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There exists a building situated in Kalm which has the questionable fortune of being built as a storage unit for MREs containing a dubious beef portion in ashen gravy. Once it empties out during the Wutai war it never gets refilled and languishes away. Sometimes it is destroyed, sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is rebuilt, mostly on Shinra's dime.
Sephiroth, poster child for the might of Shinra in its heyday, walks leisurely into the cracked and crumbling glorified storage crate. Of the the four interior lights only one is currently working and it shines through a crack in an otherwise solid wood door. Another man might have feared a trap or ambush of some sort in this desolate location.Sephiroth was not afraid, though he knew there was going to be an ambush inside. He swung wide the door, facing the threat head on. The people inside all turn their heads to face him, contempt universally emblazoned cross each and every one.
Cloud Strife glares from on the comfort of his vastly uncomfortable metal bench at the man he had once killed and might kill again,very soon. "Sephiroth, what the Hel was that?" Sephiroth is not one to come unprepared. He defends himself with a single sentence.
"You knew I was unstable when you married me."
Barret barks a sardonic laugh, pissed off and amused at the same time. Cloud can only palm his face with a glove clad hand, because Sephiroth is right. Cloud hadn't been Awake and neither had Sephiroth, but he had been aware of Sephiroth's outbursts and clingyness and disregard for most of humanity at large. It had still ended up being a surprise when Sephiroth had gone on a friend killing spree to make sure he had no romantic competition.The spree ended with a murder-suicide to ensure Cloud couldn't leave him,even in death. The grip Sephiroth's corpse had on Cloud's would have required Zack to pry them apart if he hadn't been in Shinra's near-literal dungeons for murdering Hojo, leaving the brunet the last one Awake, living out the rest of the timeline alone until the Planet turned back its hourglass for another run through.
"I can't believe that Zack set us up like that," Cloud grouses, except that he can believe it. Zack loves Happy Endings TM. Between Zack and Aerith, it was a wonder that any timeline didn't result in a very active orgy spanning seven days and in three different countries. Cloud looks balefully over at the empty seat where Zack sits when he Wakes up. Cloud's ire will have to wait. Right now Zack is out there in Gongaga with his parents, Joining ShinRa or even out in Wutai fighting Yuffie's people, blissfully unaware of the countless lives they have all lived and all the timelines they have seen reset. Yuffie's currently the same, out in Wutai being a child, he thinks. She could be roaming the countryside, stealing materia and bothering Zack or she could be in the ventwork at ShinRa, trying to avenge the soliders that fell in battle with her own Shuriken. Where ever she is, she's not Awake because no one has received a call on their PHSs from one Treasure Princess to come pick her up and bring the good materia with.
Vincent is Awake,though, directly across from Cloud in the circle of seats. He usually is, barring the situations where something has drastically deviated from the norm. He had only briefly looked up from his occupied hands at Sephiroth's arrival and his eyes are once more glued to the colorful papers he's folding. He has already gone through the warm-up origami figures of his comrades and the monsters he becomes. Now he's working on this lifetime's project. Last time it was a scale model of the world,though limited to ten thousand sheets of paper. Cloud remembered going to see it in an exhibit two lives back when Tifa "won" tickets from a rigged raffle. Tifa is also there, to Cloud's right. She's finishing the remnants of a steak, far better quality than the MREs that once haunted their meeting place. The air around her is still filled with the smell of spices, both from her consumed steak and from the yet-to-be-consumed portion in a takeout container underneath her seat. She has firmly entered that age of teenager-dom where one is constantly starving and can eat like a SOLIDER no matter how small one is and is taking the opportunity to start developing her muscles as soon as possible. She swallows with a relieved sigh and turns toward her best friend with rolling eyes.
"Better you than me! Zack's been trying to set me up with a ShinRa secretary for the last ten go-rounds. She never wakes up, and I can't imagine it would go well if I were to wake up in the middle of a loop, like that." Vincent winces, recalling a reality where he and Tifa had both Awoken in the middle of some intimacy, twenty lives back. It was fortunate that they tended to live long lives otherwise it might have still been difficult to look each other in the eye. A little awkwardness is still better than being Sephiroth's Step Mom by a country mile.
"At least you've got somebody. Myrna wasn't anywhere I could find her." Considering the resources the group had in their pockets, that was quite a statement. "Marlene was abandoned on the road before I could find her." Barret huffs an agitated breath. "Can't imagine what ass-backwards motherfuckers had Marlene and then decided to drop her in the middle of nowhere like bad Banora apples. And I can tell you, she would have benefited from Myrna's steady hand." Barret flexes his fingers one by one, leaning forward on his cinder block seat. "Abandonment issues are no joke in a child that young."
"I completely agree. Mental health awareness from a young age can make all the difference." It's ironic and a little self effacing, coming from the man whose picture is included in the dictionary beside 'issues' but that's why he says it as he settles next to the sword wielding apple of his eye who can't help but snort even as his murderer leans into his side.
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Sephiroth is first Awake. A mere child as he is, he has had enough practice moving around in his younger body for his escape to be as seamless as possible. He has President Shinra's finances at his fingertips, memorized a hundred lifetimes ago and he commissions the construction of a concrete storage facility in Kalm, as is he duty when he is the first Awake, and arranges for transport to Nibelheim, because saying he is obsessed with Cloud and always will be is an understatement. While he is at it he frames Professor Hojo for the missing funds and sets in motion a series of events that ends in him being unceremoniously fired.
Cloud isn't Awake when he gets there. He knows because he has seen what the blonde is like when he Wakes as a child and this is genuine childhood on his face as he scowls at the children that belittle him and his mother. Sephiroths means to take stock of the situation and return but is slightly held up by the literal hand holding him up, off the ground.
"Sephiroth"
"Vincent"
"What brings you here? Besides Cloud?"
"I've launched a campaign to ruin Hojo's life, piece at a time. And I find myself in need of a legal guardian." Which is Sephiroth's way of asking if Vincent wants to play house in Nibelheim.
"I suppose you do," which is Vincent's way of agreeing.
"So you spending this life playing Happy Families in Nibelheim with the merc?" Barret has Marlene in a sling held to his chest. It's a drab shade of repurposed ShinRa armor green. It's a popular color in Corel, where ShinRa's tower went up against resistance and came down on top of their heads when Barret blew out the supports under the SOLIDERS meant to slaughter the citizens.
Sephiroth nods, fingers working steadily on his paper figures of the Nibelheim townsfolk to compliment the 3/8ths scale model of the town they have been living in that Vincent is making. Cloud is make of delicate gold paper, embossed with tiny materia shapes. Tifa is blue and Vincent is red. Mrs Strife is silver to compliment her son. It will endear him to her when she next comes over to speak with Vincent. Having Claudia's favor will make it much easier to gently bully Cloud into marrying him and not Tifa; Claudia very much believes in Married Childhood Sweethearts, having been one herself. If that doesn't work, Childhood Nemesis works just as well for the cat eyed teenager. "I am going to marry him."
Barret, Vincent, and Cid all hear the "Whether he likes it or not" that Sephiroth hasn't bothered to say out loud. Only Aerith, busy knitting a jacket for Nanaki has an opinion to voice. "You know, Sephiroth, if this had been your goal from the start, we probably could have avoided a lot of trouble." she shakes her head mock condemningly. "All that panic from the planet and all the death when we could have just set you up with a nice boy." She's been practicing her Chiding Aunt voice since the last time Marlene came around. She really has gotten good at it.
"If things had gone better, I would have been twenty five when Cloud was fourteen." Age doesn't matter so much now, when they are all well into their hundreds via timeloop. They're cradle robbing no matter who they pair with outside the circle of those trapped in the planet's stuttering grasp. There's no arousal for the underage forms they might inhabit at any given time, but it's secondary to the person inside and more than one of them have been glad to wait for someone to grow up. Tifa has waited for Aerith. Aerith has waited for Zack. Zack has waited for Cloud. Cloud generally doesn't wait, so much as he is often blindsided by the regard for him that grows out of being around him. Meanwhile, Sephiroth has only waited for Cloud (and Aerith once but he couldn't go through with it, too Cloud-sexual for anyone else).
"Well, as long as Mrs. Strife makes that AppleCake for the wedding, then you have my blessing." Vincent sets down a tiny figure shaped like Mr Lockhart. "Try not to kill anyone this time. Or start a fire."
"I appreciate your support..... Dad."
"Mn."
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Cloud awakens first, long before Shinra has the idea of mako-based energy. He's an ancient, fairly rare, and he encounters Jenova, commonplace, who he sends packing via Knights of the Round swiftly picking up her asteroid and drop kicking it back the way it came. So now he's a hero. Big Whoop. More importantly he's retired. He doesn't need to worry anymore about Jenova, except that he might have gotten some of her on him and he can feel her trying to infect him. It's a familiar weight pressing down on him and it feels all the more potent for his ancient blood. Faster, too fast he's loosing sight then sound.
The next thing he knows he's trapped in a sheet of materia as Hojo leers over him. Of course it's him.
Unfortunately being infected with Jenova and trapped in Materia like an Ancient Snow White means he is well and truly unable to die without some outside help. He expects that outside help when Vincent shows up, trailing behind Lucrecia like a well armed duckling. Of course, then Vincent looks at Cloud with no recognition in his eyes and Strife knows that he's in for a long wait.
It's a little bit before Vincent returns again, without Lucrecia. Granted Cloud has been stuck here in Hojo's lab for a year and stuck in a sheet of materia playing Count the Stalagmites in a cave for centuries so his experience of time is a bit skewed. Has it been weeks or years when Vincent returns, golden clawed and vaguely sheepish? Cloud couldn't tell you if you gave him a watch and let him do the math. He can tell you that he's glad to be out of that Mako Tube and he tells Vincent as much.
"My apologies for taking so long to Awaken." Vincent shifts his weight on his feet, still getting used to his skin. It will settle down in a day or so, so he must have come right away. "My body is still healing from Hojo," he rasps out. Cloud doesn't tell him that it's fine or that he's not mad. Vincent doesn't tell him he killed Hojo or that he still feels the phantom restraints of his now-shredded red straight jacket. Both of them know the score already. Mostly Cloud is ready to get going.
"Come on," Cloud says, happy to be moving after being functionally a rock for a millennia. "I think Ifalna is still around. Maybe we can give her and Aerith a ride." Cloud pries off the terrible helmet and various tubes as the mako continues flooding the room. Vincent nods, turning towards the door, ignoring the blaring alarm that began when he destroyed Cloud's tube.
"Your hair is white now, by the way."
"...Well, that figures."
"Are you all Cetra, too?" Aerith is a joy as ever, memories or no. She's sitting in cloud's lap, hands wringing the ends of her pigtails. She aims her little doe eyes at Cid, who has broken from his conversation with Reeve and Nanaki at the sound of her voice.
"Well, i'm not. At least not right now." He grins a shit eating grin at Cloud and blows a long stream of smoke into the air. "But I could have a little Cetra in me if I'm lucky."
"Cid!" Cloud's admonishment is lost under the sounds of Cid's hooting and hollering. Even Nanaki is chuckling and Reeve is too despite his efforts to smother it. "really Cid? Did you have to?"
"Is it the 'little' thing? Cause I'm sure you're big where it c-" Cid doesn't get to finish the sentence because Cloud has lifted Aerith off of his lap and set her in his seat so he can have both hands free to murder Cid with.
"Don't mind them," Nanaki says. "I think that they just missed each other."
Aerith looks over at her Cetra mentor and the human(?) who are rough housing and trying to force-feed each other something from a silvery pouch. Mom used to talk about being force fed when the bad people had her, but Cloud hates scientists and isn't bad. She's not entirely sure what to make of it. "Are you sure?"
Reeve smiles. "Absolutely."
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Yuffie drops down into her chair with an aggrieved sigh.
"you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get past those guards when they all think I'm a child.
"You know, that' quite the statement for a fucking toddler." Yuffie takes her chubby toddler fingers and throws a bad MRE at Cid. It's nothing on the skill she will gain later, but highly impressive for someone who is physically four years old. Cid howls with laughter as Yuffie snarls in frustration when her projectile goes wide and clips him instead of nailing him in the mouth.
"You're one to talk! You're even younger than me!" He is, too. If Yuffie is four then Cid is three at best, still lisping with his youth. Usually it's the other way around but Cid's parents must not have felt like getting frisky at the usual time. He's still young enough that he can't keep his balance against the glancing blow and falls over, shouting profanities in his baby voice. Music to her refined, Wutain ears. She takes a moment to appreciate it and flops down on the floor, laying on the plush carpet she managed to drag (read: steal) from a hotel nearby.
"Anyway!" she gleefully informs as Cid abandons cursing and rights himself, "I'm going to be the princess for real this time."
"Finally found the bastard Shinra spy that ratted you all out?" He sits down with an ungainly thump next to Yuffie.
"Yeah, it was a tourist guy, Lagoona Sharpers. I had to bribe him with a better job than Shinra," through several proxies because she is currently a baby, "but he's taken care of. Plus he's totally willing to get rid of any of the other people Shinra sends out. Which is super lucky. And no snitch means no Shinra."
"And no Shinra means y'er gonna hafta be a hoity toity princess, huh?"
"Yeah, I'll have to wear the fancy dresses and stuff. At least I'll have more materia to start off with but then I won't be able to just steal more. I'll have to trade for them and junk."
"Well, you've gotta get by like the rest of us. With honest labor and shit." Yuffie looks up from her flop to scowl at her erstwhile teammate. "Not that being a princess is much in the labor department." Cid dodges Yuffie's grumpy shove and shoves back. "Oh, woe is me! I have to be waited on hand and foot and have funding enough to do what I want. How'll I ever survive?" The two sit on a stolen hotel bath mat and slapfight like the toddlers they are.
"I'd like to see you try and be royalty. Wutain royalty has so many rules and duties and junk. And that was when ShinRa had taken over the country. We're going to be independent and proud of our traditions this time. Rockets are something you can finish. Being the Princess never ends." Yuffie stands, pudgy hands in baby fists. "In fact, I challenge you! You have to be royalty with me and see just how hard it can be." Cid stands on his own feet in response and smushes his fat fingers against his forehead in a pantomime of long suffering.
"I'm not from Wutai you dumbass. If I were going to be Wutian Royalty with you I'd have to marry you."
"Yeah, alright! That doesn't stop me or anything! I hope you're ready to be Cid Kisuragi! Unless you're willing to admit it's hard to be royalty." Her hand juts out impudently, ready to accept a handshake or declare him a sniveling baby.
"Yer on!" declares the three year old to the four year old. Their hands shake firmly, ready to meet the world head on. They certainly needed that determination when Yuffie introduced a foreign toddler as her betrothed after escaping the watchful eyes of the babysitting ninjas for a solid two days.
"So, how's the married life treating you Cid?" Barret polishes his gun arm absently as he give his friend a look over. "You look like one of Marlene's Wutai shows."
"Barret, I love ye like a brother but I'll still break ye in goddamn half. Dun make me come over there." He gestures rudely at his best friend with a long Kiseru pipe engraved with little stars.
"As if you could even get up fast enough. What is that? five layers? Can ya even swing a spear?"
"I can swing it enough to shove it up in your mouth and out yer asshole."
"Watch the zoo, if you do." Vincent mildly warned, fingers working on folding a set of penguins to add to his origami zoo. The two obligingly shuffled their chairs a bit further away from him.
"So, married life?" Barret smiles as he asks again. Cid takes a deep drag on his pipe and sighs smoke out of his mouth and nose, the picture of a lazy dragon in his kimono.
"Yuffie's closer to right then I knew, but don't you tell 'er shit." Yuffie had left the warehouse about an hour ago with Tifa and Sephiroth to right monsters and work off some energy. She hated being trapped in the endless rigamarole of royalty and expectations as much as Sephiroth hated being stuck as the ShinRa poster boy. "It's all 'oh, kisuragi-dono, i want money to make my house prettier', 'oh, kisuragi-dono, please talk with me about my doll collection for four hours', 'oh, kisuragi-dono, you can't be seen fixing things, that's what the staff are for'." It's enough to make you wanna hand the whole thing over to the first moron dumb enough to take the job." He stuffs more tobacco in his pipe. "Yuffie's fine enough. y'know how she gets. Married life ain't that much different. I s'pose It'd be different if it were Sephiroth or something. But Yuffie don't really change much: dutiful and loud."
"No stealing?"
"I said she didn't change, Barret. I didn't say she hit her head and lost her mind. She's been swapping out the wallets of every single person at every big event we've hosted for the last twenty years!" Cid and Barret have a good laugh over it, but Cid has a better one when he says "By the way, check your pockets," and Barret curses at the IOU he finds inside.
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Aerith wakes in her bed. It isn't the chill of the room. It isn't her position, hands folded over each other across her chest, on her back, so tight and self imprisoning. It's more like a when a nose hair has fallen out but hasn't escaped, crawling around inside your nose. It's a sneeze that hasn't been happened and is doing its best to stay inside your face, agitating you. Her entire body feels like she has been poisoned, and more importantly poisoned for a long, long time. As if waking from sleep paralysis, she wiggles her toes, then flexes her fingers. Down the list she runs until she tenses her shoulders and feels something that should not be there, inside and underneath. Aerith opens her green eyes to the dark of the room and slowly sits up. She knows this place inside and out, but generally from the other side of the plexiglass. It's her image, faintly reflected that gives her pause. Short hair, cropped to a bob, anemically pale skin, snow white hair and green cat pupiled eyes.
"Oh, FiddleSticks!"
Meanwhile, Mallory Fair breathed out her last, holding her son in her arms. She was able to go happily, knowing that the planet would provide for the last Ancient.
"Hey, babe! I love the new ribbon!" He beams, sun tanned skin bringing a warm glow to his surroundings. He has a cap on his head and a pair of sunglasses hanging from his fingers. For someone who was friends with Turks he really doesn't put much into hiding from ShinRa if that's his idea of a disguise. Zack's energy fills the room far beyond what would be expected of a single man. Zach was undeterred by physical and social possibilities, however. He threw his arms around the Daughter of the Calamity, enemy of all Ancients and pecked her sweetly on the cheek.
"Thanks, Zack! I wanted to try something different. I don't know if I'll keep it,though. Is blue my color?" Her hair had resisted growing out and the ribbon acted as a headband, keeping her eyes clear. A sprightly, chipper bow rises from the ribbon. She doesn't have Holy in it, she's fairly sure that having it so close to her would give her a rash, so it is mostly decoration, partly force of habit. She misses her ponytail.
"Any color is your color!" Aerith lets her head fall to Zack's shoulder with a content hum. Every point of contact between them itches, like maggots and ants waging war under her skin. She half wants to pinch his cheeks, but Jenova's far and away impulses mean there's a chance she would end up turning the pinch into finger nails clawing him open so she could infect him and live inside him like a grisly dress. She wants to nestle her fingers safely in the end of her ponytail but it isn't there. So she laces her pale fingers together, neat and sweet, and luxuriates in the presence of her first love.
"So, Hojo is gone." by her hand. "And the warehouse is standing." Not something she has done, but she's happy to enjoy it. "I can't get close to Jenova, so someone else will have to do it. So why don't we go somewhere in the meantime? We can leave behind a note."
"You wanna run away with me, Aerith? It's a hard life running from ShinRa," he grins. "And you're the poster-girl, too. Think we can keep a low profile?"
"Why, Mr. Fair-"
"Mister Gainsborough, this time."
"Mister Gainsborough," she corrects obligingly. "We will just have to see if you can stay as stealthy as me!" She tweaks his nose and pulls his cap down over his blue eyes.