"Yuffie! Yuffie! Wake up!" Chu-Chu shook her friend urgently.

Yuffie rolled over in bed and blinked a few times. "Gawd, is it morning already?" She tried to recall where she been doing last night that had left her so exhausted. Drunken partying? Wild one-night stand? Online gaming marathon? Everyone hated her and thought she was ugly, so it had to be that last one. "I must have been playing ChuChu Rocket! too long... ohmigawd! I just remembered! I totally beat <=¤m3g@=f£å®ê666=> and _prometheus! They're, like, the champions at ChuChu Rocket!"

Chu-Chu completely ignored her. "Yuffie, we've got our para-magic test in ten minutes and chu already missed homeroom!"

"Gawd, I'm coming, okay?" Yuffie mumbled. "You go on without me; I don't think I can make it." She coughed weakly, or perhaps just sleepily. "I'll only slow you down."

Chu-Chu frowned. "Okay, but don't chu be late!" She hefted her tiny Gap Kids backpack onto her shoulders and pattered out the door with her hindpaws in a blur.

Yuffie rolled back onto her side and closed one eye. The other remained half-open and fixed on the all-powerful clock on the bedside table, which was now nowhere near the bed. She quickly rationalized how many more minutes of rest she could squeeze out -- because, dammit, every minute spent lying in bed was a good minute. Through careful training and planning, she'd gotten her getting-dressed-and-halfway-presentable time down to a mere four minutes. Of course, no one really could fault her for showing up a couple of minutes late, she really had two more minutes to get to class. And since everyone would already be in class by the time she left her room, the halls wouldn't be in the least bit crowded, and she could make it from her dorm room to the classroom in just a minute. That left seven glorious minutes of rest, a whole 420 seconds! Yuffie sighed with content and curled up to enjoy them.

Those 420 blissful seconds consumed themselves all too quickly. As soon as the ominous digits shifted to form "7:57," Yuffie rolled out of bed, hit the ground running, and charged into the shower. Yuffie grabbed the waiting bucket of water, dumped it over her head, and ran back out of the shower. She snatched up the towel with one hand while the other hand to shove a toothbrush into her mouth. Yuffie rolled the toothbrush around with her tongue while toweling herself with one hand and combing her hair with the other. After engaging in this peculiar ritual for about forty-five seconds, Yuffie dropped the towel and comb, spat out the toothbrush, and quickly pulled on her SeeD uniform. She grabbed a bottle of Sunny Delight from the seemingly-endless stash in her dresser, dashed out the door with untied shoelaces streaming behind her, and sprinted down the hall to Edea's classroom.

Still chugging her Sunny D, Yuffie slid into her seat next to Chu-Chu. She set her bottle on top of the study panel and then looked down at the screen, trying to get into test-taking mode.

She saw the first question and immediately panicked. "Complete the following sequence: Fire, Fira, _____." She immediately panicked. Anything could go in that blank! But she could think of the answer, couldn't she? She kind of remembered going over those, like, weird foreign names in class. Maybe she'd remember this one if she thought about it hard enough. She'd come back to it.

Yuffie skimmed the test, looking for something she recognized. Pain? Meltdown? Stock management? Gawd, she didn't know any of this! "Whatever," she muttered. Maybe she could just B.S. this. At least it wasn't an essay test. But ... so many hard questions! How was anyone supposed to know all this? It made her head hurt just thinking about.

She looked up, trying to clear her mind. Then something very strange happened. Seemingly moving by its own accord, the electronic chalkboard suddenly spun around 180 degrees, placing it upside down. Edea's writing disappeared. Some invisible force wrote new text in its place, carefully drawing each letter: "DRICAS H4S J00. CHECK E-MAIL." The chalkboard then turned itself upside down again, erasing the mysterious words.

"Ohmigawd!" Yuffie hissed, shaking Chu-Chu to get her attention. "Dude, Chu-Chu, did you, like, see that?"

Chu-Chu looked up from her test, annoyed both at being interrupted and at the prospect of being suspected of cheating. "See what?"

"The chalkboard. It, like, totally just turned around 'n stuff and there was, like, this message. Gawd, didn't you see it?"

"Yuffie, I think chu are halluchunating. Chu really need to stop staying up all night playing video games."

"Gawd, it was there, I swear!" Yuffie exclaimed. She hesitated for a moment. She really, really wanted to go check her e-mail! If the chalkboard was turning around just to tell her about it, it must be something really cool. But ... the test sort of bound her here. Well, maybe she could just get it over with quickly. She randomly typed in some good, scholarly answers. "The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers." "William Tecumseh Sherman." "The Pythagorean Theorem." "No taxation without representation." Those answers had to be worth something! After all, she obviously sounded like she knew what she was talking about. Then she jumped up. "Um, I really have to go to the bathroom!" Yuffie announced to the class. "Bye!"

Yuffie darted out of the classroom and fled back to her dorm room. She flipped on her computer and sat down to check her e-mail. None too surprisingly, it was filled with dozens of advertisements for naughtyzoo.com and the Ethos' free plastic surgery. Yuffie deleted the latter and forwarded the former to Chu-Chu. She finally located a subject-less message in the middle of her mail, from none other than <=¤m3g@=f£å®ê666=>. "The phone is for you," it read simply.

The phone rang.

"Ohmigawd!" Yuffie exclaimed, and picked it up. "Hello? This is, uh, Yuffie. Kisaragi."

"Congratulations, Yuffie," the girl on the other end said dryly. "You win the all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas and the new dishwasher."

"Wow! That's, like, oh wow," Yuffie said blankly. Yuffie wasn't known for being articulate even in the best of times, and when the day's events had been this confusing, she was about as coherent as Robotrek's storyline.

"Yuffie, this is <=¤m3g@=f£å®ê666=>. I must commend you on your victory last night. We've been waiting for someone to defeat us. The truth is, ChuChu Rocket! was no game at all. It was actually a complicated test designed to select the one person who is a bad enough dude to save humanity. You have passed that test. We need your help, Yuffie. Will you help us save the world?"

Well, she couldn't just refuse to save the world, could she? "Oh, uh, sure. But, um, like, who am I supposed to save humanity from?"

"The Dreamcast," <=¤m3g@=f£å®ê666=> explained. "It's thinking."

* * *

"Doctor Kadowaki told me to tell you that if chu are suffering from incontinence, you shouldn't be embarassed and there's plenty of treatment available," Chu-Chu said as she, Selphie, and Yuffie strolled into the cafeteria for a late lunch.

"No, see, I didn't really have to go to the bathroom. See, it was <=¤m3g@=f£å®ê666=>; she was calling because I beat her in ChuChu Rocket!, right? And she wants to me to, like, save the world or something. She said there's going to be this big army of robots that takes over humanity next month. Seriously; she explained it all to me!"

Well, if someone on the Internet had said it, it must be true! Selphie nodded politely, trying the best to humor her friend. Chu-Chu was right: the poor girl really needed to get some more sleep so she could stop being completely hallucinatory.

They latched onto the back of the long line to the cafeteria counter. Zell's T-board streaked by them, did a U-turn, and stopped beside them. "Hey, guys. Can I get your advice on something?" Before they could say anything, he launched into an explanation. "Okay, I already asked Selphie about this, but, Yuffie and Chu-Chu, I was thinking about starting an online comic and I had a couple ideas for it. Okay, tell me which of these concepts you like best: One, Annoying Melon-Headed Children; Two, College Students Hang Out and Say Witty Things; Three, Boy, Those Windows Users Sure Are Stupid, Aren't They?; Four, Daddy, Look at the Adorable Anthromorphic Woodland Critters!; Five, These Copied-and-Pasted NES Sprites Are Actually An Experiment In Post-ironic Satire, Honest."

"Four!" Chu-Chu said.

"Um, I think two is, like, pretty cool 'n stuff."

Zell made two check marks in a notebook. "Okay, thanks," he said. "I've been having a really tough time deciding. So many good ideas, you know."

"Yeah, and it's a zero-sum game because chu can only choose one!"

"Gawd, Chu-Chu, stop that; it's really annoying."

He put the notebook away, picked up his T-board and hoisted it under his arm, and joined them in line. Yuffie quickly launched back into her exposition. "Anyway, so, like, you know the Dreamcast? Well, it's, like, thinking! It's going to kill us all 'n stuff if I don't stop it."

"That's nice. So, uh, how are you planning to save the world, Yuffie?" Selphie felt a little guilty about leading her friend on like this - especially when she seemd to sincerely believe in all of what she was saying - but the whole situation was just too funny.

"I don't know. She just said to follow the white rabbit. Down the rabbit hole. Like I'm supposed to know what that means. Do you guys have any ideas?"

"Don't chu still have to finish that echunomics assignment for Instructor Trepe's class, that chu didn't turn didn't turn in when it was due? Maybe chu should do that instead."

"But, like, the future is in my hands!"

"Well, let's hope you can live down that 'Butterfingers' nickname then, huh?" Selphie said with an amused smirk.

Yuffie frowned. Her suspicions were continuing to build. "You guys are making fun of me, aren't you? You don't think that I really have to save the world."

They couldn't quite say "No" outright, so they hesitated, searching for more a tactful response that could carry on the joke without requiring them to lie.

Yuffie took the deafening silence for the rebuke it was. "Fine then; I'm not talking to you." She folded her arms and turned away from them.

"I'm late! I'm late!" a high-pitched, childlike voice squeaked from behind Yuffie.

"Ha! You can't make me turn around that easily!"

The white outline of a transparent - not to mention extremely jagged and skinny - rabbit breezed by her, staring at its line-art pocketwatch. "Oh dear, oh dear," it squeaked. It was almost 4:20 and it didn't have any weed!

Yuffie folded her arms tighter. "Okay, however you're doing that, you're still not going to make me look," she announced, continuing to watch the white psuedo-rabbit.

The white rabbit pushed a potted fern aside, revealing a hole in the cafeteria floor. The rabbit dangled its feet into the abyss, lowered itself down with its arms, and then dropped down the rabbit hole.

"...down the rabbit hole. Ohmigawd!" Wasn't that where <=¤m3g@=f£å®ê666=> had told her to go? Yuffie jumped to her feet and ran to the chasm's edge. She peered into the hole, trying to see what lay beyond -- but whatever was down there was too far away to see. Yuffie hesitated briefly, then braced herself and jumped into the rabbit hole.

Except she hadn't thought about her motion sickness beforehand. Oops. Yuffie's stomach did somersaults as the rest of her body did the same. She bit her mouth shut to try keep from throwing up as she tumbled head-over-head down the shaft.

Down, down, down.

"Gaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwd!" Yuffie squealed as she fell head over heels down the shaft. She flailed her arms about wildly, trying to stop her fall, but succeeding only in yanking a bottle off a wall shelf.

Down, down, down.

How long would go on this? Would she hit the bottom before she threw up? What if she kept going and fell right through the earth? She might end up in Esthar, or some place weird. Then she'd be even more confused than usual. Imagine having to ask someone! "Um, like, is this Esthar or Centra or what?" They'd laugh at her, of course, but they always laughed at her.

Down, down, down.

Yuffie blacked out.

* * *

What an eye-opener that manifesto she found on the Web had been. Rinoa looked down the B-Garden, realizing just how much she had been duped by society. Almost everything on here contained ingredients derived from plants. What horrible cruelty! It was a good thing she had read the truth when she had - she felt guilty enough for all the plants she had eaten to date.

Her temper flared again as she looked again at the menu. Why, all these supposedly "safe" vegan meals were nothing more than a ruse by the ruling patriarchy. A few positive-sounding words to disguise their disgusting use of plant products. Starchy roots, blanched plant stems, fermented dairy products, roasted minced muscle in fungal sauce ... she didn't know what half this stuff was, but she was certain it all contained either murdered animals or murdered plants. This was an outrage! Damn The Man!

"Do you have a manager I can speak to? This menu is an outrage and an affront to modern ethics."

The cafeteria lady sighed and disappeared into the back room. Out bounced Quina Quen, all open-mouthed grin and jolly good nature. His tongue lolled about as he hopped up to the counter. "Aroo? We serve what we want. You have problem?"

"Yes, I do," Rinoa snapped. "What's with this 'vegan' bullshit? By serving meals consisting entirely of plant products, you are perpetrating a disgusting system of disenfranchismement and abominable cruelty against the oppressed underclass of species not privileged enough to be born with central nervous systems. Fruit is floracide!"

The harangue did not fluster Quina in the least. He already had the world all figured out; Rinoa's attack did not present any new threat. "Need eat to live! It okay to impose a little on world; world work that way. What you plan to do otherwise?"

"Photosynthesis!" Rinoa declared. "Don't tell me it's impossible. If everyone stood up and refused to support the continued systemic slaughter of chlorophyll-gifted individuals, we could force the privileged power elite into developing human photosynthesis today! Fight the power!"

Quina shrugged. "World never really broken, Rinoa. Why try fix it? Here, have hot doggie. It very tasty." He grabbed a hot dog from the counters behind him and pushed it towards her.

"Hmph. Forget it." Rinoa tossed it in the trash bin across the counter and walked off in a huff.

The next person in line stepped forward. "Hey, can I have two hot dogs?" Zell asked.

Quina hung his head. His face was fixed in a permanent starry-eyed grin, but his droopy features expressed a sudden guilt. "I... so sorry. No hot dog for you. I just give out last one. I could try fish it out of trash?"

"That's, um, not necessary."

But Quina was never one to let good food -- or even bad food -- go to waste. He pushed open the swinging top of the trash bin and tried to stick his spork down it to fish out the hot dog. But the wide bowl of the utensil got stuck in the opening of the trash can. Quina first pushed on it, and, failing that, tried to yank it back out. The spork, however, remained stuck. "Uh-oh. My spoon too big."

Selphie and Zell were watching this spectacle with what began as a sick fascination but was turning quickly into a desire to simply get their food and wash their hands of this mess. (Chu-Chu, of course, was not watching anything; she couldn't see over the counter.) "Hey, can we, uh, just have some ice cream?" Zell asked.

"Yeah, I'll have two scoops of Carob Crunch!"

Quina, however, had bigger problems now. He gripped his fork with both hands and gave it a mighty tongue. The garbage can, sealed to the floor, was ripped right off it. Quina tumbled backwards and landed on his back; the garbage can went flying into the air and spewed its contents all over the floor.

"Um, on second thought, I think we'll go to Choco Bell instead." Selphie's party turned away from the counter and walked out of the line. So much for that idea. Many of the other students who had been close enough to witness the whole affair followed them. It didn't seem like they'd be getting any normal service here any time soon.

But this was not over yet. Quina's eyes quickly scanned the pile of trash and quickly located what he was looking for. He snatched it up and shook off the gum and banana peel. Good as new! He sprung to his feet and took off after Selphie and Zell. "Wait! Wait! I find hot doggie!"

* * *

Yuffie's impact with a rock floor jolted her back to consciousness. She opened her eyes to find herself in something resembling a domed cavern. It would have been a domed cavern, in fact, except that like the rabbit she had been chasing, it was just a white outline defining solid black walls. Curiouser and curiouser!

Yuffie crawled painfully to her feet as the white rabbit dashed by her, squeaking, "Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" It wriggled into a hole in the other side of the cavern, compacting its line art body to squeeze through.

"Gawd, wait! Like, come back!" Yuffie ran to the hole and knelt to peer through it. It was only about two feet high, so she had no hope of fitting through, but maybe she could attract the attention of the rabbit somehow. She reached down to stick her hand into the hole and screamed.

Her arm was just a white line.

Compelled by an awful fear, Yuffie looked down only to discover that that her fear was justified. It was not just her arm; her whole body had been turned into an incredibly simplistic white drawing, just like the rabbit she had been chasing. Gawd. How had something like this happened? What could she do about it? She couldn't imagine trying to explain this to her friends or get any help. "Selphie, I've been turned into a stick figure!" "Should I call the modeling agency?" She'd never heard of any affliction like this before. She wasn't even sure how something like this could happen. Was it a virus, or some rare genetic disorder that had laid dormant until now? Maybe she had hit her head in the fall and was now having a bad dream.

A line-art boulder rolled aside and a line-art man in a flashy line-art suit poked his line-art head out of the line-art hole below. "Snootches bootches," he said in greeting. "Hey... wait un momento, you're not xwhiterabbitx."

"Uh, he just, like, went through that hole over there." Yuffie pointed. "I think."

"He's off schedule again," the line-art man sighed. "Thanks anyway, muchacha. Now you can tell all your amigos you got to see the one and only Big Joe... or were you here for los goods too?"

"The goods?" Yuffie said. "You mean ISOs? Um, do you have the Office XP installs?"

"Installs? Que pasa, amiga? We're talking about the goods here... the stuff! Do you want the hook-up or not? I have all the crack that tu quieres."

"Cracks? Well, I normally do ISOs, but sure. Here's my business card. I'm l1ckw1d1c3 from ALBiNOiSO; I used to be just `w4ter, but that nick sucked." Yuffie handed Big Joe her business card as Joe gave her some mushrooms in return.

Big Joe waved. "Pleasure doing business with you, señorita. Say, are you single?"

"Ewwww, grossness!" Yuffie shrieked. "Go away!"

"Ah, que mala suerte. Hasta luego." Big Joe disappeared back down his hole.

Free from the need to carry on conversation, Yuffie quickly reverted back to her usual perplexed lethargy. "Gawd, why did he give me this mushroom? Oh, I bet he hid a CD in here or something. Pretty clever." She took a tenative bite into the mushroom. A blooping sound came out of nowhere and Yuffie immediately began to grow. Ack! Everything was getting smaller and she was getting bigger. She covered her head and pushed down, hoping to somehow push her expanding body back down to normal size. So much for that Calvin Klein job.

Her head smashed through the cave roof as she continued growing. Shortly thereafter, however, she realized that the ground was not getting any further away. She had stopped growing. But, ugh, she was still as big as Billy Corgan's ego. Gawd, everything keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. This must be what is like for Chu-Chu when she's in her giant mode. Feeling even more awkward and clumsy than usual, she pulled herself out of the hole and looked around.

Before her lay a vast sprawl of line-art hills. Gawd, it was all black-and-white out here too. What was going on? Where was she? Where in the world was she? Where was Garden? Gawd, she wished she was back in her room taking a nap. Saving the world could wait, couldn't it? Especially if it entailed meandering around and fighting lots of repeating monsters, as it so often seemed to entail.

"Egads! A giant!" Someone cried from somewhere in the vicinity of her left foot. Yuffie looked down and squinted to make out the speaker. A heavyset man in clunky armor sat astride a chocobe galloping towards her. The chocobo came to a sudden stop and the man toppled off headfirst. He scrambled to his feet and jumped back to his steed. "Fie! Have at you, monster!" The knight thrust his sword into Yuffie's shoe. The blade got stuck halfway through, forcing the man to jump up on the shoe and try to force it in the rest of the way. He gripped the hilt with both hands and rocked it back and forth, burrowing through her shoe.

"Gawd, stop that!" Yuffie shouted. Her voice came out as a thunderous roar. She would have just moved her foot and shaken the knight off, but she didn't want to hurt him. If only people would leave her alone!

The knight finally forced his sword through Yuffie's sock. As soon as the blade made contact with her skin - it felt like a pin prick - she heard another blooping sound and started to shrink. Her assailant sprang back in time to avoid being hit by Yuffie's descending elbow.

Whew, at least I'm normal size again. But the knight was now pointing his sword right in her face. "What foul devilry is this, fiendish witch? You were manyfold times as tall a moment ago!"

Yuffie raised her hands, pleading innocence. "Gawd, I don't know! I just ate this mushroom and it made me get that big! I don't even know where I am, or why everything's black and white! Look, if I was going to hurt you, I would have just stepped on you. Gawd."

The knight couldn't argue with that point. "Right ho." He lowered his sword and saluted. "Captain Adelbert Steiner of the Knights of Pluto at your service, madam! I am in search of our young queen, who has vanished from our palace! I fear she may have been kidnapped by scoundrels. Perhaps you may have seen her; here is her portrait from Beatrix's magic-picture box." He handed Yuffie a photograph of a young woman with long black hair.

Oh, it's Rinoa Heartilly, thought Yuffie. Gawd, I didn't know she was royalty. "Er, yeah, she lives in Balamb; she works as a secretary at B-Garden." "Great Scott!" Steiner was astounded; he had not expected this licentious tramp to have any useful information. "Forced into slave labor! I would never have expected such treachery! I must be on my way at once! The Kingdom of Alexandria is deeply indebted to you for your assistance! Simply name your desire and we will provide for you!"

"Uh, yeah, sure; thanks."

Steiner sprung back on his chocobo and gave the reins a mighty shake. The chocobo took off and promptly threw Steiner onto his face again. Gawd.

Yuffie ventured down the hill. Well, she'd totally lost track of the white rabbit now. But she had to go somewhere - they still wanted her to save the world and, besides, she had no idea how to get back to Garden. It was like Barret always said - there wasn't no gettin' offa this train she was on. She started walking straight ahead through the hills. She was unimaginative like that, and, besides, it made it easier for her to find her way back.

She eventually stumbled across Cait Sith seated at a card table surrounded by books. It took her a moment to recognize him; he too had been reduced to a stick-figure caricature of himself. But the crown, the little boots, the cape, and the air of tactless superiority were unmistakable.

"Hey! Hey! Hey you! Ugly girl!" Cait Sith said, hopping up on the table and grabbing Yuffie's shoulder. "I bet you want to buy a copy of my new autobiography, The Legend of Cait Sith Gets Some."

Yuffie stopped and stared at her archnemesis. "Gawd, why would I want a copy of your autobiography?" she demanded.

Cait Sith held up a copy of his autobiography and tapped its cover. "It's action-packed!" he asserted. "I become the world's youngest Olympic gold medalist at the age of 6, lead a passive resistance movement for India's independence and win the Nobel Peace Prize, thwart a guerrilla uprising by the Nation of Texas, build my own stealth bomber and fight in the Gulf War, save humanity from a deadly virus, and get elected King of the Espers by unanimous vote. And then I marry Luna and we have two beautiful children named Nathaniel and Superfly!"

"Um, I don't believe you that any of that stuff, like, actually happened," Yuffie said levelly.

"Well, of course not," Cait admitted. "But who would want to read about reality? Here, come on, give it a look." He forced a copy of the book into Yuffie's hands. Yuffie idly thumbed through the volume. "What-EVER. I can't believe you'd, like, write stuff that didn't even happen to you."

"Dude, I didn't write this," Cait Sith said, shocked that Yuffie would even suggest such a thing. "What, you think I'm gonna sit down and write a 300-page book?"

"But I thought you said this was your autobiography."

"Well, yeah," Cait admitted. He reached up, forced Yuffie's copy of the book closed, and pointed at the cover. "But it's written by me, 'with' Michael Crichton. Basically, he did all the work while I watched Sailor Moon, but here I am, getting paid. It's pretty cool. And then I've got a sequel coming out in a few months that I'm writing with Tom Clancy, Cait Sith Joins Rainbow Six. This is gonna be the biggest thing since Harry Potter, baby."

Yuffie handed the book back to Cait Sith. "Uh, no thanks. I don't want one," she said.

"These are on sale, dude!" Cait enthused. "Normally they're 12 bucks, but now you can buy one at double the normal price and get a second copy free! I'm cuttin' me own throat!"

"Gawd, I said I don't want one, okay?" Yuffie repeated.

"You're crazy! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a copy of the book personally autographed by me!" Cait exclaimed. "If you buy my book, I promise to leave you alone for the rest of the day!"

"Dude, you are, like, totally harassing me 'n stuff."

Cait Sith changed sales tactics. "Man, no one wants to buy this book," he moped. "I spent over two years putting this together and no one cares about my ultimate masterpiece. No one wants to read deep enough to grasp all the hidden meanings and symbolism. I'm a misunderstood, tortured genius! I'll never being recognized for my inner beauty! My life has no meaning now!" He held his forehead and leaned back dramatically in a "woe is me" pose.

"Um, before you kill yourself, can you at least, like, tell me where I should, like, go from here 'n stuff? I'm, like, totally clueless."

"That depends on where you want to go, doesn't it?" Cait Sith snapped, a little annoyed that his theatrics were going as unappreciated as his literary masterpiece.

"Uh, I, like, don't really care... like, wherever, you know?"

"Then it doesn't matter where you go," Cait said. "I'll consider drawing you a map in the front cover of my book if you buy a copy, though."

"Um, I mean, like, I want to go somewhere," Yuffie added.

"Oh, then you're sure to do that, as long as you walk far enough," Cait Sith shrugged. "Preferably very, very far."

Yuffie stomped her feet. Did this stupid cat have a retort for everything she said? "Gawd, you're so mean. All I want to know is, like, where do people live around here?" Cait Sith pointed off to the right. "Kefka lives in that direction," he said. "And in that direction lives a singing crack rabbit. Visit either of them, they're both mad. And are you sure you don't want a copy of my autobiography?"

"Um, like, I don't want to visit people are that mad," Yuffie said. "Aren't there any, you know, normal people? Where's Balamb Garden?"

Cait Sith shrugged. "Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. But you more than I."

"Gawd! Stop being mean!"

"Don't shoot the messenger, lady."

"Fine, screw you." Yuffie turned and stormed off to the left.

Cait Sith raised his megaphone to bellow after her. "Hey! Are you sure you don't want to read this gripping page-turner from one of contemporary literature's rising stars! It's packed with twenty-six chapters of non-stop action! And hackneyed melodrama, but you can overlook that, right? Come on, come back and at least look at it!"

* * *

A few hours later, Yuffie still had no clue where she was going, but at least she had wandered out of earshot of Cait Sith's megaphone. Gawd, he seemed to get more annoying every time she had the misfortune of running into him. He was still obsessed with his own non-existent cleverness. Did anyone really care about his dumb novel? So what if he had spent two years on it? It was still just a bunch of self-important crap that bore no meaning to anyone above a third-grade reading level.

Finally, Yuffie stumbled across some sign of civilization: A thatched-roof cottage, or at least what appeared to be one; it was rather to tell when it was nothing but an outline. Yuffie walked up to and pounded on the front door. "Hello?" she called.

One of the window shutters opened and a stick figure wearing large glasses stuck her head out. "Yuffie?" she questioned.

"What?" Yuffie said automatically, then realized with delight who this was. "Oh! Um, are you <=¤m3g@=f£å®ê666=>?"

But the other stick figure had already retracted her head. She soon opened the door, however, and stood before Yuffie, puffing away on a cigarette. Had they been elsewhere, Yuffie would have seen the woman in her full human form: purple hair, black leather bodysuit, and an NES controller worn as a belt bucket. "Yep, that's me," she answered Yuffie's question. "Nom de reality Lucca Ashtear." She gestured towards the bulky, bipedal robot - also a black-and-white outline, of course - standing behind her. "And this is my partner in crime, _prometheus. An R66-Y model robot, but you can just call him Robo. I'm afraid the other members of our little organization aren't here right now ... d0rmouse and MaD_HaTTeR are tracking down supplies, and xwhitexrabbitx is probably out back getting high again."

"'kay." What else was she supposed to say? Yuffie didn't know anything about this saving-the-world business; she just had to accept what she was told.

"Glad you could make it here, Yuffie. Come on inside." Lucca led Yuffie into the cottage. The living room bore a giant diagram of the Path of Sephiroth on the ceiling and the zesty, refreshing smell of cancer in the air. "This," Lucca said with great self-importance, "is Seraphic Hall."

"Er, okay."

Lucca looked over at her protégé and frowned. Yeah, she was really getting ahead of herself here, wasn't she? The poor girl had no idea of what she had been dragged into. "I suppose I should start from the beginning. But, no, wait ... before we do anything else, you'll need to choose a cool-sounding hacker nickname."

"Um, like l1ckw1d1c3?"

"Yeah, but that's already taken."

"Oh. Well, um, how about SchtolteheimReinbachIII?"

"Taken."

"Gawd!" She scratched her head. "Um, I give up. Do you have any ideas?"

"How about ~*Angel Princess Aeris Til Heartilly-chan-sama-domo-kun-hime*~?"

"Uh, sure." Gawd, I'm never going to remember that.

Lucca grinned. "All right, ~*Angel Princess Aeris Til Heartilly-chan-sama-domo-kun-hime*~, welcome aboard. Now, let me tell you the full story. _prometheus here is actually from three hundred years in your future. A future where humanity has been enslaved by machines and our civilization reduced to a wasteland. I first traveled into this future by accident - I'll spare you the details; it's a long story. Anyway, I met Robo there; he had been deactivated for some time and hadn't been programmed to battle humans like the rest of the machines are. The others are controlled by a 'Mother Brain.' We thought that Mother Brain seized control over the world after a beast called Lavos emerged from the earth and rained destructions from the heavens upon humanity. So we destroyed Lavos. But even after we did, I returned to the future only to see that nothing had changed. It was not just Lavos that had given the machines the opportunity to conquer us."

Gawd, this is confusing.

"Robo and I tried to uncover the real origins of Mother Brain. What had given her the power, the motivation to destroy us? While we were working on this project, he had his memory erased. xwhitexrabbitx and I eventually tracked him down in Esthar City and restored his memory. And before he'd been captured, he'd managed to track down the origins of Mother Brain. It seemed she first appeared as a little-used program hidden in the low-level system architecture of the Sega Dreamcast in your time period. Furthermore, _prometheus was able to pinpoint exactly when Mother Brain launched her attack against humanity: exactly one month from now, on April 5th, at 2:14 AM."

A creaking back door interrupted Lucca's story. The white rabbit staggered into the cottage, clutching the wall for support. "Oh, shit, here comes Vibri," Lucca muttered. "Hey, xwhitexrabbitx! What's up?"

"Me, you stupid bitch! I'm high on crack! Wanna freebase?"

"No, Vibri! Drugs are bad!"

"Pussy!" Vibri staggered further into the room. He tilted back and forth, his eyes wide with wonderment as he beheld things that existed only in his prviate universe. "Whoa, holy shit! The whole room is filled with raccoons! Hey, get off me, you little rat bastards! Hey! Hey!" Vibri hopped around, trying to shake the "raccoons," before toppling over and rolling around the floor. "Augh!"

"Yes, ~*Angel Princess Aeris Til Heartilly-chan-sama-domo-kun-hime*~, this is xwhitexrabbitx."

"White like cocaine!" Vibri giggled.

"He's our recon man."

"Gawd."

"Don't worry, he may be a few Stars of Destiny short of a Liberation Army, but he manages to get the job done somehow."

"It's the drugs, man," Vibri said. "I can see all sorts of stuff." He rolled over and looked at Yuffie. "By the way, I smoke weed."

"Thanks for letting us know," Lucca said, having long ago lost her patience for Vibri's antics. "Anyway, ~*Angel Princess Aeris Til Heartilly-chan-sama-domo-kun-hime*~, as I was saying, the Mother Brain program exists in each Dreamcast. But connected to the Dricas online network, the programs form a collective consciousness that has already become self-aware. And in one month - we're not really sure why she chooses this date - Mother Brain will send a program called the 'Devil Summoning Program' into each Dreamcast connected the network. The Dreamcasts will then all use this Devil Summoning Program to summon from the netherworld an army of ... of, well, mice. And black mages. Don't laugh. I'm serious about this. Under our current timeline, Mother Brain will go on to use her army of mice and mages to topple human civilization. So _prometheus and I formed this organization to stop her and change history. We call ourselves Dunamis; do you know why we're called that?"

"Er, no."

"It's a kind of an angel. And anything named after angel is Important."

"Ah."

"That's an important lesson, Yuffie. Remember it. Anything involving angels or angel wings is Important."

"Um, okay."

Vibri looked up. "I thought we should be called Hashmallim, but I got voted down. And it was such a cool name! Get it? HASHmallim?"

"Yes, Vibri, your wit astounds us all."

"I smoke weed!"

Lucca sighed and lit another cigarette to calm herself. "Anyway, _prometheus and I discovered a way to get inside the Dricas network: by jumping down rabbit holes. Like the one we had xwhitexrabbitx lead you down, for example."

"Wait, you're telling me that we're actually, like, in the Dricas network, like, right now 'n stuff? We’re in a computer?"

"Yes, that's correct," Lucca said patiently. "That's why everything appears as just stick figures. Consider it cyberspace."

"I SMOKE WEED!"

"Freaking shut up, xwhitexrabbitx; you don't need to remind us every two minutes. Anyway, like I was saying, we found a way to get inside the Dricas network and gathered together a small group of followers. Our plan is to destroy Mother Brain from inside cyberspace before she can begin her assault her humanity. We can't beat her entire army, but if we can stop her ... well, you know how it goes; cut off the head and the body dies. It's like a game of chess. We're the white side, and the only way we can win is to checkmate the black king.

"Unfortunately, we haven't made much progress so far. First off, we don't where in cyberspace Mother Brain is. There's a lot of territory inside Dricas, and Mother Brain could take the form of any being she wants inside here. But we're working on that one. The other problem is that we can't defeat Mother Brain by ourselves. This is her territory; she can shape it however she wants. We needed someone with skills greater than ours. So we developed ChuChu Rocket! as an elaborate test to select the one person capable of saving humanity from Mother Brain's army."

"Gawd, it's me, isn't it?"

"Yes, Yuffie. It's you. You're the only one who can manipulate Dricas with enough skill to defeat Mother Brain."

"So, like, you think my video game skills are going to make me an expert warrior in real life?"

"Of course."

Yuffie stopped to consider this, tapping her foot on the floor as the rusty gears in her brain ground painfully to life. "Uh... well, cool, I guess," she said eventually. "Gawd, I should've brought my Power Glove if I'd know I was going to have to, like, play games really good, though."

"Oh, that's no problem." Lucca gestured towards a fax machine sitting in the corner of the room. "This supersonic transportation device will send you back to where you came from. It's my own invention."

Robo tapped a few buttons on the fax, then stepped away from it. The fax machine started ringing. "Go ahead; it's ready. Just climb in the paper slot."

Yuffie stepped with no small degree of apprehension towards the fax. Things kept getting weirder and weirder, but at least she had finally been offered some escape from this endless exposition. She put one foot on the machine. It was sucked painlessly inside. Hey, not bad!

"Please come back as soon as you can," Lucca said. "Remember, you can't let us down. You're OUR SAVIOR, Yuffie. Our own personal JESUS CHRIST."

Yuffie frowned. "Gosh, it's almost like they're trying to imply some sort of symbolism here, but I can't quite put my finger on it."

"I smoke weed!"

Next chapter: Rinoa With One "N"