A/N: Since I got this chapter done a weekend or two ago, I was frantically trying to figure out how to get my laptop connected to the Internet. Sadly, my Flash Drive failed me quite soundly and connecting directly to my broadband access thingamabob was more of a hindrance than a help. So...just for you readers, I typed up all 4,391 words (not including A/N's) on my PC. Hope you enjoy.
Chapter 12: Fire or Ice: A Life Ends in Fire
Being a desert-bred girl, Rikku had higher tolerance of the heat than most Spirans, save all other Al Bheds. She could traipse in the sand and gallivant all around Home for hours without breaking a sweat, whereas many Spirans who came to visit (one man who came vividly to mind was her dearest Uncle Braska whom her father seemed to hate so much) rushed for shelter as quickly as possible whenever they came to Bikanel Island, for whatever reason they had.
Of course, having the curious mind that she did, Rikku lost most interest in the desert by the age of four (though not in the absolutely coolest treasure she dug up in the sands) and wondered what the rest of Spira was like. Her father said that there were places were the sun never shined, high in the mountains, which amazed Rikku to no end. She wanted to see that place desperately, and play in that mythical "snow" thing Brother talked about.
While Macalania Woods had none of that snow stuff, it certainly wasn't pouring sunshine. Or hot.
In fact, Rikku was colder than she had ever been in her life.
"Rikku, if you put anymore layers on, you won't be able to move," Clasko told the girl as she put on O'aka's last remaining coat–her third layer, which came after her own clothes and Clasko's last clean shirt. "Not that it really matters with you riding the chocobo, but you should still try and keep some mobility."
"But I'm cold Uncle Clasko!" Rikku told him, chattering her teeth for effect. "It's never this cold at Home!"
"Well, lookit Auron," O'aka motioned. "He seems mighty fine."
Auron seemed to make do with O'aka's coat for warmth, but Rikku figured that since he had lived in Bevelle before, and Bevelle was farther north than Macalania, he was used to the cold weather. Ergo, O'aka's evidence was dismissible.
"Unky Clasko?" Auron said softly, staring up at the trees with wide eyes, "isth the twee alive?"
Clasko paused, looking around at their surroundings. The huge forms of the plant life stood as imperial as ever, though the sound of water dripping filled the air. The majestic crystal shards of the Woods were beginning to melt. "Well, I bet underneath all the crystal there's something that grows. It seems that the reports are all correct and the Woods are melting. I wonder why."
"Ah, that's all hogwash," O'aka brushed it off. "Macalania's just goin' through a warm season, 'tis all. Happens all the time. The crystal melts under some heat, but then it'll get even colder and all the crystal will be right back, mark me words! I mean," he laughed, "it's not like the Woods are gonna sink or anything."
"Colder?" Rikku gulped. "Isn't it already cold? How can it get any colder?"
"Aye, lass, colder," O'aka nodded, looking her over with a critical eye. "Best ye not go up to Mt. Gagazet til you get some heavy winter clothes. It's even colder than these here Woods."
Rikku shivered impressively, burrowing further into Clasko's fur-trimmed, shoopuf-lined coat and holding Auron close in order to share warmth. As the chocobo trotted along, following Clasko and O'aka obediently, Auron twisted his head to watch an enormous oak blend into the darkness behind them.
As he blinked, and stared curiously, the two eyes he had noticed that led to his inquiry about the tree's liveliness blinked and disappeared. Confused by what Clasko had told him and what his common sense said, Auron shrugged the eyes aside and complied with Rikku's demands to sit properly.
Breaching the Woods and heading further in, Auron continued to feel as though the trees were watching him and his companions. He began to whimper and huddle closer to Rikku, and twice Clasko and O'aka mistook his discomfort as an accident. Befuddled when they found no mess to clean up and yet Auron remained distressed, they could do no more than replace Auron on the chocobo and ask Rikku if she was prodding Auron as a joke. The girl shook her head firmly, huffing at them due to the indignity of being blamed.
Auron was not the only one anxious in the Woods. The chocobo's footsteps were beginning to slow and falter, and several times it took Clasko's endearing coaxes to get the chocobo to continue. Before they had made it very far past the entrance to Macalania the chocobo had had enough. She stopped obstinately at the shining orb (something Auron and Rikku would have recognized better as a sphere of safety, if they had been their older selves) near the three-way fork with a path leading high above the treetops, refusing to go further and squawking every time Clasko tried to nudge his beloved steed along.
"What's wrong with her?" O'aka asked as Clasko gave up bribing the chocobo with stale pieces of trail mix. "She seemed alright with goin' to the Calm Lands before."
"I don't know," Clasko scratched his head. "In the Chocobo Knights, when chocobos acted like this, there were fiends about. But, they were trained to react that way–I think. Elma did most of the training, and I came in late so I didn't see most of the training. This is the first time I've really dealt with a wild chocobo."
"Ye think," O'aka looked around nervously, handling his bag like a makeshift weapon, "there's a fiend about?"
Before Clasko could answer Auron reached over and tugged at his sleeve. "Unky Clasko, how come some twees have eyes and not others?" he asked plaintively.
The adults froze. "Auron," Clasko breathed, trying not to make any sudden movements, "where do you see a tree with eyes? Don't point too obviously, just . . . just in the general direction."
Picking up on the tense atmosphere, Rikku wrapped her arms around Auron's torso tightly as the boy pointed in a southerly direction. The boy's eyes were wide and teary as he, too, sensed the tension.
Scanning the area, Clasko spotted the abnormality in the environment. Beady eyes peered out, well above his head and seemingly from the trees. A trout-like tail swished into view, and when the tail moved back Clasko could see a horn and the left-side of a flat-faced fish.
"What . . . is that?" O'aka whispered; he also found the fiend amongst the trees.
"Maelspike," Clasko replied, near-silent. "But, those fiends live on Mt. Gagazet, and are smaller. What are they doing down in Macalania?"
"Uncle Clasko?" Rikku's trembling voice brought Clasko back to their predicament. "What do we do?"
"We can't outrun it," O'aka reasoned, gulping quite noticeably. "Maybe if we just . . . ignore it, pretend it's not there, it'll leave us be."
"The chocobo won't move, though," Clasko attempted to tug the reins again. The chocobo reared her head back and squalled, but moved her feet not an inch. "We can't leave her behind; she'll be fish food!"
"And we won't?" O'aka hissed pointedly, but yelped when the fiend moved out of the shadows. It apparently had stalked them enough to whet its appetite and swum through the air toward the four humans and chocobo.
"Ah, oh no," Clasko twisted his head around, searching for a suitable weapon. He picked up a branch from the ground and swiped at the fiend, but cried in dismay when the feeble branch broke into pieces under his grip. The former Knight felt panic rising in his chest as he found no other replacement to hold the fiend at bay.
Cursing fluently, though the words were lost in the screaming of Auron and Rikku and the frantic shrieking of the chocobo, O'aka climbed onto the chocobo behind Rikku and Auron and held out his hand to Clasko. "Let's get out of here!"
"The chocobo can't carry that much weight!" Clasko protested, but when the fiend began to pick up its pace Clasko fumbled on quickly. As the chocobo began to flap her wings uselessly, O'aka took his hat off his head and slapped it hard against her rump.
Shocked at the unexpected hit so close, the chocobo gave one final, pitched, "Wark!" and ran pell-mell deeper into the Woods. The chocobo's speed was greatly reduced due to the weight on her back, but her endurance apparently outdid the fiend; they left the aerial monster behind as the chocobo fled the beaten path and ran in a simple, straight line through all the brush, stumps, and crystal in her trajectory.
"We need to get her to stop!" Clasko shouted as he began to slip off the rear of the chocobo.
"I know how to make 'em go, but ye have to tell me how to stop her!" O'aka cried back as he held the children between his arms, his hands gripping the reins for dear life.
"Birdie sthop!" Auron tried to help, patting the chocobo's neck in what the frightened animal thought as only more hitting.
"I'll give you green things if you stooooop!" Rikku squealed, eyes screwed shut as she held Auron in a death-grip.
The chocobo's tiny ears twitched. The hind claws in her feet dug into the ground, her wings spreading wide to balance herself as she came to an abrupt, unanticipated stop. The children gasped as they rocked forward and back, cushioned by the firmly-seated O'aka and the chocobo's feathery neck.
Clasko, unfortunately, lost what little grip he had on O'aka's trouser-hem and fell to the ground behind the chocobo. His breath whooshed out as the small of his back connected with something hard and jagged. Groaning and reaching underneath him, Clasko extracted the offending rock and tossed it aside with more spite than necessary.
"Good chocobo!" Rikku clapped, happy that the frantic pace through the Woods had come to an end. She smoothed some feathers on the chocobo's neck, cooing, "Uncle Clasko was right, you are smart!"
The chocobo warbled, nudging her beak against Rikku's chest. Realizing what the animal wanted, Rikku dug through the jade-green pouch out of the five she had buckled onto her limbs (an assortment of ocean blue-, sun yellow-, opal white-, and tangerine orange-colored pouches in addition to the jade-colored) and pulled out four green, root-looking items with a frayed, leafy top. "There you go! Just for you!"
"Rikku!" Clasko exclaimed, gaping at the food she was feeding the chocobo. "Where did you find those?"
Rikku froze, growing worried that she wasn't supposed to feed the chocobo the plants in her palm. "They were–they were just lying on the ground, Uncle Clasko. They weren't even in t-treasure chest. I didn't think they w-were bad, I just wanted to pick them up a-and look at them later and I thought the chocobo would like t-to eat one. Please don't be mad at meeee," she ended in a wail, beginning to cry. Seeing Rikku's tears, Auron joined her with cries that were more loud than honest.
"Ah, great, now lookit what ye've done!" O'aka griped, trying to appease the children by rubbing their backs; it had worked on his own cousins, but apparently not for these two.
"Rikku, Rikku, I'm sorry!" Clasko hurried to stand and hug the girl. "I'm not mad! Really! Those things you just fed the chocobo are Gyshal greens, they're very good for the chocobo!"
Tears stopping, Rikku blinked at him with a trembling lower lip; Auron's sniffles only stopped when hers did. "Really?" she asked.
"Yeah," Clasko nodded, holding back his sigh of relief. He hated it when children cried; it always made him feel guilty. "I haven't been able to find any of those anywhere. Do you have more?"
"Uh huh!" Rikku nodded, fishing out of her pockets a handful of more greens. "Auron's got some, too! I got him started on his treasure-hunting back in the Thunder Plains, when Uncle O'aka found us and you and Uncle O'aka had to talk grown-up stuff. Did you know, Auron's parents never told him how much fun treasure-hunting is! I showed him how to do it, and he was really good at it, and so we went by the muddy water, and that's where we found these! Go on, Auron, give Uncle Clasko your planty stuff!"
Happy to do something nice for his wonderful uncle, Auron took out his own greens from a red leather pouch Rikku had given to him and buckled onto the waist-band of his shorts ("Because I think red suits you best, Auron!") with a huge smile. His greens were a bit more squashed, though Clasko suspected it might have been due to Rikku's grip on the boy than his poor handling.
Mashed or not, the chocobo saw the extra greens and attempted to take them all. She managed to nab one fo the squished greens, but Clasko hid away the rest in his pack before she could eat anymore. With the greens out of sight and the danger gone, the chocobo acquiesced to the humans calmly and began to root at the ground for anything else tasty to eat.
"Alright, kids, let's get ye down from here and have a lil rest," O'aka suggested, lifting Rikku up and hauling her right leg over the chocobo's back, handing her to Clasko. "I'm not sure about ye, but I think I've done enough travelin' for one day."
Clasko and Rikku agreed, though Auron twisted his face into a pensive look. He angled his head up to O'aka, brown eyes blinking with the childish consideration that the merchant knew so well–something was wrong. "What is it, Auron?" O'aka prompted.
Auron played with his shirt for a moment, then looked back up at O'aka. "I'm sthinky, Unky O'aka," he pronounced the name slowly, not quite able to say all the syllables as fluidly as Clasko.
The two men blinked, Clasko sighing and O'aka chuckling. "Well, we did need to get you potty-trained," Clasko admitted tiredly. "This is the next step, I suppose."
"Here, ye take the tyke and I'll help him get cleaned up," O'aka took pity on the poor man, handing down Auron by his armpits. "Ye just get a camp arranged, and make sure Rikku gets some treasure for her very gracious donation, right?" he tweaked her nose, causing her to giggle and spin, rushing around the immediate area with her pent-up glee that they were all alive. O'aka paused as he shifted in his seat, realizing something else. "Eh, besides . . . Auron may not be the only one who needs a change."
Once Auron's mess had been cleaned up and O'aka changed his own pants, the two returned to the makeshift camp Clasko had arranged. He had dragged four logs into a square, putting a small, manageable fire in the center. His tent had been set up, and O'aka's thin sleeping blanket had been laid out by the fire for the man's rest. He had reined the chocobo close enough to the fire for the animal to keep warm, but far enough away that the occasional spark of cinders would not frighten her and cause her to run away.
The last of the merchant's food (a clay jar of raw and assorted vegetables and preserved meat) were being divided into four servings, though two of them were a bit more than the other half. He broke off some crystal from a nearby tree and put the shards into a pot from O'aka's bag. He hung the pot over the fire using a spit (over which he fought and swore silently as it refuse to remain upright for quite some time), melting the shards and boiling the resulting water.
Rikku busied herself (and stayed out of Clasko's way) by taking apart his peculiar knife-set, marveling at the tiny screwdriver, file, and other assortment of miniaturized tools that folded with the knife into a compact, oblong disc. She crowed that the Al Bhed could take the invention and make it even better, unaware that the foldable knife-set was of Al Bhed origins.
Clasko put her remarks aside as adolescent ignorance, though he wondered how a girl (who seemed to know the Al Bhed's inner workings and hold it in such high regard) could not know about one of the primary implements in an Al Bhed's tool belt. He himself had accepted the knife-set from an Al Bhed named Nhadala, who had felt obliged to pay him back for giving her some gil to pass safely through Guadosalam several months ago, before Lady Yuna's Calm had begun and the Guado had imposed an entrance tax on Al Bheds for safe entry into their namesake city.
"Alright, let's all sit down and eat our supper," O'aka let out a content huff as he plopped to the ground, grunting as Auron chose to make his lap his own seat. Rikku loathed leaving the knife-set, but at Clasko's warning to take it away and let Auron feed the chocobo without her, she joined them around the fire. She also utilized Clasko's lap as her seat. The men shrugged at each other and ate their meals silently, thinking they would have some peace and quiet at last.
Their silent meal did not stay silent for long. Rikku kicked up a fuss about the vegetables, and Auron refused to eat the meat when it became apparent two chews would not suffice. The men rolled their eyes at Rikku's fussiness and wheedled her into eating more vegetables by wafting a very new and intriguing gadget at her (O'aka's one remaining item that he could sell: a fancy Yevonite paperweight with a built-in clock). Clasko, inspired by the medics who had needed to adjust the food for the wounded Knights and civilians who could not chew properly, filled the clay jar that had held the vegetables with some of his crystal-melted water and dropped Auron's dry meat in to soak and soften.
After the meal-turned-battle-turned-science experiment (Rikku wondered what else could soften in the water containing Auron's meat, and had attempted to use bugs as test subjects while the boy's food was still in the jar) Clasko and O'aka tried to shoo the children to bed. They found, unfortunately, that no matter how many times they put Auron in the tent or how often they threatened to take away Rikku's new knife-set, they could not get the children to sleep.
They gave up, and allowed Auron to watch Rikku with horrendously-focused eyes as she chipped away at a log Clasko had intended to use for a pillow. The girl kept up a running dialogue of what she was doing, putting in at moments that, 'Tytto always told me to scrape away from me, because I might scrape too far and the knife'll get stuck in me and that's just a big no-no, 'cause tuldunc don't work miracles and Yevon would just like us to all stick sharp pointy things in our arms and we don't want to make Yevon happy because he's a pyt, pyt man," and how bugs were not fiends because, "Brother did an s'periment once, where he killed a whole buncha ants, and I didn't want him to do that, 'cause that seemed mean, but their pyreflies were all kinda a happy red, not like fiends that are all mean and dark." (doctors; bad)
All in all, the end of their day wasn't as terrible as Clasko had thought it could be. Especially in light of the very-near fiend attack. So he let the children have their play and settled against a different log to the right of O'aka. He began to drift asleep, head tilting ever so slowly down . . .
Until a hand on his shoulder made him jerk and flail about with a, "Huh? Whaa?"
"Shh," O'aka whispered, putting a finger to his lips.
Clasko looked about furiously, deducing that he could not have slept long; the fire still burned bright and the children had not lost interest in the log or the bugs yet. "What's going on, O'aka?" Clasko mumbled, irritably wiping his eyes.
"The chocobo's actin' weird again," O'aka motioned to the animal.
Clasko twisted to look behind him. Sure enough, the chocobo had gone deathly still and was eyeing the dark beyond doggedly. "Oh no," Clasko moaned. "We don't even have any weapons at all. What are we going to do?"
"We got fire," O'aka pointed out. "We just need to make sure the children and chocobo are outta the way first."
"Fire is rather close-range, don't you think?" Clasko pointed out as he and O'aka edged to the children. They left the chocobo where it cowered, both deciding the animal wouldn't move even if they both pulled with all their strength. "Unless you can throw it or cast it. Can you cast it? Like Lulu?"
"Not for me life, I don't," O'aka shook his head. "But I ain't hearin' ye come up with anything better."
"Uncle Clasko?" Rikku's voice made them jerk, which only made her more confused. "Uncle O'aka? How come you're acting all jumpy?"
"Uh, well, we're going to play a little game," Clasko chuckled in what he hoped was a light manner. "It's called, 'Stay by the chocobo.' Whoever stays by the chocobo the longest gets to have the next–"
The children didn't learn what the winner would get for playing his spur-of-the-moment game. The supposed-Maelspike from before burst into view, sending the chocobo into a fit of panicked squalling and the children screaming.
Clasko and O'aka shoved the children behind them, both regarding the fiend in terror. The fiend truly was bigger than any Maelspike Clasko had seen in his (admittedly short) stint as a Knight. The horns also seemed sharper and blacker, though Clasko wondered hysterically if that was simply his fear exaggerating the fiend's deadliness.
"This is bad!" O'aka howled as the fiend flicked and swished closer. "We gotta do something, Clasko!"
Desperately trying to take everything into account, Clasko grabbed a branch, stuck one end into the fire, and threw the branch with a shouted, "Take that!"
The branch twirled in the air, throwing off sparks as the flames consumed the entire branch. Clasko, in his mind, thought that the branch was falling in a strangely slow arc toward the fiend.
With one tail twitch, the fiend moved aside and the branch landed on the ground, the flames dying in a soft poof and a cloud of smoke.
"Well," O'aka gulped and clapped the rancher on the shoulder as Clasko backed up to him, "that was a nice shot, lad. Better than anything I ever coulda done."
The fiend drifted closer, and instinctively the men backed away, driving the children to the edge of the fire's light. "Auron, Rikku," Clasko whispered as they avoided the fiend, "when I say 'now,' you two run away from here, quickly. Like you did from the witch; remember the witch? Go to a place called the Calm Lands, you'll find help there."
"But what about you and Uncle O'aka?" Rikku asked piteously, holding Auron close. "We can't leave you."
"Ye are gonna have to, lass," O'aka told her, his accent becoming heavier as fear blanked out his mind. "Run hard an' fast, like the wind! An' don't stop for any Yevon-dogs, ye hear?"
"No wanna run," Auron sniffled. "Wanna stay with Unky Clasko and Unky O'aka and birdie!"
"Rikku, Auron, just do as we say and ru–" Clasko stopped, completely bewildered as he saw something in the sky. "What the hell is that?"
His answer came in the form of flaming meteorites, bombarding the fiend one after the other. The fiend roared as it tried to swim out of the sudden shower of meteors, but rock after rock fell on top of the fiend, preventing any sort of escape.
Shouting in astonishment, O'aka and Clasko fell back, bringing the children down to the ground with them. They didn't even have time to cover the children before the fiend finally gave a dying croak and turned belly-up.
Far too surprised to feel any immediate sense of relief, the humans could only watch the ground crackle with the dying embers of the meteor shower. Their attention quickly changed focus as something moved in the bushes.
Yellow and gold stood out starkly from the blues, whites, and blacks of the forest, and a cheerful "Wa-ark!" greeted them. A chocobo stood before the carnage, beak opening and closing as it very obviously took pride in the destruction of the fiend.
Their chocobo poked her head up from the spot she had cowered in, head cocking as she regarded the new chocobo. The newcomer chocobo wandered over to her, head tilted inquisitively. The two adults later suspected the new chocobo had only summoned the meteors in an attempt to save the other chocobo, irregardless of anyone else who might be nearby and benefit from the quick save.
O'aka, Clasko, and the children stared at the new chocobo that had come so thunderously, trotting around their own chocobo curiously and warbling softly. The fiend faded from view behind the chocobo, the pyreflies floating to the sky above.
O'aka turned to Clasko slowly and asked in a squeaking voice, "Did ye know a chocobo could do that?"
Clasko shook his head mutely, his Chocobo Ranch developing bit by bit from a simple Item-Delivery and Transport service-provider to Transport, Item-Delivery, and Property-Security business. "I-I never knew–Not even the chocobos in the Chocobo Knights ever did something like that!"
"It's another pwetty birdie," Auron informed them all needlessly, pointing with a stubby finger and hopping up and down. He showed no signs of lingering fear from their close-encounter, and in fact seemed to want nothing more than to pet the new chocobo.
"Maybe it's a boy birdie," Rikku speculated aloud, tapping her protruding lower lip thoughtfully; she, too, had recovered from her fright. "And then they can have little birdies! And they can tell all their little birdies about how they fell in love when the Daddy birdie saved the Mommy birdie from the eeevil fiend that tried to eat us up–Uncle Clasko, are you okay?"
Clasko had been twitching since the realization dawned upon him that chocobos could perform spells like Meteor, and Rikku's question seemed to have snapped him out of his trance. He sprang up from h is sprawl, began to pat his clothes down frantically, and shouted, "The greens! The greens! I need greens!"
A/N Notes to clarify up above everything I couldn't within the story.
Slightly misleading title; a proper title would have been "Unlife," but that just wouldn't be quite so dramatic. Hehe, I'm a bad author, yes I am.
When I first wrote this chapter, I thought that all the crystal in Macalania was ice. Thus, the Woods were "melting," fading (or sinking) away like it says in FFX-2. However, my sister called me on it and after researching I found she was right. I tried to fix things up, but if it seems iffy in some areas, you know why.
The chocobos in this fic say "Wark," rather than "Kweh" of the new-age chocobos because I feel the former is more avian. I didn't really pay attention to what the chocobos said in FFX/-2, so if it is "wark" then you can totally ignore this note.
If you're completely baffled as to how the new chocobo cast a Meteor spell, it comes from FFX-2. The chocobos you attempt to catch have a slight habit of casting "Choco-Meteo," which is not always so entertaining. Especially when you're nearly dead/have low HP and are not expecting such an attack.
The "Maelspike" that stalked the quartet in this chapter is actually a Dinictus, signifying the start of the fiends' migration all over Spira as evidenced by FFX-2. Clasko and co. couldn't properly identify the Dinictus because none of them can cast Scan. Really small details that aren't really so special, but it's the little things that show how the games are connected.