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Description
The Phoenix Eye
Chapter 4
Treachery

-- Fifteen Miles East of Gongaga, 18 Years Ago:

The machine gun split in two, spilling mangled bullets into the blood-soaked grass.  The man behind the gun gasped, his eyes widening in shock before Lord Goshen tossed him aside, pulling his sword free of the man’s gut.  The sounds of battle echoed across the nearby Junon Mountains, the cacophony testifying to the struggle for dominance between humans, constructs and machines.  The old warrior king looked around him, and finding no immediate opponents, took a moment to appraise the course of the battle.  His men still had the upper hand in numbers; not even including the animated constructs that fought by his command.  Nevertheless, the Shinra were fighting harder this day than they had previously.  The old lord of Wutai was unsure if it was confidence or desperation that drove his enemy, and he didn’t care so long as he won.

Lord Goshen’s warrior instincts pulled him from his observations.  He spun to face the danger, and almost laughed.  Standing across a small clearing, free from the fray of battle around them, stood a young man.  Dressed from head to toe in black leather cut more for style than function, his silver hair contrasting both to his dark ensemble and his youthful countenance.  The boy before Lord Goshen appeared to be no more than nineteen.  The only indications that this was a warrior were the steel pauldrons adorning his shoulders, and the blood stained katana held casually in his hand.

Two things kept Lord Goshen from dismissing this prospective opponent; first his warrior intuition nagged him that this young lad was somehow dangerous, and second, he noticed that the boy’s sword was the only part of his ensemble that bore a hint of blood.  Goshen raised his sword to the boy in readiness, gazing into his strange green eyes for any hint of his intentions.  The young man before him returned his gaze so fiercely that the old lord himself was surprised.  The boy smiled.

“Who are you?” Lord Goshen called out in curiosity.

“My name is General Sephiroth.” the dark figure replied softly.

Lord Goshen was again surprised, and pressed the conversation further.  “You appear too young to be a general.  And if you are of the Shinra, why do you use a Wutaian blade?”

“So many questions…” Sephiroth responded, as he began to circle his selected opponent.  “I am young for a General, the youngest to date.  And I find your katanas suit my fighting style.  I could use a longer sword, if such blades existed…” Sephiroth spiraled closer to the warrior king, grasping his sword handle firmly and pulling it behind him, level to the ground.

“Are you sure you want to tangle with me young general?” Lord Goshen warned his opponent.  “I recognize your stance and know the fighting styles that use it, it lacks defense.  Call off your men and I won’t pursue you.  And perhaps you will live to learn a better technique.”

The young general laughed.  And though Lord Goshen had fought this war for over ten years without once fearing for his own death, something about this boy’s laugh set his teeth on edge.  He realized in that moment, that the creature before him was not entirely human.  An old tale suddenly came to Lord Goshen’s mind.  A story passed down through the generations, of an ancient evil descending from the skies, determined on destroying all life on the planet.  He remembered that the fiend had come in the form of a woman, distinguishable only by her slitted green eyes.  Slitted eyes, like a snake’s.  Slitted green eyes, just like the eyes of the warrior before him.

“No Goshen,” Sephiroth replied coolly, intentionally omitting his formal title.  “I will be giving the ultimatums today.  You will give me the Phoenix eye, and maybe I will let you and your people surrender, so that you and your perverse nation will some day see the glory that Shinra will become.”

Lord Goshen tensed protectively at the mention of his family relic.  The Phoenix Eye.  So that was what this demon was after.  “Neither you nor Shinra shall ever claim the relic of my ancestors.” the old warrior announced with regal confidence.

“I was hoping you would say that.” Sephiroth replied grinning.

Sephiroth closed the distance between them impossibly fast and Lord Goshen parried the first attack before he saw it, his battle reflexes responding to the intentions of his opponent.  The old samurai instantly knew why the Shinra general fought with a style so imbalanced to the offensive; he simply did not need defense.  Lord Goshen spun and whirled, moving his feet as fast as possible to keep the young general in view.  Sephiroth’s attacks were simply too fast to follow without reading the intentions in his glowing green eyes.  A hundred times and more the lightning fast blade grazed Lord Goshen’s armor, his own sword catching it an instant before it twisted under the plates of his armor and into the warm blood-pulsing flesh beneath.

Lord Goshen kept his eyes on the green serpentine slits before him, everything else becoming a blur of silver and black.  Every moment was a struggle against impending death.  No sooner had the old lord evaded one attempt on his life, when another deathblow surged in like an ocean wave on top of the first.  The old lord of Wutai, felt his strength waning.  He was not as young a warrior as he once was, and the monstrosity before him did not seem to tire.  In that moment, the old lord accepted that he was going to die.  Peace settled upon the samurai’s mind as he formulated his plan of action.  He fought with renewed vigor, parrying, waiting for his opponent to make the right attack.

The thrust he wanted came, and the old lord let his opponent’s katana slide through his left shoulder.  His hand grabbed the sword in an instant, preventing the young general from pulling it out of him, and the old samurai sliced down at Sephiroth with an attack of his own.  Sephiroth dodged neatly, jumping backwards with a flip.  Lord Goshen tore his enemy’s blade from his flesh and armor and launched it through the air at the smiling warrior.  Another quick backwards jump found Sephiroth sailing through the air at seemingly impossible heights, only to land next to where his blade had settled.

Sephiroth laughed.  “So you think that choosing your wound will save you?  You think I cannot fight without my sword?”  The general leaned down to retrieve his blade from where Lord Goshen had thrown it.

“No, you naïve monster,” Lord Goshen whispered, his breath quickened by the fight and by his rapidly diminishing blood supply.  “You will kill me, but you will not have the Phoenix eye.”  In punctuation of his claim the old lord ripped the ruby pendant from around his neck with the remaining strength of his punctured left arm and slammed the gold phoenix onto a nearby rock.  In the same motion the doomed samurai raised his ancestral katana with his right hand, preparing for the downward strike that would destroy the coveted artifact.

Sephiroth’s smile vanished.  With lightning speed he crossed the short distance between himself and the old king, watching the warrior’s blade descend towards his claimed trophy.  As soon as he was close enough for his sword to reach, Sephiroth launched his most powerful attack.  The tip of the general’s katana swung up at the old samurai, catching the aged figure under the rib cage, and cutting upwards through armor bone and flesh.  The sword exited at the old lord’s collarbone, clipping his helmet as it passed.  The force of the attack threw Lord Goshen backwards through the air, but Sephiroth pursued and continued his offensive.  The old warrior’s heart beat its final beat, and was then severed in two.  Sephiroth watched as both halves of the former king of Wutai settled in a misshapen mass on the ground before him.

A moment passed, and Sephiroth looked back to a certain rock sitting beside him.  It had been cleaved in two, the Sword of House Kisaragi buried in the dirt beneath it.  To one side lay two halves of a gold Phoenix along with a broken chain.  And scattered all around were hundreds of tiny fragments of ruby crystal, glittering softly in the sun.  To the general’s side, another samurai cried in rage at seeing the warrior king disposed.  The samurai charged, and Sephiroth dispatched him without even taking his eyes from the two halves of the rock before him.

A Shinra officer approached the young warrior.  “General Sephiroth sir.  The enemy’s animated constructs have suddenly stopped, and the men are now pressing their advantage.  What are your orders sir?”  The man stood at eager attention, but for a moment, Sephiroth did not respond.

“Find a containment kit captain,” the general began slowly.  “And gather every piece of crystal from the ground right here.  Take the gold and the chain too, don’t miss a single piece.”  Sephiroth raised his eyes to burn the importance of this task into the man before him.  “Then I want you to take the pieces to Shinra headquarters so they can study what is left of its magic.”

“Sir! Yes sir!” the captain saluted.  “And about the troops sir?”

“The troops…” Sephiroth clenched his fist in anger.  “Tell the troops that today, we take no prisoners.”

--------------------

-- Somewhere North of Nebelhiem, Present Day:

“My parents will send the whole town looking for me if I don’t return before dinner time.” the young boy threatened.  There was no response.  The man continued working in the next room as if nothing had been said.  The boy struggled against the ropes restraining him, but his effort proved futile.  This strange man who had brought him here against his will had tied the ropes extremely well.  For all his efforts to free himself the young boy only seemed to have made his bonds tighter, and he was now loosing feeling in his left hand.

The boy looked around him, taking stock of his surroundings.  He was tied to a large pipe, more than twice his own width, running from floor to ceiling.  Around him were scores of more pipes running in all directions, punctuated at intervals by countless valves and pressure gauges.  Below his feet, a steel grate catwalk provided the only indication that this inhospitable maze of tubing had ever been intended for human presence.  Even if he had not watched where he was being carried, the boy would have known that this was the inside of a mako reactor.

The sound of footsteps caught the boy’s attention, and he looked up into the approaching face of his kidnapper.  He was a strange man, dressed in a dusty brown leather jacket and well worn jeans.  The boy had watched this man for hours as he came in and out of the room, tirelessly ferrying odds and ends of contorted metal components.  The kidnapped boy had noted how the man’s strange hair was silver white at the roots, but changed quickly to black, as if he dyed his hair but had been neglecting it for a few weeks.  The strangest part about the boy’s kidnapper, however, was his eyes.  Brown eyes, flecked with scattered splotches of glowing green.  These eyes now stared down at the young boy tied to the pipe.

In all this time, the boy’s kidnapper had not paid him any attention.  Had he said something now to anger the man?  “They will come looking for me.” the boy nearly whispered, intimidated by the figure before him.  “They will come for me and you won’t get away with this.”

The man laughed.  “I do hope you’re right kid.  I’m counting on them finding you before you die.  Though I will be long gone by the time they do.”

“What do you want from me” the boy asked angrily.

“I am finished here.  I have found the things I need.  Those people down in Nebelhiem will come up into the mountains to find you.  And when they do you will give them my message.”

“Why don’t you give them the message yourself?”

“Oh no,” them man said softer now, leaning down to the level of the young boy.  “I must be on my way long before this message is delivered.  You will tell the one known as Cloud Strife that his days are numbered.”

“Cloud?” the boy asked in confusion.  “But he doesn’t even live here anymore.  How am I supposed to tell him anything?”

“Don’t fret young one.” the kidnapper reassured as he stood and began walking away.  “I am confident Cloud will receive this message.”

The man walked away.  There was a sound of a metal door creaking open, and then closing.  The boy sagged against the pipe behind him.  With a pop, the lights in the old reactor turned off, flooding the room with darkness.  The boy realized that it was almost dinner time now, and his family would be worried when he didn’t return.  He thought of his parents, and the whole town searching for him.  Everyone knew that the abandoned Nebelhiem reactor was completely off limits, and the boy wondered to himself how long it would take before they thought to look here.  Hours?  Days?  Weeks…?  The boy struggled to remain strong, but the tears came anyway.  After all, there was no one to see.

Description
The Phoenix Eye
Chapter 4
Treachery

-- Fifteen Miles East of Gongaga, 18 Years Ago:

The machine gun split in two, spilling mangled bullets into the blood-soaked grass.  The man behind the gun gasped, his eyes widening in shock before Lord Goshen tossed him aside, pulling his sword free of the man’s gut.  The sounds of battle echoed across the nearby Junon Mountains, the cacophony testifying to the struggle for dominance between humans, constructs and machines.  The old warrior king looked around him, and finding no immediate opponents, took a moment to appraise the course of the battle.  His men still had the upper hand in numbers; not even including the animated constructs that fought by his command.  Nevertheless, the Shinra were fighting harder this day than they had previously.  The old lord of Wutai was unsure if it was confidence or desperation that drove his enemy, and he didn’t care so long as he won.

Lord Goshen’s warrior instincts pulled him from his observations.  He spun to face the danger, and almost laughed.  Standing across a small clearing, free from the fray of battle around them, stood a young man.  Dressed from head to toe in black leather cut more for style than function, his silver hair contrasting both to his dark ensemble and his youthful countenance.  The boy before Lord Goshen appeared to be no more than nineteen.  The only indications that this was a warrior were the steel pauldrons adorning his shoulders, and the blood stained katana held casually in his hand.

Two things kept Lord Goshen from dismissing this prospective opponent; first his warrior intuition nagged him that this young lad was somehow dangerous, and second, he noticed that the boy’s sword was the only part of his ensemble that bore a hint of blood.  Goshen raised his sword to the boy in readiness, gazing into his strange green eyes for any hint of his intentions.  The young man before him returned his gaze so fiercely that the old lord himself was surprised.  The boy smiled.

“Who are you?” Lord Goshen called out in curiosity.

“My name is General Sephiroth.” the dark figure replied softly.

Lord Goshen was again surprised, and pressed the conversation further.  “You appear too young to be a general.  And if you are of the Shinra, why do you use a Wutaian blade?”

“So many questions…” Sephiroth responded, as he began to circle his selected opponent.  “I am young for a General, the youngest to date.  And I find your katanas suit my fighting style.  I could use a longer sword, if such blades existed…” Sephiroth spiraled closer to the warrior king, grasping his sword handle firmly and pulling it behind him, level to the ground.

“Are you sure you want to tangle with me young general?” Lord Goshen warned his opponent.  “I recognize your stance and know the fighting styles that use it, it lacks defense.  Call off your men and I won’t pursue you.  And perhaps you will live to learn a better technique.”

The young general laughed.  And though Lord Goshen had fought this war for over ten years without once fearing for his own death, something about this boy’s laugh set his teeth on edge.  He realized in that moment, that the creature before him was not entirely human.  An old tale suddenly came to Lord Goshen’s mind.  A story passed down through the generations, of an ancient evil descending from the skies, determined on destroying all life on the planet.  He remembered that the fiend had come in the form of a woman, distinguishable only by her slitted green eyes.  Slitted eyes, like a snake’s.  Slitted green eyes, just like the eyes of the warrior before him.

“No Goshen,” Sephiroth replied coolly, intentionally omitting his formal title.  “I will be giving the ultimatums today.  You will give me the Phoenix eye, and maybe I will let you and your people surrender, so that you and your perverse nation will some day see the glory that Shinra will become.”

Lord Goshen tensed protectively at the mention of his family relic.  The Phoenix Eye.  So that was what this demon was after.  “Neither you nor Shinra shall ever claim the relic of my ancestors.” the old warrior announced with regal confidence.

“I was hoping you would say that.” Sephiroth replied grinning.

Sephiroth closed the distance between them impossibly fast and Lord Goshen parried the first attack before he saw it, his battle reflexes responding to the intentions of his opponent.  The old samurai instantly knew why the Shinra general fought with a style so imbalanced to the offensive; he simply did not need defense.  Lord Goshen spun and whirled, moving his feet as fast as possible to keep the young general in view.  Sephiroth’s attacks were simply too fast to follow without reading the intentions in his glowing green eyes.  A hundred times and more the lightning fast blade grazed Lord Goshen’s armor, his own sword catching it an instant before it twisted under the plates of his armor and into the warm blood-pulsing flesh beneath.

Lord Goshen kept his eyes on the green serpentine slits before him, everything else becoming a blur of silver and black.  Every moment was a struggle against impending death.  No sooner had the old lord evaded one attempt on his life, when another deathblow surged in like an ocean wave on top of the first.  The old lord of Wutai, felt his strength waning.  He was not as young a warrior as he once was, and the monstrosity before him did not seem to tire.  In that moment, the old lord accepted that he was going to die.  Peace settled upon the samurai’s mind as he formulated his plan of action.  He fought with renewed vigor, parrying, waiting for his opponent to make the right attack.

The thrust he wanted came, and the old lord let his opponent’s katana slide through his left shoulder.  His hand grabbed the sword in an instant, preventing the young general from pulling it out of him, and the old samurai sliced down at Sephiroth with an attack of his own.  Sephiroth dodged neatly, jumping backwards with a flip.  Lord Goshen tore his enemy’s blade from his flesh and armor and launched it through the air at the smiling warrior.  Another quick backwards jump found Sephiroth sailing through the air at seemingly impossible heights, only to land next to where his blade had settled.

Sephiroth laughed.  “So you think that choosing your wound will save you?  You think I cannot fight without my sword?”  The general leaned down to retrieve his blade from where Lord Goshen had thrown it.

“No, you naïve monster,” Lord Goshen whispered, his breath quickened by the fight and by his rapidly diminishing blood supply.  “You will kill me, but you will not have the Phoenix eye.”  In punctuation of his claim the old lord ripped the ruby pendant from around his neck with the remaining strength of his punctured left arm and slammed the gold phoenix onto a nearby rock.  In the same motion the doomed samurai raised his ancestral katana with his right hand, preparing for the downward strike that would destroy the coveted artifact.

Sephiroth’s smile vanished.  With lightning speed he crossed the short distance between himself and the old king, watching the warrior’s blade descend towards his claimed trophy.  As soon as he was close enough for his sword to reach, Sephiroth launched his most powerful attack.  The tip of the general’s katana swung up at the old samurai, catching the aged figure under the rib cage, and cutting upwards through armor bone and flesh.  The sword exited at the old lord’s collarbone, clipping his helmet as it passed.  The force of the attack threw Lord Goshen backwards through the air, but Sephiroth pursued and continued his offensive.  The old warrior’s heart beat its final beat, and was then severed in two.  Sephiroth watched as both halves of the former king of Wutai settled in a misshapen mass on the ground before him.

A moment passed, and Sephiroth looked back to a certain rock sitting beside him.  It had been cleaved in two, the Sword of House Kisaragi buried in the dirt beneath it.  To one side lay two halves of a gold Phoenix along with a broken chain.  And scattered all around were hundreds of tiny fragments of ruby crystal, glittering softly in the sun.  To the general’s side, another samurai cried in rage at seeing the warrior king disposed.  The samurai charged, and Sephiroth dispatched him without even taking his eyes from the two halves of the rock before him.

A Shinra officer approached the young warrior.  “General Sephiroth sir.  The enemy’s animated constructs have suddenly stopped, and the men are now pressing their advantage.  What are your orders sir?”  The man stood at eager attention, but for a moment, Sephiroth did not respond.

“Find a containment kit captain,” the general began slowly.  “And gather every piece of crystal from the ground right here.  Take the gold and the chain too, don’t miss a single piece.”  Sephiroth raised his eyes to burn the importance of this task into the man before him.  “Then I want you to take the pieces to Shinra headquarters so they can study what is left of its magic.”

“Sir! Yes sir!” the captain saluted.  “And about the troops sir?”

“The troops…” Sephiroth clenched his fist in anger.  “Tell the troops that today, we take no prisoners.”

--------------------

-- Somewhere North of Nebelhiem, Present Day:

“My parents will send the whole town looking for me if I don’t return before dinner time.” the young boy threatened.  There was no response.  The man continued working in the next room as if nothing had been said.  The boy struggled against the ropes restraining him, but his effort proved futile.  This strange man who had brought him here against his will had tied the ropes extremely well.  For all his efforts to free himself the young boy only seemed to have made his bonds tighter, and he was now loosing feeling in his left hand.

The boy looked around him, taking stock of his surroundings.  He was tied to a large pipe, more than twice his own width, running from floor to ceiling.  Around him were scores of more pipes running in all directions, punctuated at intervals by countless valves and pressure gauges.  Below his feet, a steel grate catwalk provided the only indication that this inhospitable maze of tubing had ever been intended for human presence.  Even if he had not watched where he was being carried, the boy would have known that this was the inside of a mako reactor.

The sound of footsteps caught the boy’s attention, and he looked up into the approaching face of his kidnapper.  He was a strange man, dressed in a dusty brown leather jacket and well worn jeans.  The boy had watched this man for hours as he came in and out of the room, tirelessly ferrying odds and ends of contorted metal components.  The kidnapped boy had noted how the man’s strange hair was silver white at the roots, but changed quickly to black, as if he dyed his hair but had been neglecting it for a few weeks.  The strangest part about the boy’s kidnapper, however, was his eyes.  Brown eyes, flecked with scattered splotches of glowing green.  These eyes now stared down at the young boy tied to the pipe.

In all this time, the boy’s kidnapper had not paid him any attention.  Had he said something now to anger the man?  “They will come looking for me.” the boy nearly whispered, intimidated by the figure before him.  “They will come for me and you won’t get away with this.”

The man laughed.  “I do hope you’re right kid.  I’m counting on them finding you before you die.  Though I will be long gone by the time they do.”

“What do you want from me” the boy asked angrily.

“I am finished here.  I have found the things I need.  Those people down in Nebelhiem will come up into the mountains to find you.  And when they do you will give them my message.”

“Why don’t you give them the message yourself?”

“Oh no,” them man said softer now, leaning down to the level of the young boy.  “I must be on my way long before this message is delivered.  You will tell the one known as Cloud Strife that his days are numbered.”

“Cloud?” the boy asked in confusion.  “But he doesn’t even live here anymore.  How am I supposed to tell him anything?”

“Don’t fret young one.” the kidnapper reassured as he stood and began walking away.  “I am confident Cloud will receive this message.”

The man walked away.  There was a sound of a metal door creaking open, and then closing.  The boy sagged against the pipe behind him.  With a pop, the lights in the old reactor turned off, flooding the room with darkness.  The boy realized that it was almost dinner time now, and his family would be worried when he didn’t return.  He thought of his parents, and the whole town searching for him.  Everyone knew that the abandoned Nebelhiem reactor was completely off limits, and the boy wondered to himself how long it would take before they thought to look here.  Hours?  Days?  Weeks…?  The boy struggled to remain strong, but the tears came anyway.  After all, there was no one to see.