fighter-chick and GiGgLyGaL, thanks for the comments! I really appreciate them!

Also, i'm putting all english translations to Al Bhed in double parenthesis ((like this))

Thanks for reading! Please RnR! Sorry it took so long to update

Chapter Two

The Strangers

He opened his eyes because he heard a voice. "Hey!" It shouted.

"My...old man?" Tidus wondered. It sounded like him, Jecht. Where was he? He looked around and saw that he was swimming, no, floating over Zanarkand. It looked nothing out of the ordinary. But something strange, almost surreal seemed to envelope the city. His vision was blurry. He then remember what happened. Auron and him engulfed into the sphere.

He thought about a lot of things. Like where he was, what he'd gotten himself into. He started to feel light-headed. And then sleepy. He had a dream. A dream of being alone. He wanted someone, anyone beside him. So he didn't have to feel alone anymore.

Suddenly, he woke up with a start and sat up. Sand fell from his face and his clothes as he looked around. He had been lying on a small sandbar, and in front of him was a very large stone structure. The sky was dank and grey, and a harsh, cold, howling wind ruffled in the air. The water around him was as dark as the sky. "Anybody there?" He shouted. "Auron?" No answer.

Tidus noticed a narrow stone pathway leading up to, what he assumed was, the entrance of the structure, which looked to be in ruins. The pathway sloped upward, softly leading him above the water. Bits of the stone were crumbling away. Whoever built this place built it a long, long time ago. He wasn't paying much attention, when suddenly the stone path crumbled into the murky water, him along with it.

Panicked, he dove under the water in hope of finding an entrance that way. Being a blitzball player, he could easily hold his breath for up to an hour. He was certain he might find a way.

He hadn't been swimming for very long when a group of three fish surrounded him. But, they weren't like any other fish he'd ever seen before. They were large, nearly as big as him, and a rich green color luminated with red, orange and yellow scales. They looked at him threateningly, however, and flashed their sharp-looking teeth. Fiends, he decided. Pulling his sword from the scabbard strapped to his back, he swam over and struck down two of the fish easily.

He planned to strike the third, when suddenly, it looked alarmed and swam away. Tidus assumed it was smart enough to escape before meeting the fate of the others, but then he heard a noise from far beneath him, deep within the deepest depths of the water.

The biggest fish he'd ever seen was slowly swimming towards him. No skin covered its rib bones, where bits of fish skin hung from, perhaps like a warning as to what the fish was capable of. The fish swam up and viciously bit the smaller fish, then flinging its bleeding body to the side. It looked at Tidus, an evil gaze in it's eye. Tidus finally caught an opening in the rock wall of the structure where he could get in. He swam, faster than he'd ever swam before.

The fish, might have been faster. He could feel the fish's presence right behind him. He was nearly there, just barely. The fish was sucking now, hoping to pull hard enough to draw him into its mouth. Tidus swam hard. He was almost there, almost there.

BLAM! The fish was not big enough to get through the opening. It crashed hard into the walls surrounding, the force propelling Tidus into the opening. The crash, however, knocked some boulders in front of the opening, leaving only a small opening to escape. Not big enough for the fish, but yet, not big enough for Tidus. He was trapped.

Thankfully, the room he was trapped in lead to stairs, which went up and out of the water. At the top of the stairs was a large, stone door, which he pushed open and walked into a large, circular hall.

He had made it out of the frying pan, yet into the freezer. He thought that he might die in this place. He walked to the center of the hall, his feet making empty echoes. There lay the ash-ridden remains of a campfire. Suddenly, he got an idea.

In a sconce vase on the wall he found a yellowed, dryed, but perfect for building a fire with, withered bouquet. In a broken drawer in one of the corridors he found two rough rocks that could be used as flint. He carefully carried these back to the campfire remains and assembled a small, but warm, fire.

He lay on his back, letting the fire warm his feet. He was very hungry, and felt very alone. Slowly, a vision clouded him.

"What do you want?" He wasn't in the empty hall of the ruins, he was back at his home in Zanarkand. Auron stood at his front door. He remembered this. It was recently.

"It was a bad call." Auron was saying. "Your team lost because of you."

"You came to say that?" Tidus had said, impatiently.

"It's been...ten years. I thought you'd be crying." Auron said quietly. Then he turned and walked out of the house.

"Who? Me?" Tidus said. He wouldn't cry. He didn't cry.

The dark-skinned boy with the purple hood suddenly appeared. "You cried." He said softly. Tidus didn't remember the boy at all being there.

'How strange.' He thought, as he sat up. Noticing that his feet were not feeling as warm as they had, he looked and realized that the fire was dying into small embers.

"Hey! Wait! Don't go out on me!" He cried. "Just hold on, I'll get more wood." He stood up and turned. A sharp, hissing noise behind him made him realize that he wasn't, despite his thoughts, alone. He wasn't alone at all.

A fiend had lunged from the top of the hall. It was sleek, jet black and had six pointy legs. It was standing, tapping its many feet, poised to fight. Tidus drew his sword to defend himself.

As he prepared to run forward to strike the fiend, he heard a commotion from behind the large doors which he came in. The fiend seemed to notice it, too. Both turned to look.

BANG! A loud noise could be heard from behind the doors. BANG! It sounded almost like and explosion. BANG! The large doors burst open in an explosion. When the smoke and dust settled, Tidus could see a group of very strangely dressed men standing, with guns drawn. In the middle stood a girl, probably not much younger than he, wearing a skin-tight yellow wetsuit, red armor strapped to her arms and legs, a red helmet, and, as well as the others, wore goggles.

She darted forward and, without saying a word, drew a grenade and tossed it at the fiend. It exploded, the fiend collapsed and disappeared. Tidus looked at her with amazement. She stared at him too for a moment, and then reached up and yanked off her goggles, revealing a pair of peircing green eyes. Tidus was amazed. He'd never seen eyes so vibrant before. There was something very strange about them.

"Whew!" He breathed a sigh of relief. "That was close!"

The other strangely-dressed men who'd came in with her all began to walk forward, guns still drawn. One of them walked up behind Tidus and grabbed him by his hair. "Hey! Lemme go!" He shouted.

"Fryd ec drec?" ((What is this)) The man asked. Tidus was stunned to hear the strange words coming out of the man's mouth.

"Y fiend! Eh risyh teckieca!" ((A fiend! In human disguise!)) Another man exclaimed. Tidus recognized the word "fiend", but nothing else.

"Oac! Ed ec cu!" ((Yes! It is so!)) Another said, sounding threatening.

The man who had Tidus by his hair suddenly drew a knife and held it to Tidus's throat. "Fa gemm ed?" ((We kill it?)) He asked the girl.

The girl shook her head. "Fyed! Fryd ev ed ec risyh?" ((Wait! What if it is human?)) She responded.

The man holding Tidus pointed his knife at the girl. "Drao yna dra cysa eh taydr." ((They are all the same in death.)) He informed her.

The girl shook her head again. "E vunpet ed! Fa pnehk ed fedr ic!" ((I forbid it! We bring it with us!)) She said firmly. Slowly, she saunted up to him, a strange sort of smile on her face. She walked up very close to him. Closer than he'd liked. So close, her body was right up against his. "Cunno." ((Sorry.)) She said apologetically, and she kneed him hard in the stomach. Tidus dropped to the ground, unconcious.