Chapter 3: Hojo's Last Laugh
As the helicopter soared towards Nibelheim, Elena sat quietly thinking of the horrors that went on inside the Shinra mansion. The place in which the Jenova project was born, where Zack and Cloud were brutally tortured and finally where Sephiroth's madness took root. As they descended on the town they were shocked to find it abandoned. Not a single person was to be found, only monsters and scavengers now called this place home. The three made their way up to the mansion, once inside it appeared that someone had "redecorated" Each of them was suddenly grabbed by strange machines which dragged them off to different parts of the building. Once they had stopped after their capture a voice boomed throughout the mansion.
"Hello unwelcome guests. This is Professor Hojo, speaking to you from beyond the grave. As I'm sure you won't understand I'll explain it. I have linked a computer hidden in this building to a monitor attached to my heart. When it stops beating the computer will activate and retrofit this place to suit my needs. After that it will carry out a series of experiments in my name that were not likely to yield results in my lifetime. But because you bumbling idiots! Have interrupted this work, you will have to be destroyed before you can screw any thing up! Goodbye." As the transmission faded each Turk became cautious of their surroundings, wondering what twisted idea of Hojo's would be their undoing.
While Reno inspected the steel plated walls around him a door opened and in lumbered a titanic mass of muscle whose face was twisted into a grotesque look of pain. Reno guessed that this poor beast was once human, but that would still make him show no mercy as he was sure that this person wanted nothing more than their own death. Meanwhile Rude stood in the middle of the room. He cracked his knuckles and started pounding on the door as the walls slowly closed in on him. Elena was in more trouble than the other two as Hojo's sick sense of humour had designed her room to poison her and leave her a few clues to the key code on the vaccine cabinet.
Reno having spotted a tattoo on the monster which read "20" He assumed this thing was called Green twenty, but as far as Reno was concerned knowing this particular experiment's name didn't make it's last blow to his guts any less painful. He composed himself and decided that life and death was definitely one of those sparing moments for a cartridge.
"Alright Green meanie, how would you like some blizzard magic, huh?" Reno picked the cartridge carefully from his belt and loaded it into the Aerith. The end began to sparkle with snow flakes as he ran forward and buried the end of the tonfa in the beast's face. The experiment froze over and shattered to pieces as Reno left saying "Hate to give you the cold-shoulder, but I'm outta here." Rude, now having to stand sideways to it, delivered one last punch to the door with his bloodied hand and it broke free of it's hinges as it sailed down the corridor. Rude straightened his tie and left. Elena typed frantically on the keypad getting nowhere with the clues she was given. Then it struck her, Hojo was full of it! He thought that everyone was beneath him and that anything he could understand was far too complicated for anyone else. So to make this a fair game, the code would have to be something that even Hojo would find annoyingly simple. Armed with this knowledge she typed in Hojo's locker combination and was soon walking out with the vaccine in hand. Having met up again in the corridor, they exchanged stories.
"I just whipped one of Hojo's twisted experiments."
"Steel door."
"It turns out listening to that bastard drone on in the locker room, wasn't a complete waste of time." After coming to the conclusion that the computer mentioned was probably in the basement, the three hurried to the secret entrance. It was sealed tight so unfortunately Reno had to use another cartridge.
"Alrighty, Here comes a quake!" Slamming the Aerith into the door, it soon crumbled under the force and the three moved on. As they carried on down the corridor to the basement they saw numerous little robots setting up machines and toying with row after row of test tubes and beakers. When they entered the room at the end of the hall there it was, a towering mass of electronics with hundreds of wires running out to unseen locations. The voice of Hojo again filled the air.
"How very amusing. I figured that there may be someone skilled enough, strong enough or smart enough to make it through my death traps so I decided to program the computer to unleash a little friend of mine if you were too stupid to leave after the first run! So presenting experiment Blue twelve or as I have affectionately named him, Ripper. Good luck, you'll need it! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" As the voice faded a large cylinder at the other end of the room opened and out of it stepped a huge monster. It looked to them like a big bulldog with no fur and tusks coming up from its jaw. It was armoured in places and to make things worse for the Turks it had a mini gun attached to its underbelly.
Reno reloaded the Aerith once more. Rude clenched his fists ready to fight and Elena pulled a grenade from her pocket. Ripper leapt forward and knocked Reno and Elena aside while pinning Rude to the wall. The mini gun rotated and began to fire from the gaps between its legs. Elena threw the grenade underneath it, but this did nothing but anger the beast. It let Rude down and began to charge at Elena. Reno swung the Aerith hard and hit it with a lightning bolt. The creature was stunned for a moment and its weapon was disabled, but that didn't stop it from tossing Reno aside like a rag doll once its senses returned. With Elena cornered and Rude injured the out come looked bleak, so Reno made the decision to load again.
As Ripper was about to end Elena's life the Turks sprang into action, Rude got up and charged into the beast, pushing it back into its container. Elena threw a bolt plume, an object that unleashes lightning, and that was followed by an angry Reno whose tonfa was surrounded with an impressive black aura. After being paralyzed by the bolt, Reno struck the experiment and the life was crushed out of it by the Demi magic that flowed through the Aerith.
They searched the computer to find that the experiment preformed on Archer was to replace his left arm with machinery; the horrible part of this project was that being one of Hojo's experiments, the observation of the subject's reaction was crucial so no anaesthetic was applied. They eventually found what they were looking for; the experiment was charged to the budget of the "Black Phoenix Squad". They duplicated the files and shutdown the computer leaving Nibelheim and Hojo's experiments to rot.