Author's Notes:
Hojo makes his move. Easy enough.
"I must...atone for my sins."
How wonderful! She had succeeded and the small one was becoming a full slave! An order that she had regarded as unimportant, that of young Sephiroth's mother, had let the child believe that she was his mother! Incredible! When he found her and released her from her prison, he would be completely obedient to her! Already, Hojo was treating his unwitting son to Mako showers and increasing amounts of her cells. And the training with the gigantic sword...how useful that would be to her, she could not guess, but she had a feeling that it would help in bringing the world under her command. And the small conflict between Vincent and Lucretia...that had ended very suddenly when he found she was with child. After she died, he ceased to care, and seemed to give in to the darkness, becoming prone to fits of deep depression. Perhaps he, too would be useful to her. Gast had gone back to the north to seek more Cetra findings, and Hojo fell farther into the fathomless abyss of mystery that surrounded her, spending more and more time in the secret room in the heart of the Mako Reactor. She decided to lie dormant for a while, and rest. Activating all those parts of her that had been placed into the bodies of the inferior beings was hard work, and though she was augmented by the other tiny consciousnesses, still, she needed sleep. Jenova slid into a period of rest.
*****
"Hojo, you've got to stop this! You're becoming a madman!" Vincent burst into Hojo's lab in the basement of the Shin-Ra Mansion. Irate over Lucretia's death, he wanted to put an end to this...madness that had enveloped Shin-Ra. Hojo had become increasingly obsessed with his precious 'Specimen' and was now gaunt, pale, and horrifying to behold. His weeks spent at his microscope had transformed him into a hunchback, and now he stood blinking in the bright light from the hallway that flooded his darkened laboratory.
"A madman, you say? How can you call me a madman? I have done the greatest possible deed for this Planet! Jenova can make everything better! How dare you call me a madman!" Hojo rose to his full height, fire flashing in his eyes.
"Yes! A madman! You've sacrificed Lucretia to your miserable experiment, and you're killing yourself! You must stop this foolishness!" Vincent reached for the gun concealed in his loose sport jacket. Hojo noted this with his dark eyes, and placed his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, as if in shame. And stroked the pistol he had hidden there.
"Very well. Try and stop me, fool," Hojo whispered to himself, seeming to mumble to himself in contrition. Vincent drew his rifle, but before he had a chance to fire, Hojo had whipped out his tiny pistol and emptied the clip into Vincent's body, sending the younger man flying. Hojo returned the pistol to his pocket after poking the Turk with it to make sure he was no longer a part of this world. Satisfied he was dead, he hauled the corpse to its feet and lay it on a worktable, found a scalpel, and set to work.
When he was finished, he dragged the now cloaked and shrouded form of a thing that had been human into the crypt located in the Mansion's depths. The loose, flowing cape he had clad the Turk in moved aside for a moment, and light gleamed on a brassy claw, where Vincent's left arm should be. After consigning his foe to whoever might come, he deposited the key to the vault in his safe, placed a few notes in strategic positions in the front foyer, and set to work, removing his equipment from his lab and piling loose-leaf binders filled with notes in the Professor's cramped handwriting into a few boxes. Satisfied that he had gotten everything, he called for a guard to carry his things away, and left Shin-Ra Mansion.
*****
Jenova watched all this with faint interest, slightly surprised by Hojo's initiative. She felt the miniscule pieces of herself placed into Vincent's body by the Professor become active, and she silenced them, telling them to wait until he was awakened. She then fell back into the abyss of sleep, waiting for her 'Son' to come and free her. And years passed.
Notes:
I know, this is a short chapter but there seems to be some cleavage lines in this story. I just find that parts seem to clump together and form chapters. Sorry!