WHO: Celebrant Bremondt Frietberg and Reis Duelar.
WHAT: Reis makes contact after two years.
WHEN: Last night.
STATUS/RATING: Complete/Terrible (jk G). also i didn't proofread this at all SORRY

( He wondered, frantically, how old he must look to her. Was she holding onto some image of him in his prime, the hale, hearty 40-year-old who had taken her in as a girl? He had been holding onto one of her, he had to confess: 21 years old, bright-eyed, helping him run his home in the absence of his late wife. Before that damned knight had come in and ruined everything. )

Mariella had been at Balamb for four years now. She was still considered an underclassman, and when they were assigning duties for SeeD missions, she was usually stuck with something like support or medic at the base camp, if she was assigned at all. But Mariella didn't mind. She wasn't a soldier by nature, and in the last few months, as things got stranger and stranger, she was beginning to doubt that she was meant to be a SeeD at all. She didn't like violence. She wanted to know how to defend herself, but going off to kill the sorceress, their classmates betraying them, and now the great war hero Sephiroth alive and well--it was a lot to deal with. Mariella didn't flatter herself that she was all that emotionally well equipped.

There was one thing she was good at, however, and that was materia. She was one of the school's youngest and brightest white mages, though she had to admit she had little interest in offensive or defensive materia--she just wanted to cast spells that would make people happy. Twice a week, you could find her in the medbay with the younger children, testing out a new materia she had synthesized to produce ephemeral, fluttering butterflies made of incandescent light; or one that showered down in a glimmering spray on the patients. Her teachers said they were pretty, but useless (much like Mariella herself, she thought with no small pang in her chest), but she always said--( how could it be useless if it made someone happy? )

JULY 12, 2001.
"You're Edea, right? Edea Kramer?"

Edea turns to see a young man in a dark suit smiling over at her from one table over. He waves as if she isn't looking directly at him, and then looks at his hand sheepishly. She smiles.

"I am," she says. "Have we met?"

"Oh--oh, no--well, maybe!" he laughs, rubbing his neck. "I've been following your work. You and your husband's, with the Garden program."

Edea dips her head in acknowledgment. "Are you a SeeD graduate?"

"Me?" He laughs again and takes a drink of water. "No. No, I missed the cutoff for enrollment at Midgarden. May I?" he adds, standing up and gesturing at the empty seat at her table. "Your husband isn't joining you, is he?"

Edea hesitates--Midgar--but lifts her hand graciously at the chair. The man smiles gratefully and, picking up his paper and briefcase with a clumsiness that sends red all up his neck and ears, scrambles between their tables and into the seat. ( Edea can't place his age. At first she would have said no older than twenty, but now that he's closer, she can see the beginnings of smile lines around his mouth, and dark circles under his eyes. Twenty-five, perhaps. )

Who: Valmafra Lenande (narrative)
What: The Hour of the Wolf.
Where: Garden
When: Late evening/early morning
Warnings: Nope

( It's the time between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning. You can't sleep, and all you can see is the troubles and the problems and the ways that your life should've gone but didn't. All you can hear is the sound of your own heart. )

WHO: Aerith Gainsborough
WHAT: This is the last time she will summon.
WHEN: Today.
WHERE: :(
WARNINGS: FEELS!!!!!!


( How terribly funny how it has come full-circle, she thinks – she can feel her fear pressing her forward as she bends over herself, her eyes wide with surprise. )

WHO: Cloud Strife (and Aerith Gainsborough, and surprise guests).
WHEN: The first night of the rescue mission.
WHERE: Bone Village.
WHAT: Cloud has a dream.

( I'll see you when it's all over. )

WHO: Milleuda Folles, mentions of her family.
WHAT: Revenge.
WHEN: First day of the last mission.
WHERE: Battlefield, various places.
WARNINGS: lol, not graphic violence?

( Each spoonful tastes like nothing except dirt but Milleuda finishes her soup, nibbles on the turnip greens in the bottom of her bowl, and stares outside their grimy window into the Galbadian frost, pretending that she is not still cold, still hungry. )

WHO: Cloud Strife.
WHEN: The day after the battle.
WHERE: Somewhere outside of Balamb.
WHAT: Cloud comes back to consciousness...without his Sorceress.

( this is also a placeholder i'm so sorry )

PLACEHOLDER.

Who: Beatrix (mentions of Garnet & her family).
What: Reflections and self doubt.
Where: Her Room.
When: After the roster comes out, before she starts posting all over.
Rating: PG.
Status: complete

( But a little luck wouldn't hurt. )

WHO: Ramza Lugria. NPC: Dycedarg Beoulve.
WHAT: A phone call.
WHEN: This afternoon, after seeing Orran's post.
RATING/STATUS: PG/Complete.

( You were always so narrow-minded, Ramza. Your ideals of right and wrong are as rigid and myopic as they were back home. )

On Tuesday, Rufus Shinra called Heidegger into his conference room. The man was taller and wider than Rufus than he had any right to be. He waddled in, his arms making long cuts through the air at his sides, and sat down heavily at a seat near the president. Rufus was going over a series of open folders, their contacts spread across the mahogany in front of him. He said nothing when Heidegger entered, and the head of Public Safety Maintenance shifted impatiently in his seat for a full three minutes before he gave into curiosity and peered across the table at the papers.

News reports; military dispatches; labwork from Hojo. He recognized, instantly, the shock of red hair that was Rosso the Crimson's identification photo. Hesitantly, he reached out one large hand, and when Rufus didn't respond, shifted one of the papers ever so slightly towards him. Weiss the Immaculate. Below him, Nero the Sable. The Tsviets. Rufus was going over the Deepground reports.

( Heidegger swallowed a lump in his throat the size of the Plate. )

WHO: Shelke the Transparent. Appearances by Marlene Wallace, Weiss the Immaculate, and Rosso the Crimson.
WHAT: Shelke has misgivings. Logical misgivings.
WHEN: From Tuesday into today, this afternoon.
STATUS/RATING: PG? Placeholder! CHECK BACK IN A BIT.