Sapphiroth

The rain in Midgar didn't fall so much as it bled out of the charcoal sky, a greasy, continuous drizzle that streaked the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass of the Sector 0 penthouse. Bianca Moore absolutely hated this apartment.

It was a gilded cage designed by Shinra’s PR and Marketing divisions to promote the '1st Family of SOLDIER'. It was all sterile chrome, sharp geometric leather couches, and hidden biometric sensors that she knew Sephiroth had disabled weeks ago, though the cold aura of corporate observation still clung to the corners of the ceiling.

To combat the metallic numbness of the place, Bianca had spent the afternoon turning the kitchen into a war zone of flour, yeast, and melted butter. She wasn't wearing her SOLDIER uniform or the heavy, asymmetric tactical dusters she favored for survival.

Instead, she wore an oversized, faded black band t-shirt that she had dragged her friends too years ago, a pair of worn denim jeans that had seen better days, and a pair of beat-up canvas sneakers with mismatched neon laces. Her large, black-and-indigo wings were carefully tucked behind her. Their internal structural wires rested heavily against her back as she leaned over the marble island, pulling a fresh, golden cookie sheet full of pizza goodness from the oven.

"Eat," Bianca commanded. She set the steaming baking sheet down on a trivet before the two women sitting at her counter. "Azaela, take the big piece. You look stressed. Sapphire, stop staring at the digital oven clock like it’s going to explode."

Sapphire Aphelion blinked out of her trance. Her dark hair framed her face. She reached out with a delicate, flour-dusted hand. Her phone rested on the counter beside her: permanently dark, permanently silent, completely ignored.

Hailing from the deep, humid jungles of Mideel, modern Midgarian appliances still looked to her like alien artifacts.

"The little numbers change too fast," Sapphire murmured, taking a massive bite of the pizza and sighing happily. "But this tastes like home. It reminds me of the simple hearths."

Sitting next to her, Azaela Sharpe looked like she was about to vibrate out of her skin. The blonde, celebrated across the planet as the first female 1st Class SOLDIER, was dressed in her preferred comfortable, oversized casual clothes. Her glowing green Mako eyes wide with a mixture of embarrassment and exasperation. She took a vanilla iced latte, which Bianca had aggressively sweetened with four extra pumps of cane syrup, and drank half of it in a single, desperate gulp.

"I am going to murder Reno," Azaela groaned, burying her face in her hands. "And then I am going to throw Genesis’s stupid copy of LOVELESS into a Mako reactor."

Bianca chuckled. Her feline purple pupils glinted with amusement as she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. She leaned against the island. Her long, prehensile tongue catching a stray speck of sugar on her lower lip.

"Alright," Bianca said. "Let's hear it. What did the red-headed menace and our resident drama king do now? I heard about the lingerie shoot. Shinra PR practically plastered the memos all over the tactical briefing floors."

Azaela turned a violent shade of crimson, looking at her slice like it held the secrets to the universe. "It was supposed to be a standard autonomy play! Shinra wanted to handle my image, so I took control of it first. But Reno... Reno won't shut up about it. Every time I walk down the corridor, he makes some loud, ridiculous comment about lace or structural integrity. And Genesis...Genesis is brooding so hard he’s practically generating his own weather system because he thinks Reno is being 'unrefined' and intrusive. I feel like I'm trapped between a high-speed train and a localized hurricane. They're making me feel like I have to choose between the two of them, and it’s driving me insane."

"In Mideel, if two chocobos fight over the same patch of greens, you simply let them kick each other until one tires out." Sapphire wiped a bit of sauce from her chin. "Or you ride both. Though I suppose men are slightly less cooperative than large avians."

Sapphire paused, turning to Bianca. "Is there a rule in the city that says you can only have one suitor? It seems terribly inefficient. Like only having one book to read."

"Exactly!" Bianca clapped her hands together. A brilliant, sharp-fanged grin broke across her face. She reached under the counter and pulled out a thick, heavily creased paperback romance novel with a flamboyant cover depicting a pirate and a duchess on a stormy sea. "Love isn't a pie, Azaela. You don't run out of pieces just because there's more than one person sitting at the table. Love is love. If you have the capacity to care for Reno’s chaotic, red-headed nonsense and Genesis’s dramatic, poetic soul, why on earth should you have to slice your heart in half?"

Azaela blinked, looking up from her latte. "You-you think I shouldn't choose?"

"I think choosing is a corporate construct," Bianca said with a dramatic roll of her indigo eyes, waving her hand dismissively toward the ceiling to mock the invisible Shinra executives.

"Shinra loves boundaries." Bianca's face darkened for a moment, resembling a look that she had seen Sephiroth have since he was four. "They love boxes, classifications, and single-occupancy forms. But out here, in real life? Polyamory is the only thing that makes sense when you're dealing with personalities that massive.

"Sephiroth caught me reading one of my romance serials the other day—the one with the polyamorous elven court—and he literally stopped, looked at me," she paused as she picked up a knife and fork and cut a small square out of her pizza, "and told me I should have been born from a cherub because I am entirely too invested in universal affection."

Bianca let out a bright, melodic laugh. "He thinks he's being witty, but honestly, he’s just glad I have the energy to manage more than one dynamic."

Sapphire nodded in solemn agreement, leaning over to gently pat Azaela’s shoulder. She signed a physical note on a scrap piece of parchment she carried in her pocket, writing her advice down as if it were a formal missive, ending it with her signature 'Yours in perpetuity, Sapphire.'

"Angeal says that honor is about being true to what your heart dictates, not what the regulations demand," Sapphire said softly. Her thoughts drifted to the stoic, heavy-winged SOLDIER she had grown so fond of. "If you try to force yourself into a shape that doesn't fit, you will break. Just like those terrible microwave machines that make the food taste like plastic."

"Listen to the jungle girl, Zaela," Bianca said, sliding the remaining half of the pizza closer to Azaela. "Reno behaves like a stray dog because he wants your attention, and Genesis acts like a tragic opera lead because he’s terrified of losing your respect. They’re both projecting their own insecurities onto your autonomy. You did that shoot for you. Your body belongs to you. Not to Shinra, not to the media handlers, and certainly not to them. If they want to be a part of your life, they need to learn to share space in the sanctuary you're building."

Azaela let out a long, ragged breath. The tension slowly drained from her shoulders. She took a large bite of the sweet pizza—pineapple and ham as Sapphire insisted—the comfort of the warm kitchen and the unyielding support of her friends finally breaking through the suffocating weight of her SOLDIER responsibilities. "So, I just tell them to deal with it?"

The rain in Midgar didn't fall so much as it bled out of the charcoal sky, a greasy, continuous drizzle that streaked the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass of the Sector 0 penthouse. Bianca Moore absolutely hated this apartment.

It was a gilded cage designed by Shinra’s PR and Marketing divisions to promote the '1st Family of SOLDIER'. It was all sterile chrome, sharp geometric leather couches, and hidden biometric sensors that she knew Sephiroth had disabled weeks ago, though the cold aura of corporate observation still clung to the corners of the ceiling.

To combat the metallic numbness of the place, Bianca had spent the afternoon turning the kitchen into a war zone of flour, yeast, and melted butter. She wasn't wearing her SOLDIER uniform or the heavy, asymmetric tactical dusters she favored for survival.

Instead, she wore an oversized, faded black band t-shirt that she had dragged her friends too years ago, a pair of worn denim jeans that had seen better days, and a pair of beat-up canvas sneakers with mismatched neon laces. Her large, black-and-indigo wings were carefully tucked behind her. Their internal structural wires rested heavily against her back as she leaned over the marble island, pulling a fresh, golden cookie sheet full of pizza goodness from the oven.

"Eat," Bianca commanded. She set the steaming baking sheet down on a trivet before the two women sitting at her counter. "Azaela, take the big piece. You look stressed. Sapphire, stop staring at the digital oven clock like it’s going to explode."

Sapphire Aphelion blinked out of her trance. Her dark hair framed her face. She reached out with a delicate, flour-dusted hand. Her phone rested on the counter beside her: permanently dark, permanently silent, completely ignored.

Hailing from the deep, humid jungles of Mideel, modern Midgarian appliances still looked to her like alien artifacts.

"The little numbers change too fast," Sapphire murmured, taking a massive bite of the pizza and sighing happily. "But this tastes like home. It reminds me of the simple hearths."

Sitting next to her, Azaela Sharpe looked like she was about to vibrate out of her skin. The blonde, celebrated across the planet as the first female 1st Class SOLDIER, was dressed in her preferred comfortable, oversized casual clothes. Her glowing green Mako eyes wide with a mixture of embarrassment and exasperation. She took a vanilla iced latte, which Bianca had aggressively sweetened with four extra pumps of cane syrup, and drank half of it in a single, desperate gulp.

"I am going to murder Reno," Azaela groaned, burying her face in her hands. "And then I am going to throw Genesis’s stupid copy of LOVELESS into a Mako reactor."

Bianca chuckled. Her feline purple pupils glinted with amusement as she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. She leaned against the island. Her long, prehensile tongue catching a stray speck of sugar on her lower lip.

"Alright," Bianca said. "Let's hear it. What did the red-headed menace and our resident drama king do now? I heard about the lingerie shoot. Shinra PR practically plastered the memos all over the tactical briefing floors."

Azaela turned a violent shade of crimson, looking at her slice like it held the secrets to the universe. "It was supposed to be a standard autonomy play! Shinra wanted to handle my image, so I took control of it first. But Reno... Reno won't shut up about it. Every time I walk down the corridor, he makes some loud, ridiculous comment about lace or structural integrity. And Genesis...Genesis is brooding so hard he’s practically generating his own weather system because he thinks Reno is being 'unrefined' and intrusive. I feel like I'm trapped between a high-speed train and a localized hurricane. They're making me feel like I have to choose between the two of them, and it’s driving me insane."

"In Mideel, if two chocobos fight over the same patch of greens, you simply let them kick each other until one tires out." Sapphire wiped a bit of sauce from her chin. "Or you ride both. Though I suppose men are slightly less cooperative than large avians."

Sapphire paused, turning to Bianca. "Is there a rule in the city that says you can only have one suitor? It seems terribly inefficient. Like only having one book to read."

"Exactly!" Bianca clapped her hands together. A brilliant, sharp-fanged grin broke across her face. She reached under the counter and pulled out a thick, heavily creased paperback romance novel with a flamboyant cover depicting a pirate and a duchess on a stormy sea. "Love isn't a pie, Azaela. You don't run out of pieces just because there's more than one person sitting at the table. Love is love. If you have the capacity to care for Reno’s chaotic, red-headed nonsense and Genesis’s dramatic, poetic soul, why on earth should you have to slice your heart in half?"

Azaela blinked, looking up from her latte. "You-you think I shouldn't choose?"

"I think choosing is a corporate construct," Bianca said with a dramatic roll of her indigo eyes, waving her hand dismissively toward the ceiling to mock the invisible Shinra executives.

"Shinra loves boundaries." Bianca's face darkened for a moment, resembling a look that she had seen Sephiroth have since he was four. "They love boxes, classifications, and single-occupancy forms. But out here, in real life? Polyamory is the only thing that makes sense when you're dealing with personalities that massive.

"Sephiroth caught me reading one of my romance serials the other day—the one with the polyamorous elven court—and he literally stopped, looked at me," she paused as she picked up a knife and fork and cut a small square out of her pizza, "and told me I should have been born from a cherub because I am entirely too invested in universal affection."

Bianca let out a bright, melodic laugh. "He thinks he's being witty, but honestly, he’s just glad I have the energy to manage more than one dynamic."

Sapphire nodded in solemn agreement, leaning over to gently pat Azaela’s shoulder. She signed a physical note on a scrap piece of parchment she carried in her pocket, writing her advice down as if it were a formal missive, ending it with her signature 'Yours in perpetuity, Sapphire.'

"Angeal says that honor is about being true to what your heart dictates, not what the regulations demand," Sapphire said softly. Her thoughts drifted to the stoic, heavy-winged SOLDIER she had grown so fond of. "If you try to force yourself into a shape that doesn't fit, you will break. Just like those terrible microwave machines that make the food taste like plastic."

"Listen to the jungle girl, Zaela," Bianca said, sliding the remaining half of the pizza closer to Azaela. "Reno behaves like a stray dog because he wants your attention, and Genesis acts like a tragic opera lead because he’s terrified of losing your respect. They’re both projecting their own insecurities onto your autonomy. You did that shoot for you. Your body belongs to you. Not to Shinra, not to the media handlers, and certainly not to them. If they want to be a part of your life, they need to learn to share space in the sanctuary you're building."

Azaela let out a long, ragged breath. The tension slowly drained from her shoulders. She took a large bite of the sweet pizza—pineapple and ham as Sapphire insisted—the comfort of the warm kitchen and the unyielding support of her friends finally breaking through the suffocating weight of her SOLDIER responsibilities. "So, I just tell them to deal with it?"

The rain in Midgar didn't fall so much as it bled out of the charcoal sky, a greasy, continuous drizzle that streaked the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass of the Sector 0 penthouse. Bianca Moore absolutely hated this apartment.

It was a gilded cage designed by Shinra’s PR and Marketing divisions to promote the '1st Family of SOLDIER'. It was all sterile chrome, sharp geometric leather couches, and hidden biometric sensors that she knew Sephiroth had disabled weeks ago, though the cold aura of corporate observation still clung to the corners of the ceiling.

To combat the metallic numbness of the place, Bianca had spent the afternoon turning the kitchen into a war zone of flour, yeast, and melted butter. She wasn't wearing her SOLDIER uniform or the heavy, asymmetric tactical dusters she favored for survival.

Instead, she wore an oversized, faded black band t-shirt that she had dragged her friends too years ago, a pair of worn denim jeans that had seen better days, and a pair of beat-up canvas sneakers with mismatched neon laces. Her large, black-and-indigo wings were carefully tucked behind her. Their internal structural wires rested heavily against her back as she leaned over the marble island, pulling a fresh, golden cookie sheet full of pizza goodness from the oven.

"Eat," Bianca commanded. She set the steaming baking sheet down on a trivet before the two women sitting at her counter. "Azaela, take the big piece. You look stressed. Sapphire, stop staring at the digital oven clock like it’s going to explode."

Sapphire Aphelion blinked out of her trance. Her dark hair framed her face. She reached out with a delicate, flour-dusted hand. Her phone rested on the counter beside her: permanently dark, permanently silent, completely ignored.

Hailing from the deep, humid jungles of Mideel, modern Midgarian appliances still looked to her like alien artifacts.

"The little numbers change too fast," Sapphire murmured, taking a massive bite of the pizza and sighing happily. "But this tastes like home. It reminds me of the simple hearths."

Sitting next to her, Azaela Sharpe looked like she was about to vibrate out of her skin. The blonde, celebrated across the planet as the first female 1st Class SOLDIER, was dressed in her preferred comfortable, oversized casual clothes. Her glowing green Mako eyes wide with a mixture of embarrassment and exasperation. She took a vanilla iced latte, which Bianca had aggressively sweetened with four extra pumps of cane syrup, and drank half of it in a single, desperate gulp.

"I am going to murder Reno," Azaela groaned, burying her face in her hands. "And then I am going to throw Genesis’s stupid copy of LOVELESS into a Mako reactor."

Bianca chuckled. Her feline purple pupils glinted with amusement as she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel. She leaned against the island. Her long, prehensile tongue catching a stray speck of sugar on her lower lip.

"Alright," Bianca said. "Let's hear it. What did the red-headed menace and our resident drama king do now? I heard about the lingerie shoot. Shinra PR practically plastered the memos all over the tactical briefing floors."

Azaela turned a violent shade of crimson, looking at her slice like it held the secrets to the universe. "It was supposed to be a standard autonomy play! Shinra wanted to handle my image, so I took control of it first. But Reno... Reno won't shut up about it. Every time I walk down the corridor, he makes some loud, ridiculous comment about lace or structural integrity. And Genesis...Genesis is brooding so hard he’s practically generating his own weather system because he thinks Reno is being 'unrefined' and intrusive. I feel like I'm trapped between a high-speed train and a localized hurricane. They're making me feel like I have to choose between the two of them, and it’s driving me insane."

"In Mideel, if two chocobos fight over the same patch of greens, you simply let them kick each other until one tires out." Sapphire wiped a bit of sauce from her chin. "Or you ride both. Though I suppose men are slightly less cooperative than large avians."

Sapphire paused, turning to Bianca. "Is there a rule in the city that says you can only have one suitor? It seems terribly inefficient. Like only having one book to read."

"Exactly!" Bianca clapped her hands together. A brilliant, sharp-fanged grin broke across her face. She reached under the counter and pulled out a thick, heavily creased paperback romance novel with a flamboyant cover depicting a pirate and a duchess on a stormy sea. "Love isn't a pie, Azaela. You don't run out of pieces just because there's more than one person sitting at the table. Love is love. If you have the capacity to care for Reno’s chaotic, red-headed nonsense and Genesis’s dramatic, poetic soul, why on earth should you have to slice your heart in half?"

Azaela blinked, looking up from her latte. "You-you think I shouldn't choose?"

"I think choosing is a corporate construct," Bianca said with a dramatic roll of her indigo eyes, waving her hand dismissively toward the ceiling to mock the invisible Shinra executives.

"Shinra loves boundaries." Bianca's face darkened for a moment, resembling a look that she had seen Sephiroth have since he was four. "They love boxes, classifications, and single-occupancy forms. But out here, in real life? Polyamory is the only thing that makes sense when you're dealing with personalities that massive.

"Sephiroth caught me reading one of my romance serials the other day—the one with the polyamorous elven court—and he literally stopped, looked at me," she paused as she picked up a knife and fork and cut a small square out of her pizza, "and told me I should have been born from a cherub because I am entirely too invested in universal affection."

Bianca let out a bright, melodic laugh. "He thinks he's being witty, but honestly, he’s just glad I have the energy to manage more than one dynamic."

Sapphire nodded in solemn agreement, leaning over to gently pat Azaela’s shoulder. She signed a physical note on a scrap piece of parchment she carried in her pocket, writing her advice down as if it were a formal missive, ending it with her signature 'Yours in perpetuity, Sapphire.'

"Angeal says that honor is about being true to what your heart dictates, not what the regulations demand," Sapphire said softly. Her thoughts drifted to the stoic, heavy-winged SOLDIER she had grown so fond of. "If you try to force yourself into a shape that doesn't fit, you will break. Just like those terrible microwave machines that make the food taste like plastic."

"Listen to the jungle girl, Zaela," Bianca said, sliding the remaining half of the pizza closer to Azaela. "Reno behaves like a stray dog because he wants your attention, and Genesis acts like a tragic opera lead because he’s terrified of losing your respect. They’re both projecting their own insecurities onto your autonomy. You did that shoot for you. Your body belongs to you. Not to Shinra, not to the media handlers, and certainly not to them. If they want to be a part of your life, they need to learn to share space in the sanctuary you're building."

Azaela let out a long, ragged breath. The tension slowly drained from her shoulders. She took a large bite of the sweet pizza—pineapple and ham as Sapphire insisted—the comfort of the warm kitchen and the unyielding support of her friends finally breaking through the suffocating weight of her SOLDIER responsibilities. "So, I just tell them to deal with it?"

Even though I included Sephy in this piece, he's not meant to be there in a literal sense. It's more to represent his influence or memory. Lucrecia does dream of him, after all.

Even though I included Sephy in this piece, he's not meant to be there in a literal sense. It's more to represent his influence or memory. Lucrecia does dream of him, after all.