VFinne Stuff

The plan so far is for initial escape to likely comprise less of the total VN than you'd think, but it'd begin with a few scenes of Finne and his dippy, excitable NPC soldiess friend named Ollie just fuckin' about around the city the day before a huge gathering of the royal family. They meet Kittie briefly in this section, and Ollie sort of just treats her like anyone else, sneaking up and surprising her while she's looking at shell jewelry, despite Finne's warnings that this fish chick is almost definitely related to the Emperor. Luckily, Kittie isn't the OFF WITH THEIR HEADS type, and while she sort of yells at Ollie, nothing bad comes of it and the soldiess actually helps her pick something out. She doesn't pay much attention to Finne here, suspecting(correctly) that he's not a soldier, and not even from this city.

The next day, they're again messing around the market, before the grand general calls all mercenaries and soldiers to attention and there's a little shout-speech by the Emperor himself about the day's events. Mostly it's about how weak the 'soldiers' look and that half of them aren't even soldiers - mercenaries are sort of looked down upon here as just sellswords who'll do anything for coin. Or shells. Or whatever. Kittie and the main prince in line for the throne are with him. Finne and Ollie are stationed in different areas of the palace and there's a skip to later on, with Finne remarking it's been pretty boring, just standing around all day. Kittie shows up and recognizes Finne. She's kind of cold to him, but does share that there's a little intermission going on right now and she's on break from the meeting.

It's at this point the invasion begins. There's an intercom order that this isn't a drill, and that all personnel in the castle are to move to protect the nobles and treasure, but that plan goes awry when it turns out the invaders just opt to set the less important areas of the castle on fire to smoke people out. The family runs by Finne and Kittie, ordering everyone to retreat to the treasure room, since it's NOT on fire and likely won't be since the invaders kind of want the treasure. Finne, however, realizes they'd just be pinned into a smoke-filled hotbox with no escape other than where the enemies are coming from and tries to explain how terrible of an idea it is, but nobody listens to him since he's just a mercenary. Some of the gaudier nobles decide he's being a li'l shit and send him to guard the main entrance(the most dangerous job) for speaking out, but a few, including Kittie, see where he's coming from, and sneak out with the soldiers. Finne realizes he's been followed a little too late and while he's arguing with Kittie, trying to get her to go literally anywhere except the front lines, they get attacked and Finne has to fight while continuing to argue with her. He manages it pretty well, not having any difficulty with rank and file invaders. But one of em tries to capture Kittie, and while Finne stops him, Kittie gets scared and bails, so Finne has to chase her down through the halls since assuming anyone survives they'd have his head if she died.

While they're running around scooby doo style Kittie overhears that the treasure room where her family is is under attack, and demands Finne go back to help since he's way more competent than the other soldiers. They try, but hear some people talking from around the corner. They mention having to inspect the royals for something, and Kittie leaps out to protest. It's Prince, of course, but also Ollie, or Oleandra as Prince calls her, who's just as surprised to see Finne as the other way around. Prince starts at Kittie, but then stops, and says he's interested in something Finne has. At that point a choice comes up with Kittie choosing between telling Finne to bail or to protect her, but he's just like "fuck it i'm fighting this asshole".

Ollie attempts to fight Finne herself, but Prince sees through her, telling her he'll do it himself, and he's not going to kill her boyfriend, what kind of monster do you think he is? He explains that Finne and Ollie would be relatively evenly matched, and that if Ollie won, it would be by a hair, and this boy would think if only he'd tried harder, he can do it next time! If Finne won, Prince would have to knock him out, and then he'd think "I could have taken that guy if I wasn't worn out!" And, he says, leaving him to cling to that kind of false hope, only to have to mercilessly crush it later, is just cruel. It's best to snuff it all out at once, without leaving any doubt. Finne's a bit fed up with all this shit by now, so Prince obliges and fights him. Prince cuts down one attack of Finne's, slashing him in the chest, then taunts him, and proceeds to never use his blades again in the fight, only his fists, as if to say "I don't even need a weapon for you." And he's not wrong, he still wins handily, with Finne barely landing a scratch before being knocked right the fuck out.

Afterward, Prince turns around and heads toward the treasure room, but Kittie yells at him. He turns to face her for a second, then tells Ollie to deal with this one, and keeps walking. Ollie assures Kittie that they're not here to physically harm her or her family, but the same can't be said of the other invading forces, so she'd best skedaddle. Kittie swallows her pride, knowing she almost definitely can't beat Ollie, and tries and fails to lift Finne. Ollie asks if she, uh, needs any help, but Kittie rejects the idea, there's a roar, and then the screen fades out.

After all that hot mess, there's a bit of a breather as Finne wakes up. The two chat, and Finne wonders why Kittie bothered to take him, it must have been pretty tough for her. She's seen just chugging litres of water, and responds that Finne's her ticket out of here. She can't fight, and she doubts there's anyone else here as strong as those two, who don't seem too keen on tracking them down. Well, at first, she wanted to go back to the castle, but she knows it would be useless. The two try to find a route out of the city, and they have to avoid or fend off patrols and the like, but most of the fighting is played for comedy as the braggart low-level soldiers aren't a challenge for Finne. He's kind of wary after getting his ass kicked, leading to him carefully attempting to outplay and outsmart an opponent, only for them to do something supremely stupid and immediately be taken down or take themselves out.

They find that all the ports are sabotaged, with most ships set to burn, and the anchoring ropes of the rest cut by the invaders, leaving them to drift out to sea. Kittie suggest that she could swim to one of the drifting boats and maybe steer it back, but Finne warns her that the invaders probably thought of that if they've gone this far, and the water itself may be poisoned or otherwise trapped, so they give up on that idea. There are many other routes out of the city, but most of the easier ones, such as along the coastline, are equally boobytrapped and patrolled, so they come to the conclusion that the only real option is to head into the mountains, to a national reserve; the invaders probably wouldn't think to block off a tourist attraction so far out of town.

Turns out, they did not, and a few days is spent in the reserve's forest. There's a little bit of survival stuff, with both characters showing their usefulness. Kittie's pretty good at finding rivers and fishing, whereas Finne the desert boi is pretty useless at doing so in a lush environment. On top of that, they plot their next move, scoping out the city from treetops. Kittie's a lot less helpful here; she hates climbing and the like. According to her, fish ain't meant to climb, or fly. Just as it starts looking a little calmer and they consider going back to check it all out, soldiers show up, because a fish princess is a pretty conspicuous sight and it isn't hard to extrapolate "bitch went into the woods" from a few sightings of a blue chick heading up to the mountains.

The soldiers happen upon the two while Finne is scouting out from atop a tree, and it seems bad for Kittie with him all the way up there, but as it turns out ice magic is pretty useful in a forest. When a soldier grabs Kittie, Finne freezes the water in the tree he's on from the top down, causing random spots on it to explode and send splinters of ice and wood spraying out everywhere. He makes sure to do this while the soldier has his back to the tree, of course, so they're shielding Kittie from it. Even if such shards aren't usually lethal, he doesn't want to risk hurting her. Unfortunately, Finne didn't think that through all the way; his magical ice doesn't stay frozen for long, since it's meant for combat and doesn't need to. It thaws out rapidly, and now he's holding onto a tree riddled with holes as it crashes to the ground. Kittie is as completely bewildered by all of this as the soldiers, but Finne grabs her and takes off, not wanting to fight it out and risk more people appearing.

Finne and Kittie escape the soldiers and have to flee the mountain, on the other face, away from Kittie's hometown. Kittie knows some about the geography of the area and is aware that there's a city at the base of the mountain, which they may be able to lie low in. They have to travel down the mountain this time, with a slightly different climate, and their survival skills/knowledge again comes in handy. They make it to the city after a few more events and some time skipping, and try to figure out what to do next. Eventually, despite some arguments, they come to an agreement that, as sad as it is for Kittie, they can't go back to her hometown in the foreseeable future. Finne explains that they city likely didn't quiet down because the invasion was over, but because the invaders had finally taken mostly complete control. From there, they decide to prepare, rest, and then set out for the next big country over, which is probably Paleta for convenience's sake. This portion is marked mostly by the two interacting in the city and experiencing some ire from rowdier locals, directed toward Kittie.

They hold the the royal family to blame for the food shortages their city suffers from, since there isn't much in the way of big trade between the two cities due to the mountain. Kittie's city has an overabundance of fish and fruit, while these people are in a more rain-starved area due to a rain shadow effect caused by the peaks. In fact, beyond the city is largely desert. Kittie doesn't consider their plights her fault, but Finne can sympathize; being from a desert himself, he's seen and heard similar complaints. He tells Kittie that while they're not completely right to accost her, especially since she wasn't involved personally, her family and city isn't free from blame, however complicated the issue is. That rocks their relationship for a while, but nothing particularly melodramatic.

After a few days of the two finding hotels and gathering supplies, Ollie jumps Finne while he's alone in the city, and tells him that she's convinced Prince to take him on as a member of their crew, if he'd like. Finne declines, and Ollie wonders why, positing that he's no soldier - he's a mercenary, just like them. Then she wonders if maybe it's because of Kittie. Some sworn duty, locked in by pride? Or maybe he's taken a fancy to her? Little of column A, little of column B? She asks him if maybe he'd consider having some of Column C instead, eh? Eh? But of course, Finne declines again, saying that ship has sailed...or some deserty version of the phrase. That river has dried, maybe. He says if they must fight now, so be it. Ollie, disappointed, clarifies that she's not here for a fight, not yet anyway. She's come to warn them of an ambush by Vespuccian soldiers. Finne doesn't completely trust her, for good reason, but she points out that she's always been a friend, even back when Prince beat him, letting Kittie go unaccosted. She's pretty open, and informs Finne that she and Prince are mercenaries, after all: they won't do a job unless they're paid, and so far they haven't been hired to track the two down. She does not tell him that that's exactly why she's helping him out here. Prince wants the ambush to fail, so that the ones behind it will come to the conclusion that they have no choice but to hire Prince.

Finne doesn't have much time to think this over, as he and Kittie were planning to leave very soon, as soon as they met back up. He tells Ollie that he'll take the help, because he doesn't know the nature of the ambush or how many soldiers are there, but that she needs to wear a mask so Kittie doesn't recognize her. She'd already planned on that anyway; the soldiers can't know that she was fighting them, or Prince's plan would be uncovered. The two of them fight off the soldiers, but these are more elite, with actual -names- on some of them, even! Ollie and Finne can't hold them all back, but Kittie transforms for the first time in front of Finne. Ollie has seen this before - Kittie did it to carry Finne off back at the castle, so she keeps fighting normally. Finne however takes a stray hit, surprised by it. They get back into the swing of things soon enough, though, and successfully fend off most of the soldiers. Ollie tells them to go ahead and get going; she can handle the rest herself, with all the tough guys out of the picture.

So, Kittie reverts to her regular form...although she looks a lot smaller, and they run off into the desert. But a few miles into it, Kittie collapses, dehydrated from using her gigantic form for too long. They can't go back, with the soldiers there and more likely coming even if Ollie takes them all out, so Finne picks Kittie up and wraps her in his shawl to shield her from the sun, and then sets to work trying to find water. Which he's much better at in a desert than a forest.



Some BG info:

In reality, when they met in the castle, Prince wanted some relic that Kittie was holding onto for her family; a small sect of the invading forces are after it, and told him to grab it if he saw it. But, instead, Prince switched track midway through his sentence, pretending he wanted some item of Finne's. He let Kittie go purposefully and lied that he never saw her, so that he could get hired to retrieve the item she has, thus making more bank. After a lot of back and forth, and secretly sending his right-hand gal Ollie to actually -help- Finne and Kittie fend off some invading soldiers later in the story, Prince's plan succeeds, and he's hired to track Kittie down and retrieve the item it after run of the mill soldiers fail time and time again. He demands payment up front, then goes to take it. And much later in the story, he succeeds, beating Finne again, then proceeds to hold the thing for ransom against the guys who wanted it because he's a dick that way. They have little choice but to buy it, though.

So Finne wants to get it back because, you know, it's Kittie's, and this far into the story he actually cares enough about her to risk that. And while at first she didn't mind the thing being stolen, she finds out soon after that basically the entire royal family was killed in the invasion. So, she wants it as a memoir, but tries to convince Finne it's okay and she can deal without it as Prince is too dangerous, and Kittie doesn't want to take the chance of Prince finally finishing the job. But Finne similarly gives a hoot and wants to get it back for her as it's basically her last family memento, and starts tracking down all the info he can about prince and the relic

The McGuffin in the tournament that finne fights for in the actual fighter during his story arc is the same thing these soldiers have been after the whole game. Throughout the story, Kittie and Prince mentioned that the thing holds a lot of power, or at least seemed to grant power to past members of kittie's family, but only activates under certain conditions. What it can do is vague, they say it's done a whole host of things before, from making people stronger to leading them to riches, etc. While Kittie had it, it was inactive, but it's since been lit up, and its power is planned to make the next person who touches it their pawn, with the theory being, they'll make it the prize in a tournament, and the winner will the strongest in the nation, will touch the thing, and become their pawn. The VN likely ends with Finne finding out about the tournament and vowing to get the relic back for Kittie.