Disclaimer: Come on. Bring it on. I dare you to sue me.
Chapter 4; Part 1: Recovery
Guardians for summoners tend to get used to things, Wakka thought. There wasn't much that could faze a guardian after a few years of guarding summoners.
The fiends, long job hours, lack of sleep... Guardians got to handle stuff other people never thought about.
It was just part of the job. When weird stuff went down, you couldn't let it get to you. You just had to learn to deal with it.
When the real crazies were running loose, you couldn't let it throw you, couldn't waste time getting upset; you just had to deal with it before it got too far out of hand, and worry about what the hell it all meant later.
And when you hear a yell and you look up to see one of your fellow guardians come flying backward out of the tenth floor of a building, arms flailing, looking for something, anything, that would break his fall, you don't waste your time wondering how it happened, you deal with it.
Wakka had been standing out on the sidewalk, wiping sweat from the back of his neck, trying not to smell the garbage, wondering how long Tidus was going to be in there, thinking that he wasn't going to find anything-and Tidus had sailed out through the hole that the Al Bhed had blown through the wall, shouting Wakka's name.
Wakka's mind kicked into high, and he was thinking three or four things at once the instant he saw Tidus, up there in the sky.
There had to be someone in there, one of the killers, which was crazy-why would the killer still be there?
But it had to be one of the killers; who else would it be?
Maybe it was a guard the feds had sent up while he was down here waiting for Tidus, but why would a guard throw Tidus out of the building?
For that matter; who the hell could throw Tidus out of the building?
And in any case, Wakka thought, he had to do something right now if he didn't want to see Tidus splatter on the sidewalk. This wasn't exactly the Tower Of Bevelle, but a ten-story fall was more than enough to kill a man.
As Tidus fell he grabbed for a wire at fourth-floor height. Wakka watched as he caught it, but couldn't hold on-the old wire, Wakka thought, this building was old enough it wouldn't have always been buried, and they'd never cleared the old one away.
Even as he saw Tidus reaching for the wire, Wakka was moving, he had already grabbed up two pairs of garbage bags with both hands; now he heaved them under Tidus, then snatched up four more, thanking Yevon for the latest garbage strike.
He had a fifth pair in his hands when Tidus hit, but he wasn't in time to use them. Black plastic exploded with a gigantic pop, and half-rotted garbage sprayed everywhere; Tidus slammed through the trash and onto the pavement.
Wakka dropped the last two bags and ran to Tidus' side, calling "Ti! Yevon! Are you all right?"
Tidus was obviously not all right, but he was breathing-sort of-and he was still conscious. "Just dandy," Tidus wheezed, spraying blood with each word. Wakka didn't stay to argue; he ran for the nearest pay phone.
Two minutes later he was back at Tidus' side. Tidus was unconscious, but Wakka said, "Hang on, the ambulance in coming, hang on." He looked up anxiously, and when he looked back, Tidus' eyes were wide open again.
"I slipped," he said. "On a banana peel." He coughed out a mouthful of blood. "You hear me? Wasn't anyone up there. I slipped! It was an accident!" Wakka nodded. "I hear you, man. It was an accident." He noticed for the first time that Tidus was clutching something in one hand, something strange. "What the hell is this?" He asked, reaching for it.
Tidus released the mask and gasped out, "I stole…the son of a shoopuf's hat…"
Then he was out again. Wakka looked at the 'hat'.
It could be a mask or helmet of some sort, all right, but if so, it was too big for anyone but a giant. It was metal, with a smooth, dull finish; inside Wakka could see gadgetry. There were little tubes along the sides, and oddly shaped plastic fittings here and there on the inside. The eyeholes were not open, but covered by multi-colored lenses of some kind.
Wakka couldn't imagine what the hell the things was for; the closest guess he could come up with was that it was some kind of hi-tech night-vision crap the Al Bhed had designed, but even that didn't seem very likely.
Whatever it was, Tidus wouldn't be able to hang on to it in the hospital, but somehow Wakka didn't think he would just want it turned over to the feds.
If the feds got it, it would probably end up on a pedestal in the Bevelle temple, right next to the statue of the fayth.
Wakka didn't know what the thing was, or what use it might be, but he didn't think it would do anyone any good locked in a drawer somewhere.
He wrapped the mask in his jacket (if he has one…), and when the ambulance arrived a moment later, he had it tucked securely under his arm. It stayed there as Wakka watched the paramedics strap Tidus to the stretcher and load him aboard the ambulance.
The crew wouldn't make any guesses about whether Tidus would live, or whether anything was broken. "No offense," one of them said, "but we don't need any malpractice suits, so we just do our jobs and keep our mouths shut."
They wouldn't let him ride in the ambulance with Tidus, so when it pulled away, lights flashing, Wakka looked around, thinking.
He could go up in that building, looking for whatever 'banana peel' that Tidus had slipped on, up there in the room where the Al Bhed and Yevonites had died, where the bodies had dripped blood in graceful spirals across the plaster dust-the room he was certain he would have nightmares about.
One of Tidus' longswords was missing, and he should look for that too. Wakka didn't like to think of himself as a coward; hell, he knew he wasn't a coward, not really. All the same, he wasn't about to go into that building again alone. Maybe if he had the rest of the party-but how could he call for them when Tidus had slipped and fallen?
He should do something, when your partner was beaten, you were supposed to do something, but he just couldn't. Besides, he had to know what was happening to Tidus. How badly was he hurt? He jogged towards the hospital.
They told him they didn't think Tidus was going to die right away, thought they wouldn't put it in writing, and no, he couldn't see the patient, but he could wait if he wanted, and there was some informing that he had to do…
Wakka hated waiting. He hated hospitals, thought they all smelled like death mixed with linoleum. He had called Yuna to tell her about Tidus' condition, and Yuna's shriek was so loud that Wakka had to immediately hang up or live the rest of his life half-deaf. But at least he had Yuna's shriek ringing in his ear, giving him something else to concentrate on other than blank walls and human misery.
He was pacing the floor for the hundredth time when a young doctor in wire-trimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed beard asked, "Are you Sir Wakka?"
Wakka looked up and didn't bother to answer. The doctor's firm belly and tidy appearance made Wakka uncomfortably aware that his own gut was slightly bigger and softer than it was supposed to be.
"I read your preliminary report," the doctor said as he took Wakka by the arm and marched him towards Tidus' ward. "So Sir Tidus tripped, huh? I haven't seen an explanation that lame since third grade."
Wakka shrugged. He allowed himself to be led-after all, he wanted to see how Tidus was doing, and if the doctor wanted to show him something, so much the better.
"Look," the doctor said as they reached the door to Tidus' room, "I don't care what you tell your fellow guardians. I'm not a guardian, and it's not my business what you say, but I want some answers. I can't do my job properly if you lie to me. So what the hell happened?"
"What does it matter? Look, the guy's banged up, but a few stitches, a little rest, and he'll be good as new, right? He's not gonna die and make you look bad or anything." Wakka said as they stepped into the room. "I know Tidus, Doc. This isn't anything."
He hoped very much, for Yuna's sake, that this wasn't anything, that Tidus wasn't going to die.
"Look enough of the bullshit. You don't get something like that from falling out of a building."
He thrust out a finger and pointed to Tidus' neck, just below the left ear.
Wakka had been taking in the monitors, the tubes up Tidus' nose, the bandages across his nose and forehead and around his jaw-even though he'd landed on his back when he hit the pile of trash. Now he looked where the doctor's finger indicated.
It was a lump of dully gleaming metal, about the diameter of a nickel, but rounded like a beetle or the head of a bolt-Wakka had a sudden mental image of Tidus as a Al Bhed designed half-machina man, with electrodes on either side.
By now he probably had enough medical machinery plugged into him for the part, too.
The metal thing was rimmed with blood-fresh blood, from the color; everywhere else the blood had either been wiped away or dried to an ugly red-brown, but here there was a circle that was still bright, bright red.
As Wakka watched, a thin red trickle ran down from Tidus' neck and dripped onto the pillow.
This wasn't anything Wakka had seen before; the garbage must have hidden it from his view when he had knelt over Tidus on the pavement.
Wakka looked questioningly at the doctor.
"We can't get it off without surgery," the doctor said. "Maybe not even then. It's got these barbed claws dug into the carotid artery, and anytime we start pulling at it, they start moving. If we tear it off, maybe even cut it off, it'll chew the blood vessels to pulp, and he'll bleed to death before we can heal him."
"Yevon," Wakka said, looking back at Tidus.
"We've scanned it, looked at it every way we know, and we can't see inside it or get any idea how it works. Now, Sir Wakka, would you mind telling me what the hell the thing is?"
"I'd like to, Doc," Wakka said honestly, "but I swear to Yevon I don't know."