And it continues. Hello regulars. Hello newcomers. Let us all get along and make fictional characters suffer.

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CHAPTER 001: BEWARE OF REDHEAD

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The spokes on his bicycle whirred and clicked as he pedaled along lazily. The nearly empty backpack Hayley had pushed on him felt uncomfortable, his back already sweating from the summer heat and making his t-shirt stick. At least the breeze on his face felt good.

It hadn't been a very good day to start with. Not with a shrilly ringing phone waking him up at six am. And the fact that it was his father calling to let them know that the trip he was on with their mother had been extended, so could Chase please cancel his weekend plans in order to look after Hayley? Yeah, that made it so much better.

Not like Hayley couldn't look after herself. She could and did cook, certainly better than Chase did, and even did all her chores with little fuss. The problem was there was no telling what she'd get up to when left to her own devices.

Once when she'd been left alone for just a few days she'd painted the dining room black and added constellations. Which, in a way, was pretty amazing. Their parents actually considered leaving it alone. In the end they hired a professional to paint over it again since it made dinner guests feel uncomfortably like they were in a planetarium and couldn't speak louder than a whisper.

Then there was that time he'd come home from a hunting trip with Jerry and his uncle, and found out she'd somehow gotten hold of a coffin. She was keeping it in her room, and they'd yet to figure out how she'd gotten it home and up the stairs without anyone noticing. Chase had been the one who had to get rid of it, while Hayley shrieked at him the whole time. Not his fault mom and dad were horrified at the thought of one of their kids sleeping in a coffin...

And now she'd practically chased him out of the house with orders to go on a scavenger hunt. Again. In the bag, apparently, was a list of things she wanted him to find in the woods outside town. Because 'you spend all your time playing survivor in there with Jerry anyway. Finding it should be easy!' He didn't even want to know why she wanted holly branches and mushrooms and whatever it was this time...

Any wonder why he questioned whether one of them might be adopted?

Well, he was coming up on one of the wood's biking trails, so at least he could do her insane bidding in the shade. Rubber tires screeched slightly as they dug furrows into the dirt path. Letting the bike drop onto a bed of old pine needles, since its kickstand had snapped off the week before, he slung the bag off his shoulder and undid the zip. Chase couldn't help but grin wryly when he saw what was already in the bag.

Hayley had made him lunch. There was a couple of sandwiches wrapped up in saran, an apple, a ziploc bag with the oatmeal cookies she'd made the other day, and a water bottle.

"Fine, fine, I'll forgive you for being the weirdest little sister this time," he snickered as he fished out a folded piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook. Under it he saw something else that made him roll his eyes.

There was a small purple velvet bag, with an embossed tiger, which he knew to be Hayley's 'Good Luck Holder'. She'd made herself out of some of the fabric scraps their mom had given her, left over from work. Whatever she'd put in it was a mystery, since she'd been secretive about the whole proceeding and then sewn it shut.

He wondered why she'd put it in his bag... Maybe she was planning on coming herself, and then just forgot to take it back out? He shrugged. Whatever, I'll just give it back once I get home. With that settled, he unfolded the paper and glanced over the list. And then reread it, thinking he must have made a mistake.

elm bark

crow feathers

yarrow root

blood root

thyme

bones of any small animals you find

"What the hell? Do these things even grow here?" Sure, there were elm trees, but what the hell was 'yarrow' and 'blood root'? Maybe Hayley just assumed they were here and that he'd know how to find them. Which he didn't, and had no clue what they'd even look like.

And if you find anything suspicious like ruins or fairy circles or anything, you have to show me later!

As if there'd be something like that here. People were in these woods camping and hunting small game all the time, they'd have noticed something like ruins. There weren't even any rotting old abandoned sheds around. And he had no idea what she meant by a 'fairy circle'.

"Gah..." Chase ran a hand through his sandy brown hair, lifting it off the back of his sweating neck. "Whatever, I'll find the easy stuff and go back." It couldn't be hard to find some Elms and feathers, right?

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Harder than he'd thought.

He found some elms eventually, but discovered it was harder to get some bark than it sounded. There wasn't any conveniently lying loose on the ground (he'd hoped) and he was reluctant to try and strip it off the trunk. Wasn't that supposed to be bad for the tree? But when he actually tried to pry some of it off it stuck harder than he expected and got his hands smeared in sap.

As for the feathers, there were probably loads of them around. He just couldn't see any of them for the leaves and vines in the way.

And thankfully he hadn't found any animal bones. If he did he'd have to decide which was the lesser evil, lying to his little sister (who somehow had a knack for finding out anyway) or actually bringing them back.

Chase finally managed to find one crow's feather stuck in a thorn bush. Shoulder deep into its branches, he was trying to extricate it without getting his hands and arms too cut up. Just a little further...

Tching~

A bell chimed. It sounded like it was right behind him. Chase blinked and turned to look over his shoulder. There was nothing there. Huh. He shrugged and winced as a thorn dug into his bicep.

Tchiing~

"Weird." Hearing it again he looked around in bafflement. "It's...in my bag?" Removing his arm from the thorns, he slung the bag off and unzipped it.

Tchiiing~

It was definitely in his bag. In fact, it seemed to Chase that it had come from Hayley's hand made luck holder. He pulled it out and stared at the purple velvet in his hand. What did she put in here?

TCHIIING~

Startled by how loud the ringing was the last time, his hand jerked and the pouch dropped to the ground. A cool breeze that carried a damp, earthy smell ruffled his hair without disturbing any of the trees or bushes that he could see. A cloud passed over the sun and the light suddenly got dimmer...

-No. It only got dark in one spot, like the reverse effect of a single sunbeam through a mass of clouds. The dark spot focused entirely on the bag sitting in the dirt and grass, and as he watched with disbelieving eyes it got darker and darker until it seemed to take on solid form.

Chase rubbed at his eyes, as if it were just something the wind had blown in them and he could swipe it away. But when he lowered his arm not only was it not gone, but there was now a man standing right in front of him.

What the hell? This guy a reject from a Shakespeare play?

The man had vivid red hair, a rare shade to find naturally but not one of those obvious jobs done from a bottle. And he had a pair of glasses that looked more like a fashion statement than necessity. But he was dressed in what Chase recognized as deerskin and what may have actually been real green silk. And boots, no Renaissance enthusiast would be complete without the proper boots.

Wait, where did he come from?

"Hmm," the strange man rubbed his chin and looked Chase over, from head to sandaled foot. "You don't appear to be a girl."

"I would hope not," Chase said before thinking. "Be one messed up case of identity crisis if I actually was." Weirdo.

But the man didn't seem to be paying attention to him anymore. Instead he'd knelt down to the on one knee and scooped up the velvet bag. "This should be..." with a sharp jerk he popped the stitches and opened it.

"Hey!" Chase protested, reaching down to snatch it out of the guy's hands. "What are you doing? That's my sister's!" His hand brushed velvet, but didn't close on the bag like he'd expected it to. The man wasn't even kneeling before him anymore. "What?"

"Your sister's! That explains it," Chase whirled, shocked to find the man standing to the side.

"How did you...?"

The man still acted as if he didn't even notice Chase's existence, though he'd clearly heard him just fine. He upended the velvet pouch so its contents fell out onto his hand with a jingle. A pair of small, brass bells gleamed in his palm, and tangled around them was the antler tip necklace Chase had thought he'd lost. Dammit, why do little sisters have to steal things?

"Well, this wasn't expected. They're no longer hers..." the redhead murmured. "They've been given, and now they're yours." He dropped the items back into the velvet bag and tossed it over a shoulder in Chase's direction. Chase barely managed to catch them before they fell on the forest floor again. "Minor setback."

"What are you talking about? What do you want with my sister?" Chase asked suspiciously while tucking the pouch safely back into the backpack. He had no clue what this was all about, but he knew for sure he didn't like a weirdo like this taking an interest in his Hayley.

"Hmm?" the redhead looked back at Chase again finally, a patronizing smile on his lips. "Don't worry, it doesn't need to concern you. I'll just be on my way," he raised a hand, fingers poised with thumb to middle finger, "to find the young miss."

If there'd been room for thought in his head at the moment, Chase would have acknowledged that what he did was pretty stupid and probably wouldn't have done it. But there wasn't any time for something as unnecessary as thinking, and he reacted out of an instinctive need to protect his family from a perceived danger.

He tackled the redhead just as the snap of fingers rang out crisp through the air.

Not the dumbest thing I've ever done, and that doesn't speak very well for me, but probably the most life changing.

But in all honesty? I don't regret it. Because the alternative would leave me living with guilt the rest of my life. It's pretty safe to say that everything that happened after that, I chose to do for my sister.

Brat better appreciate it.

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My regulars know already that I like to add my original plot, and not just jump right into the game's story right off the bat. Patience, and we'll have the stars of Final Fantasy joining the fun all in good time.

Uh, by the way? The thing with Hayley's list? I tried looking up all sorts of things online for what an impressionable teenage girl who likes the occult might have been interested in, and couldn't find anything that really seemed...reliable. So I decided she's an ignorant teenage girl who likes the occult but doesn't know squat, and wouldn't mind any advice on that sort of thing from reliable sources.