Well, okay! I guess someone's going to want an explanation… After all, who would ever, ever think to do this? If it isn't the least likely pairing of any FF characters ever, I'll eat my socks! *Pauses* You know, on second thought, I won't be doing that. Well, if you need an explanation, then, quite simply, I like it. I like Rikku. I like Zell. They're my favorites, all-time, and as such, they deserve each other in my eyes.

Man, am I crazy or what? ^_^;;

Well, alright, time to hit it, so…

Final Fantasy VIII, and all related characters and indicia are the copyrighted properties of Squaresoft, bless 'em. Ditto for Final Fantasy X and any allusions to Final Fantasy VII contained within this fan fiction. I swear that I, make no money off of this - I write it only out or respect for the creative posse at Square, to have fun with their characters and to possibly parody some events.

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Chapter I

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... I could only gape as those huge jaws gaped and the scales started sailing through the air at high speeds. The gigantic carapace outsized the island itself, and yet, incredibly, Sin was not even fully emerged from the waters of the world ocean. Below me, on the shore, the village was lined across the shore... they were simple fishermen and peasants. Honest people who'd never hurt a soul in their lives...

And in a heartbeat, they were all dead. Men, women and children alike. A flash of light and they had been indiscriminately vaporized by the energy field that enveloped Sin's body, their only legacy ashes that flew in the wind and could not be distinguished from the ruined dust of their houses. Both came up to me on the wind, up to the top of the mountain where I stood, watching with a heavy heart.

How? I wondered to myself, feeling my eyes sting and try and tear up. I stopped tears from falling by shutting my eyes to the scenes of destruction below. How can Sin be back? We killed it... ended Jecht forever...

"I don't believe it..." Tidus said, his face a mask of mixed horror and rage. "We sent it to the Farplane. It was gone..."

"One Sin ends," Wakka said, lowering his eyes to the ground, "And another begins. We have yet to atone... and we were fools to think we could change anything."

"No!" I said, turning around looking him in the eye. "Don't say that... we can keep trying, you know!"

"Why bother?" Wakka asked, shrugging. "It's not like Sin is going to just go away..."

I always got so angry when he talked that way. Of course I did - I've always been an optimist, or at least stubborn. Maybe both. In any case, I wasn't about to just listen to him give up hope like that. I've never respected quitters... that's why I'm persistent in everything I do, even if it's hard. Everything worthwhile in life is, right? So it's no use quitting...

"You can't just give up, Wakka! You're not a quitter, are you?" I looked desperately at him, searching his face for some sign of epiphany - maybe he'd yet realize that he was just upset over what was going on, that it was only momentary and he should be driven to new heights by his anger over this, just like he always used to be when I first met him...

"I don't know, Rikku..." he said slowly, beginning something. It didn't matter what he wanted to say. I wasn't going to stick around and listen to his hope for Spira's future die like that. So I did what I usually do in uncomfortable situations like that... make a tactical retreat of sorts. I prefer to think of it as 'advancing in the other direction'. But that's not important. Anyway, I ran down the hill... just to be alone awhile. Away from Wakka and Tidus and the others, who all stood together as they always had, and away from Sin, who now launched it's spawn in droves to cleanse the island of any people who hadn't been in the village. They would probably attack the village first. My friends would go and try and get them there... I'd be along... I'd follow them there in secret. I just didn't want to look at Wakka right then, or talk to Tidus about what he thought. I didn't even want to consult Lulu, like I usually might. I just wanted to be alone... and to fight some Sinspawn.

***

"Ma! I'm home!"

I entered the front door of… well, I guess it wasn't really my house anymore, but still, my home. A home with love in it never stops being your home, Ma said when I first left for Garden. Though, she probably just wanted me to visit her more often.

"Hi, Zell," She said, turning around with her customary smile. When she saw that I was alone, it broadened a bit and she walked over to hug me. Heh, that was something, thankfully, she didn't do when I had friends around with me. I mean, it's not like I mind hugging my Ma, but I guess I do worry about keeping that tough guy image around my peers. Which is really, honestly the person who I am with them. They're like family… but not in the same way Ma is.

So anyway, I hugged her back and she let go and looked up at my hair. And, predictably, she said something about trendy hair and baggy pants and how it must alienate girls.

"Hey, that ain't fair, Ma…" I said, though I really didn't take any offense at all.

"Well, Zell, you've so far failed miserably when it comes to women," she chided in her way, getting back to a pot of boiling something-for-dinner. "What about that nice girl who gave you the magazine the one time? You went on about how nice she was for days…"

"Well, yeah, Ma, but that's it, she was just nice, is all. Not anything other girls ain't…"

My Ma rolled her eyes. Well, she wasn't facing me, but I'll assume she rolled her eyes, because if I knew her, that's what she would have done if she was facing me. Right to my face. That's my Ma for you.

"Zell, you're being overly picky, and you know it."

"Aw, no I'm not…" I walked out of the kitchen, up the stairs to my room to take my shoes off and relax a little before dinner. Jeez, used to be I came over and me and mom would talk about nice things. What a big hero I was for rollin' with Squall and stopping Ultemicia and all that. How she was doing, which I did honestly care about. Even the weather, which hardly ever has any noticeable changes in Balamb anyway. But now whenever I came over it was like she wanted me to get married off and stuff. Or at least go on some nice dates...

Lying down on my bed, I pondered it more and more. It was hard not to, for me. I mean, this was something that was important to my mother, and that meant it should be just as important to me. I was her only son, after all. I had to watch out for her interests.

But the truth was, I wasn't much for that sort of thing. I mean, I like girls as much as the next guy, okay? But still, it was hard for me to just… get to know one. I don't know, maybe Ma was right and I was too picky. But… I don't know, I just felt like it wasn't time yet. It wasn't the time for hunting for a woman to be around. It wasn't the time to start trying to tie myself to another human being like that, as nice as it sounded. It was more a time for… for…

"Dinner!"

"Coming, Ma!" Oh, well. No need to worry about it so much right now…

***

"Aakh!" I grunted as the Sinspawn beast slapped me across the face with its tail. Why had I been so stupid? Why had I run away from my teammates like that? I'd fought fiends all night by myself, wasting my strength… now it was just me against this thing I'd come across... and those were not good odds, considering that it was about five times bigger than I was.

It bellowed at me, showing me its rows of fangs, arranged in a circular pattern like the shape of its mouth. Each seemed to shine red as fire in the light of the sunrise. The razor-sharp teeth seemed to stretch back endlessly into its wormlike body.

"Eat this!" I shouted as I pulled a grenade from my belt and used a length of twine to attach a small pouch of powdered Ouchu musk to it. When I threw the explosive right into its mouth, it closed its mouth and tried to spit it up - the result being that it just choked on it before it exploded with triple the force of a regular grenade, bursting the sides of the beast in a shower of greenish goop and bloodying the ground.

"Ha! What's the matter, indigestion?" I smiled at the corpse, feeling victorious and pleased with myself... until I looked up just a bit. Then a bit more. Until I was looking straight ahead into the thick of the woods that blanketed the jungle... and outside of the clearing was in... resting on tree branches... on the ground... crowding each other... were dozens more of these same gigantic worms.

"Oh, damn..." I cursed, looking them all over. There was no way I could rightfully hope to survive...

But I hoped anyway. Leave it to me to fight the system.

"Come and get some of Rikku, you fish bait!" I cried, brandishing my fighting claws and sneering, trying to look more confident than I really felt. Might as well die with grace and some style, even if nobody was looking...

***

"Bye Ma!" I said, waving at her and jogging out the door.

"Next time, spend the night when you don't have work in the morning, Zell, or you'll be late!" She yelled after me as I cut through the fog. Well, she was probably right. I mean, if I was late… well, as an Instructor, it just wouldn't do to be late. Especially not if Squall heard about it. He might dock my pay! You think you know a guy… and then he becomes your boss. Sheesh.

Well, not to worry. I had plenty of time, and I was getting some exercise. Now I was striking out on the road back to where Garden had been replaced after we had brought it home from FH. It surprised me how little things had changed on this island I'd called home for almost my whole life, considering all that had happened throughout the rest of the world. I'm sure my friends wouldn't guess at it, but I did think about these things. Maybe even more than they did. It was just a wonderful thing to me to know that I could still, after the hardships I - and we all had endured - run the familiar road from Balamb to the Garden without worry of getting jumped by soldiers.

As I ran further along the path, I could almost see Garden in the distance, though it was obscured by the soupy mists that passed over the fields out here. They were clearing now… my students were probably waking up back at Garden, taking showers, finding their equipment and wondering where they'd put their homework.

What could possibly make me want to change this life of mine?

***

"Aaah!" I shouted as I was knocked to the ground by another of those whipping, slashing tails. This was definitely not good. Not good at all.

A roll onto my side let me dodge the next one that came down and struck the ground where I'd just been laying. I got up onto my feet somehow, and, without even hesitating to look back, ran. I was going to die, there was no doubt of that, but I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of it being easy. And if I could get them beat, then so much the better. I had to get back to my friends, and to the airship to get help - if we were all there, we'd win somehow. I had to apologize for my selfishness at least, before I died. I couldn't go out with them thinking that I was a spoiled brat, like I'd always made myself out to be, I guess… I'm more complex than that, I thought. I can't die with nobody else ever knowing who I really was. Otherwise I might as well have not lived at all. Those thoughts were the only things that kept me running, tired as I was.

I hurdled over a fallen tree. I was fairly sure I could hear one of those Sinspawn smash effortlessly through behind me, but I didn't bother to glance over my shoulder, even for a second. I was running as fast as I could and I didn't need to be slowed down any, when it might mean death.

"I'm not afraid of bugs," I panted, still not looking back. "I'm not afraid of bugs, I'm not afraid of bugs…" You're not afraid of worms, I told myself. Never have been. And, hey, at least you're not being chased by a pack of Thunder Elementals, huh? I mused. I could almost kick myself for even thinking about wisecracking at a time like this. And I would have kicked myself, too, if it wouldn't have involved slowing down long enough to be torn to shreds by my pursuers. Which I didn't think I quite deserved, even if I hadn't been very smart or nice.

I squeezed my eyes tightly closed as I came to a place where a branch hung low and dashed straight on through the tangle of leaves. Fortunately the tree wasn't so dilapidated that the branch was low enough to hit me, but it slowed me down just for half a second or so. That was all the Sinspawn needed to catch up. They were on my heels, snapping their wide mouths. If I thought I'd been running as fast as I could before, I hadn't known my own strength, because now the trees flew by on either side twice as fast. I felt my saliva turn a disgustingly salty taste… my heart was pounding so hard inside my chest that I could hear it in my ears - no doubt, I was getting way too tired to keep on much longer. The fighting, the running, it was too much for me, as much energy as I always had. If I didn't get to safety soon, I was going to die of a heart attack, not the fiends.

There! At a point just ahead, the trees thinned out and sun shone. The beach - I could get away there, in the water. These worms probably couldn't swim, and even if they could, it was doubtful they could keep up anyway. What was left of my strength would serve me better out in the sea anyway…

The only problem was that it would involve a flat out run over a stretch of sand. A flat run where they could catch up and get me to the ground. And if they did that, I wasn't going to get back up, I knew.

So that was it. This again - life or death, no way of choosing anything else. But I had to try. "Damn it, damn it…" I hissed through my teeth, panting each word out rhythmically. I didn't look back. I ducked my head lower and pushed my legs harder with each step, forcing myself to tap into the kind of strength mortal terror brings one from deep inside the soul.

I hit the sand. My feet dug in a little with every step, but I was going too fast and hard for it to slow me down. Just a few seconds after I'd reached the edge of the tree line, I was nearly at the water, and I leapt as high as I could, making a diving form with my body and slicing into the surf. I didn't know if the worms were still after me, but I still didn't wait until I was all the way underwater to start swimming. The water did cool me off, and I felt pretty confident that I could go for awhile like this, weary though I may have felt. After twenty or thirty strokes, I was past the waves and any effect they had on my forward motion, so I slowed my strokes and looked behind myself.

They weren't behind me. They were on the shore and not following.

I laughed, feeling victorious. I'd done it! I'd cheated death! They couldn't touch me here… now I just had to find a rock or something to rest on until I could find a way to my friends again…

Then, then I heard it. That loud, continuous roar or churning water and flying spray that was the sound of imminent death.

That's why they hadn't followed. It was coming back for them, like it always did. Sin was coming back for them.

***

I was nearing the gates of Garden by now, and the twin statues of monsters that flanked the entrances that I knew so well. It was quite a sight at this hour of the morning, the Garden. Its halo reflected the shining of the early morning's sun as the dawn's fog cleared up.

I'd just passed the gateway when it happened. My ears popped, just like that. My whole head felt pressured, like I was under a whole lot of water.

"What the…?" I smacked myself in the side of my head, hoping that might clear up the wholly unpleasant sensation. But it only got worse - and now there was a ringing in my ears, too. What was this? Was I going into a vision? The symptoms were similar to how it was when I used to see Laguna and his friends, but Ellone had stopped that happening a long time ago, hadn't she?

Whatever it, was, it was more than unpleasant now. It was downright painful. Stopping jogging, I gripped both sides of my head and knelt to the floor, shutting my eyes tightly to try and dull the way they were beginning to sting and my vision blurred to white. I can't begin to describe it, but I swear I could sense… well, that sounds stupid… but I could definitely sense that something was going to happen. I still don't know what it was, but I knew what was happening, in some way. But all I could think at the moment, of course, was much simpler and less eloquently developed… more along the lines of: Just what the hell's going on with me?!

***

Sin came closer, not slowing down even a little. I treaded water there, not even thinking about my limbs moving to stay afloat. I was on automatic. I was too terrified to scream or even cry. I just blinked… I felt dumbfounded. How could that be it? I had just been so happy. I'd just cheated death. And now I was going to be killed anyway.

Better luck next time, some annoying random thought fired off as Sin rose up out of the water, its huge fins framing the sun perfectly, and then its horrible head breaking the surface of the ocean into a million flying sheets of spray. It rose up higher and higher, until it blotted out the sun behind it. The shadow it cast was so unnaturally dark I thought it might be something magically evil about Sin. But it didn't matter now. Nothing seemed to, for a long second. Nothing but death.

And then the shadow was broken by light. Bright, white light…

***

The blinding sensation dimmed, though my eyes were still adjusting to the regular light almost a minute later. I just remained like that, on my knees on the pavement, rubbing my eyes like it would help. When finally I could see with some semblance of normality again, I blinked at the world around me. Nothing seemed out of place. It must have just been a weird reaction to something I ate… maybe ma's cooking. I'd see the Doctor about it. No need to worry.

So, having almost dismissed my odd experience, I stood.

And that's when I saw her. She was on her side on the ground, either dead or unconscious, I couldn't tell which. But her clothes had cuts and tares in them that suggested she'd been in a fight, so naturally I went on guard, looking left, then right for any monsters that might have done this to her. Nothing. I ran over to kneel down beside her, looking her over. She looked hurt pretty bad from behind, but hey, me no doctor. One thing I did notice was her clothes. Must be her combat gear, I thought. Maybe she was out training hard at night, and when she came back she just collapsed from the stress…

To examine more closely, I rolled her over carefully, making sure to hold her head so it didn't hit the ground and damage her further.

Oh…

Oh, wow…

I blinked stupidly. I was actually glad she was unconscious, for just a second. I imagine I looked like I'd never seen a girl before. But… there was just no describing how it was, seeing her for the first time. Even asleep, and beaten down, something about her face emphasized inner energy this way I'd only ever seen in Selphie, and even then, there was something else… a kind of mystique…

And hey, screw the poetry, she was just plain hot!

As gently as I could, I scooped her up into my arms, putting a hand on her back and one under her knees to carry her along as I started walking cautiously (but quickly!) towards Garden and Dr. Kadowaki's office. This girl needed more help than just a Potion or two could cure.

"Guys…" I heard a small voice mumble. This was followed by the tiniest of coughs. I kept myself from looking down at her so I could concentrate on the walking better - the last thing I wanted was to drop her. "Guys… I'm sorry I left you…"

As much as I had seen and done, as many monsters as I'd fought and as many history-changing battles as I'd helped win… something about her saying that made me twitch worriedly. So help me, somehow, this prone, incapacitated girl scared me. She scared me deep.

And so I first met her.

That's how my story begins.

How our story begins.

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End Chapter I

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