"Argh, what do you want?!" I questioned angrily without opening my eyes. (I knew it was Paine from her monotone voice.) "It's way to early to be up!!"
"There are people in trouble! Get your scrawny Al Bhed butt up and help me!" Paine cried, and I heard footsteps rapidly thundering out of the room.
That definitely got my attention, and I flung the covers back from my body and dashed out of bed. I heard grumbling behind me as Yuna also scrambled sleepily out of the blankets, her layered brown hair a jumbled mess. We dressed quickly, throwing on our dress spheres with our usual ease. Yuna's outfit was her regular gunner, while I put on my favorite thief outfit, and we both rushed up the stairs to the deck as quick as our legs would carry us.
As we busted through the double doors, I noticed everyone was leaning against the railing on the right side of the ship, eyes wide and mouths hanging open. Paine was standing on the very outskirts of the crowd, her long skull sword swung over her left shoulder.
"What's going on?!" Yuna shouted as we jogged our way over to the emotionless warrior. Paine simply pointed in the general direction everyone was having a fuss over and we both stopped and turned to see what the hubbub was about.
"Oh NO!" I cried. Even though the Winno was a good distance away from Luca, we could still see the horrible act taking place on the dock. A large Tros had crawled out from the waters and was now positioned right in the middle of the Lucans, it's long tentacles wrapped around two small children. Their pitiful screams of pain and fear echoed out across the waves. I thought I was going to be sick with sympathy listening to it.
"How are we going to help them?" Yuna asked. "We're too far away from the dock to jump or swim, and besides if we do decide to swim the Tros will attack us and then we have no chance."
"Then we wait." Paine said sharply, her red eyes glaring at us as if we were the stupidest people alive.
"How can you say that so calmly while two children are about to be ripped to pieces?!" I cried shrilly, losing all control of myself, and I noticed a few people turning their heads to stare at us, but at the moment I didn't care. "Do you even have a heart under all that leather?!"
"Rikku..." Yuna said, putting her arm around my shaking shoulders. Paine just stared at me with her usual cold stare and I wanted so badly to continue ranting when the sound of running feet slammed across the deck behind us, diverting my attention from those deep crimson eyes.
"Eh.." I whispered as I turned to see who was making such a racket. There was a blur of blonde hair and black clothing as a small arm wrapped itself securely around my waist, wrenching me from Yuna's grasp. I barely had time to scream before I felt myself vaulted into the sky, flying gracefully through the air over the crowd of gaping onlookers, and just above the sea's angry waves.
"Hey! What's the big idea? Lemme go! LEMME GO!" I cried as I struggled in my attacker's tiny arms, my long hair blocking my view of his or her face.
"Lady Rikku, please stop thrashing, unless you want to be a fish's lunch." The voice was female, and I quickly wrapped my arms around her waist just in case her grip loosened, sending me tumbling downward into the water. Her choice of words was so darn familiar..
"Lady Rikku..." I thought. "Who's the only person that calls me by that name?"
"Raven???" I questioned, trying and failing to brush my bangs out of my face.
"Yes Ma'am, now hold on.. This may hurt."
I whirled my head around just in time to see the Luca dock rushing up to meet us.. Realizing that I didn't have time to 'brace myself', I leapt out of the pale girls arms, slamming into the deck on my side. The pain from my landing shot up and down the left portion of my petite body in nauseating waves, and I barely had the strength to pull myself to my feet. Raven stood a few feet from me, searching rapidly through a small red handbag.
"How and why did you do that?" I called out to her in a shaky voice, as I brushed dirt from my scrapes. The Tros roared, and I could hear the children scream.
"I used my rod to vault us over the water from the ship, and you DID say that you wanted to help somehow... I figured I would take you with me." She replied, pulling a large black dress sphere from her bag, and I recognized the dark orb immediately..
"You're gonna use the Dark Knight?" I asked skeptically. Most people shied away from the sphere because of its energy draining powers.
"Yeah... it's the strongest sphere I own." She replied as a dark red light engulfed her tiny frame, and a circle of black smoke bubbled up around her feet. I could still hear the screams of the two children, and I glanced anxiously over at the Winno and back again at the Tros, wondering how long it would take Yuna and Paine to arrive on the scene. Raven and I couldn't fight this big a fiend alone.
Suddenly I heard a the sound of metal slamming against concrete, and I turned to see that Raven had jammed her iron rod deep into the ground as she slowly sank into the hole the dark knight dress sphere had created. Before she was totally submerged she cried..
"Lady Rikku, distract the fiend while I complete my change, try to cut of the arms holding the little ones!"
I nodded as I tore my twin daggers from their pouches, and dashed toward the beast assaulting the civilians. Dodging the swinging arms, I struck out again and again, finally cutting through an arm clutching onto a small girl. The Tros screamed in pain as its arm hit the dock with a plop, releasing the girl from its disgusting grip. She scampered away in the direction of her mother, and I raised my knives again to stab the arm around the boy when the ground started to quake uncontrollably. My eyes darted away from the monster and as soon as they did, I became aware of my careless mistake. The creature saw it's open opportunity to strike me, and it did so, slinging me across the dock. I hit the ground with a scream, and skidded to a stop before some crates.
"Rikku!!" I heard Yunie's voice cry out my name, and the sound of her feet thundered in my ears as she ran over to me. I felt her cradle my head in her arms, brushing my long braids from my eyes.
"I guess you guys finally made it, huh?" I painfully choked out. My back was killing me, and the ground shaking so badly wasn't helping anything.
She didn't have time to answer because the dock pitched violently, and we were both thrown head over heels backwards. This time instead of landing on my back, I crashed into a crate, and the force of the blow slammed me into an upright position. Sitting there I became well aware of the reason for the earthquake.
The hole, which Raven had descended into earlier, now produced two tiny flaming hands pulling whatever horror lay behind them into the calm world of Spira. My breath caught in my throat as a fiery creature in the shape of a human clawed itself out of the abyss. As it stood on spiky armored legs, it reached into the hole once again, retrieving a huge black sword, also engulfed with angry flames.
"Raven..." I whispered to myself, but was it really her? Could that awful looking creature help us to defeat a monster equally horrendous? Obviously it could, because suddenly she broke into a sprint, her flaming weapon held over her head in the same position she had held her rod the night she had almost bashed my head in. The fiend whipped it's long tentacles out at her in an attempt to stop her assault before she brought her sword down, but it was way to late. With a scream, Raven swung her weapon with a force so strong that when she sliced through the Tros's arm, she slammed the concrete, forming a long, thick crack down the dock.
When the tentacle hit the ground, it let go of the second child, and the young boy ran just as quickly as his predecessor had, holding onto his wounded arms with his bleeding hands.
"Who-who is that?" I heard a voice stammer next to me. I felt a warm hand come down on mine, as Yunie crawled into a sitting position next to me. I lay my head on her shoulder, trying to ease the pain in my back and head. The ground wasn't swaying quite as badly now, and I found my voice just long enough to reply..
"A fan of ours... I'll introduce you to her later, but now shouldn't we try to help her?"
"I think she's doing pretty well on her own." A different voice answered. Paine stood above us, propping her long sword up against the crates we were leaning against.
"I think she's right." Yuna agreed. "Besides, I'm kinda afraid of what she might do, considering the way that dress sphere looks..." Yuna gasped loudly and pointed back towards the battle. "Look!."
I followed her quaking finger, and also sucked in a quick breath of air..
"No way..." I whispered to no one in particular.
Raven had yet again drove her weapon into the ground, and a ring of dark acid was bubbling around her blood red boots. The Tros's remaining arms were tied into a tight knot, subduing it for the moment.
"Dra byeh oui ryja lyicat draca baubma, oui femm nalaeja dah vumt! Drec ec so ykuho, so vayn, so yhkan. PA KUHA!"
She wrenched the sword from the ground, sending a wall of acid filled pain flying into the surprised monster. It let out one last dying scream, and was vaporized by the strongest Darkness attack I had ever seen. I wasn't just destroyed in an explosion of pyre flies, it was literally VAPORIZED. A few lazy pyre flies flitted into the blue sky before finally disappearing, and that was all that remained of the terrifying beast.
The ground finally stopped it's shaking completely, and the last of the on lookers walked away with bewildered looks frozen on their scratched faces. The three of us climbed warily to our feet as Raven was engulfed in another bath of red light, and when the flames were extinguished, she was left in her normal outfit, her rod lying coldly on the ground near her boots. Slowly the warrior rocked back and forth on her feet as if trying to catch her balance, and without thinking I dashed over to her, praying that she wouldn't fall before I got there. I wrapped my sleeved arms around her waist just as she fell into a crumpled heap against me.
"Lady Rikku.." she spoke softly, almost inaudibly. "Are those kids okay?"
"They sure are..." a voice I recognized as Yunie's said over my shoulder, and I nodded in agreement.
"Are you... Lady Yuna?" Raven asked, hope in her deep emerald eyes.
"Yes, but we'll talk later, you've had quite the morning." She replied.
"No kidding... that was a lot of hurt." Paine said, obviously impressed. I was surprised. It takes a lot to impress Paine.
Raven opened her mouth to protest, but her eyelids began to droop heavily, and soon after she went limp in my arms.
"Paine is she.. she..." I asked, not wanting to finish my sentence.
"No..." Paine said, walking around the girls still body, and reaching down to feel her pulse. "Just out stone cold."
"Maybe we should get her to a room and let her rest." Yuna said. "We're in Luca anyway."
"Good idea, Yunie." I responded, while trying to lift Raven off the ground, and found I couldn't because of my back. Paine reached over and took her into her own arms.
Walking in silence towards the hotels in the middle of town, we all admired the decorations for the festive party that would be held that night. We finally found a hotel we could all agree on, and seeing that we had the 'Grand High Summoner Yuna' with us, they gave us the best suite in the place. Yuna could really put on the charm when she wanted to. When we had settled into our extremely comfortable room, Paine spoke up.
"Rikku, who exactly is she, and how do you know her?"
"Well..." I began my story of the night before, of meeting Raven on the dock, my near death experience, the way she adored Yuna, and the fact that the girl was half Al Bhed and her mother was killed.
"Hm. Sounds like she's been through a lot." Paine said after I was finished.
"Maybe that explains her powerful Darkness attack?" Yuna asked. "I've seen a lot of attacks, but I've never seen anything like that, and doesn't the underworld feed off of your strongest emotions?"
"Exactly." Paine replied. "Seems like Yuna's number one fan has a lot of agony going on behind that pretty face."
I could only nod and gently brush the hair back from Raven's fragile face. Even while she was sleeping, she looked so sad...
"Rikku... you know she looks a lot like you." Yuna said pointing at Raven.
"She does?" I asked. Totally surprised. I hadn't even noticed, until now, and come to think of it she did have the same mouth and hair as I did. Our eyes were the same color....
"Yuna's right." Paine agreed. "I didn't notice it until just now."
I looked at the girl lying so still on top of the feather pillows and wondered whom she really was...
"Why do I feel like I know you...?" I thought, racking my brain for the answer and not finding one.
A yawn rose in my throat. Though I had only been awake for four hours at the very most, I was exhausted.. The pain in my back was terrible and I vaguely thought I should take a potion to heal it, but I was so sleepy that I just wanted to lie on the floor and doze off.
"Hey Rikku, I'm gonna take a nap.. what about you?" Yuna asked. "You too Paine, what are your plans before tonight?"
"I'm gonna go talk to Baralai for a while, see how he's doing." Paine replied.
"We'll I'll take you up on that nap, Yunie. I won't be able to dance and flirt tonight if I don't rest up some."
"Well wake us up when you get back from the temple." Yuna told Paine. "I have to make a speech tonight and I haven't even started practicing."
Paine nodded and walked out the door, closing it gently behind her so as not to wake up the sleeping Raven. Yuna stretched her arms above her head and lay down next to her, snuggling under the covers with a yawn.
"Hey make room for me!" I said in mock anger. Yuna laughed in her usual sing song way, and scooted over enough so that I could squeeze in between them, and I wiggled under the thick feather comforter. Yuna put her arms around my small waist. I placed the top of my head just under her chin, breathing in her favorite perfume just before I fell into a deep much-needed sleep
Thanks for reading everyone.... Again. Please read this and review for me, if I get a lot of good reviews I'll continue with my story. I need to know if anyone is really all that interested.
"Dra byeh oui ryja lyicat draca baubma, oui femm nalaeja dah vumt! Drec ec so ykuho, so vayn, so yhkan. PA KUHA!" translated to English means...
"The pain you have caused these people, you will receive ten fold! This is my agony, my fear, and my anger. BE GONE!"