Note: This is an omake based on Chapter 23 of Lightning and Fang Sitting in a Tree. The premise of that chapter is that under certain circumstances, Fang can transform into Ragnarok.
X X X
Little Terror
Diana was not having a good day. In fact, it was safe to say that she was having one of the worst days of her life.
It had all started when she'd she woken up. There had been another bogeyman attack in the middle of the night, so she'd climbed into her sister's bed for protection. But she'd been so comfortable that she'd forgotten all about it. When she'd tried to leap out of bed to catch some morning cartoons, her foot had gotten caught on Averia's leg.
Diana had hit the floor face first – and then Averia had fallen on top of her.
In the shower, Diana had gotten shampoo in her eyes. It wasn't the kind that made her eyes hurt, but then her soap had slipped out of her hand. She'd bent down to get her soap and then banged her head on the wall.
At breakfast, things hadn't gotten much better. Right after she'd finished putting peanut butter on her toast, she'd dropped it. Of course, it had landed with the peanut butter side down. By the time breakfast was done – and she'd had to go back upstairs to change her shirt because she'd somehow gotten milk on it – she was already in a bad mood.
Her mood didn't get any better at school. First, a squirrel ran down from a tree and stole the last part of her sandwich. And then, when she'd been looking for a stick to poke the squirrel with, a pigeon had run into her head. Yuffie had thrown her shoe at the pigeon to try and drive it away, but she'd missed and hit Diana instead.
The only good thing about school was that they'd gotten to do painting – except someone had spilled paint on her one. Her painting had been completely ruined. She'd gotten to do another one, but it wasn't as good as her first one. And she'd really wanted to show her mom and mommy her first one.
By the time Diana got home, she was convinced the world was out to get her. She had a feeling it wasn't done yet too. A new episode of Gary the Gorgonopsid was supposed to come out today. They were going to introduce a whole new character. Diana had been looking forward to it ever since they'd announced it a month ago.
Diana sat down on the couch as her mom went to the kitchen to make some food. She turned on the television.
There was bad news.
Her eye twitched, and her fists clenched. A low growl came from her lips.
The new episode was cancelled. It was going to come out next week instead. And there wasn't even going to be any Gary today. They were going to put on more news instead.
Nothing had gone right today, nothing at all! Rage rushed through Diana's veins. An unfamiliar power filled her body along with the overwhelming urge to destroy.
"RAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHH!"
X X X
Over the years, Lightning had grown accustomed to hearing all kinds of sounds from the girls when they were in the living room. It wasn't the least bit unusual for them to threaten each other with varying levels of bodily harm. Screaming and wailing was also normal, along with the occasional growl or roar.
"RAAAARRRRGGGHHHHHH!"
Lightning paused and put Diana's sandwich on a plate. Odd. That wasn't one of the usual sounds although it did sound a lot like Diana. She'd never heard her younger daughter sound that angry before though. Lips pursed, Lightning decided to take a look. Was the television not working?
The television was working perfectly well. There was even a news program showing.
There was also a miniature Ragnarok on the couch howling and screaming. The little monster rounded on Lightning and then leapt toward her. Lightning breezed out of the way and the mini-Ragnarok slammed into the wall behind her face first. Mini-Ragnarok sniffled and rubbed her face before pouting and giving Lightning a look of utter betrayal.
Lightning stiffened. She knew that pout and look of utter betrayal. That was the exact same look Diana gave her when Lightning told her she'd eaten enough ice cream for one day. Lightning's mind flashed back to another day, some time ago, when Fang had transformed into Ragnarok. Was it possible that their younger daughter had inherited more from Fang than just her looks?
The mini-Ragnarok huffed and folded her arms over her chest. Lightning's eyes widened. All right, as crazy as it seemed, this was definitely Diana. But what should she do? If it were Fang, Lightning would have whacked her over the head and reiterated her threat of absolutely no sex until she changed back, but this was Diana.
Mini-Ragnarok took a few tentative steps toward Lightning. Her tail moved back and forth through the air. Really, Lightning thought, Diana was still quite cute even when she was like this. Oh well, her daughter might have turned into a miniature harbinger of the apocalypse, but Diana was still her daughter. Lightning moved forward and scooped Diana up into her arms.
Diana practically purred as Lightning settled onto the couch with the girl on her lap. Lightning ran one hand along Diana's back and through the tangle of orange on her head. Diana snuggled into Lightning's arms and jabbed her tail at the television. It took a moment for Lightning to understand: the news wasn't normally on at this time. Gary must have been cancelled for the day.
Lightning wasn't sure what to think about the fact that cancelling Gary could turn Diana into a mini-Ragnarok.
In typical fashion, Fang and Averia chose that exact moment to come back with some things from the store around the corner. Diana took one look at Averia and bounded off Lightning's lap. Averia went down in a heap and fought to pry the small-scale monster off as Diana licked her cheek and patted her with her tail.
"Help!" Averia shouted. "Help! This… this thing is licking me!"
Fang plucked Diana off. She looked surprisingly unsurprised by it all. Diana latched onto Fang. "I'm guessing this is Diana."
Lightning sighed. "You'd be guessing right."
"What?" Averia got back to her feet. "That's Diana?" She tilted her head to one side as Fang pulled Diana off and held her at arm's length. Diana squirmed and wrapped her tail around Fang's arm. "But she doesn't look anything like Diana. She looks like… like Ragnarok."
Lightning and Fang shared a look. They'd agreed a long time ago to tell the girls about Fang's past. Averia had already heard about Ragnarok, but Diana was still too young. They hadn't been sure if it was the right thing to do, but Averia had always been mature for her age. Right now, it was looking like a good decision – Averia was taking the whole thing quite well.
"Don't forget I was Ragnarok for a while," Fang said. "But I didn't think I'd be able to pass the whole 'turn into an invincible monster of doom' thing down to one of you."
Diana managed to squirm out of Fang's grasp. She immediately grabbed onto Averia. The older girl staggered over to the couch and slumped down next to Lightning. Diana continued to cling onto her tightly like some kind of Ragnarok-shaped monkey.
"But how did Diana even transform?" Averia asked. Her eyes narrowed. She knew her mommy had only transformed when something really, really bad happened. "What happened?"
Lightning pointed at the television. "They put news on instead of Gary."
Averia winced. Diana had been looking forward to the new episode for ages. But why weren't her parents more worried? Diana had turned into Ragnarok! "What do we do? Shouldn't we do something? What if she's stuck like this?" Diana had gone back to licking her cheek.
Fang sat next to them on the couch and chuckled. "Well, it's not like she's dangerous." She rubbed Diana behind the ears and the little monster gave a purr and rubbed back against her hand. "She might look like Ragnarok, but she's cuddle-sized." She pulled Diana into her arms. "See? How cute is this?"
Averia twitched. Diana's normal hair already had a way of getting her in the eye. The orange… stuff she had now was even worse. But it was a testament to how unusual her life could be that her little sister turning into a mini-Ragnarok wasn't the weirdest thing she'd ever seen. It wasn't even the weirdest thing she'd seen this week. That particular honour went to Chirpy. The chocobo had gotten into an argument with Bahamut after trying to convince the Eidolon that Mr Cuddles was out to get them and needed to be "dealt with".
"So, how do we fix this?" Averia pulled a bar of chocolate out of her pocket and then scowled as her sister plucked it out of her hand with her tail and devoured it. "That was mine!" Diana just waved her tail through the air, taunting Averia with the empty wrapper.
Fang rubbed her chin. "We could always call Vanille…"
"We are not calling Vanille!" Lightning growled. "Remember what happened last time?"
"Oh." Fang grimaced. "Yeah."
Averia raised one eyebrow. What had happened back then? She had a feeling that this was another one of the many, many things that her Aunt Vanille had done that annoyed her mom. Sometimes she wondered how long her Aunt Vanille would survive if her mom and mommy didn't love her.
"Well, we need to do something." Averia tried to get up to find something else to eat, but that was a lot harder than usual with her sister clinging to her. "Can't you pry her off me?" Diana responded to the suggestion by jabbing Averia in the cheek with her tail. That was enough. Transformed or not, Diana was still Averia's little sister, which meant Averia was still in charge. "No poking me or you can walk!"
Mini-Ragnarok pouted and then nodded before she clambered back onto Averia's back.
Averia eventually managed to get herself some ice cream – most of which Diana ate – and returned to find her parents in the middle of discussing different ways to fix Diana.
"We could always threaten her," Fang said. "That worked for me."
"Threaten her?" Averia frowned. Even if it was only pretend, she didn't like people threatening her sister. "Isn't there another way?"
Lightning was pleased to see how protective Averia was, but Fang's suggestion wasn't going to work. They didn't have anything to threaten Diana with. Certainly, she couldn't use what she'd threatened Fang with. "We could try taking away all the chocolate in the house."
Mini-Ragnarok turned to Lightning with tears in her eyes. Lightning immediately felt like the worst human being in the entire world.
"How about no more ice cream?" Fang tried to come to Lightning's rescue. "We could try that"
Diana didn't tear up. She took a swipe at Fang with her tail.
Averia rolled her eyes. She'd been worried her parents would threaten Diana with something scarier than taking her junk food away. But they were onto something. There was one thing that might bring Diana back – the same thing that had probably made her transform in the first place.
With a sigh, Averia pulled Diana off her back. "Only people get to decide what we watch on television. If you stay as Ragnarok, you don't get to decide what we watch. You'll have to watch news forever. There won't be any more Gary."
Diana gave a low wail of horror. She screwed her eyes shut. There was a flash of light. When the light cleared, Diana was back to her normal self.
"You can't make me watch news forever!" Diana threw her arms around Averia. "That's the meanest thing ever!"
Averia shrugged and looked at her two parents. "Problem solved." She turned back to Diana. The younger girl shrank back at the scowl on Averia's face. "You took my chocolate and most of my ice cream."
"You can't blame me for that. I was totally transformed into a monster and stuff." Diana frowned and looked away. "I had a bad day too. I needed some sugar."
A bad day, huh? Averia had heard all about it from Rikku and Yuffie. Another sigh left her lips. The things she did for her sister. She lifted Diana onto her back. "Let's go next door. Claire has a new video game we could play."
"Yay!"
"And maybe if you ask Claire really nicely, she'll let you lead our team since it's a team game." Averia had already talked to Claire about letting Diana be in charge.
"Awesome."
Fang watched the two children head next door and then turned to Lightning. "Does it worry you that Averia figured out how to change Diana back before we did?"
"She didn't need an underground bunker either." Lightning pulled Fang over to her. "We need to talk to Diana about this. If she can turn into Ragnarok…"
"We might have problems later." Fang wrapped her arms around Lightning. "She might have been cute and cuddly today, but she won't stay that way forever." She pressed her face into Lightning's hair. "You know, we will have to talk to the others about this."
"I know."
"But in the meantime…" Fang smirked. "You do realise that we've got the house to ourselves, right?"
X X X
Fang and Lightning did talk to the others about Diana's little problem. They also talked to Diana about it. After a bit of tinkering and practice, Diana was able to make sure that she never transformed into Ragnarok over something like Gary being cancelled for the week. It would take something much bigger than that to force her to transform.
She wouldn't transform again until she was a member of the Guardian Corps.
Diana, Averia, and Claire were part of cadre of Guardian Corps officers assigned to protect a remote outpost during the construction of its defences. They'd been prepared for the usual angry wildlife.
They weren't prepared to stumble across a settlement of Gran Pulse survivors. These survivors had somehow managed to escape the devastation that followed the War of Transgression and eke out a living, deep in the mountains for centuries. Naturally, they hadn't taken too well to a bunch of researchers and colonists showing up.
There had been a battle – the bloodiest and hardest that Diana had ever been a part of. The survivors weren't in a mood for taking prisoners or showing mercy, nor were they in a mood to negotiate. They wanted to make sure no one escaped to tell outsiders about them. Outnumbered and with their communications equipment damaged, the Guardian Corps officers had been in a world of trouble.
Averia had fought a ruthless defensive action, holding the Gran Pulse warriors off for two days as they worked to repair their communications equipment. They'd just gotten off a call for help when the worst had happened.
Utterly exhausted, Diana had been never seen the spear aimed at her back. But Averia had. The older woman didn't have the magic to deflect the blow, so she'd done the only thing she could think of – the sort of thing she'd been doing for Diana's whole life. She'd pushed Diana out of the way and put herself in harm's way instead.
Diana had turned to find her sister with a spear through her gut. Ever since she'd first transformed into Ragnarok over a cancelled cartoon, Diana had worked on her control to make sure it never happened again. She knew what Ragnarok was capable of – her mom had told her all the details. She never, ever wanted to become a monster like that again. There was no telling how much damage she could do.
But seeing Averia like that, seeing all the blood, seeing her older sister flop onto her side like a puppet with its strings cut – Diana didn't give a damn about how much damage she caused. She wanted blood. She wanted the person who'd hurt Averia ripped into a thousand pieces, along with every single other person who'd so much as thought about hurting her older sister.
For the first time in her life, Diana chose to transform into Ragnarok.
There was nothing cute or cuddly about her this time. She was an engine of wrath and ruin.
The warriors took one look at her and fled. They were brave, but they knew the legends, the stories that had been passed down since the War of Transgression. Ragnarok – the beast that had scarred Cocoon. It had returned, and it was angry.
When Diana could think straight again, she was on a medical transport back to the nearest major settlement. Apparently, she'd cut a bloody swathe through the warriors before she'd doubled back to stand watch over Averia. She hadn't let anyone near her sister except for Claire. The other woman had healed Averia as best she could. The medics on the transport had arrived a short time later and done the rest.
Averia would be fine, and there was a much, much larger contingent of Guardian Corps on the way under her parents' command. Her parents would get to the bottom of the whole mess, one way or the other.
Diana made her way through the transport vaguely aware of the worried looks some of the others gave her. She couldn't blame them. She had sort of transformed into a legendary monster of doom and killed more people than she was comfortable thinking about. But she'd do it again if she had to. Averia was worth it.
Averia was still bundled up on a bed, but the way she scowled and growled at the medics was reassuring. The medics took one look at Diana and left to give the sisters their privacy.
"How are you feeling?" Diana asked quietly. She wasn't used to seeing her older sister like this. Averia was so fast that she almost never got hit and so tough that almost nothing fazed her.
"Better than when I had a spear through my stomach." Averia sat up and folded her arms over her chest. "What were you thinking? You should have seen that spear coming, Diana."
Tears prickled at the corners of Diana's eyes. She sat on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry –"
"Dummy!" Averia whacked Diana over the head.
"Ouch!" Diana's looked at her sister. "What was that for?"
"Don't apologise. Just do better next time." Averia huffed. "And don't you dare be sad or blame yourself. I didn't have to take that spear for you. I chose to do that. Not you, not anyone else, me." Her expression softened. "And Claire tells me that you got revenge for me anyway."
"I did." Diana dragged in a deep, deep breath. "Please don't ever scare me like that again, Averia."
"I'm your older sister, that's kind of my job." Averia's lips twitched. "At least you were scary this time. Can you imagine how badly things would have gone if your version of Ragnarok was still cute and cuddly?"
Diana giggled. "That wouldn't have gone well at all."
"No, it wouldn't. Can you get Claire and bring her here? The three of are going to have to fill out a stack of reports, so it might be a good idea to get started early."
Diana made a face. "You work too hard."
"Yeah, yeah. Just get Claire."
Diana stepped away from the bed and then paused. "What do you think mom is going to do to those Gran Pulse survivors?"
Averia's lips curled. "I'm not sure. But if they're stupid enough to attack her the way they attacked us, they're going to see what the original Ragnarok is like."
X X X
Author's Notes
As always, I neither own Final Fantasy, nor am I making any money off of this.
So, this story started out being completely fluffy and humorous. But when I finished the first draft, I decided to add a short paragraph at the end describing the circumstances under which Diana might transform as an adult. Fast forward to the final version, and I decided that I wanted to add a little more detail to that scenario… and that little more quickly became more than a little more.
But yeah, I thought it would be funny if Diana turned into a mini-Ragnarok (a cuddle-sized Ragnarok as Fang calls her). Of course, things are less funny in the future. As you can imagine, Diana and Averia are extremely close (you can bet Averia still gets it from Vanille about following in Lightning's footsteps with regards to the sister obsession).
Watching Averia get seriously wounded is exactly the sort of thing that would drive Diana into transforming into Ragnarok. The only reason she didn't kill every single warrior (I won't lie, she killed quite a few of them) was because the need to watch over her sister (and ensure no one harmed her in Diana's absence) was stronger than the need to chase after and kill everything. But yeah, hurting Averia is not a good thing to do in front of Diana. Gets you killed and all that.
I should also emphasise that this chapter should not be taken as constituting the future of Ordinary Heroes, it's just one of many possible futures (in the same way that Lightning and Fang Sitting in a Tree is a collection of many possible ways that Lightning and Fang could get together).
And if you like my writing… I have a new original story out! It's called The Fire Upon the Mountain. It is the third story in The Last Huntress Series (after The Last Huntress and The Lord of Dark Waters). It weighs in at a hefty 40,000 words making it as long as the previous two stories combined. It is now available on Amazon, and you can find a link to it in my profile. If you enjoy fantasy with a healthy dose of action, check it out (or pick up The Last Huntress and work your way up!). Here's the blurb (a link to a longer preview is also available in my profile), and you can rest assured that there's action aplenty:
Scarlett is the last of her line – a huntress sworn to kill all monsters.
Rose is a girl searching for the power to take back her homeland.
There are whispers of fire in the east, tales of titan wings and crimson scales. A dragon has come, a beast the likes of which the mountains have not seen since the days of Scarlett's grandmother.
Drawn to the east by rumours of dragon fire, Scarlett and Rose witness the fury of the dragon firsthand. One city already lies in ashes, and another may not be far behind. They have two weeks to prepare. But how do you kill a dragon? How do you kill a living inferno? Scarlett and Rose must find a way. If they cannot, another city will fall – and they will fall with it.
If you enjoy high fantasy, you might want to check out my other story The Burning Mountains. Alternatively, if a paranormal Western (with zombies, demons, and one tricky necromancer) is more your style, have a look at The Gunslinger and the Necromancer.
Finally, I hope that everyone who has picked up one of my stories has enjoyed them. If you have, please leave a review over at Amazon (incidentally, I'm now on Goodreads as L. G. Estrella, so if any of you are over there, drop by and say hello).
As always, I appreciate feedback. Reviews and comments are welcome.