finalflight | PSL; [FLOWER, STARDUST, STEEL EXPLOSION]

[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There are smaller, more niche exercises that are so outdated that they fall rather close to being categorized as ridiculous in Sephiroth’s mind, were it not for that strange, pervasive fascination with the unusual, the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.]

Edited 2020-06-29 04:54 (UTC)

[ and so it was. on a random day -- uneventful and unassuming and really just plain damn boring, to be honest, even with training in full force and an impending war on the horizon -- sephiroth gets a message, or several, out of the clear blue.

caller id would imply the number belongs to some standard shinra grunt. the last text he'd received from it lists off coordinates and some superficial briefing that he needn't even respond to, and so it was left permanently suspended on read.

not to mention, there's probably some kind of unspoken protocol about... not... spamming your coworkers... and it likely counts for double if they're actually soldier, so. the fact that he gets a whole bunch of these out of absolutely nowhere is a little... ]

call sephirath

[ she's in the garden again.

and she doesn't, after all, call him very often with the express purpose of pulling him away from whatever he's doing, right now, immediately. he's a man of appointments, military engagements, missions and stuffy airs. she's just the flower girl. some lab rat, captive princess (or so reno cheekily calls her to her face one day, to his sheer and utter buffonery -- which she'd responded to by tugging on his ponytail hard enough to make him shriek a little in passing, right in front of tseng and the young heir of the shinra empire whose easy name she can't be bothered to remember) whose only freedoms lie in this greenhouse, and the most recent addition of the infirmary.

if asked, maybe she'd say that she likes it. it's different, anyway, from being locked up in a room all day, dreading the next visitor she might get that tells her any sort of bad news from the list of worst case scenarios that she's keeping track of in her head. maybe in the next board meeting, they'll give hojo the okay to drown her in mako; maybe they'll take a scalpel to her skin, and cut up pieces of her to examine under a microscope.

just like her mother -- whose pictures are blown up in technicolor in hojo's office, plastered like x-rays or trophies across the walls on both sides, which she expects he'd done only to get a rise out of her, to take out his sad frustration over the fact that he can't dissect her on an open table in the only way he can.

the infirmary is a good distraction. they watch her and her uncanny knack with materia, stitching up infantryman and soldiers alike when the nurses are overwhelmed by the workload. more often than not, she watches out for him, not sure if she's relieved or disappointed when he never seems to show.

but she's in the garden, and they're surrounded by her lilies now, and at least he's here, looking as sturdy as ever. ]

You seem happy.

[ it lilts a little subdued, even if the smile on her face is warm.

maybe she's still tired, feeding all of her energy into the soldier that wound up in the infirmary earlier in the afternoon, his red hair cropped chin length, and his on-off blink of cat eyes in the dimmed light, a gash in his shoulder that she feels she should somehow inexplicably recognize even if all she'd ever seen was - ]

I think?

[ she's still not that great at being not obvious -- because she's scanning him from head to toe in a way that could only mean she's checking for injuries -- even if, somehow, she's definitely avoiding his eyes. ]

Did you win a fight recently?

((from over here!))

[And so her light turns into fire.

It’s a tug of aggression, the kind that makes him bow low, as though she has her fingers wrapped tight around a leash instead of a lengthy braid of hair. The petal of a flower jostles from its home, flutters to the ground and disintegrates before it can land near the toe of Sephiroth’s boot.

He smiles.

The curve of it is dagger-sharp at this proximity, contrasted with the lazy lifting of malachite eyes beneath long, dark lashes. She’s close; he can feel her breath glide against his cheekbones, striking him hot with agitation. If he pressed closer, maybe he could steal her heart away and feel it pulsing beneath his own suffocating grip.]

Do you want my blessing?

[A rhetorical, an old ghost of brazenness come jutting through his words, then lost again.]

I want to know if you would return to the past a second time. If you would try so hard to set things right — meet your mercenary again. Travel a dying Planet again. Feel your own life fade on the point of my blade again.

[Here, he laughs. Low, diaphanous, terrible.]

If you would follow me.

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#justgodlikebeingthings