"Uh, yeah, all's forgiven, I guess, not that I have much choice here. Hey quick question what the fuck."

She covers her mouth to stifle a giggle and says, "Well, would you have just meekly followed a bunch of Al Bhed?"

"...I'm assuming Al Bhed is whatever... group of people you are? Some paramilitary organisation?"

Or maybe an ethnicity? A species? The spiral pupils are weird.

—now that's surprising.

He's not heedless of her surprise, but he continues: "And yeah, of course I would have. I didn't have much choice, did I? I was stranded in the middle of nowhere and didn't much have a plan for what to do next. Maybe see if I could figure out spearfishing before I died of hunger."

"...you know what, okay." She takes out a knife—

Tōkan raises an eyebrow.

"I deserve that," she admits, and uses the knife to cut Tōkan's restraints. "I'm Rikku."

He rubs his wrists a bit and flexes his fingers to restore proper blood flow. "And I'm Tōkan," he repeats. "So, uh... you'd have expected anyone who saw a bunch of, uh, Al Bhed to prefer to fight them or stay stranded than come with them? Should I be worried?"

"...you really don't know?"

"I really don't!"

"Where... are you from?"

"I... expect you won't know it. If I've never heard of you, then maybe... Well, I'm from a country called Zanarkand."

She gasps and falls down onto her ass, then blinks a few times as something seems to click in her head. "Sin's toxin. That's why you don't remember anything and think you're from Zanarkand."

"...wha?"

"Do you... not know what Sin is?"

"I, uh, ran into it recently, yeah. And then hitched an involuntary ride on it and ended up where you guys found me."

"Sin releases a toxin that messes with your head. I've never heard of... forgetting stuff like this, or thinking you're from Zanarkand, but if you were close to it for a long time..."

"...so you're saying you know of Zanarkand, but there is absolutely no way I'm from it, and my memories of my life there were made up by a giant monster's toxins."

"Zanarkand was destroyed a thousand years ago."

That sends a jolt of adrenaline up his spine and makes him sit up straighter. "What the fuck." Did—did he travel a thousand years into the future? Did Sin just actually destroy his home and kill everyone except—except him?

"The toxin's effects wear off after a while, though," says Rikku, apparently oblivious to this alternative explanation to Tōkan's experience. "So you should be fine soon."

"Fine. Yeah. Okay." Well, maybe he did in fact entirely hallucinate his whole life. That's more likely than travelling a thousand years into the future, right?

...honestly it doesn't really matter. Either he travelled into the future or he made up his memories, but worrying about it right now isn't really going to help with anything.

"So. What next?"

"Well..." she starts, but the mechanical door into the ship opens again and a tall man with a blond mohawk shows up. He's wearing long trousers held up by suspenders and heavy duty waterproof boots, and his eyes are covered by goggles, but his muscular torso is bare and showing off purple and blue flame tattoos on his chest and along his forearms.

    "Rikku!" he calls, then says something that sounds annoyed and impatient in his language.

She looks up at him then stands up to reply, also sounding annoyed. The man points at Tōkan a couple of times, looking unhappy whenever he does.

Tōkan has the strong impression that there are more strings attached to being rescued by these people than he'd hoped. O...kay. He'll wait until they're done deciding what shall be done with him, he guesses. In the meantime he'll draw his knees closer to his body and hug them.

It's cold.