melodiesoflife | Event || The Answer

Event || The Answer

Characters: All characters who signed-up for the event.
Where: South Continent of Balance (Imperial Territories)
When: April 20th to April 30th.
Summary: The Heroes of Light have lost consciousness and now find themselves in the middle of nowhere, without their Moogles and away from everything they know. They will have to get back home, but what awaits them on the path? For more information, please check the First OOC Post and Second OOC Post.
Warning: Bad things.

Group 01: Team Hijinks House
Group 02: Team Brigands
Group 03: Team Discovery Channel
Group 04: Sephiroth's (In)Sanity Squad
Group 05: Team (Bad) Shipping Advice
Group 06: Team Blue-Haired Lords on Fire
Group 07: Team Mom and Late Sleepers
Group 08: Nothing Bad Will Happen
Group 09: The Hellhounds
Group 10: Loftwings, A Working Title
Group 11: Team Oni
Group 12: Team F.N.T.I²
Group 13: Team Name-In-Progress
Group 14: Team The-Mods-Couldn’t-Brain-A-Name
Group 15: Seraphim Shenanigans

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Reno shook his head. "No," he whispered. "This happened before. On our world."

He glanced toward Sephiroth again. Not good. But pretty much as expected. He was probably one of the last people Seph wanted to hear from right now, but this convinced Reno beyond a doubt that this whole fiasco was aimed at them. If it wasn't an outright trap, it was something likewise unpleasant.

"Sephiroth, we need to go." Even in hushed tones, his voice echoed eerily against the iridescent cave walls. "They're baiting us -- don't give in."

Please.

In the meantime, none of the participants seemed to notice the presence of the newcomers. Hojo turned to Tifa, Barret and the younger Yuffie before continuing his speech.

"I have been waiting for the Reunion to start. Five years have passed, and now the Clones have begun to return. I thought the clones would begin to gather at Midgar where Jenova is stored. But my predictions were not correct. Jenova itself began moving away from the Shinra Building."

He then looked up at Cloud above them.

"But being a genius that I am, I soon figured it out. You see, it was all Sephiroth's doing. Sephiroth is not just content to diffuse his will into the lifestream. He wants to manipulate the Clones himself. I wondered where the Clones were going, but I was never able to figure it out. The one thing that I did know was that Sephiroth was at their final destination."

With these final words, an strange electric crackling was heard throughout the entire cave and all of the participants to this reunion froze, as if someone had pushed the pause button on a recording. The only ones who could still move were the image of Hojo, still looking up at the ceiling and the Heroes of Light themselves.

"Yeah... " It left a bitter taste in Yuffie's mouth. This sucked and she assumed that watching it continue would only make it worse.

At the static she almost jumped, expecting an attack. When the imagines froze she knew that something else was happening.

"Oh, no..."

Yuffie pulled her blades from her hip, not knowing if you could even use them on things like this. "Is it a projection? Where is the tech?"

It felt longer than it probably was, Sephiroth standing there looking for all appearances catatonic apart from the steady tightening of his fists. As if he might be able to get a firmer grip on himself and the rising, rotten feeling which wanted to wash over him from somewhere deep in his gut. Keeping his eyes firmly fixed on that man and the scene as it continued to unfold.

As Lydia came closer, almost passing that physical barrier again like she'd done before to try and express support-No, don't touch me.-the spikey first-reaction he had was caught before his arm even moved more than a twitch. The movement stayed by his own willpower winning out, and the fact that he knew Lydia were only trying to help.

But another person commenting -didn't matter if it was Reno or not- quickly renewed any tension within himself that he'd managed to squash but this time it came with a prickly underside. Did these people have NO faith in him at all? Clearly they all thought that the worst would happen regardless of the fact he intended to keep the issues he had, they had, with his future firmly compartmentalized.

The look that Sephiroth sent back over his shoulder wasn't friendly at all, as a result.

"I'm fine. I know. It's only here to-"

The sudden electric crackling startled him more than he'd later have wanted it to but served to snap his attention back forwards. It didn't take very long at all to find that his gaze was being drawn vertical, though.

He'd read about what would be up there, but it didn't stop making him feel sick, seeing it play out before them like this.

Before long, the image of Hojo looked down and stared at the real Yuffie, at Reno and ultimately at Sephiroth. The other characters remained frozen in time, but it seemed this Hojo was different- Not only he wasn't frozen, but now he seemed to be aware of everyone's presence.

"It's only here because you are."

Hojo marked a pause after finishing Sephiroth's sentence. before turning back to the wall. "Narayana's power and your presence combined are what brought this memory to life."

"Oh, fuck."

This was so, so bad. Not only because the Sephiroth they were with might snap (despite his arguments against it), but the Sephiroth encased in that blue crystallized mako was its own threat. Not to mention Hojo -- very much aware, very much an enemy.

It didn't matter if Reno was Shinra. Here, he was a Hero of Light. He'd be just as much a target as anyone else.

"Narayana?" Reno's brow furrowed and he glanced at Yuffie. "That crystal cult? That's why we're here?"

It was a long way up into the ceiling of the cavern but eventually his eyes found it. Cloud upside-down and seemingly frozen against a deep mako-blue crystal that was so much larger than just to house a person; the cocoon of Sephiroth's own future god-like form. The cradle from which he enacted Reunion...

Frozen, just like the other inanimate members of the cast to another scene taken from events that had not yet happened as far as Sephiroth present in Crystallis were aware. Or perhaps they had already happened, and he just didn't know it. Those things he remembered upon coming back from stasis once had haunted him ever since; how he didn't know, what else he should know but didn't.

Sephiroth sharply snapped his attention back down to Hojo so quickly that it made the edges of his vision blur with the motion. Back to narrowed, glaring eye contact with the man who had been ultimately responsible...for all of it. Hatred roared deep and hot inside of his gut; sparked for the first time in Hojo's direction as his sentence was finished for him.

Not what he wanted to say, but he knew well enough that the scientist had to be right. It told on the scowl that threatened to come alive across the bottom half of his face.

"Narayana....Jenova..." Sephiroth looked pointedly away from Hojo then and turned in a step to at least face Reno and the others a little more directly. "It's the same thing, with a different name. The Calamity of the Skies."

"It isn't exactly the same thing..."

She whispered the words softly. Yuffie didn't consider Hojo's goal and the goal of the calamity to be the same. They might be similar but in her mind the two were very different.

She watched Hojo before her gaze flicked to Reno and inevitably Sephiroth. She had no idea how this was going to go.

Hojo didn't even look at Reno this time. His words seemed to exasperate him if anything.

"Dreadful ignorance. Evidently a Turk's duty is not to think, so remain silent until your part comes."

With that said he walked toward the main group and looked at Sephiroth once more.

"Narayana is the Calamity from this world, yes. There are glaring differences, but the similarities with Jenova are quite fascinating nonetheless. Both exist for the sole purpose of destroying worlds, both can be infused into otherwise regular beings to enhance them in every aspects. Weak-willed individuals fall to Narayana's powers, whereas those with superior wills harness its power." He marked another pause. "From that perspective, Heroes of Light are this world's SOLDIERs."

It might well be as if Sephiroth were wearing his soul as an outer layer of clothing, so visible was the tension which had started in his fists and was gradually spreading up his arms, across shoulders and quickly taking hold of every fiber of ever muscle of his being as he stood there and listened to Hojo -no, not real Hojo; this apparition of Hojo- reveal one of the darker thoughts he sometimes had but buried as far into the back of his head as it could go.

Genesis had been the first to illustrate such a connection, but that was before Sephiroth had known what he did now. Too often, perhaps, he'd told himself it was a pointless coincidence; something not worth pondering over. It certainly wouldn't help him to keep a clear head.

"Typical." There was a telltale grit in his tone, where Sephiroth's tone had tightened significantly. Yet he still fought hard to keep his cool under an anger which was still smoldering just underneath his skin."Why don't...you tell us something that's not as obvious as mud?"

"Such as why you feel it's so necessary to rip these facts out of my future and wave them in my face."

Lydia had remained quiet, listening, and studying this...she wasn't sure what the other was. She recognized him from what she'd heard and read from Sephiroth's file. This wasn't her place--but he was hurting her friends. Again. She could see it in the taller-soldier, and in Yuffie.

Stepping up close and putting herself in line with Sephiroth and glaring. Truly glaring at Hojo. She regularly ventured to the Neitherworld and was friends with beings others would call monster... But this man who claimed to be a professor--he was like Kalki. A true 'monster'.

"That is not my doing."

Hojo seemed disappointed in Sephiroth's question and looked up once again at Cloud and the crystallized Sephiroth.

"I am only another memory. The true "Hojo" died millenias ago and left nothing but his memories behind." Another pause. "And if you keep walking that path, I suspect you too shall become nothing more than a memory."

Millenias ago. Well, any doubt that Sephiroth had about the events of his world having already happened an unknown amount of time ago when compared to Crystallis chronologically, should be dashed to the side by that comment. If not for the source.

Either that, or this 'memory' of Hojo indicated that the man had once indeed been summoned to Crystallis as part of a yet-unknown previous cycle. The question simmered just beneath Sephiroth's retort.

"That path will not be the way that my story ends." He nodded his head up at the ceiling to express his point explicitly. The bitter thread through his tone probably sounding shakier than Sephiroth ever would like to express himself as.

"All that we are, ultimately, is memories. What's your point?"

"I think he's just being mean."

Yuffie crossed her arms over her chest looking towards the wall as if something particularly interesting was fixed to the cave. She didn't like Hojo, even as a memory. Truth or lies she didn't want to listen to anything he had to say.

In memories people were able to live on forever. That was what Yuffie believed though she didn't want to voice this opinion now.

"Agreed. Y'know what they say -- can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all. And it's been so long since I've gotten a' cut someone's tongue out..." Reno fingered a dagger almost wistfully.

"Make yer point faster, old man. I don't have patience for this world."

If Gaia was already long gone, Kyo was gone from Atia, and Johnny was already at his side, Reno had very little to lose. He'd definitely kill Hojo if he was pushed. It might not be helpful, but it would make him feel better.

"You'd be wasting your time. I recommend you put your murderous tendencies and skills to better use."

Hojo spared Reno another look and shook his head before turning back to Sephiroth.

"Memories are what is left of a past that is no longer. Memories are part of oneself, but not all we are. You need more than memories to exist. If you are nothing but memories, than you might as well be a nobody."

Hojo started walking toward the exit, slowly.

"I wonder..." He paused but didn't stop, exiting the cave without giving them another glance.

Nothing but memories. Wasn't that the greatest fear, that he had but tasted from his doppelganger that one time? Just thinking about it, with the mass of crystal above their heads with another version of him encased, sent shivers involuntarily tingling their way all through Sephiroth's nerves.

What did this 'Hojo' even mean by that? Reno and Yuffie might well have not been there at all, as once more Sephiroth found himself staring at the arrangement made up on the ceiling. It shouldn't affect him so, and he knew that; he'd read all about how the Reunion was supposed to work in his own file. Already correlated that to certain characteristics of the Calamity.

He was a little surprised, when Hojo spoke again, to find the man having walked towards the exit- behind them?

...he wonders...what? Exactly. Yet Sephiroth for the time being found himself still rooted to the spot. As if something might shatter if he didn't give it time to settle a little first.

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Event || The Answer

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