Riku and Tidus

Riku woke up before anyone else in his house and left early after a meagre breakfast of cereal. His little brothers slept like logs, even as he shifted to get out of bed when they were sleeping on top of him like that. It was still a bit dark out. Hardly anyone else would be out and about at this time of day. What could he do between then and now?

He walked purposefully down his street with the intention of going to the beach. He had decided to take his boat to the little island and attempt to find and plug the leak. Hopefully, it would only need a bit of tree sap. As he got closer to the main part of town the jungle disappeared and opened up into a tropical grassland. Most of the houses were built here since this was a more construction-friendly location only for lack of trees. It made up for not having the difficulty of vegetation by having a rather sheer topography. It was nothing compared to the valley on the north side of the island but it took someone with reasonable fitness to make it from the beach to the mayor's house, located higher than any other.

Kairi lived there, Riku recalled. The mayor was her adoptive father. However, Kairi wasn't likely to be awake this early in the morning and even if she was, she would probably be leaving or had already left. So Riku took the lower path heading down to the beach.

After collecting a bucketful of tree sap, Riku sat himself on the end of the small jetty of the play island with his boat at his feet. He pushed it down into the sea, hoping the pressure would force water into to leak so that he could find out where it was coming from.

"Aha!"

There it was – the tell-tale drip. It was seeping through the bottom of the boat from a tiny hairline crack. Riku kept pressing. The amount of water he'd found in his boat yesterday couldn't have come from just that one little crack, there must have been another. A year of neglect surely would amount to more than that.

Suddenly the boat leaped out of the water. Riku gasped in shock but (to his own relief) didn't scream. He quickly scuttled backwards, pulling his feet onto the jetty and stared between his knees at his boat suspended in the air by a jolly fifteen-year-old blond boy. Riku scowled at him. He just laughed.

"Mornin', Riku," Tidus said with a grin.

"Hi."

Tidus put the boat down beside him on the water, keeping a hand on it so that it wouldn't float away. "Hey, it's been a while! How's it hangin'?"

Had Tidus been hanging around Wakka's family too much? Riku didn't remember Tidus having that hint of a northern islander accent. He sat cross-legged and glared at Tidus. The boy was so different now. Riku's family seemed to still be the same, including his little brothers but it had taken a while for Riku to recognise Tidus. He was taller, tanner and bulkier and he'd gotten his left ear pierced. It looked like he was going to rival Riku's physique.

"I was having a wonderfully productive morning until you showed up," Riku snapped. His gaze flickered over to his bucket of sap. He hadn't tipped it over in his scramble.

Tidus shook his head, sending drops of sea water everywhere. Riku growled and threw his arms up to block the water.

"Hey! Watch it!"

Tidus chuckled. "What? Did you think I didn't mean to do that?" he asked. He stuck his tongue out.

Riku sighed in exasperation and looked around. Odd. His boat was the only one at the jetty and there were no others grounded further up the beach. He looked at Tidus while the younger boy was tying up Riku's boat for him. "Tidus, how did you get here?"

"I swam."

Riku gawked. "Swam?"

He looked over to the main island. It could have been up to a kilometre away, nobody had really ever bothered to check. Tidus was soaked to the skin but he was still fully clothed. Riku narrowed his eyes.

"I don't believe you. I think you've docked your boat on the other side."

Tidus laughed at that. "You can go check it but I promise it ain't there. I swam all the way here, bro. I'm doing it for Blitzball."

"What's Blitzball?" Riku asked.

"It's this new thing, right, this new sport that me and Wakka came up with," Tidus explained excitedly. "Right, we made up this game that's like playing football but underwater and the coaches at school said it sounded pretty cool and that we should totally make it happen so next year an official league is going to start up and as one of the inventors of the sport I have to be one of the best. Every day I catch the morning high tide and swim all the way from my house to here. I'm getting really good at it. I only had to take a breath once this time."

"That…" Riku stammered. That was impossible. Tidus' house was at the village's westernmost edge in the mangroves. It was smelly and muddy, even at high tide, and he'd have to navigate around the thorny tree roots while avoiding sharks and crocodiles and the poisonous mangrove snakes and eels. And then he had to swim more or less a kilometre to get to the little island. There was no way anyone could do that in two breaths. "That's absurd! You liar!"

"I ain't lyin'. I'm trying to stay ahead of Wakka. He still needs to take three breaths to make it here."

"That's also impossible!"

"Shows what you know, 'cause I just did it." Tidus shrugged and climbed onto the jetty. His clothes – a heavy pair of dark overalls and a yellow cotton shirt – were so saturated that they poured water as soon as he stepped onto the jetty. Riku's eyes widened when he saw Tidus stamp his feet onto the wooden boards in bright yellow rubber-soled sneakers. Surely, Tidus was lying. There was no way he could swim all the way from his house to the island in two breaths with his clothes and shoes on.

"Even I can't make it across the sea without a boat," Riku said, glowering at him as the sodden boy sauntered past.

"Things change, man. You haven't been around for a year and a half." Tidus clasped his fingers and put his hands behind his head. Suddenly he stopped and turned around with a big grin. "How's it feel to not be top dog at everything around here anymore?"

Riku tried to keep the sour look off his face but the inside of his mouth tasted like he'd just sucked on a lemon. He didn't understand why it felt that way, though. Tidus was lying, he had to be. There was no other explanation.

Something was swinging by Tidus' left hip. Riku's eyes wandered down to it curiously. It was a scabbard. It was the same colour as his overalls, which explained why Riku didn't notice it before but the sword hilt at the end looked foreign. The hoop-shaped pommel had a piece of drenched red fabric tied to it. Tidus tapped the scabbard at his side.

"Notice something different?" he teased. He drew the sword and as it emerged there was a flash of blue light. The base of the hilt bubbled and foamed and then solidified when the whole hook-shaped blade was drawn. It must have been an illusion but the blade seemed to be flowing like water. "Check it out. I managed to get a hold of this baby while you were gone. I wonder how it stacks up against your toy sword."

"How did you get that?"

"C'mon, challenge me. If you win I'll answer any question, no strings."

Riku growled. He didn't have his wooden sword on hand and by the looks of Tidus' new weapon it was magical. He'd never seen anything like it on the islands, though. The magic weavers didn't yet have the research or the technology to make magical weapons of the calibre that Tidus was holding, or had that changed too? Somehow, Riku doubted it. A year and a half wasn't enough time to advance that much. The wooden sword would be easily cleaved in two in a fight against Tidus' new weapon but he did have one that would stand a chance. He glanced around the beach. It was completely empty but he was cautious. He pointed up the beach.

"We'll go around to the other side of the island and fight there," Riku announced, standing up.

"Where's your sword?"

"You showed me your magic weapon, so I'll show you mine. But I don't want anyone else catching a glimpse of it."

Tidus burst out laughing. "Dude! Do you have any idea how kinky that sounded?"

Riku swiftly stepped up to Tidus, twisted him around by the shoulder and kicked him in the back of the knee in one fluid motion. The blond was brought down to a kneeling position. He looked up just as Riku was crossing the jetty in front of him. The silver-haired boy looked down over his shoulder at Tidus.

"Stop running your mouth, moron. See you on the other side of the island."

Tidus huffed. He glared at Riku's broad back as the older boy walked away proudly. He got up and followed begrudgingly. Even though nobody had been around to see that, the bruise that was forming on his ego was painful.

Because logically, Blitzball should be impossible. Anyone who played FFX should remember that Wakka allegedly swam around an island five times with one breath.