Summary: After defeating Sephiroth at the Northern Crater, Avalanche finds themselves stuck in a world of the past, but without them. The choices are obvious to some, but not so for others. Time Travel.

Chapter 1 - The Earth Goes Around

The green light flooded their surroundings as they watched the world irreversibly change before their eyes. They had won the war against Shinra, against Sephiroth, against the destruction of the planet. The piercing glow of the Lifestream did not scorch their eyes. It was like the woman who summoned it.

It washed away the world for each warrior on that cliff. It was quiet. The blowing wind and crumbling rocks were silenced as a peaceful lull cleansed their surroundings. It was not hauntingly eerie to them. They smiled or laughed or stared at the green with a proud glimmer in their eyes.

The world was safe.

As the world grew darker once again, they could see each others, but they saw her. Their friend, their confidant, their sister, their friend was luminescent in the greying surroundings. She met their eyes, filled with emotions, and began to smile.

The world froze. They stared at the woman who was paused in her familiar brave air and tried to reach her.

No no no...

A sound of broken glass pierced the desolate atmosphere.

Aeris!

Tifa woke with a start in the Nibelheim cemetery. Although the town burned to a crisp that fateful day, the distant graveyard escaped from Sephiroth's rampage, but not Shinra's interference. She absently noted the lack of cameras and the smell of autumn leaves in the air. It was late summer, but Nibelheim wore the seasons early sometimes.

She made a mental note to ask Aeris, a cemetery, really, girl?, sometime in the future, but it was time to find her friends.

She looked around the cemetery from her position in the Lockhart section, which she only noticed after nearly tripping over granduncle Albertus' priggish gravestone. She swept her gaze until her eyes reached a blond nest of hair in the smallest, shadowy corner.

He was standing with his head bent down staring at a gravestone.

Cloud... I won't let you suffer alone.

She would promise at least that to herself.

As she approached, he looked up to meet her eyes. His eyes were not filled with a familiar grief, but a stunned confusion.

"Tifa, look at my gravestone."

His? She looked and immediately understood why he looked as he did. That day of death... this wasn't right at all.

Cloud Strife

XXXX 1986 - XXXX 1995

"What?" If Cloud was supposedly dead in this world, then...

She turned quickly and rushed to the Lockhart's area. She dimly knew that Cloud was following her. In less than a minute, the two found the gravestone. It grimly met their expectations.

Garbage.

Red XIII immediately leaped off the dumpster he found himself on and swore to himself to get a bath. But, first of all, business.

Business like Midgar. Why was Midgar whole? He saw no signs of torn metal structures or shredded concrete.

A depressing thought crept up his spinal cord and he began to dig through a relatively clean pile with bits of paper. Newspapers, forms, and other magazines all bearing the same range of dates. It was 1997. The Wutai War raged at its fiercest. Shinra was rapidly augmenting its military and economic strength. He was in a dumpster.

If this really was the past, he needed to...

If Aeris really wanted to send them back home, she could have said something or not done that weird video game glitch. She'll say her greetings to Dad and his stuffy advisors and then run off again to find the others.

Just to check on them really!

She didn't really get why Aeris left her at Mom's incense-smelly death shrine, but even superpowered flower girls had accuracy issues with sending people at home. It wasn't really that big of a thing anyways. She needed to say her greetings anyways.

Mom... I've had a lot of adventures lately... I'll tell you all about them right now! You'll get to hear them before Dad does, heh!

She spun around and plopped down. "So I met this blond-" This wasn't right. She was right here in the living breathing flesh - Yuffie Kisaragi - the best ninja ever! Jeez, Dad probably worried his mustache off about the last battle and set up a whole funeral already. It was just weird that he would toss away Mom's stuff though.

She heard footsteps outside the shadowy room. They were... heading towards the entrance. She could make out a woman's dress through the door and leapt up quickly on the rafter as the door slid open. A servant? No, the shrine was cleaned already. It was a woman she only saw in pictures.

Mom?

The woman collapsed onto the floor in front of the shrine. She was not weeping, but from the tone of her sweet voice, she harbored a deep grief.

"Yuffie, I'm sorry your father wasn't able to join us today. He promised to you that after what Shinra did to you, he would protect Wutai, you know? I'm sorry about this whole chaos, but when the war ends, we can bring your memory to a peaceful rest. He'll be fine. You've never seen him fight, but your father is very strong and he loves you and Wutai very much. Sorry for bringing up these old worries, but... trust in us."

The Wutai War is still going on? What happened to everyone then? If Mom survived that Shinra assassin, then... then... I didn't? Shinra... I can't forgive them then.

She waited for her Mom to leave the room. It was a painful time filled with apologies. It was Shinra's fault for her Mom's grief, her country's ruin, her death. She defeated monsters, angels, demons, and even gods. She would lay to rest her parents' mourning and protect Wutai as a vengeful ghost.

Mom... please don't apologize. I'll make things fine.

He never believed in gods or religion or spirits, but if this was karma for a mission burying a Shinra rival alive back in his Turk days, he probably deserved that. That Aeris woman probably teleported him here or not, but the important part was that he had to unbury himself. He had his material still equipped to his bracer and picked through the options in his minds.

Fire, no. Ice, maybe. Thunder, no. Quake, maybe. Goblin Punch from the Monster Skill materia seemed to work the best. It was cramped, but he'd been through worse. He never met her, the flower girl, but she didn't seemed to be the type to purposely drop him off in a coffin around two feet below the ground. It's probably hard teleporting everyone to safety while saving the world.

He punched upwards against the floor's bottom. It blew away the layers around his torso and he quickly cursed himself for his luck. The ground below was weaker than he believed. Of course the Shinra mansion didn't follow basic standards of construction. He sighed and decided to summon a friend when two familiar people lifted him up and away.

He raised an eyebrow at them. Both looked mildly stunned at his situation for a moment before settling their faces into the "We're horrified, but we have bad news too" faces.

The townspeople, the nosy useless gossips they were, hovered around him in a crowd. Yes, he found himself lying on the ground a few minutes ago back in Rocket Town, but did they have to herd like stupid lumbering cows? He just saved the damn world and this is what he gets - stunned looks, weird glances, and 'Didn't he die?'

He was breathing fine! You leave for a bit to help out a bunch of loonies and then everyone is one. Where was Shera when he needed her and a stiff drink?

Ah, there she was. She looked stunned, sniffly, and a hell of a lot younger. She opened her mouth and said stiffly "Cid? How are you- I saw you die yesterday! The rocket exploded and I couldn't- couldn't."

She burst into tears, while Cid couldn't burst into curses or say anything, he didn't know what the fucking hell he got himself into either?

Time to clean out the trash then.

Reeve sighed to himself as he separated the trash can to gather the edges of the plastic bag. He just threw away a ton of wasted blueprints from half of the executive board and his latest prototype of Cait Sith, which spontaneously exploded for some weird engineering issues.

"Howdy!" The fully functional grinning cat popped out from the pit of papers, coffee cups, and broken gears - scaring a year or two from his life span. Cait Sith is functional? It jumped out and a gray blob followed it. That's functional too?

As Reeve took in some much-needed oxygen, he watched the functioning robots find a newspaper and scanned its detail. "Ah, that makes sense! Let's talk."

What does? I'm pretty sure nothing does.

"We don't want you here."

"Alright, alright, you indecisive lunatics. I'm leaving!"

You would think after saving the tent city from a bunch of Shinra goons, stopping a world destroying meteor, and punching some executives in the face, people would show some forgiveness.

Nope! Just two weeks after grabbing the Huge Materia here, everyone changed their tunes to "Never come back here again, Barrett" from "Let's work together to rebuild our home." The life.

He needed to get back to Marlene, to his friends, to home.

But, first of all, he might as well help the world out by cleaning up some things here. He would have thought that after all that weird Lifestream business, the reactors would have shut down, but Aeris seemed pretty busy already, so he couldn't fault her forgetting or leaving him at that desert cliff, where so many hopes and dreams went wrong.

Author's Note:

Some inspirations for this story -

1. Sinnatious' "The Fifth Act"

2. Youtube - Sephiroth vs. Yuffie / Tifa / Cid / Vincent / etc. (Solo). Hey, if you can kill Sephiroth's God form with anyone not Cloud, everyone can beat him up in 1997 (two years before Wutai War ended). If they choose to beat him up is 1 question, but there's no power differences between any of the cast. There might be some winners and losers based on strategy and experiences, but they're all Level 99, super buff, stacked with Hero Drinks and mastered material

3. No Angst! Cloud