As the creature staggers back, Azym presses the offensive, slashing this way and that, making sure to never allow it to regain its balance. And even though it tries to block and slash at him, he's finding in himself an intuition on how to avoid its parries and dodge its strikes.

Not all of them. He gets cut, a couple of times, shallow lines on one of his thighs and the side of his stomach, but he's definitely got the upper hand for now.

And then there's a fucking explosion somewhere behind him.

He jumps out of the way in surprise, probably giving the fiend enough time to recover.

What now?

Now it seems like five people have blown through one of the walls of the building. All of them are wearing goggles or masks covering their eyes, as well as body suits that seem suitable for deep-sea diving.

Also, four of them have guns.

The girl in the lead—and the only one not holding any guns—examines the situation, and her eyes quickly lock onto the fiend that's trying to recover from Azym's assault. With a practised, fluid motion, she grabs two small disc-shaped devices from her belt and launches them in the direction of the fiend.

It tries to dodge, but the little discs seem to have their own propellers or, or something, and they course-correct mid-trajectory and attach themselves to the creature.

And boom. The two localised (but powerful) explosions are enough to finish the fiend off, and it dissolves into flying wisps of light as it loses its ability to keep coherence.

"Shit," breathes Azym, letting himself lean against a large boulder he ended up next to. "Shit," he repeats, "thank you."

The four men spread around the room while the girl walks over to Azym, removing her goggles on the way. "You're welcome," she says simply. She stops a couple of feet away from Azym and folds her arms, examining him for a second before looking around at the mess.

Azym looks up again, still leaning against the boulder and holding onto his sword, and grins. "I would've probably managed, but," and he winces as he looks down at his freely-bleeding wounds. "Ow." He looks up at the girl again and says, "Where are my manners. I'm Azym."

"Nice to meet you, Azym. And sorry about this," she says, as she grabs a gun-like thing from within a metal backpack-like thing attached to her back. She doesn't give him time to react before she shoots, two small sticky things that remain attached to the gun by long, thin wires.

And as he realises he's about to be tased into unconsciousness he wonders how the hell his life got so weird.

When Azym wakes up again, the sky is still dark, but there are enough clouds that it could well be morning and he wouldn't be able to tell.

Also, his hands are bound behind his back and his feet are also bound together.

He looks down at his wounds, or the place where they used to be, and sees only thin reddened skin there. These people probably gave him a Potion while he was unconscious, so they're... probably... not all that bad? He feels like knocking him unconscious was entirely unnecessary, though.

He seems to be... on a boat of some kind. The deck under him is hard metal, but his captors were kind enough to place a blanket between his bare skin and it. There are two people holding guns watching him and the full-body suits are still present so it's hard to be sure whether they're two of the people who found him.

Boat

One of them says something into a radio, and unless Azym hit his head really hard when he got tased that's a different language.

(It had never occurred to him before that other languages might exist.)

After a few seconds of a staring contest between the boy and his captors, a door into the ship proper opens and the girl from before walks out of it. She says something to the two men, and they lower their guns and relax their posture. Probably a commanding officer of some kind, even though she's visibly younger than they are.

She walks over to Azym and crouches down so she's eye level with him. "Sorry about that."

Also, now that she's up close, he can see that her pupils are shaped like spirals rather than the normal circular shape Azym is used to.

"Uh, yeah, all's forgiven, I guess, not that I have much choice here. Hey quick question what the fuck."

She covers her mouth to stifle a giggle and says, "Well, would you have just meekly followed a bunch of Al Bhed?"

"...I'm assuming Al Bhed is whatever... group of people you are? Some paramilitary organisation?"

Or maybe an ethnicity? A species? The spiral pupils are weird.

—now that's surprising.

He's not heedless of her surprise, but he continues: "And yeah, of course I would have. I didn't have much choice, did I? I was stranded in the middle of nowhere and didn't much have a plan for what to do next. Maybe see if I could figure out spearfishing before I died of hunger."

"...you know what, okay." She takes out a knife—

Azym raises an eyebrow.

"I deserve that," she admits, and uses the knife to cut Azym's restraints. "I'm Rikku."

He rubs his wrists a bit and flexes his fingers to restore proper blood flow. "And I'm Azym," he repeats. "So, uh... you'd have expected anyone who saw a bunch of, uh, Al Bhed to prefer to fight them or stay stranded than come with them? Should I be worried?"

"...you really don't know?"