22: Windfalls are Right

"Or…more like godsends?" -Drana

-----

"Strokes of luck. Think the Planet is on our side instead of watching from the sidelines?"

"... it's a maybe."

A good tiding brought the not-quite-a-crew farther than they'd first hoped to go. From Nibelheim to mid-flight on the way to Costa del Sol, Tifa and Vincent received their much anticipated call from Reeve with news regarding Saristis Noah. Before Cid even had time to land the plane for fuel and a break, he was bound for Junon. From the cockpit, he cracked curses but knew as well as anyone that there wasn't any real turning back now.

Sephiroth continued to measure the general quiet filling the cabin and the small asides the others occasionally cast. Things were happening too slowly for his liking. The unseen clock ticked away, checking off each second, minute and hour that he didn't have his precious treasure. He inwardly dreamt of his anger taking on a will and flesh of its own and ripping all things asunder in its path. Comfortably, he thought, It wouldn't save Drana, but it would comfort me until we did. Someone should pay…

Sephiroth recognized the bronze high-rise structures of Junon as they sped towards the plane on the horizon and floated beneath them as they prepared for landing. The last time he'd been here, this city from his military youth bygone didn't even register in his memory save for a few sour fragments about Hojo, Shinra and petty insurgences. Now, he recalled the filthy, past glory that was Junon. The buildings were pretty much the same; only the old flags and banners celebrating the achievements of the mega-corporation had been removed.

Headquarters now stood as a mere shell of its former self, occupied by a growing little bug known as the WRO.

So little had changed on the surface but under, it had been as if the Shinra Weapons Manufacturing and Electric Power Company had never existed. Good riddance. Sephiroth thanked humanity for turning against its unloved industrial tyrant.

My problem had been rivals in the past. Shinra was still alive, kicking, and getting in my way. Even with their idiotic president gone. But now… Oh but sadly now, there's this WRO. Never rest for the wicked.

"Ah…"

The plane bounced upon the landing strip along Junon's upper cliff face, but Sephiroth, stunned by his own thoughts, didn't think to notice. He had a revelation. Since his true bodily death, he'd never pondered world domination again as he did just then. For so long, he'd been spellbound by seclusion with his one true prize. He was breathless, knowing that he had a bond with the Planet no one else would ever come to experience, likely making him the most powerful man on earth and, by acknowledging that, hadn't bothered laying down an iron fist. With the Planet already in my grasp, why bother with its people… They'll follow soon enough.

As the other passengers began to file out of the plane, Sephiroth sat wondering whether he should keep relishing in the power he reigned or stressing over its potential loss.

Thinking, he suddenly felt weary. It took too much brainpower to muse about power. How to get it, wield it, keep it, maintain it. Most was worthwhile but…

"This is our stop. Or we can go without you."

"Drana's mine," he hailed. Past his upper eyelids he saw the frown settling on the face of the black haired man.

"Then get a move on."

--

"Didn't I tell you that I answer to no one?" Sephiroth said stubbornly.

"You want to get Drana back or don't you?"

"Without her, I am through being secretive. Take me to her now and I won't slice off your arms for trying to tell me what to do."

Tifa and Cid stood away from the indomitable Vincent, their bodies each an expression of disgust at its finest. The woman tapped her boot endlessly, while the rugged pilot huffed on his cigarette without tire. Watching the display take place between the two men was more than sad, especially when the other was already a perfect monster. And the other was just a man now, not quite an equal anymore. It was like watching a child trying to reason with a beast the size of a truck.

But Vincent knew ways of needling and eventually, he'd hit a sweet spot with Sephiroth.

The confounded man refused to walk undercover now. He wanted only to be taken straight to his goal. With that crooked black wing oozing out of his shoulder, he stuck out like a sore thumb and would likely alert any of Saristis's lackeys of suspicious characters about town. Namely him. The gunman desired at least some sort of jump on the wily bunch of scientists before they started brandishing big guns. Like another summon.

"Now... why do I feel like Drana? Tifa, Cid, let's go," Vincent said, shrugging his shoulders and sidestepping Sephiroth for the elevator behind him. Donning similar faces of dismissal, his companions sidled their way in after him. "I'd hate to see you running around Junon like a stray, rabid dog, but if you can't get with the program... I'm getting Drana back myself."

Sephiroth reached for the gate as it started to close. Gears screeched and sparks flew out of the shaft as the machinery strove against the resistance.

"After I allowed you to live, dead man, this is what you do?" he asked solemnly.

"You're no longer a general, so you can't order us anymore than we can order you," the gunman retorted casually.

"I'm one with the Planet now."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tifa blurted out.

"You never told them about her?" Sephiroth asked with a telling tone.

Vincent faltered enough to make the lofty human hurdle smirk quite darkly. Yes, he admittedly never told the others more than what was absolutely necessary, which wasn't much at all. After all this time. He guiltily prided himself in knowing more than he willingly offered. But then, they never really pried. It was a point he could use in his defense.

Lucky for him, Tifa didn't direct an angry tone at the back of his head, asking why he didn't bother to share anything in full. Instead, Sephiroth replied, "Drana is the Planet, put simply for your simple minds. She and I are one. So I am reserved the right to order you around, wouldn't you think so? I am as near to your creator as you will ever be in life."

"What the hell?" the woman breathed in awe.

"What the fuck, more like it," Cid muttered in equal astonishment. Then he suddenly rose in annoyance, "Wait, don't tell me you think you're finally a fuckin' god over the rest of us, do ya? Again? Because I'm about to shit knives if you do."

"Vincent, that's not true, is it? About Drana? I mean, I know you said some odd things about her, like Lucrecia's spirit being inside her and her healing you but I never thought…" Vincent's head dropped at the sound of a stupefied Tifa and the sensation of her hand gripping his shoulder. Then he shook his head, trying to find the right words to better explain the matter while still walking the road of bare-bones.

"She's not the Planet. He's being too literal," he said. "We need to be focus on getting her back."

"But Vincent, Sephiroth could become a threat again-"

"We'll leave that up to Drana," the gunman asserted.

All three turned to face Sephiroth directly. His frighteningly smug expression had shattered. What little pieces he might have saved were reformed into stoicism. Vincent smirked secretly in triumph. If he could just keep drilling home the fact that there was or could be a power greater than him, he'd stay knocked down a peg. He hoped. If you say or think something long enough, it'll come true. And... Maybe Drana IS the Planet. So…

"Take me to her. Now."

"There's no stoppin' the pale bitch, huh?"

"Cid…"

"Sephiroth, surely you can bow to the simple demands of a human like me," Vincent said rather airily. "It would be in the best interests of us all, especially Drana's if... we managed a bit of discretion. Until we reached headquarters. It's only a few minutes away."

"... fine. You have this round, dead man."

Abruptly, Tifa's phone starting ringing off the hook, to which she reluctantly answered with a scowl. Having recognized the number, she said, "Reeve, what's up?"

"Monsters. In the city. Come quickly, we need backup."

"Or not," Tifa chimed to Vincent.

---

Unruly shadows bobbed about the streets and in between buildings while civilians scrambled to find safety. WRO troops marched uneasily, rifles raised and firing anything that cast a larger shadow than three humans combined. Bullets and the occasional laser flew but mostly missed their marks. A rare high-pitched squeal would pierce the air, but no injured beast would yet grace them with an appearance.

Vincent exited the old barracks turned flight tower and elevator complex, his rifle ready. Tifa slapped on some plated gloves while Cid pulled out a retractable spear and whipped it into extension. A lieutenant with a red beret awaited the trio alongside a quartet of soldiers, eyes and muzzles pointed to the sky. The rifle the man possessed himself jerked up at the sight of a leisurely Sephiroth entering the scene. Vincent motioned a hand for him to stay his weapon. Oddly enough, their unwelcome companion was going to be the least of their worries for the moment. They had a city to protect. Again.

"Unidentified monsters have been spotted all over town. One of my men said they're like nothing we've seen before. They just rose out of the ocean." The lieutenant was close to some form of hysterics, but Tifa lent a placating hand.

"Monsters," Sephiroth muttered quietly. "She must be nearby. Yes. If I focused, I could smell her, sense her…"

"Um, let's go while the creep hasn't gotten his creepiest just yet," Tifa remarked with a shifty glance in his direction.

"Shit yeah, let's go kill these sons of bitches," Cid proclaimed with a shake of his spear.

"Wait." The lieutenant gestured with a pair of fingers pressed to his left ear. He nodded to no one in particular then gazed up to Vincent and company. "News regarding the monsters. It seems they're converging upon the complex leading to headquarters. We've got to hurry and assist."

"Right."

In spite of everyone else, Sephiroth began to stray, a shroud of dreaminess overcoming him and leading him away down the streets. Overturning better judgments, the others motioned for the lieutenant to lead the way towards the monster epicenter.

On his own, he was liable for destruction, but one had to take a little solace in the fact that no harm or foul would arise if he decidedly took out a few monsters along the way.

With them gone, Sephiroth walked barefoot down the street, his nose to the air in hopes of catching a familiar scent. But he was rewarded only with odors of the city and that slight heady stench some monsters loved to give off. They were all around him. An attestation to some tragedy that had happened not long ago. They've touched her. I have to find those rats and show them a lesson. A very bloody lesson…

A slice of shadow slipped over his side, though it hardly startled him.

He turned slowly to witness something descending upon him. It was a thing of many eyes and hooked tentacles that billowed like a curtain even on still air. Sephiroth felt a pang of disgrace that he'd never seen these monsters before. But there was something else he detected aside from the primal instinct of a beast. A sense of will.

"Looking for her, are you? Well, you'll have to get through me."

The monster's kaleidoscopic eyes wobbled inside its flat body, a good enough response for him to accept. In counter-response, a slab of ice slipped through the beast's middle, unleashing a spray of blue. As if unaffected, it drooped right side down over Sephiroth, snapping its clawed tentacles his way. With both hands raised, he summoned to life a barrier of white light, deflecting them like bands of rubber.

"Bwaaargh!"

The unusual noise sounded off to his right, where a new thing stood, wounded but unfazed, made of tongues, massive multicolored claws, and a mean set of skeletal jaws. It slithered on tongue-like legs towards him, gnashing its teeth to a mechanical rhythm.

"Another cheerful face…"

The first monster had curtained Sephiroth's barrier, as though feeding off its energy. He dropped his hands and jumped backwards as the thing slapped into the concrete, shards of ice falling up then down onto its body. The second thing beast its tail of a tongue up and over which he caught with some effort. The jagged wing in Sephiroth's shoulder quivered at each creature's niggling presence, dividing his attention where he didn't want or need it divided.

Practically squatting on the tips of his toes, he pushed up on the heavy tongue and launched a foot square into its teeth. The monster bit back a dog-like yelp and tried snapping again but won another kick in its long, skull-like face.

"Tired," Sephiroth groaned beneath a sigh.

He slowly dropped to his knees, with the monsters around him fast recovering. He pressed a palm to his forehead, shaking softly, his body growing cold for but a second. The blackened wing rattled down to its very root, shaking off shards of dried ooze. The beasts let out a shrill cry like pained cries whistling about the air. Sephiroth gazed up, panting in quiet wonder.

The monsters turned and went, leaving him alone in the middle of the street.

"Mother... This is the best you can do? How lame of you, resorting to tricks, making me look weak. Are you jealous?" Smirking, he lifted a hand up to the departing monsters. "Burn like the sun."

Flares of near white-hot flame exploded out and charred sheets of flesh and tentacle went sailing across the sky, hitting the pavement in sick, wet plops and puffs of dark smoke. The handiwork garnered a deep, contented grin from Sephiroth as he worked to get upright under the frenzy of his rattling wing. He laughed, finding the appendage as rebellious as a teenager.

"Can you see how Mother's acting? It makes me so... sleepy. Her struggle…"

---

"Sir, I've come back with matches from the genetic database. But for some reason, they only come up as partials."

"Well, give it to me."

Saristis sat back in his chair as Evvey handed him a sheaf of papers. Within the observation room, there was little noise, save for the fawn-headed man's soles scuffing the linoleum. There was nothing he offered as to why he kept shifting in place on his feet. In the face of the blood test's results, this nervous tick was more than easily overlooked.

His hazy blue eyes widening, the redhead scholar adjusted his glasses and peered at the papers more closely. Then he shot a glance at his colleague, who returned it with no more than a shrug. Struggling not to babble, he asked, "Kit, are you sure this is right?"

"I double and triple checked, sir. Results presented no deviation in between. Surprising?"

"These partials… Entire families, however rudimentary they are. That thing harbors entire genetic trees," Saristis said, slapping himself on the cheek. He wasn't prepared for the final results, much as it was in his nature to expect even the rare and impossible. He rapped his fingers on the tabletop, tapped his foot vigorously beneath his chair, and gnawed on his lower lip for further good measure. Finally, he smiled a hesitant smile bracketed by awe. "And these are no coincidences. Lucrecia, identified with the very thing your theses postulate. But these others don't make sense. Hojo. Sephiroth. Gast. Ancient."

"You said so yourself, sir," Evvey intoned. "Families. We all knew the truth about Sephiroth. We all heard about Gast. They are progenitors and progeny."

"So... therein lay the bloodlines of members who'd been crucial to the superhuman projects of the past."

"Interesting correlation, sir."

"This little ring of esteemed and embittered scientists had woven together a web of fate more intricate than we'll ever know. Which somehow led to Meteorfall. Sort of a veritable... mindfuck, if you will." Saristis cackled, smacking the papers down on the table and rising from his seat. Evvey quickly came to stand at his side like an ever vigilant sentinel in a teenage body, reflexively preparing his notepad and pen.

"Sir, perhaps this confirms in yet another light that the general does indeed still exist out there."

"And that he'll be coming for us soon," the scholar added, stroking his chin. "I get chills just thinking about it. Oh but what if we could have captured him, too? I guess a dream like that is just asking for slaughter— Oh, but I can't help it."

"No harm in dreaming if it's only that, sir."

Saristis paced back and forth from the door to his chair, body hunched forward and hands clutched behind his back. Midway he stopped, gazing at the young scientist watching back through his goggle-glasses, his posture stiff and ready to jump through hoops for whatever action asked of him.

"What do we do now?"

Silence.

"... Oh, Kit, that reminds me. How did the biopsy go?"

"We managed to get a sample but under mildly difficult circumstances. The specimen is suddenly demonstrating a high-grade sensitivity that's a force to be reckoned with, even with anesthesia. In retrospect, we're surprised she even yielded to the blood test."

"So... just like the brain scan all over again, eh?"

---

For one so gloomy, she proved to be a rather sweet attendant, perhaps the sweetest I'd ever have. With shadowy hands silently gripping my bandaged arm, she stood by with few words but countless bows of her head. All the while, I furiously wished she would make herself whole, visible, something that didn't make my skin prickle every time I stared up into her dim abyss.

Lucrecia shook her head suddenly. "I don't understand. Where does all this pain come from? Why are you... so fragile all of a sudden?"

"I…" Of course I'd never understood it myself. I found it a shame, just as much as it was a shame never questioning it. Why did the Planet make me feel so vulnerable, so hurt, at times, while being sturdy as a mountain? Where was the sense in that? Would it be too late before I figured it out? How a simple ache could send me spinning into violent torrents without killing me? "Lu…"

"I've noticed. When they prick you with needles and slice you with knives and... use all these machines, you look like you're about to die. Is it... technology? Or..." Her shadow fingers splayed out against my arm, running them up and down its length. I wondered if she was going to find something hidden in my skin that I'd never known was there before. But her hands stopped on top of my slightly glowing bandages, finding nothing I could see. "What is it? Can you tell me?"

"... n…" My eyes fell half-closed upon the white walls in front of me.

"I was a scientist, too, you know. I could guess. Maybe... you just don't have much of an understanding about pain yet. Being with you, I've seen things. How you are with my son…"

My body suddenly went stiff under Lucrecia's ethereal touch. So the ghosts tucked away in my 'fragile' little body could see every facet of my life, every one of my actions, could they? It left me embarrassed knowing, or probably knowing, that unseen eyes were on me. Always. Worst of all in those moments Sephiroth took from me.

I felt, at least, that I should've been happy they never badgered me on the choices I made. Letting my eyes roll upward into the burning white spotlight above, I pondered. As Sephiroth failed to understand the strength of humanity, I failed to understand its frailty. What degrees there were, how I should react…

"... things are coming…" I murmured.

"Because you're hurt?"

I nodded. It was only ever that one explanation. I concluded that once this was all over, I'd sit down and talk, really talk to the Planet. So far I asked mostly the wrong things. Or I didn't ask enough of the right things. How I wondered if a lot of what happened until now could have been avoided if I only knew what was going on.

The orderlies made a move. Previously, they'd been still as statues, sitting on ugly brown stools against the wall. They were there all along, hearing me talk to what they must have assumed was nothing. Just me being a crazy person. But I wasn't. Lucrecia just didn't want to be seen, except by me, as the sad umbra that she was.

"I'm reporting to the boss," Number One said and vanished through a door like greased lightning.

Lucrecia's head turned, as if she wanted to follow the man, but she remained by my side with her head bowed. She whispered soundly, "I don't like this. I can just feel that bad things are going to happen. Can you sense him? It almost feels like he's near."

"Sephiroth... ?" I said, hopeful. If she was telling the truth, my salvation was close. I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn't feel him myself but just hearing that he might be nearby filled me with light.

I'd be going home soon.