Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Final Fantasy X: Rikku ❯ Zanarkand ( Chapter 1 )

Edited: Week of March 7, 2005. Finished March 12, 2005, 45 minutes after midnight.

Author’s Notes: Woohoo! Here ya go! Chapter 1!  

Zanarkand

“Hey, Chappu!”

A red-haired, twenty-one year old man looked towards the door where a seventeen year old, blonde-haired, green-eyed girl stood. “Hey, Rikku. What’s up?” Then, as an afterthought, he smirked and added "Nice outfit."

He was speaking of her.... new choice of what to wear. It consisted of a yellow bikini top and what seemed to be the string bottoms with the sides sticking out of her green-colored, short skirt with an orange utility belt of sorts hanging on her waist. His eyes flew down to her long, shapely, tan legs that seemed to go on for a while until he got to a pair of regular white tennis shoes. He glanced back up and saw the she had her usual magenta and yellow scarf hanging from her neck. Looking further up, he saw she had a blue bandana or sorts tied around her head until it got to her long, blonde ponytail. Finally, he focused on her strange, green eyes. When she had showed up, it was quite a phenomenon amongst the area eye doctors and regular doctors, for her pupils were naturally in the shape of swirls. They had just written of as a new sort of birthmark that they had just discovered. 

She twirled in a circle and then grinned as he watched her warily as she made her way over to him. She sat down in his lap, eliciting a loud 'oof' to erupt from his lips. Her friends had the strangest accent ever, especially for one who was a native child that was born and raised Zanarkand. At least as far as either of them knew. Shaking the thought out of her head, she took a sip of his ice water sitting on the table. "Not much. Excited?”

"'Bout what?" he asked with a cheeky grin while picking her up off of his lap and setting her onto the armrest of his seat.

"Oh… I don’t know… maybe the blitzball match. Where you’re supposed to be pulling off the Jecht shot? You know… Jecht? Your all-time favorite blitzball player… Ohmigawd! Chappu has amnesia!”

He blinked and rolled his eyes at her antics. “Not excited. Yeah. That's it. These freakish butterflies aren't 'cause of excitement, ya? I'm just really, really nervous.”

She smiled sympathetically and thought for a moment. Putting her finger to her chin, she faced him and looked him in the eyes. “So, you promise to help me with my blitzball after, right?"

“I think you’re already good enough, but sure, why not?”

"Well.... It doesn't hurt to be a bit better.... ya?"

He grabbed a crumbled up fan letter that was next to him and let it fly towards her head. She ducked and they watched as it sailed through the air and make it's way towards the door. The door that was now opening. In walked a brown haired young man and he looked down at the piece of paper that landed in front of his feet.

Picking it up, he began to read it and one of his eyebrows shot up into the hair covering his forehead. He then looked up at the two to find Chappu blushing and Rikku giggling at the looks on their faces. “Hey, having a 'read Chappu's perverted fan mail' party without me?”

Chappu rolled his eyes failed to make the blush disappear from his ears. “Hey, Rei. Have a good day at work, ya?”

Rei blinked at the shorthaired redhead and his face slowly took on a look of mock-horror, as he comprehended the question that was asked. “That... has got to be the stupidest question that I have ever heard in my life.”

Chappu laughed at his friend, his dark blue eyes sparkling lightly. “You know it.”

Rikku rolled her eyes at the two and stood from her position on the armrest. “Well, boys, I’ve got to go and help old man Charles at the shop. See ya!" She made her way towards the door, stopped and turned back towards Chappu. "Oh yeah, Chappu, please get excited for this game. People are already beginning to think you’re conceited.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, ya?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever, bye!”

·:·__·:·

"I just don’t get it." Rikku said with a tint of amusement. Rei and herself were both sitting on a bridge above the entrance to the blitzball stadium, watching their friend get mobbed by his rabid fans. "How come people don't treat Chappu like a person? I mean, just ‘cause he’s a star player of a top ranking teams and voted a babe or whatever doesn’t mean that they have to kill him!”

Rei sighed and nodded in agreement as they watched Chappu’s red head, once again, get buried by the mob of girls as he made his way to the door. “Man, he gets all the babes…”

Rikku grinned and winked at the brunette sitting next to her. “Aw…  does poor widdle Wei feel left out?”

Rei grinned. “Yup.”

“So… I’m not a ‘babe’?”

Rei turned red and turned his violet tinted blue eyes away from her. “Rikku, you’re my number one babe just… not 18.”

She grinned. “Tomorrow I will be!”

He turned a violent shade of red in response.

·:·__·:·

“Blitzball is so gruesome…” Rikku trailed off as she watched someone in the sphere of water get smashed in the face with a wayward elbow while going for the rather large blue ball. “But... it’s just SO COOL!”

Rei rolled his eyes at her antics with a smile on his face. The two watched as the Zanarkand Abes scored another goal. After a few minutes, Rikku began to squirm anxiously in her seat.

Rei stole a glance at her and quickly hid the grin making it's way onto his face. “Are you hungry?"

“No…”

He shook his head and gave her some of his gil. “Help yourself.”

Standing, she stole one last glance at the blitzball sphere and made her way towards the doorway. Sighing, she turned her head and looked for a concession stand that seemed to have anyone even remotely paying enough attention so that she wouldn't have to wait ten minutes for only one hot dog or something. Suddenly, as loud roar of cheers filled the stadium around he and she spun around on her heel to make her way back inside of the stadium. “Like hell I’m gonna miss this,” she muttered while quickly making her way to the front railing.

“Hey! You! Girl! What are you doing?”

Ignoring the security guard that was making his way towards her, she watched in fascination as Chappu seemed to erupt out of the top of the sphere. Everyone--the crowd, their opponents, and even the security guard that had been originally been coming towards her--seemed to be blanketed in a cloak of awe. Rikku saw a movement in the atmosphere beyond the stadium top and furrowed her eyebrows as she tried to see what it was. It looked like a round, watery sphere much like the stadium... except it was moving. Her awe and fascination for the game and the moving sphere changed to an aura of horror as she watched some sore of flying water torpedoes were shot from the round moving... thing and shot into the statues at the top of the stadium, barely missing Chappu. Not letting her gaze leave one of her best friends, she watched in fright as his grip began to slip. Her image of him was then blocked at the water from the blitzball sphere began to lose shape and begin to fall on top of her and anyone present in the theater. She then clenched her green eyes shut and wrapped her arms around the railing in front of her as the water from the sphere came crashing down on top of her. Forcing herself to open her eyes, she saw a blob with red on top smash into the swirling waters, the crash slowing it--or them--down. It was Chappu. Reaching out for one of his flailing arms, she managed to grab hold. He squinted through the water and then blinked at her in surprise. Then, seeing her struggle with his weight, he grabbed her arm with is other hand. She felt dizzy as the lack of air was getting to her, the bubbles escaping her mouth at a faster pace. She then felt like letting out a groan of torment as she watched something else fall into the water and smack him in the head.

Once the water drained out, she attempted to pull Chappu’s weight over the railing.

“Come on you big lug… wake up.”

As if on cue, he jerked into consciousness. Looking at Rikku, he blinked. “Was I so wasted that I fell asleep at the blitzball stadium? Oh… happy birthday… Aw……… my head…”

“The day isn’t over. We were attacked. Now help me out here.”

“Oh.”

Pulling himself over, he nearly fell as his vision swam before him and everything seemed to double. They both collapsed and slowly opened their eyes as they took deep breaths to get their breaths back. Looking at the rubble, Rikku let out a strangled sob as she took in the scene. There were bodies. All over. Dead.

“Oh no… Rei!” she paused. “Chappu, sit down and stay here.”

“I can see straight enough to look for my best friend… Ow…” With a slight limp, he followed her to their seats and almost immediately caught sight of Rei’s messy brown hair under fallen debris. He seemed to be half buried in all of it and they hoped that he was unconscious rather than fatally injured.

Biting her lip, Rikku gently let go of Chappu and made her way over to her friend's unmoving form. “Don’t be dead… Don't be dead...” she muttered, repeating the mantra repeatedly in her head. “I already lost my dad, not you too…” Placing a small, pale, and wet hand on his steadily rising and falling chest, she let out a sigh of relief. Taking her now soaked scarf, she twisted it dry over his face, the water making a slight smacking noise. He didn’t budge. With a sigh, she pulled him up with some difficulty. “Come on, big boy.”

Chappu looked at her, his eyes more focused as she made her way towards him. “'S he okay?”

She sighed and shifted his weight hanging off of her. “I dunno. He won’t wake up.”

Nodding his head slightly, the red head grabbed Rei's other arm and helped her drag him out of the destroyed stadium. Once they managed to pull him to the bottom of the entrance ramp, she turned and looked at the once beautiful, stone stadium. The once glowing orbs that were alight with the teams' symbols earlier that evening were not shattered, not even recognizable as a spherical shape. The Greek-like statues were also in shattered ruins much like everything else surrounding them. They no longer looked new and beautiful but just.... old and broken. Turning back around, she caught a glimpse of an annoyingly familiar red coat.

“…Auron…”

Chappu looked up at her in confusion. “The old guy with the red coat?” Looking towards where her gaze was focused his eyebrows shot up. "Oh."

She nodded in response to his question. “Take care of Rei.”

His gaze flickered back to her before focusing on his wounded friend. “Where’re you going?”

“Just… I’ll be back, okay? I’m not going to lose anyone else!” He nodded his consent as she marched her way over to the older man. “What?” she snapped in irritation.

Ignoring her rather rude greeting, he turned around and began to walk away from her. “Follow me.”

Biting her lip, she looked back at Chappu. He waved his hand at her, signaling for her to go ahead. Turning around, she ran after Auron.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” She twisted her mouth up and sighed as she ran to catch up with him. "Stupid old fart...." she muttered angrily.

Time stopped.

“So it begins.”

Turning around, she saw a tan boy with a clean, purple robe on, the hood attached to it shadowing his face in a mysterious fashion.

Furrowing her eyebrows, she took a step toward him. “Hey, kid… are you okay?”

“Don’t cry.”

She blinked at the strange response and took a slight step back. “Wha…?”

It all started up again as if nothing happened. Unconsciously wiping at her cheeks, she swiped her hand across her face until it was dry. She then turned back to Auron's general direction and a pout appeared on her face. "Hey, you old fart! Wait for me!!!" With that said, began to run towards Auron again after she glanced around one final time for the boy. He just… disappeared.

When she caught up with him, she nearly ran into his back as he suddenly stopped. She followed his gaze to find something dark falling from the, seemingly liquid, ball and crash into a nearby building. When she squinted at it to see exactly what it was, she came to the conclusion that it looked like a giant squid!

Hiding her disgust and fear, she turned toward Auron with her eyebrows furrowed. “Wh… what is that thing?!”

Without even sparing a glance in her direction, he uttered a single word. “Sinspawn.”

She turned back in the direction of the creature and watched in horror as its scales flew off of its body and landed in front of and around them. Her horror increased at the scales opened up and began to move about in a hypnotizing pattern. 

“Oh… ramm hyf…” (Oh… hell naw…) she muttered, stepping back before realizing that it was useless since there were also some around her. She jumped out of the way with a yelp as one took a swipe at her.

“Here.” 

Jumping away from another creature, she looked back at the older man. "What?!"

He held up two, large, odd-shaped red daggers in front of her face. She looked at him and then back at the familiar weapons. “Do you know how to use these?”

Gripping them gently in her hands, a mixed look of determination and indignation appeared on her features. “You kinda took them from me the last time I saw you.”

He assumed that meant ‘yes’. “We’re going to cut through them.”

She nodded and bit her lip, shaking a little. May it be from fear or adrenaline, she had no clue, but she was going for the former. Taking a deep breath, she charged after the red clad man.

“Stupid piece of…" She was cut off as she took a mighty swipe at one of the creatures and kept charging. "I might lose my best friend and he has me fighting creepy, scaly things." Taking two more swipes with her newly acquired daggers, she sighed. Looking up at Auron's form, she yet out a yelp as she caught sight of what was in front of them. "AIYA! How did it…?!”

Before them was the giant Sinspawn. The same one that had crashed into the building minutes before. More of its scales shot off of it and landed in front of the two fighters. Rikku felt her fear go away. Okay, so maybe she had to force it away, but that wasn't the point! She figured that it had to be done seeing as to how she had a sixth sense that it wouldn’t be the last time that she saw something like that. She stole a quick glace at Auron. He was oddly calm… She looked closer at him while making sure that the things she dubbed as the "scaley bugs" never got close enough to hit her and noticed that he was concentrating on something, hard. Just when the scale... things weren't even moving towards them, everything around them seemed to take a sort of dark hue to it...like a night in a night. It was so dark and she felt Goosebumps crawl on her skin, her forgotten childhood fear of the dark seeming to crawl on the back of her subconscious. When the lights of the broken city that was once full of life came back, she suddenly felt drained of her energy.

And seemed to be the trigger for Auron. She watched as he brought his sword over his head in a wide ark and a powerful blast of energy seemed to gather at the tip. The energy showed the movement of the large sword and she watched in amazement as a large blast of energy hit the fiends with the downward stroke. All of the smaller ones dropped dead on impact.

Rikku blinked. That was Auron’s overdrive, Dragon Fang. She then blinked again. How did she know that? And what in the world was an 'overdrive'? She figured that it had to have something to do with her past. Her forgotten past. Pushing away the frustration that usually came when she couldn't remember something, she brought herself back to the present. As she did so, her eyes seemed to brighten to a considerable... brightness at a new discovery. She then grinned almost psychotically. Almost.

The duo came to find that with every time that the giant Sinspawn was hit, one or two of it's many tentacles disappeared.

“Why won’t you just die?!” she muttered to herself, something akin to frustration laced into her words.

The two fighters readied their weapons and charged at the creature. With that final blow at its body, all of the tentacles disappeared. Rikku backed away from it slowly while staring at it in awe as it burst out into many little balls of light. It turned into a metallic black color and slowly turned into a dull black as it shriveled up in the middle of the bridge. With an exhausted sigh, Rikku stumbled cautiously around the Sinscales stuck in the ground, afraid that they would, like the others, jump to life before her very eyes. Turning away from the giant, dead creature, she came to a sudden halt as a bright, glowing object came into her line of sight. Turning her head fully to the right, she saw a.... blue, glowing sphere.

“That’s odd…” she muttered to herself. “That wasn’t there before…”

Once she had walked over to it on unsteady legs, she stared at it for a moment with a blank look on her face, as if she had no idea what to do with it.. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she placed her hand on the blue, glowing orb. She felt her drowsiness leave her in a dizzying rush and her adrenaline seemed to pump viciously through her veins, seeming to chase any remaining fears away. Looking back in the general direction of the man she was fighting with, she noticed that he, too, looked better. With a sigh, she followed Auron the rest of the way across the never-ending bridge. It seemed  that before they could even get five steps away from the dead Sinspawn, more Sinscales appeared in their line of vision. And, in Rikku’s observations, they sure as hell weren’t dead with their mother. She had kind of figured that they'd be like vampires: once the leader died, they all died. Or... whatever.

Pulling herself into a defensive stance, she studied them and watched as they seemed to be doing the same to her. Flickering her eyes away from them, she quickly accessed her surroundings and took them in, not even realizing that she was doing so. A change in lighting in the Sinscales' direction brought her attention back to them and she watched in apprehension as the wings on one of them began to flicker rapidly.

"Uhm... Auron, why's it flickering? That can't be good. It's not good, is it?" She rambled.

She could almost HEAR Auron nod at her, the adrenaline in her veins enhancing her senses. "Kill it."

Not wasting anytime, she brought her daggers up and launched herself at the one with the flickering wing and sliced at it wings, trying to get it to die. Digging her daggers into it, she twisted her wrist so that the daggers did the same inside of it. Before it could react and make a slice at her, she quickly pulled away, pulling her daggers with her. She watched in relative horror as that movement opened up its gut. Before any of its insides could be seen falling out, it had fallen forward so that its body covered any of the gore. It then, like the Sinspawn, burst into tiny balls of light, but this one disappeared with them. Overkill.

Pulling herself back behind Auron to get over the fact that she just gutted something, she scanned the area with narrowed eyes as he fought the creatures, taking some down only for more to come in its place. Bringing her eyes around the general area again, she came to the realization that the whole section of the bridge was covered in the ugly, yet moving, creatures. There was no way that just the two of them could fight them all, no matter how pathetic the Sinscales were when alone. She took one final look around until her eyes landed on a tanker. 

“Hey, Auron… buddy… can you hold them off while I work on this?” She grinned as he grunted in response. “Thanks!”

Studying the machine carefully, she felt her lips snake up. Luck so wasn't on her side. She figured that, since she couldn't find it, the part that the gas actually went into was hanging over the side of the bridge. Standing, she looked over the side of the bridge and nearly balked at the darkness below them. She never really took notice of how... deep and dark that pit they were hovering over was. Turning back to the tanker, she felt her mouth set itself into a grim line. She bent down and hacked the metal on the tank until she saw the tiniest trickle of gas. Gritting her teeth, she slammed her dagger into it harder, the other one held securely on her hip. With one final hit, the gas seemed to burst out. She jumped out of the way before it could dump onto her. With that done, she tucked the gas-covered dagger on her hip and pulled the other one out. She slammed in into the wires and jumped up and back as it began to spark rapidly. It seemed to go in slow motion as she turned to run and grabbed Auron's coat as the sparks hit the gas.

The next thing either of them knew, the bridge was being blown up. Running freely past the creatures that fell from the rumble of the explosion, the two made their way away from the fire. Rikku watched in surprised horror as the end of the bridge seemed to tip downwards toward the ground, the weight on that end bringing it down. She watched as Auron leapt, bringing himself safely to the secure area. Gritting her teeth once again, she pushed off of the bridge, a Sinscale's head and managed to grab a hold of the edge.

She squeezed her eyes shut as the explosion below her rocked her body and the bridge finally fell into the, seemingly never-ending, pit of darkness below the city. With that explosion, she felt her grip on the edge becoming loose. Bringing her other hand up, she grabbed a hold of a pole of metal sticking out and tried to pull herself out with her tired muscles.

She almost yelped as a warm, gloved hand curled around her neck and pulled her up. She was then brought face to face with Auron. The then saw and felt everything around them become distorted and pulled up into the air. She looked up and her breath began to hitch in panic as she saw the big ball of what seemed to be water, the cause of it all, brought them closer and closer. It was kind of funny that she didn't notice it on her run through the city with Auron. She turned back to Auron, not wanting to look at the thing. He just stood there, his hand still around her neck. Was he trying to choke her?

She began to panic at the thought and would have struggled in his grasp if it wasn't for the pit of blackness beneath them. “Let me go you big meanie!”

“This is your story…you have to go back home.”

She stopped her struggle. “What?”

He looked up at the thing above them. She didn't want to look at it again; the creature triggered things  in her mind that she couldn't explain. It was definitely familiar to her. Almost as if she had seen it before that day. The day of the Zanarkand's destruction. 

Auron looked back at her grimly. "You know what it is as well as I do."

She looked at him and focused on his single eye. She couldn't... she couldn't remember. At least.... she didn't think she did. And it hit. "... Sin."

He nodded and looked back up. She, too, looked back up at the creature as a few memories flashed through her mind's eye. Before she could even begin to sort them out, they were gone. She blinked at that realization and felt goose bumps of pure fear cover her skin seeing how close she was to it. There was a hole under it, sucking them in. She decided that she's rather fall to her death than be sucked up by the creature and began to struggle in panic. She didn't want to die by Sin. Not like this. She felt Auron's grip get tighter around her neck and did the only thing left that she could think of. She screamed bloody murder as her skin felt as if it was being ripped apart, piece-by-piece, into tiny bits of matter. She screamed as pain over took her senses, not even taking notice as Auron's grip disappeared. And then all was black.

Author’s Notes: I don’t really have much to say, but thanks to the reviews I got! And review. : P woo hoo! One chapter down, who knows how many more to go!

Author's Notes 2 (3/7/2005): Finally figured out how many chapters there will be. There will be 26 to 27 chapters, not counting the first one posted with the whole... character thing and whatnot. Well, I'm tired. 4,343 words as opposed to the 1,487 words before. Thought I'd share. :-D Peace.