Monsters in Midgar: Weakness
Outside on the balcony, Vant turned to look up at the roof above Shinra's office. He could hear Hojo cackling and calling out, "Yes, my beautiful experiments, show them your power! Strike fear into their hearts!"
When he went back to cackling, Vant sighed and wondered how the man had ever been classed as sane—or, at least, sane enough to give dangerous toys to. Another look and a walk around the side of the building revealed a stair leading to the rooftop, so he walked up it, peering around for Hojo. The rooftop, like the balcony, was large enough for a helicopter to land there, but there was no official mark for it and there wasn't one sitting there right then. Other than where the stairs were, the whole rooftop was surrounded by a two-foot-high wall which was about a foot and a half wide, and there was a vent pipe in one corner, pointing away from the stairs.
And on the two-foot tall wall directly across from the stairs, Hojo stood facing out over the city with his arms spread and his feet parted to brace him against the wind blowing into both their faces. With his hair and lab coat streaming behind him, the man looked positively demonic.
It would be so easy to just give him a little push—but then they'd never get the answers they needed.
As such, Vant moved over to sit on the two-foot wall running perpendicular to the one Hojo was on, placing himself about seven feet away and silently drawing his PHS so he could begin a text message to Tseng—one he'd only send when he had his answer. He then placed it on the wall beside him, out of Hojo's view if the man happened to turn around, as it would be hidden by his thigh.
"So, I'm guessing those monsters out there are indeed your creations, Professor?" he asked in a neutral tone.
The mad cackling stopped as Hojo snorted, "So the Turk finally speaks!" He then went on in a rather loving (for him, anyway) tone, "Of course they are! I'm so sure I've found the way to continue the SOLDIER program, even without Jenova or Sephiroth directly, which is entirely worthy of celebrating, don't you think?" It didn't escape Vant's attention that Hojo had apparently known someone was there without facing them, and not just 'someone', but a Turk. Was it normal for scientists to be as aware of their surroundings as combat personnel, without even looking to see 'who' it was?
"And how did they get out into the city, Professor?"
"Oh, that was because I let them out to stretch their legs and spread their wings, like any good pet owner would do."
The description of the experiments being 'pets' turned his stomach, but he tossed those feelings aside for the moment to ask, "What made you think releasing deadly monsters on civilian streets was a good idea?"
"Two reasons, Turk. One is to see their actual natural behaviors and abilities, and the other...Well, they sure make a good distraction, don't they?" There was a clear smirk in Hojo's voice.
"A...distraction?"
"Of course."
The creepy chuckling was back, and Vant had more immediate need to find out their weakness than what they were a distraction for, so he commented, "They sure do take a lot of work to take out. I can't help but wonder where they get their strength from." He silently picked up his PHS and got ready to start typing, hoping he'd get an answer.
At his comment, Hojo's chuckle turned into a laugh, then silenced for a moment before he smirked and said, "Mako energy is a wondrous thing! It's everywhere, all around us, especially here in Midgar. The smog is annoying, though."
Vant blinked, then blinked again as he remembered how Hojo loved to boast and didn't normally say actual random things when asked a question—even when it sounded random. As such, he began typing the message to Tseng: Shut down the Reactors. That's where they're getting their strength from.
In the meantime, he had to distract Hojo from what he was doing just long enough to fully type the message and send it, so asked in a falsely irritable tone, "What does that have to with anything?" He hoped Hojo would decide to boast like usual, to show his mental superiority. The longer Hojo talked, the longer he'd have to type and send.
Hojo laughed sharply again, then said, "Mako is a source of infinite power, Turk. Oh, I still needed small samples of one of my former subject's genes, but with cloning, that isn't as much of a hardship as I'd thought. No, it's singularly more troublesome that those two hack doctors from Deepground have been given charge of my SOLDIER infusions and will only give me as much as I need for the known SOLDIERs scheduled for injections. Well, regardless, true genius can find a way around any situation, and I had other useful samples at hand.
"All it took was to give the monsters Mako injections and tweak their genes to absorb their necessary energy from sources of Mako energy—those Slum drugs, power lines, the smog, batteries, waste products. The result..." Hojo paused to give a content sigh, which was somehow more creepy than his chuckle, then finished, "And the final result was a subject showing enhanced regenerative abilities, fatal damage reversal, a recovery shield, and easily twice the strength, reflexes, and senses of a normal Mako enhancement. Truly a masterpiece of scientific innovation!"
Since Vant had just sent the message and the full scope of what Hojo had just said was actually horrifying (how was any of that 'innovation'?), he reacted as expected and gasped in shock. What he didn't expect was that, a moment after he gasped, a tentacle wrapped around his PHS and crushed it with ease, leaving him to stare at his now-empty hands, his broken PHS on the ground at his feet...And at the writhing, pastel purple and blood red mottled tentacle which had destroyed the device.
As the appendage withdrew, his eyes followed it—to Hojo as the man 'tsked' and said, "Now, no spoiling the fun, Turk." The tentacle retreated beneath the man's lab coat.
For a long moment, Vant stared at the man, trying to assess what him sprouting a tentacle meant, then dropped his hands onto the wall beside him and asked warily, "Professor, since I assume you're aware of your extra appendage, where did you get it from?"
"Why, from Jenova, of course," Hojo replied with his trademark creepy chuckle, causing Vant to shiver. That answered a lot of questions he'd had about the man, how he could do the things he did to other living beings. If he was his own experimental subject, his mindset and sanity (or lack thereof) were self-explanatory.
"...So you used yourself."
"Of course I did, you foolish whelp! How could I possibly know what uses, strengths, and weaknesses something had without first subjecting myself to it? Of course, there are times where that doesn't quite work or there are viable ways to study the effects without applying the product personally, but Jenova wasn't one of them. I'm so disappointed in Sephiroth, though. He had progressed so far, only to throw it all away before he could reach his full potential. That showed me a vital flaw in my experiments. There's no accounting for sentience, after all. Pity."
"Of course, that means you'd never have full control over any living thing, Professor," Vant had to reply evenly, though internally, he felt quite rebellious. "No matter how hard you try. Not even your 'pets'."
The man went completely still, then spun and hopped down from the wall, only to storm across the rooftop, down the stairs, and back down to the President's office, saying as he went, "We'll just see about that, Turk!" Vant followed him quickly, internally snickering over how he'd hit one of Hojo's soft spots.
As Hojo made to leave the office, Vant got in his way and said, "With the rampaging monsters, I can't let you leave until someone else is here to stay with the President or go with you." No, they didn't want Hojo to go 'help' his creations wreck even more havoc, so he wasn't going to let him leave.
With a glare, the mad scientist began, "But they—"
"Sit down and shut up so Vant can do his job and I can do mine!" the President barked irritably from his desk.
"And what 'job' would that be?" the scientist asked with a sneer. "Signing off on yet another resort when you just got one?"
The President looked up at Hojo with a glare which made both men think of the phrase 'if looks could kill.' "Thanks to someone letting your experiments out into the building and city, I have to sign off on funds to clean up the mess, both now and after they've been dealt with. You're easily costing me ten billion gil in just dealing with the monsters right at this moment, so don't try my patience, because you're already treading on very thin ice, Hojo."
Sufficiently cowed by the words, Hojo hunched his shoulders and moved over to the seating area at the back of the President's Office, though his mind was clearly—elsewhere—by his absent expression as he sat. It wasn't yet an 'opportune time' to kill Hojo (would it even be possible to do so without resorting to Chaos?), so Vant took up a guard position near the door and where he could see both men. The President had gone back to his paperwork by then, so wasn't paying any attention to the other two men in the room.
And why did it feel like there was a fourth presence in the room, one besides the President, Hojo, and himself? There were no visual cues indicating someone, but as a Turk, he knew there were blind spots in the room, and he couldn't move from his position without making them suspicious.
The thought crossed his mind as he settled in to wait that it was likely nearly everyone he knew was involved in this mess. He hoped Lunaria, Sephiroth, and Anthony—and all his other friends—were okay while he was safe in President Shinra's office...
FoW
Tseng and Sora had needed a couple minutes upon entering floor sixty-eight to adapt to what they were seeing without losing their stomach contents.
Blood, gore, bits of skin, bone, innards, and cloth scraps.
It was scattered around a silent sixty-eighth floor which should have been active and energetic. There were splatters stuck to walls, doors, containers, paperwork, desks, the floor—even the ceiling. Normally, a dead body would decompose into pyreflies, but with the bodies clearly torn apart, it looked like clean-up crews would have to handle this with soap and water. Of course, with it being akin to a scene from a nightmare, Tseng had to wonder if any of the department's doctors were still alive.
"What do we do now?" Sora asked him, expression drawn. That told him a great deal about how bad this actually was, as in her time with Deepground, she had been exposed to more horrible things than he ever had.
Drawing in a deep breath, he steadied himself and said grimly, "We search the floor for signs of life, making our way towards the internal elevator between floors sixty-seven and sixty-eight."
It wasn't a very extensive search, but they were sure there weren't any living beings, human, monster, or animal, by the time they got to the elevator. In amongst the gore, they had seen several holes, and there had even been some bits which had looked pastel purple-ish or silvery white. What had produced those? Either way, it was dead and dismantled, whatever 'it' had once been, so they had simply kept going, approaching the blocked elevator with some care. It was open, but a large, cage-like shipping container had fallen over the door and one of the overhead lighting support beams had come down partway over the container, pinning it in place.
As they neared it, however, a familiar voice called from inside, "Tseng, thank Bahamut! I can't get out of here, and the others are trapped in their research offices below!"
The Wutain man paused for a moment as his PHS alerted him to an incoming text message, then called back to her, "Are you injured, Doctor Valentine?"
"No. I was just very lucky things fell in the way of the door to keep the monsters from bothering with me. The lift itself isn't damaged, but with the door stuck open by the shipping crate, it won't descend, and the maintenance hatch only leads into two feet of closed-in space with no exits," Lunaria Valentine replied, sounding both highly amused and equally as strained.
"Sora, do you think we can move the beam and shipping crate?" Tseng asked.
For a moment, the woman examined the obstacles, then said, "We'd need to melt the top of the beam still attached to the ceiling, then use Ice or Quake on the wall near there to shove it outward. From there, if it doesn't fall on its own, I should be able to move it. We'll be able to push the crate once the beam has been moved."
"Do you have Fire on you?" the Turk asked.
"I do," the SOLDIER agreed.
"Would you recommend Ice or Quake? I have both."
"Ice will do the least lasting damage."
"Fair enough. Doctor Valentine, back away from the door."
"Already done," the woman replied from inside the elevator.
It was the work of a couple minutes for Tseng and Sora to move the beam as they'd said—Ice 3 shoved it right off the crate—then shove the metal crate out of the elevator doorway, freeing Lunaria. Rather than step off it, she motioned the other two onto it with her, so once they'd stepped in, she sent it down to floor sixty-seven.
When the doors opened—it looked largely like the floor above, only with many more holes in the floor.
"Looks like someone's rendition of Nibel cheese (1)," Lunaria commented with a sigh. "It explains how everything got so quiet once the monsters ran out of easy things to kill up there, though."
"Do you know what happened?" Tseng asked as he checked the message he'd ignored earlier. It was from Vant, saying: Shut down the Reactors. That's where they're getting their strength from.
"Hojo released the monsters from their cages on purpose to kill everyone—even Doctor Hollander is dead, along with all his assistants who knew the process he used on the monsters. I think he was hoping they would kill Doctors Blythe and Kedran, too, but he underestimated their paranoia. The section of the department we work in is—let's just say, even if they could have gotten in, it would have been a lot easier for them to go elsewhere, because the floor of the main department is less sturdy than our walls and doors," the woman explained as she led them to a sealed door with another beam in front of it, the metal having twisted into an odd shape and partially melted to the door.
What had done that?
"Well, that sure puts a spin on things, and I wasn't imagining Hojo's deliberate involvement," Tseng sighed, finding Reeve's PHS number and dialing it.
A few rings later, the man asked in confusion, "Is something wrong, Tseng?"
"We have a situation out here, and it looks like we need you to authorize a complete Reactor shut-down for us," Tseng informed him simply. Lunaria and Sora both turned to stare at him with wide eyes.
"But why? Wait, does this have something to do with the monsters Jessie called me about?" the man questioned with sudden realization in his voice.
"Yes, it does. How are the others in Urban Development, by the way?"
"I sent Biggs back to them with some of Weapons' robo-soldiers, but I know only about two thirds of them are still alive, and only because they had Jessie there and she was willing to lead them to fight back. As for shutting down the Reactors, I'm going to have to call the foreman at every one of them to give them my current Master Code, but Reactor Zero has to be manually shut down. Your best bet for that is Jessie, and—maybe Sora to show her the way? Will that work for you?"
"It's a fantastic start. When the monsters are defeated, I'll call you so you can start up the Reactors again."
"That's fine. Don't take too long to get to Reactor Zero, though, or Shinra Headquarters will be mobbed if it's the last Reactor running," Reeve replied, then hung up.
Tseng looked at Sora to say, "Once we get the door open here, you need to escort Jessie to Reactor Zero."
"Tseng, no offense, but I think the Reactor is the more important thing right now," Lunaria commented in a dry tone, and Sora nodded her agreement. As Tseng opened his mouth to protest, she added, "They have everything they need for a few days, even food. The door isn't in urgent need of being opened, but if what you said is true, the city is in urgent need of a power outage so the monsters can be killed."
With a small sigh, the Wutain man relented with a nod. "Fine, then head out, Sora. The two of you will be stuck down there until we can turn the Reactor back on, since it powers this whole building, including the lift. You may want to take breathing masks with you, since we have no idea of the state of the toxins down there."
"Reeve was fine when he upgraded the Reactor, but he only went down there for short times over many days," Sora said. "A longer stay...I'll take some masks, then." She left the two there to go find the masks, then head for Urban Development.
"I have to keep on my rounds to check on the executives," Tseng told the woman with him.
"I'll go with you for now," Lunaria agreed, pulling out her PHS to let the other doctors know what was going on.
The pair then headed away from the gore on the Science Department floors.
FoW
Shalua was in one of her academic medical classes when the building suddenly rocked, producing startled yelps and screams from her classmates and other nearby rooms. She sat up straight, knowing something was very wrong, her hand moving in the direction of the gun she was allowed to have on her due to having her ranged weapons class later that day. The class came to a stand-still as the other students began muttering to one another worriedly, and their behavior irritated her as she kept gazing around, trying to find out where the rocking had come from.
Suddenly, a section of the ceiling near the front of the room fell to the floor with a monster like a distorted, scaled human on top of it, its top half a mangled, blueish color and the bottom half of its body more of a sickly, fleshy-reddish color. She drew in a sharp breath as she recognized it as a Makonoid, rising and drawing her gun from its holster to shoot the monster in the head. The force of the shot made it arch backwards, but then it straightened again and everyone watched the wound heal in something like horror. That was when the screaming, chaotic, running-around-like-a-chicken-with-its-head-cut-off behavior began.
Before they had a chance to leave the room, two more holes several feet from the first appeared, dropping two more monsters into the room, those ones Sahagins. The Makonoid was standing still for some reason, but from the holes it and the Sahagins had left, a pair of black Blood Tastes like Dark Nation appeared. Of everyone in her class, Shalua was the only one bothering to fight back, even though she knew others were also in at least one of the combat classes. Granted, a few of them may not have had their weapons on them, but at least three of them should have had their guns.
Unfortunately, her attacking them caused them to target her.
She heard the door being thrown open as one of the Sahagins dove at her with its spear—and pain exploded in her left arm, making her look to her side...where she saw the Makonoid...holding her arm in one hand.
She didn't even feel the Sahagin's spear hit her or hear someone shout her name, just too stunned to do any more than look down at the stump of her left arm to verify that yes, the Makonoid really was holding her arm in one hand. Then everything went dark.
White laced with green surged through her senses and she found herself being held up by someone. Opening her eyes, she blinked a few times at Elena as she whispered, "What are you doing here?"
"I was heading this way after realizing my class was actually going to fight," Elena said quietly, her tone subdued and her eyes pained. "Don't move too much—Revive can't return missing limbs to you, only keep you from bleeding out."
"Missing—?" Shalua began, then remembered seeing the Makonoid with her—arm in its hand. "My arm!" she suddenly gasped, trying to sit.
Elena held her down and said, "Stay still, you idiot!"
"Shalua!" Anthony's voice came from nearby, just past Elena. "Take it easy before you open the wound again," he added, making Shalua still and slowly look up at him. He was panting, and it was obvious he'd been fighting, his uniform the pale blue of the SOLDIER Thirds rather than the dark red of the Cadets and his eyes glowing, Mako-blue. That's right, they had been promoted a few days ago. (2)
"She's awake?" another familiar voice asked, and she turned her head to see Cloud and Tifa beside Anthony.
"Looks like it," Anthony agreed. "Could you go check on Karen (3), Shelke, Yufi, and Evan? It looks like most of the monsters are in this area, so I'll start working from this side."
"Yeah, I'll do that," Cloud agreed, heading away.
"I'm going with you!" Tifa immediately added, following him.
After a moment of silence, Anthony said, "I can't just stay here, but you don't have orders from the Turks yet, so I'll leave Shalua to you, Elena."
"Fine. Don't go dying on me, either, Anthony," Elena replied to him with a glare.
"I don't plan on it," he answered in faint amusement, then met Shalua's gaze. "And you had better recover, too. You know better than anyone how many options you have to deal with that." He gave a nod at the stump of her left arm, causing her to look down at it—and to see the holes and blood left over from the Sahagin's spear attack on her chest in the process. She made a face, causing him to sigh, then turn and leave.
"He's right. Don't be a hypocrite and give up just because you now need one of those—auto-mail limbs Reeve's been working on," Elena told the red haired teen she held.
Shalua looked up at her slowly and gave her head a small shake. "I'm not going to do that, anyway. But—it's really—disorienting. This—is a mess. What do I do now?"
"You don't. That's for us to do. Just rest," Elena answered. She helped Shalua sit up, then drew her gun and took up a guard position so she could send the monsters in the room back into recovery as they woke.
Notes:
(1) This would be Swiss cheese in our world. :P
(2) Based on my timeline, February 10th would have made it exactly 3 months to the day from when they began their SOLDIER Cadet training. They got their notice of successful completion then, and were assigned a time to get their first infusions on the following day, the 11th. Today is the 16th. If there had been more Cadets, there would have been more than one day allocated for the first infusion, and in my story, Mako poisoning recovery from SOLDIER infusions generally takes 3 days to become functional again (not necessarily fully recovered, just able to do things, a bit like working with a headache or minor cold). These are Cadets getting their first infusion, however, so they're given 4 days to recover, and longer if needed, up to a week.
(3) This is just a random name I assigned to 'the thirteen-year-old experiment' so they had an actual name to call her by, like they should. It's not important and you don't have to remember it. I just figured if she was hanging around with Elena, Anthony, Shalua, and the others, they'd know and use her name—it's one thing for Ed to not know, but it'd just be strange if these kids, her 'friends', didn't.