The Lake

The Lake Can Be A Funny Place

Diana loved to go camping, and the lake was one of her favourite camping spots. It had ducks, and fish, and all kinds of interesting animals. She’d even seen a crocodile once. It was almost always sunny at the lake too, and there was heaps of cool stuff to do nearby. She could walk along the shore of the lake or go fishing. She could even make a little boat out of sticks and see how far it could go.

Now that it was morning, she was ready to go out and do something fun. Everyone was already up, so all she had to do was ask someone to go with her. After all, her parents were always telling her that she needed to ask before going off on her own. It could be dangerous, and there might even be something out there that wanted to eat a small kid like her.

But whom should she ask?

There were a few people:

• Her parents (Lightning and Fang)
• Her big sister (Averia)
• Her Aunt Vanille
• Her Uncle Sazh and Chirpy
• Her Uncle Hope

Diana Asks Lightning And Fang

“Mommy, can you and mom take me to the lake?”

Diana bounded into her parents’ tent. It was okay since they hadn’t locked it. But her parents must still have been sleeping because they were completely hidden under their sleeping bag. It was weird though, she could have sworn she’d heard them moving around and stuff. But that was okay. She could always wait for them to wake up.

“Come on, you guys have to wake up!”

There was a bit of rustling under the blanket and something that could have been a swear word, which was crazy since her mom would never swear in front of her. Finally, her mom’s head poked out. Her cheeks were flushed. Was she hot or something?

“Diana, do you think you could wait outside for a second?” Lightning asked.

“It’s okay.” Diana smiled. “I can wait here.”

“Diana, we really would like it if you could wait outside.” Lightning fidgeted under the sleeping bag. “Please.”

“I guess.” Diana left the tent. While she waited for her parents, she watched a caterpillar crawling up a nearby tree. Hopefully, none of the birds nearby would get it. Her sister walked by with her Uncle Hope, and she waved. They were going to go look at some rocks over by the other side of the lake.

A few minutes later, her parents finally came out of their tent.

“Mom, what happened to your neck?” Diana pointed at the weird mark on her mom’s neck. “Did you get attacked by a bear or something?” She frowned. There was another mark on her mom’s collarbone. “Wow, are you okay?”

“Uh… I’m fine.” Lightning’s cheeks went red, and she scowled at Fang. This was her fault. “Yeah, I… uh… ran into a bear.”

Diana nodded. Bears were always attacking stuff, at least according to television. It must have been a pretty tough bear though. And maybe her mommy hadn’t helped, which was why she was getting glared at. “Can you take me to the lake?”

“Sure thing, kiddo.” Fang ruffled Diana’s hair. “Let’s go.”

They headed down to the lake, and Diana skipped along between her parents. Her sandals made a nice squishing sound on the sand, and she skipped a stone along the surface of the lake. It was a super special technique that had taken her ages to learn. The stone skipped across the lake, and her parents clapped.

“That was great,” Lightning said. “You’ve gotten a lot better.”

“I know!” Diana cheered as she ran ahead, past some ducks on the water, spinning and then leaping up onto a big, old log nestled in the sand. “I’m super good at it –”

The log moved.

“Diana, don’t move!” Lightning shouted. “And do not look down!”

Diana didn’t move. But she did look down. The log looked up at her. Wait. Logs didn’t have eyes. This… this wasn’t a log. It was a –

“Ah! A crocodile!” Diana flailed about, perched on top of the massive reptile’s head. “Mom, mommy, help! Help!”

“Diana, you have to be quiet!” Fang growled. “And stop moving. Now!”

Diana froze. The crocodile scowled up at her, its beady eyes boring into hers. Girl versus crocodile – Diana didn’t have to be super smart to know how that would end. Wait… she still had a sandwich in her pocket from yesterday, a chicken sandwich. Crocodiles liked chicken, right? Slowly, she pulled the sandwich out of her pocket and then threw it as far as she could.

The crocodile lunged after the sandwich, sending her sprawling onto the sand. Success! Unfortunately, she hadn’t been looking when she’d thrown her sandwich. It was headed right for her Grandpa Sazh and Chirpy, who were walking along the shore.

“Kweh!”

Chirpy leapt out of the way as the crocodile rumbled past. Sazh managed to grab hold of the bird as it darted to safety. The crocodile swallowed the sandwich and then rounded on the man and the bird. Sazh drew one of his pistols and fired several times in quick succession. The crocodile twitched and then went still.

“No, grandpa! You killed it!” Diana wailed.

“Relax.” Fang wrapped her arms around and Diana and held her tight as Lightning pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s not dead, Diana. It’s just asleep.”

“Really?” Diana asked.

“I just used tranquiliser,” Sazh said. “It’s okay.”

“Cool.” Diana moved to go over to the crocodile, but her parents pulled her back.

“Not so fast, young lady.” Lightning lifted Diana into her arms. “You’re staying with us.”

Diana Asks Averia

“Can you take me to the lake, please!” Diana grabbed her sister’s arm and clung on like a barnacle. When that didn’t work, she latched onto Averia’s leg instead. “Please!”

“You don’t have to grab my leg.” Averia’s brows furrowed. “I don’t know if we can go on our own.” She raised her voice. “Mom, can we go down to the lake?”

There was a brief pause before Lightning’s voice came from the tent she shared with Fang. “You can. But remember to be careful and don’t go too far. Can you bring someone with you?”

“Uncle Sazh and Chirpy already went down there,” Averia said. “So it should be safe.”

“Okay then but make sure you call for help if you run into trouble.”

“Sure thing, mom.”

Diana followed her sister down to the lake. She knew that Averia wouldn’t let them wander too far. Averia was careful like that, and for some reason, she thought that Diana got into trouble a lot. Oh well, she could spend some time feeding the ducks since she’d made sure to grab some bread before leaving their campsite.  

“Can we feed the ducks?” Diana asked as they stopped near the edge of the water, close to a large group of ducks.

“Sure.” Averia eyed the water carefully. There didn’t seem to be anything in it except ducks. “Just make sure you don’t fall in like last time. Throw the bread and not yourself.”

“I wasn’t trying to throw myself. I tripped, that’s all.”

Diana tore up her bread and then threw some of it out onto the water. The ducks quickly gathered around. She smiled. The ducks were nice to look at since they came in lots of different colours and sizes. There were even some cute, little baby ducks. She tore up some more bread and threw a piece to one of the baby ducks. Unfortunately, a bigger duck swam over and took it before the baby duck could get it.

“Hey!” Diana stomped toward the water, waving her arms around. “You can’t take that! It wasn’t for you! It was for the baby duck!”

The duck had the gall to quack at her and splash water at her. Diana responded by grabbing a stick and poking at it. The duck flapped its wings and lunged at her.

“Back off!” Averia stepped between Diana and the duck, a vicious glare on her face. Diana smirked and shook her fist at the duck, confident that nothing bad could happen with her big sister there. She was wrong.

Averia could more than handle one duck. She could even have handled a few ducks. But there were a lot of ducks there, and the duck Diana had picked a fight with was their leader. The ducks gathered, eyes narrowing before they took to the air, quacking furiously.

“Run!” Averia shouted. “Run!”

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“Help!”

Sazh looked up as Diana and Averia pelted along the shore toward him and Chirpy – while being chased by at least a score of ducks.

“Help, grandpa!” Diana screamed. “Help! These ducks are evil!” Diana tripped, and Averia stopped just long enough to throw the younger girl over her shoulder before she continued her mad dash along the shore.

“You better do something,” Sazh said to Chirpy.

“Kweh.” Chirpy had dealt with ducks before. He knew what to do.

The chocobo strode past the two girls and yanked the leader of the ducks out of the air with his beak. The duck quacked furiously, but Chirpy tossed him to the ground and pinned him down with one large claw. The chocobo and the duck stared at each other for a long moment, the other ducks circling menacingly. Finally, the duck quacked and looked away.

“Quack, quack.” The other ducks turned and flew off, and Chirpy let the leader of the ducks up. “Quack, quack… quack!”

“Kweh!” Chirpy’s eyes narrowed. “Kweh… kweh.”

As the leader of the ducks flew away, Diana ran over to Chirpy. She shook her fist at the retreating ducks and gave Chirpy a big hug.

“You’re the best, Chirpy! You showed those mean ducks!”

Beside Sazh, Averia frowned. She needed to work on her glare. Her mom could have scared those ducks away with just one look.

Diana Asks Vanille

One of the best things about Diana’s Aunt Vanille was that she always had something cool for them to do. The only catch was that sometimes they had to run for their lives. Well, most of the time her aunt carried her since she couldn’t run that fast yet.

“Okay, minion, I’ll take you to the lake. I’ve got this new thing I want to try out.”

“What is it?” Diana perked up. Maybe her aunt had a killer robot. Or maybe she had a laser cannon. Or maybe she had –

“It’s a camera.”

“What?” Diana crossed her arms over her chest. “You said it would be awesome.”

Vanille ruffled Diana’s hair. “Oh, ye of little faith. It’s not just a camera. It’s an underwater robotic camera.” She got the device in question and then handed Diana her laptop. “Hold onto that. Anyway, this thing can swim around underwater, which means that we can take a look at everything inside the lake. We can control it from my laptop and see everything it sees. I bet we’ll see all kinds of interesting stuff. Who knows, maybe we’ll even find some treasure.”

“Treasure?” Diana’s eyes lit up. A new collection of Gary plush toys had just come out. “We could split it fifty-fifty.”

“Fifty-fifty? I don’t think so. I’m providing the camera and the computer.” Vanille grinned. “But I guess I could give you a share since you are doing some of the manual labour. Come on, let’s go.”

The two of them headed down to the lake. Vanille walked over to the edge of the water and lowered the robotic camera in. It was shaped like a large fish, and the ducks nearby all turned to glare. But Vanille raised her binding rod and summoned just enough lightning to convince them that they really, really didn’t want to mess with her and Diana. The ruckus also roused a big crocodile that had been lounging in the sand. It eyed Diana for a moment, no doubt wondering whether it would take one or two mouthfuls to eat her, before slinking off into the water.

“That crocodile was looking at me funny,” Diana said.

“Don’t worry about it.” Vanille sat down beside Diana on a rock about a dozen yards from the water. “Nobody eats my minion. If that thing even looks at you again, I’ll zap it.” She reached for the laptop. “Okay, let’s go see what we can find.”

Diana’s eyes were glued to the laptop as her aunt steered the robot around underwater. It was dark, especially as they went deeper, but the robot lots of lights and scanners. Her aunt talked about all the fish and animals they saw, and they even talked about the map of the lake the robot was making. Diana had always thought that the lake was like a big bathtub, but it wasn’t. There were hills and valleys under the water, and even weird little channels and caves.

“What’s that?” Diana squinted. “I think…”

“It’s that crocodile from before.” Vanille eased the robot away as the crocodile lunged at it. “Oh no, that thing is not eating my robot.” She pressed a few keys, and the crocodile jerked back, fleeing for deeper water as the robot unleashed a brief, but powerful, electrical shock from one of its extendable tools. “If it comes back, I’ll use the mini-torpedoes on it.”

“It has torpedoes?” Diana reached for the keyboard. “Let’s shoot some!”

“Let’s not.” Vanille nodded firmly at Diana. “Torpedoes can do a lot of damage to the environment. We should only use them if we have no choice.” She lowered her voice. “Plus, your mom would totally strangle me if I blew up the lake.”

“Oh.” Diana nodded. “Well, I don’t want you to get strangled.”

They continued to look around the lake. They saw several big schools of fish being chased by a weird squid-looking thing, along with a few more crocodiles. They were skimming the bottom of the lake when the laptop began to make a pinging noise.

“What’s that?” Diana asked.

“That’s the metal detector.” Vanille smirked. “There’s metal down there.”

“Is it gold?”

“Probably not, but you never know.” Vanille steered the robot around, using one of its tools to clear some of the sand away from the bottom of the lake. “Ah… there we go.”

“Wow!” Diana stared. There was a transport buried under all the sand. It must have been big too since all they could see was one of the wings, and it was way bigger than most of the transports she’d seen. “Do you think it’s old?”

“I think so.” Vanille cleared away more of the sand. “Yep, it’s definitely old. It’s an old Cocoon transport from the War of Transgression.”

“Awesome…” Diana leaned closer to the laptop. “Can we get inside?”

“Let me see.”

Vanille manoeuvred the robot around until they found a hole in the hull. “Wait… this isn’t just any old transport. It’s a precious cargo transport.”

“So it might actually have gold and stuff?”

“If we’re lucky.”

Vanille guided the robot through the transport until they reached the cargo bay. The ship must have crashed since the cargo bay doors had been torn off their hinges. A few sealed boxes had survived the crash intact, and she grabbed as many as the robot could hold onto before bringing it back to the surface.

“We found treasure!” Diana shouted. “We’ll be rich!”

Vanille didn’t have the heart to point out that between Lightning’s generous salary and the money Fang made leading expeditions, the Yun-Farrons were already very well off. “We’ll see. Go get the others.”

Once the others had gathered around, Vanille opened the boxes.

“Oh… it’s just some books.” Diana pouted. “I was hoping for some gold. I’ll never get that new Gary plush toy.”

“These aren’t just books.” Fang’s eyes widened as she read the writing on the front of the first book. “These are… these are clan encyclopaedias from before the War of Transgression. Cocoon must have seized them to try to better understand Gran Pulse. They…”

“They’re worth way more than gold,” Vanille said softly. “All right. Nobody touch anything. I’m going to seal the boxes up again until we can get these back to New Bodhum.”

“I don’t get it,” Diana said. “Are they precious?”

“More than precious,” Fang murmured. “The War of Transgression was a long time ago. We’ve lost most of the records from that era and the times before it. But these… these can tell us all about what life was like before the war.”

“I’m going to send the robot back in to make sure we didn’t miss anything,” Vanille said. “And I’ll call in for a research team too. There might be more down there.” She hugged Diana. “You can come too. You’re my good luck charm.” She laughed. “And don’t worry about that Gary plush toy. I’ll get one for you when we get back to New Bodhum.”

“Yay!”

Diana Asks Sazh And Chirpy

Diana walked along the shore with her Grandpa Sazh and Chirpy.

“Can we make boats, grandpa?”

Sazh’s eyes twitched. He wasn’t that old, was he? “Call me ‘uncle’ and maybe we can.”

Diana tilted her head to one side. “But you’re my grandpa.”

Chirpy snickered and Sazh shot the bird a glare. “Kweh.”

“Oh, be quiet.’ Sazh sighed. “Okay, I guess we can make some boats. I won last time, so let’s see if you can beat me this time.”

The boats in question were more like rafts. They gathered sticks of the right size and shape and then tied them together with string. To finish things off, they added masts made out of sticks with sails made out of leaves. Even Chirpy had a boat although they had to help him since his claws weren’t very good at putting things together.

“Okay, let’s see whose lasts the longest.”

They pushed the boats out onto the water and watched as they bobbed up and down, the wind pushing them out toward the middle of the lake. To Diana’s dismay, Sazh was the winner with Chirpy coming in a close second.

“Aw…”

“Better luck next time.” Sazh patted her on the back. “Say, it’s pretty windy today. How would you like to fly a kite?”

Diana cheered. “That sounds great!” Her expression fell. “But I didn’t bring one this time.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got one back at camp.” Sazh grinned. “We can fly it together.”

They went back to camp to get the kite and then picked out a nice spot along the shore to fly it. With a stiff breeze coming up from the west, it wasn’t long before the brightly coloured kite was soaring over the water.

“That’s so awesome!” Diana reached for the controls of the kite. “Let me try, grandpa!”

Sazh smiled. “Sure. Just remember, you want to keep all the lines untangled.”

“I will. I’ve been watching you really closely.”

Sazh had just handed the controls to Diana when a disturbing thought occurred to both him and Chirpy. Diana was actually quite small and light. The kite was rather large. And it was very windy.

Uh oh.

“Diana!”

“Kweh!”

“I’m flying!” Diana shouted as the kite lifted her up into the air. “Look at me, grandpa!”

“Grab her!” Sazh shouted as he jumped, reached, and missed. Thankfully, Chirpy had better luck. The bird managed to latch onto the back of Diana’s jacket with his beak and pull her back to the ground.

“Phew.” Sazh wrapped his arms around the girl and breathed a sigh of relief. “Your parents would have killed me.”

“Kweh.”

Sazh smiled. “Yes, Chirpy, I owe you one.”

Diana giggled. “Maybe next time you could bring a bigger kite. Then we could all go flying.”

Diana Asks Hope

“This is nice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Diana leaned back against the rock, watching the clouds go by with her Uncle Hope. It was nice running around, but it was also nice to just sit back and relax. Plus, her uncle had let her borrow his jacket so that the wind wouldn’t make her cold. The clouds were making some pretty interesting shapes too.

“What does that one look like to you, Uncle Hope?” She pointed at a cloud.

“Hmm… it kind of looks like your parents.”

Diana squinted and then tilted her head to the side. “I don’t get it.”

Hope chuckled. “Well, see that bit there? That’s your mom with her gun blade. And that bit there is your mommy running for her life.”

“Oh… I see.” Diana giggled. “It does look like them, I guess. And that does happen sometimes. It’s a good thing mommy can run fast, and she’s good at dodging.” Diana pointed at a different cloud. “How about that one? I think it looks like Gary.”

Hope patted her on the head. “You think that every cloud looks like Gary.”

“Because every cloud does look like him.”

Hope didn’t say anything, and Diana smirked. Clearly, her uncle had been defeated by the overwhelming power of her logic.

“Okay,” Hope said at last. “How about that one over there? I think it looks like a cactuar.”

“Yeah, it does.” Diana pursed her lips as she caught sight of a smaller, darker cloud moving toward them far more quickly than the other clouds. “Hey, that cloud looks kind of like a wyvern diving at us, Uncle Hope.”

“Haha, it does…” Hope trailed off as he got to his feet and grabbed his gun blade in one hand, using his other arm to tuck Diana against his side. “That isn’t a cloud! It is a wyvern diving at us! Come on!”

A few minutes later, they were back watching the clouds. The wyvern was gone, courtesy of a few well-placed shots. Naturally, Diana considered the whole thing the highlight of her day. She’d never seen her uncle fight a wyvern before. He was just as tough as everybody said.

“What do you think that cloud looks like?” Diana asked, pointing at the object circling overhead. “I think it looks a lot like Bahamut.”

“That’s because it is Bahamut.” Hope sighed. Trust Fang to go overboard. But at least this way, they wouldn’t have to worry about anything else interrupting their cloud watching. “How about that one?”

“That’s Gary riding Bahamut.”

“And that one?”

“Gary playing with Odin.”

“And that one – wait… let me guess. It’s Gary hanging out with Hecatoncheir?”

Diana turned and stared at him. “No, Uncle Hope. That cloud doesn’t look like that at all.” She smiled. “That’s Gary hanging out with Alexander.”

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Omake: Some Rules In The Yun-Farron Household

1. Lightning’s word is law – except for when it’s not.
2. Fang is entitled to a certain amount of exclusive Lightning time each month. This time may or may not be of a highly sexy nature.
3. Diana is allowed to seek shelter in the bed of someone bigger should any of the following decide to attack: bogeyman, monster, zombie, vampire, alien, robot, rabid animal, or anything else that could otherwise be construed as menacing and/or potentially deadly to a child of somewhat diminutive stature.
4. Averia is allowed to veto one act of stupidity/mischief each day. This veto applies (but is not limited) to: Diana, Fang, Vanille, Claire, and Snow.
5. There is to be absolutely no vanilla ice cream in the freezer except for the small, unmarked container that is kept solely to appease Serah. However, strawberry and chocolate ice cream are to be kept in good supply. Note: Neapolitan ice cream is not acceptable.
6. Gary is a privilege not a right.
7. It is not acceptable to feed Chirpy homework in order to avoid doing it. This rule also applies to Mr Cuddles and Bahamut.
8. At least once a week, Lightning and Fang have to go out on a date.
9. There is to be absolutely no experimenting inside the house. This goes triple for members of the Dia clan.
10. Children are never to enter their parents’ room without knocking. In the event that they do, any mental scarring they receive is entirely their own fault.

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Author’s Notes

As always, I do not own Final Fantasy. I’m not making any money off of this either.

There’s nothing like a bit of mischief, and mischief has a way of finding mischievous children. I wanted to do something more family oriented that was also a bit more light-hearted too. Anyway, as you can see, life for Diana is always interesting – just what kind of interesting depend on who’s with her. Which one did you prefer? Personally, I like the Vanille one the best. They find treasure and Diana doesn’t get attacked by a crocodile, a wyvern, or an army of angry ducks.

Finally, I also write original fiction, mostly fantasy. I’ve recently released my newest original story on Amazon. It’s called Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf. If you have enjoyed my more light-hearted and humorous stories, you will absolutely love this one. Trust me. It’s a fantasy with plenty of humour, warmth, action, and a healthy dose of craziness (the kind you’ve come to expect from me). You can my original fiction here. If you’re after something a bit more serious, try The Last Huntress. It has plenty of atmosphere and action.

As always, I appreciate feedback. Reviews and comments are welcome.