Kallah
Everybody's playing the game
But nobody's rules are the same
Nobody's on nobody's side
Better learn to go it alone
Recognize you're out on your own
Nobody's on nobody's side
Shinra. It's a game, really. Always and forever a game. Defend your pieces, take your opponent's, manipulate them where you want them. Chess with living pieces, and figuring out who you're playing at any move is the biggest challenge.
Spilling blood on the board is the cardinal sin.
Never make a promise or plan
Take a little love where you can
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never stay too long in your bed
Never lose your heart, use your head
Nobody's on nobody's side
The most dangerous player? Rufus has four of the deadliest pieces, of course. Tseng. Rude. Reno. Elena. Sometimes he can manipulate the other players into playing his game. But only sometimes.
Survive here long enough, and you learn to see when the Turks are playing their own game. Playing them is as dangerous as playing Rufus, sometimes more so. You never play only one Turk. Reno and Rude and Elena play interlocking games, and Tseng in the background with his own game playing through all of theirs.
Tseng might be the most dangerous player here, after all. The Turks are his pieces as much as, or more than, they are Rufus'. And the other players find themselves playing his game more often than they find ... comfortable.
There are certain moves even Rufus will not make with the Turks.
Never take a stranger's advice
Never let a friend fool you twice
Nobody's on nobody's side
Everybody's playing the game
But nobody's rules are the same
Nobody's on nobody's side
Sometimes the object of the game seems obvious. Knock a piece from the board, advance a piece of your own, check your opponent.
It is never that easy here.
We know each other too well for it to be easy. Too many years in the game, and Scarlet's most impetuous moves are calculated for a dozen possible ends. She plays Heidegger like he was her own pawn, and more often than not he doesn't know it until it's too late. Or he won't admit he knows she's using him; too much of a blow to his ego, that. Not that Scarlet doesn't get played herself, but more often than not, she snatches some advantage to herself out of it.
Hojo's game is the hardest to understand.
Never leave a moment too soon
Never waste a hot afternoon
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never stay a minute too long
Don't forget the best will go wrong
Nobody's on nobody's side
If knowing your opponent is the greatest challenge, knowing what they're playing for is second. Of course, survival demands knowing what every move might gain the opposing side, to know what moves to make in return. Learning what their end goals are is the key to thriving, not just surviving.
Not that any of the players know for certain what the others' goals are. Just enough to spice up the game a bit. All of us want power, of course. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. It's the ends we want to use power for that's interesting, and the extras we want with it. Learn that, and learn your opponent's weakness. Of course, since no one wants to give away their weaknesses, it make the rare times we congregate socially quite fraught. We've known each other too long not to hve learned something of each other's weaknesses, though, however much we hide it.
Heidegger wants glory, the kind of glory the history books shower on successful generals. The kind of glory Sephiroth won, and had no use for. Sephiroth was Tseng's only rival in the game, other than Rufus, of course.
No one ever did learn what Sephiroth was playing for.
Never be the first to believe
Never be the last to deceive
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never make a promise or plan...
Move, counter, move, and defend. Check and protect, sacrifice one piece to save another, sacrifice that piece to protect the player. Nothing is more important than self-defense, and any piece is expendable.
Or so we want the others to think. Learning what the other players consider non-expendable (besides themselves) is the third challenge. Tseng ... oh, he prefers that everyone believe his Turks expendable and replaceable.
Threaten his Turks, and lose pieces. He is too good a player to be that obvious, of course, and rather often another player takes the fall. Scarlet lost two pieces to Hojo when she attempted to have Rude fired. Heidegger lost four (two to Reno, one to Scarlet, one to Tseng himself) when he tried to reassign Elena to his ... personal command.
Everybody's playing the game
But nobody's rules are the same
Welcome to Shinra. It's a game, really. The stakes? It depends on the opponent. Endgame?
The game never ends.
The song is Nobody's Side from Chess, and is copr. Benny Andersson, Tim Rice and Bjorn Ulvaeus. All things Final Fantasy are copr. Square.