Two Face

An FFVII/FFI/FFVI drabble with Dissidia overtones

The blond man in the business suit exited the taxi in the old, ruined part of Midgar.
"Are you sure this is where you want to get dropped off?" the driver asked. "I mean…no one lives here but the monsters now…"
The blond turned to meet the driver's frightened gaze with a suave movement-he was not used to such fluidity without his armor. "This is the place," he said in a booming voice. And suddenly, the driver felt that he was glad to be rid of the man as well as glad to be leaving the deserted sector. He sped off without waiting for his passenger to give him a tip.
Garland wouldn't have given him one anyway.

Strange world, this Gaia, Garland thought as he entered the apartment building and called the elevator. The elevator, with its sliding cage door, still worked, as his confidante assured him it would.
He rode upwards through the dark. It was merely business, he told himself…not to calm his nerves, but to calm his frustration at being called across the universe in a moment's notice. Not only that, but he'd found it necessary to leave his armor behind, wear a business suit-a suit!-and take a taxi, a subspecies of that purely hellish creation known as a CAR. What use were cars anyway? They were cold, unfeeling, and restricting. Not like Chocobos. And when a car took your orders, you got a sense that it was doing it with joy, maybe a little malice, instead of humans, who bowed in submission.
Garland hated machines. If the stairs of this building weren't ripped to shreds, he wouldn't be in this elevator.
Thankfully, the cage door slid open on the top floor and let him out into a dilapidated hallway with no source of light. He strode through the shades, arriving at apartment 106: the only one that still had a door. He knocked three times as instructed.
"Come in," a gentle female voice called out to him.
Garland opened the door professionally, walking in to meet his confidante, the one who had called him.
She sat next to a roaring fire, her silver hair glowing with the reflection of the flames. She was turned so only her left side faced Garland. She was a paragon of beauty…if you were into feminine beauty. Garland wasn't the sort to be hypnotized, and only barely the sort to be seduced. But she smiled, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. She seemed to think she had some sort of power over him. Her skin was the same shade as his, with maybe a bit more gray in the sheen. She was clothed in a fluted purple cocktail dress, as though she thought being a flirt would increase the chances of getting her way.
"Chaos," she addressed Garland.
Garland was taken aback. Hardly anyone used that name for him…and he liked to be called by that name. It reminded him of the powers he once had. He bowed politely: "Jenova."
Jenova smirked, still looking at him but facing a perpendicular direction. "I thank you for responding to my call. It isn't often that someone as powerful as myself will yield to my commands."
And there Garland felt the anger rise; of COURSE this woman would equate herself to him. Next she would claim superiority, which was much less than acceptable.
"I am not your servant," he reminded her. "I have come to entertain your notions, not kiss your feet."
"Very well." She rose. "The universe needs us, Chaos. And yet it thinks we have both perished. I have the marks to prove it." And for the first time, she turned to face him head on.
Garland wasn't fazed. He'd seen worse.
The left side of her face was disfigured in a stomach-churning way. This was no battle wound or birth defect. No, this was something unnatural. The skin was blue, mottled, and puckered. One eye had no pupil. The hair over that side of her head, instead of being a silver mane, was a short cropping of wiry gray.
"If you were wondering," she said, "I had stayed a while with an Esper experimenter who functioned as my plastic surgeon. He helped me regain what I lost by spending years in a tank of preservative chemicals. However, before he could put the last piece into place-" She stroked the blue, puckered half of her face "-the Turks crossed world borders just to shoot him down. Now I wonder why. Could it be because they were looking for me? They must have been very disappointed to return home without me in their clutches. I escaped that day, but I plan not to 'escape' ever again, if you know what I mean. No more Turks will go home alive after coming to capture me."
"How did you get them to leave without taking you?" Garland asked out of morbid curiosity.
"I set one of Dr. Cid's OLD experiments on them. His first Esper fusion…a fine specimen until it was shot in the head. Its newfound homicidal mania was exactly what I needed to chase the Turks away. Call it the ultimate bioweapon."
"So you waited for Dr. Cid to rebuild you…and then…"
"And then, a little less whole than I would have liked, I left for home. Or at least what had become home after two thousand years. But this place is much better when you're viewing it outside of an aquarium. Don't you agree?"
"I wouldn't know. I don't like it much."
"Of course not. Your world is still behind the times. You don't even have mechs yet."
"We don't need them."
"I bet." She picked a teacup off the table and just swigged the scalding tea like it was nothing, not even trying to be ladylike. "In any case, Chaos, you are the only one I have heard of who can even dare to match my power. What do you say to combining our powers to make this universe ours?"
"I generally work alone."
"You can't afford to. Your Chaotic powers were stripped from you. You can't get the fiends back without my help, and I…I cannot create the proper Reunion without your help. Once the four fiends and the Reunion are in place, we will both be what we were meant to be, and we can rule this pitiful universe as king and queen."
"I need no queen."
"I need no king. But we DO need each other. As it turns out, my current four disciples…they're not enough." She smiled maliciously, as though she was fantasizing about what horrible things she could do to Kadaj, Loz, Yazoo, and Sephiroth simply for not being Garland. "You have powers beyond your own speculation, Chaos. In fact, very few men have ever taken the title of Chaos."
"There have been others?"
"Join with me, and know my knowledge, Chaos." She smiled at him, extending a hand. "Do we have a deal?"
"A business partnership," said Garland, fitting his hand into Jenova's. "But only because THAT'S what your face used to look like."