Jump 299: Final Fantasy VIII

Jump #299: Final Fantasy VIII
>The Empress, reversed: Stifling matriarchal influence.
Can you say "sorceresses"? I knew you could.
>Age: 22
>Location: The Moon
Wait. What?
>Identity: Scientist (-100)
>Drawbacks: Lunar Cry (+300), Time Kompression (+300)
Oh. Evil sorceress threw me onto the moon at the start of the jump. Yay, I'm going to level up to 99 in about six hours flat! (No, this is not a good thing.)
>Limit Break (Free)
I don't even want to think about what my limit break would be.
>Certified Scientist (Free, Scientist)
Of course I'm certified. I have the straightjacket to prove it- I mean the PhD to prove it!
>Fan Club (1300)
The public loves me. How does the public know I exist?
>Sorcery Stopper (1100, Scientist)
Being able to engineer something that can put a halt to magic is immensely useful. I'll be studying THIS in detail.
>Amnesia-Proof (500)
I think I've crossed into the point that I'm grabbing such things to make sure I cover any remaining vulnerabilities. If someone obliviates me, it just won't take, for instance. There aren't very many other perks that I've seen which give flat-out immunity to such a problem, so this is worthwhile, even if unlikely to do anything.
>Sufficiently Analyzed Magic (200, Scientist)
The last puzzle piece needed to unify my magic system. Every piece of magic, tech, and biology that I have is now completely interchangeable.
>Salary (0)
Also I'm going to be drawing a permanent salary for the rest of my chain, between 500 gil and a 30,000 gil per week. How handy is that? Back-of-the-envelope calculations say that gil here is 10:1 to USD, so that's effectively three thousand a week. $150k a year is a reasonable salary for a mercenary, no?

So, firstly: I awaken on the moon. Surrounded by monsters.

Nope. Nope nope nope nope nooooooope. Maximum nope. And while I'm busy noping the fuck out, I've got literally everything that is not me on the moon trying to kill me, eat me, and defile my corpse. And not necessarily in that order. I'm not a fan of that, for obvious reasons. And we are talking MONTHS of this, because my wings have somehow been clipped and I can't escape the moon's gravity well, or teleport away. Thanks to some geniuses thinking too far outside the box, I can't even call for help because all radio transmissions are jammed worldwide. (As though that makes ANY degree of sense.) That's okay though, I can deal with this. Eventually, the Lunar Cry occurs - an event wherein monsters from the moon are sent planetside. I'm in the middle of that mass of monsters.

I am also the only living thing that makes it to the planet, because bored jumpers and planets full of monsters either mean you're going to civilize the monsters or kill them all, and guess which option I went for.

Well, I guess technically not the ONLY living thing, just the only living thing from the moon. Sorceress Adel's tomb comes down too, after all. On the plus side, this all means I get to join the party, even if the party is looking askance at me because I'm a scientist they've never heard of, drawing a SeeD salary that isn't on the books, and essentially came out of nowhere. Sure, I can't stop most of the stupidity, but I can at least join them in the remaining 10% of the game's plot: con them into taking me along, and go with them while everything goes as it did in canon. Time compression, and then dealing with Ultimecia.

In the wake of that, everyone gets scattered across time. I actually ended up about ten years before I arrived, and as a result... well, I ended up working to augment any number of technologies for the Gardens and drawing a handsome salary as a result, but was never officially on the books. And this is while dealing with the ridiculous setbacks I kept getting. And the Gardens are happy to take whatever it is I want to invent, but they won't officially acknowledge me. In fact, any requests for assistance are basically ignored until the danger's passed. The only SeeD members I ever saw were the few willing to test out new hardware.

About the time the jump ended, I'd figured out how to allow junctioning without overwriting memories, as well as boosting soldiers' abilities without having to actually junction a guardian permanently... and... cripes, the jump ended right as I blinked into existence and past-Crux got magicked to the moon. No wonder Ultimecia threw me up there... I was giving everyone the means to fight her in the future.

Stupid time loops.