Another chapter is here!

Kazeshuriken: Thank you!

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The abomination towered over Yuffie, leaving her looking up as it roared. The sheer wrongness of it, even compared to what she had seen so far, gave her good insight into why the others had such a vehement dislike of that Hojo quack. Either way, the moment it turned its attention to her, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up and listened to her instincts to dodge.

She rolled forward as the serpentine bolt snaked through the air and blew out a chunk of the floor, using the momentum to spring forward with her weapon in hand. She dragged the blade across the hybrid abomination's torso as she passed by. The tendril-steeped side was easy to cleave through, the mass of appendages not offering very much resistance, but her weapon nearly got stuck as it crossed the vertical divide and forced her to jerk it free.

Lost Number swung down its gargantuan fist and tried to crush her before she landed. Like a nimble grasshopper she leaped out of the way. Turning to keep her in its line of sight, the physically-inclined half of the abomination met with the pointy end of the Butterfly Edge blade, backed by comparable strength to its own that let it gouge a deeper rend in its abnormally thick flesh.

Cloud backed off as a dome of distorted and intensified gravity engulfed the monster, courtesy of the Gravity Materia that Aerith had obtained during their trip into the Cave of the Gi that Yuffie had skipped out on. Not that she was upset about that. The thought of having to deal with ghosts wasn't that great in her eyes.

The spell's use only succeeded in angering it. It was strong enough to resist the pressure being forced upon it, remaining unaffected as the gravity sphere tried to pull its internal organs loose and make its skeleton crumble beneath the additional weight forced upon it. It shifted its target from the others to Aerith, generating electricity from its tendril-laden half and sending it forward with the elongated tentacle.

Aerith shrieked as the Bolt 2 spell hit home. An expression of anguish came upon her face as it passed through her, wrenching the staff out of her grasp as she fell to her knees. Her entire body trembled as the electricity ran its course.

Yuffie pulled out one of her spare Fire Materia and hammered the creature with a Fire spell before it could take another shot at their healer, giving her a chance to get back on her feet and tend to her injuries. When Lost Number turned in her direction in response to the spell, she flipped to get out of the way as it used its strong leg to hop up into the air and then came crashing back down where she had been. Then its fist came around and she raised her arm-guard in defense while she hopped back.

It broke. The sound of the metal crunching drowned out her cry as the bone in her forearm fractured. She fell into a roll at the end of her flight, rising to her feet and sliding until the heels of her feet touched the wall. Yuffie clutched her damaged arm as she watched the battle continue with them down to just Cloud continuing his assault to keep it preoccupied.

He lunged as the abomination tried to crush him with a hammer-fist, a spring in his step as he swung upwards. The blade in his hands spilled more of the creatures' lifeblood over him, severing one of the shorter tendrils in the process. Then he noticed as the fist came around and braced the flat of the blade, causing a gong-like noise to resound as the metal withstood the impact and he slid a few feet before chambering the blade and going at it again.

Yuffie felt the nebulous power of the Limit Break surging within her then and took a deep breath. Despite the energy driving her to act, she turned it inwards by entering a serene state of mind and then spreading it out to the rest of them. That primal energy turned into a force of healing and rejuvenation, healing their wounds and allowing them to rise again. She tore off the remains of her arm-guard and then flexed her healed arm to ensure it would work.

"Fury Brand," Aerith announced. The light wreathing the healer dimmed as it grew more radiant around the other two, the very same energy that had abated suddenly swelling inside of the kunoichi again.

The abomination took note and aimed its longer tentacle at Yuffie, sparks of electricity crackling on tip. She grabbed hold of the energy and felt it sink into her arms and hands, down to her fingers gripping Wind Slash. She put it all into a single strike as she pushed forward, dodging the incoming bolt, and swung with all her might—severing the tentacle and cleaving through the abomination with the speed and strength of Greased Lightning.

Cloud moved next. With a battle-cry, he swung the blade three times in the blink of an eye. The creature shrieked as he did so, the blade carving so deeply into the tentacle-covered half that it severed almost all of the writhing tendrils.

The abomination staggered backwards, falling to its knee and shrieking. Had they succeeded in doing enough damage to elicit death throes? …No, they hadn't.

Instead the creature's two-halves were becoming a single entity. The purple half quickly engulfed what remained of the tendril coated-side, encroaching upon it and turning it into a mirror copy of the other half. It became a perfectly symmetrical purple beast whose abnormally thick hide concealed corded muscle, its lips curling into a cruel smile as it finished purging its weakness and looked down at the three of them.

Then it struck.

It went after Aerith first, fist cocked back and ready to rocket forward. Cloud's Cover Materia allowed him to intercept the blow. They both suffered, her being displaced as the impact sent Cloud flying. She looked as though she ended up with a dislocated shoulder, but considering he was embedded into the wall, it was the best outcome.

"Damn… it…" Cloud coughed out blood as he fell onto his knees, using the sword to support his weight as the creature curled its hands into balled fists and leap up into the air to bring them down like a pair of really large hammers. However, before the finishing blow could connect, a massive bolt of dense lightning struck Lost Number and everything flashed on impact as the windows were all blown out by the resulting thunderclap.

Yuffie's ears were ringing as the creature hit the ground uncomfortably close to her. She backed off and turned towards the source of the magical attack to see that Crimson had awoken, panting fiercely as her outstretched right hand hung in the air in front of her. She had a near-vacant look in her eyes, probably from the mental strain of the summoning beforehand and the Bolt 3 spell.

"Crimson… you okay now?" Cloud asked as he forced himself up.

"The shaking… woke me up…." Another materia shone on the former Turk's bangle and she fixed her eyes onto the surprisingly durable monster that still wasn't dead. "Hard to focus… body still hurts, but… it's vulnerable to magic, Poison… and Paralysis will work tooooo…"

Crimson passed right out again, leaving Aerith to try and patch the three of them up. That meant Yuffie had to hold the line. She reached into her pouch for her Poison Materia and unleashed the Bio spell. Maleficent poison in the form of a dense, gelatinous sphere slammed into the abomination and ruptured, soaking every inch of it in the toxic liquid.

She had its attention now as the poison did its work. It lunged for her as it did Cloud, but Yuffie was quicker to move without the need to defend someone else. She rolled out of the way as it crushed the ground beneath her and then took aim again with same spell, casting the poisonous mass directly into its eyes and letting the acrid liquid work its magic.

Unfortunately, now she had a rampaging, blind monster coming after her. Without direction, it simply lashed out and struck in her general direction. It was much harder to dodge with such erratic attacks, and one backhand successfully connected and sent her sprawling to the floor as her Poison Materia rolled out of her grasp.

"Ow!" slipped out of her mouth, despite her best efforts. The pain she was in was enough to warrant much worse, but she was more focused on the fact that it heard her. The creature turned to the sound and raised its hand to crush her. She scrambled up to her feet but wouldn't make it in time as the hand descended—

"Seal Evil!" Aerith declared, as though passing judgment upon it. Magical, violet-hued darts appeared above the abomination and then shot forward, skewering its muscles and mind. Paralysis took hold as every muscle in its body locked into place before it could crush her. "Cloud, now!"

Cloud flared with the light of the Limit Break and then channeled it into his blade. Yuffie figured that it was time to move when he chambered the blade and prepared to swing it down. She got clear as he fired the Blade Beam with as much force as he could manage.

The harsh glare of the crescent wave of energy blinded the kunoichi anew as it completely engulfed the abomination. The dying shriek faded into roaring destruction as the wall beyond the abomination gave way. When it died down, she opened her eyes to see that he had obliterated the wall behind it in the process, leaving no trace of the abomination.

Yuffie relaxed now that it was gone… and promptly groaned as a manual fell from above. It had probably been displaced from the second floor due to the blast. It read 'Cosmo Memory' and looked like it had something to do with Cosmo Canyon. She'd give it to Nanaki later.

Then Cloud started screaming as the creepy guy from the Cargo Ship floated out of the ground. He turned towards Cloud, who was on his hands and knees, and asked. "Are you here for the Reunion?"

"Re-Reunion?" Cloud grasped at his head. "You… you mean, Jenova?"

"She will be there." He extended a hand towards Cloud, as though reaching out for him to take it. "She will join with us, her children, at the reunion. She will become a calamity from the skies in the north, beyond Mt. Nibel."

A pained expression came across Cloud's face, and not the sort that came from physical pain. Yuffie assumed it was about the revelation that they learned outside the manor, about the clones. She decided to intervene before anything could come of it since Crimson was still unconscious and Aerith was clutching her staff, no doubt low on the mental power needed to cast a spell against him.

Before she could, there was a sudden bloom of cold as a bulwark of ice stood between him and Cloud. The creepy guy twisted his body before the flying kick that Tifa entered with could land, leaving her to ram into her own ice formation and shatter it with the kick. Rapid fire from the gun-barrel and lasers from the Enemy Skill Materia followed, only for them to both harmlessly impact against his skin.

The other had arrived. Outnumbered, he regarded them dispassionately for a moment in thought. Then he floated up into the air and through the ceiling of the manor, escaping from their grasps once again.

Tifa looked at Cloud, his head hanging low, and then turned to Yuffie. She crossed her arms and asked, "What the Hell is going on?"

[-oOo-]

Tifa was annoyed as she checked through the archives, tossing anything that didn't mesh with the dates when Cloud had been experiment on here to the floor. The former Turk pretty much came clean about everything that had happened. So not only did Shinra put up a fake town, with her piano strangely intact given that the things she placed inside of it were still there when she retrieved them for nostalgia's sake, but some of her friends and neighbors hadn't simply been killed—no, they were turned into mindless drones drawn to Sephiroth, who got away again!

"How many goddamn books are there?" Barret grunted as he looked at the titles and tossed them over his shoulder and out of the way. There were so many books that they weren't certain they'd be able to get through them all before Shinra arrived.

Stealth wasn't really an option anymore. Not since the battle had ended with a portion of the manor blown-out. But it would take time for Shinra to get there, so they had to go through everything while they could in hopes of fixing Cloud and the others turned by the experiment.

"Did someone drop a materia?" Aerith asked as she held it up. "It's a Destruct Materia."

"It's probably Yuffie's," Crimson said, crouched low and searching the book piles stacked on the floor. "She has more than any of us—wait, where is she?"

They all stopped to look around, only to find the youngest of their number was indeed missing. She'd slipped out without warning. Then Nanaki suddenly started snarling before the door opened and Yuffie walked in again.

She wasn't alone. There was a man with her, with long dark hair and bewitching crimson eyes, dressed in black while donning a red cloak that draped him. They reached for their weapons until Yuffie held up her hands in a placating manner, standing between them and him.

"Whoa, everyone chill out!" She gestured for them to lower their hands. "He's alright."

"Explain," Crimson demanded.

"I was just looking for what the key to the basement that fell out of the vault went to when I ran into these coffins—I wasn't planning on grave-robbing or anything," she quickly added when they gave her a look. "I found him sleeping in one of them and we got to talking. Well, I talked and mentioned that Sephiroth guy we just saw, he asked about Hojo, and here we are."

"She's given me the gist of what has happened," he said, walking around her and to the shelves. He seemed unbothered or unafraid at the collective weapons being pointed at him. Instead he grabbed the sliding ladder and slid it across to a section they hadn't visited yet. "It's been some time, but if Hojo's sorting system hasn't changed then I can help you find the research documents you're looking for."

"What is… no—" Aerith held a palm to her ear and shook her head before addressing him. "Who are you?"

"Vincent Valentine," he introduced himself while picking up a book and glancing through the contents. "I used to be a part of Shinra's Department of Administrative Research assigned here to bodyguard the scientists during the Jenova Project until I opposed experimenting on Sephiroth and his mother, Lucrecia Crescent."

"That's the old title for the Investigation Sector of the General Affairs Department—in other words, the Turks," Crimson noted. "Although it's been over a decade since they've used that title."

Cloud, on the other hand, had a different question in mind. "I thought Sephiroth was born from Jenova?"

"That's not entirely wrong, but it's not entirely correct either." He dropped a journal down towards Cloud, who caught it. "Jenova's cells were injected into his fetus while he was inside of Lucrecia's womb. She was a scientist and former assistant of Professor Gast that ended up marrying Hojo and carrying his child."

"Hojo is his Sephiroth's birth father?" Cloud mumbled while holding the journal. "He experimented on his own son?"

"I tried to stop the experiment, but failed." He tilted his head low, obscuring his eyes from view. "It is a sin that I cannot forgive myself for. So I slept in my coffin until she woke me."

"You were having a nightmare," Yuffie said. "Anyway, it sounds like that Hojo quack is the one who's to blame."

"He really is the source of everything bad that's come out of Shinra." Crimson shook her head. "The world would be a better off place without him."

"She's right," Aerith told him. "You tried when others didn't. If you feel so strongly that it's a sin, then you can't just sleep while the one responsible is still causing more problems. "

Vincent didn't respond to that. He merely went back to looking through the books for what they came for. But the words did reach him enough to consider what they were saying, and if he was truly paying penitence by allowing Hojo's evils to continue all this time….

[-oOo-]

Hojo woke to find himself inside of Shinra's Medical Center. It seemed that he had been saved after all. Good.

He looked down to see his arms were twitching of their own accord. Effort on his part seemed to be unable to stop it. The constant electrocution had indeed damaged his body in the long-term, but his mind remained clear.

That was what truly counted. The flesh was weak and fragile. It could be molded, mended, or repaired through science. But his mind was irreplaceable.

The door opened before he could further contemplate on how to go about dealing with his current condition and in stepped Rufus Shinra and his guard hound, which snarled at him. He could vaguely recall the experiment that had been done to increase the aptitude of animals and implant knowledge from materia into them, allowing them to use spells. It must've been one of the surviving ones.

"Good evening, Professor," Rufus said, his tone balanced between forced politeness and mild anger. "Are you lucid enough to understand me?"

"I am," Hojo said.

"Then let me be blunt," Rufus said. "Sephiroth. Cloud Strife. Jenova. The Ancient. You've been involved with all these incidents, which have resulted in the loss of our forces and have been a detriment to the company. You're going to help us solve every last one of them."

"Of course. But I will need compensation in order to do so. After all, it was your father who instructed me to carry out those projects."

"My father was the type who'd be fine with wasting money in hopes of getting you to comply, but I'm not him," Rufus made clear. "This is not a negotiation, one way or another you will help. The only question is whether that will be under duress or not. After I've finished cleaning up the mess you two have left behind and have finished rebuilding the company, then I may consider hiring you again."

The arrogance of youth, Hojo thought to himself as he ignored the hound still snarling at him. To have to work without the liberties that he enjoyed beforehand was an insult. Alas, he had no choice but to accept it now, lest his current condition become far more unpleasant.

But he would not forget this insult. "Very well. Let us begin."