Tensei Skill Shop Chapter 22

Tensei Skill Shop

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Chapter 22:

“What have we learned for next time?” Matsu asked out loud.

“To have the appropriate currency prepared for every new world we go to,” Uzume answered, a little sheepishly.

“Yep,” I agreed. “It’s lucky I was carrying a bunch of spare stuff we could sell.”

Potions and other consumables from Ivalice counted as the same here in this world, so the shopkeepers had no problem exchanging Gil for them, even if it was at a slight loss. Said loss would have been bigger if not for the [Haggling] skill that was part of [Speechcraft].

As for why they counted as the same? That was because this was another Final Fantasy world, and Gil currency wasn’t the only similarity.

Spira from Final Fantasy X, to be exact. 

Though in this case, the timing was near X-2, after Yuna and her guardians had permanently defeated Sin and brought the Eternal Calm.

“The wind feels nice,” Matsu remarked as we drew closer to the water’s edge.

I took a deep breath and let it out with a pleased sigh. “So it does.”

The wind was blowing the girls’ hair, making them trail away from their bodies, and it was an alluring sight for me.

“What’s with the staring? Hehehehe…” Uzume chuckled embarrassedly, before changing the subject. “Speaking of which, the fashion in this world is really unique.”

“So it is.” Belts and cords, and quite a bit of exposed skin…

“Imagining how we might look like in those?” Matsu nudged me teasingly.

“Of course I am. Are you going to try to make a version of your own?” I asked Uzume.

“I might give it a try…”

“Anyway, the stadium is just over there, so let’s walk over, shall we?”

We were currently in Luca, the second largest city in Spira, and the location of the only blitzball stadium in the world. Though at this point of time, there wasn’t any blitzball game going on.

That didn’t change the fact that the connected piers were still in use; visitors from other islands as well as cargo ships made use of them, and we passed by several people heading towards Luca’s city center, along with departing people traveling in the same direction as us.

The stadium itself was also the subject of interest of various tourists even when it wasn’t in use, so we didn’t face any suspicion for our exploration and inquiries regarding the place.

“I’m sorry, but that place is restricted to players and staff only,” The woman replied in a tone that indicated an often-repeated answer.

“Oh, alright then. Thank you for the time.” 

She nodded and walked away from us.

“We’re going to sneak in, right?” Matsu murmured wickedly.

“Was there any doubt?”

A bit of Illusion magic to cover our presence from anyone that might notice, and we quickly began searching through places we weren’t supposed to be in.

“I really wonder who would just leave a chest here with money or Hi-Potions,” Uzume commented, scooping up the loot she found.

“It will forever be a mystery. Just like how monsters just happen to carry Gil, or items that they shouldn’t have any way of carrying on them.”

Matsu snorted amusedly, seemingly doing nothing where she was seated on the bench.

“How’s progress?” I asked her.

“Almost done linking in to the cameras here,” She answered, “This sphere technology is different from what I’m used to.”

“Do you need a Norito?”

“No need.” The redhead touched her lips as she looked at me. “Though I wouldn’t say no to a kiss…”

She quickly ducked her head to avoid the cloth whipping towards it.

Uzume glowered at her. “Control yourself. We’re on a timer here.”

“Okay~”

There was the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor, and the three of us quickly got into position, with me raising my hands up and casting the spell. It took shape just as the door opened.

The male staff member stuck his head in and glanced around, before withdrawing. “Hmm, must have been my imagination…” I overheard him say to himself as he left.

<Exciting, isn’t it?> Matsu gushed through the mental link. <It stimulates my Sekirei core when we get into high tension situations like this.>

I disagreed. <I’d rather not. Too much stress for me.>

The sound of her laughter in my mind sounded beautiful all the same.

We soon finished up the rest of our preparations for a future undertaking. There was a concert supposed to take place in a few days, and that was when we planned to act.

“So what should we do in the meantime?” Uzume asked as we walked back towards the city area.

“We could hunt a few fiends and see if we can get anything from them.”

“Sounds good to me!”

…

“Go Leafeon! Use Razor Leaf!”

“Leee!” 

Leafeon did a spinning hop backwards, releasing several green projectiles from her body that sliced into the fiend, causing it to slump and disperse into tiny lights.

“Great job, Leafeon!”

“Fee!” She squealed happily, nuzzling up against my leg. 

“Want to go a while more?”

“Feon!” 

The next set of enemies was a combination that posed quite a bit of a challenge, consisting of a White Element and a Floating Eye. The former used Ice element attacks, which was a type Leafeon was weak against, while the latter had a high evasion ability that made it hard to hit.

Thankfully, we had past experience facing these, and reacted accordingly.

“Magical Leaf on the flying one!” I commanded as I swapped out my weapon for a magic staff. “[Reflect]!”

My spell took effect first, and not a moment too soon; the White Element released a surge of mana, which rebounded off the invisible protection on Leafeon, resulting in a burst of ice centered on itself.

That didn’t deal any damage. In fact, it would have served as a recovery if it wasn’t already at its maximum health. 

Still, I didn’t hesitate as I approached it, striking with a [Steal] to nab more magical materials.

Leafeon’s sure-hit attack battered the flying monster, and it quickly fell as she kept up the offense. The battle concluded when I cast a fire spell on the magic-using monster, targeting its weakness.

“Well done. No injuries too!” I praised Leafeon again.

“Fee~” 

The sensation of a mental link forming made me pause.

<Rick-tan, the target’s here!>

<Alright, I’m on my way!> I looked at Leafeon. “Time to go back, Leafeon! Return!”

The red light from the Pokeball hit her, sucking her back into it. I tucked the ball away and began running back south, towards Luca, and the first of our various targets in this world.

While we had been waiting, we did various side jobs to earn some money in this place. Mine was to clear out some of the fiends that plagued the Mi’ihen Highroad linking Luca to Djose. I finished that job early on, but was just doing a little extra to train Leafeon and to get a bit more loot to sell.

Uzume handled the more peaceful tasks like cooking, delivery, and handing out pamphlets. As for Matsu, she was on observation duty, keeping an eye out for a certain blonde.

Said blonde’s presence meant that the main plot was about to kick off, which meant this was an opportunity to get close to the main characters, and the skill-related technology we were after.

I found my two Sekireis waiting for me near the entrance to the stadium. By now there was quite a crowd around, as people were waiting to enter for the concert that was about to happen.

“Uzume, Matsu, is it really her?”

“Yes, Rick-tan,” Matsu nodded, “It’s definitely Leblanc.”

“Her outfit is pretty unmistakable,” Uzume chimed in.

“What about her guards?”

“There are a bunch of her syndicate goons around, not to mention her two main lackeys, but she should be alone in the changing room for a short period.”

“Alright. We’ll move on your signal.”

I reached out and placed my hands on their shoulders, and we waited patiently as people began to file into the stadium.

“Now.”

Between one blink of the eye and the next, three people vanished from among the crowd, and reappeared within a changing room. There was only one person present in that new location, and she failed to notice our presence.

The blond woman wore a pink robe with a high collar and long sleeves, and carried a large folded fan in one hand. This was Leblanc, a sphere hunter and the leader of the Leblanc Syndicate, and the person carrying the item we were after.

[Daze]

I hit her with the prepared spell, causing her to sway and stand in place as it took effect. 

It was a mix of a Sleep and an Illusion spell; for the short period while it was active, she wouldn’t react to anything that was done, unless it inflicted harm on her.

<Okay, go.>

The two girls carefully searched through her clothes, taking care not to snap her out of her condition.

<Found it!> Matsu pulled out a hand-sized plate with several markings on it. <Rick-tan, the skill, please.>

Still keeping one hand up to maintain the spell on Leblanc, I extracted the glowing box from myself and handed it over to Matsu. She placed it on the plate, and made a twirling gesture.

The skill spun in a similar manner, shrinking down into the plate until it had vanished completely. 

<Is it working?> Uzume asked.

<Hold on…> Matsu touched her temple as she confirmed that it was functioning. <Yup, it’s working fine.>

<Alright. Let’s put it back and get out of here.>

They slipped the plate back where it had been initially found in Leblanc’s clothes, before huddling up to me. Then we were gone, having utilized another [Teleport].

Leblanc would snap out of her daze, and go on with her plan to impersonate Yuna as a singer in the concert. Yuna’s friends would stop her, and reclaim the stolen item, despite efforts from the Leblanc Syndicate to prevent it.

Neither side knew that there was a foreign addition to the item, keeping track of its functions.

…

“Hmm, that’s odd,” The young boy remarked at his terminal.

His words drew the reaction of a female brunette, who walked over to peer at the terminal he was working at. “What’s odd?” 

“For a moment it seemed like we were getting strange data from the dressphere, but it’s not there when I looked again.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t your imagination?” A grey-haired girl asked.

“It’s hard to say. It should be working normally in any case.”

“Then there shouldn’t have been any emotional bleedthrough.”

The boy in the full body suit turned around and knelt on his seat to look at the one who had spoken. “I’m just a kid.”

“Now, now, what matters is that we got Yunie’s dressphere back from that nasty, thieving Leblanc!” A blonde with her long hair in braids and a bandana pointed out.

“Rikku is right,” Yuna, the brunette, said, “Anyway, if Shinra says there’s no problem, then I trust him.”

“Thanks.” The kid nodded to her, and settled back properly into his seat.

The grey-haired girl, Paine, just turned her head to continue looking out of the cockpit window.

All those present were members of the Gullwings. Sphere hunters, who made a career out of finding spheres that might hold the hidden history of Spira. They had several advantages compared to other groups in the same position.

The first was the airship they were on. The Celsius was capable of flying around the world of Spira at very high speeds, allowing them to beat other groups to sphere hunting locations first.

The second advantage was the glowing orb in the center of the bridge. The Sphere Oscillo-finder detected sphere waves from all over the world, allowing them to lock onto yet-undiscovered spheres, as compared to those who searched for them the hard way.

“Treasure sphere waves detected!” One of the pilots reported, “It’s coming from the ruins at the peak of Mt. Gagazet!”

“Gullwings, to your positions! Let’s move out!”

Shinra’s reservations about the oddity was soon forgotten in the face of the next few events the Gullwings faced, along with a series of strange events on the Celsius that no one was able to come up with a satisfactory answer for.

The first of many began with a note found in one of the chests in the engine room of the Celsius, shortly after they claimed the sphere from Mt. Gagazet.

“A note… wonder who left this here?”

“What does it say?” Rikku asked.

“It says… ‘Kilika is awesome, share that awesome with youths. It’s better than new!’.” Yuna looked at her fellow sphere hunters. “What a strange message.”

“Very strange,” Her cousin agreed. 

“It’s not the only one I’ve seen.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was one by one of the beds in the Cabin, after we got my Garment Grid back from Leblanc. It said ‘Take a good rest in the bed, it’ll get you to 100%’.”

“Are you sure Barkeep didn’t leave that?” Rikku asked, referring to the Hypello that ran the bar in the Celsius.

“I asked him, but he said he didn’t. He didn’t see who left the note either.”

“Sounds like an interesting mystery! But first, shall we take a look at that sphere we found up in Mt. Gagazet?”

Said sphere didn’t show anything interesting apart from a past vision of Zanarkand, but Shinra reported that the sphere could be used as a dressphere, and the girls eagerly added that to their collection for future battles.

The message only started to make sense when they found an Awesome Sphere in a later visit to Kilika, but even before that happened, more notes and messages began popping up in strange places. 

Each message gave warnings or advice, often in a vague fashion that proved to be very helpful to them when the indicated time came. Some were delivered long before the relevant event, while others arrived only a while before. It seemed unpredictable.

The notes weren’t the only odd event.

“Do you think this ship is haunted?”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts. Besides, Yunie helped to perform a sending a while ago.”

“There wasn’t any response, so I don’t think it’s an unsent.”

Rikku shrugged. “Well, I don’t think the culprit means any harm. Just see how much those messages are helping us!”

“Fee?”

The odd sound made them turn to look. There was a strange fox-like creature looking at them at the end of the corridor, but before they could do anything, it ran out of sight. 

The three girls thought it was one of Shinra’s captured and tamed fiends that had escaped, but when they questioned the boy, he claimed that all of the fiends had been accounted for, and that none of them resembled the creature they described.

While Yuna, Rikku and Paine continued on their sphere activities outside of the Celsius, the other members of the Gullwings tried to discover the truth behind these mysterious messages, but to no avail.

Shinra’s sensors and cameras detected nothing, nor did any of the others see any strange occurrences when they kept an eye out. Even when they invited other people onto the airship and enlisted their help to keep watch, the messages continued to appear nonetheless.

They didn’t always take the form of notes, like with the time when they brought the debt-ridden O’aka XXIII on board to save him from his Al Bhed debtors.

“This isn’t a prank on me because of my debts, is it?” O’aka asked suspiciously when they told them about it.

“No, there really is a strange thing going on in this ship. We just want you to keep an eye out.”

“Well, if it doesn’t cost me anything. By the way, would you be interested in my goods? Hm?” The merchant paused, and withdrew something they weren’t expecting to see.

“You have a sphere?” Rikku said in wonder at the glowing orb

“I’ve never seen that in my bag before!” He protested.

He turned it over to them without requiring any payment, and they went to have Shinra scan through it. The footage showed a strange object quite like a bowl, and a masked person in a robe placing an accessory within, along with several materials. The pile of items was consumed by a strange light, before leaving only the accessory, now glowing with a strange power.

With help from Shinra in identifying the location displayed, the Gullwings traveled to the place and managed to retrieve the bowl object, and began making use of it to create better accessories for their own use.

One of the notes indicated that this function could also modify Garment Grids, and a bit more testing proved the veracity of that claim. With the various Grids they had gained from all over Spira, this meant that they had no lack of options to choose to upgrade, and they did so accordingly.

During one of their trips to Besaid, the trio met another trio, a man accompanied by a redhead in braids and a brunette wearing a side ponytail..

“Aren’t you Lady Yuna?” The man asked when she drew close to him.

“Yes, that’s me. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall you…”

“That’s fine. You’ve done a lot for Spira as a whole, and that’s enough.”

They got to talking, and she learned that they were sphere hunters as well, though they were currently taking a break from it. 

“Though just sitting around doing nothing isn’t fun, so I occasionally challenge Beclem’s Gunner Gauntlet.”

“Gunner Gauntlet?” Yuna echoed, “What’s that?”

The man Rick explained it to her; it was a challenge where one would run a course along Besaid Island, and kill fiends along the way. 

“I recommend you give it a try,” He told her, eyeing the guns she had at her side, “It’s a good challenge, and Beclem does give prizes for doing good.”

Yuna decided to take him up on the challenge, but didn’t really do all that well for her first try. However, Rick gave her the consolation prize of a Garment Grid.

“Perhaps if you awaken the Blood of the Beast,” He quoted the name of the Grid after giving it to her, “You might do better next time. Oof!”

“Sorry about him, he likes to make jokes like that,” Rick’s brunette companion apologized, after elbowing him in the stomach.

Yuna just nodded to express her gratitude. “Thank you for this.”

Somehow, she had a feeling that she would meet them again.

…

“Man, how long have we been here?” I asked no one as I stretched out on the bed.

Leafeon was curled up on my lap and dozing. Her weight was too much for my chest, not if I wanted to relax comfortably.

“About a month and a half,” Matsu answered, “Thinking of going back?”

“Yeah, this world is pretty nice, and the sneaking around was kind of fun, but I really miss our place and bed.”

“I agree, and besides, we can always come back just a short time after we leave,” Uzume added as she looked herself over in the mirror in her songstress outfit, “Thanks to the door.”

“What do you think, Matsu?”

She paused in her work to remove her glasses and rub her eyes, before looking at me with a tender gaze.

“Since you’re asking my opinion… I feel the same way.” The redhead put her glasses back on. “Not to mention that the two of us are picking up on your frustration.”

“Sorry,” I apologized, feeling slightly embarrassed.

“It’s okay. The solution is pretty simple, after all. We go back for a short while, and come back another time.”

It was a reasonable suggestion; at this point of time, there wasn’t anything critical going on for the Gullwings. Plus with the various prediction messages I left, I doubted they would run into stuff they weren’t prepared for.

At the same time, we had grabbed most of the immediate good stuff available, so the fancier stuff required waiting for.

In the game, there was a point where the player had to choose between siding with the Youth League or New Yevon, but choosing one locked you out of the benefits of the other. I interfered a little by going out of my way to grab some of those, and transferring the unneeded ones to Yuna. The majority of the spoils still remained with us though.

“Guess that decides it then. When do you want to head back?”

“I was thinking that we could earn ourselves a bit more Gil.”

Matsu turned the screen to show a scene by the river, with a short, red-clad person posing in front of a theater stage.

“We’re going to be scalpers then.”

“That’s a rather awful way of putting it, Rick-tan.”

But I noticed that Matsu wasn’t denying it.

With our plan confirmed, we departed for the Moonflow. Once there, it didn’t take long before we found the person featured in the image.

Tobli was a stage manager, highly excitable in personality, and in my personal opinion, a bit slapdash with his planning. Thanks to that though, he was in need of help and accepted our assistance when offered.

“Oh, you’re offering to help sell our tickets? That’s great news! I was worried that we would be performing to an empty house, yup-yup!” He grabbed his heat in worry. “That’s like performing to a full house with none of the people!”

“How many should we try selling?” Uzume asked.

“Here’s a set of ten to start! Just sell, sell, sell, for big, big profits!”

“Leave it to us!”

We split the tickets between ourselves and went around the Moonflow to pitch the show to the people nearby, using our meta knowledge to adjust the price for each person. 

Coincidentally, we finished up and returned just as the Gullwings showed up.

“Oh, Lady Yuna, you’re here again!” Tobli greeted them, before turning to us. “Well, did you sell? The tickets, I mean.”

“All sold out!” Uzume reported with a cheerful smile.

“Splendid, simply splendid!”

“What’s going on?” Rikku wanted to know.

Matsu sidled over to explain. “It’s like this…”

In exchange for our efforts, we received over ten thousand Gil, our share of the profits from selling the tickets at a marked up price. We also received a Muscle Belt accessory and a magic-focused Garment Grid. 

“Thank you for the help! We’re going to make this a smashing performance!” Tobli declared, and scurried off.

I watched him leave to converse with his employees. And he didn’t even offer us complimentary tickets to watch the show…. 

“So… there’s nothing for us to do?” Paine asked.

“Seems like it. Sometimes, that’s just how things happen. Have you met Tobli before?” I asked the leader of the trio. Obviously they have, otherwise they wouldn’t have the Gunmade dressphere.

“Yes, we helped him escort his cart here, protecting it from bandits.”

“Oh, that’s helpful of you. Spira is really blessed to have someone like you around.”

“I just want to help where I can,” Yuna said modestly.

I nodded with a smile of my own. “Well, I’m sure the good you’ve done will be returned to you eventually.”

The grateful looks I got from her was photo-worthy. Too bad I didn’t have a camera on me, and had to rely on my memory instead.

We headed somewhere out of sight, and left through the glowing portal once we activated the recall. The first thing we did was to release Leafeon from her Pokeball.

“Fee? On!” She squeaked happily and darted off into the living room. 

“Guess she misses this as much as we did.”

“I keep expecting the date to be further along because of how long we spent over there,” Uzume commented with a glance at the calendar.

It’s still January. “I know what you mean…”

It was nearly midnight on a Friday still, so we still had the weekend to return to Spira and continue our collection mission. After gulping down the simple dinner Uzume prepared for us,  we headed off to join Leafeon in sleep.

The next day, the three of us had breakfast together before splitting up to do our own things. I knew that Uzume and Matsu wanted to work on the dresspheres and Garment Grids we collected and copied, so I let them.

It was pretty nice just turning my brain off and enjoying a streamer’s gameplay, especially when Leafeon decided to watch as well. Her purring as I petted her fur made for a soothing background music.

Lunch was a quick step out of the shop to buy some takeaway from the eatery nearby, and while it couldn’t beat Uzume’s skill-enhanced food, it was certainly good competition.

The room smelled extra fresh when I got back, courtesy of Leafeon’s photosynthesis as she stretched out in front of the window and its powerful sunlight. As if on cue, the door to Matsu’s room opened, and the two Sekireis came walking out.

“Oh, I’ll get started on lunch-” Uzume started to say, only to stop when she saw me with the bags raised.

“It’s okay,” I told her, “I bought takeout.”

Uzume smiled back and came over to help take the load off my hands.

Matsu’s reaction was more exaggerated. “Rick-tan, my savior!” 

I got the details of their work over a slow lunch.

Dresspheres were the equivalent of jobs in FFTA, with certain skills restricted to each job. One would have to be a Gunner in order to use Gunner skills, and so on. There were exceptions to that rule though, either due to accessories or Garment Grids that we currently lacked.

The difference lay in the learning potential; FFTA skills were learned from building experience with the weapon corresponding to the skill desired. For dresspheres, all the skills were already loaded into each one, and just needed to be learned in the right sequence. To put it in another way, the framework was present, and the pieces just needed to be assembled.

Of course, we didn’t have to go to all that trouble to obtain the full list of skills.

“It helps a lot that there are quite a lot of similarities between the skills you’ve already collected and these ones,” Matsu told me, “It just takes a bit of conversion work to unlock and extract them.”

“That’s convenient, but I get the impression that it’s not all there is.”

“The issue is that a lot of it is linked to the dress itself,” Uzume explained.

“Ah.”

Compared to the standalone skills that Sano crafted and sold as they were, the ones in these dresspheres were deeply linked with the other functions. That made them difficult to extract for analysis and duplication.

Well, it does make sense. The weapons are all generated by the dressphere, whether it’s a gun or a sword. So everything is all linked together.

In the first place, dressphere technology was a recent development based on an adaptation of normal sphere recording technology, and there were still bugs in the process. For one thing, spheres were made of pyreflies, which were the components of the soul in that world. Hence spheres could carry leftover emotions of the people whose life was recorded in them, as Yuna found out for herself with the Songstress dressphere.

Matsu knew as well as I did that Sano wouldn’t be fond of having an undesired function like that mixed into his products, and so was trying to work on cleaning things up.

Then there was the reliance on Garment Grids. It offered flexibility, but also served as a crutch that the dressphere couldn’t work without. Not to mention that some of the more powerful Final Fantasy abilities were locked behind ‘gates’ that required several dressphere changes to unlock.

In essence, complicated functions that would reduce the amount of DP Sano would pay for them.

“We’ve managed to make some progress, but it’s still far from being able to make our own,” Matsu finished.

I reached out and patted her hand. “Oh well, there’s no rush. We can take our time.”

“Rick-kun is right. Besides,” Uzume popped a piece of food into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed before continuing, “I want to design a costume that can go with the right combination of skills.”

I exchanged looks with them, but didn’t say anything as we finished the rest of our lunch.

They had a short nap after that, during which I went to examine the work done so far for myself.

If there was one thing I could say about Final Fantasy combat, it was the reliance on stats and special skills for victory. The one who could hit harder often was the winner, and barely anyone paid attention to technique honed from experience. Or if they did, it was usually because it manifested as a passive skill that contributed to the overall ability performance.

I noticed that some of the accessories we had collected were lying off to the side as well. The girls must have been working on some of those as well.

Sano rarely made accessories when it came to his products. I knew he could make them based on the Ivalice equipment I brought back, but there really wasn’t much need for a physical container for these skills when the transmigrator could contain them within their body.

There had been one or two gods that wanted something like that just to leave in their worlds as a sort of prize for the natives to go after. Sano had fulfilled their requests and I executed the sales, but the items in question weren’t that strong in terms of power.

Except… 

Spheretech could materialize equipment. Equipment that could be loaded with certain preset skills, and with a bit of modification, grant access to others.

I could see the potential in this, and I bet Matsu did too.

Guess we should be making a return to Spira soon, to try and collect more examples of dressphere technology…

Afterword: So how many of you guessed that the next world was FFX-2? I know it’s a bit of a repetition to go for another Final Fantasy world after FFTA, but I thought that dressphere technology was pretty damn interesting in terms of skills, and it really encouraged my muse quite a lot! Hope that trend continues!