Leviathan's Blessing

When Tseng woke from his 'nap', his head ached and his limbs felt akin to lead as he tried to lift a hand to ward off the pain beating through his skull. A sound he didn't immediately know reached him, but he was far more intent on just trying to will the pain away than on what was going on around him. To make matters worse, he'd fallen asleep sitting up in a very awkward position, and nearly his whole body was feeling that in the form of cramps. As if he wasn't already dealing with enough pain...

This really wasn't his day.

His thoughts were interrupted by something cold and wet pressing against the back of the hand still around his knees, which made him open his eyes a little. Reno was holding a glass of cold water against his hand, and the condensation on the glass had produced the wetness. In his other hand, the red haired sixteen-year-old held two pills out so Tseng could see them—common extra-strength painkillers.

Slowly, the older—teen (in body, at least)—leaned his head back against the wall and forced his eyes to open enough to see as he lifted the hand around his knees to Reno's hand which held the pills. Reno let him have them without a fuss, so he moved his other hand (the one he'd been holding to his head) carefully to the glass and tugged it towards him. There was a bit of resistance before Reno let go, making him wonder what that had been all about, but after squinting at the water for a moment, he was pretty sure nothing had been added to it. As such, he got the pills into his mouth, then washed them down with the water—and drank half the glass at the same time.

Done with that, he put his head back down on his knees and wrapped his arms around both head and knees again while he waited for the painkillers to work. He heard Reno yelp and a splash—and absently remembered he'd had a glass of water in one hand...and had apparently dropped it. After a moment, he heard a huff and the sound of glass being put down on something hard, followed by the sound of a body dropping unceremoniously to the ground.

The last made him smile as he recalled Reno's lazy, relaxed way of moving, and of throwing his weight around (literally, not figuratively) when he was essentially comfortable and bored. He really did throw himself around, too—into couches, chairs, cushions, beds, grassy ground...basically, anything he figured wouldn't hurt too much when he landed on it. It was a good thing Tseng's face was completely hidden, or the other Turk would have been wondering what he found so funny.

A review of Reno's current appearance made him realize a few things which weren't quite right, though.

He knew, and had always known, that something had happened to Reno when he was younger which had left scars just below the outer corners of his eyes, on his cheekbones. The marks were visible, even from a fair distance, and when Reno had been sixteen, he'd been covering them with what amounted to red warpaint—it wasn't until some years later when the red haired Turk had decided to stop bothering with covering them.

The Reno in front of him right now wasn't covering them.

There was another visible change for his age, too, but Tseng had become so used to seeing it on Reno's older self that he hadn't immediately realized it. For the most part, Reno's hair was flyaway and completely uncontrollable—even when it was around four or five inches long, it looked more like a mop, especially around the top. As far as that part went, it was just the same as always. What Reno should have had for hair was just what was right around his head, as he'd always kept the back short at sixteen. When he'd started getting older, he'd started growing his hair out into a very long, wild ponytail (much to Tseng's chagrin, whose hair when tied back—or down—was always very neat), and by the year zero twelve, when the world had ended, said ponytail had been down to his waist.

The Reno in front of him right now had a long ponytail falling to about mid-back, meaning he'd probably started growing it about a year before he'd joined the Turks.

What had caused these changes? Were they actually in an alternate dimension, rather than the past of their own world?

:No, it's the same dimension of the same world,: Aeris informed him. :But Minerva told you some changes had to be made. She didn't tell you—or even us—all of them. Most were small things which won't really do anything more than set into place your own changes, but a few others—she grabbed little bits of essences of those who were dying at the end and hurled them back in time. How far they went, she didn't know. Reno's changes may just be nothing more than some of his future self's essence attaching to his, causing him to 'feel right' by doing what he has with his looks.:

:...And what else may changes caused by those future essences be?:

:Some of the people who have their future essences might actually have some sort of vague, phantom memory of who or what their selves had been fourteen years from now, and Reno might actually be reacting to some of that.:

After a long silence, Tseng asked, :Is there a way to know which?:

:By talking with him, of course. And assessing your own memories for changes, which you've been avoiding doing. He might have been—nicer to you this time.:

Since the painkillers were working by then, he sighed and leaned his head back against the wall so he could see the room. Reno was sitting on the floor in front of him, one hand supporting his weight as it rested beside the glass of water, fingers tapping absently on the floor. Tseng could only watch in bemusement as an entirely bored Reno kept his free hand occupied by moving it perpetually—his fingers danced over the back of his neck, along his raised knee, over the shin of the leg on the floor. This was something else that never changed—Reno was hyper and expended energy by always being in motion somehow. His hands normally served as both the expression of the energy and the method of expending it, and usually by doing the same kinds of things he was doing then. It was like watching a human-shaped ferret or something.

At that moment, Reno looked up and saw his eyes open, so met them and asked evenly, "Feelin' better, yo?"

"...As much as I probably can for the moment," the Wutain answered quietly. "Thank you for the painkillers, though."

Reno looked away for a minute, then looked back at him and asked, "Ya—you really...think I hate you?"

As soon as Reno started trying to speak in proper Standard instead of the always somewhat bastardized Slum version, Tseng realized Aeris was right and some of the things which had happened before hadn't happened this time. What had been the thing which had caused him the most pain and suspicion last time around? Suddenly, a memory came to him—one which obviously had happened the same way in both sets.

Rubbing his eyes, Tseng said, "This might sound—very strange to you, but...do you remember..." He paused and sighed, then said, "I know you're a prankster and I could probably never cure you of that, but some pranks go too far. Yours often notably do. Maybe you didn't realize or intend for the outcome, but you once used my Wutain heritage as a so-called 'prank'. It resulted in several people actually believing your prank, and I was attacked by a group. They even cited the same terms your 'prank' had given. If I wasn't who I was and more than able to kill them, it would have gone—very badly. As in, if I hadn't killed them, I'd have been hospitalized for a very long time." He knew Reno never forgot a prank, so the redhead would also recall it easily enough.

Silence fell for a minute, then two—then Reno whispered in horror, eyes wide, "Oh, shit—I did—it went—Oh, fuck, I had no idea, you never said—I'm so sorry..." Tseng looked up at him, seeing how Reno's already pale skin had gone ashen and his eyes were showing more pain than he'd ever seen in them, with only one exception.

With a small sigh, the Wutain explained evenly, "I normally ignore digs at my heritage, but Reno, that one resulted in a very real danger to me—which hasn't happened since I was eleven and everyone had gotten used to me. Because you are who you are, I assumed you knew and had laughed about it, so I wasn't going to 'give you the satisfaction' of seeing 'weakness' from me. I tried to pretend it didn't happen, but it ate away at how I perceived everything you did afterwards. Things I had just thought of as annoyances became methods of you trying to undermine me or worse. When my censor came off earlier—I couldn't fathom why you appeared to be helping me, or trying to, and lashed out." That 'prank' had actually done more than he was listing for Reno, but right then wasn't the time to try to face or sort out those details.

The younger teen ran one hand back through his hair and admitted, "That actually makes a lotta sense, yo. You'd've never been able ta trust me, no matter how nice I'd been—you'd've seen a trap." With a small sigh, the miserable teen added, "I should stop prankin'..."

"It's not that you should stop pranking people, it's that you should choose the prank and the timing more carefully. Make them pranks in good humor which can't cause anything more than irritation—even your sparkle bombs are less of a danger than what you did to me. A prank isn't funny anymore when people get hurt. Save painful pranks for enemies." The older Reno had actually learned that, but Tseng wasn't surprised the younger one in front of him still had to. "Then again, I think part of your intrinsic problem is not knowing the difference between a harmful one and a non-harmful one..."

Reno's eyes moved up to his dark ones searchingly as he tried to figure out what he was effectively being given permission to do. He then asked, "Are ya offerin' ta hear my pranks and tell me honestly if they'll hurt someone or not? Become my accomplice, yo?" There was both pain and amusement in his gaze.

Tseng rubbed the back of his neck as he muttered, "I walked right into that one, didn't I?" Aeris was giggling into his head again—as were Minerva and the Lifestream voices—as the Wutain realized his attempt at advice had ended up making Reno a fixture in his life much sooner than previously. Now, between Kariya and Reno, things were bound to get interesting very fast. Looking up at the younger Turk again, he said, "If it means something like that doesn't happen again unless it's to someone we want to take down, I guess that's what I'm doing."

"That means ya can't tell me not to if it's not gonna hurt anyone, yo," the younger answered with a smirk. Tseng sighed and gave a small nod, but stilled again as Reno suddenly went back to completely serious. "Why does Legend call ya 'Baby Turk'?"

"He met me weeks after I'd turned sixteen and had just started with the Turks," the Wutain answered tiredly. "Back then, he was still the anti-Shinra terrorist called the Death God of the Battlefield." Reno's eyes widened at the admission. "But that time, on that mission, after he killed my mentor, he stopped—stayed his hand and walked away, leaving me alive. Injured, but alive. He called me 'Baby Turk' back then because I technically was just new to the Turks. Apparently, he's never outgrown the nickname he assigned to me." The only problem was that, while he remembered being called 'Baby Turk' and how things started and how they ended, he also had a gap in his memory blanking out most of the middle part of it.

"...So, did somethin' happen ta make him loyal to you, or was that—somethin' since then?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask him when he became loyal to me. I'm not sure how he did in the first place—it's not like he saw anything spectacular from me."

Reno started to open his mouth, then stopped and closed it again. After another pause, he asked, "And your state right now, yo? How'd that happen?"

A deep sigh left Tseng's mouth before he said, "Go get Veld. He needs to know this, too—he's the one who's going to see the most...differences in me, and I'd rather not confuse him any more than I have already."

Reno paused for a moment, then nodded and propelled himself to his feet, heading out of the room while Tseng carefully rose and began stretching out his sore muscles. Admittedly, he felt better after getting some real sleep, but his sleeping position had wrecked havoc on his body, even the one from fourteen years earlier, when he'd pretty much been in his prime. The biggest difference was in how quickly his body recovered from his stupidity, and he literally felt the muscles un-cramping, releasing into relaxed states in their proper positions. His older body would have protested the stretching and taken much longer to release, like creeping sap rather than a spring running by quickly.

As he was finishing, Reno stepped back into the room with Veld—and Kariya—following him. In other words, Veld had assessed that the other man already knew, so Tseng looked at Kariya and asked bluntly, "Have you explained anything to Veld already?"

"Nope, just that he's gonna have to realize he has to take your word and actions as fact," Kariya shrugged. "But I'm not the one who needs to tell him—that's your lookout, since you have to decide what to say and how. I got it on my own, but I don't know if he even knows what 'it' is, let alone the effect it'll have on things."

"That being the case," Veld cut in blandly, making the others look at him. "First, do you feel better after sleeping for several hours?"

Tseng nodded. "Much, after that and some painkillers."

"Good. In that case, I need to know what happened to you—you've managed to put the whole office into a nervous state," the brown haired man informed the younger man.

With a sigh, Tseng picked one of the chairs by the console screens filling the room, turning the chair to face the room before sitting and crossing one leg over the other at the knee. He linked his hands in his lap and said, "I know you've spent some time in Wutai, but I know Reno hasn't. Did you spend enough time there to know anything about the 'state' often called 'Leviathan's Blessing'?"

"I had vaguely heard about it, but I know nothing about it. I had been under the impression that it was a cultural belief with no basis in reality," Veld answered.

"It's got a basis in reality," Tseng informed him. "Leviathan actively hands out 'gifts' to people, and apparently, I survive so many things because I've always had one of them." Veld moved to another of the chairs and sat as Reno just stared at the Wutain from where he stood, and Kariya lounged against the wall near the door. When the Director of the Turks motioned for him to go on, Tseng explained, "Right now, the various gifts aren't important, though the one called Leviathan's Blessing is one of eight. It comes during one's life, rather than being given at birth like the other seven, and results in a sudden influx of memory up to a certain point forward in time, usually up to the point of something Leviathan wanted changed because it caused so much destruction.

"To be clear on this, since people in these lands immediately jump to the wrong application of the Blessing, this isn't 'prophesy' because 'prophesy' by nature means you've only seen the events as an outsider and have no real link to them. Leviathan's Blessing means you lived through that time, from your own perspective and with your thoughts and emotional reactions to it intact. All of that gets shoved suddenly onto the person's younger form however many years back in time Leviathan deemed it necessary to go back in order to fix things."

At that point, Tseng stopped and drew in a deep breath, then said, "I was sent back fourteen years, from the end of the world." Veld's eyes widened almost as much as Reno's at the declaration, and Kariya raised a brow at the bluntness before taking off his shades to gaze at Tseng worriedly—they hadn't discussed that point the night before. "What happens on very rare occasions is for—items of use to be sent back with the one getting the Blessing. I had several very rare Materia sent back with me, like a completely new Summon, a Mastered Leviathan, and my Full Cure, but nearly fully Mastered as it had been fourteen years from now—a couple more days and it'll Master."

Veld was silent for a minute before holding out a hand and saying, "Show me." Tseng took the Mastered Leviathan from his pocket, then pulled off his bracer to hand to the man. Veld examined the collection of new Materia (he only tapped Leviathan when he felt it repel him), knowing what they were by their rarity and states of development, then held the bracer back out to Tseng, who took it. "How many did you end up with in total?"

"Forty-three," the Wutain answered evenly. "Some common, but most of those Mastered. Many uncommon, some Mastered and some not, even an 'impossible' one."

"Impossible how?"

"It's the legendary 'Master Magic'."

"Master Magic? Like, you got every Mastered Magic Materia? Wouldn't that be forty-three, or almost, yo?" Reno asked suddenly, looking confused.

"Master Magic is a single Materia created by someone taking every Mastered Magic Materia to a specific 'other Materia,' causing all the Mastered ones to 'imprint' their spells into a new creation off the 'other Materia'. But that's assuming the 'other Materia' exists in the first place," Kariya told the red haired teen. His green eyes then moved to Tseng and he said, "But even Leviathan can't create something that doesn't exist, so somewhere in the world, maybe in that fourteen years, someone had created a Master Magic."

"Someone did," Tseng agreed. "He was at the end of the world with me, and with his collection of Materia. There's something called a 'Green Huge Materia' currently forming in one of the Reactors, and he managed to get his hands on it some five years before the end of the world. He and his team then built up one of every Magic Materia and made Master Magic. Unless I miss my guess, they also put together a Master Summon with a 'Red Huge Materia' and a Master Command with a 'Yellow Huge Materia' as well, but I didn't get those. However, some Summons now exist which weren't included in the creation of the original Master Summon because those Summons didn't exist when he made them—Airmed is one of those."

"Airmed?" Reno asked with a confused face.

"Apparently a Summon who heals and revives based on the situation," Veld said. He then looked at Tseng and asked, "Was he the only other one at the end of the world with you?"

"There were three others besides him and me, three of them because I'm under the impression they were practically living in the last surviving safe zone as the world broke apart, so were within the barrier which gave us more time," the black haired man said.

"And those four are who?" the man pressed. At Tseng's puzzled look, the man said, "You did say you saw the end of the world. Would it really have been feasible for just one of you five to be sent back to try to fix things? After all, that kind of scale of destruction would be too big for one person alone to fix, yes?"

The Wutain sighed and answered, "We were blatantly told all five of us were going to be sent back." He paused and gazed at Veld for a long minute before saying, "Commander Genesis Rhapsodos is one of them. One is known as Weiss the Immaculate and is currently in a place called 'Deepground' in Reactor Zero—that's essentially the President's private army. Of course, I'm pretty sure at this point in time, he's also only around twelve years old. The other two are—should be—in Nibelheim, one as a twelve-year-old villager named Cloud Strife and the other..." Again, Tseng paused as he eyed Veld with something like trepidation. Finally, he said, "The last is Vincent Valentine, who has been sealed in Shinra Manor since his disappearance—after being experimented on by Professor Hojo and Doctor Crescent."

Veld stiffened as Kariya whistled and asked, "Without food? Is he in some sort of stasis tank?"

"Technically, Hojo killed him," Tseng answered, turning his gaze to the orange haired man. "The two doctors only did the experiments after he was clinically dead. But the experiments wound up making him 'undead'—he doesn't need to eat."

"Is he even himself if he died?" Veld asked quietly, sounding winded.

"He is. All his memories are intact," Tseng answered, looking back at the Director. "What's different is that he's now a shapeshifter, and his body doesn't have the typical functions of a normal human. He can still feel emotion, but sometimes he has to fight for dominance over his own body with a 'Weapon' called Chaos, which Doctor Crescent put in him. The beings Hojo gave him the ability to transform into don't try to take over his mind, they just send him into what's effectively a berserker mode until he runs out of either energy or enemies to fight. He also no longer ages, barely takes any battle damage, has SOLDIER-like capability in all ways, and is effectively immortal. Those changes have already been made to his body by this point in time, so are valid."

Veld was silent for a few minutes as he pondered the new data he'd been given, then asked, "What is going to be involved in preventing the end of the world?"

The question bothered Tseng because he knew he'd have to say 'actions against Shinra' to people who had given their lives to keep Shinra in power. He looked away, not looking at any of them, as he thought about how he could present the data he needed to. Would Veld support him even then? The man had covered up the firebombing of his own hometown, the deaths of his family, to protect Shinra.

"There's no point in hiding the facts. And you know a bunch of us are gonna follow you if Veld wants to be an idiot," Kariya commented.

Tseng looked at him with a faintly puzzled frown as he asked, "A bunch of—who?"

"Besides me?" Kariya asked, raising a brow. "Sirra, Ansha, Lakis, Eonna, Lenno, Verde, and Viney for sure. You, Reno?"

"I owe 'im that much, yo," the sixteen-year-old answered.

Veld's brow rose and he looked at Tseng to say, "Apparently, you're more of a 'Boss' with the Turks than either of us realized. And if the Commander is another with Leviathan's Blessing, no doubt he'll drag the General and Commander Hewley, and other SOLDIERs, along with him in support of you as well. Tell me what you know."

"Fine," Tseng sighed, then began his list. "One key point is that one of Hojo's experimental subjects, known as Jenova, has to both be destroyed and destroyed in such a way its genetic data can't enter the Lifestream. Chaos has to be the key player in destroying it. However, that will have a negative impact on the SOLDIER program, as all SOLDIERs are currently infused with Jenova's cells as well as Mako.

"Another key point is in how we handle the terrorist group called AVALANCHE, because their current tactician is obsessed with destroying the world. In this case, however, we have a good chance of heading them off early because I already know their tactics, targets, and base locations.

"There's the literal need to stop the Mako Reactors, but it can't be done by just suddenly stopping or destroying them—we need a replacement power supply.

"We have to get into and stop Deepground, otherwise they'll end up slaughtering a huge part of the population. That means going against the President directly.

"We have to stop Hojo, Heidegger, and Scarlet from making monsters and war toys—all of them are dangerous. Hojo's desire to acquire experimental subjects which are sentient is one of the big problems.

"Oh, and we have to stop the drug and human trafficking—and Don Corneo—before we end up with a huge set of headaches. And that's along with all the other work we still have to do, some of which you're going to hate the results of."

All three other Turks just stared at him in something like horror.