Hojo's eyes narrowed as a geyser of green sprung up from the ground below them, washing over the burning land as the pilot obeyed his order to set down, and he lifted up the body of the young Turk, carrying it into the helicopter. "No one is to be told of this. No one. If the president, or anyone else for that matter, hears about this I will know it was from your lips. You will not like what will happen to you if you say anything to anyone."
Kunsel and Luxiere both gave thick swallows and nodded. They both knew very well what this man was capable of, and that he could do it in such a way that no one would ever find them again, not so much as even finding their bodies. Not a fate either of them ever wanted to meet. "Y-yes sir."
Hojo nodded in satisfaction, directing them to fly to Cactaur island. He had a lab there where he could continue his work, completely undisturbed and tucked away from anyone within ShinRa who might find him. He remained with them as long as he did for the funding, but he'd saved enough, slowly funneling away the grant money, that he could afford to never go back again.
As they reached it, he personally carried the body in, instructing the two to take the helicopter back and reminding them again not a word to anyone in ShinRa. You are mine now, boy. You should have been from the beginning but you had too many around you to protect you for me to achieve that before. No more. Now I have you, and I shall not let you go until you are mine in the heart and mind as well as the body.
Genesis had been leaving Nibelheim as the Lifestream had broken up through the soil to cleanse the dark taint from the earth, and had been sucked into the flow. A crack opened up in the ground and sucked him under, dragging him in with the flow. Tumbling, end over end, head over foot, through a green river that seemed to burn with its intensity, until the auburn haired man reached the very center of the deep pit.
Within stood a glowing, silent figure with hair the color of the sun itself, that light seeming to come from within. She wore a head dress and belt and chest plate of polished gold, her dress pristine white. Not a word was spoken by her, but Genesis knew immediately who this was, and he knelt, worshipful. He knew, after all that he had done, much of it that had not yet been discovered, that he was far from worthy of this, and yet she had deigned to grace him not only her presence and the healing of body and mind that she was giving him. .. but her choosing him to act as her avatar in the world above, her arm when she had none.
The flood of images that filled his mind made him nearly stagger. First, the war of the Gods, fire and smoke and destruction traversing the universe, and everywhere that the Dark Goddess put her hands and tainted, death would follow. The rising up of the Lifestream from world after world, the cycle starting again and again as Minerva attempted to stay one step ahead of her darker sister.
And it had started here as well. ..with the falling of Jenova on this world after the destruction of Spira so many centuries before, their descendents, the descendents of the Al Bhed through Shinra's blood line later becoming the line that the great company had been built by, and the summoners. . .Minerva had taken the summoners and blessed them with her own hand to become the Cetra.
Genesis gasped at what she was showing him, the enormity of it almost destroying the frail sanity she had managed to restore to him after his healing, but he could feel only one conviction now in his heart and mind. It was time for him to pay for the wrong he had done. . .and the first step in that was to rescue the Child of Minerva that had found himself in so much trouble from Jenova's hand.
The group had returned to Midgar, Sephiroth and Vincent talking and getting to know one another as they were flown back. None of them had any idea what had happened at the reactor yet, nor what would come of it. Cloud was thinking only about getting back to the young love of his life and sharing with him what they had found while they were in the town that the blond had been born in.
Zack couldn't help the chuckle as he watched. He had no idea that the changes that had happened around them had saved his own life, as well, that he would gain years that he would not otherwise have had. Just one action could change everything, like the ripples of a stone being thrown into water.
Vincent's expression had grown less closed off and more alive as the flight went on, the discovery that this man who was his son was more like him than not had awakened the long buried sense of humor that he thought had died the day Lucrecia had walked away from him, already bearing his child in her womb, though she'd not known that at the time.
"Things have grown since I've been sleeping." Vincent commented as he peered out of the window of the air craft, noting how there were cities that had not been there when he'd gone to Nibelheim, and how the ones that had been there were larger than they had been. "I suppose I shall have to accustom myself to the changes."
"I will find you a place to stay, so you do not have to set foot in ShinRa. Things would go rather ill for you should the Professor discover I've wakened you, and I would rather not be forced to bring trouble down upon myself by killing him." The casual way in which the General spoke of the man's death spoke volumes of his feelings toward him. To him Hojo was little more than an annoying insect to be squashed, scientific discoveries aside the man was a monster, and certainly not anything to be revered.
Cloud gave Sephiroth a bit of a side eyed look, but he didn't much like Hojo himself. The fact that the man had saved his love's life was the only redeeming quality the creepy scientist had, in his opinion.
Zack just shook his head. "Hojo creeps me out." he said quite honestly, shuddering at the thought of the man in the lab coat, greasy ponytail, and glasses, with the hawk like nose and pallid skin. He shook his head, shoving the thoughts out of his mind. "Best not to think about it."
Vincent's eyes went dark at the mention of the man's name. There were things none of them knew, a history between he and the scientist that made his muscles tense and his jaw firm, eyes going flinty in a deeply buried rage. He didn't speak, but if he could get his hands on Hojo. . .things were going to be messy.
Vincent was settled into an apartment in Midgar, one which he'd seemed fairly happy with, as Cloud returned to find his lover not there. He didn't worry too much for the first few weeks that Reno was missing, the blond infantryman figuring he'd just been sent out on a mission where he'd been ordered to be incommunicado and had not had a chance to call Cloud to tell him.
It was during the third week when Hojo began to seem almost exceedingly smug that he began to honestly be concerned, and when Rufus called he, Zack, Rude, and Sephiroth together for a meeting Cloud's anxiety levels rose sharply. There was something that set him incredibly ill at ease with the whole situation, he just was not entirely certain what it was yet.
"I called you here for one reason." Ice blue eyes panned over from one to the other, making certain that all of them were listening. "As you all likely know, Reno disappeared from ShinRa Headquarters three weeks ago as of yesterday. My father apparently knows nothing about it, Tseng and Verdot are both extremely concerned, Scarlet also has disappeared to parts unknown, and Professor Hojo looks like the guard hound that ate the rabbit. In other words, something about this is not right. I would call my Turks in on this, but it would likely get back to my father if I did so, and I do not want him in involved in this, because I suspect he may have approved of whatever caused the young man's disappearance, and I do not want him tipped off if that happens to be so. You are the next best thing. Sephiroth, you are capable of being discrete when it comes to ferreting out information, and Cloud, you and Zack have a great amount of motivation to find him. And finding him, bringing him home, is all I ask of you."
Rufus lowered his eyes, then as he looked back up, his next words would shock them. "He's the only blood I have left aside from my father with Lazard gone. He is my little brother. I discovered it two years ago, and as much as I have wanted to tell him that, it's simply been in his best interest that I remain silent on the fact. My father would not have approved."
Cloud's eyes widened at that. Reno. . .was the president's son? The Vice President's brother? But his mind began superimposing their faces and he realized that aside from Reno's face being a bit thinner, and his nose a bit more pert than Rufus' straight bridged nose, they looked nearly alike, only Rufus's coloring was rendered in pale pinks, golds, and roses, while Reno's was reds and the summery brown of his freckles. It was like one of those things that was right in front of one's face, obvious if one knew, but sometimes it took a nudge to put the pieces together.
"Rufus, you know we'll do all in our power to find him. " Cloud assured him. "That boy is the one that I love, and whatever I have to do to bring him home, I'll do." It was all that he felt really needed saying, but he did hope that Rufus was wrong. . and that was not in the kind of trouble that they all feared.
The teal eyes fluttered a moment, and all there was before them was green. .the color of raw mako. From the outside one would see a slender nude male floating inside of a tank filled with a substance that danced from liquid to gas to solid and back, seemingly on its own whims.
"He's responded well to the treatments." came the almost oily sounding voice, one that Reno would have remembered well if he'd been anywhere near conscious enough to. Once he was entirely conscious his memories of this time would be totally fragmented, but even those would be enough to drive him fully into madness and plunge him fully into the darkest abyss of his mind.
Hojo studied the readings on the computer console in front of him, smirking at the results of the tests that he had run after finding a way to reverse the damage the degradation had done to the young one's cell structure. "There. But he is not ready to be let free of the tank. .not yet."
Hojo was not taking any risks until he felt he had the Turk programmed to the point that there was no danger of his tool turning against him. He of course had no idea just how strong the man's will was or he would have been more reluctant to ever let Reno free at all ever. "My little Ancient. .. so small, and yet so strong. You would kill me could you do so, wouldn't you? Oh, I believe you would, but you shall never have the chance. By the time I let you out you will have forgotten all about your hatred of me. The perfect tool."
He stepped back from the glass, the smirk still affixed to his face. He had things under control again, and it made for good days for the professor.
Scarlet's body was found hanging from her ceiling two mornings later. It'd been made to appear a suicide, but nearly all of those who knew the Weapons Director doubted that appearance. The President merely accepted it, but then again the man had always had his reasons to want rid of her, as ShinRa had fully risen to power she had become too ambitious for Rupert's taste. Losing the information she may have had on Hojo's whereabouts was not something he liked, however.
As the infantrymen that had been assigned to do so lifted the slender blond woman off the noose and carried her body out of the room it was hard to see the blood that had flowed from her with the crimson rug that stretched across the hardwood floor of her corporate apartment. They bore the body out with the respect she deserved.
The cigar smoke curled around the golden hair as it rose up around the stocky man in the office that overlooked the city of Midgar. His city, and if Hojo thought to change that the scientist had another thing coming. "At least I've not lost the young one from Gongaga." he said quietly to himself. "Or the General, though I am surprised he has not yet fled, having not only his two friends desert, but the young Turk he'd taken on as a protégé. "
He could feel things shifting like the sands beneath his feet, and he swore to himself he'd use the business acumen that had turned ShinRa from a tiny weapons producer. into a world superpower that had control of just about every industry on the planet. "I will not lose what belongs to me." That vow, made in a firm tone, but he had no idea as yet how prophetic that would be.
During the third month of Reno's captivity with the professor, Cloud had developed enough of a resistance to the mako used to create SOLDIER that he was able to take the treatments without getting poisoned, something that Zack attributed to the strengthening of his will to get stronger so h e could find his lover.
The First Class watched the young newly promoted Third Class make his way through the motions of the sword training katas that Sephiroth had taught the blond, the determination that rested in those eyes one that Zack knew all too well. He's not gonna let this go, and to be honest I don't blame him. I'm still mad at the company for what was done to Banora, and that more effort hasn't been made to find Genesis and Angeal, but I know our best hope of finding a way to make things good is to stick around and find the chinks in the armor the old man keeps around his hold on things.
Once Cloud had finished his katas, he turned back to Zack, shaking his head. "I just hope he's still alive, and in some kind of shape that makes living worthwhile, when we find him. There haven't been reports of further destruction, so chances are he's been captured. I just don't believe he's dead, so that's the only option that makes sense."
"We will find him, Cloud. That he's alive? Means there is hope. " Zack smiled a bit at that as he headed to get his own things ready. The promotion ceremony was the next day, and he wanted Cloud to be at his best for it.
A simple weary nod, but Cloud was still crestfallen. The past few months had been hard on him, harder than he wanted to admit to.
Then, he blinked in surprise as a young woman in a pink dress, red vest, and brown boots strode in, but he became even more surprised when Zack walked over to her with a rather displeased expression. He hadn't realized Zack knew this girl.
"Aerith! What are you doing here, don't you realize how dangerous it was to come here?" The expression on the Gongagan's face was one of extreme dismay. "If they catch you here, I don't think I can protect you. You have got to go!" He'd learned what Aerith was shortly before Reno's disappearance and now it worried Zack to have her anywhere even near the Tower.
"Relax, Zack, Tseng came with me." she giggled a bit as she said that, and then her face took on a serious look. "There are things you need to know. Rufus' actions in stopping what would have happened in Nibelheim have created a new timeline. I could sense it, but trying to explain it would simply confuse you." Her head lowered and she let loose a sigh. "Needless to say, Reno is indeed alive, but I don't know where he is. All I do know is that Cloud. . ." Aerith turned to him, eyes as green as fresh young leaves meeting his. "You will have a significant role to play in what is to come. Your actions will determine whether the world lives. . .or dies."
She felt a bit sorry for him, the choice that would be laid at his feet was a difficult one for him to make, and she would not wish it on anyone in the world. "I know you can, but it won't be easy. But you won't be alone." Aerith knew how cryptic she was being, but not even she knew all. The Planet revealed what it would in its own time, and she could only give them the information that she had available.
Tseng appeared in the doorway a hand reaching out for Aerith. "I am sorry, but I must take you home now, Miss Gainsborough. It is no longer safe for you to be here, the President leaves his office in bare moments and I must have you out of the building prior to him doing so." he escorted her out, his lips pursing at what he had overheard. I do hope you know what you're doing, Minerva. That boy is just that, a boy, and he is not ready for what you would have him do. Not yet. My hope is that he will be by the time he must, for all may well fall should what Aerith say be true if he is not.
A year after Reno's disappearance the official KIA notification had gone out, and most had begun to lose hope. Rude had been called into Verdot's office with one express intent. . .to assign him a new partner. The bald man's lips clenched as he gave his supervisor one flat out answer. "Sorry sir, but my answer is no. I don't believe he's dead, and I will neither take a new partner, nor will I stop searching for him until he's found. Don't like it, put me behind a desk, but that is how it is."
"Rude. .." Verdot shook his head, tone sorrowful. "I know how you feel. But face it, he would have returned by now were he still alive, he's been missing for a year. He has either abandoned us with no intention of every returning, or he has been killed, and in either case, you must take a new partner. There is no other way, no Turk works alone."
"Then we find Reno. That is the way it is. ..sir." Rude strode out of the office at that. All of them were worried, but they still had faith that he would eventually come back to them. They refused to believe anything less.
Sephiroth kept watch for any further activity, but the last thing he had been expecting was to be contacted by Genesis. An undegraded Genesis that seemed sane, almost serene now. "I spoke to the Goddess." a hand lifted in an almost theatrical gesture. "The wings of darkness prepare to spread over the land. The war of the beasts is at hand, and we are to be the vanguard for the one she has chosen to be her Knight. She seeks to reclaim the Child that has been stolen from Her, and she asks our help."
In his mind, Genesis recalled how when the fire had swept through the forest between Nibelheim and Cosmo Canyon the Lifestream had risen up to put out the fires and purify the land of Jenova's taint and when it had washed out over the landscape it had caught Genesis up into its flow, washing him deep, deep down nearly to the world's core, where he had seen her, the very Goddess whom he had in his heart always served.
She had impressed upon him the importance of not letting the young Turk fall completely and forever into the darkness, and how the thing Hojo had done had been something that was never meant to be done. It was bad enough what Jenova's essence did to humans, who had for so long cut themselves off from the voices of the Planet and the Goddess' will that they were deaf and blind to them.
What it did however to those who still felt the Planet's ebb and flow. . it was like to giving a bird plastic in the place of food, it clogged their senses much in the way a bird's stomach would be by the refuse, starving off a very important part of them. That message was one he carried in his soul, and had shaken him down to his very core.
"What Hojo has been doing, and has done, is a crime against everything the ones who built this world stand for. They were protectors, builders, healers. Not destroyers. Jenova is the ultimate destroyer, she would take this planet and eliminate all life on it to use it too travel to the next world she would simply destroy in the same manner. It is what she does." All of this information, imparted to him by Minerva herself, one who would know better than any what they were dealing with.
The silver haired General's mouth drew into a narrow line, expression tense. "If I could not sense you were whole, if I did not know you as well as I do, I would believe you were rambling nonsense." Sephiroth's tone was firm and no nonsense, making it well known what he thought of what Genesis was telling him. "I believe you because I have seen the evidence in what happened to the boy, I trust you far more than I would that walking mass of complexes who has already ruined far too many lives, and took my true parents from me before I was old enough to realize that was what they were doing. No more."
"I thought you would say that, old friend." Genesis set a gloved hand on Sephiroth's shoulder. "I will not let what happened to us happen to the next generation of the three friends. Already the ripples of fate have begun to spread, and have turned it in a different direction than it might have once gone."
I can't tell Seph he would have been the one in the boy's place, he'd feel horridly guilty at being spared that fate at someone else's expense. Genesis thought to himself, and slipped back out, knowing that if he stayed he'd be caught. He had a mission, he could not afford to be caught.
Another three and a half years passed, fairly quietly, though there was a strange tension in the air. ..as if there was something just waiting to happen, to go wrong. Cloud had never let go of the hope that his lover might come back, and though people had tried to ask him out he'd turned down every single one, his loyalty and love to the boy he'd given his heart to back when he'd been a cadet still holding true.
Cloud and Zack both could scent it on the wind. .trouble was coming. "I don't know what to think. I can feel that things are going to be rough, and I don't know why. And it disturbs me." He shook his head, his hands going to his knees as he drew them up to his chest. The cadet had become a Third Class, then Second, though he'd never made First, Sephiroth had been his sponsor to even make it as far as Second, but he'd done well during sword training, and once he'd managed to get his body to accept the treatments he'd become stronger than any had imagined it possible he would.
"I know what ya mean." Zack set a hand on his shoulder. "But we'll make it through, right? It's what we always do." A smile accompanied the words, though he was not as confident as he tried to come across. It had been so long, and no one had seen hide or hair of the redhead in all of this time.
Deep in the deserts of Cactaur Island, a desert tribe flowed across the wastelands like a river, a man with an eerily familiar face at the head of the group. He wore a white dish dash to reflect the heat from his body, and a curved blade sword in a sheath at his waist. The desert animals carried them across the sands until they reached a recessed opening in what looked like a rock. "There." the man who lead the troop said.
Faruq had heard about the strange building inside their home,. and the Aibak Hakeem tribe that had lived in these sands for generations did not take kindly to strangers. "We will explore the place, and make sure that no one is there before we make certain that it can not be accessed again. I want nothing of ShinRa in our lands, at all." It took them about twenty minutes to get inside the complex, but when they did there was no power, and in the very back was a shattered tank, the fluid on the floor indicating it had only recently been broken. "It seems deserted. ..come, once we have left we will barricade the place. "
A blur would streak by them, though they would pass it off as a bird, it had moved too quickly for them to make out much more than a faint shape of black wing as it fled the place, though droplets of mako would spatter across their bodies and clothes as it passed. None of them had any idea of what they had just unleashed upon the world, what had been set in motion.
One of them who had been near the back swore in the musical language of the desert as he was splashed more than the rest with the viscous substance.
The first sign that something was amiss was the fire at the Junon reactor facility. When Tseng and Elena reached the underwater compound it was little more than a smoking crater full of water and debris, bodies floating to the top of the pot. "Oh sweet Goddess. .." The blond's voice choked off at the sight, this was her first mission after leaving the Military Academy, and it was the last thing she had expected to encounter during something that was supposed to be a routine security patrol.
"What happened here?" she asked her superior, noting how the dark haired man peered out over the remains of the compound as if looking for answers, for any sort of clue he could find as to how this had occurred. "This is. . .horrible, Sir. ..absolutely horrible."
Tseng was indeed looking for clues. He was cataloging every single thing he saw. "No sign of an explosive. . .as far as I can tell, the destruction was caused by materia. But there are very few people with the skill or power necessary to do so much damage. Perhaps one of Professor Hojo's experiments that were still stored here escaped. They would have the magical power necessary." he mused as he took stock of it. "It looks to be. ..fire materia. Or perhaps Bolt. A Bolt could have caused a short circuiting chain reaction that would have caused a fire. With the fuel and other supplies that are stored here a fire would soon have caused an explosion." An explosion, Tseng knew very well, would have wiped the entire compound off the face of the map with very little trouble whatsoever.
"Maybe." Elena didn't look convinced. The damage was far too focused for his theory to be correct. She was pretty sure it was a person behind this. .. not some runaway experiment. But the only person capable of doing this whose whereabouts are currently unknown is one of our own. . .and I know that Tseng doesn't want to think about that possibility. I don't know the guy personally, he was before my time, while I was still in school, but I don't want to think about that either.
"I don't think it was a runaway experiment, sir. This looks willful, focused, as if someone was trying to send a message. And I know you don't want to think this, neither do I, but how many people are capable of this sort of destruction? And how many of those have the freedom and a reason? We may be looking at one of our own who has done this." Elena's tone was gentle, but she could see in the stiffening of her supervisor's back that they had still h it him like a blow.
"But why now? Why wait. . .so long?" Tseng looked out over the destruction, still quite obviously in shock, though he did well at covering it, well enough that had Elena not known him as well as she did it would not have been seen.
"You told me the remainder of the Turks suspected he'd been a prisoner. If that is true. . .and he's been recently freed. . .he'd be very hurt, and very angry. Think of what someone you have said Reno is like in a state that hurt and angry and with that much power would do. ..would look a lot like this, wouldn't it?" Her words were musing, but sad.
"We can't tell the president about our suspicions." Tseng told her decisively.
"But sir, if we don't tell him. . .and this is allowed to continue, how many more people are going to die? We can't just let this go." Honey brown eyes widened in stunned amazement that Tseng would even say such a thing. .. the ever dutiful Turk that had served ShinRa's interests for years, practically turning against them? It was the last thing she had ever expected.
"Elena, I know you would not understand this, you are too inexperienced to have witnessed the dynamic as yet, but. ..we Turks are far more than simply ShinRa's loyal pack. ShinRa is our master, to be sure, but we've seen in nature many many times, and it is just as true of us. . .even the most loyal of hounds will turn on its master if one of its own pack is threatened." those obsidian orbs narrowed as he looked at her, deep in her own eyes. "That boy is the closest thing I have had to a son of my own. He is the closest thing I likely am ever to have to one. The President would send SOLDIER after Reno should he be told of our suspicions, and I will be damned if I let them mishandle this and Reno end up dead due to it. No, this will be done our way. This will be done the Turk way. Turks take care of their own."