I looked at my hands for a long time.
Occassionally I glanced up at the charred mass that remained of the Sample, but mostly I just stared at my hands. Because, you know, that’s where the fire came from. Not the materia — this was a no-materia exercise, just a training room operation so the Professor could track my responses. I’d been showing off a bit with my swordwork because I thought this was kind of a stupid exercise, but then the Sample had ended up being tougher than I expected.
Oh, right, the Professor was watching me. I looked up at him, but he was as impassive as ever. That bothered me, kind of, because I might have been only twelve and never been to a formal school but he’d certainly taught me enough to know that you needed materia for magic.
But there was fire. And if there was anything the Professor drilled into my head, it was that you had to believe in what happened, not what you expected to happen. So. Fire.
I was back to staring at my hands again.
I heard the observers from SOLDIER whispering in the corner. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Their words were going too fast, and my world seemed to have slowed down to just me and my hands and the smell of burned flesh. I wasn’t going to come up with an explaination, and it seemed the Professor wasn’t offering one. Nothing to do but keep going then.
Once I decided, my body clicked effortlessly into the formal salute I saw SOLDIERs perform on the training field. “Objective complete.” Now the Professor smiled, and one of the men in the corner started slowly to clap.
“Excellent job,” the large, bearded man called out. “Welcome to SOLDIER, young man.”
I blinked at him and responded automatically with a thank you, sir, but my voice was drowned out by the Professor’s shout. “What? You can’t take him yet, Heidegger. He’s not finished!” I recognized the name as someone I’d been told about before, the general who oversaw SOLDIER.
“I’m fully authorized to draft him and any other ‘able-bodied person under the age of thirty five’ if you recall,” the General snapped right back. I’d never heard anyone but the President yell at the Professor before. This wasn’t like those meetings, though. Everyone know the President won when he yelled. These two were screaming at each other in minutes, and they were screaming over me.
I waited for them to finish. There wasn’t anything else I could do.
“Fine,” the Professor finally spat. “Take him. But I expect full access to him, and I am personally in charge of his medical care. I don’t want to hear about one of your mindless grunts trying to give him a makou treatment or even so much as a band-aid.”
“I have no intention of breaking the wonderful gift you’ve given to the world,” the General said, smiling behind his beard. It took me a minute to realize he meant me.
“Go with him, Sephiroth. Follow his orders,” the Professor said, not looking at me, and left the room without another word.
The General put his arm around me and it took all my willpower not to pull away. “Yes, Sephiroth, SOLDIER has great works in mind for those hands of yours. Let’s get you downstairs and I’ll put you in a unit myself.”
