Some legal stuff:

This story and all new characters and situations are copyright 1997 by the author, Glazius Falconar (a.k.a. Paul Arezina). The characters, situations, and artifacts relating to Final Fantasy VII are copyright SquareSoft, and are used without permission. If you need me to tell you what they are… you shouldn’t be reading this. You cannot alter this fanfic in any way or charge money for the express purpose of reading it without my expressed written consent. And, if you’d like to post it on your website, please contact me, as I like to know where my work is going. The concept of the World Wide Web is copyright H. G. Wells, in his "Men like Gods." Read it some time. If you think something in this should be changed, want an HTML version of it, would care to exercise your right to free speech through flaming, (for which I will exercise my right to free speech one thousand times in your Inbox) or have an uncontrollable urge to send e-mail, my e-mail address is at the end.

"You worthless failure."

Those were the first words I can remember hearing. A bespectacled man in a white lab coat stood over me, shaking his head. His ponytail swung from side to side as he looked down at me.

"I thought the reactor at Fort Condor would provide more than enough Mako energy… but instead it gave me this."

He must mean me. What am I, anyway? If I could catch some glimpse of myself… but my neck was held by some kind of restraints. "Sir…"

The man looked surprised. "And you can talk. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!" He punctuated his statement by slamming his fist on some sort of large metal egg.

"Sir… what am I?"

"First, my name is not ‘Sir’. It’s Hojo. Professor Hojo. Second… if I told you what you were, I’d have to kill you." A smile slowly crept into his stern countenance. "But I’m going to kill you anyway, so I suppose you can at least know."

"Know… what?"

"Look at yourself." The man rotated the platform I was on to face some sort of mirror. I gasped in shock… and the figure in the mirror stared back at me with an open beak.

I was… a bird? Wings, beak, talons, tail… I was a bird. But birds couldn’t talk… could they? And they certainly couldn’t think. I stared at my brown-and-white mottled feathers… and noticed that Professor Hojo’s reflection was just as big as mine. Now this was just plain crazy… birds definitely didn’t get as big as humans. "This can’t be real."

"It is. I’ve been experimenting with enhancing the normal SOLDIER initiation process."

SOLDIER?… the name sounded familiar…

"You mean… Mako exposure?"

"And you still have some of your old memories." Hojo sighed. "You were my first test subject. They brought you in, seconds away from death. And I placed you in this" - he gestured to the metal egg - "and put you inches away from the core of a Mako reactor. It was supposed to create a superhuman, using the body as a natural seed for materia crystals. I don’t know what went wrong, but… you’re no longer human. Something happened to change you, and all the tests I’ve run came up with little or nothing to indicate what happened." Hojo shook his head. "I trust this has been enlightening enough."

"Yes, it has, actually. Thank you, Professor. Now, if you’ll just let me out of these…"

Hojo laughed. "Don’t you get it? You’re a failed experiment, a blotch on my record, a useless creature. You don’t deserve to live… but how to get rid of you… Hmm…"

Get rid of me…? Kill me? But… what had I done to him?

Hojo spoke… but not to me… "Personal log of Professor Hojo. Subject somehow escaped his bonds and attempted to escape the complex through a formerly unbroken window. Unfortunately, he had not gained control of his mutated form and plummeted to his doom. I attempted to recover the body, but it was lost to the ocean, perhaps forever."

"But I did none of that!"

Hojo turned to me and smiled… evilly… "Don’t worry. You will. Now, enjoy your rest… and may the Planet receive you with open arms." He advanced on me, with a syringe held in one hand. This was no shot of antibiotics… and I struggled against the restraints holding me down.

Hojo laughed. "As though you could make so much as a dent in those. They’re titanium carbide, completely impenetrable."

I only struggled harder… they were giving… giving… and Hojo plunged the needle into my right wing. With a scream of pain, I lashed out… and found myself free of the restraints. Hojo retreated… "But… but… that’s impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible, Professor. Nothing." I prepared to dive at Hojo, shredding him into a thousand little pieces… I was flying? I looked down… my feet weren’t touching the ground! I was flying!… and a bit woozy. That tranquilizer was starting to take effect… I’d better get as far away as I could before I collapsed.

"Goodbye, Professor. I think I’ll add some truth to that report of yours." I flung myself at the nearest window, surprised at how easily it shattered. I laughed as I soared through the air, free as… a bird… ha! Funny! I began gliding over the plains below… this was so much fun! Soaring like an eagle… no worries… ooohhh… except for that tranquilizer. I’d better find a place to land… what in the? Red rocks? A canyon… no, no, don’t fall asleep! The tranquilizer was taking full effect! Don’t fall… asleep… don’t… fall… no… the canyon…

"Looks like you had quite a nasty fall, youngster."

I was… alive… but couldn’t open my eyes… everything hurt so much… but whoever was talking certainly had a kind voice…

"Will he be okay, Grandfather?"

A child’s voice, soft… and inquisitive…

"Don’t ask such questions, Nanaki. It is not ours to know when the Planet will receive a soul."

And an older voice… harsh… but gentle, somehow.

"Ho ho hooo. Setoh, don’t be so uptight. He’ll be fine with a little rest."

The old man who had spoken at first… I wanted to thank them… but found that it hurt to talk as well. All that echoed from my mouth was a pained cry…

The old man’s voice sounded again. "Come, you two. We’ll take him back to Cosmo Canyon. We can help him much better there."

"Yes, father."

"Okay, Grandpa Bugen."

I felt myself being lifted onto something… furry? The pain… the pain… too much…

And a wave of energy swept over my body… a soothing, calming, comforting wave. The pain… was gone? Gone, as though it were no more than a bad dream. I opened my eyes to find myself staring at the stars… and a little old man flitting to and fro, in a purple silk jacket and riding a green orb.

"I must be dead. Is this heaven, sir?"

"Heaven? It is the heavens, but dead you most certainly are not. Merely unconscious for a time. I am Bugenhagen. Welcome to Cosmo Canyon."

But the pain… had been gone so swiftly. "What… what happened?"

"A Materia orb containing the knowledge of a great Ancient healer. We call it ‘Full Cure’. It is a truly rare item."

"Thank you… for using it to save my life. I’m sorry…"

The old man laughed. "Ho ho hooo. It’s not gone. Materia never is. I thought you would know that, seeing as how you’re wearing so much."

Wearing… I took a good look at myself for the first time. My wings were razor-sharp with Materia crystals... and four on each wing seemed to be much larger than the rest… almost spherical. And two bands crisscrossed my chest… I could see them now, with my chest-feathers torn away by the crash. Each band was solid Materia… with four large crystals to boot. "You’ll forgive me… but… I am not a normal creature."

"Your appearance told us that much."

I turned to face the voice and found myself staring at… a lion? I let out a cry and took off… into the cosmos? Too puzzled to do anything, I slowly glided back down… to find myself inches away from the lion again.

"Relax." It can talk…? But then again, so could I… and the sound of childish laughter nearby alerted me to the presence of… another lion? The older one scowled at the child, who was rolling on the floor with laughter…

"Nanaki!"

The cub stopped laughing and stood upright. "Yes, father?"

"Do you remember the first time you saw the planetarium in action?"

The cub seemed to be thinking… "Yes, father…"

"And how you felt?"

The cub nodded.

"How would you feel if I laughed at you then?"

The cub looked a bit ashamed. "I’m sorry, mister… what’s your name?"

"My name? It’s… it’s… I don’t know." My name? …why didn’t I know my own name…?

Suddenly, the sky above dimmed and faded… to reveal a closed metal dome… and the floor began dropping. What was going on? As my eyes slowly adjusted to the light… I saw a furnished room, with the old man adjusting a few controls. He turned to the cub…

"That’s a very good question, Nanaki, and a most puzzling answer you received in return." He turned to me. "Where did you come from… whoever you are?"

"I can’t tell you much… and most of it doesn’t even make sense to me." And I told the old man and the two lions about Hojo, and the experiment he’d performed, and my escape… and my crash into the canyon.

"That’s all I can remember… I’m sorry… oh, wait! I seem to remember that… I was in SOLDIER once… Falcon Battalion, last soldier in a legion of 70. But where that comes from, and how I know it… or how I know how to talk and fly, for that matter… that I do not know. But I do know that I have no one to go to… may I live here? It certainly seems to be a nice place."

The old man and the two lions exchanged a quick glance, and the old man smiled at me. "Of course you may. Cosmo Canyon is open to all. But we can’t have people greeting our newest resident with ‘Hey, you.’ You need a name."

The cub spoke up. "How about ‘The Big Glass Bird’?"

"Nanaki!"

"Sorry, father…"

Actually… "He’s right. That is certainly what I look like. A big glass sculpture, with all these materia crystals…"

The old man exclaimed, "Glazius!"

"Pardon me?"

"That’s your name. Glazius… if you want it."

"Well, it certainly seems to fit me…" I gave a tired laugh. "And it sounds a lot better than anything I could come up with."

"Glazius it is, then. Setoh, Nanaki… could you leave us, please? There are a few things I need to tell our newest citizen."

The two lions padded softly out the door, the older one closing it with a deft flick of his tail. The old man floated over to the controls and the floor slowly rose… we were back in the planetarium. "If you’re going to live among us… there are a few things you’ll need to know."

As he spoke, the planetarium illustrated the points he was making… and I was spellbound by his story. He talked about life, and the Lifestream, and the energy that was bound in it. He talked about the draining of Mako… a technology now in its infancy, but soon to grow… and about Materia. When he was finished… I felt as though I understood the Planet a little better… and had a few dozen questions that needed answered.

"So… you’re saying that this" - and I gestured to the materia I was literally covered in - "is the essence of life… and souls…"

"I think you understood me," replied the old man. "But I must say, I’ve never heard of materia being in such close contact with an actual body. Although I imagine that the crystallizing process Hojo spoke about could be possible… there’s something I think he didn’t tell you, something you’ll have to discover for yourself."

"What?"

"I can’t say, really. It’s just a feeling I have. But enough of my lecturing. It’s time you met the other inhabitants of your new hometown." The old man lowered the floor again, and we made out way out of his observatory… and I found myself on top of a sheer cliff!

"If you don’t mind the question… how do we get down?"

The old man smiled, and gestured to the orb he was floating on. "Ho ho hooo. I’ve never had to worry about that. And you can fly, can’t you?"

"I certainly hope so."

"Good. I’ll see you on the ground." He floated over the edge of the cliff, and slowly began drifting downward. I just hoped I could remember how I got away from Hojo… here goes nothing…

I jumped off the cliff, spread my wings as wide as they could go, and tucked my legs in. I felt a sudden panic as I fell… until my wings caught an updraft and I was buoyed skyward. This wasn’t so bad… I did a few loops around the cliff that held the old man’s observatory as I glided to the ground, touching down next to the old man… who had gathered everyone around some kind of flame.

"No, no, we’re not being invaded. This is our newest resident, Glazius."

Invaded? What could invade here? I bowed rather absentmindedly as the old man told all that was known about me… which wasn’t much. I then stood by the fire - I couldn’t sit down - as the other residents of Cosmo Canyon told me about themselves. People had come from all over the Planet to study and record their observations about the Planet… I felt rather out of place. Here I was, a monstrosity with no past and no one to turn to… I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked into Bugenhagen’s eyes.

"What are you waiting for? We need to get a house built for you."

I nodded absently and followed the old man’s pointing arm… to a scaffold on the side of the cliff. That had been constructed very quickly… I pumped my wings as fast as I could to join the others. We hammered and sawed and wove… and within an hour, I had my own home… a small but serviceable hut, built on the side of the mountain that housed Bugenhagen’s observatory. I called my thanks to the others as they climbed down the scaffold, dismantling it as they went. I turned to go back inside… and was rather startled to find an old man waiting for me. He wore simple leather clothes, and had two feathers somehow woven into his hair.

"Greetings, Glazius. I am Hargo, one of the elders of Cosmo Canyon. I am here to teach you to meditate."

"Teach me… to meditate?"

"To get in touch with the Planet… and in touch with yourself, young one. All in Cosmo Canyon exist to further the knowledge of the Planet. I am here to help you take your first steps on the long journey which awaits you."

"Thank you… what will I need to do?"

"Not much. This flame from the Cosmo Candle…"

So saying, he produced a torch, lit by the same strange white light we had been gathered around not long ago.

"… and this small dish of incense…"

And he touched the flame to a miniature brazier on the floor… a sweet-smelling smoke arose from it.

"… are all we need. Sit, if you can."

The Elder crossed his legs in a fashion nearly impossible for me to repeat… instead, I folded my wings over my chest and began following his example, breathing deeply.

"Good. Now, concentrate on entering your own mind… concentrate on your breathing… in… out… in… out… and listen to your heart beating… listen very carefully…"

And the world slowly faded out, as I began to hear what my own badly deformed body had to offer me.

"Good… good… now… listen to your mind, Glazius…"

My mind? But that made no sounds… or did… oh my….

Suddenly, I was flying over a black landscape… with a light off in the distance. Was the surface below me air, water, or ground?… I did not know. I kept flying toward the light… toward the light… by all that’s holy!

A city! A bizarre and wonderful city, no two buildings even remotely alike. And the people, such a wondrous mix of ages and homelands… was this the inside of my mind? I began slowing down, to try and land in what looked to be a park… and every head turned to look at me as I touched down. An old man in a simple cloth robe and a white beard stepped out from the crowd that had gathered.

"So… you’ve come."

"I’ve… come? Come where? And you expected me?"

The old man nodded. "Of course. I am Alfotost, Grand Druid of the Ancients."

"Wait a minute… this is my mind… isn’t it?"

The man who called himself a Great Druid shrugged. "Indeed it is. But we all live here now."

"We?"

A voice called from the crowd. "Yes. We. We are a part of you, like it or not."

"But… how can you be? I’m me… aren’t I?"

I felt a sudden jerk, and the city began dissolving around me… and the Elder was standing over me, shaking my shoulders. "Wake up, Glazius!"

It was completely dark outside… and it had been morning when the session began. "I’m up… how long was I out?"

"Three days."

That woke me up. I sat bolt upright on the cot where Hargo had laid me. "Three days? What was in that incense?"

"Nothing narcotic, I assure you. Merely something to neutralize the scent of fresh wood and thatch. You went very deep into meditation… you bordered on being catatonic. I’ve never heard of anyone going that deep before, not on their first attempt. What did you see?"

I shook my head. "A city, Elder. A city, teeming with people… and a man who called himself Alfotost, Grand Druid of the Ancients."

Hargo paled. "Stay here. If this means what I think it means…"

He left the room I was lying in… in some kind of medical center… and returned with Bugenhagen in tow…

"Took a bit of a long nap, didn’t you?"

I nodded to Bugenhagen. "It certainly seems that way."

Bugenhagen gestured with one arm. "Elder Hargo… there are a few things I’d like to discuss with this child."

Hargo nodded, and left the room.

"What happened in here?" I asked, tapping my head.

Bugenhagen responded, "I never told you exactly how most people use Materia, did I?"

I shook my head.

The old man laughed a bit. "Well, it’s certainly not the way you use it. Have a look at this." He held out a delicate ceramic hair-comb, with some holes carved into it… and in each hole was a small crystal orb, eight in all, flashing brilliant colors at the world. "This is our greatest treasure, the Limited Moon." He produced another, slightly smaller, comb, with a bronze angel gracing its surface. "And this is something of Setoh’s… the Seraph Comb." Its surface was studded with four brightly glowing orbs.

"Those… are Materia orbs?"

The old man nodded. "Indeed they are. A bit smaller than the ones you’re carrying around, but Materia orbs nonetheless. And in each orb are the knowledge and the memories of some part of the Lifestream. Now… whenever someone uses Materia, they’re really projecting the memories of someone else into their own bodies and trying to use those memories, to cast magic or perform extraordinary feats… even, for the most powerful of Materia, to become the spirit which inhabits the Materia."

I nodded, and the old man continued. "Now, the color of the Materia is reflective of its relative power, and the strength of the spirit contained in it. Purple Materia is fairly weak, and can be used constantly. The spirit in purple Materia actually becomes a part of the body. Blue Materia is the next weakest. It can be used almost constantly, but requires other Materia to function properly, and so is only used in battle. Green Materia contain spirits and memories which can be tapped to manipulate the Planet - that’s what we call magic. Yellow Materia contain spirits which actually override the body for a brief instant, enabling some quite fantastic actions to be performed. And red Materia - by far the most powerful - actually contains a spirit which can be physically manifested, as its original form."

I nodded. "But you said there was a difference between how I use it and how others use it. What’s so different?"

Bugenhagen paused to think for a moment. "Well… it’s not terribly easy to try and transfer others’ memories to your own mind. So, at first, a person using Materia can’t do very much with the power contained in it. But, over time, it becomes easier to draw power from the Materia… until, finally, the power draw is a bit too great and the Materia cracks into two. It heals, of course, but one of the Materia halves has a new memory within it. When that happens, we say that the Materia has been mastered, and a new Materia has been born. In your case - " and he gestured to the Materia which covered my body - "the Materia is a part of you. You can use it much better than anyone else could use a mastered Materia orb… because the memories which the Materia holds are a part of your mind."

"So that’s what I saw…"

Bugenhagen nodded sagely. "Exactly. What you saw was your own representation of all the memories and spirits which have somehow fused themselves with your body. But you can’t control them; they’re sentient and free-willed. And the time you spend inside your own mind… or seem to spend… has no relationship whatsoever to time that actually passes. That’s why I imagine you were so surprised when you found that three days had passed."

I nodded. "It was… an hour. Not even that. I suppose meditation’s out of the question from now on…"

Bugenhagen laughed. "Ho ho hooo. Quite the opposite, actually. This is an entirely new development; never before has anyone been able to communicate with the spirits inside Materia. I think you’ve found your calling, Glazius."

My beak fell open, and I slowly realized the implications of Bugenhagen’s statement. "That’s what I’ll do here? Just… talk with myself?"

Bugenhagen smiled. "I suppose you could call it that. And you’ll want to keep a journal of everything that goes on in your conversations… it could prove very useful later. Rest up for a bit, Glazius. In the morning, you can return to your hut and begin what I’m sure will be a most interesting vocation."

I nodded, laid back, shut my eyes, and in moments… I was asleep.

And… back in the city? "So my dreams will take me here as well…"

"Exactly." I turned, to see Alfotost and the legion of others who inhabited my mind.

"I understand what’s happened to me… and I’m sorry for dragging you all into this mess."

A voice from the crowd called, "Sorry? What’s to be sorry about? This place is a lot less crowded that the Lifestream!"

Alfotost smiled, not even bothering to see who had spoken. "True. And we are much more use to you, and to the Planet, than we would be if we were souls floating around in the Lifestream."

"Well… that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you all about. You see… what I’ll be doing from now on is trying to know you all. I’ve been given a sort of assignment… to find out about who you are and the time period you lived in. I imagine many people would be interested to know about the Ancients, Alfotost."

"And the rest of us, too?" called another voice from the crowd.

I shrugged. "Whatever I may have been before this happened… I am now a seeker of knowledge. Meaning that I can ignore no one. Meaning… I’ve got a lot of work to do here."

I could feel the city fade from around me; I must be waking up. As the scene slowly dissolved, I could barely hear Alfotost say, "Safe journeys… friend."

And I was awake. I slowly exited the medical center and flew back up to my hut, to find stacks of paper and pencils piled in a corner. Apparently Bugenhagen and the others in Cosmo Canyon had done a bit of work while I was asleep. I sat down, to begin thinking of what to ask all the voices inside my head…