How they got there is irrelevant.
When Cloud and Tifa entered the high wooded gates to the mountain village of Nibelheim, everything started to come back.
The whole town reeked of a long forgotten western movie shoot. Dirt streets and wooded deck storefronts stood architecturally accurate from the annual Frontier Days tourist attraction that used to be held every year. Paved streets existed closer to the catholic school, but not enough money to maintain them. A water tower in the center of town still dripped rain water in puddles. Cloud remembered being shoved up against it as a child.
The place was an old ski bum town with an obvious winter scene, snowboard rental stands that now stood abandoned and mountain bike shops with weathered signs and boarded up windows. Cloud remembered skateboarding at the grocery store, the only place besides the Inn with a paved parking lot.
Strolling through the little ghost town, memories rushed back in translucent overlaid scenes of kids with backpacks walking together, and one blonde boy walking alone. Take a left turn down another dirt street, a photographer was taking school pictures. Cloud's mouth was dry as the images flowed back in monochrome to his blank canvas mind like dripping paint.
They came upon a sandy playground overlooking a beautiful sunset.
"Is that why you lied…Because you didn't want to hurt me?"
A girl's voice, airy and pubescent. Cloud turned when he heard it, his mind lighting up.
"I just wanted to make you proud of me."
His words came out automatically, without knowing whom he had spoken them to. And then he saw the pair, over by the swings. The vision materialized translucent at first, becoming vivid and clear.
The blonde boy from the brothel, who Cloud knew was him now, sat on the swings in an olive drab infantry uniform. A young ravenhaired girl in a plaid school jumper sat on his lap, and Cloud knew a teenaged Tifa. He remembered.
The boy held her about the hips as the sun beaded off her shimmering skin. They gazed into each other's eyes, and he built up the courage to ask.
"Do you want to be with me?"
"Can I?"
"I want you to."
"I want to."
And they shared a youthful kiss—their first kiss—to bid the setting sun goodnight.
A grown Cloud fell to his knees crying, the realization hitting him in astral projection. Tifa ran to him, wrapping him up, clutching him close as he sobbed into the sand.
"You knew, all this time, and you said nothing…Why?"
She held him as her own tears came.
"What was I supposed to say? I didn't want to tell you I was your girlfriend, only to have you tell me I wasn't."
Cloud cringed at that. His whole body did, shrinking back with the soft blow of reality hitting home.
They stayed like that wrapped in each other's arms, alone on a playground like they had been so long ago. The sky was streaked in gold rays that moved at their own pace, in their own time, as Cloud's thoughts formed themselves into coherent shapes for the first time in what seemed like forever.
"…I want you in my life, but I'm grieving. Can you give me some time?"
She looked down at him, the sun showing bright in her irises.
"Of course."
They walked deeper into town, off the main strip where the real story unveiled itself. Dwellings were burned down, a large section of town had sustained a massive fire, and only the main part had been repaired for reasons no one knew. Cloud saw a translucent little boy and girl playing pogs on the steps of a townhouse, and rushed away. The memories came at him like baseballs. He held his arms in front of his eyes to ward them off.
The edge of town, on a hill overlooking everything, an ornate mansion sat with boarded windows and unpainted twisted iron gates. Words etched in the metal gave its name.
SHINRA MANOR.
Cloud remembered why the big tourist attraction existed in such a little town. The Shinra family vacationed up there some years and commissioned the entire ski resort, which brought the town revenue.
He was pulled up the hill toward the manor, where the main entrance was locked tight, but Cloud sensed a way around the back. He went to a board at ground level and ripped it off. It hid an open sliding door.
They stepped through into a lavish marble foyer where sheets covered chandeliers and a Steinway grand piano. Flowing dual staircases led to an upper level that Cloud followed in an unconscious line. Aside from a few healing items in tucked away boxes, there wasn't much to find in the manor, until they came to one door.
Cloud entered a bedroom furnished with a twin bed and simple varnished dresser, and he remembered.
Zack rushed into the room carrying a dying Cloud as they fled Shinra scientists. He laid him on the bed, and saw that his entire body glowed in patches of neon green. Mako poisoning. If Cloud wasn't Mako infused like Zack before, he was now. But his life was in mortal danger.
Zack stripped his poisoned Infantry uniform off and fumbled around the dresser drawers for some clothes. In a closet, hanging dry cleaned and pressed, was none other than a SOLDIER First Class uniform. In a mad rush he ripped the uniform off the hangar and dressed Cloud. It was a perfect fit.
Cloud came back to real time and a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. That's where he got the uniform.
Looking around the room, placards and framed diplomas hung everywhere, from Ivy League Universities and the famed military preparatory academy (also set up by Shinra). A framed picture sat next to the bed of the blue-haired prince in his SOLDIER digs receiving his First Class stripe.
Now That was stolen valor, having daddy buy you into every prestigious unit with the highest rank imaginable at the earliest age conceivable. The young Prince Shinra was a company man after his family. Good riddance.
They were about to leave when Cloud realized the door under the stairs of the grand foyer was an elevator. Highly old fashioned with a manual pulley system that had to be operated by a crank, it was assured to work even if there was no power in the house. Tifa and Cloud exchanged glances before he pulled the grated gate aside, and stepped in.
There were three levels including the ground level they were on. They could crawl the entire foundation out of curiosity, or they could quite literally get to the bottom of things. Cloud pulled the lever to the basement level.
The elevator descended in a rickety path down a chute that became instantly dark. Cloud kept a hand on his sword. You never knew what you might find in these old haunted mansions. They hit rock bottom in a thud and Cloud pulled the gates aside. A barrel with torches laid right next to the entrance. He lit one with a specter and they found themselves in a subterranean tunnel system which appeared to be unfinished construction of a vault of some sort.
Into the underground they trekked, the only noise being the sound of their crunching footfalls on bare dirt. They echoed off the walls of the vault in amplified tones which made it seem like there were more than two sets of boots walking. They shuddered looking over their shoulders. Dripping water in places added to the sound mesh. The whole place was a damn nightmare on Elm Street.
They came upon a door to a properly constructed portion of the underground, but Tifa grabbed his hand in a panic.
"Cloud, let's turn back. Please."
"Why?"
"That room. There's death in there. When you were deployed here, Sephiroth went in there. He never came out."
The door stood sealed with a turnkey lock that had been left open, carved in ornate antique splashes with a peeling paint wash. The world seemed to rush back as the door moved forward, and Cloud stared it down.
"I need to know what they all died for, even if it means joining them."
He clenched his fist and strode forth.
Inside, Cloud used a fire specter to light a hanging lamp, which lit the other lamps on the wall—enough reading light. The room was chalk full of huge tomes of data. Files and forms lay alphabetized on racks and in boxes that showed moisture damage. However, piles of papers were strewn everywhere, as if someone else had gotten there first.
An oaken desk lay in the center of the room, blanketed with piles of pages. Cloud nodded to himself at the truth of what he had found—the entire contents of the deleted Shinra files, mass-printed and hidden away here. He sat down at the desk and cracked his knuckles, preparing for the task at hand.
"Well, here we go…"
Cloud thumbed through scattered files and miscellaneous folders, all unrelated and completely random, while Tifa browsed the shelves like a bookstore.
Financial reports…Paystubs…Admin Leave…Medical Records…wait…
He saw Zack's name on a medical folder.
"Heh, looks like they gave Zack Adderall for 'a severe case of ADHD' but he never took it. It says Zack was supposed to be kicked out of SOLDIER for lying to the recruiter about having it. Angeal stepped in and took him as a student to keep him enlisted."
"Wow, that was nice of him."
"Well Angeal's psych-eval here says his stress levels skyrocketed after taking on an apprentice SOLDIER, so I doubt Zack made it all sunshine and daisies."
Tifa chuckled.
"Hey, check this out. It's Sephiroth's prescription refill. Haladol, Lithium, Paralyze Materia and…wait…a cochlear implant?"
And the memories slammed back into Cloud in sheer reminiscence.
Sephiroth was legendary for two things, his body count and his lack of fucks to give. Getting his attention meant putting your life in danger. You'd call for him and he'd walk right past. He didn't give a damn about your pee-on problems. Sephiroth came to you, not the other way around.
"It's true," said Tifa. "He was deaf."
Cloud let his hands fall on the desk.
"I remember. Oh God, I remember! He didn't talk like it through. He had an implant so he could hear but his hair covered it so none of us knew but I found out and I…talked to him…in his own language."
"You took it in high school, Cloud. Because you failed Spanish."
"Pfft, with all the work I did in lowcity I could probably teach the class now."
Another ten minutes of thumbing through files and Tifa dropped an enormous tome of paper—like sixteen straight inches thick—on the desk in front of him.
"Is THIS what you're looking for?"
The Nibelheim Incident.
"Holy fuck no! I mean, yes, but no! I don't want to read the fucking Summa Theologica!"
"That's you, Cloud. The Cloud I remember would know what that is."
He took a deep breath and opened to page one.
Skimming through form after form of official documents and war room briefings, Cloud bit his lip after a while and thought he had a decent idea of what was going on.
"Okay, so here's the gist of everything that went down…Five years ago, Shinra's top SOLDIER went rogue, and Sephiroth was sent to kill him. He assembled a small team of a few good operators, and Zack brought me along as his flank man."
"Why did he go rogue?"
"Jenova. The demon was trying to remanifest through him. He went haywire trying to save his own ass."
"That doesn't sound very SOLDIER. Aren't they all about brotherhood and honor?"
"Probably why it was so shocking to everyone in SOLDIER. This guy went totally off his rocker, kidnapped an entire battalion of rookies and turned them into minced meat. I'm reading all the allegations against him now. Wow Shinra was done with this guy. They wanted him like excommunicated dead. So they sent their biggest guns in to finish the job…"
Cloud took a big breath, staring a thousand miles away for a long few moments.
"…We didn't succeed."
Tifa squinted and ran back to grab a file that made sense now.
"Look at all these canceled resupply orders, Cloud. It looks like they didn't even want you to succeed. Did they send you out here to die?"
"No. No, we're too expensive. They sent us out here to break us. I have memories of being held in a cryotank and experimented on. I need to know why."
Cloud stood up, looking around the room in a lost whirl. There were so many files, so many answers he didn't need to questions he didn't ask. This was like finding a needle in a stack of needles.
"Come on. Help me out a little here."
He held out his brand like a pendulum, moving it around as it glowed brighter and dimmer depending on where he aimed it. Over by the shelves it incandesced in fireworks, then dimmed as he moved away, bright again, dim again, bright. The brand pointed him to an official looking file box. Cloud pulled it down and plopped it on the desk, where a label blared at him loud and clear.
THE JENOVA PROJECT
This was it. Cloud pulled the lid off and dove into its contents.
.
—PROJECT G—
Abstract: The first round of clones copied directly from the source—Jenova. Human surrogates utilized via invitro fertilization.
Gillian Hewely [Status: Deceased]
...|_ Angeal Hewely – FAILED [Staus: Deceased]
Aurelia Rhapsodous [Staus: Deceased]
...|_ Genesis Rhapsodous – FAILED [Status: Deceased]
.
"Genesis was the SOLDIER who went rogue," Cloud declared out loud. "Looks like a few women who already worked for Shinra donated their bodies to science…and their kids."
.
—PROJECT S—
Abstract: Second round of cloning using natural conception and childbirth, with DNA mapping utilized after embryo fertilization to introduce JENOVA cells onto the host.
Dr. Edelbrok Hojo + Surrogate #1 [Staus: Deceased]
...|_0301 FAILED [Staus: Destroyed]
+ Surrogate #2 [Staus: Deceased]
...|_0302 FAILED [Staus: Destroyed]
+ Surrogate #3 [Staus: Deceased]
...|_0303 FAILED [Staus: Destroyed]
…
+Surrogate #48 [Staus: Deceased]
...|_0348 FAILED [Staus: Destroyed]
.
"This guy is absolutely sick. He slept with all these women to make babies and killed them both when the experiments failed."
.
+Surrogate #49 [Staus: Deceased]
...|_0349 FAILED [Staus: Destroyed]
+Surrogate #50 *Lucrecia Crescent* [Staus: Deceased]
...|_0350 *Sephiroth Crescent* SUCCESS
...|_—Project Gemini—
.
On the back of the flow chart was stapled another document. Cloud flipped it over to find a marriage license between Hojo and a woman named Lucrecia, dated the same day as Sephiroth's successful test.
"He married her so he could take her baby."
.
—PROJECT GEMINI—
Abstract: Third round of cloning utilizing successful elements of Project S. Artificial insemination of surrogate hosts using collected semen from successful experiment #0350 tentatively named SEPHIROTH. No DNA mapping required, as JENOVA cells are passed on organically through the father.
#0350 Sephiroth Crescent [Status: Deceased]
...|_Zack Fair FAILED [Status: Destroyed]
...|_Unamed Female TO BE DETERMINED [Status: Active]
...|_Cloud Strife SUCCESS [Status: Active]
.
"Cloud, what's wrong? Your face, it's stark pale."
He pushed the file over to her, eyes unmoving and fazed.
"Whoa…Whew…Well…that would explain why you never had a father."
Cloud stared into nowhere, worlds swirling before him.
"Zack and I. He was my brother. And Sephiroth…"
He fought tears, unable to swallow the truth, unable to believe.
"…I'm his son."
The memories were warm watercolors bleeding onto tissue. He remembered.
Cloud never had to be afraid of Sephiroth. He came to the man about everything. Career advice? He had a big career counselor. Philosophical bullshit? The man knew all too well about bullshit. Teenage boy issues? Sit, talk with me.
The beginning of that flashback was real. Sephiroth really did pull him out of that chopper. It was Cloud that he risked his own life for. And now he knew why.
A glance at the footnotes made him wipe his eyes.
"Shinra was trying to retire him, but he found out about us. And he came back…for us…He died protecting us."
But the icing on the cake was yet to come. Cloud pulled up Sephiroth's individual file—his life story—and started reading.
Vivid experiment logs splayed out in graphic detail before him from the time Sephiroth was a child all the way until adolescence when he was assigned to SOLDIER. A little boy was tortured, tormented, molested, operated on without anesthesia to save money, and kept in a cage like an ape. All meticulously overseen and documented in the exacting hand of Hojo himself—the true pariah of Shinra.
Tifa reached over to hold Cloud's hand. He was crying.
"Cloud, I think we've found all that we need to find here. What's left is just sadness. Let's leave it here."
"He was sitting right here, reading all this stuff about him, just like this where I am now. He was all by himself in this spot and it drove him mad. If it happened to him, what's to stop it from happening to me?"
She knelt down, looking up into his eyes.
"Because I'm here with you, Cloud. He was all by himself, but you're not alone, and you never will be again."
Tifa halted the storm. She'd come all this way with him, and now she was here, making sure he'd come home with her. She picked him up, brushed him off, and took him out of that room.
They walked through the underground levels for a long while looking for the elevator. But when they didn't find it, things started to look different and they scratched their heads.
"I don't think we came this way."
"Don't worry, we just took a wrong turn. We'll double back."
They did, but couldn't even find the room they'd come from.
"Great, now we are lost in the Shinra dungeon. Perfect."
The darkness in the underground fell to almost pitch black as they continued on. How large could the basement of one home be?
"Oooh spooky."
Cloud wiggled spider-fingers at Tifa, making her jump a little.
"Nice to see you coming back to your old self, asshole."
"Honestly, after what I read, I don't think it's me, but I can't help it."
"Well at least it makes more sense now."
"Shh! What's that?"
"What?"
"…"
"…"
"RAAAAAWWWRR!"
"AHHHHH!"
Tifa fell back over a huge wooden box like a coffin. The lid toppled off and lurid crimson light shot out in holy rays. The chamber lit up, and from the auric glow of the coffin a dark figure rose as if from death. He levitated in the light for a long moment, dark hair looming around his hips and clad in a shorn amaranth cape that contrasted his deathly pale skin.
The figure blinked his eyes open, coughed, and started muttering nonsense.
"Clandestine Operative reporting in. Op Code Silver-Fox-Silver…Ugh my head…"
"Who are you?"
"Turks Designation Special Operator Vincent Valentine going active…That sword…Are you here for Sephiroth too?"
"What? Yeah. Wait. How do you know?"
"You and the last idiot who came through here. None of you let me sleep."
"Wait, you knew Zack!"
"Goodnight."
"HEY!"
The Red Turk fell back in the coffin, but Cloud threw it open, hauling him to his feet.
"You have to tell me everything, right now. Hurry."
The Red Turk rolled his eyes.
"Came down here. Sephiroth and your big sword friend. Sephiroth got it all in his head that he was some sort of demonic puppet and was going to kill himself to keep the demon sealed. Your friend talked him out of it. They almost made it out of here, until the Red Mage found them."
Cloud nodded.
"I know what happened after that. We're here to kill Jenova, and end this sick cycle once and for all. But we need to get out of here and go to the Reactor. Will you help us?"
"If you're going to fight the Weapon there, I'll help you. But it's a waste of time."
"Why?"
"…You'll see. Follow me."
The Red Turk shook out his legs and together they tramped through the underground. Down long tunnels and sharp turns they followed their guide when something caught Cloud's eye.
"Oooh, hey, shiny box." He opened it and pulled out a new pair of gauntlets that upped his attack power. "Cool."
"Look at this…" Tifa found a set of brass knuckles lying on the ground in a corner no one would think to look in.
Cloud shrugged.
"Well I guess dungeon crawling is what we were originally supposed to be doing anyway…"
After a long time they came to a set of stairs leading to light. The Red Turk took them to their exit, a secret passage coming out in the middle of the woods somewhere on Mt. Nibel. The Shinra Family had an escape route in case of assassination attempts. Looks like they'd always been greedy bastards to the common people.
Vincent lead them up a deer trail that skipped all the treacherous rope bridges and cliffs that the main road to the Reactor traveled over. When they reached the forlorn structure, it was like walking into Sherwood Forest on Halloween.
The Reactor was a huge Tesla Coil rusted in unholy arches. Its upper pylons were home to bats that swarmed out into the overland. Cloud saw the flashbacks of a young infantry boy guarding the door as he ascended the steps. A deep breath, and he pushed the massive metal gates open.
Light splayed into that dark atomic world for the first time in half a decade, but a place like this could never really see true light. Down a long hallway littered with sheered romex piping and gunked up power terminals, they came to another receiving bay door and stepped through into the atrium.
Cloud saw the pyramidal levels where the cyropods had been, leading up to a last sacred door where blood still stained its threshold like a red carpet. Jenova's lair was ready whenever he was.
Tifa stepped in front of Cloud, visions swirling in her eyes as she looked around the atrium. She didn't want to, but she remembered everything that happened here, and hard reminiscence took her right back.
The teenage ravenhaired girl had run to the Reactor when her town burned, as much fire in her soul as there had been in her home. The silver haired demon had discarded his daikatana, preparing for the rapture with his medusian "Mother." Into her chamber the girl charged with the daikatana aimed for the kill, but as noncommittal as the killing of a fly, Sephiroth grabbed the hilt of his sword out of her hand, and slashed her phenomenally across the chest.
The power and tenor of the demon's malefic swipe sent her toppling back out into the Reactor. Blood dripping down her forehead, clothes frayed and leaving her exposed, she clutched herself to cover as much as she could. The demon strode from the chamber, sensing easy prey, and his shadow eclipsed the terrified girl. She screamed as he fell upon her, and she learned the meaning of pure helplessness in the worst way humanly possible.
Tifa spoke from inside her dream.
"It was you, Cloud, who found me. You who saved me."
In the vision a blonde infantry boy ran to her body, fell to his knees and scooped her up. His face was a traumatized whirl, blind confusion plastered all over his being. Was she alive, was she dead? All he knew was that the girl of his dreams was unmoving in his arms right now, and that sonofabitch with the daikatana had done it…to his girl.
This is how people die in movies.
A primordial rage overcame Cloud, so austere and vicious that he grew up in the span of the ten seconds it took to walk from her body into Jenova's chamber…picking up the Buster Sword on the way in.
As the silver haired demon turned to receive him, Cloud stabbed straight through his torso in a football rush tackle that drove half the blade through the back of the black long coat. Anyone would have died in agony, but this demon was already dead. He skewered his daikatana straight through Cloud, picking him up like a shishkabob and held him in midair while he struggled and died slowly.
But you don't kill someone's brother, rape someone's girlfriend, and then try to kill them without seriously pissing a guy off in his last dying breaths.
Cloud kicked off the wall, grabbed the daikatana blade while it was still embedded in his damn body and picked Sephiroth up off the ground. With a phenomenal scream he tossed the man over the railing down into the Mako chamber, where the fight was over at least for a long while.
As the dream ended, Cloud stood where Zack's body had been lying, where the scientific team had found them both unconscious and they woke up in cryotanks. In all his strength and might, Zack couldn't defeat Sephiroth, but Cloud did. And Tifa had paid the price for all of it. It's always the women who suffer when men fight.
"I can see why you never talked about it. It would have broken me. I'd have been shattered with all of this. But it didn't break you…I didn't have anyone growing up. I don't know who would have taught me to be strong. I can only think…I learned it from you."
She looked up at him, eyes full of pain but holding it together. His admiration was genuine, his gift to her.
Off to the side, Vincent threw open some auditorium doors to a plume of dust and cobwebs.
"Well, get ready to break now."
Light illuminated a testing bunker filled with scientific equipment, measuring apparatuses…and cryotanks.
Cloud saw the memory play in kodachrome right where he stood.
Zack bashed through the glass of his cryotank toppling onto the floor. The Buster Sword lay propped up against the wall, as if waiting for him. He grabbed it and threw a phenomenal swing straight into Cloud's tank, unleashing a wave of liquid Mako and glass into the room. Cloud fell out into Zack's arms unconscious and not breathing. A terrified Zack pushed on his chest in desperate compressions.
"Come on. You're all I have left!"
Cloud coughed, spurting up blood and green bile, and though still unconscious, he was alive. And he was no longer an infantry boy. He was the man who now stood before the shattered cryotanks in the abandoned Reactor.
The memory faded as Cloud looked upon the tank that had held his older brother, that attempted to destroy him but failed. What horrors must he have endured, remaining silent to protect a younger Cloud? He clenched his fists. Looking at Zack's cryotank was the difference between deceased and destroyed.
The experiment logs deemed Zack a failure. Cloud was a success, but what did that mean?
A third cryotank sat cobwebbed and decayed but unused, and the words from the Project Gemini file came back to him.
Unnamed Female.
"I have a sister. And she's alive."
One final destination awaited them. One final battle. Cloud and Tifa geared up their ability gambits and recharged their life gauges before entering the final door. The road to Jenova was paved in blood. A sacrificial hiss of foul air whipped past them as they entered Jenova's chamber, only to find…
The chamber was empty, yet again. Jenova was gone.
"Told you it was a waste of time," said Vincent dryly.
But Cloud approached the pulpit where she had been held, and found a scrap of paper setting in the center. He picked it up, there was writing.
.
We really need to coordinate better. We're losing guys hitting reactors you've already been to. We're headed back to Midgar, to the one person who would have Jenova's Head. See you there.
– B Unit
PS Unnamed Female says hi
.
Cloud gasped. Someone else really had been working with them all this time, and they'd lost people too. Someone had been going through everything he had right along with him, and a small smile crept across his face at knowing who it was.
He turned to his party with conviction.
"We have to go back to Midgar. Our final battle, with the one person who would have Jenova's Head."
"Sephiroth?" asked Tifa
Vincent shook his head.
"Hojo."
[Vincent Valentine joins the Party]