Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII. I depend on my daughter, Angeal Valentine, and on Bjanik for all my information on the subject.
A/N—In case you didn't catch the hint at the beginning of Chapter 16, go back and re-read "Belated Wedding Gift" for the reference to a "von Trott" that Londo was supposed to marry. Bjanik and I subsequently have had extended discussions as to the family connections of the Shinras, Valentines, and von Trotts. Fascinating stuff.
We are continuing from where we left off—New Banora, 7:00 pm Mideel time, with Reno and Rude. It's still the fifth day of Tessa's confinement, and the twenty-second week, fifth day of her pregnancy. This chapter also contains a lemon. The beginning and ending are indicated so you can skip it if you wish.
(7 - 9 p, Mideel; 5 - 7 p, Midgar; 4 – 6 p, Junon; 1 – 3 p, Gongaga; 9 -11 a, Wutai)
"How you holdin' up there, partner?" Reno looked over his shoulder at Rude crawling along using one arm behind him. They had escaped from Hollander's laboratory but had found no way to the surface of New Banora.
"Fine—just great." Rude was not making good time in their get-away. There had been twists and turns through the vents, but so far there had been no "hue and cry" as to their escape. Presumably the Vanessas were still playing hangman. Reno and Rude weren't in the clear yet though.
"There's a greenish light off to the left up ahead, yo. I'm gonna take a look." To Reno this light looked a little more promising than that in the rooms they'd been passing, all of which seemed to go nowhere. As he crawled up to this vent, he found it looked out on the mako chamber they'd seen earlier—directly below them was the end of the landing where they'd stood, while below and to the left was the mako pool. Not exactly a way out, but… Across the big room Genesis Rhapsodos and Lynette Hiland were still talking together with burly, black-garbed body guards nearby. "Rude, come up here!"
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"GE-NE-SIS!! YOU SNEAKING, STINKING, BLOOD-SUCKING, SHIT-FOR-BRAINS, TWO-TIMING, ASSHOLE!! YOU ARE DEAD!! JUST WAIT UNTIL I GET MY HANDS ON YOU!!"
"ARGENTO! BA-BY!" Rhapsodos seemed delighted. He threw his arms wide and took an enthusiastic step toward the source of the cursing.
"DON'T YOU 'BABY' ME, YOU DOUBLE-CROSSING, LOW-LIFE, SCUMBAG! HOW COULD YOU?!"
Below him, Reno could see a stunningly beautiful young woman with long black hair caught behind her neck and dressed in black with glowing silver streaks down her arms and legs and about her waist and a silver metallic plate over her breasts. A gleaming, silver long sword, lighter than a Soldier's claymore, was attached to her back. She had entered the pool room from what was probably the tunnel they'd been brought through earlier.
"Hm, must be Argento!" Reno mumbled.
Rude had managed to crawl up alongside Reno to view the sight. "Way to state the obvious." For emphasis, Rude kicked Reno's foot. "Shh. I can't hear what they're saying!"
"How can you not hear, yo? She is yelling at the top of her lungs!"
Rhapsodos had left Lynette Hiland's side and was approaching the angry beauty. "Argento, it's so good to see you!" and Rhapsodos moved as if to take her in his arms.
"BASTARD!! DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH ME! AND HOW MANY MEN DID I HAVE TO SACRIFICE TO BRING YOU THIS, ONLY TO FIND OUT YOU'RE ENGAGED!! BASTARD!!" With that Argento bounded into the air with her long sword in her hand seemingly ready to run Rhapsodos through.
Rhapsodos shook his head admiringly, "That's what I love about you!" He leapt into the air and pulled his sword from his back. Their weapons clashed as the two flew passed each other. Both landed on pipes far above the mako pool.
"Would you budge over, I can't see!" Rude pushed against Reno.
"No, then I couldn't see!"
"And did you bring me my present?" Rhapsodos cocked his head at Argento questioningly.
"OF COURSE, I DID, BUT I'M NOT ABOUT TO GIVE IT TO YOU! YOU BASTARD!" Red flames surrounded Argento's hand as she launched a fire attack at Rhapsodos, careful to keep it away from the mako pool below them. Rhapsodos dodged the attack, but in its wake she was on him again. Argento stepped right and left on pipes to get to him, then she slashed for his ribs. Rhapsodos dodged again, but this time, rather than defend himself, he wrapped his left arm about Argento's waist and forced her to take him with her as she flew passed. "SONUVABITCH!!"
Reno wasn't sure, but he rather thought Argento tried to bite Rhapsodos as they tumbled together toward the landing, her hair flaring out in green shimmering arcs with the light of the mako below them. When they landed, Rhapsodos pinned Argento below him and held her arms spread wide against the floor. When he leaned in to kiss her, she spit in his face, kneed him in his posterior, and sent him tumbling over her head.
"IT'S NOT THAT EASY, GENESIS!" Argento turned to face Rhapsodos. She crouched for another attack, her sword low, close to the ground.
"Yes. You're right. Nothing's ever that easy." Rhapsodos stood up slowly, put his sword away on his back, and spread his hands to the sides. "I apologize about the princess, Argento. Her father sprang the engagement on me as part of our alliance with Wutai. I have no intention of marrying her."
"Yeah, I'll just bet you don't… You've made me, and Deep Ground, a lot of promises, Genesis Rhapsodos, and I'm going to ensure that you keep every last one of them."
"Yes, I'm sure you will, Argento." Rhapsodos took a tentative step toward the dark-haired woman, then another when she didn't attack him. "Argento, you know I love you. No other woman means anything to me."
Argento lowered the sword slightly and straightened, her eyes narrowed. "Genesis, you really are a bastard."
"Well, sort of… indirectly… that is." Rhapsodos shrugged and cocked a half-smile at Argento, took another step, then kissed her lips lightly. When she didn't respond with anger, he ran his tongue over her closed lips, coaxingly. She smiled slightly. Rhapsodos wrapped one arm around her waist and the other behind her head, pulled her against him, and pushed her mouth open with his. Argento raised her sword above his head as if she were about to strike him somewhere, then let her empty hand sink to his shoulder while her sword clattered to the floor. She finally leaned into the kiss. "Now where's my present?"
"Bastard."
"Ain't love grand?" Reno looked at his partner.
"You think that's love?"
"No, but it looks like fun, don't you think?"
"Urh." Rude growled at Reno then examined the room below them and the grate barring the way into it. "Wait. What's that?"
"Um? What's what?" Reno had begun pushing against the grate, trying to work it loose from the wall, when he too spotted two men carrying a long silver bag between them as they entered the room from the tunnel.
"There's your damn 'present,' Genesis." Argento had taken a step away from Rhapsodos. "I lost a lot of good people to get this for you. That little escapade of yours really weakened our base in Midgar. You owe me, Genesis."
"You are absolutely right, my love, and I will make it up to you… Let's get this to Hollander to get to work on."
"I'm right here." Vester Hollander emerged from the shadows of the same corridor the men with the bag had come through.
"I should have known. How else could Argento have found out about the princess except from you?!" Genesis had taken a step toward the bag and Hollander, but he kept an arm around the dark-haired woman.
Hollander didn't seem intimidated in the least. "Of course I told her. I just knew she'd have choice words for you over that development… Now let's see what she's brought." Hollander knelt by the bag's side and seemed to be reading something, even occasionally touching the bag. "Everything seems to be in order, but I need this taken to sample prep immediately. I'll need the enriched mako solution supplies from Nibelheim as well, not just the normal local stuff."
Lynette Hilander then stepped forward. "Is this the guest you were telling me about, Genesis? Sephiroth's wife?"
"Yes, Lynette. That's exactly who it is."
Reno and Rude looked at each other with serious faces. Now they had an additional problem. They had to get Tessa out of here too and quickly.
"I'm not anxious to meet a woman who would marry that monster. Take her away."
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Later, in the residential section of New Banora, Rhapsodos lay on his back on the bed and looked up at the naked woman on top him. He marveled again. All his plans were working: he had acquired a source of Jenova tissue, he was effectively in charge of Wutai, he had Soldier and the entire planet in chaos, and his base in Mideel was filled with cloned troops ready for deployment. Oh yes, he needed to remember to have Hutchins supply a plausible story to Midgar regarding those two pesky Turks. Best of all, he had Argento right where he wanted her—in his bed. Argento, the Silver, was absolutely perfect, wild, and uncontrolled—nearly uncontrollable.
Rhapsodos pressed his hips upward into the beautiful woman, and she rode him, arched her back, and reached back to rub his testicles. He could feel himself tightening, stretching, thickening—he would come any second at this rate—but she lifted up, nearly off him, and kept just his bare tip inside her.
"HN?! Baby?!"
"Every promise, Genesis!"
"Yeah, yeah. Come on!!"
"Swear it, Genesis." She inched ever so slightly lower, and leaned a bit forward so that her wild, silken hair rubbed his stomach.
"Okay… Yes, I swear. Anything else?"
"The princess. What about her…?"
"I'll break it off next time I'm in Wutai. Promise! You know, I don't think she even likes me."
"Well then, that's fine. You know I'll kill her if you don't break the engagement." She squirmed downward a little more.
"Yeah. I know. You're killing me right now."
"And you're sorry, and you'll never think of any other woman but me."
"I am truly sorry, and I will never think of anyone but you, Argento."
"Better not." Argento took all of him inside her then leaned forward to brush her nipples on his chest. Jarringly, from the night stand, music was suddenly playing.
"You left your phone on?!"
Argento smirked at Rhapsodos and, watching for his reaction, leaned sideways. She forced him to turn with her ("Unh! Honey!"), picked up her PHS and flipped it open, then tilted back upright. She scrolled through her text message and calculated the time difference from transmission. Argento closed the phone, let it fall from her hand to the bed, and squirmed more securely onto her lover. She leaned forward, kissed Rhapsodos lightly on the lips, and then sat up with a smile. "Congratulations. That was Midgar. Sephiroth and his troops left this morning for Rocket Town and Wutai. You have a free hand."
"Yeah. Two of them." He reached for her, dug his fingers into her hips, and resettled her more comfortably back on top of him with a sigh of relief. Yes, everything was going as planned.
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"You are a lovely woman, Dr. Romera. Too bad for you, you're carrying Jenova tissue in your body, but soon, you won't have to worry about it anymore." Vester Hollander and his bodyguards had drained the flex-tube, removed Tessa's body, placed her inside a regular lab tube, and filled it with high concentration mako solution and added an anesthetic via a feed line to keep her asleep. Hollander checked a lab notebook on a nearby table and did a quick calculation on some scratch paper, then made an entry in the notebook. "Yes, nineteen hours from now. That would be 3 pm tomorrow—that will work." He leered at Tessa, then walked to a cabinet in the corner of the room and removed a bottle. He upended it into a feed line then turned a knob and checked the line's flow gage into the tube. Hollander picked up a small digital clock and punched in an alarm for nineteen hours, then stuck it on a velcro pad on Tessa's tube. "Tomorrow..."
"Why is her stomach so big?" One of the Vanessas had wandered over to look at the woman in the tube.
"She's pregnant—carrying a baby in her uterus. It's the old-fashioned way to produce children."
"She's got a baby inside her?! How did that happen? Did you put it there?"
"Of course not!" He rolled his eyes. "Why am I talking to you?" Which one was she again? Oh yes. Vanessa-#7, the curious one. "And where did you girls put the Turks?"
"'Turks'? What are 'Turks'?" Vanessa-7 tilted her head curiously at him, her pigtails swinging.
Clones—so annoying. "The two men who were here earlier. You wanted to play with them, remember?"
"Oh-h… Them."
"Yes. And?"
She shrugged. "Dunno."
"What?!" Hollander headed for the back room where he had assumed the Vanessas had still been playing. Opening the door, he stopped still for a moment then stepped forward. Several Vanessas were playing what looked like tick, tack, toe, while others played hangman. Two were even playing rock, paper, scissors. Standing about four feet away from the far wall, however, was a pile of boxes that reached nearly to the ceiling. Walking around it, Hollander found what he had hoped not to see—another pile of boxes against the wall and a grate stuck in a ventilation shaft hole with no screws holding it in. Hollander stood still and considered for a moment.
"Girls! Come along! Play time's over!"
"Ah-ah!" Clearly, they didn't want to stop.
"Move!"
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The babies squirmed in her arms. Tessa opened her eyes. "What's wrong?"
Lucy, the more solid of the girls, looked at her and grimaced, as if in pain. She pushed away from Tessa and her sister and clutched her stomach. Angel started crying, and her tears fell like shooting stars.
"Come here, sweetheart!" Tessa tried to gather Lucy back in her arms. The child was burning up. "You've got a fever! How can you have a fever in my dream?!" Lucy was crying now too. The skin on her tiny arms was rippling, then her whole body convulsed.
"NO! LUCY!!"
Then Tessa felt it too—her skin crawling, rippling, even stretching and cracking, and nausea. Her body convulsed, and she knew she too was sick.
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"Can you see Tess? How's she look? Naked?!" Reno was trying to crawl up next to Rude in the ventilation shaft above the Sample Preparation room, but Rude kicked him back.
"Man! You want to look at a naked, pregnant woman?! You are really warped!" Rude sighed. "Course, I knew that…" Rude turned back to the view into the sample prep room. Below him, one more of the tubes was occupied than when they had left but none of the guards, Vanessas, or Hollander was to be seen. "Yeah. I can see her, but nobody else is in there. Tessa's really squirming around. I don't remember doing that when I was in one of those things with my arm. There's a timer on the glass too… Can't see what it says though... I don't think she's all right. We need to get her out of there, soon." Rude backed away from the grate toward his partner. "I wonder what Hollander's up to. He doesn't seem to have run for the alarms when he realized we were gone."
"I'll bet he went looking for us himself—probably took all those clones along to help. After all, he's the one who lost us. If he could find us, then it'd be like we never escaped."
"Yeah, you could be right." Rude agreed. Reno probably was right. When it came to getting into and out of trouble with authority, Reno had it down pat. "Okay. Let's think. We've been out of contact with Tseng for what, three or four days now?! I'll bet somebody's on the way here to check on us."
"Yeah, and when they get here, whoever Tseng has sent will run right into all these clones, yo… I hope Tseng sends an army—like every Turk in Midgar. Hell, if Tess' is here, where're Sephy and Zackman? All of Soldier for that matter? I wouldn't mind a few First Class Soldiers too, what with Rhapsodos and Hewley around—that Argento, too."
Rude's eyes widened, and he raised a finger. "Wait a sec…What was that Rhapsodos and Argento were fighting about? His engagement to a princess? Remember? It was something like 'her father sprang an engagement on him as part of their alliance with Wutai'?! You suppose Wutai's in rebellion?"
"Sorry. I was too busy watching the lover's quarrel…" Reno paused. He had been distracted—back to the important stuff. "A Rhapsodos/Banora/Wutai alliance—all enemies of Shinra. Makes a weird kind of sense, yo…" Reno leaned toward his partner with a realization, "Oh, and Hutchins in Mideel too—at least part of Shinra security…"
"Yeah." Rude nodded. "Hutchins probably tipped the Banorans off that there were Turks in the neighborhood, asking questions. No wonder we were captured so easily."
Reno nodded and grimaced. "We've got to get Tess out that tube, yo. Whatever Hollander's got in mind can't be good."
"He wants the baby's Jenova tissue." Rude looked at his friend. "But why? He wants to produce more Jenovas?"
"Not sure." Reno looked down and considered, then he shook his head. "He wouldn't if he'd ever seen the real thing." Reno looked at his partner. "We've got to get Tess and warn Tseng."
"Agreed. We need to find our weapons and our PHSs. There has to be a control room somewhere." He paused and considered. "What about that room Lynette Hiland was standing in when we were brought in?" Reno nodded his agreement. "We might be able to do some damage around here too. We've got to be careful, though, isn't Mideel supposed to be geologically unstable? If we start explosions here and all this mako starts to go, we could sink the island. We'll have to keep whatever we do damage-wise small."
"Might not be so bad, yo, sinking the island, that is. Get rid of Banora once and for all…"
Rude growled at his partner. "Don't even go there… Let's get out of this shaft. Come on…"
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In the shower in his apartments, Genesis Rhapsodos kissed Argento deeply, held her tight against his slick, wet body and enjoyed the feelings—hot water, her breasts pushed against him, and himself against her. Suddenly her hands crept under his arms and onto the skin on his shoulder blades. Rhapsodos winced and backed away from her.
"What is it?" Argento looked puzzled at his reaction.
Rhapsodos smiled. "That tickled." He placed her arms around his waist, teased her lips apart with his mouth, and distracted her, he hoped. The pain when she had touched him had been excruciating. Soon there would be relief…
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Vincent Valentine was staring out the window of a transport at the receding coast of the eastern continent. The sandy beaches had given way to the sparkling waters of the Mideel Sea. The sight was lovely. How could it be so beautiful, he wondered, when there was so much violence in the world? Clearly, Gaia was uninterested in her occupants. Suddenly, searing pain hit Vincent's entire body, and he doubled over in his seat, sick to his stomach, his skin crawling.
"Valentine! Are you all right?!" Tseng, sitting next to him, put a hand on his shoulder.
"… No …" Vincent managed glaring, his teeth gritting, his vision blurred with pain.
"Someone get Dr. Caperton up here!" Tseng called. He turned to Jayna sitting nearby. "Help me get his feet up."
"I'm here…"
Vincent heard them as if from a distance. The pain was intense. He reached out to his son hundreds of miles away. Do you feel this too?
Yes. What is it?! There's no cause I can find. I was standing at the airship's observation window when I crumbled to the floor… Sephiroth seemed closer to Vincent than Tseng who hovered above him or the doctor who knelt at his side.
Can you compartmentalize the pain? I can put a barrier up around it such that Chaos can deal with it subconsciously.
I can deal with it.
Good. I think… Vincent paused and considered whether to think it to his son. I think this is the baby… in pain… Whatever Rhapsodos is up to, I believe he's started.
Can you tell where Tessa is?! I can get no fix on the direction! Anxiety flooded the mental connection.
Vincent's only answer was Ahead…
Good…came the response.
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(9 am, Wutai; 7 pm, Mideel; 5 pm, Midgar; 4 am, Junon; 1 pm, Gongaga)
Carlos Griegos was slightly disappointed. General Sephiroth had left Midgar and was now on his way to Rocket Town and thence to Wutai. When Griegos had made his 8:00 am report, Col. Gavin McIntyre, now in command at Midgar, had received it. While McIntyre had been glad to see Griegos returned safe, he'd barely glanced at Griegos' prisoners. Griegos sighed. He supposed he'd been expecting Soldier Command to be thrilled that the war would probably soon be over. Instead McIntyre had said he'd pass the news on to the General, had given Griegos orders to sit tight and await the General's commands, and had then broken contact. Now what? Griegos knew what he wanted to do—broadcast the news of the capture of the emperor and crown princess to the entire island of Wutai—but instead he was to hunker down and keep being shelled. Griegos turned to Bill Wallace, also puzzled, who stood behind him. "Have Akita join us in the brig. We're going to interrogate our prisoners."
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(1 pm, Gongaga; 7 pm, Mideel; 5 pm, Midgar; 4 am, Junon; 9 am Wutai)
The words rang through the materia reactor and Nathan's mind. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
Nathan smiled. There was one at every equipment-heavy facility on Gaia. The head technician, the guardian of technological equipment everywhere, had appeared.
"Making materia, of course."
At Nathan's words, an older, heavy-set, gray-haired man, with a thick mustache, pressed his hands over his heart, his breath rattled in his chest, and fell to the floor, unconscious.
A/N—I've introduced many OCs in my story, but Argento the Silver is canon. Angeal Valentine tells me Argento appears only in the Japanese online part of Dirge of Cerberus. Other than a picture of a beautiful, black-haired woman in a Deep-Ground type uniform, nothing is known about her, however. That made her perfect for my story…