Chapter 37: Crossroads and Crossed Roads

"So, uh ... how do you ride these things?" Tidus squinted at one of three large, yellow birds that the group had been offered. After killing a chocobo eater outside of Rin's Travel Agency that morning, chocobo rentals were temporarily free of charge.

"Don't be chicken, ya?" Wakka chuckled at his own joke, grabbed the bird's reins closest to him, and easily mounted the creature's back. "You just pull in the direction you want them to go and pull straight back to stop."

"Don't they fly?" Tidus tilted his head to look under one of the wings.

"No, but they run really, really fast. So make sure you hold on tight."

Tidus eagerly prepared to take one of the free chocobos but was brusquely pushed aside by Kimahri. "Wha—hey! What's the big idea? Stop pushing me like that," he complained as the lion-faced man mounted the last chocobo.

"We should pair up by weight to avoid tiring them too soon," Auron suggested as he also mounted one of the large, yellow birds. "Our heavy riders need first dibs. Then we can evenly distribute the lighter weights. Kimahri is our heaviest rider, so you can't ride with him."

"Well, who said I wanted to ride with him anyway?" Tidus folded his arms.

"You're a lightweight, but heavier than Yuna and Lulu so—"

"Excuse me?" Tidus became indignant. "I'm medium weight. And I don't want to be stuck in the back. Can't we each get our own?"

"Not unless you want to stop whining like a little girl and go rent your own," Wakka told him. Chuckling, he reached a hand down to Lulu, but all he got in return was an unhappy frown. Wakka scratched the back of his head. "Uh ... I mean ..."

"Forget it. I wouldn't want you to have to listen to any whining." Lulu walked to Auron and lifted her hand, requesting to share his chocobo, instead. The warrior monk helped her climb onto the back of the bird behind him, and the mage gracefully settled into a side-saddle position, smoothing her long, black dress.

Tidus laughed at the snub, then walked back to the chocobo rental to ask for another.

Behind him, the big blitzball player held out a hand to the summoner. "Yuna?"

"Ah ... I …"

"What? Are you mad at me too?" Wakka withdrew. "I didn't mean it like that. I was just poking fun at him, ya?"

"I know. It's just … when I was little, I dropped a ball near a chocobo once. But when I tried to get it back, I got kicked and hit with a fire spell. I'm sorry, but I really don't like them."

"They only cast fire magic when they're scared."

"But they get scared a lot. And they run too fast."

"Maybe just close your eyes when they run," Wakka advised. "That way, you don't see nothing."

Having paid a rental fee, Tidus picked a chocobo for himself and led it back to the group. Stopping to study the saddle for a moment, he lifted himself onto it. "Well, that was easy." He grinned. "What are we waiting for? Let's go!"

"Yuna's afraid to ride," Wakka restated. "Maybe we should walk," he suggested to the other guardians.

"It will take longer and be more dangerous," Lulu countered. "Yuna, you should ride with Kimahri. You know he won't let anything happen to you." She cut a side-glare toward Wakka.

"What? Whaaaat?" he protested. "What's that supposed to mean? I won't let nothing happen to her. But if she doesn't want to ride, we should walk."

Yuna looked aside, ashamed at being the cause of the delay.

Tidus tested his chocobo-riding skills by moving it toward her, but the closer the bird got to her, the more she backed away. "Hey, Yuna? You weren't afraid of that big aeon bird you summoned, were you?" He turned the chocobo sideways, facing away from her.

"No, but ... Valefor does what I ask her to do. And I know she won't step on me."

"Yeah, but you've stood up to some really big fiends so far, and this is just a chocobo. Besides, you shouldn't miss out on something fun just because of one bad experience." He leaned low and held out his hand.

"Don't do it, Yuna," Auron advised. "Ride with Kimahri or Wakka."

Tidus straightened and frowned at him. "Just because I'm new at this doesn't mean I can't handle it."

"Your idea of 'fun' sometimes defies logic."

"Well, it's not like I'm going to race or anything … unless you're challenging me." Tidus leaned forward in his saddle. "Is that a challenge, old man?"

Auron's brows sharply drew together at that mischievous bait. "I rest my case."

Yuna took a brave step toward the chocobo. "Tidus?"

He turned away from Auron.

The summoner checked her fear with determination. "I don't want everyone to walk because of me. I want my journey to be fun. May I … please ride with you?"

Tidus flashed Auron a triumphant told-ya-so expression and a confident, "Hmpf." As Auron shook his head at Yuna's folly, Tidus helped her onto the chocobo behind him. "I'll try not to go too fast, okay? But if I do, just let me know, and I'll slow down."

Yuna's arms encircled his waist. "Okay," she agreed with a nervous nod, but then buried her face in his shirt's hood.

Amused, Tidus looked over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Closing my eyes, so I don't see anything."

"But ... that's not any fun."

"I'm fine with it," she assured him with a muffled voice, keeping her face buried.

Auron shook his head once more and started down the highroad. Wakka tried not to laugh as he followed. And Kimahri gave Tidus a growl of warning, choosing to stay directly behind them.

The blitzball player gave the ronso a flat expression for being overprotective, but started forward, keeping the chocobo's walk at a leisurely pace. When Tidus looked over his shoulder again, Yuna's face was still buried in his hood. This would never do. Stopping the chocobo, he loosened her arms about his waist and dismounted.

"Oh, no! What are you doing?" Yuna reached for him.

"Just trading places," he assured her.

"But I can't …" Yuna dug her fingers into the thick yellow plumes of the bird's neck and shoulders and squeezed her knees against the bird's shoulders. But no matter how she sat on the bird, she didn't feel assured. "There's nothing to hold onto!"

Tidus got back on the chocobo behind her. "Then hold onto me." Reaching under her arms, he grabbed the reins.

Yuna released the fistful of feathers to grasp his forearms.

After adjusting his position, he gently tapped his heels against the bird's ribs. The chocobo folded its wings against their legs as if helping to hold its riders in place before moving forward again. Having fallen behind the others, it was tempting to jolt forward and catch up to them, but Tidus continued to walk the bird at a slow, steady pace under Kimahri's watchful eyes. After a few minutes, he leaned next to Yuna's cheek. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," she answered with a nervous smile.

Tidus took that as a positive sign and tapped his heels into the bird's ribcage again, increasing their pace to a trot. After a few more minutes, he leaned forward to check her expression. She still seemed nervous, so he decided to distract her with conversation. "Why do they call it Mushroom Rock Road?"

"The rocks have round tops that make them look like mushrooms. On maps, they're drawn like clusters of mushrooms, sometimes." She turned her chin to try to see his face though he was already near. "I thought you didn't want to sit in the back."

"It's okay." He shrugged. "I'll switch places with you again on the way back. Having fun yet?"

The summoner blinked at him with astonishment. "Yes!" Then, with a sad realization, she smiled. "Yes, I am."

"Good! Then we can catch up now." Folding one arm across her waist to be sure she didn't fall, he heeled the chocobo's ribs again.

As the chocobo broke into a run, Yuna cried out, grabbed the bird's feathers again, and shut her eyes tight. But after the initial burst of unexpected speed, she opened them and laughed at the bumpy, jostling ride.

Tidus grinned. A genuine laugh—that was what he wanted to see—not that polite smile she wore to cover her true feelings. Kimahri growled and stayed on their chocobo's hindquarters. As Tidus passed Wakka and Auron's trotting fowls, he stuck his tongue out at them in short, comic fashion. "Woohoo! See ya!" he challenged before racing ahead.

"Ah ... Ah!" Wakka was nearly rendered speechless. Kicking his chocobo into high gear, he chased after Tidus and Kimahri, shaking his fist at them. "What are you doing running with Yuna like that, you bonehead!"

Auron brought his chocobo to a halt and sighed. Then, he glanced over his shoulder to the mage gracefully seated behind him, and his brows rose inquiringly above his sunglasses.

Lulu frowned. "Don't even think about it."

))((

The next time Shuyin heard voices, and the door into his dark domain opened, he was surprised to see several more people enter. Armed and cautious, they appeared to be hunting something. They were hunting him. And with that realization, as they continued to come further inside the cavern, he held still, remained silent, observed their movements, and listened to their conversations. Shuyin had finally learned the value of patience.

Instead of rushing to the door, he studied his prey to determine which would make a suitable host. He needed someone that would be difficult to physically subdue, and the last man to enter had a body that was half-machina. Shuyin recalled the machina soldiers he had to fight in the war—their tireless, impenetrable, sometimes magic-resistant bodies.

Some of his other memories had become so constant, so thick, that the cavern's pyreflies had absorbed them. And as the tomb raiders spread out to search the deeper recesses of the den, the ethereal, glowing mist began to reveal Vegnagun and the scattered events that led to Shuyin's death. All of them felt his despair. Within a matter of minutes, they were turning their weapons on each other. The trio of young men at the back, including the machina-man, was horrified to witness the massacre. They wanted no part in a squad that killed its own members, so they tried to escape. Shuyin wasn't going to let that happen—not without him.

His spirit flew into the half-machina man, but this time he didn't attempt a violent takeover. He searched for information, instead. His new host was a young man named Nooj—a recruit for a new elite fighting force, the Crimson Squad. They'd been told this was part of a training exercise, but this cavern had never been used for training exercises before. These people had most likely been sent down here to die. But why? Shuyin was intrigued.

As the pyrefly memories infected his mind, Nooj pointed his gun at his friend and cried out in anguish. They all did. Standing in a triangle of death, each was ready to snuff the life of another.

Shuyin couldn't let it go that far. He needed this body alive. "Put the gun down, Nooj," he calmly advised.

A female recorder circled them, wondering what to do. She yelled at them to stop.

"Listen to her, Nooj. Put the gun down, so we can walk out of here nice and calm."

The young woman's voice broke through the illusion Nooj was seeing. Then, he and his friends snapped out of their trances and ran out of the cavern, passing through the spirit wards.

Shuyin held his breath until Nooj was outside of the den. Finally! After endless ages, he was on the other side! If he was alone, he would have kissed the ground outside of that cursed door, but under the circumstances, he chose to remain quiet and hidden, letting Nooj speak and act for himself.

While the trio reported the massacre and the massive, growling machina they had seen, Shuyin looked at the world through Nooj's eyes. Its brightness and beauty were almost painful. And the men in charge of this covert operation? Their uniforms were almost too familiar—Bevelle warrior monks and a priest with robes bearing Yevon's signature trademark. Yevon still existed? Or was he merely a legend now? When Bahamut visited, he said it had been almost a thousand years since Shuyin was locked away in that cavern. Shuyin wondered how much time had passed since then.

The priest congratulated them for passing their final test and told them to forget what they saw. Then, he gave them their first assignment—protect the maester. He whispered something to the warrior monks behind him while Nooj and his friends congratulated each other.

Shuyin searched the young man's mind for more information about who this maester was and what was happening for them to be at this remote location.

"Run!" the female recorder suddenly cried. "Run!"

Her shout startled Shuyin, but the shots fired at his host's back startled him even more. Why were warrior monks shooting their own recruits? Shuyin considered jumping from his host and fleeing to safety independently, but his chances of finding another half-machina body like this one were slim. So, he seeped deeper into Nooj's mind while his defenses were down and encouraged his new host to run as fast as he could across the bottom of the canyon.

))((

"Should we go after them, sir?" one of the gunners asked.

"No." Behind the escaping witnesses, the priest in charge of overseeing the Crimson Squad's final training exercise peered into the gloomy cavern full of dead bodies. "It would raise too many questions to be seen hunting down deserters while Operation Mi'ihen is going on. We'll find them later." It wasn't the loss of the entire Crimson Squad that bothered him, though. It was the description of the apparition and giant machina they said they saw within. It made no sense, but he wasn't about to go in there and find out what was going on for himself. "There's enough pyreflies in there now to breed an entire dungeon full of fiends. I need to report to Maester Kinoc. Meanwhile, send someone in to take a body count and see if there are any other survivors," he ordered his warrior monks. The priest scowled at the female recorder that had given the three survivors warning in time for them to escape. Then, he headed back to the command center.

))((

Qwenten was the only one from his own Crusader unit at the cavern this time, and now he had been left alone with the Crimson Squad's recorder, a young woman named Paine.

"Something about this whole thing," she anxiously complained as soon as the priest was gone. "It doesn't seem right. He was going to shoot them in the back!"

It bothered Qwenten, too, but he tried to remain rational. "Because they were shooting each other in there. You saw what happened."

"I saw my friends lose their minds in there, only to come out here and get promoted to an execution! What's in there that they weren't supposed to see?"

"I don't know, okay? I'm just trying to follow orders because we've got more important things to worry about with Sin out there!" Qwenten noticed the recorder's supply bag. "Those training spheres ... They're evidence. The maester's probably going to want to see them."

"Fine." Paine dropped her supply bag at the Crusader's feet but shouldered her recorder's strap across her back. "Take your precious spheres. I'm more concerned about the people in them." Flashing him an angry glare, she ran away to look for her friends.

))((

A few minutes later, the priest returned with Maester Kinoc and was upset to learn that the recorder had run away, too. Kinoc, the head of both the Crusaders and warrior monks branch of the temple, boldly entered the cavern to see the bodies littering the floor beneath the cloud of pyreflies. Two warrior monks who were supposed to be taking a body count were arguing about bodies being missing among the enlistees. "Four still live," Kinoc interrupted. "Fix it!"

The fat one muttered something beneath his breath in response.

"Did you say something?" he challenged.

"No, Sir," the tall thin one replied. "Pay him no mind."

Kinoc left the cavern with the priest and lowered his voice. "Are you sure it sounded like Vegnagun they were describing?"

"Positive. Although how they knew about it is beyond me," the priest answered. "They suggested it was the pyreflies."

Kinoc and the priest stopped in front of Qwenten. "Seal it again," Kinoc ordered. "And this time change the lock. Make it even harder to open than before. Break the key in pieces and cast them to the wind if you have to. I don't care how you do it, just make sure no one ever goes in there again. I will be on the precipice awaiting Maester Seymour's arrival if you have further questions about your orders.

"Yes, sir." Qwenten wasn't sure what to think of Kinoc's attack on the covert operation's only survivors. "Sir, forgive me for questioning, but ... why are they a threat? They passed the trial, and we need all the able-bodies we can get to fight Sin."

"They might be infected with whatever caused that madness in there. We don't want it—or word of it—getting out, do we?" Kinoc curtly answered before heading back to the lift.

The priest who advised the maester concerning the Crimson Squad cut a warning glance toward the Crusaders' unit leader who first discovered the threat, but then he walked away.

Qwenten looked down at the spheres Paine dumped at his feet, and an idea came to him about what kind of new lock the door needed—a lock that would remember this tragedy and warn others so that it would never happen again.

))((

Yuna's party arrived at the gate of the ruins that separated the Mi'ihen Highroad from Mushroom Rock Road, and Tidus reluctantly hopped down from his chocobo. "Now, wasn't that fun?" he asked as he helped her off of the bird.

She laughed and combed her fingers through her windblown hair, hoping it didn't look as stringy as it felt now. "Oh, much more fun than I imagined."

Tidus was glad to hear it. As he left with the other guardians to return their chocobos to the rental attendant, Lulu strolled to Yuna's side. "He was reckless to race with you like that."

"But it was really fun," Yuna happily countered. "I've been avoiding chocobos since I was six, but I guess it is kind of silly to be afraid of something so small, considering I intend to fight Sin."

"If his recklessness had harmed you, where would your pilgrimage be?" Lulu placed one hand on Yuna's shoulder to hold her still while she fixed her hair for her. "None of us want to lose you, but to lose you to something trivial would be especially bad, considering the reason for your journey."

"Being in his arms like that ... It was nice," Yuna confessed with a hint of embarrassment. "And ... he doesn't understand the outcome of the Final Summoning yet. He's planning to share another ride with me on a return trip. It's … refreshing."

Lulu softened her tone. "I'm sure it was, but you know that you can't be with him like that, Yuna."

The summoner's chin dipped at the mild reprimand. "I know." When she looked up at her friend again, she covered her sad expression with a wan smile. "But I can dream, can't I?" Her gaze drifted beyond Lulu's shoulder. Tidus was returning with other guardians.

Lulu heard different voices a short distance away and spotted familiar faces at the gate. "Is that Dona and Barthello?"

The other summoner and her guardian were arguing with a Crusader about not being allowed to enter the gate to Mushroom Rock Road.

"If they aren't letting them pass, they probably won't let us pass either," Yuna guessed.

"Let me talk to them," Tidus offered and strode behind a large wagon carrying a fiend that was also stopped at the gate.

Yuna watched as Luzzu and Gatta, two Crusaders from Besaid, and their wagon were permitted entry by the guards, but when Tidus tried to follow, the gate guards stopped him. He had an animated conversation with them for a moment, then returned to her side to repeat what he had learned.

The gate guard said the road was blocked for Operation Mi'ihen—an unprecedented joint venture between the Crusaders and the Al Bhed. The Crusaders were going to use fiends to lure Sin to attack, and then the Al Bhed were going to ambush it using their most powerful machina—forbidden weapons.

"Looks like we'll need to find another way around," Yuna decided.

"Shouldn't we wait?" Tidus suggested. "If the road has been trapped with machina and fiends, it sounds pretty dangerous. And if they can defeat Sin, we won't have to."

Yuna was undecided. "They could probably use our help."

"Help them?" Wakka didn't like the sound of that. "But they're using machina. It's sacrilegious!"

"Then we find another way around," Lulu agreed with Yuna. "There's probably a connection between the low road and the beach near the ruins if we go back down the road a bit."

Yuna turned around to lead her guardians back down the Miihen High Road when Maester Seymour and his travel entourage arrived. She knelt and bowed in formal greeting to the leader of her order, and the half-guado summoner acknowledged her gesture with one of his own.

"So, we meet again, Lady Yuna."

"Y-yes?"

"You look troubled. Is there anything I can do?"

"Well ..." She looked toward the barricaded gate.

"I see." Seymour went to the gate guard and gave him the same formal greeting. Then, he requested that Yuna's party be allowed to pass through behind him. There was only a small protest from the guard before returning to his post and gesturing for them to proceed.

Seymour faced the waiting party—Yuna, in particular. "It is done."

"Oh! Thank you, Your Grace!" She bowed again in awed gratitude and stayed bowed until Seymour and his party left.

"Yuna, it's time to go," Lulu prompted.

"Oh. Right." As Yuna continued through the gate with Lulu, she overheard two of her other guardians behind them.

"Who does he think he is?" Tidus complained, unimpressed.

"He's a maester. Better get used to it, ya?" Wakka was amused at the irritation written all over Tidus's face.

))((

After running for some distance across the smooth-surfaced stone that made up the crisscrossing paths through the canyon, Nooj's foot slipped on one of the raised surfaces, and he stumbled to his knees.

"Keep running."

"I can't!" Nooj thought the voice that whispered in his mind was a side-effect from whatever caused them to hallucinate in the cavern.

"You must!"

Nooj lowered his head between his arms while he tried to catch his breath. His machina leg simply was not good enough for this kind of thing. He hated it—hated himself. He wished he had stayed in the cavern and ended his life.

"Keep running!" Shuyin had to keep his host alive this time.

"Nooj!" One of his companions realized he had fallen behind and returned to help him stand.

"Leave me." Nooj pushed his small, wire-rimmed spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose. He stood but took cover behind a large rock formation, and his friends followed.

"Are you crazy? We've got guns on our backs, and we need to get out of here!" His younger companion moved behind him to push him forward, but Nooj wouldn't budge.

"Wait!" Their other companion uttered a breathless protest. "We can't leave yet."

"Baralai! Yes, we can!" the young man behind Nooj snapped. "They tried to kill us!"

"Sin is going to be coming up that coast any minute now," Baralai argued. "We came to fight Sin! If we run to save our own hides when we could have made a difference ... If this operation doesn't succeed, then we will be at the mercy of Sin no matter where we run."

Sin ... Who was Sin? Shuyin searched Nooj's mind for more information and couldn't believe what he found. Operation Mi'ihen was the latest offensive against a giant, destructive aeon named Sin that had been terrorizing Spira since before this generation was born. Though only in his late teens, Nooj had lost his limbs in a previous run-in against the titanic beast and had been refitted with the new ones by Al Bhed machinists. He loathed his new body, though, and had joined this effort, in part, to avenge what it had done to him. The Crimson Squad had been his best hope to do that, but they had just been wiped out by the madness preserved in the Den of Woe's pyreflies. And now these three sole survivors had been shot at by their own commander—a priest of Yevon. It reminded Shuyin how Maester Renuta betrayed Lenne. He remembered his argument with Yevon about sending Lenne and the other summoners into battle against Bevelle. This looked like another cleansing. But this Sin ... Was it the same monster Bahamut mentioned when he came to ask for help? Was it the same titanic aeon Shuyin collided with above Bevelle—an aeon that could only have been summoned by Yu Yevon? That bastard ...

As he continued to search his host's mind, Shuyin found no trace of anything about the Founders in Nooj's memories, but Yu Yevon's teachings had somehow become immortal. Now all of Spira worshiped him as a god, and an entire church and legal system had been built around this massive aeon and those precepts. Yet no knowledge of the high summoner as a man was present among those thoughts.

"Look! Maester Seymour is here!" Baralai pointed to the blue-haired summoner and the large group that followed him toward the lift. "We should tell him what happened. He might be able to help us."

Shuyin looked up to see who Maester Seymour was, but was surprised when he also spotted ... himself! He made Nooj remove and wipe his glasses' lenses before replacing them for another look, but there was no mistaking it. In the group walking behind Seymour, someone was wearing an Abes uniform, and he looked just like Shuyin. What the …

As one of the mushroom-shaped rocks lifted Seymour's group up to the precipice, Shuyin started to make Nooj agree with Baralai about asking the half-guado maester for help despite the bounty on their heads, mainly because of his curiosity about this clone wearing his blitzball uniform. But his younger companion, the one Nooj knew as Gippal, cut in front of them.

"What if he knows about what happened?" Gippal challenged. "What if all of them know what happened? What if this whole operation is just a scam to kill off as many Al Bhed as possible?"

Distracted from his double, Shuyin was glad to hear he wasn't the only one suspecting a temple cleansing.

"What are you talking about?" Baralai argued. "I'm not Al Bhed. Nooj isn't Al Bhed."

"The Crimson Squad was full of Al Bhed and Al Bhed sympathizers," Gippal insisted.

"I'm from Bevelle."

"It doesn't matter. You were willing to turn away from Yevon and use machina. All the people who volunteered for this mission are willing to use machina even though the church denounced it. They're corralling us to weed out heretics, I tell ya! That's probably why that priest tried to finish us off!"

"Maester Kinoc and the Crusaders wouldn't be part of the mission, if the temple was against it," Baralai argued again. "Now, Maester Seymour is here, too."

"And you don't find that just a little odd?" Gippal countered.

"You're being paranoid!"

"It's a trap!"

Though he was interested in learning more from their argument, Shuyin turned Nooj's head toward his "twin." He was already out of sight, but the female recorder that warned them about the execution squad was running toward the lift. While he was grateful to the woman he never met for sparing the life of his host, he realized she could be reporting their escape. He didn't know these people, so he didn't know who to trust. And apparently, they didn't even trust each other now. A priest of Yevon had betrayed him once before. Shuyin wasn't going to let that happen again. Chasing after his doppelganger or seeking aid from anyone associated with Yevon was probably not a good idea at the moment. Shuyin reminded himself that he had all the time in the world to find answers to his questions, but right now, he had to keep this host alive. "Gippal's right. This is too suspicious," he spoke using Nooj's voice instead of his own. "We need to get out of here while we still can." He made Nooj break past his friends and run toward the mouth of the canyon to escape.

))((

Paine saw Seymour's arrival and figured her three friends might have gone to him for help. She was running between the tents searching for him when she spotted Maester Kinoc speaking with Sir Auron. Stopping abruptly, she drew back behind a tent to avoid being seen but kept looking around for Seymour. Suddenly, the ground began to shake.

Gripping the tent's post, Paine looked toward the cliff. One of the Sin spawn cages had been hit with electrical magic, releasing the fiend within. But while Crusaders and Al Bhed rushed to contain it again, a larger fiend appeared. This could mean only one thing. Sin had arrived.

))((

Everyone was forced to defend themselves against the escaped Sin spawn. But Yuna and her guardians had barely killed the beast when, from the edge of the cliff, they saw a dark shadow creep under the ocean toward the beach. The Al Bhed fired their cannons into the massive aeon as it rose from the waves. Their shots did nothing, but Sin spawned more fiends after each hit. Chocobo knights charged the shores along with an onslaught of foot soldiers armed with more forbidden machina. Sin raised a sphere of magic around itself. The sphere not only resisted the powerful electrical jolt aimed at it, it absorbed the charge and then burst outward, disintegrating everything in its path.

With a growl, Tidus ran back toward the lift.

"No! Don't go down there alone!" Yuna reached for him, but Auron blocked her and pulled her back.

"Yuna! You must say here!" The warrior monk held the summoner firmly in place. He knew what was eating at Tidus's mind and that he needed to vent alone. He just hoped he wouldn't do anything stupid in the process.

))((

Below the precipice, racing along the shaking ground and trying to escape the area as fast as possible, Nooj and his friends ran out of the canyon and back toward the high road. Seconds later, Tidus came out of the canyon and turned in the opposite direction heading for the beach.

As if tired of playing at war games with puny mortals, Sin fired back at the Al Bhed laser gun. The entire contraption exploded and fell into the sea.

The blast from Sin's punishing attack threw Tidus face-down in the sand on the beach. When he lifted his head in the aftermath, he saw that the beach was littered with broken and dying bodies of the men and women who had tried to stand against Sin. Scrambling to his feet, he spotted Gatta and ran toward him, but trying to get information only resulted in a brief hysterical exchange. Tidus's attention went back to the ocean, where Sin was swimming away. For Jecht to leave so calmly after shedding so much blood … It was unforgiveable. "Don't you run away from me!" He ran into the waves after the beast.

Diving under the foaming wake, he swam as hard as he could to catch up with the creature that had once been his father. But even as he chased Sin through the underwater ruins, he realized how futile his efforts were against such magical and physical strength.

))((

The blast that threw Tidus face-down on the beach also threw Shuyin face-down in the dirt on the road. Gippal and Baralai waited to see if Nooj was okay, then all three of them ran through the high road's abandoned barricades. The skittish chocobos flew their coop, and now this section of the road was in just as much chaos as the road behind them. Shuyin concentrated on keeping up with Nooj's companions as they fled to safety somewhere else.

))((

Still in the canyon, Paine cried out and braced herself against one of the cliffs to protect herself from falling rocks that were showering dust and chunks of debris down around her. When the rumbling of Sin's attack ceased, she spotted Seymour in the small crowd gathered on the precipice, but her friends weren't among them. Running back toward the lift and returning to the canyon's mouth, Paine was undecided whether to head toward the beach or the high road.

After choosing the high road, she finally ran into her friends outside of Rin's Travel Agency. All three were exhausted, but none had been injured. When they asked why she followed, she told them she wanted to know what they saw in the cavern. They didn't know. Maybe someday they would figure out what happened with the Crimson Squad's betrayal, but not today. They only knew Maester Kinoc was unhappy that they survived.

"Moving as a group is too risky," Nooj stated.

"Wanna split up?" Gippal suggested.

"That would be wise," Baralai agreed.

Nooj turned to Paine. "Your work's done. Why are you still recording?" He reached to her recorder, gesturing for her to turn it off.

))((

Shuyin let Nooj answer for himself in the conversation that followed, carefully attending each word and facial expression. But in the end, he decided he could risk no more betrayals. As Nooj and his friends parted ways, Shuyin scanned the area for witnesses, pulled his gun, and fired at their backs.

Paine, who had been trying to get one final record of their journey together, gasped aloud when Baralai and Gippal unexpectedly fell. "Who?" She panned toward her left to see the shooter. "Nooj!"

"I said your work's done," Shuyin told her in his own voice and turned his gun on her, too. He was impressed that she didn't cry when she fell beside the other two. Then, calmly walking past the bodies of Nooj's former friends, he holstered his weapon and jogged away, alone. Shuyin was finally free.