Dollet blurred by. About ten minutes ago Eiada had passed through the
square where she and Roen had rested while Arin healed the civilian. The X-
ATM092 had followed easily, crushing the fountain they had sat on. Looking
back, Eiada didn't much like the symbolism of that.
So far, the three others had been able to keep pace with her. Roen and Iyan both had longer legs, and Arin was just nimble, so together they had made pretty good pace against the metal beast. She didn't look back often, but she thought it was catching up- a fact both discouraging and inspirational. Eiada wasn't a fast runner, a fact she had no qualms about admitting, although at the moment she would have traded both her legs and her uncle's boat for a pair of wings.
Problem was, as fast as they all were (or weren't), the X-ATM092 had longer legs, was faster, and didn't have to worry about running into things- it ran over them. The only thing that seemed to slow it down was the narrow streets, which it had to take diagonally, two legs on the ground and two legs braced on a wall.
(Oh shit.) The ground had begun to slope upwards. Eiada didn't do uphill. It just didn't work very well.
Not that she didn't have strong motivation to push her limits.
Up ahead, the path widened and the 'incline' mutated into a genuine hill. Had she wanted to waste the breath, she would have sworn. Sucking in a deep breath, she pushed on.
Soon she was running uphill on a rapidly increasing slope, past crumpled bodies and monster remains. (The majority of the fighting must have been concentrated here,) she realized. Insight followed, as insight tends to do, at the worst possible time. (Oh shit, we're headed for the radio tower!)
She dared another deep breath as she slowed to wrench herself between two boulders that had fallen on the cobblestone path. "ROEN! GUYS!"
She heard someone shout behind her, couldn't make out the words over her rapidly increasing heartbeat. The AT pack chafed against her back, and she took a minute of escape by glancing up the path. Up ahead, the cobblestone road widened and begin to taper off. They were nearing the top of the sea cliffs. Eiada's heart sank. The one thing she wanted to deal with less than the X-ATM092 was the X-ATM092 and a bunch of battle-hardened Galbadian veterans. Like the ones posted around the radio tower. Not that she wanted to stop running, which seemed to be the only other option.
(Shit.)
"HEY!" She shouted again.
"Eiada!" Arin's curly head appeared between the boulders. Even with the AT pack, he wriggled through with the grace of someone whose bones are actually liquid, followed by the blockier forms of Roen and Iyan.
"Stop for a minute!" Eiada pleaded. "Hey, if we keep going, we'll get to the radio tower!"
With an ear-shattering crash, the X-ATM092 impacted with the two boulders. Roen glanced frantically between the boulders and Eiada, who had drawn her knives automatically. "You sure?"
"YES!" Eiada shouted, closer to panicking than she had been all day. "And if you don't want to get eviscerated by Galbadian soldiers, maybe you should think of somewhere else to go!"
Roen's mouth gaped; he looked like he wanted nothing more than to scream profanity at her until she changed her story. She glared back at him. (Come on, Roen. You're the Squad Leader. You're supposed to think of something!) At the same time she was frantically debating the merits of staying and fighting the attack spider with the allure of running like hell and trying to avoid the radio tower through some alternate route. Fighting seemed more plausible, not that that was saying much.
Roen looked like he didn't have the faintest idea of what to do.
Two clawed feet appeared atop the boulders, followed by the body of the X- ATM092. Somewhat ungracefully, it landed on the other side of the boulders. Iyan and Arin swore in perfect unison. Eiada agreed.
Logically, she knew the attack spider was a machine. It didn't have feelings or desires; it just carried out its programming. The rest of her knew without a doubt that the machine had followed them up the cliff to kill them, and was using this brief pause to savor imminent victory. The last shred of the sun above the ocean flung bright sparks off the metal casing of its foreplate, illuminating the red optical sensors perfectly. Damned if it didn't look satisfied.
Apparently the moment was over. The X-ATM092 charged. Eiada watched with frantic, focused terror as each metal foot came down, each ponderous swing of the body over the legs brought it a little closer. Eiada swallowed, hard. She'd told herself she wasn't going to die today. Apparently, she'd been wrong.
Looking back, later, she didn't really remember the order of things- had she tried to bolt first, shoving through the jumbled mass of Arin and Iyan, had Arin screaming set her off, or had Roen stepped forward, sword braced, hilt and blade against his hands, a beam of pure silver in the otherwise flatlined light?
All she really remembered clearly was his voice, inadequately soft for the power it called forth: "Diamond Dust." Superimposed over Iyan's: "NO!"
Then there was winter, bursting clean and white and frozen, from the Squad Leader. Eiada heard the cracking of glaciers against each other in spring, saw the white skirts and lace of snowdrifts blowing against each other, saw the pillar of ice emerge like a blessing from the unforgiving ground.
The pillar burst, showering Eiada and the others with ice crystals, and the goddess, Shiva, was given to the light. Eiada closed her eyes as her teeth began to chatter. Even in Winhill during the coldest winter in history, she had never felt such bone-sawing, mind-searing cold.
When she opened them again, the GF was gone. The entire path, and the cliff continuing up next to them, was sheathed in deep blue ice. Snow drifted in the shadier areas. Eiada bit her lip at the beauty of it.
There was a clatter of metal on glass, and the X-ATM092 made its presence known. It had been charging as Shiva appeared, and was charging still. This time, it had significantly less control over it's movement. She heard herself shout as realization hit with the force of-
Well, an X-ATM092 plowing forward at full attack speed after having slipped on the iced-over path.
The writhing mass of legs and metal skidded across the ice full tilt. Eiada scrambled gracelessly, trying to get out of the way, and fell flat on her face before she realized the path under her feet was icy as well. From the corner of her eye, she could see the others having the same problems. She watched her hands scrabble frantically at the cobblestones in front of her as though in a dream. (It's not supposed to happen this way,) she thought stupidly. (It's really not.)
Then the spider hit her, and the world caught fire and folded into ash.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
(In her dream, she was on her Uncle Wage's boat. The sun stroked her face, heating her scalp under its boyish cap of black hair, pulling the scent of fish and decay from the sea below. Far, far away, at the other end of the boat, her uncle looked up from his nets and waved. He shouted something, but the roaring in her ears kept her from hearing. She stood up to go ask him what he'd said, but a wave came up and sucked her away, into the sea.)
Eiada woke when the beach came up and hit her in the face. She snorted sand, gagged, and was thrown end over end by the uncaring ocean. The wave brought her back into deep water with it, then sent her body dancing along the crest, rolling and spinning onto the shore.
She came to long enough to throw up everything she'd ever eaten and cough up half the ocean.
A long period of pain and sleep later, someone was shaking her shoulder. "Eiada. Eiada."
She winced, tried to get a good breath, except the beach was in her way. She inhaled sand for the second time, decided it would be a good idea to throw up some more. She spent a contemplative moment gagging until a warm hand pulled her chin up, placed a water bottle in her hand. She sipped gingerly, the taste of her own puke almost making her throw up again, and spat out the water.
"Thanks." she croaked, shoving herself up from the clammy sand. She managed to roll over onto her back, opened her eyes and concentrated on focusing them.
"Are you alright?" A familiar voice asked. A dark, blurry figure swam overhead, silhouetted by the night sky.
Eiada squinted up at him, still caught up in her dream. "Uncle Wage?"
The someone coughed uncomfortably. "No, uh- Eiada, it's me. Roen."
"Oh." Eiada took a peaceful moment to wonder how Roen had gotten so damn tall. (Oh yeah, I'm lying down. Hyne, my head hurts.)
Roen stared down at her pointedly. "You okay?"
"Uh-" Four limbs and a head, all of which were functioning reasonably well. "Yeah."
"Want to stand up?"
"Oh. Sure." She took his offered hand, pulled herself to her feet. The world rocked a little around the edges, slowly settled into place. Eiada blinked, tried to think about peaceful things like fields of wildflowers or the gentle motion of a boat at night-
"You seem to be doing that a lot lately," Roen observed unnecessarily as she bent to throw up a little more.
"This is ridiculous," she replied. "Got any potions?"
"No, but Arin does. We lost an AT pack in the ocean, but he found yours washed up on the beach."
"Thank Hyne," she sighed gratefully. A second thought occurred to her Quickly, she checked for both knives and her Balamb G dog tags. Everything was there. Roen also wore his sword- more out of habit, it seemed, than anything else. More or less, they were in one peice. "So Arin's okay, then?"
"Yeah. Come on." Taking her elbow, Roen began to walk down the beach.
"What about- whatshisname, Iyan?"
Roen frowned. "Arin's with him. Over there."
Eiada followed his gaze to the abrupt intersection of cliff, ocean, and sand. The remnants of the X-ATM092 lay crumpled across a few fallen boulders on its back, all four feet in the air like, well, a dead spider. Eiada shivered, the memory of what had happened the last time she'd assumed it was dead fresh in her mind.
Roen followed her gaze. "I think it's dead. It didn't do anything when we threw rocks at it."
Eiada debated the merits of this time-honored and highly scientific method of examination, decided to let it pass. "Okay."
Roen pointed to the right of the rocks, a more grim expression conquering his face. "Arin's over there."
Eiada squinted, barely made out the charcoal-blue of a SeeD trainee uniform against the dark, wet rocks. Arin crouched over a still dark blue shape, corkscrews of hair dangling worriedly into his face. Sitting up to shove them back into place, he saw Eiada and Roen, waved frantically.
"Come 'ere!" He shouted over the roaring of the waves against stone. "I need a hand!"
The other two scrambled across the sand. Reaching the rocks, Eiada slid her hands across for purchase on the wet stone. Cursing, she pulled herself up, fell back on her ass twice, and decided to go around.
Iyan lay, limbs skewed in every direction, at Arin's feet. A freezing breeze stirred his hair, the only sign of motion besides the slow rise and fall of his chest. Superstitiously, Eiada glanced up. Dark black clouds were rolling in from the ocean and over their heads. (Shit.) She'd been raised by a sailor- she knew what that meant. With a stern act of will, she dragged her eyes back down to Iyan. "What's wrong with him?"
Arin glanced up at her, frustration written in the lines of his face. "His leg's broken. Badly. Hyne knows what else because I won't until I can really examine him. Preferably somewhere warm and dry. If we can't get under shelter, he's gonna get hypothermia six ways to Sunday and-" he seemed to realize Eiada was soaked through as well. "-Whoa, odds are you will too."
"Great," Eiada sighed, hugging herself automatically. "So, shelter?"
"The ships," Arin and Roen chorused.
Eiada gestured mutely at Iyan and his handicap.
Roen took a step back. "Here, I have an idea. Arin, align the bones and get them set as well as you can- cast Cure or make a splint, I don't care, whatever you can do. Okay?"
Looking faintly surprised, Arin cast a half-mocking salute and knelt over Iyan's leg. Eiada looked away. She wasn't usually squeamish about blood or broken bones or violence (she was training to be a mercenary, for Hyne's sake), but something about moving bones around under the skin just creeped her right out.
After about fifteen minutes, Arin placed one hand on Iyan's ankle, one on his knee, leaned forward and whispered "Cure." In the soft glow of light that followed, Eiada felt her own wounds responding to the perimeter of the spell. She sighed. So did Iyan, though he didn't wake up.
"Great," Roen said, stepping forward. "Do you want to splint it?
"Yeah, just gimme a sec-" Arin scrabbled through an AT pack, pulled out two collapsible rods and a length of rope. In less than a minute, Iyan's calf was splinted neatly.
"Okay, now." Roen reached over, pressed his palm over Iyan's forehead and said, very clearly, "Float."
"Nice!" Arin cheered as Iyan's unconscious body bobbed up into the air. "Let's go!" Grabbing the hem of the other trainee's jacket, he tugged Iyan down the gentle slope of the boulder's rear face. Each picking up an AT pack, Roen and Eiada followed.
"Good call," Eiada said in an aside to Roen as Arin bounced ahead, Iyan bobbing behind him.
He smiled. "Thanks."
"Want to make it a theme and find us a way up the cliffs that won't involve climbing?" Eiada smiled her most winning smile.
Roen gave her an odd look, then pointed to their left. "Well, there's a path going up right over there."
(Wow. Maybe I'm concussed.) The smile had no desire to leave her face, it seemed, although it grew a bit more forced. "Kidding!"
Scrunching through the sand, Eiada caught up to Arin as he wrestled Iyan's limp body around a bend in the rocks leading up the path. Once he's freed Iyan, Eiada realized she could barely discern the young healer from the rocks around him. "Hang on." She wriggled out of the pack straps, dropping it onto the sand. Opening the top, she rummaged through the contents of the pack until her hand encountered smooth plastic- a flashlight. She yanked it free, switched it on, and fastened the pack again.
Arin's face beamed eerily at her in the darkness. "Excellent."
Slowly, the party made its way up the rock-strewn path.
"Hyne," Arin wheezed somewhere around the halfway point. "Someone wanna help? He's friggin' heavy!"
"He's floating," Eiada wheezed back.
"You're dragging him," Roen agreed.
"So the hell what? He still weighs as much as a chocobo!"
"Hey, you shu' th'hell up!" Iyan slurred, looking up at Arin menacingly- Or, pseudo-menacingly. It was hard to take him seriously when his eyes weren't focusing. "Whoa, why's I floatinging?"
"Good morning," Roen called in the best sardonic tone Eiada had heard in a long time.
"Mom?"
"Are you sure it's just his leg that's broken?" Eiada asked Arin pointedly.
"Eh, don't worry." Arin grinned. "Sometimes people do funny shit when you cast spells on them while they're unconscious. Messes with their heads."
"The capital of Galbadia!" Iyan insisted.
"Stop for a sec." Letting go of his patient, Arin dropped his AT pack on the dusty ground and reached into a side compartment. "Here, I'll just give him a remedy and he'll be set to go."
Eiada shrugged, and Roen nodded, albeit hesitantly.
"What?" Eiada asked as Arin administered the remedy. Roen shrugged.
"Nothing. You guys-" He looked at a rock nearby. "You take a hell of a lot more pills than we did at Galbadia G."
Eiada stared back, not understanding. "So what?"
Another shrug.
"We're not a bunch of hopped-up potion fiends, if that's what you mean," she laughed nervously.
"That's not what I'm saying," he mumbled.
Eiada kept staring. This was the first time in the entire exam she'd seen Roen actually uncomfortable. "What?" she asked. "Do you have some kind of, I dunno, medical phobia?"
"Where the hell am I?" Iyan demanded from behind her.
"Scaling the Hyne's-ass of all cliffs," Arin griped. "Actually, I'm doing the scaling and you're floating behind me."
"My leg hurts like a beast!"
"It should. It's broken."
"WHAT!"
From what she could see in the bad light, Roen was blushing. Eiada's jaw dropped. "You do?"
"Do what?" Iyan asked. Roen colored even darker.
"Think we're almost to the top," Eiada filled in neatly. "Let's keep going!"
With some awkward pack-shuffling, the small caravan continued. Concentrating on Arin's back to avoid thinking about her legs, Eiada caught herself thinking about Roen. She probably could have been less blunt about the whole medi-phobia thing. He'd looked really embarrassed back there. (Shit, I hope I didn't piss him off.) It was a recurring theme throughout her life that she said things she either didn't mean, or said things she did mean too loudly. (Probably ought to go make amends.) As Arin and Iyan made their way upwards, while Eiada fell back to Roen's pace. "Hey," she said.
"Hey," he replied gruffly.
Now she was the one blushing. Life wasn't fair. Or it was fair, and just when she wanted it to be unfair in her favor. "Look, uh, sorry about the medical phobia thing- comment- whatever. I didn't mean to piss you off, or embarrass you, or whatever. Sorry. Sorry."
"It's okay."
Was he brushing her off? It sounded like he was brushing her off. "No, really, I mean, a lot of times I really screw up talking to people, like I piss them off or something, so if I did- piss you off, I mean, I didn't mean it that way-"
"Eiada."
She stopped short. "Yeah?"
"Babbling."
"Oh. Sorry." Still blushing. (Damned cheeks.) "I just mean I really am sorry if I-"
"Hyne, Eiada!" By this point he was laughing. She grinned. (Mission accomplished.)
"Hey, do either of you want a turn carrying the floating wounded?" Arin called from ahead.
"Sure, I'll do it," Eiada replied, spirits much higher. Giving Roen a smile, she trotted up the path ahead. "Hi," she said to Iyan when she reached them. "Eiada Connolly."
"Hi," he smiled wanly back, face pale. (He must be in a lot of pain,) Eiada realized as she grabbed hold of his good foot to pull him after her. Apparently he and Arin had worked out a system where Iyan pulled himself around rocks as her lay parallel to the ground- it worked pretty well. She began to walk.
"How're you feeling?" she asked, dodging around a boulder.
"Okay," he replied.
"Leg hurt?"
He snorted. "Can't wait to get back to the SeeD ships."
"Neither can I," Eiada confessed. "This exam was a hell of a lot more than I bargained for."
Iyan chuckled. "Tell me about it. I kind of expected something a little more. hands off."
Eiada laughed. "Me, too! Thank Hyne, I thought I was the only one."
They were laughing as they crested the hill. Pausing to catch her breath, Eiada squinted as the last shred of blood-colored light hit her straight in the eyes and blinded her. She heard the others coming up beside her and gently lowered Iyan's foot to the ground so they could all have a break.
Behind her, the chatter abruptly stopped. (Are we that close?) Eiada lifted a hand to shade her eyes, looking down to the beach below where the ships were docked.
(What the-?)
Panic struck her with its running mate, inspiration, and she looked up to the horizon. Three slender, bullet-shaped ships accelerated against the tide, growing ever-smaller, until, after a moment of perfect, horrified silence, all Eiada could see were the wakes, staining the green ocean red with light.
So far, the three others had been able to keep pace with her. Roen and Iyan both had longer legs, and Arin was just nimble, so together they had made pretty good pace against the metal beast. She didn't look back often, but she thought it was catching up- a fact both discouraging and inspirational. Eiada wasn't a fast runner, a fact she had no qualms about admitting, although at the moment she would have traded both her legs and her uncle's boat for a pair of wings.
Problem was, as fast as they all were (or weren't), the X-ATM092 had longer legs, was faster, and didn't have to worry about running into things- it ran over them. The only thing that seemed to slow it down was the narrow streets, which it had to take diagonally, two legs on the ground and two legs braced on a wall.
(Oh shit.) The ground had begun to slope upwards. Eiada didn't do uphill. It just didn't work very well.
Not that she didn't have strong motivation to push her limits.
Up ahead, the path widened and the 'incline' mutated into a genuine hill. Had she wanted to waste the breath, she would have sworn. Sucking in a deep breath, she pushed on.
Soon she was running uphill on a rapidly increasing slope, past crumpled bodies and monster remains. (The majority of the fighting must have been concentrated here,) she realized. Insight followed, as insight tends to do, at the worst possible time. (Oh shit, we're headed for the radio tower!)
She dared another deep breath as she slowed to wrench herself between two boulders that had fallen on the cobblestone path. "ROEN! GUYS!"
She heard someone shout behind her, couldn't make out the words over her rapidly increasing heartbeat. The AT pack chafed against her back, and she took a minute of escape by glancing up the path. Up ahead, the cobblestone road widened and begin to taper off. They were nearing the top of the sea cliffs. Eiada's heart sank. The one thing she wanted to deal with less than the X-ATM092 was the X-ATM092 and a bunch of battle-hardened Galbadian veterans. Like the ones posted around the radio tower. Not that she wanted to stop running, which seemed to be the only other option.
(Shit.)
"HEY!" She shouted again.
"Eiada!" Arin's curly head appeared between the boulders. Even with the AT pack, he wriggled through with the grace of someone whose bones are actually liquid, followed by the blockier forms of Roen and Iyan.
"Stop for a minute!" Eiada pleaded. "Hey, if we keep going, we'll get to the radio tower!"
With an ear-shattering crash, the X-ATM092 impacted with the two boulders. Roen glanced frantically between the boulders and Eiada, who had drawn her knives automatically. "You sure?"
"YES!" Eiada shouted, closer to panicking than she had been all day. "And if you don't want to get eviscerated by Galbadian soldiers, maybe you should think of somewhere else to go!"
Roen's mouth gaped; he looked like he wanted nothing more than to scream profanity at her until she changed her story. She glared back at him. (Come on, Roen. You're the Squad Leader. You're supposed to think of something!) At the same time she was frantically debating the merits of staying and fighting the attack spider with the allure of running like hell and trying to avoid the radio tower through some alternate route. Fighting seemed more plausible, not that that was saying much.
Roen looked like he didn't have the faintest idea of what to do.
Two clawed feet appeared atop the boulders, followed by the body of the X- ATM092. Somewhat ungracefully, it landed on the other side of the boulders. Iyan and Arin swore in perfect unison. Eiada agreed.
Logically, she knew the attack spider was a machine. It didn't have feelings or desires; it just carried out its programming. The rest of her knew without a doubt that the machine had followed them up the cliff to kill them, and was using this brief pause to savor imminent victory. The last shred of the sun above the ocean flung bright sparks off the metal casing of its foreplate, illuminating the red optical sensors perfectly. Damned if it didn't look satisfied.
Apparently the moment was over. The X-ATM092 charged. Eiada watched with frantic, focused terror as each metal foot came down, each ponderous swing of the body over the legs brought it a little closer. Eiada swallowed, hard. She'd told herself she wasn't going to die today. Apparently, she'd been wrong.
Looking back, later, she didn't really remember the order of things- had she tried to bolt first, shoving through the jumbled mass of Arin and Iyan, had Arin screaming set her off, or had Roen stepped forward, sword braced, hilt and blade against his hands, a beam of pure silver in the otherwise flatlined light?
All she really remembered clearly was his voice, inadequately soft for the power it called forth: "Diamond Dust." Superimposed over Iyan's: "NO!"
Then there was winter, bursting clean and white and frozen, from the Squad Leader. Eiada heard the cracking of glaciers against each other in spring, saw the white skirts and lace of snowdrifts blowing against each other, saw the pillar of ice emerge like a blessing from the unforgiving ground.
The pillar burst, showering Eiada and the others with ice crystals, and the goddess, Shiva, was given to the light. Eiada closed her eyes as her teeth began to chatter. Even in Winhill during the coldest winter in history, she had never felt such bone-sawing, mind-searing cold.
When she opened them again, the GF was gone. The entire path, and the cliff continuing up next to them, was sheathed in deep blue ice. Snow drifted in the shadier areas. Eiada bit her lip at the beauty of it.
There was a clatter of metal on glass, and the X-ATM092 made its presence known. It had been charging as Shiva appeared, and was charging still. This time, it had significantly less control over it's movement. She heard herself shout as realization hit with the force of-
Well, an X-ATM092 plowing forward at full attack speed after having slipped on the iced-over path.
The writhing mass of legs and metal skidded across the ice full tilt. Eiada scrambled gracelessly, trying to get out of the way, and fell flat on her face before she realized the path under her feet was icy as well. From the corner of her eye, she could see the others having the same problems. She watched her hands scrabble frantically at the cobblestones in front of her as though in a dream. (It's not supposed to happen this way,) she thought stupidly. (It's really not.)
Then the spider hit her, and the world caught fire and folded into ash.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
(In her dream, she was on her Uncle Wage's boat. The sun stroked her face, heating her scalp under its boyish cap of black hair, pulling the scent of fish and decay from the sea below. Far, far away, at the other end of the boat, her uncle looked up from his nets and waved. He shouted something, but the roaring in her ears kept her from hearing. She stood up to go ask him what he'd said, but a wave came up and sucked her away, into the sea.)
Eiada woke when the beach came up and hit her in the face. She snorted sand, gagged, and was thrown end over end by the uncaring ocean. The wave brought her back into deep water with it, then sent her body dancing along the crest, rolling and spinning onto the shore.
She came to long enough to throw up everything she'd ever eaten and cough up half the ocean.
A long period of pain and sleep later, someone was shaking her shoulder. "Eiada. Eiada."
She winced, tried to get a good breath, except the beach was in her way. She inhaled sand for the second time, decided it would be a good idea to throw up some more. She spent a contemplative moment gagging until a warm hand pulled her chin up, placed a water bottle in her hand. She sipped gingerly, the taste of her own puke almost making her throw up again, and spat out the water.
"Thanks." she croaked, shoving herself up from the clammy sand. She managed to roll over onto her back, opened her eyes and concentrated on focusing them.
"Are you alright?" A familiar voice asked. A dark, blurry figure swam overhead, silhouetted by the night sky.
Eiada squinted up at him, still caught up in her dream. "Uncle Wage?"
The someone coughed uncomfortably. "No, uh- Eiada, it's me. Roen."
"Oh." Eiada took a peaceful moment to wonder how Roen had gotten so damn tall. (Oh yeah, I'm lying down. Hyne, my head hurts.)
Roen stared down at her pointedly. "You okay?"
"Uh-" Four limbs and a head, all of which were functioning reasonably well. "Yeah."
"Want to stand up?"
"Oh. Sure." She took his offered hand, pulled herself to her feet. The world rocked a little around the edges, slowly settled into place. Eiada blinked, tried to think about peaceful things like fields of wildflowers or the gentle motion of a boat at night-
"You seem to be doing that a lot lately," Roen observed unnecessarily as she bent to throw up a little more.
"This is ridiculous," she replied. "Got any potions?"
"No, but Arin does. We lost an AT pack in the ocean, but he found yours washed up on the beach."
"Thank Hyne," she sighed gratefully. A second thought occurred to her Quickly, she checked for both knives and her Balamb G dog tags. Everything was there. Roen also wore his sword- more out of habit, it seemed, than anything else. More or less, they were in one peice. "So Arin's okay, then?"
"Yeah. Come on." Taking her elbow, Roen began to walk down the beach.
"What about- whatshisname, Iyan?"
Roen frowned. "Arin's with him. Over there."
Eiada followed his gaze to the abrupt intersection of cliff, ocean, and sand. The remnants of the X-ATM092 lay crumpled across a few fallen boulders on its back, all four feet in the air like, well, a dead spider. Eiada shivered, the memory of what had happened the last time she'd assumed it was dead fresh in her mind.
Roen followed her gaze. "I think it's dead. It didn't do anything when we threw rocks at it."
Eiada debated the merits of this time-honored and highly scientific method of examination, decided to let it pass. "Okay."
Roen pointed to the right of the rocks, a more grim expression conquering his face. "Arin's over there."
Eiada squinted, barely made out the charcoal-blue of a SeeD trainee uniform against the dark, wet rocks. Arin crouched over a still dark blue shape, corkscrews of hair dangling worriedly into his face. Sitting up to shove them back into place, he saw Eiada and Roen, waved frantically.
"Come 'ere!" He shouted over the roaring of the waves against stone. "I need a hand!"
The other two scrambled across the sand. Reaching the rocks, Eiada slid her hands across for purchase on the wet stone. Cursing, she pulled herself up, fell back on her ass twice, and decided to go around.
Iyan lay, limbs skewed in every direction, at Arin's feet. A freezing breeze stirred his hair, the only sign of motion besides the slow rise and fall of his chest. Superstitiously, Eiada glanced up. Dark black clouds were rolling in from the ocean and over their heads. (Shit.) She'd been raised by a sailor- she knew what that meant. With a stern act of will, she dragged her eyes back down to Iyan. "What's wrong with him?"
Arin glanced up at her, frustration written in the lines of his face. "His leg's broken. Badly. Hyne knows what else because I won't until I can really examine him. Preferably somewhere warm and dry. If we can't get under shelter, he's gonna get hypothermia six ways to Sunday and-" he seemed to realize Eiada was soaked through as well. "-Whoa, odds are you will too."
"Great," Eiada sighed, hugging herself automatically. "So, shelter?"
"The ships," Arin and Roen chorused.
Eiada gestured mutely at Iyan and his handicap.
Roen took a step back. "Here, I have an idea. Arin, align the bones and get them set as well as you can- cast Cure or make a splint, I don't care, whatever you can do. Okay?"
Looking faintly surprised, Arin cast a half-mocking salute and knelt over Iyan's leg. Eiada looked away. She wasn't usually squeamish about blood or broken bones or violence (she was training to be a mercenary, for Hyne's sake), but something about moving bones around under the skin just creeped her right out.
After about fifteen minutes, Arin placed one hand on Iyan's ankle, one on his knee, leaned forward and whispered "Cure." In the soft glow of light that followed, Eiada felt her own wounds responding to the perimeter of the spell. She sighed. So did Iyan, though he didn't wake up.
"Great," Roen said, stepping forward. "Do you want to splint it?
"Yeah, just gimme a sec-" Arin scrabbled through an AT pack, pulled out two collapsible rods and a length of rope. In less than a minute, Iyan's calf was splinted neatly.
"Okay, now." Roen reached over, pressed his palm over Iyan's forehead and said, very clearly, "Float."
"Nice!" Arin cheered as Iyan's unconscious body bobbed up into the air. "Let's go!" Grabbing the hem of the other trainee's jacket, he tugged Iyan down the gentle slope of the boulder's rear face. Each picking up an AT pack, Roen and Eiada followed.
"Good call," Eiada said in an aside to Roen as Arin bounced ahead, Iyan bobbing behind him.
He smiled. "Thanks."
"Want to make it a theme and find us a way up the cliffs that won't involve climbing?" Eiada smiled her most winning smile.
Roen gave her an odd look, then pointed to their left. "Well, there's a path going up right over there."
(Wow. Maybe I'm concussed.) The smile had no desire to leave her face, it seemed, although it grew a bit more forced. "Kidding!"
Scrunching through the sand, Eiada caught up to Arin as he wrestled Iyan's limp body around a bend in the rocks leading up the path. Once he's freed Iyan, Eiada realized she could barely discern the young healer from the rocks around him. "Hang on." She wriggled out of the pack straps, dropping it onto the sand. Opening the top, she rummaged through the contents of the pack until her hand encountered smooth plastic- a flashlight. She yanked it free, switched it on, and fastened the pack again.
Arin's face beamed eerily at her in the darkness. "Excellent."
Slowly, the party made its way up the rock-strewn path.
"Hyne," Arin wheezed somewhere around the halfway point. "Someone wanna help? He's friggin' heavy!"
"He's floating," Eiada wheezed back.
"You're dragging him," Roen agreed.
"So the hell what? He still weighs as much as a chocobo!"
"Hey, you shu' th'hell up!" Iyan slurred, looking up at Arin menacingly- Or, pseudo-menacingly. It was hard to take him seriously when his eyes weren't focusing. "Whoa, why's I floatinging?"
"Good morning," Roen called in the best sardonic tone Eiada had heard in a long time.
"Mom?"
"Are you sure it's just his leg that's broken?" Eiada asked Arin pointedly.
"Eh, don't worry." Arin grinned. "Sometimes people do funny shit when you cast spells on them while they're unconscious. Messes with their heads."
"The capital of Galbadia!" Iyan insisted.
"Stop for a sec." Letting go of his patient, Arin dropped his AT pack on the dusty ground and reached into a side compartment. "Here, I'll just give him a remedy and he'll be set to go."
Eiada shrugged, and Roen nodded, albeit hesitantly.
"What?" Eiada asked as Arin administered the remedy. Roen shrugged.
"Nothing. You guys-" He looked at a rock nearby. "You take a hell of a lot more pills than we did at Galbadia G."
Eiada stared back, not understanding. "So what?"
Another shrug.
"We're not a bunch of hopped-up potion fiends, if that's what you mean," she laughed nervously.
"That's not what I'm saying," he mumbled.
Eiada kept staring. This was the first time in the entire exam she'd seen Roen actually uncomfortable. "What?" she asked. "Do you have some kind of, I dunno, medical phobia?"
"Where the hell am I?" Iyan demanded from behind her.
"Scaling the Hyne's-ass of all cliffs," Arin griped. "Actually, I'm doing the scaling and you're floating behind me."
"My leg hurts like a beast!"
"It should. It's broken."
"WHAT!"
From what she could see in the bad light, Roen was blushing. Eiada's jaw dropped. "You do?"
"Do what?" Iyan asked. Roen colored even darker.
"Think we're almost to the top," Eiada filled in neatly. "Let's keep going!"
With some awkward pack-shuffling, the small caravan continued. Concentrating on Arin's back to avoid thinking about her legs, Eiada caught herself thinking about Roen. She probably could have been less blunt about the whole medi-phobia thing. He'd looked really embarrassed back there. (Shit, I hope I didn't piss him off.) It was a recurring theme throughout her life that she said things she either didn't mean, or said things she did mean too loudly. (Probably ought to go make amends.) As Arin and Iyan made their way upwards, while Eiada fell back to Roen's pace. "Hey," she said.
"Hey," he replied gruffly.
Now she was the one blushing. Life wasn't fair. Or it was fair, and just when she wanted it to be unfair in her favor. "Look, uh, sorry about the medical phobia thing- comment- whatever. I didn't mean to piss you off, or embarrass you, or whatever. Sorry. Sorry."
"It's okay."
Was he brushing her off? It sounded like he was brushing her off. "No, really, I mean, a lot of times I really screw up talking to people, like I piss them off or something, so if I did- piss you off, I mean, I didn't mean it that way-"
"Eiada."
She stopped short. "Yeah?"
"Babbling."
"Oh. Sorry." Still blushing. (Damned cheeks.) "I just mean I really am sorry if I-"
"Hyne, Eiada!" By this point he was laughing. She grinned. (Mission accomplished.)
"Hey, do either of you want a turn carrying the floating wounded?" Arin called from ahead.
"Sure, I'll do it," Eiada replied, spirits much higher. Giving Roen a smile, she trotted up the path ahead. "Hi," she said to Iyan when she reached them. "Eiada Connolly."
"Hi," he smiled wanly back, face pale. (He must be in a lot of pain,) Eiada realized as she grabbed hold of his good foot to pull him after her. Apparently he and Arin had worked out a system where Iyan pulled himself around rocks as her lay parallel to the ground- it worked pretty well. She began to walk.
"How're you feeling?" she asked, dodging around a boulder.
"Okay," he replied.
"Leg hurt?"
He snorted. "Can't wait to get back to the SeeD ships."
"Neither can I," Eiada confessed. "This exam was a hell of a lot more than I bargained for."
Iyan chuckled. "Tell me about it. I kind of expected something a little more. hands off."
Eiada laughed. "Me, too! Thank Hyne, I thought I was the only one."
They were laughing as they crested the hill. Pausing to catch her breath, Eiada squinted as the last shred of blood-colored light hit her straight in the eyes and blinded her. She heard the others coming up beside her and gently lowered Iyan's foot to the ground so they could all have a break.
Behind her, the chatter abruptly stopped. (Are we that close?) Eiada lifted a hand to shade her eyes, looking down to the beach below where the ships were docked.
(What the-?)
Panic struck her with its running mate, inspiration, and she looked up to the horizon. Three slender, bullet-shaped ships accelerated against the tide, growing ever-smaller, until, after a moment of perfect, horrified silence, all Eiada could see were the wakes, staining the green ocean red with light.