Chapter 12

The fist hit my face before I even really had time to react. My gun was torn from my hands, and I heard Meyn's slippery voice say "Nice of you to join us."

We had entered the main hall of the temple, the three of us together, with Ryhcis going first, me prodding him from behind with my gun, and Rikku taking up the rear. Ryhcis had ducked out of the way shortly after entering the door. I'd made a grab for him, of course, but by then Meyn had decided, in a very unfair and unsportsmanlike move, to slug me.

"You sick bastard," I muttered, unsure myself if I was speaking to Meyn or Ryhcis. My noise didn't seem to be broken, or even bleeding, so I prepared to launch myself forward, stopping short when my own pistol was abruptly thrust into my face.

"The tables have turned now, haven't they?" Ryhcis, who was wielding the weapon, said. He smiled, displaying teeth that still bore traces of blood from when I'd hit him. "You should have just given us your support, Gippal."

Hearing a little whimper, I glanced worriedly towards Rikku. Meyn had her in sort of straightjacket hold with one of his arms, using the other to press a long gun to her temple. Her eyes, even wider now if possible, flicked between me and Brother and Buddy, who had also been relieved of their guns and were surrounded by three unfamiliar Al Bhed.

"I'm sorry, Gippal," Brother muttered, and there was true contrition in his voice. Meyn laughed, drawing an involuntary squeak from Rikku as he tightened his grip on her arm to stop her from twisting away.

"Isn't this just precious?" he asked in his old-fashioned Al Bhed. "Not only the Leader of the Machine Faction, but both Cid's children as well." He moved over towards the alter that was against the back wall, dragging Rikku with him. "Perhaps we should make a sphere, don't you think, Ryhcis?" Ryhcis didn't answer, but Meyn didn't seem to notice. He just wrenched Rikku's head around so she could see his slick smile and added, "The last time the old man will ever see his children alive."

The hall exploded with noise as Brother and Rikku both started shouting obscenities at Meyn. Then Buddy was shouting to Brother, one of the Al Bhed surrounding them was moving, there was a solid crack, and Rikku was screaming something else entirely as Brother hit the floor.

"Shut your mouth!" Meyn ordered harshly, throwing Rikku to the floor to eliminate the problem of holding her as she had nearly vaulted out of his grasp when Brother had been hit. I threw myself forward as well, but Ryhcis stopped me with a hard crack to the head from my own gun. Meyn placed his foot on Rikku's side, aiming his gun down at her. I would have liked nothing better in that moment than to have been able to dismember him.

Silence filled the hall, broken only by our loud, almost panting breathing.

"I am going to go fetch a sphere," Meyn said at last, speaking slowly and clearly. He pressed his foot a little harder into Rikku. "None of you are to move until I return. If you do, Ryhcis will shoot your precious princess."

To say Ryhcis' face drained of all color would be an exaggeration. He certainly went extremely pale, but his unique eyes were glowing as hotly as two swirling coals. I thought he might refuse, but he didn't. He merely nodded to Meyn, and set his jaw.

"None of you are to move," Meyn repeated, glaring at me in particular as Ryhcis pulled away to help Rikku to her feet. He pressed the gun to her temple as Meyn had done, but his hold on her was gentle, almost tender.

Rikku had looked on the verge of tears before, but now as Meyn walked past her out of the room and Ryhcis wrapped an arm around her waist, her face was devoid of all emotion. She stood straight and rigid in Ryhcis' hold, staring ahead of her at nothing.

"Rikku," I heard Ryhcis whisper softly in her ear. "Rikku, please . . ."

The caressing tone in his voice when he spoke her name filled me with rage. My hands clenched at my side, and I began judging the distance between Ryhcis and me. Perhaps with one good leap I might be able to reach him . . .

"Gippal," Brother said suddenly. "I told you to stay in your own room."

I turned to look at him, completely and utterly baffled to the point of speechlessness.

"I told you to stay in your own room," Brother repeated. His lip was swollen, causing him some difficulty in forming the Al Bhed words, but there was no mistaking what he said. "You know how angry I get when you don't."

"I get angry too," Buddy added, giving me a look that was clearly meant to be significant, but I had no idea why. Neither, apparently, did any of the other Al Bhed, for they were exchanging looks with each other, clearly wondering if they shut us up or not.

"Gippal," Rikku spoke for the first time in a while, her voice rough and hoarse and entirely un-Rikku-like. She was also look at me with wide eyes. "Remember what happened last time you didn't."

I looked at her with utter perplexity for a moment, and then it hit me. She and Brother were referring to the time long ago when I had gone into Rikku's room during a thunderstorm. Maintaining that I'd just wanted to make sure she wasn't scared, I'd crawled on top of her bed and lay down. Unfortunately, Brother had heard me, and, being about six at the time, had screamed, "Surprise attack!" before leaping on me. It became sort of a joke that Rikku was fond of retelling, Brother always adding "I told Gippal everything then. I told him to stay in his own room, and I told him when I was attacking."

What he was trying to say now was that he was about to launch his own version of a surprise attack. He and Buddy were going to take on the guys surrounding them, and I would handle Ryhcis.

I bowed my head, attempting to show him I understood without being too obvious. "I know you did. I should have listened."

"You should have," Brother said. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed his tightly muscled arms tense. "And you should listen to me NOW!"

Whipping around, he kicked one of the Al Bhed in the groin, tackling the other to the ground. I saw Buddy make a wild move as well, but I couldn't tell what it was, having already moved myself.

I never got to Ryhcis, however, because Rikku shrieked, "Don't! Help them!" then wrenched herself from Ryhcis' hold and punched him in the face.

I understood that she was worried about Buddy and her brother, who were fighting two on three, but I didn't want to leave her to handle Ryhcis on her own.

"Gippal!" she screamed even as she grabbed Ryhcis in what looked to be a pretty painful headlock. "Help them!"

Giving her a look that said I would but I wasn't happy with it, I turned to where Brother and Buddy were fighting Meyn's minions. It looked like utter chaos-- bodies rolling about, kicking, punching, and scrabbling for the guns that had been thrown across the floor. Just for good measure, (and possibly because I had become slightly insane by this point) I shouted "Surprise attack!" then threw myself into the fray.

Pulling one Al Bhed off Buddy, I dealt him a hard upper cut that sent him reeling. Seeing him land near a discarded gun, I threw myself to the floor, rolled, and scooped up the weapon for myself. I whirled around to aim at Ryhcis, planning to shout, "Freeze, dirtbag!" just like they do in the movies. I had forgotten, of course, about the Al Bhed on the floor.

Now I have been in my fair share of barroom brawls where everyone just starts hitting everyone else, and there is no such thing as a fair fight or rules of combat. In brawls like that, it is very common for someone who has been knocked to the floor to reach up and grab the leg of someone standing, pulling them down, literally, to their level. So really, I shouldn't have been so surprised when the Al Bhed lying at my feet did just that.

The wind was knocked out of me when I hit the floor, and the Al Bhed took the opportunity to leap on top of me and make a grab for the gun. I use the butt of it to whack him, hard, in the face. He rolled away, moaning. I wondered distractedly, while I gasped for breath, if I had broken his nose. I hoped so.

As soon as I was able to, I scrambled to my feet. Checking the gun, I found it was loaded, so I prepared to first stop my attacker, then make sure Ryhcis wouldn't be touching Rikku ever again. I raised the gun and a shot rang through the hall. But it wasn't my shot.

Whipping around so fast I actually felt my neck crack, I desperately searched for the source of the shot. I didn't have to search far. Buddy, who was bleeding profusely from both the arm and the head, was kneeling on the ground next to an Al Bhed who writhing in pain in a pool of blood.

"Don't move," Buddy was saying, pressing his hands against the man's abdomen. "You're going to be okay." By the slight hitch I heard in his otherwise calm and steady voice, and by the moisture on his cheeks, I guessed Buddy was the one who had fired the shot.
Brother and the other Al Bhed were still scuffling, the Al Bhed with his arm wrapped tightly around Brother's neck while Brother was attempting to kick him in the knees. My Al Bhed, no doubt seeing the gun in my hand, was standing a ways away, hunched over rather pathetically and holding his nose. It was most definitely broken, and it was obvious, by the ugly snuffling noises he was making and his feeble attempts at stemming the blood, that he'd never had that happen to him before. Tch, amateur.

Rikku was standing with Ryhcis. Though she now held the gun, neither of them looked particularly hurt. Ryhcis probably gave it over without a fight, I thought. No matter what promises he makes to Meyn, he still won't hurt her. Despite this revelation, I swung my gun around towards him.

"Step away from Rikku," I commanded in what I thought was an extremely menacing voice. Al Bhed can sound quite scary when you want it to. "Or I'll blow your sorry guts out, you slimy sack of puss."

"No," Ryhcis said.

No. Just like that. It didn't matter that I had a gun trained on him, or that he was defenseless and all his allies had been defeated. It didn't matter that I meant every word I said. He wasn't moving. I lifted the gun.

In truth, I didn't want to shoot him. Yes, I hated the guy. Yes, he had not only kidnapped, but also nearly killed someone extremely close to me. And yes, though I didn't want to admit it, I was jealous of him because he'd been kissing Rikku and she had wanted nothing to do with me. But I didn't want to shoot him. He was a person, no matter how low of one, an Al Bhed and person, just like I was.

But even though I didn't want to shoot him, I was ready to do it if I had to.

"Gippal," Buddy muttered from the floor. "We need backup. I can't hold on to him much longer." He was referring to the Al Bhed whom he had shot who now seemed to be unconscious.

"Shoot him Gippal!" Brother cried, his voice strangled from the grip of his captor.

"Don't!" Rikku said, her eyes boring into mine.

"Just in the leg!" Brother shouted back. With a grunt he managed to flip his attacker over his shoulder, slamming the man down on his back on the floor, where Brother promptly sat on him, panting. "So we can get out of here."

"Ryhcis will come quietly," Rikku pleaded. "There's no need to shoot him."

The way she was looking at me, I doubt I could have refused her anything right at that moment. If she had asked me to cut off my own hand and dance around in a circle with it, wearing nothing but a leopard print g-string, I probably would have been happy to oblige. As it was, I lowered my gun a fraction of an inch and said, "As long as he comes quietly." Rikku smiled at me.

Then Meyn returned.

Another shot cracked through the air, echoing around the hall. Instinctively, Rikku, Ryhcis, the Al Bhed with the broken nose, and I all dropped to the floor. The bullet pinged off the pillar just behind my head. Looking up, I saw Meyn standing in the doorway, an Al Bhed pistol that was currently pointed directly at my head in his hand. His eyes flicked over the scene, noting the downed Al Bhed and the two incapacitated others, before coming to rest on Ryhcis.

"Care to explain what happened here?" he asked in a dangerously soft voice.

"They attacked," Ryhcis said, pushing himself to his feet and drawing Rikku with him.

"And you couldn't stop them?" Meyn demanded, still speaking with quiet disdain. "I might have known. Worthless, the lot of you. Take her gun."

Ryhcis extracted my gun from Rikku's fingers. She didn't struggle in the slightest, watching Meyn with over-bright eyes.

"Cid will be here soon," he said silkily, now speaking to the room at large. "And I have no doubt he'll give us what we want, especially if he knows we mean business. Especially if we--" He grinned widely, then swung his gun from me towards Rikku. "Persuade him."

"SON OF A BITCH!" I screamed, and raised my gun even though I knew I couldn't stop Meyn in time. Ryhcis took a step away from Rikku, turning his gun towards me. He may not have been willing to shoot her himself, but he was willing to let Meyn do it. And he was willing to stop me from interfering.

A third shot echoed around the hall. The sound of a scream was mingled with the sound of blood splattering across the floor, blood that was followed seconds later by a body.

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Confused? Good. You should be. :)
One more chapter to go. Thanks for sticking with me for so long.