Ruby and Emerald (part 2 of 9)

Gritting her teeth against the cold and the pain in her arm, she shuddered while continuing to kick upwards. All the factors tumbled together to make her progress through the water slow, and she couldn't help but wonder if the water were thicker here, even if she knew that to be silly. The light around her got brighter and brighter as she swam, and finally, with a toss of her head and a gasping sort of cry, she broke the surface, treading water to keep there. To her dismay, she was quickly aware of the silence aside from the waves, unable to hear the thrum of the Celsius' engine.

"Tyssed." She scanned the surface of the water, trying not to twist herself around too much, though she could easily position herself with the sun. Spying a darker spot on the horizon, she fancied that it might be one of Spira's multiple little uninhabited islands. She started to talk to herself as she floated there.

"Okay, so, I fell off the Celsius, which was behaving unnaturally. Brother's an idiot, but he's not that much of an idiot, so something must have been wrong. Thankfully, the ship can float, so if it stops working, it's not gonna sink." She refused to think of what would happen if the airship landed upside down, knowing that would make it go under. "So I've got about a fifty percent chance that they'll come back soon."

Rikku looked down at her arm, and grimaced, quickly looking away. It was broken alright, her entire upper arm bruised, and she could easily tell where the bone was broken at an odd angle. She thanked the fayth that it hadn't broken the skin, she didn't need to deal with an open wound in the salt water too. At least the cold water was numbing the pain somewhat, but at the same time, it was numbing her too. She knew that most certainly wasn't a good thing. "I want to wait, but what if they can't get back here? Oi." She let herself float to her back and started to kick, directing herself with her good arm. "What if they don't...no, they'll come look. Paine wouldn't let them do otherwise." She blinked faintly as she realized that inside, she was positive that Paine would do so. If you looked at their friendship, and how many times Paine would threaten Rikku with pain for something or another, one might not think that the warrior cared for the thief, but Rikku had always known that Paine had emotions somewhere down in there, and she powerfully cared for her and her cousin. Rikku smiled lightly, letting her thoughts drift as she kicked towards what she hoped was the island, thinking back to when she had first met Paine.

"Keja sa y sehida! Tysh." (Give me a minute! Damn.) She strained upwards for the next handhold. It only figured that the sphere would have to likely be imbedded in the middle of the cliff face, making Rikku have to climb for it. Hearing noises down below, she glanced down, and muttered another curse as she saw some of Leblanc's goons down at the base of the cliff. "Great, and if I don't get this sphere first I'll never hear the end of it."

The three goons pointed up at Rikku, then gestured about wildly as they talked. Finally, they took off, and Rikku half hoped they'd leave, but no such luck. They were only going up the side path Rikku had already tried, but were seemingly aiming for the top of the ledge. "Oh crap, they better not be trying from above!" She started moving faster, almost slipping twice in her haste. The goons reached the top and stood around it, looking down at her, about fifty yards up, and seemed to be arguing about if they should try to climb down or not. Rikku smirked as she reached the orb while they argued, and eyed her prize. It was pretty well wedged in where it was, causing the thief to have to consider her options. Wedging herself against another small ledge and holding on with one hand and her feet hopefully on secure footholds, she reached for one of her daggers, and started to try to pry the sphere loose without damaging it.

With a victorious squeak from the blond Al-bhed, the sphere popped loose, and to Rikku's simultaneous surprise, amusement, and embarrassment, bounced off her collarbone and wedged itself inside of her bikini top, between her breasts. "Wellll, that's one place to store a sphere..." She mumbled to herself before glancing upwards to see where the goons were. Blinking when she noticed that just the guy was left there, she looked around for the other two femgoons, and spied one down at the base of the cliff, and the third femgoon halfway down the pathway. "...stuck."

"Come on girlie! Give up that sphere!" The male goon shouted down to her, pointing with his rifle.

"Heck no! This is mine, I found it fair and square, AND I climbed all the way up here for it. If you want it, come and get it!" She stuck her tongue out at him, betting that he wasn't stupid enough to shoot at her while his partner was down directly below.

"KRACKPING!' The sound of the shot ringing off the stone nearby quickly quelled -that- ambitious overestimation of the goons intelligence, and Rikku squeaked, nearly slipping.

"Rikku! Fryd'c rybbahehk tufh drana?" (What's happening down there?) Brother's tinny sounding voice shrilled in Rikku's ear again.

"Not NOW Brother!" She scrambled sideways, away from the goon on the pathway, down below a secondary ledge that mostly blocked the male goons sight. This left only the two femgoons, and one tossed a fire spell at her, scorching the rock. Rikku silently thanked the fayth that the goons had proven themselves to be bad shots in the past, and weren't making an exception for that this time. "Nice to see that Leblanc is keeping up her ever so high standards in the creeps she hires!" She shouted, and the two femgoons flapped their arms around. A teensy part of her mind thought that it might be a bad idea to taunt the people throwing spells at her as she scrambled sideways and down at a slight angle, but she couldn't stop herself.

"We're the better sphere hunting group than you Gullwings are, and you know it! That's the only reason you feel you have to yell such insults at us!" One of the femgoons sounded so...convinced...of that, and Rikku laughed.

"Oh yeah? Then how come the four of us have managed to find more spheres than your entire Syndicate?" Rikku dangled from one arm for a moment, swinging back and forth until she got close enough to another ledge to latch on with her other hand.

"You stole the last three!" The femgoon on the pathway threw a weak ice spell at her, grazing her back, but Rikku was so warmed up from the climbing that it honestly felt good instead of hurting.

"We did not! I only take your gil!" Rikku grinned, knowing that was only partial truth. She took anything not pinned down, but these low level goons rarely had a sphere, and she was never able to steal one off of them. Any spheres lost by them to other hunters or stupidity was likely always blamed on someone 'stealing', and who better to blame than the all Al-bhed spherehunting group that was leaps and bounds better than they?

Another shot rang out from above, but again missed, apparently getting too near to the goon on the ground, who yelled up at the one up above. Rikku shook her head and moved as fast as she could, trying to take advantage of the distraction. Unfortunately, moving faster meant she wasn't quite paying enough attention to the stabilities of the rock, and with a shout of surprise, lost her handholds and fell. She was thankfully only about fifty feet off the ground at that point, but landed with a oof and a loss of breath, wincing as she rolled to her side and pushed herself up on her hands and knees. She saw the two femgoons rushing towards her out of the corner of her eye, and desperately tried to regain her breath so she could fight them off. The two femgoons skidded to a stop within spellcasting range, and Rikku was momentarily impressed with the fact that they were smart enough to try to cast their spells together for maximum damage, but dismayed that she was the target, and unable to summon her voice to call for help from the Celsius. She closed her eyes, steeling herself for the incoming spells and trying to draw a breath.

A shout and cry from one goon and the feel of a partly aborted fire spell made Rikku open her eyes and look to the two goons. One was down and out of it, the other scrambled back to stand against the rockwall. Standing over the fallen goon and eying the second goon was a tall, dark clothed woman, a long and wicked looking sword held leisurely in one hand.

"Now now, three against one? That's not very nice." The woman's voice was cool and confident, and Rikku felt an instant pang of attraction towards the pale haired warrior, staring at the scene in front of her even as her lungs were screaming at her for air.

The femgoon launched an ice attack towards the woman, who easily dodged it on her way as she rushed to strike the pink clad caster, knocking her down and away like the first. The male goon made an appearance now, but one look at the two fallen goons as he came around a corner and he turned tail and ran.

Tears were running down Rikku's face by this point in time and she turned her gaze away from the woman, hanging her head and grimacing as she finally managed to draw in a ragged breath, gritting her teeth against the pain in her back from the likely busted or at the very least bruised ribs. She breathed as deeply as she could aside from the pain and eyed the sphere that dropped from her chest and into the dirt in front of her, thinking of how this thing had better be worth all of this trouble.

The sound of footsteps drew Rikku's gaze up, and she met the eyes of the warrior woman, who was now crouched next to her, and holding out a potion. "Here, drink this when you catch your breath." The woman's relatively emotionless voice sent a small tremor through Rikku, who eyed the warrior up and down for a moment.

"I don't know if...if I should thank you..or..or be running." Rikku managed to say, gingerly reaching out and taking the offered potion.

A faint smirk rested on the woman's lips. "You're right to not know that. I could relatively easily take you our in your current state. But why would I want to do that?" She shrugged, shifting to kneel and sit back a bit. "It's up to you to trust me."

Rikku quickly drank the potion, not taking her eyes from the woman. She found herself drawn in a bit by the woman's red eyes and spiky pale hair, it not something she was used to seeing. "If I hadn't fallen, I could have easily taken them down you know."

The woman raised an eyebrow slightly. "A child with a pop gun could have taken them down." She smirked a bit, and Rikku pushed herself into a sitting position, palming the sphere as she did so and discreetly slipping it into one of her pouches. She noticed the faint look of surprise in the woman's eyes as she noticed that the sphere was no longer there.

Rikku sat, but it was in a position she could easily jump up from or get away from a strike in. She was grateful for this woman's help, but she still didn't know if she should be thanking her or running yet, if the woman was really just after the sphere or not. "Yeah, but it's fun to fight them, they're so stupid at what they do. At least sometimes one can get gil off of them."

"I figured as much, but they weren't exactly honorable in their method of attack." The woman ran one hand through her hair, and blew at a floating seed as it went past her face.

Rikku smiled at that. She wouldn't have attacked someone who just fell so far and was out of breath, but not really out of any sort of sense of honor more than it was just more fun to fight someone on their feet when you were confident in your abilities. With fiends, that was a different story, but with a person, it was just more enjoyable to not take advantage of something like that unless the situation called for it. Holding one hand out, she smiled one of her radiant smiles. "I'm Rikku, thanks for the help!"

The woman looked down at Rikku's hand, her eyebrow arching again at Rikku's bright smile. She hesitated a moment, then reached forward and shook the offered hand. "You're welcome, Rikku."

"What, I don't get a name?"

"Why should you?"

"Well, I'd like to know who I owe a favor too."

The warrior smiled faintly. "Fair enough. I'm Paine."

"Paine huh? Nice name. What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"

Paine shrugged. "Traveling."

"Where?"

Paine eyed the blond in front of her. "Nowhere in particular."

"Why?"

"You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"

"Of course."

Paine sighed lightly. "Well, truth be told, I was looking for you."

"Me?" Rikku blinked, a little bit of wariness kicking in again, her mind backtracking to try to think of if she had seen Paine before, and stolen something from the woman who now wanted it back.

"You are a member of the Gullwings, right? You're Guardian Rikku, aren't you?"

Momentarily taken back by being recognized as one of Yuna's guardians, Rikku smiled. "Yep, I'm a Gullwing. I'd not be listening to my brother and climbing stupidly high rock walls to pry a sphere out of a hole just for fun afterall." She paused for a moment, considering this as she deliberately left out any sort of acknowledgment about her time as a Guardian. "Well, maybe I would." Paine made a strange sort of face out of the corner of her eye, and she found herself liking the fact that she seemed to have the ability to disarm this cool and collected woman.

"Good. I have the perfect way you can repay me for saving you today."

"Repay you? You're not getting the sphere! Oh no, not after all the crap today!" Rikku hopped to her feet and stepped back once, and Paine chuckled lightly.

"I don't want the sphere, at least, I don't want to take it from you. I want to see what's on it, and see what other sort of spheres you have, and I've heard you have a lot of them. None of the other groups have had anything that I wanted to see."

Rikku found herself brimming with questions, like who told Paine about the Gullwings, who she had talked to already, what sort of spheres the scant few other groups who searched for them had, but only one came to her tongue. "Why?"

"Because."

"Yes, well, you and the rest of Spira want to see these. The Praetor of New Yevon has let it be known that he's interested in buying spheres for a common library, and so has the Maven of the Youth League. Personally I'd rather sell to the Youth League, but, well, you can wait till it's set up and we sell our spheres."

Paine sighed again, and stood as well. "I'd really rather not wait that long. Is there something I could do that would convince you if you don't want that to be how you repay me for my help?"

Rikku tilted her head slightly. No one had asked to see their spheres before, not like this. She and her brother being a pair of packrats, they actually still had all of the sphere's they found, which was a relatively large number, and had fended off offers from the two groups currently vying for power in Spira, not needing the gil bad enough to get rid of their little pieces of history just yet. She really, honestly, wasn't entirely certain as to why she, Brother, Shinra and Buddy were out and running around the world like they were, but imagined for her Brother at least, it was largely to get out from under their father's gaze, and she was only too happy to travel, not wanting to settle after saving the world from Sin a year earlier. She furrowed her brow slightly, then, the idea struck her like a lighting bolt.

"You can join us!"

Paine blinked. "What?"

"You can join us! You can search for spheres with us, and that way you'll be able to see what we found. You said it yourself, we have more than any of the other groups out there, and there's a reason for that, we're good. I'm good. Brother and Buddy and Shinra just fly the ship. I'm the one who goes out and crawls all over the place for these things. We're good, but I could certainly use the help of someone on the ground when going after something. I'm really tired of having to run away from the really large fiends. I can take care of most myself, but, hey, it would be great to have a partner! And another woman, god, I'm so tired of being around men all the time. What is it with large amounts of Al-bhed men traveling around in like, packs?"

Rikku knew she was babbling, but she could also tell that Paine seemed to be considering it. "Come on Paine. Or would you rather go join with those pink jumpsuit wearing goofs Leblanc employs and be constantly beaten to the punch by me and the Gullwings?" Rikku smirked, looking towards the two femgoons who had gotten up and were currently trying to sneak away without being noticed. Fishing in her pouches for a moment, Rikku hauled back and tossed a grenade at them, laughing as it exploded and they ran off screaming.

Paine looked back and watched the two goons flee, and shook her head. "I would never wear pink." She emphasized 'never', then turned to look at Rikku. "A Gullwing, huh? Well, why not?"

"Great!" Rikku hopped from one foot to the other for a moment, then held out her hand. "Welcome to the group!"

"Rikku? Rikku! I am the leader! I am.." Brother's voice was cut off as Rikku clamped her hand down over the communicator, still holding her other hand out to Paine.

"Don't mind him. He's easy to ignore."

Paine looked doubtful for a moment, but then with a faint smirk, took Rikku's hand and shook it firmly. "Great. When do I start?"

She oofed softly as her back ran aground, rolling to her right and dropping her hand to the sand below, her knees sinking into the sand. Looking upwards, she eyed the wide sandy beach, and the small cluster of trees on the circular, tiny island. Starting to shiver as she got up out of the water, she staggered to shore, falling twice to her knees. Forcing herself to stand again, she gathered together a few small pieces of wood, sitting down with her back to the trees. Closing her eyes, she continued to shiver as she tried to focus, and after a great amount of strain and concentration, she cast a small fireball to the wood, starting a bit of flame growing, feeding it wood until she had a nice, bright fire. Just in time as well, as she watched the sun sink below the waves. Scanning the sky for the airship, she sighed, scooting a little closer to the fire, and hunkered down to wait.