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year 5, quarter 3
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Sephiroth is too logical to actually reach any correct conclusions
I knew mine was a special existence
Genesis let a trickle of honey drip onto Sephiroth’s pancakes. Sephiroth’s eyes narrowed. Why he’d decided to touch Sephiroth’s food was beyond him. Did he think this was considerate as well, or was he simply irking him for the sake of it? No, he would refuse to respond. Such petty tricks were beneath him. Rather than indulge Genesis, Sephiroth chose to go without -- even as his fingers twitched.
It felt strange with Genesis across him. They’d eaten together before, of course, during training or work or with Angeal, but this felt different. Casual. He had always chosen to sleep alone, to wake up alone, to ready himself alone. This felt…
Unnatural. He itched for space to himself.
Genesis had been drinking. That was self-evident, and he confirmed as much even if he hadn’t shown the signs. In peak condition, Genesis would have never woken with disheveled hair, and Sephiroth had seen him trudge into training too many times to not know that wincing, nauseous look. Sephiroth wondered where he’d found the money to drink. Alcohol didn’t come cheap.
”I got invited to a party underground, and I may or may not have accidentally joined a dragon cult.”
Sephiroth blinked slowly as he processed the words said to him. When he did, he let out a single, short laugh beneath his breath.
”Accidentally,” he repeated. That was the most unbelievable part. Genesis had always had a habit of stretching the truth and embellishing on the details. This made him terrible for gathering intel, but quite popular among the ranks. Everyone had their strengths and weaknesses.
”You have a talent for finding unbelievable situations.”Too unbelievable. Sephiroth wondered what grain of truth was buried in his claims as he meticulously cut his under-sweet pancake into a perfect square.
”I was attacked,” Sephiroth said plainly. ”While I meditated. The threat was neutralized.” After revealing its true form. He hesitated before lowering his fork again. Genesis had more experience with this than Sephiroth could currently remember.
”One of Shinra’s experiments.” Sephiroth watched Genesis’ expression closely. ”Or so I concluded. It went feral trying to kill me.” The sight haunted him even now. Its crystalline figure, its clawed hands, its inhuman color. He’d seen it before.
He knew it wasn’t advantageous to avoid it. His body cried for it by the early morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes. Every time, he saw the strange, crystalline form of a monster lit in green-blue. Every time, his stomach rolled with panic. What did it mean? And why did it fill him with such dread?
Sephiroth touched at his forehead, pressing his palm into his brow. The encounter itself had been trivial if unexpected. Just another attempted assassination. Just another fevered fighter desperate to prove himself. There was nothing that should have struck him except that its skin had been mottled blue. Where had he seen that color before? His head pounded with an answer it couldn’t provide.
Pots clinked together beyond his door. Footsteps. Muttered poetry. Genesis. Sephiroth was grateful that Zack had offered him space in the single bedroom and that Genesis had refused any space once occupied by Zack. It provided him privacy now, and while the silence had already been broken, he at least had the time to think. Genesis had always overwhelmed him with his intensity and intrusive nature. Sephiroth had no desire to engage him.
The door slammed open.
Sephiroth lowered his hand and fixed him with a cool look. Genesis did not apologize. In fact, he spoke as though entitled to Sephiroth’s attention. How Angeal had managed to live with the man for so long baffled Sephiroth even now.
”Honey,” he said flatly. He wouldn’t have forgotten it. It was the first birthday he’d ever celebrated.
Genesis invited him to breakfast. Sephiroth glanced to the window and the regrettably risen sun. Even the smell of food tinged his stomach with nausea, but he’d already deprived his body enough for one night. Sephiroth closed his eyes and hummed his laughter.
”Bribing me?” He smirked and unfolded himself from the bed. Genesis’ offer had been considerate -- uncharacteristically so. Did he pity his lack of memory? Or was Genesis simply as relieved as Sephiroth to have reunited at all. Either way, his actions spoke far louder than his words.
Sephiroth started past him without considering him further. Genesis had clearly woken up within the last half hour. His hair was unstyled, his earring removed. Sephiroth, for his part, wore only pajama pants and had his hair pulled into a loose bun. Their wings were both clearly visible. Sephiroth suffocated the cold nausea that threatened him at the thought of it so exposed. If Genesis could manage a sense of normalcy then Sephiroth could too.
His eyebrows raised as he rounded the corner to find the counters laden with eggs and pancakes. Said counters were flecked with batter and other miscellaneous debris, but that was only a minor annoyance. Sephiroth would thoroughly clean them later.
”Impressive.” Had Sephiroth ever complimented Genesis so thoroughly about anything? It seemed that Genesis could far exceed expectations when he decided to exert the effort. This was unsurprising.
Sephiroth took a plate for himself and carefully portioned out the amount he thought to be proper. With that done, Sephiroth sat at the table and waited for Genesis to join him. He prepared himself for an inevitable barrage of dramatics and indignation.
As the flames flickered lower, Sephiroth eyed the space below with a hawk’s precision. His target had vanished. Or perhaps been obliterated? It seemed that magic had been the proper course of action.
Sephiroth waited a moment longer before he let his guard slip and lowered himself back to the ground. The sand shifted beneath his feet, warming his boots as the flames sputtered around him. He scanned the beach for signs of a body or even a scorch mark. He found nothing. Perhaps the melted ice had washed away the ash. Perhaps his target had survived.
His lips twitched into a frown. His fingers itched to have ended the battle by his own blade. Without proof of the creature’s demise, he had no guarantees that it would not strike again. Whether that was now or in some future pursuit, it left him unaware and vulnerable. With a possible enemy at play, he would have to remain vigilant for any attempted assassinations.
Sephiroth waited for evidence of hostile movement before he shifted his blade forward and slid it into its sheath. He would have preferred more time in his meditations, but he would have to cut it short. This space was no longer safe to lower his guard. He would scout the area for a new one.
Sephiroth glanced once to the water before he turned and started back towards the underbrush. Genesis would have flown, but without his previous rush of adrenaline, Sephiroth doubted he could manage it. He counted his prowess as a victory no matter how temporary. In that way, he supposed he should have considered the feral creature an aid. While its transformation had taken him by surprise, the encounter had proven short and decisive.
In the end, it had been only a momentary distraction.
”Can you act like we’re not in the military for five seconds?”
Sephiroth blinked and glanced to him. Not in the military? It hadn’t been an unreasonable thing to ask -- not when they were still in hostile territory. Sephiroth’s eyebrows twitched with irritation. ’We’ll get there when we get there.’ Sephiroth wanted to scold him for his carelessness, but said nothing. As much as it pained him to admit, he didn’t have authority here.
Perhaps if Genesis had engaged him, the conversation might have shifted. As it was, the boy used the silence to ask the exact question that Sephiroth had tried to escape. ’Why are you here?’
Once again, his eyes shot to Genesis. Genesis stayed quiet for longer than he should have, hesitant in a way that his usual impulses wouldn’t allow. He glanced to Sephiroth with something like caution before he shifted his demeanor entirely. ”Oh yes. We just love to help out,” he said. “I have quite the intuition for these things.”
Sephiroth’s eyes narrowed. He knew something. Genesis would have burned the place down before deciding to help out of charity, and he’d have burned himself before he admitted it. For whatever reason, the question had caught him off guard. Genesis wasn’t usually so terrible a liar.
”Intuition,” Sephiroth repeated coolly. Genesis would recognize his challenge for what it was.
The conversation shifted again. Perhaps too quickly. Genesis had no desire to linger.
”He’s capable with magic.” Sephiroth glanced to the child, whatever he was. He’d seen him cast fire from his vantage point in the sky, and it hadn’t been a weak spell at that. The boy had his own defenses. They had no reason to escort him once they’d left the city’s limits. ”He won’t need protection.”
His attacker was resistant to swordstrikes. That much was obvious as soon as his first blow landed. His blade cut through as though striking stone -- something he could shatter with enough power, but he wasn’t likely to draw blood. No. He needed blunt force, misdirection, and perhaps magic.
The man grabbed his sword.
The masamune was sharpened to a hair’s edge, but the twisted monster in front of him was far too feral to care. It gripped his blade tightly enough to stop him in midair (it must have sliced halfway through its palms -- even with its resistance) before spiraling itself around for momentum. Sephiroth dropped his blade immediately, flitting back through the air without need for force. His body acted on its own. In the air, the advantage was his.
His masamune flew from the man’s grip. Sephiroth noted it from the corner of his eye as it landed with a splash in the shallow water of the surf. Without it, he lost his finesse and power, but the tradeoff was worth avoiding the blow that came next. Its momentum was unstoppable -- careless. It swung its arms down at the spot where Sephiroth would have been and barreled to the ground even as its fists met nothing but air. Sephiroth raised a hand and dodged back to increase the space between them.
He had lost his sword, but he was not powerless. He called on the four materia embedded into his armor and closed his fist. The air stilled, cracked, and then froze solid as blocks of ice engulfed the point where the man had landed and burst in a line down the sand. Ice -- Mastered, All. He threw himself to the side as soon as the spell was cast both to dodge any other ranged energy blasts and to position himself closer to his sword.
As soon as his materia charged again, he raised a hand and drew orange-red light to his palm. Fire -- Mastered, All. There was a spark like ignited propane before the space below him burst into blue-white flames with the force of an explosion. The heat was suffocating even from above, but Sephiroth didn’t waste time hovering. The light was blinding -- the fire nearly opaque. With the sight between them lost, he took the opening to dodge closer to his sword and then shoot straight down into the surf.
The water was scalding. Sephiroth’s jaw set as it seared against his leather gloves, and still, he willed himself to grasp the sword’s hilt before he shot into the air again. For the briefest of moments, he was vulnerable, but under the cover of the flames, the risk had been minimized.
His opponent was not aerially inclined. Its gravity well had a short range, its energy blast had a split-second warmup time, and with his sword back in hand, any attempts to close the distance would yield to his advantage. If he could maintain his height and keep mobile, his magic would take care of the rest.
His lips flickered with a smirk. All his practice, and it was pure survival instinct that had him skyborn. There was nothing more valuable than field experience.
He forgot his situation until the first blow landed.
He caught a blur of color, a scattering of sand, and then it struck him hard below the ribs. It stole his breath and he felt the sharpened edges only barely caught by his plate armor before he was sent flying. He’d been careless. He brought his sword up before he could land, catching a kick that he redirected past his ear. The force of it unsteadied his blade. Whatever this monster was, it had gained strength as quickly as it had lost humanity.
Sephiroth thrust out his wing to balance himself in the air. His attacker, however, had already dropped to the ground. Sephiroth caught a spark of light, an acrid smell, and he knew what was coming. He pulled in his wing and dropped rapidly, throwing himself to the side on landing, but this was not the same magic as before.
His eyes widened as the air beside him charged. He couldn’t move fast enough.
Whatever his attacker had been while maintaining a human face was nothing compared to this. The magic caught him even as he pushed himself to its edges. Flare. It wasn’t the same, but that was all his only point of comparison. The air supercharged. The light came blinding. He saw it erupt in bursts from the point where he’d been then expanding outwards in both directions. Caught on the edge, the force rocked him and thrust him away from the blast.
The impact struck him with a bomb’s force, and in that moment, something clicked within him. Something clear and forceful and driven by instinct. His eyes caught on the monster as though in slow motion. Whatever it was, it had long ago gone twisted and feral.
His eyes narrowed. He would put it down.
His wing thrust out in an instinct and he slowed with pinpoint precision, twisting until his boots caught on a tree at the beach’s edge. He propelled himself off of it, his winged flight keeping him on a bullet’s path towards his target, sword outstretched. He raised a hand and shot another round of thunder towards the monster before he was on him, striking with a perfect Octaslash. He thrust one sword stroke at his target’s legs to fling it into the air before launching himself up after it. He sent another flurry of six swings before finishing with a downward thrust into the sand. He didn’t temper his blows. There was no use for the blunt edge of his blade.
Sephiroth wouldn’t relent until the threat was neutralized.
Sephiroth’s eyebrows furrowed. Was this magic? Materia? He didn’t have time to consider it before light burst from the man beneath him and sent Sephiroth staggering. He caught his balance quickly and leapt back on instinct. The force that followed was almost blinding. Sephiroth steeled himself against it, squaring his stance in the shifting sand. What emerged from the blast wasn’t human.
It gleamed with an ultraviolet aura that veiled its details to only a basic silhouette. Its clothes had merged into a bulging form that was marbled like hard granite. The arms elongated to club-sized hands that nearly dragged on the ground, and its back split into almost crystalline spines.
Sephiroth’s temple shot with pain. He winced, grasping at it. Why did the sight of this thing bring bile to his throat? It was a monster no more staggering than one of Hojo’s experiments. It belonged in a cage. Or maybe a pod…
Green blue light edged at his vision. He saw a twisted face, glacial skin, lipless teeth. Mako. Hojo. Jenova.
His sword landed once, twice, three times, and while Sephiroth expected the recoil, the grimacing, the blood spewing from his lips, he did not expect him to clench his hands together and gather magic to them.
Sephiroth’s eyes widened. He was in short range. Point blank range. He caught the faint smell of ozone and then a spark of light. He didn’t have time to think, no, his body moved on its own. The spell released. The light was blinding. The energy crackled like lightning past his ear and then came searing pain and an acrid, burning smell. Sephiroth didn’t stop to consider it. His body was already in motion, and even half-blinded he knew his mark on instinct. While the man’s arms were extended, he sidestepped around him and spun himself around to aim a kick directly between his shoulder-blades. The blow connected and the man was thrust forward face first into the sand.
Sephiroth didn’t wait for his opponent to recover. Instead, he planted a boot into his back and pressed down hard. With the flurry over, he took count of his injuries -- or rather, injury. While he’d reacted in an instant, the blast had been too close to miss entirely. If his attacker had kept his aim low, Sephiroth might very well have been incapacitated, but once again the man’s overconfidence had been his undoing. He’d tried for the head, a much smaller target, and instead Sephiroth was left with nothing more than a searing streak down his cheek. He knew the smell better than he would have liked to admit. Singed hair. Sephiroth glanced towards the damage and caught the rough, blackened edges of his uneven bangs.
His eyes narrowed. He had shown leniency for long enough.
”Why do you fight?” Whoever this man was, he had aimed to kill. He glanced from the man’s blaring red dreadlocks to his mottled blue skin. Had they fought before in that nebulous space that Sephiroth couldn’t quite remember? Had Sephiroth stolen away something dear to him? With a look like that, Sephiroth doubted it.
Whatever had attacked him wasn’t human. Perhaps one of Shinra’s experiments sent to take his life? If not, he was only a madman driven to self-destruction. Either way, Sephiroth felt only disdain as he ground him into the dirt.
”Dump him at Zack?” Sephiroth glanced back to Genesis, a smirk at his lips. Did he expect that Zack wouldn’t ask questions if he came home to a blank-faced child? Of course Zack would take him if it came to it -- Sephiroth had never seen a soldier so naively moral -- but that didn’t mean he’d appreciate the burden.
And where did Genesis think that he and Sephiroth were planning to stay? Genesis would burn the place down before he learned to tolerate the whims of a child.
Said child scampered after them with the box in his hands. The box whimpered as an undertone to the boy’s own barking. ’Mr. Sephiroth.’ Sephiroth laughed under his breath. Despite all of his fame and renowned, he had never met anyone so childish and good-willed to call him that. Perhaps because it sounded so stilted. He’d never been legally given a last name.
The rest was less amusing.
”Were you guys here to help the lady as well?" The boy hardly missed a step even as Sephiroth’s eyebrows furrowed. Genesis reflected his confusion and glanced back to see if Sephiroth had any insight to share. He didn’t. The boy had spoken so confidently that Sephiroth couldn’t help his unease. Why had he expected them to know her? And why did this woman need help? In the end, he chose not to ask, replying with a simple, ”No.”
Genesis used his wing to reach a self-made vantage point and calculate the most efficient path. The sight of the thing still set his teeth on edge, but he supposed he couldn’t deny its practicality. Genesis had chosen to take full advantage of the twisted remains of Shinra's research. Was it spite that granted Genesis such resolve or was it something more? He had never considered Genesis his equal in anything -- not in discipline, not in resolution, and certainly not in self-control -- but his ease in flight made Sephiroth wonder.
Sephiroth had started with every advantage. Genesis had forced his way from the bottom. In that regard, he was Sephiroth’s superior.
Genesis led the way to the north, and Sephiroth took a natural position behind their newest escort, keeping a sharp eye for any potential attacks that Genesis might have missed. He spotted several monsters down adjacent streets, but while Genesis chose to neutralize such threats, Sephiroth stayed his hand. Their goal was not one of extermination, but rather, of protection. He treated it as such.
Genesis asked how the boy had managed to find himself so far into hostile territory. Sephiroth couldn’t have cared less. Instead, his mind drifted back to that woman. How had the boy known to come here of all places? The entire city had needed aid, and yet, it was a single nondescript voice that had called him here. Sephiroth felt his eyebrows furrow.
”That woman.” He muttered it to himself perhaps too quietly for the others to hear. He hadn’t been called to help her, but what had called him here? He’d had no reason for it except intuition. Intuition from across an unfamiliar nation. ”I had a dream.” Sephiroth glanced to the cobblestone street below him. ”Something drew me here.”
Something had called him to a crisis he had no way of predicting, and in that crisis…
His eyes caught on Genesis. The odds of finding him on coincidence were nearly nonexistent. He had come without intel and without purpose. So why…?
”Our current route.” Sephiroth tore his eyes away and purposefully looked to the side. ”Do you have an estimated time of arrival?”
And lo, the first post where Sephiroth says absolutely nothing.
I knew mine was a special existence
Sephiroth raised an eyebrow as his would-be challenger gathered himself up from the sand. No matter the circumstances, no matter the weakened foundations of his resolve, he refused to admit defeat. What might have been admirable in the field proved nothing but tactless outside of it. Triumph here would mean nothing. Defeat would mean nothing. The only strategy left would be a swift retreat.
He didn’t recognize what the man did next. Some kind of materia activation? A healing aura came over him when he’d finished, and Sephiroth eyed him carefully from where he stood. Materia had always been a wild card. He straightened on instinct, readying himself in a way he hadn’t deemed necessary before.
It came in half a second. The flash of a hand movement, the glint of blades, and then a rain of daggers. Sephiroth thrust out his wing on instinct and leapt above them, just missing the tip of a blade below his boot. Before the daggers could land, his challenger was already dashing forward. He levied a punch towards him that couldn’t connect and clenched his fist in the space between them. Sephiroth felt the force before he saw the whirring darkness beneath him. Demi.
Sephiroth’s eyes narrowed. Weightless, he had almost no defense against the gravity’s pull, and he wasn’t skilled enough yet to fight it. His eyes flicked from the spell to the caster and then to the space beneath him. With the magic rapidly expanding, he had no other options. He thrust out a hand, calling on his own materia to send a crackling bolt of lightning at the man from above before he shoved his sword straight into the sand and used it as a javelin to lever himself six feet away from the Demi’s sphere.
It wasn’t a smooth escape. His blade slipped in the shifting sand, and that combined with the spell’s pull unbalanced him. With the distance made, he yanked out his sword before he could crash below and landed unsteadily only just out of range. He immediately brought the blade before him ready to block any attacks that took advantage of the opening in his defenses. Sephiroth had taken the chance to test his new abilities and had paid for his false confidence in kind. He would not make the same mistake again.
He moved defensively, but this time he kept his blade ready, blocking rather than dodging. With materia in play, he didn’t hesitate to attack when an opening presented itself, and he kept himself only on the edge of restraint. He struck one, twice, and then thrust him struck him hard with the dull side of his blade. It was a sparring blow rather than a deadly one, but he wouldn’t toy with him again.
