Chapter 32: Mako Woes
(Same tags apply as in Chapter 1)
It had been a little over twenty-four hours since Elmyra had been kidnapped and everyone was on edge. The group immediately returned to Shinra's Junon Headquarters at first light. Reno was due to arrive with the prisoners any moment now, and they had yet to receive any demands from Zade Fraser or Terrell Onkia.
Concerned gray eyes watched as Barret paced in the boardroom where Avalanche, two of the Turk trio and the heads of the new SOLDIER program and Shinra guards waited. Yuffie watch Barret's taut muscles and rigid stance as he paced. 'He looks like he's about to snap in two.' She thought, watching his hand clench and release.
Casting a look to Vincent, she slid from her chair, the conversations around the room continuing uninterrupted. She walked over to the gun-armed man, watching for a moment as he continued, not noticing her presence. "Barret?" She said quietly, but received no acknowledgment. "Barret?"
He turned quickly to face her. "What?!" He roared at the Ninja, causing her to jump. The coffee skinned man didn't notice Vincent's eyes narrowing dangerously, as if it was a reflex.
All the conversation stopped, plunging the room into complete silence. Brown eyes met gray and his shoulder immediately slumped. "Aw Yuffs, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at ya." He said quietly with an exhausted sigh.
The Ninja said nothing as she moved forward, wrapping her arms around his large frame as tight as she possibly could. After a moment, she felt his arms tighten around her as well. "It's okay Barret...We'll get Elmyra back safe and sound. I guarantee it!"
His eyes closed, a shudder running through his form. "You can guarantee that Yuffie."
"Yes I can! And do you know why, Marsha?" She asked, stepping back and staring up at him, her hands on her hips.
This gained a small chuckle from the brown-eyed man. "Why is that?"
She held her chin up high and grinned. "Because I'm the Great Ninja Yuffie and what I say goes!" She said proudly earning laughs from everyone in the room.
Barret hugged the small ninja, whispering his thanks in her ear. He released her before walking over to a large window and looked out over the revived harbor town of Junon. 'Elmyra...please stay safe...' He sent the thought out to her, wondering where on their tiny world the auburn haired woman could be.
The door to the boardroom opened and a man in shackles was pushed into the room. The raven-haired man stumbled on the chains around his legs and hit the floor with a hard thud.
"Damnit, I said you didn't have to push!" He growled.
"Actually," Reno started as he entered, pushing his sunglasses up into his crimson hair. "I do. You see Dean, You and your buddies pissed off a lot of people, including myself. They all want to talk to you." He gestured to the people at the table.
The red head abruptly grabbed Dean's head and directed his line of sight towards the large window where Barret stood menacingly, clenching and releasing his fist. "He especially wants to 'talk' to you." He released his head roughly, sending him sprawling to the ground once more.
The shackled man pushed himself to his knees and was about to yell, but the Turk lifted his hand, forestalling anything that Dean was about to say. "You see, your friend Zade took someone who was pretty damn important to him and the majority of the people in this room, our President included.
"Now, I guess we could let Barret question you, but since he's not a Turk, he's not authorized to extract the information we need."
The raven-haired man let out a sigh of relief. The big man looked as if he was ready to him apart and the gleaming dark metal of his gun arm made him want to piss his pants.
"But...I'm sure that our esteemed President would be willing to grant Barret a temporary Turk status. Isn't that right boss?"
Reeve locked eyes with the man on the floor and stood. "That can definitely be arranged." He said, walking from his position at the head of the table to stand in front of the man.
"You group has committed numerous crimes including murder, attempted murder, theft, kidnapping and you personally, Mr. Jeter, will be charged with treason. That alone is punishable by death."
Dean's eyes went wide at the possibility of death for his crimes. "Now wait a second! I didn't kill anyone! I wasn't even there when the convoy was attacked!"
"Well if you weren't there at the convoy raid, where were you Jeter?" Reno asked casually.
"I was at the-" The man froze, realizing that he had almost just made a big slip. "I'm not saying another damn thing!"
"Very well Mr. Jeter." Reeve nodded at the two guards at the door. They immediately, and rather roughly, grabbed Jeter and pulled him off the floor. It was apparent that the guards didn't take too kindly to traitors.
"Take all of those that have been detained to the interrogation rooms. Put Jeter in room three. Reno, after we're finished here, you and Barret will start interrogating him." Reeve ordered, walking back to his seat, ignoring the man's pleas and cursing.
After the doors to the boardroom were closed, Tifa looked up to the Shinra President. "Thank gods your bluff is better than Cloud's." She said with a slight smile, gaining a glare from the swordsman.
"Thanks Teef. He won't get death for treason, but he will be punished when the jury finds him guilty. The council will determine if a life sentence is warranted, and most likely, because of the fact that there were deaths and injuries because of Jeter distributing sensitive information, he will get it."
The russet haired president turned to Reno. "Did everything go as planned?"
The head Turk nodded and leaned back in his chair. "We arrived at the Forgotten City around an hour before Fraser's men and took up positions both in the city and in the surrounding area. They went down easily and we let two of the men escape."
Reno looked to the raven-haired soldier commander, Jessu Dojima. "We have Remington, McConnell, and Asoto tracking them back the their base, but I'm guessing that we'll either get one of the guys we captured to crack or Zade will contact us first."
"The men in that group are expert trackers. They won't lose their targets." Jessu stated with pride. "I have my men on standby. We can be up and out of here in fifteen minutes."
"Excellent." Reeve said and looked to the man with the salt and pepper hair, Amon Lindh, the head of the Shinra guard. "Amon, you and your men will work jointly with Avalanche and Soldier. Until that time comes, we need to gather as much information as possible from the prisoners.
"Reno, when will the soldiers tacking the escapees report in?"
"They had orders to report in six hours after they left, so they should be contacting us within the next hour or so." Reno pulled the sleeve of his suit back and checked his watch.
"Good. Do we have anymore information on Zade Fraser?" Reeve questioned the red head.
"Actually sir," Elena started and pulled out a note pad from her suit pocket. "I did manage to unearth some information on Fraser.
"At first the information was very difficult to find because on Hojo's orders, the files were encrypted and placed behind a small mountain of passwords and hidden files.
"I was able to break through the passwords that blocked access to the suspicious files and once that was done, I did a search for Zade Fraser by his name and birth date but didn't come up with an exact match.
"However, I did manage to find a folder labeled," She flipped through the note pad for a moment before finding her page. "ZF188937. By they physical descriptions give, they match Fraser exactly. In that file, there was a bit of history on him.
"To make a long story short, Zade was in the running to join Soldier. Hojo, in his infinite wisdom, just happened to be conducting a new experiment behind the old president's back. He wanted to create a serum that would give soldiers enhanced strength, which the Mako alone would have done, but there was another more sinister reason behind the experiment.
"He thought that if he could add an element that with the release system, he could induce violent hallucinations in the soldiers, causing their battle response to be more violent. He was planning on placing an implant that would release the mixture into the blood stream simply at the touch of a button." Elena sighed and shook her head at the sheer stupidity that Hojo had displayed with this experiment before continuing.
"Hojo created an implant and filled it with a mixture mako with testosterone, adrenaline and lysergic acid diethylamide-"
Reeve's head shot up at that along with many others at the table, but it was Barret who spoke out. "Wait a fuckin' second! You mean to tell me he mixed mako with-"
"LSD." Vincent finished for him with to emotion in his voice. His anger was threatening to overwhelm him at the madness and idiocy behind Hojo's experiment.
"Right." Elena continued. "When Zade went in for his physical and initial mako infusion, Hojo made him his first experiment and needless to say, the experiment didn't turn out as planned…"
"After the device was implanted, he decided to test it. Zade was placed in a large cell and the device was activated as four beasts were released into the area. Almost immediately, he went into a psychotic rage. The beasts were torn apart but that wasn't the worse part.
"The implanted device wouldn't shut off after the initial dose of the mixture, it kept seeping into his blood. Guards were sent in to subdue him, but in the process, twelve were killed. Zade escaped the building and went on a horrendous crime spree. He murdered men, women and children, brutally raped and mutilated women along with…other heinous acts for the three weeks it took the hormones and drugs to dissipate from his system. He has been leading a life of crime ever since and has been manufacturing and using LSD and other illegal substances."
"So all of this was of course, just swept under the rug, and knowing Hojo, he probably kept those records in order to improve upon them one day." Reno said with a sigh. "God damnit, that man is plaguing us even after death!"
Yuffie eyes widened slightly as a thought entered her mind. "That makes him a ticking time bomb. If he gets Onika's Mako treatment and the Jenova…combined with any LSD in his body, he could go on a killing spree. No one know what kind of crap could happen if that stuff contacts the Jenova cells and because all of the information Elena got was encrypted, Onika doesn't know and..."
'That means that Elmyra is directly in the line of fire if he does go mad once more…' she finished the thought in her mind, knowing that everyone would be thinking along the same lines.
The room was silent for a moment before the President nodded slowly. "We can not allow that to happen so we will need to move quickly. So far, we have the two in custody from the Convoy, two from the Gast home, and three from the Forgotten City. Seven men, one of which is undergoing surgery for the wounds he received." The emerald-eyed man looked at the tabletop for a moment. He didn't want to ask this of the man, but everyone assembled in the room knew that time was of the essence.
Green eyes came up and met glowing crimson. "Vincent, would you be willing to assist in the interrogations? I know you wished to leave that part of your life be-" The President fell silent when he saw the gunman simply lift his organic hand.
"I will assist in the interrogations." He said plainly before standing and leaving the room without another word.
Yuffie bit her lip. "Vincent, wait!" She called out to him before leaping from her seat and following the gunman from the room.
Reeve sighed as he watched the two leave the room. "Amon, Jessu, that will be all for now. Have your troops go through drills I want them all ready to go when the time comes."
"A moment sir?" Jessu asked and got a nod to continue.
"I think this would be the perfect opportunity to use the UTRV."
Tifa looked up in question. "What's a UTRV?"
"UTRV stands for Unmanned Thermal Resonance Vehicle." The soldier commander began. "It's been in development since before the meteor incident, but with the search for General Sephiroth, the military's priorities changed quickly.
"Our engineers have completed two units. They are built to fly with no sound and using heat signatures, detect enemy positions. The heat signatures are identified as human, beast or animal and that information is sent to devices secured to the wrists of our forces."
"Hey, I'd like to get a look at that." The pilot asked, searching his pockets for another toothpick.
"Very well then, tell engineering to launch a test flight and give Cid full access to the schematics. He may be able to give you input on how to improve it. Reno, Rude and Elena, start the interrogations immediately. Instruct the guards in the interrogation wing to place a man in one of the rooms and take Vincent there when he arrives.
"You're all free to go. Reno, you're taking Barret with you to interrogate Jeter."
The three Turks stood and made their way to the door with Barret in tow. Jessu and Amon followed suit.
"Come Mr. Highwind. We'll take you to the launch site." Jessu said.
"Hell yeah!" Cid allowed his engineering mind come to the foreground. "Call us on the PHS if anything changes."
The room emptied as the seven left to perform their duties, leaving only Cloud, Reeve and Tifa remaining in the boardroom though there were two guards posted outside.
Reeve let his head fall to the tabletop with a thud and a groan. "I really wish I didn't have to ask him to do that." He said quietly and lifted his head to look at the couple.
"Reeve, don't beat yourself up over it." Cloud began. "Vincent could have refused, but he didn't."
"Vincent wants to get Elmyra back from Onika and Fraser as quickly as possible. He's obviously willing to confront his past once more by using the skills he got back then." A smile graced Tifa's lips. "Besides, Yuffie will be there for him when he needs her. She won't let him succumb to his past and we all know it." She said confidently and received a nod from the emerald eyed man.
o-o-Author's Notes-o-o
-sighs and curls up in Vincent's protective arms- These last few months have been absolute HELL!!! I actually had this chapter done a month ago, but I went to the store with my mom one day and left my computer on…I came back and my computer started talking to me…
I moved the mouse and it said –CLICK CLICK CLICK-
…
…
I restarted my computer and it then taunted me by saying –NO OPERATING SYSTEM DETECTED, NO HARD DRIVE DETECTED, START UP WILL NOT CONTINUE-
…
…
My Hard drive was fried.
I was frantic! I wanted to cry, I swear. I started calling around all these computer shops and stuff and they wanted to charge me $80 an hour! That was fuckin' outrageous and the average amount of time they were telling me that it would take to fix was 3 hours!
I said "fuck that," went to radio shack, bought me a 80 gig hard drive for $80 bucks. I came back home and looked at my computer and ripped that son of a bitch apart and replaced my own hd. -gushes- I was so happy especially since I went from a 10 gig drive to 80!!!
I had to completely rewrite chapter 30 and 31…and since I didn't write it down by hand or save it to the disk like I usually do, I had to start from scratch. I am quite proud of myself for fixing my own comp…
Anyway, I started re-writing chapter 30 on paper, and right now its at 28 pages, and so I'm splitting it into smaller chunks. I'm posting the first part today, and the second tomorrow after work…from there, there will probably be 2-3 more chapters til this crisis for Yuffs, Vinnie and the rest of Avalanche is over.
I'll stop blabbing now, but I just want to thank EVERYONE for their support and the most excellent reviews that I've been getting. I really truly do appreciate everyone of my readers.
I better get going now, I gotta finish filling out job applications .
Love ya all!!!
Ezzy
Edited 1/19/07
10/04/07
Edited because of change in formatting. Also re-numbering chapters. Minor content edits.