[Sephiroth is a young boy barely on the cusp of his teenage years; a youth already threatening to grow too-fast into a tall frame the rest of his body must fill out to match, with silver hair shorn short but paired with bangs long enough to cast into his eyes. Those same feline eyes are keen and observant, though the rest of his features have already fallen into the habit he’ll carry with him into his adulthood — the line of his brow holds a considering quietude, the press of his lips are serious, his profile something nigh carved from marble. A solemn, quiet boy, one of many researcher’s attendants would say. Those who work more closely with him (who lead him to and fro through the daily rounds of tests and assessments, the proper scientists with a primal need to categorize and analyze his progress) would not dispute this; yet they would add that his reticence is oddly paired with a stubborn streak, a sort of prying curiosity that he has not yet learned to grow out of, and a propensity to display a well-earned pride.
Well-earned, because he does nothing short of excel at his SOLDIER’s training. Shinra’s military departments dole out combat scenarios, practice methodologies, stratagems to research and recreate, and he goes above and beyond, often without trying. It is as though warfare runs through his blood, as though targeted destruction is something he was born and bred for, and it comes to him as easy as breathing. In these early years, of course, he has no idea just how true that is.
But it hardly matters. With natural ease comes a sincere enjoyment of the regimens, and he learns how to wield a sword, how to fight hand-to-hand, how to properly hold a gun when the kickback of bullets threatens to send the stock careening backwards. How to operate any manner of Shinra war machines, from cumbersome bastardizations of metal and wiring and firepower, to automated drones and impossibly fast motorbikes, whose engines pitch and whine like an animal untamed.
There are smaller, more niche exercises that are so outdated that they fall rather close to being categorized as ridiculous in Sephiroth’s mind, were it not for that strange, pervasive fascination with the unusual, the non-mundane. But even they cannot be ignored, for what good is Shinra’s most promising future SOLDIER if his repertoire has even the smallest of holes marring it as incomplete, imperfect?
This is exactly why, on a day where one of these outdated methods of warfare is on the docket, Sephiroth finds himself in the cold expanse of the largest VR training room at HQ. He is mounted atop this exact plumed and anxious method — a bright yellow chocobo, whose coloration is comically at odds with the training area not yet brightened with illusion and faux sensation.
What a sight, his dark form (already his preference in clothing runs along the lines of black) balanced on the top of an oversized bird that shuffles a little beneath him, making his frame sway side to side. Sephiroth remembers himself just enough to keep his hands gripped around the reins of the saddled creature, instead of fisting them in the bird’s feathers.]
...Aerith, what are you doing here?
[He looks down at her, an unexpected sight in the midst of what is basically an official SOLDIER training exercise. There’s no reason for her to be here, though there is a chocobo astride him without a rider — but he had assumed that was for the whomever was assigned to be the trainer, scheduled in at least another half hour from now.]
no subject
Well-earned, because he does nothing short of excel at his SOLDIER’s training. Shinra’s military departments dole out combat scenarios, practice methodologies, stratagems to research and recreate, and he goes above and beyond, often without trying. It is as though warfare runs through his blood, as though targeted destruction is something he was born and bred for, and it comes to him as easy as breathing. In these early years, of course, he has no idea just how true that is.
But it hardly matters. With natural ease comes a sincere enjoyment of the regimens, and he learns how to wield a sword, how to fight hand-to-hand, how to properly hold a gun when the kickback of bullets threatens to send the stock careening backwards. How to operate any manner of Shinra war machines, from cumbersome bastardizations of metal and wiring and firepower, to automated drones and impossibly fast motorbikes, whose engines pitch and whine like an animal untamed.
There are smaller, more niche exercises that are so outdated that they fall rather close to being categorized as ridiculous in Sephiroth’s mind, were it not for that strange, pervasive fascination with the unusual, the non-mundane. But even they cannot be ignored, for what good is Shinra’s most promising future SOLDIER if his repertoire has even the smallest of holes marring it as incomplete, imperfect?
This is exactly why, on a day where one of these outdated methods of warfare is on the docket, Sephiroth finds himself in the cold expanse of the largest VR training room at HQ. He is mounted atop this exact plumed and anxious method — a bright yellow chocobo, whose coloration is comically at odds with the training area not yet brightened with illusion and faux sensation.
What a sight, his dark form (already his preference in clothing runs along the lines of black) balanced on the top of an oversized bird that shuffles a little beneath him, making his frame sway side to side. Sephiroth remembers himself just enough to keep his hands gripped around the reins of the saddled creature, instead of fisting them in the bird’s feathers.]
...Aerith, what are you doing here?
[He looks down at her, an unexpected sight in the midst of what is basically an official SOLDIER training exercise. There’s no reason for her to be here, though there is a chocobo astride him without a rider — but he had assumed that was for the whomever was assigned to be the trainer, scheduled in at least another half hour from now.]