Hah...almost forgot about this one. Well, I got a little put-off by the summary. It's not exactly accurate with the idea I had in mind, but whatever. I'll fix it when I'm not lazy, so you'll be looking at the same summary for the next couple of months.
In the Nature of a Wake-Up Call:
"What a find!" Rikku crowed triumphantly, stretching her arms in satisfaction as the wind whipped her wild hair against her face.
"I can't believe it myself," Nhadala agreed excitedly, driving the hover over a particularly large dune for no particular reason except for the fun of it.
"Miss Nhadala, I have to ask that you not do that again," Picket complained. "It rather disrupts the connections I have with this hover. That might make for a confusing ride the next time someone takes this hover out."
"A bit of roughing it out in the desert would do a lot of good to some of the good-for-nothing bums back at the camp," Nhadala said innocently, and then laughed.
Nhadala had loosened up a lot since Rikku joined the digging teams—mostly because you either have to have a free disposition in dealing with Rikku at her best (or worst) or you have to be Paine.
And since no one could really match the way Paine could stare a constipated Elder Drake in the face without so much as a flinch, well...
"I can't wait to tell Benzo about this!" Rikku grinned. "Can you imagine what we could dig up from there?"
During one of their customary rounds around the desert from the back of a hover, Picket had picked up some odd emanations coming from the sand below the central expanse, and digging around, Rikku and Nhadala had discovered an entrance leading down into a dark cavern underneath the desert.
"Benzo would wet his little Wunderkind pants with joy," Nhadala predicted. "I can already expect the—" She suddenly stopped.
"Hmm?" Rikku looked at her. "What's up, Nhadala? You aren't lost again, are you?"
Picket's mechanized voice seemed huffy. "Under my guidance, no one on this hover can even consider being lost. It's inconceivable!" It was odd to consider the fact that the little mechanism was actually offended.
"We're not lost," Nhadala said, regaining herself. "Not lost at all. Camp's over there."
Rikku peered around the hover and nearly fell off—which would probably add more insult to the stuffy Picket, so she refrained from doing so.
"Is that the Celsius?"
They were waiting for her at the entrance to the camp.
"Rikku! We've been waiting for you for hours!"
Brother had worked himself up into a fit, apparently. He was waving his arms around wildly and posing all over the camp, looking like the idiot he always was. He hadn't changed much.
Personality-wise, at least. He had finally discarded those ridiculous-looking suspenders for an actual belt, for one thing. His accent, however, was as humiliating as it always was.
"Thirty minutes," Shinra translated wryly.
The pint-sized genius still seemed to be exactly the same. Becoming filthy rich didn't show, particularly because he still wore the dirty Wunderkind suit he seemed so proud of. He was sitting on a piece of wreckage, calmly watching Brother's antics with obvious entertainment.
"How long was he ranting?" Rikku whispered to him, ignoring her brother's flailing.
"Thirty minutes," came Shinra's predictable reply.
"We went all over the desert looking for your camp and when we found it, everyone was so rude!" Brother went on, dramatically pointing an accusing finger to the other workers, most of which seemed on the brink of exploding into a murderous rampage.
A voice came from the hatch of the great air ship. "In other words, he made an absolute idiot of himself." Buddy swung down from the ship, looking a little resigned, which was the typical reaction of a person who had spent far too much time in the range of Brother's voice.
"Buddy!" Rikku squealed and launched herself at him.
"Hey, Rikku," Buddy said around a mouthful of Rikku hair. "I see the sun hasn't blasted out your brains yet." He threw a meaningful glance to where Brother was doing some sort of dance—if it could be called that.
She grinned up at him. "If it's genetic, I seem to be immune."
"We'll see," he laughed. Buddy was more or less the same—his hair was a little longer, and he was a little taller than she remembered, but he was still Buddy.
He looked up. "Hey Nhadala," he greeted the woman, smiling. "Sorry, but we had to bring him along."
She shook her head. "It's no real problem to me. Rikku sort of brings that same effect around here as well."
"Me?? I'm not in any way like Brother!!"
Nhadala ignored the suddenly indignant girl and went on, looking a little amused. "You probably shouldn't keep him here long, though." She grimaced, looking at the other fed up people in the camp. "I think they're sharpening their knives."
Shinra was listening to them and he let out a little chuckle. "I give them five minutes."
"Well, well, well," Rikku said, suddenly interested. "Isn't that an idea?" Her eyes shone speculatively.
"Not a good one," Buddy said firmly. "You don't want to have to deal with any guilty feelings later."
"Who said I'd feel guilty?" she asked innocently.
"Never mind," he repeated.
"Aw, you're no fun," Rikku kicked at the sand.
Brother had taken no notice of their discussion, apparently. "—but now you're here and—Rikku? Rikku are you listening to me? I don't think you are, and you will regret it!" His voice rose several notches, and the other diggers visibly tightened their hands around their daggers.
"So, Brother, what brings you here?" Rikku hastily asked, giving the workers a pleading look.
"Well," the Al Bhed drew himself up importantly. "Now that you ask, we're here to bring you to Luca, Rikku."
"What?" Rikku blinked. "I like it here." Her eyes narrowed. "Is this Pops' idea? Why does he want me back? Why are you running errands for him, Brother?"
"I am NOT running errands for our father!" Brother stamped his foot on the ground, bringing up a little billow of sand.
"I think you are!" she snapped back. "I will NOT go back!" She stamped her foot, sending up bigger clouds of sand.
"Yes, you will!" Stamp. Cough.
"No, I won't!" Stamp. Cough.
"She says they aren't in any way similar," Nhadala rolled her eyes (although you actually couldn't see her rolling them, because of the goggles, you see—which were pretty handy at this point, what with all the stamping and the flying sand). "And I'm a Ronso."
Seeing the steadily growing irritation on the faces of the other workers, Buddy immediately stepped into his familiar role of the intermediary. "Hey, guys, cool down."
"She doesn't want to go!" Brother complained.
"And you can't make me!" Rikku stubbornly crossed her arms.
"Unless we told you that Cid had nothing to do with it," Shinra said reasonably. "In which case, I believe the ground you're standing on seems a little shaky. Figuratively, I mean. Sand isn't really shaky, but it isn't really stable either. Perfect for glassblowing, though."
Rikku blinked.
"And," Shinra went on. "Now that you're open to the idea of taking a trip to Luca since you have no reason not to, familial strife aside, you might want to consider the fact that Yuna and Paine will also be going to Luca for the grand opening of Spira's International Museum of Recorded History. It's a worldwide event with people from everywhere in Spira coming to take a look. Something of a historical milestone, I suppose. The fact that you're a specially invited guest, being a Gullwing, might also convince you to go, because I'm sure that there will be certain benefits available to you, being one of the major contributors to the birth of the Museum."
Nhadala stared at the little kid, obviously wondering how he could say all that in a single breath.
"Me?" Rikku still seemed a little bewildered.
Shinra nodded. "Affirmative. Some time after you left, we decided to donate all the rest of the spheres we had acquired during our little bout as the Gullwings to the joint project between New Yevon—whatever it wants to be called—and the Youth League. And since we had stacked up quite a cache of spheres, we're one of the major contributors to the gathering collection of historical spheres they will showcase at the museum. Also, during the Yunapalooza, although we didn't actually sell out tickets, we still earned a bit of the proceeds from the vendors who set up around the Thunder Plains—they're very grateful to Yuna for towing in all the customers. Since we weren't really creative enough to spend all that money, and since Brother wasn't allowed to get to it, we just gave it all away to the Museum project.
"So if you think about it," the boy said in tones that indicated that he was running out of breath, "we're pretty much the major sponsor for the whole shebang." He paused. "Did I say shebang?"
There was a short moment of silence where everyone adjusted, either to the idea of going to Luca, or to the notion that Shinra just said shebang.
Rikku's face lit up, the first to change from the horrified/confused/interested expressions ranged on everyone else's faces. "Yuna and Paine are going, too? All right! I'll start packing!" She turned and disappeared in a cloud of sand.
"Luca, here I come! Hahaa!"
"She sure changed her mind quick," Nhadala noted.
Brother gave Shinra a dirty look. "Sometimes, you are so smart, you make my teeth hurt!" he declared.
Shinra looked back at him. "Only you could actually manage something like that."
"Oh?" Brother grinned, looking a little proud. "Just me, hehe. I can do what no one else can."
"Yes you can," the evil little Wunderkind told him. "Why don't you go check on the turbines, Brother? We'll be leaving soon."
Brother looked insulted. "That is an unimportant job for someone like me! Why don't you do it, if you're so smart?"
"I'm just a kid."
Well, there was nothing Brother could say to that. Other people, perhaps, could have come up with something to fire back at the little smartmouthed kid, but other people aren't Brother (thankfully).
Buddy sighed.
"It's a theory I'm working on," Shinra explained to Nhadala and Buddy as Brother walked off, wildly gesticulating to himself. "If you don't know that something is impossible, is it possible for you to actually do it? Brother's the perfect test subject. Ignorance is bliss, normally, but in this case—" there was an evil little chuckle. "Well, we'll see. I'll keep you posted."
"Thanks," Buddy said dryly. "I think."
"Well, then," Nhadala said, straightening a little. "Luca, you say?"
"Yup," he nodded. "They were thinking of using that new building in Kilika, but they decided that it was too risky to hold it there. Typhoons and all. Why?" he looked at her curiously. "You thinking of coming?"
The blonde woman shrugged. "It's a thought."
"You wanna get out pf the desert, eh?"
"No, actually." She gave him an arch look. "Unlike some other Al Bhed I know, I can live in the desert without the sun beating my brains out—the heat doesn't bother me."
Buddy winced. "All right, already. So I don't like the temperature around here. Can you blame me?"
"Wuss. That's why you always hid in Home where the big bad sun couldn't get you."
"Hey." It was Shinra. He was looking at them, expression inscrutable underneath the goggles. "Would you two stop flirting for a moment and start getting the ship ready for the trip? Brother's an incompetent—he probably doesn't know that it's impossible to stab yourself with a turbine rag, either, and by the looks of things, he's probably willing to try it."
Flirting???
Buddy instantly turned on his heel and hurried toward the Celsius as Nhadala practically fled to the camps.
Stupid little Wunderkind.
"Hey," Shinra said again, sounding hatefully amused. "If Nhadala's coming, wouldn't you say that we're a little short on sleeping space? You wouldn't mind, would you, Buddy?" There was a little raspy Shinra chuckle.
Dirty little Wunderkind.