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sanctum_cFinally! After months after the idea was mooted (after some amusing discussion with raaj) here is a short fic about Cid just after Yuffie has returned everything she stole. And I'm not sure on this - I kind of feel it should go on a bit further, but at the same time, it felt a naturally stopping point. Warnings for language for a change, as this *is* Cid afterall.
Cid Highwind scowled as he watched the other two dart ahead; the blonde ex-SOLDIER and the Wutai ninja. Why was he here again? Simple question. Not so simple answer. For one thing someone had to keep an eye on the two seemingly least stable members of this group. Cloud with his occasional headaches and tendency to stare into space, and Yuffie with her sticky fingers and her "what's yours is mine" attitude. It also didn't help that as a peace-offering the ninja, in addition to giving them all their materia back, had gotten into an involved discussion with their leader about effective materia combinations and the appeal of truly huge explosions. That and carving great chunks out of the scenery with summon spells. While the region south of Wutai was quite barren and bereft of anything important (a big reason why they were there in the first place), Cid was of the impression that the city to the north would be less then thrilled if they left the land in rather more pieces then they found it.
At least he wasn't just here to babysit, though a shudder racked him as he saw Yuffie hold up a red materia some distance ahead, afraid she was going to abruptly unleash the creature. Fortunately she was explaining something to Cloud, sliding the sphere into a pouch and withdrawing two green orbs in place. This was all kind of his fault; he'd rarely used magic before, not interested in calling forth the knowledge of the Ancients, sorry, the Cetra as Aeris had insisted on correcting him. He was interesting in mechanics, vehicles and space. Yet here he was, with a band of misfits tracking down the previously missing Sephiroth. Obstensibly his goal was to convince Rufus to restart the space program, but he was with this lot now, and the group made heavy use of materia so he needed to get up to speed with it.
His fingers clutched at the spear in his hand. It had been a long time since he had last fought with such a weapon, and the group had insisted he re-familiarise himself with combat. From what the pilot could tell, the group had basically been in regular scrapes ever since they started out in Midgar, and no one expected them to take out Sephiroth without a lot of prior combat experience. Unlike the others, Cid had found himself in Wutai without a weapon, trying desperately not to dwell on exactly where his spear had wound up...
It had been a bad day. He'd aborted the rocket launch, screamed abuse at Shera for a good few hours and was now sulking in the cockpit of the Tiny Bronco; the least accessible place he could think of at the moment. He tried to lull himself with a moment of silence after ordering his terrified assistant to start making things up to him by doing his laundry. A nervous tap on the windshield destroyed his reverie.
He slammed the hatch open, levelling a glare at the woman. "What?"
"Um... captain? I finished the washing, but the washing line when you- before," she hastily amended her sentence. "I just wanted you to know I'm going to get a replacement pole so I can hang it up."
"For fuck's sake Shera, improvise!" He cast about looking for something that could replace the bent damaged pole he'd uprooted hours before and proceeded to attack the house with. A brainwave hit him and he fished inside a compartment pulling out his dragoon lance. "Here, use this."
"Y-your spear?" qualied Shera. "C-captain, you shouldn't use something like that."
"Says who?" Cid hauled himself out of the plane and stalked across the lawn, before plunging the spear point first deep into the ground. "See? Perfectly good replacement." He reattached the severed washing line and stoof back a moment to appraise his handiwork. "Works fine. Now do the fucking washing and leave me the fuck alone."
Shera flinched back as Cid stalked past her, and let out a sigh of relief as Cid settled back into the plane, eyes fixed on the lopsided Shinra-26 ahead of him.
No, it wouldn't do to let his new companions know that in a fit of anger he had recycled the antique weapon like that. He'd been initially evasive when they asked him if he could fight, and when he confirmed that, with what he fought. At least after things had calmed after chasing Yuffie around the city, and the Turks had finally swanned off to fail to look for them. He'd been harbouring an idea that he should be able to pick up any weapon given a chance, so asked to look over their spares. That had been another embarassing spectacle. Cloud's swords he could barely stand upright, Barret's guns required a rather different arm then he had. While he could hold his own in a bar-room brawl and had several times, he could not bring himself to consider charging at monsters fist first as Tifa did. Red, no, Nanaki had claws and nothing to offer. That mechanised Moogle had megaphones which unless Cid wanted to shout his opponents to death (which admittedly did hold quite an appeal) weren't going to cut it. Yuffie offered him a shuriken which he came very close losing a foot to, and as much as he'd wanted to make use one of Vincent's array of pistols, his brief loan and inability to hit anything accurately more then a metre in front of him ended any thoughts of long-range fighting.
Tifa eventually decided to speed things up and ask exactly what Cid had used previously, and at the mention of spears, Aeris piped up and offered him a stave. This was more like it he'd thought, hefting the pole in one hand and getting a feel for it. He pivotted and launched it, watching disheartened as it landed with a muted clang on the ground, turning up a section of grass. Aeris ran to retrieve it, while Cloud sorted through their pooled money and dispatched Yuffie to find somewhere that sold spears.
And this was why he currently clutched a new spear in one hand. Now he had to remember how to fight. It had been a long time. He glanced over at the excitable youths who were busily piling materia up on the ground, Yuffie animatedly gesturing to Cloud and pointing at various landmarks. Well, they weren't injuring anyone. At least not yet. It still rankled that he was stuck out here with both of them, when he could have practiced both spear and materia on his own without two vastly more experienced companions to critique him. But everyone else had something better to do. Vincent had vanished off, Tifa and Aeris were eager to try out the local hot-springs, Barret was shopping for his kid, Cait Sith had bewilderingly basically switched off, Nanaki had gone off to sleep... So that left him, the new guy with the kids.
With a sigh, Cid turned his back on the other two intending to run through what he remembered of spear fighting. With a quick glance to check that the duo were not messing with the summon materia right this second, he closed his eyes for a moment, calmed his breathing and slid into a fighting stance. An imaginary enemy flicked into being. Palmer. No, that didn't feel right somehow. President Shinra? No, he was already dead. Rufus. Now that held more of an appeal. He jabbed the spear forward intending to skewer his target, but imaginary Rufus turned with the spear jab and it missed. No matter, techniques, stances and styles were coming back to him and he swung the spear to follow.
It wasn't the best training, but it was workable. Certainly getting used to fighting like this was preferable to being face to face with some nasty in the wild and then discovering he was so rusty, had forgotten so much that he'd be felled before he started. He'd just finished an interesting carwheeling flip, which swept imaginary Rufus' feet out from under him so he could bring his own feet down onto his enemy's torso and then plunge the spear point first into his head, when the first explosion blew him over.
"What the fuck?" he yelled, pushing himself up on his hands. Now he thought about it the two of them had escaped his notice while he'd been running through his practice.
"Sorry Cid!" Yuffie ran up and looked down on him. Cid's eyes widened as he looked beyond her. He hadn't heard anything, but the pair of them had been busy. The field was charred, small fires still burning in places, ice-crystals stabbing up out of the ground, and in a few places the ground was waterlogged.
"What was that?"
"Cloud wanted to know what happened if we used flare on ice crystals. Guess we know now."
"Fan fucking tastic. Did you have to it right next to me?"
"Hey, that was a total accident. If you want to blame anyone, blame Shiva."
Cid stared at her. "What... are you talking about?"
Yuffie sighed. "Gawd, old man, you really have missed out on materia."
Cid growled. "Shut it brat. I ain't that old."
"But you're so stuck in the old days. You haven't even touched any of the materia."
"Don't care. Who is Shiva, and why is it her fault I got blown up?"
Yuffie looked evasive for a moment before responding. "Shiva's a summon. You do know what summon spells are right?"
Cid just held her gaze levelly.
"I'll take that as a yes then," chirped Yuffie. "Well, normally we've been only summoning one summon at a time. But I got to thinking, surely it would be better against something really tough to have more then one fight at the same time. Then we can double-team things. Or better triple-team."
"Brat, I have a depressing sense that what you are about to say may very well explain why only one of those things is used at a time."
Yuffie fidgeted a little. "...you might be right."
"What happened then?"
"Well, Cloud got the idea that if you hit a new ice-crystal at the right time with a hot fire it should blow up right? Like what just happened to you."
"So it's Cloud's fault."
"Kinda. Sorta. He did cast the flare. But he thought the ice crystal was going to hit you."
"And that's supposed to make me feel better after nearly being blown up? So who's responsible for the ice?"
"Shiva."
"Who is a summon. So who summoned her?"
"I did."
"Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So it's your fault?"
"I think it's more of Cloud's."
"What? For the flare?"
"No, for Ifrit."
"...another summon?"
"Yeah."
"...wait. You summoned Shiva, and then tried to combined her attack with Ifrit's?"
"Pretty much."
"And you missed?"
"Kind of. It would have worked perfectly. Had Ifrit not kicked the ice out of the way instead of blasting it."
Yuffie fell silent as Cid mulled over the information. He'd always thought of summons as dumb directable attacks, or at least that was the impression he'd gained from the party and the odd time he'd seen the creatures called into existence. Apparently there was more to them then he'd realised.
"So... we gonna conclude it might be best to only have one of them around at a time, or just not fire them at each other?"
"Dunno yet," replied Yuffie. "Wanna help us find out?"
"In the interests of science?"
"Yeah. That or the art of blowing shit up. Come on old man, you need the practice anyway."
"One more old man out of you and you are going to get the strongest summon we have coming down on you. Actually, which is that?"
"Oh, that's Choco-Mog. Yeah, most devastating thing we have."
"Sounds like a fucking kid's cartoon."
raaj) here is a short fic about Cid just after Yuffie has returned everything she stole. And I'm not sure on this - I kind of feel it should go on a bit further, but at the same time, it felt a naturally stopping point. Warnings for language for a change, as this *is* Cid afterall.Cid Highwind scowled as he watched the other two dart ahead; the blonde ex-SOLDIER and the Wutai ninja. Why was he here again? Simple question. Not so simple answer. For one thing someone had to keep an eye on the two seemingly least stable members of this group. Cloud with his occasional headaches and tendency to stare into space, and Yuffie with her sticky fingers and her "what's yours is mine" attitude. It also didn't help that as a peace-offering the ninja, in addition to giving them all their materia back, had gotten into an involved discussion with their leader about effective materia combinations and the appeal of truly huge explosions. That and carving great chunks out of the scenery with summon spells. While the region south of Wutai was quite barren and bereft of anything important (a big reason why they were there in the first place), Cid was of the impression that the city to the north would be less then thrilled if they left the land in rather more pieces then they found it.
At least he wasn't just here to babysit, though a shudder racked him as he saw Yuffie hold up a red materia some distance ahead, afraid she was going to abruptly unleash the creature. Fortunately she was explaining something to Cloud, sliding the sphere into a pouch and withdrawing two green orbs in place. This was all kind of his fault; he'd rarely used magic before, not interested in calling forth the knowledge of the Ancients, sorry, the Cetra as Aeris had insisted on correcting him. He was interesting in mechanics, vehicles and space. Yet here he was, with a band of misfits tracking down the previously missing Sephiroth. Obstensibly his goal was to convince Rufus to restart the space program, but he was with this lot now, and the group made heavy use of materia so he needed to get up to speed with it.
His fingers clutched at the spear in his hand. It had been a long time since he had last fought with such a weapon, and the group had insisted he re-familiarise himself with combat. From what the pilot could tell, the group had basically been in regular scrapes ever since they started out in Midgar, and no one expected them to take out Sephiroth without a lot of prior combat experience. Unlike the others, Cid had found himself in Wutai without a weapon, trying desperately not to dwell on exactly where his spear had wound up...
It had been a bad day. He'd aborted the rocket launch, screamed abuse at Shera for a good few hours and was now sulking in the cockpit of the Tiny Bronco; the least accessible place he could think of at the moment. He tried to lull himself with a moment of silence after ordering his terrified assistant to start making things up to him by doing his laundry. A nervous tap on the windshield destroyed his reverie.
He slammed the hatch open, levelling a glare at the woman. "What?"
"Um... captain? I finished the washing, but the washing line when you- before," she hastily amended her sentence. "I just wanted you to know I'm going to get a replacement pole so I can hang it up."
"For fuck's sake Shera, improvise!" He cast about looking for something that could replace the bent damaged pole he'd uprooted hours before and proceeded to attack the house with. A brainwave hit him and he fished inside a compartment pulling out his dragoon lance. "Here, use this."
"Y-your spear?" qualied Shera. "C-captain, you shouldn't use something like that."
"Says who?" Cid hauled himself out of the plane and stalked across the lawn, before plunging the spear point first deep into the ground. "See? Perfectly good replacement." He reattached the severed washing line and stoof back a moment to appraise his handiwork. "Works fine. Now do the fucking washing and leave me the fuck alone."
Shera flinched back as Cid stalked past her, and let out a sigh of relief as Cid settled back into the plane, eyes fixed on the lopsided Shinra-26 ahead of him.
No, it wouldn't do to let his new companions know that in a fit of anger he had recycled the antique weapon like that. He'd been initially evasive when they asked him if he could fight, and when he confirmed that, with what he fought. At least after things had calmed after chasing Yuffie around the city, and the Turks had finally swanned off to fail to look for them. He'd been harbouring an idea that he should be able to pick up any weapon given a chance, so asked to look over their spares. That had been another embarassing spectacle. Cloud's swords he could barely stand upright, Barret's guns required a rather different arm then he had. While he could hold his own in a bar-room brawl and had several times, he could not bring himself to consider charging at monsters fist first as Tifa did. Red, no, Nanaki had claws and nothing to offer. That mechanised Moogle had megaphones which unless Cid wanted to shout his opponents to death (which admittedly did hold quite an appeal) weren't going to cut it. Yuffie offered him a shuriken which he came very close losing a foot to, and as much as he'd wanted to make use one of Vincent's array of pistols, his brief loan and inability to hit anything accurately more then a metre in front of him ended any thoughts of long-range fighting.
Tifa eventually decided to speed things up and ask exactly what Cid had used previously, and at the mention of spears, Aeris piped up and offered him a stave. This was more like it he'd thought, hefting the pole in one hand and getting a feel for it. He pivotted and launched it, watching disheartened as it landed with a muted clang on the ground, turning up a section of grass. Aeris ran to retrieve it, while Cloud sorted through their pooled money and dispatched Yuffie to find somewhere that sold spears.
And this was why he currently clutched a new spear in one hand. Now he had to remember how to fight. It had been a long time. He glanced over at the excitable youths who were busily piling materia up on the ground, Yuffie animatedly gesturing to Cloud and pointing at various landmarks. Well, they weren't injuring anyone. At least not yet. It still rankled that he was stuck out here with both of them, when he could have practiced both spear and materia on his own without two vastly more experienced companions to critique him. But everyone else had something better to do. Vincent had vanished off, Tifa and Aeris were eager to try out the local hot-springs, Barret was shopping for his kid, Cait Sith had bewilderingly basically switched off, Nanaki had gone off to sleep... So that left him, the new guy with the kids.
With a sigh, Cid turned his back on the other two intending to run through what he remembered of spear fighting. With a quick glance to check that the duo were not messing with the summon materia right this second, he closed his eyes for a moment, calmed his breathing and slid into a fighting stance. An imaginary enemy flicked into being. Palmer. No, that didn't feel right somehow. President Shinra? No, he was already dead. Rufus. Now that held more of an appeal. He jabbed the spear forward intending to skewer his target, but imaginary Rufus turned with the spear jab and it missed. No matter, techniques, stances and styles were coming back to him and he swung the spear to follow.
It wasn't the best training, but it was workable. Certainly getting used to fighting like this was preferable to being face to face with some nasty in the wild and then discovering he was so rusty, had forgotten so much that he'd be felled before he started. He'd just finished an interesting carwheeling flip, which swept imaginary Rufus' feet out from under him so he could bring his own feet down onto his enemy's torso and then plunge the spear point first into his head, when the first explosion blew him over.
"What the fuck?" he yelled, pushing himself up on his hands. Now he thought about it the two of them had escaped his notice while he'd been running through his practice.
"Sorry Cid!" Yuffie ran up and looked down on him. Cid's eyes widened as he looked beyond her. He hadn't heard anything, but the pair of them had been busy. The field was charred, small fires still burning in places, ice-crystals stabbing up out of the ground, and in a few places the ground was waterlogged.
"What was that?"
"Cloud wanted to know what happened if we used flare on ice crystals. Guess we know now."
"Fan fucking tastic. Did you have to it right next to me?"
"Hey, that was a total accident. If you want to blame anyone, blame Shiva."
Cid stared at her. "What... are you talking about?"
Yuffie sighed. "Gawd, old man, you really have missed out on materia."
Cid growled. "Shut it brat. I ain't that old."
"But you're so stuck in the old days. You haven't even touched any of the materia."
"Don't care. Who is Shiva, and why is it her fault I got blown up?"
Yuffie looked evasive for a moment before responding. "Shiva's a summon. You do know what summon spells are right?"
Cid just held her gaze levelly.
"I'll take that as a yes then," chirped Yuffie. "Well, normally we've been only summoning one summon at a time. But I got to thinking, surely it would be better against something really tough to have more then one fight at the same time. Then we can double-team things. Or better triple-team."
"Brat, I have a depressing sense that what you are about to say may very well explain why only one of those things is used at a time."
Yuffie fidgeted a little. "...you might be right."
"What happened then?"
"Well, Cloud got the idea that if you hit a new ice-crystal at the right time with a hot fire it should blow up right? Like what just happened to you."
"So it's Cloud's fault."
"Kinda. Sorta. He did cast the flare. But he thought the ice crystal was going to hit you."
"And that's supposed to make me feel better after nearly being blown up? So who's responsible for the ice?"
"Shiva."
"Who is a summon. So who summoned her?"
"I did."
"Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So it's your fault?"
"I think it's more of Cloud's."
"What? For the flare?"
"No, for Ifrit."
"...another summon?"
"Yeah."
"...wait. You summoned Shiva, and then tried to combined her attack with Ifrit's?"
"Pretty much."
"And you missed?"
"Kind of. It would have worked perfectly. Had Ifrit not kicked the ice out of the way instead of blasting it."
Yuffie fell silent as Cid mulled over the information. He'd always thought of summons as dumb directable attacks, or at least that was the impression he'd gained from the party and the odd time he'd seen the creatures called into existence. Apparently there was more to them then he'd realised.
"So... we gonna conclude it might be best to only have one of them around at a time, or just not fire them at each other?"
"Dunno yet," replied Yuffie. "Wanna help us find out?"
"In the interests of science?"
"Yeah. That or the art of blowing shit up. Come on old man, you need the practice anyway."
"One more old man out of you and you are going to get the strongest summon we have coming down on you. Actually, which is that?"
"Oh, that's Choco-Mog. Yeah, most devastating thing we have."
"Sounds like a fucking kid's cartoon."
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 16:59 (UTC)Also just love the mental image that the whole group is watching this as he launches Aerith's staff into the air, and all of them thinking various thoughts of disappointment.
"But everyone else had something better to do." OR SO THEY SAY laughing at Cait Sith's being "switch off" and Nanaki's being naptime. I'm surprised Cid's not grumping more about them.
"Rufus. Now that held more of an appeal." I'm sure it does just after him trying to take the Tiny Bronco, hahaha.
"Brat, I have a depressing sense that what you are about to say may very well explain why only one of those things is used at a time."
I really, really like this line. Just the phrasing and the rather flat tone I imagine it being said in.
Pretty sure this is to blame on just how roundabout Yuffie insists on explaining things, but the first time I was reading this I honestly thought Cloud had somewhat cruel and unusual ideas for checking if his teammates were ready for dealing with ambushes and other sorts of surprises--that he thought the ice crystal was going to hit Cid because it was intended to (making casting Flare on it too rather overkill). Then got down to the part about Ifrit having kicked the crystal and sent it off course. Well. I'm sure Cid's much happier with a leader who's not that crazy. XD;
I do love Yuffie weaseling by trying to mislead Cid, and Cid's f-bomb and the fact that he's not so easily fooled because really, the name itself doesn't suggest some dread creature. It does feel like a suitable place to end, but at the same time isn't closed off from continuation either.
I think the biggest concerns I have would be that obviously it gets very very dialogue-heavy at the end and the round-about explanation is partly to blame for it getting so long. That and it kind of gives a feeling of "where's Cloud during this?" Even though he's one of the three out there, he's not really shown doing anything directly, and it ends up feeling like the fic could easily be rewritten to be just Cid and Yuffie (with Yuffie having tried to summon one right after the other) without losing anything. The part that seems to show his characterization most is really him simply watching Cid's failed attempt with launching Aerith's staff and matter-of-factly getting things organized for him to have a spear.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-07 20:59 (UTC)Yeah, Cid isn't making the best first impression (once everyone has a moment to breath and isn't trying to get Yuffie to stop fleeing), and yeah their new companion... is a bit rubbish at combat currently. Hmm... yeah might be an idea to have Cid grumble a bit more about Nanaki deciding to go to sleep. I can actually see him kicking Cait Sith a few times to see if he really is a robot and really is switched off.
Glad most of the dialogue seems to work as well - quite fun having Cid really direct and to the point, and Yuffie trying to be anything but that. Haha the thing abouit the ice crystal and flare... Yeah I can see how it reads that way; I think I got a bit tangled when I wrote that anyway and it kind of deviated a bit as I was trying to figure out how to put an accidental explosion next to Cid. I think the first part of the idea that super-heating the ice causes explosions might be better as a result of what just happened rather then a theory for them doing it in the first place (and in the first place the idea was to have two summons active to see what would happen. Maybe they don't like each other?)
Haha - originally I was going to carry on and have Cid actively try the summon to see what happens, but that might be best unseen, and yeah, he's pretty much seen straight through that lie anyway.
I agree its very dialogue heavy at the close, and that really needs some breaking up, and the round-about explanation is a bit too long. And ack! Yeah, I really did manage to basically side-line Cloud through this. I think he either needs to join in the conversation, or just be described as doing something else (its a bit of an easy fix, but possibly have him doing something while Yuffie and Cid are talking...).
Glad it was amusing at least.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-09 16:16 (UTC)Ohh, yeah. Maybe they were just trying to get Shiva and Ifrit corporeal at the same time and the two immediately picked a fight--so the theory was about just the summons, with superheated ice being an accidental discovery.
To be honest I'd prefer Cloud joining the conversation in some way, as I think he might make the explaining a little less round-about--but I did have an idea for an easy fix at first, which I hesitated at suggesting in the previous comment because I'd rather see more Cloud than do the easy fix (I'm biased). But pretty much after "small fires burning in places" came up, once I realized Cloud didn't seem to be anywhere near the conversation, I started figuring he was taking care of the fires--depending on the size, either simply stamping them out or for bigger ones using a water or ice spell. (...Enemy skill "Aqualung"...)
But anyway, yes! It was amusing.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-09 21:04 (UTC)I think going with the super-heated ice being accidental sounds the best plan; and its a humorous nudge at the unwritten rule that outside of... IX and X I don't think we ever see two summons active at the same time (and not totally sure for IX either).
Heh - tempting to have Cloud sort the fires, but yeah I think joining in on the conversation would be better as well. And thank you for mentioning Aqualung! I spent ages thinking it was annoying that VII had no water spell materia so any fires could only really be dealt with with ice...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-10 17:08 (UTC)But yes! I like this idea. And haha, I think Aqualung came to mind because it was one of the few Enemy Skills I actually did manage to collect on my last playthrough (I'm always terrible at that). It does stand out as the only water element spell, though as I reading this actually makes it super useful if you do have it, as then few enemies are made strong/immune to Water damage.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-10 18:49 (UTC)Glad the idea seems workable, I shall make the amendments (after fixing up Fire Dancer. Trying to do fics on kind of a rotation. Which is probably going to scupper me as I forget tone or which one I'm writing...). Ah that's very cool about Aqualung. I always forget about Enemy Skills/never bother to go and obtain them all usually. I was always pleased I got Beta at all from the Midgar Zolom...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-10 18:58 (UTC)So yeah actually I really like the idea of an elaborate wake-up sequence that's really unnecessary--but it's useful in ways people don't suspect at first.
Hahaha! I was focusing on the "Comfort" stuff for the past few days but now that that's done I think I'm going to get back to trying to organize "Sleeping Arrangements" (I have like 3000 words that need to be reduced to a more coherent 2000 and given an ending, and finish rewriting the Gongaga section...and actually write the Wutai part. lol.) Sometimes does cause a forgetfulness about tone but it's also handy for not burning out on one project.
Haha I was so proud of myself getting Beta from Zolom, even though I was massively overleveled at that point by being about halfway through the game so it wasn't that much of an accomplishment.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-11 12:33 (UTC)The Fan-flashworks Comfort fic was really good - still sorry I can't think of much to comment on, everyone felt right, and the scenario was a nice missing-scene for Cloud and Denzel bonding like that, and how Tifa isn't going to tell Denzel off for wandering at night. *tries to think up idea for the next prompt*
Yeah, not burning out on a single project is handy... Heh - well I always look forward to more 'Sleeping Arrangements'
I think I got Beta somewhat flukily as I remember Barret got smacked out of the fight by the Zolom, and then it wiped the party out with Beta and whoever had the materia learnt the skill. And unexpectedly that counts as long as one party member is standing. Whenever I tried it on other play-throughts I was too high level and wound up killing the Zolom before it could even cast the spell...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-13 04:11 (UTC)Huh. I always thought the party member with Enemy Skill had to survive, so I'm sort of surprised that worked for the Midgar Zolom too!
And--well, I'll eventually get back to actual progress in fic...lately has been a no-go. I'd blame it on Mother's Day + sibling's birthday but I don't think those are entirely it...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-13 20:33 (UTC)If I remember right, the holder will learn enemy skills as the spell hits them but before the damage is applied (I also managed to learn Shadow Flare and kill Ultima Weapon with Barret later in the same game as I had forgotten he had a reflect ring, and that totalled Ultima...)
It also reminds me of the painstaking tactic I eventually utilised for Ruby Weapon, where I killed off two members of the party before challenging the Weapon so it wouldn't get rid of one of them through the course of the battle. I found him so much harder in the end then Emerald.
(semi-amusing note; all recent talk of mother's day usually freaks me out a little as I'm certain I missed it. But then I always remember the UK's version was back in March. I'm really not sure why they're placed differently in the year. I think Father's Day is the same at least...)
no subject
Date: 2013-05-13 20:49 (UTC)...Welp, I've utterly forgotten my Final Fantasy VII game mechanics. GUESS I'LL HAVE TO REPLAY IT.
Actually, I think I've only ever killed one optional WEAPON (I know I haven't touched Ruby or Emerald). None of my playthroughs have ever been entirely completionist, though I can say with my last one I finally visited all areas of the game! (Hadn't been to the Ancient Forest.)
I think the Mother's Days are dated differently because they were founded differently? Father's Day here should be about a month away, iirc. ...It looks like the third Sunday of June is a date commonly shared by a LOT of the world, actually! Wikipedia has a table for grouping which countries celebrate it when. The grouping for the Mother's Day is big too, but different--well, UK being part of that difference. haha. It looks like the UK's version is based in the church, which explains why the dating is based on Lent, and is much older than the US's tradition (and our dating simply the second Sunday of May).
/sorry I went and investigated XD
no subject
Date: 2013-05-14 20:16 (UTC)Ah, but do you really need a reason to replay FFVII? (well... maybe there should be a reason to play it over the other FFs you just got, but otherwise...). Amusingly enough the Ancient Forest was the method I used to quickly kill off my party members - I let them get caught by the plan traps and slowly reduced them to 1 hp and then got them killed by a random battle. Completionist is nice, but given how nasty the Weapons are, they're never necessary (...now I'm wondering about canonicity. Did the party take them out or is Emerald still terrorising the deeps, and is Ruby making the Corel Desert that little bit more unpleasant in the AC time-period?)
(also; I never even tried to fight Omega Weapon in FFVIII - I always used Selphie's absurdly over-powered limit break 'The End' which really will outright kill *any* enemy in the game. Problem is you usually have to scroll through a few dozen other spells to select it. Usually recommended to summon Eden while you sort that out).
Haha! Not to worry about invesitgating - I should have done that really! Interesting the holiday is shared but so varied...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 14:23 (UTC)Just a very very small reason :p ...That's really interesting to think of a world where Emerald and Ruby really are still around. I doubt they still are, as they seemed like they should have been mentioned at some point: Ruby may be ignorable for the moment, if making the Corel Desert that much more awful, but Emerald roams anywhere in the ocean. Both submarine and boating excursions would be nerve-wracking (not that Emerald ever attacks a boat in-game, and its behavior might easily be that it never frequents shallower depths, but would you be willing to trust in that to isolate yourself on a boat, where there's no place to escape to?), forget undersea research, and here's yet another reason to hope Barret and Cid quickly figure out another energy source because deep-sea oil-drilling isn't happening. (...Though I did just make myself laugh and then shake my head at the thought of Barret and Cid convincing Cloud he needs to come out with them--yeah, bring the underwater materia--so they can fight emerald so they can start off-shore drilling and that would just be like... guys no. no. That is completely the wrong reasoning for everything.)
I think both Mother's Day and Father's Day, the ideas are so basic that they were going to come up multiple times, so it's a common holiday--but the traditions behind it are all different.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-16 19:06 (UTC)I'd concur I doubt the Weapons are still wandering the world given everything else (and I can see Holy being possibly a clean-up mechanism as well and deactivate both if they are still around). Plus not only should they have been mentioned, they should really have started rampaging towards Edge to take out the Remnants and Jenova...
Yeah; Ruby makes the desert that much nastier, but Emerald is a HUGE problem for ocean travel - and yeah oil drilling is basically off while that thing is hanging around. Though that is an amusing idea fo have Barret and Cid convince Cloud to come with them and the Underwater materia so they can finally dispense with Emerald and drill without fear of attack from it - though yeah, we really don't want to encourage them to get into that kind of fuel sourcing.
(it feels faintly funny to realise that FFVII is environmentally focussed and there is a running theme of energy production being damaging to the environment. But no subsequent game seems to address power-sourcing like that. Admittedly its a completely different focus, but I was trying to think of other fantasy energy sources and wondered if one could be borrowed from FFVIII... only to realise I have no idea what they used).
Ah - good point about both the days (though Father's day seems to result in... less then brilliant presents (at least I remember the Cosby Show having a whole episode about terrible Father's Day presents, and that felt so familiar to the kind of things I remembered buying).
no subject
Date: 2013-05-17 17:25 (UTC)Though it'd still kind of be worth a joke fic where the guys go to do this and then Aerith interrupts the fight and is pretty much "WOW I am not happy with you guys go sit in your drenched clothes on the beach and think about what you were doing /BOOTS". ...Guys thinking oh, crud, they ticked off Aerith.
IX sort of addresses power sourcing in the Mist, but yeah, there's not really been a focus on that since VII.
...My Father's Day presents have usually been food. XD
no subject
Date: 2013-05-17 20:46 (UTC)...okay, I really like the joke fic with Aeris interrupting them and kicking them away from the Weapon (though not I find myself wondering just what she was intending to do with the gigantic robot creature...) - its a funny idea, and I've gotten really taken with any concept that allows Aeris to pop up in spiritual form to shout or kick the living cast like that. Do not tick off the last Cetra!
Oh! Mist! Forgot about that, but yeah otherwise very little on power sources. It unfortunately would take them a real long time, but in pure sci-fi terms, getting them to Gaia's moon to mine Helium-3 (one of the current sci-fi plausible fuel sources) might be workable. But that involves so much messing with oil in the mean time...
Haha! Very hard to go wrong with food presents. Cunning idea...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-20 22:56 (UTC)Actually--I was just imagining Aerith would tell the WEAPON that everything was alright, the rude guys were going to think about they'd done but you knoooow, since the danger was over now, maybe it should go take a nap...
Really even if Holy itself isn't a WEAPON shutdown, the WEAPONs are probably attuned to the Planet so they can tell hey, cool, imminent demise is no longer a thing (geostigma likely being too subtle to be figured out as an immediate threat), or Aerith/other Cetra would be able to tell them. NAPTIME. ...Also I'm now picturing Ruby "burying" itself in the sand like a kid would cover themselves up at the beach. So. Serious thought, what is that. And yeah, I just like a bit of joke fic in general haha.
Yyyyeah, hopefully Gaia gets a clue about using solar/wind/water power in the meantime. ...I'm now wondering where exactly nuclear power falls in here, though I imagine that's still an OH HECK NO for the risk of catastrophic failures/we still don't have solutions & answers for the long-term storage of waste.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-21 22:14 (UTC)Ah, Ruby burying itself in the desert - awakening only to smush the foolish humans who try to dig it up to find out how it works/carve chunks out the weapon for nefarious purposes...
Definitely want Gaia to have better power generation. Nuclear is potential, but so much risk for the catastrophic failure/real-world lack of long-term solutions as you said.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 22:40 (UTC)I'm a bit amused at the idea that had they NOT succeeded, it'd pretty much be time to loose the hounds/let WEAPON go after Sephiroth before he did any more with the negative Lifestream.
...Which actually could have been really awesome to watch. Though I'm assuming disastrous for ANYONE in the area, and possibly a large enough area to include Edge, ahaha...
no subject
Date: 2013-05-23 23:10 (UTC)Team Materia v2
Date: 2013-05-24 23:43 (UTC)Cid Highwind scowled as he watched the other two dart ahead; the blonde ex-SOLDIER and the Wutai ninja. Why was he here again? Simple question. Not so simple answer. For one thing someone had to keep an eye on the two seemingly least stable members of this group. Cloud with his occasional headaches and tendency to stare into space, and Yuffie with her sticky fingers and her "what's yours is mine" attitude. It also didn't help that as a peace-offering the ninja, in addition to giving them all their materia back, had gotten into an involved discussion with their leader about effective materia combinations and the appeal of truly huge explosions. That and carving great chunks out of the scenery with summon spells. While the region south of Wutai was quite barren and bereft of anything important (a big reason why they were there in the first place), Cid was of the impression that the city to the north would be less then thrilled if they left the land in rather more pieces then they found it.
At least he wasn't just here to babysit, though a shudder racked him as he saw Yuffie hold up a red materia some distance ahead, afraid she was going to abruptly unleash the creature. Fortunately she was explaining something to Cloud, sliding the sphere into a pouch and withdrawing two green orbs instead. This was all kind of his fault; he'd rarely used magic before, not interested in calling forth the knowledge of the Ancients, sorry, the Cetra as Aeris had insisted on correcting him. He was interesting in mechanics, vehicles and space. Yet here he was, with a band of misfits tracking down the previously missing Sephiroth. Obstensibly his goal was to convince Rufus to restart the space program, but he was with this lot now, and the group made heavy use of materia so he needed to get up to speed with it.
His fingers clutched at the spear in his hand. It had been a long time since he had last fought with such a weapon, and the group had insisted he re-familiarise himself with combat. From what the pilot could tell, the group had basically been in regular scrapes ever since they started out in Midgar, and no one expected them to take out Sephiroth without a lot of prior combat experience. Unlike the others, Cid had found himself in Wutai without a weapon, trying desperately not to dwell on exactly where his spear had wound up...
It had been a bad day. He'd aborted the rocket launch, screamed abuse at Shera for a good few hours and was now sulking in the cockpit of the Tiny Bronco; the least accessible place he could think of at the moment. He tried to lull himself with a moment of silence after ordering his terrified assistant to start making things up to him by doing his laundry. A nervous tap on the windshield destroyed his reverie.
He slammed the hatch open, levelling a glare at the woman. "What?"
"Um... captain? I finished the washing, but the washing line... When you- before," she hastily amended her sentence. "I just wanted you to know I'm going to get a replacement pole so I can hang it up."
"For fuck's sake Shera, improvise!" He cast about looking for something that could replace the bent, damaged pole he'd uprooted some hours before and proceeded to attack the house with. A brainwave hit him and he fished inside a compartment pulling out his dragoon lance. "Here, use this."
"Y-your spear?" qualied Shera. "C-captain, you shouldn't use something like that."
"Says who?" Cid hauled himself out of the plane and stalked across the lawn, before plunging the spear point first deep into the ground. "See? Perfectly good replacement." He reattached the severed washing line and stoof back a moment to appraise his handiwork. "Works fine. Now do the fucking washing and leave me the fuck alone."
Shera flinched back as Cid stalked past her, and let out a sigh of relief as Cid settled back into the plane, eyes fixed on the lopsided Shinra-26 ahead of him.
No, it wouldn't do to let his new companions know that in a fit of anger he had recycled the antique weapon like that. He'd been initially evasive when they asked him if he could fight, and when he confirmed that, with what he fought. Things had finally calmed after chasing Yuffie around the city, and the Turks had swanned off to fail to look for them. The pilot been harbouring an idea that he should be able to pick up any weapon given a chance, so asked to look over the group's spares. That had been another embarassing spectacle. Cloud's swords he could barely stand upright, Barret's guns required a rather different arm then he had. While he could hold his own in a bar-room brawl and had several times, he could not bring himself to consider charging at monsters fist first as Tifa did. Red, no, Nanaki had claws and nothing to offer. That mechanised Moogle had megaphones which unless Cid wanted to shout his opponents to death (which admittedly did hold quite an appeal) weren't going to cut it. Yuffie offered him a shuriken which he came very close losing a foot to, and as much as he'd wanted to make use one of Vincent's array of pistols, his brief loan and inability to hit anything accurately more then a metre in front of him ended any thoughts of long-range fighting.
Tifa eventually decided to speed things up and ask exactly what Cid had used previously, and at the mention of spears, Aeris piped up and offered him a stave. This was more like it he'd thought, hefting the pole in one hand and getting a feel for it. He pivotted and launched it, watching disheartened as it landed with a muted clang on the ground, turning up a section of grass. Aeris ran to retrieve it, while Cloud sorted through their pooled money and dispatched Yuffie to find somewhere that sold spears.
And this was why he currently clutched a new spear in one hand. Now he just had to remember how to fight with it. It had been a long time. He glanced over at the excitable youths who were busily piling materia up on the ground, Yuffie animatedly gesturing to Cloud and pointing at various landmarks. Well, they weren't injuring anyone. At least not yet. It still rankled that he was stuck out here with both of them, when he could have practiced both spear and materia on his own without two vastly more experienced companions to critique him. But everyone else had something better to do. Vincent had vanished off as usual, Tifa and Aeris were eager to try out the local hot-springs, Barret was shopping for his kid, Cait Sith had bewilderingly basically switched off (Cid had spent some minutes prodding, pushing and then eventually kicking the robot to try and get it moving again, but it remained irritatingly inert), Nanaki had gone off to sleep... So that left him, the new guy with the kids.
With a sigh, Cid turned his back on the other two intending to run through what he remembered of spear fighting. With a quick glance to check that the duo were not messing with the summon materia right this second, he closed his eyes for a moment, calmed his breathing and slid into a fighting stance. An imaginary enemy flicked into being. Palmer. No, that didn't feel right somehow. President Shinra? No, he was already dead. Rufus. Now that held more of an appeal. He jabbed the spear forward intending to skewer his target, but imaginary Rufus turned with the spear jab and it missed. No matter, techniques, stances and styles were coming back to him and he swung the spear to follow.
It wasn't the best training, but it was workable. Certainly getting used to fighting like this was preferable to being face to face with some nasty in the wild and then discovering he was so rusty, had forgotten so much that he'd be felled before he started. He'd just finished an interesting cartwheeling flip, which swept imaginary Rufus' feet out from under him so he could bring his own feet down onto his enemy's torso and then plunge the spear point first into his head, when the explosion blew him over.
"What the fuck?" he yelled, pushing himself up on his hands. Now he thought about it the two of them had escaped his notice while he'd been running through his practice.
"Sorry Cid!" Yuffie ran up and looked down on him. Cid's eyes widened as he looked beyond her. He hadn't heard anything, but the pair of them had been busy. The field was charred, small fires still burning in places, ice-crystals stabbing up out of the water-logged ground.
"What the fuck was that?"
Cloud arrived a few seconds after Yuffie looking faintly embarassed. "Sorry, that was my fault Cid."
"That's beside the point; Cloud has now discovered what happens if we use flare on ice crystals! Another score for Team Materia!" Yuffie shot her hand towards Cloud in a high-five that he matched, and they called out: "Go Team Materia!" in unison.
Cid groaned. He pulled himself into a sitting position and rolled his eyes before getting to his feet.
"Fan fucking tastic. Did you have to do your little experiment right next to me?"
Cloud scratched at the back of his neck as he replied. "Ah, no, well, I didn't mean to..."
"Yeah, that was a total accident," Yuffie interjected. "If you want to blame anyone, blame Shiva."
Cid stared at her. "What... who are you talking about?"
Yuffie sighed. "Gawd, old man, you really have missed out on materia."
Cid growled. "Shut it brat. I ain't that old."
"But you're so stuck in the old days. You haven't even touched any of the materia."
She held up a handful of the glowing spheres. Cid lit up a cigarrette; he needed some stress relief.
"As of this moment, I don't care. Who is Shiva, and why is it her fault I got blown up?"
Cloud awkwardly shuffled the few materia he was holding and Yuffie looked evasive for a moment before responding to the scowling man. "Shiva's a summon. You do know what summon spells are right?"
Cid just held her gaze levelly.
"I'll take that as a yes then," chirped Yuffie. "Well, normally we've been only summoning one of them at a time. But I got to thinking; surely it would be better against something really tough to have more then one fight at the same time! Then we can double-team things. Or better; triple-team!"
Cid exhaled a plume of smoke. "Brat, I have a depressing sense that what you are about to say may very well explain why only one of those things is used at a time."
Yuffie fidgeted a little. "...you might be right."
"What happened then?"
Cloud cleared his throat and spoke up. "Well, first I summoned Ifrit." He turned and pointed to a particularly scorched area of the landscape. "Right there."
"So you must have summoned Shiva?" Cid turned to Yuffie.
"Yep."
"So it's your fault?"
Yuffie looked at the man stood beside her. "I still think it's more of Cloud's."
Cid would have expected the ex-SOLDIER to actually protest the accusation, but no, the man's gaze was studiously avoiding the pilot's accusatory eyes. He sighed. "For Ifrit or the flare?"
"Ifrit."
"...wait, wait, wait. Let me see if I have this straight; you summoned Shiva, and then tried to combine her attack with Ifrit's?"
"Pretty much." Yuffie replied as Cloud finally turned back and nodded.
"So which of you missed?"
"Neither of us! It would have all worked perfectly." Her voice dropped an octave. "Had Ifrit not kicked the ice out of the way instead of blasting it."
Yuffie fell silent and Cloud suddenly found his shoes immensely fascinating as Cid glared further and mulled over the new information. He'd been thinking of summons as dumb directable attacks, or at least that was the impression he'd gained from the party and the odd time he'd seen the creatures called into existence. Apparently there was more to them then he'd realised. He sighed.
"So; we gonna conclude it might be best to only have one of the things around at a time, or just not fire them at each other in future?"
"Dunno yet," replied Yuffie. "Wanna help us find out? In the interests of science? Or at least in the art of blowing shit up." She struck what she probably thought was a dramatic pose. Noticing Cid motionless her stance relaxed. "Come on old man, you need the practice anyway."
"One more old man out of you and I am going to call down the strongest summon we have on you," he growled through gritted teeth. He paused a moment and added, "Actually, which is that?"
"Oh, that's Choco-Mog. Yeah, totally most devastating thing we have."
Cloud suppressed a smile as he nodded alongside her. Cid was unconvinced.
"Sounds like a fucking kid's cartoon."
Re: Team Materia v2
Date: 2013-05-27 14:58 (UTC)...Also I forgot to ask this before, but I've been wondering: is the "flare" cast part of an effect of Ifrit's kick, or did Cloud actually cast that separately (what I'd assumed first)? Was he hoping to evaporate the ice before it'd hit Cid or...? I remember it confused me a bit the first time because it does sound like a separate spell, in which case I'd assume the explosion was pretty much exact opposite of what Cloud wanted to happen (even if in retrospect, okay Cid's not hurt, so Cloud can appreciate that it was a cool effect) since the ice was going off course by the point he cast flare. I might just be confusing myself on things.
I really do like though Cloud sharing the hi-five with Yuffie; I imagine him looking "cool" (or at least casual despite his embarrassment) right up until she initiates it, and then never mind he is a total dork.
Re: Team Materia v2
Date: 2013-05-27 15:37 (UTC)Ah - yeah the flare was something Cloud cast separately when he saw the ice crystals flying towards Cid at speed - and yeah he was hoping to evaporate them before they could injure their latest team mate - and yeah not quite what Cloud intended to happen (but yeah, in retrospect - that was pretty cool). I'll try and make that sequence a bit clearer...
Glad the high-fiving works; and yeah wanted something for him to just show he can be a big kid - and trying really hard to look cool, but then he has to high-give Yuffie...