【SC】Endless Journey

(4) C-side

The fact that Sephiroth took him as his mother stunned Cloud for a week.It took him five nights to convince himself that he could barely find a reason not to expose the other party - at least it was better than letting Sephiroth know about Jenova's existence.

……probably.

Besides, he is fused with Sephiroth's gene, and Sephiroth is fused with Jenova's gene, rounding off he is indeed a part of Jenova; this Sephiroth is cloned from his body in the crystal. If you make an even equation, the other party thinks that he is his mother, and it can be regarded as recognizing Xenovia as his mother...

Claude fought a cold war for his association.

This can't be considered cheating, it was Sephiroth who wanted to call his mother without authorization, but he didn't admit it.What's more, he doesn't want to take advantage of Sephiroth at all, he just hopes that one day when the other party finds out the truth, he won't anger the innocent planet because of this incident.

After all, what normal person would take a 200-year-old man in the crystal as his mother? ?

After the crystal dissipated, there was chaos in the institute, and for several days, no one cared about Claude and Sephiroth.They spent a few days of quiet life in the room, each sitting on the bed reading and playing small games on the communication terminal, and no one touched the taboo topic.

Since he was almost strangled to death by Sephiroth that night, Claude never said a word to him.Sephiroth's mood was also very complicated, and he was not sure what attitude he should use to face him.

Claude thinks it is understandable. After all, he has seen how Sephiroth's mind body went crazy when he saw his mother's head in the box was chopped off. Leif disappeared because of him, so the other party's performance is already quite restrained.

Claude is not worried about his own safety, this Sephiroth is only seven years old after all, and has not experienced the training of Shinra special forces, Claude may be more familiar with his moves than Sephiroth himself.What Claude is worried about is that he is not good at disguising. Once the child asks about his changes, it will be difficult for him to explain.

Claude decided that if the other party asked, he would keep silent.Fortunately, Sephiroth is not a child with a strong desire to communicate, so most of the time they treat each other as air, but they are actually observing each other secretly.

In the following week, Claude suddenly discovered that he had the authority to view internal documents, so he immediately began to investigate the cause of Sephiroth's resurrection and amnesia.He read all the information he could find within his authority, and added a little personal understanding, and finally figured out what happened before he woke up.

This is about 140 four years after his slumber.In the last 100 years, human beings have experienced two large-scale wars and a terrible climate change. High temperatures have reduced food production, frequent wars have led to technological regression, and meteorological disasters have caused the population to drop by half. The cloud of fear hangs over everyone's heart .So 15 years ago, an apocalyptic fanatical religious group emerged. They called themselves the Redeemer (The Savior), and preached that the life of the planet is coming to an end, and everything will return to nothingness. Only the Savior can stop this.

Different from ordinary eschatological religions, there are quite a few scholars in this group. They are experts in the study of planetary history and ancient weapons. The claims of weapons are convinced.

Claude thought that the relevant information after the Starstreak incident had been cleaned up by Shinra, and he personally visited Rufus to ask him to do it. Why would anyone know this information?

...oh, Turks.The faces of Renault and Luther appeared in his mind, and he couldn't help slandering their professional abilities.

In short, relying on such fragments from the old Shinra era, these scholars found out that he was sleeping in the big void, and finally dug him out from there.

It might not be so bad if the Redeemer just wanted to wake him up.But I don’t know if mad scientists have similar brain circuits. They actually used his cells to create many clones like what Baojo did to Jenova 200 years ago, so the accident happened like this.

This again involves a problem left over from history. The information on Jenova and Sephiroth has been completely destroyed by Claude, and even the traces of the existence of these two words have been completely erased, so the scientists of the Redeemer lacked a Key message: While it is true that he is Cloud Strife himself, his cells are not.

As early as more than 200 years ago, Hojo implanted Sephiroth's cells into his body, causing his cells to fuse with the opponent's cells. Jenova's powerful genetics quickly replaced his own genetic material, making him Become a copy of Sephiroth.Before crystallization, he didn't even have a single original cell of his own in his body, so in a biological sense, he is Sephiroth, and his cells can only be cloned out of Sephiroth, not himself .The results of subsequent experiments also proved this point. C-05 and C-06 showed the same traits as Sephiroth, but C-11 was, to some extent, an abnormal clone.

After discovering that all this stemmed from a wrong experiment, Claude fell into a long silence.

He suddenly felt a sense of absurdity—a group of eschatological fanatical religious elements wanted to resurrect the guardian of the planet, but accidentally resurrected the disaster from outside the sky, and cultivated him as a savior—how familiar this plot is, he simply Can't believe I watched it again after 200 years.If Sephiroth knew that he could return to the world so easily, perhaps he would not have been entangled with him in the stream of life for so many years.

It's funny, but it's not funny.Right now both he and Sephiroth are facing a very serious problem, which is that cloning has brought them back to a stage where they are very, very weak, where they can't even save themselves in the lab, let alone save or destroy the planet.Claude had to find a way to take both of them out before he could consider how to deal with Sephiroth's problem in the future.

Both he and Sephiroth need power.According to the current development speed, he still has two or three years before he can wield the Six Styles, so they can only wait for their bodies to grow up in the research institute.Claude had a hunch that this would be a long and tormenting process.

Half a month after the crystal dissipated, the research institute finally cleaned up the remnants of the central area, and the savior project was restarted.

There are only two clones left in the current sample, which means that Cloud and Sephiroth have to undertake more experiments and more training.Although Claude was mentally prepared, when he saw the young Sephiroth being tied to the test bench, he realized that he could not calmly face this reality.

—He is still a child!Do these people know what they are doing?

Claude stared at the screen on the monitor, trembling and clenched his fists, wishing he could rush in and pull out the needle on the boy.

The tragedy in Sephiroth's last life stemmed from this. He was created without authorization, treated as an experimental subject since he was a child, didn't know his biological mother's name, and didn't experience any warmth from humans. Go through it all - humans are crazy!If Calamity is already a blank sheet of paper, why paint him black again?

Claude was the father of dozens of orphans, each of whom was treated like a treasure.What he hates most is a child being hurt and used at an age when he should be pampered, even if that child is his old enemy.

Claude couldn't hold back his anger and stopped the researcher who made an appointment for the experiment.

"Mr. White, let me do it." Claude raised his head, trying to put on the look that a child should have. "I'm closer to that person's data than he is, right?"

White knelt down and touched the top of his head lovingly. "Although this is the case, your data is very important."

"Accurate data is more important, right? If the deviation is too large, there is no reference value. And if the data of each experiment can be used, everyone can rest earlier."

Not having to work overtime sounded very tempting, but White still turned him down like a child. "Your body is not good, your wound can't heal, you can't do that kind of experiment."

"It's healed!" Claude immediately stretched out his right arm to the other party. "Just once, let me come next time, okay? Sephiroth can go to training, and he can collect combat data."

In the end, the experiment was not exchanged to him as he wished.When Sephiroth went out the next morning, he looked at him with very sad eyes, so that the boy had to stop at the door, and said bluntly, "I'll be back in the afternoon."

The sadness on his face must have become more obvious, so Sephiroth's eyes flashed an imperceptible irritability, and finally walked out of the room without saying a word.

Claude watched the other party leave, his eyes immediately became cold.He had similar experimental experiences with Sephiroth, so he understood Sephiroth's hatred and distrust of humans.If the institute is allowed to continue treating that child like this, the other party may regenerate hatred for humans, and the consequences will be absolutely disastrous.

Claude jumped off the bed with a straight face, checked the staff list of the institute on the communication terminal in the room, and decided to talk to the project director, Dr. Carter Holm.

He has always known that there is such a person in the research institute, but he rarely participates in the experiments hosted by the other party, so his memory of this person is very vague.It wasn't until he saw Katterholm himself in the research room that Claude was in a daze for a moment, and he didn't realize how similar he was to Hojo.

Based on his understanding of the stream of life, it might not just be a question of similar looks.

The planet's life system is a big cycle. After death, everyone will be integrated into the life flow inside the planet, and then return to the planet's surface in other forms.Under normal circumstances, the flow of life cannot carry so many memories and longings, so individual consciousness will not be retained, but gathered together in the form of energy and then distributed; but there are also special cases like Sephiroth, who can maintain The complete self keeps circulating in the stream of life and the surface of the planet in the form of noumenon, which proves that if a person has a deep enough obsession, he can remain independent in the stream of life.

Hojo's obsession is no less than that of Sephiroth. If the other party really retained a certain personality when he was reborn, it would explain a lot of things that happened here.

"Are you looking for me?" Carter Holm pushed the swivel chair away from the table, looked down at Claude.

Claude didn't speak immediately.He observed Carterholm carefully, and he was slightly relieved when he didn't see traces of familiarity on the other person's face.

Even if Catholm does have a part of Hojo, and no memory of Hojo, that might be one of the few pieces of good news.

Carterholm picked him up and placed him on another empty chair, which relieved the strain on the cervical spine caused by bowing his head. "I heard that you have learned to speak, little Claude? So what can you do with me?"

Claude tensed up all of a sudden.He really couldn't think of anything that could avoid the other party's suspicion, so he had to skip the false and pretentious part and go straight to the point: "Doctor, can I participate in the experiment instead of Sephiroth?"

Carter Holm did not reply immediately after hearing this, but pushed his glasses. "Oh why?"

"Because... the experiment hurts."

He is now a three-year-old child, this should be the answer that best suits his age group, I hope the other party doesn't think too much about it.

Carterholm's expression was incomprehensible.

"The experiment is painful, but you want to do it for him? Why?"

While studying his expression, Claude carefully adjusted his answer: "Because Safi provided... my medicine?"

Carterholm paused for a moment, lost in thought.

After a while, the other party suddenly asked: "Is this what Sephiroth asked you to say?"

Claude immediately widened his innocent blue eyes, desperately shaking his head in denial.

"Then why did you participate in the experiment for him when he provided your medicine?" Carterholm seemed very interested in the logic.

"Because..." Claude hesitated for a few seconds.

He can no longer just find reasons, otherwise Katterholm will continue to ask endlessly like Hojo, and he must come up with a strong answer to end this topic.

"Because Safi is... my older brother."

Catholm's glasses flickered, as if he had discovered something very novel.

He touched the green stubble on his jaw and looked up and down at Claude. "C-type clones will spontaneously generate a sense of kinship, even if no one instills this concept in them, it will be formed automatically. This phenomenon is interesting, very interesting..." Katterholm muttered to himself, as if he had forgotten Claude's existence, "Sephiroth said the same, brother. It's also interesting that he thinks Claude Strife is the mother..."

Not funny at all.The face of the party was livid.

"So you think that Sephiroth provided you with the potion, you are grateful to him, and he is your brother again, and you want to protect him. The experiment hurts, and for the purpose of gratitude and protection, you want to bear it for him, I Are you right?"

Claude never thought that one day he would thank Hojo's self-talking logic for helping him string together the reasons he made up, so he nodded desperately, showing a look of admiration.

"Yes, very good. I want to write down this phenomenon." Carterholm looked very satisfied, leaned back in his chair, and waved at him, "You go back first, I will think about it."

Claude nodded, and rushed out of the research room as if flying.

Although Hojo is a bad person, his words usually mean something, and Cloud hopes that Catholm can also inherit this few advantages.

He went back to the room, sat beside Sephiroth's bed, picked up the planetary history book again, and gently stroked the uneven cover.

It has been more than half a month since Sephiroth read this book to him last time, and the child still hated him because of the crystal, but kept this book by his pillow.

Claude knew that he hadn't forgotten to take it, but had been hesitating.

Before he recovered his memory, this little Sephiroth had spontaneously acted as an older brother, trying to take care of him in his own way.This identity seems to have given little Saffy a sense of belonging, an instinct for small animals to snuggle up for warmth when their mother leaves the nest, so when they sleep together, he can feel how happy Sephiroth is.

Thinking of this, Claude's heart softened.

This Sephiroth is gentle, but not unfamiliar.When he was just a Shinra soldier, he went to Nibelheim to perform missions with Zack and Sephiroth.At that time, Sephiroth was a Shinra hero admired by everyone, but after knowing that Nibelheim was his hometown, he thoughtfully asked him how he felt about his hometown, and gave him a one-night vacation to go back to visit his family.Thinking of this incident many years later, Claude still remembers his excitement at the time.

Sephiroth can and was a very good person. If it weren't for the experiments of Shinra and Hojo, if he hadn't been disappointed by humans and turned to the arms of the alien mother, maybe everything would have been different.

Claude picked up the book, feeling a sense of sadness in his heart.

—You were my hero when I was a kid...

"Who is your hero?"

The lights in the room were suddenly turned on.

Claude looked up suddenly, and found that Sephiroth had returned to the room at some point, with a layer of low pressure covering his body.

Claude was embarrassed for a moment, hurriedly put down the book and jumped off the other party's bed.He also remembered that Sephiroth didn't like people touching his bed.

"Sit down." The boy ordered.

Claude froze for a moment, then sat back carefully.

Sephiroth was in a bad mood, and Claude didn't know what happened, but it was always right not to defy him, because the other party hated everything that was out of his control.

"You went to see the doctor today."

He knows.This thought flashed through Claude's mind.Carterholm was pretty quick.

"You proposed to the doctor to exchange experiments with me, and give me a reason." Sephiroth was not asking him, but asking him to explain.

……reason.

Claude lowered his eyes and unconsciously held his breath.

Because you were a child, I had to protect you—that was the reason, but he couldn't say it.

"If you still want to continue to use silence to prevaricate me, I advise you to die as soon as possible. I know that you have also awakened that ability, so you can explain your thoughts clearly."

Claude began to think that his identity was exposed, and he broke out in a cold sweat.Immediately afterwards, he found that what the other party said seemed to be another matter, and he was a little at a loss for a while.

"That ability?"

Sephiroth looked at him suspiciously for a moment, and found that he might really not know what he was talking about, and then reminded: "After contacting the researcher, you should have acquired that knowledge. Now you are not at all the IQ of a three-year-old child, Sooner or later the Doctor will find out about it too, which will only make your situation more dangerous."

Oh, the ability of Jenova cells to read memory and create mimicry, so Sephiroth used it to quickly acquire language and other knowledge.Claude realized that Sephiroth had automatically found a reason for his change in the past half month, so his worry was unnecessary from the beginning.

This is really... very Sephiroth.I never ask, I am used to looking for the answer by myself, and once I find it, I will take it as the truth no matter whether it is right or wrong.

Claude relaxed a little.Now that the other party has accepted his new personality, he can also be more frank.

"I don't want you to participate in the experiment."

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because you're going to get hurt."

"You'll get hurt when you do the experiment, and the wound won't heal. What's the difference?"

"I'm less sensitive to pain."

Sephiroth moved the corner of his lips slightly as if hearing something funny.Claude had never seen him with such an expression before. He was stunned for a moment, and the next second he was pressed on the head of the bed by the other party.

Sephiroth tightly grasped the wound on his right arm, his five fingers kept pressing like iron clamps, and a sharp pain spread from the ulna.Claude realized that this was Sephiroth's test for him, so he gritted his teeth and looked at those green vertical pupils without flinching.

This is nothing compared to the pain that the adult version of Sephiroth caused him.If the boy knew that he had pierced his body several times with a blade and was sent back to the stream of life a few minutes later, he wouldn't have specifically tested his endurance.

The more tenaciously he persisted, the more force Sephiroth exerted, until finally the pain had escalated to the level of bone fracture.Claude saw a hint of dangerous excitement in the boy's eyes, as if he planned to break his arm if he didn't stop him, his heart gradually sank.

Claude is familiar with this look, this is the man's look, engraved deep in his genes together with his cruelty, even if he is reborn a child who can't remember why it will show it at a specific moment.If he allows Sephiroth to continue, he may awaken the beast deep in the opponent's soul.

Just as Claude was thinking about how to break free, the boy suddenly frowned slightly, and stretched out a hand to the side of his face.Claude subconsciously turned his head to avoid it, and was forced to return to the opponent's direction by holding his jaw.

Sephiroth's thumb lightly brushed the corner of his eye, and Claude couldn't help but froze.Seeing this, the boy withdrew his hand, and only then did he see the tears glistening on the fingertips of the other party.

"It's physiological, not because of pain." Claude immediately argued.

Sephiroth stared silently at his right arm, where the finger marks had swelled and turned from red to a horrible bruise.Claude caught a fleeting irritability on the opponent's face, and then the boy moved away from him.

"As I said, I only know that you are in pain if you tell me about the pain."

Claude raised his head in surprise.Sephiroth would actually have feelings similar to self-blame, which was completely beyond his cognition.

So he moved to the other side little by little, tentatively holding the boy's hand.He felt that the other party wanted to avoid it for a moment, but finally held back.

"I remember. It really didn't hurt very much," compared with Zhengzong who had a dozen bloody cuts on his body, "so don't worry."

After an unknown amount of time, the boy sighed, took his right arm, and gently kneaded his wound.

"I know, you are not afraid of pain. But don't even think about the experiment."