What I Wouldn't Do For You
Chapter Two: Mr. Leader
Rikku didn't eat much when she came out of her room to dinner. Some of the members insisted that she eat SOMETHING, but she politely smiled and told them that she was fine. I sat there staring at her, hoping that she would at least chew a piece of the food, but NO...she really knows how to give a guy the guilt trip.
After the meal was done she helped a bunch of the members clean up before going back into her room again. She acted happy and even sounded like it...but her eyes told me differently.
And they still haunt me, as beautiful as I think they are.
I decided to go get ready for bed. Today was tiring for everyone, especially Rikku and me. Hopefully by tomorrow morning, I'll stop feeling so bad and she would get over all that's happened...
...or will she? It's kinda insensitive of me thinking that she'll suddenly get over the fact that I just took a good chunk of her social life away...
No, no, no! Don't think, Gippal. It'll just make you feel worse. Even if this whole thing is your fault, don't go blaming yourself. It's already happened, so what's the point of thinking about it, right?
...because it is my fault. And my conscience is having a field day reminding me.
I put out the lit end of my cigarette in the ashtray, which was already filled with about a dozen that I had already smoked. It's a filthy habit, I know, but cut me a break. I guess I just picked it up after I left Home, and I haven't been doing much to stop. Why should I when smoking is the only way I know that will help me relax?
I put another one to my lips and lit it with my lighter, breathing in and exhaling in a cloud of white smoke. I paced back and forth across my room, my senses calming down as I smoked. I was restless tonight, so it would've been useless trying to go to sleep. I just lay there like a corpse for a few hours anyway until I actually do fall asleep. I tried my best to block out the nagging voices in my head, trying to forget about Rikku, about everything...
And then I heard a door close outside of my room. I stopped pacing and went closer to my door, leaning my ear against its surface. I heard footsteps against the temple's floor, scurrying outside of the place. When I couldn't hear anything, I took another drag of my cigarette and slowly opened my door. I tried to walk as quietly as I could, but my friggin' boots were so loud that they echoed through the temple with each step I took. But luckily, no one heard me. Everyone is always wiped out from working with the machina that we collect. If Sin was ever resurrected, they'd probably sleep through the whole thing 'cause they're so tired.
I stepped into the center of the large room and saw that one of the temple's front doors was opened a few inches. It was pretty late at night. I usually was the only one who would be awake by now. Curious, I peeked through the opening of the door, and there she was. Sitting on the temple steps in yellow shorts and a white and yellow tank top. Her arms were bare and her long hair fell down to her back. I've never seen it down before she took to putting it in braids and things like that. I always thought that she looked pretty with her hair just down, but I didn't mind it the way she usually wore in during the day.
She must have not noticed me because her head was tilted upwards towards the moon. It was like she was hypnotized by it, staring at it and the stars the way she was.
I remembered when we were little, she and I would go out into the desert and look at the sky at night. Well...it's more like I tricked her to go out. I told her that she couldn't go out into the desert at night because she was afraid of the dark, knowing that she would come. I put out the insults like bait on a hook, and before I knew it Rikku and I were sneaking out of Home before any of the grown-ups knew we were awake. We would sit in the sand and stare at the sky and tried to keep on the lookout for any falling stars. We even made a competition out of it, saying that we could find more falling stars before the other one could. So we began pointing our fingers to Spira knows what, lying that we each found one. In the end, I was the one who won because poor Rikku could only count up to ten at the time. Heh, the advantages of being a year older.
But now, it doesn't seem like she's looking for anything in particular, not even falling stars. She was just...staring into nothing.
"Isn't Cid's little girl up past her bedtime?" I teased her from behind. She nearly jumped out of her skin, probably because I scared her when she thought she was alone. Once she saw me though, she frowned.
"Big meanie!" She answered in her high-pitched voice and looked back at the stars. I saw that the front strands of her hair were still neatly braided. "Can't a girl get some privacy around here?"
"Nope," I replied as I took a seat beside her. I took a long drag of my cigarette and exhaled, noticing that Rikku wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"What?"
She snatched my beloved cigarette from my lips and threw it a good distance away.
"I was gonna finish that!" I yelled at her, but she still frowned at me.
"That's a really disgusting habit, Gippal." She said matter-of- factly.
"Your point?" I snapped, grumpy that I didn't get to finish what must have been my nineteenth cigarette that night.
"It takes years off your life," she said. I noticed the picture of a way-too-cute chocobo on her tank top, and I shivered when I saw it.
"Are you cold?" Rikku thoughtfully asked when she saw that I had involuntarily shuddered.
"No, it's just your shirt." I admitted. As soon as I finished my sentence, she was offended. I could tell by the way her green eyes glared at me and by the little frown her rosy lips formed.
"What's wrong with my shirt?!" She shouted, obviously insulted at my disgust of her sickeningly adorable chocobo pajamas.
"You thought my cigarettes were disgusting?"
She stood up with her hands on her hips. "Hey! I think that my pajamas are cute!"
"That's the problem. They're TOO cute that they're nauseating."
"Well excuse me, Mr. Tough Leader of the Machine Faction! I happen to like chocobos, so tough cookies to you!" And with that, she swung around so that her back faced me. All I saw was her long golden hair trailing down her back.
She would always do this when I said something mean. I didn't take it seriously though. I knew she didn't mean it.
"Aw, c'mon..."
"Hmph!" she answered, crossing her arms. "I'm not speaking to you!"
"Tch. Fine," I said, secretly plotting a scheme to lighten her up. If it's one thing I know that Rikku couldn't resist other than overly sugar- coated sweets and caffeine, it was tickling...
I crept up behind her and when I was near enough, I quickly placed my hands on her stomach and I tickled her under her rib cage. She instantly fell down laughing non-stop, her hair all around her flushed face as she rolled around and tried to pry my hands off.
"Stop it!" she begged me between her laughing. "Q-quit it, Gippal!!!"
"I'm sorry, I can't seem to hear you." I teased her. I had to laugh myself: she was always ticklish at that spot since we were kids.
"Stop!!!" she broke into laughter again.
"What was that?" I sneered, pretending not to hear her.
"I s-said...STOP!!!"
Feeling that she had enough, I did like she told me to. She sat up from the ground and gave my arm a good punch.
"Touchy, touchy," I taunted, grinning when she stuck her tongue out at me.
"You deserved it!" She scolded, but she had a big smile on her face. It was then that I knew that she was okay. Well, at least better than she was before.
"What are you doing out at here so late?" I asked, changing the subject.
"Nothing," she answered, her vivid emerald eyes returning to the stars above us. "Just sitting and thinking."
"'Bout what?"
She got this mischievous grin on her pink lips. "Wouldn't you like to know?" She teased.
"Of course I would. Why did you think I'd ask?" I answered with a smart-ass reply. Rikku shrugged her bare shoulders, her golden hair slipping past them.
"I'm-not-telling..." She said in a singsong voice. Even if she was teasing me, I always liked to hear Rikku sing. To me, there was this liveliness in her voice that I found to attractive. Her voice fits her bubbly personality perfectly, but being myself, I never told her that.
"Whatever," I gave up, and rested my hands on my knees. We sat together without saying anything. It was a silence, but it wasn't one of those awkward silences. An awkward silence would be not saying a word to the person next to you because you hate his guts or you just can't find anything to say to him because you don't want to talk. But this silence...was a comfortable silence.
Bear with me here. My senses are all screwed up when I'm alone with Rikku. Always has been. When I was just a teenager and I was with her, my hormones weren't the only things acting weird. I...got these feelings. And I would think about things I normally wouldn't have thought about. Like when I'm with her, I wondered about what her lips would feel like, or I'd ask myself how is it that Rikku's eyes seemed to be so different if our entire race had the gene that gave us all the same-colored hair and eyes. There were also times when I began thinking about what it would be like if something happened to Rikku or if she never existed at all. Old man Cid wouldn't be his humorous self, Brother would be even more of a lunatic without Rikku to keep him in line, and the Al Bhed tribe would be a depressed and serious couple of stiffs, even more than a lot of them are now. And me...man, I don't even want to think about it. My life would be TEDIOUS. I love machina, but a complex piece of bolts and metal doesn't make me laugh or smile the way Rikku does. And it never will. That's been her role in my life, whether she knows it or not. If she wasn't around anymore...I don't think that there would be any use of hauling myself out of bed...
"I know that face!" her cheerful voice rang in my ears. I turned my head toward her, giving her this confused look.
"What are you talking about?"
She just giggled and her index finger rested on the top of my nose. "You're thinking about someone! I can always tell by the serious look you get."
"So what if I am?" I answered, lightly swatting away her finger.
"Oooh," she taunted me, and her face came nearer to mine. "Now who's being touchy? So who is she?"
I tried to look like I had no idea what she was talking about. "I'm not thinking about anyone."
"Awww, come on!" She clasped her hands together and pretended that she was going to cry. "You can tell me, Gippal! I promise I won't tell anyone!"
"Hmmm, I seem to hear a little voice coming from somewhere. Maybe it's just the wind..."
Always the persistent one, Rikku suddenly grabbed my hands in hers and stared at me with the saddest and most heartbreaking look that she could do. "Don't be such a meanie! Tell me? Pleeaaassse?"
I didn't make direct eye contact with her because if I did, I knew that I probably would tell her. Only a handful of guys could actually resist that adorably sad look of Rikku's.
And unfortunately for her, I was one of them.
"Doesn't Cid's little girl do anything else but ask questions?" I messed up her hair like I did earlier, my fingers tangling the long strands.
She pushed my hand away and grinned, knowing that I was hiding something. "Okay, Gippal. I'll play your little game." She headed towards the temple doors.
"Going back to bed?" I asked, a bit disappointed that she had to leave so soon.
"I'm gonna leave you to your thoughts," she said with a pretty smile. "But try and get some sleep, 'kay? We got a busy day tomorrow. Night!"
She went into the temple, the heavy doors closing behind her. Don't get me wrong; I was kinda relieved that she backed off. But there was still a part of me that wished that she were still sitting next to me.
No, it worked out this way. Rikku can't know that she is the one that I think about so much. At least not yet.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out another cigarette. I lit it, feeling a bit calmer as I did.
...but there was a part of me that felt guilty as I sat there and smoked.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: damn her. She plays the guilt card extremely well.
* * * *
"WAKEY-WAKEY!!!" A girlish voice squealed into my eardrum. I shot up from my bed and my eye snapped open. Because of the fact that I had just woken up from a two or three hour sleep, all I could make out in front of me was a thick stream of blonde hair and a pair of vibrant green eyes that stared at me.
"Morning!" Rikku chirped in her perky voice. I answered by groaning and sinking back into my mattress.
She pouted, stomping her foot. "Hey! This is the part where you're supposed to get up!"
I grabbed my pillow and buried my head underneath it. Maybe I won't be able to hear her if I'm suffocating.
"Don't do that!" she cried, trying to grab the pillow with her two hands. She struggled to pry it off of me, but as always, I was the stronger one.
"It's time to wake up, Mr. Leader!"
Rikku must have been trying her hardest to get it off of me, because as soon as I let go of my pillow in my state of surprise, she flew backwards and fell pretty hard onto the ground. But the good news was that she finally got the pillow off my head.
I propped myself off of my bed with my tired arms and I sat up again. I looked at her with my one good eye in disbelief. "...Mr. Leader?"
She smiled widely and stood up from the floor. "Yep! If I'm staying here for three months to work for the Machine Faction, then that kinda makes you my boss!"
I scratched the back of my head as I tried to make sense of what Rikku was saying.
"And if you're my boss, I have to call you something more formal than 'Gippal'." She explained, walking towards my bed and putting back the pillow near the headrest.
"...so you decided to call me Mr. Leader? THAT'S your formal title for me?" I asked, not knowing whether to hate the name or laugh at it.
Rikku nodded, her long braids bobbing up and down along the sides of her cute face. "Uh huh! I think it suits you perfectly."
Before I can say anything else, she scampered toward my door. I was so tired that I didn't even realize that she was in her usual short green skirt and yellow bikini top. Her hair was also styled the same way she normally did it: a couple of braids decorated with blue and pink beads, and the rest of it tied up in a ponytail and topped off with a light blue bandana. The frayed ends of her long red and yellow scarf trailed behind her as she moved to my door after evilly depriving me of sleep.
"There's tons of work to do today! We'll be expecting you outside, Mr. Leader!" she saluted me and left my room as quickly as she came in.
I continued to sit on my bed until the horrible realization that Rikku was right sank into my mind. There WAS a lot to do today, and even though she knew how to work with machina, I couldn't let Rikku handle the Faction alone. I was the leader, like she said.
Half-awake, I began the struggle to get up. I know that I'm an important guy. If I didn't show up, the Faction would probably go nuts without me there to run it.
Hmmm. I just realized something else. I usually lock my door when I go to sleep. But...Rikku was in my room to conveniently wake me up by making me go deaf. Unless she could phase through walls or something, she HAD to have use the door.
I walked to my door and inspected it. I found something on the floor and saw that it was a bobby pin. One of the ends was crooked and bent out of shape, like it was jammed into something and twisted.
Heh. Good ol' Rikku. She's only been here for a day and already things are starting to get interesting. How predictable.
* * * * AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks so much for the reviews guys! I'm really glad that you're enjoying my story. I'll try to update soon. I'm happy you guys didn't think it was boring in the first chapter. I'll try my best to get the characters' personalities in check! See ya!
Chapter Two: Mr. Leader
Rikku didn't eat much when she came out of her room to dinner. Some of the members insisted that she eat SOMETHING, but she politely smiled and told them that she was fine. I sat there staring at her, hoping that she would at least chew a piece of the food, but NO...she really knows how to give a guy the guilt trip.
After the meal was done she helped a bunch of the members clean up before going back into her room again. She acted happy and even sounded like it...but her eyes told me differently.
And they still haunt me, as beautiful as I think they are.
I decided to go get ready for bed. Today was tiring for everyone, especially Rikku and me. Hopefully by tomorrow morning, I'll stop feeling so bad and she would get over all that's happened...
...or will she? It's kinda insensitive of me thinking that she'll suddenly get over the fact that I just took a good chunk of her social life away...
No, no, no! Don't think, Gippal. It'll just make you feel worse. Even if this whole thing is your fault, don't go blaming yourself. It's already happened, so what's the point of thinking about it, right?
...because it is my fault. And my conscience is having a field day reminding me.
I put out the lit end of my cigarette in the ashtray, which was already filled with about a dozen that I had already smoked. It's a filthy habit, I know, but cut me a break. I guess I just picked it up after I left Home, and I haven't been doing much to stop. Why should I when smoking is the only way I know that will help me relax?
I put another one to my lips and lit it with my lighter, breathing in and exhaling in a cloud of white smoke. I paced back and forth across my room, my senses calming down as I smoked. I was restless tonight, so it would've been useless trying to go to sleep. I just lay there like a corpse for a few hours anyway until I actually do fall asleep. I tried my best to block out the nagging voices in my head, trying to forget about Rikku, about everything...
And then I heard a door close outside of my room. I stopped pacing and went closer to my door, leaning my ear against its surface. I heard footsteps against the temple's floor, scurrying outside of the place. When I couldn't hear anything, I took another drag of my cigarette and slowly opened my door. I tried to walk as quietly as I could, but my friggin' boots were so loud that they echoed through the temple with each step I took. But luckily, no one heard me. Everyone is always wiped out from working with the machina that we collect. If Sin was ever resurrected, they'd probably sleep through the whole thing 'cause they're so tired.
I stepped into the center of the large room and saw that one of the temple's front doors was opened a few inches. It was pretty late at night. I usually was the only one who would be awake by now. Curious, I peeked through the opening of the door, and there she was. Sitting on the temple steps in yellow shorts and a white and yellow tank top. Her arms were bare and her long hair fell down to her back. I've never seen it down before she took to putting it in braids and things like that. I always thought that she looked pretty with her hair just down, but I didn't mind it the way she usually wore in during the day.
She must have not noticed me because her head was tilted upwards towards the moon. It was like she was hypnotized by it, staring at it and the stars the way she was.
I remembered when we were little, she and I would go out into the desert and look at the sky at night. Well...it's more like I tricked her to go out. I told her that she couldn't go out into the desert at night because she was afraid of the dark, knowing that she would come. I put out the insults like bait on a hook, and before I knew it Rikku and I were sneaking out of Home before any of the grown-ups knew we were awake. We would sit in the sand and stare at the sky and tried to keep on the lookout for any falling stars. We even made a competition out of it, saying that we could find more falling stars before the other one could. So we began pointing our fingers to Spira knows what, lying that we each found one. In the end, I was the one who won because poor Rikku could only count up to ten at the time. Heh, the advantages of being a year older.
But now, it doesn't seem like she's looking for anything in particular, not even falling stars. She was just...staring into nothing.
"Isn't Cid's little girl up past her bedtime?" I teased her from behind. She nearly jumped out of her skin, probably because I scared her when she thought she was alone. Once she saw me though, she frowned.
"Big meanie!" She answered in her high-pitched voice and looked back at the stars. I saw that the front strands of her hair were still neatly braided. "Can't a girl get some privacy around here?"
"Nope," I replied as I took a seat beside her. I took a long drag of my cigarette and exhaled, noticing that Rikku wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"What?"
She snatched my beloved cigarette from my lips and threw it a good distance away.
"I was gonna finish that!" I yelled at her, but she still frowned at me.
"That's a really disgusting habit, Gippal." She said matter-of- factly.
"Your point?" I snapped, grumpy that I didn't get to finish what must have been my nineteenth cigarette that night.
"It takes years off your life," she said. I noticed the picture of a way-too-cute chocobo on her tank top, and I shivered when I saw it.
"Are you cold?" Rikku thoughtfully asked when she saw that I had involuntarily shuddered.
"No, it's just your shirt." I admitted. As soon as I finished my sentence, she was offended. I could tell by the way her green eyes glared at me and by the little frown her rosy lips formed.
"What's wrong with my shirt?!" She shouted, obviously insulted at my disgust of her sickeningly adorable chocobo pajamas.
"You thought my cigarettes were disgusting?"
She stood up with her hands on her hips. "Hey! I think that my pajamas are cute!"
"That's the problem. They're TOO cute that they're nauseating."
"Well excuse me, Mr. Tough Leader of the Machine Faction! I happen to like chocobos, so tough cookies to you!" And with that, she swung around so that her back faced me. All I saw was her long golden hair trailing down her back.
She would always do this when I said something mean. I didn't take it seriously though. I knew she didn't mean it.
"Aw, c'mon..."
"Hmph!" she answered, crossing her arms. "I'm not speaking to you!"
"Tch. Fine," I said, secretly plotting a scheme to lighten her up. If it's one thing I know that Rikku couldn't resist other than overly sugar- coated sweets and caffeine, it was tickling...
I crept up behind her and when I was near enough, I quickly placed my hands on her stomach and I tickled her under her rib cage. She instantly fell down laughing non-stop, her hair all around her flushed face as she rolled around and tried to pry my hands off.
"Stop it!" she begged me between her laughing. "Q-quit it, Gippal!!!"
"I'm sorry, I can't seem to hear you." I teased her. I had to laugh myself: she was always ticklish at that spot since we were kids.
"Stop!!!" she broke into laughter again.
"What was that?" I sneered, pretending not to hear her.
"I s-said...STOP!!!"
Feeling that she had enough, I did like she told me to. She sat up from the ground and gave my arm a good punch.
"Touchy, touchy," I taunted, grinning when she stuck her tongue out at me.
"You deserved it!" She scolded, but she had a big smile on her face. It was then that I knew that she was okay. Well, at least better than she was before.
"What are you doing out at here so late?" I asked, changing the subject.
"Nothing," she answered, her vivid emerald eyes returning to the stars above us. "Just sitting and thinking."
"'Bout what?"
She got this mischievous grin on her pink lips. "Wouldn't you like to know?" She teased.
"Of course I would. Why did you think I'd ask?" I answered with a smart-ass reply. Rikku shrugged her bare shoulders, her golden hair slipping past them.
"I'm-not-telling..." She said in a singsong voice. Even if she was teasing me, I always liked to hear Rikku sing. To me, there was this liveliness in her voice that I found to attractive. Her voice fits her bubbly personality perfectly, but being myself, I never told her that.
"Whatever," I gave up, and rested my hands on my knees. We sat together without saying anything. It was a silence, but it wasn't one of those awkward silences. An awkward silence would be not saying a word to the person next to you because you hate his guts or you just can't find anything to say to him because you don't want to talk. But this silence...was a comfortable silence.
Bear with me here. My senses are all screwed up when I'm alone with Rikku. Always has been. When I was just a teenager and I was with her, my hormones weren't the only things acting weird. I...got these feelings. And I would think about things I normally wouldn't have thought about. Like when I'm with her, I wondered about what her lips would feel like, or I'd ask myself how is it that Rikku's eyes seemed to be so different if our entire race had the gene that gave us all the same-colored hair and eyes. There were also times when I began thinking about what it would be like if something happened to Rikku or if she never existed at all. Old man Cid wouldn't be his humorous self, Brother would be even more of a lunatic without Rikku to keep him in line, and the Al Bhed tribe would be a depressed and serious couple of stiffs, even more than a lot of them are now. And me...man, I don't even want to think about it. My life would be TEDIOUS. I love machina, but a complex piece of bolts and metal doesn't make me laugh or smile the way Rikku does. And it never will. That's been her role in my life, whether she knows it or not. If she wasn't around anymore...I don't think that there would be any use of hauling myself out of bed...
"I know that face!" her cheerful voice rang in my ears. I turned my head toward her, giving her this confused look.
"What are you talking about?"
She just giggled and her index finger rested on the top of my nose. "You're thinking about someone! I can always tell by the serious look you get."
"So what if I am?" I answered, lightly swatting away her finger.
"Oooh," she taunted me, and her face came nearer to mine. "Now who's being touchy? So who is she?"
I tried to look like I had no idea what she was talking about. "I'm not thinking about anyone."
"Awww, come on!" She clasped her hands together and pretended that she was going to cry. "You can tell me, Gippal! I promise I won't tell anyone!"
"Hmmm, I seem to hear a little voice coming from somewhere. Maybe it's just the wind..."
Always the persistent one, Rikku suddenly grabbed my hands in hers and stared at me with the saddest and most heartbreaking look that she could do. "Don't be such a meanie! Tell me? Pleeaaassse?"
I didn't make direct eye contact with her because if I did, I knew that I probably would tell her. Only a handful of guys could actually resist that adorably sad look of Rikku's.
And unfortunately for her, I was one of them.
"Doesn't Cid's little girl do anything else but ask questions?" I messed up her hair like I did earlier, my fingers tangling the long strands.
She pushed my hand away and grinned, knowing that I was hiding something. "Okay, Gippal. I'll play your little game." She headed towards the temple doors.
"Going back to bed?" I asked, a bit disappointed that she had to leave so soon.
"I'm gonna leave you to your thoughts," she said with a pretty smile. "But try and get some sleep, 'kay? We got a busy day tomorrow. Night!"
She went into the temple, the heavy doors closing behind her. Don't get me wrong; I was kinda relieved that she backed off. But there was still a part of me that wished that she were still sitting next to me.
No, it worked out this way. Rikku can't know that she is the one that I think about so much. At least not yet.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out another cigarette. I lit it, feeling a bit calmer as I did.
...but there was a part of me that felt guilty as I sat there and smoked.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: damn her. She plays the guilt card extremely well.
* * * *
"WAKEY-WAKEY!!!" A girlish voice squealed into my eardrum. I shot up from my bed and my eye snapped open. Because of the fact that I had just woken up from a two or three hour sleep, all I could make out in front of me was a thick stream of blonde hair and a pair of vibrant green eyes that stared at me.
"Morning!" Rikku chirped in her perky voice. I answered by groaning and sinking back into my mattress.
She pouted, stomping her foot. "Hey! This is the part where you're supposed to get up!"
I grabbed my pillow and buried my head underneath it. Maybe I won't be able to hear her if I'm suffocating.
"Don't do that!" she cried, trying to grab the pillow with her two hands. She struggled to pry it off of me, but as always, I was the stronger one.
"It's time to wake up, Mr. Leader!"
Rikku must have been trying her hardest to get it off of me, because as soon as I let go of my pillow in my state of surprise, she flew backwards and fell pretty hard onto the ground. But the good news was that she finally got the pillow off my head.
I propped myself off of my bed with my tired arms and I sat up again. I looked at her with my one good eye in disbelief. "...Mr. Leader?"
She smiled widely and stood up from the floor. "Yep! If I'm staying here for three months to work for the Machine Faction, then that kinda makes you my boss!"
I scratched the back of my head as I tried to make sense of what Rikku was saying.
"And if you're my boss, I have to call you something more formal than 'Gippal'." She explained, walking towards my bed and putting back the pillow near the headrest.
"...so you decided to call me Mr. Leader? THAT'S your formal title for me?" I asked, not knowing whether to hate the name or laugh at it.
Rikku nodded, her long braids bobbing up and down along the sides of her cute face. "Uh huh! I think it suits you perfectly."
Before I can say anything else, she scampered toward my door. I was so tired that I didn't even realize that she was in her usual short green skirt and yellow bikini top. Her hair was also styled the same way she normally did it: a couple of braids decorated with blue and pink beads, and the rest of it tied up in a ponytail and topped off with a light blue bandana. The frayed ends of her long red and yellow scarf trailed behind her as she moved to my door after evilly depriving me of sleep.
"There's tons of work to do today! We'll be expecting you outside, Mr. Leader!" she saluted me and left my room as quickly as she came in.
I continued to sit on my bed until the horrible realization that Rikku was right sank into my mind. There WAS a lot to do today, and even though she knew how to work with machina, I couldn't let Rikku handle the Faction alone. I was the leader, like she said.
Half-awake, I began the struggle to get up. I know that I'm an important guy. If I didn't show up, the Faction would probably go nuts without me there to run it.
Hmmm. I just realized something else. I usually lock my door when I go to sleep. But...Rikku was in my room to conveniently wake me up by making me go deaf. Unless she could phase through walls or something, she HAD to have use the door.
I walked to my door and inspected it. I found something on the floor and saw that it was a bobby pin. One of the ends was crooked and bent out of shape, like it was jammed into something and twisted.
Heh. Good ol' Rikku. She's only been here for a day and already things are starting to get interesting. How predictable.
* * * * AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks so much for the reviews guys! I'm really glad that you're enjoying my story. I'll try to update soon. I'm happy you guys didn't think it was boring in the first chapter. I'll try my best to get the characters' personalities in check! See ya!