Title: Final Fantasy VII: Advent
Children
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Author: Rose
Notes: This idea emerged to take
FFX-D and bite it in the arse. It's Final Fantasy
VII: Advent Children…except…my take on it. Horror, shock. It's entertaining to write, far more than it
should be, and offers a refreshing change from, well, other things. And it is,
of course, a work in progress: all comments are welcome. Well, most comments
are welcome. INTERESTING comments are welcome.
But, you didn't click on this to read my talk, now did you?
---
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
"All I want...is to be forgiven."
"I'm dead! Deal with it!"
Midgar
Dark storm clouds rolled overhead in a monochrome grey curtain, as dark as despair and the same color as the feeling, if it had a shade, that washed over his soul. Darkness. Gloom. Cloud looked up into the rain that washed down, the lightning that danced across the heavens, and he started laughing. It was a bitter, bitter laugh, a very bitter laugh that was filled with…angst.
"I am such a fool," he declared and looked up into the looming angsty storm and repeated it. "I am such a fool!" Cloud shouted, swinging his sword in broad angsty strokes. "I just want to be forgiven!"
The storm raged overhead as Cloud laughed with angst in his voice and tears in his eyes.
Wutai
"There's a sequel, you know," Reeve said as he skillfully dealt out the cards across the table to Yuffie. Red XIII lay nearby, in front of the TV, flipping through the channels in search of a nature special. The three of them were hiding in Yuffie's house, on the coast of Wutai. It had been built after Holy and the end of their last adventure, an agreed-upon necessity with more than enough rooms to house the entire cast if it were to prove necessary. The proceeds from her cut of the materia were more than sufficient to wire her house with cable, even across the ocean, and with Reeve's influence it was easy enough to arrange supply drops when necessary. It was a perfect hideout.
"Mmm," Red murmured.
"Cloud's fighting against Jenova…again," Reeve added, as he took up his hand and eyed his cards carefully. "Seems that Sephiroth might be back."
"Oh gawd, you'd think he'd just give up."
"Sephiroth?"
"No, Cloud!" she answered, paused. "His hero thing. You'd think he'd have enough of it the first time, ya know?"
"He might need our help."
There was a pause, as the three looked up and at each other at the statement. Silence filled the room, only broken by the babbling of the TV. Then, through communication long since honed by their many years of battle experience, them being comrades through thick and thin and multiple stuffed animals, a decision was made, without a word even spoken.
"Do you have any fives?" Reeve asked with a grin, and was rewarded with Yuffie's annoyingly gloating smile.
"Go fish!"
Red settled down with a content sigh to the TV. He had found a special on the North Midgarian Zolom, one that he hadn't seen before. Reeve and Yuffie continued to play Go Fish (other games, such as poker, had long since been discarded due to her…tendency to stretch the rules) and a strange sort of calm settled in the small house in Wutai.
Outside, the sun was shining brightly, with barely a cloud in the sky. It looked to be another perfect day.
Northern Crater
From the shadows he emerged, and the shadows released him with a sigh, a few strands clinging to him like a shroud.
Or a cloak.
His hair was burnished silver, cut from the moon if the moon ever were to finally dominate the sun. His physique was thin, as if he was a thin wrath of the man that he surely once was. His name? Forgotten, almost, except then the shadows whispered it to him.
"Sephiroth," it said, and he remembered.
"Yes. I am. Mother." He groaned, the cobweb tendrils of the Lifestream releasing him from his slumber. It was as patchwork as his memory, with threads and places missing, a tapestry with holes: like a cocoon, however, it cloaked him, protecting him from the changes that had shaken the Planet and remade it in the image of another. Not his image, however. "I hear you."
"Good," her voice whispered, disembodied in aspect, as ethereal as the Lifestream.
From the shadows two other figures emerged, two more figures in his own likeness, as if imperfect copies had been made of his glorious figure, dressed in shadows, cocooned in Mako. His mind burned to give them names, although for the life of him he couldn't think of any.
"Take your two brothers and finish what you have started," crooned Jenova's voice, smooth into his ear. "Recover my head, and destroy the planet."
"Yes, Mo-" Pause. "Wait, what?" Sephiroth blinked. Brothers? Since when the Hell did he have brothers?
There was a moment of silence. The two snickered softly, and Sephiroth vowed to skewer the two irritants at the earliest possible opportunity.
"Are you so surprised to discover others like yourself?" Jenova hissed in irritation, presumably over the dramatic moment being ruined by her son. "They are your kin, your brothers, of your kind. They are my children, as you are my son."
"I am Hesed," said one, bowing with irritating cocky charm.
"I am Din," said the other, with short cropped hair and a stocky figure, yet it was obvious just from his nod that he could move with smooth cat-like grace when it suited him. Hell, it was obvious just from the silver hair they both had: cat-like grace was a Jenova thing.
Sephiroth silently seethed, smoothing over his features until, he hoped, he only showed compliance. "Yes, Mother. But, when did I have…brothers? Who is the fat—"
"That is no concern of yours!" Jenova said hastily, her voice emerging in a roar. "Tear the world apart, reduce it to the ashes from which it was born!"
"Yes, Mother," he said, echoed by the other two…Dan and Hesed? Something like that. He would have to deal with that when the time came, though. First things, first. "Mother?"
"Yes?"
"How can I destroy the world without a weapon? Where's my Masamune?" The two other silver-haired...Jenova siblings...snickered again. It was then that he noticed Hesed's gun, and Din's knuckles, as silver as their hair, and he had a sinking dawning suspicion of where his sword went.
"Some changes were necessary, big brother Sephiroth," Din answered, smiling, lifting up his hand, sheathed in a glove of previously-Masamune metal. "You might feel a bit different."
And different he did. Not only was his lack of sword jarring, but more memories were returning, and they all involved him with a long black cloak and hair. And now he thought about it, he did feel a bit...lighter, in head as well as body.
And looking into an outstretched sword, reminiscent of his own but hollow, and seeing his reflection, he screamed at his lack of hair. His hair was short shoulder-length hair which was trendy, perhaps, but not his flowing fountain that he was used to. He looked different, younger, more angular, and he felt different: he didn't have Jenova riding in his brain like he was used to, her attention now diverted to her new sons.
And he screamed. "How could you, Mother?!"
"Stop angsting, Sephy...." Hesed said cheerfully, a broad smug grin plastered across his face.
"SEPHY?"
"....and get used to it. By the Planet, you'd think you never had a damned haircut."
"Now come, my sons," Jenova whispered, ignoring her oldest son's angst, "And attend to me, for you must recover my relic, my head, and use it to purge this planet of its sins."
And somehow, Sephiroth had the feeling that he had done this already. Although, how could that be? Déjà vu was a bitch, it must've just been the shock of reawakening years younger than he remembered himself. With a lack of hair and his poor sword bastardized like it had been, who could blame him?
Nibelheim
A chilled wind blew, and he turned his gaze towards the west. Always towards the west: it seemed that he was walking towards a perpetual bloody sunset and darkness. But, without shadow, how could light know itself, define itself?
"It comes," he said, and did not know if the knowledge stemmed from the beast within or the script he had read last week. However, he knew...something wicked this way comes.
And the battle is joined again.