Disclaimer: Despite an extreme desire to, I do not own the rights to Final Fantasy.


To my lone reviewer Rose L. Master: Thanks for the encouragement. At the moment you are the only reason I'm continuing this story.


The sound of water splashing woke Sephiroth from his light sleep, his eyes instantly awake and scanning the lakeside in front of him for the source of the sound. He could not have been asleep long, the dark of night still blanketing the land. Nothing appeared to be there but Sephiroth was no fool. He knew that something had made a noise and whatever it was still had to be in the area. As his ears had been the first to alert him, he concentrated on what he could hear. After a few long, tense moments of hearing nothing, Sephiroth stood and walked to the edge of the lake. Looking more closely, he still could find no trace of the sound he had heard. The water was like a giant piece of glass, perfectly still...too still.

Sephiroth leaped back just as the gargantuan jaws came out of the water, barely missing his booted foot. Scrambling backwards he also saw the jaws follow, along with the rest of the gigantic alligator that they belonged to. Sephiroth nearly reached for where the Masamune should have been but instead chose to continue further inland. He knew little of such creatures, they had been no more than bugs to him before, but the fact that this beast attacked from the water gave him the thought that away from the water was undoubtedly a good thing. However the gator had been surviving on small fish for so long that the chance at some larger prey overrode its usual hunting instincts. Moving impossibly fast for such a large creature with such short legs, it charged the black clad one, the light of Sephiroth's own fire giving the creature enough light to see.

Still Sephiroth did not panic. He had been a SOLDIER for too long to allow such green behavior. Instead he quickly came up with the best plan one with practically no power could. "Thunder!" he cried, one hand thrusting towards the beast while the other searched for some low hanging branch he could use to escape. Lightning danced from his fingertips, striking the gator's snout and causing it to rear in fury and pain. It did not, however, stop its charge. Nor did Sephiroth's hand find anything to aid him. Snarling a curse Sephiroth did the only thing he could do. Something he had vowed never to do. Something that only the extreme need for self-preservation allowed him to. He turned and ran.

The gator soon gave up its pursuit, fish being easier to catch and less painful to get near. Sephiroth's disgust did not disappear so easily. He said nothing, thought nothing, his mind completely blank. Bile rose in his throat. For three hours, Sephiroth did nothing but run and brood. That was when he quite literally ran into somebody he did not expect.

The small child tumbled backward, unable to avoid the charging Sephiroth. As the girl fell, something bright fell from her hand and to the ground at his feet. For a moment Sephiroth did nothing but blink in confusion, only after crouching down and helping the child to her feet.

"I am sorry small one," he said quietly. "I did not see you."

"It's ok mister. I didn't see you either," the girl replied, eying him cautiously.

A thought struck Sephiroth a moment later. "Child, what are you doing out so late without an escort?" he asked. While not fond of children, Sephiroth could ill afford to make enemies of the girls parents in his current state.

The girl just smiled at him, the guileless smile only a child could ever truly wear. "I snuck out to come see my garden. With all the water it grows real big and pretty," she tittered. Realizing she had said too much to a complete stranger, the girl's eyes darted to the glittering object on the ground and then back at Sephiroth. Just before he could speak, the girl jumped to her feet and dashed off through the trees.

Not at all sorry to see the girl go Sephiroth turned his attention to whatever it was she dropped. Despite the tree canopy the pointed, rectangular object seemed to glisten, giving off its own pale blue light. Tilting his head slightly Sephiroth could see that it looked to be similar to materia in composition, only this seemed even more crystalline. "Probably some kind of jewelry," Sephiroth mused. Thinking it possibly worth something, Sephiroth reached down to pick up the crystal.

Knowledge flooded into his mind the second his hand closed around the thing. Sephiroth saw, in his mind's eye, a man in a strange pointed hat running from an even larger version of the beast he had seen earlier. He saw the man thrust out his hand, just as Sephiroth had done. Sephiroth heard the man cry out at the top of his lungs just as the creature's jaws closed around him. At first Sephiroth had been unable to make out what the man had said, but when lightning wracked the body of the humongous alligator he realized it must have been either Thundara or even possibly Thundaga.

As suddenly as it had begun the hallucination vanished, ending as abruptly as the mage's (at least Sephiroth assumed it must be a mage) life had. "How very strange...some kind of memory crystal..." Sephiroth said thoughtfully. "Well, at least now I know there are some mages near this place. Mages with more power in their dying breath than I have after a full nights rest. Mages who, while being eaten by some water lizard, can cast Thundara!" he screamed angrily into the night sky, his fist thrusting into the air to punctuate his point.

However it did a great deal more than that. Power wracked through Sephiroth's body and a tremendous bolt of lightning flew from his outstretched arm. It made his puny spell earlier look like a match compared to his one's bonfire. Staring at his hand in amazement, Sephiroth's mind whirled with what had just happened.

"First the strange girl..." he thought to himself. "Following that I touched the crystal. When I did I saw the image of the idiot in the hat using a spell. Then I was suddenly able to use that spell when I could not mere moments before...which means I must have gained the power to do so through that crystal!"

Looking frantically around, Sephiroth could find no sign of his power source. He fell to his knees, tearing at the wet ground in his attempt to find it. Not able to find it, he instead tried to access the power of Thundara again. Once again the spell worked, making a nearby tree into nothing more than a cinder. "Very interesting..."