(A/N: Welcome one, welcome all, to my first FFTA story. I have some fair warnings for you:

#1: Yes, much of the things that happen in the plot are either twisted versions of the story missions, or are weird things that happened to me/I did while playing FFTA. (Yes, the "I can't feel my legs!" joke really happened to me. ALL THREE TIMES. )

#2: I am a romantic of the hopeless variety. Deal with it. You literally wouldn't be reading this if I hadn't been playing FFTA one day, noticed that two of my characters were standing next to each other, and said, "Gee, maybe they'd make a great couple!". No, seriously. You wouldn't.

#3: Marche's in-game personality has been cradled tenderly and thrown out the window. Ritz is also going to be a tiny bit off. Yes, I know this is probably going to offend…. Pretty much everybody that will be offended by #4. Which is a lot of people.

#4: The most important warning that you should actually keep in mind: If you have written anything FFTA related, and I have given positive feedback to it, chances are high that your stories might have inspired certain aspects of this story. To all of you guys out there… I'm sorry. I swear that if you ever find something that looks like you inspired it, and I haven't given you credit at some point….

Now, without further ado, I present to you….)

Ressel

A Novel

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Chapter One: Snow

Marche woke up with his head inside of a snowdrift.

"Ow…" he mumbled, his voice muffled. What had just happened to him? Where was the school? Ritz? Mewt? All of the other kids? Try to remember something, he thought. It always works in the movies!

Right. Well, there was the snowball fight. And then Mewt had gone into the corner and opened this book. And then this really creepy white light came out of it… He'd grabbed Ritz's hand and the two had run for their lives, but the light claimed them…

And now his head was in a snowdrift. Upon remembering this, he slowly stood up, taking his head out of the snow, and looked around. New Question: Where had the snowdrift gone? It was too warm for snow in this place…

But what was this place? Well… it looked like a town square; after all, the place was a large paved area with several small stalls along the edges, in front of little buildings that were probably stores or houses. The only non-square-like thing about it was the lack of townspeople. Marche couldn't see another soul. Great. That was another question: Where were the townspeople?

Of course, this question quietly floated out the window once the girl walked into the square.

She was wearing a yellow cloak over a tight yellow tube dress with a yellow sash that had eleven pockets, and yellow boots. All of this yellow clashed wonderfully with her chocolate skin, lilac hair, and intelligent green eyes. In her hand was a wooden bow, simple and unadorned. Marche took five steps (large ones, too) toward her before he even noticed her only unusual feature- a pair of ears that looked remotely like antlers, they were so big. Even comparing them to those of an elf would be inaccurate. (Everybody knows that the ears of elves look much like the human ear besides that the earlobes are elongated to be pointy.) The girl's ears were probably the size of the human hand, and nowhere near as delicate as the elven ears previously described.

"You... have big ears!" Marche exclaimed in surprise. The girl stared at him like he had grown a second head, and slowly walked closer to him.

"...Duh. Haven't you ever seen a Vierra before?"

"Vi-eh-what?" The Vierra hung her head.

"Good Exodus..." She mumbled to herself, before straightening back up and looking Marche in the eye.

"It's not vi-eh-what. It's vee-AIR-uh. For future reference, Vierras are the ones like me with the big ears." Marche nodded solemnly.

"VEE-air-what." The Vierra slapped her forehead. "Close... enough..."She managed through gritted teeth. "Oh, and I'm Cecile." She took her hand off her forehead and held it out for him to shake.

"Marche." He shook Cecile's hand.

It was at this time that a... thing walked out of one of the houses, holding a long piece of cloth, and began to hang it from the sill of one window on the house to the other. "Thing" is probably the most accurate term that can be used. It was about seven feet tall, and looked as if a cosplayer was dressing up as a half-lizard superhero and then had had a horrible accident involving a bucket of orange paint and most of his costume being stolen, resulting in his being forced to wear a red robe that he borrowed from a priest. Marche pointed at it.

"Look! It's an orange lizar-"Cecile quickly put her hand over his mouth, and whispered quietly:

"That 'thing' is a bangaa. Under no circumstances do you ever, ever, ever call them lizards. Or orange." But it was too late; the thing that was now known to be a bangaa had already heard them, and turned around.

"Say that again..."It hissed, quite menacingly. "Um..." Marche looked confused. "But..."

"I think you called me a lizard. And I don't apprecccccciate that!" The bangaa stepped toward the pair, and another one (him in bronze armor and with a sword at his side) stepped out of the door and stood beside it.

"Holy crap..."Cecile muttered under her breath, before reaching slowly into a pocket of her sash and pulling out one shiny glass sphere. "I declare an engagement..."The sphere started to expand, and change shape, until it was a full-sized human, although you wouldn't know it, because of his shining armor. The judge (for that is what he was, and explaining everything is painfully dull) ran off to the other side of the square and blew a whistle. "Random White Monk and random Warrior versus Cecile the Archer and… What's your name, kid?"

"Um... Marche!" He yelled at the judge.

"Okay!" The judge replied. "And Marche the Soldier! Get ready..."Slowly, the two bangaa took several steps forward. Then the one in the red robe stepped to the left, while the one in the armor did the same to the right. Cecile stepped back, and dragged Marche with her. "GO!"

Cecile got the first move. She walked to a few feet in front of where she and Marche had been before (which was still several feet from the bangaa) and stood as still as... anything. After several moments, an hourglass filled with blue sand appeared in thin air, and slowly fell onto Cecile's head.

"Wha..." Marche muttered. Where had that hourglass come from? But he did not have long to ponder this, for then the bangaa he had initially called a lizard walked, and walked, and walked, and walked... (God! He walked so much farther than Cecile had.) Finally, he was about a yard away from Marche, when he punched the ground and yelled, "AIR RENDER!" A hard burst of wind came from the monk's fist and hit Marche squarely in the chest. Marche took a step back.

"Oww..." After this, there was a long period where nobody moved. Cecile noticed this.

"It's... your... turn... Marche!" She gasped, speaking so slowly because she was balancing the hourglass, remember.

"Oh!" Marche, even though he appeared to recognize that, yes, it was his turn, continued to just stand there. "Wait... I know I'm supposed to do something..."Suddenly, his leg felt heavy. "Huh?" He looked at his pants, and for reasons that nobody will ever understand, a sheath was attached to his belt, and in it was a short sword. Slowly, his hand wandered to the sword's hilt, and he took it out, holding it in both hands as if he had just taken it out of a stone.

"Come... on..."Cecile moaned. As if in a trance, Marche stepped forward and thrust the sword at the monk. The sword stopped as soon as the point hit the bangaa's nose. But because Marche is an Epic Hero, and because Fate decided to be nice to him because this was only the first chapter, the monk was suddenly on his knees, gripping his left arm, which had a gigantic gash that Marche's sword must have caused somehow... The warrior began running toward the monk, holding a potion.

"Oh, for the love of Exodus!" Cecile snapped. She stood in a typical archer position and shot an arrow aimed at the monk. With this motion, the hourglass fell off of her head and onto the arrow as it flew off the bow... and another arrow was behind it. As the two arrows hit, the monk fainted. The judge ran up and blew his whistle.

"Engagement over! Victory goes to Marche and Cecile!" He handed a shiny glass sphere to each of them, like the one that Cecile had summoned the judge with, and then disappeared. Marche looked at Cecile.

"How did I do that? I'm just a ten-year-old elementary schoolchild! How could I lift a sword that was probably half my weight?" Cecile looked at him and blinked.

"I don't understand most of what you just said, but ten years old? No way." It was at this time that Marche realized that, although Cecile looked like she was at least the same age as Doned's babysitter, he was only an inch shorter than her. And, on further examination, he was able to lift the sword because he had mysteriously grown muscles. (You're welcome, Marche.)

"I'm... a teenager..." He whispered loudly, sounding awed.

"Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!" Cecile snapped. "Now could you please get to the part where you realize that I'm somewhat pretty and that, since you are now a testosterone fueled teenage personage, even though 'thing' would be more accurate, that actually is attracted to girls, you chase me, and- HOLY crap, he already HAS gotten to that part! AAAH!" She ran screaming from the square. Marche blinked.

"Huh? Oh, well, I might as well follow her." And so he did...

Scene.