As promised, I get this chapter out on Monday. Its about 7:00 PM as I begin to type this, so I made it, just barely.
As you would come to expect from this rag tag group of eight, the going was tough. Also, as you would have come to expect, they begin to fight like machines, making no mistakes, and keeping completely focused, but that doesn't mean that there was no room for fun, oh no. To anybody who had never seen them in action before, they would swear that they weren't even paying attention to what they were doing.
Now this is completely and totally untrue, but with Tidus taking every possible chance to pull off another crazy maneuver, Wakka spitting out one challenge after another to the endless line of monsters, Yuna, Lulu, and Rikku discussing how they men were so ill behaved, and Paine and Auron still trying to outdo each other, you would swear they were enjoying this.
Unfortunately whatever mood was over the party, was sourly interrupted. It was one of those, one thing leads to another deals. What happened was a group of Bombs had managed to fly themselves smack underneath the front end of the Paladin Bunny. They blew themselves up and the front end of the hover shot upward, throwing all of its passengers to the back. When Tidus managed to gain control over the machine, he had to swerve to avoid a nasty collision with an Adamantoise. This threw the party to the side of the machine, and Rikku flew straight out the door. She managed to stick a dagger into the floor plates as she flew, and she hung to the machine. Tidus had seen her fly, but never saw her grasp the floor, and so he began a tight curve to turn around. The centrifugal force forced her to lose her grip, and she tumbled into the grassy plain.
"Grrrrr, stupid Ty!" she thought savagely, and for good reason. By the time she got up and dusted her self off, an army of monsters came at her in a mad rush. With no time to lose, she reached for her item bags. Being the thief that she was, item organization was an absolute must. She grabbed two of her four bags, one labeled "offensive", and one labeled "protective". The other two were "healing", and "energy stealing". Taking her offensive and protective bags, she did something that she never thought she would have to do. Se threw the bags spinning into the air. Their contents began spilling out everywhere.
What resulted was an instant, catastrophic rain of deadly items. Her protective items came first, massively raising her strength, evasion, defence, and all that good stuff. The fiends reached her about the same time the offensive items did, and chaos took over. (Only the mind's eye can describe what this scene looked like, so I won't even try.)
Meanwhile, back on the hover, the group was desperately searching the ground for Rikku, but her location became all too obvious as an explosion rocked the land. They had all thought for sure the explosion of energy was just coming from all the fiends attacking her, and that she was being torn apart as they raced toward her. Of course, what they found was quite the opposite. Rikku hopped aboard the Paladin Bunny looking almost perfectly fine, but she was clearly frustrated from losing all of her hard-earned items.
Eventually they all got back into the fighting rhythm, and before too long, the woods surrounding Guadosalem came into view. As they got closer to Guadosalem something else came into view. At first it looked like a King Behamoth, but as if that wasn't enough, as they got closer, it began to look like a King Behamoth on steroids. The thing was huge, easily a King Behamoth's size, plus a half.
"Who's up for a fight?" asked Tidus. Auron called back, "not a chance, we go around it."
"Problem, it's looking like that is the only way in," Tidus said, "I'll get us by, just hang on." No more than a minute later, an idea had formed into his mind.
"Kimahri!" he yelled to the massive ronso, "grab hold of Yuna, make sure nothing happens to her." "Really Tidus, I can handle myself, there is no need to try to protect me," Yuna said.
"It's not that I doubt you, it's just that I need someone to still be conscious to bring us all back after this is over. Were gonna hit hard, and if no one is around to bring us back, the we are all screwed." With that, Kimahri grabbed Yuna in a bear hug, using as much of his body as possible to protect her.
The giant King Behamoth thing stood and watched as the little craft sped toward his post. The puny thing look like it might be fun to eat after he crushed it. But as the brazen craft came within swatting distance, something unexpected happened. He went to swipe the little thing into oblivion, and just as his giant claw was about to take it out, the little thing shot backward a fraction, and his claw went sweeping over it.
Tidus nearly killed the thrust when he came within the creature's striking distance, and almost immediately, threw the thrusters into full reverse, sweetly dancing out of the way of danger. Once again, the claw went for another swipe, and Tidus jammed the thrust to full power, and sent the machine shooting forward. Just as Tidus had anticipated, the monster caught the back of the machine, sending it flipping through the air. The hover slammed into the back leg of the monster, crushing it on impact. It flew through the air in a shower of debris, before flying into the entrance to Guadosalem.
Tidus went unconscious on impact when his leg was crushed between the roof and floor. Everyone else had fallen unconscious except for Lulu, who was on the verge of passing out, and Yuna. She quickly healed all of Lulu's wounds, who went to work melting away the metal tomb that surrounded the others. Slowly, one by one, Yuna found and healed her friends. Tidus was the last one to receive treatment. Even with all of her magic, Yuna could not get rid of the scar tissue on Tidus's crushed leg. But he wasn't the only one to receive permanent damage, Auron could add another, smaller scar to his face, and Kimahri would have a small patch of missing fur on his calf.
Just as the tattered group pulled themselves from the smoldering wreckage, a sinister laugh rang through the air, and they suddenly knew that the worst was yet to come. Seymour Guado stood in front of the Farplane entrance, and beside him was a score of familiar faces, all of them looking ready to kill on command.
Hail to the climactic suspense! Sure, it's clichéd, but who cares? This is my story and I will cliché all I want. So, as always, review please, please, please! And please be patient while waiting for the next chapter. It is coming!