Author’s Notes:

Heya guys! You thought I’d abandoned you, right? Well WRONG. I’m still writing, and blimey really writing clearly; this was only supposed to be a one shot, now it’s gonna be a three chapter story!

There was something I needed to point out about this story but can I remember what it is? No. If I remember, I’ll edit it ;-)

Ormi plodded merrily along the eastern web of streets and roads of Bevelle, his possessions easily, and rather sadly, fitted into a medium sized suitcase and a large satchel that was swung over his shoulder. He whistled to himself softly, it was such a relief to get all the negative emotions of doubt and tension off his shoulders and finally be heading for a new part of his life; a better part. Since his grandparents had passed on he’d felt trapped and almost thought himself to have a lack of purpose, a change like this was what he needed to get over all the dreadful things that had happened to him: his parents being killed by Sin, that terrifying pressure from his grandfather and of course their deaths also. He let the crisp morning breeze swell in his lungs, so refreshing.

“Ormi!”

He stopped. Eyes swivelling side to side.

“Ormi!”

“Yes?” He trumpeted back to the sound, smiling and readying to welcome an old Yevonite friend who wished to walk with him and say cheery goodbyes and ‘we shall meet again’s. Or something of that nature.

“Ormi! Ormi!”

“Yes? Yes?” He called again chuckling, searching for the fellow who had cried to him, “Is right here!”

He looked up and down the lightly populated road he was on, attempting to spy a familiar face. Eventually he did, but unfortunately one that was too familiar.

“Ormi,” Logos panted, walking up to him with his hand on his chest, a tattered scarf flopping about his neck.

Ormi stared, then shot his head up the other end of the road, then back to Logos, then back up the road again. His head loped back and forth for at least thirty seconds, great cheeks wobbling with the movement and a very bemused expression painted on his face. Why had Logos come up the west side of the road? The Menkaura household was in the east.

“Ah no, don’t tell me Is been going in the wrong direction.” He groused.

Logos ignored him.

“Thank Yevon I finally found you, I went all the way back to the dorms but your room was already empty.”

“Yeah Is got really decisive with my stuff, was done by midday, thought Is come early and surprise ya and your family.” He still had yet to stop staring at the exhausted Logos in front of him though, “But yous here…why? Is mean, whats going on?”

Logos looked up at Ormi with a sort of vacant expression and his breath became shallow.

“Erm, it’s…see Ormi it’s very complex and urr, we can’t go to my house anymore.”

“What? Whys not? Something happened? Is everyone ok?”

Logos had to physically bite his tongue at the bitterness; his friend asking about those wretched people’s welfare.

“No,” he hissed trying to retain a normal tone of speaking, “everyone’s not ok. I’m not ok!”

Painted on Ormi’s face was that classic look of confusion, one that had always reminded Logos of chocobo who had been presented with a new and unfamiliar form of food. However this was a new breed, it had a slight twinge of fear and concern, so a chocobo who had been presented with a new and unfamiliar form of food of which it suspected was poisoned. This was a very understandable expression though, as now Logos was flapping about and being very fidgety, head flitting around the place and generally looking lost and abandoned.

“H-here, I don’t really want to talk in the street. In there.”

He pointed a slender finger to an establishment across from them, a drinking establishment. Logos moved away from his companion swiftly and strode towards the dirty and bruised wooden door of the bar.

“Oh no.” Ormi always knew a thirsty Logos was a bad sign.

With a slight hesitation and some unwilling, Ormi followed. He entered into air thick with smoke and liquor, warm from the coughs and wheezes of the inhabitants who, he ascertained, were former colleagues of his. He hadn’t really considered that some members had really enjoyed their work and didn’t have anywhere else to go or any gil to tie them over until Yevon reformed. With a small and sharp inhale he feared that perhaps he and his friend would become part of them.

“Give me drink!” He heard a desperate voice from the bar slur.

“What’d want?”

“W-what doI-? What do I want? Anything! Something that’ll melt my brain and disintegrate my liver in the course of half an hour, there you go, liquefy a light bulb for all I fucking care.”

Logos slumped morosely onto a stall, his face seemingly giving into gravity; all his features sloping downwards to his chin.

“We’ve got us some spiced Besaidian sake?”

“Huh, great” was the grumbled response as Logos’ head thumped onto the sticky counter.

The somewhat, ironically, disgusted barman shook his head in distaste before eyeing a cautiously approaching Ormi.

“For ya?”

“Oh, ah, I just get an ale.”

“Right you are.”

Ormi gently placed his case and satchel on the floor, as closed to his selected stool as he could manage. He squeezed himself onto the seat, never taking his eyes of Logos, fearing he may suddenly leap up and attack him. Coated in sludge and grease from the counter top, Ormi noticed Logos’s eyes were red and to his inward horror, watery. Ormi found he could do nothing but stare at his friend’s void and miserable eyes and become overwhelmed with that awful emotion known as awkwardness, he’d never seen Logos cry, if that was indeed what he was doing or intending to do.

“’Ere ya go.”

A heaving pint of ale was plonked onto the counter in front of Ormi, thanking Yevon he now had something to entertain himself with rather than gazing at an incapacitated Logos. He grabbed the glass gladly and took a hefty gulp, smacking his lips appreciatively when he was content to hold the rest of the liquid for another moment. He turned back to his partner to notice he still hadn’t moved but sitting before him was a small, sharp shot glass of an almost fizzing, sangria coloured fluid. An arm, from the side Ormi could not see, slithered up the side of the counter and coiled flimsily around the glass, Logos’s body unfolded and he was now sitting up straight. Without a blink or a breathe he downed the drink. Watching Logos’s throat engulf it, Ormi could feel his own scorching at the alcohol’s biting touch but Logos, his expression remained void, his arm coming back down again to sluggishly let the glass go so it rolled along the bar before being stopped by another more bulky tankard.

Logos’s gaze was now directed absolutely straight towards the back of the bar, Ormi noted how his eyes were becoming even redder but also his face considerably paler.

“So, err, yous brought us in here to talk.”

Enough waiting around in suspense, business clearly needed to be tended to.

“What?” Logos responded, snapping out of his alien state somewhat; his face regaining some colour.

“Wes can’t go to your house, why?”

Logos sighed mournfully and for a moment Ormi thought he was going to just return back to the counter top. Ormi took another swig of beer and heartily patted his friend on the back.

“Yous gotta get something off your chest. Come on spill.”

Logos rubbed his now throbbing shoulder pitifully.

“I, eh, I told mother I wasn’t coming back to Yevon.”

“What? Was she mad? Yous can’t let a little argument stop you from going home.”

“It wasn’t a little argument Ormi! It was a disaster!”

“Shhh!” Ormi spluttered through his drink, noticing a bunch of ruffians staring daggers at them.

Logos sat back again, he couldn’t be bothered with another confrontation.

“Well you knew she’d be upset, why did yous tell her if you knew she’d react like that?”

“Because she’s my mother, Ormi, she deserves to know, just because you didn’t tell your grandparents about all your woes and decisions doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.”

“Hey, yous don’t bring my grandma and pop into this. Theys in the farplane now; have some respect.”

The pair fell silent for a moment as Ormi once again consumed his beverage and Logos’s stare returned to the bar back.

“She doesn’t want to see me again, Ormi.”

“Hmm?” Ormi mumbled into his pint.

“Never, she never wants me to grace her vision ever again. She hates me.”

At this point Logos made a very loud, alarming sniff and put a weak fist to his forehead.

“Ah gee buddy.”

The awkward feeling left Ormi and was replaced with a feeling of utmost sympathy. Though, he found the situation difficult to understand, at a young age his own parents had died so it was not by his, nor their choice he didn’t spend time with them. But although he found his grandparents, his carers, strict and somewhat forceful he was aware that he loved them and they him. The concept of being turned away by someone who once loved you so, just by one tiny little action was almost unreal to him. Secretly though he felt it showed a lot about Opal Menkaura’s character and priorities, she was clearly fickle yet unable to understand anything but a higher power.

All the same, he had to check round for a moment, just to make sure their discussion was going unnoticed; the rouges were no longer staring.

He clasped Logos’s left shoulder with one of his podgy hands.

“What she say?”

“Oh God just, things. Acted like I was possessed or something equally as stupid. She just told me I wasn’t accepted anymore basically,” he sighed again, “then told me to get out of the house.” He took another rattled breath. “I can’t ever go back.”

“Is sorry, Logos, I really is.”

It became quiet again. The sound of tankards clunking and glasses chinking echoed throughout the bar, riley but merry exerts boomed and bounced off walls, jives and leers hissed and simmered underneath. From the pair at the bar though, no sound could be heard.

Ormi drained the last of his drink and eyeballed it’s emptiness with great thought.

“Not to sound uncaring,” he began, “but whats ours plan of action now?”

“Drink til I shit my own liver, how’s that?”

Ormi chuckled heartily for a moment; Logos could just muster a feeble grin.

“But seriously, what wes going to do?”

“I-I guess we continue as plan.”

Logos turned to Ormi and then his eyes floated down to his bag.

“We’re just going to have to make more of a sacrifice, travel a bit lighter that’s all.”

Ormi’s eyes followed his friend’s, a sense of squirming worry and unease.

“But Logos what if wes don’t find anywhere that’ll take us? And where wes going to live?”

“Some sphere hunting locations have dorms.”

“Not many, yous weren’t the only one who researched these places by the way.”

“Well we’ll figure it out when we get there. Yevon I need another drink.”

“No.”

Logos, completely stunned, turned to see a sullen and stern looking Ormi.

“Wes aren’t gonna sit around in some dirty bar all day getting pissed. That’s what cowards do.” He slammed his mighty fist down upon the wooden counter, ‘Wes gonna get on with this, wes said we was going to change our lives cos wes were so sick of the way things were. So lets do it.”

With that his fist swung down and hooked about his suitcase, the stool was shoved back and the wide man marched towards the tavern door.

Logos didn’t move, he just gawked at the swinging wooden door (shocking as it was so heavy), a hand half raised to call attention to the barman.

“Another sake?” A crisp voice rasped.

“Huh? Oh, oh no, eh forget it. Ormi!”

Ignoring the utterly bemused barman and sniggering patrons Logos rushed out of the door to find his comrade.

“Ormi!”

“Is over here!”

Ormi was down the west side of the street by a large rubbish dumpster. To Logos’ utmost horror Ormi was throwing the contents of his suitcase into it. He ripped one or two items out and crammed them in his satchel but the majority went in with the broken bottles, old waste paper, rotting food and alcohol induced vomit! Finally the actually suitcase itself was loped in.

“Those were of the past, this is for the future!” Ormi roared as the suitcase hit the carcass of material life.

Ormi flung his satchel over his shoulder merrily and plodded towards Logos who was still lost for all words.

“Well come on then,” the fat man beamed, “which one of these sphere places wes gonna see first?”

The couple left the foul drill of rain behind, stepping through a liquid curtain of bombarding grime and on to the undeniably beautiful marble disc that welcomed them with echoes. The entrance to Guadosalam. It felt more chilled here surprisingly, perhaps the cold breath from the mouth of the hamlet before them.

One final chance, both prayed for the best because after this there were very few options. Ormi and Logos had already thoroughly investigated other institutions of sphere marauders and what not, I mean this ‘Leblanc Syndicate’ was certainly not their first choice; there had been many mixed reviews. Also, as if job interviews are not frustrating enough, they had had to beg and plead for free rides everywhere since both had found themselves kicked out without a gil to their name. Logos had found Ormi amazingly selfless in these situations, often trading old family heirlooms created from rich materials in order for them to be allowed passage onto a hover or boat etc. Logos knew that these were sacrifices bravely made and he would have to make it up to Ormi sometime…but not right now.

The first excursion was not too bad at all, in fact it was simply to the most Northern point of Bevelle, teetering on the edge of the Calm Lands. Based here was an organisation known as Farglass that had gain increasingly good response over the past few months and seemed wonderfully cheery on first meeting. In Logos’ mind a little too cheery. It was in a small quaint interview with one of the main hunters, cup of hot tea in all person’s hands, Logos and Ormi realised that there was a considerable amount of brain-washing involved! It became terrifyingly apparent that the group searched for spheres that, oh what was it again,

‘Spheres to validate and inspire the existents of the great deity Kumo-Ne-Rah, and all her fourteen children, to all who walk the land of Spira; his land, brought to nativity through his buxom and strong mistress Jumarta, the shoopuff of the sea!’

Needless to say there was much frantic nodding and gulping of tea (scorching of throats) and ‘We’ll get back to you’s from Ormi and Logos’s side of the desk.

The next trip had cost Ormi a beautiful (but relatively humble in terms of wealth) pair of pearl cufflinks owned by his grandfather and given to him as gift on his seventeenth birthday. Logos had felt an extreme pang of guilt when it turned out to be a wasted journey though. A ship to Bikanel Island to meet with the persons in charge of Bikan Connection, the racist lumps of gob shite wouldn’t even allow them an interview! Said that Bikan Connection was only open to Al Bheds, fair enough their kind had been treated cruelly by the Yevonites but wasn’t this just antagonising!

Finally another exhausting and frustrating ship ride later and exchanging of a bronze watch inscribed with the family name of Hassun, the two found themselves in Luca. It was here the sphere hunting group Windowsin was based. The pair had entered through great screen doors and told by a prim and rather attractive young receptionist to take a seat. Here they waited and waited and waited until finally a round and stern old man with a thick bristly beard escorted them up a cold steel staircase to a cramped and dour room which held two interactive monitors, back to back, with an uninviting chair before each one. The man did not breathe a word, just simply left locking the door behind him. Seating themselves awkwardly the pair found it to be a test, this was confirmed by the soft whir of a spying camera on the back wall and a tannoy speaker barking,

“NO TALKING!”

Unsurprisingly, the results were presented to them in the waiting room an hour later, a nice fat ‘FAIL’ stamp across their print outs. Logos was peeved to find he was only a few marks away from the pass mark, though it honestly didn’t change anything as Ormi had been way off and since the pair had agreed to join together it would not have been suitable.

So they left, expressions grim as they ruffled through the article describing their last contender. It was a diminutive, basic article from the ‘Bevelle Prophet’ (the weekly newspaper given out among the Yevonites), with absolutely no discerning details, oh, save for the huge heart stamped across the text in such an alarming shade that the writing was difficult to read. They had always known it to be Plan D, hoping, praying they would never have to look upon it’s nefariousness ever again to find it’s address. The sheer ugliness and unsavoury flavour of it’s words and style was a pointless discussion however as now they had no choice.

“Give it here.” Logos said gloomily, snatching it out of Ormi’s pudgy hand the moment he’d extracted it from his satchel.

“Hey Is was doing it, Logos.”

“You can’t read.” Came the bored sigh of a response.

There was no reply, both appeared to have made a mental agreement; we’re too disheartened to fight so let’s just not.

“10 Lower Concourse,” droned Logos, “Guadosalam, Midland, Spira.”

“10 Lower Concourse, Guadosalam, Midland, Spira”

“I know the address, Ormi.”

“Kay, Is just thought Is make sure.”

Logos stared up at the twisted and gracefully gnarled vines that lined the opening. It looked, like Guado hair.

“Why would any sphere hunter organisation base themselves somewhere so ominous?” Logos breathed, “It’s makes their goals somewhat, questionable if you ask me.”

“Yeah, if theys turn out to be a batty group of Guados Is running a mile.”

“They won’t be Guados, Ormi, they’re all in Malcania now, waiting for death. Good bloody riddance.”

The tall main walked ahead, stumbling a bit as he began the steep descent. His companion followed.

“But that doesn’t mean they may not share the same ideologies.”

A distinct and somewhat intoxicating smell of incense and oils reached them as they entered into the knotted dome. This place was eerily deserted save for some lonely travellers who had decided to begin setting up lodgings. They were all understandably jumpy though, on hearing an unfamiliar rhythm of footsteps they had all readied themselves for attack or flight, one man had even drawn a bow and arrow! But this soon subsided when they saw the tatty and clearly unarmed pair. The only citizens not on edge were a gaggle of dim-witted Hypellos and a strange little man dressed as..some sort of penguin, jabbering aimlessly.

Logos peered off to the side, just passed the crazed man now lowering his weapon and whistling embarrassingly.

“Lower Concourse is this way.”

He pointed to a engraved doorway to his right that sloped down all the more.

“Hows yous know that?”

“I had to come here a few times just after I passed my bodyguard assessment. This was back before Guados decided they wanted protection from their own kin and not Yevon’s.”

After another haphazard pathway further into the earth the duo were greeted, cautiously, by a round bald man. He was clearly the owner of the local sundries shop and plainly shaken by the massive upheaval of his local customers, however considering his need to deal with travellers and new folk everyday he seemed pleasantly more brave than the other denizens.

“Can I bein ‘elpen you two gentlemen?” He said gruffly.

Logos’s head swivelled about, examining the half-stocked shop.

“Erm yes, how does one now get to the Lower Concourse.”

“Heh,” the shopkeeper chuckled nervously, “and why art yous en wantin’ to go dere? Dats very muchin Guado realm now, she be.”

“We are trying to get to a particular address which happens to be down there.”

Logos also had half a mind to tell the man to stop talking in such an annoyingly thick accent, clearly an Al Bhed who had learnt Spiran the wrong way. But he bit his tongue this time.

“Pfft, dere ain’t nobody bein down dat way. Only Guados ’omes. We hasin lock it all off, so dark und didgy like, sorta in bein dangerous.”

He eyed them for a minute jestingly.

“But I bein guessing you can go on. Take a see, per’apsing I in wrong and dere is still somebody down dere.”

He toddled to his left where the classic velvet rope hung across the corridor leading to the guest rooms.

“At de otter end of da corridor. You’llin find a door, I ain’t bein locking it; no guest have come so no riskin of them creeping down dere.”

“Yes, well thank you very much.”

They stepped forward, about to cross the invisible border when the shopkeeper flung his arm out in front of them.

“But I isin telling you, I ain’t bein seeing any persons in or outta dere, notin since de Guado left.”

“Oh! Shut up!”

Logos gripped the keeper’s wrist and pulled him close, craning over him.

“I’m not in the mood for these agitations, do you have any idea what I’ve been through these past few days? Let alone having to put up with some short monkey of man trying a gypsy act on me!”

With that he threw baffled Al Bhed back.

“And learn to speak in a way in which people can comprehend you!”

Logos huffed, aggravated, then stomped down the hallway into the darkness, leaving Ormi to simply smile apologetically and then follow suit.

“Ever been to a library! They have these magical things there called dictionaries!”

The pair were swallowed up in the blackness.

Pebbles of sad, lonely stone scattered in their numbers to the lower floor as Ormi and Logos descended the eroding spiral steps. The air here was crisp and thick, not at all comfortable for living in, though one could guess that this was just an emotional response, a sort of paranoia. It’s strange when a place once populated becomes empty, gives a whole new atmosphere and feel of desolation.

The ice cold marble of the lower concourse seeped through their worn shoes, both straining their eyes to see through the dense mist, unpunctuated by any light.

“Logos, Is don’t think this is right.”

“You’d think this place would have a light or something. It’s completely bare down here.”

They stood still for a moment, rubbing their goose-pimpled arms and considering whether to continue.

“Wes should go back. Yous heard the guy, this is Guado land. Creeps me out!”

Ormi spun on his heel and attempted to make a break back up the stairs, but it was a foolish idea and he had known so, being with someone trained to have the reaction speeds of a trapdoor spider, escape was surely futile. Logos now had Ormi gripped by the collar and was yanking him (with much effort) down the sleek, cloudy corridor of houses.

Here the houses were all the same, terrace, towering in height despite their location underground and sunken into the walls, almost hiding in shame. It would have probably been that every Guado occupant or family had their own floor in one of these to call their own. Guado were odd they didn’t really enjoy spacious living, they would rather be crammed into burrows, like little lice or worms.

Luckily (for Logos’s arm) Ormi didn’t have to be dragged for too long. Logos peered up at a house not like it’s brethren, this house was clearly a house and not a collection of living spaces; it was to be used as one. It had a royal purple door, overgrown with vines and roots, peaking out from within the rotting foliage was a silver plaque displaying the number ten.

Ormi toppled back a bit as Logos released his grip. His partner was taking a few steps back, sneering at the windows on the upper floors.

“There’s no one here!” He yelled.

“Is told yous that shopkeeper was right, now lets get outta here.”

“Who cares if some lazy Al Bhed was right Ormi, where the Hell are they?”

“Huh?”

“These Leblanc Syndicate people?”

Ormi’s eyes drifted up and down the overgrown and forgotten house, expression inquisitive.

“Maybe it’s like a secret hideaway, ya know? Yous knock on the door and says a password.”

Logos stomped up to the door and pointed a finger demandingly at the leafy plumage embraced about the door.

“What is this all about then?”

“Err well maybe it like moves away when you says the right password.”

“How?”

“Umm with a fire spell or something.”

“Alright well then how does it grow back like this afterwards?”

“Ahh….” The large man gazed, lost in Logos’s annoyed leer. “Oh Is don’t know! Was worth a thought though!”

“So we’ve come all this way, all this way,” Logos groused as he trudged down the steps from the house, “for nothing.”

They looked up, sad and defeated at the mossy corpse of a building. Too tired and disappointed to even begin to think what their next plan of action was.

“Nothing.” Ormi echoed.

Logos suddenly shrunk by two and a half feet. He was now squatting on the floor, staring at the broken stone beneath his feet, hand on chin, deep in thought.

“What in the name of Yevon are we going to do now?”

“Lets, lets just get outta here first, then think.”

“Well maybe we could get a job at a travel agents, or driving hovers, but no no that’s all Al Bhed work, they won’t hire ex-Yevonites, maybe a retail job in Luca but oh God that’s so demeaning, maybe, maybe-”

“Logos.”

Ormi’s hand gently knocked the back of his companion’s head. The tall man looked upwards.

“Lets go, then think.”

With that he walked away, towards the spiral staircase they had descended earlier and, without a word, Logos followed.