Final Requests for Help

On my personal list has been fixing battle animations. I've fixed up the animations for Safe 2, Shell 2, the Super Ball (as a thrown weapon the character would take 2 steps forward and 2 steps back), and changed the animations for Rasp 2 and Kappa's Morph to be more appropriate for the ability. My last animation is one that I've been stuck on for 3 days, with no measurable progress. So, I figured I'd throw it here in case anyone knows.

I have replaced the Esper Raiden with Leviathan. The graphics replacement was easy, but there's something tied to the sprite itself that is:
1. Causing the esper sprite to display underneath the enemies
2. Displaying the "slice through" graphic on the enemies, rather than displaying damage. This happens even when I change the spell to a damaging spell. It DAMAGES the enemies, but instead of displaying the damage numbers, it slices them in half.

I've gotten far enough to know that it is tied to Byte 10 of the animation, and that Raiden's Byte 10 value (6B) is reading from this code:

Code:

Raiden: 6B - C2/EBFE
C2/EBFE: 20 2D F0     JSR $F02D
C2/EC01: A2 8C        LDX #$8C
C2/EC03: 01 DA        ORA ($DA,X)
C2/EC05: 22 00 24 C1  JSR $C12400
C2/EC09: 20 70 FA     JSR $FA70
C2/EC0C: 22 C6 9E C1  JSR $C19EC6
C2/EC10: FA           PLX
C2/EC11: 22 80 24 C1  JSR $C12480
C2/EC15: 20 87 FA     JSR $FA87
C2/EC18: EE B0 62     INC $62B0
C2/EC1B: 60           RTS

I tried replacing that code with Terrato's (C2/F25D), since that graphic is almost the exact same size, replacing the LDX #$84 with Raiden's LDX #$8C, but that just crashes. I know from nop-ing out one function of the code at a time, that the code for slicing through the enemies is either the LDX #$8C or the ORA ($DA,X), and I suspect it's ORA ($DA,X) since Odin's code is just LDX #$8B/ORA ($DA,X). Most Espers have an ORA ($22,X) at that spot. However, but any edits to either of those 2 ops just causes crashing. Any ideas?

I also started down an alternate path, thinking that I could put Leviathan in Ragnarok's spot, and have Ragnarok replace Raiden, since an instant death animation fits with Metamorph. I have been able to edit Ragnarok to be a damaging spell, so i know that works. However, Ragnarok is the one esper that you can't edit through Final Fantasy 3 Sprite Editor, so I can't just do a graphic replacement and call it good. I found that the slot for Ragnarok's graphics data (D2/77D0), is just a bunch of zeroes, and that there's some other function that's putting the graphics in.

So yeah, if anyone can help me figure how to do 1 of the 2 following, I'd be immensely grateful:
1. Make Raiden's Byte 10 deal damage
2. Swap the sprites for Ragnarok and Raiden