Seraphim

AN: I apologize for the lateness of this chapter. It was really difficult to write! I'm so eager to get to the meat of the story that building up to it is hard. Oh, I went through the first two chapters (Well, chapter 1, at least… can't remember if I tweaked chapter 2…), so there are a few changes, if you feel up to looking through them again.

Chapter 3:

Rikku sat apart from her investigation team in the shade of the hover while they took a break for lunch. So far, it had been very disappointing. They found nothing. Frustrated, she took a huge bite of her sandwich, as though it had done something to her.

'Was I just lucky yesterday?' She wasn't the sort to believe in luck- you made your own, that was her motto- but she'd also seen a lot of things she previously didn't believe in the last couple of years. Maybe luck existed. Maybe it was working against her for not believing in it for so long. She sulked momentarily at the thought.

After finishing her sandwich, she pulled out her commsphere. Absently, she poked the small button that connected her with Gippal. He had some explaining to do.

He answered immediately, which surprised her slightly. He looked a lot more at ease now that he was away from the meetings on Bikanel.

"Oh, Rikku. It's you."

"What do you mean, oh, it's me?"
He grinned. "Nothing. To what do I owe the honor of this call? Did you find something? Wait, you solved this… thing, right? I knew I could count on you."

"Uh… no. Nothing yet. I just-"

"Nothing? Then why are you calling me?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "I was just getting to that if you'd be quiet!"

"Okay, okay. Hurry it along. My lunch is nearly over and I hear that Ralli programmed the 900 series repair drones to … well, explode, rather than repair." He gave her a pained look. "Hurry up out there, Princess! I'm tired of having to repair them myself."

"Oh, you big baby." If she were there, she would have elbowed him. "I just… had a question."

He appeared to be reclining. "Okay, fire at will."

"Why did you fire my team?"

He took a moment, looking quite thoughtful. Finally, he leaned towards the commsphere again. "Because I don't have the time to deal with people who question your authority which, in turn, questions mine. I chose you to be the leader of this investigation and if they are in constant doubt well then, tough shit for them, they're expendable."

"Ouch."

"Does that answer your question?" he asked impatiently.

"Uh… yeah." What was his problem? There was a shout in the background. Something about "Ralli did it again!"

Gippal rolled his eyes. "If I didn't need all the help I could wrangle, I'd fire that dumbass…." And the screen went blank.

Rikku frowned slightly. That was… strange. She shook her head to clear it.

"Sounds like Gippal has it rough," Zanno commented over her shoulder.

"Ah!" She looked back. "I guess. He could use a little rough work if you ask me."

The comment earned her a chuckle.

She smiled, stood, and faced her new team. "You guys ready for more?"

"Yeah!" shouted the over-enthusiastic Tatts. Everyone laughed.

She grinned. That was more like it. "Then let's do it!"

It was several hot and gritty hours later before anything worth mentioning happened.

"Rikku!" Pan shouted from her hollow. "I- well, I think I found something!"

Rikku bolted out of her own hollow and joined Pan. The rest of them followed her suit. In Pan's hand was a strange and delicate object. It was relatively flat and made of a metal so heavily burnished and scorched that Rikku couldn't readily identify it. She took it from Pan and where she expected heaviness she was surprised to find it was equally delicate in weight. The outside edge was scalloped with a thin metal rope lining a curved strip of metal latticework. There was another thin band of metal on the other side of the metal that lined a fancy spread of weaving, carefully decorated with tiny jewels. There was another strip of metal and then… a sphere fragment. The opposing edge of this object was rough and jagged, signs that it had broken off from something larger. Despite the elaborate detail, the object was small, about the size of her palm, and the outside curve suggested that if fully assembled the object was round, it wasn't very much larger.

"What the heck is that?" Tatts asked with a frown as the object was passed from gloved hand to gloved hand.

"If it was smaller I'd say it was jewelry," an older girl named Naida mused. "What do you think?" She glanced at Rikku.

"Well… it… kind of looks like a sphere grid. But it's way too heavy and ornamental for that. And it only has room for one sphere, looks like." She gestured to the gray sphere fragment. "So that would defeat the purpose of the sphere grid." She frowned. So what could it be? She glanced at her team briefly. "Okay you guys, we're going to look for more of this stuff-" she held up the metal plate "-as well. If it still has more sphere fragments attached, the better for us."

The members of her team nodded and, after each got a good look at the plate, went back to work more fervently than before. Rikku smiled as she carried the plate to the hover. Finally some progress! And it didn't hurt that her team didn't argue with her about it. Mentally, she thanked Gippal.

"What did you find?" Zanno asked curiously as she approached.

"Well, it's… it's… well, I don't really know." She held it out for him to look at. He took it as she searched the hover for her knapsack. "At first I thought it was a sphere grid but… looking at it, it just doesn't seem like one, not totally."

Behind her, Zanno was making a strange gargling noise. She frowned quizzically and glanced over her shoulder, intent on asking what in the world he was doing. Her eyes widened in confusion and then horror. Zanno's body was rigid. His back arched painfully as if his body was unconsciously trying to escape from the terrible agony his face suggested. His eyes bulged and saliva trickled sluggishly from the corner of his mouth, wrenched open in a silent scream. In his hands, he gripped the plate so hard that blood seeped from his palms and speckled the sand below.

Rikku assessed this in a quick, frantic glance. "Oh man… oh man, what should I do? Zanno! Zanno! What's wrong?" She wrung her hands frantically before she finally turned to him and did the first thing that came to mind- she seized the plate in his hands and pulled with all her might. "Come on you oaf, let go! Come on Zanno! Mad ku::Let go!" She gave a final heave and fell backwards when the plate wrenched free of his bloody hands. By this time, the entire team had gathered around and gasped collectively when he crumpled to the ground.

Immediately, Pan knelt beside him and felt his neck for a pulse. "He's still alive."

Rikku nodded. "We have to get him back to camp." She didn't know what happened, but she knew whatever it was, it was serious. Worriedly, she glanced at the members of her team. "Er… can any of you actually pilot a hover?"

There was silence among them as they glanced at one another. Rikku's face fell. There was no time to wait for one from camp! Finally, though, Tatts stepped forward.

"I can… mostly."

Mostly? She shook her head. This was not the time for her to be picky, unfortunately. Hastily, she shoved the bloodied plate into her knapsack. "Come on you guys. Help me get him into the hover."

It took four of them to lift him in and, by that time, Tatts had figured out how to start the craft.

Rikku clambered into the seat next to him. "Er, you do know what you're doing right?"

Tatts threw it into reverse. "Of cour-" but he didn't finish his sentence because the hover rocketed backwards.

Rikku and the others screamed.

"I thought you said you could drive this thing!" she shouted.

"Sorry! It's been a while!"

'I'm going to die in a Great Fiery Death… Goodbye Spira!' she thought as he thrust the hover into drive and they jerked erratically across the sand.

But there were no deaths on the way back to the campsite, though, by the time they arrived, Rikku was certain she had whiplash.

She had contacted Nhadala on the return trip, mentioned Zanno's upsetting condition, and, sure enough, she was waiting for them with a pair of medics (for few Al Bhed were adequately skilled in white magic.)

"Femm ra pa ugyo :Will he be okay?" Rikku asked worriedly as the medics pushed past her and extracted Zanno from the back of the hover. Any healing she could manage had failed- he was still unconscious.

"Ra'mm pa veha :He'll be fine," one of the medics replied as they shifted him onto a stretcher and carried him off.

She sighed wearily and turned to her team. They watched her expectantly. "Ah… you know… we're done for today. Um… meet back here same time tomorrow morning. I'll contact you guys if anything changes." They nodded and dispersed. Like it or not, she still had an investigation to conduct.

She plopped down heavily on the hover's fender and buried her face in her hands. Zanno could've been killed and she had no idea what was caused it! Was it the fault of the metal thing Pan found? Possibly. But if so, why hadn't anyone else reacted to it? Or was Zanno just having an 'episode'? Heat could do that to a person, though she'd never seen it happen to an Al Bhed before. Well, that didn't mean it was impossible.

She felt the hover shift and she glanced up. Nhadala had sat beside her.

"What happened?"

She groaned. "Oh, I have no idea…"

The woman gave her a bewildered look. "This happens to Zanno and you have no explanation?"

She shook her head miserably. "He… just started- I don't know- freaking out or something!" She pulled the strange plate from her knapsack. Zanno's blood was drying in the sandy, delicate crevices. She examined it for a moment. Maybe this incident had something to do with the way Zanno held it. With a frown, she held it upright, much in the way he had. But nothing happened.

"What's that thing?"

"Today's major- well, only- find. Other than that, I have no clue." She glanced at Nhadala curiously. "Do you have any theories?"

The woman frowned, examining it when Rikku held it out. "Wall hanging?"

With a snort, Rikku laughed. "Oh cripes… if it is just a wall hanging I'm going to be mad." All that effort and excitement would've been for nothing.

Nhadala smiled faintly. "Well, I'll give you some privacy so you can give Gippal a call," she teased. But she sobered quickly. "He definitely needs to know what happened."

"Yeah," she muttered as she walked away. "I just wish I had a better explanation to give him than 'I don't know'."

After that, it took her nearly an hour of pacing and arguing with herself before she could work up the nerve to contact Gippal to announce her failure as a leader. After all, what would she say? "Hello. We found a wall hanging today. Oh yeah, and Zanno nearly died. How are things there?"

"Wait, what?" Gippal said.

Yes. After an hour of debating, Rikku came to terms with the fact that this was the only way she could figure out how to tell him.

She laughed nervously. "Yeah, we found some weird… thing today." She held the metal plate before the commsphere so he could see. "Nhadala said it looked like a wall hanging. Pretty funny eh? I thought sphere grid, but it's too big for that. What do you think?"

"Yeah, that's nice. How did Zanno nearly die?" he demanded.

She winced. The truth would come out eventually… might as well plow into it with no regrets- no major ones, anyway. "Well… you see… eh heh… I don't really know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"Exactly what I said. I. Don't. Know. He just went stiff and the medics haven't talked to me yet."

Gippal swore violently. Then, after taking a deep breath, he held his forehead and said, sounding rather stressed, "So… what you're telling me… what you're saying is… Zanno just freaked out? And you have no idea why? What the hell were you doing, Rikku?"

Her eyes widened and then narrowed and she gritted her teeth. Was he… was he really trying to pin the blame on her? The nerve! "I was doing my job, thank you!" she said, surprisingly able to control the anger in her voice. "And- and anyway, I have a few theories about what happened, neither of which have been proved yet but…you know."

"Okay, spill it."

She harrumphed loudly. Honestly, that temper of his was starting to annoy her. "Well, one is simply the heat. And our medics can prove or not that one… so I just have to wait. The other is this thing," she waved the plate, "which I'm going to clean eventually. It has a sphere fragment attached to it."

Gippal frowned, stroking his chin. "So you think the sphere might be the cause of these so-called 'accidents'?"
"I don't know. Just guessing."

"That's a lot of help."

"Hey, stop that. I'm trying my best you know!"

"I know." He flashed a charming smile.

She made a face at him. "Anyway… I've never heard of a sphere actually hurting someone." She plunged her hands through her hair and groaned. "I don't know. I don't know! It doesn't make sense! Sphere's can't kill people! They're only used for recordings."

"But they attract things that can hurt or kill people," Gippal pointed out suddenly.

Rikku paused and glanced at him thoughtfully. That was true. She almost said so, but then she frowned as something else occurred to her. "But how would that explain what happened to Zanno? I was standing right there with him and-"

"You were? Why?"

"Uh… lunch break? I don't remember, why is that important?" she asked, arching a brow. His only reply was a vague shrug. "Anyway, I turned away for, like, a second and… then it just happened. I think I would've noticed if something had attacked him."

"Eh, maybe not. If whatever got to him was really small, for instance."

Okay, he made another good point. "But something that small having feathers? I mean, I saw no feathers, but the others who survived an attack mentioned them, remember?" Touché and point!

Gippal frowned, resting his forehead on his fingertips. He was quiet for a full thirty seconds.

"Eh… Gippal?"

"Man, I haven't had to think this hard in… well, anyway, perhaps this attack and the others aren't related. It's possible that the others didn't even find sphere fragments, you know?"

"That's true." Rikku sighed and sat back against her chair, rocking onto the back legs. Silence passed between them as she thought. Then it dawned on her. Why didn't she think of it earlier? She had to talk to the survivors- it was so obvious! Seizing the commsphere, she gave it a vigorous shake. "I've got it!"

On the other end of the connection, Gippal looked very disoriented. "What do you get? And don't do that again. Seeing the image jump like that nearly made me puke."

She offered a brief but sheepish apology and launched immediately into the description of her revelation.

Gippal paused and then snorted back a laugh. "Uh, yeah. I guess that's what I should've had you do in the first place."

She smirked triumphantly. "Ha! So you don't think of everything!"

"Well, neither do you, apparently! But it wouldn't have done us much good anyway, because most of the survivors had either left or were still unconscious."

She sighed. "Well, I'll find out who we have left and grill them." She turned off the commsphere and pushed herself out of her chair. Her mind was reeling. There were so many possibilities of what had happened and she didn't like it. One good thing had come from talking with Gippal, however. She had a goal for the next day, assuming Zanno was still out.

She stopped pacing abruptly. Zanno! The medics should have figured out what happened by then. Hurriedly, she yanked her boots onto her feet and headed out the door, for the infirmary. It took her nearly ten minutes to get there, and that was running. Breathlessly, she stumbled through the glass doors and glanced around. There was a desk to her right. She made her way to it.

"Hey, who can tell me what's happened to Zanno?" she asked the bored receptionist.

The woman snapped her gum and perused her file sphere. "Muugc mega ed'c Cibaneun-Sat Tamm. E'mm byka res vun oui. :Looks like it's Superior-Med Tamm. I'll page him for you.:"

"Yeah, you do that."

The woman gave her an irritated look before making the page. It was another very long ten minutes before Cibaneun-Sat Tamm appeared. He was a short man, still powerful despite his age, with a wild poof of blond hair generously threaded with gray. Not really someone to mess with. Still, Rikku rushed over to him.

"How is Zanno? Have you figured out what happened? Is he conscious? What can you tell me?"

Tamm held his hand in the air. "Uha yd y desa. Zanno'c luhtedeuh ec cdypemewat, pid ra'c cdemm ihluhcleuic :One at a time. Zanno's condition is stabilized, but he's still unconscious:."
"Still? After all this time?"

He gave her a severe look. "Oac. Fa'na satelc, hud senylma funganc. :Yes. We're medics, not miracle workers:."

She stomped her foot in frustration. "Well… well, can you tell me what happened?"

"Famm, fa'ja nimat uid tarotnydeuh, rayd cdnuga, raynd yddylg, kahanym emmhacc, caewina, ymmankel nayldeuhh, veaht yddylg… pycelymmo, yhodrehk fa luimt dacd, fa tet :Well, we've ruled out dehydration, heat stroke, heart attack, general illness, seizure, allergic reaction, fiend attack… basically, anything we could test, we did.:"

"It wasn't a fiend attack?"

He shook his head.

She frowned. "And… you don't know what happened?"

The medic looked slightly embarrassed. "Hud yd drec buehd eh desa :Not at this point in time," he replied delicately.

Her nostrils flared. Damn. What was she supposed to do? She sighed. "Right. Well, keep me posted." Whirling on her heel she stalked from the infirmary. As she went, however, a growing sense of dread filled her stomach. Was it the Plague again? Surely not… the Plague made people violent. But who knew? She never saw every case…

"No…" she murmured. "Effram's gone. The Plague should be gone with him." But it might have been a residue of it? She hated to admit it, but it was possible. She didn't know a thing about that Plague. This realization chilled her to the core, despite the desert heat.

"But feathers?" For, despite what Gippal said, she couldn't shake the feeling that what happened to Zanno was related to what happened to the other workers.

She ran into Nhadala on the way back to her flat. "Oh, sorry." She helped the woman to her feet as was almost on her way again before she stopped and turned. "Hey, Nhadala. Get me a list of everyone injured at the Northeast dig site. Please?" she added with a slight grin.

The woman nodded. "Sure thing. Who am I to impede on an investigation?"

Rikku smiled. "Thanks." It couldn't hurt to have a game plan for the next day.

……….

FairyIce: Well, at least Gippal explains his reasoning for firing her team, eh? Hope you enjoyed chapter 3

kingleby: Thanks for your compliments! I'm glad you are enjoying the story so far!

Jezzi: I hope this fic continues to be promising! Thanks!

Kookyz::laughs: So far I'm continuing. I hope you enjoy this update as well!

Canada Eh: Well, you'll know what that sphere is soon enough… or will you::bwahaha:

Black Eyed Mistress: It's okay to be a harsh critic! The criticism is hard to take, but I need to learn how to take it! So it is okay. And I'm flattered that you spend the time and effort to understand the story and review and such, I really do appreciate it!

Fanfic-Lover: I'm glad you found me again::laughs: I hope you continue to enjoy the story!

GameGirl101: Hmm, Gippal and Rikku together in this one? We'll see. I hope this chapter is as decent as you anticipated!

Jedi Kacee: Thank you for all of your wonderful comments from both SoD and this story!