What Cloud sees...it's not Rhadore. Not in its entirety. It's already going to be too much at once, but every moment of Sephiroth's time there would truly be overwhelming. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, what comes through are the highlights. The moments that, to Sephiroth at least, were particularly memorable.
A team of three SOLDIERs - or, not quite SOLDIERs, not yet, not as Cloud would come to know them - in trouble, facing down dozens of heavily armed Rhadorans. A far too young Sephiroth, cutting through those Rhadorans like butter. Sephiroth, assuming command of the squad. An angry blond - Cloud might recognize him as Glenn, if he met Glenn during his brief stay in Town - calling him a cyborg, declaring Sephiroth would never be one of them, declaring his refusal to fight alongside someone who hadn't undergone the same brutal training he and his squad had. Sephiroth apologizing after being yelled at for whistling for his team, admitting that it's his first assignment and that all his supposed accomplishments and heroism prior to it have been recruitment lies of ShinRa. Saying that he doesn't want to be a hero, and just wants to live a normal life...the last so quietly that no one hears him, and his shrugging it off as being an impossible fantasy. Sephiroth asking after his mother, holding a locket with her picture. Sephiroth remarking that talking to the others in his squad must be what it's like to have fun, and the squad showing affection to him - even the previously angry blond. A number of small scenes as time passes, both warm and dark - the squad talking, spending time together, the murder of helpless Rhadorans that Sephiroth desperately tries to justify to himself as he clings to the training he's been given that he struggles to accept, Glenn hugging Sephiroth and telling him he can show compassion, hunting through a fortress of dead bodies for his lost locket with the others, the group speaking with a Rhadoran boy close to Sephiroth's own age.
And, finally...Sephiroth facing down that boy, Rosen, the last of the Rhadorans. Rosen asking for death to join his people, and Sephiroth encouraging him to leave with them, to find his own place he belongs in the world - the way Sephiroth did. Sephiroth begging Rosen, for Glenn and the others, to live. Rosen countering that Sephiroth has to choose between saving him, and saving his squad, demanding he make that choice...and Sephiroth finally, in agony, making it. What feels like - at least within Sephiroth's memories - the utter finality of that choice, and what he loses with it, the fury and grief and recriminations from Glenn and the others, Glenn kicking Sephiroth's miraculously returned locket into the Lifestream...and Rhadore, utterly destroyed in every conceivable way, collapsing into the sea.
Cloud gets to see Sephiroth's very first field mission. He gets to see his hero. A boy of twelve, already traumatized, committing genocide.
Path 1 (spoilers for Ever Crisis: First Soldier)
A team of three SOLDIERs - or, not quite SOLDIERs, not yet, not as Cloud would come to know them - in trouble, facing down dozens of heavily armed Rhadorans. A far too young Sephiroth, cutting through those Rhadorans like butter. Sephiroth, assuming command of the squad. An angry blond - Cloud might recognize him as Glenn, if he met Glenn during his brief stay in Town - calling him a cyborg, declaring Sephiroth would never be one of them, declaring his refusal to fight alongside someone who hadn't undergone the same brutal training he and his squad had. Sephiroth apologizing after being yelled at for whistling for his team, admitting that it's his first assignment and that all his supposed accomplishments and heroism prior to it have been recruitment lies of ShinRa. Saying that he doesn't want to be a hero, and just wants to live a normal life...the last so quietly that no one hears him, and his shrugging it off as being an impossible fantasy. Sephiroth asking after his mother, holding a locket with her picture. Sephiroth remarking that talking to the others in his squad must be what it's like to have fun, and the squad showing affection to him - even the previously angry blond. A number of small scenes as time passes, both warm and dark - the squad talking, spending time together, the murder of helpless Rhadorans that Sephiroth desperately tries to justify to himself as he clings to the training he's been given that he struggles to accept, Glenn hugging Sephiroth and telling him he can show compassion, hunting through a fortress of dead bodies for his lost locket with the others, the group speaking with a Rhadoran boy close to Sephiroth's own age.
And, finally...Sephiroth facing down that boy, Rosen, the last of the Rhadorans. Rosen asking for death to join his people, and Sephiroth encouraging him to leave with them, to find his own place he belongs in the world - the way Sephiroth did. Sephiroth begging Rosen, for Glenn and the others, to live. Rosen countering that Sephiroth has to choose between saving him, and saving his squad, demanding he make that choice...and Sephiroth finally, in agony, making it. What feels like - at least within Sephiroth's memories - the utter finality of that choice, and what he loses with it, the fury and grief and recriminations from Glenn and the others, Glenn kicking Sephiroth's miraculously returned locket into the Lifestream...and Rhadore, utterly destroyed in every conceivable way, collapsing into the sea.
Cloud gets to see Sephiroth's very first field mission. He gets to see his hero. A boy of twelve, already traumatized, committing genocide.