Before we begin, I owe a huge thank you to snowcloud8, my awesome friend and incredibly helpful beta reader. Without her, this story would have stayed a bunch of half baked ideas, or would have become a mess of awkward cliches that nobody wants to have to deal with. Her help and willingness to let me bounce a ridiculous number of ideas off of her has made this story better than I could have ever hoped for. Thanks so much for all you do, snowcloud8!

As a quick further note, the story title comes from a comedy sketch by Frank Caliendo about John Madden announcing a NASCAR race. The title for this chapter comes from Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. I own nothing of FFXV you recognize and reviews are welcome, although flames will be used to burn Ardyn's stupid hat. Enjoy!

Chapter I: The Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Of all the things Maeve Ryan had thought would happen today, going ice skating in a car hadn't even come close to making the list. Of course, destiny hadn't bothered to ask what she wanted before it sent her world spiraling out of control in an unexpected car crash. The day had started off so well too. Maeve had been curled up in the back passenger side seat, fingers tapping out a text to Grayson, informing her big brother that she and their parents were on their way to pick him up, even though he'd still be on an airplane for a couple more hours and unable to see the message. Her iPod was on shuffle in her lap, the tail end of a piece from one of her favorite movies sweeping through her earbuds as she'd typed.

The car had shimmied a little but Maeve had ignored it. She'd spent her entire life in Northern Indiana, so a little fishtailing during the winter was perfectly normal. What was also normal was her dad impulsively hitting the brakes. Matthew Ryan had grown up in Tennessee in a small town where snow on the ground meant school was cancelled for the day while the one snow plow in the county trundled around clearing roads. He'd gotten better at driving during the winter after he'd married Lydia Frye and the two had moved to Northern Indiana, closer to her parents, but he'd never quite broken the habit of hitting the brakes the instant the car swerved a little. Normally it was a harmless habit, but occasionally it could be dangerous, which was why Maeve's mother normally drove during long winter trips.

The brakes on the car locked up. Maeve let out a startled yelp as the entire vehicle jolted sideways and her head snapped up in time to see the semi clip the front corner of their car. The world around her began to blur as the car spun and Maeve flung out a hand, the one not clutching her phone to her chest, to steady herself. The heel of her hand hit the seatbelt button just as the first tree branch clipped their car with a horrible shriek. Maeve was flung towards the opposite side of the car. Somehow the door had been ripped off during the accident and she went soaring through the empty space where it should have been, cold air stinging her cheeks and making her eyes water before she hit the ground, earbuds ripping out of her ears and flying into the distance with her iPod.

The impact tore huge gouges in her blue jeans and ripped skin off the palm of her left hand that she'd shoved down in a vain attempt to stop her momentum. She tumbled sideways, back smacking into rough dirt hard enough to knock all the air out of her lungs, leaving her gasping as she ended up on her knees again, one bloody palm pressed against the ground and the other still clutching her phone to her chest. For a moment, what she was staring at was shocking enough that she didn't notice the pain. There was dirt beneath her palm and knees, cracked from heat. She gaped at it, still sucking in big gulps of air to replace what she'd lost in the impact. There should have been snow on the ground, freezing her palms and numbing the ache in her knees as icy wind dried the panicked sweat sticking her hair to the back of her neck. Instead it was hot enough that she was glad her heavy sweatshirt had fallen off one of her shoulders.

Maeve could hear the tiny strains of music coming through her earbuds and lifted herself carefully to her knees, glancing to her left. She took in the sight of a few scraggly looking plants scattered across the ground and the white wires of her earbuds curling and twisting almost elegantly towards the scarred blue paint of her iPod which seemed miraculously unharmed by the crash that had sent her flying. She started at it blankly, mind struggling to process what was going on until a grey clawed paw came down on it, cracking the screen and silencing it for good. Maeve looked up and took in the sight of something that belonged in a horror movie. The creature was skin and bones, a walking skeleton of a dog with the juts of its spine rising up in a horribly uncomfortable looking way. It looked like it wouldn't be out of place if it were in the opening song of The Nightmare Before Christmas instead of standing in the middle of some kind of desert.

"What. The. Fuck," Maeve found herself saying, shock making each word its own sentence. Her voice sounded loud in the sudden silence and she clapped her bloody palm over her mouth, half expecting her mother to scold her for using that kind of language. Instead she found the creature staring directly at her, a long tongue rolling out from between massive fangs. It looked like it had just found its next meal laid out for it. She had a brief moment to feel her stomach sinking down towards her toes before the creature lunged towards her with alarming speed.

Maeve forced herself to her feet, doing her best to ignore the way her bleeding knees screamed in protest, and sprinted away, scanning her surroundings frantically for some place to hide. After running cross country for close to eight full years, Maeve knew for sure that she was an endurance runner, not a sprinter, especially not with her knees stinging with every step. A bulky shape to her left caught her attention and Maeve swerved towards it, praying that it wasn't another monster.

It was a car instead of a monster and for a brief instant Maeve thought that he parents had gotten dragged along on this crazy adventure with her. Then she realized the car was red, not dark blue like her parent's vehicle. She didn't realize until she was a few feet away that there were two bodies slumped inside the car. She was close enough to see that the woman leaning over the steering wheel was bleeding from the head when the second monster leaped onto the hood of the car, the aluminum shrieking under sharp claws. Its eyes snapped to her almost immediately and she could see its muscles bunching just before it leaped towards her.

Maeve shrieked, backpeddling and actually tripping over her own feet in her haste to get away. She crashed to the ground, the impact sending jolts of pain through her already aching limbs, and could only stare with wide eyes at the skin and bones monster that was going to end her. Its jump had landed it a couple yards away and it was stalking towards her with small, fluid steps. Maeve found that she couldn't look away, even though she knew the first one had to still be approaching her from behind, ready to strike. She pressed her free hand against the ground, the other still uselessly clutching her phone to her chest like it was the only thing keeping her alive, and struggled to get to her feet again as the monster in front of her leaped again.

She had only a brief moment to panic, realizing that she wasn't going to get back on her feet in time to dive aside, when someone tackled her hard enough to send both of them flying sideways. The skidding stop they came to shoved Maeve's tank top and heavy sweatshirt up her side, probably bloodying her up further, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Instead she was too busy focusing on the fact that she wasn't, in fact, dead. The bulky form above her was already moving, practically lifting her off the ground to pull her with him. Part of her mind noticed that he hadn't bothered to button his shirt up when he'd gotten dressed in the morning, a hysterical giggle rising up in her throat. She forcibly shoved that part down as she was dumped none too gracefully onto her feet and shoved forward.

"Move," a gruff voice snapped at her and Maeve forced her feet to work again, ignoring the fact that every step hurt. Behind her one of the creatures let out what was a pitiful sounding whine of pain, but she forced herself not to look back. The last thing she needed to do at the moment was to trip over her own feet because she wasn't paying attention to where she was going.

The second one practically appeared at Maeve's left, its long, loping strides easily keeping pace with her. She silently began cursing the fact that she hadn't decided to take up track just to improve her sprints. The monster lunged at her and Maeve flinched as she was grabbed and shoved behind her unexpected savior. She found herself gaping as he pulled a sword out of thin air and sliced at the monster, who darted back with a vicious sounding snarl before darting forward again.

A hand at her arm made her flinch and she whirled around to face wild blonde hair and bright blue eyes. "Come on," the boy said urgently, lightly tugging at her arm, and Maeve forced herself into motion again, trying her best to ignore the sounds of fighting behind her. Her hands were trembling uncontrollably and she was stumbling a little as she ran, the events of the day catching up to her. A tiny voice in the back of her head was still shrieking that the guy who'd tackled her out of the way had pulled a weapon out of thin air and that wasn't normal, but now wasn't the time to focus on that.

A third creature came from behind a shrub that Maeve didn't think it should physically have been able to hide behind, teeth bared. It dove at them and they split apart like it was some kind of action movie choreography, Maeve going left and the blonde boy going right. He landed in a graceful roll, snatching a pistol out of thin air in a flash of blue light, firing at the creature as he was rising to his feet. Maeve landed in a rough tangle of limbs, somehow still clinging to her cell phone, and scrambled clumsily to her feet in time to see a dark haired boy that looked like he was about the same age as herself and the blonde, appear out of literally nowhere to plant a sword in the monster's face in what looked like an excessively overkill move. That was the moment when Maeve finally realized exactly where she was.

"Holy crap," she hissed under her breath, knowing her eyes had to be wide with shock. She'd somehow ended up in a video game. It sounded like a horribly cliche fanfiction written by a thirteen year old, even in her head, but the evidence stacked up before her was making it difficult to come to any other conclusion. She bit down on her lower lip, swallowing a hysterical giggle as her mind pointed out that if this were a fanfiction, she'd at least be in one of her favorite games, not one that she'd only played for an hour at her best friend Elizabeth's house and only knew the basic plotline of.

The urge to laugh abruptly faded when she realized that no one would know what had happened to her. The paramedics would arrive at the scene of the crash to find her parents and maybe her winter coat that had been folded up in the passenger seat. They wouldn't find her. Eventually someone would realize that Grayson was at the airport and hadn't been told about they accident. They'd have to go pick him up and tell him everything, including the fact that his little sister was missing. Grayson would be stuck all alone with two parents that were critically injured, if not dead, and a missing sister on what was supposed to be his first day home from Iraq.

Her breath hitched in her throat, the entire situation no longer funny, and she could feel tears building up. The blonde boy must have noticed because he reached out a careful hand to rest it on her shoulder, saying, "Hey, are you okay?" That was when the events of the day finally caught up to her and Maeve, predictably, burst into tears.