The Frogmen of the Apocalypse: Gongaga
By TacomaSquall
Chapter 5
The next three years passed in a flurry of activity. The days that I wasn't helping Mommy with the carving work, or by watching Zack, I was busy with my drawings. If I wasn't drawing, I was in school, or with Jon, as he courted me in his charming, uncertain manner. When Jon wasn't trying to convince me that I should be his steady girlfriend, I was out helping father by learning how to design houses, and drawing blueprints for him. When I wasn't doing any of the above, I was off in the woods, meeting with Patter, Hieros, Tara, Yager, Orlehn, and the others who became my friends amongst the Frogmen.
I discovered a lot of things about myself in that time. I found out that there were practical and profitable applications for my talent in the construction business. The day I graduated from school, I was hired by ShinRa to work as an architectural intern. They spoke of sending me off to Midgar to attend an engineering school there, where I could apply my knowledge of line and design to become an architect.
I also discovered that I didn't love Jon the same way that he loved me. I was pretty certain that he would ask me to marry him as soon as he had completed his apprenticeship with Daddy, and I did not know what I was going to do. I liked Jon a lot, and would be thrilled to have a husband as devoted to me as he would be, but there was just something missing. I couldn't get over his prejudice toward the Frogmen.
For that reason, I kept the purpose of my woodland sojourns a secret from everyone, which was a huge strain. To help cover my activities, I started sculpting, and found a few clay deposits in the hills of the rainforest. With Jon and Mommy's help, I built a small hideaway, where I could work on my artwork, without distractions. Eventually, my retreat became something that was accepted as one of my oddities.
I also changed from the lanky girl I was in earlier years into a willowy young woman. My raven hair, which always seemed to have a will of its own, was finally tamed, and fell in waves to past my shoulders, when it was unbound (clay is not fun when it is in your hair). The rest of my body finally caught up with my arms and legs, and I finally gained the curves I always used to envy my cousins, Elmyra and Lucresia, having. Now, when I looked in the mirror, I could not argue that I was not pretty.
The people of Gongaga liked me, but thought that I was kind of odd. They did not have any other artists in the town, so the people envied my talent. The townspeople were all dead-set against the Frogs, and I discovered that whenever an unexplainable accident happened, or someone disappeared, they would blame the Frogmen. It wasn't until later that I discovered that they had reason to fear the Frogs…
* * * * *
Talos looked around the clearing. It was a couple of hours past midnight, and the attendants of the reactor nearby were asleep at their posts. Talos smiled. His young friend's magic had seen to that. "Hurry up! If we take too long, then we will fail, and ShinRa will have more of us for use as test subjects, Shander."
A lanky Frog hopped out of the woods. He stood head and rounded shoulders taller than Talos, almost reaching five feet in height. "OK, Talos. I'm ready."
The two alternately hopped and strode through the clearing and into the compound around the Mako reactor. Their passage made no sound, cloaked as they were in Shander's magic. Two short forms made out of the night, any casual observers would have supposed, forms that seemed to flow up to, over, and around the fences, gates, and sundry other security measures implemented by ShinRa to protect the reactor from terrorist action or attack from their enemies in Wutai.
Briefly, the two were standing outside the locked entrance to the reactor. Talos looked at the locking mechanism and smiled. In an era of burgeoning technology, ShinRa was still relying on mechanical locks to keep their facilities secure. Talos grinned and removed a delicate set of probes from the neck pouch he always wore next to his scaled hide.
The happiest Talos ever was when he was a street thief in Midgar, some sixty-five years ago. He learned the trade of the burglar and cutpurse well, and made a small reputation for himself in the slums. That all changed when he tried to pick the pocket of a raven-haired man in a business suit.
Everything had went fine. Talos had sized up his mark, and made his move in the middle of a crowd in the Wall Market. The mark was average height, and seemed to be unaware of the bustle of Wall Market's busy streets. The suit was black, and well-tailored. The man had probably never shopped for clothing in any of the many shops in the burgeoning slums of Midgar.
Talos darted forward, and brushed past the man, his hand snaking into the errant professional's pocket and pulling out his wallet. The man's face had a scar that stretched from the left corner of his mouth to just under his ear, Talos noted as he started to run away. He came up to a jarring halt, in the middle of his first stride. Looking back, he saw the man had grabbed his hand, with the wallet clutched within, in one long-fingered hand.
"A little street rat. I think the Project could find use for you." The raven-haired man smiled, and Talos felt a chill run down his spine. The suit, the scar, the blinding speed… this man was one of ShinRa's elite, the Turks!
Talos looked around frantically for help, but no one was about to help him get out of the predicament he was in. He tried to wriggle free, but the man's grip was as tight as a miser's wallet, and as strong as a vise. "Let me go!"
The last thing Talos saw was the man's revolver, held by the barrel in his other hand, as it whipped across and struck the thief full on in the forehead.
In the weeks that followed, Talos was subjected to a battery of tests in a laboratory. The man who ran the tests on him was a short, disheveled man, who kept muttering about he wanted to create the perfect race. The scientist poked and prodded Talos. The thief was scraped, probed, bled and intubated for some purpose that he knew nothing of. Eventually, the scientist, Doctor Heinreich, ordered his assistants to cage the thief and prepare him for transport.
Talos fought desperately, but the assistants were large men, obviously chosen for their ability to subdue recalcitrant test subjects and not their scientific prowess, and they subdued the thief easily. He was forced into the cage, and one of the toughs injected him with a clear serum. Within minutes, Talos found himself not caring about the world around him, content to be a passive observer of the universe.
Talos was carried into a van, with the ShinRa Bioengineering Division's logo embossed on the side. The van drove with him to another place, a lab where Talos underwent experiments that made him less than human.
Talos never forgot the events that followed, the hell that ShinRa put him through. He swore he would gain revenge on all those that had turned on him, and it had been more than sixty years in the making. This would be the first blow in his campaign.
* * * * *
I was trapped in the depths of Gongaga rainforest, where a faceless enemy was stalking Patter, Tara, and I. Already it had killed Hieros, and left the Sahugin's flaming sword embedded in the messenger's smoldering corpse. Now, it glided after us, two dark eyes burning in hatred.
I sprinted ahead of the others, my longer legs eating up ground at a pace that Patter, burdened with the Sahugin elder, could not keep up with. I darted between trees, and crashed through underbrush, making enough noise to scare off every rabbit and vole in the forest, and perhaps draw every predator in the wood, as well. Somehow, I sensed that these predators could be used as a weapon against the one that was hunting us.
While I trusted to speed to protect me, Patter and Tara were trusting to guile. Their passage was noiseless and fluid, but slow. I was getting further and further ahead of them.
In my headlong flight, I crashed into a figure that was not in the darkness ahead of me when I had last looked ahead. With surprise, as I fell, I realized that I had run into Jon!
He helped rise, and concern was written all over his face. "Where have you been? Everyone has been worried about you." He looked as exasperated as I had ever seen him. "What would I do if I lost you?"
He pulled me close to him, into an embrace. Our lips met in a deep kiss. Since our first kiss, Jon and I had kissed again, but it never seemed to have the magic that it had held that first time. This time, however, the contact was electric, and it felt like I could feel the energy passing between us. I closed my eyes, succumbing to the sweet electricity that coursed between us.
I felt his hands move across my body, and gasped in surprise as he touched one of my breasts. I opened my eyes and was shocked to see that Jon had been replaced by a silver-haired man, taller and more slender than Jon, with the number 7 tattooed on his forehead. I struggled to get free, and he grinned as he held me tightly, his hands roaming as he willed, over my body. Then I felt pain, as one of his fingernails scratched me, drawing blood!
I looked in horror, paralyzed, as he raised his hand, which now had nails that were razor-sharp, to his mouth and licked the blood off of his fingers. It was then that I realized that I was not with a normal human being.
Guessing at my realization, the being in front of me seemed to flow into another shape; the techno-organic likeness of Jenova from Tara's story. Her claws grew sharper, and her grin became feral. Her burning eyes, I realized, were the eyes of the being that was hunting us, the one who had slaughtered Hieros with his own blade. She whipped one of her taloned hands back for a lethal swipe.
"Here begins the end of the Frogmen, for if you die, so do they." The alien monster's voice was thrilling with exultation.
"NO!" With a leap, Patter sprang between Jenova and me, bringing his short blade up in an attempt to block Jenova's blow. Jenova's hand streaked forward…
I surged forward, out of my bed. There was an explosion in the distance. It was followed by a couple of other explosions in rapid succession. I pulled on some clothes, just in time to be dressed when Daddy knocked on the door and told me that there had been sabotage at the Mako reactor. Someone had broken into the chambers near the center of the reactor and shattered about three dozen Mako containment vessels. There was a Mako spill, and the vandals had also set charges to the reactor's cafeteria/break area.
It was believed that the vandals had some sort of magic, for not a single member of the security detachment spotted the intruders. In fact, most of the security detail had been awakened from a sound slumber at their posts, by the explosions. Some terrorists had gotten their hands on some Sleep Materia, it seemed.
To be continued …