The next week brought a string of rainy nights hurrying in. For days, the fog clustered in gossiping, pre-dawn clumps, unwilling to disperse until the rising sun finally blasted the clouds away. Summer heat milled aimless in the air. The Al Bhed who worked the Travel Agency did so half-asleep, rolling their words into long streams of nonsense while they procrastinated the day's business.

The soggy conditions turned Mi'ihen's Highroad into mud. It dried into crumbled crusts by noon, save for the deeper puddles which festered through the week. Bootprints were everywhere. Insects hummed.

Chocobo rentals were up.

Rin had succeeded in sending a messenger out before the inclement weather sapped everyone's energy. The closest machinist had been located at Djose Temple. He had been studying the natural phenomenon of electricity pouring into the tempest of stones, and had been willing to undertake the challenge of fitting a custom prosthetic. Zanni had been his name; heirless and a widower by the time he had worn fifty years on his back, and forever angry with the world as a result. Rin had met the man's grandchildren once, before they had been torn apart by Zu birds.

Zanni's temper clashed with that of the former Crusader. The elder Al Bhed had pulled ribbon after ribbon on Nooj's body, snapping out peckish orders for the boy to hold still while he finished measuring. Rin, serving as translator, had observed the process from his corner of the room and enjoyed the mounting tension on both their parts, including the brusque yank of Nooj's leg-stump into the air in order for Zanni to have a better look at it.

Nooj had scowled. The machinist had as well, but tightly-wrapped blueprints had been dropped in Rin's lap the next evening so that he could approve the materials.

On the fifth day of storms, the rains had eventually withdrawn, tucking themselves back into the overcast cloud cover. Breakfast that morning had been scrambled eggs mixed with whatever else had been lying around the kitchens, and the breeze from the Travel Agency smelled like tomato and barley. Pots of thick, black tea had been brewed, the Al Bhed mercilessly raiding the bags of leaves imported from fields near the Calm Lands. The taste was as rancid as oil. Everyone drank up.

Nooj skipped eating whenever the meal was communal. His time was spent hobbling on the struts that now served in place for his leg. At first Zanni had left the knee joint loose, in order to provide full range of motion, but Nooj's weight had buckled every time he'd set his foot improper and had gone tumbling to the ground. Now it had been recalibrated, but the model still ranged between too stiff, and too flexible.

Once the last adjustments had been made, nothing could have kept the former Crusader from practice with the new limb. He had chosen to forgo the makeshift crutch that necessity forced him to wield before, taking up a squat length of fence-bracing instead. Fingers clenched around the makeshift cane, the teenager dredged his weight through the halls of the Travel Agency until he was steady enough to brave the outdoors.

The Al Bhed workers had pointed the teenager to one of the pastures nestled in the crags of the Old Highroad. They watched him lurch irregular steps down along the path, and that was how Rin found out where Nooj had gone; he followed the trail his employees had been mocking.

Nooj did not say anything when he first noticed his guest, only tensing his spine while he performed his disjointed stretches with a brutal patience.

Rin observed the teenager from his perch on a ranch stile. The Al Bhed had brought an account ledger so that he could work on billings--an excuse, so he would not remain idle--but did not so much as open it once before it went propped underneath his arm, the pen wiggling between his fingers. The engraved heart-nib bounced between his knuckles.

"Tie back your hair or you will catch it in the joints," the Al Bhed advised, drolly amused when the boy stopped in mid-crutch, cursing as his scalp was yanked sideways by an errant screw.

Fighting to steady himself and rip the strands free, Nooj shot the Al Bhed a poisonous glare from the bridge of his shoulder. "I didn't ask for your commentary."

Unruffled, Rin spun the ink-pen once more in his hand.

"I am simply observing my investment."

True enough. Food, lodgings, and now machina parts; many of the Mi'ihen Al Bhed whom Rin kept on employ were wondering why this teenager was allowed leniency. The founder of the Travel Agencies was notorious for his ruthless business practices. Tragic cases had pled for aid in the past--penniless sailors from Kilika, starving traders from Macalania--and while Rin had not turned them all away, he had always been ready with an itemized transaction list before the first week was up.

Nooj had received no bill. Though he had been threatened with one when Rin caught him on the floor of the kitchen in the middle of the night, his leg-stump an open sore from being overstressed, the former Crusader had not been pressured to pay. He had not even been shown a statement.

Rin had justified his tolerance by explaining that Nooj was little more than a walking advertisement. Upon hearing this, a number of the other Al Bhed had laughed.

More like a crawling advertisement, eh?

Remembering this as he observed the teenager struggle, Rin found his mouth creasing in a smile. He swallowed the expression down. If it was one thing that the architect of the Travel Agencies had learned, it was to watch for the long shots. There was no better gamble than Nooj. Older adults had buckled under disabilities and crumpled down; others, weary of the endless tepid days, had found the release of the kitchen knife or poison. Nooj had chosen none of those options.

Rin also knew how to bide his time.

With a final wrench of his hand, Nooj pulled the rest of his hair free and let it shake out of his fingers. "When will the final parts come in?"

"Soon enough." The haze of moist wood in his nose, Rin shifted his weight on his perch. "We are ordering through the Thunder Plains, and there is always a delay at this time of year. It would be to all of our advantages if the Al Bhed were allowed to secure a solution for that dangerous place, but Yevon seems determined to languish in its own prejudice." Fabric crinkled as Rin shrugged.

Nooj's baleful stare scanned the lazy attitude of the Al Bhed. The teenager threw forth his next question. "Will I be able to rejoin the Crusaders before then?"

Rin knew it was a caustic reminder of everything Nooj had lost, to sit upon the fence with one leg sprawled and the other effortlessly keeping his balance in check. Despite that, he didn't change position. "Why are you in such a hurry?" The ink-pen went over his knuckles again before the Al Bhed flipped it out in a baton pointing directly at the teenager. "But, your answer is yes. You should be able to. Are you taking your company away from us so soon?"

"I would rather lose my other leg than stay here a day longer than I'd have to."

"Be careful what you wish for." An insect burrowed out of the damp wood-pulp as Rin's eyes walked the fence, the death-skull markings of its carapace a defiant spot of white in the dark. "Sin might just be listening."

His only reply was a muffled thud, punctuated with a bitter curse.

Nooj had set his ankle wrong, and the slick grasses had caused the teenager to skid. Foot going one way, cane going another, and his body the third; Nooj caught his fall with the heel of his hand, smearing green stains across the palm as he narrowly missed striking his chin against a rock.

Rin counted the price of dignity on his fingers before he pushed himself off the fence, pinching his ledger and pen together with his thumb.

Nooj remained sprawled in the field as the Al Bhed walked over. He ignored the man in favor of groping for the cane which had rolled several feet away. Squatting with his boots in the smeared mud, Rin watched the teenager push himself forward an inch with his fingers outstretched, attempting to tease the stick closer. Brown hair, unwound and free, lay in coils in the dirt.

When he offered a hand out, Nooj only cast him a derisive glare.

"Is my humiliation the real price you demand?" Trying to scrape for the cane once more, Nooj turned his face away from the help. "Do you enjoy seeing me vulnerable like this, having to ask your Travel Agency for survival?"

"I would not say no," Rin admitted. Blunt honesty lent itself well to mockery out of his cinnamon throat. "If I am to monitor your reckless progress, the least that you can do is to entertain me."

The first part of Nooj's reply was cut off by a triumphant grunt as the teenager finally curled his fingers around his walking stick. He yanked it back in a sharp sweep. Rin watched the tip hiss by his nose, but did not flinch back.

"Entertaining yourself by watching death." Nooj's humor was a cough out of his throat, a dry husk of lizard venom. "I wouldn't have thought you'd find that profitable."

Rin found that he was not impressed.

"Yes." His mouth dropped clipped words. "Naturally, it is rare that I ever see death at all. Every day, I and all the rest of the Al Bhed on Mi'ihen are safe as children. Death is an event which occurs to the elderly, and always in peace." Practical, brows lifted in careless arcs, Rin continued relentlessly. "Because we Al Bhed seem so careless, we must be ignorant of the greater facts of life. Now get out of the field before the chocobos are released for their lunch feeding."

"Don't patronize me." With a wince, Nooj pushed himself up into a sitting position, rolling on the hip of the uninjured leg in order to rebalance himself. He did not look up. "You've made yourself clear."

As the teenager shifted his weight onto his cane, Rin snapped out his ledger book to interrupt him. It met the walking stick with a clack and stayed there. Forced to acknowledge it or have his support swept out from under him, Nooj hauled his gaze up from the muddied grass and forced it on the Al Bhed.

Rin met it, and then looked through him, blue eyes disavowing the bile he saw in brown.

"Do you know how the Al Bhed manage to survive, without following Yevon?" The question was deceptively smooth. Retaining his imprisonment of the cane with one hand, Rin lifted the other. He tapped it against the air, keeping time with his speech. "We do not believe in the use of the Farplane. We do not have summoners either. But Al Bhed can become fiends just as easily as anyone else who has died. So how have we managed to keep from being overrun by our own dead?"

Nooj's impassive stare tracked Rin's finger as it waved, impelled by lecture.

"It is because we try to come to terms with our own mortality while being alive. And we accept when we must kill those of us who have not been able to, and have become monsters. Still, we know better than to jeopardize ourselves needlessly." Finding his sudden inspiration stalled, exhausted of impetus, Rin slid his ledger back and rested it against his knees.

"You are my investment. I do not know why you persist on this course of action, but it will make a difference when I plan to reorder spare parts."

Leather creaked as Nooj rolled his weight forward onto his remaining knee and shoved against the support of his cane. The teenager lurched to his feet with the poetry of an unfolding shoopuf. Only when he was standing again did he deign to speak; facing away, towards the gnarled hills surrounding the Old Highroad, into the wilderness where only fiends dared.

"My reasons..."

In the distance, fragments of Al Bhed drifted through the air as the handlers shouted back and forth to one another. Merry.

"... are none of your business."

His metal foot left a swath of crushed grass as he dragged himself away.

Nothing Rin said could call him back.