"Why is it that the only thing that doesn't taste like chicken... is the chicken?"
Antiviral
A Final Fantasy VII Fanfiction
Author: Sanjuno Shori Niko
Summary: Consent forms? The Planet mocks your silly little consent forms!.Who doesn't want to be turned into Something Nature Never Intended, after all?
Timeline: The rest of the fic is here!
=/=
(In which Cid would like to lodge a complaint with the Planetary Management.)
Cid floated in a sea of shifting green, glaring out at the glowing nothingness around him as he brooded.
‘Sulked!’
‘Shut up!’
His sense of time was skewed, but judging from the intensity of his tea cravings Cid had been stuck in the mako fountain for at least a day, maybe less, but it was more likely that he had been trapped here for longer than that. He kept blacking out, losing track of his senses, and when he woke up after every stint of unconsciousness he felt a little bit different than before.
‘That only makes sense! After all…’
‘Shut up! I ain’t listenin’!’
Cid ached, all the way down to his bones, and his thoughts felt raw and exposed. He had wrapped arms and legs around Venus Gospel like he was some kind of damned monkey. The spear was lit up like a fucking Yule tree, sparkling like an overenthusiastic preschooler had been let loose with a year’s supply of glitter. Cid was not happy with his weapon at the moment, but like fuck he was going to let go of it. Venus Gospel was his Ultima Weapon, so fuck off.
‘Possessive much?’
Unfortunately his weapon was incapable of cluing Cid in to exactly what the fuck was going on. Someone was way too fucking full of themselves.
‘I’m more than willing to explain, if you would just stop ignoring me!’
‘Fuck off! I can’t hear you!’
Beyond the oddity of his spear glowing it up and his frequent, uncontrollable desire to nap, Cid was starting to get the impression that something weird was going on.
More weird than usual, that is. After all, Cid was the one it was happening to. If it had been Cloud who had been eaten by the Planet it would have been understandable. Cid would have gotten over whatever that meant fairly quickly. Hel, the only person in Avalanche less suited to get kidnapped by the mystical cryptic forces of Destiny was Barrett. Cid had started getting used to being ignored by the bat-shit crazy things that happened to the others. The worst thing Cid needed to worry about was an over affectionate assistant. None of this resurrected sins of the past nonsense. Obviously he had gotten far too comfortable and let his guard down enough for karma to bite him in the ass.
‘Oh pish, you grump!’
It was probably Cloud’s fault somehow. Cid could get over the Planet being taken with the sudden desire to make his life a bit more exciting, but he could have done without the theatrics. Fuck it all, he was a rocket scientist with nothing to do! He was bored. No matter how dull things got however, Captain Cid Highwind absolutely refused to listen to, talk back to, or even acknowledge the existence of any voices that may or may not be offering bitchy commentary on his thought processes.
‘Now you’re just being stubborn.’
‘Damn straight.’
Cid would not recant his stance on this issue. Yes, as a pilot Cid spoke to and about his planes like they were his precious children. Yes, it was a given, even expected, for a genius of Cid’s calibre to have a few… particular quirks. So yes, sometimes Cid acted like the birds had something to say back - at least he avoided putting voice modules in the planes, unlike some less well-adjusted engineers Cid could name. Cait Sith was just… Cid was not even going there. Talking to AI’s was one thing… talking to the voices in your head? That was just plain crazy.
‘Oh? Well then…’
Cid Highwind was uncrackable. He could manage to lead Avalanche in a relatively straight line whenever Cloud decided to prance off into whatever sparkly unicorn fantasy land existed in his fluffy blond head and had once hijacked his airship back from Shin-Ra with nothing more than a well-earned reputation and a few yelled curses. This was peanuts compared to the shit he had gone through.
‘So… I suppose you don’t mind if I start telling everyone about that huge crush of yours. You know, the one you have on-’
‘Shut up, Aeris!’
‘Ha! You talked to me. I win.’
‘Gods damn it.’
‘Oh don’t be like that, Cid. After all, he does have a very nice-‘
‘Don’t you fuckin’ go there.’
Aeris’ just laughed at him. Cid hunched his shoulders and scowled. This method of communication was weird. Like a PHS for the brain, he was catching hints of Aeris’ feelings and the deeper meaning behind her words. It was fucking strange is what it was.
‘Relax, Cid. This isn’t anything bad. Do you want to know what’s going on?’
‘A fuckin’ explanation would be kinda helpful, yeah.’
‘Well then, how should I put this… you remember the WEAPONS right, Cid? They weren’t very helpful against Jenova, where they?’
‘Kinda hard ta ferget somethin’ that big, let alone five or six of ‘em… but yer right, they did fuck all ta stop Jenova.’
‘Gaia’s under the impression that it’s all a matter of scale. After all, you don’t fight cancer with a sledgehammer, right?’
Cid experienced a feeling of foreboding like none he had ever felt before. Whatever Aeris was going to say next, Cid just knew he was not going to like it.
‘Scale, huh? What then, is She buildin’ bigger one now and decided to get an engineer’s input on ‘em? Or are they all gonna fly?’
‘Not… exactly. Um. Do you remember what we learned about how the cycle of the Lifestream works? Each life is born with a spark of the Lifestream inside of them, that spark grows stronger as they live their lives until the day they die, when that happens all life returns to the Lifestream, making it stronger and adding to the global consciousness.’
‘… What about it? You’re stallin’ Aeris.’
‘I’m sorry. Okay, to summarize; the Calamity is the Enemy of the Planet, so the Weapons were created to fight Jenova. Except this fight is less a battle and more… Jenova is a Virus, and you don’t fight sickness with force. You need rest, and care, and a healthy immune system.’
Unbidden, Cid’s mind went back to the basic biology course that was part of the Shin-Ra Officer education package. Immune systems produced antibodies to combat infections. Often specific antibodies remained in the bloodstream and made it difficult to impossible for the same virus to reoccur in the same person more than once. That was why you only suffered through Chocobo Pox once in a lifetime. Those antibodies were the basis for the immunization shots that had been created against the more deadly diseases. Cid did not like the look of where this was going.
‘So, well - with the Geostigma running loose the Planet had collected a lot of knowledge about viruses recently. So She decided to do things properly.’
Cid refused to give in to the urge to ask the obvious stupid question when Aeris paused. With Cid refusing to speak, Aeris’ thought-voice was sheepish and apologetic.
‘The Planet doesn’t like things to go to waste, and it already had the bodies available, and they have all the knowledge of how to fight Jenova already, so all She really needed to do was tweak a few things here and there to… buff out the rough spots.’
‘Aeris, stop fuckin’ dancin’ around the point and git to it!’
Cid’s snarl made the liquid around him vibrate in echo of his rage. He hated getting the run-around. All this dithering was just making him cranky.
‘Sorry, Cid. You and I, the rest of Avalanche and… well, the SOLDIERs are going to be given a gift from the Planet that will allow us to purge Jenova and all her spawn from Gaia.’
‘By SOLDIERs… you ain’t jest talkin’ about Sephiroth and Spiky.’
‘No I’m not. Several years before Meteor threatened the Planet, Shin-Ra had a large number of SOLDIERs. When our Avalanche was tracking Sephiroth… there were only a few squads of Seconds and Thirds, who were pretty much permanently stationed at their bases. Before the Avalanche that we knew, there was another Avalanche that had a very cruel man named Fuhito working for them. He corrupted captured SOLDIERs and turned them into monsters. Before that, an Elite SOLDIER - one of Sephiroth’s contemporaries - named Genesis went rogue and took many SOLDIERs with him in his defection. He turned them into copies of himself, like what Hojo tried to do to Cloud. It was… a horrible time. Zack was always so sad - he had to kill so many friends in order to end their pain. Gaia can’t - what was done to those SOLDIERs, it tainted them. The Planet can’t take them back, not twisted the way they are.’
‘So She’s… recyclin’ ‘em?’
‘Something to that effect... It’s more of a return to factory settings. The Planet knows who they used to be, and Time is a bit… fluid here in the Lifestream. Once they’re cleansed of Jenova-taint and the mako in their bodies has stabilized, those SOLDIERs are going to be returned to life.’
‘Better an antivirus than the virus, huh?’
‘Cid! It’s not like that! These people deserve the chance to live!’
Cid rolled his eyes. To tell the truth, he could care less that the SOLDIER program in its entirety was being resurrected in order to play very aggressive nursemaids to the Planet. That was not the point. The issue was that the Cetra girl was far too trusting. The multi-generational conglomerate that was the Planet’s intelligence was rather like the largest committee in existence. Cid could tell her a few things about decisions made by committee. There was a reason that there was only one Captain on a ship, after all. Plus there was another little fact of biology that tended to be glossed over when people started throwing around terms like ‘antivirus’ and ‘immunization’.
‘Aeris, I know ya didn’t git much of a formal education, but ya did know that counteragents tend ta be opposite and equal ta the things they’re supposed ta neutralize, right?’
‘… What do you mean?’
‘An anti-virus is like a… a mirror of the virus it protects ya against. Did ya even bother ta figure out what was gonna happen when the Planet pulled this fuckin’ hat trick? I don’t even wanna think about what’s gonna happen when I git outta here. People don’t much like SOLDIER anymore, not after the Deepground Invasion, and alla the ones we’re gonna be gettin’ were tortured and fucked over before being killed by people they thought’ve as friends.’
Cid had a brief recollection of Cloud, with that blank-faced thousand-yard stare and ridiculous leather outfit going oversized sword to oversized sword with a poker-faced, leather-clad Former Shin-Ra General Sephiroth. Spiky was Avalanche’s anti-Sephiroth, and look at where that had taken him. There was no way in frigid frozen Hel that Cid would willingly agree to anything that resulted in wearing leather underthings. The wings might be fun, if he could get two - only having one was fucking ridiculous, and Cid wanted none of that nonsense - but from what he could remember space-bitch had tentacles in awkward places and eyeballs on her tits. No, and fuck no, and your mother twice. No wonder Sephiroth had gone crackerjacks, with that sort of ancestry spliced into his fucked up family tree. Poor kid, puberty must have been hell.
‘… Oh my.’
Aeris sounded a little stunned. Part of that was the amount of linked conclusions Cid’s brain was spitting out. People tended to forget that Cid had pioneered most of the innovations in aeronautics for the last couple of decades. He was angry so often because people were stupid. Basic common sense was way too fucking rare for his peace of mind, and his brain never stopped running the calculations. Cid manfully resisted the urge to scream at the girl in frustration. Wisdom of the Planet his ass. Damn kids thought they knew everything and never actually stopped to think about anything.
‘Don’t be that way, Cid. It’s for the best.’
‘Idiot girl! There is no such thing as mandatory mutation for the greater good!’
Cid had a raging headache. An unfortunate sign, because from the sounds of things it was only partially being caused by his attempts to understand moron-logic.
‘Hey!’
Wonderful. He was being enhanced. Fuck it all, he had liked being the normal one. Did nobody bother with agreement forms anymore? Fucking Hojo, Cid just bet that this sort of beg forgiveness mentality was his fault somehow. If nothing else, Aeris being exposed to him while she was tiny had irreversibly scarred her psyche. Cid could only resign himself to cursing creatively over his fate and wondered how much longer he had until he was done.
‘Actually… you’re done now.’
A solid impact rocked Cid’s crystalline cage, cracks splintering over the outer layer. Another strike, and Cid’s materia-gem shell splintered, spilling mako out to splash against stone. Strong hands grabbed Cid by the upper arms and hauled him up out of the fountain and away from the glowing liquid. Cid gasped as the air hit his face, coughing without sound. Each heave pushed more mako out of his lungs, and it was the single most disturbing thing he had ever experienced. It was a long minute until Cid was able to gasp actual air and another, longer minute until he stopped choking on mako. Lungs burning and eyes watering, clothes plastered to his skin and his spear still clenched tight in one hand, Cid slumped against his rescuer. A careful hand had been rubbing Cid’s back for a while, and that eventually prompted the pilot to blink the spots clear of his vision and look up at his erstwhile knight in… a leather body-suit - surprise, surprise - and red. Lots of red.
“Oh.” Cid hacked, sounding like an upset, waterlogged Persian Cat, and sagged, resting all of his weight against his friend’s chest. “Hey, Vincent.”
(Word Count: 2,311)
=/=
There we go with another AU... I think this is one of the few story-lines that I don't give Cid children beyond his older-friend-advisor role that he plays for the younger members of Avalanche. It's one of the less developed FFVII fic I have, and I think that the fact that it happens post-game (post-DoC even) has a lot to do with that. For one thing, I don't have any canon events to fall back on when I'm stumped for ideas. For another, I have to figure out how I want the action to work out, and then decide just how deep into Gaian politics I want to go. I started this thing pre-AC release, so Rufus and the Turks suddenly showed up, bringing their sneaky brand of awesome and then suddenly all this history and background and timeline information was available thanks to CC and whatnot...
So as you can see, I mostly sat on this for a while looking like a stunned goldfish while the Planet started gathering up SOLDIERs like a small child let loose at an Easter Egg Hunt. What can I say? I likes me my fix-it fics.
... Whyfor I has to work? Can't I just get paid to play video games and write fanfic all day? I promise to keep my wordcount up... Yeah. I didn't think so. *sad face*
=/=
HERE THERE BE DRAGONS!!
♥
♠
♥
♣
♥
♠
♥
♣
♥
♠
♥
A Final Fantasy VII Fanfiction
Author: Sanjuno Shori Niko
Summary: Consent forms? The Planet mocks your silly little consent forms!.Who doesn't want to be turned into Something Nature Never Intended, after all?
Timeline: The rest of the fic is here!
=/=
(In which Cid would like to lodge a complaint with the Planetary Management.)
Cid floated in a sea of shifting green, glaring out at the glowing nothingness around him as he brooded.
‘Sulked!’
‘Shut up!’
His sense of time was skewed, but judging from the intensity of his tea cravings Cid had been stuck in the mako fountain for at least a day, maybe less, but it was more likely that he had been trapped here for longer than that. He kept blacking out, losing track of his senses, and when he woke up after every stint of unconsciousness he felt a little bit different than before.
‘That only makes sense! After all…’
‘Shut up! I ain’t listenin’!’
Cid ached, all the way down to his bones, and his thoughts felt raw and exposed. He had wrapped arms and legs around Venus Gospel like he was some kind of damned monkey. The spear was lit up like a fucking Yule tree, sparkling like an overenthusiastic preschooler had been let loose with a year’s supply of glitter. Cid was not happy with his weapon at the moment, but like fuck he was going to let go of it. Venus Gospel was his Ultima Weapon, so fuck off.
‘Possessive much?’
Unfortunately his weapon was incapable of cluing Cid in to exactly what the fuck was going on. Someone was way too fucking full of themselves.
‘I’m more than willing to explain, if you would just stop ignoring me!’
‘Fuck off! I can’t hear you!’
Beyond the oddity of his spear glowing it up and his frequent, uncontrollable desire to nap, Cid was starting to get the impression that something weird was going on.
More weird than usual, that is. After all, Cid was the one it was happening to. If it had been Cloud who had been eaten by the Planet it would have been understandable. Cid would have gotten over whatever that meant fairly quickly. Hel, the only person in Avalanche less suited to get kidnapped by the mystical cryptic forces of Destiny was Barrett. Cid had started getting used to being ignored by the bat-shit crazy things that happened to the others. The worst thing Cid needed to worry about was an over affectionate assistant. None of this resurrected sins of the past nonsense. Obviously he had gotten far too comfortable and let his guard down enough for karma to bite him in the ass.
‘Oh pish, you grump!’
It was probably Cloud’s fault somehow. Cid could get over the Planet being taken with the sudden desire to make his life a bit more exciting, but he could have done without the theatrics. Fuck it all, he was a rocket scientist with nothing to do! He was bored. No matter how dull things got however, Captain Cid Highwind absolutely refused to listen to, talk back to, or even acknowledge the existence of any voices that may or may not be offering bitchy commentary on his thought processes.
‘Now you’re just being stubborn.’
‘Damn straight.’
Cid would not recant his stance on this issue. Yes, as a pilot Cid spoke to and about his planes like they were his precious children. Yes, it was a given, even expected, for a genius of Cid’s calibre to have a few… particular quirks. So yes, sometimes Cid acted like the birds had something to say back - at least he avoided putting voice modules in the planes, unlike some less well-adjusted engineers Cid could name. Cait Sith was just… Cid was not even going there. Talking to AI’s was one thing… talking to the voices in your head? That was just plain crazy.
‘Oh? Well then…’
Cid Highwind was uncrackable. He could manage to lead Avalanche in a relatively straight line whenever Cloud decided to prance off into whatever sparkly unicorn fantasy land existed in his fluffy blond head and had once hijacked his airship back from Shin-Ra with nothing more than a well-earned reputation and a few yelled curses. This was peanuts compared to the shit he had gone through.
‘So… I suppose you don’t mind if I start telling everyone about that huge crush of yours. You know, the one you have on-’
‘Shut up, Aeris!’
‘Ha! You talked to me. I win.’
‘Gods damn it.’
‘Oh don’t be like that, Cid. After all, he does have a very nice-‘
‘Don’t you fuckin’ go there.’
Aeris’ just laughed at him. Cid hunched his shoulders and scowled. This method of communication was weird. Like a PHS for the brain, he was catching hints of Aeris’ feelings and the deeper meaning behind her words. It was fucking strange is what it was.
‘Relax, Cid. This isn’t anything bad. Do you want to know what’s going on?’
‘A fuckin’ explanation would be kinda helpful, yeah.’
‘Well then, how should I put this… you remember the WEAPONS right, Cid? They weren’t very helpful against Jenova, where they?’
‘Kinda hard ta ferget somethin’ that big, let alone five or six of ‘em… but yer right, they did fuck all ta stop Jenova.’
‘Gaia’s under the impression that it’s all a matter of scale. After all, you don’t fight cancer with a sledgehammer, right?’
Cid experienced a feeling of foreboding like none he had ever felt before. Whatever Aeris was going to say next, Cid just knew he was not going to like it.
‘Scale, huh? What then, is She buildin’ bigger one now and decided to get an engineer’s input on ‘em? Or are they all gonna fly?’
‘Not… exactly. Um. Do you remember what we learned about how the cycle of the Lifestream works? Each life is born with a spark of the Lifestream inside of them, that spark grows stronger as they live their lives until the day they die, when that happens all life returns to the Lifestream, making it stronger and adding to the global consciousness.’
‘… What about it? You’re stallin’ Aeris.’
‘I’m sorry. Okay, to summarize; the Calamity is the Enemy of the Planet, so the Weapons were created to fight Jenova. Except this fight is less a battle and more… Jenova is a Virus, and you don’t fight sickness with force. You need rest, and care, and a healthy immune system.’
Unbidden, Cid’s mind went back to the basic biology course that was part of the Shin-Ra Officer education package. Immune systems produced antibodies to combat infections. Often specific antibodies remained in the bloodstream and made it difficult to impossible for the same virus to reoccur in the same person more than once. That was why you only suffered through Chocobo Pox once in a lifetime. Those antibodies were the basis for the immunization shots that had been created against the more deadly diseases. Cid did not like the look of where this was going.
‘So, well - with the Geostigma running loose the Planet had collected a lot of knowledge about viruses recently. So She decided to do things properly.’
Cid refused to give in to the urge to ask the obvious stupid question when Aeris paused. With Cid refusing to speak, Aeris’ thought-voice was sheepish and apologetic.
‘The Planet doesn’t like things to go to waste, and it already had the bodies available, and they have all the knowledge of how to fight Jenova already, so all She really needed to do was tweak a few things here and there to… buff out the rough spots.’
‘Aeris, stop fuckin’ dancin’ around the point and git to it!’
Cid’s snarl made the liquid around him vibrate in echo of his rage. He hated getting the run-around. All this dithering was just making him cranky.
‘Sorry, Cid. You and I, the rest of Avalanche and… well, the SOLDIERs are going to be given a gift from the Planet that will allow us to purge Jenova and all her spawn from Gaia.’
‘By SOLDIERs… you ain’t jest talkin’ about Sephiroth and Spiky.’
‘No I’m not. Several years before Meteor threatened the Planet, Shin-Ra had a large number of SOLDIERs. When our Avalanche was tracking Sephiroth… there were only a few squads of Seconds and Thirds, who were pretty much permanently stationed at their bases. Before the Avalanche that we knew, there was another Avalanche that had a very cruel man named Fuhito working for them. He corrupted captured SOLDIERs and turned them into monsters. Before that, an Elite SOLDIER - one of Sephiroth’s contemporaries - named Genesis went rogue and took many SOLDIERs with him in his defection. He turned them into copies of himself, like what Hojo tried to do to Cloud. It was… a horrible time. Zack was always so sad - he had to kill so many friends in order to end their pain. Gaia can’t - what was done to those SOLDIERs, it tainted them. The Planet can’t take them back, not twisted the way they are.’
‘So She’s… recyclin’ ‘em?’
‘Something to that effect... It’s more of a return to factory settings. The Planet knows who they used to be, and Time is a bit… fluid here in the Lifestream. Once they’re cleansed of Jenova-taint and the mako in their bodies has stabilized, those SOLDIERs are going to be returned to life.’
‘Better an antivirus than the virus, huh?’
‘Cid! It’s not like that! These people deserve the chance to live!’
Cid rolled his eyes. To tell the truth, he could care less that the SOLDIER program in its entirety was being resurrected in order to play very aggressive nursemaids to the Planet. That was not the point. The issue was that the Cetra girl was far too trusting. The multi-generational conglomerate that was the Planet’s intelligence was rather like the largest committee in existence. Cid could tell her a few things about decisions made by committee. There was a reason that there was only one Captain on a ship, after all. Plus there was another little fact of biology that tended to be glossed over when people started throwing around terms like ‘antivirus’ and ‘immunization’.
‘Aeris, I know ya didn’t git much of a formal education, but ya did know that counteragents tend ta be opposite and equal ta the things they’re supposed ta neutralize, right?’
‘… What do you mean?’
‘An anti-virus is like a… a mirror of the virus it protects ya against. Did ya even bother ta figure out what was gonna happen when the Planet pulled this fuckin’ hat trick? I don’t even wanna think about what’s gonna happen when I git outta here. People don’t much like SOLDIER anymore, not after the Deepground Invasion, and alla the ones we’re gonna be gettin’ were tortured and fucked over before being killed by people they thought’ve as friends.’
Cid had a brief recollection of Cloud, with that blank-faced thousand-yard stare and ridiculous leather outfit going oversized sword to oversized sword with a poker-faced, leather-clad Former Shin-Ra General Sephiroth. Spiky was Avalanche’s anti-Sephiroth, and look at where that had taken him. There was no way in frigid frozen Hel that Cid would willingly agree to anything that resulted in wearing leather underthings. The wings might be fun, if he could get two - only having one was fucking ridiculous, and Cid wanted none of that nonsense - but from what he could remember space-bitch had tentacles in awkward places and eyeballs on her tits. No, and fuck no, and your mother twice. No wonder Sephiroth had gone crackerjacks, with that sort of ancestry spliced into his fucked up family tree. Poor kid, puberty must have been hell.
‘… Oh my.’
Aeris sounded a little stunned. Part of that was the amount of linked conclusions Cid’s brain was spitting out. People tended to forget that Cid had pioneered most of the innovations in aeronautics for the last couple of decades. He was angry so often because people were stupid. Basic common sense was way too fucking rare for his peace of mind, and his brain never stopped running the calculations. Cid manfully resisted the urge to scream at the girl in frustration. Wisdom of the Planet his ass. Damn kids thought they knew everything and never actually stopped to think about anything.
‘Don’t be that way, Cid. It’s for the best.’
‘Idiot girl! There is no such thing as mandatory mutation for the greater good!’
Cid had a raging headache. An unfortunate sign, because from the sounds of things it was only partially being caused by his attempts to understand moron-logic.
‘Hey!’
Wonderful. He was being enhanced. Fuck it all, he had liked being the normal one. Did nobody bother with agreement forms anymore? Fucking Hojo, Cid just bet that this sort of beg forgiveness mentality was his fault somehow. If nothing else, Aeris being exposed to him while she was tiny had irreversibly scarred her psyche. Cid could only resign himself to cursing creatively over his fate and wondered how much longer he had until he was done.
‘Actually… you’re done now.’
A solid impact rocked Cid’s crystalline cage, cracks splintering over the outer layer. Another strike, and Cid’s materia-gem shell splintered, spilling mako out to splash against stone. Strong hands grabbed Cid by the upper arms and hauled him up out of the fountain and away from the glowing liquid. Cid gasped as the air hit his face, coughing without sound. Each heave pushed more mako out of his lungs, and it was the single most disturbing thing he had ever experienced. It was a long minute until Cid was able to gasp actual air and another, longer minute until he stopped choking on mako. Lungs burning and eyes watering, clothes plastered to his skin and his spear still clenched tight in one hand, Cid slumped against his rescuer. A careful hand had been rubbing Cid’s back for a while, and that eventually prompted the pilot to blink the spots clear of his vision and look up at his erstwhile knight in… a leather body-suit - surprise, surprise - and red. Lots of red.
“Oh.” Cid hacked, sounding like an upset, waterlogged Persian Cat, and sagged, resting all of his weight against his friend’s chest. “Hey, Vincent.”
(Word Count: 2,311)
=/=
There we go with another AU... I think this is one of the few story-lines that I don't give Cid children beyond his older-friend-advisor role that he plays for the younger members of Avalanche. It's one of the less developed FFVII fic I have, and I think that the fact that it happens post-game (post-DoC even) has a lot to do with that. For one thing, I don't have any canon events to fall back on when I'm stumped for ideas. For another, I have to figure out how I want the action to work out, and then decide just how deep into Gaian politics I want to go. I started this thing pre-AC release, so Rufus and the Turks suddenly showed up, bringing their sneaky brand of awesome and then suddenly all this history and background and timeline information was available thanks to CC and whatnot...
So as you can see, I mostly sat on this for a while looking like a stunned goldfish while the Planet started gathering up SOLDIERs like a small child let loose at an Easter Egg Hunt. What can I say? I likes me my fix-it fics.
... Whyfor I has to work? Can't I just get paid to play video games and write fanfic all day? I promise to keep my wordcount up... Yeah. I didn't think so. *sad face*
=/=
HERE THERE BE DRAGONS!!
♥
♠
♥
♣
♥
♠
♥
♣
♥
♠
♥