Okay so a lot of this will be familiar to some people, because it is taken from a story that has been up here a while of the same name. However, the whole thing stagnated, and the document I'm working from needs a LOT of editing and improving and cutting. So I decided to take it down and repost the ENTIRE thing properly with a lot of the crap cut out and much more happening faster.

So while this is vaguely familiar to any who read the first post, new material will be on its way soon, and there have been alterations all across the board as it is. The original NaNo document is a very rough stone, it is my current project to polish it. So here goes nothing.

Note, whole phrases of speech in italics signify Al-bhed language. Just so you know.

POASTED FOR LA!

"Brother you retard! Are you trying to get me killed?!" screamed Rikku in Al-Bhed as she hung half-way out of a machina piston-shaft much bigger than she was with a spanner in one filthy hands and a toolbelt around her waist.

"Whaaaaat?!" screamed her clownish excuse for a relative from the rickety control-station on top of the machina, one eye on her and another on the dirty magazine he had stashed in his lap.

"Are you trying to get me killed?!" she hollered back, her words still incomprehensible under the roar of the machina they'd discovered only yesterday in the underwater lakes of Bevelle. It was one of the oldest artifacts she'd ever seen, centries old at least, so she had a feeling it could tell the right researchers a lot about Spira's past. Provided they could crack it open first; even after all this time it was still sealed tight and half working, which said something for the craftsmenship of their ancestors.

"I will tell you when to start the engine back up, RIGHT? Don't touch a THING until you hear me tell you to, OKAY?!" She really didn't need Brother dicking around while she was crawling around a piece of unreliable and potentially dangerous machina like this.

"OKAY! You got it!" He cracked a thumbs up at her, and after sticking her tongue out at him she lifted up her heels and slid all the way down to the end of the shaft, landing on the piston at the end with a thunk. She could just make out a line of clips that held shut the armouring to the next cylinder of the engine in front of her, and after jamming her faithful spanner up into the workings of the machine she yanked it up and the silt-caked hinges cracked open with a rusty 'pchank!'.

Squeezing herself just a little further down, she started making similar adjustments near her feet. However, she hit a little hiccup when her tool got stuck on a particularly rusty fastening and jammed, so she pulled a wrench off her tool belt and started hammering at the stuck spanner hurriedly.

As she smashed away at the trapped tool, she noticed that her feet seemed to be getting very warm and buzzy – which would most likely be because the piston head underneath her feet sounded like it wanted to start spontaneously working again. Worried by this she monkeyed up the shaft a little to reach to Brother.

"Stop the pistons!" she ordered, and then crawled back down again to try and pry her spanner free quickly. On top of the machine Brother scratched his head.

"…Drop the piston?" he said curiously to himself, but already back in the shaft Rikku couldn't hear him over the clanking of the half-functioning machina; however, she did take notice as the engine started to creak louder beneath her feet. "Drop the piston? What?"

"Speak up! What are you doing up there?!" she screamed, her voice echoing along the shaft.

"Speed up?... What's going on down there?" Brother frowned for a moment and then jumped up from his seat; Cid had told them not to take any chances, so he left the controls to go and see what was going on before he touched anything. "Rikku? You oka--" Before he could even finish the word there was an almighty crack, a lever on his control panel slammed open, and piston mechanism released, and powering up the shaft came the now highly-pressurised cork, tearing off huge chunks of shrapnel as it went and flinging everything else in its way along with it.

She didn't even have time to scream.

On the ever sunny island of Besaid, Yuna sat in a cool shaded tent with a ball of wool in her lap; she was attemptting to knit. Focus on the attempt… her efforts didn't look nearly as neat or pretty as all of Lulu's home-knitted baby clothes did.

"Oohh... why can't I do this?" she groaned as it all came undone yet again and she threw her half-hearted efforts to the floor – if she could save Spira twice over then how could something so simple as knitting be so hard?

In fact, the very reason she was sitting here trying to knit was the same thing preventing her from adventuring off to save the world a third time. She put a hand to her stomach and wondered if it was just her imagination that made it feel like there was already something growing there.

She was distracted by familiar laughter, and still wet from his Blitzball training, Tidus bounded into their home with a grin that still hadn't changed since he was young.

"You know... I don't think you're doing that quite right," he remarked as he looked down at the knitting she'd petulantly thrown on the floor.

"Then you do it," she retorted, and squeezed her eyes shut in a grimace as he leant over, dripping everywhere, to press a kiss on top of her head. Which was more wet than anything else.

"You'll get it," he said reassuringly, as he crossed the tent to pick up a washcloth.

By the time he turned back, he noticed that Yuna had her hand on her stomach again and was looking distant and sad all of a sudden – he'd seen that look enough in their past, but things had been so much better in recent years that he'd almost forgotten what her troubled face looked like.

"You ok, Yuna?" he asked delicately, and her gaze drifted over towards him like she wasn't really seeing him at all. "Is it the baby?" he said more worriedly, and felt a bolt of relief when she shook her head.

"No... something else," she said quietly, "something's... wrong."

"What?" he asked, becoming more urgent. "What is it, Yuna?" Just then they heard the sound of airship engines flying low over the island. Besaid was not under any travel routes and was so far out of the way that airships this low could only be looking to land.

They both scrambled to their feet and rushed outside along with many of the other confused villagers; everyone looked up into the sky to see the largest Al-Bhed airship in Spira circling above the island. The flagship and home of Cid, the leader of the Al-Bhed, was coming down close and looking to land.

"Why are they flying red flags?" Yuna asked as the ship drew closer, and sure enough the airship had bold red banners trailing behind it and others hanging from every free corner and edge. The platform lowered and Cid and Brother walked down followed by a huge procession of other Al-Bhed; they all wore red robes and paint markings all over their bodies.

Tidus didn't say a word; he couldn't say it.

Unlike some of his other companions or residents of this village, he'd spent time with a crew of real Al-Bhed: the dirty, smelly, violent bilge rats who'd clung to the bottom of Spira when they were chased out of everywhere else. He'd learnt their language and befriended their leader, and he knew of their traditions... he knew what red meant to them.

"Oh... shit," he breathed at last, as Cid strode into the village without a single glance at the New Yevon priests – his red robe billowing proudly behind him – and marched straight up to Yuna, Tidus tightly gripping her hand tightly beside her. Wakka and Lulu had already joined them, their silenced children clinging meekly to their mother's skirts in fear, as if even they could sense the impending tragedy.

"I've got some bad news, kids."

Yuna's crying could've woken the Fayth that night, had she not stopped their dreaming many years ago.

Act I

Rikku opened her eyes and sat bolt upright with a slightly belated scream. In fact moving in any direction at all was a surprising motion to her, because last time she checked a spine wasn't on her list of functional body parts. After accomplishing this movement with the greatest of ease, she breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the Fayth for the medical advances of Spirian healthcare.

The things they could do with a mega phoenix and bit of curagaja these days was amazing.

She then went on to wonder if she was under the effects of some kind of hypnotic painkillers, because for one she felt no pain and that was unusual considering the last thing she remembered was knowing that she was going to be subjected to some very serious 'owie'. For two, she felt very light, not light-headed, but bodily light, as if she might float away in a breeze. Then she remembered why she was in hospital, and who exactly she was intending to blame.

"Brother this is the last time you do this to me!" she shouted to no one in particular, and was rather pleased to find her voice strong and loud and not at all impaired by her accident. "Or maybe you really do want me dead, huh? Doctor! Doctor!" she called out for the nearest attending physician, "I want this guy arrested! He wants to kill me!"

A little way off, someone let out a tense breath and ground his teeth together; he knew that what was about to come would not be easy, but he didn't have a choice.

"I wouldn't say that," he said quietly, watching Rikku's back rippling and swaying in the mist before him.

"Sure," she quipped merrily, "you don't say that, Brother, but… hey, wait. You're not Brother." It finally struck her at this point that for Brother, Brother sure didn't sound like Brother right now. He wasn't speaking Al-Bhed either, and at the same time a few other tiny little things came to her notice.

Firstly, if she was in a hospital it sure was a funny one, because now she looked around it didn't have a bed, nurses, machines or even walls. In fact, she appeared to be lying abandoned on the ground in the middle of some kind of smoke storm, because all around her billowed great clouds of luminescent smoke. What kind of a hospital was this, she also asked herself, because surely no one in their right mind would ever employ Auron as a doctor. He had the bedside manner of a shoopuf in a china shop.

Wait! Auron?

"AHHHH!" she screamed as if she'd seen a ghost, which considering the circumstances she had.

Auron looked as poker-faced as always, with his arms crossed tighly over his chest and a slight wince creasing one of his eyes. However these small points of interest failed to distract from the much larger issue of it actually being him standing there.

He didn't say anything, but this fact of his being him, and most definitely him, was more than enough to scare the socks off Rikku.

"Rikk–" he began.

"AHHH!" she carried screaming, without even taking a breath for a good minute, until everything finally went black.

It would've been nice for Rikku if she had fainted, because it'd mean she wouldn't have to be aware of how she hadn't. Instead she was curled up in a ball bashing her fists against her head.

"WakeUpRikku! WakeUpRikku! WakeUpRikku! WakeUpRikku!" she screeched as she pounded her hands against her temples, and had it not been for the intervention of her watchman she might have remained like that for the foreseeable future.

"Ahem," Auron made a sort of strangled grunting noise in his throat, as if to say, 'this screaming and repetition of the same phrase over and over is beginning to rather irritate me', which was an Auron sort of thing to say. It was a sound that many, many years ago Rikku had once heard quite frequently, but it was so long past she didn't give it a second's notice at this point and carried on yelling.

"AHEM!" he coughed loudly this time, and Rikku opened her eyes for a moment to seek out the source of the sound. She was of course met with the same man she'd been looking at not moments ago – Auron the 'Legendary Guardian' of times before the Eternal Calm. Little did he know but there had been a play written about him some years after his sending, although he wasn't nearly as crabby in it as he was in real life. Or such an alcoholic.

"You're supposed to be dead!" she pointed at Auron and screamed very accusingly at him; leaning back against the blade of a large sword he made another of his bemused-come-losing-his-patience sighs.

"I am," was his very concise answer. Rikku was silent for a moment as if to take in this information.

"Waaaaah!" She screwed her eyes shut again and tried to beat reality back into her head – she told herself this was because of the drugs, or some kind of trippy coma dream. Or a coma nightmare, considering Auron was here and not someone she actually liked.

"Rikku-" he started, but never managed to finish his sentence before he was drowned out by one who was far to used to being the loudest person at each and every social event.

"Oh noo, oh no no no, oh no oh no oh noooooo!" she sobbed with tears of panic in her eyes. Before anything more could become of her the lights went out again, and it still wasn't because she had fainted.

Auron had in fact walked close enough to her to reach out and place one of his hands entirely over her face, covering her eyes completley and filling her nose with the stinky-leather smell of his gauntlet.

"Rikku," he said sternly, gripping her firmly and holding her still, "stop screaming." He had never really tolerated loud or grating noises very well, and even though she had no idea where she was or what was going on or why he was here too, the latent threat in his words actually managed to silence her for the moment.

"Now," he instructed, "calm down." It was about now that Rikku recalled the little eye-covering hoods she saw riders putting on their chocobos to calm them down when they were panicking. She resented the presumption that like a big stupid yellow bird she would stop warking if you just covered her eyes and told her to chill out, but she didn't quite dare to tell him.

While he still had his hand over her eyes a pyrefly rose out of Auron's arm, drifted down it and then merged into Rikku after a little prod of encouragement. Another pyrefly popped out of his elbow and fluttered down to sink into her shoulder, and as more and more transferred between them this way, his arm became fainter and translucent as the creatures seeped away from it; however, a slight shake of his body rebalanced it and he solidified again.

Rikku's form, which had until now been unstable and distorted by even the weakest breezes around them, began to even out. Her breathing calmed, as she felt strength seeping into her body that managed to still her hands from shaking and breath from racing so much.

Auron removed his hand from her face at last, and she looked over her shoulder at him in curiosity, then confusion, then some kind of anger.

"Hey!" She raised a finger and pointed it at him in outrage. "You're supposed to be dead!" Auron nearly rolled his eyes but managed to restrain himself for the sake of his contract. If he rolled his eyes every time something like this was going to happen he would end up with inverted sight within the hour.

"Once again," he said very tensely, "I AM. So are-"

"Noo ohh no you don't... oh no, no oh nooo…" Rikku started up wailing again, and Auron wondered if she had possibly materialised with only part of her brain as well, so that she was subsequently only able to say a grand total of three things.

"Don't-" he said weakly, but recovering her vision again meant that Rikku was once more looking around them at the odd golden smoke that whirled around the small circle about ten meters across that isolated them.

"Ahhh uh-ohhh!" She crambled frantically to her feet, and staggerd around like a baby just learning to walk or a drunkard. As she got close to the edge of the circle the golden mist was repelled away from her and a tiny path opened up.

She shot a glance back over her shoulder at Auron, and then took off.

He sighed and returned to his sword, which was stuck in the ground where he had left it; he settled his weight against the flat of the blade and tucked an arm into his robe, and then let his eyes droop a little and waited for her.

Rikku sped past the clouds, the mist swirling away from her and then whipping closed behind her like cloud-trails on airships. Although this path did not bend or turn, as such, it still seemed to move, twisting and curving almost too subtly to detect as she ran down it. It was away, though, so that was enough for now.

The path had to end somewhere, she reasoned, and rightly so; ahead of her she saw the clouds part to reveal another clearing.

"Yes!" she cheered and pumped a fist in the air, bursting into a sprint and leaping into the circle. She skidded to a stop mere centimetres short of slicing herself neatly in two on a sword – stuck into the ground by a man only just taller than it was, who had not moved so much as a muscle.

She looked up at him, even though she didn't want to because she knew it would only upset her.

"Fun run?" he said coldly, and Rikku's eyes widened as she realized the problem with her one and only plan of running.

"You're…" she gasped quietly.

"Do not say that I am 'supposed to be dead'," he interrupted crossly, "because I know and I am, and don't-" he started in vain, but there was no hope because before he could even think to finish she had started up again.

"Ahhh!" Rikku screamed, turned her back and ran away again, disappearing through the mist around their circle only to reappear a few moments later on the other side, whereupon she caught sight of him once more.

"Ahhhhh!" She turned ninety degrees and dived head first through another facet of the clouds, landing straight back in the circle onto her stomach right behind Auron's feet, with her nose just brushing the back of one of his ankles.

"-scream," he finished wearily. This was going to take longer than he'd hoped. A lot longer.

Ta-da. Two chapters become one in about 1k less of the words. For my next trick I will merge the following howevermany chapters into smaller ones and post them at regular intervals. Ish. Happy reading!