"Seymour!" Yuna yelled and pushed Jyscal out of the way of the window and leapt out.

"No!" he yelled, but it was too late; she’d thrown herself directly into the battle, tumbling in the air and firing at the scattering members of the syndicate.

"Get him out of here!" Jyscal yelled to Rikku.

"Nice try!" someone yelled, attempting to kick the door down, but considering it was made to withstand arguments between Jyscal and Seymour, it bounced off the wall and they barely manage to keep from being bashed in the nose by holding the door with their foot.

By the time the door had bounced off their foot and they had raised their rifle, Jyscal’s hand were at their neck. They dropped their weapon in surprise as Jyscal bashed their head against the doorway so hard he nearly knocked them unconscious.

"How many of you are there!" he yelled.

The assassin held his tongue as there was crashing downstairs and in the next room.

"Talk or I start breaking fingers. Then I rip them off!"

"Nine including Kren, please—"

"No!" Jyscal said, bashing their head against the doorframe hard enough it left a bright spot of blood. He bashed again to be sure and this time there was the sound of bone breaking. "Kren’s dead and one can’t walk. You make seven." He turned to Rikku and Cid, who, despite everything they’d seen so far, were turning green around the proverbial gills. "I said get him out of here! I’ll be damned if I let a diplomat die while I’m in charge."

Jyscal raced down the sitars, hoping he wasn’t taking too much of a risk with the four people he’d left Anzi with or the one he’d left Cid with.

"You are ALL going to pay!" Jyscal said to himself. "Every… last…. One of you."

……………………………………………………………………………

Yuna twirled and landed, missing Py who had run off around the palace. Maln let go of Seymour to properly aim at Yuna. Seymour took that as an opportunity to run off, despite the injuries Maln had given him to keep him from running off before.

He ran into the palace the first way he could, which turned out to be the kitchen.

Something glass smashed as he frantically closed the door and bolted it as best he could with a mop.

He ran for the door on the far side of the room, but stopped halfway, hearing his father’s extremely angry voice.

This was beyond being stuck between a rock and a hard place, those didn’t have either the desire or the strength to rip his throat out.

Someone was banging on the door from the outside and the doorknob of the door to the rest of the palace was turning. Seymour prayed the roof would fall in on him with all the strength he had, in fact, he put so much into wishing something would save him, his right leg gave out momentarily.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Wakka coughed and tried to look past the rubble. Paine was on the floor, not moving, as were Lulu and some kamikaze attacker, having taken himself out with the second grenade... or was it the third?

"Anzi?" Wakka asked. "Where’s Anzi?"

"Bit busy," Auron answered.

Wakka looked up, to see Auron wrestling with another attacker on his back.

Wakka looked around, wondering if there were anymore Guado after their lives when he noticed two things and went white.

First, Anzi was nowhere in sight. Second, there was yet another grenade—pinless, just his luck—on the floor, ignored by either Auron or his attacker.

Wakka did the only thin he could think to do. He panicked. He ducked behind what was left of the bed, which had been overturned, partially gutted, mostly burned, and was missing a leg. He grabbed Lulu’s arm, who was the closest of the unconscious to him and started pulling her to him while staying safely—he assumed—behind the bed.

He had pulled her hand to his assumed safety when the grenade went off, filling the room with blinding light and setting several things on fire—most of which had already been on fire, now there were just more on fire—as well as rearranging everything in it.

The floor, which had been through three grenade blasts already, decided to call it quits, however.

The floor landed in pieces on around, under, and on top of all of them. The bed landed right next to Wakka, wobbled and fell on him. Lulu landed several feet away from Wakka. Paine landed on a lamp, still unconscious. Auron and his attacker stood up once they had ground to stand on, only to have a bookcase land on both of them. More rubble landed on top of the mess and dust rained down on that, putting out most of the fire.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

Anzi raced out of the room as a second grenade flew threw the window and ducked under an assassin. Thankfully he was either too dumb or too determined to take out the actual warriors first.

She ran for the stairs, her feet still moving as someone grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her off the ground.

"You’re coming with us!" someone yelled.

She screamed in terror and shot her arm back, he elbow meeting with his jaw.

He dropped her, but only momentarily. He lunged for her legs as she started to run again, knocking her to the floor.

"Come… on!" he said, crawling over her to get a good grip around her, her legs and her hands punching him making it difficult.

She kicked and screamed and beat on him, managing eventually to land a swift and sharp knee in his crotch.

He froze and his eyes began to water. She shoved him off, unaware that she had reached the stairs by now and had consequently thrown him down them.

She ran down the stairs once he’d finished falling down them, stopping to kick him in the face before moving on.

And move on she did—to the floor as the palace shook and she heard a crashing sound in what was meant to be the nursery, abandoned since Jyscal was a child.

Before she could complain about either landing on her butt or falling on an unconscious assassin, yet another person grabbed her and dragged her into a room.

"Got her!"

"No you don’t!" she heard Jyscal yell.

"Aaaah!" her captor yelled. "Here, you take her!" she was suddenly shoved into another pair of arms, just as unexpecting as she was.

They were both thrown to the floor as she heard Jyscal scuffling with someone—and he was winning.

"Do something! The first one yelled.

"I’m trying!" a third one yelled.

"No!" Anzi yelled, lunging vaguely in the right direction, but the second on caught her arm and throwing her off-balance.

She hit the third’s legs and he fell to the floor. His attack wouldn’t have saved his friend form the sound of it—Jyscal had killed him and was turning to the others.

Anzi looked up from the floor as the two took off.

There was a crashing noise in the kitchen.

"Seymour!" Jyscal yelled and ran to it.

As Anzi’s vision cleared, she saw the reason why the two had taken off, and it hadn’t been Jyscal. There was a live grenade on the floor, the pin must have been pulled as she had lunged at one of them. She screamed and knocked it into the next room, the door ajar.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Seymour had prayed to everything he could think of—saints, summoners, fayth, monsters, sin, aeons, and even random famous people whom he couldn’t’ remember the importance of and was about to promise to dedicate his life to the worship whatever saved him, whether it be Yuna, a chocobo, or something that looked like it had been drawn by a colorblind four-year old.

Just then the wall exploded.

"Works for me," he said and charged through and over what used to be plaster and bricks

The door opened and Jyscal entered as Maln shot the other one and the broom both.

"I’ll kill him!" they both yelled then noticed each other and momentarily forgot about their current quarry and went at each other, the first victim being the table in the middle of the room as they grappled.

"Coming through!" Yuna yelled, running through the room, leaping off both of them and over the pile of former wall.

Her next move she hadn’t planned at all.

She crashed into Seymour, who had stopped running, seeing an angry, though slightly disoriented assassin.

The next thing she knew she and Seymour were on the floor.

"OW!" he yelled. "My knee!"

"I’m sorry," she said, frantically trying to help him up. "How badly hurt are you?"

"Well, first of all, that arm’s broken, let go!
"Excuse me!" one of the assassins, yelled as Yuna dropped Seymour’s arm and the assassin got more attention than he wanted.

The wall was still missing and by now Jyscal had broken Maln’s gun—though the bounty hunter had tried to beat Jyscal with the two pieces afterwards.

"Not without givin’ me my damn money!" Maln yelled, throwing Jyscal away from him and running into the room.

"You are all dead!" Jyscal yelled, running after Maln.

"What’d I do?" Yuna asked.

"That’s it!" the assassin yelled, and fired.

…………………………………………………………………………

"I am NOT cleaning this place up by myself," Anzi said, getting up after the blast.

"Anzi!" Rikku shouted.

"Who?" Cid asked.

"Anzi, are you alright?" Rikku asked, helping her up.

"What’s going on?" Anzi asked.

"That’s what I want to know," Cid said.

"Well, you don’t live here," Anzi said.

"You!" someone yelled, distracting them.

"What’d we do?" Rikku asked.

"You’re gonna pay!" one of the two assassins Anzi had seen run off yelled from the doorway.

"I don’t think that’s a good idea," his partner said.

"Kren and Py said take out the broad!"

"He said ‘hostage!’ Don’t you get the meaning of ‘hostage?’"

"Screw ‘hostage!’" he yelled, lobbing a grenade at Anzi. "We can hold her hostage when she’s in pieces."

"Eeep---EEEK!" Anzi yelled, at first not wanting to be in separate pieces and then realizing she had caught the grenade they had thrown.

"Um…" the first assassin yelled. His partner checked his gun to see if he had time to kill himself if anyone did anything else that stupid.

"Anz—" Rikku said, but it was too late. Anzi was dealing with the grenade by herself. She let out a piercing shriek and threw it right back at it’s owner, hitting him in the head.

"Ow!" he said.

Everyone else panicked at the still live grenade.

His partner slammed the door before the explosion went off.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

Seymour shoved Yuna out of the way as best he could as Maln ducked to the side and Jyscal went to the floor and grabbed a brick.

The gun went off and there was an explosion, though the two events had nothing to do with each other.

Jyscal took advantage of the fact that the assassin was dodging pieces of the ceiling and launched a brick at his head.

"Who designed this place?" Yuna yelled.

Seymour wasn’t getting up. He has half sitting on the floor, holding his bleeding leg with his good arm. Either the assassin was a really good shot, or he had just used up all his luck at once.

Seymour wasn’t given time to recover or even come close to standing up. Jyscal grabbed another brick and leapt at him, trying to aim for Seymour’s head as they wrestled, but taking wherever he could manage an actual blow against.

"No!" Yuna yelled, but Maln was the one to join the fray long enough to pry Jyscal’s hands off of Seymour and kick him away. "No one gets him without payin!" he yelled, holding down Seymour by the throat. Miraculously, Seymour was still conscious, although he didn’t look like he could tell which way was up.

"Leave him alone!" Yuna yelled and tackled Maln. "Get off of him!" Yuna’s plan had worked—to an extent. She had distracted Maln long enough for Seymour to crawl away, though she hadn’t counted on Maln’s reaction.

"You!" he spat. Somewhere in fighting with Jyscal, his mouth had become bloody and he got some on Yuna as he spoke. "You’re Al Behd! I’ll fucking kill you!"

Just as his hands went for her throat, something smashed against his head.

"No you won’t!" Seymour said, throwing away the other half of a vase.

"But I’ll kill you!" Jyscal yelled, smashing a small table over Seymour’s head, sending him to the floor as he clutched his head and blood well up from under his hands. "And I mean it this time!"

"No!" Yuna yelled, leaping to defend Seymour.

"Get out of my way!" Jyscal said, kicking her away, then bashing the table over Seymour’s head again, knocking Seymour unconscious and smashing the table in the process.

Jyscal broke what was left of the table over his knee and tossed the rest away, going at Seymour with one of the legs, hitting him repeatedly.

Maln grabbed the broken piece and went after Yuna.

"Where’s my share?" Yuna asked, too close to a berserk and possibly rabid foe to allow time to spherechange.

…………………………………………………………………………………..

"Catch this!" the remaining assassin yelled, hitting all of them with demi.

"That’s cheating!" Rikku said.

"So’s this!" he yelled, grabbing Anzi as Rikku was distracted in healing her father. "But when would I follow the rules?" He held Anzi in a stranglehold, which she struggled at, but to no avail. His other hand held a gun to her head. "Number one: she’s a damn hostage and she’d going to be in one piece, although it may be one headless piece if you try anything," he said, backing away. "Number two: I can wait, I’m patient, but I want the half-breed and the human gone from Guadosalam forever, dead or alive. Number three: I want out of here. In that order. However, number four first."

"How many damn things do you want?" Cid asked.

"Drop your weapons or I fire mine. And I mean it."

Cid and Rikku looked at each other.

The assassin fired into the ceiling. "Next one’s in her head if you so much as blink funny. You don’t try anything and I spare your life as well as hers."

Rikku and Cid threw their weapons on the floor and kicked them away, holding their hands up in surrender.

"By the way," he said, aiming his gun at them. "I lied."

……………………………………………………………………………………

"Uuunnnhhhhowww," Lulu groaned. Looking around, she figured she must have missed something important somewhere in the battle while she had been unconscious. The room didn’t look the same and it was covered in rubble—more rubble. Wakka was unconscious under what had formerly been a bed, but was now too broken, collapsed, and burnt to fit such a description anymore.

Paine was half-buried under rubble and dust and had missed being hit by whatever was still on fire.

All the furniture was broken—more broken, save for an overturned bookcase. Lulu pried herself out of the debris and didn’t bother to dust herself off.

The bookcase shifted and she spun around. She’d lost her stuffed doll in the initial blast when it had caught on fire. Without it, she was defenseless, at least compared to who’d been fighting with Auron through two grenades, possibly more considering the rubble.

The bookcase shifted again and a gloved hand punched through it.

"Auron!" she yelled, rushing over to help lift the bookcase.

Her efforts were in vain, for she suddenly had to step back as he managed to push it over, sending dust everywhere and both of them into coughing fits.

There was a sound from the assassin and Auron punched the man in the head, silencing him.

Lulu stepped over the bookcase and went for the door, opening it tentatively, in case there were any more grenades.

There was yelling until the door hit something hard and Lulu looked at the floor.

"Get off of me!" Anzi yelled, untangling herself from an assassin.

"Since when was this room on this floor?" Lulu asked.

"Shit!" the new attacker yelled, one hand on his head. He spun around, meeting with Lulu’s face before he ever saw her.

"You leave her alone too!" Lulu said, punching him in the face. "Auron’s bad enough!"

"Boo!"

"What? We end up getting all nine?" Rikku asked.

"If you’d proceed tot he nearest exit, I won’t have to waste bullets on you," Py said.

"Huh?" all four of them asked.

"At the moment, the half-breeds and Jyscal are all busy killing each other. It’s easier for me to wait ‘em out and shoot anyone who shouldn’t be alive afterwards."

"Who’s not dead, what’s with all the screaming, where are they, how many of them are there, when’d we get here and why?" Auron asked, wobbling into the doorway.

"Aaw, he’s drunk again," Rikku complained.

"For your information this is a concussion," he said, before losing his balance and falling over onto the rubble. "…Ow…"

"Here, hold this," Lulu said, handing her hostage to him as he stood up again.

"What am I going to do with him?" Auron asked, tossing him in the room and closing the door so he could lean on it. "

"This would be someone’s cue to do something," Rikku said.

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