Chapter 39: Come Home to Roost

Summary: Zack has been pretty upfront about what he planned to do if he ever saw Hojo again and it wasn't "be polite". However, killing Hojo isn't as easy as it should be.

All the warnings for language.

Everyone thought Tifa was the one with anger issues, but Zack had always known her anger at Shinra was a fucking match compared to the incandescent fucking rage he felt towards Hojo.

There was the fucking years of torture. It hadn't been any kind of science – Genesis was right about that – because Hojo hadn't been any kind of gods-damned scientist. The scum-sucking ass-wipe had injected him with anything at hand. He'd cut Zack up, stuck him in a tube, frozen him, and burned him at whim. There'd been no "control" data, no waiting for one thing to be healed before starting the next. He'd repeated the things that had caused Zack the most pain, not the ones with the most "interesting" results.

Hojo had played with Zack's body and mind just because he fucking could. He was an arrogant, dickless rat-bastard who didn't think anyone, other than his arrogant-ass self, was worthy of consideration.

Hojo could've fixed Angeal but hadn't, so Zack had been forced to fucking kill his mentor – his idol. Someone he'd thought of as a friend.

Hojo had fucked Sephiroth up so much that a good soldier – a good person – had gone homicidally insane because he didn't know how to handle basic fucking emotions.

Private Gidson may have died killing Sephiroth, but at least he hadn't survived to be fucking tortured for fucking years by Hojo.

(And, bloody hells, did Zack felt all kinds of fucked up for feeling that: what kind of sick fuck was he that he was angry at the kid for fucking dying, but… it was just…. If he'd had someone to talk to, to take care of, to worry about – someone who'd worry about him in turn. That would've… Maybe it would've been better. Taken his mind off the fucking rest of it, y'know?)

And then there was the rest of it. Thanks to Hojo's constant fucking gloating, Zack knew there was no Promised Land, so Hojo had been encouraging Shinra to kill the fucking planet with mako, because he liked the power it gave him over old man Shinra. Millions of people living on Gaia, and he'd let them all die so he could feel fucking superior.

All of that meant there were all these feelings simmering under the surface of Zack's day-to-day self. He'd tried doing the "forgiveness is the path to healing" bullshit that his mom had believed in. He'd tried pretending the random mobs they'd killed were Hojo, but he'd always gone back to wanting the kill the actual mother-fucking sadist in person, for real.

For the most part, he'd managed to hide his homicidal nastiness from his friends. Not through any acting skills of his, he'd admit, but because he'd known his chances of coming face-to-face with the dickless bastard were infinitesimally small. So he'd banked the rage, buried it deep, only ever brought out as a joke, because Hojo was beyond his reach.

Until he wasn't.

Zack might've handled it better if it hadn't been so unexpected. They'd been walking on the boardwalk, looking for the next most-touristy thing to try and enjoying the sun, when Hojo's sick fucking laugh had sifted through the crowd's noise.

Instantly, Zack had known this was his chance – Hojo in fucking Costa del Sol! Fate, luck, whatever – Hojo was here! Hojo was exposed. It was close enough to what he'd dreamed confronting that bastard would be that he was going to make it reality.

Zack would kill the skinny bastard, get payback, exact revenge, make the world a better place … He would take back some of the power Hojo had ….

There would be no torture, no taunting, no fucking monologues. Death would be quick, clean – like a SOLDIER, not a sick fucking fake scientist.

Zack had moved just like he'd been trained, like he'd dreamed: quick, sure, straight to his target.

Once he'd gotten close enough – screaming at the civilians to get the fuck down – he'd cut off Hojo's head just as he'd always planned.

All it had taken was one lovely swing with his sword and that slimy, smirking face had gone fucking flying!

The bastard should've dropped like the proverbial fucking stone. Blood should've pumped out of what was left of Hojo's fucking chicken neck, covering Zack and the beach and nearby civilians with gore. It would've been awful, but also fucking glorious!

That's not what had happened.

Hojo's blood hadn't fountained. It had oozed out of the exposed veins and arteries in a grotesque coagulated mass.

Hojo's head hadn't fallen into the fucking sand with a satisfying "plop," because the bastard's hands had come up to fucking catch it!

Hands, from the headless body, had fucking caught that ugly-ass head…

That same head, with Hojo's skinny face and Hojo's greasy hair, had tsked at him, had called him stupid, and then brayed Hojo's fucking condescending, laugh. "Now let's see how well the mako reacts, hmm?"

While Zack stood there wondering "what the fuck?" Hojo's… body? corpse? … was engulfed in that weird purple-blue-black light that had surrounded every Jenova monster they'd fought, and that's when he realized what they were really facing.

Zack had known that Hojo was a sadistic piece of shit whose personality barely reached the level of grumpy slug, but he'd always thought of the bastard as fucking human, but Hojo wasn't even that.

"Every time I see you, it pains me that I had so little scientific sense," the thing said. "I evaluated you as a failed project. But you are the only one that succeeded. I might even hate myself a little for being so short-sighted."

Zack had always been an instinctual fighter – most of Angeal's training had been trying to make Zack think before and during a fight – but all of that training was ignored because as soon as Hojo's transformation was complete, Zack's instinct was to cut the fucker's head off again.

He moved so quickly after the light faded that he hadn't really noticed how much taller Hojo's monstrous new body was from his human one. Zack misjudged his swing and caught the slimy creep across his… rib-like things, and not the neck.

Zack adjusted quickly, because he was a fucking professional. His back swing angled up towards something vital, and Tifa and Aerith were quick to join in once Hojo was a Jeniroth-thing, and Zack still had plenty of rage that Hojo existed in the same galaxy as them, so it was only a matter of time before he'd fucking cut that bastard's head off again!

"Really, Specimen Z?" it said as it lifted its stupid fucking head back up to its (much shorter) neck. "Your crude methods didn't work the first time. Why would you think they'd work now?"

Zack filtered out the irritating whine – he'd heard it all before. "Oh, poor me! Nobody understands my genius," "Oh poor me! I'm forced to work with idiots," "Oh poor me! Sephiroth was my greatest creation and I don't have him anymore." Wah, wah, wah. Whatever.

"Gonna fucking kill you, you fucking monster." It was a promise muttered to himself.

Hojo's new form (his true personality finally coming through, Zack thought) was big, and he could hit like a brick shithouse, but he moved slow. Too busy insulting them to block their attacks. And they hit him, again and again and again. The bastard still didn't bleed properly, but more and more rivulets of blue-black goo appeared on its surface. There were a lot around his shoulder and upper arms where Hard Edge had cut in, but the fucker's neck was short.

When Cloud and Genesis arrived, Zack figured they had this in the bag. This time, Zack promised himself, when he cut Hojo's fucking head off – again – he'd light the rat bastard on fire! See if the fucker could reattach something that was fucking ash!

Of course, it wasn't that simple.

Genesis got a couple good casts in, Tifa and Aerith's damage were both solid, but one thing Zack had learned about mako-infused monsters: they had more fucking health than the natural variety of monster, and this version of Hojo was living up to that. And then Hojo got lucky.

It knocked Zack out of the fight – literally. The asshole's massive left hand (if you could call that hammer-like thing a hand!) caught him in mid-jump and tossed him into the building across the boardwalk. When his brained stopped its siren wail, Zack could feel his body falling out of the indent he'd made. His mind was still ringing, but his body knew how to fall. And then he took a moment to just fucking breathe…

It took Zack too long to bounce back from the hit, (that adobe stuff was fucking hard), so it was already too late when he saw the toxic miasma come out of Hojo's gaping maw. (The thought 'Hojo's breath had always stunk,' was Zack's clue that his head was still lagging behind necessity.)

The stuff swirled around Cloud, sinking into his skin, and Zack saw the moment Cloud's brain checked out. Big, blue eyes blinked at whatever they were seeing. Green healing light sparkled around Cloud, but the daze didn't stop. Cloud swayed on his feet, completely unaware of his surroundings. Hojo laughed and pointed his trident hand at Cloud.

It was that vulnerability that finally got Zack moving: no fucking way was his friend gonna be easy pickings for the monster Hojo had become (had always been).

Zack reached out for Cloud, to steady him as Hojo's fucking toxic fumes thinned out, but Cloud blinked, unseeing and suspicious. It was the only warning Zack got as Cloud swung at him.

"Confusion!" Aerith called out. "He's Confused."

He was also turning towards Hojo, which yes, that was the true enemy, and no, because it was obvious Cloud wasn't focused the way he needed to be in a fight like this. The fucker sneered at Cloud and prepared to skewer him with his pointy hand. No way was Zack letting that happen.

While Hojo fucking laughed at Zack's friend, and Tifa was yelling in fear, Zack blitzed forward and up and cut off the head AGAIN!

"Die you fucking monster! Just fucking die!" It was a shout that didn't go any farther than his own ears.

He felt more than saw the swing Cloud made with Iron Blade. Three lines of slashing energy, half as tall as his friend, ran across the sand turning it into glass. When it hit Hojo's fucking foot-tentacle, it cut right through it. Gaping lines of ragged damage exposing what passed for muscle and bone in the bastard. There was even fucking blood this time!

There was a lot of blood. Actual liquid, draining out onto the sand.

But given the asswipe hadn't fucking died the first two times Zack didn't relax. He wiped his hands against his board shorts and resettled his grip on Hard Edge's hilt.

He heard Tifa shouting at Cloud some more, heard the slap of palm on skin and almost – almost – looked away.

He wished he'd brought the buster, but Costa del Sol was supposed to be safe, and the buster's wide blade would've been too dangerous in the crowded, narrows streets and, and, and… There'd been a couple more good reasons to leave his sword behind, but fuck… He really missed its familiar weight.

Plus, he somehow felt he was letting Angeal down again by not using his sword to kill the bastard who'd made all their lives into pointless shit-holes.

There was purple smoke rising from Hojo's wounds...

"Fucking shit-pissing balls," he muttered. The fight wasn't over.

Like before, it was impossible get beyond the purple light-stuff while it swirled around the monster Sure, Zack's sword had passed through with little resistance the first time he'd tried it, but neither had he connected with anything solid, like a body with skin and guts and bones. So, Zack waited, impatiently, for the moment he could hit Hojo and make that fucker bleed.

Again.

The new version of Hojo (a Hojenova?) that was forming inside the mists was a lot smaller and sleeker than the last one. It still had a head (fucking HoJENOVA!) but it was featureless. Maybe Zack had cut it off so many times the arrogant dick had forgotten what a human face was supposed to look like.

The fucking lab coat had survived.

It was fused onto a body that looked nothing like Hojo's emaciated frame. Those chest muscles… Kinda reminded Zack of Sephiroth. Which reminded him that this was Sephiroth's father. That Sephiroth's dad had experimented on his son since before birth.

Zack had to force his hand to relax. Maybe he shouldn't cut off Hojo's head; maybe he should just punch the shit out of the asshole. Who did that? To their kid?

The fucker was floating now, like gravity didn't apply to it anymore. There was a tentacle hanging down from the back of its "head" like an evil version of Aerith's braid. Zack hated it instantly.

"Is everyone back in the game?" he shouted over at Tifa and Cloud. Cloud was rubbing his cheek like it hurt. One of the cures for Confusion was to be hit. The way Tifa looked so apologetic made it clear she'd known that too.

"We're ready!" Aerith called back. She twirled a step or two, and her magic flower thing spun out from under her feet. Zack put himself between her and fucking Hojo. No way was that sick bastard getting near her. Tifa lined up beside him and then Cloud. Genesis was somewhere behind them all. Keeping his options open; maybe taking advantage of Aerith's fancy power flower.

"Let's kill the fucker!" he shouted.

Then he was in motion…

He was aiming for what passed for a neck, but Floating Hojo moved a lot faster than the previous version. Zack's dash took him to where Hojo had been, and his swing missed by a frustrating amount. Didn't even catch any of that stupid, fucking tentacle. Bouncing off a beachside billboard, he veered to catch up.

{Did you really think you could defeat me?}

Zack shook his head. He hated that the voice of his worst self doubts always sounded like Hojo, but that's what happened when you had to listen to the same smarmy monologues while being tortured for fucking years.

The bastard flowed over to Tifa, the tentacle whipping out and away from Zack. The tip flicked over her too fast to see. The only way to know the hits landed was Tifa's reactions: head, torso, torso, leg. She flinched and curled around on herself, and a line of red formed on her leg. She shook her head, trying to shake off the effects, and she stumbled.

"I've got it!" Aerith called, and green light sparkled around Tifa.

Cloud was also moving. Since Hojo was right next to him, Cloud was swinging. Nothing as fancy as that last hit, but good solid cuts that made more purple-blue ooze leak out.

{You call me a monster, but you're the one who slaughtered hundreds of ordinary soldiers who were just doing their job.}

'They were going to kill me,' Zack thought back in the familiar pattern. He could forgive himself for those deaths, believed in his core that it had been kill-or-die, but as always he saw some of their faces, helmets broken open by his attacks. They'd all seemed so young.

Fireballs swooshed through the air. Zack couldn't see them, but he heard them and felt the heat when they hit and spread. Genesis had always been good with fire. He wasn't sure he trusted Genesis, not truly, but it was sure nice to have all that power fighting on their side.

A jump, a swing, and a miss. Not the neck, but that stupid fucking tentacle.

"Fuck," he muttered. He heard Hojo's scream of pain and outrage, but since the fucker didn't have a mouth, it was muffled and Zack could ignore it. Still, it had hurt the bastard…

He used his sword's flat edge to bat the body part towards Genesis. "Burn that!" he shouted.

Genesis looked unimpressed as he dodged the ooze that spattered outwards, but he did as Zack asked. Aerith also cast Fira on it. Her power flower doubled the cast, and the tentacle burned. Thick, black, acrid smoke rose from the body part that looked toxic, but at least the thing burned down to fucking ash.

Let's see Hojo put that back on, Zack thought as Hojo's muffled shouts of anger echoed in his brain. It was delightful to hear. (Zack knew he shouldn't be enjoying it so much, but – he gave a mental shrug – the bastard needed to die, and if it could only be done one bit at a time ….)

He felt the movement before he saw it and managed to roll out of the way of Hojo's spear-like arm.

It was an awful idea. A wonderfully awful idea.

He turned back to his former torturer and grinned.

The fucker was busy dodging Cloud's determined attacks on his right side, so Zack aimed for the left arm. He wanted the bicep but got high on the forearm instead. Clean slice. He put a little extra oomph into it, and Hard Edge went right through.

"Yes!" he shouted. "Take that, you fucking monster!"

Again, he used the flat of his blade to toss the body part over to Genesis and Aerith. This time, he added his small flame to their infernos. He dodged the stump of Hojo's left arm. Some of the purple ooze landed on his shirt, and Zack vowed to burn it too, when they were done.

"I think that's working!" Aerith shouted. "He seems weaker, or something."

{Don't forget, you are a monster, too,} said the voice in his head, still sounding like fucking Hojo of course.

{You're taking such delight in my death. How can you deny that you are as much a monster as I am?}

Zack swung at the fucker's bottom – pointed flesh where there should've been legs – and took off a good 10 centimetres. A flick of the blade and it was in front of Genesis.

Purple smoke came out of the gaping wound on Hojo's … ass? What did you call the bottom of a thing with no legs? Hojo had no feet, it had no hands, it had no fucking face. How could anyone think this was better?

{And being human is so wonderful?} his inner critic said. {Is that why you wanted to become a SOLDIER?}

Zack had joined SOLDIER because he'd wanted to become a hero. He'd wanted to help people, protect them from the monsters, and hey, look! That's what he was doing right now by taking Hojo apart bit by bit!

He jumped back at the fucker, aiming for his neck again (because why not?). The bastard saw him, or anticipated him, or something, and managed to bring its tentacle up. Unable to stop his movement, the tentacle hit Zack in the face, twisted his trajectory so all he got was a chunk of right bicep. Still, score one for the humans!

{SOLDIERs weren't designed to be human,} his self-doubt spat at him. {You have mako in your blood and Jenova in your heart, and one day you will become like me!}

It was a familiar fear that made his chest seize. All he could see was Angeal the last time, after all those creatures had…. And Sephiroth striding through a tiny mountain town as it burned.

A wing like Genesis's wouldn't be so bad, but what if he sprouted a tentacle like this asshole? What if he went crazy like Sephiroth?

{You will kill everyone around you!}

Like Sephiroth.

Sephiroth had been a good person once, an honourable man. Maybe he'd been a bit more cynical about his place in Shinra's world, but he'd tried to do right by his friends.

Just like Zack was trying to do right.

Zack cut off another part of Hojo and tossed it at Genesis. And he did it again, and again, and…

The joy was gone from it. The unshakeable belief that he… that the world would be better off once Hojo was completely and finally dead had been shaken. Once Hojo was gone, they were going after Sephiroth. Once Sephiroth was gone… Maybe it would be Genesis, maybe it would be Kunsel, maybe it would be some other SOLDIER, but it would happen. And one day it would happen to him.

So what was the fucking point?

He cut more length off Hojo's gross fucking tentacle (seriously, who wanted tentacles as a mutation) and tossed it behind him. He caught Cloud looking at him in concern. He tried to smile in reassurance, "Nearly done," he said, as if that made it better. Cloud just frowned harder.

Zack was so busy trying to reassure Cloud that he missed the arm coming at him. He flipped ass-over-toe back into that same adobe brick building. It didn't hurt as much this time, but he still had to shake his head, reorient himself, when he fell to the ground.

From this distance he could see how smoothly the other four were working together: Cloud and Tifa on the front line, Aerith and Genesis in the back. Each part supporting and protecting each other; backing each other up. They were a great team.

They didn't actually need him to take down Sephiroth, he thought.

To prove it, Aerith and Genesis somehow combined their cast to create a ball of icy fire, and Cloud tossed Tifa up so she could punch Hojo's head in. The momentum adding to her natural power. It was enough. Whatever hybrid mako-Jenova energy had been keeping Hojo's cells from giving up under their combined attacks finally failed.

The thing that had been Hojo froze. Purple light broke through cracks that formed in its skin, but then the light shifted into red, then red and white. It expanded out from Hojo's form until all that was left was the outline of where it had been, and then even that was gone. All that was left was a tang in the air that hinted at the monster. The smell of Shinra's Science department and the lab in the basement in Nibelheim. Nothing remained.

Well, the sand was all kinds of fucked up – Cloud's lines of glass and the purple oozy blood. Someone was going to have a helluva time next year, dealing with mutated sand fleas, Zack thought blankly.

For five years Hojo had been Zack's Ultimate Evil. The Enemy, the "thing to be defeated". Now… Hojo was gone. That was it. Now all Zack had to anticipate was his inevitable slide into monsterhood. That moment his friends would have to kill him like they'd killed Ciobanu and almost killed Kriffin.

He needed to go away before that happened…

"Stop that!"

Zack blinked. Aerith was standing in front of him. Her frown was ferocious.

"I know that look," she said, finger shaking with disapproval. "That a look of "Noble Sacrifice" and I won't have it."

Zack frowned. "What?"

"Hojo got to you," she said. "He did something."

"No." Zack shook his head. "There was no gas."

"No gas," she agreed. "But he did something."

"When he hit you," Cloud said. "At the end. Was like a vibration."

"See? See!" Aerith swiveled her head between them. "I'm going to cast Esuna."

Cloud tipped his head, staring at Zack. "Not Poison, so Cleanse."

"Cleanse!" Aerith corrected. "I have one of those in my pack, back at the mansion."

Had Hojo cast a spell on him, Zack wondered? He pushed his awareness inwards – the same method he used to judge how close he was to Limit Break – and he felt it. It was a damp blanket on his thoughts, a void sucking his energy. It wasn't depression – Zack knew what that felt like – but it was something…

Hojo had preferred physical "experiments", but he'd also played around with materia – especially status materia. "Sadness," Zack said. "He fucking cast Sadness on me and I didn't even notice."

"Cleanse will fix it!" Aerith looked at Genesis. "Cleanse will fix it, right?"

"You know what else will fix it," Zack said. "Fucking rage. And I got plenty of that."

Aerith whipped back to look at him so quickly her long, heavy braid lifted as if in a wind. "Zack..."

"I can't be – " He broke off, took a step away. Turned around to look at them, at her. "I'll come back, but I need... " She reached out a hand to touch him. He flinched away. "I need to be angry, Aerith. Really angry. Four years in the lab; five years away from you." His throat closed. He swallowed until it opened up again. "He's dead, and I don't feel any better."

"Nobody expects you to feel better," Aerith said.

"Only a couple months since you were mostly dead," Cloud added.

They were valid points, but not helpful. "I expect it!" He dragged in a breath, dragged in his betrayal and anger. "I'm not good to be around right now. I need to not be here."

"But – "

"I'll come back," he said. "When I don't feel toxic."

"Promise?" He could tell she was trying to make it light, but there was real worry in her eyes. Her beautiful, expressive, eyes…

He took her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed her palm. "Promise."

"Want company?" Cloud asked neutrally. Absolutely no pressure in his voice or his stance.

Did Zack want company? Cloud would be a good choice. He was the least judgemental person Zack had ever known. Did he need someone to watch his back? Probably. On the other hand, Cloud was just barely above a vanilla human in terms of survivability.

Cloud quirked his lip. "If you kill more monsters, can scavenge the parts."

It made a laugh burst out of him. "We got a million gil in advance, nine million more at the end of this, and you want to collect body parts?"

This time Cloud's smile was full. "Keep in practice, ya?"

It was pure Cloud. Only a couple months, and Zack couldn't imagine what life would be like with out his best friend. His smile slid away.

"Keep out my way," he cautioned. "I won't be thinking about what I'm swinging at."

Cloud nodded, face serious. He stepped towards Zack, giving Aerith's shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he passed.

"Let's find you some monsters," he said.

Cloud brought out his phone, dialing even as he walked away from the group. Without thinking, barely noticing, Zack fell into step behind him. "Hey, Levi. Cloud here. Got anything big nearby?"

Later, Cloud kept inquisitive children and goats out of the field as Zack plowed through a flock of what the locals called "boatfloats" – predators that liked to eat children and goats. They were hardly any trouble as long as he avoided the poisonous spines that stuck out of them.

He was doing good. He was being the hero he'd always dreamed of.

A flick of Hard Edge sprayed blood across the grass. Flies instantly appeared to feast. It seemed symbolic.

Zack turned away.

"Your contact got anything else?"

It was only later that Zack realized Cloud hadn't brought any of his gear for preserving salvage. And he hadn't complained of the waste even once.

AN. I'd apologize for taking so long getting this out, but work has been one long suck and I just don't have the spoons. My unit has been dismantled and my current position eliminated. I'll be moving to a different department sometime in the next month, to do a less interesting job. Hopefully, the people are as nice.

Much of Zack's rage is mine as there has been no planning or research to justify this change. The manager is just now getting around to hire a consultant to work out the new program and what it will need.

It's all political bullshit and it makes me want to play games where I get to kill stuff. So yeah, all the swearing Zack does is directly from me. (⩺︷⩹)