"Guys, it's not working!"

"Rikku, dress spheres are always supposed to work."

"But he's not coming... I don't know what's wrong."

"Well, he was awfully scared..."

"Let me see it."

Gippal's vision cleared, but it was that distorted vision he was slowly getting used to. "Ghiki!!" Gippal turned his head and saw Rikku, and jumped in surprise. She was okay! He rushed over into her arms, and she picked him up and put him on her shoulders. "Where have you been? I was so worried that you were scared away..."

"Paine, that's really beautiful," came Yuna's voice. Gippal turned his head to look over at Paine, who had her arm extended and a large bird settling in the crook of her elbow. Yuna had, by this time, crossed over to look at the bird and was examining its beak. "Hi there!"

Gippal's eyes widened. "Nooj?"

The bird looked over at him. "...Gippal?"

"Aww, look, they're talking to each other," Rikku said, walking over to Paine and eyeing the bird -- Nooj. "He's really pretty," she informed Paine.

"Interesting," Nooj said, extending his wings out and fluttering them.

"You're a bird, man," Gippal answered as if it wasn't obvious.

"Yeah, and you're a monkey," Nooj replied, looking sideways at Gippal. "I can't see straight."

"Me either," Gippal conceded, but was alarmed as Rikku slung him down onto her arm, and he nearly lost his balance.

"Listen to them talking, like they can understand each other," Yuna mused, petting Nooj on the back of his head. "What's his name?"

"Nooj," Nooj said, or, in the ears of the girls, squawked.

"They can't understand you," Gippal informed him.

Nooj just fluttered his wings indignantly.

"Do you do anything?" Paine asked Nooj, eyeing the bird on her arm warily.

Nooj looked at her indignantly. Gippal laughed, and Rikku poked him. "You sure are noisy today," she said.

"Go on," Paine said, making a motion with her arm, "Fly!"

"What?" Nooj protested, but Paine physically threw him off her arm before he could really react. For a moment, he looked absolutely panicked, but soon seemed to regain his senses. He was a bird, after all, and it seemed like he remembered that he had wings. With a flurry of feathers, he extended his wings out fully and stopped his downward spiral to the ground with a graceful swoop. Gippal could hear him laughing as he did so.

Nooj. Laughing. It didn't happen often.

Was that a "woohoo!" coming from Nooj's general direction?

Boy was that out of character.

Once Nooj returned to Paine's arm at her whistle, he settled in with a wild flurry of wings. He was still laughing. "Hey man," Gippal said, climbing up on Rikku's shoulder again to get a better look. "You okay?"

"Gippal, this is great!" Nooj fluttered his wings again. "To fly... I never imagined."

Gippal suddenly felt a little jealous. "I've never heard you laugh like that before."

"It... I felt so free--"

Nooj was interrupted by Yuna scratching the back of his head again. "You should call him Flurry, with all those feathers, and the way he likes to flap his wings."

"Oh, that's a good name!" Rikku agreed, bounding over to Paine with Gippal still on her shoulders. Gippal held on around her head for dear life.

"Alright, Flurry it is," Paine said unceremoniously, looking down at Nooj.

He looked back up at her, and she blinked, studying him for a second. "Paine, it's me, Nooj," he said.

"I think he likes his name," Yuna said.

Paine kept her eyes trained on Nooj. Finally, she seemed to remember that she was supposed to respond to Yuna and said, "Yeah, that's probably good."

"Oh, Yunie, you should try it! See what you get," Rikku said, clapping her hands together and jumping up and down.

Gippal was infinitely glad that he had an increased sense of balance in this form.

"Alright," Yuna agreed, and took out her garment grid.

Gippal's breath caught in his throat. He looked over at Nooj. Nooj looked back at him. It seemed to click.

There were three of the girls with this dress sphere... what did they call it? The Trainer dress sphere?

And there were three of them who all had possession of this mystery sphere that sucked them in and transported them here.

Which meant that whatever Yuna's animal was would have to be Baralai. And as far as either of them knew, Baralai was still in the Praetor's office of New Yevon.

Regardless, Yuna rearranged her garment grid and Nooj and Gippal saw the familiar light of a spherechange before they could even think of any way to stop it.

Gippal knew he was surprised, and Nooj was too, when Yuna reappeared in her long trainer's dress and a rather strange looking dog came running up to her. She leaned down and petted the dog, who was looking around rather confused.

"Oh, Yunie, he's so ugly, but he's cute at the same time," Rikku said, crouching down to get a look at the dog, taking Gippal with her.

Gippal, too, eyed the dog. "Baralai?" he asked very carefully. Who else could it be?

"Gippal??" The dog turned its head, looking back and forth. "I hear your voice, where are you?"

"Up here, Lai, on Rikku's shoulders," Gippal answered, dropping down and hanging from around Rikku's neck. "Don't freak."

Baralai looked up, saw Gippal -- Ghiki -- and jumped. "You're a--"

"--monkey, I know," Gippal finished. "But don't worry, at least I'm better looking than--"

"Oh, listen to those two talking now," Yuna said, scratching Baralai behind his ears. "Ghiki is really friendly."

"Come on, he's mine!" Rikku bounced from foot to foot irritatingly, making Gippal hold on for dear life. "He HAS to be friendly!"

"Can't they understand us?" Baralai asked, looking back and forth between the girls and then back up at Gippal.

Gippal shook his head. "No, not at all. Things would be much easier if they could."

"Is Nooj here?"

"Yeah, he's flying around here somewhere."

"...flying?"

As if to illustrate this point, Nooj came swooping by them, flapping his wings elegantly through the air.

"I see," Baralai said, leaning up into more of Yuna's petting as the girls conversed mindlessly around them. "So how do we go back?"

"You want to already?" Nooj asked as he settled back on Paine's arm.

"We have to wait until they change out of the dress sphere, at least, that's what I think," Gippal said.

"Would you guys be quiet already?" Rikku tapped Gippal on the nose gently. "We're trying to decide on a name for Yunie's dog!"

"Dog?!" Baralai exclaimed immediately. "I'm a dog?!"

"Aww, listen to him." Yuna leaned down and put her arms around Baralai... effectively making Baralai look right down the top of her dress. Gippal snickered. "Kogoro, that sounds like what he's saying."

"Baralai," he tried to say even as he tried to not look down her shirt. "My name's Baralai! I'm Baralai!"

"Doesn't work, man," Gippal said, playing randomly with a braid from Rikku's hair.

"He's doing it again," Yuna mused, rubbing at Baralai's sides now. "Kogoro is your name, little guy, how's that sound?"

"Baralai!"

"I think he likes it, Yunie," Rikku said, batting Gippal's paw away from her hair.

"Gullwings!!" The sound grated on Gippal's ears. "Up to the deck!! Another fiend!!!"

"Oh no," Rikku said, bouncing on her toes. "Is it that weird black hazy thing from before??"

"Might be the same one," Paine said, heading for the elevator and taking Nooj with her. "Since we couldn't figure out how to kill it."

"But we did scare it away!" Rikku looked at Yuna worriedly. "Right? Whatever it was?"

Gippal could feel his hands starting to tremble. He was recalling what it felt like to look into that thing they had fought, what fear was there. He hoped it wasn't the same thing... but before he could get very far in his wishful thinking, they were up on the deck of the ship.

However, instead of burning Gippal's eyes with the black aura of death, something from inside the haze screamed at the sight of them. "No," it said as the haze receded from the ship, "it can't be, not again!"

"We must've really scared it before," Rikku said, stroking Gippal's tail for reassurance. Gippal was panting a little from the shock that had gone through his system from anticipating the confrontation.

"Or something," Paine added, staring off and watching it go.

"Doesn't it realize what ship it's attacking?" Rikku bounced from foot to foot.

"Fiends are stupid," Paine said, heading back for the elevator down into the ship. "Come on, let's get inside, and change our clothes..."

"Did you hear it trying to say something?" Yuna was still watching the fiend jet away, leaning down and patting Baralai reassuringly on the head.

"Fiend gibberish," Paine said harshly. "Come on, Yuna."

"They didn't understand?" Baralai turned his head and looked up at Gippal, who was still on the retreating Rikku's shoulders.

"Apparently not," Gippal replied as best as he could.

"Bye Ghiki," Rikku whispered in his ear as they neared the elevator. "I'll see you again soon, k?"

Gippal couldn't help himself. He put his arms around Rikku's neck and rubbed his face against hers affectionately. "Just call me," he said to her.

His vision spun and blurred.

------

------

When Gippal awoke, he was laying flat on his back. Of course, he was also at the bottom of a pile of bodies that included Nooj and Baralai as well. "Get off," he muttered, trying to haul himself to a more suitable position.

"Whoa," Baralai said as he rolled off of Gippal, landing in a sitting position and cradling his head in his hands. "I must be dreaming."

"What, that you were stuck inside an ugly-ass dog's body?" Gippal smirked as he dislodged his foot from Nooj's knees, fixing his shirt that had gotten twisted around in all sorts of random directions.

"So that's the power of this sphere," Nooj said to no one in particular, grimacing a little as he leaned forward and peered at the sphere again. It seemed so harmless resting in its box.

"Yeah, so now you guys know I'm not crazy," Gippal said, lying back down on the floor. "Though, Lai, what were you doing here?"

"I wanted to tell you guys that I found more information about that plague," Baralai said, lifting his head out of his hands. "But when I got here, you two were gone but I could hear your voices from the sphere. I thought you might have been in trouble."

"Funny how that works," Gippal said, folding his arms under his head. "Yuna says she wants to try it, and Lai just so happens to touch the sphere at the same moment..."

"How is it possible?" Baralai looked over at Gippal like he had all the answers.

"Damned if I know," Gippal replied, smirking. "Nooj seemed to enjoy it though."

"What did you find?" Nooj asked, looking over to Baralai and changing the subject suddenly.

"Huh?" Baralai looked confused for a moment, then shook his head. "Oh, just... it was a disease that they couldn't find the source for, no bacteria or virus or anything. They called it the Black Death, and it killed over half the population of Spira before the war between Zanarkand and Bevelle. It was part of what actually started the war... they found the source, a tree that emitted negative energy, and sealed away its power in a machine designed to keep it contained. Of course, Bevelle put that powerful machine under the city, and Zanarkand thought they were going to find a way to use the power of the tree again..."

"So that's Vegnagun," Gippal said as Baralai paused, "Right?"

"It makes sense," Nooj said, still eyeing the dress sphere. "Vegnagun was a huge weapon that thrived off negative energy, and it had to get that from some source. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed."

"But if Vegnagun was the thing keeping the power of the tree stagnant," Gippal said, looking back and forth between the two, "what's going to happen now that Vegnagun's been destroyed?"

"Maybe the Black Death will come back," Nooj said flatly, like he wouldn't really mind if it did or not.

"Maybe that's what that haze... fiend... whatever it was... was," Gippal said in a moment of epiphany. "Because that's what I felt from it that first time... death. That's all I can describe it as."

"Was it black?" Baralai asked in all sincerity.

"Yes," Gippal answered.

Baralai looked horrified. "The Black Death..."

"No need to jump to conclusions so quickly," Nooj interrupted, standing up now and walking over to the window. "We can't be certain, and should find out more before we go assuming anything."

"So we're going to Macalania still?" Gippal sat back up now, looking between the others.

Nooj looked back at him, nodding. "I'd say that'd be the best course of action."