Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and all its character belong to Square Enix.

Connected to the one-shot: "See You Again"

Summary: Even the best of warriors can slip, but only the strong of heart can stand back up.

Prologue

Sephiroth broke the surface choking and gasping for air. His arms were burning as he raised them out of the liquid mako and reached for any type of railing to pull himself up.

"General! Hang on, we're coming!"

The silver-haired warrior didn't have to wait long as two hands reached down and grabbed his before pulling him up and out of the mako tank. Once on the cat walk he coughed and gagged until he was sure he had gotten rid of all that he had swallowed. He looked up at his rescuers and saw his Lieutenant, First Class Zack Fair and an infantryman.

He tried to process the evidence before him. If Zack was still here then was he back in his own time? He had to be sure, as un-intelligent as it seemed, he decided to play ignorant. "Zack, what happened?"

The ravenette scratched the back of his head. "I know you told me to check the other levels of the reactor, but I heard this loud splash and I ran to see if you needed a hand. I looked all over and didn't see ya, so I invited this guy to help me look for you. We spent the last three hours searching before Spiky here saw your head break the surface in the mako tank."

"Spiky?" Sephiroth repeated, with an upraised eyebrow.

Zack nudged his friend who hesitantly removed his helmet, revealing chocobo-blonde hair. Sephiroth quickly realized the reason for Zack's nickname, but what surprised him even more was the identity of the infantryman. "Cloud," he stated.

The blonde teen gulped and raised a salute, "Sir." Zack only smirked. He was going to have fun teasing his buddy later.

"How'd you know his name, Sir? Have you been thinking about giving him another chance to join SOLDIER?"

Sephiroth blinked and Cloud looked like he wanted to slap Zack for saying that out loud.

The general's gaze studied the young man closely. This definitely wasn't the same man he had encountered, but he could easily see how he could turn into him if events were left unchanged. That's when everything came back to him like a slap to the face.

Standing up, he turned to face his comrades. "We have a lot of work to do here. I don't expect you to understand why and I don't expect you to take it well, but I will explain everything once it's all done." With that he headed down the cat walk, leaving Zack to simply shrug at Cloud before they both followed the General.

As he made it to a locked room past the mako reactor's main controls, he gave the door a mighty kick, sending it flying open on its hinges. As he stepped inside he was hit with a massive headache. So intense was the pain that he had to lean against the doorframe to keep himself from falling.

"Seph?" asked Zack as he came up from behind. He knew the General hated physical contact, but Zack knew he needed some kind of support. He placed his hand carefully on Sephiroth's shoulder.

"It's this room," he replied. "No wonder it affected me so strongly before."

"What's going on?" asked Cloud. Zack could only shrug his shoulders. This made Sephiroth feel better about the order he was about to issue.

"Zack, Take Cloud up those stairs and break through that door. Once inside you are to destroy everything in there, no matter what you find. Nothing must remain."

"Destroy it? But General, this is a reactor! What if it overloads?" asked Zack.

Sephiroth shook his head. "The reactor itself will be destroyed once we leave. However we must do this carefully. We can't let whatever's in here enter the Lifestream."

"The what?" asked Zack.

"The mako. It can't come in contact with anything from this room or the next. While you two take care of the room upstairs I'll deal with what's down here. That's an order."

Cloud threw a salute and headed up the stairs while Zack followed a bit slower, still confused about his General's behavior.

Sephiroth took Masamune and laid waste to the rows of tanks, destroying everything and killing the already half-dead creatures within. He wanted to make sure that nothing remained for anyone to find. His enhanced sense of hearing picked up the 'holy shit!' that came from Zack followed by 'Well, the General ordered us to destroy it, he must have a good reason,' from the younger teen which made him feel better. There was the sound of shattering glass followed by a powerful fire spell. Sephiroth doubled over and clutched his head with both hands as he heard an ear-splitting scream tear through his mind. It was a pain he had never experienced and something he had no tolerance for.

When the pain faded he opened his eyes to find both Zack and Cloud looking around at the damage the General had caused while they were upstairs.

"Is it?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's dead," Zack replied.

"I've never seen anything like it. It looked human," Cloud replied, obviously disturbed by what he had just seen.

"Don't think about that right now, Spiky. We're still not finished yet," Zack tried to comfort his friend.

"Zack is right. We have to make sure nothing is left of this place. I feel bad for those living in Nibelheim, but they're better off without this reactor and its dark secrets," Replied Sephiroth.

"We don't use the reactor's energy, so it won't be missed," replied the infantryman.

"We?" asked Sephiroth.

"Uh, I mean those from Nibelheim," the blonde quickly corrected.

"This is your hometown?" asked the General.

"Y-yes sir," he replied.

It was beginning to make sense to the General. The hatred, the anger, the pain - the man he had encountered in the future had good reason to hate him. He hoped that he could prevent such a horrible event from happening in this timeline.

It took Sephiroth using his skills to seal off the rooms so that when the reactor blew whatever was left would not end up mixing with the pure mako that would flow back into the planet. When they were clear Sephiroth gave the order for Zack to blow it. From their vantage point, they could look down the mountain and see the lights of the village. None of them had gone out which proved the younger teen's story true.

"Okay, now that that's done, do you wanna tell us what that was all about, sir?" asked Zack.

Sephiroth looked at each of them before nodding and giving the order to rest. He himself sat down which told Zack it was going to be a long story.