The Chaos Connection
by NightsDawne


Chapter 3: Soldier

Worlds came and faded around Seifer. Strange faces, knights in armor, fantasy figures with bows and arrows, strange creatures he could only assume were guardian forces he'd never known the existance of. He found himself in battles, kings, theives, sorcerers warring against powerful beings trying to destroy their worlds. A laughing maniac with a painted face, seated atop a throne of living monsters, a monster of beige smoke and tendrils with a cruel face, a multi-winged angel with flowing silver hair who hurled stars as if they were toys, a glowing machine comprised of sentient orbs. Names flashed through his mind. Kefka, X-Death, Sephiroth, Deus. The last fascinated him, battled by what seemed to be giant robots, transposed with celestial images, two angels and a demon warring with a false god. Zenogais. The meaningless word echoed through his mind as that world, too, faded into nothingness. He was at the edge of death.

Seifer heard a familiar laugh, a cruel, harsh sound, and turned to face the sorceress whose magic had possessed him when she, too, had sought world destruction. Ultimecia, the time sorceress. Was this his judgement, that he would be condemned to her in death for being too weak to stop her in life? It seemed fitting, but still his mind rebelled against the thought of death. He had fought too long and too hard to give up. He still had a dream. Ultimecia extended her hand to him, reaching across the abyss that seperated them. Seifer shook his head, gathering his will, fighting for every moment of life. I will not die today.

You're not dead yet. But you're going to have to make the choice to live.

Seifer spun at the other voice. A man stood behind him, silver hair cascading to his waist, his green eyes glowing against the darkness. Although the wings were gone, Seifer recognized the face from the earlier visions. Sephiroth. You were one of the evils. Why should I trust you?

I was used, like you were. It was Jenova, not me, Seifer. That part of me is gone now. I'm trying to save your life.

Seifer lifted his chin, then looked behind him at Ultimecia, beckoning him toward her. He clenched his teeth in rebellion and turned his eyes back to Sephiroth. I won't let anyone own me again.

Sephiroth smiled softly. I don't want to own anyone. Are you going to live?

Seifer nodded, reaching for Sephiroth's outstretched hand. Worlds collided, a cosmos in chaos, then nothing. Seifer awoke from the dream.

"Don't try to move just yet. We almost lost you there."

Seifer opened his eyes, glancing to the man sitting on the bed, still holding his hand tightly. "Sephiroth?"

"Yes." Sephiroth let go of Seifer's hand to push his long hair from his shoulder. "How are you feeling, Seifer?"

"Like shit." Seifer raised a hand to his face, rubbing his scar. "Where am I?"

Sephiroth chuckled. "Um, my father's mansion. We don't get many visitors."

Seifer sat up slowly. "And who's your father?"

"Vincent Valentine. He'll show up when he's ready to."

Seifer grunted noncommitally at the unfamiliar name and looked down at his body. "Where are my clothes?"

"There wasn't much left of them. I brought some of mine for you to borrow for now." Sephiroth nodded toward the neatly folded pile of black cloth at the foot of the bed. "I'll go heat you up some dinner while you get dressed."

Seifer furrowed his brow as the other man left the room. His eyes still glowed, just like in the dream. It wasn't human looking at all, even if the rest of him appeared perfectly normal, no wings, nothing out of the ordinary. He shrugged, adding it to the growing list of mysteries about everything that had happened after he junctioned to Chaos, then reached for the clothes. Fairly nondescript. The pants were of a lightweight cotton, black, loose fitting, the shirt was just a plain black tee shirt. He got them on, more interested in the promise of food than anything else. He was starving.

Seifer took a closer look at his environment. He smirked slightly at Sephiroth's use of the word mansion. Faded wallpaper showed a good many tears that exposed cracks in the plaster it covered. The floors might once have been highly polished, but the wood hadn't seen wax in a long enough period that the boards were warped and uneven. It was clean and the furniture, if spare, was antique and expensive looking, but had undergone as much neglect as the rest of the room. The large bay window looked out onto what might have once been a garden but was now simply an overgrown wilderness, cast in shadow by the high craggy mountains beyond it, the sun struggling to clear their peaks.

He turned back to the room itself, listening to the creaks and groans that announced age in the house as clearly as the worn structure. The door Sephiroth had gone through was halfway open, revealing an open balcony and the top of a double set of spiral staircases. Another door was off to his right, a steady dripping giving away the bathroom beyond it. Seifer's blood had been cleaned away, so he didn't need to wash, but curiosity and the surreal events sparking a desire to splash some cold water over his face led him to open the peeling door and step inside.

He fumbled to find a switch on the wall. When he turned on the light, it exposed porcelain stained with age, no sense of the modern disturbing the setting. A pedestal sink was the source of the dripping, a chipped gold faucet leaking steadily into it. An old-fashioned toilet with a high tank and a chain for flushing perched beyond it, the opposite wall dominated by a large tub with clawed feet. Seifer ran his hand through his hair, chuckling to himself at the thought that seeing this place at night would likely add the modifier haunted before the word mansion. Not that he believed in ghosts or goblins, but the entire thing seemed to be a movie set for a gothic horror flick. He heard the stairs protest use as Sephiroth made his way up them again and stepped over to the sink.

The water was cold, like ice when he got the nearly rusted fixtures turned on. The hot water tap was hopelessly rusted and merely broke off in his hand when he forced it. With a sigh he put his hands under the chilly flow and bent his head down, cupping water in his hands and then bringing it to his face. The dreamlike feel of the old house broke with the freezing sting, giving him a refreshing and sharp sense of reality. He sucked in his breath as he stood again, shaking out his hair as his eyes fell on the tarnished mirror that hung over the sink. The face that reflected back at him shocked him even more than the water.

It was his face, right down to the scar that ran from his forehead, across the bridge of his nose and down to the inside of his cheekbone. Every feature was familiar to him, but where he was used to seeing eyes of a steely blue with hints of green sometimes brought out by firelight, he now saw irises of a firey aqua, glowing with inhuman intensity. It was the same effect he had noted in Sephiroth, although the silver-haired man's eyes were a pure green, like sunlight forcing itself through spring leaves. Seifer stepped back from the reflection, shaking his head, his brow furrowed.

"Seifer?" Sephiroth set down the tray on the bed, leaning over to see around the open bathroom door. "Are you alright?"

Seifer frowned, walking out of the bathroom. "What happened to me?"

Sephiroth tucked his hair behind his ear. "I don't know all of it. What specifically do you want to know? I'll do my best to answer."

"Why are my eyes like yours?!" Seifer clenched a fist in frustration with the number of other questions he had.

Sephiroth took a deep breath. "It's a side effect of the mako energy. You were dying when my father brought you here. The only way I could save your life was to make you a Soldier."

"What kind of Soldier? I'm not going to fight for anyone."

Sephiroth sighed. "Not like that. Calm down, will you? I'll try to explain." He waited until Seifer had relaxed somewhat, the blond sitting down on the bed and looking at him with a hint of threat in his expectant expression. "Remember that I told you that I was used, that it was Jenova, not me?"

Seifer furrowed his brow. "In the dream, you mean?"

Sephiroth nodded. "It wasn't exactly a dream, but that would be a completely different explanation. Jenova was an alien. Something called a Wave being. We really don't know much about them, even now, except that they're from a completely different dimension, like summon creatures, only they're not like them. She was some kind of rogue and millenia ago she was killed and buried on this world, before there was any life here."

"What does this have to do with me?"

Sephiroth chuckled. "You're not very patient, are you. Just listen?" Sephiroth sat down on the other side of the bed from Seifer. "Apparently they didn't completely finish the job when they executed her. Eventually the planet gained life, and humans in time. Some of those humans became scientists, and some of those scientists discovered Jenova's body. So, naturally, they decided to study it. And naturally, one of those scientists was a madman and decided to take some of the cells of Jenova that had survived and put them in human beings."

"Naturally." Seifer leaned forward a bit, interested in spite of himself.

"Only two survived his experiments. That would be my father and me. Our circumstances were.. um, unique when we were hybridized. After a while, however, he discovered a way to cheaply mimic a similar effect to create a race of superhumans, or at least that was what he called them. He exposed humans to deadly amounts of mako energy from points where it erupts from the Lifestream to the surface, and then exposed them to small amounts of Jenova cells. They didn't exactly become hybrids, but they did become powerful, the ones that survived it. The government he worked for used them as an elite fighting force, the Soldiers."

"What happened to them?"

Sephiroth ran his finger over the bedspread. "There's only one other besides you who's still alive. He didn't fully make it, not in the way Hojo and Shinra wanted. He went sort of mental, but in the end it saved him because I couldn't command him the way I did the others after Jenova took me over."

Seifer raised a brow. "Wait, you command Soldiers? And you made me one?!" He stood up, anger flashing in his glowing eyes. "To hell with that! I'm not going to be anyone's slave!"

Sephiroth held up his hands placatingly. "I don't intend to do anything to you, least of all command. I don't think I can anymore anyhow. Not now that Jenova's gone."

Seifer frowned. "So what does it mean, then? Other than looking like this."

"You'll have increased strength over ordinary humans. I can contact your mind, but don't worry, I don't plan on invading your thoughts. I can tell you're someone who likes his privacy." Sephiroth pushed a rebellious strand of silver from his eyes. "I really don't know what will happen, exactly. You weren't given Jenova's cells directly. The corpse was destroyed, along with all the samples."

"So where did it come from?"

"Me." Sephiroth shrugged with a slight smile. "My cells are only half alien, but it seems to have done the trick."

Seifer sank back down on the bed, trying to absorb all of the new information. "I don't feel any different than before." He reached for the glass of wine on the tray Sephiroth had brought, picking it up, then frowned as it shattered in his grip.

Sephiroth grabbed the napkin, wiping Seifer's hand off. "You'll get used to it in time. Your brain is still thinking your former strength. Try a light touch with things until you have the hang of it." He smiled. "At least you didn't cut yourself."

Seifer rubbed his temple. "I'm going to wake up from this, I know it."

"It's got to be hard. It's not like you asked for any of this and all of a sudden it's being dropped on you." Sephiroth propped his chin on his hand. "It was hard enough for me when I just missed five years of what was going on on my own world. And for my father, missing out on five times that much, the whole world changing while he slept. But for you, it really is a whole different world."

Seifer picked up the fork and started twirling pasta onto it. "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I'd rather be back on my world."

Sephiroth nodded. "Understandable. If there's a way to get you back, we'll find it, alright?" He stood, walking for the door. "For right now, eat, relax, rest up. You'll think better when you're feeling better."

Seifer furrowed his brow, watching Sephiroth leave. Jenova, Wave, hybrids, soldiers.. whatever this world was, it was like the Lunatic Pandora had taken over the planet and, at least for the moment, he was stuck with it.