This will be the final chapter of this story. As far as I know, the weekly challenge will continue, but I’ve been wanting to wrap this up for a while now so I figured I’d go ahead and do so.
Thank you, Readers, for your likes on WordPress, kudos on Ao3, and comments on Discord. A final thank you to KyuubiPandoraChan for overseeing the Weekly Challenge.
There is no word of the week as I’m writing this before the next word is revealed, but I made sure to bring back an old friend from the first entry.
Do you know where your towel’s at?
~ EIGHTEEN ~
“Did we really have to bring Quetzalcoatl and Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli along?” Aerith asked. “The clerk was giving us the strangest looks.”
“They insisted on coming,” Sephiroth answered plainly.
“We’re right here, you know.” Quetzalcoatl hissed. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli made a generally displeased cat sound, but the chime of the elevator bell as it arrived on the top floor of the hotel was louder.
“This is us,” Sephiroth announced as he stood in front of the elevator door, which opened to a small lobby with two pairs of armchairs to either side of massive double doors. Aerith ran ahead and swiped her key card to open them, revealing the penthouse suite inside.
“Woooow! It’s so luxurious!” Aerith stared at everything breathless, going toward the French doors on the opposite end. “Look at this view!”
Sephiroth set Quetzalcoatl and Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli down, their carriers magically disappearing. Quetzalcoatl transformed into a small version of his winged serpent form, and stretched his wings before flying around the apartment for a bit. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli went off to explore the new locale.
“So,” Sephiroth said as he joined Aerith on the balcony, “What do you want to do first?”
“Mmm, let’s go for a swim! I can’t wait to see you in the swim trunks I bought you!”
***
Guess she wanted to leave something to the imagination… Sephiroth thought to himself as he donned the tight-fitting swim bottom whose legs barely went past the crotch. She had included a colorful short-sleeve button-up shirt with a Cactuar pattern and a large beach towel with matching print, presumably to cover up with on the way from the hotel to the beach. He put the shirt on but left it open, and tied the towel around his waist.
“It’s fits you even better than I thought it would!” Aerith clapped her hands together as he stepped out from the bedroom. She had changed into her swimsuit first, but the off-white wrap she donned covered it up completely; it was practically a dress in its own right.
“Shall we go then?”
“Yes, we shall!” Aerith took his hand and they headed down, leaving their “pets” to their own devices.
Though not everyone in the world knew all the things Sephiroth had done after his sudden disappearance, most people knew who he had been before. He would have turned heads no matter what, but the Cactuar print made people doubt what they were seeing. Surely Sephiroth, Shinra’s elite SOLDIER, wouldn’t be walking around dressed like that.
Besides the generally confused looks, there was one old lady glaring at him. Sephiroth gave her a confused look of his own, but Aerith didn’t notice the exchange. She was humming along happily.
“This is sooo much better than spending my birthday in Nibelheim! Er—” Aerith stopped swinging their hands between them and stopped.
“Hm…? Oh, no offense taken. I should’ve known better than to take you to such a cold place.”
“Does that mean…?”
“No lo puedo creer!” A voice suddenly shouted a few feet from them. “Eres tú! Cinico! Maldito! Hijo de madre!”
“Um…I’m sorry,” Aerith took in the indignant old woman. “We don’t understand…”
The woman paid her no mind, focusing solely on Sephiroth, who realized, to his surprise, that he actually did understand.
“Vete de aquí! Malvado!” The old woman took her flip-flops off and threw them at him one after the other. Sephiroth blocked the first one, but the second one whooshed through his high bangs. The old woman threw her hands up and with one final insult, stormed off as quickly as her bones could carry her.
“H-hey, wait!” Aerith bent down to pick up the flip-flops. “You forgot your sandals!”
“Let her go,” Sephiroth grabbed Aerith’s wrist. “Nothing we say is gonna make things better.”
“Do you know what that was about?”
“Sort of? It kinda hit me when those did,” he pointed at the flip-flops. “I think I may have committed some faux pas in this town.”
“A ‘faux pas’? That something you learned from that fancy governess of yours?”
“Probably. Anyway, let’s just leave those here. Maybe she’ll come back for them.”
They continued ahead on their way to the beach. A cordon and sign blocked off a span of beach to the left. There was a film crew about a quarter mile down. Some people were sitting under a tent checking monitors, while the cameras focused on a group of actors beneath a large beach umbrella.
“Guess we can’t go that way.”
“Well, there’s still plenty of beach left for us over here,” Aerith gestured to the opposite side.
As they were turning to pick a spot on the sand, a young man with a messenger bag nearly bowled them over. Sephiroth and Aerith watched as he ran past the cordon, flashed what must have been an ID badge at the security guard standing there, and approached the tent. The messenger handed an envelope to a man at the monitors. He ripped it open, looked over its contents, and jumped out of his seat, yelling something. A bell rang. All the actors save one cleared the set.
“Hey look, that girl has hair like yours…” Aerith started walking toward the cordoned-off area, but Sephiroth froze.
The man who appeared to be the director was yelling at the lone actress. She was gesturing wildly, but eventually stormed off toward a group of trailers.
“Se…Seph, I think…”
“Yeah, I see it. That’s…Jenova…”
“What should we do?”
“We might put the town in danger if we confront her here. Let’s follow her, from a distance. With luck, she hasn’t sensed me here yet.” He turned to look at Aerith, but found he couldn’t bare to. “Aerith…I’m so sorry I ruined your birthday.”
“What? You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s… it’s her fault.”
Sephiroth merely signed. How was this even happening? Jenova should’ve been nothing but molecules in space.
***
Jenny Armstrong was fuming. How dare they kick her off the movie? This was supposed to be her big break! She wouldn’t have to do those horrible tentacle films anymore. She would do normal movies, without having to transform into creepy monsters. Who cared if she had possibly spread a disease to a few cast members? It was nothing a little penicillin wouldn’t cure. And so what she’d had a few accidents on set, stumbling into things, knocking cameras over? She was just a little tired was all. She was shooting four other films at the same time, after all.
Through her anger, she could feel a pair of eyes watching her as she walked aimlessly through the streets of Costa del Sol. She’d left the touristy center a good half an hour ago and realized she didn’t quite know where she was anymore. She clutched her purse and scanned her surroundings, but found nothing. There were only a few houses nearby, spaced far apart, and nothing but orange groves further ahead. She could smell them from where she was. The scent was nauseating. She felt a little dizzy, and turned around to find a sword pointed at her.
“How did you get back here?” the man holding the sword asked through clenched teeth. Jenny’s eyes went wide. He seemed so familiar. He made something deep in her bones sing with joy. Yet she was utterly confused by the Cactuar shirt and matching towel wrapped around his waist.
“Wh-who are you?” her voice shook with hope and fear.
“Don’t play dumb,” a girl with long brown hair stepped forward. Jenny hissed at her before she even knew what she was doing.
“What is this?” Jenny growled, looking between the two attackers. “What do you want from me?”
“I asked, how did you get back here?”
“I got lost.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” the silver-haired one turned the sharp edge of the blade to her throat. There was something familiar, frightening, and exhilarating about the steel’s touch.
“You’re just like me…” Jenny managed to say between breaths. “Who are we?”
Sephiroth and Aerith stared.
“I feel like I know you,” Jenny stepped forward, not caring that the sword cut into her flesh ever so slightly. “I feel like you’re a part of me…”
“I will cut you down right here if you come any closer.”
Jenny stopped. She stared into the man’s eyes with deep longing even though they were narrowed at her with obvious hatred. She felt a drop of blood trickle down her neck.
“Sephiroth, let’s end this. It doesn’t matter how she got back, does it? As long as we destroy her now.”
“Sephiroth…” Jenny breathed reverentially. In the next breath, she thrust her hands up into Sephiroth’s hair, clutching his head and staring into his eyes even as the Masamune dug into her neck. Sephiroth found he couldn’t move as images flooded his mind. A headache pounded in his ears along with Aerith’s indistinct yelling. Suddenly, he was thrown into the air and slammed into an orange tree, its fruit falling all around him.
“MOVE!”
Sephiroth got half his bearings and rolled out of the way as a blinding light crackled past him, splitting the tree in half and apparently hitting the creature as well. A tentacle landed a few inches from where he was and he threw up at the sight of it.
“Seph! Are you alright?!” Aerith hurried to cast Esuna, but what was making Sephiroth sick to his stomach couldn’t be healed that way.
“I…I’m fine…” He got up on one knee. “What…was that?”
“A little teamwork,” she pointed up and Sephiroth lifted his gaze to find the great winged serpent Quetzalcoatl in an attack posture. Aerith must have summoned him.
Jenny gurgled as thick, dark blood came up from her lungs. She was starting to turn purple, her human arms and legs replaced by writhing tentacles. She stared straight ahead, gasping for breath. Aerith offered Sephiroth a hand and he took it, slightly losing his balance for a second as he stood back up. He pushed something down inside himself and stalked toward the creature, his sword fixing on the intact half of her neck.
“I understand now,” he told her. “But that doesn’t mean I can let you live. You’ll just keep spreading trouble wherever you go whether you mean to or not.”
Jenny’s eyes rolled to the side, trying to focus on the source of the voice whose tone pulled her like a magnet. She had some vague idea what he was talking about. But between the pure white magic still burning her from the inside out and the general fog that had invaded her head a few months ago, she could barely think.
“Se…phiroth…” was all she could croak. She reached a tentacle up towards him, but the Masamune sliced the offending appendage clear off and doubled back to sever her head in one smooth motion. The head flew a few feet back, but still wheezed and smiled weakly at him at it rolled past an orange.
“Don’t tell me she’s still not dead?” Aerith asked as she walked up behind Sephiroth.
“The cells can function independently of the body. We’re gonna need to do something a lot more…obliterating.”
“In that case, I have an idea, but it’s gonna hurt.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he answered. “Do it.”
Aerith looked up to Quetzalcoatl, who understood her request without her having to speak it. He soared high into the sky, summoning a dark, whirling storm around him. The poor trees bent in the raging winds, dropping their fruits. When the rain began to fall, lightning bolts crashed down from the sky, homing in on the bits of Jenova. Aerith added her own rain to the mix, and the creature began to sizzle and smoke. The Jenova cells in Sephiroth’s body reacted to the rain as well, but he clenched his teeth and tried to ignore the burning sensation ripping through him. Another well-directed lightning strike set the creature’s body parts ablaze, releasing a putrid stench into the air.
When all that remained were indistinguishable, charred lumps, Sephiroth commanded the earth to split open, dropping the Jenova remains into a pit before sending fireballs after them. His flames and the rain together burned the remains down to a fine, powdered ash.
Aerith commanded Quetzalcoatl to clear the sky, and the clouds lifted. Quetzalcoatl surveyed the scene below before disappearing into the sky himself. The rain died down, but Sephiroth kept casting fire into the pit as if in a trance.
“Sephiroth, it’s over.” Aerith walked over to stand beside him at the pit’s edge, picking his Cactuar towel up along the way. She hadn’t even noticed when it fell off, and took a moment to appreciate the view before calling to him again.
When he didn’t respond, Aerith summoned the tiniest cloud of Healing Rain to fall directly over his head. The directed sting of its drops finally brought him to.
“We did it, Seph. It’s over.” Aerith reassured him, reaching up to move his soaked bangs away from his face, and offering him the towel.
“…I don’t know if it can ever be over,” he finally turned to look at her, and accepted the towel. “She’s the proof.”
“What do you mean?”
“You remember when I asked you to call a Healing Rain after Meteorfall?”
“Yeah…?”
“The rain didn’t get every last bit of Jenova cells in the world. There were still some around, in the bodies of my clones and SOLDIERs who hadn’t died yet, in unused samples in Deepground… All of those little clumps of cells eventually started moving to come together.”
“Oh…the Reunion Theory…” Aerith shuddered.
“Exactly. Eventually they came together and made…her. ‘Jenny Armstrong.’ She really didn’t know what she was, not exactly. I understood when she touched me.”
“Wow…”
“She was sick though. Who’d a thought it? Jenova, nearly crippled by a common enough bacteria…” Sephiroth frowned at the memory of what he’d learned in his brief moment of contact with Jenova’s remnant.
“What did she have?”
“It’s…not suited for polite conversation.”
“So gonorrhea then,” Aerith said, putting a finger up and smiling.
“…Syphilis, since you insist.”
“Glad to hear you’re feeling better!” She laughed.
Sephiroth didn’t.
“Um…you’re not serious, are you? Because I was joking,” Aerith fidgeted with some of his hair as she searched Sephiroth’s eyes. He only frowned harder.
“Oh… Oh god…”
“…Now you have to suffer that knowledge with me.”
“Urk…however in the world did she get that?”
“Remember that package I got at the mansion a while ago? The one with no return address? It was one of her…films.”
Aerith cocked her head to the side. “She was…an actress? I haven’t seen her in any movies.”
“Because you get your fix from fan fiction.”
“What?”
“Never mind. The point is, she got it from somewhere and it made things a lot easier for us.”
“Hmm… Yeah, I guess...”
“Anyway,” Sephiroth cleared his throat and tried to shake his unease away. “Let’s clean up what we can of this mess.”
While Sephiroth telekinetically gathered the fallen oranges into a pile, Aerith commanded the pit in the earth to seal itself shut. They had paid no mind to the distant houses during the battle, but they could now see curtains moving ever so slightly, the people staying hidden inside.
“Hey Seph, think we should apologize to whoever owns this grove?”
“…How would we know who that is?”
“We could ask around. I feel kinda bad about killing one of their trees.”
“There could have been far more casualties.”
“Yeah, but they won’t know that.”
Sephiroth considered it. She had a point, but something started to nag at him in the back of his mind. “I don’t know…I think it’d be best to just leave.”
“Come on…there aren’t that many houses around. And look, there’s a path through the trees right there. Maybe if we follow it, we’ll get to whoever owns this grove.”
Sephiroth didn’t budge.
“Look, I’m gonna go alone if I have to,” Aerith said sternly.
“Fine, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Sephiroth almost pouted, but he joined Aerith near the path.
They walked on in silence for about fifteen minutes, watching their long shadows cross those of the trees. Finally, a huge house came into view.
“A mansion? They must be the grove’s owners, all right,” Aerith said, relieved not to have to go much further.
Sephiroth looked up at the white-walled mansion with its orange tile roof and it clicked.
“Oh no, not again…”
“What is it?”
“We should turn back. Now.”
“…What’s going on, Seph?”
“We would only be disturbing these people. We should head back now. I can fly us back, even. We’d be back in time for dinner.”
“…That old lady lives there, doesn’t she?”
“Come on, Aerith, it’s your birthday. I ordered a really special dinner for you. Or we could go for that swim we were supposed to have this afternoon. Don’t you want to see me in my swim trunks? All wet, everything clinging to me?”
“Oh, I’ve already gotten quite the view of that,” she smirked. Sephiroth looked down at himself and groaned. He’d been so focused on fighting Jenova he’d forgotten that he was dressed for the beach and that rain was wet.
“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll tell you.” Sephiroth took Aerith’s hand, but turned her away from the mansion ahead. “The richest family in Costa del Sol lives there. I had to go to a ball—”
“A ball?!”
“Yes, a ball. It was for work though. Nothing I wanted to do. The Shinra were…they weren’t quite new money, but they weren’t old money either. They wanted to rub elbows with the old aristocratic families of the world. Since money alone doesn’t buy class.”
Aerith gave a little chuckle under her breath.
“The President sent me, Angeal, and Genesis in advance, then came by helicopter with his son and some Turks. I don’t know why they thought a show of force would help them get into the inner circles of high society.”
“Did you guys have to wear tuxedos?”
“Unfortunately.”
“So then what happened? What was the faux pas? Did you use the wrong fork at the dinner table or something?”
“Far worse than that. The only daughter of the family wanted to dance with me. I said no. She didn’t take rejection very well.”
“And so the elite of Costa del Sol came to hate you.” Aerith laughed for a good minute. “You just can’t make stuff like that up, can you?”
“…No, I guess you can’t. Listen, Aerith, I was gonna wait till we got back to Nibelheim to say this, but…I think we should sell the mansion. Then we could move wherever you wanted to go. I’m sure you could start a new flower shop anywhere and be just as successful.”
“Really?! Do you mean it Seph?!”
“Yes.”
“Oh my god! This is wonderful! I was hoping you’d—well, I mean…”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to keep pretending you like it there. I know you were putting up with the place for my sake.”
“I’m sorry, Seph. But…thank you.” She stopped to give him a kiss on the lips.
***
Aerith woke up in a plush king size bed slightly buzzed and fully stuffed. Sephiroth was asleep beside her. She sat up to get a better look at him, wondering when he’d decided to part with the house he’d put so much energy into, the only place on the planet he felt he could claim as his own legitimately. It felt too much like the equivalent of buying a humongous diamond ring to get out of the dog house. What was he feeling guilty about?
The daughter of that rich family… Was denying her a dance really the only thing Sephiroth had done? He had still been sane back then, when his friends were alive, so she didn’t think he killed her or anything like that. But maybe he did break her heart, or she broke his. The thought intrigued Aerith. He could do things that surely he hadn’t become proficient in by reading about them alone.
But how could she pry? He had never asked her about Zack, and Zack had been his friend, too. Surely Sephiroth knew they had been a couple. He was either too much of a gentleman to ask, or he didn’t want to think about that.
No, she decided, she wouldn’t ask him about the ball or that mansion or the people in it again. Let the past stay in the past. It was time to move forward into something new.
***
Nibelheim seemed far colder than it actually was after their two-week stay in the perennial summer of Costa del Sol. Aerith and Sephiroth walked through the shoveled paths in the village, but were surprised to find the path from the gates of the manor all the way to the front door had likewise been cleared of snow. Sephiroth wondered if someone from the WRO had taken the trouble. Highwind had called him around midnight three days prior to say “Mission accomplished,” and he had assumed everyone had left the manor then.
“The lights are on inside… Did you get someone to house-sit, Seph?”
“No,” Sephiroth said as he noticed the warm light streaming out from the panes of glass at the entryway. “Maybe I should go in first.” He fished his keys from his coat pocket and went to unlock the front door.
There were candles in the old chandelier and wall sconces, casting warm light everywhere. Electric lights from the side rooms spilled into the foyer.
“It smells like…burnt cinnamon toast?” Aerith guessed as she stepped inside and took in the scene. Quetzalcoatl and Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli followed, then went ahead. A shriek came from the kitchen not long after.
Sephiroth and Aerith ran there to find Quetzalcoatl hovering over Lucrecia, who was cowering on the floor with her hands up. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli was behind her, hissing with his back arched, tail floofed, and fangs bared.
“I mean no harm, I swear!”
“Mom?!”
“‘Mom’?” The serpent repeated, looking as confused as a snake could look, but he backed off none the less as Sephiroth stepped forward to help her up. The cat walked away as well, but not without giving Lucrecia one last dirty look.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to surprise you. Vincent told me… Well, Cid told Vincent, then Vincent told me, that you two were going on vacation. So I wanted to come and have a warm meal ready for you when you got back…”
Aerith and Sephiroth turned to look at the kitchen counter, where they indeed found a plateful of burnt toast. Both tried to hide their surprise out of politeness, but Lucrecia could tell what they were thinking.
“I’m a scientist, not a chef,” she said sheepishly.
“Must run in the family,” Aerith quipped. “I’m Aerith, by the way. Nice to meet you.”
“Oh! Aerith! It’s so nice to meet you! I’ve heard so much about you!” Lucrecia stepped forward to hug Aerith, who wasn’t sure what to do at first, but returned the gesture eventually. “Thank you for taking such good care of my son.”
“Mom…!” Sephiroth cringed.
“Oh, what a heart-warming family reunion,” a man’s voice said from behind them. Chills ran down Sephiroth’s spine as he turned to face it.
“Genesis?!”
“‘Pretty boys, with their sunshine faces, carrying their head down,’” the auburn-haired man intoned grandly with a sweeping gesture.
“Loveless… Act Five?”
“Track two,” Genesis put his hand down with a self-satisfied grin. “I’ve learned a lot traveling the world these past few years.”
“Yes,” Lucrecia piped up, “It was Genesis who helped me get here.”
“Wha… How? When?” Sephiroth didn’t know where to start.
“I popped out of a mako fountain in your mother’s cave the other day,” Genesis carefully flicked his bangs from his eyes with an aggravating deliberateness.
“I am so confused…” Aerith looked between the two former SOLDIERs, the former scientist, and the two supernatural animals watching the scene through narrowed eyes from as far back as they could get in the tiny, cramped, outdated kitchen.
“Hey Gen,” Sephiroth looked into his old friend’s eyes with great resolve, “Now that you’re here, would you happen to be in the market for a house?”
~ The End ~
☆
Scales of Libra 
