Disclaimer: I should take a census on Fan Fiction: just how sick are we all of writing these things? Nonetheless, I still do not own, nor am I affiliated in any way with the magnum opus that is Final Fantasy.
A/N: This is a record, insofar as I know: me, the procrastinating champion of the world, posting multiple chapters in a single week. A feat unparalleled! As usual, I would like to thank the person who is making this all worthwhile for me, the also unparalleled Judanim the Green Mage, who has reviewed every chapter! You have my heartiest thanks, and some more Auron to boot. I'd also like to thank Minako for reviewing yet again. Also, to utilize the real function of the a/n, I say that yes, there is a blood connection between the characters in FFVII and FFX-2 in this story. Though this is so, it may turn out that some connections are a little different than might be imagined (aside from the obvious: Cloud and Tidus, Shinra and Rufus, etc.). Now, on to the story!
Twin Cities: Enter the Players
Tidus stood mesmerized, his eyes widened to their fullest at the sight he beheld. He, Yuna, and Rikku stood inarticulate at the awe-inspiring presence of the Lifestream. Rikku, unable to wrench her gaze from the gripping energy beneath her, queried Auron while she kept her vision affixed to it, "What is this?"
"As I said, it's the souls of people who return to the planet," Auron said.
Finally managing to look Auron in the face, Rikku's puzzled expression forced him elaborate, a thing rarely done. Though a guiding force in his younger friends' lives, he usually preferred to leave his statements – to Tidus infuriatingly – ambiguous.
"When I came here with Braska twelve years ago, I didn't notice this place either. It was only after Sin was destroyed that I found this. After I'd been awake here a few days, I started wandering around this place, and I was drawn to it," he explained. Tidus and Yuna were now listening intently along with Rikku, so he asked all of them something: "You're all aware that pyreflies supposedly take the shape of the dead, yes?" They nodded soundlessly. Auron gave a morbid and twisted grin as he continued: "That's not entirely true. The pyreflies do it in conjunction with the Lifestream. The pyreflies merely give form to the energy that was the person, which is now contained in the Lifestream. So really, the pyreflies are just a device used by the souls of those in there to communicate with their loved ones after death. I guess you could say that this is the lifeblood of Spira: all spiritual energy in the world, the stuff of life? That comes from here. The Lifestream is all the life that ever was or will be."
As he finished, Auron took note of their identical expressions; they looked as though this was one revelation too many.
Yuna's mind was reeling, her emotions awhirl with this new information. She tried her best to take it one step at a time. That this river – for lack of a better term, as it was so much more – contained the life force of the whole of Spira was just too much to fathom. Yuna stood there, desperately trying to come to grips with this.
Tidus, being a far more vocal person by nature, couldn't contain his equal measures of astonishment and skepticism from making themselves known in the most succinct way.
"WHAT!" Tidus shook his head after his outburst.
"I think I've explained it well enough," said Auron.
"You know exactly what I'm getting at, Auron!" Tidus growled.
"Wait! Just hold your chocobos!" Rikku cried, holding up her hands in surrender. She shuffled around the dirt, kicking it up with her sneakers as she tried to string a sentence together.
"W-w-why, wha….Why…Have you showed this to anybody else, Auron?" she finally managed to squeak. Auron shook his head.
"No one except you," he said tonelessly. He shifted himself once and looked at her squarely.
"Why not?" Yuna asked. Auron gave the slightly feral smile again. He didn't even need to answer, as Tidus did so for him, albeit contemptuously so.
"Yeah, and that would be so like Auron, actually telling people something important before some big crisis has come along. So what's the catch?"
"Interesting that you should say that…" Auron mused.
"Oh, you're kidding right? Right? Come on!" Tidus half groaned, following it with a slightly manic laugh. Rikku backed away from him, eyebrows lifted and a very cautious expression on her. Yuna sighed, but she took the situation by the horns, as usual.
"So why did you show this to us?"
Auron narrowed his eyes and said surreptitiously, "You know the Farplane holds energy enough to power the world. But if you try to harness it, you'll get more than you bargained for. Actually, if is the wrong word. When would be more appropriate."
"Okay, back to the questioning phase," said Tidus, "So how do you know that we knew about the energy?"
At this, Auron fell silent once more. With a pensive look upon his face, he turned and walked off again. Tidus responded by throwing up his hands in exasperation before turning to Yuna and Rikku with a look that plainly said, 'How much gall does he have?' Yuna paused only long enough to gently take hold of his arm before starting off after Auron while Rikku ran ahead. Tidus rolled his eyes, but the firm grip she held on his forearm forced him to shuffle along after her.
Over the rocky and unfriendly terrain, down a steep and jagged path into the gorge Auron led them. They ended up on a small parcel of land, the end of which was deluged by the Lifestream. Now that they were closer, the radiance of it was almost blinding, and the energy was palpable, winding its way around and through them. Tidus could feel, more than hear, the chorus of innumerable voices calling to him. Yuna and Rikku's awestruck faces were a visual testament to his feelings. Yuna slowly reached out, and ran her fingers through the air, feeling the power that flowed through the gorge.
Auron stepped to the edge, where he lowered himself so that he sat on his heels. He then reached out a hand, and his fingers were engulfed by the glowing energy. A smile appeared on his face and he turned to Tidus.
"Come here, then put your hand in," he instructed. Tidus looked bewildered, but he obeyed Auron: he, too, sat on his haunches at the edge of the shore and stretched his right hand out. His hand tingled for a moment, before his mind was blown to a completely surreal place, like none he had ever seen.
As much as she liked the idea of crippling Shin-ra, Tifa felt jittery about tonight's excursion to the reactor, even though she herself was not going this time. Apparently, everyone else, including Cloud, was feeling similarly, as tempers had been running rampant all day. Jesse had locked herself in the basement, revising their I.D. cards yet again. Wedge was chattering away to a completely oblivious Biggs, who was busy getting himself ready for tonight by muttering encouragement with a look of slightly savage glee. Barret had started to get edgy, and so had wisely departed the bar earlier with a grunt that he would return, and they had all better be ready. Cloud was seated at the bar, a bottle of some form of liquor to his left, though he was not drinking. He was leaning on the counter with his left elbow as he stared blindly into thin air while running his right hand repeatedly through his sandy spikes.
Tifa walked over to him, working a bar rag around a newly washed glass. She bent down and peered into his face.
"Hello in there. Are you feeling okay?"
Cloud started and he shook his head as he met her eyes. He looked at her strangely and began to speak.
"It's nothing. I just had this really weird dream last night," he murmured. Tifa's face was thoughtful as she replied.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she urged lightly. His face twisted as he considered her offer for a moment, but he then gave a brief synopsis of the previous night, and the unsettling dream with the eerie voice. Tifa's compassionate demeanor led her to offer some suggestions, but in all honesty, she wasn't sure what to think.
"Did it happen more than once last night?" she asked. Cloud shook his head by way of a reply.
"Just once. But it didn't feel like I was imagining it, Tifa." Cloud's face settled into a grimace, and he refused to talk about it anymore. Tifa generally would have pushed him, but she felt that today, with everyone on edge, was not the right day. Cloud rose from the bar and said good-bye, and then headed through the doorway.
The sight before him had to have been conjured up as an elaborate joke, Tidus decided. He obviously was not physically in this place – he was sure that they would have noticed him by now – but it was nonetheless overwhelming. He had just witnessed the discourse between the two young people, one of whom bore a strange likeness to himself in looks. The other, the woman, reminded him slightly of someone, but he could not put his finger on it.
As the young man reached the door and exited into the outside, Tidus – in his non-corporeal state – followed suit.
There was not a single word in Tidus' repertoire that could describe the sight that he beheld next. While the bar was obviously not much more than the centerpiece of a ramshackle, sordid slum, even this place was so bizarre in comparison to Spira. Here, there were lights and machines everywhere, the people were attired in the most outlandish garments: every moment he spent here, Tidus could count three things that proved he was not in any place he had seen before. The biggest of these was that this slum had no sky: high above even the tallest buildings here was a gargantuan metal structure, so big that Tidus could just barely see its end in the distance. He had not the faintest idea what it actually looked like, because its size made it impossible to discern its shape.
Tidus wanted to stand and gape at this place for a while, but as the young man started to move again, he felt himself being pulled along, strangely enough. He figured it would not hurt to follow the man for a short while, and allowed himself to be dragged along. But while he gazed upon a place far more alien than Zanarkand, he felt his consciousness drift away from this place, and all went black.
A/N: Alright! Two chapters in a little over a week! Tune in next time to find out a little bit of how the heredity is going to work in this story. (Some of them are quite interesting.)