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:D BACK! also, have some Restore.
- Back from vacation! i'm still alive! i'm alone at home! oh god please, parents, don't come back early like you did last year. After a week sharing one house with two sets of uncles&aunts + the grandma, and sharing my bedroom with a boycousin who has severe allergies to dust and spent ALL NIGHT coughing and spitting, I just might bite.
Oh, my home. My lovely, empty home. T^T *twirls like a ballerina*
- aaaaaaaa turning 29 soon oh god only one year before the big 30, i can't be 30, i'm 22 at most, honest. D: where did the years go?
- aaaaaaaaaaaaaa losing my LJ icon extension pack soon oh god no, not my icons. Where did my icons go?
/subtle asuka is subtle. come on guys, i'll draw you a chibi or something? >.> *beg beg*
-I wrote! ... but, well, yes, some tripletsverse but nothing got completed so I can't post it. I am a sad Asuka. But I did write Teamwork and Restore things. :D Posting the first scene of the Restore thing because all of the rest needs SEVERE EDITING, but it's here, it exists! Woohoo.
Table of Contents - Previous
FF7 : Restore - chapter 7 scene 1
He was in Wutai again. Impenetrable green tangles all around, knee-deep in bodies. His men. Wutaian men. Warriors, all dead. Camp whores with ink-black hair (often also warriors, just more sneakily so.) He kept patiently turning the corpses over, looking for his mother. None of them had any face left.
He wasn't sure how he would recognize her even if they did.
He turned over corpses. This one was Sergeant Darger and that one Third Class Ulweiss. That one was the canteen lady. This one a Wutaian ninja.
And that one was a Wutaian archer, but contrary to all rules and expectations of a hundred and hundred of jungle battlefields he was still alive, and even attempting to sit up. Sephiroth paused to consider him properly. Huh.
A swing with the flat of his blade knocked him out for good. Or broke his skull, either or. Buster swords weren't exactly known for precision and while Sephiroth could fake competency, he had never bothered trying for complete mastery. The skill-set ran opposite of the one the Masamune demanded just often enough to foul his reflexes.
Another archer. A fire-colored beast leaping, fitting no monster classification for this continent he had ever read. The forest down below, beyond the wall under their feet, they weren't on the ground anymore, they were high up...
The city behind him (them), the pagodas and the screaming crowd and the fire.
But he'd been at Yunnan (or maybe Kunming or Shilin), not inside any city walls, much less the capital. The capital came later, after he'd lost all the troopers he'd been given to watch over, when he started losing his own SOLDIERs. His Firsts.
Later they would send in fresh replacements, green almost to uselessness and a few bright ones, to keep (some he would lose anyway) but they wouldn't be enough to pile up so high. It didn't fit. Irritating.
The dragon rising out of the wave didn't fit either, but it was magnificent.
... Alright, that was more than enough of that. He turned away, pulled free. The archers were out of place and he had dead bodies to check. He was looking for Mother.
He didn't know what he'd do once he found her, but that didn't mean he could just stop looking.
His new second in command would be fine. He had proven himself (would prove himself) reliable. Even though Sephiroth didn't want to know what convoluted reason the man had found to bleach his hair bright blond.
+
"-- hasn't really woken up yet... It's nothing -- ahh, okay, okay. It's--"
"He'll have to go to the bathroom soonish."
A sigh; a low, tired laugh. "Yeah, what she said. Not trying to badger you into changing your mind. You asked, is all. I'll just put adult diapers on the shopping list. Problem solved."
The female voice was nearby, perhaps looking at him. The male voice was familiar but didn't sound that close, and its owner was likely standing. Sephiroth kept his eyes closed. The male voice...
One of his SOLDIERs. The newest batch.
A third, faraway voice. Phone call.
One of his too, that third person. Only...
Different.
"Anyway, don't worry about us, the situation here will keep. You just think about Tifa."
"That's what I was calling about," the faraway voice said. "Poison's slow-acting, but it's resilient to materia healing. We were -- hell nevermind, it's a mess. Aeris , can you help?"
Cloth rustled at his side.
"I'm not sure," said the woman, and then he remembered her. She was an Ancient (he was not) and his second in command had a bond with her that divided his loyalties, except they said they wanted the same things anyway.
She was also puzzlingly light-hearted, but not today apparently.
"If it resists magic, I don't know. I've never even heard of things like that. I'm afraid the way my Limits work might count."
"Actually," said Zack -- his name was just back in Sephiroth's mind all of a sudden, his name and his smiles when he rushed into battle -- "I think I was hit by that thing -- a lot of us were. But all I remember about the field treatment is that it hurt like a bitch."
"Fuck." A long, frustrated sigh rang through the phone. "...But it worked?"
"I'm here," Zack said simply.
More silence.
"The traditional healers are just giving basic advice and a handful of plants. Keep her asleep and hydrated, it'll pass. " Bitter. "Thanks for nothing."
"Wait. It'll pass?"
"Yeah. The nerve damage won't."
"Fuck."
"Yeah. You really don't remember?" A rhetorical question, all three seemed to know it. "Guess there's no choice then. Could you...?"
"Yeah," said Zack, commiserating. "I'll--"
"I'm awake," said Sephiroth before he could come and check.
The next silence was deeply dismayed.
He opened his eyes on a wooden ceiling and (the Ancient's) Miss Gainsborough's startled face. He had a moment of satisfaction over it -- but getting one past her wasn't as satisfying when she was distracted by worry. The very fact that such a thing would distract her cheapened the challenge itself, trivialized it.
Zack stood farther in the room, only visible once he sat up. Sephiroth held out his hand for the phone, received it after a second's pause, without a comment. It was small and sleek, the volume turned up so Miss Gainsborough could hear it.
"Strife," he said, and tried not to think about that time floating at the edge of waking when he had not known him.
"...You."
'My apologies for waking out of turn', he almost purred, knowing exactly how on edge Strife would be. Almost, because with Fair in front of him the memory of his Firsts lost in fever and pain came up easily.
"The goal was for us to kill our own men trying to fix them," he said instead, dismissing the impulse to be spiteful. The bare truth would do damage enough. "The poison was especially tailored to worsen with each materia use. How many times did you try?"
A short pause, during which he had the strange idea that Strife might be licking dry lips.
"Only once. ...She screamed."
Sephiroth arched an eyebrow. "That's lucky." He'd known commanders who'd been unwilling to admit it wouldn't work until their men's legs were dead for good, even until their lungs shut down. He'd been that commander, just once, because they couldn'd afford not to make sure there was another way than hauling around dead weights -- they only caused more of their comrades to die, or ended in mercy killings. "As the healers advised, letting things run their course might work out to leave her with a negligible amount of nerve damage, probably only in her extremities."
"She's a martial artist. A negligible whatever is not acceptable."
He conceded the point with a little 'hm'. "The field treatment, then?"
"Yes."
Strife sounded so firm, defiantly so; Sephiroth smiled to himself, obscurely amused. "Let it run its course."
"You son of a--"
"Then when the poison is flushed out, but before it sets in her body memory, hit her with Bio. Level two might work, though for thoroughness' sake I suggest a three."
Zack looked queasy, but not disbelieving. Like he could tell that was exactly what Sephiroth had done.
Like he trusted it had been entirely necessary. Sephiroth looked away.
"That's ..."
"It works, Strife," he growled back, and then forced his very real moment of irritation into mockery. "So long as you don't forget to heal her right afterwards. Preferably before the decomposition sets in."
There was another pregnant pause.
"Window of time?"
"A half hour after the poison stops acting -- keep monitoring it. Sense is a passive materia, it won't trigger another fit. Between Bio and Restore, six to eight seconds."
A sucked-in breath. "...Doable," Strife decide. "Several casters okay?"
"Recommended."
"Alright, noted."
Sephiroth pulled the PHS away from his ear to hand back to Zack.
"Hey. General."
Sephiroth stopped, and slowly brought the PHS back to his ear. He could guess Strife had only used his rank so he wouldn't use his name where it could be overheard, but it seemed one pulled his attention just as well as the other, from that voice.
Strange, that moment of -- irritation -- because Strife would never mean it.
"You staying, then?"
"It looks like," he said dryly, ignoring how it galled, how much he didn't want to. 'Want' was irrelevant, when it disregarded all consequences. (It's a god's prerogative, might have said Hojo. Then again he had more often said, Cease your childish tantrum. You have more discipline than that. He did.)
"There's a bathroom with shower one floor down."
"I don't need a reward for good behavior, Strife."
"No, but by now you've got to need a chamberpot."
Only Zack's quickly choked-down snicker convinced him of what he'd heard. Not the words so much as the tone -- wry, edging into sarcastic, but without hostility. Just... Reserve, maybe.
"...I also figure you won't have another chance to clean up, once I bring them back. "
It was annoying, that Strife would know it would have bothered him to be judged in his dirty, disheveled state. He shouldn't care what they thought.
"But once you're done, go back to sleep."
Moment over. "Very well." He terminated the call and handed the PHS back to Zack, and tried not to look forward to his bath.
Next.
Oh, my home. My lovely, empty home. T^T *twirls like a ballerina*
- aaaaaaaa turning 29 soon oh god only one year before the big 30, i can't be 30, i'm 22 at most, honest. D: where did the years go?
- aaaaaaaaaaaaaa losing my LJ icon extension pack soon oh god no, not my icons. Where did my icons go?
/subtle asuka is subtle. come on guys, i'll draw you a chibi or something? >.> *beg beg*
-I wrote! ... but, well, yes, some tripletsverse but nothing got completed so I can't post it. I am a sad Asuka. But I did write Teamwork and Restore things. :D Posting the first scene of the Restore thing because all of the rest needs SEVERE EDITING, but it's here, it exists! Woohoo.
Table of Contents - Previous
FF7 : Restore - chapter 7 scene 1
He was in Wutai again. Impenetrable green tangles all around, knee-deep in bodies. His men. Wutaian men. Warriors, all dead. Camp whores with ink-black hair (often also warriors, just more sneakily so.) He kept patiently turning the corpses over, looking for his mother. None of them had any face left.
He wasn't sure how he would recognize her even if they did.
He turned over corpses. This one was Sergeant Darger and that one Third Class Ulweiss. That one was the canteen lady. This one a Wutaian ninja.
And that one was a Wutaian archer, but contrary to all rules and expectations of a hundred and hundred of jungle battlefields he was still alive, and even attempting to sit up. Sephiroth paused to consider him properly. Huh.
A swing with the flat of his blade knocked him out for good. Or broke his skull, either or. Buster swords weren't exactly known for precision and while Sephiroth could fake competency, he had never bothered trying for complete mastery. The skill-set ran opposite of the one the Masamune demanded just often enough to foul his reflexes.
Another archer. A fire-colored beast leaping, fitting no monster classification for this continent he had ever read. The forest down below, beyond the wall under their feet, they weren't on the ground anymore, they were high up...
The city behind him (them), the pagodas and the screaming crowd and the fire.
But he'd been at Yunnan (or maybe Kunming or Shilin), not inside any city walls, much less the capital. The capital came later, after he'd lost all the troopers he'd been given to watch over, when he started losing his own SOLDIERs. His Firsts.
Later they would send in fresh replacements, green almost to uselessness and a few bright ones, to keep (some he would lose anyway) but they wouldn't be enough to pile up so high. It didn't fit. Irritating.
The dragon rising out of the wave didn't fit either, but it was magnificent.
... Alright, that was more than enough of that. He turned away, pulled free. The archers were out of place and he had dead bodies to check. He was looking for Mother.
He didn't know what he'd do once he found her, but that didn't mean he could just stop looking.
His new second in command would be fine. He had proven himself (would prove himself) reliable. Even though Sephiroth didn't want to know what convoluted reason the man had found to bleach his hair bright blond.
+
"-- hasn't really woken up yet... It's nothing -- ahh, okay, okay. It's--"
"He'll have to go to the bathroom soonish."
A sigh; a low, tired laugh. "Yeah, what she said. Not trying to badger you into changing your mind. You asked, is all. I'll just put adult diapers on the shopping list. Problem solved."
The female voice was nearby, perhaps looking at him. The male voice was familiar but didn't sound that close, and its owner was likely standing. Sephiroth kept his eyes closed. The male voice...
One of his SOLDIERs. The newest batch.
A third, faraway voice. Phone call.
One of his too, that third person. Only...
Different.
"Anyway, don't worry about us, the situation here will keep. You just think about Tifa."
"That's what I was calling about," the faraway voice said. "Poison's slow-acting, but it's resilient to materia healing. We were -- hell nevermind, it's a mess. Aeris , can you help?"
Cloth rustled at his side.
"I'm not sure," said the woman, and then he remembered her. She was an Ancient (he was not) and his second in command had a bond with her that divided his loyalties, except they said they wanted the same things anyway.
She was also puzzlingly light-hearted, but not today apparently.
"If it resists magic, I don't know. I've never even heard of things like that. I'm afraid the way my Limits work might count."
"Actually," said Zack -- his name was just back in Sephiroth's mind all of a sudden, his name and his smiles when he rushed into battle -- "I think I was hit by that thing -- a lot of us were. But all I remember about the field treatment is that it hurt like a bitch."
"Fuck." A long, frustrated sigh rang through the phone. "...But it worked?"
"I'm here," Zack said simply.
More silence.
"The traditional healers are just giving basic advice and a handful of plants. Keep her asleep and hydrated, it'll pass. " Bitter. "Thanks for nothing."
"Wait. It'll pass?"
"Yeah. The nerve damage won't."
"Fuck."
"Yeah. You really don't remember?" A rhetorical question, all three seemed to know it. "Guess there's no choice then. Could you...?"
"Yeah," said Zack, commiserating. "I'll--"
"I'm awake," said Sephiroth before he could come and check.
The next silence was deeply dismayed.
He opened his eyes on a wooden ceiling and (the Ancient's) Miss Gainsborough's startled face. He had a moment of satisfaction over it -- but getting one past her wasn't as satisfying when she was distracted by worry. The very fact that such a thing would distract her cheapened the challenge itself, trivialized it.
Zack stood farther in the room, only visible once he sat up. Sephiroth held out his hand for the phone, received it after a second's pause, without a comment. It was small and sleek, the volume turned up so Miss Gainsborough could hear it.
"Strife," he said, and tried not to think about that time floating at the edge of waking when he had not known him.
"...You."
'My apologies for waking out of turn', he almost purred, knowing exactly how on edge Strife would be. Almost, because with Fair in front of him the memory of his Firsts lost in fever and pain came up easily.
"The goal was for us to kill our own men trying to fix them," he said instead, dismissing the impulse to be spiteful. The bare truth would do damage enough. "The poison was especially tailored to worsen with each materia use. How many times did you try?"
A short pause, during which he had the strange idea that Strife might be licking dry lips.
"Only once. ...She screamed."
Sephiroth arched an eyebrow. "That's lucky." He'd known commanders who'd been unwilling to admit it wouldn't work until their men's legs were dead for good, even until their lungs shut down. He'd been that commander, just once, because they couldn'd afford not to make sure there was another way than hauling around dead weights -- they only caused more of their comrades to die, or ended in mercy killings. "As the healers advised, letting things run their course might work out to leave her with a negligible amount of nerve damage, probably only in her extremities."
"She's a martial artist. A negligible whatever is not acceptable."
He conceded the point with a little 'hm'. "The field treatment, then?"
"Yes."
Strife sounded so firm, defiantly so; Sephiroth smiled to himself, obscurely amused. "Let it run its course."
"You son of a--"
"Then when the poison is flushed out, but before it sets in her body memory, hit her with Bio. Level two might work, though for thoroughness' sake I suggest a three."
Zack looked queasy, but not disbelieving. Like he could tell that was exactly what Sephiroth had done.
Like he trusted it had been entirely necessary. Sephiroth looked away.
"That's ..."
"It works, Strife," he growled back, and then forced his very real moment of irritation into mockery. "So long as you don't forget to heal her right afterwards. Preferably before the decomposition sets in."
There was another pregnant pause.
"Window of time?"
"A half hour after the poison stops acting -- keep monitoring it. Sense is a passive materia, it won't trigger another fit. Between Bio and Restore, six to eight seconds."
A sucked-in breath. "...Doable," Strife decide. "Several casters okay?"
"Recommended."
"Alright, noted."
Sephiroth pulled the PHS away from his ear to hand back to Zack.
"Hey. General."
Sephiroth stopped, and slowly brought the PHS back to his ear. He could guess Strife had only used his rank so he wouldn't use his name where it could be overheard, but it seemed one pulled his attention just as well as the other, from that voice.
Strange, that moment of -- irritation -- because Strife would never mean it.
"You staying, then?"
"It looks like," he said dryly, ignoring how it galled, how much he didn't want to. 'Want' was irrelevant, when it disregarded all consequences. (It's a god's prerogative, might have said Hojo. Then again he had more often said, Cease your childish tantrum. You have more discipline than that. He did.)
"There's a bathroom with shower one floor down."
"I don't need a reward for good behavior, Strife."
"No, but by now you've got to need a chamberpot."
Only Zack's quickly choked-down snicker convinced him of what he'd heard. Not the words so much as the tone -- wry, edging into sarcastic, but without hostility. Just... Reserve, maybe.
"...I also figure you won't have another chance to clean up, once I bring them back. "
It was annoying, that Strife would know it would have bothered him to be judged in his dirty, disheveled state. He shouldn't care what they thought.
"But once you're done, go back to sleep."
Moment over. "Very well." He terminated the call and handed the PHS back to Zack, and tried not to look forward to his bath.
Next.
no subject
Thank you very muchly~ Cloud reaction to the conversation (amongst other things) coming soon!