Challenge 20:Hojo v Escaped Specimen

Hojo hated it when business brought him to Nibelheim. Too many bad memories. And this time, he'd lost a prize specimen. When he found out who had signed the order sending Sephiroth to Nibelheim, he vowed there would be blood.

It had been an accident waiting to happen. Hojo had never issued an order stating that Sephiroth could never go to Nibelheim reactor. He knew Sephiroth would find out about it, and promptly go there. The order had probably been signed by some low level official who didn't know about Jenova. It made sense to send their best to deal with such a serious problem. And when Sephiroth had been sent to a reactor in which 'Jenova' was written above a set of locked doors...

An unexpected bonus in that was his psychotic breakdown and massacre of the town. There wasn't many survivors to tell what happened, and by the time people came to investigate, the clean up crew would have done its work.

Kneeling just outside Jenova's storage chamber, he examined some dried blood on the ground. There had been three bodies in the reactor. A foolish villager who'd gotten in Sephiroth's way, a fellow SOLDIER, and an MP who'd both fared little better. Of Sephiroth there was no sign, but there was a blood trail out from Jenova's storage room as far as the bridge, and a pool at the base of the stairs where somebody had fallen. What on earth had happened here?

There was no point in theorising. The reactor's security footage would tell the story soon enough. Currently, he wanted to know about Jenova's welfare. Had Sephiroth tried to engineer some ill fated rescue attempt? Or even a successful one?

Jenova –at least, most of her- was still present. The huge mass was slumped half out of her containment tank, impaled on the razor sharp shards of broken glass around the opening Sephiroth had cut. Preservatives, sedatives, and various other substances were spilled across the floor. Some of the pipes were ripped free, the statue covering the tank was carelessly thrown aside. There was blood everywhere, draining from the gaping wound in her neck, although by now that flow had dried up. Hojo stepped closer, and a trailing tentacle wrapped itself around his ankle.

Very few people knew that Professor Tarquin Hojo had one of the fastest draws in the company. Once upon a time, Vincent Valentine, a highly ranked Turk, had dipped for his gun in rage, and Hojo had gotten there before him. Anyone who saw him draw in anger rarely lived to talk about it. The tentacle was severed by a lightning fast shot before it could do anything dangerous. Jenova sprang into action, raising herself into life. A Bio3 impacted on the wall near where Hojo had been standing, but he was already gone, lunging towards the door and sealing it. Whatever else happened, he would not let her escape. A Molotov hit Jenova as she tried to climb out of her tank, with limited effect-the preservatives in her tank had left her too soggy to burn. Five bullets hit like nails through balloons filled with custard, but in spite of the shower of gore, Jenova didn't seem much impeded. If she could survive the loss of her head, that made sense.

A tentacle flicked by his ear. Although her containment tank was broken, Jenova was still attached to a complex network of pipes and wires that, not entirely unintentionally, kept her confined, and were probably the reason she hadn't already escaped. She could only reach Hojo with one free tentacle and magic, provided he stood near the door. She could only thrash wildly and hope to pull free, but was effectively almost powerless.

Just as he was thinking that, a Bolt3 hammered him into the wall. Tasting blood, he rolled aside as something heavy crashed down where he had been. The tentacle he had severed had morphed into a bizarrely huge, independent creature.

So...the Jenova Reunion theory appears true.

Whatever this creature was, it was powerful, hurling bolt spells that buckled the walls and smashed the tanks below Jenovas's. Sooner or later, it would succeed in smashing down the door. Hojo fired his clip empty, but succeeded in nothing more than annoying it, if that. It ignored him, focusing on the door. He hesitated, then edged towards Jenova's tank. Her main body lashed out at him, but the tentacle almost severed itself on the tank' jagged edges, and the tank wall itself shielded him from the spells unless he was directly in front of her.

Firing at Jenova's transformed tentacle, he picked up a pipe that had been torn free of Jenova's tank and jammed it into the wound. He then adjusted the settings on a panel in the wall.

A year's worth of freezing agent surged out along the pipe, encasing Jenova's fragment in ice from the inside out.

It should be impossible to express frustration minus a head, but somehow, Hojo heard it. While he was occupied, Jenova's surviving tentacle wrapped around him, dragging him close. As she reeled him in, he caught his foot around a lever at the base of her tank and tripped it, then slashed the tentacle and threw himself to the ground.

The emergency measure was an absolute last resort, rerouting Nibel reactor's entire output through Jenova's tank. But since the village was destroyed, nobody would notice, and Jenova exploded, spattering pieces of her all over the room, beyond even her ability to regenerate within any reasonable time.

Hojo unsealed the door. By this time, his heavy crew had arrived, and a tech, flanked by two SOLDIERs, was waiting.

"Sweep her up and ship her to Midgar. We don't have to worry about Sephiroth finding out about this anymore, and clearly we need better security than this. Reopen the Nibelheim workstation, and keep the two specimens we found today there. Clean up the village, and have it repopulated-all the public needs to know is that there was an accident with the reactor. Have you seen the security footage yet? Where's Sephiroth?"

"Dead, sir."

"...Good. Announce that there was an accident with Nibeleim reactor and Sephiroth was killed. Quarantine the town until it's back to normal. I don't want word getting out

about this."

And Hojo had a new bad memory about Nibelheim. He would never forget or forgive the loss of his son.