Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Welcome to Bikanel, people. The characters described in this chapter are all NPCs in the game, but I own names, personalities, and that good stuff.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up
by flame mage
spherechange 5: Downtrodder
**********
I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't what I got. In the movies, archaeology seems so grand and complex and rewarding. Diggers get to wear cool hats and swing around bullwhips, and have entire tent colonies with air conditioning and decent food and--above all--showers.
Yeah. Well, that's the movies. In real life, our camp was three tents and a couple of hovers. It was the most miserablely tiny little operation I'd ever seen, and I include the Youth League headquarters, Besaid Village, and Naaga's dollhouses in that statement.
"Lady and gentlemen," Gippal announced with his characteristic grandiosity as soon as we stepped out of the airship, "meet your new forewoman, Nhadala."
Scattered cheers from the small group of Al Bhed who had rushed over to see who we were and appeared to be losing interest now that it was apparent we weren't carrying food. I'd probably gotten more enthusiasm when I'd joined the Aurochs, and they'd been out for my blood. I was looking at a line of three roly-polies, presumably brothers; a single woman (the only other one, which explained Gippal's intro) wearing what looked like a bondage parka and goggles that covered her entire head; a dorky-looking older man with mad scientist hair and a clipboard; a complete weirdo decked out in an entire gas mask(!!); some other guy in a tan bomber jacket with the sleeves rolled up who I could already tell was gonna be oh-so-fun to deal with; and three feet of completely isolation-suited...what was that, a kid? Oh, man. This was gonna be even tougher than I'd thought.
There was silence for a while as everyone sized everyone else up, and finally someone said, "She looks like Linna."
"Say something brilliant," Gippal muttered as he shoved me on the back. Then he called to the troops in a brighter tone, "Well, guys, keep up the good work!" and was gone. No fanfare. No ceremony. Nothin'. And just like that, I was stuck.
Rule number one of unfamiliar situations: always, under any circumstances, look like you know exactly what you're doing. Rule number two: acting tough works pretty well too. I flicked my hair out of my eyes, planted my hands on my hips, and did both.
"Okay," I began, pitching my voice just slightly higher than normal, "like that moron said, my name is Nhadala, and I'm going to be the forewoman of this operation. I'm not sure how long some of you people have been here, but I've been here three minutes, so I'm totally lost. Right now it's about--" I checked my watch, "--8:00 at night local time, so here's what I want to happen. Someone who knows the ropes is gonna show me around this place until I get the lay of the land. Then we're all gonna have a short meeting so I can start figuring out who everyone is. And when we're done with all that, we're gonna get some sleep, because we start at daybreak tomorrow. I want to get in and out of here as soon as possible.
"Now," I concluded, "who wants to take me on the three-minute tour?"
No one raised a hand, but someone shoved Three-Footer forward. He stumbled briefly and then righted himself. In a slightly tinny but pleasant voice, he said, "I am Benzo. I'm the camp translator. I'd be happy to show you around."
"Great." I revised my estimate of his age up about fifteen years; he might well be my age or older. "Let's go."
We left the group and wandered toward the first tent. He lifted the flap to show me the inside, which was filled with rows and rows of shelves. "This is where we're planning on storing the artifacts until the hovers arrive," he explained. "We've also been keeping some supplies in here. The other two tents are our living quarters. It's a little crowded, but you'll be glad that you have them. We've been getting a lot of sandstorms lately."
"Are those a big problem around here?" I asked him.
He shrugged. "I've only been here a week or so, so I can't say for sure. I can tell you that so far they haven't bothered us much, but that may change. Our scouts have noted that the sandstorms are more common in this region of the desert than, say, the Western Expanse."
"What else do you know about the different areas?" I asked.
"Not much," he admitted. "The Central Expanse is accessible by hover, but hovers wouldn't even make a dent in excavating such a large region. We need to find a better way to do things. Umm...maybe Gippal told you we're near the Oasis here. That's why we chose this site for camp, but now it seems like the Western Expanse might actually be safer."
"How are we digging? I don't see any drills or anything like that."
"We wouldn't use them for delicate operations like the kind we're doing. We haven't actually done any digging yet, but the artifacts we expect to find might be hundreds or even thousands of years old. I don't really know much about digging, but I guess you'll be doing it by hand."
"Me?" I asked, eyeing him.
"Well, the workers. You and I probably won't be doing much of the actual scutwork," he amended. "My job is to maintain diplomatic relations with the locals."
I blinked. "What locals? Home's been gone for two years. Maybe ten people live out here."
He just smiled. "If you'd like to see some of the local colors, I'll take you out tomorrow. You might find it an interesting experience. And with that," he added, "we've seen pretty much everything there is to see around here: three tents and a couple of hovers. Do you want to head back and start that meeting of yours now?"
"Sure. Where's a good place to get everyone together?"
"Honestly, nowhere, but the best you'll probably get is out in the open. The weather's been behaving pretty well."
"Okay." I stuck my head in the main residential tent, which seemed to be where everyone was. Immediately it went dead silent. Someone tried to subtly hide the bottle of whatever-it-was, but I could smell it, and it definitely wasn't a strawberry daquiri.
Oh, no. Not on your lives, kids. If they thought I was gonna let them waste time partying and getting drunk and get myself stuck here forever, they had another thing coming. I leaned against one of the tent poles and said calmly, "All right, people, time to party *my* way. Why don't you all come out here for a little while and breathe the fresh night air, huh?" They grumbled a little, but they followed.
"Benzo here has told me a little bit about what we're doing here," I began when everyone was sitting cross-legged in a circle around me like good little boys and a girl. "I'm in the process of coming up with a game plan and I'd like your input. First, though, I have no idea who any of you people are, and we're gonna fix that. So we're gonna go around the circle, just like in kindergarten, and I'll love you forever if you tell me your name and a little bit about yourself, okay? So I'm Nhadala, the big bad forewoman, and I'm kinda a fan of Linna, as you can probably tell." Sweatdrop. Why, Nooj, why of all jobs in the world am I doing this one?
Benzo, who I could already tell was gonna be my ally here, piped up. "I'm Benzo, and I'm the camp translator. I speak English, Al Bhed, Cactuar, and Old Guado fluently, and I'm currently learning the traditional Ronso language."
The guy next to him was the one I'd pegged early on as a little hard to handle--bomber jacket and fingerless gloves. "I'm Jock," he introduced himself with just a hint of a swagger. He'd been the one with the bottle too, I noticed. "I'm the ace pilot around here."
How had I known he'd have a stereotypically macho name like Jock? In fact, he probably didn't--his real name was probably something like Snuud and made him feel insecure enough to need a tough-guy handle. "Anything you'd like to add?" I asked.
"Nope."
Pick your battles, Linna. Or Nhadala. Whichever. "Right then. Next?"
Sitting next to him in a convenient little line were the three roly-poly guys. The biggest was apparently in charge, because he was the one doing the talking for the three of them. "My name's Ihu, and these are my little brothers Tuc and Dnac. I'm the hover mechanic, and these two are my assistants. They're interested in ancient machina. Dnac's kinda slow, though."
"Am not!" Dnac protested, punching the older one. I sensed a domino reaction coming up here, so I shut them up and motioned for the next person to go already.
The next person turned out to be the lone non-Linna/Nhadala woman in camp, and she was sitting maybe seven feet away from the three large warring brothers. "They call me Redeci," she announced. "I'm in charge of cataloguing and packing the finds, as well as taking care of the storage tent."
Next was the funky-haired guy showing signs of encroaching geezerdom. "It's Goma," he introduced himself, "and I'm the leader of the scouting and surveying team."
"And I'm Nedus," said Gas Mask. Oh, cred. I knew him. He was a blitzer. Hung out in Luca. Big on volley shots and always bugging me to teach him some nap techniques. Couldn't block for anything. "My job is mostly dealing with the camp--security, that sort of thing--and managing the freight hover and shipping. I'm also a blitz fan, so we'll get along well." I hoped not, or I was gonna have to tell so many lies it would make even my practiced head spin.
I looked around. "So you're telling me that we have...what, nine people here, and absolutely no one who knows how to dig?"
They all shrugged in unison.
"Oh, great!" I smacked my forehead. "When's the next freight hover scheduled to arrive?"
"Tomorrow morning," Nedus answered.
"Okay, so hopefully we'll have some pit crews and we can start soon. I've been over this a little with Benzo. Given the safety factor, we'll be starting our digs in the Western Expanse. Does anyone have a map of the desert, and maybe a ruler and a pen?"
"I do. Wait just a second." Goma the Geezer took off into the main tent and returned a few seconds later with a very large chart rolled up under his arm, a yardstick, and two pencils.
"Thanks," I said, taking them from him and unrolling the map on the ground. I had to crouch on the near end to keep it from rolling up. I could see several large red Xs scattered out all over the five regions. "What are these for?" I asked.
"They're to mark where our team found evidence of a large artifact. They might not be entirely accurate, since it was done by hover, but we thought they might be a good place to start," Goma replied.
"Okay. Then our first dig will take place...here." I stabbed the X on the southwest side of the map and circled it twice with my pencil. Then I lined the ruler up at the top of the page and started drawing horizontal lines across the map. When I was done with that, I drew vertical lines down the length of the whole thing until I had a neat pencil grid. I labeled the boxes going down on the left side with numbers and the ones going across the top with letters in English order. "Now," I explained to the crowd watching me when I was done, "we have a grid that we can work from. This'll help us tell where the artifacts are and make it easier to find everything. You've been doing all the surveying by hover?"
"Not all of it," answered Ihu, the mechanic and oldest of the Brothers Three. "Say hello to Picket."
All of a sudden my ears were assaulted by a whirring and a high-pitched voice squealing, "Nice to meet ya, boss!"
"What the hell is that?" I demanded, covering my ears.
"It's me, Picket!" Something large and silver shot into my field of vision and stopped about an inch and a half away from my nose. It was about the size of a blender and looked like it could have been made from one, with the addition of a small propeller welded onto the--back? bottom? something.
I blinked and announced in a slightly strangled tone, "That machina is talking."
"Yep," Ihu replied happily. "Isn't it great? My baby Picket here has a camera built into him that'll relay images back to our sphere receiver as soon as it arrives on the next freight hover. Then we'll be able to do all the surveying right from our tents."
"Cool, huh?" Picket sounded pleased with itself--at least, as proud as I've ever heard a machina sound.
"Oh, yeah, definitely." I stretched. "All right. I'm bushed. You guys put the drinks away and get some rest. Breakfast, assuming you people have any around here, is bright and early at seven AM. As soon as we unload the freight hover, we're going right to work. Any questions?" Nope. "Then I'll see you in the morning."
I strode off toward the smaller of the two living tents and was greeted by a couple of cots, equipped with one rough blanket each. No pillows. The only light came from the only other object in the tent, a small stand lamp in one corner. I shut it off, claimed the cot closest to the tent flap by shoving my gear bag underneath it, and stretched out. A few minutes later, I heard Benzo come in and take his own bed. The sound of drinks being poured sifted in from the other tent.
I stared at the blank canvas ceiling for hours before I finally fell asleep.
Welcome to Bikanel, people. The characters described in this chapter are all NPCs in the game, but I own names, personalities, and that good stuff.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up
by flame mage
spherechange 5: Downtrodder
**********
I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't what I got. In the movies, archaeology seems so grand and complex and rewarding. Diggers get to wear cool hats and swing around bullwhips, and have entire tent colonies with air conditioning and decent food and--above all--showers.
Yeah. Well, that's the movies. In real life, our camp was three tents and a couple of hovers. It was the most miserablely tiny little operation I'd ever seen, and I include the Youth League headquarters, Besaid Village, and Naaga's dollhouses in that statement.
"Lady and gentlemen," Gippal announced with his characteristic grandiosity as soon as we stepped out of the airship, "meet your new forewoman, Nhadala."
Scattered cheers from the small group of Al Bhed who had rushed over to see who we were and appeared to be losing interest now that it was apparent we weren't carrying food. I'd probably gotten more enthusiasm when I'd joined the Aurochs, and they'd been out for my blood. I was looking at a line of three roly-polies, presumably brothers; a single woman (the only other one, which explained Gippal's intro) wearing what looked like a bondage parka and goggles that covered her entire head; a dorky-looking older man with mad scientist hair and a clipboard; a complete weirdo decked out in an entire gas mask(!!); some other guy in a tan bomber jacket with the sleeves rolled up who I could already tell was gonna be oh-so-fun to deal with; and three feet of completely isolation-suited...what was that, a kid? Oh, man. This was gonna be even tougher than I'd thought.
There was silence for a while as everyone sized everyone else up, and finally someone said, "She looks like Linna."
"Say something brilliant," Gippal muttered as he shoved me on the back. Then he called to the troops in a brighter tone, "Well, guys, keep up the good work!" and was gone. No fanfare. No ceremony. Nothin'. And just like that, I was stuck.
Rule number one of unfamiliar situations: always, under any circumstances, look like you know exactly what you're doing. Rule number two: acting tough works pretty well too. I flicked my hair out of my eyes, planted my hands on my hips, and did both.
"Okay," I began, pitching my voice just slightly higher than normal, "like that moron said, my name is Nhadala, and I'm going to be the forewoman of this operation. I'm not sure how long some of you people have been here, but I've been here three minutes, so I'm totally lost. Right now it's about--" I checked my watch, "--8:00 at night local time, so here's what I want to happen. Someone who knows the ropes is gonna show me around this place until I get the lay of the land. Then we're all gonna have a short meeting so I can start figuring out who everyone is. And when we're done with all that, we're gonna get some sleep, because we start at daybreak tomorrow. I want to get in and out of here as soon as possible.
"Now," I concluded, "who wants to take me on the three-minute tour?"
No one raised a hand, but someone shoved Three-Footer forward. He stumbled briefly and then righted himself. In a slightly tinny but pleasant voice, he said, "I am Benzo. I'm the camp translator. I'd be happy to show you around."
"Great." I revised my estimate of his age up about fifteen years; he might well be my age or older. "Let's go."
We left the group and wandered toward the first tent. He lifted the flap to show me the inside, which was filled with rows and rows of shelves. "This is where we're planning on storing the artifacts until the hovers arrive," he explained. "We've also been keeping some supplies in here. The other two tents are our living quarters. It's a little crowded, but you'll be glad that you have them. We've been getting a lot of sandstorms lately."
"Are those a big problem around here?" I asked him.
He shrugged. "I've only been here a week or so, so I can't say for sure. I can tell you that so far they haven't bothered us much, but that may change. Our scouts have noted that the sandstorms are more common in this region of the desert than, say, the Western Expanse."
"What else do you know about the different areas?" I asked.
"Not much," he admitted. "The Central Expanse is accessible by hover, but hovers wouldn't even make a dent in excavating such a large region. We need to find a better way to do things. Umm...maybe Gippal told you we're near the Oasis here. That's why we chose this site for camp, but now it seems like the Western Expanse might actually be safer."
"How are we digging? I don't see any drills or anything like that."
"We wouldn't use them for delicate operations like the kind we're doing. We haven't actually done any digging yet, but the artifacts we expect to find might be hundreds or even thousands of years old. I don't really know much about digging, but I guess you'll be doing it by hand."
"Me?" I asked, eyeing him.
"Well, the workers. You and I probably won't be doing much of the actual scutwork," he amended. "My job is to maintain diplomatic relations with the locals."
I blinked. "What locals? Home's been gone for two years. Maybe ten people live out here."
He just smiled. "If you'd like to see some of the local colors, I'll take you out tomorrow. You might find it an interesting experience. And with that," he added, "we've seen pretty much everything there is to see around here: three tents and a couple of hovers. Do you want to head back and start that meeting of yours now?"
"Sure. Where's a good place to get everyone together?"
"Honestly, nowhere, but the best you'll probably get is out in the open. The weather's been behaving pretty well."
"Okay." I stuck my head in the main residential tent, which seemed to be where everyone was. Immediately it went dead silent. Someone tried to subtly hide the bottle of whatever-it-was, but I could smell it, and it definitely wasn't a strawberry daquiri.
Oh, no. Not on your lives, kids. If they thought I was gonna let them waste time partying and getting drunk and get myself stuck here forever, they had another thing coming. I leaned against one of the tent poles and said calmly, "All right, people, time to party *my* way. Why don't you all come out here for a little while and breathe the fresh night air, huh?" They grumbled a little, but they followed.
"Benzo here has told me a little bit about what we're doing here," I began when everyone was sitting cross-legged in a circle around me like good little boys and a girl. "I'm in the process of coming up with a game plan and I'd like your input. First, though, I have no idea who any of you people are, and we're gonna fix that. So we're gonna go around the circle, just like in kindergarten, and I'll love you forever if you tell me your name and a little bit about yourself, okay? So I'm Nhadala, the big bad forewoman, and I'm kinda a fan of Linna, as you can probably tell." Sweatdrop. Why, Nooj, why of all jobs in the world am I doing this one?
Benzo, who I could already tell was gonna be my ally here, piped up. "I'm Benzo, and I'm the camp translator. I speak English, Al Bhed, Cactuar, and Old Guado fluently, and I'm currently learning the traditional Ronso language."
The guy next to him was the one I'd pegged early on as a little hard to handle--bomber jacket and fingerless gloves. "I'm Jock," he introduced himself with just a hint of a swagger. He'd been the one with the bottle too, I noticed. "I'm the ace pilot around here."
How had I known he'd have a stereotypically macho name like Jock? In fact, he probably didn't--his real name was probably something like Snuud and made him feel insecure enough to need a tough-guy handle. "Anything you'd like to add?" I asked.
"Nope."
Pick your battles, Linna. Or Nhadala. Whichever. "Right then. Next?"
Sitting next to him in a convenient little line were the three roly-poly guys. The biggest was apparently in charge, because he was the one doing the talking for the three of them. "My name's Ihu, and these are my little brothers Tuc and Dnac. I'm the hover mechanic, and these two are my assistants. They're interested in ancient machina. Dnac's kinda slow, though."
"Am not!" Dnac protested, punching the older one. I sensed a domino reaction coming up here, so I shut them up and motioned for the next person to go already.
The next person turned out to be the lone non-Linna/Nhadala woman in camp, and she was sitting maybe seven feet away from the three large warring brothers. "They call me Redeci," she announced. "I'm in charge of cataloguing and packing the finds, as well as taking care of the storage tent."
Next was the funky-haired guy showing signs of encroaching geezerdom. "It's Goma," he introduced himself, "and I'm the leader of the scouting and surveying team."
"And I'm Nedus," said Gas Mask. Oh, cred. I knew him. He was a blitzer. Hung out in Luca. Big on volley shots and always bugging me to teach him some nap techniques. Couldn't block for anything. "My job is mostly dealing with the camp--security, that sort of thing--and managing the freight hover and shipping. I'm also a blitz fan, so we'll get along well." I hoped not, or I was gonna have to tell so many lies it would make even my practiced head spin.
I looked around. "So you're telling me that we have...what, nine people here, and absolutely no one who knows how to dig?"
They all shrugged in unison.
"Oh, great!" I smacked my forehead. "When's the next freight hover scheduled to arrive?"
"Tomorrow morning," Nedus answered.
"Okay, so hopefully we'll have some pit crews and we can start soon. I've been over this a little with Benzo. Given the safety factor, we'll be starting our digs in the Western Expanse. Does anyone have a map of the desert, and maybe a ruler and a pen?"
"I do. Wait just a second." Goma the Geezer took off into the main tent and returned a few seconds later with a very large chart rolled up under his arm, a yardstick, and two pencils.
"Thanks," I said, taking them from him and unrolling the map on the ground. I had to crouch on the near end to keep it from rolling up. I could see several large red Xs scattered out all over the five regions. "What are these for?" I asked.
"They're to mark where our team found evidence of a large artifact. They might not be entirely accurate, since it was done by hover, but we thought they might be a good place to start," Goma replied.
"Okay. Then our first dig will take place...here." I stabbed the X on the southwest side of the map and circled it twice with my pencil. Then I lined the ruler up at the top of the page and started drawing horizontal lines across the map. When I was done with that, I drew vertical lines down the length of the whole thing until I had a neat pencil grid. I labeled the boxes going down on the left side with numbers and the ones going across the top with letters in English order. "Now," I explained to the crowd watching me when I was done, "we have a grid that we can work from. This'll help us tell where the artifacts are and make it easier to find everything. You've been doing all the surveying by hover?"
"Not all of it," answered Ihu, the mechanic and oldest of the Brothers Three. "Say hello to Picket."
All of a sudden my ears were assaulted by a whirring and a high-pitched voice squealing, "Nice to meet ya, boss!"
"What the hell is that?" I demanded, covering my ears.
"It's me, Picket!" Something large and silver shot into my field of vision and stopped about an inch and a half away from my nose. It was about the size of a blender and looked like it could have been made from one, with the addition of a small propeller welded onto the--back? bottom? something.
I blinked and announced in a slightly strangled tone, "That machina is talking."
"Yep," Ihu replied happily. "Isn't it great? My baby Picket here has a camera built into him that'll relay images back to our sphere receiver as soon as it arrives on the next freight hover. Then we'll be able to do all the surveying right from our tents."
"Cool, huh?" Picket sounded pleased with itself--at least, as proud as I've ever heard a machina sound.
"Oh, yeah, definitely." I stretched. "All right. I'm bushed. You guys put the drinks away and get some rest. Breakfast, assuming you people have any around here, is bright and early at seven AM. As soon as we unload the freight hover, we're going right to work. Any questions?" Nope. "Then I'll see you in the morning."
I strode off toward the smaller of the two living tents and was greeted by a couple of cots, equipped with one rough blanket each. No pillows. The only light came from the only other object in the tent, a small stand lamp in one corner. I shut it off, claimed the cot closest to the tent flap by shoving my gear bag underneath it, and stretched out. A few minutes later, I heard Benzo come in and take his own bed. The sound of drinks being poured sifted in from the other tent.
I stared at the blank canvas ceiling for hours before I finally fell asleep.