Final Fantasy X

Origins of a Hero

Chapter 1

Besaid, perhaps the most peaceful place in all of Spira. This was a haven for many people and those who lived here were rarely disturbed by the troubles of the rest of Spira and most importantly: Sin.

Sin, the malicious abomination that has plagued Spira for nearly all of known time. It has many names, death bringer, destroyer, and the product of humanity's corruption. It was all these things and yet beyond all of them as well. Not just a production of human corruption but the produce of all-evil. Its terrible yet awe-inspiring power amazed and horrified all those within Spira and there were only a select few who had the power to stand up to Sin: The Summoners.

These extraordinarily powerful people, many young and in the prime of their lives were able to tap into the Fayth and summon forth-powerful entity's known as Aeons. These men and women were the only ones who could defeat Sin. Somehow though every time it was defeated it found a way to return and cause chaos once again.

In the village of Besaid a young man of about 17 years of age was walking out of one the many tents present. He was around 5 feet 9 inches tall; he was lean and athletic while not overly bulky in frame. His muscles were toned and slid easily into his frame. He wore a blitzball attire, exclusive to the Zanarkand abes, with an armoured glove covering his entire left arm. The material used to make the glove was practically indestructible. The material was zanarkadian and was probably the only surviving example of the armour. The young man had short, dark blonde hair and deep blue eyes. Tidus was his name a blitzball player.

He was rather out of place in Spira, considering he didn't actually come from Spira. A native from Zanarkand, he had been thrown into one situation after another, first battling through an army of creatures trying to destroy Zanarkand, being transported onto some large whale like creature, waking up in Spira and being found by a group of people known as the Al bhed only to be attacked by the creature again and ending up here. Tidus couldn't even mention the team he played for, and had to pretend he'd been infected by something called Sin's toxin that apparently infected a persons mind making them forget who they were.

He walked over to the two people waiting outside one the opposite huts one man and one woman. The man was around 6 foot 2 inches tall with a quaff of red-orange hair and light brown eyes. He was more muscular than Tidus and wore a blitzball outfit as well, though his team was the Besaid Aurochs. In his right hand he held a bright blue bladed sword and he was 23 years old. Next to him was a woman around 5'6, was around a year younger than Wakka and had jet-black hair and clothing. The front of her dress was joined by a large number of belts. Her long hair was tied up in a knot at the top of her head while braids of black hair fell halfway down her back. Her eyes were a ruby red colour and they were enough to unnerve anyone.

Wakka and Lulu were their names and they looked up as Tidus approached. Lulu seemed to gaze at him with a disapproving manner, while Wakka grinned at him.

"Morning sleepy head…" Wakka greeted his voice heavy with the Besaid accent "Hey…got something for ya" he handed the sword to Tidus.

"Whoa for me?" Tidus exclaimed hesitantly reaching to grasp the swords hilt.

"Yeah it's for you, use it well" Wakka replied as Tidus took an experimental yet skilfully elegant swing with the blade.

"That's the sword you gave Chappu…" Lulu whispered, a hint of pain underlining her usually stern and scathing manner of speech. Tidus looked at them and felt the need to give the sword back.

"He never used it…" Wakka replied. Tidus looked reluctant to keep the sword, but when Wakka looked at him, he changed his mind and sheathed the sword on his back. "Where's Yuna?" Wakka asked. Almost immediately after he spoke, a small thump could be heard from the steps to the temple behind them.

On the top of the steps, stood a beautiful young woman exactly the same age as Tidus. She was 5 feet 3 inches tall, and had neat brunette hair that feel to just above her shoulders, she wore a typical summoners dress and on her back was her summoners staff. Her most remarkable features were her bi-coloured eyes, one light green, and the other light blue. She was stood trying to heave a suitcase back upright when Lulu called to her.

"Yuna what are you doing?" Yuna looked up with an embarrassed expression.

"I was going to take gifts to the Temple's we visit on the pilgrimage" she replied, Lulu shook her head.

"Yuna we don't have time for that lets go" Lulu replied.

"Ok…" Yuna answered slightly disappointed. She began walking towards the three waiting for her. When she came to them, Lulu nodded and turned leading the way out of the village; Wakka smiled at Yuna and followed Lulu. Tidus also smiled at Yuna before taking step behind Wakka. Yuna felt a flutter in her stomach when Tidus smiled at her and she watched him leave for a second. She then turned back to the Besaid village and did the Yevon traditionally bow for a few seconds before turning and exiting the village.

While journeying up the hill, they ran into a couple of fiends, fierce creatures that would attack on sight given enough reason. Tidus was quickly able to dispose of the first one, with a leaping slash as he flipped over it, when it attacked. Wakka dealt with the second using his blitzball to knock clean out of the sky. Lulu fried the third with a little lightning magic, while finding time to inform Tidus of the basic concepts of Dark magic. After some encouragement for Wakka and Lulu, Yuna summoned her aeon Valefor a griffin like entity that was graceful yet deadly as well to battle a large aerial fiend, which it disposed of with ease. The final fiend similar to the one Yuna fought was ganged up on by the four and was quickly taken care of.

After reaching the top of the hill, and stopping for a few seconds to pray at a traveller's altar at the top of the hill. They continued on, walking through the many pathways of the island leading to the beach. Tidus found himself in awe of the natural beauty of the waterfalls and the forest of Besaid, something he had seen very little of when he was in Zanarkand.

As they rounded a bend, the other guardians dropped back as did Yuna. Tidus looked round at them in confusion, as he stood out from them. He turned round and looked up at the pillars surrounding him. As he did so he noticed something leaping from pillar coming towards him. It got closer and then all of a sudden a blur of dark blue fur crashed down in front of him, causing him to jump back as it crouched in front of him and he frowned at the large creature in front of him, slowly reaching back to grasp his sword, Brotherhood as he had named it.

The being in front of him was much taller than an average human, well around 6 feet 9 inches. The large sentient resembled an animal in a way, but had two legs and arms. He was very muscular more so than Wakka and was coated in think blue fur, but with long grey hair on his head with yellow eyes. He growled and then slammed both its fists into the ground with a fierce snarl. The blue enigma slowly drew back into a standing position and unleashed a ferocious roar, and then suddenly drew a lance from out of nowhere and leapt at Tidus. Tidus slid under the attack and unsheathed his sword, battering away an attempted stab and then attacked himself, receiving similar results only to shoved away by his opponent's immense physical power.

While the warrior Tidus fought was undoubtedly much stronger then he was, Tidus had the advantage of superior speed, agility and stamina. He seemingly danced over his enemy's attacks and occasionally parried the blade of the spear away while keeping himself out of striking distance. Eventually his opponent began to tire and Tidus took the opportunity.

He leapt over his opponent and planted both feet onto his back and kicked him away. The ronso fell to the ground and raised itself onto one knee. He barked at Tidus and the young zanarkadian turned to look at him. Tidus took a couple of steps forward and the Ronso seemed to smirk.

Tidus's senses suddenly screamed at him and he turned to see a pillar explode next to him, and he flipped back just in time to avoid what erupted through it.

A crescent shaped blade of bright red energy rocketed past him, as he just avoided it. Landing on his feet, he looked up to see about five others shooting towards him. The blitz ace rolled, flipped over and ducked under them barely avoiding two of them one of which almost took off his head. Tidus stood up straight as a red blur shot up the cliff to his right. He whipped his head up to see a young man about a year his elder soaring towards him, a katana held in his red hand which was drawn back, his left gripping its saya. He brought up brotherhood to block the one-handed downward strike. As he shoved the attacker away, the young man flipped behind him, spinning in mid-air to land so he was facing Tidus, and then charged him again.

In the short time Tidus had to observe the man, he saw he wore almost completely red, albeit a very dark shade of red, he wore a ribbed design t-shirt, and leather trousers both dark red with black boots and knuckle gloves.

Then the red warrior was on him. His vicious one-hand strikes constantly parried and battered away by Tidus. Tidus then struck back having his sword parried as well, and then brought his blade down in a downward strike. The warrior suddenly altered his grip on his katana hilt, so he held it in a reverse grip. He swung it up with incredible force sending brotherhood spinning away until it landed blade down in the grass. Again inverting his grip to hold it in a conventional grip he brought it down in a silver arc towards Tidus's shoulder.

The blade was halted before it hit its mark. The young man looked in confusion at Tidus's armoured gloved hand holding the blade of his katana. The man dropped the saya to his weapon, as Tidus turned and with a yell and adrenaline fuelled strength hurled the man towards a rock face, which stood behind a large number of trees.

The man hit the trees and almost collided with the rock face had the logs that had been the tree's not stacked up forming a kind of seat for him to hit instead and he landed in a sitting position seemingly unfazed. The red clad warrior leant forward crossing his right leg over his left and his left forearm resting on his crossed leg, while his sword was held resting on the blade in the ground. He observed Tidus whose chest was heaving as he looked up at the sitting warrior.

"So you're lookin' to play huh?" the guardian asked Tidus, he leaned back as he spoke the next words raising his blade up from the ground, keeping his legs crossed. "Alright… I guess I got some time to kill…" he stated with an air of great confidence. Tidus scoffed going to where brotherhood had landed stepping over a large piece of rock.

"Tough guy huh?" Tidus uttered picking up his sword and resting the blade over his right shoulder and the back of his neck with his back to his opponent "Well…" he turned and suddenly kicked the large slab at sitting warrior.

The guardian placed his foot on the front of the slab and ran up it; bringing his sword back as Tidus was waiting for him in mid air. Both swung twice with their weapons, the blades clanging twice in mid air as they flew past each other. The red warrior landed and calmly walked forwards a couple of steps his blade laid on his shoulder. He turned with a smirk to see Tidus sitting on top of the pile of logs, his blade also on his shoulder.

The guardians and Yuna watched intently as the two gazed at each other, the Ronso standing to watch as well.

"I guess I'll have to take you down a couple notches" Tidus said looking at his new opponent who took a couple of steps forward, his smirk growing a little more.

"Whatever you say kid…" his rival replied. Tidus brushed the back of his hand over his nose and leapt of the pile towards him. The battle resumed and this time Tidus was on the attack. The man calmly deflected his blows, and returned a couple of his own though remained mainly on the defensive.

He rolled under a sweep at his head and then angling his blade down his back, catching Tidus's downward strike. He shoved the blade away and spun trying to kick the zanarkadians legs, only to have him jump over them. When he spun to his feet he didn't expect to see Tidus's gloved left fist pulled back. He quickly brought his blade over his face, the flat position to block Tidus's thunderous punch. With a huge amount of force the guardian flew away, landing roughly on his back. He quickly kipped back up only to see Tidus leaping at him.

Oh crud he thought as both of Tidus's feet connected with his face sending him sailing back into a large pillar, his katana landing point down in the grass. Tidus stood his chest heaving as he re-sheathed brotherhood onto his back and turned away. But…

"Getting better…" Tidus turned mouth open to see the man sitting in the dent that the impact of his landing had made, and he slowly reached forward to grip the sides with his hands "I'd even go as far to say that I underestimated your…" he heaved himself out of the dent with a large number of cracking sounds from the rocks as he dropped down to land in front of Tidus "abilities…"

Tidus simply stared wide-eyed as the man yanked his katana out the ground and rolled his saya onto the front of his foot.

"Are you even human?" Tidus asked no ordinary human could have survived that impact.

"Of course I'm human… what kind of question's that?" the man replied as he flicked the saya up with his foot and in one fluent movement caught it and sheathed his katana. Taking the saya in his left hand, holding it in a reverse grip by the sheathed blade he looked Tidus up and down for a moment.

"So you're the kid Wakka found on the beach yesterday…I must say… I'm impressed" the guardian stated as he walked past Tidus, tapping the zanarkadians shoulder with his knuckle "We'll make a guardian out of you yet" Tidus turned to look at the man who turned and looked at the ronso "Kimahri… come on we still need to clear the path up ahead…we'll meet you guys at the boat" the ronso stood and held his lance behind his back as he and the young man vanished beyond the bend. Tidus stood flabbergasted for a moment.

"Who was that?" he demanded rounding on Wakka as the other four approached.

"The big one is Kimahri Ronso of the Ronso tribe, he's also Yuna's guardian" Lulu explained "The other one is called Kai…and he is Yuna's older brother" Tidus's jaw dropped again as Yuna stood, her hands behind her back.

"But why did they attack me?" Tidus stammered Yuna smiled sweetly.

" Kai's idea…he wanted to see what you were capable of so he asked Kimahri to challenge you so he could see your fighting style before fighting you himself" Yuna explained.

"He could've just asked" Tidus muttered Wakka chuckled.

"Kai likes to say fighting is the truest form of conversation, so I guess this was his version of meet and greet ya?" Yuna giggled slightly as Lulu smiled but didn't laugh, "I'm surprised you were able to match him despite the fact he was holding back…" Tidus looked at Wakka again with shock.

"He was holding back? Didn't feel that way and besides he wasn't as strong as the other guy" Tidus stated.

"Not physically perhaps" Lulu replied "But Kai is the most skilled combatant in our group, even more so than Kimahri…if you're able to match him even when he's holding back, that's an achievement" a hint of grudging respect underlined Lulu's voice.

"Come on they're gonna be waiting for us…" Wakka said and he led the way to the beach. Tidus shook his head and followed a step behind.

His story was going to be a long and difficult affair from here on out…

Anywho your reviews on this chapter please!!!!