[A/N: Looks like my schedule is going to be pretty jammed for a while, so updates may take time. I don't own anything by the Square Enix crowd. And now...]
Chapter 2: Friends and Teammates
Night was falling on the well-worn bridges and plains of the Mi'ihen Highroad. The early spring air was brisk and heady with the smell of the first flowers. Several Chocobos, tired out from a long day's work, were bedding down in their paddock by the Travel Agency which was also closing up for the night. Just across from the Agency near the cliff overlooking the ocean, faint light shone from the windows of several small hotel cabins which had been built no more than three years before. Each cabin was fully booked despite the fact it was still early in the year for tourism. Gradually the lights went out and few sounds could be heard save the lone howl of a Lupine in the distance or the occasional chirp of a cricket. A lone Hover attendant sat on a bench outside the Agency, relaxing from a long day's work as he took a swig from a small flask and let out a long sigh. His eyes danced here and there, taking in the familiar sights around him as well as the shadowy form of the steel-gray airship docked near the cabins. "Never woulda thought I'd see those all over Spira in my lifetime," he chuckled to himself, and was about to take another swig when a sudden noise from the North made his ears perk up.
The attendant stood up a bit shakily and tried to steady himself as he glanced up the road. The sounds were getting louder, and definitely did not belong to a wagon or a machina. His suspicions were confirmed as a young female voice cried out, "Help!!" Seconds later a brown-haired girl, barely nine years old, came half-running, half-limping into the Travel Agency clearing. Her dress was torn at the sleeve and the hem and she was missing one shoe; her face was covered in dirt and tears. The Agency doors flew open and several cabin lights came on as the manager emerged and gathered the trembling child into her arms. One cabin door opened just as the girl began to babble frantically through her tears.
"Our wagon's been tipped over and there's fiends all over the place and my mommy's trapped under the wagon and I can't get to her! Somebody help, please!!" she wailed through choking sobs.
"Don't worry, sweetie, we'll get your mom out of there," the manager said in a soft voice. Picking the girl up, she turned to the attendant. "Those sentry machina should've been on full alert right now; I thought you told me you'd fixed them!!"
"Ma'am, I did fix the North road machina, don't try and pin this on me!" the attendant retorted, straightening up and tossing the liquor flask into a nearby bush.
"I didn't say that I was, but we can sort that mess out later. Right now we've got a fiend crisis and we sure as hell better not be short on anything else!" the manager replied. "Are there any Council patrols nearby, because we're going to need their help!"
"Er... there was a patrol earlier in the day, ma'am, but they headed back down to Luca. That's as near as we're gonna get."
"Oh, wonderful! That'll take far too long!" the manager groaned. "Forget it, grab a sword or whatever you can and I'll get some of the other attendants to help out!"
"Don't worry about a thing, ma'am," a male voice called out from the direction of the cabins. The attendant and manager both turned to see a young man approaching them rapidly. In the twilight it was hard to make out his features, but the sword strapped across his back indicated he was no stranger to a fight. Behind him, four other figures were seen exiting the cabin he had emerged from.
"Leave this mess up to the Night Hawks."
Several dozen Lupines circled menacingly around the overturned wagon that lay in the middle of the Highroad. Some paced back and forth leisurely, others snapped and barked at the wagon as saliva dripped from their maws in rivers. A matronly woman crouched beneath the wreckage, wide- eyed and nervously brandishing a kitchen knife as if it would scare away the toughest of fiends. Her eyes darted left and right, praying desperately that the patrol machina would close in and drive off the pack, but from her vantage point she could only see one scout machina in the vicinity, and it looked to be in a state of extreme disrepair. Cautiously she leaned forward to try and get a better view, but leaped back twice as fast as two Lupines charged her ramshackle shelter, their teeth and claws gouging great furrows into the wagon's sides. The woman cried out in despair and tears began to roll down her cheeks, when suddenly a series of gunshots echoed across the Highroad, followed by two mangled squeals and thuds.
The baying of the Lupines ceased as they spun around and faced due South. Two of their number had fallen and were already spewing forth pyreflies from the gaping holes in their sides. Beyond them, a young man barely eighteen years old stood tall and defiant, brandishing two massive silver pistols at the pack. He wore black slacks and sneakers and a white t-shirt with the words Pay to Play etched across the chest, and a loose yellow jacket with silver lapels and bronze strips of metal riveted along the shoulders and the left sleeve forearm. A similar bronze shin guard on his left leg, brown leather holsters, black fingerless gloves and a silver J-shaped pendant on his chest completed the outfit. The lupines stared at the new arrival with eyes marked with curiosity and hunger. The man twirled the guns on his fingers and slammed them back into their holsters, a playful light glinting in his vivid blue eyes. He brushed his tousled brownish-blond hair and grabbed the hilt of the sword across his back. "Time to take a nap, you freaks," he muttered before lunging forward with blinding speed. Several Lupines charged him in unison; one burst forward and tried to snap at his face, but he jammed his sword into the fiend's mouth and spun around, tearing its jaw to shreds and slamming the blade into its comrade's flank at the same time. The second Lupine snarled and reared up on its hind legs, jabbing its forelimbs into his shirt and scoring wicked gashes across his flesh. Gritting his teeth, he kicked out and pushed the fiend off, executing a backward roll across the ground and sheathing his sword at the same time. Drawing his guns again, he began to unleash a hailstorm of leaden death before the fiends could even react.
Sword swinger and gunslinger- that's me, all right. Spitting image of my old man, or so I've been told. I can quick draw a blade or a pistol faster than just about anyone on Besaid; learned my lessons running the Gunner's Gauntlet three times weekly. Kinda shocked Mom when she found out I wanted to learn how to be a fighter, though. Probably just maternal instincts or something- with fiends out there, me and Ellie kinda figured we had to learn how to defend ourselves. Mom did eventually give in and she and Dad taught us what they could, but I don't think she ever really got comfortable with the idea of us fighting fiends. I guess she's afraid of losing either one of us. Even so, they taught us well, and without using Dresspheres or a Garment Grid either.
More Lupines began to fall into rank as the initial shock wore off. Several more lay on the ground dissipating into nothingness as Krys ejected two spent clips from his guns, slamming in fresh ones faster than the eye could see. With a quick shift he began to dash to the right, firing off more rounds as the fiends drew closer and lunged towards him once more. Krys darted and rolled, evading two sets of fangs before jamming a gun down the throat of a third and pulling the trigger. Just then several claws raked across his back as three more fiends encircled him, forcing him to holster his sidearms and draw his sword again. "Tryin' to play rough, huh?" he sneered. "Well that's how I like it, you crazy mutts."
A sudden flash of steel in the moonlight caused three of the fiends' eyes to go wide seconds before they each collapsed and burst into whiffs of color. Krys blinked and smiled. "Took you long enough," he said in a jesting tone. A slim young woman now stood where the fiends had been, clad in knee-length tight jean shorts and a navy blue denim vest over a white low cut short-sleeved shirt. Dark blue boots and studded kneepads adorned her legs, a maroon sash hung loosely around her waist and yellow bracers covered her wrists and the backs of her hands. Her own blue eyes twinkled in the moonlight as she hefted a peculiar sort of weapon- a tough metal staff with a large aquamarine orb set in a decorative mount on one end, offset by the ferocious-looking sword blade that dominated the other end and seemed almost as big as the girl herself. "I just wanted to make sure you really needed our help," she said in a lilting tone as she began to twirl the polearm in rapid circles. With a quick hop, the girl propelled herself into the air, leaping directly into the midst of the Lupine pack and thrashing the bladed end of the staff into the fiends in a dance that was as deadly as it was beautiful.
That's my sister Elsa for you, just as rough-and-tumble as I am. She's gotten a lot of grief over the years about her tomboy attitude, but she doesn't care. Looks just like Mom did when she was her age, except that Ellie can't bring herself to wear her hair in a braid like Mom. She says it would get in the way of her fighting style, which is something she calls Bladedancing. You wouldn't think it to look at her, but she can crack the shell of an Armet with one swing of that glaive of hers; she had it made from one of Mom's old summoner staves. Lightweight and powerful, and oddly enough she can still use the other end to channel some minor white magic spells. That's what makes her style so unique, the way she can switch from warrior to healer in the blink of an eye.
The pack began to shrink in size, but not in ferocity as the twins gouged, slashed and kicked their way through the Lupines' front ranks. Several tried to tear Elsa's legs to shreds but only succeeded in carving up one of her boots before she spun around and decapitated them with one swing of her glaive. Krys shattered the rib cage of another fiend with a vicious backhand swipe of his sword, spun around and drove his knee into the lower jaw of one that was leaping towards him from behind. Just then two more figures darted forward into the fray; one was tall and powerfully built, with red hair held back by a white bandanna. He wore black denim pants and shoes, crimson-tinted steel shin guards, a black leather jacket over a red t-shirt and metal-studded fingerless gloves. The other was shorter with spiked blond hair and green eyes, clad in beige pants and a red cargo vest over an orange short-sleeved shirt. Buckled desert boots and a pair of Al Bhed goggles on his forehead completed the outfit, and on both wrists he wore a bizarre set of chromed machina bracers with two blades protruding over each hand. "Hey, better save some o' the fun for us, ya?" the taller man called out as he ducked in low and drove his knuckles into the face of the closest Lupine. The creature shuddered, then collapsed as the man spun and roundhouse-kicked it into two of its pack mates. The smaller blond man grinned and darted into the mess with unexpected speed and agility, jabbing his bladed bracers into anything he came across.
"Some workout, isn't it Red?" Elsa hollered with a grin on her face as she spun in an elegant pirouette, driving her glaive into three hapless fiends at once.
"Jus' like a jog through the forest back home!" the tall redhead laughed, grabbing one Lupine by the throat and swinging it into an impromptu suplex that sent it crashing into another fiend.
"Or a romp or two across Bikanel during the dry season," the blond man chuckled, yanking a concussion grenade out of his belt satchel and hocking it over the wagon. The bomb exploded a fraction of a second later, tossing three Lupines into the air where they promptly disintegrated into pyreflies.
"Derrik, it's always the dry season on Bikanel!" Krys said, grappling with one Lupine that was attempting to claw at his jugular.
"Well, you can't say it's not a great place to get a tan!" Derrik retorted with a smirk. Krys shrugged and nodded in agreement just as he broke the grapple and punched the offending fiend in the face. It staggered back a few paces only to get caught in a cross slam from Derrik's claw bracers and Elsa's glaive.
The one we call Red, that's Vidina- me and Ellie's best friend while we were growing up. His father and ours have been friends for years, ever since Dad first came to Besaid. Red's a powerhouse, not an ounce of fat on him. Great Blitzer, and an even better martial artist. I swear the guy's got knuckles made of Adamantoise shell, and more than a few dirty tricks to blind or stun a fiend so he can get in a few more punches. The blond kid named Derrik, he's our younger cousin of sorts, the son of Mom's cousin Rikku- but we never bothered with semantics, we just called her Aunt Rikku and Cousin Derrik when we were little, so the titles stuck. Derrik's a real firecracker, and probably has the nimblest hands in our little group. He can swipe a soldier's rifle from right under his nose, field strip it, upgrade it and put it back before the soldier notices it was gone.
"Is it just me or is this taking a little too long?" Elsa shouted, sustaining several gashes across her upper arms as two Lupines attempted to bull rush her off the roadway. Ducking in, she flipped her staff around and drove the orb-tipped end into one fiend's mouth, breaking half of its teeth, then spun in a circle and cut both down at once.
"It's not just you Ellie, this is one big pack o' fiends, ya?" Vidina responded, grabbing a charging fiend and wrestling it into a headlock; one quick twist and the canine collapsed, its neck broken.
"Then let's do something about it," said a soft yet firm female voice. A ruddy orange glow began to throb at the edge of the pack, a glow that emanated from the tip of a simple staff made of white oak. Grasping the staff was a young woman dressed in a loose long-sleeved white shirt and pants, black low-heeled boots that came to just above her knees and a long pale green vest etched with runic symbols. A gust of wind whipped her long silver-white hair about her face as she thrust the staff forward. Her dark red eyes glinted as the Fire spell manifested and sent scorching waves across the pack of Lupines. "Feel the burn," she whispered softly, watching numerous fiends succumb to the flames and burst into pyreflies. The remaining Lupines struggled to stay on their feet, their maws frothing from the pain of their charred flesh, but these were quickly put out of their misery as Krys unloaded another hail of bullets into each of them.
Maya's the youngest of us at 16, and something of an enigma to most. She doesn't open up to many people outside of us, her closest friends, and when she does talk to others she's incredibly subdued. Of course, being the daughter of Chancellor Baralai and the Swordswoman Paine can't be the easiest thing in the world. She's been in the public eye involuntarily for ages, but then again so have Ellie and me; I guess she never got a chance to fully adapt to it. In a fashion, I suppose she's kinda the way Mom was years ago, the way she feels more at home with smaller groups of people like us. But cross the line with her and she turns from shy and quiet to a raging fury- having already learned the four basic Elemental techniques, we're all positive Maya could be one of the foremost Combat Mages someday.
Elsa breathed a heavy sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from her forehead. "Not exactly your typical evening's entertainment, I'd have to say," she said, glancing around. "Any more coming?"
"Looks like we scared 'em all away, sis," Krys responded, straightening the lapels of his jacket. "C'mon, we better get this wagon straightened out."
"Talk about a freak show! With this many Lupines on the Highroad, you'd think the sentry machina would've been on the scene already!" said Derrik, kneeling down to examine a malfunctioning Ranger model. An access panel was hanging off the back and smoke was seeping from its leg joints.
"Derrik, save your curiosity for later and give us a hand, ya?" Vidina griped as he, Krys, Elsa and Maya grabbed the broken side of the wagon and began to shove upward. The wagon quickly rose off the ground, balanced on its remaining wheels for a few seconds before Derrik darted in underneath and procured two broken wheel sections to prop the chassis up. The woman who had been cowering beneath scrambled out into the open, tried to stand up but couldn't. She tried to steady her legs and get up again when she noticed a gloved hand before her. Looking up, she saw Krys extending his arm with a reassuring smile.
"It's all right, ma'am," he said in a light tone. "We just happened to be in the neighborhood."
A short time later, the five of them had returned to the Travel Agency with the traveler in tow. The woman's daughter practically flew across the Agency floor into her arms, crying tears of joy and babbling about how scared she had been. The Agency manager breathed a heavy sigh of relief, and the Hover attendant tried to make himself useful organizing the items in the wagon that hadn't been wrecked by the fiends. "I just couldn't believe it," the woman said, hugging the little girl. "We thought the sentry machina were prepared for fiend attacks, which is why we didn't worry about arriving after sundown. But then when they began leaping out of the shadows and the ox broke the reins and tried to run..." She shuddered and pulled her daughter closer. "I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't arrived when you did. Thank the Maker."
"Hey, we was jus' doing our part, ma'am. Can't let fiends get the upper hand, you know?" said Vidina as he loosened one of the straps on his jacket sleeve.
"I want to apologize for everything, ma'am," the Agency manager piped up as she approached. "I've been telling the staff time and again the sentries need regular maintenance; in a way this mess is really our fault. If there's anything we can do to make it up to you, just let me know."
"Actually, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a look at those models in the morning. Maybe I can find out why they malfunctioned," said Derrik with a smile.
"Yeah, I think we'd all like to know that; it's not like fiends to gang up on the Highroad like this," added Krys.
The manager blinked. "You'd be willing to help us with that?"
"Why not? Might be kinda fun!" said Elsa as she slid a leather sheath over the massive cutting edge of her glaive and strapped it in place.
"It'd be a pleasure," Maya murmured, glancing up at the Agency staff awkwardly.
Maybe there really is something to be said for being in the right place at the right time. We'd only just agreed to hit the road and find adventure, and it practically came running up to meet us. That night, the Night Hawks were born- just a crazy name I thought up on the fly. It only dawned on me later that we were beginning to follow in our parents' footsteps already. Whether we're going to be actual "heroes" is something I don't know, but one thing is certain...
It's going to be a lot of fun finding out.