There was one SOLDIER named Sephiroth, who was better than the rest. But when he found out about the terrible experiments that made him, he began to hate ShinRa. And then, over time, he began to hate everything. ShinRa, and the people against them. Sephiroth, who hated the planet so much that he wanted to make it go away. And the people who tried to stop him. There were a lot of battles. For every battle, there was more sadness. Someone I loved went back to the Lifestream too. And then it came; the chosen day. In the end, the Planet itself had to make the battle stop for good. The Planet used the Lifestream as a weapon and when it burst out of the earth, all the fighting, all the greed and sadness, everything was washed away. Sadness was the price to see it end. It's been five years since they told me that.

–Marlene Wallace

When he went for his annual visit to the Forgotten Capital, the absolute last thing Cloud Strife expected to see was what greeted him when he reached the pool where Aeris had met her end. Suspended in midair above the altar was a nearly spectral figure, attired almost identically to his old enemy, the former Silver General–in fact, he might well have confused the figure for Sephiroth if not for the fact that his long, lustrous hair was the almost fluorescent black of a raven's feathers, more so than the lack of pauldrons, the turtleneck he wore and the absurdly broad wings of scarlet light that sprouted from his back and presumably kept him sustained in his levitation. In the figure's left hand was a sword that was like and unlike the dreaded Masamune–it, too, was an ōdachi, with a black hilt that was about half a meter long and an elegantly curved silver blade that was another three. Decorating it was a design of a dragon, in painstaking detail, such that it almost appeared to writhe along the obviously lethal length of silvery metal. Glowing scarlet eyes fixed upon his, with pupils the shape of slits and irises that suffered no shadow nor reflected any light or image: they were intent, yes, but somehow conveyed a deeply-held boredom full of contempt.

The figure descended slowly, his knee-high black leather wing-tipped boots alighting gracefully upon the surface of the pool, generating a single, solitary, uninterrupted ripple upon its face, the long tails of his ankle-length black leather coat billowing out with his descent. When he spoke, his voice was a cool, musical bass that reverberated eerily throughout the chamber. "Where is he?"

"I…I'm sorry?" asked Cloud, fighting to break free of his dazed surprise.

In one instant, the figure was in the center of the pool, and in the next, he was right beside Cloud, his blade against the blond's throat. "Where…is…he?" asked the figure, the bored calm of his voice turned deadly. "I shall not ask again…Cloud." The way that the mysterious man said his name was so much like the way he said it that Strife shivered inadvertently.

"Who?" the blond managed at last.

"Don't play dumb with me, Strife. I have not the patience to bandy words with an unofficial third-class SOLDIER comprised of the power of a first-class and a chocobo-headed reject," spat the unnaturally pale man. After a moment, he rolled his eyes and huffed in profound irritation."The Starcaller, you imbecile!"

Something clicked in Cloud's head. The Starcaller… There was only one who was worthy of that title: the man–the monster, thought Strife–who had somehow mastered the Black Materia and called down Meteor upon the Northern Crater, seeking to damage the Planet and use the Lifestream from the local world-wound to achieve godhood. The creature whom he had twice killed:

The legendary Silver General, Sephiroth.

"Sephiroth…" he whispered.

"Yes. Sephiroth Crescent is whom I seek, and you will tell me where he is, puppet, or I shall kill you…" The figure's strange eyes, at the same time similar and altogether different from those of the gunslinger, Vincent Valentine, widened almost imperceptibly. "Ah. Dead then, I take it?" he asserted with an edge of disappointment in his voice. He removed the blade of his ōdachi stiffly from the two-hander's throat, twirling it through the air before wiping phantom blood from it and sheathing the weapon into a saya only long enough for a katana, though it somehow fit. "That's really quite unfortunate… I seriously didn't want to have to deal with the red mage…" The man walked past Cloud, the clacking sound of the heels of his boots hitting against the stone floor of the cave echoing throughout the cavernous city as he made for the exit with an unerring sense of direction.

Strife shook off his surprised and hateful daze, pivoting on his heel and racing through the city to try and catch up with the entity who was now leaving–an entity that he was growing increasingly sure was a bad idea to release. "Hey, stop!" he called. "Stop!" Becoming more desperate and frustrated, Cloud brought the Fusion Swords out of their scabbard on his back, gripping it tightly, assuming his best battle-stance and charging the creature with the approximate shape of a man, his war cry ringing throughout the halls.

A flash of silver…

Finding himself suddenly on his backside, propped up and slouching against the wall of one of the houses the ancient Cetra had inhabited, the Fusion Swords now falling to embed themselves into the rock of the cave with a clang and a keening, cleaving sound, Cloud absently dabbed the fingers of his gloved hand against the deep, gaping wound that had suddenly appeared across his chest from his left hip to his right shoulder, noting with a strange sense of disconnection that the bones of his ribcage had suddenly been exposed. He struggled to regain his wits, but what he saw stopped him cold.

The figure stood there, his ōdachi raised in the air in the grip of a single hand at the angle that the alleged ex-SOLDIER would hazard a guess to be the angle that the blade had reached upon exiting the wound, his face (that Cloud suddenly noticed exceeded the human capability of perfection to an unnatural degree) shrouded in shadow, though a pair of what he supposed were eyes, but appeared to be twin pinpoints of scarlet fire, glowing out of his obscured visage, as unobstructed as when his face had been visible. Those eyes seemed to be boring holes into him, glaring contemptuously even as the killing intent in them faded.

"Your arrogance is quite boorish, boy," he admonished mockingly. "She allows you to maintain it and the illusion associated to your detriment, methinks. But it is no matter; bottom line, otaku-kun, do not challenge a swordsman with your delusions of grandeur if you value your life." The kissaki of the blade was lowered slowly to point towards the ground, and then the blade was twirled through the air, cleaned of the very real blood that now clung to it, and once again sheathed. He turned around once more, his back facing the blond as he walked to the threshold of the exit. There he glanced at Cloud over his shoulder, his eerie scarlet eyes still glowing in the darkness and fully visible as a result. "The name's Olliver, by the way. Olliver Cronqvist. But you can call me…Æbel, let's say. Yes, that should do nicely. Goodbye, Cloud. Don't follow me. Releasing Binding Coil Two."

With that, he turned back towards the open desert lit by moonlight, the scarlet wings of light that at some point had disappeared emerging from his back and unfurling to their full span–Cloud guestimated eleven or twelve meters–crouched, his wings shooting up in the air, and leapt, the strange appendages propelling him upwards with a powerful stroke down, and with another such stroke in midair, he flew with speed greater than any bird and a great many airplanes across the sky, and was gone in an instant.

The wound knitted itself closed relatively quickly, and when the blond could move again, he picked up his cell phone and dialed frantically the one person he knew he could turn to in times of crisis, as he feared this one had just become.

"You've reached the Seventh Heaven. This is Tifa Lockheart speaking," came the response on the other end of the line.

Cloud exhaled in relief. "Tifa! It's Cloud."

"…Cloud?"

"Yes. Listen, Tifa. I'm at the Forgotten Capital. I think I've just made a huge mistake. I think…I think I just released something terrible."

"…again?"

He huffed in exasperation. "Yes, again."

A few hours later and several hundred kilometers away, the Vampire King alighted upon the rim of the entrance to a cavern that temporarily housed his target, folding and retracting his wings into his back as he unsheathed his beloved, legendary magical weapon, and allowed a small portion of his power to flow into the blade, lengthening it into its ōdachi form. His footsteps were nearly silent as he tread upon the rocky ground, his gait graceful as ever, his bearing at once regal and predatory. His target was at once paranoid and impulsive, meaning that in order to accomplish his objective with a minimum of both time and collateral damage, he would need to be ready should the target become…unwieldy.

The blade of his cherished sword shifted a lock of vibrant, fiery red hair from a clearly-sleeping face, the cold touch of the enchanted silver, magnified by its master's dislike for the man he was here to contact, making him shift in his sleep, but not awaken. Rolling his eyes upwards to simultaneously curse and plead with the heavens, the Lord of the Elder Council nudged the sleeping man's side, and when he moaned instead of rose, he delivered a far more savage kick to the same area, sending the red mage sprawling across the ground as he received a rather rude awakening, drawing and readying his rapier as his blue eyes, still blurry with sleep, swept the room, betraying the fact that he was both bewildered and shaken to be so disturbed.

"'Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess,'" quoted the immortal. "'We seek it thus and take to the skies. Ripples form on the water's surface. The wandering soul knows no rest.' How very devout of you. But you know, even Minerva has her limits, especially when it comes to the souls of the ancient Cetra, adrift in the Lifestream. And oh, how the Cetra do bay for your blood…Genesis Rhapsodos."

"You…who are you? How do you know me?" asked the man formerly known as the Crimson Commander, confusion now added to the list of the woes from which he was currently suffering, and thus adding to the list of reasons for him to be thoroughly, properly and resoundingly pissed. "How… How did you find me?!"

"Of course, being directly responsible for the mental state of the High Summoner's consort, which, in turn, led to her death, the deck's kind of stacked against you from the start in that arena, dear Gen," continued the vampire, as if Genesis had not spoken, which fanned the rapidly growing flames of his famous temper. "As I told the otaku who thinks he's a SOLDIER, my name is Æbel. And I'm here to give you a chance to fix your greatest error–or, at least, to make amends for it."

"'Æbel,' huh?" said Genesis, even as he readied his materia. "Well then, Æbel, no offense, but I'm getting pretty sick of your voice!" At this, he lobbed an overpowered Firaga at the black-clad man, but the spell was sliced in half with a keening, pseudo-metallic wail, the cloven parts of it exploding on either side of the man as he stood there, composed as a statue, his arm holding his sword in the air at the completion of its arc.

"Believe me, Rhapsodos, the feeling is mutual," said he, lowering his sword once more, but keeping it ready. "Unfortunately, a certain chocobo-haired SOLDIER reject went and killed the one with whom I am supposed to converse, and would quite frankly much rather be conversing with presently. Thus, I need you. Specifically, I need you to cooperate with me. Do so, and perhaps the Cetra will revise their opinion of you. But Genesis, a hero was never made of one who wished the title. Get that through your thick skull right bloody now, and we'll get on just fine together."

"Why me?" Genesis asked glibly. "Too weak to do what you need to do on your own?"

"Hardly," he responded. "Why, you ask? Well, you're a very powerful red mage in your own right–of a talent that hasn't been seen in centuries–enough so that it would be foolish of me to leave you unleashed. Your delusions of grandeur might well reduce the most brilliant of my plans to smoking rubble, which would really be quite irritating. First. Second, you're an excellent diversionary tactician, and while I could do what I need to do directly, my client has asked for it to be relatively bloodless, and for that I need you…leashed, of course. Third, and most importantly, you had a connection to Sephiroth. A connection you abused, and to devastating effect. So it follows that in an attempt to resurrect him, you might prove instrumental."

"Is that it?" Genesis asked incredulously, throwing his arms out wide. "If you need someone who hurt him, why don't you use what's-his-name? Cloud Strife? He killed Sephiroth!"

"Is that what they told you?" he returned, his voice grown soft and pitying, though his luminescent scarlet gaze remained inscrutable. "Genesis, Cloud wasn't capable of killing Sephiroth. Sephiroth committed suicide."

The wind rushed out of Genesis's sails, and he crumpled, speechless.

"I…I'll do it."

Chaos stirred.

What is it? Vincent sent to the WEAPON.

{Something powerful just entered my perception,} grumbled Chaos. {Very powerful. As in, powerful enough to have destroyed Jenova without killing your son.}

This disturbed the gunslinger. What disturbed him further were the images that accompanied the sentiment: blood, screams, gunfire, immolation, and the terrible power of a Great Red Dragon. He stirred from his place on a cliff not far from Lucrecia's Cave, stepping forth to the edge of the ledge and staring up at the sky.

{Not another Calamity, Vincent,} sent Chaos in exasperation. {This one takes the form of Man. I can sense him, but…I don't want to. He's scary…} Vincent frowned. {By way of illustration, Omega wouldn't be able to harm a hair on this guy's head.}

Is there no way to defeat him? asked Vincent.

{The only one with enough power to do that, Vin, is dead,} the demon answered.

The former Turk's eyes flickered downwards.

{You know the one.}

Indeed he did.

His cellphone rang, and quick as a bullet, he flipped it up to his ear and answered it. "Cloud," he greeted coolly.

"Vincent, I'm sorry to ask this of you, but we've got a problem. Big time," said the blond without preamble. "There was something…something imprisoned in the Forgotten Capital. And I think I just let it loose."

"On my way," he replied simply, snapping the phone shut and secreting it away on his person; then, spreading his arms out wide, he fell, the snapping of bones and the tearing of flesh signifying his shift into the form of Chaos in mid-air. When the transformation was complete, the demon spread its wings and caught onto a gale of rushing wind, using it to buoy himself upwards and making for Edge City.

And so it begins.