Content warning: Lots of thinking and mental hashing about of ideas. I consider it a boring, if necessary chapter.
"And you're sure this will work?" Raul studied the veritable crate of materia that had been gathered, ignoring the scoff-laden roll of the eyes that Genesis undoubtedly shot his way. Carefully, he picked through them and hummed to himself.
"The theory's sound. One of my copies tested it in the Nibelheim reactor and nothing -bad- happened."
"You mean to say, that one of your copies made the plunge, stopped just above the surface of whatever mako it found there and then lobbed in as much materia as it could with little to no reaction." The clone patiently turned and reached out to collect the next crate being handed up to him, only to settle it next to the previous one.
"There were swirls of green! And not acid green, either. Pearly green." The red-clad swordsman stacked a similar crate on top of one that made up the rapidly expanding base layer. "I don't see you coming up with any ideas."
"Actually, I have. It simply is going to take longer than we have to implement. Unless you suddenly have a way for machines to discern and separate Jenova-tainted Mako from the rest of the lifestream, my idea was to burn her out of the planet the way we were burning the lifestream. As a fuel." Raul stepped down from the bed of the truck, accepting the final crate and passing it up to the former soldier 1st, who promptly stacked it and hopped down.
"You -do- realize that the mako reactors were also polluting the air, right? Sure most of it was burned but there was still a great deal pumped into the air." Genesis pushed the back of the truck closed.
"At a three percent ratio." The clone reached out to lightly thump the side of the truck, waving at the driver as they started the vehicle and then began to pull away. "Certainly, that means it would still be here, but with time Jenova would be burned out of the planet. A consumed resource. Even if we didn't burn it out of the planet, we could drain it out, siphon it and store it for destruction later. This would prevent it from entering the atmosphere."
"Your plan is still full of flaws." The red-clad swordsman stretched idly, arms raised over his head before dropping down to his sides and swinging.
"It doesn't account for the Jenova cells currently in circulation, you are correct. For that, something like a vaccine would be preferable. Of course, if we had something similar to a vaccine we could simply replicate it on a large scale and pump it into the planet. These are all theories. We have a handful of problems and lack the research required to fix them." Raul turned and started heading back towards the compound, nodding to a few of the on site WRO staff members and glancing back to make sure Genesis was following him. He was, fortunately, and ambled a little faster to fall into step.
"Wasn't there something in the reports about some manner of water that cured Geostigma? Didn't that neutralize the Jenova cells?" The former soldier 1st frowned, lifting both hands so that he could tap his fingers together in front of his face like some sort of evil villain coming up with a plan.
"Aerith's Healing Rain, a temporary spread of rain and a pool that remains. It did, but our supplies of such are limited. As it seems to be some manner of limit break, it appears to be nigh impossible to replicate. Such things are unique to the individual, after all. There is also the fact that she cast it from within the lifestream. It's theorized that if she could do it on such a large scale, she would have already. This also, studies show, did not remove the Jenova cells but instead simply cured them and rendered these cells inert. Those who had Geostigma still had it in their system afte-" The clone paused, mid-step, and settled to a more natural halt a second later. "Excuse me, I've struck upon an idea."
And then he was gone.
Frantic scribbling as notes were taken and compared between books and reports that covered the floor was the only sound in the room to the unenhanced ear. Those with more sensitive hearing could likely pick up the sound of a recording being played through headphones as Raul worked through yet another voice recording. A small pile of empty take-out containers were stacked neatly by the door, and despite the clutter everything still maintained a semblance of neatness and order.
Geostigma was the body overcompensating for Jenova cells within the body. Those cells remained behind, as noted by how Deepground had garnered a method of picking out those who lacked such remnants, which was how they had cultivated a dramatic increase in the 'pure' portion of the lifestream. They had the technology and ability to discern where the Jenova cells were, if only in living people. If this could be used on a grander scale...
Tainted, versus corrupted. What was the difference? Jenova's taint versus naturally occurring corrupt lifestream. What caused this corruption? The cause of Jenova's taint was clearly the parasite but the best research available was Lucrecia Crescent's and that didn't go into much detail beyond that it seemed to be stagnant somehow. Chaos, from what he could glean, was formed when enough corrupted lifestream was gathered in one spot. So, it was safe to assume that if he could glean anything about the nature of Chaos he might be able discern what similarities and differences there might be.
If the planet could spit out specific, corrupted portions of the liftestream after all, what stopped it from doing the same with tainted lifestream? Willpower? The planet was a living, breathing thing, so potentially it could be trained to shunt Jenova cells all into one, specific physical location the way it did corrupted lifestream. But any of these ideas would require the ability to communicate back and forth, which was an ability lost with the last of the Cetra.
... Could he train his own cells to act like Cetra cells? His Jenova cells were potentially malleable enough, and already proven inclined to altering themselves according to his will. It ran the risk of opening him up to the wrong all-encompassing influence, but it wasn't as if he was the one and only individual that the world could or would depend upon. The WRO was full of intelligent, dedicated and talented people after all, and if nothing else he'd never managed to beat Cloud fair and square let alone Cloud and and anyone that decided to fight with him.
An alternate angle was to seek out Minerva, the Goddess that was titled as the Will of the Lifestream. Whether she was an actual goddess or some manner of summon pulled directly from the lifestream was a matter of some debate, considering anywhere that she was reported to have appeared there were signals of a particularly strong summon. Taking into account the lore from Wutai regarding Leviathan, it was possible that she was. Though, Raul contemplated, what was the difference? What was the difference between a god and a summon?
Sephiroth had wished to become a god. To do so, he had hoped to inflict a great enough wound on the planet to cause it to gather the lifestream in one location so that he could absorb it and 'ascend'. This in and of itself implied that the prime requisite was simply an excess of power, which any summon worth their salt as well as all of the weapons, including Chaos and Omega could thusly have been classified as gods. If it was immortality...
A summon was immortal, in a sense, considering that on 'death' their manifested body was simply dispersed back into the lifestream to await the next call. What was the measure of their sentience? In some cases it was a simple matter of having the reserves required to fuel the summoning cost of the materia, while in others it was a matter of... A gift? The bird growing atop Fort Condor, it was theorized, was an actual phoenix. Hmm, it blurred the line. Maybe it was different because of the way phoenix downs were rare but obtainable, considering the fact that when a summon disappeared there generally wasn't anything left of it. Phoenix might simply be an outlier in this regard.
Of all the weapons, only Chaos seemed to be immortal. Vincent had, reputedly, died and resurrected when Dr. Crescent stuffed the corrupted lifestream that formed Chaos into him. Even Omega, with the shards of it's body hanging in the sky remaining in orbit for the time being, despite the fact that it was a creature of Gaia-
The clone rubbed his temples, before rapidly jotting things down on a fresh piece of paper, picking his way through the scattered books to find another report. Chaos -and- Omega had both passed beyond the reach of the planet's gravitational pull before Vincent had halted Weiss in his reach for the stars. Did this mean that Omega was the outlier when it came to weapons and wasn't designed to re-distribute itself into the lifestream? Into -a- lifestream? But that didn't make sense, it was meant to shuttle the lifestream from a dying planet-
"... Was Jenova a planet's Omega at one point?" Raul muttered to himself, tapping his pen against the paper a few times. Based on what Sephiroth reportedly said, Jenova had likely hit multiple planets and intended to hit more on her cosmic journey. Still, he was getting off topic.
Omega, really, should have been able to dissolve back into the lifestream. There were reports that it had, in part, done that. There were also reports of flickering red and black based motes of corrupted lifestream, in addition to the stagnant pool of lifestream that Shalua Rui's pod had been found knee-deep within. So if some of Omega did and some of Omega didn't, perhaps it was a matter of momentum. The blow from Chaos had scattered Omega, sending only some of the pieces back into range of the planet, which meant...
That meant there was a finite range before things were out of reach of the lifestream bound to the planet. That meant that, if they could get all of the Jenova cells past the outer atmosphere, it would no longer be reabsorbed into the lifestream. It would, effectively, be out of range. But would it be out of range of -itself-? If only part went up, would the rest be compelled to follow? Would they have people staring at the stars vacantly, or would they have people spontaneously devising ways to travel into space?
The atmosphere was, in theory, eight hundred miles that consisted of the the space between the ground that the average person walked upon to the point where it became 'outer space'. That meant, on average, that it would be less distance than the temple of the ancients that had held the black materia and the northern crater where Sephiroth had flexed his influence. Or... Had he flexed it from such a distance? Had he worked from a closer point, consciousness lurking within the lifestream underneath where the black materia had lain?
He needed to determine how far such a signal could carry. Grimacing, he rubbed his temples and thought long and hard how he might test a few things, place a few delicate questions and get a piece of Omega's body to start falling to the planet from where it hung in orbit.
"Raul, where you been bud? Nobody's seen you in days. People are startin' to think maybe you'd locked yourself up the way Sephiroth did before he went nuts." Reno casually sliced and cored an apple as he ambled along, having intercepted the clone on his way to Reeve's office with an armful of papers.
"When you hear what I have to say, you may begin to agree with them. I had an idea that tangented and split into a number of different possibilities, some of which are quite outlandish. Is the Director in?" Raul glanced over, before stepping aside as a secretary hustled past with a tray loaded with four properly seated coffees and a fifth nestled between them.
"Sure is. Lemme get the door for ya, bud."
I would have posted this yesterday, except that my boss for some reason decided to practically hover all day, which made it difficult to research and write and post.
In other news, I learned a life lesson yesterday. Sure, in some instances if someone has 20+ years of experience that means they get the job, but in other instances it really just comes down to first come first serve. Moral of the story is don't stop trying, because no matter what you've got a chance.
Anywho, thanks go out to Axel106106 for both the favourite and the follow, as well as always to tocasia for the review! That SOLDIER speed was key, and I -like- writing an adorable Loz. Raul, of course, gets the short end of the stick when talking to women about being women. It's not really something I see Sephiroth -or- a gangly 16 year old planet-loving teen being particularly good at.
I -miss- the old rumours. Who knows, maybe they'll implement some of them in the remake.
-KD