The unnamed boy sat despondently in front of the small fire he had made and brooded. After he had awoken, he had come to the realization that he didn't remember ANYTHING.

'Well, no,' the boy reflected. He hadn't forgotten everything entirely. He could remember how to light fires, for instance. But he could not remember where he had learned to do it, or from who. Much of his scattered memories were like that. Skills at basic things like cooking or cleaning or swimming, but no names or faces of anyone or anything.

On some memories, the memories that he desperately NEEDED, there was.. a block. A massive mental wall, through which nothing could enter or leave.

He hadn't even recognized the boy staring back at him from the water's reflection. Blonde hair, tanned skin, deep blue eyes staring out of a face that was more pretty than handsome. It was a stranger's face that stared back at him.

'I don't even recognize my damn clothes. Black shorts, yellow shirt, white hood? A silver stud in the ear, a little necklace? What kind of profession might be done in clothes such as these? What kind of man would wear this outfit?' Nothing jumped out at him.

He had even run a quick inventory of the contents of his many and varied pockets, anything that might point to who he had been. All he had found was a pair of dark, rounded shades that some instinct told him to keep safe.

Someone had given those shades, he recalled. Someone who he thought very highly of. Someone with black hair streaked with grey and a crooked smile...

But for the life of him, he couldn't remember the man's face.

Much of what he remembered was like that.

That night, he didn't bothered to sleep. He was too busy trying to find the memory of faces in the dancing flames.

---

Morning came, and he was no closer to finding his past than he had been before night had fallen. He had organized the bits and pieces he remembered into a more orderly form, but the amount of what he knew was pitifully small.

He knew that he had awoken near noon on a beach. He could recall the basics and necessities of everyday life.

That was it.

Everything else was feelings and fever dreams and damn too little information to go on.

But he couldn't just stay on this beach forever. He would need to find shelter, preferably a town or city.

That said, he chose a direction at random and began walking.

---

Cathy looked sourly at the bouncing bundle of excitement that was Zeru and sighed again. One would think they were out on a joyride rather than a hunting expedition. Jaz, too, looked much too cheerful to be out scouting for fiends, though he at least gave a valiant, though failing, effort into putting on a stern face.

Before she could think up some colorful curses for her companions, her sharp ears caught the sound of something sifting through the brush. It was faint, but it was coming their way.

"No way! You mean that they actually - "

Cathy chopped a hand behind her for quiet.

She hissed, "Fiends, I think, heading in from the south."

Jaz frowned, serious now. "D'you think we ought'ta engage, Cath?"

Before she could answer, however, a boy crashed out of the brush. It seemed that it was he she had heard. He was dressed in an odd motley of clothes, ranging from red, to blue, to yellow, to white, to black. "Whoa," Jaz commented. "You ain't from around here, are ya?"

The boy blinked. "No, I don't think so."

Jaz continued, "Man, no offense, but you look like shit."

And it was true enough. The guy looked pale under his tan, skin stretched tight over wiry muscle, and his clothes were ripped and dirty from trudging through the jungle that made up this isle. Cathy rolled her eyes and replied for the other boy, "That's it, Jaz, win him over with sweetness, why don't you?"

The other scout said defensively, "Hey, I'm jus' sayin' - "

Before he could finish the thought, the guy in question cocked his head and looked in the distance off to their right.

As if that had been a cue, a massive fiend broke above the tree level, heading straight for them with an ear-shattering screech. It wasn't any of the types the three natives had ever seen; it looked like a huge cross between a reptile and a bird, a dark tan in color, except for the bright red plumage on its chest and the feathers on the inside of its wings.

Zeru asked in an awe-struck whisper, "What.. the HELL.. is THAT? I've never SEEN a creature so big!" Cathy nodded in terse agreement and replied, "Let's get out of here. I don't think the three of us can take it alone. We'd need the whole damn militia."

The strange, blonde-haired boy frowned, his eyes far away. "A Garuda."

Cathy turned around, ignoring the monster for a moment in favor of the more immediate puzzle.

Jaz voiced the question all three teens were wondering. "What?"

The boy just blinked at them in mutual noncomprehension.

The big snake-dragon-bird-bug thing chose this moment to attack.

---

The Garuda, sensing prey, homed in on the blinking teens easily. When it was in range, it pulled out of its glide and swept its gigantic wings forward, kicking dirt and debris and startled scout up into the air through sheer force.

The unnamed boy frowned again as he picked himself up off the ground and growled. The little scouting party was out for the count, it seemed. It was up to him, as per usual. He wasn't sure where this thought came from, but he was sure it was the truth.

So thinking, he looked around the clearing for something to use against the monster, and his eyes alighted on Cathy's dropped weapon. He dropped to his knees beside her unconscious form, and hefted the sword. He recognized it; an antique cavalry saber. It didn't feel quite right, but it would serve.

He stood up again in the stance he suddenly knew he should have been in all along; left hand out in front for balance, blade behind him. The Garuda roared at the prey that did not know it should have been dead, and the prey answered with a roar of its own that seemed pretty weak in comparison.

When the Garuda attacked again, this time a raking attack with its powerful talons, the now-armed boy blocked the strike as if he had done it a thousand times before, and before the flyer could mount a second attack, he took to the trees, bounding from trunk to trunk and pushing himself higher into the air with each leap.

And with one final leap, he jumped onto the creature's back, scrambled up a bit higher to settle himself against the thing's shoulders, and drove his borrowed blade deep into the base of its skull.

With a final cry, the fiend exploded in a shower of glowing pyreflies. The boy gave himself a mental pat on the back for a split second until he realized that, with the Garuda vanquished, there was no longer anything to keep him up into the air. Gravity, deciding it had had enough of his impudence, reasserted itself.

He screamed all the way down the twenty feet to the ground, and promptly lost consciousness on impact.

---

Slowly, the scouts fuzzed back into consciousness. They looked around at each other blankly in a sort of morning grogginess before recalling the attack. Looking around, however, proved that there was no colossal fiend about to make of them a meal.

Zeru also noticed the boy they had been talking to a bit farther away, his leg twisted unnaturally. Silently, she pointed his prone body out to the other two. Jaz swore quietly with feeling. Cathy, as usual, took charge.

"Okay," she said after a moment's thought, "Do either of you know White magic? I was never very good at it." Zeru nodded quietly and said in response, "I know a bit. Lemme see what I can do."

She knelt beside him and held out a hand, palm outwards and thumb tucked in. An aura began to build as she readied a healing spell. "Cure," she murmured, her voice rich with the power of the spell. A sphere of glowing, greenish-blue light enveloped the boy, sinking into his body and vanishing without a trace.

And before their eyes, the boy's cuts and cruises closed over and healed themselves, though his limb remained twisted, likely broken. When the glow finally disappeared, the caster sat back, breathing heavily. "That's the best I can do for him. If ya want a complete healing, you're gonna have to go back to the temple, get some priests on it. I can't do enough out here."

Cathy nodded authoritively. "Well then, let's call it a day and head back to Besaid. There's nothing more we can do here. Jaz, carry him."

The trip back was filled with complaints and whining from the only conscious male of the group.

---

TBC...

A/N: Like it? Despise it? Let me know - review!