********* (I Love You) Chapter XXXIX: SurpriseFollow

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Fun fun fun! More story goodness^^

Read, review, like usual.

Previous chapters, aki, and Interludes

Part I - Connection (Enishi)

Kasho II - Kodoku (Solitude)

Part III - Reunion (Saikai)

Kasho IV- Suriyoru (Closer)

Part V- Secrets (Hiou)
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(Chapter XXXVII)
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=35&mid=1124889122641444604&num=1

(Aki XXXVIII)
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=35&mid=112531765691425700&num=6
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Bonus Story: Rainfall Memories

Not dedicated...
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Chapter XXXIX: Surprise
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This is it.

Eyes closed, I heard the hammer slammed home on the gun, and the percussion cap explode.

Im not dead.

Or am I, and I’m just on my way to final judgement by the GMs as I speak?

Slowly, carefully, I opened up my eyes...

And saw the Bastokian flag dangling down in a banner from the wooden outpost. It was torn, but there was no mistaking the blue and white symbol of the proud humes as it flapped in the

Slowly, I turned my head towards where the quite insane man was holding a gun to my head just a few seconds beforehand...only to see him slump down to the ground dead, a bloody hole gaping out of his chest and the scent of gunpowder in the air. The gun was in tattered fragments, most of them stuck protruding out from the hume’s body at random angles. It was a rather gruesome sight, but for some reason, it didn’t bother me in the least.

It...misfired and exploded?

How?...

Bastokian guns don’t explode when misfired, ever. They were designed by the great Cid after all, not some idiot smither.

It seemed impossible, but yet the evidence was staring me in the face.

Looks like he’s slipping up...but, its good for the Grand Duchy I guess in the long run. Jeuno would love to take over the number one technological spot in Vana’diel from Bastok in a heartbeat.

I stepped over his and Aoi’s bodies, and went quickly over to where the Bastok flag was hanging down from a post. Gripping it in my hands, I tugged downwards a couple times until it ripped off with a giant sheering sound and the now free end fell down towards the ground. Snapping the loose side into the air, I then caught it and held it securely until I walked back over to the hume’s body and draped it over his dead body.

At least give the dead some respect, certainly more than he would have showed me.

"Hey Dimitri, nice show of respect there. You planning to bury him also?"

I turned around where I was standing to see that Gilgamesh had apparently popped out from nowhere and was walking towards me with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed in a luxurious suit, stitched out of what looked like to be the finest crawler silk available this side of the Far East empire, and his gaint matched that of a man who was in total control of the situation at hand. He finally closed the distance between us after only a few seconds, and then shook my hand lightly before he knelt over Aoi’s body, totally ignoring the Iron Musketeer.

"How did you get here? You came outta no where. You get warped?" I asked, quite curious at his method of travel.

Gilgamesh held up his right hand as his left pushed aside Aoi’s garments to study a few wounds on her body. His hand was scarred from the many years of being with the Tenshodo, but I could see a silver ring that glinted in the fire that burned to light up the outpost at night.

"It’s called a return ring," he said absentmindedly as he reached into one of Aoi’s pockets and pulled out her ID, "Something your boys over at the Jeuno research and development department cooked up recently, and I managed to get a hold of one before they get put into use. When the band is twisted around in a full circle around a finger, it instantly warps the wearer to the nearest outpost. Quite useful when my taru friends in Windurst told me that you asked to be outpost warped here, and I happened to be in the area."

Gilgamesh flipped open Aoi’s ID card, revealing a rather simple, abiet discolored, picture of the girl with mismatched eyes, and a name. It was an older style of identification, one that had stopped being produced about the same time that I began to work for the Grand Duchy.

"So its true...she’s really dead."

Gilgamesh looked up at me with a somber expression on his face, and I couldn’t help but feel a stab of sympathy for him.

"She died trying to protect Hitomi and me from the beastmen in Sabrutabaruta." I said quietly, "She bought us enough time until Fenrir appeared..."

Gilgamesh didn’t react at all to my having said that the guardian of the moon had appeared, but instead said something that rather surprised me.

"Do you have her sword Dimitri?" he asked, with a tone of casualness to his voice.

Bells went off in my head for some reason that I couldn’t explain, and I replied cautiously. "No...I think its still outside at the tower where Hitomi and I were holed up, and Aoi died at. Why?"

Gilgamesh’s eyes went wide for an instant before snapping back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened.

"Nothing...nothing..." he said as he stuffed Aoi’s identification into an inside pocket of his suit jacket.

"At any rate, Dimitri, please leave Aoi and this"-with that, he kicked the Iron Musketeer’s disfigured form rather rudely with the toe of his boot-"in my care. I’ll be sure that they both get a proper funeral. In the meantime, you go back to searching for that Eruntalon Code, and try to fix things up with Hitomi, okay?"

"How did you know about that?" I said in shock.

"About how things are going with Hitomi? Remember, little gets past me these days. I -am- the Tenshodo leader after all. You shoulda remembered that from our days of working together, no?" He chuckled a bit as I then rolled my eyes in exasperation.

"Please...I’d rather forget about that part of my life, if you wouldn’t mind."

An uncomfortable silence fell between us, only broken by the distant cawing of a vulture as it most likely picked apart the bloody remains of a lizard that had died from sunstroke.

"At any rate, I might as well go to Bastok anyways now." I finally said and adjusted my tunic slightly to rest a bit more easily on my shoulders now that I wasn’t carrying Aoi’s weight on my body anymore.

Gilgamesh only nodded before reached behind his back and pulling out a small black object. Looking at it, I recognized it as a bat that had its wings outstretched and a rather childish expression on its face. His thumb then pressed a hidden button on the back, and I saw a slender shaft slip out of the bottom of the bat object and snap into place after about a meter or so.

"This is another toy that the Grand Duchy came up with, called a Treat staff. Even more useful than the return ring, it returns me back to where my home is in Jeuno instantly without me having to contract out a black mage to cast a warp spell on me." Gilgamesh spoke proudly, obviously quite proud of the inventions that he had managed to somehow wrestle away from the Archduke, as he then raised the staff high up into the air above him and the two bodies.

"Take me home," he commanded. With that, the bat’s eyes glowed an eerie red color, and suddenly a dark purple-black cone shone out from its body and radiated down to the ground, enveloping everything inside. After a couple seconds the bat and magic cone disappeared, taking ‘Papa’ and the two bodies with it.

"Neat trick," I muttered before orienting myself south by the path of the moon, and starting to finish up the trek to Bastok once more.

-fin Chapter XXXIX: Surprise