Prologue

"Hey, give it!"

Shouts echoed over the Sanubia sands as two children raced down the dunes toward the ruins so populous on the island of Bikanel, home to the Al Bhed people so hated by Yevonites. The leader, a young boy with a thin strip of blond hair running down the center of his scalp, laughed teasingly as he ran, the semi-circle of a recording sphere cupped in his small hand. "Gotta catch me!"

"That's not fair! You're bigger than me, Ciku!" The second child was a smaller girl with a shock of wavy blond hair that hung halfway to her neck, punctuated by strands dark with sweat. Despite her acquaintance with the desert heat, growing up among the high yellow dunes, running through the soft sand in heavy boots still wore her out.

However, anger lent her its strength, and she launched herself at his back and they went tumbling down a dune. They wrestled for control of the little shining object. Finally when they rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill among some ancient ruins, she wrenched it out of his hands with a cry of triumph.

"Geez, Rikku," he said, rubbing the growing lump on his shaved head. "You coulda taken it from me without the tackling. Don't break it," he said suddenly, with worry, as she turned it over and knocked gently on the glass. "This is the best one I've ever found."

"I'll be careful," she said with childish diffidence, her bottom lip sticking out. They sat in the shadow of the ruin on the warm sand, the sun not having yet struck it in full strength. Despite the miles of open sand between them and the Al Bhed Home, a huge metallic structure in the middle of the desert, they both knew the desert like the backs of their hands. They weren't lost.

"I found it on the Spira-side beach," Ciku said proudly, looking down at the little sphere. They were rare on Bikanel, as there was no sphere pool available to collect the material needed for them. Whenever the Al Bhed needed a sphere, they either had to risk a market purchase from Luca or go to the Macalania Woods and bring some of the water home. "I figure if I could get into the bottom panel, I could program on it, cause the recording button is broken."

"I think there's something on here," Rikku said, childishly shaking the sphere when the watery inside flickered with a red image. "We should play it back."

"It's probably just a stupid Yevonite teaching-" Just as her brother began to reach for it, an image flicked into life inside the sphere and spastically projected it above the arch of the top.

The man that appeared there looked young, maybe no more than twenty, but his voice sounded weary. His arm hung limply by his side, and his shoulder-length black hair was loosely tied back into a braid. His eyes were fascinating, but one of them was scarred and forced closed. The other was a striking golden-brown, looking as if it were piercing into their very souls. But, despite his apparent strength, he seemed weak and…sad, somehow. The sphere was damaged and his voice was lost in the crackling, but Rikku was struck by how handsome he was.

"I can't tell what he's saying," Ciku said huffily and reached for the volume, only increasing the amount of static.

Suddenly, a tall shadow rounded the corner. "That's mine," it said in a low, gravelly tone.

Rikku screamed when she heard it and whirled. Ciku launched himself at the stranger in a defensive mechanism. She knew her brother had some magic skills, but wasn't eager for him to use them after the disaster of the last time. She tried to grab the sphere and run, but the stranger had effortlessly brushed off her brother against the ruin wall and through a broken window to the other side and come after her. With a surprisingly gentle hand, he grasped the back of her orange shirt and lifted her off of the sand, with her screaming all the while.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said quickly, readjusting his grip so that he wouldn't strangle her as he reached for the sphere that she held so dearly. "Give me that."

"It's mine. My brother found it," she said in a tiny voice, her screaming now muffled into terrified silence. Then, the reason for his attack on them hit her like a desert wind in the face. It was the man from the sphere. "Who- who are you?"

"Auron," he said, dropping his name with little to no emphasis, like it held no meaning for him. "And the sphere is mine. Even if you find something, it still belongs to someone else." Forcefully, yet without injury, he pulled the little half-sphere from her grip, still holding onto her shirt. Then, without ceremony, he plunked her onto the ground and turned to walk away.

Something intrigued her about him, and her fear abated by the second when she thought of how gentle he'd been in retrieving the sphere from two petulant children. "Wait," she said, tugging on the back of his coat. Despite the fact that she was eleven now, she'd grown very little and still barely reached to his waist. Ciku held this over her over day- literally.

He turned back to her with a look through slits of eyelids, as if not used to the light. It hit her then- he wasn't from here. She'd never seen him before. He wasn't Al Bhed. "You speak Al Bhed?"

"Someone I knew once was married to an Al Bhed," he said briefly. She detected in his words a deep emotion, like he was masking over a sorrow heavier than life can bear. "He taught me some."

"What happened to him?" She tilted her head. Her father Cid always told her that curiosity would be the end of her, but she couldn't help herself in asking about the story behind this odd stranger, in a desert where strangers were so rare.

He paused, giving her an odd look. She knew she'd jumped into a deeper lake than she'd seen in that question, but her stubborn defiance and bravery kept her looking straight up into his eyes with her swirled green ones. "He defeated Sin," he said softly.

"Oh," she said, almost like an exhalation of shock. He must be talking about Lord Braska, since he was so young. This must have been the Auron, then. He was still alive?

"You're Auron?" She said with a gasp, backing off.

"Excuse me," he said, pocketing his sphere and turning away, taking several steps into the desert. However, before he went far, an earsplitting crash came from overhead, and Rikku screamed. One of the huge winged fiends of the desert had crashed into the ruined wall above with a shrill cry. She crouched in the sand, hoping to be hidden, but knowing that it had been stupidly foolish for her and Ciku to come by themselves to this desert without an adult. Ciku's magic was no match for this bird- they were finished.

Faster than she would have thought possible, she found herself staring into the back of Auron's leg, the flannel of his pants rubbing against her bare skin. She looked up to see his big, muscled hand gripping the black-wrapped handle of a long sword, decorated only with a red device near the hilt. He took up a stance, and when the beast rushed them in an aggressive charge, he swung.

She winced, waiting for a painful strike, but none came. When she opened her eyes, she found the body of the fiend staring her in the eye with a long tongue lolling out of its open mouth. But the terror was soon gone as its body evaporated into thousands of pyreflies, raining down around them like a rainbow rain. Auron was still standing over her, but his sword now stood point-down in the sand. He had vanquished the mighty fiend in one blow.

He turned to see her goggling at him, and let a slight smile crack. She seemed like a unique child, a child of a culture hated by Yevonites. They had that in common. "What's your name?" He asked as gently as he could through his low voice.

"Rikku," she said softly, extending her hand to him. He took it and shook once.

"Nice to meet you, Rikku."