Perturbation

Cloud had been aware for some time that people were pushing for him to be promoted. He wasn't really all that surprised: he was a mostly model SOLDIER with enough personal flair to be memorable and was Sephiroth's student. It would have been suspicious were he not up for promotion now that the compulsory year had passed since the end of his third-class shots.

However, as he lay in bed on sheets that were too rough, too sticky and too slippery all at once, the world before his eyes smothered in green and a raving cacophony filling his ears, Cloud Strife found himself wishing that Vincent had put a bit more effort into dissuading him from joining SOLDIER. In fact, he would have been seriously considering the benefits of avoiding unwanted attention through deliberate mediocrity had he not been conditioned from childhood by his mentor and teacher to work unrelentingly hard and always improve himself. The red-eyed Turk did firmly believe that a student's best was always good enough, but that best was equally subject to continuous improvement. Yesterday's exceptional performance was now today's standard.

Cloud had been giving Vincent his best for a very, very long time, so much so that he no longer had to think about pushing his limits. He now wished that he hadn't turned to Mako as a way to keep on improving on prior performance.

Mako. Mako was the real problem.


Cloud had finally teased it out of a disturbingly playful Chaos only two weeks previously that the blond had more liquid Lifestream running through his veins than a third-class should. The herald of OMEGA had eventually relented enough to inform him that he had almost as 'the little spy', as the quasi-summon insisted on calling Kunsel. Having second-class Mako levels while still a third-class indicated something seriously fishy was going on. The Turk-trained SOLDIER had done a little surreptitious investigating and, after digging his way under the Science Department's firewalls, had discovered to his horror that he was listed amongst Hojo's current pet projects. One of fourteen not including 'Project S', as it happened, but he was the only one actually at large outside the confines of the sociopath professor's private laboratory.

Very cautious further investigation through medical records revealed that it was Cloud's abnormally high Mako tolerance that the depraved doctor was intrigued by. That said tolerance was coupled with optimal sensitivity to the burning green goo Hojo injected all his subjects with only heightened the madman's interest.

There was much less data available on the other thirteen of Hojo's current projects, though the blond got the distinct impression there had initially been considerably more than thirteen of them. From what he could tell of the notes Hojo had left, the scientist was working from cell samples and engaging in genetic manipulation and other kinds of hard-wearing tests to see if, using the data he'd got from Cloud and some of the blond's own genetic material, he could improve the cultures' tolerance for Mako without depressing their sensitivity or relying on the JENOVA virus to enhance absorption.

It was pretty clear to anyone with any experience of going through Hojo's notes that the cell samples being used had been taken from Sephiroth: 'Project S' was still Hojo's pride and joy and the occasional regrets that he had failed to extract suitable source material from 'Project V' before decommissioning it made the slimy scientist's meaning pretty damn clear. Cloud was just relieved Hojo's obsession with the cell cultures was keeping him away from trying to experiment on fully grown SOLDIERs.

After a very private panic attack in Vincent's Sector One safe-house Cloud manfully went back over every last scrap of data with a fine toothed comb and came to a few tentative conclusions.

His first conclusion was that Chaos had known about this right from the start and was loving every minute of everyone else's cluelessness. He might trust the herald of OMEGA with his life, but there was clearly a good case against trusting the gold-eyed being with absolutely anything else including sanity, physical integrity and long term plans. Chaos was to plans what a sledgehammer was to a watermelon.

His second conclusion was that he was going to have to keep this quiet until after he got his shots for the promotion to second class, or else Vincent would throw the plan out of the window and dismember Hojo tomorrow, likely with Sephiroth's help. The Silver General was surprisingly protective of his protégé.

His third was that the mad professor had –much as Cloud hated to admit it– been surprisingly careful and conservative in his managing of 'Project C'.


Not many people understood the rationale behind the order and concentration of Mako in the shots given to new SOLDIERs and how they differed from the ones administered on promotion to second-class. The progression was neither mathematical nor proportional, but finely calibrated to take maximum advantage of the changes in Mako tolerance thresholds that the human body showed after differing degrees of exposure.

The shots that SOLDIER candidates were given on being admitted to the program were as much as the average human male could take –plus or minus a little to account for individual sensitivity– without the body going into shock and needing to be put on life support. The follow-up shots were to wear down the body's resistance and establish a solid Mako presence in all of the body's tissues. Like heavy metals, Mako accumulated. The body did try to flush it out but could only purge so much and after each sequential shot the amount purged was less and less. Once the recovery period for each injection was over the SOLDIER –or victim– recovered: no more shakes, hallucinations or sensory spikes. The Mako however remained, levels higher than they had been before. Rinse and repeat a few times and you could push the body to skirt right up against the edge of the shock threshold and keep it there.

Of course, once you'd got a person up to that limit their body needed a full year to adapt properly and renew itself to match the standard. That time enabled the Mako to permeate the bones and neural matter and be fully incorporated into new muscle and organ tissue. Once that year's grace was over, the body was suitably adapted to the presence of Mako that a dip in a vat of liquid Lifestream just dilute enough not to eat away human tissue would only improve its constitution.

Which gave you an idea of how incredibly strong the injections for second-class were.

The first set of injections enhanced the body, speeding up growth spurts and forcing all biological systems to perform to their maximum capacity. Third-class was where everyone was forced to grow up –physically at least– and many ended up far taller than they'd originally believed possible. Zack was an unbelievable six foot three, even taller than Sephiroth, while Cloud at five foot seven was still taller than he ever thought he'd be, considering his mother was only five foot one.

The shots for second class did the opposite: they slowed decay. A second-class aged very, very slowly. They also matured equally slowly, which explained why most SOLDIERs never seemed to act any older than nineteen or so. On entering second-class your attitude and personality was pretty much set in stone and only the most traumatic of catastrophes could change who you were after that second round of shots.

Cloud had found and read the statistics: Promotion to second-class meant the scientists got to inject you with as much Mako as your body could take without actually dissolving. Then after that one set of shots they left you to ride out the hypersensitivity and delirium and hoped for the best. By the end of the week you either adapted or died; about one in fifteen SOLDIERs died. The average second-class wound up with a blood Mako concentration between 21 and 25 percent, which was as much as the human genome could survive exposure to before starting to unravel.

Getting people up to first-class was the real challenge, as you had to overcome that critical threshold. Hojo solved it by saturating the shots with inert JENOVA virus, which entered the subject's cells and added itself to their DNA. This had the benefit of heightening a person's Mako tolerance by an average of nine percent, but came with the risk of serious and disfiguring mutations if the body was subject to continuous strain for long periods of time. This risk was why ShinRa actually enforced vacations for all of its SOLDIERs after a set amount of time in the field. Sephiroth's leave time had finally caught up with him and he had been off for a week before Cloud's promotion came through and wasn't due back for another fortnight. If Zack didn't take a break soon he would be forced to go on holiday by about September.

The mutations that emerged did further enhance the victim's Mako tolerance, but that was not much consolation for someone who now had to deal with an extra set of limbs, skin covered in scales or feathers or no longer having functional vocal chords.

Cloud however was not an average human, courtesy of the extremely well-informed tinkering of his genetics by his adoptive father. In fact, judging by Hojo's meticulous records, Cloud's blood Mako levels had already been only a few percent below second-class and would likely power all the way up into first-class territory with his next set of shots.

That wasn't a problem; the issue was the genetic inheritance Chaos had seeded the blond's genome with, which Cloud just knew would be at least in part Mako triggered. The high levels he would be exposed to in the second round of shots would in all probability awaken some of the 'invisible' cascading genetic alterations, which would create a foundation for later, more visible changes to build upon. The blond had resigned himself to the inevitability of a pair of wings; there was no way the herald of OMEGA would allow any child of his –adoptive or otherwise– get away with remaining with both feet on the ground.

Other abilities would likely include innate magical abilities, an ever higher tolerance for Mako and physical near-invulnerability, on top of immunity to the JENOVA virus and the ability to spook most monsters just by showing up. Cloud had no idea what other abilities Chaos considered important for a person to have and wasn't sure he wanted to ask.


All of the above had combined to lead him to where he was now, helpless, delirious and incoherent as Mako seared through his veins and drove his body right up to the edge of what it could withstand.

Few people remember to consider that the brain is also part of the body, being in fact the physical framework for the mind. Cloud was unpleasantly aware of this as he experienced phantom pains, excruciatingly detailed hallucinations and disturbingly warped dreams. His perception of time was also distorted, as were his already superhuman kinaesthetic abilities and his ability to sense other Mako-enriched beings. The frankly insane heights the latter reached meant that by the end of his second day locked in delirium Cloud knew exactly how many SOLDIERs were on the Plate, where they all where and could have picked each one out of a line-up while deaf and blindfolded.

Fortunately for his sanity one of Chaos' failsafes kicked in early in the morning of the third day, sending the blond into a deep healing coma. When the SOLDIER finally awoke at the end of the week he felt better than he had in months and easily evaded the concerned medical staff trying to get him to lie down again as he went looking for Zack and a fight. He found his friend in the VR room and, after a fierce hug and responding to a barrage of questions, managed to persuade the first-class to spar with him.

Zack won the first two fights, but Cloud beat him twice more after he adjusted to his new limits.


More Cloud, specifically detailing his discovery of Hojo's interest in him and a more in-depth look at Mako enhancement and how it works.

Chaos loves it when people don't tell other people about things they really need to know. Keeping secrets is the best way to create disharmony and sow confusion.