Cleansing.
The rain pattered onto the platform, dull tinny thuds as it splashed on the flashing coloured buttons.
He was slumped over the control panel. His glasses crooked, his eyes seeing nothing. His whitened skin reflecting the red hues of the beeping, flashing lights beneath him. His last breath fogging up the monitor.
More pattering as the rain got harder. The cacophony of noise as it hammered on the metal grilles beneath his feet. Rivulets winding their way down the machine panels, beading on the smooth surface, collecting in the corners and joins.
There was still a crackle in the air. The electric discharge from the laser that had just been fired. The whistling noise was just dying down; the Mako shreds in the air had stopped glowing beautiful colours and had dropped to the floor, charred ashen lumps.
The wind rose.
Howling it froze the joints, biting at exposed fingers, nipping at toes. It fluttered at the ragged lab coat. The whipping sound of cloth caught in a draught. His hair, clumped together in a greasy ponytail barely moved at all.
He stood alone, watching.
His enemy.
He shifted his weight. The cracking of his shoulder as the joint complained. His hair plastered to his head, drops trickling down his face. Frozen tickling sensations running over his flesh. His cloak, also flapping in the breeze, each time the cloth moved, cold chills ran over him. His suit beneath damp from the rain, chilling against his skin. Numb.
The acrid tang of guns mingling with the scent of blood, the smell of oil and machinery. The wind did not disguise the rotten smell of the corpse beyond him.
Hojo.
The scientist had experimented on himself, ingesting strange concoctions of drugs and specimens. Injections of chaos, of Jenova. Strange beasts long since died out, their DNA mingled with his. He was no longer human, no longer alive either. The smell from the badness within him was akin to a week old rotting corpse… not a man dead for, he looked at his watch, seventeen minutes.
He could sense the others, gathered on the platform two floors beneath them. Their hushed tones reaching his keen ears through the metal mass. He moved closer to his victim.
Blood trickled down the control panel. Mingling with rain it pooled on the floor, delicate swirling patterns as it mixed. A look of distaste on his face, he crouched down to look into the eyes, the eyes that had haunted his nightmares. The cold green glare that had studied him throughout his experiments.
The green eyes that would no longer sneer at him, or mock him. No longer could they boast that she had chosen him… Sneering he turned on his heel, rearranging his face into its normal impassive gaze. He went to join his friends.