FINAL FANTASY KISS BATTLE 2021!
HELLO FRIENDS????? Remember those fandoms we all used to be in? and producing things for? Well, baby, it's time for a nostalgia run, so buckle up your chocobos and get ready to roll. We haven't done a Kiss Battle in years and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lassarina and I for one think it's TIME TO DO SO.
This event is open to everyone, even if we aren't DW circlefriends! (feel free to friend me too; i promise i'm not crazy that's a lie). If you aren't on DW, you can still play via anon or OpenID!
The Kiss Battle is simple. Players leave prompts in comments under each specific fandom, using generalized fandom nomenclature: a relationship of some sort, and a concept to inspire other players.
- For romantic relationship kisses, we use X / Y
- For platonic relationship kisses, we use X & Y
- Absolutely open to relationships with more than 2 people involved! X / Y / Z (/ A / B ...) welcome to this party!
- Prompts can be a word, a sentence, an image, a song lyric; it's a suggestion, rather than a request
- it's a kiss battle! there will be smooches!
Players then go looking for smoochin' prompts they'd like to fill. Fills can be fic, art, interpretive dance, whatever you're inspired to; they can be filled in a responding comment, or as a link (to AO3, tumblr, etc). FILLS GOTTA HAVE A KISS IN 'EM. IT'S A KISS BATTLE. What counts as a "kiss" is up to you, though -- you can be creative!
- Fills should use the comment header to let people know what the fill is; please use a format like "X / Y, (title), (rating), (any content warnings that might apply)"
- "Aerith/Tifa, memorial, G"
- "Cloud/Squall, just in time, R (blood)"
- Prompts can be filled multiple times! Don't worry if someone got there first; we love Two Cakes up in this event! The more kisses we get, the better!
- You can fill as anon if you want/need for any reason
- You can of course crosspost anywhere you'd like
It's a very simple game, and is meant to be played in good faith without anybody being a shitbag about pairings or characters. We're all too old for this.
FANDOM LINKS Fandoms with compilations and expansions should fall into their titled macrofandom. For example:
- FFXIII also includes FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns (FFXIII-3)
- FFX also includes X-2
- FFIV includes the After Years
If you need to specify a certain microfandom / singular canon, please do so in the prompt or in the comment header!
FINAL FANTASY I
FINAL FANTASY II
FINAL FANTASY III
FINAL FANTASY IV
FINAL FANTASY V
FINAL FANTASY VI
FINAL FANTASY VII
FINAL FANTASY VIII
FINAL FANTASY IX
FINAL FANTASY X
FINAL FANTASY XI
FINAL FANTASY XII
FINAL FANTASY XIII
FINAL FANTASY XIV
FINAL FANTASY XV
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS
FINAL FANTASY TYPE-0
FINAL FANTASY RECORD KEEPER
FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS
BRAVELY DEFAULT
FINAL FANTASY SPIRITS WITHIN
OTHER FINAL FANTASY CANONS
FF CROSSOVER PROMPTS
MAKE FRIENDS! If you're interested in meeting more FF fandom people, this comment thread can be used as a friending meme! Tell us a little about yourself, which FFs you've played, favorite characters/ships, and look around for new friends!
You can also join the Final Fantasy Old Folks Home Discord and come gripe about those kids on our lawn and the old days where you had to level grind by hand lmao. Open to all FF fans!
BLITZ KISSINS If you already know what smooches you want to write, you don't need to wait for a prompt -- just comment into the relevant fandom thread with your kiss!
REMEMBER It's only fun if everybody plays, so if you leave a prompt, try to fill someone else's!
FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: fang/lightning, spar
Gran Pulse is lit up in a burst. The horizon line is low and the sun pushes miles at a time like a flash flood. Down in the canyons and the crevices Fang tilts her head back to watch the stars disappear in the skies furthest corners. Then it’s just the gorgonopsids and the wyverns, kicking up dust off of rocks far above, racing across the plains for the thrill of it.
It’s like the internal clock of Guardian Corps is attuned to the ground far below. Even though their suns are different, Lightning is already up, circling around their camp and shaking the sleep out of her limbs. All it takes is a turn of her head for their eyes to meet, a wave of her hand to draw her in, and Fang takes her up the trail where they can talk at ease.
It’s how they always wind up together out here: too much rest puts their nerves in knots.
Striding up the animal trails and following the stream that weaved through camp, the gray stones yield to green foliage, and the endless yellow plains and red rocks up above get closer to kissing distance. Years and years have passed in this dark hole since Fang last went so far astray as the Palisades, and the geography still looks the same -- touched by wind a bit more, and a whole lost dustier without her kind to move the air around. Taejin’s Tower is split in half — which is new — and occupied by a real monster, but so is everywhere else. Pulse didn’t care what happened to her in her absence, and neither did the other fal’cie.
It leaves Fang with the kind of sulky emotions she’s no good at housing, the kind that turn her irrational and prone to shortness: it makes her wonder if Ragnarok could have changed everything.
“No good?”
Fang turns to look at the dirt patch stretching out along their right. Bushes cushion the edges of the cliffs high above and it’s only gently sloped. The sun won’t reach it until midday.
“If you like sitting in a dark hole,” Fang retorts.
Lightning shrugs and they push forward. “Suit yourself.”
Fang knows her kind -- strung so tight a single push causes the band to snap. Military reserves so exhausted from posturing and formalities so gruesome and orchestrated by the fal’cie it makes her eyes roll. Somehow, Lightning’s never fallen into the mold when she’s been watching. She’s just steadfast and reserved. Now that most of the anger has been redirected to their current goal, she’s more amiable than ever.
Lightning takes long strides without slowing, allowing Fang to set the pace, which she makes faster as the steepness increases, urging her legs to throw her up into that volley of sunlight. It's true that the open plains make her feel alive. She'd been shivering in the cold metal of Cocoon, running through tunnels and corridors like a rat.
“You’re wound up this morning,” Lightning pants.
She kicks a large boulder out of the road that one of them would inevitably trip over later. “Am I? Slept a bit weird. My neck’s got a kink. And all sorts of weird body aches.”
“Sorry, but I don’t want to go too far from camp. Pick a spot.”
“Easy, I told the old man we’d be out. Worry about us instead.” She halted in front a section that she knew they could scale. A little dangerous, but they were damn never invincible at this point, right? “No missteps on this part above, alright? It’s slick. Watch my footholds.”
Fang could feel the glare warming her back, nearly as good as the Pulsian sun. None of that Phoenix business, but the real thing, all artificiality and pretense removed. About another ten minutes of this and Lightning would start simmering for real -- when she snapped, it’d be like getting a right hook from a behemoth.
“Tired of the scenic route?” Lightning groused.
“It’s not news to me.” Fang showed her teeth in her answering smile. “Don’t you like a little predator free adventure in the morning?”
“I wouldn’t have minded killing something.”
Fang’s legs didn’t burn easily these days, not for a long time -- the climb was like another daily trifle in her life, just a small uptick in breathing, some careful, fast calculations about her own limits, things she learned to control long ago. Plenty of others she just had to learn to let go of. The real kicker is that slowing down only gets harder. She doesn’t want to spend the time to think about doomed solutions.
At the top of the cliff, they throw themselves over the edge and slide softly in the wet grass. The sun blares in their face like hot iron. It’s enough to make her pause.
“Look at that,” Fang says, “You can see for miles and miles.”
Fang can’t stop grinning, even though she sees three suns every time she blinks, it feels good on her skin. The view is grand at every angle on Gran Pulse -- if this is the world the fal’cie set out to create for their Maker it’s a damn shame he never returned to appreciate it, and what a curse that their time is limited to the time bomb stamped on their bodies.
Lightning’s eyes sweep over the wild, open spaces around them. Taejin’s Tower looks close enough to touch. Giant blossoms protrude on thick, green stalks and the whole canyon gives way to the winding water ways below. Monsters roam everywhere, the only life left in the unforgiving environment. Sullya Springs is just a hop and skip back where they came. The roar of the water never really leaves their ears.
“You must feel vulnerable, out in the open like this. No buildings or machines or corridors to hide in. Does it put you on edge?” Fang shaded her eyes to watch her properly.
“Not really. I can see what’s coming for me. As for the monsters, I just have to be faster.”
“Oh yeah?” Fang prompts. “What would you do if those beasties overpowered you?”
“If I could, I’d run away.”
“And live to see another day,” Fang sang. She rubbed the rest of the sleep out of her eyes before leaping to her feet. She hadn’t been joking about the neck kink, but her limbs were significantly looser than when they’d left, and she cracked joints until Lightning was grimacing at the racket.
Smoothly, she pulls her lance from her back. Her clan’s name glints back at her along the handhold. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. “Ready?”
“I’m game. But you’re going to tell me what this is all about after I beat you.”
Lightning stretches like a cat, gun blade smoothly sliding out of its carrier and unfolding to its full length, lethal and silvery. There’s cold fire in her eyes, the frustration that’s been building making her twitchy and distant. There’s beauty and grace in the gesture, effortless, though the worst fights she likely ever saw before her l’cie days was breaking up groups of monsters or street fights -- now she’s a real killer.
"I’ll decide that." Fang smiled. Then she swung at her.
Fang always did like to get the first hit, but Lightning was faster on her feet.
She dodged under the lance and came up on the other side, blade reaching for her calves. Fang used the momentum of her swing to move out of reach, and they they were both turning to lock weapons, the kind of dance of steel that had her hair standing on end, the only kind of close encounter she knew how to survive the fallout of. She whooped and Lightning flipped back, an answering smile of her own making her face wide open -- she wasn’t above the thrill of whacking someone with sharp objects and that was the sign of a kindred soul.
Minutes feel like hours, and it ends with Lightning pressing her pale knee into her stomach, head back-lit as the sun hovers lovingly over head, the smell of grass and dirt and sweat hanging around like a cloud. There’s a rock digging into the muscles of her back and Lightning’s knees are red and scratched. They’re wheezing like chased animals, eye to eye.
Fang drags her pinned hand away from her side and pats Lightning on the thigh. “You win,” she wheezes. “Nice footwork. But don’t get cocky.”
“I don’t think the sun did you any favors.”
“No. Felt nice though.”
"It does," Lightning says, voice controlled. “Now, will you talk?”
Fang hesitates. “See, the point of smacking each other around like this is so we don’t have to.”
“Fang.”
“It’s just.” She sighed. “It’s a pretty awful feeling seeing how beautiful and meaningless home is now. You think about Bodhum, don’t you? All that water and sand and perfect weather.”
“Sometimes it rained,” Lightning offered.
Fang closed her eyes. “Gran Pulse lives on just fine without us. All of us people? We were the real instruments in all this. You up in that sky would have been a fat sacrifice for the Maker. Me down hear was the fired shot.”
“That won’t happen now.”
“It already almost happened. Ragnarok tried, once. Funny to think it was Cocoon fal’cie pulling our strings down here, too.”
Lightning narrowed her eyes. “You learned something.”
“Doesn’t matter. Point is that we’re gearing up for a tragedy. You’re kind of a do-gooder once you know the facts. I respect that. Doesn’t mean I want to be a part of it.”
“You don’t get to change your mind because you’re feeling nervous. Besides, we might find something in Oerba.”
“No, I don’t think we will. Unless the fal’cie give us a hint, it’ll just be a housewarming call.”
Lightning slipped off to the side. “So you feel like giving up? You don’t care about taking responsibility?”
“Vanille does,” Fang breathed. “So by extension I have to. I have to. See what I’m saying?”
“That’s what’s bothering you?” Lightning folded her gun blade and rose to her knees to sheath it. “If Serah weren’t crystal I’d have taken her far away by now, focus be damned. We’d be dead.”
Fang propped herself up on her elbows. “Two beautiful c’ieth, wandering the world in torment for eternity. At least you’d be together.”
Lightning’s mouth turned down at the corner. She slipped her gloves off and stretched her hands on the hard ground. “--Or I could have decided what I’m doing now. I figure if I die it won’t be from my focus.”
“See, you’re a better thinker than I am. I always make the wrong decisions, and shit gets worse. I thought if I followed the rules, maybe things would work out. That was the promise, right? But something went wrong... and now I’m here to do the same thing twice.”
Lightning inclined her head. “You’re working on a solution though. You’re still here, with all of us, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Never thought your group would bring me home again. Like a real little family.”
“Then just think about that. It won’t be the end until it is.” Fang stared at her.
Without warning, Lightning reached out to touch her shoulder and Fang sat up all the way. “Your neck,” she said, “where’s the knot you mentioned?”
“Ah, base of my skull.” Cool magic flowed from her finger-tips into the top of her spine. Fang watched her with narrowed eyes, breath as calm as when they started. All the haze was gone from her vision, and she felt lighter, crystal-clear. Getting a beat down always was the best solution for bringing her back to herself.
Fang didn’t doubt that she was right to some extent -- history would repeat itself -- but for now, this moment of calmness made her courageous.
“Hey, Light.”
“What.”
“Come a little closer.”
Lightning held her eyes, then leaned in, cool as wind. She didn’t stop at the halfway mark, just calmly met her mouth with her own, as dry and chapped as bark. To be fair, this would have capitalized on the moment of betrayal, a life time ago, like Fang couldn’t have fallen any lower from her duty, canoodling with Cocoon’s stock and damning her own. But the guilty feeling never came. Lightning’s fingers moved into her hair and stayed there, and Fang sighed, feeling warm from the inside out. She patted Lightning’s cheek.
“Been wanting to do that for a while now,” Fang admitted. “But I didn’t want to get stabbed.”
Lighting smirked but her face was soft. “Could still happen,” she murmured. She pressed another chaste kiss to her mouth then parted. “Who knows what the future holds. I might slip for real in our next fight. Or you may be right about everything.”
“Don’t joke. Lady Luck could leave anytime. Just let me have my frustrations and listen to my complaints and I’ll be right as day after.”
“Sure,” Lightning said. “But don’t make me beat it out of you next time. And remember who you’re really here for.”
“What, it’s not you?”
“Fang.”
“I know,” she said, softer. “Believe me, I know.”
Fang disengaged from her hold, pulling Lighting to her feet after her, and the two of them stood in the early light. The sun moved lazily, or they were slow and languid, but Fang felt a calm settling over her skin. That was something dangerous, and it was hard to believe she wasn’t making another stupid decision -- except fal’cie dreams would only ever lead them to a slow death anyway. She was the one who didn’t believe in anything better anymore.
Taejin’s Tower called out to them. And on the other side of that, Fang hoped Lightning’s prediction would come true.
Re: fang/lightning, spar
i love your Lightning voice so much? such wonderfully dry humor; I laughed aloud at this:
"You think about Bodhum, don’t you? All that water and sand and perfect weather.” / “Sometimes it rained,” Lightning offered.
and also this:
“Been wanting to do that for a while now,” Fang admitted. “But I didn’t want to get stabbed.” / Lighting smirked but her face was soft. “Could still happen.”
and also: the connection between the two of them, in the sense of, both having someone they care about driving them, Vanielle and Serah—that was such an oof and good angle to press on. and the kiss! Fang's faux-casual casual approach, expecting to feel like she's fallen and just not feeling that, ah! the simultaneous warmth and remove, the sort of push-and-pull just beneath the surface, the thing they both know in the end:
“Sure,” Lightning said. “But don’t make me beat it out of you next time. And remember who you’re really here for.”
“What, it’s not you?”
“Fang.”
“I know,” she said, softer. “Believe me, I know.”
THANK YOU for this fill; i am so thoroughly delighted!
Re: fang/lightning, spar
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Fang/Vanille, G, "first and last"
“Me, huh?” Vanille laughs.
Fang spins her around, watching the light dapple the furniture and flood the room. Bhakti crowds around her legs in automated jealousy.
“Yep,” Fang says. “You’re a real charmer. Can’t keep my eyes off you.”
“Oh stop.” Fang grins and leans in first, mouth catching hers mischievously, and it’s like the whole future has rolled out before them: days spent riling each other up into unmatched hysterics, mirrors in everything.
Then the war comes. Anima fails them. Their bunk mates leave one by one. The windmills halt as power is redirected. Oerba hollows out as the fal’Cie send them scurrying like ants from a kicked nest.
Fang volunteers as l’Cie and Vanille follows.
Stupid plan.
The train shrieks its protests in carrying its occupants to their final destination. Fang waits by the terminal, twisting her lance into the top of her sandals. She thinks, is this all we’re allowed to have?
Cocoon hangs above like a second moon, solitary and cold. Fang hates it. They'll hate her more.
“We'll come back,” Vanille says, and kisses her free hand. She sounds unsure.
“We stay together, alright? Whatever craziness happens, you stay close, understood?”
“I will.”
They don’t.
Re: Fang/Vanille, G, "first and last"
I mean that in the best way possible! ♥
Re: Fang/Vanille, G, "first and last"
Re: Fang/Vanille, G, "first and last"
Stupid plan. *oof*. I heard that one too.
Fang waits by the terminal, twisting her lance into the top of her sandals. She thinks, is this all we’re allowed to have? OOF what good, sharp detail; i really loved this ficlet!
Re: Fang/Vanille, G, "first and last"
Re: Fang/Vanille, G, "first and last"
Re: Fang/Vanille, G, "first and last"
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
They'll have to split up, Lightning announces, if they're going to scout Pulse properly. They'll form three teams of two people each, and they'll meet back here in the evening.
Sazh notices the way Hope stares at Lightning, while she splits them up into teams—and he notices the disappointed flicker on the kid's face, when she puts him on a different team than her. Sazh thinks suddenly, painfully, of Dajh. He hopes Lightning knows what she's doing.
Hope and Snow head north, and Fang and Vanielle go south, which leaves—
"You're with me," Lightning says, nodding at Sazh.
He follows her east without complaint. But as soon as the others are out of earshot, he whispers to her: "That kid looks up to you, you know. Hope."
Lightning frowns, like he's reminded her of something she was trying to forget. Sazh thinks she's about to deny it, or else she'll say that the kid needs to toughen up, get over it, something like that—
But instead she says: "I don't think anyone really stays a kid, after everything we've gone through."
"Is that so." Sazh hmms, skeptical.
There's a flash of annoyance on Lightning's face: "What?"
"I'm just saying—compared to me, all of you are basically kids."
Her face tells him that she doesn't agree, but that she also knows arguing would only prove his point. So she settles for a scowl, and walks faster.
It's funny. Sazh laughs. "It's nothing personal," he says, jogging to catch up, "it's just, I mean, c'mon, how old are you?"
"Twenty-one," she says, without turning her head.
Sazh nods. "See, when I was your age, I wasn't even due to meet my wife for another ten years. And I'm not sure how much anything before then counted."
That catches Lightning's attention—she tilts her head, though she still doesn't turn to face him. "Ten years? Really."
"Really. What? Is that so surprising?"
Lightning is counting something out on her fingers. Then: "You look pretty good, for how old you must be."
Oh. Ha. "I will choose to take that as a compliment," he says, with a mock-magnanimous bow.
They've reached a spot on the path where the only way forward is up, one long rocky scramble that's rather more vertical than Sazh cares for. East is where all those reddish cliffs loomed in the distance, wasn't it? He should've protested, earlier, and said, let's go scout some other direction—but it's too late for that, now.
Lightning bounds onto the next ledge, a full ten feet above them, in one graceful leap. Sazh's back is still sore from their crash-landing, the day before; he can't jump like that, l'Cie powers or no. He sighs and heaves himself a little ways up the craggiest section of the wall. At least Lightning's not ditching people, anymore—she's leaning over the ledge with an outstretched hand, waiting to pull him up. They make their way up together, just like that, an easy rhythm—Lightning leaping, then waiting, while Sazh clambers after.
Once they reach the top of the cliff, they pause to catch their breath—well, Sazh catches his breath, mostly, while Lightning watches. He wonders if her gaze has always looked so sharp, or if it's something they taught her in the Guardian Corps. So sharp, and yet her voice is almost soft when she asks him:
"So what were you doing, when you were my age? If you weren't meeting your wife."
"I sure wasn't a soldier or anything fancy like that," he says, slowly, not really wanting to get into specifics. "I was, well, hell. Kind of a drifter. Working this job and that, you know. I was probably was more of a kid than you. No reason to grow up if you haven't got any real responsibilities."
"So you were like Snow," Lightning says dryly.
Sazh laughs—he laughs so hard that he feels a little bad about it. Once he manages to catch his breath, he's still smiling, but he tells her, "You're kinda hard on him, don't you think?"
Lightning purses her lips thoughtfully. "I might be." Then she grins, like they're sharing some delightful secret: "But you still laughed."
He laughs again. "I said you were hard on him. I didn't say you were wrong."
Her smile fades, bit by bit, into something more pensive. "He just didn't have to grow up as fast as some people. Which is how it is, sometimes, I guess."
Something in her tone catches strangely, in a way that makes Sazh think, maybe Lightning isn't just jumped-up newly-minted-soldier I've-got-a-gun bluster. Maybe there's something more to her, underneath all that. Sazh is old enough to know that joining the Sanctum isn't the kind of thing that makes you responsible or grown-up, all on its own. But something else might be.
He wonders what that something was, for Lightning.
But instead of asking her, he takes a swig from the dinged-up water bottle they're sharing. Lightning watches him drink. He doesn't have to say when he's ready to go. She knows, from how closely she's watching him, and she simply stands up and starts walking again, right when he'd been about to say, Let's go.
They walk in silence for another hour before Lightning speaks again:
"So where is your wife now?" When Sazh blinks, confused, she adds, "The one you met when you thirty-one."
Right, right. He had mentioned that. "She passed away."
Lightning's face softens. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine. It's been a few years."
"Still."
Silence again. Silence for a long while, this time. They make their way through a narrow canyon pass, a pass so narrow that Sazh keeps almost tripping over Lightning's feet, from how the walls press them in together. (Lightning, of course, never falters in her step once. The more he watches her work, the more he wonders at her. How'd the Sanctum ever let someone this good this slip away?)
They'll have to turn back soon, Lightning says (whispering, because otherwise her words will echo in these walls). They need to make it back by nightfall. But she wants to get just a little bit farther, see just a little bit more—
They round a bend, and the path climbs rapidly. Moments later, they're standing atop a cliff, a cliff that seems to overlook the whole world, as far as Sazh can tell—red canyons stretch on beneath them, for miles, as far as the eye can see.
"Nice view," he says, with a low whistle. Even Lightning's got to hmm in agreement at that one.
They stand there for a long while, side-by-side, just staring. A wyvern circles lazily overhead, then drifts away on a breeze.
Then Lightning slips her hand slips into his—and it takes every ounce of composure that Sazh has ever built, over every year he's been a pilot, to not shout in surprise. Not that it's bad, or anything, he'd be lying if he said he wasn't intrigued, but—
She sidles closer. She angles her shoulders toward him. He feels her lean closer and—
"Ah, nah, no no," he says, backing up a step and wagging a finger, "none of that. Not until you tell me what we're doin', here."
She arches an eyebrow. "Sazh. We could all be turned into cie'th tomorrow. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that." She closes the distance between them with a single step.
Well. When she puts it like that. "Fair enough," he says, and he wraps his arms around her back to pull her close. She tips her chin up to kiss him, and the Pulse sun blazes bright on the red rock around them all the while.
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: Lightning/Sazh, "the weight of experience," G
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII
Re: FINAL FANTASY XIII