Chapter II: Advent Child
H ojo looked upwards at the Shin-Ra building, seventy stories of concrete, glass, and steel tapering away into the clouded night skies of Midgar City. It was amusing in a way. Man is always trying to reach for heaven, for God, but it is always just beyond his grasp. But today— He stopped himself. A man of about forty with brown hair and a moustache was walking towards him across the plaza, waving. He felt a stab of irritation. It was that prick Professor Gast again. He hadn't seen him for over a year, but that was too short a hiatus for his liking.
"Kawasaki!" Gast said, extending a hand. "It's been a long time. Everything's going well, I presume?" Hojo looked him in the eye and smiled. It was forced smile, but one could hardly tell. The way it could change his whole persona caught Gast off guard. He was normally taciturn, an erudite man absorbed in his studies. But now he looked...well, like a completely different person.
"Everything's fine," he said evenly. "You?"
"Great, great!" Gast said. "The Jenova Project's going very smoothly. President Shin-Ra's just given us a major budget increase for the research."
"And how is Sephiroth?" Hojo pressed. "Did he...advance at all during my absence?" Gast's welcoming face faltered. The way Hojo talked about his son disturbed him a little. He always got this eager glint in his eye when the subject came up. Almost fanatical.
"He's become very intelligent. We've tested him and found he has the IQ of a seven year old. He also has a very high compatibility with materia." Hojo nodded. "It's all in my report. If you want to see it now I can show you."
"Yes, I'd like that," he said. A chill wind blew through the plaza, sending several dry, brown leaves skittering across the pavement. Gast wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
"Damn, it gets cold here," he said. "I thought I escaped from it when I moved from Icicle. Let's get inside." He turned and walked towards the sliding glass doors of the Shin-Ra building. Hojo stared vehemently after him. Why should Gast be the head of the Jenova Project? It was he who created Sephiroth, the advent child who would become the ultimate being.
The green eyed monster hanging on your shoulder, Hojo? he thought. Hah. Yes, it was jealousy, he wouldn't deny that. He fingered the .38 in his pocket and looked at Gast's back. In his mind's eye, he saw himself draw the pistol and shoot Gast right below the left shoulder blade. A trace of a manic grin played on his lips. The most frightening thing was that these thoughts were not irrational in the least. They played themselves out in a calculated manner, like a slowly rotating chain of silver gears. He took his hand out from his pocket. Taking one last parting glance at the sky, he followed his superior inside.
Sephiroth woke up sweating, aquamarine eyes wide as saucers. His breathing was shallow, irregular, and it sounded painfully loud in the darkness. He dug his nails into his pillow, trying to concentrate on stopping his breathing, but he couldn't, his heart was going so fast—
Stop it! Stop it! He thought with clenched eyes. There's nothing out there. It's just pretend! But something inside him told him it wasn't. He sat up slowly. The sheets slid off his thin chest and onto his lap. As his eyes adjusted to the night, he could see that there was nothing out of the ordinary. He saw the door to the hallway in front and the two small wings on either side of the room. The room was roughly T-shaped, with his bed and dressers in the base of the T. There was a black fan spinning lazily above his bed. Almost everything else in the room was white, sterile, save a small picture of the mountains beyond Midgar hanging above the headboard. Sephiroth breathed a sigh of relief and fell back on his bed. His long feathery hair, white as dove wings, settled about his pillow. His eyes meandered over the various patterns on the ceiling and thought. He knew that he had a dream, but he couldn't remember what it was about. All he knew was that there was an incredible light and a sound like church bells tolling that got brighter and louder, and yes, more beautiful until it reached a point where he was sure he'd go insane. Of course, there had been no shortage of strange dreams lately, dreams many times more real than this.
Just last week (or he thought it was last week) he was taken to a room with metal walls and a metal table with a pan of water on it. There was a man there wearing a white coat. The man handed him a faintly glowing green sphere and told him to freeze the water. Sephiroth told him that he couldn't do it himself, that they should just put it in the freezer, but the man said no, you can do it, just focus on the materia and imagine the water freezing. He had no idea what this "materia" was, but the marble thing in his hand started to glow brighter. He concentrated on its swirling green depths and he suddenly felt cold, felt like he'd freeze to death if he didn't somehow get rid of it. He looked at a spot just above the water and tried to channel the coldness out. There was an amazingly loud crackling noise, and ice crystals seemed to burst from the air above the table. The man in the white coat jumped back as the water in the pan froze solid instantly and the ice started to spread across the table's surface. It crawled up the walls, onto the ceiling and Sephiroth was sure he would have frozen the man too if he didn't jump to his feet and yell "STOP!" The ice did stop, just as suddenly as it had started, and the man just nodded and wrote some things down on his clipboard.
Then there was another dream where he was lying on his back on a table (maybe the same one he'd frozen, it was cold enough) staring into a blinding light. There were several people standing over him silhouetted by the light and one of them held up something long and sharp and—
He shuddered and pulled the covers over his head, grabbing his chocobo doll tightly. He heard a noise and he tensed. He remembered having a talk with Ma'am about kids and their fear of monsters under the bed ("That's just dumb," he said scornfully) and now he almost believed it. There were monsters, he had no doubt. It was who they were that was the question.
Miriam Adler sat in the kitchen of the small apartment on floor 10. She rested, legs crossed, at the bar with a mug of coffee in her hand. Or, as Sephiroth called it, "that nasty brown stuff." She smiled wistfully at the thought. She had been assigned Sephiroth's guardian shortly after he had been born. Before that, she was the wife of a lab assistant who worked under Professor Gast. They were relatively well off and lived contentedly on the upper plate of Midgar. Until one day she received a call that said her husband had thrown himself off of the 67th floor balcony.
That wasn't a good day.
Lonely and without a steady source of income, she had heard that the Science Department needed a nanny to watch over a special child. A boy. She had no idea what the Shin-Ra's plans were for this boy, but she needed a job.
"And the rest, as they say, is history," she said. She took a sip of her coffee. There came a noise from behind. She turned around and was surprised to see Sephiroth standing there with dark circles under his eyes. Miriam quickly set her mug down knelt down to hug him. "Morning, Sephiroth. What are you doing up so early?"
"Oh, no reason, Ma'am," he said, returning the hug. Another smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She loved the way he called her that. When he was younger he called her "Mom." She explained to him that she wasn't his mom and that he should call her Miriam. Of course, he couldn't pronounce Miriam well at all when he was one (God knows how he was talking that well at all!) and it came out as "Ma'am". Miriam picked him up and set him down on a stool in front of the bar.
"Do you want me to make you something to eat?" she asked.
"No thanks. I'm not really hungry." He crossed his arms on the table and laid his head upon them.
Miriam cocked her own head. "Are you feeling okay this morning?" she asked. "You look like you didn't sleep well."
"You know everything!" he said. "I had a bad dream last night. I don't remember much of it, but it was scary. And I thought I heard some weird noises. I was...sort of afraid to go back to sleep." He said this last sentence with some shame.
"I'm sorry, honey," she said. "Do you still want to go to the playground today?"
"Yeah, I guess."
Miriam shook her head and put her hands on the table in front of Sephiroth. He looked up at her. "Listen, Mister. I think I know something that will cheer you up."
"What is it?" He asked.
"Take a guess."
Sephiroth put a hand on his mouth and looked off to the side. His other hand tapped on the table. "Umm, you can get rid of my freaky dreams?"
"Nope."
"You somehow got me a real chocobo?"
"Sorry."
"You can fly?" They both laughed at this one. "I really have no idea."
"Well, I heard from some people in the Science Department. Your father's coming to meet you tomorrow." The look on Sephiroth's face was priceless. His eyes widened as if he wasn't sure if he had heard right. Then a grin spread across his face and he laughed. It was a beautiful sound.
"No way! Is this true?" He looked at Miriam with hopeful eyes.
"Unless I heard wrong," she said. Sephiroth hopped off the stool, a look of shock mixed with ecstasy on his face.
"Oh my gosh, this is so awesome!" he said. "I never knew he'd ever come back for me. I can't wait to see who he is, what he looks like—" Then he stopped speaking and shook his head. "This is so awesome," he repeated. The absolute earnest in his voice made her heart swell and she realized, not for the first time, that she felt at home. Corny, but the truth.
"Do you feel better now?" she asked.
"Yeah. Thanks a lot Ma'am."
It was 11:30 at night, and Sephiroth still couldn't sleep. His mind was busy, whirling, with thoughts of the following day. In the books he'd read, every kid seemed to have a father, a person who would take them fishing, go on hikes, or just explore the city. Now he had one too, finally, and maybe all three of them would become a family. Just me, Ma'am, and Dad.
He shivered with excitement and took the chocobo doll off his dresser. "Bochi, tomorrow I'm gonna have a dad!" The chocobo just stared at him with its black button eyes. He threw himself on his back, hugging the doll in his arms. "Yeah, tomorrow'll be great." He chuckled a little. "Maybe if they get to know each other well enough, Ma'am and Dad will get married! No, wait. I'm getting way ahead here." He checked his watch, decided it was late enough, and turned off his lamp. He pulled the covers over his head. He didn't have any bad dreams that night. Instead he dreamt of riding his own gold chocobo across emerald plains beneath an endless blue sky.
While Sephiroth slept safe in his bed, Hojo was still wide awake, sitting at his desk in the dimly lit laboratory. Almost everyone else had left hours ago. Gast was still awake too, probably finishing up a discussion with that living Cetra they located. What was her name again? Ifalna or something like that. In front of him a newly completed report lay under the harsh fluorescent lights. Its cover read: Jenova Project: DNA Analysis of the Jenova Sample. That wasn't what his attention was on though. On the left of the report was a picture of his son and his guardian. Both were out on a balcony, a blue sky splashed with whitewash clouds behind them. The guardian (Miriam, that's what her name was) held Sephiroth up so that the camera could reach him. His unnaturally aqua eyes twinkled with mirth. They were an angel's eyes. Hojo ran a long thin finger around Sephiroth's face. Everything about him was perfect, the paradigm of human form and vitality. And it was through science that this creation was realized. Gast never seemed to comprehend this.
Just then the door opened and Gast walked in rubbing his forehead. Speak of the devil, Hojo thought.
"You still up?" he asked Hojo.
"Yes. I was just finishing up that report you asked me to compile on Jenova DNA and that Cetra's DNA." He slid it across the desk. Gast picked it up and leafed through it. "Were you talking to Ifalna again?"
Gast laughed, a tired and weary sound. "Am I that predictable? Well yes, I have. I've never met anyone quite like her. She's told me many things." He stopped on a page that caught his interest. His eyebrows knitted together. "This can't be possible. This part of the DNA's completely different. Is this thing really a Cetra?"
"We won't know until we run some more tests," said Hojo, getting up. "I'm going to sleep. I'm visiting Sephiroth tomorrow to see if he's ready for the next stage of the project."
"I'm sure he'll be happy to see that his father hasn't abandoned him after all," said Gast.
H ojo looked upwards at the Shin-Ra building, seventy stories of concrete, glass, and steel tapering away into the clouded night skies of Midgar City. It was amusing in a way. Man is always trying to reach for heaven, for God, but it is always just beyond his grasp. But today— He stopped himself. A man of about forty with brown hair and a moustache was walking towards him across the plaza, waving. He felt a stab of irritation. It was that prick Professor Gast again. He hadn't seen him for over a year, but that was too short a hiatus for his liking.
"Kawasaki!" Gast said, extending a hand. "It's been a long time. Everything's going well, I presume?" Hojo looked him in the eye and smiled. It was forced smile, but one could hardly tell. The way it could change his whole persona caught Gast off guard. He was normally taciturn, an erudite man absorbed in his studies. But now he looked...well, like a completely different person.
"Everything's fine," he said evenly. "You?"
"Great, great!" Gast said. "The Jenova Project's going very smoothly. President Shin-Ra's just given us a major budget increase for the research."
"And how is Sephiroth?" Hojo pressed. "Did he...advance at all during my absence?" Gast's welcoming face faltered. The way Hojo talked about his son disturbed him a little. He always got this eager glint in his eye when the subject came up. Almost fanatical.
"He's become very intelligent. We've tested him and found he has the IQ of a seven year old. He also has a very high compatibility with materia." Hojo nodded. "It's all in my report. If you want to see it now I can show you."
"Yes, I'd like that," he said. A chill wind blew through the plaza, sending several dry, brown leaves skittering across the pavement. Gast wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
"Damn, it gets cold here," he said. "I thought I escaped from it when I moved from Icicle. Let's get inside." He turned and walked towards the sliding glass doors of the Shin-Ra building. Hojo stared vehemently after him. Why should Gast be the head of the Jenova Project? It was he who created Sephiroth, the advent child who would become the ultimate being.
The green eyed monster hanging on your shoulder, Hojo? he thought. Hah. Yes, it was jealousy, he wouldn't deny that. He fingered the .38 in his pocket and looked at Gast's back. In his mind's eye, he saw himself draw the pistol and shoot Gast right below the left shoulder blade. A trace of a manic grin played on his lips. The most frightening thing was that these thoughts were not irrational in the least. They played themselves out in a calculated manner, like a slowly rotating chain of silver gears. He took his hand out from his pocket. Taking one last parting glance at the sky, he followed his superior inside.
Sephiroth woke up sweating, aquamarine eyes wide as saucers. His breathing was shallow, irregular, and it sounded painfully loud in the darkness. He dug his nails into his pillow, trying to concentrate on stopping his breathing, but he couldn't, his heart was going so fast—
Stop it! Stop it! He thought with clenched eyes. There's nothing out there. It's just pretend! But something inside him told him it wasn't. He sat up slowly. The sheets slid off his thin chest and onto his lap. As his eyes adjusted to the night, he could see that there was nothing out of the ordinary. He saw the door to the hallway in front and the two small wings on either side of the room. The room was roughly T-shaped, with his bed and dressers in the base of the T. There was a black fan spinning lazily above his bed. Almost everything else in the room was white, sterile, save a small picture of the mountains beyond Midgar hanging above the headboard. Sephiroth breathed a sigh of relief and fell back on his bed. His long feathery hair, white as dove wings, settled about his pillow. His eyes meandered over the various patterns on the ceiling and thought. He knew that he had a dream, but he couldn't remember what it was about. All he knew was that there was an incredible light and a sound like church bells tolling that got brighter and louder, and yes, more beautiful until it reached a point where he was sure he'd go insane. Of course, there had been no shortage of strange dreams lately, dreams many times more real than this.
Just last week (or he thought it was last week) he was taken to a room with metal walls and a metal table with a pan of water on it. There was a man there wearing a white coat. The man handed him a faintly glowing green sphere and told him to freeze the water. Sephiroth told him that he couldn't do it himself, that they should just put it in the freezer, but the man said no, you can do it, just focus on the materia and imagine the water freezing. He had no idea what this "materia" was, but the marble thing in his hand started to glow brighter. He concentrated on its swirling green depths and he suddenly felt cold, felt like he'd freeze to death if he didn't somehow get rid of it. He looked at a spot just above the water and tried to channel the coldness out. There was an amazingly loud crackling noise, and ice crystals seemed to burst from the air above the table. The man in the white coat jumped back as the water in the pan froze solid instantly and the ice started to spread across the table's surface. It crawled up the walls, onto the ceiling and Sephiroth was sure he would have frozen the man too if he didn't jump to his feet and yell "STOP!" The ice did stop, just as suddenly as it had started, and the man just nodded and wrote some things down on his clipboard.
Then there was another dream where he was lying on his back on a table (maybe the same one he'd frozen, it was cold enough) staring into a blinding light. There were several people standing over him silhouetted by the light and one of them held up something long and sharp and—
He shuddered and pulled the covers over his head, grabbing his chocobo doll tightly. He heard a noise and he tensed. He remembered having a talk with Ma'am about kids and their fear of monsters under the bed ("That's just dumb," he said scornfully) and now he almost believed it. There were monsters, he had no doubt. It was who they were that was the question.
Miriam Adler sat in the kitchen of the small apartment on floor 10. She rested, legs crossed, at the bar with a mug of coffee in her hand. Or, as Sephiroth called it, "that nasty brown stuff." She smiled wistfully at the thought. She had been assigned Sephiroth's guardian shortly after he had been born. Before that, she was the wife of a lab assistant who worked under Professor Gast. They were relatively well off and lived contentedly on the upper plate of Midgar. Until one day she received a call that said her husband had thrown himself off of the 67th floor balcony.
That wasn't a good day.
Lonely and without a steady source of income, she had heard that the Science Department needed a nanny to watch over a special child. A boy. She had no idea what the Shin-Ra's plans were for this boy, but she needed a job.
"And the rest, as they say, is history," she said. She took a sip of her coffee. There came a noise from behind. She turned around and was surprised to see Sephiroth standing there with dark circles under his eyes. Miriam quickly set her mug down knelt down to hug him. "Morning, Sephiroth. What are you doing up so early?"
"Oh, no reason, Ma'am," he said, returning the hug. Another smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She loved the way he called her that. When he was younger he called her "Mom." She explained to him that she wasn't his mom and that he should call her Miriam. Of course, he couldn't pronounce Miriam well at all when he was one (God knows how he was talking that well at all!) and it came out as "Ma'am". Miriam picked him up and set him down on a stool in front of the bar.
"Do you want me to make you something to eat?" she asked.
"No thanks. I'm not really hungry." He crossed his arms on the table and laid his head upon them.
Miriam cocked her own head. "Are you feeling okay this morning?" she asked. "You look like you didn't sleep well."
"You know everything!" he said. "I had a bad dream last night. I don't remember much of it, but it was scary. And I thought I heard some weird noises. I was...sort of afraid to go back to sleep." He said this last sentence with some shame.
"I'm sorry, honey," she said. "Do you still want to go to the playground today?"
"Yeah, I guess."
Miriam shook her head and put her hands on the table in front of Sephiroth. He looked up at her. "Listen, Mister. I think I know something that will cheer you up."
"What is it?" He asked.
"Take a guess."
Sephiroth put a hand on his mouth and looked off to the side. His other hand tapped on the table. "Umm, you can get rid of my freaky dreams?"
"Nope."
"You somehow got me a real chocobo?"
"Sorry."
"You can fly?" They both laughed at this one. "I really have no idea."
"Well, I heard from some people in the Science Department. Your father's coming to meet you tomorrow." The look on Sephiroth's face was priceless. His eyes widened as if he wasn't sure if he had heard right. Then a grin spread across his face and he laughed. It was a beautiful sound.
"No way! Is this true?" He looked at Miriam with hopeful eyes.
"Unless I heard wrong," she said. Sephiroth hopped off the stool, a look of shock mixed with ecstasy on his face.
"Oh my gosh, this is so awesome!" he said. "I never knew he'd ever come back for me. I can't wait to see who he is, what he looks like—" Then he stopped speaking and shook his head. "This is so awesome," he repeated. The absolute earnest in his voice made her heart swell and she realized, not for the first time, that she felt at home. Corny, but the truth.
"Do you feel better now?" she asked.
"Yeah. Thanks a lot Ma'am."
It was 11:30 at night, and Sephiroth still couldn't sleep. His mind was busy, whirling, with thoughts of the following day. In the books he'd read, every kid seemed to have a father, a person who would take them fishing, go on hikes, or just explore the city. Now he had one too, finally, and maybe all three of them would become a family. Just me, Ma'am, and Dad.
He shivered with excitement and took the chocobo doll off his dresser. "Bochi, tomorrow I'm gonna have a dad!" The chocobo just stared at him with its black button eyes. He threw himself on his back, hugging the doll in his arms. "Yeah, tomorrow'll be great." He chuckled a little. "Maybe if they get to know each other well enough, Ma'am and Dad will get married! No, wait. I'm getting way ahead here." He checked his watch, decided it was late enough, and turned off his lamp. He pulled the covers over his head. He didn't have any bad dreams that night. Instead he dreamt of riding his own gold chocobo across emerald plains beneath an endless blue sky.
While Sephiroth slept safe in his bed, Hojo was still wide awake, sitting at his desk in the dimly lit laboratory. Almost everyone else had left hours ago. Gast was still awake too, probably finishing up a discussion with that living Cetra they located. What was her name again? Ifalna or something like that. In front of him a newly completed report lay under the harsh fluorescent lights. Its cover read: Jenova Project: DNA Analysis of the Jenova Sample. That wasn't what his attention was on though. On the left of the report was a picture of his son and his guardian. Both were out on a balcony, a blue sky splashed with whitewash clouds behind them. The guardian (Miriam, that's what her name was) held Sephiroth up so that the camera could reach him. His unnaturally aqua eyes twinkled with mirth. They were an angel's eyes. Hojo ran a long thin finger around Sephiroth's face. Everything about him was perfect, the paradigm of human form and vitality. And it was through science that this creation was realized. Gast never seemed to comprehend this.
Just then the door opened and Gast walked in rubbing his forehead. Speak of the devil, Hojo thought.
"You still up?" he asked Hojo.
"Yes. I was just finishing up that report you asked me to compile on Jenova DNA and that Cetra's DNA." He slid it across the desk. Gast picked it up and leafed through it. "Were you talking to Ifalna again?"
Gast laughed, a tired and weary sound. "Am I that predictable? Well yes, I have. I've never met anyone quite like her. She's told me many things." He stopped on a page that caught his interest. His eyebrows knitted together. "This can't be possible. This part of the DNA's completely different. Is this thing really a Cetra?"
"We won't know until we run some more tests," said Hojo, getting up. "I'm going to sleep. I'm visiting Sephiroth tomorrow to see if he's ready for the next stage of the project."
"I'm sure he'll be happy to see that his father hasn't abandoned him after all," said Gast.