WoS, chapter 1
Title: Wages of Sin, Chapter I
Fandom: FFX, FFX-2 AU
Rating: PG-13
Writers: hinikuish, muggy_mountain
Characters/Pairings: Emobob... Pochi... Tidus (& more!)
What if Auron had never gone to Zanarkand after the start of Braska's Calm? What if he had gone to Besaid instead, to care for young Yuna? What if Tidus had grown up alone and an orphan in Zanarkand...
...And what if Sin came and took him into Spira anyway?
Last time: Tidus, having lost both parents at a young age, has grown up to be a bitter, emo child. While most of Zanarkand is at a Blitz game, Tidus is struck instead by the urge to visit his childhood home. Before arriving, however, something in the water attacked, and the area was destroyed. Tidus came to in the middle of the ocean, disoriented and afraid, but soon lost consciousness.
The Cay Cmik wasn't the vessel's official name-the real name was RTA8067V-but since the salvaging ship was a huge metal beast with a top speed that only barely outstripped a man on a chocobo, Cay Cmik had been adopted and stuck. She had a crew of forty-eight, salvagers, mechanics, engineers and so on, a doctor, cook and three children whose job was only to assist with chores. Her captaincy was shared by a brother and sister, both young, even for Al Bhed.
Cid was the elder child, although of course no one called him that; Cid was his father's name, too, and the teenager resented it. He was Captain or more commonly Aniki, some ancient word translatable as "older brother." Even in names he was in his sister's shadow. That wasn't Rikku's fault, not exactly. Aniki was a fair enough leader, but she was more interested in people than he would ever be. She was nosy at worst and a social butterfly at best. She had the knack of remembering what was wrong with who, and then the ability to do all she could to fix it.
It was only on Rikku's insistence that the Cay Cmik had taken aboard the drifter, although he was half dead and a Yevonite-at best. At worst, he was some new sort of fiend, some Sin-creature with mastery over the human form, a new sort of cruelty. Had the Al Bhed been even a little religious, they would have prayed and cast the boy back overboard. Instead, room was made in the medical cabin, and grumbling about the extra work in cooking, cleaning, caring and possibly fighting the forty-ninth crewmember was giving them.
Rikku ignored all such talk and visited the recovering human regularly. Partially, she was fascinated. Her father forbade contact with non-Al Bhed, and she had never been so close to one before as a result. She admired his pale skin and dark hair. She wondered what his eyes would look like when opened. She was interested by the lack of scars on his arms, scars that any Al Bhed who could call himself a mechanic or machinist had dozens of by the time he was twelve or thirteen. But he was thinner than she would have liked, and had a pinched, unhappy look about him. Even in sleep.
Mostly, Rikku felt pity for the recovering boy. Anyone left alone, drifting in the Baaj ocean had to have some sort of sad story behind him, whether he was Al Bhed or fiend. Or Yevonite.
"Smells like shit in here." The door was heavy metal with rusted joints and announced the boy's entrance better and louder than he himself could have done. "Disinfectant and shit. Why do you hang out here so much, anyway?" He was eight months older and half a foot taller, both things Rikku resented him for.
"Pochi here," she said, not looking up from the large book resting awkwardly on her knees, "is sick."
"Pochi?" Gippal echoed the name uncertainly. "He a dog or a Yevonite?" Regardless of what Pochi was, Gippal sat himself down on the foot of the invalid's bed, pushing the boy's legs out of the way. "Guess it doesn't matter. He's your pet either way, right?" The word in Common to drive home the insult. He noticed for the first time what Rikku was reading and glared at it-a Common-Al Bhed dictionary.
"He hasn't woken up yet, so I can't ask him his real name," Rikku said, unaffected by Gippal's remarks. "What did you come around here for, anyway?"
"Thought you might want to hang out. Finished the engines, don't you wanna see?" Aside from the chore-children, Gippal and Rikku were the youngest of the crew-fifteen and sixteen years old. He was used to spending his free hours with her, and being dropped for a soggy Yevonite was more insult than Gippal could bear.
"I don't want Pochi to wake up alone," Rikku said, voice taking on a motherly edge. "Doctor-sir's shift is over. Won't be back for another three hours."
"So what? Come on; let's go get some food, then. We'll eat together. A date." Not much of a date on a ship, but Gippal was counting on the word as incentive. He wasn't jealous, he knew, just annoyed-wasn't good for someone to get attached to Yevonites, especially not stupid people like Rikku. She was too impressionable, that was her problem-she let people walk all over her, and Gippal was only looking out for her by trying to take her away.
"But what if he wakes up? All alone, on an Al Bhed ship, with no idea how he got here, or what the Al Bhed are gonna do to him-he'll be scared. I want there to be someone with him. And," Rikku added, proudly, "I've been practicing my Common these past couple days."
"What if he's scared? So what if he is! He's Yevon, not a pet. You shouldn't feel sorry for him. Who cares if he freaks out to be on one of our ships. Serves him right," Gippal said stubbornly, darkly, glaring down the bed at the sleeping boy. The light in the hospital bay was adequate and florescent, and it cast odd shadows on Pochi's face, raising his cheekbones and throwing the top half of his face in shadow, mixing with the fall of his hair.
"You don't care at all, do you?" Rikku said, distressed now and shutting her book with a thud.
"No." The flatness of his tone stretched into the accompanying silence. After a minute Gippal added, somewhat awkwardly, "Don't see why you do, either."
"Heartless," Rikku said, a thin line of bitterness in her voice this time. "Want to dump him overboard, then?"
"He's sick. What else are we supposed to do with him? We can't bring him to Home, and we aren't going to land for another two months anyway. Say he gets better, what are you planning to do with him?" He felt a burst of annoyance when Rikku's gaze on the sleeping boy turned tender.
"We can't just throw him in the water," Rikku said. "Aniki agrees with me." And we're in charge, she didn't have to add.
"Gonna have a mutiny on your hands," Gippal said darkly, standing up. "Yevon's bad luck."
"Gippal-" This time, Rikku's attention centered on her friend. "Come on. You're acting weird. I'm sorry." She had the habit of pleading. "Come on. Stick around."
"I don't want to," he said, and she looked upset enough that he felt better. "Stuffy in here, anyway, and smells. Deck's better, let's go."
Rikku was pacified. "Told you, I'm not leaving Pochi. We'll eat here and open the window." The window was a thick, murky porthole that someone had taped a drawing of a beach over.
Gippal sat himself down hard on the patient's legs. "Pochi?" he asked again.
"Had a fish named Pochi once. Shiny purple." She indicated with her hands the approximate size of the long-ago pet.
"Ain't a fish name, either."
The dark haired boy slept on.
But by the end of the week, even Aniki had told Rikku that if her pet, if her Pochi didn't wake up in a day or two, he was going overboard. The only thing less useful than a dead person was one in a coma, her brother pointed out, abstractly intelligent only when he wasn't trying. At least you could put the dead behind you, mourn them and move on. Sick people required attention and work, and both of those were in high demand on a salvage ship.
"He means, get working," Gippal said, wiping the engine oil on his hands onto his trouser legs. "Come on, Riks. Don't you wanna see the crap they dug up last dive?"
"I was on that dive," the girl pointed out. "I dug up that crap."
"Don't you wanna see it?" Pressing the issue. She looked tired, Gippal thought, sort of worn and still, and that wasn't a good sign. "I'm bored without you."
Well. They both avoided each other's eyes at that, red faced. Gippal had a cousin who was like a sister, but Nhadala was five years older and not good for fun. Rikku and Aniki were the best friends he had, Rikku especially. Little sister, that was what she was-that was all he had meant.
"Guess so," Rikku said, chewing a thumbnail and casting half a glance down at Pochi's bed. "Should make sure that the mechanics haven't messed up my stuff," she added brightly, batting her eyes at Gippal, who narrowed his in return.
"Without me, we might as well throw your crap back in the water." But it was said cheerfully: mechanics and engineering was Gippal's life, just like water and alchemy was Rikku's. They made a good team.
Out on the deck it was stormy, grey and choppy. No rain yet, but any fool could see it was brewing. Unnecessary supplies had been brought below-decks, and the rest secured and tied. Rikku looked around. "Gonna be a big one?"
"Not really, just being safe," Gippal said, worldly for having been on securing duty earlier in the day. "Haven't you been above deck at all?"
"No," Rikku said. "No chores except diving, and we aren't at the next site for another few days. Maybe more with the rain." Swimming and diving took a lot of strength and energy, so the salvagers generally had the lightest workload of the crew. Gippal was jealous, but only a little. His parents had died when their ship was attacked by Sin, years ago. Their bodies, drowned, had been found in the wreckage. He wasn't afraid of ships, and no more afraid of Sin than anyone else, but he was a little uneasy about swimming in open water. He always had the feeling of something looming up under him, growing, rising, and sliding against his toes...
Everyone had their phobias, their Sin-fears. Gippal knew a lot of Al Bhed too superstitious to even step foot on a boat. The ocean was Sin's domain, cold, wet, and the opposite of the desert. Unnatural, some of the elders said. Al Bhed are safe in the sands. But everyone understood the need for oceanic salvaging. Much had been lost when the old island was destroyed-salvaging was necessary, even if it meant the ocean.
The Al Bhed's old Home had been on an island near Bikanel, the desert uninhabited but for a few small camp-villages and hundreds of thousands of fiends. Eighteen years ago, Sin had destroyed the island completely, and the survivors had migrated to the desert. Gippal and Rikku were in the first generation of children born in the new city of Home; Aniki had been an infant when the city was built. All Gippal had ever known was the desert and the fiends. "Too cold," he said, to make conversation. The desert got cold at night, but this was damp cold.
Rikku was staring out over the sea. "Hope Pochi wakes up soon."
Gippal was disgruntled. "You haven't even been gone five minutes. Think about something else for a while!"
"It's just that he's sick. I've never seen anything like it," she said apologetically, as if she had vast experience with medicine. "He just sleeps."
"Maybe he'll never wake up."
"There's a Blitz tournament in Luca in a few months, right?" Rikku said. "Been thinking. We'll all be there, getting supplies, so we can drop him off. Everyone in Spira will be in Luca, just about. Maybe Pochi's family, too. If he has any."
"And if he doesn't, then what? You gonna adopt him?"
"We'll leave him at a hospital if he's still sleeping," Rikku said. "If he's awake, I'll help him find a job before we go."
That was more like it, but still: "That's two months from now."
She shrugged out at the water. Gippal was sick of talking about Pochi, sick and tired of the whole affair-so why did he keep mentioning it? Why-he knew it bugged him, so why couldn't he just let it drop, huh? Because Rikku wouldn't drop it. Because Rikku was spending all her time with some Yevonite, and that was-wrong.
"Are you mad at me?" she asked, her attention having shifted from the ocean to his darkening expression. Tugged his sleeve. "Come on, don't be mad. Said I'm sorry."
He wanted to ask her why, again: why she was spending all her time so stupidly. He bit the inside of his cheek instead. "Ain't mad," he said.
"Good," Rikku said, and hopped up to sit on the ship's rail, facing in towards him. "Hate it when you're mad."
Oh. "I just don't trust Yevonites," he said.
"I know." Rikku hesitated for several minutes, kicking her feet and drawing a breath. "Gippal, I-"
The ship lurched suddenly, and Gippal had to grab for her to keep her from toppling over the edge. He caught her as she fell against him, on reflex wrapping arms around her and looking over her shoulder-disturbance in the water? Something prickled up his neck. Rikku shoved herself away from him to look, too. "What's going on?" she yelled, for anyone to answer.
Several other crewmen were rushing up to the deck. "Sin?" Rikku asked, the question repeated back to her as soon as she asked it. They were all edgy, clutching railings and standing tense. "The captain-" Gippal tried suggesting, as the ship lurched again, more violently, and a few people staggered and even fell over.
Rikku had been staring dazedly at the sea, but snapped to attention at this. Shorter than most of the crew by over a head, she shouted her way into the centre of attention of the twenty or so Al Bhed assembled, nervously milling about. "Hey! What the hell you guys doing away from your posts? Think you can get away with shit like this," she added, only prone to swearing when in a position of authority and trying to make a command, something Gippal was fairly certain she had picked up from her father. "If Sin is here, we don't wanna be stuck on the decks cuz you all abandoned the engines," she pointed out, hands on her hips.
"Don't want to be stuck down below, either," a man shouted back.
"Maybe it was just technical problems," a woman pointed out, loudly. "Might not have been Sin at-oh, hell." Because something on the horizon had just surfaced. Too big for a whale, a sight far too familiar.
"It's a ways away, right?" Gippal asked no one in particular. Rikku's authority was slipping away again, and she-suddenly small again-slipped back beside him. "Far off. Doesn't always attack from this distance." The others were starting to talk, to make their own plans, Rikku’s orders forgotten and ignored if not. Should they evacuate? Pray? Run?
"Where's my brother?" Rikku said suddenly, pale and looking around her. "Where's Aniki? He's not here."
Way to change the subject, Gippal thought with some exasperation. Who cared? "Probably in the engine room or something. Hanging out with the navigators. Who cares?"
"My brother..." Rikku was edging away, eyes wide and edgy. "He has to know-Sin-" Gippal tried to grab her hand, frustrated, but Rikku slipped away too quickly for that, vanishing below-decks. She wasn't sure what she was doing, not exactly, only that if Aniki didn't know-if for some reason-or if he did know-he shouldn't be alone, he shouldn't be below-decks. Least on top you could try and swim for it. Rikku's orders to the rest of the crew had been forgotten, and she raced and skidded through the corridors. Those of the crew who hadn't raced to the deck were milling about anxiously in the halls, having guessed at least mostly what the affair was about. A few tried to ask Rikku questions, but she ran past, ignoring them utterly.
"Aniki!" she shrieked, rounding a corner and catching sight of her brother's tattoos at last with a feeling of irrational relief-she'd half expected, somehow, that he was dead, that she was the only one left in charge, that she was now the leader.
He whirled around at her call, squinting in the dim light and too vain for glasses. "Rikku. I was just looking for you."
"I-" she gasped, her sprinting catching up to her suddenly. She sagged against the metal wall and clutched at a stitch in her side. Sin is here, she meant to say, but she had to breathe first.
"Your patient," Aniki said, gesturing roughly behind him at the still-open door of the hospital wing. "Yevony just woke up."
Fandom: FFX, FFX-2 AU
Rating: PG-13
Writers: hinikuish, muggy_mountain
Characters/Pairings: Emobob... Pochi... Tidus (& more!)
What if Auron had never gone to Zanarkand after the start of Braska's Calm? What if he had gone to Besaid instead, to care for young Yuna? What if Tidus had grown up alone and an orphan in Zanarkand...
...And what if Sin came and took him into Spira anyway?
Last time: Tidus, having lost both parents at a young age, has grown up to be a bitter, emo child. While most of Zanarkand is at a Blitz game, Tidus is struck instead by the urge to visit his childhood home. Before arriving, however, something in the water attacked, and the area was destroyed. Tidus came to in the middle of the ocean, disoriented and afraid, but soon lost consciousness.
The Cay Cmik wasn't the vessel's official name-the real name was RTA8067V-but since the salvaging ship was a huge metal beast with a top speed that only barely outstripped a man on a chocobo, Cay Cmik had been adopted and stuck. She had a crew of forty-eight, salvagers, mechanics, engineers and so on, a doctor, cook and three children whose job was only to assist with chores. Her captaincy was shared by a brother and sister, both young, even for Al Bhed.
Cid was the elder child, although of course no one called him that; Cid was his father's name, too, and the teenager resented it. He was Captain or more commonly Aniki, some ancient word translatable as "older brother." Even in names he was in his sister's shadow. That wasn't Rikku's fault, not exactly. Aniki was a fair enough leader, but she was more interested in people than he would ever be. She was nosy at worst and a social butterfly at best. She had the knack of remembering what was wrong with who, and then the ability to do all she could to fix it.
It was only on Rikku's insistence that the Cay Cmik had taken aboard the drifter, although he was half dead and a Yevonite-at best. At worst, he was some new sort of fiend, some Sin-creature with mastery over the human form, a new sort of cruelty. Had the Al Bhed been even a little religious, they would have prayed and cast the boy back overboard. Instead, room was made in the medical cabin, and grumbling about the extra work in cooking, cleaning, caring and possibly fighting the forty-ninth crewmember was giving them.
Rikku ignored all such talk and visited the recovering human regularly. Partially, she was fascinated. Her father forbade contact with non-Al Bhed, and she had never been so close to one before as a result. She admired his pale skin and dark hair. She wondered what his eyes would look like when opened. She was interested by the lack of scars on his arms, scars that any Al Bhed who could call himself a mechanic or machinist had dozens of by the time he was twelve or thirteen. But he was thinner than she would have liked, and had a pinched, unhappy look about him. Even in sleep.
Mostly, Rikku felt pity for the recovering boy. Anyone left alone, drifting in the Baaj ocean had to have some sort of sad story behind him, whether he was Al Bhed or fiend. Or Yevonite.
"Smells like shit in here." The door was heavy metal with rusted joints and announced the boy's entrance better and louder than he himself could have done. "Disinfectant and shit. Why do you hang out here so much, anyway?" He was eight months older and half a foot taller, both things Rikku resented him for.
"Pochi here," she said, not looking up from the large book resting awkwardly on her knees, "is sick."
"Pochi?" Gippal echoed the name uncertainly. "He a dog or a Yevonite?" Regardless of what Pochi was, Gippal sat himself down on the foot of the invalid's bed, pushing the boy's legs out of the way. "Guess it doesn't matter. He's your pet either way, right?" The word in Common to drive home the insult. He noticed for the first time what Rikku was reading and glared at it-a Common-Al Bhed dictionary.
"He hasn't woken up yet, so I can't ask him his real name," Rikku said, unaffected by Gippal's remarks. "What did you come around here for, anyway?"
"Thought you might want to hang out. Finished the engines, don't you wanna see?" Aside from the chore-children, Gippal and Rikku were the youngest of the crew-fifteen and sixteen years old. He was used to spending his free hours with her, and being dropped for a soggy Yevonite was more insult than Gippal could bear.
"I don't want Pochi to wake up alone," Rikku said, voice taking on a motherly edge. "Doctor-sir's shift is over. Won't be back for another three hours."
"So what? Come on; let's go get some food, then. We'll eat together. A date." Not much of a date on a ship, but Gippal was counting on the word as incentive. He wasn't jealous, he knew, just annoyed-wasn't good for someone to get attached to Yevonites, especially not stupid people like Rikku. She was too impressionable, that was her problem-she let people walk all over her, and Gippal was only looking out for her by trying to take her away.
"But what if he wakes up? All alone, on an Al Bhed ship, with no idea how he got here, or what the Al Bhed are gonna do to him-he'll be scared. I want there to be someone with him. And," Rikku added, proudly, "I've been practicing my Common these past couple days."
"What if he's scared? So what if he is! He's Yevon, not a pet. You shouldn't feel sorry for him. Who cares if he freaks out to be on one of our ships. Serves him right," Gippal said stubbornly, darkly, glaring down the bed at the sleeping boy. The light in the hospital bay was adequate and florescent, and it cast odd shadows on Pochi's face, raising his cheekbones and throwing the top half of his face in shadow, mixing with the fall of his hair.
"You don't care at all, do you?" Rikku said, distressed now and shutting her book with a thud.
"No." The flatness of his tone stretched into the accompanying silence. After a minute Gippal added, somewhat awkwardly, "Don't see why you do, either."
"Heartless," Rikku said, a thin line of bitterness in her voice this time. "Want to dump him overboard, then?"
"He's sick. What else are we supposed to do with him? We can't bring him to Home, and we aren't going to land for another two months anyway. Say he gets better, what are you planning to do with him?" He felt a burst of annoyance when Rikku's gaze on the sleeping boy turned tender.
"We can't just throw him in the water," Rikku said. "Aniki agrees with me." And we're in charge, she didn't have to add.
"Gonna have a mutiny on your hands," Gippal said darkly, standing up. "Yevon's bad luck."
"Gippal-" This time, Rikku's attention centered on her friend. "Come on. You're acting weird. I'm sorry." She had the habit of pleading. "Come on. Stick around."
"I don't want to," he said, and she looked upset enough that he felt better. "Stuffy in here, anyway, and smells. Deck's better, let's go."
Rikku was pacified. "Told you, I'm not leaving Pochi. We'll eat here and open the window." The window was a thick, murky porthole that someone had taped a drawing of a beach over.
Gippal sat himself down hard on the patient's legs. "Pochi?" he asked again.
"Had a fish named Pochi once. Shiny purple." She indicated with her hands the approximate size of the long-ago pet.
"Ain't a fish name, either."
The dark haired boy slept on.
But by the end of the week, even Aniki had told Rikku that if her pet, if her Pochi didn't wake up in a day or two, he was going overboard. The only thing less useful than a dead person was one in a coma, her brother pointed out, abstractly intelligent only when he wasn't trying. At least you could put the dead behind you, mourn them and move on. Sick people required attention and work, and both of those were in high demand on a salvage ship.
"He means, get working," Gippal said, wiping the engine oil on his hands onto his trouser legs. "Come on, Riks. Don't you wanna see the crap they dug up last dive?"
"I was on that dive," the girl pointed out. "I dug up that crap."
"Don't you wanna see it?" Pressing the issue. She looked tired, Gippal thought, sort of worn and still, and that wasn't a good sign. "I'm bored without you."
Well. They both avoided each other's eyes at that, red faced. Gippal had a cousin who was like a sister, but Nhadala was five years older and not good for fun. Rikku and Aniki were the best friends he had, Rikku especially. Little sister, that was what she was-that was all he had meant.
"Guess so," Rikku said, chewing a thumbnail and casting half a glance down at Pochi's bed. "Should make sure that the mechanics haven't messed up my stuff," she added brightly, batting her eyes at Gippal, who narrowed his in return.
"Without me, we might as well throw your crap back in the water." But it was said cheerfully: mechanics and engineering was Gippal's life, just like water and alchemy was Rikku's. They made a good team.
Out on the deck it was stormy, grey and choppy. No rain yet, but any fool could see it was brewing. Unnecessary supplies had been brought below-decks, and the rest secured and tied. Rikku looked around. "Gonna be a big one?"
"Not really, just being safe," Gippal said, worldly for having been on securing duty earlier in the day. "Haven't you been above deck at all?"
"No," Rikku said. "No chores except diving, and we aren't at the next site for another few days. Maybe more with the rain." Swimming and diving took a lot of strength and energy, so the salvagers generally had the lightest workload of the crew. Gippal was jealous, but only a little. His parents had died when their ship was attacked by Sin, years ago. Their bodies, drowned, had been found in the wreckage. He wasn't afraid of ships, and no more afraid of Sin than anyone else, but he was a little uneasy about swimming in open water. He always had the feeling of something looming up under him, growing, rising, and sliding against his toes...
Everyone had their phobias, their Sin-fears. Gippal knew a lot of Al Bhed too superstitious to even step foot on a boat. The ocean was Sin's domain, cold, wet, and the opposite of the desert. Unnatural, some of the elders said. Al Bhed are safe in the sands. But everyone understood the need for oceanic salvaging. Much had been lost when the old island was destroyed-salvaging was necessary, even if it meant the ocean.
The Al Bhed's old Home had been on an island near Bikanel, the desert uninhabited but for a few small camp-villages and hundreds of thousands of fiends. Eighteen years ago, Sin had destroyed the island completely, and the survivors had migrated to the desert. Gippal and Rikku were in the first generation of children born in the new city of Home; Aniki had been an infant when the city was built. All Gippal had ever known was the desert and the fiends. "Too cold," he said, to make conversation. The desert got cold at night, but this was damp cold.
Rikku was staring out over the sea. "Hope Pochi wakes up soon."
Gippal was disgruntled. "You haven't even been gone five minutes. Think about something else for a while!"
"It's just that he's sick. I've never seen anything like it," she said apologetically, as if she had vast experience with medicine. "He just sleeps."
"Maybe he'll never wake up."
"There's a Blitz tournament in Luca in a few months, right?" Rikku said. "Been thinking. We'll all be there, getting supplies, so we can drop him off. Everyone in Spira will be in Luca, just about. Maybe Pochi's family, too. If he has any."
"And if he doesn't, then what? You gonna adopt him?"
"We'll leave him at a hospital if he's still sleeping," Rikku said. "If he's awake, I'll help him find a job before we go."
That was more like it, but still: "That's two months from now."
She shrugged out at the water. Gippal was sick of talking about Pochi, sick and tired of the whole affair-so why did he keep mentioning it? Why-he knew it bugged him, so why couldn't he just let it drop, huh? Because Rikku wouldn't drop it. Because Rikku was spending all her time with some Yevonite, and that was-wrong.
"Are you mad at me?" she asked, her attention having shifted from the ocean to his darkening expression. Tugged his sleeve. "Come on, don't be mad. Said I'm sorry."
He wanted to ask her why, again: why she was spending all her time so stupidly. He bit the inside of his cheek instead. "Ain't mad," he said.
"Good," Rikku said, and hopped up to sit on the ship's rail, facing in towards him. "Hate it when you're mad."
Oh. "I just don't trust Yevonites," he said.
"I know." Rikku hesitated for several minutes, kicking her feet and drawing a breath. "Gippal, I-"
The ship lurched suddenly, and Gippal had to grab for her to keep her from toppling over the edge. He caught her as she fell against him, on reflex wrapping arms around her and looking over her shoulder-disturbance in the water? Something prickled up his neck. Rikku shoved herself away from him to look, too. "What's going on?" she yelled, for anyone to answer.
Several other crewmen were rushing up to the deck. "Sin?" Rikku asked, the question repeated back to her as soon as she asked it. They were all edgy, clutching railings and standing tense. "The captain-" Gippal tried suggesting, as the ship lurched again, more violently, and a few people staggered and even fell over.
Rikku had been staring dazedly at the sea, but snapped to attention at this. Shorter than most of the crew by over a head, she shouted her way into the centre of attention of the twenty or so Al Bhed assembled, nervously milling about. "Hey! What the hell you guys doing away from your posts? Think you can get away with shit like this," she added, only prone to swearing when in a position of authority and trying to make a command, something Gippal was fairly certain she had picked up from her father. "If Sin is here, we don't wanna be stuck on the decks cuz you all abandoned the engines," she pointed out, hands on her hips.
"Don't want to be stuck down below, either," a man shouted back.
"Maybe it was just technical problems," a woman pointed out, loudly. "Might not have been Sin at-oh, hell." Because something on the horizon had just surfaced. Too big for a whale, a sight far too familiar.
"It's a ways away, right?" Gippal asked no one in particular. Rikku's authority was slipping away again, and she-suddenly small again-slipped back beside him. "Far off. Doesn't always attack from this distance." The others were starting to talk, to make their own plans, Rikku’s orders forgotten and ignored if not. Should they evacuate? Pray? Run?
"Where's my brother?" Rikku said suddenly, pale and looking around her. "Where's Aniki? He's not here."
Way to change the subject, Gippal thought with some exasperation. Who cared? "Probably in the engine room or something. Hanging out with the navigators. Who cares?"
"My brother..." Rikku was edging away, eyes wide and edgy. "He has to know-Sin-" Gippal tried to grab her hand, frustrated, but Rikku slipped away too quickly for that, vanishing below-decks. She wasn't sure what she was doing, not exactly, only that if Aniki didn't know-if for some reason-or if he did know-he shouldn't be alone, he shouldn't be below-decks. Least on top you could try and swim for it. Rikku's orders to the rest of the crew had been forgotten, and she raced and skidded through the corridors. Those of the crew who hadn't raced to the deck were milling about anxiously in the halls, having guessed at least mostly what the affair was about. A few tried to ask Rikku questions, but she ran past, ignoring them utterly.
"Aniki!" she shrieked, rounding a corner and catching sight of her brother's tattoos at last with a feeling of irrational relief-she'd half expected, somehow, that he was dead, that she was the only one left in charge, that she was now the leader.
He whirled around at her call, squinting in the dim light and too vain for glasses. "Rikku. I was just looking for you."
"I-" she gasped, her sprinting catching up to her suddenly. She sagged against the metal wall and clutched at a stitch in her side. Sin is here, she meant to say, but she had to breathe first.
"Your patient," Aniki said, gesturing roughly behind him at the still-open door of the hospital wing. "Yevony just woke up."