The mako reactor still stood as tall as ever. It's toll on the planet was inconceivable by man. No one could imagine how much spirit energy it had stolen. Shinra was too naive to understand its destruction of the world.
"I am almost to Nibelheim... And yet I cannot just overlook the place where I was born and died six years ago. Hah hah hah... I'm like a child; foolish and naive. This place brings only pain and insanity." Sephiroth, clad in his usual black garments, walked up the stairs. With each one a clinking sound could be heard. His boots were almost completely metal, and most certainly uncomfortable. Yet it was the only pair he would wear. And his black cloak... that and his silver hair were the marks feared by millions around the world.
The door wouldn't open. "Heh..." Sephiroth took his gauntlet-covered fist and smashed it into the door. The door surrendered with ease. Inside were thin bars, used to get to the inner core. And below them was a pit of extremely poisonous mako. That... is where he died. Further inside would be where he was born.
The metal pipes were solidly placed and he easily walked across them. He killed a man here. Reliving a nightmare... Almost there. Just keep going.
Pods and stairs filled the room. Pods that were once filled with monsters. And then the stairs that were still stained with blood, an eternal reminder of the enraged teenage girl. The pods were a reminder that Sephiroth would never forget... that he was an experiment. "Hojo! Damn you... You pathetic deformed man... you were nothing more than a mediocre scientist, taking over the work of perhaps the most brilliant man of our time. Pray that you never see me again."
Hojo had always been cruel to Sephiroth when he was a boy. After Sephiroth became a young war hero, however, Hojo started to fear him. It was laughable. He was such a coward. He experimented on things and then ran away if they didn't like his cruel methods of study. What did he expect, complete cooperation with such hatred?
Haha. Finally he arrived to his destination. The sealed door. Open the door, Mother, Sephiroth said six years ago. Six years later, he opened it himself with the crushing blow of his gauntlet. Yes, finally....
Sephiroth entered, finding the blood of Jenova still here. As well as his own and Cloud Strife's. Jenova was no longer here... nothing was here anymore. What had he really expected to find here, anyway? It was of the past. Sephiroth had wasted too much time in this desolate place already. He turned to leave this place behind once more.
"Don't go."
"...." Silence.
A womans voice. Someone was here? Why would anyone be here... perhaps he was being followed? Not likely...
"Who's there?" Silence still surrounded the room.
"Lost you are, little one. Guidance is the key. You must honor your late father soon." The womans voice again. It was so soft and sweet. Heavenly, almost.
"My late father? How can I honor someone I do not even know....wait... Haha, how would you even know my father?" Sephiroth laughed coldly. This person defintely knew he was at least. Then again, didn't everyone know about the great Sephiroth... parentless from birth.
"I am the Great Sephiroth." He sliced his sword through the air. A cut that would have left any normal man dead. "I have no father." He sliced through the air again, even harder. "And I must know who you are to speak of such things!" He couldn't even see her...
"Put your toy away, young one. You will find out in soon time. First, however, you must let go of Jenova. There will come a time when your loyalties will be stretched once again. Know that your heritage comes from the true heirs of the Planet. It comes from no one else." The voice whispered these words into his confused mind, and disappeared.
"Who are you? WHO ARE YOU!? Answer me.... who are you to follow me around?" Sephiroth yelled in anger while his body reacted with destructive force. The very walls of the reactor shook. "Who are you to speak of such things?"
There was a long silence after Sephiroth's words echoed throughout the reactor. There was nothing. She was gone. Perhaps she was a ghost or an angel. No, there was no such thing as angels. Not real ones anyways... except... he had that wing right before he died. The wing of a fallen angel. What did that mean? Nevermind that! Who was this foul woman?
"My father is dead... and I don't even know him.... hah hah hah... what makes you think that he would matter to me? Ignorant fool." Sephiroth sheathed his sword once more, and left the reactor. Her words still floated in his mind. Know that your heritage comes from the true heirs of the Planet.... honor your late father...
Still, it mattered not. He had to get to Nibelheim. In his heart, he knew all the answers were there. The books... he had to reread them! In them were the answers. If not there, then... Midgar. Although he had no idea of what condition that town might be in; that was the back up plan. His ancestry was more important than ever... wait...
Then why laugh at the girl? She knew who his father was? Perhaps he should hope their paths should meet again. Clink, clink, clink. Metal pipes stained with blood. The mako pit below it... haunting...
What did he really want, anyways? To find out what Jenova really was, or his ancestry? Wasn't his father just as important as his mother... how could he alone make such a judgement? He had to speak to that woman again. Yet... how could he possibly find her?
Were Sephiroth's parents really were ancients? What was Jenova... ahahaha. She really had gotten him in the head. Now his thoughts were clear, though. Jenova was an alien, not an heir to the Planet.
Two thousand years ago, Jenova, the Calamity from the Skies, crashed into the Planet. She came as a Goddess, and everyone around the Planet praised her as the such! She was to bring the world supreme happiness... for she was the Original Cetra. Yet that was all a lie when she revealed her true self nearly four years later.
"Mistress Jen, you have promised us prosperity. Yet, all we have seen since your coming is destruction. The land that we, the Cetra, worked so hard to cultivate, bleeds from your touch. You are no Cetra." The woman's bright green eyes pierced the cold air with burning vengeance. She wore a light, white robe with long, beautiful brown hair going down to her ankles.
"How very perceptive of you, Mistress Luna. However, I would like to know..." Her lips curled as blood began dripping from her mouth. "What are you going to do..." She began laughing with insanity. "What are you going to do... ha ha ha! ...How shall you stop me?" Her smile was as wicked as a demons.
"Not I, but the Cetra. We realize you cannot be killed by mortal means. However..." There was still a look of laughter and evil upon Jenova's snow white face, the blood slowly dripping from her lushious lips. Luna's look was colder. Determination, yet at the same time, pure hatred. "We, the Cetra, wield of the powers of the Planet itself. And thus, the Planet has allowed us to create and wield such a force to destroy you."
"And what force would that be, little human witch?" Jenova stood up from her grand throne now, the ice around her crackling from the sudden movement. "What force can such a feeble race produce?" Jenova chuckled at her prey. There was nothing that could stop her.
"Three pieces of godlike materia. Black, White, and Crimson."
Jenova's smirk disappeared. She could feel the power... the strength... of the entire Planet. It was forged to destroy... her? No, it wasn't possible. "You misunderstand, little girl. I am a Goddess. I came here to purge the land of the Cetra. You are a failed experiment. I'm so sorry to disappoint you. I sent you here to cultivate the Planet for war, not prosperity. You failed. This world is failed. A little failure cannot stop me." Jenova smirked.
Two shining lights filled the room. It was brilliant yet blinding. "You've arrived."
"Yes, Mistress Luna." A girl with raven black hair curling down to her shoulders stood tall and proud appeared out of the light. She wore a leather cuirass like a hunter, yet she had no weapon except for a little black ball.
Another girl began to come out as well. Her hair was as white as snow; beautiful long strands came down to her ankles. She also wore a leather cuirass; all she held in her hands was a small white ball.
"Yuna and Setsuna, I'm glad you've come. She is indeed what we expected." Luna nodded swiftly.
"You have no idea of what you're up against, children." Jenova curled her bloody lips.
"The Planet has asked us to destroy you. And so we shall." In Luna's hand was a small, shining red ball. It was blood red, to be exact. Crimson.
"Ha, ha, ha. What a silly little girl." Luna was still calm. "You realize that your precious Planet's defense will soon be used against it? Give it to me, girl."
"Why would I do that, witch? No, you shall die here and today."
"Perhaps I didn't say it loudly enough?" Jenova grinned and licked her lips clean of blood. "You have no choice but to give it to me. You want to give it to me. It will ease your pain." Slowly, Luna began to walk toward Jenova with no will power.
"I... No... I will never give it to you!" Luna screamed with resistance yet her body kept moving. She couldn't stop. She had absolutely no control. She wanted to give it to Jenova, and yet she didn't. How could you resist a temptation that powerful? She kept walking with her hand out.
Setsuna made a plethora of hand movements and the white ball in her hand began to shine. "REMEDIUM!" A brilliant flash of light filled the room and Luna stopped walking.
"My head is clear... I can see again. Thank you, Setsuna."
Jenova growled. She almost had Crimson, the Ultimate Binding Magic. No, she could not possibly beat all three by herself. The girls themselves were weak and prone to her power, but together with the materia forged by the Planet, even she had no solid ground to stand upon. Her magic was not strong enough to fight against theres. However...
Jenova grimaced. "The Ultimate Protection, Destruction, and Binding Magics against myself. It sounds a little one sided, doesn't it?"
"It's over, witch. You lose." Yuna smirked.
"Sanguis Statim." Luna made several swift movements with her hands and blood swam out of the air, locking itself around Jenova. It wrapped around her like a snake, slithering with squeaming crimson liquid.
Jenova's screams could be heard throughout the world. "You little whores! You really are clever, aren't you, sluts?" She licked her lips again as the blood curled around her body. Her screams slowly turned into laughs. "Is it really me who has lost, or is it you? Destroy me! Go ahead! Yuna, show your sisters how strong you are. Hahahaha!" Her laugh was a demonic hybrid of the screams of a thousand slaughtered pigs and that of a baby crying from incomprehensible pain. Her true evil self was shown. "But you can't, because you are weak! You can never destroy me! I will haunt, hahaha, your ancestors for eternity!"
"I am the world's strongest." Yuna spit on Jenova's face and it quickly dissolved into the gallons of blood engulfing her. "I will gladly destroy you."
Yuna began making a sequence of hand signals similar to that of her sisters. "NO! Stop it. We have her trapped. That must not be used except it emergency!"
"Listen to Setsuna! Stop it right NOW! We face the destruction of the entire Planet... what the hell are you doing?" Luna began running towards her, realizing that her words were in vain.
"Destructo Meteora!" It was done.
Luna stopped running. Everything was silent except Jenova's laughter. It got louder and louder.
"Yes, destroy me, you little slut! Hahahaha.... yes... summon Meteor... purge this failure of a world, tramp. You've done perfectly!" Her demonic laugh could have echoed to the moon and back. It was true... evil. "The intent of the Original Cetra is complete."
"...You are no Cetra. Begone into the seal for eternity to think of your sins." The blood fastened around Jenova even tighter like a bubble, completely surrounding her. Yet she still grinned.
"You cannot stop the Meteor, for it is not the Planet that allowed you to create such a force, but an even higher power greater than the fairy tale of God! Bow down... SLUT... bow down to the destruc-" The blood filled her mouth and she was rendered incapable of movement.
Luna looked towards the sky as Jenova became silent. There it was. The true calamity. Meteor. It might prove to be an even bigger enemy than Jenova herself. How would she tell the people at Knowlespole how she had failed to stop Jenova from destroying their land? The land they cultivated...
Clink. The Black materia dropped to the ground. "This must never be used again... I'm sorry." Tears filled Yuna's eyes. "I failed."
Jenova's powers of the mind were legendary.
The rock was later discovered by Professor Ghast. He was perhaps one of the greatest scientists in the world. It was discovered where Sephiroth was now... Mount Nibel. At that point, he believed that she was an Ancient. Yes, everything was coming back to him now...
"This... this isn't in any text book. How do I know these things... I... I know the entire Planet's history..." Sephiroth gasped at the knowledge he now knew. Yet he couldn't be distracted by his accumulated knowledge. He had to remember further...
At the time, Professor Ghast believed her to be an Ancient because of her age. She was infact an alien with extraordinarily powerful cells. Shinra was interested in his research and the power that this artifact held. That he knew from the books... the other things, though... how had he known of the Cetra from Knowlespole? Can't remember...
Anyways... Ghast and Hojo experimented with Jenova with interesting results. The cells had the opposite effect on full-grown humans. The bodies immune system was too powerful for them to take control of so easily. When it resisted, the cells fought back. They altered the human body forever. They were considered a threat and destroyed before they could become part of the body. So the scientists tried injecting them into an unborn child, where the body would not be able to fight back. This child was eventually named Sephiroth.
Sephiroth was the Jenova Project's final product. He was a monster created by Shinra's greed. He was the ultimate soldier. Treated poorly with little emotion, he became a cold killer with power beyond normal conception.
That is what made Sephiroth go crazy six years ago. That is what led him to Jenova. All his life he was told that Jenova was his mother. He did not know who Jenova was... not until that day! The day he woke up. And the day he lost his sense of reality... And...
"I was not the first to be tricked into summoning Meteor... and... it wasn't the first time it was stopped either. Yet Jenova was angry... she was angry at them because the summoner was not strong enough to wield the full power of the Ultimate Destruction Magic."
That day he reguarded humans as traitors. They abandoned the Cetra when the great tragedy occured! Yet he himself was blinded by Jenova's shielding light. She was the cause of the tragedy. Sephiroth was blind the entire time.
That reminded him. His psychic control over clones tended to make him forget who he really was. For five entire years he was in the Northern Crater. With Jenova's psychic abilities, he was able to focus his powers and live through the clones. Any living thing that had Jenova cells in it, he could control. Anything across the entire Planet!
Yea... he was powerful back then. His psychic control was weaker, now. Jenova was so much stronger than him... she was so powerful. In his veins still coursed the power to recognize other carriers of Jenova cells. However... he had no control. He was pathetically weak now... no... he was far stronger than any other man on the Planet. Yet weaker than he once was. Jenova gave him power and strength beyond human understanding.
Finally, he made it out of the reactor. Sephiroth was a very short distance away from Nibelheim. The answers were so close. Once again, he had to ask himself what he would do when he found his answers.
Sephiroth had to retain his sanity. He would not be controlled again! Never again... would he go back and try to destroy the Planet once more? No. The Planet saved his life. He should've died down there... somehow, the Planet brought him back to the City of the Ancients.
Perhaps he could live a normal life? Haha. That would never be possible. He summoned Meteor and killed too many people to ever live peacefully. It was too late for him to start over. The only thing consistent about the future was its uncertainty.
Mountains, mountains, mountains. They were like a freezing hell. So many drastic things happened there. Jenova was discovered there, Sephiroth died there, Hojo left his experiments there, a Mako reactor was built there. They were all related to Shinra.
Shinra... what really happened to Shinra after he killed the President? It mattered not back then, but now it did. They controlled the world with soldier and mako. A world that he was going to live in once again.
Little did Sephiroth know, that same question floated in the minds of Avalanche.
It had actually been six years since he had been outside of the Northern Crater. In this body, anyways... He controlled Cloud Strife and gained the Black Materia easily. It was so simple with his psychic abilities.
The Black Materia was truly the strangest substance in the world. All Materia came from the Planet's spirit energy. How could the Planet produce something that could destroy itself? This thought brought him to the conclusion that along with Jenova, the Black Materia was also alien. The Cetra brought themselves to protect it at all costs... yet there was no way the Black Materia was forged by the Planet. It had to be a trick. Jenova... he remembered! She gave Yuna the Black Materia.
Jenova tricked Yuna. Everything was becoming clear. The White and Crimson Materia's were created to protect the Planet, but the Black was Jenova's personal creation. Yuna... he played off her jealousy of her sisters. He played off her emotions. Yuna was always second to her sisters, yet when she was given the Ultimate Destruction Magic, she became number one. Just like he played off his mind.
Inscribed on the walls of the Temple of the Ancients was the murals which showed the result of the Black Materia. It was forged to destroy worlds. The Cetra knew this, and now so did he. Why was he trying to destroy the world? Because...
Jenova said he could open the gates to the Promised Land by destroying the Planet. For the Planet hid the gates from him. That was a lie! If Meteor was succesful, he would have died. In a way... Cloud Strife saved his life. If Meteor had been succesful, he would be gone and the Planet would not have been able to be ressurected. Although he still did not know why the Planet gave him the liberty of rebirth.
It was the only materia that he never mastered. He tried... ten times... to get the ritual right. Jenova was displeaed. In the end, he wasn't strong enough to summon the true magic of the Black Materia.
Where was it? No... He was holding it as the One Winged Angel, not as Sephiroth. So its place was unknown.
Sephiroth no obligation to get it back. Not yet... If it still existed, that is. And it should, for an artifact that powerful is not easily destroyed. There was no need to destroy the Planet. To become a God was not his interest. His true interest was to find out who he was. And after that... he really didn't know.
Then there was Aeris. The one girl that was so nice to him. She was also extremely powerful. Stronger than anyone really knew... she had the power to command to lifestream. That alone made her the most powerful being known to man. Perhaps even stronger than Sephiroth. She alone could control the Planet's lifeforce. She stopped Meteor. He felt it while his conciousness was floating in lifestream. He knew what she was doing. She summoned a force from the Planet ultimately stronger than what he could command. She was stronger.
Aeris had the type of power that he wanted. How funny that she did not care about that kind of power, only wanting to protect the Planet, and nothing more.
All these thoughts and memories were so complicated. Sephiroth was lost in a world of thought once again. He had been travelling for hours just thinking again... it was really time to rest. Tomorrow, he would arrive at Nibelheim.
Sephiroth was currently in the valley between Mount Nibel and Nibelheim. He was an hour or two away from the mansion. So close... yet he couldn't risk being tired when he got there. The things that awaited him in the civilized world could be far more dangerous than Shiro.
What did that girl mean when she said his limits would be stretched again?