Eigenvectors

Vincent was happy. Ridiculously, irrepressibly content. Since Cloud's sixteenth birthday two weeks previously there had been a lull in missions that had enabled her to spend serious quality time with both Sephiroth and Kunsel. With her son she had seized the opportunity to get to know him better and they had spent a few days eating takeout, chatting and laying to rest various issues that were inevitably surfacing now that Sephiroth was no longer stuck in survival mode. Hearing in greater detail about his desolate childhood made Vincent want to kill things, but Sephiroth's wellbeing was more important than her own coping strategies so she had comforted him to the best of her abilities, reassured him and helped him to accept that what he had suffered through was not his fault in the slightest. She didn't blame him for any of it and he should not shoulder responsibility for other people's choices.

Even more difficult to work through were her little dragon's memories of his first deployment to Wutai at fourteen. Now that the Silver General truly understood the profound differences between soldiers, warriors and civilians he felt terrible guilt for the part he had played in decimating entire provinces. Vincent had not let her baby boy withdraw into himself and suffer alone; instead she reminded him of circumstances and encouraged him to let go of the burden. His ignorance had not been his fault as he had been trained in a way somewhat equivalent to Wutai's ninjas, whose targets were individuals of all walks of life, rather than in a properly military fashion. She conceded however that he did now know better and suggested that, once he had forgiven himself, he could find a way to make amends. Of course nothing he did would restore the dead but he could find ways to assist those left behind. He might fund some of the rebuilding going on in Wutai, or perhaps find a way to sponsor the preservation of the recently-conquered nation's culture in order to counter the Company's efforts to crush even the memory of independence.

Her logical division of responsibility and guilt and her suggestions to counter it visibly comforted Sephiroth and the twenty-four-year-old was seriously considering her ideas to the point of doing further research into the subjugated nation's history and economy.

Equally heartening was Sephiroth's shift in how he addressed her: rather than the formal 'Valentine' he had previously favoured he now called her 'mother' almost exclusively, reverting to 'Vi' when in the presence of people who were unaware of the connection or in situations where he felt their relationship should not influence the decision or outcome discussed. He had picked up the diminutive nickname from Avro, as it was what those Turks that had known her best had called her. Avro had been the student of a now-dead colleague who had been close to her, a man she missed and that the blond bomber reminded her of.

Genesis and his siblings however had taken to calling her 'Vinnie', a ridiculous nickname that she nonetheless tolerated in the spirit of family feeling. Nero had made her laugh with his observation that it was equally acceptable a nickname for either gender, being a diminutive of Lavinia as much as Vincent. Having a family was the best thing that had ever happened to her.


Life with Kunsel was also proceeding swimmingly. They got on well, were comfortable with each-other and talked about pretty much anything with little difficulty. It was getting to the point that Draculina was considering taking the risk of revealing her true identity in order to deepen their relationship. They had been lovers for eighteen months now and Kunsel had even taken her to visit his mother. Shortly after that Draculina had informed her beloved of the true extent of her family tree and the identities of her various relatives, including her connections to the Generals. Her lover had cracked a joke about how glad he was that Sephiroth was the only one still around to threaten him and assured her that he didn't mind not being able to meet her 'parents'. Telling that lie twinged deep inside, but Vincent had plans in place that meant that soon she would be able to end the deception.

Vincent had been apoplectic with rage of learning that Hojo had used Cloud as a test subject and had with difficulty suppressed the urge –not exclusive to Galian Beast– to hunt him down and tear him limb from limb. She had channelled that wrathful energy into perfecting the final phase of the plan she had been working on since Nibelheim; her endgame.

By the new year Hojo would be both dead and so thoroughly discredited that her family would never be threatened ever again.


It was a true-blue Turk scheme, replete with bad-mouthing, rumour-mongering, subtle manipulation and the gradual release to relevant parties of documents that brought into question everything Hojo had ever achieved and aspired to: character assassination at its finest. Vincent wanted the psychotic scientist relegated to the garbage bin of history, utterly discredited and completely neutralised. She wanted him to be the laughingstock of the scientific community, considered a political liability and an economic disaster. With this in mind she had sponsored a variety of research at Junon University which now brought into question everything from the man's methods through the accuracy and reliability of his results down to the very premises on which his work was founded.

The effects of her investments were now making themselves felt: while Shin-Ra still touted him as head of its Science Department, in academic circles Hojo was now considered unreliable and both his methods and findings were being discredited, the effects of which were spreading slowly but inexorably. The pressure on Hojo was increasing daily as 'gremlin' activity instigated more and more mishaps and office rumour ran wild; there were even whispers that the President felt the man was becoming unstable. Soon Vincent would be able to murder the man who had torn her from her son and so tortured her only child and have his death written off as an accident in the lab. After his death the more controversial details of his experiments would be leaked to the press, encouraging the Company to publicly disavow all knowledge and discontinue all projects the mad scientist had been involved with. If they failed to do so, well Vincent had to hand everything she needed for a successful coup, just in case.

In fact, the only blot on the horizon was Chaos recent behaviour. He had been positively gleeful of late and disturbingly accommodating. He was even suppressing the influence of her inner monsters, which was so utterly out of character it was creepy. Vincent was waiting apprehensively for the other shoe to drop; for Chaos to be this biddable surely meant there was something coming that would completely upset the applecart, something that could not be prevented. She had tried to wheedle it out of him but the herald of OMEGA insisted that it was 'a surprise'.

Worse still was his claim that I was 'a nice surprise, little vessel.'

Truly, a sign of impending doom if ever there was one.


Can anybody guess what that 'nice suprise' might be? Oh, and Eigenvectors are a quantum thing, again.