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Fandom: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
Claim: Zack Fair
Goal: One hundred one-hundred-word drabbles
NEW Little Damn Table
And in non-fandom news, this is win.
The Story of Zack
Part One
Title: Prophecy
Characters: The Powers That Be and Zack
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Beginnings
In the beginning The Powers That Be watched a stream of green life coagulating, as these things tend to do with alarming regularity. There were no new patterns by then, though all were unique. The Powers That Be took special note of this one. They knew the signs.
“Are you sure you want to let it run free?” asked The One. “It'll be nothing but trouble.”
“Oh, hush,” said The Other. “It's just the kind of trouble I need.”
And when the spirit had solidified into the usual crying, screaming, pissing, puking mess, the mortals in charge named him 'Zack'.
Title: Inspiration
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Middles
Be forewarned; Zack's story, though bright, is a brief one. The middle comes far too soon.
He was twelve. The war had been on forever. Radio didn't compare to the big city newspaper some traveler left behind. It was clipped to pieces and tacked to the walls of the local for all to see.
The children had a face to go with the name they'd been hearing. And what a face. It haunted Zack's dreams long after pretend wars were over. “I'll be just like him one day,” Zack promised, not knowing that middles are just beginnings of the end.
Title: Development
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Ends
Don't worry. We're not at the end yet, although ends are our subject. Zack discovered his shortly after he discovered Sephiroth. It was that special time in a boy's life when everything becomes a vast muddle, to emerge years later as a passion for fast bikes and pretty, leggy things.
Sephiroth was a pretty, leggy thing.
Zack measured himself at his door every morning and surveyed himself in his mother's long mirror. It was disappointing how he seemed set to run stocky, with legs more given to muscle than length. But what was on top wasn't half bad at all.
Title: Ambition
Characters: Zack, Mr. Fair.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Insides
The fire could only get stronger, especially with hormones feeding the flames. Out of children's games and a young man's dreaming, something had emerged and taken hold of Zack. He began training in the haphazard way of the ignorant young. It went swimmingly until his mother's good tea tray went missing. Zack had been using it as a breastplate.
“Should have gone for a helmet,” his father said after the inevitable was over, “for all that you act like you've got fluff for brains.”
Zack mused that it was different for SOLDIERs and tried not to rub his sore end.
Title: Escape
Characters: Zack, Mrs. Fair, The One.
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Outsides
Zack was fourteen when he packed his bag. He hitched a ride on a turnip truck (the potato truck was in the shop) and made his way out of Gongaga.
He told his parents he was leaving. Well, he left a very folded note under the tea cozy. The alert was out for half a day before a neighbor found it.
“Gone to join SOLDIER,” it read, “Write to you soon, love Zack.”
“Love!” his mother shouted, only half-relieved. “The nerve of that boy!”
Somewhere close by, someone spoke that she did not hear. “Nothing but trouble, I said.”
Title: Dreams
Characters: Zack
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Hours
The first hours were idyllic. Zack Fair was riding off towards Destiny. He lay back and spun dreams out of clouds in the sky. He dreamed in the way of children and fools on turnip trucks.
He'd take Midgar by storm. He'd learn to fight and use magic and rescue kittens from high places. He would be the best SOLDIER there ever was.
You who are older and wiser may know deeply how life spews gravel in the face of dreamers. May it comfort you to know, while you grind your own personal millstone, that Zack Fair was absolutely right.
Title: Happy Place
Characters: Zack
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Days
It rained on the second day. Zack earned his keep pulling a tarp over the turnips and swatting at the pests that dared creep beneath. It was hot under all that plastic, hot and muggy like a swamp. And the bugs, always the bugs.
All that would change when he was a SOLDIER, Zack thought. Pesky insects didn't have the nerve to try eating SOLDIERs alive.
By the third day it was sweltering and some of the turnips were starting to turn.
It wouldn't be like that at all in SOLDIER, Zack reasoned. It wouldn't be like that at all.
Title: Lucky Boy
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Weeks
The truck went as far as the river docks. Zack had to find his own way from there. He asked, then begged some of the boatmen and captains. They exchanged glances he didn't yet understand. They looked him over appraisingly, their eyes agreeing that he just might do.
But one stepped in and asked him to flex his arm. Even haphazard training might do some good. Zack swung grain sacks onto the barge at the docks and off again at del Sol. Two weeks to reach the coast and, lucky boy, he did it by his back, not on it.
Title: Marking Time
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Months
Zack was a willing worker, and a fast learner. Still, it cost money to get on a boat. He scrounged a bit but del Sol was an easy place for that. He moved deck chairs, took odd jobs at the docks and even managed a brief stint in tourist information (before tiring of people asking for 'information' about his working hours, anyway). It took two months to get his ticket and it was high time he wrote home.
“Dear Mom,” he said, “Almost there. Still moving so you can't write back, but I'm okay. How's Dad?”
Delaying the inevitable, really.
Title: Confidence
Characters: Zack
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Years
He was old enough, strong enough and more than willing but he had no training whatsoever. He was a nobody from a hiccup of a town half a world away. SOLDIER was a big dream, they said. Getting in was hell. Besides, there was no shame in the regular army.
They laughed at his eagerness, at his cocksure attitude. He'd learn. Oh, he might make SOLDIER someday. He had the build for it. But, they warned him, it would take ages. Still, Zack wrote home in prophetic fit: “I'll be SOLDIER before the year is out, Mom. Count on it!”
Claim: Zack Fair
Goal: One hundred one-hundred-word drabbles
NEW Little Damn Table
And in non-fandom news, this is win.
The Story of Zack
Part One
Title: Prophecy
Characters: The Powers That Be and Zack
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Beginnings
In the beginning The Powers That Be watched a stream of green life coagulating, as these things tend to do with alarming regularity. There were no new patterns by then, though all were unique. The Powers That Be took special note of this one. They knew the signs.
“Are you sure you want to let it run free?” asked The One. “It'll be nothing but trouble.”
“Oh, hush,” said The Other. “It's just the kind of trouble I need.”
And when the spirit had solidified into the usual crying, screaming, pissing, puking mess, the mortals in charge named him 'Zack'.
Title: Inspiration
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Middles
Be forewarned; Zack's story, though bright, is a brief one. The middle comes far too soon.
He was twelve. The war had been on forever. Radio didn't compare to the big city newspaper some traveler left behind. It was clipped to pieces and tacked to the walls of the local for all to see.
The children had a face to go with the name they'd been hearing. And what a face. It haunted Zack's dreams long after pretend wars were over. “I'll be just like him one day,” Zack promised, not knowing that middles are just beginnings of the end.
Title: Development
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Ends
Don't worry. We're not at the end yet, although ends are our subject. Zack discovered his shortly after he discovered Sephiroth. It was that special time in a boy's life when everything becomes a vast muddle, to emerge years later as a passion for fast bikes and pretty, leggy things.
Sephiroth was a pretty, leggy thing.
Zack measured himself at his door every morning and surveyed himself in his mother's long mirror. It was disappointing how he seemed set to run stocky, with legs more given to muscle than length. But what was on top wasn't half bad at all.
Title: Ambition
Characters: Zack, Mr. Fair.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Insides
The fire could only get stronger, especially with hormones feeding the flames. Out of children's games and a young man's dreaming, something had emerged and taken hold of Zack. He began training in the haphazard way of the ignorant young. It went swimmingly until his mother's good tea tray went missing. Zack had been using it as a breastplate.
“Should have gone for a helmet,” his father said after the inevitable was over, “for all that you act like you've got fluff for brains.”
Zack mused that it was different for SOLDIERs and tried not to rub his sore end.
Title: Escape
Characters: Zack, Mrs. Fair, The One.
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Outsides
Zack was fourteen when he packed his bag. He hitched a ride on a turnip truck (the potato truck was in the shop) and made his way out of Gongaga.
He told his parents he was leaving. Well, he left a very folded note under the tea cozy. The alert was out for half a day before a neighbor found it.
“Gone to join SOLDIER,” it read, “Write to you soon, love Zack.”
“Love!” his mother shouted, only half-relieved. “The nerve of that boy!”
Somewhere close by, someone spoke that she did not hear. “Nothing but trouble, I said.”
Title: Dreams
Characters: Zack
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Hours
The first hours were idyllic. Zack Fair was riding off towards Destiny. He lay back and spun dreams out of clouds in the sky. He dreamed in the way of children and fools on turnip trucks.
He'd take Midgar by storm. He'd learn to fight and use magic and rescue kittens from high places. He would be the best SOLDIER there ever was.
You who are older and wiser may know deeply how life spews gravel in the face of dreamers. May it comfort you to know, while you grind your own personal millstone, that Zack Fair was absolutely right.
Title: Happy Place
Characters: Zack
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Days
It rained on the second day. Zack earned his keep pulling a tarp over the turnips and swatting at the pests that dared creep beneath. It was hot under all that plastic, hot and muggy like a swamp. And the bugs, always the bugs.
All that would change when he was a SOLDIER, Zack thought. Pesky insects didn't have the nerve to try eating SOLDIERs alive.
By the third day it was sweltering and some of the turnips were starting to turn.
It wouldn't be like that at all in SOLDIER, Zack reasoned. It wouldn't be like that at all.
Title: Lucky Boy
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Weeks
The truck went as far as the river docks. Zack had to find his own way from there. He asked, then begged some of the boatmen and captains. They exchanged glances he didn't yet understand. They looked him over appraisingly, their eyes agreeing that he just might do.
But one stepped in and asked him to flex his arm. Even haphazard training might do some good. Zack swung grain sacks onto the barge at the docks and off again at del Sol. Two weeks to reach the coast and, lucky boy, he did it by his back, not on it.
Title: Marking Time
Characters: Zack
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Months
Zack was a willing worker, and a fast learner. Still, it cost money to get on a boat. He scrounged a bit but del Sol was an easy place for that. He moved deck chairs, took odd jobs at the docks and even managed a brief stint in tourist information (before tiring of people asking for 'information' about his working hours, anyway). It took two months to get his ticket and it was high time he wrote home.
“Dear Mom,” he said, “Almost there. Still moving so you can't write back, but I'm okay. How's Dad?”
Delaying the inevitable, really.
Title: Confidence
Characters: Zack
Rating: G
Word Count: 100
Prompt: Years
He was old enough, strong enough and more than willing but he had no training whatsoever. He was a nobody from a hiccup of a town half a world away. SOLDIER was a big dream, they said. Getting in was hell. Besides, there was no shame in the regular army.
They laughed at his eagerness, at his cocksure attitude. He'd learn. Oh, he might make SOLDIER someday. He had the build for it. But, they warned him, it would take ages. Still, Zack wrote home in prophetic fit: “I'll be SOLDIER before the year is out, Mom. Count on it!”
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