Authors Notes: This story is told from two different points of view- Stripes' and Ramens'. The top of each Chapter will tell you who is speaking.

Disclaimer: I Own Nothing

Stripes

I dug through a box of old fabric. "It was in here somewhere…"

"Stripes, are you sure it's in there?" That was Ramen, my best friend.

I had started my day calling Ramen over to my house. We had decided to create costumes of some of our characters we had made up. We where just putting the finishing touches on our costumes and they where looking great!

"Of course I'm sure! I remember thinking I was gonna throw it out!" I said.

"That's… reassuring." Ramen sighed.

"A-ha!" I called. I was halfway inside the huge box, and I had found what I was looking for. I help up a small brown pouch. "Found it!"

"Cool." said Ramen.

"I shifted my weight to get out of the box. Left, right, left… right…. Left… "Ramen… help?"

Ramen laughed a bit, and I heard her get up off my bed. "You're pathetic." She giggled, and grabbed my waist. She gave me a tug, and the entire box toppled over,

"Waah!" I yelped. I shook some scraps of fabric off my head, and glared at Ramen. "You are even more pathetic."

Unfortunately, Ramen knew the one thing she could do to stop my glaring. My one weakness was my favorite character from my favorite videogame.

"Oh." She smiled devilishly. "I just remembered a picture I found on D.A. It was of Kratos without a shirt on!"

Oh noes! My face turned red, and hot. It got hot so fast that my face was practically burning under my skin. "Augh… crap!" Then came the build up of air in my lungs. Somehow, the oxygen in my lungs expanded until I couldn't help it- I had to scream! I knew I would anger the neighbors if I made too much noise, so I ran and grabbed the silk-covered pillow from my bed.

I pressed the cool material to my face. It felt good, soothing the burning flames. From there, it was simple: scream into the pillow, and beg Ramen to make it stop. "Waaaai! I'm sorry! I'm sor- Waaaai!"

Ramen got a good laugh, but she finally set me best way to do that is to use my most hater character in Tales of Symphonia, my favorite video game. "Zelos in a speedo" she said.

"Ugh! Eww!" I yelled, but my face cooled, and my breathing returned to normal. I sighed.

"You're evil Rame,n. You really could kill me like that. You have no clue how possible that really is!"

"Don't worry." said Ramen. "I wouldn't let that happen."

I dared to glare again. "Really?" I growled. We glared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

"Come on." I said when we had calmed down. "Let's finish up these costumes and try them on!"

*~*~*

I spun in front of my mirror. "They're perfect! We really do look just like out characters!" I hopped up and down a few times. "I even found that old blue yo-yo, and my dads dagger!"

"Yeah! And I've perfected my home-made slingshot!" said Ramen. "We really have every detail in order, everything!"

I smiled. "We're awesome!"

Ramen laughed. "Yeah! Hey, let's have some celebration music! We can listen to this new ipod thing. It's called an I-ToS, and it has all the Tales of Symphonia battle music and theme songs. It even has applications like character quotes and pictures of costume designs and how to draws programmed into it. Whoever made this must have really loved the game. Even more than us!"

My heart skipped a beat. "Is there a baby Lloyd how-to-draw?!"

"I'm not sure, I haven't even turned it on yet. I was waiting to show it to you."

"Awesome!" I said, reaching for her bag. "Where is it?"

"Hey, don't just go through my stuff!"

Ignoring Ramens' words I pulled out a small, white object- an ipod themed after ToS. Looking over it, I noticed it didn't have the Apple corporation logo anywhere on it.

"I got the newest model, too. Speakers, headphones, recording function, and a touch screen!"

"Wow…" I breathed, running my fingers over the smooth surface, until I found something strange at the bottom. It looked like an exsphere with a tear-shaped key-crest. "Huh? What's this?"

"What does it look like?" smiled Ramen.

"Well, and exsphere."

"And what is an exsphere…?"

"A power source?"

"Exactly!" she said. She reached over and held onto the I-ToS with her left hand, and she poked the exsphere with her right. "Power button!"

The exsphere lit up with a cool blue light. "Oh, cool-ness!" I smiled, but the light got bigger and brighter. I squinted my eyes, but the light continued growing until I had to squeeze my eyes shut tight. Even then the light hurt my eyes. I wondered faintly if this light would just swallow me up, and make me disappear.

This is… What the hell? It won't go away!

After what seemed like an eternity, a strange weightless feeling came over me, and the light finally faded. I felt like I was floating. My bed had disappeared from under me, that was for sure.

I guess I should upen my eyes… But I suddenly fell on something cold and hard.

"Ow!" my eyes flew open.

"Oww…!" grunted Ramen, beside me.

I looked around. Definitely not my room.The walls where all tan and brown, and the room was circular with a huge platform in the middle and something glowing in the middle of that. There was a strange glowing blue circle on the other side of the room, there was another strange object spinning inside of that.

The I-ToS was floating in the air between Ramen and I. It still glowed faintly, and when the glow finally disappeared completely, the I-ToS fell. Neither me, nor Ramen, had very quick reflexes and we where both a bit dazed and confused, so the I-ToS landed on the floor between us with a quite un-heroic ker-CHUNK.

I finally realized where we were. I can't say I understood, because I didn't think I could understand anything at that point, but I did know where we were.

"Ramen-chan…" I whispered. It seemed too quiet, like you shouldn't make a sound or you'll break something. "Do you know where we are?"

"Uh, aren't we in one of those rooms you described to me out of ToS…?" she asked.

I nodded. "The… Martel Temple… The one in Iselia."

"How is that even possible?"

"I don't think it is." I replied.

"Huh…? But, we're here so…"

"I don't think how we got here is the question. We should focus on how to get back. Wait, let me think for a second." I stood up and began pacing. "Colette's Cruxis Crystal is still here, so no one has come in here yet. We could take the warp circle back, but the door will be sealed."

"Sealed?!" Ramen screeched. "As is, we can't get out?!"

"Calm down, will you?" I sighed. I knew I should be panicking, but I was very calm for some reason. That calmness gave me a tiny ray of hope.

Maybe I know how to get out. I just have to think.

"Oh! The Sorcerers' Ring!"

As soon as the words where out, the screen on the I-ToS lit up. But luckily it was in a normal way this time.

"Huh…?" wondered Ramen. She picked up the I-ToS and started pressing buttons. I wasn't good with technology, so I just kept thinking.

"But wait… we can't get to the Sorcerers' Ring"

"Ahh!" Ramen yelped, and a tiny fireball flew out of the I-ToS towards me! I jumped out of the way just in time. The fireball flew right passed me.

"Waah! Ramen, are you trying to kill me?!"

"Sorry." Ramen shrugged.

Suddenly, the little lightbulb in my head clicked on. "Ramen, which button did you press?" I asked.

"This one." She replied pushing the same button as before.

"Waah!" I jumped out of the way again. "Ramen!" I growled.

"Oops."

I sighed, "Show me!" I walked over to her and she pointed to a button. I snatched the I-ToS from her. "Come." I smiled, holding out my hand to help her up. "We need to get out of here."

Ramen nodded and took my hand. "So how the hell do we get out?"

"The I-ToS works just like the Sorcerers' Ring. We'll use it to break the seal on the door, and then leave. From there we can figure out everything else."

"Alright." Ramen smiled. "Let's go.

We stepped onto the warp circle, and we appeared in front of the sealed door. "As I thought." I smirked. I pointed the I-ToS at the seal, and pressed the button Ramen had indicated. A tiny fireball hit it and the door opened. "Heh heh. Admit it, I'm awesome!"

Ramen sighed. "You're awesome… I found the button though."

Ignoring her last comment, I walked down the steps. "Hmm… I wonder if the front door will be open…"

"What?!" Ramen demanded.

I laughed. "Don't worry, the priests come by every once and a while."

"Wh… wh… huh?" she panicked.

I laughed even harder. "Hehe, don't worry! I'm just joking!"

Ramen didn't calm down until we where out the door. It was much more beautiful than the game had ever given credit for. The long green grass flowed in the wind like and ocean of green. A short way off, a boy in red was rolling in the grass, playing with a green and white creature. I'd know that dog anywhere!

"Noishe!" I yelled. The boy and the dog looked up in unison. "Ramen, it's Noishe!" I jumped off the side of the steps and I ran through the ankle high grass. I hugged Noishe around the neck, and I scratched behind his ears. "Noishe!" I smiled.

"Who are you?" wondered the boy. He has a flashy red costume with a crap-load of white buttons. His brown hair was spiked up, and he definitely had his father's eyes.

"Lloyd!"

And so it begins.

When Stripes and I were brain-storming on how it would begin I came up with the idea of a mp3 player. To keep the rules of I'm going to abridge this story a bit and edit it so that it doesn't have any actual lyrics but I will get something set up so that you all can see the original story.

I-ToS: A Mary Sue's best friend.