OF A PURE HEART, A FALLEN KNIGHT AND THE ONE – WINGED ANGELS

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The Obligatory Disclaimer:

Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, Final Fantasy VII Before Crisis, Final Fantasy VII Dirge of Cerberus, Final Fantasy X and X - 2, Kingdom Hearts I and II and Chain of Memories, Seiken Densetsu I, II and III, Legend of Mana and Sword of Mana, and Exosquad, and of all its associated characters, items, weapons, special abilities and gameplay elements, are the property of Square Enix Co and / or Disney and / or Universal Studios, and no claim is made, or intended to be made, expressly or implicitly, to the above copyrights.

Any ideas taken from other (non fan fiction) stories and / or computer games will be duly noted in the Author's Notes section. Remember, copyright protects the expression of the idea, not the idea itself. Go get a patent!

Eeeheeheeheeheehee!

To other Fanfic Writers (This is admittedly more important than what I have to say to the faceless suits veiled by incorporation):

I've tried my best to stay as original as possible, but it's a bit hard to write this type of story without treading on someone's toes by accident along the line. If I come across any ideas that I might like to reproduce here, I'll be sure to ask for your consent.

Please, if you feel that I may have 'borrowed' some of your concepts or ideas by mistake, notify me immediately. Email a "cease and desist" message to me, point out where I have gone wrong, and I will act immediately to remove or modify the offending section(s).

Thank you very, very much for your understanding and tolerance.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE EVIL YOU KNOW… OR THE EVIL YOU DON'T?

Lo! The destroyer of dreams walked again amongst men!

Here was a villain akin to the creature of legend known as Sin, an avatar of death that could never be truly defeated, but would always return with greater power, ready to begin a whole new cycle of chaos, all set to ruin every man's dreams!

And like the cosmic destroyer, Sephiroth had returned to foil his grand designs yet again!

He had been so very close to crushing the insurgency that had cost his company so much for so long, within a hair's breadth of making Cloud and his confederates grovel at his feet! But what had happened? From the deepest night the tiger had come, his voice like rolling thunder, heartlessly ripping apart his grand design that had been months in the planning! He had but savored the smallest drop of that lovely liqueur before victory had been snatched his jaws, leaving behind nothing save the taste of faeces!

A hundred kilograms of dense metal slammed into the desk. Wooden chips sped away with terrifying speed, eager to avoid his wrath. A mushroom of a dust cloud rose from the deep black hole that had once been Rufus Shinra's working area, mute witness to the destruction that had just occurred.

Who was the one who had caused his company, his Planet - spanning empire to fall apart around him, the pieces to be picked up by the mongrel dogs that held neither right nor title to what had been his demesne? Who was the one who had welcomed him to purgatory, turning his world forever barren and sterile in a hellish storm of mage fire? Who was the one who had saved AVALANCHE three times in all, allowing those insurgents to escape righteous retribution at his hands? He would never have failed in any his plans; he would never have lost his dominion over men; he would never have entered into the terrible tortuous twilight between life and death, but for the despicable doings of that white - haired demon!

Rufus snarled, and through his artificial voicebox he did sound like a wheel without a tyre grinding against hard rock. If all his teeth had not been destroyed along with his mouth, his nose, his ears, his tongue, his chin, his cheeks, his forehead, his jaws would have ground each other to dust as he began to recount the most terrible trespasses Sephiroth had committed against him.

Five WEAPONs had Sephiroth summoned, one to pound his most imposing fortresses to rubble, one to gain mastery of the high seas, another to devour any who traveled on land, and yet another to wrest the skies from him. And the last had been thrust like a dagger at the heart of Shinra power, a nearly unstoppable assassin whose sole purpose had been to destroy him! Sephiroth, that cowardly monster! Even Cloud the wimp had had the guts to face him man to man, in single combat!

And to add insult to injury, the fallen general had summoned the giant comet to lay fallow his entire world, bleed his company to death by draining away all the Mako in the Planet, to destroy forever any possible chance he had of regaining his power if he ever awoke from Diamond Weapon's attack.

His one stroke of good fortune was to survive the WEAPON's attack; but was it more a curse than a blessing?

He felt sick, but had no mouth to vomit. He felt hunger, but he could not eat, let alone taste his food, his entire head being confined in that glass diving bell. He would have to live in perpetuity with amounted to a starvation diet, having glucose and saline solutions pumped in through his veins in totally unnatural fashion. Not even the grass eaters suffered a plight such as his! He longed to rest on a bed covered with perfumed sheets and relax in the cool comfort of the air - conditioning, but he could feel nothing now. Never could he again partake of nature's balm, of sore labour's bath… he could do nothing each night except wait expectantly for the next dose of stimulants to keep his mind fresh, the next flood of liquefied Mako to repair the damage done to his body from all the unguents and medicaments and artificial implants that kept him in this world. Sephiroth had murdered his sleep!

And the migraines! These were no mere headaches which would go away with the pop of an aspirin, but they were like earthquakes that rocked his world until it cracked asunder in a conflagration of blood, until the stars burned out of existence in a supernova of blinding whites and yellows and black sackcloth. Those attacks were coming with greater and greater frequency, and not even the most addictive narcotics could blunt the pain by the tiniest amount.

He had always been in perfect health, but now he was a cripple, enfeebled to such an extent that his life and all normal functioning had to be preserved by a machine… and Sephiroth was the one who had done all this to him! A thousand terrors ghosted around in his mind, each a vision of the vengeance he would wreak on the one - winged angel for the pain and suffering he had endured.

Midgar could always be rebuilt, a Mako reactor could always be replaced, an empire always reestablished. Those rebels could always be captured and destroyed at his whim, given time… but he could never again be put back into the position he would have been in had Sephiroth's mischief never been committed. All that mattered now was that this disgruntled servant of his, that turncoat who had bitten off the hand of the company that had fed him… that daemon was still alive… Even if every gil he possessed would have to be spent, even if every man in his employ die, even if his company were to perish in the attempt, he would have his hands on Sephiroth!

But from the cavity from which he had once fed himself poured a thin, pale green liquid, swirling around the glass helmet, covering all the exposed fascia and fat and muscle until the acid in the fluid stung his eyes, letting him see the world through Mako - tinted glasses.

As President of the world's largest and richest company, disloyalty in his ranks and rebellions against his just rule were only to be expected. Scarlet and Heidegger had harboured dreams of sitting in the chief executive's chair, to the extent of putting aside their differences to build the Proud Clod, hoping to threaten him with that mechanical monstrosity. Even that spineless lard guzzler would have wrested control of the company from him if the opportunity had arisen. And there was AVALANCHE, those eco - terrorists who claimed to be freedom fighters. What had he to fear from his rivals? He was certainly capable of readying thousands upon thousands of fighting men, enough to cover every corner of the globe, plenty of war machines to scare the masses into submission, agents in abundance to see his will enforced…

But this was no SOLDIER reject who would break down the moment a pretty girl died. Nor was the man with white hair a blustering barbarian or a half - blind dog or a spoilt brat of a princess. Sephiroth was no ordinary challenger to the absolute rule of Shinra. He was an army unto himself! Who else could saunter through the front doors of the Shinra corporate offices, walk up floor by floor, assassinating the most heavily guarded man on the Planet and a thousand of the company's finest SOLDIERs at one go? Who else had the power to send forth the WEAPONs to destroy the seat of Shinra power, to summon the planet killer for the sole purpose of destroying his former employer and extinguishing completely the Shinra Electric Power Company?

This was a man who was stronger than all the members of AVALANCHE combined and squared and multiplied to the power of a thousand; he was a killing machine colder than even the white titanium prison he had been forced into! AVALANCHE may have defeated the silver - haired warrior, but he had returned, and from what Reno had said, calmer, deadlier, in ever greater possession of his faculties! And he had to face him! He had to defeat him or be doomed again to eternal obscurity! And this he could not accept! But… he had to fight the great Sephiroth!

Rufus hurriedly pushed a button on the chest plastron, pressing it repeatedly like a kid trying to make his video game character attack as quickly as possible, and the valve in his suit began to operate, draining the liquid away into the waste canister. He cursed as an alarm sounded, telling him that the metal receptacle was almost full, that his medical staff had to replace it again. He never had to rely on others like this! He was like a cripple in a wheelchair, unable to even wear his clothes or bathe without someone else aiding him! And Sephiroth absolutely had to demonstrate his superiority over him in such a despicable manner!

But he did not care so much about his helplessness, not this time. Why had he thrown up this time? He had never felt that way before except during the time he had been on the ship to Junon, though he had seen it many times on the faces of those whom he ruled. All the enemies he had faced so far had been well within his means. Cloud and his confederates were but enemies made of flesh and blood, easily handled, but what of this demon to whom death itself could not hold sway over?

How could one defeat a creature of myth?

His arms clawed at the tempered glass casing fitted around his head. He could hear his monotonous whimper of helplessness. He found the floor rushing towards him amidst the clank and clatter of metal components obeying his haywire mind. And like the child who was hoping against hope that his super attack would activate if he kept mashing the same button over and over again, he prayed that the narcotics would come into play, and give him what little shelter from the hurricane that was drowning his consciousness. His world was fast dissolving into a whirling wheel of colours, a rainbow spinning faster and faster and faster, traversing the entire spectrum hundreds and thousands of times until the intense whiteness of unutterable agony consumed him.

And the pain stopped, just as he felt that it was about to kill him. But this attack, just like the last, had supplied him with clarity, and now he saw an answer.

That Hojo, for all the trouble he had given Shinra, had provided him with an answer, and like a sleeping giant, it lay dormant, deep within the Stygian pits of his fortress, a secret privy to only a few others apart from himself. This was the secret to absolute power. He could use it, and even Sephiroth would have to bend his knee in abject servility. He only had to take hold of it, and the Planet would be within his grasp, and much, much more… even what lay beyond those stars…

Did he dare to take it? Which was the lesser of the two evils? What would happen to him if he accepted this gift? Would he endure a fate worse than this existence as a lowly cyborg? He did not know. Worst of all… would he become a slave? A puppet? A mere mouthpiece? And after everything that had transpired, after all his struggles to attain and retain the Presidency that he had waited for over twenty years… twenty years of enforced isolation from the universe… twenty years of virtual nonexistence in a diving bell! He might possess powers greater than even the Great Sephiroth, but at what cost?

The acidic, foodless, Mako - laced fluid sloshed out of his buccal cavity again. Once more his fingers abused the control panel as he called out repeatedly for his doctors.

The space around him suddenly became very lively with sawdust, powdered glass and metal fragments as his iron lungs worked overtime, hurriedly drawing air into their filtered intakes. As his eyes could not close, his hands shrouded his head as he tried to begin the rationalisation process.

Fortunately, he did not have to make this choice now, and if everything went well, he would not have to make it at all. But still, was he really capable of defeating Sephiroth by himself? The line between legitimate expectations and wishful thinking had been blurred. He wanted to answer that question in the affirmative, but what if he really couldn't beat that silver - maned seraphim? Would there be nothing to cling to if he were to open his eyes by just a crack? He did not know, and he did not want to know. But in spite of it all, one thing was absolutely certain… he would call no man his master.

This was a cat's cradle he did not want to venture into right now. Things were still very much within his control. Now, he had to implement a new plan, and already he had something fermenting within this bloody bubbling stew, the remnants of his mind.

To Nibelheim Sephiroth would come… he would make sure that the white haired man would make the journey. And if the traitor did arrive at all, the heavy hand of Rufus Shinra's authority would fall upon him with full force.

And where the Turks had failed him, the vindicators, these men of numbers, would make good their blunders.

Author's Notes:

Thanks everybody, for waiting so very long! Whoa, it's been like… almost 9 months? I was losing interest for quite a long while… just had other things to do, like studying, playing FFX and Kingdom Hearts, among other things… but I could not rest easy knowing about those who still waited for the elusive next update… like waiting for Yuffie's father, I'd say. Wish I had someone like Jiminy Cricket who would become the keeper of my conscience… then I could do anything I wanted). Thanks for all the mails asking me to go on! I hope I can keep this up… it would really be bad if I were to upload one chapter every few months…

My first sentence came from a poem from Poe, if I'm not wrong. "Lo! Death has reared himself in a strange city." Raymond E. Feist used this verse to open his book, A Darkness at Sethanon, and I found it quite cool, so you now see a modified version of Poe's line.

Don't you love the reference to Sin? He's probably one of the coolest villains after Sephy. Don't worry, the big fish won't be making a splash in this story… but you never know who else might)…

I loved Exosquad when I was younger (and I still do now), and I've had the idea of a crippled villain dressed up like Phaeton running around in my head for a long while, and I thought, well, Rufus could do it nicely, after his close encounter with Diamond WEAPON. Rufus has it a little worse here, but at least he won't turn into a gooey blue puddle…

Even though FFVII was a dead serious game, it did have its light moments. Who wouldn't want to give our lard eating Palmer a good kick in the derriere once more? Lard in your tea… unimaginable. Grossness.

Finally, about the reference to a kid playing the video game… kinda reminds you of FFVIII, hmm? FFVIII had the best limit break system of the entire series. It was very easy to use, unlike FFX. Just bring your HP down to the yellow zone, or cast Aura, mash Triangle until you hear that welcome chime, and do a Lionheart or cast Degenerator (this was one reason why Quistis was one of my fave characters, apart from her cool, professional demeanor)! The system was easily abused, yes, but it had its advantages. No need to wander aimlessly killing some minnows or allowing yourself to get hit to see that silly bar fill up mm by mm. FFX had Entrust, yes, but you still have to do the donkey work to fill up the contributor's Overdrive gauge. At any rate, I looooooove mashing buttons… and you have to do a lot of it, especially in Kingdom Hearts). Time to get X replaced.

And once again, thanks everyone for waiting!!!