FN: I couldn't find any other way to define this so here it is, a look inside
Sephiroth's mind, or several of them, its just the things he deals with in the
Lifestream/his own head. Oh by the way I recently upgraded from HighschoolStudent 4.0 to PreColledgeStudent 1.0, check out the new bitchin' update rate!

Chapter 27: I'm walking down the line, that divides me somewhere in my mind.

My moment of Un-Truth: The best part of "believe" is the "lie".

Sephiroth was tired of fighting himself. Literarily. He flipped backwards barely managing to avoid an arching blow from Masamune. He was tired, and panting, that shouldn't have been possible, but then he had been fighting for hours, and so, well... he was panting, too. There was a subtle difference between him and the Sephiroth trying to kill him. His doppelganger had bangs that defied gravity, arcing up before falling along the sides of his face.

Other than that, exact same face, same Masamune, and most unfortunate of all, exact same skill. Sephiroth faced himself and scowled. "I can't believe what you're doing." The other Sephiroth just scowled back at him. "What do you know? You betrayed your mother!" Sephiroth barley managed to dodge a sword thrust from his doppelganger. "Like blood matters!"

The two Masamunes slammed against each other; they were getting too tired for fancy maneuvers. Now they were just throwing all the strength they had left at each other. "Next thing you're gong to be telling me that you're doing this for your father!" Lines either from anger or tiredness crisscrossed his double's face. "I have no father!" Sephiroth stayed calm though his arms felt like they might give out any moment. "His name is Simon Hojo. And he never cared any more for us than your 'mother' did! Family is a crutch, and if you'll never beat me if you're lame!"

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter was that unless Sephiroth was much mistaken, he still might lose this fight. "Get out of my sight! What do you think you're fighting for?" If Sephiroth had to keep this up for another second his arms would give up. Fine, he knew what he had to do. "Myself! The same thing you are!"

Sephiroth lashed out with a strong kick from his combat boots to that one area in which even he was vulnerable. His fake dropped his copy of Masamune, and Sephiroth was finally able to drop the sword he no longer had the strength to swing. Of course he also knew that even after a blow like that, he would be back on his feet fairly soon. So Sephiroth didn't waste time, he leapt at himself, dragging both of them to the ground, as much as any ground existed in the black void that they fought in.

"I don't care who you think you are. I'm smarter than you!" Sadly as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the Jenova worshiping Sephiroth slugged him in the mouth, hard. Sephiroth could feel blood in his mouth, that and at least one tooth. Maybe those would grow back as quickly as broken bones did. Maybe Sephiroth was like a shark, with one row of teeth after another waiting for him if he needed them. But what did that matter?

He tossed and turned, wrestling with himself for a death grip, but neither one of him was able to gain a clear advantage, at least until Sephiroth finished waiting. When his own eyes were completely open looking at him with hatred, he opened his mouth and spat. The blood that had been collecting in his mouth splashed into those hate filled eyes.

For a moment they closed, and Sephiroth knew it was now or never. Both of his hands wrapped tight around his own neck. "Don't think of this as me killing you, think of it as assisted suicide!" Sephiroth watched his own limbs flail helplessly as he wrenched his own neck.

He watched those hateful eyes close again, and he didn't loosen his grip till he was sure they would never open. He knew he could hold his breath for a very, very long time, so he made sure to do a good job. He kept choking himself even after he was sure that he was dead. "You poor deluded fool... look what you went and made me do..."

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My White Whale: You thought you were there to guide me, you were only in my way. You're wrong if you think that ill be just like you

"I can give you everything you want." Sephiroth kept his back to Jenova since he couldn't walk away. "You can give me nothing that I can't get on my own." Jenova was not dissuaded. "I can give you power." Sephiroth chuckled. "I think I have all the power I want." "I can give you riches." "You obviously haven't seen how big my bank account is." "I can give you friends." "I had Zack until you killed him." "I can give you more friends, friends who will never die."

"Thanks, but I'd rather keep pets now." "I can give you family." "I don't want a family. Face it, you don't know even know what it is I want." "Then tell me and I will give it to you." "Really?" "Yes my son." "Then give me a childhood. One without bars or cages or tears. Tears cried because I couldn't take one more injection, or one more blood test. Tears I cried because I had to watch those failed clones of me die off one at a time. A childhood where people coughed to clear their throats and not practically cough up their own lungs.

A childhood with sunrises and sunsets instead of electric lights? A childhood with real food instead of being fed various mixes of steroids and nutrients through IV lines? A childhood with nothing to do instead of countless hours of exercise? Can you give me that Jenova? Not just memories, but an actual childhood? Can you?" "..." "That's what I thought."

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My mentor: Son, what have you done?

"You've killed so many people." Sephiroth looked at Dr. Gaste and decided to sit down on nothing so that he could look up to the one man he respected. "Yes. But I don't
regret it. They were killed in self defense." Dr. Gaste glared at Sephiroth but with sadness rather than anger. "Sephiroth, true self defense involves not giving people a reason to kill you."

Sephiroth couldn't bring himself to even glance at Aeris' father. "I was never strong enough, Doctor. I needed purpose, I needed discipline to fight Jenova, and the only place I felt I could get them was in the army." Sephiroth didn't have to see Gaste's eyes to know he was crying. "So you traded your life for how many others?" Sephiroth some how found the strength to look at Gaste. "I traded the life of the planet for how many lives, Gaste? If I wasn't here to fight Jenova, who would be?" Gaste took off his glasses and took a moment to dry the tears from them.

"The others, Sephiroth. The others can do fine without you." Sephiroth felt his own eyes starting to feel wet but he simply refused to cry. "The others can do fine without me. But tell me this: could the others have gotten together without me? James has no true sense of right and wrong, he's a child, Mirri is just along because I convinced her, your daughter because I found her, Alex because I freed him, Niro because he sought me out, Vincent, well, you know how he is, and Melkore doesn't have an altruistic bone in his body.

They got together because I brought them together. I needed to do that Gaste, and I don't know anyone else who could have done it. I don't regret what I did. I've done something horrible I've done several horrible things. But I can't regret them now. We can't be afraid of our power, me any more than your daughter. We can't be afraid of it while we fight. I know it's hard for her, because every day I wake up and want to scream. I'm right on the edge of how much power the human body can posses before it rips itself apart."

At that point Sephiroth finally did laugh. "A human body, is that even the right way to describe me? Maybe I'm something like James, something that vaguely resembles a human, but simply isn't. Hell, am I even as human as James? Maybe I'm just a weapon, passing from hand to hand. I was designed to be Shinra's weapon, but then Hojo stole me for Jenova. Then you passed me into the hands of the Planet, and then back to Shinra, almost to Jenova, and now to the Planet again.

A perfect circle with no loose ends and no escape. I'm just a weapon, yes, that's exactly what I am, Doctor, a weapon. Angel or demon, they're both weapons, only the hand that wields them is different. I've never been a person, I'll never be a person, no family, I'm just Sephiroth Masamune, Masamune Sephiroth, user and weapon fused together."

Now Sephiroth actually was crying, so much for his vaunted emotional control. "Catch 22 Sephiroth." Sephiroth looked back at Gaste. "What?" Gaste looked like he no more wanted to go down whatever road the two of them had been set on than Sephiroth did. "Catch 22. Any mind capable of grasping the concept of its own insanity is by nature sane. Are you anything but a weapon? I'd stake my life that you are a person, actual and whole. And I'm not only willing to bet my life on it, but my daughter's as well. She couldn't be in better hands." Somehow Sephiroth doubted that considering that he was here, and Aeris was somewhere out there.

Still, all the same, Gaste walked over and ran a hand as far down Sephiroth's hair as far he could. "You're more than a person, you're a man Sephiroth. That means that I can't tell you if you've been right or wrong. All I can tell you is what I see. Just promise me you'll never forget the faces of those you kill." Sephiroth did and he didn't have to ask why.

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My Female Trouble: This guilt feels so familiar.

"Aeris, you don't have to do this." "Sephiroth, I do. Who is left to speak for the Cetra?" "Let the Cetra speak for themselves. I didn't let the spirits of the dead drag me down with them, you don't have to either." "I'm doing this for all the right reasons." "Does it matter for what reasons you do something like this?" "I have to think it does." "I know it doesn't." "Then what are you going to do?" "I'll keep going." "If you do this Aeris, I'll have to stop you."

"If you try, I'll have to stop you Sephiroth." "Aeris, you know more than anyone that nothing can stop me." Aeris' voice broke into a beautiful rhythmic chant. It was interrupted once by the sound of Masamune sliding free from its sheath. It was ended by the sound of Masamune slicing through skin so smoothly that Sephiroth could only hope it didn't even cause pain.

Then Sephiroth dropped Masamune, he no longer needed it. "Aeris forgive me. Forgive me Aeris, forgive me and tell me that you'd do the same in my shoes." Aeris' severed head couldn't respond, so the only sound to fill the City of the Ancients was a sound akin to shattering glass as Sephiroth crushed the Black Materia he had taken from Aeris' hand till all that was left was dust.

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My First Kill: If there was another way to go, I missed it 20 long years ago. My life was a war that could never be won, they gave me a number and murdered Valjean.

FN: It should be pointed out that the next two segments, unlike the rest of this chapter, are not mental fantasies of Sephiroth's, they're his memories, so the following events actually took place.

Sephiroth waited. He had been waiting for almost a month now. It wasn't a problem, really. He could wait forever. No that was too much, he could wait 'til the perfect moment, he wouldn't wait a moment beyond that. They knew that he was getting stronger, they just didn't realize how much stronger.

They had to keep giving him different types of tranquillizers because his body was getting used to them and learning to neutralize them as soon as they were administered. He had been playing them for two months now. They thought it took 24 hours for his body to get used to the drugs. It took 12. They wouldn't be changing the dosage for another five hours now. Sephiroth had already spent a very long 7 hours in this mako filled tank, doing nothing but trying to look like he was more out of things than a man who had been looking for a cigarette and ended up with a joint, instead. It was the most goddamn boring s that the Planet could ever possibly have conceived.

And he had borne it for a over a month. 12 hours like this for day after day. It was amazing what you could learn to live with. The sound of feet on the metal floor made Sephiroth's entire body tingle with pleasure. He knew the schedules, knew them by heart, he had nothing to do but memorize them. There was no one who was supposed to come to him at this time. How wonderful, that must have meant that Hojo was back; Sephiroth couldn't wait to show him everything he had learned.

He didn't open his eyes, he just let his ears tell him everything he needed. There was no way that Sephiroth wouldn't be able to recognize Hojo's voice even in this mako tank. "You see, this is my greatest triumph, my son Sephiroth!" It was Hojo's voice, that meant it was time to act. Sephiroth couldn't afford to mess this up, he'd have only one chance. But one chance was all Sephiroth needed, one chance, in so many miserable years of life, he wouldn't let it go down the drain.

"How could you do this to your son?" Hojo laughed at that, of course he did. "How? How? You need to ask how, look! I've done it!" "Why?" "Why? That is as foolish a question as 'how' my dear woman! I did it because this is what science is for! To test, to examine, to pull apart and put back together, to see what exactly humanity is capable of. Sephiroth will stretch the limits of human achievement; become the definition of human perfection! Not just his body, but his mind as well is more capable than anything that has ever come before. All of this is just to see what we are capable of, why must we know that? Because we can! After all, when you have the power to do something, it's very hard not to try!"

Sephiroth opened his eyes. Hojo, a few guards, a woman, and her child, Sephiroth could deal with that just fine. He put his hands against the tank and thought hard. Mako has a much higher heat of vaporization than water. But it also takes a lot higher temperature to melt glass than it does to turn water into steam. Sephiroth wasn't sure exactly what the temperature was, he didn't care.

He could make fire hot enough. Sephiroth could make stone burn (he was pretty sure that was technically impossible: it should have melted first, but he could make it ignite). The mako bubbled and fizzled, as Sephiroth's hands did their job. The tank was made of bulletproof glass, so he couldn't just punch through it. However, it took more than that to hold him. Hojo wanted to see what his son was capable of? He would.

The glass began to bubble and crack, then finally shattered, and the mako that hadn't evaporated started to drain from the tank. He went with it, he took only a moment, to wipe mako from his eyes, and then he was up on his feet. "SHOOT HIM!" Hojo was too slow. The guards were too slow. Even the bullets were too slow. Sephiroth was faster than all of them.

The closest guard was his target, and Sephiroth killed him. He did it splendidly. A kick to the guard's chest to make him go down on his knees, and then his neck was low enough for Sephiroth to reach. It was his first kill, and it was so easy. It was just like that time, had it been only two years ago? Dr. Gaste had leaned over him, and smiled at Sephiroth's sweat furrowed brow. "Sephiroth, you'll never get the bottle open like that however strong you are. You need to do it like this." Lift and twist he had said. Lift and twist, and the man's neck snapped in Sephiroth's small hands.

But he didn't have time for more reminiscing; he grabbed the guard's 9MM pistol from his unresisting hand. "You want me to be thankful to you Hojo, to like you, for what you've done to me? How very foolish you are, and how very foolish I am, because I do. Thank you father. Thank you for this immortal body, thank you for this defective life. This hatred that is all I know is quite insufficient for expressing the gratitude I feel for each and every one of you. Now give me freedom so that I can know what it means to live!" Sephiroth turned around, the guard he had just killed had been the slowest and had only had time to get his gun ready, he had not fired a single shot. Shinra standard 9MM pistol, seven rounds. There were seven guards, Sephiroth had their locations relative to him burned into his mind's eye.

He pulled the trigger, he moved and pulled it again, again and again and again. Then he turned around, and inspected his handiwork. Shinra body armor didn't stop a headshot from penetrating your skull, and that was just what Sephiroth had done. Seven other guards, seven head shots, and Sephiroth had been looking the other way. Moving like a bolt of silver lightning, Sephiroth was suddenly in front of Hojo.

"Are you impressed? Because unlike Gaste I'm not just running, I'm going to shoot my way out of here, and take these two with me, just to piss you off." Then a swift open palm (granted all of his fingers pointed towards Hojo as he delivered it) strike in the right place. "That didn't break your spine, just shifted it. Your going to walk crooked for the rest of your crooked life, which will last until you run into me again. Now you can sleep." Some people needed subliminal training, others needed magic, Sephiroth preferred a good simple whack to the head from an empty gun.

Hojo crumpled and Sephiroth dropped the pistol. Then once again he raced around the room as fast as he could, grabbing the two guards' automatic rifles. They were almost too large for him, almost, but he held onto them with sheer determination. Then he turned to the mother and daughter. "Follow me as best as you can. But I make no promises about getting you out of this alive."

The mother tugged her child's arm forcing her to move her feet. Sephiroth quickly searched Hojo and found what he needed, his key card. Then, he raced to the elevator that
would go down to the first floor and out of this building. He knew plenty about Midgar
and Shinra HQ from what Gaste had told him, and what he had gleaned from unsuspecting
guards. Sephiroth said nothing during the elevator down all 60 plus floors to either of them. Conversation was unimportant, and Sephiroth needed to be perfectly prepared. When the doors did open, he was.

The secretary was first. Sephiroth riddled the length of the desk and area around it with bullets. The secretary wouldn't have any guns, it wasn't self defense, but any court that wasn't run by Shinra would have forgiven him after hearing his side of the story. Then he started shooting the guards on the first floor. None of them had a chance. The ones on the second floor walkways had cover though, and they fired downwards as the three raced towards the door out.

Sephiroth didn't bother to try and dodge. There was a slight stinging sensation, he couldn't help but notice from the brief glimpses he caught of the ammunition coming his way that they were shooting him with silver bullets, how pathetic. If they had been using mako tipped ones they might have been able to stop him, but silver? Someone must have been reading too many fairytales to think that silver would work against him. Sadly, you didn't need special bullets to kill an ordinary woman or her child. Sephiroth heard the impact, heard her fall to the floor. He swore mentally.

That made things much more complicated, he could still get out just fine, but he would get these two out, if he could. He tossed the empty gun in his right hand towards the secretary's desk and it landed exactly where he wanted it to. It triggered the alarm that had been the reason for shooting the secretary. The bulletproof shutter started to lower in front of the door out. Started to was the key word. Sephiroth turned around, emptied several rounds at the guards on the upper floors, and then grabbed the woman with his empty right hand.

She weighed next to nothing, and halfway pulling half way carrying, he got her out just as the bulletproof shutters closed. It would take Shinra a while to open those shutters and that while was all he needed. "The train isn't far, we're almost out." The woman began to cough and splutter without words coming out and the child stayed silent, either completely caught up in the moment, or too young to talk, Sephiroth didn't know. Or care, really.

One way or another, the group managed to get make their way to the train, and Sephiroth showed his amazing understanding of how to win arguments with normal people. "Get us to Sector Seven now, or I'll kill you." This statement mixed with having a gun in your hands proved a potent combination. The conductor didn't spare the throttle, which proved that Sephiroth was right.

Finally sure that he had succeeded, Sephiroth turned his attention to his two hitchhikers. The woman still looked like her entire body was rocking in pain, and the girl looked on in fear. Sephiroth did a quick examination of the wound pattern, and knew instantly that anything he could do for her would have been pointless. So he turned his attention to the girl. "I'm Sephiroth, you are?"

The girl wrung her so small hands in fear but finally managed to speak. "Aeris." Sephiroth nodded. "All right Aeris, don't worry. The human mind has great ability to heal its own wounds. The amygdala is responsible for limiting the senses so as to protect the brain over all from psychological defects. Unlike me, you have a perfectly good brain."

Sephiroth didn't feel like saying that his father had apparently decided that a selective lobotomy would A: give him greater combat abilities and B; make his life more of a living hell. "I promise you Aeris. Your mother is going to die, I'm going to drop you into the middle of Lower Midgar which is almost as bad as what I just got out of, without anyone to look after you, because I have other places I need to be.

I swear to you however that in a moment, you won't remember any of this, or anything leading up to it either. But the best part is, I won't at all be harming you. You'll get a clean slate of memories personality wise, but you'll still know how to do everything like walk and talk. Believe me, I would give anything for some one to do to me what I'm about to do to you. Sadly the place I'm about to stuff all these unfortunate memories to doesn't exist in my mind anymore.

Believe me, the name Sephiroth will never even ring a bell, sweet dreams." Sephiroth executed the move perfectly. It disturbed him to know that he could do it. Maybe he should have done it to Hojo. No, then whoever the "new" Hojo was, Sephiroth wouldn't have been able to hold everything he had done against him. Of course it also might not have worked as cleanly against someone who had 35 years of memory instead of three.

Then Sephiroth turned his attention to the woman. "I promise you that it won't hurt anymore." Then Sephiroth fired. And fired, and fired. He emptied all of the ten remaining shots he had at point blank range. It had to be a better place she was going to. Any place had to be better than here in Midgar choking as your blood slowly seeped into your
own lungs. Sephiroth breathed a silent prayer to how effectively the human brain
normally was at disengaging parts of itself in order to maintain functionality overall. Now if only he had a normal brain.

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My Drive-By: You can't kill me I'm immortal

Zack was drunk. That was why Sephiroth was driving. It hadn't done much for his mood to go out and watch Zack go through the process of getting drunk on a large quantity of liquor and hitting on every girl in the bar until he finally collapsed. So Sephiroth had carried him out to the car and strapped him in. Then Sephiroth started to drive back to Shinra HQ.

The other guy wasn't as drunk as Zack. That made him more dangerous, because he was sober enough to operate heavy machinery. Sephiroth did everything he could, but the car wasn't as fast as he was, not by far. He would have walked back to Shinra HQ with Zack slung over his shoulder, but it was Zack's car, and leaving a car unattended overnight in Sector Seven was like tossing a rock into the ocean, you could be sure you would never see it again.

So try as he might, the extreme speed with which he turned the wheel or hit the brake didn't matter. The guy swerved over the line right in front of Sephiroth. The two slammed into each other hard and fast. At the last second Sephiroth realized that he had been so busy making sure Zack was safely strapped in that he didn't remember to buckle himself in as well.

Those thoughts flashed through his mind on the way to the windshield. Then he hit it head first, there was a brief tinge of pain as the entire windshield shattered; several parts of it sticking into him. Then he went over the other guy's cars hit the ground hard, and finally rolled to a stop. Then he laughed.

He laid there in the middle of that horrible accident and laughed. Because if this was all that karma could come up with, it would have to try a lot harder. He stood back up, and
brushed himself off in a shower of glass. There were still a few shards left in him
however. He could feel them stinging him. He didn't bother trying to pick them out. The
glass wasn't as determined as Sephiroth's skin was. It realized that it needed to seal itself
up so it kept replicating till finally it pushed the glass out and then went ahead with its work.

Still feeling light headed, he walked around the car that had slammed into his. On foot he was quite sure he could avoid any attempt to run him down. Then he carefully inspected the status of the other driver, and laughed again. That poor idiot hadn't been wearing his seatbelt either.

But he wasn't Sephiroth. He wasn't alive. He was a mess on the ground that might have once been human. Sephiroth sat down next to him, and laughed at the absurdity of it. Midgar was a city that never slept. Seeing the accident, its people instantly realized that something was wrong, and got out of the lane, though not a single person stopped to see what had happened. It was terribly funny.

This man had doubtlessly thought he was invincible, and now Sephiroth looked at what was left of him, idly wondering how long till the scavengers (which were the one part of Midgar that you could always count on) showed up and began to eat his body. A man had gone and killed himself, and by all rights Sephiroth should have been dead.

No, not by all rights. Sephiroth had been shot and stabbed, why should this have killed him? It was the nature of insanity to think that if you did the same thing over and over again you would get a different result. Over and over again Sephiroth had been hammered, and time after time he got back up, dusted himself off, and then laughed.

Laughed in the face of his own "mortality", and why not? Your sense of mortality was supposed to keep you safe. It was supposed to keep you from doing something like what this man had just done. Yet, Sephiroth had done everything right that night, and here he was. It had not been his sense of mortality that had saved him, but the mako and Jenova in his veins.

It hadn't saved him by stopping this from happening, it had saved him by doing just that. It had healed his wounds almost as fast as they had opened. He had felt one of his shoulders become dislocated when he had landed. In response to that sensation he had simply made a slight adjustment of how he held himself and it had popped back into place.

He had felt his kneecap break, and he had felt the bones knit as quickly as an amoeba splitting from one being into two. He had gone headfirst through a windshield and his mind had told him exactly "ouch" in the process then gotten to work. Most people didn't have bodies like that. Most people didn't get second, third, fourth, fifth, numbers beyond reckoning, chances. Most people ended up dead. And what, exactly was he doing with it? Well, who really cared?

FN: Sephiroth says don't drink and drive. If you're going to drink, be like Reno and make sure to hang around with somebody who doesn't, why else do you think he tolerates Elena?

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(FN: We're back in the land of stuff that's all in Sephiroth's mind, this should make the change fairly obvious)

My Nickname: For everything I long to do, no matter when or where or who, has one thing in common, too, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin. It's a sin!

The wall exploded inward with absolutely no warning. Pride was through it first, his long silver hair trailing behind him. Dr. Simon Hojo's face turned a very unhealthy shade of white at the sight of him. "What are you doing here?" Pride made one simple motion and spoke one single sentence. "Lust, show the doctor our gratitude for these second lives he has given us."

Lust thrust her hand forward, palm open and suddenly her fingernails transformed into claws that grew in length until they pinned Hojo to the floor one on either side of his labcoat. "Greed, make sure that Sloth is okay. I want all seven of us to get out of here. Wrath, make sure that we're not disturbed."

Wrath saluted, his small body practically humming with energy as he raced over to the elevator. He planted his hands on the wall next to it and inside a few seconds what once had been an elevator door had become a solid wall of metal. "That should slow them down some." Greed delivered a hammer blow to the glass tank shattering it into pieces. "Hey Sloth, how you doing?" Sloth got up slowly running her hands through her brown hair. "Better now."

Gluttony having been given no orders was slowly edging towards Hojo and licking his lips. "Come on Pride, let me eat him. I want him to suffer for what he did to her! How dare he leave the woman I loved to feed the worms?" Pride considered the long term reasons why he shouldn't give into that request, there weren't many. "Maybe later Gluttony. Right now, the good doctor is going to show us the fruits of his labor. After all, he's had countless prisoners of war and criminals to work with, so I'm quite sure that he'll have what we want ready for us."

Hojo squirmed but had no success at freeing himself form his labcoat and thus the impediment it was currently inflicting on him. "Is that all you care about Pride?" Pride stroked his chin with a delicate finger thinking long and hard. "Well there are a multitude of other things, but no matter how I try they always seem to come back to that stone. You know how it's the key to making us human again.

Not that I'm complaining, per se, this entire feeling no pain and near immortality is hardly a 'curse' but something about seeing the world five seconds before everyone else with one eye tends to give me a migraine. Not to mention that every time I look in a mirror, I can't help but be reminded how foolish this eye patch looks. Oh and Envy, feel free to indulge in some identity theft any time now, we would hardly want people to think something is going wrong in here. Well, just tell them that some lab experiment escaped that should buy us plenty of time."

Envy nodded, and in a few moments there was another Simon Hojo in the room and heading out of it. "I'll make this quick; there are some shapes even I find distasteful." Pride pulled off the black eye patch he wore revealing the "eye" underneath. It had no pupil, but instead an odd design in red, it was a serpent devouring its own tail, with six triangles inside of it, three large, three small.

"So lets talk about you and me, Hojo. You shoved a shard of the devil's own heart into mine, and now I want the whole thing." Suddenly in a burst of panic Hojo finally managed to tear himself free from his labcoat and make a break for it. He got all of five feet before a blast of highly pressurized water slammed into him, sending him sprawling.

"Nice shot, Sloth, I was afraid that I would have to chase him down." Sloth smiled widely at Pride's compliment. "Well on one hand I could see he was about to do it from the look in your eye, on the other I was just riding the wave." Pride's sword came out of its sheath and came back down in Hojo's shoulder. "Now then Doctor, you gave something very important to us, and we're not going to be satisfied till we get the rest of it. So for the last time before I let Gluttony turn you into a one course meal, where is the Philosopher's Stone?"

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My Transition: Angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Sephiroth collapsed face first into the small puddle of water. Two hydrogens bonded to an oxygen in the liquid phase of matter had never seemed so appealing. The water tried to drown him but it had underestimated its opponent. As hard as it tried Sephiroth tried harder to drink every single drop of water in that puddle which he succeeded at in the end, though it felt like he swallowed some sand as well.

Not that he cared. He wasn't sure how long he had been in this place, or where it was. But he was sure of one thing, you couldn't walk around this place without taking in sand even as you breathed. He wasn't even sure why he kept trying, there was nothing he could hope to achieve. But apparently he just wasn't ready to die.

That was why when there wasn't any more water left in the small hole, he started to dig at to see if there was any more within reach. There was more liquid but it wasn't water. A fountain of Lifestream emerged a moment after Sephiroth's fingers felt dampness beneath them and he barely got out of the deeper hole he had dug fast enough. Now he felt like he was ready to finally give up the ghost and become one.

/This is my blood poured out for you.\ Sephiroth looked into the Lifestream and saw only his own reflection. So this was what real insanity actually felt like, somehow he had expected it to be more flamboyant. He rested his head in the sand and looked up into a sky completely devoid of clouds that might offer any protection from the glaring sun or give promise of rain.

"If I had a chocobo right now I'd have named it to have given me something to call him when I talked to him to pass the boredom. Of course by now I'd also have eaten him to fight off starvation." /You are full of determination.\ Sephiroth decided that he might as well talk to the voices in his head, there wasn't that much left to lose. Besides it wasn't like he would be alone that much longer anyways. All around him lay bones parched white by the sun, and so Sephiroth expected to finally accomplish in death what he never had in life, fitting in.

"Yes I am. It's about the only things I have left because it's something that they couldn't take from me however hard they tried." /With enough determination, anything is possible, even making a place like this into a paradise.\ "Go find someone else. All I do is kill." /Anything capable of performing an action can perform the opposite action.\ Sephiroth unsheathed Masamune.

He wasn't sure what he was still doing with it. It was weight that he didn't need since he hadn't encountered anything he couldn't have killed with his bare hands out here. In fact he hadn't encountered any animals out here. Not to mention in his current condition the fact that it was weight he didn't need had started to matter. "I don't know what universe you live in but, in mine, you can't knit bones with a sword."

The voice was undeterred. /The tool's purpose is determined by its design, the hand selects the tool, the mind controls the hands. All that you need to do is realize what you are capable of.\ Sephiroth already knew what he was capable of. He was capable of turning the entire world into a desert like this one if he wasn't careful. Summoning up what little extra strength the water had given him he crawled off and the returned with a skull.

It had been easy to select because it had been different in just the right way from all the others. "Alas, poor Firecat. I knew him, Voice, a fellow of most infinite and excellent jest." This finally managed to successfully befuddle the voice. /You laugh at the concept of death?\ Sephiroth tossed the skull away. "Not really. I never learned how to laugh, and I got tired of crying a long time ago."

/Then ponder this. The river of life is death itself to most who touch it, yet the body of one whose only desire is destruction has in it capacity to greatly increase life.\ Sephiroth did, he might have found it amusing if he hadn't been so tired. "What's your point? I can hardly be expected to help this place when I can't help myself." /Then learn to help yourself.\

Sephiroth glared at the pool of green. "I've tried. I've helped myself to every opportunity that came my way." /Then perhaps you would be interested in mine. Would you be surprised if I said I wished you for an avatar?\ Sephiroth wasn't. It was a job that it seemed everyone wanted to have him for.

"That's how you work isn't it? You and Jenova are both puppet masters, but while she demands to be the ones holding the strings, you simply arrange it so that we pull our own strings to your liking. Do you need to ask me if I want to stop Shinra? Do you need to ask me if I want to destroy Jenova?" /Yes, I will admit that I have a preference for natural selection.\

As Sephiroth considered it all very slowly his almost-fried brain managed to make all of the pieces involved line up perfectly and he started to laugh. It was a incredibly stupid thing to do and he knew it, not only because of the absurdity but the eventual tears that his great laughter eventually brought with it were a waste of what little salt and water his body had left.

"You want me, back out there, so that I can serve as an antibody to Jenova! To do what your Cetra couldn't, because you only bring death naturally and Jenova's lifespan is probably something close to infinite. But you know that I can look someone in the eyes and kill them, however old or young, however strong or weak, if I want their death. That's why you need me, I'm a benign form of Jenova, which by natural processes makes me her vaccine." /On a strictly micrological level, correct.\

Sephiroth didn't really care. Why should he care whose side he ended up on as long as they shared his desires. Except that no one, not even Aeris gave things away for free. "What do you want from me then? Besides Jenova's head on a platter and her body in an incinerator?" /To fully destroy Jenova you must be able to heal yourself and others.\ "Not a chance. We do what we know, and what I know is killing. Even Dr. Gaste didn't try to teach me differently, he just taught me how to be more civically minded with my death dealing." /What if I was to teach you?\ "How do you intend to do that?"

/If you trust me, drink, and you will know what to do.\ Sephiroth didn't see much choice in the matter any more. Considering his current statement the fact that what he was about to do might leave him out of touch with reality was probably a blessing. He ran a hand through the Lifestream (grateful he was still wearing gloves) and cupped it to his mouth. At first there was an immense sensation of all the blood in his body rushing to his head. This surprised Sephiroth since he didn't think there was enough liquid left in his blood for it to rush anywhere.

After that came a sensation that his entire body was one fire, but this was preferable to the previous sensation that his entire body was about to become dehydrated, literarily. He drank and drank, and unlike the water there didn't seem to be any lack of Lifestream. When he was finally finished true to the planet's word he knew what to do. He got up and walked over to James' skull, picking it up and returning to where it had previously been.

"Is your curiosity sated?" He turned to another skeleton laying near James', apparently female. "SOLDIER you best get yourself together on the double!" He walked from one pile of bones to another lingering long enough to offer some statement. To one that had no left arm. "I'm not finished yet and that better mean you aren't either!" To one that had a stringless guitar (the strings were probably being used to line some buzzards nest) laying across it. "We had a contract, and I don't remember any clause about it being broken by death." To one that was almost human but had a different number of ribs and other structural changes. "It's all your choice, but I think I know what you'll do." To one that was obviously lupine in nature. "If you can die for the planet's will, you better be able to live for it!"

Finally he stopped by the last skeleton, another female. He got down on his knees before it and kissed the skull where the lips would have been had it not be without skin. "GAIA, GIVE MY LOVER LIFE!" That kicked it off. He jumped back as he heard the sound and was thankful for it. Seven towering pillars of Lifestream erupted like geysers from the ground right beneath the skeletons. Nothing, not even this desolate place, could resist the command of pure life.

Where bits of Lifestream splashed on the ground grass or plants grew. Where lots of it landed trees grew. Sephiroth marveled as he watched the process of genesis unfold before him in record time. Invertebrates, insects, reptiles, birds and then mammals. Lifestream wasn't the only thing coming out of the ground now. Crystal clear water, exploded forth in great quantity creating lakes that Sephiroth doubted would be long devoid of aquatic life.

And when the 7 veins of Lifestream finally descended in their place they left seven bodies, complete with skin, flesh, sinews, and all the other trappings of that marvelous annoyance known as "life" which, needless to say included chests going up and down. /You have a great deal of life inside you, and it behooves you not to let it lie dormant.\ Sephiroth just nodded.

FN: If you can't find the religious metaphors, then you probably aren't trying hard enough.

------------------------

My two dads: Chains of love got a hold on me.

"Let's play wounds." The two white haired men sitting one to either side of Sephiroth at the bar both nodded at once. Both of them also had burning red eyes, though the one on his right, "Scar", wore his hair short and had a large white "X" carved on his face and favored a tan jacket, white shirt underneath and black pants. Meanwhile the one on his left, "Vlad", wore his white hair long and favored a loose red jacket with black pants and shirt underneath. Of course, because Sephiroth had suggested the game, he had to start.

He took off his right glove and let the proverbial gauntlet hit the table by showing off his "S" tattoo. "I got this by having a branding iron driven into my flesh and then having ink pumped into the wound. No anesthetic. Your call guys." Scar laughed, put down his drink and rolled up his right sleeve. "Kids stuff. You see this?" It was true he had a most impressive collection of tattoos running along his arm.

But it was not the tattoos he was pointing to, it was a small circle of un-tanned skin that was just above the tattoos. "This arm used to belong to my brother. How it came to be attached to me is a long story." Vlad lowered his collar revealing his circle of slightly paler skin on his neck. "I got this when I was beheaded. With an axe."

Scar evidently felt he could beat that, as he undid his brown jacket, then unbuttoned the white shirt beneath it and revealed a multitude of bullet holes in his chest that oozed spiritual essence. "I got these when I died. Standing in front of a woman who was far more bulletproof than I was." Sephiroth could beat that. He undid his black jacket and rolled up his shirt. Beneath it was a long gash in his chest running from just below his neck to his bellybutton. "I survived this one unlike you two quitters. A jackass trying to kill someone I care about drove a sword through my chest and into hers."

Both Scar and Vlad hung their heads. "Don't talk to me about love. I watched my own brother romancing a woman I was crazy about. So I had to call the woman I was having sexual fantasies about 'sister'. What do you people say to that?" For some reason reality "flinched" for Sephiroth at that moment and Sephiroth saw Scar with long black hair, but it passed. "I grew up in a science lab. The only reason I'm not more fed up is because I developed an incredibly high pain tolerance, and they realized fairly quickly that I was a one of a kind science experiment."

Vlad wasn't out of the game yet however and apparently he had saved the best for last. "When I was in my teens I was regularly sodomized by a fat man who apparently cared more for my 'company' than any of the chicks he had in his harem." Scar and Sephiroth put down their drinks and applauded while Vlad bowed. Sephiroth even took a moment to raise a pretend microphone to his lips. "Ladies and gentlemen, the undisputed champion!"

That brief game over and done with all three of them got back to their drinking. But the monster once stirred wouldn't sleep again. "Love" was in the air, or at least the topic was. "One of my wives committed suicide, after that, all my other relationships were soured by it." Sephiroth was skeptical. "How many more relationships would someone want if they had a wife commit suicide on them?" Vlad took a deep swig of his Mary's Blood before he answered. "Well I was only married once after that. Granted, it was to three woman at the same time."

Sephiroth and Scar fixed Vlad with the exact same look. Vlad just shrugged it off. "What can I say? It was good to be the king. You didn't have to get your wives on the installment plan like everyone else." Scar looked deeply into his mug. "Not long after the love of my life died I had to watch my home town get burned to the ground and its people scattered like dust in the wind, those that survived."

"I didn't even realize that the place where I happened to be was my home town until just before it was burned to the ground and everyone else there was burned or stabbed to death. Then it was rebuilt and actors were hired to play the parts of the people killed so no one would ever realize it had happened." That time Sephiroth felt like he had a distinct advantage over his companions. "Fing pope, I defended the faith, but churchy didn't give me no parade, they spat on me!"

Once again both Scar and Sephiroth slowly examined Vlad making sure that he wasn't about to have a screw pop lose and proceed to burn down the bar. Once they were sure he wasn't Sephiroth got back to the conversation. "You know what sucks the most? You can never realize that your in love because your parents, not that I really had any to tell me this kind of thing, well even if I had them I bet they wouldn't have explained it to you what love is really like. Because love isn't fat little naked babies with wings and arrows, love is a punch in the gut, it will bring you to your knees and hurt like hell, but eventually you get used to it. At least that's about as close as I can come to describing it."

Both Scar and Vlad raised their glasses and spoke in unison. "Sounds pretty right to me!" Since he was the center of attention, Sephiroth just kept talking. "Anyways, before you know it your finding every single insignificant flaw that you can with what she says, what she does and what she believes just so that you can try to justify that she's not good enough for you when our really worried about you being good enough for her." Scar raised his glass.

"Or your traveling all the way across the planet on foot, tracking down every single person belonging to the group of people who once wronged you so that you can watch as their brains burst out of their skulls." Sephiroth had more or less tried that one also, it wasn't a bad solution for how to deal with love.

"Or your deciding that since you haven't had any luck in four freaking centuries with women you should try a different approach. Next thing you know your getting shipped across the world in a luxury coffin sleeping with your arms around a barely pubescent, if consenting, boy who smokes till you love the smell of tobacco." Two bar stools scooted a few inches farther away from Vlad's. "You are a sick, sick man." Vlad just sulked.

"Listen, when your entire body is made of shadow, gender is like hairstyle, you change it to suit your needs. What's weird was that that relationship was probably the one which ended in the least amount of heartbreak and bloodshed of all the ones I've been involved in." Sephiroth sought solace in his drink rather than comment, and Scar did likewise. "Oh like you guys know so much about successful relationships." "Yes but at least we're never going to sink low enough to try that!" Both of them said it in the unison they had expected. "Fine, then, if you guys know so much about where to look for love why don't you tell me where it is?"

"A female werewolf who's physically old enough to be called a woman, mentally naive enough to be called a girl, and happens to be a member of a race which is an ancient enemy of the one which while being no direct relation to me, still makes up a considerable portion of my body."

"My dead brother's dead wife who my brother wasn't willing to leave as dead. So after she died he sacrificed a multitude of my people in order to bring her back to life. Or at least create a doll with her appearance who technically has all of her memories except that they're repressed. So between trying to spur on the people I'm trying to kill and murdering them herself, we run into each other now and again. Mainly she tries to kill me, and I try to kill her which is okay of course because due to the nature of her new state of existence, whenever she 'dies' she just consumes somebody else's life to renew her own."

Vlad was quite pleased with this knowledge. "See! And you guys think that I was messed up just for taking part in a relationship that had nothing to do with procreation." They all put down their drinks and then somehow the poisonous question escaped Sephiroth's lips. "Did you ever tell them you loved them?"

Scar shook his head. "Never seemed like a good time while she was married to my brother and while we were at each other's throats I didn't think it would achieve much. Which was probably why I jumped in front of that hail of bullets. Just so that I could finally let her know I loved her. Which however satisfying it was in the action, the result, just wasn't worth it."

Vlad shook his head. "The girl that I'm involved in a romance with now, basically I have to do anything she says. So I have fun passively aggressively torturing her with my offers of immortality and infinite power if she'll betray her church and basically everything her parents ever taught her. I know she's gonna give in sooner or latter. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day she's gonna give in. If I told her that I loved her it would totally derail this entire image of a heartless soulless monster that I've been working so hard to build up! Do you realize how hard I worked to build that image up in the first place?"

"I never did either. Wasn't sure of it, or afraid of what it would mean if I was. You know, all the standard reasons. Maybe we should give it a try though? I mean countless people manage to pair off every year. Its three simple words how hard can I be?" "Romancing dead woman." "Deflowering armed virgin." Sephiroth responded in kind. "Screw you jackasses. That's the first thing I'm going to do when I see her again, one way or another I'm going to tell her I love her..."

Sephiroth choked on his words however and came to a stop. "What's the matter?" "Yeah I liked hearing you make promises that your never gonna keep." Sephiroth glared at Vlad. "It's just that if I tell it to her, then its just going to give her an even bigger excuse to lean on me. I won't have that, I'd be happy to be in a romance with her if only I knew she could stand on her own two, or four, or however many legs she has in the situation." "I'd be happy if she was a vampire." "I think I like her personality better after she died. Less sitting on hills watching the world go by with my brother, more killing State Alchemists."

"I'm not saying I want someone like Mirri. I mean I know where that relationship would go, which is nowhere, there would be no emotional depth. Just me kicking ass, her kicking ass, me kicking ass, her kicking ass, me kicking ass, her kicking ass." Vlad's eyes were misting over. "Dude, how can you not want a relationship like that? You'll have to introduce me to this girl sometime." Sephiroth thought quickly. "She's already taken, or to be more exact she's already taken somebody."

Now it was Vlad and Scar's turn to comment at the exact same moment. "All the good ones are." "I'm just saying that there has to be some middle ground between kicking ass as the activity that consumes most of your free time, and growing flowers." "Growing flowers that kick ass? You know, like giant Venus flytraps." "Thank you for yet another stunning intellectual addition to the conversation, Vlad."

------------------------

My Own Personal Jesus: In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?

"Hello little albatross." James sat down next to Sephiroth. "Things are pretty cramped in here aren't they?" Sephiroth considered how much extra space James probably had in his mind and nodded. "Thirty years is a long time to remember everything James." James looked around at all the blackness and then back to Sephiroth. "If you don't have room, why don't you just let some of it go?"

Let some of it go. Such a novel notion, Sephiroth had never let anything go without a fight. James squinted slightly at Sephiroth as his greeting finally hit him. "What's with that? I thought albatrosses were bad luck."

"James that's the problem when you're force fed modern culture, you never realize that developed due to the previous culture. The albatross used to be the sailors' friend. Then one day some idiot was hungry and pulled out a crossbow, and THWACK albatross stew for dinner, and plenty of bad luck as a dessert that would last him all his life." James worked that out in his uncluttered mind and eventually came to both possible conclusions.

"So am I an albatross or are you?" As usual James saw into things with the kind of deep understanding that only a simple mind can produce. "I mean, you were Shinra's General until they left you in Nibelhiem, and I was, well for a while Jenova had me wrapped around her finger, or tentacle, or whatever." That "for a while" was about sixty seconds, and Sephiroth wished his tenure dealing with both Shinra and Jenova had been so short. "James do you know what they say about birds of a feather?"

"Yeah." Sephiroth couldn't stop himself from smiling. "Well then I think you have your answer right there." James did and scratched an ear though the way he looked at Sephiroth goaded him into saying more. "But then, James, we're all albatrosses. That's the natural human condition, an albatross. We come into this world so pure, so clean, so nice, and then it happens. Some bastard with a crossbow or a needle full of Jenova cells shoots us down so we limp off, and swear to get revenge on them and everyone. The saddest part is part of our revenge involves us turning into them. By the time its over we don't know who we are and we're shooting down our own albatrosses just to watch them fall. James, do something for me." "What Seph?" "Keep flying, keep dodging those bolts that everyone else is firing." James was now very confused. "What bolts?"

Somehow knowing that James didn't understand made Sephiroth happier. ""Heh, 'what bolts?' 'In what furnace was thy brain?' No, nothing albatross, nothing at all. Just keep flying, and some day when I'm able to grow a new set of wings, maybe I'll rejoin you in the sky. For now all I can do is grab a crossbow and start mowing down the people aiming at you." "I'll save a section of it just for you, Seph."

Sephiroth knew it was all in his mind, but that was his trick on the world. If it was all in his mind then it meant that somewhere in whoever he was today, somewhere in there was James. Somewhere if he looked deep enough into himself he could grow wings and dance in the sky without being held down be the weight of being Sephiroth. He could be happy with who he was as long as he was sure of who he could be.

FN: I should note that for "My Own Personal Jesus" I didn't use a line from a song. It was the fifth through eighth lines of "The Tiger", by William Blake Sephiroth's line in quotation marks also comes from it. Bonus points to anyone who realized it beforehand. More bonus points to anyone else who can tell me how I can get John Cleese's voice yelling "ALABATROSS" out of my head. I should point out that this chapter was added in at the last moment. Also, I had just started watching Full Metal Alchemist, does it show?

Oh and there's a theme running through the subchapter titles, a moogle to whoever can tell me.

OWAN: Don't worry, I'll come over in a few days and hit you with a rubber chicken. Hair of the dog, what? And what have I told you about offering people Moogles?