Crossover Continued (Can't Escape ch63)

No, I'm not spamming you with chapters and posts.  not at all.  

Chapter

So, originally, the whole crossover was supposed to take place during Betwixt and Between.  It was during the whole "restoration and rebirth" kind of thing that I had going on, and the crossover was a part of that.  But then I wrapped Betwixt and Between up sooner than originally intended, so it got put after Betwixt and Between but before my Book 3.  (Like, literally, a couple of days before.)

by veritas-project

I remember using this image a long time ago (back when we were all still on Posterous) during the chapter where Namine and Riku ended up running into Shad.  Don't ask me why I used this picture then, but I did.  But now I'm using it again.  It's more appropriate, even though Riku and Repliku aren't going to be fighting each other.  Like, ever.  Alongside, maybe, against, never.

Man, I'm not quite sure where the "comparing injuries" conversation came from, it was probably Sora's idea.  Regardless, it totally happened and it flowed, so we kept it.

Eheheheh... the Larxene stuff, gets me every time! Oh, just you wait.  It's awful spoilers.

Man, does this group go off on all the tangents.  But, what can you do? It's a combination of them all talking about Xehanort/Xemnas/Ansem.  Which rar and I knew was going to happen, because there's the whole thing where Riku's like "man, I gotta deal with these guys again?!?!"

This is also the conversation that spawns Namine desiring to literally summon her sketchbook like a Keyblade.  Yup.  It's a thing.  Well, it'll be a thing.

Oh, this conversation happened:
rar: IS RIKU'S WRIST STILL BROKEN
magik: DEPENDS
magik: WHEN ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
magik: ARE WE TALKING CROSSOVER
rar: YES
magik: UGH, LOAD THE SPREADSHEET COMPUTER

Riku's wrist is still braced, actually, sometimes.  (He never actually got it set the cocky-butt, and then Xaldin did drive a lance through that same hand, so...) Heheh.  But I had to load the darn spreadsheet just to check.  By now, at least, Sora's hands are both functioning... remember Xehanort breaking his wrist during the battle of Castle Oblivion?  Anywho.

I think that's all I've got for now.  Except this.

WHAT IS THIS IS IT THE CROSSOVER? (Can't Escape ch62)

Chapter

Why yes.  Yes it is.

This is the epic crossover you've all been waiting for? (Well, one of them at least.  I think ya'll were pretty excited to see Sora and Sora, too.  But Riku and Riku was always going to happen first.)

Rar and I have had this planned since... oh... Probably since AtP, about when rar was finishing up FtP and moving into Dead Inside.  We even had it written.

Except, reading through it, we realized that we had to rewrite it.  Basically entirely.

Things that stayed the same:

by Maulsypaulsy

Vexen dragging Riku to the other universe
Riku landing face-first in the sand
Namine being the first one to see him
The cast of characters
General chit-chat about recent happenings

Things that changed:
Everything else.

See, originally, before Dead Inside turned into the huge thing that it turned into, Sora and Kairi's plotlines were significantly less... erm... expansive.  (This is the short version.)  From my understanding, Sora had some trouble with the darkness, but nothing on the level of Shad, because Shad didn't exist yet, and Dead Inside actually took place in a lot shorter of a timespan, which meant that Kairi never actually left the Islands.  This made the Riku Replica super confused when he saw Sora and Kairi BOTH on the Islands.  (I may post the original scene when we're clear of spoilers.)

Repliku was also cockier and the meltdowns were still a relatively new thing.  As in, Vexen didn't even know they existed.  And Repliku was having a conniption about them because no progress had been made (which of course had to change because of the recent experiments.) I think we were also having trouble with Namine continuing to offer to help and he kept saying no.  There was also a whole thing where they got on a tangent about Replicas being their own people (we were on a Days kick) and we were having feels about Repliku being worried that his Namine would be worried that she was a Replica and not a "real" person.  That got cut because people's focuses changed.

Plus, we had to change some of the conversation, because things we projected would happen and things that actually happen do end up being two different things.  And, some things had to get cut because at the time we first wrote the crossover, we hadn't planned on Joseph and Axel being frequenters of the other universes.  And, since Can't Escape became a huge thing, we didn't have to cover a lot of the mechanics.  The people in my universe know about where Sora and Kairi in rar's universe are, because they keep running into each other.  Plus, Axel ran into Repliku recently.

Yeah, it was a whole big thing.

And, about the time when we were going to rewrite it, Namine was dumping loads of feels on me of things that she wanted to say to Repliku.  Which is where the first half of the chapter as it currently stands comes from.  The second half being a brief sum-up of the parts of the story that my characters don't know.

And, I think that's all I'm going to say.  There are more chapters on this to be posted, and I don't want to discuss everything to death just yet!

I think I'll do review responses for this whole sequence once I'm done posting :P

And... I think this is an appropriate video; Also, it's amusing:

She wants Time Kompression (ch39)

Or something like that :P

So, HUGE update! 2.5 was released! Anyone super excited? I probably watched the trailer four times this morning on tumblr alone (as in, every single time it showed up on my dash) and then I think I watched it again on FB.  Anyway...  *dances excitedly*

Anyway, link to chapter 39

Link to the tumbl

by VanEvil

So this chapter actually got written after I'd loaded up FFVIII and played that last battle again.  Because, why not.  T'was fun.  That, and I watched two different playthroughs to get more ideas than just what I do.  Because, seriously, I'm not writing Irvine or Selphie, and only some of their stuff gets transferred over to what I was doing with Edea and Laguna.  And my solution with Rinoa is to stick her in her limit break and then just keep her healed.  Then she just chain-casts.  There's no strategy.  And Rinoa in my fic would have strategy.  So... yeah...

Ultimecia's a pretty fun boss battle, honestly.  I found it incredibly easy the first time I played it (though, I'd had so much else go wrong with my game that I guess it just didn't quite match up to the suspense I'd gotten waiting for a functional third disk.)  All the same, it's a pretty decent battle, though the storyline of 8 is all over the place, don't get me wrong.  I think my stuff makes more sense lol.

Sorry for those of you reading the first posting of that chapter, I had missing words and stuff.  Clearly I need to proofread better.  I think it's all fixed now.  If not, lemme know, I'll probably fix them

Again, I kinda feel bad for all the crap I put Rinoa through.  This is the second time she's possessed.  And Ultimecia's a stronger consciousness.  And... yeah... I just... but... *shrug*.  Rinoa is the one who just gets all the Sorceress powers in my story.  Heheh...

And, yes, I did reference Shad.  Don't even ask me why.  I found it amusing and thus kept it.

Huh... is that really all I have to say about this chapter? I think it is.  I mean, it's just a boss battle.  The more interesting stuff will come in later chapters.  O...kay... then.

Well, then in that case... anyone wondering what happens next will have to wait a couple of chapters.  (I say two because the next chapter involves someone who is not these characters.  You'll see!

As usual, have a video:

Oh! before I do that! I found other things to say... I think I've already attached Rolling Girl to Rinoa.  Well, here, have another version of Rolling Girl (a really excellent cover if I do say so myself).  A lot of my feels relate to rar's feels on this one (not the first time I've said this) but... yeah... enjoy!

Fight Against Adel in Rinoa (ch30)

Link to the Chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9446325/30/What-s-all-Gone-on-Before

Link to the livetumbl: http://magiksbrain.tumblr.com/tagged/ch30/chrono

So, this is the chapter where Leon finally decides that he's going to go after Rinoa.  Goodness, that took some persuading.  (Actually, it really didn't.  Edea basically just had to tell him what he needed to do.)  Anyway.

Literally, this is what I had written in my outline:
Leon, Zell, and Quistis were forced to go back to Balamb without Rinoa, but with Laguna.  Despite everything Laguna said, there was no retrieving Rinoa.  After agonizing about this for a while, Leon takes it upon himself to go rescue Rinoa.  He realizes that he cares about her a lot, maybe even to the point of love.  Edea coaches him a bit about Sorceress Knights and he goes off to rescue her.  On the way, he realizes that he loves her.  He brings Rinoa back to herself and she gets the two sets of Sorceress powers under control.

Yeah, so that happened.

by *Mar-ka on dA

Well, it kind of happened like that.  That particular portion of the outline hadn't been updated since I decided
that Adel's consciousness wasn't going to die yet.  Originally, Rinoa just lost control of the second set of powers, rather than Adel having anything to do with it.  But, aside from that modification.

What I do wish I had done, was maybe make the fight against Adel take a little longer.  Reading through it again, I feel like I shortened it by too much to keep it in a chapter length.  I don't know.  Anyone else have any thoughts on that?

Despite that, I'm glad I included the Adel conscious in favor of Rinoa just losing control.  It make Rinoa the only girl who gets possessed, sure, but that's one girl out of a load of boys who have trouble with "shadows" (e.g. Rar's Sora, Riku and Cloud (and kind of Zack).)  *not spoilers because of AtP and BB*

Though, it does make this sequence a little bit darker than originally planned.  Whoopsies.

Then, to piggy-back off of what the livetumbl has going on... I *love* the sarcasm that Leon's got going on.  "I'm going to go visit it as a tourist attraction--no, I'm going to try and rescue her, you dumbwit!"  The second half of that post refers to Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.  Because sarcasm, that's original.

Then, in those last moments, he's just so mushy.  And he's never been more grateful that Rinoa's always called him 'Squall' in his life.  I made sure that Adel always referred to him as 'boy', and it's not until Rinoa's truly herself again that she calls him 'Squall.'   Heheh.

So, yeah.  That's all I have to say.

Namine Squared

I think it's time I do a post on the Namine's.

Everything here is just a conglomeration of everything that you guys already know or can know.  It's to help even out the confusion and answer some questions--maybe even for me and rar.

For starters, there's different levels of things that everyone knows.

There's the things that you guys all know.  It's been posted in a chapter, made canon, written out in a blog, whatever.  You know it.

Then there's stuff that our beta's know that the rest of the readers don't.  Cookie may fall into this category a little because he asks questions via PM and I know *I* answer ones that aren't too horribly spoilery, or I confirm theories. 

Then there are things that rar and I have written into a scene somewhere in the future (or, I suppose in the past), the scenes just haven't been posted yet.  Things inside these scenes may change, depending on what happens in the stuff we're posting currently.  The farther out it is, the more that's likely to change within it.  

Then there is stuff that rar and I just know.  It's not been written anywhere, we've just discussed it in a plot-throwing-around session.  Or it's come up and we've sat on down and figured it out.  (Blue’s Clues reference, btw).  These facts that we know may or may not actually make it into the story itself, but we know them to be true.

Then there are the things that rar and I honestly, actually don't know.  Things like Namine's meltdowns.  Rar and I legitimately don't have an answer as to what is causing them.  (I use this as an example because it's current, relevant, and this post is about Namines...) Anyway, we have our theories and speculations as to what is causing the meltdowns, but nothing is official.  And then there are things about my Namine that I find out as she tells me.  It goes something like this:

I'm writing something, and all of a sudden, Namine's doing something that she's never done before.

I ask her: "Namine, since when can you do that?"

And she replies: "Oh yeah, by the way, I can do that."

It's a ton of fun.

So, some basic facts and whatnot about our Namines.

Both Namines can see the future.  Or, certain future events.  However, this happens for different reasons for each girl.  Rar's Namine can see the future because of the paradox in her memories: she has memories of things that haven't happened yet.  Therefore, when she sees stuff that hasn't happened yet, it's because of those memories.  Will she continue to see/draw the future when all of those memories come to pass? Maybe, maybe not.  She might, considering my Namine can see future events without memories of them and rar's Namine has data from my Namine.  

My Namine can see future events because she can see past memories.  Or, it's related to that at least.  That's her current theory as to why she can see what she sees.  She takes the memories that she has access to (it used to be people just related to Sora's heart, now it's anyone if she tries hard enough.  Except Shad, he's a bit harder... but he's special.) She takes those memories and she uses them to project potential futures.  The closer the futures are, the more accurate her projected potential futures are.  She can also draw things simultaneously with them happening.  She just... does that.  

If she draws a picture of the future, it is about 93% accurate.  Some things may change here and there.  If there is blood in the picture, that is definitely going to happen.

Each Namine processes the images from the future different.  Rar's Namine generally has a meltdown because she doesn't actually know how or simply cannot process the future images.  So, rather, she doesn't process them at all.  This might have something to do with the locks that Edd put on her brain.  She may probably get to a point where she learns to control them and process them properly.  (Or she'll just get to a point where she doesn't get the future memories anymore, that's up to rar.)  (Sorry, this is still a tad confusing.  especially since rar's Namine's seeing of future memories and her meltdowns are somewhat intertwined....) However, this is assuming that the memories are what is causing the meltdowns.  But if that's what's causing them or not, rar's Namine doesn't do well in processing the future memories.  Thanks Edd.

My Namine processes the future images merely by just drawing them.  She doesn't think too much about them because any potential time difference is going to give her a headache.  She just files them away as puzzle pieces that she can't quite place yet and then she puts them in whenever she sees that an event has happened.  She's rather calm and compartmentalized about all of this, mostly because it's just been something that she has always been able to do.  She was the Nobody who could see memories, like Roxas was the Nobody who could wield a Keyblade.

My Namine can also sort of "create" a future via the images that she draws.  But that's only if she's messing with memories inside of hearts as she does so.  It's not something that she likes to do.

Fun fact, my Namine can experience a meltdown if she happens to be paying attention to rar's Namine's memories at the time of a meltdown.  If her telepathic link to Kairi happens to be strong at that moment, Kairi will experience a shadow of the meltdown as well.

Could my Namine fix rar's Namine's meltdowns? Potentially yes.  Backing up a bit, one of the main reasons why they (as in everyone in rar's universe who cares about stopping Namine's meltdowns) haven't *tried* all that hard to fix them is because they lack complete access to the Program.  They can theorize all they want as to what is causing the meltdowns, but they can't do anything to fix them until they KNOW what's causing them, and they can't do wither thing until they have complete access to the Program.

Yes, my Namine being around could potentially circumvent this, but she can't do everything single-handedly.  She'd need a fully functional Program.  Which, at the current moment, would require rar's Namine to go to my universe, which even with them meeting in that AU scene in ASAS, that wouldn't happen simply because Riku wouldn't allow it.  (Because, to be honest, he's f***ing paranoid about what would become of Namine.  He's too afraid that she'd change, she wouldn't be his Namine anymore.  He's afraid of this because every time he went into a Memory Pod, he just got rewritten.  So give him a break.  Especially because he doesn't actually admit this to anyone.)

Plus, in the canon story, the two Namine's haven't met yet.  

Things are going to happen with rar's Namine before she meets my Namine.  My Namine is not the solution to the meltdown problem.  It does make an interesting theory, however.  You're welcome to write all the fanfiction of our fanfiction you want to on it.

That's all I have to say on this subject at the moment.  And, knowing Namine, don't trust any of it to be true always.  She has a habit of retconning things herself.