Something Wicked This Way Comes...
The harsh cries of a mind clawing at her own had been enough to rouse her from sleep in the warm strong arms wrapped around her little body. Glowing green eyes fluttered open at the shriek from the forest that was equally created in her mind, and Jenova lifted her head slowly from where it was rested on Loz’s shoulder. So rudely awakened had she been that it was probably important enough to go and investigate.
Crawling out from the sleeping bag and the warmth of Loz’s arms, she stood and levitated herself off into the forest where there was a sudden empty silence where a presence had once been. It didn’t take long for her to find the source of her awakening, and she set her bare feet on the ground and walked over to the fallen form of Sephiroth. He looked like he had crumpled over, and his mind was scattered it would appear.
She mentally investigated and took note that they large shard of mentality that had been the General was missing. She stared down at Sephiroth’s face and body as he lay quietly in the darkness of the night, and it only took her a few moments to come to a strong conclusion on what had occurred. The General had escaped.
While she had no control on the Lifestream itself save to find nourishment from it, she set her mind out to search out where the General might have gone. The Lifestream was like an active highway for every form on life that the planet had to offer, and she had come to master how the information moved about and how to hunt down the information that she sought out specifically. Where her mental abilities halted, her ability to read the Lifestream thrived. She could technically find anything she wanted that was on the planet, as long as she had enough time to do so.
The resonating thrum of the Lifestream had a direct path to the General’s essence as it had been used to steal the General away and now seemed to be protecting him of sorts. So, the Lifestream would send that one back to walk among the living again?
Jenova was terribly amused by this fact and outrightly giggled in the forest that she stood in. Her giggling soon escalated to bubbling laughter that bordered somewhere between hysteria and insanity, and her little frame shook with her own wild cackling in the forest that seemed to shudder with her amusement.
An evil smirk pulled over her childish lips as she stared down at Sephiroth, cat-like eyes missing nothing in the way of details on him. Much like every mortal on this planet, he was utterly breakable in body even if his mind was already gone to pieces. This too amused her greatly, and she waved a little hand in the air, the limp form rising from the ground at the command of her mind. She twirled his body around a little before beginning to walk back to camp, trekking off of the path with Sephiroth’s body still just floating behind her.
Stopping suddenly at a spot that was completely enclosed in by pushes, and she gently settled his body in the middle of them where it would be safe from finding until she deemed him ready to be found. A quick job back to camp, and she dragged back a blanket and covered him over, so that he wouldn’t get cold even if he was in a coma and technically throwing his body down a cliff would do nothing save maybe a little physical damage.
With Sephiroth safe, she moved back to where she had found him, scouting around until her little eyes picked out a piece of paper in a tree. “Why… hello there,” she whispered cheerfully and lifted herself off of the ground and taking the paper, opening it up and reading the contents. “Awww, you think you’re so smart little puppet, but I know better than you always. One step ahead is how I play my game,” she said as she read the note and crumpled it up into her little hands.
It would not due for anyone to read such contents, and she would see to it that nothing came of such words. No, she could build a much better story than some lies from a useless fragment that paled in comparison to her own intelligence. “Such a fool, you are, but I… I will make your return a warm one,” she said with a merry little giggle as she walked back to camp with the note in hand.
Stepping over to the embers of fire, she floated the note over and set it on top, watching as it caught fire and burned away into nothing but ashes. And those ashes she buried deep in the other ashes of wood and tree needles. Her cruel smirk had failed to falter as the fire light played over her cat-like eyes, a soft chuckle leaving her as she turned and looked around the camp at her ‘children’.
She walked over to Loz’s sleeping form and wiggled back into the place that she had been previously, cuddling up and looking around. No one would be any wiser to her because they all loved her… she was mother, and she was all consuming power that would break this planet into fragments.
“Run little General like the cowardice dog you are… I’m waiting for you,” she whispered and closed her eyes with a little smirk on her lips.