Chapter Seven
Sephiroth blearily opened his eyes, and peered through nothingness at what appeared to be shadows moving on a wall, their outlines wavering as if cast by a flickering flame. That meant there was a light source somewhere -- but with the strands of Lifestream wrapped tightly around his body and confining him into place, he didn't even have the ability to turn his head around. Closing his eyes was better than watching nonsensical shadows. He certainly couldn't sleep like this, but he had always been very good at losing himself in his own mind. Anyone acquainted with Hojo had to be, actually.
But there were limits to how well he could try to distance himself, and after just a short while, he began thinking about his own situation. It wasn't pleasant. Confronting reality had never really been his strong suit -- it was better to just dismiss what details didn't fit with his own world view and never analyze them, lest things start crumbling around him. Living in that kind of self-delusion had precipitated his eventual fall, because looking back -- with the benefit of hindsight, and something that was probably sanity -- he realized he'd been suppressing the little hints that things weren't quite right all of his life, and when finally faced with the whole picture, his mind had shattered.
It was odd, thinking back to the fragmented memories of Nibelheim -- his Nibelheim, in his world that no longer existed -- and realizing the secrets he'd stumbled across there had really been very obvious and very ugly realities that he'd somehow been able to dismiss before. And yet while what he'd found in the reactor and the mansion had broken apart his own fragile reality, what he knew about the Cetra now had broken things apart again. He knew he wasn't an ancient, and since he'd already ruled out being human, he supposed it was back to being some kind of monster. Even that conclusion had a few holes in it, more so now that he had a clearer picture than anyone on the planet as to what the Cetra really were. Jenova might not have been an ancient -- might not have been anything, really, which meant he, too, was something out of nothing -- but a little inkling in the back of his mind told him that the Cetra had only succumbed to her not because Jenova had any really specific or special abilities, but because they had all gone completely and terminally insane long before Jenova had ever landed on the surface of the Planet.
The existence of Holy and Meteor did nothing but confirm it. Both were materia, which meant at some point, the Cetra had actually felt there was a need for ultimate destructive magic. He wondered if perhaps they'd all once been like the upper echelons of Shinra inc. were now, determined to find their Promised Land, and somehow convinced that the way to do it was to stockpile more and more weapons and power and leave sanity and restraint by the wayside, all the while. Jenova hadn't been their downfall. She'd been the final nail in the coffin at the end of it. That was the only way any of this made sense.
The more he thought about it, the more it sickened him.
The flickering shadows on the distant wall coalesced, and suddenly Sephiroth watched as the single Cetra approached, its form blurring and shifting in the darkness until finally shortening and widening into a perfect doppelganger of President Shinra. Sephiroth gave him one look, and scowled distastefully.
"It's time for you to assist us again."
"...Assist you? Sometimes I think it's more like you're just assisting me. What's your role in all of this? What are you even doing, other than placing me somewhere on the surface of the Planet and giving me vague, asinine orders that I'm better off not following?" Sephiroth usually spent so much time thinking about his words before he spoke that he often didn't bother speaking at all, but this all came out rather suddenly. He waited for his punishment, but surprisingly, nothing came.
"It's understandable that you would feel such impatience," The Cetra replied, all sweetness and light, and suddenly Sephiroth decided he wanted nothing to do with whatever was coming next. Impassively, and none-too-subtly, he changed the subject.
"What do you want me to do this time?"
Too late. The Cetra cocked its head a little, almost inquisitively. "It seems like you're already forgetting your sentence, though. Impatience isn't going to help things much. It'll only make this situation more painful, for both of us."
"For both of us? Please."
"Your next task," the Cetra broke in, suddenly, surprising him, "is to fire the silver bullet. Wars start when complacency is shattered. Sometimes it takes a considerable effort to rouse humans to fight. Other times, a mere spark will catch flame and set everything ablaze. They're quite interesting, aren't they?"
Sephiroth said nothing.
"You will go to Wutai under the guise of Shinra, act as a SOLDIER – it shouldn't be hard -- and kill a girl," The Cetra said, its shape molding into someone only vaguely familiar. Sephiroth frowned a little.
"You're trying to rouse Godo Kisaragi into attacking Shinra."
"Yes."
"Another Wutain War, then? Why would that make a difference? Wutai barely has the strength to fight. Neither does Shinra, actually. It would be a slow war of attrition for both sides. I thought you were looking for something a little more sudden?"
"There are other factors at play... and there's little time for you to waste. Go now."
Sephiroth felt the familiar rushing sensation, and hit the ground a moment later, rolling in sandy loam before getting back to his feet, curious to as what the Cetra had in store for him. No punishment seemed forthcoming -- today, they were unusually patient. Perhaps, in some way, their strength was fading -- he could only hope, but then his better instincts took over, and he waited for the trap to spring.
He recognized the Wutain shores, even if it had been a long time since he'd been here. This was somewhere southwest of the capital, but only by a few miles. The air felt hot and humid -- still late summer here, in this hemisphere, and he guessed that very little real time had gone by. The hottest days of summer in Midgar and Wutai's hottest days usually coincided, meaning that Zack and Cloud -- whatever had happened to them -- were probably still there, maybe looking for Aerith.
They weren't really important to think about, though, almost distractions. Sephiroth heard a rustle in the bushes and he knew he'd been seen, definitely by a Wutain scout -- but to think that the Wutains still bothered with scouting, when the war had been lost years ago and Shinra had disarmed the country entirely was odd, anachronistic. Sephiroth drew his sword, slowly, then crouched low as ten Wutain Ninja flew out of the surrounding bushes, each wearing the distinctive clan insignia that had been outlawed after Shinra's conquest.
(...I see,) he told the Cetra, right before drawing his sword. The hot summer days didn't change, but the year was now different -- they were further back in time again, during the first war. It seemed like the Cetra thought Shinra's efforts in Wutai back then had been far too merciful.
Wutain ninja were fast and strong, but Sephiroth took the first two down in a single stroke and awaited the rest in a battle stance, impassive and preparing to strike defensively, almost bored. Aside from being strong fighters and hellishly hard to find in the immense forests around Wutai's capital city, the Wutain fighters weren't any more than a nuisance.
"I think you a need a reminder," The Cetra hissed in his ear, suddenly, taking him off-guard. "Whatever latitude we give you can be taken away in an instant."
In retrospect, maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise. As the Wutain ninja charged him a flash of pain so intense it completely blinded him bowled Sephiroth over, sending him stumbling and clutching his head at an inopportune moment. A second later a shuriken sank into his shoulder and unfurled, shredding bone and muscle in a way that the Planet couldn't. Sephiroth slew the owner of the shuriken effortlessly, but another blast of pain -- warm regards from the Cetra -- send him to his knees, fighting blurring vision and yet somehow managing to catch a blade with his hand before it sank into his head and driving his sword into the blade's owner. Two arrows sank into his legs -- they were trying to hamstring him now, keep him from moving, and most likely capture him -- but Sephiroth felt a sudden, hot flash of rage.
Cetra be damned. They weren't going to interfere with what he did best.
Striking fast as a bolt of summer lightning, Sephiroth sprang towards the oncoming Ninja and killed two more, before sending a blast of low-level ice magic into the trees (careful not to let the materia blow up on him again), aiming well enough to send two Wutains falling to the ground like overripe fruit. He killed them before they could get to their feet, then sprang towards the last man. Rather than attempt to run, the single remaining scout drew a katana and took a fighting stance -- then suddenly charged, screaming some kind of curse in the Wutain language and leaving himself wide open.
Sephiroth knew the move. Towards the end of the war, the Wutain Ninja realized that theirs was a lost cause, and somehow found death greatly preferable to living under Shinra's tutelage. He gave the man what he wanted, then flicked the body off the end of his sword with disdain -- before scowling and ripping the arrows out of his legs, watching blood fly and then irritably pressuring his shoulder wound, crouching in the forest and waiting for the mako and Jenova cells to do their work. It didn't take long.
"I think you're the one who needs a reminder." Sephiroth told the Cetra, uncaringly, talking aloud to his surroundings. "Was that supposed to be a punishment? You were no more of a hindrance than they were," he said, aiming his gaze at the dead Wutain Ninja -- and the Cetra seethed, quietly, but this time it was with a kind of subdued patience he was unaccustomed to feeling from then. Gone was the unquenched rage, the sudden mood-swings, the unbridled sadism -- maybe they were weakening, somehow.
No. Sephiroth took a few steps into the night time forest and let a wan, bitter little smile spread across his face, more self-mocking than it was a taunt. Their rage, the intense highs and lows of anger and exhilaration brought on by the slightest provocation, came from a much deeper source -- panic, laced with fear, far more toxic than anger ever was. Their planet was dying. But now something was changing. The Cetra were more single-minded now, focused, confident -- and infinitely worse.
He took another step, and then the Cetra tossed his body like he was nothing. Sephiroth slammed into a rock surface with a hard crunch, but that was somehow secondary to whatever else they were doing -- the cells that made up every part of his body were so mako-saturated they were hardly recognizably human anymore, and that mako was the very essence of the Cetra's control over him. It was their Lifestream, inside of him. They could do whatever they wanted with it.
Sephiroth saw green again, and bent over. Each mako-saturated cell started sizzling away inside, like acid racing through each of his veins and eating its way through his body. It grew more and more intense, hotter and hotter, until finally ripping his insides out to douse them in ice suddenly started sounding like a rational action. He couldn't even move.
All the years in Hojo's lab, he'd come to think of mako as a deep, aching chill. When he was injected with it or doused in it he shivered, and after every dosage he came away feeling cold for days, even after stepping into his shower and turning the faucet until the water grew hot enough to scald a normal person's skin -- and even that hadn't helped much back when he'd been a child. He'd still trembled afterwards, as it raced through him and became part of his body.
This was hot, fiery wrath at its worst, inescapable, inside and outside all at once. If he were even capable of conscious thought he would have begged for it to stop in an instant -- pride and arrogance be damned -- but that wasn't possible. There was no escape. His entire body felt like it was roasting on the surface of the sun, and each second ticking by felt longer than any amount of time his mind could even comprehend. Lifetimes. Hundreds of lifetimes. They'd given him just a taste of this before, but now it was the full onslaught, a living burning-death. Their coup-de-grace.
Then the acidic green in his vision started to fade, slowly, and after a while, he realized the torture must have stopped. Sephiroth's eyes refocused on the trees around him from where he lied flat on his stomach and looking sideways, unseeingly.
"You should understand things a little more clearly, now. Time no longer passes in your world. Things do not change. The movement of people and places doesn't matter. Nothing matters, outside of what we tell you. You are ours. Every cell in your body belongs to us."
Even if he barely counted as conscious, Sephiroth heard them. The words sounded jumbled, though, and it took a long time to make sense of them. The next command came out more sharply, a little clearer than the rest -- another blow, another stab of pain. It was so miniscule compared to the receding fire that he didn't even twitch.
"Now go finish the job."
Sephiroth remained on the ground for a long time -- too long, really -- before slowly getting to his feet. As soon as he was up his throat started burning. He grabbed at it, started coughing again, covered his mouth, and then studied the mako on his hand. It wasn't the first time for this. It was the first time that the mako inside of him came out burning hot instead of cold, and Sephiroth wiped his hand off on a nearby tree trunk and watched it sizzle at the bark before lifting his sword again, silently, and slipping through the night time forests.
The nearer he got to the capital, the thicker the smell of smoke became -- Da Chao was burning. It was the end of the war, and end of Shinra's conquest -- in Sephiroth's world the Wutain War had been inevitable as it was meaningless, fought only because Shinra wanted to take the entire Wutain continent and turn its pristine natural resources into materia mines and factories, and put three new reactors just offshore, in Wutain waters. The outcome had been all but inevitable, too. The Wutains didn't have materia, didn't have SOLDIERs, didn't have any kind of aerial forces -- seemingly helpless, but even with Sephiroth leading the march on Wutain shores, Shinra had still lost hundreds of its own in a bloody two year conflict that stood as a testament to Wutai's tenacity.
In the end, though, Da Chao had burned. Somehow, even without Sephiroth, things were playing out the same -- though as soon as he came in sight of the capital city, overrun by Shinra troops and the last seeds of Wutain resistance he ceased pondering it. So soon after the Cetra's punishment, the sight of fire overwhelmed his senses just a little. He grabbed his forehead for a moment, then shook it off and made for the tallest building, Lord Godo's palace.
Making his way through the capital unseen wasn't difficult. Sephiroth kept to the shadows, evaded both Wutain Ninja and SOLDIERs, and put a sword through anyone who happened to catch a glimpse of him. In the carnage of falling ashes and towering flames, a few more dead men hardly made a dent. The only place not touched by the carnage seemed to be the royal palace, but Sephiroth noticed only a few guards, leftovers, clearly aware that it was only a matter of time before Shinra's forces focused their attentions on breaking through to the Emperor. Sephiroth didn't bother killing them, instead climbing a tree and vaulting over the palace wall.
Subterfuge -- all this sneaking about and entering unseen -- wasn't really his preferred method of staging an attack, even if he could be good at it. That was more Turk work than SOLDIER -- SOLDIERs didn't need to be subtle, and Sephiroth wasn't used to making an effort at not being seen. All his life, he'd drawn eyes wherever he went -- that was very obviously Hojo's intent, and maybe Professor Gast's, too. They'd wanted someone who belonged on posters and pedestals -- and Sephiroth found it odd, suddenly, to think that he could walk into any given small town on the continent and not be faced with dozens of newspapers emblazoned with pictures of his face and embellished descriptions of his latest "heroic" deeds -- which often amounted to little more than butchery.
Sephiroth started climbing the tower, towards where Lord Godo surely awaited his hour of judgment. Midway there, as he entered what appeared to be a large martial arts training room, someone finally leapt in to impede his way. It seemed like most of the palace guard had been dismissed, but somehow, Lord Godo's daughter remained.
The girl, no more than nine or ten years old, gave him one look and pulled out a shuriken several sizes too big for her, scowling. "SOLDIER! Stop right there!" Her shout came out shrill -- just a little girl, after all -- but she didn't look aware enough to be scared, not yet. "I'm the Great Ninja, Yuffie Kisaragi! And I'm not letting you go any further! Draw your sword!"
This was a game to her, clearly. Sephiroth only had the dimmest memories of the rest of Godo Kisaragi's family -- his wife had died in one of the earlier attacks, and he had a daughter -- but something else about the girl's face beckoned to him, called out from beyond the haze over most of his memories of the times after Nibelheim. He supposed this girl was one of the nine who had put a stop to his plans, eventually. Looking at the girl now, she wasn't much. For some reason, it was almost a little insulting. She squinted at him, craning her head, then shifted into some kind of rudimentary fighting stance.
"Well, if you're not going to say anything, I'm going to attack now," The girl announced, obviously lacking any knowledge of how fighting actually worked. "Say your prayers! And start looking terrified!"
She ran at him. He disarmed her with a careful, almost lazy flick of the Masamune, then grabbed her by the arm and twisted her around before she could even shriek. "Sorry. We're going to see your father."
"Huh? LET ME GO! Get off me! Hey, ASSHOLE! I SAID I'M A GREAT NINJA! You don't want me using my ninjitsu to break loose, SOLDIER!"
Sephiroth knew what the Cetra had in mind. Godo Kisaragi was a wise and measured ruler, one who had chosen to bow his head rather than see his entire country ruined. But Sephiroth remembered how fiercely Godo had warned them to not put a hand on his daughter, that if anything ever happened to her, Shinra would slowly bleed out all of its resources trying to put down a Wutain insurgency. It was mostly an empty boast, but the Cetra remembered, too.
Slamming through the door to Godo's chambers, he tossed the Great Ninja Yuffie -- a nine-year old girl -- onto the ground in front of her father and put a boot on her to keep her from moving. The girl squeaked, but somehow possessed enough common sense to fall silent, while Godo stared in horror for a long couple of minutes, the color leaving his face completely. He looked from his only daughter, to Sephiroth -- who stood poised to kill her -- and the life seemed to fade from his eyes.
"So you'll even take the lives of children, just to prove a point. I've already given you my country. Must you take my daughter, as well?" No protests, nothing but tired defeat. Godo Kisaragi's deadened eyes didn't have an ounce of fight left in them, just tired resignation to the horror of his surroundings. "I beg you. Take my life, not hers. If you must make an example to the Wutain people, make it be me."
The man was altogether too calm, too defeated. He knew he was beaten. Seeing the man's obvious exhaustion, Sephiroth frowned. "You're not even going to struggle? You fought for your country, but you won't fight for the life of your daughter?"
"Unleash her, SOLDIER, and I'll fight you to the death. But what can I do...? I've never seen your face, certainly. You might not be one of the top-ranking SOLDIERs, so maybe your reflexes won't be as inhumanly fast as the rest, and I could overpower you. But if I moved, you'd kill her. What am I to do, but beg for the mercy of a man I don't even know?"
Underneath his boot, the girl twisted, trying futilely to struggle loose, and Sephiroth knew immediately that the Cetra were wrong again. Killing Godo Kisaragi's daughter in front of him would only go one way -- Sephiroth would lower his sword, and as soon as her head rolled, Godo would attack him and die fighting.
(...You really have no clue how people work.) He thought, as the Cetra rumbled in disapproval.
"It's true, we are not humans. But neither are you."
(I'm human enough to tell you that killing this girl won't spark a fire. It'll just douse it. I don't even know what you're trying to do here.)
For the first time, a sort of grim awe overcame the Cetra, tinged with some sort of sardonic amusement. Even now, after they'd definitively asserted complete power over every cell in his body, Sephiroth saw no reason to simply sit back and do as he was ordered without question. They saw it, and knew he was right -- grudgingly.
"...Then act as you see fit."
He smirked just a little -- and kicked Yuffie aside, none-too-gently yet not with enough force to seriously hurt her. As soon as she was out of range Godo attacked, drawing a katana from his side and moving with precise, surprising speed for a man who had seemed so broken before. Sephiroth met the man's blade with his own and parried blow after blow, unsurprised to see that Godo's moves were flawless. Ruler of Wutai, and no slouch -- Sephiroth hadn't ever actually came to blows with him in his Wutai, but Godo had killed lesser SOLDIERs, even with a normal body un-enhanced by Mako and only Hojo knew what else. Doubtlessly, the Wutains were fierce fighters. If they'd been willing to put aside their own principles -- use materia, create SOLDIERS of their own -- they might have even won.
But then, they'd probably never even considered the possibility. It was a shame. Sephiroth struck, taking Godo off-guard suddenly and twisting his blade aside. In a split second, resignation crossed the man's face again -- he knew he'd lost -- then his expression faded entirely as Sephiroth slew him in one quick, clean thrust.
Yuffie sat in the corner, staring. Certain her eyes were fixed on both of them, Sephiroth tossed the body off the end of the blade, with as much scorn as he could manage, and turned to her, thinking how easy it was the play this role. "President Shinra sends his regards, girl."
Her eyes rose from her father's body to his face, wide as saucers, glassy. For a moment, Sephiroth -- and the Cetra -- thought he'd misjudged, that the girl was going to turn out to be as defeated as her father. Then he saw it -- a flicker of complete, utter hatred, and felt a little hint of satisfaction. Yuffie sprinted at him, suddenly, with a tiny kunai in hand. Sephiroth just stood watching, impassive, and almost laughed -- he wondered if the weapon, tiny as it was, could manage to kill him. Maybe with enough stabs, maybe if the girl was willing to cut him to pieces -- and if that happened, perhaps the Cetra's entire plan would be derailed, because of one scrawny nine-year old.
It seemed they weren't going to take the chance, no matter how slim it was. Sephiroth saw a flash of green and then felt them actually exert enough force to shove him backwards, and the girl tripped and fell. As soon as she did, green exploded in Sephiroth's field of vision. Again, he started to fall.
The landing came much more abruptly then he expected, knocking his breath out in a sudden rush. Underneath, soft soggy ground soaked through to the bone, and even if it smelled fetid, like mako sludge, the coolness of the mud was a relief -- his insides still burned.
Sephiroth lingered for a moment, before lifting his head. Around him, the outline of several small houses loomed out of the darkness, part of some unrecognizable little town. Then he squinted, taking note of the vegetation, the towering mako reactor in the distance, and the sound of bullfrogs. This was somewhere on the Western Continent, probably the south, one of those little villages in the jungles.
...Gongaga.
Yes -- the name of Zack's hometown. Unbidden, another memory came up from nowhere, some offhand little conversation in the Shinra headquarters, a few months after the end of the war.
"So, Sephiroth," Zack's voice, in his head. The image associated with it was one of the other man leaning over the edge of Sephiroth's desk, getting in the way of whatever mundane task he was trying to do -- and Zack was probably trying to be annoying. "You never told me where you're from. Actually, I never told you where I'm from, did I? Ever been to Gongaga?"
"No."
"Small town on the West continent, way down south. Right in the middle of the jungles and swamps. There are about ninety people in the entire village, year-round. We never get any tourists. Most of the homes didn't even have power until they built the reactor... Hey, are you listening?"
"...I'm busy."
"Yeah, well, this paperwork's not going anywhere. I thought you were supposed to be a hero or something. Why's Mr. Big Hero doing paperwork?" A little tinge of jealousy, there -- but it seemed good-natured. "Well, I guess I'll leave you alone... tell me about your hometown some time. Hell, tell me SOMETHING about yourself, some time. At least tell me that you don't always take yourself this seriously, that can't be healthy."
"...Okay. You can go away now."
"Heh, doesn't exactly sound like you're looking for suggestions, huh?"
And, oddly enough, Zack's behavior never quite annoyed Sephiroth, either. That said something, but whatever the significance was, it vanished a moment later. Sephiroth cringed, grabbed his forehead, and forgot what he was even thinking about as the Cetra wiped another one of his memories completely clean, replacing it with an empty white space that hurt to think about, instead.
He got up, and looked around an unfamiliar little town, finding it completely empty. But the Cetra wanted him here for some reason -- and so he walked towards the nearest building and knelt, picking up a discarded newspaper. The date surprised him, five years after the Nibelheim Incident, and early autumn. Presumably, It was just a few weeks after Cloud and Zack's escape from the lab. But what he saw on the front page didn't surprise him at all, and nor did the Cetra's sudden feeling of preening satisfaction, like it had really been their idea.
The front-page article was about a vicious attack on a Western Continent Shinra Fortress by a whole band of Wutain insurgents, led by a Princess. Several casualties, one destroyed mako cannon, probably a good half-billion gil in damage, overall, news accompanied by rumors that the Wutain Princess leading the attack was joining up with AVALANCHE, now, too. AVALANCHE wasn't the small force it had been before, in Sephiroth's memories. It was growing. Resistance against Shinra seemed to be spreading, and it would only get more intense, if Zack joined the fight -- and if Cloud ever woke up. Little steps, little alterations in the flow of time and war and hatred were spreading, to the delight of the Cetra.
"Small alterations in the flow of time. Tiny ripples spread--" This time, he tried mentally blocking out their voice. It didn't help much, especially now that his head felt too crowded for his own thoughts.
"Killing Godo, while his daughter watches. That's not exactly a small alteration."
"But it achieved the intended result. And really, how hard was it for you?"
"It wasn't." It hadn't been -- if they expected him to feel any remorse, now, after everything, they were more clueless than he could have imagined, and apparently not bothering to look too deeply into his psyche, after all. The odd thing, though, was that the strange hint of relief Sephiroth had felt as soon as he'd seen his body keel over dead at the age of seven was fading. He was dead, and yet the hatred for him would grow again -- but what did that matter?
He hadn't given Zack much of a reason to hate him. Nibelheim had burned to the ground, but this time, he hadn't been the one to start the fire, just fan the flames. But he could feel the Cetra rumbling in anticipation of something, and Sephiroth gave voice to what he'd known all along.
"It's almost like I've been given a second chance... with Zack, Cloud, and everyone else... but that can't possibly be your intent."
The Cetra, predictably, just laughed at him.
"...It's meaningless, anyway," Sephiroth muttered, his voice coming out hollowly. The empty town around him, abandoned just like Kalm -- and with its people probably made into instant-weaponry, just like Kalm -- didn't stop him from feeling crazy, for standing in some supposed public place and having a conversation with no one visible.
"You're beginning to gain a very clear understanding of what we're doing here."
"And you're getting stronger," Sephiroth replied. "I suppose that means more humans are dying."
"Yes. It's gradual, but with all humans dead, it will be ours again. They will no longer use their materia, their reactors, all the petty little things that have continued to draw strength from this Planet... and us. The humans that die now can't be reborn, and this planet will be saved."
"...And you'll rule over it again? What makes you any better than humans?" He asked, wearily. "You'll probably destroy it too, just as they're doing."
That didn't incite their anger, but only because his taunts were beginning to mean less and less. Sephiroth clutched his head and fell over, feeling the burning pain rising again -- fire lacing through his veins, his insides aflame, every mako-saturated cell in his body giving in to their control -- as the world seemed to fade around him.
"This planet's future will be ours, eventually. But you are ours, for eternity."
Sephiroth choked, and writhed, helplessly, wondering how many lifetimes of torment he'd have to endure this time --
"The Planet doesn't belong to you. He doesn't, either."
-- A voice broke in, quiet amidst all the raging exhilaration of the Cetra, but enough to shatter their concentration and give him just a bit of relief. For a moment, Sephiroth could hear and feel nothing -- except perhaps confusion over the origin of that single voice, emanating from the Cetra. The pain receded, just a bit, and he listened to them chatter amongst themselves suddenly, disconcerted.
...Who?
Then the onslaught of rage came. The Cetra were confused now, maybe even a little shaken -- and blaming it on the one person they had control over, making him writhe and suffer until that single voice was all but forgotten.
notes:
1. ...It's going to be a while before anyone saves the day.
2. Next week: Back to Zack and Cloud, and the first of three very long chapters.
3. Thanks for the reviews, everyone! Please keep 'em coming, let me know what you think.