Whoot! Someone is reading my story. Much love to my first two reviewers. I was going to wait until tomorrow to post this, but it's pretty much done and ready, and I got very encouraged by the reviews. Whew, it's hard to get established around here.

Next chapter: Baralai, Rikku encounter (finally!) and soon after that, Rikku and Gippal. :) Slowly but surely.

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In These Walls

The Goldern Mermaid

As Rikku entered her brother's ship, she heard the bellowing of the engines, slow and wistful, groans riddled with emotions of disapproval. The Gullwings had been abusing the poor mechanisms again. The first thought that came to Rikku's mind after that was that Yuna would be mad, groaning in a similar reproachful manner, but worst than mad, she would be hurt. It would take a while before Rikku could make up this teenager running-away bit, but Yuna had done it too, so she didn't really have the right to lecture her too much about it.

"Rikku, you need to stop doing this. We are not a taxi service," Brother said with his hand extended out toward her the moment the door of the bridge slid open.

"I would beg to differ," she said handing him fifty gil as she walked inside. "How could you charge your own little sister?"

"We have costs, little sister. Engine room needs a check-up," he said and continued by stating the problem, but Rikku waved him off and headed for front the bridge. She would figure out what kind of abuse the engines had endured herself.

"Rikku, long time no see," Buddy said jokingly, sliding out of his navigators seat, and then proceeded to pat her on the back. The rest of the crew waved.

"Yeah, I know. I'm back so soon, but you better be nice. I'm going to be the one looking at your babies for the rest of the trip." Rikku winked, and Buddy laughed.

"So where to?" he asked, ready to plot the course on his screen.

"Bevelle," she said.

"Bevelle?" Brother shouted from behind her. "What the hell are you going to Bevelle for?"

"None of your business!" she said, and punched him in the stomach. He bent forward exaggeratedly and yelled after her as she headed to the engine room. It would take a second and more forceful jab for him to leave her alone to her work.

Why was everyone freaking out so much about Bevelle? So it was Yevon-land, but still, with Yuna they had been there dozens of times, usually on missions, but this in a way was a mission. It mattered a lot to Rikku to get those spheres and go to the Den of Woe. She needed to do this, because she couldn't afford what happened back on the S.S. Duyfken to reoccur. Knowing Nhadala, Rikku had probably become a good joke to tell to other Al Bhed.

"Can you imagine? A famous guardian and fighter of Vegnagun whimpering for her life?" They'd say and then burst out laughing.

She would put an end to that and get herself back—back from that place.

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Rikku had a gift that not a lot of Al Bhed could claim. Her father would always tell the story that started it all, particularly to embarrass her in front of others, but he had some kind of fatherly pride about it, so Rikku always let it slide. It went something like, when she was only a youngin', three years old, they'd been sailing west down the Great Gulf to Bikanel island, and Rikku kept insisting that she wanted to see over the damn railing of the ship. She was too short, and couldn't do it herself. Her mother told her that she'd show her in a moment, but little Rikku couldn't wait, so she looked 'round and found a wooden box that'd slid against the edge of the boat; she climbed it and somehow fell right into the sea. Some o'the others yelled that a child'd been thrown overboard. Not seeing the little runt, Cid immediately dove in after her and found her, swimming fast to the surface away from some fiends, gliding past the small fish like 'a little golden mermaid.'

That was why Rikku had been diving expert at age fifteen, and why she became head of her own diving team a year ago at seventeen. She had an unmatched endurance for the water, "as good if not better than any blitzball player," her father would say. She joined an expedition that would explore around the archipelago west of Bikanel. It was on the first mission near the third island that they found those ruins and that cave. Everything was going smoothly, and they had first found a few rusted parts near the edges of what seemed to be a sunken town, probably the work of Sin. Two buildings had collapsed and a coral reef and aquatic forests of algae had formed on the walls creating crystallized soft surface. It was murky in there, but Rikku gave the go ahead, leading two of her team members, Kumt and Raynd, into it. In the meantime, Netta used the new diving equipment on the outside, a kind of mapping device, to scale the area. That was when they found it. The old contraption nearly three by two meters, a bit rusted and consumed by the algae, but there in its glorious ancientness nonetheless.

Rikku's pride swelled inside her. After so many dives and finding nothing but trinkets, they found something huge, something that looked valuable, worthwhile and definitely like a lot of fun to take apart. But for some reason, their flashlights suddenly shut off, and they were engulfed in utter darkness. The seawater was thick, and its darkness compressed her. She struggled to find her other members, when something grazed her hand. Her heart drummed out of control, and she breathed in painful spurts of air. The diving suit grew heavier with each movement, but she swam around trying to grasp something, and instead, she hit the contraption they had discovered. She saw a glowing light. It had been a pyrefly that entered right through her body and past her into the machine. Then, inertness, asphyxiation and a scream, and she blanked out, so she figured, because she didn't see the fiend that was right behind her and the streaks of the flashlights surrounding her.

According to her team, she'd frozen up and just floated there with wide eyes, the dead flashlight stiff in her hand. The water fiend pushed her against the machine, and her head hit the metal surface. She was knocked unconscious.

"You looked so frightened, and we waved at you, tried to do everything in our power to warn you, but you just didn't respond," Raynd said, shaking her head. "I just don't understand."

"It was nothing, something startled me, that's all." Rikku smiled and searched for agreement in her team members' faces. Kumt, the broad-shouldered black Al Bhed looked away, and Raynd had a concerned expression sitting stiffly on her brow. Netta stepped forward and gave a shrug.

"Hey, even defeaters of Sin have their crazy panic moments. It might be post-trauma you know." Raynd and Kumt glared at Netta with bewildered eyes, but Rikku simply became somber, stood up and headed to her room.

"I'm going to take a shower," she said with her hand tightened to a fist. If she didn't leave then, she might have punched the life out of that woman.

So much for the golden mermaid.