For every road walked, there is a path not taken,
for every yes you say, there is a 'No' that remains unsaid,
for every choice you make, there is a maybe, a 'what if'.
This is the story of two maybe's, two 'what if's' merging into a possibility, a new beginning.
It starts with Xander Harris. With him being dumped on Valentines day. But in this time and place he didn't seek his own venegance on Cordelia. Instead he just swallowed his anger and hurt, his pain radiating outwards, calling forward Dan'Yarll, Patron saint of scorned men.
In another dimension a scientist is called away from his project unexpectantly. He leaves precise instruction for his collague... but in this 'what if' the other professor is too impartient. He starts the experiment too early... with an history rewriting result.
He looked at the small gift in his hands, wrapped into creamcolored paper with red ribbons, it had been his true valentines gift for Cordy. Xander had worked months to get the money together and now... he angrily whiped a tear from his check. He should have known, nothing good could last for him, no one would be there for him, forever.
"Hi," he looked up at the shy, stuttering voice.
A boy stood there, half a head smaller than Xander, dirty blonde hair and skyblue eyes. Xander had never seen him before.
"I'm Daniel, I'm new here."
"Hi," he couldn't help but noticed how tired his voice sounded, how sad.
Somehow Daniel got him talking, about his friends, his feelings and about Cordy.
"Don't you wish you could pay her back for what she did to you?" Daniel asked, with a strange glint in his eyes. "Don't you want her to hurt just like you are hurting."
Xander thought about it for a moment. Then he shook his head.
"No. Where is the use of such a wish. It won't make it stop hurting inside of me. If I could wish for something, I would wish for a second chance, a different life. It doesn't have to be an easy life, as long as there is someone that will never leave me, someone I can take care of and who would take care of me, someplace where I could be usefull."
Dan'Yarrl starred at him in open shock. In his 1500 years as a venegance demon he'd never had been asked such a wish. A wish completly centered around the wisher, not the one that had caused him pain. Hmmm... the boy was asking for another chance at life and it didn't have to be an easy one?? Decisions, decisions. Then he found it... it was perfect.
The venegance demon looked up at Xander, his face suddenly a distorted, demonic mask.
"So be it!"
Xander had no time to scream as his soul was ripped out of his body and flung through the dimensions. When his friends found him, hours later, his body was long since cold and dead and his stiff fingers still held the small package, his valentines present for Cordelia, a promise ring. She wore it from the day on when they buried him.
He couldn't wait. Patience had never been his strong suit. Sure fingers tapped against the syringe, filled with a glowing green fluid. His collague had said it was too soon, had left orders not to begin with the injections before the third month of her pregnancy, but he wasn't here now, had been called away to the headquaters and wouldn't return for four months. And he was the only one to know these orders. The only one to know and to ignore them. Deftly he injected the first dosis into the IV line of the sleeping woman. And he smiled.
In the womb of the woman, there was a small cluster of cells, something that was destined to become a child given time. And into the womb the glowing fluid spilled and attached itself into the genome of the cellcluster, changing it. The scientist, that had been called away, had known that in this state the cells of the unborn child were weak and that the child might not survive, but his collague was indifferent to this. The cells were struggling to survive inside their mothers womb and then, with a nonaudible 'pop' they split in two. Two tiny little cellclusters, where there had been one before and, changed by the first injection, able to survive the following shots. And one of the tiny clusters carried the soul of a boy that had been called Xander once.
Time went on and the tiny clusters of cells started to form into foetal beings. They were almost identical, but for their hair- and eyecolor. One of them had the beginnings of black fuzz on his head as well as a red glow shimmering through his closed lids, the others head was spreckeld with silvery down and his closed eyes were glowing green.
Then, one day, the eyes of the unborn children snapped open and for the first time they were seeing each other. Something happened in this moment. The minds of the two children reached out for each other. It was a communication without sound or images, yet both understood what the other was saying. *Brother* and *I will protect you*.
The tattooing gun stopped wirring and he looked at the symbol that was now displayed on the babies hand. His collague had wanted to give them numbers, but he had interfered. Had it been only one boy, then the number would have been fitting, proclaiming him the first of his race. But it wasn't only one boy and now the number was inappropriate. Instead he had choosen this symbol. One boy wore it on his right, the other on his left hand. As if they needed it to tell the difference between the two. Their different hair- and eyecolor, an effect of the injections he assumed, were more than enough to tell the difference. Purplish black hair and glowing eyes the color of garnet where the signs of Alexander, called such after Lucrecia's most cherished summoning materia. He was thirtyfife minutes older than his silverhaired and glowing emerald eyed brother, Sephiroth. Lucretia hadn't had the time to explain this choice of name, she'd died from the strain of birth. Professor Gast sighed and applied the healing balm to the childs hand, covering the symbol under a film of salve.
Two straight lines, connecting with two curved lines on top and bottom. The sign for the gemini, for twins.
*Seph?*
*Xand?*
*It hurts, Seph.*
*I know Xand. But if you can take it for a little bit longer, Gast will be here and we will be rid of Hojo for at last one week.*
A wave of warmth flooded Sephiroth's mind, the wordless gratitude of his brother. It was always like this, one of them would be hurt by the countless injections, drugs, tests and other experiments and the other would mentally hold him, talking him through all of this. Thankfully Hojo liked to concentrate completely on his tests and so the times when both of them were suffering at the same time were pretty rare.
Yesterday Alexander had been the strong one, the one to hold his battered mind as the Mako had ripped through his body, boiling in his veins. Today Xand was the one that was suffering and Sephiroth was the one to try and soothe his pain.
And tomorrow? Tomorrow hopefully would be painless, for tomorrow Professor Gast was coming.
The twins liked Professor Gast, at least he was treating them like children and not like numbers or labrats. Sometimes even, as an extraspecial treat, he would take them outside! Both Sephiroth and Alexander fondly remembered the last occasion. It has been two months ago, their fourth birthday and he had introduced them to the wonder that was ice-cream. A small smile fluttered over Sephiroth's face as he recalled that wonderfull day. For a few sweet hours he and Alexander had been normal children, celebrating their birthday with their guardian... until the time had come to go back to the ShinRa Mansion. Hojo had come and dragged him away to a new series of tests and he hadn't seen his brother for an entire week. If it hadn't been for the constant mindlink he had with Alexander, he would have gone mad with loneliness.
The mindlink... it was their most guarded secret, not even Gast knew about it. The scientists could poke them with needles and pump them full with Mako or other, creepy stuff, but they would never learn about the conection the twins shared. No doubt Hojo would try to experiment with it, if he ever found out and the twins feared nothing as much as permanet separation from each other. They only had each other and should they ever loose their special conection, both knew without doubt that they wouldn't survive... at least not sane.
Sephiroth looked up from his position on his bed when he heard footsteps, footsteps that were rapidly coming closer. That could only mean one thing... Hojo was finished for today, Alexander was coming back to him. The door of their room was opened abruptly and Alexander was shoved into the room, still weak and shivering from Hojo's injections. He frowned as he lead his brother to his bed. For Xand to be in such a state, Hojo had to at least double the dosis of Mako... which meant that he had to go through that soon as well. But not today and maybe not tomorrow.
Seph sighed and curled up next to his brother. 'At least' that was his last thought before he subcumbed to sleep, 'at least I am not alone.'
He grinned as he hugged the book to his chest.
*We've done it!*
The thought he send to his brother was smug and yet innocently happy. Happy, because now they would be able to read whatever they wanted and smug because they had managed to outlogic Hojo. Not a very simple feat, but together the brothers had managed to do it.
*Yes, Seph. We've done it! I just wish Gast would be here to see us now.*
The thought was heavily tinted by sadness and why shouldn't it, both twins were still terribly shaken by professor Gast's sudden death. Hojo had told them that it had been an accident, but neither twin trusted the mad scientist to tell them the truth. They both thought that it was far more possible that professor Gast had been taken out by Hojo himself.
There had been many arguments between the scientists in the last months before Gast's death, about the way how to work with the brothers. Professor Gast, despite doing less experiments on the twins, was having the better results, because the twins cooperated with him. He liked to tell them what he did and how he did it before his test and the brothers obeyed him if he ordered them to do something during his tests, because they trusted him. Hojo on the other side just jabbed them full with needles and never told them why he was doing the stuff he was doing and the brothers suspected that he was trying extra stuff with them whenever he could.
Also Gast had treatened them like children, terribly gifted children, but children none the less, while they where only speciems to Hojo.
And now Gast would never come back. He would never tell them stories or take them outside anymore, would never smuggle in sweets or books for them. Now only Hojo remained and they had noticed that the test had drastically increased in numbers. They had barley time to heal all the damage before being dragged out again. The assistants Gast had used, that had taken care of the twins in their testfree phases, had been replaced by people that were to Hojo's liking. Uncaring and unsuitable for rising children.
The twins hated it. They hated the tests, the uncaring assistants, that never even blinked an eyelash at their pain, the caretakers, who didn't showed them love or even the slightests ounce of respect, but most of all they hated Hojo, for they were only objects to him. Precious speciems, but yet only objects.
Together they swore an oath, to get free of him, to gain the respect they deserved and they swore to avenge themselves for all the pain he'd subjected them too.
Laughter was sounding through the gym and a small crowd was forming to watch the spectacle in the training hall. Two teenagers were facing against each other, one with a incredibly long sword, the other with twin katanas. Both were displaying swordwork that should have been impossible for boys of their age. It was like watching a dance, fluid and gracefull, like a force of nature did the boys fight each other through the room. None of the two were noticing the crowd they were drawing, they were too deeply imersed into their deadly dance. Their skills were evenly matched and both knew the advatagences and disadvatagences of their choosen weapons very well and so neither was able to overpower the other. The match ended in a draw and both contrabands stepped back and bowed to each other. The crowd stared to applaud. Then the boys stepped towards each other and to the big surprise of the spectators the black haired youth handed the long sword to his silver haired sparring partner, who in turn handed the twin katanas to him.
"It is a very well balanced weapon, Sephiroth, but I still prefere my twins."
The dark haired patted the twin katanas lovingly, before he placed them into their scabbards attached to his back.
"That's ok, Alexander. Your twins are great weapons, but I like my Masamune better." Silver hair was sweeped aside and the sword attached to special made clips that allowed him to carry the large weapon on his back.
The brothers shook hands and together they walked out of the room leaving behind a stunned crowd of cadets and SOLDIERs.
The cadets and other workers of ShinRa at the SOLDIER academy parted before them like the Red Sea. No one wanted to step into the way of the two highest ranking members of SOLDIER.
They made a rather striking picture, Sephiroth walking at the left side, his long flowing silver hair a sharp contrast against the black of his coat, the Masamune, famous, feared weapon that it was, clipped on his back. To his right, Alexander was striding, completely in sync with his brother. His purplish black hair was as long as Sephiroth's, but he kept it in a strict, long braid, that was decorated with three hairclasps, each carrier for several mastered materia.
Alexander's coat was of the same cut as that of his brother, but his was a brilliant white color. The twins had adopted the color sheme rather quickly at the beginning of the Wutai war, to optimize their visibility on the battlefield and then they had stuck with it. On his back he wore his weapons of choice, the twin katanas called Hikari and Yami after the decorations on their hilts. These two weapons were as famous and feared as his brothers Masamune and like the Masamune, only he and his brother where able to wield them.
The twins were walking in silence, which didn't mean that they weren't talking. They were using their twinlink to communicate, spectacualating about the next mission they were going to be sent on.
They didn't know it yet, but that mission would change their lives completely, for this mission sent them... to Nibelheim.
Someone was humming in the darkness. Not a song, not a melody, just toneless, tuneless humming. Hojo's assisstans had gotten used to this, even if it got on their nerves sometimes. But there was nothing they could do against the one that was making that noise, Hojo had explicit forbidden them to interact with this precious speciem. And so they tried to ignore the sound and walked a bit faster when they came along its cell.
The speciem itself was a girl, rather a young woman. She'd been captured as a toddler along with her mother. Later they had fled from Hojo's clutches, the mother had died that day. The girl had managed to hide in the slums of midgar for some time, but finally she'd been recaptured. The tattoo, that Hojo had branded her with, a big black 'C1' on the back of her left hand, had been her downfall. That and the greed of her adoptive mothers neighbour. He'd gotten 250.000 gil for the information.
Aeris had been fourteen. That had been three years ago. Since that deadful day she'd been through hell with no possibility to escape. Bloodsamples had been taken from her, too numerous to count, skin-, hair- and DNAdrafts and later, as she matured, her eggs. Last year Hojo had removed one of her ovaries and had frozen it, along with 25 of her eggs. Then he'd infused he body with Jenova.
She'd nearly died that day. The pain that had coursed through her had been beyond imagination. It had felt like her body was being ripped appart from the inside. Jenova, the crisis from the skies, the Cetra killer, had raged through her veins and only the fact, that her father had been human had saved her from a gruesome death.
A death she would have welcomed, for slowly, but surely Aeris had changed. The planets voice had become muted, until she no longer understood her old friends words, until she'd been left alone in her cold dark prison.
Hojo had been pleased that she'd survived her Jenovainjections and had started infusing her with Mako. The planets stolen liveblood, in combination with Jenova and her Cetra cells had twisted her body in unexpected ways. Her hair had darkened to ravenblack and her skin was bonewhite, yet it were her eyes that gathered the most attention, for her eyes had become a soild glowing green, as if somone had ripped out her original eyes and had replaced them with lifestream. She hated her eyes. To her they were a mockery, a reminder of what she'd lost, the ability to comunicate with her ancestors and the planet.
And still Hojo wasn't finished with her. More tests, more needles and always he, with his questions about the Promised Land. Ha, he had be furious when he learned that she no longer could comunicate with the planet, angry at himself and his curiousity what a sample of Jenova would do to a halfcetra. But he'd gotten over that loss. Aeris was still there and there were so many other things he could try out on her... nobody was missing her, he'd made sure of that.
Elmyra Grainsborough, the adoptive mother of the Cetra had been captured along with Aeris and turned over to him. He'd kept her locked up and just last month he'd planted two inseminated Cetraeggs into her womb. One each for of his most succsessfull speciems. He was rather curious how her eggs would interact with the sperm of the Jenova twins, was already preparing a battery of test he would do as soon as the children where born and also he would be able to use the children as bargaining chips with the rather rebellious speciems. Since the twins had become generals it had been rather hard to make them behave. He knew the twins, at least he thought he knew the twins and he was quite sure that they would submitt to his tests if only to safe their children some pain.
Aeris didn't know of this, she only knew that she'd been taken from her home by SOLDIERs and turned over to the devil in human guise. She'd been told that the one to give the information to ShinRa have recieved lots of gil. The insinuation made her believe that it had been Elmyra that had sold her out. And Aeris hated her for that. She hated quite a lot of things these days, her mother and father for giving birth to her and then dieing, humans, who had stolen the planet from the Cetra and had killed her people and most of all she hated Hojo, the one that took the planet from her.
But he would pay. They all would pay rather dearly. During the times when Hojo was occupied otherwise, Aeris was making plans. Plans to kill, torture and whipe out all Humans of the planet. They were bearing the first fruits, too. Slowly, cearfully she'd woven her net around Tseng, leader of the Turks. He'd been infused with lesser amounts of Jenova than her, but it was enough for some minor influences. The fact that he was almost in love with her was making it far much easier for her.
When she was finally out of ShinRa's torture chamber, she ordered Tseng to take her to the church one last time.
Aeris walked to the flowerpatch that someone had seemingly watered in her absence and touched the green. The flowers wilted under her touch and became black ashes.
She started to laugh, but ther was no joy in her laughter, only insanity and pain, as she left the church without looking back, ready to become the final weapon for Cetra. The Black Cetra, the poisonous Rose, Venegance of the Ancient.
And she would start her crusade where Jenova was calling for her, in a small mountain town going by the name Nibelheim.
Something was not right. The twins could feel it as soon as they saw the small town in the distance. Training and Evaluation missions were common and they had forgotten how many they had completed, but never here, never in Nibelheim. So why did the town felt so familiar to the generals? They, to their knowledge, had never been at Nibelheim before, so this feeling should be illogical and to be ignored
Also it was rather strange that they both had been dispatched to Nibelheim at the same time. Normally one of them would remain in Midgar as ShinRa's grorified guard dog and to keep an eye at the SOLDIER academy.
Fresh recruited boys often needed a strict hand and several times they had guided bullied boys to older, experienced members of SOLDIER, for them to be protected and to learn.
The last one, a shy and small blonde, had been personaly taken under Alexander's wing, the young general having been the first person in SOLDIER the boy was able to trust. It had been a painfull first month, before the blonde opened up to Zack, Sephiroth's best friend and then Sephiroth himself. It had ended with the generals taking the boy in, inofficially adopting him as their younger brother and it also ended with three recruits from the boy's hometown being send to jail for rape.
The boys were lucky that the generals didn't get to them first, for if there was something the twins despised, then it was rape. It was dishonourable, bad for the morale of the troups and it also reminded them too much of some of the things that had been done to them, when they had been younger.
The boy was now slowly opening up to others, having become friends with Zack, a Turk candiate by the name of Reno and, due to a chain of rather bizzare happenings, had managed to befriend Dark Nation, Rufus ShinRa's normally absolute loyal pet.
Actually, the men had theorized, from the way Dark Nation was behaving, it appeared that she thought of Cloud Strife as her cub... a cub that, in her eyes, definetly needed to eat more.
It was rather hard for the generals not to burst into laughter, when Rufus ShinRa started ranting about whatever food Dark Nation had managed to steal from him now. The Vicepresident of ShinRa was not used to his pets new behaviour and the fact that she regularly disappeared and taking rather large chunks of his gourmet food with her, was disturbing to him. If someone had bothered to ask Sephiroth or Alexander about that phenomen, they would have been able to tell them that Dark Nation would bring her stolen goods to a young, blonde recruit and then would sit down in front of him, looking at him with her big round eyes until he'd eaten everything. Those that knew him better had started to call the young blonde 'Nations Cub'. He let them, it was funny and the truth in a way. But who bothered asking the generals? No one and so the secret remained safe.
And right now Cloud Strife was more or less bouncing through the streets of Nibelheim, their unofficial tourguide thought his hometown.
A town that was getting more and more familar for the twins. And they had no idea why. It was rather irritating. Something was buzzing in the back of their brains, just like an annoying mosquito that they couldn't catch.
But then, as they walked past a bakery in the middle of the town, the twins both had a flash of memory. They saw a friendly laughing male face, heard the laughter of young children and could taste shadows of mint and chocolate on their tounges. This store, that face... this was the shop Professor Gast had taken them to, so long ago!
The twins looked at each other. From some discrete hacking they knew, that they hadn't been moved from their birthing place until after Gast died, and if Professor Gast had taken them outside here, then it would mean that this was the town of the birth, their hometown!
But why had it been kept secret from them? Why had they never been told? And why were they here now? Both of them, here, at the same time, it had to mean something! And most likely nothing good.
Someone was playing tricks with them and if there was something Sephiroth and Alexander hated, then it was dishonesty.
Unfortunately, while they had managed to find some answeres, they weren't closer to solving the puzzle than before.
The generals looked at each other and sighed, as they decided to let the mystery rest for a while. They had other things to do right know. A place had to be secured for their men and they had choosen the old ShinRa mansion as the perfect place. It only had to be cleaned of a few monsters and a lot of dust and cobwebs.
Both shared the thought that the place was most likely their birthing place, but they decided not to act on the information now. The needs of their troups were more important. They would follow the leads later... much later, after they had managed to secure their base of operation.
And tomorrow they would go uo the mountain, taking Cloud and another, hired civilian, as guides, to hunt for the dangerous Nibelwolves and maybe, if they were "lucky" they would find a dragon or two. It was time to teach the kids, just how sirious and how dangerous the life of a SOLDIER could be.
Where she went, animals and monsters fled and plants whilted. Before the experiments she had been a healer and had been able to grow plants everywhere. But now her abilities had been reversed, the healerhad become a destroyer. And destroy she would. Every single human inhabiting the face of the planet was doomed to die at her hands. Everyone.
The Planet was in pain. ShinRa had weakend its immunesystem and then Jenova had started to stir. The had been bad enough. But then SHE had appeared. The one that was but was not. She who was the antithesis of everything Cetra.
The Planet screamed in pain. But no one was left to listen.
It had taken longer to clean out the ShinRa mansion than the twins had excepted. There were far more monsters in the building than reported by the town's sources. Some they had let the troups take on, others were more dangerous and the generals had taken them on by themselves. They had to admit that it was fun, the stares of their men as they saw their leaders turning much feared creatures into as much as sushi.
Because of the workout their troups had had, the generals decided to give them the next day off, allowing them to explore the city. They would need their men in best form when they went into the mountains and right now several displayed signs of exhaustion and stress.
Also it would give the two the time to explore the mansion. Actually there would be five to search for the secrets of the building, because as soon as Zack had heard of Sephiroth's and Alexander's plans to uncover the secrets of the place, he'd voluntered himself to help them and were Zack was, Cloud and Reno weren't that far away. And so Reno had declared that he wanted to test his skills at the locked doors and safes of the mansion tomorrow and Cloud had said that he would visit his mother later, after the other recruits had stopped mucking around in his hometown. He'd blushed when he'd told the others that his mother had wanted to meet his friends, including the ones that had found out and stopped his torment at the hand of the other Nibelheim boys.
Alexander looked at his young charge, knowing the unsaid reason why Cloud wouldn't go to his mother, or through Nibelheim alone. There were three families whos sons were in Midgar, in jail for at least the next fifteen years. And while it was the boys own fault, he knew that Cloud had been a loner growing up and the blame was laid on him rather quickly. He sighed, as long as Cloud was with one of his friends, he would show his true self, the curious and happy teenager that he was, but as soon as he was seperated from them, he would become skittish and defensive.
So it was decided. The five would go over the mansion with a finetoothed comb tomorrow. But first... first the twins went out and bought two tubs of ice-cream, one mint, one chocolate, to share with their friends and to celebrate the memory of the only father figure they ever had.
Reno was glaring at the safe that, so far, had resisted all his charms. If Tseng could see him now, he would get the scolding of his life. This was an old safe, with a simple combination lock, so he should have been able to open it in fife minutes tops. It had already been eight minutes and the damned safe was still closed. He was getting pissed at that useless piece of junk. This was inacceptable, his honor as a Turk candiate didn't allowed him to admit defeat. Maybe if he turned the wheel a bit father to the right side? The loud 'click' was a big relief for his pride and with a florish he opened the door.
Zack bounced forward, curious, until Sephiroth's glare stopped him. They had said beforehand, that Reno would get first pick of the contents of the safe and now Zack had to wait until Reno was ready.
"Well let's have a look at this," Reno pulled out several familar looking round globes... materia.[1] He held one, a red summon materia, up and peered inside.
"Hmmm, that's an Odin summon, nice."
The next one was green.
"That's Destruct."
Again a red one.
"He, Alexander, are you named after the summon? 'Cause I have your namesmate here."
A blue one.
"An All materia. Pretty useful those things."
The next one was green. Reno looked inside and paled. He turned to the others and held out the materia to the generals.
"I think one of you should take this one."
"What is it?"
"Ultima."
The others gasped. Everyone had heard of Ultima, the strongest attack spell materia there was. It took a look of willpower to cast Ultima and many who had tried had killed themselves while trying. If anyone could use the Ultima materia, it would be one of the Generals.
The twins looked at each other and after a short, silent conversation, Alexander took the green materia, then he twisted his braid to reach the lowest of the three hairclasps, removed one of the mastered materias from its slot and equipped the unmastered Ultima instead.
There were several other materias, but nothing as spectacular as the first few Reno had found. They shared them, Reno having first pick decided to take the Odin summon and a Lightning materia. He really loved electric attacks and was looking for a weapon that would allow him to primary use that element. Zack took the All materia and a Restore one, Cloud got the Alexander summon and an Enemy Skill materia and Sephiroth took the Destruct materia and refused to take any of the remaining ones, he didn't needed them, because he already had mastered versions of them. Alexander picked an Exit materia and put the remaining ones, a Chocobo Lure, an Enemy Lure, a Luck Plus and a Gil Plus materia into a small bag. Maybe he could use them as a reward for some of the recruits later, even if Zack was joking that he should give the Chocobo Lure to Cloud, since he already looked halfway like a Chocobo with his hair.
When they checked the safe to see if it was really empty, they found a key, hidden under some old, musty paper. A key, but where was the door?
Three hours and a lot of dust and cobwebs later they found a locked door in the basement.
The room behind the door was musty, dark and scary with its coffins. Cloud gained a certain greenish tint, when the first four coffins were opened and they saw the mutilated skeletons lying inside.
The fift coffin contained the real suprise. A man. A sleeping man. Better, a man who had been asleep until Zack's loud yell of "Holy shit!" woke him. He opened his eyes and now everyone couldn't help but stare at him and then at Alexander.
For he and Alexander looked almost exactly the same. [2]
The man in the coffin blinked and that was all the time Alexander needed. He stepped back into the shadows of the room and with the help of a manipulation materia he'd equipped into the top hair-clasp he hid his presence from everyone in the room except his brother.
Zack, Cloud and Reno knew this tactic, having seen the twins employ it before and so they didn't react to Alexander's disappearance, behaved as if he had never been there.
Vincent rubbed his eyes, looked at the group again, hadn't there been fife of them? And the one that was missing now a carbon copy of himself? He shook his head. Obviously his mind was playing tricks with him.
The silverhaired man, obviously the leader of the group, stepped forward.
"Who are you? And what are you doing here?"
For the tenth of a second Vincent played with the thought of attacking the group and fleeing from the room, but one look at the people in front of him made him drop the idea. They all carried the symbol of ShinRa and from the Mako glow of their eyes he knew that the tall silverhaired one and the one with the spiky black hair were trained SOLDIERs. From the way his danger sense was reacting, he would say that they were rather high ranking SOLDIERs. So the best option was to play along, for now.
"My name is Vincent. Vincent Valentine. I was sealed into this coffin by Hojo after he'd finished his experiments on me. Since I couldn't open it myself I drifted into a hibernating sleep. Which year do we have now?"
The blonde boy told him the date and he shook his head in astonishment.
"Twenty-five years. I've been asleep for twenty-five years!"
Something seemed to click in the redheads head.
"Wait a minute! You say your name is Vincent Valentine. And you have been here for 25 years?"
He nodded.
"You are 'Silent Death' Valentine!"
The boy looked at him with admiration.
He frowned at the old nickname. Even after such a long time he couldn't get away from it.
"You know of him?"
The silverhaired one looked at him, speculating.
"Know of him? Damnit Seph, he's a Legend! He was the best leader the Turks ever had, the best Turk ever! Like every SOLDIER hopes to be as good as you or your bro', every Turk tries to become as good as him! 'Silent Death' has become a title of honor, but no Turk has been able to gain it, so far. Tseng is closest to gaining it, but even he will need two or three years till he's good enough to try for it."
The boy frowned for a moment before he continued.
"Silent Death Valentine himself vanished 25 years ago and was assumed dead along with several SOLDIERs and several civilian members of ShinRa. He was guarding a top secret experiment at the time, I think."
Vincent sighed and stood up, walked to the coffin in the upper left corner.
"Bennett O'Shear, SOLDIER second class, 27 years old. He was the first to go. He lasted one and a half weeks in Hojo's little experiment, before his cells turned against himself."
The upper right corner.
Skylas Cheng, SOLDIER second class, 30 years old. He lasted two weeks."
The lower right corner.
"Marius Irare, SOLDIER second class, 25 years old. He lived for twenty-one days."
The lower left corner.
"Lux T'denum, SOLDIER third class, 21 years old. He was the bravest of them all. Hojo had done everything right and all he needed was the last injection to finish his project. Lux decided to end it his way. I don't know how, but he managed to get free and to a weapon. He decapitated himself."
His hand slid over the dusty surface of Lux's last resting place. For a moment he soaked in the silence before continuing.
"I was the last one left. He made sure nothing could interfere, that time. It worked like he had predicted, but then he'd a problem. He knew as soon as he let me go I would kill him and take my children out of this hell. Hojo couldn't allow this to happen, so he sealed me into this coffin. I think he hoped I would die or go insane."
He had wandered over to his place of rest for the last 25 years. It seemed so unreal now. He bend down and reclaimed his gun that had laid at his side for so long. It was time to finish what he'd tried to do such long time ago. Twenty-five years. That meant that he was 52 years now and his boys... his boys were 25 now. He had missed so much of their life already. As soon as he'd killed the beast in human guise that was Hojo he would search for them. He owed it to them.
A hand was placed on his shoulder. He looked up to find the silverhaired man next to him.
"Tell us more about the project you were guarding."
Vincent closet his eyes and sighed. He owed it to them, they had released him.
And so he told him how an archaeological team had found a two thousand year old creature, preserved in the eternal ice of the Northern Crater. How they assumed that it was an ancient, a Cetra and how it was decided to infuse an unborn child with the cells of that being.
How one of the scientists, one Lucrecia DeVries volunteered to carry the child. And about the problems they had finding the perfect male donor.
"To his dismay Hojo was unsuitable, his spermcount to low and his body and DNA contaminated with dangerous substances. Gast refused, claiming that his DNA was not good enough for the project, but we all knew that he wanted to remain faithful to his wife. The scientist decided that taking the sperm of a SOLDIER was to risky, with all the Mako they were exposed. And finally they choose me."
He smiled as he lost himself in the memories.
"I still know how I met her the first time. She was to young and shy and beautiful."
Vincent sighed.
"The scientist had planned everything out, had said that they had thought of everything. They thought of everything, but one thing: they never expected Lucrecia and me to fall in love. But how could I not? She was perfect, a mind sharp as steel in a body that only looked fragile, but wasn't.
"When we found out that she was pregnant, we wanted to leave the project, but by the time we were able to speak with Gast, his assistant, Hojo, had already infused her with the Jenova-Cells. The egg had split in result, had started to work the Jenova-DNA into their own gnome and now the children needed the infusions or they would die. So we continued."
He hung his head as he remembered the final day.
"She went in labour too early, more than a month too soon. Everything was happening so fast. Scientists running around and her screams audible in the entire complex. Lucrecia had been weakened by the infusions, her body couldn't handle the Jenova-Cells. She died after having given birth to the twins.
"Then everything happened so fast. Gast's wife had a miscarriage and he left to be with her. Hojo remained, in charge of everything. I had returned from Lu's favourite place, having buried her there and demanded to see my children. He refused. We had a fight and several others got involved. That night Hojo gassed our rooms. I don't know what he did with the civilians, but the SOLDIERs that had taken my side are lying here, hidden away by the man that murdered them."
"You are going to search for your sons, are you?"
The shy blonde asked, bringing him back to reality.
He nodded.
"How will you do that? I mean, its been 25 years for Holys sake!"
"I will find them! Daniel Gast is a good scientist, but he's lousy at protecting his data. All I need to do is hack his computer to find out what happened with my children."
"Professor Gast died 17 years ago, his records were sealed and his data given to the new head of the science department."
The voice of the silvermaned man was cool and almost monotone.
"And even if you find the location of your sons, how do you plan to make them believe you? DNA-tests are out of question, they were obviously manipulated on the cellular and DNA level before being born and your own DNA has been affected by the experiments done to you."
Vincent stilled for a moment.
"That might be true, but there is something both of my children have, a small oddity of my bloodline."
He used both his human hand and the golden claw Hojo had gifted him with to sweep the hair from behind his left ear. Then he turned his head.
Right behind the shell of his left ear there was a birthmark, normally covered by the flowing hair. A birthmark in shape of a five-pointed star, not bigger than half an inch in diameter.
"I am from the Etowa-ru[*] clan, of the Hokushin[*] line to be exact. Every male of my families bloodline has this birthmark, my father, brother, uncles and cousins. My sons have it, too. When I became a Turk, I had to give up my family-name and identity, but as long I carry the Hokushin star of the Etowa-ru clan I will always be welcome at home."
He'd seen enough, heard enough.
Alexander had watched the man interacting with the small group like a tactician a chess game, had played with the pieces of information he gained like they were stones on a Go board.
The man, this Vincent Valentine was speaking the truth, everything was fitting together. And now he was having the evidence he needed to confirm his conclusion.
Silently he dropped the illusion and stepped out of the shadows.
*He speaks the truth, Seph.*
*But can we trust him, Xand?*
*I monitored his heart-rate and breathing when he spoke of ShinRa and Hojo. His hatred for Hojo is equal to ours. And he really loves his children. I think that it is worth the risk.*
*Then let's do it.*
"You will not need to search any further, Mr Valentine."
Alexander stepped forwards and twisted his braid aside, to uncover the small birthmark behind his ear. His brother was using a single sweeping gesture, to free the patch of skin from its silver hideout.
"As you can see, my brother and I both carry the star."
When HE stepped seemingly out of nowhere, Vincent's heart started racing. It was HIM. The one he'd believed to be an illusion. But he obviously wasn't.
He stopped next to the man with the silver hair and the similarities between the two answered all his questions, before he could ask them.
'Mine... My children... my sons... '
His mind was singing.
˜My cubs˜
Came from the corner of his mind where the demons lived, but he was to happy to silence them.
For they were here. Tall and strong and warriors in their own right, but still... they were his sons.
And when they presented him with the star, the evidence, he did something he hadn't done in a long time.
He sat down on his closed coffin and then...
Then Damarikomu[*] Hokushin wept.
She was close. So close, that she could almost taste it. One more day, maybe two, and she was there. And then humans would learn the true meaning of fear.
It was rather disturbing how easy it was to hide a grown man from the eyes of their troops. Some small usage of a manipulation materia, some quick orders and viola, Vincent Valentine was as good as invisible. Those that did capture a glimpse of the man, believed him to be their General, the similarity of the two being helped by the fact that the twins dressed their father up in one of Alexanders coats. Only the golden claw was disrupting the illusion and Vincent was able to hide it, the few times that he was spotted.
In the back of his mind Sephiroth made a note to train the recruits in the ways of destroying manipulations... but later, after Vincent was on his way to his homeland and they had made their visit to a family they didn't know anything about... yet.
But right now he and Alexander were teaching the troops about another, very important thing. They were teaching them about their own mortality.
The coffins in the Basement were playing an important role, their finding them and bringing them into the open made the cadets think. One day, they knew, one day they might have to bury one of the young men they where teaching now and every means to teach them to be careful and paranoid was ok. Also they were able to send the mortal remains of the four SOLDIERs home to their families, answering questions and closing wounds that had been open 25 years.
With the coffins of the four SOLDIERs, they also brought Vincent's empty one and send it to his ancestral home, as well as a letter. That way they could make SHinRa believe, that Vincent Valentine was dead.
Hojo would bitch about the removal of his specimen before he could have one last look at it, but the fact that this experiment had been illegal should stop him from whining to the president.
There was a short ceremony for the souls of the dead and then the generals send for the guide, to lead them into the Nibel mountains.
He couldn't believe it. Of all the guides Sephiroth and Alexander could have hired, they had to hire her! Tifa Lockheart! The most popular girl in town, the mayors daughter and the reason why he had left Nibelheim in the first place.
The other 'popular' kids in Nibelheim had decided to make his life hell, ever since the day when he rescued he from her own foolishness. Why did she have to climb the most dangerous mountain of the area and without the right gear! He'd gone after her, had rescued her when the bridge fell and had brought her unconscious body to the doctor. He'd been seven at the time and he'd bleed as much as her, but he'd remained conscious. The adults had been quick to lay the blame. Suddenly it wasn't her recklessness, her stupid idea to climb the mountain that was a fault, but him. He was the outsider, ever since his dad had died and it was easy to lay the blame at his feet.
Cloud never played with the other kids after that day. When he came too close to them, they threw rocks at him or beat him up, when he got a pet, they disembowelled it and dropped the warm carcass on his doorstep. Books became his best friends, books and the mountains. There was no rock in this region he hadn't climbed upon, no cave he hadn't pocked his nose into. If not for the fact that he was here as an recruit and to learn something, he would have been the guide, but instead, it had to be Tifa.
He watched her walking towards the generals and frowned. She wanted to guide them dressed like this? A short T-shirt that did nothing to protect her from the cold weather in the mountains, but displayed her impressive chest size at its best, shorts, that showed off her legs, but were useless otherwise. Every bit of scrubbery, each piece of sharp rock would be a danger to her, while climbing and to think that they would test themselves against Nibelwolves today... he shook his head. Tifa had obviously dressed up to impress. Cloud knew that she, like thousands of other girls, had a raging crush on the twin generals. In fact, he'd heard her bragging, that one day she would marry one of them! [3]
Since he had met and become friends with the twins, he knew that all her tries would be for naught, since the last thing Alexander and Sephiroth wanted, was a shallow girlfriend, that only wanted them because of their looks and the stories they had heard about them.
Cloud couldn't see Sephiroth, but if his face was like Alexander's then he was glaring at the prattling girl with all his might. He saw the subtle straightening of Alexander's posture and like every recruit that had seen the generals in action, he knew that Tifa was in for a good scolding.
But then everything happened so fast.
When she entered the town, the first thing she saw was THEM. SOLDIERs, she hated SOLDIERs. They had come and had taken her from the only home she'd known in her life.
The voice in her head spoke to her, lured her into a cocoon of sounds and whispers. 'If she hated the SOLDIERs so much,' the voice said, 'then she should punish them. Make them hurt like she did.'
Aeris smiled. Mommy always had the best ideas.
They were just getting ready to give the guide a dressing down SOLDIER-style, when it happened.
There was a whistling sound and several of their recruits weren't fast enough, when the firespell slammed into their troops. The screams of the wounded and the moans of the dying hung in the air as the generals whirled around.
The first thing Alexander did, was using his cure materia to cast Curaga and thanks to the all materia linked to it, the wounds of the injured started to heal. Then Sephiroth used a combination of barrier materia and all materia to cast Wall on their troops and themselves.
Only then they faced the enemy.
It was a girl. Or maybe a young woman, in a pink dress and a red jacket. She was holding a staff, but it looked like she didn't really needed it. Tongues of fire were dancing around her, like living beings.
And she was talking in a singsong voice.
"You are them. Firstborn. Mommy's dearest. But you can't hear her, naughty boys, don't hear mommy's voice, just each other. And mommy stopped trying, stopped talking to you, she had me."
She giggled.
"I didn't hear her. The planet spoke to me. My friend. Until the men came. Bloodmoney paid. They gave me to him. There where needles and pain and the voice of planet dissolved into nothing."
A disturbing sight. She was smiling while tears spilled out of her green glowing eyesockets.
"He gave me another voice, the man with the funny name, he gave me another mother. Mommy talks to me all the time. And I listen, I'm a good girl. Good girls do what their mommies say to them. Mommy says that humans hurt us, humans are bad. And now we will hurt those that hurt us."
The fire around her floated higher, forming a giant rose, before exploding and drenching the entire town, turning it into a red inferno.
For a moment time seemed to have stopped. As if the entire scene was frozen in eternal ice. Then reality snapped back and Sephiroth started shouting orders, using his water [4] materia to drench the flames, while his troops started evacuating the houses.
Alexander started attacking the girl, but she was magically well protected and none of his spells had any effect on her.
The girl pouted as the first attack branded against her shields, then she used a combination of despell and ice spell to attack the SOLDIER recruits again. The effect was destavating.
Angry now, Alexander closed in to attack again, but she started moving as well, running away from the town, up to the mountains. The entire time she was smiling and prattling about her mommy and the man with the needles and what he'd done to her. Some of her descriptions made Alexander flinch, made him remember thing he and his brother had to endure when they were younger, but he couldn't show mercy to this girl, she'd attacked his men without any reason to and he knew that there would be several, that had been too far gone for his curaga to take effect. Alexander hated loosing people.
His brother was hunting the culprit and Sephiroth knew, that it would be only a matter of time before the girl in pink would die. Right now he'd other things to worry about. The last spell combination the girl had used had killed about a third of his men and while he had a phoenix summon equipped in his Masamune, he'd left the revive materia at home, it should have been a simple mission and he'd believed that he wouldn't need it. He could use the phoenix summon, but phoenix was always surrounded by fire. And while his aquaga spell had put out most of the fires, there where several, that were still burning. Could he risk it?
He was developing a headache and the fact that he was using the twinbond to listen what the insane creature was telling his brother didn't help. In fact it only made him want to go, find and tie up Hojo before he slowly disembowelled him with a rusty knife.
*Seph?*
*Xand? What is wrong?*
*The girl has gained access to Jenova. I will need to do something to stop her and it will be dangerous. I need you to focus on the task at hand and don't worry. I will come back.*
*Alexander, what does that mean? ALEXANDER!*
But his brother didn't answer.
Then he felt it. At the edge of his awareness he felt his brother concentrating on a spell. Then he knew.
Alexander was casting Ultima.
And the reactor exploded.
He was floating. The glowing green fluid of the lifestream surrounded him, cocooned him, kept him from harm. Curious. Normally the Mako of the lifestream should have poisoned him to the brink of death, he should know, but this time something was protecting him.
#Is that him?#
He tried to turn to the voice, but he'd no control over his body. It was like he was completely caught in a spider's web.
#One of them, yes.#
Another voice.
#He doesn't look so dangerous.#
The first voice stated and if he'd been able to say or do something, he yould have proved his dangerous nature to the speaker... not dangerous! Ha! He felt insulted.
#Feel him, he carries the Crisis in his veins. He is a true child of Jenova.#
Jenova?! The Jenova that had been in the Nibelheim reactor? The thing that the girl had claimed to be her Mommy? And the voice had said that he was her child? NO WAY! Yes, he was infused with her cells, but his true mother had been Lucrecia, not some blue-skinned, tentacle waving, alien thing!
Obviously the two voices were able to hear his loud thoughts.
#He can hear us!#
The first voice noticed astonished.
'Hear you? Of course I can hear you' his mind scolded the two voices, 'You are so loud that it won't surprise me if you wake the dead!'
#Sorry.#
The first voice answered castised.
#We weren't sure you could hear us.#
The second voice was similar meek.
'Obviously I can. And I get the feeling that you two want something from me, correct?'
#Yes, that is true. But we need to know something first. The girl, that attacked you and the others said that you don't hear the voice of Jenova, but your twin. Is that correct?#
'I never heard any other mindvoice, but that of my brother. We comunicated with each other since before our birth and our mental bonds made it possible to survive the pains of our youth without going insane, a feat the girl couldn't repeat, I fear.'
#Yes, sadly it is true. Aeris has moved beyond our reach and even the Planet can't speak to her anymore. But what is worse is the fact, that she was the last protector, the last living Cetra and meant to undo the damage Jenova and ShinRa did to the Planet.#
'You must be joking! She's utterly mad and has plans to completly whipe out any life on the Planet!'
#We know that. But what I meant was that she was the last one able to speak with the Planet, she was the last hope of the Cetra people and now she's lost to us.#
'And what does that all have to do with me?'
#Well, since you and your brother already have a mental connection and know how to live with it, we wanted to ask you if we could create a bond between the two of you and the Planet.#
'WHAT??'
#The Planet is dieing, Jenovachild. Everyday ShinRa destroys a bit more of it's immunesystem and now, with Jenova awake and Aeris as her avatar, death is getting closer and closer. We saw you two, protecting, fighting for other humans, even if you had only needed to protect your own people. Right now, we are desperate for help. While you and your brother are children of the Crisis of the Skies, you don't follow her ideals. And you are strong enough to stand against her. Please, we are desperate.#
'Let me talk with my brother first.'
*Seph, were you able to listen into the conversation?*
*Yes, Xand.*
*What do you think about it? I need your oppinion.*
*Aeris is our enemy. And if I understood correctly, she will appear again one day. Anything that could help us defeat her shouldn't be refused. Accept the offer, Xand.*
*Thank you, Seph.*
'Did you heard, what he'd said?'
#Yes, Alexander, we heard his acceptance.#
'Then go for it. Links us to the planet!'
#Thank you, Alexander.#
That was the last he heard of the voices. The next thing he and his brother felt was the feeling of a mental finger touching them in their brains. And then the colors came... and the songs, the images that went beyond mortal words to discribe and the voice, the male, yet female, deep but higher than the highest soprano voice, the voice that consisted out of a coral of millions of voices, but was one voice alone. The voice of the Planet. And it was welcoming his children home.
How had it come to this? A rather bedraggled feeling Vincent asked himself. One moment he saw the explosion that started the fires and had transformed into the galian beast to be able to fight without being recognized, the seemingly next moment he had three children riding on his back, one was pulling at his horns, another at his tail and he was herding several other children away from the fight. He didn't know when he had been declared official babysitter, but now he was... if only that redhead friend of his sons would stop laughing at him!
He hadn't spoken a word since they had come to clean up that mess. It was a breach of working protocol, but somehow Rude was very glad that Sephiroth remained silent. His eyes were bad enough. He was quite sure that people would start to die if he opened his mouth right now.
How could a simple mission turn so quickly into desaster? Rude had no idea, but from the snippets he'd heard from the cadets and civilians, the general and his brother had saved the town from a far bigger catastrophe. Distracting the enemy and using every unce of magic to save their men and the civilian population of Nibelheim. And general Alexander had most likely not survived.
Sephiroth was silent, as he entered the helicopter, only once he leaded to the young Turkcandidate and whispered something into his ear... an order most likely, but otherwise he spoke no word. Neither on their way to the headquaters and his lips remained a thin, sealed line as he entered the ShinRa tower. He was like silent death and he was here to distribute his dark gift to all those that would hear his voice.
Rude wished Tseng back, he wasn't fit for the job of Turkleader, he hated talking and he had the feeling that a big part of Tsengs job was talking to the higher ups at ShinRa. But he was the most senior Turk after Tseng and so he was stuck with the job until a new leader was officially declared.
He watched silently, as Sephiroth stepped out of the elevator and stalked to his private rooms. Somehow he doubted that the man would find sleep this night.
Quintus Superbus Shinra had not slept much that night. His rest had been overshadowed with reports of the fight in the mountains of Nibelheim, the loss of one of his reactors, as well as the possible loss of one of his generals. And he had no idea who was to blame. He needed a scapegoat to unload the responsibility on or the ShinRa would suffer an immense loss of publicity. In these times, when single individuums were starting to stand up and preach against the concern and his mako technology, every small bit of information could start a wildfire of protests.
And so president Shinra sat in the conference room, waiting.
Reno's night had been long, too. After he'd dug through some databases he shouldn't have access to and finding out tons of interesting stuff, he'd spent the final hours of the night briefing Sephiroth on the fun facts he'd unearthed.
The general had not slept a single minute the night, too, something that Reno had seen happening before, without the general showing any ill effects, but sometimes, that night, he looked like his mind was ten thousand miles away.
Reno didn't knew it, but Sephiroth was transmitting his findings to his brother, was listening to his ideas... and the voice of the Planet. It was a bit distracting, the Planet was often using music or colours or a wave of emotions to communicate. Sometimes the voices in his head managed to overwhelm Reno's and he had to concentrate very hart to force the volume down.
At the end of the night, a rough plan had been constructed and now they only had to wait and prime the bait. Old man ShinRa would do the rest.
He watched them enter the conference room, Kyle Reeve and his chief of staff, who were here for details about the damage of the town and the reactor, Heidegger, Scarlet, Hojo, because he had the feeling that one of them was responsible for the mess, his son, Rufus and his pet/bodyguard, vice president of ShinRa inc and then, the last, general Sephiroth, who was stopped in the door by two young cadets, which were delivering folders.
President ShinRa looked at them, trying to remember where he had seen them before. One of them, the red-head, was a candidate for the Turks... Reiner.. Rinjo.. or something like that. The other one was one of the generals special ones, as they were called. From time to time one of the generals would pick, seemingly at random, one of the cadets and take them under their wings. All such trained cadets became top level SOLDIER's and so every special one was a welcome addition to the troops.
He gestured for them to enter, deciding that he could use their opinions as well, for, if he remembered correctly, both cadets were eye-witnesses of yesterdays massacre.
Sephiroth placed the folders on the table in front of him. Two folders, that would take care of Hojo. When he was younger, he had read the expression that, if you gave someone enough rope, the person would use it to hang him/herself. Hojo had done more than that. With the seemingly unlimited freedom he had gained after the mysterious death of Professor Gast, he had created a bomb. A bomb he was embracing, that was just counting down the last few seconds 'til its explosion.
He couldn't wait for Hojo's destruction, but first, he had a role to play.
Numbers were Kyle Reeves domain. Statistics about everything imaginable. But what he was listen to now took all the joy from his work. It was one thing to look at a printed number on paper and a total different on to hear about the loss of people and houses, to bare witness to the detailed description of the total destruction of an entire town. Reeve felt sick. Sometimes during Sephiroth's report he had to force himself to suppress his urge to vomit onto the conference table.
And all that had been done by one creature. A creature that the general described as very powerful and absolutely insane. He shivered at the combination.
Sephiroth had watched them carefully as he told them the tale. Their faces were pale and drawn, they were ready for the final facts before the explosion.
"When I returned, I started searching for information on that creature, ordering cadet Strife and cadet Reno to do the same. This is what we found."
He threw one of the folders in the middle of the table. The force behind the throw opened the folder, spilling its contents on the conference table.
Photographs, diagrams, sheets covered with scientific equations and reports, the life of C1 a.k.a. Aeris Grainsborough since her capture.
"These are all information we could find on C1, as she was called by the scientists. Until her capture by ShinRa forces, three years ago, she was, of all things, a flower girl. A psychological profile done shortly after her capture showed her as a passive, peace loving girl. That is obviously not true anymore. C1 is insane, plain and simple. Whatever had been done to her made her hate humans, all humans, but those associated with ShinRa the most. Despite her insanity she is able to cast spells, several at the same time and all without the help of materia. Her power to manipulate spells and to draw them from seemingly nowhere makes her an enemy that could do serious damage to all things ShinRa. And yet, despite her dangerous nature, nobody seemed to deem it necessary to inform SOLDIER or the Turks of her escape. In fact, no one was informed except the head scientist and nothing was done to recapture her. She escaped three weeks ago! Three weeks and we weren't given a single warning. We could have prepared for her, but instead this noninformation-politic allowed a massacre to happen!"
He stood and his fury formed an almost visible aura of menace around him. Anger at being left out of the information-loop, of having to fight without knowing anything about the enemy, of having lost so many of his recruits and civilians and of probably having lost his brother. The last wasn't true, but the others in the room didn't know it.
They were afraid of him now, finally realising what kind of force he would be if he were to turn against them. And now he had reason to do so, now that his brothers death could be announced every second, but at last, they had a name they could pin the blame on for this disaster.
Two days after Prof. Hojo's arrest, Alexander was found in Mideel, showing all signs of heavy mako poisoning, as well as several broken bones. But he was alive and, given time, would make a full recovery. Those that had witnessed Sephiroth's rising temper were relieved, since the general was visibly calming down since the finding of his twin.
One week later, Elmyra Grainsborough was released into the custody of the generals, who had found out about the insemination and had demanded to be able to raise the children as their own. Since they were the most stable and suitable choice, nobody tried to protest or fight them on that matter, since there were worse problems to be solved.
Hojo had escaped prison with the help of several, loyal to him, lab workers. He had vanished from sight and was continuing his mad experiments, now no longer caring about the health or survival of his human guinea pigs. Something inside him seemed to have stopped working and he had lost the last bits of ethics and morale he had before. He only lived for destruction now, destruction and revenge.
Three months after the Nibelheim massacre Hojo managed to abduct Zack and Cloud, one week later his men captured Reno. Since he knew that attacking the twins directly was impossible, he had decided to attack them through harming their friends and as many SOLDIER recruits he could get his hands on.
When the Laboratory war raided, half a year later, they found 25 survivors, Cloud, Zack and Reno were among them. They all were in terribly physical condition and had to stay in hospital for quite a while... with one exception: For the duration of the naming ceremony of Sephiroth's child Marius Kohabiel and Alexander's son Jessaia Teiaiel they were released, after all, you can't have a naming ceremony without the godparents, could you?
High up in the north, in the wound of the planet, a girl was sleeping. Locked into a cocoon of mako that was meant to slow her down and imprison her for a while, her wounds were slowly healing. There was no sound in the crater, but still the girl was listening. Listening to a voice that whispered so sweetly about destruction of traitors, of punishment for the wicked and of a new beginning for her. She would become one with the life-force, would become the new heart of the planet. Maybe then the planet would speak to her again.
Kohabiel: hebrew Angel of the Stars
Teiaiel: hebrew Angel of the Future
[1] Yes, I know in the game there was only an Odin Summon in the safe, but I needed a certain materia to be inside, asked myself who would forget an Odin Summon for around thirty years and thought that maybe Lucrecia has deposited her materia in the safe. Since she died after Sephiroth's and Xander's birth, she couldn't get the materia back and it was forgotten. I went with that theory and then there had to be an Alexander summon since Xander here was named after the summon and then I thought that it would only be fair if the All materia was there cause you get it when you get the Alexander materia in the game and the Destruct materia, 'cause in the game Sephy drops it in the Mansion encounter.
[2] If you look at the Game Vincent and the Game Sephiroth, you will notice that they have the same facial structure and their bodies are almost the same too (I think Seph is a tiny bit taller than Vincent) the main differences are their hair and eyecolor. And Xander has the same hair/eye color as Vincent.
[3] Yes I know, Tifa is rather OOC here but when I played the game and got to Clouds Flashback, I couldn't help but notice that she was the most popular girl in Nibelheim and he the outsider. She was the daughter of the major and never had anything to do with him, except for the time he rescued her (and never got any thanks for that, how mean could you be?) and the time he spoke to her before he left Nibelheim. When we got to know Tifa, it was 5 years after the loss of her father and her hometown so I decided that this traumatic event helped Tifa to grow up and the pre-fire Tifa was a real brat and wrote her as such, to be able to do some character development.
[4] I know, there were no water/aqua materia in FF7, there was Fire, Ice, Earth, Lightning and Wind, but no Water. Leviathan was doing water based damage and Aqualung was an Enemy Skill based on Water, but there was no materia. Well, in my Fic there is. It is unlogical that there should be materias for the other elements, but none for water.