Disclaimer: The characters and the setting are the property of Square Enix and the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.
Author's Note: And I am back, within a month! I kept on target. Hello, Zen speaking. First off, thank you so much for the favourites, follows and the reviews. I am quite astonished by how people seem so willing to try this idea and the reaction to it has been both overwhelming and fascinating!
This chapter was my first foray into Sephiroth's head. It certainly was interesting to write. There's a lot of conflict and confusion, but aren't the conflicted characters ever the most interesting? I also had immense fun writing Genesis and Cloud ribbing at each other, more fun than I thought I would, and although I wasn't planning on doing the final scene at all, I'm glad that I did. It turned out better than I expected.
Sometimes I wonder if the real reason Sephiroth burnt down Nibelheim was because he found out that Hojo was his father. I'd take an alien for a mother than Hojo for a father any day. Food for thought.
Anyway, without further ado, here's Chapter 4 of Ghost! Best, Zen :D
Hollander was shuffling cards after another round of Go Fish when the Turk woman's PHS hummed in her pocket. He gasped and dropped the deck.
"There's no need to be so nervous, Doctor." She shifted the shotgun into the crook of her arm and flashed teeth, all perfectly straight and pearly white. She set the PHS to her ear. "Hello, sir. Yes, I'm still with Doctor Hollander."
He stooped to collect the cards off the floor. He could feel her eyes burning into the back of his head like a laser sighting. The shotgun was still pointing at his chest.
"We've been playing cards, sir. It's been a little one-sided. I think he's letting me win. I can't imagine why," she complained, balancing her shotgun across her knees. "I think he's being a gentleman about it – Oh, wait, sorry, sir, could you say that again?"
Apparently she was still a fledgling Turk, because she couldn't quite hide the flicker of surprise that zigzagged over her face. "I'll pass the message on to Doctor Hollander, sir. Yes, sir, I'll be there as soon as I can."
She closed the call then looked at Hollander with a contemplative expression. "The President has made his decision, Doctor Hollander."
Already? Hollander wanted to weep.
"Oh. Has he?" He closed his eyes. "That was very fast - I mean, efficient! Yes! Very efficient. What does he say?"
"He has decided that the leak was an unfortunate incident caused by an outside force." She watched his face as if looking for a reason to believe otherwise. "There is therefore no need for you to take responsibility for it."
Hollander stood by his desk, holding the deck of cards, struck dumb into silence.
The Turk sighed and packed away her shotgun. He watched it disappear, pipe by pipe, tucked into the velvet of the trombone case, cold dark metal vanishing from sight when she shut the lid, clasps clicking – one, then the other - and slowly, ever so slowly, he finally began to understand.
"Am I…," he tried to swallow, but swallowed nothing. His mouth was bone dry. "Am I still employed by the Company?"
"For the time being at any rate," the Turk said sweetly, as she hefted the trombone case up to her shoulder. "A secretary from the President is on his way to finalise the details."
A sharp knock sounded at the door. Hollander jumped and cursed himself for being so nervous.
The Turk laughed. She held out her hand. "May I have my cards back, Doctor Hollander? I have somewhere else that I need to get to."
"Yes, of course." Gathering up her playing cards into a sticky pile, he slid them into their box and all but thrust the pack into her face.
The Turk smiled and tucked the pack away into a coat pocket. She shifted the case on her back. The shotgun clunked inside. "Thank you for keeping me company, Doctor Hollander. We should play Go Fish again sometime, except next time, don't let me win."
Hollander gave her only a strained smile in response. He never wanted to see this Turk again.
She bobbed her head in a jaunty little bow, then slipped out of the room. At the same time as she left, Bingsleydale came in.
"Ah, Doctor Hollander," Bingsleydale pursed his lips and riffled through the sheets of paper in his hands, "I am here to congratulate you on the President's behalf."
Hollander wrung his hands. "I am only too grateful to the President's mercy."
Bingsleydale gave him an odd look, before mouthing a wispy 'Oh' of understanding. "Ah, yes! The results of the inquiry. Grateful, indeed, quite so! As you should be! But I was in fact referring," he held out a letter in fine, crisp black print, "to your promotion. As of this moment, you are now the Head of the Department of Science."
"The Head of the…" Hollander's breath caught in his throat. He stared at Bingsleydale, half-expecting him to dissolve in a puff of gunsmoke and prove that this was all one wild, final desperate dream. He spluttered, "But, Professor Hojo – "
"Professor Hojo has had an unfortunate accident and is sadly no longer with us." Bingsleydale pushed his glasses up his nose. "The circumstances were quite tragic. There is no need for me to go into them in any detail, I'm sure you will find out soon enough, but the President has requested your immediate promotion to the post. He has acknowledged your ambitions, and, although the initial methods with which you intended to bring them into fruition were questionable," Bingsleydale gave Hollander a look of very cool disapproval, "the President respects ambition. To pursue ambition ruthlessly is a characteristic much desired in a Shinra Company man. He hopes that the lengths to which you were prepared to go to attain your desired position will be reflected in future efforts and the production of useful results. Congratulations are in order."
If this was all just a wonderful dream before he died, a parade of all the possibilities that had never been realised, Hollander didn't care. He grasped hold of the offered hope as if he had been dropped a life hoop and let joy buoy him up.
He took the letter from Bingsleydale. The paper was heavy – far better quality than what Hollander was used to. "I shall endeavour to live up to the President's expectations."
"That would be wise, Doctor Hollander," said Bingsleydale, as Hollander searched for a pen with which to sign his acceptance of the Department leadership. "The President may have forgiven you this time, but - "
He never forgets.
He let Hollander fill in the silence for himself. Hollander knew why he was being promoted. They needed his knowledge, his long expertise handling Jenova cells, his proven record at being ready and willing to, when Shinra called upon him to do so, experiment on 'difficult' subjects, and keep his silence concerning the underbelly of Shinra that most were fortunate enough never to see or be part of.
Bingsleydale coughed into a handkerchief. "You were very lucky, Doctor Hollander."
"Oh, extraordinarily so." Hollander tried to scan through the letter, but Bingsleydale's humourless gaze was putting him off. He attempted a joke. "Perhaps there is some god or lucky star watching over me after all."
"And so long as you are part of this Company, that 'god or lucky star', as you so call it, is our President, Doctor Hollander," Bingsleydale reminded him softly. "You would do well to remember it."
Genesis strode into the Soldier Common Room and found it, as typical of when word got ahead that he was in a mood more unpredictable than Midgar rainfall, almost empty, save for the few slower-on-the-uptake Thirds stumbling to get out of the doors at the other side of the room and two Seconds, who, for some reason of their own, hadn't fled.
Perhaps Angeal was right, thought Genesis, as he approached the cluster of sofas the Soldiers had pushed towards the bay window. Maybe instincts for self-preservation really did dull with mako dosage. Genesis had flung open the doors. He was striding. He was tapping his fingers on the guard of his blade. Any one of these cues should have been warning enough for these Seconds to jump and make excuses to leave.
Then again, one of the two Seconds was Zack Fair, doing squat after squat by the bay window as if demonstrating squatting to the whole of Midgar, and Angeal's comment about self-preservation and mako dosage had been made specifically with Zack Fair in mind.
"You two." He snapped his fingers at Zack and his friend who was polishing his broadsword on the sofa. Wearing his helmet indoors (and tolerating Zack Fair's company), it was almost certainly Kunsel. "I need you to come with me. Now."
"Well, we'd love to, sir," said Zack, straightening from a squat, "but we had an order from the Turks for the two of us to stay put here. Something about asking some questions about this trouble we had earlier today with the VR room door…er…Don't know if you've heard, Genesis, but the whole building's carded doors have been going crazy today - "
"I think you'll find that I am well aware of the door situation, and am probably more up to date with the latest of said situation than you are, and before you think you've gotten away with it, Zack Fair, you and I are not on first name terms and I would appreciate it if you remember that. Now," Genesis paced behind the sofa with slow, measured steps, "here's how it goes. You did not receive an order from the Turks. There is no such thing as an order from the Turks. This is because the Turks make requests. They do not make orders to Second Class Soldiers. However, Zack Fair, who, on the other hand, does make orders to Second Class Soldiers?"
Zack's eyes twinkled. "Director Lazard?"
"I do, you broom-haired ape." Rapier slid out of its sheath with a soft, rattlesnake hiss. "And I am ordering the two of you to come with me, right now, if you value the un-chargrilled state of whichever organ you value most."
"Yes, sir, right away, sir. Turks requests duly overridden, sir." Kunsel pushed the jar of communal sword polish under the coffee table and leapt to his feet, sliding his broadsword over his back.
"So, where are we going?" Zack asked as they moved towards the doors. "Gen - I mean, Sir?"
"Floor Sixty Eight," Genesis flexed his fingers on the hilt of his Rapier and hoped that neither of the Seconds thought to look below his irritation to see how unsettled he was underneath. "Let's just say that our dear Professor has been having some trouble with his doors, and the things that they were supposed to be holding in."
"When you said 'trouble'," Zack stared at the sight of the rank upon rank of troopers from the Security Department lined up outside of the doors of Laboratory 681, bristling with tranquilisers and riot shields whilst a small team focused on cutting through the steel seal, "just how much trouble did you mean by 'trouble'?"
"First Class Rhapsodos!" cried a trooper. Genesis didn't both pinpointing which. All that mattered was that the ranks then parted like a field of corn to let through an, as always, impeccably dressed Tseng.
"First Class Rhapsodos," Tseng acknowledged him then raised his voice to be heard above the whine of the drill. "I trust you know what to do, although, Second Class Fair and Kunsel, I was under the impression that these two were waiting to be interviewed by my colleagues?"
"And I was under the impression, Tseng, that my judgement as to which of our Soldiers I brought for a monster disposal task was to be unquestioned and respected," Genesis snapped, clicking his tongue against his teeth. "You can interview them later. This task is simple enough. It shouldn't take long."
Tseng dipped in his head in a bow. "I apologise. I had no intention of causing offence."
"Wait, this is Hojo's lab, right?" Zack asked suddenly, glancing about the hallway as if expecting the man to pop up from the shadow of a trooper. "What's happened to that old creep? Isn't this usually the part where he shows up and threatens us from touching his instruments?"
Zack was right. Hojo usually ensured his presence at the start of a monster clean-up to whine and complain about how delicate and irreplaceable the equipment and samples in his laboratories were, and insist that on no account were the Soldiers to damage them if they didn't want the costs for their replacement coming out of their salaries.
Genesis raised his eyebrows, looked to Tseng for answers. "Well? Is Hojo going to grace us with his presence or is there something that you have yet to tell us?"
"Did Director Lazard not give you the full details?"
"Lazard only mentioned an accident."
"Yes, I suppose that is understandable. At the time we contacted Lazard we had yet to identify which of our personnel were inside the laboratory along with the monster. Since then, however, we have become better informed." Tseng cleared his throat, his expression remained professionally inscrutable. "Professor Hojo is dead."
"Dead?" Zack exclaimed. "Seriously? That man was human enough to die?"
"He was trapped in the laboratory with the escaped monster. It killed him along with seven of his staff," said Tseng, pursing his lips in distaste, although just what exactly he found distasteful was anybody's guess – in all likelihood, it was probably more to do with the fact the Professor had gotten himself killed on Shinra premises and the subsequent paperwork he was going to have to deal with.
A cold thrill rippled down Genesis's spine. He started, looked up and around the corridor.
He was being watched. He could feel it: Eyes, not so much on the back of his neck, or on his back, or even his face, but simply there, like a thought at the back of his mind, a thought that had been there for weeks and hadn't been noticed simply because Genesis hadn't thought to look.
He remembered how the Stranger had known about Tseng and Genesis's laptop. The Stranger had been watching him then and he was watching Genesis now.
Was the Stranger here? He ran his eyes over the crowd of troopers, the red uniformed sergeants tucked towards the back. They flinched under his gaze. Was he one of them? Was he one of these helmeted masses, hiding in plain sight whilst the Turks scoured the computers for trace of him?
Genesis didn't allow himself to linger. He looked away and decided to bask in the feeling of being watched and appraised with something other than witless awe. He couldn't deny that he loved a spotlight, and if the Stranger was watching now, that meant only one thing: Genesis's suspicions were correct. The Stranger had made his move.
The corners of his lips twitched up in a smile. The moment he had received Lazard's order to deal with another escaped monster in Hojo's laboratories, he had suspected that something was going on. There had been nothing in Lazard's message to suggest that this would be any more than the routine monster capture-and-kill, but the timing of it – only hours after Genesis had goaded the Stranger to do something - shouted otherwise, and after setting the Turks on him, it wasn't so hard to imagine that he would do something especially drastic in an attempt to distract them, such as arranging the death of a prized department head.
But to think that Hojo had been killed!
Has this happened because I went after Hollander? He twisted his fingers on Rapier's hilt, surveying the troopers, searching for a sign, any sign that one of them was different, was more than one of the Shinra flock. Am I being punished?
A small part of him observed that if he was, he probably deserved it. After all, he hadn't been too subtle about setting the Turks on the Stranger, but as far as Genesis was concerned if the Stranger couldn't handle a few Turks, he wasn't anybody worth knowing. Besides, another part of Genesis had sincerely meant it as a bit of fun. If he hadn't thought the Stranger could take a little Turk investigation into his stride, Genesis would never have done it.
Quite on the contrary to being punished, Genesis felt utterly ecstatic: There was something subversive to Shinra's interests happening right under Shinra's very nose, and in being party to the Stranger's existence, he was a part of it too.
And Hojo had been killed – which was, admittedly, going to interfere with cold, dark, lonely and shameful death he had been hoping for Hollander, but there was always something wonderfully fresh about the first blood spilt - the first bright splash of red - and Genesis loved the colour red.
He couldn't take his eyes off red, especially with the tantalising promise of more red to come.
There is no hate, only joy. His blood sang in his ears. "I didn't think that rat bastard of a Professor had it in him to die."
"No kidding," said Zack reverently, "I thought that if a monster ever took a chunk out of Hojo, it would die."
Amusement flickered in Tseng's eyes then vanished, like all things inconvenient to the Turks somehow always did. He cleared his throat. "We will be working to retrieve the bodies whilst you three deal with the animal."
"Fine, fine, we'll get to work then."
Genesis stepped up to the door, scattering the team of troopers with their drills and saws, and raised his blade. He readied to bring it down on the steel, when his shoulder throbbed and he almost let go of his sword.
It felt as if the degradation was seeping into his bone, eating into it and making it soft. He covered up the shudder that went through him head to toe by smoothing out the creases in his coat, and lowered Rapier in a grandiose blade-sweep towards the door. "Up, Second Class Zack Fair!"
"What?" Zack stared as if Genesis had just ordered him to fly. When the penny dropped and neurons fired, connecting dots at last, Genesis inwardly cheered. "Oh, right!"
Hauling the broadsword off his back, Zack moved forward, slashed at the seal three times, scouring along the line the troopers had already put in place. Steel shrieked against steel, sparks jumped from edge of the blade, and then a vague rectangle of steel fell into the laboratory to land, not with a clank, but a soft, muffled squelch.
The troopers closed in behind the Seconds with their shields raised.
The smell of blood - cloying, thick, sharply mineral - wafted out of the opening. They could hear water gushing from a spout somewhere. Perhaps a lab bench tap or pipe had been broken in the monster's attack. To the Soldier's more sensitive ears, there was also a deeply contented purring echoing from the depths of the room, accompanied by the rasp of a long tongue and the grating of teeth on bone.
"No need to dawdle in the doorway." Genesis pushed past Zack to step through the makeshift opening. He stepped lightly around the sheet of metal. "Come along. Chop-chop, Seconds."
Zack and Kunsel followed him two steps behind, skirting around the panel of steel and the tangle of arms, legs and stiffening folds of bloodied lab-coat protruding from underneath it, ignoring the way the floor clung to the soles of their boots.
The monster didn't approach them. It didn't even respond to their entrance. It was, however, easy enough to find. All Genesis had to do was follow a trail of luminous pink and blue handprints, shattered brown glass and blood smeared across the crumpled lab benches to the far corner of the room, where the monster had retreated under a giant fume cupboard to enjoy its prize.
Black VIII was curled up quite comfortably in its shelter, grasping a lab-coated body between its strange hand-like paws like a ragdoll and gnawing at its face. What little remained of Hojo's head was a chewed up mass of red, ivory and pinkish grey, but there was no doubt that it was him: The build, the shoes, the meticulously set line of pens in his breast pocket, those long-fingered hands with their mako injection calluses, and there was a stringy bundle of black hair hanging out of the corner of the monster's mouth.
In a moment of disgusted fascination, Genesis thought it a great shame that nobody had a camera on them.
As Tseng started directing the troopers to move in and shift the bodies of the scientists out of the room, Black VIII paused and raised its muzzle, still holding Hojo's head firmly between its teeth.
"You know, from this angle," Zack narrowed his eyes at the monster and the monster glowered back, "it kind of looks my old second cousin twice-removed Zekiel. Gods, I haven't seen him in years. If I just squint a bit – "
Genesis strode between the lab benches, swinging Rapier in one hand in an easy, fluid figure-of-eight pattern. Honestly, it didn't even have the manners or the brains to respond to a Soldier First Class as a real threat. It was almost as unforgivably arrogant as the Midgar Zolom. Its stupidity justified its punishment.
It watched him approach with glowing, bright green eyes and made to shuffle backwards under the fume cupboard when it met Genesis's gaze.
It froze.
At last it had recognised the superior predator.
Behind Genesis, shoes scuffed and fingers gripped leather. Zack and Kunsel had crouched and readied their swords. The troopers had finally finished lifting the steel panel from the floor. Now they were busy cramming the bodies into bags, limb by limb, zipping them up.
The feelers around Black VIII's neck extended, contracted, extended again like restless fingers looking for a throat to throttle. Slowly collecting its six legs beneath its body, it rose, haunches first, eyes fixed on Genesis, with its mouth clamped around Hojo's crumpled head.
It growled low in its throat.
"Don't you growl at me with your mouth full." Genesis pointed the tip of his blade at its forehead, or at least the section of its scalp between its two longest of feelers. "Spit. It. Out."
It shot him an ugly, thoroughly unapologetic look then to the astonishment of both Zack and Kunsel spat out Hojo's head and something that glinted under the lights.
Hojo's glasses bounced once, twice, and came to rest with a clink at Genesis's boots.
Then in a move that really wasn't so astonishing at all, Black VIII lashed its tail and surged up from under the fume cupboard.
To those who were looking on it seemed as though Genesis didn't move at all. One moment, the great black monster was up in the air, all teeth and muscles and rolling green eyes. The next it was collapsed in a twitching heap, steel driven through the back of its neck and pinned to the floor, where it exhaled one last time in a long, wet, gurgling sigh, and Genesis was flicking stray monster fur off his coat.
In the stunned silence that followed, Black VIII began to dissolve into a cloud of fine green light.
"Well, that was quick." Zack sounded more than a little disappointed. "Hey, Genesis, did you even need us here?"
"I don't know, Zack Fair. Do you feel needed?" Genesis smoothed his hair from his face then shot Zack a glower that ought to have melted him on the spot. "And how big a drill would I need to find in order to bore it into your head that, however chummy you may be with Angeal, we are noton first name terms?"
With Zack suitably distracted by a sniggering Kunsel, Genesis breathed an inward sigh of relief. He was hardly going to admit that Lazard had forced him take back-up against one monster because of 'Genesis's health reasons'.
He was disappointed with himself. A spot of the monster's blood had landed on his boots, dammit!
But as he went to retrieve his blade from the body of the vaporising monster, pulled it free from its spine and rolled its weight off Hojo's mangled body that disappointment started to lose its grip, and in its place, was a curious combination of something like stage fright and the thrill of being trapped in a storm, that feeling of being part of something bigger than others were aware of, of being on a stage and knowing that he had been cast in a speaking role, and bubbling up from depths he hadn't known still existed a sudden, nervous agitation that could almost have been the tiniest flicker of fear.
Because Genesis knew about the Stranger, didn't he? He knew about his existence, and if the Stranger could bring about Hojo's death with his mysterious ways, and do it, with the weight of the other seven staff on his conscience (such insignificant men, Genesis had no doubt that they were collateral damage), what was to stop him doing it again and finding a way to remove Genesis too?
And then Genesis found he was laughing, his head tipped back, his shoulders shaking, his hands on his hips, and he was laughing loud and long in a ringing silence as the troopers and Turks paused in their activities to watch him.
He was laughing because he had a new reason to be afraid, not the reason of a monster - afraid of his mutating body and that thing twitching and sliding under the skin of his back like a bat buried under his shoulder blade - but the incredibly human reason of having his perhaps his life under threat, and, to feel that now when any claim to being human seemed to be slipping from him day by day, wasn't all that so funny?
The Stranger had performed.
He sheathed his Rapier and to the mesmerised shock of all those watching, started clapping his hands.
"Bravo!" he laughed, as the last of Black VIII started to fade away. "Bravissimo!"
Genesis hadn't felt this moved by a performance in a long time.
"Guys, it's alright," he heard Zack say in the background, apparently soothing the nerves of the troopers in the platoon that, no, one of their elite Soldiers had not just swandived laughing off the deep end. "Angeal says he's always like this. He's just theatrical."
Cloud had never claimed to be a tactical genius, and frankly he had never wanted to. It smacked too much of Sephiroth and the last thing he wanted to do, after fighting to prove that he wasn't a Sephiroth clone, was to try to think like him.
Of those he considered his friends the only one who could possibly claim that title was Vincent. When the mood took him (or when Cid, or Denzel, who had caught the bug from Cid, was being especially persuasive for a game), Vincent could out-chess a chess board, but on the whole he seemed to prefer deferring to whatever 'charge into the fray with guns blazing' idea Avalanche had come up with next, occasionally supplying a warning or pointing out potential problems and deftly guiding them along as they went.
Perhaps it was one of Vincent's ways of rejecting what Shinra had made of him. Maybe thinking of people in terms of pieces to manoeuvre and costs and losses reminded him too much of his times as a Turk and where his loyalties, that in the end had caused him so much pain, had once lain. Cloud had never asked, and now, sent back in time to this barely familiar world, he would never know.
The point was, Cloud was more than aware that he was a little out of his depth when it came to strategy. If he made a miscalculation, nobody would have been less surprised.
For one thing, he had hoped that Hojo's death would distract the Turks from their scan of the Shinra mainframe. The creeping program with its crackling and snapping searching fingers, however, was still advancing file by file, working methodically through the system.
A program was a program, but the people using it and analysing its results were people (yes, Cloud had conceded that Turks were people too). Surely such a dramatic accident involving the death of Shinra's most preeminent (and despised) scientist would have turned their heads and got them up and running from their desks? But, no, the Turks were professionals, and worse, he could tell from the messages they had sent each other that they suspected that this was a targeted incident. After all, doors had been locking and unlocking erratically throughout the afternoon, but only in this one particular case had it resulted in anything serious, such as death.
Multiple deaths, he reminded himself. An echo of guilt shot through him like a bullet. Seven deaths – all Hojo's staff. He hadn't planned on those. He'd closed the laboratory doors, and he had been so focussed on making sure that Hojo died he hadn't even stopped to think, but it had been necessary, hadn't it? He had to do something, and he hadn't had time to wait for them all to get out. That was right, wasn't it? There hadn't been any time, had there?
He slapped down on the voice that insisted that there had been time and gave himself a furious metaphysical shake.
Those seven deaths were all Hojo's people. They had Hojo's thoughts in their brains, Hojo's words in their ears, held the scalpels and needles for Hojo in their hands, and at some point over the next five years, no doubt more than a few of them would have found their way into an underground laboratory in Nibelheim to 'practice their skills' on two newly captured 'specimens'.
As he watched Zack, who was so alive, so bright, who looked so much younger than he remembered, cut his way into the laboratory, Cloud decided that those seven deaths were collateral damage that weren't worth the time or burden of regretting.
Sorry, Tifa, but I'm just not as good a man as I guess you wanted me to be.
But after the first report of the laboratory accident had gone through, via maintenance, via security, via a whole network of electrical signals and automatic protocols, the Turk scanning activity didn't slowed down at all. If anything, it sped up and seemed to rush towards the card access system like a locust swarm, tearing through the files as if stripping them bare for any traces that Cloud might have left behind.
At least his attempt at a distraction hadn't completely failed, he noted, as the probe scoured through where he had last been with a savage efficiency that made him more than a little concerned. The Turks' attention had been directed towards the card access system, and that had bought him some time. A soft but insistent little voice was telling him that he should probably be feeling far more worried that he was at the current, but honestly, what could Turks do if they did find him? And what would they find? What would they call him, or classify him, if they could classify him at all? Cloud was almost curious to know.
(Because was he still human?)
There was a prod at his awareness - a chime in his non-existent ears - and a message from the Shinra Instant Messaging Service dropped into his space to bob like a message in a bottle.
Hello, stranger, Cloud felt as if he had been struck on the head with a water balloon, how are you this fine evening?
No, Genesis, Cloud was not in any mood to do any more entertaining today. He was tempted to ignore him when he saw on the CCTV footage just where exactly Genesis was messaging him from: In one of the glass elevators. With Lazard standing directly beside him.
Cloud wanted to bury his head in his hands. He had no time for Genesis's games! How could he tell Genesis to just shut up and leave him in peace to deal with the Turks in as pointed a way as possible without Lazard noticing, but, in the same breath, find out what Genesis wanted?
Don't you have better company to be spending time with than messaging me?
He saw Genesis grin at his PHS in the elevator and start typing back. Lazard had turned to look out of the glass window at Midgar below. Why would I want to chat with all these boring old Shinra farts when I could talk to you? Anyway, some of them have certain quaint and gentlemanly principles that they won't cross, like looking over the shoulders of a degrading Soldier whilst he's sending sweet nothings to a concerned girlfriend.
In a flash of unwanted inspiration, Cloud realised who Genesis reminded him of.
Genesis reminded him of Yuffie.
Albeit a Yuffie with the vocabulary of a drama library, an obsession with red that was screaming for a psychoanalyst's attention, and the airs and graces instilled from an unhealthy mixture of both inferiority and superiority complex in the face of growing up with Sephiroth, but Cloud could see it now (even if he didn't want to): Genesis was a closet Yuffie.
The thought was only slightly less surreal than waking up in Cait Sith in the year 2000.
I just wanted to offer my congratulations, came the next message, just as Lazard turned around from the window and came within possible eye-line of Genesis's PHS screen. It was a fantastic show. Everybody's talking about it. I was so glad that I got front row seats. I couldn't have asked for a better view.
The lift came to a stop at the Soldier Administration floor. With a parting nod to Genesis, Lazard got off, and Genesis continued down the building alone.
Lazard tells me that Hollander is staying on, Genesis's expression on the camera was unreadable, and he's getting a promotion as well – Head of Department, no less. Presumably this all suits your agenda, but it has interfered with my revenge.
Do you want compensation? Cloud retorted, but he was forcing an image of Yuffie, stamping her feet and demanding some shiny new materia after Cloud had stopped her wandering somewhere dangerous, to the back of his mind and he couldn't bring himself to feel angry.
No. Genesis chuckled in the lift. Like I've said, Stranger, you've entertained me. I'll let it pass just this once. I think I'd rather have you in my debt, owing me a favour. A very big favour, in fact – I am, after all, passing up the opportunity to see Hollander shamed and shot and tossed over the edge of the Plate.
Alright, I'll let you keep your Knights of the Round! But just you wait! When Yuffie Kisaragi kicks your ass next time, you'd better have even prettier materia than that! Because you owe me big-time for my mercy, Cloud! Bow before the merciful White Rose of Wutai!
Sometimes, the state of Cloud's mind was a marvel even to himself. Here he was, almost surrounded by the frosty rime of a Turk scan, and whilst a quarter of his consciousness was occupied with working out how to camouflage or cloak himself against them, because there really was nowhere to run, the other half was contemplating a truly unhelpful comparison that was making him envisage Genesis with an inner Yuffie dancing gleefully inside him.
The lift doors opened. A couple of troopers walked in, spotted Genesis, then hastily about-turned and marched out.
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. The lift continued to descend down the side of Shinra Tower. Good luck! My regards to the Turks!
Bastard! Cloud fired back and was about to add some more choice words from the Dictionary of Cid to it, but Genesis had already closed his PHS and stepped off onto the Soldier recreational floor, leaving Cloud to fume alone in the mainframe.
He watched Genesis saunter along to the Common Room. The man was humming. Unbelievable.
Whatever the case, Genesis wasn't the issue at the moment. Cloud had more pressing concerns at hand – namely how to evade the Turk scan that had unravelled itself from the card access system and spread out into the rest of the mainframe again, less like a frost and more like a particularly aggressive mould.
He studied the code the Turk's scanning software. On close inspection, it shared a lot of similarities to the Turk surveillance nets that combed through the Company's e-mails. Maybe one of the cloaks that Cloud had cobbled together from looking at Lazard's surveillance bypass could do the trick. If he could take the general cloaking principle, and then maybe camouflage himself in extracts of data he had already seen the Turk scan ignore –
Yes, he could do this. Cloud could hide from the Turks. All he had to do was pretend he was a part of a system it had already scanned, wrapping himself in a cloak that mimicked data from elsewhere, but he would have to be quick about it, because those long searching fingers were turning his way...
A keyboard tap, a casual scroll down on the mouse. Faces stared at screens. Blue white light glowed on their noses, chins and foreheads.
The offices of the Department of Administrative Research were largely empty in the evenings. Mostly this was because the Turks out on their various 'day trips' doing 'research' 'adiminstratively' had yet to return. On any other day, Tseng would have considered the near empty state of the office with pride. Let it never be said that a Turk didn't earn his pay-check. The Turks did their work with an efficiency the other departments couldn't even dare to dream about, but today, as the few Turks in the building strained to cover both the mainframe scan and the interviews with those who had been involved in the card access door incidents before Hojo's lab incident, Tseng found himself drumming his fingers and glaring at the empty chairs and desks.
A soft 'ding!' of completion.
"Sir?" Tseng looked up from his report. One of the Turks in the group running the system-wide scan had raised his hand for his attention. "The scan's finished."
He set down his pen. "Did it find anything?"
"No, sir. The scan found nothing at all. Everything's clear."
A light feeling of relief trickled through him, but Tseng forced it away and refused to succumb. He wanted to believe that everything was clear, he really did. What with three assassination plots on the President to be foiled, two stolen Shinra cargo vehicles that needed to be tracked down, and a scandal of some kind involving the CEO of a small mako batteries company to be arranged, Tseng had his plate very full at the moment. He wanted to have this potential cyber-breach done and dealt with as quickly as possible.
But there was no weapon a Turk had in his armoury that was sharper and more trusted than his suspicions. A paranoid Turk was a Turk that survived and stayed on the employment record (in terms of off-the-record 'employment', it used to be said that Hojo could think of ways of employing people and their internal organs that those people hadn't even been aware they could be employed for).
"What exactly do you mean by 'everything's clear'?"
"No breaches in security, sir. No backdoors that shouldn't be there, no traces of entries or exits," listed the Turk, scrolling through his screen, "and no signs of any manipulation through an external terminal or internal terminal. Nobody's been hacking into the card access systems, sir."
Nothing at all. It would almost have been less suspicious if there had been something. Tseng returned to his report. "Check for system anomalies on the day of the Project G final leak. If there is anything unusual, let me know."
"Yes, sir."
Two hours of ticking clocks, sighs and frustrated growls of fruitless searching later, Tseng had almost finished his report summarising the day's activities, when one of the Turks at the monitors raised her voice. "Sir?"
"Yes?"
"It isn't a security breach as such," she said, "but there is something from the day of the file leak - a temporary dip in the data volume of the whole system. It's," she frowned at her monitor, "quite a large flux actually. It's like a piece of the system just moved out and then came back into it. The outward going data came from unspecific mainframe content, but the returning data flux did come from Doctor Hollander's personal laptop."
Spontaneous data fluxes in the Shinra computer system? Tseng didn't believe a word of it. More to the point, he didn't believe in spontaneity. Every effect had a cause if investigated rigorously enough and he was certain that this case would be no different from the rest. "Can we run a search for similar fluxes within the past two months?"
"I've found one, sir," another Turk at the monitors had apparently already anticipated Tseng's 'request' and started searching even as his partner had been speaking, "a massive data influx on 20th August. A big one. After that the changes in data volume are negligible at best, generally constant until the day of the file leak. The August influx wasn't registered as a security breach because it was considered benign. It came from a terminal that was within the Shinra network and the data didn't contain any of the usual expected signatures of a viral program."
20th August – Tseng fished through his memory. The date rang bells, which meant that it was likely he had had to file a report for some unexpected incident that had occurred in the building that day.
The day of the Tower blackout, he remembered. An interesting coincidence.
Except Tseng believed in coincidences hardly any more than he believed in spontaneity.
"Which Shinra terminal was the source of this data influx?"
There was a pause as the Turk checked his results. "Mr Reeve Tuesti's in the Department of Urban Development and Infrastructure, sir."
Autumn in Wutai was a good time for war. The days were clear and dry, the nights were free of biting insects, the chill of winter had yet to set, and the Wutai locals didn't have the advantage of centuries of acclimatisation on their side. Sephiroth remembered Wutai summers as an endless sticky haze of rainfall, heat, and mud warm as viscera, and the bitter taste of mosquitoes and other biting, itching, flying things every time he opened his mouth.
Campaigning in autumn was a marked improvement and this time the war would end. It was a strange inexplicable certainty, but he could feel it, like a slowing of the wind, a worn-thin tiredness, or a shredded flag. He knew he was right. He was a thing born to fight and win battles, and he knew how and when to do it in the same way a bird knew how to fly.
The feeling both elated him and left him feeling hollow. He would be lying if he said that he didn't enjoy it. Victory was something to be savoured and the hard road to it was sweeter still, but one more victory was one more victory, and one more for Hojo to prove that his Sephiroth was Shinra's perfect Soldier. Hojo won every time Sephiroth did and the thought snagged like a thorn in the foot.
His Sephiroth. He hated that possessive. Hojo never dared use it in front of him, but Sephiroth was a good observer. He knew the look people gave to things they thought they owned and when Hojo spoke his name, he could hear it in its very absence, as if the man was itching to say it and he hated it all the more, because Hojo didn't even need to speak aloud anymore for Sephiroth to know that Shinra Company owned him.
It had brought some comfort once, to know that he could hate like that. If Sephiroth could hate, then he wasn't just a threat ShinRa could set on its enemies, a weapon or a Company asset. It made him feel human, something which, admittedly, wouldn't have concerned him so much if he wasn't so sure that, for a reason he had yet to be privy to, it was the opposite to what Hojo wanted him to feel. Knowing the man, Hojo probably didn't want him to feel at all.
He didn't hate Hojo. The little man, as Angeal had once said, simply wasn't worth it and Sephiroth had agreed. Instead, he resented.
He resented the Professor for how much the man knew about him, how he seemed know more about Sephiroth than Sephiroth himself, and refused him even the simplest answers. He resented how the man had known his mother, Jenova, and never told him more than her first name.
He resented how all evidence Sephiroth had ever gathered when he tried to uncover what Hojo was hiding indicated that Hojo had not only overseen his whole development whilst at Shinra, but raised and perhaps named him.
He resented that the man might very possibly be his father, and all the hints Hojo dropped during examinations suggested that the Professor enjoyed the feeling of power he got from keeping Sephiroth in uncertainty, even when all the paperwork pointed straight to him and no other.
He resented the burning self-loathing that came with the thought that he could be Hojo'sson. He resented then the woman who had embraced the Professor and left Sephiroth behind to face him alone, and then he loathed himself even more for resenting a blameless woman who he had never even known, because if he had been in her position, he probably would have run away from Hojo too.
But Hojo guarded his secrets more jealously than a dragon guarded its hoard. Hojo knew that whilst he still held the cards to his chest, there would always be some piece of Sephiroth under his control. Those secrets he hid behind his knowing cackles and glinting glasses, but one day, Sephiroth vowed, he would know them all. Then he could dispose of the man at his leisure.
Knowledge was power and ignorance the strongest of tranquilisers. The battlefield solution to that would have been to interrogate Hojo at sword-point.
He had tried it once. He had been sixteen. He had taken up his Masamune before his examination had started, set the tip under Hojo's chin, and demanded all the answers like only a teenager could: Why did nobody else have to do all of the tests that he did? Why didn't he have a surname like Genesis or Angeal? Where did he come from? Who was he? What was his purpose?
At that time, he had been training with a troop of Soldier Thirds and tentatively fumbling through a friendly rivalry and friendship with Genesis and Angeal. The morning after that examination session, Genesis, Angeal and every Third of Sephiroth's troop were carried shaking and trembling into the infirmary, suffering from a sudden, spontaneous, and almost lethal, bodily mako destabilisation.
It was blamed on a recent mako injection nurse's poor technique. How lucky for them all that Hojo was at hand to save the day!
Sephiroth had never forgotten. He hated and he resented. He kept his friendships few and his thoughts to himself.
Of course, there was no way of knowing if the way he felt was any different from other humans and Soldiers. From the reactions of those around him in his early Soldier days (before they started brushing off his oddities as simply 'being Sephiroth'), he had a dim feeling that he probably didn't respond correctly to most of the common social cues and even less often to emotional ones.
People were perplexing. Within Soldier he could observe how an individual fought and strategized, which weapons they preferred, what times of day they were most active, and he could interact with them perfectly within the boundaries of professional behaviour and battlefield camaraderie. Outside of Shinra and Soldier, however, sometimes it wasn't much different from walking through the Wutai forests and watching the wild apes.
But for now he considered the look in the Wutai warrior's eyes, the burst of hate and anger, the shadow of despair, the dull resignation of death, watched it all bleed away like the blood seeping into the soil, and lowered his blade.
The man slid down Masamune to fall into the long green grass. Sephiroth flicked away the blood. "What was he saying at the end?"
"Sir," the Third he had brought with him to act as the prisoner's interpreter seemed afraid to continue, "he was…er…he said…"
"As exact a translation as possible, if you please."
The Third took a deep breath. "He said that he prayed to the Leviathan and all the spirits of the seas that the Silver Demon – er…that's you, sir –" Sephiroth waved on the Third to continue. " - would never know that which he most needed to know. It's a curse, sir, a traditional one." When Sephiroth said nothing in response, the Third started to babble. "I wouldn't think too much of it, sir. That was a very literal translation. Some people say it means you'll never know love, or joy, or friendship, it depends on the interpretation, but it's just words, sir."
Sephiroth wiped the remaining blood off the sword with a handful of grass. "Anything else?"
The Third gave him a nervous grin. Sephiroth wondered when it was that nervous grins became the only kind of grins he saw on his officers within a certain distance of him. "He apologised to his dear wife that he couldn't make a present of your hair to her, so that she could weave it into a fire-proof blanket. Not my words, sir!"
Sephiroth snorted. He straightened from the crouch he had sank down into to clean the whole length of the seven foot blade. Taking that as their cue, two troopers moved out of the shadows of the tree-line to collect up the prisoner's body. They would be exchanging it for bodies of their own dead later.
Striding out from the glade, Masamune in hand, Sephiroth returned to the main part of the camp with the interpreter Third and two troopers carrying the body close behind him. Word that Sephiroth had finished his interrogation travelled quickly and soon a Soldier Second came running up towards him.
"Sir! The weekly bulletin from Midgar is in the Communications Tent."
"It can wait."
"First Class Hewley says that you ought to see it, sir."
Sephiroth was surprised. Angeal wasn't usually the kind to make trivial demands of him. After a moment of thought he gave the Second a short nod. "I see. Thank you."
The Second clicked his heels in a salute and sped away in the direction of the mess tent. Sephiroth dismissed the Third and the troopers and turned towards Communications.
Ducking through a canvas flap brought him into the midst of blinking lights, whirring fans and bundles of wires snaking over floor and under tables. Booths were filled with men talking quickly and clearly into phones and microphones. A portable mako electricity generator stood in the centre of the room, throwing rippling streaks of cold green light from its mako level meters across the ceiling.
"Sephiroth! Over here!" Angeal rose from his booth and tugged a headphone-set from his ears. The two nosy Soldiers who had been peering over Angeal's shoulders both gave a start and straightened into salutes.
Acknowledging the Seconds with a nod, Sephiroth picked his way through the cables towards the laptop booth the three men were clustered around.
"Angeal, I was told that there was something that you thought I should see." He propped the Masamune up against the card partition and turned to Angeal, then his gaze dropped down. He frowned. "You are favouring your left leg."
"It's nothing serious," said Angeal quickly, but he looked oddly guilty, as if he had been hoping that Sephiroth wouldn't notice. "Apparently I didn't clean a wound as well I thought before I cast a Cure. There's probably a splinter or bit of shrapnel stuck in there. In any case, Sephiroth, everybody else who went on your morning jog through a mine field yesterday are perfectly fine, so if there's been any complication since, it's nobody's fault but my own."
"'Complication'?"
Angeal broke into a small smile. "Don't worry. If it gets any worse, I won't hide it from you. We can all suffer together – Genesis with that shoulder of his, me with my gammy leg, and you with both mine and Genesis's complaining!"
Sephiroth looked at him closely, eyes hard, then sighed. "Indeed."
Angeal deftly translated this single word to mean, 'Not much different from the usual suffering then.' He dismissed the two Seconds still hovering hopefully beside them with a flick of his thumb and raised his voice. "The weekly Company news bulletin just came through."
"Has something happened?"
"You could say that." Angeal pushed up from the chair and stood to one side, wincing as he put weight onto his left leg, gestured for Sephiroth to sit down. "Here, see for yourself."
The weekly Company bulletin was exactly as it said on the label. It was the weekly summary of the news and happenings within the Company from every major ShinRa operation. There was a simple report of community service done by ShinRa employees collecting up rubbish in Junon harbour and a paragraph on a Soldier recruitment event in North Corel. There was even a segment keeping Company employees abreast of the Wutai War, but it was written by the Public Relations Department in Midgar, not anybody in Wutai itself.
Angeal had scrolled the message down to the bulletin's very last few paragraphs. Sephiroth narrowed his eyes and started to read, and as he read, Angeal watched him become very, very still.
Finally, it is with great regret that we report the passing of our esteemed Head of the Science Department, Professor Domon Hojo, this Tuesday in a tragic and untimely laboratory-related incident.
Professor Hojo joined the Company in 1971, becoming Head of the Department of Science in 1980, and was instrumental in the development and implementation of the Soldier program, studying the effects of intravenous mako on human physiology for medical and therapeutic purposes.
He was much liked throughout the department for his sharp sense of humour and the joy he found in his work, seeing potential in all who came before him for his projects.
He leaves no existing family. It is, however, well known that he considered the First Class Soldier Sephiroth with the same affection and fondness as the son he never had, some members of the department going so far as to call First Class Sephiroth the Professor's 'living legacy'.
Professor Hojo will be sorely missed.
First Class Sephiroth is presently in Wutai and we wish him all the best of fortune in these trying times.
In light of this recent event, we would like to warmly congratulate Doctor Greyson Hollander on his appointment to Head of the Department of Science.
Doctor Hollander has been working in partnership with Professor Hojo on the Soldier program since its earliest days in both its development and current implementation. His individual research interests include mako-prompted cellular development and mako in medicine.
He is well liked within the department. We hope that he will bring the weight and skill of his considerable experience, within his field and the Company, to his leadership position.
And there it ended. There was no more bulletin to scroll through - just blank beige space as blank as the space in Sephiroth's head that was usually filled with thoughts as organised as regiments, but for once all those thoughts had tumbled away.
"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" He heard Angeal speak behind him as if through liquid crystal mako. "I was calling Genesis for the details before you came. 'Laboratory-related incident' is a nice way to put it! He was eaten by one of his own monsters. I have to say, the irony of it all – "
Whilst Angeal continued talking, Sephiroth let the words wash over him and simply stared at the screen.
This great swelling tightness in his chest - it was bigger than joy, more thrilling than victory, warmer than sunrise. It was the feeling of seeing a barred gate suddenly unbolted and flinging it open for the first time.
Elation. He was elated beyond words. Hojo was dead. He was dead, probably would be burned by the time they returned to Midgar, reduced to bones and even less, and his obituary was just a string of empty words.
All of a sudden, the bubble of elation popped and something ugly stirred inside him: The old resentment from memories that could not be forgotten; the sour black bitterness from the gaping gap in his memories that ought to have been his childhood.
Hojo was dead and his obituary was a bundle of twisted truths, but Sephiroth was indeed all that remained of him. He was the man's 'living legacy', the proof of Hojo's existence. He had Hojo fingerprints spotted all over his DNA. If they cut him open to the bone, perhaps they would find Hojo's signature there, carved into the ivory. Despite Hojo's death, Sephiroth was far from free of him.
No, he realised with a sudden pulse of cold anger. He wasn't 'far from free'. Sephiroth would never be free of Hojo, because if knowledge had been power and ignorance had been a tranquiliser, then secrets had been control.
Professor Hojo had kept as many secrets from Sephiroth as he could possibly get away with, especially concerning Sephiroth himself. Now, he had as good as died and taken a portion of Sephiroth with him, greedy and grasping and cards held pressed to his chest till the very end.
Perhaps Hojo hadn't been worth hating whilst he was alive, but having died like this, with all of Sephiroth's questions as to who and what he was and where he came from unanswered, Sephiroth couldn't think of a ghost he could possibly hate more.
"Sephiroth?" Angeal had squeezed into the booth to stand beside him. It suddenly occurred to Sephiroth that his friend had stopped talking several minutes ago and had simply been watching and waiting for a response "Are you al - ?"
"I am fine!" Sephiroth snapped, more sharply than he had intended.
The chattering in the surrounding booths dissipated. Nervous gazes swivelled their way, until Angeal glowered around the room and growled, "Back to work, all of you."
Activity resumed. Sephiroth took a deep breath. "I apologise. That was unprovoked."
"No, not at all. It is probably more than likely that I deserved it." An uneasy silence swirled in the booth between them. Angeal folded his arms, breathed out slowly. "I thought that we could all do with some cheer, especially you, what with how you've been working lately. You've made it no secret that – "
"I'd prefer Hojo dead over alive, yes." Sephiroth attempted a thin smile. "There is no need to apologise, Angeal. I am, on the whole, pleased with this turn of events. Yes, I suppose you could say that I am happy, to some extent."
"To some extent?" Angeal raised his eyebrows. "You don't sound so sure."
How much could he say without spewing something that was bound to make Angeal disappointed in him? Sephiroth was happy, but he couldn't turn his back on the suspicion that he had been cheated in some way, thwarted of something that was rightfully his.
"It is a complicated sort of happiness," he spelled out, slow and deliberate, grimacing to remind Angeal just how much he disliked having his feelings prised out of him. "I am not sure whether 'happy' is even appropriate."
For a few seconds, Angeal said nothing, as if he was waiting for Sephiroth to continue, or was trying to coax him into elaborating, but no such luck, of course. "Well, if it's complicated then perhaps it just needs more than one mind to unmuddle it."
"How would you feel if Hollander were to die in a laboratory incident, right at this very moment?"
A shadow crossed Angeal's expression, too fleeting to tell what it was, but it was in no way pleasant. He looked down his feet, avoiding Sephiroth's gaze.
"I suppose," Angeal chose his words carefully, "it would be complicated, considering many things, aside from him being mine and Genesis's responsible scientist. I can't say I'm too pleased about him being promoted, what with Genesis's wound the way it is, but, I suppose he is the only one there who could possibly match Hojo in what he knows."
"Perhaps, he will be good for the Company."
"Perhaps," Angeal agreed reluctantly, because both knew that they both thought otherwise. "I suppose I should withhold judgement until I see him running the department myself. Anyway!" He coughed and cleared his throat as if to dispel the grim cloud that had settled over them in the booth. "If you are worried about there being something wrong with celebrating the death of a – well, I hesitate to call anybody bad or evil, but, a man who I know has caused you, and the people you've cared about, a lot of pain in the past – I can tell you this quite plainly. It's perfectly human to celebrate - "
"I am not worried." Sephiroth was bitter and angry and many things, and perhaps for a moment he had worried, as to just how much of a monster he was that a son could be so overjoyed at the death of a father. "But, there is a part of me that wishes - " he clenched his hands into fists and his gloves creaked, " - a part of me wishes that the monster that did it could have been me."
He couldn't deny it. He envied the monster that had done it.
It was such a shame really that a man could only be killed once.
A hand clapped down on his shoulder. Angeal met his gaze. "Perhaps it should have been, and if it was, nobody would think you a monster because of it."
Sephiroth gave Angeal a short nod, to acknowledge his efforts as a friend. He could show that much appreciation at least, but he knew that however much Angeal talked to him, tried to help him, or support him, it wasn't going to be enough. He felt a restless urgency to return to Midgar, to see with his own two eyes that the 'esteemed' Professor was as dead as Shinra said he was and settle the uneasy feeling in his stomach that somebody somewhere had cut some strings and left him hanging loose -
He closed the laptop lid and stood. He had never been a puppet of Hojo's. He refused to even consider it.
He picked up the Masamune. "We have a war to finish."
"That we do." Angeal straightened from the partition then bent to collect the Buster sword from where he had wedged it between the table and wall. It slid into place on Angeal's back with a hiss and a soft click. "Oh, also, Genesis asked me to remind you that your bet is still on, although, Sephiroth, I really do object to this. War shouldn't be treated like a game."
"Then we will treat it as it should be." Sephiroth strode out, and the troopers and Soldiers in the Communication saluted him as he went. Angeal followed alongside him. "We will treat it as something that should be ended as swiftly as possible, and in such a way that it won't happen again for a very long time."
It had worked. The scan had finished and seeing nothing had happened since, Cloud was in the clear. It was almost too good to be true but as he gingerly undid the cloak, no frosty cloud of data came launching itself out of cyberspace to assault him, so for now, it looked as though he was safe.
A chime tapped against his senses.
That is, he would be safe if Genesis didn't keep trying to make contact with him. Honestly, Cloud didn't know why he hadn't told the man to just shut up and leave him alone, but then again he had never told Yuffie to leave him alone either – and his brain really needed to stop making that comparison.
Hello? the message hung in front of him like a signpost, hello? Is there anybody there? Hello?
Speaking of Genesis, where was he? Usually Cloud could spot him in an instant. Him, Zack and Sephiroth – were Sephiroth in the building – were almost impossible to ignore, but right now, in the late hours of evening, perhaps even early hours of the morning, Genesis was nowhere to be seen on Shinravision.
Not knowing the location of a Soldier First Class with a very unhealthy dosage of Jenova cells in his body didn't sit well with Cloud at all. Where are you?
My room, and I'm not alone – I have a bottle of Old Corel whisky with me, came the gleeful reply, and it's being a really, really, good friend to me tonight. So much for Stephanie and Angelica - prancing off to Wutai without me! How dare they? I wanted to go prancing with them.
His room. That would make sense. Cloud was more than a little surprised at Shinra's decency to keep the CCTV out of their officer's private quarters, but was more disturbed that he had forgotten that people needed to sleep.
He also couldn't deny that a drunk-calling Genesis Rhapsodos wasn't disturbing either.
Genesis, he sent back, and hoped that the use of the man's name would be a wake-up call, Soldiers don't get drunk.
At least, not on a single bottle of whisky. Cloud had tried. Tifa had despaired.
I don't care, the petulant response was speedy. It's all psychology. If I believe I'm drunk enough, I will be drunk, and cogito ergo drunk sum. It's the alcohol whatchamacallit – placebo effect.
If you can type 'whatchamacallit', you are not drunk. Cloud tried to ignore that Genesis's reasoning was astoundingly like his own on a very bad day and that Cloud had resorted to channelling Tifa. No thanks to you, I've been busy, and I still am busy. What do you want?
I want to be drunk, so that this whole night can all just be one long drunk dream, and then I can wake up like a pathetic little human with his pathetically human metabolism, with a hangover and a greasy liver, and I won't have to keep going on with all this.
I have better things to be doing than helping you get drunk, Cloud answered, a little more coolly than he would have liked, but if there was something wrong, he hoped that Genesis got the hint and told him soon, rather than drunk-rambled his way through a monologue, and since when had Cloud become the First Class Soldier's anonymous counselling service?
I don't need your help with that. I'm already drunk. I must be, because my mind and all these aches and pains in my body have decided to gang up on me, and they're making me see things that couldn't possibly be real, like this wing that's just grown out of my back, and all sorts of other stupid things, like all this blood and all these feathers, all over my carpet, and my ceiling, and my bed, and if I'm not drunk dreaming this, I'm either out of my mind or mutating beyond any help anybody could possibly give me, and tomorrow I'm going to have to try scraping all this blood off the ceiling lights, so tell me, Stranger, what am I if I'm not drunk?
Out of your mind and mutating, Cloud was tempted to say, but he bit down on that thought because it turned into a message, because however much Genesis had irritated and messed with him in the past month or so, that was far too cruel, especially to a man who had just possibly turned to him because 'Stephanie' and 'Angelica' were away in Wutai and he would otherwise be trying to deal with a sudden, disturbing and what sounded like a very painful mutation alone.
You need to clean up your room, Cloud told him matter-of-factly, pushing down the panicked voice at the back of his mind that was jumping up and down and screaming that here was another Soldier with one wing, possibly disturbed enough to go on a very deadly rampage. Now what Cloud had to do was keep Genesis grounded and distracted enough from his mutation to stop his mind wandering down that self-destructive route.
For a while, there was no reply. Maybe Genesis had used up all his energy on his previous message and had willed himself drunk enough to fall asleep.
Fat chance of that. You are right. I do need to clean up. Are you going to help me with that?
Perhaps if Cloud got into one of Shinra's cleaning robots he could, but he had no intention of piloting one of those to Genesis's rooms after just escaping the Turks (and he would imagine that the Turks would be back for Round Two soon enough). Any robot going off its pre-programmed route would send up a flag for maintenance to crawl out of bed. No.
Then are you going to help me find a cure?
I said that I would, he had a few thoughts in mind as to how he could do that, and I am looking.
Any chance of getting hold of it before I sprout a second wing or become something like that monster you set upon Hojo?
The accusation wasn't subtle. It was there to remind Cloud that Genesis knew of his existence, and if the whim took him he could reveal it any time he liked, but Cloud had a feeling that Genesis was putting up an act more for his own pride's sake than in any real effort to threaten him.
I think, at least, Cloud hoped he was right, Sephiroth had had an even higher level of Jenova cells in him and ignoring the horror he had become in their final battle in the days of Meteor, the most dramatic mutation he had ever gottenwas a single wing (as far as they all knew – who knew what scales or feathers he had been hiding under that leather coat?), that that's the worst mutation out of the way.
Do you know that for sure? demanded Genesis instantly, pouncing on Cloud's words. How do you know that?
No, I don't know that for sure, Cloud admitted, because he didn't. I'm making a guess, based on what I read in that file I sent you, and what I know of another who was in a similar position to yourself.
He didn't know why he said that and he regretted it the moment Genesis seized upon it like a guard dog wrapping its jaws on a burglar's leg. What do you mean another? Is there somebody else degrading like I am? Who are they? Is this somebody you know personally?
Who he was is none of your business. He is dead, Cloud shot down Genesis's questions without any guilt. He wasn't lying. After all, the Sephiroth he knew was dead. The difficult part was ensuring he stayed that way, and I am here to make sure that the circumstances surrounding his death do not happen again. Don't ask me any more questions about him.
There was a long silence. Cloud half-hoped that Genesis had finally exhausted himself, or perhaps drowned himself on his whisky, but a silence at this point in their conversation was more than a little unnerving. In Cloud's experience, limited though it was, men infused with Jenova cells had a pretty poor record when it came to handling emotional shocks. If Genesis upped and started setting fire to Shinra Tower, he wouldn't have been in the least bit surprised. Cloud didn't know how he could handle that. He would have to work something out for the future, just in case.
When Genesis's reply dropped into cyberspace, Cloud heaved an inward sigh of relief. Well, at least I can look forward to the thrilling prospect of growing a second wing sometime soon, now that I know what to expect and won't be taken by surprise.
To his own surprise, Cloud smiled. Would it bother you if you only ever had one wing?
Put it this way, the reply came quickly. If I had two wings, I could be an angel. It has a certain ring to it, doesn't it? 'The Angel Genesis, he comes bearing the gift of the Goddess, wings of light and dark spread afar', but if I only had the one I would be incomplete, and being neither man nor angel, what else could I be but a monster?
Loveless, said Cloud firmly, and he knew he had the man's attention, any mention of the book was like a magic spell with him, think of Loveless. Loveless is incomplete and nobody thinks any less of it. If anything, people praise it all the more. It gives them the freedom to choose how it goes, and it's just the same for you – you have a choice as to what to make of yourself, and would you really call Loveless a monster?
Another long silence. E-mails seethed all around him – like fish or like birds, or maybe flying fish, Cloud was still trying to decide.
Genesis responded. I suppose I ought to clean up this mess.
Yes, Cloud pushed him, you should.
Then that was it, no more replies. Genesis went silent, leaving Cloud none the wiser as to what had been made of his attempts to keep Genesis's spirits up, but he waited, checking the CCTV for any suspicious activity just in case Genesis decided to set the Tower on fire after all, as an especially heated expression of his crisis of humanity.
Given that Genesis did not burn down Shinra Tower that night, Cloud took that as a sign that perhaps something of what he had said had echoed with him, or at least offered better distraction (entertainment) than a bottle of Old Corel whisky.
Sephiroth and Angeal had better finish up in Wutai and return to Midgar soon. Cloud was in no position to make a habit of dealing with Genesis after hours, especially when their strange relationship was starting to feel dangerously like a very odd friendship, and Cloud wasn't sure it was a friendship he could afford to have.
Thank you for reading, and remember to let me know what you think.
Best, Zen :D