A New Specimen

Giving the signal to move in, Cloud crept down the spiral staircase and into the basement of the Shinra Mansion. His goal was Hojo's lab, or at least that's what Aeris had said. Although his lab in Shinra Headquarters had been destroyed two years ago with the destruction of Midgar, the mad scientist, Hojo, wasn't discouraged at all. He'd just resumed in his older, somewhat less advanced lab here, and from the sound of it, he still experimented on living specimens.

Cloud winced at the child-like screams of agony coming from behind that wooden door. He hoped Nanaki and Barret would be enough to cover their backs upstairs. Hojo wasn't likely to have reinforcements, and they needed as many people as they could get to deal with Hojo and whatever monster he might have created to help him.

Creeping up to the door, Cloud pressed an ear against it. He couldn't hear what Hojo was saying clearly, and wished for an instant that he'd brought Nanaki down. Surely his canine ears would have heard it all. No use complaining, Cloud just strained a little more. Did Hojo know they were there? Did he have something waiting?

"That ge... ...thout it... ...human... ...really is... ...reaction should be greater..."

It was no use; Cloud couldn't hear anything, especially when another peal of screeching blasted his ear through the wall. It sounded so much like a child... It wouldn't be the first time Hojo's morals hadn't stopped him from inhumane experiments on children.

"If only we could see," Cloud whispered in near silence; he couldn't let Hojo hear.

Aeris closed her eyes momentarily; then, suddenly, an image appeared between her outstretched hands. Cloud instantly recognized the inside of the lab, and heard Tifa stifle a gasp of horror. Some of the equipment had been replaced since the last time Cloud had seen the lab, and now, where once stood vertical testing containers of metal and glass meant to be used for humans, Hojo was putting into use a new piece of technology.

A young boy, who Cloud guessed to be somewhere just above or below ten years old, was restrained in an upright position with countless wires attached to him to monitor things like heartbeat and breath patterns. The curious, or morbid, part on the machine was a moving arm on the machine. It held a jar of some substance that couldn't be made out, but Cloud's experiences told him it was Jenova. As it moved the jar near to the boy, his thick black hair would suddenly flash golden and become rigid, standing up in a fashion much like Cloud's own... disturbing... with each change from black to gold, the boy would let fly another blood curdling scream and the arm would move away. When the jar was no longer near the boy, his hair would fall down, once more black, and he would sag as though hit with a physical blow.

Suddenly, however, Hojo turned off the machine. Before anyone had time to realize things could only go from bad to worse, there was a needle in Hojo's hands.

Vincent, a usually cool, quiet member of the group, was the first to act. He didn't hesitate to ram his shoulder through the door and fire his pistol and Hojo.

His aim was deadly, but even he was too late. Whatever had been in the small needle now was in the boy. Vincent had been unsuccessful in stopping someone else from suffering as he had, at Hojo's hands. That just added one more sin to the list that haunted him every hour of his life, waking or not.

Following Vincent's lead, the others had drawn their weapons and were ready for anything, but were confronted with nothing.

Vincent stared at the dark blood that began to pool around Hojo, as dark in shade as his cape. If what Aeris said was true, this death was only temporary for the scientist. It was a thought Vincent didn't relish.

Running up to the boy, both Aeris and Tifa began to pluck wires from him, paying little attention to the overly muscled build of the adolescent. That wasn't what kept preoccupying their minds as they gazed at the child; it was the fact that he resembled Cloud so closely...

No sooner did they finish freeing the boy, Cloud suggested leaving.

"Good idea," Yuffie, an 18-year-old ninja who usually was more interested in her own hide than her friends, readily agreed.

"Great," Cloud sprang into action, taking the boy child from Tifa and Aeris and motioning for everyone to follow him. The boy seemed disoriented at best; they wouldn't be getting any information from him right now. Maybe when hi regained his bearings he could tell them something about Hojo or Sephiroth they already didn't know. It shouldn't take too long, whatever experiment Hojo had done, its effects seemed to be wearing off now; the boy's hair had settled on a constant golden blond. But, it was very disturbing, the resemblance... almost like looking in a mirror...

"To the chocobos!" Cloud shouted breaking into a run with the boy over his shoulder. Using the fleet of black chocobos Tifa had bred with the help of Joe, the greatest chocobo jockey of all time, they could easily be over the mountains and well on their way to Costa del Sol before Hojo could regenerate. Cloud made a mental note to thank Tifa for breeding such amazingly fast chocobos. Then he decided trying to remember would be futile.

"Whe... where are we? the boy murmured; being jostled around was bringing him around quickly.

"Don't worry kid," Cloud assured him, setting him up on the back of the darkest chocobo before climbing up himself. "You don't have to see that man again. That's if you can tell us enough to avoid another fight."

"W... why?" the boy seemed confused by the birds they now rode into the Nibelhiem Mountains, that and his hair. He kept staring at the bangs in front of his face as though they were alien. "Why am I...?" he shook his head. "Why am I in Super Saijin?"

"We'll have time to talk later, but for now you should probably get some rest; Hojo did a number on you," Cloud suggested. "We'll be at my house in less than a day 's ride."

"Sleep? Right now?!" the boy sounded completely abhorred. "How?"

Cloud shrugged, "I'll keep you from falling off."

"But," the boy objected. "We're going at least..." he paused to watch the scenery go by. "200 km per hour!"

Cloud gave the boy a disturbed glance. Tifa's chocobos all had been clocked near 200 km per hour. How could this kid tell just from a glance? Cloud wished he wasn't holding the boy with his free arm; all this thinking was making his head hurt. "Well," he began after a momentary pause, "if you're not going to sleep, why don't you introduce yourself. I'm Cloud."

"I suppose we got one thing in common," the boy murmured. "Both our names are a little on the bad pun side of things, my name's Gohan."

Cloud just focused on guiding his chocobo around obstacles. "Bad pun"? What'd the boy, Gohan, meant by that?

"Maybe," Gohan started again, "we could travel faster if we flew."

"WHAT?!!" Cloud didn't like the sound of that. Only Sephiroth could fly. There was that one little exception where he had flown when Sephiroth had taken over his mind, but that was still Seph's work. Cloud was hesitant when he went on. "Can you fly?"

Gohan realized his mistake. Normal people didn't fly. But, it was too late to do anything about that now. "Sure," he replied. "I can keep up with Mr. Piccolo!"

"Mr. Piccolo?" Cloud sounded skeptical.

"Yep!" the boy was really enthusiastic now.

Cloud decided that he remembered why he didn't like kids. Maybe it would be better it he just ignored the kid all the way to Costa del Sol. What were they getting themselves into? Or, rather, what was Aeris getting them into?

Disclaimer: The characters in this fic aren't mine, they either belong to Final Fantasy VII of Squaresoft, or DBZ.