"Okay," Yuna said through gritted teeth as she stomped into Guadosalam.
All the Guado NPC’s ran and hid when they recognized her. Eventually they found a hiding place in Macalania woods and decided on a completely fabricated story about sidequests and levels in case Yuna ever found them.
"It’s here. I know it’s here. It has to be—AAAAAH!" she yelled, seeing Seymour walk out of a restaurant—with all of it’s walls, by the way. "Why the hell are you here?"
"Um, maybe because I live here?" he said.
"I thought you were trying not to live," Rikku said.
"Yeah, you know, in general," Paine said.
"Where’s that?" Rikku asked. "Do a lot of Guado live there?"
"Um, I kinda lost track of your question," Seymour said. "Uh, can you start over and speak with more IQ points than seven?"
Paine clamped a hand over Rikku’s mouth.
"Why are you here?" Yuna asked.
"I was asking around to see if any restaurants were violating health codes so I could try and poison myself. Unfortunately, everyone who worked there panicked and ran away without telling me."
"Blech! She drools!" Paine complained and took her hand away from Rikku’s mouth, who wiped her mouth before speaking up herself.
"Did ya try the rotten fish vendor on Beseid?"
"Uh… We kinda had a bit of a… disagreement."
"You didn’t set him on fire, did you?" Yuna demanded.
"You don’t have to shout," Seymour said. "No, he’s fine. So’s the rest of Beseid. Oh, and Wakka says hi. And that I’m a fruit and I ruined everything he held dear in life and bla bla bla. Then he hit me with a blitzball a couple times and found out he couldn’t kill me permanently, so I told him his team sucked."
"But he doesn’t play blitzball anymore," Paine said.
"Well, it’s still his team and it still sucked."
"But the whole team quit," Rikku said.
"Well, since they’ve never won anything, and they’re continuing to not win anything, that means they still suck. However, if no one’s playing against them, that means they’re no longer being defeated, so that means they suck less. But—"
"KNOCK IT OFF!" Yuna yelled. "What… did you… do… to the … fish vendor?"
"You know how myopic he is?" Seymour asked.
"He’s the only one who didn’t tell me to put more clothes on," Rikku said,
"Or mistake you for a hooker," Paine said.
"But he did mistake me for a chocobo," Rikku said.
"Yeah, like that," Seymour said. "We… started arguing."
"Gimme more details," Yuna said.
"Oh NOW you want details. You used to just go around killing people at the drop of some dead guy’s hat and you’d just wait for people to explain their plans!"
"This is not explaining about the fish vendor!"
"I told you, he’s fine."
"Tell me what the fuck happened or I will…. Uh… I’ll put an SOS regen ring on you and I’M the one who controls the equipment menu, so you can’t take it off."
"Will you kill me after I explain?"
"Sure."
"He called me a girl and we got into fight."
"And?"
"He won."
"You LOST to an NPC?" Rikku asked.
"Well, I did always wonder why they were wandering around the Mihen Highroad without being killed by fiends…"
"Okay, why do you keep showing up where I am?" Yuna asked.
"Hey, you said you would kill me afterwards."
"I never said when."
"Goddamn you adventurers and your rudimentary logic!" he yelled. "Besides, I do not keep showing up where you are, you keep showing up where I am."
"I do not!" Yuna said.
"Do too!"
"Do not!"
"Do too!"
"Do too!"
"Do not!"
"Do too!"
Paine hit them both on the head.
"Damnit! Do that harder next time!" Seymour said.
"I can’t be showing up where you are all the time!" Yuna said.
"And why not?" he asked.
"’Cause I’m the main character and you’re not. Everything revolves around me. All coincidences have to do with me. The world doesn’t progress until I get to the next plot point, and thus I can keep the entire place in a state of limbo for as long as I want. No one but me can rescue people or foil the plans of bad guys and no one deserves to be reunited with their loved one, even if I am a spoiled brat and many people have been in much worse than I have. I’m the main character; I rule the happenings of the world. If I die, everything stops. Therefor, do to my importance, YOU are the one **I** keep running into."
Everyone stood there silently for a few seconds.
"Wow," Paine said, breaking the silence—she had an OCD for breaking things. Her doctor would have warned her, but she broke the phone a day before. "I’m not sure if that was existential or just one big deus ex machina."
Rikku passed out from thinking too hard.
Paine revived her.
"Oh yeah, well consider this," Seymour said and took a deep breath. "Perhaps you are merely a third party. Perhaps it is indeed true that no one else performs heroic deeds like you and that your ‘plot’ as you call it, does not progress without you, but these are merely coincidences of timing and the fact the NPC’s are inherently lazy and would ask a chocobo or the nearest fiend to solve their petty problems which they are actually too cowardly too attempt, not which you are ‘leveled up’ as you call it, to attempt. And how can you say the world ends when you do without proof from another party observing the event? As Shroedinger’s principal states, you could have both alternatives, that you are in fact tied to the world’s survival and causality or that you merely think you do due to overjustifucation, coincidences, and incompetent NPC’s, but really aren’t. Without a third party observing the situation, one cannot determine either, so reality takes on both sides as true until observed. Now, if you are, in fact, tied to some space-time continuum as you say, and a third party observes you die and the world end, there is no way to state such because the world and everyone in it, including the third party has died. However, if you are not, the third party cannot state the claim to you, will shrug and start wandering around in circles and state one sentence over and over again, having forgotten what they were meant to observe."
Rikku’s head exploded.
"Crap," Seymour said. "And I feel perfectly fine."
"I think that was too existential for even final fantasy."
Paine tossed a phoenix down and a potion at Rikku, not wanting to see her friend alive but headless. Although that would prevent future problems brought on by the fact that Seymour was continuing.
"Now, perhaps it is not you who is in control of the world, but you, living your life, not mine, find me irrelevant and use strange coincidences and holes in your so called ‘plot’ to convince yourself and your comrades that you are the controller of the world, a scheme used against NPC’s who are not just inept at everything, but are also highly gullible and thus easily tricked out of potions and all other items they may carry. Remember, although FFX started with Tidus arriving in Spira, technically it did not begin until I had succeeded in killing my father whom you believed in a sphere where he told you he could tell the future and relied only on his very circumstantial evidence to kill me. Now the story continues on, until I die, in which there is a small period of boss fights and cutscenes. However, since I am here right now, that would explain why this story continues."
"Ah, but I notice a fatal, or should I say not-so-fatal flaw in your logic," Yuna said as Rikku’s head this time imploded.
Paine just stood there this time, figuring it would be easier to wait until Yuna and Seymour stopped talking and THEN revive Rikku.
"What would that be?" Seymour asked.
"If it is really you who’s in charge of and linked to the world’s plot or fate or story, whichever you choose to call it, then if I kill you, I don’t just endanger the whole world, but I destroy it entirely. Now, since I am a self-proclaimed savior of the world, it would be against my nature to do so. Plus, since these two have the attention-span of a really dumb eggplant—"
"I do not!" Paine yelled.
"Look something shiny!"
"Where?" Paine asked.
"Anyway, they won’t do it either ‘cause I told them not to. Now that you’ve explained this alternative reality of who controls the wrold, I can’t let you die."
Seymour facefaulted.
"I don’t see anything shin--!" Paine said, but was interrupted by Seymour cursing so nastily that all the trees within a three mile perimeter lit on fire—thankfully Guadosalam was extremely humid and the fire was put out in less than a second.
Seymour stomped off.
"Yay! I win!" Yuna said.
"Yuna, that wasn’t a mini-game," Paine said.
"It wasn’t?"
"No, it wasn’t."
"So we just listened to him blather on and on for the last twenty minutes for no reason?"
"Yep."
"And that wasn’t a plot point?"
"Nope."
"Then why—"
"Yuna, this is Spira, remember. Why would the sequel to FFX be any different to the prequel?"
"You’re making too much sense for this game."
"Sorry," Paine said. She looked at Rikku. "We’re about to leave cutscene mode, so I hope you’ll remember to fix her before doing much else."
"Why?" Yuna asked. "NPC’s don’t care if I bring dead people into a hotel."
"…How many hotels is that common business?"
"All of them."
"Look, don’t ask, but I’m sleeping outside form now on," Paine said.
"Onto the next plot point!" Yuna declared to no one in particular.
"Great, let’s go find Seymour."
"But I just chased him off so we could look for plot."
"I think he IS the plot."
"I don’t follow."
"We keep running into him, yes?"
"…"
"That was a question, I didn’t answer it."
"Oh," Yuna said. "Right."
"And things get more and more complicated, right?"
"Right.
"Doesn’t that sound like a plot?"
"Does that mean we have to kill him AGAIN?"
"That would depend on why he’s doing whatever it is he’s doing."
"That matters?" Yuna asked. "Weren’t we talking about fish half an hour ago?"