Naruto gaped as the city called "Luca" came into view over the horizon. It was a lot bigger than Kilika, and definitely way bigger than the Al Bhed's Home. It was probably about the size of Konoha, with mostly white buildings and a gigantic white dome in the center; definitely the focal point of the entire city.

He moved to the front of the ship to get a better look, noticing a familiar blue-eyed blonde next to him that had the same idea.

The shinobi made a small wave, attracting the blonde's attention. "Hey. Your name is Tidus right? We met back in that fight with all the fiends…"

"Yeah, I remember." Tidus replied with a small shiver. "You're… Naru… Naru…"

"Naruto." The ninja supplied helpfully, with Tidus giving a grateful nod.

"Yeah, talk about coincidences right? Meeting here probably a hundred miles from those ruins."

"No kidding." Naruto laughed good-naturedly. "I know it's kind of a long shot, but you haven't seen Rikku have you? The girl who was there when we met?" The shinobi questioned, trying and failing to keep the hope out of his voice.

Tidus frowned. "No, I haven't, sorry. After Sin attacked the ship I washed up on Besaid. I haven't seen any of the Al Bhed since then."

"Damn it." Naruto cursed and kicked at the deck of the ship pitifully. "Back to square one I guess."

"So is that why you're heading to Luca? To find Rikku?" The blonde warrior asked, trying to steer the conversation to a slightly less depressing topic.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, that's half the reason at least." The ninja replied, but kept the other half of the reason to himself. Tidus would probably think him crazy if he said he was on a mission to kill Sin. "So why are you going to Luca then?"

Tidus laughed in embarrassment while reaching a hand up to scratch the back of his neck. "Well, I can't really remember where I come from because of Sin's toxins messing with my head, so I'm going to Luca to see if anyone recognizes me."

"Ah, I see." Naruto smiled, though inside was suspicious.

'He's lying. I'm not sure why, but he is.' Kyuubi agreed silently inside his head.

The conversation eventually drifted to a few mundane topics before dissolving into silence, neither having much more to say to the other. Both blondes simply watching Luca get closer and closer.

"We'll have to start training when we get some solitude." Kyuubi stated and Naruto nodded to himself in agreement. "You can try and find a blacksmith for that sword of yours, but against Sin it isn't likely to help much one way or the other. We're going to need some serious firepower."

'And I'm all for that. I love making things go boom.' Naruto grinned in his mind and Kyuubi just smirked, fading into the back of his consciousness.

Neither blonde noticed a presence behind them, until said brunette shouted "Boo!"

Naruto and Tidus both jumped a little and spun around, seeing Yuna trying in vain to hold in her giggles. "I swear I'm seeing double. You two are so alike."

"You think so?" They both said at the same time. After a moment they seemed to realize what happened and tried to deny it.

"We are not!" Of course, they both denied it simultaneously as well. They both turned and glared at the other, again, in perfect unison.

Yuna simply giggled some more.

Yuna brushed a stray hair in front of her face back into its proper place and smiled warmly. "Come on Tidus, we should get ready to disembark, it'll only be a few more minutes until we reach Luca. It was nice meeting you Naruto."

The shinobi smiled and nodded. "Likewise. Good luck on your pilgrimage." Yuna bowed to him before walking away while Tidus just gave a little wave before doing the same.

Naruto had learnt about the summoner's pilgrimage last night, when he became curious of how exactly Summoners defeated Sin. Apparently they went on a pilgrimage across all of Spira, praying at all of the various temples and receiving their blessings and Aeons. Once that was done, they travelled to the ruins of a place called Zanarkand and received the Final Aeon, which had the power to defeat Sin.

'Of course, it just kept coming back and nobody bothered to find a way to truly defeat it.' Naruto thought with a grimace.

He pushed the thought away and waited anxiously for the ship to pull into port. He liked boats and all, but he didn't really feel safe on them anymore. The water was Sin's domain, and it never failed to attack him when he was anywhere near the water. He just wanted to get to ashore, go really, really far inland and train for a while, away from the constant looming threat of the whale-monster.

He paused at that thought. 'Hey Kyuubi. Do you think anyone in Spira has even questioned why the physical form of all of their sins and wrongs is a giant whale of all things?'

Kyuubi let out a bark that resembled a laugh. "Probably not kit. They seem to accept things at face value."

Naruto laughed out loud and some of the people on the ship looked at him oddly. He couldn't help it though; it was pretty absurd when you stopped to think about it.

His laughter dying down to a dull chuckle, he took his first step into Luca.

Naruto groaned in frustration and thumped his head against a nearby wall. Some of the passerby stopped to look at him but none bothered him outside of a glance. Naruto didn't really care one way or the other.

"Why can none of them work with this damn blade? What's wrong with it?" He growled to himself, not getting an answer but honestly not expecting one anyway.

Goukatoushin was apparently more special than he believed, which was becoming far more of a hindrance than a help. There weren't many metalworkers in this city, and nobody would take the job of repairing it for him; sharpening it and repairing the structural integrity that he assumed would be shot to hell from years of being lost in the desert sands.

Apparently though, he was wrong. Everyone he took it to simply said that there's nothing wrong with it that they can see, and a few of the younger, more cocky ones who attempted to sharpen it quickly found that nothing worked. The grinders did nothing for it, it was simply too tough.

Which was actually pissing the blonde shinobi off. Sure, it was cool to know his sword was strong and wouldn't break on him. But if his blade couldn't cut, what was the point? It was basically a gigantic damn club.

He held the sword up in front of him and sighed. "It was cool that I found you and everything, but I may have to ditch you for a katana or something at this rate." Naruto said and frowned. He understood that it wasn't very practical, hell he had a ton of trouble just swinging the damn thing around, and when he did he mostly just crushed things with it.

It had sentimental value though. He found it on his first dig with Rikku, and he didn't want to just leave it lying somewhere.

Leaning against the wall he sighed. Before he could even plan out his next move though he saw Tidus, Lulu, and a large blue bipedal lion that Yuna had called Kimahri running out of a nearby café. He was a Ronso. They seemed to be in a bit of a rush, and by that he meant that they were bowling over any unfortunate person that was in the large lion-creature's way.

He quickly caught up and ran alongside his fellow blonde. "So, what's up? You're all in a pretty big rush."

"Yuna's been kidnapped by the Al Bhed!" Tidus growled out, not even noticing who he was talking to. He turned his head and did a double-take. "Naruto? Why are you following us?"

Naruto raised his eyebrows at the fact that it was the Al Bhed that kidnapped the summoner. He didn't like the sound of that. "At first it was because of curiosity, now I think I'll follow you to help you out with rescuing Yuna. She's my friend too."

Tidus nodded thankfully, glad for the help, though Lulu looked back at him suspiciously. Kimahri didn't seem to care one way or the other, just rushing forward faster and faster, across the different numbered docks.

Out of nowhere, a brown blur crashed into Kimahri, knocking them both into a wall. It was a small brown Machina walker, like the ones that had attacked Naruto in the desert. It only came up to about Kimahri's chest, but it was avidly trying to stab him with the spike on the end of its 'arm' while the Ronso struggled with it.

Naruto and Tidus both rushed forward, each grabbing one of its respective 'arms' and ripping it away from Kimahri, tossing it further down the docks. Suddenly a bolt of lightning shot out from behind them and fried the Machina, causing it to fall apart in a shower of sparks and singed metal.

The blonde shinobi glanced back at Lulu to see her with a small smirk on her face and her hand outstretched, a little smoke coming from her palm.

'Oh yeah, she thinks she's soooo cool.' Naruto thought childishly, grinning when more of the small metal monsters moved out from behind some boxes, obviously intending to attack.

The shinobi removed his sword from his back and held it out toward the Machina. "Alright! It's time to pay you guys back for that ambush in the desert!" He rushed forward with a grin and absently noticed that Tidus had drawn his own sword and leapt forward to slice apart one of the machines.

Bringing his sword down in a helm-splitter Naruto crushed one of the Machina into the floor with ease before making a single Kage Bunshin, having it appear behind one of the machines and fling it overhead, out into the ocean.

'Two down.' He thought but then sweatdropped as a miniature army of the little mechanical monsters moved forward to swarm them. It was easily a few dozen.

"Well they aren't too hard to destroy but… this might take a while." Naruto said to himself absently, the other three people with him mentally agreeing with him.

"You bumbling IDIOTS!" A girl raged, kicking open one of the doors on the ship. Everyone on board suddenly got a cold chill down their back.

"What the hell would possess you guys to do something like this?" She growled at the three Al Bhed men in front of her. They looked down in shame.

"Well, we had started saving the summoners anyway… so we just figured we could get something extra out of it, you know?" One of the men mumbled out, refusing to meet the girl's eyes.

"But blackmail? Over a damn blitzball game!" She shouted and raised her hands up over her head in exasperation. "We're supposed to be the good guys! Not criminals! We don't kidnap people to make the worst damn team in the league throw their game!"

The men winced. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

The girl just sighed and dropped her arms, glancing at them with a defeated look in her eye. "Who did you take?"

The three Al Bhed looked at each other then shrugged. They had no idea. The girl groaned and covered her face with her hands.

"Where did you put her?" She mumbled out and they all pointed in unison to the cargo hold. She walked over there and opened the door, eyeing the girl inside.

Yuna was sitting there obediently, her robes dirtied but otherwise she was fine. She looked up calmly when the door opened; revealing her differently colored eyes and tilting her head in a silent question, not realizing the action made her look adorable.

The girl who opened the door took a sharp intake of breath and slammed the door shut again. She stared at it and her eyes watered slightly.

"Yunie…" She mumbled. There was no mistaking Yuna, the fact that her left eye was blue and her right was green made her nearly indistinguishable, even after all these years. She wiped her eyes and turned back to the three men, who all looked pretty surprised at her outburst.

"Maybe you guys didn't mess up that bad after all. Though you're still on cleanup duty for all this blackmailing bullshit, understood?" She said in a no-nonsense tone, causing the three men to groan, but knowing they had gotten off easy.

"Yes Rikku." They replied in unison as Rikku stepped past them and towards her room. She really needed to lie down.