"Ahhhh, I'm so hungry, I could eat a cactuar, ya?"

"Oh, I have something you could eat Wakka."

"Hey, my jaw still hurts from last night Lu!" He groaned and clutched his stomach "That was a big steak, yah? Real chewy, too." Lulu glared "Uhh, not that you're cooking is bad or anything, it's just… I can't quite manage it more than once every couple of decades. What do you make them out of, anyway?"

"I meant my fist. And you've never wondered why, even with Sin and Vegnagun gone, there are people going missing all the time?" Wakka looked surprised, pondered for a moment, looked horrified, and then said

"I love you sweetums."

"I love you too baby." She curled up in his arms and he held her tightly yet tenderly.

"Shinra. SHINRA! Darn it, where is that little punk?" Paine kicked the machine, cursing the absence of the teenager. And his cute lisp. She thought once again that, no matter how cute he is and how much of a bad boy he's turning into, she is about ten years too old for him. "SHINRA GET YOUR BUTT UP HERE BEFORE I KICK IT RIGHT OFF THE SHIP!" He loped lazily up the corridor,

"Yeah, yeah, quit your yelling. I'm here. What do you need now?"

"The trinium core coolant is broken."

"What do you want ME to do about it?"

"Fix it, preferably before we crash into the ground."

"Hold on. Do you know how hard it is to even GET trinium?"

"It doesn't matter! The core isn't broken, the coolant pipe is!"

"Don't get technical with me, woman! If you know so much about it, why not fix it yourself?"

"Because…" Paine hated him more with every passing moment "Because you're better at this than I am." Shinra smiled, although that wasn't visible behind his mask.

"I'll get right to it." He walked away from Paine who turned herself and headed back up to the bridge. She was halfway there when the intercom was turned on,

"Ebilibudy not fishing the core to the bridshe pleashe!" Darn Hypello. How DID Barkeep become captain, anyway? She couldn't figure it out, but she was willing to bet that moron Brother had something to do with it. After all, he'd married his own cousin… she rolled her eyes at this whole unpleasant incident and carried on up the corridor. Upon reaching the bridge, she was greeting with a fairly typical scene of pandemonium and discord. Yuna and Brother were smooching in a corner, Captain Barkeep was lazily staring out of the window, Rikku was panicking at the sight of a smoking monitor and Buddy was the only one retaining any sense of sanity or calmness. Probably helped by being asleep. Stupid narcoleptics.

"Hey Cap. What's up?"

"Hello Paine, shank you for coming sho quickly."

"No problem. Shinra's fixing the coolant pipe."

"I shee. Well, we should shtart moving at any rate." He cast a water spell on Buddy, who rather entertainingly almost drowned before waking up.

"Gah! What, what is it? You could have just shaken me or something, you know."

"Yesh, but that's lessh fun, you shee?" Wakka and Lulu emerged onto the bridge as well. "Ok, ebilibudy ish here! We have a noo misshion, yesh? We have to find shome shtrangersh in Shpira, and help shem wish share queshts!"

"Oh Yevon, this again? In the last month we've saved Spira three times, helped other people save Spira six times, solve about a million pointless mysteries and gathered so many items that we bought the entirety of Kilika with the gil we've earned and build a giant warehouse there! When can we stop?" Buddy, as you may have gathered, wasn't altogether happy.

"We can shtop when I shay sho. But I am the captain, sho you will follow my ordersh pleashe. Now we need to go to Macalania!"