Smoke rose into the air forming massive black beacons that lead to death. The dust thrown off collapsing buildings and coated the environment, giving everything light gray color. The sounds of alarms, fires, screams of pain and the deep chuckle of the titanic being filled the air.
"Let them go!" Cloud shouted at Sephiroth, the amount of rage was obvious in his voice.
The six massive feathered wings of Sephiroth's lower half calmly pounded the air, keeping the giant afloat. The rate of the flapping wings was keeping a gentle breeze moving, but the screams of pain from the former l'Cie sliced through the calmness the same way a table saw cuts through bread.
"I told you to release them, you bastard!" Vincent shouted.
Cloud shot to his feet, his Fusion Blade in hand and a blue aura around him. He sprinted towards Sephiroth, launched off the ground ready to kill the most powerful being to ever live. Unsurprisingly to everyone, Cloud was thrown to the ground by a shield Sephiroth had erected around him, most likely the moment he transformed. However, Cloud was not about to give up; He launched several Blade Beams at Sephiroth, each one hitting the shield and dissipating.
Sephiroth looked down at Cloud as the blond tried and failed to breach his shield. Soon, he would emerge victorious over his enemy.
"Primarch Rosch, this is General Vorick. We have the target in our sights. What are your orders?" The voice of the squad commander sounded through the communicator.
The former commander of PSICOM was stunned by the footage of Bodhum. The once beautiful seaside city had been reduced to a burning pile of gray rubble. A video transmitter on the lead gunship showed the massive seven-winged being gently hovering with its arm out stretched, facing away from the gunship, its attention fully on something else.
"Sir? What are your orders?" The voice asked again, with a hint of panic this time.
Rosch took a breath to slow his pulse, calmly reached out and pressed the button to respond. He took another breath to calm himself and wet his lips before answering.
The captain of the gunship, Viper One, mumbled his acknowledgment of the order and turned to his gun crew. He looked each one directly in the eye before changing his communicators channel to open, in order to contact every squad leader currently in Bodhum.
"Orders from the Primarch, we don't leave until that thing is dead, or we run out of ammo. Fire at will."
As soon as the last word left the General's mouth, his gun crew locked onto the flying giant and launched all they could as they shouted their support.
"For Cocoon!"
Snow was moving as fast as he could with Serah, his wife in his arms. Gadot was behind him carrying the injured Lebreau, with Marqui and Yuj on his heels. The large man with the Mohawk nearly crashed into Snow when he suddenly stopped. Wanting to yell at him, Gadot saw that Snow was looking up at followed his gaze.
Guardian Corps, former PSICOM, and the Skyfleet were now over Bodhum. Fighters, Bombers, Gunships, Carriers, everything. Even the ground was littered with the military, Artillery guns, Tanks, Snipers, no soldier was left out. The sheer amount of forces made it look like a swarm of locusts had come to Bodhum.
A unanimous shout that instantly became incomprehensible sounded. Everything present had begun shooting. A cloud of smoke and the sound of an avalanche blanketed the area as shells and missiles took flight. It was a majestic sight, with a hint of tragedy. It looked like humanity's last stand, and sadly, it was. If the combined might of all the military forces on Cocoon could not destroy Sephiroth, all life would meet its end.
The sound of something screaming through the air caught everyone's attention. Cloud still had his sight locked on the chuckling maniac that turned himself into a seven winged Fal'Cie, but all the others looked up at the sound. Vincent was the one able to see what was about to happen, his senses enhanced by Mako, Jenova cells, and Chaos, allowed him to see the incoming artillery shells and the wall of missiles just a few seconds out.
"Hit the dirt!" Vincent shouted to everyone. Everyone crouched low and did their best to cover their heads.
The shells slammed into Sephiroth's shield, creating a deafening boom and a massive fireball. The shock wave cast off from the shells, threw even more dust into the air, a did not cause any visible damage to Sephiroth. However, Sephiroth had released the former l'Cie from his torturous grasp.
The multitude of missiles soon fell upon Sephiroth. Some missiles slammed into the ground near Sephiroth, but most hit his shield. The rapid explosions created a large wall of fire and a shock wave with enough force to make everyone stumble and fall from their crouching position.
After the fire and smoke cleared, all saw the shield around the winged being flicker out of existence. Sephiroth let out an enraged growl at the military forces that had just broken his shield, he was not expecting this kind of resistance. The gargantuan black wing of Sephiroth started to glow with a soft orange light, which steadily grew into a piercing white light with an orange tint at the edge. Just as Sephiroth swung his wing towards the massive military force, their fighters, bombers, and gunships scrambled and began their approach.
The pillar of light raced off the huge black feathered wing and split into countless orange-white beams. The beams started to explode mid-air, mimicking anti-air flak guns. Several fighters and bombers were hit and either exploded in the air or fell to the ground and detonated on impact, gunships were also hit but they were designed to take a beating and remain in the air under the worst circumstances.
Fighters zipped past Sephiroth, and Avalanche, without firing first to see if there was any prominent weak spots which were fairly obvious to military minds. The base of the wings and the orb protruding out of Sephiroth's middle. Pilots of the fighters relayed the information back to bomber pilots and gunship crews then circled back to give their all.
The fighters locked the targeting systems of their missiles onto the seven targets and let loose. With a push of a button, several missiles dropped from the belly of each, of the dozens, of fighters. The missiles flew their low yield, but very effective, explosive loads directly into Sephiroth's grotesque form. Sephiroth was consumed in small fireballs as more and more missiles slammed into him.
As the gunships drifted closer to Sephiroth, they released near countless missiles of their own. At the same time, the gunships began charging the main cannons knowing the combined fire would be enough to put down any enemy.
Suddenly, from the cloud of smoke Sephiroth flew out towards the gunships. As he raced towards them, his hands stretched out and large beams appeared, the same type of beam that had blasted a perfectly round hole in the ground a few minutes ago. The beams lanced through two gunships, both of which exploded shortly after, and swept through three other gunships in either direction, all six ceased to be when the beams made contact. All but one gunship broke formation and fled from Sephiroth to be safe.
General Vorick ordered his gunship crew to remain in position until they could fire the cannon. The General knew his crew was afraid to be in this position, and perfectly understood why the other gunships had fled. He watched the screen with the information about the main cannon indicate the charge of the cannon reached maximum.
"Target that orb," General Vorick ordered, indicating Sephiroth's core.
Sephiroth readied an attack to destroy the one gunship that had remained to fight him. The gunship with the word Viper and number one painted on the side. Before his attack could be sent at the gunship, the cannon flashed. The beam from the cannon slammed into the core orb of the massive grotesque form of Sephiroth and the group on the ground heard a cry. The gunship started to flee while Sephiroth was struggling to regain himself.
Sephiroth was throwing attack after attack at the gunship as it fled and managed to hit it twice, but it remained flying away. Other gunships began launching more missiles and firing thousands of bullets at the seven winged menace. Cloud watched from the ground as nearly ten thousand people willingly fought a being that could end their lives with a flick of a wrist.
Three gunships circled around the flying giant while charging their main cannons. A very loud bang sounded as the first cannon shot jumped through the air and slammed into Sephiroth's right hand, shattering it and leaving the arm ending in a gargantuan stump. The other fired at the upper torso of the false Fal'Cie, making it stumble through the air and struggle to remain upright.
More screaming in the air signaled another incoming artillery strike. The fact that any artillery guns or squads had survived the earlier bombardment was amazing on its own. The screaming shells plummeted out of the sky, slammed into Sephiroth and created a wall of fire and smoke.
Gunships that had fled earlier had charged their cannons and were flying back around to deliver the shot. Shot after short flew out of the cannons, ripped through the smoke and slammed into Sephiroth. Cloud, Lightning, and the others heard a kind of cry that Barthandelus made when they defeated him.
As the smoke cleared, the broken body of Sephiroth's giant form came into view. It was on the ground and completely still. All seven wings were stretched out on the ground covering almost as much ground as a landing strip.
"Is it over?" Vanille asked the group.
Out of the smoke, a black streak raced towards them. An instant later Sephiroth was holding Cloud a foot and a half off the ground, by the throat with his left hand. Sephiroth flapped his large black feathered wing and they both lifted into the air. The silver haired nightmare stretched out his right arm, which erupted into a large black leathery, wing-like limb. His arm suddenly changing made his coat disappear in a flurry of black dust and just after, Sephiroth's lower half changed into six white wings that were very similar to the much larger form. Finally a gold symbol materialized behind Sephiroth and completed the exact recreation of the form Avalanche had fought in the Northern Cave, Seraph Sephiroth.
Sorry for the wait, I will try to have the next chapter up before Christmas at the latest. About three chapters left by the way.
I'm going to concentrate on this story until its finished, which means my other stories will take even longer to update.
Side note: General Vorick is just someone I made up for the sake of this chapter.
Random fact: Safer Sephiroth is a mistranslation of Seraph Sephiroth, which is why I used Seraph in the story.
Oh yea, please review. Please. Only three chapters left.