Title: Rites of Passage

Author: Tiffany Park

Fandoms: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Final Fantasy VII Original Game

Description: Zack and Sephiroth travel the Western Continent with Angeal's severed head in their quest to find Hollander and Genesis. Sequel to Abomination and Whatever Works.

Characters: Sephiroth, Zack Fair, Angeal Hewley, Genesis Rhapsodos, Hojo, Hollander, Lazard Deusericus

Tags: Intrigue, Horror, Body Horror, Beheading, Descriptions of Vivisection and Dismemberment, Abominations, Conspiracies, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, No happy endings, At least Sephiroth doesn't think he's an Ancient LOL, Angeal is present but he's a head in a jar, Let's See How Much I Can Traumatize Poor Zack LOL, Reunion

Notes: This story begins shortly after the events of Abomination and Whatever Works. Please read those stories first if you don't want to be hopelessly confused as to why Sephiroth and Zack are running around the Planet with Angeal's head in a jar. If you come back here after reading those fics, you're already aware that some of the imagery will be graphic. Even so, please heed the warning tags. This is a horror story.

Here be plenty of spoilers for ancient games ranging in age from fifteen to over twenty-five years, assuming anyone cares about spoilers after so long. While there are references to Deepground and Turk activities like kidnapping, torture, grotesque human experimentation, and other events from Dirge of Cerberus, Dirge of Cerberus Online, and Before Crisis, they are only used to provide background regarding some of the truly horrific activities of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company, its Science Department, and the amorality of the Turks. No changes from any of the new Remake games or books are taken into account in this story. It only deals with the original Compilation revelations.

Rites of Passage

By Tiffany Park

"My parents!" he burst out, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

"—ternoon's edition of Corel Newsline. I'm Marika Sloan-Smythe with the news," a woman's cultured voice, marred only by a little static, announced over the radio. "Our top headline: Former SOLDIER First Class Angeal Hewley was executed in the gas chamber by Shin-Ra at five o'clock this morning, Midgar standard time. The execution was not televised. Hewley was declared killed in action five months ago, but just two months later, he was discovered alive and arrested for desertion, dereliction of duty, and high treason. Later in this newscast, we'll take a deeper look at the circumstances of his shocking betrayal and the events leading up to this dramatic occasion."

The newscast had just gotten started and was already alarming. Zack half wished they'd kept the truck's radio turned off. He didn't comment despite his sudden nausea, instead keeping his gaze focused on the road as he drove. The barren asphalt stretched out before him in a straight, brutal line, slashing the arid landscape in two like a sword.

From his seat by the passenger window, Sephiroth snorted at the announcement of Angeal's demise and, unconcerned, took a bite of his sandwich. A few strands of his shoulder-length, brown-dyed hair managed to get into his mouth. He brushed it away idly.

Unaware of the contempt of her two infamous listeners, Marika Sloan-Smythe continued, "Former SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair has also been convicted of high treason and is scheduled to be executed next month. Fair was Hewley's protégé and associate, and has been under suspicion ever since Hewley first deserted. The Shin-Ra Company has obtained damning evidence against—"

"About time they got around to all that." The half-masticated food in Sephiroth's mouth muffled his words. "How does it feel to be scheduled for execution, Zack? I'm sure the main event will be as private and fictional as Angeal's was."

Zack didn't know what to think and couldn't begin to articulate his feelings. Despite everything he'd learned about the horrors of his former employer, that news announcement had still shaken him to the core. He managed a bare nod of his head. His shorn hair didn't move properly or feel right, and that upset him, too.

Accepting the silence as a reasonable response, Sephiroth swallowed his food and looked down at the specimen container between himself and Zack. "What do you think, Angeal?" he said to the disembodied head bobbing in nutrient liquid inside the clear cylinder. Bubbles rose from the bottom, generated by softly humming circulation equipment at the container's base. "I had wondered if Shin-Ra was going to keep pretending you were still in custody forever. It took them a lot longer to announce your execution than I expected." He huffed. "It will be interesting to discover what kind of story they've concocted about me."

Zack could have sworn he heard his former mentor chuckle. He shook his head again in an attempt to banish the imaginary sound. Being on the run from Shin-Ra with Sephiroth (whose mental stability was uncertain) and Angeal's head (which, with its unnatural life and tendency to grow new tissue, provided impossible problems) must be getting to him.

Either that, or he was just so tired he was hearing things. Might be a combination of all of it, might be all his losses, and now everyone in the world thought he was a traitor and scheduled for execution. That would just kill his parents—

"My parents!" he burst out, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Sephiroth gave him a curious glance. "What about them?"

Zack flashed him a wild, panicked look. "They'll believe Shin-Ra's going to execute me! For treason!"

"Technically, we did commit treason against Shin-Ra," Sephiroth returned in a matter-of-fact tone.

The truck swerved as Zack lost his focus.

"Zack, watch the road."

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, feeling sick to his stomach. Another horrible idea popped up front and center in his scurrying thoughts. "What if they want to see me? What if they go to Midgar or try to contact me through SOLDIER or Shin-Ra official channels? What'll happen to them?"

"That is a valid concern." Sephiroth stared down at Angeal's container for a moment, frowning, then nodding, then shrugging—as though communing with it, or holding a telepathic conversation.

That wasn't so unusual these days, Zack reflected.

Sephiroth finally looked up. "I never had any parents to care about, and then when I figured out Hojo was my father, I still didn't care. At all." After another pause to stare at Angeal, he continued, "Angeal says...most likely Shin-Ra will move up the date of your fake execution and perhaps, for PR purposes and as a sign of magnanimity, present an urn containing your ashes to your parents. Certainly there won't be an intact body for them to bury, but the ashes will suffice. They'll pass any tests, too—they'll probably be from a real cremated human corpse. Maybe a prisoner, or a dead trooper."

"Angeal said all that, did he?" Zack thought of how he had just "heard" his old mentor's laughter a moment ago, and wondered if he was also losing his mind like Sephiroth. Well, it could be worse. At least he wasn't participating in silent, two-way conversations.

"Perhaps not all of it," Sephiroth admitted, "but he was the one who suggested Shin-Ra probably wouldn't kill your parents and instead give them a false story and false evidence. I thought they'd be much harsher than that. Angeal was always too kindhearted for his own good, but in this case, I agree with him."

"Kill them?!" Zack's hands jerked on the steering wheel, causing the truck to lurch again.

"Zack—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, watch the road. But what about killing my parents?!"

"Neither of us believe Shin-Ra will do that. It would be too public after your own execution. Far better for PR to have them grieve for you, setting an example to families everywhere to instill loyalty to Shin-Ra in their children."

By "us," Zack assumed Sephiroth meant himself and Angeal. Zack had never considered the wider ramifications to his family and friends before, but he knew he should have. He supposed he was lucky his entire family hadn't been "disappeared" when he'd betrayed Shin-Ra to save Angeal. Sephiroth had no ties to bind him, but that wasn't true of Zack or many other people.

How, Zack wondered, had he never considered how his actions might affect his parents? By the time he and Sephiroth had raided Hojo's lab, he'd known what horrors Shin-Ra was capable of. Cissnei had even admitted that the Turks kidnapped people for human experimentation, and Zack knew the Turks engaged in assassinations when requested by the President.

"Is there any way to warn them?" he asked aloud, unable to keep the trembling out of his voice.

"Who?"

"My parents! Is there a way to warn my parents?" Zack felt tears gathering in his eyes. "Is there any way to keep them from contacting Shin-Ra? Call them, or visit? We could head south to Gongaga, drop by just long enough to talk to them then move on."

"No," Sephiroth said, his forbidding tone absolute.

Zack remembered their motorcycle, lashed to the truck's bed and covered with a tarp. "I could go alone! I could take the motorcycle and catch up with you later—"

"No."

"But—"

"No, Zack. It would give all of us away. There's no chance at all that the Turks aren't monitoring all your family members constantly. Even if we weren't captured immediately, any contact from you, even just a letter, could easily be a death sentence for them. At the very least they would be used against you. It's best if they remain in the dark."

Zack hadn't thought of that, either. It was lose-lose for everyone, wasn't it?

Relentless as an unstoppable glacier, Sephiroth added, "You know what capture will mean for us."

Zack did. He vividly recalled Angeal's vivisected but still-living remains in Hojo's secret lab. He and Sephiroth would fare no better in Hojo's clutches than Angeal had.

Angeal—his head—would end up back in Hojo's possession, too. Hojo would probably force him to regrow endless bodies over and over, and—Zack clamped down on his thoughts right there. He didn't want to imagine all the terrible things Hojo would do with a head that could regenerate an entire new body.

Hojo had talked about "improving" Sephiroth using knowledge he'd gained from his experiments with Angeal. Based on what Zack had seen, it would be horrible beyond words. Something else he didn't want to imagine.

As for himself, Zack knew that his own fate would be as a combination of lab experiment and hostage to use against Sephiroth and Angeal. A real execution would be the best and kindest option for him. Better death than ending up a copy, one of those monstrous lab creatures, or dissected but kept alive, and what remained still used to force compliance from his friends.

So Zack didn't say anything to Sephiroth, but he did respond by nodding his head slowly. He felt one tear slip past the corner of his left eye, but he managed to hold the rest in check.

The road stretching out before the truck seemed so much longer and lonelier now.

Sephiroth considered him. He took a deep breath. "I know it is cold comfort, but Angeal really is correct. It is incredibly unlikely that Shin-Ra will harm your family. You don't have to believe me. Believe Angeal. Your parents serve Shin-Ra better alive and grieving for you. We just have to trust to that. All right?"

Believe Angeal? Zack compressed his lips and darted a look at the transparent cylinder between him and Sephiroth. Every time the truck hit a bump, Angeal's head bobbed gently in the nutrient fluid. His eyes were, as always, closed. His face was slack and expressionless, his mind kept unconscious by sleep spells cast twice a day, in the morning and the evening.

Zack returned his gaze to the road. Believe Angeal. Right. Sure, why not?

"Zack?"

"I won't try to contact them," Zack promised with such a heavy heart it might sink to the bottom of an ocean. He meant it and would keep his word, no matter how much it hurt. The consequences would be too high.

He was so sorry he'd never had the chance to visit home before that terrible mission to Modeoheim. He'd thought he had all the time in the world. He was young; he could always catch up with his folks later, after things had settled down, right?

Wrong.

Sephiroth, apparently satisfied with the verbal acquiescence, continued to munch on his sandwich while Zack drove on.

NOTES:

The Crisis Core side missions include a number of missions done in Hojo's laboratory. Hojo provides some commentary for each of them. Ominously, he writes this of Experiment 106, Mission 5-1-6:

Experiment No. 106
Mission 5-1-6
Too bad about Angeal. He could have lived longer had he only returned to Shin-Ra. I would have preferred to get his body back to my lab... but at the very least, I retrieved some data from which I created a simulation of his final state.
Perhaps you might be able to tell just how faithful a reproduction it is...

According to this mission introduction, Hojo didn't get hold of Angeal alive or dead, and that was just as well. Imagine if he had... Based on the horrors exposed in Dirge of Cerberus Online, it probably would have been much, much worse than the events of this story.

~.~.~.~

If you're in the mood for a real-life horror story, have a strong stomach, and don't get nightmares from learning about particularly grotesque atrocities, read up on Imperial Japan's Unit 731 (https colon slash slash en dot wikipedia dot org slash wiki slash Unit_731 is a good overview). I'm pretty sure it was the inspiration for Shin-Ra's Science Department and Deepground.