A/N: Yayness, two in a row! I'm on a roll! Please review this one too…after you read it, of course. Moos go 'cow'! Yes, I'm weird. What's your point?
Loren ran blindly through the forest, not wanting to stop ever. She wanted to be as far away from the campsite as possible. After running for who knows how long, she finally realized that she was out of the forest and near an ocean. It was still night time, but she wanted to be away from the place. Seeing a bright greenish glow in the middle of the forest, she remembered that she was near Mideel. A ridge was in her way of getting to the ocean, but she slid her way down anyway. After running a good distance, she finally made it. She ran to the edge of the water. It was dark, but the moon and Meteor were enough light sources for her to see the next island. It was about a good hundred yards away, but she steeled herself and prepared to swim. She promptly jumped in and began to swim her way over there. The water was cold, but she ignored it.
After what felt like hours, she finally made it. She clambered on shore and shivered. She shook the coldness off and kept running. She got to another shore and had to swim again. She finally realized that she was on a chain of islands. She went from island to island, barely starting to feel fatigue at the last island before she hit the mainland. She jumped in and swam until she finally reached the mainland. She collapsed on the land and lay there for a few minutes. She then willed herself to get up and continue walking. She could mentally picture the map and knew that Gongaga was only a while away. She walked this time over to the rundown town and barely made it before collapsing for good.
Loren woke up in a small room and groaned. Her body was sore everywhere and she didn't dare move. She studied her surroundings. She concluded that she must be in Gongaga, considering the structure of the houses. She also noted that her clothes had been switched and she now wore clean clothes while her blood soaked ones were hanging on a chair nearby. An elderly couple stepped through the door and thanked the planet that she was alive. The old woman spoke first.
"My dear, are you all right? We found you just outside of town, unconscious and covered in blood. What in the name of Lifestream have you been through?"
Loren sighed.
"I don't remember."
Loren grimaced to herself. She really did remember, but she didn't want to go into detail, lest she be thrown out.
The old man stepped forward and Loren noticed that the man had very familiar blue eyes. She quickly studied her surroundings again.
"This house…it is…"
She had muttered this so only she could hear.
"Young lady, are you sure you don't remember anything? You seem very troubled."
"Are the parents of Zack? As in the Zack that joined SOLDIER, became First Class, and fought alongside Sephiroth?"
Both of the elderly people froze. The old woman clutched her heart.
"Do you know our Zack?"
"Know him? I practically fought alongside him!"
Both parents stepped forward now and sat next to her.
"Really? Oh, do tell us how he's been doing!"
Loren lowered her head. Fear was instilled in the parents.
"What? Tell us what has happened."
"He…he is dead."
The old woman clutched her heart even tighter. The old man shook his head.
"He was going to go to Midgar and become a mercenary along with one of his comrades named Cl…" she choked on his name, "Cloud. Shinra soldiers tracked them down. Zack was gunned down. They did not bother to touch Cloud because he appeared to already be half-dead. They left and Cloud crawled over to Zack. He took his sword and crawled to the edge of the cliff. He raised his arms and yelled. They had been so close. Just beyond that cliff was Midgar."
The parents were on the verge of tears.
"I could not do anything because I had no control over my limbs. They had all been shot, rendering me immobile. I am very sorry."
She didn't like making up stories, but she couldn't exactly tell them that she had seen this through a television in another world. Loren stood and proceeded to the door.
"Please excuse me, but I must be going. Thank you for your hospitality."
She turned to leave but the parents stopped her. They put a heavy bag in her hands. The old woman smiled faintly.
"Here, take this. This was meant for our Zack when he returned home, but since he isn't, we'd like you to have it instead. Thank you for telling us about Zack."
Loren held the bag in her hands and looked at the parents. The old man nodded.
"We also noticed that you didn't have any money, so we figured that you needed it more than us."
Loren nodded numbly.
"Thank you. Goodbye."
Loren left the house and soon left the town after buying a weapon and a couple materia. She bought the Hardedge and bought the Heal and Time materia. She was completely ready to wander aimlessly through the continent. She began to think about what Cloud had said.
'I saw your eyes…I saw your evil green eyes in her…Sephiroth…get out of her…'
She finally made a conclusion that Sephiroth didn't control her; a part of him was in her. She then took it upon herself to find out how to call upon and control that little part and use it to her advantage. Either way, the group wouldn't want her back. That brought her down into a dismal mood. She created a fire and spent most of the night reshaping the Hardedge to her liking. She had an extremely hard time doing this because she didn't have anything to shape the metal. She quickly solved this by quickly running back to Gongaga, grabbing a thick piece of metal and taking it back to pound on the sword. She gained much strength by doing this and had the sword that she desired. The sword was not as broad as the Hardedge and a lot sharper. The blade was oddly shaped because a smaller blade grew out of the top and the bottom of the blade was like a hook.
Loren wandered for weeks, fighting monsters, always training some part of her body. She spent a lot of her time while fighting trying to release that part of Sephiroth that was inside her and use it. The first several times worked, but she would black out and be covered in blood again. The next many tries kept getting better and better until she could control it completely. She could now control that part and prove a challenge to even Sephiroth, which was ironic because she would be using his own power against him.
She was traveling to a town when she felt a presence coming from behind. With her hand on the sword she decided to call Fiend's Lament, she continued walking until the presence was right behind her. At that time, she drew her sword faster than the eye could blink and slashed at the opponent behind her. The presence was suddenly in the air, so she jumped up after it. She looked up and saw that her opponent was the fiend of fiends; Sephiroth. Her anger doubled and her sword called for blood. She slashed up at him and, his sword already drawn, he parried and dashed back down at her. Loren easily avoided his barreling charge and landed balanced on the ground. She quickly rushed Sephiroth again and they fell into a dance of attacking, parrying, dodging, and maneuvering. This lasted for a while until their swords hit each other so hard that they flew apart. Loren quickly steadied herself and got ready for another attack. Sephiroth paused and studied her. He smiled evilly.
"So it is you. You are supposed to be with the rest of your merry band of adventurers, are you not?"
Loren smiled grimly.
"No."
"Oh? And why not?"
"Exile."
"Exile? Well, that is certainly interesting."
"I exiled myself."
"Why?"
"I killed Vincent."
Sephiroth's eyebrow arched.
"Did you now?"
"Yes. I do not remember how, but my anger made me black out and I awoke next to his corpse."
Sephiroth's expression grew less sinister and more inquisitive.
"They said that something in my eyes resembled you. Vincent is afraid of me. I have never seen fear in him before…"
She lowered her head and allowed her hair to cover her eyes. She summoned Sephiroth's power and made sure that she wouldn't lose control. The grip on her sword tightened.
"I discovered what they meant by that. You ruined my only chance to be on the good side. I ruined my chance to be on the bad side by having good intentions."
Loren looked at her sword and saw the color of her eyes reflecting off of it. She looked up at Sephiroth and growled.
"I can only be on my own side now, thanks to you!"
Sephiroth's mouth opened a little bit.
"Your eyes…"
"Yes, my eyes! That is why they now fear me!"
"They…are like mine…they know no mercy…know no happiness…know no fear…but they are different. Those eyes know love. Strange…a love without happiness. How is that so?"
Lore shook and glared at him.
"Shut up!"
She charged him and sent several slashes and jabs his way. He dodged and blocked, talking all the while.
"Come now, you must tell me. How is it possible to love without being happy?"
"You have never known happiness either! You say you have never known love. You love yourself and probably your lovely mother Jenova, too, so who are you to say anything?"
Sephiroth's eye twitched and he assaulted her with several devastating blows. She blocked most except the last one, which got her on the arm. Luckily, it wasn't her sword arm, so she was still able to attack. She jumped behind him and slashed. She thought she had missed, but was instantly corrected when Sephiroth's hair fell a little past the middle of his back. She backed up a few steps as he turned and saw that more than two feet of hair had been removed from his head. He grew rigid as he remembered something from his childhood.
Sephiroth had been running around the lab, letting his long hair go wherever it pleased. He had been a child of seven at the time, and as any other child, he had a tendency to grab things that he wasn't supposed to and spoke when he wasn't supposed to. All that week, he had been trying to hold Hojo's hand, but the scientist kept yelling at him for being a 'stupid boy' and being 'just as pathetic as the rest of the children'. On one of the worst days of his life, Sephiroth overheard Hojo talking about a woman named Lucrecia and how he wanted her to be sent to a place where no one would ever find her. Later on that day, President Shinra had summoned him to his office. The fat man had leaned over his desk to peer at the young boy.
'So my young friend, have you learned anything today? Any combat moves, any mathematics?'
'No, sir,' he had answered, 'I learned something about a lady named Lucrecia, though.'
'Oh, really? What did you learn about her?'
'Well, Daddy Hojo wanted her to be sent to a place where no one could find her and that since she was going to die anyway just to lock her in that place forever. Another person showed up and was very angry and Daddy Hojo shot him and told the other man to put him in his private lab in Ni…Ni…Nim…in a place with a weird name. The other man was carried away and he did not have an arm and blood was everywhere and Daddy Hojo was laughing and saying that 'that pesky Turk is out of the way', 'he will be a good specimen' and lots of other things.'
President Shinra sat back in his chair and scratched his beard.
'That is a very disturbing thing to learn, Sephiroth. You should probably just forget that it ever happened. Go ahead and go now, okay?'
'Yes, sir. Goodbye, Mr. Shinra.'
Later that night, Hojo came to Sephiroth's bed fuming. He picked Sephiroth up by the hair and dragged him into the lab. Hojo repeatedly hit Sephiroth, making him bleed, cursing him and yelling at him to never tell anybody what he did. As a final punishment, knowing that Sephiroth liked to play with his hair at his young age, Hojo cut his hair above his neck and hit him a few more times for good measure. He then made Sephiroth endure a double dosage of Mako (he had been getting the injections for nearly two years now) and sent him to bed bloody and covered in tears.
Sephiroth gripped Masamune tighter and trembled in rage.
"You made me remember him. You made me remember that damned scientist. You made me remember the pain I had endured that night. All because you cut my hair. I do not know if I should thank you for helping me remember to get revenge or to kill you for making me relive painful memories."
Loren tensed.
"I know what you mean."
"What? How could you possibly know what I mean?"
"I did not exactly have a perfect childhood, either. At least you had a place to sleep. I lived in the streets. I did not even have parents. I had to live my life the hard way. Yours may have been hard because you had to go through Mako injections since you were little and you had an abusive 'father'. That is nothing when you have to live off of garbage, sleep on the side of a building and get beaten up all the time by random people. I was considered nobody. That is why I killed so many people in my teens. I made them see that I was somebody. Have you ever gotten to a level of stress that you cut yourself repeatedly to lower the level just a bit?"
Sephiroth paused then removed the wrist cuff on his left arm. He lifted his sleeve to show several long gashes along his arm that seemed to be self-inflicted because of the depth and cleanliness of the cut. The word 'DIE' had been inscribed in his arm several times in varying areas. Loren nodded.
"Then you must understand what I am saying. You must know what it is like."
Sephiroth lowered his sleeve and replaced the cuff.
"I want to ask you something."
"What?"
"It is a question I asked a long time ago. Are you sure you are on the right side?"
Loren paused this time.
"I do not know anymore. Why would I be on a side where they fear me and shun me because there is something inside of me that they consider evil? Right now, your side seems kind of appealing. We have been through much in our lives and people fear us for what we are…for who we are. We have used people for our own benefit. We have killed people to gain acknowledgment. We have done so much for the people we hate just to keep them happy, but it is never enough. We have much in common right now. I have nothing in common with the opposite side right now. It is no use to go to the other side if Vincent fears me…if he hates me…"
"Do you accept my offer of joining my side then?"
"Until I can find my own way, yes. I accept."
His evil smirk returned in full.
"Very good. I am going to have to ask you to fix the problem of my hair though."
"I will make it look the way it did before, just shorter."
"Good, then let us move. I do not want to waste any more time here in this accursed land."
"Do you have a Restore materia? I need to heal my arm."
Sephiroth turned and took off his glove. He stepped up to her and placed his hand over the wound. A green light escaped from his fingertips and her wound disappeared.
"No, I do not."
He turned and kept walking. Loren looked at the wound in vague interest.
"Hmm, innate magical abilities. How interesting…"
"Hurry up, woman. I do not have all day."
"Yes, I am coming. You have the patience of a wild mustang."
And so starts a new twist of the tale…
A/N: Ha, what did ya think? Yay, I feel so weird! I dunno, did you see that coming? I hope it at least surprises you a bit or at least makes you feel tingly with anticipation for the next chappie. Aargh, must find a way to make people happy. Must make reviewers want more….lots and lots more. AAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, right, sorry.