Chapter Text
After Incident Report - Witness Interview
Witness: Pvt. Ganzorig Bodner
Incident: S602-1
Taking Officer: Lt. Caj Minow
Memo: I was assigned to gather reports from witnesses and bystanders in regards to incident S602-1, the destruction of the preferred ShinRa cafeteria and subsequent personality and behavioural changes noted in SOLDIER 1st Class Sephiroth. This report contains the transcribed testimony of Private Bodner, a direct witness to the event and preceding confrontation. My recommendation is that this report be officially forwarded to the Investigative Division of General Affairs office.
-Signed Lt. Caj Minow
Testimony:
I’m not in trouble, right? You just want to know what I saw? And informal means I can swear, right? Because if you only ever got to use cuss words to help you describe one incident in all your life, it should be what happened with Strife and Sephiroth.
Shiva’s c–urled hair.
Right. It was 0827 – I know it exactly because my shift ended at 0800 and it takes me exactly twenty-two minutes in a sleep-deprived state to reach and enter the cafeteria and I’d been standing in line for five minutes.
No, really, one of my friends timed it.
I’d been up all night on guard duty so I just wanted to eat and crash, that’s it, the whole reason I was there that morning.
Right, so, I don’t know Strife personally, okay? Different squads, different duties, different work schedules, different leisure times. We probably nodded to each other in the corridors once or twice, but that’s it, all the interaction I had with Strife before. I’m telling you this so you understand – even I could tell something was wrong with Strife the minute he stumbled in.
It wasn’t just the way he looked at everything, like he’d never seen the place before, or like everyone in it was wearing tutus and acting like everything was normal. Everything about him was just – off. Not what you expected, not just from Strife, but from any infantryman. It was the way he held himself, it was the way he looked at us, it was the way he spoke when he demanded to know what was going on. He didn’t even look the same – not some massive change or anything, but something, something that just made you shake your head and wonder what it was that you couldn’t figure out – had he changed his hair a little, maybe? Was he taller? Had he put on muscle? Lost his puppy fat? Had his ears pierced? Something small that just completely threw you off.
He was just… different. I’d had about the most casual relationship with him that you can have with someone you’ve actually met and I could still tell, so I dunno what his friends thought.
And there were his eyes, of course. Glowing. Bright as any First Class. Brighter, even, maybe.
He just stared at us all like he couldn’t believe his eyes, and we stared at him like we couldn’t believe ours – would you? An infantryman just walking into the cafeteria one day with SOLDIER eyes?
Not that he walked in, nothing so casual – like I said, he stumbled in, staggered like he’d been hit with a truncheon.
Uh. He wasn't, by the way. I mean, someone might have tried, but –
He stumbled in. Not like a new SOLDIER, nothing like that. I mean, you can tell when someone’s had their first mako shower – he wasn’t moving anything like that. It was more like – someone in great emotional shock, you know? Or, um, like after battles sometimes, just – shellshocked.
He stood there, staring at everything and everybody, breathing quick and shallow; he was on his way to a full blown panic attack, I thought, and it didn’t help that people were starting to swarm, asking him what was wrong, what had happened, how the hell had his eyes become glowlights, did he need a medic –
And then he – words can’t really describe what it felt like to watch, okay – he sort of clutched at his head, like you’d imagine a dog would, hearing its master’s whistle. If, you know, a dog had hands. …forget I said that.
I mean, you hear about SOLDIERs being able to hear frequencies above normal human hearing but that was the first time I really believed it – it was like there was a drill going right next to his ear, but only he could hear it. That’s what it looked like.
It was so sudden, and his reaction so fierce, everybody around him just kind of jerked back all at once, made this giant circle with him in the centre and that’s when Sephiroth turned up.
I can say this, right? I’m not gonna, like, get hauled off by the Turks or anything?
Okay. So that’s when Sephiroth turns up – I’d never seen him up close before, shit, no wonder the whole ‘who would you go gay for’ game was unanimous – and he just looks at Strife, freaking out in the middle of the cafeteria, I’m talking like a ‘if I could drag you into a dark corner right now you’d be walkin’ funny on the way out’ sort of look. Which. Uh. Weird enough.
And then he said his name. First, not last, and he said it like – I’m really not going to get written up or anything for anything I say here? – like a Honeybee with their first really wealthy john – don’t look at me like that, some of us can’t afford the goods in Sector 4, thanks – this kind of purr, you know? Like, you know it’s a job and everything, but it really sounds like it’s not and maybe it isn’t because you know, that level of fucking money, I’d purr for that too, no fakery here.
Anyway. That’s how he said ‘Cloud’, like he could roll it around on his tongue all day and never get tired of it, like it was everything he ever wanted and absolutely nothing else existed for him.
[cough] Yeah, it was, uh, special.
Strife, he sort of – flared up. I mean, he’s a small guy, and he looks, um, pretty, you know, but not – not like Sephiroth is, the sort of thing you can acknowledge without a few Blitzers – but when he looked at Sephiroth it was like, whoa, where’d those teeth come from. Like that cute little dog you were thinkin’ of petting just whipped out a fucking tentacle, like, ‘surprise, bitch! Motherfuckin’ guard hound!’
I actually backed up a step and I wasn’t even one of the ones ringing him.
“You,” he said, and I never heard anybody pack so much fury into one syllable, I swear, the room heated up a few degrees. Not in the good way. Although I don’t think Sephiroth would’ve minded. Or, um, the spectators. Just, Sephiroth should be a spectator sport, man. Everything he does is just another level. Walking, talking, fighting, fuc-- guy’s good to look at, whatever.
Strife looked at him like he’d like to burn him alive with his eyes though, yelled at him, “This is all your fault!”
I couldn’t really process that, because you know how much contact the big guy normally has with the lower ranks? Ranks like me and Strife? That’s right, zip, zilch, nada. If it ain’t mission assigned, you might as well be on a different continent for all you see him. At least you could watch him on TV over there, instead of doing drills in the smog.
So that’s thought number one, how the hell did they even have enough contact for there to be a fault – I worded that really badly, but you get me. Number two is like, ‘all your fault for what?’ The mako? 'Cause I didn’t know you could, ah, pass it on. Or just, I don’t know, state of being? That was the way Strife said it, like he was blaming Sephiroth for his entire state of being.
Sephiroth – he grinned, all smug and pleased, and I don’t think he took his eyes off Strife’s face for a second. And then he – I shit you not – he actually said, “So sorry,” in that singsong sarcastic way kids do when they’re being little shits and want you to know they’re not sorry at all.
And that’s when Strife went Green.
I’ve never seen a SOLDIER go Green, but if it’s anything like what happened with Strife, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if half the infantry didn’t just try and abandon the battlefield the minute the word went through the ranks. Or maybe it wouldn’t need a word, because everybody in that room, every single one of us, we felt it when Strife Greened. Nothing like a Limit. They tell you it is, but it really, really isn’t.
It was the way fine hairs stand on end when there’s a thunderstorm, or the way every cell in your body just goes fuck this shit for a lark when a tonberry starts waddling towards you. Every instinct said ‘abort, abort, abort! Get out!’
It just happened so fast, we couldn’t.
One second, Strife was standing there, glaring at Sephiroth like he was going to go for his throat with his teeth if he had to, the next, he was swinging this sword inches – if that – away from Sephiroth’s head.
I don’t even know, it was like he pulled that thing out of nowhere.
And Sephiroth, he really did pull his sword out of nowhere – there is no way any of us could have missed him carrying the Masamune, it’s not exactly an easy thing to overlook – grinning like he’s been told he’s got a free lifetime pass to the Gold Saucer and he can camp in the Battle Square or something.
I threw myself under the nearest solid object because I know when to pull a tactical retreat, and it was just. Just. I mean, I was scared shitless, they were tearing up the entire cafeteria around me, but it was also… awe-inspiring. Absolutely incredible, the speed with which they moved, I could barely follow it, sometimes I couldn’t even see them, they moved so fast – and the swords, they sang.
You hear about Sephiroth’s skill but chances are pretty much nil that you’ll ever see it, and even then, I don’t think you’d ever get to see what I saw there, because I’ve never heard of Sephiroth having an equal before. Whenever Strife met him, point for point, it just spurred him on, he got quicker and craftier and fiercer and nastier, but you could tell that at the same time he was having so much fun.
I always heard he was serious, stand-offish, you know? But he fought with Strife like –
It’s weird, but the first comparison that came to my head was, uh, like he was serenading him. You know it’s ridiculous, but when you’re in love, you can get down on your knees and belt out a love song to someone in public and not care what anyone else thinks.
Not that I think he’s in love or anything! I’m just saying, it was that sort of indifference to the world around him. Maybe the rest of the world existed, maybe it didn’t, but Strife absolutely did and that was all that mattered, all the reality needed.
I don’t know who won. I crawled out of there on hands and knees the second I thought I could probably make it to the hole in the wall without being incidentally skewered in the attempt.
You could still hear it going on two halls away – the only reason we didn’t have more casualties is because we cast Sleep and dragged the gawkers away if we had to – and I could swear I heard Sephiroth laughing at some point.
Man, my knees are still shaking. Can I go? I really, really need a drink.