In which people (and things) sometimes fall through the cracks between dimensions. (Loosely related collection of scenes and snippets; FF7 Remake and Naruto crossover.)

#1: There's a nagging feeling she's forgetting something, but all she sees is a haze of green.

Absorptance: A measure of the degree to which a substance or object absorbs radiation incident on it, equal to the ratio of the absorbed to the incident flux. (Lexico, Oxford)

A/N: Head's up, the last time I read any chapters of Naruto was more than ten years ago, way before Shippuden came to an end (Boruto? That doesn't exist! lalalalala!); I also haven't finished the original game of FF7 (but am currently playing through the remake!) or any of the spinoffs. So I'm really, really rusty on both series' canon and might accidentally or on purpose ignore things (such as Naruto filler episodes or movies. Never watched any of that stuff, though I might borrow some small aspects if it suits). This was intended to be a fun way of getting back into writing without worrying about plot. Sometimes I'll play around with the timeline or character's ages to explore an idea, so don't expect too much consistency between scenes. Some chapters may consist of longer scenes and some may be several shorter snippets combined.

Edit: If you read this story when it was first published, chapter 2 may look familiar. I messed up and forgot to separate it from this chapter and then uploaded the wrong file to the Doc Manager. (Chapter 3 will have new content.) My bad. This is the correct order, now.

Rated T for language (for now).

Meteorology

(And Natural Disasters)

Chapter 1 "Absorptance"

There's a nagging feeling she's forgetting something — the memory of urgency and panic and desperation and impossibly strong enemies and fightfightfight — but it slips away like so many grains of sand through her fingers. Instead, she's floating, drifting weightlessly through a haze of lingering aches and numbing pain. There's no up or down or sideways, no light or darkness that she can tell (but determining that requires eyes to see, to open, and having eyes means she needs to use them, but she's so tired, and opening takes so much effort so it's better to not have eyes at all, isn't it?), and she's not sure if she's been here for mere minutes or hours or days or years and years and years forever.

But the drifting is nice.

-a flash of blue eyes and spiky blonde hair-

-watching his back as he walks away-

-a sad smile, full of regret-

-"What I have is not a dream…"-

-"promise me"-

-a flash of light so bright that it blinds-

-the sensation of falling-

-pain-

-and-

Nothing.

And then, suddenly her chest feels like it's being squeezed and her heartbeat is pounding furiously in her ears. She opens her mouth to breathe, but water (no, that's not water!) rushes in and burns her mouth and nose and throat and gods why does everything hurt? Her eyes open to make sense of the world, but all she sees is a haze of green and then her eyes, too, burn.

She kicks and flails and tries to swim until the pressure finally eases (thank the Sage that she hadn't been going in the wrong direction) and she breaks through the surface and takes in the most wonderful, glorious breath of air and she will never taking breathing for granted again (until the next time asphyxiation becomes a problem, which hopefully won't be happening any time soon, because it is not a pleasant feeling, thank you very much).

She makes it to solid ground, pulls herself out with trembling limbs, wobbles a few feet away from the edge, and throws up what seems like the entire contents of her stomach. The corrosive green bile that splashes against the ground is disgusting and more viscous than she expects and the act of purging leaves her exhausted and short of breath. (Oh, definitely not good. What is that?)

A quick check of her surroundings shows that there is no one (and nothing harmful) else in the vicinity, so she decides to prioritize her health instead of securing the area. It takes her far too long to dredge up the energy and concentration to access her chakra and run a diagnostic scan. Her control is shot to pieces, the green healing energy that normally comes so easily flickers in her hands like a tiny flame in a sudden gust of wind. The burning sensation itching at her skin slowly (far too slowly, what is wrong with her?) recedes, and after a few moments longer, she gives up and decides to try again later.

Haruno Sakura takes a better look around her, sees the foreign architecture in the distance, the unfamiliar stars twinkling in the night sky, the wrong size and shape of the moon as it slowly orbits in the wrong direction, and the glowing green pond swirling behind her. The wind starts to pick up and she can see dark clouds rolling closer, can smell the beginnings of a storm in the air as her hair is whipped around into a frenzied, tangled mess.

"Oh shit."

A/N: Future scenes might not be as serious, and definitely not as long. Sakura in this chapter is around her Shippuden age, but that might not be the case in future chapters. I'm probably not going to keep characters' ages consistent between the various scenes because I'm mostly just playing around with interactions and "what if" scenarios. (Consistency? Plot? What's that? lol)

One of my goals when writing this piece was to try(! Ha.) to give both series' [characters] an even playing field. I know both FF7 and Naruto have BS physics and abilities (like, Tifa apparently isn't enhanced, but she can keep up with people with mako sometimes? WHY?!), but I don't want either side to overpower the other. It's no fun that way! (sigh) I wish I had internalized this when I was younger.

Thanks for reading!

~Ika

2020 April 27