Final Fantasy VII : Sephiroth's Revenge

Chapter I : After the Battle

Their swords clashed and sparks flew, as the two enemies swung wildly at each other! Cloud's huge sword comes crashing down, but Sephiroth easily parries it to the side. It hits the dirt, and dust is sent flying up, surrounding the foes like a vail of smoke. Sephiroth's long sleek sword sliced thru the air, as quickly as a bolt of lightning, parting the cloud of airborne dirt from their view. They were both extremely tired, but they continued their onslaughts as though it were nothing. Sephiroth's sword, parallel to his face, flew forward towards Cloud heart; but as Cloudgoes to block, his opponent suddenly veers right, and slices Cloud's shoulder.

"Arr-ahhh!" he screamed in pain, but quickly dodged Sephiroth's next attack by jumping in the air. He thrust his sword beneath him on his way down, missing Sephiroth by an inch. "You've improved a little since our last encounter," Sephiroth said, as he circled his wounded foe. Cloud now breathing heavily, held his sword with his injured arm, and kept the blood from poring out with his other. "But, your still not good enough to beat me, you never were, and never will be!" Cloud's opponent says with a smirk as he stops, facing away from him, with his hands in the air in triumph!

With a sudden burst of energy, Cloud congers a ball of flame in his right hand, and flings it at Sephiroth. It hits him dead on, enveloping his cloak in flame. He drops his weapon, so he could tear off the burning cloak, and throws it to the ground. He has a burn mark scared into his back now, but he ignores it and goes to pick up his cast away sword. "Hhm-" he mutters and pushes his bangs out of his eyes. But Cloud wasted no time, jumping to his feet and thrusting at his rival. But something Cloud had not expected happened; his foe had caught the sword in one hand and was holding it back!

"If this is all you can offer me than I'm offended," Sephiroth says. "I'm about to become the strongest creature in existence, and you waste my precious time with your pathetic excuse for a fight!" He lunged forward and grabbed Cloud by his neck, holding his sword parallel to his face, ready to strike. Cloud drops his sword, gasping for breath. "Too bad," he mocked, laughingly. However, with Sephiroth's guard down, Cloud places his hands on his opponent's arms, and shocks him with a bolt spell. He then kicks him back while his enemy paralyzed from a mix of the magic, and surprise.Sephiroth lands on a wall, causing the crater's strong rock to come crashing down on top of him.

He rises from the rubble, and coughs from the dirty air. Suddenly, far below them, the lifestream hits the column they are on with extraordinary force, causing it to shake. Slowly, it starts to sink, and Sephiroth leaped onto a higher column. Cloud seeing his enemy escaping the erupting flow of the lifestream, grabs his sword and follows suit, landing next to where Sephiroth stood. But before Cloud could find his balance, Sephiroth released a spell of his own! The ground from beneath Cloud began to crumble from under him, then it just collapsed. The whole side of the cliff he was on just came crashing down, straight to the lifestream beneath him, but Cloud managed to catch hold of the remains of the column.

"It's over, why can't you just admit it," Sephiroth says, as he slowly walks towards where Cloud hanged. "There's nothing you can do! Soon the meteor will hit, causing me to be invincible!" "NO!" Cloud screamed angrily. His sword was only a few feet away from him, and then an idea struck him. He pulled a small red sphere from his pocket, and threw his arm up to support his climb up. 'I sure hope this works,' he thinks as he pulls himself up. He runs for his sword and places the red orb inside on of the two empty slots. "This is it," he says, getting into his sword fighting stance, "it ends NOW!" They exchange glares then charge at each other. Sephiroth swings wildly, but Cloud blocks each strike with on of his own, despite difference in the sizes of their swords. They cross swords, both trying to push forward to get the advantage. "I WILL have vengeance for what you did to Aeris!" Cloud yells angrily. "Ohh, boo-hoo, the puppets mad his lover died," mocks Sephiroth, with a smirk. He then loosens his attack letting Cloud come at him, then knees him in the chest. As Cloud falls to his knees to catch his breath, Sephiroth roundhouse kicks him and Cloud flies across the cavern and lands on another cliff hitting the ground with a loud THUD. Sephiroth leaps over to his fallen opponent and puts his sword up to Cloud's throat. "It's been a nice battle, any last words?" "Yeah," Cloud said looking up as Sephiroth stood over him, "I think I'll say, 'I SUMMON YOU, IFRIT!'"

A cloud of red smoke rose from his sword, surrounding the two foes. From the haze, a monstrous creature emerged. It wrapped its massive claws around Sephiroth and flung him to the ground! Sephiroth held up his sword to keep the monster from crushing him, as Cloud got to his feet, and walked over to him. "The tables have turned!" Cloud said triumphantly. But before he could gloat anymore, Sephiroth pushed Ifrit off of him, and onto the edge of the column. He thrust his sword deep into the monsters chest, and lifted him over the sideof the cliff.Ifrit slidoff the sword andinto the churning lifestream below. "Holy shit…" Cloud says wide eyed, looking at the strongest man his world had ever seen. "Bwa-Ha-HAHAHA!" Sephiroth laughed, putting his arms up in triumph.

But as he was laughing, Cloud decided to make a last stand. His sword started to spark, as small bolts of lightning started to emit from it. His eyes went pure white, and an energy surrounded him. 'Aeris… thank you,' he thought as the energy ran through him. "Arrahh-!" he screamed as he lunged forward to attack. Sephiroth turned and started to block Clouds attacks. But he was attacking with such ferocity that Sephiroth could only block! Cloud grabs Sephiroth by the neck and pushed him up against the wall of the crater! Cloud thrust his sword into Sephiroth's chest, pinning him against the wall. Sephiroth pukes blood, and falls to knees as Cloud pulls the sword out. "Bastard," Cloud says wiping the blood off on his pant leg. Sephiroth fell sideways, down into the lifestream, and as he does he said, "Damn you Cloud… damn… you…"

Suddenly, everything goes black for Cloud, and he sits in an empty void. A small vine of lifestream came from under him, and started loop around him. Above him he could see a light blue sky, and a hand coming down to him. 'Aeris,' he thinks as he reaches up to grab her hand…

All of a sudden, everything flashes back to him, he was back in the crater, what remained of his column was sinking into the ground, and the hand he thought was Aeris' was actually Tifa's. He grabs it and she pulls him up and next to her. Halfway up, he says, "Tifa, I…I think I finally understand…about the Promised Land…" "Let's go meet her together," she replies pulling him the rest of the way up. "Where is everyone?" he finds himself asking. Tifa points up and on a slope just above them, sat the remaining of his friends. Yuffie, Barret, Red XIII, Vincent, Cait Sith, Cid… their adventures were finally coming to an end. Now just one thing remained. "Yo, Cloud, what'll we do now?" Barret asked. "Holy will be moving soon," Red answered, "there's no way we can get out of here in time…" "Lady Luck, don't fail me now…" Cid said, as he looked up into the mouth of the crater.

Suddenly, their airship, the Highwind, came crashing down from the surface and stopped right above them. "Come on!" one of Cid's pilots said, lowering a rope ladder for them. Once they all got aboard, as if on que, Holy started to coming up, pushing them up and out of the crater. As they reached the mouth of the crater, they where launched upwards a few thousand feet, spinning wildly in the air. As the Highwind began to slide off of Holy, it started to fall apartand they were sent falling back towards the ground. As they all started to slide inside the ship, Cid grabbed hold of a lever and pulled with all his might. The bridge suddenly bursted apart from the rest of the ship, and a new set of wings shot out from its side. With tensions high they watched what would happen next.

Holy was racing towards the meteor, which was now only a few hundred feet above Midgar. Spiraling twisters where forming under the meteor, causing destruction to the city below. Holy hit right under Meteor, destroying the tornados, and formed a shield above the city. But Meteor went right through Holy, continuing to come down to the planet. Holy not only didn't work, but ended up powering up Meteor's strength! "This is bad," Cait Sith said, "I told everyone to take refuge in the slums, but the way things are looking now…" "Its to late for Holy," Red cut in, "it's having the opposite effect. Forget Midgar, we have to save the planet!" Vincent hit a support beam with his prosthetic arm in anger, causing it to bend a little.

"Wait a sec. look!" Tifa said pointing down to the surface of the planet. A small spiraling vine of light was growing form the ground. At first it was just one, but soon they where everywhere, growing upwards, then curving towards Meteor. "What is it?" Cid said amazed. "Lifestream," Cloud replied, as they all looked down at it. It grew everywhere, all over the world; the strands of lifestream erupted and flowed until the planet was a bright green color. Everyone was facing the falling disaster, waiting to see what would happen! As the Lifestream reached Meteor, there was a sudden flash of blinding white light. When the light faded, they could all see the meteor covered in Lifestream, once a crimson red, now a bright green color. And then, out of nowhere, they could see a faint image of Aeris above Meteor, as if she was holding it in her hands. She clapped her hands together, and crushed the meteor, sending pieces every which way, all of it slowly falling into the ocean. Her image faded, and a bright light took its place in the sky, a symbol of the planets triumph.

Later, once everyone had left, Avalanche gathered on the bridge of the Highwind. "So, this is it huh," Tifa said, as they stood facing each other in a circle. "Ok, listen up," Cloud said, taking his final speech as their leader. "Avalanche isn't breaking up; we're just going our separate ways for now. Before you go, tell Tifa where you're headed so she can keep track of you, so if anything else happens to our planet, she can call us and we'll get back together once again." "Hell, I'm gonna miss you guys," Cid said, putting his hand forward. Everyone else followed suit, until everyone had a hand in the center of the group. "For Aeris," Tifa said, seeing Cloud's face, knowing he wanted someone to say it. "Today will be called Aeris Day, in honor of her sacrifice." "For Aeris!" they all said together.

He awoke suddenly, as the Highwind was dropping off Yuffie in her hometown of Wutai. He looks down at the chair he was in, 'Must have fallen asleep…' he thinks. He gets up and heads for the bridge. Barret, Tifa, Cait Sith, Cid, and Vincent where still on the bridge. "I though you guys said I would be dropped off last," Cloud says sarcastically as he comes into the room. "Hey sleepy head! Shut the hell up, I don't need to here your shit!" Cid said as he piloted the ship. "Oh, he's just kidding," Tifa said pulling Cloud over to where she was standing. "The rest of us are getting off at Kalm," Tifa said, answering Cloud's forgotten question. "Next stop! The Forgotten Capital!" Cid roared, as him and his co-pilots raised the airship from the ground, and started for the Northern Continent.

Cloud had decided that he wanted to see Aeris again. He was going to stay with her in that forgotten ruins of a city. He would guard the city, keeping trespassers and monsters out. 'If only she was still alive,' Cloud thought as he looked out the bridge window. They were above the ocean now, and even the calm waves of the sea seemed to remind Cloud of Aeris in some weird way that he couldn't quiet figure out. Tifa walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey Cloud," she said sadly, "I'm…gonna visit you soon, ok?" "Um, ok…" he answered, not even really listening. He just couldn't stop thinking about how Aeris just seemed to warm his heart. He was probably not being fare to Tifa. Aeris was dead, while Tifa was still alive, but he just couldn't think of Tifa the same way as he did Aeris. At one time, he might have loved Tifa, but that was before Aeris came into his life. Tifa had even risked her life to help Cloud fix his memory! But he just couldn't stop thinking of Aeris.

They dropped him off, said their goodbyes, and left for Kalm, leaving Cloud by himself with only his motorcycle for companionship. He mounted it; sticking his sword in a special sheath, he had made in the bike recently, and roared off into the distance. When he had reached the main temple, he dismounted, and walked up to the water of a special pond. This was the very same pond that Cloud himself had dropped Aeris down into after she had died. He walked into the water a little, then fell to his knees and cried.

After a few minutes, he got up, and started working. Pretty soon, he had made a fence of wood from the Sleeping Forest nearby, and had put it up around the small pond. He made a gate so he could get in, and closed off the remaining perimeter. He made white paint from the natural rocks around him, and painted the fence. After he had finished painted, he got on his bike, and patrolled the city. 'It will be a lonely life, but at least I can be with her,' he thought. He killed a few strangling monsters by sunset, and headed back to his new home. He went into the main temple, just past the pond, and went to sleep for the night.

They walked outside and started down the path that looped around the temple and went all the way thru the tiny city. "So, how have things been doing in Kalm?" Cloud asks. "Exhausting," she replies, then starts her tale. "Well first we need a base of operations, so we were going to buy a building big enough for us. But as we toured around, we realized, 'hey, there are no buildings big enough.' So we decided, why not build one? Barret called Cid up, and he came over with a few pals of his. They ended up making a building about fourth the size of the whole town! Everyone in the city pitched in a little to help, so it cut the time down a little, but it still took about two and a half months to build!" They stopped, now reaching the first seashell house, and looked up at it. It still had a few cracks in it, but Cloud had done a pretty good job at refurnishing it. After a few moments Tifa headed back down the path, Cloud only a few steps behind her.

"After that, we needed to tell the whole world that we were starting a new type of government, a Democracy." "A Democracy? What's that?" Cloud asked, not knowing much about politics. "Well, a Democracy gives power to the people, letting what they want in a government to become a reality. This way everyone will be treated fairly, and hopefully there won't be anymore war. This was only last week that we started telling everyone, and it took awhile for everyone to know we were in office. We went on television, radio, and even visited some of the less popular town to tell people. That brings me to the reason I came…Cloud I want you to come to our first meeting. You are an important reason that we didn't fail in defeating Sephiroth, so I thought…that you should be a help us make a better future. I mean you are a good leader and-" "Stop," Cloud said, and turned Tifa around to face him. "Tifa, I know your trying to be nice and all, but, I think you giving me to much credit, lets stop talking about that for a little while."

They where now entering a small cave room, with a waterfall on the walls,which was pouring into a pond below. Where the water came from or went was a mystery to Cloud, who had even tried to figure it out a few weeks ago. In the middle of the pond, was a pillar, and on that there was a large jewel placed in the middle of the column. Above that, on the roof of the cave was a small hole where light shone into the cave, hitting the jewel, and lighted the cavern. Some more water fell from there as well, and fell onto the jewel below, making a remarkable sight to behold.

"The ancients were incredible," Cloud said suddenly, as they stopped to look at the shining bluish stone. "Yeah," Tifa said, equally amazed. As they started out the other mouth of the cave, Cloud saw the large key they had placed, activating a strange music box. It was still jettisoning out of the ground from where they had placed it, in what seemed like an eon ago.

"So, how is everyone," Cloud asked as they continued down the path, now about halfway done with their walk. "Well…where to start…Cid's back in Rocket Town now, making adjustments to his airship. He's fixed it back to how it looked before it was crushed by Holy. Oh, and he married Shera, you know his assistant, remember? Well, he's supposedly got a child on the way." "Wooh!" Cloud said, trying to picture the ever-confident Cid settling down, especially with Shera! 'We must have changed him,' Cloud thought. "Yeah, I wasn't expecting it either." Tifa said with a laugh.

"Um, Red went back to Cosmo Canyon, he's the new leader now and protects the place, kind of like what you're doing, only there's actually people to protect," she said teasingly. "And now that Meteor's gone, the place has been full people trying to learn more about space. I guess Red didn't tell them it was magic that brought Meteor to us," she said with another laugh, Cloud now laughing with her, as they walked along the path, passing a few more buildings.

"Hmm, oh yeah, Yuffie's started her own materia store in Wutai. After the meteor incident, everyone but you and Vincent gave Yuffie their materia, so she decided to sell them to get money to help Wutai boom again, and it has! She's got the biggest materia selection in the whole world, and the only one that sells summon materia. Thatreminds me, why did you keep yours?" "Well, I thought that one, they would help me remember all you guys, and two, for protection," Cloud said. "Well anyways, she's real happy now…" Tifa said going on. "Yeah, I remember she always wanted to restore Wutai to its former glory," Cloud said, "but what about Vincent and Cait Sith?"

"Well," she began, "I haven't heard from them in a while, but I'll tell you what I know. When we got back in Kalm, after dropping you off,they headed off towards Midgar. Vincent said he had some thinking to do, so he was going to travel the world for awhile. A few days later, Cait Sith returned with a large amount of people, a few of which were the Turks. When I asked him what he was doing with so many people, he told me that him and Vincent had been going thru Midgar, and had found survivors! Well, there where still some there, but that there also was a bunch of Shinra troops hanging around messing with those still in Midgar, so he said he was going back, and would probably be in Kalm in another few days. Most of the people stayed in Kalm, to start a new life, but a few, including the Turks, decided to head for Junon, which has since become the only place with Shinra supporters. Well, anyways, he came and went a few more times, but the last time I saw him, he didn't bring more innocents, but he did come with Vincent. They had flushed all the troops they could out of Midgar, and had helped all the people who wanted out. Some were going to stay there, and try there luck. Cait Sith left right after that, said he was headed towards Junon, and Vincent…he was there that night, but the nextmorning he was gone, and he had only left a message saying where he was going. It said, 'Tifa, gone to wonder some more, if you need me, just contact Cait Sith, and I'll get the message. -Vincent.' And that's the last I've seen of either of them since."

They continued and headed down the path, completing the loop around the temple, and now headed towards the pond. "So… are you coming?" Tifa asked, since their walk was almost done. "…sure," Cloud answered with a smile, a little unsure, but he wanted Tifa to be happy, so why not. "Yay, I'm so glad!" she said and hugged him. When they reached the temple, Cloud, went inside and came out with his sword. "I need to make the rounds before we leave, so wait here for a minute," he said as he mounted his motorcycle. "Ok, but don't take to long," she replied, sitting down onto the steps of the building.

He speed off, heading towards the Sleeping Forest first. About halfway there, he slowed to a stop and got off, pulling his sword out of its sheath, and headed for the hills nearby. He looked for awhile, with no luck, and spotted a cliff. He headed towards it, and when he got there, he looked down and saw the temple. 'Aeris, I'll be back soon, I promise…' he thought as he looked towards the sky, feeling the wind on his face. After a few peaceful moments, he headed back to his bike, started back towards his home. 'Maybe Tifa and Barret can make this new world work. A world without Midgar, or even Shinra for that matter…' he didn't know if that was possible, but he hoped it was, so then he could finally rest easily.