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crownonacat · 1 month ago

Text

Prompt: Zip

(Or otherwise how to speed run all ascian bullshit without gaining crippling depression from losing friends

Or otherwise How to Make an Ass out of an Ascian

Or otherwise This Time White Moves First)

For context I wanted to write a cracky sort of what would happen if all the WoLs from people I know were to end up in I guess canon(?) ffxiv way back in the beginning? Specifically after Endwalker halfway into their time off before dawntrail WoLs so this is wholly self indulgent and features a lot of friends OCs just for fun

Also featuring a fix-it just cause and also for fun and profit (and also to drive the Ascians up the wall)

Spoilers: For the whole game until EW; this is technically part 1 I will be writing more as I go and then post it on AO3 maybe later cause this got uh Long

(Also do you know the feeling of losing all your formatting cause you wrote everything on your phone yeah ;-;)

Clow wakes up with an awful taste in his mouth and with the feeling like Titan had decided to sit directly on top of his head. If that wasn't enough to tell him he's not wheres he's supposed to be, the fact that he's leaned up against a wall in an alley in rags as well as the empty bottles of what is most definitely the cheapest gil can buy in good old Ul'dah with not a weapon or soul stone on him definitely make the case for him. He's also, for some reason, completely barefoot.

He doesn't drink. Not since Nanamo a decade or so ago.

So he'd forgotten, he thought wincing as he put one arm on the wall to at least get himself kneeling if not at least partially off the ground, how much of a bitch hangovers were. And how bloody bright and annoying the sun could be when it felt like a Morbol had passed away inside his mouth.

Right.

The Adventurers Guild had sounded like a decent idea as any to figure out how he'd landed up in Ul'dah of all places. Yes, the rags were a bit much, but surely it was all a misunderstanding of some kind or at the very least talking with someone would let him know how he'd ended up here when the last thing he'd remembered was conking out in Garlemald after making a visit to check on the twins.

The sharp look as well as the terrible facsimile of a polite smile on Momodi's face - sign number seven or thereabouts that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong- when he walks into the Adventurer's Guild though give him second thoughts. The sneering Roegadyn two whole fulms taller than him dressed in full set of armor with a sword the length of his torso that gets called over give him more second thoughts. Enough second thoughts that Clow - even with a headache and a sour mouth and no shoes - makes an about face almost immediately and walks through the door faster than he walked in.

Right.

He finds himself seated at the alleyway again leaned up against the wall and watching people walk by feeling awful, smelling quite awful, and with no clues whatsoever.

Further investigation among the empty bottles of piss masquerading as drinks turned up bone hora - again the cheapest gil could buy - that had still seemed decent enough and his Adventurer's plate scuffed with dirt but otherwise fine. No shoes though. And surprisingly, or unsurprisingly based on the general trend of awful that this whole morning has been, an empty gil pouch. Namely, his empty gil pouch.

Now.

Clow would never say he's rich in gil. That statement can be made about a great many people he knows and is, rather lovingly, rather terrified of (and what does it say that quite a few of them tend to be about knee height lalafells who looks like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths until you take a second gander at them and see the shark teeth). Not rich however is malms away from not dirt poor. So poor cannot buy shoes poor. Penniless poor.

He does however know how to stop being penniless poor and it's about this moment when a Hyur gladiator walks out of the Adventurers Guild muttering under his breath about not having enough people for a quest - some sort of subjugation for the mines near Horizon.

Clow is not ashamed to admit that he damn near ran the man over trying to get to him fast enough.

He has shoes. Sandals really and a new piece of leather armor that will likely help with all the coblyns and the spriggans and the giant jelly that likes the middle floor halfway through Copperbell but shoes.

His tail starts wiggling if he thinks about it too long.

Technically they're both being lent to him by the Hyur who introduces himself eventually as one Meteor "I think" - after screaming which was honestly quite fair, Clow may have been a bit too overzealous in how he'd approached him.

Making his case about being hired on as another adventurer while being hungover and generally awful was something that he worried about after immediately springing the guy, but, turns out headache or no, with enough motivation you can Thunderclap to just about anyone and, turns out, that frightening someone with martial ability to then ask them if they'd be interested in taking him to then use that frightening martial ability to dispatch some coblyns or what have you might be very convincing.

But shoes! And armor!

That he'd be able to get for free along with part of the quest reward!

The joy of clothes and the promise of gil lasts him through the first elevator ride into the mines and through the initial encounters with what is a really angry pack of coblyn. And then he's too busy bring horribly, terribly confused.

See it's not that he'd never visited Copperbell after the whole business with the hecatoncheires. Arguably both Copperbell and Haukke Manor tended to crop up fairly regularly as dispatch requisitions as the mines themselves needed to be kept clear or anything really dangerous for the Miner's Guild to work there and Haukke Manor tended to attract voidsent regularly. Something something void gates wasier to make there something something. But in the case of the mines they'd either have to approach newer sections or go through old previously detonated areas to check if it's clear and he's fairly certain that he'd seen these parts of the mines before despite the fact that there are no signs of detonations anywhere. He dismisses the feeling as a freak case of deja vu in the beginning but as they start to blow up more and more walls with firesand he starts to feel like this is that first requisition all over again.

And then Gyges the Great who should also be the Dead but isn't breaks through a wall with his giant hammer screaming something about being free and he's too busy dodging to focus on the realization that this is the first quest into Copperbell from years and years ago. Which begs a question that Clow forgot to check the answer to because he'd thought the answer was obvious: What the hell is the year?

When they get on one of the mine shaft elevators to go back up to surface he asks. The other two - a Hrothgar conjurer that looks like they desperately need to lie down by the name of Farrah and a Lalafell archer with the name Yaya Yaniya who looks like they're still shaking from their encounter with Gyges - look at him like his mouth is making sounds they don't understand. He doesn't take it personally; Yaya had gotten almost flattened by Gyges' hammer. Frankly he's surprised she's still upright at all.

Meteor says a number in a way that sounds like he's either baffled someone's asking for the year or like he's just as shocked by the number and is still trying to convince himself of the year also. Clow's eyes roll over while trying to contend with the fact he's ten years somewhere else and, he's getting the horrible inkling, someone else.

He's not the one who took the quest from Momodi, Meteor is. From his own adventurers plate - which reads Koh'a Molkot god he's going to need a name change no wonder Momodi had been very confused when he asked for the record for the requisition to be put under Clow instead - he can tell he's not the new adventurer being asked to do missions by the owners of the different Adventurer Guilds across Eorzea, Meteor is. And that means-

He has no idea what that means.

Clow gets paid for his help in the Adventurer's Guild still dazed enough that Momodi's frowning and squinting don't really register.

He asks for a room that's very hesitantly granted to him after a long silence and watches through the inn window as Meteor deals with a merchant and then Thancred in very quick succession - and it is Thancred, or old Thancred with the carefree smile and the daggers instead of the gunblade.

He knows he's staring and the little waggle of fingers and raised eyebrow aimed at him after Meteor ambles off tells him Thancred knows that he'd had an audience but Twelve. Twelve.

Right. Fine.

The worst possible thing he could do right now is go to Vesper Bay.

The absolute stupidest thing to do would be to end up in Vesper Bay gawping at the Waking Sands while trying really hard not to gawp at the Waking Sands.

So of course he finds himself a couple minutes later in that very same Vesper Bay after a quick sprint down from Horizon (which forking over gil for that aetheryte travel Sucked but there's a panicked creature in his chest that makes giving it away to get to Vesper Bay as fast as possible the easier thing to do) telling himself that no, going to the Waking Sands when no one knows who he is after the Scions spymaster caught him snooping on a conversation with a potential recruit is a bad, awful, horrible idea. He's very tempted to go against all good sense and do it anyway (when was the last time he saw Papalymo or Minfilia or thought after them in a fashion that wasn't heavily tinted with the guilt of losing them; had he ever really known either of them-) so it's probably for the best that when Y'shtola of all people walks out of the Waking Sands a small hand closes around his wrist and pulls him across the street into the bar nearby.

The relief of managing to get away is larger than the initial suspicion he feels but it doesn't take very long to place the face even if the fact that he can at all just leads to more questions, "...I-uh- Lemons?"

"Hi Clow!" Lemons says brightly, and it is Lemons down to the purple hair and the face tattoo just younger the same way Clow is younger despite the fact they should not be younger let alone in the same universe at all.

"What are you-"

"I have no idea!"

"Oh."

"Yeah!"

"How did you..?"

"The same way as you probably!"

"Right."

"Probably!" Lemons says brightly.

Right.

Lemons takes one look at the sad sack of gil he has-

"What happened. "

"I thought you said the same thing that happened to you?"

"Clow I had more than- is that exactly two hundred gil? You had exactly two hundred gil-"

"I had more than two hundred!"

"And-"

"So what you're telling me is you didn't wake up hungover in an alley-"

"Clow-"

- and buys them both a glass of orange juice. And then he buys Clow a sandwich after Clow's stomach remembers that it hasn't eaten today and decides to protest loudly and violently to the general public.

It's after when Clow feels marginally more like a person and Lemons has stopped making faces at him from across the table that Clow gestures vaguely around him, "When did you get here? Or well- how long have you been-"

"About a week or so - I think."

"I think?"

"Well" Lemons hums, "I was half covered in cow intestine when I- landed? I guess?"

"UH-"

"I still had gil on me! And I don't think I was - what's the word - participating?"

"With the cow intestines", Clow says squeakily.

"Yes, with the cow intestines. Kinda difficult to do that when you're tied to a rock. And there were weird chanting guys in hoods. And a giant voidsent statue and- anyway! I found a staff near me so I had a focus but no sword. And y'know how I feel about black magic alone just", Lemons wrinkles his nose before suddenly beaming, "I made it work though!"

Clows nearly too afraid to ask. He feels his mouth open and close a few times before he croaks, "And, how...?"

Lemons smiles sunnily back at him, "You know how if you stab something hard enough-"

And listens in abject horror as Lemons describes what is most undoubtedly the grisly deaths of some cult idiots who'd accidentally ended up with a Warrior of Light as their sacrifice. With sound effects. And hand gestures. Too many hand gestures.

"Anyway then some adventurers came by and they helped wrap up things pretty quickly. After, I hopped on a chocobo carriage to get here because...", Lemons trails off his face turning a little wry as he shrugs. Clow knows the feeling - it's why he was here instead of in the inn he'd gotten for the night. Why he's here even if one of the Scions could catch him gawking outside.

"You wanted to see if they were alright."

"...yeah."

There's a moment of silence between them where they feel a little at a loss; being nearly ten years out of time and out of space would do that.

It's only then that Clow realizes with a weird feeling of the same deja vu he felt earlier in the mines- "Wait, you said cult? And giant voidsent statue? So this all happened in-"

"The Tam-tara Deepcroft yeah. The supposedly no longer cult harboring Tam-Tara Deepcroft", Lemons nods grimly.

Well in for a gil, Clow thinks.

"Did you ever get their names? The adventurers I mean."

"Yeah, why?"

"Were any of them a Hyur by the name of Meteor?"

"Yeah", Lemons said slowly before squinting at him, "Why?"

Right.

They leave the bar. For one thing, Lemons' story seemed to have attracted some unneeded attention-

(- "They like my sound effects!"

"We all like your sound effects Lemons."

"More people appreciating my sound effects isn't a bad thing Clow.") and some wide eyed looks from the average passerby. And by that Clow means hes taking pity on the fact that he saw someone hear the way Lemons described just how much viscera he'd had on him and turn green. There was also the problem of whether they had any unaccidental passerby were around;

Clow doesn't want any particular rogues listening in and trying to make more sense of what was spoken than they have already. Also because he's not sure if push came to shove he'd be able to find where Thancred was even if he actively looked. At least by walking away he'd have the benefit of being able to better spot if they had any suspicious incidental listeners.

For another thing talking about the possibility that they're in a place where they could possibly help another person not go through any of the trials and tribulations they went through and stop the near end of the Universe early is probably not something they want to do in a bar filling up with people after a days work. Even if some people don't agree on that being a possibility.

"Listen, I'm not saying its not whats going on. Just- it doesn't make any sense."

Clow sighs, "I never said it made sense. I said that just maybe-"

"I know what you said. Its just- it doesn't make any sense!"

"Still doesn't change the fact that two of the same things that happened to us way back when is now happening to someone else."

"Well", Lemons says at last, "Okay, say it is what you say it is- in a way, this is good right?"

Clow blinks, "What is?"

"Well we have each other instead of, y'know. Not that I mind the whole "being summoned to kill things" thing and then hitting the closest spot for snacks before we just kinda get kicked out-"

"True", Clow says smiling. Lemons grins back before continuing, "And we know what happens- later, right?"

"Yes...?"

"And so we can- you ever just wanted to see what colors their faces could turn?"

"Whose faces?"

Lemons grins and Clow unintentionally finds himself backing up a couple steps as Lemons curls his fingers into claws menacingly in front of his face, "Those guys."

"I hate how that's what you said instead of something like change it for the better."

"Well that too but c'mon, tell me you don't wanna put the old grump in the grave early."

Clow stops. "Oh right he's-"

"Yep."

"And he's-"

"Yeeep."

Solus Yae Galvus. Otherwise known as Emet Selch.

(Otherwise known as that Terrible Bastard by just about every Warrior of Light Clow has had the chance to meet. Whether it's said fondly, or hatefully, or sadly depends on the person but all of them universally agree - a terrible, terrible bastard.)

"And then there's Bread, Mr.I-Eat-Cigarretes, the guy from the Chrysalis thing, fire and ice lady-", Lemons counts.

And it would be wouldn't it. A whole decade of half truths and cryptic messages that they'd never really had the chance to understand in between fending for their lives but here they were back at the beginning. Back before- well, most if not everything. And it's not like messing with Ascians while dealing with with everything else were diametrically opposed to each other. Hell most of the time both of those things needed to happen at the same time anyway.

"You know what", Clow says, "You're right. You're right, it would be fun."

"Then- revenge? For all the cryptic dramatic bullshit?"

"Oh, definitely."

#ffxivwrite2024 #ffxivwrite #oc: clow molkot #my writing

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