Besaid, Friday Morning (NFB-distance)

[the_merriest]

Rikku and her little sib Momoko had spent the night in Besaid, in the small hut that was still, technically, Rikku's. She didn't really live here, but it made for a nice home base when she needed a place to crash.

Lately, 'Home' seemed to be wherever Reno was. (And Petey, too.)

Friday morning, bright and early, Rikku took her friend out on one of the trails that led out of town.

"The airship will be here soon," she explained. "But I need to show you what we're dealing with first, okay?"

Momoko might be gunshy, about actually killing fiends. It was understandable. It was also better to find that out now, on Besaid, where the monsters were lightweights.

(for the little sib. there was going to be more detail here, and links to pics and so on, but I am RUNNING out the door for holiday-ing and will be massively AFK for most of the next two days. If I owe you pings (I know Rinoa owes them like crazy) then you have my apologies and we can SP it up? MERRY CHRISTMAS Y'ALL)

Comments

[heromaniac]

"Okay!" Momoko's excitement over being on a different planet!!! was lessened this morning only by the reminder that she was here to help kill.

The fiends here were totally different from her monsters, she knew that already. From anything on Fandom, even. What was it Reno had said that day? 'Different worlds, different rules'? But she was still the same person, no matter what world she was on. Even when she changed into Blossom!

Which, oh yeah, might be a good thing to do.

A quick transformation and Blossom was rushing after Rikku again. She could do this! The fiends here couldn't just be jailed or knocked unconscious and tossed off into the distance or even sealed. They had to be destroyed or more people would be killed. And she wanted to do this - to help these people! This was a hero job, right?

Right?

[the_merriest]

Rikku, for her part, was cracking her neck and loosening up. She hadn't had a good scrap in way too long.

Okay, nothing on Besaid was capable of giving her a good scrap, but this was just the introduction. She hoped, anyway.

"Here," she said, nodding to a yellowish creature that was further down the path. It looked almost like a dog, or a wolf, except with a meaner face. It also had yet to notice them, content instead to sniff the plants and growl menacingly. "A dingo. You want this one, or should I go first?"

She was watching her friend's face carefully. Saying you were okay with killing monsters was one thing. Facing down the monster -- who happened to look relatively harmless, even despite the growling -- and deciding to take it out, that could be another story.

[heromaniac]

"Dingo?" If you squinted, maybe it looked like a dingo? But it totally didn't look like the fiends she'd been imagining. Blossom blinked in confusion at it a moment, and then looked up at the other girl. "And you're sure that's a monster?" It was smelling the flowers, Rikku!

[the_merriest]

"I'm sure," Rikku said. They'd killed enough to be sure about it. "Do you trust me?"

Straightening up, she put a finger over her lips. Quiet. Momoko should hang back, and watch. It was all going to be okay.

And then, Rikku was going to saunter down the path as if she hadn't the least care in the world.

It only took a few steps for the dingo to hear her, and the change was instantaneous. Its head snapped up, and the growling was louder, now. The dingo bared its fangs and approached Rikku, slowly.

[heromaniac]

Of course she trusted her, but uhm...?

Blossom nodded and watched silently as Rikku started down the path. When the dingo turned on her, Blossom did a double-take but instinctively readied her yo-yo. She knew Rikku would be okay (it was Rikku, duh) but she still watched carefully.

[the_merriest]

Rikku, for her part, was playing Innocent Villager today, so Momo would understand what most people faced walking down this path. She hesitated, trying to seem nervous, and was going to start backing away, slowly. Just an average villager, the kind that could be badly hurt by a dingo.

The dingo, sensing the (pretense of) fear, pressed his advantage, stepping forward with a snarl. He tensed, and then an instant later sprung, leaping to hit Rikku around chest-level with his front paws.

[heromaniac]

Rikku had told her to just watch, but as soon as the dingo proved it was going to attack, Blossom had her yo-yo flying.

Sorry, Rikku! It was a hero thing.

Blossom lassoed the dingo around the waist and pulled, sending it flying into a tree a few feet away while she rushed to Rikku's side. "Are you okay? I'm sorry!"

[the_merriest]

Rikku was dusting herself off with a grin. "Nice moves," she said. "I'm fine. Promise. I hope I didn't scare you."

She pointed over at the tree. "Look," she said. "Quickly."

Not at the tree -- which had a definite crack in it from where the dingo had hit -- but at the dingo, or, rather, the empty space on the ground where the dingo should have landed. There were signs of impact, but no dingo to be seen. Instead, a number of roundish white lights floated upward, twining around one another and leaving iridescent trails of color.

[heromaniac]

Blossom turned, sure Rikku meant the dingo had shaken off the toss and was on its way at them again, so she was totally not expecting to see the floating lights.

"Ah! So pretty!" She watched for a moment, then shook her head. She had to stay focussed or she'd be left behind and probably get a lecture. "Uhm, Rikku? What happened? Where did the dingo go? It should at least be injured. Should we track it?"

[the_merriest]

"It's not injured," Rikku replied. "You finished it off. Good job."

And now, the part that was so hard to explain to people from other worlds.

"Someone died here," she said, gently. "Maybe not here. Somewhere near here. It could have been a long time ago, or maybe it was last week. But it was sudden, and violent. And sometimes ... if that happens, the person can't accept their own death. They don't understand. They stay behind. All that energy, mixed with pyreflies ... it turns into an armor, almost. A body. Something they weren't, in life. Something else."

A dingo. A flan. An adamantoise.

[heromaniac]

"I killed it? Ah, I forgot again!" Blossom slapped her forehead. She needed to remember that being thrown against something by her caused major trauma in other worlds. Back home, a monster would have probably just shaken it off and run away. "I totally didn't mean to! I was just trying to stop it! I only..."

But Rikku's words struck a chord, breaking into her panic. "Eh? Wait! They're yurei?!"

[the_merriest]

"Yu-what?" Rikku asked, glancing over at her friend with concern. She reached to put a hand on Blossom's shoulder. "I don't ... think I know what that means? But it's okay, that you killed it. It is. I promise. I should have warned you, how easy these ones are. I mean, you sneeze on them and they fall over."

If you were the world-savey superhero type, anyway. Average villagers, not so much.

[heromaniac]

Blossom appreciated both the touch and the information, drawing a deep breath to calm herself and try to explain. "Yurei. In my world, if a person dies and still has ties to this world - like they got murdered or have something left to do or they're worried about someone or they didn't get their funeral rites - they can get trapped here and become yurei, a ghost that can cause trouble and hurt people."

She frowned. "But that dingo was a real monster, not a ghost! I can't hurt ghosts; I've tried!"

[the_merriest]

"Those were your ghosts, not ours," Rikku reminded her. "It's not exactly a real dingo. I mean, it wasn't born from a Mommy dingo and a Daddy dingo, and it was never a baby dingo. There isn't any such thing. Fiends are just the Unsent, who haven't found their way home yet."

[heromaniac]

So... The yurei here became real?

"The dingo was a spirit of someone who died. And you can't just perform a ceremony or get a monk or miko to banish them?" Bear with her Rikku, she was getting it, but slowly. "And why was there more than one of the... You called them pyre flies?" There had only been the one dingo, right?

[the_merriest]

"Summoners can send spirits to the Farplane," Rikku explained. "But not when they're like that. I mean, I'm guessing. Otherwise the pilgrimage wouldn't have been so hard."

Dance the Sending all the way to Zanarkand. Much safer than fighting the fiends who lurked there.

"The pyreflies are ... weird," she admitted. "No one really understands them. But they're kind of drawn to the Unsent, and the Unsent can use them, to make bodies for themselves. Someone with a lot of purpose" -- Auron, she thought, a small flicker of sadness crossing her face -- "could even look like their old body again, but it takes a very strong will. Most just become fiends."

[heromaniac]

"I got it! It's an egg!" Blossom slapped her palm with her fist eagerly, then looked back to Rikku. "We have to crack the shell! Get the spirits... the Unsent out of the monster body so they can be... Sent?"

[the_merriest]

"Exactly!" Rikku said, affecting her very best hero pose.

Er. Except.

"Except," she said, frowning and wondering exactly how this was going to come off, "that I don't ... I mean. I'm not a Summoner. It's hard to learn."

And, well, the Al Bhed didn't really believe in Summoners, anyway, so it wasn't like she'd had the opportunity to learn, growing up.

"So we're cracking the shells and hoping the Unsent might find their way home themselves," she said. "Or maybe they'll linger without a body until a Summoner comes through. Either way, it's a little bit safer, for now, and we're chipping away at it."

She shrugged. "Sendings are usually at funerals, or after a tragedy. After Operation Mi'ihen, Tidus said that Yunie stayed up for hours, exhausted, just trying to send all of the lost."

The Al Bhed and Crusaders alike. She wondered if she had ever thanked Yuna, for that.

[heromaniac]

Blossom nodded and mimicked the hero pose. This was totally something she could understand now! The fiends were really spirits that needed to be freed! She could TOTALLY do that!

"Even if we're not mik... Summoners, we still have to keep people safe! If someone came along here that wasn't like us and wasn't a Summoner, they could be seriously hurt! And if we release it, maybe the soul will regret what it's done and find it's way again!"

[the_merriest]

"It just might," Rikku agreed. She didn't know how likely it was. Maybe the fiends they killed here were the same souls, over and over again. Or maybe they were making a difference.

At the very least, they bought the villagers a little time.

"So these are fiends," she said, walking over towards the cracked tree. "They come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Some use magic, and others don't. They leave behind items, sometimes."

She scooped up a small sphere, nearly the size of a marble, and held it out for Momoko to see.

"I can use these to upgrade weapons and armor," she explained.

[heromaniac]

Feeling much better now about the whole thing, Blossom moved closer to get a better look. "So that's what you meant when you said they 'drop' things!" She reddened a bit, hoping Rikku didn't ask what Blossom had thought that meant. "Awesome. What is it?"

[the_merriest]

"Just a power sphere," Rikku said, pulling herself up again and dusting off her shorts. "Nothing all that great, but these are dingos. Bigger, scarier monsters drop better loot."

Thankfully, Blossom's meaning didn't really occur to Rikku, or else she would have had to tease her friend.

"But that's why we're hitting the airship," she explained. "So we can go somewhere with tougher fiends. All I need are the drops. So I can just hang back in case you need me."

Sink or swim, but with a safety net.

"If you're up for it."

[heromaniac]

"I am! I mean, I thought I was before, but now I really am!" Knowing that this was helping the spirits stop being monsters made it completely and totally a hero job, and she was a hero!

She shrugged and grinned sheepishly, then. "I just wish it didn't seem like we're killing them. Telling me that it never was a baby and didn't have parents really really helps, but it's still hard to think about."

"So this dingo was, like, a level one monster or something, then, right?" Being friends with Kaoru meant one learned at least some videogame speak.

[the_merriest]

"It's okay," Rikku said, placing a supportive hand on her friend's shoulder. "If you get right to the edge and can't finish something off? Call me in, and I'll do it. I'm letting you take lead, but I can always step in for whatever you need. And it might get easier, with time."

And the first few times that a monster knocked Blossom over, or took a bite out of her arm. It was harder to feel sorry for something that had just given you bruises.

She giggled, at the rest. Look, she'd dated a video game geek, even if that had been a few years ago, now. "This is totally the tutorial level," she said. "We're skipping ahead to the good stuff."

And if they skipped ahead a little too far, they'd find somewhere in the middle to go, until Blossom found her footing.

[heromaniac]

"I totally don't want to kill them, but I know why it's important now, so I think I can? But... So far I've only ever accidentally killed some zombies and some evil invading gremlin-like things." She shrugged. "It's my job to protect everyone, no matter who they are, so it's totally hard to think about."

"Tutorial? Was I that obvious?" Blossom scratched her cheek, an embarrassed grin on her face. "Uhm. I think I can move up a few levels? At least to fight. Although if you have any fiends that are actually cute, I may have to be reminded of the spirits part."

[the_merriest]

"It's okay," Rikku said. "One fiend at a time, all right? You get a case of the willies, you tag me in for back-up. I don't want ... you know."

She hesitated, biting her lip. "I'm mostly scared about ... asking you to do things you're not okay doing," she said. "And then having you kind of look different at me, later? If we don't end up fighting any fiends at all, that's okay with me, too. I just ... hate thinking it might make things weird with us, I guess."

Not that she had had any experience with that. Like, say, an ex-boyfriend telling her she was bloodthirsty.

[heromaniac]

Blossom frowned, trying to figure out what Rikku meant. "But, I already knew. And I've seen you fight at school? I mean, I totally thought it was just because they were attacking people and I didn't know all of the story, but I knew! That's why you build all the droids, right? I'm not sure how good I will be at the actual... killing, but I came here to help and to learn more about it."

She sighed, and toed the ground, not wanting to really go into the next bit. But if she could tell anyone, it was Rikku. "I, uhm. When a friend of mine got kidnapped recently, I was trapped and she had to fight the kidnapper herself. By the time I was able to get free, Leda'd killed the kidnapper woman." An image of the body came to mind and Blossom frowned deeper, this time at her own failure. "As a hero, I have to help and protect everyone, but I let someone get killed. But other people seem to not be as upset about things like that, so I thought maybe I just needed more experience. It's totally different investigating a death and actually being there for it."

[the_merriest]

Rikku chewed her own lip for a moment, then pulled her friend into a fierce hug.

"The temple," she said. "The one that was on the ice. We went there, to find a guy named Seymour. Seymour Guado. He ... was dangerous. He'd killed his own father, and he was trying to hurt Yunie. So we knew what we had to do, and ... a-and we did it. But we still ..."

She shook her head, searching for words. "Him, just lying there. It got to me. We did what we had to do, and I'd do it again, but it's not ... something to dismiss. Taking a life should never be easy."

Fiends were trapped spirits. Seymour had been a person.

[heromaniac]

EXACTLY!

Blossom hugged back just as tightly... and maybe a bit more as she commenced with the babble. "With the zombies it was an accident and... and they were already dead? But the elf woman was just another person who was doing something bad! And she had magic, and it was hard fighting her, and I know Leda didn't just kill her for no reason, but I should have been able to save them both. And seeing the elf woman lying there and all the blood and knowing she had no one to save her? And then we had to leave her and get Leda to the clinic and no one cared."

Sorry Rikku, but she'd bottled this up for a while.

"I know I'm not a great fighter, because I think like that. I know that's why Reno and I had that fight and why he thinks I'm weak and totally not a rookie and it's why I don't go to the reserves meetings, too. And so I wanted to try to learn how on other worlds where the monsters are different and I'm sure I'll be totally fine now that I know it's not really killing them, but... you won't think I'm bad at it, too, if I do fail, right?"

[the_merriest]

"I won't, I won't, I won't," Rikku insisted. "I won't think anything bad about it. It's okay that you're not okay with it. I'm not okay with it. Except with fiends, but I'm used to it, and you're not. We had different experiences, you know?"

And her boyfriend didn't have trouble killing people, which they had had to work their way through, too. At least she'd realized that she could easily have done the same thing to him that Jude had done to her. It made it easier to step back and recalibrate.

She wasn't letting go just yet, either. "The woman ... she was bad, right? Going to hurt someone. It's ... it's sad when anyone dies, but it's way better that it was her than Leda. And I'm glad your friend Leda's okay. It's not your fault. You can't save everyone. All you can do is your best."

[heromaniac]

Blossom listened and nodded, totally grateful to have someone understand. "I'm used to beating up on monsters, but they can be put in jail or just beating them totally makes them stop what they're doing. And I didn't even have to fight many people-criminals until I got here."

"Yeah, she was trying to kill us, kill Leda so I know Leda didn't do anything but try to stay safe and make the elf woman stop." She took a deep breath. "I've never failed at being a hero when people can get hurt."

[the_merriest]

"You didn't fail," Rikku said firmly. "It's not failing. Leda's alive. If you had gotten there sooner -- you might have had to make that choice yourself. And that would have been hard."

And Momoko would have had to live with herself afterward. That would have been difficult, no matter which way she chose. It was so easy to second-guess yourself.

"You're still a hero," she said. "Being a hero gets messy. And it gets hard. You can't always ... save everyone."

Tidus. Auron. Everyone in Home.

She shivered. "A few of us, we ... used to joke about that," she said. "Saving the world ... isn't as fun as people think it is. There's a cost."

[heromaniac]

"People keep saying that; that you can't save everyone. I even tell other people that, and that we just have to try harder the next time. That we owe that much to them at least."

"But that totally doesn't help when you're standing there, knowing you were just a few seconds late for someone, does it? And that's kind of the cost, isn't it? Making that choice. We're always going to be too late for someone, or giving up something important to us."

Like, say, her powers, to seal a fire demon.

[the_merriest]

"It's the way it goes," Rikku said, her voice softer. "You can't save everyone. Everyone has an off day, sooner or later. And sometimes, you're way too late. All you can do is your best. All you can do is save whoever's left. You protect the innocent and hope for the best. And sometimes ... sometimes it haunts you. They haunt you. The ones you failed."

The bodies you stepped over, your friends and loved ones, so you could get the survivors onto the airship.

"It sucks," she agreed. "And it's hard, and it doesn't leave you, but ... that's what it means. Being a hero."

Being willing to pay that cost.

[heromaniac]

"It totally sucks, but yeah. It's always in my mind." Blossom pulled herself back up to standing straight. As a Hero totally should.

"You know, I don't talk to people about this stuff anymore. Everyone I know seems to, I don't know, think I'm being silly? About being a hero? Or they think I mean a crimefighter or a warrior or something." She took a deep breath and grinned wryly at Rikku. "But I don't. I mean hero. I want to be someone who saves people. All people. Even the bad ones, because even they deserve a hero if they need one."

She rubbed her face a moment, then struck a pose. "Right! I don't want there to be a world where there are no heroes like that. So as long as I can, anywhere I can, for anyone I can, I totally want to be one. No matter what it costs me."