Even in the Final Fantasy series, Odin—supposed to stand alongside Zeus as a chief deity—never received his due respect. He was always overshadowed by legendary beasts like Bahamut and Phoenix. But in the real world, he proved himself one of the rare humanoid summons with both genius-level intellect and top-tier martial skill. In one-on-one combat, he outclassed every other summoned creature. And now, thanks to the Jenova-tainted Materia Kadaj had fused into him, his entire war-forged body had twisted into something nightmarish. His single eye burned a furious scarlet, radiating raw, unstoppable power.
True to form, Odin—already a high-end Silver-tier warrior—wasted no time. He cleaved through Lady Night's Windcut Blade attack in a single, unstoppable stroke. Then, in a fluid motion, he drew his greatsword and severed one of Flora's awakened limbs. Staggering back in shock, she barely had time to react before Odin hurled his spear. With a thunderous crack, the spear of condensed light carved a trench several meters wide through the forest floor. Golden Flash (Loz) stumbled out of the trees, one side of his armor shattered by the spear's aftershock.
Magnor's eyes went wide. In the movie, the Remnants had only summoned the brute Bahamut—a massive drake with devastating power but almost no brains—and the heroes had easily dispatched it. "Dark Vow" had clearly underestimated the threat of intelligent summons. Now faced with Odin, they were utterly unprepared.
Still, Magnor didn't panic. He leapt forward to intercept Odin's assault, shouting to Cloud: "Mr. Cloud! We're freelance adventurers investigating Geostigma's origin. Help us take down that short-haired guy! We'll handle the rest. Only by defeating them can we cure Geostigma and save all those children!"
As he spoke, Magnor unleashed Indestructible Body and Triple Elemental Strike, absorbing Odin's blow head-on. Then he barked orders: "Golden Flash, tie down the guy with the spear! Lady Night, you go next—hurry!"
Though they'd long known the Remnants' names, Magnor pretended ignorance to avoid clouding Cloud's judgment. With the "friendly" lineup set, Cloud naturally fell into formation.
Jack Harper watched from the shadows.
"Golden Flash can summon an army of magical weapons—just as Elliot Gray suspected, it's akin to 'Noble Phantasm' from Fate/stay night, 'King's Treasure.' But if he truly possessed every legendary weapon, he'd be well beyond Gold-tier by now—he'd never be stuck in Bronze. Most likely he only inherited the storage space, not the actual weapons. From the power emanations, these are mid-Bronze-tier arms, probably scavenged from elsewhere—mere magic equipment, not genuine Noble Phantasms."
"Lady Night… Hmph." Jack's gaze shifted. "She's somehow pushed Flora's awakened form even further—troublesome. But since all her Remnant selves link to Flora, we don't need to worry about her possessing others or sending bats to spy. The challenge is how to force her spirit out of Flora's body."
"Magnor!" Elliot Gray had theorized that Magnor might possess seven ultimate techniques. So far he'd used Frost Fist, Cloudbreaker Palm, Storm Kick, Triple Elemental Strike, and Indestructible Body—five in total. Wielding a greatsword suggests a sword skill as the sixth, perhaps the legendary Heavenly Sword Nameless or the Solitary Sword Saint's Art. But the seventh… If Elliot was right, that final technique would be the deadliest of all.
Jack was mulling this when the battle shifted. Magnor realized his Triple Elemental Strike and Indestructible Body couldn't withstand Odin's onslaught. In a flash, he drew the Chinese broadsword strapped to his back and cried out, "Sword Seventeen!"
With a flourish, a single blade became seventeen—each beam of light weaving together into a hundredfold-powerful strike. Odin reeled under the onslaught, seventeen deep furrows scorched into his armor.
"Indeed, that's the Holy Spirit Sword Art of the Sword Saint," Jack muttered, frowning. "He may still rank mid-Silver, but his true power clearly sits at Silver's pinnacle." Regardless of Vincent's absence, Jack could no longer wait.
He ripped off his eyepatch and unleashed Frost Grip coupled with an icy surge. From the nearby spring, a towering wave erupted. Dozens of water spouts shot skyward, then froze midair into ice spears. Those spears hurtled toward the crimson curtain of summoned weapons, shattering it outright.
Simultaneously, Jack clenched his fist in the void, and a three-meter-long pale-blue crystal halberd materialized in his hand. With one throw, it hurtled toward the awakened Flora.
Flora had already reattached her severed arm—her life force was extraordinary. She struck back with her Windcut Blades, severely wounding Kadaj. When Jack's halberd descended, she reacted without thinking, slamming her bone-forged blade across its shaft.
In that instant, the halberd shattered into countless fragments, then detonated with a thunderous blast. A mushroom cloud soared ten meters high and engulfed the battlefield. Unprepared, Flora took the brunt of the explosion. Even her Silver-tier resilience and awakened vitality couldn't spare her from being hurled over a hundred meters into the forest, blood spraying as she crashed.
"Sorry, Flora. This was the only way to get you off the field without making you a hostage," Jack thought grimly as he strode from the trees.
Both sides froze at the sudden explosion. All eyes turned to Jack Harper.
"Hey—whose side are you on?" Kadaj demanded. He'd been caught in the blast too, though the Remnants weren't lethally wounded—only their energy was sapped, and they weren't pleased.
Jack swept back his hair, revealing the Geostigma-scarred green skin beneath his eyepatch. "Ever since I contracted this curse, I've been seeing strange visions. Only now do I understand their meaning. Let me ask you one thing: if Mother truly rises again, will she grant me eternal life and infinite knowledge?"
Kadaj laughed. "Of course. Mother is omnipotent."
Jack nodded. "Then I'm on your side."
A low EQ, a lack of social insight, can be handy: the Remnants took his word without question, saving him a lot of effort.
Magnor, however, stared at the explosion's epicenter and asked, "Is that your new power? How did you do that?"
Jack smiled. "Those weren't ordinary ice weapons. They were made from solid oxygen at –220°C and solid hydrogen at –260°C—frozen into crystalline form. In fact, it's the main propellant for space shuttles."
Magnor pressed on. "And what about your replica of the Buster Sword—the Frostmourne-style axe?"
Jack shrugged. "I lost it on the last mission. If it doesn't form as a Summon Card, it vanishes when you leave the world."
"So you're unarmed?"
"Even if I crystallized ice into a weapon, it wouldn't carry enough mass."
"Then… just die!" Magnor bellowed. He unleashed Triple Elemental Strike—a trio of red, blue, and green energy beams aimed straight at Jack.
"Hmph. Unarmed against unarmed?" Jack only scoffed. But this time, his fist glowed with a heavy obsidian aura—the darkest shade of blue-black.
With a thunderous impact, their blows collided—louder than the ice-halberd's explosion. Both men staggered back. Jack's Dark Aquarius Cloth bore hairline cracks from the force. Magnor fared worse: his Indestructible Body was cracking, frost forming like black-blue scales across his armor. Each step he stumbled left an ice print on the ground. He fell back dozens of meters before the frost finally dissipated.
But Magnor wasn't focused on pain—he was stunned by Jack's newfound power. "How did you learn to harness inner force? And top-tier Ice Force at that? This… This is the Frostbane Art I taught Brandon Caswell! Damn it—you not only stole the Frostbane manual, you've already elevated it to its final form: Glacial Nirvana! Combining Frostbane with Saint Seiya ice-style martial arts, you've surpassed my Triple Elemental Strike. Before, without inner force, your ice diffused naturally and spread thin. Now that you understand inner force, blocking you is far more difficult."
Jack nodded. "Good guess. But don't think you'll defeat me with your Holy Spirit Sword Art alone, especially without the time-pause technique you never mastered. You only know up to 'Sword Seventeen,' which, though powerful, lacks the upper-tier techniques of a true Sword Saint. So, do you plan to use your seventh ultimate skill?"
Magnor's pupils constricted. "How do you know about the 'seventh ultimate'?"
Jack spread his hands. "Remember that newbie you used to trick me with—then teamed up to double-cross you? He guessed it."
Magnor ground his teeth. "Of course. We did miss another brilliant mind."
Jack Harper gathered a swirling galaxy of black-blue frost in his palm—silver flecks like stars caught in an icy vortex. Darkness and light combined, drawing in frigid air from every direction. Under that power, the City of Forgetting itself felt the chill: within ten miles, snow began to fall in great, feathery flakes, as if Jack had transported a northern kingdom to Midgar.
"You've truly perfected Glacial Nirvana—the ability to draw limitless freezing energy from the heavens and earth," Magnor said, a note of awe in his voice. "Yet, without inner force, you'd remain a relic of frost. Now what?"
Jack remained silent—until he invoked the final incantation: "Mahā Ananta!"
"Mahā Ananta! Mahā Ananta! Ha ha ha ha!" Magnor laughed, incredulous at Jack's mastery of such a warped ultimate technique. "Your ice force is negligible."
Jack said nothing, instead recalling Elliot Gray's earlier musings. In physics, ice and snow share the same origin, but in supernatural power systems, they spring from different sources: ice from the earth, snow from the sky. Though Jack could conjure snow by manipulating his own frost energy, he couldn't harness the power of snow itself—so alone, he could never wield Mahā Ananta, since his natural force derived only from earth-borne frost.
But having perfected Glacial Nirvana in this mission, his signature move Heaven's Snow Vortex was the ultimate technique—drawn from the ninefold chill of the heavens and the ninefold frost of the underworld. Merging those two sources with insight from Elliot Gray, Jack glimpsed a wholly new way to channel power.
And now, it was time to test it.
Both sides fell silent. Under the Remnants' signal, the controlled children retreated. Odin stood guard before them. Cloud, no longer the focus of the battle, shielded Marlene behind him.
Though Vincent, the hidden red-cloaked gunslinger, had yet to appear, the true duel was now between Jack Harper and Magnor.
Magnor planned to hold out until Lady Night recovered—battling both physical and psychological pressure in his favor. But he'd underestimated Jack. After trading barbs over inner force, he suffered a blow to his ego and was no longer inclined to stall. With a roar, he fractured into ten shadowy echoes.
"Golden Flash, hand me your weapons!" Magnor commanded. A dozen magical arms flew to him from Golden Flash's side. Each of the ten shadows—armed or unarmed—began unleashing a distinct ultimate skill:
Twin BladesHeaven-Piercing SpearFate's SwordPrimal HalberdTiger Roar StaffMountain-Sea FistGenbu Divine PalmFlare KickHarmonized Golden FistBone-Dragon Claw
Ten ultimate techniques, each stronger than the "Triple Elemental Strike," emerged in perfect unison. Fusion of just three—Frost Fist, Cloudbreaker Palm, and Storm Kick—had created a Silver-tier pinnacle skill. Imagine ten such arts combined: their power must surely reach Gold-tier.
"Take this! Genbu Art, Invincible in All Directions!"
With that cry, ten tornado-like winds formed, each a swirling storm of golden steel fragments. Magnor's Invincible in All Directions was a city-shattering technique—designed for one-on-one duels but boasting earth-quaking force. He slammed down, and the swirling vortex displaced snow and debris like a rampaging dragon.
Jack Harper stood his ground, cradling the Heaven's Snow Vortex in both hands like an ice-sun. As Magnor's tornado descended, Jack lifted his own sphere of power to meet it. The black whirlwind from above clashed with the brilliant azure orb from below, like a colossal dragon swallowing a sapphire globe. Their collision froze the world in an instant.
Then, the sky split with a thunderclap of countless detonations. A dazzling arc of sapphire light exploded outward, sending a shockwave that cleaved the glowing forest in half—leaving a barren, hundreds-meter-wide circle. The black tornado, once towering, flickered like a Christmas tree of lightning, then shattered.
From the swirling snow and dust, Jack Harper fell first. The unprecedented blast tested the limits of his Dark Aquarius Cloth. Now shredded to ribbons, his armor lay in tatters. Horns of dark gold metal pierced him like quills. Without the Hulk-enhanced vitality he'd received, Jack would be dead on the spot.
Across the clearing, Magnor also plummeted. His Indestructible Body—impervious until now—had cracked like spun glass. Black-blue frost shivered across his flesh. He landed in a crater, unable even to muster his inner force. He would have died, but Golden Flash caught him, then waved a simple healing spell from his pale staff. It wasn't enough to restore full strength, but it held him together.
Jack Harper, unguarded, immediately drove the shards from his flesh with remaining frost energy. Though he'd spent ninety percent of his inner force on Mahā Ananta, his ability to draw on nature's power meant he already regained two-thirds of his strength. Only fatigue remained.
Meanwhile, the Remnants adapted.
"Summon Shiva, Queen of Ice!" Kadaj shouted. Amid the swirling snow, the ice-elemental Shiva materialized. The flakes, once thinning after Jack's storm, thickened again around her. Yazoo and Loz readied themselves for another wave.
"We're out of here!" Magnor panted, seeing the tide had turned. He'd hoped to finish Jack after slaying the Remnants, but Jack's mastery of Mahā Ananta and the loss of Lady Night to Jack's blast spelled defeat. "Let's retreat!"
Cloud, cradling Marlene, also withdrew.
Jack Harper, refusing to let such a foe escape, leveled his gaze at the departing trio.
At that moment, Vincent finally appeared from the shadows, firing rounds that drove Jack and the Remnants back, allowing the Dark Vow team and Cloud to vanish into the night—along with all remaining Materia.
Vincent—hero of Dirge of Cerberus—could transform into a demon. His gunplay was lethal. Yet Jack was left marveling not at his might, but his uncanny firing speed—whether thanks to supernatural reloading or truly endless ammunition.
Ultimately, both sides vanished into the dark. Only the memory of the clash remained—an epic duel of ice and steel, intellect and power, reaching heights no one could have predicted.
The Remnants—Kadaj, Loz, and Lady Night—approached Jack, their expressions holding reluctant respect.
Yazoo tilted his head. "You're a formidable ally indeed."
Loz offered a curt nod. "Let's team up again someday."
"You've proven more reliable than Cloud-brother," Kadaj said softly, stepping close. "So—will you accept Mother's will?"
Jack Harper had weighed the risks long ago. He removed his eyepatch and bowed. "I will."
"Welcome home, little brother." Kadaj laid his hand on Jack's star-scarred cheek. Inky black mist flowed from Kadaj's arm into Jack's scars, fusing Jenova's will with the Materia coursing through him.
Shattered memories flooded Jack's mind at breakneck speed. For most, this psychic tsunami would have shattered their will. But Jack—hardened by his X-Men gene awakening and the Frostmourne's memory assaults—remained anchored. He absorbed the fragments, turning them into his own.
"Hey?" A single vision flashed through his mind, jolting him.
"Aha… if that's true, a way to kill three birds with one arrow might really exist…"
In that instant, it felt as though lightning struck his soul. A faint ray of hope sparked in Jack Harper's once-dark heart.