Disclaimer: I don't own the final fantasy series. Square Enix does. Hell, you think I'd be writing this if I did? I'd be bathing in money!

Chapter 2: Scare me once, shame on you. Scare me twice, shame on me.

The day had gone on just as she expected. Phate and his companions were helping to "control" the over population of the crawlers. Her job was to heal their wounds so they wouldn't have to rest or be trampled by the over grown catapillars. However, there where two things she hadn't expected. One being the horrific stench a crawler corpse leaves behind, and after several dead crawlers and a pounding headache, she found herself wishing the cave was more ventilated.

But what had surprised her most was Phate himself. She had always envisioned dark-knights as rough, unfriendly, and comically dull people. Yet, this dark-knight was full of spirit. Between jokes about his wife and silly phrases while being chased by hordes of crawlers (Such as: MOM! Look what I found! IT follwed me Home! Can I keep 'em!) she found herself quite amused with this group. Furthermore, he made her feel like she fit in. He would include her in on conversations, randomly shoot a glances towards her, and cheer her on. She didn't feel like just another tag-along mage, she was as part of the group as he was. (Though she did feel embarrassed when he yelled "FEAR THE WHITE-MAGE IN SHORT SHORTS")

After several hours they decided to finally take a break.

The travelers shared stories of previous adventures, both serious and comical, while Feyona listened and rested her mp. Usually she'd take this time to think about all the screw-ups she had done in the past, but today she found herself more interested in the tales of glory and embarrassment of others. Phate had several remarkable stories, some consisting of being chased by thousands of rabbits in Palborough Mines, and others about how you should never poke a sleeping Jugner tiger. When all her mp was rested Feyona joined the circle to share a few stories of her own, including the time she caught an Ooze when fishing in Davoi and ended up jumping into the water while wearing all white gear to avoid certain death.

After Phate was done making commentary on her stories, he looked over at her.

"Hey Fey."

"Yes sir?"

"Hey! I thought you said no formalities… "

She giggled slightly. "Sorry, habit. Yea Phate?"

"You're a good whitemage, and seem like a damn good person. Wanna join my linkshell?"

Feyona frowned a little at this. Linkshell… damn annoying things. Distractions are what they are. Truth was she never got the hang of linkshells. They always seemed to break her concentration while focusing on a spell, plus she always forgot to turn the thing off and would constantly say things into the linkshell that weren't suppose to be said. Her comrades at the church called her "The Mistell Queen" because of this, and several embarrassing conversations had made her weary of the linkshell casabo.

Phate seemed to sense her tension and laughed out loud. "I didn't ask you to give me a kidney. Come on, its just a group of adventurers that like to do stuff together, plus-"

"We also like to wreak havoc on the world. Nothing wrong with a little chaos."

Feyona quickly turned her head to find the owner of the unfamiliar voice only see a single hume not too far away from her own position. Guessing from the armour and two katanas at his side, she presumed he was a ninja. He sat back in the shadows, his arm resting on his knee, head lookin down, and smooth brown hair flowing infront of his face with ease. When did he appear? How long has he been there? Damnit I shouldn't have let my guard down.

Phate only chuckled at his comment, "Tai, don't ya have better things to do than stalk an old man and scare young mages?"

"He didn't SCARE me. Just… caught off guard." Startled the bejesus outta her would have been more honest.Feyona crossed her hands across her chest and tried to look as angry as possible.

The stranger known as 'Tai' stood up and turned to her. "Caught ya off guard, eh? Perhaps I should do it more often," then Feyona swore she had just witnessed the most devious smirk she'd ever seen grow on his face, "I'd like to see how 'innocent' white-mages truly are. I think I can corrupt her."

"Why you EGOTISTICAL, loud mouth, son of a-" Within the blink of an eye the stranger who was several feet away from her had appeared just inches infront of her face. Whatever courage anger had granted her seemed to disappear just as fast as she stood face to face with the ninja, frozen in fear and astonishment.

"Hm? You were saying?" He looked quite amused with the whole situation and waited for a reply. After a breif hesitation and pure silence from the girl, he turned over to Phate. "I like her. She's cute when she's angry. Give her a pearl."

"Tai, yer such an asshole sometimes." Phate said in a light chuckle and pulled out a pearl. Phate's laughing? Is this suppose to be some kind of sick joke! "We're kinda busy Tai, but if wanna actually put your skills to USE, then we'll try and look for stone monuments, alright?"

"Yea. That's fine." Tai waved good bye to the dark-knight then turned around to a now infuriated white-mage. "Catch ya off guard later," he added with a smirk.

"I swear to you, you won't catch me off guard again." Feyona walked passed the ninja like he didn't exist and grabbed the pearl from the now amused dark-knight.

"We'll see," And with that, the ninja was gone.

Phate put a hand on Feyona's shoulder. "Don't let him creep ya out. He's playin with ya 'cuz he likes ya. If he didn't, he wouldn't have even acknowledged your existence."

"Yea, like us." Phate and Feyona turned around to see the other four members of their group just staring in amusement.

Feyona instantly blushed, realizing since the appearance of the ninja she had forgotten about the entire groupand mission, "Heh.. yea um… lets keep going killing some crawlers, aye?"

Within a few minutes, the group was back to crawler killing. The whole time all Feyona could think about where those eyes staring down at her. Was he trying to provoke me? Why did he target ME out? He doesn't even KNOW me! After three more hours they called it quits and left the cave. Feyona decided she was just not in the mood to travel to San D'Oria and instead headed to her moghouse in Jeuno. The other adventures dispersed but they couldn't help but make a mental note that after the encounter with the ninja, their white-mage seemed to triple the amount of damage inducing spells she casted…

---------Author's notes time!-----------------

Taiyang seems to know how to always get the best of me, including getting to my bad side. Hell, thinkin about it now I think the most common thing I say to him is not "I love you" but "Don't make me kill you!"

Trying to keep the chapters short, but I want them long enough ot be called chapters so each one retains its own ideas and impressions. It just adds more flair to the story I suppose.

And yes, I shout at tai A LOT. Its just part of our relationship I suppose.

--------More notes-----------------

Yea, Proof read this chapter to.Fix stuff. Once again, if you read through it once, nothing has changed except some punctuation and spellings. I smacked myself and promise to proofread the chapters BEFORE posting them from now on. ) If anyone wants to be a proof-reading buddy, feel free to either review or email me. I believe it is easier to proof read someone else's work versus your own.