I'm honestly looking forward to Cloud's getting to have this mystery meeting at one point with either all who know of his existence or exposing himself to everybody in the tower, them somehow dealing with trying to track him or something(thinking he's a person), and then me laughing at inner-Zack and Yuffie promptly trolling them and imagining him just petting a mad wet Sephiroth cat.

I don't know where my mind goes at times. But I oh so LOVE it right now! XD

Genesis was a stale DNA source, who could only output his cells into others, and this is why he was degrading. In a lot of ways he an incomplete water system, he had shunts to carry his water to other places, but his system both didn't receive anymore water from outside... and was leaky.

Essentially the body cells of Jenova had the inherent ability to infect and absorb, to evolve by absorbing beneficial traits even as they infected others to make them similar to itself. Genesis could only infect, in a way each infection was weakening him, and degrading him further and further.

Angeal on the other hand was a perfect form of said system, fine on its own, could easily survive without using his abilities, but could get stronger by absorbing beneficial traits from his victims to improve themselves.

What Angeal did in the last meeting was absorb multiple of his clones and overwrite himself into a monster form, like Jenova's beast form. His whole goal was to die, so the overwriting of himself temporarily put him in a berserk state, and forced Zack to kill him while he was relatively weaker.

Basically if Angeal had started making clones from Dragons, Iron Giants, and other things he would of been so strong that he could of matched Sephiroth... He just didn't want to... He wanted to die human.

So with the main self dead, the clones started dying off like cells from a body whose heart had ceased beating, like Jenova's monsters if she was destroyed...

So to correct you, its only Genesis who CAN degrade, Angeal will just attempt to kill himself thinking he is a monster. For it is Angeal who believes that Monsters can't have honor, souls, or even the right to live. All of the abilities he gained from his heritage just told him that he was not human, was never human, and as such needed to be put down like a monster... Bye a Hero/Human.

I like that Turk's style. Probably not if I were Hollander, but it's funny from the outside.

Enjoyed all the chapters in the story. Wish there were more, but thank you for what you have written

I still love this today just as much as I did five years ago. Cloud’s busy gaslighting all of Shinra as a malevolent AI. But what shenanigans will he come up with once he proves unable to resist meddling with younger Cloud? I do hope Genesis gets healed in time, even though he’s a pain in Cloud’s incorporeal neck

This is great!

IIRC, Angeal doesn't suffer from degradation in canon because he has a more "natural" infusion of JENOVA cells (from his Mother being injected and then birthing him), and the ability to shapeshift, whereas Genesis had an imperfect one (with Gillian giving some of her JENOVA injected cells to then be injected into him, which seemed a huge roundabout way of doing things to me), and the ability to infect others.

As for a cure...well, that's easy. Aerith! Lifestream infusion! Acceptance as a WEAPON by the Planet.

I'm also curious if fusing with Angeal would help him. Degradation is from the ability to make copies of oneself that JENOVA cells grant, but there are two abilities they grant. Ability to make copies (also known as "infect others to make monsters with a virus made through it's cellsand the ability to shapeshift (which Angeal used in Crisis Core, and Sephiroth used throughout FF7). Angeal apparently had the shapeshift ability, which made him Immune to Degradation.

Might also help to have a stable JENOVA cell carrier infused or injected into him, like Sephiroth's cells.

But this is likely an AU anyway, so I can only look forward to your interpretations of how things will go.

I really like this story. It's quite unique.

Please update this is such a fun story!
-Fan!

This is an utterly unique and fantastic take on the time travel scenario. I do admit to wondering, though, about how exactly Future Reeve's 'oh crap what did I just do' moment went down. Spectacular horrified shock was involved at some point, I'm sure. I love the childish harassment of Sephiroth, and I wonder what will happen (if anything) between Tron Cloud and Corporeal Cloud. And how much the Turks will resemble a kicked anthill. And several other things, really...
But, in summary:
I ENJOYED THIS

I find it interesting that EVERY one of the First Class is able to sense Cloud-in-the-cameras... (it's implied, to me, that it is the same for Angeal. I wonder if any of the other SOLDIER members can...)

Oh my god, I'm DYING. This fic is THE BEST. I wish there was more of it, but what you do have is pure gold.

oh you're kidding me, it stops here? T.T it was getting so good too!

This was an amazing read! I can't wait to see more chapters!

oh come on! this fic was awesome beyond words. such a shame, shame, shame.

Yay! Thanks for the update!

Still love this fic! How Cloud plays with Genesis, pranks Sephiroth and throws Shinra into chaos, all while accidentally being turned into a computer AI :)