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ff_exchange2014-02-03 12:34 pm
ffexchange_mod) wrote in ff_exchange2014-02-03 12:34 pm
Entry tags:
2014 Final Fantasy Kiss Battle
RULES
- All prompts will be organized by fandom, using Master Links. When leaving prompts, please put it under the right canon! If in a compilation canon, please include the important details!
- To leave a prompt: leave one prompt per comment, with FANDOM: CHARACTERS/RELATIONSHIP in the subject line and your prompt in the body.
- To leave a fill: reply to the comment in question. Please use the subject line of your comment to label your work: TITLE (if relevant), FANDOM, CHARACTERS/RELATIONSHIP, RATING (ANY KINKS, WARNINGS, FLAGS).
- There should be kissing! All kinds of kisses are welcome: gen, shippy, smutty, chaste, familial, friendly, angry, happy! We’re pretty open to anything you want to call kissing. We are fans of all of it.
- Fanart, fanfiction, drabbles, doodles, live action movies -- whatever you want to supply, we’d like to have it.
- Be kind to others regarding character or ship choices and prompts. This should be fun for everyone!
- Prompt early, prompt often, and leave as many as you want.
- Prompts can be filled multiple times!
- To leave a blitzkrieg kiss: If you have something but no one has prompted it yet, blitzkiss away! Just reply to the comment for your fandom, and make sure you use the subject line to label your work.
- Be sure to check back often -- new kissing action could be showing up everywhere!
- Spread the word! Tell your friends!
FINAL FANTASY KISS BATTLE 2014
We will be running the Kissing Battle on Dreamwidth only. There are two main reasons for this: 1) Dreamwidth’s comment limit is huge, allowing for longer kissing masterpieces; and 2) Dreamwidth still supports subject lines for comments, which are vital to a meme like the Kiss Battle. However, the Battle is open to everyone. Feel free to participate with your Dreamwidth (account creation is invite-free right now~!), your Livejournal or other OpenID account (see here if you want to set up an OpenID), or anonymously.
Have fun! Get smoochin'!
FINAL FANTASY I
FINAL FANTASY II
FINAL FANTASY III
FINAL FANTASY IV COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY V
FINAL FANTASY VI
FINAL FANTASY VII COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY VIII
FINAL FANTASY IX
FINAL FANTASY X AND X-2
FINAL FANTASY XI
FINAL FANTASY XII COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY XIII COMPILATION
DISSIDIA: FINAL FANTASY COMPILATION
FINAL FANTASY: CRYSTAL CHRONICLES COMPILATION
ASSORTED FINAL FANTASY
CROSSOVERS (WITHIN FF)
CROSSOVERS (FF/OTHER)
OTHER / ASSORTED
Re: FFVII (OGC): Tifa/Aerith
There were many times that Aerith would take Tifa's hands, and she does magic well enough to heal her own hurts, but there's something tender, almost blessed in cradling those bruised hands and arms in Aerith's own calloused palms that work with the dirt and the weeds to cast earthly light to heal them. She drew strength from Tifa, which seemed bottomless and newly sprung.
Aerith's strength comes from the voices of her mother below and her mother who wields a broom and spade, and she felt like such a witch what with all these suits chasing her so there was delight in giving back so openly.
"Hey Tifa, want to give me some pointers?"
"Hmm?"
"With fighting, of course! I want to send some big lummox flying one day with big kapow!" And she raised her fist up in the air, a little hop from her feet.
Tifa looked at her blankly for one moment before a big grin spread out that made Aerith smile big too in mirrored reaction. "Oh, man, would I? Of course I'll show you a few things to do. I mean you got to learn the basics, like how you stand and how to use your arms. Oh, and I'll show you how to stretch before doing any routine and how to build up your stamina just like how my master taught me and..."
Needless to say, Aerith got to have the most female bonding moments to last another lifetime.
Each moment of stretching, of running round the campsite to build stamina, and of maintaining Horse Stance ("you really feel it here and under here!"), Tifa related more of Master Zangan's teachings, and of how Tifa had made her own modifications for some of them.
"It is the mind and the body aligned with the energy within you and with the energy outside. The wind, the earth, the water and the air. Metal also emits their own energies, but to feel all that is to empty the mind. Breathing is also important. Fighting and breathing go hand in hand. The very word "chi" means "breath", and that is the natural force that guides the world and our bodies."
Aerith wondered if this Zangan knew the ways of the earth, the way Tifa talked about the form. If she were to meet him, would he help to articulate the voices she heard and the whispers that sound so dark and familiar?
When she closed her eyes, as when she and Tifa were meditating, she doesn't see the clear green light she thought she could see that is the root of the planet. When breathed, she heard her own heart and Tifa's words through her mind. The words of her mother were replaced by Tifa's soft, husky voice telling her how to breathe and how to know your own self.
*
The more she talked with Tifa, the more she thought herself lucky and envious. It was easy to navigate the lifelines of Midgar via the Mako pipes and the rumor mill that carried information through the throngs of people above and below. It was always a maze for her to try go through and not reach a deadend because then it meant going back to the vaguely remembered steel walls and white lab coats that threatened what she knew very clearly: Mother Elmyra and her handmade quilts and clothes, tired but knowing smiles from her neighbors that are Elmyra's friends and therefore her friends because she got that green touch that they used to remember before the land depleted in nutrients. When she worked on the garden, she thought it was fairies that spoke to her although she had always known better.
Tifa passed down knowledge from people before her, and she doesn't have to feel like she was being watched constantly. She doesn't hear the voices of the dead, but late at night in a bedroll Tifa would toss and turn and whisper conversations with the dead, and it would hurt because the following morning she'd roll out groggy and pensive but then feel that determined strength set upon her face like a flower facing the sun.
"...You okay?" asked Aerith. Tifa closed her eyes, collecting herself or feeling the moment of her breath going in and out. Then she would say, "I can be okay. I have my moments, but I'll be okay. I'll just wait and see."
When she had closed her eyes, Aerith had thought how dark her eyelashes were, and that with dark eyebrows she looked like that profile of a Wutai statue of a lady monk, both weary wise and tranquil, and she thought how lovely Tifa's lips were when she contemplated the answer: cupid bow shape and pink from a good face scrubbing, and just a little bit of a smile that was natural like Tifa had already made her peace with something inside herself.
*
The best person is like water. Water is good; it benefits all things and does not compete with them. It dwells in lowly places that all disdain. This is the reason it is closest to the Way.
Master Zangan told her that. Be like water. Move like water. Just as the chi can come from the wind gives life to us, that we ourselves hold inner fires therein, we should aspire to be like the element of water. To wear down the most stubborn of mountains, and to nourish the smallest of life beyond that of humans and animals and plants. It is essential but it is also the most lowly. That's what makes it better than all the gunsmoke and lightning flashes and even the magic that one can cast. All are so temporary in the face of how ubiquitous and versatile water can be.
Tifa knew that firsthand, and sometimes she took in lessons like a fool by living it firsthand. When the fires of revenge sputtered and were doused, it was the inner feeling of rampaging waters that carried her forward. Even still waters can drown. Guilt and sorrow weighed her down, either from tepid rain or from how heavy waterskins were when she was still recovering. In her dreams she couldn't breathe, so heavy the fog and how humid the slums could be below plate. Moisture leaked everywhere, and with it mold in the most insidious of cracks. Weeds prospered if there were no grass, and its roots reached deep down in the cracked earth so parched and malnourished.
She wished for a bit of green. There were no farm houses nearby in the heather fields where any one mountaineer can rest weary eyes on when the sight of the purple Nibel mounts became too twisted to watch. She even though Mako itself was like water, green and pulsating this lifeblood of the planet. But not thick or unctuous like oils can be. It almost looked like air the way it coiled around when unrefined. They say that if you breathe in it, you fill your head with the lost souls that gave their last breath. An old wives' tale, but one that was given justification what with all the warning signs and the instruction manuals that the plant workers were given of the dangers of Mako.
If Tifa were to fall in the Lifestream, would she have the voices of Biggs and Wedge and Jessie in her mind? Would she see her father and mother, one she felt she failed and the other she felt she lost and can't find? Sometimes she wanted to ask Aerith, "oh Aerith, tell me that my parents can still speak? Tell me Jessie's regrets so that I may carry them for her and know her. Tell me that Biggs and Wedge were really scared because they tried to hide it for a long time that it can't be good for them."
But if she asked that, then she wouldn't be any better than the scientists who wanted to ask her where the Promised Land was, and Aerith admitted she doesn't think that existed. She wanted assurance that they weren't just rubbed out of existence like a mistake in the writing. That she could protect themselves from feeling alone if no one would ever be alone in death and beyond.
But the two of them, they're as in the dark as water was.
*
"How handy are you with that staff?" asked Tifa.
Aerith gave a little twirl, a bit awkward but it went through her fingers with ease. "Pretty good if I just wanted to discourage something smaller than me from getting closer. A good bonk is all you need sometimes. But it's more like I use it to channel spells from the earth. I bet you could do better with it, though."
"Hmm, Zangan didn't teach me much about using a quarter staff or anything like that. He said that he's more of a master with hand-to-hand things, but if I wanted to learn more, he could refer me a temple in Wutai. That's where he grew up in, you know. But Wutai is so close to Nibelheim, really, so I could have gone."
Aerith gave a nod, contemplating. How easy it was for Tifa to talk about her life. She thought how interesting it was that the rest hadn't, really. Neither Red XIII nor Barret nor even Cloud, her other presumed hometowner, would talk much about their life. Not since Kalm. And not after they left Costa del Sol. It helps to piggyback off of Tifa's own reminiscence. It helps to lift the cobwebs of the future.
Tifa looked around the plains and at the edge of the forests nearby. "Do you want to practice? I know at least some basic strikes with a staff, so you can get the most out of your swing. Maybe some monsters that are easy to beat off would do it."
"All right! Look out, critters! I'll show you the results of my training!"
"Wow, you're getting into the spirit!"
"But that's how you talk sometimes, too."
"...Really?"
Tifa wasn't spared a moment of self-conscious contemplation. For no soon had Aerith made it for the brush, using her staff to guide her forward to feel out the terrain and for future quarry, when a troupe of frogs with an ill-look in their eyes came bounding outwards with wands came out. She saw Aerith pause and a delighted remark, "Oh that's really cute~"
Tifa hurried to Aerith's side before any further damage could ensue. "Wait Aerith, not these ones!"
It was too late, for a single whack from one devious amphibian did Aerith wobble. She turned around to face Tifa's direction, and saw with nearly dazed and spinning eyes, the look of someone bewitched. A triumphant grin spread upon her eyes, and Aerith shouted, "Aha! Tifa, let's practice on this one!" She pointed right at Tifa herself when the declaration was made, and the brawler stopped in her tracks.
She held out her arms, denying the charge. "Wait stop!"
*
A basin of boiled water, some clean washclothes, and first aid kit out in the open was all they needed.
"Ow. Ow."
"Turn your head away; you're saying it in my ear."
"You're pinching my skin, Tifa! The splinters are right there."
"And my head's still ringing when you shoved your staff at my ear. Should get my head examined in the next village or something."
"Yeah, well, good thing I'm not so much of a staff expert now, all things considered."
Once Tifa had managed to rouse Aerith from a confused state- and being propelled into a serious of other ailments that the unforgiving frogs have decided to beguile them into harm- they've routed them all with extreme prejudice. When they reached the campsite where Barret was minding whilst Cloud and Red searched for firewood, they gave a reproachful look at his unrestrained laugh at their expense.
Some soap on a wet washcloth, and Tifa washed away the dirt and grime from Aerith's hands and face. She could feel her palm and fingers through the cloth as she wiped across her cheeks and forehead. She thought for a moment that Tifa lingered a bit longer when she held her face. A flush of heat went up to her cheeks which she passed off as being from the water, but that soon faded when Tifa roughly wiped across her mouth.
"Mmm! Hey! I'm not some kid, you know!"
The brawler gave her a keen look, smirking and with a quirked eyebrow. "Could have surprised me, the way you look so happy when you're about to wail on me."
"Well, I can take care of myself perfectly fine, thanks mom."
"Oh yeah? So fine that you went facing off some wizard frogs without so much as a single echo herb on you or a sense materia?"
"Yes! Well... I admit I've never really uh... that's my first time seeing a frog, you know."
"Yeah?" said Tifa, wringing out the washcloth over the basin.
Aerith nodded. "There's a lot of things I've never seen. I've never even left the city before. Never thought there'd be things like how bright the stars look or how there'd be so much grass and trees in one place. Or pollen, hmmm."
Tifa laughed, and it was a beautiful laugh. "I probably miss pollen the least. But the stars don't get as bright in Midgar. But they're at their brightest at Nibelheim." Tifa stared at her hands, traces of smile still there but still. With her left hand, she picked at some scabs next to her fingernails and some small splinters embedded in her palm.
"Are you worried?" asked Tifa.
"You're not?"
"I'm very worried. So much so that sometimes I wish I could just find some place to live in instead and try to recover as much as I can in somewhere comfortable." The say she sighed out those words, they wearied Aerith as well. "But even more so because I don't really know what's the real story anymore. I just to grab Cloud and Barret and you and Nanaki all together and put us in a safe place so that we can rest and find out things before trying them out."
Tifa looked up and hard look left her breathless. "But I can't. So I'll just have to protect you and everyone here until we find out the truth. Real truth. Not just what Barret or Shinra or Cloud thinks it is, but I'll see it all. And then..." She looked back down, her hair hanging over her eyes and obscuring cheek and mouth, "...I'll try to get stronger to prepare for it."
Aerith lunged forward. She wrapped her arms around Tifa; the other girl never saw it coming. She nearly toppled over from her seat, almost disoriented by the mass of brown curls and corduroy red collar and the sudden feeling of green healing magic permeated through the embrace.
"I got you, Tifa, don't worry about it," said Aerith, all muffled voice in Tifa's hair and her neck and shoulder. "I don't want to just keep moving from place to place, running away or hiding or putting down everything like they don't mean anything. Let's see more stars and people and pollen, and that's gonna happen tomorrow and the next day and forever."
It was hard to say who started it first. Maybe it was Tifa, gave a tearful embrace back, kisses to cheek and holding Aerith's head by wrapping her arm all around. Then Aerith would turn her head to plant a kiss on her lips, and it's one of those kisses she heard can be shared between friends in books, but it's a long kiss now who's to say why it's any less fluid or as deep as water can be.