Reno, Elena, and Rude walked into Costa del Sol at nearly three in the morning; their mission had been a complete failure. No
sign of Godo’s daughter anywhere. The three Turks entered the Villa that had been rented to them and quickly plopped down
in opposite corners of the room.

Reno was the only one left standing; he got up and grabbed the hanging on the wall. He quickly punched in a series of digits and
prepared to wait while for someone to answer on the other end. By his calculations, it was still in the early evening at Wutai.

To his surprise, it was answered on the second ring.

“Y-yes,” said a gruff voice on the other end. Reno immediately knew it was Godo. Only he would be that stressed out about
Yuffie’s disappearance. Others would consider it commonplace.

“This is Reno,” he began.

“Oh!” the old man’s hopes rose to their peak, only to be shattered by the next thing Reno would say. “Did you find her?”

Reno paused, “Didn’t see a damn thing,” he concluded.

The old man was furious, “If only you morons hadn’t lost her at Bone Village!”

“Hey, hey!” It was Reno’s turn to be furious, “Maybe if you’d just give her a little freedom, she wouldn’t have to run away!”
Not that Reno cared; he just didn’t like being talked to like that.

“Listen asshole,” the old man started, “I’m paying you to find my daughter, not tell me how to raise her!”

“B-“ he began, only to be cut off again.

“If you don’t find my daughter, I’ll kill you myself!”

This was the last straw, “Listen, you old fuck! You can take this money and shove it up your ass! We quit!”

The other end was silent, he hadn’t hung up.

“Oh, and another thing, no one, I mean NO ONE threatens to kill a Turk unless he is prepared to die himself.” His tone was
deathly serious. With much flamboyance, Reno slammed the telephone into a wall, nearly breaking it in two. As it was, the
telephone fell off the wall and shattered.

He looked at his companions; “We rest here tonight. Tomorrow we pay a little visit to ‘Boss Godo.’”

                    _______________________________________________________

The night was still, and still the dreams came…

Sephiroth was weak, bowing on his knees to an even greater evil. The form standing in front of him was vaguely familiar, but he
couldn’t place it.

“Child of sin, you are not so powerful now are you…”

Cloud wondered if the figure was talking of him but then Sephiroth began to speak, “Damn you to hell! How dare you use me
like you did!”

“Silence!” Cloud felt the drumming in his ears and wished for deafness. “You failed! And now because of you the man is about
to reach his destiny!”

Sephiroth felt himself brimming with hatred, “Nooooo…you turned me against Cloud and all of the others, but I was strong…at
the end I yielded to the blade of Strife and tried to sacrifice myself for the good of the planet!” he paused, “but you wouldn’t let
me die!”

“Enough,” it stated once again, “of this constant griping! Do you forget why you’re alive right now?”

“Better to be dead than to serve the likes of you any longer.”

The figure raised its arms, as if considering killing the pathetic waste of a man, then thought better of it, “I won’t kill you because
that’s what you want me to do. Instead I will send you back, but I strip you of all of your magic, your power, and your sword.

“But,” Sephiroth began; he never finished as he disappeared into the void.

Cloud still saw the dark figure; he didn’t know what was going on. What had happened? Sephiroth…sacrificed himself for the
planet?

“You seem to be too curious for your own good…” the man said.

It took Cloud a moment to realize that he was speaking to him. He looked up and saw the figure descending upon him, the eyes
burning with a fire usually reserved for the cruelest minions of hell…

Cloud awoke and sat straight up in his bed. He wiped the cold sweat off his brow with the back of his hand.

“Was it the dreams again?” Tifa was awake right next to him; it was obvious that this had happened before.

Cloud rubbed his temples, “Yeah…”

“Sephiroth?” she asked, a knowing look on her face.

Cloud nodded his head.

“You need to stop being scared of him all of the time. I mean he's dead.”

Cloud shook his head, “No, this dream seemed different. Sephiroth was, he was…” Cloud was having trouble saying the
words, “he was good,” Cloud finally finished, “And, and it didn’t seem like a dream, more like…a vision.”

“Cloud, go back to sleep, you are tired.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Good night, Tifa.”

“Good night, Cloud,” with that she watched him sink back into his usual spot in the bed.

                    _______________________________________________________

Yuffie Kisaragi had lost the Turks again.

Why did her father have to send people after her endlessly? Didn’t he know that she would return after she was done with what
she wanted to do?

If he didn’t let her do everything at her whim, then to hell with him! She was sixteen damnit!

Now back to the business at hand. Mideel was her newest playground. Bone Village had proved to be a huge disappointment.
One would have thought that an excavation site would be home to hosts of rare materia.

Maybe they should stop excavating that same four hundred square feet area, she thought.

Whatever, now Yuffie boldly marched through the ruins of Mideel and stopped at the LifeStream. She gazed down into the
depths of the fluorescent green mass. This had saved them all from certain death.

And it was where Aeris was. Poor girl, Yuffie had never wanted her to die. She remembered how she looked as Cloud had
placed her in the center of that lake.

Yuffie seemed lost in her thoughts, but not so lost that she didn’t sense the person approaching her. She turned just in time,
delivering a hard kick to the unseen menace’s jaw. The person seemed to be caught off guard and almost tumbled into the
LifeStream.

As it was, he only staggered a bit and caught his footing, he uttered a string of curses.

“What the hell? Damn, that hurt!” he rubbed his hand on his jaw.

It was clear that he wasn’t as big a threat as she had thought. She now found herself apologizing, “Oops, sorry about that, um,
I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” he stated simply.

Yuffie was about to leave it at that when she realized something, “Hey, why were you sneaking up on me like that?”

The young man’s face quickly changed to a serious, but confused look. Yuffie recognized it as a look people give when they try
to make up a story.

“Never mind making anything up, just tell me the truth.”

The young man stared as she effortlessly saw through his attempts at trickery, “I, uh, well,” he seemed to have trouble telling her
whatever it was he needed to say, “Alright,” he submitted, “I saw your materia pack and was trying to mug you,” the look in his
eyes told Yuffie that he wasn’t lying.

“Oh,” Yuffie stated, seeming not to care, “is that all?”

The young man seemed relieved, he started to turn away. Yuffie grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.

“Well listen here mister mugger man,” she said, louder than she had previously spoke, “no one gets Yuffie Kisaragi’s materia! If
I had seen you first, you’d be the one with no materia.”

He saw a chance to explain himself.

“Ok, you got me, I lied.”

This stopped her, she’d been certain that he was telling the truth.

“To tell the truth, that was a convenient lie I made up. I was actually on my way to the materia shop, that’s why I brought
materia into the excuse.”

Now she didn’t know what to think, this man was about as mysterious as Vincent was, minus the hideous deformities granted
him by Hojo, and he was alluring in a way that Vincent wasn't.

She quickly forced all of these notions out of her head, “So then why did you sneak up on me?”

“Well, because…”

He never had a chance to finish, because then two tendrils erupted from the LifeStream and grabbed onto each of them.

“Shit!” Yuffie cursed, clawing desperately for her Conformer. The LifeStream had her arms, however.

The two of them struggled against the newly hostile mass, the young man, however, still had one of his arms free and was using
it to futilely beat at the mass.

Yuffie let out one last burst of energy as both she and the stranger were pulled into the LifeStream.

To Chapter 3