Alright, I got chapter 3 done as fast as I could!! Listenin' to Bon Jovi the whole time really sped it up XD. I'm gonna' basically abandon the FFX storyline here, sorry if that disappoints anyone. I mean, I'll keep all the summoners and sin and Yevonites stuff, but not Yuna's pilgrimage. I will be mentioning Yuna soon, though. (For an interesting note, the guy introduced in this chapter is named 'Goma', which, if translated to English, means 'Kyle'.) And I'm really, really, really sorry about the first sentence of this chapter, but it was necessary for the story to happen. I love Rikku, she's the best. I promise she'll be back… someday… Is this a Tikku? You'll just have to wait and find out… (btw, I know I spelled "Mi'hen" wrong, I'm not sure how to XD)

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Rikku was gone. Where? I have absolutely no idea. Did any of the Al Bhed know? How should I know? I can't understand them. All I know is "Hey, what's up?" Not that I can understand their responses.

Thought one of the guys on the blitz team, Goma, actually understood me.

The second I saw him after I found out about Rikku's disappearance, I started pounding him with questions.

"Where's Rikku?" I demanded. He slowly shook his head.

"We don't know." He replied honestly. "She was going to go with Brother and some of the others on a salvage mission this morning. They went to go get her and she was gone." He sighed. "Cid's really mad." He added.

"Cid?" I gotta' say, I was pretty shocked. "Your leader? Why should he care so much about Rikku?" Now he looked shocked.

"I thought you guys were close!" He scoffed. "She never told you he's her father?" I blinked in surprise. Goma almost laughed. Almost.

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Life was really, really, really boring without Rikku. No one was around to translate for me either, so I just replied with nods, smiles, or sympathetic glances depending on people's body language. Goma was the only one I'd found so far who understood me, and the blitz team hadn't looked at my skills yet, though Goma told me to come to the sphere the following Wednesday. Until then, I just sort of cooped myself up in the tiny room they were letting me stay in.

I had never been so impatient for. Even when I was waiting to see if I'd made the Abes. Every day inched by. I tried to sleep through most of them, but all of the noise from the machina made it almost impossible. I just lay there thinking. I thought about everything. Zanarkand. Auron. Sin. Home. Rikku. Especially Rikku. Where was she? Would I ever see her again? Was she even alive?

I left for the sphere pool on Wednesday morning feeling more depressed than excited. Goma was the only one who looked glad to see me. They let me play for the practice, though, just to see how I was.

By the end, almost all of them were treating me like a god. Goma caught up with me just as I was leaving.

"Dude, you're awesome!" He said in awe. It took all of my self-control not to grin. "Anyway, you need to learn Al Bhed." It sounded like an order to me. "It's really hard if you haven't grown up with it, but you should catch on. Come see me at six each night." I opened my mouth to reply, but he pushed on determinedly. "And, man, do something about your hair!"

I wanted so say "Rikku already tried." But as soon as I thought about her my throat closed up, so I just shook my head.

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I started thinking about Zanarkand a lot. Rikku had kept me busy so I wouldn't be homesick. But now she was gone, too. I felt like my life was falling apart piece by piece. And not only has I lost my home and my best friend, but my new blitzball team sucked. They really needed me. The only good thing about that was they were always having me come to the sphere pool to teach them some new shots and different moves.

My lessons with Goma were going fairly well. I could make some broken conversation with him in Al Bhed, but I wasn't anywhere near ready to face the rest of Home with my terrible vocabulary. We were pretty good friends by the end of our third lesson, which soothed my hurt, if only a tiny bit.

As I sat in Goma's room for the twelfth time, he strayed from teaching me his language.

"I take it you've never met Yuna before, have you?" He inquired suddenly.

"N-no." I stammered. "Who…?"

"She's Rikku's cousin." He explained. I flinched inwardly at the mention of my cheerful friend. "They haven't seen each other in about ten years, but they were pretty close when they were younger. She's going to be at Operation Mi'hen" He told me, referring to the Al Bhed's crazy mission to beat Sin with their ancient machina. I just have to say: those things were big old pieces of crap. "Cid wants you to go and meet her." I thought I would fall backwards out of my chair. "He knows you were close to Rikku. Plus he's never met her, so he doesn't know if she's hostile towards Al Bhed. I don't see why she would be." He snorted "Her mother was one."

Why the heck did Cid trust me? I'd never even met him…