FN: I include the following scene in my ever increasing desire to say that I hate you (300+ hits bah humbug) all and to make you tell me to stop posting this fic. It does nothing to improve the quality of the fic, in fact it probably decreases it. It will make just about no sense unless you've read Twilight Perfection, and even then it only makes a twisted sense. I would have put it after the end of this chapter, but then I realized that because no one has reviewed "I've got no beef with you" that I despite you all, and don't want to keep posting this fic that you all manage to enjoy so much.

A lesser author might let the quality of the fic itself drop, say by refraining from spellchecking them and rewriting them, but I desire more than to simply make my fic bad, I will make it a master piece of incomprehension like Silent Hill, or the ending of Metal Gear Solid Two!

So in the interest of destroying your enjoyment, behold OC's stealing the spotlight from the main characters, the same thing that makes so many of you hate Twilight, at least I assume you hate it since none of you have reviewed it. Oh, and originally this piece was going to go at the end, but it makes more chronological sense for it to come first. So in other words all you masochistic readers proceed and enjoy, if you want to skip ahead to the start of the fic where I include the chapter title be my guest.

--

"Subject Green A's readings are all negative." The black haired man in a white labcoat said those words as if he was noting nothing more important than a light switch having been turned off. A young man dressed all in red didn't feel the same way. "You mean Alex is dead?"

The black haired man turned around and glared at the one dressed in red. "Of course that's what it means Red J. Almost a shame in its way, I would have so loved to do a proper after mission dissection of him.

That Gnosis he was babbling on about, I could have cut away pieces of his body untill I found out what allowed him to control it. Oh well, it is not as if I need to design any more projects for a while." Red J clenched his hands into fists. "Damn it, don't sound so calm about this! Green A, no, Alex wasn't like Black D, I liked him, he grew those blue flowers for me, he told me stories."

The black haired man sighed. "How tedious, here Red J just let your AD make it all better." Hands began to race across the keyboard and a new screen popped upon the monitor. "Abstract Daddy units readings: Red J's serotonin production at 50 of maximum."

As more keys were pressed the numbers promptly climbed to seventy percent. Red J's face became a distorted mask, as a smile with no humor behind it. " No daddy! Please! Don't!"

The black haired man cackled as he pressed more buttons. "What's the matter? Do you want to waste your time by being sad? Bah! Feelings are nothing more than the way the brain interprets the arrival of certain chemicals. Even in human beings they're worthless and you aren't human to start with.

From this terminal I can interface with the AD unit attached to your brain stem, giving me full control over what chemicals reach your mind. I can make you feel the bitterest hatred, I can make you feel the greatest love, and with your mother fine tunning your desires, there is nothing you would not for our cause.

Looking back I can hardly believe that I trusted to something so random as human reproduction to give me a subject like Silver One. A random mix of 92 chromosomes, how could I have ever put my faith in something so imprecise?

Does it not make pride swell within your breast to know how perfect you are Red J? If it doesn't I can make it..." Red J's stayed silent, but his body relaxed considerably as a gloved hand was placed on his shoulder, and a female voice joined the conversation. "Doctor if you play with your toys too much they're going to get broken."

The black haired man did not look up from his keyboard. "I didn't ask your opinion White M." The woman with her arm on Red J's shoulder stood up perfectly straight. "I know, that's why I am now asking for yours. Permission to go on one last 'leave' before my number comes up one way or another, and take Red J with me?"

The black haired man made dismissive motions with his right hand. "Go, go. My scanners will detect it if you try to run away, and the results will be 'unpleasant' to say the least if you refuse to properly pay for the gifts I have given you, including the gift of life in your case Red J."

White M gave a quick salute and then turned around more or less pulling Red J with her. "Come on, lets go listen to Black M play, that always makes you feel better." As the door to the lab sealed behind them, Red J finally spoke up, pointing his gloved hands towards his eyes.

"Look, tears! I don't care what he does to me, I can be sad if I wanted to, I'm real, I'm sad about Alex, I don't want him to be dead... I want him to come back." White M wrapped her hands around Red J's shoulders. "I'm not the one you have to convince on that score, and you're wasting your time talking to your 'father' on that particular issue.

Now, like I said we can either listen to Black M play, or we can go outside, the weather is as good as it ever gets around here, I'll get the frisbee out of my room and we can kill a few hours."

Red J shook his head feverishly. "No, it doesn't feel right to be having fun so soon after what happened to Alex..." White M broke their hug. "Don't worry about what happened to him. You know how Cetra are, and Alex in particular, is a far, far better thing and all that. He's in a better place now, that's for sure."

FN: And now back to the main characters.

The Immortal Gunman

Chapter 5: I want something else, to get through this, semi charmed kind of life.

Sephiroth held up the box, now two coins where complete. "You realise what this means right?" Aeris gave a small nod. "Well for one things it means that there are now only 10 of them left." Sephiroth sighed and shook his head. "No, it means that we can't stay together."

Vincent looked at Sephiroth across the table they were seated at with mild irritation. "Whatever happened to the saying about there's strength in numbers?" Even though his sunglasses it was possible to see the sudden glint in Sephiroth's eyes. "That's amature tactics 101, I'm considering a much more advanced curriculum. Sticking together is what they want us to do.

Those two, Alexander and Dyne, they specifically wanted me and my father, they where trained on how best to fight us. If we split up, then the remaining ten will have a harder time finding whichever one of us they were specially trained to kill."

Lucrecia slowly looked around the table. "We're something of a rather easy to remember occurrence, if they follow us for a while the tales will add up." Her son was completely unperturbed by this reasonable objection. "They could do that, and that I why I have a plan to counter it."

With those words Sephiroth removed a small map that if not being exactly precise showed the general location of towns. Sephiroth traced his hand down along it slowly. "We split up into two groups of two. But we don't go off in opposite directions, we keep the general same path, but visiting different towns. At preset locations we change group members, that will keep those who hunt us on their toes.

Even better, it gives us a chance to double back and make the hunters the hunted." Aeris slowly ran her hand along the map as well, keeping it constantly a few inches behind Sephiroth's. "It seems pretty complicated, but if you think we can do it, we might have a shot at it." Sephiroth chuckled as he stopped tracing lines and started pointing out destinations. "It's rather easy the truth be told. The towns don't have names on this map, but Aeris and I will go here, while you two go here.

Then here we meet up and switch group members, we can decide which ones once we arrive." Lucrecia didn't seem about to object with being parried with Vincent and vice versa, but it was hard to tell of what Aeris thought of being alone with Sephiroth.

All things considered though she didn't seam about to complain out loud at the very least. "Safe journey son." Sephiroth pulled his hand from the map and began to roll it up. "May you go with the everlasting love and protection of God."

Vincent looked down at his two handguns and then at Sephiroth's cross. "Nice mantra, does it work?" A complacent shrug. "That's entirely up to you, but believers will be redeemed in one of the lives to come."

Vincent hung his head and let a long sigh. "You know, I think I preferred your atheist side." Sephiroth stood up and placed both hands upon his cross. "That is a shame, for when I opened my eyes to all of the gifts God has granted me, I found myself utterly unable to deny his existence.

That I am here alone, is proof enough of his everlasting love and mercy. The same mercy I wish to show to others wherever I go through my cross." Lucrecia chuckled but Vincent simply looked mortified and spoke slowly. "I somehow doubt that their is any kind of mercy in your cross Sephiroth. But it is well suited for what we will face."

A few generic goodbyes later the groups departed, Sephiroth and Aeris by car (Aeris lacking Jenova cells and mako enhancement was badly suited to walking in the desert for long periods of time) Vincent and Lucrecia by foot.

--

It was odd for Aeris, to be seated in a car across from the man who had killed her once before. But then it was hard to say that the man she sat next to had killed her, in a way he had simply been the weapon with Jenova had killed her. There was a horrible silence between them untill Aeris finally broke it.

"Something is troubling me." Sephiroth didn't take his eyes off the "road" if you could call what they were driving on by such a name. "What thoughts burden your mind little Eve?"

Whenever Sephiroth was speaking only as a priest, he would call people either "Adam" or "Eve" depending on their gender and as Aeris was about half a foot shorter than him "little" was relatively apt adjective. It was a slightly annoying fact, but at the same time it was useful as well. "A sin."

Sephiroth took his right hand off the wheel to finger his paper covered cross in the backseat. "Are you in need of a confession?" "More like a conversation" "Which sin?" Aeris' eyes looked down on the cars floor. "That original sin through which we all come into existence."

Sephiroth's eyes widened. "Have you committed such a sin?" Aeris shook her head firmly. "No, but that sin is passed to me by my parents... Especially in my case. I can't help but wonder if my parents where never meant to have been together."

Sephiroth return both of his hands to the wheel. "I have spent many hours thinking similar thoughts little Eve." Aeris glared at Sephiroth in irritation. "It's not the same between you and me, not like that! You where conceived a perfectly normal person, between two perfectly normal people."

Sephiroth just looked silently at Aeris, and she promptly rethought her statements. "Okay, maybe not, but still... you where conceived by humans, made a human, you might have been born different from anyone else, but untill that first needle went into Lucrecia's wombs you were no different than anyone else.

But I am the first half Cetra, and I wonder if a being like me was meant to exist. I seem to have bought myself the worst of both worlds, I am accepted neither among humans nor among Cetra." Sephiroth black gloved hand somehow came to rest on Aeris' shoulder. "If there was ever one mistake the Cetra made it was refusing you little Eve. It was a choice they made under painful circumstances, painful ones like those we will never known.

While this may have been our home for 40 years, it has been there's for 4,000. They where afraid, and fear makes people irrational. It was one of the many times knowing what they did to you is one of those moments that reminds me why I hold a lose interpretation of the Bible."

Aeris held back caustic comments about just how lose his interpretation was, especially on certain commandments. "What do you mean?" Sephiroth snarled slightly, once again a gleam in his eyes that not even his sunglasses could cloak. "What they did to you, it reminds me of 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone.' I believe in translation, or even in the first writing that parts of the Bible where left out, or rewritten, or just mistaken by those who wrote them."

In the brief pause Sephiroth might as well have read Aeris' mind. "Yes, that commandment about killing is just a well meaning suggestion, not a strict code, a more appropriate version of it would be, 'All life is precious, do not kill without reason or needlessly' but sadly the good book seems to struggle with the idea that there are shades of grey and silver at times."

Aeris nodded slowly. "Then what do you think Jesus should have told the sinless before they cast their first stones?" Sephiroth smiled slightly as he removed his glove from her shoulder. "Jesus turned and faced the crowd. he stood in front of the women about to be stoned and spoke 'You who have lifted no finger to help this woman, what right do you have to lift that finger to accuse her with now?'"

Silence filled the air between them again. Then Aeris slowly looked up at Sephiroth almost pleadingly. "Tell me what you told me that time before.

Tell me again before I stop doubting and start believing that I can't do anything." Sephiroth nodded, and instantly began to speak in that impossible way that only Sephiroth could go over the past.

He made it sound like he was simply reciting things of ages past , anyone's past, or even another Scripture from the bible, instead of his own past. "Let me tell you the story of mindless faith, and underestimated sacrifice."

--

The women slowly walked to the center of the platform in the middle of a huge city. Or what once might have been a huge city, now all that was left of it was a few buildings. However those building that did remain, were in surprisingly good condition. Ivy vines grew along them, but it did not grow as it to overtake or corrupt the buildings, the vines grew as if they belonged there, as if they complimented the structures.

In there way those vines were a last testament to the Cetras' communion with the planet, but they would not be the only testament to that communion today. She kneeled on the platform, kissed the ground, and then she spoke. "You can come out anytime."

The man descended in all but complete and utter silence, she the nearness of his body as he arrived more than she heard his arrival. "You come to your death like a moth to the flames." She slowly turned around and looked up at General Sephiroth, face to face, and instantly knew how foolish she was.

He stood twice her height (but then she was kneeling) and she was just tall enough so that when she looked straight ahead, her eyes focused with painful clarity on Masamune's hilt. He only had to calmly reach backwards, grip that hilt, pull, and then the blade that had ended so many lives would end hers as well.

She had seen him before, but when it was just the two of them alone together, it was being trapped in a cage with a rabid dog She looked up at him, and somehow managed to utter coherent words. "You're here to kill me?"

Sephiroth chuckled as he looked down at her. "Me? Sent here on a task as base a mere assassination? I don't lower myself to the level of you humans, my trade is that of wholesale slaughter, I specialize in killing humans by the dozen, by the hundred, by the thousand! My mother sending me to kill one single opponent would be like order a wolf to guard a mousehole!"

Aeris couldn't help but wonder from what hidden depth she found the strength to speak clearly. "Then what are you here for?" "I'm here to protect that planet from the unprecedented danger humans represent. You are a nieve fool half-Cetra, if you truly believe that there can be peace between your parent's races." Aeris' legs felt like rubber, making her very glad that she was already kneeling.

"The simple fact that I exist, that proves there can be piece between the two." Sephiroth's face went from being oddly handsome and utterly lacking emotion, to an ugly sneer filled with hate in the blink of an eye. "Oh there can be peace! Years and years of peace! Years, and decades, and centuries, and millenniums, and eons of peace! Bought with the lives of our

The dead have no ability to argue with the decisions of the living, and soon we will all be dead. You, me, and my mother, that is all that are left. Even your bloodline is already corrupted with human, even if you and I mated, I would still be the last true Cetra born on this planet. Even if that child lived, even with our incredible lifespan, in the end only humans will be left.

Like cockroaches they fester and breed. If they are not eradicated while we have the strength, they will despoil this entire world!" Aeris could feel tears coming to her eyes. "Then what would you do? Kill off every single human? Then what Sephiroth, leave this Planet devoid of intelligent life when you die?"

Sephiroth shook his head, and from the look in his eyes Aeris finally understood why Zack at once told her "Sephiroth always has a plan" while the two had been dating. "No, when I harness the power of the Lifestream and become a god, the Cetra will be reborn! I will take that which has been so unjustly given to the humans and give it back to those to whom it belongs!"

Through supreme force of will, Aeris held her ground. "It doesn't have to come to that. If you just gave humans a chance..." Sephiroth's face was once again an uncompromising blank slate. "I gave humans a chance half-Cetra, and they spat in my face.

You are blind to the corruption, the greed, the pain they cause each other, the pain they wish to cause us. From the very day I was born, the day I became conscious of my life, I knew I was different from the pathetic humans that surrounded me. They hoped to study me, refine me, like I was some kind of stone instead of a living being!

They wanted to unleash my true potential, not for myself, but so that they could use it. They wanted to find out just what I was capable of, and I intend for it to be the last thing they ever see! I will lay them down on the pillar to the false god of science to which they have scarified so many, and add their entire race to the pile.

My blade is so perfect that it can kill without drawing blood, I will hone the rest of the world as I hone my blade, to the point of perfection!" Aeris shuddered, she the pure hate in the mans voice was enough to make a fire dance in his eyes, even worse she knew he truly believed what he said.

But he was not doing this petty or spite, he was doing it because he wanted to make the world a better place. That was the most frightening thing about him, because in the end she believed that doing what they thought was right was the force that drove her as actions as well. "Humanity is not evil by nature, there is weakness, there is pain, but more so, there is strength, there is a will to do right!"

Sephiroth began to slowly run a hand along the scabbard strapped to his back. "Do not make judgments in a felid of where you have no experience. You have not experienced war, you have never seen bodies ripped open, and cast asunder like heaps of garbage. You have never seen the way humans lower themselves beyond the wildest animals, filled with rage and fear.

Humans nothing but wastes of Lifestream, and waste needs to be eliminated. So tell me half-Cetra, why do you chose to throw your life away, when you could live to see the world reborn?" Aeris sighed, and slowly reached into her hair, careful not to remove the ribbon but pulling from it instead, a glowing white marble. She could feel the white materia glow in her palm.

"Because of this. Through this materia, I can here the voice of my mother, and the voice of the planet. I can hear the planet's cries and pleads that all can be saved, that none if its children has to die.

Through my mothers voice, I can hear her determination, the determination that made her the first Cetra to ever love to a human. That determination tells me that no matter what is too happen, I can not afford to give up."

Sephiroth's suddenly burst into a emotionless, empty, laugh, a laugh that sounded more inhuman than any Nanaki could have ever produced. As he laughed his left hand drew forth a small sphere the same size as Aeris' although it completely black. "WHAT MARVELLOUS JEST! Very well half-Cetra, my first assessment was closer then I have would have dared to ever hope!

You see, you are not the only one who draws determination through an object you carry. You see through the Black Materia, I can here my mother's voice, the voice of Jenova. I know of all the crimes humanity has committed against her, and my ancestors. To hear such tales would drive a lesser being into a mindless rage, even I a Cetra am left filled me with the same refusal to back down that your mother gives you.

When I hold this gem, I know what must be done to protect this world. You see half-Cetra, we are so very closely united in goals, and so very disunited over the issue of means. Almost like a mirror, look into one and you do not see yourself, but your inverse. Whenever I look into a mirror I see you, and whenever you look into a mirror, you will see me.

Looking at you I see a part of me I detest, the part that makes me want to forgive those who have done me naught but on ill turn after another, a part of me that is afraid of what carrying my plants to fulfilment could mean. But I close my ears to it, you see half-Cetra, power is nothing without the determination to use it.

I once lacked that determination, and was little more then a puppet to Shinra before I met my mother and she gave it to me. Because of that determination I will risk making a foe of this entire world to save it, the risk is after all, proportional to the reward. However for you there is no risk, there is no reward, your death is certain."

Aeris shuddered slightly. "I don't care, I have determination, whatever happens I will at least try." "You have much spirit, to go to your death willingly, too bad that I couldn't convince you to join me in the world to come. I'll have to settle for making your death truly a show like none that have come before it. The culminating act of which will be when that idiotic Strife acting under my power, will take your head from your shoulders with his own blade."

Aeris' eyes filled with fright, not at the thought of her own death, but of how Cloud would react to being forced to commit such a deed. "No..." The word slipped from her lips without thought, and Sephiroth looked at her with an eager grin on his face. "Why not? Why shouldn't I show Strife just how powerless he is before a Cetra? Why shouldn't his foolish delusions be shattered as by the cold steel of reality?

He has a foolish, love for you half-Cetra, a storybook love. I feel that he should learn just how harsh life is before he is eradicated along with the others. Why shouldn't I?" "If you think we are equals in any way, then do it out of respect for me. I would gladly lay down me life, but I refuse to have blood be shed here against anyone's will.

Refuse to allow this sacred place, this pure water, to be defiled. This is the last place on the planet where the glory of the Cetra remains pure do you wish to unhallow it?" Sephiroth slowly began to scratch his chin. "You bring up an interesting point, very well.

I will make Strife think he was going to kill you, to show him how powerless he is, but then at the last moment I will stop him. Then I shall fall as he watches helplessly, and drive Masamune through your heart." As Aeris heard Cloud' approaching footsteps Sephiroth vanished and she once again lowered her head to the pedestal floor and began to pray for Holy after returning the materia to its normal resting place.

Time seamed to move all too quickly when you aren't paying any attention to the world around you. She would have felt no more pain having accidentally pricked herself with a pin, then her vision went black. She couldn't breath, but her lungs didn't feel as if they where burning, she fell to her knees, and died her face stuck in a look of amazement. Not amazement at her own death, but amazement that someone like Sephiroth could deal death so painlessly, so quickly, so humanely.

--

Sephiroth finally looked back at Aeris having finished the story. "Death marks the culmination of life, and many can learn more because of the first than the latter." Aeris raised her eyebrows hesitantly. "You know all about how I died, I think it would only be fair for you to tell me everything about your death."

Sephiroth instantly returned his focus to the wheel, not that he needed to. "That is a story for another day. No reason to jump to the next lesson before you have even finished the first. If you learned nothing from your own death, allow me to enlighten you to what I learned from it in retrospect.

Hate for its own ends consumes, totally, including the one who hates, in us at least." Aeris scowled at Sephiroth slightly. "What do you mean by, us?" Sephiroth did not meet her eyes. "I trust you remember a man by the name of Berret Wallace? His name should be particularly easy to remember considering that he had a history with the man my father killed recently.

His heart was every bit as filled with hatred for Shinra as mine was for humanity. He hated them from the bottom of his heart because they took away everything he ever knew, he hated them even more than my father did Simon Hojo. But because Wallace's hate was a ragging fire, it could grow by consuming other things, like love, my father's hate is a cold frozen absolute.

It will not lessen, nor will it grow, that kind of hate can focus a person on his goals. However burning hate only clouds your goals, makes it impossible to see them clearly, it causes a man to stray from the path of god.

However, we were far from equally sinful in the eyes of god for what we did when influenced by our hate. Why? Because when a human being is consumed by a hot burning hate it is the same as an animal becoming rabid, it is still the same animal. A human consumed by hate is still a human, still bound by the same rules, still forced to follow the way of society.

When an angel is consumed by hate and strays from the light of god it becomes a deamon, suffice to say a mere human consumed by hate is nothing compare to a deamon who is at home in the fires of hell itself. That is what I mean by 'us' Aeris, you are still mostly human, but you become more of a Cetra all the time.

The simple fact is that we who can listen to the voice of god itself, must obey his call, or we may never get another chance to hear it again." Aeris sat in silence as she worked over Sephiroth's words, it was a clear sign that he was at least thinking about what he did, but then she could have guessed that already.

More to the point, she hadn't started down this line of questions to learn about Sephiroth, she was trying to learn more about herself! She decided to ask a question which blended the two together. "How do you draw the line between Cetra and human, and how do you know I'm crossing it?"

Sephiroth returned her gaze to her to answer that one "Humans are inherently sinful creatures because they can not truly see the path of god laid out before their feet. But then you could always see that path couldn't you Eve? It would be the only way for someone to have grown up in Lower Midgar and end up the way you did.

Much as I hate this particular saying, 'snowballs chance in hell' does quite nicely describe the odds of being uncorrupted by the evil of that place. You were better then those around you, you were Cetra. But then you were also human because you refused to fully realize just what kind of filth you were surrounded by.

You may lead a human to the path of God only if he is willing to try and follow it, or at least willing to believe in it. Those who stray from the road of their own ambition because of that ambition, can not be forced back onto that road by any means."

Aeris scowled deeply. "Why did you leave the path? Last time I checked it was about certain desires you held in the area of apotheosis." "In the passing from one world to another, there is a rare chance that does not exist in any other place. It is a chance to be touched by God himself, a chance for any man to repent his sins.

Not all can be redeemed in life, but any man can be redeemed in death. That is why I serve sinners with death, because it brings them closer to God." Aeris could take no more and looked away. "Death will never be a thing I glorify in, brown roses do not bring pleasure to people."

Sephiroth, confident that Aeris couldn't see his face, smirked. "It is good that you do not take life without hesitation, but there will come a time when you encounter one beyond redemption. What you do then, will determine if you are human or if you are a Cetra." Aeris gave a hesitant sigh. "You may be right Sephiroth." She admitted wordlessly to herself. /But right now I think you're asking the right question, and giving the wrong answer.\

End Chapter.