[FFVII] Music Meme 1. The Birth of a God; Uematsu Nobuo
She thinks her heart is racing before she sees the beast and then everything kicks into a higher gear; all she hears is her heartbeat, her breath, and the whistle of blades through the air.
He did not look like this when he descended on her hometown years ago. He was human, then, and where eastern people might have loathed him as demon, Wutai revered less motherly gods: just because the water can be cruel is no reason to spurn its power as evil.
But in Wutai even gods can be fought and defeated, and she keeps that in her heart and in her arm as she lets Conformer fly, again, again, again.
2. Above the Rising Falls; Sephfire
There's nowhere to pause, nowhere to hide; the shadows are everywhere, and they're multiplying. Da Chao's belly is full of them, hundreds and thousands of midnight ink wrigglers and flitting scarlet mages. There are too many, too fast, and she'll never and as she falls she thinks she hears the sound of Aeris weeping.
3. The Chase of Highway; Nobuo Uematsu
He's going to kill her. She's going to be nothing but a Yuffie smear along the Upper Fifth's Outbound and there'll be too many bugs in her teeth to ID her from her dental records, which as far as she's concerned means they'll never take her alive and also that they'll never really truly know it was her, even if Cloud will always suspect.
And if she doesn't manage to kill herself in a spectacular explosion halfway out of Midgar, well, Cloud's going to kill her.
But god damn, it will have been worth it.
4. Heaven's Not Enough; Steve Conte
"You know what I think," she says, and he knows he's going to hear it regardless of his feelings on the matter. He tucks his chin more deeply into the folds of his cloak and waits.
"I think... all this Promised Land stuff," she starts again, waving her hands to shoo away the traces of her unfinished sentence. "It's pointless. I mean, don't people see that? It's just dumb to go on waiting when you could be out there making things better already."
She's not looking at him, which means she knows full well the impact of her words. He does her the dubious courtesy of pretending the words are not intended for him.
"Some," he murmurs at last, "have no hope of things improving, no matter which course they try."
Her chin firms, lips flat, and she glares at him with eyes the colour of a stormy ocean.
"Then what the hell makes them take that next step?"
5. Full Frontal Assault; Overclocked Remix
She gives her battles everything in her; he strives to hold it all back. It's not until she sees him shudder and the change ripple over his body that she understands why that might be so.
6. Lithium Flower; Yoko Kanno
Yuffie is not at home on the water, or in it. Rivers have always given her a certain kind of peace, and she sleeps best when it's raining, when Leviathan's soothing whispers and promises drip down her walls to soak her tatami where she left the window open (oops). But she's not at home in the water, or on it, any more than a fish is at home on a barbecue.
She downright sucks at surfing.
Cloud takes to it with the same unnatural aptitude he has for everything that might conceivably involve points, tokens or prizes, and she hates him for it. But if he's here, participating, then everyone else has to be, too.
Which means that Vincent's not at home in the water, or on it, either.
But he is incredibly soggy.
7. Night on the Bare Mountain; Mussorgsky
Chaos stretches its wings and a line of monsters shudder and fall; it roars and rasps its fury, and one by one their foes are slain. It takes precious minutes for Vincent to return to himself, careful breaths and careful masking of his fingers as they tremble on Death Penalty's
[looooong pause as another bee bites the dust]
...and blah blah blah eventually Chaos subsides, but it is always watching. Waiting. Mwa. Ha. Ha. Ha. Hah.
8. Gaia; Taimat
Reeve only stares when the reporter asks him what he thinks of the slogans appearing in the slums, the sandwich board declarations about the end of the world having taken on a new and excitable slant after Meteor.
He wants to say, yes, the Planet is coming to an end. No, there is nothing we can do about it.
What he says is, "I can't promise anything on that one, except that of course we'll do whatever we can to help."
And if he sometimes feels that genocide would be helping, he's got enough experience with double-lives and public relations not to say so on TV.
9. You Are My Candy Girl; The Archies
"You are a dork," Yuffie shrieks in evident delight. "What are these records. Gawd, Vincent, they're not even on CD. Are they signed? Did you go to their concerts? I bet you went to their--"
"Of course not," Vincent says, without much embarrassment. "They never came so far south when they toured."
10. Silent Edge; Dirge of Cerberus
The city is quiet around him. He imagines Tifa, Barret, even Cloud would find it stranger than he does; though he remembers Midgar always as busier than hell itself, it was never home to him the way it was to his compatriots.