Thirst Unabated

Part Three
by Aaron D. Roberts

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Lulu growled as she threw a fireball at a clockwise angle. The vampire yelled as he burst into flame, though the scream faded when he crumbled into dust. Reacting to some sixth sense, she lunged to the right just as another of her undead foes launched an attack from behind. "Bastards," she grunted, grateful that the midafternoon sun was still strong, weakening her foes demonic strength.

"There's no need for such language," another damned vampire said, crawling from another of the newly-reconstructed huts in Killika. The city was actually looking a lot better, except for the hordes of undead that held it in a grip of terror.

"I find it hard to quibble about the propriety of my language when I'm faced with several dozen monsters who are trying so very hard to kill me," Lulu said, frying another two vampires who were attempting to noisily sneak up on her. The people of Kilika, those who hadn't yet been turned or killed, were cowering in their huts, after Lulu had informed them earlier that no vampire could enter their home unless invited.

"One should always be concerned with proprieties," the vampire said, rubbing a gold medallion on his ornate purple robes, then returning it to its place of honor in the center of his chest.

Two more vampires approached Lulu, one of whom was, or had been, a child. Lulu shoved her pity and disgust into a remote corner of her mind, then drew a circle of flame around herself which enveloped the two other vampires. "Friends of yours, I assume," she told to the smartly-dressed vampire, whom she had taken to be the leader of her foes.

The vampire rolled his red eyes. "'Friends' is such a relative term," he lamented, fiddling with something in his hands that Lulu couldn't quite identify.

She shrugged as she looked around, and seeing no other vampires around, she said, "Finding a man as well-spoken and polite as you is quite the rarity these days, but I hope you'll forgive me if I feel I have no choice but to...well, incinerate you." She raised her right palm and summoned forth the usual magical energies.

The well-dressed vampire cackled harshly. "Of course I don't mind, my dear, but-" at this he raised his own hand and a spout of water erupted from thin air, quenching Lulu's magical flame. "I hope that you'll forgive me if I have other plans."

That was great. That was just perfect. Just what she needed, in fact. A vampire who could use magic.

"She needs some help!" Tidus shouted plainly.

"She does not," Auron said with conviction. "And even if she did, we could not provide it."

To an uninformed bystander, looking upon this scene, in the afterlife, the Farplane, or whatever one might term it, the four men would have been standing together, side-by-side, looking at nothing. In truth, each man was using his worldsight to view the situation Lulu now found herself in, though it was likely that each saw the scene in a slightly different way, from a slightly different angle.

"This sucks," Jecht said. "What good does it do to see this crap if we can't do anything about it?"

Braska smiled. "Mostly, those who are new to the Farplane use the worldsight often. I only used it to check on Yuna four or five times, myself, although, I must admit, I was spending a great deal of time getting re-acquainted with my wife."

Tidus grumbled something under his breath.

"What was that?" Jecht demanded.

"Nothing."

"Come on, spit it out!"

"Have you even seen her since you finally got here?"

Jecht stomped on the imagined ground. "I don't wanna hear it! What business is it of yours, anyway?"

"She's my mom, that what business it is of mine! She died pining away for you, but you were fine, weren't you Dad? You just had fun bouncing around the world with your new friends-"

"That's right," Jecht said, his voice dripping contempt. "Let it all out. Don't hold anything back."

Auron kept silent, as he was inclined to do, as the father and son continued their shouting match. He'd sat through several similar occurrences since his death, and had experienced even more complaints from each about the other while he still walked the earth. Having heard both sides of the argument backwards and forwards, he concentrated his attention on what was going on in Spira rather than in his immediate presence.

In fact, Auron thought, Lulu was holding her own quite well against the vampire mage. She almost seemed to be enjoying herself; he knew that she hadn't been tested magically in some time. From what Tidus and Jecht had explained to him about vampires, Auron guessed that the one Lulu was currently facing was one of the older ones, perhaps even one of the vampire elders.

"-and you'd never take me out for pizza. All the other kids' fathers would take them out for pizza-"

"Would you forget about the $#&ing pizza? It's not like we never did anything together..."

"Oh, right, I forgot about those times you'd try to hit me with the blitzball!"

"For cryin' out loud, I wasn't aiming for your head-"

Oh. This was interesting. Lulu had set up a magical barrier around herself to reflect the vampire's spells back at him. Auron sniffed. She must have been using this as a delaying tactic. The vampire wouldn't risk using fire under normal circumstances, and he definitely wouldn't use it now. Auron wondered what Lulu had in mind.

Tidus was talking to Braska now. "He'd have loads of TV interviews, but would he ever let me go on? NOOO! I had to stand under the camera, or behind it or something, like he was ashamed of me!"

"I didn't want you tearing up on television!" Jecht shot back. "Braska, wouldn't you be embarrassed if your kid started crying while you were on television?"

"That never really came up," Braska said. "Most people didn't want to interview me until after I'd died."

Auron tried to ignore the din as he focused in on Lulu's batrle. Now she was trying to rely on her MiniMog to do her work for her. The grizzled veteran could tell that Lulu had linked its element to fire as it blasted away on the vampire's legs, but its attack wasn't quite effective.

"After you died it was even worse! Oh, there's Jecht's kid-he'll never be as good as his old man!"

"And you never were, were you?"

"Hey! Who's the one who beat Sin, here, anyway?"

"Actually," Braska interrupted, "I also-

"I mean, beat him and he stayed dead!"

Lulu was in trouble now. Auron could see that the vampire had found away around her shield. The mage was thrown back by the force of lightning, and the vampire was now creeping up on her, no doubt intending to feed... Auron considered alerting the others to this situation, but decided there was no need. There was no way any of them could be resurrected, after all, and even if there had been, two of their number had never really existed, anyway. Just as the vampire was about to latch his jaws onto Lulu's powder white neck, an glowing orange projectile hit him in the back. The vampire's arms flailed as tongues of fire erupted from his back, then nothing was left of him save a pile of dust.

"In case you were wondering," Auron said to his deceased friends, "all of the vampires are now dead."

"They were always dead, Auron," Tidus said irritably. "Oh, I see."

"How'd we miss that?" Jecht said as he re-focused his worldsight.

Braska and Auron each kept their silence.

Lulu groaned, rubbing her forehead as she tried to sit up.

"Dose fiends, they really pack a punch, ya?"

Great. She owed her life to Wakka. Again.

"I dunno, somet'ing seemed...kinda funny about them, though."

"They weren't fiends," Lulu said, accepting Wakka's help as she stood up, "they were vampires."

"Ya, vampires. Good thing I brought the ol' Fireball, ya?"

"Good thing." Lulu removed the handkerchief from her pouch and wiped some of the dirt off her face. "Weren't things a little busy at 'Wakka's Place?'"

"Things are never too busy to help out someone you care about, ya? 'Sides, I think it's time I gave 'Wakka's Place' a rest. I got enough Gil ta last me a lifetime, ya? Maybe it's time I headed back to Besaid, helped 'em get things started up again there."

"Sounds interesting," Lulu said, falling into step to Wakka's right as they headed back towards Killika port. Since Wakka had just saved her life and all, it only seemed natural to slide her hand into his. And since they were already walking so close together anyway, it also seemed highly appropriate to rest her head on his shoulder as well.

"Hmph," Jecht said. "Will ya look at that?"

"I suppose they didn't need us, after all," said Braska.

"Just as I suspected," Auron stated with assurance. "Things took care of themselves."

"It's funny, though," Tidus said, scratching his chin. "I always thought 'Lu had a thing for me..."

The other three men looked at him incredulously.

"What?" Tidus asked.

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RETURN