Chapter 3: War Within
Tidus picked up a duffle bag from under the table and Walked back to the apartment with them. In the elevator of their apartment building, Yuna kept glancing over at Tidus. When the elevator reached their floor Yuna pushed Tidus back against the wall and gestured for Lenne to go ahead. The door closed and Yuna pushed the button to make them stay where they were. Tidus sighed. "What do you want?"
""How? How the hell did you know…?" Yuna's voice broke off as Tidus Stepped close to her, wrapping her in a hug.
"It was obvious. I saw your… little jive you kept doing."
"J-jive?"
"Yeah from withdrawal." At this Tidus felt several tears flow into his shirt. After around ten minutes she stepped away from him and wiped her face. "Please… please help me…"
"I will."
Tidus and Yuna walked back to her apartment hand in hand. Lenne was sitting on the couch watching a movie. When they entered she looked up and saw their entwined hands. She then looked down and smiled. Tidus walked in and asked, "Where do I sleep?" Lenne and Yuna silently raised their index fingers simultaneously pointed toward an open door. Through it he could see a big bed, most likely queen sized. He walked in there to see two dressers and a door off to a bathroom. He set his duffle against a wall and Thought, So. The three of us in one bed… this could get interesting. The he came back to the living room. The kitchen was against one wall. Tidus sat down and asked Lenne what she was watching. "Underworld." She muttered, not removing her eyes from the screen as Kate Beckinsale fired two shots into the head of some man attacking a human. Tidus nodded and reached inconspicuously into the bowl of popcorn in her lap, also without moving his eyes from the screen. Lenne noticed and pulled the popcorn away from his outstretched fingers as he put his hand down accidentally in her lap. They looked each other in the eye and burst into laughter…
Rikku looked around as the fiends surrounded her. She jumped up, drew her blades, and did a double flip on the way down. The fiends never knew what happened. She looted their corpses and left the alley. The ruins of Zanarkind made a great hiding place. She made her way back to the abandoned building that served as her temporary home. She laid on the bedroll and began to cry as The Others began to speak. They were figments of her imagination, she had been told, and past lives said another. But they regarded her with degrading criticism. All were feminine, and all were sinister and cunning. Yet, their voices were within her head, and had occasionally helped her. One, whom the others had referred to as Reverend Mother Jessica, had been the least critical.
"She doesn't fight like a Bene Gesserit."
"No, but she hasn't been trained." The reverend mother said to the unnamed voice.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Rikku asked.
"You are the descendant of Paul Atriedes."
"Paul? Atriedes? You wanna fill me in?"
"I was, in life, the mistress of Leto the first. I was a Bene Gesserit. They are a clan of women regarded as witches throughout the Old Emporium. The Kwisatz Haderach, a person the Bene Gesserit had been doing breeding programs for half a millennia to achieve, was to be my grandson. We Bene Gesserit 'Witches' have many abilities, including being human lie detectors and choosing the sex of our children. We were all meant to have female children, and my daughter was to bear the God Child. But, out of love for Leto, I bore him a son and heir. My son was the Kwisatz Haderach, one generation early. Of course, the Bene Gesserits could not control him and he became the ruler of the great planet called Arakis. It was a great desert, known as Dune, no vegetation, and no water. He united the nomadic Fremen tribes and bore twins with a woman named Chani. They were preborn, gaining consciousness in Chani's womb. They could call upon the memories of their ancestors for help, as you can. His son Leto the second, took the path that his father was far too afraid to take. He literally changed into a sandworm, which was a long process of 3500 years. He began to transform Dune into a vegetated land. This destroyed the sandworms, which destroyed the spice mélange, a substance that ruled the world in those days."
Rikku sighed and fell asleep after asking them politely for silence.
