Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
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year 5, quarter 3
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Positive: Sephiroth has been seen at the scene of several disasters and has saved a few civilians from death by earthquake, zombies, or evil witches. It hasn't been often, and the civilians at the scene know nothing about him, but he has acted in a few ways to earn him a positive reputation.
Positive: Mostly, Sephiroth has earned a reputation in Provo as the guy with the long hair and weird eyes who likes to sip coffee in the back of cafes, and who is generally quiet, polite, and minds his own business. Some are distrustful by his obvious otherwordly origins and dangerous aura. Others (primarily young women) are attracted to his inhuman beauty and seeming intelligence. He ignores both of these factions in the hopes that he will be left alone to quietly read a book in peace.
Negative: Sephiroth is a monster. He is a questionably human monster with a loose grip on reality and a hell-bent determination to destroy the world for the sake of his alien mother. There is no shortage of witnesses from Gaia who are very, very happy to tell anyone about his history given even the slightest prompting. This rumor has caused endless trouble for Sephiroth varying from life or death battles to getting harassed in the street.
Negative: Sephiroth is said to have slaughtered countless members of the Sonoran military in an extremely public fight which involved explosives and air support. As such, he has an extremely high bounty on his head by Sonoran leadership, and any mercenaries working in the area have likely heard of him.
False: Sephiroth's greatest enemy is the world famous ninja, Yuffie Kisaragi, who single-handedly destroyed him in combat so thoroughly that he runs whenever she approaches. They have a bitter rivalry which has lasted between worlds.
For a long time, Sephiroth sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin at his hands, breathing slowly. It felt like a long time, at least. He kept fading into that ringing darkness like a wave pulsing against the sand. Anemia, his mind reminded him again. He would recover in approximately four to eight weeks given fluids and proper rest and nutrition. The wounds themselves would take less time, aided as they were by materia. Had they found a healer or had Genesis…?
His vision darkened to black and the ringing swelled with it. Sephiroth focused on his breathing.
He wouldn’t lose consciousness. That would worry them. If they found him like this. If they found him…
”Sephiroth?”
Sephiroth didn’t look up. He wasn’t sure that he could until the ringing subsided. But he felt the deep well of shame and irritation that chilled him at that voice. Angeal was worried. Sephiroth had worried him.
“You…You should still be in bed.” He heard the door close. Heavy footsteps creaked against the floorboards. Still, Sephiroth kept his head down, eyes fixed on the carpet.
”I couldn’t sleep,” he said. He didn’t know how well his voice carried. It was weak. The words, indistinct. Sephiroth took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He could sit up. It was a simple thing. He’d walked all the way here. He could push himself a little farther.
Sephiroth forced himself upright, teeth grit against the sharp pain that pierced his side. The pain was enough to jolt him awake again. His vision danced with multicolored blots of light.
Angeal looked…stressed. Sephiroth couldn’t see him well through the darkness, but he saw the tension in his shoulders, his pale complexion, and the stiff posture of his silhouette. Was it all because of Sephiroth’s condition? Or was there another cause?
Sephiroth was startled out of his thoughts by a sharp whistle. It came from the kitchen. The stove. ”The tea,” Sephiroth said, wincing. He’d forgotten about it. Would it wake Genesis? He hoped not, but he didn’t know if he could reach it to stop the noise. He didn’t know if he could so much as stand.
He tried, but the movement was too much. He hissed in pain and fell back again, grasping his wound as he sank into the couch cushions. He could feel Angeal’s eyes on him. He could hear his chastising before he said it. He was too weak to prove it wrong.
[attr=class,bulk] The woman looked taken aback as though she had never considered his question. Did she really have no idea as to a motive?
She spoke. They were guesses only. Perhaps it was the shock of learning he was only an experiment. Perhaps it was that he’d been kept in the dark. It happened after he hadn’t slept for days locked inside the…
Shinra mansion.
He had a strange sense of the place – dark, mysterious, smelling vaguely of dust and mothballs. There was a stair down to the basement which creaked. And the basement itself…
Sephiroth breathed in slowly. He would ask Genesis. Or Angeal. Nothing good would come of following his thoughts alone.
The woman seemed more certain of her second answer though only slightly. She sat with her head down, looking almost guilty. ”If I have a chance to try and stop the past from repeating itself, I want to take it.”
Sephiroth watched her. So that was her concern.
”I don’t remember that day,” he said. There were flashes of fire and blood. A terrible feeling of dread. The reactor was involved, and the sickly blue-green glow of mako. It burned. His heart ached with something indescribable.
”But…I know that I was alone.” Angeal, dead. Genesis, gone. Which left…him. Why had they left him?
”I’m not alone anymore,” he said, looking to the sky. He didn’t wish to elaborate. His friends had their own enemies, and he had his. There was no reason to mix the two. ”Tell your friends that I’m not interested in mass destruction. Though if one of them attacks me again, I won’t hold back.”
She had “fought” him. She knew the Wutaian girl and the mad soldier. Her words would spread farther than others, he thought.
It was a fair warning.
”Thanks for the intel. I’ll keep it in mind.” He glanced at her and then started walking away. There was nothing more to discuss, he thought, and he had what he needed. Still, he felt himself slow as he passed her. There was still something there. Something that reminded him of the Wutaian girl.
’Sure! Cloud! He’s like our unofficial team leader. I say unofficial cause like obviously I’m in charge!’
Sephiroth smirked. ”You’re more level-headed than your teammates,” he said. ”Perhaps you should be the leader.”
With that assessment, he left, headed back towards the heart of the city and the apartment he shared with Genesis and Angeal. He thought it was good advice, at least. He’d been a general long enough to tell the difference between natural leaders and those too bull-headed to take orders. This woman would do better than the others he’d met, he thought. Though he doubted she would take his opinion to heart.
It was a strange day. A strange year. A strange life, perhaps, but he would not let himself fall to the temptations of his own mind. Not alone.
[attr=class,bulk] Sephiroth had no idea what was going through the woman’s mind. She was unreadable to him except in the broad strokes of her expressions. She was taken aback. There was some kind of realization. And then she dropped her guard.
She said that the Wutaian girl had been right. Sephiroth watched her, cold and incredulous. Was that some kind of joke? Was she mocking him?
She didn’t seem to be. After that comment, she sighed and sat on the bench that they’d both previously opted to ignore. She looked tired. It was as though the fight had left her entirely.
Sephiroth listened as she spoke. He was careful to keep his expression neutral and even throughout. Most of what she said was insane. Some of it fit. Assuming she was telling the truth, he had no doubt that Hojo would have done such a thing. No line was sacred to him, and he fell to mad science like a moth to a flame. It would explain his special interest in Sephiroth throughout his life – all the tests and the time locked alone in his laboratory. That, however, was the only part he could believe.
He waited for her to finish. Then he waited a moment longer in case she had anything to add. When she didn’t, he weighed his words carefully and finally said, ”I don’t think you’re lying.”
Not lying, no. She sounded too sincere, and the lie had no motive. Whether or not she spoke the truth, however, was…doubtful.
”Discovering this. That I was injected with alien cells. That’s what drove me mad?”
It was a more likely reason than confirming Hojo to be his father.
Still, he didn’t see it. Not if it had been explained to him like this. Not if he’d been in his right mind.
”I see,” he said again. ”I’ll…look into it.”
Angeal or Genesis might know something. He would ask them for their input. Maybe their explanation would be less unbelievable.
Even if he were to leave it at that, there was something that tugged at the back of his mind – an uneven edge, a lingering question. ”Why would you tell me any of this?” he asked. ”You say that I’ve hurt the people you love.”
[attr=class,bulk] The woman seemed…disappointed somehow. He didn’t know what she’d expected. He didn’t know what he’d expected either, but it wasn’t that she would turn to face him, look him directly in the eyes, and tell him that Hojo was his father.
Sephiroth’s eyebrows raised. His eyes widened slightly. He was taken aback if more by her demeanor than by what she said. He’d known – he’d always known – about Hojo. The disgrace of a man had always kept it their thinly veiled secret, and Sephiroth had staunchly looked the other way out of disgust. He wasn’t surprised, but that didn’t mean that he wanted to hear it, and once again he wondered as to how she knew any of this. Or how it was relevant.
She said that he’d burned down her home town.
The Wutaian girl had accused him of somehow trying to destroy the planet.
What did this have to do with Hojo?
He went on to say that his birth mother was a scientist he’d never heard of, and that he’d been injected with the cells of Jenova which was…nonsense. His eyebrows furrowed as he struggled to make sense of it. Why would he be injected with another woman’s cells?
Why did she look as though he might become violent?
She reminded him that he was his own person and that genetics didn’t matter. Sephiroth opened his mouth to answer, found no words, and then closed it. What was he supposed to say to that?
He was silent for several long, awkward moments before he simply muttered, ”I see.”
She seemed to have challenged herself to keep eye contact for as long as humanly possible. Sephiroth chose to look away. He didn’t want her to see the full range of confusion on his face.
Had he…burned down a town because Hojo was his father?
That didn’t sound right.
”The Wutaian girl said that my mother was ‘alien goo.’” Even repeating it sounded insane. ”Does that…have anything to do with this?”
[attr=class,bulk] The woman recognized the girl he spoke of. Yuffie. That was the name the Wutaian girl had given him. It seemed that she wasn’t as much a liar as he’d assumed. ’She fought you with us.’ There was a witness to the girl’s claims. Though that made her reckless behavior all the more unusual.
If the Wutaian girl had fought him once before then how could she face him alone with such confidence? She would have known what he was capable of.
The woman (had she told him her name?) also touched him as he spoke. That was…strange, but he allowed it. It seemed like it was meant to be comforting.
What was her relationship to him? Sephiroth couldn’t make sense of it.
Once he’d finished, she seemed to weigh his words. Then she turned her back to him, arms crossed, as she considered the sky. ”It’s a name I wish I didn’t know.”
He frowned. His mother’s name…? But why…?
She sighed and continued, back still turned. “What about Hojo?”
Sephiroth blinked. ”Hojo?” he asked before his lips soured and his eyes turned cold. ”He’s the director of science at Shinra.” The question felt like it could have been an insult. He was tempted to add that of course he knew Hojo. Sephiroth was in SOLDIER. He worked for Shinra. How did this woman expect that he wouldn’t know that name?
Then another thought followed. A far worse thought.
”Why?” Sephiroth asked cautiously, suddenly unsure of himself. ’Why ask me about Hojo of all people? Why ask now, directly after my mother?’
There was, unfortunately, an obvious answer – one that Sephiroth had suspected for some time and yet refused to really consider. If Jenova was his mother then Hojo was…
Sephiroth’s lips thinned. He failed to see how this was relevant.
It was strangely casual between them. An uneasy peace between potential enemies. Sephiroth had fought her friend and, whether successful or not, at least tried to put him down. He had by her own admission burned her home town and razed it to the ground. There must have been people she loved, places and things and people, all reduced to ash. Why then did she choose to walk with him? How deep did her well of secrets run?
If he had had the energy, he might have been on guard for a surprise attack from behind. He might have been, but he wasn’t. There was something about her that he trusted to an extent. He sensed no malice from her. Only pain and unease. His senses told him that she was not a threat, and that she knew the same.
There was still the potential for snipers, the Turks, or her crazed friend miraculously healed. He banished the thoughts. There could have been threats around any corner. There could have been, but he would go mad before he found them all. He would not live his life in fear.
He led them to somewhere open and uncrowded. A dog park. If she wanted a fight, he would see it coming, and the damages to the surrounding people and property would be low. They drifted near a bench though neither of them sat. It was beneath the shade of an oak tree with thick, wide-spreading branches. He watched the leaves tremble on the wind. Their colors were turning with the change of seasons. Time, it seemed, had not stood still.
The girl was ready to speak. He listened without looking at her. His eyebrows furrowed. ”My mother…”
There was that name again spoken from the lips of someone who should not have known it. Jenova. Why…? Why did it feel so…?
He winced and touched the side of his forehead. Something was pounding there, waiting to be released. His jaw set as he fought it back. He was alone. Exposed. He couldn’t lose his concentration now.
She was the second to say that name to him in that same, cautious way. As though they were provoking something. As though he might awaken like a sleeping dragon gone to rest. The first time had not been so subtle.
’Poor Little Sephiroth doesn’t remember? Well, let me tell you! Jenova! Yeah, bet you remember THAT name, right?’
”There was a Wutaian girl,” he said slowly, ”Who asked me the same. She said that I went mad. Something about destroying the planet.”
It had been hard to decipher what the girl had meant to say. She’d spoken nonsense. Or he had assumed it to be nonsense.
”That impossible,” he said bluntly. ”I have a sword. How would I…?” He laughed softly to himself. Why was he engaging with this? ”She was…enthusiastic. But what she said was insane.”
That was as far as he would consider a rant which called his mother a “space goop monster.”
”I’ve been told that Jenova was my mother’s name.” Sephiroth lowered his hand and looked at the woman in front of him. ”It’s a name that you shouldn’t know. That is what it means to me.”
[attr=class,bulk] At first, Sephiroth thought that the girl wouldn’t respond. It was clear that she considered him an enemy, and after what he’d done to her friend, he doubted she would be so willing to part with answers. Though she didn’t act like someone avenging the dead. She acted like someone sent as an envoy after hearing a story that she didn’t quite believe. Sephiroth had skewered the feral SOLDIER on his sword. After that, the swordsman had done himself in. Ultima. It was the final move of a truly desperate man. Sephiroth had lowered his guard in the moment of victory, and that had nearly been his undoing.
He knew the probability of the man’s survival. He knew his own instincts better. Here, speaking to this woman, they told him that the SOLDIER had survived. He wondered if he had ever truly believed otherwise.
He could sense him, somehow, in a strange way that he couldn’t identify. Another instinct, this one far stronger and at the very edge of his consciousness.
He didn’t fight it.
The girl thought for a moment and then stepped towards him, her voice lowered conspiratorially. ”Well, to start with. You found out some things about your past, and you didn’t take it well. You burnt down a town, and the town happened to be my home, and the town Cloud had grown up in.”
Sephiroth hummed in answer. He didn’t like how close she was. It felt like a threat and so he stepped away to keep his distance. He had heard about this town before. Nibelheim. Genesis had told him. Though he hadn’t mentioned the catalyst…
”My past?” he asked. From the way Genesis had told it, it had sounded like he’d just snapped one day after Angeal had died. He’d known there was more to it, but… ”What did I learn?”
His instincts told him that this was dangerous. His curiosity proved stronger. Everyone, it seemed, knew more about himself than he did.
What possible reason did she have to answer him truthfully?
”I’ve seen you before,” he said slowly. ”In Nibelheim.” He felt it to be true though he couldn’t place her in the churning fog of his memory. The people there were faceless and formless. There were only flames, metal walkways, and that terrible blue-green glow.
He touched his forehead, frowning. There was something there, prowling at the edges of his memory. A name. Something…
Sephiroth lowered his hand. ”We shouldn’t speak here,” he said. ”In case you choose to attack me.” There was the ghost of a joke somewhere in his words. The shadow of a smirk.
If they fought, he doubted it would take long to put it to an end, but there were people here. Witnesses. He didn’t need that kind of attention.
He turned and walked away. She’d approached him from the start. She’d follow him, he thought. Somewhere quieter with fewer opportunities for collateral damage.
[attr=class,bulk] The woman’s reaction was intense and emotional. It made Sephiroth uncomfortable, somewhere deeply buried beneath his impassive expression. There was once a time when such an outburst would have made him wince, where he would have muttered some kind of defense and tried to remove himself from the situation. But he was no longer a child, and he’d grown used to these kinds of accusations. ’You destroyed my life. You took everything from me.’
That did very little to narrow it down.
She stepped closer to him, eyes narrowed, fists curled, before turning abruptly and stepping away. People were watching them now. The crowd had parted enough to allow them space for their confrontation. More than a few onlookers were nervously edging away. Here, in this space, they knew all too well the casualties that could come from a battle of two strangers.
She took a deep breath. He watched her and said nothing.
She was unarmed but unafraid. She knew what he was capable of (or at least some fraction of it) yet she’d hardly hesitated to challenge him. She was either surprisingly skilled or overwhelmingly foolish.
She had a more careful look when she turned to face him again. She eyed him closely. ”What is the last thing you remember about Gaia?” she asked slowly. Sephiroth’s lips twitched. She was quick to shift from accusations to questions.
”The Wutaian War,” he answered truthfully. There were pieces after that -- Genesis’ defection, Angeal’s death -- all of them like disconnected snapshots in a half-remembered dream. He’d been told that he’d razed a town. There were pieces of memory there, he thought, none of them more substantial than a few grains of sand in an hourglass. After that, there was nothing but empty space.
”You’ve come to defend your friend,” he said. The crowds shifted, giving them an ever greater berth. ”He was crazed. He attacked without provocation.”
Sephiroth had seen nothing but feral madness burning in the swordsman’s mako eyes. He’d looked like a SOLDIER, but didn’t fight like one. It had felt strange yet familiar in a way that he couldn’t identify.
”You know why.” It was a statement of fact. ”Tell me.”
[attr=class,bulk] He couldn’t say what it was that drove him to the central town square. He’d been recognized too often as it was, and he knew better than to return to the scene of his attack without support. He knew better, and yet, as his mind wandered through the hours of morning, he found himself drawn there nonetheless.
He had questions that needed answers, and he had a feeling beyond all practical reason that his assailant had survived.
The square was in better condition than it had any right to be. Much of the debris had been swept away or stacked into piles awaiting disposal. More than a few of the nearby shops had opened their doors again, regardless of any boarded walls or shattered windows they had to contend with. As Sephiroth scanned the scene through the crowds, he could pinpoint the scars he had left behind. There were the cracks in the pavement left by the echo of his blade. There was the eight story building that had collapsed in on itself at the time of Angeal’s arrival. It was a battlefield reclaimed by the forces of commerce.
Sephiroth had been careless to come here.
He was dressed differently than before -- no longer in his usual black leather coat and pauldrons. Since the fight, he had dressed like a civilian more often than not, but he knew that he was recognizable all the same. He had the same long, silver hair. The same inhuman mako eyes. He may have switched out the remnants of his old SOLDIER uniform for a simple sweater, but he still carried his masamune sheathed at his hip since the incident with the mercenary at the coffee shop. Over one sleeve, he had a silver gauntlet inset with his remaining materia.
He was armed. He was distinctive. He had, in essence, returned to the scene of the crime.
Perhaps he had expected what happened next. He felt very little surprise when his name was shouted over the bustle of the crowds. Had he wanted this?
He might have, in some distant part of himself. Those he trusted would not give him answers. That left him with those who sought vengeance for the crimes he couldn't remember.
He let her push through the crowds. He watched her in his peripheral vision as he gazed instead at the sky. She was more cautious than the others had been, and far more willing to talk.
”Tell me what happened with you and Cloud. From start to finish.”
She sounded like a stern mother. Or what he imagined one must sound like if he’d had such a thing.
”Cloud? Was that his name?” He said the words slowly, testing them on his tongue. Cloud. The Wutaian girl had said the same. Had he heard it before? Maybe once. In a dream.
After a moment, Sephiroth turned and set his eyes on the woman. She was seemingly unremarkable. No obvious weaponry. No mako eyes. She looked particularly feminine with her long hair, earrings, and short leather skirt. She looked...familiar.
