After what seemed to be a lengthy, two-day rest, the braves were now itching to go fight, and Delita was no exception. A quick prayer before climbing the airship for safety and they were off.
"This ship's in for one hellova ride, kids, hang on!" Cid said.
And they did, and it was, and Cloud and Ramza once again puked off the side.
"Do they always do this?" Aeris asked.
Cid replied, "Yeah, but for Cloud, it's more of a tradition than anything. It's how he gets used to things."
Walking over to Cloud, Aeris put a soft hand on his back, and he seemed to perk right up.
Looking genuinely at her, he said, "You once asked me for a ride in an airship, I guess I got to keep that promise after all…!!"
The two laughed, even though Cloud was rather sick. In the rear platform, if anybody ever bothered to look, you could see Sephiroth and Agrias holding hands and enjoying the wind and clouds blow past them.
Finally, it was time for them to drop down into the crater.
"Wish us luck, old man!" Seifer said.
"I'll wish your friends luck, it seems to me you got enough of it if you stayed alive with them for so long."
"Very funny, old coot." Seifer smirked as he climbed down the ladder.
As the group touched down, a light whirlwind howled in their ears, and they had to cover their faces to avoid being blinded by the mini sandstorm that seemed to swirl about them.
Delita shouted over the noise, "We have to find lower ground, get under the wind!"
Cloud suddenly took the lead, "Delita! I can guide us down there, I've been down here before!"
Zidane elbowed Cloud, "Why didn't you say so before!!"
"Cause I forgot!!!"
The party, under Cloud's memory, marched down through several rocky spirals till they found an odd glowing phosphorous light deep down in the core.
"That's the lifestream! Jenova is down there!" Cloud said.
Marching on, they encountered several things that could only be described as 'Wind Barriers' one at a time, they each crossed these between gusts. As Cloud had said, "You get hit by those winds, you're in for a long fall."
As they got deeper down into the core, the party seemed to notice something odd between Cloud and Sephiroth, Cloud seemed to be eyeing Sephiroth warily, while even Sephiroth himself appeared to have some fears of his own.
Agrias was the one to walk up the Sephiroth and ask him what was going on in his mind.
"What's wrong?"
"She's down there. And I have to kill her."
"Who? Jenova?"
"...my…mother…"
At this Cloud drew his sword, not necessarily out of caution, but more as a security.
Sephiroth closed his eyes, as if trying to hold back any possible monsters that would escape his mind.
The intensity in Cloud's eyes grew, as he remembered the old battle.
Memories flooded his mind: the magical strength of his foe, the whip-cord power from the wings of the one-winged angel, the burning Supernova, the intense pain in his mind and heart, and then the rage.
Cloud, as did Sephiroth, locked those memories of their past away. And then proceeded further down into the pit with his party.
Closely following behind, Aeris felt a tinge of fear in her mind as she watched Cloud lock away those demons once again.
Further down, the party descended, walking along decaying bone fossils, strange glowing gems, and odd smells and sounds that erupted from the pit.
It wasn't really hot as they had supposed would be at the planet's core, but more of a foreboding chill that surrounded them.
That's when they saw it.
The rocky spiral stopped, and what continued was beyond their imaginations.
"Floating...stones!?" Delita asked.
"The mako energy build-up in them is what makes them float." Cloud said, "we just have to hope they stay up long enough for us to go down there."
The party began to draw weapons and stones, each knowing that what was ahead would be a stronger force then they had previously reckoned.
A hand touched Delita's shoulder, he knew whose it was.
"Delita," Teta said, "Don't think you can defeat it alone, remember your allies."
"That's right," Ramza said, "Save some for us!"
"And lighten up a little." Zidane said.
"We trust you," Cloud said.
"All of us," Aeris said.
Alma showed him her stone, "Its glow tells me that no matter what, I'll always be with you."
"All right, everyone," Delita said, drawing Legend, "We have a fiend to kill, let's go!"
Hopping from stone to stone really wasn't that hard, only Garnet and Aeris were a little nervous, but only because of the height.
The stones spiraled down towards a platform of some kind, formed out of rocks and stones of all shapes and sizes.
"This….was the last place I fought….Jenova in." Cloud said, sword tightly in his hand.
Then, almost simultaneously Cloud and Sephiroth collapsed in something like a synchronized spasm.
"Oh no! Something's wrong!!" Aeris screamed.
Agrias quickly turned Sephiroth's body over, he and Cloud were in some sort of coma. No telling if they would awaken at all.
Delita began to take charge, "Bring Cloud and Sephiroth to the rear! We don't want to lose them during this fight!"
Just as he said those words, a massive feminine-like creature floated up from the depths, it could only be Jenova herself. Basically it had a woman-like frame, but behind it was a massive orb filled with something like energy, and it had four whip-like tendrils.
Jenova spoke inside the Braves minds: "I have come for my children! Bring them back to me!"
"Sorry," Seifer said as he drew Griever's Heart from out of his holster, "That was the WRONG ANSWER!!"
"You're gonna pay for knocking out my guy!!" Aeris yelled. "Rage, fill these Braves with Strength, Fury Brand!"
A massive red aura surrounded the knights, and they felt massive energy coursing through their veins.
"I kinda liked Sephiroth, so yeah, you're on my shit list!" Agrias charged.
Blades carved away at Jenova, her tendrils whipping wildly trying to trip up the warriors, or give them a sound beating. But the speed at which they were moving, she couldn't catch up. Slash marks scorched or froze all over its body. Despite all this, Jenova wasn't about to give up yet.
Whipping its tendrils in upward arcs, it created several tornadoes and thrust them at the Braves. Delita was the first to be affected by the strong winds, but he simply dug in his sword in the rock and hung on. The other few who had a sword did the same, while the rest simply hung onto them.
"…You'll...never…win…" Delita said, charging up his Legend sword, he fired a massive ray of light upon Jenova, which appeared to have knocked it off the platform. As it fell, it performed one last hurricane attack in an attempt to lift its enemy off the platform and into the abyss.
"Everybody grab onto me!!!" Delita said, as the group grabbed Cloud and Sephiroth, who coincidentally awoke after Jenova had fallen, "Use your stones! We need to warp out of this place before it collapses!"
Making the shortest wish in history, the party vanished in a flash of gold light, just as a massive boulder came crashing down where they stood.
The warp placed them back at the edge of the crater, where what they witnessed, was the essence of chaos itself. What was once a massive crater dissipated into nothing but what appeared now was a massive Mako volcano.
"So much for Jenova," Delita said, "but what happened to Cloud and Sephiroth?"
"...I can explain," Sephiroth weakly replied, but gaining strength, "Jenova's DNA was recombined into a humanoid form at Shin Ra labs, it was also injected into experimental subjects called project S.O.L.D.I.E.R. Cloud and I were the results of those two experiments with Jenova's DNA therefore we had a psychic link with her, that's why she was able to disable us. She was, in effect, calling us home, we had no choice but to comply."
"But now she's dead, finally, and for all time." Cloud finished with a sigh of relief, "Like he said, I was to partake in the military injection of the steroidal compounds found in Jenova to be the strongest soldier ever, while Sephiroth was cloned right from Jenova's DNA and combined with a human ovule."
Sephiroth continued: "S.O.L.D.I.E.R. means Strength Optimum Latency in Direct Injection of Extract Reservoirs. Basically, when a man was injected with Jenova cells and infused with Mako energy, he was supposed to be an unstoppable killer. The perfect soldier, but when several tests failed, they created me directly from Jenova cells, Cloud just happened to be the last to be injected with the cells and the DNA bonding process was successful."
Cloud continued, "The only side affects I ever received was a splitting headache and nausea, this to cope with the mutated psychic implants that grew in my brain."
"So basically," Alma speculated, "Your mind and body have some form of Jenova cells in them, is that bad?"
"Not really," Sephiroth said, "Jenova was simply an Alien species to begin with, that humans discovered descended from an advanced race. But when Altima manipulated it, it became much more, then it manipulated the old me, and tortured Cloud."
"I just wonder how Sephiroth could know all this, when Cloud never told him." Zidane pondered.
"Hmm, clever," Sephiroth winced, "my dark half told me the truth...but..." he smiled, "despite that, I'm with you guys."
At this, Cloud grinned broadly at Sephiroth. "Good to hear, Sephiroth, you finally beat the truth!"
"So then Altima was behind it all, huh?" Ramza concluded, "Then she's going down!"
"So where do we go now?" Zidane said, "We killed the fiend of wind, so I guess we need to restore wind."
"I don't think that's possible in this era," Alma said, "if we restore it here, the only era it will affect will be the future, if we restore it in our era, it should be more affective."
Beowulf spoke up, "But what about Necron? We'll have to beat him first."
"Okay so we'll beat him first, then restore Wind, okay!" Ramza yelled, a little miffed.
"So everybody get ready to time jump again, this time into the furthest past we've been to, my era!" Delita announced.
The 13 Braves raised their stones and weapons high, and with another aura of golden light, warping back to the mystical lands of Alexandria and Ivalice.
