Disclaimer: The only thing that I own is the plot to this fanfic. That is all. I do not own any of the characters. If I did, I'd be a very happy girl, but I don't own them.

Chapter II

Every Problem has to Start Somewhere

Lightning lit up the dark sky around Besaid. Yuna and Rikku were sitting inside Wakka's and Lulu's home. Buddy, Shinra, and Brother were also with them.

"It's loud out there." Rikku sat on the floor with her knees brought up to her chest. Another loud boom of thunder sent shivers down her spine.

"Don't worry, Rikku. I'm sure it'll be over soon." Yuna calmly told Rikku.

"Yeah. That's what you said an hour ago." Rikku covered her ears as yet another loud boom of thunder rang throughout the skies.

"Yuna's right, ya know. The storms we have here usually don't last long, ya." Wakka was sitting beside Lulu and his baby son, who was in the arms of his mother, Lulu.

"I hope Paine's alright. Before I left Celsius, I checked on her and she was still asleep, so I left her alone. She had been out late last night." Yuna sat down beside Rikku.

"I'm sure she's fine, Yuna. She's safe inside Celsius." Buddy told the ex-summoner.

Brother stood. "Hudrehk lyh bahadnyda dra fymmc uv Celsius!"

"We know. We know." The group said in unison.

Inside the cabin in Celsius, Paine was just waking up. The thunder outside was making her headache worse by the second. She let out a low moan when she sat up and put her hand to her forehead. I knew I shouldn't have drunk that much. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and leaned back on her hands. That thunder isn't helping me at all. She glanced around the room. Besides the storm outside, it seemed pretty quiet and peaceful here inside Celsius. She stood and walked towards the stairs, her hand was still on her forehead. Maybe Barkeep has something for this headache. After going down the stairs, she walked over to Barkeep and leaned up against the counter.

"Hey, Barkeep. Do you happen to have anything for a headache?"

"No. Shorry. All out." The Hypello answered.

Paine sighed. "Oh well. Where is everyone?"

"They went out too Beshaid. It shtarted raining hard and they deshided too shtay there until it calmed down." Barkeep explained to the young warrior.

Paine headed back up the stairs and towards the window. It was indeed raining extremely hard. Hopefully it calms down soon. She sat back down on the bed. A strange feeling swelled up in her gut. She pushed herself to her feet and slowly took a few steps towards the window. She felt like something was pulling her, wanting her to go outside in this awful weather. Ignoring the strange pull, she took a few steps back; she felt uneasy about something, but she didn't know what exactly.

The wind outside started to pick up, and the thunder got louder and louder each passing second. A massive wave came up from behind Celsius, and seconds later, it hit the airship head on. Celsius shook violently, thrusting Paine forward and through the glass in front of her. With her arms covering her head -trying her best to protect her face from the glass that fell with her- she fell into the ocean.

The sound from the storm was drowned out by the ocean when she fell in. All she could hear was water. Rushing water. The violent ocean kept her from swimming to the top and getting air; it wanted to keep her down, and it was doing a marvelous job doing so. Paine opened her eyes and tried her best to swim to the surface, but the water only pushed her down further. Everything began to darken as the young warrior continued going deeper and deeper into the vast ocean……

"How is she?"

Paine's head swayed from side to side as her senses slowly came back to her. She felt a soft pillow beneath her head, and something that felt like cotton sheets beneath and over top of her.

"She will be fine."

Voices. Male voices. Where…am…I? Her eyes fluttered open, but shut quickly and tightly when she was almost blinded by the bright light all around her.

"So where did you find her?"

She tried her best to listen in on the strange voices' conversation.

"She washed up on the banks right outside Esthar, sir."

"Does she have any kinda identification or anything?"

"A backpack was found with her; but no identification of any sort."

A backpack? My backpack? But…what happened?

"What was in the backpack?"

"Several of these strange spheres. We have not yet figured out what they are exactly, and then attached to the backpack was a sword of some kind."

My sword! My spheres! That is my backpack! But how did it-how did I and my backpack get here? I don't remember having it with me… Paine tried to think back to what had happened just seconds ago. Or it felt like seconds ago, anyway. All that flashed in her mind was water. Dark, cold water. She shivered at the thought of that. Wait a minute. She thought back to what she had heard one of the voices say. Right outside Esthar? Where the hell is that? I don't remember there ever being an Esthar in Spira. Her eyes slowly opened, but it took a bit for her to get adjusted to the bright lights in the room that she was in.

"Looks like the little lady is awake." Another man's voice. Not the same as the other two. It sounded…different. She didn't know how, though. Her mind wasn't working all that well right now.

"Hey. You feeling alright?" It sounded like the man who had first asked how she was. As she looked up at him, she could now place a face with the voice.

He had shoulder-length blackish brown hair and what looked to be light green eyes or even brown. He was dressed in simple brown pants and a blue jacket with a white shirt underneath.

Paine tried to find her voice, but instead, she just nodded. She looked around the room and noticed she was in a hospital room. Aside from the man in the blue jacket, there were two other men in the room. A doctor, who looked to be in his mid-sixties with a slightly balding head, and then one who certainly didn't look like a doctor. This man was dressed in red, and had dark skin. His black hair was pulled back and it may have been braided. Paine could not tell from where she was laying, nor did it really matter.

"Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?" The man in the jacket asked her.

Then can I ask you a few questions? Maybe like…who are you and why am I here, 'cause I know I ain't in Spira. She looked up at the man, and cleared her throat. "Sure."

"Okay then. What's your name?"

"Paine."

"Uh…is that P-A-I-N?"

"P-A-I-N-E."

"…Okay…" The man had a notebook and pencil out, writing up whatever was said. "Your age?"

"Eighteen." Paine sat up in a sitting position.

"Where are you from?"

She quickly thought of something to say. "Esthar."

"So…do you remember how you ended up outside of Esthar?"

"No. I don't remember. Everything's a blur." She thought it was best if she lied. She didn't know these men and like they would believe she was from Spira. More than likely, they didn't even know Spira existed. So this is…a…different world? How is that possible? I mean-how could I travel from Spira to…here in less than a few seconds? Maybe it was that-

Her thoughts were interrupted by the same man. "Do you have any relatives here? Someone that we could notify?"

"No."

The man scratched his head. "Well…I guess that's all the information I'll be needing for now." He and the other man turned to leave the room. "Get some rest. I'll be back to check on you in a bit." The two left.

The doctor stayed and checked to see if she had a fever. "He's right. You need rest."

Before the doctor left, Paine quickly called him back. "Doc, where's my clothes and my stuff?" She just now noticed she was in one of those hospital gowns.

The doctor chuckled. "Oh right! They are in the chair to the left of your bed."

She looked over and saw them, right where he said they'd be. She looked back at the doctor. "Who were those two?"

The doctor looked at her, a confused expression on his face. "You don't know who they were?"

"My memory isn't so good after…well…you know…" She tapped her head with her right index finger as she said this.

"Oh yes, of course. Well, to jog up your memory, the man in the jacket is the president and the other is a good friend of his. One of his secretaries, too, I do believe." The doctor smiled. "President Laguna and Kiros. Laguna has done so much for Esthar." He quickly shook his head. "I'll leave to let you sleep now." Before she could say 'thank you', the doctor had left the room.

Paine quickly got up out of the bed, wincing when she found out how sore her body was, and undressed as fast as she could. It took her a while -even for the way the hospital gown was designed- but she had gotten her original clothes and boots on, and no one entered the room while she did this.

I swear. I feel like I've been hit all over with a sledgehammer. She rubbed the back of her strained neck. Right outside her room, she heard a male's voice. Is that…that president guy? She slowly and quietly walked over to the door and leaned up against it; she did her best to hear what the voice was saying. Yep. It's him. Sounds like he's on the phone.

"Hey! How are you?" A pause. "I'm doin' fine. Everything over here is doin' great." Another short pause. "Because I wanted to tell you about something. We found this strange young woman right outside Esthar. She says she's from here, but I'm not too sure about that. I've looked her name up, and found no one named that." Paine noticed he was starting to lower his voice, and she opened the door a bit to try and hear him better. "No. I'm positive she's not from here. And if she was from another place, then why did she tell me she was from here?"

His voice kept getting quieter, and Paine was straining to hear what he was saying.

"She's sleeping right now." Silence. "Okay. When can you get here? Okay. That's a good time for me. Bye, Squall." She heard him hang up the phone and walk towards her door.

She walked quickly back to her bed, laid back down, and covered up. Her eyes were closed as she heard the door open, then shut a second or two later. As she laid there, she began to think about what had happened in just a short amount of time.

Who is this Squall that's coming here? Should I be worried? They've found out, so I guess I should be. I can't trust them. I have to get out of here.

She sat back up and grabbed her backpack. My sword. Where the hell is my sword! She had heard one of them say that they had found her sword along with her backpack…but her sword wasn't here! They probably took it and put it up somewhere. But where?…I have to find it. She checked her backpack, and found one of the spheres missing. The thieves. She hissed silently. The backpack was swung over her shoulder as she quickly, but quietly, made her way out of the hospital room.

She had made it halfway through whatever floor she was on in the hospital, and had found nothing. Until…

"Hey! Guard!" A doctor, Paine noticed he was the one from before, hollered after a man who was carrying something towards the elevator. Her sword.

"Yes, sir?"

"Take this there, too, please." The doctor handed the man a reddish-orange sphere. "It needs to be examined by the scientists. So make sure it's delivered in one piece, okay?"

"Understood, sir." The man took the sphere with his free hand and continued on his way to the elevator.

Once Paine finished watching the doctor leave and disappear around the corner, she quickly ran to catch the elevator before the man, who just now stepped inside, shut the doors and left with her sword and sphere.

"Wait! Hold the doors open!" She knew the man didn't know she was the owner of the sword and sphere.

The man politely held the doors open for her as she ran inside and caught her breath. "Thank you," The doors shut and the elevator started to head down.

"Your wel-"

Paine punched him in the face and knocked him out cold. "For giving my stuff back to me." She grabbed her sword and attached it back to her backpack, while also placing the sphere back inside the bag. When the elevator doors opened, she ran out and towards the exit.

Obviously someone had seen the man inside the elevator and they yelled for help. Paine didn't pay too much attention to who it was, mainly because it didn't matter. What mattered right now was getting out of this place and finding a way back home. Home… Sounds good. She ran through the automatic opening doors and out onto the busy streets of what she had recently learned was called Esthar. But busy streets wasn't what one would call…this.

And I thought things couldn't get any stranger, she thought as she looked around at the strange city. There weren't any streets. Well, not exactly, anyway. It was more like-a hard to describe kinda thing. She had never seen such technology. As she wandered away from the hospital, she looked everywhere, an amazed look on her face; the kind of look you would see on a little girl who had just seen a fairy or a unicorn. "Gippal would love this place…" She found herself saying after a while. Gippal…

"Hey! You! Stop right there!" She heard footsteps behind her. As she turned to see who was the one yelling, she saw the man Laguna and his friend, Kiros. Accompanied with them were two guards; one of them was the guard that she had hit, but both had guns at their side.

Thinking quickly, she turned and ran. Why fight them? Besides the fact she didn't want to, she wasn't in the best shape right now to fight anyone. Her body was still pretty sore.

She continued running, the four men not too far behind her. Her sides were starting to ache even more than before. She knew she had to ditch them sooner or later, and she needed it to be sooner not later. Before long, she turned a corner. There was a sign, but she didn't pay that much attention to it as she ran. A second later, it turned out that she had ran right into a circular room. In the middle of this room, was this control panel and a "drive way" of some sorts in front of that panel. I wonder what kind of machina that is. She examined the panel, wishing Gippal had been here. He would know what to do with this. She heard the footsteps coming closer and looked around, mainly for a hiding place. Not knowing where the "drive way" led to -maybe outside, maybe not- she quickly hid behind a few crates that were straight across from the entrance. As she leaned back against one of the crates and listened, she heard the men talking.

"Do you think she took one of the cars?"

"She may have. There's no other way out of this room."

Paine quickly looked over the top of the crates, trying her best to see what they were doing and not to get caught at the same time.

"Uh, you two take a car and search outside. I have to get back to my office." She could have sworn she saw Laguna wink, but maybe she was just seeing things?

"Yes, sir!" The guards pressed a few buttons on the panel, and this machina on wheels showed up and the guards quickly got inside the machina.

I wonder what that is? I think they called it a 'car'. She watched curiously as the machina drove on the drive way and out of sight.

"But, Laguna-"

"No buts, Kiros. I have a lot of paperwork to finish and I think they can handle finding her." Paine noticed there was a strange tone in Laguna's voice as he said this, and she didn't like it one bit. The two walked back out into the city and out of her sight.

Not liking the situation she had gotten herself in, she sat cross-legged on the floor and tried to think of a way out of this. I know they know I'm here. You can tell by the tone of his voice, and that wink I saw wasn't my imagination. She was trapped, but if there's a will, there's a way. Right?

Moving to a crouched position, she decided that there were only two options: try and get one of those machinas, figure out how they work, and get out of here; or fight her way through the president and his friend. Well, you wouldn't think Laguna, being the president, would have any fighting experience, but never judge a book by its cover. So it was always a possibility that both, Laguna and Kiros, had fighting experience. Come on, girl. Pick one. Option number one, or option number two. A smirk appeared on her face. How 'bout secret option number three? Standing, she walked out from behind the crates and in the direction of both the control panel and the way she entered the room……