Exchange My Soul
FF7 Alternate Universe
Disclaimers: Characters are owned by Square-Enix
Warning: Yaoi- SephirothxCloud, Het- ZackxAerith, Abuse, Science, Violence
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Cloud watched his best friends and somewhat boyfriend pack. His lilac brows bowed in worry, especially when they refused to inform him of where they were going. He stood from him seat in the office and walked over to Sephiroth putting a hand on his shoulder.
"Please? Please tell me where you're-"
"It doesn't concern you." Cloud frowned some.
"Why doesn't it?" He pushed. Sephiroth sighed and looked at him.
"Because I said it doesn't." Sephiroth replied softly. Zack looked up from his packing then slowly made his way to escape. If he knew one thing about dating it was to not say stuff like that.
"No Zack… Stay. I'll go." Zack froze as he reached for the door handle. He turned and looked at Cloud, who had his eyes locked with Sephiroth. Zack took a deep breath then shook his head.
"Look… you two need to obviously talk or something." He scratched the back of his head some then opened the door. Before he could react the former blond was out the door. Zack blinked and turned to Sephiroth.
"He's different." The short reply made Zack cringe.
"So he's different… That was really cold and might end up hurting in the long run." Zack closed the door and went back to the suit case he was filling.
"We had a date. We had sex. He's not my mother." Sephiroth closed his briefcase then pushed Zack out of the way and finished packing his supplies himself. Zack stared at him.
"You know… Aerith and I haven't even had sex. Maybe that was the pro-"
"The problem is Cloud is missing from that body." Sephiroth looked at Zack. "And we're going to fix that and bring him back." Zack couldn't help but smile then nodded.
"I'm going to go check our ride." Zack headed out and made his way to the Turk wing. He found his target, snuck up behind him and hooked and arm around his neck. "Hey there red! Why don't you do me a favour?"
"Fuck you Fair!!" Reno struggled in the headlock. Seeing he was going nowhere he reached over and tickled the side of the black haired SOLDIER only to find to his dismay that Zack wasn't ticklish. "I ain't doing shit for you, yo! I don't owe you anything!"
"Seph and I need a ride over to North Corel. Vacation time." Zack grinned some. "Take us?"
"That's not my job yo!!" Reno struggled more even to go as far as to pinch and grope Zack's ass… Fail.
"Is now. Sephiroth wants the best and you're the best." Zack said all matter-of-factly and patted the struggling red head's noggin. Reno sighed in defeat then jabbed Zack in the side.
"Alright, alright!! I'll do it if you keep strokin' my ego, yo."
"I'm sure Sephiroth could stroke something else for ya too." Zack winked and Reno perked up. The SOLDIER let him go and nodded. "We want to leave in 10 minutes. That enough time to get everything ready?"
"That's more then enough. Of course I have to bring Rude." Reno lifted his hand up. "Turk honor yo."
"Yeah, yeah. We'll meet you up top." Zack grinned again and walked back to Sephiroth's office.
Reno watched then hurried to Tseng's office. Instead of knocking and waiting, he busted in with a lazy smirk.
"You know your SOLDIER boys." He announced. "Permission to take them to Nibelheim?"
"Granted." Tseng stood and walked over to his file cabinet. He pulled out some folders and handed them to the other. "I'm sure Sephiroth would want these."
"Should we really be going behind the company's back like this yo?" Reno looked through the files. "Hey these are-"
"Yes… Make sure he gets them…" Reno saluted and ran out to get the copter ready.
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Zack looked around and frowned some as he noted they were passing North Corel. He tapped Sephiroth to wake and pointed out the window.
"Reno's planning something…" The black haired teen nodded. "We're passing Corel." The General frowned in response and unbuckled his safety harness and got up. He slowly made his way to the cockpit door and pulled it open.
"Just what the hell is going on?" Silver brows furrowed some as Reno looked up at him.
"You're going to Nibelheim right? So that's where we're going." The red head nodded and turned to ignore the stunned man's look. "You know you're easy to read. You and the black spiky wonder."
"Your words displease me…" Sephiroth frowned more. "I don't enjoy being easy to read…"
"I'm a Turk, baby. If I can't read you then I'd fail at my job." Reno grinned. "You got sexual frustration written all over you. What's wrong? Cloudy no good in bed?"
"I would hit you if it didn't mean you crashing…" Sephiroth slammed the door shut causing a chuckle to escape the Turk. Sephiroth made his way back to his seat, obviously fuming from Reno's last comment.
"So..?" Zack stretched some, working kinks out of his back.
"He's taking us to Nibelheim… Remind me once we get back to Midgar, to kill him."
"Noted." Zack couldn't help but grin a the slight childish antics of the other. "When we get to Nibel, I'm gonna go talk to Tifa. Maybe she knows something."
"Keep the locals out of this."
"But Tifa really loves Cloud!!" Zack protested some but shut up when Sephiroth threw a death glare his way. "Alright no locals…. So what are we gonna do? Go straight to the mansion and dig around?"
"Exactly… Hopefully find some things… Maybe talk to his mother." Sephiroth noted a distinct change of features on Zack.
"NO!! The mother stays out of this!" Zack growled lowly. If there was no Tifa, then there was no Mrs. Strife. Zack would have no part of interrupting her world just to ask if her son was some sort of monster.
"… And if we have to?" Sephiroth raised an eyebrow some at Zack's growling.
"We don't have to!!" Zack stomped his foot. Sephiroth stayed quiet then leaned back in his seat.
"We'll see…"
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Hojo looked at the boy sitting in front of him. His mind thought it was an odd turn of events for his new prized experiment to be coming back for more willingly as opposed to being forced.
"So that is what Sephiroth is doing… Interesting… very interesting…" Hojo stroked his chin some.
"I don't understand… What's so important about Project N?" Cloud shifted nervously. "He's throwing me aside because of it. I can't stand it, Professor." He stood and started to pace. "It's like… he thinks I'm not me… He thinks I'm someone else… Am I someone else?"
"Cloud your appearance is different. You know that don't you?" Hojo eyed the boy as he shook his head. "Your hair was blond and eyes blue."
"Aren't they still?" He turned and looked at his reflection in the window of Hojo's office. The older man raised an eyebrow.
"Don't you see it, boy? Your hair is lilac silver and your eyes are bright purple." Cloud frowned at the Professor's statement.
"No…. I see blond and blue…. Is something wrong with me?" Cloud sank into the chair and shivered some. He didn't want to think that he was ill or something. "What happened to me while I had makou poisoning?"
"I have no clue, I wasn't your doctor then. Only reason why I am now is because you're a SOLDIER." Hojo shifted in his chair. "Your first mission is coming up correct? Heidegger is most interested on how you perform. He boasts about it at the meetings. Now run along. I have no more time to waste on you boy." He spun in his chair to face his desk. He concealed a smirk as he heard a disappointed sigh and the boy get up to leave.
Humming to himself, Hojo jotted down some notes, finding it interesting that Cloud couldn't see his physical appearance. A new symptom always needed to be noted.
To his delight the control chip he had installed was working perfectly. Cloud had surpassed his expectations completely. Not only was the boy's anger in check but it seems it had eliminated Cloud's over active shyness. This pleased Hojo greatly and he noted it in his writing.
"Yes Sephiroth…. Your Cloud isn't your Cloud…. He is mine. And you won't find what you're looking for in that disgusting dump of a town."
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"Anything?" The General stood and wiped the dirt from his cheek.
"Nope nothing…. How much longer are we gonna do this?" Zack whined some and set down the shovel. He looked around the tiny graveyard that was behind the mansion. So far by digging in the unmarked graves they had only found remains of infants, which crept Zack the hell out.
Who's idea was it to dig in a cemetery again?
"Keep digging. One of these graves has to have something." Sephiroth hissed as he tossed a pile of dirt over his shoulder.
"I still say we go into the basement and wake up that guy." Zack sighed and resumed digging and stopped when his shove hit a box. He crept down and brushed some of the dirt away and paled. "Hey… HEY SEPHIROTH!!!" The silver man looked up from his digging and peered at Zack's dug hole.
"What is it?"
"I found something!!"
"Just tell me, Zack." Sephiroth when to rub the bridge of his nose but stopped when he saw how dirty his gloves were.
"It's a coffin…. Has a plaque on it…." Zack brushed more dirt away.
"Get to the point. We've seen multiple coffins with plaques and they all turned out to be 24 numbered infants." Sephiroth couldn't help the slight growl he let out.
"It says 'Nevin Strife'. Isn't that Cloud's dad?" Zack looked up and yelped when he saw the other man standing above him. "Damnit!! You were just in a hole!! Don't sneak up on me like that in a fuckin' graveyard!!" Sephiroth ignored him and jumped down and reached to open the casket. "WAIT!!! Let me out first!!"
Sephiroth gave no hesitation and flung open the lid. He wrinkled his nose at the remains, as the still held some tissue. He reached down and fumbled around frowning more.
"Third stage of decomp…. Bones are slimy and greasy, some mummified tissue clinging to the dried bones…. Human soup…."
"That's fucking disgusting, Sephiroth…" Zack urked a little then got out of the hole to go puke behind a tree. Sephiroth didn't flinch at the sound and dug through the remains more then stopped and looked at the lid. The inside was covered in scratches, the fabric ripped to shreds.
"He was buried alive…" He reached out and touched the lid gently. "Given the size of the coffin I would say he had about an hour of air… After it ran out he would be lulled into a sleep and die of suffocation…"
"MORBID!! YOU ARE FUCKING MORBID!!" Zack snapped from his safety behind the tree.
"You see men die on the battlefield, Zack. This is no more morbid as that." Sephiroth resumed digging through the liquidy flesh and greasy bones, hoping there was something hiding.
"Ugh that sounds disgusting…." Zack urked again but kept his stomach from speaking up. "And we didn't come here to play CSI… We came here to find out about--"
"Ah ha…" Zack looked over at Sephiroth's quiet announcement of 'I've found something' and tilted his head.
"What is it?"
"There's a disc under the pillow. In good shape, the remains didn't get to it." Sephiroth closed the lid and hopped out of the hole. He grabbed a shovel and filled in the hole. "Tomorrow we'll have a proper gravestone for him made."
"…. You have Nevin juice all over your arms…." Zack wrinkled his nose.
"Have some respect, Zack. It's Cloud's father."
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Cloud stood next to the First Class he was assigned with. He had gone over the mission data over and over again in his head and waited for his moment to strike.
Just then an explosion rocked the platform he was on and the first he was with gave a nod. Cloud grinned a little and jumped into action, taking out any enemy that came in his way, any monster that dare cross his path. Heidegger watched from his post above and smirked.
"Gya ha ha ha!! Hojo you've out done yourself!! The boy's amazing!!" The overweight man slapped Hojo's back which caused a grunt of dislike come from the other man.
"Of course… there was only room to improve from Sephiroth. Nova is the perfect specimen. A combination of planetary biomechanics and Jenova cells. Soon enough that chip in his head will wipe away the memories of Cloud Strife and he'll be a clean slate. Nova will become the perfect soldier in all respects." Hojo walked away some as he spoke, not wanting another slap.
"Stunning Professor…. Kya ha ha ha!! I've always wanted a living weapon." Scarlet licked her lips as she watched Cloud with more then professional interest.
"A whore is not a suitable breeding partner for him." Hojo snapped at her.
"And he isn't for the Weapons department." Heidegger said crossly as he lit up a cigar.
"Then make me another one, Hojo." The woman flipped her hair and crossed her arms under her breasts, making them stick out unnecessarily.
"That's not that simple… He is one of 25 to survive birth." Hojo sat down and watched with little interest. He had already seen what Cloud can do, evidence of it was all over his lab in Junon.
"So we breed him." Scarlet turned to him. "What is a 'suitable breeding partner' for him, Professor?"
"An Ancient… or another of his kind. Seeing as he is the only of his kind and that girl the Turks are watching for me is the only Ancient left, it is only safe to say she is the only one right to breed with him. Even so… You'll be dead before the child is fully mature." Hojo grinned some as Scarlet huffed and walked away from him.
"He will be bumped to First Class after this mission. The pet is too good for Second." Heidegger took a large drag off his cigar and puffed the smoke into the air.
Down below, Cloud fought hard and out of all the attacks coming for him, only one landed, sending him flying into a build and smacking the back of his head against a metal pipe. Cloud shook his head as he got a slight shock, figuring it was an electrical pipe he had hit and got up to fight more.
But the fighting felt different… his blood lust increased and his need to kill raised. Soon he was the only one standing, the head of the First Class that was appointed to watch him in his hand.
