"When's my story going to start? Huh?" Rikku made her demands known to everyone on the Celsius's bridge. "You said that the next story was going to mine. Didn't you, Yunie?"

Well, she had told Rikku that, though she hadn't intended it quite as literally. But she had no doubts about the central point. Rikku was a kind and outgoing person; she'd have no trouble finding a purpose to her life in her own time. "The last story has barely ended; it's a bit early to be thinking about the next one, isn't it?" Yuna said.

"I know, but..." Not wanting to make Yuna's personal life a matter of public discussion any more that it already was, she sidled a little closer. "If you ... if you find You-Know-Who, you're probably not going to want to go sphere hunting any more, are you? So what am I going to do?"

As willing as Yuna normally was to engage the outside world, this was still one matter she preferred to keep to safe from prying hands, even those of her friends. "Well... I've been trying not to make too many plans so I won't be too disappointed if I can't keep them."

"I guess you probably don't want to talk about this, but I do."

"Eighty-four, Rikku." Paine spoke from the other side of the bridge without lifting her head.

"Well, I'm improving!" Rikku shouted back. Then she turned back to Yuna, her anxiety keeping her hands waving in front of her body. It wasn't that she didn't care about her cousin's feelings, but didn't Yunie realize that all this affected her too? It wasn't fair if she didn't get to have any say in the decision. "It seems like I'm always following along after somebody else. I mean, I went along with your pilgrimage and then I joined the Gullwings after Brother started sphere-hunting, right? But now everyone's taking off all of a sudden. Shinra's already left, and now Barkeep has a girlfriend and he's probably not going to stick around either. If this keeps up, it's going to be just me and Brother and Buddy, and I don't want to be stuck here with those two."

Yuna chuckled. "Well, I don't think you have to worry about that quite yet." Although if both she and Barkeep took off, that would leave only four of them, right? Rikku and Brother and Buddy and Paine... But, Yuna corrected herself, I shouldn't start thinking about that yet. Who knows what's going to happen to me?

Not any less satisfied, Rikku had gone from waving her hands to tapping her feet. "Why's everyone gotta leave, anyway? Aren't the Gullwings cool enough to stick around for?" Until Shinra had decided to take off, she hadn't even realized that it was only her assumption that they were. It had seemed natural enough to believe that everyone was happy with their position; after all, none of them had been complaining, right? Rikku didn't see any need to fix something that wasn't broken, but apparently chasing spheres wasn't enough for some people. Suddenly worried, she gave Yuna a prodding shake of the shoulders. "You're happy here, right, Yunie? Aren't you?"

"Yeah. Of course." Sometimes Yuna wasn't so good at expressing enthusiasm on cue, even if she meant it.

"Well, good. Some of us have got to stick together, 'cause there's no way I'm going back and getting sucked into whatever harebrained scheme Pops is cooking up as we speak."

"Guess you'll have to settle for getting sucked into Brother's harebrained scheme instead," Yuna teased.

"Well... pretty much, yeah." At least Brother wasn't always telling her what to do like Pops did. "Young ladies shouldn't be adventuring all the time; it'll be bad for your complexion." "When I was your age, no one on the mainland would be caught dead anywhere near a hover, so we had to WALK across the Calm Lands!" "Don't think you're leaving the airship dressed like THAT." "But I'm having fun, and, besides, we all know that you really run the show."

"Now, I don't know about that." Yuna still didn't know what to say to receiving such acknowledgements. No matter what her friends (and her enemies) claimed, she never set out to be a leader or make everyone happy. When she made choices and plans she only made them based on what seemed natural and right for to her to do, and yet everyone loved her for it. Was she really that special.

Rikku leaned closer, some of her many beads dangling in Yuna's face, and added in a whisper, "Well, whaddaya say, boss? Do you think the Gullwings need some fresh blood?"

Yuna knew the question was inevitable--heck, she'd even heard Brother and Buddy talking about it behind her back--but it never sat right with her. She knew, in spite of whatever Rikku or Paine said, she had no place to tell Brother what to do with his baby, but she still would be a little disappointed if some new people started coming on board. "I don't know ... we've all been here almost since the beginning. Anyone who jumped on board wouldn't have so many of the experiences that all of us went through, now and two years ago."

"Yeah," Rikku sighed. "We're gonna have to wait until Wakka's kid is grown-up enough to join and by that time I'll be old." Rikku sounded appalled that the prospect even needed to be considered. "Maybe we could get some of the Cactuars to join. Didn't one of them really want to ride on the airship?"

Yuna laughed. "That was Paine, Rikku."

"No, I'm serious. Wasn't his name Elio or something like that? Erio?"

"I'm not sure; I have to admit they all look the same to me."

A gloved hand landed on Rikku's shoulder. "What's this? I'm a Cactuar now?"

While Yuna and Paine laughed, Rikku bit her lip and frowned. "Paine, you're not going anywhere, are you?"

Paine gestured with her other hand towards the elevator. "Buddy asked me to bring some spheres up from the engine room."

"No, I mean ... you're not going to quit the Gullwings like Shinra, are you? You found out what happened to your friends and we stopped Shuyin, so you're probably going to leave, right?"

Paine hesitated for a moment. Any time she answered one of Yuna or Rikku's personals questions, she felt like she was probably giving the wrong answer. With most people, she wouldn't have cared, but she liked her fellow Gullwings and felt she owed them a meaningful response. But she didn't talk about herself enough to be any good at it. "Nah. I seem to be making myself useful around here."

She was already off towards the elevator when Rikku grabbed and pulled her back. "Wait! Do you think that I make myself useful? Am I ready to have my own story?"

"Maybe the world isn't ready for you, Rikku," Yuna joked.

Rikku's distress was obvious enough that Paine stopped trying to escape her grasp. Yeah, Rikku could be over the top sometimes, but she was still a good person who cared enough to pay attention to Paine's better interests, even when she herself didn't. Paine at least owed her the same in return. "That's for damn sure," she said, not without a significant degree of bemused affection. "But, you know, patience never killed anyone."

"Nuh-uh! What if you were in one of those rooms where the walls close in, or it's filling with poison gas, and you don't get out in time?"

Had Paine not been so accustomed to Rikku's brain, she would not have realized Rikku was being perfectly sincere. "Okay, maybe in that case, patience might kill you. But what I'm trying to say is, you've got a lot of time before you should start worrying about where you're going in the world. Some people go a lot longer than you without figuring that out."

"Yeah, just look at Uncle Cid," Yuna cut in with a grin.

Rikku couldn't stop wriggling with frustration. "I knoowwww," she whined, "but I wanna do something now. And if everyone leaves, I don't know how I'm gonna get started."

"Hey, look at what Yuna and I had to go on. A couple of spheres, an airship? If only we should all be so lucky as to have many people looking out for us as you do."

"Well... okay," Rikku conceded. She wasn't out into get into an argument, and she figured that they had enough good points that her mind ought to be changed by now. "But you guys have to promise that when I go on an adventure of my own that you're gonna show up to help me out. 'Cause if you forget about me, I'm gonna kick your butt."

"Sure," Yuna said. "I promise."

Paine gave a slight nod of her head. "I can't imagine there'll be anywhere to hide once Rikku gets started, anyway."

"Well, good." Rikku put one hand of the shoulder of each of her compatriots as if to claim them. "I already have some sidekicks. I must be doing fine, after all."