A/N: As it turned out, I made a sequel for my fic "Betting on a Fairytale Ending"...but it can stand independently on its own. The reason why I made this a sequel is because the fic that I've formulated fitted quite nicely on its prequel...so yeah. And also, don't expect this to be a fairytale thing that's all fuzzy and cheesy like my initial fic, in fact, it's almost a joke. Why the change of heart? I've recently realized how fun it is to strike bitterness with humor…not that I'm a bitter person, mind you. Also, just think of the fic this way: I'm the one telling the story, so it's gonna be my point of view toward telling you the story in a third person perspective. And lastly, if you wanna enjoy my humor here, think of the tone as "dramatically bitter and sarcastic" and that goes on throughout the chapters. Enjoy!

Purgatory is Dollet

Chapter 1

It was a sunny October morning. The sky was blue; the clouds looked like puffs of cotton, blah-blah up to the chirping birds and blooming flowers, etcetera, etcetera. It was presumably supposed that birds must have been singing out somewhere in the landscape, but couldn't be heard above the rumbling of the train's farting engine.

Chirp-chirp-chirp went the bird.

As the bird gazed upon the colourful scenic view of the dancing daffodils, down came the train at 180kph.

Zzzooooohhhummmm!

And down too came the then happy bird's entrails on the train's metal railing. Half of its existence was left to evaporate into dust, while the other half of it was on its way to Dollet like a sticky bubblegum on a traveller's shoe.

Seifer watched a stray feather flew in front of him outside the train's tinted window.

Yup, it was a perfect day indeed.

o O o

He waded through a pile of scattered bags and found a seat near the back of the train, not the best seat. He settled down. It was too late for worries; and besides, he would be out on another unpredictable adventure on the other side of the continent. Even with the possibility of being kicked out if the train somewhere along the way, it was a good deal—he was after all, hitching a free ride. A fifteen minute ride on a train and being thrown overboard off an 180kph speeding vehicle will always beat a wrenching 250 something kilometre walk; unless, of course, he'd lose his life in the process of tumbling over the rock infested field at an approximation of five rolls per second.

The moment he settled in his seat, he decided to shorten the travel time by taking a nap, but before he could shut his eyes he was awakened by a blast of hot air by the man sitting across him. The man was a portly seventyish man with the kind of hair that is often mistaken for a wig, but is ironically his own. On his pinkie was a gold ring with a dark green stone; it was so tight that it was cutting off circulation. A heavy gold bracelet peeked out from under the cuff of the man's shiny pale green shirt. It was not his coiffure that Seifer minded, but the fact that he wouldn't shut up. He was a perpetual yakking machine: "Blablablah my life blablabla the First Sorceress War blablablah in those days blahblablah."

There was much rolling of eyeball among passengers, and it required no linguistic ability to figure out that the general mumbling meant: "Shut up."

"Blablablahbla-bla-bla if only I had blablabla thirty years ago I was a blahblahblah a word of advice blablabla...zzZZzzzZzzZZzzzz." He considered it an achievement that he did not hurl the old grunt through the window of the moving train, thereby preserving world peace.

The moment the old man fell asleep he hustled further to the back of the train and sat near the exit; in case of another such incident it would be easy for him to push the man off the train. Just when he thought he found peace, a train attendant approached him with a tray of train food. He looked at the grub which seemed to be mutating before his very eyes.

The...thing...looked liked a dollop of mashed potato sprinkled with bits of pubic hair and sawdust swimming in a pool of animal fat. The smell was a mix of ginger, yogurt, and oddly enough fresh cut weed. And the worst part? It tasted like paper soiled in glue.

"I'm done." He jabbed the paper box toward the attendant after sampling a teaspoon of...it.

She raised a nasty brow, "Can I see your ticket?"

"Why?" it was a cautious voice, he had no ticket.

"We charge extra for every spoon of wasted food." She said in a tone that seemed to threaten his life.

He stared at the food, and then he stared out the window and saw the blurring scenery of various rocks jutting out the ground like giant thumbtacks. It was a tough choice: death or death..."But if I eat all this, then we're good?" he checked, just in case he'd eat the grub and still be forced to show his ticket and thrown overboard upon presenting a scratch paper, then self-murder via plastic fork would be a better option.

"Of course, as long as you swallow every bit of morsel, then we're fine." She smiled, a kind of smile associated with the devil.

He gulped a mouthful of spit. It would be the only good thing he'd taste in the next few hours. In one quick breath, he held out his snack and shoved it down his throat. He passed out in the process of swallowing, gaining consciousness only after twenty minutes of dead brain activity.

o O o

One and a half hours scrunched into a seat getting his vertebrates rearranged, the bathroom at the other end of the room accessible by walking sideways down a narrow aisle through a gauntlet of unopened boxes, food which made him yearn for recycled cardboard, washrooms which, if he wasn't a professional contortionist, was clearly designed to make him pee on his shoes. Sitting down for so long, he felt his blood concentrated in his buns.

After much argument between his left and right brain lobes, he came into a conclusion. He had to pee. Again.

Dammit, why did he drink so much water after his free goo-grub! Well, one: it tasted better than the main course; and two: the attendant was looking at him with eyes which told him to gulp down every served food be it fungus or mud water, or suffer the consequences far worse than a stomach disorder.

He looked at his shoe. It was still drying off after his previous encounter with the contortionist's toilet. He had to mentally remember to wash his shoes and let it dry under the scorching sun when he arrives in his destination.

He cursed and was about to stand up when he caught sight of Dollet station. He breathed a sigh of relief and slunk back to his seat imagining all the things awaiting him back in Dollet, the very first city he fled to after the Second Sorceress War, and his very last stop before going home, back to Balamb. The thoughts relaxed him from the pain of holding in piss, but before he could brace himself at the thought of a decent urinal he felt the train pick up a sudden supersonic speed. Straight the train went in vertiginous speeds sufficient enough to dislocate his neck, making sudden twists which caused his internal organs to ricochet off his skin and his brain to leak out his ears. At those velocities, there was a real danger of augmented body parts being launched into orbit—especially those owning fake ones, aka: prosthetic limbs, glued-on noses, and of course those silicon boobs.

Damn, even the train driver must hate the train so bad that he too was excited to reach the station.

The train immediately went from 1000000+kph to a sudden 0.0000kph. The shock took about seventeen seconds, just enough time for his heart to shoot out of his nose, and sucked back in. By the very second it went to a halting stop, Seifer had already melted on his seat, so was everyone else. His eyes swivelled as he felt his face rearranged and his innards osterized. When he realized he had survived the ride, he swore…it felt good. To be alive, not the ride.

He took a moment to regain his composure, then grabbed his backpack and got up. His backpack used to be quite nice, except that the last four years of travel, cats from all over the world seemed to have found a fondness of using it to sharpen their claws that it was like they were having an innate interest of using it as a scratching post…maybe it was a nail file reincarnated into a higher form of being for being such a good nail file, thus it became a bag. At least now, no self-respecting thief would go near it even if it was a formidable brand for a bag.

Upon stepping out of the train the atmosphere seemed to grow thicker. He thought there was a constant buzzing in his ear, and then he realized that it was absence of buzzing. It was quiet. After the chaos of the train ride, the silence was disconcerting.

o O o

He took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and read it out loud. "Dollet Terraces 666 Carbuncle Avenue, 2nd District. Hmmm..." With nothing but a trail of empty thoughts, he began to hunt for his new apartment.

Now, the sub-streets of Dollet megalopolis posed special problems for cartographers. Such streets are not organized radially or on a grid pattern, in fact "organized" is a stretch. That was part of Dollet's charm: the street that is called ABC suddenly and for no apparent reason turns into DEF, houses have "old" numbers and "new" numbers or no numbers, and number 85 is facing 1221. The logic of this is lost in the mists of quantum relativity. Yes, it's charming. Until you have to go someplace.

It took twenty-five minutes of aimless walk for his inner man to realize that he needed to ask for directions. After a stranger insulted his pride by pointing to him a street corner he had missed, and another three-minute walk he finally came face to face with the new gate of what he'll be calling home.

Dollet Terraces didn't seem to meet the expectation of what one would imagine when one hears the name. It wasn't a terrace, it was a dilapidated building rotting in the middle of the city's crime district. Although the units did not exactly look the same, they gave the impression of being identical: unpainted walls and broken windows. From the looks of it, the place needed five gay men before he could stomach to consider it as his new residence.

He cracked the door open...

The stranger he asked for directions had warned him to prepare to be boiled in disinfectant upon setting foot on the apartment. When he arrived, they must've run out of cauldrons, or else he'd become invisible. Holding his bag secured hanging loose behind his back, he walked straight pass the creaky floor of the hallway until he finally found a legible person to inquire about his dealings.

He looked at the fat guy behind the counter seemingly busy watching the ceiling drip of gooey thingies. His brows were so think that one could mistake parts of it as eyebrow extensions, but perhaps that made a good compensation for his seemingly lack of hair on the head. It was the opposite for this guy's case, his hair filled his face instead of his scalp. He was like the bald version of a yeti.

"Where can I get a room?" Seifer finally broke the silent conversation the man was having with the ceiling.

He looked at Seifer from head to toe as if labelling him as an ugly being with that stare of his. (Like he had the right to called beautiful.)

"Got reservations?" he groaned making potato chip bits spill out of his mouth. Good, he didn't disappoint: he was as stupid as he looked.

"Seifer Almasy."

He gargled his words as he scanned his soda-moist notebook. "Room 304" he burped, handing him a rusted key.

Upon receiving the key, he scurried up three flights of stairs and unbolted the lock of is new haven...

Or hellhole.

Thoroughly in pandemonium and degrading to his humanity, he drew open the dusty heavy red brocade curtain in hopes to uplift his mood with the possibility of a decent view at least. What he saw made his eyes almost water. It was literally breath-taking. It was a gray wall.

The kitchen and bathroom shelves were stacked with tissue paper. He has never seen so much tissue paper outside of a supermarket; the former occupant must have used up at least three rolls a day to be supplied by massive stocks of toiletries. Whatever space was left was taken up by huge bags of potato chips in flavors he did not know existed. And at the sight of so many varieties of junk food, his stomach turned over and he had a bizarre yearning for steamed veggies.

AND he was staying in the only house in Dollet that did not have a telephone. Or utensils. Or a microwave oven with which to defrost what was ever inside the humongous refrigerator standing on one corner. Or sofa. Or a bed. NO BED!

He looked at the floor...well sleeping there was out of the question, not beside the mildews and stains mutating before his very eyes. He walked on over to the table and ran his finger to feel its surface: it definitely beats the grungy floor. With one quick jump he lifted himself up the table and sat on its edge, it was almost comfortable, but before it got too cosy he heard a crack.

Crack!

And before he knew it, one leg flew out of place and down he slid to the very ground he detested knocking his head on the now three-legged table. For a moment, he stared blankly in space digesting what had just transpired, and when all was calmly thought of, he stumbled back up and punched the table as hard as he could. It sounded like the table was hurt more than his fist, but of course that wasn't the case. Falling on the floor was the last straw, it was final: he hated, reviled, and loathed the apartment!

Within an hour of his arrival in Dollet, he was having homicidal fantasies.

Seifer was so fervent about murder that he already smelt the scent of blood. It was his knuckle.

o O o

After two minutes of stuffing his bag, a two-hour walk to the outskirt of Winhill, five hours of bumpy car-wrack ride to Timber, fifteen-minute wait for the train, three minutes of secretly squeezing himself through the aisle without getting caught, two-hour train ride to Dollet, thirty minutes search for his apartment, five minutes of awful contemplation of his new abode, and a shocking realization of needing an antiseptic for his self-caused wound, because Hyne knows what bacteria he got from making an open flesh contact with the muck on that table, he commenced his invasion of Dollet.

He strode out of his room and asked the yeti for directions.

"Where's the pharmacy?"

"Block 19, 6th Street of Brothers Boulevard."

"Where the hell is that!"

"There." No particular direction was cited.

He wanted to strangle him, but he needed to save the man's gene pool for the next generation of bellboys. So he lurched out of the apartment ready to murder the next guy he'd encounter. In his case, the first unfortunate soul he spotted was a little girl. He stared at the kid and asked her if she knew where the pharmacy was.

She nodded curtly and sprinted away.

First day at Dollet and he's hating it already. That was a fucked-up day, and it was enough for him to curse his whole existence from birth to his upcoming death, and even up to his reincarnation. It was Dollet's way of saying that he wasn't welcome, and perhaps he should leave early the next day.

What more could go wrong?

He caught sight of the pharmacy, flew to it, opened the door, and heard his name.

"Seifer..." A voice he could never forget.

A reason for Dollet to feel less like hell, and a reason he had to stay.

"Quis…"

Sneak Preview:

Purgatory is Rehab

Chapter 2

Without warning, the door swung open along with a statement that was just as rude as barging in without knocking, "Hey Quis, I feel kinda fat today so can I borrow some of your clothes?"

She didn't even bother to look at the person she was talking to, she simply went on with applying her a nice orange gloss on her lips. "Very funny, but may I remind you that my clothes will make you look like a walking hanger. You do realize my shirt will look like a gown on you." She stared at the reflection of a petite girl with short russet hair, and a nice chinky set of dark brown irises staring back at her on the mirror with a rather mordant expression.

"Ha-ha! And you say you weren't pregnant, talk about morning mood swings."

A/N: Hope that you found that funny. And did I mention I adore reading reviews?

P.S.

And BTW, please do use the Story Alert if you want to tune in, because unlike my other fic, this one is nowhere near done, so I don't know when my next update will be because Chapter 2 is still one heck of a mess. I simply uploaded this chapter to help me pick up the phase because now I actually feel obligated to finish this fic. Hahahahahahaha...and yet somehow I don't find that funny. Grrr...

Disclaimer: If I say that Final Fantasy VIII is mine, would you believe me? Well...you're right. :)

Another Disclaimer: God knows how many lines I've gotten from Jessica Zafra…but she doesn't know. Anyway, I think there are so many of them that I will just make this a general disclaimer…her bitter rantings and witty remarks on her Twisted Series remains to be hers…I just happen to draw words and ideas on some for the betterment of this fic.