This is the edited version of the first chapter two and i feel it is much better than it was before on a technical level. I havn't really made many changes to the actual story.

Chapter 2

Disturbing reports

Out in the vastness of space looking down upon a peaceful looking Spira a space ship appears out of nowhere, as if it had been cloaked in darkness, the light shimmers around it for a few brief moments. The large ship closes in on the sleepy planet and slowly alters its trajectory so that it flies parallel with Spira's rotation.

A set of five flashes beat out from the side of the ship and five large, black, rocket shaped objects fly out of the ship down towards the globe. They enter the atmosphere and trails of fire light up behind them from the heat of re-entry.

Evening has come to Besaid Island, the sky is clear and stars litter the sky. Outside Wakka and Lulu's house, Yuna, Tidus, Rikku, Paine and Vidina, in Yuna's arms, stare up at them.

Rikku points up at the sky smiling, "Hey look! Shooting stars, five of them! All at once! Cool!"

Yuna gasps at the falling lights in the sky, "You're right; hey that's one for each of us. Make a wish everyone!"

Paine makes a small huffing noise and looks questioningly at Yuna, "You believe it will happen?"

Yuna shrugs, "Not really but its something to do."

Tidus flicks Paine on the shoulder, "Besides what have you got to loose? Who knows, maybe it could happen."

Paine gives a small chuckle, "Very well then," she closed her eyes and opens them again.

"What'd you wish for?" asks Rikku.

Paine shakes her finger at her, "If I tell you then it certainly won't come true; you're meant to keep it to yourself."

Rikku pouts and sits back, by now the shooting stars have disappeared.

Tidus yawns and stretches out his arms, "Right I'm tired, I'm going to bed," he gets up and dusts off the dirt on his trousers.

Yuna holds up her hand to him, "I second that," she is hoisted onto her feet with Vidina in her other arm.

Rikku clumsily gets to her feet and brushes the dust off her miniskirt, "Well if you're going I might as well too."

Paine says nothing but gets up with the rest of them. They all walk into the house for a decent night's sleep, blissfully unaware of the incoming danger heralded by the fire balls in the sky.

Night time passes uneventfully over the small Island; its inhabitants slumber without interruption. As morning comes the sun shines resplendently over the little Island. It's golden glow rising above the liquid sapphire sea.

Tidus wanders sleepily out of the tent followed by Yuna, Paine and Rikku. Barely giving them a moment to take in the morning, a rather official looking man runs hurriedly up to them. "High Summoner Yuna?" he asks.

"Yes?" replies Yuna turning to the man.

"My name is Monterro I have a message for you from Nooj, Gippal and Baralai, it is of the utmost urgency. Spira has gone into turmoil overnight! People in Luca, Bevelle and Djose have been slaughtered most horribly at almost exactly the same time and in exactly the same fashion."

Yuna puts her fingers to her lips, "Oh my god that's terrible! But why am I needed?"

Paine rolls her eyes, knowing what the response would be, "Here it comes."

Monterro shrugs, "They did not say exactly why, though I have a feeling given your past efforts in saving Spira they would like you to help them find out those responsible."

"Figures," mutters Rikku.

Tidus steps towards him, a concerned look on his face, "You said they were murdered horribly right? How horrible is 'horrible'?"

Monterro looks away from them; the mere thought of what happened to the victims makes him uneasy. He takes a deep breath and looks back at Tidus, "They were found in groups in each area, the victims I mean. Some had been hung upside down with rope and… skinned, completely."

"Oh, my…" whispers Yuna in shock.

"Dare I ask about the others?" asks Rikku, slight dread entering her voice.

"The rest of them… had their heads and spinal columns removed and the bodies dumped next to the skinned ones."

The faces of the four friends were quite a picture; their eyes wide and their mouths agape.

Paine begins moving her head from side to side, "This sounds like the doing of a highly coordinated and psychotic group of people. We don't deal with people, we deal with fiends."

Tidus rubs his forehead in thought, "I don't like the sound of this either, but we should do something; it's the right thing to do."

Rikku glances at Tidus and smiles, "Ever the do-gooder huh Tidus? However I agree with you. I mean if they attacked those places, who's to say they won't attack here? Attack the people we care for?"

"Paine I'm afraid I agree with these two, we can't risk our friends here getting hurt. Besides, the people of Spira will want to know that we are working on this, they'll calm down then."

Paine pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs at the prospect of what could lie ahead. For a few moments she says nothing, she merely holds the pose. Eventually she releases her nose and slaps her thigh, "Very well then count me in. Guess we'd better get the Celsius fired up."

Rikku walks back to the house, "I'll call Buddy."

The Celsius lands in a hangar in the City of Bevelle, Nooj, Gippal and Baralai stand in front of a door leading from the hangar and they watch the ship land. The ramp from the ship descends allowing them to see Spira's favourite saviours. They all step down and the three men walk towards the four.

Nooj bows his head to them "Good to see you got our message everyone, not to put too fine a point on things but I think Spira needs you again."

"People are panicking all over the place. In one night Spira has gone into pandemonium again," says Baralai.

Gippal for once says nothing, merely nods his head in acknowledgment at the four. His expression is unusually downbeat, as if something bad has happened to him.

"Come on you three tell us everything you know about what has happened," orders Paine, cutting right to the chase.

"Okay, you know about what happened to the people in Bevelle, Luca and Djose right?" asks Nooj, looking at them for confirmation.

"Uh huh," they reply in unison.

Gippal steps towards them, his expression unchanged, "Well here are the details. The first group of people to be attacked were by most accounts in Luca; a group of four soldiers were on patrol near the Mi'hen Highroad. They were picked off one by one; we had several witness accounts from two women nearby and a group of three teenagers."

"All of them said they saw what they believed to be their assailant, but what doesn't make sense is what it looked like; they said it had no features, except the air around it seemed to shimmer as it moved, they said it was essentially invisible, save for the shimmering effect."

"We asked what weapons the attacker was using but they said they didn't see anything specific. Apparently the first guard was shot with something; the doctors found two holes in his… skinless head. The three kids said they saw a white and blue ball shoot out at one of the guards, explode, and take him down, in the confusion a second ball shot out and kill the third one."

"One of the women was standing relatively close to one of the guards and said that whatever it was that had shot the other guards ran at the last one and that she thought she saw a pair of jagged blades coming out of what she guessed was its right arm, then it stabbed the last guard with them."

"At that point in the whole foray the witnesses all went into hiding. They were found them in their homes and they were absolutely terrified."

Gippal steps away from them, he looked worse for wear, Baralai continues for him, "The guards bodies were… well two of them had been hung upside down and skinned, and the other two had their heads and spinal columns removed. For what reason we don't know, it sounds as though whoever did this wanted some form of trophy from each of them, pretty sick stuff really."

"We didn't see the bodies but the doctors say they have no idea what killed the second and third soldiers. They both have gaping holes in their chests, you can see all the way through them, but more than that, the flesh was all fused and cauterised, they said they had never seen anything like it."

"What about Bevelle and Djose?" asks Paine.

Nooj answers, "Similar thing. A group of five guards were found, two of them were skinned and the others were… well you can guess. Some witnesses saw it at different points. Three people saw what happened, two monks and a nun. The first monk was talking to the guards as the person attacked. He said he heard a sound like a whip cracking, and then one of the guard's chests exploded. They looked around and a second guard got shot in the same way and at that point they all ran away and the guards were shooting in all directions, they couldn't see their attacker. Whoever it was they followed them. They passed a nun who watched one of the guards get caught in some sort of net and he fell to the floor, she tried to help him out but the wires were razor sharp and she cut herself badly, and as for the guard, she said he was getting cut to ribbons in the net, neither he or she couldn't do anything. The nun watched as something ran by her but she said it was translucent, the only indication that something was there was the air that shimmered around it."

"You seeing a pattern here?" asks Baralai, looking at the friends, "It then took the other two guards down, with some sort of sharp spear, according to the other monk who was nearby at the time. Then it returned to the guard and, without remorse, stood over him and stabbed him with 'blades that came out of its arms' and then cut off the wires and grabbed onto the guards leg. But before it walked away it supposedly looked at the nun and she saw something on what she could make out to be its head. Apparently it flashed its 'huge yellow eyes at her' and then walked off, collected the other bodies and proceeded to do to the guards what the other one did to the guards in Luca."

"The same thing happened at the very same time over on the other side of Bevelle. A group of 7 guards, all systematically butchered in front of a few witnesses in much the same way, balls of light, bladed objects, skinning and decapitation. Again all of the witnesses say they saw the air shimmer around a translucent assailant."

Gippal huffs, "The Machine Faction's base was also attacked, we lost 6 Al Bhed guards and four active machine weapons. All of the guards were attacked and killed the same way as the others except one of them was killed, according to one off the witnesses, with 'a disk like object' that travelled straight through one of the guards… cutting him in half. And returned to the thing that threw it. And once again they were treated like the others."

A tear came to Gippal's eye and he started sobbing. The others look at him quizzically and concerned, "Gippal, you okay, what's wrong?" asks Paine.

Gippal tries to calm himself, wiping his eye, "The one who got cut in half was on of my old friends."

Paine didn't know what to say to him, except the obvious, "I… I'm sorry Gippal," she puts a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry about me. We got a job to do."

Tidus looks at Nooj, "Okay so these creatures are translucent, therefore very difficult to see right?"

"Correct."

"And they only attack you if you are armed right?"

"It seems that way."

"So then if we are to stop them, and this probably means we will have to kill them, first of all how are we meant to see them, and secondly how are we meant to kill them if we are best to do the job unarmed?"

"We put this to the machine faction's scientists they said that they may have a solution but it won't be ready for a few days yet. Our most recent update on what they have been working on is an interesting device which will, once made, track the movement of objects. A motion tracker if you will."

Yuna folds her arms, "What do you mean a few days? We need these things now. What do we do between now and the time we get the motion trackers? Wait for these things to strike again? Next time it might not be armed people they hit."

Gippal scratches the back of his head in thought, "Well there isn't anything we can do, except hope that they don't strike again, sorry."

Yuna looks away from him in a huff, frustrated that she of all the people in Spira could do nothing.

"I'll do what I can to tell the guys to speed up their work, but we can't have faulty equipment through rushed work. In the meantime… well, I guess we better start praying."

Three uneventful days of waiting for news of the trackers pass. It seems as if the wishes of the group have been answered as there are no new reports of gruesome massacres.

Yuna, Tidus, Rikku and Paine sit in Baralai's office, waiting for the latest progress reports on the motion tracker. Yuna gets up and starts to pace about, her patients wearing thin. A clicking noise sounds from the door handle and Gippal, brandishing a smile walks in.

"Have they finished yet?" asks Paine.

"Yup, they've finished and if you follow me I will be able to show you what this puppy is capable of," he motions for them to follow him and they obey.

Gippal leads them outside of the building where they find Baralai waiting for them. In his had is a small boxy looking device about twice the size of a fist. Gippal steps towards him and he hands over the device.

"Ok guys this is the motion tracker you've been waiting for. I've played around with it a little with Baralai and it is quite impressive what this thing can do so listen up. It can detect motion in a one hundred and eighty degree arc in front of it and up to thirty metres away."

One of the six sides of the device has a bluish screen with a blue bar at the bottom and a counter that reads 00m. It has three white lines coming away from the centre of the blue bar.

"It's turned off at the moment but when activated it works like selective sonar, it only tracks living things. Now lets show you what it can do, Baralai get behind us for the moment" Baralai moves in next to the group and stands so that he is not within the sensory arc.

Gippal turns it on and a semi circular line quickly and repeatedly darts out from the centre of the blue bar and covers the area on the screen and making tiny pipping noises.

Gippal takes a glance at everyone to make sure they are paying attention.

"Notice that the line moves out? If there was something in the way it would make a bleeping noise, the closer it is the higher pitched the bleep. Let me demonstrate. Baralai move over there."

Baralai moves over about 5 metres in front of the tracker and the line sweeps over the little screen and makes a relatively high pitched bleeping noise and a small white dot appears on the screen, it quickly begins to fade and each time the line goes over the screen again the white dot is re-enhanced.

"Okay move around a little please," Baralai complies and they watched as the white line darts about the screen following Baralai's position.

Rikku looks impressed "That is a pretty nifty device. We're sure to find those things now!"

Gippal shakes his free index finger at her, "Three things you should bear in mind: The tracker does not distinguish whether an object is above or below you it only distinguishes on a horizontal axis not a vertical one, so if the dot is directly in front of you and you can't see a thing, then it is probably above or below you. Secondly it won't detect people or things that are standing perfectly still, if you saw a dot and it disappears, likelihood is it has stopped moving. Thirdly, remember that it only looks at a radius of 30 metres it's not unlimited."

"It will have to do. But I can see another problem with this. We don't know where to start. Whoever they are they will be a long way from where they were, and we can't see them from a long range can we? They are difficult enough to see close up. So where do we start?" Asks Yuna pensively.

Gippal shakes his head, "I don't know. There haven't been any more reports of attacks so they might well be trying to regroup. Let's go to the meeting room, save us standing around here. Nooj will be waiting for us there anyway."

The group enter a conference room with a large rectangular table and a number of chairs, where they find Nooj already sitting down waiting for them; he motions for them all to take a chair. Everyone sits as close to him as possible.

Baralai looks at everyone seeking their attention "Now like Tidus said, where do we start? I think we would be best to assign ourselves to teams and each team goes around with a motion tracker to Luca, Bevelle and Djose. Those were the last known locations of the attackers; we must clear out those areas first to make sure they didn't hang around in the cities."

Gippal shakes his head, "That's almost a good idea but firstly we only have two available trackers, the one I have shown these guys and the other one is in the hands of our 'soldiers' secondly Luca and Bevelle are huge cities and Djose is in the countryside, where it's easy to loose a person, let alone an invisible creature. It would be like looking for needles in haystacks."

"Well it's still a plan. Besides I don't want to have to wait any longer for another load of people get killed. We had better move and move fast." inputs Nooj.

At that moment a woman walks into the room with a rather distressed look on her face, in her hand she holds a commsphere.

"Everyone, this is something I think you all need to hear. We have lost contact with the construction workers at the new Macalania City; we would have put it down to the storm that is over them if it was not for the last transmission we received from them, just a few moments ago. I have a recording here."

She puts the commsphere down on the table and plays it, there is no picture, only static, but there are noises; someone breathing fast and shakily could be heard. A mans voice sounds out from the sphere, as he speaks there is nothing but terror in his voice.

"Th… Th… this is base leader Tao to Bevelle, come in Bevelle!"

The woman's voice responds to the man, "This is Bevelle here. What's wrong?"

Man proceeds to spout out to her, "We are under attack from unknown enemy forces; they've taken everyone, there are none left. I'm the last one; I need you to seal off the whole of Macalania. They must not escape!"

"Not let who escape?"

"The creatures that took everyone! They are not fiends I repeat they are not fiends, I've never seen anything like them but they can't be allowed to escape. The whole of Spira is in danger. You must…"

His voice trails off but his breathing can still be heard. There is a slight hissing noise then the man screams.

"AAAAHHHH HELP ME IT'S GONNA KILL ME! NO, NO, NO!"

The group hear a sickening crunching noise and hear the man gargle, then nothing.

The others look at the recorder in silence, all of them eyes wide.

Nooj breaks the silence, "Right, it looks like our killers have moved onto Macalania, damn it! There were a lot of colonists over there, men, women... children, if they have killed all of them..." he doesn't finish his sentence, merely looks at the table in dismay and the uncomfortable silence descends on the room again.

Yuna taps on the table a few times to break the silence, trying to be as objective as possible, "How are we going to stop them by ourselves? From all accounts it sounds like there are five of these things, and I don't think the four of us alone are going to be able to deal with them, with or without the trackers."

The others nod their agreement.

Baralai looks over at Gippal and then at Nooj, they nod for some reason, as if they knew what he was going to say, "I know who we can use to help us. Shortly after you guys defeated Shuyin and destroyed Vegnagun the three of us commissioned the creation of an elite fighting unit that was designed to fight for the unity of Spira when needed, sort of reminiscent of the Crimson squad, only we changed the name. We called them the U.S.C.M."

"It stands for United Spiran Colonial Marines. It has combined the best troops that the Youth League, New Yevon and the Machine Faction could offer. We have given them the latest state of the art weapons and equipment, including one of our new motion trackers, they are based here in Bevelle, and they are ready to go at a moments notice."

"We formed them to maintain control of Spira where necessary. Most of the time their work involves going to areas where the fiend concentration has become very high and they clean the place up."

Gippal continues for Baralai, "The squad is lead by a Lieutenant, who communicates to them in a mobile comm. centre, which is usually in one of our latest additions to our equipment: the armoured personnel carrier or APC for short. The rest of the division consists of two groups totalling 12 men and women. Each Group is led into combat by a Sergeant and is backed up by two Corporals. The remaining eight are then divided according to their weapons: There are six riflemen, two gunners', two flame throwers, a medic and a sniper."

"The division we have ready are the best of the best, they have never known defeat. Their skills with guns are unmatched and they are excellent in unarmed combat."

Paine looks at the three leaders, confused, "I don't get it; you have these 'Elite fighting units' at your disposal, why do you need us?"

Nooj fields the question for her, "Two reasons: Firstly if everyone in Spira knows that you guys are on the case then they will calm down, remember you have all taken on some pretty hefty tasks to save Spira in the past, especially Yuna and Rikku who defeated Sin and then went on to destroy Shuyin and Vegnagun, and the point is everyone remembers you for your respective endeavours. And secondly above all this, even after the things you have been through, you are still alive; your abilities to survive are unrivalled in Spira even by the U.S.C.M. We have faith in you guys."

"Gee thanks a lot."

"Don't be like that. We know you guys will be able to deal with this. Anyway we need to get into contact with division four's Lieutenant."

Gippal, Nooj and Baralai got up and left the room along with the woman who had brought the message.

Rikku watches them leave, looking a little pissed off at them for landing them with this obviously dangerous task, "is it really so important for us to be on this? I mean these guys sound well equipped and trained for the job, what is the point in us being here?"

"Weren't you listening to what Nooj says? As much as I hate to say it he does have a point," concedes Paine.

"Yeah besides if we do manage to capture or kill the perpetrators of this, then kudos to us. Besides I want to see this 'Elite fighting unit' of theirs. And have a look at their weapons too," plucks up Tidus.

Paine rolls her eyes, "Typical."

Yuna looks a little moody at the prospect, "I don't like it at all; I certainly don't want to end up like those men. But I feel like I must do it. For Spira and those I care about these things must be stopped."

"Ugh why can't Spira stay out of danger? I mean I feel like we're the cleaners 'we just cleaned up this mess, could you keep it clean, for ten minutes!'" pouts an indignant Rikku.

Tidus holds his hands behind his head and leans back in the chair, "Well, it's just another day at work guys, life isn't a bed of rose petals, we know that more than most people do, this is just another one of those things that we need to deal with."

Paine almost scoff at the remark, "Wow, impressive little speech there Tidus, you should introduce us to your writer." Tidus gives Paine a sarcastic smile which she ignores, "Well, I guess it would be interesting to find out who or what these psycho's are."

Tidus gets out of his chair, "So we're all in then yeah?"

Yuna, Paine and Rikku get up from their seats each heaving a sigh as if the weight of the world is on their shoulders and speak unanimously, "Yup."

Tidus gives a sneaky grin, "Lets blitz."