The Song of Eternity
Canto 3
The Return of Sephiroth
Verse 6
Making Peace
Lost in the soul of the world,
He comes face to face with a soul from his past,
And comes to grips with what he has become.
They go together to find the lost one,
Finding more than they ever expected.
"Wake up Vincent," a voice cut through the darkness shrouding his mind. He opened his eyes and gazed around at his surroundings. The last thing he remembered was falling into the lifestream with Keep. He looked down at the ground, frowning as he realized that it ended ten feet away from him in any direction. He gazed over the edge, seeing that his small island of plain rock was floating in a huge sea of lifestream. He looked up, puzzled, wondering what was going on, noticing that there was a bubble of air around him for hundreds of feet. "Weird, isn't it," came the voice from behind him.
Vincent turned around to see the last thing he expected. Chaos himself, the huge winged demon that had been trapped inside him for the latter half of his life had settled down on the rock, folding it's wings behind it's back, looking annoyed. "You," he stuttered as he pulled out his Death Penalty and pointed it at the demon.
"Take it easy Valentine," the demon said angrily. "I don't think it would be wise to shoot me," he reasoned as he revealed a small cut on his shoulder. "Take a look at yourself," he suggested as he walked over to the edge and peered into the lifestream.
Vincent reached under his shirt and pulled out his hand with blood all over it. "What is going on?"
"You got shot as your sorry ass fell into the lifestream and somehow I got hurt too. Which leads me to think it would be best that neither of us kill each other, as much as we would like to do it," the demon explained. "As far as I can tell, we are in an air bubble somewhere in the lifestream. It extends about a hundred feet in each direction before it turns back into lifestream. As to how we got here, or why this improbable place exists, your guess is as good as mine," the demon conceded as it looked back at Vincent.
"You woke me up then? I heard a voice," Vincent said to his dark half.
"Wasn't me," Chaos replied as it looked around for another sign of life. "Musta dreamt it, there's no one else here, not even that bartender you met up with."
"Keep is safe for now, leaving us enough time to sort through the mess the two of you are in," a feminine voice said from nowhere.
"It was us who woke you up, Vincent Valentine," another feminine voice chimed in.
"Who are you," Vincent asked the air surrounding them.
"Oh, sorry about that. I've been dead for so long I forgot you couldn't see me," the voice laughed. A figure shimmered into view and solidified in front of Vincent and Chaos in a familiar pink dress. "Let me help you," Aeris said to the air beside her as she moved her hands and another form appeared, this one with short spiked blue hair and tribal tattoos up and down her arms.
"The Ancient," Chaos growled as he took a step back.
"Aeris, what's going on here?" Vincent questioned the flower girl as she looked away from her companion at Vincent.
"Well, the planet was trying to get you and Keep down here to deal with some things, so we had to make the lifestream bubble up and grab you," she explained as if it was nothing. "We'll deal with your problems first, then we need to go help your friend."
"Who's she?" Chaos asked as he continued to back away from the women.
"Fiona Starmore. I'm dead too, I guess," the blue haired woman replied.
"Okay, first order of business, get this whole demon thing sorted out," Aeris said nonchalantly.
"I will not be sorted out," Chaos said angrily as he stood at the edge of the small island.
"We aren't going to hurt you, take it easy," Aeris said reassuringly.
"What do you mean, sort out this 'demon thing'?" Vincent asked as he finally holstered his weapon.
"Well, the planet has been listening to the song and found out how important you uhhh, five I guess, are," Aeris said as she tried to remember how many demons Vincent had.
"The song… It is undecipherable," Chaos replied questioningly.
"No, you just have to be dead, close to death, or the soul of a planet to understand it," Aeris explained.
"Or like Travis," Fiona added.
"Oh, yeah. Or you can be like him too, but let's get ahead of ourselves. Anyway, the planet needs you two to stop fighting each other and stop Sephiroth and other threats like him," Aeris explained.
"I tried and failed to kill my son twice, it cannot be done. What is this song you speak of?" Vincent asked the two young (dead) women.
"The song is the story of the universe. The tale of what is, was, and will be. You really can only hear it between dimensions unless you know what you are doing," Fiona explained.
"And you did kill Sephiroth the first time. Then something entered this dimension and reanimated his body, since it was the strongest left on the planet. But there were enough Jenova cells left alive in him to let him take over the body, but the paranoid delusions he has a result of the other being and it's really quite confusing," Aeris said as she ran out of breath.
"Right… He is still to strong for us to stop," Vincent replied.
"That is being taken care of right now by Cloud and the others, they've been making a weapon with the huge materia you hid. It should be done soon enough. Anyway, you two need to get your acts together and go help them blow up his SOLDEIR factories and WEAPON projects," Aeris explained. She waved her arm at the lifestream, causing it to change into the image of the undersea area where the Emerald WEAPON was defeated. "They've almost finished salvaging it. Once they get it up and running, you won't stand much of a chance."
"What about the other WEAPONs?" Vincent asked as he remembered the other four WEAPONs that were destroyed six years ago.
"They're operational by now, but Reeve built a self destruct system into them and will blow them before they cause any damage. But he has been taken off the Emerald project, which means big trouble for your friends," Aeris explained. "So you two need to stop resisting each other and do your best to stop Sephiroth's forces."
"Stop resisting? Stop resisting! This is a bloodthirsty demon, he would kill the world if he had the chance! I'm doing all I can to keep him inside of me!" Vincent shouted at the women as he pointed at Chaos.
"He is correct. I will eventually take his body as my own and destroy everything on the planet," Chaos smirked.
"But the problem is that the two of you are different sides of a coin. You can influence and stop each other if you choose. The song says a lot about you two. You're going to be around for a while, but you need to get along. If you do get along, you will eventually be free of each other and able to live your own lives," Aeris explained. "You just need to take care of some problems for the planet first."
Vincent and Chaos stood there silently, staring at Aeris. "I think they agree. Let's get on the big business," Fiona said as she looked down at the ground under them.
"Okay," Aeris agreed as she made all four of them suddenly float up into the air. The land they were on lifted out of the lifestream and slowly flipped over in front of them, revealing a disturbing sight. The underside was a featureless black sphere.
"What the hell is that?" Vincent and Chaos asked simultaneously.
"That's where we are going," Aeris said cheerfully as she made all four of them dive down into the sphere.
Vincent looked around to find himself in Keep's old bar from Midgar. The place was filled with several shadowy figures, Chaos, the women, and Keep himself behind the bar. "What is this?"
"This is his psyche," Fiona explained as she pointed at Keep. "Go talk to him, see if you can get through to him," she suggested.
Vincent walked up to the bar and took a seat. "What'll it be stranger?" Keep asked him without hinting that something was amiss.
"Don't you recognize me?" Vincent asked.
"Can't say I do. Why, should I?" Keep asked him quizzically. Vincent looked back at the others, looked for an idea about what to do.
One of the shadowy figures stood up from a table and walked over to Fiona and Aeris. "This is taking too long. I'll get through to him," the figure stated as it walked up to the bar and sat next to Vincent. Vincent noticed the strange clothing, silver hair and tail the figure had. The figure reached across the bar and grabbed Keep by the shirt. "Get your damn memory working!" he shouted as he struck Keep upside the head.
As his fist struck, the room, and everyone but Vincent, Chaos, the women, and Kuja disappeared into blackness. "Kuja, that was a bit much," Fiona said annoyed.
"I do not want to be in this place any longer than needed. I want to get back to my body. I am still alive, unlike half of you," he said angrily as the darkness began to change. "See, it worked," he commented as the scene changed. The darkness formed itself into the scene of two boys, Keep and one looking like him in a field.
"That's the man you call Keep and his brother. Keep is really Travis Starmore, my husband," Fiona explained as Vincent, Chaos, and Aeris looked on. "Watch, this is where it all began," she pointed as a globe of light appeared and Travis and his brother disappeared into it. "They were from a world called Earth, but they got pulled through to Gaia, my world," she explained as the scene lurched forward. Now the two of them were fighting a huge dragon with weapons they picked up off the ground. They were losing until Travis screamed, turned black as night, and obliterated the dragon.
"What the hell was that?" Vincent asked as he watched the brother carry an injured Travis off to a close city.
"It's called Starlight. Only one person born on any world every million years has the ability to use it, but only one percent of those ever do realize their power and use it," Kuja explained.
The scene shifted to many cut scenes of the brothers fighting off legions of monsters outside the city as the seasons changed. Then it changed again as they ventured across the land until the reached another large city. There they shook hands and Travis returned the way he came with a woman. "That's when we met, he was to help me go home. Nathan, his brother, decided to stay in the city. But on the way back..," she stopped as the scene changed. A huge metal monster descended from the air and attacked Travis and Fiona in the dream.
"That's a WEAPON…" Aeris said as she stared at the battle.
"Yes, a planet was dying and the ones living there made WEAPONs to exterminate our world so they could colonize it," Fiona explained. The scene showed the WEAPON ready to strike a killing blow until Travis looked up at it with black eyes. He unleashed his power once again in a massive explosion, injuring, but not killing the WEAPON. Fiona rushed to his side as he struggled to his feet, covered in blood. The WEAPON began to advance on them again, but he unleashed another blast, tearing it in two. "The problem with the power was that it was meant not to be used. It was meant to kill it's wielder, but he would not die," she explained as the scene faded away with his unconscious form in her arms.
"When we got home he told me to keep it secret," she narrated as the scene shifted to one of a draconian-like WEAPON attacking the city over and over again as the seasons changed. It always ended in Travis's bloody form stumbling back into the city as the WEAPON retreated. Then Fiona appeared by him and took him back to her place when he was injured. "He fought the Alpha WEAPON off for the better part of two years," she explained. "Then we got married," she said as the wedding scene appeared. "And had a son nine months later," she said as the scene showed the two of them holding a newborn.
"But the war with the other world was escalating, so he left to help his brother and some other fend off a large force of WEAPONs and monsters. When he was gone, a WEAPON attacked the city, killing the child and I," Fiona explained as the scene showed the besieged city and her own still form. "But he never knew until much later. He was too busy fighting," she finished as the image changed to a huge battlefield. Travis was flying through the sky battling the Alpha WEAPON as thousands of soldiers battled monsters and a handful of heroes attacked other WEAPONs. Travis unleashed a trio of blasts, destroying a WEAPON and critically injuring the Alpha WEAPON and himself. Then he struck at the WEAPON with his fist in desperation and they both disappeared into blackness.
That's when I found how to do dimensional travel. Travis/Keep's voice sounded musically through the sphere. Then I went to Earth, battled with Alpha and damn near killed all life on my home planet. Eventually I got back to Gaia and killed the rest of the WEAPONs. The voice quit as Travis materialized in front of them and the sphere began to fade. "But Garland sent a dozen techno-WEAPONs out into other worlds, so I went after them. Apparently traveling dimensions after expending a lot of energy causes memory loss, so Valentine found me in Midgar and that's how we all got here," he finished as the sphere totally disappeared.
"Starmore, why are your wife and I here?" Kuja asked, eager to return to Gaia.
"Because, she gave her soul to bring me to life and you unwittingly gave part of yours when I took your Starlight. Once you die, your soul will come to live in me with her and Alek until you fade away into nothingness," Travis explained. "I will go prepare to fight Sephiroth now. See you around Valentine, Chaos," he nodded at the two of them before fading away, taking Fiona and Kuja with him.
"That was bizarre," Chaos said once he was gone.
"But necessary. The planet knows that he is the only one with a chance, but he needed his memory back," Aeris explained. "You need to find the others and stop the WEAPON projects. He may be incredibly powerful, but he cannot take on Sephiroth and a WEAPON without a high probability of losing."
"When we leave, we will become one again?" Vincent asked as he gazed to the 'sky'.
"Yes."
"But we will be free if we help stop Sephiroth," Chaos added.
"Not Sephiroth… You must stop Garland, then you can be free. Anyway, good luck, I'm sending you up to Mideel now, you should be able to find a way back to the others. Good to see you again," she smiled before the green light overtook the man and demon.