#ITS BECAUSE YUFFIE IS HIDING THINGS THAT ARE CRUSHING HER

[dangoulains-devotion]

thinking just a bit too hard about how the added depth given to tifa and aerith's friendship only increases the weight threatening to crush tifa after the forgotten capital, she already had so much to carry on her weary shoulders, she's going to have to carry even more when mideel happens, and it doesn't even stop after meteorfall, ohg od oh i love her so much i

[im-totally-not-an-alien]

Final Fantasy prompts no 52

1. Cloud getting swarmed by orphans who proceed to put make up on him, Tifa, and Yuffie.

When they are "revealed" to eachother, Cloud asks, "Am I pretty?" With a blank face and monotone voice.

2. Clouds reaction to different people saying, "I have a crush on you"

That exact phrase. No other wording or phrases.

3. #2 but its everyone in AVALANCHE saying this to Cloud one at a time, once a day.

Example: Yuffie on Tuesday, Tifa on Wednesday, Barret on Thursday, etc.

This is because they were trying a misguided attempt at making Vincent comfortable enough to actually confess.

When Vincent does confess, however, Cloud doesn't believe him. Oops.

4. Palmer was being a prick again. Ever since the "Incident" in the conference room when they discovered Sephiroths...relationship...with laser pointers, Palmer had been sneaking them in and teasing the poor man with them.

Scarlett had been the most recent victim, having the small red dot travel across her breasts without her knowledge. When she noticed the general staring at her cleavage, a whole host of questions flittered threw her mind, the most prominent being, "Am I about to get laid?"

By the time she noticed the dot it was too late. Catboy pounced.

Her last thought before she was squished by hard muscle and leather was "Oh, no."

Later, there was a mysterious surge in people writing fanfiction about Sephiroth pouncing on people...

5. Cloud chunking a ceramic vase full of catnip grass at Sephiroths head and yelling, "Happy birthday, asshole!"

6. Yuffie often observed how cat-like Cloud was, and just never questioned it.

Years later when Tifa says something about it, Yuffie was like, "You guys never noticed? He's always been like that."

Additionally, Vincent trailing his fingers through Clouds hair as the blond rests his head in the gunman lap. All was well and good until Cloud began purring in his sleep.

He wasn't sure what to do with this information.

7. Time traveler Cloud lands in the Shinra building and immediately gets spotted. He fights his way down with First Tsurugi until he's confronted by a familiar mop of spikey blond hair.

He has a blond moment of, "Oh, that's me. Oh- I'm shooting at myself. Lovely." He then proceeded to kidnap his younger self, much to Zacks dismay.

Now Cloud has Zack, Sephiroth, and two people he doesn't know hunting him like a wild animal.

It doesn't help that his past self is uncooperative

8. Zack as the hero instead of Cloud.

They made it to Midgar, but Cloud remained in a coma at 7th heaven. There was even a big rescue scene where he woke up and saved Marlene when the plate fell. Everyone thinks they're dead, but they find refuge with Elmira after AVALANCHE leaves Midgar.

Zack being referred to as "puppy" by Sephiroth in the same way Cloud is referred to as "puppet"

Also, Zack with green cat eyes

9. A group of scientists working under a mysterious organization managed to obtain samples of Clouds DNA, thus managing to revive the SOLDIER program.

But they made a mistake.

Cloud was made using large amounts of S and J-cells. Cells that mutated and changed him. He feels the new SOLDIERs as they change, as they are reborn. He feels them as they come alive with his cells, senses them like blinking lights on a sonar. The pull of REUNION has never been this strong before, but strangely, the blond didn't feel drawn anywhere.

When he first saw them he knew. He knew immediately what had happened and what the scientists had done, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that he had babies and they needed him.

Needed their Mother

And so Gaia cries for another twisted hero

10. Someone from the Silver Elite writes romantic fanfiction of Sephiroth and Genesis and it starts a shipping war with people writing fanfiction about their favorite pairings.

A particularly...mature... piece of romantic high fantasy fanfiction involving himself and some blond named Cloud actually makes it to Sephiroth and he reads it.

He admittedly becomes curious of, "The pretty little fae" that has a solid hold on a significant amount of people in the Silver Elite.

Too bad the blond is avoiding him, like the plague and blushing as red as a beet the moment he sees him. He must have read something the fangirls made.

(Its funnier if you add time traveler AC Cloud but cuter if its CC Cloud. Idk which one I like better)

11. Angeal tries to teach CC Zack and Cloud how to build a bookshelf.

Cloud does pretty good, but Zack...actually, Angeal isn't sure what that is.

Zack called it art, so they were gonna go with that.

That's how they spent the rest of the evening, making wierd art that makes people stare in wonder and confusion.

12. Time travel shenanigans where Genesis's Jenova powers interfere with Clouds and now all the SOLDIERS that were in the Shinra tower with them when it happened have been turned into catboys.

It doesn't really change anything. It's still business as usual, just with a few extra appendages.

Angeal, who wasn't there at the time, has to muffle his laughter everytime he sees his friends.

It doesn't help that the company is pushing for Sephiroth to do a commercial showing off his new assets.

AC Cloud escaped and is on the run, but it's so much harder to blend in when you have cat ears on your head 24/7. Maybe he could wear a hat, but he wasn't sure what to do about the tail.

13. You remember that part in advent children where those monsters came out of the shadows that the remnants sent after Cloud?

Yeah, Cloud can do that. Not the, "summon eldrich monsters" thing, though he can probably do that too. I mean the "sinking into your own shadow to travel at high speeds/ through cracks in walls".

He finds this out by getting out of bed and falling into his shadow and slinking around like that until someone notices him.

He can't speak, so Barret and the others think the little shodow thing ate their blond friend or something.

Cloud is so frustrated and confused from being stuck in his shadow. Poor guy.

14. Gang leader Cloud x Mafia boss Sephiroth

15. Au where most things are the same, but Cloud and Sephiroth are both demons.

Sephiroth was raised in Shinra and frequently studies his dead race, believing he is the last of his kind and these books were all that were left of his people.

Then he found Cloud, who hated him on sight. As it turns out, Sephiroth is from the Cresent family. A clan of notoriously powerful and cruel demons with silver hair. What's worse is that the man was from the Strife clan, his family's enemy.

They had been at war for eons, with the Cresent family often becoming infatuated or obsessed with a Strife. They even had a phrase, which translated to, "Little song bird, you would look so pretty in a cage"

Needless to say the blond wanted nothing to do with him. So naturally, Sephiroth kidnapped him.

Demon Vincent is kind of there in the background, hiding himself like a smart person and watching over his blond friend and his deceased lover Lucricia's nephew. He allows most things, but ninjas his way in when he feels things are going too far.

[khremixed]

Part 6:  Traverse Town and Getting the Gang Together

We’ve finally gotten to our first real world and man is it a good one.

I’ve always loved the look of Traverse Town.  The cobblestone streets, Victorian buildings, and bright neon signs just combine into something amazing for me.  Each of the three districts has its own unique flavor, but they don’t feel disparate from one another.  Traverse Town also has the feeling of being inhabited, at least in the First District.  The Second and Third Districts are overrun by heartless, so it makes sense in story why no one seems out and about.  It might be my favorite world, so I’m fine that it’s the world we are going to be using as a home base for this game (and miss it dearly in the games it doesn’t appear in).

The transition here is good too.  Donald and Goofy arrive and Donald notices a star going out.  Then Pluto runs off and finds Sora knocked out in an alley.  Pluto wakes up Sora, hears some noise outside human hearing, and then runs off, not to be seen again until the closing cutscene.  Sora wanders off into a nearby store and you meet Cid of Final Fantasy VII fame.

Real talk, but I’ve never played Final Fantasy VII.  Actually, I’ve never beat a Final Fantasy game.  I find turn based combat tedious so the only one I really enjoyed was XII (you know, the one everyone else seems to hate).  I played VIII for a while because of my love of Leon/Squall (more on this in a bit), but the battle system there is broken as all hell.  But anyway, I’ve never played VII, so when I first played this game, I thought Cid was like 35.  Yeah, he’s clearly older than the rest of the gang in Traverse Town, but it didn’t seem like that big of a gap.  His hair is bright yellow and he doesn’t move in a way that reveals being that old.  It’s a jrpg so I assumed that we were going with the anime convention of any person over twenty being treated as a senior citizen.  It wasn’t until Kingdom Hearts 2, when Cid gets a voice actor, that I realized he’s way older (wiki says 42 but that’s ancient in anime/jrpg terms).

Cid’s great, though.  I mean, you are some random kid who just wandered into his store who tells you a tale he’s probably heard a million times over (world destroyed, everyone scattered) and he just immediately offers to help you.  No ulterior motive there.  He’s one of the good ones.  Cid tells Sora to look around town to see if maybe Riku and Kairi did end up here and to come back if they really didn’t.

Sora heads to the Second District.  Everything is nice except for that guy that runs out and immediately gets turned into a soldier heartless in front of you.  It’s genuinely disturbing.  This is the closest thing Kingdom Hearts gets to when it comes to depicting death.  Plus, for someone playing this the first time, you don’t really know what’s happening other than the fact that that dude is terrified and you see his heart literally leave his body to turn into a monster.  Sora then fights a bunch of other heartless and will continue to do so as you explore the various areas.  There is also a great running gag of when you go into one place, Donald and Goofy just miss you as they exit another place.

Heading back to the First District, which is now equally overrun, you go back to Cid, because really, who else does Sora know?  Cid gives a pep talk and Sora goes back outside and this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.  A voice tells Sora that he really has no clue what he has and wonders why it would ever choose a kid like Sora.  And this, my friends, is how we meet Leon.

I’ve had a crush on Leon since I was 12.  Hell, I’ve had a gunblade on my keys since 2007.  As I said before, I love him so much I tried to get through Final Fantasy VIII.  And Leon totally owns Sora in this battle.  Even if you win, which isn’t that difficult if you hide behind the pillars to block his fireballs and nets you an elixir from him down the line, Sora still faints.

While Yuffie helps Leon collect Sora, Aerith finds Donald and Goofy.  Also, between these two scenes, we get our next big Final Mix addition.  Riku wakes up on Hallow Bastion (we don’t know the location yet, but it is) and calls for Sora and Kairi.  Watching him from afar is Maleficent.  At first, I really liked this bit.  It’s fun to see new stuff and I’ve always kind of wondered how Riku ended up with Maleficent.  But the more I think about it, the more I wish it wasn’t there.  Like Sora, the player originally had no clue what had happened to Riku for several hours of gameplay.  The reveal later that Maleficent is manipulating Riku was great and this new scene is detrimental to that reveal.

Anyway, Sora wakes up and has his first hallucination of Kairi, who then turns into a concerned Yuffie.  Since this is the first one, the player can assume that Yuffie’s theory that Leon gave the poor kid a concussion is probably accurate.  Donald and Goofy are in the adjoining room and whole explanation about the heartless is given to everyone by cutting back and forth between the two groups.  It’s a pretty dynamic way to get all the exposition.  This is also the first time we hear about Ansem and his report on the heartless.  I’m sure that that won’t be a reoccurring thing that will reveal previously unknown horrific facts!  I’m sure the whole mess that is Ansem the Wise/Xemnas/Xehanort won’t cause me to start screaming obscenities at the tv screen again!  (Sidenote:  but I totally forgot that we don’t find out that Ansem the Wise was the leader of their home world here or even that his title is “the Wise”).

On a character note, but I’d forgotten just how much of an apathetic asshole Leon is.  He just cannot be bothered to care about Sora’s friends or even feelings.

This is all interrupted by a heartless appearing and Leon and Sora go off to fight.  And this scene is bullshit.  Yuffie getting Leon’s attention, fine.  Her not attacking but instead running?  The hell.  And Leon is the one who tells her to run!  Why?  It isn’t to go protect the healer in the next room because Yuffie just blows past Aerith.  What is with this game and women not getting to do anything but get kidnapped unless they are evil or mermaids?  KH2 does have Yuffie fighting, but still.

Our gang still doesn’t hook up though.  You have to make your way to the Third District, where Donald and Goofy literally crash into Sora.  Cue boss fight!

The boss battle is pretty fun.  And in another change for the Final Mix, but they recolored the armor.  Don’t know why.  (Actually, the further in I get, the more I wonder how many of the heartless were recolored for this and I just can’t remember everyone’s original look so I’ve missed some.)  You have to kill each piece of the armor separately and they will attack independently of each other.  Nothing outstanding, but still fun.

Donald and Goofy try to convince Sora to come with them.  Unlike with Cid, who just wanted to help because he’s a standup guy, Donald is an asshole who straight up lies to Sora about the likelihood of finding Riku and Kairi (Goofy is a standup dude though).  Leon also says he thinks that Sora should go, but is more like Eeyore about it.  Goofy hugs everyone and says “One for all and all for one”.  Now that I’ve played KH3D and know that he was a musketeer with Donald and Mickey, I think that’s rather sweet in retrospect.

Oh, and also, Donald and Goofy tell Sora that if he’s going to join up, then he’s going to have to smile and have no sad faces.  Fuck them.  Sora just lost literally everyone he ever knew and loved and they want him to swallow those feelings.  That’s messed up, y’all.

You also get some stuff, the most important of which is the ability to dodge roll.  I love dodge roll!  I’m always mad when you don’t get it in other games.  There is literally only one ability I like more and that is the high jump (glide is close too).

Before taking off, you can go open up the secret passage to Merlin’s place.  Before Merlin shows up we get another Kairi hallucination.  She thinks that the room is like the secret place on Destiny Islands, but she’s a hallucination, she’s allowed to be wrong.  There Merlin arrives!  I always found his help sort of useless (the Fairy Godmother was more helpful in turning stones into summons but I think in all my years I’ve only ever used a summon once).  Also, feminist aside, but why does the Fairy Godmother hang out as an inanimate mini-carriage when not doing stuff?  Is it so they don’t imply anything going on between her and Merlin when you aren’t around?

When you leave you get the villain conference table scene where they discuss the unlikelihood of Sora winning.  It’s a good introduction of the villains, but I can’t tell if the Final Mix version changed the animation or if I’m just on a better tv because you can now see the silhouettes of all the villains rather than just hearing their voices with extremely shadowed shapes.