It's not summer vacation anymore, by the way. :) Please please please review! Please?

She stuck her tongue to her upper lip as she started to inch the wires closer together. Her heart beat with anticipation. All she had left to do was touch the wires together for a split second to get this machina up and running. Any longer and it would cut out. Again. She had learned the hard way that mixing cables like this needed precision, when she had screwed it up an hour ago and was forced to start all over, since there was no chance of reviving it. So, she had picked the machina up from her living room and moved it down to this secluded deck that nobody went to, because it had a lovely view of the sandworm's burrows. Closer… This was one of those temperamental machina that if you didn't do it just right, it's dying whir would sound like it was laughing at you. It made her want to rake her hair out of her scalp. Just a bit more… She knew she had to get a good grade on this in her extra curricular machina class. Gippal had the same assignment, and the board for the… the thing with the long name… they were watching them veeeery closely. It was no secret that it was going to be a close call between Rikku and Gippal. And so, she was going to work her ass off to get this. Just a little more, and then she'd have to tear them away so-.

"RIKKUUUUUUU!" She just… lost it. It was all the sounds at once. The door banged open to let the sound of the busy hallways fill the outside. There were loud, pounding footsteps on the metal deck. A deafening, high voice pierced through all the other sounds. Even a sandworm looked up from its lunch to see what was going on. Anyway, the wires were suddenly jerked towards each other, and they touched each other way too much for Rikku to have a chance of salvaging it. The machina hummed and died away, the lights went out on it, and a puff of smoke came out from the inside of it. Great. Time for another try. Rikku squinted her eyes and leaned away from the smoke, waving it away with her hand. She looked over her shoulder as her friend, Oci, galloped over, with irritation apparent in her eyes.

"Oci, I'm kind of in the middle of something…" Rikku said, not trying very hard to keep from snapping at Oci.

"Guess what?" Oci yelled, not listening to Rikku.

"Yeah?" Rikku asked, turning back to the machina and spinning it around, ripping the back off of it.

"Gippal asked me to go out with him tonight!" Oci squealed, jumping from foot to foot. Rikku rolled her eyes. Oci had been dating Gippal for the past few weeks. The week before that, he dated Nisre. And so on and so forth. Rikku had tried to talk Oci out of it, but she knew that whatever she said, Oci would just go out with him anyway. But anyway, as long as he was distracted with hooking up with Oci, he wouldn't be working hard enough on his acceptance letter. It was as good as hers. She brightened up.

"I hope you have a great time!" she said, examining the inside of the machina and trying to decide where to start this time. Maybe there was a shortcut...

"Really?" Oci asked suspiciously. Rikku turned and stood up. She placed her right hand over her heart.

"Swear to Yevon!" she said. Oci punched her shoulder lightly.

"I definitely can't trust you then!" she laughed. Rikku laughed a bit. "Is this that assignment that the old windbag gave you?" Oci wasn't a huge fan of machina. But she also wasn't a huge fan of the machina teacher, either.

"Yes, the old windbag told me and your boyfriend that it would be a really good thing to work on to 'distinguish ourselves'," Rikku said, lightly tapping the hunk of junk with her toe. The truth was that nobody actually knew what this old machina did. Only that they found a pair of them in the desert and that it was a pain to actually make it work once it was taken apart. Rikku had a feeling it just sat there and beeped every once in awhile. Of course, Oci didn't hear most of that sentence, after Rikku had referred to Gippal as 'your boyfriend'. She put her hands on her cheeks.

"Do you really think he likes me?" she asked dreamily. Rikku bent down next to the machina again.

"Well, he's gone out with you a few times now. I-."

"Four times."

"Yeah. I think that means he likes you," Rikku said, unscrewing the cover to the core of the machina. Oci giggled.

"Oh, shoot, I better go get ready," she said. "Have fun tinkering, darling!" she said, patting Rikku on the head before she ran off the deck. Rikku laughed a bit and shook her head. She would enjoy herself very much, thank you.

She was glowering through the hallways as she walked with the still broken machina in her hands. People warily got out or her way, but she didn't comprehend how her meager height was intimidating people. She was only listening to the thoughts in her head. It's no big deal. You've still got a day to finish. She looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Now people were getting out of her way because she really wasn't watching where she was going. But… what if Gippal's already finished, which is why he has time to hang out with Oci? If he hands it in a day early, I'll look pathetic if I hand it in the day it's actually due. Spira… he might as well just move the date up to tomorrow. She got home and walked quietly into the living room. She heard Pops and Brother talking quietly in the other room.

"I just don' know. This can't be good fer 'im. I'm jus' worried that it's jus' gonna break him," Pops said. Rikku looked into the kitchen. Brother and Pops were sitting at the small kitchen table. Small, because they hardly ever ate meals together anymore. Brother was staring at Pops with a distressed look, which wasn't much different from how he normally looked. The only difference was Pops. He was covered in some sort of gloom. He had his fingers laced together and rested his forehead on the platform they made.

"Who?" she asked. Pops looked up at her and put a smile on.

"No one you know," he said nonchalantly. She scrunched up her nose. Sure, she may not know every Al Bhed in Home. But she knew pretty much everybody her Pops knew… She just shrugged it off. Whoever it was, they must not be too upset, because she would have noticed by now if they were. Or maybe she really just didn't know them. "Uh, so, how'd the machina go?" Pops asked. Brother retreated into his room without a word to Rikku. Which also wasn't out of the ordinary.

"Horrible. I was this close – this close—to being done with the stupid thing, and then… Oci comes running in and I kill it again," Rikku complains. Pops made a clicking sound with his mouth and shook his head at the machina thrown carelessly on the floor.

"Yeah, that's a nasty one. I remember diggin' that one up," he said, rubbing his nose with his thumb in a way that said, 'No big deal'. "Took us forever to figure out how to turn the damn thing on, and then, it don't even do nothin'."

"Then why not turn it into scrap metal and do something useful with it? Like maybe start that research company you've been wanting to make for… like, forever," Rikku suggested, savoring the idea of just tearing that machina that looked a bit like a crab into a million tiny pieces.

"Rik… you want me to make a research company out of this one little machina?" Pops asked with a grin on his face.

"No! I mean… like, you can scrap the other one too…" Rikku suggested. Pops let out a whole hearted laugh and pulled Rikku over into a head lock. She shrieked, but she was laughing. She wriggled out of his grip and hurried to her room, still giggling. She stopped at her door and looked back at Pops over her shoulder. "Seriously, though. If there are more useless machina like this one, you can finally start that research facility." Pops just got a blank look on his face for a moment, then looked at Rikku.

"Rik, you know why you're so smart?" he asked. She tilted her head and turned all the way around, leaning her back against the edge of her doorframe. Pops looked at the ground in front of him. "Those people of Spira… they want all their contraptions to come with a 'how to' manual. But you… you just know how to make something work. It's… you're so smart," Pops said, looking back up at Rikku. Rikku bit her bottom lip. She felt a sentimental moment coming on. That would only end uncomfortably. So, instead of running over and giving him a hug, she just smiled at him and slipped into her room. She closed her door and left the lights off for now. She crossed her room and picked up a picture of her mom. She slid her fingertips across the rim of the frame, looking into her mom's smiling face while she held Rikku in her lap. Rikku was too little to know yet that when a camera is pointed at you, you smile. She was staring in fascination, or just blandness, at the camera. Her mom was bright, happy… full of life. She would have been proud of Rikku. She liked machina just as much as she did. Rikku ruffled her eyebrows and put the picture down. She fell down on her bed and closed her eyes. She regretted not hugging her dad back there. Was it too late to go back and do it now? She heard the sphere go on. It would be super awkward now. She would walk in there and try to hug him while he was sitting down on the couch. That would be terrible. She rubbed her face in her pillow.

Her door slammed open for the second time that day. She jumped as a wailing filled her ears. Her heart suddenly leaped. Someone was dead. She knew it. She gripped her pillow and waited for the words.

"Rik-k-ku!" she sniveled. "It's… ugh…!" Rikku relaxed. It was Oci. Oci would be in hysterics if someone was dead. For Oci, this was not hysterics. Rikku flipped over and turned her lights on, then sat up. Oci was in tears. She sat down on Rikku's bed, and Rikku scooted over to her and put her arm around her. No offense to Oci, but she cried every week. And just as hard as she was now.

"Shhh, sh, sh, sh. Tell me what happened," Rikku said quietly, trying to be comforting. She rubbed Oci's shoulder blades in small circles.

"He broke up… with me!" Oci squealed, pressing her hand to her chest. Rikku pursed her lips together. Typical Gippal. Gippal always ditches girls.

"Did he stand you up?" Rikku asked quietly.

"N-n-no…" Oci whispered. Ah. Well, that was a step up. "But we were seriously like, five minutes into the date – like, we were in the middle of the hallway – when he just stops me and says…" Oci's face contorted. She must have been remembering it. It was a real shame. Rikku looked at her face. Oci really is a pretty girl. And you can tell she worked especially hard on her appearance today. Just for Gippal. Gippal, who probably didn't notice. Rikku put her arms around Oci and hugged her. Oci was crying harder. Rikku had never really liked anyone before, so she can only imagine what Oci might have been feeling. But she had heard from people that when you're going through heartbreak, a hug is very affective in cheering you up.

Oci stayed over that night, and they just left early to get her school things before they went into class. Oci's eyes were red from a morning cry at having to go into school and face Gippal. She had told Rikku that there had been a few people in their school in the hallway when Gippal had publicly dumped her. Rikku reminded her that she doesn't have any classes with him, but she then told her that she had machina class with him. Which has blow torches and other forms of torture devices at her fingertips. She told Oci that she was willing to throw away her excavation position for her, if it meant she got to show Gippal who's boss. That got Oci laughing, even as she wiped her runny nose all along her arm.

It was Rikku's worst nightmare. Gippal walked into class with the pain in the ass crab machina and placed it on the teacher's desk. It bounced up and down with life, waiting to be used, even though it didn't do anything. Her mouth was hanging open, but she just couldn't make it stop. That... show-off, stupid… meanie!

"Gippal, it's not even due until tomorrow," the teacher said in a surprised tone. Gippal shrugged.

"I finished it last night, and I didn't want it keeping my mom up another night from all the beeping," he said. People were slowly backing away from Rikku as she glared at Gippal from her work table. If looks could kill… "Oh, and I figured out what it does!" Gippal said excitedly.

"I could've told you that," Rikku snapped. Gippal turned to her with a confused look.

"When did you finish it?" he asked curiously, his eyebrow pulled down right next to his eye. She leaned back in her stool, losing her composure a bit.

"Uh… I didn't yet. But I know for a fact that it doesn't do anything," Rikku stated.

"Ah, that's where you're wrong, Princess!" he said. "Hey, Nisre. Turn the lights off," Gippal said to a girl in the corner. She nearly ran over to the lights and switched them off. Gippal set the machina in the middle of the floor. Rikku leaned forward on her stool, waiting for Gippal to fall flat on his face. "It was an entertainment machina," he explained in a professional voice as he knelt next to the machina. He pressed the buttons in a short but complicated sequence, and lights suddenly were coming out of the machina from the inside. They were brightly colored, piercing from the machina in a straight line to the wall. Rikku couldn't help herself. She put her hand out and let a green light wash over her skin. The crabby legs then stood up on their tips, and the machina started to rotate in a circle. The girls in class 'ooh'ed and 'ahh'ed and 'Gippal, you're so smart'ed. Rikku wanted to kick the stupid machina over. This definitely isn't worth anything. Scrap it. Please. She glanced at Gippal. He looked completely and utterly complacent. Rikku was presently searching for a wrench to throw at him. Poke his other eye out.

"Wonderful, Gippal!" the teacher said. Gippal stepped forward and turned the machina off. Nisre turned the lights reluctantly back on, and Gippal returned the humming machina to the teacher's desk. Rikku was practically panting in her frustration.

"How the hell did you figure something like that out?" she snapped.

"Rikku! Watch your language!" Rikku ignored her teacher. Gippal walked over and leaned one hand on her table.

"Why don't you just admit that I'm better than you?" Gippal asked casually. Rikku gave him a withering glare and turned to her table, writing down some equations. "Ooh, no answer. I'll take that as agreement."

"I wish I could shove this screwdriver up your nose," Rikku said quietly, not looking up from her paper. Gippal outright laughed.

"Not very friendly," Gippal said. Rikku turned her head lazily his way and smiled sarcastically until he felt uncomfortable. Of course, he didn't. He just leaned toward her even more. "So honestly, are you even close to finishing that machina?" he asked.

"I'll have you know that I would have finished before you if…"

"If…?"

"If my friend hadn't come to me with a crisis," Rikku said lamely. Partly true. Which reminded her…

"That was convincing," Gippal said, turning and going to his worktable. Too late. She turned back to her table with her lips pursed tightly together. She would get him back. 'Revenge' was one of her favorite words.

She banged the junkyard door open. Gippal was sitting on Mr. Lohor's stool, examining a piece of machina. The cool night air sent a chill up her spine as her senses rejoiced that the hunt was over.

"There you are!" she yelled.

"Were you looking for me, sweetheart?" Gippal asked in a teasing voice, not turning to look at her.

"Oh, shut up," she said. She looked around. "Where's Mr. Lohor?" she asked.

"He asked me to watch this place for him while he went to grab dinner," Gippal said. It was chilly outside in the night air. There was a lamp lit in the corner, enough to cast orange light on Rikku and Gippal's right sides, shadows on the other side. The junkyard was really a ridiculous place. You might think that they were just randomly placed piles. Which, Rikku still thought they were. But, apparently, they had a distinct rhyme and reason to Mr. Lohor.

"Sure…" Rikku said. "You know what, you're a big meanie!" she stated. Gippal spun around on the stool.

"Why do you say that?" he asked, resting his arm on his knee and his chin on his knuckles. There was a faint smile on his face, but Rikku tried to ignore that he was practically laughing in her face.

"Oci really liked you, and you just dumped her like it was no big deal! In a hallway!" Rikku shouted.

"Ahh," Gippal said, leaning back and nodding his head. "Where would you have told me to do it?" he asked.

"You know what Gippal, you're going to end up alone. You are completely incapable of loving anybody," Rikku said. He stood up.

"See, Cid's Girl, that's where you're wrong. Actually, I may be the most… poetic, love bug infested person you'll ever meet," Gippal said, twisting around the towers of junk. He had his face turned downwards and was staring up at her through his eyelashes.

"Doubt it," Rikku said.

"No, really! I'm like… like that little train! 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again'!" Gippal said. Rikku stared at him for a few seconds.

"That's—no! The train said, 'I think I can'!" she corrected him. His arms flopped down at his sides and he looked up at the ceiling.

"Oh…"

"You're a moron!" Rikku said. Gippal shrugged. "What do you mean by that anyway?" she asked. Gippal ended his stroll through the junkyard a few yards in front of her.

"I mean… even if I don't fall in love the first time, I'm going to try again."

"Maybe you should stop looking so hard." She thought for a moment. "You can't fall in love in three weeks anyway! And that's how long your relationships usually last!" Rikku said.

"Well, yeah, but I can tell in three weeks whether I will ever be in love with this girl."

"That's not true."

"Why not?" Gippal asked. He was just begging for a fight. She knew it. Well, he could have one.

"Because, my Pops knew Mom for his entire life and didn't fall in love with her until he was twenty," Rikku said, grinning triumphantly at him. Gippal shrugged.

"He probably knew before that it was possible he could fall in love with her. Like… you and me! Do you think it's possible we could ever be in love?" he asked, leaning towards her a bit.

"Absolutely not," Rikku said without a moment's hesitation.

"Not at all?"

"No." The thought made her skin crawl. Hugging Gippal and… kissing Gippal… blech.

"Hm…" Rikku looked apprehensively at Gippal. If he was going to try anything on her, she was prepared to throw some scrap metal at him and run for it. Someone would hear her scream. "Nah, you're right," Gippal said, sitting back down on the bench. "You'd be too much of a handful."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rikku asked, putting her fists on her hips.

"All it means is… Yevon help whoever becomes you're boyfriend," Gippal said. She scoffed in indignation and crossed her arms over her chest, turning away from him. "So… Want to take this machina for a spin?"

"Wha… I'm not going anywhere with you!" she said.

"You don't have to," Gippal said slowly. "The machina's right here." Rikku looked over him at the machina sitting in the middle of the work space. It was the same one Mr. Lohor had been working on a month ago, near the end of summer vacation. "I've been wanting to know what it does, and I think it's ready."

"What if we get in trouble?"

"What's the worst that could happen?" Gippal asked. Rikku chewed her bottom lip. To be honest, she had wanted to know what it did too. Ever since she saw the sphere in it, she had wanted to know what it did.

"All right, but just really quick!" she said, scurrying over and peering over his shoulder at the tiny little machina. Gippal looked over the machina for a few seconds, then pressed the glowing blue button. Light flickered from the top of the machina, and a blue-ish square appeared on it. Rikku stared at it. Nothing happened for about a second. Then, it started to whir with activity. A picture appeared in the square. Now she understood. The machina played spheres. And the one playing now was the sphere inside. It was showing walls with glowing glyphs on it. Then, it showed the base of something… humongous. Rikku's mouth slowly fell open as she recognized machina. Where could something like this be?

"What are you doing?" Rikku and Gippal spun around quickly. Mr. Lohor hurried over and shut the machina off. The picture disappeared immediately.

"We didn't break it or anything!" Rikku assured him. Gippal was already backing towards the door. She glowered at the coward. He frowned and stopped walking backwards, staring at the sand beneath his feet. Rikku turned back to Mr. Lohor.

"I think… it's time you kids went home…" Mr. Lohor said quietly. Rikku knew an order when she heard one. She and Gippal raced to the door, throwing it open. Gippal waited until Rikku was back in Home and slammed the door shut behind him. The both just stood there for a second. Then, he turned, and they started walking in silence. Finally, she whispered,

"What was that?" Gippal just shrugged in response.