Cloud awoke face down on cold concrete, a stabbing pain in the back of his head. His friends lie sprawled out beside him, iron bars corralling them in a dark holding cell.

The Shinra Brig.

But something was wrong. As Cloud and his friends stirred, he saw their cell door thrown wide open, and there was blood on the ground. He leapt to his feet out into the corridor. All the guards lie dead.

They hurried through the dungeons in a cold haze. Bodies lie strewn with blood splattering the walls. Red handprints and drag marks streaked around corners and into dark passageways that Cloud dared not inspect. A slow building dread culminated in the back of his mind as they followed the hewn corpses up to the Shinra main floors.

Now scientists lie butchered. Receptionists and janitorial staff lay slaughtered without mercy. Not a sound, not a breath emanated from the quiet hallways and dead corridors, shocked into silence. They rushed through passageways on light feet. There had to be someone alive here.

Tifa rounded a corner and shrieked back behind Cloud. A SOLDIER had been hung with his sword strap.

"Cloud, what happened here?" she whimpered.

But Cloud stared ahead past the hanging body, to the stairs that this sentry had guarded.

The President.

He ran.

Up flights of stairs he skipped steps like they were nothing, his friends winded in tow. Barreling out onto the main floor, he found slaughtered receptionists blocking the elevator. They'd shielded the door to the Oval Office with their own bodies. The wall panes had been shattered, and Cloud stepped over broken glass into the vast interior.

A desk. An old man. A silver daikatana impaled through his chest.

They gasped as they approached the President's body, a sense of forlorn doom humming from the stained steel.

"That sword…he's here."

"What do we do, Cloud?"

"Run. Come on."

They kicked out a fire escape window where Barret pulled the rope that was still wrapped around his torso.

"U always got ta have rope."

Cloud belayed them down with a sick gnawing dread, checking back over his shoulder every other second. When he was the last one in the building, a terrible creeping feeling slithered up his spine, like he was being watched. He Jumped to the ground.

When they got back to the alley, Red leapt up on Cloud, but the dog was alone.

"Red! Take us to Aerith, Red."

And he ran off into the crossroads with Cloud and party jumping over trashcans to keep him in sight. Red took them to a church off a dark street where they barreled inside.

"Aerith?"

"Cloud!"

Aerith rushed down the steps from the dark balcony, where she'd hid behind the pipe organ. She flew into Cloud's arms shaking and sobbing.

"I saw him! I was so scared! I ran!"

"It's okay. We're all here now."

"He's going to kill me! He'll find me! He's going to kill me!"

"Hush now. No one's going to kill anyone, not if I can help it. You're safe now."

He held her close with a hand stroking her auburn mane, not noticing a ravenhaired girl catching a stray glance.

They settled into pews to rest and recoup.

"First the Don, then AVALANCHE, now the President himself?" Tifa shook her head whilst comforting a shivering Aerith. Barret chewed on a bullet.

"It's as if someone goin round pullin' strings, and someone else be followin' behind cuttin' em."

"President Shinra is dead?" asked Aerith.

"Decapitated…" said a rasp voice crouching atop the altar. Everyone looked up to see Yulan fingering a throwing star. "…by the man in the black cloak."

"The man in the black cloak?" Tifa's blood ran cold. "Cloud, do you know who that is?"

"I know who that is. That's SOLDIER 1st Class Sephiroth, the hero of Shinra."

All Cloud could see was smoke, contorted in a pretzel in the smashed chopper cabin. A dizzy whirl kept him from telling up from down, and his legs were wrapped around the seat above him. Breathing was out of the question.

A big hand grabbed his sword strap. He felt himself yanked in a tremendous tug out from under the twisted chopper and dragged away from the flaming wreckage. He looked up to see his commanding officer over him.

Sephiroth stood like a living star, hair like silver comet tails streaking down his back and a face carved from marble with a razor blade. He pulled Cloud to his feet, where the two men exchanged grateful glances amid the torching ruins of their transport helicopter.

The only survivor of the crew was a lone infantryman. They gathered what supplies they could salvage and headed toward their destination: Cloud's hometown of Nibelheim.

"How does it feel to be going home after so long?" Sephiroth asked Cloud when they were in sight. But Cloud shrugged up at the big man.

"Probably the same way it feels when you go home."

"I wouldn't know. I have no hometown…My mother's name was Jenova, and I never knew my father."

They reached the entrance of the village where a busty ravenhaired teenager bounced up to them.

"…I'm Tifa Lockheart…No one's a better guide than me in this town."

Haze. Fading reminiscence, like movie scenes played on a blurred screen.

She lead them up a steep mountain trail, over natural bridges made of twisting tree roots—SOLDIER 1st Class Sephiroth, SOLDIER 1st Class Cloud, and their lone infantryman escort. The restless evergreens swayed at their footfalls, as if warning them to turn back. A root snapped underfoot and Cloud almost went over. Sephiroth's hand caught his sword strap.

Ascending the summit of Mount Nibel, they came to an industrial fission facility steeped in course black fog.

The Nibelheim Reactor.

Cloud posted the infantryman at the door and followed Sephiroth inside. Tifa trotted after them, but the guard blocked her, and dealt with the temper tantrum that ensued.

They entered into a loading dock resembling a decommissioned space shuttle, finding hudreds of ovular cryopods stacked in ascending rows up to a colossal blastdoor that guarded the Core. A name leered over the door like an entryway unto Hell.

JENOVA.

Sephiroth gasped in the cold reactor bay, gazing phased up at the looming door. The cryopods glowed and iridescent red light from within view windows. Their tungsten and leaded-glass frames were of the design used exclusively by Shinra's Science Department for human cloning. Sephiroth had to see.

He ascended the first row like a priest unto an altar, while a building fear pooled in the back of Cloud's throat. Stepping up on a railing, the big man peered through the view window, and lurched. Cloud caught him as he staggered back.

"What's in there?"

"See for yourself."

Cloud leapt up to grab hold of the view window, as Sephiroth was quite a bit taller than he was. Inside, he beheld a medusian vestige of codified bone and flesh. Bipadeal and multi-limbed, it floated in a state of cryosleep, clad in a blue Shinra Uniform.

Are these the missing SOLDIER's?

Whatever happened here, they'd been transformed in a bizarre feat of genetic engineering, into dark monstrosities that had been ransacking the town below. Cloud's mind whirled in horror as to how.

"Jenova. Your mother?...JENOVA CELLS!"

Sephiroth eyed Cloud in the same mountainous terror that assaulted their sense of humanity.

"…Shinra was mapping the genes of a monster onto SOLDIER's."

A thought, a moment of clarity. Cloud stared at the big man.

"…So what does that make you?"

Sephiroth's pupils constricted to beads. He leapt back in a fit of terror, seizing and shaking in uncontrollable spasms. Cloud ran to him but the big man flung him off the catwalk. Everything sped up.

A cryopod burst open and Sephiroth's sword shot out in a mad streak. He bashed the containers to bloody bits in a berserk rage attack. Steam and sparks flew in unholy rays of red light as Sephiroth stood shaking and sweating in the center of the Nibelheim Reactor, whispering up to someone who wasn't there.

"…Am I a monster?"

"…Yes…"

Cloud whipped around at an unfamiliar voice, and took a Fira bolt straight to the chest. All faded to black.

"…And that's all I remember. Next thing I knew, I woke up in Midgar. Everything in between is a blur."

They all stood transfixed on Cloud, who gazed at the altar like he was in another world. Barret bit the inside of his cheek.

"So that Sephiroth dude is a SOLDIER huh? But if he's your nigga, why he acting this way towards ya?"

"I don't know. I don't know why any of this is happening. But…"

Cloud's eyes moved to Tifa, who swallowed a lump in her throat.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Nibelheim. You were there, Tifa. You have to have seen what happened."

"I…can't talk about it."

"You never could. But you have to now. People are dying."

"I…Please don't make me do this."

Cloud took an aggressive step forward, taking her by the shoulders. His firm grip startled her. She didn't recognize him.

"Tell me what happened, Tifa. You have to remember."

"It's all blank! I don't remember!"

"Try!"

"I can't!"

"You have to tell me!"

"No!"

"Tifa!"

"Cloud! She can't!" Aerith leapt up, a lithe hand on his clenched fist. It seemed to snap something out of him, something terrible that flew away like feathers. He hadn't been himself for a moment. He let go of Tifa and she whisked away to the front pew, where Aerith followed to drape an assuring arm over her. Their muffled whispered created an invisible barrier, and now it was Tifa who whimpered.

Cloud winced at the ground, some seething energy winding its way around his body. He felt it run up his spine as he deliberated to the empty cathedral.

"Shinra, the Turks, and Sephiroth are after us. I think I know what to do, but we can't stay here. Anyone who wants out, now's your last chance to run."

A finality echoed off the arches as everyone stood, fear edged with determination glinting in their wild eyes. A silent moment of truth was exchanged between the party members, and Cloud nodded.

Silent like shadows in the night, they crept through back alleys all the way to the train station at North Edge, then stowed away between the cars and rode the PATH rail clear out of town.

.

[Received Masamune Replica]