Chapter Two: Discovery in the Darkness

At first she woke up underwater. She was in a strange place. It seemed like a destroyed stadium or stage. There were destroyed stone stands to the side and a large circular stage in the centre. She wasn't sure who she could see, but she could definitely see someone on the stage. She swam down to see that it was, ignoring the burning J in the distance, she soon reached them. As she got closer she thought it was her father, Braska, but when she reached this mystery person it became her. She floated there, staring at a child version of herself. All alone.

That was the moment that her loneliness came down upon her with full force. She began to realise that through her whole life she had mostly been alone. As a child she didn't play with other kids, she was always by herself or with her father. Even in adulthood she was alone. Her teammates never asked if she wanted to hang out with them. Her fans would talk to her but that was mostly because she was famous. Whenever it really came down to anything, she was alone.

She soon realised this was a dream, but that didn't stop her feeling sad. In this dream of being alone all she wanted was someone to be there. She wanted someone, anyone to be there beside her. Even the child version of her disappeared; she then knew that she was truly and utterly, alone.

She slowly opened her eyes. Waking from her dream, tears came from her eyes. She sat up and wiped the tears away. Looking around at where she was she saw ruins. Wherever she was, it was in ruins. Broken pillars and destroyed platform lay all around. Not to mention the fact that most of the place was submerged in water. Yuna moved further up the broken platform she was on to try and get out of the freezing cold water. She was only able to get most of her body out of the water. Her feet stayed submerged. The platform was small, she was almost surprised that it could support her. A black bird, a raven, jumped in front of her.

"Well," she softly spoke to the raven. "I guess it's just you and me little raven." She laughed at herself. "Now I'm talking to birds, at least I'm not alone I guess." She moved her arm out towards this small bird but must have frightened it. It flew away, towards a tower in the distance. Purple clouds and a swarm of ravens encircled this tower. Yuna could hear the thunder.

"Oh, you're gone." Yuna's face sagged. She was alone again. "Well, I guess I should explore. I don't want to freeze out here and it might get my mind active." She jumped into the water and was surprised to find that it wasn't actually that cold. It was simply tepid at best.

She swam from platform to platform, trying to find a place to go. Most of the platforms she found simply stopped at broken parts, forcing her to go back and find another place to go. On one of the platforms she found a strange tablet. It was filled with strange lettering that she had never seen. She looked at the tablet for a few seconds. She could almost recognise a few characters but most of it didn't make any sense to her. Even the characters she did recognise were grouped together into strange words that she was unfamiliar with. She ended up just leaving the tablet.

She jumped back into the water and found another platform nearby. It wasn't broken as badly as some of the others. She walked along until she soon found a stone bridge. It had many cracks running along it. Yuna was unsure whether to cross this visibly unstable bridge. The many cracks made it obvious that it was likely to fall if she crossed. However, if it did start to fall she could probably run to the other side, she was fast enough. She decided. She was going to do it. She took the first step.

Nothing happened. She took a few more steps but nothing happened. The bridge was surprisingly stable. It didn't show any signs that it would collapse as she crossed. Maybe the cracks weren't real but were a strange decoration of some sort. Most decorational carvings had stayed on any pillars and such. These ruins were quite surprising in their own way. She reached the halfway mark of the bridge and saw something move beneath the water. She stopped to look down. She couldn't make much out but could see a large black shadow beneath the water's edge, watching her. It simply stayed there for a few seconds.

Then, without warning, the black shadow bolted into the wall. It hit a wall under the water. Yuna could feel the bridge shake, 'it must be a big monster to make tremors that strong,' she thought to herself. She was about to move on when she felt a part of the bridge collapse. Bits and pieces of the bridge fell around her, she tried to run but couldn't. The bridge fell under her feet and before she knew it she fall plummeting into the deep water below. As she splashed down her body instinctively moved upwards. From years playing Blitzball her body had grown accustomed to moving in the water. Her head was soon out of the water again. She floated, for a little while, taking in everything around her and analysing the water's below. That creature must still be here. As she looked she could see some other monsters move.

A human-sized green fish leapt above her, then another, and another. That made three fish monsters below her and the large monster from before was still hiding from her. Yuna dove down to combat these monsters. Drawing her sword, she readied herself. She watched each creature swim around her. One of the monsters swam towards her and tried to bite her. She narrowly dodged the teeth and was able to counter-attack. The creature exploded into a mass of pyreflies. The other monsters were completely unfazed by their companion's death. Another one tried to bite her but failed. They were fast monsters, but Yuna was faster. The creature was retreating when her sword sliced it in two. There was now only a single monster left.

Yuna was about to attack it when she, and the monster, was taken by surprise. A large 'thing' seemed to speed from out of the darkness toward Yuna and the sahagin she was fighting. Yuna was only just able to escape but the sahagin wasn't so lucky. It tried to swim away but wasn't fast enough. The thing brought its jaw down upon the sahagin as it gave chase. Blood seeped from its mouth and into the nearby water as it turned its attention to Yuna. It didn't seem to want to eat her straight away.

Yuna readied herself as she got another look at this beast. It was a giant creature, of similar size to a whale. Its bulging stomach was made up of bones, allowing any monster to be trapped. Once trapped, the monster would most likely be kept until later, almost like it would kept as a snack. The creature didn't seem to have eyes, it must've sensed whatever prey it was after by using the movement of the water. The creature also had two, stone arms that had jagged points or claws at the end.

Yuna decided to attack first, before the creature could hurt her. She swam and slashed at the bones of its skeletal stomach. Her sword seemed to almost bounce off. She did no damage to the beast. She tried a few more times but to no avail. Soon enough she stopped attacking and swam away. The creature sensed her and moved its claw. It hit Yuna and weakened her considerably. She took another chance to slash the creature but wasn't fast enough when it counter-attacked. She was hit once again. She waited for the creature's third strike, but it never came. Instead of striking, the creature opened its mouth and sucked in copious amounts of water from around them.

As its stomach was skeletal, the water came back out but the sucking motion was still quite strong. Yuna was almost caught in the currents but managed to say out. She swam away as fast as she could. The monster stopped the sucking motion and moved after Yuna. It was barely inches away from her feet as she weaved and moved around pillars and broken platforms. She was almost able to make the creature crash into the wall multiple times but it stayed at her feet. As she swam she kept an eye out for any way to escape from this confined pool and great beast. Soon enough, she saw one. She could see an old door that she could fit through and swam towards it. The creature must've sensed that it couldn't get through the door. As it swam it started sucking water in again. Yuna simply continued to move her feet as she desperately tried to escape the monster. She got closer and closer to the door. Soon enough she made it. She was past the doorframe and heard the monster crash into it. In anger it shot all of its water out, propelling Yuna forward, into the darkness.

[Unfinished!]

A/N: Sorry, this chapter is only half finished. I felt really bad for not updating in so long and decided to just put up what I've done. Think of it as a preview for what it'll be in the future. This is currently just the first half of the chapter. Not to really spoil it but I plan on extending the chapter to reach until she arrives at Besaid. Anyway, I also need to point out, and am really super sorry for forgetting but, the current cover art doesn't belong to me. It is not mine and I don't mean to take credit. I'm creating my own version at the moment to show what I want the clothes to actually look like. Its basically the same but with the characters original colour scheme. So I hope to finish the chapter later this week and finish adding colour to my version of the cover so I can replace it. (I only used it because it showed what I thought they would look like at first.)

I'm still asking for possible character couples and I'll choose a few things that go together with what I would like to have myself. As a final note, I want to personally thank fanficlove2014 for giving me my first review ever and for making it so detailed. I've used the paragraph tips you gave me and tried to space it out a bit more, I will have at least a slight Yuna/Tidus romance, and plan on having Yuna and Tidus' personalities mostly stay the same but there will be some slight personality changes. Anyway, thanks everyone for reading this and I hope you enjoy this "preview".