I've timeskipped, but apparently Lucrecia's history is so empty I can't think of anything except her adulthood. And leaping straight into adulthood is too ridiculous so I've jumped only a decade ahead to teenhood. That's right, angst and emo and complaints.

Nah. My physical age doesn't really affect my mental one. Lucey is going to be the most matured teen who hasn't gone through something traumatic.

...Well, something more traumatic than death and being ripped from your world and home and family and friends...

...Okay, ignore that now.

I'd like to try writing a fight scene, but truthfully, thinking about fighting something as low-leveled as mandrogara or elfadunk was so boring I couldn't get much further than 'threw a fire 2 at them, ran up and bashed'. I mean, I haven't played FFVII at all so I have no idea how they fight, and from the looks of them on wiki, they look like an onion stalk with eyes and an elephant respectively. The elephant could probably run up and ram you or something, but the onion? Erm.


The saying that 'time goes by when you're enjoying yourself' exists on both Earth and Gaia. That said, the opposite is also true. That is: 'time crawls in an excruciatingly slow manner that probably was done on purpose just to torture you even further when you're miserable'.

Which is kind of weird, because I know that I suffered like crap the past few years.

Training, studying, even going out of town to beat up some monsters…which was not as epic as I expected it to be. And I've discovered that for all my acquired martial arts skills, I just don't have the proper mindset for it. Doesn't mean that I've relegated hand-to-hand to last resort, in fact I've made it first resort since I'm insane like that, but it still scares me when I have to put myself in close contact with the target.

The target. I've had to tell myself that so many times it's not even funny how it's become a mantra to chant while I fight.

I'm just glad the monsters here aren't that strong. Sure, mandragora are level 10 and elfadunk and levikron are level 14, but I've been training so hard I'm pretty sure it isn't an exaggeration to put myself in the level 20s.

That said, I wasn't about to go running up to challenge a zolom anytime.

By the way, it's actually true that monsters will drop stuff when you kill them. The thing about it is that they 'drop' them after dissolving into the Lifestream, which is basically them melting away and then evaporating into green mist. Left behind will be stuff that they...swallowed. Turns out they don't distinguish between food and non-food and you usually get pile of half-digested rubbish that you have to root through to find gil and potions and other things...Yuck.

Nearly ten years of that and I still catch myself thinking of myself as nine. Or eight, even. God, it's like my body's growth didn't really matter.

Sometimes I get up early in the morning and feel like it was just yesterday that I was sent to Gaia through some strange twist of fate.

I'm no less confused as to why, but time had taught me that there was no fighting or helping this. And there was only so much fretting I could do before even my very terrified psyche got sick of it. I'd reached the point that it seemed pointless to worry overmuch about something that was probably out of my control.

If it was destiny that Sephiroth be born, then he would be. Even if I didn't go out of my way to have him.

That still sounded weird in my head.

And as time went by, Baladry grew older.

He got craftier and bolder, less afraid of speaking his mind around me and less willing to take my bullshit. He was still stubborn as a rock.

And still a sarcastic, magnificent old bastard.

What did old age do to him then? It was like he'd gotten all the perks and none of the problems. He could still walk fast enough that I had to jog to catch up. And he stopped slowing down for me after six-years-old.

I wonder if he's a prototype SOLDIER. Without the mako eyes.

We'd finally found a replacement for him three years ago and during this period he'd been slowly imparting his skills to him. Not that he was leaving anytime soon, or that he couldn't take the workload, or still bamf around like a badass, or know everything that went on in the house without being there…

Why did I insist on getting him an assistant anyway?

Oh yeah, he was getting old.

And should be getting less spry. Soon… Maybe… In a few more years…

Ahem. Anyway.

He still managed things, but recently he'd begun passing some of it off to Adam.

Who is, by the way, totally my bitch.

I was the one who found him after all.

I don't care if it was an accident, I totally claim credit.

I was on another trip to Kalm (to finally get that Earth materia after so damned long) and this crazy teenage boy came barreling out of nowhere. Being the budding martial artist I was, I easily sidestepped him.

Baladry, however, wasn't so lucky.

No, it wasn't because he's old. If only. The basket got in the way.

He'd been holding my basket of purchases (fruits, cookies, newspaper, half a pound of candy, etc).

…What? I'm a growing girl. Shut up.

So of course, it went flying in the air on impact. And budding martial artist that I was, flying ninja kungfu monkey I was not. I managed to snag a few things (most importantly the candy) but the rest simply went splat on the ground.

To my fury. (It was, indirectly, my money after all.)

So there the kid was, faced with an incensed midget with a viciously violent streak, whom he also recognized as the precious daughter of the owner of Kalm mansion.

In simple terms: He. Was. Screwed.

Through the years, my repertoire of curses had expanded exponentially to include ones from several different languages and dialects. Kalm had its slightly tweaked version of the Midgardian (English) Language that was quite suited to coarse words and swears. Even the accent was rough. (Hey, mining community, remember?)

So yeah. One short little girl swearing until she was nearly blue in the face at one traumatized teenager more than twice her height, and one very exasperated old man trying to save the situation.

Okay, so I overreacted. But I was always a little high strung during the weekends because my tutors *coughsadistscough* did the opposite of normal and increased the difficulty of training. And I'd been tired enough to get beamed in the face by a Kalm Mango.

And nobody told the idiot to go tearing down the streets like a madman.

The result? A sniffling Adam bidding his mother farewell as he followed us back to Kalm mansion to work off his debt. The woman had offered to pay for the loss, but I'd refused even before I'd seen the state of their home. I wanted the culprit to be the one bearing the cost. Besides, I couldn't make a grown woman cry as easily.

That they were one of the poorer families in the village was just another reason.

So this bawling kid was given a room in the servants' quarters and the title of Miss Lucrecia's Personal Servant.

Even the servants knew what it really meant.

Irena had left after crossing the line. She'd been treating me like a particularly retarded child for the longest time and I'd been silently tolerating that behavior. But when she started making snide remarks about allowing a naïve child to make decisions in regards to the management of the house, well, let's just say that I made it my priority to run her out of the house.

Some people just don't learn. Tsk, tsk.

So, with me being down one overly-nosy shadow, Baladry had been worrying his head off over me being alone and getting into trouble. He'd tried setting a few of the other servants on babysitting duty, but they were all too afraid to do more than quiver around me.

And I took pleasure in losing them and then creeping up behind to yell 'boo!'

Generous usage of Sleepel all around too.

Okay, so I was a malicious little shit. After that stint with Irena, I'd decided to never be subjected to something like that again. No more biting my tongue and gritting my teeth. I suffered enough under my evil tutors that I deserved… FREEDOM!

Cough cough. Ahem.

Back to the story.

Poor Adam was forced to do my bidding. I made him do the most ridiculous things and picked on him mercilessly. Usual stuff like telling him to get a book from my room, telling him it was the wrong one when he got back, and then that I wanted the other one as well so go get it again, and then finally deciding that I didn't need them after all. And then going to my shelf after that and yelling at the top of my lungs that YOU PUT MY BOOKS IN THE WRONG PLACE!

Cough cough.

I didn't hit him or even threatened him with materia, so it wasn't dangerous, just annoying. He lost his fear of me somewhere along the way (to my eternal regret) and shockingly, found ways to rebel passive-aggressively.

Yeah, okay. He has balls.

…And yes fine. I…might have gone overboard…

By the end of two months, we were sworn enemies.

The younger staff spoke about him in reverent whispers. As opposed to the hushed you-know-who way about me.

The older staff slapped his back and gave him tips. Then they'd wink at me and smirk. Hypocrites. I bet they just enjoyed the show.

Bah.

Baladry gave me quelling looks which I returned with raised ones. He'd unbent enough to roll his eyes from time to time and usually gave the both of us exasperated glares. Clean-up was done by Adam, so I got the brunt of the looks.

My parents? They were so happy that their darling had found a friend to play with.

Urgh…

So we were at an impasse, neither of us willing to back down from conceived righteous fury. (Okay, I was just doing it from stress relief by then)

And then it happened.

That miraculous bonding event.

We faced down a common enemy and saved one another from certain doom. And thus bonds of comradeship were formed.

…Not really. I just got sick of Baldy giving me all these disapproving looks and also admitted that maybe the harassment had gone on long enough.

So I stopped picking on him. See? I can act my age!

The moron took way too much time to figure out that I wasn't in the fight anymore. And when he did, he reacted in an impossibly teenage manner.

He sulked.

Geez, angst much?

And then he started needling me in order to provoke a fight.

Really? Really? Who's the child here?

To cut short the whole he irritates me, Baldy gives him glares, I ignore him until I lose my temper and blow him up with a fire 2 instead of fire 1 route, I went straight to the last point.

I took him to the backyard, made him stand against a tree, and threw fire 1s at him.

See? I have restraint!

So when it finally sunk in that all that training I did could actually be applied in real life and, more importantly, on him, he backed off.

Unfortunately, the time for fear had long passed. I should have done that earlier. Dammit.

So he spent the last month tensed and grumbly and resentfully obedient. Until his 'punishment' ended and I handed him his paycheck.

You didn't think three month's work was worth half a basket of food did you? I'm not eating gold bars, you know.

Apparently, he thought so. Gosh, for such a sneaky guy he could be unbelievably thickheaded. So I had the dubious pleasure of seeing his maw drop open to reveal the mash that was his last breakfast in Kalm Mansion when I presented the bag of gil.

Oh come on, I'm not that evil. I'm not running a sweatshop for chrissake. Er, Minerva-sake.

So yeah. One dumbstruck sixteen-year-old boy holding onto his very first hard earned money. Whom I promptly shoved out the door after breakfast for ruining my appetite.

Who then returned the next day asking for a job.

Whom I then spent three hours vigorously interrogating before tossing all the questionnaires into a bin in front of him and assigning him directly under Baladry.

Who still doesn't know whether to thank me or not.

Adam, on the other hand, appears to have given me waaaay more credit to the whole debacle, deciding that I must have arranged for the whole thing to happen with my crazy psychic skillz and that the three months was his probation period because obviously nothing is that coincidental.

Okaaaay.

So he's been my loyal follower ever since, because I taught him some life lesson about tolerance and responsibility. And hard work.

Okay, so maybe I did have something like that in mind. (Not that I asked him to run into me)

But I will deny it because I do not do morale, 'growing up pains', 'awwww, that's so sweet' moments like that.

And I do not have a hard exterior and gooey center, thank you very much. That's like a walking cliché.

xXXx

So here I was, a whopping fifteen years old and actually having to, horror of horrors, go to school. I had no idea university starts at fifteen on Gaia.

…Okay, so it doesn't and I entered reeeaaaaalllllyyy early, but I can't help it when Mr. Morris finally announced that he had, surprise, surprise, nothing left to teach me. He proclaimed me 'adequate' in history and languages and then proceeded to fawn all over my parents in that disgusting way that personifies bureaucracy which ended with him getting a big fat 'goodbye' check and a letter of recommendation.

Bullshit really does get you anywhere.

But enough about him. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I was growing brain-numbingly bored with the limited number of books in the house, even though I'd pestered Daddy to get me all sorts of rare books that has resulted in the restoration of an actual library in the mansion. Daddy agreed that it gave the mansion a more 'austere' and 'dignified' feel/look and Mother said reading was a lady-like hobby to have so that was that.

But even a luxury merchant like him couldn't find that many books, particularly when he wasn't actually in the trade. So I've had to turn my sights to something else and it was then that I remembered that Kalm Village, of all Midgardian small towns, had a university.

Short story: I wrote an application, got Daddy to lend his weight, sent over some research that I'd done, and voila. Entry into Kalm University.

I'm the youngest member, currently, but not the youngest that it's ever had. And I'm kind of difficult to intimdate, if you'd remember my training, so yeah. A lot of the potential bullies learnt not to mess with me after one of them started running around screaming his burning hair off.

I like Fire materia. It's like, the most useful materia ever.

By the way, about my mp? It turns out that training is less than half of the process to increase it. If you don't have the genes, just training would get you nowhere. That was why my mp increased in little piddly steps.

The secret?

It turns out that Hojo hadn't actually invented the idea of injecting mako into a person. It's actually a sort-of secret that all materia users know. It's been passed down from whoever was the first idiot to jump into a mako pool and crawl out…and survived not turning into monster to discover that he was a lot stronger and could use more magic.

But Hojo was the one to refine it. Stuff like body mass and age had to be taken into account unless you had some kind of secret pro-mako constitution that allowed you to survive falling into pools of it. Unfortunately, Hobo wasn't quite at the age to start shooting up dudes and conducting unethical human experiments yet, so I was stuck with the very imprecise method of taking little jabs and waiting in trepidation for my arm to fall off or something.

…Ugh. I don't even want to think about what could have happened.

But the descriptions I've heard of mako were actually kind of accurate. It burns. I'm pretty sure the stuff Hobo used was different because it had the bitch Jenova in it, but what I used to read about mako was the same for the pure stuff.

…Yes, you heard me. I was injected with small doses of pure mako. Can you blame me for being utterly terrified?

There was just a little bit of water to make it fluid, since the stuff Miranda got was, I dunno, powdered or something.

And now I'm feeling queasy. Urp.

But yeah, mako burns in a very strange way. I'd say that it's like fire, since it, you know, burns, but not really. It's like having your arteries unclogged or something. Like having all your insides scrubbed hard with soap. It hurts, and you feel sore all over, but it's just like having another day of intense training.

Well, physically anyway.

Mentally? There's a much bigger change.

The first few doses were the worse, even though they were the tiniest, because before then I'd had only minimal exposure to mako. Or the Lifestream, as you could call it. I had nightmares of strange things, like memories of other people, and there was a feeling like my mind was floating away from my body and tethered by only the thinnest thread.

It wasn't scary then, but when I woke up and understood what it meant—me joining the Lifestream—I felt cold sweat break out all over. I hadn't actually understood the fact that I could die in this new life of mine, and that was like the wake-up call I never wanted but needed.

The nightmares tapered off after a while. Somewhere between the fifth and seventeenth jab. I've gotten up to a full 30cc now, though Miranda's pushing for 30.5 next week. I get jabs every two weeks, which is probably a lot more frequent than SOLDIERs, but I'm not getting full mako baths in 20-30% mako-Jenova, so I guess it evens out. And having started way younger than the average SOLDIER, I probably have higher tolerance.

…Maybe. I'm still watching for the day my arm falls off.

xXXx

One of the things I realized about this world, this era, is that things here are very, very archaic. As in, the way things are done, is very old-fashioned. Ancient, really.

Women are not expected to do anything but keep house and look pretty.

That said, Miranda's an exception, but that's only because she doesn't have family to expect stuff from her. Her parents died when she was young and she was taken in by some Wutaian woman who had been one of their precious materia experts. I'd been right when I'd guessed she had some Wutaian blood, seeing as that was probably the reason the lady hadn't killed her on the spot. (I'd heard enough about Wutai's stance on outsiders from Sensei to know what to expect.)

And travelling is damned difficult, even for men. Monsters roamed everywhere and there were no SOLDIER patrols to keep them in check. In fact, Kalm used to be invaded from time to time. But the people here were now used to that, and everyone here has had some experience wacking the low-leveled monsters that popped in.

Guess that means everyone here must be around level 10 or 14 then. Huh. Weird.

But anyway, that meant that my wish to travel and go out on an adventure to sight see and experience new things on Gaia was probably close to impossible. I was fortunate enough to have parents who were rich enough to afford books and tutors, but they probably wouldn't allow their previous daughter to go so far out of their reach.

…Maybe with PHS…

Oh who was I kidding? Mother would faint if she even knew that I went out of town!

And technology still sucked. I felt like I was back in the 70s or something. Really, really awful and backward and clunky. Phones here were still the corded type, which was kind of weird because they were powered by little pieces of materia instead of electricity.

…I really didn't want to wait until I was 30 to travel. That was the age Lucrecia was involved with the Jenova project and frankly? That was 10 years older than I'd like to be to leave home.

Besides, I had to build up my resume as a scientist somehow right? I'm pretty sure I had most of the theoretical stuff down, seeing as I'd virtually devoured all the books on materia and mako that Daddy could find. And now with access to the library in Kalm University, it was like I hardly left.

General information about mako and materia was that one was the liquid form while the other was solid. In liquid form, the substance was closer to the Lifestream, which made it more dangerous and having more mysterious properties than materia. But it wasn't just a matter of adding water to materia to get mako. Hahaha, no no, that'd be silly.

Materia was the solid form of the Lifestream, but a better description of it (one that was my own instead of the books') was that materia was a carbonized form of the Lifestream.

But back to mako. Mako was way more interesting than materia was. The thing about it was that it had several different properties under different conditions. The problem about testing them out, was the difficulty in getting enough quantities as well as safety reasons. Mako was very dangerous. In a mutate-you kind of way. It was like cancer, yet not.

In small quantities, you're safe, and you get boosts. Mako has this energy in it, the energy of the Lifestream that is basically what gives humans and any other creature the ability to function. It isn't exactly a body thing—it's spiritual too—but from what scientists have researched, all humans have some trace form of mako in their brain that allows us to be what we are. Any class of fighter, be it mage, swordsman, rogue or whatever, would have higher traces of it.

Basically, as long as you're not plain civilian, you're pretty much guaranteed to have higher percentages of mako in your head.

And get this, there's different affinities to mako too. Which is why it's so darn confusing. A mage uses magic materia pretty much like an extension of self. They also have a pretty big pool of mp to dip into. But warriors or rogues are in tune to command materia—which is why even with a small amount of mp they could use them easily. Easier.

Or it could be just because, you know, mages don't need to Slash or Throw much. Hm.

Support materia are pretty much for everyone because they had no use of their own, but independent materia were tricky to place. The thing I realized is that in here, in real life, the mp needed for certain materia is not fixed. Depending on your affinity, you need to draw more mp for a spell or a move. And exp? Oh please, there's no such thing.

…which is kind of why I'm really really glad I started off as both martial artist and magic user early.

Maybe I'll never be super-strong, but I'm pretty sure I can hold my own against an opponent or two. I've fought groups of 4 levikrons at once, and sometimes mixed with elfadunks, and come out with nary a hair out of place. Miranda assures me that it is the expected level of a green-as-grass mage, but I'm going to ignore that because my ego has taken enough hits as it is.

It's a matter of survival.

So the difference between mako and materia is that materia has solidified and stuck to a single affinity. Mako on the other hand, still has all these properties, which sometimes screws results up. And sometimes it does different things under the same conditions because the Lifestream is acting up—that's when the spiritual thing kicks in.

That's why only a Cetra who is in tune with the Lifestream and can communicate with the Planet can manipulate mako without it blowing up in his or her face. Or her. Just her now. Or not.

Wait.

It's Ifalna's generation right now, isn't it?!

I could—maybe—perhaps—I could…save her?

Waitwaitwait, would I be helping things or worsening them?

I…don't know all that much about the period before Cloud's generation, if I were to be honest. Dirge of Cerberus wasn't exactly my favourite.

…Why did the Lifestream/Minerva/Planet choose me anyway? I'm definitely not one of the most obsessed players of Final Fantasy VII. In fact, I don't even know all that much about the plot outside of the main game itself. I'd watched Advent Children—who hasn't?—but I hadn't played Before Crisis or Crisis Core, which was a major part of Sephiroth's history. I'd read maybe snippets of it, but I wasn't familiar with it at all. Even with my awesome memory, some things had not stuck, and more and more of my knowledge was slipping away in favour of gaining new, current information.

Was I even supposed to change anything?

I…was not going into another crisis. (Pardon the pun) I didn't care about what fate had in store for me, seeing as it didn't give any guidance. I was going to do what I wanted to do and I was going to live my life for myself instead of for some destiny or whatever. I was not going to worry about what I was supposed to do if whoever or whatever had caused this hadn't told me to.

So there.

If I met Ifalna, if I met Gast, if I met Grimoire, I'd decide what to do. If I met Hojo I already knew what I wanted to do.

Beat him up and set him on fire. Crush the remains under my heel and burn them again until all that was left was dust.

This. I. Swear.


Okay, so here's my solemn, passionate vow to wipe Hobo from the face of the Earth. Gaia, I mean. Do I say face of Gaia or face of the Gaia? God, er Minerva, that's confuzzling.

But yeah, here I am getting ahead of myself and hating people without knowing them. Well. It's Hobo after all. Can't very well say that I sympathise with him much. He's a moron, evil, and unethical Scientist wrapped in one disgustingly greasy and ugly package. And his laugh... Urgh.

In any case, this is just a short (was it actually short? ...don't think so...) chapter to sort of fill-in the in-between years until I can get some planet-damned inspiration and think about how Lucey is going to become a Scientist-MartialArtist-Mage... I'm having headaches. I hate my muse. She's called Lucifer by the way.

...Yeah, I'm not the most creative namers. Bleah.

So here's to hoping you enjoyed that. Here's to hoping I get more into my brain. And here's to hoping I pass my exams. Cheerios.

Memory25