Hello! My name is Feather Black Montoya, you killed my father, PREPARE TO FRY! (whips out frying pan)

BW: Been watching 'The Princess Bride'?

FB: (beaming) I got sick and had to stay home from work! Westley's eyes are REALLY close together and yet he's still sexy…HOW is that even possible?

BW: (shrugs) Might be the man in black thing…

FB: Nah, he was hot before that with his curtains and his 'as you wish'

BW: That's true…(thoughtful) but this does not excuse you for your late update. Your exam has been over for nearly two months. I'm afraid I will have to pulverise you as a lesson to others (takes out cricket bat)

FB: (blinks) That's a little crude isn't it?

BW: (shrugs) My weapons are in the shop and the wolves are at the vet being de-bugged.

FB: Huh. (ducks)

Disclaimer: (looks up at author's note and shakes head) Is there really any point in me trying to make sense here? Owning things is just another way to fill the voids in your life. (toddles off to buy a doughnut)

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Alex's Battle Notes – Remember, survival skills can be just as important as combat skills.

Heat Stroke

My eyes snapped open and I jerked upright, automatically hyperventilating.

"TIDUS!" I screamed through gasping breaths, staring straight ahead without seeing, forced to concentrate on the repetitive motion of my chest rising and falling as I fought to take in air.

"Alex?" I heard his voice and tried to look for him, eyes swimming in and out of focus. I could see the yellow outlined in his clothes as he staggered forward, wading through water to collapse before me, gripping my hand. I concentrated on that grip and keeping control of my vision as it wavered into detail. Tidus was gaping back at me with the most comically concerned face I'd ever beheld.

"Are you alright?" Tidus asked, launching right in while I examined him for transiency following that dream-like nightmare about his reality.

"We tried to wake you using a Phoenix Down but it was just like in Besaid, it wouldn't work. Do you have allergies or something becau-

I pulled him into the strongest hug I could muster muffling the rest of his sentence in my jumper. It was so good to see him looking fine, without a care in the world, unaware that he was a dream…or that I'd dreamt he was a dream. As I clung to him, I looked around at where we were, registering the rubble and the shattered ice melting and pooling around us.

Just as I feared, my mind was filling in the blanks. I knew exactly where we were by design of the game and I stifled a groan, letting go of Tidus who was blustering furiously to see if I could catch a glimpse of shadow black in the lining of the ruins. I would find him and he would explain things to me, quickly and concisely.

"Where's Hunter?" I asked, leaning around Tidus then climbing on unsteady feet to widen my visual radius.

I didn't miss the silence that followed this, glancing first at Tidus, who averted his eyes and mumbled something about crushing his windpipe, before turning my scrutiny on Rikku.

"Uh…heh…well…" she put her hand sheepishly behind her head and grinned a terrified grin.

My worn down stomach was already dropping as I turned to Kimahri who broke trend and levelled his yellow eyes with mine.

"Gone," he said simply.

Gone.

Gone.

"Gone," I repeated, falling back onto the rock they had laid me out on, staring with vacant eyes at the misty water as the rage built inside me. It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced, not like the fraying of temper that took an age to build up and sometimes sent me wild, not like the quick snaps of anger that gave way to a wasteland of calm. This was a rabid, frantic infuriation that grew at an alarming pace and set my face alight. Instead of coming in waves of intensity it just built relentlessly until I was nothing but anger, my whole world was far beyond red.

Gone. He was gone again. He was gone because he couldn't face me or the guilt of abandoning me or he was gone because he could leave just to rub it in my face that I was still entirely at his mercy.

Gone.

I exploded.

"HUNTER, GET OUT HERE!" I screamed, bolting up and storming out into the water. I could barely feel the lap of the ice cold liquid around my shins. My blood was boiling hot, running with molten lava.

"GET OUT HERE SO I CAN TIE YOUR BALLS AROUND YOUR NECK AND CHOKE YOU WITH THEM, YOU BASTARD!" I shrieked, barrelling through both Lulu and Wakka as they moved forward to shut me up.

I tore straight through the ruins, tearing up the in tact sleeve of my school uniform without thought, bee lining for the walls of the ice berg, intent on climbing my way to freedom so I could knock some Guado heads together and continue my unrelenting search for the arsehole that kept on ruining my life.

I felt the way I suspected Anima felt all the time. I felt powerful, reckless and charged though I'd been lying unconscious moments before. I dug my nails into the ice and tried to punch hand holds with my bare hands like some sort of Chuck Norris wannabe though my blades clunked against my hips as a reminder of more civilised means of escape. It was only as I felt the crack in my damaged arm and a wave of nausea overrode the anger that I was able to sit down and stop, crouching on the edge of everything.

I must have sat like that for a long time, isolated from the rest of the group with my shoulder gently thrumming enough pain into my system to stop me from rampaging again. When I finally heard the swish of the water and felt the presence of someone invading my personal bubble, I looked up into the bright, confused eyes of Rikku.

"What?" I asked sulkily. "Come to laugh at me?"

Rikku held her hands up defensively and shook her head.

"No, no, just came to see if you were alright now," she said, taking a seat next to me though I did my best to try and scare her off with a death glare.

We sat in silence for a little while watching the lap of the water as it rose steadily, licking at the tips of our shoes. Rikku opened her mouth a few times, taking a deep breath as if it was a huge effort to try and get out what she wanted to say but she always ended up just closing her mouth again, watching me out of the corner of her eyes.

Eventually, she must have figured that I'd calmed down enough though truth be told I was still livid.

"So…" Rikku started. I purposefully didn't turn to look at her, my lips forming a thin line as I watched the underside of the temple and listened to the hymn as it started seeping through the ice.

"Was he…you know…your boyfriend or something?" Rikku asked casually.

Before I could stop myself, my head whipped round so I was facing her. She gave me a pointed eyebrow raise, asking me to elaborate.

"What? No! That's insane…absurd!" I blustered, shifting uncomfortably so I could avert my eyes.

Seriously honey, me and Hunter? Where the hell did you get that from? Why in the name of arse would I be interested in someone that kidnapped me and dropped me in a dangerous world without so much as an apology then abandoned me later so he could go and lick some old wounds I'd managed to pour salt in…or something?

I mean seriously?

"Alright, alright, I was just asking," Rikku assured me, holding her hands up again to show that she meant peace. "I just thought it was weird that you would get so angry, that's all."

I stared at her, hard. So hard in fact that my eyes actually felt like they would pop clean out of my skull and roll away in the icy water.

"Seriously?" I squawked at her, flapping my good arm animatedly.

It was as if I'd been signalling the monster in the depths of the lake because as my arm started flailing, the whole fragile structure started to quake.

"Ack!" I exclaimed, trying to cling on to the slippery side of the ice only to find Rikku's arm instead. Through the chaos, I realised that this must be Sin, following the sound of the hymn to his son. My eyes found the juddering image of Tidus as he crumpled, pulled into the centre of the lake. We watched in horror as the others were dragged down with him, the ice falling away from the centre as though pulled inwards by a localised black hole.

I scrabbled on the edge of the ice, looking for any kind of foothold to grab on to but it was a fruitless endeavour. Before I could even comprehend the idea of another plan of escape, we were sucked under too, pulled into a pressurised blackness that tested my tenuous grip on consciousness to breaking point.

Though I knew I was screaming, my voice was drowned out by what sounded like rushing wind and through that, words were laced though I had no idea if it was just a trick of my own unreliable senses making words out of air.

"I'm sorry, really."

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The first thing that registered was the heat. As I hovered somewhere between consciousness and sweet oblivion, the heat trickled into my thoughts, made me realise that I was painfully uncomfortable wherever I was.

My eyes fluttered open and then automatically clamped shut against the glare of the sun directly overhead. The air was scorching and pressured, making it difficult to breathe. I could feel the skin on my exposed hands and neck blistering as the heat seeped into my pores and kept my blood boiling at molten temperatures.

What had happened? I remembered sitting with Rikku in the ice berg, in the chilling cold, now everything seemed to be on fire. I had a vague notion that this was probably the Bikanel desert and, turning my head to the side, I cracked an eye open to take in shuddery glimpses of sand dunes which confirmed my suspicions.

I took my time waking up and sitting up, trying to quell the rising dread as I discovered I was completely alone. For some reason, this made me angrier at Hunter though I have no real idea why. The yellow land stretched on endlessly, mockingly…

I scoped out the area, turning a slow 360 to try and catch a glimpse of a certifying land mark that I could head towards. It was nothing but rolling hills of gold beneath endless blue.

"Oh God…" I sighed, surprised when my voice croaked and my lips cracked. It occurred to me that I hadn't really had anything to drink since that morning before Seymour and since then, we'd been through a lot. I could have kicked myself for not thinking about it whilst we were in the bowels of the lake.

I glanced up despairingly at the big beautiful blue sky. It looked like some sort of shimmering out of reach ocean. If only it would fall on my head.

I did a damage relay as I stood up on shaking legs, noting that my arm was still throbbing mercilessly and I was beginning to get a headache along my left temple. Probably from dehydration.

I really wanted to take my jumper off but some instinct told me not to. Exposing more skin, especially my back, could have disastrous results without sun tan lotion. Sure I might hot box myself to death in my own garments but somehow that seemed better than inviting skin cancer of all things.

Similarly, I debated with myself about drinking some of the potions clinking in my satchel (how they hadn't broken in the chaos was beyond me), but instinct told me that they wouldn't solve the problem here. The texture of the potions I had taken in my time on Spira was thick, wholesome, certainly not the thirst quenching fluid I sought.

'Should I stay here? Or should I try to find the others? Or some water? Why don't I know anything about survival?' I thought to myself.

My thoughts were starting to run into each other, broiled away by the relentless sun until all I was left with was my resentment towards Hunter. For lack of anything else to do, I started walking, snaking my way between the sand dunes, unwilling to try and climb them in such unforgiving conditions.

"No wonder people want to kill you Jecht," I muttered to myself in a rasping voice as I skirted around a particularly treacherous land mass of rock and sand. I envied Tidus and his stupid oasis. I guess being related by blood to a monstrous super whale with displacement powers has to have its perks somewhere along the way.

I walked for what felt like hours, days or months in the never-ending sun. In the beginning, I thought about what had happened, tried to sort out the muddled mess that was the ticking time bomb of stress balling inside me but over-exposure to death defying conditions seemed to have left me numb. Either that or every fibre of my being was occupied with the task of hating Hunter. It was an arduous and consuming task indeed.

Of course, I thought about him. I thought about how he'd saved my life and then disappeared as soon as I was out of immediate danger. I wondered if this was going to become a regular occurrence and he'd just turn up like Odin in Final Fantasy 8, when he felt like it and not before. I pondered on his dead girlfriend and how hard that must've been but when I started feeling sympathetic, I changed tack and thought about something else. Anything to keep myself veering towards forgiveness…I don't think I could take having that detrimental driving hatred forced out of my system just yet.

Eventually, all my thoughts were flattened by the increasing pressure of the hot rays pressing on my head and shoulders. I was left with nothing but the devastating desire for water…water…

It came as a bit of a shock when I realised I could see something in the distance, a black speck against the waves of gold. I squinted through the waving heat lines to see if I could gage what it was but whatever it was, it was obscured by brightness. I gave a little shrug and started towards it. If it was a sand worm, sure I'd be eaten but at least I'd get some relief from the heat.

I staggered this way and that, glancing up every now and then to make sure I was still heading towards whatever it was. When I finally got close enough, I froze, completely confounded by what was standing before me.

It was an Oompa Loompa.

An honest to God Oompa Loompa.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, trying to clear the heat induced haze. The whole thing was more than a little unhinging and I peered through my fingers gingerly, hoping he'd gone away.

He hadn't.

He was standing a good ten feet away jumping up and down and waving. Was this supposed to be part of the game? Or was this some Ao Guardian trick? Maybe Oompa Loompas were real…I mean this place is real…maybe he was an Ao Guardian himself sent to help me out in Hunter's place?

I opened my mouth to try and say something civilised, taking a few tentative steps forward.

"I won't lie, this is messed up," I said matter-of-factly. So much for civilised.

The Oompa Loompa continued to jump up and down, waving. The headache spiked unpleasantly, spreading from temple to temple.

"Yes, yes, I'm right here, you can stop waving now," I rasped, massaging my vocal chords to try and encourage some intelligible sound.

"I don't suppose you have any water, do you?" I asked the little guy, getting peeved when he jumped up and waved in response.

Couldn't he see that I was distressed? Do Oompa Loompas even speak English? Maybe I need to speak in rhyme…

"Listen, I really do need a drink…or I'll lose the ability to think…" I started uncertainly, wincing at the awfulness of my rhyming. Whatever Ao Guardians are capable of, leaping through worlds, talking to Aeons, preventing paradoxes…rhyming is not amongst the list of essential skills.

"I'd really like it if you'd help…um…"

Something about kelp?

"Alex?"

The Oompa Loompa was suddenly staring at me with a startlingly serious expression. I peered into its beady black eyes.

"Alex?" It said again in Tidus' voice.

"How do you know my name?" I whispered conspirationally, fighting the urge to grab the little critter by the shoulders.

"Huh? Alex it's me! Why are talking to that Cactuar?"

My eyes shot up and my head gave out a painful throb in process. My eyes darted over the desert and then came to rest on Tidus, Lulu and Auron standing on my right, all with powerful looks of concern on their faces.

With a growing sense of horror, I turned back to the Oompa Loompa and shrieked when it had morphed into a Cactuar which was bouncing up and down. Without so much as a goodbye apology for being something it wasn't, it took off, shooting across the sand with alarming speed.

I was left battling the urge to curl up in the foetal position.

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It took a while for the others to convince me that they were real. My head was pounding behind my eyes as I tried not to look at them or really acknowledge them. I had come to the half-baked conclusion that the Oompa Loompa had been a sort of mirage and that these guys were just an extension of that. My immediate reaction was to ignore them, you know what they say about hallucinations…just ignore them and maybe they'll get bored and go away.

Or is that bullies?

It took Auron forcing his bottle into my hands for me to start realising they were in fact real and we were wasting time sitting out in the blistering heat. The feel of the bottle sent a jolt of reality through my system and I pawed at it eagerly, hoping against hope that he had found a water source in his travels.

Peering inside, I could just make out the slosh of the liquid and took a long swig, relishing in the feel of it as it ran through my system, cleansing my tight limbs and clearing the steam that seemed to have fogged up my brain.

I didn't stop to consider what germs Auron might be carrying or that we had just shared some sort of indirect kiss…in all weirdness…all I could comprehend was the feel of the water as it ran through me like blood, breathing life into me.

Once they were all certain that we were on the same page, Tidus grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to stare into his pool blue eyes.

"Have you seen Yuna?" He asked me in all seriousness.

I gave him a pitying look and shook my head, a motion I sorely regretted as the headache spiked.

Now that I'd had some water, I flipped open my satchel and popped the top of a potion, ignoring everyone's quizzical looks as I downed the thing, crinkling my nose as it oozed down my throat.

The minty after taste at least was refreshing and my headache dulled.

"Are you alright?" Lulu asked tentatively as we started heading out.

"Yeah, headache," I told her, pointing to my temples like this would help. "Probably from sun exposure and eye strain."

I tried to give her a reassuring smile but I should really just give in and accept that my smile is null and void at the moment. Something I'll have to remember to thank Hunter for if I ever see him again.

Lulu gave me a pained look, the kind of look that made me wonder if she was getting menstrual cramps or something.

"So…have you seen anything? About where Yuna might be?" she asked me. I cringed at the blatant hope in her expression and prepared to dance around the question as best I could.

"It doesn't really work that way," I told her, shrugging.

Credit where credit's due, Lulu's expression barely changed.

"Ah…well I just thought I'd ask. So…are you doing alright otherwise, aside from the headache I mean?" she asked me promptingly.

Huh?

Oh!

She means has this whole thing driven me mad yet?

It's a bit late to be asking that question isn't it honey?

Strangely, I felt oddly fine about the whole thing. I was fine with the fact that we'd beaten Seymour with the help of that psychopath Hunter. I was fine that I'd fallen into some kind of future telling coma, possibly brought about by the Ao Guardians as a way of keeping me on track, and I was fine about being dumped in the desert to wander round getting slowly fried to death.

Fine, fine, fine, really!

Really…

"Lulu?" I asked her as we padded along, struggling up the side of yet another dune.

Lulu glanced over at me, silently imploring.

"Uh…if I go…I mean…" I rubbed my eyes in frustration and wished I hadn't as the remnant of the headache blazed briefly.

"If it turns out I'm not okay…like…if I'm waiting on some kind of delayed reaction to what's happened…or something, just…slap some sense into me okay?"

Lulu jerked to a stop, staring at me with wide incarnadine eyes. For reasons akin to insanity, I randomly wondered if she would get a tan in the sun or if her skin was actually UV repellent.

Her face broke into a broad smile which softened her vampiric features considerably. I felt like I was catching a glimpse of the Lulu that Wakka saw, that Chappu had seen. She was completely stunning.

"It's a deal," she told me, "so long as you do the same for me."

My mouth twitched in the ghost of a smile and I nodded as we started skidding down the other side of the dune towards a figure hunched up underneath a pile of broken machinary, hiding from the unrelenting sun.

"Wakka!" Tidus called excitedly, tripping down the last of the sand dune and sprawling out before his surrogate big brother.

It was a little bit scary to see that Wakka didn't return the grin plastered on Tidus' face but instead launched right into asking about Yuna's location, getting riled when both Tidus and Lulu exchanged a knowing glance.

"First I lose Yuna, then I get ambushed by Machina. Great day I'm having," Wakka complained, kicking the scrap heap he'd been hiding under.

I nearly piped up to mention killing a Meister and becoming a fugitive to add to his list of reasons for having a bad day but thought better of it at the last minute. We'd all been having a pretty cruddy day and no one needed reminding, even if misery does love company.

We trudged on, looking for Kimahri, Rikku and Yuna until I thought I would melt into a puddle right in the middle of the desert, then shrivel up into an old husk.

"Tidus," I croaked, watching Auron's bouncing water bottle thirstily. "Can we take a trip back to the oasis?"

Tidus pivoted back to stare at me with wide, disbelieving eyes.

What?

Oh yeah…

"You knew that I'd fallen into an oasis," he stated measurably, his eyes flashing. "How can you possibly have known that Miss I can't see the future?"

"Uh…"

Crap. How the hell was I going to dig myself out of this? Curse my sun addled brain and my tendency to talk like a parrot.

"Uh…women's intuition?" I offered, trying to look innocent.

I expected to be scolded for trying to lie (poorly) but in a startling subversion of all associated expectations, Tidus' eyes lit up, his expression visibly lifting despite the unyielding discomfort of our current circumstances.

"Ha! I knew it! You can see the future! No matter what you were trying to say on the Thunder Plains, you can see the future!" He yelled, slapping a hand on my back.

Wait…is that a congratulatory slap on the back?

"Unless you're just stalking me, that would be creepy…wait, did you know we were going to be dropped into the desert from the lake? How much do you know?"

An idea seemed to dawn on him, growing at approximately the same rate as the dread in my stomach.

"Do you know where Yuna is?" He asked, grabbing my shoulders desperately.

"Uh…" I repeated by the way of an intelligent answer.

My mind was trying to work overtime but my thoughts were like slush, I just couldn't hold any real form in my thought patterns while the sun burnt the land.

Of course I knew where Yuna was although technically I didn't know where she was in relation to where we were which might count for something…right? Okay, so I might have to lie…a little…a lot…it'll be a big black mark on my karmic record next to the big black mark I got for lying to Lulu and the other big black marks that I'll probably end up taking the blame for on Hunter's behalf.

I toyed with the idea of just telling him but of course, I am a massive chicken and can't handle the thought of causing paradoxes, even if it would be the ultimate way to pay him back for everything he'd done to me.

"I don't even know where we are," I told him evasively, putting my own hands on his shoulder and spinning him round.

"I think Tidus is taking a ride on the heat stroke express," I told the others. "We should find wate-

The ground started to rumble, throwing the rest of my sentence into the sand. In an instant, I'd fallen over pulling Tidus with me so we were caught in a terribly inappropriate position under the sun. Despite the earthquake that was likely to finish us off, I could feel the blush rushing over my face and the stupid apologetic grin distorting my fingers.

"Heh," I managed as the sand worm broke the surface of the sand causing Lulu and Wakka to lose their footing as well.

Thank Thu for Auron who spread his feet apart and only had to jam his fist into the golden granules to maintain an upright and battle ready position. As the worm flailed in front of him, a huge, writhing, formless mass of an animal, he was able to charge forward for a pre-emptive strike to keep the thing at bay while the rest of us recovered.

As soon as I was up, I devoted half a second to performing the dance of the highly disgusted; the one where you hop from one foot to the other and stick your tongue out in a mock gagging motion. Then, once the ritual of making my revulsion known was over, I took a ready stance and drew my blades, itching to take out all my bottled up anger on something but knowing this highly exerting battle in the midday sun was likely to throw up some seriously negative results when this was all over.

The worm faced us and opened its huge mouth. The rush of air that escaped the colossal tunnel of teeth muffled my screaming but only just. Even Tidus seemed overwhelmed by this creature, standing with his mouth hanging wide open, the sword at his side.

It was Lulu that made the first move, shooting a blizzard attack that seemed to cause the thing great discomfort (though it was hard to tell what with the lack of facial features to read and all). Auron followed with a back up attack while Wakka focussed on aiming for the head…like…area…

The entire onslaught seemed to make the creature shake with rage and that's when I could feel the whoosh of air behind me, pulling me into that huge mouth.

"Oh no, no!" I yelled, throwing myself on the ground and covering my head.

It was useless though, with nothing to hold on to out here in the desert, I may as well have been a piece of paper fluttering in the breeze. One by one we were sucked into the dark depths of the fleshy tunnel. I only realised I was in real trouble as the mouth started to close and the light of the world was blotted out.

I'd been eaten alive.

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So Alex has been ETTED! Will she be able to survive the worminess of the stomach acid? Did she taste like chicken? What was with that Oompa Loompa anyway? Where did Hunter go?

Westley: I can answer these questions for I am the man in black and I-

FB: (hits him with the frying pan so he's KO'd) Frying pans! Who knew right?

PS Please with the review making do, you guys are my motivation and my MUSES! (bows to the awesome)