What are you doing on my property? Stripes thought, narrowing his eyes at Aeris' ghost. She had stopped laughing, but now fixed him with a creepy sort of leer. I highly doubt that you are who you pretend to be.

You were always a smart one, weren't you, Yuto?

And you must be pretty special to know my old first name like that.

Old first name. How cute. Looks like you really are trying to step beyond Hojo. She would be proud of you.

She, eh? I take it you mean Jenova?

Aeris' smile widened. Sure, whatever you say.

Before Stripes could protest, she was gone. "Dammit..." He looked back down the steps. The first floor was black, except for the faint green glow of the mako-polluted pipes. Too much had just happened at once. He needed a break. And he needed to talk to someone honestly for a change. Someone who wasn't connected with any of this drama. He only knew of one person that could do this.

Tifa found the rooms Barrett, Marlene and Reeve had holed up in and made a grand entrance, making sure they could see her cut. Barrett looked up indifferently and waved. "Hey, how's mah baby there? Talkin' to yo' friend?"

Tifa blinked. It wasn't like Barrett to not notice personal injuries. Once she got a paper cut while visiting Johnny and the next day, the poor lad had been put in traction. "Oh...nothing happened. I just fell down the stairs afterward, is all." An excuse he'd never believe.

Barrett nodded his head and looked her over. "Glad you ain' scratched up. That Stripes seems like a nice guy. Takes care o' you bettah dan Cloud, come to thinkka it. You was right. I ovahreacted."

Tifa blinked again. She found the bathroom in the room and looked at her forehead in the mirror. There was nothing there, except for a tiny smudge of dried blood. No scar, no nothing. She looked at her hand. There was no blood on it except underneath her fingernails. What was going on here?

Lingering by the sea, Stripes watched the waves roll back and forth along the shore. He closed his eyes, and sat down on the sand. It was just beginning to get warm when he crawled out of the sea, barely human again. He closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind for the warm presence he had been in the company of before emerging from the sea. He had convinced himself that it had been JENOVA, but after that last bout with Aeris' Ghost, he wasn't so sure anymore. He had known JENOVA to absorb and combine herself with host DNA, but never to heal. He'd discovered that he had the power a while back, and that maybe it had developed as a result of him needing it, but there was something a little too suspicious now.

Hey...HEY...are you still out there?

Stripes must have sat there for fifteen minutes before reaching out again. He was fucking freezing now. Shouldn't have sat down...

HELLOOO?

AHA! So you LIED to me about JENOVA being out of the picture!

Stripes jumped up and frowned with his jowels. "Jesus Christ, Lucrecia, don't you have anything better to do?"

Lucrecia adjusted her ghostly self indignantly. I knew you were going to put the planet in jeopardy again!

"Great, look, why don't you tell that to 'Aeris' and she'll push Cloud out into the open and we can have a battle to the death and everything will be okay?" Stripes retorted, making sure to use lots of flamboyant hand gestures.

Listen, I know when you're plotting, Hojo! Don't think I'm going to turn my back on this!

Stripes threw his arms down in frustration. "Lucrecia, can you stop acting like a cartoon character for just ONE second?"

Please...

Stripes and Lucrecia stopped in mid-bicker as a blue circle of light formed on the water. Lucrecia found herself unable to move, and Stripes' pants were miraculously dry again. That was the voice they had both come to know as JENOVA's.

This is all just a big, terrible misunderstanding!

Stripes walked toward the circle of light. It was pretty far out. But he stopped as he saw the ghostly blue form of JENOVA appear on the water above the circle. "You're not JENOVA..." Lucrecia floated back down to the ground and let her feet, as they were, touch the sand. Stripes looked back at her. "I KNOW you can feel this, too, Lu."

Lucrecia blinked and folded her arms across her chest, frowning, but not protesting.

'JENOVA' began to flicker out, and Stripes plunged into the water towards her. "Wait!"

But it was too late...

Stripes turned to look back at Lucrecia, but she was gone, too.

"Fuck."

Stripes sloshed back to the shore, the cold air stinging him once again. He squinted at something shiny and black on the shoreline. Once he was out of the water, he discovered that it was a pair of sunglasses. He picked them up, shook the sand off of them, and put them on.