Kain Highwind leaned against the wall of the hospital room, looking on from his place besides Angeal, Zack and Genesis at the prone form of Cloud Strife, unconscious in the hospital bed. Tifa sat there at his bedside, clutching at his hand and only half-listening, it seemed, to the doctor's evaluation. He cocked his head forth to listen in for later, when he was certain that he wished to be ready to explain when a detailed explanation will be called upon.

"These wounds are really something," remarked the doctor. "The nicks that are visible actually cut deep–to the bone, in fact, if our scans are accurate. What's especially interesting is the fact that they are all so incredibly fine that the flesh will be able to knit itself back together as if they were only as minor as their outward appearance. The concern is the chest wound, but even that missed the heart, the lungs and all major blood vessels. He'll be fine, but he was obviously quite clearly outclassed. I'd advise him to put his sword up on the wall and declare himself permanently retired. The toll on his body should these incidents keep occurring will accumulate to open these wounds in short order, bleeding him to death or leaving him a practical quadriplegic, not to mention the significant drop in his…chances of procreation, to put it in as delicate a manner as I can."

"So what you're saying is, he's finished?" came a female voice that caused the faces of every member of AVALANCHE in conscious attendance (which did not include Vincent) to turn ashen, then their heads to whip around to stare at the new arrival.

"…AERIS?!" they cried as one.

Kain turned his head to regard the new entrant, noting with approval that it was indeed the half-Cetra flower girl who stood at the threshold, braid and all, though looking as though she had aged along with the others over the past half-decade. "Yes, it's me," she returned curtly. "Now Doctor, if you would please be so kind as to answer my question?"

"Y…Yes, Miss…er…Gainsborough, was it?" replied the doctor. "Due to the latent severity of his new injuries, Mister Strife is well and truly done with his fighting days."

"And Tifa?" Aeris continued without missing a beat. "It is incumbent upon you to ensure he stays that way, alright?"

"Aeris…I…"

"Do I make myself clear?"

"But Aeris, I…"

"DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!"

"Yes!" Tifa cried, alarmed as the rest of AVALANCHE was by the irritation and buried rage that radiated in waves off of the girl they all thought they had known.

"Good. I'll hold you to that," she finished with a huff, straightening out her red leather jacket and stalking over purposefully to the window. "It will be quite unfortunate if I have to remind you of your responsibility. I never wanted to steal your precious Cloud from you, but so help me, I refuse to sacrifice my happiness for the sake of yours! You, who beat around the bush for half a decade out of fear of each other, allowing him to sink deeper and deeper into a past that is sordid beyond his comprehension. If you screw up again, I am done with helping you from beyond the grave!"

"'Sacrifice your happiness'? Aeris, what…I don't…" struggled Tifa.

"No, of course you don't," she countered. "I wouldn't expect you to."

"Aeris…"

"IT DOESN'T MATTER!" shouted Aeris, pivoting around so quickly that her braided ponytail whipped around her slender, but no longer waifish form. "I…damn it… I am so sick and tired of living your goddamn lives for you! Planet knows I've tried to be patient, but you guys are really starting to make me sick!"

"Beware the nice ones," muttered Zack.

"Zack Fair, I heard that!" she yelled, freezing him in place with a deer-in-headlights expression as his skin reddened. "I swear, if you know what's good for you, you'll hold your tongue! I am so not in the mood to deal with your joking around right now…"

"Miss Gainsborough," interceded Kain. "They obviously do not know what's going on. Perhaps you could explain it to them?"

Aeris seemed to consider his words for a few moments before giving a frustrated huff (edged with no small hint of resigned anxiety, he noticed) and turning back to the window. "Later," she said. "I don't have time to explain everything right now, but all you need to know at the present moment is that currently, the man I love is facing off against his greatest challenge–an entity of nearly unrivalled power who was willing to do me a favor–and all I can do is sit here and watch. But may the Planet have mercy on him if he lied, because I certainly won't…"

Ahh…so now the pieces all fit together, thought Kain. Oh, Aeris. You really needn't worry, but I understand your pain nonetheless. Let's hope that those you called 'friend' in days and battles past will be able to, as well…


Gedan-no-kamae against a two-handed Hirazuki stance. The combatants charged each other with shinsoku, and at a speed faster than the human eye's ability to see, Octaslash met Kuzuryūsen, at the end of which both opponents emerged, unharmed.

"Shinsoku," breathed Sephiroth. "I have heard of it, but I thought myself the only one to be able to achieve it…"

"Technically speaking, you are," replied Olliver. "I'm here only temporarily, but while I'm here, I came to do a favor for an…acquaintance of mine."

"And this is why you went to such lengths in order to resurrect me," surmised Sephiroth.

"I did that to help Aeris solve her problem," said the vampire, the name immediately demanding the surprised Silver General's full attention. "And I intend to keep to that."

"What do you mean, 'Aeris's problem'?" asked the former SOLDIER suspiciously.

"In short? She's worried," he replied honestly. "Worried about you, more specifically. She knows that you are…troubled by your past, but because you seek to protect her from your darkness, she cannot help. It results in her feeling powerless, which thus leads to frustration and despair, feelings of inadequacy, et cetera, et cetera. Thus, I come as a sort of…moderator."

"'Moderator'?" balked Sephiroth.

"Since you feel as if you cannot share your darkness with your well-meaning paramour, and since she is perceptive enough to be able to see through the act you put on for her benefit, which troubles her to no end, I offer you a deal," spoke the Dragon of Saint George. "It is your anger that is unresolved and your hatred that is unending that tortures you so."

"My hatred?" scoffed the silver-haired swordsman. "It has been too long since I have seen what destruction and horror my unfounded hatred may bring about once unleashed. I let go of it long ago."

"No, you have not," countered the black swordsman. "You have long since given up your hatred for mankind, ever since darling Jenova forced you to kill the flower girl."

"How do you know of that?!" shouted Sephiroth.

"But there is one hatred which you have refused to eschew, Sephiroth," continued Olliver, as if Sephiroth had never objected. "That is, the hatred you save for yourself. It is the greatest hatred you have ever held, even in willing thrall to the ambitions of Jenova. It will, however, consume you if not dealt with, and from that consumption not even death will offer respite or sanctuary." The vampire turned on his heel, regarding the One-Winged Angel with a gravely serious expression, his eyes blazing with intensity. "I have brought you here before me now, that I might at last set you free. Come, Sephiroth. Allow me to embody that which is intrinsically yours–your unbreakable will, your feelings for Aeris, your genius…–and cast against it your hatred of all of what you are. Come then, One-Winged Angel! Break your chains and fly, at last, liberated and born anew!"

"Hmph," scoffed Sephiroth. "If it is a fight you want, I'm happy to oblige."

"No, Sephiroth. Not a fight," said Olliver, shaking his head. "I think we're both tired of fighting meaningless battles. No, this is a duel. Our duel. And if you try to deny that, I can guarantee you, not even the great Silver General of SOLDIER will be able to defeat me."

"…I accept."


Vincent and Lucrecia sat on opposite sides of their dark room, their backs to each other. Though the air hung heavy with the tension of things left unsaid that should not have been, neither knew how to broach the subject with each other. It was to this sordid scene that Aeris Gainsborough entered when she slipped into that chamber, and it filled her with frustration–interestingly enough, not stemming from irritation or aggravation, but from profound sorrow. It reminded her, gut-wrenchingly enough, of the time shortly after Sephiroth, having sacrificed himself in order to give her enough time to augment the summoning of Holy using the energies of the Lifestream, thus stopping Meteor, foiling Jenova, and, in the end, accomplishing what the ancient Cetra failed to do: defeat her, once and for all. They had met in a fantastical environment, where they meant to discuss his and her final moments respectively, but because neither of them knew how to begin, time after time for several weeks, all they accomplished was the mutual occupation of a conjured room in the Icicle Inn.

And so she resolved to do for her lover's parents what her own mother–her birth mother, the Cetra woman, Ifalna–had done for the two of them in the Lifestream.

Break the ice.

"Lucrecia Crescent. Vincent Valentine," she began, startling and drawing the attention of both adults in the room. "I…my name's Aeris Gainsborough."

"We know," replied Vincent, his brow furrowed in confusion.

Aeris flushed with embarrassment. "Well I know you know, Vincent! I did travel with you…for a while, at least. It was more for Lucrecia's benefit, anyways…" She looked away, thinking to herself, Damn! This is not how this was supposed to work… She was unable, though, to hide her shock when the infamously shy Lucrecia Crescent spoke.

"I see. You must be the girl Sephiroth cares for so much," said she. "I'm…pleased…to see that you were able to give him that which I did not have the…the strength to do. There's something familiar about you, though… You're...Professor Gast's daughter, too, aren't you?"

"Yes," Aeris responded, suddenly demure. "Yes, Professor Gast was my father. He was hunted down and murdered on the orders of Professor Hojo. My mother and I were taken to the lab, but we escaped, and though my birth mother was gunned down in Midgar, my adopted mother, Elmyra, took me in and sheltered me from the Turks Hojo sent to recapture me. Well, it was really a combination of her and my friend, Tseng, who did it, but…yes."

"I…understand," responded Lucrecia, her body trembling ever-so-slightly. "When we met, Hojo was different than the man he became… No, that's not true. He was just better at hiding it. Monsters are born, not made, and trust me when I say that Hojo…was an absolute monster…" Her trembling became more pronounced, and her voice wavered.

"Look, the two of you," said Aeris. "Both of you have…well, fucked up (for lack of a better term) in the past, but right now, Seph…Sephiroth needs the mother and father that weren't there for him when he was being tortured by Hojo. He needs you two. And so I need you to say what needs to be said between yourselves in the next few hours, for his sake. I have faith in both of you to do this. Please don't prove me wrong." She turned and walked carefully out of the room, intending to leave the estranged couple to their long-awaited reunion.

"WAIT!" cried Lucrecia, stopping Aeris at the threshold. "Why…why are you doing this? Helping us, I mean?"

Aeris sighed. "Do you really have to ask?" She chuckled. "It's because…well, because Sephiroth has made me very happy, and I love him. With him, I'm…no longer alone. So when he's in pain, I will do anything and everything in my power to keep him from being consumed by despair. That's all." She walked out, letting the door close behind her. Not to mention, Vincent was a friend. But really, that's neither here nor there, she thought. Laughing softly to herself, she tossed her braid over her shoulder and walked off.


The pair faced each other, blades drawn and in mirroring two-handed Hirazuki stances. Then they paused, each just beyond the edge of the other's reach, considering and waiting to see which of them would end up making the first move. The decision would be made in an instant, they knew, but they also knew the stakes, for with two swordsmen of their caliber, the edge of their reach was a barrier, and they were all too conscious of it. Focused eyes cool as the Ninth Level of Hell met an irritated, slightly unsettled gaze that nonetheless maintained a mask of calm convincing enough to fool most people.

It was settled.

Each charged simultaneously, silent save for the sound of the displacement of air and the tearing of the rooftop. At the end, both of the thrusts had cancelled each other out, thus failing to connect, but the combatants whirled around in unison, the wide slashes that they turned the failed thrusts into connecting with each other. The blades ground against each other, the metallic shriek filling the air, and Olliver disengaged first. Believing to see an opening, Sephiroth rushed to hit his opponent with a swift morote-zuki, but as the vampire continued the arc of his ōdachi into a waki-gamae stance, he aborted and leapt back high into the air, Masamune held down in a waiting parry, just in time to avoid the completion of his arcing one-handed upward cut that sparked as it sliced through the roof, supported by the other hand along Kangetsu's spine. At the end of that arc, Olliver flowed back into another Hirazuki stance, this time with his hand along the crest of the blade with the kissaki pointed upwards, then executing a vertical Yamitsuki (an Amatsuken) and following Sephiroth. It pierced through his midsection and out of his back, and the black swordsman flowed into another wide slash that threw the Silver General into the building below. Olliver floated down to the other side of that surface gracefully as his opponent struggled to regain his footing, the deep stab wound healing already.

"I told you, Sephiroth, you cannot win against me unless you fully commit to this battle," chided the Vampire King. "Next time, I won't go easy on you."

The former SOLDIER smirked, pointing Masamune at his opponent. "All right, then. You want me? You got me." With that, Sephiroth's posture changed, mimicking a willow (or someone about to faint) and dashing forth with a speed far exceeding that which he had showed himself capable of previously. He lunged with another tsuki, this time a katate-zuki, but the other simply sidestepped and moved past the strike, spinning in a full circle and using the momentum to smash the blunt end of his blade into the back of Sephiroth's neck, sending him flying to crash down into the side of a neighboring building. He tumbled through it, wrecking the rows of orderly cubicles within before finally regaining his footing and stopping his motion through the generation of friction, then dashing forth, propelling himself on with powerful, explosive bounds off of each step, meeting Olliver's downward strike that his jōdan-no-kamae stance telegraphed with Masamune held sideways almost at the level of his eyes, moving past him and leaping back into the air, following with a combination of four diagonal slashes that sent waves of vibrations through the intervening space, wreaking further devastation and kicking up a thick cloud of dust. A moment later, though, the vampire burst through that smokescreen in gedan-no-kamae, repeating the upward cut from before; Sephiroth parried, and the black swordsman used the momentum from the impact to propel himself into a flip to multiply his own speed, then executing a downward strike towards the head whilst still wheeling in mid-air. Masamune parried, but the transfer of inertia and force propelled its wielder downwards towards the street below, where he landed with such a bone-shattering impact that a sizeable crater was generated in the tar. He barely had enough time to shake off his daze and roll out of the way before his opponent plunged down to the ground, brandishing Kangetsu in a way that reminded him in a flash of how his body, under Jenova's direct control, leapt down and drove Masamune into Aeris's back; Kangetsu cut deep into the ground, and Sephiroth regained his footing in the minute delay that elapsed in which Olliver pulled his sword from its earthen sheath. Imagining the possession of a sheath, Sephiroth attempted a battōjutsu strike, which Kangetsu snapped to block and then disengage from, but the silver swordsman used that momentum to spin around and deliver another strike that was faster and stronger by an order of magnitude, which this time connected, slashing the vampire from his right hip up to his left shoulder, lifting him up off his feet and into the air, where his arc ended several blocks down the street. After a moment, however, using his sword, Kangetsu, the vampire stood once more, the gash across his chest weeping viscous crimson fluid that the Silver General could only assume to be his opponent's blood.

"Impressive, Sephiroth. Very impressive," said Olliver. "You grow closer and closer to expressing your true darkness. But it becomes clear to me that your legendary self-control will not be abandoned in the face of any normal opponent…so, in order to speed this along, I'll skip my first two combat forms. Releasing Binding Coil Four!" As he said this, a black substance tinged with accents of scarlet began to ooze from the bloody gash across his midsection, covering his body as he staggered to the ground and then to all fours, and thus to a blob of nebulous black with features that could not be discerned, though from it exuded sinister laughter. Then a skeletal hand burst from the mass, the black ooze rushing forth to cover it and then to be absorbed, leaving behind a massive hand with fingers that were claws and grey skin stretched taut over lengths of corded, bulging muscle. After that, another hand burst forth, and the same happened to it, followed by a pair of skeletal wings, themselves covered with the substance that left behind a leathery membrane that filled out their bat-like structure, the arms of those wings also corded with muscle, but with skin black as pitch, in contrast with the grey skin that covered the rest of him.

When he rose, the elegant, beautiful, deadly swordsman was gone, and in his place was a massive, muscled, grey-skinned, clawed, horned beast with the same eyes ringed by yellow sclera, longer fangs, a gaunt, skull-like face, and a pair of great demonic bat-like wings, the membrane black as pitch on the exterior while the interior maintained a vital red color. His waist and below was covered in a sable lower-robe lined with red, secured with the same belt that he had had on before; from his back came a long, sinuous, spaded tail, and his feet were now bare, their digits turned to talons. This creature, its chest covered in black markings in the shape of hundreds of runes and dozens of intricate Hermetic arrays, gave a mighty, bestial roar, plucked Kangetsu up from the ground into which it had been thrust, wheeling it through the air and setting into another two-handed Hirazuki. "Now, Sephiroth, witness the True Form of the Vampire King!"


"He has assumed his True Form," remarked Kain, his arms folded across his chest as he looked down at the battle below, Aeris at his side. "That is curious."

"Why?" she asked, concerned and slightly suspicious.

"Because he seems to have skipped over Dæmon Form and Dæmon II, or Greater Dæmon," replied the dragoon. "The True Form is alternatively known as Dæmon III, and, as the first of the Four Archdæmon Forms, Archdæmon I. The fact that he's initiating Archdæmon I this early in the fight bodes well for his regard of your paramour. However, should this be the extent of his power, regardless of his skill, it does not bode well for his continued good health."

"I can assure you, it isn't," replied the Cetra with conviction. "Not by a long shot. Sephiroth…" She exhaled. "Yes, Sephiroth will be fine. Thank you. I needed that."

The dragon knight responded with a curt nod. "Happy to oblige."


Sephiroth lifted himself out of the rubble into which he had been blasted by the incredible power of his opponent's slash, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his glove and spitting out a dislodged tooth with the knowledge that a replacement would soon grow in its place. He tightened his grip on Masamune at the sight of the Vampire King, and did not drop his guard even when the demonic creature into which Olliver had transformed began to speak.

"Kagemusha-ryū: Akumano Mugen Zan. Originally a technique long thought lost, taught to me by its final practitioner, augmented with my particular caliber of shinsoku, perfected to my satisfaction and incorporated into my personal school of kenjutsu–which is, as I have said, Kagemusha-ryū," said the monstrous-looking being. "Can you see now, Sephiroth? Are you beginning to understand? You must let your hatred channel through you, truly, in order to have any chance of defeating me. If you do not, I will end it quickly and permanently; I have grown weary of fighting meaninglessly."

Sephiroth responded with the voice he knew better than his own: that of Masamune.

Assuming gedan-no-kamae, he closed his eyes and allowed his veteran analytical mind and eidetic memory to play back to him the memory of experiencing Kuzuryūsen, picking it apart and reverse-engineering it, before snapping his eyes open, his gaze blazing with his seldom-needed ki, and, with a mighty kiai, he replicated it.

The attack hit all nine targets as it should have, but shortly thereafter, he found himself on the receiving end of a point-blank-range Yamitsuki (an Akumanotantō) that punctured his midsection, intentionally missing his vitals, but then morphing into another slash to repel him.

"Good. You're learning. That attack was perfect; well beyond my expectations," remarked Olliver. "Your ki–your fighting spirit–was flowing through you; I could sense it radiating in waves. Such is the only way you may defeat me, Sephiroth. Now, you have intrigued me as to the true limits of your power. Come, show me more."

Bursting out of the rubble, Sephiroth leapt high into the air, coming back down with Masamune readied in a position reminiscent–no, nearly identical to–the Hirazuki stance, his right hand steadying the blade, another kiai upon his lips. The Vampire King beat his wings powerfully, avoiding the attack the moment before it slammed down into the space he had occupied a moment earlier, tearing up even more of the road. The Silver General, his ki flowing and his normally tight grip on his anger quickly loosening, followed his opponent into the air, their swords clashing with an explosive shower of white sparks. He disengaged by repelling himself off of his foe's blade, flipping through the air and arcing back down with an attempted katate-zuki; this, too, was deflected, but he used this to send him spinning, his resultant slash (for which he added his right hand to his grip) clashing once more into Kangetsu. With this as an anchor, he swung his legs up into a two-booted driving kick to his foe's midsection, crouching and pushing backwards, flipping in mid-air, landing in a crouch on the side of another building, sword in another two-handed Hirazuki grip, and flying from that perch across the way to where the Vampire King still flew in the air, then crashing into the opposite building with a shoulder-roll and a short kneeling power-slide. The delayed reaction came to fruition a moment later, when the Octaslash made its effect felt, followed by the monstrous form of his opponent crashing into the same building, coming out of his only slightly less controlled roll with a downward slash at his head. Masamune blocked, but the power of the impact caused the floor to buckle and shatter, sending Sephiroth falling to the lower level, his opponent on top of him. Again and again their combined weight and force of impact caused them to fall through floors, and it was only after eight or nine had been collapsed that the silver swordsman managed to crouch up into a semi-fœtal position and kick the much-heavier vampire away from him, so that on the ninth or tenth floor they reached, they both landed on opposite ends of the chamber in kneeling power-slides.

Simultaneously their gazes snapped up to meet each other, a kiai being almost torn from both of their throats as they charged each other and exchanged a wild flurry of blows, all so fluid and indistinct that all the Silver General was capable of at that time was following the dance to the inaudible battle-music that still coordinated the steps their inhumanly-fast reflexes and finely-honed instincts dictated they take.

It was an arcing upward slash, which sparked on contact with the steel girders below that supported the structure, that broke the rhythm, disrupting the elegant-but-uncontrolled dance of death. The Vampire King leapt back, landing well outside of Masamune's reach and Kangetsu's, and both fell to their knees, breathing heavily. He was the first to stagger elegantly to his feet, followed in short order by Sephiroth.

"Excellent. You grow closer and closer to becoming unleashed, and with it, your speed, strength, dexterity and accuracy increase," said he. "But I think it's time to take this to the next level, don't you agree? Releasing Binding Coil Five!" With that, he drove his sword into the ground, tightly grasping its kashira with both hands and closing his eyes in concentration. From the markings on his grey skin rose smoke-like tendrils of shadow that whispered, it seemed, directly into Sephiroth's mind. Thicker and more viscous they grew, until finally, several dozen runes and the arrays they belonged to–which, in truth, linked to form a much more intricate one–glowed scarlet with a low-pitched, keening wail. The corner of his opponent's mouth quirked open, baring teeth in a grimace and a grunt as the scarlet glow faded, secreting the black liquid once again to cover his body. The grunts increased in frequency and volume, until, as the last of him disappeared beneath it, they chained into a demonic roar. He threw his arms out wide, the liquid seemingly evaporating nigh-instantaneously, and from his back exploded a second pair of wings, identical to the first. The rest of his body was now plated in a sectioned, black, bone-like carapace, and his eyes glowed scarlet without sclera or pupil, his hair growing to halfway down his back and flowing with the explosive force of the transformation. Sephiroth gripped Masamune ever-tighter, his ki flowing through him nearly unabated, his warrior's instincts instilling him with a sense of anticipation and grim excitement. He knew that from here, the battle could–and would–only get more difficult.


"GET DOWN!" cried Kain, grabbing Aeris and throwing her behind him, where his arms wrapped around her, securing her to his armored chest. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a black-and-scarlet ball of energy pulsating, as if it was a force-field containing her lover and his opponent, before it exploded outwards into a devastating, at first soundless, shockwave. The dragoon bore the brunt of the conflagration on his back, but she could still feel the weightlessness as they were thrown into the sky, seeming to fly gracefully. Then the shockwave dissipated, and with a deafening, concussive wave of sound, the air that the shockwave had forced out rushed back to fill the vacuum, causing nigh-cataclysmic levels of destruction as windows, walls, floors, even buildings were sundered in its wake, leaving the opponents standing in a three-story-deep crater. Of course, the destruction was limited to nine square city blocks, but still, the result had Aeris gaping in open-mouthed surprise when she and Kain stood to take it in. There the pair stood, and here she and the dragoon stood, on the rooftop of a building a safe distance away from the one they had been standing on previously.

"What was that?" called Genesis as he approached from behind, his wing furling as he alighted upon the rooftop, followed in short order by Angeal and Zack.

"It felt like a localized seismic event," commented Hewley.

"He's assumed his Augmented True Form–Archdæmon II," replied the dragon knight, clearly a bit shaken. "The collateral of this battle will truly be…spectacular…"


The vampire recovered first, grasping Kangetsu and dragging it along the ground, then out and into an upwards strike, which Sephiroth, being in no position to parry effectively, launched himself back away from, skirting its reach and effectively evading it. This he repeated for three of the following slashes with which his opponent followed, and on the fourth, he front-flipped through the air, twisting mid-way and landing in a crouch, only to explode upwards with a swift slash that met Kangetsu, held in an extended jōdan-no-kamae stance to guard Olliver's back. The shock of the impact sent the silver swordsman reeling. The vampire then pivoted, bringing his ōdachi down in a descending diagonal strike at Sephiroth's pauldron-clad shoulder that clashed with the parry he brought to bear with Masamune. After a moment of gathering and focusing his strength, he used his right hand, which supported the ōdachi along its spine, to force Kangetsu to disengage, and in the interval in which the vampire reeled, he brought Masamune down into a succession of six crisscrossing, nearly-simultaneous slashes, each of which was minorly effective at best against his opponent's thick, bone-like chitin carapace, much to his chagrin. Even more irritating was the fact that Olliver brought the sword in its arc to bear in short order, forcing Sephiroth to sidestep so quickly he left an after-image, and in so doing, abandon the endeavor. When his opponent changed directions, wheeling around in a wide slash, he parried it, plumes of thin Mako-green smoke rising off of him and thickening as his frustration, in tandem with his fighting spirit, mounted. He disengaged, shoving the other ōdachi away, but almost screaming his vitriol when his opponent turned that into an arcing overhead slash that forced him to once again parry. Fueled by his rage, over which his control had become at best threadbare, he put his weight behind Masamune and drove his opponent back, then stopping and letting the inertia carry the vampire into a nearby building, destroying the last of the foundation and bringing it down upon him. Pressing the attack, Sephiroth retook the two-handed Hirazuki stance, gave another kiai, and, using shinsoku, charged, punctuating with a slash that had behind it the combined force of his momentum, his strength and his ki, thus replicating the strike he had heard his opponent refer to as the Akumano Mugen Zan…which, once again, failed to connect, instead clashing against the vampire's parry. Kangetsu forced Masamune wide and continued its arc, coming up and around and striking down towards Sephiroth's pauldron-clad left shoulder, forcing him to duck and roll under the blade's path and out of the way of its reaping edge.

"Stellar performance, Sephiroth," said Olliver. "You're almost there!"

"I have had just about enough of your mockery!" he seethed. "This. Ends. Now!"

"Hmph. You really think so?" replied his opponent. The demon slashed, and Sephiroth parried, but as Kangetsu forced Masamune further along, he was entirely unprepared for when the vampire's torque sent his long, spaded, armor-plated tail smashing into his side and throwing the Silver General careening off-balance, so that when that momentum brought the other sword full-circle, slicing deep into his midsection once, twice, sending him staggering to his knees, right hand clasping at the x-shaped wounds in his chest as he began to cough up blood. With the sight of each puddle of his blood on the ground, his control slipped further and further, and as his ki flowed stronger and faster through him, spurred on by his deeply-buried anger, his wounds healed at an increasing rate; in mere minutes, his wounds healed and his breathing slowed, his fighting spirit blazing and radiating off of him in visible waves of luminescent green.

He stepped up, first on one leg, then the other, grasping Masamune and coming to his feet, taking two strides forward, pivoting his left leg behind his right and dropping down into yet another two-handed Hirazuki stance, then charging towards his foe. The Vampire King beat his two pairs of massive, bat-like wings firmly, propelling himself into the air as the attack connected to where he had been a moment before, but Sephiroth, seeming to predict this, readied an Amatsuken and executed, using his momentum, a powerful jump and shinsoku to follow his opponent into the air. It connected, Masamune punching through the thick carapace, but the demon did not so much as grimace; in its place was a wide, feral, smug grin. It was infuriating, incendiary…

With an almost-audible snap, Sephiroth's hold on the anger, the violent rage that had been his constant companion his whole life–the bait that had turned him into Jenova's cat's-paw–shattered into a hundred thousand pieces.

"Stop…acting like…you're…fucking…winning!" shouted Sephiroth, now thoroughly incensed, as his black-feathered wing exploded from his right shoulder and the flow of Mako through his bloodstream made his head begin to pound. "It's really starting to piss me off!"

"Hmph. Releasing Binding Coil Six!" Without further warning, he was abruptly thrown back through several buildings with such concussive force that the buildings buckled and began to sway, then disintegrating entirely in the wake of a gargantuan sphere of dark energy that blasted through the city with the Vampire King at its center. It took a while, but at last Sephiroth was able to break free of the dissipating shockwave and maintain a steady altitude, hovering in the air, seething with anger that was now well beyond his ability to leash it again. Even so, he was utterly unprepared for what emerged from that destructive chrysalis.


"Um…wow…" remarked Zack, stunned beyond his capacity for coherent thought, speech or any other modes of communication. "That was…something…"

"I told you, didn't I?" replied Kain. "That the collateral would be rather…spectacular?"

"Yes, you did," acknowledged Angeal. "But you telling us that, and us witnessing it… They're two different things entirely."

"I cannot dispute that," allowed the dragoon. "Seeing him in action is somewhat of a challenge to one's martial sensibilities. I, for one, thought to myself that one as powerful as he should not exist when I first saw him wield that sword of his."

"Thankfully, though, your quick thinking got us outside of the blast radius in time," said Hewley. "You have our gratitude for that."

"Hmph," chuckled the dragon knight. "Don't mention it. I've been around the block, so to speak, enough times to be able to recognize the signs."

"Will…will Seph…will he…" struggled Aeris.

"Don't worry, Miss Gainsborough. Sephiroth will be fine," assured Kain.

She calmed herself, nodding definitively and resolutely.

"Well, I can say one thing's for sure: this guy sure pulls out all the stops when he promises a fireworks show. This has got to be by far the most fun I've had since before Wutai," said Genesis, proffering a distinctive-looking white paper bag, opened, with smoke rising off of its contents. "Popcorn, anyone?"


When the dust cleared, revealing a nine-story-deep crater a kilometer in diameter, there hovered in the center a figure. Not much could be seen about the figure in terms of detail, but Sephiroth could pick out a single pair of immense bat-like wings, black on the exterior, scarlet on the interior, with a span half a kilometer across, folded as they were, keeping it in mid-air. Beyond that, he could recognize a similar pair covering the figure's face and upper body, their tips pointing upwards, and another pair covering the figure's waist down to its feet, their tips pointing towards the ground. In a moment, though, that all changed.

"Archdæmon III: The Penultimate Form. In the beginning, Lucifer–the celestial being that came to be known as Satan, among many other names–was called 'the Seraph of the Dawn.' Thus do I appear before you now," said Olliver's voice, emanating from the figure. "Behold!" The pairs of wings that covered his upper and lower body snapped outwards, together with the pair that kept him airborne, revealing their full kilometer-wide span. Behind the cover of those wings, his skin had reverted to its marmoreal pallor, his body regained its slender, lean build, his long, spaded tail disappeared, his hands once more humanoid, fingers long, elegant and tapered, fingernails long and sharp, and his face had returned to a nearly exact replica of its normative state, the only deviation being that its lack of magnetism stemmed this time from grace so ethereal as to be austere and intimidating. His lower robe had acquired a scalloped hem, and his raven-black hair had grown to hang to his waist, Kangetsu held in his left hand and his scarlet gaze, devoid of a pupil but not sclera, fixed on Sephiroth in an expression of a challenge. "You stand in the presence of Saint George's Nemesis, for I am the Great Red Dragon, and I am your opponent! Come, Sephiroth! Our duel is not yet concluded."

Sephiroth shot through the air like a bullet out of a gun, and the metallic clash as Masamune met Kangetsu generated a sonic boom that shattered even more of the windows in the buildings surrounding the blast zone–mostly the ruined structures left behind from Meteorfall, but some of the rebuilt outliers as well–though this went unnoticed, for all that his anger could focus on was the…struggle in which he was engaged, and it did so monomaniacally. He whirled around, the screeching from the two metal blades going unnoticed, as did the sparks generated, bringing his sword slashing across his opponent's midsection. This, too, was parried, for all the vampire needed to do was to rotate his weapon in a clockwise semi-circle, but that fact didn't register in his mind; all he could perceive in his enraged state was that his foe had once again blocked his attack, and his already out-of-control anger skyrocketed. This smug bastard thinks he can help me?! Don't make me laugh! he thought. I, who put down Wutai! I, who was universally feared amongst and above soldiers everywhere! I, who…who brought down the sky! I'm a murderer! I've been damned since the moment of my birth! What chance do you think you have?! I, who…who killed Aeris…stealing the life from her breast… He dabbed at the sudden moisture on his cheek, and when his hand came away wet with tears, he stared at them in outraged, astonished disgust. "I ALREADY KNOW I'M A MONSTER! YOU DON'T NEED TO REMIND ME OF THAT! I'M AN ABOMINATION! A PERVERSION! BEYOND SAVING! DON'T YOU DARE FEEL SORRY FOR ME! I DON'T WANT YOUR PITY!" He struck down with an overhead cleave, and Kangetsu blocked it as before, but this time, its wielder's gaze pierced into his own.

"I'm not. I have none to give," said Olliver, his voice holding no trace of mockery and an almost pulverizing gravity. "Kagemusha-ryū: Jigen-Tō!"

And Masamune shattered.

"SEPHIROTH!"

"You are ready. It is time to finish this. Kagemusha-ryū: Kage-Tō Yamikiri!"


"SEPHIROTH!" Aeris cried out involuntarily (though, in truth, she would have made no effort to stop herself anyways) as she watched Masamune, her lover's most prized and precious possession, laden with memories and sentiment, both good and ill, but all integral, explode into smoking shards of metal as the vampire executed the Jigen-Tō. Already she had been hard-pressed to manage her distress as Sephiroth, enraged, shouted those things to his opponent (for though she had been aware of the darkness he hid from her, as well as having several indications as to the extent, to know such a thing exists and to hear her paramour speak it aloud, when all control had been stripped from him, were two different things entirely), but the occurrence of the event that brought the vampire such satisfaction nearly sundered her hold on herself entirely. Kain, noticing this, held her back when, as Olliver pressed the attack, clearly moving to finally bring an end to the conflict, she burst forth, also involuntarily, tears running freely down her face, and screamed, "SEPHIROTH!"

"Stop struggling!" hissed Kain. "I told you he would be fine, did I not?! Do you wish your paramour aided or not?!"

The fight went out of her then, and like a marionette whose strings had been cut, she went limp, though she still remained standing. Zack walked up and placed his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to soothe, but his words went unheard, as her anguish superseded her ability to comprehend human speech. Comforts and platitudes went entirely unheeded, first from Zack, then Angeal, then Genesis, all wasted gestures, until Kain himself stepped in front of her, kneeling down and removing his dragon's-head helm for the first time since she had met him, revealing the upper half of his face and letting free his long blond hair, his icy blue eyes meeting her bright green ones, fogged with tears unshed, but still conscious enough of her surroundings to notice this and react with muted surprise.

"I know your pain, girl, and I understand," said Kain, his tone serious and grave, his gaze intent and focused. "But right now, Sephiroth has need of you. You have been willing to go this far to give him the aid he needs, so you cannot afford to resign at this point. Be strong, Aeris. For both your sakes."

"Okay," she sighed. "I will. And…thank you, Kain."

"I know something of what it is to love, make no mistake," he replied. "Sometimes, in order to truly help those close to us, those who are important to us, we must deafen ourselves to their suffering for a time while we do what needs be done. The pain of it never truly lessens, but the alternative will invariably be worse. Thank me not, Aeris; I would be remiss were I to allow a pair of lovers to embark upon the path that will lead them to make the same mistakes I have made in the past."

Nodding at this, she sniffed, wiped the tears from her face, stood tall and, steeling herself, watched with newfound resolve and waited for the advent of the end of their struggle, though she was unable to stop herself from flinching as the sable-scarlet x-shaped after-image of the Kage-Tō Yamikiri was followed, after a short delay, by a massive, blooming explosion of white-hot flame, with the stricken Sephiroth, still reeling in midair, caught in its center.

"What the Hell is that?" gaped Genesis, his mouth hanging open, the bag of popcorn falling from his grasp to spill out puffy white kernels upon the rooftop. After a moment, Kain stood, dragon's-head helm nestled in the crook of his arm, long blond hair flowing in the wind, and looked out at the conflagration before, with a grave, serious, vaguely reverent tone of voice, he replied.

"The second phase of the Kage-Tō Yamikiri: the Demonic Megiddo."


He was floating, submerged in a seemingly-boundless sea of blood. From this ocean rose an unearthly din, millions if not billions of anguished shrieks combining into a single iterant note of existential despair and endless suffering, faces half-forming out of the viscous liquid and then disappearing, torn apart and dragged under by dozens if not hundreds of semi-corporeal, spectral hands at a time. It was like a horrible mockery of the Lifestream, and from it was the same kind of eldritch sensation, though he could tell, somehow, that it was muted for his benefit.

Within an eternity that only lasted a few minutes, however, Sephiroth found himself on the featureless white floor of an equally-featureless, almost totally indistinct chamber. He stood upon noticing, crusading valiantly but ultimately in vain to get a handhold on his emotions and get them once again leashed; he might have been better served trying to lasso a hurricane, for the impossibility of the task–let alone for all the good it did him. Consigning himself to the notion that the one who challenged him in this place would force him to bring the full wrath of the Silver General down upon them, he sighed under his breath, thankful that his rage had at least dimmed, and with it, his fighting spirit, but the anguish and self-hatred that swirled rapidly, chaotically through his mind, he knew, would consume him utterly were he to abandon this last vestige of sanity he now occupied, a familiar place, the ova of the destruction of the Calamity, the alien virus named Jenova.

"Do you like it?" asked a disembodied, echoing voice–that of the Vampire King, Olliver. "Do you even know where you are?"

"No."

"You are within me, Sephiroth. The inside of a vampire is almost never a pleasant sight."

"What were all of those…voices, faces, limbs…?"

"The souls of the people I have fed upon over the course of the aeons. Vampires must feed from living hosts, for in so doing, we drain their vitality to sustain our own, as well as their souls to augment our power," explained he. "However, when vampires of the First Generation feed, the increase is, unfortunately, miniscule per capita, and so there is a different way in which we increase our power: that is, to defeat and slay our fellows in mortal combat, thus absorbing their knowledge, memories and dæmonic energies, assimilating them into ourselves. As the ages come and pass, inevitably an Elder such as myself will accrue quite the repository of souls, both human and sanguine; I, however, have lived for so long and fed on so many that within myself, I am able to manifest a world such as this one. Observe, if you would." With that, the indistinct white vanished, and in its place there was a grand hall, floors of black marble, walls of sable granite, with ranks of candelabra, braziers and torches outlining and illuminating a rich red carpet, embroidered with gold threads, that led to a great throne, shrouded in shadow. Upon this throne, in the full version of the robes he had worn in their battle, and a voluminous, high-collared, red-lined black cloak with a scalloped hem that he had not, there sat the Vampire King, his scarlet eyes glowing as two pinpoints of flame. "This is where I ruled my race, and as Lord of the Elder Council, the Godkiller, I, who smote the Twelve Olympians upon the side of the mountain-top in times of antiquity, did reign." The landscape changed once again, morphing into a detailed replica of the Planet's Core, and so did Olliver revert to his Penultimate Form, wings and all. "It was with my blood that Clarent, the implement created to focus the power of the Black Materia, which was the main component in the ritual of your resurrection, was forged, quenched and tempered. Thus, as your body sustained nigh-mortal injury at the hands of the Demonic Megiddo and your consciousness floated at the edge between life and death, you were brought here, that we might converse."

"You said that I was…ready…" began Sephiroth, his insecurity uncharacteristically obvious from his demeanor and posture.

"And you wish to know what I meant by that, n'est-ce pas?" asked Olliver.

Sephiroth nodded mutely.

"I meant that you had at last come to terms with something that has been a part of your existence for a very, very long time: the fact that the person you hate most in the world is, and always has been, yourself," explained the vampire. "Oh, certainly, when you found Jenova, she took that hatred and anger and, not quite understanding their significance, did her very best to externalize it, make it easier for you to hate humans, hate humanity, hate the world, but deep down, you were always the target of the harshest of torments that you could bring to pass. And now that you have come to terms with the fact of its being, it becomes a much easier matter for me to help you, for your sake and that of your paramour." He smiled, and for once, despite the fangs and the sharp teeth, it was genuine, and its warmth made Sephiroth feel more at ease. "Shall we begin, then?"

"By all means."


Sephiroth had been a good son to the creature he called 'Mother,' Jenova, the Calamity from the Skies. And why shouldn't he have been? Genesis had betrayed him, Angeal had abandoned him, he had discovered the truth of his origins and been mocked by one of the only two people he had ever truly called 'friend'–save Zack, of course, but he could not have understood–and through all of these lies and deception and betrayal, who had been there for him? Who had accepted him, given him comfort and what he thought had to be love, rescuing him from the nadir of his despair?

That's right. Mother had.

In return, his loyalty to her was nigh-on unshakable. He obeyed not because he truly had any sort of vested interest in becoming a god–though since Mother thought it proper, he had done his best to fake it for her benefit, so often that he caught himself at times almost believing it–but because she had been his only friend when he needed her so desperately, when he was all alone, without anyone, cold in his isolation, just another sideshow freak to gawk at and deride. He ignored the nagging feeling that something was rotten in the state of Denmark; surely I must be imagining things, he told himself. This is what I wanted…what I've always wished for. I am just being selfish, petty. And Mother did nothing to disavow him of that notion, that his vague dissatisfaction was anything but childish naïveté.

Yes, he had followed her directives to the letter in a desperate attempt to please her, so that she wouldn't see him for what he was, see him as an unworthy, spoiled, monstrous child, and like so many others, leave him, abandoning him to his own personal Hell of isolation. For now, he knew, she cared; she was reasonable; she listened and understood as virtually no one else had.

But as he stood upon that ledge, hidden from the puppet's view, ready to strike down the Cetra girl Mother hated and feared so much, his misgivings were suddenly overpowering. He had viewed her before, yes, but that was through the puppet's eyes, and all he saw was filtered through his perception, so Sephiroth had taken her existence with a grain of salt, but now that he was so close to her, he had an inkling of just how blind the puppet truly was.

The puppet felt drawn to the girl for her kindness and her good-natured spirit, but what he had failed to pick up on was the fact that she almost literally radiated innocence, love, acceptance and…pain. Pain and sadness beneath it all; a bittersweet combination. He himself felt drawn to her, and the part of him that felt dissatisfaction nearly cried out in elation, recognizing her as the end of the long isolation Sephiroth had gone through since his first day of life, and he had the strangest feeling that while Mother could avenge and soothe, the Cetra's was the power to heal, permanently. It was a small part of him that cried out, but it quickly gained support, and was enough to stay his hand.

{What are you thinking, my son?!} cried Mother within his mind. {She is a threat! Kill her! NOW!}

[Why do we need to kill her?]

{Why?! 'Why,' he asks. It is because she is Cetra! She is a threat!}

[But there is no malice in her, no fighting spirit!]

{That is because the Cetra are insidious! Tricky, deceitful liars! They betrayed and bound me underground after I helped them! BETRAYAL!}

[But Mother, perhaps there is a way…]

{NO! KILL HER NOW!} Mother's voice was shrill with displeasure, and the shock of her unwillingness to listen that had never been there before allowed that small part of him a moment of pristine clarity.

[No.]

{… 'No?'}

[Mother, she's not like the others. She is no threat,] he insisted.

{DISOBEDIENT CHILD! YOU WILL DO MY BIDDING!}

[Mother, no! Don't…!] Sephiroth pleaded with a sense of dawning horror.

Then all protest stopped–all cognitive function stopped.

Dimly, he felt that he was falling…falling…falling…

The jolt as the kissaki of Masamune punctured her back was sudden, but with a horrifying quantity of give…

And then he was there, on the ground behind her. The fog cleared from his perception, and as he looked at the Cetra girl's impaled form, slumped forward and devoid of the tension of muscle that characterized life and vigor, a feeling of profound, nauseating disgust rose up in him, bringing bile, unbidden, to the back of his throat. Mother's influence was now dormant, leaving him with only one thought:

[Crystals… What have I done?!]


Sephiroth awoke with a start. His sweat was cold on his forehead and his breath came to him only haltingly. He remembered, oh did he remember, for in that instant, he had glimpsed into the mind of the twisted, evil thing he had so honestly and affectionately called 'Mother,' and the revelation precipitated by that occurrence, juxtaposed with what sweet, empty promises Jenova had whispered in his ear, had allowed him to reach that dreadful, devastating epiphany, the one that had caused him to retreat within himself, keeping only the most superficial of contact with the reality around him and blindly following Jenova's plans, all the while plotting her downfall from within his most intrinsic self, where she had no power to see.

He stood from his position, seated before Aeris's door, one leg arched, the other outstretched, his arm resting on the bent knee, his beloved Masamune propped up against the wall and resting on his shoulder, and, with a quick second spent with his head cocked to see if he could sense anything going on within her chambers that should not have been, he walked over to the bathroom in the hallway, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water on his face. He picked up a pristine white towel and dried himself off, thankful that he had at least remembered to shed his equipment down to his waist before sitting guard, as the water would have ruined the leather. Chuckling to himself at the thought that he could be concerned over such a thing, his mind involuntarily went over the happenings of the past week.

Currently, he, Aeris, Genesis, Zack, Angeal, Kain, Wallace and Kisaragi (he looked at his hand to confirm that the scar of the stab wound she had inflicted upon it at the treaty signing at the end of the Wutain War lingered still) were lodged above the bar Lockhart owned and operated–the Seventh Heaven, he recalled–while Cloud remained in observation, the doctors baffled by the healing patterns of the wounds he had suffered. It had been an arrangement the martial artist had obviously not been very happy about, and as such, he had tried to excuse himself so as not to cause trouble, but when Aeris had put her foot down (proverbially and literally, funnily enough), the other two had accepted: Lockhart begrudgingly; Sephiroth uneasily. And so he made it his mission to avoid those among AVALANCHE who had held a pre-existing vendetta against him before they had all met up on the cargo ship bound for Costa del Sol, with the knowledge that he wished for Aeris to be able to enjoy her time with her friends, and even more so did he find to be abhorrent the idea that his presence might be the handicap upon her happiness.

And I suppose the fact that you do not know how to conduct yourself around Mother and Father has nothing to do with it? His reflection in the mirror was skeptical about the veracity of the motives he stated to be the primary impetus of his current course of action.

I do not see why the two need be mutually exclusive, he replied honestly.

Hmph, was his reflection's dismissive (but secretly pensive) response.

Sephiroth smiled to himself–a small, close-lipped smile, but a genuine one. He tossed the towel into the nearby hamper and walked out of the bathroom, resuming his position just outside Aeris's door, leaning Masamune against his shoulder and watching for intruders of any sort. After a while, he managed to achieve a semi-aware trance-like meditative state, which he had adopted for use in lieu of sleep while in hostile environments. It was not long after, however, that this state was disrupted, when Lockhart approached and slid down the wall to sit beside him, her head bowed and using her hair as a veil as she tried to sort through her thoughts and put words to what she wanted to say.

"Take your time," he encouraged her through closed eyes.

She started. "You're awake?"

He scoffed softly. "Of course. I wouldn't be much of a guard if I fell asleep on the job." He opened his right eye, turned his head ever-so-slightly and regarded her, and when she noticed this, she ducked her head with a gasp, unfortunately for her not quickly enough for him to remain ignorant of her suddenly flushed state. With a low grunt of acknowledgement, he closed his right eye and faced his head forward, curling the hand of the arm that rested against his arched leg into a loose fist.

After a long period of silence, no doubt punctuated by a series of false starts on the martial artist's part, she let out a long, clearly audible sigh, and after a moment in which he could feel her gaze scrutinizing him thoroughly (in a way that was quite uncomfortable, truth be told, though due to the level of invasiveness he had become used to over the course of his life, he barely noticed it), she chuckled ruefully. "You really love her, don't you?"

His eyes snapped open, gazing at the opposite wall intently for several seconds before closing them again and nodding. "She is my reason for being. It was her death at my hands that forced me to confront the truth of my existence in the service of Jenova."

She masked her surprise at the way in which he referred to the alien super-virus quickly enough that, unlike her embarrassed blush, this did manage to escape the silver-haired man's notice, thankfully enough. "And that is?" she prompted.

"That Jenova, just like everyone else in my life theretofore, had lied to me, deceived me, played me for a fool–pick whichever one you prefer–from the very beginning," he replied. "In Nibelheim, when I discovered the truth of how I came to be, it did not occur in a vacuum; by that time, the two people who were my closest friends had either died, as was the case with Angeal, or gone rogue like Genesis. They had abandoned me, and when I found out what I was, combined with what I had seen of the results of similar experiments on Hojo's part and the fact that Genesis forced me to confront such a horrifying revelation in a way that…was not exactly beneficial for my continued relative mental stability, I had reached what was perhaps my lowest low on an emotional level. It was in that moment, in the nadir of my torment, that Jenova spoke to me." He paused to take a deep breath before continuing. "She told me exactly what I needed to hear at that moment in my life, honeyed words and sweet lies of unconditional acceptance and irrevocable belonging. Can you imagine? When I was forced to confront the fact that I wasn't human, she told me that there indeed was a place where I belonged, and that was with her. Thereafter, terrified of losing that–of her somehow 'coming to her senses'–my loyalty to her was without reservation, willing and eager to the point of fanaticism." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye to see how she was reacting, and inwardly, part of her was pleased that she could formulate a neutral expression so impermeable as to be able to keep her true feelings hidden even from the great Sephiroth. "Understand, throughout the course of my life, the closest thing to a father I had ever had was the man who instructed me in the proper use of a sword–this sword." He nodded to the ōdachi propped up against the wall and leaning on his shoulder. "His name was Masamune, and he was my mentor. And Hojo had him killed, partly because he had outlived his usefulness in that sociopathic bastard's eyes, partly to see how I would react, but mostly, I now know, out of spite. Hojo did so love to make me suffer…" He turned his head to face forwards once again, apparently finding what he had sought in her face. "But I had never had anything close to a maternal figure, so when Jenova came calling, I was the perfect victim of her lies."

Lockhart nodded, clearly trying to process what she was being told, and though he could clearly sense that she was having a hard time of it, she was at least keeping an open mind in spite of the difficulty she was experiencing. "Go on," she said.

"When I set Nibelheim to the torch, then, I was in anything but my right mind," he continued. "I was in thrall to Jenova's siren song, and I did not even try to fight back. Why should I, was the question I asked myself back then. Jenova was, I thought, the only one on this planet who would accept me for what I had been created for me, the only one who would not betray or abandon me. Perhaps it was a miscalculation on Hojo's part, or maybe it was his intention, just another part of his grand plan of revenge against my mother for her…impropriety in the process of my conception, to take my whole life and turn it into the perfect storm from which a monster might be birthed, but I had gone through my life without a single anchoring connection to another human being, no one I cared enough about left alive for the thought of causing their death to give me pause. And when a man, even one who is only half-human, is left without any sort of reason to be attached to this world and every reason to hate it, then with the introduction of a suitable catalyst, hate it he will. I was in an even worse position, though: since I had gone through my life with the understanding that my mother was a woman named Jenova (courtesy, once again, of Hojo), and I knew at that point that 'Jenova,' in fact, was somehow embodied within the creature imprisoned in the Mako reactor at Mount Nibel, as well as the fact that within a Jenova-infected host, there exists a powerful 'Reunion Instinct,' there was not a single thing to stop me from seeing her as a maternal figure, and thus my potential loyalty increased tenfold; all these things, Hojo knew, and some of them he had brought about himself as a way to facilitate the process of my degeneration into what can only be called 'monstrosity.' My loyalty to Jenova was that of a son to his mother: twisted, true, but no less potent for it. Not to mention the fact that I had no inkling of what a mother-son relationship truly entailed, from a purely emotional level, could not have hurt matters. And since Jenova, as a virus, was omnicidal, and I had no emotional connections to the human race whatsoever, with the non-applicable exception of Zack, of course, when she commanded me to kill for whatever reason, my response was never 'why,' but 'how many?' After all, what choice did I have?"

"We always have a choice," Lockhart muttered.

"Technically, yes. But in every practical sense of the word, no," responded Sephiroth. "The choice put before me was somewhat of a Catch-22, and so I chose the option that allowed me to stay close to the one who claimed to be my mother. And tell me, to what lengths wouldn't you go for your own mother, were she to return from the dead?"

The truth was, she so badly wanted to punch him for that last remark, but that would mean that he had won; and honestly, even she had to admit (however grudgingly) that he had a good point there.

"As I carried out her will again and again, and I saw more and more of the sordid underbelly of human society, some of it coming in dimensions of which I had not even been aware during my days in SOLDIER, I felt more and more certain that I was doing what was right by acting in Jenova's name," he mused. "In truth, perhaps it was this that helped make what happened later so horrifically jarring. Nevertheless, the first time I gazed upon Aeris, it was the beginning of the end." He paused. "Part of what makes me such a skilled swordsman is my…talent, I suppose you could say, my affinity for reading auras. So many great warriors fell to me because even though their postures did not telegraph their attacks, their ki shouted it out loud and clear. And so, the first time I saw her through the eyes of the clone I had dispatched to free you all and kill President Shinra, I could sense her aura, and I knew at once that she was Cetra, and I was not. It was not until some time later that I brought the subject up with Jenova, who confirmed that to be true, but regardless, all that managed to do was pique my interest and reinforce my trust in that ability of mine. In the Forgotten Capital, where I was supposed to slay her before she could summon Holy, though, it was different. This time, I was there in the flesh, and the air of innocence and purity about her, coupled with…with pain, loss, and an intimate knowledge of the depths of human suffering, was almost overpowering. And so I refused. I refused, for the first time, to do the bidding of that abomination, with the naïve hope that she would listen to reason, and trust that I, who she called her son, would know what I was doing. As you can probably guess, it didn't quite turn out that way…"

"What happened?"

Sephiroth looked up to the ceiling. "She assumed direct control."

Lockhart had no response.

"After I regained my awareness, my first thought was, 'Oh God, what have I done?' From that point on, I retreated into myself, acting on autopilot, only emerging during those long hours I spent meditating over the Black Materia in order to master it before I summoned Meteor. During those hours, being perhaps the first true rest I had taken since your hunt for me began, I realized how much of a fool I had been, and that if I wanted to atone for Aeris's murder, I had to make sure that her death was not in vain. Thus, I plotted in the deepest recesses of my mind to destroy Jenova, once and for all," he continued. "To that end, I mastered the Black Materia and went ahead with the summoning, then fell into my…'chrysalis state,' I guess you could call it, in which I went about installing the biological equivalent of a 'back door' in the group mind of the Jenova virus, which, since it was located within my brain, was not so difficult a task. And so, when you all arrived in the Northern Cave for that final battle, I engaged you so that I could stall, both to give Aeris time enough to augment the summoning of Holy, and to assert my control over Jenova, in order to give you a fighting chance. When I sensed that she had succeeded, I completed the transfer of control, thus forcing the 'Bizarro' form that was controlled by Jenova to morph into the 'Safer' form that signified my control, instead of allowing it to endlessly regenerate, and in that form, I was able to suppress her survival instinct, betraying her. All the while, I prayed to Aeris to let it end–for me and for Jenova both. And thus, Cloud and I were absorbed into the Lifestream, so that he could provide the catalyst for the end that I desired. For that, I will always be thankful to him. With the death of my body, to which the Jenova virus's…nucleus, in a way…was bound, so too was her intelligence sundered, and the nightmare of the Calamity from the Skies was over at long, long last."

Silence was Tifa Lockhart's only response, even as she sat there for many long minutes, attempting to figure out how she could reply to that story, the events of a decade in the past and five years ago from the point of view of he who was blamed solely for their occurrence. Finally, admitting to herself the fact that she had no words to do so, she stood and walked back to her room, leaving Sephiroth there in his vigilant solitude once more.

Neither of them, however, noticed the door to Aeris's room, cracked open almost imperceptibly, softly close.


"The patient will see you now," the nurse told Sephiroth, her brusque demeanor clearly kept up in an attempt to hide the fear she so clearly radiated at the sight of the former Silver General of SOLDIER. At once grimly amused and marginally somber, he slipped the ice materia with which he was toying surreptitiously into its slot in the wristlet he had tucked inside his coat.

"Thank you," he replied, doing his best to set her at ease. He stood from the waiting-room chair and gestured for the nurse to guide him to Cloud Strife's room, then followed her from a comfortable distance as she led the way. Once there, the door opened and Tifa Lockhart walked out. She nodded a curt greeting, which he returned; their discussion several nights previous had resulted in an uneasy understanding forming between the pair, and he was only too happy to accept something other than outright belligerence to the woman from whom he'd taken almost all she had had left. She brushed past him without a word, and the nurse, unsure of how to interpret this, simply gestured that they had arrived, and then left hurriedly. Choosing to ignore that, he stepped into the hospital room.

"Good to see you, Cloud," he greeted, his expression neutral.

"Sephiroth," grunted the blond. "What do you want?"

"To talk," replied Sephiroth, refusing to rise to the bait. He moved to sit in the chair at the end of Strife's bed, facing him. "You've certainly seen better days."

"Yeah, well, we can't all have regenerative factors up the wazoo," Cloud returned dejectedly.

"It's not your regenerative factor that's the problem. Hojo was a monster, but he did take pride in his work; you were his little pet experiment, according to the lab records we were able to dig up, and thus the lab rat for every one of his psychotic new ideas on how to improve the output of Mako treatments. He used you as a model to create more efficient SOLDIERs, and his most successful experiment regarded upping the healing factor of Mako recipients," stated the Silver General, well aware of how much like a foreign language all this technobabble seemed to the younger man. "You were just outclassed. That, and he wanted your fighting days to be over for good. And quite frankly, I think he did you a favor in that regard."

"What about you, then?"

"I was the opponent he sought. And in fact, it was about what Olliver helped me to discover that I wished to speak," he replied. "I trust Miss Lockhart has told you my story?" Cloud was silent for a moment, and then nodded. "When we last fought, in that cyclical world called 'Dissidia'–of which you might well have no conscious memory, through no fault of your own–I accused you of being stuck in the past, unable to move forward–a puppet needing to be told what to fight for. Do you remember?"

"…Vaguely," responded Cloud hesitantly. "You said…you said you'd give me a reason, every time I needed one, right?"

"Mm-hmm. Do you know what I meant by that?" Cloud shook his head, no. "I meant that I, too, was trapped by the past, right there with you. And unlike you, I accepted that and tried to force myself to be happy about it. But I learned something, something I think you need to learn, too. And if you don't get it at first, well…you'll have many years without combat to give it some extensive thought." He sighed. "You were haunted by your past, and I believed that I was not. I will not deny that as much as you said you pitied me three years ago, the pity I thought that I felt for you was probably multiplied tenfold. But I did nothing to stop it, and for the longest time, I never questioned why. My duel with Olliver, though, made me realize that the reason why was that I believed that if I continued to be your reason to fight, your reason to keep moving forward, then I was atoning for what I had done–to you, to Miss Lockhart, to everyone. So, too, did you hang on to your own grief, because you felt that holding onto it and allowing it to torture you, to devour you from the inside, would be a suitable form of atonement for your own failures."

"I…" Though he tried, to this Cloud could formulate no objections.

"More important was the lesson that he taught me after I came to terms with that being the motivation behind my actions. A lesson for me and you both. And it is this: Atonement, Cloud, is never achieved through punishment. It is a selfish sentiment that gives only momentary relief from the weight of the things that you have done and failed to do, all the while hurting those close to you–your friends, your family, your…loved ones…" said Sephiroth. "It's the coward's path, the easy path, and the one that we kept each other on for oh-so-much longer than five years. But no more. We've been given a chance to step off of this path, and for once in my life, I am not going to waste it. I encourage you to do the same."

"What are you talking about?"

"Atonement, Cloud, is not achieved through punishment, but through repentance. The only true path to absolution is to keep moving forward, for the sake of those we have hurt and those who we will hurt if we pursue this grotesque cycle of bloodshed and suffering. We must keep moving forward, learning from the mistakes of the past and living by the lessons they teach, instead of wallowing in angst and self-deprecation because of the fact of their occurrence. And I, for one, intend to take the new life I have been given and work towards this goal of atonement through the improvement of oneself. You, too, Cloud, have been given a second chance, and I hope that for your sake, as a former companion on the path to mutually-assured self-destruction, that you will accompany me on it. Think on what I have said." He stood and made to leave, but paused at the threshold, turning his head to the side. "If not for your sake, do it for Miss Lockhart's," he remarked over his shoulder. "The woman has had enough pain in her life, from the both of us. She loves you, Cloud. I would advise you not to throw that away for the sake of your own hubris. Consign the sword and marry her. There are most definitely worse ways to spend your life."

"Speaking from experience?"

Sephiroth chuckled. "There is a suffix in Wutain that I think is apropos: de gozaru." He turned his head forwards. "Farewell, Cloud Strife. I wish you a wonderful life."

With that, he left the blond alone with his thoughts.


"And just what are you all going to do?" asked Kain amicably, though seriously, clad in his Holy Dragoon armor, coronet and all, his long blond hair flowing in the wind, the Gáe Bolg firmly in his grasp as they stood on top of the Sister Ray in the city of Junon following their attendance of the long-overdue wedding of Vincent Valentine and Lucrecia Crescent, clad in their normal battle-ready combat gear. "With the rest of your new lives, I mean?"

"We've talked about it at some length, and we've decided, I think, to continue to fight," replied Sephiroth, his new fiancée, Aeris, Zack, Angeal, and Genesis at his back and offering no objections to his declaration. "Aeris and I plan to be married soon, officially, and besides, it's what I'm best at. It's what all of us are best at. The SOLDIERs, I mean."

"It'll be just like old times," remarked Zack, the massive Buster Sword propped up on his shoulder, a good-natured though sober grin on his face. "I've got much to learn, and with 'Geal back, I can complete my training. Not to mention that I'm not gonna let the fact that the old team's back together go to waste."

"Moreover, Jenova was an alien, and there are bound to be more like her. If they come here to find out what happened, we need to be here to confront them," added Angeal, his two-handed jian in its sheath on his back. "In the interim, we can at least limit the reach of ShinRa, prevent atrocities like Wutai from happening to other nations. After all that's happened, we've agreed that the time has come to bring the era of its dominion to a close."

"'Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul. Pride is lost. Wings stripped away, the end is nigh,'" recited Genesis, a small smile of genuine happiness on his face. "So shall it be for the ShinRa Electric Company."

"And who knows? Maybe the end of the age of Mako will allow Gaia to heal, and result in humans finding a new source of energy," said Aeris. "One can only hope."

"Really?" said Olliver, his golden eyes gleaming with glimmers of amusement. "Well then, I suppose you'll be needing these. Aeris. Sephiroth." To her, he threw a white gem the approximate size of a tennis ball, extracted from the pocket of his long black leather coat, and to Sephiroth went the black gem that had formerly been in the head of his staff, Clarent.

"The White Materia?!" exclaimed Aeris in excitement. "It's bigger than I remember…"

"You channeled a lot of power through it when you augmented the summoning of Holy five years ago, and likewise when you cured the Geostigma disease, brought about by Jenova cells undergoing rapid necrosis," explained the vampire, currently in human form thanks to the presence of the late afternoon sun. "Thus, with your mastery of it, the mass of the White Materia was augmented accordingly, and as a consequence, you now have access to its…other features. I'll let you find those out on your own." Then he turned to Sephiroth, who stared at his gift with a mixture of recognition and horror. "Have no fear. The Black Materia holds no power over you, Sephiroth. As its master, it will bend to your will. Likewise, I shall leave the exploration of its other abilities to your discretion. It is powerful, yes, but consider it part of your endeavour to be better than you were to use it wisely." Sephiroth's stricken expression faded, and he nodded his grim understanding and acceptance, secreting it away into his coat.

"Don't you need those?" asked Zack, his brow furrowed in confusion. "I mean, you went to all that trouble for that staff of yours, and the Black doesn't work without the White."

In response, Olliver plucked a marble-sized materia from each of the pockets of his black leather trousers, one white, one black. "Don't worry. They reproduced." He slipped them back into his pants' pockets, and his hands emerged with a single, almost luminous violet crystal the size of a throwing knife. "At any rate, it is high time, I think, that Kain and I were going. Farewell, all of you. I wish you good health and good fortune in all your endeavors. Memento mori."

With that, he lifted the crystal up to the sky with one hand, uncurling his fingers and flattening his palm, and the crystal hovered on its point in the center of the gloved extremity. It rotated in its levitation, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, the almost-luminescence intensifying to a spectacular brilliance and rising into the air with a tinkling sound akin to wind chimes, yet so much more beautiful and perfect, and thus somewhat unnerving (especially to Aeris, as she compared its sound to that of the Planet attempting to make contact with her); then, in an instant, the brilliance reached its peak. A blinding flash engulfed them, and the next moment, they were gone.

Once more reunited, the pain and betrayal of the past left there with the aid of the machinations of the Dragon of Saint George, the company of heroes–Sephiroth Crescent, Aeris Gainsborough, Genesis Rhapsodos, Angeal Hewley and Zack Fair–gazed out at the russet sun on the horizon, leaving the mistakes and failures of yesterday behind and looking forward to the coming of the new day…


When the war of the beasts brings about the world's end,

The goddess descends from the sky;

Wings of light and dark spread afar

She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting.

Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess;

We seek it thus, and take to the sky.

Ripples form on the water's surface:

The wandering soul knows no rest.

There is no hate, only joy,

For you are beloved by the goddess:

Hero of the dawn, Healer of worlds.

Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul;

Pride is lost–

Wings stripped away, the end is nigh.

My friend, do you fly away now?

To a world that abhors you and I?

All that awaits you is a somber morrow

No matter where the winds may blow.

My friend, your desire

Is the bringer of life, the gift of the goddess.

Even if the morrow is barren of promises

Nothing shall forestall my return.

My friend, the fates are cruel.

There are no dreams, no honor remains–

The arrow has left the bow of the goddess.

My soul, corrupted by vengeance

Hath endured torment, to find the end of the journey

In my own salvation

And your eternal slumber.

Legend shall speak

Of sacrifice at world's end–

The wind sails over the water's surface

Quietly, but surely.

Even if the morrow is barren of promises,

Nothing shall forestall my return.

To become the dew that quenches the land,

To spare the sands, the seas, the skies

I offer thee this silent sacrifice.

Exeunt.