Author's Note:

Reno: WOO HOO! I get to solve my problems with violence now!

Reeve: Not so fast. This chapter is a two parter! It starts with Elena and Cait, and then moves on to Hojo! Events are picking up, and things need to be done now in order for it to be set all on time.

Reno: Godamn you. Do I get to shoot Trask this chapter?

Reeve: That would be a spoiler. We don't do those. We do disclaimers. Speaking of... Tyramir doesn't own the rights to Final Fantasy or any of its characters.

Chapter Sixty One

Rule Five

Cait sat calmly on Shera's old desk, the fur pulled back from his face, exposing the metal exoskeleton underneath. A compartment in his head was opened up, and wires were strewn about everywhere around the desk. In Cait's hands was a small microchip, and a soldering iron.

Elena watched it all, a feeling of disgust in her stomach. How could someone take apart their own head like that and calmly alter pieces of his own brain? At least he wasn't whistling anymore. That had gotten on the female Turk's nerves after a while.

But there was no other way. Reno had delivered an ultimatum. Figure out how to get his body back, or lose it for good. And right now, Cait was playing around with the original modem which had transferred his mind to the toy body. He had figured that if he could alter it correctly, he could use it to transfer his own mind back into his own body. Or so the theory went.

Elena lifted another painting off the wall, calmly knocking on the newly exposed portion, looking for hollow parts. She hated this office. It was small, it was cluttered, and there was absolutely nowhere to hide anything. And worse, there were tiny little airship models hanging from the ceiling, and even despite her short height, she nearly bumped her head into them at every turn. She was about ready to start grabbing them and throwing them to the floor.

"So..." Cait Sith said. It seemed like he wanted to get something off his mind, but couldn't bring himself to.

After a moment's pause, Elena stopped her search through a filing cabinet and said, "Well?"

"I was just wondering," Cait said, never taking his eyes off his work. "Well... when this is all over, and I have my body back. Uhm... well, would you like to go out for a cup of coffee?"

The words were said so quickly Elena wasn't even sure of what he had asked at first. She blinked, confused, then said, "Did you just ask me out?"

"Sort of. Kind of... yeah. I did. Is that bad?" The robot stopped his soldering, turned about, and looked up to her.

Her eyes widened, and she mulled it over. She hadn't really thought of dating anyone in what seemed like forever. Well, except Tseng. Who had always been more interested in Aeris anyway. And was dead. And might be coming back to life. Now how was that for a fucked up one-sided relationship?

"I'm not sure," she answered. "It's a lot to think about."

"Coffee's a lot to think about?" Cait asked.

"Why coffee?" she suddenly asked. "Why is it always coffee? Why not tea? Or beer? Or a lunch at McChocobo's? Why is the dating ice always broken over coffee?"

"Because it's warm and ice melts? I don't know. It's not always coffee. We could go to a movie if you don't like coffee."

"No, no. Coffee's fine. I like coffee. I just... I always had this picture of how a guy should ask me out. Somewhere romantic. And a certain wording. And there has to be confidence to him. And he can't have half the contents of his head on display on a desk."

Cait looked from Elena to the desk, and let out a small sigh. "So that's a 'no.'"

"That's not a no."

"Then it's a yes?"

"I didn't say that either." She turned to go back to what she was doing, bumped her head into one of the low flying models, this one of Shinra No. 26, and finally, with a flicker of annoyance, grabbed the cursed thing, yanked it off the suspension wire, and hurled it to the ground.

The model exploded into small fragments on the floor, and something went thump. Curious, Elena bent down and went through the pieces and found a small, metal box. She turned it over, and saw that it wasn't a box at all, but a remote control of some sort. There were a few buttons, a dial, and a small display read out. She frowned. Was this what Shera had been hiding?

She turned it about in her hands and saw the Shinra company logo on the back. Something she wasn't supposed to have?

"Let me see that!" Cait said.

She handed him the control, and he whistled. "I recognize this. It's one of those old control devices used for first gen Soldiers. Like the one that Yuffie's supposed to be stealing."

"What's Shera doing with one?"

Cait shrugged. "Maybe it's not hers. Maybe Hojo hid it in here. Figured it'd be the last place we'd look."

"Or that Trask would. It's meant to keep him in line, right? Maybe Hojo hid it in here thinking that Trask would never think to search here."

Cait nodded. "Make sense. We need to get this to Reno, now."

"What about whatever Shera was hiding?"

"We don't even know if she was hiding anything at all, or if it was even important if she was. But we do know that Reno's looking for this, and we need to get it to him."

Elena nodded. It made sense. "Howabout you? Are you done with your... uh... thing?" she said, indicating the pieces of him that were about.

"Just give me a minute to put myself back together. I should be good to go."

A few minutes later, Elena and a Roboguard controlled by Cait were headed down the corridors to the Turk office, where they encountered Reno smiling to himself, looking over a stack of crates, and holding a cell phone to his ear.

"I don't care if you can't find it, Yuffs," Reno said. "keep looking. It has to be in his office somewhere."

"Call the search off!" Elena said cheerfully. "We found it."

"You heard the lady, Yuffs. Get back here." He stopped, then asked as he took the controller from Elena, "Where was it?"

"Shera's office, surprisingly. We think that Hojo put it there figuring it'd be the last place Trask would look for it. It his weak spot after all."

"That clever little monkey. Not a bad hiding spot for it. Did you find whatever Shera was hiding? Hojo thinks that she was out to sabotage Shinra, and if Hojo thinks it, then I think it. The guy's a nut, but he's smart."

"We didn't find anything."

"Too bad," Reno said, polishing the controller on his jacket. He held it up and crooned to it. "You're my little baby, yes you are. Yes you are. Me and you, we're gonna make that meanie face Trasky-Wasky cry like a little girl."

He made baby faces at the controller, and continued to talk to it, and Elena rolled her eyes. There were days when she wondered why Reno was given the leadership position.

The door opened, and Yuffie stepped in. She looked at the crates, and said, "What's with the boxes?"

"These, my dear," Reno said, stroking the top of one, "are our new toys. Grenades, new shuriken for you, a second 'mag-rod for me, two pistols for 'Lena, and some extra ammo for Cait's Roboguard there."

"And Shinra lets us have this stuff whenever we ask for it?" Yuffie asked incredulously.

"Not quite," Reno said. "This is the part that sucks to be a Turk. Shinra pays us damn well. 50 K a mission is a lot of money, right? Well, there's a reason why we make that much. We have to buy our own toys from Shinra. Which sucks. But on the upside, we're allowed to have whatever we want, whenever we want it. And we're allowed to custom make weapons. Like this baby."

Reno drew his 'mag-rod from the back of his coat and telescoped it out, then pressed a button, causing the end to spark, emphasizing his point.

"So, I think it's time to teach Hojo what it means to break Rule 5 of the Turk hand book."

"What's Rule 5?" Cait asked once more, irritated.

Reno, Elena and Yuffie all answered at the same time.

"Never fuck with the Turks."

Hojo overlooked the Mako tank, his hands clasped behind his back and a sadistic smile coming across his face. Finally, he was doing what he'd never before been allowed to do. Always before he'd been limited by budget, by the morality of his superiors, by claims that this just wouldn't make money. After all, who would pay the price required to bring a living man back to life? It was dreadful indeed. But that had never stopped Professor Hojo in the past.

But as Reeve, Vice President of Shinra, Hojo had been able to cut through the red tape that had always bound him before, cleared the contracts, ordered the supplies he needed. No longer was he bound by the limitations of others. Now he was in charge of his own destiny. And that of any corpse he could put his hands on.

And right now, he had the perfect corpse in his hands. Tseng Katsuo, former Commander of the Turks. Prime condition, both mentally and physically. A clean killing wound; a single strike from Masamune. The blood had clotted instantly around the wound, preventing any real blood loss. An odd trait of Masamune's, but useful in these circumstances. The wound had been stitched together and been healed with Materia. Although that had proved difficult. Materia appeared to be working imperfectly at the moment, influenced by an outside source, no doubt from the strange energy read outs Hojo had been monitoring from the direction that Rufus and the Ancient had gone. The signals proved promising. Very reminiscent of Jenova. He'd made a mental note to look into it at a later date.

But first things first. He had to deal with those meddlesome Turks, and the little cat doll. They alone knew who he was, and he would have to eliminate them before continuing on. Normally he wouldn't bother with such a small quarry, but if the truth were to get out about his real identity, things could become difficult. Best to eliminate the lot of them now.

Tseng was dressed only in a pair of utilitarian blue dress pants, and black socks and shoes. His shirt and Turk jacket had been removed for this procedure.

The Mako tank was, at the moment, empty save for the body of Tseng, which was strapped down to a gurney in the middle of it. The gurney was rigged to a remote which could cause it to lift out of the tank and set it down, where it could then be wheeled to the next station.

All about the Mako tank were a series of pods lined around it, fifteen in number, each had a sedated Shinra guard inside. The pods were air tight, and supplied oxygen into them via a small pump to the side of it. Originally, Hojo's assistants had hand picked each soldier for spurious reasons. Lack of family, friends, contact with the outside world, mental instability and so on. The Professor wouldn't have any of that nonsense, though, so he'd assigned the job to Trask. The large Soldier had efficiently picked the most physically perfect Soldiers he could find, including former comrades-in-arms.

Tests had shown that eight human Soldiers would be needed. Normal Mako energy wouldn't cut it. It had to be pure, undiluted human energy. However, Hojo had reviewed the projections, and wondered about the possibility of some of the Mako energy 'returning to the Planet' despite his devices keeping it contained. Just to be certain, he'd upped the number to fifteen.

This was why no one wanted to explore the field of resurrection. At best, it would take eight lives to bring back one. And worse, the process would be ever so painful for the revived subject.

The Professor only smiled as he walked about the room and firmly shut the valve on each air tank, thus depriving the Soldiers of much needed oxygen. Sedated as they were, they died peaceful, painless deaths. One might say it was the greatest act of mercy Professor Hojo had ever committed. Hojo himself knew different. A more violent death would potentially ruin the Mako flow.

Mere minutes after the death of each subject, a steady hum began to sound throughout the room as the machines siphoned green Mako energy from the pods and flushed it through newly opened valves and into the tank. In moments, Tseng Katsuo's body was completely submerged in Mako energy.

Hojo looked over the readings and frowned. "Hmm... I managed to captureninety percentof it after all."

The extra Soldiers had died for no reason. Oh well. He'd make use of the excess in future experiments. He absently wondered if he could get Trask to kill any of the other Turks cleanly so they could be resurrected in a similar manner. If not, there would always be other people.

He thumbed the control panel on the side of the tank and the gurney raised up, moved a little to the left, and then dropped down slowly. Hojo looked over Tseng's body and noticed signs of healing, skin color returning, though there would always be a scar where Sephiroth had stabbed the man. Pulling back one of the man's eyelids, he nodded to himself. Tseng's eyes now gave off a bright lavender color, a side effect of the Mako process. It was so similar to the Soldier enhancement, Hojo wasn't at all surprised to see this development. The eye color wouldn't stay, of course. Not until Hojo allowed for phase three.

But now for phase two.

Wheeling the corpse over to the opposite side of the room, Hojo began to hum off key a tune he'd once heard one of his test subjects humming while trying to keep his mind off the pain of various experiments. It was a catchy tune.

Once to the next station, Hojo pulled a large turret-like object affixed with a needle on the end from the ceiling, pointing it at Tseng's body. The device was also Mako-powered, and functioned by transmitting Mako energy through an emitter array, which essentially turned concentrated Mako into radiation by removing the physical properties of the substance and then transmitted the remaining radiation (the "essence of the Lifestream," according to studies made by scholars at Cosmo Canyon) towards the host. Hojo thought it sounded a little mystic, but he was willing to let that slide for the purpose of this procedure.

The cells left in the host's corpse, which would depend both on the length of time the host had been deceased and the condition the body had been stored in that time, would be excited back into life by drawing on the Mako radiation passing through the host's body.

The process had to start with the heart and then the remaining lower brain functions, following the exact pattern of a developing foetus. Any deviation from this procedure would result in anomalies in the host, from simple metabolic changes to visible physical mutation. Because the process started by restoring the brain functions before much of the body, the process would inevitably be extremely painful to the host. It was noted by the Canyon scholars that this would be a result of reversing the natural process of life - that because "becoming one with the Planet" was a peaceful transition means being reanimated would be a painful one, and that the soul would cry out against such an unnatural process - however their views are founded in philosophy rather than scientific fact.

The reanimated cells, once fully excited, could return to producing energy on their own, however it must be noted that while most cells could be reanimated with almost certain success, the process was a long one and due to the specific order the body must be revitilised in the host wwould endure massive mental trauma during the procedure. In most cases, the host would have no memory of this experience, however Canyon cosmologists maintained that the "scars inflicted upon the tattered remains of the host's soul are irriversible, and will adversely affect it's wellbeing irrevocably." More tripe from those fools, naturally.

The host would return to full consciousness within a few hours of completing the procedure, however base functions like muscle movement were immediately restored, usually with violent outbursts, so scientific staff were warned to be prepared. The host's memory could be restored to within 84 of their previous capacity, however the longer the host was dead the more loss of memory they could be expected to suffer.

It was extremely important to note that restoring a body to life in no way means that the person would return as they were before they died, and that the host was revived in exactly the same state as it was currently in - therefore dead cells would not be affected by exposure to Mako radiation. If the corpse was fully decayed, then there would close to no chance of revival, and the further the state of degeneration the more adversely the procedure will be affected - even a host who had been dead for a month would affect the probability of success from between 7 and 12 percent. There were also instances of not only extreme memory loss, but memory gain. Cosmologists theorised that the host could inherit memories of other people through their spirit energy, and that the more concentrated the source of Mako the higher they would be affected. This theory remained untested. No one had ever made it that far with the resurrection procedure.

In a nut-shell, it made dead people live, albeit with poor memory and muscle spasms for the first day or so.

But that was easily fixed. Still humming, Hojo flipped the switch and let the machine do its work. He went to go find something to do while it began to regenerate the subject. A few minutes of searching turned up a book of crossword puzzles. An hour into doing his crosswords, the corpse began to move, and shortly after that, a gurgle that was beginning to turn into a hoarse scream sounded from the body. Hojo beamed. He was much closer than anyone else had ever been. He went back to his crosswords, which were proving far too easy for a man of his intellect.

Time went by, and Tseng's voice gave out after an hour of screaming. Perhaps it was involuntary, the vocal chords flexing and such. Or perhaps the Elders at Cosmo Canyon were correct. And maybe Chocobos could fly.

"Sir!" Trask's voice barked, and the scientist rolled his eyes and slammed his crossword and pencil down on the table he was seated at, turning to face his lackey.

"What is it, Trask?"

The man stood at attention, his face blank and his body stiff, betraying nothing. But Hojo knew the man hated him. It didn't matter. He'd long since broken Ivon Trask years ago.

"Four guards have failed to report in. They're supposed to be guarding the entrance to the science department. I believe the Turks have decided to make their move."

Hojo nodded absently. "I'm not surprised. It was inevitable. They must know that I have their former companion. How many soldiers do you have stationed outside my lab?"

"Thirty, sir. Not including myself. The best I could muster. Not even the Turks could get by them without taking losses."

A loud explosion sounded by the door, and Hojo sighed. He moved to stand beside Tseng, and thumbed the man's eyes open. Oh yes, he was alive. Dreaming somehow, but alive. His body wouldn't be able to work properly for a few more hours, perhaps even days. Oh well. On to phase three then.

Phase three was the simplest of them all. Hojo merely pulled a needle from his pocket and stabbed it directly into Tseng's heart. The man's body convulsed, his arms thrashing and legs kicking.

"That sounded like a Shinra-issue missile launcher," Hojo said, remarking at a second explosion. "Your thirty men are more than likely quite dead by now."

He didn't even turn to face Trask as he said it, merely took Tseng's pulse, checked his eyes again, then nodded to himself. The man probably had little memory now, and was easily susceptible to commands. Especially with that strain of the Jenova virus he had just injected into the former Turk. Taking a second needle from his pocket, Hojo injected some adrenaline into the man, this one also going into the heart. Tseng lurched, jerking upwards, his eyes opening on their own.

"RES-Subect Zero," Hojo said. "Do you remember anything?"

The man looked confused, shaking his head, and mouthing the word 'no.' His vocal chords were probably still raw from all that previous screaming.

"As expected. RES-Subject Zero, my name is Augustus Hojo. I am your master. Do you understand?" When Tseng failed to nod, Hojo produced a controller from his pocket, and pressed a button. Tseng jerked upright as an electrical shock emanated from the base of his skull and sent out neural pain to the rest of his body. The chip had been installed prior to the resurrection technique, and was now proving quite effective. "Do you understand?"

Tseng furiously nodded.

"Excellent." Drawing a knife from underneath his lab coat, he handed it to the Turk. "Your mission is simple. Kill anyone who attempts to enter through that door."

Tseng looked at the knife, then the entrance to the lab, and hopped from the table. His feet touched down on the ground, and there was no sign on unsteadiness. Remarkable. By introducing the Jenova virus into the equation, the muscle spasms had been completely eliminated. Those legs should be atrophied, the muscles non-compliant. And yet there Tseng was, standing perfectly.

A smile crept upon Hojo's face. He hadn't felt this proud since... well, since Sephiroth had summoned Meteor.

The doors burst open, and in stepped the Turks. Reno, Elena, Cait Sith and... Hojo frowned. A girl, about sixteen years in age. So, Trask had been wrong. Rude Seirath was not the final member of this party.

"Cait, do it!" Reno said.

A looked of concentration covered the cat's face, and Hojo frowned. Immediately he felt the modem in his brain activate, and he began to panic. Somehow that little doll had figured out a way to send a signal back to the implant!

Luckily, he knew the secret to the implant. It had a very limited range on the length it could sent its transmissions. Without even explaining himself, Hojo turned and ran in the opposite direction, away from the cat and towards the back doors.

"It's no good! He's too far!" Cait cried, and Hojo laughed. As long as he could keep twenty seven feet away from that cat, he was safe.

He kept that in mind even as he heard a gun shot and felt something pierce his side. He gasped, and clenched at the area just above below his left kidney. One of the Turks had shot him!

Well, he wouldn't let them have him that easy!

"Trask! Zero! Kill them! Kill them now!"

He didn't turn back to see if they complied. Clutching his side, he ran.

Author's Note:

Damn was that one long. This chapter was co-written by Nisus. I'd like to thank him for giving me ideas. We really tried to make Hojo seem very dry, analytical, and insanely evil. I hope we pulled it off. And I see that no one's registered an account on the Final Trinity Message Board. Shame on you guys. It doesn't require anything, and your mailbox won't be spammed, so don't worry. It's linked on my author page (Well the Final Trinity site is, and from there, the Message Board). So come on ... check it out, eh: P