Fission

Cloud scrambled up the narrow path towards the Mako reactor, heart pounding somewhere between terror and fury. On their return to Nibelheim after clearing the reactor of monsters Sephiroth had been so unwell Cloud had been forced to help his mentor to bed and inject him with the medication all SOLDIERs carried to treat the rare yet debilitating tension headaches that were the only physical condition made more rather than less severe by the addition of Mako to the body. Sephiroth was a chronic sufferer, which meant that every five months or so he had to spend two to five days lying insensible and drugged to the gills with painkillers and muscle relaxants so his body could process the build-up of chemicals and desensitise the neural pathways without being hampered by the debilitating pain that accompanied the problem.

Thus, Cloud had injected the drugs, had the three troopers set up a rotating guard to deal with any monsters wandering too close to the village and then spent the next six days either training in the room assigned to the grunts or visiting his mother, doing the latter only when Kirian agreed to stand guard over the unconscious General.

As Sephiroth's headaches had recently been decreasing in intensity and frequency, probably due to the decrease in stress and worry that came from having reliable people around him to depend on, Cloud had been worried about this one; it was too early and far too fierce to be natural. Waking on the seventh morning to find one of the infantrymen lying dead in the hall in a puddle of blood, the town in flames and Sephiroth nowhere to be found had simply confirmed his fears. Fearing the worst, the blond had sent the two surviving troopers to rescue what survivors they could find, ordered Kirian to get hold of Tseng and set off up the mountain after his mentor.

Cloud's extrasensory Mako perception enabled him to keep track of everything and everything with Mako in it within a mile of his position when fully extended; tracking Sephiroth was child's play considering he was the largest signature in the area and left a distinctive trail of kills behind him. On reaching the reactor he contracted his field of perception to fifteen meters and slipped inside.


The blond Second-class hated Mako reactors. They whispered to him, faint murmurs barely on the edge of perception that bypassed his ears completely and trailed teasingly across his brain, hinting at secrets and knowledge that he might gain, if only he paid more attention. Cloud did his best to block them out; paying attention would only take him deeper into the Lifestream and that way lay Mako poisoning and madness. The Nibelheim reactor was the worst he'd ever been in, the whispers actually audible snatches of this and that he had to outright ignore; the problem was likely that the Mako in his blood had come from here, making him more attuned. Walking across the narrow walkway into the heart of the reactor, Cloud did his best to shut out everything not strictly physical. It was much harder than it had been the week before as his instincts and senses were on overdrive trying to find Seph and think of possible scenarios. The Mako in his blood was pumping and it called out to the raw Lifestream swirling beneath him.

Hurrying through the pipe room he slashed through the door at the top of the steps, the door with JENOVA carved above it, Ragnarök making short work of the reinforced steel. Behind the door was a platform suspended above the primary Mako chamber with a damaged cylinder standing in the centre containing a chimerical corpse; JENOVA itself. Sephiroth stood in front of the body, sword drawn, eyes luminous and his feel oddly empty in a manner horribly reminiscent of Fuhito's Ravens.

Without so much as a word the thing using his mentor's body as a puppet lunged forwards, Masamune outreached and aimed for Cloud's heart. The blond ducked, separated one of the Tsume, dashed forwards in a feint then danced back. He'd sparred against his General a thousand times since meeting him and this imposter, this monster was clumsy and slow compared to the real thing. As it attacked him again Cloud sheathed both Ragnarök and the Tsume on his back and danced forward once more, hands reaching forward to touch Sephiroth's skin and dance across his body.

"You desire me, do you not, Cloud?" the thing purred with Sephiroth's voice, tone low and cruel. The blond ignored the taunt. He wasn't flirting; he was emptying the General's pockets and stealing his effects to make subduing his opponent easier.

A few passes later the only weapon his enemy had left was Masamune –Cloud had even stolen his Gold Armlet– and Cloud went on the offensive; drawing one of the Kiba from Ragnarök with one hand and gripping a mastered Contain Materia in the other the young SOLDIER lunged, catching his mentor's blade between Kiba's teeth and twisting the swords away to one side. As he impacted with Sephiroth's chest he prayed the Protect ring on his finger would extend its effects to his mentor considering they now had skin contact and poured all the power he could muster into casting Flare towards the cylinder behind the General, right at JENOVA.

The world went white even through screwed up eyelids buried in his mentor's chest and Sephiroth screamed. The agonising sound went on and on until Cloud ran out of MP and the Spell died. Only then did the scream choke off, leaving behind a ringing, boiling silence as the General collapsed, slate-grey wings exploding from his back to flop on the ground either side of him. The blond caught his mentor clumsily, wrapping the hand with the Materia clutched in it around the taller man's waist and lowering him to his knees, revealing the view of the space behind the General where JENOVA had been.

There was nothing left in the shattered, blackened cylinder but ash.


Cloud slumped forwards in relief, pocketed his Materia, re-attached Tsume and Kiba to Ragnarök then moved over to his right to pick up Masamune. JENOVA was dead; hopefully Sephiroth would recover.

A gunshot rang out behind him. Cloud spun just in time to see professor Hojo lower a smoking handgun –a Quicksilver his Turk-trained hindbrain noted– then turned again to see Sephiroth topple forwards to sprawl across the platform, the back of his head a bloody mess. The base of the cylinder behind the General had a bullet embedded in it and was spattered with skull fragments and brain matter.

Cloud was distantly aware that beyond the roaring in his ears and the rising green in his vision professor Hojo was saying something –something about failure and high Mako thresholds and specimens– but he really did not care. Sephiroth was dead. Hojo had killed bright, battered, beautiful Sephiroth, his SOLDIER mentor and best friend; his foster-father's son.

All of Cloud's horror, grief, rage and adrenaline rose and coalesced within him as he smoothly drew the immensely heavy six-piece blade Chaos had given him, the fusion blade Ragnarök that even Zack considered to be rather heavy and unwieldy. Hojo had killed Sephiroth.

Cloud would kill Hojo.

Blue power coalesced around the enraged Second-class, merging with the dancing streams of green rising from the Mako pooling far below as he lunged forwards, blade disassembling and the pieces hovering in a circle around the murderous scientist. Uncaring of the consequences and pouring his very soul into every blow, Cloud let the rising power guide him as he attacked, cutting through the professor again and again as he moved too quickly for the man to follow.

When the power retreated the blond was left standing over a small mound of diced flesh within a circle of blades embedded in the gantry, his uniform heavily splattered with gore and facing a squad of shaking infantrymen staring up from the pipe room through the broken-down door. Ignoring them Cloud turned on his heel, Tsurugi hanging negligently from his right hand, and dashed over to Sephiroth's side, gently turning the larger man over on his back.

Blank aqua eyes with ovoid pupils stared sightlessly upwards below a hole placed in the centre of the General's forehead.

Sephiroth was dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Brother lost.

Pack broken.

Dead!


The strain of the past hour's events combined with the ridiculously high Mako levels building in Cloud's body from the Mako vapour being absorbed though his skin set off a chemical reaction in one of the little 'gift packages' Chaos had spent years carefully grafting into his favourite mortal's genetic code. The reaction spread, flipping a switch in his brain and embedding a new set of instincts and drives into the teen's psyche.

Cloud Strife threw back his head and Howled. From outside the reactor came a dozen answering Howls. The blond Howled again, heedless of the scrambling infantrymen fleeing for the exit and the sounds of unprepared troopers meeting hunting Nibel wolves in an enclosed area, wild grief rising and falling as he decried the death of his pack-brother.

When Cloud had been nine, the Herald of OMEGA had promised to teach him Howling someday. As the six mostly-grown Nibel wolves slunk into the room to find their new pack-alpha and his fallen pack-brother, the messy wound on the back of Sephiroth's head closed and he breathed in, wings snapping back into his body and out of sight. Cloud's head jerked over and he stared as his General's eyelids fluttered closed, his breath evening out.

The blond threw his head back to howl again, this time in joy and triumph:

Pack-brother lives!

The other wolves joined in the chorus, celebrating the return of life snatched from the jaws of death. Cloud rushed forwards to the pile of flesh that had been professor Hojo and yanked his bloodstained swords out of the gantry, quickly sheathing them in their individual harnesses across his back. Then he slipped Masamune away into Sephiroth's pack, slung the unconscious General over his shoulder and loped out of the reactor, the wolves behind him.

Protect pack.

Cloud had no idea that his eye-sockets were full of glowing Mako green from edge to edge or that the combination of blood spatter, escort and oddly lupine gait made him look utterly feral. He probably wouldn't have cared, either: his pack-brother-alpha was injured and needed protection and his newfound pack-siblings needed food and rest.

Heedless to the Turk staring at him from further down the path Cloud vanished up the mountainside, Sephiroth hanging limply over his left shoulder and a pack of wolves at his heels.


The Nibelheim Incident, in all its terrible glory. I wrote this months and months ago, just before I wrote Kunsel meeting Vincent, so I knew what I was working towards. Mwa ha har! I trust this satisfies my readers' appetites; remember to review!

Edit: Muddled up Tsume and Kiba; the Kiba are the big ones. All fixed now.