DISCLAIMER: I do not own FFX or the antiquated custom of the bar brawl.
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Wakka and the other Aurochs regained consciousness once a few X- Potions were administered in the locker room. They were ecstatic once they heard that they'd won the game, and Jassu ardently pressured Seymour to forget being a Crusader and becoming a full-time Auroch.
"No, I'm afraid I cannot," Seymour had replied. "I feel that I must do something to end Spira's suffering."
The Aurochs had been disappointed, but admired their substitute goaltender's benevolent aspirations. Auron, Lulu, Wakka and Rikku had glared at him, understanding his double meaning.
"Now that the game is over," Auron said once they were out of the stadium, "can we look for Yuna without any more diversions?"
"Certainly," said Lulu. "The hotels, then? I doubt that they're still in Luca if Tidus was not at the game, but we should double-check just in case."
"While we're at it," Wakka interrupted, "shouldn't we check into one? I mean, it's kinda late in the day. We need a place to sleep whether we find them or not, ya?"
"I suppose," said Auron. "But we'll worry about that later. Finding Yuna is more important. And we can compare rates when we search."
"Can we spring for a good hotel this once?" Rikku asked. "You always pick the cheapest ones, and they're never any good. We'd be sleeping outside if you had your way. Remember the first night I joined you guys, out at the Moonflow?"
"Was that the place with the chunky water?" Lulu asked.
"Nah-uh, that was Mi'hen," said Wakka. "This one had roaches."
"All right," Auron interrupted. "I get your point. I'll think about it. But now, we search."
Their inquiries of every hotel in Luca took over three hours. Naturally, the very last hotel was the correct one. The odd group containing a young couple and a Ronso had rented two rooms for a week. However, they had checked out the previous day. The concierge recalled the young man mentioning something about taking the ferry to Besaid by way of Kilika.
Auron was irritated. "You see? If we'd left one day before, we wouldn't have missed them."
Rikku shrugged. "Well, what's done is done. For now, we need a room. How much do you guys charge?" she asked the desk.
"2000 gil for a single, 3500 for a double," the concierge replied.
"See? That's not too bad. And they have a pool and a game room! Can't we stay here, Auron? Pleeeeeeease?" Rikku looked at Auron with wide puppy-dog eyes.
"What is that face for?"
"I'm trying to be adorable." She pouted her lips slightly.
"By dilating your pupils and bulging your lips?" Seymour asked. "You look as though someone punched you in the mouth on your way out of the optometrist's office."
Wakka laughed in spite of himself. Lulu chuckled quietly behind her sleeve. Even Auron smiled crookedly. Seymour was astonished. He had made them laugh? He had amused them at the expense of someone other than himself?
Rikku scowled. "Well, it works on my dad!"
"Isn't your dad farsighted?" Wakka asked with a grin. Everybody but Rikku laughed again.
"Hey, quit being mean!" Rikku protested. "Are we staying here or not?"
"All right, we'll stay here." Auron pulled out his wallet. "Two doubles, please."
"I do not think splitting up and going out into the city would be hazardous, do you, Auron?" Lulu asked.
"I suppose not," Auron relented. "How are you splitting up?"
"I don't know. Would you like to go out and find some dinner, Wakka?" Lulu asked.
"Sure!" Wakka agreed. "Um...anybody else?"
"Nah, you two go ahead," said Rikku with a smile. "The rest of us will be just fine."
"Where are you going?" Auron asked Lulu and Wakka.
"There's this kinda fancy place out by the stadium," Wakka said. "That is, if you want to, Lu..."
"That sounds fine," Lulu replied. "Lead the way, Wakka."
The second they'd exited the lobby, Rikku began giggling insanely.
"And what are you planning on?" Auron asked, so used to the girl's sudden spurts of giggles that he didn't notice them.
"Oh, I was just gonna wander around," Rikku said. "You know, explore the city and stuff."
"Am I accompanying you, or is Seymour staying with me?"
"You're coming with me," Rikku replied. "I mostly wanted to check out the shopping district. It looked like they had tents and stuff set up."
"That sounds fine," Auron agreed.
They headed to the nearby shopping district, which was very crowded. Seymour had no desire whatsoever to shop. He had no money with him, after all.
"If we get separated," Auron told Rikku, "meet back at the hotel lobby. And don't let Seymour wander off, or let your guard down around him. He could strangle you with one hand if he had the chance."
"Geez, you sound like my grandparents!" Rikku laughed. "You just forgot to mention that if I don't bundle up, I'll catch a lethal disease and die within hours. We're surrounded by people. Even if I couldn't shock him, d'you really think that nobody would notice a person being strangled?"
They looked at quite a few stalls selling jewelry, hair accessories, and other things that neither Auron nor Seymour had much interest in. Auron eventually immersed himself in a stall selling sunglasses. Seymour gazed longingly at the toy swords in the next stall and wished they were real.
Suddenly, he felt a tug on his shirt. He looked down and saw Rikku dragging him away.
"What—"
"Shh!" She put a finger to her lips. "We're ditching Auron."
"You are attempting to ditch a legendary guardian?"
"I've done it before loads of times," she said with a shrug. "Now c'mon!"
Seymour followed her. He expected them to be stopped by Auron at any moment. However, they made it out of the shopping district and onto the main street without incident. He was somewhat impressed with Rikku. And now he only had one chaperone to deal with.
"See? Told ya!" Rikku said triumphantly.
"Where are we going, exactly?" Seymour asked.
She grinned. "We're going to go spy on Lulu and Wakka."
Seymour arched an eyebrow. "Why?"
Rikku launched into a long, detailed explanation that included every hint that she'd seen of their attraction; what Auron, Tidus, Yuna, and Kimahri thought of the matter; the story of Lulu and Wakka and Wakka's brother Chappu, as Rikku heard it from Yuna; how she predicted Wakka would propose; what the wedding would be like; and where they would go on their honeymoon.
"So you think they like each other," Seymour said fifteen minutes later, once Rikku had finished saying what she thought they ought to name their children.
"Yep! Haven't I been saying that? Oh, here we are!" They had arrived at the stadium district. Rikku pointed at a nice-looking restaurant on their right.
"That's where they're eating, I think," Rikku said. "So we're going to spy on them from in there."
She pointed at a bar to their left, across from the restaurant. It looked questionable in terms of both patronage and cleanliness. Seymour would not have gone in on his own.
"This?" he asked dubiously.
"It'll be fine!" she assured him. "My brother said he's been in here before. He said it's a good place as long as you don't antagonize anyone. Oh, and if you order meat, make sure it's the right color. And, um, from the right animal."
Seymour began to wish that he'd stayed with Auron.
Rikku led him into the dimly lit bar. It was just as Seymour had expected. The smell of smoke, alcohol, sweat, and a few other unpleasant things hit his nostrils. Loud, incomprehensible music blared from a sphere somewhere. A screen broadcasting a blitzball game was set up above the bar. A pool table and a dartboard stood against the far wall near the bathrooms. The place was crowded with grungy, filthy, menacing individuals—all human with the exception of a grizzled Ronso and a puzzled Hypello—from whom Seymour would just as soon keep his distance. Rikku didn't appear to notice any of this. She cheerfully sat down at a table by the window and whipped out a pair of binoculars.
Seymour sat across from her. "Aren't the binoculars a bit much?"
"I want to get a good view," she told him. "Ha! Found them! Let's see...it looks like they're ordering their entrees. They already have drinks. Hey, Wakka said something funny and now they're both laughing. Oh, here comes the waiter. It looks like Lulu's ordering shrimp, but she might've said shrooms, I'm not sure."
"I doubt that she ordered shrooms," Seymour said. He glanced around. "She would have to come over here to order those. And I neither need nor want a running commentary of your observations."
"Suit yourself," said Rikku without taking her eyes from the binoculars.
A disgruntled waitress arrived at their table. "You want anything?"
Rikku put down her binoculars to order. "I'll have a small soda and some nachos."
The waitress turned to Seymour. "What about you?"
Seymour was hungry, but remembered what Rikku had said about meat and decided against it. "Just some water for me."
Once the waitress had left, Rikku resumed her vigil at the window. "They're sharing breadsticks. Aww...Lulu's buttering one for Wakka!"
Seymour rolled his eyes. "I don't care." She took no notice of his apathy. "Now Wakka's saying something. He's waving his hands around. Is he talking about a boat? HEY! Don't sit there! Move, move! Ah, phooey!" Rikku turned back to the table. "A big group just got seated by the window, and they're blocking my view. All I can see now is the top point of Wakka's hair." She put away her binoculars. "Wanna play darts?"
Seymour shrugged. "Fine." Throwing pointy things sounded appealing at the moment. He headed over to the dartboard with Rikku.
A game was already in progress. Rikku tapped one player, an ill-tempered burly man, on the shoulder.
"'Scuse me!" she said brightly. "Can me and my friend join in?"
"After this game," he grunted. "We've got two more rounds to go."
They weren't very good dart throwers, Seymour observed. He could beat them. He suspected that Rikku could beat them as well. Hopefully they were gracious losers.
The game finished, and Seymour and Rikku were added to the roster. The game was simple: 7 rounds, with 3 darts per person per round. All darts had to be thrown from behind a line on the floor. The one with the most points at the end was the winner.
There were five other players, two of whom had flaky girlfriends who watched. Rikku and Seymour, being the newest arrivals, went last. It was a good thing, too; true to Seymour's prediction, he and Rikku out-threw everyone by far. Rikku beat him by a small margin.
"Round one to me!" Rikku cheered. "Top that."
Seymour smirked at her challenge. "Trust me, I will."
Round two did go to Seymour, who looked at Rikku triumphantly. "Your turn."
"Oh, I'm just getting started!"
At the start of Round Three, the waitress delivered Seymour's water and Rikku's soda and nachos. Seymour came out the leader in this round as well. Rikku claimed that the nacho grease had affected her grip and vowed that she would come back the next round. Seymour found himself enjoying the friendly competition. He ignored the glares and grumbles of the other players.
They became impossible to ignore midway through the fourth round. A skinny man with greasy hair took his turn and in doing so stepped far over the throwing line. Nobody said a word, including Seymour, who didn't care what the other players did. Rikku, however, did care.
"HEY!" she yelled angrily. "You stepped over the line!"
The greasy-haired man shrugged. "So what?"
"So you're a cheater!"
He gave a short, snide laugh. "A cheater? Hear that? An Al Bhed called me a cheater!"
Rikku's eyes narrowed. "And what do you mean by that?"
"A pot callin' the kettle black. A lyin', blasphemin' thief callin' me a cheater."
"Take that back," she said in a low, wrathful tone. Seymour remembered the incident on the airship and knew that Rikku was serious.
The man sized up his tiny female opponent and snorted. "Make me."
Rikku wordlessly raised her hand and cast Fire on her antagonist. The spell landed on his head, where it reacted with the grease and hair gel to form an impressive flame. The man yelped in surprise and pain. Panicked, he ran in circles, beating at the flames with his hands.
"Hey! Where do you get off hurting him?" demanded an irate bimbo, who apparently was the greasy man's girlfriend.
Rikku shrugged. "His fault for being such a sudran-vilgehk pycdynt."
"Don't you call him dirty names, either!"
The bimbo advanced on Rikku, hand raised. Rikku casually picked up the contained of nacho cheese and dumped it into the bimbo's hair. As the bimbo squawked angrily, Rikku covered the cheese with the rest of her soda. The other bimbo, who apparently was friends with the first, came charging in. Rikku moved aside and tripped her.
Seymour, watching the fray from the sidelines, began to laugh. A large bearded man noticed. "What're you laughing at?" he demanded.
Before Seymour could make a portentous reply, the bearded man swung a fist at Seymour's face. He dodged it just in time. The man came at him again. This time, Seymour blocked him. He glanced over at Rikku, who was casting Blizzard on a new attacker, and wished he could use even the tiniest bit of magic. He could end the fight with one spell.
In the instant he'd looked away, the bearded man had hauled back for another punch. This one nailed Seymour squarely in the cheekbone and floored him. He picked himself up and made ready to exit. He had no stake in this brawl. The brutes weren't worth the energy expenditure.
"Hey! Let me go, you jerk! Help!"
The burly man had pinned Rikku's arms to her sides and lifted her off her feet. She kicked furiously, but was having no luck in getting down. Seymour continued on his way. Rikku had started this fight. She could get herself out of it. Out of the corner of his eye, Seymour saw the greasy man—his hair still smoldering—and the nacho cheese bimbo moving towards Rikku. Seymour also saw the corner of a familiar piece of machina poking out of Rikku's pouch.
"Let's see what she's got," said the greasy guy.
Seymour's eyes widened. Calhoun's controller! If they got hold of it... He had no idea what other features Rikku had programmed into that thing. The shock might be the least of his worries. And he really didn't want to have a narcoleptic episode in this particular bar. He wheeled around and re-entered the fray.
"Put her down!"
He reeled his fist back and let it fly for a punch that knocked the burly man backwards a few steps. After Rikku kicked him in the groin, he released her. Seymour was now busy with the greasy man, who grabbed a stick from the pool table and swung it. Seymour caught it and twisted it out of the man's grip. Then he used it to soundly crack the man over the head.
"Do you have any swift ways to end this?" Seymour hissed at Rikku as the remaining darts players regrouped.
"I'm looking..." Rikku pawed through her one of her pouches. "Here! Dream Powder! Don't breathe in!"
She withdrew a small capsule, cracked it, and threw it into the middle of the bar. It exploded into a cloud of granular smoke that filled the room. Rikku led Seymour out of the room, keeping her head down and her nose covered. Seymour did the same. Around him, he heard people coughing. The coughing quickly subsided as the Dream Powder took effect and sent the other patrons into unconsciousness.
They ran out the door, and didn't stop running until they were a safe distance away from the bar. Then Rikku collapsed against the low wall that lined the street, laughing insanely.
"You..." Seymour panted, "you think that that was funny?"
"In retrospect," Rikku gasped, "yes."
He shook his head in disbelief. "You are insane."
Rikku grinned and winked. "Well! That's the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?"
He let out an exasperated groan. "Indeed."
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(A/N) Okay, yeah, so the ending is awkward. But this chapter was running long as it was, so I couldn't start something else yet. Hmm...a week since the last update. Not too bad. And thankyouthankyouthankyou to all readers, and especially reviewers, because I like having non-spam e-mail. Hooah!