Redemption for a Weary Soldier
Disclaimer: Don't own FFX2 or its characters
Chapter 3
The Calm Lands slept the deep and nourishing sleep of an infant. Stars crawled above the land in a dizzying pattern orchestrated around the moon that glowed palely onto the dimly lit ground. One lone lupine's howl descended across the grassy plain oozing its eerie melody along the gentle slopes and dips of the ground. Quiet blanketed the atmosphere encompassing the camp-grounds of the small Al-Bhed party gathered along the edge of a deep canyon. On the other side of the canyon lay the Cave of the Stolen Fayth.
One little bird sat perched on the edge of the canyon. All the rest of the land might be sleeping, but this little bird was hungry, and it wanted a big bug to chomp on right then. Cocking its head, the bird looked down into the abyss. Even its sharp gaze couldn't penetrate the inky blackness of the downward descent.
But this little bird had a few brains in its head and it put them to work coming up with a fairly sound solution: bugs liked deep dark places to live and the bird wanted a bug to eat. So in it plunged.
At first, the voyage went fairly well and the bird thought nothing of what possible dangers he could be placing himself into as he careened headlong to the bottom of the gorge. It wasn't until the sky was swallowed whole by the canyon wall and a chilling draft told the bird that the bottom was nowhere near when the bird began to realize his mistake.
Poor bird.
A glitter of red glowed eerily from the gaze of a nearby Divebeak as it watched its prey flutter along. The bird of prey sprang from its branch and cleanly caught the smaller bird in its talons. Using its beak, it brutally gouged out the eyes of the creature before twisting the body until first a wing came undone and then the belly opened up from the sheer force of the Divebeak's wrenching.
The poor little bird was still alive as its innards descended to the bugs crawling below…
(AN: I promise I'm not a sadist…not much of one anyway…)
Rikku brought a hand up to wipe her sweating brow. For the thousandth time that day, her nimble fingers danced over the clips and cords keeping her small frame from tumbling into the blackness below. She gingerly yanked and prodded the main cords, the backup cords, and the backup's backup cords. When she ran another hand across her forehead, the sheen of moisture seemed less of an overworked layer of sweat, and more a clammy nervous sweat.
Light from overhead suddenly spilled onto her body illuminating hands that she'd only caught glimpses of since moving out of the skylight blocked by the high wall of the gorge. She squinted to the pair of boot-clad feet dangling inches above her head lighting up the bottom half of her climbing partner.
"You alright there?" Gippal asked. His own face was layered in sweat and smudged with dust and dirt from the wall. Rikku could only imagine what a sight she must've been.
"Yeah, I'm good," she replied coiling a length of rope around her shoulder. "Let's just rest for a minute alright?" she asked planting her feet into a few rocks jutting from the wall and leaning against it to let her weight rest on it.
"Wonder how far down this canyon is?" Gippal mused precariously dangling his legs in the air. He didn't bother taking as much weight as possible off the ropes. Wrenching a rock free from the wall, he tossed the pebble into the dark and both he and Rikku held their breaths listening for it to hit the bottom. After several minutes they gave up. "Guess we'll be here a while, how much supplies we got?" he asked and Rikku swung her bag around her shoulder to check. "Four days worth, I think," she responded counting the food partitions blindly with her hands.
"Hopefully this canyon doesn't go down for two days…" Gippal said half to himself. A silence ensued between the pair as they contemplated scaling the rocky surface for that length of time.
"Pops is probably just about ready to throw himself off the cliff by now," Rikku commented. "It's been almost five hours already."
"I don't think anyone anticipated the canyon to go down this far," Gippal replied in agreement. "Heck, the edge of the Calm Lands goes down roughly one mile, but I've got this kinky feeling that we've traveled much further than one mile." Rikku nodded in concurrence although it couldn't be seen.
Another pause occurred while the pair rested. Suddenly Gippal started chuckling. "What's so funny?" Rikku demanded.
"Nothin," Gippal replied, "I was just thinking about your old man getting so uptight about us being gone for so long."
"And how is that funny?" Rikku asked.
"Shoot, I bet he's more worried about what we're doin down here than whether we got hurt or anything," Gippal responded laughing.
"Yeah…well, he knows how you're perverted and I'm his little girl, so it's only natural that he'd worry." Rikku sniffed. "In any case whether he was worried or not there's no need to be. I could kick your ass all over this canyon if you so much as look at me wrong."
Gippal laughed a little louder at Rikku's declaration. "This coming from the girl whose life is connected to the safety clip connected to my harness."
Rikku reached up and playfully punched Gippal's boot making him sway slightly. "Forget it. If you did anything like that, then you might as well make yourself nice and comfy down here because Pops would probably pull your testicles up through your mouth from the inside out. Very slowly."
This earned Rikku another sound laugh from Gippal. "Where'd you get such a potty mouth from?" he asked and Rikku merely shrugged her unseeable shrug again.
"Paine," she responded simply.
"Ah, now that makes perfect sense." Gippal stretched and leaned back a little farther in his harness swing. "Well, whatever Cid did to me, as long as he doesn't kick me off this mission, I'll live."
"Say Gippal," Rikku said in her suddenly tiny voice. "Um…well, sorry I guess, about havin to do all this manual labor. I really tried to explain to Pops that it wasn't your fault, but you know how stubborn he can be."
Gippal was thoughtful for a moment. "You know," he said, "I really don't mind."
"You don't?"
Rikku felt him shake his head as the rope swung back and forth lightly with his actions. "Paine's doing a good job of reading those maps of mine. And besides, it's funny, but I'm almost kind of glad that it happened."
"W…Why's…that?" Rikku asked feeling her lungs constrict and the heat rise to her face.
"I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to dig, you know? To do the hands on things, to be the first person to find something that could prove significant. It's really a rush for me, but I'd forgotten how much I'd enjoyed it whenever I was left in charge of everything."
"Oh…" was Rikku's disappointed reply.
"And besides," Gippal said playfully, "I wouldn't get so much time to hang out with Cid's girl!" Reaching down, he ruffled said girl's hair. "Gross! Your hair's totally full of sweat!"
"Hey! Meanie!" Rikku answered and pulled back her arm for another punch, but froze when a noise to their left suddenly grabbed her attention.
Both the Al-Bhed quickly illuminated the spot in question with their lighted headgear. "Wha…?" was Rikku's response to what they saw.
A lone Divebeak clung to the wall of the canyon. Its beady red eyes rested on the pair and never twitched, even as its beak opened and shut and one of its talons jerked and yanked at something. "What's it got?" Rikku whispered feeling very uneasy about the fiend's continuous stare.
"I think it was a bird," Gippal answered.
"So why'd it come all the way down here just to eat a bird?" Rikku asked.
Gippal was silent a few moments as he took in the scene. "That's weird…" he murmured under his breath.
"What's weird!" Rikku frantically asked beginning to feel uneasy by the situation.
"Well, if you watch it, it isn't eating the bird, just tearing it apart. Since when did fiends become so…sadistic?"
"Who cares, we should just go," Rikku said in a slightly hysterical voice. That fiend's gaze was really starting to freak her out.
"Yeah, I guess," was Gippal's response.
"Okay then, let's just—" Rikku's sentence was cut off by a flurry of wings as the Divebeak suddenly shot straight at her.
Rikku squealed and held up her arms, just managing to fend off an assault to her eyes where the fiend was heading with its razor sharp talons. She earned two gashes on the sides of her arms. Ignoring the cuts, Rikku reached for the only weapon available: a flare pistol, which she shot at the fiend. Her aim was terrible, however because of the wounds on her arms and the flash of light sailed right over the bird and up toward the outside world.
Meanwhile, Gippal reached for his own weapon, a real gun this time and tried to sight the bird to aim. To his dismay, he realized that the fiend's talons had somehow become tangled in the small length of cord connecting Rikku and himself. If he shot at the Divebeak, there was a possibility that he would also shoot Rikku and that was a chance he was not willing to take.
Rikku fumbled with her gear while holding one arm above her head to shield her sensitive face. The Divebeak was in the process of alternating between snapping at Rikku's flailing hand and trying to free its leg from the cord it was tangled in.
And then, many things happened instantaneously.
The Divebeak, with all of its struggling finally managed to tear through the rope with its sharp claws.
Rikku raised her eyes from her frantic task of trying to find her rapier and was soundly whacked over the head by one of the Divebeak's wings.
Gippal, finally able to discern fiend from Rikku, shot point blank at the Divebeak's head and the fiend immediately exploded in a flourish of pyreflies.
Looking down to check on Rikku, he was just in time to see the rope connecting them snap after being severed by the bird's claws.
He could only gape in horror and watch as the unconscious girl was near to him one moment and rapidly flying away from him the next.
"RIKKU!"
"DAMNIT! WHERE THE HELL ARE THOSE TWO!" Cid's angry red head rivaled that of a tomato as he storm about the bridge in a fit of rage. "They've been gone for over five hours! There's no way that it takes so long to climb down a wall and back up!"
"Hey Cid, just calm down. Maybe they've already found some machina parts and are trying to bring it back up with them," Buddy reasoned from his station.
Cid just grew angrier at that comment. "That wasn't what they were ordered to do! I told them to climb down and measure the depth then climb back up! If they aren't following MY orders then they sure as hell don't need to be doing MY missions!"
"You mean MY mission!" Brother raised a defiant fist into the air. When Cid shot him a glare that could melt diamond, Brother paled and quickly sat back down.
As Cid continued his ranting, Paine studied her maps taking and processing the information she was shown. For three weeks now, this was her life. She didn't mind sitting around; the map reading was a challenge. It was her job not only to process the information, but to interpret it as well. This wasn't easy considering she was seeing pyrefly concentrations and not what the pyreflies were connected to. That was up to her elucidation.
For the last two hours, she had been studying the map, particularly the area where Rikku and Gippal had descended. It was strange how the more time passed, the more concentrated the area's pyreflies became. At first she dismissed this as Gippal's and Rikku's own life force being added to whatever was down there (probably the random fiend or some unsent soul who had accidentally fallen down the gorge's depths), but when the area began growing, well, exponentially as far as Paine could tell, she became worried.
"Incoming transmission!" Buddy shouted and leaned over his station. "Some of our boys reported seeing a light coming out of the canyon…they're reporting it as a flare someone set off from below."
All the redness drained from Cid's face upon hearing that. "I want all able-bodied hands to grab their climbing gear and get down that hole pronto!" Cid snapped not missing a beat. Buddy relayed the order and Paine frowned in thought. Her gaze wandered back over to the map and she gaped in surprise. A moment before, the pyrefly concentration had been at a mild yellowish-green. Now the concentration was a blood red.
Something was down there.
And so was Rikku and Gippal.
Paine didn't waste any time as she hastily rose from her seat and fairly dashed to her quarters. She barely managed to catch Cid's exclamation of surprise ("Hey! Where do you think you're going?") as she ran to her rooms and grabbed her garment grids, fastening them to her belt and running back down the corridor to the airship's exit.
She never broke stride as she scooped up a discarded light sphere and jogged over to the edge of the cliff where a throng of Al-Bhed were busy tying lengths of cords to harnesses, which they fastened around their legs. The workers were stopped short in their tasks as Paine suddenly disappeared in a brilliant flash of light seemed to grow giant wings and legs of steel.
Donned in her Full Throttle sphere, Paine plummeted from the edge of the cliff into the blackness below.
"Damnit," Gippal cursed under his breath as he scraped his knee against another jutting rock in his haste to shimmy down. He barely noticed the pain, but cursed the time wasted because of it. One thought dominated his mind as he continued his downward descent.
Rikku.
He vowed to retrieve her…whatever her condition.
Despair filled his heart when he considered just how he might find her, but he forcibly pushed the thoughts away. Sorrow couldn't cloud his mind right now when he needed to be in full control of all his facilities. It might take him days to reach the bottom, heck, he probably wouldn't even be able to make it back up once he got down because the supply of food had scattered with Rikku when she had fallen. None of that mattered now though. All that mattered was reaching Rikku. Wherever that might be…
"SHIT!" he howled his grief to the silent canyon when his arm rammed another rock. He could feel the rivulet of blood traveling down his skin. He ignored the discomfort and lowered his foot down blindly scrambling for another foothold lower than the one he was on. Finding one, he backed his body up slightly and tried to lower himself, but found that he couldn't.
Looking up, he shined his light on the source of the problem and found to his dismay that a coil of the rope had become wrapped around another protruding rock, this one longer and sharper than the previous ones.
Punching a fist into the wall in frustration, Gippal cursed under his breath as he prepared himself for climbing back up to untangle the rope. In his haste, he grabbed the wrong handhold and slipped backward putting all of his weight onto the cord. He tried to keep himself from swinging wildly by planting his feet, but alas, his footholds weren't the sturdiest ones and his grip left him. He slammed miserably into one side of the canyon wall before bouncing back and slamming into the other one.
The friction from his movement caused the rope to tighten along the jagged edge of the rock it was coiled onto. It didn't take much before rope strained and then snapped and Gippal found himself in Rikku's predicament as he tumbled backwards into the black abyss too.
Sorry for the major cliffhanger, but I plan on jumping straight into the next chapter starting…tomorrow morning after I get some sleep!
Thanks so much ColdhardPaine85, Paine3, and x-Storm-Goddess-x for reviewing! You guys are angels! Sarah, this one's for you! Thanks for getting my butt into gear!
Please leave a review, they make me want to write more!