Author: Zhampy
Rating: T / PG-15
Genre: Humour/Romance
Disclaimer: I don't own a single thing in the FFVII Compilation.
Summery: After Clouds impressive, albeit drunken, display he is sent to the labs for an examination. Someone so young barely just entered into the military shouldn't show such skill. Hojo is a dick, but eventually Cloud is released under Zack's care.
Contains: Main pairing is Cloud/Sephiroth with a Zack/Aerith side-dish and some other minor pairings. Some OOCness for humourous purposes, AR, couple of OCs, and occasional foul language.
Modus Operandi
Episode Two – No Sailboating
Hollander was a useless hack, Hojo thought as he prepared his workspace. The bearded sack of flesh and bones sat in his office all day doing his best impression of a vacuum cleaner doing nothing but suck up ShinRa funds that should rightly be going to his own department. If only the President had taken his suggestion of splicing Hollander's brain with that of a dog, then at least the man would be good with fetching things. Adequate with fetching things. Okay, mildly useful with fetching things.
Honestly, the man couldn't even deal with a petulant little child. What idiot couldn't handle a child? Hollander dealt with the cadets and Hojo dealt with the SOLDIERs. That was the arrangement. This blonde boy had been sent to him after Hollander had found nothing out of the ordinary despite the insistence of the SOLDIER Third who had been training with the child that morning. Then again, the man couldn't decode the hereditary genome of the common housecat. What a dunce!
Apparently this kid was some sort of overly talented prodigy or something? Pffft. Boy used a gun; Turks used guns. Feh! If a runt like this could bring a SOLDIER to his knees then it merely meant MORE MAKO needed. Looking down at the cadet laid on the metal table Hojo could practically see the boy's brain boarding the train to Consciousness City. Last stop. Ding! Lolling his head back Cloud opened his eyes to a searing white light overhead.
"What happened? Where am I? Am I dead?" he croaked.
"Not yet, but I would be more than willing to lend my assistance," Hojo grinned.
"Nngh..." Cloud tried to throw an arm over his face but for some reason felt them restrained. "Have I joined a cult?"
"Something like that," Hojo said. "Now, let's have a look at those eyes."
As the professor yanked back his eyelids and shined his little medical torch with the light cooking his eyeballs, Cloud decided to make the best of a weird situation. "So, how's it going?"
Hojo narrowed his eyes at the casual conversation the boy was apparently attempting to begin. "It would be marginally improved if you would cease speaking."
"I have the weirdest dreams sometimes," Cloud continued regardless.
"You don't say..." Hojo poked at the boy's eyeball with his little torch, but received no reaction.
"Like i'm being watched," Cloud pushed on as if he weren't in the same room with the sociopath who was ultimately responsible for the entirety of every shitty thing that had ever happened in his life. Well, except his failed military campaign and love life. Those were wholly Cloud-problems, but damned if he wouldn't blame the good doctor anyway. "I like you, doctor. I feel like I can talk to you."
"How hard did you hit your head?" Hojo asked curtly.
"I'll let you in on a little secret," Cloud not-whispered, lifting his chin and looking thoroughly creepy with his folded eyelids. "I think i'm drunk, ha ha!"
"You are not drunk, boy. I had your stomach pumped."
"Stop talking to Hojo, dude," Zack's echo-y voice rang in his head.
"You're weirding us out here," Aerith continued.
"I hear these voices," Cloud pointedly ignored his imaginary friends.
"Oh?" If Hojo had possessed emotions beyond unwarranted self-importance or a sick sense of satisfaction his surprise might have shown on his face. "Tell me more."
"They're jerks." Cloud could hear both Zack and Aerith puff with indignation.
"Two voices?" Hojo queried, suddenly invested in the cadet. "Fascinating."
"My life sucks you see," Cloud sighed.
"One remains unsurprised given your lack of talent and poor stature," the professor replied as he began taking notes.
But Cloud didn't seem bothered as he went on; "i've come back from the future."
"I see." Hojo began poking him with things now.
What was this nonsense? Boy clearly had a concussion.
"If I could do things differently, I would. Would you do things differently if you could?"
"No. Everything action I perform is perfectly calculated to produce the most desirable outcome."
"Ever since I left home to join SOLDIER," (Hojo snorted here), "i've made nothing but mistakes."
JENOVA, this boy was depressing, Hojo thought as the boy mindlessly droned on about his pathetic life. He'd have to break out the prozac after this session. Criminy.
"You chart says you are from Nibelheim," Hojo inquired absent-mindedly.
Boy was probably inbred. Or the village idiot. Possibly both.
"There are no pubs back home," Cloud regretfully ruminated.
"Who taught you to fight? Have you received any mako treatment in the past?" Hojo interrupted.
But Cloud wasn't interested in discussing that subject. If this were his dream they'd talk about what he wanted to talk about. And right now the only thing on his mind was what had been pumped from his stomach.
"We had to make our own booze in the bathtub," he began, about to launch into an impressive and thoroughly unwelcome explanation on how to achieve aforementioned practice.
"And I bet you were terrible at it," Hojo mockingly interrupted swiftly, knowing were this stream of consciousness would end.
Cloud instantly began sobbing.
"You are the worst kind of drunk," Zack informed his friend.
"Stop being mean to me!" Cloud shouted angrily at no one. Well, Hojo assumed it was no one since he'd not been horrible to the boy—merely pointing out the obvious.
"I was perfectly happy in that backwater bar with my barf lies. You think this makes me happier?" Cloud muttered sombrely to his imaginary voices.
"Silence!" Hojo shouted, them remembered he was supposed to be 'nice' with the cadets, and lowered his voice. "Wait, boy. You say the more unhappy you are the more these voices speak to you?"
Cloud nodded.
"This could mean something..." Hojo muttered thoughtfully, then turned to the intercom. "Prepare the onions for Project S."
With a metallic snap the restraints constricting Cloud's wrists were released. Hojo wrapped a sphygmomanometer around Cloud's upper arm and released him to the lab.
"You are an interesting specimen." the professor said in that sincere tone he'd not used since he'd suggested the Hollander dog-brain theory. "I will require you to return at a later date. Your superior officer will be notified."
"Hoo, Cloud's got a date!" Aerith jibbed.
As the professor wrote a brief note Cloud began examining the room. It was larger than he'd remembered the ShinRa labs to be. Then again he'd never had Hojo as his physician during his failure-ific stint in the military, and Hollander had always been bitching about "limited resources" and how "Hojo could blow him". He walked up besides a human study skeleton twisted in the throes of an agonising death.
"What's this?" Cloud asked, examining a whiteboard covered with illegible handwriting.
"Those are the rules. You'd best obey them whilst in my lab."
Cloud looked closer. "No sailboating."
"'No screaming!'"
"No salting...?"
"'No suing!'"
Cloud wrinkled his nose. "This is indecipherable."
"Look! It's perfectly simple," Hojo snapped.
Walking over the professor pointed to the first sentence. "No screaming!"
Then pointed to the second, "no suing!"
And the third; "... none of that! Or any of the others!"
Stupid, insolent brats! Did no one understand the tribulations he had to endure tending to these worthless human children? His handwriting was not indecipherable; his lab assistants could attest for that! However, they were refusing to meet his eye for some odd reason.
While the blonde boy had his back turned still inspecting his intricate and sophisticated handwriting, Hojo upturned a vial of green liquid into a syringe. With no mind for warning the poor lad he jabbed it into the boy's unsuspecting arm and emptied the substance with a press off his thumb.
"Owww!"
Cloud silenced himself as Hojo pointed at the first 'no sailboating' rule.
"Congratulations, boy," the professor congratulated the boy in an entirely non-congratulatory tone. "You've just joined SOLDIER."
Rubbing his arm Cloud mumbled to himself. "Could've warned me."
"Eh," one of his two imaginary friends shrugged.
Hojo levelled a look at the cadet as he unwrapped the sphygmomanometer. "Talking to the voices again?"
"If they're my friends they should warn me about these things. Like your prowling around behind my back like a tramp going through the bins behind the Honeybee Inn."
"I see," Hojo's face darkened with malicious delight. Then he spun around and his face was as happy as a sunny day. "Well, i'll be seeing you again, Mr. Strife! Please feel free to drop in any time you may feel overwhelmed. I will be more than happy to lend my services."
"Err, sure."
Cloud quickly hurried from the room.
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
With the oddest revelation beginning to creep into the back of his mind, Cloud walked the deserted hall. It was almost as if this were real and not some fevered drunken nightmare? Well, at least it was something interesting this time, so he may as well enjoy it, until a phantom Sephiroth inevitably jumped him from behind LIKE THIS—
Nothing.
"Hmm, you win this round, imaginary Sephiroth," Cloud thought, blue eyes shiftily peering left and right.
"Spike?"
Cloud whipped around to that oh-so familiar voice. That patronising nickname he'd come to love so much. There, sat in a chair across the hall with the porcupine hair, was the man he'd wanted to call his best friend. The one who had saved him and the one who had shared all his memories with. Sephiroth may have been his idol, but Zack was his hero.
"Oh, Cloud. I didn't know you thought of me like that. You're making me blush!" the Zack in his head giggled.
The real SOLDIER Second approached him carefully. "I head you got sent to Hojo but didn't believe it. Are you okay?"
Cloud couldn't say anything. The porcupine had his tongue as his jaw hung open uselessly. The intrusive Zack in his head didn't have such a problem.
"Damn, i'm hot! I wish I were you, Cloud, so I could look at me. Cloud! Cloud! Look at me! Do you see that? Dayummn."
"I'mma get me summa that," Aerith catcalled.
Zack looked taller. That was odd. Cloud could have sworn there were of a similar height the last time they had been together. Heck, he'd been wearing the guy's damn uniform for a year whilst he'd been loopy in the head! That's when Cloud finally took a good look at himself.
"Eyah!" He jumped dramatically, missing the concerned frown pass over his friend's face.
He was short! And weedy! His arms where like sticks and his feet looked disproportionately large. And his head felt too heavy, and his nose was too small, and his voice was all weird. And what the hell was going on with his balance‽
"Oh, my Gaia! You actually did it!" He shouted up through the ceiling as if that weren't the opposite direction of the lifestream. "Arseholes!"
The voices in his head wisely kept quiet.
"Keep the noise down out there!" the lab door rattled as Hojo shouted.
Zack silently laughed to himself. He walked over to the young boy who was preoccupied with shaking his fists up at the ceiling. Throwing an arm around the blonde's neck he said contentedly: "let's get you some rest before training begins."
Cloud's hands slowly fell limply to his sides. He tilted his head like a confused puppy. "Training?"
"Yeah!" Zack had the biggest, happiest most proudest smile across his face. "I knew you could do it, Spike! You're a SOLDIER candidate now! And guess who's your mentor?"
Cloud couldn't move.
"Zachary Fair!" the SOLDIER tightened his arm around Cloud neck. "This is great, i've never had a trainee before. Just wait until I tell everyone!"
Cloud squirmed and struggled as his friend proceeded to give him the biggest and most painful noogie he had ever received. He couldn't stop the shocked exclamation escaping his mouth:
"HOLY SHIT! This is real‽"
-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-
a/n: I love Black Books. See of you can catch all the references I make during this fic.