Final Fantasy VII: Untitled 5
Into the Dark
He’d watched TV until 0200, idly flicking through channels until they had become thick with infomercials and bad B-grade movie-of-the-week adaptations of the Catastrophe that made him cringe. Sometimes he wondered how such things were allowed release with neither his nor Cloud’s say-so. He’d been contacted several times in the last score of years by actors who had been assigned to play him in some movie or other, and had wanted to go back to the ‘source’, to get a feel for the role. He had never turned them away, though made no attempt to explain his actions during those dark days he could no longer remember. They were just as incomprehensible to him as to any of the bright-eyed young men with their wigs and contact lenses.
None of them looked much like him, he had thought. They were all too young. Too pretty. Too glamorous. And he in turn was not much like they expected. Too tired. Too sharp. Too inhuman.
He’d read for several hours after finally flicking the set off. Magazines, the TV guide, a stack of dry-as-dust reports from various Shinra outposts. Nothing interested him.
Finally he’d simply stretched out on the lounge and let his mind wander; to soft skin and lush lips. To the warm bed he should be sharing… and the welcoming body within.
Cloud had ducked out from the bedroom at around 1900, vanishing self-consciously into the shower. He had emerged wrapped in a towel – a sight that did not in the least help to improve Sephiroth’s lustfully gloomy disposition – and had asked, mortified, for some pyjamas. Cloud rarely bothered with pyjamas nowadays. Sephiroth had pulled some old sweats out of a drawer and handed them over. A final hurried goodnight had been the last he had heard before the bedroom door was softly closed. He had been tempted to enter the room since, his mind conjuring up all manner of delicious fantasies of compromising positions for Cloud to be in should he do so, but had bit the feeling down hard as dishonourably inappropriate. That he felt like an intruder in his own home was not lost on him.
He did not wish to sleep. He’d not done so for four days, and had he started now he would not wake for at least half that time. Tomorrow Cloud would be lectured upon his past, and if truth be told, Sephiroth was dreading the event. Cloud had forgiven him his sins once. He didn’t feel like pressing his luck twice.
No, tomorrow was not a day he could afford to spend unconscious.
All attempts at lustfully mindless daydreaming thwarted, Sephiroth hauled himself almost painfully upright – he really was quite tired, and he chastised himself for his weakness – and left the small apartment.
The room they shared here was technically Cloud’s. Sephiroth supposed he still had his own small, grimy rooms lost in the forgotten portions of the building, but he hadn’t seen them for almost two decades.
He’d first kissed Cloud on that fallen log in Junon, the experience cut abruptly short by the arrival of an inopportune band of monsters. After the battle, Cloud had said nothing about the kiss, and Sephiroth hadn’t pressed, instead dreading the awful, awkward silence that would follow. None had come. It would have been incorrect to say that nothing at all had changed between them; things had changed a great deal, Cloud had grown more relaxed in his presence, more willing to share jokes and talk about inconsequential things, friends and family and past misadventures. During that time after Junon, Sephiroth had also found himself meeting Cloud’s friends in something less than a professional manner. President Reeve and his re-instated ex-Turk-cum-bodyguard Valentine were first. Reeve had held no love for Sephiroth initially, but had warmed to him after several drinks and reassurances by Cloud. Valentine had regaled him with tales of his mother – his real mother – in a soft, sad voice. The man looked no older than his mid-twenties, though if pressed Sephiroth would have been forced to put him at least thirty years older again. Another product of Hojo, timeless and inhuman, but of a different breed altogether to Sephiroth and Cloud. Sandwiched between Valentine and Strife in an near-empty Neo-Midgar bar at closing time, listening to Reeve animatedly tell stories of his days as the giant robotic cat/moogle Cait Sith, had left Sephiroth with a strange sense of… belonging.
About two months after the incident in Junon – which neither he nor Cloud had yet mentioned – they were called out once more, this time to Nibelheim. Sephiroth had filled with cold dread upon learning where they would be going, could not bring himself to return to the town where so many things had been ruined; his life, Cloud’s… not to mention the place itself.
“… I’ll be lynched the second I step foot into the damn place. And, honestly, I would expect nothing less!”
“It will be fine.”
“How can you say that? What if it’s still there, up in the mountains. What if…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish, to face up to his own sordid past.
“If you decide to go mental again, which you won’t, I’ll stop you. I’ve done it before, and this time won’t be nearly as difficult.”
He had resulted to churlishness. “I still don’t see why you can’t do this alone…”
“Don’t be stupid. If I could do this alone do you think you’d still be alive?”
They’d flown out the next morning. Sephiroth hadn’t pressed the argument further, but had hardly been pleased by the entire situation. Cloud must have felt his unease, as he had kept closer and chatted more than usual. They had landed around midday and been met by a rather well-endowed young woman Sephiroth vaguely remembered from what seemed now like another lifetime. She had greeted Cloud enthusiastically, waves then hugs then a kiss. Sephiroth had been given a seething glare, to which he simply replied cordially; he had expected no less from any of the inhabitants of the town, especially not this one.
Tifa Lockheart, he had heard about her through rumours and files. She had been one of the group that had accompanied Cloud during the Catastrophe, and from what he had gathered they had been childhood sweethearts of a sort. The brief walk from where they had landed into the town itself had confirmed something else; that Lockheart was absolutely smitten with Cloud, and that he regarded her with more fondness than Sephiroth had ever seen from the normally stoic man. He had hung back, as quietly and unobtrusively as he could, and tried not to notice their easy affection. He had kissed Cloud and had not been pushed away, but perhaps the blond had insisted he come here for a reason…
They had stopped outside the old Shinra mansion and Lockheart had turned to him, then, regarding him with a cool gaze.
“We’re here.”
He had nodded. “I assume you have much to catch up on. Strife, I will meet you here tomorrow at 0500?”
Cloud had blinked, slightly taken aback. “Uh… I guess…”
“Oh no you don’t.” The words had come as something far beyond a shock, and he had turned to find Lockheart, eyes blazing. “You’re staying here tonight. I want you to see this.”
“Tifa…” Cloud’s voice had been low, warning.
“Shut up Cloud. He needs to know what he’s done.”
“Tifa!”
Orphans. The mansion had been turned into an orphanage for children who had lost their families during the Catastrophe and the tumultuous days that had followed. Lockheart had dragged him through the place with a hellion’s determination, Cloud trailing behind, expression totally shuttered. Sephiroth had spent the entire trip in silence, hearing dozens of stories of children whose parents had been slaughtered, all delivered in the kind of tone that left him in no doubt that he and he alone was to blame for their fates. There was nothing he could say, no apology, no explanation. So he had said nothing at all, endured his punishment, and had escaped to his small, lonely room at the earliest possible opportunity. He felt, perhaps, that he should have cried; bar the fact that he did not believe he physically could. Another so-called useless human vestige stripped from him by Hojo.
Cloud had come up several hours later, carrying a tray of the food Sephiroth had smelt being served shortly after he had shuttered himself away. He had entered without knocking, but Sephiroth did not feel he would have opened the door anyway.
“I’m… angry at Tifa.” He had sat next to Sephiroth on the narrow bed, glaring at his hands as if they were responsible for all the evils of the world. “If I had know she would –”
He had waved Cloud off. “Don’t trouble yourself by it. It was bound to happen sooner or later. A mild penance.”
“How can you say that! She had no right…”
“Of all people, I believe she has every right –”
“She has no right,” Cloud had come back vehemently. “She has no idea what it’s like, to spend every day doing everything so carefully, knowing that one moment of inattention could mean someone winds up dead or worse.” He had been flexing his hands again, and Sephiroth had understood.
“You love her.”
“I used to think so. And… and we tried, once… you know…” Cloud’s eyed had closed and he had lent back, expression pained. A short bark of laughter had escaped. “And it’s so stupid, you know. I just kept thinking, ‘What if in the middle of everything I just… lose it.’ All it would take would be a fraction of a second’s lost concentration and I could snap her in half. I don’t… I can’t have a relationship like that. And Tifa’s gotta be about the strongest woman I know… but it’s not enough…”
Sephiroth had nodded in understanding; his handful of conquests had always been elite SOLDIERs for that very reason. Still, it had come close several times, and he had not at all enjoyed the thought that perhaps he would have to be have to be physically restrained to ensure his partner’s safety. Those days, however, were long gone, and he was far stronger now… as was Cloud.
“Fucking Hojo… I bet he didn’t even think…”
Sephiroth had shrugged. “Hojo was quite… dysfunctional in some regards. I’m sure he would have found a kind of perverse joy in the notion, had he thought of it.”
“Fuck… to be the result of such… such…”
“Monstrosity?”
Cloud had nodded, folded into himself, arms hugging his chest. “… it’s good to have someone who understands,” he had said, eventually. “Tifa tries but she doesn’t get it… what it’s like to have everything you thought was you ripped away and examined like some kind of fucking… fucking insect. How can I tell her I can’t be with her because I’m terrified of killing her accidentally. She’d just look at me like I was mad and tell me she trusts me but it’s not enough… not fucking enough…”
They had sat in silence for a while. When Cloud next spoke it had been so quiet Sephiroth had almost missed it. “Sephiroth…” It was rare even now, he realised, to hear his name from those lips. “I just… thank you. For… um… in Junon…”
Something warm had curled within him at that, replacing the painful fear that had been growing ever since learning of their current mission. Cloud had looked up at him, nervous and flushed and innocent, and Sephiroth had found himself smile despite everything. “It was my pleasure,” he had murmured, leaning down to close the gap between their mouths.
That night, in the cold, narrow bed in the house that had ruined their lives and the lives of so many others, Cloud Strife had not been afraid…
They had found him up on the roof at 0900, practicing katas in the smoggy, industrial morning; mako was hardly used for power nowadays, but all that meant was it had been replaced once more by oil and coal. The Planet was still dying, albeit at a slower pace.
“General Sephiroth?” The tone did not sound friendly, and while he regarded that as the norm nowadays, there was something else in that voice also.
He finished his move with flowing precision of decades of practice, turned and was somewhat surprised to find himself face-to-face with a small army, including several ageing SOLDIERs. Everyone looked altogether too grim.
“Yes?”
“General Sephiroth, I am placing you under arrest. If you attempt to resist we are under orders to use all necessary force to terminate you.”
He blinked, somewhat stunned. “Arrest? What for?”
Someone had stepped forward then, shooting him with the care of a seasoned hunter. He pulled the feather-tipped dart from his neck, feeling the specially-engineered mako-enhanced tranquiliser spread through his system.
He lost consciousness to a line from a nightmare. Horrifying… and impossible.
“… placing you under arrest for the murder of General Cloud Strife of Shinra...”
He’d regained consciousness suspended in a world of liquid fire and cruel restraints he had long ago sworn he would rather die than revisit. Reeve was standing in front of him, his figure distorted through bubbling mako and curved glass. When he spoke his voice was hazy and dreamlike,
(… not a dream… nightmare…)
embarking on a mechanical recitation of impossible facts.
They had sent an aide around to rouse Cloud at 0700, to inform him that the Doctor Liguel’s requested briefing had been assembled. No-one had answered the door, and after some time the aide had attempted to open it, finding it unlocked. She had found Cloud face down and naked on the bed, Masamune buried deep into his back and through the floor with such force it had taken several people to finally remove it. The entire room had been sprayed with blood, traced in mad patterns over the walls. The General’s body was cold, rigor mortis already set in; the time of death had been placed somewhere in the early hours of the morning. Sephiroth had been the only person the security tapes had recorded entering or leaving the room during that time.
“The Board had an emergency meeting this morning. It was decided you should be detained here until further action can be considered. It will…” Reeve had hesitated somewhat, glance flickering away from where Sephiroth hung suspended and helpless. “… it will most likely be terminal.”
He had flicked his gaze up, then, eyes locking with Sephiroth’s own, and his mouth had formed a single word, quickly and away from the eyes of the multitude of guards that surrounded him.
(“…run…”)
And then he had left.
Sephiroth did not know how long he spent after that. It was difficult to think through the haze of drugs and pain; mako was not deadly to him as it was to normal humans, but being suspended bodily in it hurt, liquid fire in his veins and lungs and along his skin. A perversion left over from Hojo; as far as he knew, he was the only one to receive such treatment anymore. Except Hojo had never subjected him to it like this… others, yes… and Cloud…
Cloud.
A thousand memories swirling with a deep vortex of emotion rose within him, clamouring to the point that he thought he would have screamed, if only he could. His mind fed him images; Cloud’s body spread out upon their bed as it had been a thousand times before, smooth creamy skin glowing under the city lights, accentuated by dark stripes of rich, seeping, red-brown blood…
He had started struggling then, throwing himself against the walls of his tank the best he could. Numerous shouts filtered through from outside, and soon he felt the burst of hated ice through his veins, slowing his movements and his mind down to nothing more than a weak crawl.
(… cloudcloudcloudcloudcloudcloud…)
The words repeated over and over like a mantra. They were lying… had to be… he did not, could not… could not…
Oh gods…
Hell, he realised. This was Hell; finally life had caught up with him, decided to punish him for his transgressions against the Planet and its people. He was to hang here in painful eternity, having never had the chance to say goodbye…
(“… run!”)
Reeve’s words, an echo he felt rather than heard, but not Reeve’s voice. He didn’t…
(“… must run, must get out… remember!”)
How could he escape when he could barely think… barely move. He choked back frustration and helpless, dry sobbing. He was trapped. Stuck in his Hell for eternity…
(“… must remember… Mount Nibel… remember…”)
Mount Nibel... he and Cloud and gone to the reactor there the day after their first night together in the cold, narrow bed of the old Shinra mansion. They had both been infused with a kind of electric energy rooted in pure bliss, of the knowledge they were no longer so totally and utterly alone. He had ached to reach out and caress that deceptively small body once more, but the presence of Lockheart had made even the briefest affection difficult; she had been deliberately placing herself between them, constantly linking arms with Cloud and dragging him off to look at some view or other, leaving Sephiroth to walk morosely behind.
The path was arduous and, he was convinced, longer than the last time he had dared walk it. After half a day’s worth of navigating the jagged shale, of slips and skinned limbs, Lockheart had sighed, gazing wistfully at their destination still some hours away, and said, “I don’t suppose you remember how to fly around anymore, do you?”
“E-excuse me?”
Cloud had come to his rescue. “Back when we were chasing after the Black Materia,” – it had been yet too early for the event to be widely dubbed ‘the Catastrophe’ – “you used to do all kinds of crazy shit; flying around, walking through walls, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. That kind of thing.”
He had tried to imagine himself whizzing about in the sky – arms outstretched, coat flapping dramatically in the wind – and had failed miserably. “I… don’t recall.”
Cloud had shrugged. “Ah well. Probably one of those ‘Wisdom of the Ancients’ things you were always going on about.”
“… probably.”
The conversation had set him to thinking; he’d possessed some truly incredible abilities, the combined power of Jenova and the Cetra… where had it all gone? He was not the same as he had been, had felt so almost instantly upon waking. There was something other inside of him, a deep black well of something unutterably alien; Jenova. Years later he had finally confessed it to Cloud, broken shamefully down under self-loathing and the deep desire to have that thing removed, no matter what the cost. It was wrong. Evil.
Cloud had simply shrugged. “What Hojo did to us was hardly for the greater good, but would you give it all up just for that? All these mako seeps, would you really rather we sent some other poor fucks down there to get killed or worse?”
It had made a kind of infuriating sense, but Sephiroth had always known that it would be one of the few lines that divided them; Cloud simply could not see any kind of power in itself as being evil, no matter its origins. Sephiroth, on the other hand, had never been so sure. He had sworn to himself a thousand upon thousand times over that whatever would happen, he would never again reach into that deep, dark place within, the place of Jenova. That nothing could possibly be worth the price of a further dive into that siren song of madness. Nothing,
(… cloudcloudcloudcloudcloudcloud…)
except maybe
(… have to see…)
one last chance. He would burn yet in his Hell of glass, he knew, but first
(… lies…)
he had to know.
It was deep and dark and terrible. Bad mako to the core, and it was this that gave him immunity to the poisoned seeps. Except it was a lie; he wasn’t immune, he was infected. Always had been. Jenova was first and foremost a virus, she had infected the Cetra, warping and twisting their bodies, had spread since to the other animals and plants of the Planet, corrupting everything she touched. Hojo had been in the business of making monsters and Sephiroth…
You might walk like a man, talk like a man… but you are a monster. Hojo’s greatest creation, almost indistinguishable from the rest of humanity.
Madness flared through his mind, a voice he no longer remembered but knew all the same.
(“… worthless filthy creatures… come, my son, take my hand and we can rule as gods…”)
He would have cried out, had his throat not been jammed with tubes and liquid fire. Dimly he was aware of a commotion building outside his Hell. All their tubes and wires and monitors; they knew. His veins filled with ice then fire then ice once more, a futile attempt to stop whatever power he was building. It didn’t matter; Jenova was awake and she burnt the chemicals out of him.
(“… see, my love… such power… so far beyond…”)
A painful cacophony of sound and thoughts… and memories. Flashes of people, of places; a creaking ship, a city made from coral, an endless expanse of snow, and most of all, blood and fire.
He went deeper,
(… escape…)
past the siren voice and the memories, to the deep heart of madness. To the power long forgotten and deliberately so, hidden behind a lock with no key, a door with no hinge. His thoughts swirled of freedom, of breaking glass, of metal becoming no more solid than the air, of simply vanishing.
The electricity stopped his heart, ripped through his thoughts, shattering Jenova, the memories, and his concentration; power slipping through his fingers like sand.
He screamed, in rage and pain and frustration, and when he did, the Planet shook.
Reeve’s first thought was that he was getting too damn old for this. He was almost sixty; just last week he’d been planning his retirement, to be promptly announced the second he had decided on which, exactly, of the young up-and-comings was least likely to send Shinra back to the shit heap he had dragged it out of after the Catastrophe. Thus far he had not been particularly hopeful.
“He escaped?” His voice was dry, one eyebrow raised just-so. The young lab-technician in front of him shifted nervously.
“Y-yes, sir, Mr. President, sir.”
He let the pause extend. “Go on…”
A nervous swallow. “It was all very sudden, sir. One minute everything was fine, the next the levels of JCM in the tank were shooting off the scale; I don’t think anyone’s ever seen mako go bad that fast before… It cracked the tank; the thing is pretty strong but bad mako chews through practically anything. We figured the disturbance was coming straight from the su… ah, the General, but nothing we could do seemed effective. Eventually it was decided to employ the, um, the Kill Switch. We stopped his heart, alright, but it also exploded the tank, but before anyone could do anything the General kinda… um, he kinda… fell…”
“’Fell’?”
“Um, yes sir, Mr. President.”
Reeve put on his best disdainful expression; damn every one of the little lab-coated bastards. The ‘Kill Switch’, common parlance for the emergency ECT; designed to send an electric current right across the subject’s heart. It’s legitimate purpose, as far as he could gather, was the act as a defibrillator to revive a subject whose heart had stopped. It’s more common usage was to kill, hence the name. Reeve had never been one of Sephiroth’s greatest admirers, and the Catastrophe had compounded his initial dislike of the man, but it had been almost a quarter of a century. People changed, he knew, and besides he would not have wished the experience of the containment tank on anyone; except perhaps the machine’s creator.
“Where, exactly, did he ‘fall’?”
The tech laughed nervously, obviously taking Reeve’s expression for disbelief instead of disgust. “Well, sir, it’s… it’s kind of silly. But, er, some of the guys… they swore they saw him fall right through the, um… the… the floor.” He looked straight at Reeve, then, as if daring the man to disbelieve him.
“And the security tapes?”
“Um, they went blank at about the time we hit the Switch, sir.”
“How… convenient.”
The tech didn’t know what to say at that, and Reeve decided to just let the man stew. It served them right, really.
Eventually he sighed. “Casualties?”
“Thankfully none, sir. The lab is designed to significantly reduce the risk of JCM exposure.”
Well, that was one good thing, Reeve supposed. That and…
“And the containment tank?”
The technician’s shoulders seemed to slump slightly at that. “We’ll have to get a closer look when the area is decontaminated, but I’d say it’s irreparably damaged, sir. It might be possible to build a new one, but Hojo was very paranoid when it came to things like schematics. It’s likely the plans have either been lost or destroyed.”
“A shame.” Inside Reeve’s mind, Cait Sith did a victory dance. One more thing of Hojo’s gone… and gods only know how many more to go.
The sarcasm was lost on the tech, who did, indeed, look as if his puppy had just been strangled.
“Very well, you’re dismissed.” He waved distractedly at the door.
A few seconds passed, the tech didn’t move. “Um, sir?”
“What?”
“What should be done about, um, the subj… er, General Sephiroth, sir?”
“You’re very welcome to try and track him down yourself if you like.”
The tech took a half-step back, swallowing hard; as a lab specimen, the erstwhile General was a fascinating remnant of another era. As a free man, he was deadly… and most likely would want a few words with his captors.
“Or perhaps you should leave it to the soldiers?” Reeve suggested, and was surprised the tech’s head didn’t fall off with the enthusiasm of his response.
“Excellent. Off you go.”
This time, the tech did leave. The second he fled Reeve groaned, letting himself fall back heavily into the lush red leather President’s chair.
“What a fucking crappy day…”
“… Indeed.” A patch of shadows in the back left corner of the room suddenly materialised eyes and stepped forward slightly. Vincent looked no older than he ever had – a sure sign of the curse of Hojo if ever there was one, Reeve thought he had never seen a man so repulsed by mortality – though dressed now in the kind of black suit more befitting a Turk.
The Turks had been one of the first things Reeve had revised upon ascending to the Shinra throne; still the odd-jobs men of the company, though now the answered exclusively to Reeve himself. They were still spies and assassins, but they were his spies and assassins, and that thought alone often helped him sleep at night. He had appointed Vincent their head to some protest – not least from the man himself – but if there was one man he could trust to make sure the Turks were running a tight ship, now and indefinitely into the future, it was Vincent.
They regarded each other for a long time, finally Vincent said, “Even in his current state, it will be… difficult for the regular forces to prevent Sephiroth from leaving the building.”
“Oops.”
“One might get the impression you didn’t want him recaptured.” The intonation was totally flat, as usual, but Reeve had known Vincent for a awfully long time.
“It’s all a bit… convenient, don’t you think, that this all suddenly chooses to happen now…”
“You don’t believe Cloud’s dead.”
“Do you?”
Vincent didn’t answer, which was enough, of course.
“We’ve both seen him hit with worse than a sword through the back and survive; I saw Liguel’s autopsy report, it didn’t even hit anything particularly vital. It wouldn’t’ve killed him, at least not so quickly, and that’s not even going into why he didn’t try and struggle free. Besides, getting stabbed by Sephiroth, of all people? I don’t buy it. Fuck, Vince, you know what those two were like. Other people, well, they don’t know the half of it, so I can see how the masses might buy it… but I sure as hell don’t.”
He heard Vincent cross the short distance to the desk, finally looking up at the Turk when he placed a small iridescent disc down in from of him.
“Security tapes,” Vincent offered by way of explanation.
Reeve shrugged and pushed the small disc into the drive in his terminal, waiting for it to go through the process of booting up the player. Unsurprisingly, the feed was from the camera outside Cloud and Sephiroth’s apartment. Reeve watched with a kind of grim fascination as the two owners walked into frame. There were a number of things Reeve associated with Cloud Strife, but ‘cowed’ had certainly not been one of them. Until now; there was really no other way to describe the man’s posture. As if he were constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the next door to be opened to lead to his place of execution or worse. Reeve grimaced at that; in a way, it had been.
“I’ve changed the door code for the time being. 1908; not terribly secure, but at least you won’t have to worry about locking yourself out.”
Even through the cam’s tinny mic that voice still held an inhumanly cold command that, even now, Reeve found it hard to listen to without shrinking away. He didn’t catch Cloud’s reply, didn’t know what was going on in the kid’s head or exactly how much they had told him about what was going on, but Reeve realised he must have been terrified. He watched them disappear into the apartment, something about the video was bothering him…
“Hey! Since when have the security cams had audio?”
Vincent nodded, tossed something small and black onto the desk. “It was in the planter next to the door.”
“Someone’s tampered with the feed?”
Vincent nodded. “It would appear that way. They have also altered the camera’s angle; like it is, it gives far too clear a view of the door’s keypad.”
Reeve nodded. Even if they hadn’t had the audio with Sephiroth telling Cloud the new door code, it would still be reasonably easy to guess the numbers simply by watching. “How long has it been like this?”
“A… while…”
Reeve looked up sharply at the oddly evasive action. Vincent seemed focussed on anything but him. “How long, Vince?”
“At least eighteen months, quite possibly longer. I… didn’t bother checking.”
Eighteen months. At least. And no-one had noticed.
“You’re telling me someone’s been watching Cloud’s door for two years, waiting for… what?”
Vincent shrugged. “An opportunity.”
Reeve felt his lip cul in disgust. They had certainly found a body in that room this morning, but whoever he had been, it hadn’t been Cloud. Which left the obvious question…
“Find Sephiroth. Let him know… whatever he needs. Someone’s fucking with us, Vince; someone on the inside. I don’t care who they are, but I want them dead. And Sephiroth deserves the first shot.” His grin was bleak and vicious.
Vincent nodded, and by the look in his eyes, Reeve knew his thoughts were echoed there. To describe Sephiroth as something of a tightly wound spring was to underestimate the sheer level of manic tension that lurked under the man’s icy façade. There were truly few things that could destroy that, but if something had happened to Cloud, well, that would do just nicely. And when Sephiroth lost it – really lost it, Catastrophe style lost it – then it was fire and brimstone time, folks.
(... through the floor… we haven’t seen him do anything like that since…)
Hopefully if we’re lucky, this time he’ll be on our side…