【SC】Endless Journey

Since the disappearance of his mother's crystal, Sephiroth felt that the world around him had changed drastically.

There are big differences within the institute. Some people think that the savior project destroyed the crystal and killed the savior, so it should be terminated immediately, otherwise there will be a greater butterfly effect; The best remedy is to continue cultivating those two clones.The two factions quarreled for half a month, and the latter had the upper hand, so the project finally continued.

The above incident was only known to Sephiroth when he listened to the researchers chatting during training, and his deepest feelings came from the changes in Cloud.

On the day the crystal dissipated, Claude suddenly had normal communication skills, and became extremely mature and reticent.

At first, Sephiroth thought that his younger brother could finally absorb the knowledge of other people like himself, and this knowledge helped the other party reshape the world view, thus producing a complete personality.As time passed, he discovered that Claude's situation seemed different.

Claude was very attached to himself before he was able to speak fluently, wishing he could stick to him 24 hours a day.Occasionally he gets tired of attacking each other. The boy has never been scared away. After a few minutes, he sticks to him persistently like a small magnet, making him feel like he is keeping a pet.

Since Claude had an independent personality, he suddenly began to keep a distance from him.Sephiroth gradually couldn't understand what the other party was thinking and what he was going to do. Claude became too assertive and would not ask his opinion for various decisions.He felt a little irritated that his brother was slipping out of his control; this irritability reached its peak when he learned that Cloud had asked Catholm to take part in the experiment for him.

Clearly, Claude is protecting him, even if it hurts him.

But Sephiroth has passed the stage where he would be ecstatic about his brother's deep love for him. He just wanted to let Claude know that even self-sacrifice must be approved by him, so he warned Claude in a small way, hoping Crowder clearly recognizes how fragile and vulnerable he is.In the process of grabbing the opponent's right arm, he read a kind of deep fear from Claude's eyes that he had never seen before, as if what the opponent was looking at was not him, but some extremely terrifying existence .

The terrified look in Sephiroth's heart palpitated.

"Are you going out?" The movement in the next bed drew his attention back.

Cloud studied for a while how the straps of his new training suit got tangled, and finally gave up on that part.

"They said I could go into the training room, but I had to do a test first, so I scheduled the test for one o'clock in the afternoon."

Another thing he didn't know.

Sephiroth narrowed his pupils slightly, looking at the boy's small body who had just turned six years old, feeling a little displeased. "A simulated combat test for VR?"

"No, it looks like a military hound."

Oh, and the traditional test, he did it when he was six.

"Be careful not to get hurt."

"Ah."

Claude was concentrating on arranging his equipment, when Sephiroth suddenly stood up and walked behind him, a tall shadow enveloped the boy.Claude turned around abruptly in shock, showing a guarded look for an instant.

……This is it.

Claude is always guarding against him and fearing him.

He admitted that the first time he pinched the opponent's neck, and the second time he pinched the opponent's arm, but after that he never hurt Claude again, but the opponent continued this fear for more than a year.Sephiroth even suspected that he had offended Claude without knowing it, and completely ignored how scary it was for a ten-year-old self who was almost 1.7 meters tall to appear quietly behind others, but these were not the point .

"I'll go with you." Sephiroth simply informed the other party, and then changed into training clothes.

"No, I can do it myself." Claude tried to decline, but he picked it up with one hand and carried it away.

The boy of tens of meters who had just left the house struggled desperately until he slapped his buttocks and dared not move again.They came across a researcher at the corner, and Claude immediately buried his face in his shoulder, the tips of his ears were so red that they were about to bleed.

This made Sephiroth feel good, so he put Cloud down, and the boy ran towards the training area immediately.

The training room used for testing is an enclosed room with floor-to-ceiling sensors, typically used for combat data collection.When they arrived, there was already a cage in the room, and a mutated military hound was pacing back and forth inside, rushing towards the door of the cage from time to time, barking horribly.

"Yo Claude, today is on time." White greeted easily, and then saw him behind Claude, and immediately restrained his smile. "Uh, Sephiroth is here too?"

"I want to see his test." Sephiroth explained calmly.

Although his original intention was to prevent Claude from having an accident, he was somewhat curious about how far his younger brother could do it.

Claude pursed his lower lip, finally gave up the idea of ​​driving him away, and turned to the weapon rack.

"Can I have a weapon?"

"Okay. Just follow your own habits."

Sephiroth watched quietly from the sidelines.He saw the boy hesitate for a moment before the weapon rack, choosing a sword longer than himself.

The sword weighed more than 3.5 kilograms visually. It was a two-handed sword of the special forces in the old Shinra era. It was difficult for even adults to swing it for a long time, but it was not too much of a burden for them.The mother's combined sword weighed forty kilograms, almost the weight of a person, and Sephiroth and Claude, who were clones, naturally also inherited this arm strength.

I like cold weapons, very good, just like me.Sephiroth thought happily.

Claude weighed the sword, swung it slightly a few times, and then headed for the door of the training room.

Because there was no sword sheath on his body, Claude could only drag the sword diagonally on the ground.As he walked, the sword scraped against the floor, making a tooth-piercing noise.It wasn't until the door of the training room was closed that the opponent swung the big sword, used inertia to swing it to a certain position, and made a standard pre-war posture.

A reminder sounded from the speaker, the door of the electronic cage popped open with a click, and the military hound rushed out in an instant and rushed towards Claude viciously.

The boy rolled over to dodge the hound's first attack, and Claude quickly got up from the ground and raised his sword to block in front of him.From the second time on, whenever the hound rushed over, Claude would follow its momentum and throw it far away, and at the same time resume the blocking posture.

The huge mutant dog was teased like this a few times, and it went into berserk mode.Claude never attacked, but adjusted his orientation according to the attack of the mutant dog, continued to catch the sharp teeth with the big sword, turned the momentum of the hound into the inertia of his own rotation, and then found a suitable angle to throw the hound out.

This way of playing is very inefficient and the data will not look very good.The researcher didn't have much reaction to this battle, but Sephiroth's expression on the side gradually became serious.

Crowder used a defensive counterattack style of play.This style of play is more difficult than a direct attack, requires skilled skills and precise timing control, and is usually only used by people with very rich combat experience.Playing counterattacks can be easy and safe if used correctly, but for most beginners, this style of play is tantamount to making yourself a target for the enemy.

Claude's biological age is only six years old, but his movements are extremely proficient and smooth, as if he has already integrated into his muscle memory when to swing a knife and when to use force.The researcher can only observe the data and can't understand such details. Only Sephiroth, who is also a soldier, knows how abnormal things Cloud has shown.

While he was still looking for a reason for this abnormality, the battle in the training room was coming to an end.The mutant dog was exhausted and fell to the ground, struggling for a while and unable to stand up again.So Claude dragged the sword and walked over, spun around for a few weeks to increase the momentum of the sword tip, then jumped into the air, and slashed down heavily from directly above.

5 minutes.Twice slower than Sephiroth's first training session with the military hounds, but completely uninjured and showing no signs of fatigue.

Sephiroth knew that the battle could have ended at least 3 minutes earlier, and Claude seemed to be deliberately delaying the time to lower the data.He stared at the picture on the monitor, lost in thought for a while.

Don't want to be noticed by Carter Holm?

If the data weren't pretty enough, the researchers probably wouldn't have sent the footage of the test to Catholm.Is the other party betting on this matter?

Soon his train of thought was interrupted.The door of the training room was opened, and the noise of sword points scraping the floor returned to the console again.Claude put the sword back into the weapon rack, hesitated for a moment, and walked to the researcher.

"Mr. White, can I attach a magnet to the straps of my training suit?"

White paused the data entry and bowed down to meet the boy's eye level. "It can be ... but why? You want to carry it?"

The boy nodded.

Sephiroth intervened in their conversation: "This sword is too long for you, and it's easy to touch the ground when it's slanted. Why don't you use a sword sheath?"

Claude refused without thinking: "No. A horizontal sword is easy to get stuck when entering the door."

Sephiroth choked, and White laughed behind him.So he retaliated and pulled Claude in front of him, and rumpled the fluffy blond hair: "It's as if you have penetrated like this."

Claude opened his mouth subconsciously, but fell silent before speaking.Sephiroth pretended he didn't see it, and secretly pushed the boy out of the door forcefully.

In the months that followed, their schedules were packed, and Sephiroth rarely saw Cloud outside of his sleep.The other party always participated in certain experiments and training mysteriously. The former Sephiroth could not dig out any information from the researcher and Carter Holm, but the latter he could check the records on the terminal in the training room.

Claude's strength and speed are very close to his own data in the same period, but the training data is much worse.The Institute believes that Claude's physique is slightly weaker, and it is normal that he cannot reach his strength.Only Sephiroth knows that Claude is deliberately controlling the data. The opponent chooses a variety of AI types, and the end time is always around 5 minutes. This kind of data that can be divided into [-]-[-] regardless of strength is very good Suspicious, he simply doesn't know what the research institute is usually analyzing in order to turn a blind eye to this matter.Cloud seemed to know he was questioning this too, so he never sparred with him.

In the winter of this year, a news spread in the research institute - there was going to be a war outside.

Sephiroth didn't care much about the outside world at first, but there was news that part of the experimental results of the institute would be expropriated, which involved his project, so he listened to a few more words.

If he understands correctly, the person who proposed the requisition was the military of the Duchy of Midgar. They had a conflict with Junong's warlords in the neutral zone some time ago, and now they want to occupy that area.They need more advanced weapons and monsters that can obey the command to capture Junon, so Sephiroth is also counted among them.

He went back and told Claude about it. Although he didn't expect the other party to understand much, he still couldn't help asking the question in his heart: "Why are the research results in the institute being requisitioned by the military?"

Claude listened very carefully, so he answered his question very seriously: "The Grand Duchy is the capital of these projects in the institute."

Sephiroth was a little surprised: "How do you know?"

"Guess. A small religious group wouldn't have the funds to build such a large-scale research institute."

His younger brother was becoming more and more astonishing, but Sephiroth would not pursue it for the time being, anyway, he would investigate it himself in the future.At this moment, he just thought for a few seconds and thought of another question: "So our project is also funded by the military? To make us into Midgar weapons?"

Claude shook his head: "Maybe we were created for...the purpose of faith, which is the core of the teachings of the Redeemer. But I don't know how they persuaded the military to invest."

Sephiroth thought it made sense, but he didn't tell Claude that the general planned to transfer him to the front line.He has been living in the institute since he was born, and he knows that this is not a good opportunity to increase his knowledge, but he doesn't want to miss it either.

Sephiroth began to take the initiative to increase the amount of training, from the initial five hours a day to eight hours a day, and Claude also began to frequent his training site.

He had never seen Claude through the glass window of the control room before, as if his brother had no interest in anything other than his health.Cloud came to see him recently after the experiment, and never commented on his training, but Sephiroth felt that he was looking at his own battle, and this meaning was even more obvious after he tried to pick up his mother's sword.

This afternoon, Sephiroth also deliberately avoided more convenient weapons and picked up the combination sword.

Six Styles - one of the few things left after the disappearance of the mother's crystal.The structure is extremely complex and the mass is extremely heavy, making it hard to imagine how my mother wielded this big sword with her slender body back then.

200 years ago, there were a lot of video data, but everything about the mother was erased artificially. Most of the conclusions about the mother came from the research institute's testing of him and Claude.Sephiroth's current biological age is 11 years old, and his height is already equal to that of his mother, so he suddenly became very interested in the sword left by his mother.

Since he is a clone of his mother and should have inherited all her preferences and fighting habits, the sword should eventually be wielded by him as well.

At the beginning, Sephiroth thought this way, applied for the sword to the research institute, and then entered the training ground eagerly.It wasn't until he used Six Styles for the first time that he realized that this sword was not designed for easy use at all.

The whole sword weighs forty kilograms when fully assembled, and the center of gravity is in a very strange position.There are four pairs of secondary swords besides the main sword, but Sephiroth suspects that they do not exist for two-handed use, especially the smallest pair of swords is close to the length of a dagger, and his mother obviously will not use it for melee combat.

Sephiroth speculates that the two particularly small ones might be used...to be thrown, as throwing weapons.This means that every time the knife is disassembled, it must be picked up one by one after the battle.Who would give themselves so much trouble?

Then Sephiroth used the complete six-style battle against the heavy machinery guard, which took a third longer than usual.This data was unexpectedly bad, so he took out the main sword and fought again, a quarter faster than before, but still couldn't catch up with his usual fighting efficiency with the long sword.

Unconvinced, Sephiroth reassembled the swords, adjusted his offensive posture and fought again.According to his own habits, the core of the battle is to advance and retreat lightly, avoid everything that may touch him flexibly, and stab the opponent's vitals cleanly, but all the attributes of the six styles run counter to his habits .This sword was born to slash and block, the ultimate in brute force, and Sephiroth tried to make it graceful, but failed repeatedly.

He split the giant mechanical beast in half again, and the wires exposed to the air sparked for a few seconds before exploding.

Claude looked at him in the control room with a thoughtful expression.

After the training, Sephiroth walked out of the room with Six Styles, and carefully put the sword back on the holder.Although he had never seen how his mother used the Six Styles to fight, and he could indeed swing it smoothly, he always felt that something was not right.When he thought that this was once his mother's weapon, but he couldn't use it freely, he felt a sullen feeling of powerlessness.

"Murasame."

Claude suddenly mentioned such a name endlessly.

"What?" He turned his head to the other person.

Claude raised his hand and gestured in the air.

"Murasame, a Wutai famous sword with a blade length of about 93 centimeters. Although it is a bit short, it is more suitable for you than this sword."

"Tai knife?"

"Ah."

Sephiroth searched the Internet on the terminal in the training room and saw a photo of the knife.This knife was bought by a wealthy businessman for 13 million Gil 300 years ago, and it should be stored in a mansion now. It is said that it was once the weapon of the savior.

"Is this the knife my mother used? The style is completely different." Sephiroth said casually, but heard Claude softly "hmm" beside him.

Sephiroth's pupils were shocked: "Is it really his knife?"

Claude nodded, and then stopped talking.

Sephiroth no longer questioned Cloud, he felt that his younger brother seemed to know more about his mother than himself.

Given that he had communicated directly with his mother in his head in the past, it was not ruled out that Claude could do the same.But so far, neither of them has talked openly about this point, as if they both know that the other has some ulterior secrets, so they have tacitly kept the bottom line of not prying into each other.

Just when Sephiroth almost forgot about it, one day two weeks later, he returned to the room and found a very beautiful sword on the bed.

The knife was about [-] meters long, and the steel of the blade was indigo, and even glowed with a faint purple light from certain angles.

--Murasame.

Without looking at the inscription, Sephiroth could recognize at a glance that this was the knife that once belonged to his mother in the photo.

But he still remembered that this knife was still in the hands of a wealthy businessman two weeks ago, why did it appear on his bed at this moment?

Sephiroth pondered for a moment, picked up the knife and weighed it twice.This knife was much lighter than the weapons he usually used, but it was more slender and slender, as if it could be integrated with his arm, and there was no sense of stagnation in swinging it.Although he felt that the blade could be longer, it is the one that suits him best so far.

So who actually got it and put it here?

Just as Sephiroth was immersed in his own thoughts, the door of the room was suddenly opened.He turned around and saw Claude standing at the door, glanced at the knife in his hand, and walked towards his bed as if nothing had happened.

"As soon as I came back, I saw it on my bed." Sephiroth couldn't help explaining.

"Well. That's a gift for you." Claude was about to take off his shirt when he suddenly seemed to remember something, and quickly pulled down the clothes to cover his body tightly.

"Happy birthday, Safi."

There seemed to be a few seconds of blankness in Sephiroth's mind, and a strange emotion swelled in his chest, like a chick that had just hatched in spring, and the soft fluff scratched his palm.

For the first time, he felt a feeling of cherishing, so he stepped forward in three or two steps, and was about to hug Claude, but the other party yelled in pain because of his movements.

The sound was small, but he caught it keenly.

"Claude?"

The other party didn't respond, and quickly bypassed him and ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.After a while, there was the sound of dripping water in the bathroom.

Sephiroth's heart sank immediately.