And now...an update for Crash Course Parenting!

crickets chirp, dogs scratch fleas, and squirrels continue to attack poor college students for their lunches

Yeah. It's been a while, and I apologize heartily. I thought my summer and winter breaks would be more productive, but...they weren't. I was bound and determined, however, to update this fic before CCP's birthday rolled around and, lo and behold, I did.

I'd let you all know exactly how far this story is going, but...well, that's the author's privilege of knowing and withholding information, heh.

Chapter 13: Picking Up the Trail

Tidus screeched to a halt just within the doors to the bridge, huffing as he thrust a fist into his side to relieve his cramp. He had taken the distance between the kitchen and bridge at his fastest pace, regrettably leaving Yuna and the party behind. But when Buddy had announced over the intercom just minutes before that he had found something, all Tidus could think of was being present to advance the search for Auron and Rikku.

"You . . . you found something . . . Buddy?" Tidus gasped as he lurched to Buddy's seat, leaning on the back of his seat heavily.

"Uh, yeah," Buddy frowned at Tidus before shrugging the blitzer's habits aside and returning to the computer screen before him. "Take a look at this. Pyreflies from a fiend rose up from the lower section of Macalania Woods just ten minutes ago."

Frowning himself, Tidus asked, "So, what's the big deal? Don't fiends go up in a smoke of pyreflies everyday?"

"Not unless someone kills it off," Buddy replied. "On the very rare occasion, fiends dissipate on their own, but that's one fiend in every six thousand."

"Sooo . . . not very likely," Tidus didn't need to be excellent at math to understand that much.

"Yep. So, what makes this occasion very interesting is that only one fiend bit the bullet in this area."

Scratching his head and feeling irritated with Buddy for piquing his hopes, Tidus growled, "What's so special about that? We used to encounter lots of fiends one at a time on the pilgrimage when we were training."

"But," Buddy interrupted, "you always fought lots of fiends within a span of an hour during training, right? On average, say, thirty or forty?"

"More like sixty or seventy," Wakka broke into the conversation, also wheezing. The party was coming in behind the man, and each of them were in varying stages of breathlessness. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"As I was telling Tidus," Buddy motioned to his screen, "One fiend went to the Farplane in the last hour. Only one."

Tidus exchanged a look with Yuna, finding her just as confused as he was. Wakka seemed equally clueless, and Lulu's brows were furrowed as she worked out the riddle mentally. Cid fidgeted and mumbled under his breath, his dark look growing stormier as the answer continued to elude him.

Kimahri was the first to understand. "Fiend not pass away naturally. Not wanderer training. Fiend attack party, party kill fiend."

"And who do we know is in Macalania Woods?" Buddy goaded.

Startled looks of understanding passed across everyone's faces, ending with Yuna's gasped, "Auron and Rikku!"

"You can be Goldie, and you can be Comet," Rikku giggled as she petted the female chocobo, recently dubbed Goldie. "And when you get little baby chocobos, I'm going to name them Starlet and Yellow Flash and Sunny!"

The quartet had fully recovered from the fiend's ambush, and the newcomer chocobo (conveniently male, whom Rikku named Comet) had been entreated with some of the greens Clasko had received from the children. Clasko's pride had been bruised, however, when Comet only accepted the greens from the children, attempting to flee whenever Clasko dared to near in order to feed the chocobo by his hand. Clasko put aside the insult, though, seeing as how Comet was still in their possession.

The arrival of a second chocobo eased their traveling arrangements immensely, since now both men could ride on a chocobo each with one child in their care. They could cover far more distance than before, and because the fiend's attack had driven them horribly off-course, they would need all the advantages they could get if they wanted to reach the Calm Lands sometime before the end of the week.

"Ye kids ready for a real chocobo ride?" O'aka announced as he saddled up behind Auron, resting an arm around the boy's waist to keep the toddler from falling.

"Go go!" Auron clapped, smiling broadly. "Birdies go go!"

"Alright," Clasko nudged the sides of Goldie as he looked at his map, prompting her forward. "Let's go. If we take this way, we should get back onto the main pathway…I think? Or maybe it's this pathway…"

Rolling his eyes, O'aka mirrored Clasko's actions and took the lead. "Follow me and I'll get us out of this forest."

Taking up the proper path once more, the party traveled quickly up, down, and underneath. They made excellent time, but before they reached the diverging paths leading to Bevelle and the Calm Lands Clasko made them stop in order to rest the chocobos. O'aka attempted to argue with the man that the birds were not delicate creatures, but one rather offended and blistering glare from the chocobo-loving man and the trader chose to save his time for calculating the distance and time until they reached the Calm Lands.

Rikku crouched near the trunk of one large tree, watching the two men with a cocked head. Choosing to make O'aka and Clasko her honorary uncles back in the Thunder Plains (the very bad Thunder Plains, she shuddered) hadn't been all that difficult, nor based on any prior feeling of affection to them, but recently she had the oddest sensation that she knew the two grown-ups from sometime before. Like when she discovered her long-lost teddy bear that stupid Brother hid away from her when she was four that she found almost a year later.

Thinking of Brother made her think of her tytto, and what he would say to her when he found her again. Her lower lip trembled; she hoped he would find her, she couldn't bear the thought of never seeing Home or Tytto or even Brother ever again. If she'd thought Tytto's mad-face about wandering off from Uncle Rin's Travel Agency had been the worst, she was sure in for it now. He'd be so mad, his face would probably get stuck, just like Keyakku always said it would, and she'd have to look at him being all mad-faced forever and ever times infinity. And Tidus and Yunie, and Lulu and Wakka and Kimahri…they had all been upset when she and Auron had played that game of Hide-and-Seek on the airship. Would they be even madder now? Madder than Tytto? That made her worry more than the time she had broken apart Brother's toy machina to figure out how it worked.

"Rikku?" Auron's voice made Rikku snap out of her thoughts. "What awre you thinking about?"

"About Tytto, and how he's going to tell me that I shouldn't ever never ever again get into strange machina," Rikku scratched the side of her nose. "Did your tytto ever get mad at you, Auron? What'd you do to make him happy again?"

Auron screwed up his face in thought, his brown eyes closing to the shape of small, moonlily petals and his lower lip jutting out wetly. Rikku giggled; he looked like such a cute baby when he did that. "I don't wemember vewy well," he admitted in a small voice, swinging one foot slowly. "All I wemember weally good is water…bad water," he frowned. "They put me in the water and I couldn't bweathe. I twied to get out, but they wouldn't wet me. I was scawred."

Rikku couldn't imagine being kept in the water like that, though her Byby had mentioned something about the Evil Maester-Men of Yevon doing rituals like that, something called babatism or batzing or…well, something along those lines. Boy, was she ever glad she hadn't been born to Yevon! "No wonder you don't like baths," Rikku mused aloud. "But, Auron, baths are fun! You don't have to put your whole head under, you just splash around and play with boats! Sometimes Tytto even puts this stuff in the water for me that makes it all foamy and bubbly!" she giggled.

Auron's face continued to stay in a pout. "I don't wike baths," he said stubbornly, and as though to prove his point he folded his arms and made a harumphing sound.

Rikku blinked, a sound echoing in her ears. "Fine, we rest. She's worse than the storm." She wrinkled her brows, rubbing her ears and wondering what she had just heard. The voice had sounded so familiar... "Auron, do you sometimes…I dunno, feel like you remember something, but you don't know what it is?"

The boy frowned. "I….I dunno. Sometimes I dweam and evewything is diffewent and I'm bigger, but I don' wike it, because it don' make me vewy happy at awll. And then I see you, o-or Yunie or Tidus and pictuwes come to my head. It's vewy weiwrd."

"Yeah," Rikku tapped her finger to her cheek. Maybe the words had belonged to Keyakku? No, it sounded more like something Brother would say….or maybe Tytto, if he were feeling grumpy (which, she reminded herself, he always was unless he had his bright little ray of sunshine known as Lady Rikku, Super Al-Bhed Knight of Spira, by his side) and she had done something like sticking his goggles in the oven again.

"Rikku? What's it feel wike when you need to pee?" Auron asked, interrupting her thoughts.

"Like you have too much water in you and you gotta let it all go," Rikku shook her head, hoping to rattle the strange echo out of her head. "Why? You gotta go?"

Auron shifted his weight uncertainly, trying to decide. Getting to her feet, she jumped up and down and hailed their adopted uncles. "Uncle O'aka! Uncle Clasko! Uncle O'aka Uncle Clasko Uncle O'aka—"

"Aye, aye, what is it ye two?" O'aka trotted over, hands on his hips. "Not more…fiends, is it?"

"No, Auron's gotta go!" Rikku pointed.

"Oh, well then, let's get ye behind a bush, Auron," O'aka took the boy's hand and led him away. "Now, remember, when ye are doing this with a toilet, ye got to aim very carefully…"

As they became hidden from sight, Rikku turned to Clasko. He was mulling over a map etched in the bark, scratching his head. The chocobos hunted amongst the foliage, looking for food to munch on and communicating in a series of "Warks" and other low sounds.

"Uncle Clasko?" Rikku asked, trundling over. "Are we gonna find my tytto soon? I don't want to get into any more trouble than I already am, probably."

Clasko bit his lip, sighing internally. As much as O'aka was at odds with Bevelle and Yevon, they really should put the children's needs first, and that was to find their parents and guardians. Although, with Rikku being an Al Bhed, it would be next to impossible to find anyone at Bevelle who could look past her heritage and actually care that she was lost, much less have access to the proper equipment needed to contact them. And Auron had said no names that could possibly be his guardians or caretakers in the past two days. Going to Bevelle would only give grief to O'aka and Rikku, and possibly some to Auron himself.

"We'll find a way to contact him once we get to the Calm Lands, Rikku," Clasko promised her. "It's only a few more hours away. Can you wait that long? Or else we'll have to go to Bevelle, and—"

Rikku's eyes flew open wide, making the swirls in her eyes expand and whirl almost hypnotically. "No! Bevelle's a bad place! They don't like us Al Bheds, and they put Auron in this water-thingy called bazping and wouldn't let him out and I don't wanna go!"

Clasko blinked, then smiled grimly. It appeared that even a child as young as Rikku understood prejudice. He hoped the Eternal Calm will do something to eliminate the hate. As for Auron's experience: "You mean they baptized him?"

The word struck a cord of familiarity to her. "Yeah! That! Let's not go to the bad place, please Uncle Clasko?" Rikku begged.

"Bevelle is beginning to reform now, though," Clasko stopped when the frightened look didn't leave Rikku's expression. "Don't worry, Rikku. We won't stop by Bevelle. We're going to go straight to the Calm Lands, alright?"

Her face brightened considerably. She smiled and almost replied when a whoop of exhilaration broke the serenity of the Woods. Clasko and Rikku looked over to where O'aka was slowly leading Auron from behind a tree-like bush, smiling broadly. "We got ourselves a potty-trained Auron!" O'aka announced proudly.

Auron grinned, jumping whenever he managed to catch up with O'aka's wider steps. "I did it, Rikku, Unky Clasko!"

"That's great!" Clasko smiled, this one happier and easier to manage. "I'd say it's time for chocolate cake…except we don't have cake. So we're just going to have to wait til we can get some for us to celebrate Auron's outstanding achievement. But until then…" Clasko felt around his pockets, finding some Gyshal Greens. "Why don't you feed Goldie and Comet, Auron, for being a good boy? And you, Rikku, for being a good sister to Auron."

Both men were treated to ecstatic children, right before they took the Greens and rushed to the chocobos, clamoring for the right to feed one or the other. Trading bemused looks, Clasko and O'aka sighed and moved forward to keep the children from falling into another argument.