(…. I'm such a hypocrite.

Chapter Summery: In which Gippal is rudely awoken, livers are possibly shot, and the stage is set.

Don't own 'em.)

Despite popular belief, Gippal was not, in fact, a light sleeper. Both Baralai and Nooj could attest to that, seeing as they roomed with him while in the Crimson Squad, along with another man whose name was not nearly as important as their own. However, the reason he is even mentioned in this story is to prove that Gippal, again, was not a light sleeper; for this unimportant man could snore loud enough to wake High Summoner Braska (may he rest in peace) on the Farplane. And while Baralai and Nooj, and sometimes Paine when they had to share a tent or a room (whatever lodging the higher-ups felt they deserved) had to struggle to sleep while Nameless snored to high heavens, Gippal would sleep like a baby, sometimes adding his own nightly noises to the serenade.

Now that you know that Gippal could sleep through a hurricane (he hadn't, but he had slept through a sand storm once on Bikanel and Baralai told him that they were similar, except that hurricanes were a bit more wet), it should be somewhat obvious as to why he did not immediately wake up when something clanged in the hallway outside of his room. After all, he lived and worked in a temple made of stone where they built machines all day. Odd clanging sounds were no stranger to him. This, however, was not the clang of metal against metal, or stone against stone, or even stone against metal. This was the clang of someone who had tripped and knocked something over, and this was made obvious by the small curse from the hallway after the aforementioned clanging sound was made.

Gippal, for his part, snorted and rolled over in his sleep.

Thankfully, some of Gippal's workers actually were light sleepers, and so after the clanging and the curse, a door opened slowly to reveal Alla, one of the female employees of the Faction. She blinked against the dull blue light of the quietly humming electric current that lined the sides of the walls and tried to focus her weary eyes long enough to see what had made the noise. What she saw shocked her (not in the literal sense, as the electric current wasn't quite that strong), and she quickly ducked back into her room to peek out of her cracked door.

Outside her door, just a few feet from the boss's room, were two people dressed entirely in black, complete with hoods and gloves and masks. They were dressed like some of the bandits from the road to the Moonflow had decided that playing ninja would be the Coolest Thing Ever, and had so dyed all of their clothes black. They seemed about as smart as those bandits, too, because they were whispering frantically to each other and pointing to the door to Gippal's room. Once she had looked over their clothing, Alla realized that one of them carried a wicked-looking machina that she thought she might have seen once when those fiends came out of the temple. Needless to say, it was most certainly a weapon, and she highly doubted that they were going to give it to her boss as a present.

Backpedaling into her room, Alla glanced around for her gun and found it sitting on top of her dresser. She drabbed it quickly, then darted back for the door and glanced back out into the hallway, pausing to make sure her weapon was loaded. They were still out there, and they seemed to be trying to pick the lock on the door. She hesitated. Gippal was kind of an ass… but then again, he did sign her paychecks. She pushed open the door and dropped into a stance, rifle at shoulder-level as she aimed.

" Dinh ynuiht cmufmo," she commanded, not moving as she saw both of them tense. The one who was bent down near the lock twisted to look at her over his shoulder. He opened his mouth, and her eyes narrowed. She had a bad feeling about this..

Without warning, the one standing (the one holding the freaky machina) reached into his pocket with the speed of someone who'd just casted Haste on himself and flung out what she recognized as a smoke bomb. A large plume of smoke emptied itself into the hallway, and Alla managed to fire a shot in their direction before the smoke filled her lungs and she started coughing. Just before she began to gag and wretch, she thought she heard a cry of pain.

While Gippal is a heavy sleeper, one simply does not sleep though the duel bang of a smoke bomb and a rifle going off just outside one's doorway. He jerked awake, throwing back his sheets and grabbing the handgun stashed under his pillow before scrambling to his door, trying and failing to not trip over the pair of jeans in his floor. As soon as he reached the door he threw it back, bringing up the gun and preparing to shoot. He stepped back immediately, coughing and swiping at his… eye. He waved a hand into the smoke, mentally willing the offending obstacle out of his hallway and out of his temple. Pulling his shirt up over his chin and holding it above his nose, he stumbled back out.

Numbly he registered the coughing and gagging a few feet to his right, and the pained moan to his left. At least whoever else was in this smoke was just as hindered by it as he was. He reached out blindly to the direction of the moaning, and fumbled until his hand met fabric, which he promptly fisted and yanked back on, grabbing the person and dragging them into his room. He left the room again; the hand that was still holding the gun was now also running along the wall to the right, and his other went back to holding up his shirt. As he reached the coughing, he grappled blindly for a moment before hitting something solid. The person tensed up and began to flail, but he managed to grab a hold of some hair and pulled the struggling person back into his room as well.

He flicked the light switch with his gun hand and (after blinking dumbly a few times at the sudden light that assaulted his eye) closed the door before any more smoke could get in. He stepped back to survey his captives.

The coughing one turned out to be one of his workers. Alla, he thought. He recognized her, but his half asleep/adrenalin-pumped mind couldn't quite wrap around something that trivial at the moment. All he needed to know was that she wasn't a threat.

The other, however, looked like a ninja reject. Like one of the bandits or a Youth League member decided that black was now It. The poser was hunched over in pain, clutching at his side and hissing the hiss of someone who had just gotten shot.

I'm going to be cleaning blood off of my wall again, Gippal thought in a somewhat detached manner.

Alla had finally stopped coughing, thankfully without vomiting all over his floor, and she looked around warily once she could see straight. After seeing Gippal she relaxed, then turned to glare at the other person who had been dragged in. It seemed like her wild shot had gotten lucky, and the machina that he'd held had been dropped in favor of crushing both hands to his side to stop the flow of blood.

Gippal stepped over to him, bent down, and pulled off the mask.

The man had a dark tan, probably either from Kilika or Besaid. His dark brown hair suggested the former. He had high cheekbones and a slightly chiseled face, and was not at all unattractive. His Kilikan-gray eyes were surprisingly lucid, and they narrowed in disgust at Gippal. His lips pulled into a grimace, baring teeth that were stained over with blood. The bullet had probably hit the liver.

Gippal glanced down at the machina, and his eyebrows rose slightly. That was an experimental weapon that his men had assembled themselves, and only four or five had actually been made since the first one had proven to be unsuccessful during the fiend attack. It was very powerful, but it had a kick that could blast the user back twenty feet if it wasn't handled correctly, and was deemed too much of a risk in the current state to be used. It was defiantly an assassination attempt; with a weapon that strong and them outside his door in the dead of night, what else could it be?

" Why," he asked evenly in Common, " did you try to kill me?"

The man glared at him, making small hissing sounds and looking serious for someone who was in such a lame get-up. He opened his mouth to reply, then let out another deep hiss and a gurgle as blood climbed up his voice and into his mouth to leak slowly over his lips.

Gippal waited patiently, then turned to look at Alla as she cleared her throat. She coughed once, then rasped, " There were two, sir, in the hallway. One was picking the lock and the other, that one I guess, had the weapon. I heard them talking in the hall." She stopped to cough again, holding one hand over her mouth.

The boss nodded, then with a glance down at the gasping man, turned to open the door and look out into the hall. By now the smoke had cleared slightly so it was visible, and several other workers were cautiously sticking their heads out their doors to investigate. No other ninja, however, and Gippal returned to his room, ignoring the curious employees.

He glared down at the young man who was obviously dying, or at least in tremendous amounts of pain. If the bullet really did hit the liver, there wasn't much they could do for him anyway.

" I'll ask again, then. Why did you try to kill me?"

The man coughed up some more blood, then let out a shaky smirk.

" Fucking Al Bhed scum," he hissed out, reaching up with one hand to wipe at his mouth. It only succeeded in smearing the blood, however, and he returned to pressing against the wound. Gippal let out a silent snarl. An assassination… just because he was Al Bhed? While he wouldn't put it past a Yevonite zealot, something just seemed wrong about it. He felt like something just didn't add up.

But this man was bleeding all over his floor, and if they didn't get him medical attention soon then he was going to be dead before they could properly question him. He ran a hand through his hair and resisted the urge to scratch at his eye patch before turning to Alla. The young woman looked up at him questioningly, ready to act. Again, he signed her paychecks.

" Get someone to help you take him to the medics antechamber. Try and see if they can't save him." Hi lips pulled back into a grimace. " I still have some questions, and 'fucking Al Bhed scum' doesn't seem very informative to me."

Alla nodded, then crawled over to the man and gripped him under the arms, heaving him up and dragging him out of the room, barking for help once they were in the hallway. Gippal sighed uneasily, then blinked as someone new, another worker, barged into his room.

" Sir! We just got two Commsphere messages, one from Bikanel and the other from the bridge of the Celsius!"

Something in the bottom of his stomach dropped, and his mind went numb. " The C-Celsius? Is Rikku okay?" He assumed the message from Bikanel would either be from Cid or Nhadala, but he was leaning more towards Cid.

He let out another sigh, this time in relief, when the worker nodded. " Yeah, it was Anikki who did the actual calling, but he said Rikku was alright, just a bit shaken up." Gippal began to pace, then walked out of his room. The worker jumped, then followed.

" So Rikku was attacked, too?" Gippal asked, striding in the direction of the communications room. Shinra was as lazy as he was brilliant, and had installed only one Commsphere at the Djose temple for them to use in one of the antechambers. The worker nodded, struggling to keep up with his boss. " Yeah," he confirmed, " and so was Cid."

Gippal paused to think, then shook his head. " What about the High Summoner and her husband? Was Yuna attacked too?" The worker replied in the negative, and his employer sighed once more. He seemed to be doing that a lot, lately.

" Right. Well. Let's… let's see if we can't get back in touch with Cid's girl, and get down to the bottom of this."