The lights came on not much farther from where they encountered the woman. The rest of Cloud and Ragnar's way was well illuminated, and they proceeded as before. Again, Cloud took the lead, and took them to every branch that led further downward. Ragnar at first believed they were on the right track due to how they had encountered one of the creatures. Yet as they went further below ground, and the minutes began to go by once more, he was beginning to grow doubtful that this was the case. At any rate, his headache was getting worse. Whatever he had done, it had strained him. But still he pushed on, and still he made ready for any fight that could come up next.

At long last, the two were stopped by something that wasn't a branch. As they moved down another dip in the landscape, they found something blocking their path. A metal door had been installed in front of the corridor. Not only that, but it had some sort of control pad next to it, one that looked like a security device to Ragnar. It had the keypad of one. This device looked much newer than the door. He guessed that it was something that Hoeng had installed himself.

The two halted before it. Cloud stood in front of the door, and looked it over for a moment. As for Ragnar, he looked over to the control panel. He scratched his chin as he did so, thinking and remembering.

"I did something when I escaped from the New Shinra HQ Dome. I looked to see which buttons had the most oil on them, and then I inferred the code from that. I think I can do the same-"

Ragnar didn't finish. He was cut off by the sound of metal ripping. He wheeled around and back to Cloud, to see the the ex-mercenary had already slammed Event into the door, and was cutting a rather large rough ellipse around it. He had little trouble doing so, and after a few moments he pulled his blade out. The new part fell out and to the ground, leaving an opening in its wake.

Ragnar leaned up from the keypad, and shrugged. "…That works too."

"I think this must be the inner area." Cloud answered, still looking ahead. "Let's move."

The ex-mercenary stepped through the hole and into the hallway beyond. The young general followed closely behind. As they entered this new area, they saw that the place had grown far more complex. Now, there were numerous branchings and four way splits in all directions. There were also more doors in here. The two looked around for a moment at this confusing new area.

Ragnar shrugged. "Any ideas?"

Cloud brandished his sword.

"…We ask for directions."

With that, the ex-mercenary began to walk down the hallway. Ragnar looked around a bit, uneasy about where they were wandering into, and wondering what type of horrors awaited within. In the end, he drew his own sword before following.

The two men went straight down the hallway for starters. They ignored the side branches for the most part, only looking down them to see if anything was coming. On seeing nothing, they focused their attention ahead and kept moving. They also checked out the doorways as they moved on. Each one they came to was locked, and so they were abandoned for the time being. For a minute or so, their slow progress went in this monotonous way, not producing anything of worthy consideration.

Ragnar was looking one way and another for signs of life or direction when suddenly Cloud halted in front of him. The ex-mercenary froze in mid-stride and raised his head.

The youth turned to him. "…What is it?"

"Shh…" Cloud whispered. "I hear something."

Ragnar went silent as well when he heard this, and began to look around and listen again. He heard nothing at first. But as the two men went silent…he began to hear slight faint oscillations of volume…the kind that came from regular talking. They were nearby.

Cloud hesitated a bit longer, but then looked ahead, pressed himself up to the corridor wall, and began to move again. Ragnar soon aped him, and followed on his heels. Both of them moved silently now, trying to focus on the noise. It quickly grew louder. Ragnar began to pick up more oscillations, and eventually some sort of phoenitcs began to become audible. It was someone talking…

Cloud continued to slide forward…but finally came to a stop. Ragnar saw he was right on top of the next door. The youth inched forward closer, and soon realized why. The sound was coming from inside. It had to be someone talking within. He crept until he found himself right next to Cloud. Once there, he looked up to the ex-mercenary and gave a nod.

Both men backed off from the door, and aimed their swords at it. Cloud moistened his lips once, and then braced himself. The talking continued within, seeming oblivious to their actions. They would have the element of surprise. At last…Cloud acted. He suddenly rushed forward, reared up, and kicked. His foot impacted the door, and the sheer strength he possessed snapped the lock and door off of its hinges. It flew open soon after.

Cloud and Ragnar immediately rushed in, swords out and ready to attack. Once inside the doorway, they stood their ground, and quickly looked over the area.

To Ragnar's surprise…it was a room. Not much of one, but it was a room. It was made of metal panels and was bare and cold. It had never been meant to be a dwelling place like it was now. There were dirty, stained clothes scattered about it, obviously the same kind that the creatures wore when they went topside. There was an old box that had been moved in and used a dresser as well. This one had a few odds and ends on it. There was some sort of jewelry, an old compass, what appeared to be a cap, and a few photographs in frames. There were a few more taped to the metal wall behind it.

Last but not least…an old stained mattress was shoved into one corner. There were older, ragged blankets piled on top of it. One of the industrial lights had been yanked out and transplanted here. Its dull orange color was the only illumination in the room. A hooded and cloaked small figure was near the mattress. It turned around and looked to the men as they entered, and seemed to shrink back in fear. It was small, smaller than the kids back home. Perched on top of the mattress was what had to be the owl person.

Based on her figure, Ragnar immediately realized it had once been a woman. Now, she looked like a gigantic, anthropomorphic owl. Her large eyes gazed unblinking at them in the dim light. Her body was bandaged in multiple places from what appeared to have been a violent beating. She made no move to attack them when they entered. She didn't even shift. She just stared at them silently.

"…So, you've come at last." She finally said, clicking her beak with each syllable. "Are you here to finish me?"

Ragnar hesitated. He turned to look to Cloud. His friend's face was stony and cold as always, indicating neither hate nor pity. His sword stayed in the upright position. However, Ragnar wasn't like that. He nervously swallowed a moment, and then turned back to the owl. Slowly…as if wondering whether or not he should do this…he lowered his blade. He kept doing so until the tip touched the ground. After that, he turned to the side, moved it out, and rested it against the wall. Cloud turned his eyes to this, but nothing else.

"…No." Ragnar answered, turning back to her. He held his hand open in front of him, trying to seem harmless. "We're not here to hurt you."

The owl snorted at that, seeming to think it was a joke. However, she gave a pause afterward. Her head tilted back as she stared at the youth. "You…" She finally said aloud. "You were the one in Junon. The one who tried to talk to us."

Ragnar immediately nodded in response. "Yes. I'm General Ragnar Vice of the Planet Protector Army. Who are you?"

The owl hesitated at that. In the end, she snorted once more and turned her head down.

"…I was once a woman named Horus." She answered in a half-mutter. "Now…I'm a creature without a name or species."

Ragnar hesitated a moment. But after that, he noticed the one still shrinking away. In the end, he pointed to him. "And he is?"

"Malcolm's little brother." Horus answered. She sighed soon after, still looking down. "Hoeng knew he couldn't use him as an asset or beast…but he experimented on him anyway to perfect his technique before he turned the rest of us into monsters."

Cloud's sword slowly began to lower, although his face stayed cold. As for Ragnar, he pressed on. "Who are all of you? What did Hoeng do to you?"

Horus paused a moment longer…but then slowly looked up and into Ragnar's eyes.

"…He played God."

---

Vincent's eyes slowly cracked open as he finally emerged from his unconsciousness. He remembered almost nothing. All he could remember was feeling his body thrown forward and through the windshield as a blast of heat smacked him from behind. After that…his emotionless side was broken. The passion and anger that he kept in check so successfully all the time broke free. And when that happened…he never remembered anything else. But he knew what it meant. Chaos had once again vented its unquenchable rage on the world. The question was…what had happened since then?

As the dark man raised his head and tried to move…he began to grow aware that he wasn't on the ground, like he normally was after a transformation. Instead, he was upright, straight and tall against what felt like a metal slab. But how had he been unconscious and in that position? That question was soon answered too. His wrists, ankles, waist, and neck were collared in steel, and fixed to the slab. His limbs were stretched out and fastened, and he couldn't move them. He was able to turn his head to his arm, and yanked against his bindings. But it was useless. They were tightened to a painful level, nearly encircling the bone. But now that his view was turned in this direction, Vincent examined his surroundings.

He was somewhere dark. It looked like a giant vertical tunnel, or even a missile silo. Faint orange light illuminated it, but most of it was cloaked in shadow. It was a circular space, a good hundred feet in diameter. Maybe even more than that. The walls were lined with thousands upon thousands of pipes and cables, all being fed downward. He traced them with his eyes, and looked down to where they went.

In the midst of this circular area, there was a great basin shaped circular platform. Most of it was sheet metal, including where the steel slab was mounted. But just behind him, and rounding the area in an upturned formation, was some sort of wire mesh. It was almost fence like, creating a lip that rounded the circular platform area. There were three catwalks extending from this lip at equidistant points around the metal basin. They extended the rest of the length of the circular space, spanning over what Vincent could only assume was a deep pit, and leading to open doorways.

Vincent heard the sounds of noise, and turned his head forward. Here was what took up most of the platform on which he was perched. Stretching before him was some sort of great machine. He had no idea what it was for, but it was spread out over most of the area, centered on the platform. It was on somewhat of a raised platform itself that sloped up from the sides, no doubt concealing vast amounts of electronics and technology under more metal plates. But the gist of the device seemed to be a trio of clear cylinders. Each one was large enough to easily accommodate a full grown man. Based on the sliding door designs, Vincent realized that they were remarkably similar to the specimen tanks that Shinra Inc. used to use. They each had metal lids on top, which had white lights mounted into them. Apparently, they had lights below as well, because each cylinder was filled with white light. The three cylinders surrounded one central cylinder that was extra large. Lastly, a rather long and extensive console was mounted in front of the machine, about ten feet in front of Vincent. This was covered with displays and controls. A single man sat there, black haired and in a white lab coat, adjusting various devices but keeping his back to Vincent. He only looked up to look at what appeared to be a digital clock mounted on top of the console.

Vincent looked up to the cylinders again…and suddenly realized that they weren't empty. Two of them had people inside them. They were lying at the bottom of them, and were partially concealed by a metal rim. As a result, Vincent couldn't make out much. They were stirring slightly, as if they were waking up. Based on their figures that he could see, he soon realized they were women. They were also quite nude.

The source of the noise that he heard was coming from other characters. Now, Vincent at last saw the creatures clearly for what they were. A lesser man might have been frightened. There were three of them, and they were moving some sort of sealed barrel over to the third cylinder. One looked somewhat humanoid…except his skin was ragged and torn all over him, from the presence of what looked like huge spikes of bone jutting out all over him in odd places. They made him look more like a rock than a person, and dramatically deformed his appearance. Another was a hulking figure. He appeared to be part bear, only with distinctly human traits about him. He had a thumb for one, and his face was more turned toward looking humanoid. The last was totally bald and hairless, and his skin appeared to be made out of hundreds of small square segments of jaundiced, shining skin.

He watched these creatures as they yanked the drum over to the open cylinder. Once there, the big one reached down and yanked off the top. He immediately winced in disgust, and pulled his head back. The others too shrank. Vincent, from where he was, could smell something foul, although he didn't show it. But it smelled rotten and fetid. It was enough almost to make him gag, and coming from him at this distance was something rather remarkable. The creatures, on their part, quickly dumped the contents into the cylinder. To Vincent's intrigue, they appeared to dump nothing more than a great pile of rotten flesh and entrails into it. It was disgusting even for him. At any rate, once it was dumped, they quickly released the drum and let it fall to the ground. Afterward, they covered their mouths and moved away, making for the exit. The cylinder itself shut and appeared to lock itself, just like the others.

Once this was done, the man stopped working at his console. Abruptly, he leaned up in his position. Vincent looked back down to him. As he stared…a burning sensation began to come into him. He knew that hair style…and he knew a man who was always dressed in a lab coat… And despite the fact that he believed him to be dead by now, killed at his own hand, he couldn't help but sense the same forboding feeling from him. He trusted his instincts. He tensed up, and expected fully to see a ghost as the man slowly turned in his chair and looked back to him.

However, on seeing his face, his tension abated. It was the face of a stranger, someone he had never seen before. He bore a lot of his mannerisms…what with his slow movements and expression…but it wasn't him.

Yet on looking again at his face…Vincent couldn't help but feel it was familiar…

"You're awake. Right on schedule." The man addressed.

Vincent hesitated a moment, turning and looking to his arms and legs. He soon noticed that he too was half nude. Only a black pair of pants had been given him to conceal his manhood. In addition…he noticed something else for the first time. His metal arm was in place, anchored back with the rest of him. But that didn't make sense… Whenever he turned into Chaos, the transformation broke the arm from his body. He had to find it later and put it back on. If he went down over the ocean, and then somehow got here…then the arm should have been lost. And there was no one still alive with the knowledge to build a replacement…

Not showing any of this confusion or doubt, Vincent turned back to the man. "…Dr. Hoeng, I presume?"

Hoeng let out a small chuckle. "…You always did have a good memory, Vincent. I shouldn't have expected you to forget a name like mine, even when uttered only once."

To this, the dark man raised an eyebrow. "…You know me?"

"Of course I know you." The man immediately answered, sounding almost insulted by that question. "I know you better than almost any man alive. And I know more than you or your friends have even begun to suspect. For months, I've watched you all blunder about on your merry way, like a bunch of clueless children, never knowing the designs and motives that are encircling you. Even now, you and your friends come here blindly moving. You don't even have the slightest idea what is about to transpire."

Vincent leaned his head back slightly. "…But I suppose you wish to tell me." He answered as dark as before. "Otherwise, I would not be here."

"You won't be here much longer, I assure you of that." Hoeng answered. He gestured behind him, to where the creatures had long since left. "They're bringing you your doom right now. When it gets here, we shall see exactly how durable that Chaos form of yours is."

Yet to this…Vincent gave a cold smile.

"…Just enough time to tell me everything, eh?"

Hoeng hesitated at that comment, looking caught off guard a little. It seemed to unnerve him a bit. "…Why do you say that?" He asked in a rather wary voice.

"You remind me very much of a man I once knew." Vincent simply answered. "It was never enough for him to simply play God. He wanted to have an audience. He wanted someone to acknowledge his twisted brilliance and shudder before his nightmares. He wanted to lord his science and knowledge over everyone else…as if it somehow made him a higher being than them. I'm guessing that you wish to tell me exactly what is about to transpire here before you have me killed…so that you can feel praiseworthy for a few moments before I die."

Hoeng didn't answer this. His face stayed steely and calm. However, Vincent knew better. He knew he had hit the nail on the head. No…he might not be the man, but he shared far too much in common with him. Vincent could tell that already. Yet in the end, Hoeng cracked a smile of his own.

"…You read me well, Vincent." Hoeng answered. "As well you should. You see…you too know me, as well as I know you. You just don't realize how much yet."

Vincent's smile faded at this. What was he talking about?

"But before I begin…" Hoeng went on, gesturing behind him to his machine. "Perhaps you'd like to take a closer look at the guests of honor."

As Hoeng said this, right on schedule, the women began to rise up in their cylinders. They were immediately bewildered at their predicament, and began to feel around their prisons. As they did, they gave clear view of their face to Vincent. And on seeing them, his mouth loosened for a moment, giving the mildest sign of emotion.

Krystea and Aerith were in there.

---

"We were pirates, plain and simple." Horus began as she leaned back a bit more. "None of us had any relatives or friends other than ourselves. There were twenty one of us in all. We had claimed a gunboat from an old Shinra dock. We refurbished it. We thought that we could make a killing on the high seas. The war that was coming was only an opportunity for more profit. And when we started…that was what it was. We were soon amassing a great deal of goods that made us a sizable amount on the black market. Some of it we sold right back to the New Shinra or Wutai merchants. I won't lie about our methods. We killed our share of people then."

Cloud frowned a bit more at that. Ragnar had to admit he wasn't that happy about it either. However, he held for the moment. He wanted to hear the rest of what Horus had to say. "So what happened?"

"We made ourselves too much of a nuisance." Horus answered. "Eventually, a destroyer was dispatched to handle us. Our gunboat was no match for it. Somehow we escaped without all of us being killed in the process, but most of us were severly injured, and the ship was sinking. We barely managed to get it ashore near Midgar. The injured were immobile, and there was nowhere and no one we could go to for help. Even if we were in range, we were all wanted.

"We were there for four days, with no water and no food. We were all near death, stranded on the far side of Midgar with nowhere to go." Horus hesitated here…her large eyes narrowing.

"…That was when Dr. Hoeng showed up. We didn't know who he was or where he had come from, but we were in no position to argue. He announced immediately that he knew who we were, but that he was willing to help us out if we would use our talents for him in a job. We agreed, not knowing what we were getting into. He led us down here with what we had managed to salvage. He gave us food and water…but it wasn't until we had eaten and dranken so wantonly and without caution that we realized the food was drugged.

"We woke up in places like this." Horus gestured around her. "Each one was in a separate cell…and our veins were filled with a paralyzing drug. We were awake, but we couldn't move. One by one…he came to each of us. One by one…he made us his experiments."

---

It only took a minute for the two to realize where they were before they started banging on the walls of their prisons. It didn't work, however. The cylinders didn't even shudder. They looked out again to the two of them. Aerith called out something to Vincent, but he couldn't tell what it was. They seemed to be sound proof. As for Krystea, she glared at Hoeng and said something far more angrily, but again this went unheard as well. Only the vibrations of their hitting resounded, and Hoeng didn't seem to care about that.

"What you see behind me was one of Shinra Incorporated's greatest successes as well as its greatest failures." He started. "After having invested millions into the space program only to have it be blown by one tiny human error, Shinra Inc. began to look at new and more efficient ways of getting around. After all, rockets were rather impractical. The amount of fuel it would take to get a single man into orbit of the Planet alone made ever using such things to travel through space an impossibility. And given the distance between areas in space, time was far too much of a constraint. Even if traveling at the speed of light was possible, it would take millennia to arrive at a destination.

"That was why this was created. It was based on a theory of Shinra engineers that matter was made up only of condensed packets of light…a duality of nature to both, you might say. These packets could be broken down into their component light photons, could travel instantaneously through space, and then be reassembled at another destination. Teleportation, in effect. Already, such things were possible using materia over a limited area. The Shinra sought to make the same thing available through purely mechanical means. With that in mind, the teleporters that you see behind you were constructed.

"Early successes were made. The teleporters moved photons, atoms, proteins, nucleic acid, viruses, bacteria, flatworms, earthworms, flies, and mice…in that order. Unfortunately, two very large problems occurred when they moved up to mice.

"One was that they were expending exponentially greater amounts of energy every time they ascended to something with greater mass. Teleporting a mouse taxed the reserves of twelve city blocks. I can only use this device now by tapping energy from various sources around Midgar, as well as by using a test mako reactor located beneath us. It was because of this that the teleportation idea was eventually reasoned to be infeasible. Teleporting a family would require two of the eight mako reactors in Midgar to redirect all of their power toward the teleporter.

"The other problem was something far more severe. Once the scientists were able to teleport a mouse, they began to try and teleport two mice. Yet every time they did so…to their surprise, they wound up with only one being teleported. They were fearful of this. They thought that transporting more than one person would cause the other to cease to exist. They would have continued in this false logic for some time…did not one of them get an idea. Until then, all of the lab mice were white. He tried to teleport a white and a black one together. What emerged was gray…and on closer inspection, turned out to be made of a mosaic of black and white fur."

Vincent narrowed his eyes at this.

"…The machine put them together."

Hoeng gave a nod. "A serious error on their part…putting two in on one end, yet leaving the other end programmed to only reconstruct a single body." The man hesitated a moment after this, but then gave an exhale and a shrug. "This was the final nail in the coffin for the project. Even if the machine could be specified to receive two objects, there was still the chance that gene swapping would occur in transit. Not only that…but there was the potential horror of what would happen if, say, an insect of some sort found its way into one of the chambers when only one person was going through, thinking it would just be them and being programmed to receive only one as such. The project was deemed an abomination by all who created it, and they abandoned it, destroying the files and leaving it to rot."

Vincent kept his gaze unchanged on Hoeng.

"…But where they saw a nightmare…you saw an opportunity."

Hoeng cracked a smile again at this.

"You see…you do know me."

---

"Hoeng rebuilt the teleporter so that its main function would be to fuse different things together…and he tested it on us. How it operated now was that two different individuals would start in two different cylinders, and they would be broken up and reassembled in one body in the center. As you may have guessed…I myself was fused with a snowy owl."

The two men were horrified. Both of their eyes had widened now. Ragnar's mouth hung loose as he gaped. He had through some sort of mutation had taken place… Perhaps it had been some sort of manipulation. But he never knew it would be so grotesque…that someone would actually want to do such a twisted thing to another human being. That they would actually mix their bodies together a chemist mixes chemicals...

"Oh my god..." Ragnar exhaled.

"Sick bastard sounds a lot like someone I used to know…" Cloud muttered aloud.

"I actually got off easy." Horus continued. "Ones like Fen and Martel went first…before he perfected the blending of DNA. Before then, it was only a perfect blend if they were the same species. But when he tried to fuse Fen to a wolf…it was more broken up. It was like he and the wolf had been cut into pieces and pasted together again. The same with Martel and a mantis. He had perfected it by the time he reached me. Another point in my favor is this...at least I'm still a warm-blooded vertebrate. He fused Scion with a tapeworm. And Mortimer…he got the worst. He fused him to a culture of amoebas, turning him into a giant blob that couldn't even speak."

The two men were stricken with grotesque shock.

"That's…inhuman… Psychotic…" Ragnar slowly spoke aloud, the horrible images running through his mind.

"And here I thought that humanity reached an all-time low with Hojo…" Cloud snorted as glared at the ground.

"After he finished with us, there was no need to restrain or drug us again." Horus continued. "He knew we would never be able to go to anyone for help. The only friends and family we had were each other. And if any of us tried to disobey him…well, he had thought of that. He put implants into our skulls to shock us if we misbehave. If he leaves it on, it will eventually melt our brains into sludge.

"We became his lab assistants…helping him change his machine and organizing his new projects and experiments. He said that if we did as he wished, he would restore us to humanity. And in the end, what he wanted were new test subjects."

"Aerith and Krystea." Ragnar answered for her.

Horus gave a nod.

Cloud's jaw tightened, and his hand clenched around his sword. "And what does this psycho want with them? To make them half animals as well?"

To this, however, Horus gave a slow shake of the head.

"No. He wants them to be his masterpiece…and he wants to do something very different with them."

---

Krystea leveled her shoulder against her cylinder and started to beat at it. Aerith closed her eyes, pointed her arms at the cylinder. She began to chant something.

Hoeng noticed this, and cracked a smile. "Watch carefully." He instructed Vincent. "You're going to love this."

A moment later, a green aura enveloped Aerith, and after that her hands erupted into flame. Balls of fire shot out from her and impacted the side of the cylinder. However, right after doing so…they immediately rebounded off and slid around the chamber, like a hockey puck on ice. Aerith's eyes shot open in fright, and immediately she cringed as the flames encircled around her, trying to guard herself until they slowly subsided. She eventually slammed herself back against the floor, trying to stay flat.

Hoeng let out a chuckle at this. Vincent's face stayed cold as he glared at him.

"…You enjoy watching others be scared?"

"I'm amused at their stupidity." Hoeng simply answered. "To think…that I wouldn't have thought of her trying to blast her way out of there." A noise suddenly caught Hoeng's attention, and he suddenly turned and looked over to the side. "Ah." He said when he saw it. "Here they come now."

Vincent looked up as well. The door that the creatures exited out of before was now open. They were wheeling in some sort of cart with what looked like a metal crate on it. It was reinforced with multiple bands of steel, and secured with some sort of remote lock. The creatures were looking rather dark at this moment, seeming to resent that they were doing tasks for Hoeng. But the doctor cared about none of this. Instead, he turned back to the women. When he did so, he folded his hands behind him, and stood straight and tall as he observed them.

"It is clear to me now, after all of my experiments, that humanity is a flawed race." Hoeng continued. "Their physical inferiority is evident. That was what I thought I might cure by giving them the characteristics of other creatures. But that was hopeless. Their intelligence is great, but it is bent toward a self-destructive goal. I used to be a student of history, Vincent. And human history is marked by a series of violent bottlenecks. The race builds itself up to some apex and then kills itself off. It has been an evident character since the days of myths… The Legends of Chaos, Palamecia, Zeromus, X-Death…their unifying thread is that the old race of humanity must die out to give birth to the new. Death is inevitable for the human race, as they can only sustain themselves by periodically wiping out their race and rebuilding from the ashes.

"That was my goal, Vincent. To find a way to improve on mankind's design. I could no longer rely on evolution to do that. Oh no…humanity has taken the tendancy of inventing things to cure problems rather than letting the strong survive. It protects the weak so that their genes will frustrate the next generation. Their sentimentalities and morals make them weak, even as they violate those same morals to exploit the weak."

"And what exactly would an improvement to mankind's design consist of?" Vincent asked calmly. "More Sephiroth clones like the one you engineered?"

Hoeng smiled and let out a chuckle. "…I assume that by saying that, you are referring to the one that has named himself Azure." He murmured in response. He turned back to Vincent at that. On seeing his face return…Vincent was positive that he had seen it somewhere before. It was twisted and thin…with that sickening smile on it that derived pleasure from the pain of others…just like his.

"You think I engineered him as a clone?" Hoeng simply asked. "Not at all. He is something quite different. Using Jenova cells mixed with human DNA was the old method…and it was a failure. Out of twelve attempts, only one proved successful. At an older age, it was far too impractical to be able to expect integration. The result was mutations and death. Younger ages proved better…but in the end, they only produced 'pseudo-Sephiroths' that were putty in the hands of the true Sephiroth. That method was a failure as well.

"Azure was intended to be a new type of Sephiroth warrior…using true methods of cloning. Since we began to make the original Sephiroth clones, we found a way to transplant DNA into enucleated ova to grow new Sephiroths from babies. With the proper blend of promoters and enhancers, it would take only a few years for the clone to reach maturity as well. Now…by we, I mean the old Shinra Inc. But to be able to do this, we had to find an intact strand of Sephiroth's DNA. Unfortunately, all we ever had was an old, mostly dry and dessicated blood sample from the Nibelheim Reactor. Try as we might, we could never get more than an incomplete genome from it.

"And yet, we did have enough to make do. We had enough to make a haploid genotype. Using that, we only needed an egg donor to make a new Sephiroth. It would only be a quarter Jenova…but it would be a new entity, one we had a far greater chance of controlling rather than Sephiroth reborn."

Vincent held for a moment after hearing this, as he made a connection.

"…So he's not a clone." He finally stated. "Genetically speaking…he's a son."

"You catch on quick." Hoeng answered, still smiling. "The project was never finished. It was begun in the latter days of Shinra Inc., and the science division was disbanded just as we had perfected an embryo." He grinned a bit wider here. "But luckily…I was able to find the embryo, as well as finish the work that we had begun on building an artificial womb. It took longer with just me working, but in the end I managed to get him to grow. Thanks to the accelerated growth proteins, he was already boy-aged within a month of being in the artificial womb. By that time, I had my new…assistants. So I let him out, and set about conditioning him."

Here, Hoeng's smile faded, and he sighed. "…He was a colossal failure. He responded not only like a normal child to my experiments, but like a normal, passive child. I thought I could at least brainwash him into being more savage, but he resisted it. You see…he was only a quarter Jenova. But I theorized that in that sort of humanoid, the Jenova portion of him would continue to grow and combine with his existing body until he did indeed become like Sephiroth. To that end, I tried everything to stimulate his Jenova half to take control. Beatings…starvation…solitary confinement…cold temperatures… Nothing worked.

"I eventually concluded that he would need something emotionally disturbing and not just physically to cause a potential revertation. But we had no way to do that. He was born with no memories, and he had no emotional attachment to us. I thought of giving him a puppy and then slaughtering it once he loved it enough before his eyes, but he escaped before I could."

"You're just all heart." Vincent darkly answered.

Hoeng smiled. "Actually…it turns out I was right. After bonding to the boy and girl, he became emotionally distressed when he saw them injured. As a result, his true powers awakened and he killed two of my assistants. Unfortunately…he was still a failure. At this point, he was too independent, and I had no way of controlling him. So I had him terminated.

"But getting back to what started this discussion…Sephiroth was indeed one of my considerations. In terms of intelligence and physical ability, he was without peer. But he was also far too uncontrollable and reckless. A simple Sephiroth clone would seek to carry out the destructive agenda of its alien mother; to consume mako and then move on to another world to devour it as well. I began to realize that when I started to see what a failure the boy was.

"It was then that I realized there was something that Sephiroth lacked. That was a great spirit. His was strong…but not the best. The Cetra were the ones that had that. After all, the will of one of them had proven to be greater than the will of his when Meteor collided with Holy. And the Cetra had the virtue of being tied to the Planet…the one energy source that was greater even than Sephiroth. His own immense power and ability that he gathered was as nothing compared to that of the world. By his very existence, he was unable to carry out what a Cetra could…commanding the Planet's energy itself and shaping it to its will. My conclusion, therefore, was simple. I needed to make a hybrid. A hybrid of a Cetra and a Sephiroth-like humanoid. The ultimate organism."

Vincent's eyes opened a bit more. At last…the truth was revealed. Now it was all clear to him. This was the madman's true intention. If the glass was truly sound proof, then no doubt the women didn't hear that. And it was probably better that they didn't. It was another twisted nightmare of an experiment...and one that was intended for them. One more fusion...

"…But why did you take them both?" Vincent asked. "Didn't you only need one?"

Hoeng snorted again, still smiling. "Apart, both of them are useless. They are two halves of a true Cetra. If they were made complete, then they would be a truly powerful being. A true Cetra. Using just one would be pointless."

"So…" Vincent answered. By now…he wanted to keep Hoeng talking about his plans. The longer he did…the more time Aerith and Krystea had. "Krystea was telling the truth about being Aerith's sister."

Now Hoeng really did laugh. He snapped his head back, closed his eyes, and let out a horrible chilling peel that filled the entire chamber. Aerith and Krystea heard nothing, but his assistants, monstrous as they were, shuddered uneasily in its wake. Vincent himself bit back his loathing. Even his laugh sounded just like his…

"Sister?" Hoeng asked rhetorically, as if it was the punch line to a funny joke. "That was the conclusion she reached? That she's her sister?" Hoeng kept grinning, but boiled down to a chuckle as he turned to face Vincent completely.

"Only if she was a twin would that be genetically possible, Vincent." He answered. "Krystea is Aerith's clone."

---

Both Cloud and Ragnar looked intrigued on hearing that.

"A clone?" Cloud asked.

"I don't think any of us were ever supposed to know that." Horus answered. "Just like I wasn't supposed to know the details about his 'great experiment'. But I took to reading his notes when he wasn't looking. I'm almost totally silent in flight, and he leaves for extended periods sometimes, like today, giving me more time to look at them.

"I don't know the whole story, but apparently this Aerith person was supposed to be dead. The old Shinra thought that. But they wanted an Ancient so that they could find the Promised Land. That was the intention of using her in the first place. With her gone, they were shot in that regard. So they decided to clone her.

"They did have her DNA from blood samples, and so they put a strand of her DNA into some sort of egg that's supposed to develop into a baby. I'm not sure about the science…but they had some sort of artificial womb…stimulated her to grow faster… Yet when they had gotten this far in the project, Shinra found the Promised Land without her. She was abandoned. Some of the scientists kept working on her after coming so far. She was up to teenage years in the artificial womb when Diamond WEAPON attacked Midgar. Most of the scientists fled after that. One stayed behind…apparently thought she was more than just a mere clone. This one supposedly died getting her out of the womb and awakening her when Meteor struck. It was thought they were both lost…but Krystea reappeared, and she immediately got Hoeng's attention for this experiment when she did. Still…he didn't plan on going on. He didn't want a half Cetra. But when Aerith showed up, he decided to continue."

"Then why isn't she like Azure?" Ragnar asked. "Why isn't she just a big child? She's only mentally four."

---

"That was where I came in." Hoeng continued with a grin. "And, though you didn't know it until now, that was where you came in as well."

Vincent was confused by this remark. What did he mean? However, he showed nothing, and stayed calm as he continued.

"The clone would be an infant when she awoke if she wasn't somehow 'primed'. We wanted to give her a set of memories so that she would not only not question the validity of her existence, but that she would also have emotional connections in place that would make her far easier to control. Now, we never quite mastered the ability to give someone false memories. That technology is still decades away. But we did find a way to shape a person's memories to match that of another. While we may not be able to localize memories in the brain yet, we can electronically stimulate one brain to mimic the synapses and connections of a different one, so long as both are living. The result gives the person a vague copy of their memory. After that, it's a simple matter of feeding them the right clues to enable the normally-rationalizing brain to fill in the holes, and apply that history to themselves.

"And fortunately for them…I knew where to find a set of memories that no one would care about being reproduced…"

---

"That's why she remembers Vincent." Ragnar responded to Horus' explanation. He turned to Cloud soon after. "That's why she has all of those memories. She isn't remembering what happened to her…she's remembering what happened to him."

Cloud kept his arms crossed and glared darkly at the ground. "…Then they fed her the proper clues to make her create this new reality for herself…where Vincent was her big brother and defending her."

"Is that really possible?" Ragnar asked incredulously.

"Believe me, it is." Cloud answered grimly. "I had false memories myself. And because they were half true, it made it that much harder to realize I had made them up. And as time goes on…they become easier and easier to accept as reality. Any time a fallacy occurs, it is simply chalked up to memory loss."

"At any rate…her origins don't really matter." Horus interrupted, causing both men to look back to her. "She and Aerith are the keys to Hoeng's experiment. By fusing their bodies together, he can discard what of them is human and retain the Cetra parts of them. But that's only half of what he's planning. He has a culture of Jenova cells…at least, he had a culture. He was able to make them grow and reproduce until they became roughly half of the weight of Aerith and Krystea. He's going to use that in his experiment as well. He's not just going to make a pure-blooded Cetra…he's going to splice them with the Jenova material. He's going to create something that shares the same DNA as Sephiroth."

Both men stiffened at that. Cloud's eyes widened considerably as his own jaw slackened at last. Ragnar himself was stunned. That was his goal? To create a new Sephiroth…one that was half-Cetra? He was going to kill Aerith and Krystea for that… He was going to put them into that devil machine…and blend them together to make some new abomination. He had turned people into monsters…and now, he was looking to go even further. He was looking to bring back one of the greatest destroyers of all time.

He was insane. He had to be stopped…before it was too late.

Cloud reasoned the same way, and didn't need any more urging. Pulling his sword up again, he turned around and began to march back out of the room, ignoring Horus. Ragnar himself turned to the creature, then back to Cloud. But in the end, he swallowed, and stood up and went after him. He had a feeling this creature had more to say…but he was intent on saving Aerith as well. They had already wasted too much time here. If Hoeng already had Krystea, they could begin at any time.

"Wait."

Cloud kept going…but Ragnar stopped at this. He turned back to Horus. The woman hesitated…seeming to wonder whether or not she should speak. But at last, she sighed and spoke.

"…Go straight through three intersections. Turn right and go through two intersections. Turn left and go straight and you'll reach him and his machine."

Ragnar's brow knit at that.

"…You're helping us? Why?"

Horus looked down at this. She hesitated a moment, and then gave a snort chuckle.

"…Maybe I'm just sick of Hoeng, and I'm sick of dying and bleeding for him, regardless of whether or not he can change me back." The woman paused again after this, and then closed her eyes and exhaled.

"…Or maybe your friend Aerith was right. Maybe we were monsters all along…and Hoeng just gave us bodies to match them. Maybe I want to prove to myself that I'm still human somewhere in here…"

Horus went silent after this. Ragnar stared back at her for a moment longer. The small one continued to cringe, although he began to creep back to Horus' side. He looked out and to Ragnar as he came. The youth held and watched her as he thought over her words. At last, he pulled out, and got ready to move.

"…Thank you." He called before running after Cloud.

---

"Now…is that all of your questions?" Hoeng asked. "My time is running rather short…and I'm beginning to feel rather giddy."

Vincent didn't know what this meant, and frankly he didn't care. All he knew was that he was stuck here and Aerith and Krystea had been sentenced to a horrible fate. He had tried working his hands and legs out while he had been here, but it was impossible. And so, in the end, he could only ask one last thing.

"I have one more." He spoke darkly. "I'd like to know who you are."

The scientist paused at this. This question seemed to catch him off guard a moment, although it was only in an amusing sort of way. "Who am I?" He echoed back. "Why…whatever would make you ask such a question?"

"Because so far, you haven't answered it with your vague stories." Vincent answered. "The only thing that I can draw from what you've said is that you were some tech in a lab at the Shinra HQ Building. But obviously you had to be high ranking to have known about all this stuff, and to have access to this area. You also had to be high ranking to have the codes that would enable you to slip right into the Northern Continent. But more than that…you have to have a connection to the Turks. You knew about their exclusive drugs and used them, and you knew where to find the stashed helicopter. I want to know how you know this. I want to know how we overlooked you in our fight with Shinra. Most of all…I want to know how come your face looks so familiar, and yet I have no idea who you are."

Hoeng took this all in. When Vincent had finished, he hesitated again…before breaking out into a smile. He proceeded to let out another laugh. It wasn't as loud as before…but it was far colder and more sinister. It had a more subtle, dark quality about it. It was one so foul that even Vincent felt the alien sensation of a chill moving down his spine. Once Hoeng was finished…he calmly walked forward a few more steps, practically getting into Vincent's face. He flashed that grin…that sadistic, twisted grin…and shook his head slowly at him.

"You figured out everything else…but not this. I've set all the clues in front of you, and you still don't know." He breathed, almost in a disappointed tone.

"Here's one last clue, Vincent. I was my own first experiment in blending bodies."

On hearing that, Vincent hesitated for the briefest moment, incorporating it into his thoughts. But once he had processed it…the connection formed…and he began to realize what had happened. On doing so…Vincent's own eyes widened and his mouth slackened. There was little left in this world that could surprise him after all he had been through, and after all the emotions he had killed. And yet…he felt himself stunned none the less as he realized the truth. This was the answer to all the riddles… How a man could be a high ranking member of the Shinra and still be a Turk… How he could look so familiar and yet be a stranger… How he would be the only one who would know about him and the experiments done on him… It now came forth as obvious as his name testified to the truth…

Hojo.

Tseng.

Hoeng.

---

To be continued...