Paths of Our Fathers

This fanfiction, written by IluvAUs on fanfiction.net, is set post-Kingdom Hearts 2. It goes off of the somewhat insane fan theory of Riku and Sora being related to Sephiroth and Cloud, though it manages to avoid the typical Die for Our Ship implications that many others of the same ilk run into, and is fairly well written. It is complete, with a possible sequel in the works. Read it here.

Tropes used in Paths of Our Fathers include:

• Action Girl- Kairi's molding into one.
• A God Am I- Sephiroth.
• Alas, Poor Villain- Kadaj's send off was rather heartwarming- until Sephiroth interrupted it.
• All Men Are Perverts - The boys seem a bit 'too' entranced by 'La Esmeralda Dance'...
• And This Is For- See Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• Anti-Hero - Vincent. Type III or IV
• The Atoner - Vincent has become this, post- Heel Face Turn.
• Awful Truth - Riku's parentage. He's related to the Big Bad, Sephiroth
• Badass- Riku, facing down Rydia's Eidolon, Titan, coolly stares at it, and then proceeds to slice the thing in half before it can even make a move to harm him.
• Batman Gambit- Riku pulls one to lure out Sora's Super-Powered Evil Side to be able to use the Keyblade For Massive Damage.
• Big Bad - Sephiroth.
• Big Damn Heroes - Vincent coming to Kairi and Sora's rescue.
  • Kairi flies in to Sora's rescue when he's about to give up and let Riku kill him. Unfortnately, she underestimates the strength of her opponent.
• Big No - As an obvious homage to the source medium, Quasimodo's Big No is kept in.
  • Cloud does one too. See Shout Out for specifics.
• Black and Gray Morality - This gets somewhat lampshaded by Riku when he points out the possibility that Cloud could be using them as tools in his quest for vengeance.
• Body Horror - Vincent's transformation into Chaos. Unpleasant.
  • Hojo's abominations on Wonderland? Even MORE unpleasant.
  • Riku sprouting a wing is not the most pleasant thing to read either...
• Brainwashed and Crazy - Vincent. And to some degree, Quistis and Seifer
• BFS - But of course, with Cloud and Sora running around.
• Call Back- The text when Sora runs through the burning Destiny Islands is almost the same text from the prologue, now without the ambiguity the latter contained as to who and where and when it was.
• Calling Your Attacks - Lampshaded by Sora when Vincent's casting a spell on Derris Kharlan.
  • Also done in AMAZINGLY EPIC fashion when defeating Kadaj with four Limit Breaks.
• Chekhov's Gun- Remember Kadaj's Cruxis Crystal that Sora picked up? Yeah, that saves his ass later on.
• The Chessmaster - Sephiroth.
• Cooldown Hug - Kairi waking up and saying Sora's name gets him out of Antiform, in a non-physical version of this trope.
• Cold-Blooded Torture - Riku faces this after being captured by Frollo's men.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome - Kairi, after witnessing an armada of ships Sephiroth commands orbitally bombarding Radiant Garden, gets really pissed off, and proceeds to run right into the ravaged town square to the Gummi Ship, pilot it, and single-handedly manages to destroy a nice fraction of Sephiroth's forces.
  • Vincent also gets one on Notre Dame as he overcomes his inhibitions about using Chaos form, and proceeds to rescue Kairi from being burned at the stake.
  • Four words. Keyblade. Omnislash. Version. Five.
• Crowning Moment of Funny - Kairi trying to get the boys' attention while Esmeralda is dancing. Pushed into CMoF territory by the fact that VINCENT, of all people, is also affected by her charms, and it is only with great effort that he can focus.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming - Vincent and Riku have a surprisingly heartwarming chat after witnessing Quasimodo being passed over for Phoebus by Esmeralda about their own unrequited loves.
  • SEPHIROTH, of all people, has one with Riku when he rescues the boy from the torture he faced, and is confronted with the feelings of being a father.
  • Kairi and Sora share one after Kairi rescues Sora from the Derris Emblem.
  • After Sephiroth is killed, Cloud tells Sora he is proud of him.
• Curse Cut Short - Seifer was dangerously close to implying Hojo's parents were never married...
• Deadpan Snarker - Riku has his moments. Especially in Halloween Town after Sora makes a really, REALLY bad joking comment.
  • And Vincent is also quite the snarker...
  • Quistis, in her introductory line to Squall.
• Deal with the Devil - Vincent makes a deal with Hades which has something to do with him being able to see Lucrecia again.
• Doomed Hometown- Well duh.
• Dramatic Irony - Sephiroth and Hojo have a little discussion about The Reveal which Sephiroth, without too much testing, gave to Riku. Sephiroth is speaking with his (unbeknownst to him) father about his son, Riku.
  • Also, Riku proceeding to mimic Sephiroth's actions exactly after giving him a definite Shut UP, Hannibal due to a lecture claiming they are Not So Different.
• Dreaming the Truth - Riku, having dozed off in Radiant Garden's library, has a flashback to the moment his mother told him his father had died. His dream-child self didn't notice, but he now pieced together that his mother had lied to him.
• Eldritch Abomination- JENOVA. Also, Sephiroth after his ascension.
• Exact Eavesdropping - Of the 'Bob saying something important about Alice' variety. Riku overhears the Radiant Garden group talking with Sora and Kairi about him, worrying about his recent actions after The Reveal.
• Eye Scream- Sora's left eye gets torn out by Way to the Dawn, leaving a massive scar down the side of his face...
• Face Heel Turn- Riku.
• Fake Defector - Quistis turns out to be this, having pretended to be on Sephiroth's side for information.
• Final Speech- Averted HARD. Riku mouths Sora's name and dies. No long, drawn out speech. Nothing.
• Flat What - Cloud's response to Riku's first words after exiting the Radiant Garden Archives, where he had holed himself up for days on end after recovering from his Heroic BSOD. Though, to be fair, they WERE Sephiroth's exact words right before he burned down Nibelheim
  • Sephiroth also delivers one following Riku's Heel Face Turn.
• Forceful Kiss- Riku does this as a prelude to an attempted rape, but is stopped by Sora's arrival before things get too far.
• Genre Savvy- Sephiroth can have his moments of this.
  • Riku seems to swing back and forth between this and grabbing the Villain Ball... Sometimes doing the latter to be Genre Savvy.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!- Kairi does this to Sora before her Rousing Speech to get him to fight Sephiroth following Riku's death.
• Go Mad from the Revelation- Riku has been slowly going mad over the fact that his father is Sephiroth, and that madness has now begun to show.
• Hannibal Lecture - It's a fanfiction with SEPHIROTH as the main villain. This trope is GOING to come into play.
  • And Hojo, well, being Sephiroth's father, is quite good at this as well.
  • Vincent and Sora receive some rather scathing ones during their Secret Tests Of Character from an illusory Lucrecia and Riku.
  • Riku's one that he faces in his Secret Test of Character from his own mother Rydia is the worst of all of these...
  • Riku himself is pretty damn good at giving these as well. Must run in the family.
• Heel Face Turn - Vincent.
• Heroic BSOD - Riku appears to have entered one after The Reveal...
  • Sora entered a rather impressive one after Riku's Face Heel Turn...
  • Vincent has also seemingly entered one after Hojo escapes.
• I Did What I Had to Do - Quistis was able to deliver the group good information- in exchange for Squall fighting Seifer. She justifies her actions by saying it was for the greater good. Sora is, understandably, not happy.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty- Riku pulls this trope, but not the line, on Kairi.
• If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him - Kairi's words to Vincent, and her motivation in stopping him from killing aforementioned scientist.
• Incredibly Lame Pun - Sora pointing out the Valentine's day tree in the Hinterlands speaking in reference to Vincent's location. Get it? His last name's Valentine, so...
• Insane Troll Logic- Kadaj's reasoning and objective after his Motive Decay.
• In the Blood - The source of Riku (and everyone else's) worries...
• Killed Off for Real- Riku.
• Kneel Before Sephiroth!
• Laughing Mad - Hojo. Oh dear God, Hojo.
• Little No - Riku's initial reaction as he realizes the Awful Truth.
• Loss of Identity - Seifer's dialogue with Squall implies that, after Radiant Garden was destroyed, he had lost his memories, and with them, a large portion of his identity, reverting back to the hot-blooded, disobedient person he once was
• Luke, I Am Your Father - The last part of the line is uttered verbatim by Sephiroth, though without the obligatory Star Wars reaction
• Magnificent Bastard - Sephiroth. Holy. Crap. Sephiroth.
• Mercy Kill - Vincent does this twice to two of Hojo's failed creations.
  • Vincent also suggests the others do this to him after the Protomateria is forcibly removed from him and destroyed.
• Mind Rape - Heavily implied to have happened to Vincent at Sephiroth's hands, after the former's mind control made him fail a mission. Also, the best way to describe what happens to Riku during each of his geostigma-esque attacks.
• Moral Event Horizon - Okay, so we already know Sephiroth crossed this line a LONG time ago, but the first time the heroes ever truly acknowledge it is when he orders his fleet of Nobody-piloted Cruisers to orbitally bombard the surface of Radiant Garden, sending Kairi into an Unstoppable Rage.
  • Once again, Hojo has already been WAY across this line, but experimenting on those whimsical creatures of Wonderland, turning them into monsters? That. Goes. Too. Far.
  • After his Face Heel Turn, Riku proceeds to cross the MEH in the manner of his father before him, starting at committing matricide, and ending in killing off all the people on the Destiny Islands, and burning the structures on the islet where they played to the ground.
  • And if the bombing of Radiant Garden wasn't bad enough, Sephiroth pushes himself to the point of evil singularity by coldly and brutally MURDERING his OWN SON, and then prodeecing to COMPLETELY OBLITERATE Twilight Town for the sake of using a Limit Break on the heroes..
• Motive Decay - Kadaj. Oh so very much.
• Motive Rant - Sephiroth delivers this to QUISTIS of all people, as a Batman Gambit to maintain her brainwashed trust. In a rare moment of Genre Savvy, he avoids mentioning the specifics on how his ultimate goal is to be carried out.
  • Kadaj does one to himself as he recovers from the Notre Dame attack.
• My God, What Have I Done? - Vincent says the statement pretty much verbatim during his Heel Realization
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero - In fleeing for their lives from Frollo's guards, Sora, Kairi, Riku, and Vincent lead them right to the Court of Miracles. Oops.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain- Kadaj, in performing a Limit Break of his own on the helpless heroes forces all of them into Over Limit, and sets him up for a successive assault of Limit Breaks. Nice job fixing the heroes, Kadaj. And Nice Job Breaking Yourself.
• No One Should Survive That - Kairi gets hit by an Ultima at point-blank range. This should have been lethal. She survives.
• Not Quite Dead- Riku after being stabbed by Sora...
• Oh Crap - When Frollo shows up to find Sora and Co. apparently harming his innocent troops, and the ink Riku used to hide his silver hair has clearly washed off.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You - Cloud is invoking this trope in his longing to fight with Sephiroth.
• Paper-Thin Disguise - Technically any disguise the group takes on, but this is most obvious on Notre Dame.
• Please Wake Up - "Kairi? K... Kairi, please. Please, wake up."
  • "Riku, get up, this isn't funny!"
• Post-Rape Taunt - Riku attempts to pull this on Sora, though the supposed 'rape' never ended up happening.
• Precision F-Strike - Riku is none too pleased with not getting a straight answer. "Stop dodging the question, and answer me, damn it!"
  • And, in what could qualify as a CMoA for Vincent, he says to Hojo You. Deserve. Hell.
  • Riku, once more, when confronting his mother, loses his temper a bit- implying she was a street walker.
  • Sora claims, rightfully so, that Riku's parents were never married when he discovers what almost happened to Kairi...
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech - The fake Lucrecia's Hannibal Lecture to Vincent also has shades of this.
• Redemption Equals Death- Poor Riku...
• Rousing Speech- Vincent and Kairi deliver most epic ones to Sora to get him to fight once more.
• Sanity Slippage- Kadaj. Oh so much.
  • Riku. Good. Lord. Riku.
• Secret Test of Character - The Derris Emblem tests.
• Sequel Hook- "It seems the Palamecian Empire has placed a fleet in the airspace of a neighboring world, in direct violation of the World Order."
• Ship Tease - Very much in keeping with the source medium, the author has hinted several times towards Sora and Kairi being the pairing, though Sora's sometimes unusually strong reactions to what happens to Riku hint more towards the Ho Yay seen by yaoi fangirls in Kingdom Hearts.
• Shout-Out - Oh so many Shout Outs to Final Fantasy VII...
  • "I'm not a child. I can do this."
  • "I'm not going to kill you. But that doesn't mean I have to save you."
  • Sora has a little talk with Cloud about his motive for going after Sephiroth. After denying it's about revenge, Sora calls bullshit, and suggests that he and his friends go to help, and Cloud inexplicably loses his cool, shouting "NO! Nooooooo!" while overturning a table.
  • The HECK is THAT?
  • Code Geass even gets a wink when Riku muses to himself as the island burns around him.
  • Revenge of the Sith gets a nod in an exchange between Riku and Sora.
• Shut UP, Hannibal - "If I am a monster... it's only because you have made me so!"
  • Sora has a mental one in response to Riku's Hannibal Lecture...
• Skyward Scream- Sora lets out an impressive one after Riku dies.
• Stepford Smiler- Sora may be on his way to becoming this, seeing as how he's forcing himself to smile before the final battle begins.
• Super-Powered Evil Side - Sora's Antiform is treated as this, brought out whenever he's suffering from a particularly dark emotion.
• Survival Mantra- "Self defense... self defense... In the end, it was self defense...
• Tear Jerker- Riku's death... Just... Riku's death...
• Tell Me About My Father - In Riku's dream, he remembers asking about his father's whereabouts as a child. His mother tells him his father died. She lied.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That- Sephiroth pulls this on Cloud and the others when they arrive in the form of a holographic pre-recorded message.
• This Cannot Be!- Kadaj, as an homage to the Tales Series, lets out a massive one when when he's about to be struck by an IN-DIG-NAY-SHUN based spell.
  • Riku utters the 'impossible' variation on this when Sora stabs him.
• This! Is! SPARTA! - Twice in Wonderland, both times in the quiet form, delivered by Riku and Vincent.
• Took a Level in Badass- Sora and Kairi, definitely. SEVERAL levels in Kairi's case.
• Troubled Fetal Position - Riku, in classic Heroic BSOD form, takes this position after discovering the Awful Truth.
• Turn Out Like His Father - This seems to be Rydia's motivation for having apparently lied to Riku about his origins.
• The Un-Reveal - "Because Kadaj and Yazoo are-"
• Unstoppable Rage - Sora, after Kairi's "death", goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Antiform. It takes Riku getting in the way and Kairi waking up to stop him from completely going nuts.
  • [[spoiler: After tracking down Hojo, Vincent goes a little bit nuts on him...
• Unwitting Pawn - Pretty much all of the heroes.
• Villain Ball- Grabbed FIRMLY by Sephiroth in the end, complete with Just Between You and Me and Pride.
• Voice of the Legion- Sephiroth gains this after he ascends to godhood.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong? - Vincent says this to be sarcastic just before they land on Notre Dame, and it turns out that everything goes wrong.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic - After being found by Sephiroth, Riku is referred to being chained to the wall in a position like someone being crucified. Think about that for a second. The son of a would-be god is in a position like he's being crucified.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute? - Vincent shoots a helpless, mutated animal from Wonderland to 'put it out of its misery'.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?- When the group comes across a clearly sentient failed Loz clone begging for help, Vincent shoots it. This leads directly into...
• What the Hell, Hero?- This happens TWICE in Wonderland. The first time is Vincent shooting a sentient failed experiment, the second is Riku as he coldly says Hojo should die. Kairi calls them both on their actions.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!- Riku uses this when Kairi pulls her Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Where I Was Born and Razed- Riku has too much of his father in him, and does this.
• Batman Gambit and Kansas City Shuffle- Sephiroth has been running a massive one from square one. He only ever created or hired his minions to serve as distractions for the heroes as he made whatever preparations he needed to in order to become a god, counting on their utter need to save people from distress and death to keep them busy.
• You Are Too Late- Sephiroth began the final stage of JENOVA's fusion with Kingdom Hearts thirty-five minutes ago.
• You Can't Fight Fate- Given their genetics, Riku and Sora were pretty much destined to drift apart and turn against each other at some point.