Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction / Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction ❯ The Whys of What Ifs ❯ Ch. 3 The Warrior Arrives - An Unfortunate Mistake ( Chapter 3 )

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The Whys of What Ifs

Chapter 3 - The Warrior Arrives: An Unfortunate Misunderstanding

Lightning and thunder flashed again, raging in concert with the storm that howled across the Nibel area. The rain made visibility poor and the monsters made poor visibility deadly. If any of these deterrents frightened ordinary people, it seemed not to apply to Shinra, Inc. because a brown armored truck bearing its logo and insignia trundled it's way along a muddy road towards the small but critically located village of Nibelheim. The ride was less than smooth, jostling five of the six passengers and the driver.

The sixth passenger, the commander of the mission, rode without moving an inch, even on the worst turns that threw the rest of the crew along the interior of the truck. The only times he moved his body was to tilt his head to look at his soldiers. His blazing green eyes noted that his second in command was trying to help one of the grunt soldiers with his motion sickness.

Sephiroth snorted. If the fool wanted to hide from his failures, it was his business, but there was no use in him losing his lunch over it. The silver haired general knew that the soldier's name was Cloud Strife and that his hometown was Nibelheim. Sephiroth didn't know too much about his soldiers except for their names, ranks, and serial numbers, but Zack had told him a bit about this Cloud person.

Zack had told him that Cloud had made a promise the day he left Nibelheim, two years ago. Cloud had promised that when he returned, he would be a SOLDIER, one of the elite Shinra special forces. When he applied, he was flatly turned down: Cloud was told that he was too weak to be a SOLDIER. And so now, returning to his hometown, Cloud hid his face behind a mask, too embarrassed to face the truth.

Sephiroth was not acquainted with failure. For most of sixteen years, he had been the most feared and respected man on the Planet. When Shinra initiated a war with the island nation of Wutai, it seemed as they had bitten off more than they could chew when the armies of Wutai not only held their own in battle with Shinra's SOLDIERs but also pushed them back to the mainland. Then they had assigned him to command the assault. Within two weeks, Sephiroth had done what no general before him had done: he made the proud people of Wutai acknowledge that they had a better in combat. A fourteen year old with no formal training in coordinating massive battles on a strategic and tactical scale had done what generals with decades of battle experience had failed to do.

Sephiroth could not sympathize with Cloud's failure because he had never failed himself.

Unbidden, the memory of a cold, sterile room filled with metal and glass filled his mind. It had operating instruments and syringes lined in straight rows near an operating table fitted with straps. A cage of glass, a prison where freedom was in sight, lay in the far corner of the room. Inside the cage, a woman with long brown hair sat on a small cot, holding her young child to her.

A thought rose to his conscious mind: 'Did I fail here?'

Angrily, Sephiroth shoved the memory aside. The memory had been one from his childhood. Sephiroth did not like to think of his childhood. He had been helpless then. Against what Hojo did to him, all of his rage had been impotent. Gradually, Sephiroth learned that lesson and had channeled all of his hate of Hojo into his training. Slowly, the wall had come up, blocking Sephiroth more and more from his past, when he had been so helpless. He had power now. His rage had not helped him gain it. Sephiroth's legendary calm and cool had. He would not waste his time on it now. Rage was worthless.

Sighing, Zack made his way over to Sephiroth and sat across from him, disturbing his thoughts. Apparently, Zack had convinced Cloud to take off that mask before he threw up in it. Zack settled himself, reaching within his sword sash and withdrawing a small green orb the size of a small marble.

"Almost forgot." Zack said, tossing it to Sephiroth. "Headquarters wanted you to have that, but personally I don't see how a freshly made Poison materia is going to help you. I mean, you've got all of that Mastered materia. Something like this is probably like a Kalm penny sitting right next to fifty thousand gil to you. I mean, which would you pick up?"

Zack paused, looking at his commander and friend. "Uh… Sephiroth, what you doing?"

Sephiroth had the materia balanced between four of the fingers of his left hand, slowing revolving it and looking at with an odd expression on his face. But his eyes were far different. Zack was quite frankly frightened of the look in Sephiroth's eyes. Zack knew that if Sephiroth ever looked at him with an aspect in his eyes like the one they held now that he would soon become a dead man. It was beyond anger; beyond hate… it was even beyond insanity. It wasn't human.

Before Zack could speak again, Sephiroth's eyes became normal again, the orbs now reflecting all they saw back to its source like the facets of an emerald. Zack couldn't be happier for the fact. He hoped he never saw that side of his friend again. It worried him. It worried him terribly.

Sephiroth looked at him, a small smile tugging at his lips. "Catch." He said as he lightly tossed the green materia to his black haired friend. "I think you may notice a slight difference."

Zack held it up to his eyes, looking at it with only vague interest. "I just gave it to you. I don't see how there could much of a..." Any further comment Zack had that followed the same train of thought ceased immediately as he dropped the materia, his face dumbfounded.

Sephiroth calmly snatched the materia out of the air with his right hand before it was halfway to the ground. "I see that you've noticed a difference." He said with the ghost of a smile, his left hand in the air, displaying a fresh Poison materia held between his index and ring fingers.

Zack stared at him, trying to figure out how Sephiroth had done that. "That's impossible. How did you do that?"

"First you say it's impossible. Then you ask how I could have done it. Let's just say that it is a trick of the trade and go on. Agreed?" returned Sephiroth, an enigmatic smile on his face as he tossed Zack the spare materia.

Zack smiled widely as he caught it, dumbfounded by what Sephiroth had done. "Agreed. Let me say, my friend, that you really are a marvel."

Sephiroth pulled his hand to his chest in an exaggerated manner, as if to protect his pride, and replied in a dry tone, "You're just now realizing that? My friend, you really are slow. I would have thought that you knew that particular fact since I told you about that incident with the Restore materia."

Zack chuckled at the thought. He wouldn't have wanted to be that supply clerk. "True. I deeply apologize." Zack brought his left hand out in an over-emphatic manner that matched his tone, which Sephiroth accepted in his usual way; with a semi-grave nod and the twitch of his cheekbones that Zack had learned to interpret as Sephiroth's own unique form of laughter. Then Zack noticed something: Sephiroth had not placed his new materia in one of the slots on his sword or bracer. Sephiroth had placed it in one of his trenchcoat's inner pockets.

"You're not going to use that new materia of yours?" Zack asked, slightly confused.

"I've already assigned all of the slots to other materia. I might try it out later." Replied Sephiroth in a cavalier tone.

Any further conversation was halted when the truck stopped. Sephiroth's brow furrowed. They were still at least an hour's travel from Nibelheim. Why had they stopped?

"What's wrong? Why have we stopped?" Sephiroth demanded in a monotone shout.

"There's something out there. Something big. I can't get around it. It's blocking the road." The driver replied, attempting to match the general's mythical placidity, but he failed miserably, his voice had cracked.

Sephiroth shrugged and gestured his team out of the truck. "Then I would guess that we had better move it out of the way. Let's go."

They assembled outside the truck, ready for combat. They needed to be. In front of them was an enormous dragon. Sephiroth studied it coldly, noting its razor sharp claws and lightning bolt shaped horns. Its scales were a dazzling green and its underbelly was a sharp gold color. Sephiroth noted dispassionately that it looked strong enough to kill a dark dragon without a problem, for unlike most dragons; this one was compact, almost squatty with arms that disproportionately long compared to its legs. Although it didn't have the length of other dragons, it was even more heavily muscled than its counterparts. It could use that muscle on a shorter frame to better effect. Its arms were folded in two, and Sephiroth noticed that it walked on the pivot points of its elbows. He guessed that the arms could unfurl like a whip to give a deadly surprise attack to the unwary. He wryly thought it a good thing that he wasn't unwary.

Sephiroth mentally reviewed his materia stock, debating a battle strategy. He had a Mastered Fire, Ice, Bolt, Earth, Gravity, Seal, Restore, Time, Enemy Skill, and an All materia that was attached to his Bolt materia. The dragon's scales looked too tough to suffer much harm from a Fire or Ice attack and a Bolt attack probably wouldn't do much either. Sephiroth decided that the best plan of attack would be to knock it off its balance with a Quake attack, then hammer it to the ground with one or two Demi attacks before finishing the dragon off with his Masamune. If it survived long enough for him to actually use his sword, he arrogantly thought. Satisfied with that battle plan, Sephiroth moved his troops forth to give battle.

Before Sephiroth could even launch his first spell, the dragon reared its head back and unleashed a massive bank of fog from its mouth. The fog attack covered the entire area; to the point where Sephiroth couldn't even see the ground underneath his feet, yet for some reason he could still see his boots quite clearly. The fog blocked him from seeing anything. His ears seemed to be deceiving him because everything sounded distorted, like when you hold your ears underwater. If it was even to be believed, Sephiroth could not feel the raindrops that were surely still falling. It was as if the fog was completely shutting him off from the outside world.

Sephiroth stared in horror, looking around in dismay as he suddenly realized that it was shutting him off from the outside world. The fog formed together, solidified, and as it did so, it changed from a dirty gray to pure white. The last of the gray faded, leaving him in a dimension of solid white.

A tune started playing, breaking the silence. It reminded Sephiroth of an old Junon marching song that was played for troops on long journeys. As the song played all of Sephiroth's materia, with the exception of the Poison materia that was in his trenchcoat's inner pocket, drifted out of their slots and started rocketing towards the sky. He made a desperate lunge for them, hoping to come up with the Gravity or the Bolt materia, but only managing to grab the blasted All materia, which Sephiroth quickly placed alongside the Poison materia. As the materia rose, they started to glow, brighter and brighter as they gained height. When they reached the top of the dimension the light that they emitted was so bright that Sephiroth had to cover his eyes.

Sephiroth's last thought before he disappeared from his Planet forever was a wry one.

'I guess that battle plan didn't turn out so well.'

* * * * * * * * *

The thunder roared.

Throughout the gray and cloudy day, the thought pulsed in Hotaru's head. It remembered clearly the words that were spoken yesterday. 'For he is a guardian, even as I am, but his duties charge him with a responsibility that weighs more on him than even my duties have ever weighed on me and a duty that I can barely comprehend.'

To Hotaru, the thought was almost beyond belief. Pluto was charged with the preservation of the time line, a duty that she had kept ever since the days of the Silver Millennium, over ten thousand years ago, if not longer. Hotaru knew, although Setsuna tried to hide it, that the Time Guardian's responsibilities were soul-rendingly heavy.

Setsuna's eyes showed it. They were a dark garnet, almost burgundy, with an ageless quality in them, conveying both immeasurable wisdom and immeasurable sorrow. Hotaru had overlooked the third aspect, almost invisible, hidden behind the other two.

Hotaru wondered: What duties could hang more heavily upon an individual than those of the Guardian of Time, who must stand and watch at the Gates of Time as eons pass, watching and waiting, interfering only if something dire threatened the timeline? What duties could drag more heavily upon an individual than to stand and watch your death and the deaths of your friends foretold, and say nothing, because a single word could destroy the timeline? What duties could tear more heavily at an individual's soul than to watch everything you love wither and die and do nothing, for a single finger raised to help could annihilate the timeline?

No, Hotaru did not like to think of what more terrible burden Phobideum might carry. Beside the duties of the Time Keeper, Hotaru's duties as Senshi of Death and Destruction were miniscule. Hotaru could wreck the solar system for several thousand years with three spoken words. Setsuna could turn the entire universe into a living Hell forever with a careless breath.

No, Hotaru did not like to think of it at all.

Hotaru's gloomy thoughts were interrupted by a familiar noise, never heard by anyone other than a Sailor Senshi, unheard by her for five years.

Her communicator.

Hotaru peered around the area where she was walking and then ducked into an alleyway. She pulled the communicator from her sub-space pocket, opened it, and pressed the flashing 'all-call' button.

"Saturn here. What is it?" Hotaru was cautious; she felt that something was going down. Something big. The battle could begin at any moment. Ami's face popped up on the screen.

"This is Mercury. There's a youma and a strange, silver haired man fighting it out in the park. I think that the man is one of the Triad that you talked about yesterday. Please get here as soon as you can. Mercury out." With that, Ami's face disappeared.

Hotaru replaced the communicator in her sub-space pocket and retrieved her henshin stick. The time for action had come for her.

She held the stick to the air and said, "Saturn Crystal Power, Make-Up!" In a flash of black and purple, Hotaru was transformed into Sailor Saturn. As soon as the transformation had finished, Saturn was off, jumping to the rooftop above her and sprinting as fast as she could towards the park.

Her thoughts as she raced toward the park, leaping from building to building were: 'This is it. It's definitely got to be the first of the Triad. I hope I arrive on time.' As soon as Hotaru thought that, she couldn't resist adding: 'It had to be in that park. I'm surprised that it hasn't been destroyed with all of the fights that we've had in it.'

Several minutes passed and Saturn arrived at the park to find that she was not late. The Senshi had surrounded the pair who were engaged in a stalemate in the center of the formation. The Senshi were unable to attack for fear of hitting the silver haired man. The silver haired man held the youma, a strange mixture of lobster and human, at bay with a wickedly curved long sword. He held the sword tilting upward against the youma's large armored claw, using his right hand to hold the hilt and his left hand to support his other hand. For several seconds more, the two were deadlocked. Then the man grinned smugly and said in a voice as cold as ice with contempt: "You're strong, but you're dumber than hell."

In one motion, he pulled the hilt of his sword up and around, dodging the claw and slamming into the youma's face before continuing around in a spin. The swordsman finished his spin by cleaving the youma's torso exoskeleton in two, the sword's destructive power causing the monster's two body parts to rapidly separate and disintegrate.

He had chosen an inopportune moment to do so.

Sailor Mars was located behind the youma, watching the struggle. She decided that the battle needed to get a jumpstart. This youma had to go down. Mars called out her attack

"Flame Sniper!" The fiery arrow shot out on its way towards its target: the youma's torso.

As the red missile continued on it's way, it clearly missed the youma's now separating torso, and the Senshi watched in surprise as it played along the sword's blade and up, turning the blade from a sparkling silver to a glowing red as it went, along its course, burning and blackening flesh and cloth from the silver haired man's right arm, until it stopped at his shoulder joint.

The smell of burnt flesh and cloth combined, producing a sickening aroma. The man grimaced at the pain, looking downward. The Senshi watched, motionless, unsure of what to do. After a moment, he looked back up at the Senshi, pain and anger clouding his blazing emerald eyes. He leaned his sword's hilt against his torso with its blade to the ground, careful that the red-hot blade did not touch his flesh and was correctly balanced, without taking his eyes off the Senshi.

He flashed the Senshi a quick grin. "You want a piece of me? Heh. Fine." With an abrupt motion, to the horror of the Senshi, he tore at the blackened char on his right arm with his left arm, tearing it off like a kid would tear the wrapping paper off of a birthday present and with the same fierceness on his face.

Surprise, surprise. Look what's inside.

The Sailor Senshi's horror commingled with shock when they saw what lay beneath the char. Sailor Uranus, who was on Mars's left, gave a statement that was quite a clear indication of this fact.

"There's no way. There's no way in hell. Mars's attack turned that arm into a cinder. It looks like nothing ever happened to it. How in the hell did he do that!?" Her voice lilted from deadpanned to outraged as she spoke.

Uranus's evaluation of the situation was correct. Except for the stray bit of black grit, the man's arm looked untouched by the attack. The color even matched the rest of his skin. Instead of being the pink of new skin, it was the deeply tanned color of the rest of his flesh.

The silver haired man chuckled as he reached into the left side of his damaged trenchcoat. "I don't know who any of you people are, but it's been a while since anyone inflicted that much damage on me." He pulled out two small marble sized orbs, one blue and one green, and picked up his long sword with his left hand.

"I'll show you that it takes far more than that to kill me." He held his sword out and horizontally even as he placed the orbs in two interconnected grooves in the hilt. They glowed faintly as their power linked. He brought the crimson-gleaming blade forward in a two-handed attack position, blade pointed towards the Senshi of Fire.

"My name is Sephiroth. En Garde.' The warrior said coolly as he charged forth.

'Sephiroth. Well, at least now we have a name to go with the face,' thought Hotaru.

The Senshi of Silence summoned her Silence Glaive and raced forward.

The battle had begun.

The first of the Triad of the One Winged Angel had arrived on Earth.

* * * * * * * * *

Phobideum stood in the void that was his temporary residence. His form had started to regain physical solidity but even if it was complete, Phobideum could do nothing directly yet to help the Celestial Warriors.

Directly and yet were the key words in that thought and the main reason behind the warrior that stood in front of him. The soldier was a man of above average height and heavily muscled, with his raven-black hair done up in spikes and green eyes alight with mischief and excitement.

"You know what to do… right?" Phobideum asked, expecting one answer and getting three.

"Yeah, yeah. Protect the Celestial Warrior of Order. Help the rest of them where I can. Screw any hot chicks I come across. No problem." The ebon haired man replied, grinning from ear to ear.

Phobideum rolled his eyes, or at least as much as was possible with his incomplete body, before replying. "Just keep your eyes on the prize Zack. Keep side trips to a minimum and be careful with that new power I gave you. It's still unstable. I don't know what it will do if you put too stress on it."

Zack's face took on a somber quality as he replied. "Don't worry Bid. I'll get the job done. I always do."

Phobideum nodded, pleased with the response. He used his massive power to open a portal to where and when Zack needed to go. "Then nothing else need be said. Good luck."

Zack flashed Phobideum a grin before he entered the portal. "Don't need luck. Got devilish good looks and charm." With that, the ebon haired man disappeared.

Phobideum was now alone in the void again.

A timer had started the day he had spoken to the Celestial Warrior of Darkness. Phobideum needed time to think, but time slipped through his insubstantial fingers like water, like sand from a broken hourglass. The Earth was running of time. He was running out of time.

He just needed some good, old-fashioned time to brood.

Phobideum laughed bitterly at that thought.

'That's what started this whole mess in the first place.'

Phobideum shook his head. He had valuable little time to plan; even less precious time to act. It didn't matter anyway. He wouldn't remember it in that case. It would be just like last time.

Phobideum looked at the void around him, wondering in faint despair: 'Have we failed already? Can we win?'

The silence did not answer him.

Chapter 4 - Darkness Approaches: Help Arrives