Who doesn't like it rough?

Do you have a partner in-game that you do everything with? Do you know that feeling of just clicking and everything going perfectly or as it should?

That's what I have with Jacinda. We are at the point where we will go up against something we probably shouldn't and develop a strategy to win without saying a single word.

The last time I had realized how far we had progressed, her and I were still working on Sobek for our empyrean weapons.

On a particular run, she had run ahead and popped Sobek while I was still getting my Atma and Cruor buffs applied. She doesn't say anything, but I notice her HP is taking small hits, so I can only assume she's fighting something. I take the conflux and arrive in the area. She's not only taking on Sobek, she has Gukumatz in tow as well. Gukumatz, if you don't know, is a timed spawn NM used for a key item to pop Sobek, so there is a constant battle for claim.

Nothing had to be said. I cast Flash on Gukumatz so she can focus completely on Sobek. So now here we are fighting two NMs, one of which can instantly kill either of us. She's subbing dancer, and she's removing my poison effects as I fight, just as I'm curing her from across the way. I hit the red weakness on Gukumatz and she calls out that the yellow weakness on Sobek is Light. Without thinking, without changing targets, I select Holy and sub-target Sobek. Instant trigger. I finish up Gukumatz, which gives Jacinda the key item for another Sobek. I run over and we finish off the Sobek we already had popped.

It was such a great feeling, knowing we didn't have to bark out orders to each other in order to adapt and succeed. It was such a new feeling, I figured it was going to be rare.

Apparently not.

Just a few days ago, Jacinda and I decide to try and duo Bennu, the Altepa Mega-Boss, for some of her +2 items. It's not a terribly hard fight with a proper group, but Jaci and I were going with an unconventional setup:  A NIN/WAR  PLD/RDM duo.

The fights were actually going fairly smooth. Cures here, refresh on occasion, and a haste when it needed to be recasted.

Then our third fight. We're fighting fairly close to where you spawn the NM, so we were still close to other monsters. As it turns out, the notorious monster Ouzelum decided to pop right next to where we are fighting.

Now, Bennu already takes a fair amount of our focus. He's got a nasty terror ability that makes it a bit rough on a NIN. Ouzelum can also be problematic for low-man situations because he casts high tier magic.

Now we were facing both of these. At the same time.

But wait! There's more! We also had to deal with two additional, normal monsters that decided to tag along! That's right folks!  Four enemies! Two high damage NMs and two regular roc type mobs. Things went from calm to chaotic. But we never lost our focus.

Ouzelum had attacked from behind, so I couldn't see it. All I saw was "Ah shit" from Jaci in the chat log. I wheel the camera around to see Big Bird pecking away at me. All that was said was "Stay on it" by me. She stayed on Bennu and I changed target to Ouzelum. We killed off the weaker mobs easily enough.  One or two weaponskills via sub-targetting.

But now we had to face the two NMs.

Things were rough. I was stretching my MP to the max. Cure IV was the only thing that could sustain either of us, and at 88 MP per cast, it's very taxing on a PLD's MP pool. I used my abilities that allowed me to refill my MP pool, but things were still going rough. Luckily, both her and I had enough temporary items to maintain. Healing Mists, Elixers, Ethers, Potions, the works. And boy, we used all of them. But we won. She was able to polish off Bennu and help me finish up Ouzelum, with a red weakness trigger for another Bennu key item.

We sat for a bit in stunned silence. It was hard to believe what just happened and that we survived. We felt good. Damn good. Another group would have wiped. WE would have wiped. But we had experience and teamwork on our side.

We're discovering new tricks everyday to augment our partnership. Just the other day, we discovered how to deal out over 10,000 damage in a single skillchain. Over 18,000 if we have another ninja with us. Empyreans are very powerful when wielded properly.

I'm truly grateful to have a friend like Jaci. We can tear just about anything up and have fun doing it. You can argue til you're blue in the face that we aren't being efficient and that a job change can make things go smoother. But why? We have fun, we succeed, and we've done so much under our own power that no linkshell or group can lay claim to. We're a powerful, unorthadox duo. And we're proud of it.

Sometimes you are so in tune with your partner, you can still maintain order in chaos.