Chapter Text
Cloud glared at Sephiroth. “This is your fault.”
Sephiroth just looked perplexed. “I fail to see how.”
They were standing in the entrance of the Sector 0 reactor, surrounded by dark steel walls lit green by glowing mako. Long metal catwalks stretched high overhead, and massive pipes rumbled below.
And standing across from them… three far-too-familiar silver-haired teenagers.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Cloud said. “You shouldn’t even exist here.” Jenova had been utterly obliterated. Sephiroth was alive. In this timeline, there was no one in the Lifestream who either had the motivation or the capability to manifest the triplets.
Except Yazoo, Kadaj, and Loz were all there, and all very much existing.
“That’s not very kind, big brother,” Kadaj purred. His voice was smooth and sultry, but the underlying threat hadn’t changed at all.
Sephiroth apparently heard it too, as he suddenly fixed the triplets with a sharp stare – the kind he normally reserved for enemies. “Do we have a problem here?”
Kadaj’s gaze flicked to Sephiroth, awe and wonder and jealousy flitting across his face, before snapping back to Cloud, full of venom. “The only problem is him. He’s a traitor, and he should pay.”
Cloud palmed the hilt of his sword. He might have felt a bit sorry for the remnants once upon a time, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t completely willing to cut them down. Show them how well they’d fare when he wasn’t half-crippled with Geostigma.
He didn’t get the chance. Sephiroth stepped between them, a physical barrier to the brewing fight. “If you have business with Cloud,” he said, “You first have to go through me.”
The threat turned immediately to dismay. “But he killed mother!” Kadaj protested in disbelief.
Loz’s eyes began to tear up. “Don’t cry, Loz,” Yazoo chided.
“I’m not crying!” he protested.
“Kill me,” Cloud said to Sephiroth. “I’m giving you a free shot. I’m not dealing with this.”
“Don’t joke about such things,” Sephiroth replied with a frown, and then to the triplets said, “And if by mother you mean Jenova, that wasn’t Cloud. I believe Genesis deserves the credit there.”
“You called?” Genesis sauntered in, with Cloud’s past self in tow. He came to an abrupt halt, took one glance at the silver-haired, cat-eyed triplets, and said, “Dear goddess, there are more of him.”
Incidentally, that had been eerily similar to Cloud’s first thoughts on meeting the remnants.
“We need to alert Lazard,” Sephiroth said. “And get someone from the Science Department to figure out where they came from, and whether it’s possible to send them back.” He glanced at Cloud. “You seem to know the most about this. Do you suppose they’ll need holding cells?”
“They’ll probably listen to you,” Cloud admitted grudgingly.
“When I answered the alarm, no one warned me about this,” Genesis complained in the background, even as he fished his PHS out of his pocket. “Is this more time travel? Minerva spare me, do you have children in the future?”
“He’s not our father,” Kadaj declared, with haughty derision enough to match Genesis’s own.
“He might as well be,” Cloud muttered under his breath.
Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at him. “If I recall correctly, they called you big brother.”
“Brother?” the younger Cloud asked, utterly flabbergasted. “…Does this make them my uncles too?”
“We are not brothers,” Cloud stressed, glaring at Sephiroth. “Don’t encourage them.”
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Genesis declared, flipping his PHS open and dialling one-handed. “Lazard? I’m not taking this one.”
“That’s cruel, big brother,” Yazoo chided Cloud. “You’re making Loz cry.”
Loz had his arm over his eyes. “I’m not crying!”
He refused to deal with this. Cloud plucked the PHS from Genesis’s hand and held it to his ear. “Lazard, I’m quitting SOLDIER.” Then he handed it back and stalked from the Reactor, leaving Sephiroth in charge of his three younger look-alikes and his thoroughly bewildered past self.
“Is he really-?” the younger Cloud hesitantly asked.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Genesis reassured him. “This is the third time he’s quit this month.”