions.
Yuna sighed, pulling another potion bottle to her, cursing the Chimera under her breath as the potion healed a stinging cut on her left shoulder. Rikku was whining about being knocked unconscious, and Lulu was chiding Wakka over not allowing her to fix his obviously broken finger.
"It's fine, ya?" Wakka said, dodging Lulu's attempt to grab his wrist.
"Enough, Wakka! Give me your hand!" she shouted, trying again to snatch him again.
"No!" Wakka said, moving out of her reach. Lulu's red eyes glowered at him.
"NOW!" Lulu thundered, her voice echoing in the small clearing. Yuna and Rikku stared at Lulu before slowly backing—or crawling, in Rikku's case—away.
Wakka instantly handed over his hand, and Lulu touched his palm a few times with her finger. Wakka's index finger glowed gently before returning to normal, and unbroken.
"Uh, thanks, Lu," he muttered.
"Don't mention it," Lulu snorted, turning her back to him and facing Yuna and Rikku, who were still watching her cautiously and fearfully.
"That Chimera was not an ordinary fiend. Someone would have had to tamper with it to give it that much power," she said, crossing her arms.
Yuna nodded, agreeing. "But who?"
"Come on, Yunie! I thought that outfit would make your mind sharper, too!" Rikku said, reaching to grab Yuna's shoulder. Yuna's eyes widened.
"Oh, how could I be so stupid! Seymour!" she cried, slapping herself mentally for her mistake.
"Yeah. So where is he?" Wakka sat down, but immediately got to his feet again as his question was answered as Seymour appeared in front of them.
"Why, I'm right here, Sir Wakka," Seymour said smugly, looking calmly at him.
"Seymour!" four voices chorused together, eight eyes glaring at him at once.
"Well, well. It seems you are missing a few . . . guardians, if I may say," Seymour said, chuckling to himself.
"What do you want, Seymour?" Yuna growled, taking a step toward him.
"It's simple really. I want you. I want to rule Spira."
"Well, too bad Seymour! You're not gettin' nothin'!" Rikku chimed in, moving sharply to Yuna's left, taking up her battle stance.
Seymour laughed and brought his hand up. "Offering your life to me again? Well, this time I'll have to be sure to take it."
"Oh, no you don't!" Lulu snapped, stepping up to Yuna's side, a fire alighting in her eyes again for the heat of the battle.
Seymour paused as Wakka joined the Black Mage on the field. "Very well. Until we meet again, Lady Yuna," he said, bowing slightly to her. "Oh, tell Tida I say hello."
With that, Seymour vanished, leaving them alone in the clearing.
Rikku snorted. "Yeah, that's right! Run! Dumb SOB!"
"What did he mean, 'tell Tida I say hello'?" Yuna asked, looking around at the blank faces that answered her query.
"I don't know, but I have a feeling we'll find out. Come on; we've got a way to go to get to the," Wakka grinned and grabbed Rikku, "Thunder Plains!"
"No!" Rikku sank to her knees, covering her ears. "Not again! Yunie, please! Isn't there another way?"
"Sorry, Rikku, but we have to go through the Thunder Plains. After that, we'll stop for a brief while at the Farplane and then on to the Moonflow," Yuna apologized, smiling at Rikku with a slight lift of her shoulders. Rikku closed her eyes, hands still pressing over her ears.
"It's just not fair!"
* * *
"Tida, will you hurry up? The temple's about to open!" Chappu tapped his foot impatiently as Tida sidled up still carrying one of the strange little creatures that were running around underfoot everywhere.
"Sorry, but they're just so cute! And cuddly!" Tida said, pressing the tiny creature to her cheek and cooing to it lovingly. Chappu sighed, throwing his hands up.
"You're impossible!"
"Well, so are you but at least I was nice enough not to say anything about it," Tida retorted, setting the fluff ball down as the temple opened. Not waiting for a comeback, she hurried inside. Chappu growled and glared down at the little white—little white thing at his feet, looking up at him almost hopefully.
Sighing in defeat, he patted his head lightly before following Tida inside.
Tida was already standing in front the door to the Cloister of Trials, waiting. She smirked when he began ascending the stairs.
"You petted it, didn't you?" she said. Chappu ignored her question and jerked his head at the door. Rolling her eyes, Tida pushed at the doors with her shoulder.
"They evidently haven't been used in a long time," Tida said through clenched teeth, grunting with her efforts to open them. Chappu frowned and moved up beside her, putting his back to the doors.
Before both could push together, the doors swung forward and deposited Chappu and Tida on the ground, Tida falling on top of him. She blushed and sprang to her feet.
"Um, thanks for breaking my fall," she said, trying to force her blush away. She ran ahead into the next chamber.
Chappu sighed. "Why me?"
After a few mishaps in the Trials, one of which involved Chappu getting hit by a bolt that was supposed to be charging a Djose Sphere, they made it to the Chamber of the Fayth. Tida obediently went inside while Chappu played with a Destruction Sphere, wondering vaguely if there were any hidden items left in the temple.
He slipped the sphere into a slot on the wall and was thrown backward as the wall exploded with the force of a machina canon. Chappu groaned and sat up, rubbing his backside. "Damn sphere," he swore. He achingly got to his feet and walked toward the chest that had been spared from the explosion that had rocked the chamber.
Chappu opened the chest and pulled out a shimmering blue movie sphere along with a blade. "Whoa," Chappu breathed, turning the blade to see it better. "A Spirit Keeper! I didn't think these existed anymore! Incredible!"
Meanwhile, Tida was kneeling in the Chamber of the Fayth, praying whole-heartedly for the power of the aeon of the Djose Temple. The fayth floated up from the glass dome and looked, smiling, down at Tida.
"I was hoping you would soon come to seek my power," the fayth said. Tida dropped her hands and opened her eyes.
"Yes. Will you give it to me?" Tida asked hopefully.
"I will. Believe it or not, we fayth are also connected to the Farplane. I can feel that Seymour is no longer there. Please, take my aeon and stop him," the fayth said, moving its hands toward Tida, a strange but comforting glow transferring from them to Tida. Tida was pulled into the air, her eyes closed as a wind swept around the room. She hovered a feet few off the floor until the fayth sank back into the dome and color returned to the forms beneath it.
Tida opened her eyes a let out the breath she'd been holding. "Talking to the fayth is really nerve-racking," she said, suppressing a shudder. She turned back to the door, stepped out, and froze. Chappu was grinning and holding a blade in one hand and a sphere in the other, but he didn't seem aware that he had black marks all over his face and on his red shirt. His usually combed hair was tangled wildly and some of it was sticking up in the front.
"Hey," he said, lifting the sword up so she could see it better. "I found this and this movie sphere."
Tida looked past him at the rubble on the floor that she guessed used to be the wall that covered the now gapping, jagging hole.
"Uh, yeah, and you took apart the temple to get it," Tida said, placing her hands on her hips. Chappu shrugged sheepishly.
"Oops?" he said. Tida sighed.
"Did you know you're also a big mess?" she asked, moving to him and rubbing at his face with a cloth she pulled from her belt. Chappu wrinkled his nose as she wiped his face off but he tolerated it; better than walking around embarrassing himself.
"You can clean your shirt off at the Moonflow," Tida told him, replacing her cloth in her belt. "So, what's on the sphere?"
"I dunno. I was waiting for you to come back out so we could watch it. It's kinda old," Chappu said, lifting the sphere to his eye level and giving it a careful scrutiny.
"Here." Tida took the sphere from him and sat down on the floor. Chappu joined her and watched as she managed to turn it on.
Instantly, the sphere came to life.
Disclaimer: All belongs to Squaresoft. Tida and Chappu are mine.