snowblindrpg | [log] Birds of a feather... (or not) [closed]

What are you up to?

[It's pretty obvious, she thinks, but she also doesn't want to assume and offend him. Wanting to know what's going on makes perfect sense to her, though. She doesn't think any of them have had a chance to explain things to Hiro and Jim beyond "Sephiroth is dangerous" and "we need to be as careful as possible".]

[ They haven't, really, though Jim knows why they're staying upstairs and away from things. He stands up slowly and fidgets with the glass, moving it from hand to hand, and keeps that not-quite-a-real-smile in place. ]

Getting a glass of water?

[She raises her eyebrows, the barest hint of a smile there and gone again.]

Mhmm.

[That is very believable, Jim. Look how much she trusts everything you're telling her!]

You want to know what they're talking about, don't you?

[ He can't help the look of frustration that automatically forms on his face. Yes, yes he does, so bad. ]

I just don't want any of this to come back to bite us later because we weren't all on the same page.

[ That's absolutely why; lingering paranoia has nothing to do with it, surely. ]

[Pretty much what she was expecting, honestly. Whatever vague amusement she was managing before is gone now. She's fully aware that it doesn't mean much to tell Jim to stay away from Sephiroth when he doesn't know exactly what Sephiroth is capable of, anyway.

Explaining everything to AVALANCHE was the first thing Cloud had done when they'd found out Sephiroth was alive, and it wouldn't make any sense to keep Jim in the dark. And even though this conversation is going to be hard - especially the parts about Cloud - it's an easy decision to make. She makes a soft, thoughtful noise, then nods, more to herself than to him, before finally stepping away from the wall. Not without one last uncomfortable, paranoid glance at the stairwell, though.]

I'll explain everything. You deserve to know what's going on.

[ Jim senses the change in her mood easily enough. He thinks for a split second that he's about to get a (well-deserved, probably) lecture on minding his own business, but she surprises him. Jim glances down at the stairs and then at her - 'are you sure?' - but doesn't hesitate to follow. ]

-Thanks.

[ It means he's missing out on the chance to listen in directly, and he'll have to trust that Tifa's telling him something like the truth, but he'll take it if it means getting another piece to this puzzle.

He points out a bedroom - unoccupied, better not to be overheard - with a tilt of his head. ]

In here?

[She nods, stepping past him to lead the way. It is more private, but she's not going to close the door. She still wants to be able to hear if anything goes wrong downstairs. Once she's sure Jim has followed her, she turns to face him, tucking her hair behind her ear. And then she frowns.

Where does she even start?]

So...

[The basics, probably.]

How much have Zack and Kunsel told you about Gaia?

[Hopefully he's up to speed and she can just jump right to the important part.]

[ Jim settles cross-legged on the bed, his back to the wall at an angle he can see the door. She's not the only one worried about things going south downstairs. ]

Not a lot. I know they're soldiers that work for some kind of private company back home - same one as the girl downstairs, but she does something different - and they started out pretty young before they got their ...

[ He makes a gesture at his eyes, summing up SOLDIER enhancements. ]

I'm guessing Sephiroth was the same. Other than that... I know about Materia, and he told me that's the crystallized form of something called Mako.

[ Basically nothing, in other words. He's only now starting to realize that. ]

[Not as much as she'd hoped. Her mouth twists as she crosses her arms and scuffs the toe of her boot against the floor. This is going to take a while.]

Shinra. It's a power company. They use Mako as a power source, and...

[She's never really thought about this stuff before, and explaining it to someone who has no knowledge of any of it is really... really odd.]

The Lifestream is what gives life to everything on Gaia. When it's in a liquid form, we call it Mako, and Shinra uses reactors to generate electricity from it.

[She is so, so tempted to go on a rant about how Shinra was killing the planet, here, but she knows she'll get off topic so she fights the urge. Barely. Her silent, momentary debate with herself is obvious in the way looks away for a moment, studying the floor intently before she looks up again. One thing at a time, right?]

Zack, Kunsel and Sephiroth are part of SOLDIER. They're a small part of Shinra's military, and they're all infused with Mako. That's what makes them so special.

[ He's not seeing how that's so bad, but he's also not seeing why a power company needs a private army filled with people powerful enough to mass murder an entire town.

It does, at least, correct a long-standing assumption about the enhancements. ]

-Wait. They're not cyborgs?

[That tears her out of her thoughts immediately, and she blinks at him, utterly confused.]

They're not what?

[He's lost her in four words. Good job, Jim!]

Cyborgs.

[ Do they really not know that one? Is this really the time for one of those cross-world misunderstandings?

Apparently. ]

People with - robot parts, to help them if they lost a limb or make them stronger or whatever. Kunsel said they were enhanced, so...

Oh.

[Realization dawns in her eyes, and she shakes her head. Like Barret, he means.]

No. We have people like that, too, but SOLDIER is different. I'm not... really sure how they do it. You would have to ask Zack or Kunsel.

[ It's really annoying to realize you've been working on the wrong assumption for a month, even if it never came up. ] Guess that explains why they weren't more bothered by the cold...

[ He shakes his head and looks sheepish. ]

That wasn't part of your story, though.

No, it's okay. You can ask questions.

[She's sure she's going to assume that he knows about things that just don't exist on his world, anyway. Tifa does have to pause for a moment, though, trying to figure out where she was.]

Sephiroth was... [Is? Damn, this whole thing is so weird.] He's famous back home. A war hero. His strength is legendary, even for SOLDIER.

[This is about the point where she realizes she's going to have to talk about Cloud, already, and she pauses, looking away.]

Cloud and I... We grew up in Nibelheim. He left to join SOLDIER when I was thirteen. About two years later, the reactor outside of town started malfunctioning. It was causing creatures in the mountains to mutate, so Shinra sent Zack and Sephiroth to investigate. Cloud came with them, too, and they hired me as their guide up the mountain to the reactor.

[ Some of the pieces of the story Jim hadn't quite grasped startt to join up in his mind. Tifa'd said she was there, yeah, but if this is going where he thinks it is, she wasn't just there. It was her home, and Cloud's too. ]

So what happened when you got there?

Most of it... I only know from what Cloud told me. They wouldn't let me come into the reactor with them.

[And Cloud's memories had gotten all twisted up with Zack's, but... Details, right?]

There were pods in the reactor. Shinra was doing experiments... Exposing people to Mako and turning them into monsters. We went back to Nibelheim, and I had no idea...

[She pauses, sighing.]

There was a big mansion in town, owned by Shinra. Sephiroth locked himself inside and didn't come out for days, just reading notes and research from Shinra's scientists. He found out how he was made, and he...

[She trails off, not sure how to continue. All of it is so awful and complicated, she's not sure how to condense it.]

[ Wait.

What.

Jim's not really sure what to address first in the awkward silence, because very little of that made sense. He gets that Tifa's upset, but he's not going to get anything out of it if he doesn't understand.

Better start at the beginning, and the thing that's alarming him: ]

Mako turns you into a monster?

[She blinks, as though surprised he's asking that question.]

It can. Mako is dangerous. It can poison you, too, if you're exposed to enough of it. I don't know what they were doing to the people in the reactor, exactly, but...

[Sorry, Jim. She's definitely not a scientist.]

-It was bad enough to turn people into monsters, [ He finishes for her. ] Like the MN here, maybe.

[ And if Mako can turn you into a monster, maybe that's what happened to Sephiroth. Maybe that's what would happen to all SOLDIERS eventually, if they got enough of it; he hopes Zack and Kunsel haven't had enough of it. ]

What did Sephiroth find out?

[Tifa's mouth twists, her expression momentarily unreadable. She'd never even considered a parallel between MN and Mako, but... Well. That's a grim thought.

But then Jim moves on, and she decides to follow his lead.]

Shinra found this...

[How does she even explain this?]

A creature. An alien that crashed on our planet thousands of years ago. They thought it was an Ancient.

[Wait, she should explain that too, shouldn't she?]

That's... The Cetra, they're... They have special abilities. Shinra wanted to try to recreate them, so they used Jenova's cells to create Sephiroth, and... I still don't really understand it. That's why Sephiroth is so powerful. But Jenova isn't an Ancient. It's something else.

[She knows she's getting more and more disjointed as this story goes on, but she's finding it much harder to explain than she'd anticipated.]

So he was ... 'cloned' from someone from another planet, and he found that out in the mansion.

[ He's not seeing the progression from that to burning down an entire town yet, if the answer isn't going insane from too much Mako exposure. ]

What did he do next?

[Tifa nods, glad she's making at least some sense.]

Sephiroth thought that Jenova was an Ancient, and so that made him one, too. Shinra was keeping Jenova in the reactor outside town, and Sephiroth... He snapped. He wanted to break her free, so he...

[She trails off, swallowing hard.]

He set the whole town on fire, and he was killing anyone he came across. It all happened so fast.

[Focus, Tifa.]

My father followed Sephiroth to the reactor to try to stop him, but by the time I got there, he'd already... It was too late.

[Tifa pauses again, trying to keep from getting too emotional. She'd thought this would be easier, five years out, but just losing Cloud and then retelling this story with Sephiroth just downstairs... It's so much harder than she'd thought it would be.]

I tried to go after Sephiroth, but I couldn't do anything. [Obviously. She shakes her head.] He cut me down so easily. That's when Zack showed up to try to stop him, too.

Tifa...

[ They don't know each other all that well, and Jim isn't exactly emotionally demonstrative at the best of times. What he'd like to do is storm down the stairs and confront Sephiroth about doing that to her - killing her father, hurting her - but he's at least levelheaded enough to know he can't right now.

If that were an option, he thinks she'd be first in line anyway.

All he can offer is an awkward hand on her shoulder and a look full of sympathy. ]

I'm sorry that he wasn't stopped sooner.

[Tifa glances up, surprised by his reaction. It's an awful thing, definitely, but... She isn't telling him this to try to garner sympathy or anything. She appreciates his response, though. She forces a smile, then covers his hand on her shoulder with hers and squeezes it softly.]

Thanks, Jim.

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