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 think I own most of the exotic locales in this chapter--with the obvious exception of Bevelle. I hear Yuna and company can actually enter the city in FFX-2, but since it hasn't been released yet in my neck of the woods, the description is based on my imagination and the few details I can glean from FFX.
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 7: Coward
**********
"Miyu, where the hell are we going?!" I yelled as we tore down the dirt path out of the village back toward Guadosalam.
"In all honesty, Linna, I do not know!" she called back. "We must find a place to hide. Then we may plan a course of action!"
"Has anyone ever considered," Bickson threw in as he caught up to me, "that none of us has any idea what we're doing?"
"Oh, NOW you listen to me!" I exploded. "You couldn't'a acknowledged I was right back in, say, Luca?!"
"Linnie...Linnie, I'm scared," moaned Naaga, burying her face in my shoulder.
"Shut up!" We were in the forest now, sloshing through mud and brambles. Naaga and my gear bag were both heavy. I kept tripping, which hurt like hell. I was wearing only the bodysuit now and my feet were bare and probably bleeding. The trees felt like they were closing in on us. I shot a glance back over my shoulder to see if the guardians were still following us and nearly went sprawling. Naaga whimpered.
"This way!" Miyu called from up ahead. I looked up to see her pointing through a tangle of roots on the ground. "Through this tunnel, there used to be a monastery!"
"Oh, great, EXACTLY where we want to go!" I shouted.
"It's abandoned! We played there as children!" she explained. As I watched, she ducked down onto her hands and knees and crawled through the dark hole.
"We don't have a choice, do we?" Bickson asked, huffing a little as we slowed down.
I closed my eyes and heard Guado shouts from behind us. "Nope," I agreed, crouching and setting Naaga down too hard. Immediately, she scrambled through.
Bickson and I looked at each other and heard the battle cries as they got louder and louder. "They're getting closer," he said.
I nodded roughly. "I think they're onto us. Better get out of here."
"See you on the other side." With that, he flattened himself on the ground and pulled himself into the tunnel.
I looked down and couldn't see light at the end of the tunnel. The voices were almost behind me now. There was no more time to hesitate. I shoved the gear bag through the hole, put my head down, and slithered into darkness.
*****
I surfaced about a minute later root-scratched and dusty as hell, but alive. I was in a clearing in the woods, completely covered by a canopy of the kind of huge trees that make up the Forest of the Guado. The ground here was more grass and less mud, though, and at the back of the clearing was a wooden building. I could see where several trees had been carved out and then joined by more carved wooden archways to form a large circular structure.
"This is the temple," Miyu said. "We can't stay here long--they know this place as well as I do and they will find us. But they do not know that I know of this place, and so we have some time in which we can rest and plan our next move."
"How long do you think we have?" asked Bickson.
Miyu shrugged elegantly. She was the kind of person who did everything elegantly. "I have no way of knowing. Possibly a few hours."
"No time to waste, then," the Goer decided, starting for the main door of the temple. Like the houses in Guadosalam, the tree-building actually did have a hinged door. He swung it open and took a step in.
"Weird," he murmured to himself as we entered. "It doesn't look all that dusty. You're sure no one's still here, right?"
"I cannot imagine why anyone would be." Miyu looked around the place. Bickson was right; there was no dust anywhere. The inside of the temple was basically a simplified version of Nav's house--entirely wooden without the bright colors of Guadosalam. I wasn't exactly sure what a Yevonite monastery was supposed to look like, but I figured only about ten people could live there at a time. The tiny main room led straight into a tiny chamber where a table and a few hard benches were carved out of the wood--probably the dining room/living room, I decided. The only other room was a small alcove with shelves built into the walls; the Yevonite version of bunk beds. I didn't see a kitchen or a bathroom anywhere--maybe the priests did that stuff outside or something.
Naaga was thinking along the same lines I was. "No food?"
I sighed, resigning myself to a life of starvation, and started digging around in my bag for the rest of my uniform. Getting the boots and sleeves on again felt good.
"Ahh, travelers," an ancient voice creaked behind me as I was slipping on my goggles. We all jumped in unison, Bickson cracking his head on the low ceiling. When I recovered and turned around, there was someone standing there.
If I'd thought Miyu's father was ancient, he was still a toddler compared to this guy. The man coulda been a museum piece, with a shiny bald head and enough wrinkles to keep a laundromat busy for days. He looked like he was all skin and bones, and right away I wanted to tell him to start eating or die already.
Immediately after I took all this in, I saw that he was wearing the robes of a Yevonite priest.
"Oh, sir, our humblest apologies!" Miyu gasped, her hand flying up to her mouth in horror. "We did not mean to intrude!"
"It is all right. I knew you would come." His voice, which had probably been somewhere in Bickson's range when he was younger, had fluked up the octave in old age and sounded like a bird's now. Or maybe he'd always sounded like a drug-infused little girl.
"You knew?" Bickson asked skeptically.
The priest-guy nodded. "I foresaw it. I know, too, what you seek, and I believe I can help you."
"Oh, really," I scoffed involuntarily. "Great. Just what we needed, a deus ex machina! All right, old man, what are we seeking?"
"Linna," Miyu whispered to me out of the corner of her mouth. "Have respect, please."
"It is all right," the geezer repeated, waving one bony hand in a gesture of dismissal. His eyes were a pale, filmy blue, like someone had dropped milk lenses into them. "I anticipated this. Linna is not among the believers in Yevon's truth."
"Shut up, grandpa," I snapped. "What do you know about truth, and what do you know about me? With those eyes, I'd bet my last paycheck you can't even see me."
"There is a speck of dust exactly 1/32 of an inch in diameter located a quarter of an inch to the right of your upper lip," he croaked. Involuntarily, I scraped the back my gloved hand across my face and watched the dust speck unstick itself and fall onto the table, where it bounced twice and stopped moving. I scowled.
"I foresaw that too," he said smugly.
"Look, sir, as great as it is that you've taken it upon yourself to improve my friend's oral hygeine," Bickson interrupted, "we're in something of a hurry. You said you can help us."
"I can." The old man still looked like he was talking only to me, and it creeped me out. "In answer to your question, Linna, you are seeking your missing comrades. I have news of one of them."
"Which one?" Naaga wanted to know. I snorted. I knew she was hoping it'd be Jassu. Her and her stupid crushes.
The old, wrinkled lips slithered into a dry smile. "Naida."
I rolled my eyes and snorted again. "Where was she, huh? Vacationing in Besaid? Cheating on Aniki with some tanned blitz hunk?"
He ignored me. "She was last seen in St. Bevelle."
"Do you know what she was doing there?" Miyu asked.
"No."
"Do you know why she disappeared?" That was Naaga.
"No."
"How long ago was this?" was Bickson's question.
"Two days."
"Great. Wonderful. Totally useless." I threw up my hands in disgust. "Where's the part where this is helpful again?"
"Think about it, Linna," said Geezer. "Put the facts together in your mind. Naida is in St. Bevelle, which means the others are probably there as well. You also know that St. Bevelle was Reppi's ultimate destination. Does it not make sense to go there?"
"Wait a minute. How do you know Reppi was headed for Bevelle?" Bickson demanded suspiciously.
Geezer smiled enigmatically. "I told you. I have foreseen everything."
No one said anything for a minute. Then Naaga piped up, "I don't like it."
"Me neither, kid," Bickson agreed.
"But you have no choice," Geezer insisted. "If you stay here, the guardians will find you. I can take you to Bevelle safely. It's your only lead."
Miyu sighed. "He is right; you do know that."
"So what are we supposed to do when we get to Bevelle?" I asked. "Go up to every random stranger we see and say, 'Excuse me, but have you seen an obnoxious Al Bhed diva wandering around dressed like a hooker lately? Oh, great, which way did she go?'"
"You will find her," the priest said. "I am sure of it."
"I'm not," Bickson shot back. Then he paused. "But I can't think of anything else to do. I vote we go."
"Waiddaminute. C'mere a sec." I grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the corner. In a low voice, I hissed, "Bick, what the hell are you doing? Don't you remember all those prayer beads? Don't you think it's weird that we were able to find the sphere so easily even though it was obvious someone had torn the place apart looking for it? Isn't it a huge coincidence that those Guado happened to show up just as we were watching it? I keep getting the feeling it's all a set-up."
"It doesn't matter," he replied without hesitation. "No matter what anyone says, the fact is the old guy's right. All the signs are pointing to Bevelle. If you have any brighter ideas about where we should go next, go ahead, share 'em with the class." I kept my mouth shut, because I didn't think he'd want to hear that I thought we should just go home and recruit new players for the Aurochs. "Either way, someone's probably still out to get me," he continued. "And we know they're willing to go through you or Naaga or anyone else. The only way we even have a shot is to keep going."
Naaga. Couldn't let them get Naaga. I sighed and cracked my knuckles. "Fine. Fine. We'll go."
We walked back over to the group. "Have you decided?" Geezer asked, like he already knew what the answer was.
"Yeah," I replied. "Next stop--Bevelle."
*****
"Uhm...Sir Priest...please forgive me for my disrespect, but isn't this a bit...well, unusual?" Miyu asked skeptically, looking at the three shiny new motorbikes with eyes as big as watering cans. The gleaming chrome looked weird against the solid brown wood of the temple's back room.
"Desperate times require desperate measures, Miyu! Have no worries--I'm a priest. Now get on!" the geezer chirped happily from the back of the first bike. He grabbed the handles, making the kind of overkill "vrrm, vrmm" sound that always used to drive me nuts when idiotic maintenance workers on lawnmowers did it at Home.
"But it's a machina!"
The filmy blue eyes seemed to sharpen as they turned towards her. "You are a Crusader. You are familiar with Al Bhed machina technology, are you not?"
"Yes. But...a priest?"
The old man shrugged, which made him look even more like a bird. "We have no time to waste. This is the fastest way to get to St. Bevelle. Get on."
"Are you sure they're safe?" Bickson was kicking the treads and looking skeptical.
"He probably ain't, but I am," I answered. "I've used them before. They'll save us a day or two of travel time. We could be in downtown Bevelle in a couple hours."
"Is Bevelle far?" Naaga asked.
"It is about to get a lot closer, child," Geezer told her. "Now let's get going." With that, he revved the engine one more time and sped out of the clearing--there was a back way, I noticed--and into the forest again. Shrugging, we followed.
Big mistake.
*****
It took us about two and a half hours to get from that point to Bevelle. Miyu, who was apparently completely impervious to the dark cloud of tension hanging over her head and pouring figurative rain all down her uniform, would later describe the trip as "wonderful." She was lovin' the machina thing--it still threw her that a priest was endorsing it, but I guess she figured that as long as it was there, she might as well enjoy it. And Naaga had more experience with machina than Miyu, which meant she got to drive--which I never let her do at home, since she'd already failed her driving test three times since her sixteenth birthday. Jubilant over her good fortune, she sang loudly and off-key the whole way.
Bickson and I weren't that naively cheerful about the whole mess. He was even less comfortable with the machina idea than Miyu, and he definitely wasn't used to going that fast. Sometimes his arms were clamped around my waist so tightly I had trouble steering, and a couple times we almost crashed into trees because I kept having to turn back to see what the hell he was looking over his shoulder at. A lot more trees and nothing, it turned out. We were all getting paranoid these days.
Geezer, for his part, didn't seem to have much to say. He still hadn't told us anything about himself, and when I asked him where in Bevelle he'd seen Naida he suddenly got a hazy memory and became so completely befuddled he didn't speak until we were at the city limits.
"We dismount and enter the city. I will take you to a place I know of where you will find your answers," he told us cryptically, jumping off the motorbike and flipping the kickstand down with his toe like he'd done it before.
"No one's going to stop us?" Bickson asked. "We're riding machina and traveling with two Al Bhed and no one's gonna think that's weird?"
"Do not worry. All will be well," answered Father Non-Ambiguous.
Saying that Bevelle is bigger than Luca would be a serious understatement. Bevelle is to Luca what Luca is to an ant farm. The whole place is gleaming with purple and green and gold, with towers that scrape so far into the sky they look like they might hit the sun and glassy red walkways crisscrossing the city everywhere. And in the center of it all is the temple--syh, the temple.
I was pretty unconcerned with all this at the time, though. My thoughts were running more along the lines of, "this is crazy. We're never gonna find Naida, let alone Letty and Jassu and Zalitz. We're running around with some wacko religious crackpot whose most defining feature is his incredible ability to see small quantities of dirt. There is no way in hell any of this is going to work the way it's supposed to."
Which is why I really wasn't all that surprised when I felt the cold metal barrel of a gun being leveled into my back and the ground rushed up to meet me for the second time that day.
*****
This time there wasn't much I could do about it, because when I looked up I was surrounded by a ring of--surprise!--more people with guns. Each of which was pointing at one of our heads.
"What is this?" Miyu choked from the ground.
"This, Madame Crusader," one of the guards replied coldly, jabbing her with the barrel of the rifle he was cradling in his hands like he knew how to use it, "is an arrest."
"E *dumt* oui ed fyc y cad-ib," I muttered to Bickson.
"An Al Bhed, eh? Stand up slowly, filth," another spat into my ear. "Any sudden moves and I'll turn that pretty yellow hair of yours into a wig for my daughter's doll, got it?"
"It's not yellow, it's *blonde*," was what I shoulda said, but of course you never come up with that stuff until later. What I actually said was closer to "urk" as he grabbed my hair and yanked hard. I scrambled for footing and managed to bear enough of my own weight to avoid being snatched bald-headed.
"You lied to us!" Miyu cried at Geezer, who was standing there motionlessly with a smile on his withered little mug.
"I did," he acknowledged like he was proud of it.
All around us, people were still moving. Priests, chanting quietly to themselves as they walked. A group of blitzers spinning balls on their fingers and trying to act macho. Little kids with their mothers, clamoring for ice cream. Thousands of people, and not one of them acted like they cared or even noticed that right in the middle of their city, four people were getting arrested for absolutely no reason.
"All right," the guard ordered when we were all on our feet, "March!"
**********
Translations:
"E *dumt* oui ed fyc y cad-ib." - "I *told* you it was a set-up."
I think I own most of the exotic locales in this chapter--with the obvious exception of Bevelle. I hear Yuna and company can actually enter the city in FFX-2, but since it hasn't been released yet in my neck of the woods, the description is based on my imagination and the few details I can glean from FFX.
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 7: Coward
**********
"Miyu, where the hell are we going?!" I yelled as we tore down the dirt path out of the village back toward Guadosalam.
"In all honesty, Linna, I do not know!" she called back. "We must find a place to hide. Then we may plan a course of action!"
"Has anyone ever considered," Bickson threw in as he caught up to me, "that none of us has any idea what we're doing?"
"Oh, NOW you listen to me!" I exploded. "You couldn't'a acknowledged I was right back in, say, Luca?!"
"Linnie...Linnie, I'm scared," moaned Naaga, burying her face in my shoulder.
"Shut up!" We were in the forest now, sloshing through mud and brambles. Naaga and my gear bag were both heavy. I kept tripping, which hurt like hell. I was wearing only the bodysuit now and my feet were bare and probably bleeding. The trees felt like they were closing in on us. I shot a glance back over my shoulder to see if the guardians were still following us and nearly went sprawling. Naaga whimpered.
"This way!" Miyu called from up ahead. I looked up to see her pointing through a tangle of roots on the ground. "Through this tunnel, there used to be a monastery!"
"Oh, great, EXACTLY where we want to go!" I shouted.
"It's abandoned! We played there as children!" she explained. As I watched, she ducked down onto her hands and knees and crawled through the dark hole.
"We don't have a choice, do we?" Bickson asked, huffing a little as we slowed down.
I closed my eyes and heard Guado shouts from behind us. "Nope," I agreed, crouching and setting Naaga down too hard. Immediately, she scrambled through.
Bickson and I looked at each other and heard the battle cries as they got louder and louder. "They're getting closer," he said.
I nodded roughly. "I think they're onto us. Better get out of here."
"See you on the other side." With that, he flattened himself on the ground and pulled himself into the tunnel.
I looked down and couldn't see light at the end of the tunnel. The voices were almost behind me now. There was no more time to hesitate. I shoved the gear bag through the hole, put my head down, and slithered into darkness.
*****
I surfaced about a minute later root-scratched and dusty as hell, but alive. I was in a clearing in the woods, completely covered by a canopy of the kind of huge trees that make up the Forest of the Guado. The ground here was more grass and less mud, though, and at the back of the clearing was a wooden building. I could see where several trees had been carved out and then joined by more carved wooden archways to form a large circular structure.
"This is the temple," Miyu said. "We can't stay here long--they know this place as well as I do and they will find us. But they do not know that I know of this place, and so we have some time in which we can rest and plan our next move."
"How long do you think we have?" asked Bickson.
Miyu shrugged elegantly. She was the kind of person who did everything elegantly. "I have no way of knowing. Possibly a few hours."
"No time to waste, then," the Goer decided, starting for the main door of the temple. Like the houses in Guadosalam, the tree-building actually did have a hinged door. He swung it open and took a step in.
"Weird," he murmured to himself as we entered. "It doesn't look all that dusty. You're sure no one's still here, right?"
"I cannot imagine why anyone would be." Miyu looked around the place. Bickson was right; there was no dust anywhere. The inside of the temple was basically a simplified version of Nav's house--entirely wooden without the bright colors of Guadosalam. I wasn't exactly sure what a Yevonite monastery was supposed to look like, but I figured only about ten people could live there at a time. The tiny main room led straight into a tiny chamber where a table and a few hard benches were carved out of the wood--probably the dining room/living room, I decided. The only other room was a small alcove with shelves built into the walls; the Yevonite version of bunk beds. I didn't see a kitchen or a bathroom anywhere--maybe the priests did that stuff outside or something.
Naaga was thinking along the same lines I was. "No food?"
I sighed, resigning myself to a life of starvation, and started digging around in my bag for the rest of my uniform. Getting the boots and sleeves on again felt good.
"Ahh, travelers," an ancient voice creaked behind me as I was slipping on my goggles. We all jumped in unison, Bickson cracking his head on the low ceiling. When I recovered and turned around, there was someone standing there.
If I'd thought Miyu's father was ancient, he was still a toddler compared to this guy. The man coulda been a museum piece, with a shiny bald head and enough wrinkles to keep a laundromat busy for days. He looked like he was all skin and bones, and right away I wanted to tell him to start eating or die already.
Immediately after I took all this in, I saw that he was wearing the robes of a Yevonite priest.
"Oh, sir, our humblest apologies!" Miyu gasped, her hand flying up to her mouth in horror. "We did not mean to intrude!"
"It is all right. I knew you would come." His voice, which had probably been somewhere in Bickson's range when he was younger, had fluked up the octave in old age and sounded like a bird's now. Or maybe he'd always sounded like a drug-infused little girl.
"You knew?" Bickson asked skeptically.
The priest-guy nodded. "I foresaw it. I know, too, what you seek, and I believe I can help you."
"Oh, really," I scoffed involuntarily. "Great. Just what we needed, a deus ex machina! All right, old man, what are we seeking?"
"Linna," Miyu whispered to me out of the corner of her mouth. "Have respect, please."
"It is all right," the geezer repeated, waving one bony hand in a gesture of dismissal. His eyes were a pale, filmy blue, like someone had dropped milk lenses into them. "I anticipated this. Linna is not among the believers in Yevon's truth."
"Shut up, grandpa," I snapped. "What do you know about truth, and what do you know about me? With those eyes, I'd bet my last paycheck you can't even see me."
"There is a speck of dust exactly 1/32 of an inch in diameter located a quarter of an inch to the right of your upper lip," he croaked. Involuntarily, I scraped the back my gloved hand across my face and watched the dust speck unstick itself and fall onto the table, where it bounced twice and stopped moving. I scowled.
"I foresaw that too," he said smugly.
"Look, sir, as great as it is that you've taken it upon yourself to improve my friend's oral hygeine," Bickson interrupted, "we're in something of a hurry. You said you can help us."
"I can." The old man still looked like he was talking only to me, and it creeped me out. "In answer to your question, Linna, you are seeking your missing comrades. I have news of one of them."
"Which one?" Naaga wanted to know. I snorted. I knew she was hoping it'd be Jassu. Her and her stupid crushes.
The old, wrinkled lips slithered into a dry smile. "Naida."
I rolled my eyes and snorted again. "Where was she, huh? Vacationing in Besaid? Cheating on Aniki with some tanned blitz hunk?"
He ignored me. "She was last seen in St. Bevelle."
"Do you know what she was doing there?" Miyu asked.
"No."
"Do you know why she disappeared?" That was Naaga.
"No."
"How long ago was this?" was Bickson's question.
"Two days."
"Great. Wonderful. Totally useless." I threw up my hands in disgust. "Where's the part where this is helpful again?"
"Think about it, Linna," said Geezer. "Put the facts together in your mind. Naida is in St. Bevelle, which means the others are probably there as well. You also know that St. Bevelle was Reppi's ultimate destination. Does it not make sense to go there?"
"Wait a minute. How do you know Reppi was headed for Bevelle?" Bickson demanded suspiciously.
Geezer smiled enigmatically. "I told you. I have foreseen everything."
No one said anything for a minute. Then Naaga piped up, "I don't like it."
"Me neither, kid," Bickson agreed.
"But you have no choice," Geezer insisted. "If you stay here, the guardians will find you. I can take you to Bevelle safely. It's your only lead."
Miyu sighed. "He is right; you do know that."
"So what are we supposed to do when we get to Bevelle?" I asked. "Go up to every random stranger we see and say, 'Excuse me, but have you seen an obnoxious Al Bhed diva wandering around dressed like a hooker lately? Oh, great, which way did she go?'"
"You will find her," the priest said. "I am sure of it."
"I'm not," Bickson shot back. Then he paused. "But I can't think of anything else to do. I vote we go."
"Waiddaminute. C'mere a sec." I grabbed his wrist and dragged him into the corner. In a low voice, I hissed, "Bick, what the hell are you doing? Don't you remember all those prayer beads? Don't you think it's weird that we were able to find the sphere so easily even though it was obvious someone had torn the place apart looking for it? Isn't it a huge coincidence that those Guado happened to show up just as we were watching it? I keep getting the feeling it's all a set-up."
"It doesn't matter," he replied without hesitation. "No matter what anyone says, the fact is the old guy's right. All the signs are pointing to Bevelle. If you have any brighter ideas about where we should go next, go ahead, share 'em with the class." I kept my mouth shut, because I didn't think he'd want to hear that I thought we should just go home and recruit new players for the Aurochs. "Either way, someone's probably still out to get me," he continued. "And we know they're willing to go through you or Naaga or anyone else. The only way we even have a shot is to keep going."
Naaga. Couldn't let them get Naaga. I sighed and cracked my knuckles. "Fine. Fine. We'll go."
We walked back over to the group. "Have you decided?" Geezer asked, like he already knew what the answer was.
"Yeah," I replied. "Next stop--Bevelle."
*****
"Uhm...Sir Priest...please forgive me for my disrespect, but isn't this a bit...well, unusual?" Miyu asked skeptically, looking at the three shiny new motorbikes with eyes as big as watering cans. The gleaming chrome looked weird against the solid brown wood of the temple's back room.
"Desperate times require desperate measures, Miyu! Have no worries--I'm a priest. Now get on!" the geezer chirped happily from the back of the first bike. He grabbed the handles, making the kind of overkill "vrrm, vrmm" sound that always used to drive me nuts when idiotic maintenance workers on lawnmowers did it at Home.
"But it's a machina!"
The filmy blue eyes seemed to sharpen as they turned towards her. "You are a Crusader. You are familiar with Al Bhed machina technology, are you not?"
"Yes. But...a priest?"
The old man shrugged, which made him look even more like a bird. "We have no time to waste. This is the fastest way to get to St. Bevelle. Get on."
"Are you sure they're safe?" Bickson was kicking the treads and looking skeptical.
"He probably ain't, but I am," I answered. "I've used them before. They'll save us a day or two of travel time. We could be in downtown Bevelle in a couple hours."
"Is Bevelle far?" Naaga asked.
"It is about to get a lot closer, child," Geezer told her. "Now let's get going." With that, he revved the engine one more time and sped out of the clearing--there was a back way, I noticed--and into the forest again. Shrugging, we followed.
Big mistake.
*****
It took us about two and a half hours to get from that point to Bevelle. Miyu, who was apparently completely impervious to the dark cloud of tension hanging over her head and pouring figurative rain all down her uniform, would later describe the trip as "wonderful." She was lovin' the machina thing--it still threw her that a priest was endorsing it, but I guess she figured that as long as it was there, she might as well enjoy it. And Naaga had more experience with machina than Miyu, which meant she got to drive--which I never let her do at home, since she'd already failed her driving test three times since her sixteenth birthday. Jubilant over her good fortune, she sang loudly and off-key the whole way.
Bickson and I weren't that naively cheerful about the whole mess. He was even less comfortable with the machina idea than Miyu, and he definitely wasn't used to going that fast. Sometimes his arms were clamped around my waist so tightly I had trouble steering, and a couple times we almost crashed into trees because I kept having to turn back to see what the hell he was looking over his shoulder at. A lot more trees and nothing, it turned out. We were all getting paranoid these days.
Geezer, for his part, didn't seem to have much to say. He still hadn't told us anything about himself, and when I asked him where in Bevelle he'd seen Naida he suddenly got a hazy memory and became so completely befuddled he didn't speak until we were at the city limits.
"We dismount and enter the city. I will take you to a place I know of where you will find your answers," he told us cryptically, jumping off the motorbike and flipping the kickstand down with his toe like he'd done it before.
"No one's going to stop us?" Bickson asked. "We're riding machina and traveling with two Al Bhed and no one's gonna think that's weird?"
"Do not worry. All will be well," answered Father Non-Ambiguous.
Saying that Bevelle is bigger than Luca would be a serious understatement. Bevelle is to Luca what Luca is to an ant farm. The whole place is gleaming with purple and green and gold, with towers that scrape so far into the sky they look like they might hit the sun and glassy red walkways crisscrossing the city everywhere. And in the center of it all is the temple--syh, the temple.
I was pretty unconcerned with all this at the time, though. My thoughts were running more along the lines of, "this is crazy. We're never gonna find Naida, let alone Letty and Jassu and Zalitz. We're running around with some wacko religious crackpot whose most defining feature is his incredible ability to see small quantities of dirt. There is no way in hell any of this is going to work the way it's supposed to."
Which is why I really wasn't all that surprised when I felt the cold metal barrel of a gun being leveled into my back and the ground rushed up to meet me for the second time that day.
*****
This time there wasn't much I could do about it, because when I looked up I was surrounded by a ring of--surprise!--more people with guns. Each of which was pointing at one of our heads.
"What is this?" Miyu choked from the ground.
"This, Madame Crusader," one of the guards replied coldly, jabbing her with the barrel of the rifle he was cradling in his hands like he knew how to use it, "is an arrest."
"E *dumt* oui ed fyc y cad-ib," I muttered to Bickson.
"An Al Bhed, eh? Stand up slowly, filth," another spat into my ear. "Any sudden moves and I'll turn that pretty yellow hair of yours into a wig for my daughter's doll, got it?"
"It's not yellow, it's *blonde*," was what I shoulda said, but of course you never come up with that stuff until later. What I actually said was closer to "urk" as he grabbed my hair and yanked hard. I scrambled for footing and managed to bear enough of my own weight to avoid being snatched bald-headed.
"You lied to us!" Miyu cried at Geezer, who was standing there motionlessly with a smile on his withered little mug.
"I did," he acknowledged like he was proud of it.
All around us, people were still moving. Priests, chanting quietly to themselves as they walked. A group of blitzers spinning balls on their fingers and trying to act macho. Little kids with their mothers, clamoring for ice cream. Thousands of people, and not one of them acted like they cared or even noticed that right in the middle of their city, four people were getting arrested for absolutely no reason.
"All right," the guard ordered when we were all on our feet, "March!"
**********
Translations:
"E *dumt* oui ed fyc y cad-ib." - "I *told* you it was a set-up."