Sephiroth simply blinks at Albedo for a moment as he processes this. It's far from the most outlandish thing he's ever heard, but it's also a lot to take in. "Creation, hm?" he murmurs, half to himself. "Should I take that as an explanation for why you don't appear to have aged in all that time?"
He at least seems to take what Albedo says at face value, without hesitation. Whether this is naivete or his simply feeling Albedo has no reason to lie could be a matter for speculation, but at least it means the process of convincing him can be skipped.
His gaze flicks over to Albedo when the boy asks his question, but given what Albedo's already said about his own origins...Sephiroth doesn't see much reason to hold anything back. "My parents surrendered my existence to the corporation before I was born," he says flatly. "That company, ShinRa, used the lifeforce of the planet, called mako, as fuel for its generators to create electricity. It had risen to such supremacy through its monopoly on mako that it was essentially the primary authority, governing force, and military power of the planet. They sought the remnants of an ancient race of people from which the humans of my world had diverged from long ago, the Cetra - they were said to be tenders of the planet, able to communicate with it and channel the flow of its energy. More than that, the Cetra told of a place called the promised land - a paradise of supreme happiness. ShinRa assumed that such a land must be fertile, and since lands stripped of mako are barren...then surely it must be a place where they could harvest infinite mako. So they sought to find the Cetra...or, barring that, to create one."
Sephiroth shrugs. "Before I was born...I was injected with the cells of a being they believed to be one of the Cetra, called Jenova. Had this given me the abilities of a Cetra, I'm sure they would have used me to try to harvest the planet's energy, or lead them to that promised land. But...they'd misidentified Jenova. It wasn't a Cetra. It was what the Cetra called the calamity from the stars...a sort of sentient planet-killing virus. Subduing Jenova, preventing it from destroying the planet completely, is what wiped the Cetra out. But Jenova's abilities made me exceptional in other ways than they'd intended, and ShinRa have never been a company to let anything go unexploited. I'm not what they intended, but for my entire life, I was still their property. Just a product of their science department."
He pauses. "From the way you speak of yourself...I feel as though you may understand this."
no subject
He at least seems to take what Albedo says at face value, without hesitation. Whether this is naivete or his simply feeling Albedo has no reason to lie could be a matter for speculation, but at least it means the process of convincing him can be skipped.
His gaze flicks over to Albedo when the boy asks his question, but given what Albedo's already said about his own origins...Sephiroth doesn't see much reason to hold anything back. "My parents surrendered my existence to the corporation before I was born," he says flatly. "That company, ShinRa, used the lifeforce of the planet, called mako, as fuel for its generators to create electricity. It had risen to such supremacy through its monopoly on mako that it was essentially the primary authority, governing force, and military power of the planet. They sought the remnants of an ancient race of people from which the humans of my world had diverged from long ago, the Cetra - they were said to be tenders of the planet, able to communicate with it and channel the flow of its energy. More than that, the Cetra told of a place called the promised land - a paradise of supreme happiness. ShinRa assumed that such a land must be fertile, and since lands stripped of mako are barren...then surely it must be a place where they could harvest infinite mako. So they sought to find the Cetra...or, barring that, to create one."
Sephiroth shrugs. "Before I was born...I was injected with the cells of a being they believed to be one of the Cetra, called Jenova. Had this given me the abilities of a Cetra, I'm sure they would have used me to try to harvest the planet's energy, or lead them to that promised land. But...they'd misidentified Jenova. It wasn't a Cetra. It was what the Cetra called the calamity from the stars...a sort of sentient planet-killing virus. Subduing Jenova, preventing it from destroying the planet completely, is what wiped the Cetra out. But Jenova's abilities made me exceptional in other ways than they'd intended, and ShinRa have never been a company to let anything go unexploited. I'm not what they intended, but for my entire life, I was still their property. Just a product of their science department."
He pauses. "From the way you speak of yourself...I feel as though you may understand this."