Disclaimer- Dissidia and all its characters belong to Square Enix


"Princess… Wilt thou be happy, married to a lowly peasant such as I?"

"Uhh, sorry but I'm not a princess."

Startled, I quickly looked up to see him, smiling and trying not to laugh at me for calling him a princess. "Not sparring with the others today?"

"Nah, I got tired of it," and he took a seat next to me.

Lately, everyone had been sparring with each other during our free time. Which was understandable, since that was one thing all of us had in common. Other than that, there didn't seem to be another activity that we knew and could participate in.

"So what exactly were you saying before?" He turned to look at me, still smiling.

"They're lines from a play, called I Want to Be Your Canary."

"Plays have lines? And what's a kuhn-eary?"

I looked at him with wide eyes. "Haven't you ever seen a play before?"

He scratched his head. "You mean plays in a game? Like how we make formations for offense and defense?"

I was completely lost by what he said. "What?"

He put his chin in his hand. "What play are you talking about?"

"Plays, when stories from books are acted out by people in front of an audience."

He shook his head. "So you performed in lots of plays back in your world?"

I nodded. "That's what my friends and I did for a living, along with some thieving." He gave my arm a light punch; he thought it wasn't right to steal from people, even if the people we stole from were mostly pompous jerks. "But I really do miss it, acting with other people. For a little bit, you become a totally different person, like a knight in shining armor, or an evil king, roles like that. It's exciting."

"It sounds interesting."

"It is, especially for real shows, not just during practice. You get ready to perform, in front of a large group of people, and you start to get a bit nervous and jittery."

He nodded. "Yeah, and sometimes you get a funny feeling in your stomach."

My voice started to get a bit louder. "Uh-huh. And then finally when it starts, everyone's real quiet and just watching you."

He sat up straighter. "And when something exciting happens, like a fight, everyone starts to get more pumped."

We were both speaking faster and faster. "Yeah! And when you nail a line or pull off a crazy stunt, everyone's standing and cheering for you."

"And at the end, when you win, you just have a huge adrenaline rush and you feel like you're on top of the world." He pumped his fists into the air and fell to the ground, lying with his arms splayed out.

We sat in silence, imagining crowds of people smiling and cheering for us. After a while, I turned to look at him. "What is the name of the game you play?"

He sat up again. "Blitzball. It's a game you play underwater. I use a blitzball when I fight sometimes."

"Oh, so that's the weird bumpy ball you're throwing around." He nodded. "You must be crazy about the game, since you adapted it into your fighting style." I grinned.

"You can bring your acting into fighting too. Before you attack, you can say lines from plays, kinda like what your brother does." He laughed as I made retching noises.

He started talking again after we calmed down. "I really don't wanna give up blitzball while we're here, even if I have no one to play against. It's the only thing I have that reminds me of home. Well, I have my sword too, but blitzball reminds me of home home." He scratched his head. "Does that sound weird?"

I shook my head. "Nah, I think I know what you mean." I swished my tail around a bit. "I think it's nice you have something other than fighting that you really care about."

"Really? How come?"

I shrugged. "I mean, you're passionate about something other than fighting. Squall has his card game, but he only plays that occasionally, and he makes it sound like a chore, collecting all the different kinds of cards. Cloud said he played in a game center, but he also said he spent most of his time in the game center's fighting arena. And everyone else said they were in a war or heading towards the end of the world to worry about anything else other than fighting." I blew my bangs out of my face. "I dunno, maybe I'm just homesick."

"Hmm." He got up and stretched. "When you go back home, you can get your friends together and put on hundreds of shows, one right after another, until you get sick of it."

"Haha, maybe I will." I beamed up at him. "And when you go back, you can play in all the blitzball games you want until you feel so tired, your body feels like goo."

"I'd like that, if they'd let me go back."

"You said you were a star player right? Of course they'll take you back."

He smiled a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "We'll see what happens."

I stood up and gave him a reassuring pat on his back. We saw everyone start to come back towards camp, and we started heading back to camp as well.

"By the way," he stopped by his tent, feeling around for something, "check out this new move I thought of and see if it's okay or not." He held something in his hand and started to wind up for a powerful kick. And before I could warn him, he had kicked away a Moogle doll that Terra had asked him to watch for safekeeping. He spent the following moments running away from an angry and transformed Terra, while I stood there and broke down laughing.

Some people would think it foolish that he tries to play a ball game while fighting; some might think that his fixation for the game is childish. But I didn't think so at all.

I found it admirable that he was so passionate about something that he would give his all to it.