A HUGE shout out to everyone who wrote feedback on the Al Bhed translation system. I have now changed chapter nine, and chapter two, to match chapter ten and will use this side-by-side translation system for the rest of the story.

And another HUGE shout out to everyone who has reviewed and followed the story up to this point. I'm ecstatic that so many of you like this story, mainly because I love this story and have a lot of plans for it.

Anyway, enough gushing, it's chapter ten, I still don't own Final Fantasy X, and thus and therefore.

"Uh, I meant... Forget that.


I got too, uh...close to Sin and my head's all foggy-like.


So I don't know where this place is. Or even where I came from."

-Tidus

As Rikku pulled herself onto the deck of the salvage ship, she paused to collapse for a minute, breathing heavily. She glanced over at the light-haired man who was standing in a pool of brackish seawater that had been dripping off of his body.

Rikku gave the young man a begrudgingly appreciative look. He may not know the particulars of fighting off fiends, but he was strong, fit, and made up for his lack of knowledge with an odd sense of enthusiasm. He also had been able to hold his breath for a very long period of time. Rikku noted this fact quickly and assumed that he must be some sort of blitz player. He grinned back and she was once again struck by how good-looking he was.

Shaking her head, to remove water from her ears as well bring her mind back from the clouds, she stood up and strode happily into the cabin.

"Pnudran! Fa vuiht ed!"(Brother, we found it!) Rikku all but sang as she walked through the door. "Vydran femm pa cu rybbo!"(Father will be so happy!)

"Oac,"(Yes,) Brother replied in agreement. "Huf, ruf tu fa pnehk ed ib vnus dra puddus uv dra cay?"(Now how do we bring it up from the bottom of the sea?) Brother gestured dramatically. Rikku rolled her eyes, but passed on this opportunity to make fun of her other brother. She was still in a charitable good mood from the successful dive.

"Famm,"(Well,) Rikku began, "E ryja y vaf etayc…"(I have a few ideas…)

"Hey! I helped out didn't I?"

A whiny voice rang out in the dank atmosphere, interrupting Rikku's speculation. She turned to see Brother's posse trickling into the cabin, grunting and laughing amongst themselves.

"Fryd tet oui tu?"(What did you do?) Rikku asked accusingly, placing her hands on her hips for emphasis.

One of the men pulled off his gas mask and leered at her. It was the first time Rikku had seen him without it, despite the fact that its practical uses didn't apply on a salvage ship. After quickly comparing the two, Rikku decided that she preferred the mask to the bloated and red face underneath.

"Hudrehk ra tethd tacanja,"(Nothing he didn't deserve,) the now maskless man replied as he looked her indignant figure up and down.

Rikku decided to ignore him, and turned to her brother instead. "Drec sicd cdub!"(This must stop!) she ordered. "E fuh'd ced po yht fydlr drec syh pa dnaydat drec fyo!"(I won't sit by and watch this man be treated this way!) She punctuated the end of her statement with a loud, metallic stomp on the deck, only in hindsight realizing that her childish stomp could jeopardize her attempt to take control.

Luckily, for Rikku, Brother was far more childish and didn't take advantage of her loss of ground. "Ruf tu fa ghuf ed ec risyh?"(How do we know it is human?) he taunted.

"Oui ghuf ra'c risyh!"(You know he's human!) Rikku shouted, frustrated that their argument was only regressing. She paused briefly to inhale and quickly continued before her older brother could counter her statement.

"Yht ev ra ryth'd rambat fedr drec secceuh E fuimt pa tayt!"(And if he hadn't helped with this mission I would be dead!) Rikku crossed her arms and cast a defiant look at Brother. It was a slight overstatement, especially considering the young man's obvious inexperience, but he had tried.

Brother paused and ran a nervous hand through his bristle-brush mohawk. Rikku could practically see the rusty cogs slowly turning in her eldest sibling's mind.

On the one hand, if he admitted that Rikku was right, he would lose his authority over, and probably his standing with, his friends. Rikku knew that her brother had always had a rough time trying to find friends. Despite the fact that they had usually been on the move during their childhood, Rikku had never experience trouble in finding a friend or two; however, Brother had been a different story. He had always been a little too overeager and overzealous.

She continued to study her brother as he contemplated his options. If Brother defied her, Rikku knew Cid would let him have it, especially if a Yevonite was killed, and their father was a very scary man when he was angry. In fact, their father was a very scary man in general, Rikku mused. It was this lovely quality of Cid's that Rikku was counting on Brother remembering.

"Oui feh,"(You win,) Brother capitulated finally, hanging his head.

Rikku forgot, for a moment, about maintaining her authoritative, tough exterior and jumped up in the air cheering. "Oui fuh'd naknad ed Pnudran! Dryhg oui!"(You won't regret it, Brother! Thank you!) she said excitedly, embracing him in a rare hug. Brother threw his hands up in defeat and stalked away to the bridge as Rikku quickly turned to glare at his crew.

"Oui rayn dryd?"(You hear that?) she asked fiercely. "Tuh'd rind des!"(Don't hurt him!) When her Brother's men refused to respond, she put her hands on her hips once more and threw her head high in the air.

"Ed ec yh untan!"(It is an order!) she yelled bitingly at them before turning on her heels and walking out of the cabin towards her quarters.

No sooner had the door to the cabin closed behind her when Rikku burst into giggles and pumped her fist in the air. Being a leader was obviously what she had been born to do, she thought to herself as she opened the door to her quarters.

Having the privilege, or dubious honor depending on who was asked, of being the only female on the salvage ship, Rikku had an entire room to herself. Cid had insisted on it and, until today, Rikku hadn't really cared one way or the other. Remembering the maskless man's leer, Rikku shuddered as she shrugged her wetsuit off and flopped noisy down on her bed.

Cocking her head to the side, she lay on her back and studied a small, dark water stain on the ceiling. From one angle, it nearly resembled a cactuar. Rikku sat up with a start, quickly jotting down a note, which she stuck to the wall among hundreds of its kind, reminding herself to let Cid know about the cactuar legend she had learned

"E fuhtan ev E lyh naymmo bycc drnuikr dra cyhtcduns?"(I wonder if I can really pass through the sandstorm?) she mused aloud.

Sighing, Rikku closed her eyes and lay still in her bed. "Ur Gippal,"(Oh, Gippal) she whispered softly. "E fecr oui fana cdemm rana."(I wish you were still here.)

Hours later, Rikku awoke with a start. Quickly springing up from her bed, she pulled her wetsuit on and burst into the cabin.

"Fryd ec dra nicr?"(What is the rush?) Brother asked nonchalantly, not looking up from the makeshift game of cards that had been set up in the center of the cabin during her absence.

Rikku's only response was a shrug as she slowed her pace and attempted a saunter over to the small kitchen in the corner of the cabin.

"Tet oui keja des vuut oad?"(Did you give him food yet?) she asked.

Brother placed two of his cards on the table and tapped the edge of it lightly before shrugging his shoulders. "Fa ymm yda,"(We all ate,) he responded simply.

Rikku grit her teeth in frustration, and valiantly tried to keep her frustration from seeping into her speech. "Pid hud dra bnecuhan?"(But not the prisoner?)

"Hud dra bnecuhan."(Not the prisoner.)

She nodded and quickly threw together a sampling of food on a platter. Squinting her eyes and nose as she held it out in front of her, Rikku sniffed. It wasn't the best food on Spira, but it wasn't bad enough that letting him starve would be the more humane option.

As the door to the deck opened, she saw the young man sitting, rather pathetically, with his back to the door. She tapped him on his shoulder before sliding the tray in front of him.

"Whoa! Right on!" the young man exclaimed before diving into the food. Rikku watched him scarf down the meager dinner with amusement, which quickly turned into concern as he began to choke.

"Hey!" she called to get his attention before throwing a bottle of water in his direction. The young man noisily chugged down the water before collapsing with a grateful sigh.

"It's 'cause you eat too fast!" Rikku stated cheerily.

The young man laughed as he rose up from the metallic floor of the deck and stretched. Curious, and not wanting to be ignored, Rikku followed him before calling out, "Hey!" again.

"Hello there, what's your name?" the young man asked.

Rikku stopped herself from scratching her head as she thought to herself. His simple sentence structure and odd demeanor piqued her interest. She quickly ran through a few possibilities, including the fact that he might be mentally underdeveloped, before responding.

"Rikku," she said concisely, in case he didn't understand. Instead, the young man cheered and laughed, a genuine smile brightening his face.

"Whoa! You really do understand!" he cheered. "Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"I didn't get a chance to!" Rikku countered indignantly. "Everyone thought oui were a fiend."

"Uh…'we?'" the young man asked, obviously confused.

"Oh, 'oui' means 'you,'" she explained as the light-haired man paused to think.

"Who are you guys anyway?"

Rikku scrunched up her face and gave him a hard stare. There wasn't anyone on Spira who wouldn't at least know that they were Al Bhed. If the clothes hadn't given it away, the language surely had, and yet the young man continued to stare at her strangely.

"We're Al Bhed, can't you tell?" Rikku asked. She suddenly felt a tendril of fear in the pit of her stomach but quickly squashed it. After all, if he had wanted to do something terrible to them, he would have done it by now, she thought.

"Wait," she hurriedly continued before she could stop herself. "You're not an Al-Bhed hater are you?" She instinctively turned her face away from the young man to hide her bright, green, spiraled eyes.

The young man threw his hands up in a hopeless gesture and shrugged. "I don't even know what an Al Bhed is."

Rikku was floored. "Where are you from?" she asked incredulously. She didn't think that there was a place on Spira where people hadn't heard of the Al Bhed. The High Priests of Yevon were forever condemning the Al Bhed to the populace for violating their teachings. Either the young man was from a place that she had never heard of, or he was lying.

"Zanarkand," he replied earnestly, grinning widely. "I'm a blitzball player. Star player of the Zanarkand Abes."

She stared at him. The young man was either crazy, or playing a practical joke. Rikku was inclined to believe the latter, and slowly began to edge away from the man.

"Did you…hit your head or something?" she asked. It was the only thing that she could think of to respond.

"Um…you guys hit me," the young man said, still grinning.

Rikku narrowed her eyes at the young man and leaned towards him. "Oh right," she agreed good-naturedly. "Do you remember anything before that?"

The young man's eyes lit up with enthusiasm and he leaned in, beginning to talk animatedly about Zanarkand. Rikku listened to enough of his conversation to respond and appear interested, however her mind kept returning to the way he had said, 'Star player of the Zanarkand Abes' so matter-of-factly. If he was lying the young man was very talented at it.

Rikku sighed. She would simply have to listen to his story more attentively. If he kept talking, there was a chance that he could slip up and either stumble over his lie, or, at the very least, drop a few hints as to where he was really from.

"So then, he threw me this sword! He said it was from my old man, but that's impossible. I mean, my old man has been gone for ten years, and there's no way he ever knew how to swordfight."

At this statement, Rikku suddenly realized why his sword fighting technique had been so bad. If his story was true, which was a ludicrous assumption in of itself, this was the first day he had ever picked up the weapon.

"So we were surrounded by these creatures, and then the road began to fall apart! Suddenly, there was this really bright light and Auron kind of shoved me into it…"

Her mind abruptly latched onto the name 'Auron.' For some reason, Rikku knew she had heard that name before, but she couldn't remember where. It was definitely a Spiran name. And Sin had been in the young man's story too, so he was definitely from somewhere in Spira.

"Did I say something funny?" Rikku looked up to see the light-haired man staring at her imploringly. His eyes seemed to be begging her to validate something, anything, that she had heard in his story. Rikku tapped her chin thoughtfully before responding.

"You were near Sin…" she began, finally realizing what had been happening. Inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief. Rikku hadn't wanted her first attempt at leading to have ended with a psychotic prisoner attacking everyone onboard.

"Don't worry, you'll be better in no time," she said reassuringly. "They say you're head gets funny when Sin is near. Maybe you just had some kind of dream?"

"You mean I'm sick?" the young man replied as he looked at Rikku disbelievingly.

"Because of Sin's toxin, yeah," Rikku said.

"You sure?" he asked, his voice trembling and cracking. Rikku cocked her head to the side and studied him again. He seemed very upset.

"Yeah," she said softly. "There is no Zanarkand anymore. Sin destroyed it a thousand years ago."

"What do you mean a thousand years ago?" the young man frantically asked. "But I saw Sin attack Zanarkand! You're saying that happened a thousand years ago? No way!"

Rikku blanched at his indignant tone. "You said…" she began, and then thought better of it. It was pointless to argue with someone who had been exposed to high levels of Sin's toxin. In some ways, it would have been easier to deal with the young man if he had been crazy.

"You play blitzball?"

The young man nodded his affirmative.

"You know, you should go to Luca. Someone might know who you are, or you might find someone you recognize." Inwardly Rikku praised herself for such a brilliant idea on short notice.

"Luca?" the young man responded.

Rikku groaned and shook her head before walking away from the young man in frustration. "Namyq, Rikku,"(Relax, Rikku) she murmured to herself out of his earshot. "Ra tuach'd ghuf fryd ra'c cyoehk. Hu uha ec dryd cdibet."(He doesn't know what he's saying. No one is that stupid.)

Striding back to the young man, Rikku firmly tapped him on the back. "Okay, leave it to me! I'll get you to Luca, I promise." As she grinned at the young man, he weakly smiled back.

"You'd rather stay here?" she asked out of disbelief. When the young man nodded his affirmative again, Rikku shrugged and sighed. It wouldn't be easy to convince Brother to keep him on the boat; however, fresh from her recent victory, Rikku felt as if she could eventually persuade him.

"Okay, I'll go tell the others," she told the young man as she began to walk towards the cabin door. "Oh! And one thing," Rikku remembered to say before she went to negotiate with Brother, "don't tell anyone you're from Zanarkand, okay? Yevon says it's a holy place. You might upset someone." Rikku waited for the young man's nod before disappearing into the cabin.

No sooner had she walked in when the ship gave a huge creak and shook. Rikku was unceremoniously thrown against one end of the cabin. As she fumbled to stand up, the ship rocked to the other side and Rikku spun across the cabin floor. There was a loud thud, and then everything went dark.