A NOTE TO ALL MY FAITHFUL READERS:

Canada Eh
2005-02-08
ch 8, reply

DAMN! This story is so good! You HAVE TO KEEP WRITNG OR ELSE! attempts to think of punishment UM, THE PUNISHMENT IS SO HORRIBLE, I DARE NOT UTTER IT ALOUD! Yeah, that's it... Please continue!

PainFighter
2005-06-13
ch 10, anon.

hey please hurry up with the next ones!

The Hyper Al Bhed Jokester
2005-06-30
ch 4, reply

Hey... You got an email in Yahoo? Email me sometime alright? Cuz, my friend said she chatted with another author one time. I thought that was cool so I wanted to try to chat with my mentor... check my profile to add me alright:D Anyway... Thanks for reading my fics and adding reviews! You have no idea how cool it is to have your mentor give you a review and all... PLUS commenting that you're good! Woohoo! I made one of my mentors laugh!

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penname: One Winged Angel of Destruction
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http/ have you been, WRITE!

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Well, you did it. Thanks to all your strange, obsessive, Kathy-Bates-in-Misery­ styled tendencies towards my work, I've been compelled to write another chapter. Again. Just promise not to break my legs with a sledgehammer when I try to escape.

In addition to this, I am dedicating this chapter to my real-life friend Molly Zigler, who managed to find this POS and show it to all my friends, thereby ruining any coolness I may have ever had outside of the intarwebs. Kudos, biatch!

Also, yes…it is true that I started writing this on a dare for $20. And now, none of you will ever let me go until I finish it. I even tried to scare you all off with a chapter written terribly on purpose coughcoughnumbersixcough. So, I must finish. I feel obligated to do so, just for you. Now don't you feel special?

Alright, on with the show!

-JB

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ENTRY THIRTY FOUR:

Well, here I am again. We've just boarded the airship again to go to Djose from Mushroom Rock Road. Why we couldn't just walk, I have no idea. I mean, I could have spat off the top of the Youth League HQ and hit the temple without even trying. However, in my time with the Gullwings, I've learned to stop asking questions and just let the mind-numbing insanity take me wherever it may flow.

Anyways, we flew an amazingly long twenty feet north to Djose, just so Gippal could tell us what I could have already figured out: Djose is fine, they don't need any help, the machina are working properly, the Machine Faction is all in order, and he's having a secret love affair with Baralai.

Not really. I just made that last part up.

Like always, Rikku and Gippal just had to have a precious little Sphere Recorder Moment and waste all our time with another one of their little cid's-girl-is-cute-stop-hitting-on-me-we'd-make-such-an-adorable-couple-shut-up-you-creep-oh-you're-just-denying-it-so-what-if-i-am conversations. Those arguments are just laden with the most vomit-inducing sexual tension anyone will ever see. I swear, if I have to pretend to pay attention to Rikku's rants in which she denies any sort of affection towards Gippal one more time, I will be forced to drug them both. Possibly even put them in the same room at an inn so that when they wake up, Rikku beats the crap out of Gippal for supposedly taking advantage of her. Wow, this drugging plan is sounded better by the minute…

-Paine. Ether is your friend.

ENTRY THIRTY FIVE:

On to the Moonflow we go.

Because Yuna simply has to cover all of Spira to make sure that not one person is unhappy, we were all forced to tag along to Tobli's little show. I could barely understand what he was saying, same as always, but I was able to pull out the words "climactic passion".

Ew.

This was made all the more creepier when he got the bright idea to throw Yuna up on stage. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, the words "Yuna" and "climactic passion" should never exist in the same thought process. Being the only one among us to realize what was going on, I urged Yuna to get the hell out of dodge, and quickly. I, for one, wasn't about to be dragged up on some stage set up on a giant shoopuf along with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumbass. Guh…those things give me the creeps. The shoopufs, mind you, not Yuna and Rikku, but I suppose they have a tendency to weird me out just as often. Yuna, attention whore that she is, shrugged it off by saying that it "might be fun". Why couldn't she save me some trouble and kill my dignity off quickly by just waving her hand at me dismissively and saying "Psshaaaaw! Embarrassment is for sane people!". Sweet Yevon, when will things ever go my way?

Oh, that's right.

Never.

I was able to maintain some sort of control by just standing there, arms folded, and not letting in to the side of me that is starting to actually agree with them. They do seem to be getting more and more tolerable each and every day. Either they're becoming less crazy, or my state of mind is deteriorating. Unfortunately, I think it might be a little bit of both.

Now if you'll excuse me, journal, I must go practice some karaoke for tonight's break at the Celsius's bar in order to "fit in" a little more with Yuna and Rikku. I guess I should at least try to be more friendly.

Oh, Yevon, who am I kidding? Karaoke? Friendly? They're turning me into another person. A kinder person. A happier person. An…an open person.

…Help me.

-Hold me closer, tiny daaaaanceeerrr…

ENTRY THIRTY SIX:

Bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored.

Last night wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I guess the alcohol content of Barkeep's "Hypello Highball" helped me with that. When you've got three shots of 80 proof liquor in you, the excessively angsty songs that Brother writes about his forbidden love to the girl crying her eyes out in the corner over her forbidden love seem a lot less…suicide-inducing. Plus, it's fun to see how many little plastic umbrellas you can stick in Rikku's hair before she slides off the bar or regains consciousness. I'm beginning to see that liquor is an amazingly great way to deal with day to day life as a sphere hunter.

Pounding headaches aside, I was able to ignore all my sensitivity to light and sound in order to move on to Bikanel Desert, the land of endless bright sunshine and extremely loud, repetitive drilling noises.

Oh, joy.

Once we arrived there, we discovered that once again, help was needed. Evidently, things can never run smoothly around Bikanel, because this time they were caught up in a real shitstorm of political conflict with a place called the "Cactuar Nation", to whom they had only recently established "diplomatic ties". Tell you what: if you're crazy enough to form a treatise with a bunch of cactuses, please mail me a small quantity of whatever drugs you are taking, and I'll be grateful forever to you for revealing to me the secret behind Spira's insanity.

But, I digress. This "Cactuar Nation" had its very own language, which only one man could speak…a short, annoying little man who simply had to follow us everywhere. Benzo, meet my last nerve. Last nerve, this is Benzo. He'll be working with you for the next few weeks.

For all I know, these cactuars could be telling us the reason for all life and existence and he could just translate it into whatever he wanted. "Get out of my territory" becomes "My name is Marnela". "Seriously, get off my land right now" becomes "Please find the 10 gatekeepers". "I swear, I'm going to blow that tiny man's head off if he calls me 'grandma' one more time" becomes "You're our only hope for salvation". At least, that's what I think she's saying. All that weird chirping and squeaking sounds the same to me.

Must be why Benzo feels the need to end every translation with "That's the gist of it".

Speaking of which, that whole phrase…it's getting so…so aggravating! It's as though he needs to speak it to live. Of course, that also leads to the same sort of concept I had back when I first started all this "Gullwing" stuff, which is a bet to see how long he can go without saying it. It's a little different than our current one…I'm still winning, since I haven't even mentioned or thought about using the name Ti…

Whoa, nearly lost it there. Whew. Close one.

Long story short, we're now on a sort of a little helper monkey mission to get these cactuar "Gatekeepers" back to the Cactuar Nation. Another way to waste time? Meh, I'm used to it by now.

-Paine, tag-along in a trio of tasteless trials.

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Wooohooooo! Done with that, for now. Hope you're all happy. I can't buy the rights to the stuff I've used (because I'm in CHAPTER ELEVEN HAHAHA GET IT LOLOLOL!111!SHIFT!ONE!12!SATANLIVES!121), so I've gotta give credit to Square Enix, for the use and abuse of their characters, and to that dude who wrote the "Tiny Dancer" song. I forget his name.

Also, since you're all so seemingly hungry for sarcasm and snarkiness, I recommend you find even more things like this story. Have any of you ever heard of VideoGameRecaps? Go forth and find it, I say, because waiting for me to be funny...well, we've all seen how disappointing that can be, now, haven't we?

-JB