Whispers. Whispers echoed everywhere. Millions upon millions of faintly uttering voices called out in, what seemed, a longing plea. Faint lights flashed about like brilliant arrays of stars. With each rise and fall of the black lashed eyelids, the rays of utter flamboyance ricocheted within its wide, fearing pupils. As the fluttering eyelids slowly opened and focused a new setting came into perspective. The tendrils of emerald seemed to swarm around his body, and the perpetual setting he was in. It was a beautiful green, matching the blue-green glow to his retina. Lifestream…
The whispers seemed to grow stronger and more persistent with they're faint words. They were in a different language that he did not comprehend. The once faint voices now screamed in a horrifying perseverance. Brutal, ear splitting screams that frightened him into the fetal position. Why was he here? What happened? Why couldn't he remember? Why were they questioning him? Who were…they?
The screams became so decibel that they penetrated the strong hands, which clamped to his ears so tightly. With a sudden burst of freezing wind, he to, lo he knew not of himself, began to scream in pain. His voice erupted with a slightly deep, yet soft- spoken, tone. His jaw arched downward with the feral growl of his uncontrollability, baring perfectly shaped, white teeth. He couldn't make it stop. The voices just persistently shrieked higher, almost setting a tone of antagonism upon the tattered man.
Silence. The only thing left reverberating within the green world of nothingness was the fading screams that were escaping from his rasping throat. He began to sob slightly, not with emotionality but with a sense of utter despair, ultimately, fading sanity. His strong Caucasian hands gripped his long silver hair tightly and lightly pulled down. His long silver bangs matted to his perspiring face, shedding a shade across his tightly shut eyelids. The dark eyelashes quivered like the wings of a hummingbird in shock.
What was this place that he was so bereft of power? What was this antagonizing realm, which had condemned his tarnished, vanquished soul? The spiritual outcast, which he had become, surely had sent his wretched soul spiraling into eternal damnation. What men of lesser rank deemed as the fiery chasm of Hell. But this it could not be. No, for it was not the epitome of pain, nor the harvester of sorrow, or even one of the seven circles of endless and fathomless darkness, where not even dwelled the serpentine beast of shadow. Suddenly a thought struck him…Rank?
Why had he thought of rank? And, why had he suddenly thought of 'his' spirit to be as an outcast damned to only Hell?
Because you are the destined ruler of everything…
He leapt to his feet within the blink of an eye. His reflexes were so quick that he was hardly a blur. Instantaneously his ambidextrous hands reached to his right hip for what seemed to be a weapon. The long, pale fingers grasped only air in they're retreat from his waist. Images flashed through his mind as he glanced over to find nothing at his waist but a large, metal belt, engraved with a symbol, and the black fabric of fighting pants. He looked upon himself, slowly regaining memory of his former self. As he examined the black, knee high fighting boots secured around each of his feet and legs, spectral images of him running through battlefields, littered with corpses and fighting men, trailed through his memory. The combat boots fit like a glove and were tightened to his legs with silver latches, rather than laced. This was all he could tell was covering his body.
Who had spoken? The voice echoed in his brain, reverberating from the constructed walls of many years of living with it. It fed off of him like a disease, but this he did not see, for his true self lay dormant within his own mind. Masqueraded by the female tone of this voice, in the darkest corners of his collaboration of reality and persistent nightmares, his true self was locked in a cell that had no key. His desperation for some sort of companionship pushed him to imagine more clearly who the voice belonged to. Then it clicked…"Jenova."
My son, you have awoken to reality. I longed for your companionship for what has seemed like years…but it has only been one month…
"One month since what? What has happened, who am I? What is this place I am left in? Why do I know so much, but remember so little?" The desperate voice of the young man cried out in anguish. The swarming, green lights, swishing around his tiny island of despair, seemed to grow fierce. They flowed around the island of nothingness like a hurricane, obviously trying to fend off some intruding force. He stood tall and rigid and looked around, his emerald eyes swishing between the mako hue of blue to the glowing green of the lights around him. The waist length of his locks of hair whipped around his very well developed muscles like a river of molten silver.
The Lifestream grows impatient with my presence, but I shall inform you before your resurrection and destroy this place. Your name is Sephiroth, never given a last name because you were born not unto humanity, but under the supreme race of which I descend from. I am your mother Sephiroth. I gave birth to you twenty-six years ago. When you were born, I used my magic to give you the form of a human. This gave you the empowerment to blend into the worthless society, so we could finally make our rise against humanity. We are destined to destroy this worthless race of humans, also known as the Cetra, and reign as the ultimate power of this planet.
Sephiroth brought a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. Images raced through his head. The blood dripping from his long, curved sword, and the distant screams of human suffering, they all came back. He didn't like it. He felt everything begin to shift within himself as so many memories flooded the empty embankments of his throbbing mentality. He almost felt as if…he were losing control. "What… are you… doing to me? My mother's name was Jenova, but not…you… Who are…you?"
You dare speak such evils to your own dear mother? I am your mother, not some worthless human creature…very unlike the worthless scum that killed you one month ago. You will do as I say, and you will obey like the obedient son I knew before.
Sephiroth opened his eyes and glanced around, stiffly, but with the precocity of an eagle. His darting eyes found nothing but shimmering lights and infinitely extending plains of swaying emerald. Painstakingly, more memories punctured his thoughts, causing him to squint his glowing set of iris. A flash of a crying young man with slightly long, spiky, blonde hair ripped its way through his burning retinas, just as another of a similar young man with long, black, spiky hair followed it. These people were familiar…all of them, he noticed, as more and more flooded like a river. This wasn't him. He wouldn't do those horrible things. He protected people, not killed people. This wasn't him, he thought to himself. Then it all came together…
Now gather yourself my son, we must make haste before the Lifestream processes your spirit energy and reduces your existence to nothingness. We will begin extermination of the human race after we return.
"…No…I will not follow you Jenova. I realize what you did to me all those years ago…you made me do a lot of things that I would have never done on my own. I was confused and lost, even still I am, but you took advantage of my despair and manipulated my thoughts," Sephiroth thrashed his gaze upward, his long silver bangs flailing and silkily resting back into the sleek position. The words gritted through his perfectly white teeth in a controlled ferocity. "I didn't think anyone could do what you did, but you did it, and you ruined everything I worked so hard to accomplish. I will never allow you to do what you did again…for my sake and the sake of the people who destroyed you… I would rather reduce to nothingness, and serve a better purpose in death, than resurrect and destroy humanity!"
…Very well…impudent human disgrace…I will absorb your life force unto my own and use you against your will to destroy the planet…you are nothing without me…
"No you will not Jenova…" came the soft voice of a young woman, several yards away from the tall, dark man on the small, blank island. Sephiroth's eyes darted to her with a gleam of mako as they focused. "His lifeforce has been preserved as the planet did unto mine. He will not go anywhere unless he is resurrected by Holy, and the planet confides in it. Retreat your consciousness from this sacred place Jenova, or I will be forced to summon the planet's power to cast you out of here."
Sephiroth froze, his stone glare beginning to curve thoughtfully. The girl…a searing red light began to blind his vision as a shrill ringing noise began to override his senses from clarity. He began to dizzy under the invisible force, and fell to his knees unconsciously. The last thing he perceived before the blackness overwhelmed him was the girl who had reprimanded his mothe- or the thing that was trying to manipulate him.
She was fairly small, with a light complexion of her skin, and she wore a long pink dress that ended its descent just before her ankles. A small, red jacket adorned over top of the dress, and a set of golden bracelets protected her wrists. In her hand she held a long metal staff as her long brunette hair billowed around her body freely. Jenova screamed in anger as the distance between the fallen man and consciousness increased, again, and again…
Warmth seemed to flow like blood. It was a dramatic transformation to the cold and uncomfortable world of nothingness from before. Yet to open the caskets of green, he sat up in the soft bed beneath him, resting his tired head on the, what felt like, wooden headboard behind him. Had it all been a dream, no…he forgot, he didn't ever sleep. Due to the mako inducements he had undergone in the Shinra Military squadron of SOLDIER, sleep was rarely needed. He usually slept a maximum of an hour and half a week, not even that when he was fighting in the Shinra/Wutai War. That was in the past though, lo, time obviously did not exist in the afterlife. He lightly chuckled to himself, and found that he was in a very small room, due to the quick reverberation of his voice from the walls around him. He rubbed his forehead and snapped his glowing eyes open.
"Where am I," he asked to no one in particular as he checked his surroundings. The room was very small, approximately eight feet by twelve feet. The bed his lower body was still consumed by had white sheets and a soft white comforter on top. A small vase of flowers sat, very lively and bright, on a sunlit windowsill, and a small bed table positioned against the wall next to him had, what seemed to be, clothes on it. He slicked his very long silver hair behind his head and turned to sit at the edge of the soft bed. He noticed that he was only wearing a short set of black boxers, and a pair of thermal socks specially designed by Shinra to keep they're SOLDIERs warm in the chilliness of Midgar.
He reached over to the table and unfolded the black fighting pants, which originally belonged to a complete Top Officer Series SOLDIER uniform. He had discarded the shirt long ago, he remembered, after buying a long leather coat that trailed down to his calves. After putting on the loose fighting pants, he latched the large, SOLDIER belt around his stomach and attached it to the hem of the thick, black fabric of his pants. He tightened the leather straps connected to the top of the belt across his chest and tightened them securely over his shoulders. "I wonder why my uniform is here?"
The tall, ex-SOLDIER next pulled his black, leather coat over himself and tightened it around his midsection with a small, silver buckle on the front. The coat was specially tailored to fit around his muscles and abdomen perfectly, and well showed off his impressive frame beneath. The crisscrossing straps over his chest covered only a small portion of his bare, muscular chest, but that was the way he liked it. Finally he reached for the shiny, silver shoulder plates that had protected him in battle since he had made the rank of First-Class.
First he placed a thin, silver padding over top of his shoulders and latched them securely with straps that went under each of his armpits and connected behind his long trailing hair. After that he placed the four-piece adornment of silver plates over his shoulders and strapped them with similar buckles to the silver padding beneath. On the front of each plate were three holes that were arranged in a triangular fashion, but other than that there was no other symbol or marks that were usually seen on that type of armor. The only things left were a pair of silver wrist bracelets, his black fighting gloves and something he did not expect…his sword.
After he slid the thick bracelets on and pulled his gloves onto his hands, the completely dressed man reached cautiously for the black Katana handle of his sword. The sword was very beautiful, lying across the table in its black sheath, but it held the most fearsome deadly power within its indestructible blade. The handle was about nine inches long and was wrapped in a black grip cloth just like all Katana swords were. The small gaps between the crisscrossing fabric gleamed with small materia orbs, and the small guard between the handle and blade was forged of some sort of black metal.
He clasped his hands over the black handle and lifted the curved Katana sword, still encased in its black sheath, from its resting place on the table. He slowly unsheathed the reflectively silver, five- foot blade from its sheath and examined the untainted blade. This was the sword that had been passed down his family from generation to generation, Masamune. Professor Gast had given it to him just before he left Shinra. He mentioned that it was one of the most powerful weapons in the world, it would never break on him in a fight, and that it could only be wielded properly by him... Sephiroth slowly slid the blade back into the sheath and tied the fairly long Katana to his side.
He had never known anyone in his family, and he had no idea how Professor Gast would have gotten a hold of the weapon, but he never asked any questions upon receiving such a fine sword. Maybe Gast had known his father or mother? After all, he had been there his entire life. Why hadn't the man told him anything of his past? Maybe he really was just an experiment…an engine of destruction for Shinra to use to they're every whim. I won't believe it, he thought to himself. There is more to me than a big ugly monster and a mako pod. Sephiroth tossed his hair back and walked out the doorway of the room. The next room was only a few square feet larger than the other one, and had few things within it. A few pictures of miscellaneous images hung on the log cabin like walls, and only a wooden chair and a blanketed couch occupied the shiny wooden floors.
"Small house…" the tall, black clad man noted as he stepped out the front door. Bright sunlight invaded his pupils as they focused to the new surroundings, but it affected him not. What he found outdoors was something stolen from a dream. Flowers. Flowers as far as the eye could see, in his case that was very far. Grassy plains stretched over the horizon where a dusk sun could be seen taking its last steps of the day. Seeming to glow in the gray mountains beyond were faint auroras of brilliant green and blue. The beautiful hues combined into what perceived to the eye as arrangements of cirrus clouds, but, due to his experience of living in Midgar, Sephiroth knew that they were actually the gaseous compounds of Lifestream partially in a mako state.
"…Beautiful…" he uttered as he took in all of his surroundings. He wasn't sure where he was but he knew that he could get used to it. He suddenly ended his thoughts as he sensed something nearing him. The magical properties that mako induced on the body allowed SOLDIERs to have a vast aura of awareness, and over his past twenty or so years of fighting, he had grown very acute to it. He spun around swiftly, but calmly, on one heel, just in time to meet the, slightly shocked, emerald gaze of a beautiful young woman. It was her…
"Sephiroth…how do you feel," she asked in the softest of innocent voices. She had after all lived a pure life. She had grown up in the worst areas of Midgar's slums, kept virginity even through countless near-rape experiences, avoided crime, and after all of it she died at the blade of a laser sharp sword with no one to turn to. How did he know all that though, he thought to himself. Then it came to him, just like all the other evading memories that were constantly returning home. He had known Aeris soon after he had become the Top Officer of SOLDIER. Another memory returned with a flash as he remembered how he had first met her. His friend, and trainee, Zack Strife, had begun going out with her after he gained the rank of First Class. He had taken her to a Shinra party and introduced her to him, he remembered. She had been so nice and sweet to him, even though he was of high rank, and often feared by citizens.
It cringed him on the inside that he had done such an evil as to kill a sweet person such as Aeris Gainsborough. He gave a slightly confused look and tossed his hair back with one hand as he looked down at the girl who was several inches shorter than him. "I feel fine…but what is going on, how did I get to this place?"
"I figured you would ask that. Well, you got your butt kicked by my friends in Avalanche-"
"I know that much, and I didn't have control over myself, so whatever I did while possessed…I'm sorry for…" Sephiroth became slightly irritated with the blunt comment, but Aeris nodded and continued.
"Come on inside, we got to sit down and talk about this because things are going to seem very weird." The duo walked inside, the grass crunching under they're feet as they made they're way into the very small cabin. Sephiroth sat down on one end of the couch as Aeris leapt onto the couch and landed in a laid back position, casually lying across the rest of the couch. He was slightly shocked by her casual behavior; he had expected her to act very hateful to him. "Okay Seph, after you died in the battle, your soul was absorbed by the planet, but!"
His attention was suddenly jerked fully to her stern green eyes. She was curling one of her long, brown locks of hair with one finger as she spoke. "Something really odd happened after you reached the gap between the lifestream and the natural world. The planet, unbeknownst of what you were, sent you here."
"What do you mean unbeknownst? It didn't know that I was a human or what? Shouldn't I have been absorbed and circulated through again," Sephiroth asked with a slightly desperate confusion to his crisp voice.
"Yes, exactly. The planet should have absorbed you, but you see, the planet isn't a very smart lifeform, if that is what you want to call it. It is almost like a person in a coma. It feeds and lives off of the lifestream, but it has no sense of personality, mentality, or perception, because it is basically a plant. The only thing it can do is sort its own Lifestream to be used again, it is almost an automatic process. The thing is if it finds something that it can't reuse, it has to put it somewhere where it won't circulate it again. That is where people like us come in." Aeris continued after slow nods by the man before her. She knew he was very intelligent, one of the most intelligent people on the planet before he died, so she knew she wouldn't have to repeat herself twice.
"If you remember the whole ordeal with Shinra wanting to find the Promised Land, or whatever you want to call it, that was what all of us Cetra were constantly seeking. On the planet it is more or less a religion that you had to stay true to in order to find. That isn't true. The only way to even make it to the Promised Land is to have the blood of the ancient Cetra in your veins. The Cetra were the original race of humans, and they were more or less, a part of the planet itself. If you think about it, the planet can't absorb itself, so to counter this, the planet sends those who are of this race to a parallel dimension that is exactly like the planet, except without all the things that are in the natural world such as people and buildings. It is really complicated and difficult to understand." Aeris took a breath. Sephiroth just stared, not sure what to make of the whole ordeal.
"So why did I end up here then? I'm not an ancient, and I don't have blood of the Cetra in my veins. I carried Jenova cells for Christ's sake, shouldn't I be spiraling into Hell right now?" Sephiroth shook his head and awaited a reply. The beautiful young woman only shook her head.
"Sorry. What happened with you was the planet confused you as being an ancient due to something that is in your mind. When you went on that rampage across the planet with Jenova in your head, you absorbed an ungodly amount of knowledge from the Lifestream. That apparently was your main goal, to absorb all of the Lifestream. Well, somewhere in that head of yours still lays the dormant knowledge of the original birth of the planet, and due to this, the planet did not absorb you, but sent you here…" Aeris sat upright and got up from the couch, leaving the baffled young man in his stiff position. "You're a special case, and you got lucky because of it. Now you don't die, you kind of 'live' here now."
"…Damn it…damn it all to Hell!" Sephiroth shot up from his seat and walked over to the window, where night had surely fallen. It was so beautiful, much more so than any other night he had ever seen when he lived on the planet. This wasn't what he wanted. Life without what he had known before was not worth living, especially since he wasn't of any importance in a world like this. His sword, his rank, his life, meant nothing here. He was just a dark spot on a surreal, white canvass. That was this entire place was…surreal. It wasn't worldly, only stagnant, and dreamlike. That was all it meant to him at least… "I don't belong here. Why couldn't I just die like any other human…like all the people I murdered!"
"What are you talking about? Why wouldn't you want to be here?" Aeris walked over to calm him down with a gentle hand to his arm. He turned his head to look over at her, his eyes taking her back. Such sorrow and pain lingered within his glowing green eyes. The tint of the glow seemed to fight an endless battle between green and blue as his feelings thrashed with turmoil within. "You have basically been granted eternal life in a world of perfection and you would throw it away given the chance? You are just going to have to live with it, because this is the place you were put and the planet doesn't make reconsiderations, it can't. The only way you can ever get back to the natural world is if someone decides to resurrect you, and that type of magic hasn't been used for thousands of years, and even if it was possible, I doubt anyone would want to bring a mass murderer back to life."
"I can't believe you call me a mass murderer. You don't even know me so don't make accusations you can't hold up. You didn't 'know' me before I went 'insane' so don't ever call me something so impudent ever again," Sephiroth crossed his arms and turned back to the window.
"Look, I'm sorry. I know this is a big change for you…heck it's a big change for me too. You can't go around wishing for death, and you have to except this life you have been given…"
"What life? What really is there to this place besides getting up, breathing, and then going back to sleep? Does time even exist in this world," Sephiroth sighed as he searched for his reasons. Aeris just shook her head.
"This place is the original planet Sephiroth. This is the planet before the followers of the Cetra branched off and civilized themselves. Just because it is the 'afterlife' doesn't mean that threats of monsters, and need of protection don't exist. This is the same world, just taken from the past. We are still alive and we can still die just as easily, but the only difference is if we die, we still get reprocessed back to this world. The clock ticks just as fast as it did in the natural born world…things are just…different sort of."
"How many people live in this world? There couldn't possibly be that many of us…" Sephiroth rested his hand on the black hilt of his Masamune as he tried to understand what kind of situation he was in. He had been in countless battles where he had nearly been killed, even deep within a massive war, but he had never been where he is now…
"Millions, Sephiroth…just like the other planet…things have changed a lot but on the outside they haven't." Aeris began to walk into another small room of the little house, where a kitchen seemed to be. Her words echoed like the passage of time through his head. She didn't understand… He didn't want to live. Knowing he had done the things he did, death was something he wished to embrace, not this perfect world of emptiness. He started for the doorway, when the beautiful young girl in the other room walked out with her hands on her hips. "And where do you think you are going?"
"I'm leaving," Sephiroth uttered as he walked out of the house and into the overwhelming darkness ahead. Aeris just shook her head and went back to cooking dinner.
"He'll be back…he'll be back…"