Dragonstone: Welcome to the Royal Selection Ceremony! Sorry that your god didn't save the royal family:( As an apology, we've conjured a list of only the best replacements!
We have:
The devil herself and some guy with no traceable background!
A feral rat with criminal connections and her pet depressed god!
A genderswapped QPR with a grudge against your entire religion!
A foreign CEO color-matched to one of the prettiest boys we got!
A foreign totalitarian princess several times divorced (by elimination) and her Craigslist barbarian!
Wow! 5 options! You've got 3 years to pick who you want! Hopefully, nothing bad happens!
[ID: Re:Zero Break Time screenshot of Julius having a pleasant conversation with the Pearlbaton triplets, by all appearances completely fine with the fact that Mimi, having climbed up on his shoulders, is currently nomming his head.]
Broke: Tales of the Abyss time-travel fixit fic starring Luke fon Fabre. He's not an asshole and he knows Van is the bad guy so he doesn't kill 10,000 people, boring.
Woke: Tales of the Abyss time-travel fixit fic starring Anise Tatlin. She knows the entire plot and would really like to prevent its 5-digit body count that includes her closest friend, but she is 13 years old, her parents owe eighty gajillion dollars to a guy who wants that body count as high as possible, and most of her allies would sell each other to Satan for one corn chip. Her weapons are the ability to spoil plot points to the other party members, very carefully choosing what she reports to Mohs, and unhinged ultraviolence, and she is so mad that she's having to learn to play 5D chess instead of relying on the last one.
Whenever she can't think of an excuse for why she knows about something she shouldn't, she either says, "Ion mentioned it to me three years ago when I was in training to become a Fon Master Guardian! :)" or claims she heard it from Dist in the Oracle Knights cafeteria.
I don't have it in me to keep track of all the moving parts of Abyss's plot well enough to plan the whole thing out myself, but I have decided that the first thing she does is send Mohs a letter helpfully informing him that Ion told her he wants to investigate the Cheagle Woods because of concerns from the locals about liger sightings in the area.
No one asked, but just for the record, the reasoning here is:
In actuality, Ion's decision to go to the Cheagle Woods was a spur-of-the-moment one when Anise wasn't even there, so she couldn't have reported it originally. (Here she sticks with him.)
Anise now knows that the God-Generals primarily want Ion to unlock the Sephiroth and don't care all that much about Mohs's goals, so they're highly unlikely to hurt Ion as long as any of the Daathic seals remain, and in all likelihood he'd need to lift those seals eventually anyway.
It is much, much easier to kidnap Ion from an isolated forest than from inside a heavily-defended warship. Therefore, providing the information to let them do this will prevent the attack on the Tartarus.
Mohs and Van generally want to limit Arietta's access to Ion so she doesn't realize he's not the same person she knew, but if Anise is lucky, "ligers" may be tempting enough keyword to get them to send her anyway. Most likely, they'd send Arietta with Largo as babysitter, since they don't need nearly as much firepower if they're not attacking a warship.
If Arietta is present in the Cheagle Woods, this means there is someone who can translate from Human to Monster who the ligers are much more positively disposed toward than Mieu.
The God-Generals could easily kick Anise, Luke, and Tear's asses and leave with Ion. However, Arietta does not want the ligers to be hurt. Therefore, Anise has a potential opening to do some fast-talking about the fact that if newborn liger cubs eat an entire village, the heavily-armed Malkuth warship full of soldiers would definitely show up and kill all of them, and therefore it would be in Arietta's best interest to convince them not to do that.
There is no other suitable liger habitat nearby. However, you know what Anise has access to that the ligers don't have? A large vehicle that can travel over land.
This opens the possibility of, essentially, a hostage exchange. Anise will convince Jade to ferry the ligers somewhere they won't eat everyone, and Arietta will take Ion to Shurrey Hill. Jade won't kill the ligers because they need Ion back, and Arietta won't take Ion and run because she needs the Tartarus's cooperation to get her family somewhere safe.
Worst case scenario result: Anise has to hand over Ion (she can probably act like she thinks she's just following orders from a trusted superior in the Oracle Knights to avoid getting murdered) and the death toll goes down by 300 Tartarus crew members. Now she has to deal with the ligers and figure out how to get Ion back.
Best case scenario result: the death toll goes down by 300, Arietta no longer hates everyone's guts, Anise gets Ion back, and in all likelihood Largo uses the fon slot seal on Ion as he originally planned, leaving Jade at level 45 and capable of steamrolling every combat situation they come across for months afterward.
For whatever reason I'm thinking about this again, and FTR a major plot issue after this that Anise would not foresee: without the fon slot seal and landship attack, Jade would have MUCH less incentive to cooperate with the rest of these chucklefucks. My guess is that this would first become an issue when Guy shows up, and because Jade still has a small army under his command and the ability to cast Thunder Blade, this time he chooses not to conveniently overlook the sticky political implications of a personal servant of the Kimlascan royal family randomly showing up in the middle of Malkuth. I have no idea what Anise should or would do about this, but I did decide that she can totally deflect any scrutiny that might arise from her being suspiciously patient about explaining things to Luke, simply by loudly declaring that she will be Luke's tour guide because she has relevant experience from having a job doing that in Daath for like a week, then diligently keeping a time sheet for all the man-hours she's going to charge Duke Fabre for as soon as she gets the chance.
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