Twilight Perfected Chapter 17: So you got what you always wanted, so you got your dream come true, good for you!
It had all been simple back in Midgar. Not exactly"easy", but at least simple: get out of President Shinra's office, escape from Shinra HQ, get far enough away from the city that Shinra wouldn't be able to locate them with one lucky patrol sweep… One "simple" straightforward task after another; that was the life that Sephiroth was used to. Now though, now that he and the others were finally clear of Shinra's immediate reach, cloistered in a room in Kalm that was honestly a bit small for the number of people, he had a far more complex task to worry about.
"Thank you all for putting up with my previous vague comments on this matter. You've been owed an explanation, and… now you're getting one." Sephiroth began, looking around the inn's suite and the six other people occupying it.
"Before we start, you sure our hostage should hear this?" Barret pointed out, glaring warily at the hostage in question.
Once they'd entered the room and locked the door behind them Tifa had attached a pair of zip ties to Reeve's arms, making sure to bind them behind his back.
If Sephiroth had been in Barret's place he might have asked the exact same question, but for better or worse, those details Sephiroth knew which Shinra didn't probably wouldn't even interest them in the first place. Still, since his position as Avalanche's leader was only recently established and backed by little beyond his own reputation, he was loath to simply lead by fiat...
"This isn't my story alone; Miss Lockhart shares an equal part in it. I don't have any objections to him hearing what I have to say… do you?"
Tifa grimly shook her head.
"So let's hear this story that's got you acting like a spooked cat..." Barret prompted.
"Indeed, we are gathered, we are safe, let the tale be told." Stargazer declared. Unlike the others, he'd opted to remain on the floor and so was speaking slightly louder to make up for it.
Sephiroth sighed heavily; talking had never been his greatest skill as a leader, and there were precious few things, mainly his childhood, that he'd prefer to talk about less than this.
"My part in the story begins in September 2002; I'd just received orders to investigate some mysterious malfunction in Nibelheim's mako reactor." Sephiroth began.
Then he paused and gestured awkwardly in Tifa's direction.
"Nibelheim was... a town. I mean, it's the only place I've lived aside from Midgar, so I'm not sure how much I could truly say about it. It was a small town, small enough that I knew the names of all the other kids my age growing up. The only thing we had that made us special is Shinra built its very first mako reactor there, up in Mt. Nibel so that the town itself would suffer less harm if something went wrong.
"That plan worked, sort of. Because back in August of '02, people who worked at the reactor had started going missing..."
Heads swiveled back in Sephiroth's direction and he resumed his half of the story.
"When word got back to Shinra, they sent out the Turks, who traveled to Nibelheim by conventional means. When the Turks realized just how powerful the local monsters were, they called for reinforcements. While they'd needed over a month to reach Nibelheim, Shinra arranged for me to be brought most of the way by airship in less than a week.
"However, Nibelheim's mountainous nature meant that the last few miles needed to be covered by truck. There were five of us assigned on that mission: myself, my second in command and fellow First Class SOLDIER Zack Fair, and three troopers who would act as our adjutants."
With a small, choked sound, Aerith's face turned paler than Sephiroth's own.
"Just to be clear… that would be the same Zack Fair who captured Fort Tamblin during the Wutain War?"
Her reaction more or less confirmed the theory Sephiroth had been contemplating since Sector Six's playground.
"Correct; the capture of Fort Tamblin signaled the end of all organized Wutain resistance, with the war wrapping up four months later." Hopefully, by sticking to the impartial facts, he could avoid causing her further distress.
Aerith didn't say anything in response.
She simply stood up and walked out of the room.
The silence she left in her wake filled the room with an almost physically smothering sense of oppressive tension.
After initial moments of hesitation, Sephiroth realized the obvious truth: if he was ever going to truly lead this Avalanche cell, it'd be because they had faith in more than just his ability to kill things.
"I'll… be back." It was strange; Sephiroth should have felt elated over getting a chance to delay telling this story, but for some reason, he only felt worse.
XXX XXX XX
"Aerith."
She silently turned to face him, her expression hard to read, but putting him in mind of a cracked mask. She was clearly struggling for composure and seemed to be fighting back tears; sorrow was the obvious cause, but her posture showed signs of ill-concealed pain, as well. She seemed somehow...off, and it took him a moment to realize why:.
That ever-present smile that had afforded him no end of frustration over the past several days had, he realized, cemented itself as part of his mental image of her- to the point that its absence was jarring.
"Zack was the mysterious boyfriend you spoke of." Sephiroth tried to make his voice as soft and gentle as possible, not that he had much practice.
Emotional intuition wasn't exactly his strong suit; in fact, it was pretty much his weakest, but he'd gotten enough pieces to put this particular puzzle together.
/1: Aerith had dated a First Class SOLDIER.
2: Aerith had described the SOLDIER as never having a nasty thought in life.
3: Zack had wanted Sephiroth's help to try and impress a girl from Sector Five of Lower Midgar, where Aerith lived.
4: Aerith displayed far greater familiarity with Zack's military feats than she should have.
5: What other explanation would cause Aerith to display such an extreme emotional reaction to Zack's name?\
"Yes, he was."
"When was the last time you talked with him?"
"Right before he left for a mission..."
"To Nibelheim?"
"Yeah….
"Honestly, the worst part was that he was gone for so long and I never heard from him. I figured that a famous SOLDIER like him must have just met some new girl and fallen so head over heels in love with her that he never bothered to get back in touch with me. It hurt to think about, but I could mostly just… not think about it. Only fair, right?
Three months ago, though, I felt Zack enter the Lifestream." Aerith's gaze dropped, and she seemed to shrink in on herself a little more.
Sephiroth winced, surprised at how the news stung. He'd known his subordinate's fate ever since their conversation in the Lifestream, but he'd assumed that Zack had perished shortly after Nibelheim as a result of Shinra tying up loose ends.
If Zack hadn't died until recently… was he responsible for Zack's death because he's spent so much time trying and failing to locate his mother in the Lifestream? Could he have saved Zack if only he hadn't insisted on spending half a decade in the most selfish manner possible?
Grief wasn't really an indulgence he allowed himself, but with guilt added to the mix, it was almost more obligation than indulgence. If he could have saved Zack, and didn't… what did he owe to the people harmed by his indolence? A eulogy, at the very least.
"Zack Fair was… not a terribly good soldier. But, he was an excellent fighter and a better man. I haven't had a lot of friends… but he was the only one that never really let me down."
"You're bad at this. I mean, really bad at this." Aerith giggled. "Thank you for trying, though."
Whether he'd actually eased her pain, or just given her the distraction she needed to get herself under control, Sephiroth considered the cheerful barb to be a good sign.
"If you felt him enter the Lifestream, and as a Cetra, you can talk to people in it… does Zack have anything important he wants me to know? A few days ago we spoke… briefly. Very briefly, so if there was anything else..."
Aerith's bare fingers intertwined with his gloved ones, and they stood there in silence while she reached out to the Lifestream.
"Zack says you're really bad at this." Aerith abruptly announced before releasing her grip.
Sephiroth couldn't help but wonder if she'd actually gotten Zack's opinion on the matter..
XXX XXX XXX
Aerith preceded him back into the room. He didn't see any reason to comment on the fact that her new seat seemed to have been chosen so that no one in the room could simultaneously look at her and at Tifa or himself.
"To set the stage, the reason Shinra sent me in was that they weren't sure if the people vanishing from the reactor was a result of natural accidents or the intentional sabotage. Either way, Shinra had a problem, and they wanted me to solve it..."
XXX XXX XXX
At twenty-two years old, Sephiroth was, on one hand, the youngest General he'd ever heard of. On the other, he was currently on his way to a town he'd never heard of in the back of a truck with no suspension or air conditioning. Clearly his life was going places, but the jury was out on which direction..
"Settle down..." he sighed.
Zack was… Zack. A big, friendly dog in the form of a spiky haired young man, full to bursting with a guileless exuberance that tired his superiors and inspired his subordinates. In response to his commander's words he stopped pacing… and instead started doing squats.
Sephiroth rolled his eyes.
Everyone in SOLDIER had their quirks; it was the natural side effect of how the procedure made them something other than a baseline human being; Zack's was that he needed a way to deal with his excess energy.
Before the conversation could go any further, the entire truck shook.
"MONSTER!" the driver called out.
Sephiroth didn't need to be told twice.
He was out of the truck in an instant and circled around in front of it in another-just in time to have his entire body be engulfed in flames, as a gigantic green dragon breathed a torrent of fire at him.
Sephiroth acknowledged, on reflection, that the truck's lack of air conditioning was reasonably tolerable.
The dragon's flames abated, leaving him unscathed but for a few smoldering patches on his coat. Before it could launch another attack, Masamune's wrapping fell to the ground.
He only needed one slice to open up the monster's belly and a second to decapitate the beast for good measure.
Sephiroth patted out the flames, cleaned and rewrapped Masamune's blade, and climbed back into the truck. Weapons should always be cleaned and put away after use.
"Clear." He informed the others, sitting back down in the exact same spot he'd originally occupied.
As the truck drove on, those seated in the back were able to get a good look at what had become of the dragon.
"Your strength is unreal." One of the troopers accompanying them gasped in reverent awe.
"Pick your jaw up off the floor, Cloud. You don't need to sound so scared either, Sephiroth is on our side." Zack insisted, resting a comforting hand on the young man's shoulder.
"Cloud?" Sephiroth repeated the name, surprised to see even Zack being so chummy with a normal trooper.
The trooper promptly threw the most energetic salute Sephiroth had ever seen.
"Cloud Strife, Shinra Trooper, at your service General Sephiroth!" Cloud introduced himself.
Zack eased Cloud's arm back down to his side, clearly trying to get him to return to a less formal pose.
"Relax, Cloud, relax. Boss, I personally picked Trooper Strife to accompany us on this mission. He's from Nibelheim, so his knowledge of the local area could prove useful."
Sephiroth resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Shinra had mentioned in their briefing that the town itself would be providing a local guide to get them to the reactor. Given Zack's soft heart, Sephiroth expected that in reality, his fellow First Class SOLDIER was simply giving a grunt some undocumented extended leave to visit his hometown and family.
/Family…..\
XXX XXX XXX
"The rest of the truck ride was uneventful."
XXX XXX XXX
Sephiroth stood at the entrance to Nibelheim and briefly turned his attention to his newest subordinate.
"So… how does it feel? To be home after all this time? I have no hometown… I wouldn't know." Sephiroth half asked, half explained to Cloud Strife.
He wasn't even sure why he was doing it.
Boredom wasn't enough to motivate this kind of oversharing, although it had indeed been some time since a mission had actually taxed his abilities. Nor was simple discontent, although lately he had indeed been struggling to find anything meaningful about his work. Increasingly, he wanted to be more than just a sword Shinra thrust into the heart of their biggest problems, but he didn't have the first idea what he'd rather be doing.
Such a growing sense of unease about his place in the world was the only thing that could possibly drive Sephiroth to make "small talk," especially with someone he barely knew.
"What about family?" Zack asked as he took up position directly behind his commanding officer.
"My mother's name is Jenova; she died shortly after I was born. My father..." Sephiroth fell silent.
XXX XXX XXX
"So Jenova is the name of our, well, your mother?" Kadaj interjected.
"NO! No! No. I'm sorry Kadaj, just bear with me, and you'll understand by the end of the story."
XXX XXX XXX
/Who… who in this world could I possibly call my father?\ One hand clenched into a fist, before Sephiroth willed it to relax.
A father looked out for his son, a father taught his son how to be a man, a father taught his son what was right and what was wrong, a father protected his son... Who had been there for Sephiroth when he'd most needed guidance and protection? No one.
In the end, every "father" he'd looked to for succor had either been forced from his side, or willingly abandoned him. Sephiroth had been born without a family, and he would one day die without a family.
The question was pointless; there was nothing there.
An unsettlingly mirthless chuckle won its way free of Sephiroth's throat.
"What does it matter?" He stripped as much bitterness from his voice as he could.
Based on his subordinates' posture, he hadn't fully succeeded.
"Come on, let's go," Sephiroth ordered, focusing on the mission made it easier to push aside all the troublesome thoughts that were suddenly trying to crawl into his head.
What was it about this place that put him so… off-balance?
XXX XXX XXX
"Miss Lockhart, would you care to take over?" Sephiroth suggested.
Tifa looked like she would have preferred to refuse his offer, but after taking a moment to gather her courage, she accepted.
XXX XXX XXX
These were supposed to be the most important days of Tifa's life… she just wished she could tell herself exactly why they were so important. Everyone in town seemed to be all aflutter over the fact that General Sephiroth himself was coming to Nibelheim, and while Tifa could understand the feeling, she just didn't share it.
Although it seemed that practically every other girl in town was hanging out of their windows hoping to simply catch sight of the Planet's most famous SOLDIER, Tifa had something else on her mind. Was she finally going to put Master Zangan's teachings into practice today?
Alas, deep down she already knew what the answer to that question would be. Shinra wanted her to be a guide to help them make their way through Mt. Nibel's confusing caves, not because they needed a teenage girl to throw a few punches or kicks. When all was said and done, the town would be exactly the same as it had been before, except they'd be able to hang an asterisk with "Sephiroth visited here once" on the sign next to "site of the first Mako Reactor."
"Hey Otto, have any luck yet?" Tifa greeted the town's photographer, who unsurprisingly was staking out the center of town, seemingly accompanied by every single piece of equipment he owned.
"Not yet, and your father still won't permit me to accompany you to the mako reactor; something about 'Shinra's proprietary information.' Still, maybe I'll get lucky if I wait around long enough; I want to take a picture of Sephiroth fighting a monster! You know, a real memorable shot!"
Although the topic of her and Otto's conversation was more or less clear across town, somehow Sephiroth heard them. Tifa could think of no other reason why the silver-haired SOLDIER suddenly turned and flashed Otto a look that she'd spend the rest of her life only able to describe as "that thing Sephiroth did with his eyes that scared people".
"You know, it's a lot brighter out here than I thought it would be. I'm gonna go get my focusing cloth!" Otto stammered out before racing off.
Tifa admired the wisdom of that choice; not only would it get him out of Sephiroth's presence for the moment, but when he returned, he'd have something to hide under.
XXX XXX XXX
Tifa felt an instinctual shudder run through her body when she first laid eyes on the wooden bridge leading further into Mt. Nibel.
"Something bothering you?" the younger SOLDIER, who had introduced himself as Zack, came to a stop behind her.
"I've had some bad experiences with this bridge before. Well not this bridge- there used to be another one around here seven years ago. It wasn't as strong as this one, and was kinda rickety…. I'm sorta the reason the town put in a new one." Tifa admitted with a slight flush.
"I'm sure we'll be fine; the boss didn't fight a dragon on the way here to be killed by a bridge."
XXX XXX XXX
"About a third of the way across, the bridge gave out." Sephiroth reflected.
"I'm never crossing that bridge again. Never." Tifa vowed.
XXX XXX XXX
Sephiroth reached a hand up under his hair; when he pulled it back, his gloves were slick with blood.
He shook it off and then checked a second time, this time the glove returned dry. Sure enough, it'd take more than a fall to seriously harm him.
The others might not have been so lucky, though; he'd have to locate them before any nearby monsters did. Luckily, a quick search revealed that he hadn't lost any of his possessions. Not only that, but his ears could pick up the sound of water splashing nearby; no, not quite 'splashing', more like 'lapping'…
Following the sound, he soon discovered one of the two troopers who had accompanied them into the mountains. He'd removed his helmet to reveal a head of spiky blond hair and was using his hands to lift water to his lips from a nearby pool.
"Trooper, don't you know that stagnant water is more likely to be contaminated? What happened to your canteen?"
The trooper had evidently been so busy quenching his thirst that he hadn't heard someone approaching, a failure in situational awareness that would need to be corrected- later.
"I'm sorry General Sephiroth, my canteen broke in the fall. I was trying to make sure I didn't get dehydrated before we made it back to town."
Sephiroth recognized the trooper's voice instantly- Cloud Strife, at least, had survived the fall relatively intact.
As the trooper redonned his headgear, Sephiroth took a moment to check his own canteen. Unlike Cloud's, it hadn't suffered any damage in the fall, so he handed it over to his companion who would doubtlessly need it more.
XXX XXX XXX
"From there, we located Zack and Ms. Lockhart, who had also landed fairly close together... but we never did find Sloan.
After, in all honesty, a little more time than I was truly comfortable allocating for a search, we had to work our way through a series of caves, but the monsters were easier to deal with than the bridge. Once we got to the reactor itself, Zack instructed Cloud to look after Ms. Lockhart outside while the two of us investigated the reactor..."
XXX XXX XXX
"Naturally, they never considered sending an engineer along to inspect the malfunctioning reactor…"
He and Zack might have the muscle to make their way to the reactor, but if the problem was some extremely technical matter like the camel flange had come loose on the spronsen sprocket, then the people of Nibelheim had better start constructing more windmills.
Traveling deep into the bowels of the reactor failed to yield any flickering lights or other blatantly obvious signs of disrepair. Instead, it yielded something far more unexpected...
"Jenova…."
Sephiroth read the word slowly, almost reverently.
It wasn't just affixed to a nameplate over a locked door to the reactor's core, that same name was present in big block letters on numerous crimson pipes leading into that same closed area.
"What… what is behind this door?"
He pressed on it and felt the frame resist him.
It was just an ordinary door, he could smash it to pieces with one good shove. All he had to do was want it badly enough, and Sephiroth could have his answers...
So why didn't he?
It just… didn't make sense. Why should someone write the word "Jenova" multiple times in one room? Whoever it was might as well have planted a sign with "General Sephiroth, RIGHT THIS WAY" and half a dozen gigantic arrows all pointed at the locked door.
He'd gotten through the first two decades of his life without knowing anything else about "Jenova" other than her name. There couldn't possibly be anything on the other side of that door that suddenly made all the pain and hardships he'd been forced to suffer into delightful daydreams of sunshine and lollipops… could there?
Sephiroth forced himself to focus on the reason he'd come here in the first place and reevaluated the room, looking for anything that might be broken.
Giving the room another extended examination he noticed one particular pod that seemed to be emitting small arcs of electrical energy periodically. Listening more closely Sephiroth was able to detect that there was no sound of fluid flowing through the tube attached to this particular pod.
Down near the bottom of the pod was a valve that seemed to be a hair out of place… had it somehow fooled the system into thinking that the pod's door was ajar and so the flow of mako to it had ceased? Was that creating a backup elsewhere in the system if the total amount of mako being pumped into this room hadn't been decreased? Even the smallest fault could have huge consequences if left completely unattended….
"Hard to say how many different things are wrong, but this can't be helping it. This valve has gotten misaligned. Try to fix it, and I'll see if anything changes..." he ordered Zack.
A few moments later once the valve in question was properly adjusted, the sparks ceased and Sephiroth could hear mako starting to flow into the pod once more..
That got them no closer to figuring out why it had broken or if the reactor was now in working order though. The pods had a viewing window but it was perversely placed so high up that even Sephiroth needed to jump to be able to use it. The moment he got a good look at what was inside, he wished he hadn't.
He instantly jerked back and found that for once words completely failed him.
While Sephiroth was taking the time to get his thoughts in order, Zack took a look for himself.
"What is that?" he spluttered in shock.
"...Hojo's work. SOLDIERs are people that have been exposed to carefully calibrated amounts of mako; they're enhanced, but still human. These things… they're what you get if someone decides to provide endless mako exposure without caring about decency, morality, or any other boundary you wish to name."
"You mean… that thing used to be human?"
Sephiroth took a step back and gestured towards the dozen of tanks that filled the room.
"Yes. They could have been in those tanks for months, or even years. I doubt there's anything left of their humanity though; how could anything human survive an experience like that?"
"You could."
Zack meant it as a joke, Sephiroth knew he meant it as a joke… but the two words, lighthearted praise born of genuine awe, reverberated in him until he felt something fracture.
In that moment, it was as if all the finely crafted walls he'd built up throughout his entire life to help him deal with the world were crumbling to pieces. He could hear everything, each and every single mechanical "whirr" "clang" or "clink" rang his ears like deafening drumbeats. He could see everything, not just the sudden horror in Zack's face, but each and every single individual cell that made up the other SOLDIER's body. The more he looked the deeper he saw, cells broke down into atoms, atoms broke down into protons, neutrons, and electrons, those broke down into quarks…
He shut his eyes tight and braced his hands against his ears trying to shut out the world around him. No matter how hard he tried, however, he couldn't shut out his own mind….
No one human should ever be able to do the things that Sephiroth did; how much of his life had he spent building up those walls so that he wouldn't be forced to face that simple fundamental truth?
"I'm… I must have been made the same way…." Sephiroth gritted, wishing that by giving voice to the words they might somehow be allowed to escape from his head and never return.
"What are you talking about?"
"I knew, ever since I was a child… that I wasn't like everyone else. That I was unique. But, I always thought… that I was surely meant to be more than just a monster..." Sephiroth sighed defeatedly.
As if to perfectly punctuate his admission of guilt, the tank suddenly cracked open, dumping the misshapen monster on the reactor floor, shimmering jade mako following in its wake.
/Am I… human… or a monster like them?\
XXX XXX XXX
Sephiroth had to get to the bottom of this one way or another. That was the one thought that had kept rebounding in his mind all the way back down Mt. Nibel.
Where had he come from, what was he, and why did this town feel so familiar to him? The largest building in Nibelheim was called the "Shinra Mansion" because supposedly Shinra had done some sort of major research project there back in the late 70's, only to abandon it in the early 80's. Normally, he would have just passed it off as coincidence, but the fact that the company had done research there during the year of his birth, this place constantly feeling like it was somehow important, Jenova's name being in the reactor… once was happenstance, twice was serendipity but three times was enemy action.
But who was Sephiroth's enemy, and what action were they trying to take against him?
The mako reactor's issue might have been resolved, but it would be easy for Sephiroth to insist that the group remain in town for a while to make sure they hadn't missed any additional problems… that should give him all the time he needed to fully investigate the mansion.
XXX XXX XXX
Roughly an hour later, all Sephiroth had to show for his investigations of the Shinra Mansion was a mildly rusty tape measure.
Everything else about the mansion was unimportant and unremarkable: a piano, spoiled food evolving towards sentience, old smudged windows, and a bunch of potted plants, possibly also evolving towards sentience.
It didn't seem possible that Shinra could have conducted research in such a place, unless they'd taken all the equipment and research papers with them when they'd left. That, or there was more to this mansion than met the eye.
Well, he had the tape measure; if he wanted answers, he knew how to find them.
XXX XXX XXX
After another hour of searching, Sephiroth indeed had some answers. He wasn't an architect, but he had a pretty good head for numbers; good enough that he was sure that Shinra Mansion's internal and external dimensions were too drastically at odds to be explained away by thick walls.
Hidden rooms now actually seemed more likely than not, so it was time for yet another tour of the mansion and this time he knew exactly what to be looking for… and to be listening for...
XXX XXX XXX
Roughly half an hour of rapping his hand against walls and listening for something that sounded unnatural later, Sephiroth pushed open a hidden door on the mansion's second floor to reveal a massive staircase of semi-corroded and discolored wooden planks.
He cautiously descended the black spiral into the labyrinth below.
XXX XXX XXX
"In the mansion's basement, I discovered a hidden Shinra laboratory complete with volume after volume of research notes. Sure enough, not only did they date back to the time of my birth, but they dealt with Shinra's attempts to produce an 'Artificial Ancient' through a process they called 'The Jenova Project'.
I spent a week straight doing nothing but poring over those books, a decision I'd come to regret for many reasons..."
XXX XXX XXX
"My mother's name is Jenova... Jenova Project... Is this just a coincidence?" Sephiroth sighed, momentarily tearing his eyes away from the book.
This was getting him nowhere fast. The books contained countless pages of information on Ancients and the Jenova Project, but it was written in such a… cagey manner. The purpose of proper scientific literature was to clearly and concisely pass along information to the reader; why didn't these books do that?
Well, maybe that was why they'd been left behind in some hidden basement rather than taken back to Midgar to be further analyzed by Shinra?
"Jenova was confirmed to be an Ancient by Professor Gast… but how? Confirmed how?" Sephiroth snarled, shaking a book as if he could convince the ink swirl about and provide less obtuse explanations.
What was Sephiroth even doing with himself, why was he doing this? This entire quest could have been based on faulty intel from the start, it relied on the premise that Hojo had been telling the truth when he'd said that Sephiroth's mother was named Jenova.
But why would he have lied?
Because he was Hojo; "to see what happens" was as much justification as the man ever felt he needed.
"Maybe… maybe I just need a break..." Sephiroth winced, wondering how much time had passed since he'd started reading…. before being shocked to realize that he honestly didn't know the answer.
A break was clearly called for at this point.
Sephiroth looked at the spine of the book he was currently carrying and then at the shelves, searching for where the book belonged.
/My son, I can take away your pain...\
Sephiroth's eyes shot wide open and his head twitched about, trying to discover where that voice had come from.
"Show yourself!"
/If only I could, my son… but I cannot… because they are trying to keep us apart.\
Sephiroth scanned the room, making sure that there were no possible hiding places he hadn't checked. Then he took a deep breath.
"Auditory hallucinations are an established side effect of sleep deprivation. I am not going insane, I am simply hearing voices because of the extreme amount of stress I've put on my body." Sephiroth insisted, trying to convince himself... and not exactly succeeding.
/My son… why do you not embrace my love? Embrace your mother's love...\
The only thing worse than hearing voices that weren't real was trying to hold a conversation with them.
"...Jenova?"
So why was he doing it?
/Yes, my son… my... Sephiroth.\
The book fell from his numb fingers, but he didn't even hear the sound of it hitting the floor.
"Why… why am I only hearing you now?" Sephiroth called out to the empty room.
/You already know the answer, my son. You were always so smart… so strong…\
"The door labeled 'Jenova' in the reactor, it was labeled that because..."
/Because the vile humans sealed me away behind it. They fear my power, the only thing they fear more is your power, my son.\
Sephiroth found himself rooted in place, unable to move, unable to do anything but focus completely and utterly on the conversation.
"Hojo. Hojo is to blame. Hojo needs to pay."
/They ALL need to pay, my son.\
"...Why?"
/The world is cruel. The world is wicked. The world does not respect us, the world turns a blind eye to our legacy. Humans turned their back on us, they ran, they were cowards then and they are cowards now. Only the Cetra are truly fit to inherit this Planet, and you are the greatest Cetra to live in millennia. My son, you are the only one who can save the Planet from calamity.\
"If I am a Cetra, then I am a failure." Sephiroth hissed, gesturing at the teetering stacks of books, the cryptic chronicle of his creation.
/No... you are powerful, you are perfect.\
"I have never heard the voice of the Planet… does that alone not make me unworthy of the title? I am not a Cetra, I am not even human… On my own I am a monster, and in the hands of another I'm just a weapon, a tool for killing…
/You are perfect, my son. We Cetra are so powerful, and yet this world is ruled by humans- why? Because they are vicious and cruel; while we care for the Planet, they only care about themselves. The garden has become over-choked with weeds and only a cleansing fire can set it right. You, my son, are the first of the New Cetra.
New Cetra who can turn humanity's ways of war-making back upon them. Who can repay them in kind for how they have abused us. You are perfect, there is no one who could be better suited for this moment. The planet does not need another pair of ears to hear its voice cry out in pain, it needs a pair of strong hands with which to enact its vengeance.
Do you not see? Every indignity that you have suffered, every pain you have endured, they are the fires within which you were tempered to become the perfect blade of the Planet's retribution. Your heart is so noble and pure, for how else could you even for a moment imagine showing any sort of mercy to those who have wronged you so?
You are perfect my son. Embrace your heritage as the defender of the Planet, embrace your mother's love...\
XXX XXX XXX
"And then?" Kadaj asked, leaning forward so intently he was at considerable risk of joining Stargazer on the floor.
"Then? Nothing..."
"Nothing?" Barret grumbled, clearly finding this a less than satisfying response.
"I don't know what happened after Jenova 'said' those words to me. The next thing I was aware of was..."
XXX XXX XXX
"Boss... Boss… Boss… you okay? Come on Boss, you aren't gonna make me fill out a mission report that says you sliced a dragon apart in seconds but got killed by a bookcase are you?" Zack Fair pleaded.
Sephiroth's eyes shot open.
"Zack… you're… really here, right?" He whispered, extending an arm pleadingly.
His hand was seized by both of Zack's.
"Figured the threat of paperwork would do it! All right, let's get you on your feet. Then, I don't care what you say, you're leaving this place and we're getting a meal together. Even Shinra's greatest general can't read books on an empty stomach forever..." Zack chattered as he hauled his commanding officer upright.
Sephiroth could slowly feel strength returning to his limbs, but he didn't try to stand on his own.
He leaned against his second in command like he was an oversized spiky black-haired pillow.
"Zack Fair… you are the best thing in my life." Sephiroth sighed, his eyes bleary and unfocused.
"You're gonna give people the wrong idea if you keep talking like that. My girl back in Midgar is gonna get jealous if she thinks that she'll have to compete with you and your luscious locks!" Zack half joked as he began to lead Sephiroth out of the room, supporting the general as if he was walking wounded.
"Do... you smell smoke?" Sephiroth asked, not sure if his brand of delusion had suddenly taken a turn towards the olfactory.
"Yeah..." Zack admitted after taking a moment to breathe in deeply through his nostrils.
Sephiroth gently pushed Zack away, wavered on his feet- and took off running so fast his subordinate had trouble keeping up with him.
XXX XXX XXX
Sephiroth's hands were curled into tight fists as he grappled with the painful memories.
"I can continue to explain exactly what Zack and I found when we left the Shinra Mansion… but there are important parts of the story that even I don't know. I can keep going all the same if you request it..." he offered
Eyes slowly turned to Tifa, whose posture was more less a perfect mirror image of Sephiroth's.
"No. No. I'm not afraid to tell my part of the story, not even this part." Tifa insisted though she got up off of the bed and began to pace as she explained what had happened to her...
XXX XXX XXX
Tifa heard a scream and ran downstairs.
Her father was lying on the floor, impaled by a jagged piece of wood that might have once been a fencepost, blood spilling from his body, his lips still open in a now silenced scream.
Standing over him was a Shinra trooper.
"Wh….at?"
The Shinra trooper laughed, a hollow, alien cackle.
Then he slammed a fist into the cabinet by the front door, effortlessly shattering it, producing several more jagged chunks of wood. That was impossible; only a SOLDIER should have been able to do something like that.
"Why…?" Tifa whimpered, none of this made any sense.
"You still… you still don't recognize me! Of course you don't! Why should you? I was always invisible to you!" The trooper snarled.
Then he reached up with his free hand and unstrapped his helmet. A simple shake of his head sent it bouncing to the floor.
Tifa found herself confronted by a familiar head of spiky blond hair, but the blue eyes beneath it now glowed with mako exposure.
"Do you remember me now?" demanded Cloud Strife.
Tifa's knees gave out and she crumpled to the floor next to her fallen father.
"Why… why did you kill him?!" she gasped, for a few brief moments too angry to be frightened.
"He was always trying to keep us apart! Do you realize how much it hurt to let him blame me for you doing something as stupid as trying to find your dead mother by climbing Mt. Nibel? I was willing to let him though, so that you could be happy! So that you could still be his perfect daughter!
"What did it get me, though? An entire town that thought I was a freak! That's why I had to go to Midgar! That's why I had to prove how great I could be, to come back to Nibelheim a hero as great as Sephiroth!
"But it turned out that Midgar was the exact same as Nibelheim! Full of people who thought I wasn't good enough! Who couldn't see how great I could become! They said that I would never make it as a SOLDIER!
"They were all so stupid, so wrong… I was the perfect candidate for SOLDIER! That's what my new mother finally understood!" he ranted.
"New... mother?" Tifa stammered in complete confusion.
"All my fake mother did was try to keep me trapped in this stupid town because she wanted me to be weak! She wanted me all to herself because she wanted me to be her helpless baby forever! My new mother, my true mother, has shown me how to be strong!
"If I could just get stronger… then even Tifa would have to notice me… that's what I always told myself. I was right, I've finally gotten stronger, and now you've noticed me!"
Then he jammed the wooden shard deep into Tifa's chest.
"NOW, YOU CAN'T IGNORE ME!" Cloud roared as he yanked it free.
She pulled back, tried to open distance, but he was on her in a heartbeat. Tried to defend herself, but he ignored a punch that should have broken his nose, stabbed through her guard like her arms were made of damp cloth. Over and over again, punctuating his screaming tirade.
"NOW! I! FINALLY! MATTER! TO! YOU!"
Tifa's vision swam, then faded as her world descended into an endless haze of pain.
XXX XXX XXX
"That's the last thing I can clearly remember from Nibelheim," Tifa admitted, as she finally finished pacing and slowly returned to the bed.
Kadaj watched her carefully as if he wanted to say or do something but evidently couldn't figure out what, so he simply sat there and waited for Sephiroth to resume his version of the story.
XXX XXX XXX
The two SOLDIERs emerged into a fiery hell.
Perversely, Sephiroth almost felt relieved at the sight of the entire town going up in flames. This, unlike his personal struggles, was a problem he could deal with.
"I'll start putting out the fires; you search for survivors." Giving orders in times of crisis came naturally; unlike phantom voices, raging flames were a foe that he'd already fought and bested many times before.
"Blizzaga!"
XXX XXX XXX
A short while later, Sephiroth had the blaze under control and Zack returned from inspecting what remained of Nibelheim.
"I found one survivor! At least, she was still alive the last time I laid eyes on her about-"
"Show me." Sephiroth interrupted.
The two raced off at top speed to a nearby wrecked house that contained one body that had been desecrated beyond recognition- and the only survivor either of them had been able to locate.
"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!" Zack tried to reassure her, though it was hard to tell if she could hear him; her eyes were still open but she seemed to be staring at nothing.
Sephiroth recognized their survivor as Tifa Lockhart. "I … didn't mean for any of this to happen… I'm sorry."
Everyone else Sephiroth had come across had been killed quickly, if sloppily; why had Tifa been singled out for a prolonged painful death?
"How bad is she?" He needed actionable intelligence before he could offer her anything more than words.
"She's torn up pretty badly. Broken ribs, looks like some organ damage… her heart's in one piece, though, and her lungs… uh, could be worse. Her spine's intact, and I've been able to stabilize her with healing magic, but... she's lost a lot of blood, Boss...
That last part was exactly what Sephiroth didn't want to hear. Shinra pharmaceuticals or magic could heal many injuries and "speed the recovery"of most others; blood loss though, that was something which could slay even SOLDIERs.
"Keep her warm. I'll be back," Sephiroth promised.
In theory, he could have saved time by bringing Tifa with him rather than making a two-way trip, but carrying an injured woman at speed was bound to exacerbate her injuries. So Sephiroth beat a blistering pace back to the truck that they'd parked just outside of the town, glad to see that it was still in one piece and not currently on fire.
"If this girl dies because you cut corners..." Sephiroth began to lay a preemptive curse on the head of whatever quartermaster had been responsible for outfitting this particular truck should it prove to be undersupplied as he flung open its passenger's door and checked its glove box.
Heedlessly tossing aside several maps, he eventually unearthed a red and white metal case adorned with the symbol of two golden snakes curled about a staff, the Planetwide recognized symbol for medical supplies.
Sephiroth raced back to Tifa and Zack, his mind going every bit as fast as his legs. He wasn't sure how, but somehow he felt certain that this had only happened because he'd come to Nibelheim. Causing death was all he'd ever been good for; it was all he'd accomplished during the war, death had struck down those close to him after the war, and now the reaper's scythe had claimed an entire town... Was he truly cursed to bring death with him wherever he went, or did he have a chance to save a single life, to prove he wasn't bound by some immutable law?
Sephiroth popped open the case, and quickly started digging through its contents. Since blood loss was by far the leading cause of death for any SOLDIER who made it off the battlefield in one piece, every Shinra medical kit contained the equipment necessary to perform a transfusion.
Hopefully, he'd gotten here quickly enough to make a difference. The signs were less than encouraging; Tifa's eyes were still open, her chest still rose and fell, but all the color had gone out of her face. Looking at her unearthed unpleasant memories of the last time he'd seen someone that thoroughly blanched…
/Genesis…\
XXX XXX XXX
"The problem is the mako energy that seeped in through the wound..." Doctor Hollander had explained.
"Is it treatable?"
"First, he'll need a transfusion."
Sephiroth had stepped forward without words or hesitation; he'd been Genesis' opponent in that duel, he'd allowed himself to be provoked, allowed the fight to escalate...
"You aren't viable."
Just like that, the most powerful SOLDIER on the Planet had felt utterly powerless.
XXX XXX XXX
The most powerful SOLDIER on the Planet refused to be utterly powerless twice.
He rolled up the sleeve on his right arm, expecting that he'd be needing his left for other matters before long.
"Zack, find a vein."
XXX XXX XXX
"So you decided to give her a transfusion without checking that your blood types were compatible?" Reeve interrupted.
"She was on the brink of death, beyond the help of conventional first aid, healing magic, or phoenix down. I could either do something risky that had a small chance of saving her, or do nothing at all and let her die."
Reeve thought it over, then slowly nodded in understanding.
XXX XXX XXX
Crimson liquid glistened in the dying embers as it poured through the clear tube out of Sephiroth's arm and into Tifa's. It was strange: despite all the differences, his blood looked almost perplexingly mundane.
As his blood replaced what Tifa had lost, color began to return to her face and her breathing became deeper and more regular.
He'd done it.
He'd actually saved someone's life.
Sephiroth still had no idea what he was, but his blood was human enough to save this young girl, maybe he wasn't such a monster after all...
"Zack, get Miss Lockhart to safety and double check the town for any other survivors; I'm going to go to the reactor and put an end to this," Sephiroth vowed.
He didn't bother to wrap his arm in gauze, the moment the needle was withdrawn his flesh began to scab over, and even that scab would be gone soon enough.
"How do you know whoever, or possibly even whatever, is responsible for this is at the reactor? It could be Avalanche, it could be Wutai, it could even be the mother of that dragon you killed on our way here out for revenge!" Zack protested.
"Remember what I told you when we arrived? My mother's name is Jenova, and we saw the name "Jenova" all over that Reactor… call it an educated guess."
XXX XXX XXX
Sure enough, the doors to the mako reactor had been thrown wide open by the time he arrived, even the one to its core labeled "Jenova".
Inside the core Sephiroth discovered something that resembled a gigantic replica of a woman's torso with numerous pipes pumping chemicals into its shoulders, creating a grotesque mockery of angelic wings.
Standing before it in rapturous supplication was a man with blond hair in a Shinra trooper's uniform.
"Just like you told me, I sacrificed them all for you..." He crooned to the statue.
"Strife? How could you do this? This was your hometown! You murdered your own mother!"
Cloud Strife spun around and Sephiroth was momentarily shocked by not just the presence but the intensity of the mako glow in his eyes; the gleaming orbs illuminated the sunken cheeks of a man who'd likely last eaten around the time Sephiroth himself had.
"My mother is right here in front of me! Besides, how did you become 'great' Sephiroth? By killing all those people in the Wutain War! It's not enough to just be strong, you have to get a chance to prove your strength, and now I finally have!"
"Did those people mean nothing to you?" Sephiroth spat.
Mako eyes or no, Strife was unarmed; it would be child's play for Sephiroth to deal with him. Before he could though… he needed to know why. He needed to understand why someone could have everything Sephiroth had always wanted, and just throw it away like that?
"How could you murder your entire village for a statue?"
"A statue? My deaf brother thinks you're a statue!" Cloud cackled before vaulting away from Sephiroth with surprising speed.
He landed before the statue, grabbed it by its torso, and ripped it in half.
Disturbingly organic fluids began to drain from the statue and the room was suddenly graced by additional lighting, revealing another specimen containment tank, this one completely translucent. Inside, submerged in rapidly draining fluid was a blue-skinned figure in a vaguely humanoid shape with horrific crimson tumors growing from its body.
Sephiroth didn't need his impossibly keen eyesight to be painfully, dreadfully, certain of what was written upon the helmet attached to the figure's head.
Jenova.
"Bathe in our mother's beauty! She will lead us to the Promised Land, she will make all our suffering a thing of distant memories!"
Sephiroth had heard enough.
"I don't understand you, and now I realize I don't want to."
Masamune's wrapping fell away and in response, Cloud armed himself with a jagged piece of metal ripped from the statue.
Cloud Strife was faster and stronger than any Shinra trooper should have ever possibly been…. But he was new to his strength, fighting a man who'd been raised with it, molded by it.
Inhuman strength and bubbling rage had carried Cloud on a bloody path through Nibelheim, but was no match for equal strength backed by a decade of experience with a blade and immaculate precision in its use. Each feint opened his guard a little further, each exchange of blows robbed him of more and more momentum, until an open-handed strike launched him across the room to slam into Jenova's tank with enough force to spiderweb the reinforced glass.
Masamune sank into his chest, sending a trickle of bluish fluid down the side of the tank. Sephiroth stepped back onto the walkway and swung the skewered trooper out over the yawning chasm.
"Consider yourself dismissed," he raised the blade up at an angle, then swung it sharply downwards, only noticing mid-motion that Strife's fingers had wrapped around the blade hard enough to draw blood.
Teeth clenched in a rictus of pain and fury, Cloud raised his free hand towards Sephiroth and the walkway overhead. Flames began to gather between his outstretched fingers, then roared out to engulf Sephiroth.
"Really?" An unharmed Sephiroth glared down through the inferno, incredulous.
Strife had seen him weather the dragon's fiery breath without injury; why had he expected his magic to fare better?
"Maybe I can't beat you, but can you beat gravity?" Cloud gritted out.
Crack.
Sephiroth might have superhuman resistance to flames, but the catwalk he was standing on didn't. Metal twisted and deformed beneath the mystical heat, growing too weak to bear their weight..
SNAP
Both of them plunged into the endless green below.
XXX XXX XXX
"But how was this even a fight? You're Sephiroth, and he was just some random trooper." Kadaj couldn't help but ask.
"Remember how I mentioned his canteen broke when we fell off the bridge? He drank from a nearby spring. The water in it was probably tainted with runoff from the reactor. It contained the same slurry of mako and Jenova cells that were responsible for turning Nibelheim's local wildlife into vicious monsters.
I can't prove it, but during that week I spent obsessed with the scientific papers in the Shinra Mansion, Strife was probably hiking those mountains and drinking from that same spot, over, and over again. Since he kept his helmet on the entire time, none of us would have realized that his eyes were developing a mako glow.
Keep in mind, the standard Shinra formula for creating SOLDIER is an external mako wash, and the internal exposure being carefully calibrated down to the milliliter. What he was doing was insane; it should have killed him or, at best, given him mako poisoning… but Jenova seemed to have other ideas."
"What about you Tifa? You said you couldn't clearly remember anything after you got attacked, but what was Nibelheim like when you woke up?" Kadaj turned his attention to the story's other protagonist.
"I have no idea. Even with the blood transfusion I just barely survived. The next thing I knew…."
XXX XXX XXX
"Papa… Papa…."
"Tifa..." The soothing voice was mature, masculine, familiar.
For a brief moment, all the blazing reds were nothing but a bad dream; it hadn't been real, none of it. It made her want to laugh, thinking what a silly girl she had been for believing it, that the one and only General Sephiroth would pay a visit to her town; that for some reason he would have brought some boy she barely knew along with him as well, that Cloud Strife would have murdered her father and burnt Nibelheim to the ground….
It was all just a bad dream, just a nightmare. Now all she needed to do was open up her eyes and shake off the weight of 'memories' that had never been.
Then she felt her "bed" buck and jump about.
Her eyes flew open and she discovered that she was very much not in her bed. She wasn't even in her house.
She was laying in the back of a dilapidated truck traveling along a rocky road. The voice had belonged to Master Zangan, not her father.
Looking around, she saw vast stretches of nothingness and orange-red mountains that were completely unfamiliar.
"It wasn't… it wasn't a dream..." Tifa could barely force herself to say the words.
"No." Zangan's hair had already been gray when they'd first met, but somehow he seemed to have aged a decade overnight.
Except… had it been just a single night?
"How… how long?"
"A week."
"Figures, doesn't it? First Mt. Nibel and now this; seven really is my lucky number." Tifa sighed despondently.
Even if this was the second time she'd woken up from a coma after being dead to the world for seven days, it was hard to feel fortunate at the moment.
Still, the more she thought about it, the more the idea of her having been unconscious for seven days felt 'wrong', bordering on impossible. Comparing how she felt at the moment to how she'd felt the first time she'd woken up from a coma, why didn't her throat feel sore, why didn't her muscles feel stiff?
If anything, she felt… good… like a coiled spring; as if the energy of the entire week she'd been unconscious had built up inside her and now was just waiting for a chance to be let out.
"Where are we?" It would drive Tifa crazy if she tried to take this all in at once; best to try and focus on one thing at a time.
"We're on the road to Midgar; there are a few people in the city who owe me favors, enough to get you into a hospital. To be honest, when we left Nibelheim I didn't expect you to wake up without significant medical attention."
A thought struck her and Tifa took a good long look at her bare midsection. She was shocked to discover that her stomach looked more or less exactly as she remembered it.
"I was stabbed here, over and over again... shouldn't I have a scar?"
XXX XXX XXX
"That wasn't even the weirdest part of course, what really took the cake was when I realized I'd even lost the scars I picked up from falling off the bridge as a kid." Tifa admitted.
XXX XXX XXX
"Do you know how you survived?" Zangan asked the question in a tone suggesting he already knew the answer.
Which made one of them at least, because Tifa didn't have so much as a clue.
Tifa shook her head, it was the only honest answer she could give at the moment.
"You were brought to me by the black-haired SOLDIER who came to your town. He insisted that you'd be safer being far away from him… and that you were only alive because General Sephiroth gave you a blood transfusion."
Tifa once again began to inspect her arms for any sign of the transfusion, but if she couldn't find proof of being repeatedly stabbed in the chest, what chance did being simply pierced by a needle have?
"Do you believe him?"
For an answer, Zangan produced a small mirror.
A lack of familiar scars wasn't the only thing about Tifa's appearance that had changed. Her deep brown eyes were shot through with luminous flecks, bright and dense enough to make them appear more red than their familiar burgundy shade.
"Well, at least my pupils are still the same." Tifa reflected awkwardly; it would have been even more unsettling to see her reflection with Sephiroth's cat-like eyes.
This discovery raised a lot of questions, questions she was going to deal with later.
"You asked why I survived, were there..."
Before she could even finish asking the question Zangan began to shake his head mournfully.
Sure enough, exactly as she'd feared, "lucky" Tifa Lockhart.
Then another thought struck her and her hands clenched into fists.
"If nobody else survived, you really mean nobody, right? There was a Shinra trooper, blond hair, glowing blue eyes, Are you sure he's dead?"
Zangan sighed heavily and shook his head again.
"I was outside of the town, training against some of the weaker local monsters when Nibelheim was destroyed. By the time I returned, Zack was the only one left. He told me that Sephiroth had followed the one responsible to the mako reactor.
"When he went there, all he found was a catwalk that had been torn to shreds. He surmised that Sephiroth and whoever he'd been fighting both ended up plunging into the mako, and I could find no reason to doubt him."
Tifa felt a cold emptiness in her stomach, it was worse than anything she'd felt after her mother's death. This time everyone was dead, even Cloud.
No, not everyone was dead…
"You said that you could get me into Midgar while I was unconscious and in need of medical care. Do you think that you could do it while I'm awake and healthy?"
"Why would you want to go to Midgar?"
"Because Cloud Strife might have been the bomb that destroyed Nibelheim, but Shinra lit his fuse. Why else could he have left town a normal enough boy and come back a monster? Shinra happened to him… and now, I'm gonna happen to Shinra."
XXX XXX XXX
"So once I got into Midgar, the next thing I needed to do was make some money; luckily I was able to get in touch with the right wrong people..."
XXX XXX XXX
"And the winner of tonight's Don Corneo Cup..."
"The chick with the kicks!"
"The girl with the guns..."
"And she's packing something bigger than your average 38s..."
"Tifa Lockhart!"
XXX XXX XXX
"Which was how I bought my bar. I would have eventually started my own Avalanche cell, but I ran into Barret first. He had the revolutionaries, I had the base for them to operate out of, it was a match made in Seventh Heaven."
"An enlightening story well told." Stargazer opined from the floor.
"It sounds like, if what Sephiroth told us is true, it was Jenova… whatever... It? She? They?" Reeve trailed off, scrabbling for pronouns.
"'She' is fine. I spent so much of my life thinking that Jenova was my mother's name that I feel most comfortable discussing her in female terms." Sephiroth clarified.
"It sounds like she was responsible for Cloud Strife burning down your hometown, not Shinra." The Director of Urban Development finished.
Tifa thought about that for a moment, idly cracking her knuckles.
"Seems to me… Shinra felt it was perfectly fine to store some kind of horrible monster in our mako reactor, and never bother to tell anybody about it. I guess it must have been awfully convenient for them to keep their gigantic brain warping abomination out "in the middle of nowhere" where it couldn't possibly 'hurt anybody' if something went wrong…. well not anybody important." Suffice to say, Tifa Lockhart had room in her heart for three mortal enemies: Jenova, Cloud Strife, and Shinra.
"So this monster, Jenova. She's the thing you think could be an even bigger threat to the planet than Shinra? She's the 'second front' we'll have to deal with? How much do we even know about her?" Barret grumbled.
Sephiroth sighed heavily and turned his eyes up towards the ceiling.
"Not half as much as I wish I knew. Jenova isn't human. Jenova is a unique entity because I've been all over the Planet fighting for Shinra, and only in Nibelheim did I feel her brush up against my mind. I suspect that Jenova is probably as old as the Cetra themselves, hence why she might have once been mistaken for one.
"I can't say with certainty that Jenova is extraterrestrial in origin, but given that the Cetra were and there's only one of her, I wouldn't be surprised if she was. The other main thing that I suspect is…."
"Jenova is what destroyed the Cetra."
Heads turned towards Aerith in confusion, Sephiroth's among them.
"I could be completely wrong, but just to be clear; am I the only one in this room who has actually read a fantasy series? Two great and powerful beings descend to our planet from above, one good, one evil. I don't have any proof, but it's almost uncanny how well the pieces fit."
"Still, that could explain why this Cloud punk left us that message about the Promised Land. If that's where the Cetra went into hiding, and Jenova wants to wipe them out, it's no wonder why she's so interested in going there." Barret pondered.
"I wish I had more answers for all of you. Right now, all I know for certain is that the only way to get those answers is to play Strife and Jenova's game. That's why we must go to Junon."
XXX XXX XXX
Simon Hojo had finally finished examining samples he'd gathered from President Shinra's office. Rufus wanted him to create genetic profiles on all of the Avalanche members who had dared to invade his father's office based on hair follicles, skin samples and other minor bits of genetic detritus they'd left behind.
The task had been made easier by how he'd been able to quickly eliminate four of the genetic donors who he had already personally cataloged, and Reeve's DNA hadn't been difficult to track down either. That just left two of them; the unknown male was relatively unremarkable, Jenova cell count almost soporifically average for a Third Class SOLDIER. The female, however...
"I suspected that girl wasn't one of my SOLDIERs, but this..." His breathing became unseemly fast.
She wasn't just equivalent to a S-type SOLDIER; her blood had one of the most extraordinarily high concentrations of Jenova cells he'd ever seen! For that to be possible, she must have gotten a blood transfusion from Sephiroth! She'd not only survived but had been improved by a blood transfusion from Sephiroth...
Hojo had made several dozen attempts at doing exactly that, and those who hadn't perished from an especially aggravated case of graft versus host disease had been turned into broken shambling wrecks who moaned insistently about "reunion" this and "aghhhh" that.
"O brave new world, that has such people in it!" Shinra's top scientist exclaimed with delight.
"Not only that, but she was in the company of my Second Silver prototype! With this degree of Jenova cell saturation in her bloodstream..." Hojo stopped reviewing the blood tests and ran to a nearby whiteboard and grabbed up a marker.
He began to scribble upon the board in large unsteady letters.
What an absolutely fascinating outcome this might produce!
End Chapter.
AN: First off, I am going to "cheat" on one thing right now. In the Original Game of FF7, there's a safe in the Shinra Mansion during the flashback. In this continuity that safe does not exist, because there's no way I can conceive of Sephiroth not being able to force open said safe, and am likewise completely certain that he would have done that long before locating a well-concealed hidden passage.
So in the Twilight Perfected version of events, that safe and its contents are not in the mansion during the Nibelheim Incident, that's why he doesn't mention them. It breaks with FF7 continuity… well breaks in ways that this fic normally doesn't, but I'm still making that call to present a story that is more internally consistent in my opinion.
Next thing, since the red cross doesn't exist in the world of FF7 and since the "cross" is likely to hold as significant a meaning in a world that shows no clear signs of having religious practices that line up with our own, I'm using the Caduceus in its place on the medkit Sephiroth finds. Some of you may feel this is just replacing a symbol of a Christian religion there are no signs of in FF7 with the symbol of a Greek/Roman religion there are no signs of in FF7… but I did already decide that discussion on Eros/Cupid and Apollo back in chapter 11 so from there to Caduceus being a medical symbol is a pretty short hop. With that out of the way, I'm going to move onto meatier topics to discuss...
Let me be clear about something right here, right now, I am not trying to insult or belittle the character of Cloud Strife. I portray him as a villain because there are seven truly awesome swordsmen in-universe of FF7: Sephiroth, Cloud Strife, Zack Fair, Kadaj, Genesis Rhapsodos, Angeal Hewley, and Elfe. Much like every Yog-Sothoth needs a Wilbur Whateley, Jenova needs a human avatar to work through from one of the above seven.
Sephiroth and Kadaj are currently heroes in this story, Zack is canonically pretty much the nicest guy in the setting, and growing up I read Irony of Fate by JenesisX, a 60+ chapter Aeriseph story/retelling of FF7 where Zack was the bad guy. It is a really good story to say the least, but as far as I can remember it still didn't really provide all that much of an explanation for Zack being evil other than the Doylist reason of needing a villain for the heroes to fight with.
So basically,"Evil Zack" has already been done better than I could ever do it, and even then it was a weakness in an otherwise strong piece of work. If an author better than me can't make a particular premise work, it'd be foolish to think I could.
If I use either Angeal or Genesis, then suddenly Crisis Core becomes required reading, well playing, for the story's plot to make sense. Right now, I'm trying to use the expanded compilation stuff for a pinch of flavoring rather than as a main ingredient. The fact that I'm using a version of Kadaj as a main character says I'm failing, but that's neither here nor there at the moment; though I think this story could in theory still make sense to someone who hasn't seen Advent Children with "Kadaj'' just being a weird choice for a name and the fact that Kadaj's sword has two parallel blades being a very weird design choice. Elfe is the same problem except Before Crisis is even less widely known than Crisis Core and it is even more improbable for her to be serving Jenova for reasons that make sense if you've read the plot to Before Crisis.
So, to sum things up, Cloud draws the short straw and Jenova's attention in this story by default as from an out-of-universe perspective, in my eyes, he's easily the best candidate to replace Sephiroth as Jenova's main human servant. I say that because unlike Zack, Cloud does have some genuine flaws that I can use to highlight aspects of his true character even while being "Jenova's Son", much like even as a hero we still see Kadaj's mercurial nature on display.
Cloud's greatest vice is envy, and his feelings of being a social outcast are very fertile soil for Jenova's seeds to grow in.
Although I find Aerith a better counterpoint/foil for Sephiroth, there are some things that Sephiroth and Cloud have in common. A big one would be that before the Nibelheim Incident they both suffer from "Inferiority Superiority Complex", (Sephiroth's went away after he decided he was the Planet's chosen one, but Cloud more or less continues to suffer from one until the around the midpoint of Disc 2) they just express them in different ways. Cloud desperately wants to be strong, but even when he genuinely becomes superhuman he insists on portraying himself to Avalanche as a stoic, cold "I'm not in this for your revolution" anti-hero to try and look even more badass, even though Zack Fair who was Cloud's best male role model was basically a golden retriever in human form.
Sephiroth for his part, well it should be fairly obvious that before going to Nibelheim canon Sephiroth puts on a general air of stoic invincibility while in reality, he's deeply worried about if he even qualifies as a human being or not.
In short, Cloud is insecure about his physical attributes; how strong he is or isn't, Sephiroth is insecure about his mental attributes, the fact that he's neurodivergent and what it might imply.
So now you might be wondering, why did I go the direction I went with Cloud? It wasn't just because "Incel"/"Red Pills" are timely, I personally find it as the most accurate reading of what type of villain Cloud Strife would become if he gave into/was chosen by Jenova.
As a young boy, he has a crush on Tifa but it never goes anywhere because he's never really allowed into her social circle, the social circle of the most popular girl in Nibelheim…
Because his father died early on and he was only raised by his mother, Cloud could be argued to have no idea what a healthy masculine role model would be, well at least until he is taken under Zack's wing.
That, I think, is the best, most interesting way to look at Cloud and Sephiroth as foils. All Sephiroth has to do to know what an ideal father figure would look like is to take one glance at Hojo and say "the exact opposite of that." At the same time though, Sephiroth has no more idea of what a healthy maternal role model looks like than Cloud does a healthy paternal one.
If I was going to give a deep philosophical reading of the two based on the these two, which is a dangerous/not necessarily accurate thing given that I'm nowhere near a trained psychologist,I'd say that Cloud has no idea how to properly express strength, while Sephiroth has no idea how to properly express love.
Moving on to more amusing subjects, you guys should be glad that I'm playing somewhat fast and loose with how much of Crisis Core is canon to this story because otherwise, I'd have had to include something like this…
[Start Omake]
"So there I was in the Nibelheim reactor, and I saw what Hojo had been making there... they might have once been animals, they might have once been people... but they'd been exposed to so much mako at this point that I couldn't tell anymore, all I knew was that now they were monsters…. and I couldn't help but ask myself... was I the same?"
Sephiroth took a deep breath and his expression suddenly shifted from one of deep sorrow to barely contained rage.
"Then this TREMENDOUS jackass named Genesis Rhapsodos showed up out of nowhere and told me that indeed I was a monster, but he needed my blood to keep himself from falling apart at the cellular level. He also offered me an apple because at that point his mind was so decayed that he was only capable of communicating through overly dramatic allusions to famous literary works."
"Wow, a lot more happened inside that reactor than I realized," Tifa admitted.
"Just be grateful that you at least missed SOME part of that disaster," Sephiroth noted with a scowl.
[End Omake]
You guys should also be grateful that unlike in the original game Tifa and Sephiroth's recollections of the Nibelheim Incident don't have any major disagreements, otherwise, this would have turned into the Rashomon Job from Leverage…
[Start Omake]
Tifa sighed as she looked over at the silver-haired general.
"So when we got back to town from our trip to the reactor, he only had one thing on his mind..."
She coughed for a moment and then continued her story in a less than impressive impression of Sephiroth's baritone.
"I'm gonna go read a bunch of books. Also, sharpen this sword. Maybe walk around the halls. In the dark. Don't interrupt."
[End Omake]
To cover a few more in universe details, the effect of Phoenix Down in-universe, at least for this story, is best compared to the "magic defibrillator" trope, it will get someone who has been knocked out cold back on their feet and capable of fighting again… but it isn't going to fix a gaping hole in someone's stomach, and no item or magic can instantly replace the blood someone has lost. That is why Shinra med-kits would be sure to include instruments for blood transfusion, and why no other approach was likely to save Tifa's life.
For those playing along at home, based on established FF lore, Tifa's Blood-type is B (we don't know if she's negative or positive though) and Sephiroth's is simply "Unknown". The only other relevant fact we know is at one point according to Crisis Core Sephiroth offered to do a blood transfusion for Genesis, but was told they were not compatible.
I don't think any of the existing media ever states what Genesis' blood type is, and in my mind, it is super easy to mark that situation down to "Whatever you do, don't cross the streams and try to mix S-type SOLDIER blood with G-type SOLDIER blood." I'm assuming that because I'm damn sure that otherwise Hojo would have tried to do EXACTLY that at some point, and the results probably resulted in more misshapen wretches rather than next-generation super-duper SOLDIERs.
I'm aware that Genesis believed that mixing his G-type and Sephiroth's S-type SOLDIER blood would cure him/make him stronger… but Genesis's "proof" for that particular conclusion seems to lay somewhere between "flimsy" and "rantings of a madman".
That said, my Co-Author, Fenrir offers the counter-proposal that indeed Sephiroth would have actually made a perfect blood donor for Genesis, but with Sephiroth as a Type progenitor and Genesis...not, doing so risked overwriting Genesis' DNA and make him an S-type SOLDIER instead of a G-type, and Shinra was more invested in seeing what happened when one of their two "prime" G-type SOLDIERs went through degradation than caring about Genesis surviving said degradation; thus they told Sephiroth he couldn't be a blood donor.
Lying to SOLDIERs, the cause of, and solution to, all of Shinra's problems!