Prologue Footnotes

As we began formulating the ideas for this story, it dawned on us that the world map of Gaia was likely very tiny, simply from the in-game mechanics. Your bitty little sprite could feasibly walk a chocobo all the way around the world in a matter of minutes. Obviously, the planet can't be that tiny, but it gives an overall sense of a very small scale. This didn't really cause too many issues initially...until we discovered the canon timeline of events that took place in Advent Children [link]. Having a set amount of time things were required to be done in put a specific limitation of size on the planet; we needed for Reno to be able to fly the helicopter from Northern Crater back to Edge and then to Healin within a three-hour timespan.

In the FFVII Ultimania Omega, stats are detailed for all of the machinery used in the original game. The maximum speed of the helicopters used in-game is listed at 150 knots--about 278 kilometers/hour. Come the events of Advent Children, two years have passed, so it served to reason that ShinRa could have facilitated modifications to their current fleet to where the choppers can fly up and over 300 kph. Going with this idea, we calculated that the maximum distance Northern Crater can possibly be from Healin Lodge is about 616 km.

Then we hit the issue of timezones. It appears that Gaia has about a 24-hour day, like earth. However, with the map being as small as it had to be for distances to be traversed in the amount of time dictated, a 24-hour day presented a few logistic complications. Northern Crater--basically the northernmost point on the map--is very cold. Obviously. Mideel--basically the southernmost point on the map--is visibly subtropical, meaning that the size of the map only encompasses about one hemisphere of the planet at best.

Saving you, the reader, the explanation of the hours and hours of math and geography it took us to reach our decision...here are two maps:

The first map is the canon dictation of the [known] land masses of Gaia. The second map shows necessary latitude, longitude, and timezone boundaries for the passage of time to flow normally. The top line of latitude on the second map is 60º; Northern Crater is at 58º latitude--about level with the cities of Oslo and Juneau Alaska, and running through the countries of Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the Alberta province of Canada. The bottom line of latitude on the second map is 22º; Mideel is at 24º latitude, lining it up with the Bahamas, Okinawa, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Egypt, or around the center of the Florida keys.

The thick red vertical lines demonstrate where the timezones would be divided, one hour being lost per timezone as one travels east Timezones on Earth fall every at approximately every fifteen degrees longitude, so we applied the same concept for Gaia, making each time zone about 269 km wide. Ergo, the circumference of the planet is 6,456 km--that means the entire planet is not that much bigger than the United States, to give you a sense of orientation. Since the map of landmasses only spans approximately 981 km, most of Gaia is water. The size being as it is, Gaia must be a moon, since no planet can be that size and still be a planet. There are two scenes in Advent Children that indicate Gaia itself has a moon in its sky, however this could easily mean that Gaia is one of multiple moons to a larger planet, and has little bearing on whether or not Gaia itself can be classified as a moon.

Back to the original point of this footnote... Since the landmasses of Gaia cover such a small percentage of the planet itself, there are only three timezones represented on land. Since Midgar seemed to be the largest and most populated, industrial city in the game, it served to reason that it was thus the most important. To prevent temporal issues that would have arisen from the fact that traveling east causes one to lose daylight, we chose to unite all three timezones under one blanket timezone: Midgar Standard Time--similar to how on Earth we use Greenwich Standard Time to synch up official timepieces. While each timezone does run on its own hourly marker, we chose to show the events of Advent Children as having a timestamp from a consistent source, giving us Midgar Standard Time.

Rosalind

In Before Crisis--the compilation game created by Square Enix for play on certain mobile phone systems--there are several playable characters for you to choose from. While none of these characters have canon-assigned names, a fan website dedicated to Before Crisis, Gunshot Romance, has an assemblance of Mission Summaries, in which the webmistress lists her preferred name choices for the playable characters. These names were embraced by a percentage of the FFVII:BC fandom, and personally, we found them to be awesome. So any mentionings of the playable Turks from the game will be under the monikers from Gunsot Romance.

Before Crisis canon tells us that Rosalind is very professional, and takes her job as a Turk very seriously. She entered the ShinRa Military School where her father is an instructor. Under the stern tutelage of her father, Rosalind flourished, becoming a top marksman, even surpassing the very man who had taught her. She graduated with honors at the top of her year, and was recruited into the Turks immediately afterwards.

Sisters?

In Before Crisis, it's listed in Playable Character A's bio that she is Elena's elder sister. There is also a screencap of the two of them in a scene together, in which Elena calls her 姉さん [Neesan], "Elder Sister". (Screencap provided by Suzaku) The girls' personalities often clash and Elena resents her sister for outdoing her.

PHS

In the FFVII continuum, the cellular phones are referred to as PHS units: Personal Handyphone System. As far as is implied, these phones work pretty much the same as any cellular phone would.

Potion Calibration

Since the Final Fantasy worlds revolve around magic and the use thereof, coming up with a feasible method of explaining the Lifestream and Potions and the like to the satisfaction of our scientific OCD was trying. But we finally came up with something that satisfied canon and our anal-retentiveness. Since Potions and Hi-Potions restore a specific amount of HP (100 and 500 respectively), the amount of healing a Potion can do is exact and does not vary based on who is using it. This was easy to explain; dosages. However, an X-Potion restores a character's full health. Ergo, an X-Potion is not a specific strength or percentage; it's going to be different for every character. This took a little pondering, and we finally decided that since X-Potions cannot be bought and are difficult to come by anyway, we'd take a little artistic liberty and say that an X-Potion is not a specific type of potion that magically restores you to full-health--rather it's...sort of like a prescription. You have it calibrated to your specific stats. Each X-Potion is made exactly to the specifications of who it is being made for, which would logically be the only way anyone who uses one could be restored to full-health without severely overdosing a low-level character, or falling short for a high-level character. Now, this also presents the issue of potential overdose if you're not that hurt. Well duh, an X-Potion is a pretty coveted item; you only use it when you're about to KO anyway. ^_^

This rule also applies to other such items, including Turbo Ethers, which restore all of one's MP, and Elixirs, which fully restore both HP and MP. We also ran into a bit of a quandary on the subject of Phoenix Downs or a "Life" spells that will revive a KO'd character in-game. Now...Biology and Physics would argue that it is pretty much physically impossible to bring someone back to life once they are "dead", so we took a bit of artistic (scientific?) liberty with the definition of these sorts of items/magic, and added the stipulation that they do not re-animate someone who is dead...but rather revive someone who is unconscious so that they may heal themselves and continue battle. After all, save for the "Full Life" spell, both revival magic and the Phoenix Down only return a small percentage of the character's total HP...so it served more to reason (and science) that reversing death would be...unreasonable. Ergo, these sorts of items/materia can only revive someone who is unconscious and restore the amount of health and magic applicable. If you die, you're screwed. Sorry.

...Otherwise, we come back to the age-old argument, "Well, why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aerith?"

Senpai~tte...nani?

The word 先輩 [senpai] is a Japanese term used in reference to someone's elder, as in at work, in school, or in a martial art, for example. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with age. Someone younger than you in age who is a higher belt-level than you are in karate would still be your senpai. This word doesn't translate well into English; therefore we opted to just keep the term to illustrate the relationship between the Turks. Reno and Rude have been Turks longer than Elena and Rosalind; ergo, Reno and Rude are the girls' 'upperclassmen', as it were. We are both well aware that the use of the dreaded "Fangirl Japanese" in fic is serious taboo...however this word does not have an acceptable translation into the English language and will therefore be left in its untranslated form. For the record, both authors of this fic study and speak Japanese--we're not just throwing this in the story for shits and giggles, I promise.

Comatose?

In Mission Seventeen of Before Crisis, your playable character falls comatose after being exposed to heavy amounts of mako radiation inside the depths of the reactor in Corel. This coma lasts three years, during which time it is implied that Reno and Rude visited on occasion--since they are both conveniently there when your character comes out of said coma and Reno cracks jokes about how long you slept. During the whole of Before Crisis, Reno and your character work together a lot, and Reno acts as a mentor to your budding Turk throughout most of the missions, teaching you about materia and showing you the ropes of Turkdom. He even comes to rescue you if you fail on a mission and get captured. We chose to have Rosalind be the Turk who was exposed to the mako in the reactor for several reasons, all of which will be explained as the story unfolds. Taking a few artistic liberties with this decision, we decided to play up the relationship between Rosalind and Reno accordingly.