Chapter Text
[ μ ] – εуλ 0000
“It’s truly quite fascinating!” Dr Hojo enthused as he studied the small ball he held in his hand. It was a Materia Orb, but unlike every other type of Materia out there, this one was not of one color – it was many, swirled around each other like an opal. It shimmered in the light as the mad scientist tilted it this way and that. “I normally prefer the biological sciences to Materia, but the possibilities here – the advances it could make for my work –!”
He was interrupted by President Shinra snatching the materia from his hand, leaving him to close his fingers on nothing with a disgruntled look.
“Yes, it’s truly marvelous,” President Shinra said, turning to where the other members of the Board of Directors were arrayed around the conference table. “And to think, it came about by complete accident! Who’d have thought that by combining so many different types of Materia they would coalesce into a materia capable of bending the very bounds of reality itself!” he admired the small colored orb in his hand once more.
“We have decided to call it the Wish Materia, as that is essentially what it does,” Scarlet said, looking over at her fellow heads smugly. The accident that had led to the creation of the Materia had been due to her experiments after all. “In this case – the Lesser Wish Materia. We did some experiments, and while it is capable of granting wishes, it is only to a certain extent. It’s useless in finding the Promised Land so far – though we’re still testing that,” she quickly reassured the President, “we think we may have simply not found the right wording for the wish yet – but all the other tests have worked wonderfully.”
The Wish Materia, once they had figured out what it did, had given her gold, and food she asked for, and the wonderful new dress she was wearing, once they’d tested it suffieciently to ensure it was toxic or likely to dissolve into nothing. She stroked a hand along her side, enjoying the smooth glide of the fabric.
“However, as mentioned, we have called it the Lesser Wish because there are limitations. It couldn’t bring back the dead, make any of the users permanently younger, or travel through time. It certainly tried – when we made those wishes it lit up and the user was drained of their MP – but it fizzled out before it could finish. We weren’t sure if it was a limitation of the user or simply that the Materia wasn’t strong enough – so, in a rather brilliant move, if I do say so myself,” she smirked and flipped a lock of blond hair over her shoulder, even though she had not actually been the one to come up with the idea, “we wished to know which it was. The Materia granted us the knowledge that it was actually both. The Lesser Wish Materia is not strong enough to truly rewrite reality…but if we make another, with more Materia then the amount that created this one, and have someone sufficiently powerful use it, the Greater Wish Materia will be.”
President Shinra settled back in his chair as that set the other Directors gossiping like pigeons. “Imagine it,” he said dreamily. “The Greater Wish will lead us to the Promised Land, where the supply of mako will allow us to make even more Wish Materia. And then – Immortality! Time Travel! The Power to be or do whatever we will! Flight, Shapeshifting, the strength of Sephiroth - being young and beautiful forever! We can explore into the stars, into other dimensions, into the past and the future – expand onwards and onwards, an Eternal Empire of Mako!”
He spread his arms wide, and the assembled board members clapped, some more eagerly than others.
“For now, I want as much Materia to be gathered and created as possible,” Shinra said. “We want to have as many Wish materia as we can manage. It will be faster if we can also use natural materia as well as created.”
Scarlet pouted. It was a known fact that naturally created Materia were just plain better in all ways than her manufactured materia, but that didn’t mean she liked having it brought up.
“Natural materia are hard to find,” she protested, but President Shinra waved it away.
“That’s fine. I’ll send the Turks out to look for any in the wild, and we’ll do a press conference to show our new Materia to the citizens of the world – and our enemies. Offer some rewards to those who hand in natural materia – a rate decrease perhaps, and entry into a special lottery where the winner will become one of the first citizens of Neo-Midgar – and we’ll have Natural Materia pouring in.”
Reeve Tuesti interrupted at this. “Mr. President, are you sure? Showing this new power to our enemies, even letting them know we need more materia to make another…I’m not sure this is wise.”
Shinra waved him off, used to Reeve’s caution. The man was a genius at Urban Planning and Development, but a bit of a wet blanket otherwise.
Still better then Palmer though.
“It’s fine. I understand your worries, but along with enabling our search for more materia, this press conference will also ensure that our enemies know we have this new power, and are more then willing to use it. We’ll demonstrate our force, and everyone watching will know they’re outmatched – especially if we have our forces and our top SOLDIERS arrayed on the stand with me.”
He looked over at Lazard Deusericus, Head of SOLDIER, who nodded immediately. “All three Firsts and a variety of our best Seconds and Thirds. I’ll see to it.”
President Shinra smiled. “Excellent. And as a demonstration – one of the wishes will be teleporting Sephiroth over to my side. Show everyone that as long as I have this materia, I can have Shinra’s greatest weapon at my side in a heartbeat if needed. That is all.”
The various directors stood and started to leave the room, and President Shinra turned in his chair to look out the large windows, enjoying the view of his kingdom. He smiled.
~~
Several days after the heads and President had met to discuss the new Materia, Sephiroth stood silently beside Genesis and Angeal, back straight and face expressionless as he ignored the shoving and shouting and the repeated flash of lightbulbs from the crowd that surrounded the platform he and his fellow Firsts stood on. Angeal stood equally straight, as unfond of this sort of pageantry as Sephiroth was, but Genesis was flicking his hair and smirking at the crowd.
Angeal leaned in. “What do you think of it?”
He didn’t need to be more specific than that – everyone at Shinra knew what ‘it’ was. This sort of conversation had been going around the building since people had discovered what all the new fuss was about, but this was the first time he had been able to be with his fellow Firsts, and so this was the first time for them to be able to discuss it.
Discuss, not gossip, regardless of what Genesis might say.
“It’s impressive, and I look forward to learning what the Greater one can do once they make it.” Sephiroth said.
“What would you wish for, if you had it?” Angeal asked.
Sephiroth had had a chance to use the Lesser Wish Materia himself in some of the tests, being as he was the man in the company with the most MP. He’d wished for what he was told to wish for.
If he had been alone…he would likely have requested knowledge about his origins. His mother. What she had looked like, if she had wanted him, was she still alive?
But it was pointless. President Shinra had the only current Wish Materia, and when they succeeded in making more he would likely keep those with him as well, though various board members might be permitted the use of a wish or two for their projects.
“Nothing,” Sephiroth said.
Genesis scoffed, turning to them with a whirl of his coat. “Really, nothing? You can think of not one single thing you would wish for with all the power of the world at your fingertips? Of course not!” Genesis continued before Sephiroth could answer his question. “That would require you to act like a human being, instead of a machine!”
“Genesis!” Angeal snapped, sending Genesis turning away with a huff. Sephiroth said nothing back, instead watching Genesis with steady eyes. Ever since their last spar in the VR room, where Genesis had gotten injured, he had been like this, snapping and snarling, and quoting Loveless even more than usual.
He would get over it eventually, Sephiroth was sure. And besides, it wasn’t his fault Genesis couldn’t beat him.
Instead, Sephiroth turned his head towards the pageantry on the stage as the President stepped forward and finally showed off the Lesser Wish Materia, holding it up and letting the light glint off its colourful, marbled depths. Sephiroth let his senses expand out. This would be the best time for enemies of Shinra to attack after all.
And if he was privately hoping for that to happen, so he didn’t have to sit through the interminable boasting of his employers (owners, whispered a small part of him) or the nauseating feeling of teleporting to President Shinra’s side – well, no one need to know.
President Shinra, having formed various objects out of thin air, changed the weather, and changing the hair colours of various members of the audience, held up the Wish materia again.
“It can do even more!” he announced to the shocked, enthralled crowd. “I wish for Shinra’s greatest creation to appear before me now!”
Sephiroth tensed, ready for the awful sensation that being teleported by the materia gave him – but something went wrong. The Wish Materia started to glow – but instead of fading out as the wish was granted, it kept glowing, getting brighter and brighter. The light swirled around the Materia, which was starting to shake, reaching out across the stage in branching, fractal patterns like frost or lightning. President Shinra was staring into the light, expression frozen, as the turks near him tried to reach out and grab him away, one of them calling for him to drop the Materia.
He didn’t.
The Materia glowed brighter and shook harder, and then, with a sharp crack, it shattered, overloaded. The light formed a glowing circular portal on the stage, sparks coming off the edges as though it was whirling very fast in a circle – and a blond man on a motorcycle rocketed through from the light on the other side, portal snapping shut behind him.
Sephiroth stepped forward, mind taking in several facts at once. The first was the stranger’s appearance. He was small, pale, with spiky blond hair and blue eyes that were widened in shock as they met Sephiroth’s own eyes. He could see the glowing green of mako within them.
He wore a black, modified version of a SOLDIER uniform, with one pauldron with a silver wolf’s head on it and a long black leather apron that cloaked his bottom left half.
He was also extremely pretty, slender but muscled, with long lashes and full, pouty lips set against a jaw that added a hint of masculinity to otherwise androgynous features.
Sephiroth shook that observation away, as the glowing blue eyes darted around, from his face to the reporters in the crowd to the figure of President Shinra and his board members, and Sephiroth saw the exact moment the stranger realized that he was going to crash into them.
With the size of the machine he was riding, and the speed he was going, it would be fatal to those non-enhanced humans he was about to run into.
Sephiroth headed forward, ready to put himself in between them – but he didn’t have to. The man was already reacting, as fast as Sephiroth was – no.
Faster.
He turned to the side, pulling his motorcycle with him, as he reached forward and did something to it which caused compartments in the side to open out like wings. Inside each were swords, and the man gathered them all together and merged them into one larger sword in less the second, reaching down and stabbing the blade into the stage and using it as a lever to swing the motorcycle around using just the strength of his lower body.
Sephiroth would cherish the look on the President, Heidegger, Palmer, Hojo and Scarlet’s faces as the wheels swept just barely past their noses for the rest of his life.