Part 3: Under the Surface

[Age: 16] During the escaped group's interim tent stay at Charlie Station, after Serah's rescue from PSICOM Central but prior to establishment of the GC remote base.

"Hope, I need that plant," Maqui whispered, puppy-eyed. He had him by the front of his t-shirt, out of sight from the bustle of campfire setup. "This is my reputation on the line! I can't make a halfway decent soup without the key ingredient. Understand?"

It was going to be dark soon. Hope heard the crickets beginning to test their instruments and felt the chill settling on the air. It made him sleepy after the long afternoon of chores, but his friend's desperate grip kept him from slipping under.

He focused glazed eyes on Maqui again, not even trying to pry himself free.

"And there was absolutely no way you could've gotten it earlier, because…?"

"Like I said, it's the bulb of a moonsoul bloom," he huffed, half-heartedly pushing Hope away. He kicked the dirt underfoot in contempt. "You can't even see the flowers until twilight, and there's nothing else distinctive about the dumb plant. Just that bluish-white blossom."

"So you need me," Hope recanted, pausing to stifle a yawn, "to go clear across the camp, crawl through a dank hole into who knows what kind of bug-infested cave, and dig up some bulbs. Sounds peachy."

He ran a hand through his sweaty hair and exhaled heavily, looking back up at Maqui with narrowed eyes. "Is there any payout to this mission?"

The smirk he shot back set off a hundred alarms, but Hope was too worn-out to care. Maqui planted a hand on his shoulder and assured him, "Lebreau's the one who tipped me off on the location. She said there's nothing to be afraid of in there, but I'm perma-forbidden from the spot."

"I'm afraid to ask why," Hope deadpanned.

"Well, I'd be a dead man if I crossed her," Maqui laughed. "And I'm bound to secrecy about the stupid plant already."

"Doing a bang-up job on that," Hope muttered, rolling his neck for good measure before he snatched the sack from Maqui's hand. "Might as well get this over with." He tromped off over the trampled weeds that marked a web of unnamed paths across the camp.

The moon had just begun to rise. It only took twenty minutes to reach the collection of boulders that shielded the cave entrance, but Hope was honestly glad of the darkness falling around him. He could've sworn that several soldiers' eyes watched his progress from their tents, and he didn't want to read their faces.

The cave entrance was a low opening mostly overgrown with hanging moss, which Hope discovered served as a curtain. He got on his hands and knees, his shoulders scraping against the very narrow tunnel, and slowly advanced until it flared wider and higher for walking. He couldn't imagine that many of the soldiers would even fit into Lebreau's "off-limits" cave.

That might explain why she bothered to ban Maqui, but still…

Hope rubbed his eyes, looking side to side at the dimly visible surfaces. Something was giving off a light source – a whitish glow feathered around the tunnel exit a few paces ahead. He also heard the echo of higher voices and occasional ringing laughter.

He pressed against the stony wall at the mouth of the exit, held his breath, and peered around the corner. His wide eyes fell immediately on the goal.

Hundreds of soft, radiant flowers stretched over a patch of green oasis that covered most of the cavern floor. The stems seemed to reach toward the shafts of moonlight pouring in through several small openings in the ceiling, and each bloom magnified the bluish-white illumination to fill the space. Clouds of moths floated over the field, fluttering in their erratic dance. The soft gurgle of a cavern stream drew his eyes for less than a second before they drifted back to the main attraction.

Hope could only stare in awed silence. His body had inched forward of its own accord, intent on reaching the ethereal flowers, before he felt a shiver of apprehension.

When did it get so quiet?

A hand clamped down on his arm and yanked him sideways so abruptly that he yelped. Hope snapped his gaze up to see Lucil, glaring at him with fiery blue indignation.

"Hope, what the hell are you doing here?"

He remained paralyzed, so she gave him a shake. "C'mon, spit it out!"

"I-I just," he stammered, throat dry and eyes clamped shut. "Maq asked me to… get those," he limply gestured toward the flowers, "for a soup. That's all, I swear."

When Lucil only growled to herself and loosened her grip, he dared to crack an eye open. A group of probably twenty women had surrounded them, most wearing tank tops and military trousers below their shrewd stares. Several held solar lamps that cast frightening shadows on their faces. Hope felt keenly like a foolish little fox in a very tough hen house.

"Damn it, Lebreau must've let it slip," Lucil huffed, redirecting her accusing eyes past Hope. He followed the familiar laugh and turned his head, not surprised at all when Lebreau dismissed the charges with a flip of her hair.

"Maqui just wanted to know where to find the flower," she said, hand on her hip. "I told him he was banned from the premises, but I may have expected him to show up and learn a lesson. Whoops."

She stepped closer to ruffle Hope's silver hair. "Don't worry, we'll go easy on ya."

"Easy?" Hope practically squeaked. He backed away from Lebreau and her thinly veiled threat, straight into Lucil. She caught him by the shoulders.

"You know it's my job to keep him safe," Lucil warned, still talking past Hope's head. "Kinda trumps your little games."

Lebreau wore a wicked smirk. "Aw, but we could use a pair of skilled hands. No harm, no foul."

Hope's face turned purple in the blue light, and several of the other women snickered. Lucil's grip on his shoulder's tightened.

"You want another gardener? Then he's with me. I'll show him the ropes."

At the mention of gardening, Hope's chest deflated with relief. He'd had a bad feeling about the weight to Lebreau's words, but she was one to tease.

"If I help," he said quietly, surprised at his ability to dare make a request, "Can I take a few bulbs to Maqui?"

The fair audience laughed again, scoffing at his suggestion as they turned back to whatever-it-was they'd been doing. A few retired to one corner with seedlings arranged on rock ledges under a large opening above, while another pair went to a forgotten laundry basket by the stream. Several more ended up at a makeshift stone table where they picked up haggling over a spread of items – glimmering stones, knives, small bottles of different colored liquids, nondescript paper packets, and other assorted items that he didn't recognize were in play.

The rest of the soldiers picked out positions in the gleaming field and set to work with small hand rakes. He watched them furrow into the soil, their activities closer for scrutiny as Lucil pulled him along by the hand.

A heady perfume from the flowers flooded Hope's nose when they reached the edge of the grass. He swayed where he stood, struggling to concentrate and clinging to Lucil's arm when the room tried to spin.

"Stop… moving…" he slurred. He registered surprise and concern on the soldier's face before she sat him on the ground.

She lifted his chin and ordered, "I need you to count backward from fifteen, three counts in, three counts out. Okay?"

Hope bobbed his head and started the count. Gradually, his thoughts began to clear as he adjusted to the lower, less fragrant air, and the cave lost its strange halos of light. The brightness remained, but none of the fog.

His right hand wrapped around the handle of a triangular spade. He stared blankly at the tool. "Are we… planting new bulbs? Digging up weeds?

"First, we're aerating the soil," Lucil said, stabbing her three-pronged instrument into the packed dirt and wriggling it mercilessly. "The new seedlings will need healthy places to take root."

"And mass-producing moonsoul blooms is important because…?"

Lucil sat back with a huff and dusted her hands. "Listen. These plants were just about wiped out, thanks to some of the dumbass soldiers in this installation. You wouldn't know it, but there used to be a valley full of dayring blossoms here – the 'male' counterpart to these beauties. They grow from the same base plant and bloom in direct sunlight," she explained, prodding the smaller, purplish bud on an adjacent stem.

"Inconveniently, these bulbs were also the prized ingredient in Charlie Station's famous soup."

Hope rolled the spade between his hands, his thinking still a bit cloudy from the surrounding air. "It must've really been something," he wondered aloud, "if they ate the valley clean. You ever try it?"

"Once," she bit out, "And I wish I hadn't. Wasn't all that special to taste, but it certainly made every idiot in the vicinity think he was hot stuff for a couple of hours. I've never seen so many fights and random hookups in a single night."

"It's a drug, then," Hope remarked, lifting one delicate petal with the tip of his finger. "I should've guessed. Did you get into trouble?"

"Not exactly." She skewered the earth again, redirecting a portion of the negative energy Hope felt radiating from her. "I prefer to differentiate between making a life mistake and formal military punishment. I did something stupid, like the rest of them, but no one actually got in trouble."

It was not the first time he'd heard military tales of woe and conquest from Lucil or other soldiers. He could guess where things might've gone.

"Stupid as in a trip to someone else's tent?" he ventured. "Or a fist to someone else's face?"

"Both, actually. In sequence."

"Oh." Hope's eyes went a little too wide, but Lucil never looked up to see them. Teasing questions aside, he hadn't expected that answer, and he hated his own mind for travelling down a few forbidden paths and spinning up inappropriate questions. Worse, he hated the heat in his face and the defensive impulse that flared in his chest.

At least she clocked the guy.

He cleared his throat and tacked on, "Um, when was all of this?"

"My first assignment," she said with a shrug. "They transferred a bunch of us back to the settlement district after that, since it became abundantly clear that newbies shouldn't be stationed at remote outposts in the first place. I'd only been back a couple of weeks when Serah dragged you in."

A long minute of silence passed, punctuated only by the furrowing of their tools in the damp soil.

"I guess… I still don't understand," Hope said, prodding the sad little dayring bud. "If consuming these plants caused all kinds of trouble, wouldn't the military ban them? And if they did, wouldn't the flower population recover? I mean, it's been a while since you were here."

Lucil pushed upright and sat back on her heels, violet eyes hard as crystal. "Oh, they were banned, all right, after the leadership busted up a ring of drug-traffickers. The idiots thought it might be a good idea to harvest all the bulbs they could get their hands on, dry them out, crush them into powder and sell them. PSICOM got involved and bombed this whole outpost with a special herbicide to kill off the plants, just to be safe."

"So these cave-dwellers are the only ones that survived," Hope concluded, his spirits sinking when he thought about the essentially purged species. He looked out over the subterranean field and noticed for the first time that every single plant had one or two sealed buds.

"They can't pollinate down here, can they?"

Lucil laughed in that parched way she often saved for a bad joke. "Not naturally, no. These ladies have to hand pollinate them, harvest the seeds – the whole bit."

"That sounds like an awful lot of work, just to save some pretty flowers," Hope said. He dropped his spade as Lucil dropped her rake, his shrewd expression mirroring hers in a brief contest of wills. She was withholding something important, and he intended to ferret it out.

Lucil cracked a smile. She wasn't about to budge. "It's not as hard as it sounds," she said, bending the stem of a dayring bud toward her. "Watch."

Curiosity held him fast. Hope watched her carefully massage the bud, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger until the petals began to loosen their protective grip. A small pair of anther laden with pollen peeped out.

"All right, I need you to tilt that bloom toward me," Lucil directed, nodding at the plant in front of him, "and do not sneeze. Take a deep breath."

"I-I don't think that's going to reach—"

"Doesn't have to." She severed the bud from its stem with her fingernail. Hope winced, and she gave him a flat stare. "What? It'll grow back. Just hold that bloom already."

He held his breath and cupped the flower in his left hand. The moonsoul bloom's petals were velvety soft against his fingers, and so thin that he could see faint purple veins on the surface. The skin of his inner wrist was a near-match.

Hope pondered that odd connection for a moment before his eyes were drawn to the single projection from the bloom's center. Lucil twirled the tip of the dayring bud around it like a paintbrush, clockwise, counterclockwise and back again, until the stigma held a healthy coating of golden powder.

"See? Nothing to it." She pulled his hand back from the bloom and dropped the severed bud into it. "Hold onto that."

Hope released the breath he'd been holding like a drawn-out sigh. He stared at the shrinking bud in his palm, pitying it for no real reason.

'A beautiful flower in a dark cave,' huh? Never had a chance to bloom.

"What's it good for, dead?" he asked.

Lucil patted his shoulder and bit her lip, obviously holding back a laugh. "Suck it up, Hope. We're not giving it a funeral. Flowers have a pretty short life cycle."

"But this one didn't even have a life," he muttered. He shook himself and finally raised his head, searching her expression. "What's the real reason for cultivating so many bulbs? These soldiers obviously don't want to make dangerous drugs or get them into the hands of anyone who would. And they could just clone the existing flowers by letting the bulbs divide instead of mimicking sexual reproduction. Do they need so much variegation?"

"What are you, some kind of green thumb?" Lucil quipped.

"Mom was into gardening. Mostly perennials."

"Hmph, not surprising," she said after a moment's hesitation. She cleared her throat and wiped off the excess pollen from her fingers onto her trousers. "I guess I might as well explain, if you promise to keep it to yourself."

Hope managed a weak smile. "Easy enough."

Lucil stood and dusted off, helping him up to take a tour of the cavern. They passed the many spaces he'd noticed initially, finally stopping by one shady corner with rows of drying blooms, leaves and buds.

"Consider it a side-business," Lucil commented, gesturing at a stack of small paper packets. "The trace amount of desired chemicals in these dried flowers are harmless, but they maintain just enough of an effect to be valuable for trade. The moonsoul blooms make a very fragrant herbal tea, and the dayring buds and leaves can replace use of the bulbs as a safe cooking ingredient. Better plant variety just means diverse, hardy product."

"Okay, so…" Hope began, stuffing his hands – dayring bud included – into his pockets. "What's the desired chemical effect?"

Lucil stiffened for a fraction of a second, then tried to play it off. "It's an aphrodisiac. Pretty weak at best, and I think it's mostly superstition and placebo effect – people just trick themselves into believing it's, y'know, firing them up."

Hope turned to her, one eyebrow raised. "How do you know it doesn't work?"

"Do you ever stop asking questions?" she huffed.

"I do when I get what I want."

Lucil crossed her arms, dark eyes weighing his resolve. "All right. I know because I've tried it. Now can I just trade you some buds for Maqui's dumb soup, if you drop the subject?"

"Nope," he said, smirking at her defensiveness. "But I appreciate the offer."

Wicked laughter sounded nearby, and Lebreau pranced up behind him out of the shadows. She draped her arm across his shoulders and pinched his cheek, impervious to his glare. Her eyes caught Lucil in a sidelong glance.

"He's not that innocent, Loosey Goosey. You sure he can keep this little operation on the down-low?"

"Don't ever call me that," Lucil hissed, her face burning the purple-tinted color of her hair in the cave. "And yes, Hope's sworn to secrecy. You can elaborate all you want."

"Nah," Lebreau sighed, either bored or disappointed. She dropped her arm and faced Hope, patting his head and laughing at the persistent glare. He wasn't sure if he was more irritated with her on his own behalf or Lucil's.

A retaliatory flame flickered in his chest.

"I'm sure smarty-pants here already understands the plight of our sex-deprived customer base," Lebreau said casually. "Hope the product line didn't come as a shock."

It did not. The explanation made sense, considering the potent effect of the bulbs that Lucil had described before. Hope blinked back at her, unfazed by the information but aiming to make trouble.

Lebreau smirked again. "Any questions for me, hon?"

"Not really," Hope said, watching her smile shrink at his cool response. Lucil's eyes widened, but she didn't interrupt him. "I mean, it's hard for me to picture you playing pimp to Maqui, but you basically lured him to this soup ingredient. Good for him, I guess. Do you sexy-spike drinks at the bar for your special customers, too?"

It was Lebreau's turn to be flustered, and she flailed her hands as she sputtered in defense, "I am not Maqui's pimp! I just wanted him to get stuck in a cave full of ladies and act all goofy and awkward. Ugh, I swear, Hope— He's like a brother to me. Admittedly lacking in game, but still."

She blew a lock of hair out of her face and recovered her impish grin. "As for the bar service, you can't expect me to admit trade secrets for free," she said with a wink.

Lucil nearly choked on her own laughter, it came so fast. She snatched one of the paper packets from the stone ledge and pressed it into Hope's palm.

"Just take it. I told you, it won't really do anything to blondie or anyone else. It'll be diluted to nothing in a soup that big."

"Hey, you can't just give away the merchandise, either!" Lebreau whined.

Hope stuffed the packet deep in his coveralls, grinning like a fiend at the fussy woman. "You mean your falsely advertised merchandise? Consider it payment for my silence, 'Breaumancer."

One of Lebreau's eyebrows shot up as her eyes lit with the promise of a challenge, and Hope knew he'd made a wrong move. She propped her hands on her hips in preparation to give him a run for his money. He backed against the stone ledge but could not for the life of him wipe the grin off his face.

"You'll pay for that," she threatened in a pleasant voice, lifting his chin with her finger and thumb. "My merchandise is the genuine article – can't take the word of miss fifteen-shots-to-drunk here. She's numb to most pain meds, too."

Lucil just rolled her eyes and wisely glared at the wall.

"And I see my nickname-crazy brother's got you doing more than his dirty work, now," Lebreau tacked on. "Sounds like he's getting more creative."

Hope tilted his head, wide eyes shining. "Aw, but I was proud of that one. Why does Maq get all the credit?"

"Digging a hole, pretty boy." She shook her dark head slowly, shaking his in a mirroring motion by the grip on his chin as she stepped closer.

"You think so?" he teased. Lebreau was playing on sheer proximity, and it set Hope's nerves on fire in spite of all his reasoning, but he stubbornly met her eyes and refused to back down. "Guess I must be doing something right."

"Oh, honey," she laughed lightly, leaning right next to his ear. "You've got a lot to learn."

Hope squeezed his eyes shut.

Damn it, I'm in over my head. Abort!

He felt rather than saw Lucil snatch his hand, his eyes flying open as she dragged him from the scene at a sprint. Lebreau's triumphant laughter followed them away. His thoughts rattled all over the place, a mess of colorful blobs when he caught another whiff of the overwhelming flowers, but he was beyond grateful when they reached the way out. The soldier shoved him ahead of her, and he dove to his hands and knees to scrape down the tunnel.

The instant he was free of the mossy curtain at the entrance, Hope lunged for the open field and bolted through the dark. He could barely hear Lucil's footfalls behind him, just enough to keep him moving. They were almost to the semicircle of familiar tents, lit up by a small fire-pit, when she snagged him by the shirt to a screeching halt.

"What… is it?" he wheezed, doubling forward. "Did she… follow?"

He turned to see Lucil resting her hands on her head. "No, but she'll be back later," she huffed. "You really will pay for that stunt."

Her nearly motionless silhouette looked especially stern against the surrounding cliffs, until a laugh broke her composure. "Or I'll pay, more likely. Damn it, Hope…"

"That's five saves, now," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "Sorry for the trouble. Can I make it up to you?"

"Yeah, just do me a favor and go on to the camp alone," Lucil requested. "You promised not to mention anything about the flowers, but I'd prefer that you not mention me, either."

Hope sagged a bit. "I can't even tell Maqui about how you saved me from Lebreau's evil seduction just now?"

"Nope."

"And gave me the special soup ingredient?"

"Not a word," she insisted.

"Why?"

"Look, I don't even want to be placed at the scene. There are people on this base who already know me and like to gossip, and they've got more than enough ammunition," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I'd rather not involve our crew. If anyone asks, I was off patrolling, got it?"

"Sure, I guess," Hope begrudgingly agreed, shuffling his boots in the dirt. Lucil started to turn and go, but he tugged the back of her belted uniform.

"What?"

"You know we don't care, right?" he said, talking past a lump that suddenly formed in his throat. "About your past, or anything. I'm sorry Lebreau teased you, but she's like that to everybody. Our crew is a family. You're part of it, too."

Lucil released a heavy breath, her shoulders slumping a bit in the dark. "You're a sap, you know that?"

"What can I say? It's a gift."

Snorting, she turned back and gave him a good shove in the right direction, and he stumbled off with a broken roll of laughter.

"Just take that gift somewhere else," she demanded. "Blondie's calling you."

Sure enough, he could hear Maqui shouting out past the camp, his voice crashing through the usual sounds of beasts on the plains.

"Hope Lollygagger Estheim! I'd know that dorky laugh anywhere, so you'd better get your ass over here!"

"Coming!" Hope called, jogging through the high weeds. He glanced back for a moment, but Lucil was already gone.

Endnote: Beta-roomie had a crap-ton of revisions to this segment, so unfortunately all the goofy things she said were not recorded on the edited document ;^;