Part Fourteen: Obligatory Explanatory
"Yunie!"
Yuna was nearly knocked off her feet, not even having had time to register her cousin's presence before one frantic Al-Bhed girl threw her arms around her, while chanting, "You're alright, I knew you had to be alright..." again and again.
"Rikku-"
Rikku drew back, keeping her hands on Yuna's shoulders and casting a critical look at the ex-Summoner, checking her for any overt signs of damage. "Did they hurt you? Did they feed you? Those meanies! Why I oughta-"
"Rikku!" That was Cid, who, upon the airship's clearing of the garrison island, had come down from the bridge with Rikku to the cargo hold, where the group had ducked into during the airship's rapid and stomach-churning departure from the area. "Leave the girl alone, dammit."
"Hey!" Rikku stomped her foot. "I was worried!" Then she turned back to Yuna and asked, in a slightly gentler, and somehow more sincere, tone, "You are okay, right, Yunie?"
This time Yuna was the one to embrace her cousin, if less energetically than the girl had. "I'm fine, Rikku. They treated me well."
Rikku bit her lip holding tightly to Yuna's hands as the ex-Summoner tried to draw away. "I'm so sorry for not having protected you in Guadosalam. It's all my fault, I'm... I'm a terrible Guardian-"
"Rikku!" Cid again, glowering fiercely at his daughter. "Enough of that. Yuna doesn't need any of your moping."
To someone who didn't know the peculiarities of this particular family, it might seem like chastisement. But all present knew what it was truly: that Cid was telling Rikku that there wasn't nothing she could have done, so she should really stop beating herself up over it (dammit).
Everyone present except Isaaru, of course, who just looked confused.
Rikku seemed to take it well, in that she drew herself up, and only threw a two or three epithets in the Al-Bhed language at her father before stalking off.
Yuna and Lulu exchanged fond glances. Business as usual.
Cid cast a look over Yuna that somehow seemed to be a perfect mirror for Rikku's visual check. "Get cleaned up, all of you," he ordered. "Then haul your asses up to the bridge. I got something you need to see."
And then he was gone.
Maybe it wasn't business as usual.
Feeling refreshed, and glad to have had the opportunity to have a shower, Yuna arrived on the bridge a quarter of an hour later. It had seemed to be somehow cathartic to physically scrub every last speck of dust her place of incarceration might have left on her from her body. It left her looking pink and flushed from where she had rubbed at the skin with a rough cloth, but she felt a certain satisfaction.
Her arrival there caused her to find a grim looking group awakening her. Her three guardians and Cid stood next to the Sphere Oscillofinder, looking at her as she walked in. She refused to let the intensity of their regard throw her.
Wakka was back in his normal clothes, but Lulu was cad in an Al-Bhed worksuit. It was an improvement on the guard outfit, at least. Yuna absently wondered why the woman had not brought her favored dress with her, and then shook her head for thinking of such fripperies when there was clearly something important going. But she did notice that Rikku was standing stiffly, and her clothing seemed rigid about her midsection. To support the injury Yuna remembered her getting?
"What is it?" she asked, as she walked over to them.
Rikku was clutching a sphere in her hands. "We lost contact with one of our survey teams exploring the eastern islands." She said, "So we sent another team after them. By the time they arrived, there was no sign of the original group, and in the end, only one of them made it back. She brought this."
She extended her hands, and thumbed the activation switch.
The image is indistinct, the visuals bouncing and juddering. It's clear that someone is carrying the recording sphere, and they're running fast, not giving any thought to where they're pointing the camera.
"Hey! Siral! Over here!"
Siral, who must be holding the camera, changes direction, heading over towards the direction of the shout. A female can just be seen in shot, lying down holding a pair of binoculars that are focused off in the distance. She's only visible for a moment, then the camera sees only the brush as its set down as Siral joins his companion on the ground.
"There..." A near whisper, and the camera is picked up again. Grasses are pulled out of the ground and discarded, giving a blurry image of something in the distance.
Then the image starts to sharpen as Siral focuses the lenses. A large building starts to take shape, and then so does the background. The building itself is huge, ellipse shaped, surrounded by circular grounds. In these grounds are ranks upon ranks of soldiers, all moving in perfect unison. Militarily trained Yevonites, a degree of precision not found in the regular ground. This is no normal guard training facility, this is a place where soldiers are bred for combat.
And in the background are two more buildings, identical. There must be hundreds of soldiers there.
"Searing sands and skies above," Siral, speaking for the first time, and sounding horrified. "Why would they need all these people and weapons."
It's easy to work out why. Why does anyone train to kill?
To kill, of course.
"Let's get out of here," The female says. "We have to-"
"HEY!"
It's neither of the observers who shouts, and from the way the image suddenly loses focus and starts bouncing again, its clear the two are running in fear, not caring about whether they've turned the camera off or not.
The sound of shots rings out, and Siral falls to the ground, the camera falling with him. The image only shows booted feet approaching rapidly. The female bends and snatches up the camera, whispering an apology and a tearful farewell to Siral, and then runs again.
The image goes dark.
Silence reigned for a long, sickening moment after the images faded from sight, if not mind.
Cid was leaning against a console, his arms crossed. "Those bastards killed him and the others to protect their secret."
"Hardly surprising." That was Isaaru, causing faces to turn towards him in surprise. Most of them hadn't seen him enter. "The project relies on no one outside knowing about its existence."
"Who are they?" Lulu asked, narrowing crimson eyes at him.
"The soldiers?" Lulu nodded, and Isaaru shrugged. "Yevon, of course. But a special task force. Raised in the Temple, each and every one of them has been bred to obey the words of the Priests and Priestesses as if they were the words of Yevon himself. And so they would never question any order, not any."
"But... what would they want with such an army?"
"It's not what 'they' want, it's what Ismene wants." Isaaru was looking directly at Yuna. "Remember what I said in the hallway?"
Yuna returned his intent look blankly, mind turning over as she tried to understand what it could possibly be that he was referring to.
Then it hit her, and she felt bile rise in a way that was unrelated to her pregnancy. "No..." she croaked, shakily sinking onto the seat she had been standing next to and covering her mouth as she swallowed rapidly. "Not even they would be so... obscene."
Isaaru closed his eyes, lowering his chin to his chest in what was either a nod or a prayer for deliverance.
"What?" Rikku looked utterly confused, glancing around. "What did he say?"
Wakka reached up and scratched the back of his neck. "That... ah... I can't remember... something about Sin, ya?"
Lulu's breath caught in her throat, as she made the same leap that Yuna had. "That Ismene would become Sin anew."
"I wasn't really speaking literally," said Isaaru softly, still not having opened his eyes. "But to all intents and purposes, that it exactly what she seeks."
"I don't understand," Rikku admitted quietly.
Isaaru raised his head, and started to explain, his voice low, as if he were relating some unimportant anecdote, rather than ground-shattering information.
"With this army, Ismene could order an attack, against a village, ship or town. And the soldiers, so indoctrinated they function little more independently than machina, would wipe them out. All of them. Every man, woman and child. With no one left to tell what had happened, Yevon could say that Sin had returned, people would flock back to the church, and they retain their power.
"Ismene said she wanted to preserve stability." Isaaru, sounding like a little boy who's slowly realising that the world doesn't work the way he'd like. "But it's rule by fear, and has the potential to be even more devastating than Sin who, at the end of the day, was a monster, but was hardly human."
The others glanced at each other, and decided not to let Isaaru know of what Sin really had been for now.
"Spira would be denied its hope," Yuna said after a while, as they all sat, or stood, in stunned silence and digested what Isaaru had revealed to them. "Summoners can't defeat an army. There would be no Final Summoning, no Calm to come."
"It's why she was willing to wait for you as long as necessary. Pass a few years in a 'Calm' and then Sin returns. So much for the word of a heretic who proclaimed Sin dead." Isaaru bit off his words, as if keen to be rid of them.
"And you were helping them," Cid said, in a low growl.
The others glanced between Cid and Isaaru nervously, and then at each other, perhaps wondering who, if anyone, would be the one to restrain Cid from physically attacking the male former Summoner.
But Isaaru drew himself and said, in a calm voice that was somehow tinged with self-loathing. "My lord, I could perhaps offer the excuse that my cooperation with Yevon was under duress, it would only be partially true. While it was understood by me that there was an implied threat against my brothers should I fail to accede to their wishes, perhaps the greater reason for my collaboration was simple apathy. With the end of the Fayth and Sin, my reason to be ceased. I am a Summoner, born to deal death to the bringer of death, to defeat Sin. Ismene has become Sin, and so my task now is to destroy her. I see that now as I did not then, weighed down with a lack of caring. Perhaps you can thank Lady Yuna for opening my eyes. There is a world beyond the void that the Fayth have left, one that needs my protection."
He turned his head away. "And all I can do after that is to see that I die in the best way I can." Smoothing away a wrinkle in his robes, he turned and walked off the bridge.
Yuna staring after them, her rolling stomach not having calmed any at Isaaru's words. "What does he mean by that?" Although his words seemed clear, Yuna felt like she'd just listened to a long speech in Ronso, unable to understand the meanings behind the sounds. Was this shock?
Rikku sighed loudly, "I think I know what Maroda was talking about now."
Lulu and Wakka nodded silently.
At the questioning glances of her father and Yuna, Rikku took a deep breath, and started to speak.
And of his brother, what Maroda told Lulu, Rikku and Wakka was this:
Isaaru was tired, Maroda knew that more than anything. He could see it in the way his brother moved, the way his staff slipped limply from his grip to the floor whenever he stumbled into their rooms, and the dark circles under his eyes spoke volumes. It seemed that Isaaru had been doing nothing but Sending the dead for days now. He perform the Sending, before he would stumble home, soul weary and exhausted, falling asleep on the closest vaguely padded surface, barely stirring when either Maroda or Pacce came with soup or something light to eat. And then he would awaken, and they would call for him again, needing him to Send the souls of the dead bodies that they had pulled out of the debris in the western part of the city while Isaaru had slept.
Yevon would not relieve his burden and allow another Summoner to assist, for they had none anywhere within their city boundaries. And so Maroda watched his brother continue to run himself to the bone, until he began to fear that every time he touched the dead, he left a little bit of himself with them.
Isaaru danced the Sending now, under Maroda and Pacce's anxious and watchful eyes. There was no time or space to prepare the bodies of the dead for their internment beneath the waves of the sea, so instead they were placing the bodies on funeral pyres, to clear the way for those still living. It was of no consequence to a Summoner. In the Sending, the elements shaped themselves to the Summoner's will, and it was as inconsequential as a gnat's bite.
The flames licked up around Isaaru's body, hungry, eager to taste his flesh and rend it as easily as they did that of the bodies they reduced to little more than ash and charred bone around him. But they dove away from his staff, which looked as if it were two lotus blossoms intertwined at the head, and were forced to be kept at bay. The fire sought, but Isaaru's steps avoided them all deftly, as he turned and wafted a small swarm of pyreflies up on the heated air currents, their song nostalgic and sad.
With many of the male Summoners, who donned thick heavy robes, it was difficult to see the grace that they wielded in the dance. Indeed, Maroda could laughingly recall when he had been younger, teasing Isaaru mercilessly for his clumsiness when his brother stumbled over his own feet or tripped over a set of stairs. But Isaaru had emerged from Bevelle Temple, after attaining Bahamut, his first Aeon and who Isaaru had called Spathi in his Summons, and had stood before the Yevon clerics and the people of Bevelle to Summon the creature and prove that he had indeed become a Summoner, and Maroda how he had danced so elegantly, staff twirling and arms moving in a graceful dance that brought the great dragon down to them. He remembered how Bahamut had bowed to Isaaru, who had laughed at the thanks for such a performance.
Isaaru had been flushed with excitement, and Maroda had teased him as to how he could no longer make fun of Isaaru for his clumsiness.
Maroda could see a trace of the old clumsiness creeping into Isaaru's movements in the Sending now. He never missed a step, or fumbled his staff, but it was the careful precision with which he conducted himself that gave it away. Since becoming a Summoner, Isaaru had become more physical confident, no longer checking every step he made, or watching where he walked. That he was so conscious of his own motions showed Maroda how worried Isaaru was that he would err.
And then it happened. The death of Sin.
The sky flooded with light. Pacce, beside him, gasped and cried out in shock at the sudden brightness, turning night into day. Maroda's eyes went instantly to the heavens, searching the sky for the cause.
Caught in the Sending, Isaaru danced on.
Maroda had heard whispers that after confronting the Al-Bhed ship over Bevelle, causing the destruction to which they were tending, Sin had moved to near the Calm Lands, not too far from the city. What this Sin's doing, he wondered? And then the song reached his ears. Pyreflies. The great field of light that flooded the skies was millions of pyreflies, singing and calling out in their inimitable fashion. Maroda was unsure how long he stood there, watching the skies, wondering if this was Lady Yuna's doing, and if this was one final attack by Sin, and that their end was coming.
And in the end, it was the pyreflies that pulled Maroda's attention away from the vista, for they had started to scream.
Maroda glanced down and called out in shock as he saw his brother falter in the Sending, his staff slipping from his fingers, which had stopped moving, and being flung from the flames. The pyreflies, angry at their dance being so interrupted, were shrieking, causing several of those nearest the fire to cover their ears. But Isaaru had stopped moving, his eyes wide.
The flames' fingers sought him out, snatching and swiping at his clothing, moving across skin, and Maroda, with nary a hesitation, leapt upwards into the fire, grabbing Isaaru by a piece of his robe and yanking him bodily from the pyre before the flames could claim him as well.
Pacce, who had snapped out of his stupor with his brother's leap, was casting water spells to douse the flames and soak the garments that had begun to smolder, but he, and Maroda, seemed at a loss for what to do as Isaaru, if anything, became worse as he was removed from the fire. He choked, clawing at his chest and called out hoarsely, his eyes unfocussed and unseeing. Maroda wasn't entirely sure that his brother was still with them in the here and now.
Was it the Sending? Was it finally one dance too many and his brother's spirit was calling out to join those on the Farplane?
"Don't go!"
Isaaru's voice was barely recognisable, hoarse and desperate, and before Maroda could ask who Isaaru was so keen to keep with them, his brother began to weep. The people of Bevelle kept their distance, not knowing how to deal with a Summoner who was acting thusly.
"No," he began to repeat, "No, no, no."
Maroda smoothed his brother's hair back from his forehead, where it had been plastered their by sweat from the heat and whatever nightmare held his brother in its grip.
"Isaaru, come back to us," Pacce's voice was entreating, and Maroda saw the telltale green tinge of a Cure spell wash over Isaaru, the scent obscured by the smoke from the fire. He appreciated Pacce's effort, but he wasn't entirely sure this was some affliction of the body that could be so easily fixed.
"Don't leave..."
Maroda shook his head, feeling tears prick at his own eyes, tears of helplessness. "We're not going anywhere, brother. We're right here."
Isaaru was reaching out to something unseen, and Maroda didn't think his words were heard. "Please don't leave me."
Pacce and Maroda exchanged twin looks of fear.
And then he screamed.
It was like nothing that Maroda would ever hear again, though no sound issued from Isaaru's mouth. The pyreflies, still caught in the spell Isaaru had woven with his steps, screamed with him in sympathy, the sound passing from pyrefly to pyrefly until half the audience was on their knees, hands over their ears and trembling under the sonic assault.
The pyreflies streamed upward and outward, passing in straight, fast, lines rather than their usual meandering pathways. Several people yelled in surprise as a pyrefly passed straight through them unheeding. They fled, joining the currents of their fellows swelling the sky, and the sound died away to an echo that only remained in the ringing of the ears of the listeners.
"Gone," Isaaru said, with the finality of a door slamming shut. His eyes focused on his brothers, but they were dull and so without life that Maroda feared that he had indeed passed on to the Farplane and all that remained behind was an Unsent husk. "They're gone."
"Who are?" Maroda asked softly, even though he could barely hear his own voice over the audio afterimages of the scream.
Isaaru was weeping freely now. "The Fayth. They are gone." And he had broken down, needing to be carried back to the Temple for a mind healer to see to him.
When Maroda related this story to Yuna's Guardians, much later, Lulu would say that Yuna had not experienced anything so horrible as she Sent the Aeons. Maroda would only smile sadly and say,
"The Fayth were not only weapons to Isaaru, a means to defeat Sin, they were his duty, and his bond, his anchor. They were, in a very literal sense of the word, his life. When they left, everything became... pointless."
But even though they struggled to understand, neither Lulu, Rikku nor Wakka could understand what he meant by that.
And now, with this little bit of extra information, Yuna understood. She understood all too well.
"You were suicidal."
Isaaru turned to face her, causing his hair to whip around his face at a new angle. The wind on the deck was merciless and driving, but people were prevented from being flung off entirely by some sort of traction field generated by the machina within the ship. Yuna had asked an engineer to explain it to her once, and had come away with the absolute certainty that she must never ask about machina again lest she burst a blood vessel.
Yuna was standing close enough to be heard, but far enough away that there was no chance of accidental, or purposeful for that matter, contact between them. Her light skirt fluttered in the wind, and she had to grip the edges to keep it from showing anything indecent. Isaaru's robes were heavy enough to resist the motions of the air. For a moment, she envied him his choice in clothing.
"'Were', Yuna?" Isaaru's mouth twisted wryly. "I thought I made it quite plain that I still am. Although, 'suicidal' is perhaps the wrong word."
Yuna stared at him in horror. "How can you speak so casually of such a thing?" she asked, her voice a near whisper, but it still carried. Or perhaps Isaaru just had very good hearing.
"How can you be surprised?" He countered. "You are-were a Summoner. Do you honestly believe that anyone who undergoes a Summoner's training, who walks the path of the pilgrim, does not, at some deep level of their soul, not truly desire death? And that they are not prepared to embrace their destruction with every fibre of their being?" He made a little half-shrug of a gesture. "Summoners rarely require Sending, you know."
"Belgemine?"
Isaaru actually smiled at that. "Ah yes, her. She beat me hands down, you know? But she stayed because she had a task. I think she would have willingly accepted her fate."
"She did," Yuna said quietly.
"Then you see?" Isaaru gave her a gentle, understanding look, which she wanted to wipe from his face. "So tell me, Yuna, can you say, in all honesty, that the idea of death didn't seem at all appealing to you?"
"I was willing to die for Spira. My death was inconsequential to give hope to Spira."
Isaaru said nothing, staring at her patiently.
"No," she hissed, turning away and stalking to the edge of the deck. "Don't you dare ascribe whatever demons you created to me."
There was a long silence, and then she heard Isaaru move to stand next to her, overlooking the sea as it whipped by below them at fantastical speeds. "How about deathwish instead, hmm? Good a word as any, I suppose. Do you want me to tell you my story?"
She wanted to say 'no' and maybe push him off the side, but instead she said nothing.
Isaaru seemed to take that as permission. "I lived, with my father, my mother and my brothers, in a village not too far from Bevelle. It was close enough that most of the time we were afforded the same protection as Bevelle from Sin's attacks. But it was hardly foolproof. And so Sin came, as he did to so many towns and villages, and killed four fifths of the population. I can name the survivors, and the number less than three handfuls. My mother, a..." Isaaru pressed his lips together briefly, and forged ahead. "A woman I..." It seemed he couldn't finish that sentence, and he carried on. "Her son, everyone, in fact, that I had ever really cared about, save my brothers and father, and he died from his injuries not long after."
In Yuna's mind she filled in the blanks, and closed her eyes. Any tears she might have shed were dried instantly in the wind, and for that she was glad.
"Ever since I was little, I had thought of becoming a Summoner. As a child, it was something to be aspired to, to be a hero, as I grew older, an apathy at the world that made eternal sleep appealing, and after that... death was something to be actively desired. Maroda once accused me of being a little bit in love with death, and maybe he was right, but I really was too much of a coward to go through with it by my own hand. So I became a Summoner. Part vengeance, part childhood dream, part... fulfillment of desire.
"But then you destroyed Sin. Make no mistake, Yuna, you have my eternal gratitude and that of Spira for doing so, but in so doing, my death had been taken from me, so I couldn't care about what I did anymore. What, in all truth, was the point? I think Yevon knew that, and so didn't have much qualms about using me.
"Now, my death has become a just punishment, for what I was willing to go along with. All I can hope is that it can be seen as an honorable demise."
Yuna didn't even realise what she was doing until she realised that she was staring up at him, her hands fisted in the front of his rooms, doing her best to shake him angrily, as much as she could with the strength in her small body.
"You selfish bastard!"
She felt disconnected, like it wasn't her voice saying the words, that someone else was using her throat, her body. All she could see was Isaaru's face, feel the sudden dryness in her mouth, and the renewed churning in her stomach.
"How could you say I'm anything like you? I didn't want to sacrifice myself for some glorified suicidal insanity. I didn't want to die for me. It was for Spira. It was all for Spira. For the people who had to die, at the hands of the great monster who destroyed indiscriminately. A deadly relic, it later turns out, of a war from a thousand years ago. Death begetting death, and the only way to stop it, if only for a little while, is to die. That's nothing like your 'desire for death'. It was hope. It was noble."
Her voice cracked. "It was for the children who had to grow up without their fathers. The ones who had to rely on nothing more than the kindness of the people who were around them. Who had to receive their life lessons from virtual strangers because there was no one else to say anything to them, who..."
And then she realised what she was saying, and she crumpled to the deck, her grip on Isaaru's robes dragging him down with her. Tears streaked down her face, and what the wind didn't dry was soaked into the rich cloth of his garment. "I just wanted to see my father again," she sobbed. "I just wanted to see him again, and feel his arms around me, and hear him tell me that everything was alright. I just wanted to see my father again."
She didn't even register that Isaaru had wrapped his arms around her shoulders and was rocking her gently.
She added, miserably, "If he had to die, why shouldn't I?"
"No reason, Yuna," Isaaru said, in a soft whisper. "No reason at all."
"We have to destroy the base."
Yuna stood on the bridge, facing the Al-Bhed and her Guardians with her fists clenched and a determined expression on her face. Isaaru lurked near the exit, blending in with the shadows remarkably well considering the sheen of the cloth he wore. It probably made all the difference that he didn't want to be seen.
Cid was the one to voice what they all thought. "You what?"
"We have to destroy-"
"I heard you the first time, girl." Cid glowered at her. "You know that this ship can't take on an entire army by itself."
"It took on Sin."
"It worked when we took on Sin," Rikku said, dubiously. "And was mostly loaded with ammunition."
"Ship works! We fight for Yuna!" That was Brother, who Rikku and Cid pointedly ignored.
"The airship is still the most powerful force on the planet, now the Aeons are gone."
/Now the Aeons are gone.../
For some reason, that resonated within her, but she tried to ignore it, in favour of pressing her point.
"There's no one else on Spira who can amass any sort of force right now. And now is when we must act."
"What's the rush?" Lulu asked, tilting her head. "Yevon is running on a timetable that will take years. We have time to prepare, to warn others."
"No we don't," Wakka this time, and he was peering at Isaaru with remarkable understanding. "Because he knows, and he escaped. So they're going to try and kill us. Because now we know."
Yuna closed her eyes, bowing her head. "Yevon can't be allowed any more time to build their assets." She said. "I... I cannot believe I am suggesting such a thing, against people, but we have to stop them. We have to destroy the base, the three training camps. We have to do it before it's too late."
Lulu nodded slowly, reluctantly. "She's right. We have to act, and we're the only ones that have the means. We fought Sin. We can fight Yevon's army."
And then Yuna realised the root of the resonation with her, and she realised that there was another option. But she said nothing of it, only, "We have to fight Yevon's army. We don't have a choice. It would be hypocritical to destroy Sin, and leave Yevon alone when it tried to mimic the monster."
Cid sighed, looking at each of them in turn and then glancing around his crew. Those who spoke both Al-Bhed and the common tongue were providing a running translation for their unilingual colleagues, and they all looked back at him with determined expressions on their faces.
They would fight.
"Fine," Cid grumped, though they could tell there was equal parts duty and a certain anticipation of a good fight burning behind the leader's gruff attitude. "But if we all die, don't come crawling to me. I'll only say 'I told you so'."
- End of Part Fourteen