My footsteps fell softly on the sleek marble floor. Black and white checkered tiles surrounded me, giving the impression that I was standing, not in the City of the Ancients, but on a giant checker or chess board. The idea had irony to it though, now that I thought about it. I was like a chess master, moving all my pieces and pawns to trap the enemy. Of course the chess master doesn't always have the advantage of being the puppet master of the enemy king.
Light was spilling in from overhead now as the sun moved over the large hole in the ceiling. The ceiling itself was domed with a hole in the top, which at one time was perhaps used as a chimney, or as some device to measure the seasons, or for some other primitive purpose. But I am not a scientist; those were questions for another man, not me. The light was playing across the ground now, it was being reflected from off the water above us with a complex system of mirrors. It moved so smoothly, more like a liquid than light and saturated the room in its brilliance. It even pored down the large pit in front of me, illuminating the darkness below. The pit was in the floor, right underneath the circle of light set into the ceiling. It was an interesting comparison really, the light above and oblivion below. It was where I wanted to go though; the pit was where I needed to be. I walked on closer to the edge, making sure my steps were slow and quite, I did not want to alert my prey, not now, not after all the hunting. I moved my head out over the edge and stared down into the depths below. The waves of light circled me and I had to grab my long white hair with my left hand to keep it from hanging down in front of my eyes. I had to be very still, in fact I barely breathed, all to make sure that the light wasn't disrupted, alerting my prey. And there, beneath me at the bottom of the underground chamber rose a single stone pavilion, bathed in the light that even then I was tainting with my presence. The pavilion was formed from solid stone and inlaid with the same black and white marble checker pattern as the room above. Water surrounded the platform and the light reflecting off the water faintly illuminated the large room around the stone 'alter'. The carvings on it were exquisite, although I could not see them very well from where I was, I had seen Cetra ruins before, and I knew they were excellent craftsmen. "Unlike me," I thought. Yes, I was no craftsman and never would be. I could never be one of the peaceful, planet loving Ancients. "In my veins flows the blood of the Ancients"...Ha! what a joke! I was no Cetra, but I didn't need to be one either. Hojo tried to trick me, tried to manipulate me, but I was smarter than him, and I WOULD become better than the Ancients...I would be a god.
And all that stood between me and that destiny was the tiny figure seated below. It was a girl in a pink dress, kneeling on the stone pavilion and praying. She might as well have been in a church, but I knew what she was trying to do, and the power of no one single church could do what she needed. In this place, the lost Cetra Capital, the Planet had lingered for centuries. This was a place where one who was gifted could literally mold with the planet, become one with it. That's what the girl needed...the CETRA girl. I gritted my teeth as the memories surfaced. "She was the real Cetra wasn't she?" yes...she was. "And what was I?" nothing...an experiment gone horribly wrong, or right...depending on whom you talked to. I felt for the number tattooed on the back of my neck, knowing that I could never actually feel it, I could still imagine it burning and eating away at my sanity...at my soul. I turned my head and looked at my black-leather clad arm and glared hard as the light glinted off its glossy surface. This body wasn't even mine, just another of Hojo's abominations, but soon I wouldn't need a body, and then Mother and I could live happily ever after...at least I think that's how the fairy tales ended. Mother was the only person who'd ever cared for me, she'd shown me which way to go and how I might accomplish my goals, so why shouldn't she be deified with me?
She'd also told me what to do here, how I might destroy an opponent and gain a servant. All that was needed was for the puppet, the one who called himself Cloud, to come down into the city. Once he was there I could control him, pull his strings, make the JENOVA cells in him boil with rage. He'd kill the girl before he even knew what was happening. Then he'd hate himself, yes...he'd truly despise himself then, and that meant he wouldn't mind doing a few more things for daddy Sephiroth.
I was his father anyway, my cells created him and even though Hojo had labeled him a failure the clone had done quite well. "Of course he's doing well," I smiled, "he was created with my cells, so of course he'd trick that lunatic scientist". And then these thoughts came to a close as footsteps echoed across the chamber.
The slight 'click-click' of boots on marble came closer and closer as out of the gloom stepped three figures. The one on the right another girl, with a white shirt and black skirt. I remembered her from that first visit to Nibelheim all those years ago. The one on the left was a man clad in black and red, his long black hair running down his shoulders and the bottom of his face obscured by the neck of his shirt. For some reason this man in black reminded me of someone...of a woman in one of Hojos's books. The man -who looked quite different now- had been standing in the picture with the woman Hojo had labeled Lucrecia. Of course none of this mattered because it was the man in the middle who I was interested in. The tall blonde haired man with Mako Eyes. The puppet named Cloud. He was the first to see the girl, and I noticed that he took a visible step back when he saw her kneeling perfectly motionless. Perhaps he thought she was dead...it didn't matter. But I needed him to hurry up! I had waited too long as it was and who knew how close the girl was to finishing the summoning. What she didn't know was that I had prepared for this, if Holy was summoned I could and would stop it. It would take a lot of extra energy but it could be done. So it didn't really matter if she died or not, but she needed to die all the same. She deserved to die for trying to stop me! But now my attention went back to the pavilion as Cloud jumped from stair to stair up to the platform to stand before the girl named Aeris. I went to work.
My hand moved ever so slightly so that the open palm was facing down, and then I began to concentrate. I looked down through the flesh and conscious thoughts into his subconscious, and there I began my search. I looked for that shadow that made me, the shadow that made him. I knew it was there, but that it was also repressed, waiting for me to unleash it. It was not difficult to find and unleash it I did, sending in energy to power it. I sent my orders to the shadow, knowing it would do my bidding till the last of its strength failed. I opened my eyes and was pleased to see the effects already taking hold.
Cloud was shaking his head as if to get rid of some thought he didn't like or understand. I smiled as I watched him struggle, knowing that he would fail. Then his sword was out and clutched in his fist, he was already giving in to the shadow. He walked foreward as the girl continued to meditate as if he didn't even exist. The sword was raised and my back arched in anticipation. But then, even as the blade descended a cry tore through the chamber. The two companions were shouting at him and Cloud had stopped the execution! He was shaking his head again and backing up! Backing up!...it was impossible! He could not have beaten Mother and me, our power was beyond his ability to even comprehend. But he continued to back away from the girl until his head came to a stop and his eyes became unclouded. Then he just stared as Aeris lifted her head to look him right in the face.
She was so content, the smile on her face so warm and inviting. It made me sick! She'd completed the summoning and Holy would be moving soon. Now I would have yet another problem to deal with, but with the problem came another idea. This one was my own, I knew it was because I could remember the thought process that went into its creation. Holy might be moving, but only the girl and I knew it, and if the others knew nothing about Holy they would do nothing to free it, and then it would be too late for anything to save them. So I picked up my sword, Masamune, and squeezed its handle in my hands, watching the sunlight play and flicker across the cold metallic surface of its long curved blade. I stood up, my cape rustling and my hair falling back into place. I would take away the man's love, the girl named Aeris. "He deserves this doesn't he?" yes...just for defeating Mother and me he deserved to have this girl he loved taken away...as if he could even love! He was me! his genes were my genes and his cells my cells...how could he expect to love or be loved, when I had never felt or been given anything that resembled affection? Mother had cared for me, but had she ever loved me?...no...she had never loved me. Without a look back and a flicker of rage on my face, I took the plunge.
The light fell down with me so that I seemed to falling in a glowing beam of pure radiance. My sword was held with the point facing the quickly approaching earth. My hair and cape flew back behind me as I desended in a flurry of doom. Then my feet touched ground and my knees bent to absorb the impact. I rose back up to full height and found my sword lodged very nicely in Aeris's stomach. I could see her diaphragm moving up and down as her body struggled to take in air. Blood had already stained her dress and was already pooling on the floor. I could almost see her mouth moving up and down in a vain effort to tell her love that she had saved him, that she had just saved all humanity if they just knew how to unlock that chance and use it. I had to smile, it was too pathetically funny not to smile at. I looked at Cloud, his face ashen white, and slowly pulled Masamune free. As I did the body fell to the ground and the ribbon around her hair came undone, releasing a small white materia orb. "The Holy Materia," I thought to myself as it rolled off the platform and into the surrounding underground pool. "Better that way," I thought and looked back at Cloud who was by now cradling the girl's broken body as tears rolled down his cheeks. Blood was trickling out of the girl's mouth but her face was still the picture of silent peace. Even in death she mocked me, that arrogant Cetra whore! But O what a sight Cloud was, and it was a sad day any clone of mine should be seen in such a state.
I tried to explain to him, but words were worthless. He didn't understand the magnitude, the magnificence of my plan. Perhaps he didn't want to...I don't know. He didn't listen though, and that's what important. I was his master, I told him the girl was fine and she was, so he should have listened. Soon enough she and thousands like her would help me to complete my plan...whether they wanted to or not, and so he should be happy with this knowledge. But of course he wasn't, the wretched boy could talk about nothing but the girl, how she would never laugh or smile again...who needs those things! I don't need laughter or smiles, power will be plenty for me thank you...the rest is weakness. The puppet needed a lesson in power, and I decided to give it to him.
I was tired trying to explain myself and all that I could see now was the blood running and flowing across the marble floor. It was surrounding me even as I explained the glory of my plan. I felt that it was trying to consume me, trying to avenge its master in some way. So I left.
I felt my feet lift off the ground till I was levitating in mid-air. Pulling a small wad of gray organic material from inside my cape I fitted the Black Materia into the clump of pure JENOVA cells. The power of the Black Materia would multiply the strength of the cells and make the creature it formed extremely strong. This would be the puppet's lesson. The lesson that I learned so long ago...that everything is power. And yet, even as I flung the mass to the floor and sped up through the ceiling into the light, I had to wonder...was it?
Light was spilling in from overhead now as the sun moved over the large hole in the ceiling. The ceiling itself was domed with a hole in the top, which at one time was perhaps used as a chimney, or as some device to measure the seasons, or for some other primitive purpose. But I am not a scientist; those were questions for another man, not me. The light was playing across the ground now, it was being reflected from off the water above us with a complex system of mirrors. It moved so smoothly, more like a liquid than light and saturated the room in its brilliance. It even pored down the large pit in front of me, illuminating the darkness below. The pit was in the floor, right underneath the circle of light set into the ceiling. It was an interesting comparison really, the light above and oblivion below. It was where I wanted to go though; the pit was where I needed to be. I walked on closer to the edge, making sure my steps were slow and quite, I did not want to alert my prey, not now, not after all the hunting. I moved my head out over the edge and stared down into the depths below. The waves of light circled me and I had to grab my long white hair with my left hand to keep it from hanging down in front of my eyes. I had to be very still, in fact I barely breathed, all to make sure that the light wasn't disrupted, alerting my prey. And there, beneath me at the bottom of the underground chamber rose a single stone pavilion, bathed in the light that even then I was tainting with my presence. The pavilion was formed from solid stone and inlaid with the same black and white marble checker pattern as the room above. Water surrounded the platform and the light reflecting off the water faintly illuminated the large room around the stone 'alter'. The carvings on it were exquisite, although I could not see them very well from where I was, I had seen Cetra ruins before, and I knew they were excellent craftsmen. "Unlike me," I thought. Yes, I was no craftsman and never would be. I could never be one of the peaceful, planet loving Ancients. "In my veins flows the blood of the Ancients"...Ha! what a joke! I was no Cetra, but I didn't need to be one either. Hojo tried to trick me, tried to manipulate me, but I was smarter than him, and I WOULD become better than the Ancients...I would be a god.
And all that stood between me and that destiny was the tiny figure seated below. It was a girl in a pink dress, kneeling on the stone pavilion and praying. She might as well have been in a church, but I knew what she was trying to do, and the power of no one single church could do what she needed. In this place, the lost Cetra Capital, the Planet had lingered for centuries. This was a place where one who was gifted could literally mold with the planet, become one with it. That's what the girl needed...the CETRA girl. I gritted my teeth as the memories surfaced. "She was the real Cetra wasn't she?" yes...she was. "And what was I?" nothing...an experiment gone horribly wrong, or right...depending on whom you talked to. I felt for the number tattooed on the back of my neck, knowing that I could never actually feel it, I could still imagine it burning and eating away at my sanity...at my soul. I turned my head and looked at my black-leather clad arm and glared hard as the light glinted off its glossy surface. This body wasn't even mine, just another of Hojo's abominations, but soon I wouldn't need a body, and then Mother and I could live happily ever after...at least I think that's how the fairy tales ended. Mother was the only person who'd ever cared for me, she'd shown me which way to go and how I might accomplish my goals, so why shouldn't she be deified with me?
She'd also told me what to do here, how I might destroy an opponent and gain a servant. All that was needed was for the puppet, the one who called himself Cloud, to come down into the city. Once he was there I could control him, pull his strings, make the JENOVA cells in him boil with rage. He'd kill the girl before he even knew what was happening. Then he'd hate himself, yes...he'd truly despise himself then, and that meant he wouldn't mind doing a few more things for daddy Sephiroth.
I was his father anyway, my cells created him and even though Hojo had labeled him a failure the clone had done quite well. "Of course he's doing well," I smiled, "he was created with my cells, so of course he'd trick that lunatic scientist". And then these thoughts came to a close as footsteps echoed across the chamber.
The slight 'click-click' of boots on marble came closer and closer as out of the gloom stepped three figures. The one on the right another girl, with a white shirt and black skirt. I remembered her from that first visit to Nibelheim all those years ago. The one on the left was a man clad in black and red, his long black hair running down his shoulders and the bottom of his face obscured by the neck of his shirt. For some reason this man in black reminded me of someone...of a woman in one of Hojos's books. The man -who looked quite different now- had been standing in the picture with the woman Hojo had labeled Lucrecia. Of course none of this mattered because it was the man in the middle who I was interested in. The tall blonde haired man with Mako Eyes. The puppet named Cloud. He was the first to see the girl, and I noticed that he took a visible step back when he saw her kneeling perfectly motionless. Perhaps he thought she was dead...it didn't matter. But I needed him to hurry up! I had waited too long as it was and who knew how close the girl was to finishing the summoning. What she didn't know was that I had prepared for this, if Holy was summoned I could and would stop it. It would take a lot of extra energy but it could be done. So it didn't really matter if she died or not, but she needed to die all the same. She deserved to die for trying to stop me! But now my attention went back to the pavilion as Cloud jumped from stair to stair up to the platform to stand before the girl named Aeris. I went to work.
My hand moved ever so slightly so that the open palm was facing down, and then I began to concentrate. I looked down through the flesh and conscious thoughts into his subconscious, and there I began my search. I looked for that shadow that made me, the shadow that made him. I knew it was there, but that it was also repressed, waiting for me to unleash it. It was not difficult to find and unleash it I did, sending in energy to power it. I sent my orders to the shadow, knowing it would do my bidding till the last of its strength failed. I opened my eyes and was pleased to see the effects already taking hold.
Cloud was shaking his head as if to get rid of some thought he didn't like or understand. I smiled as I watched him struggle, knowing that he would fail. Then his sword was out and clutched in his fist, he was already giving in to the shadow. He walked foreward as the girl continued to meditate as if he didn't even exist. The sword was raised and my back arched in anticipation. But then, even as the blade descended a cry tore through the chamber. The two companions were shouting at him and Cloud had stopped the execution! He was shaking his head again and backing up! Backing up!...it was impossible! He could not have beaten Mother and me, our power was beyond his ability to even comprehend. But he continued to back away from the girl until his head came to a stop and his eyes became unclouded. Then he just stared as Aeris lifted her head to look him right in the face.
She was so content, the smile on her face so warm and inviting. It made me sick! She'd completed the summoning and Holy would be moving soon. Now I would have yet another problem to deal with, but with the problem came another idea. This one was my own, I knew it was because I could remember the thought process that went into its creation. Holy might be moving, but only the girl and I knew it, and if the others knew nothing about Holy they would do nothing to free it, and then it would be too late for anything to save them. So I picked up my sword, Masamune, and squeezed its handle in my hands, watching the sunlight play and flicker across the cold metallic surface of its long curved blade. I stood up, my cape rustling and my hair falling back into place. I would take away the man's love, the girl named Aeris. "He deserves this doesn't he?" yes...just for defeating Mother and me he deserved to have this girl he loved taken away...as if he could even love! He was me! his genes were my genes and his cells my cells...how could he expect to love or be loved, when I had never felt or been given anything that resembled affection? Mother had cared for me, but had she ever loved me?...no...she had never loved me. Without a look back and a flicker of rage on my face, I took the plunge.
The light fell down with me so that I seemed to falling in a glowing beam of pure radiance. My sword was held with the point facing the quickly approaching earth. My hair and cape flew back behind me as I desended in a flurry of doom. Then my feet touched ground and my knees bent to absorb the impact. I rose back up to full height and found my sword lodged very nicely in Aeris's stomach. I could see her diaphragm moving up and down as her body struggled to take in air. Blood had already stained her dress and was already pooling on the floor. I could almost see her mouth moving up and down in a vain effort to tell her love that she had saved him, that she had just saved all humanity if they just knew how to unlock that chance and use it. I had to smile, it was too pathetically funny not to smile at. I looked at Cloud, his face ashen white, and slowly pulled Masamune free. As I did the body fell to the ground and the ribbon around her hair came undone, releasing a small white materia orb. "The Holy Materia," I thought to myself as it rolled off the platform and into the surrounding underground pool. "Better that way," I thought and looked back at Cloud who was by now cradling the girl's broken body as tears rolled down his cheeks. Blood was trickling out of the girl's mouth but her face was still the picture of silent peace. Even in death she mocked me, that arrogant Cetra whore! But O what a sight Cloud was, and it was a sad day any clone of mine should be seen in such a state.
I tried to explain to him, but words were worthless. He didn't understand the magnitude, the magnificence of my plan. Perhaps he didn't want to...I don't know. He didn't listen though, and that's what important. I was his master, I told him the girl was fine and she was, so he should have listened. Soon enough she and thousands like her would help me to complete my plan...whether they wanted to or not, and so he should be happy with this knowledge. But of course he wasn't, the wretched boy could talk about nothing but the girl, how she would never laugh or smile again...who needs those things! I don't need laughter or smiles, power will be plenty for me thank you...the rest is weakness. The puppet needed a lesson in power, and I decided to give it to him.
I was tired trying to explain myself and all that I could see now was the blood running and flowing across the marble floor. It was surrounding me even as I explained the glory of my plan. I felt that it was trying to consume me, trying to avenge its master in some way. So I left.
I felt my feet lift off the ground till I was levitating in mid-air. Pulling a small wad of gray organic material from inside my cape I fitted the Black Materia into the clump of pure JENOVA cells. The power of the Black Materia would multiply the strength of the cells and make the creature it formed extremely strong. This would be the puppet's lesson. The lesson that I learned so long ago...that everything is power. And yet, even as I flung the mass to the floor and sped up through the ceiling into the light, I had to wonder...was it?