4 - Enter Sephiroth X

[Sephiroth X]

*The rain descended heavily upon the empty road in the Super City. Thunder roared and lightning lit up the sky. Sephiroth X slowly walked his way down the center of the road marching towards something with a determined look on his face. He occasionally glanced towards the sides of the road, into alleyways, seeing people peek out at him but run away. For some reason, X could not see the faces of the people… they were blurs.

Sephiroth X looked back down the middle of the road and stopped suddenly, keeping his intense facial expression. Roughly twenty yards down the road from him Sephiroth X, through the thick rain, saw a cloaked figure standing facing him. It was nighttime and the rain easily carved out the figure’s silhouette but the occasional bolt of lighting truly reveled the person to Sephiroth X.

Sephiroth X ran at him, towards some kind of destiny it felt like. The cloaked figure then did the same; X pulled out the Masamune and held it in his fighting position as he continued in his head sprint. From under the cloak, the other person pulled out a slightly smaller sword of his own. The two kept charging at each other, and upon reaching each other they viciously swung their swords. Lighting crashed just as the two swords collided. Suddenly as fast as lighting images flew by… images of X and the cloaked person fighting, images of X dominating the battle and others of X on the brink of defeat. The final image was of X impaled into the side of a wall with the cloaked man flying straight at him with his sword fully extended. X tried to move but he couldn’t, the cloaked man kept getting closer and closer, death was inevitable. X never closed his eyes as he saw the sword bearing down towards him.

Just before the blade was going to pierce Sephiroth X, he woke up in a sweat lying on his side on the cold desert ground. Sephiroth X sat up and saw his Masamune lying next to him were he left it before he prepared to sleep. He then looked to the east and saw the sun starting to rise.

The nightmares were becoming much worse and much more frequent within the last four months. And even though the cloaked man was still in most of them, they still didn’t seem to make any kind of sense what so ever.

Sephiroth X - “Damnit…”

*Sephiroth X didn’t know what to call them, so he called them nightmares. He knew his memory had its blanks, and that the same recurring things occur in every one of them, but he didn’t dare say it was his memories. But at the same time he didn’t like the possible idea of hearing himself say he could envision the future… it sounded ridiculous.

- - - - -

*A few hours later the sun was shining down on Sephiroth X and the Desert of the Dead felt scorching hot, like always. Sephiroth X had been lurking the desert quite some time, feeling no purpose to go to Midgar or especially Zion. And he didn’t like the idea of him in that Super City either, he found himself at home within the desert’s isolation.

X had decided to spend the night sleeping under a barely living fifteen foot tall tree. The only reason this tree was even alive was because it was next to a small lake, a lake only about twenty feet across from shore to shore with a creek feeding the lake and a creek leaving the lake as well. Sephiroth X stood under the tree without his torso portion of his clothing on, the black pants alone kept him easily warm during the day… he knew he could survive with his full suit on but felt best not to risk it anyway. X stood holding his sword in his traditional battle ready pose under the tree next to the lake, his eyes were closed in concentration. X stood still like a statue as the sweat dripped off of him from the heat, and he stood there like that for a few minutes in total concentration. Suddenly X’s eyes burst open and X let out a fury of sword swings at the air in front of him, and then leapt high airborne doing a back flip as he landed near the top of the tree. Sephiroth X didn’t stay in the tree for long though, the moment his toes graced the branch he leapt from his perch and held the Masamune at eye level as he descended downward. And as he came to the ground he thrust the sword foreword and landed on one knee with his Masamune over halfway impaled into the ground directly through a soccer ball sized rock.

Sephiroth X stood up and wiped some sweat from his forehead, and then reached down and pulled the Masamune out from the ground and slid it back into its holster on the side of his belt. He walked toward the edge of the lake and knelt down to grab some water to splash onto his face. After doing so X continued to look down at the water below him as the ripples slowly faded away into the water revealing his own reflection, a quick image of the cloaked man flew through Sephiroth X’s mind quickly and he continued to ponder his nightmare.

Sephiroth X – “Who are you?”<br>
*Suddenly the water began to ripple again and the reflection of X in the water blurred away. A slow roar started to come from the sky.

Sephiroth X – “What’s this?”<br>
*X quickly stood up and looked upward, he scanned the sky for the source of the now booming roar. Sephiroth X’s eyes finally looked in a southern direction and just as he looked, a smoking ship zoomed like lightning overhead causing a small windstorm below. The force of the mysterious ships speed caused X to fly back with significant force crashing back-first into the tree and causing his sword to bang out of its holster, and the sword flew about thirty feet past X.

Sephiroth X shook off the pain and watched the ship continue to leave a smoking trail behind it as it continued at its trajectory. X squinted as the ship almost crossed view with the sun, and then made note of what he saw.

Sephiroth X – “That ship, its descending…”

*He finally diverted his attention from the ship as he walked to where the force of the wind had blown the Masamune towards. As X approached his sword and knelt down to pick it up and then noticed something in the ground.

Sephiroth X – “Hmm… track marks…”

*X saw two sets of tracks in the dirt below. One set seemed to be from a group of motorcycles, drifters probably, but these tracks were very old tracks… weeks or even months old… the other set seemed to be from some kind of heavy vehicle, this vehicle went by within the last few weeks at most. X continued to analyze the tracks in more detail this time, analyzing the patterns of sand to determine what directions they all went in. He finally figured out that the drifter tracks must have gone in a western direction and whatever heavy vehicle went by here was going east… it seems both groups used this lake as a pit stop just like he did. X followed the trail of the heavy vehicle this time and saw that from this point the vehicle turned and went south… towards Zion.

Sephiroth X – “Looks like whatever tore ass through here was one of the Senate’s.”<br>
*Sephy X then noticed that no motorcycle tracks from the drifters ever came close through here again. Which was odd, usually the drifters have been known to establish routes of ambush along with keeping borders of their own ‘turf’. Maybe these drifters and those Senate guys had a little run in at some point.

X’s attention was diverted once again has he heard a thunderous boom come from the northeast. He looked up and followed the trail of smoke from the ship and figured out that the source of that boom came from were that smoke trail and ended at the horizon. Sephiroth X was right, the ship was descending. But X didn’t pay much attention to it, he returned to the Senate and drifter tracks and continued to ponder.

Sephiroth X – “It doesn’t make sense why the Senate would have been all the way up here, I know for sure that I’m not that close to Zion what so ever. And I know I’m not to close to Midgar either because for some odd reason the drifters don’t flock near that city too much. Guess the Midgar army scared the drifters pretty far from the borders.”<br>
*In an instant X’s head instinctively darted toward the direction of the crashed ship and suddenly X grabbed his head in some kind of minor pain.

Sephiroth X – “What the… ugh!... what is that… A presence… a power… who? AHH!”<br>
*He collapsed to the ground for a moment but just as fast as the odd feeling came, it left. This was something else new to X, within the last few years anytime he got into a seriously dangerous fight with someone he felt these odd sensations and pains… and they seemed to come from the person he was fighting. He couldn’t explain, what was this that was happening, was he actually feeling the power from a person?

No matter what caused them didn’t matter at the moment, what did matter was that this was the most ‘power’ he’d ever felt from anything. If it did come from a person and wasn’t just spontaneous, he’d never felt a person’s essence if they weren’t within a few hundred yards of him. And whoever this person was, was easily a good few miles away from him.

X returned to were he put the rest of his clothes under the tree, he shook them off to get off some sand and then slipped them on. Whatever the drifters and Senate were up to around here didn’t matter at the moment, if X could honestly sense people’s energy or presence or whatever… that meant whoever was in that ship meant business in some aspect.

Sephiroth X – “Who knows… I’ve been wandering for this long… maybe I’ll finally have some damn answers to things.”<br>
*A small trail of smoke was ascending to the sky now, it was the crash site of that ship X assumed. So X began his walk toward the ship, he knew it would take some time to get there on foot and the hot desert heat wasn’t going to help him out at all either. He would have preferred to walk there at nighttime when it was cool, but he was too urgent to find out what was going on.

[Sephiroth X]

*It was dusk by the time X had reached the crash site of that ship he saw that morning. It landed much farther away then he had assumed. The ship was massive compared to what he saw in the sky that morning, which meant that the ship had to have been a lot higher up in the sky then what X had assumed and traveling a hell of a lot faster too.

X examined the exterior of the ship, a giant hole had ripped into what he guessed where the ships engines… possibly an attack? As he continued to examine he took mental notes, and slowly made unusual assumptions. He had a rather good knowledge of Senate technology and judged that even they couldn’t produce something this massive and yet so physically stable to hold its structure… and the Senate probably had the best technology around… so what the hell was going on? X figured it was time to take a peek inside.

He found a door that was already broken open from the inside, so apparently someone did manage to get out of here… could it have been that person he sensed? As he walked down the hallways of the ship he saw the damage that resulted from the crash, not a pretty site what so ever… people where dead and blood scattered the occasional hallway. All of these people died from ship explosions or the crash itself, no signs of man made wounds on any of these people. This means that they weren’t attacked, so what the hell happened?

Sephiroth X finally entered what he saw as the bridge, people dead in here everywhere. The room still smelt like death even, X battled the smell as he examined everybody. Once again, all dead from the crash, no signs of resistance.

X made his way to the main control consoles on the bridge, he saw odd inscriptions on some of the keys and the rest were all too damaged to even think about using. He couldn’t determine if they were some kind of coding, or possibly another language? Languages didn’t make sense and wouldn’t be logical to use anyway, the language barriers were torn down at the end of the two centuries of war and everybody uses a standard English language now.

Unless they were… no… that wouldn’t make sense.

Sephiroth X continued to examine the bodies, and examined them a little closer… his suspicion ever growing. He found one female body laying face down on the floor dead. X flipped her over and examined the uniform she was wearing, she had a name tag on that said “Hodia”. An odd name, but it was her physical appearance that seemed a little odder. She had a bright orange and red colored hair, and it was all natural too… X even took the time to examine the roots of her air, same color all the way down. Not even a dye could go that close to the scalp. X opened one of her eyelids and was stunned to see kind of a fire-like look in her pupils, he examined what looked like a flame even closer and saw it dwindle out from her dead eye.

Sephiroth X – “Who in the hell are these people…”

*X then looked out the bridge’s main window and saw that the sun was almost totally set outside. Before the dark took over X jogged out to the door he entered to check for one more thing, something he had to be sure off.

He went back to the door he found broken open on the ship, it was the only open entrance on the ship from when he initially examined. He scanned the ground looking for something, and then found it… footprints. The footprints were staggered, like the person walking was dizzy or something. They went out straight in a single direction. That confirmed it for him, there was only one survivor from the crash. Knowing this would help him a lot, because it meant that the presence he felt had to have come from that one person. It would save him lots of time tracking down multiple survivors.

Knowing that it would be hard to track the footprints in the black of night, X decided he could afford give up some hours and track the person down in the morning. Sephy X determined that this ship, whoever it belongs too, would make a nice place to sleep for the night. Since this ship had everything from a bridge to a cafeteria he assumed somewhere there would be some crew quarters, so X roamed the ship looking.

It wasn’t long before X found a door that had odd insignias on it, and considering it wasn’t far from the bridge X guessed it could be the captain’s quarters. X slowly opened the door expecting to find the bloodied remains of the ships captain, but found nothing but a disorganized bed and desk.

Sephiroth X – “A clean room, you can’t complain about that I guess.”<br>
*What bugged X about it though was that he couldn’t identify anybody as a captain on the bridge, and since nobody was in what looked like a captain’s room it could be assumed that the captain was the only survivor. Who knows, all X wanted was some sleep at this point.

-- End Part One --

[Sephiroth X]

*X stood surrounded by walls of burning hot red fire. X stood firm with a stoic almost evil face on him, calm within chaos was X’s style all the time. But this fire was almost too intense, X tried to walk out of the circling wall of flames but every place he tried to walk through the fire just burned hotter.

Then finally X saw something behind the wall of fire, the cloaked man? No… there was a silhouette of a buffer figure then what X knew as the cloaked man… and by the time he saw the muscular figure it erupted into flames that burnt brighter then the fire around him. The flaming person ran at X through the flames, X reached for the Masamune but it wasn’t there. Gone, X tried to keep calm and fight the flaming adversary with his fists and when the flaming person got to him, X swung a massive punch at the fire person only to have his hand fly right through it. The flame person extended his arms outward and his whole flaming body flew at X like a beam of fire knocking X flat on his back in defeat.

X couldn’t get up, he could only look around. He saw the fire man reform and walk away as if he too was searching for something. Then X turned his head again and saw the figure of the cloaked man in the smoke… The cloaked man didn’t bother attack this time, instead he just laughed at X as he watched him be defeated.

- - - - -

*X screamed as he woke up this time. He tried to get up from his bed he was sleeping on but suddenly felt restrained by something, just like he did in his nightmare. As Sephiroth X’s eyes began to refocus he saw the desert, he was outside the ship, and heard low toned laughter around him. X looked around and saw that he was actually tied down to his bed, and his bed was dragged outside from the ship. As he looked around some more he saw people standing around him laughing.

Sephiroth X – “…Drifters.”<br>
Drifter #1 – “Heh lookie here boys, panzi-hair finally woke up from his sleep. Lookie likes he was havin himself a nightmare, hahaha, he was scared like a lil’ kid!”<br>
*The drifters all laughed at him. X carefully observed his surrounding potential assailants and saw there were 6 of them in total; the one who was talking to him, three others around the bed, and two others who were observing the Masamune that they stole.

Drifter #2 – “Whats the matter poor baby have a wittle nightmare? HAHAHA!”

Sephiroth X – “You know you guys are making a big mistake right.”<br>
Drifter #1 – “Ha coming from the baby tied to the bed? Show’em boys!”<br>
*All the drifters pulled out large pistols.

Sephiroth X – “Why do you all have to use such dishonorable weapons, any idiot can use a gun.” *X motioned his head towards the Masamune.* “It takes a real man to use a sword.”<br>
Drifter #3 – “Bah, it takes a smart one to use a gun!”<br>
Sephiroth X - *Smiling* “Wanna find out which one would win?”<br>
*The drifters all look at each other.

Drifter #1 – “Untie him…”

Drifter #4 – “What!?”<br>
Drifter #1 – “Just do it…”

Drifter #4 – “You wanna take that chance?”<br>
Drifter #1 – “Six guys with guns against one with a sword and punk-ass hair… c’mon.”<br>
*The drifters slowly untie Sephiroth X from his restraints.

Drifter #1 – “Ha…” *He chuckles.* “This is gonna be fun…”

*One of the other drifters tosses the Masamune on the ground next to X. Sephiroth X slowly reaches down to pick up his sword and keeps a sharp eye on the drifters as well, he then slowly grasps the Masamune but before he begins to pick it up one drifter shot at X.

Just as the bullet struck the ground were X stood, X had already rolled to his right with the Masamune in his head and dodged the bullet. Sephy X gave off a smirk at the drifters, who were all looking in a little confusion.

Drifter #1 – “Don’t just stand there and gawk… shoot him!”<br>
*The drifters all shot at X, but by this time X was back on his feet with his sword and easily used his agility to sidestep and deflect the drifters’ shots. As X continued to deflect away the bullets he slowly edged his way closer to the drifters them selves. There was a brief moment of silence in the shooting; the drifter’s had to reload their guns.

X took this as his chance to finally end this minor conflict, he sprinted toward the drifters and swung the Masamune elegantly at his attackers. Two drifters dropped instantly from sword wounds, in one fluent motion Sephiroth X connect with a spinning kick two a third drifter that sent the drifter flying back and slamming into the side of the ship knocking him out. The fourth drifter was quickly taken down by another swift sword attack from X. One of the last two drifters attempted to punch Sephy X, but X’s constant motion along with the drifters inaccuracy resulted in the drifter’s fist slamming into X’s shoulder guard breaking two knuckles. X quickly took down this drifter with an elbow to the head followed up by a sweeping kick taking the drifter down to his back. As the drifter landed on his back, X stood back up and thrust the Masamune directly down into the drifter’s chest killing him. Sephy X quickly pulled the Masamune back out and just as he did the sixth and final drifter reloaded his gun and took one last shot at X, and X quickly deflected it away. The drifter was stunned to see X’s quick reaction time with his sword, X simply responded to the drifter’s futile shot by smirking and shaking his head ‘no’.

To finish off the final drifter Sephiroth X charged at him and connected solid with a knee to the gut of the drifter, sending him crouching downwards gasping for air. X didn’t hesitate to finish off the last drifter, he brought the Masamune upwards and stabbed it down fiercely through the back of the drifter, coming out the other side. X withdrew the Masamune from the final drifter, and the drifter smacked the desert ground after. Sephiroth X examined the immediate area for any remaining drifters.

Sephiroth X then noticed something he could use, the drifters’ motorcycles. Transportation across the desert was always a safe thing to have no matter what. X looked over all six motorcycles and picked out the one that suited him best. X sat down on it, started it up, and looked for the trail of the ship’s lone survivor. He started up the motorcycle and then sat in thought for a few moments.

Sephiroth X – This guy who survived this… could he really be something besides human? And the dream… it had fire in it, and another person in it besides the cloaked one… fire… like the eyes of that woman…<br>
*Sephy X observed the trail and what direction it went, he looked over his surroundings and also the direction of where the ship crashed from. He then figured out where the survivor went to.

Sephiroth X – “Well… this guy I’m hoping has some answers for me… in Midgar.”<br>
*Sephiroth X then took off on the motorcycle following the trail of the survivor, continuing his quest for the answers. Hopefully Midgar this time around would be a good visit.