Chapter Summary: Jefferson and Alice visit Spira. Crossover with "Final Fantasy X."

Risk

Snarling ferociously, a great horned beast with short blue fur shook the earth as it ran after its prey.

"It's gaining on us!"

"Follow me!"

Two chocobo riders sped across the grassy plain of the Calm Lands with a balivarha in hot pursuit. The landscape seemed serene from a distance, but was home to all kinds of "fiends" - monsters whose bodies had coalesced from the unsent spirits of the dead.

Just another walk in the park for the Hatter, thought Alice, whose chocobo struggled to keep up with her lover's. Strands of the young woman's long, blonde hair blew into her eyes, trying to escape a messy bun, and her brown and green riding clothes were coated with dust and splattered blood. Her mount was a 10-foot, flightless bird that ran on two powerful legs, tucking in its yellow wings that did little more than slow its descent on short jumps. Domesticated, the birds served as Spira's equivalent of horses and had been the most common mode of transport while machina was illegal.

Alice squeezed her legs, signaling her mount to run faster.

The woman had lost her only weapon - a silver throwing knife fashioned to kill werewolves in another land, not fiends. Despite its dangers, the couple had been idly relaxing on the open plain with their chocobos grazing nearby when they were attacked. Acting on pure instinct, Alice blinded the fiend in one eye, which had only made it angrier. Her lover, a 26-year-old thief named Jefferson, fired four silver bullets at the balivarha from a gun he had picked up in the same realm. This creature had no weakness to this metal, however, and its thick hide repelled the projectiles. Magic could subdue the monster, but neither of them could wield it.

Jefferson was a man known back home for his miraculous powers over space and time, but Alice discovered he had no innate magic of his own. People often called the arrogant "Hatter" a charlatan until he proved otherwise. His astonishing ability to retrieve rare objects lost to time usually did the trick. Magic wasn't alien in any world they visited, but many people they encountered coveted magic as powerful as that. Jefferson swore Alice to secrecy - that he was just an ordinary man without the Hat. A hat that could be easily stolen.

"Jefferson!" Alice called out to him, still some yards behind.

The beast's swiftness had taken them by surprise. A chocobo could maintain a high speed over much longer distances than a balivarha, whose legs were canine and bulk like a bear's. But the creature was capable of quick bursts of speed, and all it needed to dismount and maul Alice was one opportunity to impale her chocobo with one of its two massive horns.

The beast did not catch up, but Alice could hear a burbling noise coming from the balivarha's throat. Quickly glancing behind, she saw flames lick the fiend's open maw. With no warning, the creature exhaled a fiery breath that singed the tail feathers of Alice's chocobo.

"Kweh!"

The bird screamed and ran faster. A chocobo had one advantage over a horse, and a balivarha for that matter. Horses had four legs to worry about. Chocobos only had two. Jefferson turned his mount around to place himself between Alice and the fiend.

"No, Jefferson! What are you doing?"

"Saving you. Heeyah!"

Jefferson pulled out his gun, aimed at the fiend's good eye and fired, attracting its attention and its malice. He directed his chocobo away from Alice and the balivarha followed.

"You want a snack? Take me!"

"Don't!" Alice cried.

"Get to Rin's!"

Conflicted, Alice turned her head in the direction of Rin's Travel Agency, then looked back at Jefferson and the fiend.

"Come on," she told the chocobo, kicking its sides and charging after her lover.

Jefferson knew exactly where to take the beast, and if his chocobo suspected, it didn't show it. The thief headed straight for the Scar, the gaping chasm that had cleaved the Calm Lands in two when High Summoner Gandof battled the monster Sin four centuries earlier.

Alice caught up in time to see Jefferson's chocobo dart over a small ridge, the fiend close behind. She knew the Scar lay on just the other side, and screamed.

"No!"

The balivarha leapt at Jefferson, its massive paws swiping at his chocobo's tail. Suddenly, the bird was gone, and only open air lay before it. Roaring and clawing at the ground, it tried to stop, but its momentum carried it off the cliff and into the Scar.

Jefferson's chocobo had veered sharply to the right, its talons dangling off the edge of the gorge for mere seconds, using its flapping wings to catch the wind and ease itself back onto solid ground. The bird trembled with fear, well aware of the Scar's depth and its own limited flying abilities. Safe at last, but furious at its rider, the bird violently shook Jefferson off its back.

Alice climbed over the ridge and found her lover on the ground, his eyes narrowed at the chocobo but looking happy to be alive.

"You must be very proud of yourself," she said sourly.

"You know, I was wondering what that feeling was."

"That stunt you just pulled? I thought you were dead."

He stood up and tried approaching his chocobo, but the bird avoided his touch. Jefferson fished around his pockets for some gysahl greens.

"Well, I'm not. However, that balivarha's prospects aren't so good."

He held out the bird's food and, despite its best efforts to resist, it took some in its beak. Jefferson used this opportunity to pet the bird, who couldn't keep a grudge for very long.

Unlike his lover, who was still glaring at him.

"I haven't heard a 'thank you,'" he said, still not looking at her. When he was met with silence, even the sarcastic jab he expected, he turned to see she had begun riding away. Jefferson mounted and trotted after her.

"Alice."

"Alice, my love."

"Alice."

She turned and replied with a curt, "What?"

"I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't let it harm you. I took the risk because..."

He trailed off, but her mind filled in the blanks. She always thought he used "my love" as a kind of shorthand, a pet name for any girl he slept with, but the expression on his face told her something very different.

"I know," she said. "But I worry."

They reached the outpost and dismounted their chocobos. Alice led them to an open trough of water. Jefferson opened his bag to remove more gysahl greens for the birds.

"Kweh!"

"You're welcome, you great smelly bastard."

Jefferson patted the chocobo's head. Alice glanced at the two of them and smiled.

"You'll spoil that bird."

"Yeah, well, this one certainly deserves it today."

Alice walked over and placed her hand over Jefferson's.

"See, I knew you could be nurturing."

"Is that a hint?"

Alice's other hand lightly rubbed her stomach, but the man didn't notice. She knew Jefferson wasn't keen on children, but the couple had left some things to chance. The Hatter was a risk taker, after all.

He risked their lives every day, taking her to lands with as rich a history as their own, if not richer and more complex. Worlds with entirely different magic, technology, cultures, and languages (magic helped with that particular hurdle). Other species with unique physiology, even differences in physics on a universal scale. These were parallel realities, not neighboring kingdoms, so when people asked why the Hatter sometimes wore mismatched articles of clothing from different eras, or had a satchel that was bigger on the inside, or kept time with a pocket watch and equipped a revolver, Jefferson had a number of perfectly good reasons, but merely replied he was "well traveled" and hoped they wouldn't press the issue.

Spira was a land unlike any other Jefferson or Alice had visited, and the Hat's door opened in the Calm Lands for the simplest of reasons - its ambient magic, which felt similar to Crystalsong Forest's. Like radiation after a nuclear explosion, it just wouldn't go away.

Travelers would pass through the Calm Lands from the city of Bevelle on their way north to Mt. Gagazet, and the region was more mesa than prairie. A man could stand on the northwestern rim and gaze out at the uninhabited hills and valleys below, stretching for miles and miles to the ocean.

For the most part, the Calm Lands were bordered by cliffs to the south and east, which grew higher to the northeast where a road led up the mountain. To the southeast, a hidden path - reachable by a spry chocobo - led to Remiem Temple, a holy city abandoned long ago when the mountains were first wracked by the magical battle between High Summoner Gandof and Sin.

One thousand years ago, the kingdoms of Zanarkand and Bevelle fought a brutal and bloody war that left this once-fertile land barren and lifeless. Sometime later, summoners chose this location to fight the monster Sin and bring on the Calm - a period of respite from Sin's regular purge - thus giving the land its new name. One particular battle, between Sin and Gendof, left the Scar. History said that Sin used the last of its strength to tear the earth asunder, creating a chasm so deep and dark it seemed bottomless. The massive quake broke apart and raised the ground of the northern plains. The southern plains were left with pockmarks from the battle - small round craters with spiky rock formations that protruded from the dirt like claws or teeth.

The few people who lived in the Calm Lands buried their dead in the Scar, because with no resident summoners - who served as this world's priests, and whose prayers quite literally sent souls to the afterlife - the unsent spirits may turn into Fiends. It was said that Fiends roamed the bottom of the gorge for this very reason.

Fiends clearly roamed the plains as well, which explained why every adventurer was either adept at magic or well-armed.

Or just took the risk, bringing nothing more than a swift chocobo...