The Loveless

©®™ Lt. Commander Richie

A/N: Welcome, one and all, to my newest project. Its name is The Loveless, quite obviously, and to be rather frank it is a blatant self-insert. I'm trying to make a believable Mary Sue here, people. It won't have any pairings involving the OC, either! This is a first for me! Anyone in for the long run? Someday this'll be great. I just know it'll be longer than Penance, you'll see!

Disclaimer: Summons are red, Jenova is blue. I don't own, so please don't sue!

Chapter 1

The sun shone brightly off the ocean as a small white car sped along the shore, scrubgrass swaying in the salty wind as they passed. The top of the car wasn't down, but it was still cold inside to both of the riders. The road was a large one, many smaller ones leading off in three-way intersections dispersed with small back-roads dotted with State Beach signs. The car passed through one of the larger intersections without too much trouble, and one of the riders looked up slightly before looking back down.

"You just missed the turn." The girl was wearing a long silver wig and a blindfold pushed to her forehead, crammed in the passenger seat of the small and cramped car with a well-worn rented DVD in her lap and her eyes glued to the screen of her PSP. Small Paopou Fruit keychains with a mass of ribbons on them jingled on the keychain loop of the game system, mixing with the sound of constantly-mashed buttons and making a thoroughly annoying sound.

"We're returning the DVD first." The woman driving was much too young-looking for her age. Except for a few wrinkles and the large white streak in her curvy shoulder-length black hair, she didn't look a day over thirty-something. A large floppy pink hat, its brim smashed against the roof of the car and the headrest of the driver's seat, was shoved over the white streak in the woman's hair. The girl sighed, pausing her game and looking up at the driver.

"But muth-urrr..." She trailed off, making a pouty face and utterly failing.

"I'm sure all your obsessed friends will understand that we have to go return a movie first." The two sat in silence for a moment, the red light they were stopped at turning green and the tiny white rag-top Jaguar they were both crammed into speeding across the deserted intersection.

"But I don't want to return it. Emmie doesn't have a copy and we were gonna watch it tonight!" the girl in the silver wig sat her PSP on her lap, a blue Pause layered over a darkened screen. She tucked the long silver bangs of her wig behind her ears, pushing up her slowly-falling black blindfold.

"Chyrin, honey, sometimes you just have to suck it up and let things happen." The car turned sharply around a corner, then again as it went into the parking lot of the closed video store. Chyrin sighed and turned off her PSP, shoving it in the pocket of her pants and unbuckling. She got out of the car and pulled her blindfold over her eyes for the hell of it, brushing the long bangs of her wig out of the way and headed for the video return slot.

"'Just suck it up and let things happen'," The teen mocked, her lip curling up into a sneer. "Please. She wouldn't understand if understanding came up and bit her on the arse." The wig-wearing girl tried pushing the case in, but the door wouldn't budge. She tried again, still to no avail. Muttering in an annoyed fashion, she shoved the worn DVD case into the slot, her hand going all the way in past the metal flap. She let go of the case and pulled her hand back, but the flap closed on her wrist and tried to lock.

It was an old thing, partially rusted shut from the salty air of the seaside town. Chyrin had gotten her hand stuck in it before, and since then usually went inside to return videos. But she was in a hurry and the place wasn't open, so she had foregone her hatred of the rusty metal door and just tried shoving the DVD inside. The teen pulled at her wrist, but a jagged pain shot up her arm and she stopped. Growling slightly, she shoved at the door and tried to pull her arm out. The same pain hit her, and she whimpered this time.

"Mom?" She called, turning around and waving to her mother. "My hand's stuck." her mother rolled her eyes and turned off the car, pulling out the keys and getting out. Her long white hospital labcoat blew around in the wind, and she nearly lost her ID badge and her floppy pink hat in the process.

"Honestly, Chyrin." The woman said in a disapproving tone, her heels making clicking sounds as she walked over and kneeled down next to her daughter. "I thought you learned after the last time." The older woman pushed on the door and Chyrin pulled, but she hissed in pain and stopped.

"It's not moving and my wrist hurts!" The teen in the wig pushed her blindfold up with her free hand, the world gaining more color than the hazy black it had been before. Her mother leaned back to survey the rusted door, raising an eyebrow at the old contraption.

"Push your arm farther in. I'll hook my fingers under the door and push it up and in, and you should be able to get your hand out." She finally said, glaring when her daughter just barely rolled her eyes and sighed. "Don't you roll your eyes at me, just do it." Chyrin grumbled, but pushed her arm farther into the slot. The rusty door ground open, suddenly popping open and making the teen shove her entire arm down the chute. Grumbling, she pulled her arm back out and her mother put her hand in so as to keep it from closing and locking again.

"See? That wasn't so bad, now was it?" Her mother asked, and the wig-wearing teen sighed.

"Fine, it wasn't. Thanks for getting my hand out." The two stood, both of them smiling. The older woman pulled her daughter into a hug, and the teen groaned.

"Moth-errr, do you really have to hug me in public?" They both rolled their eyes, but released eachother and stepped back. The older woman paused, however, her smile faltering.

"Honey... Don't move. Something's not right." Her mother looked panicked all of a sudden, and on instinct Chyrin took a deep breath. The air no longer smelled like salt, and instead of the brightness of a sunny and small seaside town in summer the light was filtered and gray, tinting everything a muted color of what it once was. The teen blinked several times, slowly turning to look out at where the ragtop Jaguar should have been. But instead of the parking lot of the closed video store, there was a busy street full of both people and older-model-looking cars. All the buildings were cement, and rising above the bustling and dirty-looking city were girders stretching up to the sky and a hazy-looking old towering building that all looked so very familiar that it made Chyrin want to scream and huddle on the ground.

"Chyrin? You don't look so good." Her mother held the back of her hand to the teen's forehead, and the girl snapped out of her sudden zoning. "Wherever we are, we should find out just how the hell we got here."

"Mom?" Chyrin asked, pulling the blindfold completely off her head and stuffing it in her pocket with her PSP and her wallet.

"... Hm?" The doctor asked, her pacing making rather annoying clip-clop sounds on the hard concrete sidewalk. Several people bumped into both of them, none of them really paying any attention to either.

"We're not in Kansas anymore." It hit the teen so fast that she nearly didn't know what to do with the thought. But she still grabbed a handful of her silver wig and tugged. Pain shot across her scalp, and she yelped.

"What're you doing?" Her mother asked, watching as the teen tugged at her hair even more, then ran a hand through her bangs and promptly screamed.

"My wig's not a wig! It's my hair!"

Catherine Renton was abso-fuckin'-loutely scared out of her goddamn mind. She had no clue where the hell she and her daughter were, they were stranded wherever the hell here was, and to top it all off Chyrin was probably having a mental breakdown. But she kept her calm facade, if not for herself then for her daughter. She watched as Chyrin began pacing back and forth, gathering up all her now-silver hair that had at one point been a wig in one hand and sweeping her bangs back with the other.

"Ma, I need your hat." Catherine handed the hat over, and the teen shoved it over her now-silver hair. Looking a bit funny with the large and floppy pink hat jammed onto her head, Chyrin spun around several times. "Can you see my hair?"

"Nope." The doctor was completely in the dark, and even moreso when her daughter jumped up real close to her and held one eye open.

"Are my eyes still brown?" Catherine nodded, still extremely confused. The teen sighed almost forlornly, but backed away and then leaned against the wall.

"Chyrin, what's all this about?" Chyrin looked up, raising an eyebrow that was brown and shot-through with silver, and shrugged.

"I'onno. It's all your fault, though. I figure as soon as this all sinks in, I'll be running into walls and screaming like a loon." A man shoved Catherine aside, walking on without so much as an apology. The doctor stumbled in her heels, bracing herself against the wall next to her daughter so as to keep herself from doing a faceplant.

"Hey bastard, watch where you're going!" The woman yelled, shaking a fist. The man didn't listen, and continued to walk on.

"If we'd just gone to Emmie's instead of returning the freakin' DVD, we wouldn't be stuck here." Chyrin griped, crossing her arms and sliding down to sit on the dirty sidewalk. She looked up towards the sky, her eyes falling on the looming and nearly-destroyed monolith that she figured she knew so well.

"Where is here?" Catherine sat down next to her teenage daughter, looking in the same direction she was.

"City called Edge." The girl supplied. "Way over there is Midgar, and in the very center of that city is the old ShinRa building." Chyrin pointed at the monolithic structure rising out of the smog, her voice bored. "North of here, across the plains, is a little city called Kalm, south-west of here is Junon, south of that is Fort Condor, the Mithril Mines, and on the other side of the mountains is the Chocobo Farm."

"What's a Chocobo?" The doctor asked, almost dreading the answer as she looked over at her daughter.

"Think of a draft horse, then turn it into a giant chicken." She was right to dread it. In one final gasp of breath, Catherine fainted. Chyrin put her head in her hands and moaned.

So... Did you survive? Don't worry, it'll just get odder. And possibly worse. In fact, definitely worse. It's written through chapter nine right now, so that means you have nine weeks of updates from this at least. The best part is that I finally have a menagerie I can work out of, and it comes equipped with a list of Materia (besides the ones I remember and/or have from FFVII)! So plenty of monsters this story around, not just Mandragoras and Dragons! Now I have Razor Weeds and Sahagains, not to mention Behemoths, Mover RE's and Sweepers.

But yeah. Before you start on me, it's post-DoC. You'll see why eventually. It'll also have a lot to do with Crisis Core, what since I love that game to little bits and pieces despite the fact that I have to kill Angeal... Again... If I want to advance and finish the game for what seems to be the bajillionth time. One of these days I'll try playing it on Hard Mode!

A few things are confusing me about the layout of the Slums, though. Sector Five is where Aerith's church is, and somehow Sector Six gets lost between there and Sector Seven? The park right next to the gate to Sector Seven is in Sector Six, right? So's the Marketplace. But in Crisis Core they're both in Sector Five and then Sector Seven is right there. I'm having a slight mental crisis. Anybody wanna help me figure it out?

So yeah. Rejoice. I've started a new multi-chapter fic. It'll be an epic. You'll see. Lots of fun and emotional breakdowns.