On the seventh day, they'd had enough. Zack went charging up to the manor hellbent on dragging Sephiroth out sane or insane, even if he had to beat him to a bloody pulp first.
Round the lighthouse on the trail up to the mansion, a ray of hope shone down on Zack like a gift, an iota of cell reception! Enough at least for one email to get through for a split second. His phone buzzed with the alert.
To: Zackfair21atSOLDIERdotShinradotmil
From: xKunselx353atSOLDIERdotShinradotmil
Re: My Baby Pictures
Zack!
Sorry I had to name this something stupid or they'd read it. I found her! Didn't even get a chance to finish explaining what happened before she stormed off to find Doctor Hojo. I heard they had to sew things back on, eek! Anyway, she wrangled Sephiroth's birth certificate out of him (can you believe that creep Hojo is his father!?). I attached it as a .JPEG to this email. It's the best I could do, hope it helps somehow.
Stay safe buddy,
Kunsel
P. S. She says "bring him back alive or don't come back at all."
Zack ran to Shinra Manor fast enough for the Olympics. Bash-barreling through the doors into the foyer, he almost tripped at the elevator. He ripped the metalmesh gate aside so hard it broke a hinge, and sprinted through the basement. Kicking a crate out of his way, a swarm of scarabs flew at him and he flailed back crashing through a side-door to a drab storage room, falling over some long oak crates.
When the dust settled and Zack collected himself in a foolish heap, he stopped. What was that sound?
"ZZZZzzzz."
Snoring? He gaped at the oak storage casks…
Ho-ly-Hell. They're coffins.
One of the lids had been jarred aside from his fall. He peeked inside and lurched back.
"Oh my God, there's a person in here!"
A pale rogue with a mane of dark hair and angular cheek bones lay bound in carnelian leather, a dhampir cloaked in blood. He emanated an unearthly hue in his state of timeless, dreamless sleep.
"Hey! Wake up!"
Zack shook the body, and the sleeping figure stirred. Blacklight rays emanated from his self-imposed tomb as his body levitated out of the box. He spoke in a flat voice, dark and monotone, deader than deadpan like the coffin he'd slept in.
"…cough…cough…Clandestine Operation: Swift Fox. Op Code: Silver-Five-Silver. Special Agent Vincent Valentine reporting in."
"You're a TURK?" Zack exclaimed. The red ghost merely blinked in a haze.
"Where's Lucrecia? Where's Dr. Gast? Where's Sephiroth? Where's Hojo?"
"You know Sephiroth?"
"Sephiroth Crescent, Lucrecia, where are they? Where am I?...Who are you?"
"I'll explain later, forget about Hojo, we have to get back to Shinra!"
The red ghost hovered in prophetic auralence for a long moment, studying the strange boy with a sword the size of a semiconductor. A light seemed to turn on in his eyes, like he'd finally woken up. He took a breath to speak, and…
"…Not interested…"
He crashed back into the coffin, closing the lid.
Zack hurled it open and grabbed the man's arm.
"—Come on, you have to help me help Sephiroth!"
"Uh, whuh, where are you taking me?"
With this red Turk's arm over his shoulder, Zack dragged him through the basement. The man's legs were akin to a newborn giraffe from sleeping in a coffin for so long. At the archway to the library, Zack leaned him up against the wall.
"Wait here."
"Well, it's not like I can run off now is it."
Zack didn't reply. He built up as much speed as he could and shoulder-bashed straight through the door. Stumbling inside, the first thing that hit him was the smell.
The air was fetid, the pungent stench of urine filled Zack's nostrils. He gaged. The library was strewn with loose-leaf papers, while glaring UV light cast down in floodlamp sheen. Books had been stacked in rummage heaps on the floor, and leaning over the desk, Zack saw him.
Sephiroth leered like an undead cast of plaster, tearing over tomes of techno-quniform. Disheveled and deranged, he shook in mad bursts that rocked his entire body. Bulging veins popped out of his trembling hands like cyborg wires, and when he lifted his face to stare at Zack, his bloodshot eyes were ringed in a charcoal pallor like death. He hadn't slept in seven days.
Zack stood firm, taking a strong step toward the big man.
"Sephiroth, let's go. We're going home now." He wasn't playing around anymore. Zack gave the orders now, and he knew Sephiroth could hear him.
A feral flash of fear and rage filled Sephiroth's wild eyes, but Zack didn't back down. He motioned with a hand for Sephiroth to come to him.
"Let's get you back to the Inn. We leave in the morning."
A sharp gasp, Sephiroth pried himself away from the desk, skulking like a phantom around the room. He huddled like an old man into himself, contorted hands wrung by his face and eyes in agony. His hair was now frizzed and matted from running his nails through it, the first time Zack ever saw him like that. Incoherent muffled muttering escaped his lips, guttural growls like snarling.
"…chosen by the planet, we're all monsters, we were supposed to be free…Jenova will be at the Reunion…Jenova will join the Reunion…becoming a calamity from the sky…"
Zack didn't know what was going on in this bizarre behavioral spaz, but he held his ground amid the whirlwind of Sephiroth's mind-blindness.
"Come on, Sephiroth. Let's get out of this dungeon."
He moved to collect the man, but Sephiroth lurched around. Zack stopped as a glare like daikatanas flew from the man's demonic irises.
"You…traitor…you're all traitors."
Zack stood very still, Sephiroth's sword was still sheathed on his back. The big man shuffled in hunched circles, dragging his feet on the floor.
"It was started here, the Jenova Project. That's why I felt like I've been here before…I was born here. No…I was created here. Hojo, Hollander and Gast were trying to recreate a Cetra from Jenova's cells so they could mass-produce an entire army of hyper-powered warriors. You ordinary SOLDIER's are Mako-infused, but you're still human. You still need to be surgically modified to use the power of Mako, and then only in limited levels. It takes a SOLDIER like you a lifetime of training to obtain even an iota of the power a Cetra can procure with the wave of a hand from infancy. Producing Materia for you, training you how to use it, and enhancing you so that you can even equip it…billions of dollars, gone in the blink of an eye. Imagine SOLDIER's born with fully-leveled magic stats, who don't need to use Materia at all, who could harness terrestrial powers straight from the planet's core without even breaking a sweat. The Jenova Project was the ultimate weapons development program, and it worked. Mako put nuclear fission out to pasture, but Cetra would put Mako production costs on par with buying a stick of bubble gum. That is what I am to Shinra, a golden power rod to your stick of gum."
"And you believe all this…?" Zack threw a bewildered hand skyward.
"The notes are complete, experiment logs infallible, everything filed and catalogued, the truth is undeniable. The end is nigh…"
"Reading Shinra reports written by Shinra? That's like asking SOLDIER to do our own performance audits. We'd pass with flying colors every time!"
"READ IT! IT'S ALL THERE!" Sephiroth flung an armload of books at Zack's feet and paced in a mad shamble about the room. "It all started with the deity Necron, a divine calamity whose ultimate aim was to return this realm to the Zero World—a world without Crystals. When he was destroyed, another took his place…"
Zack squinted at the sheer inanity of these ludicrous statements. "Sephiroth…WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"
But something flashed in Sephiroth's eyes, a dark awakening, like a forlorn curse had been uttered in blaspheming doom. The madness drew back for a swift moment, curtains of coherency flaring like absolute truth. Sephiroth stood straight like a dark prophet, and uttered a word straight from the divinations of hell itself.
"Methuselah."
That name, why did it conjure images of a cold draconic devil holding up a meteor? Zack's breaths went silent as Sephiroth continued his mad rambling.
"Eons ago, Ifah came to this world to play. Eons after, Methuselah followed her…to feed. She and he are one, she is his Goddess, he is her Lifestream, but her power kept the planet safe and him at bay. So he sent his unholy harbinger Jenova to destroy her…She succeeded.
"The Ancient Ones were left behind—Ifah's children who abandoned the old ways became the humans, while the Cetra refused to relinquish their power over the planet and were slaughtered without mercy. Your kind are the Soulless Ones, you converted to save your own lives, abandoning the ways of your heritage to become the energy sapping leeches you are today, the gluttons of society that Shinra stands to empower."
Sephiroth's fists balled in desperate tangles of rage, but as he glanced up to meet Zack's eyes, his own expression filled with pained urgency.
"But Ifah lives! It was right there the whole time in Loveless: Even if the morrow is barren of promise, nothing shall forestall my return. You saw the play, do you even know what it's about? It's an epic over 2000 years old. Ifah will take a human lover though she knows she cannot keep him. The child that is born from their union shall be named Orphan, and will bring about Ragnarok—the battle at the end of times. The ending of the play was added later by thieves in Alexandria looking to steal money from plebian theatre-goers, but the play is left open by design…because it is still going on. None know its meaning, Genesis died trying to figure it out, but after coming here, I now know the truth. Jenova is Ifah! That's why she died! She sacrificed herself to save her children from the clutches of her dark assailant. There can be no other conclusion! It must be true! And I am Orphan, her bastard child sent to bring about Ragnarok and end the world as we know it."
"What the hell are you talking about!" Zack screamed. Sephiroth's eyes fell in a dark scowl, impending doom so profound and austere flooded from his core like antimatter. With a deep voice, he uttered a premonition with such finality that it vibrated the space between where the two men stood like cursed suzerains.
"Meteorfall."
Zack couldn't believe what he was hearing, everything was so bizarre, the level of strange occultism pissed him off beyond words. Everything was so…stupid! How could Sephiroth buy into such banal conspiracy theories? Zack whirled his hands around his head trying to wrap his mind around this sheer lunacy. So many things to say, trouble picking just one.
"This is bull—"
"It's all here!" Sephiroth shouted. "I can't deny what's right in front of me anymore! Jenova is His dark arbitrator and she lives! And I…am her gift. She can come back through me, she will remanifest in living flesh and all of humanity will be enslaved. Angeal figured it all out, that's why he knew he had to die. He was the first one she tried to possess, but he called her play. He ended his life to keep her bound, sealing the gateway for which she could come through him. Now she assails Genesis, but he is less willing to martyr himself. He is degrading into her, and he knows that if she takes him, she will kill him, his consciousness will be cast into oblivion.
"But me…I cannot degrade. If she ensnares me, my consciousness will remain intact and I will retain my awareness…all while capsizing the world into an abyss of unending darkness. I would doom humanity to its ultimate destruction. Genesis seeks my body for this reason, because if he ensnares me, he ensnares her, sparing himself and amassing power beyond the forces of a deity. This I cannot allow. I must do…the responsible thing."
"What is that? What is the responsible thing?"
Sephiroth stood stone, his countenance like shadow. He bore into Zack with an aura of black kohl, darkness incarnate dripping from his steel eyes.
"Get out of my way," he growled. "I'm going to see my mother. Do not try to stop me."
He swept past Zack like a flay of black wings, striding out of the library on a mission. Zack chased him down with a slow-building rage of his own.
"Why are you doing this Sephiroth? This isn't like you, you're acting like a man possessed! You're acting like Genesis! What are you!"
"GHARRH!" Sephiroth screamed and fell against the wall. Zack ran in front of him, to block him, to stop him, to do something as he hurled himself at the foundations. "Don't you see? I'm a monster! A daemon! An abomination! I must end this like Angeal, I must follow him, I must end myself!"
"It doesn't have to be like this!"
"I cannot be this Jenova's puppet! If I must choose the lesser of two evils, I would rather see everyone I love die than be enslaved! I've been a slave, I know what it's like! But you—innocent and unscathed—you cannot begin to fathom the darkness."
"I think I can Sephiroth...I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."
"They tortured me!" he cried. "They razed my flesh, burned me with acid and molested me! They made me think a woman was my mother and then they killed her! And now, you are here, my living legacy. Your blood and mine, the sick end result of Project Gemini, conducted under the guise of a fertility treatment!"
Zack realized what was happening…He was talking to Angeal, he was seeing Angeal in front of him right now.
"Sephiroth, I'm listening to you, but do you know who you're talking to right now? I'm Zack, it's me, remember?"
"Damn you Zack Fair, you are the densest creature on the face of the planet! Angeal was a saint to put up with you as long as he did! You blissfully oblivious imbecile!" Okay, maybe he was talking to Zack. "You don't even know where you are in the world, flitting through life like a bee flies to flowers, unaware even of the invitro fertilization program your own mother took part in!"
Zack cocked a hard eyebrow.
"…The hell?"
"Everything you know about yourself is a lie. You weren't born at Gongaga General, you were delivered in a laboratory via cesarean-section at Shinra. That birthmark you have on the seat of your pants is a brand to identify you in case your citizenry paperwork was ever lost or destroyed, and so that no one could hide you."
Now Zack was scared, no one who hadn't seen Zack naked knew about that birthmark, and he was pretty sure Sephiroth hadn't seen him naked. Zack whirled his hands in front of him, trying to find a response. Everything had just gone from bizarre to insane to senile. He had to bring this down.
"Sephiroth, I want to believe you, but you're not making sense."
"You idiot! Why do you think the Turks were guarding you in Costa del Sol, practically holding you prisoner? Why do you think I couldn't answer your phone calls?"
Zack froze. His blood ran cold. The world rushed away as the image of Sephiroth stood still.
"Ask me Zack! Ask me where I was! Ask why the Turks were guarding you. Ask me!"
"W-why were they guarding me?"
"Because I was coming to get you!" The world disappeared as Sephiroth threw Pandora's Box wide open. "Those fools. They thought I was going to hurt you after what I found out in the data room. I would never harm my own blood!"
Zack gasped. His eyes flew wide, welling with hot tears. Everything slowed down, everything was so surreal.
"Ask me what I found in that data room, Zack. Ask me, damn you! ASK ME!"
"…What did you find?"
"THAT I WAS CLONED!" Sephiroth screamed, clawing into the stone unable to keep himself upright. His face scraped against jagged foundations with steel tears stinging his flushed cheeks. With a desperate look of longing, he spoke a soft confession to the young man who now stood bewildered before him.
"...Three times. Two boys, and a girl. The oldest was in SOLDIER…"
Now Zack broke. His hand flew over his mouth, and the tears fell in tributaries that threatened never to stop. Realizing who this man was, who he himself was, made Zack stand as straight as he could to face the bane of absolute truth. And Sephiroth stared back at him, affirming it. They were both shaking.
"…I had to go away for a while, to absorb all this, to grieve. My brothers were dead. But when I found out what they were going to do to you, I couldn't stay silent. They had plans, Zack. They had a cryotank with your name on it. They were going to do the same thing to you that they did to me. The vivisections, the constant experiments, the torture, the sensory deprivation enough to make you want to kill yourself, they were going to do it all to you! I found out, so I marched straight into Rufus Shinra's office and threatened to expose him as a traitor to the press!"
"R-Rufus Shinra?"
"Who do you think we're working for Zack? Shinra is the mob and we're hired hitmen, sent to wreak havoc and destruction in the name of someone else's profit! We're cast aside like dogs once our usefulness is worn out, used like we're not even human. Not to you! Your brother Cloud was safe, he wasn't in SOLDIER yet, they didn't have him targeted. But I couldn't contact you, I had to go far away from you, lest they use you against me and put you in danger. I had to let them know I was serious, that I would take Shinra down one rung at a time…starting with Lazard."
Zack's face contorted in confusion. Everything had turned into an impressionist nightmare. Sephiroth struggled to remain upright.
"I didn't know who the girl was until I came here. I thought it was your red-headed Turk for a while, until I read it in the hand of Hojo himself. My own student! Oh the sick incestuous acts I've unknowingly been forced to perpetuate upon my own gene-pool. They were probably pleasuring themselves to the livefeeds they've bugged my room with! Their own twisted joke! Those bastards! I can't live with myself! I must end this once and for all! I'm a monster! A MONSTER!"
Zack rushed to him, catching him by the shoulders as he fell and holding him up.
"Keep talking to me! Don't let it take you! You're not a monster, you're a man, who's good with a sword!" He bore into his eyes with his a fist balled over his own heart. "…Like me."
The man and the boy stood there clutching each other for dear life. Sephiroth's eyes zoomed in and out of focus, clinging to the image of Zack, who did the same. In the shadowed null of the basement, no one remembered the red Turk who leaned like a slinky against the other wall. He watched this strange display with a cocked eyebrow and spoke in a deadpan monotone.
"Um, can I go back to bed now?"
Zack whirled around in a revelation.
"You! Turk! Do you know who this is?"
"I know who that is. I don't want to believe that he's who I think he is, because I really don't want to believe I've been asleep that long."
"Tell him! He has to know! Tell him his name!"
"WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE BABBLING ON ABOUT!" Sephiroth cringed back amid too much stimulation.
The red Turk hauled himself up as straight as he could, and looked the silver man dead in the eye.
"…Sephiroth Crescent." His dark voice resounded through the shadows, a forlorn proclamation that echoed in Sephiroth's soul. "That's your full name, after Lucrecia Crescent—the wife of Dr. Hojo. He impregnated her with the probing tool attached to his body, and psychologically manipulated her into letting the child be experimented on…She never even got to hold him. The baby was implanted with Jenova cells in utero and borne via natural childbirth into a world that was anything but natural. I was assigned to her as protection, I watched the whole sick drama play out like a macabre stage performance. The aim was to deeply traumatize the child to make his mind malleable for a handler to program, exposing him at an infantile age to horrors and torture techniques we use on the world's most dangerous terrorists. When I tried to step in, Hojo shot me in the back, trying to abduct the child from this hellish nightmare of Monarch mind-control. Now Lucrecia is lost to history, and her son carries on her name…Do you remember me now?"
The flashback came upon Sephiroth like a tidal wave.
The pale boy huddled on the floor of his cell that his mother had furnished for him. But now she was gone, and he struggled to breath with the droopy-eyed face of trauma. Now a man in a micro-check suit stood over him, eclipsing him in a suffocating shadow. What would he do to him? What would they take away now?
But the man gazed down on the boy and brought something from behind his back…the Golden Book. He offered it to the little boy, who took it like a tea cup, and gazed up with a hidden light. The man picked him up, so light, the child was so small. He carried him out of that room, taking him out of there with a hand pressing his tiny head into the nape of his neck. Sephiroth cried on the man's shoulder, drooling onto his sleeve. The nightmare was ending. They were leaving this Hell.
In the hallway corridor, they stopped. A monster stood in their path.
Dr. Hojo leered like a loiterer, blocking their escape. Sephiroth saw lips moving, and felt the heartbeat of the man whose arms engulfed him speed up, but he heard nothing. Lips moved faster and teeth bared, hands flung up and fists flew skyward, Sephiroth hyperventilated against the pounding beat of the man's heart.
The flash of gunmetal, Hojo drew a pistol. The man whirled around, covering the boy with his body. He lurched again and again, sudden impact driving them both to the floor. He fell over the little boy who felt his heartbeat slow…slower…stop. Sephiroth couldn't breathe, his eyes flew wide in mottled shock.
Phase II: Complete.
Now Sephiroth the man stood against a stone wall, shaking in utter denial.
"Lies. It's all lies! IT'S ALL LIES!"
"I would know, I loved her," said the red Turk.
Zack yanked his phone out of his pocket.
"It's not lies! Your girl checked it out for me! She cut off Hojo's wang for your birth certificate!"
He showed the screen to Sephiroth, who stared at it for a long time. His whirling eyes seemed to whirl a little less as Zack talked him down.
"So it's not the best of circumstances, your father was a sick mad scientist, my step-dad was a sick cult-leader. But no matter how we got here, no matter what sick process it took to make us, all that matters now is that we're here. They control where we came from, they can't control where we're going! We can be better than the ones who made us…we don't have to be monsters."
"The things I've done, the things I've been driven to do to people I love…"
"That they'll forgive you for, and if not, then they're the real monsters!"
That did it. Zack felt it. He was getting through.
Sephiroth trembled and sweat in uncontrollable spasms, but his emotional meltdown was climaxing, like the cusp of a wave about to break. The look he gave Zack was one of pure despair, he couldn't be the hero of Shinra right now. He was ill. He was off his medication. He needed someone to understand. Zack was that person, and he knew in his heart what his purpose was now. If he couldn't pick Angeal up off the ground, he could pick up Sephiroth.
He stood up strong as the big man fell onto him, and held him up against his shoulder. He wrapped a strong arm around Sephiroth, who broke down in uncontrollable sobs. The wave was breaking. The storm was passing.
Sephiroth struggled on Zack's shoulder for a long time, and Zack stood there, letting him. The shakes stopped in time, and his soul went quiet. After all the hurricanes had passed, he spoke in his velveteen voice.
"Let's go home. I'll take the mission failure."
Zack held in the biggest smile of his life.
"Heh, it'll go on your permanent record."
"I'll chance it. There are no more monsters here."
"Lies."
A dark angel's voice spoke from the shadows, and Sephiroth glared up off of Zack's shoulder.
"…Except maybe one…"
Genesis, the dark meriah, emerged from the basement foyer. Black mist shrouded his steps like a veil that followed him in his wake—Chaos.
"Infinite in mystery is the Gift of the Goddess. We seek it thus and take to the sky. Ripples form on the water's surface. The wandering soul knows no rest. She appears to the pure heart on Last Days, foretelling his day to die."
Light footfalls, an alluring hand held aloft to the wayward group of onlookers.
"Sephiroth…" he called in a sing-songy voice, and Sephiroth's eyes zoomed out of focus. "Come to me, Little Brother. You have no choice but to obey."
Zack saw what was happening, Genesis was activating him. But if Sephiroth had to follow orders…
"Belay that order! Stay!" Zack shouted, and Sephiroth breathed. It worked.
But Genesis leered in light circular steps, mocking the pair.
"Well, look at Zack the Puppy, barking the orders now. All grown up. The pup has turned Sheepdog, guarding his flock against wolves, unbeknownst to him that the wolves were within his very flock! A wolf in sheep's clothing hath trained him after all, and it must elate his heart to learn that he and his beloved mentor were blood all along. He treated you like his own son, didn't he, Zack? That burning connection you felt toward Angeal was no accident, as it was no accident that you were assigned to him in the very beginning. We are all kin, young one, even you and I. The other SOLDIER's are stagnant human beings, of little use to anyone save for their limited Mako energy output. It was so easy kidnapping them all in the beginning, they all cried for their mothers, so I addressed letter-bombs to their homes to get them to cooperate. But you, Zack, you know better than anyone that we haven't cried in years, don't you? Welcome to our family, Zack the Black Shepherd, the Silver Elite is together again."
"Did you kidnap Lazard too?" Zack snarled as he held Sephiroth behind him. "Is that how you got him to commit treason, by blackmailing him?"
"Tsk, tsk, you would make a horrible playwright. Your sense of the three-act plot structure, not to mention the Shakespearian storyarc, is simply atrocious! Lazard was my lover in SOLDIER, I bade him cooperate of his own accord. He was quite fond of me and my cause for quite a while, but, toward the end there, he became, shall we say, far too vocal for his own good. I had to—ooh I love this part—discipline him."
Zack swallowed a lump in his throat.
"What did you do to him?"
"Oh, we had a little spat, as couples are wont to. He actually called me a megalomaniac! So, a pity, I lost my temper. I sent him back to Shinra wrapped in his entrails. The Receiving Department should be getting a little present very soon."
They gasped, but Genesis flipped his hand.
"I'll bet you're curious to know how I fooled the Predator Drone? I'll tell you, it's simply quite brilliant. A Shapeshifter. I'm sure you've already met him—your Skinwalker friend. Hollander discovered it at North Crater. I can be here and there at the same time, and what's more, if I die, I can assume its vacant vessel and come back for an encore, one last hurrah."
We'll see about that, Zack thought.
"As for the other SOLDIER's—"
"The other team! Where are they?"
"If my sense of time is correct, they should be hanging on meat hooks right about now."
"YOU BASTARD!"
"Such a shame, they were all so young. Poor 3rds, just as gullible and naïve as the ones in those cryopods you saw, and just as ear-piercing when I cleaved open their chest-cavities."
"You won't get away with this!"
"I already have. Unfortunately, it is you who won't be getting away."
Zack's mind whirled as he flew into planning. His body tensed as he flipped into a low-level autonomic combat-mode, hand not yet on his sword but twitching by his side. Yet Genesis still flowed in his circular strides, pacing the inside of the basement like a grand stage. Zack realized he was actually covering all escape routes and keeping them pinned against the library. The pariah called again to his younger brother.
"SOLDIER 1st Class Sephiroth, SOLDIER indeed. It would seem that your illustrious career as the hero of Shinra is actually wrought in abuse. Bred in captivity, taken against your will, forced to produce offspring, your story is the definition of rape. If anyone has leave to be angry at this company, it is you. Yet, there is one element in this demented narrative for which I am intently perturbed…When you came out of that data room and ran away, Command had you on furlough; paid leave and full access to company benefits. You were declassed, no longer a 1st, your name was removed from PERSCOM as a single-resource and you were taken off the planning table in the war room. You were free, Sephiroth, Shinra would not have come after you. You could have fled to Galbadia, assumed a new identity, built a life for yourself. You would have been gladly granted asylum for our work there, your name would have faded into obscurity like you always wanted and your children would have remained lost. After all this organization has done to terrorize your poor soul, I'm curious…why did you come back?"
Sephiroth leered from behind Zack's shoulder, and spoke with absolute certainty out at the demon that assailed him.
"…To accept responsibility."
Genesis erupted into hysterical laughter.
"Sephiroth, the family man! How touching! A shame that he is only good to some parts of his family and not to others."
"I WILL kill my own brother for their sake."
"I'm afraid, dear brother, it is you who will die today, along with your errant sons!"
Genesis drew his Curtana, and Zack drew his sword. This basement was as good a place as any for a throwdown, it was shaped like an arena after all. If this whole charade had been a videogame, it would have been the perfect location for a boss battle that never happened.
All along, watching this melodramatic black-box play out like a cheesy one-act, the red Turk leaned with a cocked eyebrow against the wall. He stood up, shaking his legs out to get his blood circulating, then walked right in the middle of the mess like he didn't care. He looked at Zack, looked back at Genesis, and shook his head.
"This game is so stupid. You're a monster, he's a monster, I'm a monster, we're all a bunch of monsters…doesn't bother me much…"
A singeing black light burst forth from the red Turk's aura as his body morphed. His limbs elongated into the feral form of a lupine monstrosity. With gnashing claws he lunged for Genesis who shot his sword out with wide eyes.
(Vincent transforms into a monster and attacks Genesis).
Sephiroth and Zack stood taken aback with mouths gaping. The werewolf creature in shards of shorn leather lashed in vicious swipes at the red-cloaked angel. That crimson Curtana flew into whirling defensive arcs, catching the monster's claws on its blade. Genesis bore into the beast with rage.
"Your part in this tale is not for another Act."
And he hit the Turk with a Sleep mote that sent him flying all the way back into the storage room, back into the coffin Zack pulled him out of, where the lid clamored shut once more.
"Now, where were we?" Genesis fixed his cufflinks. "Oh yes. Even if the morrow is barren of promise, nothing shall forestall my return."
He pulled an indigo apple from his coat pocket and held it out to the two SOLDIER's. But something changed about the fruit. The skin began to burn off.
Sephiroth pulled Zack behind him.
"Get back!"
"What is it?"
"Black Materia."
The skin of the apple flaked to the ground in ashes to reveal a glowing obsidian orb. Genesis took it with a leering look of power, and slowly fused it into his body. His aura glowed a neon-black, the embodiment of Chaos. He smiled in daemonic reverence.
Sephiroth still held Zack.
"…Whatever happens, do not interfere."
"But you'll die!"
"Maybe not, but you definitely will."
Now Genesis stood a glowing red angel, ringed in a blood-aura with a fanged daemonic grin. He lifted his crimson Curtana, and rushed for the pair. Sephiroth drew his daiakatana and shoved Zack to the ground before charging in.
The rush of sheered steel singed in flarelight as a daikatana bashed off a Curtana. Zack looked up to see an avenging angel standing over him, silver hair flaring like wings in a flash that made him remember the first time he'd accosted Sephiroth, a long time ago. Now another unholy demon assailed him, and once again, this man stood guarding him.
Zack clamored to his feet, shadowing the two warriors from the outskirts. A sweeping downbash caught Sephiroth in the shoulder, and Zack threw a Cura to heal it. But he wasn't trained as a heal-bot, hence Zack's Magic was limited and healing spells took a lot out of him. He did his best to stay with Sephiroth, shuffling like a catcher at the plate.
Genesis got wise to Sephiroth's tagalong, quite an annoyance. And though Zack wasn't an expert in high-level defensive Magic, Genesis was. He cast his legendary Barrier, ringing Sephiroth and himself in a translucent dome that reflected all casts and items back at the caster. Zack slammed his fists against the dome, and his sword bounced back at him. This was bad.
The fighting raged as Zack dug in his pockets. There had to be something he had, one thing that could break through the Barrier, anything—
Sephiroth's green vial flew from his pocket and clamored on the ground. Zack dove for it in slow motion, but the vial was pure Materia…It slid seamlessly through the Barrier.
Genesis streaked in a flash for the vial, and as he clutched his hand around its mass, he threw Zack a little kiss. Then, as Sephiroth streaked after him in his wake, he jammed the vial of Paralyze Materia into his chest.
Zack gasped.
Genesis, the leering pariah, let out a maniacal laugh as he examined his foe. Sephiroth was completely immobilized, not even his eyes could move. Genesis flowed to him like a dashing rogue and ran a blackened fingernail down his cheek. Soft caress against a pale jaw, Genesis brought his own face so close to his brother's, and cheek to cheek he felt the warmth of lifeblood that could not degrade. In a luscious sigh, Genesis turned Sephiroth's implant off…with his tongue.
"I don't want you to hear this, I just want to say it…"
He spoke in free verse, breaking character for the swiftest moment.
"…Do you remember our little fight in the Junon Cannon simulation? I do. I'll bet you've always wondered what started it, what set me off? But the truth is, it was you who was set off. Didn't you notice your surge in stats after I read you Loveless, how all of the sudden you couldn't stop? You see, Loveless was the trigger that activated your slave programing, and I was your handler! Me! That's why I read it to you as much as I did, I activated you and relayed your mission objectives, and you obeyed. Did you ever wonder why your fame kept increasing while you did nothing different? You probably have entire blocks of blanked-out memory, don't you? Whole chunks of your life are just pure black, you can't remember anything. That's because they are missions you would never have been able to perform had you been conscious, and missions I would never have been able to relay had I not been entranced myself. I quit Dancer long before I met you, they made me start again. They did things to me too, Sephiroth. I am but a slave myself. A couple of marionettes are we, a pair of puppets on a string, dancing to the devil's delight. But why, you ask, was Angeal sparred our fates? Because they used him against us, Sephiroth. They would hurt him if we didn't cooperate, we obeyed to protect him. We are old hearts, you and I, old fools together in torment. We've been bound since the beginning, since our brief interlude of unrequited lust. Do you think they did not know? That is precisely why they chose us! During our fight in the simulation, you thought I didn't understand that you were trying to offer your sincerest apologies. I know what you were trying to say, that you'd forgiven me, that you wanted to move on. But I didn't want to move on, I wanted to move forward, with us…It seems now, at the end of everything, I will finally have my chance."
Genesis' lips moved for Sephiroth's, and Zack screamed. Their mouth's met in a mournful song. An emanating power deepened through his kiss, lush and violent, the smooth stroke of tongue against teeth. Flowing warmth invaded the silver man, and a flash of white blinded his eyes.
Sephiroth awoke in pure void.
He saw his brother, Genny-G, half the side of his head shaved to skin. But his youthful glow didn't shine now, he stood naked in darkness with eyes that gleaned in tears. He averted his gaze, turning away in shame, and Sephiroth saw it…a line of stitches running down his spine. The questions remained unanswered, what went wrong? Who had been talking to Genesis in his mind after their father had died, telling him his brothers didn't love him and that he was a burden? What dark malevolence had taken him from them? What was its name?
Sephiroth found himself on a wide open savannah, golden wheat stems wafting around his pants legs. His hair flowed in a silver braid down his back, and his coat was too big for him again. He had always been that little boy inside.
The world was an endless golden ocean with marigold flowers spanning as far as the eye could see. But the sky didn't shine now. Clouds coalesced in blue and purple stratus like the indigo flesh of apples he'd once known long ago. The longing in his heart was as long as the endless field as he whispered a silent wish cast onto the edges of forever. He was nothing, he belonged nowhere, he owned nothing of consequence that he would regret losing, save one thing…
"I miss…my friends."
A voice, from behind…
"We're still here, dumbapples."
Sephiroth turned, and there he was, with chaotic bangs that flew everywhere like a catalytic star. His oldest brother stood brimming with lost light, ocean eyes gleaming with pride. He and Sephiroth sat back to back in the wide savannah, and watched the clouds roll by overhead like foam.
"Hey Sephiroth?" Angeal asked with eyes still skyward. "I had a dream last night. I dreamed we were all heroes. Cool stuff, eh?"
But Sephiroth snorted at the non-existent sun.
"Hmphf, who wants to be a hero?"
The light was fading fast now, the flowers disappearing into blue null. Angeal glanced over his shoulder with a warm smile.
"…Hey, you ready to go?"
Sephiroth's eyes fell to his boots. He wasn't sure. He was tired, his joints ached from the multitude of torn ligaments, his back hurt from numerous slipped disks, his head pounded in a dull throbbing from the infusion headaches that never seemed to go away, but the most painful wounds came from his heart.
The flash of Zack walking away on the Junon Cannon when Sephiroth had returned, and walking out of his apartment after they'd sparred in a culminating unison, played in front of Sephiroth's eyes. He heard what his thoughts had said in silence on that night.
Angeal…he's my son.
The memory of a little blonde boy in a helicopter, and a girl with a chip on her shoulder caroused his subconscious mind. What would become of them? Would they be okay? The answer came like a forlorn sunset sweeping across the plain.
Yes.
Angeal stood up then and offered his hand to Sephiroth. But wait, not yet, he wasn't ready. Sephiroth was shaking. Light swept over Angeal's glossy features, shining like porcelain glass, and a soft promise smiled through his eyes.
A moment that seemed to last forever, and Sephiroth felt calm. He took his older brother's hand.
Angeal lifted him to his feet and walked with him, leading him from this life into the next.
Back in the basement, a darkness so malignant and profound engulfed the corporeal forms of Genesis and Sephiroth, entwined like a braid of blood and mercury. Neon light flowed from the red angel's lips into Sephiroth's mouth, into his eyes, his limbs, and all at once Genesis disintegrated into black feathers. His essence invaded the being Sephiroth, possessing his mind, his heart, his higher brain functioning, and ultimately, erasing him.
The Barrier dissolved and Zack sprinted for Sephiroth. But the flay of dark feathers fell to the floor at the big man's feet, who stood stone and motionless with his eyes closed. Zack grabbed for him, taking him by the shoulders and shaking him. There was no breath.
Raw panic. Zack cast Life to wake him up. Nothing. He cast Full Life and drained his Magic. Still nothing. He used a potion, ten potions, all of his Elixirs, a Megalixir, a Gold Needle to cure the Paralyze effect. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing.
"NO!" Zack threw his arms around him. "I loved you like I loved Angeal! You stood in for him, gave me pride that only a father can give his son. But you can't cave to this darkness, you have to stay strong, for yourself, and for the kid right here who idolizes you. You can't give in, you have to fight it! I'll fight it! I'll fight with you! I'll fight forever! FIGHT IT!"
Zack cried and sobbed in a dire embrace, but the big man didn't stir. He hugged the stone monolith in the basement of some forgotten mansion, wailing like he'd lost someone all over again. But then, a low vibration in Zack's ear—like a laugh—and he froze.
Steady rumbling, building in Sephiroth's throat, made Zack's blood run cold. Now he stopped breathing, the hairs on his neck standing on end as the low muffled laughter intensified. Louder and evil, it began to echo in the dark underchambers. As Zack pulled back with a look of guiled terror, the big man's eyes opened…Orbs of solid black.
An overpowered hyperpunch sent Zack flying back through stone walls, up through the floor of the mansion, out onto the cold earth beneath the manor's steps. He toppled like a dead body across the hallowed ground, out cold.
A shadow flowed from the manor, and in its wake Sephiroth strode cloaked in an aura of crimson Chaos. He moved as if he barely touched the ground, a phantom in a black coat. He took one step onto hardpacked ground, and all at once the entire forest despaired.
With daikatana in hand, he reached the entrance to Nibelheim, and all at once from every corner and crevasse of the mountain range, Genesis copies flocked to the call of their new master.
[Received Black Cowl]
