As of now, this little "play" is just an experimentation. I have only just barely started, but I would like to see how it goes with you first before I venture too far into the FFIX story. I'll be the first to readily admit that my humor is oftentimes probably too dry or too nonexistent -
depending on the circumstances - to be appreciated by the average Internet audience. So, I'll see if the Magonians even want to see more before posting too much.

For those of you who have been keeping up with recently created "What did You Do Today?" thread, you may remember that about a week ago I mentioned spending the entire previous night at work with two things on my mind: pretty princesses (as always), and the story of Final Fantasy IX as if it were presented in the form of great stage literature. Why? I don't know, other than the possible explanation that I had been near the radio as one of FFIX's many great and musical hymns was playing, and therefore I started thinking of FFIX, and then Zidane, ... and then how much I hate him, in spite of how legendary an RPG the game he stars in is. So be warned, not only is this quite a lot to read as it is, but if you are a Zidane fan, I WILL focus heavily on verbally thrashing him through the words of his fellow FFIX characters.

So, without further ado, and in a similar spirit of Duel's satirical play that he wrote about the cast of RPGMaker Magazine three or four years ago, I present to you the first half of the first chapter of:

A Final Fanatsy IX Play - By Sarah's Knight

Chapter 1: "In Which a Princess is Self-Kidnapped (Part 1)"

(Aboard the Tantalus theatre ship)

Zidane: ... It's dark in here.

Blank: Yeah, you're right. This is no way to start off a good game, to where we can't even see where we're going right off the bat. The player will lose interest immediately!

Cinna: Don't worry. Characters like me are here for that purpose.

Zidane: Shut up and light the candle, Uncle Pork Chop.

Marcus: Wait, guys, chill! I think I hear something!

*A weird man in some dragon/gargoyle helmet comes bursting into the room*

Weird dragon/gargoyle-helmeted Stranger: Surprised to see a total stranger traipsing about aboard a ship run by thieves?

Blank: Zidane! Did you post those MP's from Final Fantasy VII as guards, again? I told you to stop that, because they are completely ineffective! No wonder this guy made it onboard!

Stranger: Now, watch me clumsily swing this giant sword around and trip on my own feet a lot!

Zidane: Well, that was a short fight.

Blank: Oh, it's just the boss, Baku. I thought that guy looked familiar from the chest down.

Zidane: ... Who else in the Final Fantasy world harbors the lower-body shape of a Lollipop Kid?

Cinna: In this game in particular, you can probably find a lot of people with physical deformities such as Baku's, actually.

Baku: All right, good fight, people! You make me proud!

Marcus: Well, of course we beat you. You should, rather, be very worried about the general effectiveness of your own crew of dangerous thieves if not even the greater fraction of the entire crew together at once can't take you on alone.

Baku (scratching head): .... Hell, 'didn't even consider that. Well, let's go! Meeting time!

(Moving into the nearby Shady Conference Room)

*Baku holds up a creepy-looking, ugly doll*

Baku: Okay, now, see this puppet made to look like a teenage girl that I am somehow deriving a tiny amount of perverse sexual pleasure in holding over my hand while grinning like a true degenrate pervert at?

Blank: Oh, man, that's supposed to represent Princess Garnet Til Alexandros, isn't it? So we're kidnapping her?! All right! She is SO fine!

Marcus: It's the turn of the millennium, Blank. get with the learn the proper lingo. (*looks over at Zidane*) And while I'm on that subject, for the record, Zidane, it isn't calling her your "sweetie-pie".

Baku: Yes. We will be performing the world-famous play by Lord Avon "I Want to Be Your Canary" tonight in Alexandria. It is a personal favorite of Queen Brahne's, so Marcus, as the lead role, you must be sure to put on a tremendous performance in order to keep her attention, while Zidane and Blank as your fellow swordsmen in the play will sneak away after the duel scene and search the castle for the princess.

Cinna: ... Wait. Zidane will be in the fight scene with us? ... He's IN THE PLAY AT ALL?!

Zidane: Yeah, so? What's the problem?

Cinna: Is it really a good idea to include him in the play, even if just as a means to a diversion for getting at Princess Garnet? Do you remember how low you scored in the personality section of that aptitude exam we took back when we first started learning to act at Lindblum Theatre?

Zidane: No. How low?

Marcus (patting his back): Let me put it to you this way. You scored somewhere between Kanye West, and that guy from the Party of Five cast who played Billy Lee in the Double Dragon movie.

Baku: ... What he's getting at is that it might not be a good idea to put an attention whore like you in any sort of significant acting role, tonight. Lord knows you run every risk of forgetting your goal of kidnapping Princess garnet in favor of finessing your fight with Blank for the audience or something. But we've no one else, sadly.

Zidane: Hey, why am I the main character in this RPG and yet getting three times as much hate as anyone else has so far?

Marcus: Well, should I start with the clothes you're wearing and work my way into the more personal?

(Alexandria city proper, the same afternoon)

*An short little oddball of a boy with seemingly nothing for a face but two white lights for eyes peeking out from underneath a steeple hat wanders past the city entrance, with amazingly not even so much as a curious stare from any of the guards*

Vivi: ... Wow. That's a really nice little BG tune playing somewhere in the distance for fitting the mood of "afternoon stroll through the big city".

*Vivi wanders on past many townsfolk bustling about outside their shops and homes: several humans and a few seemingly out-of-place hippo people on the residential street. He declines to race with that one mother's truly obese hippo son who is trying to exercise more and play video games less, because, screw that whole notion.*

Vivi: Hi, can you direct me to the theatre where "I Want to Be Your Canary" is to be performed tonight?

Ticketmaster: Sure, son. May I see your ticket, by the way?

Vivi: Okay, here.

....

Vivi: ... Man, I'm really glad I managed to score one of these at the last minute. They were said to be almost entirely sold out in every city by now.

Ticketmaster: ... This one is a fake.

Vivi: ......

Ticketmaster: You aren't disappointed? This means you won't get to see the play, after all.

Vivi: ... What? Oh, no, it's just that I was waiting to hear that sudden piano sting that usually precedes someone wailing, "Noooooo ....!!!" at some bad news.

Ticketmaster: Well, don't fret, son. I can at least give you this beginner's set of completely unplayable Tetra Master cards.

Vivi (annoyed): Why?! What good will these do me at all?! What, will they magically help level me up for the duration of the imminent world-changing adventure that I will be embarking on just hours from now? I don't want to be allowed to play some stupid useless card game where no one really understands what the numbers on the cards even mean; I want to be able to see the classic work of stage literature that I have been saving UP FOR YEARS to go see, you ticket-selling coot!

*A few minutes later, Vivi is staring gloomily at nothing while standing in the alleyway where Tantalus sweetheart Ruby the Cowgirl will later break ties with the group to start up some kind of bar/poetry-reading boondock that never sees many patrons*

Vivi: ... Man, if only I wasn't made to be the timid member of the party who is consistently discouraged by his own sentient lifelessness and must therefore always be plagued by deep, personal questions about the meaning in living at all, then I would go back to Dali village and light that crooked broker's ass with my best Fire spell. *sigh*

Puck the Runaway Rat Prince: Hey, you there! You look like a pretty gullible shrimp who hardly ever stands up for himself and is easily taken advantage of. You wanted to see the play, tonight? ... Good! Me, too! Be my new slave and I'll hook you up!

Vivi: Sure. What does a slave do?

Puck: Well, for starters, you should tell me your name. I'm Puck, a rat boy from way the hell on the other side of the Mist continent. You?

*Vivi waits patiently for the player on the other side of the fourth wall to input a much less sissy name than "Vivi", something way cooler and more manly, like "Black Dynamite".*

Vivi (eventually): Well, I would tell you that my name is Black Dynamite, but the game we're stuck in wasn't programmed to allow any more than seven spaces for anyone's name, so it's Vivi.

Puck: "Vivi" .... Man, you must be quite the little girlie boy with a name like that. Well, you'll do. Carry this ladder for me and let's go to the roofs.

Vivi (musing): (... If I had more iron balls and a better sense of self-worth, I would at the very least ask him why he's making me his b*tch, too.)

(On the roofs of the houses in town)

Vivi: Do kids normally hang out in places like this? ... And by the way, what ... was that pink, fluffy thing with the knapsack we just encountered in the bell tower?

Puck: Hunh. You must be new to the Final Fantasy series. Come on, just walk across the ladder. You'll be fine.

Vivi (wanking): B - But ... we're so high up!

Puck: Geez. Come on!

*Vivi frantically skips across. The ladder conveniently falls the second he's on the other roof*

Puck: Ha ha! Oops!

Vivi: (Again, 'sort of feel a Fire spell coming on ....)

*Sudden change from mid afternoon to night time, indicating an Uwe-Boll-like continuity in the script*

Vivi: Ummm, ... okay.

Puck: That just means the play needs to hurry up and start because the player was getting sick of watching your meaningless prance around the city. We need to move this game along.

(Over on the stage below Vivi and Puck)

Baku (bowing): ... And now, my good Alexandrians, the beautiful Princess Garnet, and my delightfully obese, sasquatchian queen, Brahne .... Tantalus - the most notorious band of androgynous freak-show brigands on the entire continent, intent on kidnapping a major royal figure beneath the shroud of this play you are about to witness - proudly presents to you, "I Want to Be Your Canary"!

*Audience claps*

Queen Brahne (fanning herself in spite of the cool summer night): Beatrix, remind me to have Lord Baku beheaded after the play concludes for that "sasquatch" quip.

Steiner: Am I the only one on this balcony who has noticed the long, depressed look on the Princess's face?

Garnet: it is fine, sir knight. My illegitimate mother never cared much about anything other than these Romeo-and-Juliet ripoff plays and stuffing her face with Eskimo pies, so why should she pay any attention to my inward struggles over being raised as a symbol of importance and hope for the people of an entire nation?

Steiner: But - but, I shall be here for you, princess! You are but my one and only sword duty in life! To fail you is dishonor worthy of hara-kiri!

Garnet: Yes, that you always will be, Steiner; the stray cat who is fed once and then chooses to hang around indefinitely. Excuse me, but the festivities of the evening have left me feeling poorly. Perhaps I shall retire early.

*Garnet elegantly rises from her royal seat and departs the balcony*

Steiner (not paying any attention): If I wasn't so busy thinking about what a good little knight I am, perhaps I would actually take notice myself that the princess is leaving the balcony right this moment and insist that she be personally escorted back to her personal chambers for fear of assassins skulking about the palace. but, alas, I won't perceive her to be missing until at least ten more minutes from now into the heart of the play.

(Ten minutes into the play, back on stage)

Baku (stumbling into the shadows as Lord Leo, clenching his chest): Thou hast not seen the last of me, Marcus!

Marcus (confused): Um, Boss, are you really okay? Did I accidentally stab you with the wrong sword or something during that pretend fight?

Baku (whispering back): No, no, just ... mild heart attack.

*After another fight, elsewhere on stage*

Blank (whispering across): Damn, Zidane, you fight like a girl. The audience is not the least bit impressed. ... And for that, no getting inexplicably showered with random pocket change from the rich folk.

Zidane: Shut up and follow me.

*Both run off stage and into the castle, not very subtly, either*