Zack barricaded himself in the bathroom, hollering like the world was coming to an end. Cloud posted up outside doing what any good friend would do when their buddy was down and out...making it worse.

"Eggs and bread, eggs and bread, eggs and bread…"

"Aaaaaahhhh," Zack yelled. Cloud winced in empathy.

"Is it coming out both ends?"

"Yeah with the force of a Graviga!"

"Hehe…"

Sephiroth happened down the hall and Cloud got his attention. He lead him to the bathroom door where Zack moaned in agony.

"Ohhhhhh! Why is this happening to me?"

"Because you ate ten hotdogs, Zack."

"Sephiroth! Buddy! I'm dying, man. It was nice knowing you. Remember your SOLDIER honor. If I could hold your hand now I would."

"I'm not going to hold your hand, Zack. You're going to need that in a minute."

"I was just trying to be a hero!" He was trying to get Cloud to eat hotdogs…it worked.

"Thanks Zack," Cloud smiled. He could eat hotdogs now! Skinny Cloud had a thing about meat and Zack thought if he saw him eating it…

"I don't know where it all went wrong, how I got to this point, how one hotdog turned into ten. I'm sorry guys, I'm gonna have to pull an Elvis on this one. Oh no, I can see it now: Zack Fair, SOLDIER 1st Class, KIA on the toilet. You're here, and Cloud's here, thank you for being here in my final moments. You guys are the greatest, thank you for cheering me on in my crappiest times, thank you for holding the door so I can find my way out, thank you for just being awesome. I love you!"

Fortunately, a bout of food poisoning did not spell Zack's endoscopic doom.

Zack hung out in his usual chair by Sephiroth's window with a big sombrero on his head. It was a Galbadian holiday known as Cinco de Mayo, and Zack was all into the spirit. He kicked back in Sephiroth's room opening up to him. The man did save his life from a potential ruptured bowel.

"…And in 7th grade I kissed my first girl, but not on the mouth, like on the jaw, and that's why I think cats are awesome!"

"No," Sephiroth glared, remembering the blue Persian that watched his every move like it was some sort of robot.

"So tell me more about when you and Angeal were my age"

"What's there to tell? We were idiots too, the end."

"Aw come onnn!" Zack whined, making Sephiroth ponder. "Genesis too?"

"Genesis was a later addition to our trio, but completed a motley triangle of troubled operators."

"Man, must have been annoying having that fairy hanging around all the time."

"Au contraire, there was a time where I would have died for that man…"

Angeal and Genesis were like two peas in a neon pink pod with rainbow trim. Genesis didn't talk with a lisp, but when he let the flamboyant personality come out, it came like a virgin on prom night.

"Oh-emm-gee, see that guy over there? He's my husband. And that's our son, his name is Damien, and that woman with him, pfft, she's our housekeeper."

Hotdog Day in SOLDIER was completely ruined.

Angeal ate his cheese dog while Genesis leered at him.

"You eat that hotdog Angeal. You look like you're very well-practiced."

Angeal leered back. He grew up with Genesis, this was an ongoing war between them. Sephiroth sat watching the whole charade unfold like a catfight.

"How's that wiener working out for you Angeal? It looks juicy."

"Nah, it's actually more savory."

"Oh be sure to wipe that sauce off, don't let it dribble down your chin." Angeal did with a straight face. "You know if you swirl your tongue around it, you get more flavor."

Sephiroth put his hotdog down, and Angeal threw up his hands.

"No! You can't give in! That's what he wants!"

Genesis flipped his hand in a dismissive flourish. "He was easy."

Sephiroth winced, realizing the true target of this little sniping war had been him.

"Arrggh, hand it over then," Angeal groaned. "Don't let it go to waste."

The cafeteria wasn't the only thing ruined. One night when Angeal suggested grub at a taco stand, Genesis tsked and took his hand. They ended up at a ritzy establishment the Turks were known to frequent.

"Pfft, yeah, we'll be able to eat here in a million years," Angeal scoffed. But Genesis shot an evil grin.

"Relax gais, it's on Lazard tonight." He pulled out a black Visa card, and Angeal's jaw dropped.

"How the hell did you get Lazard's credit card?" But instantly the blood rushed from his face. "Oh god, please don't answer that…"

Genesis cocked a hip, pressing a pinky to the corner of his leering lips.

"He was a bastard. No warning."

Angeal and Sephiroth rushed to opposite sides of the street to throw up.

So Genesis was a salacious little flirt, but he was always there with a motherly air whenever overhead snapped at Angeal for something stupid.

"What's wrong?"

There's a certain composure guys treat each other with. But with Genesis and Angeal, all of that went straight out the window. They were the kind of guy-friends who would cry their eyes out next to a roaring fire. Regardless of anyone else's objections, Angeal loved his gay brother.

Angeal made a joke out of his own metrosexual tendencies at work, but back home in Banora, it was the devil! Angeal could do the best gay impression, and Genesis could do the best straight impression. Watching them imitate each other was better than television.

Riding in the back of Pop Hewley's pickup, blasting the Spice Girls on the dash radio, Angeal and Genesis sat side-by-side snapping selfies with a Polaroid camera.

"Besties!"

"Ohmagahh boo, Angeal, your hair, it's everywhere! What did we talk about with my hairdresser Jessica about flat-ironing?"

"Shut-up! No way Jose!"

"Oh yes way, all the way."

"Don't make me snap my fingers in a Z formation at you!"

"Don't make me take off my earrings!"

"Girlfriehh don't try to flaunt what you don't got…"

Genesis crawled across the truck bed to sit next to Sephiroth. He put his head on his shoulder interlacing their fingers.

"You're not nice, Angeal. I'm going to be Sephiroth's friend now. We're taking our balls and going home."

Sephiroth tensed with bug-eyes, while Angeal just pointed and laughed. Hah, your problem now!

Sephiroth was still getting to know Genesis when the boy knocked on his door one morning. Genesis motioned for him to come to Angeal's room, and they went to the third door in their row. He inserted his ID card into the key-slot and spammed zero until the door opened—that little trick worked on a soda machine downstairs.

Inside, they found Angeal singing and dancing to Michael Jackson…in his underwear!

BILLY JEAN IS NOT MY LOVER
SHE'S JUST A GIRL WHO CLAIMS THAT
IIIIIIIIIIIII AM THE ONE!

Angeal saw them leaning against his wall and hammed it up even more! He ran his hand down his face, striking a pose.

BUT THE KID IS NOT MY SON! BAAABAAAYYY!

He moonwalked across his room with a spin and a pop-scream. Sephiroth and Genesis lost it.

It was true that Sephiroth was mainly Angeal's friend at first. Now Genesis sat with them during lunch hour completing a bizarre pack of misfits. He did have a habit of scoffing at their steak and potatoes though. Angeal meanwhile explained the high-protein diet he had Sephiroth on like someone who bred greyhounds for racing. He wanted to see how big he could get him, their own little experiment that the R&D Department could go kiss.

"He's not a chimpanzee, Angeal! You can't just experiment on him!"

Sephiroth looked over with a mischievous grin, and took a huge bite of steak. Angeal never let Genesis hear the end of it.

"You know, if you want seconds for your salad, there's a bush out back behind the Shinra Building…"

"You are what you eat, Angeal," Genesis shook his fork at him. An evil glow crossed Sephiroth's eyes as he signed over at their vegan friend.

"Then you should lay off the fruit-salad."

"Oh that's it! I'm going to sit somewhere else. This is workplace bullying."

He flipped his hair and sauntered off, Sephiroth and Angeal giggling at his back.

It was very true that Genesis was somewhat of a drama queen, always fussing over the dumbest little things, like civil rights and political activism—him and those damn whales.

"Eco-terrorists are no better than the oligarchies they fight against. You can't hurt people in order to save people, and you certainly can't hurt people to save the planet. People come first. Ecological management is superior to ecological activism because…" blah blah blah.

And then there were his tirades about merit in the art world. The guy was into the kind of obtuse modern art that would flip a chair over and stick it in a museum. A graphite line on a blank stretched canvas, SOLD! Genesis was part of the reason the Mob was able to stay in business laundering money by selling incoherent scribbles to anonymous buyers for mountains of gil…he was part of the problem!

But his true passion was poetry. His theatrics had women swooning like a sex toy, which he loved to flaunt in front of his straight brothers. Under no conditions was he planning on being a career-SOLDIER. He'd do his time, take his GI Bill and go straight to the University to study Classics—aka he was going to take his tuition and piss it all away—if his older brother didn't throttle him first for making him an unwilling study-buddy.

"I've been analyzing the last line of Act I…She appears to the pure heart on Last Days, Fortelling his day to die…Do you think it's trying to say the Goddess will return in spirit and body? Do you think it's a literal or figurative interpretation? Angeal, what do you think?"

Angeal yawned as the three of them walked through SOLDIER wing. "I think it's a crock of Jello. Bob Dylan wrote better poetry than that."

"How could you even compare trashy lyrics to the quaint spirituality that Loveless evokes? Infinite in mystery is the Gift of the Goddess, we seek it thus and take to the sky."

"OH! The places you'll go!" Angeal swept his hand in a world-encompassing arc.

"Angeal! How can you be so disrespectful?...Love seeketh not its soul to please, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair…"

"I will not eat them in a box, I will not eat them with a fox!"

"AAARRRGGGHH ANGEAL!"

"I will not eat them here or there, I will not eat them anywhere!"

"You prude! I hope you die young."

But Sephiroth, who walked quiet with his hands in his pockets, spoke up in a barely audible mutter.

"Love seeketh only Self to please, to bind another to its delight…"

Genesis and Angeal stopped, gazes trained on him. Genesis cocked an eyebrow and recanted another verse.

"Here we may reign secure, and in my choice to reign is worth ambition though in Hell…"

"…Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven…Paradise Lost."

Genesis jumped in front of him.

"It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll…"

"…I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

Sephiroth looked him in the eye, and Genesis' jaw dropped. But Angeal's hands made a picture frame.

"Aww, this is so cute! You two are perfect for each other!"

Genesis and Sephiroth stood star-struck. Angeal was right about one thing, this was the start of something.

They continued on together, Genesis talking to Sephiroth about poetry now. Angeal could only take so much fluffy prose for so long.

"Aight, enough poetry! C'mon Sephiroth, let's go get tickets for Back To The Future. Loveless over here can go see Dirty Dancing alone."

But Genesis put his hand on Sephiroth's shoulder.

"Eh-eh, Little Brother is with me tonight." Sephiroth saw an alluring flash cross Genesis' eyes. "You won't regret it. I promise."

He glanced back at Angeal, who made a queer face jamming an index finger into his cupped hand. Sephiroth rolled his eyes and followed Genesis.

He took him to a black-box theater a street up from Loveless Avenue; Off-Loveless. The audience was small, but Sephiroth noticed something very distinct about many of them.

Implants.

What could this mean? He had a feeling he was about to find out. A woman went up on stage with no microphone, ambient lights trained on her in a soft glow. She did something that made Sephiroth's jaw drop.

She started signing!

Sephiroth almost leapt out of his seat, brimming with excitement, but Genesis caught him by the hand to keep him down.

"Poetry for you."

Sephiroth lit up in a full glowing smile for the first time in his life. As he watched the poets perform in elliptic artful hand motions that conveyed sorrow, joy, and everything in between, Genesis watched him, still holding his hand.

From that day on, they were inseparable and insufferable. Genesis and Sephiroth signed for hours about the deepest subjects. No one could understand them save their saint of an older brother who put up with them. Sephiroth was also beginning to act like a true brother, dragging Genesis by his sword harness to the medical bay kicking and screaming.

"This is ridiculous! You're just as bad as Angeal! I'm a big boy and I don't need to be swept off to the doctor every time I take a little fall!...Why do I not feel so good?"

But their relationship really kicked off the day Sephiroth lost his uniform deposit.

They faced off against a pack of gorgonopsids when one slipped by their defenses…charging for Genesis. He charged a Fira to take it out, but Sephiroth reacted. He leapt in front of Genesis and accidentally took his Fira bolt, which in turn made him take a cross-slash to the chest.

"Whoops! Sorry," Genesis winced.

Aside from the sunburn Sephiroth would have for the next few days, his uniform shirt was slashed to ribbons. Angeal ran over with wide eyes.

"Whoa! You should leave it like that. You look so cool!"

Unfortunately it was the only uniform shirt Sephiroth owned.

"Eek, do you want my coat?" Genesis asked. Sephiroth shook his head.

"Red isn't my color."

Back at barracks, Genesis took Sephiroth into his room.

"I have one in black too. I got it downtown during Fashion Week. I paid almost five whole paychecks for it! It's like way too big on me though."

Sephiroth cocked an eyebrow.

"Why did you buy it then?"

Genesis flipped his hand.

"Impulse buy. I thought it would give me motivation to get to the gym. Oh dear…guess not."

Genesis pulled the black gunmetal coat from his closet and held it up to Sephiroth.

"Ohmygaah, try it on!"

Sephiroth did. He was swimming in it.

"Oh well you're so much more motivated than I am, it'll give you something to aspire to!"

"What size is this? XXXXL?" Sephiroth took the coat off, and took his shirt off. "You wouldn't happen to have an extra shirt I can borrow?"

Genesis caught his breath.

"Um…Shoot, I don't. I, uh, I don't actually wear clothes, I just borrowed these."

Sephiroth contemplated his tattered shirt, while Genesis contemplated him. The meat-and-potatoes diet was working. Genesis saw boulder muscles starting to develop around his arms and chest, alabaster curvature chiseled into his pale figure like a renaissance sculpture.

Genesis swooped right in, throwing the shirt out of his hand.

"Who needs shirts? They're for old straight fat dudes. A rogue like you doesn't need to…eh…hide anything."

Genesis threw the gunmetal coat around Sephiroth and made him put his arms through the sleeves. He buckled the sword straps across his chest, hands sweeping in luscious flowing caresses over his skin more than they probably needed to, remaining there to fiddle with them after they were secured…to make sure.

He stood back to see a boy become a SOLDIER, the black monolith with silver lining. The coat fanned out on him like a black mage's cloak, his braid rolling down the length of his back as if to catalogue the inches he'd grown. Luminous as shadow, Sephiroth's dark eyes seemed to smile in satisfaction as he clutched his lapels over his ever-broadening shoulders. Genesis stood there in awe.

"Sephiroth?" He looked up to meet him, and Genesis hesitated. "Could you turn your implant off? My signing isn't as good as Angeal's, but I'd like to say this to you in your native language, so that I can be certain you'll understand."

Sephiroth pricked up, turning his implant off and fixing his attention on Genesis. What's up?

Genesis composed himself and began signing.

"'Life is about remaining true to ourselves despite other's disapproval. I am gay, I've never hid this, and you don't judge me for it. I don't know if you stand by me out of ignorance or devotion, but you are a virtuous soul. Each of us has a virtue. Angeal values honor, but my virtue is love. If you don't have love, you're nothing. Love is not a chore, it's a revelation. Honor is a noble virtue, but if we don't have love then what the hell are we doing here?'"

Genesis placed a hand on his shoulder, signing with the other over his heart.

"'…When I say family, I'll die for you.'"

When Genesis' hand dropped from his shoulder, Sephiroth caught it, pulling him in for a hard hug. Genesis gasped. His arms engulfed him like Angeal's arms, gripping him in a brotherly embrace before they let go of him.

Sephiroth threw him a smirk, and walked out into barracks sporting his new coat in front of everyone.

Jaws…floor.

"Well it fits you NOW!" Zack exclaimed while Sephiroth stretched his shoulders inside his coat.

"It's a little tight, actually."

"I know what my virtue is. Appetite. I can eat a whole whale!"

"Hunger is not a virtue, Zack. But you'll find yours on your own someday."

Zack pinched his chin, mulling over what he decided was his virtue. "Awesomeness."

Sephiroth grunted.

"I want to ask you a serious question, Zack. Now that you know Angeal's position on a controversial subject, I am curious to know yours. Do you agree with his sentiments?"

"Of course! My buddy Damaris is like that. He's dating some famous fashion designer who buys him whatever he wants. I'm hella jealous because I could be dating the most posh it-girl in Midgar and I guarantee you I will still be paying for dinner!"

Zack threw his hands up while Sephiroth let out a slight grin. He went silent for a long moment before working up the nerve to speak.

"Then I think I feel comfortable telling you this next story. But you'll have to excuse me if I take a moment to compose myself, I want to be sure I get it right."

"Take your time. How could you mess it up if I don't know either way?"

"…I've never told it to anyone."

.

[Received Mind Stone]