A/N: In order for this fic to work, there's going to be a bit of an AU-type situation regarding the dresspheres. The girls will have all of them (unless otherwise written, i.e., "the girls obtained the new dressphere from Shinra that he had been hoarding away for the past several months.") and all the skills will be learned–yes, even that damned 999 AP-required Elixir ability of the Alchemist (again, unless otherwise written). It'll kind of be as if the girls had experienced a New Game Plus; this will allow me to put the spheres in any order I want, and not have to stick to the game's chronology. Also, if any of the fiends don't actually perform the attack I say they do, I apologize. I didn't pay too much attention until late in the game, when this idea struck me; I might revise this later, when I have better access to the Internet and thus Gamefaqs.
I don't own Fall Out Boy's lyrics to "Dance Dance."I'm simply using them for the title.
Songstress--Dance, this is the way they'd love If they knew how misery loved me
"Alright, girls, we ready to try this again?" Rikku prompted, hoping to get her friends' spirits up.
After the fiasco on Djose, the sphere hunters had decided to try a different training ground to experiment with their dresspheres. They now roamed Kilika Island, ducking underneath trees and doing their best to ignore the Squatter Monkeys as they chattered loudly.
"Which one should we use?" Yuna asked, regarding her collection with an amazed eye–so many different abilities and outfits, if only they had had these on the pilgrimage! She muffled a laugh at the thought of the boys in a Gun Mage or Thief outfit, at least based on the preview Shinra offered them of the dresspheres.
"How about Dark Knight?" Paine suggested. "That sounds like it can kick ass."
"Ooh!" Rikku jumped up and down in excitement, picking one dressphere out of her own assortment. "Let's do the Songstress!"
"I don't know," Yuna hesitated; she had reservations about that dressphere, especially after the incident in Luca.
"C'mon, please?" Rikku begged, letting her eyes grow wide and teary in a puppy-dog face. "I wanna dance like Yunie did! Dance and sing and twirl in that cute outfit–"
Chuckling hesitantly, Yuna looked askance at Paine. The woman sighed, grumbling, "Fine. But next time, I get to choose the dressphere."
"Goody!" Rikku fit her dressphere into the slot on the Garment Grid, quickly changing into the Songstress. "This is going to be fun!"
"I can already feel the headache," Paine muttered to Yuna under her breath, following Rikku's example. Smiling vaguely, Yuna made the change to the familiar outfit of blue, purple, and silver.
Casting a wary glance around, Paine spotted three fiends zooming for them. Recalling from Shinra's massive fiend encyclopedia that the fiends were Assassin Bees, she told the others, "Here come our first victims."
Rikku clapped, grinning evilly as she swung her wand/microphone around wildly. "Then it's time to boogie down!"
"Let's show 'em what we got!" Yuna agreed fervently, catching Rikku's infectious enthusiasm.
Paine rolled her eyes and sighed. "This ought to be good."
They confronted the Bees head-on, making the fiends hover uncertainly. Yuna started the battle off with Jitterbug, Hasting the party to overcome the fiends quickly. Rikku followed up with an astounding Dirty Dancing number, and Paine finished with Darkness Dance.
And then . . . they did the same thing again.
And for a change of pace . . . they switched from "Dance" to "Sing."
"How long are we going to keep this up?" Paine asked tersely as she dodged a jab from a Bee, mostly thanks to the Evasion boost given by Rikku's Matador Song. "We're not doing anything but giving these fiends a good show."
"I . . . I didn't realize this was all that Songstress did," Yuna admitted as she finished her Jitterbug sequence, huffing greatly. Jitterbug helped them stay ahead of the fiends, but it took so much energy! "I thought . . . I thought there was an Attack ability we hadn't unlocked."
"Okay, uh, let's change our plans," Rikku suggested as her song came to an end. "Paine and I should switch to an attack, and Yunie you keep–aaah!"
An Assassin Bee landed a hit, in spite of Rikku's song. As she began to dim and brighten at slow intervals, the other two Assassin Bees did the same to Paine and Yuna, much to their dismay.
"What did they do?" Paine growled as she grew dim.
"I think this is Curse," Yuna gulped. "Try and spherechange–quickly!"
"Rightio!" Rikku agreed, and screwed her eyes shut in concentration. She opened them in panic, realizing she couldn't change at all. "This is so not good!"
"We're stuck in these outfits," Paine realized in horror.
"Rikku, try to use Sleepy Shuffle on them," Yuna ordered rapidly, trying to think of how to stay alive. "Paine, Cantus Firmus to raise our Defense in case Sleep fails."
Much to their chagrin, Rikku's Sleepy Shuffle did nothing but make the Bees pause in their attack. Desperate, Paine shouted out the one thing that came to her mind. "Run!"
Yelping and shouting, the trio turned and high-tailed it as fast as they could to the village on the island, as the Temple would have only turned them away with noses held high. As they stumbled and leapt over brambles and logs, Rikku exclaimed, "We really need to work on our strategies!"
The Assassin Bees hummed for a moment, and had the girls understood fiend-talk, they would have heard:
"That was a good song."
"Yes, it was. I liked the blonde one best; she seemed to have much more zest for her singing and dancing than the other two. Plus, didn't that tall one look kinda like that King of Rock and Roll from way back when, in Zanarkand? Not that Lenne person, but the Elvis guy."
"Hey! They're leaving! We better go after them; I haven't heard a song that cool since Macalania began to fade and the musicians stopped playing!"
And so the Bees gave chase, hot on the girls' heels all the way to the gates of the village.
I don't know if it's just me, but . . . does anyone else see Paine in Songstress and think, "Elvis?" Yeah, I thought it was just me . . . . 'cries at her insanity.'
