FFX-3 Chat

Chapter 4
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   The Celsius was ripping slowly through the night air. It could not fly more slowly, else it would have run the risk of stalling and crashing.

   Inside the c*ckpit, Paine was listening to Rikku's, Brother's and Buddy's conversation. At his post, before his monitor, Shinra was turning his back to his comrades, focused on his task. Maybe was he making essential calculations for the flight, or maybe was he killing time with a puzzle. Behind his glasses and his mask, his facial expression remained inscrutable.

   “Is the storm approaching?” Paine asked, as she took advantage of a pause in the conversation.

   The Al Bhed, who expressed themselves in a different language from hers, spoke too fast, and she did not understand half of their conversations.

   Rikku was keeping a close watch on the radar.

   “A huge depression is approaching Besaid on the south,” she announced. “It is going to blow hard.”

   “We must inform them of this.”

   “The radio does not work,” Shinra answered, detached.

   Brother yelled, but the pilot contented himself with a shrug.

   “It’s working less and less, and not only with Besaid.”

   “Why?”

   “I do not know, I am just a kid you know.”

   The boy sometimes seemed annoying, but nobody knew machines better than him. Paine held him in high regard thanks to his skills; quite the opposite of Brother, who poured out ranting. Paine did not know what their leader was saying, but his shouts and his gesticulations were irritating her at the highest point.

   “In this case...” she began.

   Nobody listened to her.

   “Shut up!” she yelled.   

Brother stopped brusquely, standing in a ridiculous posture.
   
“Yes?”

   “Should we not hurry to reach Besaid before the storm? The village is made of hessian: we have to inform them of this.”

   “If the wind takes the tents, the inhabitants will lose everything,” Rikku acquiesced.

   Brother seemed about ready to cry. They had left Besaid at top speed, like thieves in the night. They had nowhere to go, but Buddy had preferred not to let their leader too close to the lovebirds, Yuna and Tidus.

   “After all, this is just a storm,” Paine reconsidered. “The inhabitants have overcome worse situations.”

   Their leader was pathetic. Nobody respected him.

   “You think so?” Rikku asked. “According to the radar... Oh! It went off!”

   “She may have had her days,” Shinra declared. “End of the road for her. After all, this is a millenary device: a breakdown is not nonsensical.”

   “Can you not build a new one?”

   “Let me think... Why not? After all, the Al Bhed are comfortable with the machines. But we only know how to use them. Of course, in order to exhume them, figure out their function, recondition them and understand how to operate them, we have developed knowledge and a certain dexterity. But we cannot build new ones. Sometimes, I wonder why. Don’t you find that strange? Even though Yevon loathed them, we have contributed to their use, but we have not retained a single plan in order to build them. Admittedly, we rediscover some rules and forms of calculation, but only when it is necessary. Our ancestors have left nothing. Why? Here resides the greatest mystery of the history of the Al Bhed.”