FN: Too tired to write scathing criticism or mind trippyness... Like I said I despise what this fic is and that's why its taking me so long between updates because its hard for me to work up the energy to proofread it.

Therefore to show you what your normal rate of updates should be like, I will not even begin working on editing the next chapter until thegr8sephiroth gets around to posting the first chapter of the sequel to Twilight Perfection. That or I don't know, I get some freaking reviews on the other stories I've written.

You think I'm bluffing? Just try me....

Chapter 9: I'm young and I'm hopeless, I'm going no where fast that's what they say.

The two groups met in complete silence, as if their meeting was just a passing in chance instead of one that had been planned. No stories were exchanged, only a small half of a coin with a metallic glint to it. Sephiroth took it from Vincent, quickly opened the a small box and pressed it next to another half coin the two fitting together perfectly. Sephiroth quickly showed the three completed coins and nine half coins in what could be assumed was an offhand gesture, instead of a wordless warning.

Then neither group acknowledged the other's existence, in the morning both groups walked out of town ignoring the other till all the buildings where out of sight. Like the motions of an elaborate dance both groups passed one member to the other. The two women walked off with each other in one direction, the two men in another.

---

Aeris leaned on her staff for support, it was times like these that she knew just what a third wheel she was, even if no one ever talked about it. Still, it was just as clear as if she had shouted from the tallest rooftop she could find that Lucresia wasn't pushing herself as hard as she could have been, she was slowing down, helping Aeris walk.

After travelling with Sephiroth it hurt her deep down to admit that she was glad for those offers and readily accepted them. She didn't have mako injections, she didn't have Jenova cells, all she had was some Cetra in her and that was worth nothing on these walks through the desert. The hot sun could have killed her just as surely as any fire spell if she was stranded this far from civilization on her own.

Lucresia occasionally looked at a small compass she removed from her briefcase and made a few adjustments in the direction they walked but on the whole she seemed completely sure of her course. Aeris was less so, if they where going the direction she thought they where going, they where headed out to total wasteland. That was why many people didn't travel now, if you weren't careful you could walk right into the desert, get lost, and never been seen again.

The fact that Lucresia hadn't bothered to consult any maps, only her compass also did little to inspire Aeris' confidence. Still, as she leaned on her staff Lucresia looked up at the sun and gave a small nod. "We've been walking for about four hours now. The shelter should be up ahead in a couple of minuets now, another half an hour at most." Aeris heaved a deep sigh. "I find it hard to believe that anyone, could take orphans this far out into the desert."

Lucresia shrugged helplessly. "Other people wouldn't believe that the place we lived at for so many years existed. Sephiroth wanted to make sure that nothing bad happened to this place while he was away and it's remoteness is its prime defence." Aeris walked up the sand dune using her staff to guide her feet with every step she took before her boots hit the ground. It was not an easy thing considering she had to make sure she didn't let her feet slide and have to climb all the way back up the hill.

As she finally did come to the top of the hill her eyes opened wide as suddenly before her jutting from the sand she saw a church surrounded by a small field of green with an equally small stream running through it. But then it was not so little considering that the church had to be about three times the size of the house she had lived at for several years. It was the work of several Cetra, she could see that as she drew nearer, it was too large for one Cetra alone to have made it, even if they'd worked at it over the process of several years.

As she finally drew closer to the garden her eyes could pick out a woman slowly patting the ground and whispering reassuring words to it. She stood up and looked slightly warily at them and then suddenly she smiled. Her hair was a slightly faded red but her eyes where still a brightly shining green. It was not mako that made them glow, but an inner fire.

Green was not the only color Cetra's eyes came in, but unlike in humans it was the most common, and regardless of what color they where, they had a shine to them. She smiled at Lucresia who's own eyes glowed with a far greater intensity, and for a moment that surprised Aeris. The woman looked like she was a few years older than Lucresia, which didn't say much as Lucresia still looked to be closer to thirty than forty, just like her son.

Even though she had been just working in the ground she didn't bother to clean her dirt fingers before shaking hands with Lucresia. Her voice was warm but something in her eyes suggested she wasn't quite sure what to do with the rest of her body. "Lucresia, the others wondered how long it would be till you or your son showed up, after all it is about time for his traditional visit."

Lucresia let out a small laugh. "I know, sadly Sephiroth won't be able to show up for a while Cassie." Cassie laughed a laugh which still had joviality of a young girl. "Yes, as he would say 'The Lord's work is never done.' He would bend down to pick up a gil in the middle of the desert just so he could give it to someone else." Aeris couldn't keep her face from showing surprise, anywhere else a visit from Sephiroth would be considered equivalent with a passing tornado.

At the surprise that flickered in her eyes Cassie cocked an eyebrow at Lucresia. "Is she one of yours?" Lucresia shook her head "Cassie, this is Aeris Gaste. Sephiroth and I decided that we should look after her personally. Her situation was a good reason for us to do it under the circumstances."

Cassie's eyes suddenly widened just like Aeris' had, but she snapped them back to normal just as quickly. "I understand, I have a small idea what happens when you get caught in a crossfire. Thank the Planet that mine was over money instead of ideology. Your timing is good as ever, I was just about to head inside, and judging by your faces you two would like to join me."

Aeris nodded eagerly, and all three of them began to walk towards the church. The garden was larger then Aeris had thought at first, and marvelled at how much work it must have taken. Lucresia spoke with complete frankness as they walked along. "It's okay to stare Aeris, this place turned out to be a greater chunk of Eden then even Sephiroth planned." Aeris looked around and shuddered slightly. "Sephiroth made this?"

It wasn't Lucresia who answered but Cassie. "Yes, it was close to three and a half decades ago. My parents had been killed by a group of bandits when our caravan was attacked, I was the only one left. I don't remember much of it, thank the Planet, but I remember Sephiroth arriving, suffice to say those bandits never hurt anyone ever again, and he took me here.

I'm not sure if Sephiroth built this thing, or we did with his help, but it was his idea. The world that for so long was safe is now becoming anything but, and for the first time there are Cetra orphans. So he did what somebody needed to do, he set up this church so that we could look after ourselves by looking after each other. When he left we were still pretty young, but he's come back every ten years, to make sure we're okay. It wasn't long before we started sending a few of us out to do the same thing he had. There aren't only Cetra orphans here any more, we take in humans as well."

Aeris instantly understood Lucresia's previous statements, she doubted Sephiroth would have envisioned that. However, one thought occurred to her. "Where did Sephiroth find time for all this?" Lucresia smiled to herself at a private joke. "You may not have realized it, but about a year after I found you, he left us for two years, that when he set this place up. He's been gone for about six month to a year for every decade just to look after this place."

Aeris shuddered, and wordlessly wondered to herself how she could not have noticed that Sephiroth had been gone for five years. However the other half of her pointed out that as she wasn't ageing, two years really wasn't that much. In the end, she knew at that time she wouldn't have truly noticed, she was only thinking about herself and trying to piece his world back together.

As they approached the front door Cassie slowly opened it before she turned back to Lucresia and gave her a small wink. "Zazie will be glad to see you, he couldn't wait for you to get back. He seamed more interested about knowing when you would be back than meeting a living legend like Sephiroth."

Aeris raised an eyebrow at Lucresia, but she answered as they walked into the blessedly shaded church. "I came out here on my own a few years ago to see how Sephiroth's work was going, and I ended up getting a bit more involved in it than I had planned. I found a human child named Zazie out in the desert after his parents had been killed by some particularly nasty bandits." Cassie nodded along with the story without looking back. "Zazie has been doing well enough out here, he's not fitting in as neatly as most of the others do, but he's happy with the sandworms."

Aeris started to ask a question but Cassie cut her off. "I'll let Zazie explain them, he's young, but ever since he came here he's spent almost every waking hour studying them." It was am empty room that Cassie lead them to however, and before Aeris could ask she nodded towards some chairs. "Seat yourselves wherever you like, this is the kitchen, and by the way would you like some water?" Aeris let out a happy sigh at the prospect of a cold refreshing drink. "Yes, I think I would..."

---

Aeris sucked in a breath and for the first time in a long while he lungs didn't instantly pull all the oxygen from the air she had inhaled before making her exhale without a second thought. Her day was now starting to take a turn for the better and the sun had begun to start descending before Cassie lead Zazie down over to them.

One quick look told Aeris that he had to be about eight or so years old. His hair was a straw yellow that apparently was badly in need of a combing, not that he seamed to care. His eyes where a deep blue ranging to violet that brimmed with an odd intelligence even for his young age. He wore a simple brown cloak that went all the way around him and was large enough to cover him from his neck down to the end of his brown pants.

He instantly jumped to Lucresia's side, his face split by a wide smile, a smile that Lucresia soon shared. She playfully ruffled Zazie's hair for a moment before speaking. "So Zazie, how are the sandworms doing?" Zazie slowly drew back and his face twisted in an odd look, as if he couldn't quite figure out how to answer her question. "Well personally I'm a little surprised you didn't see them yourself on your way here. For some reason the sandworms have started to really act up recently. Most of the time they rarely come to the surface while people are around, but now they're all shaken up by something. I wana go out find out, but they say I'm not old enough to go out on my own...."

His eyes fell the floor and Aeris could already see the gears starting to turn in Lucresia's head and she let out an agitated sigh. Clearly it was his mother's side of the family that Sephiroth got his impulsiveness, and a fair bit of his determination. One of the things she learned about Lucresia since they'd met, was that once she got an idea into her head, it was nearly impossible to get her to give that idea up.

Aeris reached for her glass of ice water (thankfully Sephiroth had thought ahead to install practically every technological convince known to man when he built the place) and slowly began to drink from it. She wanted to get more water into her system before they started walking again, she was going to be sweating a lot before today was over.

---

It was barely half an hour latter by the time Lucresia had told (and convinced) most of the members of the church to let her take Zazie with her for another journey out into the desert. Aeris was not by any means excited about the prospect of another journey, but she decided to go along anyways. Her already low hopes for how things would turn out promptly hit rock bottom once she realized Lucresia was going to let Zazie decided which direction they walked.

Then they somehow managed to plunge right through rock bottom when it turned out that Zazie didn't seem to know what direction he wanted to go either. At least untill he simply stroked something by his right ear as if listening for only hear could hear, and his eyes suddenly filled with understanding. He pointed in what for all purposes to Aeris was a completely random direction before starting off. Lucresia followed him without so much of an ounce of hesitation.

As they walked along Aeris decided that it was better to make conversation than to deal with silence that otherwise resulted, so she decided to voice the forward most thought in her mind at the moemnt. "Do sandworms eat people?" Zazie shrugged and smiled. "Not that often, and only in self defence. They're herbivores mainly, all those teeth are just for show. Your average sandworm is twenty feet long, they might look like some kind of monsters, but they're actually really sweet. I've heard it's that way with wolves too, but you don't get a chance to see any of those out here, not to mention they're carnivores."

Aeris was not in no way 'set free' from her worries by this tidbit of information. "So we're looking for these things, why exactly?" Zazie sighed despondently. "It's live and let live with sandworms for most people, but one way or another the worms have to keep living.

You see sandworms can rip through sand and then their bodies recycle it. The more sandworms you have, the better the soil is, even if you need to dig down to find it. So when people start worrying about them, and hunting sandworms, they're really hunting themselves.

Even we can only do so much to help enhance nutrients in the soil, so sandworms are more important now then ever. But looking the way they do it only takes some bad rumors, and people are hunting sandworms all over the place. Hunting them, when they're the most useful animal in the world!"

Aeris couldn't keep her eyebrows from shooting upwards in surprise again, but then slowly she began to think about how she had reacted in similar circumstances to Zazie's. She had thrown herself into growing flowers when she was young, spending hours tending to them, somehow making them grow in a place with no sunlight She couldn't have been much older then Zazie, it was just look at in it retrospect made it seem odd. Particularly considering that Aeris was now sixty five years old. She paused for a moment to work that one over. She was sixty five, twenty five years on the planet, forty years here, yet she still looked as young as she had when she died.

The Promise land only aged Cetra, being part human Aeris hadn't aged, one more thin she slightly detested. To think that so much time could pass without her accomplishing anything, but she still had even more time. Time she decided was most defiantly the most relative of all resources. She had done much more in those first twenty five years then in the last forty, but those forty could go on forever. Her twenty five years would have ended as she grew older and died naturally, but here her forty years meant nothing.

Supposing she survived this, at least. Living forever, it was a frightening thought, made even more frightening by the thought of what it would have meant if she hadn't been staying with people who aged like her. Diving yet further into her contemplations she silently gripped her staff and prepared for the long trip ahead.

---

They changed directions every now and again, Zazie would tap his head just above his right ear now again before adjusting the direction that they walked. It seemed to be going perfectly normal until suddenly the ground beneath them started to shake with ferocity and all three of them where almost thrown to the ground.

Zazie was the first one to recover from his fall and almost instantly he was back on his feet with a desperate cry of "SANDWORM!" As he spoke, a huge monstrous head emerged from the sand, it's many teeth where almost rendered redundant against it's huge gapping maw and it's body covered in countless overlapping armored plates like a oversized caterpillar.

Lucresia griped her suitcase and began open it as soon as she was on her feet but Zazie touched her hand lightly. "Don't. Your more likely make it mad than actually do any real damage. Let's just try not to get it mad at us." Unfortunately as he spoke the sandworm made a hissing sound and Zazie' cry of "RUN" was not truly needed.

All three of them jumped (though not in the same direction) as that gaping maw spat forth a mass of some ugly green substance. The stuff bubbled as it struck the sand corroding it out of existence. Zazie let out a small cry as he saw that happen. "They normally only use that acid to eat through dirt and rocks as they move, not to attack!"

It was a surprisingly calm statement given the situation and who it was coming from, but that made Aeris less calm all the same. The huge monster did not spit forth another glob of acid, instead its huge body slowly rose from the sand in all its glory, leaving the three to stare in a mixture of a horror and awe. Zazie shuddered slightly as he tapped his head just above his right ear. "Something's wrong with this one, sandworms never, ever come fully above ground, if they did they'd have to create a new hole for them to crawl back down!"

The monster began to circle around them like a living wall that drew closer with every passing moment. Before the worm could crush them with its body a jeep appeared out of the dessert coming towards them, with armed men on board. However, as it drew closer no shots were fired at the sandworm, instead a gruff voice spoke to them. "DROP YOU WEAPONS NOW OR YOU'RE WORM BAIT!"

Three distressed looks were exchanged, and a staff and a briefcase fell to the ground. Zazie shuddered, but much to Aeris' surprise his face was unmarred by the wetness of tears, only letting lose with a sarcastic mutter. "This is studying sandworms a little closer than I wanted to...:. The sandworm amazingly began to slowly worm its way back down into the ground and the jeep drove closer, guns pointed right at them.

The man who spoken growled gruffly at them a second time. "Get into the car, we'll see what the boss wants to do with you!" Aeris' staff was taken from the ground and thrown into the jeep without a thought and nobody seemed to want to try and open Lucresia's briefcase. Guns where leveled at all three of them, and no more words were spoken. Lucresia on the other hand had whispered a few words before this had started. "Don't resist them now, they're expecting it, wait for my signal." The young boy and the sixty five year old half Cetra both nodded like obedient children.

---

They where driven into a small camp and they were lead under guard to the one who was apparently in charge of the situation. He was a thin man with a black beared, and odd brown eyes. He looked down on them harshly. "What are you doing here?"

His voice was corse as sand, even Lucresia needed to remember to not stutter or show fear as she responded. "I didn't know that anyone owned any particular place and could keep others out of it." The man glowered at them with pity and hatred in his eyes.

"You stray unarmed dogs, this entire desert will soon by mine to control like a shiny pearl! That sandworm attacking you was no coincidence, allow me to show you the power of the Master of the Desert!" Guns where prodded into their backs (even Zazie's) and they where lead forward into a large tent, in the middle of which was an odd device apparently sticking into the ground. Next to it was a small screen with lines running along it and those lines jumped lightly as they walked into the room.

The Desert Master flipped a small switch on the odd device and it started too move back and forth. As he did the small green lines began to hop up and down like incredible speed almost leaping off the screen. He then flipped it off again and suddenly Zazie's face filled with anger.

"You... a subsonic wave generator, you creating vibrations in the ground to drive the sandworms mad! Disrupting their mating, and everything else, do you have any idea what your doing? Anything that hurts sandworms ends up hurting everyone else sooner or later, is all you think about yourself? You're using the sandworms like your own personal guard dogs!" The Desert Master leaned down and looked Zazie in the eye. "You know what, I don't care!"

He slapped Zazie with such strength that he was driven to the ground his limbs splayed wildly, and a large pink imprint on his cheek. Zazie lay on the ground in silence, his face contorting with rage as the Desert Master spoke. "The sandworms are tools that any man with enough intelligence can control. That is what separates brilliant men from the fools who surround them, we find ways to use tools to make other tools work for us!"

A small laugh left Zazie's mouth as blood trickled out of it, and somehow he managed to get his legs and arms back underneath him. Lucresia gave him an odd look that Aeris couldn't possibly understand, and then he looked the Desert Master right in the eye.

"You think it's fun to see another form of life suffer?" Zazie suddenly spun in the sand and he ripped the brown cloak was wearing from his neck sending flying straight up towards the ceiling of the tent, the guards eyes following it.

They where destined to die because they followed that cloak and did not see what was on underneath it. Aeris' eyes widened in complete and utter shock, underneath that cloak Zazie wore a red scarf leading down to a black shirt. A black shirt over which he wore a brown vest leading to brown gloves, brown gloves she had seen him wearing, but hadn't seen the black spiked armbands around his wrists. Nor had she seen that around his waste he wore two belts, with a holster strapped to each one.

His hands moved almost faster than Aeris' eyes could follow as he grabbed both of those guns and twisted them behind him without so much as a glance in the direction they where pointing. There was something surreal about it to Aeris, the way those two small silver guns especially made for a child to wield could fire real bullets instead of some play replica. Real bullets that regardless their small size ripped through skin and flesh, in the first two shots the guards behind him and Aeris went down.

He spun around pivoting on his foot, one gun pointing at the erstwhile Master of the Desert and the other along with his face pointed at the third guard. Zazie suddenly looked much taller, as if he had grown several inches in the span of a few seconds, his face was now transfixed in a snarl of rage.

Even if he had to point his gun up and tilt his head to bring it level with the final guard that made those two tiny revolvers no less deadly. The man suddenly fell to his knees looking into Zazie face barely uttering one word "Deamon" before the chambers rotated on both guns. One bullet ripped through the guard's skull killing him like the other two, the other bullet flew past the Master of the Desert slamming into the machine he had been using causing sparks to dance along it.

Zazie smirked at sight of the corpse before it. "A 'deamon' I suppose that's all your limited mind could ever comprehend me as!" He then turned and faced his one living foe inside the tent. "You think it's funny to abuse a lesser form of life, assuming there is such a ting? Well you know what, I think your right, because if it does exist I know you're it! Standing here watching you squirm in my sights, it's far more invigorating then fishing ever sounded!"

Aeris could only stare in horror. "Zazie what are you doing?" Zazie didn't turn to look at her as he snarled out his answer in what passed for a guttural voice coming from one so young. "What I'm doing is about to make this pathetic excuse for a man pay for what he did to my sandworms! Now 'Master' it appears that one of your subjects has an argument with you, what are you going to do?"

Suffice to say the Dessert Master was suffering from an entirely different kind of fear concerning Zazie than Aeris was at that moment. Aeris was afraid of what he might do if not stoped, the Master was afraid of what would happen to him if Zazie wasn't stoped, but he had no way to stop him. Zazie's eyes where no longer blue any more, at some point they had become a pure dark violet.

"I wana see you get down on the desert your supposedly the master of and kiss it begging for forgiveness!" The Desert Master did so, and as he spat sand out of his mouth a few moments later. "WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD ARE YOU!" Zazie's lip twisted up in a defiant smirk. "MY NAME IS ZAZIE THE BEAST, AND I'M A REAL DESERT MASTER! Because I take the time to look after the desert, in fact I think I'll give you a first hand experience what the a real desert master does!"

With that, Zazie parted the hair on the right side of his face, and a small green device was apparently attached to his head in some way, most likely simply clipped to his ear. He tapped it three times, and suddenly the ground began to shake with increasing strength, at least untill a huge sandworm rose from the ground itself. In the blink of an eye "The Desert Master" became one with the desert as that worm made him its afternoon snack.

Aeris headed for the door and Zazie reached out a hand stopping her. "That would be a bad idea. Sandworms are ripping this place apart even as I speak. Anyone outside this tent is gonna end up inside a worms belly, you should just stay put for now." Aeris did, and her gaze locked not on Zazie but on Lucresia who did not look nearly as surprised as she did "You, have a lot of explaining to do."

---

Amazingly (or not so amazingly) one of the few things that the sandworms didn't destroy in the camp was the jeep with Aeris' staff and Lucresia's briefcase in it. Tents where melted by acidic breath and the people themselves had become just one small appetiser for sandworms.

As the three got back into jeep Zazie had once again put back on his cloak and tied it around his chest hiding his guns and armbands from sight. (actually he pushed the lose fitting armbands farther back on his arms, up to his shoulders to hide them from view. However with the flick of the wrist they would slide down his arms to rest just behind his gloves.)

No mater how she tried, Aeris was unable to make herself fully believe that he was the same person she had just seen kill three men, and by default destroy the rest of the encampment.

As the motor started with one deft twist Lucresia started talking. "Aeris, everything I told you about Zazie what I told you is true, I found him out in the desert after his parents had been killed, six years ago."

Aeris felt her eyebrows raise, it was like Vincent saying that he had done something when he was 35. What he generally meant was that he had done something when he was actually 65, but Vincent tracked his age as PM (Post Meteor) date +30. In fact she should have counted it as PM +60 but he didn't count BM (Before Meteor) years 30-0 for his age because he had slept through them. But how could Zazie's age be like that, unless he had only been two years old, then...

Lucresia shook her head sadly as if she as reading her mind. "He was six. You see I was tracking down some information to do with some science project Hojo was supposed to be working on out here since he had an unlimited number of Cetra subjects within his reach.

He wasn't shy about how he got them, he had one of his subordinates round up a group of bandits to attack the few people who where travelling, with the goal of taking a child alive. Zazie was unfortunately enough to be that child.

I arrived at the lab too late to stop the experiments, but fast enough to work with the results. You see they where doing more then simple Jenova cells and mako injections, they where also experimenting with Cetra's abilities to hear the planet.

However, they transferred those abilities into humans, or came close, but instead of hearing the planet Zazie hears the voices of animals, and being just about the only animal around, that meant sandworms. What they intended to do was use an on/off switch in that device you see on his ear, when its off he would be perfectly normal, when its on he would become a mindless animal.

I modified it to restrict transmissions so that he can control sandworms instead of the sandworms controlling him. I also made him contacts to eliminate the mako glow and make his eyes look more blue, and finally I made his guns for him."

Aeris looked back at Zazie who at the moment was paying more attention to the rapidly passing desert scenery then he was to the conversation. If he had been five six years ago. "He's only aged about half as much as should have..." Aeris let the thought trail off but Lucresia only nodded.

"The moment you get Jenova cells injected into you ageing starts to slow, most people only get them at an age where it isn't so noticeable, or at least not so undesirable. However Zazie will most likely look like an adolescent for the next century." Aeris shuddered, suddenly her own problems concerning the passing of time didn't seem so large all things concerned. However ,an odd thought came into her mind.

"Sephiroth got Jenova cells before he was even born, shouldn't he have gone through the same thing?" Lucresia shook her head sadly. "Because Sephiroth got them when he did the Jenova cells didn't alter human biology, they controlled it. Sephiroth didn't slow ageing like anyone else did, he stoped physically ageing the moment he hit his peak physical ability."

Aeris looked back at Zazie again, he was 11 years old and the gap between how old he was and how old he looked was apparently only get wider. The thought sent a shudder down her spine as she remembered what he had done. "Why did you do that for him?" Aeris didn't have time to realise what kind of question it was to ask, it simply slipped from her mouth. Lucresia gave a weak smile as she spoke. "I didn't need to see any more children grow up to be Sephiroth, that's what happens when they're given power, and now way to defend themselves from those who want to abuse them because of it."