A/N: Update on account of a new reader! Thank you so much for favouriting my story! I'd like to re-iterate that this is a slow journey, but it is one that I love so I will try my best to keep at it.

Enjoy! :3

Chapter 2 – Fall of The Great Machina City

An hour later saw Tidus leaning back on a bench in the locker room right underneath the monumental spherical pool that would be his playing field. It was warm inside compared to the ever-chilly Zanarkand air. The water that covered the entire surface of the floor was just as warm.

When he had entered the locker room, his strut casual and unhurried, the team captain stepped in front of him and pinned him with a cold glare. He didn't say anything – simply shoved his uniform into his hands and left. Tidus figured this was a discussion they were going to have sometime after this game. No matter – after this game, he would have led them to victory and it would no longer matter.

Tidus laid his head back and breathed slowly, trying to calm his racing heart and the twists in his stomach. Excitement? Nerves? It didn't matter. He was prepared to make history.

He could tell it was time by the change in atmosphere and the screaming of crowds flooding in even from the locker rooms, even before his teammates called his name. Music was blaring, casters talking quickly and enthusiastically, effectively riling up the crowd and making them scream and cheer in anticipation.

The Abes met in the elevator that would take them to the top of the sphere pool. Despite Tidus's escapades and their subsequent exasperation, they were all grinning at each other. No words were needed – their confidence spoke volumes for them.

When the elevator doors opened at the top of the pool, Zanar introduced them as they stepped out on the platform that hovered over the pool. Cold air blasted Tidus's face, accompanied by the unrestrained force of the fans' cheers.

He looked up to find the opposing team, the Duggles's, captain—heh, Captain Duggles—glaring at him. She knows, he thought. He smirked at her—a challenge. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

Soon the referee gave the signal and the Abes breathed in a deep lungful of air and held it before diving into the waiting lukewarm water. Everyone dispersed to take their designated places – Tidus at frontal attack, directly opposite the Duggles's captain's position.

The buzzer signalling the start of the game went off, and everything became an adrenaline-filled blur.

A blitzball was launched up from the centre of the playing field, leaving one team's frontal attack to catch it before the other did. With practised ease, Tidus kicked his legs and twisted his body through the water in a way that could be comparable to a dolphin. Captain Duggles was reaching for the ball already, but Tidus slipped his own hand between hers and the prize, claiming it for himself. Without risking a moment of pride at his accomplishment, he spun and hurled it over to Kyra, the Abes's best defender, and, like a practised routine, she swam in the direction of their goal in a wide arc to avoid the Duggles' attackers.

One of the Duggles caught up and rammed headfirst into her side, causing the Abes to lose control of the ball. Captain Duggles eased by to grab it and kick it well out of anyone's reach faster than the eye could follow – into the waiting hands of their fastest swimmer.

Tidus grinned. She's going to try to beat us with speed? he thought. Not on my watch. Time to take control.

The enemy attacker was still on Kyra, preventing her from recovering. He freed her by grabbing the enemy attacker by the scruff of his uniform—why would they wear such a showy blitz uniform? Tidus wondered, It does nothing but inconvenience them—then planted his feet on his opponent's back. From here he thrust himself forward, and the momentum gave him a head start toward the stolen ball. But he didn't need it – no one could match Tidus for speed. Too fast, he had caught up and was wrestling dominance back from her. In seconds, the ball was back in the Abes's control, and the next person touching it would be the enemy goalie tossing it back into play sourly after failing to block it from barrelling into their goal net.

This was when the dream shattered.

Not too far away, a man stood on the rooftop of a nearby skyscraper. He supposed he had the best view of what was to be a historical event – but not the one the cheering crowds in the stadium he overlooked thought it was. He could see them clearly from his vantage point. He could see Tidus.

He turned his back on them. They would be dead in a couple of hours. They already were dead. All but one.

"Let's do this," he said. At his side, an opaque bottle hung tied to his belts. He reached for it – allowed himself a short moment of amusement at the questions this bottle had elicited over the years.

The fights it had elicited over the years.

Tidus was convinced it was vodka; the same vile drink he believed had killed his father.

It was not.

The man unscrewed the top. It was not easy – he hadn't opened this bottle for ten years. But soon it was free, and he held it up in the direction of the horizon. In the direction of the Calm Lands.

"Come get it, you bastard," he said.

He didn't know how long it would take. It felt like hours, but he could still hear the same game going in the stadium behind him, so it couldn't have been. It was already dark, but the City of Lights illuminated the sea as far as the eye could see. And there is where he saw the tremors start.

It started only as ripples. Then there were waves in the water – waves in the Zanarkand sea that was as unnaturally still as the city was alive. Then there was a shift in the water's surface – it rose, slowly, in the shape of a dome. Only a little at first, but soon people within view were gathering to stare out at sea, pointing as the water rose higher and higher like a giant wave. It did not crash however – it just continued to rise, bigger than even the skyscraper he stood upon, until it was a giant sphere-shaped mass hovering over the surface of the sea.

"Long time, no see," he murmured.

Far in the distance, the sphere of water hovered over the sea. Quiet had settled over that side of the city, almost suspended in time. It had become less of a marvel and more of concern to the people that could see it. Mayhem was starting to form, calls going out to Fayth only knew who. Who could do anything in this situation?

They would be the first to disappear.

The man waited to see the surface of what hid in the sphere of water to light up – like hundreds of headlights in the night, the city of Zanarkand the deer trapped in them – then he was moving the very direction in which his back was facing seconds ago, leaping from one rooftop to the next. He had the unfortunate pleasure of hearing the screaming of cheers at his front at the same time as screaming of terror at his back started. He blocked them out, eye zeroed in on the stadium and the young man there.

By this time, Tidus had his opposition in the chokehold he needed, and his name on the lips of all who watched.

Just a little more, he thought. Just a little more.

But the knot in his stomach sank until it was closer to being a pit.

Something was wrong.

Frantic, Tidus's eyes darted around the playing field. What is it? What is it?

But he saw only the game. The hunger in the opposition's eyes, closing in on him. The panic in that of his teammates'. Move, their eyes said. You have the ball. Move.

He did. The pit dragging him down, he propelled himself up, up, up – until he broke the surface of the sphere pool. Without the density of the water in his ears, he could clearly hear the gasps of the audience. He would take pleasure in it – he had been practicing this move in secret for months, after all – if he could think of anything but the pit in his stomach.

Time slowed. Adrenalin coursed through Tidus's veins. He twisted his body around mid-air – he had to do it. The whole of Zanarkand was watching. He had to –

Don't. Something's wrong.

But he had to. He had to. This is what he's been working on to make a name for himself independent of Jecht –

No. Stop.

Finally heeding the voice in his head – what is it? Instinct? Intuition? Was it the same voice from before? – Tidus released his focus from the game that was meant to decide his fate and let it past the goal, past the sphere pool, past the scores of fans, past the towering buildings beyond.

It was then that he saw it: a monumental tidal wave rising out of the ocean, towering over even the tallest building in the city. A tidal wave? Tidus thought. But the Zanarkand waters are so incredibly calm—

As he watched, it started to glow. He barely had a second to question what was going on when the surface started to ripple, and what looked like spikes of blinding white peeled out from the ripples.

And then explosions. Fire. Screams.

Before Tidus could wonder if he was going insane, something blindingly white and hot zipped past him, grazing his cheek as it went. He was still midair, so when the projectile collided with the bleachers behind him, he was sent flying forward from the force of the explosion.

Time returned to normal – and if instinct hadn't been talking earlier, it did now. Tidus flailed, hands grabbing at the air – anything to catch him – until he collided with the reaching hand of the statue that stood with its arms outreached as though in praise over the sphere pool. The feel of cold, hard reality under his fingertips sped his brain up to work at its normal pace again, and he glanced around in a panic.

Chaos, absolute mayhem. The stadium that had only seconds before been a marvel of architecture and filled with life was being stripped of both. The sphere pool, massive and holy to all lovers of blitzball, was cracked and leaking.

Another flash of white and what was left exploded. Vibrations shook the ground, and the cracks in the sphere pool stretched, up and up until it shattered. Before Tidus could take a breath, water slammed him from his place hanging onto the crumbling statue. Unable to control his direction, unable to so much as keep his head above water for more than a few seconds at a time, the current carried him out of what remained of the stadium until it slammed him into a structure that seemed to have survived the destruction. All the air that was left in his lungs rushed out, and he choked on water. He was still submerged, the current forcing him flat against the structures. A few seconds of flailing, desperate for oxygen, and he was falling again – a victim of gravity once more now that every drop of the sphere pool waters have dissipated.

As soon as he touched solid—wet, soggy—ground, he was on his hands and knees, coughing up water. When he could breathe, he looked up – and saw only destruction. All around him, people were screaming. The once-graceful sloping streets of Zanarkand were littered with craters and debris. Buildings that used to shine with colour and light were flickering out and dying, leaving naught but the fires to illuminate what was once the City of Lights. Those same tall and proud buildings were falling and falling, destroying bridges and highways as they went down and finally disappeared under the still Zanadian Ocean.

That wasn't all. Over the ruins of Tidus's home, creatures he had never seen before stalked the remains, stopping to – Oh god, Tidus thought – tear into the unmoving bodies, thick still-warm blood spilling out, mixing with the water and painting the streets a sickly pink.

Tidus's head dropped into his hands and he gripped at his hair. "This is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening –"

Another explosion, too close, too close, too close –

"Mama!" came the cry, stilling Tidus's panicked mind. "Mama, get up, mama!"

Frantic, Tidus looked around, between the retreating bodies, searching for the sound. When he found the source, his body moved before he could tell it to. It wobbled, aching in places it never has before, and he could not walk without hunching over his burning chest – but even stumbling, it moved. As he neared them, he could see a boy no older than seven, arms red with blood up to the elbows as they shook at an unmoving form of a woman – a woman wearing the Abes' uniform. Kyra. She was soaked, the water around her head a darkening pink. When the child shook at her again, harder this time, her neck moved in a way it should not have been be able to.

Dead on impact. Wound to the head. Bones shattered.

Tidus could feel the bile rising in his throat.

"Mama," he could hear himself crying, younger, weaker. He saw her on the ground, unmoving. Desperate, he pushed at her. "Mama, get up!" He looked at his hands – they were smaller, chubbier. They were red.

Tidus swallowed the memory away. He steeled himself, forced his back to straighten through the pain, and ran at the boy. In a motion that had his sore muscles protesting, he scooped the boy up. He didn't resist, too shocked or too scared – he only cried and reached back over Tidus's shoulder weakly as he ran. He didn't know where to – he just needed to get away, to get them away. Maybe he should just follow everyone else, he thought. Let this play out without resistance, then he'd wake up and realise that this was a terrible dream and life would go on as it always did. Maybe he would ask Kyra about her son. Maybe he would meet him.

The orphanage, he suddenly realized. Liora. With renewed vigour, Tidus broke away from the crowd and turned into a street that didn't look too banged up, but he slowed to a stop after a few strides. He glanced in the direction of the tidal wave that had caused all this destruction. He could still see it, even from this vantage point. He looked at the boy in his arms – he was curled into himself as much as possible in Tidus's arms, sobbing into his fists.

He needed a car.

There was no shortage of them, abandoned on the highway, many crashed into each other. His eyes searched for one that looked like it would run and made a beeline for it.

Not too far from this, the man with the crimson cloak was closing in on the stadium. Somewhere in the chaos he had lost sight of Tidus; mobs of people pushed and shoved at each other in their attempts to get away to where they thought was safety. They blended together until they were almost a single entity, one terrified face the same as the next – until a form with the familiar mop of blonde hair he was looking for broke off from the crowd into a near-deserted highway.

There you are, the man thought. As he watched, Tidus stopped to assess the situation before he ran towards a car that seemed to have survived the destruction and opened the back door. It was here that the man noticed for the first time the child Tidus had been cradling in his arms. At the same time, he saw one of the skeletal creatures that Sin had brought with it snap its head up from feasting on a corpse to zero in on Tidus.

He cursed inwardly, and then he was running.

But not fast enough.

Tidus did not see the creature until it let out a screech, but by then it was already too late. He was still trying to disentangle his ward so he could buckle him into the back seat when they were both launched a good three yards away from the impact of a scaled body slamming into them. His head spun from the movement, but he shook himself and lifted to see the creature that had slammed into them. It looked unlike anything Tidus had ever seen: it looked like a fish, but with spindly legs more akin to an insect. Membranous, tattered wings angled up from its body, which was dark and sleek. Red-tinged saliva dripped from a mouth lined with sharp teeth too large for its grotesque face, and glowing red eyes darted between the two prone bodies.

There was nothing in those eyes. No soul, not even malice. Just hunger.

Tidus didn't wait to see what it would do; he scrambled to the boy who had fallen a few yards away from him, crawling when he couldn't get a grip on the ground. The boy was staring wide-eyed at the creature and his breath was coming faster and faster in his panic.

He didn't have to. He didn't have to. Tidus would protect him. He would.

But he couldn't. Before Tidus could block the boy with his body, the creature was already on him, and the boy's bloodcurdling scream quickly turning into a wet gurgle would haunt him for the rest of his days.

"No!" he yelled and launched himself at them. He knocked the creature off – they rolled until Tidus was pinned underneath it and sharp teeth coated with fresh blood were snapping down at him. Its jaw unhinged, readying to sink into Tidus, but in a moment of madness – or desperation – he shoved his forearm into its mouth and forced it back, further back even than its teeth could reach, forcing its jaw open wider. It flailed around his arm, and he used its disorientation to push it off and roll to his feet.

Enraged now, the creature shook itself. The spiked tips of its wings elongated and started glowing, and it angled its body to ready for a lunge –

But before it could do anything more, a blade thicker than Tidus's arm and twice as long came down on it, slicing it clean in two. For a second it bled tar-black blood, but then it disintegrated into several little orbs of dark-tinted light that floated up and disappeared into the air until nothing was left.

Shocked, Tidus followed the length of the blade up to a crimson-clad arm of the cloak with the collar high enough that it hid the man's face, the other arm braced against his body to support the crippled shoulder, the useless sleeve rippling in the wind. Tidus finally met the singular steel grey eye staring him down from over the tinted glasses.

"Auron," he all but sobbed. "Auron, wh-wh-what are you d-doing here?"

Contrary to all that was happening around them, Auron was calm.

"I was looking for you," he said.

"For me? What do you – we should be getting out of here –" As though remembering something, Tidus cut himself off. He whipped around, looking for the boy that lay several ways away from them – now unmoving.

"No," he said. He stumbled in his haste to reach him and crawled the rest of the way and took his still-warm hand. The blood, so much blood. "No no no no –"

Auron closed his eye, and when he opened it again, it was cold. The boy was dead. He was dead before this night even began.

With his jaw set, he slung his katana over his back and turned his back on the scene.

"Come," he commanded, and without waiting to see if Tidus would obey, he started walking.

The very opposite direction that Tidus had been running.

"Wha – A-Auron, wait," Tidus begged through his tears. "We can't just leave him – Auron!"

But Auron kept walking. The boy was already dead. Tidus wouldn't understand. Not yet.

"Auron, I –" Tidus bowed his head over the hand he gripped. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, he thought. When he looked for Auron again, he hadn't so much as paused. "God dammit!" he yelled, and with a final look to the boy – The boy I killed, he thought – he set off in a sprint to catch up.

"Auron, what are you doing? We need to –"

Then all of a sudden – silence. Tidus's ears rang with the suddenness of it. Around him, everything was still. The few people that were still left were frozen. Auron, still in front of him, was mid-stride, his empty sleeve frozen in what had been a breeze a moment before. But now – nothing.

"What the . . .?" Tidus grabbed at Auron's sleeve. It was pliant under his touch but kept its position when he dropped it again.

It begins.

The voice made Tidus spin around so fast, he had to take a second to focus his eyes. He had heard that voice before.

Don't be afraid, the voice said again, making him whip around once more. For a second he thought he saw a hooded figure standing in front of him, but it was gone in the next second.

Tidus gripped at his head, fingers curling in his hair and pulling. "This isn't happening," he said. "This isn't happening."

This is all how it should be.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?" Tidus yelled.

All will be explained in time.

"Where are you!?"

Don't cry.

"Wha – ?" he started again, but before the rest of his question could come out, there was a brilliant flash of light and Tidus thought the world was tipping over. A wave of dizziness hit him, and he realized that the world was moving again.

He whipped around looking for Auron in time to see the sleeve of his red coat fluttering behind a pile of debris. He followed him around the corner and halted in his tracks.

The thing, the tidal wave – although now he could see it wasn't a tidal wave at all – was much, much closer, and it was bigger than anything he had ever seen. Bigger than the sphere pool where he played blitzball, bigger still than the buildings in B-west, where skyscrapers housing the powerhouses of the business world in the city towered over the people of Zanarkand.

Auron gave Tidus a moment to take it in. It looked like a giant sphere hovering over the city, but he knew it was so much worse than that. A thick layer of water from the sea it had risen out of covered its surface, but even from here Auron could see the massive exoskeleton covered with overlapping uneven plates making up its skin. Tidus made a choking noise, and stared at Auron with more questions he could voice, and more yet than he would get an answer to.

But there was one question Auron could answer.

"We called it 'Sin'."

"'Sin'?" Tidus echoed. "You-you know what that is? And what do you mean 'we'?"

Ah, one of those that Auron would not answer. But before Tidus could push him to, Sin was moving. As they watched, the bottom of the massive sphere of water that engulfed Sin bulged, stretching further and further like elastic until the force that held the water in place snapped to release a long, thick limb covered in the same plates that covered its body. It swung, sluggish with its size, levelling the city where it went until it came to a stop just a few streets down from their position. Whatever it was trembled like it was shaking itself out, then the plates covering its surface lifted just enough for more of those creatures that Tidus had just witnessed murder a child in front of him to crawl out and stalk over the street like a colony of ants looking for glucose. Looking for blood.

Hundreds of them.

"We're expected," Auron said quietly.

Expected? thought Tidus. He shook his head.

"This is crazy!" he yelled. "We need to get out of here or we'll die." He gasped. "The orphanage! Liora! Come on Auron, we need to go! They're on the other side of the city, they might still be alive!"

Auron closed his eye for a second, and when he opened it, it was hard. Cold.

"If you want to live, this is the only way." He faced Sin and started moving, pausing only to throw the one-word order over his shoulder: "Come."

Tidus almost cried with frustration and terror and outright horror. He looked around him – there was nothing left. Those who still lived were long gone – god only knew where they escaped to, where it was safe to escape to, but he hoped they had made it, and Tidus wished he was there. He thought of Liora, Taro, Lina, Aira – hell, even Vespera and Selene. He hoped they were all there.

With a final prayer to a god Tidus rarely acquainted himself with, he set after Auron. What else was there to do? At this rate he was as good as dead anyways. Sin was almost on top of them. Those creatures prowled the streets, feasting on those who didn't survive and making quick work of those that did. Bridges, highways, buildings that used to reach into the clouds – they were destroyed, collapsed, falling into the sea below and cutting off any path.

Perhaps going towards Sin would give him a faster death.

Despite this reasoning, Tidus faltered when hundreds of those little beady red eyes levelled on him the moment they turned onto the street.

"Auron," he all but whimpered. If they ever came out of this alive, he would deny that sound ever left his mouth.

Auron analysed the situation, then pinned Tidus down with a stern stare.

"When I say run, you run."

He waited for Tidus to nod before he turned his back on him. Tidus could only stare wordlessly as Auron squared his shoulders and with measured movements he pulled his crippled – or at least, he had thought it was crippled – arm out from inside his coat and stretched it out. He reached for the bottle that always hung at his hip – an opaque bottle that Tidus always accused him of containing vodka, even though he quietly admitted that Auron never, ever stank of alcohol – unscrewed the cap, and held it out in the direction of Sin. He then brought the bottle back to take a large gulp of its contents. He let it drop to the floor, freeing his hand to grip his sword with both. He was still for a moment, his katana held in front of him and head bowed as though in prayer. In the next instant, he snapped his eye open. It was no longer steely grey – now, it glowed a bright, angry red.

When he spoke, chills crawled down Tidus's spine.

"Creatures of the Farplane, Sent and then taken from the depths by Sin." His voice shuddered through the air. His entire figure seemed to take on a dark aura. "Today, you die!"

Then he was off, moving with speed that shouldn't have been possible for one wielding a sword of that size. Tidus could think of no way to describe what he was seeing other than to compare it to a tornado, because that is what Auron appeared to be: a tornado of blades and the dark blood that splattered out from every one of those creatures that he struck. Tidus thought the deadly swings of his sword were stretching out longer than the blade actually was, carving a wide berth into the swarm of creatures that had blocked their path moments before.

When Auron came to a stop, he was hunched over, panting and clutching at his bad arm.

"Run," he said.

Tidus didn't have it in himself to ask questions anymore; he just obeyed. Despite his apparent exhaustion, Auron kept his pace – and when they reached the base of the limb still stretching out from the bottom of Sin's monumental body, Auron grabbed Tidus by the scruff of his shirt so he would not stop. Together they climbed up on its plated surface, and then they were running up the length, closer and closer to the entity called Sin.

When it sloped up too much for them to go any further, Auron stopped. It was right above them now, and Tidus could see more than just a spherical creature submerged within the water now. Now he could see what they had been running on looked something like a tail, attached to a creature bigger than anything Tidus could have come up with in his own imagination. It had six giant legs tucked into its body that was held suspended in the air by what looked like three layers of glowing wings. Its face was massive, split by a mouth that stretched from the one side of its head to the other, and the top half was covered with hundreds of solid white orbs.

Tidus could feel panic rising in his chest.

"Auron!" he yelled, desperate.

Auron ignored him. He stared up at the creature reverently. "You're sure?" he asked it. His only answer was the legs untucking to reveal a gaping hole that seemed to bend reality around it in its dimmed light. Auron nodded.

"Auron!" This time it was a plea.

Finally, Auron turned to face him. He reached out with his good arm to grip the front of Tidus's shirt and lifted him as though he weighed nothing. Tidus grabbed hold of his arm, clinging to it desperately.

"This is it," Auron said. There was no alarm in his voice. No fear. "This is your story."

Tidus realized Auron was changing, reforming in the odd, dim light leaking out of the gaping hole above them. Being sucked in.

Still Auron was calm. "It all begins here."

It didn't sound like Auron anymore. Tidus felt his form changing, stretching, disintegrating. He screamed. It didn't sound like his own voice.

And then he slipped into unconsciousness.

A/N: I am not a sports enthusiast so I apologize for any weird wording (this won't be the first time that I make this apology, and Luca won't be the next lol). I hope the action sequences are decent, and that Tidus's emotional state fits.

I'd appreciate any reviews - any thoughts, good or bad, are welcome, as long as they're constructive.

Have a wonderful day!