Camp was quiet, and it was in the middle of the night in Zanarkand. The pyreflies were swarming and the monkeys were chattering. Damned monkeys. They kept reminding Gippal of what had happened earlier that afternoon.

No matter what he did or what he tried to think about, Gippal's mind and eye always came back to the sphere. It was sitting right there in the box, only a few yards away... he wanted to find out what exactly had happened to him. Nooj and Baralai were asleep... they wouldn't have to know. He could just do it discreetly.

They would tell him it was dangerous... but he had been there. He knew that there was no possibility of him getting hurt. It was just Rikku... he could handle it. And maybe now that he knew what was going on, sort of, he could figure out a way to ask questions.

And so, as quietly as he possibly could, he crawled over to the box and opened the lid with a slight creak. The dress sphere glowed yellow in the dark, and he swallowed, carefully reaching his hands out toward it.

It seemed to pull to him, like someone was calling him.

Ghiki...

Gippal jumped back. That was Rikku's voice. He could hear it.

He looked over toward Nooj and Baralai. Still asleep, as peacefully as either of them ever were.

His attention was focused back on the sphere. Ghiki...

"That's not my name," he whispered, barely audibly. However, his palms had come into contact with the sphere, and the light and haze overtook him again, and he was gone.

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"Ghiki!"

Gippal's vision cleared. "Rikku!"

"Oh, how cute, you know my name!" She squeaked and scratched him under the chin. Gippal had to admit it felt good. "I'm sad that I didn't use you before," she continued, still scratching under his chin, "you might've made the whole thing a little more cheerful!"

Gippal rolled his eyes. "I was there," he tried to say.

Rikku pretended like she was listening. "But, it's all over now. Things are quiet, and I can take the time to get to know you and how you work."

"Rikku," Gippal said. That seemed to be the one word she understood of his.

"You're so cute," she said, and then proceeded to... cuddle him.

Gippal wanted to vomit... but... it felt strangely nice. She was warm, and her skin felt so soft on his fur.

...fur?

Since when did Gippal have fur?!

He ran his hands over his arms, behind his neck, around the back of his head. Fur. Everywhere. Panicked, Gippal looked down at his hands now, noticing for the first time that they weren't really hands at all.

They were paws.

And what was this strange feeling from his back? Muscles tensing and relaxing... what was it? He turned his head and looked.

He had a tail. A nice, very pale brown tail.

It was flicking back and forth at him. He could feel it; he watched it, incredulous, for several moments.

"Aww, you're so cute, even if you're dumb," Rikku said, patting Gippal on the head.

Gippal turned and glared. He was not dumb, damnit!

"You're supposed to be a sacred animal, you know," Rikku informed him, petting him behind his ears. It felt so good; Gippal just wanted to purr. "So, if you're so sacred, what can you do?"

"I have fast hands," Gippal answered, "I can take apart machinery and-- you can't understand me at all, can you?"

Gippal's words sounded perfectly fine to his own ears, but considering that he really did seem to be a monkey and Rikku was giving him that same blank stare as she always did, he was willing to bet money that Rikku didn't understand a word he was saying.

"Well, go on," Rikku said, putting him down on the floor. "Show me what you can do."

Gippal looked over at a piece of machinery in the corner. He had no idea what it was, but it would be useful to prove his point. Maybe when she saw his skill with the machines, she would finally get it. So he walked -- more like kind of hopped and skipped, but it felt completely normal to him -- over to the machine and put his hands inside of it, beginning to take it apart quickly. Inside he found a grenade and some scrap metal holding it together, and he promptly extracted these and brought them back over to Rikku.

She squealed with delight, of course. "Oh, you're a little thief too! How perfect!" She grinned and took the grenade from him, and petted him on the shoulder blades. It made Gippal's spine tingle.

"Gullwings!" came a loud, frantic voice over the speaker system that rocked Gippal's ears. The speaker had to be none other than Brother. "To the bridge! We have spotted something strange!"

"Come on Ghiki," Rikku said, hoisting Gippal up into her arms. Gippal was slightly amazed at how well this little girl could handle him all of a sudden. She put him up on her shoulder, and he latched on to her head for balance.

They rode the elevator up to the bridge, and Gippal had to admit that he was impressed by the Celsius.

"It's coming from Macalania," he heard another male voice say, "there's a strong influx of fiends coming from the forest and into the lake area. They're worried about them getting to Bevelle."

"Well, the Gullwings are on it!" Yuna made a pose on the deck, and Rikku clapped.

That was when there was a loud crash from outside, followed by the airship rocking back and forth in mid-air. "What in the world?" asked several people, none of whom Gippal could identify.

"There is a fiend on the deck!" Brother announced looking up through the front window of the airship. "It's going toward the engines!"

Yuna, Rikku, and Paine all looked at each other. "We're on it," they said at the same time and, taking Gippal with them, they rushed back to the elevator and up to the deck.

Gippal felt a rush of tension, which abated slightly as he was carried out into the cold rushing air. "Rikku, can you fight like that?" Paine asked, glaring at Gippal.

"I think so," Rikku replied, rushing forward.

Gippal meant to smirk at Paine, but he was distracted. The moment he looked up, he locked eyes with something horrible.

And he wasn't even sure it was eyes he was seeing. It was dark and deadly, a black haze that showed no form, thick and almost signaling coming death. This wasn't like being shot by Nooj, or getting into that accident that had lost him his eye. Gippal was frightened and terrified, feeling the very fiber of his being taken control of by this... creature, if it could even be called that.

It felt like Shuyin, but it wasn't. It wasn't just the despair this time... this was darker and more ominous. Like the bringer of death... and Gippal was going to die. He felt it.

He clawed frantically at Rikku's neck and hair, trying to get away from it in any way possible.

Gippal!

What was that? Was that his name? He had to get away... death was coming.

Gippal! Come back!

Back... he could go back... he had to get far away from this thing. He could feel it inside of him, even though he closed his eyes and looked away it still watched him...

"Rikku! We need cure spells!"

"I'm on it!"

Thank goodness... she was changing... Gippal could go back. The death was there, it permeated his blood, but he was being set free...

------

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"Gippal!"

Gippal's eyes flew open, and he gasped, trying to get away from the feeling of death. "It... death... was there... I can't..."

"I told you it was dangerous," Baralai said admonishingly, holding Gippal down as he struggled. "Calm down, you're safe."

"Here," Nooj said, and then Gippal felt the older man's arms under his shoulders, elevating his head. Then, there was something soft and comfortable under his neck -- presumably a pillow. A cloth wiped Gippal's forehead, and it was only then that he realized he had been breaking out in a cold sweat. "Relax, Gippal," Nooj said so flatly that it was oddly soothing. "Deep breaths, then you can tell us what the hell you thought you were doing."

It took Gippal a few minutes to relax, some of it spent closing his eye and breathing deeply, leaning back into Baralai's arms. One thing was for certain; Baralai knew the advantages of a human touch to calm someone down. Gippal was eternally thankful. Finally, he was able to open his eye and look up at Nooj or Baralai without shaking and fearing the onset of death, and at last he was able to speak clearly. "I've figured out what it does... sorta," he said, sitting up into Baralai's arms. "Rikku has this dress sphere, I think -- she was dressed like a normal Spiran girl with the long dress--"

"Actual clothes," Baralai mused gently. "I thought it was impossible for women now."

"Let him finish," Nooj said as gently as Nooj could say anything.

"Anyway," Gippal continued, trying to clear his thoughts, "It must be new or something, or they didn't use it before, but apparently some sort of sacred animal comes with it. And that... was me."

"So you really were a monkey," Baralai said, laying his hand on Gippal's elbow as if he was trying to communicate that he didn't mean that teasingly at all.

"Yeah," Gippal answered, looking up at Baralai. "Fur and a tail and... two eyes." He put his hand up, feeling for the familiar eyepatch. As much as he disliked that thing sometimes, it was nice to have it back as a reminder that he really was real and this wasn't some bizarre dress sphere incident. "But I had full dexterity, I could still take apart this machine when she asked me to, but it was weird... I was so small, she could lift me up and put me on her shoulders..."

"How is that possible?" Nooj asked after a pause. "Dress spheres aren't supposed to do that... they're just clothes and abilities, not species."

"You said it yourself," Baralai answered him, "this can't be a normal sphere, since we found it here of all places."

"It's also apparently doing some sort of teleportation thing," Gippal added, sitting up fully without Baralai's help now. "They were in their airship over Macalania, and they had just gotten attacked by some fiends--"

"Fiends attacked the airship?" Baralai looked absolutely incredulous.

"It wasn't really a fiend... it was... they were... it was... like Shuyin all over again, except worse," Gippal managed to say. "As soon as we got up there, outside, I could feel it inside of me. It blanked my mind, I couldn't breathe, it felt like... like death."

Nooj looked understandably interested. "What was it?"

"I don't know," Gippal answered, shaking his head. "I was so completely taken over by fear that I couldn't even see straight. There was this black haze, and it just seemed to suck the life out of me."

"Gippal, don't touch the sphere again," Baralai said, putting his other hand on Gippal's arm. "What if you had died in there?"

"Oh believe me, I don't want to do that again," Gippal assured him, trying to smile.

"Keep your hands off it," Nooj warned him, closing the lid of the sphere box emphatically. "At least until we find out more."