Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
I own Reppi, her family, the Spira Spirals, and while I'm at it, Naaga and the entire village this story takes place in. I'm pretty sure I don't own much else right here.
And while I'm rambling, big thanks to all the reviewers, especially the ones like Pierson and miaowne and Tuna-chan who keep coming back for more. Rock on, blitz fans.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes in Overdrive
by flame mage
round 6: Daredevil
**********
Their heads swiveled towards her in unison, like mechanical dolls. For a while, no one said anything, and I felt like busting out with a cheery, "Well! Isn't this nice!" knowing perfectly well that it wasn't nice, and it wasn't gonna be. I just felt this need to break the silence.
I guess they did too, because right away the little buggers started whispering to each other until finally they couldn't contain it and blurted out, "Miyu's home! Miyu's home!" But it didn't have the cadence of normal speech, not even the weird fast way most Yevonites talk in their own language. It was monotonous, dead, so that despite all the years I'd spent slumped over a desk in the front of an Al Bhed English class, it took me a little while to figure out what they were saying. Creepy.
"Eiko...Yomi...Takeo?" Miyu's voice was creaking strangely, like it might crack up an octave. "It has been so long..." She took a step toward them; they shrunk back. Puzzled, she ran a hand up to her face and removed the glittering Crusader's mask that covered her eyes. "You see? It really is me." Her hands reached out as if by their own will. The kids didn't respond.
"Why have you come?" the old woman asked harshly.
Miyu turned, naked pain covering her face suddenly. Because of that mask and our height difference, plus the calm way she always acted, I always thought of Miyu as older than she really was. As she stood there staring, though, she looked like a little girl. "I...I must ask a favor of you," she said shakily. "It is a matter of life and death. We must use a sphere viewer."
She was speaking in the same distant, polite way she always spoke. If I didn't know her I wouldn't've even heard the quaver hanging in her voice. That wasn't the way she got answered. "And why should we help you?" demanded the old man. "Why should we do anything for you after you ignored our will and then ran off to fight alongside the filthy Al Bhed? Yevon will punish you for your sins, child."
Filthy Al Bhed. Filthy. Me. Naaga. Our parents. Everyone who'd died in the attack on Home. Filthy.
I felt my body start to shake.
"Please," Miyu begged, "you don't understand--"
"Three years, Miyu. Three years you've been gone!" the old woman cried, like she hadn't heard. "Look around you! We are starving, child, and the blame is yours. We will not help a traitor to our family and our Yevon."
"No? Then maybe you'll help me," I burst out. Miyu turned to face me, and I saw the tears hanging in her eyes. I could feel Bickson's eyes, too, and Naaga's eyes and the eyes of those skinny kids and their parents boring into me. I took a deep breath and tried to hold back the explosion.
"Look," I said finally, when I had counted to ten a couple times and was pretty sure I could keep from screaming. "I haven't known your daughter all that long, but I like to think I know her pretty well, and she didn't run away because she was trying to rebel. Everything she's done, she's done because she loved someone and because she wanted to destroy Sin. And that ain't a crime, okay?
"You know what is, though?" I asked. "Sending us outta here without letting us see that sphere. Miyu's not kidding when she says it's life and death here. Us not seeing that sphere means that there are four missing people who might not ever be found. If you can't do it because you love your daughter, do it because you're gonna have to wake up every morning for the rest of your lives and look out at that Moonflow and know you killed four people who didn't deserve to die."
They were absolutely silent. The kids weren't moving, and it was creeping me out. The two old people sat there, staring at me and looking tired.
"Come," Miyu said quietly, turning and putting an arm around Naaga's shoulders, "let us go."
"Wait," the old man croaked almost silently. Miyu turned back. Slowly, as if the words were wrenching themselves from his throat, he choked out, "You may use the viewer."
"Thank you," Miyu said so quietly I could barely hear it, and then she went back into motion immediately. Quickly, she crossed the tiny room to the far side, where there was a dusty little sphere stand. She knelt to brush it off and set Reppi's pink sphere in.
"Is it still the same one?" she asked. The old man nodded. "Then it'll be black and white, but at least we'll be able to see it," she said over her shoulder to us, pressing the button.
The screen flickered.
*****
It kept flickering until an exasperated Miyu finally got Bickson to kick it, after which point it worked fine. A couple seconds later, we could see the black-and-white image of a woman. She was tall--in person, she would've towered over me--and strong-looking, with dark hair kinked up in dozens of long braids and skin that I got the impression would've been the same chocolate-brown color as Miyu's eyes.
"Yep, that's her," Bickson muttered, mostly to himself.
The goalie was still on her knees, looking at the viewer. "It appears to be divided into tracks, which I would assume are the entries," she announced after a while. "I will skip to the last track so that we may learn what her final words were."
The sphere spluttered in protest and then flickered again. When it calmed down, Reppi was standing there again in the black-and-white uniform of the Spirals.
"I can't believe it!" the image griped. "They weren't kidding! I got that order from the Maesters themselves the utha day sayin' I gotta disband the team!"
"This is it," Miyu decided, rocking back on her heels to watch.
"The other guys were pretty confused," Reppi continued from the sphere. "They didn't get why the Maesters would botha with a minor-league blitz team. And a'course I couldn't tell 'em what it was about. I always knew it'd get those guys' attention, but I neva thought it'd come ta this.
"See, I'm sure this is about the team name. The Spirals seems like a pretty dumb name for a blitz team, right? But I knew what I was doin' when I chose it. My momma was a summoner, and my big brutha was her guardian. They both died up there on Gagazet tryin' to bring the Calm. We've had two more Calms since then, and everyone thinks this is gonna be the last one. But it isn't.
"There's somethin' the Temples don't want us to know, somethin' those big-wigs up in Bevelle aren't tellin' everyone. There's never gonna be an Eternal Calm. Sin's gonna keep comin' back, and meanwhile summoners and guardians and everyone else are gonna keep dyin'. It's just a big spiral--a spiral of death, like. And that's why I called the team that. 'Cause I wanted those fancy Maesters to know that someone knows the game.
"So I know what I'm gonna do now that I'm outta the sphere. I'm gonna go on my own pilgrimage, just like my momma did. Go to all the temples, see all'a Spira while I still can. And then, I'm gonna go to Bevelle and tell those Maesters--"
"Who's in there?! Open up!" demanded a voice at the door.
*****
"Oh, holy Yevon!" the old woman gasped. "Who--"
"Open up and no civilians will be hurt!" the voice yelled again. "We'll break down the door if you don't come out!"
"What's going on, Linnie?" Naaga wanted to know.
I was still mentally trying to translate the word 'civilians,' which is not something they teach you in Al Bhed English classes. "I don't know, kid," I hissed back once I'd made the connection with 'lejemeyhc'. "But keep your mouth shut. Whatever it is, it ain't good."
"What should we do?" Bickson asked Miyu.
The goalie squared her shoulders and fixed her mask back on her face. "Go out."
"Are you crazy?" Naaga asked. "They sound scary!"
"I'd rather they scare me than them," Miyu answered, gesturing at the family. The three children were wide-eyed now, clutching their mother like scared birds.
"Mother, father," she said to them. Her hand passed lightly over the hair of each of the kids. "You three." She stood up again. "As soon as we leave, I need you to run. Please, do as I say. I have a feeling that it is not safe for you here. Return when the threat is gone."
They nodded silently. The old man scooped the littlest up in his arms, and the other two took their mother's hands. Miyu turned her face toward the door and called, "All right, we'll open the door and come out quietly." Calmly, she started walking. I found Naaga's hand inside the long sleeve of her robe and took it, leading her out. Bickson followed behind her.
As soon as we made it out into the dusty path, I heard a cry. My eyes were still adjusting to the light, and I blinked wildly, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I still couldn't see by the time someone roughly grabbed my wrists behind my back and forced me to the ground. I felt someone's knee boring into my spine, and I choked on the mouthful of dust as my face hit the dirt.
"What the hell is this?!" Bickson demanded. "You said no civilians would be hurt if we opened the door!"
"You're not civilians, you're traitors!" the voice shot back. I finally figured out what was going on and looked up from my new friend, the ground, to see that the other three were bound in the same way I was. The people holding us were Guado, dressed like guardians.
Filthy blue slime.
"What are the charges?" Miyu asked, still sounding completely calm. I wanted to kick her. How the hell was she still chilled out at a time like this?
"Treason against Yevon," the Guado holding her answered curtly.
"What's treason?" Naaga asked, confused by another word that our English books never bothered with.
"Silence, brat! It matters not!" her captor roared, shaking her roughly.
My fists clenched involuntarily. "Get your hands off my sister!" I screamed at him with more intensity than I'd thought I had.
"You are not in a position to be giving orders to anyone, *pilgrim*," he taunted me.
"E cyet," I yelled back, kicking violently back and up into the shins of the Guado holding me, "kad ouin ryhtc uvv so cecdan!" His knees buckled and he went down, moaning slightly. I launched myself toward Naaga and got hold of two fistfulls of her captor's spiky hair as I shot past. The guardian and I both went down hard on the dirt, and Naaga scrambled free.
I recovered first and jerked the robes off, leaving myself in just the blitz bodysuit. Behind me, Naaga was doing the same thing, and Bickson had just punched his Guado in the face. Blood spurted from the delicate blue nostrils. Miyu whirled around, breaking the guardian's hold on her, and took off running.
"Where the hell are you going?" I shouted after her.
"Come on, while they are still down!" she cried back. "They will have reinforcements waiting--we cannot afford to dally here!"
I didn't get the whole dallying thing either, but I got the point. "Naaga! Bick! Let's bail!" I yelled to the other two. They followed. I scooped Naaga up in my arms, and we ran for dear life.
**********
Translations:
lejemeyhc - civilians
"E cyet, kad ouin ryhtc uvv so cecdan!" - "I said, get your hands off my sister!"
I own Reppi, her family, the Spira Spirals, and while I'm at it, Naaga and the entire village this story takes place in. I'm pretty sure I don't own much else right here.
And while I'm rambling, big thanks to all the reviewers, especially the ones like Pierson and miaowne and Tuna-chan who keep coming back for more. Rock on, blitz fans.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes in Overdrive
by flame mage
round 6: Daredevil
**********
Their heads swiveled towards her in unison, like mechanical dolls. For a while, no one said anything, and I felt like busting out with a cheery, "Well! Isn't this nice!" knowing perfectly well that it wasn't nice, and it wasn't gonna be. I just felt this need to break the silence.
I guess they did too, because right away the little buggers started whispering to each other until finally they couldn't contain it and blurted out, "Miyu's home! Miyu's home!" But it didn't have the cadence of normal speech, not even the weird fast way most Yevonites talk in their own language. It was monotonous, dead, so that despite all the years I'd spent slumped over a desk in the front of an Al Bhed English class, it took me a little while to figure out what they were saying. Creepy.
"Eiko...Yomi...Takeo?" Miyu's voice was creaking strangely, like it might crack up an octave. "It has been so long..." She took a step toward them; they shrunk back. Puzzled, she ran a hand up to her face and removed the glittering Crusader's mask that covered her eyes. "You see? It really is me." Her hands reached out as if by their own will. The kids didn't respond.
"Why have you come?" the old woman asked harshly.
Miyu turned, naked pain covering her face suddenly. Because of that mask and our height difference, plus the calm way she always acted, I always thought of Miyu as older than she really was. As she stood there staring, though, she looked like a little girl. "I...I must ask a favor of you," she said shakily. "It is a matter of life and death. We must use a sphere viewer."
She was speaking in the same distant, polite way she always spoke. If I didn't know her I wouldn't've even heard the quaver hanging in her voice. That wasn't the way she got answered. "And why should we help you?" demanded the old man. "Why should we do anything for you after you ignored our will and then ran off to fight alongside the filthy Al Bhed? Yevon will punish you for your sins, child."
Filthy Al Bhed. Filthy. Me. Naaga. Our parents. Everyone who'd died in the attack on Home. Filthy.
I felt my body start to shake.
"Please," Miyu begged, "you don't understand--"
"Three years, Miyu. Three years you've been gone!" the old woman cried, like she hadn't heard. "Look around you! We are starving, child, and the blame is yours. We will not help a traitor to our family and our Yevon."
"No? Then maybe you'll help me," I burst out. Miyu turned to face me, and I saw the tears hanging in her eyes. I could feel Bickson's eyes, too, and Naaga's eyes and the eyes of those skinny kids and their parents boring into me. I took a deep breath and tried to hold back the explosion.
"Look," I said finally, when I had counted to ten a couple times and was pretty sure I could keep from screaming. "I haven't known your daughter all that long, but I like to think I know her pretty well, and she didn't run away because she was trying to rebel. Everything she's done, she's done because she loved someone and because she wanted to destroy Sin. And that ain't a crime, okay?
"You know what is, though?" I asked. "Sending us outta here without letting us see that sphere. Miyu's not kidding when she says it's life and death here. Us not seeing that sphere means that there are four missing people who might not ever be found. If you can't do it because you love your daughter, do it because you're gonna have to wake up every morning for the rest of your lives and look out at that Moonflow and know you killed four people who didn't deserve to die."
They were absolutely silent. The kids weren't moving, and it was creeping me out. The two old people sat there, staring at me and looking tired.
"Come," Miyu said quietly, turning and putting an arm around Naaga's shoulders, "let us go."
"Wait," the old man croaked almost silently. Miyu turned back. Slowly, as if the words were wrenching themselves from his throat, he choked out, "You may use the viewer."
"Thank you," Miyu said so quietly I could barely hear it, and then she went back into motion immediately. Quickly, she crossed the tiny room to the far side, where there was a dusty little sphere stand. She knelt to brush it off and set Reppi's pink sphere in.
"Is it still the same one?" she asked. The old man nodded. "Then it'll be black and white, but at least we'll be able to see it," she said over her shoulder to us, pressing the button.
The screen flickered.
*****
It kept flickering until an exasperated Miyu finally got Bickson to kick it, after which point it worked fine. A couple seconds later, we could see the black-and-white image of a woman. She was tall--in person, she would've towered over me--and strong-looking, with dark hair kinked up in dozens of long braids and skin that I got the impression would've been the same chocolate-brown color as Miyu's eyes.
"Yep, that's her," Bickson muttered, mostly to himself.
The goalie was still on her knees, looking at the viewer. "It appears to be divided into tracks, which I would assume are the entries," she announced after a while. "I will skip to the last track so that we may learn what her final words were."
The sphere spluttered in protest and then flickered again. When it calmed down, Reppi was standing there again in the black-and-white uniform of the Spirals.
"I can't believe it!" the image griped. "They weren't kidding! I got that order from the Maesters themselves the utha day sayin' I gotta disband the team!"
"This is it," Miyu decided, rocking back on her heels to watch.
"The other guys were pretty confused," Reppi continued from the sphere. "They didn't get why the Maesters would botha with a minor-league blitz team. And a'course I couldn't tell 'em what it was about. I always knew it'd get those guys' attention, but I neva thought it'd come ta this.
"See, I'm sure this is about the team name. The Spirals seems like a pretty dumb name for a blitz team, right? But I knew what I was doin' when I chose it. My momma was a summoner, and my big brutha was her guardian. They both died up there on Gagazet tryin' to bring the Calm. We've had two more Calms since then, and everyone thinks this is gonna be the last one. But it isn't.
"There's somethin' the Temples don't want us to know, somethin' those big-wigs up in Bevelle aren't tellin' everyone. There's never gonna be an Eternal Calm. Sin's gonna keep comin' back, and meanwhile summoners and guardians and everyone else are gonna keep dyin'. It's just a big spiral--a spiral of death, like. And that's why I called the team that. 'Cause I wanted those fancy Maesters to know that someone knows the game.
"So I know what I'm gonna do now that I'm outta the sphere. I'm gonna go on my own pilgrimage, just like my momma did. Go to all the temples, see all'a Spira while I still can. And then, I'm gonna go to Bevelle and tell those Maesters--"
"Who's in there?! Open up!" demanded a voice at the door.
*****
"Oh, holy Yevon!" the old woman gasped. "Who--"
"Open up and no civilians will be hurt!" the voice yelled again. "We'll break down the door if you don't come out!"
"What's going on, Linnie?" Naaga wanted to know.
I was still mentally trying to translate the word 'civilians,' which is not something they teach you in Al Bhed English classes. "I don't know, kid," I hissed back once I'd made the connection with 'lejemeyhc'. "But keep your mouth shut. Whatever it is, it ain't good."
"What should we do?" Bickson asked Miyu.
The goalie squared her shoulders and fixed her mask back on her face. "Go out."
"Are you crazy?" Naaga asked. "They sound scary!"
"I'd rather they scare me than them," Miyu answered, gesturing at the family. The three children were wide-eyed now, clutching their mother like scared birds.
"Mother, father," she said to them. Her hand passed lightly over the hair of each of the kids. "You three." She stood up again. "As soon as we leave, I need you to run. Please, do as I say. I have a feeling that it is not safe for you here. Return when the threat is gone."
They nodded silently. The old man scooped the littlest up in his arms, and the other two took their mother's hands. Miyu turned her face toward the door and called, "All right, we'll open the door and come out quietly." Calmly, she started walking. I found Naaga's hand inside the long sleeve of her robe and took it, leading her out. Bickson followed behind her.
As soon as we made it out into the dusty path, I heard a cry. My eyes were still adjusting to the light, and I blinked wildly, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I still couldn't see by the time someone roughly grabbed my wrists behind my back and forced me to the ground. I felt someone's knee boring into my spine, and I choked on the mouthful of dust as my face hit the dirt.
"What the hell is this?!" Bickson demanded. "You said no civilians would be hurt if we opened the door!"
"You're not civilians, you're traitors!" the voice shot back. I finally figured out what was going on and looked up from my new friend, the ground, to see that the other three were bound in the same way I was. The people holding us were Guado, dressed like guardians.
Filthy blue slime.
"What are the charges?" Miyu asked, still sounding completely calm. I wanted to kick her. How the hell was she still chilled out at a time like this?
"Treason against Yevon," the Guado holding her answered curtly.
"What's treason?" Naaga asked, confused by another word that our English books never bothered with.
"Silence, brat! It matters not!" her captor roared, shaking her roughly.
My fists clenched involuntarily. "Get your hands off my sister!" I screamed at him with more intensity than I'd thought I had.
"You are not in a position to be giving orders to anyone, *pilgrim*," he taunted me.
"E cyet," I yelled back, kicking violently back and up into the shins of the Guado holding me, "kad ouin ryhtc uvv so cecdan!" His knees buckled and he went down, moaning slightly. I launched myself toward Naaga and got hold of two fistfulls of her captor's spiky hair as I shot past. The guardian and I both went down hard on the dirt, and Naaga scrambled free.
I recovered first and jerked the robes off, leaving myself in just the blitz bodysuit. Behind me, Naaga was doing the same thing, and Bickson had just punched his Guado in the face. Blood spurted from the delicate blue nostrils. Miyu whirled around, breaking the guardian's hold on her, and took off running.
"Where the hell are you going?" I shouted after her.
"Come on, while they are still down!" she cried back. "They will have reinforcements waiting--we cannot afford to dally here!"
I didn't get the whole dallying thing either, but I got the point. "Naaga! Bick! Let's bail!" I yelled to the other two. They followed. I scooped Naaga up in my arms, and we ran for dear life.
**********
Translations:
lejemeyhc - civilians
"E cyet, kad ouin ryhtc uvv so cecdan!" - "I said, get your hands off my sister!"