Jump 151: Final Fantasy VII

Jump 151: Final Fantasy VII

Location: Nibelheim
Age: ?
Identity: P̶l̶a̶y̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶C̶h̶a̶r̶a̶c̶t̶e̶r̶ The Final Boss
Drawbacks: [+700] On That Day Five Years Ago, Compilation Canonicity, On The List, Random Encounters, For The Reunion: Sephiroth

[Free]      Still More Fighting
[Free]      Limit Break
[Free]      Glorious Hair
[Free]      You Can Thank Me Later
[Free]      Business Badass
[Free]      DRIVE
[Free]      HIDDEN
[Free]      HERITAGE
[100/1700]  BOUNTY
[200/1700]  PROPAGATE
[400/1700]  Guns, Guns, Guns
[600/1700]  BIRTH
[800/1700]  LIFE
[1100/1700] GENESIS
[1400/1700] ADVENT
[1700/1700] REUNION
[Free]      Unique Weapon: Service Weapon
[1700/2000] Materia Stipend (+300)
[1800/2000] Command Materia: Steal
[1850/2000] Support Materia: Sneak Attack
[1900/2000] Support Materia: Final Attack
[2000/2000] Independent Materia: Mega All
[Free]      Command Materia: Morph
[Free]      Potions Bundle
[Free]      PHS

On a certain date, a town elected to report that it was being attacked with some regularity by monsters. Monsters were of course not terribly rare, but these were not the ordinary variety and they seemed to be most frequently encountered near the local power plant, a reactor that siphoned Mako from the planet and used it to create electricity. Shinra sent a detachment of its military, led by General Sephiroth and First Class SOLDIER Zack Fair, out to deal with the local threat, but what they found was far from what they'd expected.

The monster attacks that had been reported seemingly had stopped, only days prior to the arrival of the Shinra contingent, after a streak of fire had been seen in the skies. But procedure was procedure, and so they investigated the power station. What they found, however... pods, rows and rows of pods set up as though for the usual SOLDIER infusion processes, except those inside the pods were clearly not ordinary SOLDIERs but converted into monsters. However... something else had gotten into the pods. The monsters within were stillborn, and when one of the pods opened the monster within dissolved into ash.

Sephiroth of course saw the similarities to them and himself, and considering what had happened earlier that year to his two compatriots was concerned he was created by a similar process, destined for the same fate as his fellows and the monsters, to degrade and die. He devoured all of the material in the basement of the Shinra mansion in the space of a week, before taking action.

A monster attack had happened in the town while he was in the basement, though miraculously no one in the town had died, but they'd evacuated so the Shinra forces in the town could fight them off. Sephiroth hadn't even heard the disturbance, and when he initially left the basement the soldiers were elated for at last their general was going to turn the tide. And he did - at a horrid cost. The town was turned into a bonfire, half the Shinra contingent killed, and the entire town themselves left without anywhere to go. Not that Sephiroth cared; in his maddened state he made a beeline back to Nibelheim's Mako reactor, seeking out his... 'mother', Jenova.

Something else had gotten to her first, however.

Trailed by the mountain guide, he wounded her grievously. He spoke to the mechanical visage of his 'mother' of taking the planet back with her. He struck down his second in command when confronted, But as he at last beheld Jenova, his elation turned to horror. Her body was flecked black ichor. And when he was impaled on the blade of his lieutenant, by an ordinary grunt, the glass of the tube shattered. Before he could turn to attack the soldier, he saw that Jenova's body, too, was dissolving into ash.

Utterly demoralized, he sank to the floor and lost consciousness. And outside of Jenova's chamber, three were unconscious. Zack Fair, First Class SOLDIER; the grunt who had nearly bisected Sephiroth, Cloud Strife; and the mountain guide, Tifa Lockhart.

A team of Shinra soldiers, led by one Professor Hojo, canvassed the reactor. Tifa had been taken away by persons unknown, but the others were hauled to the lab beneath the Shinra mansion for study - and in Sephiroth's case, ostensibly to recover. Hojo was of course absolutely livid that Jenova had been lost, but intrigued when he found out how it had happened. And a further curious thing was found; Sephiroth had been wounded, yes, but whatever the ichor was that had infected and destroyed Jenova had also affected him and his lieutenant. Whatever Jenova's blessings had been, they had been utterly removed from them both, and they were far weaker than they had been after proper enhancement.

And in the months that followed, other SOLDIERs were affected by the same, as if a plague had spread to them - but only to consume their enhancements, not to otherwise damage their health.

In short order Sephiroth was himself reduced in rank from general to lab rat, joining the other two in being submitted to Hojo's tender mercies. Officially, all three of them had died when Nibelheim was attacked by monsters, not that they bothered to notify anyone's next of kin. But Hojo found something very curious in the mountains of Nibelheim near the reactor. The source of the ichor, something (or perhaps someone) very much like Jenova but very different. Encased in cracked crystal and seemingly inert otherwise, with its eyes gemstones, its skin covered in twisting and flowing script. It had been found embedded in a wall within the reactor, having punched through the roof from above, the golden ichor leaking into a mako line and burning into it; surely this was how the monsters and Jenova were contaminated. It felt vaguely familiar, in the way that you might distantly remember something from your childhood, but he dismissed the thought and ordered the would-be usurper of Jenova taken for study.

Hojo had tried to set up something to push Sephiroth, and instead... this thing had come from nowhere at the most opportune moment and destroyed all his hard work. And yet, it seemed perhaps to be of the same species as Jenova, save for not being embedded in rock for two thousand years. It prompted questions about Jenova's origins, but this... interloper, was the crux of the matter.

So of course the company president would just call it the Crux, and that name leaked into the paperwork, to Hojo's irritation.

Over the course of the next five years, Hojo conducted any number of experiments with it, trying to use the same process that had been mastered for the creation of SOLDIERs for Shinra. And this was much more important than idle curiosity, because the SOLDIER program was having... problems. Abilities were degrading. The effects of Jenova enhancement were seemingly fading of their own accord, when normally they would be possessed for life. The reunion theory was a wash, after her main body had been annihilated by the interloper. Or perhaps simply absorbed, somehow. That, coupled with fending off terrorist attacks by Avalanche over the next few years, saw the program's numbers utterly decimated.

Being the mad scientist he is, Hojo stumbled onto a way to make the enhancements work. They were less likely to cause monsters, seemingly, which was desirable. Infusions of the golden ichor would grant a level of temporary regeneration. And with proper enhancements through the process, materia-independent spell casting was possible ... if arguably difficult, it still granted increased versatility. So of course Hojo elected to take it to the next level, enhancing SOLDIER to try to bring them back up to their usual level, and applying the changes to other projects such as Deepground to take them beyond.

After five years had passed from when the Crux had crashed into the planet, five years of torturous experimenting, a daring escape was hatched by the trio of Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth. They'd grown thick as thieves in the intervening time, and the instincts they seemed to have gained 	from being experimented on served them well when they escaped. And, unfortunately for the Shinra army, their meager abilities at materia-less casting were sufficient to escape the Shinra army - while seemingly leaving behind corpses. Sephiroth's doing, but with the proper work and strategically cut hair... mangled army troops could easily be mistaken for them.

And so the three went to Midgar and became mercenaries. Even if they were more than a bit confused, as the treatments had muddled their memories to the point that there was notable overlap. Ironically, of the three, Cloud had the clearest mind among them as he hadn't had Jenova's cells forcibly ripped from him. And when they stumbled into Midgar, disheveled and looking for a way to stay alive, they ran into Avalanche... and moreover, Cloud and Tifa reconnected. Zack and his old girlfriend, Aerith Gainsborough, reconnected as well - and Zack had a difficult time explaining what happened.

Sephiroth? He was slowly rebuilding his strength, though compared to how utterly unstoppable that he had been, it would likely be months of recovery before he could begin to approach that state. But at least he had his opportunities - in the meantime, Avalanche hired the three of them on as mercenaries and began hitting Shinra where it hurt: their pocketbook. Disabling a mako reactor, and going after a second while furthermore using that attack as a distraction to hit another target at the same time... it was pure luck that Sephiroth wasn't spotted, and that the president of Shinra came out to taunt Avalanche before siccing a robot on them.

In the aftermath, everyone survived, but Cloud found himself taking quite a fall and ending up going through the roof of Aerith's church. The two had been introduced thanks to Zack, however, and so they had a bit of a laugh once they were sure Cloud was all right ... and then the two of them slipped out the back just as the Turks were coming to the church, and got Cloud back to the rendezvous with the others.

In the aftermath of this all, of course, things had to go awry. Things went largely as they might have gone in another timeline, including an attempt at going undercover to find out Shinra's plans to destroy Sector Seven; Aerith was captured, though the attempt to crash Sector Seven failed rather inexplicably. Oh, the explosives in the support pillar holding the plate detonated just fine. But the plate itself did not fall. It became unstable, it wobbled, but it did not fall. This was extremely perplexing for a great many reasons, including the fact that by all rights there was literally nothing holding the plate up, but it gave time to evacuate - for those living below and atop it both. And the moment the last person made it to safety, the plate dropped like a rock and crushed Sector Seven completely.

By this point, a certain group of mercenaries were breaking into Shinra Headquarters to liberate their captured comrade, only to be caught after Sephiroth caught a momentary glimpse of Crux, contained and locked up quite thoroughly in Hojo's lab. And when they escaped, after the building was rocked by an explosion and a brief loss of power... well, they followed the trail of blood to President Shinra's office, to find that the walls had been bleached white, the furniture destroyed, and all that remained of the President himself was a permanent shadow on the now bone-white wall.

Our heroes made good their escape, in a motorcycle and a pair of trucks, but Aerith and Zack got into an interesting argument while making their way out of the city, which Sephiroth was roped into (in between swording the Shinra motorcycle-riding soldiers). Crux, was... according to Sephiroth, a being that absorbed Jenova and wanted to end the world; according to Zack, de-powered everyone in SOLDIER; according to Cloud, probably could seize control of them like Jenova briefly seized control of Sephiroth; and according to Aerith, yes, if Crux succeeded in its goals the next time they'd meet would be in a better place. Which is why they were all very lost when Aerith got separated from them during the pursuit, with the stated intention of helping Crux and that "it will all work out just fine, you'll see."

Much of what happened in the following weeks went the same as it might go in another timeline, save that they were in pursuit of Crux, and Aerith when they realized she was in fact working with Crux; sure, the planet was potentially in danger, but now it had become personal. The group added a couple of additional recruits - a ninja from Wutai, a former TURK, a cat and mog puppet pair, and a member of SOLDIER who had gone through the new augmentation process, by the name of Kunsel - and it became further personal when one of the new recruits found that Crux had recruited another who had been trapped in crystal... Sephiroth's mother, Lucrecia Crescent. ("Wait, after all this... your last name is Crescent?" "...shut up.") And so they continued to chase Crux and his seeming lieutenants across the globe, while also evading and fighting Shinra's forces when they confronted them.

Things came to a head in an old temple where it seemed that Crux was seeking out the Black Materia. The Turks were there confronting Aerith and Lucrecia - and were quite surprised to find they had their backsides handed to them when they engaged in direct battle - and in the end the temple was reduced to its original form which was in fact the Black Materia. Aerith and Lucrecia had disappeared at this point, and conflict broke out between everyone else who was left behind, that being the Turks and our heroes. Conflict that fractured the group, seeing Sephiroth stealing the Black Materia and running away... in his mind this was the only way he could get enough power to stop Crux from subverting everyone and destroying the planet.

And so Sephiroth summoned Meteor, and prepared himself in the Northern Crater to hijack the planet's repair process once it hit, while essentially mainlining mako direct from the Lifestream to augment himself in the time leading up to it. This of course made essentially everyone desperate, the heroes ran around trying to get the Huge Materia, the Planet itself set loose four WEAPONs - one of which was obliterated by Shinra, another by our heroes - and when the Huge Material was launched on a rocket-turned-improvised-missile, it was stolen prior to impact. Apparently Aerith was rather cheeky about the fact that she could now fly, as evidenced by her fly-by kissing of Zack once the heroes were back on the ground. The attempt to destroy the Meteor failed of course, but it would not have been any more successful if the materia had been on the rocket - it's crystal, not a bomb.

Somewhere in there, as well, Hojo confronted the heroes, going on about Reunion theory, turning himself into a beastly monster that was "the best parts of Jenova and Crux combined!!", and ... well, it was fairly anticlimactic, as an apparition of Crux appeared behind Hojo as he confronted Zack and Cloud. With a frown and a wave of its hand, the violent changes that Hojo's body had undergone undid themselves, leaving behind a whimpering, fluid-covered, SEVERELY traumatized mad scientist that they quickly put out of his misery while he was busy dissolving into protoplasm. The apparition apparently spoke with Zack and Cloud before it disappeared, but they were withdrawn afterward and reluctant to speak to the others of what was said.

In the end of course, the race against time saw everyone approach the Northern Crater. Sephiroth tried to get everyone to see that he was doing it for their sake, but when both the Ruby and Emerald WEAPONs were sent against him by the planet only for him to cut them down... that was about the point that everyone decided to work together to try to take him down. This included Shinra and the Turks working alongside the heroes, and the return of Lucrecia and Aerith to aid them - and the advice of the latter was that they just had to delay Sephiroth until the Meteor had been destroyed. Even so, the fight was remarkably close and Sephiroth raged against all those who opposed him, descending back into the madness he'd briefly touched long ago, ranting about how he would supplant the planet for Mother, wipe out all the inferior life forms on the planet, and-

The battle fell to a sudden halt with a massive pillar of light appearing on the horizon, stretching into the sky, impacting the Meteor that was descending upon the planet... shattering it, the light fading after blowing the pieces of the Meteor deep into space. This only made Sephiroth fight as though he were a berserker, and the injuries laid upon the heroes went from easily healed with magic to grievous and life-threatening. But when he seemed poised to inflict a final blow, the sky lit up again and white light seemed to infuse everything and everyone - and in between eyeblinks, they all found themselves abruptly transported to Midgar atop Shinra tower, the sky blacked out.

Crux stood before them all in its inhuman form, and the weary group readied for another battle... only for that form to be shed, and for him to appear as a normal human in a suit, looking not dissimilar to an older Rufus Shinra with rather darker hair. And he then applauded, joined by his lieutenants.

"CONGRATULATIONS!" said Aerith cheerfully, before she kissed Zack soundly.
"CONGRATULATIONS!" said Lucrecia, who proceeded to do the same to one Vincent Valentine.
"CONGRATULATIONS!" said Minerva, the incarnate spirit of the planet itself.
"CONGRATULATIONS!" said Crux, who proceeded to snog the hell out of a very confused Yuffie Kisaragi. Everyone else was thoroughly confused by this, and only moreso when Crux palmed a materia to the reeling ninja, who looked at it, then back at him, shrugged, and kissed him again in likely hopes of getting more materia.

"So... you wanna stop making out and tell us what the hell happened?" asked Barret shortly after.

"By all means!" answered the eldritch-in-human-skin entity. "You delayed Sephiroth long enough for myself and Minerva to reach an accord, and so I have taken your world and stitched it into with a thousand thousand other worlds. Minerva brings something unique - none of these worlds have a Lifestream, and so over the years to come, it will grow and become a part of all the worlds under my domain."

"...So where's the sky? And what about Sephiroth?"

Crux opened his mouth, paused, looked upward, and palmed his face. After a moment, the sky shifted, the sun fast-forwarding through a sunrise until it returned to the position where it belonged. "Yeah, my error there. Forgot to turn that on. Anyways, you kept him from pulling Meteor down onto the surface while you were all fighting him, and Minerva let me borrow enough 'oomph' to stop the Meteor from hitting the planet. After that was done, the contract was sealed, and I took the planet afterward."

"...but Sephiroth?"

A grin crossed Crux's face. "Oh, that's easy. He's right there... about a hundred twenty million miles up." And he pointed into the sky. "Let's see if that one-winged jackass keeps whining about his mother in deep space. H'anyway, you kids saved the planet, I'll send a welcoming committee over with a fruit basket to help make this world a better place later. Right now I've got someone to treat to dinner and dancing. Ta-ta!" He promptly grabbed Yuffie, before they both vanished.

Zack and Cloud looked at each other and blinked. Barret scratched his head.

"That didn't answer a god damn thing."