things to know (because maybe the summary didn't put you off):

Sephiroth: Went insane for a slightly different reason. May have been traumatised by the addition of several wings in the Final Battle (Part II)

Chocobo Head: Sephiroth's favourite single-brain-celled puppet, known to other people as Cloud Strife.

Cloudy: Sephiroth's homemade voodoo doll, complete with internal organs and real chocobo feather hair.

Cloud: a blue racing chocobo who has absolutely no idea why all the other chocobos are scared spitless of the nice man with the pretty silver plumage.

Strife: the eight-year-old spiritual representation of Cloud Strife; the reasonably sane part of his psyche. Does not have hair capable of physical harm. This has been tested.

Aeris: Sephiroth's nursemaid, master and blackmailer. She wears pink and smiles far too much. Sephiroth is understandably terrified of her.

Zack: Sephiroth's former best friend and partner in crime. Also, the personality Chocobo Head borrowed for a short period. Is quite peeved everyone else seems to be getting the chance to come back to life.

Sephiroth woke up in the underworld. Odd, given that he was dead and had already passed on to his world's version of the afterlife, which this place was most assuredly not. He'd grown used to the practice of leaving the Lifestream periodically for an epic battle with Chocobo Head and a cup of tea, and the break in routine was disconcerting, particularly as there appeared to be no reason for it.

So. He was in a cave. Having died in a giant crater, he thought the décor to be in rather bad taste.

There was an oddly dressed, blue-skinned freak with flames for hair ranting to himself in front of him, though Sephiroth suspected flame-hair thought he was talking to him. He looked around hopefully for Strife – who could reduce anybody into an incoherent mess within minutes of meeting them – but was sadly disappointed.

There was also a dog with three heads gnawing the biggest chew toy he'd ever seen. Hm. Someone had been planning ahead, to prepare a challenge for him.

He sighed, and decided he might as well speak up and stop flame-hair from rambling on to himself.

"Look." He said at last, making flame-hair, pacing theatrically, jump two feet into the air with a startled oath, "Where the hell am I? Try to answer concisely, because I am not afraid to impale annoying people on general principle."

"Hehe, I like you!"

Sephiroth stared hard at him in a way that left no doubt that if it weren't such a waste of time his guts would already be decorating the throne room. "Don't make me repeat myself." The threat in his voice had the walls sweating blood.

"Sheesh. You don't make many friends, do you? You're in the Underworld, buddy, and I am Hades, god and master here. Where the hell were you when you died?"

"I am not your buddy. Call me as such again, and I will see if I can roast you with the flames from your own decapitated head. Explain further. Why am I here?"

"Uhh, let me think…" Hades said with considerable sarcasm. "You died?"

Sephiroth began to wonder what the hell someone this stupid was doing talking to him. "I am quite aware of the fact that I am dead." He said in his blandest, most patronising tone. "It is a condition to which I have adapted and been accustomed to for quite some time. However, this 'Underworld' has never been part of my previous afterlife experience and I don't see why it should suddenly have become so. Elaborate."

He sat through the long explanation about Darkness, Heartless, Keyholes, Key something or others, Gummi ships (and there he'd been, stupidly trusting Strife when he insisted gummies were chewy sweets), princesses and hearts, but when the informative talk descended into profanity laden rants about someone or something named 'Hercules' or 'Jerkules' or some such, he stood up, hit Hades over the head with the Masamune, thoroughly tormented Cerberus and went in search of an exit.

Hours later, he was no closer to the exit, but he had found a pool. He regarded it with great suspicion for a moment before his vanity got the better of him and he decided he might as well see what practical jokes had been played on his appearance this time, because he was convinced his hair grew a foot every time he came back to life.

He leaned over the faintly glowing water.

Something behind his shoulder twitched. It moved. It unfolded. There was a long, wailing scream. It sounded as if it might have been, from a human throat, a scream of 'wings?!' followed by, at an even higher pitch, a shriek of 'feathers?!'

It took some while for him to recover, but eventually he recovered enough sense to continue with his self-evaluation and check what other unnecessary alterations had been made to his appearance while he wasn't paying attention.

The addition of red edging to his coat he regarded as pointless, but nowhere near as bad a change as it could have been. In fact, he decided after further consideration, it was – to use an Aeris-term – quite snazzy. But, whoever had decided to model his coat upon Batman's cape – they were going to die. Horribly and exquisitely painfully. His coat needed nothing, least of all a scalloped edge, to enhance its basic awesomeness.

Then he realised he'd just used the word 'awesomeness' in regards to himself, and put his head under water long enough that the fish started nibbling.

There was nothing else for it. He had to find Aeris.

"Hello, can I help you?"

Odd. He'd expected Aeris to brain him with a staff the moment she opened the door. "Aeris?" he said, a trifle uncertainly.

"It's Aerith," she said patiently, smiling pleasantly, as if she had to deal with such mistakes constantly. Sephiroth blinked at her. The undertone of malice he expected from her was distinctly lacking.

"…If you say so," he said warily, remembering very clearly just what Aeris could do with a staff. "I--"

"Oh, but I've been keeping you out in the cold!" Sephiroth opened his mouth to tell her that unlike her he was sensibly dressed in clothing that could withstand a lower temperature, but before he could say a word, she'd managed to grab his arm, shove him into an overlarge squishy armchair and had him holding a cup of tea in one hand and a plate of some vile pink confectionary in the other, all within fifteen seconds.

He would not admit to anyone that he was impressed.

"—must have come such a long way, you poor man--"

Sephiroth's new wing twitched. "Aerith," he said, watching the whirlwind of pink.

"— Heartless, you know, and when will Cid be back, he knows how to make a proper cup of tea--"

"Aerith,"

"— from the moogles, exorbitant prices, really--"

"Aerith," he repeated again, a tad desperately.

"—keep telling Yuffie to find a better place to hide her munny but--"

Sephiroth gave up. He'd just heard her say 'munny' with a distinct lack of proper spelling, and Aeris had always been terrifyingly exact. He sighed, curled his new wing around himself and went to sleep.

"Look at it this way," Aeris said cheerfully in his dream (and somehow, it was Aeris, not Aerith) "At least you've still got the full complement of arms and legs this time."

"I have a wing!" he yelled. "With a spike!" She cocked her head to one side quizzically, her expression blank. "It moults!"

"You should see Cloud's," Zack said over her shoulder, grinning broadly.

His heart sank. "He's here too?"

Aeris' smile was a terrifying thing. "Well of course. What did you expect?"

"A little peace and quiet?" Sephiroth said irritably.

She smiled condescendingly. Sephiroth had the sudden idea that he'd become Strife and Aeris had become him and any moment now she would lean forward and pat him patronisingly on the head. "Silly Sephiroth," she sighed, still smiling merrily.

"Speaking of new worlds and altered circumstances," Sephiroth said cautiously, "why 'Aerith'?"

"You can scramble it up and make it say 'I, Earth'." She said brightly. "Isn't that cool?"

Sephiroth exchanged wary looks with Zack. "Uh… right…"

He looked around with the vague sense of something missing, and it was only when Aeris sent him a vaguely pitying look that he realised that along with Zack and an Aeris who knew what was going on, he'd been expecting to see Strife.

"He's not here," she said, with kindness that Sephiroth decided was deliberately making fun of him. "This isn't the Lifestream. I think he's actually part of Cloud's head now. Apparently that's how it normally works."

"Well it's a stupid system," he snapped. "and-- wait. Why is Chocobo Head here anyway?"

Aeris and Zack exchanged amused looks. "Don't tell me," he said bitterly. "Somehow we've managed to become destined enemies or some such rot."

"Yup." Zack grinned. "You should hear the theories about the significance of you both having one wing each."

Something finally clicked. "He's got a wing too?"

"Yep." Aeris said brightly. Sephiroth would deny to absolutely anybody that her smile made him feel as if some cornerstone of the universe's existence had been replaced – the world was round, the sky was blue, Aeris was a manipulative, pink-dressed bitch… "It's spindly and delicate and folds up like an umbrella and it is sooo cute!"

"…" Sephiroth gave her a look of consummate blankness.

"Like a bat wing," Zack clarified.

"Let me get this straight," Sephiroth said flatly. "I'm the evil one, but I'm the one who has to deal with feathers and the whole angel mythology thing?"

"Opposites, you see," Aeris said brightly.

"Opposites." He repeated flatly.

"Yes. You're his darkness. Capital 'D' and everything."

"I'm not even going to justify that pseudo spiritual mythology crap with an answer."

"What did you think this was if not pseudo spiritual crap?"

"What the hell--"

"--is that giant feather duster doing in my damn armchair?!"

He knew those dulcet tones. He moved his wing enough to see through the feathers whether or not Cid was aiming a spear at him, before he closed his eyes and tried to ignore him.

"I couldn't leave him out in the cold!"

"You've started giving inaminate objects genders now? I always knew you were nuts, girl."

Aerith's huff of annoyance sent an unexpected pang of homesickness through him, though how you could be homesick for the Lifestream, he had no idea, and was quite worried at the thought. "It's not a feather duster, Cid! It's a person with a wing! And be quiet, he's sleeping!"

"Sure it is, Aerith," Cid drawled. "Sure it is."

At long last the thought sunk in that if Highwind was there, surely the rest of those irritating, annoying people were around somewhere. "Excuse me," Sephiroth inquired mildly from behind his shield of feathers. "But would that be Cid Highwind, by any chance? Because I'm sure I've run into about five Cids already."

"Holy – it talks!"

Sephiroth folded the wing back (still a nervously attempted and awkward exercise) and glared at him. "No shit, Sherlock."

Cid stared blankly. "Who?"

Sephiroth sighed. "Never mind." He gave him a long look over. He seemed a little pudgier than he recalled, and there was no persistent smell of cigarette smoke, but he appeared to be the same man who'd called Chocobo Head a numbskull. And if this was the same Cid, then surely the other members of Chocobo Head's ragtag band was around here somewhere. Maybe. Possibly.

"Right." Cid said, looking at him suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. "I'm going back out. Aerith, you invited the nutcase in, if he flips out, you can be the one he kills."

Sephiroth was unnerved by the lack of profanity he knew could have been slotted into at least six places in that announcement. Probably more if Cid was on top form. The years could change people, he admitted, but that much? Suddenly, looking for Chocobo Head seemed to be quite an attractive option, and less a desperate plea for help with suicide.

Worrying, he mused. Very worrying.

"So." Sephiroth said after a long time spent watching Aerith threaten Cid with all many of horrific deaths under her breath, interrupting when he judged most of her spleen was spent. He'd grown quite adept at it, after all. "Who else do you know?" He ignored the rational, slightly contemptuous voice in the back of his head – the small, sensible part of him undamaged by long association with the unhinging influences of Jenova, alcohol and Strife – pointed out that if she didn't know him, the likelihood of her knowing anyone else from Team Chocobo other than Cid was very small indeed.

"Well there's Yuffie. And that was Cid of course. He's such a teddy bear really."

Sephiroth's incredulous look declared quite adequately what he thought of that statement. "What about whiny Girl? Mr. T? The vampire?" At her politely disbelieving look he made a real attempt to remember their actual names. "Tifa Lockheart? Barret Something. Valentine? Oh come on!" he said, exasperated as she shook her head. "You must remember Valentine! Red cloak, red eyes, golden claw hand? Always going on about sin? Pointy toed boots?"

She shrugged apologetically. He was beginning to revise his opinion of deities, because surely some god, somewhere, had it in for him.

"There's Squall," she said at last. "Although he calls himself Leon now… he's from Hollow Bastion too -- why are you hitting your head against that wall?"

"Aerith," Sephiroth said helplessly, "You do not, listen carefully, do not come from a place named Hollow Bastion. You are also the last of an ancient race called the Cetra. I killed you. Does none of this ring any bells?"

"I think I'd remember if you'd killed me," she frowned.

"You'll certainly remember it if I'm forced to repeat the act," he snapped.

"How rude!" she said startled. Sephiroth's attempts to destroy either the wall or his own skull – whichever yielded first – redoubled in effort.

"Would you please stop hitting your head against the wall? Blood is such a bother to clean, and I really don't want whatever local law enforcement there is inquiring why there's a body in my home."

Sephiroth stopped and stared at her. "…are you sure you remember nothing?"

She stamped her foot impatiently. "As I keep trying to tell you," she hissed through clenched teeth, "I remember everything of importance in my life thus far. It's just that you don't seem to think I do."

"Thank you for your time, he said politely as he staggered out. He wouldn't put it past her to fake amnesia solely to further her own diabolical agenda. Women. Pink-dressed women. Who could understand them?

So that was it. It was time to find Chocobo Head. With the world(s) gone mad, only the already mad could be sane.

"Excuse me," a smooth voice inquired. The moogle looked up and chirped endearingly at the stranger looming ominously in the doorway. Unfortunately, its natural defence against predators (vomit-inducing cuteness) didn't appear to be working. "I'm looking for a man named Cloud Strife," the visitor said flatly, the black wing on his shoulder shuddering when he said the name. "Traumatised schizophrenic amnesiac, about so high, spiky blond hair, has a wing, probably on his left shoulder?"

The moogle burbled a negative.

Sephiroth walked on. "Have you seen a boy, five foot seven, spiky blond hair, single wing on his left shoulder? Couple of branches short of tree?"

"That asshole?"

Sephiroth gave the dominatrix in leather – who apparently didn't know how many belts he required to hold up his pants – a bland look. "Try the Olympus Coliseum," scar-face said at last. "Think I've seen his name on the lists there somewhere…"

It wasn't a bad life, living at the Olympus Coliseum. It helped that he earned his keep doing something he would have done anyway – namely, beating up fighters who got too big for their boots (Sephiroth considered their boots to be far inferior to his own and felt they ought to know this). There were very few people strong, cunning, or lucky enough to get far enough in the tournament to challenge him, and therefore he found himself with a lot of spare time to traumatise various other worlds searching for Chocobo Head, because, quite frankly, Sephiroth wouldn't trust him to be at his own funeral.

(Monstro had indigestion like nothing else in the universe; a whole new body of mythology had sprung up in Agrabah regarding silver-haired demonic beings with only one wing; hundreds of fairies had keeled over the instant he stepped foot on Neverland; the less said about the horrors visited upon the Hundred Acre Woods, the better. Dr Finkelstein, on the other hand, had never been so inspired.)

Sadly, he couldn't spend all his time exploring the newly expanded universe. Occasionally – very occasionally – someone would turn up that he had to fight. Being godlier than the actual gods around this place, Sephiroth felt he needed to perfect his entrance.

There was an art to both the entrance and the exit, and even Sephiroth needed to rehearse occasionally. For example, he'd had to practise folding and unfolding his wing obsessively. Despite his unfortunate penchant for gaining feathered appendages, they rarely remained long enough for him to need to know the mechanics of using them.

Then there'd been the means of communication and instant transportation to the arena he'd had to work out with Phil in case someone challenged him while he was off-world, as invariably happened the first time someone conned Phil into allowing them to challenge him. Sephiroth was not pleased by the distraction, having been about to introduce the concept of sushi to Atlantica.

So. Sigils, lights, sparkly magic. All the trappings seemed to be in order. As did the fact that he appeared with his back to the potential challenger (this was not, in fact, something he specifically requested of Phil but a mistake in the summoning process. Even if it hadn't been, he would have preferred it – how better to demonstrate his absolute superiority other an opponent than to demonstrate that he didn't even need to worry about having his back to them?)

He stretched leisurely, turned with his best 'I am going to fuck you up' smile that usually got rid of half his opponents before he even reached for the Masamune and stopped, puzzled by the apparent lack of his challenger. He looked around, perplexed, before he thought to look down, blinking at the oddly familiar sight of a spiky-haired boy wielding a… wait. Giant key?

"Who are you and where is my real opponent?"

"I'm Sora," the boy declared, as if that was supposed to mean something. "And I am your real opponent."

Sephiroth had been involved with enough errors of judgement to know he shouldn't burst out laughing immediately at this pronouncement, no matter how much he wanted to, but couldn't quite keep the disdain from his response. "Sure you are, kid," he drawled, and turned back, ready to leave and look for something to drink – preferably something alcoholic. "Come back when you're old enough to pretend to shave."

In a move that forcibly reminded him of an incident long ago involving another teenager with a mother a little too fond of the weather channel, Sora attacked while his back was turned.

Sora woke up in a dimly lit room that in no way resembled a hospital, and yet, strangely, was terribly hospital-like. He looked at the ceiling for a long time. "Ow." He said at last, when he realised that the pain wasn't actually going to fade when he got used to it.

"You stupid boy!" Donald scolded from somewhere to the side, with typical compassion.

"He beat me," Sora said, dazed, blinking in stupefied surprise.

What Donald said in response to this was not fit for repeating among the vilest, most depraved people in all the worlds (even Cid would think twice before employing two of every ten words used) but suffice to say Sora's ancestry, intelligence, sexual proclivities and future offspring were all denigrated in excruciatingly meticulous detail.

Fortunately, the tirade went in one ear and out the other, as pretty much everything said to Sora did. "He beat me," he repeated, with rising incredulity.

Donald threw his hands in the air – an amusing gesture that was paradoxically regarded with much horror by the inhabitants of Disney Castle – and stalked out. Goofy, with considerable effort, kept his bladder under control.

"T'aint necessary to fight him, you know." Goofy said with an apologetic shrug, casting frequent, terrified glances at the door, convinced Donald would come storming back in and fry him if he didn't prevent Sora from acting on his impulsiveness (which, Goofy admitted privately, was going to be very, very hard). "We could just, y'know, toodle on…"

"No way!" Sora yelled defiantly, and stormed back into the arena.

Sephiroth looked up disinterestedly from where he sat cross-legged in the middle of the arena, combing out loose pinions, and sighed. "Not too bright, are you, boy?"

After a further nine battles, each key a little more outlandish than the last, Sora keeled over and refused to even exit the arena as he'd done before solely for the dubious pleasure of running back in and attacking again. "It's not fair," he blurted, tears gathering in his ridiculously blue eyes. "You're too strong! I'm the Keyblade Master! You're not supposed to be stronger than me!"

"That," Sephiroth said irritably, "is what being a real master of an actual fighting discipline will do for you."

The boy wiped his eyes. He hated those eyes. Strife had eyes like that. Or was he supposed to talk about Strife in the past tense now?

"Don't you have some sort of limit on the amount of magic you can use?"

"Can I help it that I am so much better than you?"

The boy sniffed quietly, clearly watching his world, childhood and sense of importance crumbling to pieces around him.

Sephiroth sighed. Irresistibly reminded of Strife, he leaned forward and patted the boy's head, muffling an oath when he pricked his finger on the sharp points of his hairstyle. "I'm sure you're a very good… Keyblade Master," he said, with an exquisitely timed pause that announced to anyone but the boy before him just what he thought of those two words, especially in conjunction. "Although," he added under his breath, "how you can be a master of anything when you were probably playing with toy swords a year ago is beyond me." He stood and flexed his wing tiredly. "However, I've been doing this since before you were born. It's a matter of age and experience. If you live long enough, you might be able to think of something I wasn't doing when you were in swaddling clothes."

Sephiroth watched the boy chew his lip distractedly as he assimilated this information. "Now, if you're not going to make an eleventh attempt, get out. And send that jumped up little satyr in after you."

"Phil?" Sora said curiously. "Why?"

"I'm going to ask him to revoke your Hero Licence, which you clearly acquired by fraudulent means."

"No way!" Sora yelped, jumping to his feet. "Come on! One last time!"

"You said that after the fifth attempt," Sephiroth reminded him, sighing irritably. "Kid, I've used the same tactics against you for the past ten battles. If you're not smart enough to take advantage of that, you don't deserve to live, never mind hold a licence giving you the right to bother me."

"But I'm the Keyblade Master!"

Strife would have known by the way he was twitching that Sephiroth would soon attempt to kill him. The boy in front of him didn't even have the excuse of being blond. "…I don't know who you've been fighting before this, but they did you no favours allowing you to win."

"Well that's not fair," the boy grumbled in an undertone. "I worked really, really hard to get here, and I had to win all the other tournaments y'know, and you wouldn't believe the amount of running around I had to do to get everything I needed for this--" he brandished the spiky thing Sephiroth assumed was another key only because he'd never seen another weapon in all his experience even remotely resembling it. "—and I almost died the first time I fought Cloud, and--"

"Wait." Sephiroth said. "Did you say 'Cloud'?"

"Uh-huh."

Sephiroth waited. "…Cloud… Strife?" he prompted at last.

"Um… mm… yeah!"

Sephiroth closed his eyes, hoping futilely that when he opened them again he wouldn't be facing the same person. "When did you see him, where did you see him, and what'll it take to get you to tell him I'm waiting here and to hurry up" he hissed through gritted teeth.

"He fights at the Coliseum here. I dunno where he goes when he's not fighting…"

…just who did Aeris think she was kidding? Surely Destined Enemies™ knew when their other half – he had to find another synonym for this situation – was on the same world, never mind in the same goddamned building. "Right," Sephiroth said flatly, staring into the distance, oblivious to his hands' attempts to fashion a noose from his own hair. "…Right."

"Are you okay?" the boy said curiously.

The wing shuddered spasmodically. "Am I… okay?" he snarled.

The boy saw something in his face even Chocobo Head couldn't have missed and cowered appropriately. Sephiroth took a deep breath. Eventually, the wing stopped twitching. "If I let you win this next fight," Sephiroth said idly, "Will you tell him I'm waiting here?"

"No way," the boy said indignantly, as if he'd never heard of a bribe before. "I'm gonna beat you fair and square!"

Sephiroth glared at him coldly through a curtain of hair. "Don't you have Heartless to defeat? Keyholes to lock? Keyblade mastering to do?" Anyone else would have heard the implication that it would be doomsday before Sora managed to defeat him 'fair and square'.

"I'm gonna win!" he insisted fiercely. "I can do it! I'm--"

"If you say 'Keyblade Master' one more time," Sephiroth hissed, "I may just forget the Coliseum rules about non-lethal combat. I may accidentally gut you and not realise in time to call for help. Or I might just take that oversized key and shove it somewhere extremely painful." Wonder of wonders, the sentiment actually appeared to be understood.

"I wasn't going to say 'Keyblade Master'," Sora lied. "I was going to say… um… ah…" Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. Anything Sora might have said congealed in his throat. "Um… maybe I should… ah… leave now?" he suggested hopefully.

"Good idea," Sephiroth said magnanimously. "You can restock on elixirs and make an eleventh attempt later."

It took a further five attempts before Sora left victorious.

Phil watched him leave, distinctly unimpressed. "I say you were far too easy on him," he grumbled to the figure sitting on the roof. "An' I know you let him win. What is it with you people?"

Sephiroth, studying the spiked edges of his gloves with greater absorption than the task should ever require, shrugged. "There's only so many times you can kick a child's ass before you start feeling cheap."

"Pah. Kid needs to know what it means to work for something. He's had every handed to him on a silver fucking platter."

"Why, Philoctetes," Sephiroth said mildly, "how unworthy and petulant of you."

"Shove yer sarcasm up your feathered ass," the satyr snapped. "And don't call me that."

"Call you what?" Sephiroth said innocently. "Philoctetes? There's worse. I'm named for a spiritual tree, from a religion I don't think even exists in my world."

"Hmph," Phil grunted, glaring at the waving figure at the Coliseum gates. "I still say you should have kicked his ass into next week."

"I did," Sephiroth said wryly. "Fourteen times and the little bastard still came back. You've got to admire his tenacity."

"I don't have to admire anything," Phil said sourly. "Hypocritical little bastard. You'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, wouldn't you?"

"…I still don't understand that idiom…"

"and then he goes and steals a finishing move from someone else! He's got his own! I mean, I saw him after you vanished in a puff of feathers-"

"…I can't help the wing's propensity to moult…"

"and he went and used that other spikehead, what's his name… Cloud's move."

"…perhaps a few more beatings wouldn't have gone amiss…" Sephiroth mused, conveniently forgetting to recall that he'd liberated several moves from Chocobo Head's expanded repertoire himself. That was completely different. Sephiroth owned him.

"Phil," he said after a long silence, with studied casualness. Phil immediately perked up at the thought of potential entertainment/blackmail material. "I have been… semi-reliably informed that you employ a Cloud Strife here. Given what you've just said, may I assume this is the truth?"

"Eh… he fights here, yeah. …Why'd you wanna know?" Phil said suspiciously. "You gonna kill him?"

Sephiroth paused for a long moment. Did he want to kill Chocobo Head?

Chocobo Head, the bane of his existence?

Chocobo Head, who'd driven him to the brink of suicide so often he and Death exchanged daily greetings and birthday cards?

Chocobo Head, now his only source of entertainment?

His favourite, most amusing puppet, the only person who seemed to recognise him? Even if he didn't know what was going on, and to be honest, Sephiroth had never expected that of him anyway, recognising that the boy had amicably divorced reality sometime before he reached his teens.

"…No." he said at last, with enough uncertainty to make what would once have been a bald-faced lie into something that vaguely resembled the truth (if you took ten steps back and squinted hard).

"Well that's okay then, 'cause he's got a big match soon. You want a match or something? I'll sort something out for ya if you like."

"…thanks," Sephiroth said absently, still astonished by the long overdue conscious recognition of the fact that he actually preferred Chocobo Head alive.

Things were far, far worse than he'd originally thought.

"Boredboredboredbored…" Zack chanted. Sephiroth's fingers twitched with the urge to hit him. Or rip his tongue out, whichever appeared the more attractive option at the time.

"I feel cheated."

"Bored – cheated of what?"

"My importance." Sephiroth declared impassively

"…?"

"I am, quite simply, the greatest and most challenging villain out there. There's nobody out there in my league…"

"Modest, aren't we?" Aeris interjected dryly.

"I have nothing to be modest about it." Sephiroth said calmly.

"Hmm."

"I am simply wasted in my capacity as an optional challenge at the Coliseum."

Aeris shook her head pityingly. "Sephiroth. If you were ever let loose on the poor bastards meant to be the protagonists in this story, you'd slaughter them."

"Precisely my point."

"…Sephiroth, nobody wants the Heartless to win."

Sephiroth wondered if this was the point where he buffed his nails, if he could only figure out what that meant. "So you'll settle for substandard hero material."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"At least you got a chance to appear," Zack said bitterly.

"Oh Zack," Aeris sighed. "You know you're just there for a tragic element."

"Without me, Cloud wouldn't even be alive!"

"Yes, but all pasts are rewritten here. You're completely unnecessary."

"…when did you become so cruel?"

"Zack. She was always that way. You just allowed yourself to be fooled by the pink and the flowers."

"…pink is the evilest colour."

"Is that a word?"

Zack blinked. "What, pink?"

"No, evilest, Zack," Sephiroth said impatiently.

"Of course it's a word. I used it didn't I?"

"…I don't believe I have any need to point out just how little that does for it."

"…when did you become so cruel?"

"Zack," Aeris said disbelievingly, "how can you be so stupid and still capable of breathing?"

"Honestly, Aeris," Sephiroth said, studying his long secondary feathers with apparent fascination, "given the great amount of such idiots I've met here, it's more interesting diversion to wonder if they have to work at it or are simply born that way, like Zack here."

"Hey!"

"Sephiroth," Aeris said after awhile, patting Zack's back gingerly as he sobbed theatrically into her shoulder, "You realise there's a sequel to this little adventure, don't you?"

"…"

"Everybody gets another memory rewrite too."

Sephiroth mumbled something about killing them all.

A/N: Because it had to happen eventually.