Amongst the elite, the Shinra building was a symbol of their success and ever growing wealth, a seventy floor glass and steel monument to the city's excesses. It was in this monolith that Sephiroth hoped to find some answers to the questions buzzing through his brain. Why he was so suddenly obsessed over a common flower seller, he himself didn't even know. Though one thing was certain, something in his mind would not be satisfied until he knew each and every little thing about her.

She was familiar somehow and he knew, without a doubt, she was hiding something. He felt a pulse when he was near her and in that moment he knew she was like him. Maybe not exactly in the same way, but he felt in his gut that she wasn't quite human. She had power, like he had power...

And if he knew anything about power, it was that it was sought by all. It was seductive, and in all ways necessary to maintain control or take it. And if the girl truly was like him in some way, then there would be those who sought to use her as they did him.

Ever since the first day his promotion to general had been announced, he'd been surrounded by scads of people heaping accolades on him, jockeying to curry favor with him in hopes of a promotion, wealth, and fame – whatever it was they thought they could get from him. The old saw that women wanted him and men wanted to be him applied to his status in the public eye. For the life of him, Sephiroth couldn't understand why. Any number of complimentary adjectives had been attached to his name by both sexes. Compliments meant nothing to him. It was hollow adulation, and he couldn't stand it. They were sycophants, only greasing him up to try and share in the glow of his hard won success.

And what kind of success had he achieved? He'd killed a lot of people, expanded Shinra's influence, made widows and orphans in the thousands, and destroyed the economy and well being of an entire culture. Some success. But he did it. He regretted it, now and then, but he still did it... no questions asked. Why? If he hated it so much, then why did he do it? The answer to that was: he liked his work just as much as he hated it, because he gave him purpose. It made him feel, on some level, almost normal.

Doubt had been plaguing him as of late. He had always felt an otherness in him, something that separated him from everyone else. It was liquid and ill defined in his own mind, but he knew, without a doubt, that there wasn't something quite right about him.

The battlefield was the only place he ever felt alive. When he wasn't killing, he felt disconnected, disjointed. On some level, he knew there wasn't something quite sane about the way he operated day to day. The way he felt about people. How utterly expendable they were. How he could watch a man die in agony and not feel a thing.

In the press, they often spoke of his cold professional manner as the marker of his greatness as a general. If they had known the depths of that coldness, perhaps they wouldn't speak so glowingly about him. He didn't care if he sent a hundred or a thousand men to die... Death meant nothing to him, so why would he care if it meant something to others?

Beyond all that, he had found that his control had been lacking of late. It felt like someone or something was watching him. Something behind his eyes, crawling and hissing, it was there... watching and waiting. It slept now. Slept in the daylight hours but at night it came alive and wandered his mind. It showed him such awful things. Such horribly awful things, and he would wake feeling ashamed of himself and confused by the rock hard erection those images elicited.

Over and over again, the thing behind his eyes would whisper to him. It told him what his real purpose was, told him that death was his gift to this world. It spoke to him so much at night that he ended up not sleeping very much, just to stave off the nightmares.

No, it wasn't sane to think that way – normal. Abnormal. Yes, there was something not quite right about him. Something broken that needed fixing, not that he'd ever trust another living soul to help him. All of them were fools because they couldn't see the sickness in him. It was so plain to see, yet they were blind to it. What would those fools think if he told them what he really felt? If he answered their ridiculous questions honestly, instead of lying and giving them the answer they want to hear.

What would the world think, indeed, that under his carefully cool exterior lay a man in constant torment and barely in control of his own sanity? They could say what they wanted about him; let them call him a genius... let them call him the Great Sephiroth, but it all rung false in his ears. He knew what he was, a freak of nature. What else could he be? Being abnormally strong and intelligent beyond his years, he could easily cast high level magic men twice his age had difficulty mastering. Not to mention the color of his hair. He was young, only twenty two, yet his hair was as silver grey as an old man of sixty.

And perhaps he was an old man. Maybe he was some sort of immortal being, who'd lived so long he didn't remember how he'd gotten here. Of course, that would require him to believe in such fairytale nonsense. But still, the thought had merit. He'd often thought that maybe he wasn't human at all. Those thoughts had been especially potent when he was younger, less so now but they were still there, creeping in the deep dark back of his mind.

He used to dream of far off places, of magic and adventure, as all children did. Those things were swiftly beaten out of him. All except one. He often dreamt of a young woman with light brown hair and eyes just like his. She was crying just for him. Reaching out to him, and she looked so sad, so frightened. Sometimes he thought it might not be a dream at all. Sometimes, he liked to imagine that sad woman was his mother. The mother he never knew. The mother whose name he had to trade for a week's worth of pain.

He had asked about his mother. He had told Hojo about those dreams. And in exchange for those two things, he suffered like no other.

At the time, Sephiroth had wondered if Hojo would even tell him anything at all. The man liked to inflict pain; especially on him... and the bargain Sephiroth had negotiated seemed to amuse him. It would have been easy to break his spirit along with his body, but he didn't. Perhaps Hojo liked it better when he screamed. In the end, the crazy bastard had told him his mother's name. Jenova. His mother's name was Jenova, though he never got an answer about who the woman was in his dreams.

Secretly, sometimes he put that name to the face, so he could pretend for even a sliver of time that those dreams were really memories, that the woman that called to him through the ether -- to this day -- really was his mother.

He closed his eyes in an attempt to silence the empty voices of his own mind.

Ridiculous.

Sephiroth pushed open one of the glass entrances to the Shinra building. The eerie glow of fluorescent lights painted the main entrance a sickly green tint. It had the effect of making the entire lobby look like one large hospital room. Or perhaps a laboratory... He shivered with revulsion. This was why he killed? To keep a place of degradation and sin working smoothly, allowing it to subjugate souls one by one till nothing was left. There had to be something more, something bigger and better than this. His purpose in life shouldn't be to serve the very reason for the world's sickness. Once he had the resources and the answers he sought, perhaps he wouldn't serve it any longer.

That girl, Aeris, he wanted to know her secrets. He was firm in his belief that she was involved, one way or the other – informant or terrorist – it didn't matter much to him, with the terrorist attacks that had plagued the city, but there was a reason underneath he didn't want to acknowledge. He sensed, more than knew, that she held a vital fact that he needed in his search for something better than what he called life. What did this girl know... what was she? The light she exuded, there was something in it he needed. Perhaps it had been that one blessed moment of silence, when he'd gotten close enough to reach out and touch her light -- that one moment when the voices inside his head had quieted and for a moment he felt connected to something greater than everyone and everything.

He thought this as he walked through the lobby, all eyes in the room watching as the enigmatic General strode towards the elevators.

Employees visibly moved away from him as he approached. Whether it was awe or fear, or a combination of both, didn't matter in the least to the young man. He was known for his rather unpredictable fits of temper. Sephiroth stood in front of the bank of elevators, choosing one at random and waiting quietly. The other employees who waited near the same elevator relocated to one of the other lifts. No one wanted to be in a cramped space with General Sephiroth. He couldn't help but smile wryly to himself at the irony. Some of these same people, who would stand next to him without fear while he was in the spotlight, couldn't bear to be near him when it wasn't. Wanting him and loathing him at the same time. Sometimes he wondered if it would be better if he'd just let go and give into the voices.

A pleasant bell sounded as his lift became available, the metal door soundlessly opening. Sephiroth entered, his long black trench coat flapping in rhythm with his strides. Stepping into the elevator, he gazed out the wide glass window and without looking pushed the button for the sixty-second floor. The chime went off as the doors closed, though Sephiroth didn't hear it. He was concentrating on his own strange reflection. He'd never liked looking at himself, the face in the mirror a constant reminder of his lack of normalcy. Silver hair draped over dark fabric. He had gone casual that day, leaving his straps and armor in his apartment in favor of a simple black silk shirt and black cotton pants, along with his trademark coat. He wanted to blend, if that was possible for one such as him.

The elevator ding had gone off, startling Sephiroth from his reverie. Moving swiftly through the doors before they even opened fully, he walked down the empty hallway to the Shinra library. He didn't even take note of the guard at the entrance, and the guard didn't dare to stop the General and ask him for identification. His boot heels clicked on the shiny surface of the floor, echoing as he moved swiftly down the hall. He entered the public records section, making a bee-line for the computer terminal.

Typing fast, he entered the information he wished to search for. Hopefully there were only a few young girls around fifteen to seventeen with the name Aeris. He was looking for as much information as he could get. Ideally, he wanted to find an address. He'd tailed the girl earlier but had to back off once she met up with that Turk, which was an entirely new curiosity. He wondered if he might have discovered a leak of some sort, or perhaps she was an informant – he'd thought as much earlier but he was becoming increasingly unsure.

Considering her powers, it wouldn't surprise him a bit if more than one group were anxious to coax the girl into using her gifts for their cause. A fact which he liked not one bit.

In any event, he couldn't keep following because eventually the Turk would sniff him out; they were blood hounds that way. So, in lieu of following the girl, he decided to skim Shinra's records, hoping for a birth certificate, school records – hell, he'd settle for whatever he could dig up on her, though he realized this might be asking too much, as the girl looked to be a slum rat. And finding someone in the slums was like looking for a microscopic needle in the world's largest haystack.

The biggest mistake Shinra ever made was to allow people under the plate to even exist. They should have burned that hellhole to the ground and salted the ashes. Idiots.

The computer chugged and hummed, the little hourglass tipping up and down on the screen. Slowly the information requested came up, and he was beyond shocked to find only one record. One record. No birth certificate. No school registration. No arrest records. Nothing. It was like the girl didn't even exist but for that one record.

It was in the restricted access library, coded AS-AG-102-T. Sephiroth's eyes narrowed contemplatively. The code was familiar to him; it was used to indicate a file that had anything to do with the Turks and their activities. The Turks. He'd seen her with one. What the hell did they have to do with that girl? Damn it.

Being the General of the Shinra army he had nearly unlimited access, nearly. The only files he couldn't touch were the Turks, but in the moment it didn't make a difference to him. He was on a mission now; surely, it was his own mission, but a mission non-the-less. There were things in that file he needed, and he'd be damned if anyone would stop him. Not that anyone could even if they tried.

A few minutes later he broke into the Turk's library, after having knocked out the guard at the door. Sooner or later someone in Main Security would see the unconscious guard on the closed circuit, and he'd be caught. But he'd have what he wanted by then. Flicking on the light, he found the file cabinet he wanted and tore the drawer open, breaking the lock. Long fingers flipped through the files, rapidly viewing the numbers as he went. He stopped, fingering gently touching the file he wanted, his eyes gazing at it sharply. Pulling it free, he leafed through the papers inside it. The one on the top was a formal request to the Turks for their assistance in finding the girl.

Request-102 DALV-01 03-28-XX

Status: Active

Subject: Female, approx. 12 to 13 yrs. Name unknown.

DOB: 02-07-XXXX, approx. from science record-GAS-Ifl-193/GAS-Ae-194

Subject Description: Average in appearance and stature for age. Hair most likely light brown to black. Eyes, unusually bright blue-green. No other defining physical characteristics.

LIV.CAP/DOA: Alive and in good condition

Notes: Subject is requested for testing upon Prof. Hojo's orders. Subject has affinity for all forms of planet-life. Look for subject to have job in horticulture industry. Check flower shops, greenhouses, and nurseries for subjects matching description. Will have success at growing flora in unacceptable growing conditions, look for reports of vegetation growth in barren areas of city. Subject most likely lives in lower plate and is not a registered resident.

Assigned to: E172621-TSE

Sephiroth read the short document, pulling it out and setting it to the side. He continued flipping through documents. Most of them were progress reports, noting the different leads that had been investigated. He ignored them, flipping continuously until he came to another document that caught his attention.

05-13-XX Addendum to RE-102

Contact has been made with subject. Flower seller possibly residing in Sector 5. Female, name Aeris, last seen in Sec. 5 abandoned church. Subject is known to frequent church, reports indicate unusual growth of vegetation in area. Further tests needed. Science Dept. recommendation -- take test sample from specimen J/N-SEPH-01. Subject is thought to be an ancient. To determine Subject's status, expose to specimen SEPH-01. Subject Aeris should have strong negative reaction to sample. If status is positively identified, capture and return to Shinra HQ – Executive Order 187 is given if Subject GAS-Ae-194 identification is negative or undetermined.

Sephiroth paled -- specimen SEPH-01 -- that was his number, the one used on all the science department documents regarding the various tests performed on him. It explained her fear of him to some extent. But why? Why would exposing her to one of his test samples cause some kind of reaction, unless... unless... Perhaps she was a medium of some kind, adept at reading auras or some such nonsense, and perhaps... perhaps this meant she knew what he was...

He'd heard of people who were sensitive to such things. Psychics and whatnot, to put it plainly, he'd never believed in them but her reaction – her reaction to him was one of horror, of terror. It was as if she could see the sickness inside, as if she could hear the voices and whispered horrors that compelled him to destroy. And he couldn't deny the fact that when he saw her that morning he had felt an irrational anger bubble up within him. He had wanted to crush her. To kill her in the most brutal way possible, and at the time, he, himself, had been horrified by the thought.

In an instant, his motivations had turned on a gil, and whether or not she was a terrorist or an informant was immaterial. She was a mystery. His mystery now and he would find her out. He had to talk to her, he needed to. Because the sickness inside was starting to sound all too reasonable, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could resist its pull. She knew, she saw, unlike all the others and he wanted to know why. Maybe she had answers. Maybe she was the key to silencing the darkness that whispered low and sibilant... because he could remember after the revulsion to the light, he had felt, for just an instant, warm and welcome. If he embraced that light, perhaps he could put a stop to whatever madness seethed inside... perhaps... perhaps... perhaps... He carefully tucked both reports into his coat, turning his head slightly to the door. His ears heard footsteps in the hall, the company he was expecting had finally come.

"What are you doing in here?" a voice drawled, the words coming out with a slightly nasal Wutanese accent.

He turned to regard the man speaking to him, recognizing the leader of the Turks as he stepped into the library. Behind the raven haired leader were a host of low level grunts with weapons drawn.

"I was reading..."

"Hn." The Turk seemed oddly unimpressed by this answer. "This area is restricted. How did you--"

Sephiroth silenced the man with a look, his jade eyes glowing brightly with malice. He put a hand to his Masamune, which he had always by his side. The General closed the gap between them in the blink of an eye, his movement so quick that the Turk barely had time to register the movement. Tseng's eyes widened minutely. He was suddenly eye to eye with Sephiroth, and he was afraid, though he barely showed it. What the Turk allowed him to see was clear contempt. The look in his eyes and the message in his stance telling him that Tseng didn't believe for a moment he was just reading.

"This area is restricted, General. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"What a coincidence, I was just leaving."

"Good." Tseng's dark eyes took in the files the General was holding. "And I'm afraid you're going to have to leave those here."

Holding up the files, he waggled it at Tseng like it was a carrot and he was the jack-ass. Tseng reached out to take it carefully, hand slipping inside his suit jacket, just in case the General decided to do something. Sephiroth unfurled his fingers, letting the file drop to the ground and scattering its contents. Tseng scowled at him, forgetting everything else momentarily for indignant annoyance. The Turk bent down and began to pick up the errant papers, stuffing them quickly back into their folders. Sephiroth stepped over him, striding confidently out the door and shoving past the guards. He had what he wanted.

"General Sephiroth," the Turk called after him, his voice echoing commandingly off the empty walls of the restricted section.

Sephiroth stopped and waited, his back turned on his co-worker. "Was there something else?"

Files held neatly in one hand, the Turk snorted. "Yeah, just wondering why the Great General Sephiroth was digging around in our files without going through the proper channels." He paused, though not enough for an answer to his purely rhetorical question. "But I suppose heroes don't have much time for paperwork..."

"Indeed."

Tseng grunted, his fingers clenching around the files as he glared at the General's back. "Hero or not, the next time you're feeling curious, I suggest you follow protocol. I'd hate to be responsible for the death of a co-worker, wouldn't you?"

The General turned his head minutely, and sneered: "Heartbroken."

"Glad we have an understanding."

Sephiroth smiled genteelly, his face devoid of anything that would resemble real joy, and walked away, coat billowing out behind him like a great black sail.


For those of you who've read the original, you'll notice the biggest difference at the end of this chapter. Hee.