And So The Story Begins.... (Prequel Ch9)

Well, a new part of the story, anyway...  This chapter marks the end of one part and the beginning of another.  It also marks an extreme passage of time.

Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/9/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

by ~YunaB-Rabbit on dA

So, Kairi's portion of the chapter happens directly after the previous chapter, the dirge of Radiant Garden.  The protection charm she had took her from that world and plopped her right into the seas of Destiny Islands.  From there, she was carried to the main island of Destiny Islands and was found by Sora and Riku, both of whom she instantly becomes friends with.  Though not mentioned in the chapter, nor will I do a chapter on this, Kairi is then adopted by the mayor and his wife and proceeds to begin a life as if she were their daughter.  She still retains memories of her old home, but five-year-old's only have so much memory recall, so things begin to blur and fade.

In between the last time we saw Quistis and now, she's been studying hard to become an instructor, and she finally makes it.  She's not even an instructor for an entire hour when she's called to do a mission to research the appearance of Heartless onto her world.  Proud and logical, Quistis takes up the job, knowing that since she has no classes or students at the moment, she won't have to put her life on hold to do it.  After this chapter, she will proceed to take Zell and maybe another Cadet or two and do as much research as she possibly can on the Heartless.  I will explore Heartless and that world later.

Tifa's in a conundrum.  She wants to take martial arts lessons, for many reasons, (protecting her town, trying to see if Cloud will take her on as an adventuring buddy, not wanting to be helpless) but she can't afford them and knows her dad won't pay for them.  I'm not sure when I decided that Tifa's dad would be such a pain, but it happened somewhere in this chapter.  So she tries to get a job as a tour guide for Mt. Nibel (a job that she has in Crisis Core) but unfortunately, she can't get the job at this point.  However, despite not having a job or the money to pay for the lessons, Zangan is willing to train Tifa anyway because he sees her potential.  I will explore this later as well.

Rinoa's magical powers finally dwindle and she decides that she must not be a Sorceress after all.  (Spoiler alert, she wasn't.)  She's initially upset, mostly because she's finally been able to master some good spells, but then she becomes relieved because she's not a pariah to society.  She starts thinking about other ways to fight and how she's going to help Timber without magic.  She reconsiders going back to SeeD and becoming a cadet, thinking about how she could help the Timber Owls that way, but the thought gets postponed because maybe, maybe she can handle things at the Timber Owls without magic and without being a SeeD.  Her plans to become SeeD will continue to get delayed partially because of things with the Timber Owls and partially because of the influx of Heartless.  (Trust me, this isn't spoilers.)

Things that did NOT appear in this chapter, but I can guarantee you are happening: the Organization takes form with the first six members, and Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, starts to bring darkness to more worlds.  Yup, yup!

So, there was no liveblogging for this chapter... however, I did go back and add the liveblogging link for chapter 8 below.

And this is super awesome....