DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of Square's characters. I'm not shelling out for them, either.

This is a one-shot, and before you go on, you need to know something. This story is written to make fun of FFNet authors, and it is written as though each "story" written by some hapless fool is actually to be lived out by the Final Fantasy characters without theirchoice andmuch to their chagrin, as they wait eternally in a sort of storytelling limbo, wishing desperately for an escape.

...Spira, save them all.

-JB

"Go fish".

"God damn it, Rikku, we're playing poker!"

Paine threw her cards down on the table in frustration. Card games were always started out of boredom while waiting for the scripts to come in, and Rikku always managed to botch them up. She played as though it were an entirely different game than the one everyone else was set to, and her strangest mid-game switch yet had her somehow playing Hi-Ho Cherry-O using nothing but three matches and a Joker.

Quite frankly, it was pissing Paine off.

She sighed and pushed her cards into the center of the table, then silently stood to find Yuna. It had been three hours...certainly the new stories were in by now, right? She could at least find her schedule in this dump full of aimless scrawlings by horny teenagers. Walking into a small office in the corner of the large, mysterious space that reminded her of an abandoned warehouse, Paine ruffled through the stacks of papers in various drawers, each one a different tale poured from the minds of anonymous people everywhere onto scrap papers, notebooks, and computers worldwide. For all the pieces submitted to this inescapable hell, you would think there would be more interesting ones. Each one, however, seemed to be just the same as the last. There were so many cheesy romance, holiday parody, real world, crossover, and "high school" works that they all just seemed to blur together. Truth be told, the melancholy of this verbal wasteland was really getting to her.

At last, she pulled out the schedules for the day from the bottom of a stack contaminated with paper upon paper of poorly-written yaoi smut. Each one of her allies would be forced to live out these horrid "fictions" woven by various authors, and these sheets told them when they would be doing each type. She glanced quickly at her schedule and, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, moved on to the next. Hmm...Rikku was marrying Rin and then commiting suicide with a Chocobo talon. How upbeat.

Continuing to read through every schedule she could find, Paine sat for what felt like an eternity waiting for Yuna to receive the mailed-in scripts that dictated their fate. In the middle of one particularly disturbing section of Isaaru's agenda, she was startled from the previous dead silence by a sudden knock on the open door. Paine practically fall out of her chair at the sound, a complete shock to the boredom she was so accustomed to. Jumping back up into a standing position with what would best be later described by Rikku as "a flying side leap into a metal cabinet, it was so funny, you should have seen the look on her face", Paine snapped into a defensive stance by instinct, only to find Yuna standing at the door.

"Um...are you going to be okay?"

Paine sighed in annoyance and brushed her hand against her shoulder lightly. Yeah, that was gonna need a White Mage later. "I'll be fine. Do you have the scripts in?". Yuna handed a large stack of paper to Paine and watched quietly as she flipped through them, her expression growing darker with each new story title she read off. "Let's see, now: 'Paine and Rin: An Adventure In Hot, Midnight Al Bhed Love' by Angstkid7489. 'Rikku an Tidus an Me serch 4 some cheez-whiz an browneez' by l337n00bd00dkillurrzzz. 'LIEK OMG THE FLUFINESS PxBxGxN LUV TRIANGEL' by sweetangelbabyhoneychickgurrrl57932685345553456345...Jesus, why doesn't she just put the first three digits of 'pi' and leave it at that?" Paine threw the papers over her shoulder and flopped back down into the seat at the desk with a very loud thump. She rested her head on her hands and closed her eyes, breathing slowly and quietly, as though dreaming that she was somewhere far away from this endless sea of half-assed scribblings and shitty Goth ventures.

Starting to back her way out of the tiny room, Yuna leaned her head out of the doorway into the main space of the building. Her eyes searched the area, looking at the various inhabitants of this almost magical space that would soon drive them into randomly re-enacting scenes from these stories, as though in a dream. She checked off each person in her mind as she saw them: Rikku, Gippal, Wakka, Lulu, Kimahri, Auron, Braska, Shuyin, Lenne, Baralai, Nooj, Leblanc...wait a minute. She tilted forward again into the room where Paine wallowed in her frustration. "Where's Tidus?" she asked, baffled. Paine tipped her head up just enough for her now bloodshot eyes to peer out from the shelter of her arms. "My guess is hiding. Have you seen his schedule for today?". She spoke slowly in a near monotone voice, her gaze piercing Yuna with its aggravated state, then handed her a blue sheet from the desk top. Yuna took it cautiously and read the words:

SCHEDULE – Tidus

Day Three Hundred And Twenty Eight

10:00 AM: Sex Scene w/ Wakka

11:00 AM: Sex Scene w/ Baralai

12:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Gippal

1:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Nooj

2:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Rin

3:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Rikku

4:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Lulu and Paine

5:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Random Chocobo

6:00 PM: Steak Dinner (Leftover)

7:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Shuyin

8:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Lenne

9:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Auron

10:00 PM: Sex Scene w/ Yuna, Brother, Calli, and Clasko

Yuna, highly disturbed by the poor blitzer's undesired schedule for the day, dropped it back onto the desk. She backed away and scratched her head, very wide-eyed. "Wow...well, I hear those steak leftovers are pretty bad...heh..." she giggled hesitantly at her joke, hoping it would lighten the mood somehow.

It didn't.

Paine continued to glare with the same cold look as before, then shook her head and started for the door of the office. She stopped in the doorway and turned her head back towards Yuna. "We don't get out until we live through every terrible story that will ever be written about us. Who knows who long it will take for people to lose interest and stop writing...it could be two weeks, it could be two decades. All I know is that it's going to be another long day, and if we're going to survive this with our sanity intact, we need to pull ourselves together and struggle through whatever blatant bullshit stories they throw at us. I don't know about you, but I don't care how long it takes me or how many Paine/Leblanc stories I must endure...I will get out of here, and so help me Spira, I will choke the life out of every damn brainless author who put us through this."

Yuna inhaled softly and meditatively, then opened her eyes and gave Paine a smile that said "Let's do this." She walked past the spirited warrior and out of the office to rejoin everyone else in the main area.

"Then we'd better get to work."

Wow, you really read all of that? Congrats, and if any of those stories sounded like something you'd write...I hope you're offended.

-JB