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.
Looks like a lot of sharp-eyed people noticed the shift in chapter names from dress spheres to garment grids--you got it right; there are a lot more to choose from and it's a little easier to fit chapter names to situations. Kudos to everyone who picked up on that. Please keep reading! ^__^
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 8: Treasure Hunt
**********
By 11:46 the next day, I was already pacing around camp like a madwoman, striding so fast I wore the sand down three feet in a figure-eight that took two days to blow away. Even if the freight made it there safely, "around noon" as defined by Gippal could mean anything from 11:30 until nightfall.
"Nhadala," Benzo suggested after a while, mainly because he was the least likely person in camp to get his head bitten off for trying to talk to me while I was stressed out, "maybe you should calm down a little."
"You're kidding, right?" I snapped. "How am I supposed to calm down when--hey, there it is!" A medium-sized craft that looked something like a normal hover might if it got pregnant was settling down not far from the tents. I snapped my goggle strap to make sure my eyes were covered and charged straight into the dust cloud. By the time I stopped coughing, it had cleared and the pilot, dressed in the typical aviator's cap and green scarf of the Mi'ihen hover operators, had jumped out of the cockpit and opened the cargo hold up.
"Hi there," she greeted me. She seemed to be in pretty good spirits. "I'm Sanna, nice ta meetcha! Looks like I'm gonna be your normal freight pilot from now on."
"Nhadala. I'm the forewoman." I almost blitz-bowed, then caught myself and shook her hand. "Whatcha got for us?"
"Gippal sent the usual, plus everything you asked for and a little extra--he said to tell you he was still getting the better end of the deal, whatever that means." She grinned knowingly, like she was used to Gippal's exploits. "He wanted me to take a look at your emergency sphere, by the way. Said something about an upgrade?"
"Yeah, sure. It's sitting on one of the shelves in the first tent over there; go take a look. Hang on a sec and I'll get this unloaded while I'm at it," I told her, then called over my shoulder, "All right, people, the freight's here! You want it, come get it!" The team swarmed out of the woodwork and was crowded around the back of the hold in ten seconds flat. "Okay, Benzo and Nedus, I want you two to get the food set up in the back of the storage tent, and you three grab the extra tent and then come back for the cots. Jock come back yet?"
Redeci shook her head. "He and Picket are still out scouring yesterday's freight."
"Okay. What else do we have here?" I climbed into the hold and looked around. "Great, he sent some barbed wire. Redeci, you and Goma surround the camp with this. I want a rough circle, maybe thirty yards in diameter. Make sure it holds." I grabbed the wire fencing and handed it out to them as the pilot returned. "What *is* all this stuff, Sanna?"
"Couple'a AC units here," she replied, tapping a couple of small silver rectangles. "Set 'em up in the backs of the tents. Annnd..."
"Gippal, darling, love of my life, you sent us a portable toilet and a shower!" I cried, pumping my fist. "I never thought I'd be so happy for a cheap plastic cubicle. When the guys finish up with the tents I'll get them to help me carry these out back."
Sanna was picking up bags and handing them out to Benzo, who'd just jogged back. "The rest of this stuff is mostly small--you got a lot of mechanical stuff like hammers and nails, some energy cores, and then some little things like soap. In the food shipment I got that dried fruit and jerky your translator asked for."
"Nice work," I told her. "Thanks. We'll appreciate your efforts every time we take a shower."
"No problem. That everything?"
"Think so. Oh, hey, guys, help me grab these." I waved Ihu, Tuc and Dnac over. "Here, mebbe if we turn them on their sides we can get them out behind the tents." Ihu came around and picked up one end of the portable shower stall. I hooked my fingers under the other end and we stumbled and grunted our way to the far side of camp. Sanna had slammed the hold doors shut and climbed back into the cockpit when I brushed my gloves off and headed back toward the freight. "I'll be back on Saturday," she called.
"See you then!" I shouted back as the twin propellers began spinning and sputtered into a sandy blur. It was kicking up dust into my face; I jogged back to where the others were standing until the thing took off and vanished in the cloudless blue sky.
*****
"So, what now, fearless leader?" Nedus asked.
I shrugged. "Wait until Jock and Picket report back in. As soon as they get back, I think I'll head out on survey. Goma, what do you know about the Eastern Expanse?"
"It exists," he replied simply. "That's about it. More fiend activity, sandstorms moderate. All those mongrels running around make it pretty dangerous, though. Ever been eaten alive by a Sand Worm?" I shook my head. "You don't want to be."
"Sounds like my kinda place," I replied. "So, who wants to be the first one to try out that brand-new shower of ours?"
Seven hands shot into the air. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a hover swooping in for landing. "Okay, you guys have a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament and figure that out while I go see what Jock figured out, sound good?" I dashed off before anyone could argue.
Jock got out of the hover at about the same time I made it over to him and shook his hair out. "I found it," he reported grimly. "Thing was totally mangled. I couldn't salvage much except three cans of food and a couple Al Bhed primers--not like there's anyone out here to teach Al Bhed to except the fiends."
"Any survivors?" I asked.
Just then, Picket zoomed by about two inches in front of my face and zinged in circles around me. "Greenhorns in sector B3!" it piped up gleefully.
"Shut up," Jock told it, then to me, "No sign of the pilot--looks like it crashed nosefirst, so he's probably underground. There were a couple passengers, none of whom made it. I, uhh...well, I dragged 'em out, made a fire. Burned 'em, you know how we've always done it. Scattered the ashes off the propeller on my way back."
Damn. He might be a hotshot, but at least he was human. Not many people would have taken the time to bury a couple of total strangers in the middle of nowhere. "Thanks, Jock," I said quietly. "You did the right thing."
He was scuffing his boot on the ground, looking a little embarassed. "Yeah, well...I did find one guy that was okay. He's got some minor burns--Nedus knows some basic medicine; he can treat that--and he's half-starving, but otherwise he looks all right."
"Digger?"
"Greenhorns in sector B3!" Picket whined again. I slammed one fist backward, hoping to catch it. I missed.
"Nope, merchant," Jock answered. "First thing he asked me when I pulled him out was whether I wanted to buy a Fiery Gleam."
"He said no. But maybe you do, ehm...?" came a voice from the cockpit of the hover. I looked over and saw a man in a long robe and a turban getting out.
"Nhadala," I told him. "You have a name?"
He bowed. "You may call me simply 'The Merchant.' I have arrived to peddle my wares among your diggers."
"You're lookin' at 'em," I snorted. "Try your luck at the Oasis." He merely smiled and held out a bottle of blue liquid that looked like a Potion. "I'm warning you, I'm not a bleeding heart case like--ahh, screw it. Here!" I snatched the bottle away from him and handed him 50 gil. "And that's the last you're getting outta me, ya bloodsucker. Jock, go get him fed and cleaned up before he cons me into buying the whole damn stock." And with that, Nhadala the Curmudgeon slunk off toward the center of camp, where the Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament was still in full swing.
"Okay, people, change of plans!" I announced. "Ihu, Tuc, and Dnac, you three are on duty this afternoon. We've gotta get this digging done somehow, so until we get someone to do it, it's a chore like everything else we do around this dump. Follow the rotation charts. When they get back, whoever's next heads out. Follow Picket's instructions and start looking in the Western Expanse. And Nedus, go check out those buildings on the edge of camp and find out whether they're liveable. If they are, we're movin' in. Got me? Great. The rest of you go back to what you were doing." I turned and then paused. "And while I'm at it, where the hell is Benzo?"
*****
I consulted the map for the fourth time in the last three minutes and pressed the joystick in a different direction. "This *is* the right way, ain't it?" I asked Benzo, who was once again strapped into the passenger's side seatbelts leaning over like he was the king of the world.
"Yes," Picket assured me. "Stop being so worry-warted, sweetcakes."
"Who asked you, circuithead?" I hissed as I brought the altitude up another two hundred feet.
"He's right, Nhadala," Benzo said patiently. "And don't say 'ain't.' It's not a word. You mean 'isn't.'"
"Dammit, Benzo!" The dashboard was taking a real beating this trip.
"You probably shouldn't curse so much, either. It's the sign of a small vocabulary."
"Benzo?"
"Yes?"
"Ever been kissed?"
"No."
"Wanna start with that sand dune over there?!"
He shut up.
"There!" Picket started whirring. "Take it down, chief, this is the Eastern Expanse."
I glanced back at it, irritated. "Why take it down? I just want to check the place out."
"No sandstorm activity, low fiend activity, and I'm picking up readings from an artifact down there. Pretty small. Stone. I can't get a good estimate on the age, but I'd say it's at least a couple hundred years old."
"Hmm. Well, if Gippal doesn't want it, I can set it into a necklace," I mused ironically. "All right, I got some time to kill. Any objections, Benzo?"
"Not a one. Perhaps it's a stone tablet. I wonder if any ancient civilizations on this island left records."
"Were there any?"
He spread his hands. "Who knows? Maybe this'll tell us."
I took the hover down to the ground and tightened my goggles. "All right, Picket, gimme a map or something here."
Picket swooped down and opened its central compartment to display a small sphere map. "The object I picked up is about twenty feet to your northeast. Be careful, though, it's hot out here. Without any protective gear or water, you have about sixty seconds to dig it up and get back to the hover before you collapse from heat stroke."
I grabbed it--him?--Picket--and started walking in the direction it'd indicated. I could see where I was going; the large yellow X on the sphere screen was the artifact he was talking about. We must've looked completely idiotic--a machinized blender and a blitzer in heels tangoing through the middle of nowhere--but I got myself to the spot and dropped to my knees, using my gloves to sift through the sand until I hit something hard. I took one glove off and brushed more hot sand away until I came up with a small stone disk, roughly rectangular and about the size of my hand, with tiny holes in it.
"Picket, what gives with this thing?" I asked.
"I'll analyze it when we get back to the hover," it replied. "To which, by the way, you have twelve seconds to return before you pass out."
I stood up and dashed, almost falling into the air-conditioned cockpit. When I'd cooled off enough to move, I wiped the sweat off my face, climbed all the way in and closed the door, and took off again.
"Here. Take a look at this," I said to Benzo, handing the disk over. Picket dropped down to hover over the translator's shoulder and scan it. "I'm gonna do a quick flyby of the entire expanse and then head back. After the heat out there, I think I'm a little too tired to be doing this right now."
The first things I noticed when we were back at cruising altitude were the dozens, maybe hundreds of machina scattered all over the desert in this expanse. "Wow, it's a machina graveyard," I mused. "This place probably has everything we're interested in and more."
"At one time, it was probably our testing grounds," Benzo said. "Did you live at Home at all?"
I caught myself and answered noncommitally, "Some."
"Then you probably knew mechanics who worked there. They were trying to repair machina here--this is where most of our subs came from. They also developed small things for Home; uncomplicated stuff like electric lighting and microwaves."
I nodded, but I was concentrating on the ground. Nothing else interesting goes on in the desert. I could see fiends roaming; they looked about as hot as I felt. Who knew Pyreflies were still affected by heat? I scrawled a couple of Xs onto the map where I thought some sites that might be worth checking out up close later were and then swung back across the middle of the desert toward camp.
"No clue, Nhadala," Benzo said finally.
"I've never seen anything like it either," agreed Picket. "Why don't you ask Gippal about it? In fact, you should do it now, because it looks like there's a storm coming in."
"Right. I'll put that at the end of my mile-long to-do list. First thing up is taking a long, cool shower--waiddaminute. A storm? I hate storms." I jumped out of the hover--and froze.
Standing in the middle of camp were two of the people in all of Spira I least wanted to see: the High Summoner Yuna and Aniki's little sister.
Okay. Time to think up a really good cover story.
Really fast.
Looks like a lot of sharp-eyed people noticed the shift in chapter names from dress spheres to garment grids--you got it right; there are a lot more to choose from and it's a little easier to fit chapter names to situations. Kudos to everyone who picked up on that. Please keep reading! ^__^
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 8: Treasure Hunt
**********
By 11:46 the next day, I was already pacing around camp like a madwoman, striding so fast I wore the sand down three feet in a figure-eight that took two days to blow away. Even if the freight made it there safely, "around noon" as defined by Gippal could mean anything from 11:30 until nightfall.
"Nhadala," Benzo suggested after a while, mainly because he was the least likely person in camp to get his head bitten off for trying to talk to me while I was stressed out, "maybe you should calm down a little."
"You're kidding, right?" I snapped. "How am I supposed to calm down when--hey, there it is!" A medium-sized craft that looked something like a normal hover might if it got pregnant was settling down not far from the tents. I snapped my goggle strap to make sure my eyes were covered and charged straight into the dust cloud. By the time I stopped coughing, it had cleared and the pilot, dressed in the typical aviator's cap and green scarf of the Mi'ihen hover operators, had jumped out of the cockpit and opened the cargo hold up.
"Hi there," she greeted me. She seemed to be in pretty good spirits. "I'm Sanna, nice ta meetcha! Looks like I'm gonna be your normal freight pilot from now on."
"Nhadala. I'm the forewoman." I almost blitz-bowed, then caught myself and shook her hand. "Whatcha got for us?"
"Gippal sent the usual, plus everything you asked for and a little extra--he said to tell you he was still getting the better end of the deal, whatever that means." She grinned knowingly, like she was used to Gippal's exploits. "He wanted me to take a look at your emergency sphere, by the way. Said something about an upgrade?"
"Yeah, sure. It's sitting on one of the shelves in the first tent over there; go take a look. Hang on a sec and I'll get this unloaded while I'm at it," I told her, then called over my shoulder, "All right, people, the freight's here! You want it, come get it!" The team swarmed out of the woodwork and was crowded around the back of the hold in ten seconds flat. "Okay, Benzo and Nedus, I want you two to get the food set up in the back of the storage tent, and you three grab the extra tent and then come back for the cots. Jock come back yet?"
Redeci shook her head. "He and Picket are still out scouring yesterday's freight."
"Okay. What else do we have here?" I climbed into the hold and looked around. "Great, he sent some barbed wire. Redeci, you and Goma surround the camp with this. I want a rough circle, maybe thirty yards in diameter. Make sure it holds." I grabbed the wire fencing and handed it out to them as the pilot returned. "What *is* all this stuff, Sanna?"
"Couple'a AC units here," she replied, tapping a couple of small silver rectangles. "Set 'em up in the backs of the tents. Annnd..."
"Gippal, darling, love of my life, you sent us a portable toilet and a shower!" I cried, pumping my fist. "I never thought I'd be so happy for a cheap plastic cubicle. When the guys finish up with the tents I'll get them to help me carry these out back."
Sanna was picking up bags and handing them out to Benzo, who'd just jogged back. "The rest of this stuff is mostly small--you got a lot of mechanical stuff like hammers and nails, some energy cores, and then some little things like soap. In the food shipment I got that dried fruit and jerky your translator asked for."
"Nice work," I told her. "Thanks. We'll appreciate your efforts every time we take a shower."
"No problem. That everything?"
"Think so. Oh, hey, guys, help me grab these." I waved Ihu, Tuc and Dnac over. "Here, mebbe if we turn them on their sides we can get them out behind the tents." Ihu came around and picked up one end of the portable shower stall. I hooked my fingers under the other end and we stumbled and grunted our way to the far side of camp. Sanna had slammed the hold doors shut and climbed back into the cockpit when I brushed my gloves off and headed back toward the freight. "I'll be back on Saturday," she called.
"See you then!" I shouted back as the twin propellers began spinning and sputtered into a sandy blur. It was kicking up dust into my face; I jogged back to where the others were standing until the thing took off and vanished in the cloudless blue sky.
*****
"So, what now, fearless leader?" Nedus asked.
I shrugged. "Wait until Jock and Picket report back in. As soon as they get back, I think I'll head out on survey. Goma, what do you know about the Eastern Expanse?"
"It exists," he replied simply. "That's about it. More fiend activity, sandstorms moderate. All those mongrels running around make it pretty dangerous, though. Ever been eaten alive by a Sand Worm?" I shook my head. "You don't want to be."
"Sounds like my kinda place," I replied. "So, who wants to be the first one to try out that brand-new shower of ours?"
Seven hands shot into the air. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a hover swooping in for landing. "Okay, you guys have a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament and figure that out while I go see what Jock figured out, sound good?" I dashed off before anyone could argue.
Jock got out of the hover at about the same time I made it over to him and shook his hair out. "I found it," he reported grimly. "Thing was totally mangled. I couldn't salvage much except three cans of food and a couple Al Bhed primers--not like there's anyone out here to teach Al Bhed to except the fiends."
"Any survivors?" I asked.
Just then, Picket zoomed by about two inches in front of my face and zinged in circles around me. "Greenhorns in sector B3!" it piped up gleefully.
"Shut up," Jock told it, then to me, "No sign of the pilot--looks like it crashed nosefirst, so he's probably underground. There were a couple passengers, none of whom made it. I, uhh...well, I dragged 'em out, made a fire. Burned 'em, you know how we've always done it. Scattered the ashes off the propeller on my way back."
Damn. He might be a hotshot, but at least he was human. Not many people would have taken the time to bury a couple of total strangers in the middle of nowhere. "Thanks, Jock," I said quietly. "You did the right thing."
He was scuffing his boot on the ground, looking a little embarassed. "Yeah, well...I did find one guy that was okay. He's got some minor burns--Nedus knows some basic medicine; he can treat that--and he's half-starving, but otherwise he looks all right."
"Digger?"
"Greenhorns in sector B3!" Picket whined again. I slammed one fist backward, hoping to catch it. I missed.
"Nope, merchant," Jock answered. "First thing he asked me when I pulled him out was whether I wanted to buy a Fiery Gleam."
"He said no. But maybe you do, ehm...?" came a voice from the cockpit of the hover. I looked over and saw a man in a long robe and a turban getting out.
"Nhadala," I told him. "You have a name?"
He bowed. "You may call me simply 'The Merchant.' I have arrived to peddle my wares among your diggers."
"You're lookin' at 'em," I snorted. "Try your luck at the Oasis." He merely smiled and held out a bottle of blue liquid that looked like a Potion. "I'm warning you, I'm not a bleeding heart case like--ahh, screw it. Here!" I snatched the bottle away from him and handed him 50 gil. "And that's the last you're getting outta me, ya bloodsucker. Jock, go get him fed and cleaned up before he cons me into buying the whole damn stock." And with that, Nhadala the Curmudgeon slunk off toward the center of camp, where the Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament was still in full swing.
"Okay, people, change of plans!" I announced. "Ihu, Tuc, and Dnac, you three are on duty this afternoon. We've gotta get this digging done somehow, so until we get someone to do it, it's a chore like everything else we do around this dump. Follow the rotation charts. When they get back, whoever's next heads out. Follow Picket's instructions and start looking in the Western Expanse. And Nedus, go check out those buildings on the edge of camp and find out whether they're liveable. If they are, we're movin' in. Got me? Great. The rest of you go back to what you were doing." I turned and then paused. "And while I'm at it, where the hell is Benzo?"
*****
I consulted the map for the fourth time in the last three minutes and pressed the joystick in a different direction. "This *is* the right way, ain't it?" I asked Benzo, who was once again strapped into the passenger's side seatbelts leaning over like he was the king of the world.
"Yes," Picket assured me. "Stop being so worry-warted, sweetcakes."
"Who asked you, circuithead?" I hissed as I brought the altitude up another two hundred feet.
"He's right, Nhadala," Benzo said patiently. "And don't say 'ain't.' It's not a word. You mean 'isn't.'"
"Dammit, Benzo!" The dashboard was taking a real beating this trip.
"You probably shouldn't curse so much, either. It's the sign of a small vocabulary."
"Benzo?"
"Yes?"
"Ever been kissed?"
"No."
"Wanna start with that sand dune over there?!"
He shut up.
"There!" Picket started whirring. "Take it down, chief, this is the Eastern Expanse."
I glanced back at it, irritated. "Why take it down? I just want to check the place out."
"No sandstorm activity, low fiend activity, and I'm picking up readings from an artifact down there. Pretty small. Stone. I can't get a good estimate on the age, but I'd say it's at least a couple hundred years old."
"Hmm. Well, if Gippal doesn't want it, I can set it into a necklace," I mused ironically. "All right, I got some time to kill. Any objections, Benzo?"
"Not a one. Perhaps it's a stone tablet. I wonder if any ancient civilizations on this island left records."
"Were there any?"
He spread his hands. "Who knows? Maybe this'll tell us."
I took the hover down to the ground and tightened my goggles. "All right, Picket, gimme a map or something here."
Picket swooped down and opened its central compartment to display a small sphere map. "The object I picked up is about twenty feet to your northeast. Be careful, though, it's hot out here. Without any protective gear or water, you have about sixty seconds to dig it up and get back to the hover before you collapse from heat stroke."
I grabbed it--him?--Picket--and started walking in the direction it'd indicated. I could see where I was going; the large yellow X on the sphere screen was the artifact he was talking about. We must've looked completely idiotic--a machinized blender and a blitzer in heels tangoing through the middle of nowhere--but I got myself to the spot and dropped to my knees, using my gloves to sift through the sand until I hit something hard. I took one glove off and brushed more hot sand away until I came up with a small stone disk, roughly rectangular and about the size of my hand, with tiny holes in it.
"Picket, what gives with this thing?" I asked.
"I'll analyze it when we get back to the hover," it replied. "To which, by the way, you have twelve seconds to return before you pass out."
I stood up and dashed, almost falling into the air-conditioned cockpit. When I'd cooled off enough to move, I wiped the sweat off my face, climbed all the way in and closed the door, and took off again.
"Here. Take a look at this," I said to Benzo, handing the disk over. Picket dropped down to hover over the translator's shoulder and scan it. "I'm gonna do a quick flyby of the entire expanse and then head back. After the heat out there, I think I'm a little too tired to be doing this right now."
The first things I noticed when we were back at cruising altitude were the dozens, maybe hundreds of machina scattered all over the desert in this expanse. "Wow, it's a machina graveyard," I mused. "This place probably has everything we're interested in and more."
"At one time, it was probably our testing grounds," Benzo said. "Did you live at Home at all?"
I caught myself and answered noncommitally, "Some."
"Then you probably knew mechanics who worked there. They were trying to repair machina here--this is where most of our subs came from. They also developed small things for Home; uncomplicated stuff like electric lighting and microwaves."
I nodded, but I was concentrating on the ground. Nothing else interesting goes on in the desert. I could see fiends roaming; they looked about as hot as I felt. Who knew Pyreflies were still affected by heat? I scrawled a couple of Xs onto the map where I thought some sites that might be worth checking out up close later were and then swung back across the middle of the desert toward camp.
"No clue, Nhadala," Benzo said finally.
"I've never seen anything like it either," agreed Picket. "Why don't you ask Gippal about it? In fact, you should do it now, because it looks like there's a storm coming in."
"Right. I'll put that at the end of my mile-long to-do list. First thing up is taking a long, cool shower--waiddaminute. A storm? I hate storms." I jumped out of the hover--and froze.
Standing in the middle of camp were two of the people in all of Spira I least wanted to see: the High Summoner Yuna and Aniki's little sister.
Okay. Time to think up a really good cover story.
Really fast.