Author's Note: Italicized Words = Flashbacks
Disclaimer: I do not own the whole or any part of Final Fantasy or the characters involved in this story. This story is purely a work of fiction by a fan, hence the word "fanfiction."
~~~~~Zack's Point of View~~~~~
"You call yourself SOLDIER?" a familiar voice asks. My vision was starting to come back to me, but all I could see at the moment were radiant white angel wings. "You tarnish the SOLDIER name!" I finally saw him.
"Angeal!" I called out to the man on the other side of the glass. I tried my hardest to break through the invisible solid prison that separated Angeal and I. "Wait!" Without so much as a care about me he turned around and flew off. I remember being in a place of peace. A peaceful blue sky and a peaceful lake. A brilliant white feather floated down from the sky and landed next to me in the reflecting lake. I look up at the free sky thinking of Angeal while envy consumes me. "Those wings… I want them too." A brief moment later my peaceful world had shattered before my eyes.
I woke up on a floor sprinkled with glass. I got myself to my feet and noticed a Shinra scientist standing next to me. I ran up and gave one good punch to the face to knock him out, seeing how if I didn't, he would've called for help. How did I get here anyway?
I screamed at the top of my lungs in agony as my stomach had suffered more pain than what Sephiroth had done. "I'm sorry, Zack," a girl said to me. I opened my eyes enough to see Tifa standing over me holding the Masamune in her hand. What happened to her? She was so brutally beaten I almost didn't recognize her. "I'll be the one to kill Sephiroth." I reached out and muttered her name, as she turned to limp away toward the reactor.
Tifa! Looking behind me, I saw three human test tubes. One was broken which I assumed was the one that I was in and the one beside mines contained a woman strangely familiar. Walking up to it for a closer inspection, I realized it was Tifa. I pushed the release button on the side of the tube and the door opened after all of the mako had drained. She fell right into my arms as I caught her and sat her down next to a table in the middle of the room. I had to get her out of here to some place safe. I scanned the room for the Buster Sword hoping, by extreme luck, it would be somewhere close. Lady luck was on my side as I saw that it was lying against the test tube I was in.
Something was still bothering me. I had the Buster Sword and I had Tifa. What was I forgetting? I looked around for something that seemed to need my attention when the third test tube caught my eye. Who or what could be in this one? As I made my way over to it I found my answer.
"Sephiroth," I mumbled to myself. He was alive, regaining his strength inside a mako chamber. I should kill him right now just to make sure there won't be another incident like Nibelheim.
"This one… take him down to Shinra Mansion's basement too," said an irritatingly familiar voice. "Sephiroth… you've surely done it this time. Hm? Just wait a second. This girl finished him, huh? Interesting. This is really interesting. I can use her as a new sample."
Wait a second. This is the human research lab Sephiroth shut himself in for a week… and Hojo sent us here after the Nibelheim incident. I've always hated the guy. He treats everyone like they're just tools and objects for his research. No one, not even Sephiroth, deserves to suffer through any of his experiments. I press the release button on the side of Sephiroth's pod and after the mako drains, the door opens and he falls to the floor.
"Never again," I tell him. "This is the last favor I do for you. You may be a monster, but you're still human. Just remember… that if you hurt another innocent soul… I'll do whatever it takes to kill you myself." With those last words, I pick up Tifa bridal style and exit out the large steel door from the lab.
"Tifa, I'm going to scout ahead to make sure it's safe. I'll be back soon, okay." I sat Tifa down on ground next to door we just came through. As promised, I scouted the area up to the bedroom of Shinra Mansion for any threats and went back to get Tifa after assuring that the way was clear. When we got to the bedroom I laid Tifa down in the bed to try and make her comfortable. I did my usual routine of promising her that I'll go make sure the way was clear, actually go and scout ahead, and come back to get her when I knew it was safe.
After a while we finally made it to Nibelheim and I sat her down against the side of a house and noticed that something was off. There was a house here. What's going on? I saw the town reduced to ashes, but now it's back to the way it was before. In the distance I saw a group of people running toward us.
"It's a breakout!" shouted an infantryman. "The professor's test samples are escaping!"
"It'll take a lot more than you're average grunt to take me down," I responded as I took the Buster Sword off my back. More and more infantrymen surrounded us and I started to get worried. I turned around to face Tifa and saw one of them start to drag her away. This is bad. I have to take care of them quickly. I'm not going to get caught again.
As I engage to fight them, I notice that I'm slower for some reason. Not only that, but I also feel weaker. Group after group, infantrymen started arriving as reinforcements and it seemed like every shot they fired was getting closer to hitting me. This can't be right. How can I be having trouble against these guys?
~~~~~Sephiroth's Point of View~~~~~
"Never again," an acquainted voice says. "This is the last favor I do for you. You may be a monster, but you're still human. Just remember… that if you hurt another innocent soul… I'll do whatever it takes to kill you myself."
Zack. I chuckle to myself a little before pushing myself to my feet off of the floor I was lying on. Looking around, I noticed I was back in the Shinra Mansion basement. Hojo must've brought me here. There was a document by the examination table in the middle of the room and I was curious as to what the professor was doing to me while I was decommissioned.
It read, "Analysis of Sample Results.
Case #1 Failed: SOLDIER 1st Class, Sephiroth Crescent. Summary: All Jenova cells have disappeared. Mass mako fusion with subject's body has not restored SOLDIER 1st Class abilities.
Case #2 Failed: SOLDIER 1st Class, Zack Fair. Summary: Transfer of mako energy to Sephiroth not possible. SOLDIER conditioning has been made permanent with DNA.
Case #3 Succeeded: Female Civilian. Summary: Mako infusion was successful and has increased physical abilities to reach SOLDIER 2nd Class expectations."
Impossible. My thoughts traveled back to the tour guide who led us to the mako reactor. He turned that girl into a SOLDIER? And this analysis of Zack and I. My Jenova cells have disappeared? Zack's mako transfer failed? I needed to find out more about the experiments performed on us.
"H-he's awake!" a Shinra scientist yelled. "Backup's not going to make it in time."
On instinct, I jumped over the table and pinned the scientist to the wall. "What backup?" I demanded.
After forcing what quick little information I could from him, I rushed and gathered the Masamune from a near corner, along with whatever documents I could before knocking out the scientist and rushing out of Shinra Mansion. Once I was finally outside the gate of the mansion gunshots echoed through the air from the direction of the town. Zack. Why was I so concerned with Zack all of a sudden? Is it because he freed me from the mako chamber? Is it because of my concern over the experiments performed on all of us? I was uncertain.
By the time I was pulled out of my thoughts by the task at hand I was already at the center of town where Zack was fighting a platoon of infantrymen. Also, one infantryman in particular was dragging away a woman in a cowgirl outfit. Identifying her as our escort that guided us to the reactor, I ripped my way through the group of enemies past Zack and decapitated the man dragging her away.
"Sephiroth!" yelled Zack.
"You fool! You were supposed to protect her!" Why did I snap at Zack that way? She was never important to me, but for some reason I felt obliged to protect her.
"Kill them!" ordered one infantryman.
The fools. With both Zack and my own power combined, those insects didn't stand a chance. They were all dead in under a minute. I walked over to the girl and picked her up, carrying her bridal style in my arms as I headed toward Shinra Mansion, but a certain "puppy" stood in my way glaring at me.
"Move," I ordered.
"First explain to me why you-," Zack began with a hint of anger.
"The enemy is after us. If you want to stand around talking until we have another confrontation on our hands, you can do it alone. Or, if you prefer, we can return to the mansion and discuss matters there where she isn't as prone to kidnapping as out in the open like you left her." We exchange glares for a brief moment as if he was thinking of some sort of response in the process of trying to intimidate me. He finally looked down with a sigh and stood aside letting me pass. "I thought so."
When we arrived back at the mansion, I laid the girl in a bed on the upper floor and sat in a chair across the room, facing Zack.
"Well?" he asked with that same hint of anger as earlier.
"Calm down," I stated. "First things first. This girl-"
"Tifa."
"Pardon?"
"Her name is Tifa."
"My apologies. Tifa seems to be suffering from mako addiction. I found these reports in the lab basement." I handed the documents from my coat pockets to him.
"Then we should give her a change of clothes."
"Hm?"
"Those mako soaked clothes will definitely not help her on her road to recovery," he said as he made his way to the closet. "I found something good back here. It may not smell very good, but we can't be too picky right now."
"Good observation. You're not as helpless as I was led to believe." Zack took out a SOLDIER 1st Class uniform from the closet and sat it on my lap as he proceeded to walk out the room. "I'm going to keep watch. Good luck, boss."
I watched as he grinned and closed the door behind him as he left wondering what he meant. Then it hit me. Blood rushed to my face as I looked over at Tifa and saw the task Zack left me. He wants me to redress her. "Zack!" I roared as I ran to the door and tried to open it, but for some reason it wouldn't budge. Then a note was slipped under the door. I picked it up and read aloud to myself, "I already have a girlfriend and I can't betray her like that. Anyway, this should be a piece of cake for the great general, Sephiroth." I clenched the note in my hand out of frustration as I thought back to what I had to do. With one deep breath I accepted this task with full responsibility and confidence.
After for what seemed like the most tedious fifteen minutes of my life, I throw myself in the chair across the room and sigh, finally having completed the commission of redressing her. And almost on cue, Zack enters the room with that usual smug look on his face.
"Wow," he started. "You actually did it. I guess I can finally rest assured that you've returned to your old self." I completely ignored him for the time being until he got serious. "Sephiroth," he continued in a more solemn tone. "What happened to you at Nibelheim?"
"Did you read the documents I gave you earlier?" I asked.
"Yeah, it said that yours and all the spare Jenova cells Professor Hojo had suddenly disappeared. But what is Jenova?"
"She's my mother, an alien from another planet whose cells were implanted in me before I was born. She's also the entity that possessed me to slaughter everyone in Nibelheim. I assume that since she's dead, I have control over myself again. It is believed that when she disintegrated into the mako reactor, so did all of her cells worldwide, which is why I assume I have full control of myself again. I never wanted to kill anyone, Zack. I was forced. I understand if you still hate me-"
"I don't hate you," I looked to him, flabbergasted to say the least. "You saved me and Tifa against those guys back in town. I think you just want to say you're sorry to us."
"You're still just a puppy. If it was as simple as apologizing, I would've already done it, but… what I did was something you cannot simply apologize for."
"Well I guess you'll just have to start all over then, huh?"
"What?"
"You're going to live the rest of your life helping us until we can find it in our hearts to forgive you."
"Try telling her that after she wakes up," I finished, motioning to Tifa. This was going to be the worst journey of my life.
~~~~~Zack's Point of View~~~~~
I reached in my pocket for my phone to try and find out where we should go, but instead, I pulled out a shriveled up piece of paper. What was this?
"They're tiny, but you have lots, right?" I asked.
"That's right," Aerith responded. "Wanna hear?"
"How many you got?"
"Hm… twenty… three?"
"Write them down, so I don't forget."
"I have twenty-three tiny wishes. But you probably won't remember them all, so I put them all together in one: I'd like to spend more time with you.
That moment. How could I forget? "Sephiroth."
"What is it?" he asked.
"I… I have to go to Midgar."
"Midgar? I didn't know you were so eager to die."
"Please, Sephiroth. I have to go." He paused for a while before answering.
"Very well. We'll rest until nightfall and depart at midnight."
Author's Note: Um okay. I pretty much rushed through this chapter because my brain was moving a lot faster than I was typing, which caused me to forget what I had planned later on so yeah, sorry if it moved by too quickly, and I sincerely apologize for any/all OOC moments I may have/definitely created.
Also, I was debating should I write a scene out where Sephiroth actually redresses Tifa, but that would require intense mental preparation and as I said before, my brain was moving a lot faster than my fingers. But if you would like me to, I will update this chapter with the redressing scene worked into it.
Also (again), I really don't feel like going all the way through Crisis Core plot with Sephiroth along with Zack until the final battle against the Shinra army. I just want to skip all that and go to the cliff outside of Midgar because that's where my brain is right now. But if you think it'll be interesting then leave a review about what you think I should do.
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