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.
I know, I know, I'm a terrible slacker. This chapter and all the ones after it are dedicated to Kane Skylight, for IMing me at least once a week: "Update yet?" I hope you talk to me before you see this, so I can actually say yes for once.
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 16: Mercurial Strike
I spent most of the morning in bed staring at the wall. Eventually Sanna came into the shelter, banged a small cardboard box down on the floor by my cot, and walked out without a word. A few minutes later I heard the whirr as the hover took off.
When I was sure she was gone and I was back in dead silence, I struggled to sit up and grab the box. Inside were three glowing spheres and a note in borderline-illegible handwriting.
"Hey, hon, I've spliced out the three dress spheres from that video sphere, so these should work for you as a Songstress, a Gunner, and a Gun Mage. You know the drill. Don't get too carried away playing with them--if we don't start getting some results around here we'll make about as much money on this war as we would selling time shares in Sanubia. Come on, baby, let's see some hustle! Love, GippalPS--But don't kill yourself."
Ironically, that was the most comforting thing I'd heard in a long time.
I took the dress spheres out and rolled them around in my hand. I'd already used the Songstress, and I knew from the fight with Benzo that Rin was the Gun Mage. So Bickson was naturally a Gunner. That would explain his affinity for the Gauntlet back on Besaid. That was when the idea hit me: I could use that sphere to practice, and when I got back, I'd be able to show that moron Beclem a thing or two. That thought cheered me up enough to get out of bed.
I still couldn't hear anything outside the shelter, so I got up and stumbled outside into the sunlight. The place looked pretty much deserted. Everyone must have gotten their assignments and headed out for the day already. It was already almost noon.
"Anyone around?" I called, walking slowly toward the middle of camp. The hovers were gone--even the mechanics must've gone with them this time.
"Yeah, over here!" someone else yelled back from one of the tents. I turned around to see Reppi walk out holding a charred piece of scrap metal in her hands. "Hey, boss," she greeted me. "You doing okay?"
"Not bad," I lied. "What are you still doing around? Looks like you're pretty much the only person left in camp."
"Looks like it, huh?" She shrugged. "Yeah, guess so. I haven't been lookin' around much. I've been in that tent all morning, testin' this out."
I was completely lost until I remembered. Oh, yeah, the machina squadrons on the rampage in the Eastern Expanse. Ihu had told me that they'd been designed to keep civilians away from the projects going on there--the scientists had been virtually clueless about a lot of the technology they'd been experimenting on, so there had been a lot of mishaps. After a couple of kids playing near there had been hurt trying to operate an experimental submarine in the middle of the desert, the teams had come up with small attack drones to keep people out of the region. None of us knew how to shut them off, and most of the scientists who'd worked there were dead, so we were at a loss to do anything except take them all out. I knew Reppi was a pretty strong mage, so eventually I got her to take a look at the problem and try to see if she could come up with a solution.
"Come up with anything?" I wanted to know.
"Electric shocks stop 'em for a while, but the easiest thing to do is just swipe their internal engines--if you're fast enough. I'll see if I can figure out a way to slow 'em down."
We were talking totally normally, and I had this sudden urge to grab her by the throat and shake her. "I'm LINNA!" I wanted to scream at her. "Stop falling for this stupid half-ass lookalike act and tell everyone I'm here so I can tell Gippal it's not my fault and go home!"
"Great," I told her instead. "Keep up the good work." I turned and started off toward the side of camp where we kept the hovers. Man, was even Benzo gone?
"Hey, Linna!" Reppi called suddenly from behind me.
My muscles twitched, but I managed to shut myself up in time. "Just a wannabe," I called back.
When I looked over my shoulder, she was watching me thoughtfully. "Just checkin'," she said, half to herself.
Luckily I didn't have to say anything else, because right then my commsphere rang. I picked it up; it was Benzo. "Nhadala, you've gotta come see this," he said. "Marnela told me about a hidden cavern in the Machina Graveyard. I guess one of the Cactuars found it while they were training, but she says there's some really good stuff there."
"How soon can you pick me up?" I asked.
"I'm on my way now."
In ten minutes I was over the Eastern Expanse, with Benzo riding shotgun and a Cactuar bouncing around on my lap. The interpreter was listening to its chitters and telling me where to go, but when the little guy (or girl; as with Chocobos, I didn't know and wasn't checking) started going nuts on me, I figured out on my own that it was time to land.
"Okay, little buddy, where to now?" I asked as the thing leapt out and started dancing in circles in the sand.
"This one doesn't know much Al Bhed yet," Benzo told me as he switched to Cactuar and started chittering out my question. At least, I thought that was what he was doing. He could have been saying, "Haha! That stupid blonde lady still thinks there is a cave here! What she doesn't know is that I am going to run her out here in the desert pretending to search for it until she collapses from exhaustion and I get her job! Just pick a direction!"
But if that was the plan, it didn't work, because the little creature spun around one more time and marched decisively off over a hill until it disappeared from view. When I'd jogged to the top of the dune myself, I expected to see it hobbling off into the sand, but it was gone. I was still standing there like a moron when Benzo calmly strode up behind me, jumped off the dune into the pit below, and turned around to walk straight back into the hill. When I got down there, I saw that the hill I'd been standing on actually formed the top of the cave.
The Cactuar chittered something to Benzo, who chittered back, sending the green thing skittering out into the sun. "I told her we could find her way back. She was headed somewhere to train."
"Train?" I asked, adjusting the dimmers on my goggles as we walked deeper into the cave and the light receded.
"Yes. She's one of the Ten Gatekeepers, Bartschella. She was the one who found this place, but from what I hear it's not her style. She likes to be where the action is."
"Don't we all," I muttered. "Where do you think this stuff is?"
"I don't know, but we'd better stop and arm ourselves before we go in any farther. This place is bound to be filled with fiends." He stopped and turned toward me expectantly, and I unshouldered my gear bag and took out the garment grid and the dress spheres. "What do you think? Gun Mage again?" he asked me, studying them.
I shrugged. There was no way there was enough light in here for him to be able to pick out a Luca Goers uniform. "I'm going Gunner." And hopefully there really were a ton of fiends in here, just so I could get used to the dual triggers, even if I had to sacrifice the improved vision my goggles would give me. I just made out the outline of his profile nodding in assent, and so I reached my hand out to touch Bickson's sphere.
The transformation was weird. It wasn't so much the shift from my blitz uniform to one that Doram or Balgerda would wear, but landing in a puddle of Bickson's consciousness. I was picking up a hint of his typical arrogant jerk persona. Almost involuntarily, I flexed my arms, laughing a little to myself. Now I was feeling good.
There was a brief glare of colored light in the darkness as Benzo switched to Gun Mage, and then we continued together in the darkness. The cave was stretching out into a long tunnel, just wide enough for each of us to keep one hand on the wall and lace the fingers of our inside hands together to keep from getting separated. I couldn't tell whether or not the route was straight, but it didn't matter, because there was no other way to go.
We'd been walking for maybe ten minutes when I heard the whirring sound. I froze, holding my breath, and cut my eyes around at Benzo. He was looking at me and I knew he'd heard it too. Then suddenly a series of stomps started and got louder and louder. Silently, I dropped my hands and reached for the holsters at my sides.
The ground was shaking.
The next thing I was aware of was metal gleaming against the light from Benzo's goggles. Whatever it was, it was almost on top of us now. And whatever it was, it was large.
"I was wrong," Benzo whispered to me. "It's not filled with fiends. It's filled with machina."
And then there was a four-foot corkscrew stabbing out right above his head.
If he'd been a few inches taller, it would have impaled him, driving that nail straight through his face. He instantly flattened himself on the ground in the center of the corridor, and then I heard the sound of heavy machinery moving and realized that the thing was raising a leg. Without thinking, I threw myself at him in a blitz tackle I'd practiced a million times back in Besaid with the guys and rolled us both straight into the wall. The sharp-edged metal platform slammed into the ground with such force that both of us literally bounced.
I rolled and pressed my back against Benzo, ripping both guns out of the holsters and firing with two hands at the thing's leg, which was still pressing into the sand-covered stone floor of the tunnel. I'd meant to defend him--another dry-land version of a blitz tech--but he pushed me over just a little so he could get his own oversized gun out and aim it at the colossus. The next thing I knew, my back was up against the pole that attached the platform to the rest of the machine and I was being dragged up into the air on top of it.
I scrambled to grab onto the pole and dropped one of my guns. Beneath me, I saw Benzo scrambling to, to grab the weapon before the foot came down again and crushed it. As the foot reached the top of its trajectory before slamming down, I finally managed to right myself and jump off and out. I hit the ground at the same time as the platform, only a few feet away.
"Nhadala!" Benzo yelled, throwing the gun at me. I barely caught it and pressed myself against the wall to keep away from the foot and the corkscrew, both barrels blazing as I shot round after round into the machine. But it was still getting closer.
Over the din, I could just hear the interpreter shouting in Al Bhed. "This isn't working! We need to find another way to get at it!"
I was breathing hard, still sore from all the bruises I'd gotten the night before. Man, two scrapes with huge hulking threats in one day was just too much. Why had I bothered getting up? I could still be back at camp, lounging around like the big boss woman, chatting with Reppi-
--and then it hit me. This was one of the guard machina she'd been talking about. What had she said? Use electric attacks and steal its engine. Gotcha.
"Benzo!" I called back. "Distract it for a second!"
"What are you going to do?!"
"Probably get my ass killed." I ducked under the corkscrew and got behind the machina at the same time as he ran out in front of it. The zipper stuck on my gear bag, but in a few seconds I had the grid out and I was flipping back into my own blitz uniform. Then I flung the garment grid at Benzo and yelled, "Quick! Go back into Alchemist and mix up something that'll create an electrical charge!"
"Wha--?"
"Don't ask questions, just do it!" I bellowed at him. Then I jumped as hard as I could and landed on the back of the machine. My feet were kicking right on top of the corkscrews until I managed to find footholds. When I was clinging onto the mech's torso with both arms in a bear hug, I tried to think logically. I knew where the engines were located now in the transportation mechs Gippal had sent us to find. The most important part would be in the central area with the best defense. And that meant that my arms were wrapped around the thing right now.
Man, talk about stupid, arrogant things to do.
There was one flash of light and then another, and then I felt a white-hot blast of electricity. "Without killing me!" I screamed as both my feet fell and one of my arms slipped from the machina's torso. Stars were flashing in my eyes. My left foot connected with the corkscrew and barely held as it shot out, giving me just enough time to grab the machine again before I fell.
Now I had a problem--how was I going to get the engine out of the machine without falling? The entire center of the body couldn't be the engine--it must be inside. There were no panels on the back-- the thing was continuous sheet metal, which struck me as really odd. On the front, though, my fingers felt the ridge in the machine where a panel must be bolted on somehow, and I was sure the engine had to be there. Slowly, still hugging the machina, I hooked my right ankle around the platform pole as it rose and spun myself around to the front. Once I was there, I found the panel and felt my heart sink as I realized it was bolted. At all four corners.
A sudden electric blast glancing off the corkscrew right near my right foot reminded me Benzo was there and nearly made me fall again. If I didn't do this quickly he'd electrocute me. "Benzo, gimme the garment grid again!" I called, wrapping my legs around the torso too and reaching out with one arm. I wasn't sure if I could switch dress spheres without letting go of my hold on the machine, but I was about to find out. I found the Warrior sphere in my bag and jammed my hand on it.
My free hand curled around the hilt of a sword and I hissed. Miyu's armor was metal. That would make it even worse for me. Benzo couldn't attack the machine effectively without using lightning, and if he stopped attacking it it would turn on me. But if he shocked it again, the metal would connect and probably hurt me even worse. I had to do this right away if I wanted to live. Carefully, I tightened my legs around the machine--as a female and a forward, my strength has always been in my legs--and freed both arms so I could pry the panel off with the edge of the sword.
When it had clattered to the ground, I switched back into my own Thief form, wrapped both hands around whatever it was inside that compartment, and yanked.
I fell backwards, taking the hunk of metal with me. Landing flat on my back on the ground, I watched as the machina leg ground to the top of its cycle, poised to flatten me--and suddenly exploded.
For several seconds, I was still breathing too hard to speak.
"Well," Benzo said brightly, "all's well that ends well," and he continued down the tunnel.
The place was starting to feel like the Via Purifico all over again by the time I finally got to my feet, brushed myself off, and started walking again. If the claustrophobic corridor hadn't opened up only a few minutes later, I might have called the whole thing off and told the Cactaurs to take their cave and cram it. "This better be worth it," I griped once every four or five seconds to Benzo. He just smiled benignly. Sensing that any abuse I could think of would fall on deaf ears, I shut up.
We were moving toward a source of light. By that point, even this pissed me off, because I figured it had been some crazy Cactuar prank to trick the stupid humans into walking through a tunnel and nearly getting killed while Marnela...I dunno, made prank calls on our commsphere. As we got closer, though, we realized that the light wasn't coming from the sun. It was artificial.
The cave we ended up standing in was about the size of four of our big tents arranged in a rough rectangle. There were electric lights lining the walls, but that wasn't the first thing that hit us. The place was crammed with machina.
"Oh, wow," Benzo breathed, wandering slowly over to a large airfan.
"What is this place?" I asked him.
He turned to look at me though the isolation suit. "This is the nucleus of the Al Bhed testing grounds. I'd always heard rumors about it, but I never thought it actually existed. The story goes that about twenty years ago, our top engineers established this secret lab somewhere on the island where they weren't just restoring machina, but actually creating it. Remember, back then the Yevonites were arresting anyone who was doing machina research. Those guys didn't care if the maesters got hold of the subs and innocuous things they were looking at, because they knew they wouldn't use them, but they knew they'd be killed and their ideas stolen if that lab was found. For years, crackpots have thought it was hidden somewhere in the Oasis or just offshore. Who knew it was right under their noses the whole time?"
I'd stopped listening after the first sentence or so and shrugged. I was wandering the long lines of machina. Twenty years. I'd still been playing with blocks, and people here had been coming up with things that had defined my life. Construction equipment. Pumps for desalinating ocean water. Automatic cleaning machina. And then, at the end of a row, I saw one of the water pumps hooked up to a specially-designed plant box. It was the system I'd used for my hydroponic garden.
"Take that, you Moonflow-sucking losers," I muttered to the Yevonites at large. "This is what science can do. Grow tropical plants in straight water in the middle of a desert. And you guys were using, what, handmade wood rakes?"
"Look, Nhadala," Benzo called from behind me. My Yevonite-bashing reverie went poof. "They have the names of the inventors on them. They're prototypes! They should be in a museum."
"Yeah?" I didn't care all that much, but I idly leaned over and craned my neck up to glance at the underbelly of the machina box that held the plants and the water-distribution mechanism. There was a small panel there, with simple block letters etched into the metal. "Brought forth from the crypt of the ages by Merko."
My father.