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27 Footnotes

Admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:55:13 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Twenty-Seven of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Roz at Nibelheim=== [[Image:TifaBC12.jpg |right|thumb|150px|Tifa in Mission 12 of Before Crisis, in the Nibel Mountains.]]

Nope. Did not make this shit up. In Mission 12 of Before Crisis, your playable Turk (whom I chose to be Rosalind for this event in the fic) spots little 15-year-old Tifa on a rope bridge with her wayward white cat, surrounded by monsters. After coming to her aid, you don't have time to take her back to town, so you take her with you as you head toward the reactor, promising to take her home after your job is done. Your Turk gets to be chummy with Tifa, and then there's a really heartwrenching scene after the town is razed by Sephiroth when your Turk finds Tifa's cat and starts to question whether or not they're strong enough to be a Turk. It's pretty awesome. In any case...we didn't make this up--a Turk really did save Tifa from Kimara Bugs on a rope bridge in the Nibel Mountains. Tifa's fuzzy memories are conjuring dragons as well because the reactor was surrounded by dragons for a time, which was why the initial investigation into the disappearances within the reactor had to be postponed.

===The Corel Reactor=== [[Image:RufusBC16.jpg|thumb|left|150px|Rufus and the Turks in the Corel Reactor.]]

Also not making this shit up. In Mission 16 of BC, we get a little more insight into the destruction of the Corel Reactor. AVALANCHE has occupied the reactor and gets to protesting, demanding that no more reactors be built. Rufus had been playing the informant to AVALANCHE and then tries to strongarm Fuhito, telling the man that he never gave them permission to occupy the reactor and he should be taking harsh measures in response... However, if Fuhito sees fit to destroy the Turks, he'll consider the matter dropped. Fuhito just laughs and tellls Rufus to go screw himself and attacks Rufus, and the Turks now have to protect their dummy VP who just tried to get them all killed. They just can't catch a break, can they? 
 
Afterwards, Veld recognizes Elfé as his long lost daughter Felicia and runs after her to try and get her back, leaving Tseng, Reno, Rude, and your player to protect the VP...but your player gets thrown back down into the reactor with Shears when Fuhito lands an unexpected blow... 
 
Now, it's never stated just how your player gets rescued from the reactor, but seeing as how Reno seems to take lots of pains to check up on you after you recover, it served to reason that he could have done it.

===No, they're not contacts=== [[Image:RozGreenEyes.jpg|thumb|left|200px|Rosalind from the opening sequence, with bright kelly-green eyes.]] [[Image:Rosalind.jpg|right|Rosalind's game sprite, with mako-colored eyes.]]

Additionally, there seems to be a discrepancy in the color of Rosalind's eyes, which was the reason we chose to have her as the victim of the Corel Reactor disaster. In some of the official artwork, Roz's eyes are green, as shown to the left. However her official sprite illustration shows her with bright turquoise eyes, like Reno's, as shown to the right. In fact...they are the exact same shade of turquoise as Reno's eyes...which seemed a trifle odd. Certainly it's not impossible for two people to have the same eye color, but mako-colored eyes seem unusual and are always artificially induced in this world, and so it got us thinking. The sprite artwork never changes--the eye color is turquoise from the beginning...but to change something as minute as eye color in a tiny sprite image on a mobile phone display would have been silly. But it did give us something to play with. 
 
[[Image:Reno.jpg|right]]Basically, it had always kinda bugged me that a big chunk of the fandom seemed to think Reno's eyes were green--they're not. They're quite clearly turquoise, like he was subjected to mako. And while his sanity may be questionable, he hasn't lost his mind the way the people who suffered mako poisoning or Jenova experimentation did...so it served to reason that perhaps he was just exposed to it to the point where it stained his eyes. Then we noticed the discrepancy in Roz's eyes and everything just kinda fell together.

17 Footnotes

72.177.32.198 — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:13:55 GMT

Admin: Reverted edit of Laurie, changed back to last version by 72.177.32.198

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Seventeen of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===When In Rome===

[[Image:Logo.jpg|thumb|200px|left]]RANDOM FUN FACT! The kanji in the logo of the ShinRa Company is broken down thus: 'shin' 「神」 is more commonly read as 'kami', meaning 'god', and 'ra' 「羅」, meaning Rome, as in the city in Italy. So, one could say that the name ShinRa carries the basic meaning, 'Roman God'. =D Neat, huh?

15 Footnotes

Admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 03:24:53 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Fifteen of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Chelsea===

[[Image:Chelsea.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]No, we are not making this up. Rude actually did date a girl named Chelsea who was a spy for AVALANCE. In Mission Six of Before Crisis, which takes place in January of 1991, the relationship comes to a head, although the length of time Rude may have been seeing Chelsea prior to this episode is unspecified. Things go down pretty much the way Reno details through the course of the chapter (though some of the dialogue and inner monologue was improvised on my part), but if you'd like to read the script, you can check it out [http://www.freewebs.com/gunshotromance/episode6.htm here] at Gunshot Romance.

14 Footnotes

Admin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 05:40:13 GMT

Admin: /* Aibou */

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Fourteen of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Aibou===

In the original Japanese script of Advent Children, Reno and Rude refer to one another as 'aibou' 「相棒」. In the English dub, this word is replaced with 'partner', however as with so many Japanese words, the true connotations of this word are lost in translation. The breakdown of the kanji is as follows: 'ai' 「相」 means fellow or dealing with togetherness, and 'bou' 「棒」 is the essence of a line or a support--an anchor, if you will. A police officer does not just up and call his assigned partner 'aibou'; it is a title that must be earned over time and through countless trials of trust and solidarity. An 'aibou' is more than a mere working buddy...an 'aibou' is a comrade in arms and a brother or sister perhaps truer than those you might have been blessed with by blood. While 'partner' is certainly not an incorrect interpretation of this word, as with 'senpai' 「先輩」 and 'zuruzuru' 「ズルズル」 there is no word in English that fully captures the depth of this word, so we chose to leave it untranslated. 

Also of note is that Reno never called Rude this in the script of the original game, nor did Rude call Reno by it. They always called one another by name; this holds true in Before Crisis as well. It seems that while these two would certainly go so far as to consider one another 'aibou', they don't say it unless the occasion truly calls for it.

13 Footnotes

Admin — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:20:29 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Thirteen of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Poppin' Pills===

In the FFVII Ultimania Omega, there are visual representations of many of the items, accessories, and armor you can acquire in the game. One of the things that caught us rather by surprise was the image of the curative Potions, as they appear to be orbs or spheres rather than liquids consumed from a vial or bottle.

[[Image:Potion.jpg]]

Since no size comparison is given, we chose to interpret these orbs as being small enough to put in like a pill bottle and carry around; that's why you can carry up to like 99 of them. XD Many thanks to [http://d_angel.livejournal.com D_A] for bringing this to my attention. ^_^

12 Footnotes

Admin — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:11:34 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Twelve of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Charlie===
[[Image:Charlie.jpg|left]]A secret character from Before Crisis, this man is known as "The Legendary Turk". Originally from Junon, he is a super-first class agent who was once feared on the battlefield as the God of Death. He uses both chain bombs and remote controlled bombs in battle. He becomes a playable character after completing Episode 24 (basically, after beating the game), and can be used for Episode 10 and on. He had no canon name, as was the case with all the Playable Turks, and D_A had not given him a name on her site, so we settle on 'Charlie' as the moniker for this character. 

Very little information is available regarding this character, so most everything mentioned in the fic about Charlie's character is from our own interpretation of him. 

===Valerie===
[[Image:Val02.jpg|left]]A young woman from Corel who was orphaned in the [Wutai] war, Valerie grew up trying to save other orphans from the suffering she herself had to endure, and sought to join the ranks of the Turks to attain the power to do so. Her weaponry consists of a slew of small throwing knives, and while she carries out her duties as a Turk faithfully and cheerfully, she has a dark somewhat brooding side that believes she goes through her life all alone. 

As with Charlie, very little information is available regarding this character, so almost everything mentioned in-fic about her is the interpretation of the authors, and has little specific canon basis. I will be translating scripts of her dialogue one of these days. 

===Regen in Battle===
Certainly Final Fantasy characters endure a lot of crap in their daily lives. Like...seriously. They're all a helluva lot more hardcore than I am, that's for sure. However we noticed something of a discrepancy in the amount of damage it seemed weaponry would do to a character in battle--namely, Vincent Valentine is shot by Hojo and 'dies', more or less. But when Vincent is in your party, his gun ends up doing significantly less damage to enemies than a lot of other attacks do. How could a gun kill Vincent, but do so little damage in battle? It seemed that there were other factors at work; we settled on the assumption that people going into battle probably had some preparation for the fight. It would be a good practice to cast Regen on oneself and one's party before entering battle, and seeing as how Reno and Rude take multiple hits from Yazoo and Loz over the course of their fight, and don't really start showing much wear for it til the very end of the fight, we felt it was safe to assume that they likely used materia on each other before engaging the Remnants, knowing it would be a hard fight.

11 Footnotes

Admin — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 06:57:34 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
Wow. Haven't needed any of these in a while. :o These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Eleven of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===We Seem to be Having a lot of Weather Today...===
As Gaia is mostly water, it stands to reason that the planet's climate relies heavily upon ocean currents. When Aerith summoned Holy, the Lifestream gushed up out of Northern Crater and poured over the world, saving it from Meteor. However, due to all the ice in that region, and the fact that the Lifestream is actually warm, the summoning of Holy would have resulted in a massive amount of ice melting and dumping into the ocean, effectively interrupting the flow of the climate-regulating ocean currents, resulting in a short miniature Ice Age that could have rectified itself over the course of one year, as precedented by the miniature Ice Age of Earth during the Industrial Revolution, caused by a slight melting of the polar ice caps due to the sudden influx of greenhouse gasses. The miniature Ice Age of Earth was rather unimpressive--aside from the strange weather and the fact that it was snowing in July, nothing was really affected, and the following year, the climate had essentially righted itself. Following in this same global climate regulatory pattern, Gaia would realistically experience a very cold year following the eruption of Holy. 

===Why~ Didn't I Take the Blue Materia?===
What Reno didn't realize was that Kadaj wasn't using Summon materia. Though a Summon materia would have been necessary to summon Bahamut Sin, we see a distinctly blue materia--a summon materia--glowing in Kadaj's arm. This, coupled with the fact that Bahamut Sin appears and actually fights on the material plane, rather than apparating and casting a spell before vanishing again as do the other summons of FFVII, leads us to believe that Bahamut Sin was summoned with the help of support materia, in much the same way as Zirconiade was summoned in Before Crisis. Please see [[Summons#Bahamut_Sin|this entry]] for some clarification. 

===The Good Old Days?===
It is in the opinion of the authors that the Turks' official department name of 'Department of Administrative Research' is far more apt than the fandom gives it credit for. A lot of people subscribe to the idea that the Turks have always been assassins, and that this department title is simply cover. We seek to cancel this subscription; it makes little sense for ShinRa to have needed an elite team of assassins over thirty years ago, when Vincent Valentine was a member of the department. ShinRa was only just starting to delve into the fields of mako technology, and had little opposition at the time. Why would the company bother to come up with a cover-story for a secret team of 1337 assassins? Obviously, the department used to have a normal mundane duty to fulfill. Please see our [[Turk Info|Turks Information Page]] for our full theory on how the Turks began, and each member's introduction to the team, as well as some further back story on some of the lesser known playable characters from Before Crisis. 

===Rafe===
[[Image:Rafe.jpg|left]]A former bodyguard of Don Corneo, Rafe's specialty is his outstanding ability to wield twin handguns with deadly accuracy and blinding speed. Growing up in the slums, his prowess with firearms earned him a seat on Don Corneo's cabinet of bodyguards. It was said that「銃を見た時には、既に死んでいる」, 'by the time you see the barrel of his gun, it's too late'. But after spending many years in the slums, he was tired of the politics that overran the scene in Wall Market and sought a new lease on life. 

It was around that time that he got an offer from the Turks. Knowing that his dissatisfaction with his situation wasn’t likely to go away, and that his defection would not be kindly looked upon by the Don and his cohorts, he accepted, leaving the world below the plate and its intrigues behind. Cool headed and a consummate professional, he carries out his orders, and he carries them out well. There is only one major flaw Rafe has, and that is, to be specific, that he carries his orders out in his own way. He has spent almost his whole life under the plate, and quite a bit of time in the Don’s employment, and as a result, he is used to doing things as he so chooses. When he was offered a place in the Turks, he took up the role, knowing that it would put his skills to the test. However his brash and unorthodox "underground" style of carrying out missions often brought about failure on his part, much to the chagrin of his peers. He often came to loggerheads while on his missions because he suddenly had protocol to follow, and team members he had to work in tandem with, and it was all very jarring for the youth. But it was something that he had to get used to if he was to succeed in a formal working environment, especially one like the Turks, where the ability to follow orders and do things exactly the way Veld and Tseng want them done was paramount to his success and survival. But what he lacked in self-restraint and strategy he more than made up for in enthusiasm and passion for his work, and eventually it all evened out. Despite his lack of reservations and tendency to fly off the handle, his skill with his guns is legendary and unmatched, and while his induction into the department might have been rocky, his ability to shoot the wings off a fly from fifty yards has saved the lives of his comrades on more than several occasions. 

===Cyr===
[[Image:Cyr.jpg|left]]Native to Icicle, Cyr is perhaps every bit as cold and merciless as her hometown. As a mercenary, she has seen a lot of battle and is accustomed to taking orders, regardless of how bloody or greusome they might be. As such, she adjusted to her new job on the Turks' payroll easier than some or her peers. Thoroughly no-nonsense and businesslike during missions, she gets her work done with minimal fuss and maximum efficiency. She is level-headed, alert and perceptive, frequently able to assess a situation and take the most prudent course of action. A skilled martial artist, she uses a style that demonstrates high levels of agility and kicking. She uses a special kind of attack style that involves twisting herself in the air mid-jump and kicking out at her opponents that, when executed just right, leaves her opponents dazed and often incapacitated. 

She almost exclusively uses male speech patterns. It seems that having worked as a mercenary for as long as she has (naturally, most of those mercenaries were men), she just sort of picked up on their speech and behavioral patterns. She became, essentially, "one of the guys". That's not to say that she’s butch, exactly, because there are things about her and the way she acts sometimes that are distinctly feminine, however she is most decidedly a tomboy if nothing else, and has just grown accustomed to being the way she is and probably doesn't even give it a second thought anymore. 

===Samantha===
[[Image:Sam.jpg|left]]Raised in Mideel, (presumably) the only daughter of a well to do family, Samantha is the epitome of genteel breeding, and has developed a taste for particular (somewhat eccentric) hobbies that accord with that breeding. She is very much "daddy's little girl", as it is implied that her parents doted on their daughter, and she was given the best of everything. Her love for hunting was instilled in her at a young age, and her skill in that area--and her expertise with the shotgun in particular--what was caught the attention of the people that recruited her into the Turks. She loves showing off and constantly tries to outdo herself, and, thus, immediately accepted the offer to become a Turks when it was presented. Samantha is a fan of big game hunting, and it shows in her work as well. While big missions incite a certain zealous enthusiasm in her, the smaller missions don't really hold her interest. Samantha is a rather flashy person with a flair for the melodramatic, and has a tendency to act a little spoiled. However she has a firm grasp of who she is and is confident in what she can do. She often comes across as a bit over-the-top as a result of her enthusiasm.

09 Footnotes

Admin — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 05:35:47 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Nine of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Captain, my Captain!===

[[Image:Veld.jpg|left]]Veld was the leader of the Turks in Before Crisis, and due to some...extenuating circumstances he had to literally disappear, else his life would prove forfeit. During his days at ShinRa, the Turks called him 'Shyunin' 「主任」, meaning literally, "person in charge". There is a lot to be said for the connotational and inferential meanings behind the honorific terms used to refer to one's superiors or elders in Japanese, and we wanted to maintain different titles for each of the individuals the Turks answered to. Rufus is called 'Shyachou' 「社長」, meaning "company president"... Durr. It sounded terribly ridiculous to have Reno calling Rufus "Mr. President", so we had to decide upon a term that showed a degree of respect, but that all the Turks would call Rufus. We settled on 'cheif', since it carries a similar connotation to 'president', but sounds significantly less formal without being insubordinate. Tseng was called by his name with 「-さん」 added to the end, indicative of formality, but without specific title. Even Reno uses the honorific 「-さん」 when addressing Tseng, and so 'boss' was used in this case (however, Elena calls him 「ツォンさん」 as well...and since the suffix can also be used as a term of endearment [rather like calling someone "name", dear], we chose to have her call Tseng by his name instead of as 'boss', since we all know how she feels about him. ^_~). 

So when we got to Veld, we were somewhat strapped for how to transfer the word 'Shyunin' to English, since cheif and boss were already taken. We decided to use 'captain', since it not only shows the high respect the Turks have for Veld, but it can also be used colloquially. The Japanese word for captain is actually 'Kanchou' 「艦長」, and Veld is actually never called thus...we just wanted to clarify our decision to use this title, since calling Veld "Hey Guy In Charge" would have been rather silly.

===Dilly Dally...===

Okay, let me just say right off the bat that the choice to translate Tifa's 'zuruzuru zuruzuru' 「ズルズルズルズル」 chiding as "dilly dally, shilly shally" had to be one of the worst choices they made with the dub of Advent Children. This is one of many reasons I...don't watch dubs. Some things just sound really retarded in English. We chose not to translate this phrase, as it is literally not meant to be translated. Japanese uses a lot of onomatopoeias as words; this one is meant to be the sound of something dragging along the ground. So while dilly-dallying might not be an incorrect inference, it really doesn't carry the same meaning that zuruzuru does. Japanese onomatopoeia is not intended to be said in English. Leave it alone. >:[

Turk Info

66.68.115.80 — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 07:05:26 GMT

Admin: /* Andrew, Rafe, and Rosalind */

<div align=justify>
This page contains spoilers for all of FFVII, Advent Children, and Before Crisis. Most of this information is based on canon, but is embellished with author-interpretation. It is not condoned by the creators of Final Fantasy, Square, Squeenix, Nomurasensei, or any other important industry people who will probably never read this anyway, and cannot be constituted as official canon in any manner. This is simply a culmination of fan-geekery and mild OCD. Thanks for reading. ^_^

==Nobody's Business but the Turks==

So now that we've gotten physics out of the way...let's talk about the Turks. That's right...ShinRa's Department of Administrative Research, the crème de la crème elite task force that not only holds Top Secret security clearance to all of the information ShinRa knows and kicks ass to preserve it...but looks damn snappy doing it in their three-piece suits and ties. While the exact history of the Turks and their origins with the ShinRa Company remain unknown, a close analysis of the compilations of FFVII give us enough of a foundation to be able to glean a feasible back story for this R&D-turned-assassin faction of the corporation. So let's work our way backwards, from the events of Advent Children back to Before Crisis, to try and understand just how deep the roots of the Turks as a department go. Below is a general synopsis of everything stated in canon regarding the Turks. Please keep in mind that for the sake of brevity, this is a very abridged version of the events the Turks take part in. Mentioned below are simply the most notable moments in the canon history of the Department of Administrative Research, and is not all-inclusive. 

===Advent Children===
[[Image:AC_Turks.jpg|thumb|200px|One of the final scenes in Advent Children, when Rufus is cured of his geostigma.]]
In Advent Children, ShinRa itself is mostly in pieces. After Rufus's being stricken with geostigma, what remained of the company after the horrific events of FFVII had no leadership with which to rebuild. As a whole, ShinRa as a global presence was done for; the president was dying, the planet was dying...there was simply no room and no motivation for ShinRa to rebuild...that is until Rufus came upon the idea that Kadaj and his brothers were after Jenova and there was suddenly an opportunity for ShinRa to 'redeem' itself in the eyes of the planet. It appeared that post-FFVII, the Turks (all of them--we discover in the final episode of Before Crisis that all of those Playable Turks who were believed dead after the battle with Zirconiade had actually been in hiding with Veld) were basically reassigned to simple bodyguards for the ailing president. Aerith was dead--the projects to attempt to recreate the Ancients died with her. Hojo was dead--the Jenova project died with him. Heidegger and Scarlet were dead--Weapons Development and the SOLDIER Project no longer had management. We are actually not given much indication what became of Palmer, but the Space Program was mostly shut down after the failed rocket launch... Reeve survived, but had gone off in the direction of the WRO in something of an effort to try and repair some of the damage ShinRa did. 

In short, ShinRa Electric Power Company had basically been reduced to the dead corporation of a dying president whose worldly dreams had been destroyed with the tower in old Midgar. 

That didn't mean that the loyalty of the Turks had been shaken, however. Despite the crumbling foundations of their corporation, the Turks stood by Rufus and were prepared to defend him to the death from the Remnants and their plan to resurrect Sephiroth. Mostly all this tells us definitively is that the steadfastness of the Turks is unwavering and endless, despite the impermanence of their company. Even without ShinRa's logo to stand proud before, the Turks would never back down from their duties. Even decades after the creation of the department, despite scandal, conspiracy, betrayal and tragedy, the constancy of the Turks remains unbroken. 

In the end, we don't know what is to become of the ShinRa Company...but it appears that regardless of where Rufus plans to take his company now, the Turks will stand by him to whatever end. 

===FFVII===
[[Image:FFVII_Turks.jpg|thumb|left|200px|The Turks as they appear in FFVII.]]
The role of the Turks in FFVII-proper was decidedly that of anti-heroes of choice. While the Turks certainly weren't the good guys, they were far from villains. Over the course of multiple altercations with these blue-suited opponents, even Cloud seems to come to the conclusion that the Turks might not be entirely bad. They even temporarily team up in an effort to rescue their respectively kindapped teammates. 

For that matter, as a general rule, the Turks don't really seem to want to engage Cloud and his group. There are a couple of occassions in which Reno actively refuses to act offensively against them, claiming he and the other Turks are 'off-duty'. In fact, the final battle with them is completely optional--they'll let you go if you opt not to fight them, even though they're supposed to be keeping you away. This rather proves that while their orders are important to them, even the Turks will bend the rules when they know it's the right thing to do. Despite being given direct orders to find and eliminate Cloud and his group, Reno, acting as leader in the absence of Tseng, in the end allows the heroes to pass. Despite the chagrin it undoubtedly caused him to allow Cloud to go ahead, Reno knew that unless Sephiroth was stopped, there was no hope for anyone. 

What all of this indicates is that, while the Turks' loyalty to ShinRa is obviously fierce and runs deep, even the most faithful Turk isn't blind to reason. Adding this layer of depth to the Turks as a whole helps humanize them significantly--no one can really relate to or like or significantly respect a bunch of corporate dogs who will follow an order to certain death. But take that loyalty and add reason and the ability to think for themselves, and we get a smart team of upright and ultimately likable anti-heroes who know when to follow an order to the end...and when that order will lead to their end. 

===Before Crisis===
[[Image:BC_Turks.jpg|thumb|200px|The cast of Before Crisis.]]
This chunk of the compilation of FFVII is probably the best source for defining the Turks. It is in this side of the story alone that we truly get a Turk's-eye-view of the world and how it works. After reading through the story of Before Crisis, I personally had a much clearer image of the Turks as a unit and ShinRa as a company. Before Crisis's story begins shortly after the ending of the war between the ShinRa Electric Power Company and the Wutai tribe, a conflict mentioned only in passing during Final Fantasy VII. With Wutai defeated and the people of the world now dependent on their mako energy and materia, ShinRa finds itself the dominant economic, military and political power in the world. But there are those who remain dedicated to the destruction of ShinRa, chief among them being the newly emerged insurgent movement known as "AVALANCHE". Before Crisis focuses on this conflict between ShinRa and the original AVALANCHE group, which began six years before the events portrayed in Final Fantasy VII, and lasted up to the time immediately preceding the events that took place in that game. 

The first few mission files of Before Crisis deal with AVALANCHE's first hostile assault on ShinRa and its global power. AVALANCHE confronts the Turks in Sector Eight at all hours of the morning, and then make an assassination attempt on President Shinra himself in Junon. However, at this time, the Turks are already a highly trained and deadly force. This indicates that something, at some point, triggered ShinRa to take their Department of Administrative Research and turn them from simple recon teams into highly skilled assassins. It is also implied that prior to this trigger, the Turks consisted solely of Reno, Rude, Tseng, and Veld (and Vincent Valentine, much much earlier), since all of the Playable Turks are basically all referred to as rookies (save for three of them, who will be noted upon further along in this analysis). 

[[Image:Mission4.jpg|thumb|200px|left|In Mission Four of Before Crisis, Andrew attempts to recruit some ringfighters for the SOLDIER program]]The next major development Before Crisis hints at is in mission four, about two weeks later. We find out that the Turks are apparently the department in charge of scouting out recruits for the SOLDIER program. This not only clinches the fact that the Turks are basically in on all the shit going down in the dungeons of ShinRa's scientific laboratories, but that they are apparently aware of the traits and characteristics and nitty-gritty specifics that make a good candidate for various programs being run by the company. Three months after mission four, it is proven again that the Turks have grade-A security clearance, since they're sent to protect the doctor in charge of delivering Top Secret information regarding the SOLDIER program itself. 

Now, up until this point in the story, the Turks are pretty much unknown to people in general. Come mission seven the following year, we learn that AVALANCHE has actually created their own band of creepy experimental soldiers in an effort to combat the Turks, meaning AVALANCHE has recognized them as formidable opponents. While most people appear to have no idea who the Turks are and what their specific ties to ShinRa may be, AVALANCHE has become well aware of their intentions, and cultivates a pratcically immortal combat team to counteract their forces. Also in this mission we learn that the SOLDIERs really dislike the Turks--for obvious reasons. Nobody would be too fond of the group who turned them into a bunch of experiments. It seems that the Turks are regarded with general disdain by most of ShinRa--even the president himself doesn't like them. He appears to see them as too[[Image:Mission9.jpg|thumb|200px|right|President Shinra relieves Veld of his duties as leader of the Turks in Mission Nine.]] much of a wild card. They're too strong; they know too much. The Turks could literally bring about ShinRa's downfall, and the president is anything but reassured by this... In fact, in mission eight, Rufus convinces the president that the Turks must be leaking information to AVALANCHE, since the terrorist group always seems to know exactly when and where ShinRa is going to make a move. In retaliation, President Shinra removes Veld from his position as leader of the Turks and instead puts Heidegger in direct charge of them, claiming Veld is incompetent and cannot maintain a firm hand over his own department. However this doesn't last for long--when Veld threatens to go public with all of the top-secret information he has on ShinRa's controversial research, he is quickly put back in charge of his beloved Turks in an effort to maintain the company's secrecy. All of this fully supports the supposition that, while the Turks are indeed completely loyal to ShinRa--and more specifically, to Veld--they are not afraid to throw their weight around in an effort to keep their team intact. There appears to be a lot of in-fighting in the ShinRa bureaucracy, and it seems that perhaps the Turks are the only department where all of the members trust each other completely... The Turks are every bit the 'family' Veld sees them as. 

Mission ten gives us insight into just how top-rung the Turks really are on the ladder of ShinRa's chain of command. When all of Hojo's experiments are set loose in ShinRa tower, not even the SOLDIERs are permitted to make a move. Only the Turks are allowed to know about these experiments, and if word of Hojo's controversial doings were to be leaked, ShinRa could be done for. This may be the best indication given that the Turks were not always a combat team. After all, why would a bunch of assassins have information on every little minute detail of ShinRa's underhanded internal workings? Perhaps the Department of Administrative Research is more aptly named than is initially apparent... 

In mission thirteen we are shown a very sad flashback of when a faulty order given by Veld results in the destruction of his hometown, Kalm. This helps to explain why Veld is so very attached to his Turks--they truly are the only family he has anymore. Here we also see just how dedicated to his job Veld is. He says to your playable Turk, "This is what the Turks do. Even if it means killing your family, you’ll continue to do your job." This leads me to believe that all of the Turks, in order to be considered for Turk-dom, must have either no family at all, or sever all ties with them entirely. Having given the order that killed his own family tore Veld apart inside...and the only way he can justify his actions at all to himself is to accept that he did it because it was his job. If being a Turk has to come before being part of any family other than the Turks themselves, it would serve to reason that Veld would not want to put anyone else in the position he himself was put in on the day that Kalm was destroyed. Perhaps this is why, aside from Elena and her elder sister, we know nothing of the families of any of the Turks--they all forcibly removed themselves from their families, or had none to speak of in the first place. 

[[Image:Mission16.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Rufus betrays the Turks in Mission Sixteen.]]The Turks' first true taste of betrayal comes in mission sixteen, when it comes to light that Rufus was the informant to AVALANCHE, and he basically tells AVALANCHE to off the Turks if they want to stay in ShinRa's good graces. However, when AVALANCHE doublecrosses Rufus and basically tells him to sit on it and twist, the Turks--in a surprisingly merciful show of their loyalties to the company--save young Rufus's ass from a whooping at the hands of Fuhito and the Ravens. After this, Veld discovers that Elfe, the leader of AVALANCHE, is actually his daughter Felicia, who he thought died in the destruction of Kalm all those years ago. He more or less defects from ShinRa to pursue her, and Rufus is grounded for being a naughty naughty traitor. However, in Veld's fleeing ShinRa to try and find his daughter, he sealed his own fate. The information the Turks know is far too confidential for anyone to simply leave. As President Shinra once said, "The only retirement a Turk is entitled to comes with a body bag." Suddenly, Veld is a very wanted man, and the Turks are stuck between a rock and a hard place. What are they to choose? To save their boss and the father figure they have come to respect as their mentor would mean to forfeit their own lives...but how could they instead choose to murder Veld...? After a series of unfortunate events including but not limited to the Turks basically all-out turning against ShinRa in an effort to save Veld's life, President ShinRa decides that the only course of action is simply to destroy the Turks entirely. 

But then there are more pressing matters at hand--Fuhito manages to complete the summon materia Zirconiade which will destroy everyone on the planet and revitalize the Lifestream. Crazy bastard. There are no scripts to be found beyond episode twenty of Before Crisis, unfortunately, so I don't have the details of how precisely the Turks manage to defeat Zirconiade, or what exactly becomes of Fuhito...however in the end, Zirconiade is defeated, and all of the playable Turks are presumed dead. Tseng pretends to shoot Veld and Elfe so that ShinRa will stop hunting him, and Rufus is satisfied that the Turks have reestablished their loyalties to ShinRa by killing Veld and destroying Zirconiade and the leaders of AVALANCHE. The epilogue of Before Crisis coincides with FFVII, as the remaining Turks are suddenly alerted to the attack on Mako Reactor One, and then we cut ahead to the Meteor crisis, where we discover that all of the playable Turks who were presumed dead are in fact alive and have been in hiding with Veld all this time. 

==The History of the Turks?==

The information below, as with all of the not-specifically-canon information stated in this wiki, is not supported or condoned by the creators of FFVII, and is merely the speculation of the authors. The stories to follow are abridged, and many of them will actually be explained in further detail in the story itself. These notes are here mostly so that the reader can garner an understanding of the relationships between the members of the Turks as we have interpreted them. This is our take on the Turks, and how they came to be not only the most powerful defensive force of the strongest bureacratical presence on Gaia...but also its greatest liability... [dundunDUNNNNN!!!] 

===Vincent Valentine===
[[Image:TurkVincent.jpg|left]]It is established that Vincent Valentine was once a Turk, before he was creepily experimented on by Hojo and locked himself away in a coffin beneath the ShinRa mansion in Nibelheim so he could emo away the rest of his life as a freaking vampire. This is stated to have taken place thirty years ago, meaning that prior to 1967, Vincent was the only canonly-known Turk in ShinRa's repertiore. We're not even certain that Veld was in charge at this point. However, we're going to say he was, because while we're given no specific indication it was Veld, there is no statement that the Turks ever changed hands, and Veld does refer to Vincent at one point as his previous coworker. So thirty years ago, Veld was in charge of the Department of Administrative Research, and his only known employee was a one Vincent Valentine. Vincent actually states that he had been employed by ShinRa as a hired gun...so here we hit an impasse--if Veld was the only acting member of the Department of Administrative Research and yet Vincent was a hired gun for ShinRa, what exactly were the circumstances of his employment? 

Before the beginnings of the Jenova Project, ShinRa logically had little to no call for a scientific department; why else would Gast have conducted all his research in the basement of a mansion in Nibelheim rather than a pre-established laboratory somewhere? So, we can conclude that before the establishment of the Jenova Project, whatever scientific research, if any, that ShinRa was funding could have been overseen and reported upon by one executive--Veld. Back before ShinRa was financing multiple endeavors, the president would have only needed one employee to oversee any and all research done in the name of ShinRa, a sort of acting executive to make sure the research was being carried out properly and being fully reported to the president. This Department of Administrative Research would have safeguarded against scientists making amazing and profitable discoveries with ShinRa's funding and then turning around and patenting them without giving ShinRa its due. The Department could also do surveillance and reconnaissance to gather information for ShinRa; the company was assuredly interested in the inner workings of enough so that Veld was kept sufficiently busy gathering information. 

[[Image:Vincent.jpg|right]]Enter Gast and the Jenova Project. Suddenly, ShinRa had more going on than one man could keep tabs on. Veld saw the need for a suboordinate, someone he could assign to the Jenova Project and report upon it, leaving Veld free to continue his data mining in other venues. We don't know much of anything about Veld's early days, but we can assume he was all right with a gun and fairly decent in combat--we figure he was hired straight out of the military academy as ShinRa was just starting out. Perhaps Veld found himself in a situation where those combat skills came in handy once or twice. Additionally, judging from the fact that Gast planned to delve into the realm of genetics with the supposed Ancient dubbed Jenova, Veld could very well have predicted some kind of public outcry against the experimentation and might have sought to safeguard against potential turmoil by hiring a research suboordinate capable of defending the scientists against anti-experimentation aggressors (you know the type). We think that for these reasons, Veld decided to hire a subodinate with satisfactory combat abilities, meaning Vincent was indeed employed by ShinRa as a hired gun, as he states in FFVII, but that Vincent was actually an executive of administrative research, in line with our theory of the Turks' origin. 

===Charlie===
[[Image:Charlie.jpg|left]]After Vincent's unfortunate mishap involving an irritable scientist, a bullet, and a coffin, Veld once again found himself in need of a subordinate. So, in light of Vincent's inability to defend himself sufficiently, Veld sought to hire an incredibly competent subordinate who would be capable of surviving any situation. Reflecting upon the training he received in the military academy, Veld once again turns to the school for recruitment, and comes up with a youth from Junon who graduated at the top of his class. This man is referenced in Before Crisis as the "Legendary Turk" and becomes a playable character in the game after completing Episode 24; he has no canon name or widely accepted fanon name, and so we have dubbed him Charlie. Because he only becomes available after the entire story is completed, and he is considered legendary and known as the God of Death on the battlefield, we can conclude that Charlie was actually not present for any of the events of Before Crisis, since he would have probably been mentioned at some point throughout the story if he had been there. 

Before Crisis begins in 1991, and so Charlie must have left the Turks before that point. Because he does become available, however, we know he is not actually dead, but merely absent. Given that we decided Reno and Rude joined the Turks in 1987, and that Tseng was an established employee at the time, we can estimate that the latest Charlie could have left the Turks was immediately prior to Tseng being hired, which could have been as late as 1986. Based on our earlier speculation, this gives Charlie a potential nineteen-year period between Vincent's demise in 1967 and his own departure from the employ of ShinRa. This gives Charlie plenty of time to go from a competent military academy graduate to a legendary Turk feared on the battlefield as a God of Death, and given Charlie's impressive capabilities, a successful vanishing act after developing an interest in retirement is completely plausible. 

===Tseng===
[[Image:Tseng.jpg|right]]Tseng's attachment to Veld is very much like that of a student to a mentor, as well as a son to a father. Tseng seems to have an overwhelming sense of duty and respect toward Veld, fueling the idea that Veld may have actually found Tseng on the streets and, sensing in him a potential for greatness, decided to train him to work beneath him in the Department of Administrative Research. Why? Perhaps it had something to do with the loss of his own family. Veld's own misconstrued order destroyed Kalm and killed his wife and daughter, so he believes, and his personality clearly dictates that he longs for that feeling of unity. Going on the assumption that Reno and Tseng are about the same age, and Reno is visibly in his mid to late twenties at the very oldest (and Tseng's photo from Before Crisis seriously looks like his highschool sophomore yearbook photo--he can't be older than like sixteen there), we settled on a solid 27 years old for these two come Advent Children. Like pretty much everything about the Turks, Tseng's origins are completely unknown to anyone, however seeing as how he appears to be very young in Before Crisis and yet is almost unnaturally loyal and steadfast to his cause, it seems plausible that perhaps ShinRa and the Turks are all Tseng has. 

Born in Wutai (as his name itself is Chinese in nature) in 1972, Tseng is far too disciplined in his youth to have been raised without some manner of guidance. Because his personality is such that he trusts Veld absolutely, and views duty, loyalty, and efficiency sacred above all other things, Tseng would have obviously been taught as a child that in order to be successful in life, one had to understand and practice these values. As the war between ShinRa and Wutai begins in 1982 when he is but ten years old, it serves to reason that Tseng subsequently either lost touch with his Wutaian roots, or was somehow betrayed by his heritage, else it is exceedingly unlikely that he would have joined forces with the very company Wutai was at war with. Tseng's personality is very remniscient of a virtuous and honorable samurai, and so we suppose that if he is not of full Wutaian ancestry that his father at least was probably the Wutaian parent (it rather feels like Tseng's mother died when he was very young--perhaps he never even really knew her, which would explain at least some of his very clipped and harsh-edged ways), and instilled into his son all the honor and pride that went with being a male from their respectable country. But when the war broke out between Wutai and ShinRa, Tseng was too young to enlist in the ranks of the armies that would fight for Wutai. Left alone--most likely with a neighbor, nanny, or friend of the family--as his father was sent off to war, Tseng would come to learn that his father fell in battle. Enraged, stricken with grief, and suddenly left questioning all of the honor and virtue he had been taught as a youngster, Tseng would flee the safety of his home to charge into battle to avenge his father's untimely demise at the hands of ShinRa. 

Naturally, a ten-year-old would be about as successful on the battlefield as rollerskates on ice. Tseng fell quickly to the might of the SOLDIERs of ShinRa's forces, left to curse the very foundations of intrinsic worth that his family had always believed would save them from wickedness. 

But Tseng was saved. When the SOLDIERs were ordered to comb the bloodied battlefield for survivors to be brought in for questioning, the battered body of a young boy would have been brought before Heidegger, who was in charge of the SOLDIER Department. Obviously, the executives would see no merit in questioning a child. But when the order was given to have the boy shot, there was a voice of objection...from the Department of Administrative Research. What a waste it would be to simply kill a boy with the courage to face the power of ShinRa at the tender age of ten! If Heidegger had no use for the boy, then Veld would find one. Suddenly, those intrinsic values of Wutaian faith were worn upon the lines of a very different face, and spoken in the voice of a man who would prove to be a worthy surrogate father to the upright and principled young boy from Wutai. 

Now, it might seem nonsequitur for a man such as Tseng to ultimately swear fielty to ShinRa, when ShinRa was the power who felled Wutai and killed his father, but bear in mind that all of Tseng's youth was steeped in honor and integrity. Although undoubtedly resentful at first, Tseng would come to terms with his hatred for ShinRa, and his admiration and respect for the man who saved his life when even the virtues of his own ancestry had abandoned him would rise to dwarf and eclipse his bitterness and abhorrence of ShinRa. So great would Tseng's loyalties to Veld grow to become that he would swear allegience to the very company that destroyed his country in order to stand by Veld's side. When he faced the door of death, it was not ShinRa who extended a hand to save his life, but a man--Veld--who would cast aside the precedents of war and opposition to spare the life of a child. Surely Tseng owed him that same benefit of doubt and suppression of discrimination in return. 

Acting as Veld's apprentice and eventually--when he grew old enough to bear the gravity of such responsibilities--earning the title of his second-in-command, Tseng took his job as a Turk very seriously, and maintained that immaculate work ethic unwaveringly. At the age of fourteen, Tseng would become the youngest junior executive on ShinRa's payroll. 

Tseng is the only Turk you never engage in battle in FFVII, however in Before Crisis, there is a special episode in which you can actually play as Tseng. In this episode, we learn that Tseng's weapon is a pistol, and that he's damn good with it. If Veld was seeking to hire additional employees with combat skills, you can bet your PHS that Tseng would have undergone strict and regimented combat training before he achieved any manner of significant status in the department. It is likely that his father gave him some manner of training as well, so Tseng probably took to the tutelage of the Military Academy like a fish to water. So although we have little hard evidence to work from, it would make little sense that Tseng would serve as leader of the Turks come the time of FFVII if he wasn't just as capable in battle--if not moreso--than his subordinates. 

===Reno and Rude===
[[Image:Reno.jpg|left]]The history of Reno and Rude is a subject of great debate in the fandom. It is given that these two have been friends for a very long time...but that amount of time is never specified. It is stated that come the events of Before Crisis, the two of them have both been Turks for several years, but just how many years, we are never told. Given the stark opposing personalities coupled with the fact that Rude rarely speaks more than three words at a time and yet Reno has little difficulty knowing exactly what is on his partner's mind, it would serve to reason that these two were buds before they signed on with ShinRa. A chatterbox like Reno is going to have difficulty getting along with a taciturn person like Rude--surely he would get terribly bored. And a stoic and levelheaded man like Rude is certainly going to find Reno's boisterous nature downright obnoxious, his reckless methods foolhardy and idiotic. We supposed that these two boys were friends from childhood--it's really the best explanation for how they can stand each other for extended periods of time, and how despite the dichotomy of their characters, they serve as the best pair of agents on the Turk team. Rude appears to be a few years older than Reno, both in body and spirit; we settled on a four-year gap, and so when they signed on with ShinRa in 1987, Reno was fifteen and Rude nineteen.[[Image:Rude.jpg|right]] 

Obviously, Rude seems like an excellent candidate for an administrative career. Quiet, stern, and no-nonsense, Rude would have likely been hired on the spot--most likely by Tseng, since he would have the authority to act in Veld's place in non-emergency situations. Tseng probably liked Rude's levelheadedness and businesslike manner, and would have quickly sought to add him to their team. With his broad, strong shoulders and obvious strength, Rude's need for training with the Military Academy would have been minimal. Serious, smart, and strong as a bull, Rude was already prepped and well on his way to being an excellent addition to the Department of Administrative Research. 

Reno, however, would have been a completely different story. Reno was rather the embodiment of everything Tseng stood against. He was brash, excitable, loud and gung-ho, with little finesse and no strategy to speak of. Even before the interview process could take place, Tseng surely would have dismissed Reno as a loose cannon--an accident waiting to happen. And while Reno was, in fact, a few months older than Tseng, he would have been seen as far too immature and peurile to handle a serious job that required stealth and strategy. Reno walked through the door a dark horse; he was going to have to prove himself before Tseng would even look his way. 

Infuriated that his best friend got hired by the cool and illustrious corporation when he didn't, Reno probably set out to...put it in Tseng's eye. He'd show that stiff white-collared jerk just what a loose canon he could be. You can imagine Tseng's shock and disbelief when a one redheaded young man ninja'd his way into Tseng's excutive office through the air ducts and snuck silently up behind the deputy to the most top-secret department in the ShinRa company. Poking two fingers into the back of Tseng's head, Reno asked darkly, "Who's not good enough to work for you now?" 

After being shown out in handcuffs by security and returned to an exceedingly embarrassed Rude at the hotel room the boys had rented in Sector Eight, Reno would receive a phone call the next day from a one Cheif Veld of the Department of Administrative Research, asking him when he was free to begin training. 

While Reno was somewhat disenchanted by the idea of being a paper-pusher, it never crossed his mind to look for alternative means of employment. ShinRa was the largest most well-to-do company around, and anywhere else Reno might have been qualified to work at his age wouldn't have paid anything near the paycheck ShinRa offered. And once the Turks' job description began to morph and warp from officework to field work to something much more sinister and clandestine, Reno really found his niche. While both Reno and Rude excelled in their positions, Tseng still found Reno a vexing presence, and the two often locked horns. When Veld made the decision to put Reno in charge of field missions, Tseng protested fiercely. And while he has since come to the understanding that Reno's unorthodox methods and questionable morality are never executed in a manner that would endanger any Turk, he retains some long-standing general irritation with the redhead...perhaps for old times' sake alone. 

===Tegwin===
[[Image:Tegwin02.png|left]]
When Reno and Rude became part of the Turks, it wasn't long before they were introduced to Tegwin. Small, slim, and rather serious for her young age, Tegwin was the youngest person ever recruited by the Department of Administrative Research. Having been signed on with the company at the tender age of six in 1985, Tegwin was merely eight years old when she met her new coworkers. Growing quickly attached to the two of them and coming to view them in the same big-brotherly light in which she saw Tseng, Tegwin took it upon herself to show the two new recruits the ropes of the Department of Administrative Research. But Reno was suspicious. How had a kid like her gotten through the door (especially when he himself had had to jump through eighteen flaming hoops to get his foot in)? Only after much pestering on Reno's part did she finally explain how exactly someone so young came to work for ShinRa. 

Tegwin was born to a mother she can barely remember and a father no one can forget. She is Charlie's flesh and blood, and while she is anything but ashamed of this fact, Tegwin had been keeping her family ties a secret from all other ShinRa personnel, even going so far as to take a false name--Shisune--to wear over her true name in an effort to keep Charlie's legacy quiet. Trusting her new seniors with this information was a difficult enough task for little Tegwin, but when a curious Reno pressed for more details, she was inclined to balk. Only after the first indications that ShinRa was in for a long hard road against AVALANCHE's predecessors did the little redhead gear up the nerve to tell Reno, Rude, and Tseng the full truth. 

It had been no secret that Charlie got around in his day. But when his romps with a particular young lady in Lower Junon left the poor girl expecting, Charlie was caught between a rock and a hard place. Certainly Veld trusted the man enough to know that he would have taken ShinRa's secrets to the grave, but President Shinra was not so forgiving of the Department of Administrative Research. Charlie had no choice but to leave the young mother of his child to raise the infant alone. ShinRa paid its employees well, and so Tegwin's childhood was never a strained one, since her father sent plenty of financial support their way (he always insisted it was only because Tegwin's mother had plenty of information on him to sell him out to any of ShinRa's enemies...but Tegwin knew better), and while visits from Charlie were few and far between, there was never a doubt in her mind that despite her father's pointed absence through most of her childhood, she was loved. 

But even the best-laid plans can come unraveled in one's grasp. One night when Charlie returned to his lover's home, he found the house empty, locked, and up for public auction. His lady and daughter were nowhere to be found. Alarmed that perhaps their secret had been found out, Charlie contacted Veld to try and nip any slander or libel in the bud, but Veld already knew. Charlie's lover had died suddenly, unexpectedly, of a heart condition even Charlie hadn't been aware of. Tegwin had been taken to a nearby orphanage. Charlie would never see her again. 

That wasn't good enough. Many things could be said for the Turks, but never that they abandoned their families. Charlie pleaded with Veld to offer Tegwin some manner of sanctuary, for lack of a better word, within the safe walls of the ShinRa Company. After much haggling over the issue with President ShinRa, Veld finally found a workable loophole. As news of the precursors of the AVALANCHE movements grew more and more aggressive, it seemed that there would be a need for more members of the Department of Administrative Research. Family ties made recruitment into the department tricky, but wouldn't it be fascinating to raise a parentless child as a Turk? To take a child from an orphanage and steep them in the values of ShinRa for the entirety of their young life? To know that the loyalty of that Turk was so deeply rooted in them that they would never stray? Never question? Certainly the idea of unquestioned solid loyalty intrigued President Shinra, and he agreed to allow Veld his experiment. 

Adopted from the orphanage only a week and a half after arriving there, Tegwin became the child of the Turks. She was trained in every field from her introduction into the family, and while Charlie's visits were still sporadic (he was, after all, 'dead' as far as the company knew), Tegwin's love for him was never shaken, and she poured her heart and soul into becoming just as legendary a Turk as her father had been. 

Incidently, aside from Charlie, Veld, Reno, Rude, and Tseng, no one in the ShinRa Company ever found out that Tegwin was related to Charlie in the first place... 

===Adrian===
[[Image:Adrian02.jpg|left]]
Originally hailing from Gongaga, Adrian was born into a simple family with simple ideals. His mother died in childbirth, leaving him to be raised alone by his father--a swordsman who helped provide law enforcement for the little town. Serious, dedicated, and driven by his studies, Adrian grew adept at swordsmanship at a very young age, determined to surpass his father one day. Gongaga was a very small town; there was only one school, and everyone pretty much knew everyone else in the village, so when Adrian stumbld across a little redheaded girl being picked on during recess hours one day, he quickly took it upon himself to stop the injustice. Soundly silencing the bullies with his swift movements and well-placed strikes, Adrian dispatched the older students and turned to find out what they had been picking on the little girl about. She explained that her mother was unmarried, and her father was never around, and the older children saw fit to fault her for that. Her plight struck a chord in Adrian, who had always had an appreciation for others who bore the hardships of single-parent family life. While he was a full three years the girl's senior, the two became fast friends, and she never again had to worry about being bullied on school grounds. But the pleasant days of his childhood would not last. The little girl's mother died within a year of their meeting, and Adrian was saddened to see her sent off to an orphanage in Nibelheim (as Gongaga was far too small of a town to house an orphanage). Having no means to keep in touch with the girl, he expected they would never meet again. 

Several years passed, and Adrian continued his training under his father, growing more and more skilled each day. But like his friendship with the little redheaded girl, it seemed that this, too, would be cut short. Adrian's father was killed on the job one night when a store robbery turned violent; shot in the head, he died instantly and painlessly, but Adrian was left with a feeling of unfinished dissatisfaction in his life--he would never fully learn his father's skill and would thus never be able to surpass him or pass his teachings on. At the tender age of thirteen, Adrian would be faced with a tough decision: either try and make a living on his own with no guardian, or be shipped off to the orphanage in Nibelheim. Supposing that there was more honor to be had in forging one's life for oneself, Adrian chose to remain in his father's house, doing odd jobs around the village to make ends meet. It was hard work, but he was happy knowing that his father would be proud of his efforts. 

A generally gentle and amiable fellow, Adrian was well-liked by his neighbors, and was friends with most of the villagers. Raised to value honor, virtue, and loyalty above all things, Adrian did not take unfairness lightly. So when one of his friends was kidnapped by a rebel group and held hostage, Adrian went to retrieve him without hesitation, enraged that anyone would dare endanger a comrade. In his anger, he lost control and single-handedly killed every man guarding the stronghold where his friend as imprisoned. Suddenly, his motives were unimportant in light of the massacre at his hands, and he was apprehended and thrown in jail, never to live the life of a free man again. News of the crazed swordsman who had killed an entire rebel squad spread like wildfire through the media, and caught the attention of a particular young redheaded girl in Midgar. Upon seeing images of the imprisoned man, Tegwin was shocked to recognize him as Adrian, the little boy from Gongaga she had known so many years ago. Knowing that he would never be freed after commiting such a crime, Tegwin pleaded with Veld to do something to offer some kind of sanctuary to the captive swordsman. Impressed by tales of Adrian's skill, and intrigued by Tegwin's past ties to him, Veld decided to fulfill Tegwin's request. Adrian was offered a position in ShinRa's Department of Administrative Research in early 1988. Recognizing his recruiter as none other than the little girl he had known so long ago, Adrian quickly accepted the offer, and never looked back. 

Swearing his loyalties to ShinRa and the Turks who had saved him from a life behind bars, Adrian pledged his sword and his life to Veld, carrying out his missions with deadly swiftness and accuracy. His friendship with Tegwin was rekindled, and while his fielty is sworn to the Turks in general, it is and always will be sworn to her in particular. He found it ironically fitting that the little girl he rescued from injustice on a playground years ago would be the one to save him from a life of imprisonment as an adult. Funny the way things tended to work out, he often mused, and how friendships had an odd way of coming full circle. 

===Andrew, Rafe, and Rosalind===
[[Image:Andrew02.jpg|left]]Not long after Reno and Rude's induction into the Turks, things began to get sticky for ShinRa. With the discovery of the profitability of mako energy, the company began to grow, and its harvesting of natural mako began to draw attention. Though the team consisted of four very capable field agents in addition to Tseng behind a desk in the office, the Department of Administrative Research did not see the attack coming when AVALANCHE's predecessors unleashed an all-out assault on the company itself, howling about how ShinRa was going to destroy the planet. HQ was mostly unharmed, but several of the smaller facilities under the ShinRa umbrella were lost that day, along with many factory workers' lives. At that time, Veld knew things were going to do nothing but grow more and more difficult for his Turks, and decided to begin expanding their ranks. 

[[Image:Rafe02.jpg|right]]Recruitment for the Turks was never done in a traditional manner once they ceased to be merely a recon department. When they turned from datamining to ShinRa's most capable line of defense, things were done in a much less public manner. In late 1990, after being promoted to second-in-command under Tseng, Reno scouted the talents of a young redhead from Junon (and by 'scouted' I mean incarcerated him after catching him trying to steal a motorcycle from the company garage), around the same time that a speedy ex-bodyguard of the infamous Don Corneo was pulled in for training. Along with a gunslinger girl whose father was a professor at the military academy, the three youths made up the first new batch of Turks. Rosalind was the oldest of the three, and was in fact older than her two teachers, however the fact that her tutors were younger than her didn't break Rosalind's strict and severe code of professional discipline. Reno and Tseng were still her honorable senpai, regardless of her two-year age advantage. 

[[Image:Roz02.jpg|left]]Andrew and Rafe were both trained by Reno, since he seemed to be the only one who really 'got' them in the first place. The boys were brash, reckless, and gung-ho, and so Reno's strict and brutal--if not unorthodox--methods were about the only thing that got through the thick skulls of the rookies. Rosalind, however, bounced back and forth between training with Reno and training with Tseng, and was handled very differently. Needless to say that while all three rookies turned out to be excellent Turks in their own way, their work ethics varied drastically. Whereas Andrew and Rafe bucked authority and preferred to do things their own way, Rosalind followed the book to the letter. Rafe even began bucking uniform regulations along with his tutor, and Tseng gave up reprimanding the two of them after about two weeks with no luck. Tseng had long ago stopped trying to get Reno to tuck his shirt in, and he hadn't appreciated his deputy condoning such sloppiness with the new recruits, but in the long run the most important thing was that the new Turks be able to get the job done. Tseng supposed he could overlook the lack of necktie for the sake of Reno's flawless field record, and only hoped that Reno's accuracy and dedication would rub off on the rookies along with his foul mouth and slovenly wardrobe. 

===Valerie and Alexander===
[[Image:Val02.jpg|left]][[Image:Alex02.jpg|right]]While Reno was training Andrew and Rafe, Tseng was busy training two additional recruits. Alexander, a young man with the unusual talent of wielding nunchaku, and Valerie, who was deadly accurate with her throwing knives, were being trained simultaneously with the other rookies, but with a slightly different purpose. They were to serve as partners to Tegwin and Adrian. While the Turks often worked as a full group when out in the field, Veld had decided it might be a good idea to have each one assigned a partner to cover them specifically. Since Reno and Rude had been friends for years and already worked seamlessly together, it only seemed logical to assign them to guard one another's blind spots. Alex was to be assigned to partner with Tegwin, and Val with Adrian, so that each rookie would be working with a veteran. Once training was complete, the regimen of Turks numbered at seven, partnering the level-headed Rosalind with the hotblooded Andrew, and leaving the loose canon Rafe to work alone until a suitable partner was recruited into the ranks, as Tseng rarely went into the field and thus was not assigned a partner until many years later. 

===Samantha===
[[Image:Sam02.jpg|left]]A few months after the successful 'graduation' of the first five rookies, Samantha joined the ranks of the Turks. Coming from a rich family in Mideel, Samantha wasn't exactly the first image that came to mind when one conjured an image of the Turks. She was the youngest on the roster aside from Tegwin, with more zeal than anyone really knew what to do with. But her energy was well-placed, and her skill with a shotgun unmatched. Growing up the only daughter of a wealthy old businessman, Samantha wanted desperately to get away from the sheltered life her father had offered her. Learning of her skill with rifles, Veld sought to recruit her into the Turks, as long-distance weaponry would surely prove useful in what was sure to be a significant battle against terrorist organizations that would condemn ShinRa for their use of mako technnology. 

Samantha took to Turk-dom like a fish to water, her ardor encouraging her coworkers and her friendly, boisterous nature making her easy to work with, if not somewhat ridiculous. She was a surprisingly good match to partner with Rafe, their combined enthusiasm for their work making them an unstoppable force. 

===Cyr and Durman===
[[Image:Cyr02.jpg|left]][[Image:Durman02.jpg|right]]It would be January of 1992 before any more Turks were hired into the department. A mercenary from the town of Icicle, Cyr was just what the doctor ordered when Fuhito and his Ravens infiltrated the city and put the other Turks in danger. Making a flashy debut by coming to the rescue of the away team, Cyr was thrown headlong into her first mission even before her first official day on the job. Similarly her partner Durman, an ex-detective from Costa del Sol, had proven himself a most useful addition to the team by providing information from channels the rest of the team had not thought to check. Though these two were officially assigned as partners to one another, they were both used to working alone and as such often split up to execute the missions they were assigned to. 

===Elena===
[[Image:Elena.jpg|left]]The most recent addition to the Turks, young Elena didn't enter the scene until 1997. She was, in fact, still in high school at the time, attending the military academy where her father taught. She had always regarded the Turks with a feeling of disdain and resentment, since her elder sister Rosalind had joined their ranks several years prior and excelled in her position. Feeling shunted and outdone, Elena regarded her sister and all of the Department of Administrative Research with loathing. Despite her youth, however, Elena was somewhat well-known in school; she had won several awards for close-combat skills, and was very adept with a pistol. Despite her small stature and tendency toward bubbleheadedness, nobody messed with little Elena unless they wanted to get punched. Having been present for many of the training excercises her sister had gone through, Elena managed to develop something of a distant schoolgirl crush on Tseng.[[Image:Elena02.jpg|right]] 

After the Turks' battle with Zirconiade, all but Rude, Reno, and Tseng were thought dead, and while Elena was affected by the supposed death of her elder sister, she was perhaps not nearly as upset over the whole thing as people might have expected. She and Rosalind had never been close, after all. And so the Turks were down to three for a time, and Elena was stuck simply adoring Tseng from afar...until he approached her in late 1997 to ask her to fill in for a man down on a mission. Stricken with the opportunity to step up to the plate in her sister's absence, Elena didn't hesitate to take Tseng up on his offer. Despite her aversions to following in her sister's footsteps, Elena refused to pass up the opportunity to get close to Tseng and show him what she was made of and that she could be just as good a Turk as Rosalind. 

Forced to drop her final semester of high school (although her records show her as having graduated early--it was good to have a father in the business), Elena donned the Turk suit with gusto, and joined the home team in Rosalind's place as the team's gunner. When she learned that her sister and the other Turks had in fact not died during that final mission against Zirconiade, Elena was worried for a moment that her position would be usurped, and put forth every effort to prove herself useful to Tseng and her other seniors. After being captured by Don Corneo, Elena was afraid that she had just destroyed any rapport she had managed to gain, however when Rude and Reno came to her rescue posthaste, Elena knew she had won herself her own place in the ranks.

==In Summation==
And so while a lot of fans seem to be under the impression that 'Department of Administrative Research' is simply a codename or a misnomer to throw the public off from what the Turks truly are, we the authors find it much more sensible to assume that there actually was a time when the name was apt, and suited the department as its duties were assigned. However, as time went on, ShinRa needed less an information-gathering unit and more a specialized combat squad. The Turks served well as both, and while the transition from spy to secret service might have proved a rocky one for those team members who were present for the change, the change was made nonetheless. It made little sense to assume that Turks were assassins from the get-go, in our opinion. And even if they were, why would ShinRa bother to come up with a big cover-scheme for a group of ninjalike assassins, unless they had once been out in the open as a department in the first place? It is much easier to wear a professional face on one side of a coin and a secret identity on the other, true, but when the entire identity was secret to begin with, why bother with a coverup at all? It's far too non sequitur for a huge corporation like ShinRa to jump through such hoops, and what's more--President ShinRa hated the Turks. Unless they had, at one time, proven to be a useful bureaucratical department, it's unlikely he would have given them a department name or significant funding in the first place. 

It is our belief that the Turks began humbly, as simple paper-pushers and dataminers (who, coincidentally, happened to know a thing or two about kicking ass), and the needs of the company slowly required them to shift from being desk-monkeys and information surfers to special combat forces and, ultimately, ShinRa's best defense against the war with AVALANCHE to come. Turks don't take their job lightly, and they don't give up, regardless of how hard, hopeless, or heartless the mission might seem. And while their loyalties may lie with ShinRa on the surface, their true colors bind them to each other and no one else; when push comes to shove, the Turks are a family before they are part of a corporation, and in that lies their unique ability to come through victorious every time. 

[[Image:Banner.jpg|center]]
<center>"When we take a job, we see it through to success no matter what. That's what makes us Turks."</center>

07 Footnotes

Admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:53:49 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer

<div align=justify>These are all applicable footnotes from the Chapter Seven of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Sector Four===
[[Image:Roadsign.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A road sign in Edge.]]
When Cloud is chasing Kadaj after the Bahamut fight, they pass a particular sign near the ShinRa monument. It indicates the directions toward Sectors Five and Three, meaning the sign, and therefore the ShinRa momument, are in Sector Four. Since the square containing the monument was shown at the beginning of the film, preceding the cut to Tifa's new bar, we can conclude the bar, too, is in Sector Four, and since ShinRa would likely build a monument near their new headquarters, so is the Neo-ShinRa HQ. Running with this idea, we decided that not only 7th Heaven and the HQ are in this sector, but so is the majority of Edge, as the chase scene across the ruined old highways shows that much of the rest of the area is still demolished.

06 Footnotes

Admin — Sat, 26 May 2007 08:25:33 GMT

Admin: /* Tegwin */

Disclaimer

<div align=justify>These are all applicable footnotes from the Chapter Six of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Tegwin===
[[Image:Tegwin.jpg|left]]
A young woman whose place of birth is unknown, Tegwin (Playable Character G) is the youngest on record to ever enter the ranks of the Turks. Scouted for her talent when she was but a child, she was taken out of the orphanage she had been raised in and trained so that she could one day become a Turk. She uses a large shuriken (throwing star) called 'Rekka' 「烈火」, meaning 'raging fire', as her weapon of choice. 

Strong of mind and body, and with a very straightforward and realistic outlook on life, she has taken it upon herself to look after the other Turks, especially the junior members, despite the fact that she is younger than most of them. She is warm-hearted and has a motherly side which can border on bossy. Her loyalty to the Shinra Company and the Turks in particular is unquestionable. Having been raised by them, she came to realize throughout the years that, while the company has done some questionable things, they have also brought ease and progress to the lives of countless people. For better or worse, she'll stick by them.[[Image:Shisune.jpg|thumb|right|200px|"I'm Shisune.".]] 

On a somewhat random note of interest, it seems it has recently been discovered that Playable Character G's proper name is 'Shisune', and she has something of a significant role in Crisis Core. Seeing as how neither of us author people have played Crisis Core, and any canon specific to the game is not being incorperated to the story, this would not necessarily affect this character...however we do endeavor to embrace all available canon that does not directly contradict what we have already established for the story. So in order to use this new piece of canon, we chose to have Tegwin's true name be Tegwin (as this name was preferred by the webmaster of Gunshot Romance and is recognized among many BC fans), but she took the name Shisune when she became a field agent for the Turks, preferring to keep her given name to herself. She introduces herself to Zack Fair as Shisune...but all her Turk colleagues know her as Tegwin.

05 Footnotes

Admin — Sun, 20 May 2007 07:13:36 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Five of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Andrew===
[[Image:Andrew.jpg|left]] Another playable Turk from Before Crisis, the canon biography for this young man goes something like this: Andrew (Playable Character B) is a rather brash, proud young man, born in Midgar, on the upper plate. An ex-leader of a gang in Junon, he spent his time getting into turf wars with other gangs and running about on various stolen motorbikes. He is an expert in the area of maintenance and repair of motorcycles, and he's also a good driver (he's shown riding his motorcycle throughout most of the trailers for the game), though we're left to wonder if that applies to all vehicles or if it only applies to his driving skills on a bike. Made the leader of his gang at the age of 18, Andrew gains the full trust of his gang members, and leads them with utmost confidence. Having done so much and come so far at such a young age instilled him with an overpowering sense of bravado and overconfidence... 

Being so unfamiliar with failure and rather consumed by his own pride, Andrew decided to test out his skills by trying to steal a motorbike from ShinRa. He was arrested by Reno, and in the fight that followed, he realized that perhaps he wasn’t the big shot that he thought he was. Veld realized his skills could be used to aid the Turks, and he was offered a place in the organization. Andrew quickly realized that if he wanted to become the best, he’d have to work with the best and accepted the offer of employment with the Turks. He now has his sights set on becoming the best there is in that small group, and has aspirations for leadership; you could say he's something of Reno's protégé--striving to follow in the footsteps of the second-in-command who leads all the field missions. Much like Reno, he is known for his speed and agility with his EMR. As a result of his overconfident and brash upbringing, the speech patterns Andrew uses are rather uncouth and informal, something that’s especially evident when he’s around his elder Turks. 

In the Last Order OVA he seemed to have some familiarity with Playable Turk C, due to the fact that she teased him during the mission. He was also called "newcomer" by Reno before the Turks boarded the helicopter, but this is probably just a long-standing barb between Reno and his junior, since Andrew has been playable since the original beta version of the game, and is one of the four Turks you can choose from for the very first mission of the game, which is dated in 1991 (please see the [[FFVII Timeline|timeline]] for details). 

On a random note, it is shown in mission eight of Before Crisis that Andrew doesn’t particularly like snow.

===Materia and Intention===
After a bit of pondering how materia would work in a non-turn-based setting, we decided the most logical way it could be equipped and wielded was by intention. Casting spells is fairly obvious--one intends to cast the spell, and thinks the name of the spell and the target, and the spell is cast. But what about equipping in the first place? The materia we see in Advent Children are a little bit bigger than golf-ball sized, and yet the materia slots we see in Zack's sword aren't even that big. This rules out physical insertion and removal (and also avoids the issue of armlets and amulets being necessarily huge and unwieldly). 

Because the materia interact with a user's Lifestream anyway--it seems like the way magic works is the materia allows the users to channel their own personal store of Lifestream (the part that returns to the Lifestream when they die) through the materia, which directs its usage--equipping and removing materia could be equally simple. The Lifestream reacts to intention, and materia is crystallized Lifestream. A user simply desires to equip a materia into a specific slot, and it is equipped, the crystallized Lifestream becoming a sort of energized plasma that fuses with the metal of the materia slot and unfuses again when the user removes the item or wants to unequip the materia. At that point, the materia would unfuse and emerge from the metal, leaving the slot available for another orb.

04 Footnotes

Admin — Tue, 15 May 2007 08:00:55 GMT

Admin: /* Oh For the Love of-- */

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Four of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Reeve's Monument===
We actually have no idea who canonly designed the monument in the square of town in Advent Children...but since Reeve is an architect, we supposed that it was rather feasible to suppose he might have done the plans for it. Plus Reeve gets no love in fic, so we decided to give him more of a supporting role in our story. >:[

===Oh For the Love of--===
In every world of Final Fantasy, there are summons--mighty creatures with powerful magic that aid your party in some of the toughest fights of their pixellated lives. The summons are a fundamental building block of Final Fantasy, as important and expected in the storyline as the very magic the worlds are built on, as staple to the game as chocobos and guys named Cid. Whatever the characters call them, be they summons, espers, guardians, eidolons, aeons, or avatars, these creatures are the closest things to heavenly beings that the Final Fantasy universes are granted. Especially in FFX, these creatures are likened very much to gods, as only summoners can call upon their power, and only after they have reached the end of the highest of holy journeys are they considered strong and capable enough to fully harness the power of these beings. 

Thus, it served to reason that perhaps the people of the Final Fantasy worlds would refer to these creatures as their gods. You won't hear any of the characters in this story call upon "God"; they may breathe oath to multiple "gods", but if they speak of a single deity, He or She will be called by name. 

For an incredibly detailed in-depth look at our conjecture of the way the system of religion might work on Gaia, please visit our [[Summons]] section for a completely pedantic and long-winded analysis that really has no particular bearing on the fic itself--we just got bored. 8D

Summons

Admin — Tue, 15 May 2007 07:23:19 GMT

Admin: /* The Bahamut Summons: Fortitude, Strength, and Power */

<center>Summons and the Tabernacle of Gaian Religion</center> 

----
<div align=justify>
The people of Gaia have no stated system of religion in the game canon storyline...however, several scenes in both the game and Advent Children take place in Aerith's church. If there are churches, then clearly there must be gods the people pray to; and what is a god but a great unnamed creature called forth from the heavens when the people who have sworn fielty are in need of some devine intervention? Whatever the characters call them, be they summons, espers, guardians, eidolons, aeons, or avatars, these creatures are the closest things to heavenly beings that the Final Fantasy universes are granted. Especially in FFX, these creatures are likened very much to gods, as only summoners can call upon their power, and only after they have reached the end of the highest of holy journeys are they considered strong and capable enough to fully harness the power of these beings. 

Thus, it served to reason that perhaps the people of the Final Fantasy worlds would refer to these creatures as their gods. You won't hear any of the characters in this story call upon "God"; they may breathe oath to multiple "gods", but if they speak of a single deity, He or She will be called by name. 

In the same way many of the religions of the world today have multiple gods who are all responsible for different elements of life, we decided that perhaps the summons--or gods--of Final Fantasy might also be responsible for certain factions of existence. Some summons are shared by both FFX and FFVII, however most are not. Below is a detailed description of the system of religion we've set up for our take on the world of FFVII and the gods of Gaia. 

===The Aeons of Spira===

As Spira and the world of FFX were precursors to FFVII, the roots of the religions of FFVII would be heavily influenced by the religions and Aeons of Spira. Yevonism was debunked as a sham in the story of FFX, however despite the hoax of the false god Yevon, the power of the Aeons could not be written off as a political scam against the people. So while the Fayths of Yevon were probably fast to crumble in the face of glaring exposure, the summoners would have likely remained loyal to the might of the Aeons and continued to call upon their assistance in times of need. 

The Ultimania states that Spirans went to Gaia a thousand years after the events of FFX2, where they settled and became the ancient race called the Cetra that are referenced in FFVII. According to FFVII, Jenova came to Gaia and threatened the life of the Cetra two thousand years prior to the events in the game, but gives no indication of how long the Cetra were there on Gaia before Jenova arrived. Therefore, the events of FFVII take place at least three thousand years after those in FFX2, but it could have easily been much longer than that. 

Through the course of the thousand years on Spira after which Yevonism was debunked, it is plausible that a sort of Aeonism evolved. The summons of FFX were always associated with divinity and holiness, and it is easily conceivable that with Yevon exposed as a false god, the Aeons themselves would slowly climb the ranks of divinity from holy guardians to gods themselves. So we can conclude that the religion of the Spirans at the point where they first ventured to Gaia was something of a pantheon of these holy protectors who would come to your aid and fight for you. Though the Aeons could be vanquished in battle, they never truly died; they merely returned to their ethereal plane of existence, ready to be called again after a brief respite. Obviously, these gods would not be viewed as infallible, but rather as very humanized, each with a personality and specific traits and powers suggested by their elements and attack styles, much like the ancient Greek pantheon of gods, all of which had character flaws and made mistakes. 

===Welcome to Gaia: From Aeon to Summon===

The Spirans would have naturally brought their religion to Gaia after they settled there. The summoners of Spira, these holy priests who had the ability to call upon the power of the gods, wouldn't have lost their abilities after changing locations; logically, the Spirans on Gaia, who we can assume were the ancient Cetra, would still have been able to summon the Aeons to fight for them in battle. This holy knowledge would have been passed down through the Cetra, but since the Cetra in FFVII are considered an ancient race that died out millenia ago, this knowledge would have been lost to the world as the Cetra dwindled into nothing. 

What is interesting to note is that in FFX, the Aeons are actually called into being and will stay with you, take your damage and fight for you, until they lose all their HP and return to wherever it is they came from, but in FFVII, the summons don't really have a physical manifestation at all. In the game, when a summon materia is used, the summon appears, casts a spell, and then disappears again, taking no damage for you and lasting for only one turn. In fact, there are only two instances in all the FFVII compilations where a summon actually battles its opponents--Zirconiade in Before Crisis, and Bahamut Sin in Advent Children. These two instances are covered in detail below. 

In FFX, a sphere grid was used to improve character stats, and while nothing in FFVII is comparable to that kind of personalized customization of party members, it does imply that the Spirans--and therefore the ancient Cetra--were quite familiar with the concept of shiny spheres having magical uses. It really wouldn't have taken them long to figure out that the Lifestream was Gaia's version of the Farplane, and that crystallized Lifestream could be refined into spheres and used for magical purposes. The different colors indicate different usages, another concept that would have been familiar to those used to sphere grids. 

The Cetra probably refined as much crystallized Lifestream as they could find into materia, but as with the power to summon Aeons into battle, the knowledge of materia usage would have died out with them, leaving Gaia without magic until the ShinRa company discovered how to use materia. For that duration of time, materia were probably viewed as ancient relics, artifacts of the extinct Cetra with no known utility. It wasn't until Professor Hojo discovered how to use refined Lifestream called mako that it really occurred to anyone that perhaps these spheres of crystallized Lifestream served any particular function. 

Under scientific scrutiny, the different abilities afforded by different materia would have come to light. Green materia cast magic spells; blue materia link to other materia and afford the user useful boosts and bonuses in battle. Purple materia are much like blue materia, except they work independently and do not need to be linked, and yellow materia allow the user more skills to weild in battle. These four colors can exist in duplicate, meaning more than one of each specific materia could exist, so someone could have two Fire, Elemental, Cover, or Steal materia. Despite the fact that some materia of these colors can only be obtained once in the game itself, we can assume that they all can and do exist in duplicate, though some (like W-Item) are certainly more rare than others (Fire, Lightning, etc). 

The last type of materia, the red materia, exist as singularities, only one of each type in all of Gaia. These materia are the summons of FFVII, and allow the weilder to call upon a summon, who will then arrive, cast a spell, and vanish again. When the Cetra first discovered these materia, it is quite likely that they equated them to the Aeons that their holy summoners could call upon. The summoners were most likely viewed as sacred priests or clergy members, and so it would have made perfect sense to the Cetra that the power of the gods called upon by non-priests with the help of materia would have been more fleeting and transient, and less controllable, than the Aeons of the summoners. Of course the gods would provide more reliable aid to their devoted priests than your average devotee; materia were miraculous enough in that they allowed regular people to call upon the power of the gods at all. 

Thusly, the Aeons of the summoners would have been the gods themselves, and the magical apparitions drawn forth by materia would have been viewed as aspects of these gods, much like the multi-faceted aspects of the gods of modern-day Hinduism. These aspects could take on different names and appearances than the gods themselves, but could still be considered the same as long as the Aeon and summon shared the same basic powers and characteristics. The Cetra mythology surrounding these Aeons and their aspects probably grew rich and colorful, much like the Hindi and ancient Greek mythologies of Earth, and were then passed down and slowly changed over the millenia of oral history, so that the evolution of the Spiran pantheon became the traditional old religion of the people of Gaia, despite the fact that the ability to call the Aeons forth and the knowledge of how to use materia were lost over time. 

==The Original Pantheon==
Since we decided the Aeons of Spira are considered the gods proper, we had to go through the whole arsenal of FFX's Aeons before we could figure out where the summons of FFVII fit into the religious picture. The following are our conjectures of what part each Aeon plays in the Cetra's pantheon, and quite honestly has no real bearing on anything in the story at all. 8D 

===Bahamut: The God King===
[[Image:FFX bahamut.jpg|thumb|left|100px|FFX's Bahamut]] 
The strongest Aeon in FFX, Bahamut's attacks can often obliterate enemies in one attack from the moment he is obtained. His strength, defense, and magic capabilities are all high, and he can damage multiple targets regularly. Powerful and adept at black magic, Bahamut is obviously the reigning king of the gods, his wings splayed in royal colors and his scaled armor wrought with gold. He is the god of power, both physical strength and political rule, a grand and venerable king capable of mastering black magic without succumbing to its corrupting power. Bahamut symbolizes strength of body and strength of mind; his endurance and fortitude are unmatched throughout the pantheon. 

===Shiva: The Wise Queen===
[[Image:FFX Shiva.jpg|thumb|right|100px|FFX's Shiva]]
Tall and breathtakingly beautiful, Shiva is a graceful and agile Aeon who uses ice-based attacks to annihilate her enemies. She can delay an opponent's next turn and can freeze and shatter any that stand in her way, controlling the powers of ice with little more than a snap of her fingers. A fitting queen to Bahamut's king, Shiva is likely the goddess of beauty and grace in addition to the goddess of ice. Her ability to slow her enemies suggests she may also embody wisdom and strategy. As queen of the gods, Shiva likely also symbolizes love in the gentler sense, a beautiful and tender love between partners. 

===Ifrit: The Blazing Prince===
[[Image:FFX Ifrit.jpg|thumb|left|100px|FFX's Ifrit]]
A strong, hulking beast with ferocious horns, Ifrit is a fire-elemental through and through, blasting his enemies with raging flames and explosions. He can also use a non-elemental attack that can pierce through defensive spells, though it takes him longer to recover after performing it. The god of fire, rage, and passion, Ifrit likely has a short temper and tends to leave destruction in his wake. His low defense against both physical and magical attacks suggests youth, as does his short fuse, suggesting that perhaps he is the prince of the gods, much like the Egyptian sun god Horus. Like Horus, Ifrit could be seen as god of the sun due to his affinity for flames, and could represent light, enthusiasm, and earnestness; he is likely the god of truth and honesty, a beacon of morality as he fights for good and seeks to burn the shadows from the hearts of others. Quick to anger, Ifrit is also quick to forgive, and is perhaps characterized by a touch of naivete due to his youth and intense appreciation of the truth. Bold and unafraid, Ifrit is likely reckless but always good-intentioned, a tragically rare and endearing quality in a deity. 

===Anima: The Tempered Judge===
[[Image:Anima.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Anima]]
Bound and skeletal, chained as if to protect the summoner from the very power they call upon, Anima is the most monstrous and haunting of the Aeons in Spira's repertoire. Casting spells of indescribable agony and often inflicting a death effect, Anima holds in his mummified clawlike hands the power over who lives and who dies--a very frightening deity indeed. The eerily chilling chained Aeon of pain and death, Anima's obvious role is the god of death and judgement or the Farplane, much like the Egyptian jackal god Anubis, who weighs the hearts of the dead, or the Greek god Hades, who rules the whole of the underworld. 

Interestingly enough, the name Anima comes from the Latin word for soul, strength of heart, or breath of life; perhaps not just the god of death and the Farplane, Anima may also be the god of life as well, the great balancer who does not simply bring about death indiscriminately, but who peers into the souls of mortals and passes His judgement upon them all. Also, similar to the Roman two-faced god Janus, the god of foresight (and bridges wtf), Anima has two halves, once which rises above the surface of the earth and one which resides below it. 

Overall, the mummified and ghastly Anima can be considered a harbringer of death, ruling the underworld and yet chained there with the rest of the dead, possibly as punishment for some destructive deed. With his two halves, Anima can also be a god of foresight and insight, which makes him a prime candidate as the god of final judgement, and his overwhelming power makes him suitable as the god of ruthless vengeance. As he is bound and chained, he may also be the god of temperance and self-control, who casts judgement upon those who have great power and do not weild it conscientiously. However, due to the symbolism of his name, Anima may also be the god of life, the symbol of balance and the cycles of life and death. Though he kills and destroys, Anima also leaves the chance for life to rise from the chaos of destruction; he brings about ruin but also embodies the hope of rebirth from the ashes. 

Anima's great power gives rise to the idea that he is Bahamut's brother and temperance, always there to make sure the great god king never falls into corruption. It is likely that Anima and Ifrit work in tandem to punish the wicked, though Anima is undoubtedly more ruthless than his youthful nephew. 

===Ixion: The Victorious General===
[[Image:Ixion.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Ixion]]
A mighty horned beast, Ixion can call upon the powers of thunder and lightning. Weilding not only electric elemental power, this unicorn-like creature also deals non-elemental damage with razor-sharp discs, and has the capability to negate positive status effects such as sheilds or time spells. Ixion should most likely be cast as a god of storms, akin to the Norse god Thor, the god of war and storms. 

The name Ixion is actually a character of Greek mythology, though the Greek Ixion bears no particular resemblance to the Ixion of this universe. In Greek mythology, Ixion is the son of Aries, who killed his father-in-law and was thus the first man to have shed the blood of a kinsman, eventually sent to Tartarus for the many sins he committed in his life. He was said to be the father of centaurs, which may be why his name was given to an equine creature. 

Ixion's rather unique ability to enact both elemental and non-elemental attacks suggests that he is a powerful warrior, capable and verstatile in battle. Because he can negate protection and enhancement spells, Ixion could be construed as a symbol of pride and courage, the crashing of his thunder striking fear into the hearts of his enemies. He is a bold leader and a fierce general, leading his troops fearlessly in times of war. Though not the king of the gods, Ixion could be easily viewed as the king's right-hand-man, or horse, as it were, so perhaps Ixion also embodies the concepts of loyalty and fealty. 

===Valefor: The Lucky Protector===
[[Image:Valefor.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Valefor]]
A great winged beast that bears some resemblance to the Aztec avian serpent-god Quetzalcoatl, Valefor casts no elemental attack, but instead delays the enemy's ability to strike back. This would logically make him a god of protection, perhaps a god of luck, bringing good tidings and winds of safety to those who ask. As the first summon available to Yuuna in FFX, Valefor is painted as a gentle and benevolent creature with a short recovery time, able to perform rapid-fire attacks to keep the enemy at bay. Perhaps Valefor's greatest power was not in his attack itself, but rather in his defense and ability to prevent the enemy from striking; he is a shielding god above all else. 

The natural defense to Ixion's offense, it seems most likely that Valefor is Ixion's brother. Their dichotomy is nearly immaculate, one a stout-hearted attacker capable of nullifying protective spells, and one a protective shielder capable of delaying attacks. 

===Yojimbo: The Opulent Prankster===
[[Image:Yojimbo.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Yojimbo]]
A most intriguing and tricksy summon, Yojimbo will only join your party in FFX if you first defeat him, and then pay him a hefty price. The more you pay to get him to join you, the more helpful Yojimbo will prove--the damage he deals is proportional to the bounty you are willing to initially pay him, you could say. Perhaps most easily likened to Loki, the Nordic trickster god, Yojimbo can cast devastating attacks, but it is almost humorous how devil-may-care he seems to be. You cannot choose his attack, nor does he have an Overdrive function the way the other Aeons do; as a mercenary, his offensive will be based solely on how much he has been paid and...how cooperative he feels like being at the moment. 

Obviously a trickster god himself, Yojimbo likely also encompasses the realm of merriment and play, making him almost akin to the Greek god Dionysus, god of wine. Yojimbo is brightly colored and quite ornate, and judging from his infatuation with money, he is likely the god of wealth and good fortune as well. The wild card Aeon with loyalties to no one, Yojimbo is something of a singularity in a pantheon of family. His only companion is his dog, Daigoro, who aids him in one of his attacks. Because of this, Yojimbo may also be construed as the god of beasts and ruler of the animals, the final third to the ruler of the cosmos, Bahamut, and the ruler of the Farplane, Anima. 

===The Magus Sisters: The Unbreakable Trinity===
[[Image:MagusSisters.jpg|thumb|right|100px|The Magus Sisters]]
A trio of insectlike siblings, the Magus Sisters cast three individual non-elemental attacks. The summoner who would call upon them has little control over what these three sisters do, making them wild card goddesses if anything. Individually, the three attacks the sisters can do are not particularly noteworthy; however, when they combine their powers, the attack they unleash is quite literally one of the most devastating offensives available in the game. 

These three might well be viewed as goddesses of teamwork or family, especially as their power is exponentially stronger when combined. The girls will heal each other as well, something none of the other Aeons can do, so they might also embody concepts like reciprocation and karma--do unto others and they will do so unto you. Perhaps standing above all for unity, these three represent the sacredness of family and the indestructable bonds between hearts who love each other. The love they would naturally symbolize is a fierce one, love to be fought for, defended and championed against all odds; they are the goddesses of passion, devotion, and dedication. 

Because of their constancy, these three could possibly be the original three goddesses who created the cosmos out of its primordial chaos. They give an impression of eternity that none of the other Aeons possess. It is quite possible that each of the three sisters created two of the other six adult deities--one created the brothers Bahamut and Anima, another the brothers Ixion and Valefor, and the third made Shiva and Yojimbo. However, the sisters are too close and too connected to ever view their creations as individual efforts. It doesn't matter who made who; the three of them made all the others, aside from young Ifrit, who was born of Shiva and Bahamut later on. 

==The Cetra's Aspects==
Gaia's summon materia allowed anyone, not just summoners, to call upon the power of the gods. But, as mentioned above, the summon materia can only call down an aspect of a god to cast a spell for the materia's user, as opposed to the Aeons who will answer the call of a summoner. The following conjectures correlate the summons of FFVII as aspects of their FFX counterparts. 

===Odin: Bahamut's Reign===
[[Image:Odin.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Odin]] 
Odin is one of the strongest summons available in the game. Often dealing deathblows to enemies (who are not of boss-status), Odin weilds his mighty sword from atop his six-legged steed. His power is legendary, as is his strength; Odin is nothing if not the king of the gods embodied. 

===Leviathan: Shiva's Tide===
[[Image:Leviathan.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Leviathan]] 
Leviathan is the great water beast, a ferocious sea monster who casts powerful water-elemental damage on enemies, and is probably an aspect of Shiva, using the element of water instead of her traditional ice. 

===Titan: Ifrit's Rage===
[[Image:Titan.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Titan]] 
A great figure made of stone, Titan crushes your enemies much like Ifrit does with his Meteor Strike, smashing them beneath a giant hunk of rock. All of Ifrit's might and fury are encompassed in Titan, making him a fitting aspect of the Aeon's anger. 

===Alexander: Anima's Judgement===
[[Image:Alexander.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Alexander]] 
A great tanklike creation, Alexander is less a sentient creature and more a great machine of holy judgement. The only summon that can inflict Holy damage, Alexander is less creature and more machine than anything, so it seems that he is an aspect of Anima, symbolizing the machinations of judgement and the cold mechanic process of weighing the lives of the deceased. He can also encompass the foresight and insight of Anima, those powers which let him pass judgement. 

===Hades: Anima's Reaper===
[[Image:Hades.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Hades]] 
Hades casts multiple negative status effects, and bears fierce resemblance to the Grim Reaper himself; a skeletal figure swathed in heavy robes. While the visual representations of Anima and Hades bear no similarities, their attacks are so similar that the connection between the two is obvious. Hades is the part of Anima that brings about death, reaping the souls of those he's come to harvest and dragging them off to their final judgement. 

===Phoenix: Anima's Rebirth===
[[Image:Phoenix.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Phoenix]] 
The fiery bird of rebirth, Phoenix casts fire damage to enemies while healing fallen party members. Though flight and fire are not normally attributed to Anima, it is the overriding concept of ressurection and salvation that characterizes Phoenix, and so it makes sense that he be the symbol of the redemption Anima brings about after destruction has already happened. 

===Knights of the Round: Ixion's Loyal===
[[Image:Knights.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Knights of the Round]] 
This summon depicts King Aurther and his twelve knights, each attacking the enemy in succession to total thirteen blows for over 120,000 points of damage. If Ixion is the god of war and the divine general, this summon is obviously Ixion and the generals who follow him, embodying the sense of duty and fealty associated with him. 

===Ramuh: Ixion's Storm===
[[Image:Ramuh.gif|thumb|right|100px|Ramuh]] 
A lightning elemental, Ramuh appears as an imposing old wizard with a fearsome stare and a mighty staff, calling down great bolts of lightning to attack your enemies. 

===Kujata: Ixion's Warrior===
[[Image:Kujata.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Kujata]] 
Like Ixion, Kujata is a hoofed, horned beast that can cast lightning damage to an enemy. Capable of casting lightning, ice, and fire attacks, and with powerful physical attacks as well, Kujata represents Ixion's prowess on the battlefield. 

===Choco Mog: Valefor's Luck===
[[Image:Chocomog.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Choco-Mog]] 
Weilding the rare element of wind, this summon attacks with the chance that a fat chocobo will fall from the sky and sit on your enemies. Clearly, he embodies the luck Valefor symbolizes, though he is significantly more ridiculous. 

===Typhon: Yojimbo's Trickery===
[[Image:Typoon.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Typhon]] 
A rather gastly summon, this strange mauve creature is one of the rare wind elementals of the FFVII world. Unique and strange, this summon can be considered to be a prank of Yojimbo. The ethereal nature of the wind element also lends itself to Yojimbo's lack of ties with anyone else; this summon with its strange coloring and rare elemental attacks is surely an embodiment of Yojimbo's love of practical jokes. 

==Shared Summons==
The following summons of FFVII are also Aeons of FFX. These summons aren't really considered full-fleged aspects, but rather fall halfway between aspects and the actual gods themselves. Because the Cetra believed that materia could not summon Aeons, only their aspects, these shared summons came to be viewed as something of fledgeling gods. Ifrit, Shiva, and the three Bahamut summons in FFVII are thusly not actually considered analogus to the gods themselves, but in the style of being an intricate and complicated theology, as aspects that encompass the all the qualities of the deity, or as apparitions which act as conduits, allowing the magic of the gods to be cast by mortals. 

===Shiva's Ice===
[[Image:Ffvii_shiva.jpg|thumb|right|100px|FFVII's Shiva]] 
The Shiva summon freezes her enemies much like the Aeon does, and though she looks a bit different, is still beautiful and graceful. This summon is Shiva's Ice, construed as a spell the weilder casts which brings the ice of Shiva down upon the enemy. 

===Ifrit's Fire===
[[Image:Ffvii_ifrit.jpg|thumb|left|100px|FFVII's Ifrit]] 
The Ifrit summon emerges in a ball of fire and then hurtles at your enemies, ensconced in a burning corona. He too looks different from the original Aeon, moreso than Shiva does, and could even be viewed as a messenger of Ifrit, bringing his fires to the aid of mortals. 

===The Bahamut Summons: Fortitude, Strength, and Power===
[[Image:Ffvii_bahamuts.jpg|thumb|right|100px|FFVII's Three Bahamuts]]
The Bahamut summons can be viewed more easily as aspects of Bahamut than the Shiva and Ifrit summons can, because there are three of increasing power. The first is a fearsome black dragon, shares its Aeon's name. Powerful and unblockable, he can be considered the will of the god king, Bahamut's Fortitude. The second summon is dubbed Neo Bahamut, a red dragon that is a stronger, more powerful version of the first summon. He is Bahamut's Strength. Finally, Bahamut ZERO, the third and most powerful of the three Bahamut summons, is a six-winged black dragon attacks from space. He's nothing if not a compelling display of Bahamut's Power. 

==The Black and White Materia==
Each the only one of its kind, the black and white materia of FFVII impose an interesting facet of this reconstructed Cetra theology. Both call upon great powers; Aerith's white materia summons Holy, and the black materia summons Meteor, but neither of these is really a god or aspect thereof at all. Rather, Meteor is quite literally a giant asteroid hurtling toward the planet, ready to destroy it, and Holy causes all the Lifestream of the planet to surge up from the depths of the earth and deflect Meteor. It seems these two are in perfect balance, black and white, which is why they aren't red like the other summons and exist as a unique and isolated set. Perhaps the Cetra came to construe these two as the concepts of light and dark, of good and evil, and so they are not represented in the pantheon but instead viewed as an eternal balance throughout the universe, in the hearts of men and gods alike. 

==When Summons Battle==
As mentioned above, there are two rather confounding instances in which summons actually remain on the physical plane for an extended period of time, doing battle like Aeons of old rather than vanishing after their spells are cast. These two summons, Zirconiade from Before Crisis and Bahamut Sin from Advent Children, are unique in that regard, but we managed to come up with satisfactory explanations for these two abberant phenomenon. Both beings are summoned under unusual circumstances and with unusual materia; the analysis below offers an interpretation of how these summons came to act within the physical plane long enough to do battle. 

===Zirconiade===
[[Image:Zirconiade.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Zirconiade]]
Zirconiade is called "The One That Will Burn The World" and is a summon materia like those above. However, the materia was shattered at some point, possibly by the Cetra to prevent its devestation, and is now imperfect. In Before Crisis, Fuhito gathers up these pieces and implants them into Elfe with the intention of summoning Zirconiade so it will destroy all the life on the planet, restoring the Lifestream to its full potential and eradicating any dangers to the planet through native life. 

The materia embedded into Elfe is still imperfect, and requires the use of several support materia to even begin the summon. As the legend goes, the true Zirconiade summon is unbeatable and will destroy the world. Because the Turks manage to defeat Zirconiade and the world is not destroyed, we can safely assume that this Zirconiade summon was still imperfect. 

Traditionally, materia of all types must be equipped to some piece of metal, either a weapon or armor, in order to be used. The meteria shards within Elfe were not equipped to anything, and are actually feeding off of her life force, the Lifestream that is locked away within her living body and would normally return to the Lifestream when she dies. 

The most sound conclusion we could draw was that because this summon was not called upon in the normal way and instead had numerous support materia and someone's very life force at its disposal, it had the energy to stay on the physical plane and do battle with the Turks. Perhaps because a summon is not intended to fight the way an Aeon would, Zirconiade simply couldn't keep up its manifestation and weakened over time, such that the Turks could defeat what was said to be an unbeatable summon. 

===Bahamut Sin===
[[Image:BahamutSin.jpg|thumb|left|100px|BahamutSin]]
Similarly, Bahamut Sin in Advent Children is summoned by a materia that was physically inside someone's flesh. As Kadaj emerged from the Lifestream and is less a living creature as a manifestation of Jenova-infested Lifestream, it makes sense that he can absorb materia directly into himself, as materia is nothing but a crystallized form of the Lifestream he is made of. 

When summoning Bahamut Sin, Kadaj is shown weilding a blue materia, not a summon materia at all, which had a lot of fans up in arms, as if the creators had forgotten their own canon. 

We believe we've come up with a more positive explanation for his use of a blue materia to summon Bahamut Sin. Like Zirconiade before it, Bahamut Sin is summoned with the help of support materia, which allows it to stay in the physical realm and fight. 

==Two More Summons==
And so, after coming to the conclusion that both Zirconiade and Bahamut Sin were once summon materia used by the Cetra, it served to reason that they, too, would have become aspects of deities in the Cetra's pantheon. Here are our conjectures of the nature of these two summons. 

===Zirconiade: Anima's Annihilation===

This is obviously the part of Anima that obliterates all life, as Zirconiade is actually alledged to do just that. Anima is the god of destruction and rebirth, so as Hades is the reaping of life and Phoenix is the rebirth from total destruction, Zirconiade is the one that falls between the two, destroying everything and creating the ashen chaos from which hope, and life, can rise again. 

===Bahamut Sin: Bahamut's Endurance===

This summon is strong and powerful like all the Bahamut summons, worthy of bearing the title of his namesake, but what makes Bahamut Sin so unique is his ability to withstand so much before finally going down. Though we don't know anything about the legend around this summon, or his usual fighting spells as he was summoned in such an unusual way, we do see that Bahamut Sin withstands many attacks and sustains a lot of damage before he finally goes down. Cloud has to physically cut him open for him to drop from the sky; nothing else embodies Bahamut's great endurance than does Bahamut Sin. 

==Addendum; Oaths and Swearing?==
Though several characters in the English translation of FFVII (namely Barret and Cid) say "God dammit" or "Goddamn [tea]", the original Japanese curses actually have no religious connotation at all. However, we do use the word "goddamn" in the story, though it is not capitalized as a proper noun. Consider this to be partially translational, the word used for its connotation rather than religious affiliation. Additionally, take into account that the oath "godsdamn" would linguistically be elided most logically as either "gosdamn", in which the first D is dropped for ease of annunciation, or as "goddamn", in which the S is dropped for the same reason. Due to the correlation between this potential elision and the desired level of connoted swearing it entails in English, we chose to go along with this second option.

03 Footnotes

Admin — Fri, 11 May 2007 02:19:55 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Three of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Say What Now?===

You may notice as scenes from Advent Children are revisited over the course of the story that the dialogue doesn't always match up with the English dub, or the subtitles you may have seen. That is because we didn't like all of the interpretations represented by preestablished translations, and decided to illustrate our own take on the dialoge of Advent Children. After finding a copy of the [http://rokoran.com/ff7hokankeikaku/ff7ac/spript/original.htm Japanese script], translations were made directly from it, and interpretations and liberties taken from that. So while the gist of the dialogue is no different, and the meanings of scenes won't change, the actual verbatum dialogue will probably be slightly different from that which you may be used to.

===We'd Like to Thank the Academy===

Obviously, as Gaia is not Earth, the customs, vernacular, and all around culture of Gaia is not going to be that of Earth. However, rather than come up with an entirely new culture and having to create a whole encyclopedia for every nuance thereof, we decided to go with a slightly less cumbersome option: parallels. Logically, as Gaia is a relatively advanced civilization, there would be many culture congruencies between the people of Gaia and the people of Earth. So when you see a reference to something, such as Academy Awards or titles of books, foods, places, or recreational activities, be advised that we are not necessarily referring to that specific thing or place--rather we are making reference to what the Gaian equivalent would be. The Oscars probably don't exist in Edge...but certainly a civilization that has digital technology and airships can produce forms of cinematic entertainment, and have some manner of awards ceremony for high acheivment in that field. Same goes for works of literature: Gaia may not have Shakespeare, but surely they had great playwriters somewhere in their history. Italy does not exist on the continents of Gaia, but wouldn't it be a shame if the people of the planet had never eaten spaghetti? It Wutai can be likened to China, surely there is an equivalent to other places on Earth. Any time a reference is made to something that logically could not exist by name on another planet, please just think of it as the cultural Gaian equivalent. It's easier for everyone that way. ^__^

Even Further Reading

Admin — Mon, 07 May 2007 04:28:30 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer

<div align=justify>This is a second edition of additional or extraneous information regarding and used in the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

This page will be updated as the story progresses. Please check back for new information! 

<center>Even Further Reading</center> 

---- 

==Chocobown'd!==

As stated in the footnotes, it served to reason that after the fall of Midgar, public transport would be fewer and further between. The train systems of old Midgar would likely be damaged beyond fiscally reasonable repair and, with the president of the only major corporate power having fallen ill with geostigma, it's unlikely anyone had the means with which to recreate the mass transit systems Midgar once had at its disposal. This leaves the refugees and survivors of Meteor with few options for getting around. They would either have to have personal vehicles (such as motorcycles or small buggies) or use chocobos. There are a few car or van-type vehicles in Edge--we see them in the opening scenes of Advent Children--and Cloud has his Fenrir, however given the general state Edge seems to be in, it seems unlikely that very many people can afford personal vehicles. 

Which was probably music to the chocobo-breeders' ears. If mass transit has come to a screeching halt because there is no longer a place for trains to dock near Midgar, then the chocobo industry will suddenly be in high demand. When racing chocobos, the fastest speed the best chocobo can attain is 187kph (116.2 mph), almost as fast as [we presume] a high-grade racing bike can go. And with the various types of chocobos that can be bred (to cross water, mountains, etc), chocobos are actually a more versatile and widely useful mode of transport than a bike or a car, which would be confined to relatively flat-land-travel. 

In the original game, the Chocobo Farm on the eastern continent was the only place where chocobos could be bred and kept. While normal yellow chocobos could be caught in the wild in several locations all across the landmasses, one could only get special types of chocobos by breeding them at the Chocobo Farm. So after the fall of Midgar, as the demand for chocobos would increase, it serves to reason that the farm would expand into sattelite franchises all over the continent to get people to and from what was once the largest most industrial city on the landmass. These satellite locations would not breed or keep chocobos on-hand at all times, but would rather serve as a place where chocobos could be sent and retrieved in a more convenient location. 

For example, Tifa and Marlene plan to go to Aerith's church to look for Cloud. However, Edge goes around the outskirts of Midgar, and Aerith's church was in the slums of Sector Five, and the slums are literally in a giant crater that is littered with debris...going on foot would not only be unwise, but would actually take far longer than the canon timeline permits. Ergo, Tifa must have had some form of transportation. Cloud is away, so they couldn't have taken his bike, and we're given no indication that Tifa has one of her own, nor does she appear to have a car or a buggy at her disposal. So it seems logical that a chocobo would be the next best choice. Renting a chocobo come the time of Advent Children can probably be likened to renting a car here on Earth. You call the main reservation number and they connect you to a location close to you, where you will go and choose the car you want based on your specific needs (small/medium/large/SUV, as well as certain insurance options and distance policies). So Tifa would call the Chocobo Farm and explain that she needs a short-distance plain chocobo to get from Edge to old Midgar. The Chocobo Farm would then contact the sattelite location nearest Edge and inform them of the reservation. They would then send a courier to deliver the reserved chocobo to the satellite location. We assume that the average plain yellow chocobo can be likened to an ostrich and maintain an average speed of about 65kph (40mph), meaning it would take the rental chocobo about five hours to get from the Chocobo Farm to Edge based on how we scaled the planet.

==Nothin' but Net==

((Many thanks to [http://zeph-miran.livejournal.com zeph_miran] for the screencaps used for this section!!)) 

One of the biggest fandom-controversies of Advent Children that I have come across is in the scene where Rufus tumbles from the 13th floor of the building where he was meeting with Kadaj, plunging toward the pavement below only to be miraculously saved by nets that Tseng and Elena shoot across the expanse to catch him. Many fans, I have found, discount the credibility of the movie from this scene alone, howling about how it's physically impossible for the net to have caught Rufus, how physics were being completely fucked, and wah wah wah, etcetera. Newsflash, folks--if you simply pay attention, a multitude of questions can easily be answered without whining. No, seriously. This scene is completely feasible, physically possible, and not an egregious error on the part of Squeenix. Boohoo for you~ No one has any excuse to bitch about this scene anymore, as I have discovered the secret. 

The secret is--pay attention. -_-;; Let's take a look here, shall we? 

[[Image:Net01.jpg|thumb|150px|left]][[Image:Net02.jpg|thumb|150px|right]]In the timeline of the movie, this is when we are given confirmation that Tseng and Elena did, in fact, not die in Northern Crater at the hands of the SHM. If you take a close look at these screencaps here, you can see that they are apparently shooting some manner of net-guns toward their falling president. In the image with Tseng, you can actually very clearly see that the grappling prongs are trailed with two cables that have nothing between them. This is very important. Remember this: NOTHING BETWEEN THEM. The net-guns appear to shoot two cables with grappling hooks on the ends and nothing more. In the next few frames, we can see the cables settle against one another in a cross-section bridging the open air alongside the building. The screencaps here are a little fuzzy, so it's difficult to see in specific detail, however it does very much appear that the two cables coming from the left side of the frame are threaded between the two coming from the right. One of the most prominent arguments I saw/heard/read regarding this scene was that it would be physically impossible for the net to have caught Rufus unless it was somehow magically intersecting itself. Well, holy shit, kids, guess what? It's magically intersecting itself. [[Image:Net03.jpg|thumb|150px|left]]Because at the time the support cables are cast, there is no net stretched between them. For as unclear as the image may be as far as the exact placement of the cables and how precisely they intersect, there is very obviously nothing between them. 

[[Image:Net04.jpg|thumb|150px|right]]If the previous image was iffy for you, then perhaps this next one will be of some elucidative assistance. Once the grappling hooks on the ends of the cables were secured and the cables criss-crossed however you choose to believe they were, you can very obviously see a net shimmer into existence between them. You can even see in the images how the nets twist and pull against one another with Rufus's weight, giving very clear indication that they do, in fact, intersect, and that the net between them was unfurled after said intersection. This gives indication of the use of materia, perhaps. Since a Barrier spell is depicted as visually similar to the net shown here (with prismatic-shaped pixel-type blocks that deflect attacks), it seemed very plausible that the grappling-cable guns that Tseng and Elena fired were infused with some type of Barrier materia. Since the Barrier spell only halves physical damage, it is clear that a Barrier spell is not impenetrable, so for Rufus's entire weight to have been caught and held in this net, a Barrier spell alone would not be enough.[[Image:Net05.jpg|thumb|150px|left]] [[Image:Net06.jpg|thumb|150px|right]]Even a Wall spell would be insufficient, since MBarrier (or Shell, as it is called in more recent FF games) also only halves damage. Since ShinRa is, however, the leading monopoly on mako technology and materia, it would certainly not be difficult for the company to have come up with new materia over the years that were not used in FFVII-proper, and were possibly still in an experimental stage during past events. The most likely hybrid created for use with this net would be a Barrier materia that permitted the casting of a spell that combined the power of Barrier and Reflect. Reflect spells completely repel all magic and shoot it back toward its caster and while there is no physical damage equivalent, it is not out of the question for ShinRa to have come up with a way to create a spell that could fully block physical attack. After all, it was ShinRa who discovered the springs of natural mako and harnessed the very nature of materia in the first place. It is very likely that ShinRa has materia that no one else does. 

==Do You Believe in Magic?==

On that tangent, there is actually a significant precedent for ShinRa having only created one of certain types of materia. Take W-Item, for example. There is only one of these materia in the game (unless you master said one and it duplictates itself), and it is not sold in any store. The only way to get it is to find it in the sewers under Sector 8, or if you miss it there, you can dig for it in Bone Village. Whatever specific purpose ShinRa may have created the W-Item materia for, they seemed rather intent on never creating another one, or letting it fall into public hands to be replicated. The same can be said for the Added Cut and Added Effect materia. Found in the Great Glacier and the Cave of the Gi respectively, these two materia are one-of-a-kind and if they occurred naturally, it seems there won't be any more of them coming. If ShinRa created them, they appear to have no plans to create more. Many other materia appear to be one-hit wonders, as well. Comet, Contain, Doublecut, Enemy Away and Enemy Lure, Final Attack, Full-cure, Long-Range, Luck and Magic Plus, Mega-All, Morph, MP Absorb, MP Turbo, Pre-Emptive, Shield, Slash-All, Ultima, Underwater, and W-Magic and -Summon are all only found in a quantity of one throughout the game, as well as all of the Summon Materia. Most of these single-shot materia are Support or Command materia, and were probably made by artificial means. Magic materia that occur only once in the game, such as Comet or Full-Cure, are probably naturally-occurring, but only happen once in an exceedingly long time without the added Master-Clone stiumulus of a wielder. 

There is also the question of unique attacks that the Turks seem to be able to use when you engage them in battle. Reno's Pyramid attack, for example, is a very unique offensive that appears to be utilized with some assistance of his EMR (he shakes it at your party as he attacks). It seems not entirely out of the question to believe that Pyramid is a unique materia that was created by the ShinRa Company. The same could be said for Rude's Grand Spark attack, Elena's Flame Light, and Reno's Turk Light and Electropod attacks. While Elena and Rude also use familiar spells, such as Fire or Cure, Reno never does. And yet his boss stats list him as having several-hundred MP for his battles. Now...why on earth would he have MP if he wasn't using materia...? It would serve to reason that, as the Turks are ShinRa's most elite and knowledgeable task force, it would fall within their job description to try out new materia.

02 Footnotes

Admin — Mon, 07 May 2007 03:52:36 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter Two of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Elena's Phone===

In the scene in Advent Children when Kadaj is sitting atop the plateau while Yazoo and Loz are battling Cloud on their motorcycles, he's speaking to someone on the phone, and while it's never specified who he is speaking to, the fact that he tells the person not to shout and then asks for the president gives a heavy indication that he's speaking to Reno. But this left us wondering two things... First of all, where in the world did Kadaj get a PHS in the first place? Later on, in the scene in Aerith's church where Loz battles Tifa, he also has a phone, and this too is never explained. It's doubtful the Remnants have any money with which to buy a Family Plan on Verizon...and even if they did, it's even more unlikely they'd actually do things that way. It's just not their style. However stealing cellular telephones from the store does the boys no good--a phone doesn't work unless it's activated and on some type of calling plan. So clearly the phones that Loz and Kadaj have were pilfered. 

Bringing us to our next question: Whose phones are they? Obviously, they're Tseng and Elena's phones. Why, you ask? First of all, we see only two telephones--why doesn't Yazoo have one? There were only two. Secondly, how does Kadaj know the phone numbers of anyone working for ShinRa? While there is probably a general telephone access number for ShinRa in the phone book, Kadaj isn't keen on letting his fingers do the walking, I'd wager. Moreover, he doesn't just call any old ShinRa number...he calls someone associated with the president, and from the way Kadaj is talking, that person is probably Reno. Obviously, Elena would have her coworkers' phone numbers in her directory...and if Kadaj is looking to get in touch with Rufus to get information about Jenova, then who better to go through than the Turks? [[Image:RenoCloudHealin.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Reno and Cloud cross swords, as it were, in Healin Lodge, in front of a large image of the ShinRa Company logo.]]

===ShinRa and Healin===

Little specific information is given on Healin and what precisely it's there for. All we really know is that it's something of a health spa. However, we noticed when Cloud shows up in Healin and has his little chat with Rufus that there is a big framed poster of the ShinRa logo on the wall behind where he and Reno clash. Intriguing, no? It appears that either ShinRa owns all or some portion of Healin's establishment, or they are a significant enough patron of the location that their logo is slapped up on the walls.

===Chocobos===

In the two years after the destruction of Midgar, chocobos would logically become something of a mass transportation system for those who couldn't afford motorcycles or other personal vehicles. The mass transit systems of Midgar would have fallen with the city, leaving the struggling citizens of Edge without any method of transportation other than their own two feet. Certainly the chocobo breeders of the area would make use of their plight and capitalize on the fact that they now held something of a monopoly on transport. We decided that Chocobo Farm, the only place to rent chocobos in the game, opened up a type of franchise with local shops in major cities, and customers would call these local shops to rent chocobos, which would then run out from Chocobo Farm to their destinations. Sort of like...a car-rental place that will deliver your car to a local branch for you. For further information on our theories about chocobo-rentals, please visit our [[Even Further Reading]] page.

01 Footnotes

Admin — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 05:17:36 GMT

Admin: /* Healin */

Disclaimer
<div align=justify>
These are all applicable footnotes from Chapter One of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Healin=== [[Image:HealinSign.jpg|thumb|left|200px|The sign out in front of the Healin Lodge.]][[Image:Healin.JPG|thumb|right|200px|Triangulated location of Healin.]]

When Cloud drives up to Healin Lodge, we see him pass a large directional sign near the entrance to the lodge that indicates the locations of Midgar City, Kalm, and the Chocobo Farm. For Midgar City and the Chocobo Farm to both be to the right of the sign, Healin must be due east of both of these locations. However, since there is no location that will put both Midgar and Chocobo Farm in a straight line due west, we had to compromise and figure that the roads would go in an approximate westward direction from the sign's location in Healin.

So, if a right-facing arrow indicates due west, then the arrow that indicates Kalm, which is pointing at 5:00, tells us Kalm must be in a northwest direction. Triangulating these locations results in the location of Healin being Southeast of the Chocobo Farm.

Note that for the triangulation to be accurate, the sign must be facing north, the viewer facing south.

===Treatment?===

In the commemorative art/resource book [http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-lt-49-en-70-1fhb.html Final Fantasy VII: The Reunion Files], Healin is listed as being a hot spring/health spa.

===Quote===

'The only kind of retirement a Turk is entitled to comes with a body bag.'

In Before Crisis Mission Seventeen, President Shinra says this line to Tseng in regards to Veld's disappearance; however it seems like the kind of thing he would eagerly reiterate to the Turks.

===Firaga?===

In the original Japanese version of the game, the spell names were [example: Fire materia] Fire, Fira, and Firaga. However, when the game was brought to America, the spell names were changed to Fire1, Fire2, and Fire3. We found this lame, and decided to stick with the Japanese version for this particular situation. This method will be used for all materia spells mentioned in the story; The English 'Bolt' spells will be Thunder->Thundara->Thundaga, Cure2 will be Cura, Cure3 will be Curaga, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

===Neo ShinRa HQ===

[[Image:FrostTower.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Frost Tower in Austin, TX.]]We're actually given no indication that ShinRa is rebuilding its headquarters. However, we...kinda needed there to be a new tower for this story, so we decided they were rebuilding. Now, both of us author people live in Austin, TX, and we had both decided long ago that the Frost Bank Tower in town was totally what Rufus would design the new building to look like. Tall, fancy, lots of glass, intricate roof decorations, giant clocks on the faces... Yeah. Right up Rufus's alley. At 515 feet (157 meters) tall and containing 33 floors, the Frost Tower is the tallest building in the city of Austin. Now, granted, the skyline of Edge doesn't allow for such a hi-rise, so we've chopped the building in half, giving Neo ShinRa HQ 15 floors and standing at about 225 feet...but the general design of the building in our heads is that of Frost Tower. Just so we're all kinda...seeing the same thing. ^_^ 

On a related tangent, in Before Crisis, we learn that the Turks actually apparently lived in ShinRa Tower in old Midgar, which is actually not a terribly unusual occurrence in Japan, for people employed in an occupation such as theirs to actually live on-the-job. However, we wanted the Turks to have individual residences for the sake of the story, and decided that Rufus was going to be stingy and deny them their company residency.

===7th Heaven===

Tifa's bar was destroyed when Reno dropped the plate over Sector Seven of Lower Midgar in the events of FFVII. However, in Advent Children, she has a new bar by the same name. In the novella [http://one.xthost.info/ffwebnovel/chtifa.htm On the Way to a Smile: Case of Tifa] (as well as in The Reunion Files), it is explained that after the destruction of Midgar with the descent of Meteor, Tifa and the gang moved to Edge, a town that was being built around the edges of what remained of the ruins of Midgar. In Edge, Barret suggested that Tifa rebuild her bar. Marlene pleaded that the name of the new bar remain 7th Heaven, and Tifa conceded [somewhat reluctantly].

===Currency Exchange===

Gil Conversion - 1gil ~ $0.50 USD/€0.35/¥60, based on current value of the these currencies vs. prices in in-game shops. Example: Potion sells for 50gil, Phoenix Down for 300gil, and a tent for 500gil. That would make a potion about $25/€20/¥3000, a Phoenix Down $150/€115/¥17,700, and a tent $250/€185/¥30,000. This seemed a reasonable exchange, and will apply to any and all monetary exchanges within the story.

Beyond Good and Evil

Admin — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 08:16:10 GMT

Admin:

<div align=justify>Beyond Good and Evil is a joint fanfiction written by [http://hawkeye-chuui.livejournal.com/ chuui] and [http://aenigmadarai.livejournal.com/ Lulu]. Its initial creation was simply a desire to play out a few scenes involving Tifa and Reno, the authors' favorite pairing from the game [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII Final Fantasy VII], however as scenes became longer and ideas became more intricate, what began as a simple exercise in drabbling ended up turning into a huge idea. 

The very fabric of the FFVII cosmos was going to be picked apart and rewoven. And this time? It was going to get some proper explanation. 

After doing some initial research on the many [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII#Compilation_of_Final_Fantasy_VII compilations] of the original story, the authors began a long and time-consuming effort to put together a timeline of events from the earliest known moment mentioned in the storyline through the events of Advent Children and its preceeding novellas. Beyond Good and Evil draws from the canon of the compilations of FFVII, including Before Crisis, the game itself, Last Order, Advent Children and the novellas. The story does not, however, use any canon from Dirge of Cerberus or Crisis Core. This is firstly because the fic itself was started before either of these games came out and anything was known about them, and the direction the fic itself goes in would subsequently cause continuity problems if Dirge were being taken into account. Rather than rework the story in its entirety to encompass the game canon, the authors chose instead to simply discount the game and write the fic as if the canon sources only encompassed Before Crisis, FFVII, Advent Children, and the novellas. Additionally, in looking the additional canon over, we discovered that Dirge of Cerberus appears to actually contradict a lot of the preestablished canon from its predecessors. Evidence of these contradictions will be cited at a later date. 

Please enjoy the fic!

FFVII Timeline

Admin — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 03:30:31 GMT

Admin:

<div align=justify>Disclaimer 

This timeline is based on information gathered from multiple sources of FFVII canon, and goes along with the idea that FFVII took place in 1997. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

This is still a work-in-progress. Additional canon sources are added to this timeline as dates are configured. Please check back from time to time for new timestamps. 

EDIT: Recently, the official FFVII timeline from the 10th Anniversary Ultimania was translated and can be viewed [http://ultimania.ff7compilation.net/timeline.php here]; most of the information there is the same as is here--seems we had this pegged pretty close! :o
</div> 

<table border=2><tr><td valign="top">over</td><td valign="top">2000 years ago</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The Cetra arrive on The Planet; some Cetra give up their nomadic ways and become the predecessors to the current 'human race'. The lesson is that humans are really nomadic alien gypsies who gave up their wanderlust to settle down and have chitlins in villages. O_o</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">circa</td><td valign="top">2000 years ago</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">An alien life-form crash-lands on The Planet and has a viral effect that turns the Cetra into monsters and oh noes. The WEAPON are created by the Planet to forcibly remove the virus, as it was impeding the healing process of the crater left in its wake, but the Cetra seal the creature before the WEAPON are necessary, so the Planet swirled natural mako into the WEAPON and put them to sleep until such time as the Planet was in danger. Eerie faces of the WEAPON could be seen in the huge mako crystals that formed the crater.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~Normal Calendar Time is Created~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top">1867</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Bugenhagen is born.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">13Oct</td><td valign="top">1940</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Vincent Valentine is born. He has no specified canon birth year, but he was a Turk 30 years before FFVII, which means he was a Turk in 1967. His age is listed at 27...so we assume he is actually 57, since his career as a Turk ended abruptly with Sephiroth's birth and the [sudden unexplained] introduction of Chaos into his system.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1949</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Nanaki is born in Cosmo Canyon.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">circa</td><td valign="top">1950</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Nanaki's father Seto sacrifices his life to save Cosmo Canyon from the Gi Tribe, and makes Bugenhagen swear not to tell Nanaki the truth about what happened.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">23Sep</td><td valign="top">1959</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The ShinRa Company discovers a new sort of energy that can be mined from the planet: Mako Energy.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">10Oct</td><td valign="top">1959</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">During an excavation of the Northern Crater, Professor Faremis Gast finds the mummified remains of the alien life form responsible for the destruction of the Ancients and, deciding she is an Ancient, brings her remains to Nibelheim for study in the Shinra mansion. The creature is called "Jenova" and the plans for experiments that come to be known as "The Jenova Project" are put into motion over the next eight years. The general idea appears to be that Professor Gast got a wild hair and decided it would be cool beans to try and recreate an Ancient because that involves lots of awesome science.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">15Dec</td><td valign="top">1962</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Barret Wallace is born in Corel.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">22Feb</td><td valign="top">1965</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cid Highwind is born.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1967</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">In this year, a plan to find "The Promised Land" is set in motion by the ShinRa Company's science department. The point of this venture was to recreate an Ancient by injecting a normal human with Jenova cells. Sometime early this year, Professor Hojo conceives a child with his wife Lucrecia Crescent. The child is injected with Jenova cells for experimentation. Next we have a scene that is never really clarified...Vincent is shot by Hojo and then experimented on. But we don't know why exactly, or what was done. Speculation seems to be that Lucrecia is seriously damaged giving birth [and subsequently locks herself/is locked away in a mako cavern on the Eastern Continent] and Vincent is consumed with grief, since he was in love with Lucrecia. He blames Hojo for her fate and confronts him, and Hojo shoots him, mortally wounding him and then experimenting on him. It seems feasible that he injected Vincent with Jenova cells, and this was the cause of his possession by Chaos, however all of this is niether confirmed nor denied by canon sources. All we know is that Vincent thinks he is a miserable failure [for not being able to save the woman he loves from this horrible fate]. He locks himself away in a coffin beneath ShinRa mansion as punishment for his sins, and now he's a freaking vampire. *emo* His aging stops at this point.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">02July</td><td valign="top">1967</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Jenova is sealed away in the chamber of the Nibelheim mako reactor.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">09Jan</td><td valign="top">1968</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The first Mako Reactor is built by the ShinRa Company in Nibelheim (despite a discrepancy that indicates it was built 50-some years ago...).</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">circa</td><td valign="top">1972</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Give or take up to two years, Gast becomes wracked with guilt that he subjected a poor innocent pregnant woman and her unborn child to such hideous and unethical experimentation, he abandons the project to a guilty conscience and flees ShinRa to go to Icicle. There he meets Ifalna, who is a surviving Ancient. He interviews her and ultimately falls in love with her. Also around this time is when ShinRa decides to come up with a cover for the Jenova research by creating the SOLDIER program. Young men are recruited [by the Turks] for ShinRa's military services, and are then injected with Jenova cells and exposed to mako radiation so Hojo can <s>watch them pee</s> study the effects. Sephiroth becomes the first member of this SOLDIER program.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1974</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Zack is born in Gongaga.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">07Feb</td><td valign="top">1975</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Aerith is born to Professor Gast and Ifalna in Icicle.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">27Feb</td><td valign="top">1975</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Gast is killed by Hojo. [Sephiroth age 8] Hojo takes Aerith and Ifalna to ShinRa for study, and steals all of Gast's research for his own.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">24Jun</td><td valign="top">1976</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The planet's largest Mako reactor is erected in Midgar, and the ShinRa HQ Tower is raised.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">19Aug</td><td valign="top">1976</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud Strife is born in Nibelheim.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">03May</td><td valign="top">1977</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Tifa Lockart is born in Nibelheim.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">20Nov</td><td valign="top">1981</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Yuffie Kisaragi is born in Wutai.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">circa</td><td valign="top">1982</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Sometime around this year, the war between Wutai and ShinRa begins.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1982</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Aerith escapes from the ShinRa headquarters with her mother and they flee to the train station in the slums of Sector Seven. Ifalna is mortally wounded trying to protect Aerith, and entrusts her with the White Materia. After encountering Elmyra Gainsborough at the train station, she enters her care and begins living in the slums of Sector Five.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1985</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Tifa's mother dies. ; ; Then Tifa falls off a mountain and is in a coma for a week. ; ; And everything is horrible.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1987</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Zack goes to Midgar to join SOLDIER.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1991~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1991</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud says he's going to join SOLDIER and when he comes back he will no longer be lame. He and Tifa make their promise at the well in Nibelheim.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">30Feb</td><td valign="top">1991</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">It says 30Feb, but that day doesn't exist...so it's actually like...02Mar. wtf. AVALANCHE makes their first attack against ShinRa in Junon, and Sephiroth steps in to stop Elfe from killing some of the Turks. Then President Shinra decides to recruit more people for SOLDIER because they don't have enough manpower to fight AVALANCHE.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">16Mar</td><td valign="top">1991</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The Turks go off and are recruiting people for SOLDIER, and it's pretty hardcore. The recruits apparently know what this means and they're all like "NOOO we don't want to work for SOLDIER and become Mako experiments <s>and be molested by Hojo</s> laaaame! DX" Arrival in Costa del Sol and everyone has to go get back all the recruits that AVALANCHE set free. The Turks fight Shears on the beach, and Cloud is working for ShinRa at this point, and is there in Costa del Sol when the boat leaves.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">28Mar</td><td valign="top">1991</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Classified information regarding the SOLDIER program is entrusted to a Dr. Rayleigh despite everyone insisting it's a bad idea. The Turks are put in charge of protecting her, but the train she is on is attacked by AVALANCHE and the Ravens and they get their hands on the information.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1992~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">circa</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The war between Wutai and ShinRa is ended and Sephiroth is hailed as a hero for his involvement in the ceasefire. Also, Denzel is born sometime this year on the Upper Plate.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">14Jan</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The nature of the Ravens is revealed. Two days later Zack arrives in Icicle to help with the situation. President Shinra decides Veld is a miserable failure because obviously someone is leaking top-secret information to AVALANCHE, since they always seem to know when and where ShinRa is planning to go/make a move, and he revokes Veld's position as head of the Turks, putting Tseng in charge for the time being.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">01Feb</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Heidegger is briefly put in charge of the Turks, much to everyone's chagrin. >/ He's really bad at it, and Junon falls to AVALANCHE because he's lame and wont't let the Turks coordinate and work together. AVALANCHE HQ is infiltrated by the Turks, and then Veld can't stand this BS anymore and basically threatens to go public with all of ShinRa's top-secret info unless President Shinra gives him back his Turks.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">17Jun</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Monster outbreak in ShinRa HQ oh noes! AVALANCHE sets free all of Hojo's experiments and it's horrible. >:[ The Turks are the only ones who can deal with this--not even SOLDIER can know about the top secret experimentation Hojo has been up to. Hojo's all excited that he can now collect research on his experiments since AVALANCHE released them, and he doesn't even TRY to fight back when they attempt to kidnap him. Hojo is a naughy bat. He decides to go with AVALANCHE cuz they have cooler science than ShinRa. Knowing that Hojo will readily leak info to AVALANCHE if they offer him tasty science, President Shinra cries that they have to get Sephiroth to take care of this. Sephiroth shows up and kills a dragon cuz he's hardcore.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">09Aug</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Tseng finds Aerith in Midgar, but does not take her against her will because he luffs her. 8D</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">21Sep</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Sephiroth, Zack, Cloud, one or more of the Turks, and a few other ShinRa goons are sent to Nibelheim to investigate some disappearances around the reactor in the mountains. Sometime over the next few days, Sephiroth stumbles across Gast's research in the basement of shinRa mansion, and goes insane with the knowledge that he was created by a horrible experiment.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">29Sep</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The Nibelheim Burnination. After destroying the town, Sephiroth goes to the reactor in the mountains and cuts off Jenova's head, planning to take her with him to "The Promised Land" where they can be all-powerful and rid the planet of the useless humans. Obligatory scenes we all know...Sephiroth beats up Zack and spears Cloud and goes off on his megalomaniacal soliloquy about the Planet and Mother and blah blah blah...and then he jumps into the Mako pit. Whut. In the original game canon, Cloud throws Sephiroth into the Lifestream...however in Before Crisis and Last Order, Sephiroth dives in of his own accord. A Turk is in the reactor and sees Cloud collapse after 'defeating' Sephiroth.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">01Oct</td><td valign="top">1992</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Zangan escapes the cleanup with Tifa, but Zack and Cloud are taken to ShinRa mansion for experimentation with the rest of the survivors. Afterwards, the headless remains of Jenova's body are moved to ShinRa HQ on Hojo's orders. He planned to use Jenova's remaining cells for "The Sephiroth Clones Project", which was essentially exactly the same as what had been going on with the SOLDIER program--the difference being that SOLDIER candidates were hardcore, and the people used in the Sepiroth Clone project were the survivors of Nibelheim, most of whose more fragile psyches were broken by the exposure to Jenova and Mako and left them as "pieces" of Jenova. The point of these experiments was to prove Hojo's hypothesis about Jenova's cells being able to reassemble. Meanwhile, Sephiroth flows through the Lifestream back to the Northern Crater, where he begins "The Reunion"; the reconglomeration of all of Jenova's scattered cells, and consequently the gathering of all the people within whom they dwell, as well as the dismembered pieces of Jenova's mummified remains. All of Jenova's cells begin migrating toward the Northern Crater and it's creepy as hell. Because the Lifestream contains all the knowledge of all who have ever lived, Sephiroth learns of the Black Materia that can summon Meteor while in the Lifestream, and plans to summon Meteor. Meteor would cause a great wound in the Planet and, knowing that the Lifestream gathered where The Planet was injured, like blood, Sephiroth would gain control of The Planet while the Lifestream was in abundance at the site of the injury.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1993~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">early</td><td valign="top">1993</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Marlene is born to Dyne and Elenor and a mako reactor is built in Corel.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">01Mar</td><td valign="top">1993</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Yuffie's obsession with materia begins!!!</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">11April</td><td valign="top">1993</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The failed launch of ShinRa Rocket 26.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">early</td><td valign="top">1993</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Marlene is born to Dyne and Elenor and a mako reactor is built in Corel.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">08May</td><td valign="top">1993</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The Corel reactor incident; Barret's wife Myrna and his best friend Dyne are killed when the town is attacked and destroyed by ShinRa troops. Dyne and Barret both lose an arm to Scarlet, and then Dyne also supposedly dies. Also, it is finally revealed that Rufus was the inside job who was informing AVALANCHE of ShinRa's plans. He is <s>grounded for a week</s> put on house arrest until further notice. One of the Turks is trapped within the damaged reactor and falls into a coma from exposure to the mako radiation. Barret finds Marlene has survived and adopts her. Around this time, Barret joins AVALANCHE and sets up a local chapter in Midgar [in the basement of Tifa's bar in Sector Seven]. This is also the day that Tseng is put in charge of the Turks on account of Chief Veld's disappearance; he is given orders to kill Veld should he return.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1994~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">1994</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">A reactor explodes in Gongaga, destroying most of the town.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1996~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">30Oct</td><td valign="top">1996</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The Turk who fell comatose in Corel reawakens in the hospital and is very confused. Being asleep for three years will do that to you. O_o Nanaki is captured by ShinRa and the experiment specimen "Red XIII" is created.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">19Dec</td><td valign="top">1996</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud and Zack escape ShinRa and head for Midgar being pursued by ShinRa troops and the Turks. Cloud is basically a vegetable as a result of mako poisoning. A few days later, they near the outskirts of Midgar and Zack is killed protecting vegetable!Cloud from the troops. Awakening somewhat from his mindless state, Cloud takes Zack's sword and continues to Midgar, running into Tifa in the train station in Sector Seven. Upon seeing her alive and well, he snaps fully out of his broken-psyche stupor, however with many gaps in his recollections and a myriad of false memories.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1997~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">05Oct</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The summoning of Zirconiade; Tseng shoots Veld on orders to kill him, and also shoots his daughter Felicia--AVALANCHE's current leader, Elfe. The Turks destroy Zirconiade, however all but Rude, Reno, and Tseng are caught in the destruction and presumed dead.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">09Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The epilogue of Before Crisis and the first day of FFVII-proper, providing a seamless transition from one game to the next. Rufus returns to the board of directors for ShinRa Co., and the first Mako Reactor is destroyed by Cloud's gang.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">10Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The Don Corneo incident; Cloud dresses in drag and goes with Aerith to save Tifa. They find out from the Don that ShinRa plans to drop the plate on Sector Seven and go to try and stop it. Aerith rescues Marlene, and then is captured by Tseng and taken to ShinRa, and Reno drops the plate anyway [; ;]. Sector Seven is annihilated, and the destruction is blamed on AVALANCHE. Marlene is now at Elmyra's house, and the gang finds out that Aerith is an Ancient and they make plans to rescue her from ShinRa.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">11Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The gang saves Aerith, but they are thrown in ShinRa jail. They escape, only to find that one of the pieces of Jenova's body takes the form of Sephiroth and kills President ShinRa with the Masamune sword. Rufus is now in charge of the entire company. Lord help us.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">13Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Elena is made a Turk thanks to Cloud's gang beating up Reno, and the gang goes to Junon when she accidentally tells them that is where Sephiroth was headed. >.></td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">14Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The team goes to Costa del Sol and runs into a now-resigned Hojo, who postulates in passing about the "Jenova Reunion" hypothesis.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">15Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Barret is accused of being responsible for several murders that have happened in the Gold Saucer Area and he and the gang are thrown into the Corel Desert Prison. Here, Barret finds that Dyne did not die and instead went insane. Rather than succumb to the desire to kill his old friend [and Marlene, who he had thought was dead], Dyne kills himself. They are released from the prison when Cloud wins a chocobo race, and then head to Gongaga</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">17/18Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">In Cosmo Canyon, the gang learns from Bugenhagen about the harm that the Mako Reactors are doing to the planet: If Mako is forcefully extracted from the Lifestream, then it cannot be reabsorbed. The Mako Reactors will eventually suck the planet dry if they continue.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">19Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The gang arrives in Nibelheim, and Cloud and Tifa are surprised to see that it's even still there. They don't recognize anyone in the town, however...because none of the people there are the original residents of the town. The survivors were all experimented on, and the town itself was repopulated with Sephiroth Clones and ShinRa personnel. Everyone denies that anything even happened five years ago... Spooky. In the basement of the mansion, Cloud encounters Sephiroth, who tells Cloud he is neaded north, and asks him if he is going to participate in the Reunion. While in Nibelheim, the group discovers Vincent's coffin and release him; he joins the party in the hopes of getting revenge on Hojo.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">20Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cid joins the party in Rocket Town after they help save the Tiny Bronco from being stolen by AVALANCHE. The group goes to Wutai and are robbed of their materia by Yuffie, who then gets kidnapped by AVALANCHE along with Elena. Cloud-gumi and the Turks [who are on vacation LAWL] team up to save their girls from AVALANCHE, and then Reno and Rude kill Don Corneo. Yuffie then joins the Cloud party. Learning from Cid that Rufus was going to go to the Temple of the Ancients, they talk to a weapons seller east of Gongaga and learn that to enter the temple you need to have a 'keystone'--which the man had already sold to a man--Dio--in Gold Saucer. Cloud enters a tournament for Dio's amusement in the hopes that they will be permitted to borrow this keystone.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">21Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud's infamous date. After a night on the town, he and his date run into Cait Sith, who has stolen the keystone and hands it off to Tseng before Cloud and his date of choice can catch him. Cait Sith then explains that his master has kidnapped Elmyra and Marlene, and then when the rest of the group awakens, Cait Sith tells them all how to find the Temple of the Ancients.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">22Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The group arrives at the temple only to find Tseng has been mortally wounded by Sephiroth. They discover Sephiroth's plan to retrieve the Black Materia from within the temple and summon Meteor. They learn that the temple itself is the Black Materia, and the only way to obtain the materia is to solve all of the riddles inside and the temple will shrink down, becoming the materia, but killing whoever is inside it trying to obtain it. Cait Sith offers to be the sacrifice, since he is really only a robot, and once the team has the materia, Sephiroth takes over Cloud's mind and makes him hand over the Black Materia cuz he's a meanie head. He basically goes berserk, and gets punched out by one of the party members. O_o;;</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">24Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Two days later, Cloud awakens in Gongaga after having a dream in which Aerith goes after Sephiroth herself. When he wakes up, he finds out that Aerith has...GONE AFTER SEPHIROTH BY HERSELF. When he discovers that he apparently willingly handed the materia to Sephiroth, Cloud has an emo attack and barely manages to pull himself together as the group heads north to Bone Village, and find that they need the Lunar Harp in order to enter the forests to reach the City of the Ancients.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">25Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The team arrives in the City of the Ancients and finds Aerith tranced out in prayer. Sephiroth takes over his mind again and almost makes him kill Aerith and it's horrible. The group manages to stop him from killing her, but Sephiroth kills her anyway and everything is horrible. Aerith is laid to rest in the water in front of the Forgotten Capital. ....Merry Christmas? ; ;</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">27Dec</td><td valign="top">1997</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud and the gang arrive at the Northern Crater to confront Sephiroth again. They fight a Sephiroth Clone and it drops the Black Materia. The materia is handed off to one of the other party members as Cloud and Tifa head deeper into the Crater with the advance party. They meet up with Sephiroth and he screws with Cloud's head, telling him the truth about how his memories are not his own. The ShinRa airship arrives in the center of the crater as well, and Hojo is disappointed that only Cloud the failure has made it to the "reuinion". The person who had the Black Materia is attacked, the materia is stolen, the WEAPON awaken, and everything explodes. O_O;;; </td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1998~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">03Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">One week later, Tifa awakens in a hospital in Junon with Barret, and is told by Rufus that AVALANCHE is going to take the heat for all of the crap that is now happening all over the world; Meteor has been summoned, the WEAPON are running amuck, and everything is horrible. HAPPY NEW YEAR. Tifa and Barret are to be executed on live TV to appease the masses. >:[ Tifa is locked in a gas chamber, and is prepared to die, but then Sapphire WEAPON attacks and starts blowing stuff up and blows a hole in the gas chamber. Tifa escapes and gets into a slapping match with Scarlet. She is rescued by Cid and the Highwind airship, which is now under AVALANCHE control.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">04Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The gang finds Cloud in a cheeselike state in Mideel from exposure to mako since he fell into the Lifestream in Northern Crater, and Tifa stays with him until he comes back to his senses. Cait Sith tells the group that ShinRa is collecting Huge Materia for the fight with Sephiroth, and so they decide to get some too. They stop a train from crashing into Corel, and acquire one of the materia and the town thinks they are awesome.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">05Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Next stop is Fort Condor for another Huge Materia. The Condor tribe leader gives them the materia after they assist in the resistance against ShinRa, and then the group heads back to Mideel to check on Tifa and Cloud. However there is an earthquake, and the Ultima WEAPON attacks and everything is horrible. Tifa tries to escape with Cloud, but they fall into the Lifestream. Again. She somehow manages to like get inside Cloud's brain and can see all his memories and stuff and she kinda explains that he's nuts and it was Zack who came to Nibelheim and not him. When Cloud's memories are set straight, his fractured brain is realigned and he's normal again and it's awesome. The Lifestream barfs them out again back in Mideel and they are found by the others there.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">06Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud tells everyone that he was out of his mind and thought he was Zack and he was never really in SOLDIER cuz he was lame and only a Sephiroth Clone and that's why he has Mako eyes. The team then goes to Junon in search of another Huge Materia in the Underwater Reactor there. The sub gets away, and they sink it, but before they can claim the materia, they hear that ShinRa is planning to ram Meteor with a materia bomb being constructed in Rocket Town. They get to the airport too late to stop the plane carrying the materia, however, and the Gelnika takes off to carry the materia to Rocket Town. They get there and the launch can't be stopped, so they go to outer space and Cid is like "8D! woohoo outer space!" and then they realize that they really have to dismantle this bomb cuz it's a bad idea and they're gonna take the materia anyway. They escape, and the rocket crashes into Meteor, and doesn't really faze it.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">07Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The team goes to talk to Bugenhagen in the hopes that they can learn something about what Aerith was trying to do when she was killed. They head to the Forgotten Capital and find runes that tell them they have to find a 'key' where the 'sunlight won't reach'. They head for the caves beneath the ocean. In a cave they find a large object that appears very old. Taking it to Bugenhagen, who has found that the White Materia will summon Holy, which can defeat Meteor. The large object they found--the 'key'--unlocks a projection device that shows the White Materia fell out of Aerith's headband when she died. The group fires the Junon cannon--which was taken to Midgar--toward Northern Crater in an effort to break the barrier that Sephiroth has put up around it. The barrier was what was keeping Sephiroth safe from the WEAPON and outside attack. Meanwhile, the Diamond WEAPON is attacking Midgar, drawn to the threat of the Mako Reactors there when they charged the cannon, and the WEAPON fires at ShinRa tower, destroying it and presumably killing Rufus inside. Hojo is now in control of the cannon, and the gang runs into the Turks as they go to try and stop Hojo. The Turks let them pass, claiming that ShinRa is finished anyhow, so their orders are as good as nullified. Heidegger and Scarlet try and intervene when they move to stop further shots from being fired, but die when their robot weapon overheats and explodes. Hojo plans to fire the cannon again, admitting that he really just wants to help Sephiroth out--he's Sephiroth's father, after all. Sephiroth is counting on the power from the blast. Hojo takes on some creepy forms thanks to his Jenova powers, but is defeated in the end, and the canon is shut down.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">08Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Bugenhagen informs the group that Meteor should hit in about a week, and Cloud orders everyone to go home and figure out the reason why they are fighting...and only come back if they wish. He and Tifa share a moment together when they realize that all they really have left now is eachother. >.>;; >/</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">09Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud and Tifa go back to the ship to find Cid and Barret are already there. The rest of the crew trickles back, and they all take off for the final showdown!</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"></td><td valign="top">over the next several days</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Cloud and the gang show up at Northern Crater and fight their way toward Sephiroth, taking out Jenova and then attacking Sephiroth, who takes on a creepy Bizarro form in an effort to protect the barrier holding Holy at bay.

Meanwhile the Turks are in Midgar helping evacuate the civilians, and Veld returns with the rest of the Turks who were thought to have been killed in the fight with Zirconaide. They all assist in the evacuation.

Sephiroth falls to the power of Cloud's party, but comes back pissed off. Because he's Sephiroth. >:[ They defeat this form as well, and like the rest of the solar system is destroyed. O_o Oops. Cloud then fights Sephiroth in his MIND...defeats him...and Tifa reaches to help Cloud back out of the crater. With the defeat of Sephiroth, Holy is released, and as the Highwind comes to Cloud and the gang's rescue, the power of Holy erupts from the crater and destroys it. Cid ejects the cockpit and they fly to safety. Meanwhile, Meteor now has no one to guide it, and is careening toward Midgar. All Holy seems able to do is destroy the outer pieces of Meteor, and so the planet sends forth the Lifestream to destroy it in a burst of light...</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">21Jan</td><td valign="top">1998</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">The actual date of Meteor Strike. See [http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r26/Beyond_Good_and_Evil/rockininmidgar.jpg here] for datestamp; Era 0008 (1998) 01 (January) 2[?](if the number was anything other than a one it would show beside the 2. 1 is the narrowest number, and so logically any other number would have been visible in some form beside the 2. This gives us January 21st, 1998 as the day Meteor hit Midgar.</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"> </td><td valign="top"><div align="center">~1999~</td></tr>

<tr><td valign="top">mid to late</td><td valign="top">1999</td><td valign="top"><div align="justify">Advent Children occurs over the course of 3 days [43 hours total].</td></tr>

Works Cited

Admin — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:13:49 GMT

Admin:

<div align=justify>These are all sources used in gathering information to create this fic. We would like to thank all of the webmasters of these sites for their indirect assistance in the writing of this story, and for the time and effort spent creating and maintaining these wonderful informational pages.</div>

Image Galleries 
[http://ac.mehve.net/index.php r e u n i o n]: Advent Children Screencap Gallery 
[http://www.unlimitedgamer.net/coverage/ff7ac/ff7ac_screenshots.php An Additional AC Screencap Gallery] 
[http://shinra.dragoon.nu/divine/ Divine Right]: an all-inclusive FFVII image gallery 
[http://beforecrisis.net/ BeforeCrisis.Net]: Screencaps of the BC Missions 
special thanks to [http://zeph-miran.livejournal.com/ zeph_miran] for some great screenshots used in our informational pages! 

Before Crisis 
[http://www.freewebs.com/gunshotromance/index.htm Gunshot Romance]: Before Crisis Fansite *Special thanks goes out to D_A, the webmistress of this site, for putting SO MUCH WORK into her script translations. Without her site, this fic would not have happened.* 
[http://one.xthost.info/ffwebnovel FFVII Web Novel]: Before Crisis Mission Scripts/Novellas 
[http://neosphere.nobody.jp/index.html NEOSPHERE]: Some BC scripts in Japanese 
[http://844.jp/~neosphere/index.html NEOSPHERE II]: More scripts
[http://flashpink.net/ff7/bc.html FF7BC]: Some more BC scripts in Japanese 
[http://d-o.moo.jp/bcff7_m20.html]: MOAR BC SCRIPTS IN JAPANESE~ =D 
[http://www.ffcompilation.co.uk/pages/bc/Final_Fantasy_VII_BC_Main.php Before Crisis Specifics] 

FFVII Original 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII FFVII Wiki]: General information about the game 
[http://www.icybrian.com/fanficresource/ff7steeleinfo.php Everything You Need to Know About FFVII]: A fan's interpretation of the game's timeline as a whole 
[http://www.ff7citadel.com/ FFVII Citadel]: General information about the game 
[http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/197341/36775 Level Info] 
[http://www.rpgplace.net/ff7/materia/green.php Materia Log] 
[http://www.ff-fan.com/ffvii/itemshops.php Items] 
[http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/ FFVII Compendium]: More general info 
[http://www.parabox.or.jp/~takashin/ff-07.htm Game Script in Japanese]: for obvious reasons... thanks to [http://ahvia.livejournal.com/ ahvia] for linking me!! 
[http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=55848&rid=51768 Game Script]: self-explanatory...the script in English 
[http://www.vtutorials.com/phoenixgenesis/ff7/ff7script/ff7contents.html Another Game Script]: this time with screencaps! :o 

Advent Children 
[http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dvd/ff7ac/ff7ac_novelmain.html On the Way to a Smile Novels]: Japanese language site 
[http://rokoran.com/ff7hokankeikaku/ff7ac/spript/original.htm Advent Children Script]: Japanese dialogue from the movie 

Other/Misc 
[http://confluence.org The Degree Confluence Project]: Find out about stuff at all different coordinates all over the world! 
[http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/index.php Ctrl+Alt+Del]: for the lulz

Prologue Footnotes

Admin — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:32:11 GMT

Admin:

Disclaimer

These are all applicable footnotes from the Prologue of the Final Fantasy VII fanfiction story, Beyond Good and Evil. This is not a source of official canon information and, while all of the information stated herein is based on and derived from what is given in canon, this information is not and can not be considered official or supported by the game creators or developers. 

==Footnotes==

===Midgar Standard Time===

<div align=justify>[[Image:Timeline01.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Page 01 of the Timeline of Advent Children.]] [[Image:Timeline02.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Page 02 of the Timeline of Advent Children.]][[Image:Gaia.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The projected latitude, longitude, and timezone lines of Gaia.]]Midgar Standard Time would be based on the timezones illustrated in the map shown to the right. 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 (shown to the left). Having a set amount of time things were required to be done in put a specific limitation of size on the planet; certain distances needed to be traversed in a certain amount of time, and passage of time would have to be metered by timezones for time to flow naturally across the planet. 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 possible 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 would 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. For further information, please see our [[Further Reading]] page. 

Also something to note is that when the gang is on the train at the beginning of the game, the conductor says over the PA, "Last train out of Sector 8 Station. Last stop is Sector 7, Train Graveyard. Expected time of arrival is 12:23AM, Midgar Standard Time...", proving that apparently, we were not the first ones to suppose a blanket timezone was a good idea. XD

===Rosalind===

[[Image:Rosalind.jpg|left]]In [http://www.square-enix.co.jp/mobile/bcff7.html 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, [http://www.freewebs.com/gunshotromance/index.htm 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.

[[Image:ElenaRoz.jpg|thumb|200px| ]]

===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 [http://adventchildren.net/forums/member.php?u=2137 Suzaku]) The girls' personalities often clash and Elena resents her sister for outdoing her. 

The text in the screencap says, "Big sister [et al]! You guys came back!"

===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===

In our interpretation of the way restorative items work in FFVII, 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. For further details, please see Section Three of our [[Further Reading]] page.

===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.

Footnotes

Admin — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:19:10 GMT

Admin:

Here you will find the directory for all the posted footnotes for the fic. As new chapters are posted that require footnotes, links will be added, so that all footnotes are easily accessible from one location. Enjoy! 

※ [[Prologue Footnotes]] 
※ [[01 Footnotes|Chapter One Footnotes]] 
※ [[02 Footnotes|Chapter Two Footnotes]] 
※ [[03 Footnotes|Chapter Three Footnotes]] 
※ [[04 Footnotes|Chapter Four Footnotes]] 
※ [[05 Footnotes|Chapter Five Footnotes]] 
※ [[06 Footnotes|Chapter Six Footnotes]] 
※ [[07 Footnotes|Chapter Seven Footnotes]] 
 
※ [[09 Footnotes|Chapter Nine Footnotes]] 
 
※ [[11 Footnotes|Chapter Eleven Footnotes]] 
※ [[12 Footnotes|Chapter Twelve Footnotes]] 
※ [[13 Footnotes|Chapter Thirteen Footnotes]] 
※ [[14 Footnotes|Chapter Fourteen Footnotes]] 
※ [[15 Footnotes|Chapter Fifteen Footnotes]] 
 
※ [[17 Footnotes|Chapter Seventeen Footnotes]] 
 
※ [[27 Footnotes|Chapter Twenty-Seven Footnotes]]

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128.6.51.12 — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:50:39 GMT

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Admin — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:56:21 GMT

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128.6.51.12 — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 16:48:03 GMT

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