"Okay, this is just weird," Tidus said. Jyscal had converted the family room into a guestroom by not locking the door. The décor consisted of dust, dust covered furniture, burnt places, burnt furniture, and places and furniture with both.
"You get used to it," Buddy said.
"No ya do not," Brother said.
"You can get used to it because you know what’s going on," Tidus said
"Actually, that just makes it worse," Buddy commented.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
"Jyrrin, stop," Anzi asked, falling to her knees. " I can’t do this anymore."
"Anzi, there’s no way back now." Jyrrin bent down, placing a blackened hand on Anzi’s hair. "Why would you go back there? There is Jyscal and Yuna back there. You know the promises they make, and how readily they break them. I won’t let you be hurt by any more broken promises."
"I know."
"Then we should keep going."
"Seymour’s back there."
"He’s not. Not anymore."
Anzi was silent. Jyrrin put a black hand upon her hair, the flesh peeling and twisting away from its bone frame, muscles that rotted fell away. Anzi looked away.
This was it. Her lover, blackened and oozing stuff that refused to ooze properly and smelled worse than the rest of her. Her eyes had gone, her hair was barely left. Her face was a face no more. Pieces of what used to be flesh clung to a dark skull and something that could only be described as ‘stuff’ clung to it underneath. Seymour, her boy, her baby boy, the closest thing to her own child that she’d ever had… what had this things hatred done to him? What had its love for her done to the woman she loved? Yuna… pretty, precious Yuna… Yuna was gone too. In a near-lie, in not being told Seymour’s fate, Anzi had let the face of putrescence speak with Jyrrin’s voice and convince her to use her knife… on the woman she had just before considered her own daughter.
No matter what Seymour had transformed into after his own death, no corpse was ever this cruel—and he certainly couldn’t have smelled anything close to this stench.
"I kept a promise I made long ago. I promised I’d take you away one day, so we’d be free. So it’d be just us. You told me you couldn’t leave Seymour if he had no one else to make him happy. I made him happy. It burned to hold his face—even half he burned me—and yet I looked inside his head. I gave him what he wanted. He felt nothing. He’s with his mother now. He wanted it."
"I’m not stupid Jyrrin."
"And I loved you because of that."
"You beat Seymour the day you left. You hated him the most that day; you hated him ever since you knew of him. Ever since you knew I liked him."
Now it was Jyrrin’s turn to be silent. Jyrrin wasn’t just silent, she was dormant. Something else was silent now.
"Don’t tempt me," Anzi said.
"You tempt me. If I had control over the mind of this body before, I’d have seen what it was that she dreams about every night watching you sleep."
"What are you?" Anzi asked. Now she was afraid. Truly afraid. For herself, not for what she’d have to do to her friend. She’d thought she’d have had Seymour to keep her company after the murder, and somehow she hadn’t given thought to the fact that their collective sanity might drop.
"She did not believe in half-breeds. The races could mingle, but not the blood. Never the blood. Until—Until she thought of you, and what it would mean to you o save the world, a world just for the two of you. She made a half-breed to give it up, to sacrifice it in the final summon."
"Don’t—"
"She gave me a body, and now, she has given me a mind. I feel for myself, I guarantee. I wouldn’t worry about your baby. I feel things she can’t. She was merely the shell, acting out my vague urges until I was strong and bored enough to take over."
"Where’s Seymour?" Anzi asked. She was crying now. She didn’t care how much or what kind of magic this thing had, being dead was no excuse to lead her around in circles with lies.
"Exactly where you left him, give or take a room," it answered. "If you want to save him, I’d move that ass that this host covets so much. Time is running out for him, and I’m not my ‘mother.’ I like him too."
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
"I need that plane! Especially now that we got another ocean to cross to get to Zanarkand!" Cid yelled.
"Yeah, well, you’re not drivin’, it’s my plane!" Brother yelled back.
"Look boy, I need that and that’s it. We need an army up there and that’s the only way we can get it there. Now gimme the keys!"
The participants, not only not in the same room as the screamers, but not even on the same story as the screamers, noticed that the argument changed to Al Behd, once again. This would be more impressive, if, for the fifth time, the argument consisted of words other than ‘mine!’
"It always like this?" Tidus asked.
"More chair throwing, I’ve heard," Shinra said.
"Different participants," Buddy said.
"So… why exactly are we in Guadosalam?" Tidus asked.
"Long story," Buddy said.
"It always is," Tidus replied.
"Longer than that," Shinra said.
"Okay…" Tidus said, trying to think. It wasn’t his best ability. It wasn’t even on the list of his best abilities. It failed to score a rank in his mediocre abilities. Still, he tried, and that’s what counted. "Who’s Anzi?"
"Friend," buddy answered.
"Of who?"
"Can’t tell you."
"Can you tell me what that dead-looking thing was?"
"It used to be a Anzi’s girlfriend," Buddy answered.
"We don’t think it is anymore," Shinra said.
"I hope not," Tidus said. "What is it now?"
"We don’t know," Shinra said. "That’s hardly important."
"Why?"
"It’s gonna kill us either way," Buddy said.
"There any good news?" Tidus asked.
There was a thump from upstairs. It was followed b y a long silence, which left abruptly, leaving the sound of scuffling to take over as the eerie noise of the place.
"I think they’re almost finished arguing," Buddy said.
……………………………………………………
Rikku had checked all the buildings she thought were of important enough to explore in the mini-flood. All she found was nothing.
At least it was an impressive nothing. Impressive as it was, though, it was still nothing. And nothing, no matter how impressive, gets boring fast. Faster than most somethings.
"Hey!" she yelled. For fugitives, Ormi and Logos weren’t going anywhere. "That things gone, right?"
"I doubt it," Logos said. "She walked off. She’s somewhere."
"An’ I don’t recommend messin’ wid her," Ormi added.
"I meant… the…thing."
"Um…" they both said.
"No one’s been eaten since, right?" Rikku asked.
"Nope," Ormi said.
"We’ve been the only ones here for weeks," Logos said.
"Kay. Thanks," Rikku shouted back. She looked around, wondering what to do. She opted for shrugged and started to trudge though the water. The level hadn’t lowered at all and a school of harmless fish from the former lake Macalania swam into her shoes.
"Why do you ask?" Logos shouted back as she was distracted by freeing the fish.
"If it went into her, we might be able to get Nooj back," Rikku said. LeBlanc’s bad enough pining over him when he’s alive. Hey, why were you up there? Didja know the flood was coming or what?"
"Not really," Logos said. "We were a bit bored."
"And up here’s the best view."
……………………………………………………………………………………………
Cid wasn’t skilled at talking. He wasn’t good at negotiating. He was rather good at war, especially when the strategy of ‘smash it ‘til it’s gone’ was the best one to use.
Brother was a good pilot and took good care of the plane. He was useful, but the only people who knew it wouldn’t admit it.
The deal, even though it took a broken nose, a black eye, and several bruises between the two, was that neither got to fly the ship, both were one board and what was left of an army went to Mt Gagazet to blow something—hopefully the right something, and as little as possible of the wrong something—sky high.
Paine had met with Kimahri. An hour ago.
Anzi and Jyrrin were beginning their climb.
The plane was almost there, the Ronso were ready for one invading army, not two.
There was one thing no one took into account: They’d left Tidus back at the palace. Alone.
He had the survival skills of a confused lemming and twice the intelligence. Added to that, there was the fact that danger and disaster followed him around so much that there is not metaphor even equivalent—let alone greater than—danger and disaster following Tidus. Magnetic and gravitational forces dim in comparison to this phenomenon.
Whoever you are, whatever you’ve been through, you are never prepared for what happens in the wake of Tidus as he has no clue what is going on.
………………………………………………………………………
"Rrrrrr," Jyscal exclaimed at the entirety of everything as he slammed his door closed. His best friend had been abducted by the reincarnation of doomsday, there were foreigners—idiots at that—camping in his house, which, by the way, had been partially destroyed. His son’s hands were in the hands of the gullwings and he wasn’t sure what to think of that. He had been ousted from his throne by an illiterate who had just fought with a teenager wearing too much makeup. If the world suddenly refused to make sense, why did it have to do it so violently? Especially around him?
"Hello?" he heard someone say down the hall.
With all the commotion in the place, Jyscal was wondering why he still bothered having a door to his room.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded to a strange-looking unkempt blond.
"I’m Tidus," the boy answered, stupidly without fear. "I’m looking for Yuna."
"Why?" Jyscal said, somehow making the one-syllable question into a fatal threat.
Before Tidus could say some stupid or something that would soon lead to his arrest—and he was indeed about to utter one, if not both, of those—someone burst into the palace, screaming that Jyscal had to come see.
There were no more guards anymore. The person screaming was a mere citizen, and an unremarkable one at that. Whatever was going on, it was definitely something to see.
Jyscal was betting on the end of the world and decided that if he couldn’t fight it, he could at least get a god view.
Jyscal grabbed Tidus and stormed out of he palace, taking with him Tidus's indescribable luck of attracting the unknown, unforeseen, unpredictable, and inconceivable.
With Tidus, fate put on a show. The trick was to keep from getting cancelled.