Dawn of a New Day

or

I'm Gonna Regret This in the Morning

The sun slipped through the clouds, its rays gently caressing the face of a new world. The rain had ceased, and the Planet was saved from the poison that had threatened its children. Cloud stood above the ruins of Midgar, surveying the light that spread across the plains. The Ex-Soldier breathed deeply, feeling freedom from the Geostigma that had plagued him day and night for nearly a year. Freedom, also, from the shadowy nightmare that had haunted the back of his mind, Sephiroth, son of the destroyer of worlds, Jenova. For the second time, he had watched his oldest enemy die, and for the second time, he had felt the cosmic release of the death of the most powerful Entity in the universe.

Little did he know, Sephiroth would once again stir on the fringes of the living world. Sooner than Cloud could even imagine.

*

The earth trembled. The entire world shuddered from its very foundations, from deep within its core. From the very heart of the Planet, protest rang. For the second time in its history, something foreign attempted to enter the Lifestream. Something malign; something of purest evil. Sephiroth sought peace within the Planet’s lifeforce, and the Planet denied him. And, with nowhere to go, the spirit of Sephiroth was forced to manifest, once again, bringing with him the last of the cancerous venom of Geostigma.

Enter - Sephiroth Sin.

*

Cloud looked up as he felt the tremor of the ground beneath his feet. Far below him, on the plains of Midgar, a spot of darkness was spreading. Cracks began to form in the surface of the earth. Cloud’s cerulean blue Mako eyes, glowing with a burning-cold fire, narrowed. The wind ruffled the soft blond spikes of Cloud’s hair and the sunlight, once so bright, now dimmed by an invisible veil, glinted delicately off the silver wolf of his shoulder guard. “What now, old friend?” he murmured to his invisible guardian, his oldest friend, now a spirit on the wind. “I believed it was over, Zack.”

The wind swirled in answer, a soft susurrus, brushing against Cloud’s skin. And the answer was on the wind.

Soon.

Sighing to himself, Cloud shook his head and slowly turned, descending from the ruins to his motorcycle, knowing in his heart that it was his duty to go and discover what this new anomaly was, and whether or not it was a threat to the glorious world he had saved, once again.

*

Long, veined cracks spread across the Planet’s surface, small at first, beginning on the plains below Midgar. Pale light welled through the cracks as they widened. It was a greenish glow, the soft teal green of the Lifestream. It darkened malevolently. The Lifestream was angered. It swelled to the surface with a fury, a force, and a power that caused reality to waver around it.

Sephiroth emerged.

Sephiroth SIN emerged.

*

He was a creature of freakish beauty. His skin was pale as marble, veined with the blackish purple of geostigma, and his body was perfection. More beautiful than anything a human of the Planet could have created. Sephiroth Sin, thrice dead and thrice resurrected, separated by death from whatever he had originally been. Sephiroth Sin; the ultimate creation, the last of Jenova’s essence, epitomized in a glistening monument to destruction. Her final vengeance, her son, her Sephiroth. Her greatest Sin.

*

Reality fluctuated. Sephiroth’s re-emergence sent waves rippling through the universe, and through other universes. Disturbances were created.

A yawning blue gate opened before the most powerful sorcerer in his dimension, on a quest to discover the Entity who had stolen his sister from him. Without a second thought, trusting to fate, he plunged inside. The blade of his scythe flickered in the blueness of the wormhole as he flew towards his destination.

A young woman, golden-haired, slender, beautiful and deadly, felt a rush of wind as she was pulled away, through time and space, to face another former General. Her grip tightened on the hilt of her Runic Blade, and she felt the stirrings of a call to destiny, once again.

A young man, a leader, a hero, plummeted through the brightness of an occurrence he had experienced once before, a journey that transcended his very known universe. An error in the time stream, a compression. The handle of his gunblade was tight against the leather of his gloves.

A silver-haired weapon, called across the barriers of space and time, to face his equal. As he approached his destination, he gave his mind and body to Trance, feeling power course through his body again.

A guardian, called, like Sephiroth, once again across the barriers of death. Like he had, once, so long ago, been called across the limits of a dream by the Sin of an old friend, he was brought forth again, by the Sin of a deadly enemy.

A warrior. A soldier. A man who know Sephiroth more intimately than anyone else on the Planet, a man who had faced him from within his mind. The man responsible for each and every one of Sephiroth’s triad deaths gunned the engine of his motorcycle, and roared across the plains towards the last death his oldest enemy would ever face.

*

Simultaneously, the six universes overlapped around Sephiroth.

The Warlock leveled his scythe at the Sin before him. “You have created this disturbance,” he hissed, a voice of shadows and blackest magic. “You are the Entity. I will take what you took from me, a thousandfold.”

The General ran a slender hand along the cool mythril of her Runic blade, feeling it pulse in anticipation of the fantastic energies that swirled before it. “I have seen one like you once before,” she murmured. “A mortal man twisted into the likeness of a god. I did not stand for it then, I will not stand for it now.”

The SeeD slung his gunblade over his shoulder, narrowing slate blue eyes at the demi-god. “I don’t know why I’m here. But I know how I came here, and I know what I faced the last time it happened. Sorceress…whatever you are. You’re going to be eliminated.”

The Angel of Death felt the power of Trance. He focused his eyes coldly, condescending. “The weak lose their freedom to the strong. Such is the way of the strong. And it is the providence of nature that only the strong survive. You, you are not nature. You are, as I was, a weapon. You must not be allowed to survive.”

The Guardian lifted a bottle of saké to his lips and drank slowly. Lowering the earthen jug, he rolled his shoulders and shifted his blade behind him. “I made a promise. I promised I would face Sin. I’ve never seen a greater Sin than you. I will tell your story’s end.”

The SOLDIER roared to a halt at the edge of the gaping cracks in the earth. He dismounted his bike slowly and drew two swords, composites of three each. He said nothing. His expression was grim, and Mako flared behind his eyes.

Sephiroth Sin opened his eyes. They had been closed before, black lashes resting against alabaster cheekbones. No longer were they Mako eyes. Darkness swirled within their depths, purest evil. No longer was he a SOLDIER. No longer was he a General. No longer was he the One-Winged Angel. No longer was he a memory made flesh.

He was Sephiroth Sin. And darkness covered the world.

“This will be the Reckoning.”

*

The power that exploded from the new and final Sephiroth was beyond anything and everything. Those who surrounded him, the Allies, would not have survived, had They not been the strongest of their calibers, had They not faced powers that nearly reached this extent. Had not each one lingered on the fringes of death, the cataclysmic explosion of force that ripped through the rest of the world would have killed Them all.

Even so, pain ripped through Their bodies. An agony. The agony. The final torment, the ultimate power the universe had to offer. And They survived. They picked themselves up, They stood.

They faced Sephiroth. And They called upon Their power.

*

The brightness of the Lifestream that had rejected Sephiroth changed. It intensified. It became brighter and brighter as all the souls that existed, that had ever existed, unified, as they had done once before, to repel another evil, wrought by the same hands. The darkness was dispelled and, welling up from between the cracks that had been made by the emergence of Sephiroth Sin, clothed in pure white light, surrounded by the spirits of her ancestors, the Last Ancient came forth. Corporeal, alive, as real as Sephiroth was.

Aeris. The Planet’s Forgiveness.

*

The chaos that had been caused by Sephiroth’s egression, the freak anomalies that had called forth dread warriors from every dimension, became purposeful. Light, the same light as that of the Lifestream, a unifying force throughout the entirety of Existence, shone from the portals that surrounded the apocalyptic being.

And more allies came forth. More warriors, more who had faced their own versions of ultimate evil, summoned by a stirring deep within, a call to aid their allies; their friends.

Sephiroth Sin was surrounded.

A silent young man wielding a katana. A princess bearing a crossbow. A robot shown to feel. A girl seeing outside time. A frog once knighted. A woman from ages past. The Magus smiled coldly at his allies and twirled his scythe quickly around to point at the Entity.

A woman, once half Esper. A thief turned rebel. A king and his twin. An assassin with a secret. A samurai broken by grief. A boy raging through the world. A gambler free from obligations. A moogle saved by compassion. An artist giver of life. A grandfather bearing the power of others. A monster gentled. An Enigma, a mystery to all. The General nodded curtly to her comrades and raised her sword and shield to the sky, screaming out a battle cry.

A rebel fighting for his daughter’s world. A fighter overwhelmed by love. A prisoner taken from his home. A traitor redeemed by truth. A pilot living new dreams. A man facing his final sin. An Emperor’s daughter craving magic. The Soldier looked expectantly at his friends and hefted the First Tsurugi onto his shoulder.

A martial artist proving his courage. A teacher protecting her students. A child playing a game. A sorceress aiding her knight. A sniper keeping his cool. A knight scorned. A father making up for his past. A mute ever-watching. A token wielding blades. A false mother. The SeeD pointed to the Horrible Perfection before him as his family filed into ranks around him.

An Angel of Death. A queen with a recovered past. A dragoon seeking her own. A child questioning existence. A Royal Knight performing his duty. A gourmet, ever hungry. A mercenary enticed by power. A little girl, last of her tribe. The Perfect Genome seemed to ignore them, his eyes never leaving the Beautiful Abomination’s face.

A dream willed to life. A summoner ready to die. A machinist searching for home. An athlete tied to tradition. A witch with her own view. A beast yet so much more. The Guardian nodded slightly to his fellow travelers and took a final swig from the earthen jar, its contents run dry.

The Sephiroth chuckled.

And there was a Reckoning.

*

Dawn broke over a new world. Cloud stood, alone on the plains of Midgar. The ground was solid beneath his feet. The cracks had sealed. The Lifestream had regressed. The worlds were separate again; the gates between them forever closed. Cloud stood for a few more moments, then snapped the two swords he carried together and embedded them in the ground before him.

“And…now…it’s over.”

*

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