Hello, everybody. Mengde here. You may not know what to make of this fic - have I finally gone insane? Has the thin thread of my sanity finally snapped? No, I just felt like writin another epic, and I also felt like writing a parody, so I combined the two. Your first reaction may be to jeer at me and say that I'm just copying Those Lacking Spines, but I urge you to give me a chance and prove that this is different.
Somehow.
Disclaimer: I don't own FFVII. Also, this will make fun of many elements of fanfiction, but it is all in general and not directed at anyone in particular. If you feel like I'm making some kind of personal attack against you, please reevaluate your stance on that. Thank you in advance.
I'm rating this T for violence and some perhaps-crude situations, but otherwise this is going to be pretty kosher. If you like to laugh, and you don't get offended easily, read on. I present...
Fanfiction Wars
An Epic Sextology In Six Parts
Written by Mengde
Chapter I: The Fandom Menace
Tifa hesitated outside Cloud's door.
She had made up her mind to do this. Cloud had defeated Sephiroth once and for all and Geostigma had been cured. They'd just beaten Deepground and the WRO was safe. He was happier now than she had seen in years, and he seemed to be finally getting over Aerith's death. If there was a time for her to do this, it was now.
Still, she couldn't help but feel nervous about it. What if he was still burdened by guilt despite his insistence that he had moved on? What if he really had loved Aerith too much to let go of her and there was no more room in his life for her?
Tifa shook her head. She knew better than that. That night they had spent together while everyone was out affirming what they were fighting for hadn't been random. She could see him stiffen, ever so slightly, whenever she walked into the room, an instinctive reaction that he tried to cover but never could. She saw the way he didn't make eye contact with her that often. For people who were living together, they were remarkably separate – they slept in different beds, different rooms even, and seemed to have very little in common.
That, she resolved, would change tonight.
"Cloud?" she called tentatively. "Can I come in?" There was no answer, so she assumed that he was asleep. She opened his door quietly and slipped inside, treading across the floor to his bed. She could see, faintly outlined in the bit of moonlight coming through the window, his form underneath the blankets, a few strands of his sandy-blonde hair protruding past the lip of the covers. Tifa smiled, looking at him. He was like some kind of human earthworm when he slept – the rest of AVALANCHE had always made fun of him for it.
She sat down on the bed next to him and he stirred, feeling her weight on the mattress. He gave a start and poked his head out from underneath the blanket, his eyes glowing faintly in the dark. "Tifa?" he asked, his expression surprised. "What are you doing in here?"
"I've been thinking," she said, her resolve set. "About a lot of things. About how we saved the planet again, and about AVALANCHE, but mostly about us. Cloud, I don't want us to be this way any longer."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I don't want us to be separate like this, living two different lives under one roof. I respect that you felt deeply for Aerith and that you blamed yourself for her death, but you've gone past that now. You told me so yourself. I want us to be a family, a real family." She delicately ran a hand down his cheek and smiled. "I want you."
Cloud sighed and his expression fell. She felt her heart stop as he sat up and said, "Tifa, I'm sorry, but… I have a confession to make. I can't be with you."
"What?" Tifa asked, feeling her eyes begin to well up with tears. "Why not?"
"Because," Cloud said, "I'm gay."
He motioned down at himself, and that was when Vincent's head poked out from underneath the covers, staring adoringly up at Cloud. "Darling," he said in his deep, inscrutable voice, "will you get her out of here? She's messing with the ambiance in the room, you've gone all limp."
That was when Tifa woke up, screaming.
After the dream Tifa had managed to get back to sleep, but it was a restless slumber, and she woke up that morning feeling sluggish. She plodded down the stairs to the kitchen in Seventh Heaven to find Marlene and Denzel already there.
"Morning, Tifa," Denzel said. "What happened last night? It sounded like you were being attacked or something."
"Just a bad dream," Tifa assured him. She thought back and added, "A really bad one."
"What was it about?" Marlene asked, pouring herself some cereal.
"The end of the world," Tifa told her, wondering why that sentence seemed oddly fitting. "Is Cloud up yet?"
"Nope," Denzel said. "He must still be sleeping, the lazy bum."
"I'll go get him up, then." Tifa poured herself a cup of coffee before trudging up the stairs again to Cloud's room. She knocked and called, "Cloud? It's nine-thirty in the morning, are you up yet?"
She got no response. Slowly she opened the door, half-afraid to find him snuggling in bed with Vincent, but the sight that greeted her was entirely different.
There was nobody in the bed. The bed itself, however, looked like it had been hit by a bomb, and the rest of the room had been ransacked. The window was hanging open, and the mirror mounted on the far wall was shattered. Tifa stepped inside, wondering what the hell had happened and how none of them had heard it, then reflected that with the way she had been screaming it was doubtful they'd have heard the world coming to an end.
"Denzel! Marlene! Did you hear anything coming from Cloud's room last night?" she called.
"No!" the two children both shouted up at her.
Worry creased Tifa's brow, and she hurried to her office and grabbed her phone, dialing Cloud's number. Nobody answered, and she got his voicemail – not that she hadn't gotten used to that in years past, but he tended to pick up nowadays.
Then her phone started vibrating. She looked at the number and saw that Yuffie was calling. Briefly she considered just not answering, but she steeled herself and picked up. "Yuffie, this is kind of a bad time," she said, trying not to sound upset or angry. "Can whatever you need wait for a little bit?"
"Don't tell me that 'this is kind of a bad time,'" Yuffie's voice snarked at her. "If Cloud's having his period you can handle it. This is a lot more important, Tifa. I can't get in contact with Vincent or Reeve. Cell phones, pagers, nothing works. Nobody's seen either of them since last night."
Tifa frowned, ignored Yuffie's comment about Cloud, and felt her interest pique. "Really? I was telling you this isn't a good time because Cloud's missing, too. I had this awful dream where he was having sex with Vincent –"
"What?" Yuffie exclaimed. "You're kidding me. I had a dream like that, too, except it wasn't Cloud. It was – this was so gross – Cid and Reeve. I mean, sure, Reeve's got a nice ass, but Cid's like, forty. Ew."
"This can't be a coincidence. I don't know what the dreams mean, but if everyone in them except Cid's gone missing –" She broke off, a thought hitting her. "Listen, I'm going to call Shera and ask if Cid is there. I hope whatever's happening hasn't gotten to him too, but if it has…"
"Right," Yuffie said. "You check on that. I'm in Junon right now on WRO business – I'll join up with you in Edge by afternoon. We'll get to the bottom of this, Tifa."
"Thanks, Yuffie." Tifa hit the END button and was about to dial Shera's number when a thought occurred to her.
She dialed Elena's number instead and waited for a few seconds until the Turk picked up. "Hello?"
"It's me, Tifa," she said. "Listen, Elena, I'm sorry to bother you, but is everything all right with you and the Turks? You haven't heard anything unusual going on at the WRO, have you?"
"As far as I know, everything's fine," Elena replied. "I'm on my way to work right now. Stuck in traffic on the freeway – rush hour, you know. Had the creepiest dream last night, though."
Tifa felt her blood run cold. "What was it about?"
"I dreamed that I walked into my office to find Reno and Rude sixty-nining one another on top of my desk, and Tseng was standing alongside wearing a bondage harness and hitting them with a riding crop. It was probably the most horrible thing I've ever dreamt, ever."
"Elena, forget going to work. Come over to my place, right now. Yuffie's on her way, too. We have a situation on our hands."
"What? What's going on, Tifa?"
Tifa swallowed. "I'll explain when you get here. Just trust me on this one, Elena. You need to be here."
"Yes, Cid is missing," Shera told them through Tifa's phone. Yuffie had arrived five minutes ago and Tifa had called Shera and put her on speaker. "I haven't seen him since last night. I woke up to get a drink of water and when I came back into the bedroom it had been ransacked and he was gone. Whoever did it didn't make any noise at all and certainly didn't let him put up much of a fight."
"You should come to Edge," Yuffie said. "We're going to figure out who could have taken the guys and where they could have taken them to. I mean, Cid's your husband and everything, so you should be here."
"No, no, it's all right," Shera said. "I'm not important or interesting enough to be included. Before Cid married me, I didn't even have a last name, after all."
"Shera, you know that's not true," Tifa protested.
"Oh, really? Then what was it?"
They exchanged blank stares. "Um," Elena said.
"Exactly. You girls go on without me. Just, please, when you find Cid, make sure you get him back in one piece. Without him, I really have no purpose as a character."
"We understand, Shera," Tifa assured her. "We'll get Cid back. You just sit tight." She hit the END button and sat back, feeling as though there was a wall somewhere that was quickly being eroded.
After a moment of silence, Elena said, "All right. Who do we know that would want to kidnap all the men? It must be somebody with a grudge against the WRO."
"If it was that simple, why would they stop at kidnapping the men?" Tifa countered. "They'd have it out for all of us."
"But I can't think of any reason other than that these perpetrators might hate the WRO. We have no other possible motives, no clues, nothing."
"Maybe they want to put pressure on us," Tifa suggested. "Maybe they kidnapped all of the men because they're a bunch of chauvinists who think that women aren't capable of managing the affairs of the world and are trying to make a point."
"Wow," Elena exclaimed. "That's probably the dumbest motive I've ever heard."
"I don't hear you coming up with anything better! Besides, the situation fits."
"Guys," Yuffie interrupted. "I think we're forgetting something, here?" The two other women looked at her, and the ninja-girl leaned in close, as though there were other people in the room eavesdropping. "The dreams."
"What about them?" Elena asked. "Obviously they're uncannily coincidental, but you think that whoever did this used dreams to kidnap the men?"
"No," Yuffie said. "I think the dreams are the reason why the mystery bad guys kidnapped the men."
Tifa and Elena stared at Yuffie for a long moment before Tifa said, very quietly, "You think that they kidnapped the men because they want to watch them have sex with one another."
"Makes sense. All of our dreams were about it, and everybody that showed up in a dream is gone."
"Wait a minute," Elena said. "It feels like we're missing somebody. Somebody that we all know, but isn't really that important –"
"TIFA! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? I CAME BY TO SAY HI TO YOU AND MARLENE!"
The women all looked at one another. "Of course," Tifa sighed. "Barrett would come by at a bad time like this. I'll go and tell him to come back later – wait." Her eyes widened in realization and she exclaimed, "Barrett hasn't been kidnapped? Why?"
"TIFA! I KNOW YOU N' CLOUD ARE HERE, HIS BIKE'S OUTSIDE! QUIT PULLIN' MY LEG AND LET ME IN!"
"I think I know why," Yuffie snickered.
"So you think that whoever kidnapped Cloud n' everybody wants 'em to have sex with each other?" Barrett asked as they walked up to the WRO Tower. "You're really a hundred percent sure?"
"Of course we're not sure, but it's the most logical explanation," Elena told him.
"Shit, no it ain't!" Barrett laughed. "If somebody was kidnappin' men for some kinda sick circus, why wouldn't they come and snatch me? I'm one helluva catch!"
The women exchanged glances and murmured general, unconvincing assent.
"Although, I gotta say, I woke up this mornin' feelin' not quite right," Barrett mused. "Almost like I wasn't wanted, or I wasn't important or somethin'. Damndest feelin'." He paused as they all showed their ID cards to the guards at the Tower entrance and proceeded on in, then continued. "An' you said all of you had weird dreams about the guys that got snatched, right? Well, I had a weird dream too."
"Really?" Tifa asked. "You should have mentioned this earlier!"
"Y'all were too busy checkin' my damn temperature and makin' sure I wasn't dyin' to let me get a word in!" Barrett protested. "Anyway, it was a weird dream, right? I was in this giant thing, a coliseum, that's the word. An' the stands were filled up with, I dunno, a million or so people. This is the thing, though – they were all girls. And they were all just a few years older'n Marlene. Teenagers.
"An' I'm standin' in this coliseum thing, and all these girls are yellin' and hootin', and that's when I realize I'm naked. That was almost as bad as the time I dreamed I got into President Shin-Ra's office to shoot him dead and it turned out that I forgot to wear pants. Anyway, I'm embarrassed, right? But then it hits me – they're not yellin' and hootin' at me. In fact, they're goddamn ignorin' me. I'm standin' there butt-naked an' y'know who the girls're yellin' at? All the guys who you say got kidnapped!"
Tifa stared at him as they got into an elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. "You're joking."
"I swear it's true."
"Were all the other guys naked too?" Yuffie asked.
"No!" Barrett said, obviously flustered. "They were just standin' around doin' nothin'! I had my damn dolphin tattoo on display for the whole world and they ignored me!"
"Barrett," Yuffie said. "Do I want to know where you have a tattoo of a dolphin or why?"
He grinned at her. "It was durin' my wild years. I was workin' at Manny's Tattoo Parlor over in Sector Four, and one night all of us got really hammered. Y'know how when somebody passes out you're supposed to write on 'em, right? I musta passed out at some point, because I woke up the next mornin' with a big dolphin right neck to my d-"
The loud ding of the elevator arriving interrupted him, and the women hurried out, trying not to look too relieved.
Reeve's office, obviously, was locked to most outside access, but Yuffie pulled a card out of one of her pockets and slid it through the reader on the door. The door unlocked with an audible click and they made their way inside.
The office was filled to the brim with things. Reeve's desk, a massive slab of wood with legs that looked like an afterthought, was covered in paperwork and knickknacks. There was a large safe in one corner of the room, and the rest was filled with memorabilia, including a scale model of old Midgar.
"How the hell're we gonna find him in all this crap?" Barrett asked.
"Watch the master at work," Yuffie said. She walked up right to the safe, put in the combination, and opened it without even looking. Nobody bothered to ask why she knew how to open Reeve's safe – it would have been more noteworthy if she hadn't.
Inside the box was the thing that they had come to the WRO Tower in search of. It shuddered to life with a growl, eyes flashing in the morning sun.
"Thanks," Cait Sith said to Yuffie. "It was getting cramped in there." He dusted himself off and looked up at all of them, his face somehow managing to look accusing. "So? What's the occasion? I mean, not to point fingers or anything, but the last time anyone came looking for me was when Nero left me snapped in half inside Deepground. And that took you two months to get around to!"
Yuffie sheepishly rubbed the back of her leg with her foot. "Well, it's not that we don't care, it's just that we were… uh… busy!"
"Sure. What do you want?"
"Reeve's missing," Tifa said. "Do you know where he is? I mean, yes, you have independent programming and everything, but he still has control over you, right?"
"Not a day goes by that I don't ask myself that same question," Cait Sith sighed. "Am I really capable of independent thought or are all of my actions and feelings predesigned subroutines inside a program to make me think I'm intelligent? What is life, anyway? When the line blurs between advanced programming and true sentience, is the resulting product alive, or merely a mistake? If…"
"God, he's worse than Cloud," Elena muttered out of the corner of her mouth. "Does he always do this?"
"Only since that last mission in Dirge of Cerberus where he got captured by Nero the Sable," Tifa muttered back. "I think being nearly killed instead of actually killed by a giant temple sort of put some kinks in his personality."
"Man, why the hell's it called Dirge of Cerberus anyway?" Barrett whispered. "I mean, Vincent's got that big gun, Cerberus, but I never heard any music comin' from it. That title's misleadin', I say."
"The whole thing was just so lame," Yuffie added. "And you know what the worst thing was? One word: Shelke."
"Oh, God," Tifa sighed. "What a plot device."
"…as Kant tells us when he discusses the idea of universal apperception," Cait Sith continued, "which is strikingly similar to the Monadology in some key aspects –"
"SHUT UP!" Barrett finally yelled at the robot. "Shit, you're boringer than Vincent when he starts talkin' 'bout the impermanence of the soul! D'YOU KNOW WHERE REEVE IS OR NOT?"
Cait Sith gave a very melodramatic sigh. "If I'd just told you 'no,' you'd have put me back in the safe and left. At least this way I got to see the sunshine before I went back into my prison."
"Reeve wouldn't keep you in that damn safe if you weren't so depressin'!"
"I'm only depressing because nobody ever uses me, ever! It's almost like I'm conveniently forgotten every time something interesting happens, left to collect dust on the shelf while all of you go off and have adventures! I miss the old days." Cait Sith walked over to the window and placed a white-gloved hand on the glass. "I miss… Mog."
"Oh, no," Yuffie groaned.
"When I'm tired and thinkin' old," Cait Sith began to croon, "I hide in my music, forget the day/And dream of a Mog I used to know/I closed my eyes and she slipped away/She slipped awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!"
"I don't know what's more disgusting," Elena said. "The fact that the Mog was apparently female, or that the robot is singing Boston."
"Boston?" Yuffie asked.
Everyone looked at her with horrified expressions, amazed that she didn't know who Elena was talking about, while Cait Sith wailed about how it was more than a feeling.
When they left the office to seek answers elsewhere, they took him in exchange for his promise that he would never sing about the Mog again.
They were walking to the elevator to leave when Yuffie happened to look out the window at the far end of the hallway. She stopped and squinted at it before saying, "Guys, am I crazy or do you see what I see?"
The rest of the group followed her pointing finger to the window and realized that they, too, saw what she saw. The window gave a partial view of old Midgar, the wreckage left over from Meteor's fall, and even in the bright early afternoon sun it was possible to see a soft green glow emanating from the abandoned city.
"What the hell's that?" Barrett asked. "Reminds me of…"
"The Lifestream," Tifa said. "I would know that glow anywhere. Something's going on there and I'll bet it has to do with the men disappearing. We need to go investigate."
They took the elevator down to the garage, found a WRO van big enough to fit all of them into, and took it out down the road to old Midgar. As they got closer to the city, it was easy enough to see that while the glow appeared to emanate from the entirety of the place, it clearly had its origins in one specific area.
"So, anybody else creeped out here?" Yuffie asked as they got out of the van after parking it in front of Aerith's church. "I mean, first the weird dreams, then the men disappearing, and then a strange glow from our dead friend's church? The next thing that should happen is one of us saying, 'Hey, gang, I think we should split up!'"
"What?" Cait Sith asked as they slowly opened the doors to the church. The interior was even more run-down and forgotten-looking than it had been a year ago when Cloud had inhabited it. The glow emanated brightly from the pool of Lifestream-rich water at the far end of the church that marked where Aerith had once grown her flowers.
"Y'know, horror movies?" Yuffie asked. "Let's split up to cover more ground, and then the cute girl gets cornered in the dark by the monster because she was stupid and walked through that one door that you just know the bad guy is hiding behind? I mean, that'd be me in this place."
"First off, it's around noon and the ambiance is all wrong," Elena pointed out. "Second, you're the cute girl? What's that make Tifa and me?"
"You'd probably have died already," Yuffie replied brightly, which earned her a smack across the head.
They cautiously approached the glowing pool, which did not seem to react to their presence. Eventually, Cait Sith gave a long sigh and kicked at the dirt, sending a small, errant pebble into the water.
The ripples spread like wildfire over the surface, moving faster and in much greater numbers than a simple pebble could cause. In a second the entire pool was rippling madly, like boiling water without any bubbles. "What the hell?" Barrett exclaimed. "Water's gone crazy or someth-"
He stopped talking and merely stood stock-still, mouth hanging open, as a very familiar image materialized above the pool.
"Hi," Aerith said.
All of them stood dumbstruck, staring at the image of the flower girl. Finally, Yuffie summoned the presence of mind to say, "It's not really Aerith! It's gotta be old man Jenkins wearing a mask!"
Tifa shot her a dirty look and then said, "Is it really you, Aerith? How is this possible?"
"I think it has to do with my being a Cetra," Aerith replied. "I returned to the Planet after Cloud defeated Sephiroth, but I didn't rejoin the well of souls and move on into the next life. I remembered who I was, and sort of acted as a guardian of the Lifestream. After a while, I even began to feel as though I'm not alone in my duty. Of course, Zack had been there, but I mean there were others…"
They all knew to some degree about Zack, but Elena was the one who caught it. "'Had been?' Has something happened to him? Is this why you're… here?"
Aerith nodded. "That's what I wanted to talk to you all about, so I tried my best to get your attention. It looks like it worked."
"Do you know what's going on?" Tifa asked. "Cloud, Vincent, Reeve, Cid, and all the Turks except Elena have gone missing."
"I felt that something was wrong," Aerith replied, "but I wasn't sure until I realized that Zack wasn't with me any longer. He had been taken from the Lifestream and somehow brought back to life. And that's not the only thing." She leaned forward, eyes widening. "I could feel whoever took Zack pull Sephiroth out of the Lifestream, reform him, make him whole again and resurrect him too. Not just Sephiroth – the Remnants, as well."
Tifa stared incredulously at Aerith. "The Remnants are – were – Sephiroth. How can they exist at the same time?"
Aerith shrugged. "I don't know how or why any of this is happening, but it is. At first I thought it might be some plan of Sephiroth's, some force that had it out for you, but why would they take Zack and not me? Then I felt the same thing, or nearly, happening in the real world to everyone you mentioned, and I decided that I needed to talk to all of you."
"I don't think that Sephiroth is the one behind all this," Tifa mused. "This isn't his style. He was less interested in kidnappings and more interested in burning the whole world to the ground."
"Regardless of his involvement, we need to figure out what's going on," Aerith said. "And I have a request – I want to come with you."
They all stared at her uncomprehendingly. "How?" Barrett finally asked. "It'll be kinda hard, you bein', y'know, dead."
"I need you to come to the Forgotten City," Aerith replied.
"Kind of an inaccurate name by this point," Cait Sith muttered.
"I also need," Aerith continued, ignoring Cait Sith, "a Phoenix Down. It'll make the process a lot easier, especially since you were out of them the last time." Nobody chose to reply to that, instead looking at their feet and trying not to seem too guilty. The flower girl kept her accusing gaze for another moment before saying, "So just come to the City with a Phoenix Down and I'll explain the rest there. See you soon." The water slowly returned to being calm and Aerith's image faded out.
"This is by and large the most bizarre day I've ever had, and it's only noon," Elena observed after a minute of silence.
"No time to waste, gang!" Yuffie exclaimed. "Back to the mystery machine!"
"Yuffie," Barrett said, "you ever wonder what it feels like to get punched in the mouth by a metal hand that's also a gun?"
The ninja-girl took his point and shut up.
They drove the van back to the WRO Tower and swapped it for an armored personnel carrier that was much bigger and better-protected, well knowing that there was no telling what they might run into. At around two in the afternoon they departed for the northern continent at best speed.
Passing through Kalm, they picked up some supplies for the journey before continuing north towards the beach. They arrived and were just shy of the sand bank when it occurred to Yuffie that they had no way of crossing the ocean.
"How could this have gotten past us?" she asked. "I mean, seriously. We have to get to the Northern Continent, guys, let's take an APC! Great idea!"
Tifa rolled her eyes at the ninja-girl. "You're the only one who doesn't know, Yuffie? Think back to a year ago. I told you how Cloud went to get the kids back from Kadaj when the Remnants were using the Forgotten City as a base. Well, how do you think he got there on Fenrir? And, for that matter, how do you think the Remnants crossed the ocean themselves?"
Yuffie shrugged. "No idea."
With a small smile, Tifa pointed out a window of the APC to what looked like a rippling hole in nothing. "A plot hole."
Barrett blew a long, low whistle. "Haven't ever seen one of 'em up close. Let's get out and look at it." They did just that, leaving the APC parked nearby as they went up to the tear in reality and looked at it. It showed the Sleeping Forest, or what the Sleeping Forest would look like if it were submerged in water and then forced into a singularity.
"You're sure we'll end up in the right place if we drive through this thing?" Elena asked.
"Of course," Cait Sith replied. "Once a plot hole comes into existence, it usually translates things that come in contact with it in the same way as the original. They don't have to be physical distortions like this, either – they can be contradictions in logic, conflicting backstories, that kind of thing."
"Damn cool," Barrett proclaimed, poking the distortion with his metal hand. "Let's go through!"
They piled back into the APC and drove straight in. Reality whirled around them, distorting and folding in on itself, and suddenly they were just outside Bone Village on the Northern Continent, and a similar plothole leading back to the Eastern Continent was floating just behind them.
"That was kinda trippy," Yuffie said.
"You think that was trippy?" Barrett laughed. "You ain't seen nothin', kiddo. This one time, back in Corel –"
Tifa rolled her eyes and hit the gas before Barrett could continue with his undoubtedly hilarious and culturally appropriate anecdote about mainlining acid in between shifts at the coal mines. "Let's just concentrate on getting to the Forgotten City," she suggested, maneuvering around the outer edges of Bone Village and cutting past the sentry towers into the Sleeping Forest. "Once we get there, Aerith can probably better explain what the hell's going on."
"I feel like we're forgetting something," Elena said.
"Like what?" Cait Sith asked. "Something vitally important to the quest that we've misplaced? An item of some sort, perhaps?"
Nobody said anything for a minute, trying their best to remember. Then Tifa hit the brakes, hard. "We forgot to get a Phoenix Down!"
"For the last time, we don't accept debit cards," the man behind the stall in the Bone Village shop sighed. "I need hard cash or a check that I can take up to get cashed at Icicle Inn. We're a dig site, not a shopping mall."
"Then why do you even have this shop here?" Yuffie protested.
"Can't hurt," the man said. "If we can score a few gil off of passing-by suckers who want to buy the cheap shit we dig up, why shouldn't we?" He stopped and then added, "Present company excluded, of course."
"Of course," Tifa sighed. "Look, we don't have five hundred gil between us to get a Phoenix Down. None of us have anything more than a twenty on us. Can't we come to some kind of arrangement? This is very important."
"You don't look like you're in pressing need or anything. I don't see anybody knocked out."
"Please," Tifa said.
The man sighed and scratched at his head. "All right, all right, look. I shouldn't be doing this, but… I sympathize. I really do. Phoenix Down addiction is a seriously tough thing to beat, but trust me, you guys, you're better than this. There are ways to get high besides huffing mystical feathers, but you have to believe in yourselves first!"
"We are not addicted to Phoenix Downs!" Tifa protested. "Why would we only be getting one to split between us if we were? In fact, none of us even knew that you could get addicted to them!"
"The first step to getting better is admitting that you have a problem," the man said in a low, sympathetic tone. "You have to be above the influence. But don't worry – support groups exist for people like you. You're not alone in this world. Big corporations manufacture Phoenix Downs to be just potent enough to get you high, but not enough to hurt… the magical amount, as it were." He stepped out from behind the stall, and a unicorn materialized beside him and they began to sing. "The magical amount/Enough to get you hooked/But not enough/To hurt/The magical amount!"
While the rest of the party stood transfixed at the utter stupidity, Yuffie raided the stall, stole several Phoenix Downs as well as a selection of potions and curative items, and scratched a vaguely phallic symbol into the wall that she later claimed was supposed to be somebody's hand flipping the bird. Nobody really believed her.
Wherever they were, it was cold. And unpleasant.
Cloud looked at the other men in the cell, people he all knew well. Cid sat in a corner, muttering to himself and carefully rationing puffs from his second-to-last cigarette. Reeve rocked back and forth in the middle of the floor, muttering to himself about how he was too pretty to be kidnapped. Vincent, Reno, Rude, and Tseng, having similar natures, were all still combing every inch of their prison, looking for structural weaknesses or possible ways to escape.
"How long have we been here?" Cloud finally asked. "It feels… I don't know. My internal timesense is off. We can't see the sun, or what time of day it is…"
A malicious, girly giggle answered him, and everyone in the cell started and turned to face the heavy, metal door from beyond which the giggle had come. The door swung open, and five more people were tossed into the cell.
Cloud's eyes widened. There was no way that any single one of the new arrivals could be alive.
"Time, like, passes differently here," a voice said. It came from a slim silhouette in the doorway, outlined by blinding light coming from beyond.
"How are these people alive?" Cloud demanded. "How?"
"What do you mean, time passes differently?" Vincent cut in, clearly not as concerned with the new arrivals as Cloud was.
The silhouette cocked its head and struck a very feminine "let-me-think" pose. "Well," it finally said, "y'know, like, when you're having an orgasm during sex, and you seem frozen in that perfect moment, and time seems to slow down and stuff?"
Everybody stared at her. Finally, Cid gave a cough and said, "No."
"Well, that's why."
"That doesn't actually happen," Tseng said. "I mean, really. Who thinks that it does?"
"Nora Roberts wrote about it! She knows about these kinds of things!"
"Sure, sure," Reno sneered. "And I'm sure that her period pieces are really accurate, too. 'Och, lassie, it seems that your fair touch 'as restored me strength an' virility! Let us plow oor troughs in the bed o' your evil cousin Mortred!'"
"Ridiculous," Rude agreed.
"SHUT UP!" the silhouette screeched. "MY STORY, MY RULES! I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT! TIME PASSES DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE I SAID SO, NOW STOP FLAMING MEEE!" It slammed the door in their faces, hard, and was gone.
None of this registered for Cloud until the door slammed shut. The sound seemed to jolt him out of his reverie, which had been caused by seeing Kadaj, Yazoo, Loz, Zack, and Sephiroth all lying unconscious but very much alive on the floor.
"We're in deep shit," Reeve finally muttered.
"We might not be able to defend ourselves from them if they wake up and decide to attack us," Vincent observed. "Hopefully they'll recognize the severity of the circumstances and we'll be able to come to some kind of temporary agreement."
"'The enemy of my enemy, even if he tried to destroy the entire world and kill every single one of us, is my friend,'" Reno observed sagely. "Makes perfect sense."
All of them tensed as Sephiroth began to stir. He sat up, clutching at his head and giving small groans, before he opened his eyes, blinked several times to clear the gumminess out of them, and looked at Cloud.
"Private?" he asked groggily. "Where are we?"
Cloud stared at him. "What?"
"I remember… we left Shin-Ra to go and investigate… Nibelheim. We were riding in the truck through bad weather, and there was a flash of lightning, and…" Sephiroth looked around, bewilderment looking alien and strange on his normally imperturbable features. "And I woke up here."
"You mean you don't remember?" Tseng asked. "Nibelheim, the Lifestream, Meteor? You don't remember any of it?"
"What are you talking about, Tseng?" Sephiroth asked. "I – wait. Tseng, you're in here too? What's going on? Where are we?"
Cloud shakily sat down against the wall, heart going like the Energizer Bunny on crack. "What's going on?" he breathed. "How is this possible?"
Another girlish, high-pitched giggle came from outside the door, and all of them could hear a sound, like breaking glass, only the glass was screaming about how it had a family to look after as it was breaking.
It was the sound of canon being raped.
The Sleeping Forest flashed by as the APC barreled down a convenient road. It had been doing this for quite a while. "Is it jus' me," Barrett said, "or does it feel like we been goin' nowhere for the past hour? It didn't take near as long to get through this forest the last time."
"That happens when the narrative switches scenes and time passes differently in one place," Cait Sith said, looking out the window. "Either everything is changed and strange, or the narrative is lazy and the characters that got neglected sit around and do nothing." His expression became wistful. "Just like me and Mog used to do on the Highwind…"
"Take that train of thought any further and I'll shut you up with my boot," Yuffie warned the robot.
"Fine, fine. Just one question – what's that thing outside the window?"
The APC rocked like it had been hit with an artillery strike. It tipped over onto one side, a huge dent suddenly in the flank of the vehicle, and everyone desperately held onto their seats. There was the sound of ripping metal, and the doors to the rear slowly came off of their hinges.
"What the hell is that?" Elena breathed as the doors were torn away.
Their assailant looked like a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl. Her hair was dyed bubble-gum pink and she wore black clothing, multiple studded bracelets, and huge platform boots. One of her eyes was a rich purple and the other a soft green. She held two katana in reverse grips, one in each hand.
Something scuttled out from behind the girl, a small, lumpy object that was about a foot high and seemed like nothing more than a rock with little grasping legs.
"Who the hell're you?" Barrett growled, pointing his gun at the girl in favor of keeping her covered instead of the little rock-thing on the ground.
"Um, duh," the girl said. "I'm Princess Raven Mysteria Goodheart, Cloud Strife's long-lost and forgotten girlfriend! I've totally returned to find him and I have a mysterious past and everything." She twirled one of her katana into a normal grip and leveled it at Tifa. "You're going down, sweetie. Cloud is, like, all mine."
Tifa just stared, dumbfounded, for a moment before she said, "You've got to be kidding."
The girl leapt forward and struck, lightning-quick. Her katana slashed right through the dashboard of the APC as though it was made of paper, and Tifa ducked out of the way in a hasty dodge. "I can handle this!" she yelled as she leapt out the shattered windshield of the APC. "Take care of the other thing!"
Elena stared at the scuttling thing and said, "Are you serious? What are we supposed to do? It's a rock with legs."
Yuffie held out a Scan materia. "Let's get a little info, here." The materia flashed brightly and the ninja-girl frowned. "What? Guys, read this. This makes no sense."
They clustered around the materia and Elena read, "'A manifestation of a writer of bad yaoi.'" She stared at it. "What? How is that a manifestation of anything?"
In response, the rock reared up on its little legs, revealing a gaping maw full of teeth on its underbelly. The horrible mouth opened and from it spewed mind-numbing gibberish that everyone left in the APC staggered back from, clutching at their skulls.
"OMG HOW CN U LIEK CLEFFIROTH THEY R SO NOT GOOD FOR 1 ANOTHER SEPHIRACK IS JUST WIERD CLACK IS OTP 4 LIFE!"
Yuffie, fairly sure that there was blood streaming from her ears, pulled her boomerang-shuriken from her back and hurled it at the rock, but the weapon glanced off of it without any visible effect. Barrett shot the rock nearly point-blank and achieved no results, and Elena's riot prod was similarly ineffective. "It's immune to all our attacks!" Yuffie gasped through the pain.
"Y R U HATIN ON WAT I WRITE? ITS MY STORY I CN DO WAT I WANT!"
"There's gotta be something that'll work!" Barrett roared, charging up an energy blast and letting it fly. "Dammit!" The rock remained undeterred.
For a moment the space in front of the rock distorted, and then it screamed, "DON'T LIKE? DON'T! REEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
The sonic shockwave hurled all of them, as well as the APC, back at least a hundred feet. The vehicle smashed through several trees before finally rolling to a stop, completely totaled. Yuffie, Barrett, and Elena managed to shakily extricate themselves from the crumpled mass of metal. Cait Sith had been thrown free somewhere between the first and second trees, and his whining could be heard vaguely intermingling with the horrid babbling of the rock.
At the same moment, Tifa was finding herself hard-pressed to keep up with Princess Raven Mysteria Goodheart. She had a vague idea of what this girl was, but she had no way to take advantage of that knowledge and find a counter, not when the girl was busily trying to cut her head off with a pair of katana. Tifa dodged and weaved in and out of the trees, Princess Raven Mysteria Goodheart's swords leaving swaths of cleaved trunks and severed branches in her wake.
An idea hit her, and she skidded to a halt. "All right, Princess," Tifa said. "I give up. I'll surrender to you."
"That's, like, really smart of you," Princess Raven Mysteria Goodheart giggled. "It'll be less painful that way."
"But first, explain how you and Cloud got together."
The girl's expression flickered. "What? Why? We just did, that's all!"
"Mm-hmm. When? Was it when he was still a boy in Nibelheim? Somehow I think I would have noticed someone as obvious as you running around with a pair of katana and that color hair. Was it when he was working for Shin-Ra? He was just a grunt and lived in a barracks with other soldiers – there'd be no way for you to be his girlfriend without somebody noticing, and I doubt anyone in Shin-Ra has ever heard of you. After that, he spent a few years floating in a tank, and then he was brought to Nibelheim by Zack, and then he met up with me. And I've kept a pretty good eye on him since then, and I've never met you before, so really, it's impossible for you to be his long-lost girlfriend."
"Shut up!" Princess Raven Mysteria Goodheart screeched. "I am his girlfriend, I am! We got together when – um. I totally… uh."
Something evidently snapped inside the girl's head, because her eyes crossed, she started cackling inanely, and then she started narrating the plot of a bad Harry Potter story that she had also been in. Tifa took the opportunity to find a suitably large tree branch and then bash Princess Raven Mysteria Goodheart over the head with it until the mad ramblings about vampire Draco having sex with goth Harry mercifully ceased.
"I hope the others are okay," she murmured.
"This is hopeless!" Yuffie yelled over the sound of the rock's babbling. "No matter what we do, it doesn't shut up or take any damage! It just keeps going like the Energizer Bunny on steroids and coke!"
Suddenly, they heard Cait Sith's voice rise above the clamor. "Get over here! I have a plan!"
They quickly elbow-crawled over to the robot's position, keeping their hands pressed over their ears to ward off the horrible noises the rock was making – it was in the middle of a poorly-spelled rant about how Cid and Vincent were soul mates. "What's the idea?" Elena asked when they managed to get to Cait Sith.
"Did anyone else bother looking at the 'weaknesses' field in the Scan materia?" Cait Sith asked.
They all sort of looked at one another guiltily. "Well, no!" Barrett replied. "I mean, shootin' stuff has always worked jus' fine. I never needed any fancy magic to do my job."
Cait Sith rolled its eyes. "Scan is useful for a reason! It said that the bad yaoi writer has a major weakness: it's hypocritical! It flees in terror from pairings it doesn't like!"
"And?" Yuffie asked. In response, Cait Sith looked at her, and then looked at Elena. The ninja-girl continued to look puzzled, so Cait Sith pointed at her, and then at Elena.
"What?" Elena exclaimed. "You want me… and Yuffie… to…?"
"Ew!" Yuffie screeched. "GROSSNESS! No way am I going to kiss Elena!"
"Then you can kiss either me, or you can kiss Barrett!"
The two women looked at Barrett, who gave them a big grin and mimed using a bottle of breath spray.
The rock had begun to elaborate in all capitals on why Reno and Rufus were a much better couple that Reno and Rude when Yuffie and Elena walked out into the open road where the rock could see them.
Trying to ignore the mind-destroying stream of babble from the rock, Yuffie turned to Elena, swallowed hard and reminded herself that she was a big girl, and said, "Elena, I think…" She trailed off, almost too disgusted with herself to continue, but she vowed to persevere. "I think you are amazingly hot and I want to make super awesome lesbian love with you."
The rock faltered in its tirade and seemed to look closer at them.
Elena looked like she had been punched in the solar plexus, but she managed a very phony-looking, shaky smile. "That's perfect, Yuffie, because I've always thought the same thing about you," she almost whispered.
Yuffie looked past Elena's shoulder to see Cait Sith, hidden from the rock's view by a tree, making kissing faces. She suppressed the urge to vomit, squeezed her eyes shut, and delivered a quick peck to Elena's lips.
By this time the rock had shut up entirely and had begun, if it was possible for rocks to look this way, scared. However, it didn't budge from its spot. Yuffie opened her eyes to see Cait Sith slapping its forehead with its palm and then making a 'kick it up a notch' motion.
Why me?
With a deep breath, Yuffie moved several inches closer to Elena, took the older woman in her arms, and gave her a full, rich kiss on the mouth, tongue and all.
The rock emitted what sounded like a strange cross between an earsplitting screech and a whimpering wail, said something about OMG EW YURI – again in all capitals – and fled as though Hell itself were chasing it.
"Looks like the plan was a success," Cait Sith said, watching Yuffie and Elena disengage and immediately begin to wipe furiously at their mouths.
"Yep," Barrett chuckled, saving the picture he'd snapped of the two women kissing to his phone's memory card. "It sure was."
Aside from the attack by the Sue and the bad yaoi writer, the trip to the Forgotten City was uninterrupted. They arrived and left the APC, which despite all the damage it had sustained had only taken ten minutes to fix due to the scene change, outside the city, hiking along the familiar stone paths to the clearing with the pool where Aerith's remains lay.
"So…" Tifa said. "What do we do now, I wonder?"
There was a flash of green light and Aerith's image coalesced over the surface of the lake. "Oh, that's pretty simple," she said. "One of you dive down here, find what's left of me, and use the Phoenix Down."
"So, not that I'm trying to run everyone's fun, but aren't you rotted away to nothing by now?" Yuffie asked.
"Nope," Aerith replied. "I'm perfectly preserved, right down to my hair ribbon." She proceeded to rattle off a list of highly plausible and completely not made-up reasons why, and none of it sounded at all like plot device, so the party drew straws to see who would take the Underwater Materia and go down into the lake after she finished explaining and disappeared.
Drawing straws, of course, meant that all the women looked at Barrett expectantly and said he should go.
"What? Why me?" Barrett protested.
"My hair takes forever to dry if it gets wet," Tifa said.
"You want me to go down into the murky dark depths of some weird creepy forgotten pool looking for my friend's corpse? Hell no!" Yuffie said.
"Does this look like a suit that I can get wet?" Elena asked.
"You could just take it off!" Barrett countered, which earned him a smack. "Crap, fine, I'll go. Gimme our Underwater Materia, the Phoenix Down, an' a flashlight."
"We didn't bring a flashlight," Tifa said. "Damn. Do we have one back in the APC?"
"Ahem," Cait Sith interjected. His eyes abruptly lit up, emitting bright white beams that pierced the evening dusk and looked like a pair of miniature car headlights.
"Aw, hell no. I'm goin' down there to find Aerith's body with the robot? Come on!" Barrett violently shook his head and crossed his arms. "No way no how."
"See? A scene break later and I still ain't goin' into that water!" Barrett said.
"You go in or we tie you down and cut your testicles off," Elena told him.
"The irony is palpable," Cait Sith said as Barrett swept the robot's eye-lights across the muddy floor of the lake in front of him.
"Shut up," Barrett told the robot, bubbles escaping from his lips as he spoke. "Thinkin' yer so damn funny all the time. Well, I get news for you, smartass." He paused and racked his brains for an appropriate chastisement and couldn't find one. "Yer not."
"You're so droll," Cait Sith drawled. "You should give up oil prospecting and do standup."
"Yer momma should give up oil prospectin' and do standup!"
"I hate you more than I can convey with mere words."
Abruptly, the light revealed a very familiar, pink-clad form lying pristinely at the bottom of the lake. Barrett stepped closer and felt a wave of recognition and sadness sweep through him as he looked at Aerith's body, her eyes closed as though she were only sleeping.
"Well, time to fix you up," he said, and reached into his pouch for the Phoenix Down. He withdrew the bottle of magical featherstuff, uncorked it, and sprinkled it over Aerith's body.
The aforementioned magical featherstuff spilled out into the water and hung in front of Barrett, sparkling and certainly not descending to revive Aerith. "Son of a bitch!" Barrett cursed. "How the hell'd we get these damn things to work when we were fightin' Emerald?"
He let go of Cait Sith and picked Aerith up by the ankles, swinging her around through the water like some kind of strange divining rod, getting as much of the Phoenix Down on her as he could before it dissipated. Fortunately, he acted quickly, and there was a sudden jolt as life returned to her body. He pulled her close to him so the Underwater Materia could extend its protective magic to her, and she gave a gasp and started to breathe again.
"Barrett!" she exclaimed. "I'm so glad to see you again!"
"I'm glad to see you, too, kid," Barrett said, pulling her into a bear hug and feeling very glad that the water that surrounded them masked the very unmanly tears that were welling up in his eyes. "Damn, I missed ya and I didn't even realize it. Why the hell did that idiot spikey-head not do this the first time?"
"Well, like I said, he was all out of Phoenix Downs," Aerith said. "That, and it was an FMV."
A joyful reunion was had when the three soaked party members emerged from the lake, with lots of hugging and well-wishing and other sentimental stuff that will be omitted here in favor of advancing the plot.
"So," Tifa said, "now that you're alive again, Aerith, do you know where we should start looking to try to figure out who's behind these kidnappings?"
Aerith sadly shook her head. "No. I have no idea. I was just told that I would be able to come back to life for the purposes of the plot."
The rest of the group looks at her curiously. "Told by whom?" Elena asked her.
"Me."
The new voice belonged to a mysterious figure who now stood a few feet away from the party. He, she, or it was dressed in a dark robe that covered its entire body and shrouded its face in shadows. Its voice was androgynous, and nobody could tell precisely what it was from just listening to it speak, which it proceeded to do at length when Yuffie asked, "Who the hell are you?"
"I," the figure said, "am an ally. Listen: the ones that attacked you are shadows, mere harbingers of the horrors to come. Your friends have been kidnapped by the enemy, who plan to cover the entire world with a great darkness – the darkness of bad fiction. They want to make terrible fan fiction with poor characterization, hole-ridden plots, and stupid premises the only kind to be found here, and you have to rally and stop them."
For the most part, the party gasped. Only Cait Sith refrained, instead choosing to look horrified. "Why would these people want to do that?" Aerith asked.
"And, for that matter, why'd they kidnap our friends and leave us?" Tifa pressed.
"Some people never want to improve their writing or read the good," the figure said. "Some people only want to throw up a hundred words' worth of bile and post it up as the latest chapter in their endless chain of meaningless, stupid character-study drabbles that are supposed to be philosophical and deep. Some people don't want to go to the effort of making a pairing plausible and instead just throw people together for no reason at all. Some people… just want to watch the world burn."
There was a grim silence, both in recognition of the severity of the figure's declaration and in contemplation of what a great movie that was. Abruptly, the figure added, "Oh, and the reason they took all the pretty men is because at least one of the enemy has a very unhealthy fascination with yaoi."
"Then why didn't they kidnap Rufus?" Aerith asked. "He's really, really big in the yaoi fandom. I would think."
"Who says they're not on the way right now?" the figure replied.
Another collective gasp. "We have to go help him!" Tifa exclaimed. "But why would they wait until now to try to kidnap him?"
"Dramatic timing and convention," the figure explained.
"Bastards," Elena hissed. "We'll cut them off. Rufus is at his lodge in Healin. We can be back at the plot hole in half an hour and outside his door half an hour after that."
"Go!" the figure urged them. "The plot thickens!"
"Oh, boy," Barrett muttered. "An' I thought my jokes were bad."
Tifa drove the APC like she was trying to kill them all. Cait Sith made several remarks about women drivers before Elena threatened to get a screwdriver. Fortunately, a side effect of Tifa driving as though she were on crack was that they made excellent time. They got to the Healin lodge just in time to see a black van pull up in front of the building and disgorge a squad of six strange, transparent humanoids that seemed to shimmer and ripple in front of their very eyes.
"What the hell are those?" Tifa wondered aloud as they disembarked from the APC and ran for the lodge.
"I managed to get a Scan off before they went inside," Yuffie said. "The materia says they're exclusivist drabble-writers."
"What?"
Yuffie cleared her throat and began to read the information laid out for her. "'Unlike normal authors that occasionally write drabbles as an alternative means of expressing themselves in an interesting format, exclusivist drabble-writers have nothing interesting to say and no real literary merit to their work, so they write hundred-word drabbles over and over in an attempt to seem deep and inventive. In actuality they do nothing but write the one-hundred-word equivalent of a shallow puddle.'"
"So that's why they look like they have no substance," Aerith said. "Still, we can't underestimate them. There's no telling what these enemies might be capable of."
They quickly made their way up the stairs to the front door and entered. Two of the drabble-writers were waiting for them. Yuffie cocked her shuriken and hurled it, but it passed right through the things as they weren't even there. "What the hell?" she exclaimed. "When are we gonna get to fight something with an ass that I can actually kick?"
In response, the drabble-writers raised their ghostly arms and pointed at the party, and all of them reeled back as though they were being riddled full of bullets, except that these bullets were all comprised of stupid and meaningless crap that was exactly a hundred words in length.
Tifa barely kept down the bile rising in her throat as images of herself and Cloud sitting around and having tea endlessly in some lame attempt at a Camus- or Sartre-esque absurdist piece. "How are we supposed to fight these things?"
The answer occurred to Cait Sith first. He turned up his volume to max level and began to recite:
"I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night."
The drabble-writers, confronted with a piece that far surpassed in meaning and literary brilliance anything they could ever hope to create – and was only a hundred and ten words – promptly exploded into ghostly fluff.
The rest of the party stared uncomprehendingly at Cait Sith, who tapped his foot for a moment in silence and then said, "You're welcome."
"What was that?" Elena asked him.
"Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost," Cait Sith replied haughtily. "Not that any of you uncultured pulp-fiction-reading savages would know."
"Okay, you can take off your beret and your trendy long-sleeved turtleneck, you little snob," Yuffie sneered.
"There are still four more of them going to get Rufus, lest we forget," Aerith said. "Let's hurry." They listened to her advice and quickly rushed to the ex-President's study, dreading what scene might await them within.
They arrived just in time to see the remaining drabble-writers explode and die as Rufus recited a final couplet:
"Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah
I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon."
He looked up at the horde of people outside with an expression of mild amusement. "Thank you for the tip, Cait Sith. Eliot seems to have worked beautifully on them."
"God bless Mr. Apollinax," Cait Sith said reverently, and nobody could find it in their hearts to disagree.
"So that's why those things were here," Rufus mused upon being told about the kidnappings of pretty men. "Whoever is behind this must have good taste."
Nobody deigned to comment on that, so they let it pass with a moment of uncomfortable silence before Aerith asked, "Do you have any information that might help us, Mr. Rufus? Any idea as to where these people are keeping our friends?"
"Actually, I do," Rufus replied. "I've lost all communications with some contacts of mine in Costa Del Sol. The timing can't be mere coincidence. I'm not sure if Cloud and the other abductees are there, but I think it might be a good place for you to start your search." He opened one of his desk drawers, fished around in it for a moment, and withdrew a set of keys. "This one," he said, indicating a particularly ornate key, "is to my private yacht that I keep in Junon. You can take it to get to Costa Del Sol."
"What about you?" Tifa asked. "Are you going to come with us?"
"No."
The party looked at him, surprise and concern written on their faces, though there was significantly more of the former than the latter. "You smokin' somethin'?" Barrett asked. "If ya stay here they'll getcha."
"I know that," Rufus said smoothly. "That's part of the plan, after all. Whoever these enemies are, they'll dispatch a second team to take me, and when they do I'll tell everyone else what's going on and we'll start formulating an escape plan. This may be our only chance at getting everyone free if all of you can't effectively mount any kind of rescue."
"Are you sure about this, sir?" Elena cautioned him. "Practically speaking, we know very little about these people. Their plans don't seem to follow any logic, rhyme, or reason. Once you were in, you might not be able to get out."
"I'll be fine, Elena," Rufus assured her. "You can count on me."
"I never thought I'd say this, but that's real good of ya, Rufus," Barrett said.
"Of course it is. Besides, I wouldn't be caught dead travelling with all of you. Obviously your team is comprised of rejects and women, which is a bad combination in any scenario."
The party left shortly after that, and Rufus settled in to wait for the inevitable. He also put an icepack on his quickly-swelling right eye. Tifa, he had to admit, could hit like a truck.
The trip to Junon was uneventful, but the city itself seemed strange, as though it was slowly being twisted into a dark and possibly non-Euclidean version of its normal self. People seemed to blend into the buildings, fading in and out, and the buildings themselves seemed downtrodden, uncared for, even decrepit at times.
"What the hell's wrong with this place?" Yuffie wondered as they walked down a street towards the docks.
"Simple," Cait Sith replied. "It's being phased out. I mean, does anyone ever bother to use Junon? All the interesting stuff happens in Wutai, or Edge, or maybe the Gold Saucer. This is just a big coastal town that used to have an oversized gun."
"Do you think that's what happened to Costa Del Sol?" Aerith asked.
"We go on vacation there enough that something else probably happened," Tifa disagreed. "But Cait Sith has a point. When was the last time any of us were here? I mean, honestly."
"What'll happen to this place when it completely phases out, though?" Elena asked. "Is it just going to disappear? Will we all forget that it even existed?"
"We can only speculate," Cait Sith said gravely. "Right now, though, we have to get to Rufus's yacht and take it across the ocean to the Central Continent. What might happen to this place is a bit moot if the entire world goes under."
They voiced general agreement and picked up the pace, arriving at the docks in short order. The only vessel of any note that was moored there was a huge, sleek yacht, with beautiful lines and several decks.
Yuffie took one look at the name of the yacht and started snickering. Everyone else followed her gaze and saw that the vessel was named Rufus's Talent. "Kid's got a pretty high opinion of himself," Barrett observed, his tone wavering between disgust and resignation.
"Could be worse," Tifa said, moving to board the vessel. "He could have named it Rufus's Appeal or something along those lines."
"He named his private jet Rufus's Wit," Elena said. When everyone looked at her, she shrugged and said, "Because it's really fast, I guess?"
"Lame!" Yuffie declared, rushing up to the yacht's wheel and giving it an experimental spin. "Still, I like this boat. Do you think he would mind if it disappeared and he never saw it again but there happened to be one that just looked like it docked near Wutai and it was called Yuffie's Awesomeness?"
"Yes."
"Damn."
It took them the better part of the rest of the day to get the yacht going and traverse the ocean to the Central Continent. None of them were sailors, but they managed to point the ship in the right direction and let Cait Sith do the complex calculations to correct its course.
"This takes me back," Aerith sighed, looking over the side of the yacht at the water rushing by below. "Remember the last time all of us were on a boat together like this?"
"I do," Barrett said sourly. "Ain't never forgiven Spikey for callin' me a marshmallow, either. Was just plain unsportin'."
"Cait Sith, are we getting close?" Tifa called.
"We should be," the moogle replied from where it sat on the highest point on the yacht. "I mean, the ocean isn't that big, technically speaking, because if it was it would interfere with the ability to make smooth transitions from one continent to the next when the characters didn't have any ability to travel by air. This restriction might come about through any number of means, whether something as simple as thematic concerns crops up or if – oh. What is that?"
Everyone had stopped listening to Cait Sith after his first sentence, but all of them started paying attention again when he stood up and started pointing. "Look! I don't believe it, it's impossible!"
As the yacht continued to plow through the water, a black shape rose up over the horizon. Within a few minutes it became very clear to all of them that Costa Del Sol, or at least where it used to be, was no longer a tourist's paradise and an ideal place in which to base a romantic oneshot.
Instead, a huge, grey tower rose out of the ground, thrusting hundreds of feet into the air and piercing the clouds. The very air around the edifice seemed dark and foreboding, and the tower radiated a palpable aura of despair that seemed to eat at anyone who laid eyes on the structure.
It was also very unmistakably phallic in its construction.
"It's hideous," Tifa breathed.
"It's what the enemy uses to rape canon," a familiar voice said from the prow of the yacht. The party, startled, all realized that the mysterious figure from before was abruptly standing there, where beforehand there had been nobody. "The Tower of Badfic."
"And what the hell are we supposed to do against that?" Yuffie asked. "I mean, it's… I'm afraid that if I touch it…" She hesitated and then said, in a very small voice, "I'm afraid it'll like it."
"Let's move on and not reflect about how disturbing that was," Elena said in an overly cheery tone of voice. "Look. Who are you, and what do you know? Obviously you have something to say, else you wouldn't be here."
The figure nodded. "I'm a writer, one that doesn't like badfic and wants the universe to remain free of its taint, or at least as free as it can get. I can help you."
"How?" Aerith asked.
"I can help you fight them. We can beat them, but it won't be easy. The people in that tower can churn out potentially endless amounts of horrible drivel, and at a much faster rate than we can make antidote fics. They don't care about canon, so they can do pretty much whatever they want." The writer lowered its voice and said, "If I'm to help you, I need you to secure an ancient artifact of unfathomable power for me."
"And why can't you do this yourself?" Cait Sith asked suspiciously.
"It's the rules," the writer insisted. "The rules of setup and drama, to be precise. There are always rules."
"Suppose we believe ya," Barrett said. "What's this 'ancient artifact' you need us to get ya?"
The writer cast its hooded gaze around several times before saying very quietly and reverently, "The Creative License."
"The Creative License," Aerith repeated. "What's it do?"
"With it, I'll be able to circumvent canon – not destroy it, but instead use it tastefully to accentuate experimental takes on what might have come to be. In effect, I'll be able to create alternate universes, populated with alternate versions of you, and we'll be able to use these alternate-universe, or AU, doubles of you to fight the badfic writers."
The party considered this, contemplating the idea until Tifa finally spoke up. "We'll take all the help we can get, I suppose. I mean, I don't know what we could possibly hope to accomplish against that… thing. Just one question, though."
"Yes?" the writer asked.
"Why do you need this ancient artifact? Couldn't you just do this without having to have us go chase down some relic for you to use?"
"Like I said, it's the rules," the writer said. "Which all of you could benefit from some education in, by the way.
"The first thing I'll tell you about is called a MacGuffin…"