The Misguided, Misread Quest of Sephiroth
Not owned but creatively influenced by Chronic Guardian, FullMentalPanic, and Fahiru
Ch. 1 Fan the Fumes
"I would like to be alone."
Zack shifted, trying to angle his head to look Sephiroth in the face. Silver bangs blocked eye contact and Zack straightened with a sigh.
"Alright, but if you change your mind I'll be over at the inn...or maybe somewhere in the mansion...or near that water tower in town, there was some funky stuff going on with that...or along that fork in the trail or exploring in the mountains...I might even go back to the reactor...I'll be around, okay?"
Sephiroth didn't answer.
"Yeah, well, see you soon?"
"..."
"Oh, remember it's Cloud's hometown – but don't tell anyone – he'll be hanging around the village. You can find him and I'll have let him know where I am, so then you'll be able to find me. Got it?"
"..."
"Yeah...you might want to be alone not down here, it smells kind of trippy. Remember to get your daily dose of sunlight okay, Sephiroth?"
"I would like to be alone."
"Fine, fine, I've got some Seven Wonders to investigate, see you around!"
Swift impacts thudded against the floor as Zack ran out of the room.
Finally. Silence hadn't been working, but reiterating himself seemed to do the trick.
Now he was alone.
…
"I don't want to be alone anymore."
He could read, that always made him feel better. Wait. No it didn't. That was why he was depressed right now. Maybe he should switch genres. What else did Professor Gast keep down here?
So far he'd examined the journals and compiled notes at the very beginning and very end of the library, but hadn't really examined anything in the middle.
He paced down the corridor lined with bookshelves. There had to be something in here that wasn't devoted to the heinous method of his creation. He picked up a tome at random.
Jenova cells have demonstrated an unceasing capacity to subjugate and convert the cells of the host body much in the manner of a virus...
Strike out. He dropped it to the floor and tried another.
...explosive regeneration with adherence to the original form of Jenova in the repaired tissue...
After seeing Jenova that was disturbing on a number of levels. He threw the book on top of the last one and tried again.
The Wondrous Works and Musings of Professor Hojo Concerning his Indispensable Role in the Jenova Project.
Certainly not.
Books were quickly piling up around him as he discarded them for their uncanny creepiness. Was there nothing not involved with horrendously applied science? His scrutiny paused over a paper-bound cover. Not a leather-bound journal, it had favorable points already.
Moonlight Conquests: Heat and Passion Under Starlit Skies.
…
This was in heavy contrast to everything else he'd looked at. He opened the front cover trying to find a clue as to how it had ended up here. A card of paper with dates was slipped inside; a library book...that had been checked out twenty-five years ago. The overdue fines must be astronomical.
If it was kept this long did that mean it was good? It looked slightly more appealing than everything else he'd picked up so far, he thought glancing up at the piles of discarded books.
He leaned against the wall and opened the soft cover to chapter one.
The First Meeting of Luscious Lips...
Sephiroth stumbled against one of the shelves and a few of the tomes sprawled to the floor. How could people stand to read this schlock? The horrifying paperback slipped from his senseless fingers, and he had an urge to put his gloves in an incinerator and then rinse his hands in bleach.
He was still entertaining the idea when harsh light suddenly dominated his vision. He blinked and the world slowly came back into distinction. Why had that happened? He slowly looked at his wrist, but it was as uncommunicative in regards to time as always. He really should get a watch. The walls were lacking in anything resembling a clock, how long had he been down here? He'd read the whole of that 'book', he was a complete and utter fool for hoping it would improve somewhere, and it didn't let him know how long it'd been. He did know that he was feeling ravenous and his throat was as dry as the wastelands.
He seemed to remember a small fridge tucked into one of the corners of the first room. He stalked forward to investigate. His head whirled as he opened the lightly pressurized door. Hadn't Zack said something about getting fresh air? That was sounding like a splendid notion at the moment. He'd grab something to stabilize him while going up all those stairs, and then he would step out for some sunshine.
Most of the packages in the fridge didn't even remotely resemble something he would consider eating. He poked through the squishy objects perturbedly until he found something that didn't look quite so experimental. He wasn't willing to try any of the questionably preserved fluids.
Unwrapped, the most promising item he'd unearthed from the fridge was nothing that would have passed a Midgar health inspection, but he'd had worse in the field. It tasted terrible. Slimy and bitter, with swirling aftertastes of sickly sweetness and oil. It was almost as bad as war rations.
He swallowed determinedly, and waited for the initial digestion to get some sugar back in his bloodstream. Any moment now, things would clarify at least a little bit and he could steady himself enough to leave. Any second now...
Everything plunged into darkness.
"...ephiroth."
Squinting with great dignity, Sephiroth cracked a gummy eye open. Zack was standing on the side of the wall flagrantly disobeying gravity. Wait. He sat up. Perceptively things made sense again. Physically he wanted to throw up.
"Have you been down here the whole time since Tuesday?"
Scrubbing at his face with one hand - stiff leather was irritating and unhelpful - he tried to prop himself up with the other. His fingers brushed against something and he glanced down. The lurid details of the front cover of Moonlight Conquests assaulted his eyes.
"Did you at least figure out what you wanted to?"
He pushed the shoddy novel away with a shudder and rose to his feet, "It's horrendous."
"Really? Want to talk about it?"
He paused, admitting, for whatever reason, that he'd been reading a sickeningly sentimental story was not something he wanted to discuss. Even the objects of his original perusal were preferable to what he'd been reading. He'd talk about that instead.
"Long ago, catastrophe struck this planet. Your ancestors survived by scurrying about and hiding in fear."
Zack wasn't interrupting, he must be buying it.
"The planet escaped certain doom through the sacrifice of the Cetra. After which, your kind would multiply and assume control as if nothing had happened." And spent their freedom writing sordid 'literature'. From that perspective he didn't particularly want to be grouped with them. "Now, the Cetra are but a memory that exists only within the pages of history."
"So what does that have to do with you?"
"Don't you see? There is Jenova, an Ancient unearthed from a 2000-year-old stratum. And then, there is the Jenova Project. The aim of the project was to create a human being with the powers of a Cetra. Thus, they created me."
"Created...?" exclaimed Zack, eyebrows inching toward his hairline
"According to everything documented here."
"Sounds like a load of hooey."
But it was better than that wretched book.
"I know you're an acclaimed and bonafide war hero, and seven different scents of shampoo waft in the breeze whenever you toss your hair, but you're still subject to B.O. You either need a shower or REALLY strong cologne."
"What you detect with your physical augmentation is not discernible to society at large."
"Sephiroth, I'm all the way across the room and I can smell you without trying. That's not SOLDIER enhancement, that's you needing to pay attention to hygiene. By the way, is there even a bathroom down here? And on that note, are you eating anything?"
He winced, thinking of the rancid slime he'd swallowed. "Yes."
"Are you eating enough?"
"It was more than sufficient."
Zack was looking far from convinced. "Anything else you wanted to look into down here?"
"No."
"You ready to leave then?"
"...Yes." What was the point of staying down here anyway? There was nothing decent to eat, the decor was depressing as well as disturbing, and nothing he found out was improving his quality of life.
Blearily contemplating walls that wouldn't come into focus, he decided it would be counterproductive to snap at Zack for steering him toward a grey blob that slid into the dimensions of the door out. As soon as he started moving decisively, the awareness that he couldn't remember the last time he'd drunk anything burst upon his tongue. Stepping through the cavern outside the lab, he grimaced as the walls of his throat and mouth grated dryly against each other.
"Doing alright?"
"Thirsty."
"Here."
He looked down at the bottle of water Zack was holding out.
"Where did you get that?"
"What good are pockets if you don't keep stuff in 'em?"
The water was cool against his throat, and he could feel the dry tissue relax under the liquid. The bottle was empty far too quickly.
"Have another."
He exchanged the empty container and took the waterline of the new one down to nothing before handing it back.
He wasn't feeling fantastic, but he was feeling better, and able to remain adequately poised on the way out of the basement, idly listening to Zack's casual chatter about Seven Wonders and what a fabulous cook Mrs. Strife was. He envied the homemade fare Zack had apparently been enjoying in plenty. Maybe he would be willing to share some leftovers.
"Speaking of food, you look hungry." Yet another pocket was delved in to produce a glossily packaged bar. One that was not Shinra produced.
He accepted it readily. "Do you always carry such things?"
"I usually have a problem making it to regularly scheduled meals," Zack grinned.
"Will that cause a problem?" he wondered, disheartened by the thought that perhaps he should return the last scraps of the protein bar instead of devouring them.
"Half my luggage was filled up with snacks, I have plenty. Besides, we're friends."
"..."
Zack turned to grin at him. "Right?"
"...Right."
As they continued around the curve of the staircase, light from the doorway in the mortar flashed across the edge of the Buster Sword. Sephiroth was suddenly conscious of the absence of six pounds and seven ounces of weight. He rocked to a halt.
"I forgot Masamune."
Zack leaned back over the threshold where the enclosed stairway gave way to the main manor. "You sure? I mean, you don't look like you're carrying it a lot of the time anyway."
"It is gone." He prepared to spiral in the opposite direction as he started down the stairs again.
"Wait - I mean...I guess you have to go and get it, it's just..."
Sephiroth looked up and across the tower room to where Zack half-knelt on the platform before the doorway, his head craned back toward the mansion. It would be selfish to require any more of his time. "Go on ahead."
"Nah," Zack swiveled around and leaped over the plummeting center of the room. Impressively, the stairs held up to the impact with only a muffled crunch. "We're not done yet, I'll stay 'till the end."
"I am capable."
"Top of your class," Zack affirmed with a touch of humor.
"I've also had many years of experience in moving Masamune from one place to another. Assistance is not necessary."
"I don't mind."
"I'm trying to be nice," he looked at Zack pointedly and raised a brow. "If you don't allow it, it might never happen again."
Zack laughed, and shook his head slowly. "Well, if you're sure?"
Sephiroth nodded.
"I'll see you at the inn then?"
"I think I'll avoid the village and the rural paparazzi," he said, thinking of the photographer who had shadowed them nearly to the reactor before the annoyance factor had progressed from manageable to professionally inhibiting, and he'd ordered the man back to town. As he wasn't fond of much in the northern area... "I'll circle around to the lands south of Nibelheim for a while."
"If I don't see you around town I'll look for you there then. Take care!"
Zack swooped up and out of the cylindrical corridor and Sephiroth turned carefully, testing his equilibrium for the descent, and stepped down. When he trod over to the ladder, he was reminding himself of his self-sufficiency and that he'd be able to use Masamune for support on the way up. It would have been nice if he'd had it now, because both his feet slipped off the rung he was stepping onto.
The thing to do in such a situation would be to grab onto the ladder with his hands. Unfortunately, reaching his arms didn't bring his hands to anything graspable, and the only thing he did make contact with was the side of the rocky shaft, as his head collided with it.
An awareness of being monstrously thirsty and extremely groggy were plying at his consciousness. It was one of his less preferred methods of waking up. It got pushed further down the list when he couldn't find a glass of water anywhere close to where he was lying. The movement also highlighted that he had quite a few undocumented bruises in addition to being parched and disoriented.
So here he was, uncomfortably prone at the bottom of a ladder with a cavern in between him and a questionably supplied lab in one direction and several flights of stairs to all of the mansion's amenities in the other. He rolled to one side, wondering if there could possibly be anything in the edible category that he'd missed from his first scavenging through the fridge, when he heard a splash. Ever since he'd started equipping healing materia he'd ceased to carry potions, which would have been quenching and restorative to his current state. However, he still had ethers.
Slowly he worked through his mental filing system to remember where he'd stashed the vials of liquid, then fumbled his way to the appropriate inner pocket. Ethers served to aid mental acuity for materia casting, however, the first thought that twirled in his brain after he'd downed the contents of two containers in quick succession was that maybe it didn't work so great on an empty stomach.
The slew of colors that suddenly crowded into his vision reminded him of that time Genesis had dragged him and Angeal to one of the gaudy displays devoted to Loveless in Sector Eight. He blinked in protest against the tackiness, but the vibrant swirls stayed in place even with his eyes closed.
On the other hand, he felt that he'd suddenly gained some enlightened insight on Genesis' literature sessions. All the logical issues he'd usually raised with the values Genesis ranted about had been booted to the wayside, and youth inducing, unencumbered poetry reined supreme! It was really so much deeper, but simpler, and more complicated than Genesis had portrayed it. Sephiroth could write his own dissertation on the brilliance of Loveless, and he would use Moonlight Conquests as his primary resource in the annotations!
Sephiroth flopped purposefully onto his face and choked on dust as he pushed himself to hands and knees. His hair fell in his eyes. It seemed very greasy, and he'd only brought four bottles of shampoo for this mission. Unimportant in the face of academic achievement, he chided himself. He got one boot solidly planted on the floor. After a few tries, the other followed and he was triumphantly on his feet.
With a swaying stride, he carried himself closer to his destiny of cultural betterment. If he ran into a wall or four it was only symbolic of the plight of human existence as it strove to draw nearer to celestial standards. It was a bare three, or thirty, minutes later that he was in front of the lab door, and he dramatically flung it open. The force bounced it off the inside wall and slammed it shut in his face. Very gently, he tried again, and was rewarded by effectively entering the lab. Sephiroth noticed that his nose was running, but he sniffed manfully and continued forward.
Dedicated searching revealed the inspiring paperback carelessly upended on the floor, and he even spied Masamune in one of the adjoining rooms. Armed for both war and philosophy, all that was left was to secure a copy of Loveless to complete his grand thesis on the epic tome. Perhaps Zack had one.
Only taking two tries to sweep through the door out, he was soon making appreciable progress to sharing enlightenment with all of mankind. The ones who read Loveless at any rate. He would need to sponsor a public service initiative to have communal readings, and a mentor program, and a translation team. He nodded in satisfaction and opened the door in front of him.
He drew in a deep breath of the outside air, and realized he wasn't quite where he'd meant to be. The rocky ceiling was the first clue. The scattered coffins were the second. An understanding of death would lend a bittersweet truth to his lyrical musings, he decided. Additionally, the dead should always be honored.
Deeming it time that would be well spent, he designated several minutes for solemnly laying a hand to each sarcophagus lid and contemplating the ended life within. At the last, he paused in puzzlement when he heard a snore. There was no one behind the coffin, or in any of the shadowy crevices of the room. Process of elimination left the wooden box itself as the likely resting place. Sephiroth frowned. Using a tomb as a handy place for a nap was not honoring to the dead.
With a mounting sense of disapproval, Sephiroth tipped back the coffin's lid, ready to admonish the occupant. Upon seeing him, however, Sephiroth once again slowed in confusion. He sensed something oddly familiar about the youngish man, some kind of context or memory. A moment later, Sephiroth unsuccessfully tried to snap his fingers in confirmation. The dark-haired, dramatically clothed man in front of him closely resembled the hero who dashed through the pages of Heat and Passion Under Starlit Skies.
If there was anyone who could provide a quotable source for his political and socio-economic exploration essay, it was surely the person before him. Additionally, he seemed to recall some saying about how the closer you came to death, the greater appreciation you had for life. This guy hung out it in a coffin, so he must really know what was what.
Elated at the disquisition possibilities, Sephiroth poked one scarlet clad shoulder. "Pardon me."
Aside from a screwing up of the eyelids, there was no response.
Sephiroth considered the option of pinching the man's nose closed until he awoke, but that seemed rude. Instead, he repeated his action and his words, but a little harder and a little louder.
The was an explosive retort of sound and he felt the hot passage of something close to the side of his head. In his current proximity to the coffin, and his admittedly less than ideal physical condition, if that bullet had actually been aimed at him he would likely have had some difficulty in dodging it. As it was, the deliberate miss was probably a request not to drag the conversation out too much. Sephiroth nodded seriously in agreement.
Very narrowed red eyes glared back at him.
Sephiroth was disappointed, since the Moonlight Conquests hero's eyes were the blackness of his dark and tormented soul until the limitless affection of the heroine turned them into pearly, pupil-less orbs, but he resolutely compressed his questions to what was most relevant.
"Did you ever find love?"
"No." The lid of the coffin closed with finality.
"...Then there's no hope for me," he voiced forlornly.
What were all his aspirations of poetical ramblings if the man who vaguely resembled a literary character had been cruelly deprived of a prolonged and lasting happily ever after? All you need is love? Bah, he didn't need love. He had a sword. He could stab romance! Stumbling back, he dropped the paperback to the floor and drove Masamune clean through.
Now he felt better. No one would ever be mislead by its inexplicably sappy similes again. He haughtily observed the demise of lies. It was such a clean cut though, as soon as he withdrew Masamune most of the text would still be legible. Slashing it to ribbons would help, but then someone might be able to paste it together.
Immolation was the only option.
Of course, one should never start fires inside. There was that one instance where his opponents had relentlessly pelted him with Firagas, the walls and ceiling had turned into hazardous barriers of flame, and all the oxygen in the room had been sucked up by the combustion. He'd won simply by leaving and letting his assailants suffocate.
With the book disdainfully suspended from his sword, Sephiroth stomped with decision to the exit ladder. Having a clear goal was of great assistance in climbing out of the basement with one hand and making his way up the dizzying steps out of the hidden passageway. He did briefly forget what he was doing in front of the stained glass landing, but he recalled his purpose as soon as he looked back at the book he was striving to execute. It wouldn't be long now, you paperbound fiend.
Once he was outside, he seriously wondered why he hadn't left the musty old mansion earlier. It was the dusky prelude to night and the air was infinitely more refreshing. He decided to put considerably more distance between himself and the manor before he undertook any other action. In a negligible amount of time, Nibelheim was actually in view. Which meant that they could also see him with a book on the end of his sword.
Sephiroth swayed to a stop. Zack was going to find out that he'd read Moonlight Conquests. He needed to burn it now.
The materia he used was overkill, but the pages hissed and crinkled as they were consumed in red, and he swept his eyes about for the ideal final resting place for its soon to be blackened remains.
The problem with looking determinedly into the distance was that you weren't looking where your feet were going. He tripped. For the first time, the book was unintentionally thrown from his grasp and into one of the robust patches of grass. It whooshed into flames and the wood of the house beside it creaked and threaded with burning fire.
"Oooh."
A/N: So the true source of misery and woe is trashy romance novels, although in this fic pretty much everything surrounding them was inspired by the magnificently overblown titles and end credits lyrics of the Rurouni Kenshin anime. Masamune's weight was estimated after reading the specs for a folded steel katana, it was a lot lighter than any of us thought it would be and it's quite likely we made a mistake with it. We hope you enjoy!