#v; warrior of world b (cycle 5 ; dissidia)

[cornelianlute]

tag dump.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

Ok, let's see how much I remember of the Dissidia Plot without looking anything up:

SPOILERS

1) So, some time in ancient times, there are two nations at war. I assume one of them is the Lufenians since Cid of the Lufenians is there, and the other had powerful weapons like Bahamut (or maybe summons, can't remember, anyway the other country is military stronger while thd Lufenians are more scientifically advanced).

2) Anyway, Cid and his wife are, like, the head researchers for the Lufenian Government, and are tasked with building a "Weapon to surpass Metal Gear the Omega Weapon," the other country soon to be perfected doomsday weapon, and I don't remember if it's them creating him or if they, like, find a alien baby in the woods ala superman and shit (most likely the later given what happens next), but they find Chaos (FF I) as a small demon baby, and the Lufenian governmemt decides to train him and raise him as the new weapon, having Cid and his wife as heads of the project since Chaos has basically imprinted on the guy's wife as his mother.

3) Anyway, they try to prepare Chaos for war, but Cid's wife is opposed to this, and tries to, like, prevent her "baby" from getting abused and used, but then she dies during a accident/assassination attempt and Chaos goes berserk and uncontrollable, causing sone sort of disaster.

4) Meanwhile I don't remember which atmy is also undertaking a project invving creepy manequin soldiers that mimick other people weaponry and skills, that becomes important later.

5) At some point the Lufenian government starts a Cloning Project and clones Cid's wife to keep Chaos in check. She's called Project something or another, and then goes by the name of Cosmos. They also try to copy Chaos but end up with a mindless, feral beast without reason, sealing it somewhere to degenerate.

6) I think at some point Chaos and the Omega Weapon fight, and Shinryu (FF V), a big ass dragon god of rebirth and shit, is also there, can't remember fighting for whom, maybe as a neutral party. Anyway, the world (From now on, World A (In universe called as such)) dies, the only survivors being Cid, now turned in a Moogle, Chaos, if damaged and lacking most of his memories, some Manekins, Cosmos, with conflicting memories, the Chaos Clone, sealed in a rift, and a bunch of other moogles.

7) Shinryu, the dragon god from before, then appears to... someone, maybe cid, maybe other lufenians who somehow survived, never got that part, and offers to save the world or heal Chaos and bring him onto the state the Lufenians wanted him to become, might be both. Anyway, He creates World B, a perfect copy of World A, and places the survivors there. Cosmos is given half the world, Chaos the other half.

8) So, now, the deal with Shinryu is this: Chaos and Cosmos, now elevated as Gods, must fight each other in perpetual war. They summon pawns to fight in their stead and then, after either god "dies" in the war, Shinryu will show up, reset the world to a state before the start of the cycle, resurrect the fallen and absorb their memories and powers, while those who survived the cycle keep them for the next one. By doing so, Shinryu can now feed himself and Chaos, each new cycle, can train and gain some more power for himself since he technically wins every war, thus growing even if his memories are missing into the perfect super weapon for a empire that isn't even there anymore.

9) The first Cycles are on a Skeleton Crew, Chaos gets Gabranth (FF XII) and Garland (FF I, more on him later) while Cosmos gets Shantotto and Prishe (Both FF XI). The Manekins are still around, unbound, and are outside of Shinryu cycle, so if they manage to kill someone they can't get renewed by the dragon anymore and disapear from the cycle. They get later sealed on a dimensional rift somewhere, unknown to anyone.

10) Gabranth, Prishe and Shantotto get erased from the cycle at some point, we don't know how If I remember correctly, but first Prishe finds Warrior of Light (FF I), with no Helmet, somewhere in the world. Due to dimensional fuckery and Shinryu absorbing warriors' memories, shards of other worlds start mixing in with World B, so you can be on the surface of FF IV moon one day only to stumble in a hole and end up in Ultimecia's Tower, so he's, like, in FF I Chaos Shrine, with no memory of who he is. She gives him a name, they flirt a little, then he becomes a pawn of Cosmos despite never being called there by a god. Garland is the only one who recognizes him, but is not forthcoming with the answers.

11) Garland, literally the first boss of the first final fantasy game and a one note character till the final boss of FF 1, is the most important character in this story.

In the original game, he kidnaps the princess, gets defeated by the warriors of light, and then is sent back in time becoming Chaos, only to be defeated again by the Warriors of Light later.

According to Dissidia, FFI Chaos is AGAIN sent back in time after his final battle, damaged, regressed to infancy and with no memories, to a time before the FFI World existed, to World A, and becomes the Chaos raised by Cid and his wife, and later fights against the clone of his beloved mother for Shinryu. Then, after dying for a last time in the 13th cycle, he gets sent forward in time, and reincarnates into FF I Garland again, beginning the Cycle anew.

The Garland we see in Dissidia is the culmination of all those deaths and rebirth, the apotheosis of Chaos, who knows how things are going to go, and how things have gone. He looks like FFI Garland, but holds the same magical powers of FFI Chaos, that Garland lacks as a simple traitorous knight, and has the concentrated memories of all his lives, so he knows everything and everyone, and how things will go and have gone.

12) Anyway, after a couple Cycles things stabilize into two major sides, with minimal side switching between cycles:

12A) Chaos: Garland, the Emperor (FF II), Cloud of Darkness (FF III), Golbez (FF IV, switches sides some times), Exdeath (FF V, most memed character in the game), Kefka (FF VI), Sephiroth (FF VII), Ultimecia (FF VIII), Kuja (FF IX, switches sides some times), Jehct (FF X, switches sides some times).

12B) Cosmos, with Warrior of Light (FF I), Firion (FF II), Onion Knight (FF III and Dark Souls), Cecil (FF IV), Kain (FF IV, never switches sides but does some shady shit at times), Bartz (FF V), Terra (FF VI, gets brainwashed into fighting for Chaos at times), Cloud (FF VII, gets brainwashed into fighting for Chaos at times), Tifa (FF VII), Squall (FF VIII), Laguna Loire (FF VIII), Zidane (FF IX), Tidus (FF X, some times switches sides based on who his dad is fighting for (EX, Jecht is Cosmos, Tidus is Chaos)), Yuna (FF X), Vaan (FF XII), Lightning (FF XIII).

13) In the 12th Cycle, A inner faction within Chaos' forces (Kefka, The Emperor and Exdeath and other 3 I can't remembed (I think Cloud of Darkness, Sephiroth and Garland, don't quote me on this)), discovers the rift where the Manekins have been sealed, and free them hoping they'll erase not only the warriors of cosmos before the next cycle, but even Cosmos, winning them the war for good. A second faction, composed by Golbez and Kuja among them, try to prevent this from Happening for personal reasons, so Kuja kills half of Cosmos forces, and Golbez convinces Kain to kill off the other half, so they'll be able to be revived by Shinryu.

14) Warrior of Light is the only one who didn't perish in the Purge of the main 10, and stays at cosmos side trying to defend her from the Manekin hordes. She sacrifices herself to save him from being erased, and dies before she or warrior or light can get killed, starting the cye anew. Cosmos is however weakened in the next (and last) cycle.

15) Vaan, Yuna, Laguna, Kain, Tifa and Lightning all get erased from the cycle trying to stop the Manekin horde. They seal back the rift, but the World is still swarming with them, persisting into the next cycle, while the 6 of the 12th cycle die an heroic death.

16) Yuna and Jecht manage to bring back Tidus into Cosmos' folds when Jehct sacrifices himself for him as Tidus dies, and Yuna beats the shit out of the Emperor (more on him later). In order for Tidus to become good, however, his dad become evil since that's how their cristal is based (More on this later).

17) Cloud is being brainwashed into fighting for chaos. Tifa punches him (and probably also Sephiroth, who's there being creepy) right in the dick, he remembers who he is, and dies getting back onto Cosmos right as his memories of Tifa are erased alongside her.

18) Terra is getting enslaved by Kefka in a Joker - Harkey Quinn situation. Kefka then does a stand-up comedy battle with Vaan, who wins it by out stand-up comedy Kefka, and "kidnaps" Terra. They have some hot girl summer scenes together, before Vaan goes to die at the rift for her. She shakes of the mind control thanks to him, and becomes a warrior of Cosnos again. As a side note, Vaan has a weird relationship with Onion Knight since OK is, like, a 6 years old midget, and he treats him like a little kid and brother, while most other characters treat him as a holy knight, which will become important later since Onion Knight and Terra will be one of the 5 major parties in the 13th and last Cycle.

19) Kuja is discovered by the other faction in Chaos' army and is killed, his memories altered for the following cycle. Golbez manages to weasel his way out of all of this, the other members of the factions die and are resurrected by Shinryu.

20) In the 13th cycle, a now weakened Cosmos splinters her power in 10 cristals, and tasks her remaining wariors to find them. Once they'll get them all, Cosmos will die the final death, and the cycles will stop, granting her last 10 warriors one last resurection, and the power to end the cycles for good and return to the homes they've forgotten about. This creates 4 major parties in Cosmos' army questing for the Crystals.

20A) Biggest Party is Cecil, Cloud, Firion and Tidus. They start splitting up over time, mostly Cloud wanting to be a lone wolf, and are in a mostly ensemble cast situation.

20B) Zidane and Bartz are best friends. They try to rope Squall into their merry couple, but he's even more of a lone wolf than Cloud so he is all "I work alone, I shall help my friends by working alone from the shadows too!" As he, like, basically stalk them along the way, and Zidane roast him for being a edgelord. Zidane and Bartz are split up by (I think) Kefka's machinations at some point and spend the other half of their journey trying to get back together.

20C) Terra and Onion Knight form a "Arthurian Knight and his Lady" Party, neither remembering Vaan. They cuddle while sleeping, she gets kidnapped, he gets kidnapped, he manage to talk Exdeath out of a fight by being a silver tongued 6 years old midget, the usual things.

20D) Warrior of Light works alone, first time he's not protecting Cosmos in a cycle. Due to the cyclical nature of Garland, he's the only one who fights his signature enemy both as first and last boss in his story.

21) Once they find the Crystals by each defeating their Original Villains, the chaos forces are resurrected once again by Chaos, now in complete control of Shinryu's powers, who then kills Cosmos for good, and then murders the 10 heroes. They are resurrectex by the Crystals once again, and set off to end the final cycle and kill Chaos.

22) After reaching Chaos' seat of power, they find him, like, super depressed and he doesn't know why since he just won. He has one final conversation with Garland, who knows why he's depressed of course, since he just killed the clone of his mom and shit. You kill off the 10 villains along the way, sending them back to the original worlds, before defeating Chaos in a 10 on 1 battle, killing him, unthetering Shinryu, and freeing World B from its cycles.

23) World B is then revealed to be the World of Final Fantasy I, finally back to World A primordial state, now on a grassy hill near a forest, each hero from Tidus to Firion is sent back to their home world by their respective Crystal, in descending order, with Warrior of Light remaining with Cornelia standing in the background on a sunrise, starting the events of FF I as Chaos gets Isekaid into Garland again, starting his cycle anew. The ones erased in the 12th cycle are then released back into their original worlds and times.

24) Meanwhile a secondary Timeline splinters from world B where Cosmos couldn't sacrifice herself in the 13th cycle. Chaos, now bloated with Shinryu powers, becomes a corrupted shadow, a feral beast devouring the world and its inhabitants, and only 6 survivors of either army, either cycle, are tasked by Cyd, now a moogle, with putting a stop to this. In this timeline, Chaos, now Feral Chaos, Shinryu, now Shinryu Ex, and their Clone are finally stopped, leaving a empty world, inhabited by moogles, Cid, and Cosmos, ready to begin the Cycle anew.

25) As a side note, a big deal was made for Jecht and Tidus cristal, a sort of Yin Yang power born from their conflict and fight or some shit, that the emperor was trying to harvest for his own means since the 12th cycle, but was later stopped by Yuna and later Tidus agaib after he finally beat the shit out of his awful dad. Can't remembed much else but it was kinda important.

26) Don't remember much else plotwise aside from, like... minor shit like Ultimecia and Cloud of Darkness flirting by having a philosophical debate over the concept of death, rebirth, cycles and time loops, or Firion and Lightning bonding over a Rose.

EDIT: 27) Oh, yeah, Gilgamesh (FF V, recurring dimension hopping character in other game) is also there. He accidentally stumbles upon Workd B during, like, one of the early cycles, and tries to find and fight Bartz, but only manages to have zany highjinks and adventures before falling into another rift out of the world, into another FF Game. Irrelevant to the plot, but he's Gilgamesh, so he gets a special mention.

[cornelianlute]

                                     * Opera Omnia verse. *

Sarah is summoned in an unspecified cycle of the gods' war. In this cycle, Cosmos is no longer eager to battle Chaos with such vigor as she once did. Chaos was , also , no longer hesitant to do battle against her. Cosmos in this cycle is racked with guilt over summoning her champions in an endless war on her behalf and so when Garland comes to strike her down, to see if she would be revived like her warriors before her, she does not resist. Like her warriors , she is purified by Shinryu and has no recollection of her champions and all her warriors in that cycle are never revived save for the Warrior of Light. 

Prior to Garland striking the goddess of harmony down , Sarah fights dutifully as a warrior of Cosmos, against the warriors of Chaos. Because of the circumstances surrounding the summoned warriors, the cycles of battle, and so forth, Sarah has no memories of her world nor of any previous cycles she may have participated in.

Despite this, World B’s close resemblance to her own world, World A, brings back the faintest of memories for her. Things as simple as the passing of her lute to someone, the loss of someone dear, and even vaguely remembering her own home in Cornelia. 

Because she has no memories of her home, sometimes she feels like there is something important that she is missing from her life. When she meets Garland in World B, she has no memories of him and that he kidnapped her but can sense that he has a kind heart that is trapped in turmoil and wishes to help him.* There is also a part of her that feels like she has met him before. She is unaware of both Cosmos and Chaos being from her world and is also unaware the mythical Cid from her world is also in World B as well. As for the Warrior of Light, she also feels like she has met him before too but is unaware of the where and how.

Though she has no memories, she feels a close kinship of sorts with the Warrior of Light and with Garland. Each time she comes face-to-face with Garland on her own, she can feel the turmoil in his heart. She longs to help him, but does not know how, but because this is a world where they must do battle , almost always , she finds herself fighting him more than she'd care to admit. She longs to talk things over with him, to know why he is so eager for the war to go on as it does, and why he is always saying one thing when fighting her , but his actions tell her another. He is always hesitant to fight her, and it saddens her to know that they must wage war against each other. Even when she learns from the Emperor that Garland had kidnapped her in her homeworld , she refuses to believe it, but somehow her heart knows it is true. The Warrior of Light learns of this as well and does his best to protect her from Garland , but in all honesty, all she longs to do is talk with the stalwart knight. 

Sadness threatens to choke her and she makes her way back to Order's Sanctuary alone to ask Cosmos her advice. The princess felt a warmth and a closeness in the goddess of harmony that she had only really felt with those from her own world. Unbeknownst to Sarah, Garland is in Order's Sanctuary seeking answers about what would happen should Cosmos fall - would she be purified like her warriors or would she cease to exist? It was a risky gamble and one that ultimately cost Sarah her life. She made her way into the Sanctuary just as Garland struck the telling-blow and she watched as Cosmos fell. She wanted to scream out, but found she could barely speak. A warm, white-hot pain spread through out her body and soul and the scream she wanted to let out was one of pain. Through it, she strained to see , but see she did as she watched Garland whip around at the sound of her anguish. She could not see his face, but his body language told her all. His giant sword, Rebellion, fell to the ground with a crashing clang and his arm outstretched. Did he call out her name? She could not tell. Falling to her knees, with tears in her eyes, she grips her chest tightly. The pain is unbearable and in those final moments she receives the memories she had lost when summoned. Everything. She remembered everything about their world and about each other, and before she faded from sight, she whispers, softly, "I forgive you, Garland. My sir knight." 

Sarah is never revived in those cycles with Cosmos and Chaos and only returns to World B after the two are long since gone and a new war is being waged - but this time to stop Shinryu and his planesgorgers. She is now a champion of Materia and fights alongside the Warrior of Light and his friends. It is bittersweet seeing Garland in this world knowing that he no longer exists back in their own world and though she knows she shouldn't be, she is happy to see him , and in this world of battle , she takes solace in their fights. She sees it as a chance for Garland to see how strong she has grown and wonders if he is proud of the strength she has found. 

After the battle with Shinryu is over, she leaves a crystal behind with her memories for the goddess, Materia, so that an image of her formed from said crystal would be able to fight for the goddess and gather battle energy for her. This version of Sarah is identical to the real Sarah and it is this version of her who is sent the world of respite governed by Materia and Spiritus known as World C.

* In a one cycle, she loses her life and is never revived when Garland strikes Cosmos down desiring to know if Cosmos would also be purified and revived like her champions. *  (I had this down originally because ooh! angst! but this is no longer true for my verse, but it is something I'm gonna keep here because ooh! spicy!)

** Also I don’t know where to put it , but Sarah absolutely asks Warrior of Light if he is also proud of her as well . Sarah enjoys being around in Terra’s and Tifa’s company specifically in NT. Cecil is like the brother she never had and she asks for Shantotto to teach her the ways of powerful magic which some of the others are hesitant about. She also enjoys Bartz’s seemingly-carefree personality and likes to hang out with him, too. ALSO LIGHTNING!!! 🥺🥺🥺 They are friends!!!!!!! /screaming Kirby with a microphone/ **

*I can’t remember for certain (I’ll have to dig through my stuff), but I think something along these lines is mentioned in one of the Theatrhythm games on one of Garland’s cards or his profile. I may be mistaking it for something Penelo says in Dissidia/Dissidia 012 about Garland.