No one had a better plan in the morning. Knowing Strife was loose in the city limited their options. He was obviously crazy enough to come kill the highest ranking members of the company in the most highly fortified building in the world. There was no telling what else he would do or who he would hurt in the process. Even Angeal, who had the most reservations about trying to draw Strife out, could not argue with that logic.

They quickly dressed for a fight and gathered their strongest materia and accessories. They took a company truck and drove it through the city and out to the wastes. No one had expected to find him the first day, but they all watched the shadows, hoping to spot him.

For four tense days, they repeated the routine. Breakfast at Angeal's followed by a trip out to the cliffs for sparring. On the fifth day, they found him waiting for them.

Despite their plan, it was still a surprise to find Cloud Strife perched casually on a rock. His blade was disassembled into its separate pieces and spread around him. He had the smallest blade, twin to the one that Sephiroth held, in his lap. He used a soft cloth to bring the polished metal to a shine.

"Son of a bitch…" Zack murmured, surprised in spite of himself.

"Hello to you, too." Cloud replied without looking up, "I heard that you've been looking for me."

Genesis drew his rapier, the metal ringing in the emptiness of the wastes. Cloud snorted and did not as much as twitch, "You're not going to fight me yet."

"Are you certain?" Genesis asked, fingers twitching with the desire to power up his blade with the materia it held.

Cloud looked up with a lazy shrug, "Kill me, then. You'll never know why I was here, what my purpose was. The rest will take care of itself. Thankfully, I'll be too dead to care by that point."

When no one moved, Cloud let out a quiet chuckle and set the blade in his lap on the stone in front of him, "Thought so. My sword if you please, General."

"You can't honestly think he's just going to give that to you." Zack said.

"Give it, don't give it." There was another shrug, "One short blade won't make that much of a difference."

Sephiroth shook his head, but crossed the gap between them and held the sword out to his opponent, hilt first. Cloud took it, glancing up at Sephiroth with no sign of fear, "Thank you."

"We believe we have some of it worked out." Sephiroth said, stepping away and crossing his arms across his chest. For a moment, he began to understand why so many people found him unnerving. Outnumbered and alone, Strife should have shown some sign of unease. Instead he was almost bored, speaking to them like they were nothing instead of the deadliest warriors in the world. He never doubted that they would dance to his tune. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

Cloud arched an eyebrow, "Oh?"

"You're a time traveler." Zack said quickly, words sharp with anger, "You used materia to come back in time."

Cloud's other eyebrow joined the first in surprise, "That was your first thought?"

Zack scowled, "Hell no. It was the last, desperate one. It was the only way we could explain Cadet Strife."

"Ah. Hadn't thought about that. Interesting that you came to that conclusion on your own." Cloud said, using another cloth to get the bits of dried blood off of his short blade, "Well, now is the time. I'll answer any questions you want until my sword is clean. Then, I'll kill you… or you'll kill me."

"You mean, you expect us to believe you traveled back in time just to kill us?" Genesis asked.

"I didn't expect you to believe anything." Cloud replied tartly, "Zack's the one who said you had come to that conclusion already. I can try and prove it, if you want to waste time."

Genesis scowled but thankfully said nothing. Sephiroth took over the questioning before he could find his tongue again, "What is your purpose?"

"I'm here to stop all of the disasters that are coming." Cloud said, "The world ends in about ten or so years. I'm not clear on when I am exactly… but it's definitely less than fifteen years from now."

Sephiroth snorted, "You alone can do it?"

"I couldn't manage it when I had help." Cloud said, his fingers rubbing at a particularly stubborn stain on the edge of the blade, "Thought I'd try something different this time."

Angeal stepped closer, "Why did Shinra help you?"

"Hn. So you did survive." Cloud looked up, eyes skimming up and down Angeal's body, "I really didn't think you would."

Angeal glowered at the blonde, but did not say anything more. Cloud rolled his eyes, "I went to Shinra when I got back. Obviously, you know I was a Cadet. I knew the company, knew the people who are in charge. It was laughably easy to convince them that I was telling the truth. Hojo saw what I was after I let him take a little blood. I was proof that his greatest scientific endeavor succeeded. I promised him the secret of time travel once I accomplished my goals. He just didn't realize that one of those goals was to kill him. The greedy whack job thought he was smart enough to use me."

"You admit you killed him?" Sephiroth asked, not really surprised.

Strife's smile was a little eerie, "I did. I enjoyed doing it. You should have done it years ago. None of this would have happened if you had just snapped his neck like you used to think about."

No one knew what to say to that. Cloud only shook his head and flipped his blade to clean the other side, "The president was easier to manipulate. He already feared Soldier. He knew no one could truly control you. I told him that I would take care of Soldier and kill all of you in return for peace and comfort. He couldn't sell you out fast enough."

"Did it never occur to you to come to us for help?" Angeal asked, "We'd make much better allies than enemies."

"Trust me, I know that better than some." Cloud said, voice flat. He set aside his cloth and picked up a second blade, slotting them together, "Time's running out. Make the last few questions count."

"It just doesn't make sense." Angeal growled, "We're all reasonable men. We may have all taken orders that we probably shouldn't at one point or another, but do you honestly believe we would do something that would end all life on the Planet if we could prevent it."

"You don't deny time travel." Genesis added, grudging respect mixed with incredulity in his voice, "You speak to us like you know us, that suggests a familiarity that few have. Alright, perhaps it's not a good association, but things are different right now and-"

"And I should offer you the opportunity to make right the wrongs of the potential future." Cloud said, imitating Genesis's usual inflections and patterns of speech with devastating accuracy.

Genesis's mouth closed with a snap as the words were stolen straight from his brain. An uneasy silence fell between them.

Finally Zack said, "This isn't the first time you've done this."

It was a statement, not a question. Cloud answered it like it was anyway, "No, it's not."

Even Sephiroth's usual unflappable calm was shaken, "How many times?"

"I've… lost count. Time stops having meaning after you see how many ways it can all go wrong." For a moment, they could all see the weariness in eyes that were too old for the rest of him. He shrugged and continued to assemble his blade, "The first time was the worst. We fought and fought, kept coming when we were called… every few years there would be a new threat trying to end the world and we succeeded every time… until we didn't."

"You know us so well. I spar with Sephiroth, Genesis and even Zack regularly and none of them could keep up with me the way you did." Angeal said, "That kind of knowledge is hard to come by. It speaks of years of working together… or maybe lifetimes. You've obviously had that since the first time we failed. Maybe with some work we could fix the problems… let us try again."

"Us? You think I meant… no. None of you even survived the first time around. " Cloud laughed bitterly, "I never even met you the first time through Angeal. You were already dead before I had the chance. You forced Zack to kill you the day I met him."

The air rushed out of Angeal's lungs as if he had been punched. The color drained from Zack's face, leaving him ashen. The four Soldiers stood transfixed as Cloud continued with the detached coldness most men reserved for a particularly difficult mission report, "Genesis started the events of the original timeline when he took an injury from Sephiroth during a spar that never healed. Degradation they called it. He started to lose his mind and defected with a large portion of Soldier. Angeal went after him, tried to get him to see reason until he began to degrade, too. You attacked Zack to make him kill you when you couldn't take it anymore."

Cloud's hateful eyes turned on Sephiroth next, "They thought you had some sort of cure or were immune, but the effects were just slower. Your mind degraded first… or you simply went insane. On a routine mission to check on the mako reactor in Nibelheim, you burnt down the town and killed everyone there. You later went back to Midgar and killed the president… you killed so many people. Then, you tried to summon a meteor to wipe out the whole planet."

If the loathing in his eyes had been fierce when he looked at Sephiroth, it was nothing compared to the way he looked at Genesis, "You were the one who finally tipped the scales. The Planet restored you, saved you and you-"

"What?" Genesis asked when Cloud choked off his words, his voice uncharacteristically small, "What did I do?"

"You rallied the remaining Soldiers into an army… there had been bad blood between the enhanced and civilians after everything and you were one of Shinra's shining Firsts. I guess you learned from the mistakes made by the others. You killed everyone who had ever helped me." Cloud's fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade, obviously at the end of his patience, "You said it was the will of the Planet, the reason you had been saved from Degradation. You destroyed everything, but you weren't insane. You were completely yourself to the end.

"We found the studies on theoretical time manipulation through materia right before the planet died. It used the last of its energy to send me back." Cloud's laugh was tinged with hysteria now, "I tried everything I could think of. I told you the truth, I lied, I ignored you completely… destroyed Jenova, didn't destroy Jenova-"

"My mother?" Sephiroth asked.

Cloud's blue eyes snapped up to meet Sephiroth's as he jumped to his feet, "She's not your damn mother you lunatic. You ignored almost everything else Hojo has ever told you. Why do you always believe that?"

Sephiroth blinked in surprise. No one had ever dared to talk to him that way before. The whole thing was so surreal that he could not find it in himself to get angry, "I… do not know. If… you know the truth… you could-"

"It doesn't help." Cloud said flatly, "I've tried that a dozen times… more. Never really matters. Nothing makes a difference."

Angeal knew what was coming. There was the barest shift in Cloud's stance to better balance himself. He was done talking. The second anyone else so much as breathed too deeply, Cloud would swing his blade and the fight would be on. Angeal mentally prepared himself to make the first move. It was unlikely he would survive this second encounter, and even if he did it would no longer matter.

Degradation, Strife had called it. His wounds would never really heal and eventually he would lose his mind… madness strong enough that he would force a friend to kill him. He did not want to live long enough to see it. He was the weakest link in their team. Being the first one into the fray would give Sephiroth, Genesis and Zack time to try and out think the blonde warrior.

Just as his hand twitched to reach for the Buster Sword, Zack's voice stopped him, "What about me?"

Cloud's head jerked in Zack's direction, almost as if he had forgotten Zack were there. His eyes met Zack's a moment before they slid away, "You should have left when I told you and not come back."

"Yeah? Why is that?" Zack challenged, trying to keep his voice from cracking under the strain of the anger and fear, "What is it about me that's so special? How bad was I that you can hardly look at me? What did I do!?"

"Nothing. No matter what happened, no matter how bad things got, you always did your best to help. You were always so sure there was a right answer." Cloud looked back at Zack, eyes wild and pleading, "You're one of the two truly good people on this planet. Just once, I wish you would listen to me. There's a girl in a church in the Sector Five slums who needs you. Go to her, be with her, protect her. Let me take care of the rest."

Zack did not know this man outside of the hatred he had felt since that first fight. Cloud Strife was a murderer and quite possibly insane, but for a moment he felt something stir deep in his chest. It was almost instinctual, the urge to cross the gap between them and comfort the other man. He bit down on it fiercely, refusing to be moved by Strife's plea, but the words that came out of his mouth were soft, almost regretful, "I can't do that."

Cloud's eyes drifted shut, nodding weakly, "I know."

When his eyes opened again, they were cold. He shifted into a better stance to fight, "I'm done talking."

Genesis brought his sword up to salute the man, before flicking it down in front of him. He glanced at Sephiroth with a small smile, "You know, I always assumed I would die in a glorious fight against you one day. They would write an epic story about our rivalry that would put Loveless to shame."

"There's an easy solution to that." Sephiroth murmured, swinging his blade down into a ready position, "Don't die. I'll happily kill you later, if you're still interested."

Zack rolled his eyes, drawing his own blade, "You guys are really going to do this now?"

"If not now, when?" Sephiroth asked.

"This day will never come again." Genesis added, turning his focus back to the enemy, "Most of us, maybe all of us, will not live to see the next sunrise. Legend shall speak; Of sacrifice at world's end; The wind sails over the water's surface; Quietly, but surely."

"There's nothing quiet about your sacrifice." Sephiroth muttered without heat.

"Cretin."

"Focus." Angeal said, drawing the Buster Sword at last, "Don't take Strife lightly."

"Noted." Genesis and Sephiroth said at once.

It was uncanny, the way that Angeal and Strife swung their blades up into the same identical guard position. Strife nodded, "Let's begin."