【SC】Endless Journey

On the day when Cun Yu was received, Sephiroth wanted to tell Claude that he was going to Junon the day after tomorrow, but the other party ran away from him.

Sephiroth received a gift for the first time in his life, and great joy arose in his heart.He felt that the person who gave the gift should also be happy for his reaction, but Claude was very afraid of his touch, which made Sephiroth feel a little strange—although Claude often made some things he couldn't understand It was awkward, but he thought that the relationship between them had eased a lot in the past few weeks. The other party even gave him his mother's favorite knife, which showed that his brother had always cared about him and was not as alienated as the other party showed.

Sephiroth quickly thought of the experiment Claude participated in, so he quickly hacked into Claude's terminal while the other party was taking a shower, and saw an encrypted appointment on the schedule as expected.

— Carter Holm.

Sephiroth looked coldly at the profile picture of the reserved user. The man's ID photo was even more miserable than his own, which made him instinctively feel disgusted.

After trying several passwords but unable to read the encrypted content, Sephiroth exited Cloud's system interface.His gaze fell back to Murasame in his hand, and this gift suddenly became a bit more important.

Sephiroth hated everything here except Cloud, but he was powerless to change the status quo.

Either he or Claude will always be Katterholm's experimental subject, and Claude, who is more like a mother, will be chosen by Katterholm anyway.But just because he doesn't ask doesn't mean he doesn't know, he just doesn't want to push the frightened brother further away, and he's also curious about what purpose Claude has.

Claude's body is more than three years younger than him, but he has always wanted to protect him, and he has done it to an unreasonable level.Sephiroth couldn't figure out why he would do this. It was like a young chocobo trying to protect its parent bird. It was cute but illogical. There was always a deeper reason behind it.

Sephiroth was immersed in his own thoughts, caressing Murasame's cold and slender blade casually.His fingertips were accidentally scratched by the blade, and a bead of blood leaked out of the wound, and he soon calmed down under his gaze.

This is the C cell.Far beyond the strength and speed of ordinary humans, far beyond the repair ability of ordinary humans.

He has always been thinking about a question: If there is such a big gap between him and ordinary humans, then what kind of existence is his mother, brother and him?

Why does a mother have this level of power?

How much does Claude know?

The three of them seem to be closely linked by genes, but there seems to be a little secret between each of them that the third person doesn't know.

Sephiroth had a feeling since he was a child that his mother never returned to the stream of life, but stayed in a very close place to observe him.This feeling is especially obvious when he is close to Claude, so he firmly believes that his little brother not only absorbed the vitality of his mother, but also became some kind of carrier for his mother.

In order to keep his mother and Cloud alive, and for them to go to the new world together, Sephiroth needs more power.It is a good opportunity to follow the army to the outside world, and he will not give up easily.

Sephiroth didn't find the right time to tell Cloud about this until he boarded the Midgar military transport vehicle.They had some unpleasantness on the last night before leaving, so he pinched Claude unconscious and lay awake all night beside him.

The next morning the military came to pick him up and asked him what luggage he had. Sephiroth gestured to Murasame with his eyes.

The non-commissioned officer who connected knew that he was also one of the "weapons" manufactured by the research institute, but he subconsciously asked, "Only this?"

Sephiroth was a little surprised, the people in the institute never asked him what he had or wanted, they always arranged everything for him, and he had no choice to refuse or accept.

"only this."

The sergeant looked him up and down, and couldn't help frowning: "How old are you?"

"11 years old." Biological age.

A flash of surprise flashed in the other party's eyes, and he murmured, "Isn't it too much to go to the battlefield at such a young age?"

Sephiroth pretended not to hear, but felt a bit strange in his heart.It turned out that people from the outside world looked at teenagers in this way. The research institute only cared whether his data was enough to kill other mutant creatures, and never cared whether his age reached the standard for playing, but this seemed to be inconsistent with the common sense of the outside world.

He didn't remind the other party that he was not an ordinary 11-year-old kid. He avoided the helping hands and jumped into the carriage one person high from the ground.

The sergeant was a little surprised at his jumping ability, but he didn't go into it too deeply. He just changed his palm to the side: "My name is Angel. What's your name?"

He looked down for a few seconds, hesitantly stretched out his hand in the same gesture, and was held and shook by the other party. "Sephiroth."

"Do you want to sit in the passenger seat or the compartment?"

"The passenger seat."

So Sephiroth sat in the cab as he wished, and watched the familiar scenery recede a little bit from his eyes.

As the transport vehicle left the final checkpoint, Sephiroth left the confines of the institute for the first time in his life.

Most of the facilities of the institute are underground, and it is said that they were built on the remains of a steel city 200 years ago.The transport vehicle traveled through the long tunnel for more than ten minutes, and finally a glimmer of sky light appeared at the end, followed by a gray-yellow wasteland.

The vast wilderness stretches as far as the eye can see, with jagged stone pillars everywhere, and in the distance is another plain on top of a cliff like a knife.The sun shines on the earth through the flying dust, like a strangely colored lamp, reflecting the sky into a gloomy gray-white.

Sephiroth has read many books and video materials, and has also selected various venues in simulated combat devices, but seeing the outside world with his own eyes is a different feeling.There are almost no living things on this road, only gravel and thistles all over the ground, which makes people feel a sense of loneliness, as if there are only them and a few other transport vehicles in the world, and the endless barrenness will swallow him up.

Later, Sephiroth learned that this loneliness is called "smallness", and what swallowed him is called "unknown".And these are the reasons why human beings are afraid of a more vast universe.

The car drove for another two hours before entering the capital circle of Midgar, and the vegetation on both sides of the road gradually became lush.

There is a distance of 200 kilometers between this city and the Mako city called Midgar 110 years ago. It is closer to the coast than the old Midgar. The climate is humid and the sky has returned to blue.

The transport vehicle parked at the base, Sephiroth did not follow the mutant dog in the vehicle into storage, but was taken directly to the boss's office by the kind sergeant.Angel let him stay in the living room, chatted with his boss in the back room for a while, and then came back to pick him up again.

"That's him?" Another officer swept him from head to toe, frowning slightly.

"Yes."

"Those nagging--what's their name, Redeemers? Go mad at last and send children to fight?"

"That's what I said too...so I want to give him a uniform first, let him try training with the camp?"

Sephiroth didn't say a word the whole time, he just stood there quietly, with strange vertical pupils lingering on the two of them.

In his eyes, the two people who "have common sense from the outside world" finally finalized his arrangement, so half an hour later he went through all the procedures for temporary enlistment and received a real military uniform.

At the institute's request, Sephiroth was assigned a single dormitory with cameras installed.He came to the dormitory, took off his casual clothes, and changed into the combat uniforms of Midgar soldiers in sequence, and then went to the mirror to look at his new look—it seemed quite handsome.

Although his age has just passed the passing line for teenagers, his figure is close to that of an ordinary adult.The small military uniform doesn't look loose on him, but the special fiber close-fitting outlines the chest and abdominal muscles that are usually hidden under the fabric, which makes him look more like a soldier, and Sephiroth is very satisfied.

Angel gave him a little special training on military discipline that afternoon, and the next day he had gone out for exercises with other soldiers.Sephiroth easily ran [-] kilometers of weight-bearing training, and then participated in [-] kilometers of weight-bearing cross-country, common transportation training and some general education courses. After a week, he found that life in the army was much more interesting than the research institute, and he felt more and more that he It was the right decision to make.

It was not until this afternoon's shooting training that Sephiroth participated in the actual combat course for the first time.He seldom uses hot weapons on weekdays, but he quickly adapted to the recoil of the new gun after the first one or two shots with poor rings, and his overall results were quite good.

"So you are really, uh, a modified body?" Angel watched the whole process with surprise written all over his face.

"A clone," he corrected.

The other party's expression was a bit puzzled, but his eyes quickly fell on Murasame who he put aside. "You don't seem to use a gun much before? You usually use a sword? This is really rare."

"Don't touch it." He immediately stopped the other party.

Sephiroth thought his tone was normal, but the man quickly withdrew his hand as if frightened, so he could only explain: "This knife may be heavier than you imagined, and it is very sharp, so it is easy to accidentally injure it."

Angel cast a skeptical look, and in order to avoid complications, Sephiroth decided to demonstrate it to him himself.

He looked around and saw a low reinforced concrete wall next to him that was used as a training bunker, so he turned his head and asked, "Can I use it?"

The black-haired soldier passing by whistled, walked over and put it on Angel's shoulder: "Hey, new kid, if you can use this little iron piece to destroy it, how about I give you 100 Gil?"

"Pete, gambling is prohibited in the military."

"Don't say that, aren't you interested? 100 Gil?"

Sephiroth was listening, and suddenly realized a problem - all his consumption in the institute was directly reimbursed, and even himself was part of the institute's assets, so he never had any money in his hands.But if he plans to take Claude out of the institute in the future, he will need a lot of cash, which can only be accumulated while he is still outside.

So Sephiroth immediately intervened in their conversation.

"How many people want to watch?" The silver-haired boy blinked, "If you sit on the bank, you can earn more. I only need to smoke 50.00%."

Angel turned around in an instant: "Where did you know this?!"

"In books, and in movies."

"Don't make trouble!"

"Angel, let him try. Then it's settled, 50.00%, I'll find someone."

After 10 minutes, Petra came to six people, all the soldiers who had been training with him just now.Pete took out a hundred Gil from his pocket and put it on the table, raised his eyebrows provocatively at the others: "Do you dare to let him try?"

"You'll lose your underwear." Another soldier maliciously pulled out a second hundred-gil bill and pressed it on top.

"I depend on you for my panties." Pete patted Sephiroth hard on the shoulder.

After everyone bet their money one after another, Sephiroth picked up the village rain.

Take a step back, bow your body, make a preparatory movement for drawing the sword, and then draw it out of the sheath in an Iai posture.

He was still five meters away from the concrete wall, but the force compressed by the blade had pierced through the air like two silver arcs, cutting the one-meter-thick wall into four X-shaped pieces.

With a bang, the training field was filled with dust, and the soldiers present fell into silence for a while.

"So, I won?" Sephiroth put the knife back into its sheath gracefully, and turned to look at the people who were so shocked by the scene just now that they couldn't recover for a long time.

Angel was the first to react and immediately sent everyone away.Pete took the opportunity to pick up the money on the table, counted half of it and stuffed it into Sephiroth's pocket: "Happy cooperation, next time I go to trick Class [-], I will bet on how far you can cut with this knife." How are things?"

"Peter!"

The other party winked at him, and ran away before Angel lost his temper.

Sephiroth was still confused about the situation, so he stood there and waited for Angel to explain.The man looked around nervously, and only sighed when there was no one else on the training ground, with an unusually solemn expression.

"Although I don't know what you are, don't let the higher-ups know that you can do this."

Sephiroth was a little puzzled, but he understood what Angel meant, so he didn't say anything.

In the second month, he received a notice that he would go to a small town at the junction of Junon and Midgar with Angel's company to perform a mission.

Drone scans have revealed a large void beneath the town that is responding with strange heat.Midgar suspects that the residents of the town have colluded with Junon, and that the underground cavity may contain the arms that Junon smuggled into Midgar, so they are asked to search the village.

Sephiroth boarded the military truck again to go to other areas, feeling less excited than the first time.He sat in the carriage, without helmet or gun, as conspicuously as a stork among wolves.

There is no impenetrable wall in the world, especially when he made a lot of noise on the training ground last time. He didn't know how Angel finally settled it for him, but everyone in the company already knew about his deeds, so except Pete No one dared to joke around with him.When he got out of the car, other people spontaneously lined up a few meters away from him, only Angel patted him on the shoulder and took him to the designated place to gather.

"The hole detected by the drone is about 20 meters below the ground. There must be a secret door in the town to go down, so every house must be searched carefully."

As soon as Angel issued the order, Pete started to report: "Sir, what should we do if we encounter resistance?"

"The above means that if you can catch it, you will catch it, and if you can't catch it, you will kill it on the spot. Before the arsenal is found, no news is allowed to leak out."

"Even if it's just residents?"

"Even if it's just residents."

The company was silent for a moment, and everyone's expressions were not very good-looking.

"If there is no problem, act immediately. Disband!" Angel drove the others away before turning to Sephiroth and saying, "Just follow me and don't run around."

At that time, Sephiroth didn't realize the seriousness of the matter, so he obediently searched with Angel.

The townspeople looked at them in horror. A middle-aged man tried to drive the soldier out of his house, but was knocked to the ground with the butt of a gun by someone he didn't know.After that, Sephiroth passed by the square and saw several residents being dragged into the center of the square to kneel. Midgar soldiers pointed their guns at the back of their heads and loudly questioned them about their connection with Junon.

Sephiroth didn't know that the search was such a violent operation before. He felt that the efficiency of this search was not high, but since it was a necessary part of the form, it probably had its meaning.

In the evening, everyone returned to the square to gather.Angel asked about the progress of each team, but no one found the entrance to the underground facility for the time being, so Angel arranged for the soldiers of the entire company to stay in the town, and sent another squad to guard the entrance and exit of the town to the outside world. Philos checked into the largest hotel in town.

That night, Sephiroth was sleeping soundly when he heard a loud noise downstairs.He got up from the bed almost instantly, and saw that Angel was also awakened by the sound. The two looked at each other and rushed to the window to check the situation together.

There was an explosion on the first floor of the hotel where they were staying, but it was not known whether the dose of the explosives had not been adjusted properly or it was placed in the wrong place. The shock wave only lifted the wall on the west side of the hotel, and did not directly affect them who lived on the east side.While the two were changing clothes, the flames from the explosion quickly ignited the carpet in the hotel, and the fire surged up the narrow corridor, quickly engulfing the corridor on the fourth floor.

Thick smoke seeped into the room through the crack of the door, Angel rushed into the bathroom and wet two towels, one covered his mouth and nose, and threw the other to Sephiroth: "You can't go outside the door, check if the window is sealed of!"

Sephiroth only glanced at the towel, but didn't pick it up.He turned around and pulled out the village rain, and swung towards the wall where the window was, and the wall was chopped into pieces.

The strong convection poured fresh air into the room, and the thick smoke gushed out as if it had found a flood outlet.Sephiroth grabbed Angel's sleeve and touched the broken wall, making a jumping posture.

"This is the fourth floor! At least use a bed sheet to make a rope." Angel looked shocked.

"There's no time, just jump. You can't die." Even so, Sephiroth remembered that Angel was not a C-type clone like him and Claude, so he thoughtfully held the tactical strap behind the opponent, The man jumped down while roaring.

Sephiroth landed on the ground lightly like a cat, put Angel aside, and began to observe the surrounding situation.Flames lit up in many places in the town, and the sound of submachine guns firing could be faintly heard.

Angel immediately realized what happened, and hurriedly pressed Sephiroth's shoulder: "Go and find our people, and let them gather at the street sign outside the town, the sooner the better!"

Sephiroth hesitated a little, and replied: "But I can't recognize so many people, I only remember a few classes."

"Then only find people you know, they can recognize each other."

"What about the rest?"

"Kill or kill."

Sephiroth nodded. The houses he wanted to be attacked must be the houses where the army stayed, so they headed towards the place where the fire started first.

During the search, he discovered that the situation was much worse than he had imagined.There have been fierce gun battles in some corners of the town, and there are many corpses lying on the ground, some are Midgar soldiers, and some are residents of the town.He came to a small burning building, and there were screams in the flames, but the house was so burned that he couldn't enter at all, and could only watch the figure fall in the flames.

At this moment, several dark figures ran past the house.Sephiroth immediately saw that they were not wearing Midgar's military uniforms, so he remembered Angel's order: shoot to kill.

With a wave of Sephiroth's hand, the light of the knife cut the legs of those people.He walked over and saw that there were two middle-aged men and a half-year-old boy, and one of them was holding a gun in his hand.

Sephiroth was wondering if these people were disguised by Junong's army, when he saw the oldest man dragging his injured leg and begging him for mercy: "Sir, please, we didn't do anything, at least let the child go... ..."

Sephiroth looked at the boy, and thought of Claude for a moment, and the hand holding the knife froze in the air for a moment.But the boy seemed to see an opportunity, and immediately grabbed the gun from the man and pulled the trigger on him. Sephiroth instinctively swung the knife, and the three of them fell together in a pool of blood.

shoot to kill.Sephiroth finally understood what Angel meant.

Sephiroth is not lacking in killing experience. When he was in the research institute, he killed thousands of monsters in actual combat and virtual battles in the training room, but it felt completely different from killing people.Monsters are very strong, they can fight and resist, which makes him have the real feeling of "killing a certain life"; while humans are so weak, the feeling of cutting is no different from cutting a piece of paper, but they also have intense emotions , which made Sephiroth feel very uncomfortable when he did it.

He didn't even have time to investigate in detail whether it was the fleeing townspeople he killed or the Junong army in disguise. He just mechanically killed all humans who didn't wear Midgar's military uniform, otherwise he would be hated and condemned. attack.

Killing people seems like a pointless thing to do.Sephiroth thought.

But he will remember the feeling of being hated.He knew that compared to those weirdos in the institute, this was the emotion that ordinary human beings should have.

It wasn't until dawn that the rebellion in the town was completely suppressed.When Sephiroth arrived outside the town, Angel and Pete were counting the number of soldiers. About thirty soldiers were killed last night. Everyone's face was covered with blood and smoke—except him.

Sephiroth was neither disheveled nor embarrassed, as if the battle last night was just a walk around the town, making him stand out among the wounded soldiers.

Afterwards, the Midgar military blew up the ground under the town square, and found that the void scanned by the aerial photography was not actually an arsenal, but an air-raid shelter left over from the war.There is indeed a resistance organization inhabiting the town, but its relationship with Junong's military is unknown. Not all residents in the town know about it, so most of the people they killed last night were ordinary residents.

In the two months after this incident, Sephiroth participated in six more missions, sometimes on the frontal battlefield in the neutral zone, and sometimes ambushing Junon's army in the wild.He has accumulated a wealth of war experience, and the reputation that one man is worth an army has also spread among the Midgar army.Fortunately, Catholm had asked to keep his project secret at the time, and the Grand Duchy did not make much of his presence.

Sephiroth made meritorious service in these actions, and thus received awards and promotions from above.He himself didn't feel much about these rewards, but only belatedly wanted to understand one thing: he, and Claude, might not have been created for the purpose of saving the world.At least for the military that invested in this project, they are born as a weapon, with a more efficient ability to kill than ordinary soldiers, and have nothing to do with the word hero, and the war that is going on on this planet probably has nothing to do with what destroys The calamity of the world is irrelevant.

Maybe the mother was once the hero who really saved the planet, but he and Cloud were just tools used in the process of human beings fighting each other.He has no interest in who wins and who loses in all human countries. If there is no mission to save the planet, he just wants to find a place to live freely with his brother.

Sephiroth began to miss Cloud terribly.

In the three months since he left the institute, what Sephiroth cared about most was Claude.Although he knew that he would find the other party to conduct experiments whether he was in Katterholm or not, he could see Cloud's condition at any time in the institute.If Claude cried secretly like he couldn't heal himself after the first operation, at least he would know, and then use his own way to comfort the other party.

While Sephiroth was thinking like this, one night he suddenly dreamed of the person he was thinking about day and night.

It was a scene he had never seen before - the delicate and beautiful blond youth in his memory, wearing a uniform he had never seen before, was sleeping in a huge magic jar.

That looks like the mother of a certain period, a little more immature than in the crystal, and the hands and feet are still somewhat slender.

Sephiroth let himself sink in the mako, slowly approached his mother, and then gently stroked her face.The young man seemed to have sensed something, and uttered a raving in his dream.

"Sephiroth..."

—I am here, mother.

His fingertips caressed the young man's soft lips, and carefully pressed himself against them, trying to get a kiss of affection.

At this moment, he felt the other party's lips slightly open and close under his own, and the vibration was sent all the way to his brain along the skin, so he heard another sentence from his mother clearly——

"help me."

Sephiroth woke up suddenly, his chest heaved violently, and a strong sense of unease came to his heart.

He had an inexplicable feeling that something might have happened to Claude.So he immediately called Angel, and at the same time glanced at the electronic alarm clock next to the bed, the time displayed on the screen was 4:20 AM.

It took half a minute before the phone was picked up, and a sleepy man's voice came from the receiver: "Sephiroth? What's the matter?"

"Sorry, I have to ask for leave to go back to the research institute. Tomorrow."

There was a sound from the opposite side, which seemed to be the sound of the other party getting out of bed in a hurry.It took a while for Angel to pick up the phone again: "What happened?"

Sephiroth hesitated for a moment, and decided to tell the truth: "My brother may have had an accident."

"Brother?" The other party's tone was very surprised, after all, he had never mentioned the existence of Claude to Angel.Fortunately, Angel is not a person who likes to get to the bottom of things. The other party just considered his authority and replied: "I will try my best. What is the reason?"

"Just say that I need to go back to the institute for a physical examination, otherwise something may happen. The higher ups know my identity, and they will understand."

"No problem. I'll send Pete to tune your car, so you can go straight in the morning."

"Thank you."

Sephiroth hung up the phone, feeling uneasy in his heart.He sincerely hopes that Claude can survive until he returns, if not...

Sephiroth couldn't even imagine what he would do.