Remember how this started? I had a bad day. Well guess who had bad day again?

(Five years later…)

Day 1

"Let me out!" Cloud thrashed against the glass. Below him mako began to fill the tank. "Stop it. Please! Stop!"

Panic tightened his chest, cutting the airflow in his throat as the mako sloshed around his knees. The lab aides didn't turn at his cries, and only one pair of eyes remained locked on him as his knuckles cracked and bled from the force of his pounding.

"My, my. We're going to have to cut down that attitude if you are to be perfected." Hojo chuckled low before releasing a feral smile. "Who knew a failure like you could turn into such a magnificent success if only pushed hard enough in the right direction."

Cloud continued his fruitless pleading as the mako rose around his chest like a cold, green sludge burying him alive. Unlike the mako tanks under the mansion, there was no air mask. In a few seconds it would reach his throat. Oh. Oh, Gaia! It was already in his mouth. Cloud tilted his head upward and swallowed a scream. It came out as tears instead, salty wet sliding down his cheeks to meet the rising pool below.

"Please don't do this," he sobbed. The mako slid up his throat, pooled in his ears, and stained the tips of his hair. He tilted his chin higher, trying to breathe for as long as possible. Swirling with a vengeance, the liquid spilled into his mouth.

"Zack!" He screamed.

The ceiling of the tank started to cloud with black spots as he looked on. Desperately, Cloud closed his eyes, hoping that he could stop the mako from seeping under the lids while trying to ignore the sensation of it soaking into his skin.

"Truly magnificent," Hojo marveled openly as the mako stuttered to a stop, now completely filling the tank.

Cloud dared open his eyes, sputtering and overcome with shock. He was still alive and breathing. Cloud gathered enough wits to cast a shaky glare on his torturer. With mako pervading his every living cell, his eyes glowed like beacons rimmed with red.

Hojo dismissed him, "Don't be so dramatic. Emotions are more work for everyone." He turned then and addressed the lab aides, warning them to watch for signs of mako poisoning – as though that were the greater threat and not Cloud choking on liquid acid.

Hojo left without another glace to Cloud, leaving him relatively alone.

No one was coming for him. Hojo had hidden him in the one place Zack would never look. The room was still horribly wrecked with tears in the metal walkways and a noticeable person-sized dent in one wall. Even some blood spatters remained on the floor below. His blood. He was back where it began. Jenova's chamber.

Exhausted and scared, Cloud sank to the grated floor and cried.

… … … …

Day 6

Cloud repositioned for the fortieth time. If the mako wasn't going to kill him, his back certainly would. It ached with a dull pain that made it uncomfortable to move anything – meaning if he wanted to stay pain free, he was going to have to stop breathing too. He wasn't that desperate. Yet.

The general pain was manageable enough, but two vertical spots in his back burned like the holy hellfires of Ifrit. His moaning had gotten the attention of a younger lab aide, and he shot some form of pain medicine into the IV line hooked up to one of the outgoing tank tubes. He probably could have just pushed it straight into the stream of mako – Cloud was still breathing it, and though his lungs felt wet (a sensation that still had him shuddering), his body adapted well to this new form of life. It disturbed him how well his body was faring with his situation.

Cloud curled his fingers into fists.

"Ow!" He reflexively opened his hand at the pinch. And stared.

Droplets of blood swirled with the mako as the skin of his palm neatly regenerated within seconds. His fingernails were still tinted with red. He turned his hand over to stare at the elongated nails from a different angle, but they remained the same. Each one tapered off to a fine, hard point. The skin of his fingers was roughening, growing calloused without reason. With the pain in his back, he hadn't even noticed; he was growing claws.

You are…a monster.

"Shut up," Cloud snapped at the voice in his head, but the words blanketed him with worry. Jenova said nothing more.

… … … …

Day 14

Cloud thought the back ache was bad, but the crackling pain driving ice picks into his gums had him tearing at his mouth for relief. This time the lab aides had actually done more, finding it relevant to bind his hands out of the way of his newly grown hollow-point fangs.

Apparently there was no getting out of the tank as they left him there after assuring that he couldn't do anything to alter the dental work sprouting from his mouth. The pain in his head put the sting of his arm to shame.

Maybe Cloud had been right. Maybe they did put drugs and chemicals into the mako. Something had to cause this, because while nothing about his new features made sense, a regular infection might explain the black pus oozing from his left arm. That is, if pus being black was a medical thing. For all he knew this strange gangrene eating up his arm was just another feature to add to the list.

But that was all on the physical side. Lately he'd been hearing things. Voices, to be specific. It was more than Jenova now, though he couldn't make out what the new ones said. Whoever else was invading his mind, Cloud wondered if it had anything to do with the claws and the fangs and the sharply barbed wings.

He had to wonder what was the purpose of all this. So far the lab aides had only monitored him as though he was some sort living mako pickle. He certainly felt like one, and except for the fact that he was turning into some sort of human-dragon-snake hybrid, he might have believed it.

Jenova stirred in his mind, probably trying to get ahead of him and start the daily dose of mental torture and doubt.

Cloud shut her down in an instant. "Zack," he said.

Zack wasn't in the room; probably had no idea where he was. Hojo had taken Cloud from their cell while Zack was still in one of the standard mako tanks under the mansion. Still, Cloud felt his heart calm at the notion that Zack was with him. He had proven himself a loyal friend on too many failed escape attempts, never leaving Cloud even when he might have made it out himself. Cloud knew Zack wouldn't leave him here alone if he had a choice, but he wasn't here now. So Cloud kept pretending.

"It's been a while since they put me in here," he whispered into the mako, liquid exiting his mouth in a light whoosh in the place of air. His teeth reared in pain at the movement. In an effort to relieve it, he clamped his mouth shut. Jenova rushed in with a torrent of sneers and whispered taunts of doom.

Zack, where are you?

… … … …

Day 24

"I could probably cut my hair with my claws," Cloud leaned against the side of the tank, watching idly as monitors beeped and the odd scientist conferred with a lab aide. "It's getting annoying," he added. "You'd probably like it though."

He pulled his bangs down flat in front of his face, frowning when he touched the tip to his chin. Releasing it, the spike floated back into its place above gravity. Cloud grimaced. "How do you stand hair this long?"

He imagined Zack giving him one of those dumb grins and explaining that Aerith seemed to like his hair long.

"Why, so she can braid it?" A smile cracked on his mako slick lips. He heard the faintest echo of Zack's stammering laughter as he backed out of the ambush he'd walked into.

"Tifa would probably think it's dumb," he commented, twirling a strand of hair between two rough fingers.

The imagined Zack stopped in surprise.

Cloud frowned, surprised with himself too. It had been a long while since he'd talked about anyone outside of their little cell. Zack prattled about anything and everything all the time if only to give Cloud something to think about aside from Jenova's haunted whispering.

The Zack sat down and quietly asked what he was thinking about. Cloud fidgeted, flinching away when Zack poked him in the ribs and commanded him in a light teasing tone to 'confess or else'.

He repositioned so his back was against the wall, his wings flat against his back, as tightly folded as he could manage. "Just wondered…will we ever see them again? I mean, you talk about it all the time, and I don't want to believe that we'll die here, but…"

Monster. The word was double edged, lined with his voice and Jenova's. There wasn't much he could do to protest when it was something he believed himself.

"Will they even know it's me?"

Zack sat silently.

"Never mind, it doesn't matter," Cloud closed himself off, lying down on his side. He looked up to check for Zack's reaction, but he was met with empty space.

… … … …

Day 32

He figured out a way to stretch. It was awkward, wrapping his wings around him to lengthen sore muscles he shouldn't have. Cloud was so tired, but sleep did nothing for him.

The source of the exhaustion seemed to stem from the ugly amounts of black pus leaking from the sores in his arm and floating in the mako. Since sleeping was a no go, Cloud found himself talking to Zack almost as often as Zack talked to him. Currently, he was informing Zack of the most recent theories of his apparent disease – since the scientists acted as dumbfounded about its origin as he felt.

"The lab aide with the glasses thought it might be a reaction to the mako. Like a weird allergic reaction," Cloud shredded the edges of his bangs with his claws as he talked.

"The other one, the girl, thinks it's probably contamination from the leftover Jenova cells in the tank since they didn't clean it before putting me in here." He paused, face squenching in the disgusting knowledge that a far worse creature had spent a far longer time than he had in the same three square feet of space.

He thought about the conversation. It was only overheard lab gossip, but the knowledge that he'd overheard it from the other room bothered him. That wasn't the only thing he heard from the other side of the wall. A clicking pen, the tap of fingernails, the soft rush of air like a sigh. The noises made him twitch; they were only slight irritations, but he couldn't turn it off, and muted though the sound was, he knew he shouldn't be hearing it at all.

Lately he seemed to experience a lot of things that shouldn't be considered normal. He decided not to tell Zack that.

… … … …

Day 47

The lab was getting quieter, or maybe the voices in his head were getting louder. There were more of them, but one bunch seemed to lump together like a mess of whispers and wishes while the other slithered through his brain. The second was Jenova. He knew the thought patterns well. Not well enough to shove them aside when she struck a particularly tender spot in his memories…but his memories were fading too, and along with it, his resistances.

He shook his head fervently, starting off a thudding of tubes and cords against the sides of his glass prison. They'd hooked him up to some machines a few days ago. It was anyone's guess why. Zack wasn't being very helpful. Not that he ever was.

… … … …

Day 53…or was it 54?

The days and nights blurred together. Standard time had lost meaning. Instead, he measured time by the nutrition shots. One every six hours. He measured time by the depth of the scratches he could put in his tank before they sedated him and patched it. It was hard to keep a meaningful tally of how long he had been in this bland room full of tubes and hushed whispers, but he liked tracking time better than listening to the murmured conversations held in the other room.

One of the scientists had mentioned to another that wings weren't meant for submersion, but rather for the sky. That had gotten him thinking.

The sky…what color was that again? Did it even have color? Why did he get the feeling that the loss of this knowledge should bother him? Heh, and wasn't that ironic? He was feeling more bothered over not feeling bothered. It was kinda funny.

He laughed, and for some reason, the silence reflected at him sounded hollow. It was as though something were missing. Someone else's laughter in response to his own. Wasn't there supposed to be someone else around? Why weren't they here?

What was their name? Something starting with "s", no, "z"! Zack. It was Zack! A rush of relief met him as the name returned to living memory. The figure he spoke to was nothing more than an imaginary friend created to sate this lonely existence, but it felt so good to remember its name.

It felt safe. It felt lonely. He was lonely. …He was so, so alone, and he'd created someone to talk to out of that yearning for someone to be there to tell him it would be alright.

The logical explanation withered away as he sank back among the folds of his furled wings. As he curled taloned fists in his hair, he repeated the name. Zack, Zack, Zack…But whatever he expected, nobody came.

By the time the lab aide arrived with the nutrition shot for his IV, he couldn't remember why the name "Zack" was so important or why he was laughing.

… … … …

Day 60

His head felt stuffy, his back ached, and his left arm burned. He'd been in this cylindrical hell far too long, and his body screamed for the space to stretch out all the cramps and knots etched into his spine and shoulders. He thought about standing up, at least stretching his legs, but before he could move a blare of beeping and scuttling in and out caught his attention.

Chancing a peep outside his private realm of black leather wings and stuffy mako, he watched the chaos around his tiny prison. The lab aides were scrambling in a frenzied panic. Something had them worried. With the speed of a haste spell propelling them forward, they gathered notes and samples and piled them onto crash carts before wheeling them out of the room and further into the reactor.

A familiar feeling flared within his mind, and he stood, pressing his palms to the glass. The emotion grew in his heart like it was calling to him with a voice. He reached out.

Anyone who called to him was welcome. He was so alone, and so horribly afraid. He had long since lost track of reason to his life. Nothing made sense, and he needed someone to pull him away from it all.

Save me, he begged.

The scientists finished their mad dash and the last few scuttled out the door, thunking off a large power switch that left him in the pseudo dark. Only the green glow of mako swirling in his tank offered him light.

Hours went by, or maybe it was only minutes. He tapped on the glass, claws tink-tinking in an endless rhythm. Clink, Clink, Clink. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Clink, clink, clink.

Help me. Somebody help me.

The familiar feeling faded, depressed under the darkness of the chamber. It wasn't until later that he remembered what the feeling was called. Hope.

… … … …

Day 62

He couldn't remember his name. It had been so long since he'd heard it said by anyone. He opened his mouth to say it, hoping the muscles in his body would remember better than his mind.

No sound came out. His name was simply gone. Closing his mouth, he sank back. There was nothing to say and no one to say it to anyway.

Wasn't there someone he used to talk to? He must be imagining things again. Probably Jenova's fault. Closing his eyes, he leaned his forehead against the cool glass. A few tubes got in the way, and he batted at them with one hand. He wondered what would happen if he punctured a tube. Nobody had come to feed him in a while now, and his body mass should have atrophied down to nothing. But for some reason, he only felt tired.

With no reason left to defend himself and no purpose to his existence, he was painfully vulnerable. There was no one left to fight. Even Jenova had abandoned him to the quiet.

He didn't know loneliness could hurt this much.

Day 60: Zack

Zack heaved, dragging Kunsel down with him.

Kunsel grimaced as he readjusted his grip on Zack's arm around his neck. They didn't have time for a third spewing of mako, but Zack wasn't going anywhere without getting some of it out of his system.

"Were they trying to drown you?" Kunsel whispered harshly. The malevolence wasn't directed at Zack, but rather at the shouting guards somewhere behind them. They were still underground, staggering together down a bat infested corridor.

Zack said nothing, but wiped his mouth with a mako covered hand. "They only tried that right before you came in."

"Glad you can hold your breath for so long," Kunsel murmured. "We've got to keep moving. Let's go."

Zack shook his head, but his feet stumbled forward, dragged along by Kunsel's force. "No. First Cloud. I told you. He's still down here somewhere."

"Zack," Kunsel hissed. The guards were getting close. "He's not here. We've been over this. I looked for him, but there isn't even a note about him in the folders. Wherever Hojo's keeping him, it's not here."

"But–"

"We'll find him." Kunsel jerked them toward the stairs. The thudding of the guards' boots was unnervingly close, probably just down the hall. "Listen. I only barely figured out where Hojo was keeping you, but I did. Wherever he is, we'll find him. Okay?"

Zack nodded numbly and struggled not to heave again. When Kunsel had unveiled himself from the guise of one of the lab guards, Hojo's assistants had been resolutely trying to drown Zack by filling his tank with mako and no air mask. His lungs hadn't taken too kindly to the two or three involuntary gulps of the acid.

Being sick again would only slow them down, and what kind of thanks was that to Kunsel for not only taking initiative like a best friend would to find him, but managing some serious Turk-like planning to slip in and break him out?

He sincerely hoped Kunsel had planned for what they would do after actually leaving the place. Zack steadied himself against his friend and grimaced at the familiar rocks underfoot. How many times had he and Cloud tried this exact same thing?

They'd never had help, though. They never had to plan for "after getting out". Some part of Zack, a small and insignificant part that Zack wanted to strangle but couldn't seem to silence, truly believed that he and Cloud were going to die in that lab. Whenever that line of thought grew too hard to bear, he would ask Cloud to look at him. Really look at him.

Cloud would stare into his eyes, lower his gaze slowly, and confirm what Zack knew to be true. He wasn't destined to die here. And it didn't matter if Cloud's freaky ability to see death was legit or not. It comforted him all the same.

A shout of orders echoed down the hallway. Kunsel cursed under his breath and pulled them along faster. Ahead lay the stairs to freedom. Zack followed Kunsel up and didn't look back.

Day ?

Deep in the undisturbed recesses of an abandoned mako reactor, a lifeless body lay curled on the floor of a damning glass prison.

A voice like a groan from the very planet itself stirred the dusty silence. The Planet is in danger. Wake, my WEAPONS! Rally and save this land from the enemy of the lifestream. Arise and destroy the humans!

For an eerie moment, all sound was absorbed in the waiting silence. Then, a movement. From inside the glowing tank resting on the dais, a pair of vibrant blue eyes outlined in pulsing green and gold opened and stared impassively at the empty antechamber. The WEAPON Ragnarok sat up, folding elegant black wings behind him.

The call to arms echoed in his mind, swelling within his veins as a pulsing rhythm. He was an empty vessel before, but now he had one purpose and one objective:

Protect the planet. Destroy the humans.

Finally. You have no idea how long I've wanted to write this.

No scheduled updates. It's just going to be my project for when I'm tired of life. That's how it started, and that's how it's going to stay.

-Dante