A/N: This chapter refers very vaguely to the concept presented in the Ultimania Omega that FFVII and FFX/ X-2 took place within the same universe, and that humanity originally hails from the FFX/X-2 world. Like FFVII itself, this story is about one millennium removed from the plot and characters of FFX/X-2, rendering them 99.9% irrelevant. This isn't a cross-over—just a pitstop at place that is canonically stated to exist, and an extremely time-altered version at that. It's not at all necessary to have played FFX/X-2 to understand fully what happens here.

Chapter Nine: Cradle of Humanity

Finally, something other than her own silly, forced noises broke the silence. Tifa turned her head to her left at a loud clunking noise—the sound of two metallic slabs interlocking. A hiss from overhead grabbed her attention afterward, followed by hundreds of tiny little pops as the probes disengaged from her pod. Lastly, she felt the painful thud her feet and knees made when gravity kicked in, dropping her to the concave floor. Just barely, she kept herself from eating the wall by catching the remainder of her weight on her hands first. Peering just ahead, she saw translucent silhouettes moving closer to her on two legs, and she swallowed a deep breath. She called her shell back into her, and it followed her lead, dissolving and releasing her onto a much more tolerable flat floor.

Static-laden gasps erupted all around her as she landed, and when she glanced up, Tifa saw them—humanoid creatures dressed from head to toe in what looked like hazardous materials suits. Darkly tinted masks completely obscured their faces, and mesh filtering devices lined their necks, lightly rasping with each breath their wearers took. They pointed long, glassy wands at her, connected to small hand-pads that each of them eyed nervously when they weren't gawking at her. Whatever readings they were trying to take, she was making their devices light up like the Gold Saucer at midnight.

Tifa raised her hands in a surrendering motion, hoping it meant anything to them, and lowered herself back down on one knee. "I'm unarmed," she enunciated, cringing at the quiver the crept into her voice.

"Stay right where you are," one of the masked figures replied, pronunciation unlike anything Tifa had ever heard, but the language plainly one that had been common back in Midgar.

Forgetting to breathe, Tifa bowed her head, unable to believe what she'd heard. There was no language barrier. To the best of her knowledge, she was nowhere near where Gaia had been, but these people, whatever they were, spoke in words she'd scarcely heard outside of her head or fevered dreams in over a year. An awkward, almost cartoonish thought about alien abduction crossed her mind for how they might have picked it up, but she shook it off as paranoia. She was here to ask for their help once the difficult introductions were done, not to get lost in fantastic worries about the sliver of a possibility that one of them might want to make her into an experiment or their next dinner.

"Miss, you've been severely irradiated. We're going to have to quarantine you for the safety of the ship," another suit spoke, a female voice crackling through its mouthpiece.

"Right," Tifa mumbled, nodding once, realizing that in her rush of optimism, she'd failed to consider any misgivings that seeing her literally absorb her mode of transport might inspire. Not that she had any idea of what else she might have done, aside from maybe let them try to crack it open. Considering her relationship to it, she had to wonder if that would have harmed her in some way. It wasn't worth the risk.

"Enna, Vits, get the containment cart, "the female suit motioned to two of the others. "Aron and Della, you two prep the area for decontamination once we're clear."

"Ma'am," they responded, and proceeded to a large locker along the far end of the room.

Tifa remained frozen in place, stock-still, eying every their every move. The two the woman had called Enna and Vits approached, wheeling a thick, metallic box reminiscent of a portable toilet that housed a bench, a small container of water, what looked like bandages, and a single overhead light. Not a big deal, she told herself. They were just protecting themselves. From her. Because she was apparently so radioactive that she was giving off enough to be dangerous to the people around her. The list of possible causes was short, but indeterminable all the same. The simple fact that she was hosting her home world's only uncorrupted souls and what used to be its consciousness was one, and what had happened to the last place she'd touched down probably wasn't helping. Her recently acquired life-absorbing problem was another. Or it could be part of whatever he'd done to her… All three options had to do with intaking a tremendous amount of spirit energy and tolerating it, though. It could easily be a combination.

"Please step inside," Enna motioned, and Tifa blinked once, realizing that she'd zoned out.

"Don't worry lady. We're not gonna store you in it. We're just taking you to a nice, comfy cabin where you won't make the rest of us glow," Vits reassured her.

Mildly humiliated, Tifa stood and stepped inside, replying, "No, I don't want that either." Everything was going to work out okay. She'd known from the start that this process was going to come with some speedbumps. Temporarily confining her while they figured out if she posed a threat was a predictable part of the equation. She could take it in stride; she had to.

When the containment cart's door slid shut behind her, she overheard the unnamed woman issuing one last set of orders to her group—"Aron, when you're done here, report to the isolation cabin and complete the unknowns survey. She looks like one of ours, but she can't be this far out. We also need to find out how she's putting off rays like that without melting. Della, review samples and footage from the probe array. I want to know what's up with that oblong crystal thing she was riding in. She doesn't seem hostile, but none of what we just saw makes any damned sense."

Upon reaching what appeared to be a medical bay, Enna and Vits inserted the containment cart into a fitted slot. Locked in place, it opened on the opposite side and released Tifa into a small room. When she stepped out, they motioned her over to a large window overlooking the rest of the area and activated an intercom. Casually, both removed their face masks and head gear, and she nearly stumbled over backwards. Not only did her hosts speak the same language; as far as Tifa could see, they actually were human. It was too good to be true, but not a single detail was out of line. They had normal-looking faces with blue and brown eyes, mouths beneath noses with two nostrils, sandy colored hair and a bald head. She could see no extra joints or appendages, they were neither extraordinarily tall nor short, and both had some variety of earth-toned skin.

"Make yourself at home," Enna said before he and Vits left. "Once he's done directing the clean-up detail, our Commander has orders to come ask you a few questions."

Tifa took his advice and did her best to settle down, if not settle in. Behind her, the cart that had transported her now served as a locked door. The room in which they'd quarantined her was decked in unnerving medical and surveillance equipment. But they'd recognized her as someone who at least looked like one of their own species right away, she reminded herself. That part was promising, and she was doing her best to cling to it. Save for the numerous unidentified devices affixed to the walls, the presence of a tank clearly meant to hold a human inhabitant, and spherical objects lining the ceiling that she was certain were analogous to cameras for how they rotated with her every move, this wasn't horrible. There was also a relatively average-looking bed, and two folding chairs pulled up to a table just beneath the window. Content to turn her back to the room's more disturbing contents, she lowered herself into one, folded her arms on the table, and buried her head in them, trying to gather her thoughts and calm her nerves. It had to be a good sign that they wanted to question her. The possibility of a torturous interrogation had occurred to her, but the physical danger she posed had at least made that route too inconvenient, and they still wanted to talk. She had answers—so, so many answers—maybe more than they were ready for, but they were going to get them.

…Except for what had happened to the last place she'd crashed. The last thing she needed to do was give them a reason to think that she was the one behind Amyntas' destruction.

She stayed that way for about an hour and was starting to drift off when a low buzz overhead broke Tifa out of her reverie, and she lifted her head. Outside the window, a middle-aged man in a navy-blue uniform stood with a thin tablet in his hands. He now counted as the third most unremarkable-looking person she'd seen in what already felt like forever, standing at the higher end of five feet tall with black hair lightly frosted at the temples, dark brown eyes, a complexion a shade deeper than olive, and a medium but fit build. The only details that stood out were two small medals attached to his right shoulder, and eight diagonal white stripes on his left. The "Commander", Enna had called him; the one who had orders to question her, solidifying Tifa's suspicion that this was a military vessel. Hope crested anew; if they were military, they had firepower. That they were part of a space-faring military meant those hopes weren't just the product of some desperate fantasy. They were very likely to possess the resources she needed them to have.

Before addressing her, he attached his tablet to the upper right-hand corner of the window, stating, "Commence survey '7R: Persons or Entities of Unknown Origin'; Commander Aron Sudira attending." The device emitted two quick beeps, and he continued, "Alright, I suppose we should get introductions out of the way. I'm Aron Sudira, second in command of my people's local interstellar investigations fleet. The ship you're currently aboard is called the 'Passage'. What about you?"

"Tifa Lockhart," she answered, resting her head in her hands and leaning forward slightly on her elbows. "A little more than a year ago, I owned a bar and helped a close friend out with his delivery service. Not exactly exciting stuff, but…it was nice, back then."

Aron folded his hands behind his back and raised one eyebrow, appearing genuinely surprised. "That is tame, especially considering how we found you. Care to tell me what's happened since then?"

Tifa paused. She had to be careful. She couldn't just launch into everything like last time. She needed to be smarter about how she shared her story this go around. "Before I get into that, can you tell me what you believe happens when a world dies?" she asked.

"Odd question," he said, cocking his head to one side. "You aren't some kind of cosmic doomsday nut, are you?"

Grimacing, she answered, "No, nothing like that. I just—it'll be easier to explain if I know how you think about it."

"Got it. but there's not much to 'believe', miss. When the situation gets a little too hot for survival, most life-bearing rocks have a mechanism where their energies, which we generally understand to be the catalyst for that life, are rolled up into one entity. That thing leaves the dead world behind and finds another one a comfortable distance from its parent star to start over. We've even had the privilege of documenting it—at least the part where the new world's life begins, anyway. Hell of a sight. We call it 'auto-terraforming'. There is some sketchy evidence that something else goes on in extreme cases—almost like the thing transporting the energy goes hyperdimensional, but not exactly like you'd think of for getting from point A to point B in a ship like this. It's got to be going somewhere, but we don't have much beyond some bizarre telescopic data, and a mathematical theorem to support that idea, though. It's a work in progress," Aron explained.

Standing so that he wasn't looking down at her, Tifa pushed a little more, "So…what if I told you that a person had figured out how to become that 'entity'?"

Aron pulled a chair up to the window for himself then, crossing his arms pensively when he sat. "First, I'd want to know how they avoided getting killed in the process. Then, I'd say they're one of the scariest sons of bitches I've ever heard of, because there's no way that doesn't involve some kind of omnicide, and I'd want to know why they did it."

Nodding, Tifa fixed her eyes on her fidgeting hands. "Yeah, scary is one word," she soberly agreed. "One more question, and then I'll tell you everything."

"Shoot."

"…How is that we're the same?"

Aron gave a tight-lipped, ironic smile. "Glad you asked first. Our history has a lot of blind spots, but about a thousand years or so ago, a combination of religious foolery and engineering errors destabilized our home world's energy field. People got a little too excited about trying to tap into it. Story goes that all kinds of monsters and even angry spirits were running amok. Not sure I buy the part about the spirits, but around the same time, a private expedition of roughly 25,000 people was the first to leave and was never heard from again. Fast forward to today, and those of us who stayed behind have managed to terraform three other planets in our system artificially. The old world's pretty much a ghost town. Now, we run into you, a quarter of a light year from home. I'm guessing the first expedition found what it was looking for, but lost contact. One of them was probably your grandma with about ten or fifteen 'greats' attached."

"Maybe…" Tifa acquiesced. "For most of my life, my world was run by a corrupt electric and paramilitary corporation called ShinRa. The only history we learned was whatever version they wanted us to know, so not many people paid much attention."

"ShinRa? That name sounds familiar…huh. A damn shame for both of us," Aron commented. "Anyway, your turn Miss Lockhart."

Tifa hugged herself, shivers creeping down her spine while she paced. "ShinRa developed a project where they modified people into super-soldiers by treating them with the planet's processed energy and materials from an alien life-form they'd found. They went so far as to experiment with this procedure on someone before they were born. Under the company's watch, he grew up extremely strong like they'd hoped, but eventually he found out about the project…"

"Under the company's watch? I'm sure they were perfectly humane. This extra-special super soldier lost his shit, didn't he?" Aron guessed.

She continued to pace as she spoke, heat building in her face. "But it was worse than that. He decided he was meant to be some kind of 'god', and I was just lucky enough that the project was based in my hometown. He razed it, killed my father, almost killed me when I—"

"Holy shit," Aron interrupted with a start, glancing up at his tablet when it sounded a high-pitched alarm. "Uh, Lockhart, I'm listening, but you're going to have to sit back down and take a breather. The radiation level in there is spiking dangerously high. No pun intended, but we don't need a meltdown."

Dropping her hands to her sides in frustration, she continued, "I guess the only parts left that really matter are that he developed a personal vendetta against one of my friends for stopping him. It was never enough, though. He kept coming back until he beat us. In the end, he destroyed our planet and took most of its energy."

"Most of?"

"How do you think I survived?" Tifa sighed, already loathing how incriminating that had to sound.

"Would you say you'd been part of the project at any point?" Aron queried.

"No."

"How'd you wind up with the leftovers, then? Are you sure there wasn't something in the water where you grew up that might have exposed you?"

"I was just the last person left alive," Tifa insisted. "He…doesn't want me dead. Our world's usual way of gathering its energy had been destroyed in an earlier crisis. I wound up with anything he didn't corrupt."

Aron ran a hand over his face, flabbergasted. "Well, that might explain the radiation. I feel like there's more to how it's not hurting you, but we can revisit that. You got a name for this divine wannabe?"

Tifa closed her eyes and bit her lower lip hard before answering, "Sephiroth."

"Do you have any idea what Sephiroth is up to nowadays?"

"He also killed the world that used to be where you found me."

"Damn. Seriously? We'd just come out this way to finalize plans for contact, not sift through its rubble," Aron confessed. "You can imagine our reaction when all we found was a bunch of dead asteroids."

Smiling sadly, Tifa looked Aron in eyes. "They called themselves Amyntas. They were about as good or bad as humanity, I suppose. The two might have been good for one another with a little work. I tried to warn them, too. I came back around this way hoping I'd find someone looking into it…Please say you have a way to stop him."

"If you're telling the truth, there's a terraforming trick or two we have that he might not enjoy if they were pointed at him," Aron answered. "I'm not at liberty to discuss those methods, but I don't foresee many challenges in weaponizing them if we had to."

"That's relieving," Tifa said.

"Would you say that this Sephiroth character still holds a grudge against you personally?" Aron asked suddenly, furrowing both brows. "Not trying to pry into anything, but you did say he doesn't want you dead. If this guy's going around knocking off entire worlds, we kind of need to know if we're holding bait."

Tifa did sit back down then, breaking eye contact and lightly touching the back of her head yet again. This was a dangerous question. She had to be honest, but she also needed to avoid giving them a quick reason to reject her. "I don't know. He's not following me everywhere I go, if that's what you're wondering."

With a heavy sigh, Aron rose from his place and collected his tablet from the window. "End survey 7R. Extensive follow-up recommended. Sudira signing off."

Sheepishly, Tifa glanced back up and asked, "What's going to happen to me?"

"You'll stay quarantined for obvious reasons. We'll probably want to perform some minor tests to see if we can turn off the whole human nuke thing you have going on, or at least isolate it without having to isolate you. I'll share what you've told me with my superiors and see what they want to do with it. I'm sure we'll be talking again sooner than later," he expounded.

"Thank you for listening," Tifa replied.

"Just my duty. Try to get some shut-eye. We'll be home in about ten hours, and I can't picture a scenario where we won't be keeping you busy."

Sleep eluded Tifa, and not only because she didn't need much anymore. Voyeuristic mechanical eyes whirred and rotated overhead, unashamed of their purpose. She tried swapping which hand she'd folded over the other on her stomach, and two of the orbs directly over them moved as well. After a count to one hundred, she twitched a pinky finger almost imperceptibly. Again, the adjacent-most device still detected it. She turned over onto her side to face the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest then, curling into herself.

She was at least being treated as a serious witness to Amyntas' demise. That was a good first step. However, as with anything else the probes had gathered from the scene of the crime, she knew that she herself counted as a type of evidence—residue of a bygone event that needed to be secured, tested, and interpreted. Tifa worried about what these people might find when they poked and prodded her, even though she initially believed she'd divulged enough that nothing should come as a surprise. Now, she wasn't so sure. While they didn't seem to recognize the 'spirit' in spirit energy, was it still possible for them to tell the difference between a world's living consciousness and what it was she was housing? Would the two appear different under a microscope? Would they blame her?

No, that wasn't the right attitude. Honestly, how much better could she have possibly done than to find another human civilization to help her? Beyond simply forging an alliance with a people who might be able to stop Sephiroth, the fact that they were her own kind offered a chance for redemption. She'd do anything she needed to make it work; to protect them where she'd failed to protect Gaia. Any cost she might have to pay to defeat him, she would gladly give, whether that came in the form of grueling medical tests, or even if it meant doing something objectively terrible to prevent much worse. She could not, would not repeat the mistake she'd made with Eden. Tifa felt her gut clench, revolting at the idea of being so ruthless, but told herself that she'd just have to bear it.

Where had the optimism and confidence that had led her here gone? Searching inward, she found only the razor-sharp resolve that had accompanied them lingering on the surface. Alone, it was sorely tempted to cave to cynicism, assuming she'd have to betray her conscience, or that she was doomed to be dissected like Jenova. Tifa recalled the power of those feelings; how they'd lightened her spirit and given her a little taste of times past when she'd encouraged her friends—when she was the voice telling them that everything was going to work out, even if it had to hurt for a while. Concentrating on that memory, she allowed herself to ignore every hum and beep about her and searched her mind a little deeper. Yes, those positive convictions were still there, but just out of reach, as if something was preventing her from owning them—not exactly a puzzle, given everything she'd faced up until now. It was hard to embrace flying high when the next smack-down always felt so inevitable.

She needed both hope and resolve, but time and again, she'd learned that they weren't always readily available. How many times in the past had she acted more confident and hopeful than she really felt to keep moving forward? Too many to remember, and this was no different. She didn't need to feel invincible every second to know that meeting again with humanity couldn't be a coincidence. Preserving them was her calling, and one she could believe in no matter what games her heart wanted to play.

Rolling over onto her back again, Tifa stretched out her legs and splayed her arms out at her sides. She shut her eyes and willed her breathing to slow. A gentle pressure settled between her eyes while she stared at the backs of her lids, and her palms tingled. She imagined that she was weightless, floating on the undisturbed surface of an endless sea—no waves, no wind or storms, no animals; just an infinite stretch of calm waters shielding her from the troubles of the waking world.

Moments had bled into oncoming unconsciousness when she sleepily stretched her arms over her head and met with the resistance of a warm, very real liquid passing over them. Surprised but somehow not startled or frightened, Tifa slowly peered out of one eye and saw neither the ceiling lined with its many cameras nor the many medical contraptions on the walls. Instead, she truly was in something like the temporal place she'd envisioned to relax herself to sleep, afloat on a flat, black ocean under a moonless night sky. At first, it was blissfully monotonous, and she believed that she'd merely slipped from unwinding into a lucid dream. Then, a tiny streak of light caught her attention, followed rapidly by another, and another until the sky was playing out a torrent of shooting stars. They were benign; just tiny bits and pieces burning up in the atmosphere, but there were so many that heavens began to glow from their shared, overlapping milliseconds aflame.

Watching the sky fall, a fresh wave of anxiety crashed over her, and when it did, she sank beneath the surface like an unsuspecting seagull snatched into the jaws of a predatory fish. Impulsively, frantically, she reached up for anything she could grasp onto, while her legs paddled hard against the unseen force dragging her down. A panicked cry escaped her throat when she sank ever deeper, and she realized that she wasn't underwater any longer. Albeit with some flailing, she was drifting again, having descended not into anything's stomach or crushing depths, but an undercurrent of spirit energy—a vast stream of interlacing crimson and black tendrils.

The negative Lifestream. Sephiroth's Lifestream, as it had been back on Gaia.

Reflexively balling her hands into fists, Tifa waited for shrieks of agony and every awful, tortured thought belonging to the souls that comprised this stream to assail her senses. She waited, but all she heard were whispers; murmurs too unintelligible to decipher, and for the most part, not wholly given to any specific emotion. They came in chanting waves, fading in and out like the memory of a rite or prayer long forgotten, and although she tried to remain on high alert, the sound lulled Tifa back down. More than that, she was struck anew with how very soul-tired she truly was. Closing her eyes, she let her arms and legs hang limp. An idea of being freed from all her burdens—of simply dispersing—wormed its way into her thoughts once more, but she quickly rejected it. Exhaustion alone didn't justify admitting defeat. It dawned on her that perhaps the negative Lifestream was not necessarily constructed only of torment, but of that very defeat. Containing all those lives Sephiroth had taken and enthralled, this was firstly a place of resignation, whether to madness, sickness, hate, despair, or the man himself.

Further down the flow carried her, until she felt her feet alight on an even floor. Glancing back up the way she'd come, she saw that the negative stream formed a broad, vertical helix that reached up to and just barely pierced the watery ceiling where it had pulled her under. At ground level, off to her right, it flowed forward without gaining or losing altitude. Unable to perceive any other path, Tifa warily followed it. All she could see was a dark expanse lit very dimly in the Lifestream's presence. There was nowhere else to go, but it wasn't long before she came to a point where the corrupted river curved back around. Looking over her shoulder, Tifa now noticed that it ran back to rejoin the helix, forming an entrapping loop. She attempted to wade through but was transported back into the loop's center when she'd made it about halfway across. One step too far, and a flash of blinding light reassigned her next one to where she'd started.

After that, the hushed whispers abruptly ceased, and the hairs on the back of Tifa's head stood on end. She'd gathered enough to know that he was eventually going to appear and steeled herself as best she could, but it did nothing to soothe her dread. Anytime Sephiroth felt the need to be more than a goading voice in the back of her head, some new unholy terror befell her.

As if her apprehension itself had summoned him, he materialized only a precious few feet in front of her.

Instinctively, Tifa stepped back.

Sephiroth smirked slightly at her reaction but maintained their distance. "The very cradle of humanity is before us," he stated, seemingly pleased. "What shall we do with them?"

Tifa shook her head in the negative, bewildered that he'd bothered to ask or include her, but knowing it was rhetorical all the same. His intentions for these human worlds would be no different than any other—destroy, consume, and corrupt. And it probably meant that time was already running short for them to plan and mount a defense. "Nothing," she replied. "I'm not doing anything with you."

His expression softened at her words, regarding her with unmistakable pity, his scheming malice and steely glare fading to unmask solemnity; sorrow. "…Why take pains to protect those so far beneath you, Tifa? What do you imagine they can become to you?" he questioned her, the condescension she was accustomed to hearing from him entirely absent.

Doing a double take, she answered the suggestion he'd made in times past instead, retorting, "I won't follow you anywhere." Why was he looking at her like that, as if he were sincere—as if he cared? That was impossible. And why did it make her feel more trapped and overwhelmed than if he'd come to inflict further grief as she'd expected? Throat tight with trepidation and confusion, she firmly reiterated, "I don't want anything to do with you," forcing more rage than she presently felt into her voice.

Sephiroth nodded once and vanished.

Tifa turned in a full circle, confirming that she was alone and still inside the negative Lifestream's loop. Running back to the far end in hopes that an escape had opened up, she found the energy flow had instead grown wider. Not only that, it was rapidly constricting. Panting, she scurried back to the center. She didn't want to think about what would happen when it caught up to her, but it was closing in fast. Crouching down, she covered her head and squeezed her eyes shut. All she'd done to wind up here was fall asleep. Logically, she just had to wake up to get out. When the panic became too much, or when the stream overtook her, she would be alright, wouldn't she?

But waiting didn't work out quite as planned. Cold tendrils wrapped around her wrists when the dark spirit energy reached her, and she remained. They pried her hands away from her head and coiled around her forearms and biceps, pulling her to stand. She strained against them and tried to break into a sprint when they'd forced her most of the way up, but they held. Her heart pounded mercilessly, and hot tears threatened the corners of her eyes, but there was still no reprieve.

When she was fully upright, dark-clad arms snaked around her midriff from behind, drawing her near so that her upper back rested flush against his chest.

"Don't—" she started but knew too well it was futile.

Sephiroth's wing dropped over and around her, blocking out the sight of his Lifestream; of anything that wasn't him. Long silver strands fell over her shoulder as he leaned into her, murmuring, "Tifa, forsake your past ambitions; they are already dead. Accept that you have surpassed humanity. You must."

"No, I won't," she defied him, just barely above a whisper.

"Perhaps not yet," he conceded, "but you can only delude yourself for so long. When that delusion fails you, I'll be there…Tell me what you believe in then."

Lurching forward to tear herself from his grasp, her momentum caused her to bolt upright, greeted only by the night-dimmed hazmat cabin. She threw her legs over the side of the bed, squeezing the mattress' edge in both hands, trying to ground herself in the tangible, conscious present. It was a dream—nothing but a nightmare, fabricating what she'd expect him to say to discourage her; just her anxiety playing around because why wouldn't it? She was on the cusp of finally fighting back, and even the most wonderful changes could be frightening.

Comforting though that thought wanted to be, she knew it was a lie, and she couldn't pretend otherwise. Not this time; the stakes were too high.

Bodily, she hadn't gone anywhere. That much was true. She'd been in her own headspace at first, but rather than invading her mind, it was like Sephiroth had stolen her away into his own this time. Aghast, Tifa stared blankly out her window into the medical bay proper, her field of vision temporarily lost in the sight of a watery ceiling and the crimson and black streaks that had breached it, as if piercing through a thin, fragile veil separating two realities. The cost of Sephiroth having healed her—the root of why she felt that some nebulous force was clinging onto her—was suddenly crystal clear. Hidden behind her total physical recovery, she could now feel how he'd bonded a small part of her subconsciousness to his, leaving a boundary so flimsy it was almost meaningless. The only saving grace was that it felt compartmentalized; separate from where she sheltered her friends. Why he hadn't gone after them, she could only guess.

She knew she'd misjudged one crucial thing, though—she was in fact "bait", as Aron had put it. Since the end of Gaia, Sephiroth had always been just behind her in one sense or another. He didn't have to follow her in person to pick up on where she was or what she was doing. For any of her plans to work, Tifa now believed she was going to have to come completely clean. Her connections to Sephiroth, the suspiciously Jenova-like changes she was undergoing—they needed to know everything, because he knew everything. This made trying to warn the rest of humanity extremely precarious for her, and time was running so very, very short, but what choice did she have? Missing information—anything he had that they didn't—could kill them all.