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year 5, quarter 3
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What's that? Do I sense subconscious JENOVA reunion instincts?
I knew mine was a special existence
Angeal.
Sephiroth closed his eyes, contemplative. His friend was here. It had gone from an impossibility to a rumor to a fact. Since the Turk had first spoken the words, he’d known in some part of himself that it would. No matter what Genesis said, no matter what he felt in that strange, unknowable place of memory, Angeal was alive.
His friend was alive.
Sephiroth opened his eyes, watching the slate gray sky. Clouds passed on a bitter wind that foretold a storm -- the effects of the hurricane to the west perhaps? The square in which he found himself was crowded and bustling, and yet he felt as though he stood along on a hill, gazing out on the rocky plains below. Genesis had left him. They had parted ways to cover more ground. Though Genesis had not seemed entirely convinced, there was a spark of hope between them, and in Genesis’ case, maybe dread.
Sephiroth sighed and lowered his head. This was pointless. He needed his usual pinpoint precision now more than ever, and yet he couldn’t help the thoughts that rolled through within and under him. There were eyes on him, he knew. Whispers of the ominous man that was somehow wrong in some unspeakable and instinctual way. This man was dressed all in black with a thin sword and a long cloak which, for some reason, he’d heard described as a cape. He was unnaturally pale, nearly the color of a corpse, and his eyes were vivid, cat-like, and inhuman. Sephiroth had never minded the whispering, and now he welcomed it. Perhaps Angeal would hear the murmur like the faint echo of ocean waves. Perhaps Angeal would seek him out if given the chance.
This square, this City Center, offered him nothing more than notoriety. Find me, it seemed to say. I am here.
And so he stood, waiting, among the people and the great halls and the statues of leaders long dead. He stood waiting for something that tugged at the back of his mind, for something that felt natural and alien all at once. It was like a call that struck him at his very core and carried on the wind.
Post by Cloud Strife on Sept 18, 2020 22:21:26 GMT -6
He told himself he was looking for proof that the stories of the man in black with the sword and the silver hair were anything other than coincidence, but the truth was he knew the answer with certainty before he ever set foot in Provo. He felt it, in his guts, in his bones, in the static buzz in the back of his mind. He could taste the iron on his tongue and feel the sharp white-hot burn through his chest and he could hear the hum of the reactor from a long way away in space and in time. A long way that was never long enough. It filled him with the weight of a familiar reflexive dread. Yet the more he turned it over in his mind the more that dread ebbed away. Like a receding tide. Like ash in the wind. In its place clarity. Certainty. Hate.
Sephiroth was here. Sephiroth was alive. That meant Sephiroth had to die.
There was something freeing about the hate he felt, the knot of rage that burned like a hot coal between his ribs. Burned too hot for the fear or dread or apprehension to sit alongside it. It was pure and it was fuel and it felt limitless. It radiated from him in waves, in the steel of his stare and the tension of his muscles and the way he moved with a predator's grace and a murderer's purpose.
The sword on his back swayed as he walked and his hands were balled into tight fists. He could have been following the murmuring of Provo's civilians about the stranger with the silver hair and the sword or he could have been following the reckoning of his own internal compass. A nagging thought that this was history repeated hovered like a fly and Cloud swatted it aside.
Killed him before, he told himself. I'll kill him again.
The street opened up into the bustling square but in the dull grey light Cloud did not see the gaggles of tourists or the towering statues or the looming facade of the city hall. He saw a tall figure in black with long silver hair. He saw the fire bursting through the windows of his childhood home. He saw Tifa bleeding out on the floor of the reactor. He saw hallways filled with blood and bodies. He saw Aerith's lifeless eyes and limp body. He saw Meteor and the depths of the northern crater and every nightmare of every horror branded inside his skull. Because of him. All of it because of him...
Cloud's hands shook, tremors of fury and adrenaline. The blood roared in his ears. The rest of the world fell away.
Sephiroth had to die.
He drew the sword from his back and broke out into a sprint, the tip of the blade dragging behind him and throwing a trail of sparks. The crowd parted like the sea. He let out a primal scream of abject rage, a scream to make his throat bleed, and he leaped high in the air and held the sword over his head like the executioner's axe and he swung it down at Sephiroth with the full weight of his hatred.
He didn’t know how he knew. He felt it, he supposed, as a kind of secondary instinct. It wasn’t Angeal, but someone else. He sensed a deep burning hatred that was nearly overwhelming and drawing closer.
Interesting.
He didn’t steel himself for the attack that he knew was coming. He heard it easily -- that scrape of metal across stone ground. That wild yell like a raging beast. He heard it and he felt it, and only once his attacker had leaped into the air with his sword raised did Sephiroth act. He did so with pinpoint precision, one step forward, stance angled, sword pulled in a flash of silver. He felt resistance on that sword as he looked up to meet his assailant’s eye. Blue eyes. Mako eyes.
The man’s eyes burned with bloodlust. His face was twisted into an animalistic snarl. For the briefest of moments, he was suspended by the force of Sephiroth’s sword, blocking his blade with a practiced ease. Then Sephiroth’s lips switched into a smirk. He thrust the man away with an unnatural strength, sending him flying some ten feet away.
There was something about that face. Something about those eyes. He felt a strange sense of unease. He’d forgotten something. And why couldn't he name this man who was clearly once a SOLDIER?
”Do I know you?” He gave nothing away. There was only his smirk. His cold expression. It was professional -- perhaps a little curious. He had no time for doubts in combat. That had been drilled into him practically since birth, and it was not an instinct quickly set aside. There were many with a reason to draw his blood. But this man…
Post by Cloud Strife on Oct 6, 2020 20:37:24 GMT -6
Bright flash like lightning heralding the coming storm. The high ringing clash of steel on steel sounding across the city center. Heads turned. For the first time since the Northern Crater Cloud stared into those inhuman eyes - not Mako eyes, not a SOLDIER's eyes, but a monster, the thing that had taken so much from him and kept trying to take more. His mother, his town, his friends, his sanity, his free will, the whole damn world.
And the bastard was still breathing and still smirking like none of it meant anything.
In that suspended moment Cloud knew without words, without conscious thought, that there was more to this than stopping Sephiroth again. It was more than protecting his friends, more than protecting this world from whatever mad plan he had stewing in his psychotic mind, and it was more than just simple revenge. They'd killed Sephiroth as quickly as they could have back in that crater because they had to, but Sephiroth didn't deserve such a mercy.
What was a fair return on all the suffering he'd wrought?
Sephiroth pushed back against the locked blades and sent Cloud soaring backwards. Something in Cloud's gut anticipated it. Like they'd done this dance a hundred times before. He spun with the momentum, backflipping, landing in a crouch in the space cleared by a retreating crowd of gawkers. The first notes of panic seeping in to the collective murmur. When he straightened up the materia in the Mystile on his wrist glowed a faint green. Sephiroth's voice like needles in his spine.
"Shut up," Cloud said through his teeth. His voice was venom. No games. No mind tricks. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
If he were thinking logically he'd remember that memories were a funny thing in this place, but he wasn't thinking logically. His head was filled with all the worst moments of his life on an endless loop and the singular clear idea that cutting Sephiroth's head off would make it all stop.
A blue light enveloped him and he charged at Sephiroth, a Haste-enhanced blur, faint puff of dust and grit kicked up from the cobblestones in his wake. Cloud knew Sephiroth was faster than him and he couldn't afford to give him space to react. Even still their blades clashed shot for shot, the percussion line of some new epic of violence and vengeance. Light strobing in bright bursts of sparks, one after the other, a dozen times over before the first began to fade.
People were running. Cloud was only peripherally aware of this, the multitude of frantic voices and stampeding footsteps. A distant scream. The townspeople in Nibelheim never had the luxury of running. He angled away from a blade thrust and felt the force like a gust of wind past his ear. He swung up with his Fusion sword, clashing against the end of the masamune just to knock it off line, just to buy himself a little time. Half a second. A fraction of that. He had to keep pressing. He had to get Sephiroth on the back foot.
Another green glow, the mastered Fire materia embedded in the guard of his sword. A primal yell as he hurled a great fireball at Sephiroth. The blast of heat was familiar. The flames roared so loud in his ears that Cloud couldn't hear himself.
The man went flying backwards with the force of Sephiroth’s blade though he recovered quickly, easily regaining his stance in the air and twisting himself into a stable landing. Sephiroth felt a twinge of respect for the man’s abilities, but that was irrelevant now. His assailant sought a fight with him -- one that would only end in blood. Sephiroth had not been taught hesitation.
”Shut up.” The Soldier had gone feral. Sephiroth could see it in his eyes -- that monstrous rage. There was nothing human left inside him. Was that an effect of the mako, the stress, or merely his own burning hatred?
It didn’t matter. In this field, Sephiroth had the advantage.
The man charged again, magic shimmering around him as he went. It boosted his speed, and Sephiroth prepared himself for it. Haste. His assailant struck so quickly that it could hardly be seen by the human eye. Sephiroth let his body move on its own accord, faster than his conscious mind could follow. He blocked in short, precise motions, dodging the blows with light steps that hardly brought him from his starting position. The man may have boosted his speed, but that made his form clumsier. It was crude, forceful, emotional.
The man may have had the strength of a Soldier, but he had none of the control. How long had he trained? Sephiroth would never have promoted him to Second Class.
Sephiroth struck back, and the man dodged sideways, avoiding his blow with a hairline’s space. He pressed his blade against Sephiroth’s, thrusting it off course. He bought himself an opening, but only the thinnest of openings. He took it by thrusting out his hand and casting magic again.
Sephiroth saw a familiar spark of red. Fire. In that slowed half-second, tactics turned sharp and rapid-fire -- subconscious, calculating. His sword would cave if he tried to block it. There was no dodging to the side. It was too late to counter, but he’d seen this before. From Genesis.
Genesis.
The flames erupted from his assailant’s gloved hand. Sephiroth felt the heat, heard the blast, and took to the air.
It was a close dodge -- narrowly avoided. The heat seared his boots. The light was disarming. Still, as he felt his own weight fall away, he let none of it slow his thoughts. Genesis’ weakness had always been his passion, his recklessness, his insistence on magic at a close range. Sephiroth knew this fight, and he knew casting left a split second’s loss of defenses. It was a gamble, and not one that an enraged mind could calculate.
Sephiroth kept his distance, thrusting himself higher with that strange weightlessness that now felt natural. He swung his sword rapidly with enough force to send shockwaves that struck the ground below him, cracking the street in crescent arcs. He did not expect them to disable a Soldier, but the blow would disarm him long enough for Sephiroth to follow through.
Post by Cloud Strife on Oct 28, 2020 13:17:52 GMT -6
Sephiroth was a black streak almost lost in the white-orange heart of the fireball. The flames crashed and burst against stone and wood behind him and left a charred carbon shadow. Small wisps of fire remained, fed on fuel of wood splinters and scattered detritus like little burning spores. Cloud craned his head up, following Sephiroth's path into the sky, raising arms, swing of the blade--
In the depths of the Northern Crater Cloud's hands didn't shake until after the thing that was Sephiroth fell; after the twisted mass of bloodied Jenova-flesh broke apart, after the last vestiges of Sephiroth's will dissipated in the Lifestream like an inkdrop in an ocean. Then his hands trembled. Sweat beaded on his brow and a sick churning filled the empty space of his stomach and his whole body shook and it was only the tremors of the crater itself, the collapsing rock and earth, that disguised it.
In the end, Cloud didn't want to die.
He was broken, once. He gave up, trapped in what seemed like inescapable misery. But when Tifa refused to give up on him, he clawed his way up from the depths of utter despair and emerged whole. Then he understood the simple truth-- that he wanted to keep breathing after all. Keep fighting. Live to see a world free from Shinra and Sephiroth and Meteor. And he carried that with him on his march towards almost certain death. It took every last ounce of nerve, every drop of blood and sweat and adrenaline, to put one foot in front of the other even as his mind's eye conjured the vision of him bleeding out on a lump of rock deep in the earth among the bodies of his friends and there would be no one left to mourn because there would be no one left.
Cloud spent everything that he had on that final push, the paradoxical battle of accepting the possibility of death without welcoming it. He spent everything but his rage, and he clung tightly to that now even as it burned him. He refused to accept that they fought for nothing. This time, he refused to accept the specter of death.
An arc of force barrelled down on him. He swung his sword up over his head and shielded himself behind the flat of it. The impact buckled his knees. The stones of the city square cracked and split and fine plumes of dust and grit billowed in the air around him. The next impact rattled his lungs, stumbled him, dropped him to one knee. He felt a tremor beginning in his wrist.
"No..." he exhaled, pinned beneath his sword and the next shockwave.
Hold on to that rage.
It was all he had in him, that supernova sitting between his ribs, coiled in his muscles, waiting to explode.
Cloud shot up to his feet and fixed his burning blue eyes on Sephiroth. He swung his Fusion sword around, spun with it, a blur of steel, the force of it kicking up a wind that carried with it the shrapnel of shattered stones and splintered wood. It grew into a twister in the blink of an eye, and with a final swing of his blade sent it barrelling straight for Sephiroth.
Sephiroth’s blows landed as expected, cracking and tearing the street into clouds of stone debris. Sephiroth squinted through it, waiting for the perfect opening. The Soldier did not lower his guard. Despite his lacking training, he knew well enough to raise his sword defensively, grounding his stance against any incoming attacks. The sword itself was broad enough to serve as a kind of shield. That sword…
The Buster Sword.
Sephiroth’s eyes widened for a moment, but only a moment. Despite its resemblance, it wasn’t the blade he knew so well. It had the same shape -- so familiar that it set him on edge. The boxy guard, the thin handle, the sheer weight and width of it. It felt wrong, seeing it in the hands of someone so unworthy, and yet...
Something familiar flashed behind that sword. It was like a shadow -- a dream. For that single instant, he saw another behind that sword, gritting his teeth against the sheer force raining down around him. He saw a Soldier uniform, black hair, a scar along one cheek.
He hesitated.
That moment was enough. The Soldier took it, darting into the air and swinging his sword around in a spiral motion. Sephiroth hardly had time to raise his own sword in a block before it struck him with the force of a cyclone.
He grit his teeth as he felt himself knocked out of the air, thrust backwards as the winds uprooted concrete and stone. There was a disadvantage to aerial combat, he realized. He was weightless which meant…
He felt the full force of a building rushing to meet him. He smashed through it, sending up splinters and bits of drywall. He kept his sword crossed defensively, prepared for another attack even as his ears rang.
Who was this man? And why did he find it so hard to remember?
Post by Cloud Strife on Nov 10, 2020 12:14:26 GMT -6
He watched the cyclone tear unopposed across the square, watched for the streak of black and silver that told him he missed his shot, but it never came. He dropped through the air with the pull of gravity and saw Sephiroth swallowed up in the maelstrom, carried off in a whirlwind of debris. His foot made contact with a solid surface. He pushed off, boot against the statue face of a man whose name and deeds Cloud didn't know and didn't care to know. He pushed off like a launched projectile, following Sephiroth's path through the slatecolored sky, following him through the shattered facade of a building, through jagged teeth of snapped wooden beams and the crumbling drywall. The structure groaned like a wounded beast.
The screaming winds died and Cloud remained in the billowing dust of their wake, advancing on Sephiroth unhesitatingly, hatred carried forth on Jenova-infected nerves from mind to hand. There was nothing left to say. He'd said everything back in the depths of the Northern Crater and what remained in his heart was wordless. The steel sang for him instead. It sang for his mother, and for Tifa, and for Aerith, and for Nibelheim, and Midgar, and the planet itself. For everything they sacrificed. For all that they endured. For the scars Cloud bore in the places he had been broken.
He wouldn't let it all be in vain. He wouldn't let Sephiroth steal a second chance from this world.
With every swing of his Fusion sword Cloud hunted for the kill. For the clean decapitation, or a severed artery, or a shattered spine. He did not leave Sephiroth room to breathe. Downward chopping blow to the collarbone, blocked. He pressed forward, sweeping cut up into the ribs, blades sparking on impact like camera flashes. He pressed forward. Again and again, a violent blur of steel brought down with all the strength Cloud's contaminated cells could muster, keeping Sephiroth on the back foot, unrelenting. A cacophony of metal, of snapping wood, sparks bursting as their blades clashed. He swung with reckless abandon, unrestricted by the close quarters of the collapsing room, his sword crashing through the ceiling, a wall, carving up the floor on each backswing. Cloud's muscles screamed at him. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck along his spine. The effects of the Haste spell were beginning to wear off but Cloud willed himself to move faster, even if he tore muscle from bone, even if his lungs burst.
In that moment there was no town square, no crumbling nameless building. There was no Provo and no Sonora and no Zephon. In that moment there was only Cloud and Sephiroth and the weight of the duty Cloud assigned himself. And if he failed there would be no moments after.
A bright aura surrounded him, lit his face, the fire in his mako-eyes. It blew out plumes of drywall dust and woodsplinters in an arc around him. The building shuddered.
"STAY DEAD!" he shouted, and the light flowed into his sword, the metal glowing like a beacon, and he swung for the head--
Angeal withheld a strong sigh, lowering the map that he’d had pressed into his face for a good half-hour or so. Thankfully, his rented chocobo was well-trained enough to keep straight on the path to Provo while he languished in silence over the impossible amount of tiny roads, small farming villages, and odd structures unmarked by names on his map. The bird’s steps didn’t falter as the Soldier adjusted in his seat, folding the map and tucking it back into his pocket.
He was on a fool’s errand, Hewley could readily admit to himself, searching for his friends with near nothing to go on. Yet, he’d spent too much time in Torensten without a whisper of a word or a sign that anyone would find him there, or that anyone was coming. Other than the odd strangers and friendly faces that he’d met in the city, Torensten felt too out of place, too estranged. At night, when he tossed and turned and contemplated life, Angeal felt nothing but cold. Distant. Something was telling him that, what he sought was not there.
And so, Angeal bid a farewell to Rosa and the orphans, promising to someday return. Tucked away in his bag were his familiar map, some provisions, a change of clothes, and a list of names of the people he’d met. Simple things, for a simple man with a complicated journey ahead.
Unfortunately, traveling without a real idea of where to look for his fellow Soldier’s had led to … few results. At every little stop, every village where people were willing to speak, Angeal asked about a man with long silver hair in a black coat, or a red-head in a red coat, both with impressive swords and strange personalities. Zack, unfortunately, probably blended in well enough that he’d be hard to find on a physical description alone.
If he could even stand to see Angeal.
Question after question went unanswered, and the journey stretched from days to weeks. The strange, cold emptiness never quelled, like a fire without fuel. Why Angeal was so drawn to searching for his friends, he couldn’t say. He was a good friend. Maybe. Well, not really, was he? Maybe it was the thousands of apologies that had bubbled up inside of him over the weeks following his discovery of his memories, of his death, what he’d done to everyone. But, it didn’t feel the same as shame. It felt like … like …
Something was calling.
... I’m here …
Angeal tugged on the reigns of his chocobo, causing the bird to squawk in alarm as it came to a halt. His mouth fell open in a light gasp, mentalling grasping at the feeling that had just passed through him. A signal. A sign. Words somehow familiar, despite there being no voice behind them. He could almost picture the silver hair and familiar, green eyes.
... Find me…
The Soldier nearly threw himself off of his chocobo. The bird would be fine. It would find its way back home.
Find. Home.
Large, white wings unfurled from Angeal’s back, and without a second thought, he quickly took to the air. There was no way to explain the feeling he had. There were no words. His glowing eyes were wide as he flew, further and further into the sky, darting as quickly as he could toward the source of that wordless call. His heart thrummed in his ears, beating faster and faster with each beat of his wings. Far below him the landscape looked more like the map in his pocket, trails like pencil drawings and people hardly visible below.
It was Sephiroth. He didn’t know how, or why, but Angeal knew -- Sephiroth was close by. Finally. Finally.
Despite the chilly air in the clouds, Angeal broke a sweat in his haste to find the source of his strange feeling. By the time he’d crossed over the aerial boundary of the familiar Provo, the muscles of his back throbbed angrily. There was no telling how long he’d flown at his max speed, Angeal hardly cared to notice. He felt like a man possessed.
Yet the city, painted in grey hues, seemed alive in all the wrong ways. As the Soldier flew lower, he heard panicked screams, and the sounds of destruction. A clear focus shoved itself back into the forefront of Hewley’s mind, tucking away that incessant need to be here, right here, in this moment. He’d found what he was looking for, apparently, but what was going on? Ahead, in the city square, a vortex of heavy materials appeared, then dissipated as it met with a target.
A wing beat.
The sounds of clashing steel.
Another beat.
A desperate, angry cry.
Another beat.
A strange glow …
Angeal saw Sephiroth first; his green eyes narrowed in concentration, deftly moving Masamune into a block. In the next moment, he saw his friend’s blonde-haired opponent -- face contorted into rage, his broad sword behind him, glowing ominously. There was a split second to react, and in that moment, the three of them would be in the same space. Angeal pushed through the air, his arm pulling the Buster Sword from his back effortlessly as he kept his speed, throwing himself into the fray.
“Enough!” he shouted, his blade meeting the stranger’s with all the force behind his speedy, aerial entrance. Though he was powerful enough to stop two 1st Class Soldier’s with nothing but his own raw strength, seeing Sephiroth on the defensive forced Angeal’s hand to deliver a blow that would surely send the stranger back a pace or twenty. The clash of metal, of force on force, was strong enough to send a reverberation through the Soldier’s very bones. For all of a split second, it seemed like his arms would become jelly.
What in the hell kind of strength did that blonde have?
Angeal planted his boots into the ruined concrete as he came to a stop, the Buster Sword raised as he eyed the blonde he’d knocked back. Sephiroth was behind him, safe, and though Angeal wanted nothing more than to drop his sword and acknowledge his dear friend, he knew the situation was far from safe. This fight would continue, until that blonde man was either dead or they made a getaway. There was no time to throw questions around, no time to figure out what the hell was going on.
And around them, the destruction lingered.
“We should leave,” Angeal spoke quickly, loudly over the battlefield. He didn’t dare turn to speak to Sephiroth directly. He’d seen the kind of twisted, hell-bent rage in that blonde-haired man before. He’d felt it. Experienced it. It would only lead to death.
How long can you swallow the pain? Before it comes round again, And a shadow in the valley will lead you to them, So don't follow.
It's almost like Sephiroth wouldn't have cracked if he'd just had his friends
I knew mine was a special existence
Sephiroth did not have the advantage.
The shift had taken place in an instant. He’d had that one lapse of judgment, that split second hesitation, and that was all it had taken to force Sephiroth onto the defensive. Their swords clashed in rapidfire flashes of hard steel. They were almost too fast to follow -- the swordsman’s heavy swings and Sephiroth’s minute shifts in posture, never farther than needed. He wasted no time on flourishes, his eyes a laser focus for even the slightest opening. He found none. It was almost as though they had fought before
(they had)
and the man knew his style
(he did)
and as the building quickly became a ruin of shattered glass and shards of broken concrete, it was only his instinctual professionalism that kept that strange familiarity from rising through the fog. He knew this feeling. He knew this fight. He knew this sword, and as he dodged backwards, blasting through walls and windows and crumbling debris with singular swipes of his blade, those murderous blue eyes seemed to pierce him straight to the hidden core beneath.
He hated them. He was fascinated by them. But why…?
(mother)
It shot through his head in a bullet of static and light. Betrayal. Pain. Euphoria. There was laughter. Metal set in a hard green glow. Those eyes, piercing, and a single word hanging on the edge of a precipice.
JENOV-
”Enough!”
Sephiroth stumbled back as a third figure thrust itself in front of him. There was a metallic clang and a shockwave of force, and suddenly there was a man standing like a bulwark between them. The first thing he saw was white. A great swathe of white feathers that drifted on the wind. Sephiroth’s eyes traveled to his back to his SOLDIER’s pauldrons and then to a familiar layer of black, windswept hair.
Angeal.
Sephiroth straightened, burying the rush of relief in the natural ease of standing beside him. This feeling -- the feeling of a friend at his side -- was almost stronger than the muffled pain of loss and reunion. He smirked, brandishing his sword to the side. ”You came.”
It wasn't much. An acknowledgement. There would be time for conversation later.
”We should leave.”
Sephiroth glanced at the raging swordsman, his composure returning to his usual cold calculations. They could overpower him. Together, they could put their years of trained cooperation into action, blind-siding the assailant with a combination of skill and raw power. It would be better to dispatch him now. They could terminate the threat before he returned at a more inopportune moment. And yet…
That would mean facing those raging eyes. Sephiroth's heart raced at the truth they promised -- of that terrible, overwhelming truth that threatened to overtake him.
