Wow, it's been years since I last started a new fanfic (at least five by my estimation). I might as well go with something that I've been planning to write for nearly as long! Welcome to Characters In the Hands Of An Angry Tactician!

Much thanks goes to Shadow's Interceptor for her awesome beta work. If you're a fan of Final Fantasy VI, you ought to go and check her stuff out, it's worth it.

Chapter 1: The Wrong Direction

OH DEAR GOD, WHAT THE HELL? Huh? That's weird. I feel like I just suddenly sprang into existence. In fact, I believe that's exactly what happened. Meh, never mind that. My name? Er… I don't know? I've only existed for a grand total of, like, fifteen seconds, tops. Give me a break. You've already written Mark there, so that'll do. My name from this moment forth is Mark, apparently. Birth month? Why do you need to know that? Oh, I get it! Changing the birth month changes the little symbol next to my name! Knowing this information makes it make precisely 0% more sense! Eh, it probably isn't that important. July has a cool fireball, so we'll go with that. Gender? Um, male works, I guess. Anything else you need to know? No? Fine then, let's get-

"OH DEAR GOD, WHAT THE HELL?" shouted a strange man lying in the middle of a field. "Can I please stop springing into existence now? It feels really weird!" There was no response but the wind. He could feel that wind. In fact, he could feel a lot of things now that he wasn't in that unending void: the wind, the ground below, the grass brushing up against him. Given that he had only existed for less than a minute Mark wasn't sure how he knew the names of all these things, but soon realized that he didn't actually care.

Mark finally sat up to take in his surroundings. In truth, it wasn't all that different from when he was laying down. There was wind, there was the sky, and there were tall strands of grass. Lots and lots of grass. "No friends?" he said to no one in particular. "That's fine I suppose. I'll just go find some." He stood up on shaky legs and brushed himself off. "By the way, I just noticed that I'm already wearing clothes. I appreciate that, whoever dropped me here." Now that he was standing he looked around again, but there was nothing new. Staying in one spot did not really suit his tastes, so he randomly picked a direction and headed off.

Hours passed and, beyond his hunger, thirst, newfound hatred of grass, and the growing weight of the sun at his back, little to nothing had changed. Clearly he must have picked the wrong direction. Even so, Mark was nothing if not persistent. There had to be something in this direction. Well, something other than more grass and disappointment. He had already found more than enough of both those things.

The sun was reaching its peak in the sky when Mark realized that his existence would be a short one. That was fine he supposed, maybe there wasn't actually anything in this world but himself, grass and wind. It seemed a bit silly to drop him here only to have him die shortly afterwards, but who was he to argue with his superiors? It was then that he finally noticed something new; a small lump that looked somewhat like a hut was directly ahead a short way down from the horizon. He knew nothing about this mysterious lump, but its existence filled him with hope. Perhaps he wasn't alone in this accursed green sea.

Unfortunately though, exhaustion came to Mark long before the mysterious hut ever would. At this pace he wouldn't make it to the hut before nightfall, and he certainly didn't have the energy left to increase his pace. What would night be like here in these plains? Would he be safe? Futilely, he shouted towards the hut, "Hey! HEY! Help! Please!" There was no reply. He thought he may have seen a flash of blue at the edge of his vision, but that was probably just a hallucination at this point. Mark fell to his knees, panting. The sun may not have set yet, but he wasn't going any further today. All there was left was to do was hope he survived the night. That hope was reduced to zero when suddenly a shadow from behind fell over Mark something hit him in the back of the head, knocking him out cold. His last thought before losing consciousness was, Of all the directions I could have walked in, of course I chose this one…

Mark's eyes opened slowly and then blinked several times to clear his vision. Despite the throbbing pain in his head where he was hit, this was far better than expected, considering he figured he'd be dead. He heard movement and turned his head to see a girl with long green hair tied up in a ponytail at work sharpening a blade. She hadn't noticed that he was awake yet, so Mark took a moment to look around. The structure he was in seemed cozy enough, and the bed where he lay was actually quite comfortable, but there was one thing that was a little bit off… "Why are my hands and feet tied up?" Mark wondered aloud.

The noise startled the girl, who immediately looked up from her work. Seeing Mark awake, she gasped adorably and then jumped to her feet smiling. "Are you awake?" she asked excitedly.

"That does not answer my question," Mark pointed out.

The girl ignored him, instead turning around and looking through some drawers. Eventually she pulled out a stack of paper cards. Then she turned around, straightened herself, and began reading off of the cards. "*Ahem* I found you unconscious on the plains." This was read in the same way that a terrible actor would read directly from a play's script. "I am Lyn of the Lorca tribe. You're safe now."

"Fantastic, but I'd feel safer if I knew why I was tied up."

Again, Mark was ignored and the girl continued. "Who are you? Can you remember your name?" Lyn looked up from the cards and paused, awaiting his response.

After a moment of glaring, Mark simply sighed. "My name is Mark. Now can you please explain the ropes?" He lifted up his bound hands for emphasis.

"Your name is… er… Mark?" Lyn repeated, turning back to her notecards. "What an odd-sounding name… But pay me no mind. It is a good name."

"Did you really write all of this down on notecards?" Mark asked.

Lyn nodded, looking away from the cards and speaking like a normal human being. "Uh huh! I prepared them for the next time I meet somebody so that they'll definitely become my friend forever!" Mark was unsure how to respond to this. "I didn't have your name in here though…" she admitted. "I just put a blank space where it was supposed to be so I could fill it in. See?" She turned the card around and showed it to him as proof. "Don't read ahead though! I haven't gotten to the best part yet." Then she looked back to her cards and continued reading. "Um… oh right, this is where I left off! I see by your attire that you are a traveller. What brings you to the Sacae Plains? Would you share your story with me?" She paused again, obvious expecting another response.

Despite Lyn's innocent look, Mark couldn't help but be wary of her. He still wasn't sure why she was avoiding explaining why his hands and feet were bound… Even so, he did finally answer her, if only because he didn't seem to have much of a choice. "There's not very much to tell… I appeared on the plains, started walking in a direction," I'm still debating whether it was the right or wrong direction, "got knocked unconscious, and woke up here. That's pretty much my life's story."

"So what you're saying is that you don't have any friends or family that will come looking for you if you go missing forever?" she asked sweetly. As she said it though, Mark could have sworn he saw a frightening flash of insanity cross her face, but it was so fleeting that he assumed he imagined it.

"Er, correct," he answered. "Now what about the bonds? Explanation please?"

"Oh, those? I just didn't want you to go anywhere if you woke up while I was away. I didn't know your mental state and wouldn't want you to leave and hurt yourself. You got hit pretty hard in the head you know." She smiled as though that last fact satisfied her.

Mark breathed a sigh of relief. "Ah, got it. I guess that makes sense." He had begun to think that maybe a psychopath had abducted him, but the girl seemed genuine enough. Mark had no reason to believe she was lying. "So… other than a pain in my head I feel fine. Can you untie me?"

Lyn seemed to be considering Mark's words for a moment, but suddenly a startled look crossed her face. "Huh? What was that noise?" she asked. Though Mark hadn't actually heard anything, he could now hear the very faint sounds of laughter coming from far outside the hut. "No no no! We were supposed to be alone!" Lyn said worriedly. "No one was supposed to find us!" She frantically paced around the hut briefly and then turned to Mark. "I'll go and see what's happening," she told him. "Mark, wait here for me." She all but dashed out of the flap that was presumably the hut's front entrance.

"Wait!" Mark called after her, but it was too late. "Oh fine," he grumbled, "I guess I can stay." He slowly sat up, intending to get out of the bed and follow Lyn. Even if he couldn't walk with his feet bound, he assumed that he could hop after her with relative competence. This plan was thwarted though when he realized that the ropes tying his feet were also tied to the bed itself, so he couldn't go anywhere in this state without bringing the bed with him. Defeated, Mark lay back down and, as instructed, waited.

It wasn't long before Lyn burst back into the hut. "It's bandits, they must have come down from the Bern mountains," she explained. "They likely plan on raiding local villages." Her eyes gravitated to the sword she had been sharpening earlier. She strode towards it with determination, picking it up and turning back towards the hut's entrance. "I have to stop them. If that's all of them, I think I can handle them on my own. You'll be safe here, Mark."

"Wait, what?" Mark questioned, concern obvious in his voice. "There's enough bandits to confidently raid a village; a village that probably has its own warriors for protection. Please note the plural, as in 'more than one,' on 'warriors' because that's important. You think you can take them on alone?"

Lyn turned to Mark, looking somewhat surprised. "What? You want to help?" she asked.

"Er, that's not exactly what I said…"

"Can you use a weapon?"

"N-no! I came into existence less than two days ago! When would I have learned how to use a weapon?"

Lyn appeared confused for a moment, but then it clicked with her. "Ah… I see. You must be a strategist by trade. An odd profession…"

"That's an even worse assumption!" Mark exclaimed. "PLEASE STOP PUTTING WORDS INTO MY MOUTH!"

The girl was clearly not listening though. After thinking it over, Lyn nodded. "Very well. We'll go together!" Her blade cut through the ropes binding Mark's feet (though she curiously ignored the ropes tying his hands) and dragged him running out of the hut and back onto the plains. "Over there!" she shouted as she pulled Mark along, pointing towards a small bandit encampment. There weren't quite as many of them as Mark may have initially feared, but even so any number of bandits greater than zero was not an ideal number of bandits to him. "If you want to help, Mark, I could use your advice. I'll protect you, so stay close to me." In truth, Mark would have preferred not staying close to Lyn, as that would keep him further away from the bandit's axes, but he had realized by now that his arguments would either be ignored or misinterpreted so he remained silent.

I have been breathing for less than forty-eight hours, he thought to himself as the bandits finally noticed the pair charging aggressively towards their position. What could I have possibly done to deserve this?

When Mark awoke again he was back in the hut, hands and feet bound once again. Lyn was up and about, apparently preparing food. "Ugh, what happened?" Mark asked groggily.

The girl turned towards him and smiled. "Good morning, Mark!" she greeted cheerily. "That fight yesterday must have taken a lot out of you. You threw up and fainted after the bandit leader's internal organs spilled out all over your shoes."

Memories of the battle suddenly flooded back into Mark's head. It was a surreal experience. Just before the battle broke out is when the hallucinations began. All of the bandits' clothing spontaneously turned a bright shade of red, as though to indicate that they were the enemy. Voices started speaking to him, explaining how to perform mundane tasks such as walking and pulling items out of a pouch. The whole world even seemed to take on an odd grid-like pattern. Maybe it was just something he was imposing on the memories, but in any case, he hoped he'd never have to deal with it again. "Where are my shoes?" he asked, noticing that he was mysteriously barefoot at the moment.

"Well, the last thing you said before fainting was, 'Burn the shoes,'" she explained. "So… I did."

"Good," he responded immediately. He'd likely regret that particular request later considering those were his only pair of shoes, but he also didn't really want any reminders of that event.

"You did well out there!" Lyn complimented.

Mark stared at her incredulously. "You're kidding." She shook her head. "You understand that I didn't actually do anything, right?"

"Don't be silly! You gave orders throughout the whole battle, and without those orders I might be dead now."

"HOW WAS I GIVING YOU ORDERS? Everything I told you to do, you told me to tell you to do it immediately beforehand!" he exclaimed. It was true, that was essentially how the entire battle panned out. Lyn would instruct Mark to order her to move somewhere or do something, and then would wait until he actually ordered her to do it. He had considered making a quip theorizing that she just wanted to be dominated by a handsome man, but chose not to because he didn't know her age and was afraid it might be overly creepy. "I mean seriously, when you needed to take a health potion-"

"Vulnerary," Lyn corrected.

"A health potion," Mark insisted, "you had to tell me to tell you to drink it, and then refused to drink it until I specifically ordered you to! That's such an unbelievably dumb workflow that even I'm having a difficult time following the logic in my previous two sentences!"

The outburst didn't seem to faze Lyn at all. "Well I think that you're a great tactician, and I know that I'll eventually convince you of that." There it was again, that slight flash of dangerous insanity that was immediately replaced by a sweet smile. Mark hoped it was his imagination, but having seen it for a second time now…

"Whatever," he groaned. "In any case, can you untie me again? And this time get the ropes off of my hands too?"

Lyn gasped at this, though it wasn't a gasp shock or horror, more a gasp of excitement. "That reminds me, I wanted to talk to you about something! Hang on, I prepared notecards for this." After a moment of searching, she found the cards she was looking for. "*Ahem* You have some experience in the ways of war, I can see," she began, reverting back to sounding like a bad actress reading from a script. Mark could have easily argued with what she said, but chose not to in the interest of avoiding her making even wilder assumptions about his origins, like that he was a prince from a foreign land or perhaps a god. "Would you let me travel with you?"

This question caught Mark completely off-guard. Especially since being dragged into battle, he had hoped that this would only be a temporary arrangement. "Um, er," he stammered, "I, uh, don't exactly know where I'm trav-"

"What?" Lyn continued, still reading directly from her notecards. "You… want me to get permission from my parents?"

"No, actually. That has absolutely nothing to do with what I was just saying," Mark responded.

As expected, the response was completely ignored. "My mother and my father… died six months ago," she said with genuine sadness in her voice. She then began to recount a tale of the destruction of her former tribe at the hands of bandits.

Mark immediately felt terrible for bringing this up, even though he had nothing to do with bringing it up and the whole story was probably just written on her notecards. "Oh, wow… that was heavy," he remarked. "Um, well I'd offer you a hug if my hands weren't still tied together."

Finally, Lyn lifted her eyes from her cards and smiled. "Thank you, but I'm better now," she said, ignoring Mark's hint that he clearly wanted to be unbound. "I need to avenge my parents, but yesterday's battle taught me that I can't do it alone." Mark resisted the urge to tell her that due to the bizarre workflow of orders in that battle, she likely would have been better off alone. "Mark, please tell me that you'll train me, that you'll let me travel with you!" She seemed desperate, almost frantic, as she said this.

After the story she just told, it was truly tempting to say yes. However, for both of their sakes (though if he was being honest, it was mostly his own), he had to decline. Lyn was clearly prepared to fight many more battles ahead, and Mark's incompetence regarding military tactics would certainly get them both killed sooner rather than later. He turned his head away from her and sighed. "Lyn, I-"

"You will?" she interrupted in a burst of glee. "That's just wonderful!"

Mark turned back to the girl and frowned. "Wait, no, you didn't let me finish!" he insisted.

"Thank you! Oh thank you!" Lyn was practically dancing now. "We'll be better off working together, I just know it!"

"Lyn, please don't do this."

"You'll be my master strategist, and I'll be your peerless warrior!"

"Oh come on, now you're just being delusional!"

"I'm sure that together, we can do it! Right?"

It was useless. Lyn had won; there was no convincing her otherwise. It was almost as though this whole conversation had been perfectly calculated to trap him in a corner. Was this girl truly as ignorant as she appeared, or did she understand what she was doing this whole time. "Just one question," Mark requested. Lyn nodded. "Are you the one who originally knocked me out so you could abduct me against my will, brainwash me to think that I'm a brilliant tactician, and convince me to take you on as a travelling partner?"

Lyn paused for a second, then threw her head back and laughed. "Of course not!" she reassured. "I'm not holding you hostage or anything. If you want to leave, all you have to do is say so!" Mark began to sigh in relief, but Lyn wasn't finished yet. "I wouldn't recommend leaving though." By what was definitely pure coincidence, she chose this moment to draw her sword and carefully inspect the blade. "You likely wouldn't find any other people for miles, and travelling the Sacae Plains alone is very dangerous." Mark thought he heard her also mumble, 'And I bet I can run way faster than you.' This time, he knew he saw the insane glint in her eyes before her face replaced it with a smile.

Terror welled up in Mark's gut as he realized that he wasn't going anywhere. He finally reached a conclusive decision: back when he first woke up in the sea of grass, he definitely chose to walk in the wrong direction. "You know what? Whatever. Sure, we can do it," he said reluctantly.

Far away in another realm entirely, the goddess smiled at these words. Things were in motion, and all she had to do now was wait.