The snowboarding part of the game was, indeed, ridiculous. However, watching Genesis get very annoyed with the controls made it all the more amusing. Sephiroth didn't know why there were balloons and chunks of snow with what looked like faces under blue hats set up as obstacles on a supposedly off-limits skiing hill, but he was willing to let this one slide when Genesis started yelling at the screen. Hearing him swear at the 'useless controls' was far more amusing than he thought it should be.

He also wondered where the other seven members of the group were, again. Perhaps, he pondered, the excuse of 'game insanity' worked somewhat like a defense mechanism; not actually explaining anything, it simply allowed them to move on.*

Of course, then the mounds of snow changed shape.

"Are those… moogles?" Sephiroth asked.

"You know about moogles?" Angeal asked.

He pondered asking if the earlier snowballs with faces were also supposed to be moogles, and looked to see Angeal looking back at him. "The lab assistants used to talk about them. I asked once… it wasn't—"

"AND NOW YOU SEND ME TREES?!" Genesis shouted at the television. The other two turned to see that, indeed, the screen seemed to have spouted trees. A good deal of them.

Sephiroth started to feel a little badly for Genesis.

Once he got past the trees, something else popped up, even.

"CRYSTALS?! Why are there CRYSTALS?!"

Sephiroth couldn't answer him other than to say, "Game insanity."

Genesis pointedly turned away from the screen just to emphasize a glare, looking about ready to throw the controller at him, but resumed without doing anything more than shoving another bite into his mouth. Sephiroth was rather glad he didn't have the controller at the moment. Genesis would never have let him live this event down.

After all too long, they watched as Cloud flew off into a white screen, disappearing after several seconds.

"Did he… just fall off of a cliff?" Angeal asked.

No one seemed to have an answer to that.

When the screen faded in from white, it showed Tifa and Cloud laying in the snow surrounded by trees. Next to her, lower on the screen, they could see Cloud's head as he shook it and then stood up. He asked if everyone was alright. Tifa and Vincent both answered that they were fine. He wasn't entirely sure where Vincent was.

"How did they suddenly appear there?" Genesis asked, sounding offended.

"Sephiroth," Angeal said, tiredly, "you're right. It's game insanity. There is no logic to it."

The sliver-haired man nodded at his friend firmly.

The map from before appeared on screen… but didn't show where they were on it. Naturally.

"Where are we?" Angeal asked.

"You assume I would somehow have the psychic ability to know," Genesis grumbled back, still in a sour mood, apparently.

Sephiroth just shrugged and shook his head. Angeal pushed another dish at him, which was somehow both sweet and sour, and despite his earlier assessment decided the combination actually made it somehow better.

They wandered around the snow-covered forest, stumbling on a mind-source, even, but all Sephiroth could really focus on were the white pine trees and the show blowing by.

"How is Tifa not freezing?" Angeal asked after a couple of seconds. "That looks terribly cold."

"Don't ask," Genesis muttered.

Eventually they found the exit to the scene, once Genesis pulled up the red arrows again, and they walked out at the left of the screen. A path of snow surrounded by rocks and trees stood before them. So Genesis had Cloud run down towards the other end of the screen. The next screen had what looked like a natural stone bridge over some water… or through, perhaps? Although how that made any sense, Sephiroth didn't know. A sign stood right before the 'bridge', but snow covered it and nothing was visible, so no help there. So they just continued on.

The fights they ran into here dealt with a lot of wolves, giant centipedes and what looked like floating merpeople of some kind? Sephiroth really couldn't tell with the game graphics.

Oh, and then they ran into a blue woman in what looked like a swim-suit… who could confuse. At least they discovered that's what people spinning around as if they were a top signified.

Eventually, Sephiroth realized where they were on the map, and that it was actually somewhat helpful to have. They'd landed on the bottom left of the map and apparently needed to make it to the red check mark at the top. Navigation was still difficult, though, as they couldn't plot the logical path and were limited in where the game permitted them to go.

They continued from screen to screen, running across some hot-springs and… little robots… that shot ice. They weren't easy to beat.

Well, Sephiroth had seen some awfully strange monsters out there. This didn't even register on the 'game insanity' scale he'd begun to build in his mind.

They even ran across icebergs that somehow changed shape when one jumped on them. Sephiroth was beginning to wonder if the people who made the game were actually well…

On the other side of that was a cave with what looked like old camping gear in it. Oh, and a 'safety bit' that guarded against petrify, sudden death and slow/numb. Useful. After that, they found a couple of materia, but nothing more. It honestly felt as if they were running around in circles, even though they figured out approximately where they were.

It didn't help much as eventually, Cloud just collapsed.

He woke up in a house.

The man there said they collapsed at the Great Glacier and it's a miracle they're still alive.

"Ah, yes," Genesis said snidely, "how convenient. If this is implying that one old man rescued the entire group..."

'Game insanity,' but this time they all left it unsaid.

After a few moments of trying to talk to the man with no result, Genesis apparently got frustrated and tried to leave. Which triggered a scene transition with the three party members now sitting on a couch. The text box introduced him as "Holzoff" who claimed he'd been there for 20 years.

"So he's that woman's husband, back at Icicle?" Angeal asked.

"Some husband, wandering off for twenty years like that."

"It's not just a miracle we're alive," the brunet agreed.

"It's a miracle he was able to build a house," Genesis muttered.

Sephiroth couldn't disagree. He still jotted the mention down, noting the man would only have currently been there roughly twelve years, if the game proved accurate.

The man proceeded to tell them about 'the cliff', how he and his friend, Yamski, had braved the cliff 20 years before and how they never dreamed the temperatures would be as low as they were. His friend cut his own rope to save Holzoff and he stayed as a warning to fellow travelers.

"So, is he the missing husband, or is that Yamski fellow?" Genesis asked.

Sephiroth shrugged. He didn't see how it mattered. Still, that didn't sound like a pleasant death.

Holzoff warned them to check their path and keep themselves warm as they climbed up. Sephiroth wasn't entirely sure how they were supposed to do that (the game just said to hit a certain button over and over again while on a ledge, so what exactly did that entail?).

They ended up spending the night in the cottage, and left the next morning to find everyone outside.

"Oh, how convenient that they all happened to be there," Genesis said, rolling his eyes.

Barrett spoke about how awesome nature is and how he'd change things around the place to make it better. Then he commented on how that thought didn't make ShinRa seem so bad… of course, he took it back immediately afterwards.

"Making something more comfortable or livable isn't bad," Angeal said slowly, having put down his meal a while before. "But excessively draining a source to a point of harming people and even the planet… that isn't beneficial to anyone but the people at the top. And only for as long as the resource lasts."

"'The top' includes us, you know," Genesis commented.

Angeal sighed. "Yes. I know."

Sephiroth didn't say anything.

On the screen, Cloud said he'd secure the path ahead and for everyone to follow him up. Again, that seemed rather not productive, but then, Sephiroth had never had problems, even in extreme weather like that; a side effect of the mako strengthening process so he had to assume that Cloud had similar capabilities. So, perhaps it made more sense than he'd initially thought

Once outside, they had a couple of choices as to where they could go. Genesis decided to head straight north and ended up at the bottom of what was, apparently, Gaea's cliff. Cloud climbed up to the first ledge, marked with a red flag, but while they did so, the number of degrees at the bottom of the screen began to fall. Genesis didn't seem to care and found what looked like the way to the second ledge.

"Is that a ladder? Or just a natural formation?" Angeal asked skeptically.

"It's dropping to 32," Sephiroth pointed out. "You should stop and warm up."

Genesis frowned and then thrust the controller at him. "Then you do it. I've had it for long enough."

The silver-haired man glanced at the clock on his PHS and realized that they'd already been playing the game for almost two hours at this point. He still didn't particularly like the idea of playing the game himself (he liked it less than simply watching, to be sure), but Genesis had been playing for a while now.

He glanced over at Angeal, who looked worried. That more than anything else spurred Sephiroth to take the controller. He didn't need pity or worry. Not over something like this.

Genesis took to shuffling among the remaining boxes of food, getting himself a proper plateful now that his hands were free.

They'd dropped to 31 on the screen, so he found the proper button and began to push it quickly.

Cloud moved his feet… very strangely. Was he having a seizure? Well, that was what it looked like to Sephiroth. Perhaps it was running in place? Whatever it was, it looked ridiculous, but it warmed them up. Sephiroth kept Cloud… doing the strange activity until they'd reached 38 degrees. It wouldn't go any higher, so he eventually gave up and found the next path up the mountain.

They continued to scale the cliff, pausing at every ledge to warm up, even though it took more time. He suspected that if they didn't, it would likely delay them further when the party died and they had to reload the game.

Then they came across a cave that was apparently the next part of their journey, and they wandered inside.

Naturally, it was another maze.

Sephiroth didn't sigh, but it was a near thing.

"A cave made of ice, and yet it obviously isn't nearly as cold as the cliff outside," Genesis said, utterly unimpressed.

"No wind chill factor," Angeal pointed out.

The red-head turned to him. "Two of them are in crop tops and shorts. Barrett is wearing cargo pants and a vest. Cloud is dressed in a SOLDIER outfit, that is most definitely not suited for that extreme of cold. The only ones who did look remotely fine when they were at the cliff base were Vincent and Nanaki. The traitor doesn't count due to being a doll."

The larger SOLDIER opened his mouth, but then paused and closed it again. "Point," he said eventually.

"Thank you," Genesis said, not sounding thankful at all as he sat back and glowered at the television screen while Sephiroth did his best to navigate the maze of a cave.

He did stumble across a couple of items, but there were some he just didn't want to take the time to figure out how to get. Their monster battles consisted of a lot of bats, worms with legs and teeth that slowed and poisoned, and yellow birds. Oh, and giant scorpions the likes of which reminded him of the difficult monster guarding Nibelheim's cave.

Sephiroth really needed to get up-to-date on the monsters on the Northern Continent. He jotted a note during one of the victory scenes.

He wandered around pushing boulders off of cliffs that could destroy crystals blocking the way, picking up items and fighting. He even got into the menu and set everyone's limit breaks as their newest ones. Were this real life, it would have been impressive that some of them had learned their third by this point. Vincent had only reached his second, though, but Sephiroth was curious as to what would change.

Eventually, he found his way back to the cliff, except much higher up. Deciding to heat himself up again, he brought the temperature up to 38 degrees and then searched for a way up the cliff. It didn't take him long to find it and they climbed to the next ledge, going straight up instead of to the right. It was a good thing they did as the other ledge seemed to be a dead-end.

Sephiroth paused and warmed them up, finding the little character on the screen moving like that amusing for some reason. Then he began to climb to the next ledge. They had to go right to do so, but that was fine. After warming him up again, they began to climb the next leg.

"Does anyone else wonder how Barrett, a man with a gun for an arm, can climb a cliff face?" Genesis asked suddenly. "Or Nanaki, seeing as he has four paws and likely no opposable thumbs?"

Sephiroth paused. Huh. He hadn't thought of that.

"Game insanity," he said and moved Cloud up the cliff again.

Genesis sighed and shook his head but didn't argue.

The next ledge led to Sephiroth's first dead end and he had to climb back down and warm himself up again. He took the path on the left and began climbing that one instead once the readout got back up to 38.

Then they climbed to the next cave.

And promptly fell into a fight. With one of the scorpion-like monsters.

Of course.

This cave consisted of more mazes and puzzles. Sephiroth found himself to be rather suspicious of the three particularly round holes in the floor of the cave, but didn't know what to do with them, so ignored them for now.

After running around for a couple of minutes (outside again, even), they found themselves fighting a group of bats… and a giant icicle.

What.

"Why are we fighting an icicle?!" Genesis practically hissed. "Are they claiming that icicles are sentient now? Really?!"

Seeing as they wanted the battle over with as quickly as possible, they had Tifa use her newest limit break. She had five now, and the latest one was called 'dolphin blow'. With her hair tied the way it was, it certainly reminded him of footage he'd once seen of a dolphin shooting into the air.

At the end of the battle, it cracked and then fell.

Sephiroth allowed himself to sigh at that. On exiting the battle screen, he was given an option to jump, but they could all see the item chest to the far left. And three more large icicles identical to the one that just fell.

So, they fought three more icicles.

"This is ridiculous," Genesis said, throwing his hands in the air and grabbing one of the deep-fried sweet rolls that Angeal had ordered for dessert.

"What in this game isn't?" Sephiroth asked, honestly curious.

Genesis just rolled his eyes and flopped his head back over the couch dramatically, groaning. "My friend, the fates are cruel! No dreams, no honor remains. The arrow has left the bow of the Goddess."

Once he'd beat the last icicle, he picked up a megalixir and then had to turn around and backtrack. Once he reached a certain point, though, a menu popped up, asking if he wanted to jump down. That seemed rather stupid to him, but he said yes anyway. Game insanity and all.

It worried him that he was beginning to predict and roll with said game insanity.

It turned out that the icicles had all fallen directly in the perfect circles from the floor below.

The utter amount of nonsense that made just...

This game.

Oh, and also apparently there had been a lake that one of the icicles had fallen into, making a path Cloud could jump over.

Just accept that this game makes no sense and move on, he told himself.

Genesis and Angeal both seemed to be about as done with the game as Sephiroth was. And yet, he knew they wouldn't stop here.

The next item they ran across was an 'Enhance Sword' that Cloud could equip. The amount of slots on the sword – connected slots – almost had Sephiroth's jaw drop. He'd never heard of a weapon having more than six, and at least two of those couldn't be connected if they wanted their materia involved in their fighting style and growing… so how?!

"Am… I seeing that right?" Genesis asked, voice a little weak.

"Yes," Angeal said in a similar tone.

"I'm putting that on my list to find when I go up North." Genesis opened his own notebook.

Sephiroth took a deep breath then glanced at his friend. "You plan on going that far?"

Genesis shrugged. "Why not?"

"How will you justify it to ShinRa?"

The red-head just grinned. "Oh, even SOLDIERS get lost, you know."

Sephiroth snorted and Angeal snickered.

"Just, be careful," the Silver-General said. "Take the proper equipment… unlike them," he nodded to the screen.

They spent several minutes going over matera arrangements for the sword and ended up with a rather impressive array mainly due to Genesis' knowledge of materia and which ones would work the best together. Then, just because they were already in the menu, they did the same for Tifa and Vincent. Angeal vetoed them playing with the non-party though, by citing the ever looming yet unknown time constraints.

It turned out to be a very good thing they did because they ran into one of the last monsters any of them wanted to see.

"A Malboro?!" Genesis exclaimed while Angeal just cried out wordlessly.

Sephiroth winced. He rather disliked fighting Malboros. If this game even remotely portrayed this monster accurately then this… would not be a fun battle.

Fortunately, they had an enemy skill materia equipped on Cloud when the Malboro used its bad breath. Unfortunately, that made the battle harder and by the end, Tifa was out, Vincent barely hung with both he and Cloud reaching their limit breaks. Vincent's came up first, so they triggered his limit break, wondering what it would be…

"What in Gaia's name is that?" Genesis asked when the large, bulky monster with patches of mismatched skin in different shades of purple, blue and gray, what looked like bolts the size of fists shooting out of the back of each shoulder, a mouth entirely too large for its tiny face, and were those bandages holding his light-colored (almost white?) hair up in spikes?

No one could answer him.

Vincent's HP replenished (so that happened with every one of Vincent's overdrives, Sephiroth supposed) and he attacked with lightning.

His attack finished the malboro off.

Sephiroth sighed and sat back. Even with the sudden and strange conclusion, it felt like he'd just fought the stupid monster himself. Why?

"Angeal," he said, then held the controller out to him over Genesis' head.

The man glanced at him, then accepted it, clearly sympathetic. After reviving Tifa and healing up the party he moved Cloud onward.

They moved through the cave one more time, but it wasn't more than a bridge before they found themselves on the cliff face again. Angeal looked at his controller and then back up at the screen, hitting the button to make Cloud dance and warm up.

Why did Sephiroth still find that so amusing?

They went straight up, stopped on the next ledge and warmed up, then continued on. Angeal decided to go up again at the next choice, and it proved to be the correct one as the way to the right ended at a dead end.

Angeal had Cloud dance and warm up again, then moved on, climbing up again, which took them up and to the right in a diagonal path to another ledge. They warmed up again (was it just him, or was their temperature falling faster the farther they climbed?) and then climbed to the next cave.

Sephiroth wanted to sigh. He was done with mazes and caves. And thus, grateful that it was Angeal's turn.

Funny, normally he didn't get annoyed or tired of such things. If something had to be done, it had to be done, and complaining or whining about it didn't change anything. Actually, it usually made everything worse. Hojo had made sure to teach him that.

Fortunately, the next cave held a save point and what looked like a glowing fountain.

"What is that?" Angeal asked, walking up to it. Cloud knelt down and touched it, and, to their surprise, it restored the party's HP and MP.

"I have got to find that… fountain or pool or whatever it is," Genesis said.

Angeal and Sephiroth nodded in agreement.

Then Angeal saved the game at the save point before turning to move on. The next tunnel was a straight shot, with Cloud running towards the screen. As he did so, someone (or something) groaned. At least, that's what Sephiroth assumed 'Eeeeeeerrrugh' meant.

Then a black-cloaked figure jumped onto the screen… or was tossed? It landed in a heap, then stood slowly as Cloud ran up to it. Or it tried to. It didn't make it far before it began to blink and then fade out of existence.

Of course, right about then, the cave began to shake.

"Oh," Angeal sighed. "It's another boss battle."

Sephiroth blinked. "Boss battle?"

"Battles that are more difficult than the other battles in the area. That's what Zack called them, in any case. We talked about non-specific games a small bit this afternoon, when he was warming up for our training session. Nothing else specific."

"Oh," Sephiroth responded, thoughtful as the screen twisted into battle mode.

The monster that appeared had Sephiroth blinking in astonishment. Because…

"What. Is. That?" Genesis asked, verbalizing Sephiroth's thoughts exactly. It looked like someone had taken the heads of two enormous snakes and merged them onto a dragon's body… without the wings. Oh, and apparently one side used ice while the other used fire.

It wasn't the easiest battle they'd fought, but somehow Angeal managed to eventually kill it. This time, Vincent lay with no HP and Tifa and Cloud both barely had any HP left when Tifa used her overdrive to finish the final head.

Angeal healed them up a little and revived Vincent before Sephiroth suggested he go back to the glowing pool/spring from before. The larger SOLDIER paused and then nodded.

"Good idea," he said and turned to head back… only to run into another 'normal' battle.

This time, it was Angeal's turn to sigh.

However, they got through the fight fairly easily and ran back to the pool in the previous room, touching it and restoring their HP and MP before they saved it again.

Angeal didn't exit the save screen, though, and instead leaned forward. Sephiroth thought he was only pausing momentarily so as to snack a bit, but Angeal set the controller down and started to consolidate food into fewer boxes.

"If either of you two want any more, pull it aside. Cleanup will go faster if you're willing to help, but I could use a moment to stretch."

Genesis huffed, but stood. "Do you have reasonable space in your refrigerator, Angeal?"

"I bought this for all of us and there's plenty for another meal or two. We'll use Sephiroth's. No point in hauling it all to my place unless he doesn't have room, but it was rather empty when I stored the pizza and it's only been a few days."

Sephiroth only needed to spare a momentary thought, before he too agreed. This was a good spot for a short break.

xXx

AN: Thank you once again to the amazing and incredible Imagination7413!

*MST3K anyone? Snort Doesn't make the ridiculousness less… (note, this is a complete coincidence, pointed out by Imagination, lol)

Thank you to my Discord community, always there for me to ask questions of. Thank you guys so much!

Discord: discord dot gg/GPfDYy5ZPa