Author's Notes: I'm SOOOO sorry for not updating this poor thing sooner, but it's difficult when inspiration dies, isn't it? It took me months to get past the first...section below, and when I started with Aeris, things started to flow nicely. Anyway, enjoy it, because I rather think there's some good stuff here, especially the part with Hojo, which I am quite proud of :)

Legal stuff as always, which I don't think Square would bother with now, since they've apparently decided to make silly FF X with TALKING characters, lah-dee-DAH! As if FFVIII wasn't enough of an abortion....

Life, Cloud reflected, was very different in Midgar. Lights were on all night, streetlights, shops, and most of all, the eternally flickering green radiance of the eight Mako Reactors, bursting forth from the top vents with a constant hissing that was audible everywhere, light that poisoned the air but was ethereally beautiful nonetheless. He had been in the city for a month, living with the other recruits in a large barracks, and training in the vast basements of the Tower. He was beginning to use the massive sword used by SOLDIER easily and was proficient in the use of the required Materia. He wasn't the worst one of the lot, either. Of course, there were those that were better than him, but Cloud thought that he was fairly good.

Every day, Sephiroth led them in physical training, running laps, swimming, gymnastics, and in the fine art of military command.

The requirements for SOLDIER were high. Those who failed the final tests were admitted into the higher ranks of the general army, while those who passed underwent the horrific Mako treatments and were injected with the secret chemical that enhanced strength and mind.

Not all survived the Mako showers and immersions. Those whose bodies lived but whose minds did not were given mercy, although there were whispers late at night that the failures were used in scientific experiments or moved to the areas within the Reactors to guard sensitive areas where the effects of raw Mako would kill a human.

To be in SOLDIER you had to be the best of the best. Well, close to it, at least. Everyone knew that Sephiroth was the best SOLDIER that there would ever be.

Zack and Cloud had become inseparable, best of friends, and tonight they were going out on the town, to have a small sip of the cup of life that was, in Midgar, overflowing. Cloud was never quite sure of where they would go, and neither was Zack, but they always had a great time. The plan tonight was to go out to one of the many underground concerts that were regularly held in the Sector Three slums. Some dark and Goth band, Cloud thought, Satan's Angels, Blackened Wings, something along that vein. He didn't always enjoy the music they played at that sort of gathering, and he knew that Zack didn't always, either. In fact, he knew that Zack had a very secret taste for a kind of folk-dance music that originated from the Cosmo region, but it seemed that Zack was able to delight in different genres of music, and so Cloud would make an effort to enjoy himself this evening.

*****

Aeris turned the corner and entered the sunny lawn around her house. She smiled. It was such a mystery, that sunlight. Mother had told her that is had slowly appeared the day she had brought Aeris home. Almost, she had said, as though the sky was welcoming her, although Aeris privately thought that there were some big, but unnoticed, holes in the Plate above that let the sunlight through. The waterfalls had always been there, but the day that Aeris had arrived they began to flow with clean water instead of the waste and filth that they had spewed earlier. She had no secret explanation for that.

The bright patches of flowers made the place absolutely beautiful. Aeris liked Midgar, since it was all she had ever known, although she couldn't remember anything from before she was three or so.

She noticed that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. Mom wasn't home, then. Oh well. She reached into her cleavage and drew out the key. She didn't really like keeping it there, but it was the only place she could make sure it was safe, and it certainly couldn't be stolen without her notice.

In Aeris went, and clumped up the stairs. Mom always yelled at her when she did it, and that was why she did so whenever she had the house to herself, and why she wore such enormous boots. Some of her friends referred to them as 'shit-kickers', a term she privately agreed with, although if Mom ever heard what her friends said she'd have a fit.

She went into her room and laid her empty basket on the bed, then reached under it and pulled out the suitcase where she kept her clothes. She was going out tonight. Aeris laid out the outfit she would wear tonight, and then grabbed a towel from the linen closet and thumped down the stairs and outside to the big waterfall that poured through a grille into the sewers, dragged some sheets of corrugated tin over, and rigged up the enclosure that they used as a shower stall. She sang a sweet melody as she stepped under the torrent of clean water and shook out her hair.

She came back in, dripping wet and barefoot, and dashed across the carpet, up the stairs, and into her bedroom where she dried off and dressed in tonight's ensemble.

Elmyra would never recognize her in this outfit. For one thing, it was black. Black was eminently suited to her plans tonight. First was the dress. It was a delicate confection of spiderweb lace, the bottom half shredded with a razor she had found in the junk heap in Sector Six. Then there was the big silver necklace. It was a pentacle, and she was proud of it. It had taken a week's worth of flowers to buy that necklace. She had a long vest made of worn black denim, and she shrugged into it. She automatically fixed her hair, but tied it with satin ribbons of deepest crimson. Then she reached far behind the bed, wriggled her arm around, cursing a bit, and cringing once at the touch of a cobweb, then finally extracting a viciously spiked, cruelly bladed, and generally evil-looking staff, into which she slotted her three precious Materia. With the insertion of the last, the weapon acquired a faint emerald glow, and emitted a fain hum that was almost inaudible. She had asked people about it, but no-one had ever said that they noticed such a thing. Probably, Aeris had decided, it was because she was...different. Exactly how, she had never quite been able to figure out, but from what Mother had told her, she wasn't quite completely different. But even so, it was something she knew that she wasn't supposed to talk about, especially to Tseng.

Tseng was very nice, but he worked for Shin-Ra, and what Shin-Ra wanted, besides Mako and money, was Aeris Gainsborough, which Tseng had hinted at ever-so-delicately over steaming cups of green tea in the café in Wall Market. After a few unsuccessful attempts to get her to go topside with him, he had gradually, and gracefully, made less frequent visits, although she'd seen him lurking around in the shadows every once in a while. Occasionally she wondered just what he'd wanted her for, or, more truthfully, what Shin-Ra wanted her for. But it was best not to wonder about such things. Otherwise you might get vanished by the Turks, or something. People under the Plate noticed things like that. That the local drunk who'd ranted that Shin-Ra was working under the control of an alien from outer space, that the bag lady who'd insisted that SOLDIER wasn't quite human (different like Aeris, but a different kind of different), that the weird old man who'd mumbled treason and sedition into a folded-up newspaper had suddenly gone away.

Aeris opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out a small bottle of mascara and a compact. Setting the compact so that she could see herself in its mirror, she carefully applied a touch of mascara, pale foundation, and liberal amounts of dark eyeshadow, and finally took out a tube of lipstick and gave her full lips a redness that was almost black, so rich was its colour.

Perfect.

She left a note for Mother, telling her not to wait up, and let herself out, then took the back routes to Sector Three, to the almost-hidden bar, Opaline Dream.

It was Aeris' night out, and she was going to spend it dancing to the liquid tones of Beautifully Green Poison in their latest gig.

It was during the second song, My Heart is Lying Bleeding and Broken, that she noticed the tall boy with the spiky black hair and faintly glowing blue eyes. Dancing about wildly, jumping, writing in midair, she contrived to land almost between him and his worried looking friend, with the same blue eyes, but hair more yellow than blonde. She wondered for a moment if they were 'together' but decided to have a go.

Feigning giddiness, she bumped into the one with black hair and turned about as if she were going to apologize.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! It's just that I've, well, you know! Heehee!" She wiggled her almost-empty glass of opaline at him, and grinned insanely. "Hi! I'm Aeris!"

He smiled down at her, looking faintly amused, then pushed his friend away. "Hi. I'm Zack. Care for a drink?"

*****

Hojo waited in his office for Tseng to come and tell him the latest news of the Ancient. The Turk was always perfectly punctual, arriving at the exact moment Hojo had requested his time, and was always perfectly groomed. Not a hair out of place. Not a stray thread on his suit. Not even a squeaking of the shoes, or any kind of fidgeting, or, indeed, any sign that Tseng was human at all and not an automaton of some sort. To Hojo it was massively disturbing, and, in another way, a great triumph. Tseng had been one of the original test subjects for the Jenova treatments and he had turned out even better than had been hoped.

As always, the clock's LCD numerals shimmered to eleven-thirty AM, Midgar Standard Time, and a respectful knock made itself known, almost apologetically. Hojo winced internally. Always perfect timing. It might be a neurosis of some sort, which could be a result of the Jenova treatment, or it might be something else entirely. It might just be an overdeveloped sense of duty. Whatever it was, it was annoying. He wondered if there was anything that could be done about it, and then decided that whatever Tseng had about him that was disturbing, it was more than outweighed by his exacting standards for new inductees into the Turks, and on how to keep his organization in line. Still, he wasn't nearly as good as Valentine, but Valentine had been...taken care of. Severely. So severely that Hojo hoped very sincerely that no-one would ever find out what he had done to the man. Hojo was a very, very callous person, but he knew what the courts were for, and that there were international bans on the sort of thing he had done to Valentine. But he had stood in the way. He had not seen the Plan. It was very important, the Plan. Lucretia had, in the end, stood in the way of the Plan, and what had happened to her? Insanity, suicidal tendencies, and a totally irrational desire to see her son. Women. So delicate, so easily used, used up, and then thrown away. And throw her away he had, drugging her, and having her taken to the Gongaga province and left there to live or die as she could. What else was he to do? She was a threat to the Project and to security. What if Sephiroth had somehow come across her, babbling and twitching? And after that nanny had told him that his mother was Jenova...well, what might that have done to the poor lad? After all, Jenova was, in a way, the mother of Sephiroth, or, at least, the origin of his incredible strength, his agility, his astounding intelligence, all tidily shut away behind a devastatingly beautiful mask of bone and flesh, proving that brains and beauty were not necessarily opposites.

He sighed, and buzzed Tseng in.

Tseng was, as always, immaculate. His navy suit, creases perfect, not a speck of dust. His jet-black hair, shining, brushed back revealing his widow's peak. A tiny circle, dark red, tattooed above his Third Eye, not a pinprick of ink out of place. Revoltingly perfect. Far too polished and ever so tidy.

How Hojo hated the man!

Tseng spoke, perfectly trained to erase the faint Wutese accent that he had carried with him from his homeland.

"Sir, my operatives have not observed any new activity in the subject that does not correspond with the database."

The scientist considered this for a moment. "What was the new activity that did correspond with the database?"

The Turk frowned slightly. "Sir, the subject has been followed en route to the Sector Three Slums, but we lost her there. The subject had adopted a very different form of dress. We barely recognized her when she left her house."

"What was she wearing?"

Tseng frowned even more. "Black, sir. Lots of black. Torn lace, silver jewellery, and a new staff, with spikes. We last saw her around the Happy Hauler Inn."

"And how does this new getup correspond with the database?"

"Sir, we have noticed that the subject has been buying new clothes at a small shop in Sector Seven. The shop caters to people who adopt an anachronistic style of dress with a very dark undertone. Basically, they are Goths, sir. We do know that the subject's adoptive mother has forbidden that style of dress, so perhaps this has something to do with teenage rebellion."

"I see. But she is coming to no...harm when she goes out on these outings, is she?"

Aha. a faint frown there. Worry for the girl, it would seem. Yes, Hojo knew quite a bit more than Tseng thought, at least in that particular province.

"No, she has never come to any harm, although it could be a matter of time. That part of the slums is more...degenerated than the others, and it is home to the more uncouth classes. However, her fearsome appearance and new weapon may deter any assault. Also, she wears a pentacle around her neck. It could be that it scares off any would-be attackers. After all, it is a symbol considered indicative of witchcraft. Her unique link with the Planet probably enhances that idea."

"You know, Tseng, you may be right. Do make sure that no harm befalls her. After all, if we lost her, we would lose a very important part of the Jenova Project, would we not?

Tseng nodded. "Yes, sir. I will dispatch additional operatives to the places she frequents and ensure that she is safe."

"And I want you to resume your efforts to win her over to our cause."

Very perturbed now. The Turk was actually biting his lip! Clearly, Tseng was weaker than expected. Hojo noticed that his guest's lower lip was actually quite chapped, and was so reddened that it almost looked as though he were wearing lipstick. He had been nibbling for quite some time, it seemed. It was obvious that he didn't want to disturb the girl, but Hojo cared not for what the girl thought, or, for that matter, what Tseng thought.

"Yes, sir. I will post men around the house, and renew my attempts to bring her topside."

"Very good, Tseng. That is all, I think."

As Tseng passed the door, Hojo called out, almost in afterthought.

"You wouldn't happen to have surveillance photos of the subject in her new outfits, would you? They would be invaluable for research, or perhaps even blackmail..."

Tseng turned, visibly blanched. "...Blackmail, sir?"

Hojo grinned, a feral grin. "Well, of course. If the girl does not want her mother to discover her new hobby, she would have to comply with our requests, now wouldn't she?"

And now, even more lip-biting. Clearly, something was twisting around internally.

"...Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Tseng. Do be sure to send up those pictures. You may go."

He went.

Hojo smiled.

A/N: Oho! Gothic Aeris? What am I thinking? Well, I NEEDED to explain how Aeris met Zack in the first place, and to be open, I have always loved the idea of a Goth Aeris, because Goth girls are pretty, Aeris is pretty, how do I make Aeris even more beautiful? Goth Aeris! Also, it gave me a chance to give her a whirl with the feé verte, which I could NOT resist.

Also, notice the little wondering if Zack and Clod are 'together'? Again, I couldn't resist - Zack+Clod slash is sooooo funny and I had to hint at it at least :P