by Fritz Fraundorf

It wasn't the best of times. It was the worst of times, at least for Cait Sith. He was completely broke, and now Cloud was demanding the rent on his garage. It was all Aerith's fault. Last season she had made a fortune betting on the Florida Marlins, who had had a miraculous winning season. But when he bet all his money on them, they'd come in dead last. It just wasn't fair.

The cat Esper looked around the garage of Cloud's villa, where the rest of the Cute Animal Pictures crew -- Spekkio, Neko, Hanpan, and Mog -- was hanging out. "Seeing how this is our movie studio, I don't see why you guys can't chip in," he said.

"You borrowed the garage, you pay," Neko said. "I got my own shop back in my world; I don't need another."

Cait Sith looked at the rest of them. All of them avoided eye contact. "A lot of help you guys are," Cait said.

"What's he gonna do?" Spekkio said. "It's just a garage, it's not like he's gonna evict us or something."

"Yeah, that might require him actually having an opinion," Mog added.

"Maybe Luna will loan me some money," Cait Sith said hopefully.

Hanpan rolled his eyes. "Cait, Luna doesn't even know you exist."

"Hey, did I tell you guys I had a dream about her last night?" Cait said.

"We don't want to hear about it," Neko said quickly. "This is a family-oriented fanfic."

"No! It wasn't anything like that!" Cait said. "See, I dreamed that Katy Kat from PaRappa was really Luna in disguise, and that she had been sent to spy on P.J. Berri, who was an evil demon, and P.J. took Luna hostage, but then I came to the rescue and saved the day, and we lived happily ever after."

"That's lovely," Hanpan said sardonically. "I'm so happy for you."

"Well, they do look kinda similar, kupo," Mog admitted.

"Frankly, I think anything who spends all his time fantasizing about Sailor Moon's cat has a screw loose," Hanpan said.

"I don't spend all my free time fantasizing about Luna!" Cait Sith retorted. "I only spend, like, half my free time! So there!" He stuck his tongue out at the wind rat.

"Yeah, and he spends the rest of his free time making fun of Rufus's hair," Spekkio said.

"Shut up," Cait said.

It was about then that Cloud wandered into the garage, carrying a baseball bat and glove. "Hey, guys," he said. "I'm starting a baseball team."

"Good luck," Cait Sith said bitterly. "Give my regards to Bud Selig."

"You don't seem too enthusiastic," Cloud observed.

Cait Sith gave him a frosty stare. "Seeing as how as I'm dead broke as a result of baseball, that's not too surprising, now, is it?"

Cloud scratched his oddly-shaped hair. "So... you wouldn't want to join my team?"

"Is Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon fun?"

Cloud was surprised. "Um... you do?"

"No," Cait said bluntly. "You like that game?"

Cloud shrugged. "Yeah, it's pretty fun."

All the Cute Animal Characters turned to stare at him. There was a long, uncomfortable, silence. "You're weird," Spekkio said eventually.

"That reminds me of what I did to Cait Sith No. 2," Cait Sith said. After having been sent to spy on the humans by Bahamut, Cait Sith the Esper had waylaid Reeve's Cait Sith No. 2 robot on the way to the Temple of the Ancients and took its place, picking up Reeve's transmissions through a secret receiver in his stuffed moogle. "I tricked it into peeing on an electric fence, and while it was short-circuited, I took it to my cave in the Esper World and forced it to play Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon until it beat the game."

"Hasn't it won yet?" Cloud asked.

Cait Sith gave him a funny look. "Er... you do know that Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon never ends, right?"

"No," Cloud said, unperturbed. "I guess it never ends. Anyway, do you want to join my baseball team?"

"I said no the first time."

"Well, I was thinking that if you joined the team, I could let you off the hook for not paying your debt..."

Cait Sith looked at him. "All right," he said. "You got yourself a deal. Who else is on the team?"

"Uh, nobody," Cloud said. "Well, Red XIII agreed to be our manager, but he can't play because he doesn't have hands. I'm going to call Tifa and Aerith. You call Yuffie and Sephiroth, since you're friends with him."

"Yuffie? Why do I have to talk to Yuffie?" Cait complained. Behind him, Hanpan started humming funeral music.

* * *

Aerith was doing the laundry in the basement of her house when the phone rang. "Cloud!" she exclaimed. It had to be Cloud. And she had to answer the phone right now, before Cloud hung up and called Tifa instead. Fortunately, Aerith had left the cellular phone on the shelf over the washing machine for easy access just in case Cloud called.

Aerith sprung up on top of the washing machine and made a diving leap for the shelf. She managed to grab the phone, but also tipped over a bottle of bleach, spilling it all over the floor. Clutching the phone tightly in one hand, Aerith bounced down from the washing machine onto the floor -- and stepped right in the bleach. She quickly lost her balance and tumbled forward, falling headfirst into the dryer. She collided with the back of the dryer, making a loud thump that startled her pet mouse, who was sitting on top of the dryer. The mouse bolted off the dryer, unfortunately stepping on the dryer's on / off switch as he did.

"Hello?" Aerith shouted into the phone as she was bounced around the dryer. "Cloud, are you there?"

"How did you know it was me?" Cloud said. "And what's that sound?"

"Um, it's just the dryer," Aerith said. "I'm sort of, uh, inside it."

"Oh," Cloud said. "Say, I'm starting a baseball team. Would you want to join?"

"A baseball team?" Aerith repeated, startled. "Uh, why, uh, sure, of course."

Elmyra Gainsborough poked her head into the basement. "What's all that noise down here?" she asked. Her own question was answered when she saw the bleach spilled all over the floor and her daughter bouncing around inside the dryer. "Oh, dearie me," she said, and fainted.

* * *

Cait Sith hopped off his plane in Wutai and looked up at the Kisaragis' hilltop house, half expecting lightning to flash overhead and someone to laugh evily. Neither occured, however, so it had to be at least partially safe. Cait nervously strode up the steps to the door. He knew that any minute now, Yuffie was going to jump out from somewhere, steal his money, and run off.

Cait reached the door without incident and breathed a sigh of relief. He still had the house to tackle, though, and it was liable to be booby-trapped. Cait rang the doorbell and waited. A few moments later, Godo opened the door. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I am Cait Sith, Esquire, high king of all Espers, and all-around cool guy," Cait proclaimed. "Um, is Yuffie there?"

"Oh yeah, the annoying cat guy," Godo said, finally recognizing him. "Yuffie's in her room."

Cait let that one pass as he brushed past Godo into the Kisaragi's house. He easily located Yuffie's room -- it was the one with the huge Wu-Tai Clan poster on the door -- and knocked on the door. Without waiting for a response, he walked on in.

Yuffie was seated on her bed, listening to the ego-deflation tapes Cait Sith had given her. "You are a complete and utter moron," a soothing voice said. "You are the scum of the Earth. You are a complete and utter moron."

"These are, like, so mean," Yuffie whined. "Why did you, like, give them to me?"

"I didn't need them any more," Cait Sith shrugged. "Cloud's starting a baseball team. Wanna join? You'd make a good pitcher."

"I don't know," Yuffie said. "Who else is, like, on it?"

"Uh, well, me, Cloud, Sephiroth, Vincent, and Barret, and Cloud said he was going to get Tifa and Aerith to join," Cait Sith ticked off the players on his fingers. "And Red XIII's our manager."

The wheels in Yuffie's head began to turn. There were two of them, one called "MONEY" and the other "MATERIA", and they were very precisely honed. "Will I get, like, paid?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so," Cait said.

"Like, cool," Yuffie said. "Okay, I'll, like, play. Whatever."

* * *

The newly-formed Midgar Moogles stood in an empty lot in the back of Nibelheim. Normally, they would be practicing in their stadium back in Midgar, but the Promise Keepers were holding a rally there and the team had to find other accomodations. "All right, gang, we've only got four practices before our first game against the Wyndia Woodchucks, so we'd better make 'em count," Cloud addressed his players.

"One, two, three, four..." Cait Sith started counting.

"Shut up, Cait," Cid said.

"I'll bat first," Cloud said. Carrying his trusty Nail Bat, he walked to the rock that represented home plate and waited while the others took their positions in the field -- Yuffie as the pitcher; Vincent, Aerith, and Sephiroth on the bases; Tifa at shortstop; and Cid, Cait Sith, and Barret in the outfield. Red XIII crouched on the edge of the field, watching.

"Like, what I am supposed to, like, do now?" Yuffie said as Vincent tossed her the ball.

"Throw me the ball, and I'll hit it," Cloud said patiently.

Yuffie wound up and pitched a fastball to Cloud. Cloud used his Cross Slash Limit Break and took a hard swing at the ball. He connected and sent the ball whistling across the field. It crashed through the window of the Shinra Mansion and landed inside.

"@#$^*$!" Cid swore. "There goes our ball. Go get it, Cait."

"Me? Why me?"

"Just go get the %&!@ ball already."

Cait Sith sighed and jogged around to the front door of the Shinra Mansion. As he entered, he tried to figure out where the ball would have landed. He made his way through the cobweb-filled rooms towards one of the back rooms, where there was a hole in the floor. Guessing that the ball had fallen through there, Cait wriggled through. After a rough landing, he stood in a wide, dark, room, filled with a wide variety of Nissan cars.

Cait Sith's tiny eyebrows furrowed as he tried to figure out what this place was. Suddenly, he felt a tap on his shoulder and jumped. He whirled to see who it was, only to be confronted with the hideous visage of the Nissan guy.

Cait Sith screamed.

"Cats... love... lamps," the Nissan guy mumbled, forcing a dusty old ceramic lamp into Cait Sith's hands. He then shuffled away, much to Cait's relief

Cait looked at his gift. "Maybe it's a magic lamp," he mused. His eyes scanned the floor and located the baseball near a Nissan Altima, the official car of St. Ajora. He grabbed the ball and hurried back to the field, carrying the ball in one hand and the lamp tucked against his chest in the other.

"Did you get the ball?" Tifa asked as Cait Sith ran around the corner of the mansion.

"Right here!" Cait Sith shouted back, holding up the ball in one hand.

Vincent pointed at the lamp in Cait's arm. "Why are you carrying a lamp?" he asked.

Cait Sith had almost forgotten about what the Nissan guy had given him. He looked down at it. "Uh... I'm practicing my cold lamping technique."

"Is that one of them magic lamps?" Barret asked.

"Maybe you should rub it," Aerith suggested.

Bowing to his teammates' demands, Cait Sith held the lamp out in both hands and gave it a rub. A puff of smoke rose out of the lamp and coalesced into Shaquille O'Neil. "Hi, I'm the genie inside this lamp," Shaq said. "Thanks for freeing me. With the magical power of my ego, I can grant you three wishes."

Cait Sith immediately broke into song. "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener..."

"Is that your wish?" Shaq asked.

"Uh, no," Cait Sith said. "Hold on, I gotta think for a moment."

"Hurry up, I don't have all day," O'Neil said. "I've got free throws I could missing at this very minute."

"You should wish for world peace," Aerith suggested to Cait.

Cait Sith turned to look at her. "No way! I'm not going to wish for anything wussy like that! I'm broke! I need cash! All right, Shaq, I wish for all the money in the universe."

"Careful, Cait," Red XIII interrupted. "If you wish for all the money in the universe, it'll result in complete pandemonium."

"Okay, then, I wish for half the money in the universe," Cait Sith commanded.

"Done," Shaq said. A huge tide of money in hundreds of currencies suddenly tumbled out of the sky, pouring down on Cait Sith. Gil, zenny, dollars, rubles, gella, francs, goth, pesos -- it was all there. The little cat Esper was quickly buried as the vast amount of money continued to pile up. It was, after all, half the money in the universe.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Vincent said. The rest of the team backed away from the pile as it continued to expand.

Twenty minutes later, the hail of money finally stopped. Gasping for air, Cait Sith poked his head out of the mountain -- or in this case, probably a mountain range -- and spit some 1000-yen bills out of his mouth. "I'm rich!" he exclaimed.

"WHAT ABOUT MARLENE?" Barret shouted. "She been savin' fo' the new My Little Chocobo Promised Land Playset. You damn cat!"

"Here," Cait Sith said. He looked around the heap for some gil and handed it to Barret. As soon as he did so, the money vanished and reappeared in the heap, maintaining Cait's ownership of half the money in the world.

"Dude, this is pretty @$%*ed up right here," Cid observed.

"Yeah, just wait until Shinra hears about this," Vincent said.

* * *

Shinra already had. Reeve raced down the halls of the Shinra Building. "Our gold reserves have vanished!" he blurted as he burst into Rufus's office.

"I know," Rufus said solemnly. "And be careful with my door there."

Reeve glanced back at Rufus's office door, which had been specially-imported from Castlevania, and carefully shut it. "It's not just the gold," Rufus continued. "Half of all our money's gone. It's been wiped right out of our finances, off the computers."

"How?" Reeve asked rhetorically. "Y'all reckon someone hacked into our computers?"

"Not if the gold's gone too," Rufus said calmly. "And why would they take only half? It just doesn't make sense."

* * *

Karnak

Mid Previa, Cid in Training, hurried to the TV and switched it on. He was just in time to catch Dukes of Hazzard, an important part of his Cid training. After all, Cid Highwind watched it; so should he.

Just as the Dukes of Hazzard logo came on, the screen changed to static. It was replaced by the image of a news studio. "We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special news report," the news anchor said. "A three-headed salmon answering to the name of Frederick has gone on a rampage near the town of -" The news anchor said no more, because he too was replaced by static, which was succeeded by a different news studio.

"We interrupt this special news report to bring you an even more special news report," the new anchor said. "Half of the universe's money has mysteriously vanished. Governments, companies, and people around the universe have all had half their money disappear within the last half hour. The cause is unknown, but El Nino is widely suspected to play a role. For more on the situation, we will now take you to Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's address."

The TV cut to an image of Alan Greenspan giving a speech. "At this time, the irrational shortage of devaluation probability premiums does not appear to have a rational explanation based on current expansionary conditions with regards to dollar-denominated debt securities," Greenspan rambled. In the lower-right hand corner of the screen, a small box displayed the current status of the Dow. Despite the disappearance of half the universe's money, it was still up 182 points, perhaps spurred by the IPO of an Internet stock.

When Greenspan droned on unintelligibly, Mid pulled out the 100 gil he had put in his pocket this morning. He found only 50 gil in his hand. Even stranger, the 100-gil bill had been replaced with two 25-gil pieces.

Mid looked back up when the broadcast abruptly cut back to the news studio. "This just in," the anchor said. "An anonymous source has just informed us that the missing money is in the hands of a talking cat named Cait Sith, who has used a magic lamp to wish for half the money in the universe."

* * *

"What did you have to go and do that for?" Cait Sith demanded as Yuffie hung up the phone and stepped out of the Nibelheim phone booth. "Now Shinra's going to kill me."

"Yeah, but just think about all the reward money I'll get," Yuffie grinned. Cait Sith could have sworn that her pupils briefly turned to dollar signs.

"You won't get any reward money!" Cait yelled. "Shinra just lost half their money! They don't have any for you! You spoony bard!"

"Gawd, like, whatever. Like, calm down, okay?" Yuffie said.

Cait Sith looked imploringly at the rest of the baseball team. "C'mon, guys, you gotta help me," he said. "We gotta find a place to stash all this before Shinra finds it."

Vincent stared at the 70-foot-tall mound of money. "Where are you going to find a place for that?" he asked. "It's bound to attract attention."

"There's a lot of money," Cloud observed.

"@$#*^%, you're doing it again!" Cid snapped.

"Yeah, we're gonna need something big," Cait Sith said. He thought for a moment, then snapped his finger. "I know! The stadium! We can dump all this in our stadium in Midgar! Quick, get some wheelbarrows! Fire up the Highwind! We gotta move!"

* * *

"It's that damn cat," Rufus said as he switched off the TV. "I should have figured." He turned to Reeve, who was still standing at Rufus's desk. "I've about had it with his shenanigans. He's demolished a K-Mart, smashed up 20 armored cars, fled the planet while under indictment, and he even made fun of my hair. NOBODY makes fun of my hair."

"He disabled my Cait Sith No. 2 robot, too," Reeve added. "Those parts don't come cheap, y'know. I reckon this might be the time to try out the new Cait Sith model we've been working on it."

"New model?" Rufus said. "I don't recall hearing about this."

"It's top secret," Reeve explained. "Y'all follow me." He walked to the elevator, leaving the dubious Rufus with no choice but to follow. They got in and Reeve pushed the button for the 80th floor.

"Hey, wait a second," Rufus said. "There is no 80th floor."

"I told y'all this was a top-secret project," Reeve said as the elevator shot upwards at an abnormal speed. It flew out through a trap door in the roof and was launched into the air, where it passed through the airlock of a small satellite hovering over Midgar.

"What is this?" Rufus demanded. "I never approved this!"

Reeve declined to respond, and instead lead Rufus to a heavy steel door with a control panel near it. Reeve punched in a four-key password on the panel, which appeared as asterisks on the panel's LED display. The doors slid open, allowing Reeve and Rufus entrance into the room.

"What was the password?" Rufus asked as they stepped inside.

"It was four asterisks," Reeve replied. He stepped to a cloth-covered object in the center of the room and yanked it off. "Behold... the CS-1000."

The CS-1000 was a sleek, armored, metallic version of Cait Sith. It was composed of liquid metal, able to change its shape at will. Two eerie red eyes glowed from within its head, which also sported an equally-unsettling metallic grin. The CS-1000 sat atop a similar liquid metal moogle, which had rocket launchers mounted on its shoulders and spikes covering its wings.

Rufus nodded appreciatively. "So what's the plan?" he asked Reeve. "We go sent this out to catch Cait?"

"Not quite," Reeve said. "Y'all see, the CS-1000 can travel in time. We're going to send it back in time and kill Cait Sith's mother before he's ever born. Then none of his escapades will've ever occured."

* * *

Working furiously, the Midgar Moogles hauled Cait Sith's huge stockpile of money onto the Highwind, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. Cait sat off to the side, "directing" the operation from the comfort of a lawnchair he had pilfered from a nearby backyard.

"Hey, Yuffie!" Cait shouted through his megaphone. "Put that money back!"

"Gawd, why do you keep, like, picking on me?" Yuffie whined.

"I would have kept it anyway," Cait Sith added. "I own half the money in the world."

Yuffie reluctantly removed the gil she had wadded into her pockets and stuffed it back into the heap. She paused and gazed longily at the money, in a near-trance. Cait raised his megaphone again. "Stop staring at my money like that and get to work!"

"She looks about like you when Luna shows up," a voice behind Cait said. Angered already, Cait turned to see who it was. It was Neko.

"Dammit, Neko, I thought I told you to stop spreading my personal secrets," Cait Sith said. "Grab a wheelbarrow and help out. I've got half the money in the universe, and we're trying to hide it from Shinra."

"I know," Neko said. "I heard about it on TV. I came out to get my money back. I'm running a budget, you know."

"You what?" Cait spluttered, sitting bolt upright. "On TV?"

"Yeah," Neko said. "It was on SIN. They said you had a magic lamp and used it to get half the money in the universe."

Cait hopped out of his lawnchair. "Why didn't you say something?" he demanded. "Shinra's gonna be here any second now. They're gonna kill me! What're we gonna do?"

"I've got an idea," Neko said. "Let's put all the money in my bag."

"Would it all fit in there?"

Neko gave him a flat stare. "Have you ever seen anything that didn't?"

* * *

Twenty minutes later, half the money in the universe had been loaded into Neko's bag. Neko grabbed the bag, hefted it over his shoulder, and stood holding it as if nothing had changed.

"Gawd, how do you, like, do that?" Yuffie asked.

"It's magic," Neko explained.

"It's actually my cousin Felix's magic bag," Cait Sith said.

"I conned him out of it," Neko added.

"Felix the cat is your cousin?" Cid exclaimed. "Holy @#$!"

Cait held up a finger. "Estranged cousin," he corrected. "We caught him smuggling ketchup into the human world."

"O--kaaaayyy..." Aerith said.

"Can we get back to our practice now?" Cloud asked.

Yuffie stared greedily at the bag. "What's gonna happen to the money?"

"I'll keep it in my bag," Neko said. "Don't worry, it's safe in there." With a wave, he turned and walked back towards the train statio. He had taken about thirty steps when his bag emitted a puff of smoke. Half the money in the universe tumbled out of the sky and landed where it had been before.

Neko chuckled nervously. "Whoops," he said.

"It must have thought you were trying to take the money," Vincent guessed.

"Money..." Yuffie echoed.

Cait rubbed the magic lamp. "Hey, Shaq," he spoke into the air.

Shaquille O'Neil rose out of the lamp. "Yo," he said.

"How can we take the money anywhere without it disappearing?"

"You have to hold it," Shaq said. "Nobody else can carry it."

"Oh," Cait said. "Bye."

"Look for my new rap album, coming soon!" Shaq said as he disappeared.

Cait looked at Neko's bag, and then at the money. "Well, I guess we'd better fill up the bag again."

"Wait a second," Neko cut in. "Does this mean you're going to be keeping my bag?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess so," Cait Sith replied.

"I've got a lot of valuable stuff in there," Neko protested. "We're talking my whole business here. What if you lose it?"

"Um... we go to the Lost and Found?" Cait suggested.

"I have an idea," Tifa spoke up. "Let's attach a radio tracking collar to the bag."

"Shu'up foo'!" Barret exclaimed. "Tha' be a damn stupid idea! Sounds like somethin' those damn Shinra'd try."

"It's so stupid, it just might work," Vincent said. "It's worth a try, at least."

"Ok, I think I've got in here," Neko said, reaching into his bag. He tossed out a hair dryer, a mauve-colored hammock, a live tortoise*, a lamppost, and a book on the even-toed ungulates of the North Corel region before finding a radio tracking collar and its receiver. He slipped the collar around the neck of his bag and stuffed the receiver in his overalls pocket. "Okey-dokey," he said, handing the bag to Cait. "It's all yours."

* Disclaimer: Neither the author nor this site advocate or condone the keeping of live tortoises in large bags. Please use only small bags. Thank you.

* * *

That afternoon...

Cait Sith panted as he ran up and down the streets of Costa Del Sol, carrying the bag full of money, which was almost as large he was. "How much longer I gotta do this?" he gasped to Neko, who was standing on Cloud's doorstep with the radio transmitter receiver.

"I want to make sure this transmitter works," Neko said. "Ok, now run around behind the villa so we can see if this works when there's a building in the way."

Grimacing, Cait stumbled around the street corner and half-jogged, half-fell, around the back of Cloud's villa, his head down as he tried to carry himself the last few yards. Not watching where he was going, he did not notice the black-robed figure until he had collided with it.

Cait fell hard onto the pavement. He picked himself up and saw the black-robed figure standing over him. Its long black cloak obscured all of its body except for the skull that stood in place of its head and the bony hands that clutched a long steel scythe.

"Oh no!" Cait squeaked. "It's Death!"

"Nay, I am not him," the figure said. "I am his twin brother, Taxes."

"Oh," Cait said. "Hey, I met your brother. I, uh, died, and I went to Hades, and then I ended up playing Death in chess, and I won, so I got to come back to life, and -"

"Yes, Mr. Sith, I've heard all about you."

Cait's face lit up. "Wow, I'm famous!" he exclaimed. "Maybe they'll give me a cameo appearance in Chocobo Racing."

"Mr. Sith, you do realize that you'll have to pay taxes on all that money, now, don't you?"

Cait Sith folded his arms. "Nuh-uh," he declared. "If I pay you, the money will all just come back to me because I always have half the money in the universe."

"Mr. Sith, there are only two sure things in life, and you know what they are."

Cait Sith looked at Neko's bag, which he was still carrying. There's got to be something in here that will get rid of this guy, he thought. Cait reached into the bag and started rummaging through the stuff inside, tossing out some celery, a stuffed Fred Flintstone doll, a blueberry-picking ladder, a Binney & Smith & Weston crayon gun (a .45 mauve, to be exact), and a copy of the Spotter's Guide to Exotic Pasta before he found something useful: Ronald Reagan.

"Hi, there," Reagan said as Cait pulled him out of the bag and set him down on the street. "Who are you folks?"

"I'm Cait Sith, and that's Taxes," Cait said, pointing at Taxes. "He's trying to take my money."

Reagan and Taxes seemed to recognize each other. "So, Mr. Tax, we meet again," Reagan said. "You've ballooned back up."

"You can't stop me, mortal," Taxes boomed.

"You cannot defeat my supply-side economics!" Reagan said. He began chanting a voodoo-like incantation and rose a cocktail napkin into the air. Taxes started to shrink until he was a tiny super-deformed version of his normal self.

"Uh-oh," Taxes squeaked, and ran off.

"Thanks, Ron," Cait Sith said, rudely shoving Reagan back into the bag. Picking the bag back up, he hurried the remaining distance back into the garage.

* * *

The Kremlin

An puppeteer crouched down behind a large wooden desk, his hands clutching the strings that operated the large puppet that was known as Boris Yelstin. Carefully, so that his hand would not be seen, he pushed a button to turn on a videoconferencing system, then turned on a CD player that provided Yeltsin's voice.

"Half of our money has disappeared," "Yeltsin" said, addressing a number of top Russian government officials over the videoconferencing system.

"Mr. President, half of our money disappeared a long time ago," one of the officials said.

The CD kept playing. "We now have only three dollars in our national reserves," Yeltsin said. "This could cause a national crisis."

"And this is some sort of new occurence?" another official said.

The puppeteer jumped to the readily-accessible Track 1. "YOU'RE ALL FIRED!" the voice bellowed. "I'm getting a new government!"

The meeting was temporarily postponed while some Kremlin aides grabbed a bunch of random pedestrians off the street and brought them in to function as the new government. "All right, what I was saying to the other guys was." "Yeltsin" paused in his speech as the puppeteer cycled to the correct track. "Half of our money has disappeared."

"Let's go get it back," the finance minister said.

This was better. The puppeteer switched to a different track. "The money was taken by a cat who used a magic lamp to wish for half the money in the universe," Yelstin explained.

"I don't believe that," the prime minister said.

"YOU'RE ALL FIRED! I'm getting a new government!"

The meeting was halted again as the current government was fired and the original government brought back into their offices. "All right, what I was saying to the other guys was. Half of our money has disappeared. The money was taken by a cat who used a magic lamp to wish for half the money in the universe."

"Where's this cat?" the defense secretary asked.

"He's on another planet," the voice of Yeltsin said.

"Then how are we going to get there?" an official said. "Saddam Hussein stole the Mir."

"YOU'RE ALL FIRED! I'm getting a new government!"

A third government was hastily brought in and assigned to their positions, and the meeting resumed once again. "All right, what I was saying to the other guys was. Half of our money has disappeared. The money was taken by a cat who used a magic lamp to wish for half the money in the universe. He's on another planet."

"So what's the plan?" someone asked.

"We're going to put a bunch of soldiers in a car, and hit the car with a big truck. Then the car will go flying out into space, and land on this cat's planet."

There was no response.

"It worked in PaRappa," Yeltsin explained. "It's bound to work if we try it. Besides, it's more reliable than our rockets."

* * *

Dragging Neko's bag behind him, Cait Sith hurried down the street and into Cloud's garage. The rest of the gang -- Neko, Spekkio, and Mog -- was seated on the couch, watching Extreme Mouse Wrestling on Cloud's "borrowed" TV.

"In this corner, we have the challenger, Stone Cold Hanpan. And in this corner, we have the defending EMW titleist, three-time champion of the world, Thunder God Miiickkeeeeeeyyyyy!"

Mickey's theme music began playing as he strode into the ring. "M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E..."

"What the hell are you doing?" Cait Sith demanded. "Sailor Moon is on!"

Spekkio popped open a can of Coke and took a swig. "This is Hanpan's big debut," he countered. "Hey, want some Grizzly Twizzlies?" Spekkio waved a box of black licorice.

"Sure," Cait said, taking the box. As usual, the wrapper for the official candy of Hades was covered in various morbid thoughts -- a sort of warped version of Laffy Taffy.

"...and now it looks like Thunder God Mickey is about to unleash his patented Thunderstorm attack!" On the TV, Mickey held up some aluminum foil and shook it. Hanpan fell to the mat as if hit.

Cait stared at the streen in disgust. "Get real," he said. "This is as fake as Kiko the moogle. Why don't we watch a real show? I hear Sailor Moon is pretty good..."

"Move," Neko said implacably, pushing Cait to the side. "You're blocking my view."

"...and here comes Hanpan with his Stone Cold Stunner..."

Cait Sith held his hands out pleadingly. "But what if I miss an episode? What will Luna think of me?"

"Cait, Luna doesn't even know you exist," Neko said through a mouthful of Grizzly Twizzlies.

"Well, yeah, not right now," Cait Sith admitted. "But after I give her the chance to, you know, hear about me 'n stuff, I'm sure she'll fall instantly in love with me."

"Uh-huh, we believe you."

"Wait a second..." Cait said. "Why am I worrying about this? I have a magic lamp." He grabbed the small oil lamp off the table where it sat and gave it a rub.

"Are you sure that's such a good idea...?" Neko cautioned.

"Hey, man," Shaquille O'Neil greeted Cait. "Need another wish?"

"Yeah," Cait said. "I wish that Luna will fall madly in love with me."

"Ok, done."

Cait squinted skeptically, a rare occurence for him. "Are you sure? That seemed awful fast."

"I got skillz," was Shaq's reply.

"Hey, is it true that your IQ is lower than your free throw percentage, kupo?" Mog cut in.

"I mean... I just wish there was some way I could know that Luna was really in love with me," Cait explained. He suddenly realized what he had just said. "Oh, wait, shoot, I didn't mean that..."

"Okay, hang on," Shaq said, heedless of Cait's protests. Cait, the lamp, and Shaq suddenly vanished from the room, leaving no trace of their former presence.

There was a long silence.

"And he took my bag, too."

* * *

Reeve walked into Rufus's office. "We've activated the CS-1000, Mr. President," he reported. "It's travelling back in time right now."

"Good," Rufus said. "Did you hire the backup I requested?"

"'Course, Mr. President," Reeve drawled. "If the CS-1000 doesn't catch that varmit, y'all assassin will."

Reeve's eyes suddenly opened wide as he saw the object hurtling towards the window. "MR. PRESIDENT, LOOK OUT!" he cried as he leaped over the desk, tackling Rufus just as a Honda Civic came flying through the window, shattering the window and sending glass everywhere. The car sailed over Rufus and Reeve's heads and landed on the floor, instantly collapsing into thousands of pieces and revealing four Russian soldiers lying unconscious inside.

"Damn," Rufus breathed. "What was that? Is my door all right?"

While Rufus was examining his precious door -- which appeared to be unharmed -- Reeve checked on the soldiers. "Are y'all okay?" he asked, shaking one of the soldiers. "Speak to me!"

The soldier sat up and said something in Russian. "Excuse me?" Reeve said. The soldier repeated his statement while another one of the soldiers tried to indicate that they did not speak English.

The office door suddenly flew open, knocking Rufus, who was still examining it, against the wall. In trooped a band of chimaanzees all clad in matching blue space suits. The leader strode up to Reeve and saluted. "I am Pongo La Ropa of the Space Chimps, registered deus ex machina. We are fluent in both Russian and English and can translate for you."

"Okay, ask them what they're doing here and why they crashed their car through the window," Reeve told Pongo La Ropa. The Space Chimp translated it directly into Russian and spoke to the soldiers.

The soldiers conferred with each other briefly, then relayed a message back through La Ropa. "You didn't crash your car through our window."

"Naw, I meant fer you to ask them soldiers, in Russian, what they, the soldiers, were doing here," Reeve explained to LaRopa. Pongo asked the Russians the question, and translated their response.

"They're looking for a cat that stole half their national treasury. They launched themselves to this planet by getting their car hit by a truck."

"Cait Sith," a dazed Rufus muttered as he emerged from where he had been pinned. Despite being hit in the forehead with a door, he did not appear altogether unhappy.

"We have to get the missing $3 back," one of the soldier said through Pongo.

"Yes," Rufus said. "He's taken half our money as well... hell, he's taken half of everybody's money."

"Y'all come with us," Reeve motioned towards the door.

* * *

Cait Sith materialized in the middle of a shopping mall somewhere, holding the magic lamp with the ethereal form of Shaquille O'Neil hovering over it. This unusual incident provoked a few stares, but Cait was used to that -- he provoked quite a few stares where he went, usually associated with the wake of chaos that trailed him everywhere.

"I didn't mean this as a wish!" Cait Sith whined. "I was just that -"

"No taking back wishes," Shaq insisted. "And speaking of which, I think that's your last wish, buddy."

"Uh-uh, I have another," Cait said. "It was a buy-3-get-one-free deal."

Shaq paused. "You serious, man?"

"Dead serious."

Shaq shrugged. "Ok. Hey, wanna buy a giant poster of ME?"

"No," Cait said. He was about to wish himself back home when he realized that since he was already here, he ought to look for Luna. Cait called Shaq back into the lamp, and stuffed the lamp in the bag. It was time to look cool.

Cait folded his arms and adopted a half-asleep expression as he strode into a clothing store. "Hey," he greeted the clerk. "I need a t-shirt with a slogan that makes no sense whatsoever and some really baggy pants. Oh, and give me one of those pocket chains too."

The clerk held up a black shirt with the word "Pendulum" printed in tiny white lowercase letters in the center. "This okay?"

"Perfect," Cait said. "What about the pants?"

"The biggest size we have is a men's XXXL."

"Okay, great," Cait said. He pulled a couple of gold bars out of his bag, handed them to the shocked clerk, and took his purchases into the dressing room, failing to notice the cloaked figure watching him from the shadows. A few moments later, the gold bars reappeared in Cait's hoard.

Cait quickly put on his new clothes -- the pants were so large that he could pull them right over his red shoes -- and checked himself in the mirror, which hung under a "Visit Beautiful Meribia" banner.

Cait's black shirt prominently displayed its incomprehensible message at about the level of his bellybutton; the shirt itself hanging down to his thighs. Its baginess was matched only by that of his pants, which hung down in large folds around his legs, giving him the appearance of some sort of monster rising out a pool of black fabric. His pocket chain was invisible under his baggy shirt, but just knowing that he was wearing a chain in his pocket for no logical reason made him feel cool.

Cait grinned in seeing his newfound coolness, then quickly caught himself -- cool people were always bored. He slogged his way out of the store, frequently tripping over his pants, and sat down in one of the wooden benches in the mall, slouching as much as was possible without falling off the bench. Not only was Luna already madly in love with him, he was now the epitome of cool. What more could she want?

Cait watched the passerby with disinterest as he waited for Luna. None of them paid any attention to him either, except for one blue-haired girl clad in a yellow dress.

"Oh, what an adorable little kitty!" the girl exclaimed, running over to him.

Cait didn't say anything. Cool people didn't talk much.

"And look at your little clothes! Awwww, you're so cute."

Cait remained motionless.

The girl bent down to look at him. "What are you doing here, Mr. Cat? Are you lost?"

Cait still didn't say anything. To do so would question his status as master of cool.

"Poor thing... you look like you need a good home," the girl said. "I'll take you home with me."

Cait still remained silent. Don't make any threat to it and it will back down, he reminded himself. Sudden moves will only startle it.

The girl gave him a concerned pat on the head. "My name's Luna. What's yours?"

* * *

The Midgar Moogles took the field in their stadium in Midgar for their final practice before their opening game against the Wyndia Woodchucks the following day.

"Hey, where's Cait Sith?" Vincent asked. The team looked around. Their right-fielder was nowhere to be seen.

"Is he still hanging out in your @#! garage?" Cid asked Cloud.

"Yeah," Cloud said. "But I don't think I saw him today, I think."

"That foo' cat!"

"He'd better show up for the game tomorrow," Cid muttered.

Yuffie took the mound and practice began without Cait. As he wasn't exactly the team's best player, the Moogles hardly even noticed Cait was missing until Shinra arrived.

Accompanied by a group of apparently foreign soldiers, Rufus and Reeve strode onto the field without warning. Rufus looked around briefly, and then turned to Aerith, who was currently at bat with her staff. "Where's the cat?"

Aerith set her staff down. "We don't know," she explained. "He didn't show up for practice."

Rufus gestured towards the soldiers. "These soldiers are from the country Russia on Earth," he said. "They came all the way here to get their country's money back from Cait. This isn't just a worldwide problem now. It's a universe-wide problem."

By now, most of the team had come in from the field and were standing around the plate. "And what do you want us to do about it?" Cloud asked.

"We want to know where Cait Sith is hiding," Rufus explained. "We've got sufficient evidence to try him in hundreds of countries."

"No way! Cait Sith is our friend," Aerith said. "Relatively speaking."

"Don't worry, CS-1000 is still on the job," Reeve whispered to Rufus. "And our assassin is trailing him."

"Yeah, but if we don't cooperate with them, they'll know we're up to something," Rufus whispered back.

"To tell you the truth, we don't know where Cait Sith is either," Vincent admitted.

"What about the, like, radio transmitter?" Yuffie blurted. She was quickly silenced by several teammates, but not in time.

Rufus smoothed his hair. "What radio transmitter?"

"All right," Cloud agreed, sensing defeat. "We'll help you on one condition."

"What's that?"

"A requirement, a term, a prerequisite..."

"No, what's the condition?"

"You two join our team," Cloud said. "Cait Sith's missing, and Sephiroth quit to work on his latest movie. So we're short two players."

"Dammit, half the world's money is missing, and all you can think about is baseball?" Rufus said, losing his usual cool.

"If we don't win tomorrow's game, we're dead in the water," Tifa explained. "Genji will cancel our endorsement contract. With half the money in the world missing, we can't afford to pay the rent on the stadium without the contract."

"Yeah, what about Marlene?" Barret cut in. "We got a lot o' money bankin' on our team doin' well. If we lose it all, there go Marlene's education."

"And guess whose fault this all is?" Rufus said.

They considered for a moment. "All right," Cloud agreed. "Neko has a radio transmitter attached to Cait's bag. We can track him anywhere."

"How ironic," Vincent said. "Cait joined the team because he couldn't pay the rent on Cloud's garage, and now Rufus is joining the team because we can't pay the rent because of Cait."

Cid shot Vincent a glare. "If you spent half the time that you use thinking up your @#$* 'ironic' thoughts doing something useful, we wouldn't be in this damn mess right now."

"Let's mosey back to Costa Del Sol to check on Cait," Cloud said.

"And you ^&@#! shut up too, dammit," Cid added.

* * *

Ruby crept through the rafters of the new opera house in Burg. She carefully slid onto a beam that overlooked the main stage and bent down to get a better view at the audience filing in. There he was. Dressed in a ridiculous-looking tuxedo, a less-than-enthusiastic Cait Sith was being dragged into the opera house by Luna.

"Dump me just because I'm not really a cat, will you?" Ruby muttered. "I owe you one, so I'm gonna jam up your opera!"

On the other side of the rafters, a dark-cloaked figure sat crouched behind some sandbags. It, too, had come here to kill. And its target was the same.

* * *

"Hey, move it," Spekkio said to Mog. He spun the CD that was hooked over his index finger. "I wanna play Metal Gear Solid."

"I was just about to play Xenogears, kupo," Mog said.

"Tough toasties," Spekkio said as he tried to pry the PlayStation controller out of Mog's hands.

Mog took a bite out of his Grizzly Twizzly as he tried to wrestle the controller away from Spekkio. "I was here first!"

"Are you messin' with The World's Best Game?" Spekkio demanded.

"Hey, hey, guys, settle down," Neko said from the corner of the room. "Let's play both." He grabbed a bottle of beer and slammed it down on top of the TV set. There was a bit of static and then...

"XENOGEARS SOLID!" an announcer thundered. "The World's Best Game! Brought to you by... Square Capcom Konami Sony EA!"

"Yeah!" Mog and Neko both cheered.

The garage door suddenly opened, prompting Hanpan and Neko to turn -- Mog and Spekkio were too intent on their new game to notice. The assembled Midgar Moogles team, now including Rufus and Reeve, was standing outside with stern looks on their faces -- except for Cloud, who was as neutral as ever.

"It's all Cait's fault!" Neko said before any of them could speak.

"Hi, guys," Cloud said congenially. "Have you seen Cait Sith around?"

"He left," Neko said. "Shaq beamed him out of here."

"First he wished that Luna would fall in love with him, then he wished to go see her," Hanpan elaborated.

"What about the radio transmitter?" Rufus urged.

Neko appeared surprised. "Hey, I'd forgotten about that." He took the receiver out of his pocket and looked at the screen. It was blank. Neko shook the receiver, and, when that failed to produce results, gave it a thump on the side. Still nothing. "Well, either this thing is broken, or Cait Sith is off the planet."

The Moogles team flinched. "He could be anywhere by now, then," Tifa said.

"There is one person who will know where he is," Red XIII murmured.

"Who?"

"Bahamut."

* * *

Cait Sith squirmed in his seat impatiently. This place sucked. Not only was he stuck here with this other Luna and a wasted wish, he was being forced to listen to opera. "Dude, why can't they sing in English?" Cait Sith said aloud. "Nobody can understand a word of this."

Every other person in the opera house -- except Luna -- turned to stare at him. "Sssshhh!" they all hissed.

"Aww, you're such a funny little kitty, Mr. Cat," Luna said, ignoring the evil eye Cait was giving her.

Cait folded his arms and slumped down in his seat, severly annoyed. Suddenly, the air shimmered in front of him, and a bearded figure appeared "Needs translate you?"

"Professor Daravon!" Cait exclaimed.

"What are you talking about?" Luna whispered.

"I wasn't talking to you," Cait whispered back.

"Where is translate need I am," Daravon said. "I have returned from the dark world and now I am RED Daravon."

Cait leaned forward. "Can you tell me what they're saying?" he whispered to Daravon.

Daravon nodded. "Off course! This job is a gift from God."

"Why are you talking to yourself, Mr. Cat?" Luna asked him.

"I'm not! I'm talking to Professor Daravon!"

"Who's Professor Daravon?"

Cait Sith pointed at Daravon. "He's the guy right there!" Luna squinted and stared at where he was pointing, but saw nothing but vacant air.

Daravon watched the action on stage, then started translating for Cait. "This are is somebody's rotten apple," he said. "Oh yes, it's someone. Myau flaps his wings ploudly."

"Never mind," Cait Sith muttered. "Forget I asked."

"Hey, you," someone behind Cait said. "Some of us are trying to listen. If you need to talk to yourself, do it outside."

"I'm not talking to myself!" Cait insisted. "I'm talking to Professor Daravon! HE'S RIGHT THERE!" Cait pointed directly at Daravon, but the other opera-goers could not see him.

"I tried my best. As a result, I was able to transrate it. So, this job's a success. This's the way! Huff. Puff." With those final words, Daravon suddenly vanished.

By now, everyone was staring angrily at Cait, on the verge of violence. "Shut up!" they all shouted.

"I'M NOT TALKING TO MYSELF!" Cait cried, near-hysterically. "I was talking to Professor Daravon! He was right there! Didn't you see him? Didn't you?" Cait hopped out of his seat and pointed urgently at where Daravon had been. "He was there! Right there! He was translating the song for me!"

One of the actors on stage stepped forward. "Look," he said in a heavily sarcastic tone. "There aren't any good operas in English. Do you know any good songs in English?"

"Yeah!" Cait Sith leaped onto the stage and broke into song. "Blue, blue, blue, green! Blue, blue, blue, red!"

* * *

Bahamut took a sip of tea and munched on a scone as he checked the football scores in the paper. Just then, Carbunkle, intern Esper mailboy in Cait Sith's absence, poked his head into Bahamut's cave. "You've got mail, your Highness," the crystalline-gecko-sort-of-thing squeaked.

"Come on in, old chap," Bahamut said jovially. "It's tea time."

Carbunkle stepped inside and sat down at the small wooden table, taking off his postal carrier's hat as he did and setting it on the hat rack. "Here's your mail," he said, handing a legal-size sheet of paper to Bahamut. "It's some sort of petition to get rid of Cait Sith."

Bahamut examined the paper while Carbunkle poured himself some tea. It was a petition from Shinra, AVALANCHE, and the heads of state of over 300 countries, all requesting that Cait Sith be summoned back to the Esper Dimension and banished from the human worlds for collapsing the universe's economy.

Bahamut set the paper down. "Bloody hell," he said. "Just how much does he think he can get away with?"

* * *

Yes! Ruby thought triumphantly, up on the rafters. Right in position! She threw her full weight -- which wasn't much -- against the anvil that was suspended directly over Cait Sith.

It didn't budge. "This is heavier than I thought," Ruby said. "It's going to take me 5 minutes to drop it!"

Below, Cait Sith concluded "Blue and Green" and launched into "The Bonobo Song".

Ruby tried to block out the awful song as she inched the deadly weight ever closer to the edge of the beam it was perched on. A third of the way... half the way... two-thirds... and then, silently, the weight dropped from the rafter.

Cait Sith's singing stopped abruptly when he suddenly, inexplicably, vanished. Ruby watched in horror as the 5-ton weight hurtled down towards the stage, aimed for two singers who were looking for the vanished Cait. "Look out!" Ruby called down... but it was too late.

"Oh my God, they killed Biggs and Wedge!" Luna shrieked as the weight crushed the unfortunate pair.

Someone pointed up at Ruby. "Up there! Get her!"

As a crowd of people surged towards her, Ruby held up her hands in surrender. She knew when she couldn't win... but where had Cait gone?

* * *

The CS-1000 emerged from its personal Time Gate and set foot onto the streets of Midgar... or at least, the Midgar of 500 years ago. It had a mission. "Primary objective is to 'Kill Fiona Sith' as wallaby is to life raft," the robot said to itself.

Guided by Reeve, the CS-1000 marched through Midgar towards an Esper shrine in what would later become Sector 5. From there, it would enter the Esper world, where it could easily complete its mission. Cait Sith would soon become nothing more than the product of a time track that no longer existed.

* * *

"-d hearts," Cait Sith concluded before realizing that he had suddenly appeared in a cave. He blinked and turned around, coming face to face with Bahamut, who was seated upon his royal rock.

"Um... uh... hi," Cait stammered.

"May I remind you that leaving the Esper Dimension is prohibited?" Bahamut said levelly.

Cait stared up at the towering King of the Espers. "There is no controlling legal authority," he asserted.

"Oh, yes, there is," Bahamut said. "I can put blokes like you in exile."

"Er... you can, but you won't right?"

"That's correct," Bahamut said. "What I want you to do is use that bloody magic lamp of yours to wish all the money back to its rightful owners."

Cait Sith cringed. "Um... I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"I already used all three of my wishes," Cait explained. "One to get half the money in the universe, one to make the wrong Luna fall in love with me, and the third to go to Burg." He convenientally "forgot" to mention the fourth wish he had conned out of Shaq... it was his, and he wasn't going to waste it for Bahamut.

"I see... we'll have to give Plan B a go, then," Bahamut said. "We're going to send you back in time before you picked up the lamp, and you'll destroy it and prevent this from ever occuring."

"But won't that mean I won't end up going back in time, which means the lamp won't get smashed, which means this will all happen and... oh, man, my head is starting to hurt."

"Don't worry," Bahamut said. "We have it all planned out. All we need you to do is destroy the lamp."

"Why can't you do it yourself?"

"You got us into this bloody mess, you get us out of it."

Cait Sith considered the mission. "I don't really have any choice, do I?"

"No."

"Uh... okay, I guess I'll do it."

"Jolly good," Bahamut said. "We'll get the time gate powered up. In the mean time, you'd better catch up on all that mail you've been neglecting. We've left it all in your flat."

* * *

Cait Sith unlocked the door of his cave and stepped inside. His little piece of the Esper Dimension was covered with dusts and cobwebs, a sign of neglect from his year in the human worlds. Everything else was the way he had left it, except for the several huge bags of mail sitting in a corner -- and the cloaked figure watching without Cait's knowledge from the broom closet.

"Oh, man," Cait groaned, staring at the mail. "I can never answer all this."

Cait Sith took off his tuxedo, brushed a moldy biscuit off the kitchen table, and sat down with the first sack. He grabbed a huge stack of letters and catalogs and started thumbing through them. "Kate Sith may have just won 10 million gil!" the first one proclaimed. "If you have the winning entry, you receive this letter on February 29th, you buy $500 worth of collectible salmon figurines, the number of blue cars in Minneapolis outnumbers the number of red ones, and we feel like giving you the money."

Cait tossed that letter aside -- they couldn't even spell his name right -- and grabbed the next one. "Long has he touched the hearts of RPG players everywhere... and now, the Franklin Mint is proud to present this highly collectible sculpture of Tim the Talking Warhead, complete with real working explosives, available to you in only five monthly installments of 2000 gil..."

Cait tossed that one aside too -- and the next, and the next, and the one after that, before he finally to came to something useful. "Hey, the new issue of Unpopular Mechanics," he read. "Wow, with a cover story on humiliating personal massage machines, and features on the Virtual Boy and the perpetual motion machine! Cool!"

Cait Sith put aside his mail to thumb through the Unpopular Mechanics magazine. After he had read his fill, he turned to back to the task at hand. He had emptied barely a handful of the first bag, and there were still three more bags after that. He could never get through all this.

"I'm not doing this," Cait declared, throwing the mail to the ground. "I quit!" He strode outside the cave, leaving the door open, and set off for the time gate complex.

When he arrived, the door was shut and the lights were off. Cait opened and poked his inside. It was pitch black. "Hello?" he called. Receiving no response, he stepped inside and flipped on the lights. There was nobody in the room. "Must be on their lunch break," Cait guessed. "They probably won't mind if I have a look around."

Cait walked up to the control panel for the time gates and stared at it. There were a bunch of buttons and dials, and a fancy generator-sort of thing used to open the gates. Out of curiosity, Cait pushed a large blue button. It beeped in response and electricity surged across some wires to the generator. A blue field emerged from it, forming into a time gate and sucking Cait Sith inside...

* * *

Cait Sith found himself standing on a cliff, in some bat guano. He climbed out of it, wiped his feet on the rocks, and looked around. Before him, the cliff dropped sharply away to a dense jungle below, intercut by a pristine blue river. On the horizon stood some ancient, crumbling, ruins that had flunked the test of time, but were still unmistakable. There was only one Midgar.

"Whoops," Cait Sith said. "I must be in the future."

Childlike laughter to his right made him turn. Red XIII and two cubs bearing a strong resemblance to their father were perched on a cliff above him, staring down on the dead city. "Hey, Red," Cait Sith shouted up. "It's me, Cait Sith!"

Red XIII looked down at him. "Cait Sith!" he exclaimed. "You haven't changed a bit, I see. What are you doing here?"

"Um, actually, that's because I'm really from the past," Cait explained as he climbed up to join Red and his cubs. "I travelled into the future, I think. I was really trying to go the other way so I could destroy my magic lamp that I used to get half the money in the world.

"Ah, yes," Red XIII said, nodding sagely. "I remember that. You were assassinated by Shinra."

"Assassinated?" Cait Sith's eyes went wide.

"They hired a hitman to kill you after you took half their money," Red XIII said. "At least in our current timeline."

"Wow, thanks for warning me, man," Cait Sith said. "Er, lion. Or tiger. Bear. Oh my." Unknown to Cait, the very assassin Red spoke of was crouched behind a rock on the other side of the cliff, waiting for the right moment to strike.

One of the cubs looked up at Red. "Dad, what's his problem?" he asked of Cait. "He's weird."

"Cute kid," Cait said sarcastically. "Say, what were you laughing about?"

"Sshh, do not tell anyone," Red XIII cautioned. "It is part of my secret plan to take over the world. I poured cough syrup in the water supply of Midgar, so no person wanted to drink the water, and they all died of dehydration."

Cait took another look at Midgar. "Yeah, that place has gone downhill faster than Gamefan magazine." He stared at the scenery for a while longer. "Red?"

"Yeah?"

"What is all this supposed to mean?"

Red XIII considered this. "I haven't the foggiest idea," he said eventually.

* * *

"What do you mean, he's disappeared?" Rufus demanded of Bahamut from behind his huge marble desk.

"Dude, don't talk to the King of the Espers that way," Spekkio advised. "That's so uncool."

"He's bloody vanished, that's what I mean," Bahamut said. "He was supposed to checking up on his mail at his flat when he took off. We think he snuck into the time gate facility and sent himself off through time."

The crowd in Rufus's office -- Rufus, Reeve, AVALANCHE, and the Cute Animal Characters -- digested this information, except for Yuffie, who was asleep in a swivel chair. "He could be anywhere, then," Vincent concluded.

"Righto," Bahamut agreed.

"Looks it's time to open up a can of whoop-ass," Hanpan said.

"Cait Sith seems to be missing," Cloud said. "But we can't look for him. We have our big game this afternoon. If we don't win, we lose."

"Yeah, what about Marlene?"

Rufus gave AVALANCHE a flat stare. "A fat lot of help you are," he grumbled.

"Hey, don't forget you're on our team now," Aerith said to Rufus. "That was the deal."

"mmm... materia..." Yuffie mumbled in her sleep.

The Cute Animal Characters looked at each other. "Looks like it's up to us, then," Neko said. "There's no way I'm letting Cait get away with my bag."

* * *

Cait appeared back in the Esper Dimension, in the present era. Although he was glad he had received Red's warning in the future, he still had to get back to the past. The operators were still out on lunch, but that didn't matter -- after all, how hard could this thing be to use? Cait pushed a red button this time. Another time gate opened up and sucked him through.

Three years in the making... the greatest game ever made. It will revolutionize the way you think about games. It will stand above all. It will touch lives. It will make the world a better place. It will patch the ozone layer. It will build homes for the poor. It will bring peace to the Middle East. It will cure cancer. Final Fantasy 8. Only on Sony PlayStation.

When you're looking for an insurance company, you want somebody you can trust. Somebody with experience. So when you're looking for life insurance, ask the people who know what's it like to die. Mutual of Wedge.

Genji. What are you levelling up for?

We now return to Cait Sith and the 40 Thieves.

Cait Sith appeared on the cliffs overlooking Midgar, but he was now 500 years in the past instead of 500 years in the future. Midgar was but a small medieval town, with a few blocks of houses and a stone wall. Chocobo carriages, not automobiles, crossed its streets, and the village was stocked with a population of elves, dwarves, and even Moogles.

"Ahhhh, the good ol' days," Cait Sith said. "When games were games, dungeons were dungeons, and you fought by swinging weapons in the air."

His short attention span once again diverted from the task at hand, C.S. made his way down the cliff and into Midgar. He walked up to the first person he met, an orange-hiared man standing on a street corner. Cait chuckled inwardly at the man's hair. "Hey," Cait said.

"Greetings, stranger," the man said. "I am Bjorn Shinra. How can I help thee?"

Bjorn Shinra, Cait thought to himself. He's got the hair, all right. Hey, I wonder what would happen if I killed this guy? Nah, that might collapse the space-time continuum or something nasty like that.

"Uh... where can I get some food around here? I'm starving," Cait Sith said. It was true. He hadn't had any thing to eat since back when he was in Burg.

"Thy shouldst go to Dirk's House of Pancakes and Cannabis Club," Bjorn Shinra advised.

"Okay, thanks," Cait said. "Thanks, Mr. Shinra. By the way, your great-great-grandson is a real chump."

* * *

The big game had arrived. The Midgar Moogles waited anxiously in their dugout while Palmer called off the Wyndia Woodchucks' starting lineup -- Rand at pitcher; Rei at catcher; Sten as shortshop; Manillo, Katt, and Mogu on the bases; and Garr, Ox, and Ryu in the outfield.

"We kin beat these guys, easy," Barret said. "They be jes' a bunch of monkeys an' fish an' stuff."

"Hey-hey-hey, and now the starting line-up for your Midgar Moogles," Palmer said. "At first base, from Wutai State, Viiincent Valentiiiinnnee! At second base, from Midgar Tech, Reeeeeeeve, who doesn't seem to have any first name that we know of."

Palmer continued to rattle off each player's name as the team took the field. "Hey-hey, please rise for the national anthem, performed by the Gramor Kazoo Corps."

A bunch of moles ran onto the field, all carrying kazoos, and they and Mogu began to play an ear-splitting rendition of "Shinra, 'Tis of Thee". While the anthem was going on, Palmer quickly changed into his moogle suit to serve his other duty as the team's mascot.

By the time Palmer reached the field, the first inning had begun. The Moogles, being the home team, were fielding. Yuffie had just taken the mound to pitch against Ox.

Ox hefted his huge mallet and waited for the pitch. As it flew by the plate, he swung hard, and connected. The ball rocketed back towards the mound and hit Yuffie in the head with a loud smack. She instantly dropped to the ground.

"Hey, is that a legal bat?" Cid asked, pointing at Ox's mallet.

The rest of the team rushed to attend to Yuffie while Cid argued with the umpire. "Are you all right?" Aerith asked. "Say something!"

Yuffie did not reply.

Two medical assistants rushed onto the field with a strecher. "What are we goigng to do?" Tifa said as the unconscious Yuffie was carried away. "A baseball team without a pitcher is like a dance floor without me! Do you understand that?"

"Don't worry, Tifa, I'm sure we'll think of something," Cloud said calmly.

Rufus looked around the field, at the fans, the Woodchucks... and Palmer. "Get over here, Palmer," he commanded. "You're our pitcher."

* * *

Cait Sith bounded into Dirk's House of Pancakes and looked around. "Hey, peoples," he said to nobody in particular. "It's your lovable and marketable buddy Cait Sith!"

There was no response. Cait walked up to the counter. "A junior chunky burger, curly fries, and a large chocolate frosty, please," he ordered. The clerk nodded and went to get his food.

While Cait was waiting for his food, he looked around and noticed the four people sitting at the table nearest him were looking askance at him and whispering to each other. Cait Sith glared back at them, and they quickly turned away from him. Meanwhile, in the far corner of the building, the cloaked figure kept its eyes fixated on Cait, waited for the right time to strike.

"Here it is," the clerk said, handing Cait's food over, which the cat greedily took. As he was walking to an empty table, he noticed the four people staring at him again. Cait stopped. "If you want my autograph, just say so," he demanded.

The four conferred briefly, then one stood up. "Mune," he introduced himself. "Masa Mune. I'm from the Interregional Police Office."

"Sith," Cait retorted. "Cait Sith. I'm from Cute Animal Pictures, and I have half the money in the universe."

"I thought the other Cait Sith had the money," one of the others, who was wearing a turban, whispered to Masa.

Cait Sith overheard the turban guy's comment. "Nope. I'm the real McCoy. The other guy's locked up in a cave playing Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon."

"Wait a second... you're the esper Cait Sith?" the turban-clad one said.

"Yo," Cait replied.

"Then you came just at the right time," the turban guy said. "I'm Buzi, the commander of the Talon time machine."

"Buzi is the Talon chief crew!" someone who was obviously Daravon's ancestor blurted.

"These are Masa the weaponsmith, Juba the armorsmith, and Shar the wizard," Buzi introduced his companions. "We work for the IRPO in the present, but we've been sent back here to deal with a disturbance."

"This has got to be the dumbest way to introduce a plot element I've ever heard in my entire life," Cait Sith said.

"The Shinra Corporation's created a new Cait Sith robot," Buzi explained. "The CS-1000. They've sent it back in time to kill a certain target and change the flow of history. Cait Sith, that target... is your mother."

* * *

Palmer walked to the mound, still wearing his moogle suit. He tugged the head of the suit off... or at least tried to. "Mrgmmph," he mumbled from inside the suit, pulling harder.

Cloud peered at the suit. "I think the tag of the head's stuck in the zipper," he said.

"Mgnks," Palmer said, trying to reach around behind his back to grab the zipper.

"Here, let me get it," Cloud said. He tried to pull the tag out of the zipper, and in the process yanked Palmer's head backwards.

"Owww! Mrmg mghhmph!" Palmer shouted, his voice muffled by the bulky suit. He shook himself out of Cloud's grasp and tried to free the tag by himself.

The umpire walked up and grabbed Palmer by the shoulder of his moogle suit. "Hey, you," he said gruffly. "You've got five seconds to pitch or I'm calling it delay of game."

"Mrmgmgmghph!"

"He's stuck in the suit," Cloud explained calmly.

The umpire checked his watch. "Three... two... one... okay! That's a delay of game! The Woodchucks get a run."

"Mgggmph!" Palmer tugged desparately on the tag, trying to free it from the zipper.

"Five... four... three... two... one... oh, I'm sorry, that's another delay of game. The Woodchucks score another run."

"Dammit, fatman, hurry up and get out of that @*#in' suit!" Cid shouted.

"Mmm stmck!" Palmer shouted.

The umpire watched his watch. "Delay of game," he reported. "The score's now 3-zip."

"Look, jes' play in da suit already, foo'!" Barret said.

"Mmt's moo mmht mm hmmr!" Palmer shouted, hopping around the mound and trying to grab the tag.

"Whoops, looks like we have a delay of game here, folks," the umpire said. "That would make the score, let's see, 4 to nothing."

Palmer threw up his hands in resignation, then picked up the ball in the hand of his suit. This was no easy task, considering the suit's hands had no fingers and were just pads. While Palmer was trying to get the ball secured in his hand, the ump called him for another delay of game, giving the Woodchucks a 5-0 lead on the Moogles.

"Mmkay, mm thmk mmm rmmdy," Palmer said.

The umpire returned to his normal position behind home plate, where Katt was waiting patiently to hit. Palmer took a few hobbling steps forward and swung his arm forward, lobbing the ball out of his paw. It arced slightly into the air and landed on the grass, barely halfway to home plate.

Cid let out a string of curses. "Can I borrow your gun for a moment?" Rufus asked Vincent.

* * *

After finishing their meals, Cait and the Talon crew left Dirk's House of Pancakes. "So what does this new CS-1000 thingy look like?" Cait Sith asked.

"We don't know," Juba replied. "All we have are the instructions headquarters gave us."

They stood on the street corner, watching people pass by and thinking -- or, at least, the Talon crew was thinking, and Cait Sith was gluing 25-gil pieces to the ground. "Dude, cut that out," Masa said. "You could get arrested for defacing currency."

"Nuh-uh, this is for artistic purposes," Cait said, as he arranged the glued money in a festive holiday pattern. "Saw this on Martha Stewart."

Juba stared at the arrangement of coins, but saw only a haphazard mess. "Damned if that's art," he said.

Cait glared at him. "Please do not insult my artistic sensibilities," he said stuffily.

"Cait Sith, is there any sort of Esper shrine around here?" Shar asked.

"Well, there was in the present, why?"

"Your mother's an Esper, right?" Shar asked. Cait Sith nodded in reply. "Then that means she's living in the Esper world. For the CS-1000 to get there, it's going to need some conncection to the Esper world."

Cait Sith nodded. "There's a shrine in Sector 5," he said. "I remember 'cuz they had to bulldoze it when we built the baseball stadium."

* * *

Wedge and Biggs watched the game from the stands as the Wyndia Woodchucks racked up run after run from Palmer's incompetent pitching. After just five innings, the Woodchucks had already scored 27 runs, making the score look like one from a football game and not baseball.

"'s too bad what happened to Yuffie," Wedge said.

"Yeah, well, at least the ball didn't come flying up here and kill us," Biggs said. "We died yesterday; we don't need to die again."

"Peanuts! Hot dogs! Cracker Jacks!" Neko called as he came down the aisle. "Get 'em while they're relatively lukewarm!" He waved his box of wares in Wedge's face. "Want to buy anything?"

"No thanks," Wedge said.

"Oh, yeah, I bet you do," Neko said. He grabbed one of the Cracker Jack boxes and held it up for Wedge to see. "There's a free prize in every box."

"That's okay, I'll pass," Wedge said.

"You know I'm not going to go away until you buy something, so you might as well do it now and save yourself a lot of trouble."

"Well, at least he's honest," Biggs admitted.

Wedge grudgingly handed Neko a few gil, and Neko gave him a box of Cracker Jacks. "Let's see what our prize is," Wedge said, opening the box and giving it a shake. His eyes widened in horror as a hand grenade rolled out. "Not agaaaiiiiiiin....."

Time seemed to slow as the deadly explosive dropped towards the ground. "Any last thoughts, Wedge?" Biggs said.

"'Grudgingly' sure has a lot of Gs," Wedge replied.

As Wedge and Biggs looked on, the grenade hit the ground, bounced one, and exploded. Biggs, Wedge, and their seats were blown to smithereens, leaving a jagged hole in the bleachers that would sure to be a mystery for generations to come.

"Oh my God, I killed Biggs and Wedge!" Neko exclaimed. "I'm a bastard!"

The commotion that erupted, however, did provide Neko with a good cover for what he needed to do. He ducked down behind the bleachers and pulled a walkie-talkie out of his pocket. "Sierra Oscar to Stone Cold. Come in, Stone Cold."

"This is Stone Cold," Hanpan's voice replied. "Any sign of Cait, Neko?"

"Hey, you have to use the secret codename," Neko said. "It's 'Pegachuck.'"

"This is idiotic," Hanpan complained. "Have you seen him or not?"

"No, no, you have to ask me again with the secret codename."

Hanpan sighed. "Any sign of Pegachuck, Sierra Oscar?"

"Nope. Looks like he's not turning up for the ballgame after all. Any sign on the radio tracker?"

"None," Hanpan said. "Keep your eyes peeled. He might still show up."

"Roger, Stone Cold. Will do. Oh, and I, uh, accidentally killed Biggs and Wedge."

"Don't worry; they'll be back."

"Roger. Sierra Oscar out." Neko switched off his walkie-talkie, much to Hanpan's relief -- these "codenames" were an embarassment.

Over in Costa del Sol, the wind rat turned and checked the receiver for the tracking collar. Still nothing -- Cait was off the planet. "Bahamut, you simpleton," Hanpan muttered. "How could you have let him out of your sight?"

* * *

Cait Sith, Masa, Juba, Shar, and Buzi arrived at the Esper shrine, tailed at some distance by the cloaked assassin. The Esper shrine was just a small rectangular wood shack that barely qualified as a building. Were it not for the idols by the door and the sign over the door proclaiming it to be the "Warren G. Harding Memorial Esper Shrine", it could well have passed for the Unabomber's shack.

"Stand back," Juba said. The armorsmith strode up to the door and gave it a mighty kick.

"@#$!#" Juba cursed, hopping around and holding his bruised foot.

"It's probably warded," Cait Sith said. "If I remember right, and I always do, we have to sing Neil Diamond songs to open it."

There was an uncomfortable silence as the five looked at each other, each waiting for the other to speak.

"Look, someone's gotta do it," Buzi said.

"There is no way you're going to catch me singing Neil Diamond songs," Cait Sith insisted. "You're the brains of the operations, you do it."

"It's your mother we're trying to save," Shar countered.

"My foot is sore, I can't," Juba said lamely.

There was more silence. "Uh... maybe there's a back door?" Masa suggested hopefully.

Holding no real hope of finding anything, the group trooped around the back of the shrine. And there they saw it. Leaning against the side of the shrine was a shiny, liquid-metal, robot moogle, upon which was perched the demonic-looking CS-1000.

They remained still for a moment, hoping the CS-1000 would not notice them. When it made no move for several minutes, Cait Sith slipped forward and prodded. The robot gave no response.

"Heh... guess it must be powered down," Masa said. He drew his Emperor sword and plunged it through the CS-1000's chest, punching a huge hole in it. Sparks flew out, and the slight hum from the CS-1000 stopped.

Masa grinned in satisfaction and dusted his hands off. "That took care of that," he said.

"I guess Reeve didn't want to sing Neil Diamond songs, either," Cait observed.

* * *

Barret angrily paced the Midgar Moogles' dugout. "Those damn Woodchucks got forty-nine runs," he said. "And we be havin' none. If they get one more run, the damn mercy rule means we lose the game automatic'ly!"

"Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find a way to come back," Cloud said mildly. "Besides, winning isn't everything."

"Shu'up, foo'!" Barret said. "You be forgettin' 'bout Marlene! We lose this game on the mercy rule, there no way Genji be wantin' to sponsor us! How'm I gonna pay fo' her education?"

While Barret was ranting on about Marlene, Reeve pulled out the controls for the CS-1000, in hopes of finding another way into the Esper shrine besides singing Neil Diamond songs. When he peered into the view screen, however, he was greeted with the image of Cait Sith and the Talon crew walking away from the damaged robot. "Holy @%#!" Reeve exclaimed.

Everyone turned to look at him and the device he held in his hands. "Uh, it's just a Tamagotchi," Reeve said. "Yeah, a Tamagotchi. I reckon I jest fergot to feed 'er." Kicking himself for forgetting to attend to the CS-1000 during the game, Reeve pushed a button to activate the CS-1000's repair systems. The robot was back in action.

Meanwhile, Barret continued talking. "Palmer, we be countin' on you. You better not let them hit no homers, okay?"

"Mrgpfh," Palmer nodded from inside his moogle suit.

"And no mo' pitches that don't reach home plate," Barret added.

The umpire walked up to the dugout. "Excuse me," he said in his nasally voice. "If you're not back on in the field in one minute, I'm going to have to give you another delay of game penalty."

The team quickly rushed back onto the field. As they moved to their respective positions, they caught wind of a rumor. The Woodchucks were making changes in their batting order. "Vince, they're taking Ox out," Rufus said urgently.

"The absolute value of good and evil is the same," Vincent muttered mysteriously.

"Oh, never mind," Rufus said, talking mostly to himself. "But why are they taking him out? He's their best hitter."

Cloud jogged up to Rufus. "Aerith said they're taking Ox out," he reported.

"I know," Rufus said. "What's going on here?"

Cloud shook his head. "I don't know."

"Palmer, you better not mess this one up!" Rufus shouted as the players jogged back to their positions.

* * *

Chuckling at their easy victory, Cait Sith and the Talon crew turned to leave the small clearing where the Warren G. Harding Memorial Esper Shrine was situated.

"Stop is to time zone as airplane is to wing," a gravelly voice behind them spoke.

They all froze and slowly looked over their shoulders. The CS-1000, in perfect condition, was standing at the side of the shack, its rocket launchers trained on the small party.

"Oh oh," Cait Sith said.

"But I smashed a hole right through it!" Masa said.

"Liquid metal is to CS-1000 as bagpipe is to woodchuck," the CS-1000 explained. It punched itself in the chest, making a hole. The liquid metal immediately grew back over the hole, repairing the damage.

Then, suddenly, the CS-1000 charged towards them, firing its rocket launchers. Cait and the crew quickly scattered, running around in circles to dodge the rockets. Shar fired a lightning spell at one of the CS-1000's arms, destroying it, but the CS-1000 merely grew a new one.

"Maybe if we attack its head," Juba muttered, rushing in to attack with his axe. The CS-1000 merely grabbed the head of the axe and flipped Juba over its head, sending him crashing into a tree.

"Whoa, that was like something out of Power Rangers," Cait panted.

"Dead meat is to you as parrot is to Dark Ages," the CS-1000 said.

Shar threw a tornado spell in the direction of the CS-1000, trying to blow it out of the battlefield. As luck would have it, Cait Sith was standing nearby, and both he and the CS-1000 were carried into the air by the tornado.

"Auntie Em! Auntie Em!" Cait Sith shrieked as he and his robot twin were lifted into the air, rising far above the clearing. C.S. risked a glance down and instantly regretted it. "I think I'm going to puke," he mumbled.

The pair continued to spin higher and higher. The CS-1000 tried to get a bead on Cait Sith, but their rapid spinning made it almost impossible. Cait Sith looked down at Neko's bag, which he still carried, wondering if there might be anything in it that might save him. Then it hit him. "The lamp!" he said aloud. "I still have one wish left!"

Cait Sith pulled the lamp out of the bag and started to rub it. Figuring out what he was doing, the CS-1000 fired its thrusters and flew at Cait Sith. "Lamp is to CS-1000 as cattle prod is to Queensland," the CS-1000 said as it grabbed the lamp. Cait Sith refused to let go, however, and kept rubbing it.

Finally, Shaq appeared. "Yo, C-Dog," he said. "Need a wish?"

"Quick, take me back to the present!" Cait Sith shouted.

"Okey-dokey," Shaq said. Cait Sith instantly found himself spinning through time -- carrying the CS-1000 with him, both it and Cait Sith clutching the lamp tightly.

* * *

Palmer concentrated furiously, imagining where he would throw the ball. He didn't dare let the Woodchucks score, or he could kiss his job at Shinra goodbye. "Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey," he muttered under his breath to calm himself.

Then the batter arrived. In place of Ox came the Woodchucks' pinch hitter, who hopped up to the plate with a happy grin on his face, staring at Palmer expectantly.

"Wheep wheep?" Peco squeaked.

Palmer almost dropped the ball in shock. At the critical point of the game, the Woodchucks had replaced their best hitter with an onion? He didn't even have a bat, let alone hands to hold it with! Palmer quickly regained his compsure, however, and wound up for the pitch. He clumsly tossed the ball at the mound, hoping he could throw right over Peco's head.

Peco scurried up to the plate. With a squeak, he swung his head at the ball and connected. The ball shot over Palmer's head and arced into the air, sailing over the heads over the astonished Midgar Moogles.

"@#$%$, it's gonna be a home run!" Cid cursed.

The Moogles watched helplessly as the ball sailed towards the stands. Then, suddenly, Cait Sith and a robot version of C.S. materialized in the sky, both holding the magic lamp. They both immediately plummeted towards the ground -- and directly into the ball's flight path.

With a loud crack, the ball collided directly with the CS-1000's head, tearing it off. The ball, deflected by the collision, bounced off to the side and landed in the stands, a foul ball. Cait Sith continued to fall and hit the ground in the outfield.

Dazed, Cait Sith picked himself up and looked around. "What happened?" he asked as the CS-1000's body landed at his feet.

"Cait Sith!" Aerith exclaimed.

"NOW!" Rufus bellowed.

Remembering Red XIII's warning, Cait Sith hit the ground. Two gunshots rang out, and bullets whizzed over his head. Cait quickly rolled to his feet and saw the dark-cloaked figure standing with a gun aimed at him. The figure aimed the gun to fire again, but the CS-1000's head suddenly fell on it from above.

Too dazed to aim, the figure ran to grab Cait Sith and stop him from escaping. C.S. quickly aimed a punch at the figure's head, knocking the figure's hood back.

It was Felix the Cat. "Felix!" Cait exclaimed.

"If I catch you, they'll have to let me back into the Esper world," Felix said. "Now hand over the money."

Cait Sith dropped Neko's bag and held up his hands. "Uh, I don't have it here."

"Don't be stupid, it's in my magic bag right there," Felix said, grabbing the bag.

"I wouldn't have done that if I were you," Cait said mischievously.

"Why?"

Cait Sith pointed up into the sky. Felix stared upwards. A huge cloud of money was dropping down towards him, almost blocking out the sky. As soon as Felix has taken Cait's money, it had left the bag and was returning to its rightful owner.

"Oh, bugger it all," Felix said as a gold bar hit him on the head and knocked him out.

As his estranged cousin was buried under the rapidly-growing mountain of money, Cait Sith thought it best that he make a hasty exit. Clutching the lamp under his arm, he made a dash across the field, towards the dugout.

"Stop him!" Rufus shouted. "He's got the lamp!"

"Hey, just what were you trying to do, killing Cait Sith?" Tifa demanded.

"But he -" Rufus started.

Vincent quickly whipped out his pistol and fired it just over Rufus's head. The bullet zipped through the center of Rufus's hair, carving a neat little furrow through it.

"Aaugh! My hair!" Rufus wailed. "What have you done to my hair?" He collapsed to the ground in tears. "Make him pay, Reeve!"

Reeve sprinted off towards the dugout, in pursuit of Cait. "After him!" Cloud shouted.

"Why?"

"I don't know, but what else are we going to do?"

* * *

After a few minutes of work, Hanpan had hauled the cell phone onto the table. It was time to give Bahamut a piece of his mind. The tiny wind rat hopped up on top of the phone to punch the buttons, when he happened to glance at the radio transmitter receiver and see a blinking red light.

"What? He's back?" Hanpan said incredulously. After a quick glance around to make sure nobody was looking when he revelaed his secret identity, Hanpan transformed into his alter ego, Mighty Mouse, and flew off out of the garage.

* * *

Cait Sith hurdled a bench and ran out of the locker room and into another hallway. He was somewhere under the baseball stadium in Midgar, lost in a maze of corridors. He could hear the rapid footsteps of both teams behind him, however, so he knew he needed to keep running.

Something red caught his eye, and he turned. Mounted on the wall was a red case marked "Break Glass In Case Of Chase Scene", with an uzi inside. "All right, now we're talking," Cait Sith said, giving the case a hard punch and succeeding only in bruising his knuckles.

Cait Sith pushed on the case's lever lock, hoping to open the case that way. The lever wouldn't budge either. "Damn childproof seal," Cait Sith muttered, pulling harder.

The Midgar Moogles burst into the corridor. "Don't move, in another couple of minutes I might have a gun!" Cait Sith blurted.

"Stop right there, Cait," Cloud commanded.

"Don't worry, we won't hurt you," Aerith said. "Just hand over that lamp."

Cait Sith let go of the lever and turned to face his friends. "Well... I guess so..."

"It's for your own good, Cait," Vincent said. "If Shinra finds you, they'll kill you."

"Oh, there you are, Mr. Kitty-Witty!"

Cait Sith's head snapped to the side. Luna was charging down the tunnel towards him, her arms spread wide. "I was looking all over for you!" she cried. "Where did you go?"

Cait Sith screamed.

"Who the @$%! is that?" Cid asked as Cait Sith sprinted between the pilot's legs. Ducking and weaving around the AVALANCHE members, Cait charged into the locker room from which he had come, slammed the door shut tight, and locked it.

Gasping for breath, Cait Sith sat down on a bench and listened to Luna's pounding on the door. Everywhere he went, someone else kept showing up to try to kill him... or, even worse, take him back to the opera.

The locker room door flew off its hinges and Luna bounced in. "Come here, Mr. Kitty!" she cried.

Cait Sith resorted to the only weapon he had left -- the lamp. Cait turned and hurled it at Luna, but missed wildly. The lamp hit a steel beam supporting the ceiling and shattered into pieces.

The genie form of Shaquille O'Neil appeared in the air. "Hey!" he shouted. "What have you done to my lamp? I still have 59 more monthly installments to pay! What am I gonna tell your mother?"

Cait backed away from Shaq and Luna, looking desperately about for some escape route, when...

"Heeeeeeere he is to save the day, Mighty Mouse is on his waaaaaay!" Hanpan, in his Mighty Mouse form, streaked into the room and hovered over Cait's head. "Return to whence you came!" he cried, pointing at Luna and Shaq. "Han Transporter!"

Luna and Shaq glowed briefly, then both vanished, sent back to their homeworlds. "Whew, thanks for saving me, Mighty Mouse," Cait Sith said.

"Not quite yet," Hanpan said. He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his cape and slapped them on Cait's wrists. "You're coming with me."

* * *

One week later...

Cait Sith stood facing Ramuh, bailiff of the Court of the Espers. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" Ramuh asked.

"No," Cait said.

"Okay, no biggie," Ramuh said. "Sit down anyway."

Cait Sith sat down as closed as he dared to his lawyer -- Luna, the only person who would defend him. On the other side of the table sat Rufus and Reeve.

Bahamut banged his gavel. "Defense, call the first witness."

"Your Honor, I'd like to call Ruby the dragon to the stand," Reeve drawled.

A handcuffed Ruby took the stand. "He left me waiting at the altar!" Ruby said tearfully. "He dropped me into some muck in the sewer! He got me arrested! All because I wasn't really a cat!"

"Awwww..." the jury said.

"Next, we'd like to call Burkina Faso's ambassador to the United States to the stand," Reeve said.

Ruby left the stand, and the ambassador took her place. "He kept me up all night printing with his constant printing business cards," the ambassador said. "I fell behind on important work because of him."

"Thank you, sir," Reeve said. "Next, we'd like to call Yuffie Kisaragi to the stand."

Yuffie, wearing a thick wad of bandages over her head, hobbled up to the stand. "Cait Sith, like, gave me these tapes that were, like, all mean and stuff," Yuffie said. "They said I was, like, stupid and retarded for listening to them. And, like, um, that's, like, it."

"Our next witness is Name Withheld of the Republic of Texas."

A Republic of Texas member took the stand. "That mangy cat tricked me into fighting the CIA and the Eyewitness News team!" he ranted. "And he made me set foot inside that bastion of communist known as the U.N. Building! It's part of a conspiracy to -"

"Next, we'd like to call Alan Greenspan to the stand," Reeve quickly interrupted.

Alan Greenspan took Name Withheld's place. "Thank you," Greenspan said, clearing his throat. "Numerous irrational fluctuations in the devaluation risk premium have been observed in the calibrated vicissitudes of sovereign debt..."

"Oh, man, we're gonna be here all day," Hanpan groaned from the audience.

* * *

Several hours later...

"Enough!" Bahamut bellowed, interrupting Greenspan's longwinded testimony. "I've heard more than enough to make my bloody decision."

Bahamut cleared his throat. "Cait Sith, you have been found guilty of slander, grand theft economy, recklessly endangering the life of numerous living creatures, destruction of property, engaging in a false or scandalous moneymaking scheme, impersonating an ambassador, engaging in a con operation at Fort Condor, and playing really bad music."

He paused to catch his breath. "Your punishment: 200 years banishment to the Esper World. Titan, take him away."

The Cute Animal Characters and AVALANCHE watched as Titan slapped some handcuffs on Cait Sith and led him out of the courtroom. "Do you think we did the right thing?" Mog asked.

"Look at this way," Neko said. "Anything the Espers do to him is a lot better than what Shinra was going to do."

"Yeah," Mog said. "I suppose you're right, kupo. There's just one thing that's bothering me."

"What's that?"

"Where were the forty thieves?"

Rufus's phone rang. "Hello?" Rufus said, grabbing it off the receiver. "President Shinra's office, the big kahuna speaking."

"This is Cloud. Why aren't you at practice?"

"Practice?" Rufus repeated, puzzled.

"We're at the stadium, waiting for you!" Cloud said.

"You still have a team? After that disaster?"

"We only lost 49 to 1, after Barret hit that bank shot off the pile of money in the bottom of the ninth," Cloud said. "It wasn't that bad. And Genji was so happy that we got half the universe's money back that they extended our contract anyway."

"Oh," Rufus said. "I see."

Static suddenly cut into the line, seeming to come from a third source. "kzzhk... zkhk..." a voice said. "zzkkh... I am the icy black hand of fate... kzzz..."

"Cait Sith, is that you?" Cloud said.

"No... kkzzhkkk... I am the... zzz... icy black hand of fate... kzzkkhh..."

"How did you get on here?" Rufus said. "This is an unlisted number."

"zzkkh... kkhhzz... the icy black hand of fate is all-knowing... kkhzz... zzhkk... bzzkrhh..."

"So, uh, should I come down to the stadium?" Rufus said, ignoring Cait.

"Yeah," Cloud said.

"zzzkhk... bizeep... zrkhhr... the icy black hand of fate... kzzhr... says... 'You have funny hair'... kkzzhrr..."

"Cait Sith?" Rufus said.

"kzzhr... yes?"

"NOBODY makes fun of my hair," Rufus said, and hung up the phone.

And the moral of the story is...
    "Beware of Neil Diamond!"