This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, generally speaking 'being' is better than 'owning'. Methinks. Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung II is entitled to use her apart from me.

NEVERENDING SONG

Part I – DIVER. 4th song

"I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside
Bring me to life…"

Evanescence – „Bring me to life"

„I know you can speak," professor Hojo addressed him, pacing to and fro with hands clasped behind his back along the table on which the child sat in silence.

„There is nothing wrong with your vocal chords, specimen alfa; they are in perfect shape. Your brain activity ranges within the normal limits – ahem, whatever is regarded as ‚normal' for you, anyway. So I know you are not stupid either. You understand me perfectly. You are fully capable of articulate speech, both physically and as far as your IQ is concerned. You just won't do it. Well, personally I don't give a damn on this; I never did. In fact I must admit you made my life so much easier by not uttering a word all of these years ever since you became able to. I am NOT fond of children whimpers and whinings, nor do I need to be distracted from my work by endless silly questions or childish blabbering. I must also admit that your determination to maintain your self-control during the experiments and not giving me unnecessary distress with excessive wails and howls of so-called pain is to be appreciated. It will certainly be of use to you in the future as well. Only the weak cry – and you are not a weak one. Therefore, the time has come for you to move on towards the next step in your life..."

Changes again. Even more drastic ones, though he had not taken them that hard at the time.

Life was monotonous inside the labs. It had been so for as long as he could remember. The daily experiments, the tests, the mako dips. His horizon had only enlarged when he had become able to go beyond the walls through the computer network's wires. Reading the newly entered data day after day was a welcome distraction from the routine, especially when he lay strapped on a table expecting something painful to come or, again, when he lay on the mattress in his cubicle, trying to busy his tremendous mind with anything at all. Occasionally he would even go as far as to take over the computer-controlled equipment and make it perform devious things instead of what it was supposed to, such as mixing the chemicals in wrong ways to create new substances with dangerous or exhilarating effects, manoeuvering the animals in weird ways or even ordering the simultaneous opening of all the electronic locks of the cages, causing an absolute chaos until the animals could be gathered again and put back where they belonged. All this while he was just lying in his own cage, watching the whole hubbub with impassive, totally disinterested eyes on a completely expressionless face.

Then, all of a sudden, changes swept over him like what he would learn to know as a tsunami.

At first there were, all of a sudden, lessons for him. He had been moved again, this time only into another area of the labs, but it was an area in which he had never had access before – and for good reason, because only humans went there. He knew how it looked though, as he had seen it through the cameras before. It was the resting area, containing a few rooms where the personnel could take a break and get some rest when the working hours extended during some important project. One of those rooms had been arranged for him alone and, though in terms of size it was quite small, compared to the cubicle where he had lived before, it seemed so huge to him. It had a real bed, like the ones only humans had, a low chest of drawers and a small desk with a chair and a computer placed on it. He had been given human clothes too, as he could find out by looking into the drawers. That night, as he lay in his new too comfortable human bed with pillow, real sheets and blanket, he almost trembled with fear already. He knew how it was to sleep in such a bed from his dreams, but this wasn't supposed to ever happen! It was… as if his dreams had spilled everywhere around him, splattering his life with spots and puddles of unreliable, surrealistic and yet palpable illusions.

Dreams weren't supposed to do that. They should have stayed in their realm of nothingness – mere moving shadows on non-existant walls. They weren't supposed to invade the reality and drown it so terrifyingly.

Lying in the simple, narrow bed – yet so luxurious to him – he dove into his new computer and swallowed its content entirely, oblivious to the fact that it was only going to get much worse than that. Next day he knew it all, though he hadn't even turned it on yet.

He was stunned, nauseous and scared.

There had never been anything else but scientific materials in the computers inside the Lab World, not even in the terminals placed within that resting area. It was obvious for him for a long time that there had to be other areas where they left at some point, but in the network there had never been anything at all about humans and their life, where they lived, what they did in that mysterious part of the Lab World when they left in the evenings. If those areas they lived in had computers at all, they weren't connected in a network with the ones he knew and roamed and thus he hadn't had access to them. He had tried to follow any wires and penetrate the walls – but they had proved to be unreachable. It seemed all the networks in their part of the labs were self-sustained and never connected with whatever other places the humans went to when they were not working.

And now, all of a sudden, the new computer was filled with information that caused him to make the most terrifying discovery: forget his poor new bed and anything else for the matter! His whole universe as he knew it, The Lab World, suddenly proved to be just a mere dot on the map of a huge real world he'd never known of!!

The sky? The endless blue? Seemingly it was there, somewhere outside.

Outside.

With cotton balls called ‚clouds' and all.

Trees? Certainly. On endless areas, stretching farther than he could ever imagine, called ‚forests'.

Buildings? Everywhere.

Suddenly his wildest dreams, his dreams, of places he had never been to, were the daily reality.

How could he ever dream of them? How could he see so clearly places he had never set foot in and things he couldn't even comprehend entirely??

He hadn't seen them yet for real, but there were clips with them in that computer. And they looked precisely as he'd seen them in his dreams!

There were detailed lessons about the human world, its geography, history, biology, population, society with its structure and organisation and politics – and something huge and omnipresent called ShinRa.

He was meant to live in that world he knew nothing about. A dumb and helpless animal from the labs, forcefully thrown among the humans.

And he was terrified.