Chapter 12 --- Baby Ochus

            The group retraced their steps until they reached the split in the road again.  They turned right again, thus making their way to Moonflow.  Tydus couldn’t help noticing that the very first fiend that attacked them looked exactly like a miniature Ochu.

            “Booga, booga booga!” it squeaked.

            “It’s a baby Ochu!” Yuna said in delight, “How cute!”

“Woot!  Let’s kill it!” said Tydus, waving his sword.  This they did, but not without half of them getting poisoned.  “What’s with this green star burst above my head?” Tydus asked, “It makes me look drunk.”

            To their further, er, delight, the path seemed to be absolutely full of baby Ochus, and the group burned and hacked there way along the path to Moonflow.  Everyone they met as they went warned them of summoners who were disappearing.

            “Maybe they got eaten!” Tydus suggested.

            “How could all the fiends suddenly develop a taste for summoners?” said Lulu.

            “Do we taste good?” Yuna asked timidly.

            “Well, you have five guardians for them to get past first, and I doubt any of the smart ones think you taste that good,” said Tydus.

            “No, that’s just how much we suck,” Lulu said with a smirk.

Tydus blew raspberries at her.  She threw her doll at his head.

            “Squeak!” went the Moogle.

            “Ha!  Didn’t hurt!”

            “It was a Venom Moogle, see?”  She pointed at the poison symbol over his head.

Yuna sighed and casted Ensuna on Tydus, and they finally made it to Moonflow just as the sun was setting.  The Moonflow was a gently moving river bordered by lilies and pyreflies in the shallows.  The pyreflies were having a water fight and some of the splashing hit the group.  Tydus kicked water back at them, but due to being ten times larger he almost drowned several of them.

            “Whoops.”

            Moving on, they quickly reached the dock where they would cross the Moonflow.  The first thing they saw was-

“Tydus, over here!” Auron yanked Tydus behind a tree before he could get more than a glimpse of the huge thing standing at the dock.

“What?!” Tydus yelled at him, quite ruffled from the yanking.

            “That thing you saw was a shoopuf,” he hissed in an urgent whisper, “It is not, I repeat, not  a fiend and thus you should not attack it.”

            “I only attack things in battle, why would I attack a, um…”

“Shoopuf.  I’m telling you this because when Braska and I brought Jeckt here he was drunk out of his mind and attacked the shoopuf.  You’re not an alcoholic, to my knowledge, but you never know…”

            “I’m not that stupid, or that drunk!” Tydus demanded.

“Just making sure. Shoopuf medical care is expensive.”  This being said, Auron led Tydus back to the dock, and after playing a mini-game called “Merchant Dodger,” the group caught a ride on a shoopuf.   The shoopuf was basically an aquatic elephant with a small carrier on its back where people sat.  The problem was that spme parts of the river were too deep for the shoopuf to keep the carrier above the water, and several times the water ended up inside the carrier with the passengers.  They were quite wet by the time they reached the halfway point.  Because of this the irritable group was taken completely by surprise when a pair of Al Bhed jumped into the carrier, grabbed Yuna, and jumped back into the river.

“Iiieeee!” Tydus screamed sarcastically, “Sin!”

            “Oh shut up,” Wakka scolded, “Let’s go get Yuna.”

            They both jumped into the river and looked around for Yuna.  What they found was, unsurprisingly, a giant piece of machina.  It greatly resembled the blitz ball machina they didn’t fight in Luca.  It had a bubble on top in which Yuna was standing.

            “Don’t worry about hurting me, just get the Extractor!” she said.

Tydus stopped in mid-swing.  “What?  Oh, yeah, we might hit Yuna.”

            “She did say not to worry,” Wakka pointed out.

“Oh yeah.” Tydus finished his swing.

            “Ooof!” said Yuna as the Extractor shook.  “Stupid men,” she muttered.

            “Sorry!” Tydus called.

            Eventually, a very shaken Yuna was released from the dead grip of the machina.  Once back on the shoopuf they were not much wetter than when they had started.

            I should have know the evil Al Bhed were behind the summoners disappearing,” said Wakka.

            “They didn’t seem that tough,” Tydus said, “Do all the other guardians suck that much?”

            “Well, not everyone has five guardians,” said Wakka.

“Oh, no.  There weren’t five people down there fighting.”  Tydus looked around accusingly at the ones who had stayed on the shoopuf.  “You lazy bums didn’t lift a finger to help!”

            “Eh.”  Auron shrugged.

            “Not everyone’s a blitz ball player,” said Lulu.

Kimahri, of course, said nothing.

            They finally made it to the other shore.  Most of the group was drying themselves off with complimentary towels, but the blitzers had the unique ability to become suddenly dry.  Wakka stood there, patiently waiting, but the uppity young Tydus decided, “I’m going to conveniently run ahead!” which he then did.

            There was still a short path before Guadosalam that led along the Moonflow for a while.  Tydus stopped at a small shore.  There was a dead body lying in the dirt.  “How bizarre,” thought Tydus.  He went to find a stick to poke it with, but before he could take a step, the corpse made a move.

            “Blarg,” muttered the dead thing.  It struggled to its feet.  It was wearing a body suit that looked oddly familiar.  Noticing him noticing this, the carcass promptly shed the rubbery covering to reveal green short shorts, an orange shirt, arm coverings that ended with blades at the hands, and a face that was definitely familiar.

“Rikku! What the heck?!”

            “Hello!” said Rikku.

            “Um, hi, it’s nice to see you made it out of that Sin attack, but why were you laying like road kill on the shore of the Moonflow?”

            “You should know, you were the one who beat me up!”

            “You were in the Extractor?!  What did you mean by going after Yuna?”

            “I would tell you, but whoops, here comes your group!”

“Ack!  Hide!  Wakka’s with them!”

            “No problem.”  Rikku struck a pose.  “Poof! Instant Yevon!”

            “I see…”  Rikku hadn’t changed at all, but Tydus supposed it didn’t matter.

            “Yo!” Wakka called from the down the path.  As he and the group got closer he noticed Rikku.  “Who’s the girl?”

            “My name’s Rikku.  I love Yevon!”

            “I’m satisfied,” declared Wakka.  He wandered away.

            “Rikku, you are definitely Al Bhed,” Auron said quietly.

            “How could you tell?”

            “That was a horrible act.  Also, your eyes are extremely peculiar.”

“Oh yeah.”

            “Here, you can borrow my extra pair of sunglasses.”  Auron handed her a small pair of dark glasses that looked exactly like Auron’s.

            “Uh, thanks.”

            When Wakka came back the first thing he noticed was that Auron and Rikku both had the same sunglasses on.  Rikku looked at him innocently.

            “Rikku’s my cousin,” Yuna explained, “She’s going to join our group as another guardian.”

            “Why?”

“Because I currently have nothing better to do.”

            “Whatever.”

“To Guadosalam!” Yuna said, and the unusually large group started off.

            “And Seymour,” mumbled Tydus.

            “I heard that,” Wakka hissed at him.

            They had a few more random encounters before they reached the fiend-free land of the Guados.  In the first of these battles Tydus found out that Rikku had the exact stats as when he had first met her, and while impressive at the time, were really pathetic now.  A saving factor was her powerful overdrive.  She grabbed a Power Sphere and Tydus’s map and created a Pineapple, which she then chucked at a particularly ugly fiend and killed it.

“My map!” Tydus said mournfully.

            “Get over it,” said Lulu, “Look, there’s the entrance to Guadosalam.”