A/N: How long has it been… like… a week since I typed up a chapter for this story? Sorry about that. This week was like… so rough. I actually spent some time concentrating on school matters. But, now that it's a Friday… I'm all happy happy and I can finally type up stories again! 'sides, I had writers block. I actually still had it while I was typing this so… please go easy on me if I put any mistakes in. :sigh:

Summary: The Lifestream goes out of control, which led to Sephiroth, Silent Wind and their other souls to be sent inside the Lifestream… where Cloud meets someone he hasn't seen in a very long time.

Disclaimer: FF7 doesn't belong to meeee… only the dragon lady does… and I want to draw her someday…

Silent Wind
Chapter 8

Deep Within the Truth

'Che. Disgusting trash,' SW growled to herself, making a disgusted look on Elena's face. 'I had a feeling this would happen.'

The Turk's eyes dilated and soon returned to Elena's normal eye color. She blinked a lot before realizing she had been pinned down by Red XIII. She shrieked, surprising the beast-like creature that jumped away from her.

"What is the meaning of this!"

"Not now!" Red XIII responded, quickly moving her out of the way from a falling plastic Chocobo.

The cracks on the ground grew bigger, separating each AVALANCHE member away from their friends. The earthquake suddenly stopped, creating an eerie silence that filled the air. Suddenly, a sprout of the Lifestream emerged from underneath, followed by even more that randomly shot out. The Lifestream then intertwined with each other and quickly headed up towards the sky, almost hitting Sephiroth on the way up. He paused then looked up, narrowing his eyes.

"… this… is not good."

"Daaaammnnn…" Cid said as his cigarette fell out from his mouth. "Looks like it's really pissed off."

"W-Why's the Lifestream-!" Yuffie started, quite shocked at the scene before her. "Where is it going?"

"I don't know…" Tifa responded, zoning out as she was looking at the stream flow up towards the sky.

"I-It's looking for something…"

Reno helped Rude sit up. "Shyeah. Probably the soul she took from it, right?"

"..."

Sephiroth managed to make it to the ground as Tifa ran towards him. AVALANCHE, Reno and Rude made their way to the center of the crumbled Gold Saucer entrance.

"What should we do! Everyone's in trouble!"

He turned away. "Not my problem."

"Cloud!… Sephiroth!… whoever you are! I know that you know something about this!"

"I know nothing," he responded flatly, rudely walking away from the worried girl.

"Impossible," a voice said out of nowhere.

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes and turned around, only to find himself face-to-face with the ex-Turk, Vincent. The dark haired man examined the light haired man's eyes before walking around him. He finally stopped and looked up at the Lifestream streaming towards the sky.

"The Lifestream is filled with souls from those who perished. They return to this world to heal the planet. It's the planet's so called, 'blood.'"

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes as it glowed brightly. "Don't think I don't know that."

"Now," Vincent continued, "what do you think would happen if one of the souls escaped? …disturbance within the Lifestream."

"Think of it as losing blood," Red XIII added. "You feel a little weaker for a while until you produce more. But, it doesn't seem to work that way for the Lifestream."

"It needs to keep itself balanced… and with a soul lost, more might escape through."

"Geez! First of all, I never intended to come out and second of all, it was Number Thirty-four's fault! So, quit blaming me!" the swordsman turned around and grunted to himself. He gave out an apologetic look to no one, but it seemed like everyone could see clearly as they remained silent.

"But, there's something I don't get. She was dumped a long time ago… so, how come her soul wasn't brought into the Lifestream?"

"She turned into rock, duh!" Yuffie blurted out.

"So you were paying attention, girl!" Barret sighed loudly as he rubbed the ninja's head.

"But, still… I wonder what exactly the experiment was about…"

"AHHHHH!"

Everyone quickly turned to Elena who suddenly let out a loud screech. She slowly pointed up to the Lifestream as it began forming into vortex. The Lifestream rotated, creating a huge dark hole within, shooting out pieces of the Lifestream, that looked like spears, towards the ground as it made its way through the earth. Everyone quickly dodged the falling spears as they jumped across the huge cracks and onto the other side. Before Sephiroth and Elena could move out of the way, the spears of Lifestream went straight through their is chest, making them immobile. The souls inside each of the bodies slowly made their way outside and floated towards the vortex that sucked them in a blink of an eye. Cloud and Elena both fell to the ground in unison with black colored eyes.

Through the darkness of the vortex, the newcomer souls made their way through, soon arriving at a pleasant scene of a meadow. However, cutting the thought of such pleasance, the souls dropped into a small pond, which was surrounded by what seemed to be people dipping their feet in the water. A big splash was created, causing all the occupants to run out of the area.

Sephiroth, followed by SW, popped out from underwater and panted for air. Sephiroth looked around and smacked the water, splashing the woman's face.

"WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?" he growled loudly.

SW shook the water out of her face. "Where the heck are we?"

"ANSWER MINE FIRST!"

They both paused, noticing bubbles in between them. SW gave a disgusted look to the swordsman who shook his head around.

"Not me!"

Cloud and Elena's heads quickly burst out from underwater, causing Sephiroth and SW's eyes to widen. The spikey haired man coughed up water and slowly opened his eyes, only to see his old foe stare back at him with a "what the heck?" look on his face. Cloud gasped and dunked Sephiroth's head underneath without thinking.

"AGH! SEPHIROTH'S BACK!" he yelled in Elena's face.

She squinted her eyes before wiping her face clean from his spit. Completely ignoring his loud comment, she looked around the area, spotting people happily running around and resting underneath the bright warm sun.

"Where are we?" she asked to no one in particular.

Sephiroth's head slowly resurfaced, scaring the heck out of Cloud. "We're inside the Lifestream."

SW laughed at that. "Ahaha! Yeah… right. I don't feel dead…"

"… how can you feel dead…?" Elena mumbled to herself.

"…I'm serious." Sephiroth added.

She paused. "… WHAT! W-WHERE!"

"Ah-! I see more souls have joined us!"

Everyone turned their heads towards a young man with long dark hair. He grinned and offered to help them out. After helping the wet newcomers out of the pond, he grinned once again and looked at them for a while, mostly concentrating on Cloud who just seemed confused at the moment, then he looked at Sephiroth and smiled.

"Hey! Where the heck have you been?"

Sephiroth turned away. "I got kicked out…"

"Hah! Really?"

"AHEM!" Elena coughed loudly, trying to get everyone's attention. She smirked as everyone turned towards her direction. "Is this really the Lifestream?"

"Indeed it is!" the young man smiled. "We frolic… and… give away energy to heal the planet! Ooo… and to think we had it easy after we died."

"That's rather inappropriate."

"Yeah? Ah, well."

"Have you felt any disturbances while I was gone?" Sephiroth asked.

"Mmmm… well, there was a slight earthquake in here before... then a huuuggee one… like… a few minutes ago. I swear, everyone was acting quite strange at that. But, it finally stopped when you guys came in here."

"... why is that?"

"No clue. But, everyone kept complaining about some 'evil spirit' or something. "

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes and glared at SW who was busy kicking the grass. She looked up and lifted an eyebrow.

"… what?"

"It was you."

"…"

"You're the one responsible! Because… you never became part of the Lifestream. That's what it was looking for! You were meant to come here!"

"Che. It was looking for you too, remember? Besides, Hojo didn't know that when he finally trashed me like… one year later, now did he?"

"I have a feeling that you weren't supposed to materialize into rock. You said you acquired new abilities, right? Was that one of yours?"

"…"

"… Zack."

The black haired man widened his eyes and turned around, only to find Cloud standing in front of him with a sad face on. Cloud resisted the urge to punch his old friend in the face for not noticing him before, but he had stopped himself. Zack gave out a slight smile to his friend who continued staring straight into his eyes.

"… Cloud."

A/N: End of Chapter 8! I just love cliffhangers… don't you? Muahahaa.. ah.. I'm so evil. Hm, anyways… :slams hand on a table: I say... this chapter turned out pretty good actually… considering I had writers block as I wrote this. Oo; I read it over and over… trying to catch anything that sounded weird... but, all is good. :nods: Anyways, hope you enjoyed this chapter and please leave ze review!