"If it’s not what it looks like, then what the fuck is it?" Cid yelled
"Where the hell have you been?" Jyscal yelled. "Where’s Anzi? Where's Jyrrin?"
"Anzi’s gone with the rest of the kitchen, or didn’t you hear?"
"Hear what?" Jyscal yelled.
"Fru dra vilg’c Jyrrin?" (Who the fuck’s Jyrrin?) Cid yelled back, slipping into Al Behd
"Speak Spiran!" Jyscal yelled.
"What’s everyone screaming about?" they heard a third person but in from the top of the stairs.
Both leaders stopped yelling at each other and turned to see Yuna. She looked like she was about to cry.
"What did you do?" she yelled, running down the stairs. Now here guests were coming out to see what had happened.
"I left to tell him to get the guards in place immediately," Jyscal said defensively.
"Seymour! Seymour, wake up!" Yuna said shaking Seymour. He didn’t react.
"It’s too late," Jyscal said.
"You mind telling us what happened?" Cid complained. "If you just got here, and you didn’t here this place lose a kitchen, then what’s going on."
"Why won’t he wake up?" Yuna asked.
"Jyrrin requested to meet with me, and more specifically, Seymour," Jyscal said.
"Who’s Jyrrin?" Cid asked.
"Jyrrin was almost Anzi’s fiancée," Jyscal answered. "They had a bit of a fall out over twenty-two years ago. I believe Anzi declined over the grief of my wife, who was a dear friend to her."
"Pretty messy way to elope," Cid said.
"Would you let me finish?" Jyscal asked. "We are all in danger and we are running out of time."
"Then shut up and start talking," Wakka said.
"For Jyrrin to suddenly show up is suspicious enough. She returned from Bevelle, claiming to be the one to have vanquished the very same thing that destroyed your island," Jyscal said to Cid.
"So what’s the problem?"
"That thing was made of the very same stuff as Sin. It is a anger to the Farplane and the Fayth."
"But she killed it," Rikku said.
"How?" Cid asked. "You can’t see that thing. People just disappeared. If you were lucky, you heard them scream to get out of the way."
"An invisible Sin?" Yuna asked.
"Indeed. So Jyrrin must have gone back to the basics."
"A final Summon," Paine said.
Jyscal nodded.
"But that… kills both the summoner and the guardian," Yuna said. "They’d both disappear."
"I never said it was sin. This was the first time I came in contact with it."
"Sin without a body… and someone performs the final summoning," Lulu said. "She gave it a body."
"She?" Yuna asked.
"Indeed," Jyscal said. "If you got close to her, you’d have smelled it… if you were guado. Even he noticed it."
"You didn’t try anything earlier?" Cid yelled.
"I wasn’t there when she did it! I had no idea what had happened until I came close. Al I knew was that something was amiss. She detained me until Seymour arrived. If I had left before then she would have known I knew something and there’d be a lot less of this place!"
"You said we don’t have much time," Paine said. "Much time until what? It looks like it’s already happened."
"She did not perform the final summoning the way you are used to," Jyscal said. "She sacrificed her unborn child. I can only assume she meant to deal with it before it was born, thinking she could kill it afterwards, and thus destroy the vessel."
"Ewwie!" Rikku said.
"The problem being?" Wakka asked.
"She can’t kill it," Lulu said. "It’s in her body. It probably took her a while to get here and she must have done something to keep the whole place from sniffing her out."
"Exactly," Jyscal said the fact that he didn’t like agreeing with these people evident, despite the situation.
"Why’d she take Anzi?" Wakka asked.
"A hostage as best as I can figure."
"What about Seymour?" Yuna asked.
"Look, she wasn’t my girlfriend, I don’t know everything!"
"Girlfriend?" Wakka, Yuna, and Cid asked.
"How dumb are you people?" Jyscal asked.
"You know what she did, though, right?" Paine asked.
"She intended to take his life," Jyscal said.
"How’d she fail to kill him and not my men?" Cid asked.
"Because she did not intend to make them a Fayth," Jyscal said. "Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to understand the first thing about her heritage."
"What’s that mean?" Yuna asked.
"It doesn’t work on Guado."
"Then he’ll be fine, right?" Wakka asked.
"It doesn’t work on full-blooded Guado," Jyscal said. "He won’t become a Fayth, but I doubt he’ll hold up in the end."
"He can’t die!" Yuna yelled.
"Of course he can," Jyscal said. "You proved that last time, remember? And he was the one hit on the head."
"Which, I recall, you did," Cid complained.
"How long does he have?" Paine asked, interrupting before things turned into a fistfight, or worse.
About the same amount of time as that thing that’s taking over Jyrrin," Jyscal said. "My guess is a fortnight, give or take. I’m not an expert on half-breeds. She’s holding it back, but she’ll lose in the end. It’s taking her over. Once that happens, it’ll need a new body. Frankly, I’d be more worried about the rest of the world than him."
"Why’s that?" Wakka asked, not liking the sound of how calm Jyscal is.
"Because the last time Sin was created, so were the Fayth. As that thing takes her over, The Fayth will lose their power. That thing dies too soon and—"
"There won’t be any Fayth left," Yuna finished for him.
"Indeed. And how exactly you’re going to ‘kill’ that thing is beyond me," Jyscal said.
"They done it before," Cid said.
"And it was the size of a city at the time," Jyscal said.
"And besides, how you’re going to kill it NOW I don’t know. It’s in the middle of a transformation, that’s like killing Sin during the calm, as it rebuilds itself."
"Look, we’ll think of something," Paine said.
"Hitting it over and over won’t work," Jyscal said.
"So what do you suggest we do instead?" Wakka asked
"I don’t know, I’m not an expert on this!"
"Well, that’s pretty obvious, lookin’ at this place!" Cid said.
"You have a better idea?" Jyscal asked.
"As a matter of fact, I do. For starters, I’m not listening to you anymore."
"You can’t take over!" Jyscal complained. "This is my country!"
"And a lot of the people here are mine!" Cid retorted. "And I taught them how to fight. Until that thing’s gone, I’m in charge!"
"We’re even more doomed than I thought, then," Jyscal said. "Fine, I concede, get everyone killed. Just do it quietly."
"What about us?" Rikku spoke up.
"What about you?" Cid and Jyscal asked at the same time, earning each other’s nasty looks.
"We’re the experts on saving the world."
"Well, then go ‘expert’ yourself out of my house!" Jyscal said. "I don’t know half of what’s going on, just more than anyone else around here."
"I wanna make sure he’s okay first," Yuna said.
"Yuna, you’re coming too?" Paine asked.
"In your condition?" Lulu asked.
"Of course I’m coming," Yuna said.
"What condition?" Cid and Jyscal asked.
…………………………………………………………………………..
Cid and Jyscal were having a debate over what was whose fault--especially her pregnancy and which one of them opposed it more—and a contest about who could be louder. It didn’t help that Cid would slip back into Al Behd and Jyscal, no longer standing to be ‘mocked’ by his opponent ‘retreating’ to another language, would try to speak in AL Behd himself, and rather badly; he was slow and most of his words were only half-translated.
Rikku had called the airship to take Wakka and Lulu home before they started looking for a something they had no clue where it was. Yuna didn’t like the idea of being dragged into another disaster, or into looking so inexpertly for it, but what choice did she have?
Jyscal had picked Seymour off the floor, claiming he’d step on him or trip over him. He left Seymour in a guestroom. Although Jyscal couldn’t care less about his son, he picked up the necklace and meticulously plucked every last bead from the floor and put it all way carefully in a drawer next to the bed.
Yuna just sat and watched, making sure Seymour was still breathing. His movements were so minute, sometimes she missed them and she would rush to check that it was her own mistake and not his failure at staving off the curse.
She couldn’t believe it and she could feel the denial building up in her. It was just like being a sumoner again and learning that the church and everything it stood for was false and always had been when she had put so much faith into it.
This wasn’t the man she’d married, this was an empty shell, a nightmare come true that she had to learn how to shatter. She had slept in his bed for a year now. He could toss and turn and cling to something, as if pleading them to help him, to not let him get caught or found or killed by whatever he was afraid of. He would jerk and twitch in fear, he would make small noises, whimpers for help. And she’d put her arm around him, or a hand to his face, she’d press closer and be rewarded with his fear fading and his face calming and another noise, this one in thanks for the comfort she gave him.
Not now. He didn’t react to anything. Not from his father’s callous treatment, from her attempts to see him move in the slightest, from his own mind.
She had no idea of the irony downstairs, not even Jyscal knew the full extent of the irony that had taken his maid and dearest friend from him, and neither knew or could have know or even thought to prepare themselves for the irony that was yet to come.
"Yunie!"
"I promise I’ll never leave you," she whispered, and kissed her husband on the forehead.