Author's Notes:
Ah, the miracle of birth. With all its attendant messiness and so on. What goes before those 'Confidential' videos in Gast's house...
"Grrr! Edgar, you pinhead! Why do you have to live in the middle of nowhere?"
Gast held Ifalnya's hand, grimacing as she clenched it with amazing strength, in the midst of another contraction.
After he had been removed from the Project, Gast had moved to a large house in the northern town, and soon Ifalnya had moved in with him. None of the villagers knew where she had come from, assuming that she was an assistant from Shin-Ra. In fact, she had provided him with a great deal of information about Jenova, the Cetra, and the Planet's great defence system, WEAPON. Hah! Shin-Ra had been foolish to get rid of him! He knew things that Hojo would sell his own grandmother for, if he hadn't already! The young Sephiroth had confided a great many matters to him, things that Hojo would never find out! He kept the files containing these notes in a special drawer of his desk.
Ifalnya clenched his hand again, far harder this time.
"All right, once more, dear. Just once more." The nurse was keeping an eye on the baby's progress, and attempting to soothe Ifalnya at the same time.
Ifalnya moaned and squeezed Gast's hand so hard that he imagined that he could hear the crackle of small bones shattering. He almost screamed, but was distracted by the squeal from the other end of the bed as the doctor held up the child.
"Professor Gast, Mrs. Gast, you have a healthy daughter!"
"Oh...oh, lemme hold her....let me hold her!" Ifalnya held out her arms for the baby.
"Oh, she's so perfect..." Gast was filled with a sense of pride, that he was the father of one of the two surviving Ancients. he watched as Ifalnya cuddled her child.
"And the name...she needs a beautiful name. She will be beautiful..."
"Hmmm. How about Yolanda?" Gast ducked as Ifalnya aimed a punch at him. "Just kidding! How about...Aeris? That sounds nice."
"Aeris...yes..."she looked down at the now sleeping child. "Aeris...hello, Aeris... yeah. I like it..."
"Aeris it is, then. Nurse? Could you take her to get washed up or for her shots or whatever?"
The nurse looked at him with worry. "Shots? She's a human, not an animal. We examine her for illness."
"Oh. Well, do that, then. I don't want my precious Aeris getting sick or anything..." He watched as the woman took his daughter away.
*****
So, now there was another Cetra to contend with...but there was nothing to worry about. This...girl, she could sense it, even at this great distance, would not be capable of doing anything to hurt Jenova for years, yet. But Gast had been allowed to do as he liked for too long, now. She decided that he should be put out of the way, and that Ifalnya or whatever her name was, and the child should be imprisoned. Then they could live out the rest of their days in captivity, prisoners of Shin-Ra.
If Jenova had been capable of laughter, she would have indulged herself in a bout of insane giggles, but as such, she could merely radiate happiness. The waves of amusement emanating from her momentarily stopped Vincent Valentine's nightmares, caused Sephiroth and countless members of SOLDIER a small lapse of confusion, and even caused Professor Hojo to suddenly have a rare grin, terrifying the person he was treating at the moment. Then she stopped her strange equivalent of laughing, thinking for a moment of how to achieve her control over those last miserable remnants.
*****
Near the small town of Nibelheim, in a little hospital, a birth that would shake the world in a few years was going on.
At the head of the bed, a clipboard shows the mother's statistics, but all that can be seen of the information is one word, a last name.
Strife.
*****
Hojo grumbled to himself about the cold, and shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his heaviest winter coat.
"Damn! Gast, you fool, why do you have to live in the middle of nowhere?"
"What's that, Sir?" One of the two fighters looked at Hojo inquisitively.
"Nothing..."
The soldier returned to whatever thoughts he had been having, and Hojo did as well. Soon the Shin-Ra helicopter landed outside the small town of Icicle, and disgorged the three people it had been carrying. The pilot closed the door so quickly, not wanting to let the freezing air of the North Continent into the cabin. One of the soldiers looked back at the chopper, but it was lost in a gust of snow.
Once they arrived outside what seemed to be Gast's house, Hojo turned to the guards.
"Wait here, till I call you on the radio."
"Sir, yes, Sir!"
Hojo quietly walked up the steps to the door, then waited until the wind picked up, with an optimum amount of snow. He liked to use dramatic effect, whenever possible. Once an icy gust that satisfied him kicked up, he slammed his foot into the door, throwing it open and stunning the inhabitants. The look on Gast's face would keep Hojo warm on cold nights, a rictus of horror.
"Hojo, what are you doing here?"
"Simple, Gast. I'm here to sever all your ties with Shin-Ra and take your...'specimen'..."
"I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that." Gast made a slight movement, probably for a weapon of some sort. Hojo called the guards. They burst in, and Gast stopped his movement.
"Hmmm, what an odd looking camera. Guard, destroy it!" The man turned and aimed his rifle at the camera, and unleashed a short and destructive blast. The recording device fell to the wooden floor with a crash.
"And now, if you'll surrender your wife and child..."
"No! No, you won't!"
"Oh, won't I? Guard?"
The other guard let loose a salvo of bullets. Gast fell to the floor, a large and bloody hole in his chest. The woman knelt to the floor.
"Honey? No!"
Hojo allowed himself a slight smile. "And now, if you'll come with me...."
"Scum. You make me sick." The woman looked at Hojo with unbridled hate, but he saw that she shrugged on a coat, retrieved her child and got her into a jacket, and followed the guards. Hojo quickly rifled through the drawers of Gast's desk, and used his pistol, the same one he had killed Vincent with, to blow the lock off one of them, exposing the treasure trove of notes hidden within. He snatched them up and flipped through them, eyes greedily absorbing information.
"What's this? Jenova...WEAPON?" Thank you, Professor Gast..." He let loose a short chuckle. Then he looked around at the pile of cooling meat on the floor, and left.
Through it all, the microphone in the smashed remains of the camera whirred away, silently filing away the noises of the scuffle.
*****
Ifalnya and the infant Aeris were confined in a large cell, with large viewing windows. Periodically, Hojo would come into sight at one of the windows, and appear to say something to an orderly, and soon she would be forced to answer more questions about the Cetra, Jenova, the Planet, and WEAPON. Ifalnya thought about suicide, but then Aeris would be left to the care of those Shin-Ra scientists, and she didn't like to even think about what would happen to her daughter at their evil hands. Ifalnya languished in the cell for three years, Aeris' rapid growth being the only thing that kept her going.
Just before Aeris' fourth birthday, a new and sympathetic doctor 'accidentally' left the door to the cell open, and Ifalnya and Aeris made their escape. In their terrified flight from Shin-Ra Tower, Ifalnya was wounded by a pack of guard beasts, and she barely made it on the train to the slums, where she knew the Shin-Ra would never find her. Once she dragged herself off the train, she collapsed, but managed to tell the one person who aided her to keep Aeris safe.
In Elmyra Gainsborough's arms, Ifalnya died.
*****
Great cables flailed wildly, the immense pressure of the containing fluid spraying uncontrollably, damaging vital systems, propelling the tubes that kept her alive.
The Crisis from the Skies was angry. So enraged that she cared not about the multimillion gil cost of the systems that were destroyed by her anger, not caring about the slowly leaking sustaining liquid, not caring that the incredible pressure from one of the tubes cut a luckless scientist in half. That damn Cetra had escaped, was free from the control of her puppets!
Her anger crystallized as she saw that Ifalnya had been mortally wounded, the died, and then Jenova actually grinned, a tiny, nearly invisible twist of her lips, putting one of the Shin-Ra workmen who came to repair the damage to think of an ancient painting he had once seen in a museum, called the Mona Lisa, a relic from the Planet's ancient past.
Jenova used her great influence to erase the memories of those who had seen her enraged destruction, altered their memories, putting off the devastation as a mechanical failure.
The near invisible smile stayed frozen on Jenova's features for many, many years.
*****
In a secret laboratory at the top of Shin-Ra Tower, a similar mind was rife with a similar anger.
"She WHAT?" Hojo screamed at the luckless subordinate who had been sent with the information the Cetra had escaped.
"Sir, they...they...g-got out, s-someone l-l-left the...the door open..." The scientist cringed. Hojo's tantrums were legendary. There were rumors that once he had actually told the President 'No' in an argument. If they were true, then Hojo was obviously valuable, or he would be dead.
"Well, then. I suggest that you do something to find them. " Hojo spoke in a venomously sweet voice. "Send in the Turks. They'll get them."
"Uh, Sir...you, you n-need President Shin-Ra's authorization..." The pathetic man stared at his feet. He felt that he shouldn't have said that.
"I don't give a flying fuck about the President's authorization! Now you go and find Tseng and make sure he gets that band of assholes searching! Do you hear me, you wretched little blob of swallow's shit?" Hojo's face was turning an interesting shade of purple.
"Y-yes, Sir! Right away, Sir!" He scuttled off to find the leader of the Turks.
Hojo went off to find who was responsible for the breach in security that had allowed the Ancients to escape. He wasn't sure what he would do to the offender, but he imagined it could involve hot oil and red-hot handcuffs somewhere. He grinned. Someone would pay, and he would have considerable fun making them do so.
Notes:
Personally I'm very satisfied with the way I did Hojo at this part, it seems to capture his eccentricity and turns him into a nice villain. Incidentally, that last part was inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I highly recommend them. They're funny.
Also, I couldn't resist that part with Jenova's smile. That smile has bugged me since I first saw it and now I had a chance to explain it as well as mesh our world and the Planet together more tightly then they already are...just go to Bone Village and look at the fighter jet's ruins...see? I think that the Planet is ours in the very distant future...interesting.
Next: The construction of the Sister Ray!