Standard disclaimers apply.
*********************
The light of the moon never shone in the chambers beyond the empty Fayth statue. And infinity seemed to stretch of into forever. Stars glittered with endlessly bright light, remaining diamond bright jewels against the inky black depths of the night. Here and there a couple of plants struggled for life, choked out by the death and darkness of Zanarkand.
Rikku entered the chamber with a swing in her step. "Shyster!" she called out cheerfully. "I'm here..." her voice trailed off and she looked around carefully. "I'm here to KILL you!"
A low chuckle met her threat, creeping along her spine and raising the fine hairs on her arms. Rikku resisted the urge to rub her arms in the sudden chill that seemed to permeate the musty air. That would be seen as a weakness, and she couldn't afford to give in to anything.
"I fear your -"
"Ah, yes...fear..." Rikku interrupted. Her finger bellies were tapping against the trigger point in her claws. "Are you going to stay hidden? Do I have to pursue you again?" She adopted a silken and relaxed posture. "Will you flee like a coward... again?"
On cue with her words, Shyster stepped from the shadows. "Little one -"
"Implying what?" Rikku challenged. She couldn't afford to let him talk her down from her good form. She had seen how easily ones confidence could wan in the face of a vampire's words, and had no intention of allowing the same thing to happen to her.
"What does it matter?" Shyster asked. "You have come to become my daughter -"
"That's a lie!" Rikku spat quickly. Even interrupting him every time he started speaking wasn't working. She could feel her form start to crumble. She needed to take action.
Her fingers tightened on the claws, snapping out the wooden points on one hand and then mixed points on the other. She wasn't sure why she had opted to wear a mixed claw along with her Vampire Claw. She wasn't planning on fighting any werewolves or witches... ever again....
"And the youth moves towards haste," Shyster said. "But to put so much thought behind my death." He had his hands folded in front of his stomach, taking no visible aggressive stance. "And carelessly, you shall throw your life -"
"Your life away!" Rikku completed for him. Her body gliding effortlessly through the shifting shadows. Her swirled Al Bhed eyes were locked firmly on Shyster, she wouldn't let anything interrupt her concentration.
His image... flickered. Like a recording with a scratch. For a moment it wasn't there at all. Rikku spun from the image, dropping towards the ground to present a smaller target. She felt a blast of cold air race by her left ear and reached up, catching hold of a silk and lace shirt. Using the foreword momentum from his lunge, Rikku whipped shyster of her head in a perfect flip.
Almost as soon as he hit the ground, Shyster was getting back to his feet, moving his body out of range of Rikku's deadly claws. He sidestepped to the right, attempting to off-balance her foreword lunge.
Rikku abandoned hurting him with her claws and dropped to the balls of her feet, kicking out one leg and whipping it towards his foot in an effort to keep him off balance. Then, as he leapt nimbly into the air to avoid her footsweep, she pushed herself towards him. bunching her legs behind her, she tore the corner of one claw into his arm, drawing first blood.
Shyster moved back, adopting a more relaxed posture. Then he hissed. "This is Besaid silk!" he snarled. He poked at the bloody hole in the sleeve of his shirt with a furious expression on his face.
"Don't wear your Sunday best for a mud flinging competition!" Rikku suggested.
"I wasn't aware that we were flinging... mud," Shyster's voice came back towards her with oily smoothness.
Rikku smiled coldly. "You're absolutely right. We're dealing in death, aren't we? We're not little children playing with mud - we're predators playing with death."
"Maybe I'll just kill you," Shyster snapped. "You're starting to get on my nerves." He vanished, claws racking across Rikku's shoulder. "You will know pain before I finish with you. I shalln't kill you slowly."
"Because you won't kill me at all. I'm the one who is going to win this time, Shyster. This time you'll loose more then an eye."
"That's right, I owe you my vision in one eye, don't I?" Shyster hissed. "You have caused me much grief mortal."
"And there's plenty more to be had," Rikku acknowledged.
****************************
It wasn't her. The blond girl he was following - the pyrefly memory - it couldn't possibly be Rikku. She was too different. She smiled easily and bounced when she walked. She laughed easily and spook with a bright gleam in her emerald green eyes.
She was clearly the most bouncy thing in the group of people Vincent was watching travel through the ruined dome.
And the others called her Rikku.
Was this why he had to find her? So he could better understand how someone could change so much? How she could go from Miss bounces-a-lot to, Miss too-tough-to-cry? He stopped following the image, raising one hand to his head, covering his crimson eyes. "...I don't understand..." he announced. As if saying it outloud would make it easier to understand.
He sprang straight up, landing on the second level of the ruins. Time was short. By now, Rikku was probably already confronting her enemy. He couldn't really afford to wonder about her one eighty personality change.
He crossed to the end of a passage and stepped into a small room with a screen on the far wall. Curious, he stepped foreword. A soft rumble behind him alerted him to the absence of turning back now. A stone wall had dropped down blocking the exit from the Trials. He stepped foreword again and the tile beneath his feet made a slight depression. On the far wall a diagram lit up.
Vincent blinked slowly. It was... a puzzle. He stepped onto another trigger rock, watching as some of the tiles lit up. Within seconds, he had activated the correct codes. He smiled. Puzzles weren't really that difficult. He strolled out of the room and into an even bigger one complete with screen. Suddenly, the puzzle had gotten harder.
Haste kept making him step on the yellow square. That made all the others turn back to regular gray and forced him to start over again. Rikku was in trouble, he could feel it suddenly. She might be holding her own, but it wouldn't really matter because she couldn't win. He stepped on the yellow square again.
"Relax..." he heard a man's voice say. "Your too impatient."
"I'm sick of these trials!" another man's voice snarled. "I just want to get this over with -"
"Then let me do the trials!" a man dressed in red snapped. He had a sake jug at his hip and long back hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. He also was walking purposefully towards all the correct trigger stones.
Pyrefly images. Vincent found them useful. He followed the crimson robed man, activating the correct combinations as he went. A click sounded somewhere and a lift rose into the air.
Without hesitation, Vincent stepped towards it. Then a monster sprang up from the center of the hole and barred his path.
*******************************
She was on her back, Shyter's cold hands around her throat in an ever tightening hold. "Let go...you j....erk!" she choked, managing to gouge him with her Vampire Claw. It left a long crimson trail across the tops of his knuckles, causing him to pull back.
Rikku drew her feet back and kicked him full in the face, rolling to her feet in the same motion. She coughed, trying to get air flowing into her lungs properly again. She blinked and then he was on top of her again, driving her head back into the stone floor.
Stars of agony exploded in her head. The force of him landing on top of her forced the air from her lungs, leaving her gasping for breath again. Her vision slightly splotchy, she started to reorientate herself quickly.
"I don't think so!" Shyster snarled. Seizing her by her shoulders, he whacked her head back into the floor several times in a row. Then, before she could get orientated, he sunk his fangs into her neck. "Yummy!" he announced, pulling back and hauling her to her feet. He pushed her away from him and began to lick her blood off of his face.
Rikku shook her head, knowing that things weren't going so well anymore. Somehow he had gotten under her skin. He had managed to prevent her from thinking clearly and now the fear was back.
She could barely hold a tight fist through the trembling in her arms. Her vision wavered and abandoned her at crucial moments. Her body jerked involuntarily when she needed to be still. And she kept thinking, "I'm going to die," over and over in her mind. And now he was toying with her.
Again and again he came at her. Biting and drinking just a little bit before throwing her back to wallow in her own fear.
"I'm told that when confronted with death... crying helps," he pointed out. Then a strange BANG echoed throughout the room and he looked at her in complete confusion. "What did you do that for?" he laughed.
"D-do w-what?" Rikku stammered, realizing that her voice was trembling. And it wasn't with fatigue. There was real fear in her voice. She was frightened.
"Shoot me, of course," Shyster laughed.
"I..." her voice trailed off. "Shyster, you shithead! I didn't shoot you!" She felt a ghost of a smile tug at her mouth. "You must have shot yourself." She snickered at the thought of her vampire enemy shooting himself. It certainly presented a humorous picture.
"Well it was pointless, you shot me with silver," Shyster pointed out. "And I'm not a shithead. I'm a -" BANG! Another shot rang out, followed by another. BANG! BANG!
Shyster spun, relocating his fierce eyes toward Vincent. "You shot me!" he snarled.
"...Yes... and?" Vincent inquired. He activated the small green orb set in the middle of gun, summoning Ifrit to burn the vampire.
*****************************
Rikku had fallen to her knees. Clearly Shyster wasn't actually shooting himself. That would be too stupid. Then her eyes had drifted towards the entrance. The dark haired young man who had treated her last vampire injuries stood silently taking aim.
He clearly hadn't been listening when she gave him the specialized ammo clips because he was testing each of them out in turn. He had already shot Shyster with lead and silver. By the time that the third shot rang out, his gun was equipped with wooden bullets.
"What are you doing here?" she murmured, aware that he probably didn't here her at all. And wasn't it obvious what he was doing? He was... vanishing and being replaced with... Ifrit? Rikku pulled herself to her feet, watching as the aeon appeared and cast it's Hellfire onto Shyster.
The master vampire hissed and sizzled, roaring about murder and mass destruction. Then the fire faded and pyreflies began to spill from his body. The master vampire was finally dead.
************************************
Vincent walked over to Rikku, noting that she seemed to have passed out. He picked her up gently. "Rikku... are you all right...?" he asked softly. She didn't respond, but that was okay.
He started walking towards the list leading up to the surface. "You're a strange girl," he told her in an off hand fashion.
In timing with his words, her eyes opened. "What?"
"...I saved you..." Vincent said stoically.
"I meant the aeon! You can summon!" she exclaimed, clasping his forearm tightly. "You can really make Ifrit and Shiva and Bahument and -"
"...Odin?" Vincent suggested for another name. "Yes, actually, I can."
Rikku leaned back into his arms. "Vincent... Mr. Valentine... why did you come here?"
Silence met her question. Vincent stopped walking beside the Little Guardian. He set her down and silently began gathering her medical supplies from the compartments. He still couldn't be certain why he had come to save her. But wasn't that the reason that he had come?
"You shot Shyster," Rikku announced. She stifled a giggle. "That wasn't really funny. We were having -"
"...You smiled, Miss Rikku," Vincent said quietly. "I saw you back in the dome. You were different. I think," and he took a deep breath. "I think that you were happy then."
"Not really," Rikku said. "I was scared then. Really scared. But I wasn't alone. Everyone was there with me and..." she let her voice trail off. Thinking too much about the past would make the present unbearable.
"You're never really alone," Vincent told her. "...I would like to stay with you .... for a while at least..."
"Hn?" Rikku murmured. "But what would we do? Shyster... you crisped him, and with his death, the vampire fiends will all vanish to the Farplane. They'll be drawn there by his black soul."
"...We'll think of something," Vincent murmured. "But for now, just rest."
~~~**owari**~~~
******************************************
Author's notes; That's the last chapter. I don't think it ended quite how anyone really wanted except for me. Anyway, as the last chapter, I'd like to thank each and every person who supported this story. I really loved everyone's support and reviews.
Please review this last chapter and tell me how you liked the story overall.
Thanks for reading,
Kissa-chan
*********************
The light of the moon never shone in the chambers beyond the empty Fayth statue. And infinity seemed to stretch of into forever. Stars glittered with endlessly bright light, remaining diamond bright jewels against the inky black depths of the night. Here and there a couple of plants struggled for life, choked out by the death and darkness of Zanarkand.
Rikku entered the chamber with a swing in her step. "Shyster!" she called out cheerfully. "I'm here..." her voice trailed off and she looked around carefully. "I'm here to KILL you!"
A low chuckle met her threat, creeping along her spine and raising the fine hairs on her arms. Rikku resisted the urge to rub her arms in the sudden chill that seemed to permeate the musty air. That would be seen as a weakness, and she couldn't afford to give in to anything.
"I fear your -"
"Ah, yes...fear..." Rikku interrupted. Her finger bellies were tapping against the trigger point in her claws. "Are you going to stay hidden? Do I have to pursue you again?" She adopted a silken and relaxed posture. "Will you flee like a coward... again?"
On cue with her words, Shyster stepped from the shadows. "Little one -"
"Implying what?" Rikku challenged. She couldn't afford to let him talk her down from her good form. She had seen how easily ones confidence could wan in the face of a vampire's words, and had no intention of allowing the same thing to happen to her.
"What does it matter?" Shyster asked. "You have come to become my daughter -"
"That's a lie!" Rikku spat quickly. Even interrupting him every time he started speaking wasn't working. She could feel her form start to crumble. She needed to take action.
Her fingers tightened on the claws, snapping out the wooden points on one hand and then mixed points on the other. She wasn't sure why she had opted to wear a mixed claw along with her Vampire Claw. She wasn't planning on fighting any werewolves or witches... ever again....
"And the youth moves towards haste," Shyster said. "But to put so much thought behind my death." He had his hands folded in front of his stomach, taking no visible aggressive stance. "And carelessly, you shall throw your life -"
"Your life away!" Rikku completed for him. Her body gliding effortlessly through the shifting shadows. Her swirled Al Bhed eyes were locked firmly on Shyster, she wouldn't let anything interrupt her concentration.
His image... flickered. Like a recording with a scratch. For a moment it wasn't there at all. Rikku spun from the image, dropping towards the ground to present a smaller target. She felt a blast of cold air race by her left ear and reached up, catching hold of a silk and lace shirt. Using the foreword momentum from his lunge, Rikku whipped shyster of her head in a perfect flip.
Almost as soon as he hit the ground, Shyster was getting back to his feet, moving his body out of range of Rikku's deadly claws. He sidestepped to the right, attempting to off-balance her foreword lunge.
Rikku abandoned hurting him with her claws and dropped to the balls of her feet, kicking out one leg and whipping it towards his foot in an effort to keep him off balance. Then, as he leapt nimbly into the air to avoid her footsweep, she pushed herself towards him. bunching her legs behind her, she tore the corner of one claw into his arm, drawing first blood.
Shyster moved back, adopting a more relaxed posture. Then he hissed. "This is Besaid silk!" he snarled. He poked at the bloody hole in the sleeve of his shirt with a furious expression on his face.
"Don't wear your Sunday best for a mud flinging competition!" Rikku suggested.
"I wasn't aware that we were flinging... mud," Shyster's voice came back towards her with oily smoothness.
Rikku smiled coldly. "You're absolutely right. We're dealing in death, aren't we? We're not little children playing with mud - we're predators playing with death."
"Maybe I'll just kill you," Shyster snapped. "You're starting to get on my nerves." He vanished, claws racking across Rikku's shoulder. "You will know pain before I finish with you. I shalln't kill you slowly."
"Because you won't kill me at all. I'm the one who is going to win this time, Shyster. This time you'll loose more then an eye."
"That's right, I owe you my vision in one eye, don't I?" Shyster hissed. "You have caused me much grief mortal."
"And there's plenty more to be had," Rikku acknowledged.
****************************
It wasn't her. The blond girl he was following - the pyrefly memory - it couldn't possibly be Rikku. She was too different. She smiled easily and bounced when she walked. She laughed easily and spook with a bright gleam in her emerald green eyes.
She was clearly the most bouncy thing in the group of people Vincent was watching travel through the ruined dome.
And the others called her Rikku.
Was this why he had to find her? So he could better understand how someone could change so much? How she could go from Miss bounces-a-lot to, Miss too-tough-to-cry? He stopped following the image, raising one hand to his head, covering his crimson eyes. "...I don't understand..." he announced. As if saying it outloud would make it easier to understand.
He sprang straight up, landing on the second level of the ruins. Time was short. By now, Rikku was probably already confronting her enemy. He couldn't really afford to wonder about her one eighty personality change.
He crossed to the end of a passage and stepped into a small room with a screen on the far wall. Curious, he stepped foreword. A soft rumble behind him alerted him to the absence of turning back now. A stone wall had dropped down blocking the exit from the Trials. He stepped foreword again and the tile beneath his feet made a slight depression. On the far wall a diagram lit up.
Vincent blinked slowly. It was... a puzzle. He stepped onto another trigger rock, watching as some of the tiles lit up. Within seconds, he had activated the correct codes. He smiled. Puzzles weren't really that difficult. He strolled out of the room and into an even bigger one complete with screen. Suddenly, the puzzle had gotten harder.
Haste kept making him step on the yellow square. That made all the others turn back to regular gray and forced him to start over again. Rikku was in trouble, he could feel it suddenly. She might be holding her own, but it wouldn't really matter because she couldn't win. He stepped on the yellow square again.
"Relax..." he heard a man's voice say. "Your too impatient."
"I'm sick of these trials!" another man's voice snarled. "I just want to get this over with -"
"Then let me do the trials!" a man dressed in red snapped. He had a sake jug at his hip and long back hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. He also was walking purposefully towards all the correct trigger stones.
Pyrefly images. Vincent found them useful. He followed the crimson robed man, activating the correct combinations as he went. A click sounded somewhere and a lift rose into the air.
Without hesitation, Vincent stepped towards it. Then a monster sprang up from the center of the hole and barred his path.
*******************************
She was on her back, Shyter's cold hands around her throat in an ever tightening hold. "Let go...you j....erk!" she choked, managing to gouge him with her Vampire Claw. It left a long crimson trail across the tops of his knuckles, causing him to pull back.
Rikku drew her feet back and kicked him full in the face, rolling to her feet in the same motion. She coughed, trying to get air flowing into her lungs properly again. She blinked and then he was on top of her again, driving her head back into the stone floor.
Stars of agony exploded in her head. The force of him landing on top of her forced the air from her lungs, leaving her gasping for breath again. Her vision slightly splotchy, she started to reorientate herself quickly.
"I don't think so!" Shyster snarled. Seizing her by her shoulders, he whacked her head back into the floor several times in a row. Then, before she could get orientated, he sunk his fangs into her neck. "Yummy!" he announced, pulling back and hauling her to her feet. He pushed her away from him and began to lick her blood off of his face.
Rikku shook her head, knowing that things weren't going so well anymore. Somehow he had gotten under her skin. He had managed to prevent her from thinking clearly and now the fear was back.
She could barely hold a tight fist through the trembling in her arms. Her vision wavered and abandoned her at crucial moments. Her body jerked involuntarily when she needed to be still. And she kept thinking, "I'm going to die," over and over in her mind. And now he was toying with her.
Again and again he came at her. Biting and drinking just a little bit before throwing her back to wallow in her own fear.
"I'm told that when confronted with death... crying helps," he pointed out. Then a strange BANG echoed throughout the room and he looked at her in complete confusion. "What did you do that for?" he laughed.
"D-do w-what?" Rikku stammered, realizing that her voice was trembling. And it wasn't with fatigue. There was real fear in her voice. She was frightened.
"Shoot me, of course," Shyster laughed.
"I..." her voice trailed off. "Shyster, you shithead! I didn't shoot you!" She felt a ghost of a smile tug at her mouth. "You must have shot yourself." She snickered at the thought of her vampire enemy shooting himself. It certainly presented a humorous picture.
"Well it was pointless, you shot me with silver," Shyster pointed out. "And I'm not a shithead. I'm a -" BANG! Another shot rang out, followed by another. BANG! BANG!
Shyster spun, relocating his fierce eyes toward Vincent. "You shot me!" he snarled.
"...Yes... and?" Vincent inquired. He activated the small green orb set in the middle of gun, summoning Ifrit to burn the vampire.
*****************************
Rikku had fallen to her knees. Clearly Shyster wasn't actually shooting himself. That would be too stupid. Then her eyes had drifted towards the entrance. The dark haired young man who had treated her last vampire injuries stood silently taking aim.
He clearly hadn't been listening when she gave him the specialized ammo clips because he was testing each of them out in turn. He had already shot Shyster with lead and silver. By the time that the third shot rang out, his gun was equipped with wooden bullets.
"What are you doing here?" she murmured, aware that he probably didn't here her at all. And wasn't it obvious what he was doing? He was... vanishing and being replaced with... Ifrit? Rikku pulled herself to her feet, watching as the aeon appeared and cast it's Hellfire onto Shyster.
The master vampire hissed and sizzled, roaring about murder and mass destruction. Then the fire faded and pyreflies began to spill from his body. The master vampire was finally dead.
************************************
Vincent walked over to Rikku, noting that she seemed to have passed out. He picked her up gently. "Rikku... are you all right...?" he asked softly. She didn't respond, but that was okay.
He started walking towards the list leading up to the surface. "You're a strange girl," he told her in an off hand fashion.
In timing with his words, her eyes opened. "What?"
"...I saved you..." Vincent said stoically.
"I meant the aeon! You can summon!" she exclaimed, clasping his forearm tightly. "You can really make Ifrit and Shiva and Bahument and -"
"...Odin?" Vincent suggested for another name. "Yes, actually, I can."
Rikku leaned back into his arms. "Vincent... Mr. Valentine... why did you come here?"
Silence met her question. Vincent stopped walking beside the Little Guardian. He set her down and silently began gathering her medical supplies from the compartments. He still couldn't be certain why he had come to save her. But wasn't that the reason that he had come?
"You shot Shyster," Rikku announced. She stifled a giggle. "That wasn't really funny. We were having -"
"...You smiled, Miss Rikku," Vincent said quietly. "I saw you back in the dome. You were different. I think," and he took a deep breath. "I think that you were happy then."
"Not really," Rikku said. "I was scared then. Really scared. But I wasn't alone. Everyone was there with me and..." she let her voice trail off. Thinking too much about the past would make the present unbearable.
"You're never really alone," Vincent told her. "...I would like to stay with you .... for a while at least..."
"Hn?" Rikku murmured. "But what would we do? Shyster... you crisped him, and with his death, the vampire fiends will all vanish to the Farplane. They'll be drawn there by his black soul."
"...We'll think of something," Vincent murmured. "But for now, just rest."
~~~**owari**~~~
******************************************
Author's notes; That's the last chapter. I don't think it ended quite how anyone really wanted except for me. Anyway, as the last chapter, I'd like to thank each and every person who supported this story. I really loved everyone's support and reviews.
Please review this last chapter and tell me how you liked the story overall.
Thanks for reading,
Kissa-chan