Up ahead, three blobbing water fiends menace them with angry looks.

Hasira exhales irritably, and sends an abrupt thundara at them without even a pause in her stride. "We'll make right."

The fiends bubble away to nothing.

Wakka wisely keeps his mouth shut.

"We swim from here," Hasira says, stepping off the walkway into the water below. Swimming, she hopes, will stop him asking her questions.

"Yes, ma'am."

It doesn't take that much longer before Hasira spots Rikku and Cid. She pauses her stroke for long enough to wave.

Cid waves back with one arm, the other still firmly around Rikku.

"Wakka!" Rikku screams, trying to wriggle out of her father's arms.

Wakka puts on speed, showing off his blitzball skills, to pass Hasira and pull himself onto the walkway, running to hold the girl in his arms. "Hey kiddo, I'm here. You did good getting away. Maybe I can make a blitzer out of you."

"You're so stupid!" Rikku admonishes, punching Wakka, beaming.

Cid only lets go of Rikku once he's sure his daughter isn't going to end up back in the water. "Alright. Let's go before the rest of Yevon decide it wants to take on Hasira."

Hasira smirks as she hauls herself back onto the walkway. "Let them try."

"Yevon would lose!" Rikku says confidently.

Wakka keeps his mouth shut, but looks fondly at Rikku.

"You'd be hard pressed to find an Al Bhed who'd bet on Yevon if the other combatant is our Hasira," he says fondly.

Hasira snorts and shakes her head. "C'mon. This place makes me sick."

She heads back towards the surface.

Once they're back outside (following Cid and Hasira's chalk-marks), another contingent of warrior monks and outlawed machina greet them.

"...You'd think they'd get the message from the other corpses," Hasira notes, readying another spell.

"But that would be dull," Cid comments blithely before yelling over to the warrior monks. "We're gonna be nice and give you a chance to walk away!"

"You blasphemers have stolen Evrae, killed him and killed two contingents of soldiers! We will see you hang before you walk!" The commander yells back, furiously.

"Actually Evrae's alive and well!" Cid calls back. "Free will, wonderful thing. I mean, if you think you can coax him off my top deck I'd be obliged..."

"[Don't think they're gonna listen...]"

They don't, instead readying spells and swords and guns.

Hasira casts watera, aiming, perhaps strangely, for the floor and the feet of the warrior monks and their machina.

"[The machina are pretty helpless once we get in close!]"