A/N: This story may be blamed on many things-a sudden impulse to buy a single I heard on the radio, the fact that 'fancy' is actually a shorterned form of 'fantasy', the dearth of good Cait Sith or Reeve fics on fanfiction.net, my obsession with Discworld and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy-but it is mostly due to my own insanity. I hold myself fully responsible, and will laugh when you send flames, for they will merely be used to make pretty light shows.
Oh, and I don't own Cait, Reeve, or any other Final Fantasy characters.(Grrr...)Neither do I own the song 'Year 3000' by Busted, which is what the parody heretofore contained is based on, if you didn't guess.
______________________
Final Fancy
______________________
I can't help it if I think you're funny when you're mad
Trying hard not to smile though I feel bad...
-one week
______________________
The auditorium was packed full. Most people were there because they wanted to be there-which was odd, considering-but a surprisingly large percentage did not want to be there at all. They would rather have walked tightrope over a raging waterfall, gone one-on-one with a rabid dragon minus all weapons, armour and magical aid, or tried to stop a solar eclipse with a wad of chewing gum.
Nevertheless, they had to be there.
They had to be there because it was their duty; they were fictional characters from the many interlocked planes of Medui-Omar, also known as Final Fantasy, and a young fanfiction author who chose to work on their planes had decided to publish a new work. The nature of this work, they did not know. There was a rumour going round that it was centered around that plane upon which a fiery lump of outer space rock had very nearly crashed; viz, Final Fantasy VII. More specifically, it was about Reeve or Cait Sith or both.
Given the fanfiction author in question-a young girl who went by the title of Ambassador Garnet L. Alexander-this seemed all too likely. She was a Cait Sith fangirl-that most rare and dangerous of all breeds-and while she sought to make life Hell for anyone who harmed one hair on Cait's head, she also-possibly unintentionally, though you never could tell with fanfiction authors-made life Hell for Cait, on quite a regular basis. Cait usually bounced back, though; his human counterpart, Reeve, did not. In fact, he had been driven to the point where he spent more time sheltering *under* his desk that sitting at it.
But as of yet any such rumours were just that-rumors. Therefore, as she had not announced her work ahead of time, representatives from all the planes she worked on had to be there.
The free cola and popcorn was a reason to be there, too.
* * *
The Final Fantasy VII 'crew' took the back row of seats, in an effort to remain inconspicuous. Reeve in particular tried to choose a place in shadow and near the door; he couldn't actually run out in the middle of course, it was a oft-talked topic what terrible punishments were dealt out to those who dared escape in the middle of a reading. But it was a mental thing.
'Mental things' were another area Reeve had entirely too much experience with. No one had ever been able to decide whether Cait Sith and Reeve were one person pretending to be two people, two people pretending to be one person, or simply a pair of lunatics. The upshot of all this was that sometimes Cait Sith had an independant existence and sometimes he did not and the Ambassador in particular loved to play around with different notions of the feline's existence, and that this was very bad for Reeve's mind. Presumably it was bad for Cait's mind(or lack thereof)as well, but he never seemed to care.
Once Reeve had decided that Shinra existed because it would cost far too much to institutionalize all those people.
Then he had dismissed this as being overly paranoid and decided that Squaresoft existed because it would cost far too much to institutionalize all those people.
He soon realised, however, that there was a flaw in his thinking there, and decided that *fanfiction.net* existed because it would cost far too much to institutionalize all those people.
But all ruminations of the collective sanity of any of these large and notorious (dis)organizations aside, Reeve did *not* manage to grab a seat conveniently near to the exit, OR concealed in the shadows. In fact, he ended up more or less dead centre, between the two major sub-crews of Final Fantasy VII-AVALANCHE and the Turks. This meant that if the author was displeased with the reaction her work was getting, he would be a sitting duck for the dangerous SFX that her kind hurled out at will, and if inter-crew warfare broke out(as often happened), he would be flattened in a matter of minutes.
He wondered sourly if there was something symbolic about this, then gave up as the fanfiction author herself walked on-stage.
* * *
The Harlequin Ambassador Garnet Leona Carol Alexander was a young girl who took the appearance, for some reason, of a long-lost twin of Dagger Carol of Madain Sari. Except for her hair, which was not sheared into a bob, and sometimes looked nastily like the mane of a large and vicious lion. She sometimes took other forms, in the course of her work, but she always delivered her stories and poems in this form.
She smiled a smile that, again, made her look slightly too feline for comfort, and began her introduction.
"Most of my work here has been aimed either to praise or aggrievate someone," she explained. "Not the readers, though-the characters I work with." Several present-including Reeve-groaned. "My serious fics are designed to exalt the subject, my humourous ones to wind them up to flaming pitch. I prefer to exalt those who have not recieved much exalting-" at this Rinoa Heartilly, in the second row from the back as a member of a Final Fantasy VIII crew and wearing a badge declaring her one of the the Ambassador's GF/Muses, began to preen visibly "-and to annoy those who insist on playing 'straight man' and are therefore very, very easy and fun to wind up. There are exceptions, of course, but this is the way I like to write most."
Reeve suddenly had a clear and horrible insight into the workings of his life, and lost all hope of the new fanfic being about someone other than him.
"That's why I find it so fun to work with Cait Sith," the Ambassador continued. "One soul with two very different aspects, that may be separate or intertwined depending on your point of view. I can wind him up *and* exalt him in a single breath. And when I wrote my first song parody, that was exactly what I was seeking to do. So Reeve and Cait, this one's for you!"
Across the auditorium, heads turned to look at the pair. Cait shamelessly played to the crowd, dancing about on top of his moogle and waving around both megaphone and popcorn in a highly dangerous manner. Reeve sunk down into his seat, trying to pretend that the Ambassador was talking to a different person called Reeve with an altar ego known as Cait Sith and wishing that the ground would open up and swallow him. And the Ambassador began her song.
* * *
One night
I was depressed
Crying oceans
As I was coming home
Turned on
My Playstation
There was someone
Yellin' through a megaphone
He was
Second Player
Fellow gamer
The spy from Shinra
He'd built a fortune telling machine
Like a cat in this book he'd seen
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He took me
'Cross the Planet
In the Highwind
And I saw everything
Chocobos
And another one
And another one
And another one
Magics
From the ancients
Secret temples
And one-winged angels
I owe a lot to that small machine
Like a cat in this book he'd seen
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
(I took a trip to the Final fancy
What a landslide bunch of heroes!
Everyone said they were the greatest
Seven is the magic number!
I took a trip to the Final fancy
What a landslide bunch of heroes!
Everyone said they were the greatest
Were the greatest
Were the greatest...)
He'd built a fortune telling machine
Like a cat in this book he'd seen
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'....
* * *
The Ambassador's strange song parody had gotten exactly the reaction she had desired. Cait Sith, never very firmly on this side of sanity to begin with, had been pushed over into near-megalomania due to a kind of insane, fame-seeking glory, and Reeve was mortified. Everyone had taken time out to take the mick from the long-suffering Shinra executive, even Aeris, and by this time after the presentation everyone had had a few drinks and Aeris was usually ballistically bashing the hell out of anything that looked remotely like Sephiroth and uttering most of the vocabulary she had picked up from Cid. The 'dangerous nutball' spot was instead being occupied by Reno, who had scored a first by being chucked out in the middle of the reading when he'd snorted cola up his nose(and all over the people sitting in front of him)and fallen over, laughing hysterically. He was subsequently discovered to be drunk, and though he was not causing as much damage as Aeris habitually did, it was not for want of trying.
It occured to Reeve, not for the first or indeed the last time, that both he and Cait kept company with some very, very odd people. Maybe AVALANCHE was not a rebel group, as Shinra had previously thought, but a small band of escaped lunatics. The same theory might well apply for the Turks, if you read 'elite fighter division' for 'rebel group'; it would certainly explain a lot.
Reeve sighed and gazed disconsolately at the chaos, panic, disorder and furry animals which surrounded him. Sometimes he felt like he was stuck in some kind of weird video game.
Oh, and I don't own Cait, Reeve, or any other Final Fantasy characters.(Grrr...)Neither do I own the song 'Year 3000' by Busted, which is what the parody heretofore contained is based on, if you didn't guess.
______________________
Final Fancy
______________________
I can't help it if I think you're funny when you're mad
Trying hard not to smile though I feel bad...
-one week
______________________
The auditorium was packed full. Most people were there because they wanted to be there-which was odd, considering-but a surprisingly large percentage did not want to be there at all. They would rather have walked tightrope over a raging waterfall, gone one-on-one with a rabid dragon minus all weapons, armour and magical aid, or tried to stop a solar eclipse with a wad of chewing gum.
Nevertheless, they had to be there.
They had to be there because it was their duty; they were fictional characters from the many interlocked planes of Medui-Omar, also known as Final Fantasy, and a young fanfiction author who chose to work on their planes had decided to publish a new work. The nature of this work, they did not know. There was a rumour going round that it was centered around that plane upon which a fiery lump of outer space rock had very nearly crashed; viz, Final Fantasy VII. More specifically, it was about Reeve or Cait Sith or both.
Given the fanfiction author in question-a young girl who went by the title of Ambassador Garnet L. Alexander-this seemed all too likely. She was a Cait Sith fangirl-that most rare and dangerous of all breeds-and while she sought to make life Hell for anyone who harmed one hair on Cait's head, she also-possibly unintentionally, though you never could tell with fanfiction authors-made life Hell for Cait, on quite a regular basis. Cait usually bounced back, though; his human counterpart, Reeve, did not. In fact, he had been driven to the point where he spent more time sheltering *under* his desk that sitting at it.
But as of yet any such rumours were just that-rumors. Therefore, as she had not announced her work ahead of time, representatives from all the planes she worked on had to be there.
The free cola and popcorn was a reason to be there, too.
* * *
The Final Fantasy VII 'crew' took the back row of seats, in an effort to remain inconspicuous. Reeve in particular tried to choose a place in shadow and near the door; he couldn't actually run out in the middle of course, it was a oft-talked topic what terrible punishments were dealt out to those who dared escape in the middle of a reading. But it was a mental thing.
'Mental things' were another area Reeve had entirely too much experience with. No one had ever been able to decide whether Cait Sith and Reeve were one person pretending to be two people, two people pretending to be one person, or simply a pair of lunatics. The upshot of all this was that sometimes Cait Sith had an independant existence and sometimes he did not and the Ambassador in particular loved to play around with different notions of the feline's existence, and that this was very bad for Reeve's mind. Presumably it was bad for Cait's mind(or lack thereof)as well, but he never seemed to care.
Once Reeve had decided that Shinra existed because it would cost far too much to institutionalize all those people.
Then he had dismissed this as being overly paranoid and decided that Squaresoft existed because it would cost far too much to institutionalize all those people.
He soon realised, however, that there was a flaw in his thinking there, and decided that *fanfiction.net* existed because it would cost far too much to institutionalize all those people.
But all ruminations of the collective sanity of any of these large and notorious (dis)organizations aside, Reeve did *not* manage to grab a seat conveniently near to the exit, OR concealed in the shadows. In fact, he ended up more or less dead centre, between the two major sub-crews of Final Fantasy VII-AVALANCHE and the Turks. This meant that if the author was displeased with the reaction her work was getting, he would be a sitting duck for the dangerous SFX that her kind hurled out at will, and if inter-crew warfare broke out(as often happened), he would be flattened in a matter of minutes.
He wondered sourly if there was something symbolic about this, then gave up as the fanfiction author herself walked on-stage.
* * *
The Harlequin Ambassador Garnet Leona Carol Alexander was a young girl who took the appearance, for some reason, of a long-lost twin of Dagger Carol of Madain Sari. Except for her hair, which was not sheared into a bob, and sometimes looked nastily like the mane of a large and vicious lion. She sometimes took other forms, in the course of her work, but she always delivered her stories and poems in this form.
She smiled a smile that, again, made her look slightly too feline for comfort, and began her introduction.
"Most of my work here has been aimed either to praise or aggrievate someone," she explained. "Not the readers, though-the characters I work with." Several present-including Reeve-groaned. "My serious fics are designed to exalt the subject, my humourous ones to wind them up to flaming pitch. I prefer to exalt those who have not recieved much exalting-" at this Rinoa Heartilly, in the second row from the back as a member of a Final Fantasy VIII crew and wearing a badge declaring her one of the the Ambassador's GF/Muses, began to preen visibly "-and to annoy those who insist on playing 'straight man' and are therefore very, very easy and fun to wind up. There are exceptions, of course, but this is the way I like to write most."
Reeve suddenly had a clear and horrible insight into the workings of his life, and lost all hope of the new fanfic being about someone other than him.
"That's why I find it so fun to work with Cait Sith," the Ambassador continued. "One soul with two very different aspects, that may be separate or intertwined depending on your point of view. I can wind him up *and* exalt him in a single breath. And when I wrote my first song parody, that was exactly what I was seeking to do. So Reeve and Cait, this one's for you!"
Across the auditorium, heads turned to look at the pair. Cait shamelessly played to the crowd, dancing about on top of his moogle and waving around both megaphone and popcorn in a highly dangerous manner. Reeve sunk down into his seat, trying to pretend that the Ambassador was talking to a different person called Reeve with an altar ego known as Cait Sith and wishing that the ground would open up and swallow him. And the Ambassador began her song.
* * *
One night
I was depressed
Crying oceans
As I was coming home
Turned on
My Playstation
There was someone
Yellin' through a megaphone
He was
Second Player
Fellow gamer
The spy from Shinra
He'd built a fortune telling machine
Like a cat in this book he'd seen
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He took me
'Cross the Planet
In the Highwind
And I saw everything
Chocobos
And another one
And another one
And another one
Magics
From the ancients
Secret temples
And one-winged angels
I owe a lot to that small machine
Like a cat in this book he'd seen
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
(I took a trip to the Final fancy
What a landslide bunch of heroes!
Everyone said they were the greatest
Seven is the magic number!
I took a trip to the Final fancy
What a landslide bunch of heroes!
Everyone said they were the greatest
Were the greatest
Were the greatest...)
He'd built a fortune telling machine
Like a cat in this book he'd seen
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'
He said 'I live in the Final fancy
And we're all waiting for you to come too
You should know we care about you
So just hang on'....
* * *
The Ambassador's strange song parody had gotten exactly the reaction she had desired. Cait Sith, never very firmly on this side of sanity to begin with, had been pushed over into near-megalomania due to a kind of insane, fame-seeking glory, and Reeve was mortified. Everyone had taken time out to take the mick from the long-suffering Shinra executive, even Aeris, and by this time after the presentation everyone had had a few drinks and Aeris was usually ballistically bashing the hell out of anything that looked remotely like Sephiroth and uttering most of the vocabulary she had picked up from Cid. The 'dangerous nutball' spot was instead being occupied by Reno, who had scored a first by being chucked out in the middle of the reading when he'd snorted cola up his nose(and all over the people sitting in front of him)and fallen over, laughing hysterically. He was subsequently discovered to be drunk, and though he was not causing as much damage as Aeris habitually did, it was not for want of trying.
It occured to Reeve, not for the first or indeed the last time, that both he and Cait kept company with some very, very odd people. Maybe AVALANCHE was not a rebel group, as Shinra had previously thought, but a small band of escaped lunatics. The same theory might well apply for the Turks, if you read 'elite fighter division' for 'rebel group'; it would certainly explain a lot.
Reeve sighed and gazed disconsolately at the chaos, panic, disorder and furry animals which surrounded him. Sometimes he felt like he was stuck in some kind of weird video game.