Disclaimer: Square-Enix Incorporated owns all copyrighted material this fanfiction may include. All other materials, such as characters, events, dialogue, et cetera, all belong to Zeshin-kun.

Author's Notes: I sense a lack of interest in my latest story. sob Are all my reviewers gone from this story?

Spira: The Eternal Discord

Chapter 9: The Depths Some Will Go

Rikku

Shuyin suggested that we separate into two groups to look around faster. At first, I didn't think it would be a good idea for him to suggest something like that. I mean, Yunie and Paine still weren't too happy about Shuyin's return. Yunie was kinda liking him now, but she couldn't trick me. I knew she wasn't sure what to make of Shuyin. Then, there was Paine. Boy, she started off hating the guy so much. You couldn't really blame her for that, of course. I mean, Shuyin did try to kill her and all her friends and ruined her life. It was the biggest surprise ever when she said she wanted to blitz with us. And then, it was an even bigger surprise than that when she went up to Shuyin in that game and slapped some confidence into the guy. Well, it was a start, but I'm sure she'd still love to kill him one day.

"Hey, Rikku, you comin'?" Shuyin called, swimming away from Yunie and Paine to go towards the lower levels of the machina city.

"Don't worry Yunie. We'll get that sphere and be back up in no time!" I told my cousin.

Together, we looked at the grounds of the city, seeing a few pyreflies floating around down there. There was nothing down there besides rubble, though. Too bad. Shuyin seemed happy about it even without finding anything. It looked like he was trying to find something besides a sphere, though.

"Whatcha lookin' for, Shuyin?" I asked him, swimming over and seeing nothing important.

"Hehe, sorry. I'm getting a little nostalgic here. You know, the guys had a game here a couple of seasons before I met Lenne. We found this place that was still under construction and they just finished up smoothing out the cement around an area they were planning to build some corporate headquarters just after the game was over. The guys were invited to put there handprints into the cement. Their Glories were gonna get the front side and we'd get the back side for beating them silly. I wonder if they're still around… Wishful thinking, I guess."

"Wow, I guess for a guy like you, you've got a lot of memories to look back at. There's just not enough time in the day, huh?"

"Yea… but I really should leave it behind. After all, everything about my Spira is long gone. Blitzball was the only thing to survive and even that's changed. We only had six players back then and your Spira only honored that while Yevon was still holding strong. I've moved on from the deaths of my past, but my heart's still clinging to the old Spira, the one I grew up with."

"It's understandable. I think about Home every now and then. It's only natural to think about happy times in the past. Sin's taken away a lot of good times, made them all into memories. Usually, people go to the Farplane to think about their memories."

"Hah, I keep my memories inside. It took me forever to go to the Farplane and visit my mother. I don't suppose I'd be willing to go with my sanity to see my other friends. No, my memories stay in my heart where it counts."

"Haha, you know, maybe Jecht was part Al Bhed because that sounds a lot like something I would say."

We searched along the base of the city some more, but still no sphere. It was pretty hard to look over all the bits and pieces of the machina city that broke off from the buildings and the oxygen tanks weren't going to hold out much longer. I swam around this big spiraling tower thing and noticed that the ground was kinda uneven. Looking closer, it almost looked like…

"Shuyin! Come quick!" I yelled from my communicator.

With his sword held in hand, he sped over, looking like he was ready to kill something. "What is it, Rikku?" He was looking all around for something.

I laughed at how serious he was being, "Oh you silly, I just called you over to look at this." With that said, I pointed at the floor, to a few specific cement slabs.

Shuyin looked closely, but he didn't seem to know what I was trying to show him. He kept looking and furrowing his eyebrows, but I don't think he got it. I had to laugh again.

"What are you trying to show me? All I see are rocks." He said, "If there was a sphere here, it would be glowing orange and we'd spot it in a flash."

"Shuyin! I'm trying to show you that!" I whined, pointing at the cracked dents in those slabs."

Shuyin took a closer look, "Oh wow, those are… They're handprints. You found them!"

Slowly, he moved closer to the floor, putting his left hand onto one of the handprints. "Hmm, this one's Rothel's."

"How can you tell?" I asked. Those things were older than a thousand by now. Even though they weren't worn away somehow, it would still be impossible to tell, right?

Shuyin smiled, "Out of all of us, Rothel's got the biggest hands. This handprint's too big for me so it has to be his."

"How slick of you, Mr. Detective." I kidded.

"Here, put your hand on one of these smaller ones." He said, "I'll tell you which of the two is Vena's and which is Kirin's."

I nodded and swam down to where he was and put my hand on the smallest looking handprint I could find. Surprisingly, it fit my hand pretty well. I had a sudden flash in my head and then, the water was gone. I was standing in a huge city, twice the size of Bevelle from what I could see. However, that building that I was in front of before was gone. Shuyin wasn't anywhere around. Where was I?

"Kirin? Hey, Kirin! Hey, I been wonderin' where you were. You okay? You look kinda lost, ya know? Excited 'bout the game?" Some man asked me, patting me on the shoulder with his black, fingerless glove.

"Uh… yea… maybe…" What should I tell him? I wasn't even Kirin. The last thing I remember, I was just swimming underwater with Shuyin. Who was he? Where was I? Was this Zanarkand?

"Kirin, ya sure you okay? If ya can't play, I'm sure that rookie, Drea, can cover for ya. Don't want you bein' in a game you ain't ready for, ya know?" He suggested.

"Uh… no, that's alright…" What was I saying! It was something in my mind. I just couldn't let down… the team?

"Heh, just like Shuyin. Ya know, the two o' you could be twins. Guess that's why ya joined together, eh?"

Shuyin! Wait, so then… That's right. If I was Kirin… I'm on the Zanarkand Abes! How did that happen?

"Haha, yea, guess so…" My mouth had a mind of its own! But… what was this feeling in my heart? It was almost like I was angry, but confused if that was what I wanted to be feeling. I hated this feeling.

"Alright then. Let's get goin', ya know? Game ain't gonna wait forever, ya know?"

I nodded and together, we headed in some direction to the SphereDome, I would assume. Instead, we went to someplace that looked a lot like Home, except with different colors and much wider than the machina structure. I had half a mind to ask the man what the place was called, but I thought it would just scare him so I decided to keep wondering it to myself.

"Hey kids an' cats! Look what I found." He shouted to the people in front of him once we got there.

There were about ten of them, each of them gathered around a bright glow in the center of the building. All of them were blitzers by the looks of things. They all had the same colored clothing. None of them even looked like anybody I would've known, but my mind was telling me that they were people I'd known for years. There was a woman with long red hair, in braids like mine. She was Vena, one of Shuyin's friends that he told me about. She was supposed to be engaged to Kion, their goalie. I saw… well found him really. He was kinda slumped over a bench, drooling all over the floor.

"Eww!" I squealed. Was Vena really engaged to that guy!

"Haha, Kion's always had that effect on people, eh Kirin?" A familiar voice said to me, coming closer from behind.

I turned around and Shuyin was right there. I froze. Did he do this to me? Maybe wanting to be back in his own Spira took him this far. As he walked closer, I began to feel cold. Suddenly, the color started to fade, the man who'd led me to the stadium started to disappear. That was Rothel!

"Rothel!" I screamed, water swishing around me.

"Rikku! Are you okay?" Shuyin asked me, swimming to me quickly, putting his hands on my arms.

"I… I saw your friends!"

Shuyin's eyes went wide with worry for me. I'm so sorry! "Rikku! What happened? Maybe we should go back up. Maybe your tank ran out."

"No, that's not it. It happened when I touched that handprint."

"That handprint? I was just about to say that you touched Kirin's print. Alright, I want to get to the bottom of this so tell me what you saw."

So I told him about the machina city, the stadium that looked like Home, and about seeing his friends. To be honest, it was fun to see his friends and to be in a huge machina city. Now that I think back, it couldn't be Zanarkand, but wherever it was, it was so wonderful.

"Wait, you saw Drea and Lefan?" He asked, "Did you see Haru? Were Drea and Lefan wearing red?"

"No, everybody was wearing yellow. I don't know if I saw Haru or not. I never got a chance to look at all of them carefully enough for those feelings to tell me who else I was looking at."

"It's alright. I know when in my past you saw. It should've been my first guess, seeing how we're here. You went back to that game I was talking about. It was Kion's second season with us and Haru wasn't even around then, that traitor… Anyway, that was the night we placed our handprints into the concrete." He explained to me.

That when I realized something. The stadium was where the sphere was! "Shuyin, I know where the sphere is. Do you think you can still find that stadium?"

He nodded easily, pointing to his left. We left immediately, the tanks down to twenty-five percent capacity. We were running out of time, but if my… let's call it a "dream" was right, we already found it. It took about five minutes, but we were there. Now, all I had to do was remember where I went with Rothel. I guided Shuyin through a few halls, kinda losing my way, but eventually our combined teamwork got the job done.

"So, you saw it here?" Shuyin asked, beginning to look around.

"Yup, it should be somewhere over here." I told him, following him to the inner wall of the lounge that he said it used to be.

We searched for a while, but the deeper we got, the dimmer it got and soon, we were more interested in looking for the way back out than finding the sphere.

"Rikku, you should head on up. Your tank's not gonna last much longer." Shuyin told me, swimming close so he wouldn't lose track of me.

"Same for you. Your tank'll run out soon, also!"

"Yea, but I'm used to it. I can stay down here for another ten minutes after the tanks run out if I have to." He replied. It was true. Once those tanks ran out, I would probably need to surface, especially since we were down so low. But, for Shuyin, he could stay down a pretty long time on his lungs alone.

I nodded to him and started to leave when a dark shadowy thing passed by in front, just past the entrance to this area of the stadium's interior. Right after the shadowy thing passed, the whole place started to shake and fall apart.

"Rikku! Get out of here now!" Shuyin screamed, knocking away a bit of rubble before it could hit me.

I tried to make it out, but the entrance was the first to get covered in broken pillars. The thing that passed by was probably a fiend out looking for a meal. It saw me and tried to come in, but it was too big. So instead, it just slammed into this old place and made it start collapsing.

"I'll call for help!" I told him, getting to a safe distance from where the rubble was falling.

Shuyin nodded and attacked any bits that were coming for me while I activated my communicator. "Yunie? Paine?"

Paine was the one to answer, "Rikku? Is everything alright?"

"No! Everything's just disasterrific!" I screamed, the signal blurring a little from the rumbling all around.

"Rikku? What's wrong?" It was Yunie this time.

"Come quick, Yunie! The column snapped! Shuyin and I are trapped down here!" I told my cousin.

Shuyin, suddenly, tackled me away, my hand losing its grip on the communicator. A huge chunk of the roof collapsed where I was just standing and crushed the communicator.

"Rikku? Are you okay?" He asked, starting to check for bruises.

"No, I'm just fine, thanks to you." I told him.

"I should've seen it earlier. One more second and you'd be where that communicator is. Collapsing stadium… It's bringing back some hot flashes I really don't want right now."

"Don't worry. Yunie and Paine are coming…" Oh no! My tank's empty!

"Maybe we don't need them. All you need to do is get one of your dresspheres out." Shuyin suggested. Unfortunately, my breath was starting to run out so changing a dressphere wouldn't help us too much.

Shuyin understood and his eyes went wide. "Rikku! Give me your Garment Grid! I have to get you out of here!"

My breath ran out and I started choking, but with my last effort, I tried to point to the side-pouch that I kept my Garment Grid in. It did the trick and Shuyin frantically looked for the plate of dresspheres. After he found it, we both realized he didn't know which one was which.

"Hold on, Rikku. I'll just try them." He said, pushing one of the random spheres.

A white light appeared like it always did when we changed dresspheres. Shuyin's body was covered in streams of white and gasped since it was his first time. Then, the light turned violet and black and I knew which sphere he pressed. Lucky for me, the first one he tried was the Black Mage sphere. As he finished transforming, his outfit was very dark. It was made-up of black pants, a grey shirt with glowing shapes on them, and topped off with a pitch-black trench coat.

"Rikku, just hand in there! I'll have you out in no time!" Shuyin reassured, but I could feel my mind slipping.

He cast an Ultima on the roof and swam us both out, but my eyes weren't working for me anymore. Everything turned black and I…

Author's Notes: I do plan to continue whether or not I get reviews, but I would still appreciate a response. C'mon guys. :(