DISCLAIMER:  I do not own FFX, FFX-2, FFVIII or any of the characters and locations affiliated with it.  I do, however, own the story "Silver Wings", "Silver Wings 2: 1000 Confessions" and all references to dialogue not originated by Square-Enix.

DO NOT COPY MY STORIES!!

If anyone wants to post my stories anywhere else, please just ASK and then give me credit for writing it.  Email akksgurlyahoo.com with any requests.

PLEASE NOTE:  "PaineOfBevelleSairysSkyeWind" is a fic stealer!!  Watch out for her.  She is also known as "Paine" and "Paine of Spira"  I am sure I am not the only one she is stealing from so be sure to keep an eye out for my fics as well as others on other sites.  She has been known to post on apocalypse.com, adultfanfiction.net, and nfiction.com.

Author's Notes:  We're getting to the meat of the story now.  I can't say for sure how many chapters there will be, but there is a definite possibility that there will be the same (if not more) chapters than Silver Wings (the first one).  I can't guarantee, though.  It depends on if my muse comes up with any more crazy twists.

SILVER WINGS 3: Back Into My Arms

by akksgurl

Chapter Thirteen: Time To Find Another Praetoress

Tidus wearily lead the teenagers through the underbelly of Bevelle Temple.  He wasn't sure where he was going.  He had never been this far below the surface before, but he managed well enough by keeping his eye upon the pathways of the Cloister of Trials above.

Squall's hand landed harshly on his shoulder after Tidus had lead them all over the 'castle' and came upon a large wooden door with a knocker upon it.  He didn't have to utter a world for everyone seemed to know what he was thinking. 

This Ultimecia person was in this room. 

"Everybody…" Squall said after a moment of silence, "This is it.  Ultimecia is here.  Let's get it over with and fight her now."

Nods came from everybody but Tidus who shook his head in rapid succession, "Hell no!" he said, "I am not going to die when I'm so close to being home!"

Squall frowned and scratched around the scar on his head, "What do you suggest then?"

"How about I go and you guys finish up here?" Tidus said.

Shrugging, Squall replied, "Well, do what you want but we're going in."

Tidus stood and watched as his companions made their way toward the large door and began to pull it open.  Light leaked through and lit the small stone walkway where they stood.  Tidus could distinctly hear voices from within as he watched his companions struggle to open the door the remainder of the way.

"So…what exactly are we waiting for?"

Tidus gasped and grabbed Squall's shoulder, shoving him to the side to peer into the crack made by the door.  She was standing beside the one he assumed was Ultimecia with her hair in the same haphazard style it had been the last time he had seen her.

Rikku…

"What's the deal?!" Squall hissed, pushing Tidus back against the wall, "Are you trying to mess this up for us?"

"T..tha…that's…Rikku!" Tidus responded in a hushed whisper.

"Like…who's Rikku?" Selphie asked.

Tidus sighed, "She's Yuna's cousin!  I knew I was home!  Rikku's here to get me!"

Squall stared at him with no emotion on his face until he whispered monotonously, "Why is your girlfriend's cousin here to get you and not your girl?"

Tidus felt sure that Squall had stabbed him in the heart with those words.  He hadn't thought about it like that.  Where was Yuna?  Why wasn't she there to get him?  An even better question…was Rikku even there to get him?  How would they have known he'd be coming this way?  And…why was Rikku with Ultimecia in the first place?

Summoning up all his courage, Tidus rose to his full height before Squall, "I don't care about that right now.  Rikku is in there and she's going to take me home.  Everything else is inconsequential." And with a quick turn on his heels, Tidus pulled the door the rest of the way and marched into the room.

-------------------------.

"Please, tell us where Rikku went." Yuna begged Paine, gripping her friend's hands tightly in her own, "I need to talk to her."

Paine pulled her hands away in an act of disgust and shook her head at Yuna, "Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you, but I don't so this discussion is pointless anyway."  With a last sneer directed at Gippal, Paine turned on her heels and left the Celsius, making her way through the sand toward Home.

Yuna's shoulders sagged tremendously and she let a tear fall from her eyes, "Where could she be…?"

"I don't know…" Gippal replied.

Yuna spun to him, fire in her eyes as she pounded her fists on his chest angrily, "This is all your fault!"

"My fault!" Gippal screamed, appalled at her accusation.

"Yes!" Yuna insisted, pounding harder until he caught her fists in his hands and pushed her away from him, "You kissed me!"

"You kissed me back!"

Yuna wiped her mouth violently with the back of her hand, "And it was disgusting!!"

"You didn't seem to think so then!"

Yuna glared at him with her arms akimbo before dropping them to her sides and sighing dejectedly, "What will Tidus think?"

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you grabbed my…" Gippal said, letting the sentence trail off with the unspoken innuendo hanging in the air.

Lifting her eyes to connect with his, Yuna hissed, "And it was barely there!  It felt like limp spaghetti!"

"Maybe that's because you're not hot enough!"

Yuna growled low in her throat, "Ooo!  Rikku was right!   You are a man whore!!" she seethed, kicking out but missing his shins as he jumped out of the way at the last moment.  She spun on her heels to avoid him when she suddenly stopped in her tracks as a realization dawned upon her. 

Yuna had told Rikku about Ultimecia's prediction about Tidus…

Spinning back to Gippal, all trace of her previous anger gone, she whispered breathlessly, "Rikku went to get Tidus back…"

--------------------------.

Tidus' first glimpse of Ultimecia nearly stopped his heart.  The resemblance to Rinoa was uncanny but Squall didn't seem to notice.  Nonetheless, if Tidus didn't know any better, he'd swear that Ultimecia was Rinoa…but that just wasn't possible.

Was it…?

However, there wasn't time to ponder those thoughts when Rikku's shrill voice rang clear through the room, "Tidus!!!!!!!!!"  The blonde bounded from her perch next to Ultimecia and leapt into his arms with the same gusto Yuna had exhibited when he had first come back.

Slightly blown off balance, Tidus scrambled to remain standing while the girl frantically hugged him as if making sure he was really there.  With gentle hands, Tidus removed her from his person and smiled at her, "Nice to see you too Rikku."

"You're back!" she shrieked, jumping up and down excitedly before spinning back to Ultimecia, "Thanks so much!"

"She helped you?" asked Squall as he lifted his gunblade in the air menacingly.

Rikku nodded, "She's the one who told us that Tidus wasn't really dead, just back in the dream world."

Squall groaned, "Enough with this 'dream world' crap." He said to Rikku before focusing his cobalt blue eyes on Ultimecia, "We're here to stop you…"

"...SeeD..." Ultimecia said with a half smile on her face, "SeeD......SeeD......SeeD, SeeD, SeeD!" Standing suddenly, she raised her long hands in the air above her and dragged them down her body in a slow and provocative manner, "Kurse all SeeDs.  Swarming like lokusts akross generations. You disgust me."

"What's going on…?" Rikku whispered to Tidus, gripping his shoulder tightly.

"I don't know…" Tidus whispered back, "but I think we should back up…"

"The world was on the brink of that ever-elusive 'time-kompression'." Ultimecia continued, never breaking eye contact with Squall.  She pointed a long finger at him which was bejeweled with nails grown to three inches and filed to sharp points, "Insolent fools!" she shrieked, "Your vain krusade ends here, SeeDs.  The price for your meddling is death beyond death.  I shall send you to a dimension beyond your imagining.  There, I will reign, and you will be my slaves for eternity.

Tidus grabbed Rikku around the waist and flung her over his shoulder as Ultimecia's evil cackle grew louder and louder.  Finding a relatively good place to hide behind a gargoyle statue, he dropped her on her behind and hissed in her face, "We're going to stay here.  This doesn't involve us."

"Yes it does!" Rikku cried, "They're going to kill that nice lady!"

Tidus did a double take, his mouth hanging open until he questioned, "Nice lady?"

"Yeah…the Praetoress.  She's the reason I found you."

"Praetoress…?" Tidus was incredibly confused and rocked back on his heels, rubbing his head as the first strains of a migraine began to play between his eyes.

"Whom shall I exterminate first!?" Ultimecia asked, slowly trailing her claw over her chest before pointing, "I'll start with you three!"

Rikku jumped to her feet and squealed, "We can't let them kill the Praetoress!"

"Rikku!" Tidus cried, grabbing the blonde before she ran headlong into the ensuing battle, "Stop it!  That woman is an evil sorceress who is trying to kill them!  Not the other way around.  Now, I don't know why she helped you find me, and that doesn't matter right now."

------------------------------------.

"We can't let them kill the Praetoress!"

Gippal stopped in his tracks as the voice echoed along the corridors of the Cloister of Trials.  Yuna stopped too and listened.  The sound of clashing weapons and cries of anger and pain echoed along with Rikku's pleas and Gippal dropped to his knees to listen closer to the ground.

"What are you doing?" Yuna asked him as he crawled between her legs to another location on the ground.

Gippal didn't reply for a moment as if trying to decide whether what he thought was a possibility or not but when he decided it was, he stood quickly, "She's below us…"

------------------------------.

"Hey!  Hey come back here!"

Tidus spun at the sound of his uncle's voice and ducked further behind the gargoyle as Seifer – who his uncle was supposed to be protecting – and Laguna ran through with the latter man frantically trying to catch the former.  Seifer ran toward Squall who was busily trying to ward off Ultimecia's attacks.  The man unsheathed his weapon and Tidus saw his intentions in that instant.  Forgetting that he was unarmed and seeing only that a life was in danger, Tidus jumped from his space and tackled the taller man in one move, rolling and punching until his gunblade fell free from his hand. 

"Rikku!  Grab it!" he shouted back at the blonde girl still hidden in shadows.  A bolt of lightening flashed next to Tidus and he jumped, realizing he'd narrowly missed being the unwelcomed recipient of a thunder spell.  Rikku bent to retrieve the gunblade and made to hand it to Tidus but the man refused, "No.  I've gotta keep him down.  Get her!" he shouted, motioning toward Ultimecia. 

"I am Ultimecia." She was hissing, "Time shall compress...All existence denied." Another spell flashed, narrowly missing Rinoa and Selphie, "Reflect on your...childhood..."  A blinding white light surrounded Tidus and he struggled to maintain in control of the struggling man he held to the ground.  The sound of a gunblade clattering to the ground was his only connection to reality.

"Is she all right?"

"Why should you care?"

"If she dies, I wouldn't know what to do."

"Don't say Mom is gonna die!"
 
"I apologize."

"Your sensation..."

"Dad?"
 
"Yeah?"
 
"I hate you."
 
"I know, I know.  You know what you have to do."

"Yeah."

"Your words..."

"And I've been telling Yuna... 'Let's go to Zanarkand together! Let's beat Sin!' I told her all the things we could...we could... And all along, the whole time, I didn't know anything! But Yuna, she'd...just smile."

"Your emotions..."

"Yuna, I have to go.  I'm sorry I couldn't show you Zanarkand.  Goodbye!"
 
"Hey!"
 
"We're gonna see you again...?"
 
"Yuna!"
 
"I love you."

"Time...It will not wait...No matter...how hard you hold on.  It escapes you..."

"Hey! Can't we rest a little?"
 
"No need. We reach the summit soon."
 
"I know, that's why I want to stop for a bit.  Soon means that... there's not much time left."
 
"Rikku..."
 
"Fine. I'll think on the way."
 
"Hey, come on, let's go."
 
"We are almost there, aren't we?"

"And..."

"Stop it!!!!" Tidus screamed, flying to his feet in a fit of rage, tears streaming from his eyes.  Grabbing the gunblade from the ground, he plunged it through Ultimecia's stomach in one quick thrust, watching as it entered and protruded from the other side with the thick crust of blood upon it. 

Ultimecia's eyes glazed over as she stared down at the gunblade in shock.  Tidus backed off suddenly, afraid of himself and what he'd just done.  Seifer opened his eyes as if seeing him for the first time as he slowly rose to his feet as well.  The teens who had been fighting stared with mouths agape at the sight they saw before them. 

Rikku tripped backward, landing firmly into Zell's arms as a low hum began to form from Ultimecia which grew louder and louder.  Her head snapped up suddenly and her eyes focused on Rikku.

"You…promised…" Ultimecia moaned at Rikku as the hum grew louder and louder until it became deafening and the woman's body exploded, shooting body parts everywhere and onto everything.  A breath of white wind flew from were Ultimecia had been standing and seemed to jump into Rikku's open mouth, having hung agape from her screams. 

Then the girl collapsed…