It took only a few minutes for everyone to be gathered back around the yawning hole. There was rubble everywhere, casting long shadows in the sunlight. The fiend had ripped out a huge chunk of the stadium wall, and it looked like more was falling in all the time as little stones and pebbles bounced down the jagged rocky edges of the stadium walls to disappear down into the hole. Rikku was sitting on a particularly large chunk of rubble, Kairi was sitting on the ground nearby and Yuna and Tidus were standing next to Rikku. Rikku and Yuna were telling Tidus of their adventures since he'd gone. Kairi was listening to the story attentively. Paine was standing next to the hole, staring down into it's depths. She thought for a moment that she saw something in the darkness. Watching, it appeared again, and this time in multitudes. There were pyreflies rising out of the hole. Suddenly, she turned towards the group and spoke.

"Do you think this hole leads anywhere?" She asked. Everyone else stared at her blankly for a moment, then Yuna seemed to understand.

"You mean like those ones that led to the Farplane?" She suggested, walking over with Tidus to look down into the darkness, with half hopes of having the depths of the hole reveal themselves to her. Rikku stood up and walked over, too.

"Oh, like those ones in all the temples. And the one that Vegnagun fell into underneath Bevelle." She added, kicking a pebble into the hole and listening to the echoes of it falling down. She didn't hear it hit the bottom.

"You're saying that this hole might lead somewhere?" Kairi asked, peering down into it.

"I'm saying that the Fayth sent the fiend here out of an enormous hole into the ground for a reason. In a word, yes." Paine replied. All eyes were on the darkness in the hole, and no one said anything. It was Kairi who finally spoke.

"Well? What are we waiting for?" Without waiting for anyone to argue, she took and deep breath and jumped.

"Wait!"

"Kairi!"

"No!" Many distressed echoed into the darkness of the hole, from the mouths of Yuna, Tidus, Rikku and Paine as they watched Kairi disappear. Paine sighed.

"Alright then…" she said, jumping in after Kairi. Rikku shrugged at Tidus and Yuna, following Paine. Yuna smiled helplessly at Tidus.

"Looks like we're in for quite a ride." She said quietly. Her smile turned mischievous as she stood on the very edge of the hole. "Coming?" With that, she dropped in after the others. Tidus shrugged and dove head first into the darkness.

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Kairi had her eyes squeezed shut, trying (unsuccessfully) to enjoy the feeling of the wind whistling in her ears and the sensation of flying. Both stopped very suddenly and she opened her eyes slowly. She couldn't tell if she was still falling and had lost the sensations that go along with it or if she'd been snagged on something or if she was dead and this was what the afterlife was like, because it was so dark. She knew she wasn't dead when she saw what she could just make out as being Paine stop in mid air right beside her. Kairi grinned.

"Well, hello." She said, feeling around in the darkness for whatever it was that stopped them. She could see Paine moving a bit.

"Kairi?" She asked, still apparently struggling against whatever it was that was holding both of them. Strangely enough though, Kairi felt like nothing was holding them; it felt like they were simply suspended in midair. Another shape dropped towards them, stopping between Kairi and Paine. It was Rikku.

"Ohhh, what's happening?" She asked, squinting at Kairi and Paine, trying to see who they really were.

"I'm not sure." Paine answered.

"Me neither." Kairi agreed. Rikku sighed, relaxing.

"I wonder if we're dead?" Rikku asked off-handedly.

"I don't think so." Kairi replied as a fourth shape joined them, closely followed by a fifth.

"Hello!" Yuna greeted them cheerfully. The fifth shape seemed to struggle and bit before speaking.

"Am I hanging upside down?" Tidus asked finally, exasperated. Yuna, Kairi and Rikku squinted at his shape in the darkness.

"I think so." Kairi answered after a long silence. She could see slight movement between Tidus and Yuna. Yuna was reaching out to him and touched the sole of his shoe.

"You're upside down alright." She agreed. Tidus struggled a bit more before giving up completely.

"Why?" he asked, seeming a bit annoyed.

"Because you dove head-first into the pit." A sixth voice explained. A flickering light appeared with the Fayth, so everyone could better see each other. Yuna stifled a laugh when she saw Tidus hanging haphazardly upside down. Rikku didn't bother to try to hide her laughter. Kairi had to work to keep from laughing along with them. Paine rolled her eyes, but was smiling too. The Fayth seemed to be the only one with the ability to move among whatever it was that was holding them there. The Fayth grabbed Tidus by the foot and in one swift movement flipped him back right side up. "We wouldn't want you landing on your head, now would we?" He said simply, before disappearing. The light disappeared with him. There was a long moment where nobody spoke.

"…Isn't he supposed to explain what's going on here?" Kairi asked, breaking the silence. She heard a bit of shuffling movement and no one answered. Suddenly, whatever bonds were keeping her still released and she dropped. She almost screamed, but the sudden fall ripped her breath from her throat and she fell silently. Straining to see above her before the group completely disappeared from view, she thought she saw Paine drop, too. None of the others appeared to see what had happened. A few seconds later, she heard Rikku's cry echoing down to her, followed closely by Yuna's gasp and Tidus' yelling 'Hey!' She stopped falling a moment later again, only this time she was sure she'd landed on the ground. It felt like she landed on a sand dune. She didn't land hard, falling into a pile of what felt like sand, which shrunk away, absorbing the fall for her. She sat up, staring blankly into the pitch black. She could hear the sound of water against rocks to her left and to her right she heard a number of soft thumps one after the other; it was the sound of the others landing on the sand.

"Ohh!" Rikku gasped. Kairi couldn't see what was going on, but she could hear the sound of sand grinding on sand. Rikku had landed on a slope and was rolling down. Just able to stop herself, she clung to the loose sand, scrambling back up the hill in the darkness.

"Okay, so where exactly are we?" Paine asked, seeming bored.

"I don't know, but there's something about this place…I don't like it." Yuna said, staring around in the blackness, trying to see the others. Kairi, meanwhile, was trying to keep her mind from flooding with nagging memories that she didn't want to remember. A sudden, bright light shining from her left came as welcome relief from the dark. It startled everyone except Kairi, who had been looking desperately for something to separate her from the darkness. It was the Fayth, once again bringing some form of light. Kairi gasped when she saw how narrowly she'd missed the surprisingly sharp edge of the sand dune. She was inches away, and it was more like a cliff than anything else. If she'd landed even remotely differently, she could have easily gone off the cliff. As far as she could see to her right, there were huge mounds of sand, and to the left there was an enormous body of water, stretching to the horizon. The sound of water that she'd heard was waves crashing against the rocks so far below her. Immediately, she rolled away from it, rolling right into Rikku, who had just managed to get back onto the top of the dune after rolling down it. The pair nearly went tumbling back down the side of the dune, but lucky managed to catch themselves. Once the commotion settled, everyone looked expectantly at the Fayth, who obligingly spoke.

"I see you found your way back. I had hoped I'd made it easy enough for you to find."

"This is the way back?" Yuna asked, rather confused. The Fayth nodded. Yuna looked out at their surroundings. "This isn't any part of Spira that I recognize. Where are we?"

"This is the place between waking and dreaming." The Fayth explained simply.

"So, we're only half way there?" Rikku asked, disheartened.

"In a sense, yes, but you won't have to do anything else now that you're all here." The Fayth said. He looked directly at Kairi. "From here, I can take all of you back to Spira."

"Why the sudden change of heart?" Paine asked. She sounded casual, but Yuna and Rikku both knew that it was a sign that she was angry; she was just very good at hiding it.

"If I'd sent all of you directly to Spira when I first found you, the results could have been disastrous. My powers have been draining. My powers, as you likely know, are directly connected to Macalania Woods. If I'd been able to, I would have brought Tidus back to Spira the moment it could have been possible. However, I had to spend a long while gathering up the energy it would take for me to take you to Zanarkand and then to bring you back again. If all had worked out as I had originally planned, Yuna would have been transported directly to Tidus, found him, and I would have brought both of them back immediately." He looked at Paine and Rikku. "Your insistence in joining Yuna kept me from finding you and drawing you back right away. I had to take a little bit of time to draw up more energy to bring you three girls back and to support Yuna in bringing Tidus back." The Fayth was going to continue, but Rikku interrupted.

"Only support Yunie in bringing him back?" Rikku asked, suspicious. The Fayth nodded.

"Tidus is no longer a part of my dream. He continued his existence as a part of Yuna's memories. I could not bring him back for her; she has to do that herself. I can only help her. As I was saying before, I could not take you directly to Tidus, just as I could not draw the four of you back to Spira any sooner even if you had found him right away. That, in turn, caused you to find Kairi, which caused another problem. If I had at all tried to bring five people back to Spira, I would not have had the power to draw you all the way back. If my energy had drained part way through the journey back, all of the stress would have then been placed on Yuna, and would have undoubtedly killed her." Everyone was quite taken aback. Yuna was slightly pale. Kairi frowned, lowering her eyes.

"I'm sorry, this is all my fault." she said quietly. The Fayth smiled.

"But that's not actually the case, Kairi. All of this happened for a reason, though the reason is one that I cannot see." He said. He smiled again at the surprise on the faces of the four from Spira. "I am not the power that is the be all and end all. There are still laws more ancient than myself. I can see only that Destiny drew you here, though I cannot see why."

"That still doesn't explain why we're here!" Paine complained, standing up.

"You're here because, once Kairi joined you, I knew I would never be able to gather enough power to pull you all directly out of your existence is Zanarkand and take your consciousness back to Spira, so I instead torn the edge of Zanarkand out at the bottom of the hole."

"I'm sorry? You tore the edge of Zanarkand out?" Paine asked.

"Zanarkand is not a world, it is a dream, and it's existence ends once you reach a place that the dreamer had not dreamt up yet. Zanarkand had no existence once you dug far enough into the earth. So I removed the fabric that separated the dream of Zanarkand and the reality of Spira at the bottom of the hole, opening this place, this 'between waking and dreaming'. I couldn't draw you out of the dream, but that in no way meant that you couldn't just fall out of Zanarkand by yourselves."

Kairi, Yuna, Tidus, Rikku and Paine all sat on the dune in silence. They all seemed to be lost in their own thoughts. The Fayth seemed happy to just stand and wait for them to be finished with whatever thoughts they were thinking. Rikku's voice finally cut the silence.

"Okay, so, now what?" She asked, looked at the Fayth lazily.

"Now? Now it's time for your final leg of the journey back to Spira." He said calmly. Paine looked around.

"I don't see how we're going to get anywhere when we don't know where we are or where we're going." She said, disliking the way that the Fayth seemed to speak in riddles.

"I already told you that you're in between waking and dream. I can also tell you where you're going. You're going down." Everyone looked at him, entirely confused. He smiled and disappeared, immersing the rest of them in darkness once again. Kairi sighed.

"I don't like where this is going, do yo-ah!" As she spoke, the sand fell out from underneath her, sending her falling down yet another deep, seemingly endless pit. She heard the cries of the others as they, too, fell. A sudden flash of blinding light made her gasp, holding her eyes shut. It didn't go away, either. Whatever was the source of this light also radiated a warmth against her skin. She hadn't realized how cold it must have been in that between place, but it made her shiver, even now under the beating heat. Where was she? She wanted to know, she wanted to look around, but her eyes still hadn't even remotely adjusted to the sudden glaring light. She heard Rikku shouting above her.

"Look! It's the Celcius!"

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That was one huge explanation, but I guess it needed to be explained. More excitement and less talking by little Fayth dude next chappie ;)