This break in the chapter ordering is mainly to point out the shift away from sole focus on Sephiroth and entirely personal, single relationship snippets. Hopefully I actually realize that change in my writing, but that is the intention. Shifting to an ensemble cast featuring the typical Crisis Core set of characters that everyone is familiar with from reading any other Crisis Core - adjacent fanfiction.
Technically the 'story' of Crisis Core is still in the vague future, this new part of the story takes place in that nebulous 'sometime in Crisis Core' assumption that a lot of fic writers take when they just want to write in the setting of Crisis Core without invoking the plot. Eventually I will probably want to invoke the plot to continue on, but I plan on having some fun in this space.
For the sake of stretching the timeline slightly more, I have already moved characters birthdays as they appear in canon reference material back by a few years. I'm sure no one will be mad at this., I just wanted to make it clear for anyone who wanted to know. I always like to keep timelines straight in my head, even if the timeline is entirely my own. I don't know how many of these characters will actually show up in story, just wanted to cover all my bases ahead of time.
Asher born early 1978 (chosen birthday 21 Dec 1977* [Chapter 4])
Sephiroth, Angeal, Genesis born early 1979 (moved back from ~1980)
Zack born 1982 (moved back 2 years from 1984)
Aerith born 7 Feb 1984 (moved back 1 year from 7 Feb 1985)
Cloud born 11 Aug 1984 (moved back 2 years from 11 Aug 1986)
Tifa born 3 May 1984 (moved back 3 years from 3 May 1987)
(idk i'd just like them all to be the same age)
Yuffie born 20 Nov 1988 (moved back 3 years from 20 Nov 1991)
Also, I'm switching to third person strictly from here out, I realized I wanted to write from everyone's perspective so I'll be using third-person limited and omniscient instead of cutting to third-person bits away from a first-person narrative. Hope that clears things up.