"Good to see you, Cloud." How could Cloud forget that voice? His eyes glinted dangerously as Sephiroth's Masamune repelled him. "Your Geostigma is gone? That's too bad," his antagonist scoffed.

"Sephiroth," Cloud roared in ire and demanded, "What do you want?"

Sephiroth raised his other hand, his delicate fingers dancing amidst the air and slicing it, as though to orchestrate the intricate stream of life and death. "The last thought of Geostigma's dead. Those Remnants will join the Lifestream and girdle the planet—choking it, corroding it. What I want, Cloud, is to sail the darkness of the cosmos with this planet as my vessel, just as my mother did long ago. Then, one day, we'll find a new planet, and on its soil, we'll create a shining future," he concluded in his melodious voice, as if innocently. The protagonist, however, knew better than to take the fallen angel's words at face value.

"What about this planet?" "Well, that's up to you, Cloud."

Masamune and Fusion Sword clashed and locked against each other. Their wielders' wrathful condemnations and spites were pointed at each other as sharply as their blades were honed.

The younger warrior, who had never been cut out to be a SOLDIER—a hero of dawn—like Sephiroth himself, began to lag. The gloves creaked under the pressure of the heavy sword in his hands. Cloud could not afford to lose.

"I've thought of a wonderful present for you. Shall I give you despair? On your knees. I want you to beg for forgiveness," a hero of the past murmured in perverse joy at Cloud's escalating sense of inferiority.

The fleeting moment of respite drove the spear into the same location. "Is this the pain you felt before, Cloud?" Sephiroth lifted Cloud off the ground, reveling in the bellow of agony. "Let me remind you. This time, you won't forget. Tell me what you cherish most. Give me the pleasure of taking it away?"

Cloud's eyes gleamed with newfound resolve.

"I pity you. You just don't get it at all. There's not a thing I don't cherish!" the hero howled to prevail.