Professor Hojo surveys the damage. Nibelheim is on fire. Or, it was. Parts of it are still smoking and the rest is smoldering wreckage.
"What happened?" he asks the Turk next to him.
He'd read the debriefing on the airship, but there had to be more to it. The General, the company's top Asset, the pinnacle of his scientific research, could not have simply 'gone AWOL'.
"Officially? Nothing," Tseng says. "Unofficially…" He lowers his sunglasses. "Catastrophic losses."
No kidding. It will take decades to replace a miracle like Sephiroth. Hojo wonders if anyone has informed Lucrecia yet, wherever she is.
"Survivors?" Hojo asks, watching black-uniformed Shinra employees pile charred bodies in the town square.
"Some civilians fled before we arrived. But mostly, no."
"Mostly?"
Hojo looks over at Tseng. The Turk is stoic, eyes ahead, trained to deal with extreme loss, but there is pain beneath the surface. The death in the air is getting to him. It stinks of burnt flesh.
"An Asset?" Hojo presses.
A First-Class SOLDIER had gone with the General on this mission, according to the report.
Tseng shakes his head. "An MP."
"Just one?"
"Yes. Badly injured. The President wants him… terminated."
Hojo considers this. He's been wanting to run a new trial of Jenova cells on necrotizing flesh.
"Take it to my processing lab instead," he tells Tseng.
"The President's orders were clear."
"And the MP will be destroyed. I assure you."
Hojo grins. It unsettles Tseng, the way the scientist eagerly taps his fingertips together, but he hasn't the energy to argue. He has this whole mess to clean up.
"We can't secure transport back to Midgar. The MP cannot leave Niblehim," Tseng tries anyway, hoping to spare the MP the professor's scalpel.
Hojo frowns. The Nibelheim lab isn't equipped for medical emergencies, but then again the point isn't for it to survive. The Mako submersion tank could be used to stabilize the specimen.
"Fine. Then set him up in my lab here, at the mansion," Hojo says. "Assuming that hasn't also burned to the ground."
A roof collapses inward on a nearby home. Ash fills the air.
"The mansion was extinguished first, and the basement is intact," Tseng reports. "I will instruct the medics to deliver the… young man to you."
Hojo barely hears him. He's already heading towards the mansion, mind filled with how exactly to fill the enormous void of Sephiroth. There was no body recovered at the Reactor. The Mother Cells were disturbed. No, 'decapitated' is the correct word. The crown prize of his scientific research, defiled!
He sits in the basement. It's cool in here, a stark contrast to the intense heat everywhere else. The bookshelves are ransacked, pages torn and littered everywhere. Who the hell went through all his research?
The MP arrives, carted in by two medics. Hojo instructs them to put him down and get out.
"This thing... is alive?" he sneers, peering at the mess of a man.
A shallow breath lifts its chest, and yes, there is the faintest pulse, but the center of the MP is sliced through with a deep cut. The work of a Masamune. Blood covers the torn uniform, dripping to the floor. The face is young, boyish. Blonde hair is matted in sweat. Its skin is extremely pale.
Hojo begins prepping the Mako suspension chamber. If the MP survives (unlikely), it would need the Mako resiliency in its cells to sustain the first round of Jenova treatment. It was a shame there couldn't be more survivors. There is another theory Hojo has been wanting to test. A reunification theory, that all cells taken from the Mother would eventually coalesce together again. But in order to test this theory, years of scientific planning would need to take place, and he'd need many test subjects. Without fruitful results, the President would be less likely to fund his endeavours. And with this most recent failure with Sephiroth, their jewel of the Wutai war, the biological weaponry research program would most certainly be defunded next year.
So this could be it, Hojo thinks as he hauls the rasping unconscious body into the tank. Tubes begin flushing the chamber with liquid, that cold chemical scent of Mako nips the air.
Catastrophic failure. Hojo exhales. He watches the security footage from the Reactor, now classified and scheduled for deletion along with the rest of the materials collected, and cannot believe what he is witnessing. A rotten feeling pulls at his chest. Despair. Shame. He watches his son cut down a First-Class SOLDIER with ease and wrench open the housing for the Mother Cells. It is unbearable.
The camera in the Reactor's entryway, however, captures something unreal. It doesn't make sense.
He eyes the MP in the Mako chamber, suspended in half-death. Was this the same man?
Couldn't be. Sephiroth falls, twisting into the open pools of Mako far below. Hojo cringes and stops the tape. He removes his spectacles and rubs his eyes. There is much work to do. Scientific advancement often meant missteps, and Sephiroth had obviously been a misstep. A miscalculation.
No matter. He will keep trying. The Jenova cells have many secrets to unlock, and only persistence would be the key.
His mind is already racing with ideas, and he grabs a nearby pad of paper, feverishly jotting down his thoughts.
Nearby, the MP twitches as Mako coats his skin. It enters his mouth and slides down his throat. One fingernail etches the glass entombment. He cannot see. He cannot scream, but he is in agony.