Sephiroth

Flowers.

A sharp pain shoots through my mind—I shake it off.

The sight is not what I had been expecting upon entering my old apartment. What was once ordered and stark is now busy and alive. Curious that they'd chosen to house her here, as if we'd swapped natural places.

I never doubted that Hojo would act as he had. Yet I'd expected to feel nothing. His choices formulated the causality of his fate—in every conceivable way. Why is it instead, that I am so... agitated.

They haven't cleared the place out yet. Good.

I've known the girl was alive since last returning from the crater. Yet, Gast had not been there to tell—purely because of some nonsensical intractability.

I search the room, Masamune removing any obstacle obscuring my path.

He'd not been the same after the apparent loss of his daughter—distant, anxious, obsessed with irrelevant aspects of the past.

Flowers everywhere, even in one of the sinks.

Ordinarily, I might have given such things more nuanced consideration, but as of this moment the clutter is unaccountably irritating. Cloying.

Since I'm here, I plan to deliver Gast some evidence or symbol of the girls endurance. Perhaps it will assist him in reforming his focus. I won't stay long. I've broken my way in with brute force, and my intent was to minimise confrontation. I've spent most of my life strategizing in such a way. Even if I'm currently somewhat indifferent about whether I succeed. Hojo didn't have the chance to sound any alarm before going into shock... but as soon as he's found, the whole building will be on alert.

Even the bath is full of flowers.

The transformation she's wrought on the place is senselessly perplexing, reminiscent of her father. I dismiss another migraine with a sharp shake of my head. A bit of rubbish catches my eye—colourful against the black granite countertop. I pick it up, realising it's a girl's thing, a ribbon.

Something like this might suffice.

I close my eyes, concentrating—reaching. It's still on the helipad, waiting, unnoticed in its shifted skin. No one questions the personal pilot of the president's son.

Utilising the Crisis organism's latent ability to alter its form is a process still unfamiliar. The feeling is of a painless, yet counterintuitive, movement of insides, a blooming sensation. The mimicry itself is sourced from a diverse range of sensory inputs, but it helps to have some small piece of genetic material from the model. Jenova understands genetics like a language.

It's the control that is the most delicate part though. I can only just transfer my consciousness to it completely at this distance, for now. The focus required is constant and intense. The undulations of the alien will of Jenova are slippery and sporadic... It was somewhat premature for me to attempt this—un-mastered. But I'd needed to come here first, before Nibelheim.

I force my way through a wall of disorientation.

The smell of flowers continues to permeate the air as I load the last of the extra fuel reserves on-board the helicopter. It lingers as I engage the controls to initiate take off. Cursory training and instinct prove adequate to make the hovering descent down the side of the building to the fifty-eighth floor. I set the controls to autopilot, and let go.

Landing roughly back into my own body, I steady myself with the counter top until the horizon finds its equilibrium. Impatient, I exit to the living room, raising Masamune as I approach the windows. The change in air pressure is abrupt, the room whistles and shakes as I tear open the shutters, break the glass—

—and jump.

I'm exhausted when I finally approach Nibelheim. My presumed birthplace.

—"How does is feel? It's your first time back in your hometown in a long time, right? So how does it feel?"—

My, now constant, headache surges in intensity.

I feel nothing—nothing but fire.

I've left the Jenova body to smoulder with the rest of the helicopter, having purposefully landed all too roughly in a remote part of the mountains—out of fuel and patience. I wonder if that's why I too feel as if I'm burning. My nerves prickle and spasm and my mind is a conflagration.

The fire is no real danger to her... It doesn't matter...

Since I've approached from Mt. Nibel, I avoid the town with ease, heading directly to the mansion..

I need to find him.

I invite myself in. All is quiet, I don't think Shinra will have moved in on him, he is only under surveillance for now. I search the top floor first. Considering it's the middle of the night I expect him to be asleep in one of the bedrooms. I'm not disappointed.

He must have known he wouldn't be safe here. Was he counting on my protection? He knows I have other things to do.

I note automatically that he's still working himself to sleep—he's dressed in day wear as usual.

Why am I so concerned?

I haven't slept much on the journey here, only stopping to refuel. Anchored against the door I continue to watch him as my unruly mind flares and cools, drifting in and out of wakefulness.

I'm fully alert before he stirs. He sits up abruptly, nearly bumping his head on the bed frame.

"Sephiroth?!"

"What were you thinking, coming here," I speak slowly, my voice habitual steel, "You must know the danger you are in."

He reaches for his glasses, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, before adjusting them into place.

"You're here!" He gets up, looking around in manic upheaval. He looks down at his—at least—day old clothing. "Give me a minute to get changed!"

I turn to leave, fractious and fatigued.

"How long have you been standing there."

I glance back at him with a shrug.

"I fell asleep." If he's expecting an apology, he is going to be disappointed.

He doesn't pursue it so I assume he understands.

I pace the upper landing of the main hall, looping the girl's ribbon absently around my fingers. After what is far longer than it should have been, he emerges, his face set with stubborn intent. A man follows out from the hall behind him, stopping at a distance to gaze quietly across at me with a look of acute perplexity. His appearance is odd, not at all congruent with the sort of company I would expect the professor to keep—if any.

"...Sephiroth..." The stranger's voice is remote but saturated with disbelief. I mark the abnormality of his eyes, which appear to match the deep red cloak he's wearing.

"Do we know each other?" I ask simply, keeping my restless displeasure carefully at bay.

Gast answers on his behalf— "Sephiroth... this is Vincent. He was once with The Department of Administrative Research, a precursor to the Turks. He was assigned to our protection detail... when we worked on the Jenova project."

Really. How, exactly, has he found such a person.

It's suddenly obvious that Gast must have been eager for me to meet him immediately lest I disappear again. My irritation compounds.

"We look the same age," I observe diplomatically.

He's tall, we're nearly the same height. Yet his demeanour is reclusive, melting into the wall behind him.

"Hojo... performed experiments on him, locked him in the basement of this mansion. He's always been here... since that time."

I chuckle in absurd reflection at that, though whatever Hojo did to this unfortunate stranger, it didn't involve Jenova, I can tell that much.

"You have my sympathies," I commiserate with tempered politeness.

Professor Gast's eyes meet the floor in troubled thought. My attention returns to the former Turk, 'Vincent'. Judging from the intensity of his look, it is unlikely that he has yet taken his eyes off of me.

What does he want?

"I've always suspected that satisfying his curiosity was merely a convenient coincidence. It's not like Hojo to let a warm body go to waste," he says, and even the quality of his speech is unusual—It's ambiguous whether he is communicating with either one of us, or simply musing to himself.

However, I've had enough of this conversation. I look directly at Gast, deciding to derail it— "I've come from Shinra Head Quarters."

He tenses, his eyes widening with startled apprehension. "They recovered the body of Crisis three years ago," I elaborate, glancing over at Vincent, "Hojo has been continuing his Jenova research with little to restrict him."

"You sensed it... from across the planet," Professor Gast says with detached gravity. He understands, even if he does not wish to.

I nod, turning back to him. "I've resolved the situation. Whatever Hojo does going forward, I will know." Gast's brow is furrowed, his eyes sharply focused. His look of ardent concern is quite familiar to me.

"How?" He has already apprehended the answer.

"He injected himself with Jenova material," I supply for the sake of clarity.

"...Has he finally gone completely mad?" Vincent voice is distant and pensive, in contrast with Gast's own suspicious tone, which is addressed squarely at me—

"Has his mental state really worsened so dramatically?" he shakes his head, "I can't believe it... What happened." His eyes meet mine. "Did you..."

"Have something to do with it?" I complete his question. "I gave him the opportunity."

I don't need to explain. Professor Gast knows me well enough—Hojo is an egotistical man, his many neurosis on full display. It was quite easy to exploit them to my desired effect. But, I was pushing buttons that exist independent of my will, a mere agent of acceleration.

Vincent chuckles faintly, and the professor looks between us, momentarily stunned with disapproval. "What about this is remotely funny?"

The peculiar man shrugs, his eyes switching to Gast for a brief moment as he responds. "It has a certain... poetic justice." The professor looks aghast at his supposed ally.

Interesting.

"If he survives, I will have gained influence from inside Shinra," I explain with pragmatic patience.

"You know... my thoughts on that," Gast doubles down.

"I do," I affirm, "and you know mine. Perhaps it might influence your thoughts to know what the endeavour you disapprove of has uncovered."

His gaze fixes on me question, warily attentive.

"Your daughter is alive."

"...What?" Gast exhales in a hiss. Confused? Angry? His whole body stills. I observe reflectively that I might just as well have shot him.

"Incredibly, it seems she escaped from captivity not long before I arrived."

I raise my right hand, fingers unfurling, offering the ribbon.

Gast steps forward, reaching slowly towards it. Once it's in his hand, he stares down at the thing as if it were a dead bird.

"Alive...?"

It's only a small matter of time now. We will leave. It shouldn't prove too difficult to track her down.

There's a knock at the door. Soft as it is, it breaks the quiet with an eerie violence.

Gast turns towards it looking thoroughly disoriented. "...What..."

Vincent places a hand lightly on his shoulder. His steps are oddly silent as he descends the aged staircase, but Gast breaks the effect as he follows, and the stairs creak beneath his own slow footfall.

I doubt that this will change his mind about my abilities. Maddening though it is, I've long since understood just how stubbornly his mind is set. But I cannot fully get my head around it, and I need to. It is unacceptable to me simply not to comprehend him.

He is halfway across the hall when Vincent turns from the door. "Is your daughter's name Aeris?"

Gast freezes. The look on the professor's face must be all the confirmation Vincent requires, because he steps back—fully opening the door.

A small girl stands in the doorway, barely a woman, dressed in peach pink. A picture of comely innocence. I can't see the professor's face from where I stand, but I can see her's.

She's looking straight at him.

"Are you... Professor Gast Faremis?" Her question strikes me as somehow purposeless, as if she already knows, she's only making the appropriate social noises. Though she makes them well.

Gast steps forward.

"...May I... come in?" she asks, her voice timid, posture demure. I'm sure I detect more in her tone. She strikes me as being cloaked in social niceties. "That's!" Her eyes have found the object still sat delicately in his right hand. "My ribbon?!" Her surprise, at least, is genuine. "How—Where did you get that?" she asks, her eyes bewildered.

Reflexively, Gast glances upwards to my position in the middle of the upper landing. Her eyes follow his, and as they meet mine her body produces a tiny involuntary jolt, one I recognise.

Fear.

Gast's look only lasts a split-second before he turns back to his daughter. But her eyes continue to flick upward at me periodically—in the same surreptitious manner that a bird might keep an eye on a cat.

"This?" the professor begins, looking at the ribbon, "It's.." he pauses as if he isn't sure himself. "It's... complicated," he finishes after a long pause. "But I am Gast Faremis," he nods, breathless, "although I'm no longer a professor in any official capacity. I suppose I will always be one in nature, you can't really change things like that," he clears his throat, having found his voice to ramble with. He steps backwards hastily to make room for her. "Please come in, there's a dinning room to your left. Would you like to sit down?"

She smiles with nervous warmth and nods. The sincerity of it somehow nettles more than her niceties.

"I am sorry about the... general state of the place—its very old, not very hospitable, but hopefully it's not too uncomfortable," Gast rambles on anxiously. I watch them as they cross the main hall together. Before they pass into the adjacent corridor, her eyes catch mine one last time.

She's just a girl.

"It never occurred to me that we would ever meet..." Vincent's low voice draws my attention to the foot of the stairs.

"There must have been a reason Gast was so keen to introduce us," I announce coldly, my question implied. Despite his abnormal qualities, he seems to be an unusually straightforward person so I've decided to be frank with him. Though I suppose my impatience isn't helped by the fact that the girls sudden appearance has changed everything.

"I knew your mother," he returns, equally blunt.

Ah.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, holding back the pressure of another migraine.

My mother.

"And what is it, that you know about my mother."

He looks up at me and his face is hard to read—a fact decidedly worsened by his clothing, which seems intentionally designed to disguise.

I feel the sudden desire for fighting. I would quite like to kill something, going back up the mountains would be the quickest way—I need to be free of this place for a while—

"What do you know about your mother?" Vincent echoes back at me with quiet curiosity, redirecting my focus. It fixes on him instead, with aggressive antipathy.

I laugh.

"I know that she volunteered her unborn child for experimentation," I answer apathetically, taking a few steps forward.

"I know that she later regretted that choice," I continue, descending the stairs.

"I know that she killed herself," I add, moving to stand before him.

"A curious gesture of atonement," I reflect, before returning my eyes to his.

"And I know that I have little reason to care—she accomplished all of this before I was old enough to possibly recall her."

He doesn't look away, despite my words appearing to impact to desired effect. I'm more irritated than impressed.

"...You're wrong... You have no idea," he responds after a long moment.

"Get out of my way," I command.

He shakes his head and slowly obliges. I graze his shoulder, striding past him and out of the door.