AerTi In Space: AU Concept

AerTi In Space: AU concept

When the team fight their way through Hojo's lab in the Shinra building, Tifa and Aerith pass the central pedestal and see cracks in Jenova's tube. In a split second, glass shatters, mako splashes, black tendrils are everywhere. Around Tifa's throat.

This body fades. And you are...

Compatible.

We must continue. We must endure.

Bluish veins snake down Tifa's limbs as Jenova's infection spreads, dissolves into her.

One eye jitters and flashes scarlet when Tifa first connects to the hive mind. She summons a lightning storm which shorts out most of the containment in the lab, then blows a hole in the ceiling and ascends to the roof of the Shinra building.

By the time Aerith and the team reach her, she's surrounded by robed figures, R&D monsters, flanked by Cloud and Sephiroth.

They all call her 'Mother' now.

Aerith, one of the few not under Neo-Jenova's thrall or restrained by those who are, fights through and begs Tifa to wake up, to come back.

But when she touches Tifa's hand, she feels something more invasive, more wrong than she's ever felt in her life. Aerith's skin bubbles where they touch, something is crawling and burning through her veins, and she screams.

The awakening of a new Jenovan node has caught the attention of both the Jenovans and a spacefaring sect of Cetra who departed thousands of years ago and evolved separately to those who remained on Gaia. Two warships glitch into existence in the blue lightning bruised-sky maelstrom above the Shinra building.

Tifa and Aerith are whisked away by their respective alien peoples. (To avoid making Gaia even more of a mess, and because Tifa's now a crucial, living part of the Jenovan collective.)

Aerith tries to understand what it is to be Cetra far from Gaia's lifestream. The Cetra who left and became space-farers are entirely different - the only similarity is their connection to the energy flow of the universe, but it is strange, and unfriendly, and metallic, and far too big. Where does Aerith belong now?

Kept apart by their peoples, who are bitter enemies, Aerith and Tifa maintain a mysterious mental connection across the galaxy.

They meet in dreams, but when you're both lifeforms whose consciousness transcends physical bodies, where is the line between dreams and reality? And how much are the Jenovans, watching now that Tifa is the centre of their everything?

If they escape, will there even be a home to return to?