Dreams of the Morrow
A Redemption Storyline
Genesis Rhapsodos - @ApocaplypseInR3d
Victor Nikiforov (OC) - @angelic_legacy
Midgar, εγλ 0000
As word of Genesis' degradation spreads, the ShinRa scientist Lilija Baranovskaja sets out to investigate a way to cure the disease.
Believing that neither pure Jenova cells nor S cells would be able to cure the degradation, as the Jenova genome did not combine correctly with Type G cells, the scientist seeks to find a way to combine the two genomes differently. Building on the assumption that Project S had been successful as the Jenova genome was passed down “naturally” from Lucrecia Crescent to her biological child, she believes that a possible cure for degradation could be found by working in reverse, creating a natural child of Sephiroth and Genesis Rhapsodos, and then use the child’s own cells, where the two DNAs would combine naturally, to cure the disease in Genesis. Baranovskaja’s outlines her project, naming it Project Nikiforov (“bringer of victory”), but with Genesis and Hollander’s desertion, the project is put on indefinite hold.
After the Nibelheim Incident, Baranovskaja and her husband Yakov Feltsman, a now-retired ex-commander in the infantry, leave ShinRa to continue working on Project N, deciding to approach Genesis himself.
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Modeoheim, εγλ 0003
Genesis accepts to take part in the experiment, now conducted far away from ShinRa, with the condition that, after using the newborn’s cells to attempt a treatment for his degradation, Lilija and Yakov would take the child with them and raise him as their own.
As a result of Project Nikiforov, nine months later, in a cold December morning, a child is born, one year after Sephiroth's death in Nibelheim.
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Banora, εγλ 0004-07
Despite their initial agreement, after seeing the newborn, Genesis, still in turmoil for all that has occurred since his desertion and for the loss of both Angeal and Sephiroth, which he begins to blame on himself, has a change of heart. He names the child Victor, and raises him for the first three years of his life, with Yakov and Lilija’s help.
Project N, however, is in itself a failure. Genesis’s degradation is not cured, and the ex-SOLDIER grows weaker by the day, until he realizes he would soon be unable to protect his son, were ShinRa to find them.
With Zack Fair and Cloud Strife fleeing Nibelheim, he thus returns to his original plan, and, after being confronted by Hollander and almost killing him to keep him away from his son, he realizes he has no other choice but to separate from the child, sending him to the Northern Continent and leaving him in Yakov and Lilija’s care. As he leaves, he promises to return only if and when he would find a cure. Hoping against all hope that Victor is right in saying that he can still feel Sephiroth’s presence in this world, he also asks Yakov and Lilija to help his son find his lost father, when the time is right.
But after he receives the Gift of the Goddess and is cured from his degradation, he is also bestowed the mission to become the Planet’s Champion against Jenova and its legacy. With this chance of redemption also comes the realization he can’t go back to Victor, fearing he would be forced by the Goddess to eliminate his own son, who carried Sephiroth’s genes.
Stricken with grief over the conflicting desire to become a hero and his love for his son, he refuses to fight Gaia’s war against Jenova, and crystallizes himself in mako under Midgar.
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Icicle Inn area, εγλ 0007-11
Victor grows up in hiding with Yakov and Lilija, painfully missing the father he had known for a short while, and the father he had never met but always felt a deep connection with.
During Meteorfall and the Geostigma crisis, Lilija and Yakov keep him safely hidden in the area near Icicle Inn. But with Omega's rising, a now 7-year old Victor finally feels Sephiroth awakening once again, and this time, he sets out to search for his lost father, Yakov in tow, as Genesis himself wakes up from his stasis.