(A/N: I'm fighting myself over Bayla's friend's name. Lycao just doesn't seem right to me. I'm open to any suggestions.)
The next evening, Bayla wandered to storage shelter near the building site in search of a few new supplies. She grabbed a few grenades for herself, and while she was at it, some spare ammo for Badan and Lycao. She was excited about tonight. She had found some great supplies from dispatching fiends, and had high hopes from their turnout in the night's rounds.
Once she finished restocking her supply, she glanced out at the sunset.
Waving to her friends in the construction crew, she headed out for the scouting tent.
She met Lycao and her brother there, and handed them each their ammunition.
"Okay." The security chief, Alo, started. "Same teams as last night. The day shift reported less fiend activity this time, but don't get lazy about it."
Some of the gathered Al Bhed sighed and shook their heads in amusement. Alo was an uptight man, middle-aged, and already significantly balding.
He was lucky enough not to lose family in the conflicts with Yevon, but he stressed easily.
His warnings were hardly ever taken as seriously as he gave them.
So the teams for the night shift parted, back into the shifting sands to keep there kin safe from fiend attacks.
While starting on their rounds, Lycao was chattier than he normally was.
"So, have you gotten a look at the plans? This Home we're all working for, it's going to be huge." He said.
"Yeah." Bayla replied a little distantly.
"I wonder if Bevelle will think we're a threat, and declare war on us, like Zanarkand."
Zanarkand. The machina city. Mentioned fondly in Al Bhed circles, and spit upon by Yevon. Bayla had often wished she could have seen Zanarkand. But it was destroyed before she had the chance. Two Calms had passed already since Sin's first appearance.
Yevon had called Sin punishment, and had put blame soundly on machina, as well as anyone who didn't agree with them.
Bayla had always found it a little odd, because there had been rumors that there were machina in Bevelle. But anyone who could have elaborated had been caught and silenced.
Bayla's dark, thoughtful silence was enough to give Lycao pause.
"I don't even want to think about that." Bayla said finally. "I'm putting all hope into the idea that they won't come looking for us here."
The cold dread underlining her voice was plain. Like all Al Bhed, she just prayed that they be left alone. Bayla often thought it was odd, for one to pray after being rejected by the temples. But one had to have faith in something, be it Yevon or otherwise. So she prayed anyway. Maybe fate had an ear. If so, it just might hear her.
The two friends were quiet to each other, each deep in thought, for the next few minutes. They slew a pack of fiends in numb silence. While Bayla plucked some peculiar finds from the remains of a birdlike fiend, Lycao spoke up again.
"Do you think that maybe we aren't meant to stay? That maybe this 'Home' is too big a dream?" he asked bleakly.
Bayla stood up, her new supplies loosely in hand, staring at Lycao, a baffled look on her face. There was utter silence on the moonlit dunes. He had been so optimistic about Home just minutes ago, and now this?
"Where did that come from?" she asked, her own voice cracking in her dark mystification. "Last night you tell me there's no way this can go wrong, and now you're concerned?"
Some gloomy thought had taken root in Lycao's head. Something had crossed his mind in the quiet and stuck there. Most likely connected to the Yevon incidents and his father. Lycao was staring distantly at a nearby sand dune. His goggles hid the vague look in his eye.
Bayla touched his arm, near the shoulder, bringing him out of his dismal trance.
"Lycao, mecdah du sa." She said gently but firmly.
She waited for his goggled eyes to meet her exposed ones before she continued. She spoke softly, but patiently, making sure he understood.
"We're going to make it. Our dreams will become reality. Everyone's working far too hard for this to fail. You helped me believe this. You have to move on. You have to live. For your father, for yourself. You need to let go of the pain instead of bringing it back on yourself."
There was an eternal moment. Lycao did nothing, said nothing. But he held Bayla's gaze. If she looked really hard, she could see through the goggles to the wavering look in his eyes, slowly coming to grips with reality. Finally, he heaved a great sigh of finality and relief.
"Oui'na nekrd." He said softly.
He brought his opposite hand up to cover Bayla's, and squeezed ita little reluctantlyagainst his upper arm.
As the two smiled softly, Bayla, having better hearing, picked up on something. A fiend approaching.
Lycao saw the thoughtful look on her face, and looked around. The biggest flying fiend he had ever seen swooped rapidly down toward them from behind Bayla. It would be upon them in mere seconds, and hit her first.
"Bayla, tilg!" He said loudly and quickly.
He whipped out his gun and, aiming over Bayla's shoulder the split second before she dropped, started unloading bullets. Bayla hit the sand and rolled, pulling out a small bottle of a clear liquid and a funny crystal a fiend had dropped as she did so. Springing up to the side, she tied them together and threw them as hard as she could at the approaching fiend.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion.
The path of the bottle and crystal crossed Lycao's line of fire.
One bullet went straight through the two items, right in front of the fiend.
There was an earsplitting boom like thunder, and a white flash brighter than the sun.
When Lycao and Bayla could see again, pyreflies were fizzling away where the fiend had just been.
Lycao turned to Bayla, and she turned to him. Both were speechless.
Their thunderstruck expressions soon melted into grins, and they burst out laughing.
"Whoa... What was that?" Lycao asked, wide-eyed.
Bayla was giggling breathily and open-mouthed. She pushed back her hair with the palm of her hand. Her fingers were splayed against her head.
"A gem left behind by a fiend from last night, and some holy water I got from a merchant before we came here."
Lycao grinned widely, chuckling. "I don't suppose you have more of those?"
Bayla's expression dulled a little.
"Unfortunately not." She said regretfully. She smiled again. "But that's definitely one for the books!"
The rest of the night passed on a lighter note. Even on their way back to camp at the end of the shift, they were talking and chuckling about the explosion. When other people started asking about the thunder they had heard and the light they had seen, they told the story all too willingly. And the group ate it up.
The Al Bhed parted ways in lighter moods than when they had gathered. An incident like that was wonderful at breaking up the monotony. Such moments had been few and far between since arriving on Bikanel.
Badan was laughing all the way back to the tent, and praising his sister's intuitions as an Alchemist.
"You always had talent like that. You got it from mom."
Bayla smiled poignantly. She remembered her mother, just enough. She had been young when her mother passed away after being severely ill. Everyone said her father died from grief a few short years later.
She barely noticed when they finally got back to the tent.
"You'll probably want to record this in your journal, so I'll go to bed now." Badan said pleasantly. He clapped her warmly on the back. "Thanks for giving us something to laugh about, Baddo Tasuh, we needed it."
Bayla smiled a bit more. Baddo Tasuh, pretty demon, had been her parents' nickname for her as a little girl. She had been strong-willed, hot-tempered... Her parents' little demon.
She pulled her journal sphere from her pocket as she smiled at the faint purpling on the eastern edge of the velvet night sky. She recounted the night's events as the purple turned to pink, and pink to gold, just on the horizon.
As the sun peeked over Bikanel's eastern coast, Bayla put her journal sphere away and went in the tent to sleep, somehow feeling better than she had in some time.
(A/N: FFX-2 players might recognize the item combination and resultant kickass explosion as White Hole. More or less.)