Author's Note: Hi everyone. In a midnight fury, I wrote the first act of a Shakespearean tragedy. It is based upon the infamous Jenova Project, but also touches on the War of the Gi and Holzoff's backstory. I realize that Shakespeare nerd and video game fan don't always go hand in hand, so I will briefly give a run-down of what you may have missed in highschool.

Spelling and grammar in Shakespeare's time wasn't a new thing, but proper spelling and grammar weren't as strictly enforced. Because of that, words in old texts can sometimes be capitalized, sometimes elongated - this is not a mistake! It's meant as a kind of note for the actor, to punctuate or elongate the speaking of the word. I have followed those rules in doing so here, to best emulate what I think the characters are feeling.

Also, "iambic pentameter" was the basic structure of Shakespearean verse (da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA) but, in his plays, if lines are short or long, that means that the character is either overflowing with emotion or holding back (see the "what light through yonder window breaks" speech in Romeo & Juliet for good examples of both). Also switching to trochaic is an easy way to signify a shift in thought or the skip of a heartbeat. Newer texts (as in, 1800s on) have 'fixed' the mistakes but I prefer the original texts, and this play is trying to emulate that style, which is full of bluster and raw, bawdy shit. Not the dry, high-brow text the Victorians would have you believe it was.

In short, it's best if you read this out loud! Maybe with a friend or two. Throw a party or something.

One final note about being OOC: yeah, okay, it's kind of necessary to do that if I'm going to have Hojo speak entirely in verse. I believe I stayed true to at least the arc and the essence of each character, and gave people something fun to read. It sure was fun to write! I'm planning on doing the other four acts, just to practice writing in verse.

THE TRAGICALL HISTORIE OF

IFALNA & GAST

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

GAST, a scientist

HOJO, his young partner

LUCRECIA, assistant to Hojo

IFALNA, assistant to Gast

VINCENT VALENTINE, a Turk

HOLZOFF, a northman

YAMSKI, a northman

BUGENHAGEN, a retired scientist

SETO, a warrior beast

NANAKI, his son

EXCAVATOR

SCIENTISTS and DIGGERS

ACTUS PRIMUS

(A snowy crater. Enter SCIENTISTS and DIGGERS. Then enter HOLZOFF and YAMSKI.)

HOLZ. The Shinra Company is at our Glacier.
Their scientists and diggers rape the land
so tell me, Yamski, what are we to do?
I know thou hast been at their beck and call,
Providing shelter, meat and mead to all
who ask for it. Has Shinra's Greene embrace
relaxed thy northern loyalties?

YAMS. Thou know'st I live and dye by northern law
and Shinra's grip on th'world has never crossed
the Em'rald sea 'fore now. But Thinke, if we
refused them comforts and our succor, bar'd
our wintry doors, and spoke of northern law,
they would plague us, such they did Wutai.
That southron country with rebellious armes
did strike and was struck back upon tenfold.

HOLZ. I might have banked upon thy words, had banks
not set upon thee previously.

YAMS. Shinra came to our door, Holzoff. If thou thinks't
that thou hast kept thy honour by having kept
thy wary wallet thin, pray tell me why
thou hast thy life amidst of Shinra's hirelings?
Those savages from tribes along our shores.

HOLZ. And thou, my friend, thinks't bowing at their sight
and taking greener gratitude than I
makes thee righteous?
Sit on thy gil.

YAMS. I will, good sir, and think me right in that
For Shinra's wallet thins as mine grows mighty fat.

HOLZ. Hark, here come the leaders of the dig
We'll speak of northern retribute anon.

(Enter GAST and HOJO)

GAST. How now, good Yamski? Holzoff?

YAMS. Professor Gast and Hojo, my good sirs,
how fares the expedition?

HOJO. Well enough.
Thy comforts have been most appreciated
this last long fortnight of our expedition.
Expect that Shinra will reward thee well.

HOLZ. And you expect the same.

GAST. How so?

YAMS. With comforts and our guidance through this glacier!
Its perils and its wonders do contend
with all the magic of technology.
The spirit world's beyond, sirrahs, beware,
Be sure of foot, of mind, and take you care
of your hearts, lest they be themselves ensnared
by witch or magicke wizard of the snow.

GAST. Thou frightens me not.

YAMS. Thou'rt surely bold, I know.
Behold the Crater that I spoke of yesterday
tis wide and deep, as if to dig for thee!

HOJO. E'en Nature lends her succor to our cause!

YAMS. And so, as promised, we have led you here
our goode and generous souls with thee in mind,

GAST. Yes, yes, see Chloe at our camp in town
say Gast approved another ten score gil.

HOJO. The password of today, good sirs, is Mog.

GAST. If we return to find a penny more
removed from Shinra's bank, we will have 'wordes.
Go to, good sirs, we'll see you on return.

YAMS. Fare thee well! If they survive, then we
will fix another end for them.

HOLZ. I took thee for a hare, mayhaps the green
I thought reflected in thine Eyes is truly
what's beneath, th'pois'nous peal of malbor's skin

YAMS.So smile with me, my hare, and we'll be beasts within.

(Exeunt all but GAST and HOJO)

HOJO. Well, my friend, shall we begin descending?
Aye, let's.

GAST. This chille disheartens all my creaking bones
And makes them hollowe as this barren earth.

HOJO. Aye. The ayre Stings.

GAST. Not just the ayre, young Hojo, but all Force
of old Kjata's ellments seem to pale
and quake in holes as deepe as this.
I fear this northern slab shall buy us both
for monuments of ice.

HOJO. Ha! Doctor Gast,
Kjata may have lost his hope in thee,
but where the Bull leaves naught but cold and Stale
for tryed professors such as Thy good grace,
It only serves to Burn the ice on me:
and as Kjata is the bull of youthe
he Forsakes me not;
My Bones lose not their Fire.

GAST. Nor thee thy wit.

HOJO. Tis the Bull's Bolts that strike.

GAST. You, good sir, are a bolt.
You brought us here. I pray you, have you found
the specimen for which you burne those Bones?
This expedition is to Shinra's purse
the very picture of iniquity:
I would we did our businesse and were done.

HOJO. The cold does not become You, sir.
A learned man once took me to his wing
and showed me all the corners of the world
and how to see them truly: with divine
Scientific eyes and hands and Hearts.
I loved those wings as his discoveries
Truly gave him cause to soar.
I prayed to any god to listen and obey
when I avowed to be one tenth the man of him:
such virtue and judicious grasp of life
aroused the vital voltage of my brain
until Kjata seemed a cow.
Within a fortnight, could those hands and eyes
Chill so quick? Could those wings droop and sag?
Could that Heart close?

GAST. I am sorry to offend.

HOJO. Thou 'ffendst me not.
Tis Shiva 'ffending through thy blessed mouth.

GAST. Out upon her, I say, and let's on.

(Enter EXCAVATOR)

EXCA. Hail Gast and Hojo!

GAST. Lo, what's this?

EXCA. My lords!

GAST. What lords are we?

EXCA. The President's men!

GAST. Not lords.
We have no holdfasts, banners nor estates.
Our lives are quiet servitude in sight
of gods and men: and Shinra, God 'mongst men,
the president, usurper of the olde
traditions. Lords and knightes seem triviall
and barbarous to civil eyes as ours.
We mighty in our humblenesse, do serve
the Shinra first, and Progresse second, last
of all ourselves and lordship, sir.

EXCA. Not-lords!
I come here not to flatter but to bring
news of great triumph! A spring
there was of water warm as Ifrit's blood,
a-bubbling from within a fist of ice
and though its grip was steely and unflinching
the rime could suffocate no water, nor
not any man who touched the tepid waves.
I dipped my hand inside the boiling pool
and all of Shiva's baiting lifted off
my personne, freeing me to live againe:
for Shiva's lure's a fatal, nippy touche
and were it not for this hot puddle
we men would take to madness such as that
strange dance her puppets dance when 'ticed into
her mortal grip, casting off their garments in a fit
of drunken heat in wintry lust, the frosty
mouth of her stiffening their limbs
until they give their life's blood to it.

GAST. Stiff limbs and warm puddles.

HOJO. A fascinating tale thou tells, yet what
are we to do about this Spring of thine?

EXCA. Prithee, good sirs, hear me.
I am but one of two-score excavators
from settlements along the bony shore
of this north continent, all hired to help
the search for Hojo's buried specimen.
The pool was found our first day on the glacier.
Upon my touch of this excited spring
a flurried siege of axes launched upon
the frozen land, my men-at-arms as keen
as their pick-axes: soon I found myself
with axe in hand among them, like a battle
with bloody yearning charging heaps on heaps
and days became nights until the chasm we had fashioned
was great enough to rival in its depth
e'en this the natural crater of the land,
we did such violence to the snow I fear I lost myself
as, hammering away, my brandished axe,
too hungry to discern that which it fed upon,
struck a shriveled figure in the ice.
All diggers lent their strength as we exposed
a figure unlike any I had seen at least at first
it was as if Cerulean had made himself a man
or woman we could not discern at first, and still,
though the Fyres in me burn for Her
and in her presence longing I have never known
became the very nature of my hands: parting the snow
around her frozen body, eyes seeing th'clearest Sky
reflected in her skinne
I knew the broken pieces of the world
as moving digits in a single clock
their cracks and splinters fitting in eachoth'r
and not disjointed.
There is no Doubt, doctors, that she is Anciente.
For something rare and beauteous as she
could only come from times ere now, and lost.

HOJO. Thank thee for thy paines.

(Exeunt EXCAVATOR)

GAST. What madnesse drives thine ears to hold their tongues?
He may as well have sermoned of Wutai
and told us that the gods were Reale,

HOJO. And I
would have heard him. His passion tells of truths
if not of th'world, then of the Minde.

GAST. Then thou needst catch him quick to finde
a better specimen in him than soothsayr.

HOJO. Cans't thou hold thy temperance long enough
to let me revel in the what and if?

GAST. To do so would be th'sin of Science.

HOJO. Nay!
What are we but champions of what?
Lovers of If? Artists of How? And happiest
Students of Why?

GAST. Professor Hojo, let us up to th'site
to see if student hearts can still delight.

(Exeunt GAST and HOJO. Enter LUCRECIA and IFALNA)

LUCR. By my troth, Ifalna, these northern comfortes
fail to charm me: what keeps thee in such spirits?

IFAL. The pleasure of your company.

LUCR. Go to.

IFAL. Lucrecia, can you feel this sacred earth?
The way it whispers of our Anciente past?
We are the dreams those Ancientes had,
the quiet murmurs of their eager hearts,
compelling them t'enfold themselves in love,
and know not why.
How could they know that we were in their blood?
moving their arms toward their lovers faces,
heating up the marrow of their bones,
and whisp'ring, begging them to give us life.
And here they whisper back, returned to Earth:
the very Earth who dreamed of them; they call
us back to them, as Earth called them to yield
their rebel lives to it.
Return'd to dust
as all things are, and one day even us.

LUCR. I hear no thing.

IFAL. I speak no thing, friend.

LUCR. What Ancientes lived here bare no semblance t'us
For two thousand years have passed since we
descended from their line and became human.

IFAL. Thou tells it true. Those Anciente men,
whom we call Jcetra, are returned to Earth
and we to them are as our machinations.

LUCR. As robots to their engineers are we
to our old Cetra mothers in the ground.
But Blinde masters need no reverence,
no master asks his robot's worship, nor
no robot finds affection for his maker
on his springy own.

IFAL. Would that they could.
Affection needs no spur to prick its flank,
think'st thou it doth?

LUCR. I think not of't.
My Minde was made of sterner stuff that love
and should be put to use in worthy fields.
Affection is the bulwark of a foole
who calls it Castle. Crumble, bulwarke, as
thou doth, for I care not for feigning castles.

IFAL. A Scientiste is but a named career.
One facet of a diamond, pray thee,
is it the only part of thee thine eyes can see?

LUCR. It is the only facet cleanly cut.

IFAL. Diamonds require chiseling.

LUCR. Mine doth not.
Who calls herself aspiring mother, lover
of merely humans? I will birth the world
by making love to Progress. Women of
the world doth nurse their babes, and men
doth nurse their present day alone.
A lonely babe Tomorrow is.
She hungers for the milke of yesterday,
but no one feeds: no drop of it is left
from those who would consume it instantly
Tomorrow starves whilst we are drunk on love.

IFAL. Tomorrow is a full-time job, then?

LUCR. Aye.

IFAL. Then thou arrivest early. Is there none
who could convince you of Today's appeal?

LUCR. Would I could find a man who would reveal
me for a fraud I'd snatch him up as Titan
does the Earth. But no such man exists.

IFAL. They say that Hojo has his eye on you.

LUCR. They say. And he is not unpleasant, yet
his passion unbecomes him.

IFAL. There's a jest!
If passion unbecame a lover, love
would not exist. Is Hojo ugly?

LUCR. Nay: yet he slouches. Ugly he is not.

IFAL. Marke you his unintelligence?

LUCR. Nay twice! His wit doth rival that of mine.

IFAL. Pray, what repels you so?

LUCR. If I had half the passion he bore me
for him, I would agree, Ifalna, yet
he thinks not of Tomorrow as I do.

IFAL. He may tomorrowe.

LUCR. Til then, let's away.
This chill may hold us evermore Today.

(Exeunt LUCRECIA and IFALNA. Enter HOLZOFF and YAMSKI)

HOLZ. Looke ye down into the Crater, Yamski!
I see no trace of Hojo nor of Gast.
Is it so that they have fall'n?

YAMS. I know not. Should they return and finde
that we have taken twice the given summe
Olde Gast would have us buried in the snow!

HOLZ. You have the daggers ready?

YAMS. Aye, I do.

HOLZ. If they attempt to climb, we cut their ropes.

YAMS. And if they make the climb?

HOLZ. We cut their throats.
After they have been dispatch'd, the hirelings
surely will abandon our great glacier.

YAMS. And we with pockets full of weighty gil
are set for life.

HOLZ. Or else for death. But soft!
Who comes at us arrears? o'er snowy dune,

YAMS. Hold tongue and hide!

(Enter GAST, HOJO and DIGGERS all carrying pick-axes)

GAST. I feel as giddy as a chocobo!

HOJO. Indeede.

GAST. We Founde a Cetra in the Snowe.
Th'excavator sang us golden truthe
out of his rusted pipes!

HOJO. The youthe
of thee has come againe, dear Gast.

GAST. As long as I see Her, my youthe will last
until the stars reclaim me, and no cold
can touch me where I stand.

HOJO. So bold
and tall thou standst! Regret'st thee now my zeal
in coming to this land?

GAST. Good sir, I kneel
to thee, who once I called my student, name
a prize and I will offer it.

HOJO. Verily?

GAST. We saw the Queen herself, and touched her skin
And chipped away the ice that held her in
this damned glacier. Now she's in our hold,
and I can study her from this day forth,
if Shinra deems it so, and so my mirth
makes gen'rous of my happy self.

HOJO. There is one thing.

GAST. Just name it, and it shall be done.

HOJO. Forsooth, tis not a thing, but nothing could
repay in greater force and number than
this one thing: fair Lucrecia.

GAST. What? Madnesse man, thou know'st I cannot give
a human being to another one!

HOJO. I know'st, although I would thou could'st.

GAST. Why ask it of me then?

HOJO. Could you entreat
with her? She loves you as she does a father
and I have seen her oft obeying you
when you demand.

GAST. All Worke, which she would do without my spur.
Arranged marriage is no trifle

HOJO. Sir,
I only ask you speak to her for me.
Insist she be my partner in the lab
For the duration of our study on
this Queene of ice I led us to.

GAST. Aye, there you have some sense.
We'll take this Anciente back to Nibelheim
I'll partner you, from there the work is thine.

HOJO. Oh gracious friend, you've made my life.

YAMS. And we now make'st death.

GAST. What, ho!

HOJO. Treachery!

GAST. Why stand'st thou in the shadow of the crater
with daggers at the ready?

HOLZ. Methought I heard thee speak of taking Ancientes
out from hallowed resting grounds
and cutting them with Shinra knives. For that
villaines, you die! Yamski to armes!

YAMS. I'll show the North the difference of our blood
Which one is green and red, for good.

(Fight, and YAMSKI slain)

HOJO. My pick-axe doth unearth thy false lips: Hojo
sheds no blood today on northern snow.
But thine is red, at least thou died with half
a truth in tongue, I wish thou'd done it fast.

HOLZ. Alack!

HOJO. Peace, slave! He cut his verie rope
when he did toy with ours.

GAST. Thy dagger on the ground, and we'll not harm thee.

(enter LUCRECIA and IFALNA)

LUCR. What's happened?

HOJO. Pray shield thine eyes! If sighting a cadaver
pales not thy perfect cheeks, this treachery
incarnate, Holzoff, is no sight for thee!

LUCR. All reason to look harder.

HOLZ. My dagger gone, I'm at your mercy, sir.

GAST. Then be thou as thy dagger, gone, from here.
To all, and Holzoff, this I do decree
In th'name of Shinra, here then there shall be
a town reborn, of diggers and the tribes
from whence they came, and let the city scribes
write this a single caveat to'th deal,
Holzoff is exile, never welcome whilst
the spirits of the north make thick the wild.
He shall inhabit only wand'ring hence,
til Shinra pardon him for recompense.

HOLZ. If wildernesse I must inhabit, ne'er
let Shinra's toothy eye be fixed there.

LUCR. Hie you, pernicious fiend! To'th white, and death!
We'll hear no malbor words nor malbor breath.

(Exeunt HOLZOFF)

IFAL. He's gone.

GAST. And so are we, to Nibelheim.
Come, friends. I am too weary of this clime.
It smells too much of death.

(End of ACTUS PRIMUS)