#define COPYRIGHT_OWNERSHIP_DENIAL {
"Copyright law in the USA is a bit insane in duration, I don't have money to pay fines with, I don't MAKE money from this, and Square Enix owns the copyright on all Final Fantasy characters and on the stories they wrote. Characters from other works are property of their respective publishers and creators. I own only the differences, am receiving no monetary or other financial compensation from this work, and am using the source materials under fair use and parody rights. If said rights do not exist in your locale, you are not permitted to read this work for any purpose.
By continuing to read this story, you are agreeing to the whole contents of the preceding paragraph and this one, and agreeing that you will not sue in a court of law, attempt to impose arbitration, or in any way harass or intimidate the author. Failure to abide by these terms will...mark you as a pariah among fans of the intellectual property of yourself or your client(s), I guess? I'm not a lawyer, I dunno how to write this stuff!" }
Chapter 1
Trigger warning: Trigger warnings, brief authorial complaints about midwest-American culture, clichéd plot types (self-insertion), calling people crazy when not referring to medically-diagnosable mental instability, magical instant medical-side-effect-free genderswapping.
I wish I could say I was surprised by how I went out. Given the crazy drivers in ▄┴◄ ◘╕who didn't give two shits about pedestrians crossing the street, completely ignored the laws regarding usage of texting while driving – specifically, the part where it was ILLEGAL for better reasons than you have for doing it – and were (did I mention?) crazy, it was only a matter of time before somebody rammed me with two tons of metal at, oh, thirty miles an hour.
Turns out that calcium-and-organic structures less than an inch thick aren't that great at preventing acute kinetic energy transferals of that magnitude from inducing catastrophic data loss and hardware failures in Jello-consistency organic computers; said transferal being followed up by a collision with the nearest steel lightpole does nothing to mitigate the problem. Thankfully it all happened too fast for me to really register any pain – how bad off would I be remembering THAT as I try to come to terms with where I've ended up?
Translation: He's dead, Jim.
The next thing I can recall was a starfield, nothing else around me. I couldn't see myself or feel anything – heat, cold, or any perception of limbs. I was just...floating? Not a great word, I'm not in a fluid, I just exist, with no real idea of the perception of time. Sort of thing that could very quickly drive a person laughing mad, having only visual sensory input, but it triggered nothing.
Translation: It's life, but not as we know it.
All I can see are the points of light, here and there. The view slowly shifted up, left, twisting down and sliding further left; stopping, spinning back right. It was slow enough I wouldn't have been too ill if I had an inner-ear and stomach left to be nauseous with; as it was, it felt more like one of those movie-like dreams where you just watch what happens.
The hallucinations started eventually, of course – with next to no input to process, the brain generates its own. The later, more vivid ones involved, in no particular order:
An angry Q shaking Kyuubey in a manner reminiscent of a cat who's stepped on sticky tape, and wants it off right meow, being tackled and banished by a massive toad with some weird...kanji, I think they're called? on a cloth around it, who in turn vanished in a puff of smoke.
One of the stars shading a sickly green as it swelled to the size of the Moon, and dipping behind a massive structure, taller than the Sears-er, Willis-Tower, before a small group of people at its base entered. This also left my vision, as the view spun aside.
Four crystals appearing, then four more, and again four times more, all varying in sizes and shapes from SUV-sized polished and faceted gems to rough translucent fancy rocks the size of a three-story condo, and down to shards you could easily carry in your pocket. These surrounded me, dancing like snowflakes in the...solar wind, I guess? I was never naturally poetic.
Finally, a woman appearing, serene and dressed in white. There is a tiara in her hair, and earrings with purple gems; the crystals, leaving me, now flocking towards her until an abjuring wave cause them to halt and bow before her. She speaks to me, her gray eyes intense: "You must defeat the deluded one. Stop the abomination from devastating more of my warriors' worlds." She tilts her head fractionally, and with a comforting smile continues, "You will be given a new body, suited to the dangers you will face. When you awaken, come to grips with your new situation quickly, for events will not wait for you.
"I cannot place you before the delusion was formed, though any changes would be most effective there. Chaos has locked that Time to me; yet you must do what you can where you can, how you can. I fear his allies plot to deny me access to my best warriors, world by world. This must not be permitted – you must stop it here, on the world yours calls Gaia.
Light pooled at her feet, flowing from the crystals; at her beckoning, it rose up and spun around her and into her hand like an eager, trained puppy, then flew into...me, I guess. The place from which I perceived the world around me, though I had no body, still. The flash washed my vision out with white, before fading back to the empty starfield.
Her voice remains. "Adjustments have been made so that you can control your new body naturally. They may take some time to settle. Now, go, think, fight; live and do not die before you are done." Her royal stance seemed to falter for a moment, as she added, "I...am truly sorry to drag you into this. "
Her voice fades away. Consciousness swells, and awareness thereof. I think, therefore I...wait, I already was, and I don't remember thinking then. Meh, think about it later, no sense in putting Descartes before da horsin' around, eh?
These stars are alien, I think. There are no constellations I can recognize, no great glowing lanes of dust, or ways of thousands of glowing balls. No rhyme or reason, not like a structured galaxy. Maybe a globular cluster? Nah, they're too far away for that, more like...I don't know. Why am I thinking about this? What is this? W-where am I, I was walking home off the bus and… What were those visions? Great, I'm hallucinating and I'm panicking and and urrgh.. okay, try to calm down, center yourself. Nothing is here to harm you right now, just focus on...okay, no breath to focus on, not a problem not a problem. Um,choose a star, I guess, and …
Okay, that one's quickly getting bigger. It's not quite on-center, I guess I'm not going to crash into it. Maybe. I hope. Not a fan of 13th degree burns, they tend to disassociate my molecules and fuse my atomic nuclei. Y'know, just for...future reference.
Who was that woman?
That's interesting...a planet. Hey, it looks Earth-like. Ish. Hard to tell from here, could just be huge amounts of green algae. Algae-like stuff, floating in a water ocean?
Nope, that bit over there looks kinda three-D.
That whooshing noise is getting loud.
The last thing that crosses my mind is, If I don't have a body right now, is a collision worth an oh sh-
…
…
…
"Hey. Wake up, sleepyhead. Come on." An annoyingly cheerful young woman's voice is the next thing I hear.
"Urgh….ugh." I think I just reentered an atmosphere without a parachute or heat shielding, you can gimme five minutes...
"We don't have time, the Shin-Ra might still be after us, if you forgot!" A man's voice, this time. I guess I'm waking up more now, I notice his baritone sounds strained.
"We haven't seen any sign of them since we left. This far out, it's more likely they'd use force in Kalm to intercept us when we get there" A second man, more of a mid-high tenor, reasoned with him. "And they wouldn't send a lone woman, even a Turk." Someone else is lying here? And, they don't see me? I...ugh...just...get up already.
My eyes flutter open, and immediately slam shut "Brraiht..." I croak out. Bright light, BRIGHT LIGHT! My arm was a bit sluggish as I raised my hand to shield my eyes, but it was enough to let me blink them open again and try to look around.
"She's waking up, don't crowd her," ordered the first voice. I squint at her first; as my eyes adjust, I can make out her brown hair, tied back with a ribbon into a loose braid. Her eyes are as green as mine and speak of concern and relief. She smiles softly, and tells me, "Easy, now. You had a few cuts and bites from… well, never you mind that. What's important is that you're alive." I was injured? Well, besides the whole dying thing? Don't think about it, focus on now. "Can you sit up for me?"
I can see well enough now, as long as I don't look at the sky. I try to comply with her request—it takes a moment, it's not just my arm that feels like I've been asleep too long—and push myself to a sitting position. I feel...off, somehow, but I ignore it in favor of pulling my legs under me. "Don't try to stand up yet. You okay?"
"Yeah, I think so. Just...a sluggish," I admit. "It's passing." Something's off. "Hmm." My voice isn't right. I touch the base of of my throat and swallow clear it. "Wee~iirrd."
"Um, good?" She stood up, and stepped back to brush the dirt off her skirt. "Can you tell us your name?" I could hear the baritone grumble again. "Oh, be nice, Barrett! We've been walking for two hours, we can afford a break."
I pretend not to hear her question, for the moment, still distracted. My voice isn't nearly so resonant as I remember, and – a more obvious clue that something has gone *very* weird indeed – the forearm across my chest is sending sensations that make me look down and widen my eyes.
I seem to have breasts.
Last time I checked, I was a male-type dude, and while I didn't exactly maintain a body-builder physique I had a firm belief that dudes should never be A-cups if we could avoid it.
Or bigger, as the case is here.
Huh. Okay then, coulda warned me, Starfield Lady.
I look around and see three people standing in front of me—the lady who was kneeling over me; another with...huge tracts of land, black hair, and a skirt to match the hair (in color, by no means in length); a man with something large and metal shining in one hand, both standing a few feet away and to the side of whoever it was talking to me.
"...you sure you're okay?" This time it was the black-haired woman.
"L-less sure than I was a second ago, but," I paused to move my toes and fingers, removing my hand from where, in my shock, it had slid down, "I'm not feeling more than pins-and-needles in my left arm, and I feel all my other limbs and toes, so I guess I'll live?" I shook my head to try and clear the distraction.
"Good!" This time she sounded more cheerful. "Well, if you're not feeling dizzy..." she paused, and I shook my head in the negative, "go ahead and try standing up, but take it slow. Cloud'll catch you if you fall."
Turns out, Cloud didn't quite catch me. Snickering bastard.
Author's Note:
First published fanfic, but not my first story ever. I'm quite rusty at writing, though, so constructive criticism is appreciated.
I've been a fan of Final Fantasy for a long time now, ever since I got a couple hours into the Gameboy Advance version of Final Fantasy VI. That's still my favorite, even after I finished VIII and IX, much of V, and up to the final dungeon of IV DS. I've played bits of X – sorry, but fuck blitzball – and even started XII at one point before moving on to Shin Megami Tensei titles.
VII, though, seemed too similar to VI in many ways. You have your insane villain who tries to become a god and destroy the world, advanced technology (though now circa-1995 and not steampunk tech), some characters who're designed solely to pander to fans and otherwise nearly uninteresting [Mog and Umaro in VI, Yuffie (she could've been so much more), animal mascot Cait Sith (with some ShinRa guy controlling him, I know) and emo-with-some-reason Vincent in VII]), a character named after a big ball of dirt (Terra (US versions only, I know), Aerith), a first boss you have to be careful when you attack (Lightning Whelk/Guard Scorpion, AND the Wind Raptor in V), and getting hyped into being overpriced even a decade later. So, with that conception in mind, I never got around to playing it.
I tried playing Crisis Core a few years ago, but the Digital Mindwave interrupting my gameplay at uncontrollable times broke my suspension of disbelief and gameplay rhythm far too often for me to finish it; I gave up right before the Angeal battle.
Seriously, it's basic game design: if you're going to make an action-RPG, you need to be able to have some degree of control over your character's actions at all times. The awkward system of switching between Attack and a bunch of materia, and then back, didn't help matters much, but I still got used to the running-around trick while doing that. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't usually too much trouble.
I've also never played Before Crisis (the No Export For You cellphone game) or Dirge of Cereberus, but I have—unfortunately–watched Advent Children Complete. I've watched the Last Order OVA, but that's not canon anymore.
As far as I'm concerned in this story, only Crisis Core and FF7 proper are canon, and the former is secondary at best. "Zack" existed, was a country boy with waaay too much energy who found himself attracted to a spirited flower-selling slum dweller in a nice dress; after some nasty experiments sorely lacking in proper control groups and double-blind testing, let alone ethics, he escaped with a semi-comatose Cloud and was murdered outside of Midgar by a Shin-Ra army even as the Turks were trying to find and save them. Anything outside that may be referenced, it may not.