Another chapter is here!
Kazeshuriken: Read and see.
Enjoy!
Kunsel did a quick count of heads the moment he entered the restaurant. He found thirty-seven people beneath the decorative lights. That number would only grow within the hour using the last few nights as a reference, along with the atmosphere being a sort of quiet and peaceful ambience fitting of the locale.
He and Yuffie specifically took a seat in the corner, perched against the wall, so they could see everyone else and take the appropriate measures when the time came. As she placed an order for fries and he for something light, Kunsel looked down and saw that she had the bangle for the materia on her wrist. From the bulges in her pocket, he assumed the All and Seal Materia were there. Good.
He adjusted the dial to the device linked to the earpiece in right ear, filtering through the frequencies linked to the bugs he had on the Shinra base. So far there was no change there that they need to be aware of. He shifted the frequency back to the bugs at the Villa being used by Rufus, set in place before he arrived. The man in question was on the phone from what he could hear.
That left Hojo. Kunsel reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device used to track the GPS signal of the small tracker he placed into the lining of Hojo's casual wear. He was on the way.
"Ten or so minutes before Hojo arrives," he told her as he placed the device back into his pocket. "Be ready."
"You placed a tracker on this guy?" Yuffie asked. When he nodded, she looked somewhat impressed. "How'd you do that?"
"The same way I bugged the base and the villa," he said. "Either I use a Transform Materia to shrink myself with Mini or Manipulate to control rats. Then I set the bugs into out-of-the-way places or slip the tracker into place. You'd be surprised with the sort of non-conventional uses materia can have."
That seemed to grab her attention. She learned forward, resting her elbows on the table and perching her head between her hands to stare at him. "Tell me more."
Kunsel leaned closely in and whispered, "As soon as you tell me why the leader of Wutai's daughter is so far from home."
Yuffie immediately stiffened. "How did you—"
"I have traveled the world over in the last few years in search of my late friend, whenever I had time off," he started. "During that time, I made a number of contacts. That includes Wutai as well. After the war, those who possessed combat skill of your level were few and far between, either due to dying in the war or ritual suicide from what has become of your home. Between that and your first name is it so much of a surprise, Miss Kisaragi?"
"Is there are problem with me going with them?" she asked, a change to be found in her tone as she did so.
Kunsel adjusted his shades and perched his elbows on the table as well, interlocking his fingers in front of his mouth to cover it as he met her gaze. "I simply wish to understand your motives. I can understand your gratitude for them saving your friend as the reason you aided them in getting here, but from this point on you will become an enemy of Shinra. If your identity gets out, you will paint a bull's-eye on your country's back for being careless. Why risk everything for them?"
"…You said it yourself. What my homeland has become is something that I cannot stand. They are opposing the people who are responsible for that. Do I need another reason to stick around?"
"As long as you don't cause problems," Kunsel said to close the matter. "I also feel it'd be best if you actually told them who you were instead of hiding it, but I have no interest in revealing it myself. I just wanted to make where we stand clear."
"Crystal," she said. Whatever cheerfulness she had before was gone, instead replaced with a cold expression on her face as the waitress came with their food and set it down. She ate silently.
Kunsel wondered if he blundered there, addressing the issue headfirst. Maybe there was a better time and place for it. But he had learned that it was best when things were cleared from the beginning, such as with Cloud and his memories. It was fine if she loathed him for now, as long as it didn't cause problems for the others she traveled with later.
Plus, there was no telling what would happen later on if she thought that she could do whatever she pleased and then disappear into anonymity. Not to mention the way she had been eyeing his materia on the way into the restaurant left him wary. Considering she had actually cleaned out the local materia shop without a second thought, he couldn't be sure she wouldn't do the same to them.
Things grew quiet between them after that until Hojo arrived. His round-shaped glasses and slouching walk were unmistakable, even if he was dressed in a long shirt and khakis with three women hanging around him. He took a seat and placed his order.
Kunsel dialed Crimson's PHS and gave her the go ahead. Five seconds later, a shroud of darkness was thrown over the area as all the lights within the building and nearby went out at the same time, raising discontent murmurs and chatter among the customers. He tapped on Yuffie's shoulder to signal her to do her part now.
For a moment, he wondered if she would disobey purely out of spite. That would set them back. But she acquiesced to his command and slipped the two materia into their slots on the bangle before casting the spell to put everyone inside of the restaurant asleep, with the exception of them.
Kunsel scanned the room again with the excellent night-vision his SOLDIER enhancements granted and nodded in satisfaction at the results. Now for the hard part…
[-oOo-]
"You had one damn job!" Heidegger's yelling could be heard even as Rufus' car came to a stop. In the absence of light besides the stars above, it may as well have been a part of the dark background with the jet-black paint job. Even if it hadn't been, the man was so heated that he failed to notice as he continued dressing the women down in front of three armed infantrymen. "I gave you a single task—keep an eye on him! Were you too busy primping in the mirror or getting a tan that you failed to remember that?"
Two of the three women winced as he continued verbally harassing them to the extent that spittle was flying out of his mouth. The final one, who didn't take well to being yelled at, lost her patience after he prodded her in the chest with his fat finger.
"With all due respect, sir," she all but spat, cutting him off. "There was little we could do about the situation. We couldn't be certain the power failure was a hostile action and we didn't want to compromise ourselves without being certain he was in danger. If we were informed ahead of time that someone may have been targeting him, we would have taken that risk."
"I don't want to hear your excuses, you miserable—" Rufus slammed the car door shut as Heidegger reared his hand back to slap her, allowing for his displeasure to be known to the gathering on the boardwalk outside of the restaurant. Heidegger dropped his raised hand and turned to face the Rufus, standing at attention. "President, sir!"
Rufus came to a stop in front of the women, Dark Nation at his side. "Report what happened."
"We accompanied Professor Hojo as ordered to the restaurant. He'd come here often and the staff checked out so we didn't expect trouble. Then the lights went out in the entire neighborhood and we were besieged by a sudden bout of drowsiness. Everyone inside fell asleep and, by the time we awoke, he was gone along with several other people."
"Where are the others?" Rufus asked. "Have demands been made for hostages?"
She shook her head. "No demands, sir. In fact, some of them have arrived back to the restaurant. They claimed to have woken up some distance away and walked back unharmed. A few of them also claimed to see a vehicle driving off as they awoke as well, large with black windows—likely a van."
The new President whistled to get his hound's attention and pointed him in the direction of Hojo's car. "Get the scent and track it, Dark Nation." Once the guard hound ran over on all fours and hopped into the opened window, Rufus turned to Heidegger. "Have men on the ground searching for that van. Get the Turks on the line as well; I want them here on the double. And is the machine you salvaged from the wreckage in working order?"
"The container it was in was reinforced to survive the blast and water pressure. I can have it ready in thirty-minutes for deployment, but may I ask why?"
"There are a number of people interested in Hojo, but so soon after Sephiroth appeared it brings to mind only one other party," he said. "They were last spotted in the Mythril Mines. I'm not taking any chances. Have every exit to the town covered with whatever forces you can and create a grid, close in on them. Whatever worth they have pales in comparison to the one who made Sephiroth—secure Hojo and the Ancient at any costs."
Heidegger immediately trotted off to the Jeep he had rode in and sped back towards the base, barking orders into his PHS. That left the three women, the infantrymen, and Rufus. He turned back to the women.
The nervous one, a blond, spoke out of turn. "We had no idea this would happen. We—"
"No excuses," he told them plainly. "While the circumstances were unaccounted for, I have neither the time nor patience to hear them. You will receive a dock in your payment until further notice and should the professor not be recovered alive, you will be terminated from the service altogether. Head back to base immediately."
Dark Nation gave a gruff bark as the women departed. The scent trail was found. Good.
Rufus turned to the armed infantrymen who had been left behind. "Follow Dark Nation and call in when you have the location where Hojo is. Should you find yourself under attack by anything or anyone, send an immediate distress call to the base. Do not fire upon any of the suspects until you have confirmation from the base as well. I don't want anyone to accidentally kill a priority target. Any further failures will be met with the immediate termination of your positions and dismissal from the service. Am I understood?"
"Yes, sir!" replied the trio in unison. Rufus sent them on their way and they disappeared into the dark of the night on his guard hound's trail.
[-oOo-]
Hojo flailed as he felt the sting of cold water on his face, only to find his arms and legs unwilling to move. He blinked away the stinging droplets as they cascaded down his face only to find the world looked as though he was viewing it through a blurry lens. It took him a second to realize he was tied to a chair, glasses perched on his head, only able to rely on his hearing to determine what was happening.
"He's awakened," said an almost feral voice, coming from what appeared to be a red blur.
"Evening, professor," said another voice, a woman. It sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. "How are you feeling?"
Hojo showed no fear, instead sitting straight up with his head held high. He would not be cowed by voices in the dark anymore than he would the other numerous threats he'd been dealt throughout his lifetime. One of the blurs reached for him and he tensed in preparation for being stricken, only for his glasses to be placed over his eyes and his captors to be revealed.
His world cleared to reveal he was sitting in an old metal chair with rust lining it, a floodlight tied above his head to act a source of illumination. They had brought him to what looked to be a decrepit basement of sorts judging by the concrete floor below and stone surrounding them. As for his captors… he sighed exasperatedly at the sight of some of them. "Can that idiot Heidegger do nothing right?"
"I hope you feel rested after your nap, because we have a lot of questions we need you to answer for us," said the former Turk who'd ran the risk of breaking his wrists the last time. She slipped materia into a bangle. "The longer you resist, the more painful this will be."
"Spare me the unnecessary threats," he said. "I'm fully aware of your methods of interrogation. Tseng allowed me to observe one for purely scientific interests. I was not impressed."
"So, this guy is supposed to be super-smart or something?" asked the short girl that looked to be of Wutai descent. She was speaking with the last of the Ancient, the child of Ifalna.
Ifalna's daughter nodded. "I won't dispute his intelligence, only his use of it. Someone of his talent could have used his knowledge for the betterment of both the world and the people on it. Instead, he's dedicated his life to making the world a worse place."
"You sound just like that fool Faremis," Hojo said, disdain and venom in his voice so thick that it practically dribbled down to the floor."The hypocrisy sickens me the most. You claim me to be selfish in my actions when my work has produced results the world has never seen and changed it for the better. Selfishness is someone who claims to pursue science and then bothers to hinder themselves and its progression by citing morals and emotions—products of chemical imbalance in the brain. He wanted to stop change for the sake of two lives, what was that if not selfish?"
"Gast Faremis?" Ifalna's daughter inquired with a note of caution in her voice. "Mother mentioned that name when I was younger. She said he helped her escape once from Shinra the first time they met."
"Is that all you know?" Hojo seemed amused. "Your ignorance is astounding considering how vital he was to your existence. He's the very reason you are inferior to your mother, because half of his genetic code composes yours."
She seemed perplexed for a moment as the information registered. Then her expression turned crestfallen as the realization dawned on her. "He was my father?"
Hojo went silent, denying her an obvious answer. That ended when he abruptly received an electric shock courtesy of the Thunder Materia in the hands of the former Turk. "Aggghhh!"
"She asked you a question," she said, cutting the spell. "You don't get to dangle something like that in front of one of the people you've wronged. Not if you want to keep breathing."
"You won't… risk killing me," Hojo stated, panting. "You… need my knowledge… for some reason or another. Otherwise… you would have done it already."
She turned towards the surviving failure to his Reunion Theory. He supposed it was a testament to his own prowess that, despite being a failure, he managed to elude capture to this point. "Your call."
"She deserves to know," was all he said.
The former Turk nodded and then turned back to Hojo. "Sense is active. I can see everything about your condition, every beat of your heart, every rise in your chest. Lie to me and I'll know. You'll fry for it, only for us to heal you to do it again. You'll talk well before that mind you value so much breaks, I guarantee it."
He looked up, his hair disheveled from the shock. He could see it in her eyes that she'd do it. She meant every word she had said. So he faced the last of the Ancients and talked.
"He was the one who originally found Jenova and worked with Lucrecia and I on the Jenova Project. However, he left because he drew the wrong conclusions, citing that Jenova wasn't of the line called the Cetra—the Ancients. He took your mother, Ifalna, and ran off to Icicle Inn, where they remained hidden while I continued my work with the project."
She looked to the former Turk. "Is he telling the truth?"
The woman nodded, her eyes never leaving him. If her words were true, she must've mastered that materia to such an extent that her mind was able to comprehend a vast amount of information. Such a thing was a rarity given how they often required combat until the excess knowledge budded off into a separate materia entirely. He wondered how much information she could handle before her mind broke under the strain….
Thoughts for later, he thought to himself before continuing. "I cannot tell you how frustrating it was to have to search for him after that, but I made it a personal mission. By the time I tracked him down two years afterwards, I found that he had consummated with her and the end result was that the heiress to the Cetra was born."
"Gast Faremis," murmured the girl. She closed her eyes and held her hand to her chest, as though listening to a voice only she could hear. Was this the power of the Ancients to converse with the Planet? Was she asking for access to the knowledge of the Planet directly through to the Lifestream?
"Fascinating," he whispered. "Tell me girl. What does it tell you? What does it tell you about the fate of a man of science who dared to compromise it for the sake of emotion?"
Tears trickled down her eyes as she opened them. "You killed him. You shot him right in front of mother when he tried to defend us… then you had the men with you get rid of his body."
"Hahaha, outstanding!" He couldn't help but laugh. What was it that enabled such a connection? What of the eighteen percent difference between the girl and her mother? Would that factor in as well? "Can you imagine all of the knowledge that could be obtained with such an ability? Oh, I can't wait to get you back into the lab!"
His laughter continued as she began to weep over the knowledge of her father's demise, until the long-haired terrorist stomped forward and cocked her fist back. The world spun with pain, only to come to an abrupt end upon impacting the hard floor. Then he was silenced.