All people who have read Shadow Feather and Angel Memories do not need to read this chapter, unless you want to.
Welcome to Broken Halo, the third story in my little epic of Sephiroth. Now…little is actually not in the least bit true. The first fic, Shadow Feather was one thousand words short of 50,000, and its sequel, Angel Memories, almost got to 73,000. I understand that when you look at something and see 17 or 26 chapters, that is really overwhelming, no matter how appealing or how many good reviews it has. I also know that you might just wanna start reading my new one so you can get a feel for my writing, which is hard when you get dropped off in the middle of a plot.
For this reason, thanks to the brilliant counseling of my friend and fellow fanficcer Chaos 009, I have composed a (fairly) short overview of the first two fictions and am using it as the first chapter of this third installment that is Broken Halo.
This is in no way a substitute for the real fictions and I would highly recommend reading them, but you are not required to and I do understand that so many chapters and words is really overwhelming.
So here's the disclaimer for the summaries.
I disclaim all characters and places as they belong to Disney and Square Enix, NOT ME. This does exclude the characters that I have created, i.e Keter.
Shadow Feather
Shadow Feather begins with Sephiroth floating in pure darkness, something I have named myself as the Nexus. His original world, the Planet, was destroyed by Heartless shortly after he was defeated by his nemesis Cloud (go play Final fantasy 7 if you don't know who that is. Also be slapped.).
He comes to his senses, alone, naked and only holding his treasured katana Masamune. After some time, he is assaulted by Heartless and his heart is ripped from his body. Before it can be devoured by Heartless, he takes it back and saves himself. It is later revealed that this incident made his heart very unstable.
He defeats an enormous group of Heartless and hears a mysterious voice, Xehanort's Heartless, Ansem at the time, in his head. He settles down and communes with his own thoughts to wage a mental battle against the intruder. He defeats Ansem and is transported to Hollow Bastion.
When he reaches Hollow Bastion, he meets with the Disney villains who are discussing their plans with Sora. He finds out that Cloud is alive from Hades and threatens to kill the whole group. He is beaten by sorcery and nearly killed but Masamune (I consider it to have a mind of its own) saves him. Hades decides to make a deal with him to kill Hercules in order to take Sephiroth to the coliseum.
On their trip, A heartless makes a shallow cut on Sephiroth's shoulder and a wing forms there. This seems insignificant, but this is actually the "Birth" of Sephiroth's first Nobody, Keter. You don't know it at the time.
Sephiroth arrives at the coliseum in time to witness the first tournament. Sora and Cloud fight and Sora gets his ass handed to him. Cloud seems to have gotten weaker though, and Sephiroth deems him unworthy, leaving him in Hades hands after he scares the crap out of the god. He then leaves for Hollow Bastion once again.
When he gets there, he is in time to see Maleficent speaking with Riku. He sees something strange about Riku and ultimately believes that he is from the Planet, as opposed to Destiny Islands.
Sephiroth secludes himself in the library where he meets Axel. The two of them fight while Axel shares information of who and what Riku is. Riku is apparently, the last experiment of Hojo and was transported to Destiny Islands as a child. Hojo gave himself to the darkness in order to send him there.
Sephiroth decides that he cares about Riku, almost like a son, and struggles with his new feelings. He eventually returns to the meeting room of the Disney villains in time to see Maleficent give Riku the ability to control the Heartless. He recognizes the risk and nearly kills Maleficent in anger. He decides to look after Riku and protect him from whatever he can.
Sephiroth heads to Traverse Town to meet with Sora. Instead of Sora, he meets up with Leon and kicks some Heartless butt. Yuffie and Cid show up and try to kill him. Sephiroth, being a good guy now, is about to let himself be killed in order to atone for his sins, when Aerith intervenes. Aerith forgives him after he realizes that protecting people is important and decides to help in any way he can. He even decides that he wants to help Cloud. Sephiroth creates the One Winged Angel keychain in order to assist Sora in bringing Riku to his senses.
Sephiroth returns to Hollow Bastion in time to hear Riku gaining more powers and getting closer to the darkness. Sephiroth can't stop Maleficent because other members of the Organization are keeping him out. Zexion and Lexaeus try to kill him but fail and leave after Riku gets more power. Sephiroth beats Maleficent senseless and starts searching the castle for Riku.
He runs into Ansem, who reveals his plan to him, and also sends him to agrabah to play with some Kurt Zisa. Sephiroth has a difficult time with them, nearly dies, and gets saved by Mickey. Mickey says some cryptic stuff and sends Sephiroth back to Hollow Bastion.
Sephiroth arrives during the first battle of Riku and Sora where Sora gets his keyblade back. Riku gets beaten and Seph follows him. He runs into the Organization again who stall him and try to kill him. He fights for a bit with Axel, lexaeus, and larxene. When they are done, they vanish.
Riku has already been taken over by Ansem. Ansem-Riku pierces Sephiroth's heart with the black keyblade thing and turns him into a Heartless. Not known at the time, this also fully shatters his Heart, creating the possibility for multiple Nobodies. You learn this at the end of Angel Memories. Sephiroth reaps havoc in Traverse Town until he gets changed back by Mickey.
Sephiroth enters a tournament to give his keychain to Sora. He fights Sora and sees his potential. He lets Sora win. Then he meets up with Cloud who is the only person who hasn't forgiven him. He fights Cloud and before either one can kill one another, he transports him to the Nexus and drops him off in Hollow Bastion to meet up with Aerith. Cloud doesn't know why.
Shadow Feather ends with Sephiroth floating in the darkness.
Angel Memories
Sephiroth ends up with Riku and Mickey on the other side of the door that KH ends with. He finally talks with Riku who realizes who he is and they run into the last fragments of Ansem. Sephiroth fights him and everyone gets beaten and then transported to Castle Oblivion. Sephiroth meets with the Enigmatic Man, not knowing who he is and learns some strange things about Nobodies.
At mostly alternating chapters, Sephiroth either faces difficult memories in the rooms of Castle Oblivion or fights a member of the Organization in the hallway. A summary is redundant so here are some basic things.
Vexen, being a scientist, is fascinated with Sephiroth and causes him the most emotional pain, especially when he talks about making the Riku Clone.
Axel is annoyed with Sephiroth for being there and doesn't like how Sephiroth is rebelling against his memories because it hurts Namine.
Namine is using Sephiroth to find a balance between his old self (selfish and cold) and his new personality (only caring about others and not himself). She accomplishes this by making him relive terrible memories and relearning that not all people are worth saving.
Sephiroth really identifies with the Riku Replica, and his existence causes him a lot of grief.
At the end, Sephiroth relives the memory of Nibelheim. In the end of the memory, he realizes that protecting others is important, but his own survival does come first. He personally kills his memory of Cloud.
After that, Namine transports Sephiroth to Deep Dive City (I don't remember the real name) where two more of his Nobodies are "born," creating the two new wings that he has in KH2. He watches them and learns that Keter, the leader of his nobodies, has been around ever since the first chapter over a year ago. The two new nobodies are named, Binah being the female, Chokhmah being the male. They discover him and try to kill him but he is saved by Namine.
Namine explains to him who those people were, and the fact that he has an incredibly unstable heart that is broken into pieces. The pieces all orbit an unnatural phenomenon called the Ain Soph, a light found in his Heart with incredibly destructive powers. The real Ansem reveals to Sephiroth that sleeping in one of the memory tanks may help recover his heart, but everyone will forget who he is. And he must give his heart to someone else for safekeeping.
Sephiroth decides that it is for the better that people forget him and decides to give his heart to cloud while he is out of commission. He feels bad because it's a burden for him but it must be done.
Angel Memories ends with Sephiroth falling asleep and everyone forgetting him.
So that is the summary, not bad making the summary of two stories in the span of a regular sized chapter. I'm undoubtedly leaving stuff out that's probably important, so I would very much suggest reading back to the other two before reading this, but I wont blame you if you don't. So these first three chapters are already written, prewritten, so there aren't authors notes on the next two. Hope you enjoy.