Masamune
Audrey
sordidstory@yahoo.com

Sooner or later, at one time or another in our lives, we all feel used. Like a tool. Like a weapon. Used for someone else's reasons, motive, revenge, loves, lives. At one point or another, we all feel disgusted or appalled or proud or saddened at what we are being used for...but can do nothing but watch...

My master is a monster and I am a sword. They named me Masamune, and it is that name they fear, for along with it comes the name of he who wields me. Sephiroth. Everyone shivers, everyone retreats, and all revere. Sephiroth. Masamune. What a pair they think us. We are all-powerful. We are the controllers. We make you our tools. What fools, what utter fools you all are.

I am given to a child, a boy, and I know him, I feel him, I make him. I complete him. It is I that molds him, makes him the warrior he is to become, makes him a man. He holds me, and I bring him merit. He swings me, and I bring him strength. He fights with me, and I bring him victory. Then he grows, and the targets, the victories do as well. Dragons, beasts, monsters I slay. We are inseparable. We are indestructible. But there is one monster we cannot destroy.

Jenova.

He is drawn to the files, drops me in his haste. My taped handle screams for his grip in its absence, but he clings to the dusty pages, instead. Days pass. Then, he picks me up once more. But now, there is something different, there is something WRONG. I do not control him. He does not control me. Instead, we are both tools, just tools, and this new grip knows me yet does not know me at all. I am swept up behind shining silver hair, dragged on metal grating, slaying randoms, and how can he control me when he cannot control himself?

It is all a blur. What is now, what is then, what has passed and what is happening? Then, he approaches: that boy. He withdraws, swings back, and WHAT IS GOING ON? I try to concentrate, his will, on the actions, our collective practiced grace, but even that intimacy is gone, blurred by hatred, anger, madness, and Her.

We enter together. She is there, foul, vile. We are repulsed, together. She is spiteful in her beauty, smile. In her, in my reflection, is a desecration of a legend, the fall of a hero, the crumbling of the names we had established. Cold blade cuts through flesh that is not flesh, and as the head hits the ground with a thump, I relish it all. Yet...yet it is not over yet. He picks up the head. I am now companion to a severed head. The fool, oh, the poor, sad, fool. My sad sad Sephiroth. My poor, sorry boy- what have you become? He seeks to control her...he does not know... No, no it is not over. He rampages, he kills; the fire, the furious fire that rages the village below the mountain heats my blade. An intruder takes hold of me...I destroy he who controlled me, controlled now by someone else, to fall...fall...fall.....

We disappear. We die. The legend is but a desecrated legend, the name but a forbidden one. They forget about us, in that little town below the mountain. But then...oh...then he returns, returns to me, and I plead, oh how I plead, for SEPHIROTH, that boy with the grace, and the destiny for greatness...but as his hand grips my handle, all I get is more madness...and I know now. I brace myself. I am nothing but metal. We are nothing but tools. The hero, his legendary name are no more. I am efficient metal. I am a simple blade. I cut through things with no feeling, by his orders, Her orders. We fight the intruder boy, his friends. I sneer at their naivete along with my master. The leader- he trades his swords in like cards, getting new! Improved models! They don't even have names. Then: I am readied. He is laughing. He looks at me, smiles, and I see the boy, almost, though I know I am lying to myself. For that image, I do this for him. She is an innocent, a praying girl. She is helpless. He brings me down viciously into her, and I do my job. I am cold cold steel. I am thoughtless, emotionless blade. I am a tool. I have no will. I am cold, I am steel, and together we kill an innocent flower girl. She dies, and I know that now...now is the end.

We meet again, that strange blonde boy. He is, She is confident. They do not see it. I am not there to reflect. I am not part of their team of insanity and beauty anymore. I am a tool. They will not see what I see: A man who names his guns, his love, another who names his planes, his spear, a woman who knows and names her moves, oh for that again dear Sephiroth. And they go on and on, and their leader...Though he knows not his swords, his self, he knows his NAME. Do you know your name anymore Sephiroth? Do you know what it means? They name their purpose, their reason, their will, and it is Aeris, Justice, Life. Don't you see? What do we have Sephiroth? You do not know who you are, or I, or the legend, or the name of the hero you used to be. You are random. You are blind. You are a tool beyond tools. If I could, I would speak for him, but I am cold steel, frozen metal. I am, again, merely a tool. Except that this time, this too fails him, something I have never done. They kill him, he falls again, away from me, the boy I loved, the boy I made, and I clatter down. I am no materia, I am only a sword, so I let him go, let him slip, knowing I will never see the boy again. He leaves, they leave, eventually She leaves, but I remain, alone in the dust, motionless, soundless, homeless, masterless for now. Until one day, another boy can pick me up, and give me a title, and build us a legacy, and let me name him....

Name him...a hero.