My Vietnam

30 May 2014

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This is a FFVII fic by klepto_maniac0. I own no concepts and no characters except the ones you've never heard of, which means they're ones I've made. I freely admit I will take liberties with the FFVII canon because this is an alternate universe fic (in case you haven't figured that out already.) That's why some details are different, some events are ignored, and some people don't exist or act in a different capacity. Ain't fanfic fun?

"My Vietnam" (henceforth shortened to MYV) is a continuation of "Put Your Lights On" (PYLO), but it is not necessary to have read PYLO before reading this story. Whenever PYLO-specific events are referenced, the pertinent chapter will be indexed in the author's note.

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He taught me about freedom

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Losing Sephiroth was worrisome on more than one level. Obviously the public missed him. Obviously the armed forces missed him. And obviously the SOLDIERS missed him, which was the crux of the problem. Without Sephiroth's DNA, there was no way to create more SOLDIERS. President Shin-Ra did not know much about science, but he did know that Sephiroth's genes provided a scaffold for the SOLDIER injections to transform an ordinary person into a superhuman. Hojo's proprietary blend of Mako and other things did the rest.

"We have about four hundred SOLDIERS, most of whom are Third Class. Less than twenty First Class remaining now..."

President Shin-Ra didn't anticipate a need to increase SOLDIER ranks, but knowing that there was no foreseeable way to create any more made him very, very uncomfortable. Particularly in light of the Turks' latest report that AVALANCHE had figured out how to create their own superhumans. They weren't as strong as SOLDIERS, but they also weren't dependent on a single man's genome.

So in the days before Sephiroth's death was announced to the public, President Shin-Ra met with Hojo.

"Is Toriko suitable for maintaining the SOLDIER program?" President Shin-Ra asked him.

"No," said Hojo immediately. "I attempted it as soon as she came into my possession, but her genetic makeup is incompatible with the current crop of candidates."

"All of them?"

"Yes," said Hojo. Straightening his glasses, he said, "Related though they are, Awe and Sephiroth are practically two different species. It's why the crossbreeding never took."

"I thought that was due to surrogate failure."

"Partly." Hojo pursed his lips and said, "At this point, I'm inclined to believe that the only way Awe will ever reproduce is if she goes through the pregnancy herself. Which is unlikely on multiple levels, the first of which being that her genetic makeup is radically different from anything else on the Planet."

"You said that about Sephiroth once as well."

"Indeed... Unfortunately, Awe's birth mother is extremely poor shape and unlikely to survive any sort of pregnancy. She's been hovering on the edge of death for years. And at this time, there do not appear to be any candidates that would be compatible with Awe either." Hojo straightened his glasses again and said, "In any case, something needs to be done with Awe. I recommend a return to the lab. I have confidence that useful results will be produced in time."

"The continuation of the SOLDIER program being first and foremost, I would hope?"

"Of course."

Some sort of accident would be required. Fortunately it was going to be easier to "kill" Toriko since the public perception was that she was but a fragile girl, so even something like a house fire would be completely believable, if unoriginal.

However...

Public interest in Toriko had never been higher. As President Shin-Ra viewed the biography, he had to admit that Toriko's presence only added to the Company. She was growing out of her Wutaiese features and becoming a truly beautiful and elegant young lady, and nothing about her demeanor even hinted at anything improper. She was something of a fashion maven thanks to her stylist. And the fact that Toriko regularly exercised at the Garrison had produced a surge in young girls wanting to join the army, which wasn't a bad thing at all; recruitment had gone way down since the end of the war and as long as a woman could take orders and hold a gun, President Shin-Ra wasn't going to stand in her way.

That wasn't what made her so hard to get rid of, however. Easily the most annoying thing about Toriko's existence was something she had no control over, yet supported her as firmly as the pillars under the Plates.

The Wutaiese diaspora fucking loved her.

There was a certain number of Wutaiese people in Midgar, immigrants who had left the hidebound traditions of the old empire for something that relied on merit and science. They had settled down in Midgar, married, started businesses, and otherwise made themselves part of the community. Then the War had happened and the native Midgarians had turned on the "immigrants", hating both full-bloods and half-bloods alike. People had died. The relationship between the Wutaiese descendents and the native Midgarians had been sour indeed, with race-related incidents occuring more frequently with each passing month...

...but then Sephiroth had introduced and adopted Toriko, and over the next year, these incidents had dropped down to almost zero. The correlation was impossible to ignore.

Toriko had no idea, but President Shin-Ra was well aware that the Wutaiese Midgarians placed a great deal of value on her very public existence, and if she were to go missing... Well, President Shin-Ra did not want a return to the old racist days. Too much time lost tracking down hate crimes and fighting with pro- and anti-diversity groups. Too many stupid prejudices stopping work from being done. Oh, President Shin-Ra hated Wutaiese people to be sure, but foreigners and illegals were one thing and productive immigrants were another. Besides, the Wutaiese could be very useful. Just look at Hojo.

"She needs to be removed from the public eye without drawing suspicion or eliminating her positive influence... So no scandals, no deaths...

"Perhaps an illness."

Toriko was not the only SOLDIER crossbreed in the world. Third-Classers and Second-Classers had been known to reproduce, but all of those children had died before their sixteenth birthday due to health defects. Not obvious ones, either. Hojo had personally performed all those autopsies and found that they tended to suffer from extremely aggressive, wide-ranging cancers, inexplicable organ failure, and in very rare cases, they died from some sort of plague that turned their flesh into black goo. If Toriko fell abruptly and deeply ill, no one would think anything of it.

"Yes, she'll have an 'illness'. One that requires hospitalization and as little disturbance as possible to recover. Perhaps a touch of madness as well, nothing too frightening. Memory loss, that would do the trick. And if she ever needed to appear in public again, the methods that would keep her sedate would easily mimic the signs of a fragile mind."

Rufus would probably be suspicious, but he'd shut up in the face of the gains made. He was at least that sensible. He'd get over losing Toriko, and better sooner rather than later. President Shin-Ra could see that the dark-haired girl was curling her claws into his son's heart. Yes, the sooner she was gone, the better.

"Six months," President Shin-Ra decided. "She'll be back in the lab in six months."

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a/n: President Shin-Ra has always wanted to get rid of Toriko, but the problem (above all others listed in the chapter) was Sephiroth. He knew that Sephiroth would literally tear the Building down around his ears if Toriko went missing. This is not OGC Sephiroth, who trustingly and loyally obeys the Company. PYLO-verse Sephiroth is a hot and bitter mess of emotions held together with measured violence and a high tolerance for most kinds of stress.

Just in case anyone needed the reminder :P

And Chapter 23 of PYLO provides useful backstory about the War and President Shin-Ra.

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Machaon had things well in hand in Nibelheim, so when Awe called in and asked for an appointment, Hojo was in a position to make that happen quickly. It was a pity about Sephiroth, but Awe had been one of the more tractable specimens before his interference and Hojo was looking forward to working on something that didn't threaten to kill him every time he did bloodwork.

Just like her father, Awe came to the lab alone and went straight to the private examination room, thus named not for privacy but because it was small enough for one scientist and one specimen. It had glass walls on either side like an operating theater, which provided useful education for ambitious underlings. Today, however, Hojo had drawn the curtains; it was not common knowledge on the floor that Toriko Shin-Ra was the same as escaped specimen Awe, and until President Shin-Ra gave him explicit approval to get her back permanently, Hojo could not endanger her public image.

She arrived right on time. Hojo heard the hiss of the door opening and he turned to comment on that, but the words stuck in his throat.

"Is something wrong, Professor?" A black-haired Lucrecia asked. Hojo blinked hard and at once the specter faded. Toriko stood in the doorway, a white trenchcoat over her arm and her hair caught up in a high, full ponytail. Her skirt had a straight hem, not an asymmetrical one, and the ruffles on her shirt went in a square around her neck, not down her front. She was too short, too flat, and far too young.

But the cast of her face was firming up into features that were familiar indeed.

"Curse you, woman! Even after all this time, you still find a way to haunt me. Why couldn't have Awe taken after a Wutaiese ancestor instead?"

"Nothing," said Hojo briskly. "Undress. You mentioned pains in the low abdomen?"

"Yes," said Toriko. "I was hoping you could tell me if they were menstrual cramps or not."

"Pre-menstrual cramps, you mean." He looked at her significantly. "Unless something has changed?"

"No period yet," said Toriko, hanging her trenchcoat on the door. It was a thin, shiny little thing. How could he have ever mistaken that for a labcoat? "That's another thing I wanted to ask about."

"You're fourteen," said Hojo. "It's unusual, but not unheard of. Why the sudden interest?" He asked, cocking his head.

"No reason," said Toriko. "I was just curious."

"Hmmm..." Hojo straightened his glasses. "Well, rest assured that your primary amenorrhea has no apparent effect on your fertility, at least according to your last examination. The last blood test also indicated that you are quite ready to be pregnant at any time. So do your best to select a partner with good genes, won't you?"

Any other woman would have blushed at such bald terms, but Toriko just blinked and said, "I'll take that into consideration, Professor. Did you have any candidates in mind?"

What a weird mood she was in today. Normally Toriko was uncommunicative and slightly hostile, but today she was positively chatty. Then again... She had been that way before escaping and living with Sephiroth. Bright, serious, curious but not in an obnoxious sort of way. A bit like Lucrecia, when...

"Bah!" Hojo scoffed. He was getting romantic in his old age. "Knowing your predilections, you'd go out of your way to avoid them."

"Of course," said Toriko serenely. As Hojo frowned, she said, "You're a smart man, Professor. I don't see any reason to make things easier for you."

The impudence was entirely like Sephiroth, which was a relief. Toriko undressed and they began the examination. Her muscle tone was excellent, there were nothing unusual on the cervix or anywhere in the vaginal canal, and her breasts were developing normally as well. Since Sephiroth was not around to glare, Hojo took the opportunity to draw blood and run Toriko through the MRI. She acquiesced quietly, occasionally sniping at him, but after years of Sephiroth's hostility, this was a walk in the park. After some consideration, Hojo sent Toriko to the behaviorist as well; Sephiroth had never agreed to go when it wasn't absolutely necessary, and considering his stress readings before his death, Hojo wondered if he wouldn't have benefited from a visit or ten. Hojo said as much to Toriko, who was quiet for a moment. But she went anyway. Two hours after Toriko had originally come in, Hojo went to check on her and found the behaviorist alone in the office.

"Where did Miss Shin-Ra go?" Hojo asked, alarm bells starting to ring softly in his head. "I told you that you were to inform me if she left."

The behaviorist blinked. "I... What? I didn't see Miss Shin-Ra today."

"Don't be a fool! I sent her to you an hour ago!"

"I've been here," said the behaviorist slowly, gesturing at her desk. "Catching up on paperwork. I haven't seen anyone, Professor."

"I introduced you to her."

The behaviorist shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what to tell you, Professor. I haven't moved from this desk all day."

Lesser men would have raged, but that was unproductive. Hojo instead went to the security console and accessed the footage from the past two hours. There was Toriko in the private examination room... There she was in the MRI... There she was leaving to go to the behaviorist's...

"Wait a moment. I walked her over there. Didn't I? She hasn't been back since we got the behaviorist, so she wouldn't know where the office was...

"Then again, when have I ever shown anyone anything?

"It must have been a different specimen that I introduced.

"So Toriko must have taken herself...

"Which means she's running about unattended in the laboratory for at least an hour. WONDERFUL."

Rapidly Hojo pulled up the feeds from the entire floor and what he saw made him hiss. Toriko had disappeared. Thirty cameras and there wasn't so much as a flicker of a heel walking out of frame. He resisted the urge to hit the security console. God, it was just like when she was a child and somehow managed to dodge surveillance in a locked room with no features.

"How is she doing that?"

Well, no alarms had been set off, so at least Toriko wasn't as pointlessly destructive as her father had been. Pre-war Sephiroth had been a terrible specimen, behavior-wise. Practically from infancy he was figuring out ways to mako Hojo's life harder—his first escape attempt had been at three years old, and a year after that, he had deliberately destroyed a delicate still whose fumes had created a corrosive fog that had caused everyone but him and Hojo to break into pustulant blisters. He'd calmed down a bit with a companion specimen—Genesis, who was now making himself useful in Deepground—but even then, Sephiroth's destructiveness required far too much time and effort to control. He had been a foolish boy. Why, look at Toriko! She didn't need restraints or tranquilizers or electric shocks because she did what she was told.

That did not mean, however, that she was obedient in any way. Hojo continued searching the surveillance videos, a low growl rising to audible levels as he continued to come up with nothing.

"What are you looking for, Professor?"

Hojo whipped around. Toriko was standing in the doorway of the security room, her coat over her arm.

"Where have you been?" He demanded.

"Looking for you," she said. "I'm about to leave. Unless you wanted me to see someone other than the behaviorist?"

"Don't try to lie to me, young woman!" Hojo snapped. "The behaviorist said she hadn't seen you all day!"

"She?"

"Yes, she!" Hojo stopped. "Are you saying you saw a man?"

"Yes, about so-high..." She indicated the level with her hand. "Graying, past fifties. Said his name was Dr. Hollander?"

"That is the animal behaviorist," snapped Hojo.

"You said specimen behaviorist," said Toriko calmly. "You did not indicate that there were two different ones." She shrugged. "In any case, he was very thorough. I have his findings here," she said, holding out a manila folder.

"Thorough, ppft!" She wasn't exactly wrong, though. Hollander had been fairly competent in paperwork, though his understanding of science and biology were slightly better than post-doc level. No wonder Genesis had failed as an experiment, though he was making the most of his limited time. Demoting Hollander rather than firing him outright had been a kindness. Practically charity. In any case, Hojo crossed the room and snatched the folder from Toriko's hands. He was so irritated that for a moment, the words seemed to blur before his eyes. He growled and rubbed them, clearing his vision as a thin bit of tinnitus keened against his ears. He hated psychology, so all Hojo was concerned with was the diagnosis on the bottom, which said, "All findings within normal parameters."

"Professor...?"

"Yes, go, go," said Hojo, snapping the folder shut. Toriko dipped her head in the barest of bows and left. Hojo went back to real work, absently rubbing his ears to get the last of the persistent whine out.

Hours later Hojo and Hollander got into a fight about leaving specimen notes in the security room, though neither admitted to being the one who'd removed the Sephiroth-Genesis interaction files from Hollander's office. Meanwhile, the security room feeds blipped back to live and the current time instead of cycling the footage from one year back. And in a vent above the power room, a melting block of industrial strength frendalamine finally reached the volatile substance known as galcerolyn, and at approximately 10am the next morning, the switchboard for all the specimen containers failed due to a massive electrical explosion, the cause of which was never, ever discovered.

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a/n: hee hee hee

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