Disclaimer: The Final Fantasy games and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
And the fanservice continues. Man, who knew it was so hard to be popular? Don't sue me; none of this is mine except the lousy plotlines.
Did anyone out there go to the Final Fantasy Ball at Metrocon? If not, I highly encourage you all to attend next year--it's a cool event, and how else could you go on a date with Barret?
Okay, you could play the game, but I think I did it the fun way.
Blatant Fanservice
by flame mage
take 3: "I...got careless."
I was not feeling the artistic vibes when I woke up at the inn in Guadosalam the next morning. Why did Tobli have to start sooo early? I couldn't even get my trailer into town...man, sometimes it's really rough being a video game star. And I can't even imagine what it must have been like in the days before the level of realistic FMVs we have today. No wonder the SeeDs had to be mercenaries--they weren't getting enough screen time to live off their acting gigs.
Luckily, the world wasn't missing that much, after all. I mean, think about it: wasn't Selphie just a shoddy imitation of the spirited, energetic, cute-as-a-button me?
But annnnyway, the Guadosalam scenes were really boring, and they're not the point of this story anyway, so I'm not gonna bother talking about them. Shooting on location is okay, because you can always go get a smoothie or something, but sound stages--ugh! Nothing to do, nothing to look at except Yunie massaging Leblanc's back--like we didn't already have enough fanservice going on before the whole kinky yuri massage thing. And then we had to wait around for the longest time while our stunt doubles were doing the scene with the big spiked wall, and then we had to spend a lot of time talking to Ormi and Logos, and...uggh. Entire days of booooooring! The only interesting thing I had to do was talk to Gippal in between takes while we planned our big scene.
But it was strictly business. Of course I didn't like hanging out with him or anything. Umm...eww?
Okay, forget that. The point is that after the looongest time, we finally made it to the Farplane scenes. There's a lot of running around and pre-recorded fiend fighting and playing freaky organ things and good stuff like that, but the only part where I was really gonna get good face time for a while happened after Yunie finally got the entire phrase right. The notes were still echoing when I ran up ahead. And there--cue the dramatic zoom and the big tearjerking moment--was Gippal, sprawled on the ground in dramatic agony.
Time to ham it up. "Gippal!" I cried, rushing to his side and motoring my hands.
He raised his head slowly to look at me. Man, he was really going all out here, even breathing hard and everything. "I...got careless," he panted.
"Are you all right?" Paine asked. Even she sounded concerned.
"I could use...a nap."
Yunie wasn't bothering with stuff like that. Her line in the script had (forcefully trying to move onward) in italics next to it. "Where's Nooj?" she demanded, leaning forward and clenching her fists.
"He went ahead," said Gippal.
I heard a noise behind me ([hearing a noise] was in the script for my line, too) and looked over my shoulder to see Leblanc & Co. behind me. "Guess she couldn't stay away," I snickered. I also muttered, "the stupid hag" for good measure, but they cut that part out.
"I never said where I would wait!" Leblanc snapped, waving her fan around. Ooh, stupid old bat, always trying to steal my show. We were almost at my one big moment, and she was gonna ruin it. I didn't even have a single scripted line for the rest of the scene.
Yunie turned around. "Well then, please take care of Gippal."
Gippal shot a look at me. I was about to break the script and volunteer to stay and care for the brave little wounded soldier when Leblanc the Lame crossed her arms and practically yelled, "You DARE give ME an order?!"
Now Paine turned too. "Look, we'll tell Nooj you're waiting like a good girl and doing your part for the team."
"Hmmm..." Leblanc leaned forward and made a big show of thinking about it--probably the time it took her to jump- start her brain, at her age and given how dumb she probably was to begin with, not like me at all. "All right, I'm in!" she announced brightly all of a sudden. Talk about your short attention spans.
"Hey, Dr. P." It was Gippal, bringing the action back home near me where it belonged. "A gift from Nooj." He held up a glowing orange sphere. "It's from two years ago. Said it was inside the sphere camera."
"I'll watch it later," Paine told him, starting to put it away.
Yuna, who had been so POed when the script had (with her usual nosiness-disguised-as-concern) next to her next line that she'd made everyone in the entire cast and crew cross it out with a permanent marker, said, "Hey. You should watch it now." Paine just looked at her. "Think about it. You know you won't be able to fight your best as long as it's on your mind."
That totally should not have worked. In fact, in real life it didn't work, and stupid Paine never let us see the sphere. The only way I knew what was on it was because I was watching from the Celsius deck while they were reshooting the sphere contents. But now Paine was following the script, and so she sighed and stopped thinking about getting off-camera and waving her sword around again and held up the sphere. "You're right," she sighed again as she turned it on.
I knew they had to shoot another few seconds of her holding the sphere before they could splice the footage in, and then they might take a break before doing the shot segment after she watched it. So before anyone could stop the cameras, I (gracefully, of course) threw myself at Gippal's feet and demanded in a slightly quavering voice, "Oh, Gippal...are you all right?" Paine had already asked him that, but so what? Maybe mine'd be so much better that they'd even cut hers.
"I'll--manage." He did a good job of struggling to sit up some more. "No way am I gonna let you guys have this party without me."
"But...but I don't want you to get hurt!" I pinched the inside of my elbow until my eyes started watering.
"What gives? Cid's girl actually cares what happens to me now?" Rule number four of G/R fanservice is that he has to call me "Cid's girl" or some variation thereof at least once a chapter.
"No! I just--I mean--no way--I--you--yes!" I cried, throwing my arms around him and doing a pretty darn good job of sobbing into his chest, if I do say so myself. "Yes, I do care! I always have! I've never been able to tell you that, but the truth is--I've always lo--"
Okay, so sometimes you just have to give into the whole cliche thing. That's what fanservice is all about.
"Shh." He put one finger against my realistically trembling and perfectly glossed lower lip. "I know, Rikku, I know. I love you too."
I gazed up at him. I'd been practicing this in the mirror at the inn for days, trying to think of things that made me happy--like being a video game star, and having little kids all across the world try to cosplay me and then get arrested for indecent exposure, and hot fudge sundaes--so my eyes could shine with happiness and--yes--love. I realized that it wasn't anywhere near as hard to do as I'd thought it would be. All I really had to do was look at his face, with that one brilliant green eye smiling down on me.
But that was just a tribute to my skills as an actress, of course. He had nothing to do with it.
And then, like magic (or maybe movie magic!), he leaned over and kissed me. And it was a totally perfect FMV kiss, in glorious full color and Dolby Digital Surround Sound, and I could hear "Suteki da Ne" swelling in the background (or at least a decent OCremix).
And then, all of a sudden, he jumped up. "Hey, I think after that I'm ready to get out there and take that big ol' machina apart! Guy's gotta be tough for a cute girl like you, y'know. See ya on the other side." With that, he turned to go--he had to be gone by the time Paine was done with the sphere--and then froze dead.
"Are you absolutely-positively-entirely finished now?" the director's voice asked. I looked back to see the two-foot bird-person-whatever-he-was-thing standing about three inches behind me with his stumpy little arms crossed, glaring. As much as anything like that can glare.
"Umm...finished?" I laughed nervously.
"Yes! So we can begin shooting again!" The director was tapping his foot now. Impatient little bugger.
Gippal almost choked. "You mean you stopped?"
"Of course we stopped! The scene ends with Paine holding up the sphere, oh yes indeed! Can't have the cameras rolling after the scene ends! Time is money, you know! Ooh-hoo-hoo!" And then he sped off to the next section of the Farplane like the Roadrunner. The rest of the cast and crew followed, generously taking the time out of their busy schedules to shoot us dirty looks.
Gippal and I stared at each other, and if my face was anywhere near as red as his, those Pyreflies were workin' overtime.
"Aww, no one ever does that to Yunie and Tidus when they start sucking face in the middle of a scene," I muttered to myself, looking away and scuffing my toe on the ground.
"So..." he said awkwardly after a couple seconds. "Any more bright ideas?"
"Oh, man, Gippie-baby, that was our best one!" I groaned, motoring my hands. "No Farplane, no Moonflow, no Djose, no Bikanel, no Macalania...even the stupid Celsius is out! Where else are we supposed to have a big love scene chock full of fanservicey goodness?!"
"Wait." He grabbed my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes. "There's one more place. I was checking some fanfiction sites last night for some of the sappiest Rikku stories of all time. There's this one place in Spira where a whole bunch of people set fics with you and Auron, and now they're doing it with us."
"Home? The old airship? The inside of Sin? Zanarkand?"
"The Thunder Plains! We'll tack it in right after that scene at Djose where I mentioned that we went out and call it a flashback, or maybe right when you guys show up at the Thunder Plains for the first time! The script says--here--" He grabbed it out of his back pocket, flipped through it wildly, and finally stabbed his finger about halfway down a page. "'Yuna voice-over: Guess what? Rikku finally overcame her fear of thunder. Know how? She said she camped out here for a week!' We'll just cut to a flashback sequence right after that line."
"Waiddaminute! We're never gonna get anyone to go all the way out to the Thunder Plains! How are we gonna shoot this?"
"We'll just have to steal a camera and a tripod, that's all. You're a thief, Rikkmeister. I'm sure you can manage that."
I pressed my hands to the side of my face and moaned. "Ohh...all right. But you owe me bigtime. I'm only doing this as a favor to you, you got me? I don't need popularity this much!"
"Do it and you'll have my eternal gratitude and adoring worship, O Most Great and Long-Suffering Pixellated Bimbo," Gippal sighed. "Now come on. Let's get over there with the rest of them before they start wondering what happened to us."
Ooh, man, I could tell you some crazy stories about the big wrap party...if they wouldn't get me arrested and/or ruin my chances for some wicked blackmail, that is. We had it on the Celsius, because that made it exclusive--and easy for all the little people in Spira to see that floating superbash overhead and get really jealous of the big stars like me. We didn't even let Shelinda in for exclusive interviews, so she was running around beneath us on a Chocobo trying to get shots of the deck through a long-lens camera. It's all about media manipulation.
But I bet you're wondering what this has to do with the story. No, hate to break it to ya, Gippaliscious and I didn't steal a quiet moment together while everyone else was off partying, or wow everyone with our mad dancing skillaz, or get way drunk and end up kissing each other (eww, how romantic is that anyway?). I'm telling this to you, kids, because this is how Master Thief Rikku ended up stealing the camera for our brilliantly evil plan, and it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see me in action. Unless you buy the game, of course.
So picture the scene: the stars of the show are doing our super-exclusive thing up on the bridge (playing loud music and trying to get the guys to spherechange into drag) and the crew's down in the cabin, drinking. Like, a lot. And Gippal casually mentions that we're outta ice, and normally I'd get one of the lackeys to get some more but I'm feeling generous (because no one else except him knows that I've got a sneaky little plan in mind), so I head down to the cabin to grab some from Barkeep. And as soon as I walk through the door that camera guy who has a crush on me whips out his equipment (his camera! his CAMERA! Come ON, fanboys, eww!) and starts filming me. (Current fanservice shot count: 497.)
Now watch the master work.
Me: (swinging myself up onto the conveniently empty barstool next to Camera-Wielding Fanboy) Hey.
CWF: (nervously) Oh, ah, um...hey.
Me: So, enjoying the party?
CWF: ...oh, yeah. It's...umm...really fun. (pause as he wipes his nosebleed on his sleeve) What about you?
Me: Ahh, I'm having an okay time, but it's kinda boring, y'know?
CWF: Oh. (feeling stupid for having thought it was fun)
Me: But I bet I know something that would make it a lot more interesting. (hooking my ankle around his and smiling)
CWF: What?!?
You know the type. Some guys are so used to seeing things through a lens (or a computer screen) that they just don't get it when it actually happens.
Me: (jumping off the stool, grabbing his arm and dragging him up the stairs) Come on. You're coming with me.
Because of course there are beds upstairs. That's where we used to sleep. And of course there was some really nice thick rope under one of the beds upstairs, because once in a while Gippal really come through when you need him to. And of course, no one thought it was strange when I slipped back downstairs with the camera but not the cameraman, or when I got back to the bridge without the ice and Gippal followed me out again, or when a hover loaded with camping equipment took off from the deck of the Celsius a few minutes later.
Man, if only it were always that easy.
And the fanservice continues. Man, who knew it was so hard to be popular? Don't sue me; none of this is mine except the lousy plotlines.
Did anyone out there go to the Final Fantasy Ball at Metrocon? If not, I highly encourage you all to attend next year--it's a cool event, and how else could you go on a date with Barret?
Okay, you could play the game, but I think I did it the fun way.
Blatant Fanservice
by flame mage
take 3: "I...got careless."
I was not feeling the artistic vibes when I woke up at the inn in Guadosalam the next morning. Why did Tobli have to start sooo early? I couldn't even get my trailer into town...man, sometimes it's really rough being a video game star. And I can't even imagine what it must have been like in the days before the level of realistic FMVs we have today. No wonder the SeeDs had to be mercenaries--they weren't getting enough screen time to live off their acting gigs.
Luckily, the world wasn't missing that much, after all. I mean, think about it: wasn't Selphie just a shoddy imitation of the spirited, energetic, cute-as-a-button me?
But annnnyway, the Guadosalam scenes were really boring, and they're not the point of this story anyway, so I'm not gonna bother talking about them. Shooting on location is okay, because you can always go get a smoothie or something, but sound stages--ugh! Nothing to do, nothing to look at except Yunie massaging Leblanc's back--like we didn't already have enough fanservice going on before the whole kinky yuri massage thing. And then we had to wait around for the longest time while our stunt doubles were doing the scene with the big spiked wall, and then we had to spend a lot of time talking to Ormi and Logos, and...uggh. Entire days of booooooring! The only interesting thing I had to do was talk to Gippal in between takes while we planned our big scene.
But it was strictly business. Of course I didn't like hanging out with him or anything. Umm...eww?
Okay, forget that. The point is that after the looongest time, we finally made it to the Farplane scenes. There's a lot of running around and pre-recorded fiend fighting and playing freaky organ things and good stuff like that, but the only part where I was really gonna get good face time for a while happened after Yunie finally got the entire phrase right. The notes were still echoing when I ran up ahead. And there--cue the dramatic zoom and the big tearjerking moment--was Gippal, sprawled on the ground in dramatic agony.
Time to ham it up. "Gippal!" I cried, rushing to his side and motoring my hands.
He raised his head slowly to look at me. Man, he was really going all out here, even breathing hard and everything. "I...got careless," he panted.
"Are you all right?" Paine asked. Even she sounded concerned.
"I could use...a nap."
Yunie wasn't bothering with stuff like that. Her line in the script had (forcefully trying to move onward) in italics next to it. "Where's Nooj?" she demanded, leaning forward and clenching her fists.
"He went ahead," said Gippal.
I heard a noise behind me ([hearing a noise] was in the script for my line, too) and looked over my shoulder to see Leblanc & Co. behind me. "Guess she couldn't stay away," I snickered. I also muttered, "the stupid hag" for good measure, but they cut that part out.
"I never said where I would wait!" Leblanc snapped, waving her fan around. Ooh, stupid old bat, always trying to steal my show. We were almost at my one big moment, and she was gonna ruin it. I didn't even have a single scripted line for the rest of the scene.
Yunie turned around. "Well then, please take care of Gippal."
Gippal shot a look at me. I was about to break the script and volunteer to stay and care for the brave little wounded soldier when Leblanc the Lame crossed her arms and practically yelled, "You DARE give ME an order?!"
Now Paine turned too. "Look, we'll tell Nooj you're waiting like a good girl and doing your part for the team."
"Hmmm..." Leblanc leaned forward and made a big show of thinking about it--probably the time it took her to jump- start her brain, at her age and given how dumb she probably was to begin with, not like me at all. "All right, I'm in!" she announced brightly all of a sudden. Talk about your short attention spans.
"Hey, Dr. P." It was Gippal, bringing the action back home near me where it belonged. "A gift from Nooj." He held up a glowing orange sphere. "It's from two years ago. Said it was inside the sphere camera."
"I'll watch it later," Paine told him, starting to put it away.
Yuna, who had been so POed when the script had (with her usual nosiness-disguised-as-concern) next to her next line that she'd made everyone in the entire cast and crew cross it out with a permanent marker, said, "Hey. You should watch it now." Paine just looked at her. "Think about it. You know you won't be able to fight your best as long as it's on your mind."
That totally should not have worked. In fact, in real life it didn't work, and stupid Paine never let us see the sphere. The only way I knew what was on it was because I was watching from the Celsius deck while they were reshooting the sphere contents. But now Paine was following the script, and so she sighed and stopped thinking about getting off-camera and waving her sword around again and held up the sphere. "You're right," she sighed again as she turned it on.
I knew they had to shoot another few seconds of her holding the sphere before they could splice the footage in, and then they might take a break before doing the shot segment after she watched it. So before anyone could stop the cameras, I (gracefully, of course) threw myself at Gippal's feet and demanded in a slightly quavering voice, "Oh, Gippal...are you all right?" Paine had already asked him that, but so what? Maybe mine'd be so much better that they'd even cut hers.
"I'll--manage." He did a good job of struggling to sit up some more. "No way am I gonna let you guys have this party without me."
"But...but I don't want you to get hurt!" I pinched the inside of my elbow until my eyes started watering.
"What gives? Cid's girl actually cares what happens to me now?" Rule number four of G/R fanservice is that he has to call me "Cid's girl" or some variation thereof at least once a chapter.
"No! I just--I mean--no way--I--you--yes!" I cried, throwing my arms around him and doing a pretty darn good job of sobbing into his chest, if I do say so myself. "Yes, I do care! I always have! I've never been able to tell you that, but the truth is--I've always lo--"
Okay, so sometimes you just have to give into the whole cliche thing. That's what fanservice is all about.
"Shh." He put one finger against my realistically trembling and perfectly glossed lower lip. "I know, Rikku, I know. I love you too."
I gazed up at him. I'd been practicing this in the mirror at the inn for days, trying to think of things that made me happy--like being a video game star, and having little kids all across the world try to cosplay me and then get arrested for indecent exposure, and hot fudge sundaes--so my eyes could shine with happiness and--yes--love. I realized that it wasn't anywhere near as hard to do as I'd thought it would be. All I really had to do was look at his face, with that one brilliant green eye smiling down on me.
But that was just a tribute to my skills as an actress, of course. He had nothing to do with it.
And then, like magic (or maybe movie magic!), he leaned over and kissed me. And it was a totally perfect FMV kiss, in glorious full color and Dolby Digital Surround Sound, and I could hear "Suteki da Ne" swelling in the background (or at least a decent OCremix).
And then, all of a sudden, he jumped up. "Hey, I think after that I'm ready to get out there and take that big ol' machina apart! Guy's gotta be tough for a cute girl like you, y'know. See ya on the other side." With that, he turned to go--he had to be gone by the time Paine was done with the sphere--and then froze dead.
"Are you absolutely-positively-entirely finished now?" the director's voice asked. I looked back to see the two-foot bird-person-whatever-he-was-thing standing about three inches behind me with his stumpy little arms crossed, glaring. As much as anything like that can glare.
"Umm...finished?" I laughed nervously.
"Yes! So we can begin shooting again!" The director was tapping his foot now. Impatient little bugger.
Gippal almost choked. "You mean you stopped?"
"Of course we stopped! The scene ends with Paine holding up the sphere, oh yes indeed! Can't have the cameras rolling after the scene ends! Time is money, you know! Ooh-hoo-hoo!" And then he sped off to the next section of the Farplane like the Roadrunner. The rest of the cast and crew followed, generously taking the time out of their busy schedules to shoot us dirty looks.
Gippal and I stared at each other, and if my face was anywhere near as red as his, those Pyreflies were workin' overtime.
"Aww, no one ever does that to Yunie and Tidus when they start sucking face in the middle of a scene," I muttered to myself, looking away and scuffing my toe on the ground.
"So..." he said awkwardly after a couple seconds. "Any more bright ideas?"
"Oh, man, Gippie-baby, that was our best one!" I groaned, motoring my hands. "No Farplane, no Moonflow, no Djose, no Bikanel, no Macalania...even the stupid Celsius is out! Where else are we supposed to have a big love scene chock full of fanservicey goodness?!"
"Wait." He grabbed my shoulders and looked me straight in the eyes. "There's one more place. I was checking some fanfiction sites last night for some of the sappiest Rikku stories of all time. There's this one place in Spira where a whole bunch of people set fics with you and Auron, and now they're doing it with us."
"Home? The old airship? The inside of Sin? Zanarkand?"
"The Thunder Plains! We'll tack it in right after that scene at Djose where I mentioned that we went out and call it a flashback, or maybe right when you guys show up at the Thunder Plains for the first time! The script says--here--" He grabbed it out of his back pocket, flipped through it wildly, and finally stabbed his finger about halfway down a page. "'Yuna voice-over: Guess what? Rikku finally overcame her fear of thunder. Know how? She said she camped out here for a week!' We'll just cut to a flashback sequence right after that line."
"Waiddaminute! We're never gonna get anyone to go all the way out to the Thunder Plains! How are we gonna shoot this?"
"We'll just have to steal a camera and a tripod, that's all. You're a thief, Rikkmeister. I'm sure you can manage that."
I pressed my hands to the side of my face and moaned. "Ohh...all right. But you owe me bigtime. I'm only doing this as a favor to you, you got me? I don't need popularity this much!"
"Do it and you'll have my eternal gratitude and adoring worship, O Most Great and Long-Suffering Pixellated Bimbo," Gippal sighed. "Now come on. Let's get over there with the rest of them before they start wondering what happened to us."
Ooh, man, I could tell you some crazy stories about the big wrap party...if they wouldn't get me arrested and/or ruin my chances for some wicked blackmail, that is. We had it on the Celsius, because that made it exclusive--and easy for all the little people in Spira to see that floating superbash overhead and get really jealous of the big stars like me. We didn't even let Shelinda in for exclusive interviews, so she was running around beneath us on a Chocobo trying to get shots of the deck through a long-lens camera. It's all about media manipulation.
But I bet you're wondering what this has to do with the story. No, hate to break it to ya, Gippaliscious and I didn't steal a quiet moment together while everyone else was off partying, or wow everyone with our mad dancing skillaz, or get way drunk and end up kissing each other (eww, how romantic is that anyway?). I'm telling this to you, kids, because this is how Master Thief Rikku ended up stealing the camera for our brilliantly evil plan, and it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see me in action. Unless you buy the game, of course.
So picture the scene: the stars of the show are doing our super-exclusive thing up on the bridge (playing loud music and trying to get the guys to spherechange into drag) and the crew's down in the cabin, drinking. Like, a lot. And Gippal casually mentions that we're outta ice, and normally I'd get one of the lackeys to get some more but I'm feeling generous (because no one else except him knows that I've got a sneaky little plan in mind), so I head down to the cabin to grab some from Barkeep. And as soon as I walk through the door that camera guy who has a crush on me whips out his equipment (his camera! his CAMERA! Come ON, fanboys, eww!) and starts filming me. (Current fanservice shot count: 497.)
Now watch the master work.
Me: (swinging myself up onto the conveniently empty barstool next to Camera-Wielding Fanboy) Hey.
CWF: (nervously) Oh, ah, um...hey.
Me: So, enjoying the party?
CWF: ...oh, yeah. It's...umm...really fun. (pause as he wipes his nosebleed on his sleeve) What about you?
Me: Ahh, I'm having an okay time, but it's kinda boring, y'know?
CWF: Oh. (feeling stupid for having thought it was fun)
Me: But I bet I know something that would make it a lot more interesting. (hooking my ankle around his and smiling)
CWF: What?!?
You know the type. Some guys are so used to seeing things through a lens (or a computer screen) that they just don't get it when it actually happens.
Me: (jumping off the stool, grabbing his arm and dragging him up the stairs) Come on. You're coming with me.
Because of course there are beds upstairs. That's where we used to sleep. And of course there was some really nice thick rope under one of the beds upstairs, because once in a while Gippal really come through when you need him to. And of course, no one thought it was strange when I slipped back downstairs with the camera but not the cameraman, or when I got back to the bridge without the ice and Gippal followed me out again, or when a hover loaded with camping equipment took off from the deck of the Celsius a few minutes later.
Man, if only it were always that easy.