Business As Usual
Chapter 15: The Million Gil Macabre
By Miyamashi
Miya's Note: Well, here it is: Chapter 15! cue canned applause This is probably one of the strangest, darkest, most twisted chapters yet, but what can you expect with HOJO?
Say no to drugs, children. Say no to drugs.
Chapter 16 is coming pretty soon, too. I'm so excited! :D
To TwistedGoth: Hello! I'm glad you read. It makes me feel all warm an fuzzy inside to see the kind of response you and the others are giving me! So, you like Hojo, huh? (Me too. He's such an evil bastage!)
"How does it feel to stare into the face of death once more," Hojo asked aloud to Rufus' comatose form. "But who will be the one to back down this time, you or him?"
The Professor peeled the bloody shirt from the lithe, still frame of the man on the table, and threw it into the trash. "You are a very special specimen, you know," he said, without even looking at the blonde as he spoke. He pulled a rag from a large metal cabinet and wet it, scrubbing both new and dry blood from the other man's chest. "And that's why none of my assistants are here today. I'm not about to share my findings with them."
"You see, you've had Mako treatments before, so I know you can handle that." Hojo pulled leather straps over Rufus' body, tightening them as much as his own strength would allow. "But, what do you think would happen if we took the process a little farther, and then reversed it?"
"I've been doing studies on the effects of injecting very high levels of Mako--on monsters, not humans, of course, but that's what you're here for--and causing intentional Mako poisoning. The results have been very interesting, you see."
Hojo pulled two clear tubes from the cabinet, attaching a sharp metal end cap onto one end of each. The other ends he fastened into a bizarre-looking contraption that was hooked into the ground.
The end caps he forced into the visible veins on the inside of Rufus' elbows, clamping them into place. "This is going to hurt a little, I'm afraid," stated the Professor casually, turning to the contraption--a Mako filter--and opening the small valve that released the lifeblood of the planet to mix with that of Rufus.
The purpose of the leather straps became quickly obvious as Rufus' let out a massive, ear-splitting screech as his teeth bared like those of a wild animal, his eyes bursting open blindly, glowing brightly with the Mako behind them; his entire body convulsing erratically from the poison that would save him.
It seemed like eternities had past before the convulsions stopped, replaced with only the occasional small shudder, and Rufus went limp, his eyes and mouth still opened wide as if he were dead. Hojo quickly closed the valve.
"I'm impressed," said Hojo, closing Rufus' eyelids so that the blonde would not be blinded from the dry laboratory air. "Most people wouldn't have taken that much before it became toxic to them. You really have become stronger, haven't you? I wonder what it's like. I would try it, but I don't trust anybody else with bringing me back. Shame. I would like to see what you are seeing first-hand."
Rufus' breathing was shallow.
Hojo pulled the tubes from the Vice President's arms, and the blonde stayed eerily still, the only evidence of life, the slow, unsteady rising and falling of his chest.
"There are advantages to having you in this condition, although you're not very good conversation in this state. It's much easier to take readings from an incapacitated subject." The scientist adjusted his glasses on the brim of his nose as he picked up a clipboard and a pen from one counter, clipping a stack of papers into it, on which he began to take quick, sketchy notes. The scratching of his pen was the only sound.
"Already an improvement to the shot wounds," Hojo said aloud as he scrawled out his observations, shattering the almost-silence like a thin pane of glass. "Already the bullets seem to be dissolving." The Professor stopped writing, and the cornet of his mouth upturned slightly as he explained the logistics of the procedure to Rufus, though the blonde was incapable of hearing it. "That's the wonderful thing about Mako, don't you see? It identifies the malignant source and destroys it, improving the tissue around it. But, when you have too much, that's when you begin to become its target. It gets confused, if you will, between friend and foe."
"I'll have to watch you closely. Once the Mako heals your injuries, you will begin to degrade at an alarming rate. That's when I'll have to start taking it back out, since I can't have you dying on my. There's no better way to ruin a good experiment than to kill the specimen. But excuse me if it doesn't work out quite as planned. I've put Mako in before, but I've never successfully taken it out. It probably wouldn't kill you to leave it in if you were in good health to start with, but you're not, and if I don't lower the levels of the stuff in your bloodstream, you'll most likely end up a pile of dust in my laboratory."
"I'm still a little unsure of how I'm going to go about this. The only way I can see is to draw some of your blood and filter the Mako from it outside of your body. Unless…"
Hojo's face seemed to almost light up with a sudden burst of fanatical joy.
"Perhaps I've been thinking along the wrong lines. Maybe I shouldn't try to remove the Mako. There are other ways. The Lifestream has its enemies." He stooped over a drawer, opening it to reveal a few needles containing a strangely glowing fluid. While the Mako shimmered with a lively green, this new substance emanated altering blue, purple, and pink, as if the liquid inside were alive and constantly changing structure. "One needle should be enough. The cells are more potent than the Mako is."
Hojo jabbed the needle into Rufus' jugular, and a war began in the test subject's bloodstream.
Rufus was sitting in his room--but it was different now; colder, less personal: the room of his childhood--in a stiff-backed wooden chair. A tall, naturally redheaded woman sat on the bed, smiling at him. Her beautifully crystalline blue eyes were warm with life.
Rufus' own eyes had been like this once, far before the first Mako treatment had frozen his inner fire.
"Don't worry, Mother," said Rufus. "I won't let him hurt you again."
"I know, Rufus, my beautiful son. How well you've grown and how strong you have become," Virginia replied gently.
"There is somebody that I want you to meet."
"Soon, Rufus, very soon. But first, come here. It has been far too long since I last was able to hold my son."
The blonde stood and walked to the bed.
"Sit down beside me, Rufus," his mother beckoned.
He did, and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling his head down to rest on her shoulder and storking his hair lovingly.
Her touch was cold as death.
Rufus pulled away.
"What is wrong, my son?" asked Virginia, her voice distorted.
Then, before Rufus could react, she was gone.
The room twisted itself; transformed into an immense office. Unlike his own, which was far more private with its polished mahogany desk covered in papers and coffee mugs, this one was open and impersonal with a large, half-circular metal-and-glass desk covered only in computers and fluorescent lighting.
He was sitting in the overly large leather desk chair, looking out through a pane of bullet-proof glass at his own father's angry, dark blue eyes (so much different than his own) from behind the President's own desk.
"What are you doing, boy?" bellowed Shinra. "That desk isn't yours until the day that I die, and I'm not planning on that day coming anytime soon."
"What did you do?" Rufus screamed hysterically. "What have you done to Mother? What have you done to me?" A screeching began in his head, and the Vice President clasped his hands over his ears and jerked forward, barely avoiding slamming his head into the edge of the desk.
"What is your problem, whelp?" the father screamed in an attempt to drown out his son's tortured cries. He stomped around the desk and turned the chair to face him.
The father had no time to react as the young Vice President's eyes opened wide and his hand flicked out quickly as if of its own accord. Shinra didn't even know what hit him before the blood began to flow from four visible gashes across it where Rufus' nails had slashed.
One drop of the father's blood fell from Rufus' hand, which looked almost clawed in its distortion.
"This was your biggest mistake, Father, creating a monster that you weren't prepared to face," echoed Rufus' memory tauntingly as the President fell into a lifeless heap of crimson on the floor as his blood mixed seamlessly with the red of his suit.
"Beast!" screeched the voices in Rufus' head. The young blonde felt as if his whole body was ready to rip itself apart. He was changing…
A head-splitting wail cut through the voices and the screams. It felt to the blonde as if life and death themselves were waging their eternal war within his skull.
"Shut up…" he hissed, dragging his own claws down the sides of his head, creating thin lines of scarlet in their paths.
And the voices did.
He was in his room again, in that same, straight-backed wooden chair, looking the same as he had when he had sat there just moments before, across from his mother, who was sitting in that same place on the edge of his bed, looking at him with that very same pleasant expression.
"Hello, Rufus."
"Mother."
"Yes, my beautiful son. How well you've grown and how strong you have become," Virginia replied gently.
"What? But you already…"
"Is something wrong?"
"I…" But Rufus couldn't finish his sentence.
Without even moving, he felt the touch as cold as death. Then, he was once again behind his father's desk.
Flashes. Only quick flashes of it all.
Warm blood on claws.
Father lying dead on the floor.
Screaming, screaming, screaming.
Mother.
And again.
Then, it stopped. There was nothing left No room. No office. Only him.
There was the sound of footsteps--on what, he couldn't guess--coming from either side of him. To his right he saw himself, and he looked into his own cold eyes. On his left was Reno.
"So, this is her?" asked Reno.
"What?" asked Rufus. His voice was not his own. It was gentle and warm. It was his mother's.
"Yes," said the other Rufus.
"She's beautiful. Now I know where you got your good looks," stated Reno as if he were looking at a piece of art, rather than at a human being.
"Did you think it came from my father, Reno?" asked the other Rufus, continuing to talk around the real Rufus that wasn't.
A scream, and Rufus' head whirled. He remembered that scream vividly, almost expecting it to have come from his own lips. But it hadn't.
There was a gun in his hand, and he had it pointed at his own Mother's head. His brain told him to drop the weapon.
But his body fired it.
He turned quickly as steps shifted toward him from somewhere behind.
A blood-covered hand circled around his throat, and nails dug into his skin. He could feel the hand shake, but the gaze given by his attacker remained steady.
Though the hand could barely reach around the front of his throat (and he feared that he knew the reason why), hw could feel the air leaving his lungs.
"I'll rip your fucking throat out, you bastard, even if it kills me," growled the other Rufus.
Rufus had no choice but to fire the gun into the gut of his other self.
"You're a pathetic excuse for a man, Father," echoed his own memories.
The real Rufus, in the body of his most despised enemy, dropped to his knees, grasping his head once more and screaming for it all to stop.
And the voice was his again.
He looked around. He was in that void from before, unaccompanied by anything but his own mangled thoughts.
He looked down at his hand. The fingers were thin and long like they had always been.
"Be at peace, my son," came the voice of Virginia. Rufus looked around. There was nobody there. It was impossible to tell if the voice came from in or out of his head. But had he heard another voice with that of his mother, high-pitched and ghastly, but oddly compelling, like the song of a siren?
"Get up off of the ground, you worthless wretch!" screamed a thousand voices at once, with the President's at the forefront. Once again, Rufus searched for the source of the sound, but found none.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" Rufus said, more to himself than to anybody else.
"Rufus, my dear, why do you forsake me?" asked the siren's song again, but Rufus didn't realize that his mother's voice had disappeared.
"Mother…no…I don't…"
"You're killing her, boy," said the thousand voices, drowning out that of his father completely.
"No…Mother!" Rufus turned panic-stricken and hysterical. "I'm going to help you, Mother! Let me help you…Where are you? Let me see you again…Let me save you…"
Hojo stared at the corpse-like form on the table before him, and, for a long time, there was no sign of change.
But, soon, the war within Rufus began to become apparent on the outside of him.
It started with a slight twitch of the fingers. Then, the spasms spread throughout his body. He jerked as if he were being electrocuted.
It was fascinating to watch.
One twitch broke the leather strap around Rufus' forehead. Hojo was forced to move quickly to try and stop the blonde from slamming his head repeatedly into the table.
"She's doing more than I initially suspected…What do you see?" Hojo asked aloud. "What does she have to show you?"
"Mother…no…" Rufus moaned, as if in response to the professor.
Mother? I've heard this reaction before…"
"Mother! Where are you? Let me help you…Let me see you again…"
"She's winning. But how?"
"No…Mother, I'm going to save you…"
"There's nothing you can do for her, you wretched boy…"
"Shut up, old man!" Rufus was on his knees, his hand yet again on his ears. Everything he said was in a scream. "Mother! Mother! Tell me there's something I can do to save you!"
"There is, my son."
"What is it, Mother? I'll do anything!"
"Give in."
"…What?"
Give in to me. Abandon him and give in to me."
"Yes, Mother."
"No, I can't let her win…Jenova will kill him, and my experiment…" Hojo hissed, but Rufus couldn't hear.
"My beautiful son. We'll be together forever."
"Of course, Mother."
"…it will be ruined…"
"Rufus," cut in a new voice over the thousand voices, in place of where his father's once was.
"Who…?"
"Rufus, you're Mother's already dead. You know that."
"No! Don't say that!"
"Don't listen to him, my son. Let the sound of my voice tell you the truth."
But it wasn't her voice, Rufus suddenly noticed.
"You know now, doncha' Drama Queen?"
"Reno…" the blonde whispered as the sound of the other voice registered in his recollection.
"Rufus, listen." There were thousands of angry voices, quiet voices, sobbing voices, but Rufus could only hear one: the voice of Reno Kiribani. "You know your mother's dead, and it wasn't you who killed her."
"Reno, why do you have to tell me?"
"Because you were losing yourself."
"Then you should have let me."
"You know I couldn't do that."
"Why not, Reno?" Rufus yelled angrily. "Answer me that!"
"That's easy, Rufus. I'm selfish, and I want you all to myself."
Rufus paused for a very long while.
"That was a joke, you know. You're supposed to laugh."
"I think you may have come to late. I don't think there's anything left of me to save."
"If that's how it is, you wouldn't be telling me that."
"…Maybe." He felt like the defenseless, weak child he used to be.
"Rufus, I need you to wake up."
"What are you talking about?"
"Open your eyes. It's that easy."
So he did.
Hojo actually jumped, startled, as Rufus' eyes opened slowly and the blonde took in his surroundings, moving as much as he could from under the remaining straps.
"I don't believe it," said Hojo with a smirk. "You really are a special subject. I actually thought you were done for."
"Where the hell am I?" Rufus groaned as if it had been years since he's last used his voice.
"You're in my lab."
"…Hojo?"
"The Professor leaned over his research subject so that Rufus could see him. "This has been a most interesting experiment. You're even more resilient than I originally suspected."
"What the fuck did you do to me?"
"I saved your wretched little life."
"Why?"
"It was an order. From your father."
"So that explains why I'm here and not with a legitimate doctor."
"Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but you would have died with a legitimate doctor. It's because of me that you can even talk right now."
"And that's something for which I'll have to be thankful to you for the rest of my wretched little life," the blonde rebutted sarcastically. "Now undo these straps, Hojo, and let me go. I'm alive and well. This experiment is over."
"Not just yet, Specimen. You're not ready to be up and about just yet."
"Do I look like I care?"
"Do you really think you're in a suitable position to be making decisions here?" Hojo hissed annoyedly. "You know, I could just make you disappear and blame it on a failed experiment."
"Then my father will have your head, and you know it. Empty threats don't work on me, Professor."
"I never thought you would stoop low enough to use your father to defend yourself."
"At least he's finally good for something." Rufus smirked. "I know you hate him as much as I do, Hojo, and if you let me go, I'll be sure to make his life a living hell for the both of us."
Hojo managed to crack something close to a smile. "You cut a good deal, Specimen."
"It's one of my specialties."
"Plus, after-effects of these experiments tend to be much more interesting when they're let loose in an uncontrolled environment."
"That's reassuring," Rufus stated dryly. "Now undo the straps."
"I will in a moment. But first, I need to take a blood sample."
"Well, hurry it up."
Hojo drew a sample from the back of Rufus' left, uninjured hand, and undid the straps.
Rufus stood, swaying slightly at first. The cold air of the laboratory hit his chest, which now only showed faint evidence of shot wounds.
"Do you happen to have any extra shirts handy?"
"This is a laboratory, not a boutique."
"Very well." The Vice President walked out of the door and slammed it behind him.
Hojo laughed from within the lab.
Miya's Note: Chapter 16 is next! Chapter 16 is next! Ooooohhhh…I'm so excited! I haven't finished writing it yet, but it's such a fun concept!
And, was it just me, or did Rufi's Mako trip take Cloud's, beat it into the ground, chop it up into tiny little bits, burn it to ashes, then pee on it?