Chapter 38 - Performance Magic
February, 1991
Sephiroth's fifth candle explodes as Orlin arrives for their training session.
The materia flashes in Sephiroth's sword across his lap like laughter. He can't get this right. At least for this training session, he thought to spread a tarp over the ground before lining up the small candles in a row. Now there are five smudgy piles of melted wax and no real success.
Materia training has changed. It's no longer about how large of an explosion Sephiroth could make but how precise he could be. Explosions are perfect for the battlefield, Orlin assures him, but precision is key too. What if you want to burn someone's hand to make them release you?
So candle work had begun.
The first time he tried lighting a candle, the air combusted so fast that it took out the whole line and a few feet more. Only charred metal circles where the wick connects to the bottom remained. Now he can avoid melting the candles surrounding his newest victim.
"I should warn you," Orlin says as the door clicks shut behind him, "I am not 100% today."
Sephiroth looks up from his seat on the floor. "That makes two of us."
The medication helps but there are days that he wakes up feeling terrible. He places his hands on the flat of his blade so they stop shaking. He'll submit the symptoms form to Mariella tonight but long-term mako poisoning, as they decided to call it, is an unmanageable beast.
"You didn't drink a sea of beer," Orlin grumbles somewhere behind Sephiroth.
"No. I didn't," He says as he concentrates on the next candle. The magic is in him and it is hard and alive in his chest. The rush of power is so strong that it batters against his control. It would be easy to destroy the whole line of candles.
Orlin makes noncommittal sounds. His training bag scrapes against the back table. Sephiroth takes a breath, focuses and lets the smallest amount of magic he can slip from his fingers. It is still too much. The fireball implodes where the wick is. This time it eats only 3/4th of the candle. The charred wick lights for a half second before guttering out in the hot wax. Sephiroth allows a grin before he stops it from growing into a full smile.
The candle was lit, if only for a moment. It is an improvement.
"It smells like you've set all those textbooks on fire." Orlin stands above him.
"Not yet," Sephiroth mutters. He toys with the warmth coming through his fingers and focuses again. Three candles remain.
He should have melted through those as well but Rafi had sent him a text simply saying: Bored, send selfie. It had taken him an inordinate amount of time to do so. This is her newest thing. The usual selfie comes back with a frown and a pencil in her mouth. The subtitle said: You need to get a haircut so bad.
He doesn't care. It's grown out but whenever he feels it against his chin, he gets it sheared short. It does whatever it wants. As long as it isn't standing up straight, usually no one cares. If it is unremarkable besides the color, that's good enough.
"Proud of you graduating so soon."
His focus slips. The fire cascades off to the right and sputters out against the candle's neighbor.
"You mean that?" He looks up and disengages himself with the materia. It leaves in a rush, leaving an emptiness.
Orlin's smile is tired but warm. "Yeah, kid. You only graduate high school once."
The thrill plays in him. He's never achieved anything like graduating before. Sure, the day when Dinand put a sword in his hand is special but this is something that everyone will have to see how hard he has worked. All the bullying, the late nights and limping to school will all be worth it when he gets handed that diploma.
And he gets to go first.
With Latin Honors will be written under his name. SOLDIER will be impressed when he hands that in.
Orlin grins past the darkness in his eyes. "But you still need to grow up. Pass that final level into adulthood."
"Not going to happen." Sephiroth shakes his head, stares at the sword and pulls the materia from its slot. The warmth of the glass tingles.
"It's just a word. A four letter word. I won't tell anybody." Orlin sits on the ground next to him. He groans as his knees bend.
"I don't want to." A grin is coming across Sephiroth's face and there is nothing he can do to stop it.
"It's a rite of passage."
"I'm not going to say it." Sephiroth's eyes stare into the materia.
"One fuck. That's all I want. I've heard you mutter shit under your breath a few times but you are going to be a legal adult soon so it's time for big boy words."
"No." Sephiroth pinches the glass hard and tries to dampen down the smile more. Orlin laughs at him. This has been going on for months. Sephiroth had cursed when he accidentally electrified himself with a miscast lightning spell. Ever since that "shit", Orlin has been on a warpath.
One that he's not going to win.
Orlin's phone chirps and he pulls it out, squinting at it. Sephiroth waits as he reads through whatever is on it. He'll be pleased with his progress with controlled fire spells. Sephiroth's work with Orlin makes it so much easier to enjoy magic. He may not be the best at it but it comes so much easier than swordplay.
"Well, kid," Orlin grunts and rubs his hand across his forehead. "the powers that be are changing the lesson plan."
Sephiroth's excitement fades.
"They want you to learn how to create a fire dragon." He raises an eyebrow.
"Is it an offensive spell? I thought I learned all of those."
"You have…is it too early to get another drink?" He laughs and rereads the screen.
Sephiroth leans over and tries to peer at the email before Orlin locks it. The phone goes in his pocket and he crosses his arms. Annoyance crosses his face and then it falls into something close to resignation.
"They want you to learn performance magic."
"Performance magic?"
"Like for the circus."
"Why would SOLDIER want that?"
He pulls out the phone and scrolls through until he starts reading aloud: "Due to requests from SOLDIER, please make sure that Sephiroth has mastered the following performance tricks. We are expecting results promptly."
Sephiroth frowns.
It makes no sense.
He won't be creating fireworks on the battlefield or wanting to entertain his men. That won't be his job. Why would they want him to waste time, especially with less than a quarter of a year left until his formal enlistment, learning this? He should be learning more valuable skills.
It isn't up to him.
It isn't up to Orlin either.
He decides to answer his own question.
"The fire dragon is a dragon fully represented in fire in the sky, isn't it?"
Orlin doesn't say anything at first. Color rises his cheeks and he says, "Yeah. It is."
"But I can do this." Sephiroth twists, reaches for the magic in his hand and engulfs the rest of the candles. The fire explodes out in every direction. The heat rolls over them. It's ashy and smells like burnt plastic. The light plays in yellow and orange before disappearing into blackness. The metal disks glow red where the candle used to be and cracks in the fireproof paneling stand out like veins.
Orlin puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles. "That's all well and good, but can you make it a dragon?"
Sephiroth sends him what he hopes is a withering glare.
"Come on, the quicker we start, the quicker it is over."
It takes him about forty minutes to get the general grasp of shaping fire. His endurance allows him to maintain a large flame for a few minutes and he slowly forces it to narrow and widen. By the end, if he squints, he can see a creature within the flames.
Orlin seems impressed enough to leave it alone after an hour.
Sephiroth ends up in the SOLDIER's apartment that night. It's rare but when Orlin asks if Sephiroth has relaxed recently and he says no, the invitation of food and the bad reality TV is too much to resist.
Sephiroth sits on the floor, propped up against the couch. He's half asleep with the amount of Wutain takeout stuffed into his stomach. The apartment smells of ginger, clove and sesame oil. It'll hang on his clothes until he takes them off. They haven't changed their order for years: an unpronounceable noodle dish for him and a braised pork one for Orlin.
Another one of the traditions that they have adopted.
Sephiroth watches Jessica make the wrong decision on which man to send home. He wonders what that must be like. Relationships are phantoms to him. Never has he had the time to pursue it. Who would want to date him? What is the value of him? He's an oddity, a thing in the junk drawer of Shinra. A strange steel focused weapon that doesn't have time for distractions or is even allowed them.
How would he, Sephiroth, date?
Or even have time to himself?
The colors on the screenplay on his hands. What would he do with a free week? All his time is structured one way or another. Even when he goes on "vacation", Orlin or Mariella go with him. Most of the time, they go riding or hiking in the forest. The older he gets, the more they let him influence what they do but it is allowed, not completely his own.
A snore interrupts him.
The last few years have not been the easiest but Orlin stood by him the whole time. Sephiroth tries to do the same. Several times his mind wanders back to Orlin at the edge of the plate. Now with more life under him, the memory seems steeped in something worse. What would have happened if he had not come?
Not that Orlin doesn't live on a knife's edge now.
Sephiroth glances up at his mentor. He's sprawled across the cushions of the couch. One hand is in a fist on his stomach and the other is somewhere near his throat. Even in sleep, the buried stress does not completely fall away. It doesn't take much to notice that he is declining.
Orlin doesn't mention why.
They know. Shinra and SOLDIER have been pushing him. The missions have been getting more and more dangerous. When Sephiroth was younger, he thought it was because Orlin got promoted to Second. Now he knows better. There are eyes watching Orlin. He's not sure why but the Turks hover in the distance, black sunglasses reflecting back his own face.
With war brewing, President Shinra still shrugs to the camera and says it is uncertain. It's a lie. They all know it. Things will not resolve.
Orlin's missions have become classified and more dangerous. He's gone for longer periods of time. Sometimes when he isn't careful, he even mentions flying or traveling west. When they talk about the war, Orlin says nearly nothing. The most that Sephiroth can squeeze out of him is that he has no close family on the island that Shinra is about to descend on.
The scars, the near misses that mako can't fully erase, are building on his skin now, starting to overlap.
Sometimes when he is sleeping off the hangover on his couch, he says things that worry Sephiroth.
But he is a SOLIDER. What can he do? Leave?
The anxiety of that happening makes his fingers dig into his palm until there is pain.
A SOLDIER without Shinra.
What does that even mean?
What would any of them be without Shinra?
Sephiroth hopes that neither one of them ever has to find out.