Day 1 Morning

[Mickey Mouse]

A/N: This post takes place before the above Face to Face.

Mickey Mouse had never felt so up in his entire life. Well, his entire Omniverse life.

Sure, in Dante’s Abyss he had woken up with an iron gauntlet stuffed in his backpack. Subsequently, he had had the distinct pleasure of wielding—first—one of the most legendary swords ever in existence and then, following Erza’s unfortunate demise at the hands of that golden-haired jerk, a hammer that felt like it belonged to a god. Honestly, though, the three of those intensely powerful weapons could not compare to the blessing he had received in exchange for his help finding Teucer’s stolen pieces of armor.

The spirit’s last words foreshadowed a happy ending for the competitors; Teucer promised to assist them in any way he could and drop any weaponry he could find in their locations. Mickey had expected to find a sword or a gun or something else abhorrently violent when he’d finished overcoming the whiplash from being teleported, but no. What lay in front of him, its pages flipping in the wind, could not be beat.

He quickly snatched it up, thumbing through to try and glean as much as he could. It contained article upon article filled with strategy for any situation the former King could think of. Between the advice columns were littered pictures of various young human women modeling armor which Mickey could only suppose was designed for speed and maneuverability.

The mouse was giddy—Teucer had sent him a survival guide designed specifically for him! How kind of the spirit.

Of course, the mouse noticed that no other supplies lay in wait for him. Ah, well; he supposed that he couldn’t ask the good ol’ spirit for everything. After all, this guy was just a ghost looking for a pal to help him out of a jam. It wasn’t like he was Karl Jak or any of the other big goons behind Dante’s Abyss, who probably rolled around in money like it was bathwater.

Still, the book’s appearance in front of the mouse gave him an overwhelming sense of optimism about the journey to come. The Keyblade wielder couldn’t really fathom this whole shindig being a competition, but he supposed he had to see the spirit’s side of things. Sometimes, the promise of reward was the only way to convince these people to do anything. The Omniverse’s warped morals had always put a salty taste in Mickey’s mouth, but he couldn’t find it in his little heart to fault Teucer for just doing what he needed to do to ensure that one way or another, he got all of the relics back safe and sound.

Well, he supposed, he could fault him for needlessly endangering the lives of thirty-plus primes, but had he really thought about those consequences? Honestly, Mickey doubted it; most people didn’t think of the collateral damage if they weren’t truly pure of heart like he was.

No lolly-gagging, though—Teucer’s guide to survival in this new land seemed to signify the mouse’s clear favor in the eyes of the Spirit. That meant he had to get going. He didn’t want to disappoint his host. Putting a broad grin on his mousy little face, he rolled up Play, Boy (named, Mickey supposed, for the game-like structure Teucer’s challenge had adopted) and tucked it in the back pocket of his blood-red shorts. Time to get explorin’!

* * *

“Ugh, can I go home yet?”

Within a few hours, the mouse’s optimism had drained almost entirely.

He had been wandering around aimlessly for what seemed like forever, trying to make heads or tails of the confusing instructions in Play, Boy. The more he read and the more he meandered around the environment, the less anything seemed to be relevant, or make sense at all.

Finally, he decided that he needed a rest. He looked to Play, Boy for guidance on where the safest spot for hiding out would be. It took a few minutes to decipher any instructions on the subject from the tome—there was a lot about a spot in ‘G’ being pretty advantageous strategically, but the spirit hadn’t been so kind as to provide the fighters with any sort of labelled map like Dante’s Abyss had—but eventually he found instructions that seemed as good as any.

“Climb the shaft carefully. You’ll be thirsty when you reach the top!” he read aloud.

The mouse looked around—he didn’t exactly know what Teucer meant by “shaft,” but judging from his surroundings it was just an ancient old way to say the word “tree.” Following instructions, the mouse shimmied up the tree and rested on a pretty sturdy-looking branch, and then a realization hit him: Teucer had not provided him with any way to quench his thirst. And the book had been absolutely correct in its prediction: the climb had, indeed, made him very thirsty! His frustration with this whole ordeal began to simmer.

A scowl forming on his face, he pulled out Play, Boy and flipped through the pages looking for an article that seemed relevant. He stumbled upon a picture of a lightly-armored female warrior with long, red hair, similar to his friends Erza and, now, Belle.

“Hm,” he murmured. I didn’t realize how similar they looked. Mickey shrugged off the coincidence, and scanned the next page to see what the title of this advice column was. In big, bolded letters, it read:

Why You Should Always Have A Thing For Redheads!