Phase Transition
The eight months since Angeal's attempt at suicide and resurrection by Vincent had been fairly quiet for Nero and the rest of the fugitives at the new underground Banora hideout. True, there had been a tension to Genesis for the first six weeks after his lifelong friend's banishment to the base situated in the wilderness between Corel and Cosmo Canyon, but after Vincent stopped by for a few days in June the Crimson General had relaxed properly and really settled into managing the army of former SOLDIERs.
The data drives Nero and Weiss helped Cloud steal back in April proved invaluable to all the surviving Deepgrounders as they contained not only everyone's complete medical records but also the general dosage information the scientists had been using to determine who gat which Mako injections and when, all ninety-six pages of it. Even better, there was also all the information on the psychological programming –read brainwashing– that various individuals had been subjected to. As the most technically minded Valentine within several hundred miles of the base, Weiss had sorted through the mountain of medical data and imputed everything into the relevant and accessible files on the closed system used by the handful of qualified medical personnel Genesis had working for him. Fortunately said personnel included a specialist Mako technician or else they would have had significantly more difficulty.
Shelke, as the best Synaptic Net Diver despite her young age, was the one who actually did the deprogramming. Her eleventh birthday had only been a few weeks previous to her appointment but she was nonetheless making considerable progress in diffusing the mental traps and control points in her patients' minds. She was very careful, very cautious and never took risks without Weiss there in another VR helmet to back her up. Genesis had been a little leery of placing his SOLDIERs sanity in the hands of a child and her teenage supervisor but recognised that they were capable enough. More pragmatically, they were all he had.
Their successes were very good for morale: Shelke had already deactivated several dozen potentially nasty hidden triggers and Weiss made a point of calling people in again to check for more insidious programming that might have been put in and not mentioned in the paperwork: laboratory politics at its most unpleasant. Shelke had discovered a few of those already.
Since Rosso was keeping herself busy out in Midgar well away from everyone in the family except Sephiroth and occasionally Vincent, Nero found himself left largely to his own devices. True, he did spend time with Weiss whenever his older brother was free but that wasn't often as the white-haired teen actually had a proper job now. As a result the youngest Valentine divided his time between training and honing his skills and exploring the various new things he was now allowed to do, like have hobbies. His physical training he divided between the shooting range and the dojo, practicing in both with his wing-like metal arms and without. He also meditated on his power, practicing at using his Darkness –what Genesis called 'Pocket Space'– to move various objects and living things around. When not training he listened to music, went exploring or read books; Genesis had given all of the former Deepgrounders timetables that included specific slots on weekdays and extra time on weekends for recreational activities, then persuaded Vincent to fiddle the electric locking system so they couldn't get into the training rooms with their keycards during those periods.
Fiction was a recent discovery for the youngest Valentine and he had found that he loved reading stories. He wasn't a fan of poetry like Rosso or Genesis but he did like prose, especially fairytales and ancient myths. On his fourteenth birthday in the middle of May Cloud had given him a volume of Nibel folk tales he'd had posted specially from Nibelheim by his mother. Nero had devoured them with gusto and written a careful letter of thanks to Mrs Strife, who believed Nero to be one of Cloud's fellow SOLDIERs in Midgar. Te stories of Odin, Thor, Loki and the other gods were harsh and occasionally brutally unfair, very unlike the tales of fairies and magic from Kalm and Junon.
Before being rescued from Deepground Nero had doggedly and single-mindedly followed Weiss' lead in absolutely everything; his white-haired elder sibling had been the leader and in the cannibalistic and perilous environment of the underground laboratories questioning the chain of command was tantamount to suicide. Since the rescue however he had been immersed in a much safer environment and encouraged to ask questions and make his own decisions. He was gradually learning to do so, though it was nerve-wracking at times. One of the first of his choices had been to read what he wanted to rather than just what was required as part of his education. Vincent had found the young teen hunched over a computer terminal reading a hacked online novel and offered him access to the Valentine family library, with particular emphasis on the generations-worth of childrens' stories. Nero had accepted and swiftly discovered the wild and wonderful world of children's fiction; he never looked back.
Out of all the Valentines Nero was the one who saw Chaos the most, other than Vincent that is. It wasn't exactly a personal thing: the quasi-summon hunted him down every single time Vincent came to visit and made a point of testing the young teen's command of his Dark powers, often almost to breaking point. The Herald of OMEGA had back in March pronounced the suit that supplied him with Mako as 'a damnable crutch for the weak and pathetically lacking in control' and all but bullied Nero into learning to tap the planet's energy without it. Which was about as easy as singing along to a tune you couldn't hear and in fact hadn't ever heard at all. It took weeks to even find the Lifestream.
The first time he actually located the power Chaos wanted him to access Nero almost lost himself in the green clamour and had to be rescued. The slit-pupilled teen found the experience soul-chillingly scary and whimpered hysterically about the voices, the green and the undertow until his ashy-skinned tutor placed cold fingers on his temples and sucked the terrifying awareness away. It took months of trial and error –mostly error– but Nero eventually learned to meditate in a way which enabled him to tap the Lifestream without being overwhelmed by the voices: he filtered the power through his Darkness, which prevented the voices from reaching him.
That managed, Chaos proved that he was indeed the manifestation of some unspecified evil and informed his student that he expected 'the little shade' to be able to maintain his carefully balanced meditative focus in combat. After all, if he couldn't access his abilities in a fight he wouldn't be allowed to do missions.
Given that Rosso was out on a long-term deep cover mission in Midgar protecting Genesis' girlfriend and Weiss had been all but guaranteed an opportunity to study Mako Science and Psychology with a sideline in Limit Theory at Junon University –which would also be done in deep cover– Nero did not want to be left behind. Even if catching up involved an exercise unpleasantly akin to singing Wutai Opera perfectly in tune and on the beat whilst fighting off people who could hear neither the music nor his voice. Coordinating an extra pair of arms at the same time pushed the difficulty level from 'punishingly hard' to 'practically impossible' but the untidy-haired teen had no intention of backing down from the challenge.
He was at least allowed out of the complex every now and then for fresh air: by December he was deemed sufficiently competent to be permitted to do more than help harvest the Banora Whites that grew on trees all over the land above and around the base, stretching miles in all directions. Of course, his leash was only extended as far as the monthly Mideel delivery run on the truck and then the cargo vessel taking Banora apple juice, cider and crates of fruit to the aforementioned town and a disguise was still required, but it was more freedom than he'd ever had before.
Mideel had some very nice shops and the spending money he'd gotten both from Vincent and his apple picking wages meant he could actually buy things. It also had very nice monsters to practice fighting against, which was no longer possible around the base due to the large numbers of largely unoccupied SOLDIERs who rotated through for medical checkups. The Banora base was also Genesis' headquarters and he was as hard on the local monsters as a whole squad of SOLDIERs.
While shopping Nero bought himself a jem ring, a few antidotes and a crystal bangle. He also pocketed an odd-looking ring with a skull on it he had found in the dirt outside the accessory shop. The ring had a hum to it that resonated with the shreds of Dark that flitted invisibly around him even when his power was fully suppressed.
The morning after he and the rest of the SOLDIERs who'd volunteered as cheap workforce took the cargo vessel back along to the coast to the tiny port then back to the base through the sprawling cave network that connected the base to the village of Banora and numerous other hidden outposts. Nero was silently entertained by the fact that the purple fruit his big brother and sister so adored were financing the Valentines' schemes for the overthrow of the ShinRa monopoly. Apples seemed so... benign.
Meet Nero. He's far, far more passive than his siblings, much more like how canon Vincent was. He's also heavily intellectual and an introvert, though with a core of pure steel. This makes his less emotive and very difficult to read. Unless Chaos is doing the reading that is; Mr Glowy-Gold-Eyes is quite possibly the only person capable of getting Nero's goat and needles him just enough that Nero knows Chaos does it purely for entertainment.
