Hey there! I am a new writer to the game fan fiction "genre," so bear with me as I get my bearings. This is a Rikku-centric fic, so I guess you could call it Rikku's story. This fic's pairings are mainly RikkuxGippal and RikkuxBaralai, with the usual TxY, WxL, etc. I don't think my fic will be mostly RxG or mostly RxB. I think it will be pretty even, as I do love both couples pretty equally.

When you read the prologue, you might be a little startled, but this is the prologue and not the first chapter, so it's not the actual start of the story yet. I will post pretty regularly, because the chapters will be a bit shorter than I'm used to. And thank you thank you for even checking this story out.

-B

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In These Walls

Prologue

I suppose I should start this story at the beginning, not the very beginning of the world called Spira and how it came to be, but the beginning of a new era, the Eternal Calm. The calendars have all shifted and the current year is 4 E.C., and the years I will talk about are the last decade of S.R., Sin's Reign. It all began really with a man born in Bevelle, the great Yevonite city of Spira. His name was Braska, and when this man realized that he had a gift to summon the great spirits of his ancestors that held the world together, known as the Fayth, he knew that he had been born for the very purpose of stopping Sin…

Sin—I should stop and talk about what Sin is. It started in 978 S.R., when tradtion-rich Bevelle waged war against the powerful island of Zanarkand. Bevelle, the Red City as it was known then, was swiftly losing under the superior technological advantage of its enemy. According to legend, its top leader, Lord Yu Yevon, found a scroll that described how to construct an incredible armor that would end the war. Sin was this armor. Sin was the beast that would be reborn every ten years since its creation in 980 S.R. I have always felt that the year should have been 1 S.R., but they say that Sin always reigned before then, even before it actually came into being by Yu Yevon's hands. With what we know now, I couldn't possibly deny that. But Sin, this ungodly armor, wiped out all of Zanarkand. Some say Yu Yevon lost control, and some say he did it intentionally. It was too long ago for us to know for sure. For over a thousand years, Sin used the souls that it killed for power in order to be reborn. Its very thick leathery skin was the souls of thousands of people, thousands of Fayth-like beings, of the families that birthed the families alive today. That was Sin. That was Yu Yevon's creation.

…Then there was Braska, and it was not that he was particularly gifted, but he was driven and he had one of the Fayth's weapons at his service. Should I explain summoners? It is so embedded in Spira's common history that I forget this is an account for those who may not be familiar at all with the current world. Summoners were like priests, connected to all the spirits around them. Most spirits are simply pyreflies, glowing smoky energy that fills this planet, but the special ones, the ones that fought against Sin, those were the Fayth. The Fayth had the power to make people. That doesn't sound quite right. I must re-write it, but later. Now—

These summoners would go through trials to unite with the Fayth and summon them in their beast forms to fight against Sin. With guardians by their side to protect and help them stay alive through their pilgrimage, the summoners would have traverse the entire continent from south to the very north to reach Zanarkand for their final summon and face Sin. It isn't as glorious as it sounds, because these young hopefuls—and they were always terribly young—would either die during the pilgrimage or if they succeeded, they died killing Sin. That's all they were, mere human sacrifices to the giant grey beast that haunted the waters and skies of Spira.

Lord Braska was different only because he was an anomaly. He was not more gifted than the next, but he had been blessed by the Fayth and supplied with a guardian they created with their incredible power. They summoned Jecht, an ordinary Blitzball sports player from old Zanarkand, the shadow of a spirit, and made him flesh and bone. They fused pyreflies with their magic and birthed a real human being out of the city that only existed in the dreams of the Fayth…

I have my theory as to why they chose Braska over all the others. Braska was devoid of the usual racist compulsion found in many Spirans and had married to an Al Bhed, making his reputation as a summoner laughable in the eyes of all Yevonites, and that meant mostly all of Spira. The Al Bhed race never followed the teachings of Yevon, particularly those that prohibited the use of machines or technology not sanctioned by the religious institution. Perhaps the Al Bhed instinctually knew that there was no spiritual merit to Yevon, and that it was simply used to appease and control the masses. But because of their resistance against the religion, they suffered more than any peoples in Spira. They bore the brunt of the blame for every misfortune and endured everything from being exiled to ethnic cleansings.

…But Braska, being one of pure Bevellian Yevonite blood, fell in love with an Al Bhed woman. And she birthed his daughter, Yuna, the summoner, who, at the mere age of seventeen, would bring the Eternal Calm to Spira and kill Sin once and for all.

Yuna had the most guardians ever recorded for a summoner. There was Auron, her father's own High Guardian; Lulu, an ex-guardian herself for a summoner that died at the hands of one of the Fayth; Wakka, a blitzball player and strong faithful Yevonite back then; Kimahri, exiled from his own race, the Ronso; and most remarkably, the first Al Bhed guardian ever: Rikku, Yuna's cousin and the daughter to the great Al Bhed leader, Cid, for which she was considered the princess of the Al Bhed. Yuna also had her own shadow spirit, Tidus, son of Jecht, and also a dream like his father, made into flesh by the Fayth.

All of them went against Yevon's teachings. They brought down the power of the leaders of Yevon, the maesters, and entered Sin, defeated the spirit of Yu Yevon from within and instead of a human sacrifice, the Fayth used their own lasting power to undo the armor forever.

Peace was never promised with the Eternal Calm, as many Spirans came to realize. What was promised was that there would be no more Sin. But with the organization of New Yevon (formed out of the rubble of the old Yevon) having to answer for the all the many centuries of corruption, and new groups forming as a deterrent of religion such as the Youth League, constant political wars began to form and the senate of Spira still had as little power as it did during Yevon's long unquestioned reign. And since Yevon no longer existed to prohibit the use of machines, the Al Bhed also began their rise to power through the Machine Faction. These three organizations were forced to unite but a year ago to fight against a mechanical demon from Spira's haunting past. Yuna once again joined the fight, along with Rikku and their partner, Paine, mostly by chance. They all found out that the most valuable and dangerous thing about Spira was its mysterious and muddled history.

Oh, I've realized that I haven't introduced myself yet, and I suppose now would be the ideal time. My name is Bevelle. I lived over two thousand years ago, when Sin meant a completely different thing.

These are my words—the words that I have written using the last of my strength, the last of my energy. I am the daughter of a prophet. I am the daughter of the woman that nurtured this planet into being. My parents, like Yuna's, were of mixed race. My father was of the beautiful dark-skinned people of Bikanel, and my mother was of the powerful fair-skinned people known as the Spiran race.

I am the daughter of Suen, which my mother's people always pronounced as Sin.