VANILLA RAVE, a final fantasy vii fanfic

Alrighty, folks and chimps, so here we are in Nibelheim. Oh, the drama! Reactors and villages burnt to a crisp and overcooked people on a roasting spit. But how about Jenova? What happens to an octopus alien after two millenia of counting sheep underground, then another 30+ years of floating in some disgusting slop with no more sheep to count? Buckle up and let the madness begin!

VANILLA RAVE

Sephiroth checked the travel bag he always kept at the ready for the unexpected missions. Clean underclothes - check! Military rations for the road in case of any detour or delay - check! The sanitary kit - check! How about the hygiene part?... Hm... no shampoo, no conditioner. He searched the shelves in his bathroom. Apparently he was out of both and the new batch they got every week from ShinRa hadn't arrived yet, though it was due that very day. He pouted with a huff.

Well, maybe until they took off the stuff would still arrive and he would grab a bottle on the go. For now he just took his travel bag with him to drop it at the chopper before going to inspect the party that would accompany him. He stopped on his way out of the house near Angeal's rooms, pondering over raiding his late friend's supply of cosmetics for a bottle of his ocean-fresh shampoo. Not his all-time favorite scent, but oh well. Angeal surely didn't need any of the stuff anymore, wherever he was now in the afterlife.

He willed his feet to move toward Angeal's bathroom but his shoulders just slumped. No, he couldn't bring himself to do that.

Maybe Genesis' apple-scented stuff then?... After all, his rebel friend was not there either, but at least he was still alive, so raiding his stock wouldn't feel like defiling some mausoleum.

Sephiroth knew all too well that he had to acknowledge Angeal's departure and tackle the task of cleaning his friend's space of his belongings at some point, but... no, not that weekend either. Not yet. Thank Goddess for unexpected missions sometimes, as bothersome as they were.

So, Genesis' apple-scented shampoo it was!

Right when he was about to go for it and help himself, his phone rang. He snatched it out of his pocket and barked an impatient "Hello!" in it.

It was Zack, complaining something about not being able to locate the troopers for round up.

"I'm coming," growled Sephiroth, heading toward the apartment's entrance, bag in hand - the shampoo forgotten for the moment.

He let the phone slip back into his pants' pocket, grumbling: "Gods, can't the puppy do a simple task without me blowing into his soup every single time?! Bother this!"

Then he whooshed through the door, hoping against all odds to catch the guys from the supply service still at work, which in a Friday afternoon would have been the feat of the century after 14,00h.

No such luck of course. He did manage though to get blitzed by a herd of chicks visiting the ShinRa tower, who flashed phones and photo devices at him from all directions, especially trying to catch his tell-tale waving mane. Unwashed tell-tale waving mane. That did very little to improve his abysmal mood. He could already picture in his mind the memes filling the internet.

He found Zack at the chopper, wailing at two Turks that looked positively bored down to their smart-suited bones.

"Hey, Sephiroth!" jumped the young Soldier, "for the life of me I can't seem to..."

"Shut up, Fair!" the General barked, cutting him short, " do I look like I give two consecutive damns on your predicament?! I got no vanilla, no fresh ocean and no apples at the moment, my hair is learning new swear words as we speak and I'm already getting the ITCHES, FOR IFRIT'S SAKE! And for as much as you talk all the time, you don't foam by far enough to properly rinse a hamster's hair, let alone my own! So don't tell me you're not able to assemble three men or you'll break my heart - and if you break my heart, then I'll break your spine in turn!"

Thus said, he stomped his way around the chopper, throwing his bag inside.

Zack watched him with a perplexed face, mouth agape.

"Is he... is all his tiling on the roof? Cos it sure sounds like he's short of a few shingles!" wondered he, scratching his porcupine head.

Tseng merely smirked, leaning against the side of the chopper.

"Hair is a man's temple," said he coolly. "A clean head will clearly think clean thoughts - and the clearing of one's thoughts goes directly through the cleaning of one's mane. Don't you mess with that, or you will have the second Wutai war on your hands, Soldier."

Zack gave him a funny look.

"And you know this because..."

"... it works the very same for me too, yes." sneered Tseng, sieving his black, silky mane through his fingers with a loving gesture.

"That's it, I'm beginning to think you're all a bunch of loonies around here!" stared Zack at the Turk, while Reno came too and leaned against the chopper right next to Tseng, rolling his own ponytail on one lazy finger.

Sephiroth showed up again, herding a trio of troopers who looked like they would wet themselves and cry for their mommas at the same time any moment.

"Atteeeeen-SHUN!" he barked, and they all froze in place, straight as a bunch of steel rods. One of them hadn't even had the chance to put his helmet on and was sporting a blond mop of hair that resembled closely the head of a chocobo.

"Uh, Cloud! Together again, huh?" leapt Zack grinning, but the chocobo head didn't dare move a muscle.

"By the way, where are we going?"

"In some neck of the woods of course, where do they usually send us?" barked Sephiroth put upon.

Zack thought intently.

"Gongaga?..." ventured he hopeful, thinking of a surprise visit to his family.

Sephiroth merely rolled his eyes.

"Well, at least you know where you come from. That's one neck of the woods indeed, if I ever saw one! But sadly, no. This time's gonna be Nibelheim."

The chocobo head snapped toward him...

The day didn't get any better. Things actually went right down the drain instead. Reno may have been the best pilot in ShinRa (by his own words at least) and his chopper, the Stormrider - as it read on its side - was improved with any gizmo he ever invented, but what was happening in the upper part of the Nibel mountain chain was no ordinary storm and when an unexpected blizzard caught the chopper in its clutches and the visibility turned to zip, the redhead just went down with a "BANZAAAAAAI!" and they crash-landed in what could have been a small clearing, buried though under an unmeasurable amount of snow drifts.

"Ughh!" huffed Zack, finally managing to crawl at the surface of the snow pit that had all but swallowed the helicopter. He almost succeeded in hoisting himself up before he lost his footing and slid on the side of the snow drift, barely stopping himself from going all the way down again by grabbing a tree branch at the last moment. When he finally hit hard land, it proved to be in fact the upper part of the chopper, tilted at an unnatural angle, and which the blizzard's blows kept burying in the snow and then uncovering again. Reno and Tseng were already standing on it too, trying to keep their balance while assessing the damage.

"From Stormrider to Nightcrawler, eh? Brrrr!" puffed Zack.

"Nah, that dub's reserved for Hojo, man." said Reno unfazed, pulling a woolly cap low over his ears and zipping his pilot jacket all the way up.

A hand appeared from the snow below and clawed at the chopper's roof, feeling around until it found Zack's foot and anchored on it. Zack jumped up with a yelp, then grabbed the hand and pulled out one stalky snowman that, when shaken a bit, let a mop of yellow hair emerge from the ice crust.

"Cloud!" cheered Zack with joy.

The youngling let himself fall on his butt on the metal roofing, bumping a few times his helmet on it to dislodge the snow and then putting it on to protect his head from the wind.

"Couldn't you just carry this thing a little further to the other side of the mountains at least?!"wailed Zack through chattering teeth, wrapping himself with both arms. "This is one crash I won't easily forget!"

"Well, you're welcome!" sneered Reno. "A little thank you would have been nice, but nooo! Whassa matter, Soldier, what's your problem? In Wutai, during the war, we crashlanded our choppers as a rule! Damned Wutaians wouldn't have it any other way! But at least that gave me the chance to polish my skills at this. Wuss!"

"Where's Sephiroth?" Cloud's quiet voice still managed to make itself heard over the blizzard's roar. "And the rest of the guys?"

Zack froze in place, both literally and figuratively this time.

"OMGoddess, he didn't...? We're here and he's... He's dead!?..."

Reno gave the place a circular look. The blizzard seemed to relent, but so far had only thinned just about enough to allow them to make out the shapes of trees around the area in which the chopper was buried in the snow. The trees were so close they could have almost bumped their heads on them - it was a miracle they hadn't crashed right into the canopy. But there was no human trace in sight.

Reno took two more steps toward the chopper's front, clearing his path around the airscrew's unit. The rotor seemed to be intact but the two blades he had encountered so far were loaded with ice and buried in snow too, so he had to duck and work his way beneath them to move ahead while pushing away the shifting snow. He stopped and kneeled, feeling with his hands the metal plate and placing one ear over them.

"Naah, he's fine." nodded he.

"How do you even know?" wondered Zack in genuine amazement.

Wind dropped suddenly and an eerie silence fell over the whole place, while snow kept sieving from the sky, in smaller flakes though.

"Incoming!" said the chocobo-head flatly, while Reno snapped his fingers at the same time, yelling: "Hold onto yer pants, here he comes!"

A deep metallic groan rumbled in the still air and the chopper shifted quite suddenly. They anchored themselves hurriedly to the closest thing at hand. The whole carcass kept groaning harshly while it seemed to straighten itself, as if by miracle, from its previous position leaning dangerously on one side to the normal vertical one, more or less. Snow exploded as something emerging from it glimmered with a silverish hue and a whooshy sound, seeming to cut a portal through the snow while arching in the air.

Then in the split of a second, with a more powerful snow explosion, a black-and-silver cannonball erupted from the white layer below and came up rolling to land seemingly on thin air. As the huge machine was about to collapse to its previous tilting position, the General extended one leg and lodged it in the upper corner of the chopper's door, stopping its descent. An avalanche of snow, dislodged from the roof and the metal sides, rolled down letting the wreck's silhouette emerge from the snow layer below like a sunken ship coming out of the waves. The landing gear became slowly visible. The great metallic bird kept wailing stridently while it barely hung only onto the tip of Sephiroth's boot, who, unnervingly, stood there on nothing up in the air right in front of them. He carried one unconscious trooper under each arm.

"Mphgrlbrbwrrr!" gargled he quite anticlimactic, then spit a roll of steel cable he held between his teeth.

Reno caught it with a grin and a fist pump and dived into the snow pit below, followed closely by Tseng. They proceeded to tie the cable onto the landing gear's rail.

"Somebody rid me of this dead weight!" yelled Sephiroth from above, dangling the two limp infantrymen with both hands. "My head's ITCHING and I got no hand to scratch!"

Chocobo-head leapt from the chopper's roof like a monkey and grabbed a tree branch onto which he held, balancing a few times until he gained enough momentum to propel himself to a tree closer to Sephiroth. He hoisted himself on a larger branch and sat astride on it, then gathered his courage and called:

"General... sir? Pass the guys, please! I'll catch them."

Sephiroth threw him an appreciative look and inquired:

"What's your prowess, Spiky?"

"Um... I'm from here, sir." stammered the young trooper shyly. "Grew up in Nibelheim on the other side of these mountains, know these places like the back of my hand. Am good with trees and stuff."

"Mhm. Here, catch this one!" said Sephiroth and swung one of the bodies in his direction.

The chocobo-head caught his comrade deftly and secured him by one of his straps on another branch.

Sephiroth nodded approvingly, observing the manoeuver and the boy's strength.

"Here comes the other," announced he and sent the second trooper rolling through the air, then watched him getting caught and secured too in a safe position in the tree.

"What is your name, Spiky?" asked he, clawing fiercely at his scalp with both his freed hands.

The young chocobo-head beamed up proudly:

"It's Cloud Strife, sir!"

Down below them, Reno had gotten inside the chopper again, rummaging through the mess for the other tracting cables, while Zack and Tseng shoveled the snow pressing it the best they could beneath the landing gear, to give it more support.

"Man, is he even real?!" wondered Zack aloud. "I still can't believe what I'm seeing, how can he stand there on nothing AND hold a friggin chopper on his boot? What sort of insane magic is this?..."

" 's no magic, you dolt!" threw Reno from inside. "It's the Masamune he's standing on! Where were you during the war, yo? We've seen him doing this kind of stunt more than just once! He would throw his Masamune to embed it in some tree and then jump to land on it. And I'm gonna learn to do that trick too some day - landing like that on a blade! You'll see! He used to train for his aim with Angeal and Genesis, slicing apples on each other's heads, throwing the swords at them from the other side of the training room, the crazies! It's true, man! We've got footage of it."

Zack's mouth fell.

"You mean Angeal would do that too?! Throw swords at people's heads?! No way!"

Tseng snorted.

"You didn't know them as well as you thought, hmm?" said he coolly, shoveling away. "So they did, including your honorable mentor. But Sephiroth would win every single time."

"Yeah, they say he's a left-brainer," commented Reno, working to disentangle the other cable rolls from the messy pile of gear bits blown in a corner when his bird had spun out of control earlier. "You know, that cool cat kind that's all coldness and precision and stuff. You just gotta make sure you stay on his good side cos he can be quite a pain in the... ahem!... rear of my chopper sometimes..."

"Well, what IS his good side?" asked Zack genuinely interested.

Reno stopped to muse for a moment:

"Lemme see if I remember it well... We had it charted back then. 'twas something like this:

Left side for fighting,
Right side for drinking,
Both sides for screwing,
No side for thinking."

Some even say Hojo had his right side of the brain - you know, the emotional one - extracted so he can keep it in a jar on his desk to stop the General from going emo by chance."

"I heard that!" boomed Sephiroth from above.

"Ouch, rats!" froze Reno, wide-eyed. "Forgot the mako-freak has a premium turbo-hearing..." whispered he.

"I heard that too!" came another shout. "Want me to drop this bird on you, redhead? My foot's growing numb anyway up here as we speak!"

"Err... no please!" begged Reno. "Sorry, I got it mixed, my memory failed me. I think it was:

Left side for fighting,
Right side for drinking,
Both sides for victory,
No time for misery.

Something like that. Better now?"

"That's more like it!" approved Sephiroth all a-smug.

"It's lame. I got it right the first time!" mouthed Reno without a sound, winking toward Zack.

"I can see you as well, you tardigrade! Keep pushing your luck there and you'll live just enough to regret it!" snapped the General from above.

Reno facepalmed himself and raised his hands in surrender.

"Alright, watch it there," added the silver psycho, "I'm changing legs!"

And without further ado he pushed against the thin blade he was standing on and launched himself in a somersault in the air, performing a mindblowing scissor with his legs so fast that Zack's eyes trying to follow him crossed themselves. The huge machine balanced until then on the tip of his boot screeched ominously and dislodged a bit further, but before it would get the chance to slide away, Sephiroth landed with his other foot on his sword again, that clinked with a clear, high-pitched "zingg!", and caught the chopper deftly with the tip of his boot.

"He's doing it just for the smug of it, y'know. He could just change legs in a jiffy, bing-beng!" commented Reno boredly, rolling his eyes and making a minimal shear with his legs, leaping from one to another. "But nooo! Goddess forbid it! He has to make it flashy, otherwise it wouldn't do!"

"Are you ready yet with those cords? I'm getting bored up here and I'm hungry and I still got the ITCHES!" snapped Sephiroth impatiently.

"Goodness, not the ITCHES again..." sighed Tseng. "Almost ready, sir! We're going to bring the cables up to your tree in five! We're securing the second one just now!"

"What's with the 'itches' anyway?" inquired Zack, scratching instinctively his own porcupine mop of hair.

"Not itches, Fair. ITCHES!" corrected Tseng. "That was every army man's nightmare back in the war. And ours too, incidentally. When they wanted something done without people dragging the job forever, Angeal would keep them a lecture about honor and dreams, Genesis would read them from Loveless and Sephiroth would simply march in with a murderous glare, Masamune in hand, and announce that his hair gave him the ITCHES."

Zack gaped at them.

"Did that even work?!"

Reno grinned lopsidedly:

"You bet your ugly boots it did! Any of these was enough to make the guyz work on the double just to get away from them sooner! I don't even know which one was the worst, Angeal's and Genesis' yapping or... y'know... him!"

He motioned with his chin toward the silver maniac perched on his sword, then added, keeping his voice as low as he could:

"Guyz would run from the three of them like plague when they got like this. They preferred to hurl themselves into the heat of battle rather than face this trio from Hell. At least at Sephiroth they threw bottles of vanilla shampoo with a sling just so they wouldn't have to get too close to him when he got the ITCHES. Oh the happy memories! It was so fun to watch, all this show of horrors!" grinned he, lolling his tongue with a crazy glint in his eyes.

Tseng only chuckled:

"Say what you will, Reno, but the General's legendary bad hair days may have shortened the war considerably - so I guess he wins as usually."

Sephiroth smirked above them, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Here, Zack!" added Tseng, once he and Reno finished tying the second cable farther on the chopper's landing rail. "Now take these up to that tree the General's Masamune is lodged in and tie them to the trunk right above those two larger branches so they wouldn't slide down!"

And he handed the Soldier the other ends of the two cables.

Zack took them and looked up in dismay.

"How can I even get there? I can't jump that high!"

"Reach me and I'll send you further!" shouted Sephiroth.

Said and done. Zack leapt as high as he could, Sephiroth caught his boot in his linked palms and gave him a boost, launching him further on. Almost about to miss the tree's branch, the porcupine Soldier flailed his arms desperately and found himself caught in a strong grip and pulled up in the tree by no other than the little chocobo trooper who was already there, lounging on the next branch with his feet secured in the tangle of twigs.

"Thanks, man!" cheered Zack, exchanging a five with him. "I think we need more like you in Soldier!"

They tied the cables onto the tree together making sure they were properly strung and signalled the Turks below.

"Ready, sir! waved Tseng at the General.

"Alright!" nodded Sephiroth. "In three, two, one!"

He swiftly retracted his foot from the chopper's opening. The huge machine groaned and fell a few inches. The cables strung all the way with an eerily musical wail, but held. Sephiroth assessed the situation and then, seeing the chopper anchored safely to the tree, he pushed against the blade of his sword, launched himself in another somersault in the air and descended, grabbing on his way the Masamune's hilt with one hand and snatching it out of the tree's trunk. He came down rolling through the air like a cannonball to land gracefully right next to the two Turks.

"Someone please explain to me how that thin-bladed sword could hold about seven feet of hard-packed First Class muscle, a bloody chopper AND two infantrymen..." mused Zack from the tree, watching the whole thing flabbergasted.

"Magic." chuckled Cloud as he sat perched right next to him on the branch.

"Of the most badass kind, yeah." sighed Zack.

"No. The sword's magic. Everyone knows. The General is just badass like that. This is why I always wanted to be in Soldier, ever since I was a kid. To be like him some day." said Cloud softly.

Zack's shoulders slumped.

"Who are we kidding, buddy? sighed he again, patting Cloud's shoulder. "We'll never be like him. He's all alone up there, in a league of his own."

They exchanged a somber look.

"He's just beyond human already." stated Zack with a sinking feeling.

Things seemed to look up after that, if only a bit.

They managed to find a cave nearby, roomy enough to contain all of them. Young Strife said there had to be a whole maze of them, piercing through the mountains. The two other troopers were lowered from their tree and finally came back to sense. They were both unharmed, only with various bumps and bruises but nothing serious. Everyone gathered in the cave, whose floor was littered near the entrance by a great amount of leaves and twigs blown there by the winds that could be quite harsh at that altitude. Aside from those on the top layer, powdered with some snow, the ones underneath were still dry and they could make a nice fire to warm themselves, dry their clothes at least partially and heat up some food. Sephiroth announced that he would go on a scouting mission to see if there was any road nearby and he took with him only the young chocobo trooper as a guide, who looked like Christmas had come early that year just for him.

They returned a while after, with mixed news.

"The road is not far away and is not only clean but in a better shape than expected." said the General. "The good part is that the blizzard only affected quite a limited area. The bad part..."

He stopped and gave a circular look to their crashing site. While he and the young trooper had been away, the others had managed to drag a fallen tree trunk and roll it under the anchored part of the landing gear where the ground caved in, so now the chopper stood firmly with one rail on the ground and one on the trunk they had stuck in place with some rocks too.

"We must depart as soon as possible. It's barely four in the afternoon, we can make it over the mountains until evening drops." pondered he.

"How?" wondered Zack incredulously.

"We found a truck a little farther down the road. It's a ShinRa issue. It must have belonged to the troops that have gone missing. Maybe they encountered some monsters, we don't know yet. But apart from being partially stuck in a ditch and running low on gasoline, the truck seems to be in working condition. Reno, where do we stand with the gasoline reserve?"

"The canisters are intact, yo!" grinned the redhead. "They were well secured in place, they didn't budge an inch!"

"Good. Fetch them, will you? We'll need them."

Zack jumped to his feet.

"Guys, let's all go and put the truck back on track!"

"No need. Me and Strife did that already." said Sephiroth flatly.

"Uh... okayy?" said Zack scratching the back of his head and staring at the duo. The chocobo-head grinned like an idiot from ear to ear.

Zack's mind tried to picture the scene, with the little trooper probably directing: "To the left! Now a bit to the right, sir! Higher, higher!" while Sephiroth did all the work by himself. After his feat earlier with the chopper, it didn't even seem that far-fetched.

"Oh, and - Reno, Tseng!" called the General. "You will have to stay here and guard the chopper, see if it's fully functional and bring it to working condition if it's not, for we'll need it to go back home when we have finished here. The bad part is that this blizzard was no natural feat. There is a winter dragon somewhere around, we just missed it."

"WHAT?" jumped Zack. "Are you serious?! I've never even seen one so far, I thought those were only stories for kids!"

"Well, this one's not." retorted Sephiroth dryly.

Then his gaze melted into a dreamy stare off into space and he let out a touchy sigh:

"They say their kind has the most luxurious silvery mane crowning their glorious heads..."

Reno elbowed Zack:

"Geee, I wonder what they wash it with. And do they ever get the ITCHES?..." whispered he through the corner of his mouth.

The General threw him his most withering Glare of Doom - which seemed to go right over his snorting head though.

"But then shouldn't they come with us instead of staying here? What if the beast returns?"wondered Zack hurriedly, trying to bring the discussion back on a safer ground.

"If it returns, then it will have to deal with two hard-trained Turks. In which case I pity this critter. It might even come to regret it didn't meet us instead. Its death would be quicker and cleaner." said Sephiroth ominously. "Am I right, flamehead?"

Reno gave him a lopsided grin, letting his tongue loll out of his mouth in the most demented way and patting his shoulder with the EMR.

"Rite you are, yo!"

"But I don't think it will return that soon." continued Sephiroth with a huff. "The trail of snow goes over the mountains from what we've seen. Strife here climbed up a tree and had quite a good view of it. In which case we must hurry, because the dragon might reach Nibelheim, where there are untrained civilians and children, who wouldn't be able to face it."

They gathered their things and hurried to leave.

"Make sure you don't use magic!" warned Sephiroth. "It attracts these creatures - and much as I'd like to know the dragon on this side of the mountains and blowing ice rings up Reno's ass rather than moving toward Nibelheim, I still don't think you should call for it. Or any other kind of monster that could be drawn to your spot."

Tseng nodded somberly, while Reno just wiggled his butt.

They watched the truck, driven by one of the troopers, disappearing ahead of them at a turn of the road.

"I wonder if that dragon even exists." mused Reno with a sly smile. "Or he just wanted to get to Nibelheim sooner to have a nice long shower and wash the ITCHES off his hair with a whole year's worth of the local inn's shampoo."

Tseng only let out a sigh, touching his own limp mane, spoiled by the earlier blizzard.

The whole year's worth of the local inn's shampoo proved to have gone MIA sometime earlier, much to everyone's dismay - but most of all to the one of a certain silver-haired pain in the rear of Reno's chopper, who had managed to break a wall in his bathroom by hitting his ITCHY head against it in unspoken despair and murderous helplessness.

On their way to Nibelheim he'd had the strange impression at some point that he could hear music coming from the very place they were headed to - his foot had even started tapping in rhythm on the truck's floor. He stopped it, miffed. By all gods, he hoped there wasn't some blasted musical festival or something of the kind in that godsforsaken place, for that was the very last thing he needed - more people around to gawk at his greasy hair! Fortunately it hadn't seemed to be the case - thank Shiva for small blesses! - and the village didn't look like it was currently housing any kind of musical endeavour. All the better for his gloomy mood!

The little chocobo-headed trooper, Cloud Strife, the one good with trees and balance, whose strength looked really promising in terms of a possible future career in Soldier, had said he was from that very village. How could it be to return in a place where he had grown up? Sephiroth wondered.

Well, on one hand it could be kind of embarassing, had you left it with the promise that you'd only return there as a Soldier, as it seemed to be the case with that little trooper, from what he had admitted to him during their scouting mission - but at least he did seem to have the potential to get there. It wasn't his fault that Soldier's effectives didn't decrease significantly now that the war was over, so joining Soldier wasn't going that fast anymore.

And of course returning to one's home town could also be nice, if it was a place where you had only lived good times, as was the case with himself and Banora. True he was already fourteen when he'd first set his foot there with Angeal and Genesis, in their very first permission to go home, in which they had dragged him along. And, having been brought up in a lab like any other test rat, he still remembered the heeby-jeebies he had over not knowing how to behave in a normal home.

He recalled how, after a couple of mugs and plates had broken, falling from unsure hands shaking for his fear of doing something stupid, the whole effective of Gillian's house, where all three of them had camped in a pile in Angeal's room, had seemed to be hit by the Great Curse of Clumsiness, with every single one of them dropping jugs and bowls and plates and cutlery and then quaking with bouts of laughter while sweeping the piles of shards.

And he recalled their hilarious tries to make new ones using clay and an obsolete modelling wheel and then scattering all over the place in hysterical laughter over and over again when the results looked as if they had been trampled over by a giant tonberry and couldn't hold enough water to drown a fly! And he also recalled the epic trip they took to Mideel to buy new sets and all the shenanigans there, from trying to get drunk on the local rum distiled from dumbapple sugar to the accidental demolition of a bookstore when his Masamune would suddenly burst out. Years of happy memories, yes - but still Banora was his adoption town and, even if it never ranked for him below a real hometown, he still wondered at times how it would have been to actually spend his childhood growing up there, in a real human settlement.

Anyway, there was no point in dwelling on such thoughts, so he had freed the others to visit their family and friends or to roam the place at will, whatever suited them, and headed alone for the inn to enjoy a loooong and peaceful shower and delightful self-pampering with all the care products he expected to find there, starting with his beloved and sorely needed vanilla shampoo. It was a pity that the mansion's key seemed to have been lost, or they could have stayed there for the night, which would have meant much more space for him without the need to share the bathroom and whatever other such inconveniences.

But... but oh, misery and despair!

Not only there was no vanilla shampoo to blind a mouse with, but there was no shampoo of any kind whatsoever! None of it. Nada. Zip. There was still some soap around - and in lack of anything else Sephiroth had to wash his glorious mane with a second-rate bar of what looked like some rough, home-made stuff. At least he managed to clean himself adequately enough and the ITCHES progressed somewhat toward mere dullness. No blissful smoothness, no silky feeling, like water flowing between his fingers when he sieved them through his tresses. Just the dullness of it all.

He dragged his feet back to his room, feeling sorry for himself and his cruel fate, and set to do some push-ups and squats before going to bed. There was again music coming from somewhere near - and he found himself synchronizing his push-ups with its luring beat and humming to himself the lyrics of it: "an unstoppable rocket, going straight to the moon... no guilty for it and I got nothing to lose... Conqueror..."

Push-ups went so much better coordinated with the music and he moved to squats, still keeping the rhythm...

...which at some point seemed to mold into something more frisky and lively, that really put a pep in his step...

...wait, what? What step? He was just doing his squats...

Only he was not. He realized that not only was he actually dancing on that music for quite some time already, but he was also singing with gusto, highlighting his moves with "yesses" and pump fists. What! The hell?!

He tried to stop himself but the music seemed just too good to be left to go to waste, so his feet kept dancing and jumping.

"You're over my head, I'm out of my mind!... Keep it real in the way I feel, I could walk you down the aisle... You're one of a kind, baby, you're so classic!" he kept at it loudly, thinking of his favourite flower girl and moving around, feeling like a king on top of his mountain... for the next hour or so...

...and the next hour or so...

...and another hour or so...

...and...

"STOP THAT!" he yelled eventually at no one in particular, clenching his fists and willing his feet to stay still. The music dropped abruptly to nothing.

"Some people are trying to sleep here!" added he just for the record.

The silence felt somewhat mocking, for some strange reason. But at least the message had seemingly been acknowledged. He let himself fall back on the bed, with arms spread wide.

"I swear to Goddess, Genesis, if this is any of your doing..." grumbled he through gritted teeth.

Oh, who the heck was he kidding?

If only it had been Genesis' doing indeed! Where was that redheaded lunatic anyway? Soldiers disappearing, strange pods in the area... it all screamed of some combination having Genesis at its epicenter. Or at least this was what he had been so willing to read in it. But... was it so indeed? For his swashbuckling friend was nowhere to be seen. And yet this kind of mischief would have been quite like him. After all, who had taught Sephiroth how to dance?

Well true, not before having the fun of his life and lying on the floor in hysterics at a ShinRa annual party while watching the poor silver dumbass tripping over his own feet. But right after that Genesis had made it his mission to teach the hopeless case that was Sephiroth to dance - and his approach to it had been remarkable and effective at the same time: "dancing is like battling", he had told his friend, "just as battling is a dance of death", so if one was able to dance his way on a battlefield and stay alive, then damn well he could do it on a harmless floor with no excuse.

So with sleep gone now and evading him as if he had the scabies, in the end Sephiroth grabbed his Masamune and left the inn, heading straight for the mountains in search of some monsters to vent on. He chased every single one he found, now battling them like possessed in the darkness, with the starry night sky, his mako eyes and their inner fire as the only sources of light, now dancing around them and swirling his Masamune on "Love and Joy" and the double fast-paced version of the "Levan Polka" - which were the very songs on which Genesis had bullied him to learn fast dancing. And not anyhow but holding Masamune in his hand - no less! - instead of leek stalks, saying that if he could accomplish such a deed without slicing and dicing himself for their next dinner, then he could tackle anything in terms of dancing. After which he had taken Sephiroth to the training room and put him to do the very same while actually battling monsters.

It had to be his doing! But where was the blasted music coming from? For it seemed to be in his very head! So how on Gaia was Genesis doing it?...

At some point he ran into a mako fountain - a miracle of nature indeed! Ooohh, the beauty of it! The wonder! He sat there for a while and gazed at it in awe.

It had been conveniently put to good use. Its mako flow powered a whole installation involving a huge container filled to the brim with dumbapples, whose sugar was extracted via a maze of pipes connecting various other parts and having at its center the stolen pod in which a golden liquid bubbled. Sephiroth got close and sniffed at the oak barrel in which the distilled liquid slowly dripped.

Rum, of the highest purity. Only the smell of it would have made a grown man topple over, the steam sending them to dreamland, out cold. But he was a mako freak, so the rum scent only gave him as much as a fuzzy feeling and made him giddy. He inspected the rest of the containers dipping his finger in them and licking it and then, rubbing his chin, he mused: "Hmmm... orange juice, check! Honey, check! Cactus juice...check! So he's going for the Traitor variety. I see citrus juice too and nutmeg... so there's going to be some Bumbu too. Mhmm, things are looking up!"

He smirked a knowing smirk. So now he knew for sure Genesis couldn't be far. He went on dancing his way up and down the mountains, battling monster after monster and humming: "...a thief in the night to come and grab you... creep inside you and consume you... a disease of the mind, it can control you... Disturbiaaa..."

When the night's dark blue sky started to get only the merest hint of a change of tone towards a lighter shade, Sephiroth remembered the winter dragon and went in seek of its trace of snow, trying to make out where it could could have crossed the mountain chain.

At last, following the white trail, he found the dragon in a cave.

He sat at the entrance and stared at it in marvel. The creature was beautiful, as it lay there staring back, silvery white under the moonlight and with indeed a glorious mane cascading down its back and falling in waves around it, over the rows of glistening scales that looked like brand-new nickels. It didn't seem to need any shampoo, Sephiroth observed with envy and genuine admiration.

They just sat there face to face, staring at each other with two pairs of emerald-green, slitted reptilian eyes, with relaxed postures and yet with that tell-tale forward bending of their heads and shoulders that spoke volumes about the shard of a second it would've taken them to be up and going for the kill at the merest threat.

But there was no threat that night. Not for any of them.

"Let me introduce myself," Sephiroth hummed softly. "Some people live for attention, you know, playing the victim. But baby, just like you, I was born to do the killing. Know thus that I am nothing like the others. So are you ready for the monster, monster?" asked he caringly. "You should better be heading toward the far North before the day is here, or you will never have the freedom and the unhindered life that you deserve. Just go already - and maybe one day we'll meet again, in better times."

He got up, took hold of his Masamune he had set in front of him on the ground and just turned his back to the giant dragon and left. He didn't stop, nor did he turn when he heard behind him the swishing of a huge pair of wings and felt the air dislodged by them blow on his back, making his hair swirl like a wave around him. He just smiled, pointing his long sword toward the reactor's outline in the distance and spat: "If there is a dangerous monster around, it's not these that were merely attracted by the mako leaks."

Then he turned and made his way back to the inn. At some point he bumped into Zack, who seemingly had the same sleeping problem and was heading the very same way, though coming from another direction. They returned together, dancing their way down the mountain and howling in a ear-insulting, approximate unison: "I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed, get along with the voices inside of my head..."

There was little sleep left to be caught after that for any of them.

In the morning they set up the mountain toward the reactor, guided by a town girl they had hired because she knew the local paths well. The reactor's building stood tall and deserted, with no staff anywhere in sight, all of them having disappeared as well, just like the soldiers sent later to investigate the occurrence.

Something was surely amiss, for before they even opened the gate to enter the reactor, music blared ominously in their ears, both Zack's and Sephiroth's feet moving all by themselves all of a sudden. Sephiroth pirouetted half-willingly, to see at a glance that of the two troopers who had remained downstairs together with their female guide, the one talking to her at that very moment seemed to be dragged around by the very same music.

Sephiroth stomped his foot on the metal floor with a growl and the music stopped suddenly.

"Trooper! Here at once!" motioned he with one hand toward the youngster in question. "Leave the girl with your colleague and come!"

Said trooper, who proved to be the one and only Cloud Strife, concealed under his helmet, hurried up the steps.

"Sir!"

"There's something weird going on here and we seem to be in this together!" observed the General. "You're coming with us, Strife!"

The blond kid beamed up and rushed to the door:

"Sir, yes sir!"

They finally entered the reactor and went from hall to hall, searching for whatever malfunctions there could be. Finally, somewhere at the back, there was a space full of rows of pods. Sephiroth's brow went up and he sniffed at the air, thoughtful.

"Hmpf... no rum here." mumbled he disappointed, feeling his throat parched after all that roaming. He hadn't had the time to grab anything for breakfast, busy as he had been with all the preparations - not even a vanilla-flavoured coffee - his smallest pleasure for the road.

"Sir?" inquired Strife, a few steps behind him.

"Uh, nevermind." pouted he, waving one fine hand dismissively. "Just monsters here in these pods, ugh! Nothing edible, I'm afraid. I was at least hoping for a coffee."

"Coffee... in a pod?! ..." asked Zack scandalized.

Sephiroth merely gave him a withering glare.

"You do like to play dumb, don't you, Fair?"

"I think the General was referrring to a coffee machine, Zack." observed Cloud wisely.

Sephiroth gestured toward him with one hand, raising his brow at Zack.

"Well, at least someone's still using their brain cells around here." observed he dryly.

"Yeah, right..." Zack was still entranced with the monstrous visions from the pods. "What IS it with these?" he inquired.

"You have to ask, huh? That Hojo slimeball created them of course. He never stops playing with fire, that walking trashbin of complexes. You know the drill, normal Soldiers like yourself are showered in mako to get the stamina and strength you have. But look at these nightmares here! They have ten times your amount of mako in their system, enough to go out through their ears in flames, if the indications on the screens are anything to go by."

Zack frowned.

"What do you mean 'normal Soldiers'? Aren't you one too?"

Sephiroth facepalmed himself.

"Do I look normal to you, Fair?!" snapped he.

Zack's shoulders fell at the killing straightforwardness of the question.

"Ehhh... I... Ugh..."

How to tell the man he seemed positively nuts most of the time? Like, really, how exactly? "Sir, you're clearly all the way on the loony side but hey, no worries, we love you anyway?!" Why not stab himself with Angeal's Buster already, to save Sephiroth the trouble?

"Errr... no, not really?..." he barely squeaked with the tiniest voice.

"So you DO think I am the same as these monsters then?!" kept bullying Sephiroth, towering over him and obviously enjoying the whole thing.

Zack pulled at his already porcupine hair.

A soft chuckle could be heard. It was the young trooper, sniggering behind his hand in quiet mirth. Sephiroth turned toward him.

"Start talking, Strife!" he demanded with a stern look.

But the chocobo-head could still catch inside the snake-like eyes that tiny spark of enjoyment.

"Uh, sir, I guess Zack has problems expressing the fact that you are simply in another league, with its own notions of 'normal', different than the rest of Soldier."

Sephiroth snapped his fingers in approval.

"See, Fair? Strife understands. A Soldier like you should have less problems with expressing clearly what you are thinking. He will make a good addition to our ranks... once he gathers his scattered courage from the ground to tell that girl outside that he's not Soldier yet."

Cloud facepalmed himself, slumping to almost half his usual height.

"And once you recommend him for joining the 3rd Class, after this mission is satisfactorily concluded."

Cloud bloomed again, snapping to attention, straight as a rod.

"Sir! Thank you, sir!"

Sephiroth gave him his tiniest smirk.

"Don't thank me. Thank Fair, for he's the one who's dying to recommend you. I cannot do that; it would be a conflict of interests."

In that very moment a bout of music blared in Sephiroth's ears so loud that it made him stagger on his feet, clutching his head with both hands.

"Shut this blasted music already, Genesis!" he howled, shaking his fist at the ceiling. "I've had enough of this trash, it drives me nuts! Stop it this instant or I'm going to find you and kick your ass all the way to Saturday, you hear me?! I'm sick of this! Ever since I was a child I knew I was not like the others! I knew mine was a special existence! I knew I had a different purpose! But if you live by the impression that this purpose was to become the butt of your jokes, then so help me Goddess..."

A couple of Firas flew at them, one managing to knock Zack down without fail. Cloud ducked under a pipe, while Sephiroth caught the other Fira in his palm, unfazed.

"So it WAS you after all!" he huffed. "I just knew it!"

Genesis trampled his way down the metal stairs, rolling his eyes.

"It was me what? What? Stop the nonsense already! If I wanted you dancing your soul out I didn't need any of this fuss, did I? I have already seen you battling monsters on music before, what else is new? As for Fair's talent at this... what can I say, he's as talented as my left boot without my foot in it, in a good day!"

"Genesis!" snarled Zack furious. "So you were still alive after all!"

Genesis gave him a withering glare, just like Sephiroth before.

"Nooo, I'm just your average ghost. BOOO!"

Zack fell on his butt again.

"We're all monsters here, puppy, if you want to take it that way!" spat Genesis. "You, me, Seph and the whole Soldier lot. We were all showered in mako - and something else. Jenova's cells."

"My mother's... cells...?"

Genesis rolled his eyes again:

"Oh you poor soul!" said he boredly. "Have I not beaten it into your head to never, EVER, give a dime on what Hojo, that old greaseball from Hell, tells you?! You just never learn, do you? Jenova's not your mother. It's just some disgusting alien they discovered buried in a stratum and then played with it, injecting its cells into pretty much everyone around, just to see what the heck happens, cos that's science for you nowadays!"

Sephiroth smacked himself over the forehead.

"A friggin' alien, huh? Why am I not even surprised? I should have known that old bat would never lose the chance to do something obnoxious. I should have seen it coming!"

"Well, I did try to tell you several times... it was all there in my book. I kept trying to read you from it, but you were just too smart for me, hah!... By the way, what an ugly head of hair you're sporting, ugh! No vanilla, huh? Damn. And have you even had any breakfast today? Here, have an apple at least!" and he extended his hand with a dumbapple toward the silver-headed wreck.

Sephiroth hit his head on the nearest wall, then put his hands on his hips and glared daggers at Genesis:

"You're just as loony as I am, aren't you? What in Gaia's name has my hair or my breakfast got to do with all this madness? And speaking of Loveless, if I never hear another quote from it in my whole life, it will still be too soon for me! So if it was Loveless you were talking about in terms of books, then you can just go rot together with it!"

These said, he slapped Genesis' hand aside, sending the apple flying away from his grasp, then stomped his way toward the farthest halls of the reactor.

"Go rot, huh?" mused Genesis. "We'll see about that, mister Danceroth, sir!"

Then he checked his watch.

"Uhh! Time to go see how the rum's coming out... See you guys later!"

And he took off through the reactor's service entrance.

Things didn't progress much after that. They roamed the halls looking for signs of malfunction or anything else amiss. Tedious and unrewarding job on the whole. It was late in the afternoon when the three of them - Sephiroth, Zack and Cloud - reunited in the pods' hall, with nothing to report and feeling quite exhausted.

"I think we searched every single corner, sir!" puffed Zack, bent with both hands on his knees. The only one left is that room upstairs. The one with the nameplate above the door... It seemed to be locked up earlier. I'll go check it again if you wishhhhh..."

Sephiroth leaned against the handrail, with an "I don't care if it crashes and burns together with everything inside" look all over his perfect face.

"If you can mount the stairs wiggling your butt like that, Fair..." huffed he tiredly.

"Say what, sir?"

"You're wiggling your butt like you have a whole nest of bees up your ass, Fair!"

"Am NOT!"

"Are too!"

"With all due respect, sir, you're the one wiggling your... ahem!... rear!"

"AM NOT!"

"Are TOO!" two voices retorted in unison, both of Zack and the blond trooper, who watched in fascination Sephiroth's pelvis doing 'eights' in the air.

"Shut up, Strife!" snapped the General. "Who the heck asked you? Look at your own butt wiggling! This music IS compelling, I'll give you that, but still!"

The trooper's face acquired a clear shade of pink.

"I'm not wiggling, sir!"

"HAH!" spat Sephiroth rolling his eyes. "You SO are!"

They all stared at each other in dismay, while the music kept getting louder and louder and their rear ends moved in perfect unison now, circling in the air and shaking in rhythm.

Sometime later Genesis showed up again, holding a mug of his newly-produced rum in one hand and a big bowl of still hot popcorn in the other. He found himself a spot with a good view and sat perched on a platform, leaning against the wall with the bowl next to him. He cheered and munched at his popcorn, recording them with his phone and sipping occasionally from the mug.

"Whooo boys! Shake your booties! I love it! Work it, babies!" shouted he enthusiastically, pumping his fist and giving them thumb-ups. He even strolled around to catch them from every angle while they kept wiggling their butts with blank stares on void faces and no sign they would ever stop again.

Night had all but fallen outside when, eventually, Genesis collected an unconscious Sephiroth from the metal floor of the reactor and threw him over his shoulder, then turned to leave the place through the back emergency exit. He couldn't resist aiming a kick with his elegant boot at Zack's ribs as the Soldier lay a few steps away, equally unconscious.

"Stupid puppy, carrying Angeal's sword!" grumbled he spitefully.

Back at the mansion, whose keys he had spirited away days before, Genesis dropped Sephiroth on a chair in front of the sink in the kitchen - because it was larger of course! - and then went to rummage through a box and returned with a handful of small bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the kind they put in the hotel rooms.

"Hopeless slouches, what dump of a place is this, to run out of normal, full-sized bottles of vanilla shampoo, I wonder? The world has gone to trash these days apparently." he grumbled. "Ten of these should barely do the trick and I bet someone's gonna miss them at the inn tomorrow morning, but I couldn't give a damn right now, hah! That should serve them well!"

And he set on washing vigorously Sephiroth's scalp and mass of hair, with no delicacy whatsoever.

When he gave it the first rinse, the General started to stir and finally came back to his senses with a groan. He tried to raise his head but Genesis pushed him back down into the sink, in the foamy water.

"Bloody hellbrrlblblrrrll!" sputtered the victim, flailing his arms and spitting bubbles through his nose. "Go rot!"

"Mind your language, General!" snapped Genesis, slapping him over the head. "You'll thank me later for this, you'll see!"

"Like hell I will! For what, for beating me?! What on Gaia are you doing to me, you savage?"

"Washing your hair, what in the Goddess' name do I look like I'm doing?"

"What gives? Why the heck?!..."

"Well, because I like you clean better, that's why!"

Sephiroth gargled something awfully injurious, which got in a good part muffled by the water's sound, lucky for him. Genesis sneered:

"Watch it, or I'll slap you again! Didn't you send me some months ago to find out what's with us and your precious supposed mother Jenova and the whole caboodle? Well, here I am now and before I figured out what the damn thing was, I danced myself to the grave and back until I grew white hairs - and all you have to say to this is 'go rot'?! You assinine twit! The next time you ever go at least as far as the grocery store, make sure you're freshly showered and, most of all, with your hair properly washed! Vanilla's a good choice for a scent, stick to it if you value your sorry life! Though I'd strongly recommend killing your mother first. Then you can try new scents all you like!"

"You're mad, aren't you?" sputtered Sephiroth from the tsunami of foam rising around him every second.

"Why of course I am! You would be too, if you had to go through what I had to go through around here." said Genesis rolling his eyes unfazed, then pushed Sephiroth's head down in the water again, bumping it hard on the tap.

"OUCH! Watch it, you crazy maniac! You're gonna have me in stitches! Just leave me alone, why don't you? I can do it myself!" gargled poor Sephiroth inside the mass of pinkish suds already spilling over the sink's sides and gathering in piles on the stone floor.

"Shut up, you stinky rat!" scowled Genesis, rubbing vigorously at the General's skull. "You should have done it when you could. Now I'm doing it for you - and my way! Just look at yourself, you're such a disgrace! I barely leave home for a few months and the whole household goes straight to hell! You don't wash yourself anymore and I know for sure you don't even cook! Soon enough you'll look just as scrawny and slimy as that lab bat Hojo!"

"I shower at least twice a day!" protested Sephiroth, clinging with both hands onto the sink's sides to prevent being dipped again in the soapy water.

"Right! And yet you walk away in a mission on the other side of the planet with a greasy head of hair! You should be ashamed of yourself! Some General of ShinRa you are! And what about cooking, huh? What do you have to say for yourself? When's the last time you cooked something at home, you slouch?"

"Errr... last week?..." tried Sephiroth hopeful.

"Liar!" snapped Genesis, giving him a slap over the side of his head. "Last week the food in the fridge that I left you a few MONTHS ago, when I departed, had all but grown limbs and become sentient and was preparing to go see the world, you twit! - Yes, don't even bother denying, I've been in Midgar but you weren't there! - I had to do the cleaning for you, throw all those tentacled remains together with the fridge in a sealed Hazmat container and send it at Hojo's to those loonies there to play with it! I also ordered a new fridge and even baked you an apple pie and left it for you in it. Which you still haven't found up to this day, you lost soul, have you? I can bet you haven't even set foot in the kitchen, Goddess only knows what you've lived on since we left, me and Angii."

Sephiroth didn't utter another word. It was all too true. He was only grateful now that the suds his face was sunk in covered any other wetness his eyes could have let out upon hearing his late friend's name, beside the one caused by the soapy suds themselves.

When Genesis finally declared himself satisfied enough with the state of Sephiroth's hair, the coat on him had in turn been all but ruined, soaking wet and dripping everywhere. Sephiroth tried to at least dry himself and his clothes using magic, but Genesis caught the hand he'd barely raised to cast a spell.

"A-a-aaa! No you don't, that slimy creature there can sense magic and you're open to its messing. Haven't you noticed that you got in a dancing mood whenever you used magic, you dolt?!"

Errr... nope, by his guilty silence he obviously hadn't.

"Hmpf, figures! There, you'll have to dry the old-fashioned way."

Sephiroth threw him a dim look.

"What's the old fashioned way?..."

Genesis raised an eyebrow.

"Witty, are we? Here's a towel. Dry your hair with it. Take off your coat and hang it somewhere to drain. Do I have to draw you a sketch?!"

Sephiroth took the towel and did as told, obediently. For all their dagger-throwing, he was ever so relieved and simply happy to have Genesis with him again. He had grown so used to having the both of them, Genesis and Angeal, by his side, that over the last months since Angeal... since Angeal, well... - and Genesis - had left, being alone again felt utterly awful.

"Are you hungry now?" asked Genesis, after turning on all the cooking machine's heaters and setting Sephiroth on a chair nearby, to dry his hair at the fire.

The slitted pupils enlarged until the green pair of eyes looked like twin mako fountains in full eruption mode.

"I'm starving!" gulped Sephiroth, feeling his mouth starting to water at the mere mention of food.

Genesis huffed, setting his hands on the hips.

"Have you even eaten anything this morning, by the way?!"

The General gathered his shoulders with a sheepish look.

"Err... no time?..."

"See? That's why breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" scolded Genesis. "No wonder Jellova got its claws stuck into you so fast."

"What's food got to do with Jenova?" wondered Sephiroth amazed.

"Well duhh! Had you eaten well this morning, a good part of your brain would have been disconnected for your energy being directed to digestion. Less for Jenova to mess with, that is. Hm..." mused Genesis rubbing his chin, "What am I even saying? In your case, probably your whole brain would've gone MIA. You know how you are with food. All the better though, in such a case."

Sephiroth stared at him suspiciously, with one brow up:

"You're mocking me again, aren't you?"

"Who, me?!" grinned his friend.

"Ah, alright." sighed Sephiroth, letting it pass. "Where's the food?"

Genesis turned and opened the stove. A wave of scent filled the kitchen in an instant when he pulled out a large pot of stew, bringing it to the table and setting it in the middle, between their bowls. He filled Sephiroth's with a generous portion, then his own bowl with a somewhat smaller serving and sat himself on the other side of the table.

"There you go. Dig in now!" said he.

Sephiroth didn't wait for another invitation and started making a short work of his share.

Both of them had always been two individuals with very healthy appetites - they were barely twenty-one after all, though in Soldier at that age you were a full-blown veteran, even considered old by the standards of those only entering the ranks at the mere age of maybe twelve. Yet they were still a pair of young men - even though Genesis looked somewhat tired and there were some white hairs among his tresses. He was merely about halfway through his own bowl when Sephiroth hit the bottom of his and asked hopeful:

"Can I have some more?"

"Yes you can, piranha-man!" grinned Genesis. "Just help yourself!"

He simply loved to watch Sephiroth eating his cooking. It made his heart swell to no ends in his chest, all but bursting out, for Sephiroth had been brought up with the lab slops that Hojo's minions there would make sure to be nutritious alright, while not bother to also make them palatable in the least.

And the ShinRa cafeteria had not proven to be any improvement whatsoever, so once Sephiroth got acquainted with real, tasty food when Genesis and Angeal came to Midgar and moved together with him, he would always eat with such obvious enjoyment, with small sighs and sounds of pleasure, closing his eyes in elation at times, smiling to himself at every tasty discovery and expressing his delight at the mere look of every dish, that any cook would have felt thrilled to have such a keen client to their artwork. So there were few things Genesis enjoyed more than watching Seph eating their cooking, his and Angeal's - when he was still with them - and listening to all his "mmmmhhh"s and "aaah"s and "oh, this is SO good!" any time of the day.

"Is there anything else?" asked Sephiroth slyly, knowing all too well that his friend never cooked just one dish.

Genesis smirked.

"I have the dough ready in the fridge for an apple tart. I just didn't have the time to take care of the apples yet."

"I'll peel and grate them." offered Sephiroth, digging into the third serving of stew. "Just where are they?"

"Down in the basement. There's a room downstairs with some wooden boxes in it. The middle one's got the apples. But finish your stew first, before's getting cold."

Sephiroth didn't contradict. He finished his food, wiped the pot clean of the remains with some bread and then went to bring the apples.

He came back with an armful and a funny face.

"What's with that red-caped corpse in a coffin down there?" asked he flatly.

"It's not a corpse, you wisebum! Well, not entirely anyway. It still twitches at times."

"Ugh! And why did you put the apples all over him? It's creepy."

"Look who's talking about 'creepy'! They keep better there, he has a cooling system to that box of his. Why let it go to waste when it might as well cool other things too?"

Sephiroth's eye twitched.

"You're nuts! What if he wakes up?"

Genesis shrugged, unfazed:

"What if, what if! Well, then at least he'll have a healthy snack at hand."

Sephiroth facepalmed himself, dropping an apple in the process.

The evening went on pleasantly enough, enlivened by the good times they always had when they cooked together. While Genesis was laying down the dough on a wooden board, Sephiroth peeled and grated the apples, then rummaged through the cupboards searching for the spices. He poured enough cinnamon to scent the whole manor and then got slapped over the wrist by Genesis when he tried to do the same with vanilla.

"No you don't!" warned the redhead. "We need to be stingy with that, there's not enough of it."

Sephiroth looked at the vial.

"Looks enough to me, hmf!"

"Well, in other times maybe. Remember what I told you when I was washing your head earlier?"

"Yeah, about that..." started Sephiroth.

"Right," Genesis cut him short. "About that, the short version is: when I hit this end of the world I danced my way through every corner of this godsforsaken dump from the bottom of the caves to the top of the trees. Sounds familiar to you by chance?"

"Mhmm..." said Sephiroth distracted, pouring just a few drops of vanilla essence in the apple mix and stirring it in a pan over the fire. "And then what happened?"

"Well, when I gathered myself from the mountains and came back all a sweat and drained out, I wanted to take a shower, but I found out that the mansion's supply of my favorite apple-scented shampoo was way past its expiring date, so in lack of anything else to my liking, I used some vanilla-powered stuff. Guess what happened?"

"What?" obliged Sephiroth.

"The next day, I haven't danced anymore. How about THAT?"

Sephiroth gaped at him with a dim look.

"Erm... how exciting?..." tried he.

Genesis gave him a withering look.

"You don't get it, do you? Alright, so then later on I bought from the local store a bottle of some apple shampoo and used it in the evening. The third day I won the dance marathon before lunch, so to say, and the music gave me the headache of all centuries and was still killing me! Even my feet kept tapping under the table while I was trying to eat. Then after lunch I was hit by this weird idea - well, it sounded demented even to me, but I made myself a nice cup of coffee with a whole vial of vanilla essence poured into it. Guess what, again?"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes:

"Don't kill me with the suspense here! What?"

"Nothing. Silence."

"Anticlimactic, huh?"

Genesis threw him a bland stare.

"Do I have to draw it for you, Bugenstein? There is an alien in that room at the back of the reactor. One nasty shit they unburied about thirty years ago and played with it ever since. This alien has the power to enter people's minds if there is as much as at least one of its cells in them. And guess what, yet again? The whole Soldier bunch of crazies that are us has been not only showered in mako but also injected with cells of that grisly thing from Hell. And, GUESS AGAIN, who got the most of them, lucky bastards? Yeeees, it was us, Seph. So, like I kept telling you in the reactor earlier, that living carcass is NOT your mother, Seph. You were just infected with that alien's cells, that's all. Same as me and Angeal. And same as every Soldier around. It's just that they got a little cookie, so to say, me and Angii a good slice of pie each and you got the whole rest of the cake, bless you! Only our slices of pie were shoved down our throats, while you, poor soul... you, were baked together with the cake, as it were, so its influence in you is, compared to the rest of us, simply overwhelming."

"Ughhh... cringed Sephiroth. Thanks for the creepy cake image forever etched into my mind. I think I feel like retching now."

"Well, I did try to tell you over the years, time and again, didn't I? When I kept reading you from Loveless..."

"Egads, not that Loveless pile of trash again!" groaned Sephiroth with an eyeroll.

Genesis grabbed the recipe tome from the table, without even looking, and slammed it on Sephiroth's head.

"OUCH! What was that for?" yelped the object of his abuse, letting go of the pan's handle and the wooden spoon to rub his already growing bump.

"What indeed!" spat the redhead. "Next time you talk like that about the oldest source of knowledge on Gaia I'm gonna split your skull with Loveless itself!"

"And how will that be any different from now?" wailed poor Sephiroth, still holding his head gingerly.

"It will be, if I'll have it carved on the blade of an axe!" sneered Genesis.

"YIKES!..." gulped his victim, edging away from him with a wary look.

"Watch those apples!" barked the redhead. "We don't want them scorched!"

Sephiroth grabbed hurriedly the panhandle and the spoon and stirred industriously, without a word.

"Well," carried on Genesis, so the big discovery is that apparently this creature can't stand vanilla. Crazy, huh? But yep, it actually works! Every time I used vanilla in one form or another, the creepy alien didn't have access to my mind anymore. So then I said to myself: by all means, let's all bath in vanilla, if that's the case!"

Sephiroth's face brightened.

"Yeah, let's!"

Genesis sniffed:

"There's not enough vanilla for that in this dump. That's why I said we have to be stingy."

Sephiroth deflated.

They spread the filling over the dough, then put it in the oven.

"Tomorrow we're gonna camp in the library." announced Genesis. "I kept rummaging through the stuff there and I found some things that are quite interesting, which I wanna show you too. Hojo the Creep left a lot of papers back when he moved to Midgar. I'm sure he must've sieved through them thoroughly before leaving, but like I said, they're still interesting, some of them. There's stuff about Jenova, you know, and how this project came to be and all kinds of data about the alien freak, its anatomy, its supposed pattern of thinking... you know, this kind of trash. As if someone really asked the freak what it's thinking or something!"

"Yeah, like... why this dancing obsession?" wondered Sephiroth.

Genesis merely shrugged.

"Who the heck knows? You can imagine that alien's gotta be batshit crazy by now. After all, it spent about two millenia encased in a stratum, counting sheep for all we know, then was unburied and probably hated the guts of everyone around who poked and pinched it on a daily basis. No time to count sheep anymore, so at some point it must have cracked completely and started acting up."

Sephiroth pondered over the thing a bit.

"See? So if you hadn't taught me to dance, then I..."

"Yeah, if I hadn't taught you to dance and you still had two left legs even now, then you... soon enough would have been the laughing stock of all Nibelheim down to its last inhabitant, AND the root of all memes on the Gaia Net."

Sephiroth hunched, downtrodden.

He still brightened up again when the tart was ready and he could dive into it, hot as it was from the oven.

He kept a slice of it though, announcing that he intended to save it for breakfast and that he wouldn't put it in the fridge because it would get too tough, so instead he would take it downstairs in the basement cos it would keep better there.

"Mhm..." commented Genesis laconically, watching the whole manoeuver without letting himself be fooled by it in the least.

Sephiroth took the plate, covered by a napkin, and carried it to the basement just as he had said. He placed it near the middle coffin and knocked gingerly on its lid.

"I've no idea who you are, man," said he, "but I guess you could use a tasty bit at least from time to time. So I'll leave this here for you."

He went back upstairs and they finally retired to their beds.

"Wake up, Seph! The early bird catches the worm! Rise and shiiine!"

"Go away!" groaned Sephiroth and pulled the blanket over his head. Genesis snatched it, leaving him uncovered.

"Up-up-up! We're gonna have a nice morning stroll in the mountains!"

"What? But you said..."

"Library afterward. Now we're going to get your luggage from the inn AND pay a visit to your momma Jenova!"

Sephiroth bolted upright:

"WHAT?! NO!"

And he curled on the other side, giving the back to Genesis:

"Are you crazy?! I'm NOT setting my foot in that hellhouse, near that bitch from Hell, EVER again in my whole life!"

"Yes you are! You gotta know your enemy, see what you're dealing with. Isn't this what you always told the Soldiers?"

Sephiroth groaned, covering his face:

"I should have know one day it would turn against me..."

"Well yep, that day has come to bite your ass. Rise and shine, we gotta move!"

"I hate you!" sniffed Sephiroth.

Genesis merely snorted.

"Yeah, I know. I love you too!"

Sephiroth huffed and puffed, but dragged his very sorry butt and put on his clothes.

"Breakfast's in the kitchen," threw Genesis over his shoulder. "And coffee. With vanilla!"

They killed each a large omelette, downed their coffee and sprang up.

"Let me take my coat, it's kind of chilly outside at this hour," said Genesis, turning to retrieve his red leather overcoat from the back of his chair.

"And since when have you become chilly?" frowned Sephiroth. "And by the way, look who's getting scrawny! Last night you barely ate two rounds of stew, don't think I haven't noticed. You look... withered! What are those, white hairs on your head?! And what's with the sunken eyes? Are you ill or something?"

Genesis smacked his brow in frustration.

"Here we go." mumbled he. Then rose his head and stared Sephiroth right in the eyes.

"I'm degrading, Seph." said he bluntly.

"What? How? Why the heck?"

"Because Hollander did a lousy job with me, that's why. And now what's funny as hell is that apparently the only thing that would keep me going would be none other than that Jenova creep's cells."

Sephiroth frowned deeper.

Then he shifted his weight from one leg to another.

Then he put one hand on his hip.

Then he scratched his head with the other.

Genesis watched the whole drill with one brow going up and up, almost reaching his hairline.

"Alright," said he eventually. "I get it. Someone's thinking deeply. I can feel the scent of 'brain pané' going all the way to Midgar. Spit it out already!"

"Okay," obliged Sephiroth, "then why the heck do we want to kill Jenova? Why not keep it somewhere safe so you could inject with that... eewy stuff all you like? Sounds obnoxious to me, but hey, if it helps you, why the hell not?"

"Well, because even I don't love dancing THAT much, for starters." said Genesis blandly.

Sephiroth rubbed his chin.

"That would be a good reason, yeah. My blistered feet and my sore back and butt tend to agree with you wholeheartedly. And yet! We could... oh, I don't know, buy the whole vanilla stock on the market, just for the two of us - and to hell with anyone else who likes it too! We need it more than them. And we could also grow our own plantations of the stuff, while we're at it. And then we could..."

"That won't work, Seph. This stuff of nightmares is too dangerous to be kept alive, why do you think the Ancients buried it so deep?"

Sephiroth puckered his lips in deep thought, then his face brightened again:

"Alright then, there's no need to bother ourselves with the whole carcass. We could keep just a chunk of it, no? I could... I don't know, chop its head off or something and put it in a jar for you..."

"Sure, why not? With some pickles around, huh?" agreed Genesis straight-faced. "You're such a dear!"

They gaped at each other in silence for a few moments.

"And to think you called me nuts last night for storing the apples in the coffin downstairs, over that guy..." mused Genesis. "I don't even know who's the worst out of the two of us: me with the apples cooling in a coffin around its owner, or you with Jenova's head pickled in a jar?"

They stared at each other a couple more moments, then doubled over into a fit of laughter so raucous it would have caused even Jenova to flee out of their minds and duck under the table for cover, had it been around at that moment.

Outside the air was chilly alright and Sephiroth, who had his own coat over one arm, put it on - and cringed the very next moment.

"Ouch! Bother this, the bloody thing's still wet!"

Genesis rolled his eyes.

"Well, have you hung it anywhere to drain like I told you?"

"Uhh... I forgot."

"Great. Bonus points for you. Near the oven would have been perfect. It would've dried by now real nice."

Sephiroth looked around. There were very few trees in that area. The reactors usually had that effect of creating a deserted area around them. There were just some wooden shacks and other such ramshackles.

"Can't I burn at least a shed or something, to dry my clothes and get a bit warmer?" wailed he moodily. "I still feel water dribbling down my back!"

"You sure know how to make folks here love you, huh? Setting fire to their stuff, eh? With this wind here the blaze would spread in no time flat and you'd get the whole darn Nibelheim, together with its every soul, turned to crispy strips. And people saying I'm the one with a fixation for fire, huh!" commented Genesis. "Anyway, I told you we can't use magic."

"Yes, but I have some..."

Sephiroth shoved his hand down one pocket and extracted a small box. He tilted it and a rivulet drained through one corner.

"...wet matches." finished Genesis, giving him a thumb-up.

Sephiroth facepalmed himself.

"What on Gaia are you doing with them anyway?..." marvelled Genesis.

"Oh, they're for when I'm in an area with no magic signal, of course." said Sephiroth.

Genesis facepalmed himself too.

"That's NOT how the magic force works!"

They reached the reactor with Sephiroth still wet and in a rotten mood.

Genesis forced the door of Jenova's chamber with his Gift-of-the-Goddess rapier and they found themselves in front of a large pipe that led upward to a tall glass pod, partially concealed by a metallic effigy.

They watched each other.

"C'mon," nudged Genesis, "go see the flying circus creature. I've seen it already."

Sephiroth dragged his feet up the pipe with no interest whatsoever. He reached the end of it and stopped in front of the effigy.

"What's this supposed to be?" asked he beyond his shoulder.

"Oh, just a representation of Jenova." shrugged Genesis.

"It's got wings!"

"Yeah, well, it's kinda idealized, if you'd ask me. C'mon, take a peek at the thing inside."

Sephiroth bent carefully to look beyond the effigy and jumped back in such a hurry his feet slipped from the pipe and he would have gone right down the mako pit below, had Genesis not grabbed him by the straps of his Soldier belt.

"HOLY SCHMOLLY!" howled the silverhead wide-eyed. "That shit's ugly as all Hell!"

"It kinda is, huh?" grinned Genesis.

"WHY did you make me look at it?!" yelled Sephiroth with a frantic look, shaking Genesis by the lapels of his coats. "Did you even see that abomination?! It's blue, for Shiva's sake! And it's got tentacles, man!"

"Yup! And some ugly whatevers instead of wings."

"They should have called it Squidnova! It looks like a giant dead squid!"

Genesis chuckled:

"I pet-named it Jellova. Cos it makes me think of a jellyfish y'know."

"The horror of it! I feel traumatized! I'm gonna have nightmares for the rest of my sorry life!"

"Well, at least I hope I'll never hear Jenova mentioned as your mother again, no matter what Hojo the Crackpot tells you."

"Are you kidding me?! Not even Ifrit would want such a mother!"

"Okay, I suppose we can go back now. We came, we saw, we'll kick its ass. Soon enough, anyway."

"Let's flee before it wakes up!"

Genesis grinned:

"Oh, it's awake alright! But we just had our vanilla shot, so no luck for it today. Alright, let's beat it. We'll make a detour to check the rum. A full mug will do you good, I think. Both of us in fact."

Sephiroth brightened up:

"Rum! I get the first mug!"

Genesis rolled his eyes.

"Well see about that."

"Mine! It's mine! I need it more! I'm in shock, can't you see?!"

"We'll toss a coin, Seph."

They reached the mako fountain in half the time, with Sephiroth practically running the whole way and Genesis following him, a little bit slower though. He fished in his pocket and produced a small coin.

"Head or tail?"

"Head!" urged Sephiroth eagerly. "C'mon, throw the coin already!"

"Head of course. Figures!" mused Genesis rolling his eyes, but obliged. With a deft move, he managed to catch the coin on the back of his hand so that the head would be up.

"Oh jeez, you win!" smiled he.

Sephiroth pumped his fist:

"Yesss! I am the chosen one! I have been chosen to taste this rum!"

Sometime later that day Zack marched in the library and promptly tripped on Genesis' leg, who was just emerging from behind one of the book racks. He slid a few good meters on his belly on the polished floor, then leapt back to his feet, bumping nose to nose with the very same Genesis, who in two strides had already been ahead of him.

"What?" snapped the redhead.

Zack growled:

"Not this stupid thing again!"

"Well, it seems to follow you, this... cloud of misfortune, doesn't it?" mused Genesis.

Zack winced.

"What do you mean... Cloud?... Oh, forget this! Where's Sephiroth?"

"He's busy. We're busy. Go away, puppy!"

"I have to see him!"

"You're not helping, you know. I said beat it! Or do you want me to cite some Loveless to you?"

"I'm not going anywhere until I see Sephiroth and talk to him! I have to see him now!" snarled Zack, clenching his fists, and he took a step, trying to shove Genesis aside with one hand.

Genesis did indeed let himself fall on the side of the path, leaning against the rack behind him and swiftly extending one leg forward, as if for balance. Zack managed to trip over it again and his body made a beautiful, if unintended somersault, landing hard on the floor and bumping his head on the nearest shelf in the process. He remained there for a few moments, dizzy. Genesis bent lazily, grabbed him by the straps of his Soldier belt and carried him like a soaked kitty outside the room, letting his body drop there in the hall. Then he shut the library's door firmly behind him.

"You're evil, you know that?" Zack's muffled yell could be heard from outside. Genesis stopped for a moment and grinned over his shoulder.

"Why thank you, yes I am! Now buzz off!"

And he turned his back to the door, shouting on his way with manic glee:

"Even the morrow is barren of promises, I shall always return to the place where you stand. Or lie. Or whatever. Or maybe I just won't!"

He headed back to the reading area where Sephiroth was rummaging through a pile of books on a table

"Did you hear that, Seph? The puppy managed to finally grow a pair of eyes before his holes in the head. And he 'has to see'! mocked Genesis, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "I'm still waiting for the day when he learns to see at least where he's going and doesn't trip all the time over people's legs."

Sephiroth chuckled.

"You are evil!"

Genesis rolled his eyes, chuckling too.

"Sweet Minerva, twice trips in a row! And the first time I wasn't even trying, I was just coming from behind the shelves! He's such a lost cause, don't you think so? But I still have it, yess!" grinned he pumping his fist.

The next few days were leisurely spent between baking all kinds of goodies, (parts of them being snuck by Sephiroth to the basement in the coffin room), enjoying long soothing baths parcimoniously scented with vanilla just enough to keep Jenova at bay and having pleasant lectures in the library, seasoned with mugs of vanilla-flavored rum - the barrels having been carried already at the manor in one of their trips. They dragged a sofa into the reading room in the basement and lay on it with their feet up on the table, taking turns reading to each other the parts they found interesting from the mounds of papers around. There was also some occasional dancing when the vanilla effect wore off.

It was about the third day when Sephiroth found the rather thin notebook squeezed somewhere at floor level, in a back shelf between some very old binders that suddenly spilled out of it on his path. Genesis wasn't there at that moment; he had gone upstairs to check the steak in the oven and turn off the flame under the apple jam simmering on the heater, but he practically rolled down the stairs when he heard Sephiroth's howls, fearing some belated nervous outbreak.

He found his friend lying on the floor and crying with hiccups over the pages, but when he tried to see what was all about, the silverhead snatched the notebook from his grasp and hid it inside his house coat in a jiffy, saying that they would only read it together once the meal was ready and they would carry it downstairs, because the things unveiled in it seemed too mindblowing to be faced alone and on an empty stomach.

He tried to insist, but Sephiroth composed himself and stubbornly offered him a poker face, unwilling to elaborate more. They went upstairs together and busied themselves with preparing the lunch. Genesis laid the foundation base for the cheesecake and neatly spread the filling over it, while Sephiroth readied the jars to be filled with jam, unnervingly humming the ShinRa funeral march. The fact that when they arranged the table downstairs the long-faced, somber-looking silverhead brought up the manor's fanciest silverware and crystals, complete with candleholders AND the most valuable Wutainese porcelain vase together with flowers in the middle of the table, announcing that if they had to go down tonight then they might as well do it in style cos they were finally going to learn the truth about the experiments giving them life, did even less to soothe Genesis' troubled mind.

They finally ate, with Sephiroth taking his sweet time to enjoy the food as usual, while Genesis enjoyed his enjoyment, but seemingly not quite as much as usual.

Finally, the silverhead extracted the notebook from his inner pocket. He took a delicate sip from his fine glass of rum, squinted at the liquid in the candles' light, swilled it in his mouth as if he was barely tasting it for the very first time, gave a grunt of appreciation and...

...Genesis hit his head on the table, sputtering:

"Alright you ass, you took your revenge for everything, now read the damn thing already!"

Sephiroth gave him a withering look, then let out a solemn and dignified "Ahem!" and, putting the glass aside, finally opened the notebook.

"Come here, my brother in assery," said he slouching back on the sofa and patting the space next to him "and let us learn the story of our lives as sung by this unknown bard."

Genesis teleported himself onto the sofa next to Sephiroth and threw his eyes in the notebook. They both stuck their noses in it, brow to brow, reading avidly.

"Say WHAT?" shouted the redhead, slack-jawed. "He said what? Who the heck wrote this?"

Sephiroth chuckled.

"Oh, I don't know, he didn't put his name anywhere. Some random lab guy of Hojo. But by the looks of it, they had a blast with this project back then. Here, listen to this: 'Day x, Month y, Year z. Today both our madmen on duty threw a hissing fit of stellar proportions: Dr Hollander's fat orange tabby Garfield managed to fall into Jenova's tank and drowned and Dr Hojo has all but chased him with a gun for contaminating their most precious specimen. They fought like two cats, insulting each other with some words you won't hear even in the Midgar slums! Hollander kept babbling that there had to be a glitch somewhere, otherwise the pod's lid should have been well secured, while Hojo kept shrieking: 'you schmuck!' and pulling at his hair.' "

Genesis sniggered helplessly, wiping his eyes in mirth:

"Good Goddess, I can even see the two bumbling idiots clawing at each other's eyes! Too bad this guy didn't tape them! Waitwaitwait! What's that there? Read it aloud, Seph!"

"Okay. Where is it? Ah, here: 'Hojo The Creepo keeps boasting with the prowess of his latest test subject, the little S. It's all we ever hear these days and frankly it would be enough to make one hate that ceaselessly howling baby. Until now he would even insist on taking care of the infant himself, not letting anyone else get close. But the other day, while he was changing S's soiled diapers, his phone rang and he got out of his office, leaving the baby on his desk. The stupid ass! Before he came back, the kid had crawled all over the place, pooping some more, and all the papers, the keyboard, screens, files, well, you name it, were thoroughly smeared and the baby sat proudly in the middle of that shit explosion, drawing patterns with his finger in it. Hojo all but exploded too and we dived in all directions, taking cover and holding our laughs to save our lives! We all love the baby now!' "

They laughed tearfully until they were almost about to fall backwards together with the sofa.

"So you were a shitty little bugger even as a baby, huh? Giving grief to poor Hojo the Slimeball, crapping all over his life's work!" sniggered Genesis helplessly, ruffling Sephiroth's mane. "I'm so proud of you!"

Sephiroth wiped his teary eyes:

"Wait, there's more! Hear this: 'Hojo made us change the baby since then, but the kid never acts up like this with us. It's like he knows who's the ass here, man, and he saves his shenanigans just for him! Each time the good doctor manoeuvers the kid and needs him butt-naked to give him some shots or whatever, he either pees on him or craps over his whole working place or project-vomits stinky milk all over the professor or on his papers or whatever valuable thing is at hand. Gotta love the little guy! And by all means, we all love him to bits!'"

"See, Seph? You always knew how to make people love you, even when you were a child!" howled Genesis with laughter, wiping tears of joy from both eyes with his sleeves.

Sephiroth chuckled smugly, letting the notebook fall on his lap so he could wipe his eyes too. The pages flew, opening in some other place. Genesis squinted at them and lunged to stop them from fluttering further. He grabbed the notebook, staring at the writing there.

"Hey Seph, where do you think Project G and Project S come from after all?" asked he with the silliest grin stretching over his face almost from ear to ear.

"Well, from our names I guess, no? Project Genesis and Project Sephiroth. Isn't it?" shrugged the silverhead.

"HAH! Wrong! Listen and weep!" hollered Genesis mirthfully. "The good doctors are still at it like cats, perpetually clawing at each other every single day. Hollander keeps blaming the errors in his own project on glitches, while Hojo, each time little S pulls one of his stunts on him, shrieks: 'shitshitshit!', tugging at his hair. No wonder he's barely left with one wisp of a ponytail after that much pulling. We're only sorry we don't have access to the other two kids from Hollander's project, for he jealously guards them in another part of the labs. We would all wish to see these three put together and wreaking havoc all over the place here, even if we had to hose-clean it afterwards the way we do after S's shenanigans. Anyway, the projects have only had so far some mere indicatives for names, but we coded them between ourselves as G and S - as in Project Glitch and Project Shit. The good doctors thought the letters came from the names they gave their test subject - as in Sephiroth and one of Hollander's kids who's seemingly called Genesis - which made the whole thing even funnier! Understandably, we didn't bother to correct them... So now we've got Project G(litch) and Project S(hit), folks, and we double over with sniggers each time the doctors boast on them as the final names chosen for their precious work.' "

The two Soldiers stared at each other with goofy, lopsided grins twisting their handsome features.

"So hellooo, Glitch!" cackled Sephiroth.

"Well, hello to you too, Shit!" blinked Genesis, high-fiving him with a loony smile. "Too bad the guy didn't have access indeed to us before Hollander beat it with us to Banora. I didn't even know we got to spend any time at all here at the manor. I suppose he moved the tent once Hojo got his claws on the position as head of the Scientific department, huh? There was no point in dwelling around here after that. Though I would have liked to see what this guy could've had to say about us too - me and Angii."

"Wait! You missed a few lines here!" chuckled Sephiroth squinting at the page. "Hear this: 'The baby likes music. He learned to tap his hands and his feet in rhythm on it, but apparently Jenova largely resents it - which is why lately we all carry our players around every time we go near its pod and blast every kind of music until its parameters go crazy and we gotta get lost before Hojo would show up to see what's bothering his most precious of monstrosities...' "

"Well, this sure solves the mystery of the dancing craze, huh?" sniggered Genesis rolling his eyes. "This idiotic jellyfish takes its revenge on us for what they put it through. Oh, we'll SO see about that, Jellova-Squidnova! Whoever gets the last laugh, WILL laugh best!..." grinned he menacingly. "It's a promise!"

A week passed with them getting none the wiser about the way they could destroy Jenova. Slicing and dicing it would have only multiplied the problem exponentially. Burning the thing was no option either. Doing that would have asked first for a thorough drying, cos you couldn't incinerate a thing that was soaking wet after all - and to dry the bloody thing you would've needed to take it out of the slop it was currently floating in, running the risk of contaminating everything around in the process. Pouring any poison in the pod's liquid filling didn't seem to work either. It had no apparent effect on the nasty creature inside. What to do, what to do?

Vanilla stocks were also wearing off, no matter how stingy they had been with them. Pouring what was left of their vanilla directly into the rum would have been superfluous at that point if they hadn't done it earlier, for the effect would have been too dissipated to really matter anymore.

Sending the Turks by chopper to bring new vanilla supplies from anywhere else was a tardy thought either, for once Reno and Tseng had brought the machine back to working condition, they had been summoned back to Midgar by Rufus to be sent in another mission and by now they were all the way to Fort Condor or something of the kind, with no perspective of returning in good time.

The bouts of dancing mood were getting more and closer in between and were becoming more and more of a nuisance, heating up the spirits and darkening the mood.

It was eventually Genesis who bumped into the liberating passage not in any of the papers left behind by Hojo but in their prized notebook.

"EUREKA!" yelled he knocking with one hand in Sephiroth's skull beneath him, who was doing push-ups to tire himself enough to take his head off the music that resonated mockingly inside his mind, while the redhead sat cross-legged on his back to prevent him from giving in to any dancing bout.

"Listen to this, Seph!" hollered he to be sure to cover the music in the silverhead's inner dance-ring. "I should've known that bastard Hojo wouldn't let anything useful behind. We lost precious days sieving through his mountain of garbage when all the while the answer was right here under our very noses!"

Sephiroth merely hummed a tune.

Genesis climbed down from his back, snatched him by one arm turning him face-up and sat himself again astride Sephiroth's belly, grabbing his face with both hands and staring him in the unfocused eyes.

"LISTEN TO ME SEPH! SNAP OUT OF IT, WOULD YOU?!"

He slapped Sephiroth hard on each cheek.

"WHAT!" spat the silverhead.

"Eyes on me! Listen to me, it's important! Here, drink this!" said he grabbing from the floor a cup with some rests of coffee on its bottom. He opened Sephiroth's mouth and poured it directly down his throat with no fuss.

"Now FOCUS! This was the last bit of vanilla, so you better be with me now!"

He waited until Sephiroth's gaze cleared up a bit, then went on:

"We should have known there was no other way. We just lost the time needlessly. Hear this: 'The puss has all but burst out today. Hojo threw the fit of the century and we had to actually restrain him, lest he would shoot Hollander. The guy is packing now his whole stuff, to be moved somewhere in the Mideel area as it seems. He would've moved even farther I suppose, if there ever was a farther place on the planet at this point, for Hojo swore to kill him as soon as he gets his claws on him. I wasn't around, but it seems that this morning Hollander climbed up to the top of Jenova's pod to measure some parameters and took with him his mug of vanilla milkshake, which he put on the pod's lid, only to hit it later with his elbow and spill the largest part of it in the tank below. The creature inside, which we had thought to be all but dead, let out some soul-shattering shrieks and wriggled frantically inside the pod, making the liquid around it spill in waves over the pod's edges. Thank goodness Hojo was way too busy draining the tank of the contaminated liquid and refilling it with a fresh batch, otherwise Hollander would have been dead already. The creature, that before seemed to have a more-or-less human-like complexion, looks now like a years-old, bruise-blue drowned corpse, all burnt and with shrivelled patches...' "

"Well, that sure solves my all-time perplexity over how in Gaia's name the Cetra could ever be fooled by this monster being one of them. It just didn't have this sick color at the time, huh..." mused Genesis. "Did you hear this, Seph? We can poison the damn thing with vanilla! All we have to do is pour all the vanilla we got in its tank and kaput goes the bloody thing!"

Sephiroth blinked from the floor.

"Well, IS there any vanilla left?" asked he dryly.

Genesis' mouth remained agape.

Sephiroth sprang up, grabbing Genesis with one hand to keep him from toppling over. They both landed on their feet like two cats.

"That's it, I won't end up a Squidnova clone!" said he determinedly. "We're going to the village to squeeze whatever vanilla's left from those twits there and Goddess help us all! Is there no trace of it left here? Are you sure?"

Genesis looked at the ceiling for a moment, in thought, then took off to the bathroom and came back with one tiny hotel-sized bottle of shampoo that only had about one finger of content left at the bottom.

"This is all that's left. I kept it to mix it with some other kind. Now that I think of it, I poured some vanilla in the apple jam too." said he. "I'll bring the jars from the coffin room!"

"Shut up and dance with me!" snapped Sephiroth. "Err... I mean take your battle gear too, I'll take mine and don't you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me! Errr... you get the point!"

They reached the local so-called "universal store" in Nibelheim with Sephiroth step-dancing most of the way. Genesis kept better, so he followed him in a more normal step, carrying a bucket with the jam jars in one hand.

Sephiroth slammed his fist on the shop's counter.

"Alright, I want your whole supply of vanilla, old man! And quick, for Ifrit's sake, we're in a hurry!"

The shop owner disappeared behind the counter, rummaging through some boxes, and showed up again with three small bottles of vanilla essence and two vanilla pods packed in little flasks.

"Th-this is all I have left, sir." he stammered. You bought the whole rest these days I'm afraid."

Sephiroth gave him the Glare of Doom.

"That's it? Isn't there anything left, man?"

Said man withered under his stare, shifting his weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other.

"S-sir! Weather was bad lately, you know, and the roads are not safe since the... monster outburst. We... I didn't get any new merchandise these days."

"Yes, but as far as I remember I've solved your monster problem the first night I danced here. Err... came here... So, no shampoo either, huh?" rumbled Sephiroth dangerously, his hands twitching ominously on the counter on the rhythm of the music ringing in his ears, while his feet danced polka figures on the floor.

"N-not with vanilla, no..."

"Told you so, Seph." said Genesis bored, grabbing an ordinary apple from a pile and taking a bite, then puckering his lips with an "ughh" and throwing it away over his shoulder.

The owner wisely chose to not pursue that smaller matter at that particular moment but to concentrate on the more ardent problem at hand, who towered over him right there and then.

"We do have other scents, sir, if you please..."

"GrrrrrrrRRRRR! Hmmm... how about at home?"

The shop owner looked baffled.

"Sir?..."

"Do you happen to have any vanilla at home, you pathetic human being?" barked Sephiroth trying to cover the music hammering inside his skull.

"Y-yes, sir, I-I think so..." stammered the shop owner terrified.

"Good. Here's the deal then: In one hour I want the whole worth of this wretched town's vanilla from every home gathered in a barrel. And another barrel with whatever kind of shampoo you have around here. And I don't care if you haven't washed your heads and won't have anything left to use. If you don't give me what I want, then, so help me Goddess, you'll have much bigger problems than a slimy head because I'll have you all turned to shish-kebabs and your tiny town burnt to a crisp. I dried my matches, just so you know! By the way, meet the roasting spit!"

He sneered with a crazy glimmer in his snake-like eyes and the Masamune materialized in his left hand with a sharp "whooshhh", skewering two sacks of flour on its way and getting out to take some fresh air through the window.

The shop owner fell on his butt, frozen in terror. Sephiroth leaned over the counter and lifted him by his collar one-handedly, dangling him in the air a few times in all directions on the music that kept blaring in his ears and finally managing to pile him on a chair upon seeing that his feet didn't hold anymore.

"Don't waste my time and my patience," he growled. "I think I expressed myself clear enough: you give us the whole town's worth of vanilla in any form you may have it in one hour and no one gets hurt. Oh, and shampoo. Let's not forget about shampoo, shall we? You'll even get your money on it - give me a list later with everyone's contribution and I will honor it myself. Or no, old man Shinra will. Or even better, write on the list "to be covered at the expense of Professor Hojo of ShinRa". Why not saddle that grimeball with the payment for the torture of his most precious specimen of all times? That should make his day, year and century for sure!" the silver-haired snorted, grinning like a hyena.

The shop owner threw a horrified look from Sephiroth to Genesis, who merely raised one eyebrow.

"Don't look at me, old man," he shrugged. "He can be like that sometimes. You know what I mean..." and he rolled one finger around his ear, wiggling his eyebrows meaningful.

"Yeees," purred Sephiroth, "he means mad as a cuckoo bird. And YEEESSS, I can totally be that way when I don't get what I want. And I already feel like going batshit crazy just NOW! So, where were we? Ah yes, give me what I want and no one gets hurt. Hell, I might even get generous - on Hojo-the-Slimeball's money of course! - and send you a whole truck of vanilla to make it up afterwards. I might even throw in the mix some consolation prize. What would you like? How about some cilantro? Or maybe some estragon or thyme? You name it - we got it. We got it, we send it. But if you don't give me what I need now, then it's crispy shish-kebabs with a side of burning village! Did I make myself clear?"

He turned around with a sweeping pirouette and headed for the general direction of the door, his feet dancing a giga that carried him to the left and to the right in a rapid succession. He managed to bump his head on the doorframe, growled some more and, turning again, sneered one last time at the owner:

"Remember, one hour! Round up the people - by horn or trumpet, or whatever you folks use in this neck of the woods! I'll be at the inn, admiring the sunset. Or something of the kind. Put the stuff where I can see it!"

He turned, bumped his head again, sliced a few more bags and sacks of various seeds with the Masamune he dragged in the hand twitching in rhythm and finally managed to miss the door completely and got out through the window generously enlarged by his sword.

"My oh my, this will ask for capital repairs," mused Genesis behind him, taking a circular look at what was left intact of the shop. "Here, man, have some gil," said he with largesse, extracting a pile of it from one of his pockets and handing it to the traumatized-looking shop owner with a regal gesture. "And for Goddess' sake, just move your sorry arse already and do what he said! Chop-chop!"

He went out through the window as well and headed for the inn. He found there a crazed Sephiroth looking out through the window in the hall, hopping from one leg to another and grumbling:

"Huh, no wonder this dump seemed familiar to me. I've been here as a baby, Hit me, baby, one more time! Ughh..." he hit his head on the wall repeatedly.

There were also Zack the puppy and that blond kid with a weathery name which Genesis couldn't remember for the life of him. They were hip-hopping around Sephiroth on some music only they could hear, humming something cacophonic. Genesis grabbed them both by the head and yelled directly into Zack's ear:

"Tell me puppy, what the hell did you do to this kid here? Did you try to help him get to Soldier sooner? Huh? Sneaked him some mako slops from Hojo's kitchen of Hell? By all means he shouldn't be dancing now, them troopers don't get Jenova cells, you idiot! Answer me!"

Zack kept shaking on the music with a guilty look all over him.

"You should put some tinfoil hat, puppy, on that crackhead of yours. That should really help now, I bet." mocked Genesis, letting him go.

One hour later two large barrels were indeed under their window. One of them was filled to the brim with various bottles of shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and even floor cleaners, some of them vanilla-flavored, some of other scents. The second recipient was much smaller and only half-filled, but it contained the good stuff, as far as Genesis was concerned. He rummaged through vials of vanilla essence and vanilla pods and little envelopes of vanilla sugar, while Sephiroth danced around him like a cannibal around the cooking fire, until he grabbed the crazed silverhead and poured down his throat a whole vial of essence to calm him down. It seemed to work all too well, so he squeezed between his teeth half a vanilla pod to shut off the musical buzz in his own head as well and showed enough mercy as to have Zack and the chocobo trooper share the other half.

Sephiroth hiccupped a few times and swayed on his feet.

"Oh man... hic! I think I'm experiencing a - hic! - sort of a psychedelic vanilla rave..." blurted he, while Genesis caught him with one hand before he would fall face forward over the pile of packages.

They had the barrel with the bottles of cleaning liquids upturned on the ground and put Zack and the troopers help empty the bottles in the barrel. Their great majority read on their labels: "Lots o'foam to roam", "Bubbly-squabbly", "Foamy-shoamy" "Suds for Gods"and other such sputtering nonsense, but they didn't think much of it. When all the bottles had been poured in the container, Genesis emptied a few vials of vanilla essence over them and almost did the same with the jars of jam but thought again and kept them. The vanilla essence they had should be enough, he thought. Then he thoroughly mixed the whole concoction with a branch.

All done, they set up the mountain toward the reactor, dragging the barrels with them. As they made their triumphal entrance in the pods' hall, Genesis glanced back at their joyous herd and his brows went up almost to his hairline.

"What's that on your head, Fair?" asked he trying to keep his face straight and the voice even.

"A tinfoil hat, man. Didn't you say..."

Genesis facepalmed himself with tears of mirth in his eyes.

"Oh my Goddess puppy, you're so stupid! But by all means, don't take that off, it looks fabulous on you!"

This time, far from shying away the way he had done at their first visit, Sephiroth ran up the pipe to Jenova's pod, hauling the container filled with vanilla-powered slops with a crazed glint in his bright mako eyes.

"Hey momma, we meet at last, hic! For real this time!" hollered he. " And guess what? I've had an epiphany - HIC! So would you look at this! Know what I got here? I got a jar o'shampoo, I got a jar o'shampoo, and guess what's inside - Hic!?" grinned Sephiroth like an idiot, dangling the barrel with the devilish concoction under the creature's nose."

"Puppy, check that control panel over there!" directed Genesis keeping his cool. "See where this pipe's going!"

"It's connected to the pods in the other chamber, man!" shouted Zack back at him.

Genesis sneered menacingly.

"That's so awesome! We're gonna kill the whole bunch of pigeons with just one stone! Are all the valves open?"

"Some of them, err... sir!"

"Good. Send that troopie - what's his name, Rain? - together with those two clones of his to open all the valves to the very last!"

"Done, sir!" came the answer after a short while.

Zack and Cloud climbed the pipe to where Genesis stood, about halfway to Jenova's pod.

"Should we help the General with the barrel, sir?" asked the chocobo-head rather shyly.

"No, silly, does he look like he needs any help now?" grinned Genesis. "He'd be dead before someone manages to get that cookie out of his hands at this point. Leave him be, this is HIS moment." and he put his hands on his hips, looking up at Sephiroth, who had climbed over Jenova's effigy and was now sitting on top of the pod, barrel in hand. The silverhead tapped a sequence on a keypad up there and a section of the upper part slid aside, uncovering the liquid mass.

"How do I do now to lower the level of this slop enough to make room for our mommy's washie-washie - hic?" yelled he from the top.

"Lemme check, sir!" shouted Zack and ran to the control panel down the pipe. "It's a sequence you gotta tap there, sir!" hollered he to make himself heard up the pipe. "It'll make a portion of the liquid circulate toward the pods below. I think it's used when they want to send it to the monsters in the other chamber - or maybe to replace the fluid gradually in the pod where you are. Here, I'll transfer it to your screen!"

Sephiroth watched the sequence appear on his monitor, figure by figure, then copied it on the keypad. The level of the liquid in the pod started dropping rapidly, until the alien's head stuck out of it down to its shoulders.

"Good grief!" sputtered Sephiroth puckering his lips in disgust. "Bleah, you stink like a dead rat, mommy! Here, get a good wash! We like you clean better - Hic!"

And he poured over it enough of their hellish concoction to cover the blue head completely.

A terrible shriek split their ears the very next moment and the whole pod shook so bad it was a miracle it stayed in one piece. Sephiroth though was thrown aside of it, but he was already prepared for this from the story of Hollander's mishap, so he grabbed the barrel hurriedly and managed to land on the pipe next to Genesis, who had rushed to catch him. They all watched in fascination the alien creature struggling savagely for its life, while the slops bubbled inside the pod, the foam spreading around Jenova in a cloud and spilling over the sides of the tank, sliding on the glass in snake-like ribbons.

The creature's fight seemed to get weaker and weaker and at some point it simply hung limply inside its glass coffin. Then, gradually, it became translucent, offering a gory image of its insides enough to turn anyone's stomach. In the end it simply dissipated in an outline of green sparks, like any of the monsters they battled, once they returned to the Lifestream. A flat "Dang!" could be heard when the metal contraption that had been on Jenova's head fell at the bottom of the tank.

The chocobo trooper came running from the other chamber.

"Sirs, they all disappeared! The monsters from the pods! They just went all poof in sparkles! There's none left, sirs!"

"What do the readings say, Fog?" asked Genesis rubbing his chin.

"Oh, it's Cloud, sir!" said the trooper a bit miffed, but ran anyway to the nearest control panel and checked:

"They say 'no lifeform found', sir!"

"Amen to that!" nodded Genesis.

The liquid in the now empty Jenova tank boiled one last time, all of a sudden, rising in a wave of foam sliding down the pipe toward them.

Sephiroth grinned lopsidedly, smacking himself over the face with his free hand.

"Great! More suds. Oh the joy! Alright, let's pour the rest of the stuff directly into the mako pit and beat it, on the double! I don't think I want to still be around when the foam's gonna reach the main entrance - hic!"

"Hooo boy!" leapt Genesis, grabbing Sephiroth by the hand in which he had already hefted the barrel with the vanilla-powered bomb, dangling it right above the mako pit that burned far below. "We don't want to wash the heads of everyone down there in the Lifestream!"

"We don't? Why the hell not? Hic?" asked Sephiroth with a determined look. "It can't hurt!"

Genesis stared at him in dismay, jaw-dropped.

"You're nuts! Sure, let's just throw into the Lifestream whatever slop comes our way! What if... oh, I don't know, what if not everyone down there likes vanilla as much as you do, Seph?"

Seph rolled his eyes.

"Well, if it's just a preference matter... Excuse me, - hic! - I thought we were supposed to purge whatever remains of Squidnova might float in the Lifestream cos it hates vanilla and all that jazz. But if it might inconvenience the tastes of the dudes below, then..."

He seemed to have changed his mind and put the barrel back on the pipe. Genesis blew a sigh of relief.

"...then, whoever's down there, be damned! One vanilla wash of the century, here it comes!" grinned Sephiroth like a madman, aiming a powerful kick with his boot at the barrel, which sent it rolling in a high arch over the mako pit. The vanilla shampoo inside it sprang in all directions before the spinning bomb disappeared below in the burning pit with a splash.

"And good riddance to you, Squidmother from Hell, whatever may be left of you anywhere on this planet!" yelled Sephiroth toward the pit, hands cupped around his mouth.

Genesis pulled at his hair, slack-jawed.

The whole place rumbled with a booming sound that made their teeth chatter in unison. A blinding green light flashed from below in waves and even with their naked eye they could see a tsunami rising rapidly from the pit.

Genesis gulped, wide-eyed.

"You did it, Seph!" groaned he - then gathered his wits. There was no time to cry over spilled vanilla.

"Puppy! Take that hapless chocobo kid with you - what's his name? Sleet? Hail? - and for the love of the Goddess, head for high ground!" yelled Genesis. "We got a 'loony on the loose' alarm on our hands here and much as I hate your guts, it'd still be a grim death to die! Move it or lose it!

"INCOMIIIIIING!" yelled Sephiroth gleefully and slid down the pipe, bumping into the fleeing Zack and Cloud and taking them together with him in a whooshing trio of the most epic kind.

They all practically flew out of the reactor and down the mountain, then up the next one to the very top, with both Genesis and Sephiroth carrying under their arms two of the others - Sephiroth having grabbed Zack and Cloud, Genesis the other two troopers before they would get swept by the Great Vanilla Wave of Doom. They sat there huddled like a herd of stunned chocobos, watching the reactor catching fire in a deadly chain of electric short-circuits until it eventually exploded, collapsing in a pile of hot metal embers that, thanks to the desert around it, didn't manage to ignite anything from the village nearby.

Sephiroth gathered himself from the ground and saluted solemnly:

"Rest in pieces, mother of all Hell!" stated he, assessing the burial place.

Then he started whistling the ShinRa funeral march again and set down the mountain.

Genesis caught up with him in two strides.

"Did you even imagine this mission would make you an orphan, Seph?" grinned he.

"Well, it didn't. You're still here after all, aren't you?" shrugged Sephiroth, sober all of a sudden. "And I in fact only took this mission because by all the clues you left I was hoping I'd find you here."

"Well, good for you! So you did. Now what?"

"Now? Now we go back."

"Sure. And then we'll write a book together with all the adventures and call it something loony, like "There and back again", huh?

They sniggered together, punching each other like two kids.

A day of blessed non-dancing quietness passed and, when Reno and Tseng announced that they would be arriving that very afternoon with the chopper to take everyone back to Midgar, Genesis and Sephiroth decided to cook a departing meal with the whole rest of the food they had left.

"It's going to be in Angeal's memory, Seph." stated Genesis solemnly. "It's high time we did this for him, there's months since he left us - and until we finally get him wherever he is now to kick his ass up to space and back for being such a dick and leaving us like that, we're still gonna have a memorial for him."

Sephiroth carried two trays filled with piles of chicken outside, where they had set the table in the garden.

Genesis went down to the basement, to bring the salad they had left to cool there.

"Wake up, old man!" shouted he, kicking the coffin with his boot. "Time to get your first full-blown decent meal of this century! Oh, and mind the apples please, I don't like them squashed!"

He kicked the side of the coffin again, then turned to leave.

"We'll be outside in the garden, okay?" he threw over his shoulder. "Don't be a late one! Get it, huh? Late..." sniggered he, then rolled his eyes at himself, mumbling: "Good Gaia, I'm beginning to make Dad jokes, Goddess help me!"

The sun had already gone over the sky's crown point when they all sat together, enjoying the meal cooked by Genesis, together with Sephiroth.

Tseng and Reno took their place at the table and once they were seated, the manor's door opened and a tall, pale individual with long raven hair and a red tattered cloak clanked his way down the stairs and went to seat himself at one corner of the table, right next to Tseng.

"Whoaa, a pleasure to meet you, sir!" exclaimed the Turk reverently, nodding toward the silent pale man, who merely grunted in response.

"Should we cry if it's a mourning meal?" wondered Zack unsure, looking at the food.

Genesis facepalmed himself.

"Yes, puppy, by all means! Start sobbing already, why don't you? In fact let's weep on our food everyone in Angeal's memory, cos he would've loved to see us all yowling like a bunch of emos."

Zack threw him a dim look, obviously clueless about the redhead being serious or sarcastic about the thing. Genesis hit his head on the table.

"D'ohhh... No, stupid, unless Seph dropped too much onion in the salad, you don't have to cry in your plate. Just eat your goddamn food already!"

The Turks chuckled, helping themselves at the chicken pieces.

"You just sounded like a certain pilot I once met." grinned Reno.

Tseng looked around, assessing the landscaping work they had done up the mountain. There was just a ragged crest where the reactor once rose.

"Wow, you sure did some thorough cleaning around here." mused he.

"Well, you know us." Genesis lounged in his chair. "We're tidy like that."

"Uh-huh," chuckled Reno. "I wonder what His Sleaziness Hojo will have to say about his most beloved jellybean ascending to Kingdom come."

Sephiroth's head snapped up.

"You knew about that slimy squid there?" inquired he.

"Darn right we did." shrugged the Turk. "Caught once the old bat saying that if something happened to his most precious of specimens, he'd downright shoot himself cos he wouldn't have anything to live for anymore."

Sephiroth's face brightened up like a sun:

"Did he actually say that?"

"Uh-huh. He sure did."

"Man, why didn't you say so earlier? I gotta call him right away to give him the good news then." the silverhead said with a nasty grin, and he rose from the table and strode a few steps away, taking out his phone.

"Hey Hojo, is that you?" they heard him hollering. "Listen, I couldn't catch the Prez to report about our mission's conclusion. Can you tell him we solved the monster issue here? Yeah, razed it to the ground. So sorry for keeping you from work, professor! Just tell him we cleaned the whole reactor of the plague. Some of the critters had penetrated to the grounds and sheltered in a few of your pods there. We took care of them for you, yeah. What do you mean they were yours? Nah, they couldn't be! By the way, there was a really nasty one that got into a big tank at the back. Some bluish thing... We extinguished it, don't you worry. It's all gone now, you're welcome!" shouted Sephiroth gleefully, then winced, keeping the phone at arm's length. A high-pitched howl of agony could be heard from it all the way to the table.

"Yeah man, we love you too! Stay safe there!" hollered Sephiroth back, grinning like a maniac.

The howl faded, seemingly decreasing as if moving farther and farther.

"What says he?" inquired Genesis curious.

Sephiroth merely shrugged, smiling serenely.

"Not sure. It sounded like he threw himself out of a window or something."

"Amen to that!" said all of them solemnly.

The red-caped individual merely snorted.

"Alright Seph, I have two newsflashes for you," grinned Genesis. "The first one is good - well, it depends on how you wish to take it. And the second one is... err... the same. Kind of."

Sephiroth, who had taken his place back at the table as if nothing had happened, tore his eyes off the chicken he was savagely pulling apart and merely raised one fine brow, still chewing industriously.

"Stop stuffing your face and pay a little attention to me, okay?" snapped Genesis impatiently.

"I'm hungry!" protested Sephiroth. "And besides, I can listen and eat at the same time."

"Yes, I know. You can also exist and piss people off at the same time, you're polyvalent like that. Well then, just so you can finally stop believing you were created in some vial or something by Hojo-the-Creep, there you go! Meet your biological parent: this tattered pops here is your father: Vincent Valentine, the sleeping beauty of the Turks. Badabum-TSSSSS!"

Sephiroth threw Vincent a deadpan look, still holding a chicken leg in his left hand.

Vincent returned him an equally deadpan look, still holding a celery stalk in his right hand.

The deadpan stare duel lasted for a few good moments, in which the others stopped eating and just stared at them too, suspense picking at their souls. Eventually Sephiroth said flatly:

"Pass the pepper please... Dad."

Vincent obliged in silence and they both stuck their noses again in their respective plates.

Genesis blinked.

"Wow. Anticlimactic, aren't they! Alrighty, Seph, now to the second news flash, which I'm sure would elicit more of a response from you..."

But Sephiroth raised his palm, stopping him.

"Oh no you don't!" said he. "I have an ominous feeling about this. I think I shall have my dessert first."

Genesis smiled slyly.

"Well, if you insist..."

"I do." nodded Sephiroth. "Because I have this hunch that I might miss the chance to enjoy it, if I know you well enough."

"Sometimes I even wonder how you too get along like that, yo!" mused Reno in all soberness. "You're so different, like... I don't even know, man..."

"Yeah, but he's family, Red." said Sephiroth snapping his fingers. "And that's what matters, you know? If I ever learned something in all these past years - but especially in the last months - is that family's the most important thing. And when I say that I fully consider the fact that the members of a real family aren't always born under the same roof. So stick to your family, guys! I wouldn't let go of mine for the world!"

Vincent let out a cryptic hum.

Zack scratched his head with a sheepish mien.

"Geee, I don't know, man. Yours seems kinda... dysfunctional..."

Genesis snorted, leaning back on the hind legs of his chair.

"Dysfunctional families are the best, puppy. You never get bored in a dysfunctional family."

"Well, mine's far enough anyway." shrugged Zack. "Maybe in time I'll be making one closer, who knows?..."

"He's thinking about a certain flower-selling girl, maybe?... Name's Aerith I think..." mused Cloud, promptly earning himself a boot kick in the shin under the table, from the mortified porcupine-headed Soldier.

"Is that so!" purred Sephiroth, waving his empty glass of rum in the air. "Aerith, of all people. Well, well. Leave Aerith alone, Fair, or your legs will end up having more joints than necessary. Not that it matters, anyway, cos you're just the nice friend who builds butt-ugly flower waggons for her - but still, Aerith's MY girl."

Zack gulped.

Genesis snatched the glass from Sephiroth's hand.

"Enough with the booze already," said he. "The rum's gone anyway."

Sephiroth blinked.

"Why is the rum gone?!"

"Well, mostly because we sucked it up these days like two barnacles, that's why. But don't worry, there's some more wine in the cellar - and tomorrow I'll make some hot apple cider."

"Ah good!" breathed Sephiroth in relief. "For a moment you got me worried."

"Why do you even keep at it with the booze like that?" marvelled Zack. "It's not like we can even get drunk, with all the mako we got in our systems, Hojo was so very clear on that."

Genesis shrugged.

"Well puppy, we keep trying to prove the old scarecrow wrong. Got any problem with that?!"

They kept chatting merrily, licking their plates clean of the apple tart's remains and also of the three kinds of cakes with all their respective fillings of every local forest fruit around, because Genesis couldn't decide to only one kind and didn't want to mix them - but none complained about them being too much to handle.

"Alright," said Sephiroth eventually, patting his belly, "now you can give me the second news. What was it?"

"Oh, not much," said Genesis modestly. "I just wanted to let you know that, after all this training we got here these days, I called Domino earlier today and enrolled us both for ShinRa's annual dance marathon challenge."

"SAY WHAAAAT?!"

The howl penetrated the skies up to the very last heaven where Angeal was trying to enjoy his afterlife. He peeked from above and smacked his brow on a cloud with a pained mien, watching one enraged silverhead chasing, Masamune in hand, a well-known red-headed twit, who was shaking with insane laughter while he ran.

"Family." he groaned. "You gotta love it indeed."

Aand... th-th-that-th-that's all, folks!

For any Gen/Seph interaction lover who wishes to chase me with forks and torches right now, I think Genesis' brotherly love for Seph transpares well enough from this fic. Like he said, dysfunctional families are the best!

This whole thing was written, just so you know, because I always hated the guts of the Nibelheim canon. For the life of me, I could never get it how someone could go crazy in like five minutes over learning that they had some loopy genes spliced on them. Also no one can be such a dumbface, methinks, as to not figure out such a thing after a whole life having to do with Hojo the Slimeball - and such a wuss as to fall on their arse over a thing like this after surviving the atrocities of a war!

After all, it doesn't matter how you were born. It matters what you choose to do with what you've got. It's as simple as that.

Btw, there are all kinds of references from various movies and the like. Good luck finding them! :p

(Also the incidental bits of lyrics hummed by Seph and Zack belong to their respective authors and were only used to their glory, so as to make everyone go and listen to those awesome musical pieces.)