I Was Replaying FFIX When...

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 9 belongs to Square Enix.

In my household, not everyone enjoys the classic final fantasy games I play, and when I say "everyone", I am actually meaning my fiancée. We have many things in common, he can appreciate video games to an extent, like Assassins Creed and generic war games that I'm not even going to try and remember the titles of. Yet when it comes to RPG's, he's very unimpressed, having a negative stance on how the fighting sequences are, and not really caring for story line. Because of this, I tend to play my favorite games on my own.

One evening, he came home to find me playing the game final fantasy 9, I love this game, and enjoy replaying it from time to time just to go back down memory lane. So there I was, waiting out the scenes of the play, until it was time for Zidane to enter the castle and sneak sleeping weed into the princess's tea.

"Can we put in Family Guy or something? It's been a long day and I just want to veg out." He asks, taking off his shoes and starting for the shelf with all our box sets of DVD's.

"Can you wait a minute? I want to save my progress." I ask, trying to pay attention to my game as I hear him sigh in light annoyance. Reluctantly, he sits in his recliner, as I continue on with my game play.

"It's suppose to thunder tonight." He comments, his words were quickly followed by a loud thunder above us, practically shaking the whole house.

Now I'm worried, if the power goes out, before I save, I'm going to be very angry and possibly take my frustration out on him. I don't want that to happen, and neither does he, so I'm trying to hurry up, but I've already played through to the part that they're all on the stage, pretending to act as if everything's normal, that "Rusty" is just apart of the performance.

As I'm playing, and my guy is grumbling, the thunder and wind is really picking up, shingles rattling on the roof. My man, his name is Shaun by the way, he goes to open the shades to the front windows, so we can see the lightning striking throughout the dark sky.

"Wow, pretty." He comments as I'm trying to hustle through dialog and the small fight with Steiner, the bomb behind him growing rapidly. All I want to do is get through everything fast enough to save, because I really didn't feel like going through all that again.

"You know, it's stupid." I hear his grumble, I pause the game to raise a brow.

"What's stupid?" I ask, already anticipating his negative response.

"Four people in your party, taking turns to hit the knight. It's stupid, why can't they just hit him all at once? Why do they even have to take turns? I just have no patience for this type of game." He shakes his head, unimpressed with a series that so many people love and adore.

"I'm not going to argue about this again. It's not like it's real life, and they're waiting to hit the bad guy one at a time, it's a game, so quit picking it apart already. I didn't pick apart Leisure Suit Larry when you had that for the PS2." I remind him, of course he just shrugs.

"That was still a better game than this one." I swear, it's like he's goading me.

"You know, for a guy that likes fantasy novels, and use to play Magic The Gathering, I'm always surprised by how shitty your attitude is against this game series." I'm now at the scene in the game where they're trying to take off and leave Alexandria.

Out the window, we see a huge lightning bolt touch down in a neighbors field, we both watch and wait to see if the strike will cause a fire. The storms getting worse, the lights are flickering a bit, yet the television and PS1 are still stable. I'm focused on the game again as my significant other keeps staring out the window. In the game, I'm about to walk towards a moogle, when darkness engulfs the entire house. We're both sitting there, silent in the blacked out house, lightening isn't even striking anymore to give us light.

I move my hand to try and fumble for my phone, it makes for a good flash light in a tricky situation, when I realize I'm not touching anything to my right. It's all thin air, no table, no glass with tea in it, and no phone. I feel this is rather odd, Shaun and I live alone together, he wasn't able to move that table away that quickly...

"Shaun?" I call out his name, because he's being pretty quiet.

No answer, so I stand up from my chair, and walk towards where he should have been. I'm walking, keeping my hands out to feel something first before running into it, and I'm not finding anything. In fact, our living room appears to have gotten bigger, because I'm still walking and not running into the wall. All this is starting to bother me, I start to wonder if maybe I fell asleep while playing the game, or maybe I fainted...but none of that is sitting well with me, it's not making much sense, those possibilities.

I stop walking and turn in the direction I knew the T.V. had been in. I'm waiting, wondering if maybe I'm going crazy, when I see a small light where the screen should have been. So I start moving, the light comforting me a little the closer I get. As I get closer, I notice the light gets bigger, kind of like when you're exiting a cave. My bare feet are starting to feel cold, the carpet isn't feeling soft anymore. I feel like I'm walking on smooth linoleum, or something like it in texture.

The light begins to get unbearably bright, so I close my eyes for a moment as I finish my last steps towards it, and stop.

The moment I open my eyes, I know that something horrible has happened to me. I've either died, or I'm in limbo, because what I'm seeing doesn't make sense at all. It's too vivid for a dream, this familiar yet strange landscape. I'm gazing out of the Ice Cavern, towards the little town of Dali.

"This is crazy!" I'm talking to myself, having no one currently at my side. I start to look over myself, relieved to see my beautiful opal rings still on my fingers. They were given to me by Shaun, and I feel naked and uneasy without them on me. As I'm looking over my skin, glad that this world hasn't changed me so far, I notice my clothes are different.

I'd been wearing comfy shorts with a purple tank top, but now I have on a white long sleeved blouse, with a simple brown leather vest over it. I'm in comfortable suede pants, with knee high leather boots. I don't appear to have any weapons on me, much to my dismay. I know how this game works, there are monsters out there ready to strike and kill travelers. As I'm coming to grips with all this, I hear a voice yelling my name.

I look down and in the grassy area before you reach the town, I see a guy waving at me. I do a double take, surprised at seeing a familiar, normal face within this game world. It's Shaun, and he's somehow traveled into this land with me. I start making my way from the cavern entrance, towards him. He has a very confused look on his goateed face, his outfit looks very strange on his farm boy frame. My guy, is wide shouldered and big boned, he's six foot one, and strong as an ox. He's currently in this tunic not unlike the Dali men wore, made of a simple cotton like material, with well worn brown trousers. Quite different from his usual Jeans and collared western shirt.

A part of me wants to laugh, but I hold it back, knowing that my actions weren't going to make him feel better. As I reach him, I take my hand and touch his face, making sure he's real and not an illusion.

"Amy, is this some sort of joke? Or are we really...you know...in a video game." He's frowning, apparently not impressed with being inside the game he had dissed.

"I'm wondering if we died, and this is like, limbo or something." I answered him, not completely certain as to why we were there.

"We're not dead." He assures me.

"How do you know?" I ask him, that's when the asshole pinched me, making me yell and slap at him.

"See? You felt that, dead people wouldn't feel a thing." He's rationalizing this situation, not wanting to be the negative one, I keep my mouth shut for a moment.

"So, what are we suppose to do?" He asked me, apparently I'm the leader as of now...

"We'll let's wait for Zidane and the gang at the Dali Inn." I start making my way towards the town, he rushes to put himself in front.

"Let me lead, in case...you know, those weird things you fight in this game? In case they pop up. I'll be your shield." He informs me, I'm kinda enjoying the way he wants to protect me from the beasts, it's a cute look on him compared to his old grumbly self over this game. Together we trudged through the plains, wondering what the Hell was going to happen next in this weird situation.

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A/N: This is a fun story about what might happen if my Fiancée and I got inside the game world of FF9. He's not a fan, and there's going to be funny situations in here with how he reacts to characters and how they game is suppose to go. Story line in FF9 might just change a little with us trapped in their world.