AN: Hojo is one of those villains that I fully, wholly and truly despise. Killing him was a pleasure, even if was only in prose.
…when the goddess descends from the sky…
An ordinary girl comes to the capital, on an ordinary day. (Tings are not so ordinary when she leaves.) She comes to visit relatives, a brother in the army who's been laid up in the infirmary after that last spot of trouble in Corel.
"Of course, miss, we heard all about that. How kind of you to come visit him."
"Well, yes, I couldn't not come now could I, mister Shinra officer sir… and if I'm lucky maybe I'll get to see one of the commanders too!" she beams at the guards.
"You're in luck then, miss, they're all here in Midgar right now."
"Oh thank you! I must be going," she says and waves good-bye.
"You take care now!"
And she waltzes in with her basket of home-cooked food and further in and up. And-
"Oh! I got lost mister scientist sir. I don't know where I am and he was really adamant he get this delivered quickly, you know how he gets," she says, nervously shifting from foot to foot.
"Yes, you better hurry then, girl, or he might just turn that scalpel on you and not that thing in the basket. He's right through there, just make a left…" the scientist answers and gestures vaguely, with a bit of a grin on his face.
"Oh!" she squeaks. "Oh, you're teasing… Thank you, though, mister scientist, sir."
She puts her MidDelivery courier service ID back in her pocket and grabs her clipboard and basket and hurries on. She makes a left and flashes her clipboard and ID and is let through a biometrics-locked door and knocks on an office.
The door opens and she smiles the sweetest, happiest smile she has ever smiled. This is everything. She is so relieved.
She backs the man in the doorway into the room at gunpoint and kicks the door closed behind her. Snake-quick she injects him with a serum that paralyzes his vocal cords, and then she takes him down.
Gun at his temple, braced over him with a knee on his sternum she greets him, still smiling, face alight with joy as she meets his eyes, grown round and terrified. He tries to trash himself free, but she holds him with a grip like an adamantine vice.
"Hello Hojo."
Then she sets to work with quick knives. She flays the flesh away and breaks back ribs with crackling, snapping force. Finally, finally she has his heart in her hands. It trembles and beats and then oozes though her fingers, the most euphoric satisfaction. She has never been so happy.
The rest is not so quick. She unleashes a virus that tears though the company's mainframe and all its databases. She herself tears through the scientists like a scythe through ripe wheat, like a knife wielded with skill, cutting away the rot.
She leaves, and behind her the reactors, spread all over Gaia, collapse, die and fuse together into scrap and ruin. Thus is Shinra toppled. Thus is the Calamity incinerated and entombed. Destiny goes off-road. Inevitability is stalled. Prophecy sleeps.
An ordinary woman works as a trucker. She hauls foodstuffs and construction materials and, lately, components for the new green-energy windmills that are springing up all over the place.
She has seen a lot of the Planet by now. Why, she's even been to Wutai, at the emperor's grave, long live the emperor!
Nibelheim this time of year is pretty, the spring sun charms and deceives. She picks up a hitch-hiker along with her cargo, a scrawny, tow-haired young man going to Junon. He's going to work construction there. He's an ordinary sort of boy, maybe a little timid, but he seems happy to be out of Nibelheim and is grateful for the lift.
She wishes him luck.