Chapter 4: The brazen brass of the working class are here to find their voice.
Tifa Lockhart, the owner/bartender/waitress/bouncer of Seventh Heaven, took a moment to assess the patrons of her establishment as she came out from behind the bar. It was part of her standard evening routine; doing it gave her a chance to stretch her leg muscles instead of just standing in one place all night. Even more importantly, she could make sure that no one looked likely to start trouble.
Tonight, it seemed to be just usual crowd: roughnecks, ne'er do wells, people down on their luck, and other unfortunates who found her establishment a good place to spend the evening. It was wings night, so there were actually as many people eating their dinner as drinking it, for a change.
Then she saw him.
Most of Seventh Heaven's visitors were relaxing and enjoying themselves, but one occupant seated at the small circular table by himself was crouched low over his food. The guy's stance reminded her of a feral animal, fearful that to let their eyes wander was to invite his food being snatched away.
He needn't have worried; Seventh Heaven wasn't exactly high-class, but if anyone in her bar was foolish enough to steal from her customers, Tifa would show them the door- and a few other things, as well.
Seventh Heaven was nice like that; it was hers, and Tifa Lockhart would always fight to protect her home.
Next to being a professional therapist or police interrogator, there were few occupations that could teach you how to read people like being a bartender. Tifa turned her practiced gaze on this unusual occupant, trying to figure out just how much she should be worried about him.
To start with there was his hair; silver was a color more frequently gifted to people by a dye bottle than genetics. Not only that, but the only kind of people who tended to be interested in dying their hair silver were….
One quick glance down at his outfit confirmed her suspicions.
/Oh Planet, he's a Sepher!\
Among General Sephiroth's more dubious 'achievements' was the speed with which his distinctive look had been copied by those with more money than sense; even five years after he had vanished, there were still those rich hipsters trying to look "cool" or "dashing" by dressing in all black leather.
Her mystery man certainly met that qualification. Sepher Score: 1.
Not only was her Sepher wearing black leather, but his clothing was too clean, and too new, for him to have spent any real time in the slums.
Still, it wasn't like she had grounds to criticize him; she was perfectly aware of the fact that the sight of her tending bar and serving food in a white crop-top and black miniskirt helped reel in new customers and bring back repeat business. Nothing wrong with dressing to impress.
With a mental shrug, Tifa continued her analysis.
He had obviously dyed his hair silver. Sepher Score: 2.
He was drinking water, which didn't exactly set off alarm bells, but did set gears turning in Tifa's head; most people in Seventh Heaven wanted beer, if not something harder.
A quick glance at his baby smooth face suggested that either her mystery man owned the only sharp razor in Sector Seven, (where every man tended to sport some kind of facial hair, even if it was just stubble left over from using the cheapest razors Shinra sold) or was young enough that she should be grateful he was sticking to water.
Of course, Tifa wasn't especially concerned about the possibility of some petty Midgar functionary showing up to shut down Seventh Heaven because she was serving booze to minors; no, it'd take a Turk strike team to shut down her bar.
While his beverage of choice wasn't too strange, the way he interacted with it was. He'd stuck his fingers into his glass of water and was lazily swishing them back and forth against the ice cubes. Not only that, but his expression as he stirred his drink wasn't one of boredom, but rather intense interest.
Looking closer, she should see that not only was he wearing a sword, but it was on his right hip, making it easier to draw if its wearer was left handed. It was possible this guy actually was both a southpaw and a competent swordsman, but statistically far more likely that he was a poseur who'd trip over his sword in the act of drawing it.
Deducting half a point for uncertainty, she still felt comfortable bumping his "Sepher Score" up to a conservative 3.5.
Green eyes: maybe natural, probably not. Mako glow: reflective contacts. Sepher Score: 4.5.
He wasn't the first Sepher she'd seen in Seventh Heaven, but it'd be an overstatement to say she saw one every month, or even every other month. Sephers were inevitably rich, and if there was one word that did not describe the population of Sector Seven, it was "rich".
So what was a rich kid doing in the middle of Sector Seven on his own? Well "kid" might not be entirely fair, he looked to be within two or three years of Tifa's own age, but there was something about her mystery customer which projected an air of "youth" about him.
"Thanks."
It seemed that her young Sepher had noticed what she was doing, which was to be expected; Master Zangan had warned her about how as you studied someone, you were inevitably giving them a chance to study you in turn.
"You're welcome." She replied to the Sepher, though she still having no idea exactly what he was thanking her for.
The chance to finally look him directly in the eye revealed that some how he'd managed to give his pupils the same sort of cat like vertical slit look that General Sephiroth's had.
That was a new one; Tifa knew you could get "mako contacts," but cat's eye lenses were a bit much. Definitely worth a point and a half. Image was one thing, but half-blinding yourself in pursuit of it?
Sepher Score: 6!
He raised up one of the hot wings he'd ordered, then forced the entire thing past his lips to casually chew it up and swish its juices around his mouth before swallowing.
"These are great!" He all but moaned with pleasure.
Tifa wanted to avoid getting drawn too deeply down this particular rabbit hole a second time, but couldn't stop herself from thinking about the event she'd just witnessed.
Normal people did not eat hot wings like that.
Roughly five seconds from now, he should be either screaming in pain, or desperately chugging from his water glass, before following it up with someone else's glass for good measure. On top of which, wearing leather gloves to eat wings was just ridiculous; the cleanup would be a nightmare.
Sepher Score: 7.
Tifa waited, but the Sepher showed no signs of having just scorched half of his taste-buds to ash.
"It was nice to meet you, Mr...?" Tifa trailed off, hoping she could at least get a name to put to the Sepher's face.
"It's Kadaj, just Kadaj."
Tifa couldn't keep her eyebrows from shooting upwards in surprise. This guy insisted on acting like he had only one name?
With that 3-point finisher, Just Kadaj's Sepher Score was an absolutely perfect 10 out of 10!
Somewhere in Upper Midgar, (because there was no way they lived beneath the Plate) this poor (in a strictly non-financial sense) boy's parents were probably worried sick about him, assuming they cared where he was.
With that final detail, even if she hadn't managed put the entire puzzle of Kadaj together; she had enough pieces to see a general outline.. It was obvious that neither she or her patrons had anything to be worried about from him.
Which meant she had a bar in need of running.
A she started to turn away, he spoke up again.
"Your eyes… they're totally amazing, you know..."
"Thanks."
It was far from the first time she'd had her eyes complimented since opening Seventh Heaven, though to Kadaj's credit, he was actually looking at them when he did it.
A long time ago, Tifa's eyes had been deep brown, but these days they were mahogany, and there was nothing artificial abouttheir mako glow.
XXX XXX XXX
General Sephiroth waited in the shadowy alley between Seventh Heaven and its nearest neighbor, watching for any sign of Kadaj or Tifa Lockhart. Even after being "dead" for five years and in a slum, he was still certain that he'd be recognized all too quickly should he just walk into Seventh Heaven. So instead, he'd sent Kadaj in, with orders to find way to convince Miss Lockhart to go outside with him.
As he waited, one thought kept running through his head again and again, he wished he still had his old second in command with him.
Not only because he had worked alongside Zack long enough to trust him like he'd never trusted anyone else, but because if there had ever been a SOLDIER who could be counted on to forge a friendly relationship with a bartender, it was Zack Fair.
XXX XXX XXX
The rest of the night passed normally enough; people ordered food and drinks, Tifa provided them.
'Just Kadaj' had somewhat improbably hung around and, over the course of the evening, consumed three more orders of hot wings. At this point, Tifa could only assume that he must have suffered some kind of tragic wax-related accident as a child; the human mouth simply did not handle that much capsaicin that casually.
When every other customer had departed Tifa was tempted to start explaining to Kadaj exactly how the concept of "closing time" worked, but he managed to beat her to the punch.
"My older brother really wants to meet you, he's waiting just outside!" He declared with a cheerful smile.
This was a new one to Tifa.
Yes, she was familiar with the concept of a "wing-man", but it usually worked with two men being present at the same time. For that matter, Tifa could grasp the idea of a shy younger brother sending their more mature and experienced older brother in to break the ice, but why would an older brother use Kadaj to try and build a rapport with her?
On top of all that, given how Kadaj's older brother was unquestionably rich (and probably also a Sepher), why hadn't he just swaggered into Seventh's Heaven and started throwing his money around if he wanted to impress Tifa? It wouldn't have worked of course, but rich jerks often had more money than common sense.
All this was strange, very strange.
"Why didn't your brother come himself?" Tifa couldn't help but ask.
"He's not as big a fan of crowds as I am." Kadaj shrugged.
Kadaj had sat by himself all evening, at a corner table, protecting his food like a starving animal and talking to nobody but her.
"I'm a little busy tonight." Tifa turned her back on Kadaj, returning to gathering up glasses and plates.
"He told me that if you didn't want to see him, I should tell you, that he knew you back in, Nib-el-heim." Kadaj pleaded, though he struggled with how to pronounce Tifa's hometown.
The rag Tifa had been cleaning with dropped to the bar, her fingers numb with shock.
There weren't that many people in Midgar who she'd known before leaving Nibelheim, and none of them had struck it so amazingly rich that they could have a Sepher for a younger brother.
What was going on?
Tifa began to feel a growing sense of curiosity; a desperate need to get to the bottom of this mystery, just so that she could finally stop asking herself questions about Kadaj and his theoretical older brother.
Ever since she'd left Nibelheim, Tifa had been training herself in in how to spot a problem in the making before it got a chance to blossom. Right now, Kadaj's offer was a very big possible problem in the making… but for some reason she just wasn't smart or cynical enough to turn him down flat.
"Let me go take care of one thing first, then I'll meet your brother, I promise." Tifa offered.
Then she went to the backroom of Seventh Heaven and put on her gloves.
While Tifa was tending bar she didn't wear gloves. Sector Seven was a tough town, but not that tough. It was only when she went out to do errands that she actually donned a pair of reinforced black fingerless gloves; they were subtle, but the materia slots at the wrists and the metal plates over the knuckles kept her from being mistaken for easy prey by anyone savvy enough to be dangerous.
Mixing drinks and serving food could be done with bare hands if you were careful enough, but some things, some things would always end up getting your hands dirty.
"All right, take me to him." Tifa sighed after returning to the main room.
Kadaj nodded eagerly, seemingly oblivious to just what the change in Tifa's hand-wear implied. Without further ado, he stood up and motioned for her to follow. First outside of Seventh Heaven, and then into the dark alley between it and the neighboring building
Before she could inform Kadaj that she hadn't been born yesterday, (even if this was the most polite lead up to a mugging she'd ever encountered) his mysterious sibling stepped out of the alley.
All of a sudden, everything somehow simultaneously made so much more, and yet so much less sense.
As she struggled to wrap her head around that impossibility, it happened…
Face to face with a Kadaj's older brother, Tifa suddenly found herself being briefly dragged down by her own memories, like a swimmer caught in an undertow.
XXX XXX XXX
Flames flickered and crackled all around her... she didn't feel hot... she didn't even feel warm… she felt…. so dreadfully... cold...
"Hold on girl; you're not gonna die, I promise you. You're in a bad way, but my boss can do anything if he sets his mind to it!" Strong hands. Frantic blue eyes. Spiky black hair.
"I … didn't mean for any of this to happen… I'm sorry." A rich baritone, tight with fury and regret. A flash of silver, shimmering at the edge of her vision.
XXX XXX XXX
The owner of Seventh Heaven looked better than she had the last time they'd met. Not that looking better than "on the cusp of death" was an especially difficult task.
"Tifa Lockhart. You... probably don't remember me..."
"You're General Sephiroth; everyone remembers you. Reports of your death..?"
"Were true enough." Excellent, ice broken, moving on.
"I have a mission that I could use your help with. You have a stake in this, but you should know that it will land you on Shinra's bad side."
In the blink of an eye, all uncertainty and confusion fell from her face and she eagerly grabbed his left hand with both of hers.
"I have some friends you need to meet, now." Tifa insisted, leading Sephiroth back towards Seventh Heaven.
/It is disturbing how quickly she's agreed to this.\ Sephiroth couldn't help but reflect.
For the first time in his life; General Sephiroth consented to being dragged someplace more private by a pretty young woman, Kadaj following eagerly in their wake.
Once they'd gone back inside, she turned her attention to one of the Seventh Heaven's two pinball machines and began to fish gil coins out of her skirt's pockets. While she did so, Sephiroth read a small sign by the machine and did some mental math.
"You're cheating your customers. It costs twenty five gil for one game, so your Seventh Heaven Special of seven games for three hundred and fifty gil is actually giving them fewer plays than if they just bought each play individually. Do you count on people not being able to figure that out?" Sephiroth pondered aloud while Tifa fed coin after coin into the machine.
"No, we want them to figure it out." Tifa admitted, as the "Seventh Heaven Special" light flickered to life on the machine and then she hit the "start" button.
A moment later the pinball machine started to descend into the floor taking Sephiroth and Tifa down with it.
Sephiroth was grudgingly impressed; secret passages were always a compromise between ease of accessibility and providing actual security, This one seemed to have hit the sweet spot of being easy to use, while at the same time extremely unlikely for a normal person to blunder into accidentally.
"Kadaj, don't break anything." He warned his little brother who had been standing far enough back that he wasn't being lowered downwards.
The sinking pinball machine took Sephiroth into a hidden basement that was littered with boxes, machinery, computers, and a TV screen. It seemed that Shinra had failed to notice a great deal more about Tifa Lockhart than simply that she was still alive.
The room had a single occupant; General Sephiroth was tall enough that he normally dominated any room he entered, but he was fairly certain this man had several inches on him.
The dark-skinned man had clearly been in his share of fights; his opaque sunglasses and open vest did nothing to hide his collection of scars, to say nothing of his missing right hand. In its place, he had a light machine gun mounted just below the elbow, fed by a collection of sickle magazines.
Said weapon was currently pointed directly at the secret room's two new arrivals.
This didn't dissuade Tifa from making introductions once the pinball machine finally stopped descending.
"General Sephiroth, this is Barret Wallace. Barret, this is General Sephiroth." She explained.
The built in assault weapon switched its target, now instead of being pointed in the pairs' general direction it was focused on Sephiroth's center of mass.
"You do realize that you just lead Shinra's number one attack dog right into our hidden base?" Barret growled.
"It has been five years since Sephiroth did anything to help Shinra. He brought up the idea of picking a fight with them before I could. He could help us, a lot." She insisted in turn.
Barret relaxed his posture ever so slightly, but not enough that Sephiroth wasn't still getting ready to dodge a hail of bullets. The situation was made especially hard to predict because Sephiroth had no idea exactly which muscles Barret would need to tense for him to fire a gun that surely had no conventional trigger.
"I'll admit she's got a point about you no longer being Shinra's top troubleshooter, but I'd damn sure like to know what you actually have been doing recently."
"I was dead."
"But you got better?"
"I was trapped in a twilight between life and death where I was able to communicate with all those who had come before; searching for the voices of those who would give meaning to my existence." Sephiroth decided he might as well try the actual truth; it had worked with Kadaj.
"So you spent the last half a decade in the Lifestream? Is that what made you finally decide to wake up and smell Shinra's bullshit?"
"Five years gave me a lot of time to think. I realized that a company which thinks sixteen year old children should serve as front-line combat troops didn't have my best interests at heart.
I've got more reason than anyone to hate Shinra. Sadly, I've also got more important things to do than get revenge on every single person who ever wronged me-"
"More important?!" Barret stomped hard enough to shake a layer of dust off the wall.
"What you gotta deal with that's more important that the whole Planet, General?" He mockingly threw Sephiroth's (former?) title back in his face.
"All I'm trying to do is save as many lives as I can. Right now, I've already got one mission that deals with making good on my past mistakes. If you really believe that I can do something that will help the entire Planet, now's your chance to convince me." Sephiroth had no intention of sidelining his current mission, but it couldn't hurt to hear them out.
"If you've personally been in the Lifestream, you have to realize what Shinra's doing to it. The scholars of Cosmo Canyon have something they call the 'Lifestream Theory,' in short, the belief that Shinra's reactors are slowly drinking it dry, one drop of mako at a time." Tifa cut in, her tone gentler than Barret's.
"It ain't just a theory either..." Barret grumbled as he finally lowered his weapon and stomped over to the room's computer.
Its keyboard was clearly set up in something other than the standard "qwerty" layout, a practical choice if its primary used had only five fingers.
"I can't believe that you spent five years doing nothing but floating in the Lifestream, and still couldn't hear the planet's pain! That's like living in a house that's burning to the ground without ever smelling the smoke. I can't believe I got to convince you of a truth that should be clearer to you than anyone else on the Planet! If you wanna see the cold hard numbers, well take a look...
Every year all across the Planet, farms buy more fertilizer, people buy more drugs to help them conceive, and more children are being born with birth defects. Well, all across the Planet… except for Wutai. Pretty funny, isn't it? That the one place which doesn't have a mako reactor squatting on top of it, is the one place where statistics don't indicate that life itself seems to be getting harder and harder to come by?" Barret grumbled as the computer screen began to fill with various spreadsheets.
Sephiroth placed the laptop he'd been carrying with him gently down on top of a nearby cardboard box before taking some time to examine Barret's figures.
The changes were slight, only a percent of a single percentage point every year… but they trended up too steadily for it just to be random chance. Everything seemed to be adding up, but he needed to be certain that this wasn't simply a case of cherry-picked data.
"Can I double check your sources?"
"Be my guest." Barret tone wasn't especially inviting, but he stood back and allowed Sephiroth access to the computer.
After spending some more time on Moogle, Sephiroth was able to determine two important things: first, that Barret's numbers were indeed all coming from reputable sources, and second, that there had been no reports of entire towns being slaughtered and burned to ground recently.
Whatever was going on, it seemed that he wasn't willing to show his hand yet… and Sephiroth couldn't just go chasing after a foe he had no idea how to find, not when this important mission had just gotten dropped in his lap.
For something that sounded so outlandish on the face of it, the Lifestream Theory fit perfectly with Sephiroth's experiences. There was not a single an ounce of doubt in his mind that Shinra would be all too happy to strip mine the entire planet; after what they'd done to him, there was no line they wouldn't cross in search of a profit.
It could also explain why he'd been unable to find his mother, no matter how hard he'd looked: because after she'd died, Shinra had sucked her essence out of the Lifestream and burned it away for a handful of gil!
Sephiroth had killed his mother… but the Shinra Electric Power Company had turned her into a light bulb.
With a cold smile, he turned back to Barret.
"Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to enlist in your terrorist cell."
End Chapter
AN: Just to be clear if you hadn't figured it out yet, in this AU the Nibelheim Incident happened a "little" differently than canon. That's why Tifa isn't reacting to the sight of Sephiroth with righteous anger or fear for her life. It is also why Tifa's personality will have developed slightly differently post Nibelheim. The existence of project "Second Silver" is likewise tied into those events.
As for Tifa's eyes, there's a saying about creating a party in a Star Wars RPG, "All Jedi or No Jedi". It basically boils down to, if there's a source of superpowers in your setting, it behooves you to make sure that either everyone in your party has access to said superpowers or no one does.
It sort of breaks my suspension of disbelief in Final Fantasy VII where the SOLDIER program is supposed to make people superhuman badasses, but Cloud (at least in the game, Advent Children is another story I'll admit) who has gone through at the very least a jury rigged version of it, isn't massively stronger than any of the characters like Tifa, Barret, Cid, or Yuffie who are completely baseline human beings.
So in the interest of world building, none of the protagonists in this story are going to be badass normals. The story of how Barret and Tifa go their enhancements will be revealed as Avalanche gets more comfortable around its two newest recruits.
As for the "Seventh Heaven Special", well it was the best idea I could think of to explain how the Avalanche secret basement could exist and be accessed via pinball machine elevator, without risking customers accidentally blundering into it. It is certainly a better security set up than how the remake handles it, where it seems all you have to do is flip a switch on the underside of the machine.
I would be remiss if I don't take a moment to mention that height in Final Fantasy Seven is stupid. If you look at the wiki it'll tell you that Sephiroth is 6'1, and Barret is 6'6, with certain game materials rounding it down to 6'5. So far, so good.
If you watch certain scenes in the remake though Sephiroth is taller than Barret. Not only that, but according Crisis Core Zack is 6'3, and I sure as heck can't find anything that's ever portrayed Zack as being two inches taller than Sephiroth. In short (pun not intended), between Sephiroth or Barret who is taller is a somewhat convoluted mess that depends on which sources you're looking at. I'm aware that this an issue with room for disagreement, let us move on.
Finally, I'm amazed that as far as I can tell, I seem to be the first one to come up with the "Sepher" concept. It has no real basis in any of the cannon stuff we've see in any of the games, movies, books, etc; but consider how many people cosplay as Sephiroth at anime conventions. Then ask yourself how many more people they would be doing that if Sephiroth was a real person, and also the equivalent of George Washington (or at least Dwight D. Eisenhower). Now try and tell me that in the world of Final Fantasy Seven, Sephiroth's look/style wouldn't constitute a marketable aesthetic (until he came back and tried to kill everyone of course...)