Part Fifteen: The Act One Gun
Yuna critically regarded the reflection she beheld in the surface of a particularly shiny bridge bulkhead panel. She was still clad in a the traveling robes she'd donned for her trip to Guadosalam, although she had discarded the outer layers in the desert climate of the garrison island. Even though her robes were entirely modest she couldn't help but feel somewhat naked. She was to fight, and she stood without weapons, armor, or items to aid her. Not for the first time, she faintly regretted her decision to lay down her arms at the culmination of her pilgrimage. But then, would have being armed really made that much of a difference?

"Yuna?"

It was Wakka, standing by the entryway. He held in his hands what looked like little more than a collection of short metal pipes.

"You said you need a weapon, ya?" He stepped forward and held out the bundle. "One of the girls on Besaid wanted you to have this."

So that was what it was. Yuna could easily see now that it was a Summoner's staff in its collapsed, transportable state. The folded segments were clumsily presented to Yuna.

"I tried to assemble it, ya? But I think it's broken," Wakka told her.

Yuna smiled, before reaching into the mess to grab one particular section of metal. Then, with a flick of her wrist, the other sections snapped into place, and Yuna was holding in her hand a fully formed staff, with a head that looked rather like a sunflower.

"It's all in the wrist," Yuna said, with a grin at Wakka's startled expression.

Already she could feel the abilities woven into the staff start to flood her veins. Her movements sped up even as the world around her slowed down. She set the staff aside, closed it into its compact form once again. Such speed was always very useful in battle.

"I'll have to thank her," Yuna said.

Wakka turned away. She wasn't sure, but he might have said "I wouldn't."

She wondered what he meant by that.

"Okie dokie, people," Cid clapped his hands noisily, drawing all attention towards him. The Sphere Oscillofinder was displaying the globe of Spira, their current location enlarged in a separate hologram hovering just above the surface.

"This is where we are, this is the island where Yevon's been putting together its little party. From the sphere recording and what we can see from afar, this is what we're facing. Three towers, though the majority of their base is likely to be underground, at least from what Isaaru tells us. He also gave us a good idea of the numbers of grunts in there, and their weapons. Turns out we're only facing hundreds of heavily armed personnel and mages, who were all to be used to kill as many people as possible. Should be fun," declared Cid, glancing around the group with a determined glint in his eye. "Everyone ready?"

"Ready," was the murmured response from all present.

"Ready, but I would say this: consider what we are facing," Isaaru said, quietly. The other turned towards him, eyeing him carefully. "The Yevon base has stood there for centuries. It has been a bastion of the faith all that time. Only the purest of belief were taken there, and most have grown up within those walls of religion and absolute worship, and know nothing else. They cannot be swayed, they cannot be persuaded that the Church is wrong. Because the Church is everything to them, they would die for it, and if we do not stop them, they will kill for it."
Perhaps it was a misguided sense of chivalry that drove her to insist, perhaps it was a determination not to become the enemy they were fighting, but it was on Yuna's word that the Al-Bhed airship and her crew gave up the one of the most valuable elements in any strategy: the element of surprise.

They did not dive out of the sun, raining missiles and energy beams down upon the Yevonites. Instead, they hailed them openly, warning them of what was to come, giving them a chance to surrender. It was a mistake, perhaps, though Yuna's conscience did feel somewhat better for it when it became the Church who attacked first.

The compound was immediately recognisable, even though their only reference was taken from the poor and grainy quality of a sphere recording. It was only now, as they saw it with their own eyes, that they sort how obviously Yevon had chosen to make their presence known. Three towers, each of differing heights and carved out of a local dark, rust red stone, were arranged in a triangular formation around a concave indentation in the ground, an artificial crater lined with the same rock as the buildings were make of. But inset in such a way that it must surely only be visible from the air was a darker stone, veined with what might have been lapis lazuli for the pure blue tones it held, laid in the shape of the Eye of Yevon. For all that only the Al-Bhed possessed the technology to fly, it had to be wondered who they were trying to impress.

Almost as Yuna's voice died out, the last remnants of her amplified voice faded from the stone walls, openings appeared high in the towers. Out of them streamed fiends, tamed by the magics of the Yevonite priests somehow. Perhaps there were Guado amongst them. Flying fiends, they were, for any based on the ground would have been useless. There were Garudas and Evil Eyes, Bombs, Bite Bugs and elemental creatures of various alignments. Alycones dove through the dry, hot air, trying to peck at the weaponry of the Al-Bhed that was forced to turn towards short-range fighting, while others lunged for the Al-Bhed, shooting out of open portholes in the sides of the ship. No one was foolish enough to stand in the open, on deck.

On the ground, doors were opening, and soldiers were hurrying out in droves. If their eyesight had been up to the task, the crew of the airship would have noticed that none looked worried or caught off-guard. Not a piece of armor was out of place, nor did anyone look uncomfortable entering a battle. In spite of Isaaru's assertion that the force at this base hadn't been deployed in decades, they were quite clearly all combat ready.

But Cid had been prepared. He hadn't faced a hostile Yevon force for many years without having exactly the mindset needed in the event of entering battle with the church that dominated Spira. Before they had even approached, Cid had ensured that they had one full complement of missiles in the tubes and ready to be launched. Perhaps the only difference between the plan and the execution was that he hadn't expected to launch them so soon.

Maybe he was getting soft, he would later wonder. He had been hoping that Yuna's strategy would work, and they wouldn't have to get into a firefight. But instead, as fiends swarmed the airship, overwhelming the meagre close-quarters defenses they had, he gave the order to fire.

The missiles, aimed hastily and fired nearly wildly, did not all hit their intended target. Two missiles hit a cluster of fiends, the expulsion of pyreflies nearly masked by the explosion itself. Others struck the largest and smallest of the towers, causing mostly cosmetic damage on the latter, and demolishing part of the exterior of the former. But it was the middle-sized tower that sustained the worst of the damage. The majority of the missiles, the Al-Bhed airship having been closer to that tower, struck the stone, sending rockdust and shrapnel flying in nearly every direction. Lulu, Isaaru and the three Al-Bhed mages that had been on board, quickly followed up this attack with powerful water spells, washing away the mortar holding the stone blocks together, casting what flare and gravity spells they could, rocking the foundations and then dragging the loose stones to the ground. As the gunners aboard realised what was going on, they concentrated their firepower on that tower, it became obvious what the result was. Audibly cracking under the strain of holding itself upright under gravity spells and a weakened shell, the tower started to crumble, most of the top half falling off, landing in the artificial crater, the only area clear of fighters on the ground, while other floors compressed, collapsing under their own weight.

What was left of the tower was only an abbreviated remnant of its former self. It was perhaps that which caused the Yevonites to realise what a genuine threat this machina vessel represented.

Now, from the other towers, the White Mages had appeared, moving to ring the area in a barrier of white-clad bodies. Their hands were held out to the sides, and their voices were raised in a steady droning chants. Protective shields were cast, and recast when they failed, others in ranks further forward cast restorative magic, and revived those who had fallen to the concussive blasts of the Al-Bhed weaponry, and those closest to where the ship was cast magic to dispel anything shields that those aboard had placed about themselves.

And then the Black Mages appears, in twos and threes, appearing as speckles dressed in blacks, blues and purples, that dotted the mass on the ground. Each of them was holding some sort of magical aid, a staff, usually, that amplified their power, and they began throwing spells. Most of them only seemed to know elemental magic, but gradually more skilled mages were emerging from the damaged buildings and suddenly started casting flare spells, gravity spells, and occasionally a white mage gathered their strength enough to cast a holy spell that ripped through the ship with white light, causing everyone to be forced to stop what they were doing to bear the pain. Aboard the airship, the mages they did have were exhausting themselves, Yuna flagging under the healing she was conducting near constantly, and the ship was running out of ammunition.

The simple fact of the matter seemed to be that they were outnumbered.

The only good thing about the situation was perhaps that a lot of them were bad shots, combined with Brother's maniacal piloting skills, which meant a fair amount of the fire they were taking hit the fiends, and causing them to burst into pyreflies. But they were still coming.

So naturally, just when it seemed that the situation couldn't get any worse, it did.
It was that central, artificial crater from which the new threat came. It seemed so innocent on the surface. It seemed nothing more than a harmless bit of decoration, the ostentatious rubbish that Yevon liked to come up with. But it seemed to be shaking.

Little puffs of rock dust wafted upwards in short, sharp movements. The rocks shifted in time with the rhythmic pounding that seemed be be happening underneath the surface. The air around the crater became filled with a haze of dirt and shrapnel.

It happened all at once. With a final burst of movement, the crater, which now revealed itself to be made up of small, tightly compacted blocks of stone, disintegrated, falling inwards as a hole was created in the very centre. But some of the blocks rose upwards, on the back of the creature which had made its exit into the outside world through that solid wall of rock and stone.

As they tumbled away, they revealed a creature with mottled ruby red and azure hide stretched thinly over a long and sinuous body. Faint, almost transparent wings supported the body, bringing it higher into the air, while claws gleamed wetly, and the flesh over the snout drew back to allow the creature to howl long and loudly.

It was not a fiend, nor a machina creation. It was something else entirely.
"Is that..." Wakka sounded like he was fighting to speak through his shock. "Is that Evrae?"

At the scanner console, Rikku raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. "The egg!"

Cid turned to look gravely at his niece. "This is why you wanted us to attack now instead of later, isn't it?"

Yuna bowed her head. "Yes," she said, quietly.

Cid looked at her a moment longer. "You don't ever keep stuff like that from me again." And then he turned back to barking orders at the crew.

Yuna turned to glance back at Isaaru, who returned her gaze with a faint hint of despair.
They had been sitting atop the airship, on deck, while Yuna recovered from her crying jag, when Isaaru had told her.

"Is this where you battled Evrae?" Isaaru had asked. "Was it a hard battle?"

"I wasn't here," Yuna said, eyeing a score line in the metal where she was told that Evrae's claws had gouged the airship. "I was a little busy getting married, but I'm told it was a very difficult fight."

"Could you defeat it again, if you had to." There was an urgent note in Isaaru's voice, and it made her turn and look at him questioningly.

"What's going on?" she asked, warily.

"There is," Isaaru began, after a long pause. "An egg in the possession of the Yevonite army. It is the single offspring of the Guardian Wyrm of Bevelle. It is Evrae's egg.

"No one is entirely sure how it works. Perhaps there is magic involved, or some strange force of nature. All that is certain is that Evrae will lay one egg in its lifetime, and that egg will not hatch while the creature lives still. Then, a few weeks after its death, the egg shatters, and, to all intents and purposes, Evrae emerges anew. The hatchling is, for all intents and purposes, Evrae. Without training it responds to commands that its predecessor did. It is almost as if the creature as been resurrected.

"That was the task that Yevon removed me from Bevelle to accomplish. I was to oversee the hatching of the creature, to make sure that its memories were intact, and to impress upon it its place within the army that Yevon had created."

"You're honestly telling me that there was no one else that Yevon could find to do the same task?"

Isaaru shrugged minutely. "Perhaps. But the devastation Sin wrought upon Bevelle was very extensive, and they were on a schedule."

Yuna stiffened before she even realised she was doing so. "A schedule. You mean you know when the egg will hatch?"

Isaaru nodded slowly. "If, that is, Evrae's offspring holds to the same timetable that the creature has in the seven hundred years of protecting Bevelle."

Yuna bit her lip. "It's probably safe to say that such a thing is very likely indeed. So, when?"

"Soon. Very soon."
Evrae wheeled about in the sky for a moment, enjoying its moment of freedom after having escaped from the confinement of its underground cell. But then it spied it, the metal bird, the flying machine that its masters had taught it to hate, to fear, to kill. Claws outstretched, it dove for the airship, and it was perhaps only Brother's insane flying skills that saved the airship from losing its entire engine housing.

Turning through the air, the vessel was forced to flee from the pursuing creature, which unfortunately was far more agile than the machina could ever be. Claw marks gouged the hull, tail-impacts caused whole sections of plating to cave in, or windows to shatter, causing the air pressure to suddenly drop inside the hull. Inside, crew were forced to flee deeper into the ship, to the inner sections where the atmospheric pressure was still breathable. Unlike the top deck, there weren't fields in place to allow people to breath and live in the rarified atmosphere that could be found high in the sky.

The slight advantage that the airship had in the sky, firing down from above, or with its superior technology was lost as the bulky ship failed to escape from the creature.

Yes, the situation had definitely gotten worse.
Inside the airship, Isaaru swung around, staring around the bridge in confusion. "Where's Yuna?"
Magic poured forth from Yuna's fingertips, the backwash of the firaga spell and the raw heat she was producing by melting the lift doorway. As a side effect, she was also rendering the lift mechanism itself completely non-functional, but that was of no consequence; she was perfectly able to climb the utility ladder that lay along the lift shaft.

The metal cooling behind her, she carried on moving.
Isaaru hurried through the ship, leaving behind a confused group on the bridge who, nevertheless, had no time to spare by following him to find out what he was doing. He had seen a monitor feed on the bridge, of Yuna entering the lift shaft, and melting the door mechanism. He had a horrible, sinking feeling that he knew what it was she was doing.

He snagged a technician as he ran past, who was using a cutting tool to try and excise a section of bulkhead that had caved in.

"You," he ordered brusquely, "With me."

"But-" The technician resisted, pulling back. "Damage control, I-"

Isaaru stopped, glaring at the worker. "Do you want to explain to Cid why you left his niece up on deck to get killed?"

The technician gulped audibly, gathered his tools, and hurried after Isaaru.
Yuna perhaps wasn't sure what possessed her to come up onto the deck, Marta's gift of a staff in her hands, which was helping her far more than the girl had probably intended, with the decision to carry out her plan in her mind. Perhaps more disturbing to her was the knowledge of where the idea had come from.

She stopped in the middle of the deck, ignoring the sounds of people trying to get through the door she had sealed shut with a powerful fire spell, and took a deep breath. She ignored the spells and bullets that flung towards her, trusting her magic to keep it at bay long enough to do what was needed.

Then she raised her staff before her, and started calling pyreflies to her.

She wasn't sure it would work. For all she knew, death was a requirement in order to be successful, after all, that was the state in which she had found Yu Yevon, Seymour and Yunalesca.

She was a Summoner, and at the basis of the Summoning Arts, as Lady Nadim had taught her, were those basic blocks of Spira's existence: pyreflies. They existed everywhere, in everything, and Summoners were able to control them, to a degree. They could call the pyreflies together, to call an Aeon, really a cluster of pyreflies imbued with the power of the Fayth, they could dispel them, in Sendings.

But Yuna knew now, from experience, that pyreflies could be used by a Summoner to forge an armor stronger than any metal or woven cloth in Spira.

Which was what she was trying to do.

There was only one doubt in her mind, a doubt she had to forcibly put aside so as to even begin to try to complete her self-assigned task.

Those Summoners she had seen create armors had all been dead and Unsent. Each of them had changed the pyreflies of their own body to merge with the alterations they desired, and so become stronger, more powerful. Yuna was still counted among the living, and so her form was still immutable, by the laws of nature.

Pyreflies were starting to swirl about her, the air becoming thick with them, as more and more fiends broke apart under attack. She had to do something, and so she did the only thing she knew how: she fixed her mind upon the goal, and began to dance.

How familiar this was, but it was different now. When she moved, there was a hollow feeling. As if she was dancing steps meant to be performed in concert with another, but instead she was there on her own, awkwardly waiting for her partner to act and finding nothing happening. The power of the Fayth was no longer with her, and so Yuna had to put out of her mind that crutch she had used. Other Summoners had done what she had done. She should do the same. Her mind was strong enough to be a vessel for the mighty Aeons. Great creatures that could call destruction upon the strongest of enemies. She was the daughter of the High Summoner, a High Summoner herself. If her will was not strong enough, then no one's was strong enough.

But the power was not there.

She let out a breath, that turned into a cry midway. It wasn't working. She could feel the pyreflies struggling to fit into the designs she ordered them, but it wasn't working. And in an instant she knew why.

She was trying to connect the armor to the ship, but it was not a living thing, and so the pyreflies ignored it. They would rather bind to her, but she was living and her body refused the changes. The mass of pyreflies trembled as one, a few breaking off and streaking to the heavens, perhaps to go seek their rest on the Farplane, tired of her.

Yuna could feel the control of it all breaking up. There was no focus. There were no dreams of thousand year old Fayth to shape the pyreflies into form and function, and Yuna suddenly realised her great mistake. She was a Summoner. She could guide the pyreflies, but she could not bind them to her. She was a conduit, not the source or the destination.

Her arms trembled from fatigue, and she was ready to drop the staff and give up.

And then Yuna saw her, a little girl with blue hair, and flowers in her hands, and even as she danced, Yuna wept, mourning with the realisation of what this was about to cost her.

The girl moved through the mass of pyreflies, and as the passed, the pyreflies cried out and flocked to her, or rather, to the dream, the tiny ill-formed dreams, that they could feel.

Yuna wanted to stop. But she was only a conduit, and once she had begun a Summoning (and that was what it was, truly, now), she couldn't stop without being knocked unconscious, or killed.

The girl danced, a clumsy unskilled imitation of Yuna's movements, though if anyone else had been able to see her, they would have remarked at her natural talent. As she moved and twirled, and flowers flung themselves from her grip, she began to change. It started with a lengthening of her arms and a narrowing of her body. Pyreflies clung to her, reshaping her as they could not Yuna.

Veins that had lightly threaded her temples elongated, merging with hair that became glued to her body, a second skin that spread over her, becoming striations that smoothly ran over the lines of her body that was smoothly becoming greater, more luminous, more awe-inducing.

She no longer looked quite like the little girl she had, more of a creature of light and shadow than anything else. But there was still a youthfulness to her countenance, an innocence that shone from her core. A soundless cry ran through the air, electrifying the very wind itself.

A great bird hung in the air in the girl's stead, and Yuna knew from the screams and yelling that it was now visible to everyone else in the field of battle.

Yuna stopped dancing, clutching the staff to her chest.

"Stop them, my daughter," she whispered, before collapsing to the floor, unmoving.
A newly borne bird, easily as large as the creature Evrae, hovered in the air above the Al-Bhed airship. Each wing was as wide as the length of the body, the size becoming apparent as it unfurled its wings from where it had wrapped them tightly around its body. It threw them back, screaming soundlessly, as lightning crackled along its neck, wings, to gather at the beaktip on its oval, sightless head. It possessed no feathers, no claws, eyes, mouth or even an apparent skeleton. It was as if someone had seen a bird in silhouette, and tried to recreate it out of yellow-green clay.

On the observation deck, no one spoke, staring in a mixture of awe and horror at what they were witnessing.

On the bridge, Rikku couldn't, on the other hand, keep her silence. "Is... is that an Aeon?"

"E ruba cu," said Brother. I hope so.

Because if it wasn't an Aeon, and it wasn't on their side, they were all in very serious trouble.
By the lift, Isaaru caught sight of Yuna falling to the deck's surface on the monitor and knew, as no one else aboard could, what had just happened.

He grit his teeth, and tried to be patient while the tech crew carefully carried on cutting through the metal that Yuna had welded shut.
With the manifestation of the unusual Aeon, Evrae was perhaps the only one on the field of battle to respond without puzzlement, without amazement. It was not a thinking creature, it was trained and bred to fight. And so fight it did.

Evrae did not pause to regard the bird, but instead dove downwards, out of the sun, straight for the creature that held its position above the Al-Bhed airship. Surprised by the attack, the Aeon was caught up in the claws of the Wyrm, and the two went tumbling through the air. Evrae's razor sharp tail barely missed scoring across the upper deck, saving the unconscious Yuna from being bisected.

The two twisted through the air, and then there was a brief, blinding flash of light, accompanied by a crack of energy, and Evrae shrieked, releasing the Aeon, which stabilised its flight with a deft flick of the wings. There was a faint scorching on Evrae's hide, and it moved one wing slightly stiffly.

The Aeon, having regained its equilibrium, and no longer about to be taken by surprise, dove towards Evrae, one wing, etched in lightning energy and magic, scything towards Evrae's flank. The creature bellowed in defiance, swooping out of the way, and returning the impact with a raking of claws along what, on a true bird, would have been its tail feathers.

The two traded blows, clawings, and magic was flung through the air with only the force that two unearthly creatures could summon.

Evrae, it seemed was the first to tire of the back-and-forth impacts. It flew away, abandoning the flight in a manner that seemed to confuse the Aeon, which hung back, wary of being lead into a trap.

Evrae climbed through the sky, higher and higher, and eventually it was possible to lose track of it. The Aeon surfed higher upon an air currently, energy crackling over its skin.

It was the crack of what sounded like thunder that heralded Evrae's return, a loud thundering boom that shook the sky. It was what people would later realise was the Wyrm pouring all of its speed into a single attack, crashing through the sound barrier on a straight course for the strange Aeon.

At the speed Evrae was going, if the Aeon had moved, the attack would have missed, and Evrae would have plummeted into the sea off the coast of the island, but the Aeon quite simply did not see the attack coming.

It was hard to tell where one creature ended, and the other began. The sight in the skies above was little more than peridot and ruby intertwined, or there was an occasional flash of wing as one or the other tried to stabilise their wild ground-ward tumble.

Attacks suddenly dropped off as the soldiers and mages on the ground realised that the gestalt mass was plummeting down towards them, and showed no signs of stopping. The tiny figures on the ground scattered, trying to reach safety in time. For all but a few of them, this sudden spiriting into flight was conducted in vain.

The two great creatures fell (and it was impossible to tell which hit the towering stonework first), and slammed, with a great 'crack' like thunder, into the tallest of the three church towers. That might have been enough to take down the upper stories, but one or the other panicked, their claws scrabbling to find enough purchase to launch into the air again. Wings beat against walls, widening hairline fractures in the masonry.

It seemed like only seconds, but it must have taken longer, but the tower started to collapse in on itself, taking the two winged beasts with it.

Evrae was fairly quick to recover. As its claws hit the ground, it dug them into the tightly compacted earth and scrabbled out of the way, hauling itself out of the damaged building, and avoiding being caught by the stone that still fell. When it was clear, it shook itself off, and launched into the air with a defiant shriek, even it one apparently delicate wing seemed somewhat battered, and its tail was little more than a ragged ichor-soaked mess.

The Aeon seemed the worse of of the two. It hovered, but it seemed uncertain in holding its position, dipping and rising almost with the breeze, its break drooping and its wing beats slow and tremulous. There was no way it could have landed. It had no claws. It would have never been able to take off again.

But in spite of that, the bird seemed to be gathering a strength it had not possessed before. The brilliant blue lightning that crackled over its skin seemed even more excited than before, if that was possible.

And then it started to turn.

The sky grew dark.

The Aeon seemed to be growing larger, but later, observers would recall it only as an illusion, as even as the surroundings grew darker, the Aeon grew brighter, as if it were drawing all of the light nearby into itself. Its wings wrapped around its body, turning it into a slender aerodynamic shape as it propelling itself upwards, rising nearly a hundred meters above Evrae.

It flung back its wings when it reached the apex of its climb, in a manner so similar to that when it was Summoned, but this time, instead of moving to attack, it hovered there in mid-air, the lightning crackling over its body changing. The energy started to align along the striations that rippled over its skin, pooling at the wing tips, where they quickly became too bright to look at.

Below, Evrae hovered, too confused about this enemy's new tactics to know what to do. This was never something that its teachers had trained it to handle.

Thunder magic leapt from the wingtips to the blunted tip of the beak, the lines of energy forming an inverted V-shape. Energy poured forth from the Aeon, encasing the creature in a solid globe of light. By the time the wyrm realised the danger, it was too late to move away, and all on the ground and in the sky could hear the agonised shrieks of the creature as it lashed around inside a shifting mass of thunder, unable to move, fly, or even to breathe.

Then, impossibly, the energy grew brighter, and the sphere started to contract.

Evrae's screams became louder, and its thrashing could be dimly seen through the distorting influence of the lightning energy. Smaller and smaller the sphere became, until it reached some critical point, and a shockwave ripped through the sky from the very centre of the sphere of energy, where Evrae should have been.

If anyone had been able to hear, they would have heard the gasps and cries of pain as several who had been looking in the direction of the light were flash-blinded, and stumbled to the floor, covering their eyes.

Then the light was gone, and the sky was once again blue, seeming so unnatural after the pervasive darkness that had accompanied the Aeon's devastating attack. Silence reigned for a moment, and slowly eyes adapted, and were raised to see what had become of the battle.

Evrae tumbled from the sky, wings twisted and unable to support the wyrm's weight. It fluttered downward like an iridescent ribbon, and a scant few meters above the sea, it broke apart, pyreflies streaming outwards and upwards, singing victoriously at their freedom. What was left passed beneath the waves, hardly causing a single ripple.

The Aeon, if that was indeed what it was, hung in midair for a long moment, its wingtips drooping. The fact that the soldiers didn't take the opportunity to attack was an indication that they were all too stunned by Evrae's defeat to press their advantage.

Then the Aeon flung its wings back, lightning crackling downward from the sky, the element seeming to restore the creature. And it turned.
"Amazing."

It wasn't clear who said it, but Cid wasn't about to turn his head from the aerial battle playing out before them to seek out the speaker. Didn't mean he couldn't force other people's minds back onto business.

"Stop gawking! What's happening with the army, with the fiends."

There was the sense that Cid's words broke the spell that held the crew enthralled, and the sounds of people suddenly starting to move and breathe again filled the bridge.

"The aftershock from that..."

"Desperation attack?"

"... Right. It seems to have wiped out the remaining flying fiends, and even took a chunk out of the ground troops."

"Every Aeon has such an attack," It was Rikku speaking, one of the only Al-Bhed to have seen an Aeon repeatedly and at close range. "It leaves them vulnerable for a minute or so, but I think that Yevon missed the window."

"It's... dying." It was Brother who spoke, falteringly, in the common tongue, and his hushed words silenced even his gruff father as the attention of those present was once again drawn outside of the airship.
Indeed that seemed to be the case. Even though the thunder magic had restored a little of the Aeon's spirit, it seemed that it simply wasn't enough. There was what looked like tiny tears in the hide of the Aeon, whisps of ethereal light wafting away on the breeze, followed by the occasional pyrefly as it broke away from the Aeon to seek its end on the Farplane. Its vibrant colour had faded, leaving it a sickly grey-green in shade, and it drifted oh-so-slowly towards the final tower with an air of resigned determination, though how they could discern such things was a peculiarity that none gave much thought to at that moment.

It floated lower, barely moving its wings to keep it from plummeting to the ground, and moved closer to the tower. Finally, the belly of the Aeon came into contact with the outer stone walls, and it stopped. Its wingbeats halted completely, but before it could fall, the Aeon wrapped its wings around the tower, nearly, though not quite encompassing the structure. That said much for the wingspan of the creature. Hugging the tower, the Aeon didn't move for a very long moment, at least, not in a manner apparent to any observer.

It was the sound of cracking masonry that gave the first sign of what it was the Aeon was doing, and the sound seemed to stir the troops out of the stunned stupor many of them had succumbed to. They could not be blamed. Surely they had never thought to see an Aeon turn against them.

The sound was like thunder, rolling far away, though the grinding noise that followed as chunks of carved stone started to fall away dispelled any ideas of bad weather.

The soldiers started to fire, flashes of light showing where the bullets impacted on the Aeon and where the torn 'flesh' returned to the state of pyrefly fragments, drifting away on the breeze. But it was too little, too late.

There was a soft sound, a sigh mixed with a moan, and the grip of the Aeon about the central tower started to slacken. As the only thing that had been holding the crumbling stones in position fell away, so did the stonework, and, with a crack that rivaled the thunder that the Aeon had been casting right, left and centre, the building started to collapse, burying the Aeon under the falling bricks, as well as a good portion of the soldiers too slow to get out of the way in time.

Dust and debris blew out in every direction as the building crumbled, obscuring sight for a long moment.

And then, even as the dust settled, buried in the rubble the shape of the Aeon became translucent, fading gently, and pyreflies streamed away to dissolve the body. The only thing that marked the passing of the Aeon was the tumbling of a few more rocks as the creature they had pinned simply vanished into the aether, leaving behind a scene of utter devastation.
The fighting had stopped. With the destruction of their buildings, and the deaths of most of their comrades, the soldiers had seemed to lose heart in the battle, leaving the airship unmolested as it hung precariously in the air, hydraulic fluids and oil lines leaking ponderously from gouges in the hull.

Inside, Isaaru waited impatiently as the Al-Bhed finished burning through the metal of the reinforced hatchway. He dove through the narrow gap the moment the metal plating fell away, clanging loudly against the deck plates. Behind him he could hear shouting in Al-Bhed, calls for medics, and hurried questions of what was going on. He recognised one of the voices as Yuna's young cousin, but he ignored the shouting of his name as he scrambled up the emergency ladder that lead all the way up the lift shaft to the hatch that gave the access to the deck. Fortunately, the manual lever was working here, and it slid open obediently under his touch.

Yuna lay in the middle of the deck, her hair spread out in a fan-like pattern about her head. Underneath her, originating from beneath her skirt if the stain on her dress was any indication, a pool of dark blood slowly spread outwards, dribbling along the deck in different directions as the ship tilted to keep moving.

"Oh no," Isaaru said, realising what had happened. He knew. He knew like no one else could, knew what had happened, and what the cost had been. "Yuna, no..."

He heard a scrabbling behind him as two sets of footsteps finally followed him.

Rikku was soon onto the deck after the pair, two Al-Bhed medics, who looked like they could use a healer's services themselves, following along with a medical kit and a stretcher. "How is she?" she asked Isaaru anxiously, wringing her hands.

Isaaru got up from his kneeling position as the medics tried to gently manhandle the High Summoner onto the makeshift stretcher. "Not good," he said quietly, sounding more shaken than he looked. "I think," he added quietly, with a catch in his voice, "I think she's lost her baby."

And then he followed the medics belowdecks to see to Yuna's injuries.
Rikku couldn't move, frozen in place as she was by the news of her cousin's probable miscarriage. "Yuna was pregnant?" She asked the wind, for lack of anyone else to speak to. She stared in disgusted fascination at the pool of blood that was threatening to run off the edge of the deck.

The enormity of the situation suddenly collapsed down upon her shoulders, and Rikku found herself falling to her knees on the deck, hand pressed over her mouth.

A hand fell upon her shoulder, and she looked up to see Lulu.

"You should have told me," she said, quietly. "There was so much more going on that I knew, than any of us knew."

Lulu hesitated, then nodded slowly.

Rikku took a deep breath, and got to her feet, raising her chin slightly to give the black mage a steady gaze. "You didn't tell me," she said, "You should have. You guys got my pops and the people on this ship involved in something that we didn't know everything about. I'll do anything for Yuna, you know that. But don't ever even think about putting the people on this ship in danger without telling them /everything/ again. Because, Lulu, so help me, I will make sure that no Al-Bhed gives you the time of day ever again."

Rikku started to march off the deck, but Lulu's sudden "Rikku!" called her back.

The black mage was glaring at her, and the woman's crimson gaze was tinged with an anger that Rikku hadn't expected. Shame, she had expected, perhaps, or even amusement at Rikku's words. Anger, though, had not been what she thought would happen. Lulu so rarely got angry.

"What would you have done if you had known? Told Yuna to keep out of it? Or would it have made no difference at all?" Lulu tilted her head, walking slowly over to the Al-Bhed girl. "Perhaps you should be honest with yourself. You're angry because no one told /you/. You feel left out. Everyone on this ship would still have fought even if they knew that Yuna was carrying a baby. They would have fought if they'd been under the impression that Yuna was really a Ronso with a very good shave. Don't you dare use your wounded pride as some sort of reason why Wakka and I should feel ashamed for doing our duty as friends and defending Yuna's privacy."

Rikku lowered her eyes, staring at the deck.

"It's Seymour's child, did you know that?"

Rikku blanched.

"So now you know everything," Lulu said quietly, folding her arms. "Now go and be the Guardian, friend and family to Yuna that you should be, and don't you even think of breathing a word of your childish dissatisfaction with being 'out of the loop' to her."

Rikku's voice was soft, barely audible. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Lulu grunted. "Just go."

Rikku practically ran from the deck.

Lulu turned her head to stare at the blood, before she raised a hand and used the last of her magical energy to conjure a water spell that expunged the blood from the deck's surface. Satisfied that it was gone, she turned and followed Rikku belowdecks.

Yuna needed her.

- End of Part Fifteen

Idle note: I hate, loathe and DESPISE the fact that deletes all the dividers, thus the reason the formatting is mucky. I would suggest that anyone wanting to see the story as I want it to be seen has a look at my website.