Author's Note:
Reeve: Yar!
Reno: Avast!
Reeve: We are mighty pirates!
Rufus: ... Seriously. I leave for like... fourty chapters, and Reno infects you with his stupidity.
Reeve: ... Yar! Walk me plank!
Reno: Dude, this isn't yaoi, you can't say that stuff!
Reeve: But we probably just upped the readership by like ten fangirls by even suggesting that Rufus might 'walk my plank.'
Rufus: Reeve?
Reeve: Yes sir?
Rufus: You're fired.
Reeve: Hot dang. Tyramir doesn't own the rights to Final Fantasy or my plank.
Chapter Sixty Seven
Fire In The Sky
Cait – no, Hojo – scampered across the landing pad, Reeve right behind him, swinging his sword wildly. Up ahead was the Highwind, his last, best hope to escape the maniac who was pursuing him with such fervor. The silver airship, still unfinished, looked like a shining beacon of hope to Cai... Hojo.
What's worse? an inner voice taunted. The sudden lack of identity, or spewing silly metaphors for a hiding place? Do you even think the airship will fly? It isn't finished yet. I heard they just installed the engines this morning. Hasn't even been flown yet. Do you think you'll escape?
Hojo wanted to tell the voice to shut up, but it had a point. Several, in fact. For one, it was true. Ever since that Cetra witch had banished him to this accursed body – how had she done that? - he'd been thinking of himself as 'Cait Sith' and had to force himself to think as a Hojo persona. Worse, he had to refer to himself as a 'persona.' Had Reeve also suffered from similar problems? Was it the machine doing it, or was it something on a subconscious, human level?
Another thought for another time. Hojo scrambled up the gangplank onto the Highwind, hurriedly hopping up and slamming onto a panel on the side of the doorway once he finished ascending. The stairs retracted and the hatch shut, sealing Reeve outside.
Hojo let out a sigh of relief, and suddenly realized how foolish that was. He was a robot now. He didn't breathe, therefore didn't sigh. Human reactions. How ingrained they were.
The robotic cat walked calmly down the metal corridors of the Highwind. It was a crudely built machine, but one that would serve his purpose. Escape. He only hoped that Zero and Trask would kill the Turks so he could come back at a later date. Rufus had always been one to appreciate a genius among his ranks. But at the moment, that pesky Reeve was in the way. He would just have to bide his time.
He attempted to clasp his hands behind his back, but the megaphone he still carried got in the way. He frowned ruefully at it. No mog companion, so no point in carrying it around. He tossed it aside, and as it hit the wall, heard a rattle. The robot quirked an eyebrow, and bent down to examine the megaphone. Picking it up, he found the source of the rattle immediately. A small remote fell out. It had probably been lodged in there. Looking over it carefully, Hojo nodded to himself. Of course the Turks would steal his Soldier control. Probably as a more efficient way of dealing with Trask and RES-Subject Zero. He tried to remember the last time he'd seen it. He had left it in his lab… in his absent-mindedness, one of them had probably taken it and he'd just not noticed it. But why did the cat have it? Perhaps even with the control, Trask and Zero had overcome the Turks, and Reeve had been the only survivor of the encounter. An impressive display, to be sure. Hojo made a mental note to check the cam records of the battle upon his return.
Controller and megaphone still in hand, the cat made his way down to the bridge. Upon reaching the doors to it, he reached his first obstacle. The auto-opening mechanisms weren't working, and the manual opening control was too high for him to reach. He was forced to degrade himself by standing on his toes, reaching vainly with the megaphone as an extension to press the button. When that didn't produce enough height, he found himself hopping up and down, desperately trying to smack the offending red button that seemingly taunted him.
Look at me, the button seemed to say. I'm big and bright and red and shiny. And you can't reach me.
In a fit of frustration unbecoming Professor Hojo, he hurled the megaphone at the button. It connected, and the door slid open. With a smug smirk on his face, he retrieved his tool of button mashing and walked through the opening.
His next problem lay in the fact that he had no idea how to pilot an airship.
He'd been on the deck of the Highwind many times, and had observed the pilots somewhat in their control of the airship. Not out of any real desire to learn aeronautics, but more out of a curiosity about how the airship functioned. While it wasn't his brand of science, the field of genetics was obviously superior, it had piqued some interest in him.
Still, that wasn't enough to get by. He barely knew the basics. Searching about, a careful examination of the area by the main flight controls yielded an emergency crash course pamphlet in a small basket housed next to them. Glancing over the preface, Hojo read that it was meant to quickly teach someone how to land in the event of an emergency, such as the pilot's death. It also contained information on autopilot, and how to program a quick destination into the ship's computer. While not as safe as being manually flown, it was certainly better than nothing.
All Hojo had to figure out now was take-off.
He looked at the pamphlet again, focusing on directions for landing. It seemed simple enough. Find flat ground, then slow propeller speed, causing the ship to descend. It was more like a helicopter than it was like a plane. Simple up-to-down landing. A novice certainly wouldn't be able to land the Highwind and leave it undamaged, but they'd be able to land it with these instructions. If landing were as simple as that, then taking off should be equally as simple. If landing only required you to decrease propeller speed until the airship touched down on the ground, then logically, in order to get it off the ground in the first place, all one needed to do was find the 'on' switch and increase power to the propellers.
Ten minutes of chair-hopping to reach controls and much frustration later, Hojo found that was not in fact the case. However, he was one of the most brilliant minds of his time, and found the source of his problems right away. First, the ship's fuel gauges needed to be opened. Then the engine needed to be prepped. Then coolant had to be sent to the propellers. Hojo deduced what he had to do before daring touch a control, carefully examining each one on the bridge and making note of the labels before even activating one.
Once he was finished, buttons were pushed, switches were switched, and toggles were toggled. He nearly found himself doing a little dance in celebration, but wisely stopped before he even started. The Cait Sith persona was influencing him far too greatly.
The airship hummed to life, giving the steady sound of machinery at work. The scientist felt exhilarated, and rather proud. He hadn't done anything this challenging since… well, since resurrecting Tseng Katsuo. The elation faded, and he realized that once again, he'd just solved another problem, one that had been all too easy to figure out.
A large banging noise sounded, and Cait frowned. Too much power to the propellers? He looked at the status screen, and noticed there was nothing wrong with the power flow. Not enough coolant? He made note of that figure, and noticed it, too, was within normal parameters.
The ship banged again, and Hojo irritably went to the video display monitors. Turning them on, he found the source of the pounding immediately. Outside at the door stood Trask. The man was bleeding profusely, and his face had been badly burned. Hojo leaned over, about to open the hatch to the Highwind, then stopped, and peered at the monitor again. Behind Trask, in the distance, were three forms coming up behind him. Not running, but not exactly walking either. Hojo recognized one right away. Reeve. The other two were probably Turks. Reinforcements, then. Trask had failed in subduing the Turks.
Hojo could not abide failures.
The robotic cat made a few quick checks of the controls, and made sure the Highwind would have enough power to take off. He then programmed in the coordinates to Mideel. The Lifestream had recently up-welled there, more than likely affecting the populace somehow. Some experiments would have to be done, figures observed. An adequate use of his time for now.
Picking up the remote and the megaphone, Hojo strode purposefully to the outer deck. He would look his failure experiment in the eye as he killed him.
The door to the outer deck was not like the one to the bridge, the auto-opening function actually… functioning. The door slip open, and Hojo stepped outside even as the Highwind began to lift off. He reached the rail, and growled. He couldn't see over it. He was forced to jump up, grab onto it, and pull himself up. Standing on the rail as he was, he felt a little vulnerable as the Highwind ascended.
He looked about, and spotted Trask, the man blankly staring up at the Highwind as it took off. Behind him, Reeve, Reno, and the Wutaian girl were within a dozen feet of the large Soldier.
Lifting the megaphone up to his lips, Hojo shouted, "I have won, Reeve! I've escaped!" Then he turned to Trask, and simply said, "Goodbye, failure."
He lifted the remote up and firmly pressed the top-most button, the button reserved for the kill command.
He wasn't sure how it'd happened, but somehow he was hurled from the railing, the controller falling from his hand. A large roaring filled the air, and the Highwind lurched to one side, tipping slightly, even as it steadily flew further south. Hojo slammed into the floor, and panic swept through him.
What's happening? his mind screamed.
He stood up, wobbled, fell back down, and managed to stand up again as the Highwind rocked about. Another roar… no, an explosion… sounded, and the Highwind jolted again. Once more Hojo was flung aside, but this time managed to recover more quickly, grasping onto a railing. He looked about, and saw immediately what had happened.
One of the propellers had exploded! Where once was a device that allowed the ship to fly, now nothing but a smoldering ruin remained. How? He'd done everything perfectly! He'd worked out how much power and coolant those accursed propellers would need precisely in his head! He'd done nothing wrong! Nothing!
It wasn't his fault. It couldn't be. Sabotage. It must have been sabotage. But how? Who could have…?
Hojo looked at the remote laying on the deck in horror. He'd done it. The remote must have been hooked up to some sort of explosive device that was attached to the propeller! Where had this dreaded remote come from? Who could have made it? Why would they have done it?
Hojo leaped for the remote. He was beyond saving now. Beyond hope. He only had one question left. Who?
He pawed at it, accidentally pressing another button as he clumsily grasped it. Another explosion sounded, and once more the Highwind rocked about. Hojo was thrown side to side, but it didn't matter. Tossing aside his megaphone, he pried at the remote, pulling the back off. Inside the remote, etched on the metal were the words:
For Cid.
He didn't understand them, didn't know what their significance were. But he knew what they meant for him, even as the ship fell more and more quickly, no propellers left to support it.
Reno, held up by Yuffie, watched the Highwind take off, lifting ever higher and away from his reach. He thought of firing his 'mag-rod at it, but decided not to. He was out of range. He'd do no damage, just waste fuel.
Oh well. Hojo was a problem for another day then. There was always Trask.
He was about to point his 'mag-rod and fire a few firebolts into the man from behind, kill him while he wasn't even looking, but a voice distracted him. From the Highwind came the taunting call of Hojo's voice, amplified clearly by the megaphone. As one, Reno, Reeve, Yuffie and Trask all looked to the source to see the robotic cat, barely recognizable in the distance as he yelled, "I have won, Reeve! I've escaped!" A pause. "Goodbye, failure."
Reno smirked as he saw Cait lift one hand. He was holding something, but Reno wasn't sure what. He looked down and saw Trask's shoulders slump, the Soldier realizing his fate was sealed.
An explosion wracked the air, and Reno flinched. He looked up and saw the left propeller detonate, sending shards of metal raining through the air. He unconsciously ducked, shielding Yuffie with his body. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reeve hunch down in a similar fashion.
Yuffie made a disgusted noise, and he saw a green light flash from her bracer. Metal slammed down into the newly erected Barrier spell she cast, harmlessly bouncing off. A moment later, a second explosion sounded, and more steel fell from the sky, only to bounce once more against the Barrier. Once it was finished, he looked up, and saw the Highwind falling down and southward, out of his line of sight. The ship would undoubtedly make quite the mess when it landed. He was almost kind of sad he would miss it. Fire was always kind of pretty.
Still huddled down beside the two, Reeve was the first to ask, "What just happened?"
"Shera's legacy," Reno said with a smirk.
"Excuse me?" Reeve asked.
"Took me a while to figure out. I thought she was planning on sabotaging the Highwind. I even kind of blackmailed her with the info to get her to cut the power when we freed you. Was all subtle about it, too. Looks like she did."
Reeve sputtered. "Wait. Why would she try to sabotage the Highwind? That ship was her dream."
"No, it wasn't," Yuffie said. "It was Cid's. One of Cid's, anyway."
"Exactly," Reno said. "And what happened to the last Highwind? Oh right. Destroyed, in a kamikaze attack on Shin Bahamut. Who Rufus summoned."
"Wait. So Shera was planning on blowing up the Highwind to kill Rufus, as revenge for Cid?"
"My best guess anyway," Reno supplied.
"So what set off the explosion?"
Reno shrugged. "Does it matter? Hey, I just realized something."
Yuffie said, "That it was probably the controller that Elena found in Shera's office? And that, I might add, Cait had with him before he switched bodies with Hojo again?"
"Well, yeah, that makes sense, but I was kind of referring to the fact that I still haven't killed Trask yet."
Reeve barked a laugh, and Yuffie rolled her eyes. Reno, a goofy smile on his face, stood up, and peered about, looking for the black-haired Soldier. And was greatly disappointed when he found him.
When the Highwind's propellers had exploded, Yuffie had shielded the three of them from the debris. Trask, however, had not been quite so lucky. The man was lying down, face up, and pinned to the ground by a giant propeller blade, an expression of agony on his visage.
"Dammit," Reno said. "Shera hogs all the fun, even dead."
Sighing, the Turk managed to stumble towards Trask, and did the only thing he thought appropriate given the situation. He dropped his pants, and then promptly emptied his bladder upon his enemy, all the while whistling a tune.
"Oh, that's gross!" Yuffie said.
Reno ignored her. He just kept peeing on Trask's dead body, happy with his victory dance, such as it was.
Author's Notes:
I know next to nothing of flying, well, anything. So when it came to Hojo starting up the airship, it was pure bs, all the way. I know nothing of aeronautics, or whatever the term may be. I just hope I made it sound convincing enough. Heh.