The tentative title for the whole is "Final Fantasy X: Unending Spiral", and ideally the art team would be the same that's working on the current JLA book from DC (Michael Turner for covers, Ed Benes and Sandra Hope for interior art). Yeah, you heard that right. It'd be an American style comic book, no manga here.
The story would start about a year or two after FFX-2's events. For reason of story, and really realism, I'm not accepting the statement that the Youth League was dissolved after FFX-2. Rather, Nooj, Baralai, and Gippal have been working in concert to keep the tensions and disagreements of their factions from growing hot.
But it's getting harder, because as time passes the sheer instability of disunited Spira instills distrust and fear in the hearts of people. Reforms by Baralai and Nooj to prevent what almost happened last time - their disappearances nearly sparking conflict - have ended up strengthening the hands of the hardline elements of the League and Yevon. Tensions rise once more.
Only one person commands the respect of all the peoples of Spira, and that, of course, is Yuna. Given the final CGI vid of FFX and how it ties into FFX-2's Good Ending, it's clear Tidus was always intended to return by the game's makers, so we'll presume that's what's happened, and he and Yuna have been living on Besaid and enjoying the life of a young couple.
This ends when an unknown source gives Yuna information about her mother, hints that she did not die at the hands of Sin as long reported, and Yuna wants to discover more. She sets off for Gagazet with Tidus, leaving just before a notice can come of a new incident between the Crusaders and New Yevon and a new meeting between the faction leaders to forestall further violence.
Once on Gagazet, however, it swiftly becomes apparent that it was all a trap. Yuna and Tidus try to fight themselves free and end up falling into a crevice; Yuna's arm and legs are broken and Tidus receives a fatal wound and dies shortly after they hit the snow. Half-buried in snow, freezing to death, all Yuna can do is prolong her life with curative magic and hope for rescue, but she grows too exhausted to focus enough for using magic (translation; she's out of MP) and her eyes close for good....
We then turn to the summit, attended by Nooj, Baralai, Gippal, Kimahri, and Tromell. As Nooj and Baralai debate a dispute, they are then forced to restrain quarrelling subordinates. Suddenly one of Baralai's men draws his weapon and fatally wounds Nooj with a gunshot. As Baralai and Gippal kneel over their comrade and try to save his life, Nooj suddenly realizes what's happened, and tries to get them to flee.... but it's too late, and all die in a fiery explosion. All that the outside world knows is what was transmitted by audio sphere; a soldier of New Yevon shooting Nooj for an unforseen reason and the explosion that killed them all. New Yevon's new leaders claim that Nooj must have committed treachery, while the Youth League/Crusaders proclaim it a New Yevon betrayal. And with the news that Lady Yuna has disappeared on Mount Gagazet, both sides accuse the other of murdering her.....and the Spiran Civil War breaks out.
We again transfer scenes, seeing Yuna's frozen body on a metal table. A device above the table is seemingly warming her while displays indicate the slow revival of her body's functions. Finally she starts to come awake, disorientated and confused. She looks up when a familiar voice calls out to her, saying "It's about time you woke up".... and finds herself facing Rikku.
A sixty year-old Rikku, who takes up the entirety of the last page in one big panel, wearing dark combat camo and typical al-Bhed gear. She says, "We need you now more than we ever have."
And that would be the end of issue 1. Ideally issue #1 would simply have some generic ass-kicking cover of Yuna (likely dressed as in FFX-2 with her guns in hand) and Tidus.
Issue #2 would be exposition at first, featuring a joint cover of Yuna, armed as usual, with the older Rikku. Rikku explains to her what has happened.
For forty years, violence has gripped Spira. New Yevon and the Crusaders have virtually split the planet down the middle, locked in a struggle of blood and hate. New Yevon has rewritten history and made Yuna a venerated saint, almost a messiah; the Summoner blessed by Yevon to destroy Sin and begin the Eternal Calm. All of the history of Yevon's prior abuses is dismissed as al-Bhed and Crusader lies. Yevon's histories now charge that the Crusaders are an eight hundred year old conspiracy by Mi'ihen and the al-Bhed to overthrow Yevon, and they're more vicious and intolerant than ever before.
But the Crusaders are little better. In their controlled areas they brutally suppress all Yevon worship, adopting a pseudo-fascistic ideology of militaristic service to Society, in which servicemen are held high and above those who do not join the Crusader military. If New Yevon has become 16th Century Spain, the Crusaders have become Sparta, with Yevonite prisoners providing their helots.
The Al-Bhed are scattered, with all of their leaders dead save for Rikku and the grown-up Shinra. They are on the verge of extinction due to the pogroms in Yevonite-held land and occasional attacks by Crusaders on neutral al-Bhed clans. Rikku flies around on Cid's airship, trying desperately to save her people from extinction; long gone is the happy, bouncy Rikku Yuna knew, as the years of suffering and loss have embittered her. Shinra, OTOH, has allied his al-Bhed with the Crusaders, preferring them over Yevon as they support his various research and technology programs.
The Ronso and Guado are also at the brink of extinction due to pogroms by either side or being used as cannon fodder (due to geography, Yevon has typically held control over the Ronso and used them as shock troops, while Guadosalam has been ravaged due to it's proximity to the frontlines and having changed hands so many times).
It is into this world that Rikku has finally been able to revive Yuna. For years, Yuna had been kept in cold storage, as the fact of her body freezing to death mixed with the curative magics she was using to keep herself alive to put her into a form of cryogenic stasis that took Rikku and the al-Bhed years to reverse without killing Yuna.
Yuna finds out that the others are all dead and is crushed to see Spira wracked by such death and terror, but before they can do much the airship comes under sudden attack. Yuna joins the effort to fight off the boarding parties but joins them in defeat when the unknown enemy uses gas before the al-Bhed can give her masks.
When she wakes up, it is not in a prison cell at all, but in a lush bedroom, with a fine robe on her. She walks up to the window and looks out to see Bevelle in all it's splendor, when a voice calls her attention back into the room. It is a man named Lovum, a Maester of Yevon, who performs the traditional Yevon bow and prayer stance and welcomes "The Highest Summoner" to Bevelle. The panel's final panel shows Yuna's bewildered face as he speaks, off-panel (With the accompanying word balloon pointing off-panel), saying "Yevon needs you now more than ever, Lady Yuna."
End of issue #2.
And that's it really for planned issues. I had in mind that Yuna would end up escaping Bevelle with Rikku and the recovered airship, further encountering the Crusaders, Shinra's al-Bhed, and other nasty things (the communities at Bikanel, now given to slavering to acquire the labor to find the machina scraps that the Machine Faction and the Crusaders hunger for to defeat New Yevon). Rikku would die helping Yuna escape another foe, driving her crippled airship into an enemy airship and, for the first time in this storyline, calling her "Yunie" again.
Finally ending up on Besaid, Yuna finds out about the deaths of Lulu and Wakka when the Crusaders conquered Besaid and enslaved it's inhabitants for not turning their backs on Yevon. She also meets the resistance on Besaid, led by none other than Vivina - the son of Lulu and Wakka born in FFX-2 - and is finally moved to stop running around and do something about this world by assembling her own army to remove both factions and restore the Calm.
As the story progressed, we would not just see Spira gripped in war but also get hints at the past, specifially the civilization that once lived in the city that is now underwater at the Moonflow.... and the secret weapons they developed to fight Bevelle and Zanarkand, secret weapons that both factions have discovered and are on the verge of using to end the war once and for all, and quite possibly destroy what's left of Spira in the process.
To stop this, to save Spira, Yuna becomes faced with a horrible choice. To save Spira, to end the madness of the war, she could, she might have to, do the unthinkable.
Bring back Sin.
So, opinions? Thoughts? Boos?
