Final Fantasy 7 1/2: Magic Planet A Final Fantasy 7/Beast Wars crossover fanfic written by Stella Quetzacotl First created: Aug 10, 2001 Last modified: Aug 10, 2001 ~~~~~Legal Stuff~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a work of fiction written for entertainment purposes only. All FFVII characters are the sole property of Squaresoft. All Beast Wars characters are the sole property of Hasbro. All other characters are the sole property of the author. Most of the Maximals' and Predacons' dialogue in this chapter is taken from the Beast Wars pilot episode. While I have tried to keep it as close as possible, some changes were necessary due to storyline. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~Setting~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a TOTAL rehash of the Beast Wars saga, in which the group lands on the FF7 planet (what would you call it, anyway?) instead of Earth. They'll take different beast modes, but I'll keep the same names for convenience. The time is twelve years after the FF7 saga; Marlene is sixteen years old. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~Text Conventions~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [This is a character thought] *This is emphasized text* Chapter 1 As usual, Marlene Wallace was stargazing. The brown-haired teenager had been fascinated with the stars ever since she could remember. Her earliest memories consisted of a sky without stars, a sky dominated by the upper plate of the once- mighty city known as Midgar. Then her father had left on a long journey and left her in the care of Mrs. Gainsborough, at whose temporary residence in Kalm Town she'd seen the sky for the very first time. The day sky was beautiful, all aching blue and endless, but it was the night sky that truly captured her. So many stars, all, Mrs. Gainsborough had told her, at least as big as the sun, burning brightly in the infinitum of space. As she grew older, Marlene, called Marli by her friends, began to appreciate the significance of this idea. When her father returned from his journey, the two would take long walks in the evening outside of Kalm and gaze at the stars. Ever the doting parent, Barret Wallace would research constellations and star names in the daytime and teach them to her at night. Often he would help his daughter pick out new constellations, drawing pictures of Toxic Frogs and Ark Dragons from her fertile imagination. After the Wallaces returned to North Corel, Marli's father was often too busy to go stargazing with her anymore, so she would drag the local kids out with her or, more often, go alone. Like tonight, for example. It was a crisp evening in mid-autumn, cold enough that Marli needed her forest-green windbreaker and black gloves, and in the east Bandersnatch was rising. The Cokatolis's head pointed due north, toward the tail of the Cokatolis Chick, where the Pole Star resided. Sighing, Marli sat down in the grass and lay back, feeling as if she were visiting old friends. There was Deenglow, and Slaps, and Crown Lance, a constellation she'd drawn herself... Marli was close to dozing off when she saw the falling stars. She stood quickly, lips moving as she tried to calculate their path. [That's funny,] she thought, [my star charts didn't say anything about this...] Then she frowned. Were those meteorites getting *bigger*? They were. Cold fear clutched Marli's heart like the hand of a Magnade. Raised on stories centering around the terror of Meteor, the Great Destruction from the Sky, Marli was ill prepared for these streaking little brothers of Sephiroth's attack against the Planet. She tried to turn, to run back to her father in North Corel, but her legs seemed to weigh three tons and she was helpless to do anything but watch as the two comets fell to the Planet's surface. "Hull breach in Sector Seven! Guidance systems failing!" Optimus Primal, commander of the Maximal exploration ship Axalon, winced in sympathy as the ship creaked and shuddered in the onslaught of Predacon gunners. "Dis is ridiculous! We're an exploration ship, not a freakin' battle cruiser!" complained one of his crew members, for about the fiftieth time. "No choice," Optimus replied. "Our ship was the only one that could lock on to Megatron's warp signature." He gripped the console, fighting the urge to yell, as another Predacon salvo rocked the ship. "Shields doing a major fade!" yelled his bridge officer, panic beginning to edge his voice. Optimus reacted. "Plasma cannons to full power!" "Yo. Plasma cannons charging," his weapons officer replied. The designations were temporary - his real weapons officer and most of the rest of his crew were safely tucked away in stasis pods. But these four would do for now. A scream of tearing metal jerked Optimus out of his reverie - yet another hull breach. "The stasis pods!" his bridge officer gasped. "All plasma cannons! Fire!" Optimus ordered, hoping against hope that some of the stasis pods would stay in the cargo bay, especially the one containing - no, he daren't think about that now. The ship shuddered like an animal in its final agony, and Optimus saw stasis pods out of the side viewport. "We're going down!" his weapons officer announced. "Brace yourselves!" Optimus shut his eyes and held on. [Please, Primus,] he prayed, [let all of us survive.] As the objects from the sky descended, Marli pulled out her pocket telescope and extended it. The telescope revealed that they were not meteorites but ships, constructions of metal growing red with heat. One was dark under the fire of atmospheric entry and oblong- shaped, almost cute; the other was tinted gold behind the metal heat, spiky and lethal-looking. The gold ship crash-landed too far away for Marli to see, but the other came to a tortured rest in the Corel mountain range. Marli could hear shouting from her hometown and wondered idly how many others had seen the crash. "Marlene! Marle-e-e-ne!" Barret Wallace, every inch the fighter still at forty-seven, came running like a battering ram from the North Corel city limits. "Marlene, where are you?" "I'm right here, Dad!" Marli called, waving her arms. "Did you see it?" Barret tromped up to his daughter, grumbling. "Damn right I did," he said sharply. "What th' hell was it?" Marli snapped her telescope closed and put it back in the pocket of her windbreaker. "It was just a couple of meteorites, Dad," she said, crossing her fingers behind her back. "Nothing to worry about." Her father frowned. "You didn't say nothin' bout no meteorites." Marli shrugged. "My charts said there'd be a meteor shower, but they said they'd land closer to Mideel way. I didn't think it was worth mentioning." "Hot damn." Barret scratched his head. "Haven't seen you wrong like that in the longest time." "Well, if I had better equipment..." Marli suggested hopefully. Barret laughed. "Ya scrounger. C'mon, let's go home. You gotta get up early tomorrow." [I sure do,] Marli thought happily, fingering her telescope. It was five thirty-seven AM, to be exact, when Marli popped open the window of her bedroom and slipped out onto the dewy mulch below. Dragging her small travel bag after her, Marli turned - taking great care not to step on the zinnias and primroses growing alongside her house - and crept away, heading toward Mount Corel. "Marli?" Marli froze. "Laz!" she hissed, seeing the tow-headed twelve- year-old. "What're you doing?" Lazarus Townsend blinked. "Studying the habits of Cokatolis. What about you?" Marli sighed - Lazarus fancied himself a monster expert, and his habits had become a bit strange as a result. "I want to check out those meteorites that landed last night. I have to get up this early if I want to be back in time for school." "Mr. Henson says the meteorites were a bad omen," Laz said solemnly. "He says Meteor might be comin' back." Marli snorted. "My dad took care of Meteor a long time ago," she said proudly. "It ain't comin' back." "'S what they said about Sephiroth." "Yeah, and my dad took care of him too." Marli grinned at the younger boy. "Don't worry. I got my Materia with me. If something comes up, I can take it, no problem." Laz still looked skeptical. "Let me go get my Materia. If you're goin' to Mount Corel, you'll need someone to watch your back." The older girl frowned in distaste as Laz scampered away toward his own house. "I'd really rather go alone," she muttered at his retreating back. The two ships weren't anything she felt she could share with another person, much less Laz Townsend. Marli considered leaving him there and going up to Mount Corel alone, but before she could make her mind up to do so, Laz came running back, two Materia crystals clinking in his palm. "Okay, I'm ready, let's go." "All right, but you gotta keep up," Marli told him, turning away. "I'm not going to wait for you." She started at a half-jog toward Mount Corel. Stung, Laz watched her bobbing back for a moment, then hurried to catch up. "I won't slow you down," he insisted. "Damage report." "Believe me. You don't want to know." Optimus sighed. "That's what I thought. Any ideas as to where we are?" "Nope. But wherever we are, we're gettin' extremely abnormal energy readings." "Energon? So Megatron found the power source described on the golden disk?" "Not exactly... it's a radiating mineral similar t' energon, but not so similar that we can take excessive periods of exposure to it without takin' damage. I think the closest we can come to it is sayin' it's a new kind of energon." "Oh, for bootin' up cold! Didja sleep through the geology download? There ain't more than one kinda energon, pal!" "Well, now there's another one. It's a big universe - even we don't know everything about it." "Well, maybe *you* don't..." "Can it." Optimus turned to his appointed scientist and friend. "Any recommendations?" "Y'mean besides the obvious? Gettin' beast modes, learnin' as much as we can about the planet, blending in?" "Yeah." "Just one. Find out what the Preds're up to, then find a way to stop 'em." As it turned out, the Preds were up to much the same thing as the Maximals - that is, orientation. "Navigation! Is this the right planet!" demanded Megatron, Predacon criminal and aspiring conqueror of Cybertron. "Unknown. Navigation software has been damaged. Readings are inconsistent with those expected for intended destination." Megatron banged a fist on his command chair with an impatient roar. "Never mind that! Tell me if there is energon here!" "Unconfirmed. Energy readings similar to those of energon but several wavelength anomalies exist." "Similar to energon, you say? Can we use it for power?" Megatron calmed down visibly. "Affirmative." "Well. This has possibilities, yesss..." "Warning - high concentration of damaging energy. Readings are off the scale. Continued exposure to robotic forms will result in permanent damage." Megatron slammed his chair with a fist again. "Then we will create new forms based on the most powerful local creatures!" He flicked a couple of fingers in the direction of his waiting scientist. The robot, obscured from Megatron's vision by the shadows, merely stated, "Scanners activated." A small antenna, one of the few things still intact on the Predacon warship Darkside, extended from the dorsal side of the hull. Two prongs folded from the top, and suddenly a mirror duo of flat spreading beams of purple light clicked on from the tip of the antenna, bathing the landscape in scintillating violet. The beams began to rotate, slowly, filling the air with a high buzzing noise. Laz stopped short. "Hear that?" Marli looked back impatiently at her companion. "Hear what?" "Shh." Laz closed his eyes and tipped his head back. For a moment everything was muted, and Marli froze in spite of herself. "It's - a weird noise," Laz said finally, so low as to not break the stillness. "Kind of whirring. Like a Bizarre Bug flying, only more metal, you know?" Marli had to swallow several times before she could speak. "What do you think it is?" "It's not any monster I've ever heard." The two shivered in the stillness. Suddenly Marli caught something out of the corner of her eye - a flash of yellow. "Look out!" she yelled, jumping in front of Laz. In one smooth movement she pulled her weapon, a Guard Stick she'd been given by a friend of her father's, from its accustomed resting place in the leather straps on her back and assumed an on-guard stance between Laz and the yellow light. "Easy, Mar." Laz put a hand on her shoulder. "I don't think it's dangerous." Marli stared. The yellow light she'd seen was a slowly rotating beacon, consisting of a single two-dimensional beam like that of a lighthouse. Even as they watched, the yellow light faded from sight, leaving spots on the two kids' retinas. "That was the sound I heard," Laz said softly. "It's gone now." Marli exhaled - she hadn't realized she was holding her breath. "I knew those ships were inhabited," she whispered. Laz, however, heard. "Ships? You mean, not meteorites?" he demanded. When Marli looked away, he jumped to plant himself in front of her. "You mean, you knew those things were actual spaceships all along, and you didn't tell me?" "I wasn't sure," Marli lied. "I was just waiting for confirmation." Laz quirked an eyebrow. "Sure, Marli." "What? You don't trust me?" "Sure I trust you." "So what was that look?" "What look?" Still arguing, Marli and Laz continued their journey up Corel Mountain. "Scanning and replication of local life forms... complete. You may emerge." The first to emerge from his CR chamber was a lithe catlike animal, fur a dull gold punctuated by charcoal dapples. The Cuahl leaped from the R-chamber, spun around a couple of times, and said exultantly, "Whoa, lookit me, I'm a cheetah! No, wait, I'm..." Suddenly his eyes widened with inspiration. "...Cheetor!" he breathed. "Interesting," Optimus said from inside his R-chamber. "Interesting?" Cheetor protested. "Optimus, the word is -" He strutted over to the R-chamber to admire himself in the door's reflective surface. "Spot-on *smooth*," he finished proudly. He stretched and purred, waving his long tail like a flag. "It's a crime." "Gaudy." A giant Trickplay - giant for the species, that is - sauntered from the next R-chamber over. He resembled a giant squirrel, mahogany fur short and coarse everywhere except his tail, where it lengthened into spiky layers up toward the tip. "Ya never had taste, didja?" he continued, slinging his tail over one arm jauntily. "This is what class is all about. Call me... Rattrap." Cheetor arched his back, his fur standing on end so that he looked twice as big. Raising one clawed forepaw, he challenged, "Oh yeah? How's about I cut meeces to pieces?" "Ease back, Cheetor." A Behemoth, the blue-purple rhinoceros- like monster with a neck frill similar to a Triceratops's, stepped out of his R-chamber. Even slightly shrunk as he was to allow movement inside the Axalon, he still cut an imposing figure. "Livin' large is for forms like me," he said conversationally, interposing himself between Cheetor and Rattrap. "Rhinox." "'Sides," interrupted a warbling femme-voice from the next R- chamber over, "when it comes to beauty contests I got you both beat." The chamber opened to reveal what resembled a cross between a puffin and an emu, about four feet tall with feathers colored a scintillating white - a Chocobo. "And it's Traveller, by the way." Cheetor purred admiringly. "Sweet." Traveller looked away, affecting an air of disinterest. Rattrap, looking disgusted, muttered, "Yer just lucky there's a lady present, else I'd hafta get rough on ya." "What?" Cheetor arched his body threateningly. "Moderate your conflict circuits, Maximals," Optimus said, emerging from his own R-chamber. His form was that of a Doorbull, roughly centaurian and stocky with hard muscle. His face was painted in a warlike pattern of orange and white streaks, and short ivory horns extended from his head. He, like Rhinox, was slightly smaller than his DNA pattern allowed for to facilitate movement inside the Axalon. "Remember, these beast modes are to protect us from the long-term effects of the energy fields out there. We may be able to use this new energy for power like energon, but this is too much of a good thing. Our robot forms will begin to short out after a few minutes' exposure." He moved toward the Axalon's entrance hatch, staring pensively out the viewport. "This is one unusual planet... whatever it is." "Yo. Or *whenever*," Rhinox added. He trotted over to join Optimus at the viewport. "The Transwarp drive can travel through space and time," he continued grimly. "We were locked on to Megatron's warp signature. We could be anyplace... anytime." "Swell," Traveller commented sourly. Optimus looked up. "And our crew is orbiting the planet in those stasis pods we lost in battle," he added, looking pained. "They'll be protected from the energy fields, but it means Megatron has us outnumbered." "Let's hope the locals are friendly, at least," Cheetor said cheerfully. Next chapter... The humans' and Maximals' encounter with the Predacons... and with each other. Experience the joys of cross-cultural craziness!