Author's notes:

I didn't write this story by myself, it wouldn't have come to be without help from Hikari, who Co-authored this story with me. ^_~ Thank's Hi-chan!
We had a small discussion over who should post this, after all, we BOTH wrote it, and we couldn't very well both post it. I insisted she post it, and
she reiterated her desire to let me post it... so after a few days of talking, I finally let her have her way and post it myself. :)

Anyway, we both hope you guys like our story. We put a lot of effort into it, and you wouldn't believe how many times we stood up to 5am writting
and correcting. We'd like to hear what you think about it, and be sure that all the Reviews I get here will get to her. ^_^

And, I'll also post the first 3 chapters one right after the other, since these three are the 'Prologue' to our story. I'll put the rest of the chapters up
depending on the interest of people. ^_^ THAT MEANS PLEASE R&R!!

Ah, we also don't own Digimon, etc, etc, etc. Domino and Dice are OURS though.

On with the story!

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Tanomoshii Sugoroku 01
by Kino Hikari (hikari_san@hotmail.com)
and Wanderer D (wandererd@hotmail.com)
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I was so close, I could almost taste my victory. I hit the sorceress again, and again, and my magic hit her hard. She doubled over, then struck back, and hit my fellow warrior.

"Oh no! Quistis!"

My hands were aching, but I was not about to give up now, not when I was so close!

"Come on, come on!" I implored as I pulled up my menu list and selected "full-life" from the "magic" window. There was a strange sound, and a handful of feathers enshrouded with pink and purple light surrounded my fallen comrade, and she got back to her feet.

"Yess!!"

I leaned to the right as Ultimecia sent another spell my way...but the little pixilated people on the TV screen did not follow my motion. Stupid of them, I thought, if they would just move instead of standing there like a bunch of stoned dolts, they might not get slammed.

Hi, my name is Devinne. Heh, no, I'm not really fighting any sorceresses...it's just a video game...though I would like to have an adventure like Squall and the others... I think I would be good at fighting sorceresses! I'm fifteen...and I hate being fifteen...you can't drive, you can't see the good movies... It's very frustrating...

Though, surely not as frustrating as this game of Final Fantasy 8 is getting... I've been playing for almost six hours straight now, and I have yet to get through this final boss fight! My butt is going numb!

"Hey--!"

I let out a startled yelp as someone ruffled my hair with their hands.

"Hey, Debbs, let me play for a while! You've been at it for six hours!"

I sighed. That's my brother David...pain-in-the-butt extraordinaire. He's seventeen...so he never turns down an opportunity to rub in my face the fact that he can drive, and he can see all the good movies.

He's a lot taller than me...which, granted, isn't that hard to do, considering I barely clear five feet, and he has kinda jet black hair he likes to hide under a baseball cap. He has blue eyes, like my mom, while mine are green, like my dad's. That just kinda adds to the irony of the whole thing.

You see...David and I have almost nothing in common. He's got black hair...I'm a brunette. He has blue eyes, I have green. He's a total dweeb, and I'm--
What?? What's that look for??

Okay, okay, personal opinions aside... He always wears the same thing...blue jeans, a white shirt, and these brown shoes...I dunno about you, but I prefer to vary my wardrobe. And it's not just the physical stuff that we differ on... I'm a ball of energy, I just go, go, go. He'd rather just sit at home and play video games or watch TV all day. I'm on the school track team, our best sprinter, and I was on the volleyball team, too. David plays basketball...but only cuz he's tall, that doesn't take any real talent when you're nine feet tall... He reads magazines, I read Shakespeare. He's an uncultured pig, he thinks that "The Taming of the Shrew" is about rodents... He also likes to break stuff. He calls this "tinkering"...I call it destructive tendencies...you should see what he's done to Dad's favorite pocket watch...

"Will you quit calling me 'Debbs', David?" I said, annoyed. I dunno how he got that nickname from "Devinne"...I think he does it just to piss me off... "My name is Devinne...Dev-inne..." I gestured at the game controller. "Besides, I've been stuck on this one Boss fight...let me finish, and then it's all yours..."

He leaned over my shoulder and laughed.

"Heh, you're still stuck there?" he asked in his very condescending way. "Wow, Debbs, I think you're not gonna get past it this time, either...you've used up almost half your life!"

I grit my teeth. "You're gonna lose half your life if you don't shut up so I can concentrate!" I huffed. "I think I'm really close this time! Besides," I said, giving him a mean glare over my shoulder, "I remember how long it took you to beat Ultimecia, so I wouldn't talk..."

He frowned. "It took me half an hour..."

I punched his foot with my free hand and he made a sound of protest.

"You never would have made it that far if you hadn't kept borrowing my strategy guide, so shut up!" I snapped my head up when slow and sad strains of music came from the speakers on the sides of the TV. "'Game over'? Ohhhh man! Not again! You did it again, Davey, you distracted me and I died again!"

He smirked.

"Sorry, Debbs," he said, not sounding sorry at all, "looks like you have fallen prey to Time Compression yet again!"

"Har har," I sneered, "very funny, you're a regular comedian..." I tossed the controller at his feet.

"Hey, watch it, that ain't cheap, you know," he scolded.

I narrowed one eye, then stood up and ambled over to his bed. I flopped down with an over-exaggerated sigh. "Yes, David, I know," I said, "I paid for half of it, you may recall...? We bought it with our combined Christmas and birthday money."

"Yeah, well, if you'd like half a controller, then keep treating it that way," David growled, putting another game into the console.

"Keep talking and I'll give you more than half a knuckle sandwich," I shot back, and flopped backward onto the bed. I scowled and folded my arms over my chest.

"I dunno why Mom sided with you and agreed we could keep it in here..." I grumbled.

Yes, this is a normal day in the life of me...David and I fight all the time. He's a total control freak, that's why he practically begged Mom to let him have the Play Station in his room. I sighed again. I don't even like his room. It's so boring, mine is much more interesting. It's got drab blue walls and kinda beige carpet, and he has only got posters of comic book characters with huge muscles and torn shirts or big-busted animé women.

It gives me the creeps.

"Shaddup," he said as he hunted for a game, and I ignored him as I turned over onto my stomach to toy with the action figures he had lined up on the shelf near his bed.

"What game are you playing, anyhow?" I asked, plucking at the plastic cape around Captain Neutrino or some action hero equally as un-original.
David looked at me. "Pokémon Stadium," he replied, unhooking the Play Station to hook up his Nintendo 64.

I made a scoffing noise. "Pokémon?" I echoed as he jammed the game cartridge into the top of the Nintendo. "Again?? Is that all you ever play, Davey?" He ignored me. I made a face at the back of his head. "I don't understand why you like that game so much anyway, all it is, is a Nano Pet for your Nintendo. You feed it, you play with it, you train it to kick another pokémon's ass...you might as well take it to the bathroom..." I made a low growling noise in the back of my throat and tugged at my long brown hair. "It's too much like baby-sitting..."

"Yeah, it's kind of like having you for a little sister, Debbs," he said, "except I can get my pokémon to do something useful."
I chucked an action figure at him. "How's that for useful, huh?"

"Ow!" he yelped, and paused the game while he inspected the projectile I had thrown at him. "Hey, that's my limited edition Croc action figure from the animated Batman series! This is a collector's item!"

"Oh," I said, sliding off the bed onto the floor, "is that what that thing is? I thought it was like a hypothermic Komodo Dragon or something."

He squinted at me. "Listen, Debbs," he said, placing the crocodile man beside his leg as he un-paused the game, "why don't you go have fun with the microwave?"

"Only if I can put your head in it," I said with a syrupy smile. He ignored me, as usual, so I got back up and flopped down onto the bed again, knocking over half a dozen more action figures and making rather a lot of noise in the process. "Oops," I said to nobody in particular. "Sorry there, Spawn..." I picked up the caped crusaders I had scattered all over the floor and glanced at the TV over David's shoulder. "What are you doing now?" I asked. "What the heck kinda pokémon is that, anyhow?" I asked. "That looks like a booger with eyeballs..."

He sighed in disappointment at my obvious lack of knowledge on the subject. "It's called a Muk, Debbs."

"How fitting," I laughed. "This game is so lame, I much prefer kicking evil sorceress ass to baby-sitting a walking Jell-O mold..."

"Hah, any of my pokémon could wipe the floor with Ultimecia!" David bragged, and I lifted one eyebrow.

"Uh huh..." I said flatly, "like that...what was that thing you had once? It looked like a floating bowling ball."

"Maybe it was a piece of slime," David suggested, "like that curry you prepared last week."
I stuck my tongue out at him.

"Well, at least I can fend for myself," I accused. "You can't even make instant rice! God only knows what would happen to you if you were ever caught out in the wilderness by yourself! You would never be able to forage for yourself..." I puffed out my chest. "Unless, of course, I was there to help you... I was a Girl Scout for six years..."

"I'd be just fine," he insisted. "I have style, whereas you have...mere enthusiasm."
I snorted a laugh through my nose. "Psh, yeah, you have all the finesse of a carsick llama." I shook my head. "Besides, style won't help you build a fire with no matches..."

"I'd use gasoline."

I jumped, a little startled by his response. "You can't use gasoline!" I cried. "That's cheating!"

"No, that's improvising," he replied without looking at me, and I rolled my eyes.

"You're such a moron, David," I said, "go and tend to your poké-booger..."

"I told you," he said. "Style."

I ignored him.

Sitting on the bed, I watched the shadows from the TV dance across the walls and cast eerie darkness into the corners. I started when thunder rumbled outside the window. Slowly rising to my feet, I approached the window and placed my palms on the cool glass.

"It's raining again," I said, though I wasn't really expecting any response from my brother. "That makes four days straight now, it's like Seattle out there... When is it gonna end?" Lightning struck nearby, and thunder followed almost immediately after. The storm was nearly on top of us. The lights flickered, and I cast David an uneasy glance. "Are you sure it's a good idea to be on the TV while there is a storm? It might...I dunno...blow up..."

As much as I couldn't stand him, I didn't really want chunks of David all over the room when the TV exploded. The lights flickered again.

"Great," David grumbled, seemingly impervious to my concerned remark, "I'm actually doing really well, and now the lights are gonna go out..."

"Maybe you should just shut it off, Davey," I suggested.

"Might as well save it," he said, and pressed a button on the controller.

I looked worriedly out the window again.

"Hurry up, David," I urged, "it's getting vicious out there."

Then, as the game began to save its data onto the cartridge, something went wrong. All the lights went out, and it took me a second to realize just what had happened.

"Davey...?"

"Great," he groused in the darkness. "I was doing so good, too!"

"At least it didn't blow up," I said, and then froze.

Apparently, I'd spoken too soon.

"Erm...Davey?" I pointed to the Nintendo. "Davey, what's...what's it doing?"

The game console was engulfed in a strange pale green light, a misty sort of glow, as though it had been left in the x-ray machine too long.

"I think I read about this once," David said slowly, and I gave him an incredulous look.

"Read about what, about possessed Nintendo systems??" I cried as the TV screen filled with the green mist.

"Actually," he said, "no, I have no idea what's happening..." He looked at me. "But I think it's your fault."

"My fault??" I shouted. "I told you that you shouldn't have bought your Nintendo from Wal-Mart!!"

"But Target was two bucks more!" he protested, and I grabbed the collar of his shirt as the light intensified.

"Next time," I said, getting up in his face, "pay the extra two bucks so you don't get one that needs to have the demons exorcised!!"

The light seemed to explode all around us, and suddenly, I couldn't see. I couldn't feel, it was as though my brain had gone numb.

"Davey, what did you do?? This is all your fault!!" I shouted. "Mom is gonna kill us!!"

"Debbs?!" I heard him shout, and then I didn't hear anything else. Everything went white, and the last thing I remember thinking was how mad I was that I didn't get to beat Ultimecia before I the world ended...

[End Part 1]