Tifa is Cloud’s light, you can’t tell me otherwise (Prequel ch 70)

Chapter

Tumbl

Okay, so I generally hate having to do separate chapters from different PoV’s, but I figured that this would benefit from it, so I backtracked a tad. 

This chapter starts out before Tifa even arrives in Hollow Bastion, but rather her showing up in Traverse Town and running into Leon.  I decided it was a good idea, as you can tell from my Tumbl. 

You can also tell from my Tumbl that Tifa and Leon were talking all over the place and I had a hard time keeping up.  *rolls eyes* I hate it (and love it) when characters do that.

I really love the dynamic between Leon and Tifa.  Leon just decides that day that he likes Tifa for whatever reason and he’s gonna help her.  And Tifa doesn’t complain.  It’s great, because this turns into a friendship where Tifa can look at Leon in the heat of battle, say “I need a lift” and he uses his gunblade to get her into the air.  I LOVE THEIR DYNAMIC.  Like, they’re a brotp.  End of story.

I also just made a crapton of references (radiant, shrouding dark cloud, and a SoKai reference, all for the win!)

by B-AGT on dA

Then a bit of duplication, except I abbreviated some stuff so it wasn’t a direct duplication. 

Then the end of that sequence, which was already set to be Sephiroth leaving, saying he’ll never be truly gone.  Then Tifa embraces Cloud and demands that he tell her what all has happened, but Cloud is too weak to respond at the moment.  Aerith decides that they should just go back to Traverse Town and deal with things there.

Well, that’s the plan anyway.  But I shan’t say more because spoilers.  Muahahaha.

Teaser Quotes:

“I mean, my teleportation spells sometimes have glitches, but I’m getting pretty good.”

“That’s highly effective.”

“Not my most favorite spell, but yes, effective.”

“Odds Leon managed to cook something?”

“Slim, but possible.”

“Daddy’s gotta take care of these Heartless!”

“Who are you?”
“Nobody in particular.”

Have I mentioned that I love the Piano Guys, seriously... check them out!

Hurt (ch38)

Warning, this blog post is about half my feels on the chapter, and half my feels about the context surrounding this chapter.  I don't expect you to read it.  (not that I think anyone reads the blog anyways, but all the same...)

Link to the chapter

No link to a tumbl.  I very obviously didn't livetumbl this chapter, and I didn't take notes like I've been doing in more recent chapters to put up on the tumblr later.  And, well, um... going back and adding in notes just feels weird for some reason, so I'm not going to do it.

Anyway, I was going to write this chapter no matter what.  It was on the slate because I knew I was going to deal with the aftermath of Angeal's death from Zack's perspective.  It's not something I can just gloss over.  The fact that Rand's death practically overlapped it is a completely different story.  It did mean that I wrote this chapter before I wrote the previous chapter, because my version of "dealing with it" involved writing.  I was going to write no matter what and I might as well be productive about it.

I sat at my kitchen table with my roommate and my sister kinda just watching, but they knew asking if I was alright was futile because we all knew the answer was "no."

So I sat there with my giant headphones in, listening to an odd mixture of the Crisis Core soundtrack, Linkin Park, Safety Suit, and Mumford & Sons, as well as a mixture of very Zack-feelsy-amvs on YouTube.  And this chapter was born.

by ~Fanatic007 on dA

I didn't edit it too much, mostly because I wanted to keep the raw emotion that I fed into Zack.  And Aerith.

Aerith is in no way telling Zack he needs to be strong and get over it.  Aerith is simply telling Zack that he should not try so hard to grieve when no one is looking, because it makes it harder to function that way.  It's okay to cry.  You don't have to be strong all the time.

And... can we just take a second to appreciate the vast amount of strings in the Crisis Core soundtrack? I'm a sucker for strings, being a cellist myself.  And... the sadness that the sound of a cello can produce, complete with the franticness of a violin.  Sorry, music feels.

And, actually, I think that's all I have to say.

Yeah, it is.

Have another fitting video... (couldn't get the embed link to work either)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SWWJTbFnRw

The Fight Against Edea (ch19)

Fanfic Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/19/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

Livetumbl link: http://magiksbrain.tumblr.com/tagged/ch19/chrono

And the truth comes out.  Leon didn't ACTUALLY do anything against Maleficent.  Quistis is a bit ticked (rather understandably), but Leon does his job.  Well, sort of.

It's not really his fault that Edea aimed an icicle right at his chest (ala the end of FFVIII disk 1).  (Excuse my snark, I was reading a snarky walkthrough to ensure that the battle I'm referring to really ended disk 1.  You fight Edea at the end of disk 1 AND disk 2.  Yay.)

But enough about FFVIII the game, back to the story...

I tried not to make the battle sequence too long, but rereading it, I'm wondering if I made it long enough.  Oh well.  There will be more battles.  Trust me, there will be more battles.  It also occurred to me that Leon didn't do much this battle.  Of course, the original plan was to not physically attack her, so he was left with pretty much nothing because Leon actually doesn't know too much magic at this point.  He'll get better.

Well, sort of.  At some point, why do you need magic when Quistis and Rinoa know all the magic? I'm referring to story mechanics, actually... in-game mechanics, I gave Squall loads of spells.  Because, he needs them!

Oh, for anyone new, I tend to use Leon/Squall interchangeably when I'm just talking.  When I'm writing, I try to remain consistent.  As in, everyone calls him Leon except for Rinoa.

Anyway, backtracking, to get back on track...

Leon's all like: "This is your Sorceress? I thought for a moment it might be Maleficent.  Oh well, she needs to die anyway."
And then Quistis is like: "What do you mean you didn't properly deal with your last Sorceress? I thought you knew what you were doing?"

Quistis isn't happy with Leon.

Anyway, they battle Edea and after the whole icicle-through-the-chest thing, instead of being captured and
jailed like in the game, Rinoa basically has a Limit (though she uses Squall's gunblade for it) and nearly kills Edea.  This causes the transfer of powers between the two, instead of the later fight like in the game.  Now that I think about it, I'm not sure why I'm describing what I did versus what the game did.  I know that what I'm doing is different (partially because FFVIII is long and partially because I haven't played it in years and when I wrote the timeline, I was basically going off on memory and wrote a condensed version.  Yup.)  Then there's the fact that I want to add the KH spin to it, hence the possessing and the plunging into darkness motifs.

Actually, I think originally, I wasn't going to use the icicle-in-the chest, so Leon would have been awake to make the executive decision to move everyone off the float, but then I used the icicle thing and Quistis decided that everyone should be awake before they moved.

 by ~tomuyu on dA

So, the two pass out because...well... transfer of powers.  It'll happen every time.  Quistis and Zell are surrounded by two passed-out women and a bleeding-to-death Leon.  Yup.  Quistis heals Rinoa because she knows Rinoa's not crazy (spoilers: at the moment).  And then she still has to have Edea healed to answer questions.  But Edea's fine now because Ultimecia's not possessing her! Woo!

It's about here that I decided that Ultimecia and Xehanort should form a fanclub for possessing and Genesis should join.  What is it with KH and needed vessels? Well, it's mostly Xehanort, but still.

But anyway, Ultimecia's now back where she belongs at the end of time (for now) and she's stewing because her plan failed.  But she's not even a main objective right now, they've got other things to figure out.

Hmm, I'm not sure if I have anything else to say...

Okay, well... video!

Yup.  Another one from me.  I had a thing with this particular Linkin Park album and how it relates to Axel.

Currently, I'm of the opinion that the new FOB album is AkuRokuShi.

Like, seriously....

The Unwanted Mission (Prequel Ch6)

Convenient link to the chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/6/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before


I don't think I had originally anticipated sending Rinoa off on a mission to spy on her father, it just sort of happened.  I think I decided it would be an ironic situation and I went with it.

I hope that I accurately reflected Rinoa's initial panic on being told to go spy on her father, and then her maturity when she realizes that, despite all that, she's actually the best one for the mission and she's not going to let the Timber Owls down.

I had planned that Rinoa would start losing her magical abilities.  You'll see why later.  I can't say why now because spoilers.  I knew that she'd be living in Timber, making her way in life without revealing herself as a Sorceress, which admittedly gets easier when she has less magic to draw on.

I actually don't have too much to say about this chapter, honestly.

I remember having trouble writing it.  I actually started both this chapter and the chapter after it simultaneously and got stuck on both.  Not fun.  But, I finally got the inspiration for this chapter and finished it!

Picture on the right by *procerdecrepusculum on DeviantArt.  He does a lot of good art, you should go check it out.

Review Responses:

Just the one from KKBeckett: I'm really glad you liked the development of both Rinoa and the world!

Video:

I have a newfound obsession with this song.  It's the cellist in me. You should check out the Piano Guys altogether, however, because they're awesome.

Stepping Stones (Prequel Ch5)

I feel that's an accurate description of the chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/5/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

It kind of is a "stepping stones" chapter, considering it's made up of four smaller parts.  Each of these parts is a step away from what happened before and/or a step towards what's coming next.

We hadn't seen Cloud yet, but I needed to set up several things with him:
-His relationship with Tifa
-His unhappiness of where he's at
-His want to go adventuring
And so I did just that.  Sure, in a future chapter with him (minor spoilers), he's still in Nibelheim, but he's working towards his goals.

We had yet to see a chapter featuring Isa and Lea as main characters, only as side characters.  I didn't particularly have enough information on them to warrant a full chapter.  It's not really an area I'm exploring and what happens to them is relatively explained in the games themselves.  I took what we knew and made a snippet of a chapter.

Kairi's chapter featured both her and Zack.  It was a step away from Kairi in the first chapter and it certainly pulls from that.  It's also a step away from the last chapter where Zack was featured.  He's now in Hollow Bastion and looking for his own means of transportation outside of the black feathers.  Kairi's part of the chapter is also a step towards what will happen next--both in Hollow Bastion and for Zack.

Then there's Aerith's part of the chapter, which also features Kairi.  Go figure.  Aerith's part of the chapter, similar to Kairi's, pulls from the first chapter, as well as leads into future chapters.  Just you wait and see.  The plot is moving forward!

The picture on the right depicts the characters ALMOST at the age at which I'm writing them.  (I'm a year off.)  I saw the picture and really wanted to use it.  I feel it reflects how they all look at this point in their stories.  Picture courtesy of ~sakurabatou on DeviantArt (though she has since moved to a new account).  I realize I could just use the picture when the characters ARE those depicted ages... but I have other images I want to use heheh...

Review Responses!

WritersProse Chapter 2&3: I really appreciate your analysis and such! I'm also glad you found Rinoa's relationship with Angelo cool :) I do apologize for how this ends up coming across with the constant switching every chapter. Though, I do promise that several chapters down the road, things are a lot more connected.  It helps that several characters will meet up and start interacting with each other on a semi-permanent basis, the stories will become connected and there won't be such jarring switches.  On that note, I will strive not to do recaps of previous chapters as I switch to a new one like I seem to have done with chapters 2 and 3.  I'm trying to keep everything set in a KH universe, though a lot of Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core will bleed through.  I'm glad to hear my characterization and dialogue is solid, however :)

KKBeckett Chapter 5: Yes, that was definitely a reference to the Buster Sword (though in my canon, Cloud has YET to get it come Betwixt and Between--which is a function of Zack having it lol).  But yeah, totally a reference.  I'm glad you like the Lea/Isa bits, even though you found them eerie.  I find that entire relationship eerie and a bit tragic (as you can see by the end of AtP...).  KH3 isn't going to change that I don't think.  I question if Isa is redeemable.  I'm up for a little debate on that, however.  Anyway, it's seen later in the chapter how Kairi knows what a star shard is--she heard Mickey and Aqua talking about them likely.  (If that doesn't actually happen in BBS... whoops....) However, some of that is Kairi just knowing things like that as a function of being a Princess of Heart.  And Zack is all for taking the tip.  And yes... darkness is coming.  (I don't consider this spoilers, considering the games themselves dictate Radiant Garden's/Hollow Bastion's history.)

Video!

I love TSFH.  You should listen to them sometime.  I watched this video and had feels.  So I'm sharing it with you all.

Byes for nows!