"It's very different from a horse," pipes up a drained voice that sounds very much like the owner has been through hell.

The source is a slight young man - oddly fuzzy in appearance at first glance until one realizes that he's wearing his ponytail like a scarf after being reverse-clotheslined off his mount one-too-many-times - on a smaller bird that seemed to be making up for its lack of stature with an abundance of hyperactive twitching.

Takumi had ridden everything from pegasi to horses to kinshi, but nothing had prepared him for the rapid, lurching, two-beat THUMP, THUMP of a chocobo running full tilt. His tailbone was killing him, and gods knew it was a good thing he hadn't eaten recently.