Pure Genius
They say there's a fine line between madness and pure genius. I walked that line for too many years to count. Who knows when I finally slipped past that point of no return and entered the world of insanity?
My name is Professor Hojo. I gave the best years of my life to Shin-Ra Electric Power Company. Eventually I gave them my very soul. Nothing was more precious to me than my beloved experiments, fascinating specimens, and the blessed knowledge I gleaned from it all.
These things were so precious to me, in fact, that they cost me my beloved Lucrecia and our only son, my most perfect accomplishment ever: Specimen Number 01, Project S, the great Sephiroth himself. No matter how hard I tried, I could never replicate the procedures that created him.
I tried. Oh, yes. I spent the last 30 years of my life trying, using SOLDIERs as guinea pigs. I injected them with mako and Jenova cells, and I tried splicing their genes with other species. I kept some under surveillance in my mako tanks. Failed experiment after failed experiment passed through my labs.
There were a few that came close to my Sephiroth, but none ever matched his utter perfection. I loved my son as I loved his mother. However, my obsession with replicating his genes soon separated me from them.
I suppose I can only blame myself for Lucrecia running to that Turk. I must have neglected her for too long causing her to seek comfort in another man's arms. How many times have I wished that I had been more observant?
Vincent Valentine. He stole the love of my life, and in a fit of jealous rage, I killed him. I could only stand and laugh as his life bled away on the floor while Lucrecia wept.
The ultimate betrayal came when she went behind my back and used her illicit lover as a specimen. Sure, I had a hand in it all, but only from a clinical point of view.
On further inspection, it was perhaps the betrayal of my lover with this Turk and the later loss of my son after his own descent into madness that brought about my own transformation.
After they were gone, I completely threw myself into my work. I would go for days with little to no food or rest. Eventually, I began to experiment on myself because nothing mattered to me anymore, not even my own health and well-being. After many mako and Jenova cell injections and splicing my own genes with those of various creatures, my very body began to change. I no longer cared at this point.
By the time I faced my former failed experiment, who was calling himself Cloud Strife, I was no longer human. I had become one of my own monsters. Even when I appeared to die and rejoin the Life Stream, I wasn't really gone.
I found a way to possess the body of a former SOLDIER now working on the W.R.O. Project: Deep Ground, who went by the name of Weiss the Immaculate. I was completely mad by this point.
I was almost grateful for the sweet embrace of death at the arrival of the former Turk who had once been my rival in matters of love and then became one of my specimens. While I taunted him and laughed as I had so many years ago and attempted to bring forth the very essence of the corrupted planet foretold by the Ancients, I prayed that Valentine would bring an end to my suffering with his Cerberus.
This time, I did not resist death when he came on swift wings to bear me away to the Life Stream. I welcomed it. Perhaps now I could be again with my beloved Lucrecia and my darling Sephiroth. Dare I hope that maybe even I can be forgiven and be granted peace?