Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII or its characters and I am not affiliated with Square Enix. I only own my original characters. Any similarities between this fic and others are purely coincidental.
This is my first Final Fantasy fic to ever be published. If you don't like, don't read. My aim is to show a perspective that is different from others. Such is my writing style.
Chapter 11: Washed in Insanity
The next day, everyone except Rena boarded the airship and took off in the direction of Cosmo Canyon, and Rena transformed into her second form to lead them. Her powers showed her which way to go. She was able to channel power from the planet itself to find what she needed. This power changed her vision from normal to heat vision. When she found the spot, she turned to the airship and pointed downward before making her descent. Cid followed suit, landing a safe distance from the laboratory. AVALANCHE prepared themselves for battle, and the Turks were so naturally confident that they didn't bother preparing at all. Rufus stayed on the ship, not wanting to get his white suit dirty. A handful of infantry men came with them. Breno was one of them. Rena had seen him, but chose to ignore him. He had no right to call her a slag and expect her to forgive him right away. And now that she had changed, there was no way that she would soften towards him.
Before anyone could get into the laboratory, they were met with a wall of circling dragons and a red sheet of normal Vincent clones. Rena's vision was back to normal, and she held her weapon in a battle stance, her blade pointed forward. Breno watched her silently, while his gun was held in a firing position towards the incoming army of red. The members of AVALANCHE charged forwards, each clashing with a clone and making their way through the red sheet.
The Shinra infantrymen followed after them, using AVALANCHE as a barrier to protect themselves, as Rufus instructed before. The Turks flanked them as they fought off more clones. It was a struggle to even make a dent. With each strike of her weapon, Rena felt that damn fever gradually taking over again. Her mind was being pounded by Sephiroth's whispers, and she tried in vain to stop them.
"The scientists are goin' to get away at this rate!" complained Barret.
"Then we should use the Materia that we brought along!" shouted Yuffie over the war cries of the enemies. "It must be that time, surely!" 'Then we can delay Rena's limit break a little longer,' she thought to herself.
"Stand back!" shouted Cloud. Everyone retreated to a safe distance as the battlefield became a large lava pit. Emerging from the flames was the well-known summon Ifrit. With a roar, he pounded the ground with his fist, creating a temporary quake, and engulfing thousands of clones in Hellfire. After many had fallen, the flames vanished as did Ifrit.
"Next summon!" Barret ordered.
"Outta my way!" yelled Yuffie as she charged forward, Materia glowing from her wrist. "Let's go... ODIN!"
The clouds grew dark and grey as the sound of Sleipnir the six-legged horse galloped from the distance. The rider, the great Odin sat proudly on his steed, and drew his sword from his torso. Holding the sword at arms length, he charged forward and sliced many clones with his super-sharp blade. Severed bodies were all over the place, and the powerful summon had vanished.
"They just keep coming!" grunted Luke. He didn't mind the battle, but he couldn't stand a living mirror image right in his face. He shoved off the abomination and finished it off by slicing off its head.
After completing one of her limit breaks on a few of the clones, Tifa called her assigned summon. A great blue serpent, Leviathan appeared. With a roar, he drowned half the battlefield in a great Tsunami before disappearing.
"I'd say that's a big dent now," said Cid.
'I wish I could call Bahamut,' thought Rena with bitterness. 'I could if Daemon hadn't stolen that Materia from me...'
"Stand back!" she shouted to her allies. "Here comes the big one!"
"NO!" roared Barret. "You can't handle your own limit break! Stand down!"
"Too bad," muttered Rena. Her dark side wasn't far now.
She took to the air until she got to the right altitude. That darn fever was burning now. It had nothing to do with the limit break, she was certain. Perhaps her body was rejecting the Bahamut cells? No, if that was going to happen, it should have happened at the beginning. Holding her bladed rod in front of her, she channelled her power from her wings to the rod, creating a ball of energy. Once it was at its full size, she struck in down with her weapon, and it became a beam, creating a great ball of destruction on the ground. The entire enemy army was destroyed, including the circling dragons. The building of the laboratory was scorched, but not about to collapse. The flames of Rena's limit break burnt out, and she landed slowly. Back to her human form, with the small black wings, she managed to keep herself standing. Yet that fever still burned.
"Rena...," began Tifa, as she approached the younger woman. "You look pale." She felt her forehead. "You're burning up!"
"That means there's still a dormant power within her," said Red XIII. "It's not an Ancient's power... It's not the foreign cells, either. It's..."
"Sephiroth," Cloud finished.
Breno listened from a distance. He'd heard of Sephiroth, the man who was once considered a hero, and who proved to be too good for himself, let alone anyone else.
"Ah, the joys of being conceived in a test tube," Rena mused.
"What?" blurted Breno. Everyone turned to face him, and he blushed deeply.
"You didn't know," said Rena. "I was adopted. Twice. Hell, it's even news for me. Wait, why am I talking to you? You think I'm a slag."
"I didn't mean it," said Breno.
"Of course not," retorted Rena. "You say lots of things you don't mean. Tseng, isn't there a protocol for infantrymen to only speak when spoken to? I should know. I used to be in the army."
"You're right," said Tseng, as Breno glared. "On the other hand, there's too much at stake to worry so much about protocol."
"Are you feeling alright?" asked Luke. "Spending too much time with your rivals is making you soft!"
"Not at all," said Tseng. "We can now enter the facility, but if there's any surveillance cameras and Rena is seen, our target could get away. I can contact them, and see if they are willing to negotiate."
"What, you couldn't contact them before?" asked Tifa.
"It wasn't the right time," replied Tseng as he took out his cell phone and used speed dial to get in touch with Hojo.
Hojo chuckled as his cell rang. Seeing the caller ID, he grinned as he answered.
"Been a long time, Tseng," said the scientist.
"Is Daemon with you?" asked Tseng.
"Of course," replied Hojo.
"We must negotiate," said Tseng. "Come to an agreement. What do you want with Shinra?"
"The whole company," Hojo replied simply. "Is Rufus with you, or is he hiding?"
"It's not your concern."
"Well then... If you want to negotiate, come alone."
"Absolutely not," said Tseng calmly. "My people are coming with me."
"Fine... Your fellow Turks, and the grunts. But nobody from AVALANCHE. I can trust you, Tseng. But them... Not while they're harbouring that freak of nature."
"Hojo, your apprentice did that to her and more. If anyone's the freak of nature, he is." With that, the Turk hung up. He turned to the rest of the group.
"We can get to where the scientists are," he said. "But he won't have AVALANCHE because they're non-Shinra."
"We're not standin' around!" exclaimed Barret. "Who does that guy think he is?"
"Oh, you're coming with us," explained Tseng. "But you'll have to blend in."
After some coaxing, Barret agreed to dress like a Shinra grunt like the rest of AVALANCHE. Rena felt an odd familiarity with the uniform, since she used to wear it a lot when she was in the army. To keep her wings from standing up and trying to get out of the material, and to make her look male from the front, Tifa took her behind a corner to bind her chest and wings flat. If the enemy thought she was male, she would go by unsuspected. Now fully dressed with the helmet and everything, she was ready. Everyone filed up inside the facility, except for Red XIII, who could not pass himself off as a grunt. The real Shinra grunts stood by every stair case by twos, covering any ground so as to prevent Hojo and Daemon from escaping. Rena and Yuffie walked side by side.
"Hey, you might get your Bahamut Materia back," said Yuffie.
"Yeah, that would be something," replied Rena. "Say... I bet Daemon and Hojo used it to make dragons out of those clones..."
"Always a possibility," said Cloud from the front. Wearing the uniform brought back memories for him also. When he was an infantryman, he'd met his best friend Zack, who was in SOLDIER. Images flashed in his mind for a moment as memories played on his mind. He could always move on, but he could not forget. And he knew that he also had some business with Hojo, the man who practically soaked him in mako. Hojo had been gone for a long time, but he must have realised that he wouldn't be around forever. Hence, Daemon was chosen to carry on his work. Cloud was disturbed by that thought. For his foster daughter's sake, these experiments could no longer continue. And that man could not keep walking free while the orphan continued to suffer.
They reached the floor where the scientists stood, waiting for them.
"I assume you brought the grunts here as witnesses," said Hojo, as Tseng approached, flanked by Reno and Rude.
"No, this is your escort," said Reno with a smirk. "To protect you from AVALANCHE. Big bad AVALANCHE..."
"Before you act," began Hojo. "I ask you as fellow Shinra people. Don't you see the potential which these experiments hold? My pupil Daemon and I are discovering the wonders of Summon Materia. If you unleash a summon long enough, you can extract their DNA and use it on other organisms. That's what we did with some of the Vincent clones, to see how powerful they are."
"They may be powerful," said Tseng. "But they couldn't stand up to Rena. She was too strong for them."
"Rena was a failure," said Daemon.
Upon hearing this, Rena's blood immediately boiled, and her willpower was only just holding on.
"I should never have used her own Materia to make her into a weapon," explained Daemon. "I realise now that just having her in her old form was enough. Half Ancient, half Jenova spawn... I mean, we had the means to make an embryo long before the passing of those two. But our curiosity got the better of us. When she was growing up, she did not show one symptom of possessing any powers of her ancestry. I thought that perhaps she was a dud. Until I gave her the B cells. I thought that creating her the way she is now would be the pinnacle of achievement in genetic engineering."
"How did you expect her to react?" asked Reno. "You... you know... to her." He was uncomfortable with words to describe what Daemon had done.
The professor sighed deeply, and turned around to look through a window, facing the dry landscape surrounding the facility.
"I was supposed to be watching over her," he explained. "My grandfather... he... But I guess a part of him had passed onto me. It doesn't excuse what I did. But before I went back to the Science Department to continue my training, I booked into the Shinra Rehabilitation Centre to confront my perverted ways. Obviously, I couldn't get over it overnight, but my therapist helped me to confront the reasons behind my actions. I know I deserve to be locked up forever..."
"Why did you make an army of clones?" demanded Magan.
"To draw Rena back here," replied Daemon. "Rufus hadn't told you?"
"You mean he was in on it?" exclaimed Reno.
"Yes," said Hojo.
Rena was shocked to the core, as well as everyone else in the group.
"A lot of infantry personnel died from the clones' attacks," said Magan. "And why use clones?"
"Because clones are sub-human," replied Hojo.
Luke felt insulted. If it wasn't for his disguise, he would have lunged at the old man. Vincent held in a chuckle.
'Sub-human,' he thought. 'Poor Luke...'
"And by fusing Vincent's DNA with that of Bahamut, we were attempting to create an organism more powerful than Rena," Hojo continued. "But they were all lacking in the hidden power held by Rena. The power to be in tune with the planet, and the strength to take on armies."
Once again, Sephiroth was calling out to Rena from the Lifestream. She had a vision of Sephiroth standing in front of her, eyes like coals, his hair swaying in the non-existent breeze. He walked towards her until he went through her, and awakened another power in her. His phantom presence had stirred up the Jenova cells that lay dormant in her blood.
"I had thought that I could fix her," said Daemon. "But the cells are there to stay. There's no way that she can be changed back... However, her continued existence and her surges of power could mean the end of this planet..."
"No...," Rena said softly. "My continued existence means the end of yours!" She removed her helmet as her black horns came out and the usual transformation, but instead of black dragon wings, black angel wings tore out of the back of her uniform, just like the wing of Sephiroth. Her hair turned silver but remained at its usual length. The rest of AVALANCHE showed themselves, casting off their helmets and held their weapons in Rena's direction. Rena was not herself. Her real self saw nothing but black.
"So... you betray me as well," she said.
"Rena, don't do anything stupid!" Luke called out.
The creature chuckled evilly as she looked carefully at everyone. Her eyes fell on Cloud, who held his sword in a battle stance.
"Kill my father and then kill me?" Rena questioned. "And what about my mother? Father says you did it. Stabbed her from behind. How will you kill me?"
"Rena," said Cloud. "This is not like you. Sephiroth is lying to you. Yes, I defeated him. He was going to destroy everything! Sephiroth killed Aerith!"
"Don't lie to me," growled Rena with a glare. She took out her weapon, which had changed shape as a reflection of her heart. It was a long sword now, with the handle resembling the long handle, and the blade was long like Sephiroths, but curved up slightly at the tip.
"We were all there!" shouted Cid. "You weren't! Who ya gonna believe? Us, your friends, or some crazed phantom?"
"I'll not have you refer to my father that way!" yelled Rena. A dark sphere surrounded her and she disappeared, and reappeared behind Daemon.
"This is the end!" she declared. She drove her blade into his back before he had time to react, and the blade went out to the front before she pulled it out again, and the old man collapsed lifelessly to the floor. Rena went to kill Hojo next, but as she went to strike him, her blade was locked with Cloud's.
"You're in the way," glared Rena.
"Because I care," replied Cloud calmly. "Nobody else has to die."
Rena stepped back, her searing look the same as Sephiroth's.
"Father says that if I kill all our enemies, he will come back and we'll bring back my mother together," said Rena. "So I must kill you all! My family will be reunited! And if you won't die by the sword..." She trailed off. She spread her wings and took to the air, blasting a hole in the ceiling. She hovered above the facility.
"Prepare for Supernova!" she called out.
"We have to get out NOW!" shouted Cloud urgently. "Yuffie, grab the Materia!" Yuffie hopped across the floor and snagged the Bahamut Materia from a pedestal on a counter. Reno and Rude grabbed Hojo and everyone scuttled down the stairs as the huge ball of energy came falling from the sky. Everyone evacuated the facility and jumped aboard the airship. The ball of energy got even closer as Cid started up the airship. Just as it took off, the attack made contact with the facility, causing it to explode. The shock waves were right on the tail of the airship. Fortunately, the airship was hidden from view by the immense dust cloud. Seeing a burnt out crater where the facility once stood, Rena grinned in satisfaction and flew off into the distance, sure to appear again.