Fanfic / Liberi Fatalis The Therianthrope Chronicles

Three Unique Legends, Separated by Space, but United by a Single Fate

LIBERI FATALIS: The Therianthrope Chronicles is a CrossOver fic between Albedo: Erma Felna EDF (while mixing elements from the comic's side-stories and additional canon and non-canon material, starting with Refractions, but excluding Albedo: Birthright), Katmandu and Ace Combat (more especifically, using Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere as basis, as it uses elements and characters from that game) written by luisedgarf. The story is also an alternative retelling of the plot from those three franchises, as well as expanding their events and plots, not to mention trying to continuing the events from Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, who was Cut Short.

The fanfic is also notorious for having four different plot lines, each one covering a different set of characters in different eras and from each of their original franchises:

The first plot line begins at Frankfurt, Germany, at the eve of World War II: A young Japanese scientist from Hiroshima named Yoshinori Komatsu, working there on a Japanese government grant, develops a revolutionary but controversial scientific theory that, if successful, could give lower creatures such as mammals and birds human intelligence and language, based on an advanced version of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Unfortunately for him, one of Komatsu's co-workers is the infamous German scientist Josef Mengele, who takes it upon himself to make things difficult for the Japanese scientist, and due to various problems, Mengele arranges for Komatsu to be expelled and deported from Germany, which causes several events that end up changing the life of the young scientist, and all those around him, permanently.

The second plot line, named Days of Wrath, set at the distant future at AD 2305, tells the story of many group of characters hailing from many countries, including a group of Japanese students from Tokyo, a couple of twins from Okinawa, together with ther grandfather, an Israeli ufologist, a Russian pilot, and a group of Japanese pilots doing a top-secret mission on a terraformed Mars.

The third plot line, set in the world of Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, is basically an expanded retelling of the events from the comic, starting with the Battle of Derzon, while adding some additional elements who were not present in the original canon.

And the final plot line, set in the world of Katmandu, begins with the trials and tribulations of two human women, an Eswati-Japanese soldier named Akane Araki, and a Japanese socialité named Kaguya Hoshino, who, while trying to return to Earth after staying a season in another terraformed planet beyond the Solar System named New Haiti, ended in the planet Katmandu after their spaceship, the Asuka, ended mysteriously stranded near the vicinity of the planet after a jump attempt went wrong and the ship getting destroyed by mysterious robotic drones, forcing Akane, the only alleged survivor of the attack, to escape to Katmandu via an escape pod. This forces the human woman to trying to survive in the harsh enviroment of that planet, while sharing her life with the inhabitants of that planet, and the main protagonist, Liska.

You can read the fanfic here and here.

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Tropes of the story:

• Abled in the Adaptation: In contrast to her original canon, Rena Hirose no longer suffers from Silverstone Disease here. Instead, as per the author, she once had another ailment that has since been cured, but the details of that undisclosed condition remain a mystery.
• Ace Pilot:
  • Too many to list here, but to note we have Erma Felna, Lt. Ruby, Rena Hirose and Kei Nagase.
  • On the other hand, this is averted with many of the pilots from the Imperial Japanese Air Force, especially with Akiharu Hirose, which were rookies fresh from the academy and thrown into the gutter against the Americans during the Battle of Midway in the Pacific theater of World War II.
• Adapted Out:
  • Yoko Martha Inoue, Dission's lover, will not appear here, since Simon is already married with another woman, and Dission will appear with a very different personality instead, meaning that the events from their game are not going to happen.
  • Since the events from Katmandu are told from either Akane or Liska's points of view, neither Leahtrah Middlesmith nor her mate, Thorin Leonius appears here.
• Adaptation Expansion: The fanfic expands many events and complete story arcs from the three franchises' original canons in order to make the plot more engaging:
  • Albedo: Erma Felna EDF story line:
    • The whole Battle of Derzon, which only last one single issue worth of story, is now expanded into two long episodes, as the story also includes air duels with fighter jets and some additional subplots.
  • Katmandu story line:
    • The whole scenario from the Woman of Honor sub-arc from the comic, when Liska made her debut as a warrior when foreign bandits under the orders of Arn raided the Highland Tribe, only lasted a single issue. Here, the whole thing last three episodes worth of story, due to the inclusion of the original character Akane and the additions of many sub-plots, including a previous sub-arc explaining how Akane ended in the Highland Tribe in the first place.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Since Komatsu is now fully Japanese rather than having foreign ancestry like in Refractions, his full name is now Yoshinori Komatsu rather than Charles Ambrose Komatsu.
  • As a result of the R-101 Delphinus is now being built in the Albedo setting rather than the Ace Combat one, and the fact dolphins and other marine mammals doesn't exist as anthros there, the fighter jet is now identified as R-101 Delta instead.
  • Similarly, through in an inversion, the planet Katmandu is now nameless in-universe. This is justified here, since in the comic's original canon, the titular planet is never gave a name by their inhabitants, and the name "Katmandu" is only used by either her original creator, Carole Curtis, or in a single non-canon side-story. Instead, the narrator call the planet as "the unknown planet" or "the alien world" in its place.
• Adaptational Nationality: Sort of:
  • Since the characters from Ace Combat now live on Earth instead of Strangereal, their nationalities now match the ethnicity of their names. So far, Kei Nagase and Rena Hirose are Japanese, while Simon Orestes Cohen is an Israeli Jew.
  • While not technically characters per se, the same happens with some original Ace Combat's fighter jets: Per example, the R-101 Delphinus, who was originally built in Strangereal by Neucom, Inc., is now built by the Independent Lepine Republic (ILR) instead, under the name of R-101 Delta.
  • Likewise, In the Refractions' story Exo-Genesis, Komatsu was Japanese of unspecified western ancestry, likely American judging by his name "Charles Ambrose". In this fanfic, Komatsu is an ethnic Japanese instead.
• Age Lift: The characters from Katmandu underwent to this in order to avoid the same plot holes the comic was infamous from regarding the characters' ages:
  • Instead of having different ages like as in the original canon, Liska, Rial and Pyndan are now share the same age (18).^note Liska was 17 when she was Made a Slave, and 18 when she had sex with Rial, Rial himself was 21 in the same situation, and Pyndan was 22. However, Liska is still 18 when she met Akane, meaning that the events from the comic still happened here, through in a different fashion.
  • Mother Sanna was 51 in her original canon; in this fanfic, her age was bumped down to about 47 instead.
  • In a non-Katmandu example, Rena Hirose was aged up from 19 to 22 in order her actual age to comply with realistic expectations about the age of a real air force pilot. On the other hand, her wingmate Kei Nagase retains her same age she had from her original canon (23) in order to depict her as Rena's senior.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The fanfic is particularly more violent and having more graphic descriptions of many of the violent events that occurred in the original canons of the three franchises:
  • To note, the way how an ILR soldier executed a fugitive citizen during the Battle of Derzon is more graphic here. While the original comic, at least in the Color version, the same character is shown being executed mostly off-screen, while only see the ILR soldier shooting at the poor man, the fanfic describes the same scene with more detail, especially how the same soldier basically blows the man's brains with a shotgun, while in the original comic, it was using a handgun instead.
  • In the Katmandu storyline, the battle against the foreign invaders who attacked the Highland tribe at the beginning of Liska's era is quite more violent here, since both Liska, the protagonist, and Akane, the Original Character, used katanas against them, causing that lots of heads and arms ended up flying, including a scene when Akane blows the brains out of a marauder trying to kidnap Liska by using a high-powered revolver .
• Cool Big Sis: Akane Araki behave this way toward both Kaguya, Liska and Kayce, being her their senior, through she isn't about acting sassy when they do something stupid or in a way she disaproves of.
• Crapsaccharine World: The Earth post-World War III had became this. While the Earth and society, at first glance, have not undergone dramatic changes in terms of culture, fashions and other details, on the other hand many modern nations and entire regions suffered changes, or simply disappeared, at the same time that many aspects of our modern 21st century culture also underwent radical modifications. In more detail:
  • The Middle East, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and many nations dissapeared as a result of either mass destruction due to the effects of World War III (Middle East nations) or natural or human-made disasters (the rest of the aforementioned countries), causing their inhabitants to emigrate to either other nations or other planets, mainly Mars, space colonies, or discovered planets like New Haiti.
  • The Internet as we know it today is gone, replaced by the Albedo's Net. At the same time, as a result of this, many aspects of our modern internet also disappeared or were banned by post-war governments, such as social networking, as well as any kind of free and open source software (FOSS), with the partial exception of Linux, which exists in a very restricted and government-controlled form.
• Creator Provincialism: A very downplayed example: While the author is Mexican, the entire fic is written in English, in at least the Earth parts of the story, most of the story takes place in many countries, and only a very few parts of the story take in Mexico, mainly a very brief part in Act XXIII that take place in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, a town near the American border, and a Mexican bartender appears in Act XXV. Other than that, besides most of the story happens outside Earth, most of all the human-based narrative takes place in either the U.S.^note Mainly in Texas, Arizona, New York, New Mexico, Delaware, Massachusetts, Indiana and Kentucky. Japan^note Tokyo, Osaka, Naha, a fictitious town in Okinawa, Hiroshima, Kanagawa, Nagoya, and Okayama. Germany^note Berlin, Frankfurt and Offenbach., China^note Northern China, also known as Manchuria/Manchukuo during World War II, Taiwan^note Kaohsiung, Greenland^note Narsarsuaq., Israel^note Haifa., Russia^note Moscow. and an unified Korean peninsula ^note Pyongyang. so far. Also, all the characters from Strangereal are treated as Earth citizens, with their nationalities matching the ethnic origin of their names.
• Dies Differently In The Adaptation: Some characters who died in their respective canons die here in a different way than they did in their original stories:
  • The most visible example would be the way how Arn, the leader of the bandits who raided the Highland tribe's village, bite the dust: In the original comic, he dies after Liska chopped his arm after she pinned it with a knife. In this fanfic, she kills him by cuttting him at half with a katana in order to save Akane's life.
• Fun with Acronyms: A given, considering the military backgrounds of two of the franchises that appear in the comic. Besides the ones already used in their respective canons, there's a new ones used here:
  • JSSDF: Japanese Space Self-Defense Force. The Japanese Self-Defense Force's branch Akane Araki belongs to.
  • ANEN: Advanced Neuro Electronic Network. The name given by humans to their version of the Net.
  • UNMCS: United Nations Martian Colonial Service: The according with Act XV in the Days of Wrath story line, this is the name of the official representation of the UN in Mars.
  • UNSF: United Nations Space Force: The space equivalent of the United Nations' peace-keeping forces.
• Hard Boiled Detective: Frank McNamara and Douglas Miller are two detectives working for the New York Police Department who got involved in the whole story after the deaths of Dr. Nick Larkin and his father after someone sabotaged the oven of Dr. Larkin's father bakery.
• Meaningful Name: The name of the fanfic, Liberi Fatalis, has several layers of meaning in many languages, taking into account the context of the story: Firstly, "Liberi Fatalis" is a deliberately butchered Latin spelling of the phrase "Liberi Fatali", mainly taken out from the name of the opening theme from Final Fantasy VIII, which usually is translated as "children of destiny/fate". However, by adding an "S", and reading the phrase in other Romance languages, mainly Spanish, the language of the author, can be also interpretated as "Free Us From Fatality/Death".^note Liberanos de la Fatalidad/Muerte Additionally, there's also other meanings that would be revealed later as the story goes on.
• Ruder and Cruder: Played with: While there's somewhat more profanity here than in the three franchises' original canons, how this is handled varies depending of the setting or the species of the characters:
  • Just like in their original canon, the characters from Katmandu doesn't swear anything more offensive beyond "crap" or "damn", including changing some incongruent earlier scenes from the comic when either Liska, Flint or Markree used "bitch" in a setting with no canines, anthropomorphic or otherwise, appears, being replaced with either "whore" or "harlot" instead.
  • The characters from Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, aside of the already mentioned swearing, also use "shit" at times, but they don't use anything stronger like "fuck". Unlike the Katmandu ones, they don't have problems on using "bitch", for obvious reasons, being a more diverse society, through they avoid using worse insults like "cunt".
  • And finally, both the humans characters and the ones from Ace Combat can swear without any kind of restrain.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Many characters who were killed in a rather anti-climatic way, or simply because the author felt they could contribute the story better than being dead were spared from their original fates in this fanfic:
  • In the Albedo: Erma Felna EDF storyline, during the ILR attack on planet Derzon, a Feline mother with all her children were murdered by a random ILR soldier in order to escape from Erma and the EDF. Here, while the mother is still killed by that soldier, her children were spared in the fanfic.
  • In the Katmandu storyline, Kayce Men-tir-son, Kebec's elder sister-cousin, was originally killed by an arrow shot by one of Arn's men through her heart when trying to invade the Highland tribe, the tribe she belongs to. In the fanfic, while she isn't killed and survives the attack, she was raped by one of Arn's men instead.
• Trapped in Another World: This is what happens to Akane Araki in the Katmandu storyline, as she is a human soldier whose spaceship was destroyed, forcing her to escape to planet Katmandu and having to live there, with no means to return to Earth again.
• You All Share My Story: It's pretty obvious from the very beginning that all the characters from the three main crossing over franchises, as well the original characters, are related in some degree or another with either Yoshinori Komatsu or with each other in many particularly ways.