Ok Sea Monkeys! Here it is, the long awaited update! I've been working on this for a while, and I'm satisfied with it. I hope you are too!

I do NOT own FFX-2, or anything else FF related. All I own are my ideas, which are meager enough, yet are my treasure.

I felt the wind again. Not a breeze, like last time, but a wind. It was stronger and filthier and I wanted nothing more than to rip it to shreds. It was still spouting nonsense and insanity. It was cold too. Bitingly cold. The closer I got to what used to be the center of the city, the stronger it got. I wonder if it was a machina that made that light or if it was some horrendously big and powerful fiend that did it?

Think about it. There is already a new fiend, called a Something, in an unknown part of Spira's underground. Why not have another Sin or a ridiculously big Something with nasty breath that becomes that tainted wind? It's possible. I just don't want to know the answer. That's all.

The destruction and decay of the city got worse the closer we got to the center. All things considered, we made good time on the way there. What with me all broken and bleeding. There must be quite a blood trail behind me. Moving made those wounds break or rip open again, so there is a constant yet slow fountain of blood in the shape of Rikku. I hope there really aren't any other things down here that like the taste and smell of blood. I'm a goner if there are. Not a whole lot of strength left in me. Not a whole lot of blood either, by the look of things. Or feel. There's not much light here anymore. The lights that were at the start of the city had faded away to nothing here. Only the sporadic bit of moss lit the way for me.

I guess Damon didn't need light and more than he needed food or water. There didn't seem to be any here at all. I guess you could tramp back to that lake. But it's in the dark now, and maybe the Something can regenerate itself and try to eat you. Blech. I'm not in the mood to have a leg chomped on. I don't care if you are. Go right on ahead. I won't stop you from becoming Fiend Feed.

Maybe I'm getting used to the mad wind, because it's died down again. I had been walking after Damon with my head down, both to see where I was going and to keep the wind from my eyes, where it seemed to like to go. A dazed follower of crazy little turquoise foxes, that's me. The people had appeared again. I didn't stop walking. If anything, I went faster. I didn't want to watch them be destroyed. I couldn't do it.

One person, a woman, walked right into me. I felt those cold spider webs again, but then there was some kind of disorientation (that's hard to say after the past day or days I've had) and I was back to being me.

Only I wasn't me. I was someone else. I was the woman that'd walked into me. I was wearing a dress. A dress! I hate dresses. The collar of it was tight, so I tried to move my arm and loosen it up a little, you know? My hand didn't work. I tried it again, but the same thing happened.

Oh, the hand moved when the woman moved it. Just not when I moved it. I'm a passenger in another person's body. What a thing to have happen. It's kinda like when Shuyin possessed me, only there is no murderous drama in the woman.

She did like to look at other people though. Just about everyone here was beautiful. The men dressed well and tastefully and the women, oh the women! They wore all kinds of pretty clothes and jewelry. Not a one of them looked below a middle class citizen. One walked by, and was wearing a beautiful gown that was nothing more than see through fabric draped over and over so that you could almost but not quite see through it. The eyes followed her, lingering on her long, graceful neck.

Memories came into my mind. Who said I wanted to remember something from her? I didn't. I know I didn't. BOOO! I remembered that neck, only it was arched back and slightly sweaty while I was…

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I'm stuck in a lesbian's body? I LIKE MEN THANKSVERYMUCH! I don't want to see this.

I had to see it. Ok, yeah, it's kinda erotic, but it's not my thing, ok? I like men. I like to look at a manly, well muscled chest and have manly hands on me. Not women. Sorry for all you freaks out there that want me to become a lesbian. Ain't happening. So nya!

The woman turned around quickly once the rush of heat hit her. I could feel her fear; fell the body I was in pump adrenalin like it was the end of the world. It was the end of the world, only she didn't know it. She thought about a bunch of things in a flash. Her husband, (so she's a closet lesbian. Cool. ) her black and white cat that was sitting right this second on the window sill waiting for her to return. She thought of the woman in the almost see-through dress with a longing that bordered on despair. Then the light hit her.

Hit me.

The body was there one second, and then I felt it be torn away in a matter of two or three seconds. It was agony. Every piece of me was torn apart, not just away. Every little cell in my body exploded and got washed away. The flesh burned before it got blown away. I can smell the stench of burning meat and hair for about half a second, then it was gone, along with everything else. I felt her try to scream, I felt me try to scream. There was no chance to do it for either of us, cause then the light was gone, and I was me again.

Still standing up, unfortunately. I fell right where I was. My legs are officially jelly now. No bones or muscles, just jelly. Or maybe jam, but jam isn't as wobbly as jelly. I was limp, like an over-cooked noodle. I felt Damon on my lap. He was nuzzling me, but I couldn't move. How could I move? I'd just felt my body get destroyed. Felt someone else die. How can I be expected to move?

I cried. I could do that. I don't' think I could've stopped it from happening. I sobbed and wailed like a baby with its first tooth. Falling face first the rest of the way to the ground, I rested my head and cried. I found my hands next to my head, ripping at my hair and clawing my face, trying to get rid of those memories. Trying to tear them away. So that I wouldn't have to see them in my head again.

That's the funny thing about memories. They always creep up and stay with you when you don't want them to be there. Like when you remember what your ex-boyfriend smells like when you're in the middle of a date with another guy. Or the time you showed up to lunch with your underwear on the outside of your pants.

Why can't I forget this? Aren't you supposed to forget traumatic things? I know people that watched Sin kill their parents, but they don't remember them. Why can't I forget the death of that woman? The death of me?

I seriously thought it was me dying there. So what if I know it was another person and that I was just a passenger? I still felt her die. She didn't want to die. She tried to cling to life, even while she was in agony, she wanted to live.

My world was shaken. I have never been in a position like that. That I was in the throws of death and not wanting to die. I wonder if that is what Nooj'll feel when he finally dies. What a horrible thing to happen.

My world felt like it was shaking from inside my head.

Wait. My world is shaking! And screaming and groaning like before. What next? I can't take it. I can't. Not this again. Give me the ghosts. I can deal with ghosts. I can deal with insane winds, just not this again…not again. I was being tossed around like a Macalania Jumping Bean now. I don't want to hear that painful moaning again.

This close to the city center, it was horrifying beyond your imagination. No longer is it just the earth moaning and moving, but there is something else in it now. Something alive. Something that is angry and in pain.

Like what that woman went through, only it was still feeling it.

I stopped bouncing around for some reason. I feebly opened my eyes, and saw Damon in front of me. He was standing like he was ready to attack or pounce on something. A deep, ruby red glow was all around us, like what the kid had done. This wasn't a bubble though. It was just a glow, and it was full of an energy I could feel down to my very core. Red light lit everything, even me.

The red light came from Damon. I'm sure it came from him. There was nothing else to give it off but me, and I have yet to find myself glowing like a walking advertisement for the red light district of Luca.

Once the shaking and groaning and screaming stopped, the red light disappeared. Damon relaxed, sitting down with a gaping yawn. I only heard the yawn, cause he was facing away from me and it was really, really dark.

Damon stood up again and gave a great big shake before turning those dewdrop eyes on me. His head was cocked (Minds OUT of gutters, please!) to the side, like he was asking me what I was doing laying on the stony ground covered in blood and tears and probably a whole bunch of snot and slobber.

"Keep looking at me like that," I said, my voice creaky and hoarse. "And I'll use your tails as tissues."

He apparently thought this was a great big joke, and scrunched up his little nose at me and flicked his tails a couple of times. He was so preciously cute! It's like he's my red-light-emitting-beacon-of-hope in the gloom and doom of this, haunted, cursed city.

My face moved, and I realized that I was smiling. Then I felt something ooze down my face. All of those lovely scratch marks on my face that just happen to come in a set of ten and match the shape of my ruined fingernails cracked open, making thick, half congealed blood and new, runny blood stream down my face. It hurt. A lot. Although remembering why I'd gone and clawed my face like that hurt a lot more.

I shuddered at the memory.

"Think happy thoughts…think happy thoughts…"

A shoopuf dancing in a tutu. Cute, fluffy chocobos doing line dances in clogs. Shelindra tied up as a pinata being beaten by kids with microphones. Nooj dressed in drag…

That was enough to shake the memory from my head, even for a short time. I can see it now…lounging in an overstuffed chair, eating olives with a toothpick and holding a glass of wine in the other, a cigarette holder in his mouth, the end buring…wearing a pink frock with purple polka-dots and lace trim…oversized high heeled shoes that show toe cleavage…

I don't know which was scarier.

But I'll take the image of Nooj, and keep it close to my heart. Anything is better than remembering how it feels to die, right? Right. Or am I left and just don't know it?

Damon padded up to me, now that I wasn't blubbering like a madwoman with a Hedgehog Pie up her butt. That and I guess that he figured that his tails were safe from the Snot Monster. He licked my nose, just a tiny flick of the tongue. It made me feel better right away. Like when you were little and you cut your finger, and your mom kissed it and that made everything right as rain. It was kind of like that. I knew that I could get up, and shuffle along after Damon on his crazy little trip into Bad Place.

I didn't know what to call it. I guess it had a name once upon a time. I hadn't seen any kind of welcome sign, or even writing, since I'd been in here. What kind of city doesn't have a welcome sign? I'll make one, if I live long enough.

"Welcome to Bad Place!

Home of Creepy Ghosts,

Destructive Lights, and

The Non-Stick Frying Pan!"

Hey, it could be true! No one knows where the non-stick frying pan came from. Or even who invented it. It could have been made here. I'd like to think so, at least. How much would it suck to have your lovely fried eggs stuck to the pan in the morning, and then be destroyed sometime later that day? That is one hell of a bad day, if you ask me. Not that you did ask, or anything, but I told you anyway!

I know I was having a bad day.

Sooo…how'd you like it? Reviews are welcome, seeing as they make me all happy and more happy. Thanks for reading!

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