Ugly fears, old fears that he has held closely to his chest. He has spent many an evening wondering. There are truths, even inconvenient ones, that are not enough to move the world. Not even to save itself. Yet when they arrived at Cosmo Canyon, were granted succor by the wise sages and their kindly glittering eyes behind wiry spectacles and learned enough to discern the truth, Aerith did not recoil from it. The dusty research journals he pored over in the Shinra manor basement were right about one thing: his mother had not been human. Aerith did not gaze upon him and see someone, something different. She held his hands in hers and they spent the rest of their evening under the open sky and its endless expanse of starlight and dust.
After all that he had borne witness to: Aerith’s stubbornness, her little indulgences, her unfaltering kindness, her growing knowledge of her people and her place in the world, on this Planet and all the responsibilities she bore out of her heritage, Sephiroth knows he should have better anticipated her next course of action– to strike directly at the heart of HQ and address the rumors they had been hearing about Science’s most precious specimen recovered out of the ashes of Nibelheim.
Shinra has had its fair share of issues with security leaks. People talk.
If there still existed any chance that Jenova could seek the ruin of the Planet once more, then they needed to stop the creature that had caused the near-extinction of the Cetra hundreds of years before.
What did that mean for unnatural atrocities like him and every SOLDIER that also shared her cells? He never did ask her, and he couldn't shake this particular feeling the more the question weighed on his mind. The same feeling he felt back in Nibelheim. Like someone important was waiting for him to wake up. Someone who he never properly met, but has known him his whole life. An eerie, cold, and unwelcome feeling.
His mother. The Calamity.
“You’re sure about this?” he asks one last time as they prepare to disembark. The rusting seams of the rattling can truck they have stowed away on seem to groan in response as it shuttles them down the crowded expressway.
Not too late to turn back, to let humanity find someone, anyone else willing to play hero.
Despite having been the one to ask, Sephiroth also knows what Aerith’s answer will inevitably be. He steadies her with a light hand on her waist as he releases the lock bolt and the loading door rolls up towards the freight ceiling with a clattering thump.
The open door gives them a direct line of sight to the Tower. Ground spotlights criss-cross hazy beams of light that illuminate the heavy concrete and steel walls of Shinra HQ through the many layers of mako smog that hug Midgar’s highest peak. Landing beacons blink faintly at the top. Every floor has its fair share of silhouettes, backlit.
Employees, bustling to and fro across the halls. Security officers, Turks, SOLDIERs, salarymen, interns, techs, researchers. Monsters lurk there, too. Some human-shaped, some not. Elevators ceaselessly moving along their pulleys. Up and down. Top to bottom, bottom to top. Mako lines, glowing, pulsating as they course along the underside of Science’s playground in the upper floors. The engine and the drum.
Would that he could, nothing would be more satisfying than to reduce the entire structure to slag. Sephiroth can only think of one person who truly possessed enough mana to do so.
“Hang on tight. We’re going to jump.”
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