Oh hey, what am I doing here? It's only been four months since the last update! I know, I know, I'm writing this much too quickly and need to slow down :P In all seriousness though, I apologize for the fact that four months for an update is ridiculously quick for this story...

Anyways, we're on the home stretch now! One more chapter to go, and then this saga finally ends. I'm actually hoping to get the last chapter out in the next couple weeks, but we'll see what really happens.

Huge thanks to my beta, Shadow's Interceptor. If you've never read any of her stories, I would highly recommend that you start because she's a fantastic author. Also a lot of thanks to the reviewers SageQuill, Kein Sylvan, and MoogleTerra! You guys are awesome as always!

Chapter 9: Crossover Villains Are Terrible Ideas

The creature standing before the heroes was unlike anything they had ever seen. It was humanoid in shape, other than the six wings sprouting from its back and the one dark wing that replaced its right arm. From its head fell long flowing hair that appeared to be simultaneously silver and gold. White robes wrapped around the creature, covering everything below its waist. Its skin had marble-like effect with swirling patterns of dark and pale. The face seemed familiar to the heroes, yet also completely different. Perhaps its most striking feature however, were its eyes, which were both a pale blue, but the one on the right seemed to shine with a joyous madness while the one on the left seethed with a dark rage. A single flap of Sephka's wings brought it higher into the air and it screamed maniacally, "Well come on! Do something! Scream in terror, bow before my majesty, don't just stand there gaping!"

"This is unbelievable," the creature also said, but in a deeper voice that was completely different. "Whose imbecilic idea was this?"

"Aw, it's not that bad Lady Boy," the maniacal voice said mockingly. "It's always a joy when I can get under your skin, but look a me now!" It brought up its left hand and started tickling its chest while smiling bizarrely. "I'm inside you!" it cooed.

A horrified scowl crossed Sephka's face and then it smacked itself with the winged arm. "Dammit, that hurt!" the deeper voice shouted.

"Wait, that hurt you too?" the other voice asked. Sephka then slapped itself with its left hand. "Ow, it does hurt!" it complained. "That's stupid, stupid, STUPID! Hurting you isn't any fun when it hurts me too!"

Edgar was the first of the heroes to speak. "Er, do you mind me asking what's going on? I feel like I've seen you before..."

Sephka's eyes widened in fury as it raised its chin and looked down at Edgar with a condescending glare. "How dare you speak to me in such a familiar tone of voice!" the maniacal voice shouted. "I am a GOD and you should be groveling at MY FEET! You shall become the first example of what happens to BLASPHEMOUS HERETICS who try to undermine my power!" A ball of white light appeared in the creature's hand. However, right before the ball of light was released, Sephka gasped in realization and the light disappeared. "Hold on," it said. "Waitwaitwait, I remember you!" He looked to Edgar's companions and added, "And you. And you! I remember all of you! Oh, this is going to be fun!"

"What are you blabbering about Kefka?" the deeper voice of Sephka asked. The mention of that name put everyone in the area deeper into a state of shock as they suddenly noticed the resemblance.

"Oh, you don't know? It just so happens that this is my world, and these are my good friends who broke into my fortress and RUINED EVERYTHING THAT I WORKED MY ENTIRE LIFE TO ACHIEVE."

"K-Kefka?" Phillip stuttered, clearly mortified. "No. No that's not possible. That…. that's-"

"Hilariously ironic," Wedge finished. The comment prompted a dark glare from Biggs and presumably Phillip. "What? It is! I'd be laughing if we weren't all about to die horribly."

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," Phillip continued. "How is this possible?!"

Sephka turned to him with a gleeful look. "Oh, it was the invisible one who opened the portal?" the maniacal voice asked. "Before you ask, I'm a magical god, of course I can see you. Anyways, good job! It really sucked back there in Hell. You'll have to be rewarded somehow… How'd you like to lead my cult?"

"I would rather kill the moron that let us out," the deeper voice growled. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be sharing this body with… with him."

"Oh come on! Stop your complaining, it's not that bad."

"I'd rather be in Hell."

"Well then you shouldn't have followed me through the portal," the maniacal voice responded.

"No, you followed me. I was trying to escape you once and for all!"

"Well maybe if you had an even number of wings you could have flown fast enough to get through the portal first!"

"Well… Fine, maybe you're right. Only having one wing is difficult. At least now you get to know how it feels being unbalanced like that."

"Wait, what?" Sephka paused, apparently counting its wings. Including the one arm that was now a wing, it was an odd number. Its face soon contorted into rage. "HOW DARE YOU MAR MY SYMMETRY WITH YOUR IMPERFECTIONS!" The creature then appeared to engage in a slapping fight with itself.

While most of the rest of the heroic party was either frozen in shock or just waiting for Sephka to finish speaking, Cyan had been focusing his concentration in order to perform one of his most powerful bushido techniques, Tempest. When it was finally enough, he opened his eyes and glared at his opponent. "I know not what thou hast become," he said stoically, "but if any part of thee is Kefka, then thou must be destroyed!" Rushing forwards, Cyan managed to land four powerful slashes on the demonic creature before them.

Sephka stopped attacking itself, but otherwise appeared unfazed. With a swift kick, the samurai was sent flying backwards back towards the other heroes. "I suppose I never properly introduced myself," the maniacal voice said. "You all know me as your almighty god, Kefka. With me is the IMPERFECT ABOMINATION named… er… I don't quite remember his name. I think it's either Bizarro or Safer."

"Sephiroth," the deeper voice corrected angrily. "It's Sephiroth."

"No one cares!" the maniacal voice snapped. "This is my world, not yours! All of your pathetic accomplishments mean NOTHING here! You're basically just an unknown little leech with a sexy voice."

Finally, the rest of the heroes began to snap to their senses. Celes turned to the Figaro brothers and stated, "We should probably start shooting ultima spells at it."

"That's what I've been yelling at you for the past ten minutes!" Setzer exclaimed. In fact, he had been doing exactly that, but no one was paying attention. He would have started doing that himself had the God-Like Voice actually given him his magic back.

"Right," Edgar agreed. "Okay, who's going to be in the party of four… Sabin and I, since it's our home. Cyan already started fighting, so he can join us too. And… Celes, so that the women are represented as well."

"We have to fight four of them at once?" the deeper voice of Sephka remarked.

"Of course," the maniacal voice answered, "I always fought them four at a time unless there weren't enough party members. Why?"

"In my world it was always a maximum of three at once…"

"Oh! So that's why you're exceptionally pathetic," Sephka sneered, "rather than the normal pathetic that I'm usually faced with."

The heroes however, were not paying attention to Sephka's bantering, and were readying for the final fight. "Alright, everyone take a Celestriad and start casting ultima. No matter what happens, unless you're healing someone don't stop casting ultima! We've taken on every other enemy this way, so it must work here too!" The party lined up and began chanting as a blue glow emanated from their hands.

Sephka's eyebrows raised, then it cocked its head in curiosity. It folded its arm and wing, and the deeper voice said, "Let's see what kind of damage this body can take."

The maniacal voice knew what was coming however, and had a much different plan. "How about no," it stated. "Trine." Suddenly the blue glow in the heroes' hands faded as the spell inflicted the blind and silence status effects on not only them, but the party members on the sidelines as well.

"Everyone, use your eye drops and echo herbs now!" Edgar commanded. They fished in their packs for the appropriate items. Oddly enough, it seemed that they all managed to find the eye drops first to cure the blindness. When they all went to grab the echo herbs for the silence though, they collectively realized a rather large problem. After a moment of silence, Edgar asked, "Does anyone actually have any echo herbs?"

"We sold them all before we left," Setzer answered with a nervous quiver in his voice. "Since we didn't have any magic anyways, we all figured that silence causing us to not be able to cast magic wouldn't be a problem."

"Well, it's a problem."

"I noticed."

In the Cave of Great Trials

"THAT'S UNBELIEVABLY INCONVENIENT," said the God-Like Voice, who was watching the events unfold from his cave. "AND REALLY DISAPPOINTING TOO. DOES THIS MEAN THAT ALL OF THAT TIME SPENT IN HERE WAS WASTED?"

Back on Triangle Island

The maniacal voice of Sephka immediately began to laugh hysterically. The heroes, after being thwarted by this sudden obstacle, were understandably less jovial. "Eh, right," Edgar said nervously, "we'll move on to Plan B then. Sabin, what's Plan B?"

Before his brother could answer Shadow stepped up with Ragnarok drawn. "We hit it repeatedly with sharp and/or heavy objects," the assassin answered. "That's what we did before and after magic, so I don't see why it wouldn't work now."

"Heheh, excellent," Setzer said, grinning as he shuffled the Final Trump. "That means that I can get in on the action too. Oh, and no more of this fighting with only four of us at a time crap! I don't even know why we started doing that." And so, for the first time, the entirety of the heroic party (minus Mog) stepped forward to face their foe together, weapons drawn and determination in their eyes.

"For Figaro," Sabin said.

"So we can apologize for our crimes against the intangir," Terra said

"To rid this world of Kefka," Cyan said.

"To rid this world of… that," Shadow said.

"Für meine Freunde, meine Familie," Gau said.

"I dunno what I'm going to do with a paintbrush," Relm said, "but it's gonna hurt that thing so hard!"

"Paint targets on it," Strago suggested. "My eyes ain't what they used to be and I'm gonna need to know where to smack it!"

"So I can finally get rid of all of you," Setzer said.

"I fight for my friends," Gogo proclaimed, mimicking Ike from Fire Emblem.

"*incomprehensible grunting*," Umaro grunted incomprehensibly.

"Kupo," Mog would have said if he were present.

"I'm not really sure why I'm here," Locke admitted.

"Neither am I," Celes agreed, "but it probably has to do with friendship."

Edgar looked to his companions and smiled. Were they just a bunch of misfits? Maybe, but that didn't matter. In his country's time of need they had all come running, even if it was somewhat reluctantly. They might sometimes be incompetent, they might sometimes be jerks, but they were all willing to risk their lives for the sake of a silly mechanical castle, and that meant the world to him. He turned to his brother and nodded. "For Figaro," he agreed.

Sephka's deeper voice was clearly irritated with all of the toying around and said, "No more games Kefka. From now on, we shoot to kill."

"Fine," the maniacal voice groaned, rolling its eyes. "I was getting bored anyways."

With that, the heroes charged forward.

Universe Theta F7: At the Chocobo Farm

As usual, it was a quiet day on at the Chocobo Farm. Choco Billy stood at the fence to the pasture watching the chocobos graze peacefully. On a beautiful day such as this one, watching the birds graze was one of his favorite pastimes.

A sudden voice in his head startled him. "HEY, CHOCO BILLY," it said, "DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE OR TWO?"

Billy knew that he recognized the voice, but he couldn't quite put a name to it. Then he remembered. "Hey there Mr. God-Like Voice!" he greeted. "How are you doin'? What brings you to these parts?"

"I'M… NOT DOING SO WELL," it answered. "SAY, DO YOUR UNIVERSE'S HEROES STILL KEEP THAT GOLDEN CHOCOBO IN YOUR STABLES?"

"Yeah, she's in there right now. What about her?"

"YOU SEE, I'M SORT OF IN A SITUATION, AND WAS HOPING THAT MAYBE YOU COULD DO ME A FAVOR…"

Back on Triangle Island

To say that the fight was going poorly for the heroes would have been a severe understatement. Sephka had led off with Heartless Angel, which, as usual, brought everyone in the party mere inches from being knocked unconscious. That was followed by several castings of break, turning almost a third of the party to stone. Before even a minute had passed, the fight had essentially devolved into the heroes scrambling in all directions throwing potions and status healing items, doing their best to just survive as Sephka cackled in glee. Every now and then, the heroes could land a hit on the creature, usually by Relm, Strago (since Sephka wasn't really expecting to be killed by them), and Shadow (since he's Shadow and can do things like that), but those moments were few and far between. They were holding on pretty well for now, but they all knew that they were eventually going to run out of items.

"I suggest we move to Plan C!" Setzer shouted as he leapt out of the way of a firaga.

"What's Plan C?" Edgar asked while trying to shove a gold needle down a petrified Gau's throat.

"Get the hell out of here and think of a Plan D!"

"Hold on a moment," Edgar insisted, "Umaro's in the process of calculating Sephka's approximate total hit points. Kefka hardly had any HP, so we might be closer to the end than we think." He turned to where the yeti was and called out, "I don't mean to rush you, but we're kind of all about to die. Have you figured it out yet?"

The yeti leapt up from his position and sprinted over to the engineer, clutching a stone tablet he was carrying tightly. Umaro skidded to a stop and held out the tablet. On the tablet was written the words, 'All of it.'

"'All of it?'" Edgar read, confused. "What do you mean by that? Are you saying that Sephka still has all of its HP, or that its total HP consists of all of the HP in the known universe?"

In response, Umaro simply nodded.

Edgar paled. "Everyone! We're moving to Plan C!" The next time that every party member was conscious, they ran, and by some miracle they managed to get away from Sephka. They stopped behind a pile of rocks to determine what their Plan D would be. Discussion ensued, but it was going nowhere. Things began to look hopeless.

Then, Relm noticed something in the distance coming towards them at a high speed. It was a man with a feathered hat, riding on a shining chocobo! The chocobo stopped a few feet from the party as the man hopped off of it. "Hey there fellas!" the odd man called out. "I hear that you're all in a bit of a bind, am I right?"

The party wasn't sure how exactly they should respond to this apparently nice man that just came riding a chocobo into what was probably currently the most dangerous place on earth. "What?" was all that Setzer could manage.

"The name's Choco Billy. A mutual friend wanted me to come here to help you all out," he explained. The chocobo warked in what might have been agreement. "By the way, you're Setzer, right?" Setzer nodded, still confused. "The God-Like Voice wanted me to sic Henrietta on you. Hope you don't mind!" The chocobo warked once again and then began to chase and viciously peck at the gambler, who ran screaming as one might expect someone to do when being attacked by an angry, seven-foot tall bird. "Anyways," Billy continued, "since the big, bad guy from your universe and my universe merged together, the God-Like Voice thought I could give you some tips on the guy from my universe. I'm here as your official Sephiroth consultant!"

The party still didn't really know what was going on, but the man seemed friendly enough. "So," Sabin wondered, "the God-Like Voice we met in the Cave of Great Trials teleported you from your universe to here?"

"Not exactly," Billy answered, "the Voice said that he didn't have enough in his budget for a full cross-planar teleport. The reason he asked me is because my family's stables house Henrietta, a golden chocobo, and everyone knows that golden chocobos can go anywhere."

The heroes collectively agreed that they should just shut up and accept this fact. "Okay, whatever," Edgar said, "what can you tell us about this Sephiroth guy? The faster you can do so, the better."

"Right," Billy said, then began to explain, "first of all, I don't know if you know this, but if Sephiroth has casted meteor at any point in time while he was here, you're gonna want to find someone who can cast holy in the next three days 'cause otherwise the world's gonna explode."

"The fiend did cast meteor several times in our last encounter," Cyan mentioned, "though he appeared disappointed with the results."

"But it's okay!" Terra said cheerfully. "We all can cast holy, so once we get some echo herbs to cure the silence we'll be all set."

Choco Billy appeared very surprised by the last statement. "Wait, you can all cast ho... You know what, never mind. Anyways, he's also got this special magic attack called Super Nova, which summons a comet that destroys several planets on its path to collide with the Sun, causing the Sun to expand and engulf you. I've been told that it hurts quite a bit."

"People survived that?!" Locke exclaimed.

"That is extremely excessive," mentioned a maniacal voice directly above them, "and it's probably the best idea that I never came up with." It was then that the heroes noticed that Sephka was hovering directly above them.

"I'll take that as my one and only compliment from you," the deeper voice of Sephka said, "so thank you. I was rather proud of that one." It then noticed the heroes staring at it in shock. "Oh please, you didn't actually think that you had gotten away from us?"

"I just wanted to hear your adorable little plan to stop us!" the maniacal voice added. "But I guess that we're going to have to kill you all now." Suddenly Sephka gasped and then gleefully clapped its hand and wing together. "I just had a GREAT idea! What if you casted Super Nova and I casted Forsaken AT THE SAME TIME?!"

Sephka's insane smile turned to a slight smirk as the deeper voice said, "For the first time ever, I like how you think." Sephka then began to charge up energy for the release of this obnoxiously over-the-top attack combination.

Edgar suddenly became frantic. "Choco Billy, quickly, how did your friends actually kill Sephiroth?!"

"Oh, that's easy!" Billy said. "The cast really powerful magic at him and hit him repeatedly with sharp and/or heavy objects!"

The complete unhelpfulness of this statement stunned the party into silence. "By any chance, do you happen to have any echo herbs?" Shadow asked the chocobo farmer.

"No, why?"

Shadow sighed in extreme annoyance. "Leave now," the enraged assassin told Choco Billy coldly, "before I strangle you with your own testicles. And tell the God-Like Voice that I'm coming for him." Billy took the hint, called back Henrietta, and then rode the golden chocobo off into the distance.

"We're dead," Edgar said simply. "We're all dead. We lost. Goodbye."

Cyan shot the engineer an angry look. "We cannot allow that monster to be victorious!" he shouted.

"And how are we supposed to do that?!" Edgar shouted back.

Terra stepped up to try to calm him down. "It's okay Edgar," she said nervously, "I'm sure it's not that bad."

Edgar shot her an incredulous look. "Not that bad? None of us can used magic, all of our attacks have been ineffective, it's looking like the total HP of this thing was a multiplication of the two original HPs making it near impossible to stop even if we had magic, and to top it off, we're all about to simultaneously get hit with a magic blast comparable to ultima and BE ENGULFED BY THE BLOODY SUN! You're right, things aren't 'that bad.' They're worse. Much, much worse." It was difficult for the rest of the heroes to argue with that. However, even so, Edgar sighed and started his chainsaw. Shaking his head, he said, "But we're still alive now, so we might as well try to do something."

Suddenly, they heard shouting in the distance. "HEY! HEY YOU!" it said. The party turned to see the two Figaro guards, one with his hands cupped around his mouth as he shouted. "HEY SEPHKA, OVER HERE!"

Note: I'm operating under the assumption that the silence status effect doesn't make the characters unable to speak, but instead just removes any magical power from their words. Also, I apologize for any incorrectness in Sephiroth's character; I hardly played any of FFVII.

Please review if you have the time. Also, since it's the holiday season, I wish you all happy holidays! (if you celebrate them, of course. Otherwise, just have a merry conclusion to the year.)