[ He can only press on. Not much farther to go in the tale, now. ]
Sephiroth... took the experiments hard. We cleaned them out, and headed back for the inn, but he didn't speak to anyone once he got back. And in the middle of the night, he left for the Shinra Manor, the old building on the outskirts of town, before you hit the mountain trail. It was... basically an old research facility, before Shinra got really big.
He found a basement none of us knew about, he reading old... scientific journals, I think. Research notes. About the Jenova Project. Shinra's initiative to revive the Ancients. He wouldn't talk to me when I first found him down there.
[ Again and again, doubt nags at Cloud. There had to have been something. Should he have been more insistent in pulling Sephiroth away from those old books? Just one more question about those night he'll never find the answer to. Frustration and grief knot together the features on his face, impossible to untangle one and not the other. ]
This went on for days. I couldn't really wrap my brain around what he was reading, so I finally marched my ass back down there to get some answers from the guy.
But by that point... it was too late. He was— well, as you know him. He told me Shinra had created him as part of the Jenova project, and that 'Mother is waiting'. I tried to get him to hold up, but he tossed me aside like a rag doll. Hit the wall so hard I blacked out.
[ Cloud's hands tighten into balled fists, saved only from drawing blood by the leather gloves he wears. His body is coiled tighter than a spring. His jaw sets and he stares at a point in the sand below him, refusing to look upward. ]
If I had come to sooner, I could have tried to do something — anything — about what happened next.
no subject
[ He can only press on. Not much farther to go in the tale, now. ]
Sephiroth... took the experiments hard. We cleaned them out, and headed back for the inn, but he didn't speak to anyone once he got back. And in the middle of the night, he left for the Shinra Manor, the old building on the outskirts of town, before you hit the mountain trail. It was... basically an old research facility, before Shinra got really big.
He found a basement none of us knew about, he reading old... scientific journals, I think. Research notes. About the Jenova Project. Shinra's initiative to revive the Ancients. He wouldn't talk to me when I first found him down there.
[ Again and again, doubt nags at Cloud. There had to have been something. Should he have been more insistent in pulling Sephiroth away from those old books? Just one more question about those night he'll never find the answer to. Frustration and grief knot together the features on his face, impossible to untangle one and not the other. ]
This went on for days. I couldn't really wrap my brain around what he was reading, so I finally marched my ass back down there to get some answers from the guy.
But by that point... it was too late. He was— well, as you know him. He told me Shinra had created him as part of the Jenova project, and that 'Mother is waiting'. I tried to get him to hold up, but he tossed me aside like a rag doll. Hit the wall so hard I blacked out.
[ Cloud's hands tighten into balled fists, saved only from drawing blood by the leather gloves he wears. His body is coiled tighter than a spring. His jaw sets and he stares at a point in the sand below him, refusing to look upward. ]
If I had come to sooner, I could have tried to do something — anything — about what happened next.