Garnet and Zidane (FFIX) (3 kids)
Yuna and Baralai (FFX-2) (2 kids)
Rikku and Irvine (FFX/X-2, FFVIII) (3 kids, triplets)
Aerith and Cloud (FFVII/KH) (1 1/2 kids)
Quistis and Rufus (FFVIII, FFVII) (3 3/4 kids)
Sally and Zell (FFVIII) (2 kids)
Yuffie and Leon (KH/FFVII, FFVIII) (2 kids, twins)
Barret (FFVII) (Marlene, who isn't technically his daughter, but work with me here.)
The world Neko's in is from one of my FAVORITE book series-- one that has an abundance of very good, very detailed maps, not to mention another entire book dedicated to information about the world. I command thee all to read The Belgariad and The Malloreon by David Eddings-- they're some of the best not-quite-high fantasy novels ever. (After you're done with them, try the books about Polgara and Belgarath, then Redemption of Althalus. The Eddings RAWK! -)
Experimental
Darkness: Part One
Kizu
Six years.
Six years have past since the day Neko sealed her brother-- killed her brother-- with ice. Many things can happen in six years, as people in love marry, have children, and grow families. The Bastion (now far from hollow) is recovering, and life is finally moving on.
Nine years.
Nine years since Sora supposedly sealed the door to darkness, nine years for evil to grow again. Nine years for one person to be trapped alone, another to be lost, a third to lose her hope.
Now.
Now is the time for the final play; the final dance as something far greater pulls the strings. Now everything draws together, now the end draws near.
Wait.
-- Bastion
"Have you seen Neko?"
Leon glances absently up at Takeo, then back down at his paper-strewn desk. "Not today."
"Huh." A worried frown creases the teen's face. "She didn't show up for breakfast..."
"Hm."
The door clicks softly shut as Takeo leaves Leon's study. "Mou... Neko-chan, where ARE you?" he mutters to the air, wandering down the hall.
"What's wrong?"
Takeo twitches slightly, as he always does when Sephiroth sneaks up behind him. Even after six years, the silent movements and quiet voice remind him just enough of Oni to ruffle his nerves, but he turns and smiles anyway. "I can't find Neko, is all. Just a bit worried." At the skeptical twitch of a silver eyebrow, Takeo repeats, "Just a bit."
"Right. If you say so." Sephiroth shrugs ever-so-slightly, blue-black wing rustling. "Would you like for me to keep an eye out?"
"Would you? Please?" Sephiroth nods, and the boy's green eyes shine in silent thanks. With a slight bow, Takeo skitters off, face brighter than it had been.
"... I'm starting to get really worried. I mean, sometimes she'll go off and mope for a couple hours, but it's been a day." Takeo sighs softly, staring mournfully at his best friend through his bangs. His arms tighten slightly around his legs, bringing his knees closer to his chin as his bare feet slide across the leather of the armchair. "It's like she's not even in the castle anymore." Another sigh, and he repeats, "I'm starting to get really worried."
Sephiroth stares back, cat-slit emerald eyes glowing with eerie light. "I'm worried as well." Though you would never know it to look at him; his exterior is as cool and poised as ever, even as he's perched on his bed with his legs bent tailor-style. "Although this isn't a repeat of what has happened," at the oblique reference Takeo winces sharply, "it isn't like her to leave you worrying."
"Haaai..." The sound is released on the wave of another sigh. "She's not upset, I would know if she were upset and avoiding me. She just... vanished."
"Hmm."
A minute passes, then Sephiroth rises smoothly to his feet. "Come."
Takeo blinks slowly, but slides out of the oversized chair and follows Sephiroth out of the bedroom-study-den. (Every room is similar, containing one person and everything that person possesses; even after nine years of life in the Bastion, there are only two floors with habitable rooms. This will change in the next few years, as the few small family units grow and new ones begin, but until then everyone has their own bedroom-study-den.) They go up a level, down a door-lined passage, walled halfway in marble and halfway in coppery pipes, and Takeo blinks again as they pass his room and end standing outside Neko's door. Sephiroth pushes the door gently open, glancing back at Takeo to make sure the fourteen-year-old is following.
With a tiny nod, Takeo slips into the room behind his friend and sits on one corner of the unmade bed. Sephiroth walks to the bookshelf, gently running his fingertips over the spines before turning towards Neko's roll-top desk. After another few moments of searching, he comes up with a familiar folder stuffed with paper.
"Surely there's something," Sephiroth comments, flipping the cover open and riffling through the drawings.
Takeo nods again.
-- ?
Neko wakes up someplace strange.
Gone is the crystalline landscape of the Bastion; Gone also is the misty, fog-dampened sunlight so familiar to the inhabitants of that place. Instead, brilliant light beats down on the mountainous peaks around her, making the fresh, young grass glow on either side of a muddy road.
"Well," she comments to the air, "at least he thought to drop me someplace dry." And she is quite dry, perched atop a small boulder. Although an odd strumming tickles the base of her skull-- presumably the aftereffect of being pulled by the Voice to where she needed to be.
'Go north.'
Neko sighs at the typically succinct statement. "Hai, hai, north it is," she replies, "but which way is north, hmm?" A mental nudge points her up the road, towards where it crests a rather large hill. "Aa. Thanks."
She ascends the hill slowly, sticking to the grass next to the road to avoid the mud. The scent in the air is one of lingering rain and damp soil, mixed with the green scent of plants and musty-sweet wildflowers, strikingly different from the metal-tinged torpid water Neko is used to. The new smells are almost heady to Neko, and the wonderful warmth of the sun is intoxicating as it hits her pale face.
"Beautiful world..." she murmurs, a smile spreading across her face as she tilts her head back, looking up at the soft blue spring sky. Then she crests the hill.
-- Bastion
Eight overly-mobile children, ages three to seven, trail behind Takeo. They whine pitifully, beg mournfully, and plead hopefully for him to play with them. The two oldest-- Zone and Hanabi--lead with the most persuasive arguments, namely that all the adults were busy with "big people stuff."
Takeo has no doubt about that, seeing how just last year another five babies were born, and both Aerith and Quistis are well on their ways to having MORE children. Not to mention that the rumor mill has it that Sally is pregnant again, and Zone's parents rarely left their rooms, proofed by two younger siblings.
:: Must be something in the water,:: he thinks silently, then smiles at his own cliché thought. :: Yeah, right.:: He turns around and kneels before the cluster of children.
"Mou, minna-chan?" He smiles sweetly at them. "I know something you can do. I heard that Aerith-san is baking cookies. Why don't you go help her?"
The children blink up at Takeo, then en masse they cheer and turn to stampede towards the kitchen.
Takeo sighs in sympathy for poor, poor Aerith, but continues towards Leon and Yuffie's rooms, a sheet of paper held gently before him.
-- ?
Neko can't help but stare down the slope, into a valley-- a huge valley, a thousand times the size of Rising Falls, if not more. And comfortably nestled into the valley, shining in the sunlight, is a majestic city of pure white, sprawling over every bit of space it can.
Neko guesses that it would take at the very least two days to walk through, despite the straightforward grid of broad streets bustling with bright-clothed specks. She also guesses that this is where she's supposed to go, so after a good five minutes of awe, she starts down the hill.
Stretching to the west of the city are beautiful, lush plains, reaching over the horizon in a mist of fresh spring green. Neko can't quite make out what's north of the city, nor what's to the east, as the horizon and snow-capped mountains blur and hide details. But as she descends, she notices that the city itself isn't as pristine as she thought-- entire neighborhoods seemed to be in the middle of being rebuilt, and other streets are darkened and collapsed from fire. The smell of burnt wood is faint and stale under the hurry of a busy city, and she guesses that the buildings were touched by flames years ago.
An hour passes before she reaches a pair huge bronze gates, even after she speeds her decent by smoothing the grass out with a crystal path and sliding down it. (Neko took care to make it ice, so that it would melt a few minutes after she passed; in this unfamiliar world, who knows what a person would think if they ran across a path made of frozen oxygen?)
The gates are wide open, a pair of crimson-clad soldiers standing guard on either side. They look slightly askance at Neko as she walks up, but neither one moves to stop her.
"Good morning. Would you tell me where I am?"
The taller guard blinks in surprise at her. "Umm... This is the southwest gate of Mal Zeth."
"Hmm? Really?" She smiles brightly up at him, then asks, "What country are we in?"
He blinks again. "Mallorea."
"Ah. Thank you, sir." With another bright smile, she strolls through the gates and into the city. "So, Voice-san, what next?" she murmurs, not really expecting a reply. But she hears her name; turning, she sees a young man smiling at her from the edge of the road.
"Welcome, Neko." The man's voice is a gentle tenor, his smile softly amicable. "A friend asked that I help you."
"Ah!" Neko bows slightly. "Nice to meet you, um..."
"Eriond." He dips his head in return. "Here, come with me." And Eriond turns towards the center of the city, strolling along with Neko trailing behind.
-- Bastion
Takeo knocks politely on the doorframe-- politely but loudly-- and waits for a response. The response takes a long time, finally taking the form of a mussed-looking Leon, shirt half-unbuttoned and pants hastily thrown on. He only opens the door a few inches, blocking Takeo's view into the rest of the room.
Takeo blushes, matched by the pink flush across Leon's face, but he manages not to do something embarrassing, like scream and run away from the mental images of Leon and Yuffie doing what they were obviously just doing.
"Who izzit, Squall?"
Leon glances back, careful not to shift away from the door, and replies with a quiet "Takeo." He looks back out into the hallway. "What is it?"
The teen continues to blush, but manages to choke out, "Neko's gone."
With a little start, Leon motions for Takeo to stay still, then shoves the door closed. A minute of shuffling later, and the door opens again-- this time on a far less rumpled Leon, and Yuffie in a bright sundress, finger-combing her hair absently. Leon steps out into the hallway, half-closing the door, and turns his cool blue eyes on Takeo. "Gone?"
"I... I couldn't find her, so Seph and I dug around her room a bit, got out her folder, you know, the one she puts her sketches into? and went through that, and Imouto-chan left, um, this." Takeo lifts up the sheet of plain paper he's holding. "She's gone."
The Bastion formerly known as Hollow is a rumor mill. Via the children's garbling, unconscious omission and exaggeration, and Rufus Shinra's mischievous manipulating, Neko's disappearance has mutated twenty different ways by nightfall-- from her literally vanishing before Takeo's eyes, to Sephiroth kidnapping her and sealing her inside a wall of the Waterway. By the next morning, according to the kids, Sephiroth kidnapped her in front of Takeo and took her inside a wall to a place where she could play with ice dragons and catch all tuna in the world, without grown-ups telling her she should eat something besides fish.
By the next evening, Leon has to call a meeting to straighten out the rumors.
-- Mal Zeth (Capital of Mallorea)
"So. You're off to save the universe?"
Neko nods. "At least, that's what I've been told."
Eriond glances at her, and Neko gets the sudden impression that he isn't as young as she first thought. "Do you always trust what you're told?"
She blinks. "No, but I trust him." No need to say who "he" is; the voice whose words had never lied to her.
With an odd smile, Eriond nods. "I see." Just what he sees, Neko isn't sure, but certainly more than anything she said. "Hmm. It's been a while since I walked this far."
Another smile crosses his face, and between steps Neko feels an odd lurch. Then she realizes that the entire area around them has changed, and before them are a huge set of gates-- gates gilded in gold.
Neko stares, then murmurs-- not for the last time-- "Beautiful world."
Eriond chuckles. "We rather think so."
Hai: Yes, sure, okay (fairly formal)
Aa: Yes, sure, okay (informal)
Mou: Almost a verbal pout... That's the best way I can describe it. ;;
Minna: Everybody
-chan: Affectionate, informal honorific. (Rhymes with Han Solo)
-san: Average level honorific-- Mr. Mrs. Ms., ect (Rhymes with Han Solo)
Imouto: Little sister (Very informal, more so with the chan suffix)
Yes, yes, I know some of the pairings are... eh. AKA, "Huh? Rikku and Irvine? Quistis and Rufus? Where did THAT come from?"
I'll tell you where. That came from me pulling every FF character from VII to X-2 that didn't already have a place/wouldn't interfere with set romances, and sticking them in the Bastion. Then pairing up every one I could. (Even so, I still have Laguna, Auron, and Edea floating at loose ends-- and I'll be damned if I pair Edea or Laguna up with anyone but FFVIII Cid and Raine. And Auron only goes with Lulu, or no one at all, and since Lulu's getting married to FFVII Cid, no-can-do.)
(Yes, Lulu and Cid Highwind. Yes, Final Fantasy Seven Cid.)
(Stop giving me that look.)
(I hate you.)