He awakens to the slosh of waves rocking the ship, pulled from a dream he can't recall. There's an odd sense of someone watching him, yet there is nothing around but pallets and crates, secured with ropes and steel rings. He's in the belly of the cargo ship, alone. His friends are all scattered, agreeing to reconvene upon landfall.
Shinra MPs inspected the freight before cast-off, but Cloud was able to evade them. Given no raise in alarm, he suspects and hopes that the others weren't discovered either.
That was several hours ago. It must be the middle of the night.
Overhead lights sway, moving yellow beams around the hold in a slow dance. The crates are motionless, and for some reason, Cloud starts to feel seasick. Has he ever gotten motion sickness before? He didn't think so.
But something woke him. He listens, eyes straining. There is an unusual quality in the air, like burnt electricity. Intangible yet ever-present. He doesn't know where the others are, but once his mind considers Tifa, he decides to investigate. He wants to make sure she's safe.
The ship creaks and groans in the tilting sea. This freight section is a maze packed stem to stern, very quiet and very dark beyond the scope of lights.
There's a strange odor of burning as he progresses.
Ahead, he spots a man lying face down, an MP. The blue uniform isn't moving. Cloud takes a cautious step forward, hand on hilt. The burning scent grows potent, but it isn't firewood or coal. There's something putrid underlying it.
He turns the MP over and jumps back. Someone has sliced the man apart. Red douses the uniform into black. A long thin gash from clavicle to hip exposes layers of muscle and skin, and organs are puddling beneath him. The face is a silent desperate scream.
Dread clenches Cloud's stomach. He must find the others. They are all in danger. He tries his phone, but there is no signal. The swaying lights flicker and some go out, sending large portions of the hold adrift in darkness.
"Tifa? Barret?" he whispers as he walks on, but they are nowhere near.
Then he sees blood, smears of it across the planks. Another dead MP. This one, too, in a state of brutal dissection. His senses sharpen.
There is a killer on this ship. And the quiet either means Shinra personnel are unaware or they are all already dead. Whatever did this, he's lucky it hadn't found him in his sleep.
The urgency to find Tifa escalates. Three more bodies lead down the hold, and that burning smell grows stronger. It smells of singed hair now and skin. He wants to gag.
The overhead lights terminate at a wall of darkness where he sees a glint. A flash of steel. A long thin blade protrudes, moving from an unseen owner. Then it slips away.
Cloud can't trust what he's seen, because it can't be possible. That weapon, the suggestion of it…
Blood pumps loud in his head. The ship creaks and settles.
From the darkness, a form emerges. Tall and formidable. It seems to coalesce out of nothingness. That burning smell is noxious, and suddenly Cloud remembers exactly what it is. Or was.
He's back in Nibelheim, emerging from the Shinra mansion, and his town is on fire. He's raking away piles of smoldering wood and flesh-searing brick, trying to dig his mother out of their collapsed home. Tears sting beneath the MP helmet. Hadn't he thrown it aside by now? The gloves cannot protect his hands from the heat. And that smell…
It's his mother's body, her skin melted off, hair gone to cinders. And all that smoke. He's been gasping and crying, and when he turned through the smoke, the General stood as a silhouette. The masamune was glinting in a thousand flickering flames.
He blinks, and the ship returns. He draws his sword.
The General stands before him now, partly concealed in shadow. Long silver hair drifts with the rocking ship.
"Sephiroth," Cloud says, feeling the fresh resurgence of anger and hatred from that day.
Cold Mako-green eyes stare at Cloud. The General is wearing his black uniform crossed with the leather sheath of the weapon now held in one hand. A dark jacket trails to his knees. This is exactly how Cloud remembers him in the Reactor. The bloodless complexion betrays no hints of the insanity below.
He's within five paces. Cloud adjusts his stance, gritting his teeth, expecting a blur of motion and swift death. But the General does nothing.
"You… you're alive," Cloud says into the silence. "How are you alive?"
"After a long sleep…" the General murmurs in odd syncopation. "The time has come…"
Cloud's resolve diminishes without the expected confrontation. The cryptic words have him stunned.
Sephiroth's gaze focuses with sudden clarity at Cloud. "Who are you?"
Doubt creeps in. Cloud hesitates.
"You don't remember me?" Cloud responds. He'd been so close to the General in his death. "I-I'm Cloud!"
"Cloud…" Sephiroth repeats the name with unfamiliarity. "The time…is now…"
"What are you saying? What does that mean?"
Sudden footsteps approach from behind, pulling Cloud's attention away on reflex. The corner of his eye spots Aerith, far down the corridor. When he looks back at the General, the man has disappeared.
"What? No!" Cloud scans the darkness.
"Cloud?" Aerith calls. Her voice quivers.
But he's searching the shadows in front of him, on high alert. Sephiroth couldn't have gotten far.
She's at his arm, tugging his elbow. "What happened? What are you doing here? Those dead men...!"
He's in a frenzy. He grips her shoulders. "Sephiroth is here! He's here, right in this room. We can't let him escape."
"He killed those men!"
Cloud nods. Of course he did. That's the logical explanation. But why? What did the General mean?
Aerith readies her telescoped staff. She's still dressed in her Shinra uniform, and her green eyes are wide in fright and determination.
"We must find him," Cloud whispers, locked on the gaping darkness ahead.
There is silence beyond Aerith's breath next to him and the faintest creeping down his spine. He hears it rattle up his skull like tapping fingers.
The pair proceed in lockstep, sweeping the perimeter. The ship moans around them like a living beast.
Then all the lights go out. Aerith grasps his arm tight. He isn't afraid until he hears that sound. The clicking. It's distant at first, but it grows closer. He's heard this sound before, in the lower labs.
"What is that?" Aerith whispers.
He's listening, trying to discern its location. But it's all around them. It's coming closer.
That burnt smell is gone, replaced with pure rot. The rocking ship makes him dizzy without any point of visual stability.
Click, click…
"It's ahead of us," he whispers.
There's a faint glow in the distance and a rhythmic pounding like turbines spinning. Water pumping. The engine room is ahead, but the lamps above are still out.
The open doorway to the engine room is a hellmouth of dim red. This must be where Sephiroth went. Cloud steps through, and Aerith follows single-file in the close confines. The corridor is claustrophobic and hot. The rhythmic noises grow louder, jarring.
The hallway terminates into an area dense with mechanical components. Hazard lights spin slow in the ceiling, accentuating the sharp angles of machinery. It's loud in here and stinks of fuel. He cannot see the furthest reaches of the room.
As soon as they cross the threshold, the hazard bulbs extinguish. Aerith freezes, gripping Cloud's arm. Absolute dark immerses them both in a swamp of heat and noise.
He feels her fingernails digging into him.
Then another set of fingers graze his other arm. The warmth of something very close moves next to his ear.
The lights snap on, and Aerith screams.
A twisted body fills the space, twice as tall as Cloud, on a base of thick discolored flesh. His breath catches. It's a sick mutation of human form. Misshapen lumps form an asymmetrical torso. One clawlike appendage and one truncated stump arc from its back. The neck is long and alien, terminating in a gruesome fusion of spine and skull.
"What is that thing!?" Aerith shrieks, staff in her hand.
Shadows trace the bone protrusions of its face around the holes where its eyes should be. The creature shifts as the ship moves, and tendrils extend from behind it.
Cloud knows what it is. This is Jenova. The thing in the basement. It's much larger than he remembers, but he can't unsee the female form melded at its center. The organs that had been floating outside it in the tank are now congealed onto its body. He hasn't forgotten about Sephiroth, but this creature has him spellbound.
Aerith attacks, spinning her weapon to knock away a tentacle that extends towards her.
"Don't touch me!" she shouts.
A greenish gas emanates from its body, creeping along the floor. Cloud backs away. This cannot be real. Something this large could never have evaded Shinra's sweep of the cargo.
The tendril recoils. A bright light manifests at the end of the claw sprouting from its back. Realizing what it is almost too late, Cloud dashes into Aerith, knocking them both to the floor as a laser cuts right above their heads. It smokes a hole through the deck.
Cloud jumps up as another laser strikes. He shields with the broad side of his sword, and the force of the beam slides his feet back. The creature is incredibly powerful. Its face pivots to Cloud. That whispering returns, scuttling around his brain. Digging. He tries to block it out and cuts through a tendril as it reaches for him. The lopped-off flesh quivers and bleeds thick purple fluid. Then it recedes into the main body as if Cloud had done no damage at all.
"What do we do?!" Aerith yells.
Surely all this commotion will rouse whoever is left on the ship. Surely a dozen MPs and sailors would arrive and confront this thing with them. Tifa and Barret and Nanaki. Hell, even Yuffie would be a welcome sight. But nobody comes. And this thing is with them in the middle of the ocean. Even if they ran, there is nowhere to go.
"Cloud, do something!"
But he can't. Something holds his muscles tight. A painful compression and paralysis. He recognizes this feeling. He's felt it before in training against an enemy who used materia with the effects of Stop. But this creature has no materia visible nor any sort of weapon or armor to catalyze the reaction. He's frozen, helpless, and that gas creeps over him. His breath quickens in panic.
"I-I can't…." he says through clenched teeth. The gas is poison, leaching into his blood.
Aerith dives into an attack, jabbing and swinging full force. The creature's body seems distended, bloated, and each hit from Aerith's staff threatens expulsion of its innards. The lasers charge again, striking Aerith fast in three pulses. She cries out, falling back, and her uniform has three fresh holes above seared skin.
Cloud cannot shake free. This thing is rifling around his head.
Aerith gets to her feet and stands between him and the monster.
"Get the others!" Cloud manages to say.
"And leave you alone with it? No way!"
She goes in for another flurry of attacks.
Cloud grits his teeth, furious at this paralysis. The creature shoots white-hot beams at Aerith as she hops around, smacking at its soft body. The poison makes him sluggish, dizzy, but he will strike this thing down the second he's able. Sephiroth, he's convinced, is still nearby and must be pursued. This monstrosity is what Sephiroth took from the Shinra Tower. His "mother", the word comes unbidden into Cloud's head. Yes, it's regrown a head to replace the one Sephiroth took. It's changing, adapting.
Aerith is taking hits, staggering to evade laser fire. Cloud can't stomach this invasive helplessness.
Then a flash of red pounces onto the scene. A bright fiery tail illuminates the monster in glistening purple.
"Red!" Aerith exclaims. The nickname from Yuffie stuck, but Nanaki doesn't seem to care. He bares his teeth, growling and squatting low.
The creature shifts its attention off Cloud, finally removing itself from his head, and sends a tentacle after Nanaki.
Cloud expects to be free, but no, the paralysis is absolute. For a second, he fears this could be permanent. He's never seen this before. The ability to call on the energies of the planet without materia is not possible. Then he considers Aerith.
Nanaki clamps down on a tendril, puncturing the slimy skin. Black oozes out. Nanaki spits a chunk of it onto the floor. He and Aerith coordinate an assault, evading the laser fire.
The engine room heaves around them as the ship suffers an exceptionally rough wave. The turbines and generators thrum so loud with the whispering now gone from Cloud's head.
Then Aerith halts. She's shaking, held by an invisible force. At the same time, Cloud is set free. She is now the victim of Jenova's spell, and he takes no hesitation.
Cloud slices at the towering thing. Over and over. Each attack draws fresh dark liquid from its body, and it retaliates with another shock of lasers. Nanaki evades the beams and tentacles while ripping into anything he can. Despite the damage they are causing, the creature does not appear to be weakening. Heavy tendrils batter them. Lasers singe skin and fur.
Then it throws Nanaki hard against the metal jutting from an engine. Aerith's expression is pure panic in her frozen state. And the monster shifts its eyeless gaze back to Cloud.
No, he thinks, it cannot get him again. He won't allow it. That crushing restraint...
An intensity burns his muscles. The broadsword becomes a natural extension of will. He rushes forward and cuts downward, then upward, then across in three fluid beats. The procession is seamless, quick. Flawless.
The creature staggers. Black liquid covers Cloud's sword. It's splattered against his face and hair.
The tendrils withdraw. The form bows, leaking, and it withdraws. As fast as it had shown up, it's gone.
"No!" Cloud shouts, giving chase.
Aerith drops, released from the spell, and she and Nanaki follow.
The lights flicker, but there's no sign of the creature despite its tremendous size. Cloud dashes through the aisles of thundering equipment, hellbent on pursuit.
A trail of dark blood terminates into thin air.
"That's….that's impossible…!" Cloud says, looking all around.
But the creature has vanished. Aerith and Nanaki catch up, still on guard.
"Where did it go?" she asks above the noise.
Nanaki sniffs the air. "I can't detect it with all this diesel."
Cloud cannot accept that it's gone. Sephiroth, too. He was here, Cloud knows it. And yet…
"How did something so large disappear?" Aerith's voice quivers.
Nanaki makes a pass around the room, sliding in otherwise hard-to-reach places, but he returns with a sullen expression.
"Perhaps," Nanaki says. "It was never there to begin with. That gas was—"
"A poison," Cloud finishes. "A defense mechanism. I know what I saw."
The poison still circulates his veins. He can feel it lingering, making him sick.
"I know what I saw," he says again, quieter, scanning the room.
"Hmm, poison," Nanaki comments. "You'll need an antidote."
"I'll be fine," Cloud says, searching. No Sephiroth. No Jenova. It isn't possible. "I...I saw him," he says, but the words are lost in the noise.
The poison is tempering, thanks to all the genetic therapy bolstering his cells. The Mako. Or the...Jenova. Yes, he's almost certain now that's what lies inside him. But he cannot tell the others.
"How did you both find me?" he asks.
"I woke up," Aerith says. "Not sure what caused it. Just an odd feeling. I ventured down here and once I spotted those bodies…"
Nanaki grunts an affirmative. "That smell… The creature produced a very potent odor. Cloud, what was that?"
Cloud shrugs. "Don't look at me."
But Aerith and Nanaki are.
"Why were you down here?" Aerith asks. "We were all supposed to hide until the ship docks."
He can't explain what woke him. Was it nightmares? Seasickness?
"I thought I heard something," he says, "And I thought I saw something, too." Nobody else could corroborate Sephiroth's appearance. He doesn't want to appear crazy if he continues to push it. "Maybe I just need some sleep."
Nanaki motions towards the entry. "Something killed those men. Something vile, and then it escaped. Whatever it was must've been much smaller than what we imagined we were fighting. Something that could squeeze into crevices or take flight."
The engine room has no other exits, though, aside from the one they came through, and Nanaki trots back towards it. Aerith and Cloud follow. Aerith stows her telescoped staff beneath her uniform, which is torn and singed and covered with grime. Cloud's uniform looks no better. They will need to be extra careful departing the ship.
"I need to find Tifa," Cloud says.
Nanaki halts, fur raised.
In the spot where they'd fought the uncanny creature is a shriveled-up mass of bumpy rotting flesh. A part of a tendril. It writhes and twitches.
All three watch as the lump diminishes and then drips through the floorboards, completely erased. Cloud blinks. Aerith leans in. All that's left behind is a dark stain on the planks.
"Not a hallucination," Cloud states as if this proves it. "A type of creature we've never encountered before."
A frightful silence falls on the party. The engine room chugs on around them.
"We've got to find the others," Cloud says.
"There were plenty of sailors and Shinra personnel above deck," Aerith says. "It's only a matter of time before one of them makes the rounds and discovers these…dead men. Maybe we should remain hidden and reconvene outside the ship once we dock. At least this thing is gone, for now."
"Yes," Nanaki says. "Might be best not to wander around the ship. We shouldn't expose any of our fellow stowaways."
Cloud doesn't like it, but it makes sense. Lay low until they can get out. "How far across the sea are we? Does anyone know?"
Aerith points at a clock hanging above a generator. "Well, we've been traveling for almost eight hours. How far is Costa del Sol?"
Except Cloud and Nanaki don't know. Cloud exhales. The poison is gone from his bloodstream, leaving an awful taste in his mouth. He uses a series of healing from his Restore materia on each of them until the little orb is exhausted. Just like Cloud feels. Mentally and physically.
At first, Cloud insists on finding Tifa, but the ship's night crew patrols the upper decks in larger groups than what Aerith had reported. They've been alerted to their missing companions, and a thorough search will begin soon.
Nanaki departs, citing that he can remain undetected from humans much easier on his own. Aerith and Cloud decide to stay together, huddling in the hold where Cloud had initially elected to spend his evening.
A few MPs do a sweep of the area, but all attention pivots to the found bodies. And, presumably, the strange dark trail of inhuman blood.
Cloud stays awake the rest of the night, sword resting at his hand. Aerith curls against his shoulder, shivering. He puts an arm around her. But he can't get that monster out of his head. The glint of the masamune shines every time he closes his eyes. A phantom weapon, sticking from the dead President's back at the Shinra Tower, and now, here, somehow, in the hands of his enemy. He can't make sense of it. He keeps repeating the words Sephiroth spoke in his head, hoping to understand. The time has come. The time is now.
Author's Note:
If you've made it this far, a very heartfelt THANK YOU, first off.
So, where is this all going? I bet you weren't expecting to literally be taken through the entire game, yet that's how it's looking. Full disclosure: this was originally a one-shot. The first chapter was creepy Hojo (I wanted to try my hand at horror), but it morphed into an idea that would essentially prove that Zack is the real hero of FF7. I love Zack, as most do, but I wondered how things would play out if Zack hadn't been able to save Cloud.
Originally, I intended to stop at "Kalm" - the group gets out of Midgar and the story more or less progresses akin to the OG. Except "more or less" suddenly turned into "less" as the further implication unraveled in my head.
So, I realized I am committed to telling the rest of the story from that divergent point of Zack's death and the host of possibilities it could change for our characters.
And I'm really, really, enjoying it. Some things are not so different, some things are VERY different coming up. I'm really excited, and I hope you take the journey with me.
I try to keep elements from the OG as narratively relevant as possible, and I'd genuinely love to hear any feedback you have. But I think we'll have a great time exploring together. And if you made it THIS far in the Author's Note, I thank you again. A big hug of gratitude. Love you, for reals.
