I do not own Final Fantasy IX or any of the characters.

Preparing

Zidane looked around at the other three as they readied their weapons. He enjoyed training. Cinna charged first, a tall, round man wearing brown leather shorts, brown leather boots, leather cuffs, leather shoulder guards, a leather collar like a dog's, and a steel hat that looked like the head of a rivet. His nose was large and always red, he had a thin beard along the edge of his jaw and under his chin, and his weapon of choice was a steel mallet.

He swung it at Zidane, but Zidane ducked under it, then stepped forward, slashing the section of the mallet's shaft below Cinna's hands, knocking the mallet free of his grip, before kicking Cinna in the gut. As Cinna doubled over, Zidane stepped around to Cinna's left, simultaneously avoiding the other two-s blades and slamming his own into Cinna's helmet, driving it down over his face and knocking him backward to the ground. The next to reach Zidane was nicknamed Blank, for his lack of facial expression. That was better than what others called him, however. Their insults ranged from Patchy, to Patchwork, to Stitches, to Scar.

Blank, before joining their group, had suffered an attack by monsters and had needed entire pieces of his body either replaced or entire patches of skin sewed back on. As a result, he still had scars as permanent markers where the stitches were, and anywhere his skin or limb had been replaced, his skin-tone changed, drastically, making him look like a ragdoll. The upper left part of his face had had the skin replaced, as had the front of his chest and upper abdomen, while his left leg had been bitten off just below the knee, his left arm just below the elbow, and his right arm about mid-bicep. He only survived because of a travelling Inhuman, who had stumbled upon him and saved his life and replaced his limbs and missing skin with that of a fresh corpse from the group Blank had been the only survivor of. However, Blank now lacked a left eye, or even an opening in the skin that had been grafted there for an eye socket, so he wore a thick leather strap with a black belt to hold it on over his forehead and down over where his left eye should be. He also wore a pair of thick black belts that reached from his waist to his ribs, a pair of reinforced leather short shorts, a leather guard on his right knee, black leather boots with pointed toes, brown leather gloves with fluffy, white, fur cuffs, a thick leather strap diagonally across his body to hold his cutlass on his back, and enough hair gel to spike his crimson hair up and backward like a rooster's tail.

Zidane deflected Blank's sword into the path of hos last opponent's, then flipped forward, rolling across Blank's back before twisting and kicking him away. Then, he turned, slashing at the same time as his last, and most skilled, opponent, their identical blades clashing hard. Both had a gleaming silver blade, brown leather wrapped meticulously around the grip, and a gilded hilt. The pommel was shaped reminiscent to an arrow, an intricate design inside of a pentagon between the grip and the blade, then a pair of wing-like guards reaching out to the sides.

Zidane shoved his last opponent, Marcus's blade away and leapt back, narrowly avoiding the returning slash. Marcus was powerfully built, and wore a sleeveless, blue shirt with a collar, blue shorts black leather boots folded down at the top, leather cuffs, several leather belts piles one over the next on his waist, a leather strap diagonally across his chest to hold his personal sword's scabbard at his side outside of training, and a red bandanna over the top of his head to hide a jagged scar across his scalp from a monster. He had blue lines tattooed the length of his arms, and had two pointy teeth sticking up from his bottom row. He was second in fighting ability only to Zidane, but was the most popular of their members.

Marcus leapt at Zidane, slashing from overhead, but as Zidane spun out of the way of his strike, his own sword swept around and slammed into Marcus's back, hurling him forward. Marcus groaned, rolling over, then glared at Zidane. "What the Hell, Zidane!?" Marcus snapped. "The main character's supposed to win!"

"Then maybe you should get better at fighting," Zidane said, sheathing his blunt prop sword, Marcus doing the same as he grumbled a string of curses under his breath.

Zidane headed for the stairs, glancing into a mirror as he passed it. His blonde hair was getting messy again, but his clothes were as immaculate as ever. His blue dress pants, his blue vest over a white shirt, the stupid blue lace collar their boss made him wear, his grey gloves and boots, and his detached, blue butler cuffs around his wrists. He normally wore a harness around his shoulders and hanging down to attach to his belt in back, his own personal weapons attached to the back of the harness just above his belt.

Despite his skill with a sword, he disliked it because it was unwieldy and unbalanced. Instead, he favored daggers, which had better balance. That probably came from him being the group's cook ever since he was a child. He was excellent with knives, which translated to daggers perfectly. His boss had given him one, a large one that wasn't balanced but had a heavy, scimitar blade that was useful for monsters with solid bodies. To complement it, Zidane had custom built his own dagger. A thin, black one that was much lighter, made with a harder metal than the one the boss had given him, was always kept razor sharp, and had a short, round grip, then the blade secured with scrap metal he'd managed to find. It wasn't pretty, but it was his prize dagger. Then, his worst feature waved into view. A tail. As golden fur as the hair on his head. Belonging on a monkey, not him.

He, unlike the rest of his group, despite their strange appearances, was an Inhuman. Not a full-fledged monster, but not a human. Not belonging among humans. Not belonging among monsters. He was a singular, disgusting freak. And unlike the Rat Inhumans, who were numerous and had been renamed as Burmecians after establishing their own home of Burmecia, he had no similar people among whom he could live. He didn't have a home to go to. He didn't have a place he belonged. He was alone. The rest of his group, the Tantalus play troupe, allowed him to be a part of their number for his cooking skills, but even his permanent role showed that he wasn't truly accepted. No matter what play they did, he was always the same role. The sacrificial side character. In every play, he would inevitably sacrifice himself at the end so that the main character, always Marcus, and the main character's love interest could escape and live happily ever after. Always. He'd never once been given a role that survived the play, and despite being a better actor and being a better fighter, he'd never once been given the main role. Not even the role as the main villain. Always a side character. Always sacrificed for the main character's happiness.

He turned back to the stairs just as their Troupe's boss, Baku, reached the top of them and started down them. He stepped out of the boss's way, allowing him to pass before waiting to see what play they'd be performing next, and where, as the boss had been called by a rich noble to discuss employment. As the boss stepped down into the light from the torch hanging above the room, Zidane's eyes flicked over him carefully. As the man that had trained them all to fight, he had also fought against them from time to time to test their progress. He stood more than double Zidane's height, his head almost brushing the ceiling, and was a master of every weapon they wielded, including several he'd never bothered to teach them to wield. He had a bushy purple beard, a bat nose and ears as the result of a mutagenic venom from a rare monster, thick purple hair on the backs of his forearms and his shins, grey boots with orange toes, leather belts around his wrists like bracelets, green shorts with brown straps around the legs, a button-up white shirt, a brown leather vest over it, a leather cap, goggles, and a thick leather belt around his waist to hold his scimitar at his side.

"Good, you're all here," Baku said.

"Not all of us," Marcus said. "We're missing Ruby."

"She's not coming this time," Baku said. "Now, listen carefully. I've trained you since you all joined so that you could defend yourselves from monsters. However, this time, it won't be just monsters you'll be defending yourself from."

"What do you mean?" Zidane asked.

"We've been paid a pretty penny to kidnap the princess of Alexandria," Baku said.

"What?" Blank asked.

"But we're not mercenaries!" Marcus argued. "We're actors!"

"And this time, the performance that we'll be selling is that actors is the only thing we are," Baku said. "Listen carefully. While we have everyone, including the queen, distracted by the play, two of you whose characters are missing for the majority of the play will sneak into the castle and kidnap the princess."

"Sir, can I be the lead role this time?" Zidane asked. "You said you'd consider it, and since I'm better at acting than Marcus, I could keep the crowd distracted more easily than him."

"No," Baku said. "I considered it, but no. You're not lead role material. Marcus will do it. Blank will be in charge of kidnapping the princess, and you'll be assisting him and doing whatever he says. Don't get him caught."

Zidane opened his mouth to defend himself, but closed it again, knowing nothing he said would make a difference.

Baku nodded. "Go and get your things ready. The trip there won't be difficult, but be ready for a fight. If things go sideways, we'll be in for it."

Everyone nodded and scattered to gather their things.

"You want to what?" Alexandria's queen, Brahne, demanded.

She was grotesquely fat, her face was so heavily powdered that it had been left as white as snow, and her voice was all but ringing with outrage at being asked a favor, strange as the favor may be, by an acting troupe.

"To borrow fifty of your knights, your majesty," Baku repeated. "They won't need to go all out, as any of your knights doing so would obviously ruin the play from how quickly they would destroy us, and of course, they'll be given unmarked armor so that they won't accidentally shame your kingdom, but surely you have some knights to spare."

Brahne began to swell with rage, only to pause, then smirk. "Yes, I have some you can use. But I'm only going to be giving you nine, one of them being the commander of the other eight."

"We can make it work," Baku bowed. "We humbly thank you for your generosity, your magnificence."

Brahne summoned the nine knights, one of which was a large, powerfully-built man with a rather dull expression, and the other eight all tripping over each other. Zidane rolled his eyes. This unit was the most incompetent unit under her rule. That's why she allowed only them to go. She told them they'd be assisting with the play, and the knights all bowed before following Baku, Zidane, and Marcus back to where the stage was being set up. Zidane, being the role that would be facing the supposed army of enemy knights, led them on stage to where there was a strip like a conveyor belt.

"One of our backstage assistants will be turning a crank to move this," Zidane explained to them, stomping on the ground twice to tell them to demonstrate, the knights all nodding as the conveyor belt moved toward the side of the stage, where anything on it would be deposited behind the curtain. "For the main part that all of you have to worry about, save for a few lines of your commander, you'll all be rushing at me, and I'll be defeating you as I make my way toward your commander. Now, to start with, I'll be walking on the conveyor belt to make it look like I'm walking, while a background scrolls along beside me. You eight will come charging out one every few seconds, I'll step off, kill the one charging, then continue. Each time one of you goes down, I'll put you on the conveyor, and you'll be transported off stage. Once you are, run back around backstage and be ready to come on stage again. I have to beat forty-five of you, then five will enter with your commander, only for him to order you to allow him to handle it. At which point, the conveyor and background will stop, and we'll move on to the next fight. Once that happens..."

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