Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII or any of its characters. This disclaimer applies to all chapters of this piece, so .read on, and don't sue me, you'll get nothing. Also, this story is rated a somewhat mild R for language, violence, and eventual mild sexuality. consider youself warned.


Fire, and desolation, death spreading in flames across the bitterly cold expanses and up towards the mountains… Lives fading in the darkness, ephemeral screams silenced as life faded from the night. Smoke blossomed into the cold air, but nothing could relieve the burning in his lungs… In his eyes… As he watched everything he knew crumble before him.

Wiping his eyes and leaping over a wave of flames, he stumbled to his knees, listening as the screams burned into his already burnt ears. Lurching upright, he looked around wildly, now aware that there were soft sobs of horror escaping from his lips.

(This is terrible… So terrible…)

How could this have happened?

"Hey! You're still sane, right?" A loud voice hailed him from afar, and he whirled around, never more grateful in his life to see another person. There the man was, that muscular, wiry old martial artist with the sharp eyes and the powerful legs, kneeling over the body of one of the townspeople.

(A body… we came here to protect these people… And now…)

The man leapt over another tower of flames and landed near to where the man stood, panting, ash streaking across his now pale features.

"…What the hell's going on?" The man asked, his voice angry and high.

"…I don't know… I have no clue…" The SOLDIER whispered, his voice broken and empty. "…I can't believe…"

"Hey, check that house over there! Someone might still be alive! I'll check over here," And the man shoved away, before another word could escape from the SOLDIER's mouth. Turning, he moved through the flames, feeling as his lungs began to burn and his eyes began to cloud and water. Where they tears? He did not think so, but the desperation in his mind was beginning to destroy him. Bursting through the flames, he pushed aside a burning, rickety wooden door and went forth into the burning house. What he saw… No, there was no one left alive in this house… There was rotting flesh, peeling away from too-white bones, an empty skull protruding from the ruins where a kitchen table had been upended… The body was pinned under the table…

(What monster… What kind of monster would do this…?)

God… Good God…

He turned, leaping out of the tiny ruin of a house before the rest of home collapsed, stumbling and clutching his sword in his hand. This was not his house… Not his home… But to imagine something happening like this, this nightmare, this absolute terror …

(…Why did you do this?)

He saw one of the troopers sprawled across the ground, struggling to rise to his feet. His chest rose and fell in sickly gasps, and his face was burnt from the lacing flames flickering around his fading form. Rushing forth to help him, the SOLDIER reached out, his hand grasping for the scrawny form as he laid sprawled across the hard ground…

…But his eyes were drawn, inexplicably, elsewhere. It took a moment to focus, through the ashes, the flame, the painful screams…

He watched as the last remaining vestiges of life faded from the townspeople, as their sanity left them and they surged forth towards their destroyer out of the darkness. And the demon did not hesitate… His sword flashed out, sinister, sharp, and reflecting the ashen light of the moon above, before it lanced through the air. And before the blood drops hit the ground the man whirled on booted feet, his sword flashed, and another body hit the hard ground beneath.

The man paused, once the last one had fallen… And he stood, the slightest hint of a demonic grin on his pale, ashen features. His hand was folded tightly around the hilt of his sword, and even from here, the SOLDIER could see the muscles in his arm twitch with the raw, satanic power that seemed to be literally flowing through him. He stood there for a moment, entire body wreathed in flame, his dark garments rippling with the slight lift of the breezes around him…

Before finally, the rose his head slightly…

And for an expanse of seconds that the SOLDIER would remember forever, and see in his nightmares, their eyes met…

His gentle hazel eyes, usually so kind and full of emotion…

Themonster, and his eyes, glowing like embers through the ashen darkness of the night, something evil and sinister shifting behind the glaring color… Those eyes were an ice cold, glacial blue, the empty, soulless gaze of the most utterly perfect, chilling warrior that the Planet had ever seen. His ascension was complete.

Cloud Strife's face split in an empty, blank smile as the corners of his lips rose, ever so slightly. His revenge, too, was complete…Now that he stood above the remnants of a town he had burned to the ground... His own home...

And he turned…

(I'm going to meet my mother…)

…as the Planet screamed in raw, terrible agony.