A/N: Once again, I apologise for the size of chapter 12! Thanks to all of my reviewers. When I started writing this story, I had most of it planned out, but since then I must have changed it at least three times! I didn't know how this was going to end, but with a little help from Martha and Victoria during school, and a extremely boring History lesson, I've finally figured it out! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own ANYTHING ... expect from everything I own.
This chapter is dedicated to Victoria and Holly.
P.S. The fiends that we fight in the Mi'ihen Highroad are all based on what kind of fiends are there in FFX, not X2, because I currently do not have that information at my disposal!
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Machina City
"Hey, do you have five gil I can borrow?" Lillie asked, as Martha and I handed over our money to the man on the stall selling fruits.
"Here," I said, handing her ten gil, "But I want the change!" Lillie laughed, payed the man for her apple and handed me back the remaining five gil. It was over an hour since we had arrived in Luca, and after fifteen minutes Lillie, Martha and me had found our selves drifting away from the others. Nit that they were really bothered; in fact, I think they were quite pleased.
"This I boring! Why can't there be some fiends here? I mean, I'm not saying I particularly enjoy killing, but at least it's something to do!" Martha moaned, plonking herself down on a nearby bench.
"We could go to the Mi'ihen Highroad ..." I suggested.
Lillie thought, frowned, then said, "Yeah, but we have to stay here, don't we? In case Nemesis shows up."
"Listen," I said, facing the two of them, "First of all, it's more than fifty percent chance he'll attack Bevelle, not Luca. Secondly, the Mi'ihen Highroad's only a tiny bit past the outskirts of Luca – if the others call needing help we can be there just as fast as we would have been if we were still in Luca!"
"You have a point," Lillie muttered, "Okay, we're off the Highroad!"
That set Martha off singing 'Follow the grassy Highroad' – her version of 'Follow the yellow brick road' from the Wizard of Oz. By the time we had reached the outskirts of Luca she was signing 'We're off to slaughter some fiends – some wonderful fiends from Spira'.
::Mi'ihen Highroad North And Central::
I decided to change out of the Trainer dress sphere when we were about seven fiend battles into the Highroad. Don't get me wrong, I love Otto, but it takes years to learn anything on that sphere, so I changed to Warrior. Lillie had stayed in Black Mage while Martha had transformed from Black Mage to Gun Mage. Martha had recently learned Scan and was know into the Fiend Hunter abilities – Lillie was still learning Fira.
"You're going down!" Martha yelled as a Dual Horn came charging at us.
I dodged the Dual Horn's attack and shouted over to Martha, who was behind it, "You can learn Fire Breath from this fiend! Try not to kill it too fast!"
Martha scanned it so we could see it's health and guess how much we could harm it. It didn't take very long. After the fiend realised it was going to be dust soon, it unleashed the one and only Fire Breath.
"Thanks!" Martha yelled as I tossed a potion to Lillie, who was the most harmed. She then hit the Dual Horn with a Blizzard spell and a bell sound went off signalling she learnt Fira.
"No use in this fight, is it?" She smirked, throwing another Blizzard spell at the fiend the very second I attacked it, causing me to get hit in the side by the spell.
"Whoops! Sorry, Amy," She yelled, giving me a potion seeing as I wasn't that badly damaged. I hit the Dual Horn with a final blow and then it was pyreflies.
"Eight down – many thousands to go," I said, as we began to walk away from the swirling mass of pyreflies. A few seconds after that we were ambushed by two Blizzard Flans (I forget there real name). This was Lillie's area, so me and Martha attacked the second Flan between us while Lillie dealt with the first.
::Mi'ihen Highroad Travel Agency::
"Maybe we should turn back now," Martha said as we entered the Travel Agency, "You know, once we've maybe had something to eat here. IF we're too far away when they call us ..."
"Relax. Come on, we've only been gone an hour and a half. They know we can look after our selves and anyway, if Nemesis does attack they'll call in the others for help as well, won't they?" Lillie argued. Martha seemed to loosen up after hearing her say that, so she happily ate some food before setting off with us to the Southern part of the Highroad – or more formally known as the 'New road'.
::Mi-ihen Highroad North End::
Barely ten minutes later we were at the North End. You know where that is – the part where the Highroad ends and Mushroom Rock starts. You meet Seymour there in FFX and he tells the guards to let you past, remember? Anyway, we were busy debating whether to travel down the Old Road or travel in to Mushroom Rock. Eventually we decided we were sick of the Highroad, and went to Mushroom Rock. However, all three of us agreed to keep on walking straight onto the beach, instead of going to the Youth League Headquarters and getting ambushed by Elma.
::Mushroom Rock, Beach::
I'm sure you know where I'm talking about when I say the beach, so I won't explain. Anyhow, we all of a sudden found ourselves travelling peacefully (well, about as peacefully as you can get when you're attacked by fiends every few seconds) up the Djose Highroad. There are seriously too many Highroads in Spira.
::Djose Highroad::
When we reached the fork in the road up at the top, we sat down and studied our dress spheres, monitoring how many abilities we had learnt. Martha had by far learnt the most, seeing as Gun Mage doesn't need much AP. She had learnt almost half of the Fiend hunter abilities. Lillie had learnt Blizzara and Thundara while I had become skilled at Sentinel and a few various other Swordplay skills.
::Moonflow::
There was no point in us going to Djose Temple, so we veered left and went to the Moonflow. As we were walking along talking and fighting any fiends that came at us, In guess none of us thought 'Shouldn't we go back to Luca?' In fact, I never even thought once about the others in Luca or Bevelle as my mind was too busy focusing on things in the Moonflow. I think it was the same with the other two. Anyway, an hour later (it had been at least three hours since we had been in Luca, though none of us noticed) we arrived at the Shoopuf Port, South Bank. We were waiting for the next Shoopuf to arrive (which you could see making it's way across from the North Bank) in order to make our way across the Guadosalam. For some reason, we very much felt like visiting Leblanc! At any rate, when the Shoopuf entered the port, and the passengers climbed off, an extremely unexpected sight met our eyes. Two of the passengers on the Shoopuf ... were Holly and Victoria!
"Oh my God ..." Lillie muttered, "I was not expecting that!"
"Hi!" Victoria screamed, causing others to stare at her but she never noticed, instead she came running over with Holly tagging behind. "We thought we'd have to travel all the way to Luca to find you! I bet your in the same boat as us – you felt bored and wanted to do something, right? You walked away a bit then found yourself miles away from where you originally where!"
"That's about right," I agreed, smiling, "So, you were bored, too?"
"Definitely," Holly nodded glumly, "Not so much as a scream, let alone Nemesis destroying the place."
"Yeah, " Victoria said, "But that's good. If Nemesis did the same to Bevelle as he'd done to Djose Temple ... well, you know what I mean!" We nodded and Victoria added as an after thought, "In Truth, I don't think anything is more devastating then Nemesis!"
I said to them in a dreary voice, "You obviously haven't seen 'Matron Annihilation'."
Victoria and Holly looked at us in shock, surprise and confusion as Martha, Lillie and me burst into hysterics.
::Moonflow South Bank::
We didn't bother taking the Shoopuf to Guadosalam, instead we sat on the bank of the Moonflow, watching the lake.
"So, did you have any problems in Macalania, the Thunder Plains or Guadosalam?" I asked, letting my newly-bare feet dangle into the lake like the others.
"A bit," Holly said, thinking, "Macalania had pretty strong fiends, I had to get us to Flee quite a few times, but we learnt some abilities – a lot less than you, though-"
"Yeah, well, we did have easy fiends," I pointed out fairly.
Holly grinned and continued, "Then in the Thunder Plains ... erm ... Oh, yeah, an Iron Giant used White Mage hater – you see, stayed in Thief and Vic stayed in White Mage, so we had to escape from that, too. In Guadosalam ... We were assaulted by Tobli's Hypello's. That was scary." So Holly told us in more detail what happened. Once she'd finished Martha explained what happened to us.
::Same Place, One Hour Later::
"A rabbit," Victoria said.
Lillie exclaimed, "A rabbit?! It doesn't look like a rabbit! I'd say a-"
"Pineapple?" I piped up. I could feel their heads turn to look at me. "I'm not looking at the one you are, I'm looking at that once," I pointed. I heard Vic let out an 'Oh'.
The five of us were lying on our backs, looking up at the sky and studying the clouds. I asked which one Vic and Lil were actually looking at, and when I gazed at it, it did actually look like a pineapple. I didn't tell them this, though.
"I'm gonna go for a swim," Martha said, jumping up.
"Change your dress sphere," Holly said, absentmindedly, "To Thief or Lady Luck, something like that."
"Why?" I enquired, squinting at Holly.
"Because they're both kinda like swimming costumes, aren't they? Well, Thief is more than Lady Luck." So Martha changed to Thief and set off for the water, shortly followed by me and Holly doing the same (Holly didn't need to change her dress sphere though) and then Victoria and Lillie came a few minutes after that, mirroring us.
::Moonflow Lake::
Swimming in the Moonflow was brilliant! I was surprised nobody else did, but then again, people probably didn't like swimming above a ruined city. Can't blame then, either, it was kinda creepy, but it wasn't that creepy, otherwise we wouldn't have explored it.
I bet you saw that coming. 'Otherwise we wouldn't have explored it'. Just to let you know, I'm not lying, we did actually explore the place. It was all Martha's idea – and a very good one at that. We were a bit worried that we wouldn't be able to hold our breath for long enough, under Victoria pointed out if we managed to get inside some buildings they would in reality be empty of water. Which was true, but we were still unsure. In the end, though, we just went for it. Can't hurt to try, can it?
::Machina City::
Victoria was right, and we found a water-less house. We were quite worn out from all the swimming, so we rested for a little bit. After a while I went over to the only window (it was filled with glass, before you say anything). It was quite small, but had a perfect view of all the city! I squinted to try and make out details on all the buildings. As I scanned the area, I noticed a very big building, almost squashed between two others. It had fallen into place so that it was impossible to see from above, looking down. That would have been why nobody have discovered it. Guess what it was? A Temple.
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A/N: Good? I'm gonna write chapter 14 straight away now, and post these at the same time, but I'd still be grateful if you reviewed this chapter!