Disclaimer: Square-Enix Incorporated owns all copyrighted material this fanfiction may include. All other materials, such as characters, events, dialogue, et cetera, all belong to Zeshin-kun.
Author's Note: As promised, this chapter will start to focus on having their enemy actually reveal itself so they can fight it. Currently, this new Sin and its Yu Yevon core have mostly absorbed the Farplane and are working sinkholes into the bodies of water on Spira to absorb the rest of the planet from within. It will have to be something big if they want to disrupt Sin from that.
To my reviewers: Where are my reviews?
Spira: The Eternal Discord
Chapter 42: Zanarkand's Prime I
Rikku
"That was super cool!" I yelled, hopping up to dream boy and leaning up against his shoulder, "But I thought I was supposed to toss you the ball."
As usual, he just put a hand up to the back of his head and scratched. It was so easy to catch him off-guard, but he really did do a number on Areth with that Blitz Ace. Something told me there was more to their double-team than just beating up on Areth, but Shuyin was already working on the next stage of things and I wasn't about to get left behind.
I skipped over to him and tapped him lightly in the arm, "To Zanarkand?"
He turned to me and nodded with a smile, "To Zanarkand."
There wasn't much left to the trip, but it was long enough for me to ask him about what had gone on just before. Apparently, that was Areth's last stand. He wanted to prove to Shuyin that he was fighting for justice and to avenge his brother's death and Lenne killing Trista, which was a whole other situation that I asked him about later, but really Areth was tired and resentful. There was a part of him that knew he was wrong this whole time, or so Shuyin told me, but there was a side to him that was too strong and wouldn't let go of his hate and regret. It was the thing that kept him targeting Shuyin and Zanarkand all his life and it was the thing that got him stuck on Spira as an unsent. From that emotion, he ended up seeing something close to what Shuyin saw in his thousand years, but Areth stayed twisted since that was all he had while Yunie brought Lenne back to Shuyin.
"I was just as surprised about Lenne as you were, Rikku." He admitted, "I've never seen her so cold and indifferent to a murder."
"She wanted to save you from yourself. It was all she could think about and it kept her going in the Songstress Dressphere all those years." I suggested.
He got quiet for a bit after that and walked over to one of the windows. When I looked, I saw that we were just getting past Mount Gagazet, which meant we were getting really close.
"It'll all be over soon, Rikku."
"Promise me you'll stay." I said plainly.
I didn't want him to go. Last time we settled on fighting Sin, we lost one of him. This time was only worse, but I didn't care. I didn't want to let him go. And still, I knew there was no guarantee. There was no guarantee any of us would make it back. Sin was bad enough last time and that was a normal version. Now we were going up against a complete Sin with Yu Yevon in the driver's seat?
"And I still don't care." I said out loud, "Promise me you'll stay!"
Shuyin looked right at me but didn't know what to tell me. What did I really expect him to say? But I already stood by and watched Yunie go on her suicide mission and then I went along with her man's suicide mission. I was there for the days she looked like she just wanted to give up and forced herself to hold it together for everybody else. I watched everybody pretend that life was back to normal again, when it obviously wasn't. I dated Gippal of all people just to get over what had happened for goodness sake! I wasn't about to go through it again for the same dumb fish!
"Shuyin, pro-" I tried to repeat.
"We're here kiddies, now get yer butts movin' an' git off my ship! C'mon, we got a planet ta save!" Pops shouted over the coms, awful timing as usual.
Shuyin bolted as soon as vydran came on, making for the lift where everybody else was headed. Vydran had told us that the airship took a few big hits to the hull and external plates and couldn't even effectively land let alone deal with Sin. He had the Fahrenheit hover over the entrance to the ruins instead and we were going to use the same deployment that we used in Bevelle during the pilgrimage. The cables shot out and latched onto the broken brick floor and each of us took one to slide down.
I was the last one down and most of them were already much ahead of me when I landed. Shuyin had already gone ahead and gazed at his old home one more time. The others didn't really know what to make of it. I don't think any of us knew how effective this strategy of waiting for Sin in the Zanarkand Ruins was going to be, but I trusted that there was a reason we were here.
"Alright, I'm ready to begin." Shuyin suddenly said to us, turning back to us before walking a few steps deeper into the ruins.
"Begin? Begin what?" The dream asked.
We would soon find out as he stretched his arms out and exclaimed, "I call on you, people of Zanarkand. I call on you in a time we never imagined, in a world on the brink. I call on you because we were betrayed and now we know the face of that traitor."
In the moments he started to talk to them, the pyreflies changed their typical whistle to a terrible groan. Stray pyreflies started fluttering from the debris and swirled around him like they understood. More and more gathered and we were beginning to feel a sadness in each of them. Their groans echoed the lives they lost to the Machina War and the years to come after it.
"Come our lost friends and neighbours, brothers and sisters, lives never lived and loves lost to the ether, come together now! Forget those scorned dreams of our sacrificed past and unite in our present to fight for the future!"
Just like that, the huge swarm of pyreflies surrounding the skies of Zanarkand flooded straight for us and surrounded Shuyin. Slowly, they started to dissolve into the ground and spread evenly across it, expanding over every surface. From where Shuyin stood, the ruins began to melt away, shifting with the pyreflies until it looked brand new. The cracked and uneven roads mended themselves and paved forward between rebuilt lampposts lighting gigantic towers piling marble, steel, and concrete back into place. Luxurious fountains and waterfalls that hadn't worked for ages sprouted anew and huge view screens started showing their advertisements again. The whole city stretched out right in front of us. This was Shuyin's plan all along. Zanarkand was back.
"My goodness!" Yunie gasped, holding her hand over her mouth.
I knew how much this meant to my cousin, but at that moment, all I could think about was how much I had really wanted it. Having lived in a mechanical base most of my life, the city magnified everything I remembered about Home. What was better, it wasn't an illusion like Areth had come up with last time. The pyreflies of Zanarkand were holding steady and truly rebuilt this giant metropolis we had only heard legends about. I remember vydran used to tell me about how airships covered the skies in the past and each one had a designation and purpose. They corresponded to several bases and could be used for anything from diplomatic missions to advertising. What Shuyin had these pyreflies make didn't include those airships in the Zanarkand sky, but I could see lots of companies, some even with symbols I recognized from the Celsius' database. I started running to the edges of the street to see what was underneath. I analysed all the lights and digital map readouts. There was so much I wanted to see.
"There won't be a nut left unexamined in this city if Rikku keeps this up." I heard Yunie say.
"Oh, there'll be one left." Paine suggested with that usual downie downer tone.
Lucky for me, I wasn't the only one excited about Zanarkand. "Whoa, everything is here! The old cinema, the Digiplex, the pubs, those museum walls I used to do backflips off of, everything!"
"The museums you used to backflip off of?" Shuyin asked, having been quiet since renovating the ruins.
"Yea, you mean you didn't?"
I think everyone was expecting something like, "No, but I once maimed someone behind one." So when he said, "I didn't realize they'd know that part about me. Did you sprain your left ankle the first time, too? I remembered trying very hard to act as though I meant to do that while I limped to the back to wince for the next few minutes", everybody's mouths dropped.
"No, I got my first one in perfectly. That is, until Auron clocked me one for leaving a shoeprint on the marble." Dream boy explained, rubbing the back of his head.
"Why were you backflipping off of museum walls?" Yunie asked them.
In unison, they both replied, "Because it sucked!"
"At least, back then I thought so." Shuyin said, rubbing the back of his head, too, "I was a curious kid and museum curators don't like it when you ask them stuff they don't know. I don't like it when they get snarky because they can't answer you properly. And finally, museum security doesn't like kids giving curators broken noses so I backflipped off their wall and left a heel print for them."
"I was doing it for a girl."
Paine immediately clasped her hand on my shoulder to turn me to her, saying, "I should be saying 'why am I not surprised'. Rikku, what's wrong with this picture?"
"Didn't think he had it in him?" I said with a sly gaze.
"It's been hard to show who I used to be. I suppose without this old Zanarkand, I've been lost in the aftermath of the war. But we've come so far and I feel that this is it." Shuyin said, walking over to Yunie, "You feel it, too, don't you? The question is: Can we make it through?"
"I know we can." Yunie told him.
"However, you know it isn't going to be as simple as it was before."
"I'll do what needs to be done. We've been through too much for me not to try everything."
Shuyin nodded and smiled, "Good answer. Now, what say me and my brother here navigate for a while. I'm sure there are a few places you could all see before we start."
The suggestions came in relentlessly while we walked. Paine kept asking about sphere technology and weapons manufacture. Yunie was so not herself, pointing at every pretty building and asking what it was for. I, for one, was totally relaxed…
"Ooh ooh, how does that work?" Okay, mostly relaxed.
"Sorry, not an engineer. I think it's something like there's a machina that collects the moisture in the air and concentrates it into water to generate the fall and then at the bottom there's a thing that collects that, filters it, and provides pure water for the whole building." Shuyin explained, but he was scratching his head the whole time.
"I thought it was a pump at the bottom that pumped it back up so they just reused the same water and the stuff at the top is filtered used water from the building." His brother said.
"Yea, I guess that makes sense, too. You think maybe somebody's just sitting back there casting Watera spells?" Shuyin asked.
"Wouldn't have that much magic."
"They could be taking shifts, right?"
"That'd be too much of a waste of funding, wouldn't it?"
"You have a point… Hm, we'll go with the used water and pump it back up theory." Shuyin concluded, but my hand was already planted against my face.
We had a few more of those discussions with some other buildings and those weird multi-level roads that they had all over the place. Some stuff they knew about. Other stuff was them telling us their dumb theories again. Dream boy actually knew a few more details than Shuyin did, which surprised all of us, but those two guessed that since he was a dream of the fayth that maybe some of those fayth that made him put the information into him by accident.
"Huh, with all the fun we've been having, I don't think we were really paying much attention to where we were headed." Shuyin said, "Everyone, this is the Zanarkand Spire. It's the headquarters of our city's leaders."
"Leaders… like Yu Yevon?" I asked him, hiding behind him.
"Yea, like him. I remember the last time I saw this place. Bevelle got the upper hand on us. All our summoners were out on the Calm Lands and they went around them and hit us with everything."
"That's the night you went to find Vegnagun?" Yunie asked him, her voice shaking.
"There was a lot more to that night than just Vegnagun, Yuna." He said, scanning the entire tower, "We should check it out. There might be some secrets we could find in there. We'll need all the help we can get."
Inside, it looked like a really big library, smelled like one, too. All the books were old, but none of them were dusty. I guess the old guy really liked reading. Paine went right to them, pulling out volume after volume to see if she could find something on Sin. Yunie was busy just marveling at the whole place, wandering about like she was looking into moving in. Her man went with her, probably the first time he was ever here, too, but Shuyin just stared out, standing just a few steps from the entrance. He looked like he was taking it hard, like those awful memories were coming back again on him. I turned away and went over to a messy desk to see if maybe I could find something to distract him with, but all that was there was a ton of loose papers with lots of stuff written on them and I was sure it wasn't going to interest him anything that Yu Yevon wrote. Still, I kept looking and even tried organising the mess. Then, I saw a page that wasn't written like the rest. The handwriting was softer and I didn't know what came over me, but I decided to show Shuyin that page.
"Hey, I found something that doesn't look like it was written by the same guy that wrote all these. Think it might be anything useful?" I asked, handing it to him.
Shuyin took a deep breath and smiled at me, knowing that I just wanted him not to focus on his past anymore, "Thanks, Rikku, let me have a look."
But that's when his brow furrowed and he looked really carefully at it, making me ask him, "What? What is it?"
"This note, it was written by Lenne." He explained, reading it to himself, "Breaking. Yea, we really could use a break. Oh well, it isn't important, but thank you for showing it to me."
He handed it back to me so I could return it, but I thought it could still be useful so I folded it up and put it into my pouch. After all, if the guy got caught up in his past again, I could just flash it in front of his face to bring him out of it. That was useful. Paine also found a book about how to call Sin, but all she could take from it was that it bragged about how strong the thing was and Yunie couldn't understand the text on how to create it to let us know any more than we already did about it. It looked like Yu Yevon's headquarters was a bust so we made our way out.
"Right, now we still have some time left before Sin arrives. I know how much this city means to some of you so why not take advantage of it while we can. Let's split up and rendezvous back at the entrance in say an hour?" Shuyin suggested, starting to walk off.
I quickly caught up with him and linked his arm with mine, saying, "Uh uh, you're not ditching me that easily,"
"Fair enough. So where to?" I smiled.
The walk to Kirin's house was rather far from where we had been, but Shuyin was himself again the whole way. We talked about the stories he told me about her and laughed about all the fun they had had with each other. He told me new stories, ones I hadn't heard before. He went into more detail about them this time, telling me all the things Kirin had done for him when they were growing up, all the little places they used to go, the places she used to drag him to after his parents died, even pointing out his old house when he was growing up.
"This is it. Kirin's place." Shuyin announced, showing me a house that was bigger than some of the Yevon Temples.
"That's a house?"
"Well, Spira wasn't quite the same as the Spira you guys know. Believe me, I was lucky I possessed Nooj and had the Chateau to call home because that guest hut in Besaid was not exactly five star."
"Five star?"
"Never mind."
As soon as I entered through the door, I felt at home. Everything about it made me feel safe and comfortable. I thought to myself how all the furniture was placed just like I would… well, if I even knew what half the furniture was, but they all looked like I would put them where they were. After running around to look at everything, my next step was to take a look at the pictures over the mantle. I knew right away the one person with Kirin in the middle picture frame. It was Jurama. He looked out from the frame and I felt tears well up inside.
"You know, I get it." I started saying, "All the things she did, they were the same things I've been doing."
I looked up from it, turned my attention to Shuyin leaning against a table with a look of concern, and said, "Just that I understand why. I'm not trying to mean any more than that."
Shuyin didn't say anything, instead taking his eyes to the carpet on the floor. Taking a deep breath, he looked back up at me, but stayed silent. I nodded once and put down the picture because I figured he knew what I was getting at, but wasn't going to take it further than that. Swinging my hands to catch each other in front and behind me, I took a few steps and stopped myself right in front of him.
"Shuyin, promise me." I repeated what I wanted from him earlier, "Promise me you'll stay. Promise me this time will be different. I want you to tell me we'll all make it through just fine this time. Shuyin, we've all been through enough and I don't think I want to 'get through it' again. I won't!"
Taking another breath and closing his eyes, he replied, "Nobody knows who I really am. Maybe they just don't give a damn."
I could feel the tears welling up, but I knew what he did was the right thing, "But if I ever need someone to come along, I know you will comfort me and keep me strong."
"You're not alone, Rikku." He said, "You and Kirin served a crucial part in our team and we count on you for it, even if we don't even realize that we do."
"And you'll be here for me if I need it?" I asked, hoping he'd just make that promise.
Instead, he only took the few steps left and pulled me into his arms. It wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't what Kirin had wanted from him, either. I knew that much, but just like he did to her, he wasn't going to be there in the end. But, lucky me, he did do one thing.
"Spira's at the cusp of a new cycle. It was lost at sea for generations, but it's finally close to shore. If we just strain at the oars, we'll make it and reach our new destiny."
I admit I really didn't get him, but some part of me did, and it told me it was enough. No, I still didn't get him to tell me it was all going to be okay. But what I did get was that he was thinking about a "new destiny" and that meant he wasn't planning on leaving. True to his word, he was there for me to keep me strong.
After a while, he let go of me and I wiped the stray tears from my eyes. He made sure to check if I was alright, the big dummy, but we eventually got the mood light again. I wanted to check out everything, sit in every chair or things that looked like they were chairs before Shuyin told me they weren't, and take in this comfortable place like it was mine. Really, I think I was only doing that because, new destiny or not, Sin was scary the first time and now it was worse. As long as he wasn't telling me time was up, I was going to soak up every second I could. Still, I was also really jumpy the whole time and ended up sitting in all the places that looked like they were for sitting in no time. I had no other places to check out on that floor so my next stop was upstairs. Just then, Shuyin said he saw something and went to go investigate, telling me he'd meet me up soon.
Once I was upstairs, I realized the first room was Kirin's bedroom and just had to take a look. There were lots of posters all over the walls and all of them were cute. She was my kind of girl. She also had pictures everywhere of her and the other guys from Shuyin's time. I took to peeking at all of them, eventually getting to one of Kirin, herself, but obviously taken when she wasn't ready. It had to have been a prank, but it meant a lot to her. I remembered that that was what I wanted to take from all of this. I didn't want to remember if we beat Sin again. I didn't care. I wanted to remember Paine tickling me and Shuyin backing off when she gave him a look. I wanted to remember scaring Yunie with the new SRP. I wanted to remember the parts during all of this when we weren't about to die or ready to give up.
Picking up the picture, I whispered, "Kirin… we are a lot alike, aren't we?"
Putting it down, I noticed that it was a while now and Shuyin still hadn't come up. Going back downstairs, I called out for him, but didn't hear anything. I went all over the floor and he wasn't there. I went back upstairs and started looking through all the rooms, but I couldn't find him.
"Shuyin?" I shouted, my voice more shaky than I needed it to be.
I still didn't get any answer so I went further upstairs, hoping he just thought I went up already, but he wasn't on that floor either. I went back down past the lower level and checked both sub-floors. I rechecked the floors and still nothing.
"Shuyin!" I yelled, getting more worried and frantic.
I started wondering if he might have been hiding in places and went to check in closets and bathrooms. I checked under the beds and behind the couches. It got to the point where I was looking for him in cupboards and drawers, but he wasn't anywhere. He was gone.
"Shuyin."
Author's Note: That bloke just can't stay put, can he? Where do you suppose he went running off to this time? What is he planning? Was rebuilding Zanarkand really the answer or was it the perfect distraction for the others to make his escape? Does he plan to take on Sin by himself?