Disclaimer: I don't on FF7 or its characters, ideas, ect... So don't sue me!!
Now on with the story...
Chapter 3
The black-haired woman frantically leafed through what she had been able to steal of her brother's notes. After all this time she would finally get a shot at some *real* research. She knew one day her hard work at the Junon Academy of Science would pay off. Her brother may have thought he was the greatest but now that she had a chance she would prove him otherwise. And she would do so with *his* last specimen.
The Turks found themselves in a large underground cavern. The walls were of some sort of rock, maybe granite. The floor was smooth, polished stone. Reno had never seen anything like it. Along one whole side of the magnificent room were roughly twenty glass cylinders, all of which contained a body in a blue liquid. However, only one of them was the source of the dim but cosmic blue glow they'd seen from the tunnel.
They all had their weapons ready as they neared the only tank that seemed illuminated. But Reno, who was leading the group towards the tank, stopped short.
"Reno...what's wrong?"
Elena's question fell on deaf ears. Reno slowly made his way over to what devoured his attention so suddenly.
/It can't be... /
The Turks watched as Reno approached a particular cylinder. When he reached it, he looked up at it with disbelief.
/All these years I thought...all these damn years /
He sank to his knees in front of the tank head bowed and one had against the glass. The memories came flooding back.
She smoothed soft red strands of hair from his face and tucked them behind his small ears before planting a soft kiss on his forehead. "I'll be back before dark, honey...I just need to pick up a few things from the shop."
"Can I come with you mommy? I'll be good, " he pleaded with her.
"Not this time short-stuff. I promise I'll be back before you know it. Be good while I'm gone and don't let anyone in...Ok?"
"Ok."
"That's my tough guy. Lock the door for me hon."
He followed her to the door and when she left he turned the bolt lock using both of his tiny hands, standing on tiptoe to reach it. Then he waited...
and waited...
and waited...
...but she never came through that door again.
He waited for her for days but there was nothing. The days turned into weeks and when the bills weren't paid at the end of the month the bill collectors showed up. They took note of Reno's situation with little pity and it was off to the Sector 5 orphanage.
Years at the orphanage taught him that no one was expected to look out for him but himself. He went from a ten-year-old thief to a fourteen-year-old delinquent to the seventeen-year-old leader of a well-known gang.
When he was too old for the orphanage the streets hardened him into the typical Midgar thug. That is, until a certain raven-haired Turk gave him a few options and a future. He had long before then come to the conclusion that his mother walked out on him like the parents of countless others at the orphanage.
Apparently, that wasn't the case.
Rude came up beside him and gazed up at the figure in the tank from behind his midnight black shades.
"I'll be damned..." He removed his shades to get a sharper look. The beauty of the woman behind the glass wasn't what caught his throat. It was the striking resemblance between his autumn-haired friend and the lifeless woman suspended in the glass cylinder.
Her flame red hair drifted around her waist like the smoke from a spent incense stick. Her eyes were closed but Rude guessed they were the same aquamarine as Reno's. Her mouth was relaxed into a frown that seemed to give her an air of peace and seriousness. She didn't appear to be any older than thirty.
Reno spoke without lifting his head, his voice glazed with ice, "She's been here all these years, Rude." He began shaking his head as he spoke the cursed realization. "All this time I thought she walked out on me Rude, but boy was I wrong." He let out a round of bitter, humorless laughter. Rude put a comforting hand on Reno's shoulder but the action went unnoticed. "To think...all this time I thought she found herself a "nice little life" above the plate without me, and *they* had her. I went to work everyday with her RIGHT BENEATH ME!!"
His outburst echoed of the cavern walls causing a chill to grace Elena's spine. She never saw Reno lose control like that before. It frightened her a bit but she would be there for him if he needed it. If she had put it together correctly, that was Reno's mother in that tank and he wasn't taking it too well.
She started to approach them but her journey stopped short when the wail came again. It rang off the cavern walls creating and eerie echo. The source was the illuminated cylinder about twenty feet away. They all watched in shock as thin but powerful tendrils of electricity wracked the body in the glowing tank.
Elena carefully approached it but a voice from behind her hooked her attention.
"What's going on?"
Cloud and Tifa stood in front of the tunnel the Turks had come in. They had heard Reno's outburst from the tunnel and rushed the rest of the way down. Their eyes wandered around the cavern in shock.
"What is this place...? It looks like some sort of underground lab." Tifa stepped further into the cavern staring up at the rocky ceiling towering high above them. Then she caught sight of the cylinders with female bodies suspended inside. Her hand came to her mouth as her breath caught in her throat. She hurried over to where Elena was approaching a glowing tank. "She's the one making that awful sound?"
Cloud followed Tifa's lead to the glowing cylinder. Elena frowned at their presence and glanced over at where she last saw Reno. He was coming towards the group with Rude at his side. The earlier emotion in his demeanor was gone the moment Cloud and Tifa came through the tunnel.
/He sure got it together quickly. Men. /
"Elena, you think you can go through some of that equipment and find a way to get her out?" To Reno, the electricity seemed to be what was causing the woman to cry out. The electric tendrils make have been thin but he'd seen the affect his nightstick had on his opponents...electricity could be pretty deceiving.
"Maybe. I'll go have a look."
Like all of the other bodies, this one was naked and submerged up to the chin in a pale blue mako solution. Her ankle-length ebony hair covered most of her form. Her eyebrows were narrowed a bit and her mouth was parted slightly from the cry she had just released. The wires from about two dozen of the censors swirled their way up and out of the top of the tank to slither across the floor to an array of computers. Elena was hacking away at one of them at the moment and Rude chose that time to phone Reeve and fill him in.
Cloud and Tifa observed the other tanks for any visible signs of life but Cloud couldn't toss the familiar feeling he got from the woman inside the glowing tank. There was just something about her that reminded him of Aeris. He couldn't place it. She did look a bit like her in simple ways...the smoothed almost youthful cheekbones and small elegant nose. But it wasn't all skin deep. He didn't want to voice his observations with Tifa...he was pretty sure she had the same feeling.
"This has to be Hojo's work, Tifa. I can't think of a more twisted..."
"I know, but where did he get all of these women? Somehow I don't get the feeling they volunteered for this."
"He probably just picked them off the streets...away from their homes and families." He vaguely remembered being just like those women when he and Zack were trapped in the ShinRa mansion.
Elena whistled to get everyone's attention.
"It wasn't all that hard to get in. This system seems to have been set up quite some time ago so it's kind of dated." She scanned the screen for a moment before reporting her findings. "The tanks are hooked up to an automatic life support system (ALS), which have been programmed to deliver a sort of electric pulse to the occupant if their life signs weakened dangerously. The program ends if the occupant is lost..."
"Does that mean all of these women except that one over there are dead?"
Elena was a bit annoyed at Cloud's interruption but nodded to his question. She winced when she heard Reno sigh from his place to her right. Then she thought for a second.
"Well actually, they aren't completely dead...not all of them. Their bodies may not be functioning but the mako enhanced solution they're in was made to preserve their bodies to the fullest." She scanned a menu before clicking on one of sections. A chart appeared on the screen with some of the selections highlighted. "TK. 2, 6, 7, and 13 may only require a full life. The others, except TK. 17 who seems to be alive, are lost completely."
Reno leaned over her chair to examine the screen for himself before inquiring into her ear, "Which one is *she* in, Elena?"
His voice held an almost desperate edge. As she scanned a diagram of the tanks' layout she silently prayed that Reno's mother wasn't a lost cause.
"She's in TK. 7, Reno. /Lucky number seven... /", she thought thankfully.
"Is there a way to get them out?" Cloud asked with his back to the group.
"Yes...number seventeen is weak but she should be ok. The program made a mistake. She wasn't really weak in the first place when it began to shock her so it ended up doing more harm than good...Probably why she was wailing like that. If I move the others, it may kill them completely."
"Let's concentrate on the living one first then worry about the others."
"No one asked you, Blondie."
Before Cloud could reply to Reno's remark Tifa shushed him, "Let it go Cloud, we have more important things to worry about."
"I'm going to go ahead and drain number seventeen." With that, Elena highlighted tank seventeen and clicked on the option to shut it down and drain the solution. Cloud and Rude rushed over there as the woman inside slumped against the glass. As the glass slid up Rude caught her and placed her on the floor. He removed the coat from his Turk uniform and placed it over her while Cloud checked her vital signs.
Reno waited patiently after giving Elena the "ok" to drain number seven. He waited for the solution to drain and the glass to lift before catching the redheaded woman. He tenderly laid her on the floor repeating Rude's actions by covering her with his jacket. Then he frantically searched his weapon for a Life materia. He had a new one so it wasn't yet mastered. He whispered "Life One" over her still form but nothing happened. He tried again and the green tendrils surrounded her body. When they receded she still wasn't breathing and there was no pulse.
It just wasn't meant to be...
/It has to work. Now that I've found her.../
"Let me try..." Tifa squatted beside Reno and slid a Full-Life into her glove. "Full-Life..." The moment the words left her mouth brighter green fibers snaked their way around the body. Most of the cavern was bathed in an ethereal glow before it suddenly faded.
The woman on the floor coughed and spit out solution from the tank. Her breathing was labored and shaky but she *was* breathing. Tifa checked for a pulse. "She's alive but not strong. We should...oh my..." Tifa looked back and forth between Reno and the unconscious lady. "Is she-"
"Yes...she's my mother."
It was pretty obvious. She could almost pass for his sister. Tifa's heart went out him almost immediately. She never knew Reno past their usual encounters at her bar. One really couldn't call the drunken passes he made at her and one-sided conversation, on his part, bonding. However, they had actually held an entertaining conversation once or twice when she was able to coax his dangerous gaze to her face and away from her chest.
She didn't seem to harbor the natural hate for him that Cloud had. At one time she thought she did hate him, at least for dropping the sector 7 plate on so many innocent people, not to mention close friends of hers. But then her part in bombing the reactors was no better. They had called themselves freedom fighters, AVALANCHE: a cold wave of destruction that not even ShinRa could withstand. But she couldn't, with the slightest hint of a clear conscience anyway, believe no innocent people were killed when a reactor went up in flames because of them. Hating Reno or any of the Turks would be the lake calling the ocean wet.
Cloud, on the other hand, refused to put himself in the same slot with *any* Turk. And that's just what he thought as he glared poison darts at the flashy-headed Turk squatting on the floor next to his best friend.
Tifa placed a sympathetic hand on Reno's, "I'm so sorry..."
"Don't be, "He replied almost testily. "It's my burnt sausage...I'll deal with it." Tifa raised an eyebrow at his crude way of viewing the situation but she could understand him not wanting anyone's pity. Tifa warmly smoothed wet strands of red silk from the woman's still face and tucked them behind her ears. She was very beautiful...probably where Reno got the face that attracted women like a mastered chocobo lure did for the week minded fowl.
Reno suddenly noticed Cloud's gazed and met it with equal vehemence. Tifa and Rude both noticed their friends and stood up. Tifa cleared her throat to fracture the tension.
Rude spoke up, "I'm going to call Reeve back and have him clear the clinic floor. We can't do much for them all the way down here." He phoned Reeve while Elena tried to gather more useful information.
"I don't get it, "she began half to herself, "The first part was pretty easy to get into but ::sigh:: this part is way more advanced. It's like its been updated or something." She stood up and stretched while taking another good look around the cavern. "I think we should come back later. I could put some of this on disk and run it through some programs at home." Not to mention she had had enough of this Planet-forsaken cavern.
"Yeah, "Tifa agreed, "besides, I don't think the chill down here is doing these women any good." They all grunted in affirmative.
Knowing they would be traveling down a shaft of some sort, Elena took the time to stash some rope in her bag.
"Elly, we should use some of that rope you brought. We need a way to bring them up."
They all got to work planning who would carry them. Reno decided without hesitation to carry his mother. Cloud would have carried the other woman but that would leave either Rude or Elena to carry his sword and there was no way in hell he would trust a Turk with his weapon. So the dark-haired woman was roped to Rude's back. Cloud lead the way with Tifa then Elena following. Cloud refused to give Reno the pleasure of following behind Tifa.
As she placed her hands on the rungs of the ladder Elena groaned at the long climb ahead of them.
Now on with the story...
Chapter 3
The black-haired woman frantically leafed through what she had been able to steal of her brother's notes. After all this time she would finally get a shot at some *real* research. She knew one day her hard work at the Junon Academy of Science would pay off. Her brother may have thought he was the greatest but now that she had a chance she would prove him otherwise. And she would do so with *his* last specimen.
The Turks found themselves in a large underground cavern. The walls were of some sort of rock, maybe granite. The floor was smooth, polished stone. Reno had never seen anything like it. Along one whole side of the magnificent room were roughly twenty glass cylinders, all of which contained a body in a blue liquid. However, only one of them was the source of the dim but cosmic blue glow they'd seen from the tunnel.
They all had their weapons ready as they neared the only tank that seemed illuminated. But Reno, who was leading the group towards the tank, stopped short.
"Reno...what's wrong?"
Elena's question fell on deaf ears. Reno slowly made his way over to what devoured his attention so suddenly.
/It can't be... /
The Turks watched as Reno approached a particular cylinder. When he reached it, he looked up at it with disbelief.
/All these years I thought...all these damn years /
He sank to his knees in front of the tank head bowed and one had against the glass. The memories came flooding back.
She smoothed soft red strands of hair from his face and tucked them behind his small ears before planting a soft kiss on his forehead. "I'll be back before dark, honey...I just need to pick up a few things from the shop."
"Can I come with you mommy? I'll be good, " he pleaded with her.
"Not this time short-stuff. I promise I'll be back before you know it. Be good while I'm gone and don't let anyone in...Ok?"
"Ok."
"That's my tough guy. Lock the door for me hon."
He followed her to the door and when she left he turned the bolt lock using both of his tiny hands, standing on tiptoe to reach it. Then he waited...
and waited...
and waited...
...but she never came through that door again.
He waited for her for days but there was nothing. The days turned into weeks and when the bills weren't paid at the end of the month the bill collectors showed up. They took note of Reno's situation with little pity and it was off to the Sector 5 orphanage.
Years at the orphanage taught him that no one was expected to look out for him but himself. He went from a ten-year-old thief to a fourteen-year-old delinquent to the seventeen-year-old leader of a well-known gang.
When he was too old for the orphanage the streets hardened him into the typical Midgar thug. That is, until a certain raven-haired Turk gave him a few options and a future. He had long before then come to the conclusion that his mother walked out on him like the parents of countless others at the orphanage.
Apparently, that wasn't the case.
Rude came up beside him and gazed up at the figure in the tank from behind his midnight black shades.
"I'll be damned..." He removed his shades to get a sharper look. The beauty of the woman behind the glass wasn't what caught his throat. It was the striking resemblance between his autumn-haired friend and the lifeless woman suspended in the glass cylinder.
Her flame red hair drifted around her waist like the smoke from a spent incense stick. Her eyes were closed but Rude guessed they were the same aquamarine as Reno's. Her mouth was relaxed into a frown that seemed to give her an air of peace and seriousness. She didn't appear to be any older than thirty.
Reno spoke without lifting his head, his voice glazed with ice, "She's been here all these years, Rude." He began shaking his head as he spoke the cursed realization. "All this time I thought she walked out on me Rude, but boy was I wrong." He let out a round of bitter, humorless laughter. Rude put a comforting hand on Reno's shoulder but the action went unnoticed. "To think...all this time I thought she found herself a "nice little life" above the plate without me, and *they* had her. I went to work everyday with her RIGHT BENEATH ME!!"
His outburst echoed of the cavern walls causing a chill to grace Elena's spine. She never saw Reno lose control like that before. It frightened her a bit but she would be there for him if he needed it. If she had put it together correctly, that was Reno's mother in that tank and he wasn't taking it too well.
She started to approach them but her journey stopped short when the wail came again. It rang off the cavern walls creating and eerie echo. The source was the illuminated cylinder about twenty feet away. They all watched in shock as thin but powerful tendrils of electricity wracked the body in the glowing tank.
Elena carefully approached it but a voice from behind her hooked her attention.
"What's going on?"
Cloud and Tifa stood in front of the tunnel the Turks had come in. They had heard Reno's outburst from the tunnel and rushed the rest of the way down. Their eyes wandered around the cavern in shock.
"What is this place...? It looks like some sort of underground lab." Tifa stepped further into the cavern staring up at the rocky ceiling towering high above them. Then she caught sight of the cylinders with female bodies suspended inside. Her hand came to her mouth as her breath caught in her throat. She hurried over to where Elena was approaching a glowing tank. "She's the one making that awful sound?"
Cloud followed Tifa's lead to the glowing cylinder. Elena frowned at their presence and glanced over at where she last saw Reno. He was coming towards the group with Rude at his side. The earlier emotion in his demeanor was gone the moment Cloud and Tifa came through the tunnel.
/He sure got it together quickly. Men. /
"Elena, you think you can go through some of that equipment and find a way to get her out?" To Reno, the electricity seemed to be what was causing the woman to cry out. The electric tendrils make have been thin but he'd seen the affect his nightstick had on his opponents...electricity could be pretty deceiving.
"Maybe. I'll go have a look."
Like all of the other bodies, this one was naked and submerged up to the chin in a pale blue mako solution. Her ankle-length ebony hair covered most of her form. Her eyebrows were narrowed a bit and her mouth was parted slightly from the cry she had just released. The wires from about two dozen of the censors swirled their way up and out of the top of the tank to slither across the floor to an array of computers. Elena was hacking away at one of them at the moment and Rude chose that time to phone Reeve and fill him in.
Cloud and Tifa observed the other tanks for any visible signs of life but Cloud couldn't toss the familiar feeling he got from the woman inside the glowing tank. There was just something about her that reminded him of Aeris. He couldn't place it. She did look a bit like her in simple ways...the smoothed almost youthful cheekbones and small elegant nose. But it wasn't all skin deep. He didn't want to voice his observations with Tifa...he was pretty sure she had the same feeling.
"This has to be Hojo's work, Tifa. I can't think of a more twisted..."
"I know, but where did he get all of these women? Somehow I don't get the feeling they volunteered for this."
"He probably just picked them off the streets...away from their homes and families." He vaguely remembered being just like those women when he and Zack were trapped in the ShinRa mansion.
Elena whistled to get everyone's attention.
"It wasn't all that hard to get in. This system seems to have been set up quite some time ago so it's kind of dated." She scanned the screen for a moment before reporting her findings. "The tanks are hooked up to an automatic life support system (ALS), which have been programmed to deliver a sort of electric pulse to the occupant if their life signs weakened dangerously. The program ends if the occupant is lost..."
"Does that mean all of these women except that one over there are dead?"
Elena was a bit annoyed at Cloud's interruption but nodded to his question. She winced when she heard Reno sigh from his place to her right. Then she thought for a second.
"Well actually, they aren't completely dead...not all of them. Their bodies may not be functioning but the mako enhanced solution they're in was made to preserve their bodies to the fullest." She scanned a menu before clicking on one of sections. A chart appeared on the screen with some of the selections highlighted. "TK. 2, 6, 7, and 13 may only require a full life. The others, except TK. 17 who seems to be alive, are lost completely."
Reno leaned over her chair to examine the screen for himself before inquiring into her ear, "Which one is *she* in, Elena?"
His voice held an almost desperate edge. As she scanned a diagram of the tanks' layout she silently prayed that Reno's mother wasn't a lost cause.
"She's in TK. 7, Reno. /Lucky number seven... /", she thought thankfully.
"Is there a way to get them out?" Cloud asked with his back to the group.
"Yes...number seventeen is weak but she should be ok. The program made a mistake. She wasn't really weak in the first place when it began to shock her so it ended up doing more harm than good...Probably why she was wailing like that. If I move the others, it may kill them completely."
"Let's concentrate on the living one first then worry about the others."
"No one asked you, Blondie."
Before Cloud could reply to Reno's remark Tifa shushed him, "Let it go Cloud, we have more important things to worry about."
"I'm going to go ahead and drain number seventeen." With that, Elena highlighted tank seventeen and clicked on the option to shut it down and drain the solution. Cloud and Rude rushed over there as the woman inside slumped against the glass. As the glass slid up Rude caught her and placed her on the floor. He removed the coat from his Turk uniform and placed it over her while Cloud checked her vital signs.
Reno waited patiently after giving Elena the "ok" to drain number seven. He waited for the solution to drain and the glass to lift before catching the redheaded woman. He tenderly laid her on the floor repeating Rude's actions by covering her with his jacket. Then he frantically searched his weapon for a Life materia. He had a new one so it wasn't yet mastered. He whispered "Life One" over her still form but nothing happened. He tried again and the green tendrils surrounded her body. When they receded she still wasn't breathing and there was no pulse.
It just wasn't meant to be...
/It has to work. Now that I've found her.../
"Let me try..." Tifa squatted beside Reno and slid a Full-Life into her glove. "Full-Life..." The moment the words left her mouth brighter green fibers snaked their way around the body. Most of the cavern was bathed in an ethereal glow before it suddenly faded.
The woman on the floor coughed and spit out solution from the tank. Her breathing was labored and shaky but she *was* breathing. Tifa checked for a pulse. "She's alive but not strong. We should...oh my..." Tifa looked back and forth between Reno and the unconscious lady. "Is she-"
"Yes...she's my mother."
It was pretty obvious. She could almost pass for his sister. Tifa's heart went out him almost immediately. She never knew Reno past their usual encounters at her bar. One really couldn't call the drunken passes he made at her and one-sided conversation, on his part, bonding. However, they had actually held an entertaining conversation once or twice when she was able to coax his dangerous gaze to her face and away from her chest.
She didn't seem to harbor the natural hate for him that Cloud had. At one time she thought she did hate him, at least for dropping the sector 7 plate on so many innocent people, not to mention close friends of hers. But then her part in bombing the reactors was no better. They had called themselves freedom fighters, AVALANCHE: a cold wave of destruction that not even ShinRa could withstand. But she couldn't, with the slightest hint of a clear conscience anyway, believe no innocent people were killed when a reactor went up in flames because of them. Hating Reno or any of the Turks would be the lake calling the ocean wet.
Cloud, on the other hand, refused to put himself in the same slot with *any* Turk. And that's just what he thought as he glared poison darts at the flashy-headed Turk squatting on the floor next to his best friend.
Tifa placed a sympathetic hand on Reno's, "I'm so sorry..."
"Don't be, "He replied almost testily. "It's my burnt sausage...I'll deal with it." Tifa raised an eyebrow at his crude way of viewing the situation but she could understand him not wanting anyone's pity. Tifa warmly smoothed wet strands of red silk from the woman's still face and tucked them behind her ears. She was very beautiful...probably where Reno got the face that attracted women like a mastered chocobo lure did for the week minded fowl.
Reno suddenly noticed Cloud's gazed and met it with equal vehemence. Tifa and Rude both noticed their friends and stood up. Tifa cleared her throat to fracture the tension.
Rude spoke up, "I'm going to call Reeve back and have him clear the clinic floor. We can't do much for them all the way down here." He phoned Reeve while Elena tried to gather more useful information.
"I don't get it, "she began half to herself, "The first part was pretty easy to get into but ::sigh:: this part is way more advanced. It's like its been updated or something." She stood up and stretched while taking another good look around the cavern. "I think we should come back later. I could put some of this on disk and run it through some programs at home." Not to mention she had had enough of this Planet-forsaken cavern.
"Yeah, "Tifa agreed, "besides, I don't think the chill down here is doing these women any good." They all grunted in affirmative.
Knowing they would be traveling down a shaft of some sort, Elena took the time to stash some rope in her bag.
"Elly, we should use some of that rope you brought. We need a way to bring them up."
They all got to work planning who would carry them. Reno decided without hesitation to carry his mother. Cloud would have carried the other woman but that would leave either Rude or Elena to carry his sword and there was no way in hell he would trust a Turk with his weapon. So the dark-haired woman was roped to Rude's back. Cloud lead the way with Tifa then Elena following. Cloud refused to give Reno the pleasure of following behind Tifa.
As she placed her hands on the rungs of the ladder Elena groaned at the long climb ahead of them.