CHAPTER 1:
MURDER OF MINERS IS A SERIOUS OFFENCE
Why is it that important events tend to take place a thousand years between, especially in the storyline of a videogame that is being parodied by this fanfic? Well, I guess it's because people love big round numbers, in the same way that many a man loves the sight of big round breasts.
Anyway, a thousand years ago, a trio of deities decided to have a war. Now, you'd think when gods decide to duke it out on a scale that can level mountains and leave patches of land that will make you sterile when you walk through them (and that's if you're lucky), that they're doing so for a good reason. A just reason.
Actually, that was far from the case here. One of them had eaten the last bit of ambrosia in the fridge, and the stores had closed.
Anyway, they fought to the death (which, considering that they were immortal, was sort of funny), and turned many a human being into their magical footsoldiers (which was only funny if you had a sense of humour darker than the event horizon of a black hole). To recount the details of their world-spanning brawl is both boring and giving attention to a trio of effectively spoilt children who had world-devastating power.
Long story short, they were given a time-out by their parents. Being immortal deities, a time-out meant being petrified in stone for some millennia. However, their parents neglected to clean up after their children, and their children's formerly human soldiers, now magical beasts known as Espers, began warring against people who wanted to suck them dry. Of their magic.
So, another day, another apocalyptic war tearing into the world. Eventually, the Espers thought, "Fuck this, we're out," and retreated to the hidden realm where the Warring Triad were having their time out. And with them, magic, more or less, faded from the world.
But it didn't go away. Not completely.
Civilisation began to grow again. And without magic, technology emerged in its stead. Luckily, the smartphone has yet to be invented by the time this story comes around, or any kind of computer or computer network. Otherwise, they would be indulging in social media and onanism.
Unfortunately, one pastime that had been invented had never gone out of style: war. What is it good for? Well, absolutely nothing, so people say. And yet, it happens. This time, it was happening because some old fart with a big beard and an even bigger ego by the name of Gestahl decided that he wanted to own the entire world. Both in the sense of possessing the thing, as well as having it defeated and prostrated at his feet. He didn't get enough toys when he was little, you see.
He wasn't the only guy driving the war, though this guy didn't come into play until just under a decade ago. Imagine some J-RPG ripoff version of the Joker, give him the fashion sense of the sixth incarnation of the Doctor, give him the petulant temper of Joffrey Baratheon, and give him the sheer love of chaos and destruction of Randall Flagg, and you have Kefka Palazzo, Esquire.
Anyway, while our story can begin any time, let's begin at the coalmine town of Narshe, where the local pastimes are mining, singing in choirs, and calling each other 'boyo'. And who are about to have a trio of Gestahl Empire soldiers wearing Magitek armour about to invade them…
"Do you know what they call a sheep tied up to a post in Narshe is?"
A sigh before the punchline. "An entertainment centre. Biggs, your jokes are getting worse than Kefka's."
"Aw, c'mon, Wedge, nobody's jokes can be worse than Kefka's."
"Well, they can't have more gore, anyway."
"Of course." A pause. "Goddammit, I need to piss. Can't they install a urinal in these things?"
"Urinals within Magitek Armour are unhygienic and hard to maintain." This last was spoken in a creepy monotone, by a voice that hadn't spoken yet. The last two voices were those of men, but this was the voice of a young woman. "In addition, urinating in public contravenes Section M1 of the Gestahl Empire's Rules of Engagement, save for when it is performed on the corpses of enemies of the Great and Glorious Gestahl Empire."
The helmeted head of Biggs turned to his commander, and said, "Creepy as fuck, or what? Can we stop when we get to the observation point, though? I badly need to go."
"Again?" Wedge groaned. "Seriously, you're like a kid who's got an IV drip filled with soft drink. You're banned from having any coffee!"
"Fine by me, Wedge, I only drink tea."
Their companion, a young woman with long green hair and a blank expression normally on those in front of a TV or a computer, said, "Kefka does not let me drink any caffeinated beverage. I do not understand why."
Biggs and Wedge looked at each other as their Magitek Armours trudged over the landscape, and shuddered at the memory…
"I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE, AND I BRING YOU FIRE!"
As the green-haired teenager, not yet with a Slave Crown upon her noggin, unleashed fire spells left, right, and centre in the training grounds, Kefka looked on. Not with pride or joy, despite the fact that he loved to see such destruction. But jealousy, jealousy and anger that the girl was destroying things he wanted to destroy…and she was doing a much better job than he was!
No matter what eventuated from this day, Kefka vowed, he was not letting her anywhere near a cup of coffee ever again…
They soon arrived at a snowy, icy outcrop of rock overlooking Narshe, whereupon Biggs leapt from his Magitek Armour, only to nearly fall off a cliff in his eagerness to commence micturition. "Shit!" he snarled, before, upon regaining his balance, undid his fly and began relieving himself over the side. Let it go, let it go, you can't hold it back anymore, sang a perversely apposite song in his head. He didn't know where the hell it came from.
As he did so, he mused, "Hey, in this weather, do you think this stuff'll freeze before it hits the bottom?"
"Who cares?" Wedge said. "I'm not the one with a nervous bladder."
"No, you have a cowardly tongue," Biggs retorted. "Every time you're afraid, you scream like a little girl. You scream at pitches dogs can hear."
"You take that back!" Wedge snarled.
"No, he is correct," the green-haired girl said in her creepy monotone. "Your scream can reach a maximum pitch of 40 kilohertz(1), and has been noted to cause dogs around Vector to wince in pain."
"Shut up, bitch!" Wedge snarled.
"My name is Terra Branford. Bitch is a noun, not a name."
"I said, shut up, bitch."
"Wedge, you have to use her name for the Slave Crown to work properly," Biggs said, zipping up his fly, and clambering back into the Magitek Armour.
"Okay. Shut up, Terra!" In the silence that followed, Wedge asked Biggs, "Aren't you going to wash your hands after relieving yourself?"
"The way I see it, that's the fault of whoever didn't install a urinal and sink in this machine," Biggs said. "Besides, I wash my hands twice a week, whether I need to or not."
Again, silence fell, and once again, Wedge broke it. "…I am NOT accepting any chips you want to share with me ever again."
Not long ago, being part of the Militia of Narshe was seen as a relatively cushy deal. True, one had to be fit enough to fight against monsters and the like, but it was often seen as a way for those who had had enough of mining to have a temporary holiday, so to speak. Unfortunately, as the Gestahl Empire became more expansionist, the militia was trained somewhat more arduously.
It wasn't enough.
You know the old saying 'like a hot knife through butter'? That pretty much described the progress of the three Magitek Armour-riders through Narshe. Only with less melted butter and more melted flesh.
As they finally reached the entrance of the mines, Wedge halted, and murmured, "I love the smell of Magitek in the morning. Smells like…victory."
"And burning flesh," Biggs said.
"And excrement," Terra said in her dull, deadpan tone after a brief sniff.
"Why would Magitek smell like excrement?" Wedge asked, knowing he wouldn't like the answer.
"Uh, I kicked over an outside toilet on the way here. Sorry. Seriously, though, haven't these guys ever heard of indoor plumbing?" Biggs complained.
At that moment, the Elder of Narshe, a great believer in all things traditional (like a wooden fire as opposed to coal, no central heating, and, of course, no indoor plumbing) was waddling, nearly blind, wholly deaf, and more than a little senile, to his outside toilet. The rest of the governing body of Narshe, such as it was, had seen fit to not tell him about the pending invasion. Well, not after trying, and receiving a response along the line of "THE MAGITEK SCIENTISTS WANT MY BLOOD!" Which was one of his more frequent senile utterances, rather than a statement of fact, they felt.
So he was understandably surprised when he found his outside toilet a shattered ruin of ornately carved wood (hey, it may be a toilet, but no reason not to have a beautiful-looking one). He stared at it for a moment, ignoring the groaning in pain and dead bodies that were just nearby. He could have screamed in anger or dismay.
Instead, with a philosophical and mildly annoyed harrumph, he turned back to head back home, and muttered, "Bloody vandals. Looks like I'll need to get the ol' bedpan out…" And once more, he ignored the corpses of the dead, and the bodies of the dying and the agonised, as he headed back home...
"Just wipe your feet on the ground, okay?" Wedge said.
As they looked at the melting remains of the monster they had just killed through a massive application of Magitek, Wedge wrinkled his nose at it. "They sent…a fucking…snail against us."
Biggs peered at the gooey mess on the ground. "Uh, technically, it is, well, was a whelk."
"They sent a fucking snail against us. Okay, it can eat lightning and crap thunder, but it doesn't detract from the fact that that thing could have sufficed for a hundred meals at my favourite restaurant at Vector!"
Biggs blinked, before looking at Wedge with even more disgust and horror than he had towards the first boss of the story. "You eat snails?"
"It's called escargot, Biggs! Bit of butter, bit of garlic, mm-mm! Lovely stuff. Besides, they eat my lettuce, I eat them. That's the circle of life!"
"Actually, the Circle of Life is a song from the Disney film known as The Lion King," Terra said in her monotone.
After a moment, Wedge said, "The fuck she's talking about? I've never heard of a film called that, never mind fucking Disney!"
"She sometimes speaks like that. Kefka told me that it's a condition, known as Tangential Mentality Cross-Dimensional Reference Disorder, or as he liked to call it, Deadpool Syndrome," Biggs said. "The other day, she said something like 'The Angels Have the Phone Box'. And those are far from the weirdest things she has uttered."
"Wrackspurts," Terra said in her monotone.
"See what I mean?" Biggs asked.
Wedge snorted. "Well, let's get to that Esper. It shouldn't be far now. Then, once we've figured out a way to get it back to Vector, I'm stopping for a nice meal of escargot at the next town that has it."
"Why?" Biggs asked.
"The smell of that thing cooking's put cravings into my head."
"…You're weird," Biggs said.
"And you have poor personal hygiene."
They soon came across the Esper, frozen in a block of ice, looking like the bastard mutant offspring of an eagle and a snake, and massive to boot. "I've got a bad feeling about this," Wedge muttered, feeling apprehensive all of a sudden. "Why do I feel like that I'm about to die?"
Oh, that's nothing to worry about.
"Oh, really? Thanks, I…wait, who said that?!" Wedge demanded.
Oh, so sorry, I haven't had visitors lately. The miners got scared after I spoke to them, so I shut up. But you guys, wow, I love the armour. Hey, wait a moment, is that Maduin you have with you there?
Biggs blinked. "Maduin? Hey, who are you? Show yourself!"
Oh, be quiet. Ooh, so that isn't Maduin, but his offspring. Ooh, he had a lovely daughter. Nice hair colour, green. And…wait, what the fuck is this? Did you put a mind-control device on her?
Biggs, rather stupidly, said, "Well, actually, that was Kefka."
Oh, and you brought her here as a living weapon so that you could capture me. Well, the name's Tritoch. Or is it Valigarmanda? Dammit, names are the first thing to go when you've spent centuries in a block of ice. Anyway, I'm not impressed as to how you treated the daughter of my old drinking buddy, and I'm gonna show my displeasure.
A strange blue light bathed the two Magitek Armour riders, and they faded away. "Where did you send them?" Terra asked in her monotone.
Well…
"MAKE ME MORTAL, WILL YOU?!" an effeminate man who looked like a cheap ripoff of a Super Saiyan 4 howled as he hurled beams of energy around left, right, and centre. "MAKE ME KILL THE EIDOLONS?! MOCK MY WARDROBE?! I WORE A THONG OUT OF CHOICE! MY CHOICE! SOCIETAL DEFINITIONS OF FASHION ARE BULLSHIT!"
Biggs had just enough time to scream just before an Ultima bolt smashed into his Magitek Armour, Kuja not even noticing as he freaked the fuck out and destroyed Terra. The planet, not the main character…
"So, the Midlight Shard will be tested?" a young man with long, girly locks of black hair and an aristocratic airing that made him look surprisingly intimidating asked the older, bearded man with the glasses.
"Yes. If my calculations are correct, we will emit a merely powerful stream of Mist, one that we can direct on our foes without our friends suffering. As long as Zecht follows my instructions, I…" Doctor Cidolfas Demen Bunansa, better known as Dr Cid, felt an unaccustomed feeling wash over him. "Oh no."
Vayne Solidor turned away from his telescope in the airship's observatory, and probably just as well. He thought he had seen a man in a massive bipedal machine fall from the skies into Nabudis, and that was insane. "What's the matter, Cid?"
"I divided by zero."
The two men looked at each other, and just before Nabudis (but not themselves) was consumed by a flare of actinic light, they chorused, "Oh, sh…!"
Nowhere you'd want to be. Anyway, would you like me to remove that Slave Crown from your head?
"I am not allowed to say whether I want it off or not," Terra intoned.
I'll take that as a yes. Just keep in mind, this may sting a little.
Cyan light played around the green-haired girl. Soon, the cavern was filled with strobing and whirling lights, as if it had become a frankly rather tacky disco. Then, Terra convulsed, which wasn't according to the plan. The Slave Crown exploded, and Terra slumped forward.
…I think I done goofed, the frozen Esper thought to himself.
CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATIONS:
So, there you have it, the first chapter of Final Fantasy VI: The Abridged Series. What is probably a pretty poor attempt at doing an abridged series, given the references crammed in and the toilet humour. Hopefully, though, I've made a few of your chuckle. Keep in mind that this is more of an experimental work, so updates will be infrequent at best.
1. A dog whistle usually falls within a range of 23 to 54 kHz (kilohertz). It's the only joke I'm explaining this chapter.