It was grotesque, even by Sephiroth's standards. He had hated Hojo, had often wished him dead in horrible ways, but he had never brought himself to follow through with it. In the end, he always decided that it would be beneath him to give into his baser urges to gut the man. The fallout afterwards would make it more trouble than it was worth.

Apparently Strife did not agree.

The entire lab was a disaster. Anything that was not bolted down was left in a twisted, melted heap. Every piece of glass was broken, windows, beakers, syringes, containers of any kind. His booted feet crunched over the shards as he walked. Even some of the unbreakable glass from the observation tanks had been shattered and melted down. How many times had he imagined doing that as a child?

He had been informed that the upper laboratory was in shambles as well. Liberal use of fire spells had been used to destroy every file and sample. There was nothing left of the computers but smoking piles of plastic. Even back up computers and storage drives located in other areas of the building had been destroyed.

The most impressive piece had been a tank in the lower labs that had been forcibly ripped from the wall and crushed into misshapen scrap. There had been mako in the tank, but Sephiroth had no idea what else it had housed. Whatever it had been was burnt into ash.

It was easily millions of dollars of gil in damages and at the center of it was Hojo's head.

It was like a strange shrine. There was only one metal table that had been left untouched in the middle of the room. In the center of the table was Hojo's head. His hair was still held back in its normal ponytail and his glasses hung crookedly from his nose, but there was nothing beyond his chin. His body was nowhere to be seen.

Sephiroth forced himself to examine what remained of Hojo. The cut had been made clean, one solid blow from a sharp blade. It had likely been a quick death. Sephiroth was not sure if he was disappointed by that.

He spotted a Turk, a redhead with a wrinkled jacket. It took him a moment to remember the Turk's name, Reno, a sign of just how tired he was.

If Reno was disturbed to suddenly have Shinra's most dangerous weapon at his side, he did not show it, "General."

"You were the first on the scene?" Sephiroth asked.

"After the assistant who sounded the alarm. Cameras went down at about ten o'clock. Security got a dummy feed of the empty lab. No one heard anything, yo. Don't know how you do this kind of damage without making noise." Reno shook his head, hands jingling gil coins in his pocket, "At about ten forty-seven an assistant came back to the labs because she forgot her keys. Said the place was like this and some of the metal was still smoldering. Nobody in sight."

Sephiroth nodded, "The president?"

"Dead as fuck, yo."

Sephiroth had not expected that, "Explain."

Reno's lips twitched, disinterested façade cracking. Sephiroth was not sure if it was the memory or the order that caused it, "He was torn apart and left around his office. It was not pretty. Rufus is taking care of stuff from Junon under a heavy ass guard until we can clear him to come here. I'm sure he'll be getting in touch with you soon."

"I should probably have something to report, then." Sephiroth nodded to Reno and turned to leave.

Genesis and Angeal waited for him in the hallway, looking grim. Genesis clutched a short blade in his hands with a distinctive cross guard that almost looked like a piece of a gear. Neither looked keen to enter the lab. Sephiroth arched an eyebrow in question.

"Hollander is dead." Genesis said without preamble. He held the blade out to Sephiroth hilt first, "This was stabbed through his chest."

"It's one of Strife's blades." Angeal added quietly, "More specifically, the one he used to break Zack's fingers. Needless to say, I sent him off to check the Cadet wing so his temper cooled."

"Hojo is dead." Sephiroth said, gesturing for his two friends to head back the way they had come, "The president as well. Both fairly brutally killed if Reno's accounts are to be believed."

"I suppose Strife is done waiting." Genesis murmured blandly, "How exciting for us."

Sephiroth sighed and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. Angeal made a noise of sympathy, "Still have that headache?"

"No… at least not the same one." Sephiroth gave him a small smile. The three of them had called for an early night after severe headaches threatened to cripple them all. Genesis and Sephiroth had found nothing of interest in the slums, save an empty church full of flowers. There was no sign of Strife anywhere and no one recalled seeing him. He was relieved to see neither Angeal nor Genesis seemed to be suffering any discomfort, "The pain eased off about ten minutes before I received the call to come to the labs."

"That is unsettling." Angeal said, pressing the elevator call button, "It was the same for me."

"And me." Genesis added, frowning, "I hate this."

Neither Angeal nor Sephiroth said anything. There was nothing to say. They stepped into the elevator and Sephiroth punched the button for the Soldier floor. It was unlikely that he would be getting more sleep until they decided what to do next.

Zack was leaned against the wall outside of Sephiroth's office. He scowled at the blade before turning his attention to Sephiroth, "The Cadet wing is fine. The guard said they never saw or heard anything out of the ordinary. I've told them to be on high alert and called in a second set of guards as backup. They're not thrilled to be dragged out of bed, but they didn't complain when they found out that there was a security breach."

Sephiroth opened the door and let out a small sigh of relief when he found it empty. Part of him had expected to find the blonde swordsman waiting for them or a morbid warning written in Hojo's blood on the windows. Strife was obviously unhinged or had a grudge… perhaps both.

He leaned the short blade against the wall behind his desk and listened to Angeal bring Zack quickly up to speed. Zack cursed quietly under his breath. Sephiroth wanted to lean his head against the window, to take a moment and regain his slipping composure. His control of events slipped further and further out of his grasp every moment.

He could feel the heavy gazes of Zack, Angeal and Genesis watching him. They needed him to be a leader. The time for weakness would come, but it was not now. He turned to face them again, "It is obvious that we have to do something. My dislike of Hojo is well known, as is my distaste for the president, Both were guilty of crimes too numerous to count, but it was not Strife's place to be their judge and executioner."

"Hollander was not much better, but he did not deserve to die like that." Angeal added, hand tracing his ribs unconsciously, "He's the only one who knew about the process that made Genesis and I Soldiers. We needed him."

Genesis took one of the chairs before Sephiroth's desk, "Tonight is proof that Strife will come for us if we do not seek him out. He can easily get into the building and out again without alerting a single person. If we wait, he will probably just come for us here."

"But you and Sephiroth looked for him today." Zack pointed out, "You were in the slums all afternoon and couldn't find him. What is he waiting for?"

Everyone was silent a moment. Zack had meant the question rhetorically, but it was the whole of the problem. Strife was obviously waiting for something.

"Let's examine what we know." Angeal said, taking the other chair, "Operating under the assumption that Strife somehow managed to take theoretical materia studies and use them to travel back in time… he initially attacked Soldiers on missions. None of the Soldiers killed had ties to the others, other than being in Soldier. Strife killed both Seconds and Thirds. It appears he did this to draw us out."

"He got the information straight from Shinra. They gave it to him and kept Sephiroth from putting all missions on standby." Zack added, doing squats beside the door to burn off his anxious energy so he could think, "We figured that out when he mentioned how I should not have been on the mission where he fought the both of us."

"He plays by his own rules, though." Genesis added, "He refused to kill Angeal when he had the opportunity because Shinra had lied to him. He also refused to kill Zack at all. Tonight he murdered the two highest ranking scientists and the president himself. The three of them would have provided him with his power and information."

"Revenge for lying about Zack?" Angeal suggested, "He was furious about that."

"That's the worst part of this for me. It's like he thinks he's protecting me! What's so special about me!?"

Zack rose from his last squat and punched the wall, his fist going clear through the plaster and wood. The thunk of his head hitting against the wall echoed in the silence that followed his outburst. He sighed, "I'm sorry guys. I just… this isn't what I thought being a First would be like, you know?"

"It certainly isn't the initiation we would have wanted for you." Angeal said, going to his former student and gently removing his hand from the crumbling drywall and enfolding him in a hug, "I'm sorry, pup."

Zack chuckled at the old nickname and allowed himself to enjoy the comfort of his mentor's arms for a moment, "Thanks 'Geal."

"We're too tired for this tonight." Genesis said at last, "We need sleep and clear heads before we come back to this again. Tomorrow is going to be a nightmare."

"Any chance we could just load up in a truck and escape for a while?" Zack asked with a weak grin, "Let this be someone else's mess for a couple hours while we go sun in the wastes."

Sephiroth looked at him sharply, "Perhaps that's not such a bad idea."

The others stared at him. Angeal snorted in disbelief, "You can't be serious."

"I am. Perhaps the issue is that we are rarely together anymore. Since this all began, we have been on separate missions to ensure things continue to run smoothly." Sephiroth turned his sharp gaze on Angeal, "The mission where he attacked you, you said he was oddly focused on you. He would have left your squad alone had they fled?"

"That was the impression I got." Angeal agreed, "He also was in no real hurry to kill me. It was almost like he was trying to determine if I would get up again before he killed me."

"He was testing you." Sephiroth said, feeling oddly eager, "We three, and now Zack, are Shinra's strongest weapons. Maybe he was gauging how difficult it would be to take us all at once. He fears what would happen if he picked us off instead of taking us all in one fight."

Genesis nodded, picking up Sephiroth's enthusiasm, "He just struck a decisive blow at Shinra. He has made it essentially impossible for Soldier to continue by destroying all the research and samples in the lab. Even if there were backups somewhere, it would be difficult to go on without Hojo and Hollander."

"If he kills us all at once, Shinra's military would crumble. No one would stay if the greatest of Shinra's warriors fell." Sephiroth scowled at the thought of losing all he had bled and sweat for. He may not have been able to consent at first, but it had become his life's work, "With the Science Department in shambles and Rufus's claim to the company shaky, Shinra would fall apart. If he could not get us all at once, he knows we would fall back and bring more reinforcements than he could handle."

"So let's start at that level." Zack said, cradling his wounded hand, "Let's rally up in the morning and force this guy out into the open."

"He'd never come out." Angeal said, "There's too many places he could hide in the slums. We'd spend weeks chasing our tails."

Sephiroth nodded, "That's why we should go, alone. If we started taking trips out to the wastes every day at the same time, eventually Strife would show."

It was time. They all knew it.

"Let's talk about it in the morning." Angeal said finally, "We need a good night's sleep before we make any decisions. Come over to my place in the morning and I'll cook breakfast."

Everyone murmured their agreements and rose to leave. At the last moment, Sephiroth grabbed Strife's short blade. If the man wanted it, he could come take it from Sephiroth's apartment. Sephiroth smiled at the thought, even as he knew that it would not happen.