Nothing much to say about this chapter. College finals are coming up, hence the delays. Oh, the horror of final exams! Luckily, the semester is almost done with, so I can return to my writing a lot more now.

Chapter 2: Visions

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to be sick for a few hours..." I mutter, shaking my head and putting a hand to my forehead. At the moment, I'm sitting on the ground in an alley, courtesy of the portal that the fayth made for me. Unceremoniously spitting me out into the street, it also left me with a bad case of motion sickness.

"So, this is what Zanarkand looks like, up close and personal."

The city of Zanarkand, home of the Zanarkand Abes. Upon first glance, the city looks to be styled with an olden-day flair. On closer inspection, however, you would see that the city is actually quite modern. Towering buildings and large bridges span the entirety of the grand city, and a massive stadium for a game called blitzball, a game resembling a cross between soccer and football, but played underwater, sits near the center of the city.

Apparently, from the massive amounts of cheering and music that I can hear, there's a game going on right now.

"Maybe I can sneak in and watch," I say to myself, chuckling. "Nah. Too much trouble for too little reward. I've got more to do right now, anyway..."

Looking around at my surroundings, I notice a few people still walking the streets. A few of them give me strange glances, probably because of my clothing, but most simply ignore me, either heading towards the blitzball stadium or along other streets. A huge outburst of cheering from the stadium causes a few people to glance in that direction, as well as letting me know that the Abes must have scored another goal. A small smile creeps over my face as I look up at the stadium, but that smile quickly turns into a frown as I notice something unusual nearby.

Water droplets. Water droplets floating up into the sky of their own accord, to be precise.

"That...could be very bad news," I murmur, fingering my katana's hilt absently and following the water droplets with my eyes. "Where's Auron when you need him..."

The trail of floating water droplets leads up to a very strange sight - namely, a large, spherical ball of water, hovering above and behind the town's buildings. I'm not fooled by the seemingly docile appearance of the object, however. I know what it really is.

"Sin. Lovely," I mutter sarcastically, staring at the ball of water with hate-filled eyes.

Sin. A creature that exists for one reason, and one reason only - to destroy. There is no other meaning to its existence. Death personified, yet concealed cleverly in this strange, yet seemingly harmless facade.

My glare of anger quickly turns to a look of mute terror, as I see faint yellow light coming from the ball. Panicking, I duck back into the alleyway that I came from, curling into a ball beside a large trash can as I hear explosions from above and around me. I can feel the ground shaking as pieces of buildings topple, rubble falling into the alley near me and partially blocking it off. Screams erupt from all directions as people try and seek cover from the unexpected attack, and I cover my head both from the noise and out of fear, remaining still as the city continues to collapse around me.

The minutes tick by like hours, each minute seeming like an eternity as I wait for the danger to pass, at least mostly. Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing, relaxing as best I can for what I know is about to happen. Usually, when I'm exceedingly stressed, I'll try to meditate somewhat to ease my mind and body; this seems like a perfect opportunity for that.

"Stay focused...you've got a job to do," I whisper to myself, standing up from where I had taken shelter and unsheathing my katana, watching as the blade gleams against the rubble and fallen metal. As I step out of the alleyway, I nearly run into a tall, older man, wearing what appears to be a large, red robe, despite the fact that it feels like mid-May here as well. A very large sword with strange designs etched onto the blade is strapped to his back, and a sizably large jug of some sort is hanging from the belt encircling his waist. The collar of his robe and the sunglasses sitting on his face only allow me to see some of his face, but I don't need to see his face to know who I'm looking at.

"Auron?"

"Benji. The fayth told me that I would meet you here. You are safe, I see."

"I'm fine," I reply, nodding. A moment later, a figure runs up behind the two of us, breathing somewhat heavily. Obviously, he had been chasing Auron through the streets, apparently with little success.

"Man, Auron, wait up next time!" the boy, looking no older than my own seventeen years, exclaims, stepping in front of Auron.

'Well, looks like everyone's here...' I think to myself, watching as Auron remains silent, instead electing to shake off the boy's words and head down the street in a fast paced walk. The boy follows Auron, jogging to keep up with the warrior, and I take off after the two of them, not wanting to be left behind in the destroyed streets.

Ahead of us, I can spot a large bridge, one of many that apparently exist in the advanced city. The bridge is largely intact, luckily, only a few chunks of stone and metal missing from the overall structure. Several people are running over the bridge as we arrive, just before a very strange thing happens to the surrounding area.

The entire area around us seems to simply freeze completely. Every bit of movement and sound seems to be completely shut out, the only noise a faint ringing in my ears from all of the explosions a few minutes earlier. In front of the three of us, a small figure appears, the same fayth that appeared to me in my room before this began. Calmly, he looks up at the boy beside me, face holding an expression almost resembling curiosity.

"It begins."

"What?" the boy replies, obviously quite clearly confused at the fayth's words.

"Don't cry."

"What the - hey, wait!" the boy exclaims, as the fayth disappears just as quickly as he arrived. A moment later, everything around us goes back to normal, the people continuing to move as if they had never been frozen.

"Look,"Auron says, his sudden speaking seems to jolt the boy out of his momentary confusion. The boy follows Auron's outstretched hand, gasping slightly as he notices the ball of water that I saw earlier hovering nearby the bridge. "We called it Sin."

"Sin?" he repeats, never taking his eyes off of the creature. Another explosion suddenly goes off in the distance, startling me slightly as I turn to look at the source of the noise. Just beyond the side of the bridge, a strange, glowing tentacle seems to have smashed its way through a building, and is now flailing madly for no apparently reason. As it does so, small, scale-type pieces of what appear to be some sort of skin fly from the appendage, twisting and turning in flight before stabbing deeply into the bridge ahead of us.

What appear to be scales really aren't, which becomes apparent as each of the things begin to move, becoming strange, bug-like quadrupeds with two wings extending from their back.

"Sinscales," Auron explains, looking between the two of us. "They may be weak, but they appear in numbers. Don't let your guard down."

"I never do," I reply, lifting my sword up and holding it diagonally in front of me as I slide into a balanced combat stance. The boy tries to fight off several of the creatures at once, but falls onto his back as one of the creatures lunges at him. Auron quickly swats the offending Sinscale away, causing the others to chirp slightly in a high-pitched voice and back away, apparently afraid. Reaching to his side, Auron unstraps another sword, this one a simple-looking long sword, and hands it to the boy, who takes it quickly.

"A gift from Jecht," Auron says, watching as the boy's eyes go wide.

"My old man?" he says, somewhat startled by the words. Another Sinscale steps forward, braver than the rest, and the boy leaps to the attack, swinging the blade wide in an attempt to get the creatures to back off again.

(Play: Hurry! - Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy X)

One of the Sinscales leaps at me now, raising a leg to slash at me with a sharp claw. Instinct takes over, despite all of my martial arts training, and I lash out in a vicious soccer kick that launches the Sinscale back, skidding across the ground.

"Anyone else feeling stupid?" I ask, eyes narrowed at the creatures. "Didn't think so."

A sickening crunch from beside me causes me to turn, and I see Auron's sword embedded into the body of another Sinscale, which is now split nearly in half. The creature's corpse glows for a moment, before bursting into a cloud of small, multicolored balls of light, which fly up into the sky and disappear. The sound of metal meeting flesh sounds again, and more lights fly into the air, the boy beside Auron removing his sword from the mass of muscle and tissue that once composed a Sinscale.

"These ones don't matter!" Auron roars, over the sounds of more falling debris and cracking pavement. "We cut through!"

"I can live with that," I reply with a smile, running up to the nearest Sinscale and launching into a spin, my sword coming around in an arc to both cut deeply into the Sinscale, as well as send it rolling backwards along the ground even as it dissolves into balls of colored light. The other Sinscales quickly move out of our way, leaping onto sides of the bridge or fleeing the other way, obviously frightened at our furious attack. Auron leads the charge, his massive sword held over his shoulder as if it weighs no more than mine. The boy and I are behind him, watching the sides carefully in case the Sinscales decide to attack again.

The warrior leads us down the bridge with good speed, leaving us about halfway down the bridge before we're stopped. The reason? Only that the tentacle from before has found a nice, new home. Namely, sticking out of the middle of the bridge, directly in front of us, accompanied by four of the smaller Sinscales.

"Sinspawn," Auron says, pushing his glasses back up from where they had slightly fallen during the run.

(End: Hurry! - Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy X)

"Ammes, I believe," I mutter, looking up at the creature. The boy moves to launch an attack at the Sinscales in front of the Sinspawn, but Auron holds his sword out in front of the boy, blocking his path.

"Stand back. I'll handle this."

With that, Auron thrusts his left hand forward, pulling his sword back and onto his shoulder while leaning his entire body back. Orange light glows around him for a brief moment, being pulled into his sword, and the entire blade shines a bright reddish-orange color as Auron suddenly leaps straight up into the air, coming down and stabbing his sword into the ground hard. The energy from the blade vanishes, reappearing as fountains of orange energy that practically melt the offending Sinscales, and cause an eerie screech of pain from the Sinspawn.

'Now that's power...that Dragon Fang attack is brutal.'

Auron calmly removes his sword from the ground, lifting it back onto his shoulder and looking at the Sinspawn, just as a ball of dark energy begins to glow in front of the creature. The ball expands as a wave without warning, pulling all of us into the field of energy, and I immediately recognize what the spell is.

The Demi spell, a spell that takes away a certain part of the enemy's energy, wastes no time eating away at us, feeling much like every bit of the energy in your body is sucked away, and then replaced to the point where you feel like you will explode. Finally, the wave of energy fades away, leaving me feeling somewhat drained. Auron and the boy look much the same in terms of energy lost, and the boy growls angrily, standing back up to his full height.

"Get out of my town!" he yells at the Sinspawn, before charging in. His sword shines yellow for an instant as he runs, leaping off of a piece of debris into a frontflip, then diving down into a roll, and finally leaping high into the air and twisting, spinning and delivering a powerful slash to the Sinspawn. The sword cuts deeply, black blood oozing out as the boy cuts a tear in the Sinspawn nearly from top to bottom.

Still, the monster stands, however. Another wave of black energy rolls over us, forcefully ripping away more of our energy and sending both me and the boy to a knee. Auron remains standing, however, but is breathing heavily from the looks of things. Without saying a word, he runs at the Sinspawn, the sword moving from his shoulder in a two-handed strike that bites hard into the creature. Auron digs the sword in deeper, before pulling it out and striking again, the monster giving a howl of anguish before its body folds over itself like a tree that has been chopped down. More of the colored lights begin to emerge from the creature's corpse, and Auron motions for us to follow, leaving the very large and very dead monster to fade away.

What I thought was halfway down the bridge was in actuality no more than a third, apparently. Now, I can see the end of the bridge...except, there's one tiny little problem.

"Well...we're just a little surrounded."

My words are an understatement, really. There are no less than 50 of the Sinscales around us, split fairly evenly between front and back.

"Suggestions?" I ask, looking between Auron and the boy. Auron slowly looks around our surroundings, finding nothing but Sinscales and pieces of bridge for us to use, before his eyes finally settle on something to my right side.

"That - knock it down!" he exclaims, and I finally get a good look at what he's talking about. It's some kind of fuel truck, or was, from the looks of things. Now, it appears to be wrecked on the side of the bridge, the fuel containers which are linked together hanging partially over the side.

"I'll take care of it!" the boy yells, causing me to nod as he starts to run over.

"We'll watch your back! Hurry!"

The Sinscales take that moment to leap to the attack, several rearing up on their back legs and launching what appear to be several spines of some kind from their undersides. Fortunately, the spines are fairly slow-moving, apparently genetically designed more for close-range defense than mid to long-range offense. Auron and I duck under the spines fired at us, the warrior throwing out a sweeping strike and cutting the legs off of a Sinscale that got too close. As we stand back up, I dive right into the middle of the first line of Sinscales, sword swinging out in a spinning, rising arc that cuts into two Sinscales and forces a third to back away, else become the third victim.

Auron wastes no time, smashing a Sinscale into little more than paste with his heavy blade, before moving out of the way of a retaliatory claw strike from another Sinscale. This Sinscale also meets its end on the tip of the blade, this time a stabbing strike that impales the creature from front to back. More Sinscales approach, but Auron rips the blade out and sweeps it out again, the flat of the blade hurling the Sinscales away long enough for him to focus for another strike.

At the moment, I don't believe I'm doing too bad for myself. I have two long gashes on my right leg that are both bleeding, the result of a Sinscale that got too close without my noticing, but several more of the creatures are either missing limbs, or already fading away into colored lights. To me, the Sinscales seem incredibly weak, but they have the advantage of outnumbering us at least twenty to one. I hiss in pain as I feel a burning sensation across my thigh, a large gash in my clothing and skin now visible as I glance down. Spinning in anger, I flip my sword to an overhand grip and stab down, sending the blade straight into the Sinscale's head.

"Got it!"

The irritating screech of metal on metal rings out over the area as the fuel tanks that the boy was working on dislodging finally fall, disappearing from sight quickly. A thunderous explosion sounds from below, part of the bridge behind us simply disappearing from sight and crumbling to the ground below, along with the Sinscales. The Sinscales in front of us chitter to each other and flee, running away from both us and the explosions, as the bridge continues to collapse.

"Let's move it!" I yell to the boy, as Auron and I take off, the boy needing no further persuasion to follow as chunks of metal and stone begin to fall closer to us. The bridge is rapidly collapsing now, and my legs are beginning to ache from the sprinting, prolonged running, and all the fighting. Still, a bit of burning in the legs is a better fate than falling to my death, in my opinion, and so I keep running, never looking back at the scene behind us. The bridge in front of us starts to collapse, prompting Auron to leap to safety on the other side of the bridge, near the end. Apparently, the bridge was constructed in segments, which were then fitted together, explaining why our piece of the bridge is falling and the other piece is still standing.

Pumping my legs harder, I leap into the air, clearing the short leap and landing in a roll on the other side of the bridge. The boy leaps into the air behind me, but comes up somewhat short, his hands latching onto the stone for dear life.

"Auron! Auron!"

"Oh, no, you're not falling that easily," I mutter, scrambling over and grabbing onto the boy's wrists, hauling him up enough to get a foothold on the bridge. Sighing a breath of relief, I sit down for a moment on the bridge as it shudders slightly, the ground still shaking from explosions and collapsing rubble.

"You are sure?"

My attention is drawn to Auron as he speaks, not even looking at us. Instead, his attention is focused on a strange sight in the air, something that appears to be a whirlpool of energy situated above our heads. Auron nods to the sky then, turning around and picking up the boy by his shirt collar.

"This is it. This is your story. It all begins here."

The familiar pulling feeling returns as I feel myself lifted up by some magical force, the whirlpool beginning to suck all three of us into its depths. I may have an idea of what lies beyond the portal, but I can't help feeling a strange sense of foreboding as my body disappears into the whirlpool of energy.