Disclamer: don't own shite, dammit.

Chapter 1

Half-finished bottle of beer

Halfway down to death

'Can dead guys come back?' – Cid.

There was nothing out of the ordinary here at the Northern Crater, not that it had ever been just an average, run-of-the-mill landmark to begin with. Cid pressed his lips onto the cigarette and inhaled deeply. He exhaled seconds later, taking his time in releasing the smoke into the already thick air through his purse lips. 'Normal' here was to be used in the loosest sense of the word.

'Wonderful, just wonderful,' he mumbled out loud. 'Oi, you down there! Can you find anything?'

Cid was feeling particularly vexed about all of this, and the man was usually vexed anyway. Standing here, looking down at the lifestream spring that was far beneath his feet, he felt something had rubbed him the wrong way, like spilling your tea onto the kitchen floor while you're about to sip it, or stepping on something cold and sludgy and smelling it through your skin. Maybe it was the sheer height between the cliff edge, where Cid was, and the undulating current in the inlet, where the lifestream was, that was bothering him. At any given time, he would delight to soar in the skies in his great plane. He had even been in outer space, where the miles in distance were several dozens of digits and numbers, distance so vast that it could diminish one human being and nobody would notice; but here he was, standing on a fledgling precipice, and he was feeling an acute sense of vertigo.

'I said, you found anything yet?' He bellowed at the hapless men of his unit at the other end of this cavernous room inside the crater. Incompetent bastards, Cid thought darkly.

'No, sir, none whatsoever! My meter here's not picking up anything on the rock bed that you wouldn't see anywhere else!' An enthusiastic looking boy answered.

'Then get over here, and see to the spring!'

Just where was that stupid ninja girl? This was clearly her sort of assignment, he frowned, then frowned even more when he belatedly realized that he was the one with the airship. His men scrambled near to where he was with their mako and whatnot detection devices. Cid watched them disinterestedly slicing the meters through the air, holding them out this way and that with a look of anxiety and intent concentration. So I make the bastards nervous? He thought. Tough! This seemed to have gotten on his nerves even more. He had always been under the impression that he was such an efficient and pleasant man to work for.

A different youth repeatedly looked at his mako instrument then around the large jagged, stony walls in careful appraisal. Automatically, this caught Cid's attention. So that one's found something, huh.

'Sir! The air in this section of the crater is infused with a large amount of diluted mako. My meter's been picking it up ever since we were within a 2-mile radius of the source. I've never seen anything like it, the trace of mako tends to drifts off from wherever it's hidden, but not this much!' The boy was shouting with obvious astonishment on his face.

Cid nodded approvingly. Rather than stubbing out his charred cigarette onto the earth, he took out from his left pocket a brilliantly shining fire materia, and with a mere glance at the tiny globe, singed the remains of his used cigarette into almost imperceptible black bits. It didn't feel right littering on this ground. There was indeed something else infused into this place: namely how being in this large, nature-formed chamber could inspire in him terrible dread and concrete trepidation. All who fear the lord. He was briefly lost in deep, troubling contemplation, which was of-course stupid, oh so fucking stupid- because Sephiroth was dead. Dead guys don't come back. For the third time…, he thought wryly. So he rummaged in his coat pocket to retrieve another cigarette and deftly lighted it with the materia in his other hand; all of this was done with practiced adeptness, as if he was doing it for the umpteenth time. Which he was.

'Yeah, you got that right. What's your crude evaluation?' He said to the boy that had spoken up just now, wanting to gauge his interpretation of the situation.

'That something's happened here. I'd say something similar to a huge tidal wave of mako rose up from the lifestream and tunneled through our immediate zone and its vicinity,' he answered without hesitation.

The other 6 people paid attention to this, and they were looking at the boy with disbelief, some with cynicism.

Smart, Cid thought.

Before this mission got under way, those who had alerted his attention to this phenomenon, namely Reeves, then later on Red XII, had told him only the minute of details about what was happening. They had informed him of the unusual lifestream upsurge occurring in the Northern Crater, and asked him to conduct an investigation into it, reporting to them anything that was out of character in the area. The men under his charge had been briefed on even less information regarding the background of this incident. It would have had been nice for Red to have told him what it was specifically that he should be on the lookout for. On the surface, he was just out on a standard inspection assignment, but Cid had his suspicions.

Maybe they trusted in his intuition. Maybe they thought he could figure it out his own. Still, should've told him, though- this reeked of mild insult, he brooded with a wounded look on his face.

'Right, people. We're going to split into 2 units of 4,' Cid ordered. 'Rifles at the ready, we're gonna take a little walk around the area. Look out for anything that you deem out of place: monsters acting weird, fluctuating mako level in the area, a psychopath emerging from the lifestream etc etc. That sort of thing.'

Perhaps he should have omitted the last bit out, as there was a general puzzled 'do you get it?' look amongst his men.

'The critters here are nothing to poke fun of, I'll say. So avoid confrontation if possible, but remember that you are armed for a reason.' Abruptly, Cid's brows knotted together even more and he groaned in frustration, 'why the fuck, they didn't send me more people only Gaia knows!' The men in his outfit were capable former SOLDIERS alright, but the Northern Crater was an infamously evil and immense place, and the creatures residing here equally evil and ferocious.

'I think I can be of help to your current plight,' said a dark shadow stalking out of the darkness of the archway that turned out to be Vincent Valentine. Stepping out behind him were several WRO personnel.

After a long, fairly strenuous day, Cid sat down with a bottle of cold beer. Just holding its neck in his hand was a comforting sensation enough. He then proceeded to pop the cap off with his teeth, the gush of compressed air from the open bottle and the satisfying little sound that accompanied it were just music to Cid's ears. Today had been a long day.

Vincent entered the cockpit where Cid was situated in, and promptly sat next to him on the co-pilot seat They were all back on his airship now, including Vincent and his men. As callous as he could be at times, Cid showed that he, too, could be an accommodating host; after all, they were playing for the same goal and were old companions. Even though Vincent was stationed at a base nearby for the duration of this mission, his Highwind was much closer in proximity to the Crater.

'When are you people gonna start letting me in the loop, huh?' Cid necked his beer in obvious relish, nonetheless he kept questioning Vincent with his eyes. 'Oh man, that was fucking exquisite! Can you honestly tell me that there's anything better than a cold beer after a rough day?'

Vincent looked at him with a face that seemed to say, I can name plenty.

'But in all seriousness, you gotta start telling me something sometimes, you idio- uhh—Vincent.' For this, Cid gave an apologetic look. He had long ago thought everybody's name was idiot- old habits died hard. He continued, 'like how you were gonna join in for this little exploration gig we have going on here. You people don't keep me clued in. Honest to Gaia, it hurts sometimes! Where's the communication?'

'I did tell you. I believe you were inebriated at the time,' Vincent replied dryly.

'Occupational hazards!' Cid guffawed. Then he took a big gush of beer from the bottle. 'I need to wind down after a hard day's work. You know how it is.'

Again, Vincent stared at him with a blank expression. He turned away to look though the airship window, but he was unable to make out anything in the impenetrable darkness. All the while, Cid was contentedly drinking out of his beer bottle. The sudden silence that had befallen indicated that it was laden with unsaid words. They were both deep in thought.

The younger-looking man was the first one to speak, 'I'm not certain of what is happening either. Up until now, I had been occupied in surveying other areas not far from our Northern Crater post.' He turned to Cid as he was talking.

'What other areas?' Cid questioned.

'There are inlets, fissures of various sizes that spread all over the Planet, connecting to the Lifestream. I was asked to examine a number of them in proximity to the Crater,' Vincent answered.

Growling, Cid ventured conspiratorially, 'Something's not being said.'

'I wonder.'

Cid's mouth moved as if to speak, but then he stopped, instead his gaze was directed downwards to his translucent brown bottle that he held in both of his hands. He looked like he was examining it with some sort of curiosity, but his eyes held a vacant, blank gloss. With more intensity, he continued to scrutinize it. Vincent knew that his thoughts were somewhere further away. And he was right; Cid thought of the Crater as his eyes were kept on the round opening of the bottle, he thought about how the fragile bottle resembled the shape of a volcano, its beer just a moving outline of clear liquid. Cid imagined that it wasn't a beverage in there, but something much worse, something that had a potential to erupt without warning, sending out pernicious seeds and destruction. This image called him back to the moment he was standing on the edge of the precipice that descended a substantial distance down to the Lifestream spring, only this time he was dangerously close to falling off. Some small rocks would be plunging down first, taking some time to reach the bottom, finally being enveloped by the stream, leaving no trace of their existence behind. He remembered he had watched the flow of the mako river today imagining the exact same scene. The Lifestream current had appeared to be flowing without any conception of time then- perpetual, endless. The more he had watched it the more he was drawn into its hypnotizing grip. And in that surreal trance he had been able to visualize Sephiroth emerging from the thick layer of the stream: because in that timeless realm of the Lifestream, anything was possible.

Vincent's voice interrupted Cid's reverie as if someone had jolted him from a dream, so unconcerned was he to the present reality, 'What seems to be troubling you?'

'Sephiroth's back,' he said.

'Why do you say that?' Vincent asked in a hushed voice.

'Oh shit, even that's too horrible to say!' Cid thought he had lost all appetite for his cold beverage. 'I was thinking now, you know, that Reeves and Red probably share that same sentiment: they didn't want to tell us anything, because they didn't want to believe it themselves. You know how sometimes you keep quiet about something because you don't want it to be real.' He looked down at his beer bottle then fluidly leaned over to the side and put it down on the floor. It stood there neglected by his feet half-emptied. 'Why do I say it? Because I just feel it,' he took a moment to glance at Vincent. 'The guy's an aberration of nature.'

It was plain to see that Cid's revelation had troubled the other man. Vincent held a pained expression on his face. 'I didn't want to acknowledge it, but I had a hunch that something awful such as this was imminent in coming.'

'It's funny—ok, not so funny—but we've killed him twice. I mean, can dead guys come back? Well, for the third time,' Cid looked as if he was chewing this over. 'Ok, I see my own point.'

'I'm worried about Cloud, Cid,' Vincent looked at him straight in the eyes and maintained his gaze for a long time. 'If—,' he paused. 'If you and I are sensing 'his' return, then I can't imagine what Cloud is going through.'

They didn't have to think about it, everyone in their circle was positive of the knowledge that Cloud and Sephiroth possessed some kind of connection to one another, as warped and ominous as that may be.

'I'm sure the little guy will be alright,' Cid placated, affecting a grin. 'He's tough, that one.' But he doubted the sureness of his words.

Cloud was dreaming. In his dream, he was falling. But no matter how long time had seemed to be passing, he could not hit the ground. It wasn't that he wouldn't hit the ground, he simply couldn't hit the ground. The sensation of plummeting through the air or some other kind of dream-like fiber was very manifest to him, but he felt as if he was suspended in time. Time ceased to hold any notion at this instantaneous present.

To conquer time is to conquer everything else, he heard someone speak in a voiceless transmission of exchange. Mindspeak, he thought vaguely.

And there Cloud was, trapped in a far-removed world, forever descending halfway to his death.