It had been six months since Vincent walked out of Midgar and didn’t look back. He’d hacked into the computer to find out what happened to his wife, closing the file after [deceased]. He didn’t want to know the details.

He’d caught a bad cold while shovelling his small Icicle Inn house out of the third blizzard of the year and he hadn’t quite worked up the will to go further than the small bathroom in the hall today. As he laid in bed, he heard something like knocking on the window.

His bedroom was on the second floor. He ignored it.

The knocking was shortly followed by the screeching sound of a blade against glass. Vincent winced and walked over to see if there was something outside rubbing against the window.

He screamed and jumped backwards when he caught sight of Hojo in the tree outside. He doubled over, coughing hard. After he was able to stand up, he unlocked the window.

“Fucking ghosts,” he muttered. “Get in here, it’s cold.”

“You’re not scared?” Hojo asked as he slipped inside.

Vincent shrugged. “No point. You gonna kill me?”

“The thought crossed my mind, but no.”

“I just want you to know, Hojo,” Vincent said, his breathing labored. “I wanted to put you out of your misery. Lucrecia only wanted to save your life. We didn’t set out to, you know, torture you for twenty five years or anything.”

“I know,” Hojo sighed. “Things get out of hand. I accept that.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Oh, I’m just here to watch.”

“Watch?”

There was a knock on the door. Hojo slipped back out the window.

“Who’s there?” Vincent called warily.

“Tseng, sir.”

“Tseng? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Delivery, sir.”

Vincent cracked the door open. “Delivery?”

“Yes, sir.” Tseng said, making eye contact with Vincent while he pressed his pistol agains the door and fired three times. “Delivery from Veld Dragoon. Your Turk retirement package.” As Vincent slumped to the floor, Tseng calmly picked up the shell casings from his gun and walked away.

The flight to Bone Village was largely silent. Aeris looked at each of the others on the helicopter in turn. Veld was piloting the machine, though it didn’t seem to require much effort now that they were in the air. Zack sat next to her. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders and she was glad he was there. At the rear of the cabin sat Hojo, muttering to himself. She was glad he had chosen to sit there. Planet’s weapon or not, he still creeped her out.

“Hey, Zack?” she asked, turning to look at him. He shook his head as he was pulled out of his thoughts.

“What is it?” he smiled at her.

“Do you mind… I mean, you looked all weird when my dad called you my boyfriend.”

Zack chuckled and pulled her closer. “I was just caught off-guard. If you want me to be your boyfriend, I’d be honored.”

“Oh, wow. I’ve never had a boyfriend.” She hugged him and rested her head on his shoulder for the rest of the ride.

When they arrived in the village, it was still quiet. Hojo checked on the buried Jenova specimen, declared it still safe, and the four of them took up positions within sight of it, among the long-abandoned excavations.

It was getting dark again by the time Lucrecia and her sons approached the village. Hojo shook his head when he saw her. Her skin was bluish and almost translucent, and her hair seemed to be turning white. Sephiroth and Dadjy trailed behind her. They didn’t seem to be expecting any trouble; their guns remained in their holsters.

They entered the village and went straight for the body. Aeris waited for them to draw close to where she sat, obscured behind some kind of half-excavated artifact, and then she reached out to Sephiroth the same way she’d done to Reno. Sephiroth wavered and then stopped walking.

Lucrecia turned and frowned at him. “Sephiroth, darling, why aren’t you listening to Mother?” He stared at her, his eyes pleading, but didn’t move. Lucrecia’s frown grew deeper, twisting into a grimace.

“Someone’s trying to take you from me!” Lucrecia screamed, her voice more shrill than Hojo remembered. “I won’t let them!” Dadjy stepped away from her, looking for the hidden attackers, while Lucrecia hurried to Sephiroth’s side and put her finger in his mouth.

“Bite down,” she coaxed him. “That’s a good boy. You need more of Mother in your body.” A trickle of blue blood trailed out of the corner of his mouth. Aeris guessed he’d done as he was told because the pressure of the Crisis fighting her multiplied. It felt like it was surging around her, drowning her, trying to push her out as she’d tried to do to it. This was a lot harder than it had been with Reno. She fought to retain her concentration.

“Ewww,” Zack grimaced, in his hiding place opposite Aeris. Dadjy immediately turned toward the sound and opened fire. When the clip was empty, he let the gun hang from its strap and drew some kind of blade. SOLDIER-issue, Zack judged, and he waited until Dadjy got close before jumping out from his hiding place.

Zack pressed what advantage he had in surprise, getting one clean swing in at Dadjy before the younger man blocked his sword. They settled into a duelling fight, each pushing the other back in turn. Dadjy was quick and clever with his sword, but he was only a second-class SOLDIER, and a young one at that. Veld could see from his vantage point that Zack would wear him down eventually.

“I suppose I could hurry that along,” he said, taking careful aim as Dadjy seemed to hesitate.

“Hello little one,” Dadjy was saying below, not in hesitation, but because he had spotted Aeris in her hiding spot. Zack rushed to put himself between Dadjy and Aeris as Veld fired.

The two young men shouted almost in unison. Zack wondered if Veld had missed, but noticed Dadjy was bleeding too. The shot had actually gone through Dadjy completely and buried itself in Zack’s side.

“Fuck,” Zack swore, throwing himself and his sword at Dadjy again. He waited to change into the wolf again, but the feeling running through his veins just didn’t seem right. He was losing himself, that much was the same, but…

He lost conscious thought then.

Veld frowned, angry at himself, and aimed instead for Lucrecia. She barely flinched when he fired and hit her in the stomach.

Lucrecia looked away from Sephiroth. “Why, Dadjy! You’ve infected a new toy for Mother! Thank you!”

Dadjy smiled proudly and advanced on Aeris. Lucrecia spared a thought for Zack, ordering him to do the same, but as his body twisted and swelled into the wolf form, Fenrir fought her control.

Aeris screamed as Dadjy swung his blade at her, scrambling backwards and reaching for her staff where she’d left it on the ground. The second time he swung at her, she brought the staff up and blocked it. The third time, she knocked him off-balance long enough to allow her to scramble to her feet.

With Aeris’s concentration gone, Sephiroth returned to Lucrecia’s control and she directed all of her effort to Fenrir. The wolf growled at her, trying to force away her mental pushes.

“Inflict some pain on him, Sephiroth, dear,” Lucrecia ordered. “That should break his will quickly enough.” As she continued to batter on Fenrir’s mental shields, Sephiroth dashed at him, firing repeatedly from his rifle and then dropping it, as his brother had, to draw a sword.

“I will never get used to seeing that,” Veld muttered, thinking that people should pick one shape and stay with it. His had served him just fine for forty years, after all, aside from the whole arm loss. He shook his head and waited for a good shot at either of the boys. He looked over at Hojo, who was watching from the highest vantage point they’d found.

“Well?” Veld shouted at him.

Hojo looked up at him. “What?”

“Well, aren’t you going to do something?”

Hojo looked back down, thoughtfully, as if considering. “Yes, I suppose you’re right, this would be a good time. Shoot me. The body needs to break down to release the energy that allows the shift.” He was ready to argue if need be, but he needn’t have worried. Veld shrugged and easily pulled the trigger.

Hojo had never been able to communicate well with the dragon. Their thought patterns seemed simply incomprehensible to each other, and he assumed that was why he lost all memory of himself when the dragon took over.

This time, it was different. Chaos himself reared up in the back of his mind, pushing his way forward through the haze of pain, and he was not thinking about the sort of animal instincts the dragon followed. Chaos’s thoughts were clear and concise and quite compatible with Hojo’s own.

“Kill the bitch,” thought Chaos. Hojo thought the sentiment a bit crude, but certainly not a bad idea. He was surprised to note that his own perceptions were not dimming as his body shifted. Hojo heard Chaos’s thoughts like notes on a violin, next to his ear and inside his mind at the same time, and he was surprised and fascinated by the amount of pain required to reshape his body. Unlike the dragon, this form was no mere beastial energy taking the form most comfortable to his mind.

Hojo felt the skin on his back tear as great, leathery wings spread. His skin hardened and it seemed like there was fire in his eyes and on his feet, like the demons he remembered from the old Wutaian legends.

He never had taken those very seriously, but after he was done here, he made a note to go back and read them.

Spotting Chaos above her, Lucrecia sent shards of ice through the air at him. Beating his wings, the demon took off and the ice spell flew past him, knocking Veld backwards and causing his head to bounce off a rock. The Turk reached up to feel the wound, and pulled his hand away bloody.

Beside her, Dadjy had Aeris pinned against a stone wall. He knocked her staff aside. As he pulled back for a killing blow, Veld fired again, this time clipping his hands and causing him to drop his sword. Aeris reached out and pressed her hands to both sides of his face, shoving the Crisis back in his body. He faltered and dropped to his knees.

Lucrecia dropped her assault on Fenrir’s mind and turned to Dadjy, then glared up at Veld. She let loose another volley of magic, and this time the sharped ice found purchase in his chest. Veld stumbled and almost dropped his gun.

Turning back to Dadjy, Lucrecia tried to reclaim him. Before she could bolster his defenses, Chaos swept in from the sky and knocked her to the dirt. He landed at her feet, staring down at her as she lay on the ground. At first she had no idea who or what she was looking at, but the demon’s form was much closer to his host’s body than the dragon.

“Chaos!” she spat, knowing the demon’s name instinctively. She knew it, like she knew what was right, because she was Mother. She knew Chaos was sent by the Planet. She knew he would try to stop her.

She would not let him.

“Jenova, you can’t win here,” Chaos said. Hojo felt the words forming before they were spoken. It was easier simply to think as Chaos, so he let himself slide into the mindset.

“Of course I can,” she answered. “You’re just plain outplayed, weapon. I have control of one of yours.” At this word and her unspoken command, Fenrir turned and clawed at Chaos. Chaos dodged and Fenrir, sensing an opportunity for freedom, let his momentum carry him toward Lucrecia with his claws raised.

“Sephiroth!” she screamed, and her elder son swooped in, sword upraised, and shoved it downward through Fenrir’s body. Fenrir tried to stand, but he was pinned to the rock floor.

Aeris, pressed closely to Dadjy as she chased the Crisis from his body, could feel that something was desperately wrong with Fenrir — and with Zack — but she didn’t dare lose her concentration now. She’d already watched her work undone once.

“Now him,” Lucrecia commanded, pointing to Chaos. Sephiroth tore the sword free, leaving Fenrir collapsed and breathing raggedly, and charged at Chaos. The demon stepped smoothly aside, leaving Sephiroth’s blade catching only air at every turn. Sephiroth pushed himself harder, Lucrecia’s mental insistance serving to work him into a frenzy.

She pushed the foreign cells inside him to make him faster, make him better.

Sword caught flesh, and Chaos winced. It was not deep, but imprisoned for so long in the materia, Chaos had nearly forgotten he could bleed. He tried to make his way over to Lucrecia, but Sephiroth seemed to be in front of him at every turn. He moved faster than humanly possible, now. Chaos grabbed his sword and jerked it from his hands, throwing it aside. Irrational, Sephiroth dove at Chaos anyway, his hands twisting into claws as he made contact with the demon. They penetrated Chaos’s leathery skin more easily than the sword had.

“Protect me, Sephiroth! Protect me from the demon that fathered you! Be my angel, Sephiroth!” Lucrecia was screaming, hysterical. There was pain behind the glaze over Sephiroth’s eyes now and he hunched forward, dragging claws down Chaos’s chest, as a single misshapen wing pulled out of his back. Lucrecia’s eyes were wild and she was laughing.

In the corner of his vision, Chaos saw Dadjy in Aeris’s arms.

“No… Mother…” Dadjy whimpered, but Lucrecia’s attention was centered on Sephiroth alone. He didn’t want her gone, didn’t want to let her go, but he felt the bile rise in his throat and there was nothing he could do. Aeris stepped out of the way, knowing what to expect this time, and held Dadjy’s hair as his body shook violently and he vomited.

“It’s okay,” she said softly, stroking his hair. “It’ll be okay, Dadjy. It’s okay.” She wasn’t sure she believed it, but it was what her mother always said to her when she was sick.

When it seemed like there was nothing left for Dadjy to throw up, he collapsed, sobbing, onto the ground. Aeris turned her attention to Fenrir… or Zack, as his body had returned to the human form. She dashed in front of Lucrecia, hoping to drag him to safety.

The woman glared down at Aeris as she tugged on Zack’s heavy body. Above them, Veld painfully pushed himself up far enough to fire the last rounds in his gun, burying two bullets in Lucrecia’s lungs and drawing her attention away from the young girl.

Lucrecia’s attention was on Veld now and she drew on the magic in the stone beneath them, causing it to shake. The outcropping Veld was on shuddered and collapsed, and he with it, a sickening thud among the cracking stones as he landed.

She turned back to her eldest son. “Sephiroth, stand up for Mother. Fight for Mother,” she ordered him, standing close behind him, but the harder she pushed his body, the harder he found it to fight.

Sephiroth’s legs gave out and he looked up at Chaos with horror in his eyes. The pain was bringing him back to his senses, but his body was still in Lucrecia’s control. The seams on his pants burst, revealing a mass of tentacles and malformed wings where his legs had been.

Aeris screamed. A moment lated Dadjy was beside her, taking Zack’s heavy body from her hands and pulling both of them away. He couldn’t make himself look. He was too aware of how close he’d been to that, and suddenly his skin felt foreign and itchy on him.

Chaos watched, waiting.

“Get up! Listen to Mother!” Lucrecia was screaming. She grabbed Sephiroth’s hair at the root and lifted him from the ground, her arms far stronger than they should have been. Boneless, fleshy tentacles twisted against each other as Sephiroth’s body tried desperately to do as it was commanded. She released her grip and he fell again.

Aeris was crouched over Zack, trying to make him breathe again. “Please,” she whispered, praying to the Planet or her mother or whomever would listen. “Please, please, please…” The Planet didn’t answer, and Zack’s body was growing cold. Dadjy put an arm around her now, hesitantly. He was afraid she would push him away. She was just hoping that she could close her eyes and never open them again.

Sephiroth’s one wing was beating sickly against the ground, blowing up clouds of dust. He clawed weakly at the air in front of him, towards Chaos, but couldn’t muster the force to reach him. Lucrecia laughed and egged him on.

Chaos reached over him, grabbing Lucrecia by the neck with his clawed hand and pulling her to him. Her hysterical laughter died on her lips as she gasped for breath. The demon’s other hand rested over her chest, ready to tear out her heart, but it was Hojo’s voice that came from his mouth.

“What did you do to your son?!”

“I made him better! Can’t you see? He’s better!”

Chaos’s voice was in his ear, telling him that this was no longer the woman he’d dated, or even the woman who had left him in the basement to rot. Lucrecia was gone, he said. Only Jenova remained, a cancer that had replaced her host.

Both minds were in agreement as Chaos’s claws sank into her chest, snapping ribs and closing around her heart. Lucrecia — Jenova — the body continued to laugh even after he’d pulled the organ free and let the body slump to the ground.

Her voice dwindled slowly. She twitched, and was still.

Then, without the force of his mother’s will to blind him, Sephiroth became fully aware of his situation. He looked at his twisted arms and the masses of flesh that had been his legs like a man slowly waking up from a nightmare.

It was a full minute before he began to scream.

Aeris approached him hesitantly, looking at Chaos, but the demon did not order her away. She put a small hand on Sephiroth’s chest and another on his head. She grimaced, trying hard to focus and listen over the sound of screaming in her ear.

“I can’t… I can’t do anything. It’s in too deep. I can’t fix it,” she said dully, stepping away from him.

She looked up at Chaos. “Can you fix him?”

“No,” the demon answered her.

“Can you… help him?” she asked, even more quietly.

Chaos nodded. He stepped up to Sephiroth, gently cupping his chin in one hand. He stood there for a long time, waiting until the screaming died away and the former SOLDIER was staring up at him, silent.

“I’m going to take your soul,” he said, unsure if Sephiroth could understand him. “It will ensure you can escape that tainted body.” Chaos trailed his clawed fingers over Sephiroth’s cheek, and the man closed his eyes.

Chaos nodded to himself, knowing that was as much acknowledgement as he was likely to get. He tipped Sephiroth’s face up and drove a claw between his eyes, into his brain. Sephiroth’s body went limp.

Folding his wings in around him, Chaos sighed heavily. The demonic form slipped away like wax, and then the man Aeris had first seen inside the lab was before her again.

“Is he…?” she asked, swallowing hard.

“For the most part,” Hojo answered, staring down at the bodies. “Zack?”

“He… he stopped breathing… I couldn’t do anything,” Aeris said, gulping air.

“That’s it, then.”

Aeris looked around the abandoned village, shaking her head slowly. Zack and Veld’s bodies lay where they had fallen. Dadjy walked up to stand beside her.

“We should bury them,” Dadjy said, biting his lip.

“I will, when I’m done,” Hojo said. He was looking past them, now, toward the cave Lucrecia had been heading for. “You two should go.”

“Go?” Aeris asked. Hojo walked over to Veld’s body and pulled out his cell phone. He flipped it open and the screen lit up. Nodding, he closed it again and tossed it to Dadjy.

“Take the boat they came in. Go back to Kalm. Call Midgar. Veld’s assistant will understand, I think.” Aeris and Dadjy both nodded.

“Go. Now.” When Aeris didn’t move, Dadjy gently took her arm and led her away.

Hojo watched until they disappeared down the path, then turned back to the cave. “Time to finish this, finish her, finish the story.” Ice froze Jenova, but didn’t stop her. He needed something more permanent. Chaos whispered to him that the way to destroy something totally was to make it ash. Hojo felt the energy forming the spell and smiled.

Looking back as Dadjy navigated the boat away from shore, Aeris saw smoke and then flames rising from the village. She was surprised. She hadn’t expected Hojo to choose a funeral pyre.

“Daddy?” Aeris called from outside. “It’s me, Daddy. I’m home. Some stuff happened.”

He opened the door hesitantly. “Oh good, Aeris, I was worried– Zachary! You’re all right?” Aeris spun and saw Zack coming up behind her, two more people in the alley behind him.

Zack hesitated for a minute, then shrugged. “I don’t really know.”

Gast looked past him then. “What’s going on? Veld? And who’s…” Even having heard from Sephiroth that Hojo was alive, Gast’s voice died in his throat when he set eyes on the man.

“Hello, Professor,” Hojo said with a nod.

Aeris looked back at all of them, glaring. “I said I wanted to be alone.”

“No,” Veld corrected. “You said you needed to think. You didn’t specify where you were going or that you wanted to do it by yourself.”

“You’re all insufferable. I can’t believe I have to help you people save the Planet.”

“Is that what we’re here for?” Zack asked her.

“Well, yeah. What did you think?” she responded.

He shrugged. “Beat the heck out of Lucrecia, maybe?”

“The Planet loves irony, Zack, she plots these patterns out nice and straight and watches them all collide. Slowing in her orbit for traffic accidents.”

“Don’t talk about her like that!” Aeris shouted.

Gast could see porch lights going on behind them and heads appearing in windows. “Maybe you had all better come inside,” he said, opening the door. Hojo waited for everyone else to file in before following.

He looked Gast in the eye as he passed. Gast shook his head sadly.

“They told you I was dead and you believed it?” Hojo asked.

“They did, and you looked it, and quite honestly… quite honestly, I could believe them. I could see you experimenting on yourself.”

Hojo shook his head. “You’re right, I was close, I’d thought about doing it to myself. That’s not why I’m disappointed, not at all, no. I’m much more hurt that you thought I’d fucked it up that badly.” Hojo brushed past him and into the kitchen where everyone else had gathered. He looked briefly at the occupied chairs and then pulled his hair out of the way before hopping up onto a counter to sit.

Gast shivered and turned to the strange group that had convened in his kitchen. “Why are you all here? I hope you’ll tell me that much. What happened to Sephiroth?”

“He’s infected,” Aeris said. “With the Crisis.”

“What does that mean?” Veld asked.

“Jenova, the Crisis, was an alien that came to this planet a long time ago.” Aeris spoke in a faraway voice, not looking at anyone. She was obviously listening to something not in the room. “She made the crater up north. She killed most of the Cetra with some kind of disease and the planet made Weapons to protect itself from her… but the Cetra were the ones who bound Jenova in the ice. She was frozen and helpless until she was released.” She relaxed, sighing heavily, when she was done. She hadn’t realized how tense she was.

“Hojo and I discovered her body early in my career,” Gast picked up the narrative, and though he tried to look at his daughter, his eyes kept darting back to the former scientist hunched over his counter. “We assumed Jenova was the first perfectly-preserved Cetra specimen to ever be discovered – or at least we wanted her to be. Of course we had no idea what we were looking for in the first place. We dug her out and brought her back. When we established the auxiliary lab in Nibelheim for Hojo to do theoretical research while I stayed in Midgar to work with SOLDIER, he was assigned to observe and record the specimen. I met Ifalna while you were out there, Hojo, and she told me about the Crisis and about –”

Veld’s PHS rang. He stepped into the living room as he flipped it open.

“Ifalna?” Hojo asked before Gast could continue.

“A Cetra. My wife.”

Hojo looked at Aeris, raising an eyebrow. She nodded to him, “The voice.”

“Interesting,” Hojo answered.

“What?” Gast asked, hating the feeling of being out of the loop. Who was this man who’d been left for dead twenty-five years and showed up again knowing his daughter better than he did? This was a far cry from the relentlessly logical scientist he’d known.

“Apparently the voice the planet uses is your wife.” Hojo smiled thoughtfully. “You have better taste than I thought.”

“Thank you… I think,” Gast answered, shaken, as he stared at at Hojo. Hojo was watching Aeris, and the girl was worrying over her father.

Zack broke the silence. “So, um, your wife was telling you stuff?”

“Oh, right,” Gast recovered, “yes, she told me about what the Crisis had done to the Cetra and said I had to put her back right away, before she woke up and threatened the planet again.”

“This was all after…” Hojo said, shaking his head.

“Yes,” Gast nodded. “So I had her taken back up north to Bone Village and left, the site abandoned on the pretense that some horribly contagious disease had been uncovered.”

“Did Mom suggest that?” Aeris asked.

Gast blinked. “Yes. Why?”

“It’s true, is all. But it sounds like a cover up. That’s so like Mom.”

“I suppose that is the sort of thing she’d come up with,” he considered. “But the question is where Lucrecia got her hands on some to begin with.”

“That… may be my fault,” Hojo said quietly. “I was experimenting with her as well as observing. I had some blood samples from her in storage when I was… yes. So this is my sin. The planet really is a bitch with a sense of humor.”

“So… do you think they’re headed for the body? Like, they’re gonna dig it up?” Zack asked, ignoring Hojo’s question.

“What does she want?” Gast asked, shaking his head. None of it made sense to him.

“It doesn’t matter what she wants,” Veld came back in, snapping the PHS shut. “Power, control, or a nice cup of tea. We were on the verge of arresting her for attempted murder. She’s already infected two SOLDIERs and on her way out of town, Reno and Rude intercepted her. Reno was badly injured and he’s showing signs of this infection, too. Nobody messes with my kids.”

“If this can be spread, we need to take her out fast,” Zack said, grateful to be able to switch into discussing tactics. This was ground he did feel comfortable on. “So she’s going north. They’ll probably take a boat from Kalm. Get us a helicopter, Veld, and we can beat them to the Village. What kind of backup will we have?”

“For the time being, you’ll have me,” Veld said. “Until we figure out how she’s spreading this, we can’t risk sending in a whole unit of SOLDIERs.”

Zack let his mouth hang open for only a minute before closing it and nodding. “Fine, so there’s you and there’s me. If you give enough fire from the helicopter…”

“You’re taking me as well,” Hojo spoke matter-of-factly.

“No offense, but you couldn’t shoot for shit up there,” Veld noted.

“I won’t be shooting.”

“What’s that supposed to–” Veld started, but Zack cut him off.

“I saw him in the basement. He’ll be fine. He comes.”

Veld crossed his arms over his chest, unhappy at having lost control of the situation.

“I’m going too,” Aeris said quietly.

“What?” Gast shouted. “No. No. Going to get your boyfriend is one thing–”

“Boyfriend?” Zack blinked, but Gast continued talking over him.

“–but going on a military operation is something else entirely. No.”

“But Daddy! I have to!” she complained. “The Planet said I have to and Mom said and I need to! I really do! And I know how to fight, you know I do, and if it gets bad, Zack will take care of me!”

“I will?”

She glared at him.

“Um. I guess I will.”

“‘I guess’ is not the most reassuring thing to hear from a SOLDIER,” Gast pointed out.

“I agree with your father,” Veld said. “This isn’t going to be clean or easy.”

“I’m not stupid and I’m not a kid!” Aeris shouted. She realized that a whiny, tantrum-throwing kid was exactly what she sounded like and stopped. She took a deep breath and collected her thoughts.

“Look. I’ve been thinking about what Mister Hojo said in the lab and he’s right. I know the planet’s not all happy and nice but this whole fighting thing isn’t simple or nice either. Sephiroth and Dadjy are sick! They need help, not just getting beat up, and I don’t think any of you guys is going to deal with that.”

“I was– I mean– We could deal with that,” Zack sputtered.

“How?” she demanded.

“Um… I dunno,” he admitted.

“Sephiroth is practically your best friend in the world and you’re about to run off and beat the heck out of him without a plan! Listen to yourself!” Aeris shouted.

Zack sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, then looked up at Gast. “She’s right.”

“I don’t care if she’s right. I have to put my daughter’s safety first,” Gast answered.

“But what if she can heal them so we don’t have to fight them? Honestly, they pretty much kicked our asses back in the lab,” Zack said. “I dunno that we could take them even with more planning and surprise on our side.”

“It’s not about saving Sephiroth,” Veld pointed out. “The security of Midgar is at stake, and possibly the planet. And you are still, technically, a Shinra employee.”

“Oh, like Shinra gives a damn about the planet,” Gast snapped.

“Shinra does care,” Veld said with a smirk. “Dead people don’t pay taxes, and a creepy alien space army could threaten Shinra’s control.”

Gast buried his face in his hands.

When he looked up, Ifalna was standing behind Aeris, hands on her daughter’s shoulders. He glanced around quickly. Veld and Zack were discussing tactics again, and Aeris’s head was down. She didn’t seem to notice.

Gast looked at his wife pleadingly, but she only nodded. He wanted to say something, anything, had been waiting to see her again since her death, but nothing came to his lips. Though she didn’t speak, it was obvious what she was telling him. Aeris had to go.

He nodded back to her, slowly, and closed his eyes. He could find no peace in the decision, however.

A hand laid on his shoulder made him jump. Ifalna was gone, and the hand belonged to his former student. He looked up at Hojo, ignoring the eyes and claws, looking for the man he had known. As a young man, he’d been a brat and a prima donna, too smart for his own good and insufferable to work with. That was why Gast had given him the lab in Nibelheim in the first place; it made his own life simpler.

He thought about Sephiroth and Dadjy, infected by their mother’s desperation, and about his own daughter. How much of this was his fault? Was fault even the right word to use? What had Hojo called it, his sin?

Gast was surprised to realize that he could also, when he squinted, see the resemblence to Sephiroth in Hojo’s face. He’d never had any reason to doubt that Sephiroth was Vincent’s; the effect was startling.

“We should go,” Hojo said, interrupting Veld and Zack’s planning. “We’ll go see this boy who was attacked. If Aeris can help him, then we’ll bring her.” He looked down at Gast and the older scientist nodded.

Aeris jumped up and ran around the table, hugging him. “Thank you, Daddy! Thank you!”

“Thank me by coming home in one piece,” Gast choked out.

“Come on. We don’t have much time,” Veld instructed. He, Zack, and Hojo filed out the door.

Aeris hesitated. “I love you, Daddy. I’ll be back.”

Then she was gone and the door slammed shut behind her. He watched through the screen until the four of them disappeared into the twilight.

Veld led them to a small house near the northernmost exit from Midgar. On Shinra’s behalf, Rude had commandeered the first floor and had Reno laid out on the couch. Rude was no longer bleeding from an array of cuts and a bullet wound in the shoulder, but neither had he bothered to heal himself; he’d apparently been using up all his materia on his teammate.

Reno’s left eye was clouded-over and useless, even after healing, and the scarring around it would be permanent, Veld knew. Everything else seemed to have knitted up well enough under the cure spells, at least enough to hold him together until they got him to a hospital. It was Reno’s mental state that worried them.

“He has moments of lucidity,” Rude explained tersely, “but he’ll get violent, and start in about ‘protecting Mother’ and then I hit him in the head until he shuts up.”

“You hit him?” Veld asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Only thing that calms him down,” Rude shrugged.

“Please dun hit me agin,” Reno muttered.

“Stop being crazy and I won’t,” Rude replied without looking at him.

Veld frowned. “I don’t need brain-damaged Turks… Well, any more damaged than the lot of you already are.

“Okay, Aeris, this is your show,” Zack said. Looking nervous, the girl stepped forward.

Aeris wasn’t quite sure what she was doing as she laid her hands on his forehead, but she waited for the planet to show her what she had to do. She had a memory suddenly of catching some of the neighborhood boys in the garden playing ball, how they’d run through the flowers to get away when she called her father. Several of the flowers had been crushed and were in pain. She’d spoken to them, and they’d recovered.

Well, Aeris reasoned, if she could talk to the inside of a plant, maybe she could talk to the inside of a person, too. She concentrated on sensing the lifestream that was inside Reno. The feel of it bubbled up angry in her mind, fighting, and she tried to tell it what it was fighting, but the idea seemed too complicated. The lifestream retreated from her.

Desperate and unthinking, she pursued it, her own lifeforce invading Reno’s body. When she felt the Crisis inside him poisoning his lifeforce and twisting his cells, she railed against it.

The Crisis was stopped, and Aeris could almost hear it howl in anger. Reno’s own energy followed the example she’d set, breaking up and pushing aside the invading cells. Now, Aeris thought, he would just need to expell it somehow. How…

Before she could think of it, Reno reflexively turned his head to the side and vomited in Aeris’s lap.

“Eww!” she squealed, jumping up and away from him. “Get it off! Get me a towel!” Zack couldn’t help laughing now that the tension was broken and Aeris began to yell at him for it. It was Hojo who returned from the kitchen with dishtowels so she could clean herself off.

Reno sat up on the couch, looking ill but much better than he had a few minutes before. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“Nicely done, messy but effective. Practicality wins over pretty. Do you know how you did that?” Hojo asked Aeris when she had calmed down. The front of her dress was still damp and rather dingy, but she was trying valiantly to look dignified.

“Yeah, I do. I think I can do it for Sephiroth and Dadjy,” she told him.

Veld had disappeared, and returned with a shirt and a pair of workpants. He handed them to Aeris.

“You want me to wear these?” she asked. “Where did they come from?”

“Comandeered by Shinra,” he smirked. “And I don’t want you distracted by uncomfortable clothing. It’s faster to change yours than train you to make do.”

“Thanks…” she said, without much gratefulness in her voice. She disappeared into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later, wearing the tight pants and too-big shirt. Veld tossed her a coat.

“It gets chilly up north. Come on, helicopter’s waiting for us outside the gates.” As the others left, he looked at Rude. “Get him back to headquarters, let the lab look at him. If there’s anything weird, call me.”

Rude nodded. Veld took another look at Reno’s eye, cursed under his breath, and followed the others.

“Welcome back, sir,” Irena greeted Veld as he woke. He blinked up at the flourescent lights above her, waiting for the room to come into focus.

“How did it go?” he asked as soon as he could see who he was talking to.

Irena smiled. “It went fine. Pepper’s pretty clever at this kind of thing. We rushed the post-op cure a bit, since you wanted to get back in the field as soon as possible. I figured a bit of a surgical scar was the least of your worries.”

Veld nodded. “So now what?”

“Any pain in your arm?”

“Nope. You guys did good work.”

“Then it’s time for the prosthetic. Sit up and raise your arm, please.” Veld did so, pulling awkwardly on his hospital gown. As she was sliding the prosthetic arm into place and fastening it, there was a loud crash from the lab.

“What the–” Irena looked up. “I’ll be right back, sir. Try moving the arm, hopefully the nerves synched up properly.” She stepped outside and hurried down the hall, reaching the main lab just in time to see Pepper knocked back against the wall, bleeding. She turned just as Sephiroth fired at him again.

“Pepper!” she screamed. “Sephiroth, what are you doing?

“Removing the obstacles in Mother’s way,” Sephiroth answered, his voice dull. Behind him was a young man with short brunette hair, his brother Dadjy, whom he’d seen around the lab a few times as well. Behind him stood Lucrecia, looking ill or possibly dead. Her skin was corpse-white and her lips and cheeks were blue.

“Ah, Irena,” Lucrecia said, stepping forward. “Pepper changed the access codes to the cold storage unit. Would you be so kind as to let us in?” Sephiroth and Dadjy fell into step on either side of her. Their eyes were dull. The whole scene was almost too surreal to be menacing.

Irena tried to summon up her courage. “I– I don’t know them,” she lied. She told herself that it was better than giving in, at least.

“Too bad. She’s useless too, my boys. We’ll just have to break the door down.”

“Wait, no! You can’t do that!” Irena said, spreading her arms to block the hallway. It was going to be ineffective, but she had to do something. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t right.

“Somebody’s standing in Mother’s way,” she said, turning to Dadjy. “Remove her.” The younger boy stepped forward without a word and levelled his gun at Irena.

She closed her eyes as he fired and waited, but didn’t feel any bullets ripping through her. Irena opened one eye, first seeing the look of surprise and annoyance on Lucrecia’s face, then looking down. At her feet was Carbunkle, his fur and tail standing on end, an almost angry look on his small face. The ruby in his forehead was glowing.

Dadjy fired again, and this time Irena watched as the bullets were deflected by the shield spell. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Both of you! He can’t hold that forever!” Lucrecia ordered, and Sephiroth and Dadjy both opened fire. Carbunkle held his ground bravely, but he began to look tired. Finally he broke his concentration and lept forward, claws extended, at Lucrecia’s face. She screamed and knocked him aside as Irena heard another shot — this time from behind her.

She turned to see that Veld had leaned out from the post-op room, having apparently retrived his guns, and was comfortable enough with the prosthetic to be firing with both hands. She felt a moment of irrational pride that it worked so well, even if his shots from that hand did seem to be going wide.

Finally gathering her wits, Irena ducked. Veld managed to hit both Dadjy and Sephiroth, but neither one seemed bothered by the shots. Irena crawled into the lab at the end of the hall to get out of the crossfire and tried desperately to think of what she could do to help.

Looking up, she found her answer.

She and Pepper had finally finished stabilizing Zack the night before and had been planning on releasing him when they got distrated by Veld’s emergency. She quickly pressed the buttons to wake him and drain the tank, then opened the cabinet where Pepper had thrown his sword and clothes. Irena was suddenly quite grateful Lucrecia had made him strip before she injected him — asking him to go out naked to fight a possessed Sephiroth seemed a bit much even for a first class SOLDIER.

He woke up coughing and disoriented but, like any good SOLDIER, the sound of gunfire in the hall drew his attention straightaway.

“Sephiroth’s gone insane,” she told him, handing him his pants and shirt. “The whole family has. Lucrecia wants to infect everybody with what she gave them.” Zack frowned at her.

“We need your help. Please?”

The SOLDIER ducked his head into the hallway just in time for a shot to clip his hair. He leaned back quickly and swept the damp strands back from his face.

“This is Lucrecia’s fault?” he asked.

“Yes,” she told him, trying to heft his huge sword.

“Then I can handle that.” He took it from her easily and stepped toward the door.

Outside, someone yelled “Sephiroth!” and Zack’s eyes went wide.

“Aeris?” he asked.

Irena shrugged. She didn’t know the voice.

The girl outside screamed and Zack ran out without another moment’s hesitation.

Irena peeked around the doorframe and watched the fight. Veld was still using the lab door for cover. His good arm was bleeding from the shoulder but he was continuing to fire. Zack was advancing on Sephiroth and Dadjy, deflecting most of their shots and about to bring his sword to bear on Lucrecia when a spell arced out of her hand, an ice bolt, and threw him back. The sword flew from his hand. Lucrecia nodded to Sephiroth and he fired at his former boyfriend’s prone form without reaction.

“Stay ready,” Lucrecia warned them. “He’s going to–” He had already begun to change, his shoulders widening and his body slumping over until he was on all fours. Dadjy hurried to change his clip while Sephiroth began firing again, but Fenrir was already almost on top of them and lept at Lucrecia. She screamed as she fell under his paws.

“Get him off me!” she yelled. They dropped their guns, afraid of hurting her if they fired, and Dadjy pulled two blades from inside his coat. He tossed one to Sephiroth and they each attacked Fenrir, who howled in pain. He snapped at Sephiroth, giving Lucrecia time to scramble out from under his paws.

The elevator dinged and its doors opened. No one paid much attention as the long-haired man stepped out and surveyed the scene.

“And they call you Chaos,” he muttered. He shut his eyes. “Let’s find this contamination and get it over with.” The sensation he called Chaos answered, drawing his attention to three forms.

Sephiroth, he recognized immediately.

“Sephiroth, I think you forgot something!” Hojo announced as he drew the rifle out and fired. He had never been a particularly good shot, however, and his bullet ripped straight through Lucrecia as she stood.

She looked down at the wound, where it seeped dark blue blood onto her white labcoat.

“Ewww,” Irena squealed from down the hall before ducking back into the small lab.

Lucrecia unbuttoned her coat and pulled up her shirt to look at the wound. Fenrir tried to attack, but Sephiroth and Dadjy dove at him, knocking him aside. As Lucrecia watched, the hole knit shut, leaving her skin a flawless white.

She smirked at Hojo. “Looks like my experiment was more successful than yours. No scar.”

“Actually, if you recall, if you think very hard, you might remember that they were both my experiments,” Hojo snapped as he approached her.

“You always did worry too much about who got the glory,” she muttered.

“Only when you were trying to steal it,” he answered, bringing his claw around to her face. Sephiroth stepped in between them, letting the claw rake down his chest. Hojo stepped back even as the wounds began to close.

“It’s getting too crowded in here,” Lucrecia said, standing on tiptoe to catch Sephiroth’s ear. “I’ve got a better idea. Follow Mother, boys.” She turned down the hall toward the fire door. Fenrir tried to stop her, but Dadjy knocked him aside and all three were gone through the door before he got turned around to pursue.

Fenrir collapsed against the wall and slumped to the floor, and a minute later, Zack was looking around in confusion. Veld stepped out of the observation room.

“Can somebody tell me what on earth is going on here?” he demanded, managing to sound very dignified for a man whose hospital gown was gaping open in the back.

“If you ask very nicely, I might,” Hojo said.

“And you are?”

“I’ve been called many things, many, most of them unpleasant. But call me Hojo.”

“Professor Hojo? The one who disappeared?” Veld asked.

Hojo nodded.

“But you look–”

“I’m older than I look.”

“Heh. And here I’d hoped I could nail Vincent and Lucrecia for your murder. That would have gotten Vincent out of my job for certain.”

“I’m not sure that’s an issue anymore,” Hojo pointed out, looking around the destroyed lab.

“Maybe, maybe not. There’s no proof Valentine had anything to do with this. For all I know, he’s back at his apartment waiting for us.”

“He’s not involved, he’s not the problem. He’s not the solution either. He’s secondary, leftovers, useless.”

“Lucrecia’s the problem?”

The former scientist nodded again. “What she’s done is, what she’s let out. It’s a crisis.”

Aeris’s head whipped around when she heard that. “What?”

“She’s the problem, I’m the solution. She made the solution before the problem existed. She always did find all her good ideas by accident.”

“What makes you the solution?” Veld asked.

“As the demon in my head is so fond of informing me, he was a weapon. My experiments disturbed him from his work. He guarded the planet. Funny, humans are so cynical, we say ‘nature doesn’t blow everybody up’ but it does. We just don’t see it as controlled. It’s all controlled, the planet knows what it’s doing. We’re the planet’s children. We build weapons too.”

“You’re a Weapon?” Aeris asked quietly.

“I am. I’m not. It’s an incomplete synthesis, I read him, he reads me, but it’s all ultimately different. We can’t think alike enough. Not yet. He’s pushing me, he keeps pushing me, but I’m not sure yet that I’m cut out to be anything more than human.”

“You’re already more than human,” Veld pointed out. “They shot you. You healed. You all–” he gestured at Pepper and Zack, “changed. What the hell was that?”

“That is the triumph of science over nature. The creation of things that were never meant to exist,” Hojo’s grin at this was almost predatory, and Veld had to force himself not to step back.

“You can’t hear the planet. You’re scary, you’re not–” Aeris stumbled over her words.

“Not nice? You mean like the zolom is nice? Like a thunderstorm is nice? Not friendly and flowery like chocobo being torn apart by marlboros? Not warm and comforting like kittens staving and freezing in the snow? No, no, I’m not nice, and if what you hear is nice, you’re not hearing the planet. You’re just crazy.”

“You’re not really the best person to be lecturing about crazy,” Zack said, putting an arm around Aeris.

“No, I’m probably not,” Hojo said with a moment’s reflection. “How about you? Do you hear him yet?”

Zack looked down.

“How was he born, do you know? Did he tell you?” Hojo demanded.

“I don’t–” but he stopped, and there was a change in his voice like he needed to cough, and Aeris slipped out of his arms. “There was something strange about the new building outside the human town. Several of us from the pack went to sniff around, to discover why it felt so wrong. Then something loud and burning happened, and I felt… twisted, somehow, and bigger, and like I had a purpose. And the planet told me I needed to stop it from happening again, but it didn’t tell me how. I was just supposed to know, to protect.” Zack shook his head and looked away.

“What was that?” Aeris asked.

“Fenrir,” he answered automatically, though he hadn’t known the name a minute before. “The wolf.”

“It can talk?”

“I guess so.”

“And you?” Hojo prompted Pepper.

“Just feelings,” he answered quietly.

“What kind of feelings?”

“Protect. Just… protect.”

Hojo nodded and looked at Aeris, who had ended up in the middle between the three of them. She looked around the small circle slowly, shaking her head and looking like she was about to cry.

“I need to think,” she said finally, looking at Zack. “I’m going home.” Before anyone else could say anything, she ran to the elevator and was gone.

“Home?” Hojo asked Zack.

“I know where that is,” Zack nodded. “She and Gast live out in sector eight.”

“She’s Gast’s? Interesting.” Hojo nodded thoughtfully. “Who is her mother?”

Zack shrugged. “I haven’t heard her mention it much, but I think her mom’s dead.”

Hojo looked in the direction she’d gone. “Interesting, interesting. We’ll need her, but I think we need to talk to Gast anyway.”

Hojo had just arrived in Junon and was waiting for the next train to Midgar, killing time in a bar near the waterfront. He liked the view over the ocean and the way the light bounced off it, like fire on the water, like shards of life itself. It was very distracting, and Hojo ignored much of what was going on around him.

“Excuse me, sir?” the waiter was asking when Hojo saw fit to pay attention.

“Yes?” he asked, turning to face the waiter. The young man flinched at Hojo’s grin.

“I was, um, that is, the customers are a little scared of you, sir?” he asked, making it a question by the time he got it all out.

Hojo smiled. He had expected as much reaction. “Terribly sorry, so terribly sorry. What can I do to help?”

“Well, it mostly seems to be your eyes that bother people, so could you, ah, put these on?” he stammered, handing Hojo a pair of dark sunglasses.

Hojo smiled. He’d expected the man would simply ask himto leave; this cleverness amused him. He took the proffered sunglasses and slid them onto his face, reflecting how much he missed the feeling of weight on his nose.

He wondered what Vincent and Lucrecia were doing right then.

“Valentine.”

“For fuck’s sake, Veld, where have you been? It’s cold up here! Shit!” Vincent couldn’t see very well, though his eyes were as adjusted to the dark as they were going to get. He’d been up here for what he guessed was several hours now.

“I’ve been doing some research,” Veld said as his silhouette disappeared from the doorway. The door clicked shut and the room was nearly pitch black again. He sat on the desk next to Vincent’s prone form.

“Research? I’ve had to piss for like an hour and you’re doing research? I thought we agreed not to mix business and pleasure!”

“Am I doing that?”

“Fuck yes! You wander off in the middle of pleasure to worry about business!” Vincent argued with a whiny tone that made Veld grit his teeth. “Now either finish me off or let me up.”

“No, Valentine, I’m afraid you misunderstood. This was always business.” Veld pulled out his handgun and aimed at his boss’s head. “I think it’s finally time for my promotion.”

“Veld? This isn’t funny, Veld, you know I don’t like playing with guns in bed.”

“Oh, it’s not supposed to be funny. I’m quite serious.”

“After everything we’ve done together?”

“I got tired of your kowtowing to your wife. In bed. In the office. Everything revolved around her and she hardly ever sees you! You’ll fuck up entire investigations for her, on her say-so.”

“Well, she’s my wife,” Vincent tried to shrug, but being tied down made it difficult. He had to do something about that. He set about working his ankles free, figuring Veld was less likely to notice. He was suddenly glad the man had left the lights off.

“I don’t care about your wife, Vincent. She’s a fucking criminal just like everybody else.”

“Like everybody?” Vincent asked.

Veld glared. “Don’t play the optimist with me, Valentine, you’ve seen at least as much shit on this job as I have. Nobody’s good in this company, just varying levels of evil, and our job is to make sure they don’t push it too far. But you’ve been letting her push you — and by extension, all of us — for too long. You’re not fit to be head of the Turks any more, Valentine, and you know Turks don’t retire.”

Vincent thought of how he’d had to take down Tally, the leader before him, and shuddered. “So that’s it? You’re going to tie me to a desk and shoot me? At least give me some fucking dignity about it.”

“Dignity? That woman sleeps all over on you! Sephiroth isn’t even yours! I’m not the one you have to worry about preserving your dignity.”

“… Sephiroth what?” Vincent demanded.

“He’s not yours, Vincent. I’ve been looking at the records. Lu never did a direct paternity test, but he’s got a couple genetic irregularities that only show up in Wutaian bloodlines.”

“Maybe she’s part Wutaian.”

“Does she look Wutaian, Vin? I always figured Sephiroth got his dark looks from you.”

“Maybe I’m part Wutaian.”

“I think you’d know if you were.”

Vincent let his head lay back against the desk. “I can’t believe that she– she swore to me, she did, she said it wasn’t possible that that bastard fathered him.”

“Which bastard? The one the two of you locked in the basement out in Nibelheim?”

“How did you find out– you fucker. You’re the one who broke into the apartment, aren’t you?”

Veld snickered. “Not me personally, no, but I helped keep you occupied.”

“Gods, and I had to put up with Lucrecia complaining all weekend because of you.”

“Well, you won’t have to listen to her any more now, will you?” Veld cocked the gun and held it next to Vincent’s head.

He hesitated. He did care for Vincent, underneath all the shit he pulled, and wondered if he could talk sense into the older man, get him to turn on his wife now that he knew about Sephiroth.

“Vincent, it doesn’t have to–” he started, but there was a feeling of sudden motion in the darkness. He pulled back instictively as Vincent kicked upward with his now-free legs, but Vincent twisted and brought his heels down on the back of Veld’s head. The gun went off next to Vincent’s ear and he felt his balance thrown off as the shot rang in his ear. He used his leverage to roll off the desk and pulled hard on the knot tying his wrists. It held.

“Fuck.”

“Very nice, Vincent,” Veld said, rubbing the back of his head. “It’s nice to see you haven’t forgotten everything.

Vincent held his arms up in front of him as well as he could manage. “Veld…”

“Oh, now you’re cowering? I thought you were worried about dignity. You make me sick.” Veld fired at Vincent’s face behind his hands, but he moved quickly, ducking his head out of the way. Veld pulled back on the trigger to fire again, but Vincent shot a foot out and knocked his legs out from under him.

The gun hit the floor and skidded away. Veld reached after it in the darkness, but his hand landed on something sticky and soft. He looked up and saw Vincent’s face in the dim light, only inches from his own, and Vincent’s hand on the gun.

“What?”

“You always, always let yourself get emotional, Veld. I goaded you and you did just what I wanted — you shot that stupid tie so I could get loose.”

“I thought you liked that tie.”

“Not tied around my wrists.” Vincent stood up, holding the gun in his right hand, the one that wasn’t bleeding from a large wound in the wrist. “Now take off your pants.”

“Vincent, this isn’t the time–”

“I’m going to wear them, Dragoon, because you stole mine, and because I suspect you have too much dignity to follow me in your tighty whities. If you think I’d fuck you again after that little display, you’re crazier than I am.” Veld did as he was told, and Vincent stepped awkwardly into the pants, one eye on the younger Turk and one finger on the trigger as he did so.

Veld made his move as Vincent was zipping the fly, diving at the older man, but Vincent ducked and fired, and Veld grunted as he hit the ground hard. Vincent waited to make sure he was still breathing, then left, hurrying down the hall. He hoped to get to the locker room and steal some real clothes and maybe a first aid kit before fleeing the building.

“Veld was right about one thing,” he muttered to himself as he rode the elevator. “It’s definitely time for me to retire.”

Inside the science department, Pepper’s first impression upon waking was that he was cold. His second was that he was naked, and his third was that he was practically in the lap of one of the young lab techs he’d hired the year before. She was dozing, but she snapped awake when Pepper jumped out of her lap and across the room, trying to retain his modesty with his hands.

She smiled. “Are those your clothes in the pile behind you?”

Pepper turned and looked down. They were the clothes he’d been wearing this morning. He shook them off and put them on, noting that there were a few long tears in a couple of the items, but they were otherwise intact.

“What happened, Irena?” Pepper asked.

“The Turks are gone. They couldn’t find you, so I told them you’d said you hadn’t been feeling well and you must have gone home.”

“They couldn’t find me?”

“Well, they could, but they didn’t realize that the cute blue fuzzy thing was you,” she smiled.

“Oh.” He looked down at the table where the empty needles still sat. “How did you know that I was…”

“Carbunkle?” Irena supplied.

“I was going to say ‘experimenting on myself’ but yes, that too.”

“I get stuck with all the shit jobs around here, including typing in requisitions. I knew that it had come in the lab and that you were the one who signed for it. When Bunky came bounding out of the back labs where I’d seen you last, it was kind of obvious.”

“‘Bunky’?”

“It’s a nickname. He seemed to like it.”

“Who, Carbunkle?”

“Yeah. He also likes tummy rubs and being scratched behind the ears,” she added.

“Oh, right.” Pepper could feel himself turning bright red. “Ah, did the Turks…?”

“I’m to tell you to call them as soon as I see you.” She paused. “So you should call them and tell them how you got sick yesterday and had to leave. They’ll probably ask if you saw Professor Lucrecia yesterday, and if you gave her anything.”

Pepper got very quiet.

“You should tell them the truth about that, if you did. They probably know already anyway. Turks are like that.”

“But Lucrecia was protecting me–”

Irena looked at him sadly. “Professor Lucrecia was setting you up, Pepper.”

“What?”

“When I was snooping, er, looking around in the computer for the information they wanted, I noticed someone had changed the requisition records. It said your access to the cold storage unit wasn’t authorized by anyone, and whatever Project it was listed under was gone, too. The only reason I knew it was changed was because I remembered typing it in.”

“Do you remember every form that goes through the office?” he asked her, surprised.

“Only the ones you sign,” Irena said, then blushed as she realized how she sounded.

“Well. Um.” Pepper looked around. “I suppose I have a phone call to make.” He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hello. Please wait,” a quiet voice answered.

Not having much choice in the matter, Pepper did as he was told, hitting the button to put the call on speakerphone while he and Irena cleaned up the mess he had left in the lab.

“Fuck,” someone was clearly grumbling in the background. Pepper thought it sounded like Veld.

“Fuck, yeah, see where fucking gets ya?” someone else added. The red-haired Turk, maybe? What was his name…

“Just use the damn cure materia,” ordered Veld.

“I can’t,” a woman said calmly. “We have to get it out before we heal it.”

“So get it out,” that was Veld again, and he sounded like he was in pain.

“You’re pretty tore up.”

“Fine. We’ll go see the fucking experts. Somebody get me some pants.”

Pepper and Irena looked up at each other, hesitating, then both cracked up laughing.

“Hey! What the hell? Tseng, you forgot to put it on hold, yo! You have to hit this little button–” the sound cut off abruptly and was replaced by dull music.

“I think we’d better get a table ready for him,” Irena said to Pepper as she tried to stop laughing. “Somehow I doubt he’ll feel like going all the way to the hospital.”

When Veld stepped off the elevator with his Turks behind him, Pepper and Irena were waiting.

“How did you know we were coming?” he asked, blinking.

“At Shinra, there’s always somebody watching,” Irena said with a smile.

“What?” Veld demanded.

Pepper stepped in. “Sorry, sir. I was the one Tseng put on hold a few minutes ago.”

“Oh,” he answered, looking almost embarassed for a minute. “I got shot, boy. Fix it.”

Pepper nodded. “Yes, sir. Right this way.” He led Veld and his entourage of Tseng, Reno, and Anna back to an examination table he and Irena had already prepared. Veld removed the shirt he’d applied to the wound in the hope of stopping the bleeding and Pepper leaned in to examine it.

“This looks pretty bad. Your bone is shattered down here, near the elbow,” he said, straightening back up and pointing to his own arm as a display. “And the ligaments and tendons are badly torn as well. I can probably save your arm, but I doubt you’ll have much use of it.”

“You’re kidding,” Veld said. “It was just one bullet! I’ve been shot dozens of times before!”

Pepper shrugged. “Then whoever got you is either a damn good shot or has Hades’ luck, sir.”

“Or both,” Veld grumbled. “Just take it off, then.”

“What?” Pepper asked.

“Just take the arm off. I’m no good with a useless arm.” Behind him, Tseng and Anna were emotionless, but Reno’s mouth was hanging open. Anna turned to him and put her fingers under his chin, gently pushing it shut.

“With all due respect sir, are you sure you’ll be much better without any arm?” the scientist asked.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll get a prosthetic,” Veld snapped. “Now put me under and take it off before I lose my nerve.”

Irena looked at Pepper, who shrugged and turned back to Veld. “As you wish, sir. Irena, please get the anesthetic.”

Veld turned to the Turks. “Tseng, you’re in charge while I’m under. I want Lucrecia found now. Check their apartment first, then anywhere else you think she might go.”

“What about Valentine, sir?” Tseng asked.

“If you find him, you find him. Lucrecia’s the one we’re after right now.”

“Isn’t he more dangerous?”

Veld hesitated. “Lucrecia’s unstable. She was locking people up last week. As far as we know, all of Vincent’s sins are behind him. Understood?” The three of them nodded.

“Good. Now get going.”

Lucrecia, however, had no intention of returning to the apartment she shared with Vincent at the moment. She had gone instead to the SOLDIER barracks, where she used her keycard to slip inside and track down a certain unit of second class SOLDIERs.

“Dadjy, come to Mother,” she announced outside the room where his unit was drilling. He looked at his instructor, who looked at Lucrecia and shrugged.

“Dismissed, soldier.” Smiling, Dadjy ran over to his mother.

“We have a problem, Dadjy, honey. I need to talk to you seriously,” she pulled him aside into a small room and set her box on the table. “You’re a good boy, right? You do everything Mother tells you?”

“Of course,” he told her. “Is something wrong, Mother?”

“I’m going to give you a shot… to make sure you’re always a good boy. To make sure no one corrupts you.” She opened the box and began pulling out two needles and the little alcohol wipes to clean the skin.

“Corrupts me?” his eyes went wide. “Who could do that?”

“It’s already happened to your brother,” she said, a hint of bitterness in her voice, as she rolled up her sleeve. “Now I have to take the first shot, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I want you to promise me you won’t go get help or call for anyone. Okay, Dadjy?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“That’s my good boy. My one good boy. Don’t worry, we’ll go fix your brother soon enough.” She slipped the needle into her vein and pushed, closing her eyes and bracing herself. She waited.

Nothing seemed to happen. She didn’t feel any different, at least. Strange. She didn’t have much time, however, so Lucrecia decided to go ahead and give Dadjy his shot as well. “Roll up your sleeve like a good boy.”

Dadjy did as he was told and offered his arm to Lucrecia. She administered his shot and watched him carefully for a reaction. His eyes rolled back and he started to go limp, but she caught him before he could fall.

“Wake up for Mother, Dadjy,” she said. His eyes snapped open. The pupils were catslit, she noticed, but wide and unfocused.

“Stand up.”

He did as he was told.

“Good boy. Let’s go get your brother.” Dadjy followed her, wordless, and Lucrecia smiled. She led him downplate to sector eight, to Gast’s house, where she guessed Sephiroth would be waiting.

When she knocked on the door, Aeris answered.

“I need to see Sephiroth. Is he here?”

“Nope! Bye!” Aeris said, starting to shut the door, but Lucrecia caught sight of Sephiroth walking into the kitchen behind her.

“Sephiroth!” she yelled shrilly, to get his attention.

“Mother?” Sephiroth asked as he came to the door. “Are you cold? Your lips are blue.” It was humid and cool that night in Midgar, but nothing unusual. He worried about her.

“Let me in, Sephiroth,” Lucrecia ordered.

“Where’s Zack?”

“He’s still in the lab. We can go get him soon enough, but first I need you to talk to Mother,” she said.

Aeris looked up at Sephiroth. “She can’t come in. She’s tainted. Don’t talk to her.”

“Little brat, stop meddling,” Lucrecia snapped.

“Aeris, she’s my mother, I can’t just ignore her.”

“Sure you can,” Aeris shrugged. “But you won’t. Whatever. It’s your life, Sephiroth, I’m just giving advice.” She turned and walked back into the house.

“But she’ll let Zack out!” he called after her. She didn’t turn.

“Jealous, Sephiroth?” Lucrecia said from the other side of the screen door. “Just think how Zack will feel when you go to help him and she’s not there.”

Sephiroth hesitated. She had a point. As much as he felt he should probably listen to Aeris… well, this was his mother. He stepped outside.

Dadjy slipped in behind him and grabbed him under the arms. Sephiroth tried to pull away but he was held tight.

“What the–? Dadjy? When’d you get so strong?”

“All of Mother’s boys grow up big and strong,” Lucrecia said. She pushed his shirtsleeve up out of the way and held his arm tight while she administered the Jenova shot.

“Mother? Mother! What are you doing?” Sephiroth shouted before he passed out. Dadjy held him up until he returned to himself.

Lucrecia smiled. “Feeling better, Sephiroth?” He opened his eyes. Like his younger brother, his had changed.

“Much better, Mother,” he answered, his voice dull.

“Good. Now come with me, we need to go back to the lab for more of this delightful specimen, so that Mother can make everyone behave the way they should.” Lucrecia turned toward the Shinra building and both young men followed.

From inside the house, Aeris watched them go.

“In retrospect, honey, there’s letting someone make their own mistakes and there’s tossing them to the wolves.”

“Is Mrs. Valentine a wolf now, Daddy?”

“You would know better than me. What does the planet tell you?”

Aeris scrunched up her face. “It tells me I screwed up. And she’s worse than a wolf.”

“Oh?”

“She’s a Crisis.”

Gast blinked. “But I had her buried.”

“I dunno. That’s what the planet’s telling me. If you want to argue, go out in the garden.”

“I was just surprised. Your mother — she said that I’d saved the planet from the Crisis. Not that I didn’t endanger the planet in the first place, of course, but she just had a gift for making me not feel useless.”

“Daddy,” Aeris said, looking up at him. “I need to go soon, okay?”

“Go?” he asked.

“I have to fix the thing I broke.”

“Oh.” He looked down. “If you have to.”

“It’s more than that too, but that’s part of it. I’ll come back, Daddy. Don’t worry so much.” She smiled at him, and she looked so much like her mother that he hugged her quickly and turned away before she could see him cry.

The door was clearly held shut from the outside. Pushing had only served to exhaust Hojo and he was quickly getting frustrated. He stepped back from the door and tried to think.

Can’t get too tired, if I get too tired I’ll go back to sleep. Can’t go back to sleep. They’ll come back and lock me in again. Need to get out before he comes back or brings someone with him.

The dragon could do it, he thought, but I can’t– and then his gaze fell on the stolen rifle in the corner, stacked with a few things he’d hidden in the lab that Lucrecia had never managed to find.

Can’t hurt to try it, he thought. If I’m right, the dragon breaks down the door. If I’m wrong, I kill myself. He’d never wanted to be wrong so badly in his life.

He picked up the rifle and tried to point it at his chest or his stomach, but he couldn’t reach the trigger at that distance. He frowned and inspected the end of the barrel, then wiped it on his formerly-white coat before putting it in his mouth. It tasted disgusting and he gagged, but forced himself to relax. It stayed. He reached for the trigger, just barely within his arm’s reach, and fired.

The bullet ripped through his brain, a thoroughly unpleasant sensation he hadn’t felt since Vincent left. He thought it strange that he could feel it at all, since the brain wasn’t supposed to have nerves in it. The back of his skull shattered and pushed through the skin above it, leaving Hojo with the curious sensation of a breeze blowing over the back of his head as rational thought began to escape him.

Meanwhile, Vincent returned from lunch with a fresh coffee and a full stomach, and was facing the afternoon in unusually good spirits. That feeling lasted exactly as long as it took him to enter his office and close the door behind him as he noticed Veld standing next to his desk with a stack of paper.

“We’ve confirmed the rumor that your son is a homo, sir,” Veld said as Vincent entered the office. Vincent had been careful this time, however, and his mouth was dry.

“Good to know my employees are so devoted to Shinra’s security and my son’s sexual preferences. So how did you confirm this for sure, sending Cyr after him?” Feeling safe now, Vincent raised his coffee to his lips.

“No, apparently he referred to the boy your wife has doped up in a tank down there as his boyfriend,” Veld answered, and Vincent spit coffee anyway.

“You know, I’m just going to stop coming in to work,” Vincent grumbled, throwing his coffee in the trash and reaching for a tissue.

“Apparently two technicians, a researcher and a secretary all heard him yell,” the brunette Turk continued, pretending to read from the report . In truth, he was using it to hide his smirk. “Then your son had to be escorted from the building by security and, oh yes, your wife may have broken the law by lying to security personnel. We’re still investigating that last one, but it looks likely.”

“You’re enjoying this!” Vincent accused.

“Doesn’t change the truth,” the other man said, tossing the report on his superior’s desk and no longer bothering to hide his grin. “There are allegations she’s performing questionable experiments, too.”

“That’s ridiculous. I want this investigation dropped immediately, it’s a waste of time and money,” Vincent ordered, dropping the report in the trash.

“I can’t do that, Vin. I already reported the goings-on to the President. He thinks it’s best if I oversee this investigation personally. Worried you might be a bit too… emotionally involved.” Veld leaned across the desk. “Of course, you’re always emotional, aren’t you?”

“I really hate you sometimes,” Vincent said, laying his head on the desk.

“Oh, do you?” Veld asked, leaning further over and whispering in his ear. “Even when I have you all tied up?” He reached under Vincent’s collar and pulled on his tie, twisting it around in a smooth motion until he had the long of it in his hand to grip. He tugged Vincent’s head up.

“I’m not in the mood right now.”

“You’re never in the mood, sir,” Veld walked slowly around the desk, not letting go of the tie, “but I think it best if you stay occupied for the duration of this investigation.” He let his other hand drop into Vincent’s crotch and play with the zipper on his pants.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to stay occupied,” Vincent answered, his breath growing short, “but as soon as we’re done I’m going to see Shinra.”

“That’s fine with me,” Veld answered.

Outside, Tseng nodded to Reno and Anna beside him. “Veld has him distracted. Let’s go.”

They hurried downstairs and out, in the direction of the Valentines’ apartment.

“Gast! Professor!” Sephiroth was banging on the door of the small house in sector eight, but there was no answer for a long time. Finally the inside door swung open and Aeris looked up at him distrustfully from behind the screen.

“What do you want?” she glared.

“I need to talk to Gast. It’s important,” he snapped at her.

“Daddy’s busy. He’s talking to Mom. You can see him later.”

“… Aeris, your mother’s dead.”

“Well, duh.” She crossed her arms. “I guess you can come in and wait.” She reached up to unlock the door. Sephiroth stepped into the kitchen and looked around. He took a seat. Aeris stayed standing, glaring at him.

Sephiroth figured he might as well be polite. “So what does your father do to… um… talk to your mother?”

“He goes out in the garden and he talks to her,” Aeris answered, obviously exasperated.

Conversation didn’t seem to be helping much, so Sephiroth let it drop and sat in silence. After a few minutes, Aeris, obviously bored, sat across from him.

“So what’d you come about?” she asked. “You feel upset.”

“How would you know what I feel?” he looked up at her, surprised.

“Am I wrong?”

“Well, no. You caught me off-guard. I’m pretty confused right now.”

“Is it because Zack broke up with you?” Aeris smiled was just a little too mean for his comfort.

“He told you about that?” Sephiroth briefly considered letting Zack stay in the tank, but broken up or not, he knew he couldn’t do that to any man in his unit, let alone to a friend. “Actually, that’s the least of my worries right now. Zack’s in trouble much worse than breaking up with me.”

Aeris narrowed her eyes. “Is he?”

“He’s sealed in a tank up in the Science Department. I think my mother is experimenting on him.” He wasn’t sure why he was confessing this to the teenager, but there was something about her. It wasn’t comforting, not precisely, but it made him open up in a way he wasn’t used to.

“Experimenting on him?” Aeris repeated. Sephiroth nodded. “I’ll go get Daddy.”

“Oh, now that your boyfriend is in danger, he can be interrupted?” He muttered as she ran out the door. She hesitated after he said it, but didn’t say anything, and he couldn’t be sure that she’d heard him.

When Gast came in a few minutes later, wearing an old shirt and pants muddy at the knees, he was already agitated.

“Did Aeris already tell you?” Sephiroth asked.

“Tell me what?” Gast answered, surprised.

“About Zack?”

“No. Should she have?”

Sephiroth frowned. “No, I just thought, you seemed upset, so…”

“Oh, no. No, sorry, I upset about something I heard from my wife. What’s happened to Zachary? He seems like such a nice boy,” Gast rambled, getting himself a drink and sitting down next to Sephiroth.

“He’s in my mother’s lab, in a tank,” he said plainly.

“What?”

“He said he had to go see Mrs. Valentine today,” Aeris offered. “Something about some monster he fought a long time ago.”

“When I went in to tell my mother about Hojo, she had him in a tank in the back of the lab. I wasn’t supposed to see him there. I don’t think she expected me to be back yet. She wouldn’t say what she’d done to him, she just kept insisting he’d attacked her and she’d shot him and put him in the tank to save his life.”

“To tell your mother about Hojo?” Gast questioned.

“Oh, er, yes. I just got back from Nibelheim,” Sephiroth swallowed. He’d been hoping to gloss over that part.

“And what happened to Hojo?”

“He…” Sephiroth hesitated, then took a deep breath and decided to get it over with. “He got ahold of the key to the room he was locked in.”

“And who had the key when this happened?” Gast asked, frowning.

“I did.”

“And where was Hojo last time you checked?”

“I barricaded him in behind the secret door. It should take him a while to get out of there, at least.”

Gast just shook his head. “Why didn’t you wait? Or tell me? I could have gone with you, we could have helped him.”

Sephiroth looked down at the table. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was upset about… things.” He looked over at Aeris, who had left the kitchen and was now playing with the small television in the living room.

“– unknown what happened in the town of Nibelheim, but townspeople said they were attacked by a large dragon.”

“That was fast,” Sephiroth sighed. He supposed he should be more upset, but at this point he was just expecting the worst.

“Dragon? Hojo? You’re kidding.”

Sephiroth simply looked at him.

“You’re not kidding.” Gast sighed. “Aeris, get me the phone. I need to call the President.”

“Well, at least if he was telling the truth, I’m part Wutaian.”

Gast looked at him as Aeris came in and handed him a phone. “Remind me again why that’s a good thing?”

“Now I have the option of committing seppuku.”

“Sephiroth, ritual suicide isn’t– wait, telling you the truth about what?”

“He told me he’s my father. That my mother was pregnant before she married Vincent.”

“And you believed him?” Gast asked, nearly dropping the phone.

Sephiroth stood up. “I didn’t want to! I didn’t believe him at first, but Mother got so strange and defensive when I asked about it that it just… it makes me wonder.”

Gast started to say something, but got distracted by the phone. “Yes, I need to talk to Andrew Shinra. I’m sure he’s busy, he always is. No, I will not hold. This is Gast Faremiss and I need to talk to him about Professor Lucrecia Valentine right away. Yes, about Lucrecia– Andrew? Well, that was fast.”

“What is it, Gast?”

“It’s about Lucrecia. I’ve been informed that she’s doing unauthorized human experimentation in the lab.”

“Is she?” Andrew asked as he doodled stick figures of the Turks along the bottom of Veld’s preliminary report about the lab incident. “That’s a pretty serious charge to level, Gast. What makes you sure?”

“Her son is in my kitchen right now telling me about it. The young man he saw in there is a friend of his.”

“Well, that does put a new light on this,” Andrew said. He leaned back in his leather chair and put his feet up. “I just got done reading Lucrecia’s statement on the situation. She, apparently, says that Sephiroth and the boy were fighting, and she was attacked.”

“Does she? Well, what do you think of that?” Gast leaned over the counter, remembering why he hated calling the President so very much. Politics had always bored him. Really, it was a miracle he’d lasted at Shinra as long as he had.

“I don’t think anything yet. That’s why I have Turks,” Andrew told him. “I’ll let them know you called. They may want to talk to you.”

“Andrew, with all due respect, Vincent has never listened to any–”

“Oh, Vincent won’t be handling this case,” interrupted Andrew. “He’s, ah, been relieved of leadership for the duration of the investigation. Rest assured it’s being taken care of.” Gast started to say something else, but Andrew snapped the phone shut.

He pressed the intercom button. “Tell Lucrecia I need to see her first thing Monday morning,” he told his secretary. “I want to give her all weekend to come up with a really good excuse.”

When Hojo came back to himself, he first recognized the rose garden behind the mansion. It was thoroughly overgrown, but he knew the pink blossoms weren’t native to this region. He’d had them imported for Lucrecia.

He rolled over on his back. The sky above him was blue. He hadn’t seen a sky in decades, and it was a perfect shade of blue, as if it was waiting for him, as if… Well, it wasn’t quite a perfect blue. There was some sort of dark cloud at the edge of his field of vision. It was low and quite black and there was some sort of smell in the air he couldn’t put his finger on.

Hojo sat up and looked at the smouldering hole in the side of the mansion. That would account for the clouds. He stood, wiping the dirt from his clothes. It was fascinating, really, that they somehow remained, or were replaced, after he transformed. He would have to look into that.

The smoke was thinning and he could see no open flames, so he stepped inside to retrieve his papers and Sephiroth’s rifle. Leaving for the walk into town, Hojo noted that he could see all of Nibelheim in some detail. This was good, as he’d long ago lost his glasses.

“The fresh air must be good for me,” he spoke out loud to himself as he tried to pull his ridiculously long hair out of the way. “I’m surprisingly lucid. Or maybe blowing a hole in my head clears my thoughts. This will require further study.” He started walking. He knew it would take days to reach Costa del Sol.

He had grown up in Midgar. Heading for it felt like going home.

Sephiroth spent the weekend avoiding home, reading notebooks with Gast or talking to Aeris. They’d made peace as they worried about Zack.

Lucrecia spent it at home, trying to clean up the mess some errant burglar had made as he trashed her apartment. He’d taken the obvious valuables, missed most of the hidden ones, but made an utter mess of her office. Papers were strewn everywhere. An hour on the phone with the police seemed to do no good, so she made her frustrations known to Vincent loudly, all weekend long.

On Sunday night, he told her he would shoot her if she didn’t shut up. She walked out, then.

Mondays had always made Vincent nervous, and this Monday was worse than most. His nerves were shot before he even got into the office, having listened to Lucrecia go on all weekend about whether this or that other thing was missing from the apartment and then fought with her on Sunday. Sometimes he almost wished he’d been the one who got to sleep through a decade uninterrupted. Even a night would be a pleasant change.

He looked carefully inside his office and, seeing no sign of Veld, stepped inside with a sigh. He turned to shut the door and found himself face to face with Veld, who’d been behind him. Vincent jumped and spilled his coffee all over himself.

“Oh for the love of… Veld! You’ve got to stop wasting my coffee,” Vincent grumbled.

“Sorry. I just couldn’t wait to see you today.”

“Slow weekend?” Vincent asked, laughing.

“Something like that,” Veld said, grinning wickedly and loosening his tie.

Vincent backed up until he knocked into his desk. “Hey, don’t you think it’s a little early for this?”

“Not at all,” Veld answered. “Now let’s get you out of those wet, stained clothes.”

“Valentine is occupied,” Tseng said simply into his phone.

Upstairs, Andrew Shinra nodded and closed the phone as Lucrecia stepped into his office. “Lucrecia. I’ve been hearing some disturbing things about your work.”

“Look, you told me you wanted results, Andrew,” she said, skipping the niceties. “I’m getting you results. You can’t have it both ways.”

“I can’t? Gast seemed to manage brilliance without locking people in tubes.”

“Locking people– what?” Lucrecia asked.

“I got the report, Lucrecia.” Andrew leaned back. “Even I have lines I won’t cross.”

She snerked. “You won’t allow experiments on people?”

“Not without the proper paperwork. Lucrecia, I need to know what’s going on in this company. That’s what I do. That’s why I’m the boss. If I have to send the Turks sneaking around to tell me what my employees are doing, I can’t send them to do something useful.”

“Oh, come on. You know as well as I do that it would be weeks before you got around to that kind of permission.”

“Lucrecia, you’re done. I want you out of the building immediately.”

“No! No, you can’t do this!” she screamed.

“I just did.” He reached for the intercom.

“Andrew, don’t!”

By the time she heard Veld’s voice on the intercom, she was already running for the stairwell. She was hoping she could get down as far as the labs and then pick up what she needed and jump into the elevator before anyone noticed they needed to stop her. She slammed into the firedoor to the 67th floor and stepped into the Science Department.

“Pepper, are those Jenova shots prepared yet?” Lucrecia called down the hall.

“Almost, Lucrecia!” Pepper answered. “I haven’t finished reading the notebook yet, there’s still more after the formula.”

“There’s no time, Pepper. Pack them for transport,” she ordered, stepping inside. She looked disheavled, her hair loose, her lab coat unbuttoned. She was upset about something, too.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked, turning to her.

She glared. “Yes. Pack the damn things up, I don’t have all day.”

Pepper didn’t like the way she spoke, but considering how busy she’d been, it was probably understandable. He slipped caps and stoppers onto the needles and packed them into an emergency medical kit.

“How do they work?” Lucrecia asked.

“I haven’t gotten that far,” he said, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice, “but it appears that what Hojo called the ‘reunion’ effect will take place naturally. The first person exposed becomes the host or the queen, to go back to the insect metaphor. The others are worker bees.”

“Don’t get testy with me, Pepper. I could walk back up there and destroy your career any time I liked,” she threatened, then her voice and her face softened, and she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for this. I won’t forget you.”

She took the box and hurried down the hall, the fire escape door slamming shut behind her minutes before the elevator door opened. He heard a great many footsteps and, panicking, slipped back into his workroom.

Turks spilled out into the department’s lobby, a tie-less Veld at the lead. “Everyone on the floor, ladies and gentlemen, and I don’t want to see so much as a test tube flinch! This is a Shinra security operation!” There was a scuffle as everyone laid down, and then silence hung over the department.

Veld turned to the Turks who had followed him in. “You got the briefing, go for the paperwork. I don’t think we’re going to find Lucrecia hiding in here.”

“Are– are you looking for Professor Lucrecia, sir?” one of the techs on the floor asked.

“Among other things. You want to help?” Veld asked, cocking an eyebrow at the young woman.

“Of course, sir! I’m just asking because Vincent’s usually the Turk we see.”

“Vincent’s tied up at the moment,” Rod interjected, and he and Reno snickered.

“Do you know where Lucrecia is?”

“Not sure, sir, but I saw her in the back. I think I heard the fire door.”

Veld frowned. “Rod, Anna, down the stairs. Reno, clear the back rooms, make sure she isn’t still there. Rude, I want you and Cyr waiting in the lobby before she gets there. I’ll finish up in here. Move.” The navy blue suits scattered through the lab.

He turned back to the young woman. “Stand up. What’s your name?”

“Irena, sir.”

“Irena, hm? You know that if you’re lying, I’ll kill you, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Drop the sir.”

“Yes, s… sure, I can do that.”

“So who else is here?”

“That’s not in this room? Just Pepper, I think.”

“And where’s Pepper?”

Pepper was staring at the needle. It was intimidating. To be administered, the altered mako required a large-gauge needle. Combined with the size of the dosage itself, it made for a truly intimidating shot. Even to a doctor, it was a big needle.

He swallowed hard. He’d already given himself the preperatory shots and was waiting for his head to clear before he finished.

They had come. Once he’d thought Lu would hold them off, but Lu had also turned on him, using his work and pushing him aside. Now she was gone, President Shinra had called her up and she’d run away. He’d heard her secretary talking about Turks almost coming to blows, and he could guess what that fight had been over.

Whether it would be Lucrecia who decided that he knew too much or Shinra, he didn’t know, but he knew it would happen soon enough. He had promises to keep and experiments to finish before he died. He needed to be ready. Times were desperate.

You know what they say about desperate times.

Pepper tried not to think about every lurid story he’d heard about Professor Hojo, both in school and from Lucrecia. He’d done everything he could to make the experiment safe, down to choosing the smallest and least-intimidating looking summon listed in the materia chart. The process had been done twice now, and he’d participated in one. This was as safe as it was ever likely to be. He pressed the needle against the vein in his elbow.

Someone was outside banging their way down the hall, some Turk thug or other. Pepper knew he didn’t have much time. He took a deep breath and pushed the needle in, turning his face away. It was bad form for a scientist, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to look.

It hurt as it entered his vein, trailing a sensation like electrical shock down into his fingers and back up his arm, and Pepper was suddenly quite sure that he was going to die.

Someone was knocking on the door. Pepper was not panicked, only disappointed, as the buzzing feeling reached past his shoulder and into his heart. The knob turned, but before anyone could come in, Pepper felt himself twitch and the world went dark.

“What the fuck is that?” Reno shouted as the small blue animal darted past him and into the hall. It dashed into the front of the lab toward the elevators, but Irena dropped to her knees and caught it. It scratched at her, but she pulled it close.

“Pepper?” she whispered. It calmed.

Reno nearly ran her over as he dashed out of the back rooms after it.

“What is that?” Veld demanded.

Irena tried to remember what the name on the requisition form had been. “Carbunkle. He’s part of one of our projects.”

Veld eyed the small blue creature. “Which project?”

“The Break Limits one. He’s a summon.”

“Hmm.” He shook his head and turned away. “I need some papers. You folks are going to get them for me. Wherever Lucrecia is, the other Turks will find her.”

Lucrecia was, at that moment, reaching the bottom of the stairwell. She could hear the Turks advancing behind her, but she refused to panic. She pushed open the door to the main lobby, setting off the fire alarm, and then slipped out the side door.

As she hurried to Sephiroth’s apartment with her box from the lab, she wondered where her husband was.

Upstairs, in the Turks’ office, Vincent was tied to his desk with his tie around his hands and someone else’s around his ankles. “Veld?” he called out, sheepishly. “Veld, this isn’t funny anymore.”

The mansion was the same when he arrived back in Nibelheim. He’d hitched a ride with a mail carrier to get into town, and he figured he’d hitch a ride back to Costa as well. Sephiroth didn’t even bother taking a room at the Inn this time, just left his bag on the floor by the door. He didn’t think he’d be here long. “Are you awake?” Sephiroth called through the heavy door. He didn’t want to interrupt the man’s sleep… assuming he did sleep, and assuming it could be interrupted, both of which he was assuming based on the fact that he seemed to have done both before. There was no answer.

He considered going away and coming back, but curiousity got the better of him and he slipped the key into the lock. He was breaking one of the first rules his father had taught him: never make decisions while angry. He was angry enough not to care.

“I’m sure I’ll regret this in the morning,” he murmured as the key turned in the lock. He slipped the cord around his wrist, hesitating for one nervous minute, then drew his rifle and pushed the door open.

“Professor?” he asked. There was only silence for several minutes. “Professor Hojo?” He advanced into the room. The lid was laying to the side of the coffin and he could see inside it a body. The hair almost entirely covered the body, but he kept the rifle trained on it as he advanced.

“Hmm? What is it, Gast?” came the mumbled voice from the coffin, sounding for all the world like anyone waking up in the morning.

“No, Professor, I’m not Gast,” Sephiroth told him, letting the rifle drop but keeping his distance. “He knows you’re down here now, though.” There was a gasping noise and Hojo shot up, looking around in confusion and making a strangled noise.

“Oh, god,” Sephiroth thought he heard. Hojo whimpered and dropped his head into his hands. Sephiroth shook my head. No. That couldn’t be right, this guy was crazy. He must have misheard him.

“You said you had more to tell me,” Sephiroth said, sitting on another of the coffins. “So I came back.”

Hojo stared at him for a long time. “You came back?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Sephiroth asked.

In an instant, the former scientist’s face changed. All hint of the confusion Sephiroth had seen there was gone. His eyes were narrow and he smiled disarmingly. He tossed his head back, obviously trying to get his hair out of his face, but it was a futile gesture.

“The price of knowledge is high, very high.” Hojo warned, pushing himself up and resting his weight on the edge of his coffin.

“Yes. I can tell,” Sephiroth said, gesturing at the stone walls.

Hojo snerked. “This is the price of lust.”

“What?”

“But really, tell me true, what do you want to know? What question eats away at you at night, keeps you awake, echoes in the statements of everyone around you? What gap of knowledge bothers you enough that you would come here and see me?” Hojo leaned forward toward Sephiroth, who instinctively leaned back and brought the rifle up again.

“So fast, so fast. You grew up fast too, didn’t you, my boy? Your young men called you lieutenant last time, didn’t they? You’re a soldier.”

“I’m a SOLDIER, yes. Commissioned officer.”

“Not a Turk?” he asked, almost giggling.

Sephiroth shrugged. “I’m not cut out for that sort of thing.”

“What sort of cutting do you do, then?”

“I thought I came down here to ask you questions,” Sephiroth snapped.

“Did you? Oh, that’s right, you did. Did I give you the high price of knowledge speech?” he asked, leaning back.

“Er, yes. And I was thinking that doing this to yourself qualified as a very high price for knowledge.” Sephiroth was legging the gun sag again. While Hojo was decidedly creepy, he had a hard time thinking of him as a threat when he was talking and rambling like this.

“To myself? Oh, my boy, my dear boy, is that what they told you? Is that what that harlot and her paramour told everyone?”

“Don’t call my mother names like that,” Sephiroth glared.

“Not even true ones? She’s the one who did this to me, the one who shot me up and shut me up, kept me like a clever pet. Clever pet, oh yes, she was always such a clever pet, playing Vincent and I off each other. Little wordplays, double meanings, entendre and innuendo. But you poke a dog too many times…” Hojo’s voice trailed off and he looked at the floor. Sephiroth waited for him to continue, but he seemed to have lost his train of thought.

“You get bitten?” Sephiroth supplied.

“You get strapped to a table and injected with untested materials,” Hojo corrected. “But that’s all behind us now, and she never comes to see me anymore.”

“Why?”

“I think she grew scared of the past,” Hojo said with that pointed smile. “The years have been kind, but age always shows true. Unless you’re me, of course, but I’m… you called me a ghost last time, didn’t you? Or one of yours? Might as well all be the same, you soldiers, you SOLDIERs, a little colony of ants following the orders of queen bee Shinra.”

“You’re mixing metaphors,” Sephiroth pointed out.

“What?”

“You called us ants, but then you called Shinra a ‘queen bee’. Mixing metaphors.”

“Don’t correct me!” Hojo frowned. “A little mixing of metaphors is good for the soul. Toss lightly, add oil and vinegar.”

“Look, I just want you to explain what you meant when you told me to ask my mother about my father.”

“Are you really so dense you came all the way back here for that? You must not be mine after all.”

“I was afraid that was what you meant.”

“You were afraid, and yet you had to know anyway. Maybe you’d make a good scientist after all.”

Sephiroth shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Vincent’s the man who raised me, and he was a good father.”

“Was he, now? Never lost his temper? Maybe fatherhood tempered him.” Hojo laughed. “But if it doesn’t matter, I’ll ask you again. Why are you here?”

“I had to know.”

“Do you always have to know things that don’t matter? I should hope no son of mine was the sort to go trifling about with movie star magazines.”

“Right,” Sephiroth looked uncomfortable. “I think I should be going now. I’ll see myself out and lock up.”

“No! You are not just going to lock me up and put me away like you’re done playng with me! I tolerate it from Lucrecia because I loved her and because she always carries a lot of tranquilizer on her person, but I am a human being and I will not be treated like a toy!”

“You’re a monster!” Sephiroth yelled, jumping to his feet.

“You’re starting to sound like your mother. She always did like to demonize me. Got a bit carried away, obviously, but oh yes, she liked to remind me of my faults. Tell me, soldier boy, did you earn your commissions and your stars by looking pretty?”

“No,” Sephiroth glared. “I earned them for leadership and heroism.”

“Heroism? Bah, illusions and pretty lies. You’re bloodier than I am, boy! I can smell it on you.”

“I’m surprised you can smell anything, considering the stench down here,” Sephiroth said quietly, but Hojo must have heard it, because he glared.

“Blood stans the skin, stains the soul. It won’t come out. Even bleach won’t get blood out. There’s no penance, not really, no matter what the churches tell you.”

He continued before Sephiroth could get a word in. “Do they still tell you that in church these days? It was sort of dying out back when I used to argue with the religious.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t go to church.” Sephiroth was backing slowly toward the door, hoping to be outside before the former scientist noticed what he was doing.

“Good. It’s a disgusting habit.”

“I really can’t care too much what you think.”

“I expect my son to show me some respect.”

“You’re not my father! You’re insane! I’m leaving,” Sephiroth insisted. He was almost at the door, but he was still out of reach. Hojo dove at him, roaring monstrously, and knocked him against the wall. Sephiroth’s head banged hard against the stone wall. The rifle and the key fell from his hands and Hojo grabbed both of them and retreated to the far corner before Sephiroth could clear his head.

“Go.” Hojo spoke clearly.

Sephiroth shook his head, trying to think, but he was still seeing double.

“Go!” Hojo said again, this time aiming the rifle at Sephiroth. A better man, Sephiroth knew, would find some way to disarm him, but Sephiroth considered himself a man who knew his limits all too well.

He fled, hating himself for it at every step. When he reached the top of the staircase and the secret panel slid shut behind him, he waited. There were no footsteps on the stairs. That surprised him. Why wasn’t the man following?

Sephiroth frowned. Whether he was coming at this moment or not, the former scientist would try to leave sooner or later. He had to do something.

Looking around the bedroom, Sephiroth settled on a plan. He pushed all the furniture against the door, hoping to jam it so it would not open. Even when he was finished, it didn’t look terribly impressive, but it would have to do.

Again, Sephiroth ran.

His father (Vincent, his thoughts appended as if he might be unsure) was going to kill him for losing the rifle. It used to be his and he had made a big deal of passing it on to Sephiroth once upon a time. Back when he spent time with his family as well as his Turks.

His mother was going to kill him for losing the key… once he told her he’d taken it in the first place. He only hoped he would live long enough to demand the satisfactory answers from her that he hadn’t gotten from Hojo. He took a moment to reflect on how pathetic it must sound, that he went first to the crazy man in the basement for answers, and then to his mother as a last resort.

Sephiroth didn’t stop running as he thought all this. Much to his relief, he met with a supply truck from Rocket Town as he followed the road out of town and was able to ride all the way to Costa that afternoon. He boarded the next ship to the eastern continent as soon as he arrived in the resort town, hoping his mother would know how to fix this.

His mother, meanwhile, was hard at work getting Pepper to recreate Hojo’s work on the Break Limits Project. She had to have another department liquify the materia codenamed Fenrir properly; the science department didn’t have the equipment for specialty materia operations.

Soon, Pepper was done and the shots were ready, and all Lucrecia had left to do was find out what she was dealing with. She made an appointment with the young man who’d fought the beast.

“Zachary, wasn’t it? You’re in Sephiroth’s unit,” she said with a smile as she greeted him outside the elevator.

He smiled back, a wide, relaxed grin. “Yes, ma’am, that’s me.”

“Oh, heavens, don’t call me ma’am, call me Lucrecia,” she told him.

“If you insist, Lucy,” he laughed. She hated the nickname, but she continued to smile and leaned on the desk in front of him.

“It says here you fought the summon codenamed ‘Fenrir’ when he emerged near Gongaga,” Lucrecia said, looking up from the report. “What were you doing way out there?”

“That’s my hometown, ma’am,” he answered, then caught himself. “Lucrecia. I was on leave.”

She nodded. “And what was the fight like?”

“It was pretty short, but it was real vicious. He got a couple of nasty bites in on me before I put him down. Wanna see my scars?”

“No, that’s…” Lucrecia paused and looked the young man up and down. Healthy, strong, and since he was in SOLDIER, his system was already prepped for further mako exposure. She was going to have to experiment on someone, after all, and she’d gotten permission for a human specimen.

Lucrecia thought about Sephiroth coming in alongside him, arguing with him. She didn’t know what they had been arguing about; Sephiroth had refused to tell her. But she was a mother. She could tell when Sephiroth was hurt, and he had been hurt badly.

Oh, yes. This boy would not hurt her son again.

“Yes, Zachary, I’d like very much to examine your scars. Would you step into the next room with me, where I can give you a proper examination?” She smiled at him, leaned forward, put her body through all the mechanical motions of putting a man off his guard.

Zack seemed oblivious, which frustrated her, but he was also easy-going enough to follow her suggestions anyway, so she couldn’t be too mad. He didn’t argue about stripping naked (he even seemed shameless, which she hoped would be an improvement over Hojo’s whining) and didn’t think twice about laying back on the exam table.

“Oh, hey, a needle, what’s that for?” he asked as she stuck him, not complaining at all. Before she answered, he had passed out. She hoped that doing the procedure with an already-tranquilized specimen would cause a less violent reaction.

She strapped Zack down and called for Pepper.

“Yes, ma– er, Lucrecia?” Pepper asked, looking to see if the room was empty.

“We’re ready to run the first stage of the project. Get the recorder ready, hun,” she smiled sweetly and Pepper blushed before running off. He returned a few minutes later, rolling in a cart with a tape recorder and a compliment of prepared needles, just as Lucrecia finished strapping the unconscious young man to the table.

“He volunteered?” Pepper asked.

“Something like that,” Lucrecia smiled. “We’ll just give him half the expected prep dose of mako, since he’s a SOLDIER and has so much in his system already.” Pepper nodded in agreement and adjusted the needles.

“Turn on the recorder and let’s get started,” she ordered.

As they began their work, Sephiroth’s train was leaving Junon bound for Midgar. In his mind, he kept going over the fight in the basement, everything he’d done wrong, everything his father had berated him for a hundred times. Stupid. Stupid. And now that ghoul, that broken man, had the key. He would have to tell his mother. There was no way around it, no other option. Eventually it would come to her attention, and there was no telling how long his makeshift barricade would hold.

When he disembarked, Sephiroth ran to the Shinra building and into the elevator. He dashed into the lab as soon as the elevator door slid open, looking for his mother. A red-haired young man smiled and pointed him in the direction of one of the rear labs.

“This is an emergency, Mother, I just came from Nibelheim and –” Sephiroth ran into the room and stopped dead. Lucrecia was there, looking up from her notes to see what he wanted, but it was what was behind her that froze his blood. He hadn’t seen the full-scale mako tanks in use since he was a child, but this one was, the liquid inside bubbling but clear enough for him to make out the person inside.

“Mother! What in the name of Alexander are you doing to Zack?” Sephiroth demanded, unable to tear his eyes away from Zack’s prone form in the mako tank.

“He attacked me,” she told him, careful to keep her voice distraught. “I reacted without thinking, shooting like your father taught me.” If there was extra emphasis on the phrase “your father,” Sephiroth was too upset to notice it.

“You can’t just put my boyfriend in a tank!” he shouted.

Lucrecia stared at him.

“I said that out loud, didn’t I?” Sephiroth asked quietly.

She nodded.

“Can we… discuss that part later?”

Lucrecia looked uncomfortable as she nodded again. “We’ll stay with him attacking me for the time being.”

“Zack attacking you makes no sense, Mother, you must have misunderstood. Zack is the most laid-back, down-to-earth SOLDIER I’ve ever worked with.”

Lucrecia frowned. “It’s not like you to talk back to me, Sephiroth. Go ahead and look in the next room. That’s where it happened. I haven’t had a chance to clean up in there yet.”

Sephiroth looked inside and, sure enough, the room was a mess. Something seemed out of place, however: he noticed that the straps on the overturned table were broken. It occured to him to wonder why anything would be strapped to a table that could be flipped so easily.

The answer was obvious when he looked closer. The table had once been bolted to the floor. There were needles on the floor as well, recently used.

“What did you give him, Mother?” Sephiroth asked, his voice hard and so low that Lucrecia could barely hear him.

“Just a standard–”

“I’m not stupid, Mother,” he spun on her, glaring down with a voice full of disdain and dark hair falling in his eyes, and Lucrecia was suddenly reminded of Hojo’s rages.

And of the phone call Sephiroth had made to her in the middle of the night.

“Get out! Just get out!” she screamed at him.

“Not without Zack!”

“I have the authority to keep him here if I want! You get out of here or so help me I will call your father and I will have you escorted out of here by Turks, do you hear me?” When he ignored her and began studying the control panel for the tank, Lucrecia hit the security button. Instantly, the overhead lights dimmed and red emergency lights shrouded the lab in shadows.

Veld’s voice spoke from the intercom. “Problem, Mrs. Valentine?”

“My son is attempting to damage Shinra property. I need him removed from the premesis by security,” she ordered.

“Ma’am, I don’t know what your husband does when he’s here, but Turks are security, not babysitting.”

“This is a security matter! He’s going to ruin an experiment in progress and my safety has been threatened! Now get your men down here at once or I’ll make sure you don’t have any men to order around tomorrow,” Lucrecia yelled, then snapped the intercom off.

“I can’t see any of the buttons in this half-light,” Sephiroth complained.

“That’s good,” Lucrecia assured him. “Sephiroth, you don’t know what you’re doing. You could hurt him further if you corrupt his environment.”

“What the hell did you do to him?” the SOLDIER demanded again.

“I told you, he attacked me and I shot him.”

“I don’t believe you,” Sephiroth said quietly.

“I know,” she answered.

“Get him out.”

“No.”

Just then the stairwell doors burst open and three young adults in navy suits burst in, weapons drawn.

“I’d better not see any a’ your asses moving, yo!” shouted the leader at the frightened lab technicians. He looked for his target. “Seph, you gonna come quiet or do I have ta shoot your pretty face?”

Sephiroth knew Reno. Vincent had introduced them when Reno first enrolled in the Turks at sixteen, and they’d gone out partying or clubbing plenty of times. But Sephiroth knew Reno well enough not to argue with him when he was on duty.

“There’s no need to be so forward, I know how handy you are with your rod,” Sephiroth said, smirking and joking to cover his distress. His mother was going to win this battle, but Sephiroth would figure something out. Gast might know what to do. He was ragingly mad, more than he could remember being before in his life.

He wanted to hurt her, but he knew Reno and the Turks wouldn’t let him touch her, not now.

Not physically.

“I thought you should know, Mother,” he called over his shoulder as Reno led him out. “I had an accident when I was on vacation last week. I lost your key. You might want to check up on that.”

“What?” she called after him.

“You know, last week, when I took some leave and went to Nibelheim?” He smiled, then, and her jaw had just begun to drop as one of the Turks pulled the door shut behind them.

“Sorry about all this, man,” Reno said as he left the other Turks in the lobby and walked with Sephiroth outside the glass doors of the Shinra building.

Sephiroth shrugged. “You’re just doing your job. I’m not going to hold that against you. You didn’t even shoot me this time.”

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are ya?” Reno asked, laughing, but his voice quickly turned serious. “You better take a couple days off, yo. Go hang out in Kalm or Junon or something, let your parents and Heidegger sort this one out. I know a sweet girl down in Junon, I’ll give ya her number.”

“I wish I could,” Sephiroth said, shaking his head. “The guy in the tank up there? He’s a friend of mine. Good friend. I don’t know what my mother thinks she’s doing, but I’m not okay with it.”

“Just cause I like ya so much, Imma pretend you didn’t just tell me that,” Reno told him. “Now get outta here, at least for the time being, kay?”

“Sure thing, Reno. And thanks.”

Reno watched the lieutenant walk away toward the subway station, then pulled out his PHS and dialed. “Hey, Veld. He’s off, yo. I told him ta cool off and wait for someone to call, he’s headin down Junon or something.”

“Good. Nice work, Reno. Now get your ass back upstairs and finish your paperwork,” Veld ordered, snapping his phone shut. He turned to Lucrecia, who was busy surveying the damage to the lab. She was ordering half a dozen lab techs around as well as a few janitors and while he was on the phone she had apparently shanghaied his assistant into helping too.

“Tseng! You’re here to take notes, not rearrange furniture,” Veld snapped. The Turk dropped the broken chair he was holding and stepped back into place beside him, notebook and pencil appearing.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was just trying to get everything cleaned up,” Lucrecia told Veld. “I want to get back to normalcy in here as soon as possible.”

“I’m sure you do, ma’am–”

“You’ve known me for years, Veld! Call me Lu.”

“Ma’am, but this is an investigation, and we need to inspect the damage. Now you said Sephiroth did all this?”

“I don’t know what came over him! He was arguing with,” she dropped her voice and leaned forward conspiratorily, pointing to the tank, “his boyfriend and they just started shouting, and Sephiroth went crazy! He shot the poor boy, that’s why he’s in the tank. I think I can heal him.”

Veld reached down and picked up a snapped leather cuff that was laying on the floor. “They were just arguing, hmm?”

“Oh, please, don’t embarass me like that,” Lucrecia said, turning away as if she were blushing and vaguely horrified. “Sephiroth isn’t… like that.”

“Mm. He must be quite a strong lad,” Veld noted as he snapped pictures of the broken table legs with his camera. “These bolts are actually snapped clean through. Usually they’d be rocked loose and shear off the edges of whatever was holding them.”

Lucrecia frowned. “Veld, I’m not sure what you’re implying, but I don’t appreciate your tone of voice.”

“I don’t appreciate being lied to, ma’am, and I’m not going to fold into an origami crane in front of you just because you’re my boss’s wife.”

“I’m not asking you to fold anything, I’m just telling you what happened.”

“Of course you are. Now, to review: Sephiroth and this young man in the tank came in arguing. They got violent, though you’re not sure why, and when you tried to break it up, Sephiroth threatened you.”

Lucrecia nodded.

“You called for help. You mentioned something about him threatening an experiment in progress. Was any damage done to it?”

She blinked, but recovered quickly. “Nothing that can’t be done over again, just some prepared materials that were destroyed.”

Veld nodded. “Sephiroth shot the young man after you turned off the intercom, correct? And you immediately put him into the tank for possble medical attention.”

“Yes. I did the good and decent thing.”

“Of course you did.”

“You should try that some time, Veld, it’s great for stress relief,” she snapped.

“I’m sure it is. Since he was already in the tank when we arrived, I think that will be all for now.” Veld turned to go and Tseng snapped his notebook shut, ready to follow him. “I’ll send Vincent down as soon as he gets back so you can give him five new reasons to fire me. Have a good evening, ma’am.

When they left, Lucrecia realized that there was a piece of paper on her desk folded to resemble a small crane. That Wutaian must have left it, she thought, trying to remember the name of Veld’s assistant. She picked it up and almost threw it away, but she paused and unfolded it instead. Inside, in a very precise, small hand, was written:

Time elapsed between emergency call and arrival of peace preservation personnel: four minutes
Time required to fill an R-series mako tank to stability level: twelve minutes

Lucrecia tore the sheet up and let the pieces fall around the trash can. She needed to make herself invaluable, and quickly. She looked up at Zack. Would he do? She needed to find some way to bring him under control, or she needed to find something even more impressive.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door frame. “Lu?”

She recognized Pepper’s voice and put on her best worried look before turning to face him. “Oh, Pepper, thank god those awful Turks are gone. They were asking so many questions.”

“Questions?” he asked, his voice leaping up an octave.

“They kept asking who shot the SOLDIER. I deflected them every time, I told them you were totally innocent, but Pepper, I don’t know if I can keep them away forever.”

“But– but– he was a wolf! And he was attacking you!”

“They’re lackeys, Pepper. They don’t know what to make of things like that, so they ignore them and blame the innocent and the brave.”

Pepper swallowed hard. “I, ah, I’ll have to do something about that. But first, I finished the second notebook you gave me. It’s about a different project altogether, something called Jenova.”

“Oh, Gast buried that project years ago, not long after Hojo died,” Lucrecia said, brushing the idea aside.

“I don’t know what Gast worked on,” Pepper pressed, “but the logic and theory here looks solid. I’d need a sample to see if the formula carried over, but in theory this would create soldiers like ants, whose will would be subject to the ‘queen’. This is what he was working on while he waited for approval on his… other project, so he never got to finish or test it.” Pepper shivered at the thought of why Hojo had never finished this work.

“Hmm,” Lucrecia considered. “Do you think it will work?”

“If this specimen is everything he says it is, then yes, I do.”

“Gast had it buried where he originally found it, but when we moved out of the mansion I found some samples Hojo must have put aside. I still have them in the cold storage unit. I want you to work on this for me, Pepper, so that if they do their worst to you, I can prove to Shinra that you’re useful.”

Pepper nodded. “Thank you, Lu.”

She stroked his cheek and leaned in to kiss him. “I think we… work well together. It would be a shame to lose you.”

“I won’t let you lose me,” Pepper said, smiling.

“Now you go get to work on that. The samples are filed under Project J. I need to check on our other project.”

Pepper started to leave, but turned back. “There’s something else I’d like to talk to you about. Can we discuss it over dinner tonight?”

Lucrecia didn’t even look up, the young man already forgotten. “Not tonight, but another time. Hurry.”

He frowned a little, but did as he was told, hurrying down to cold storage. When he typed the specimen retrival code into the computer, it asked what project he was working on. He thought a moment, then simply labelled it JENOVA PROJECT.

The computer beeped and he stepped inside to retrieve his samples.

Vincent stumbled out of the elevator and headed to his office. He hated arguing with Lucrecia in the morning. It tended to set the tone for the whole day, to cloud over everything he worked on. He raised his coffee to his lips and tried not to think about it.

“So, Valentine, I hear your son’s a homo,” his second-in-command greeted him as he entered the office. Vincent spit a mouthful of coffee back into his cup.

“What?”

“Oh, not that I’m going to judge him or anything. It’s just a rumor going around. I’m sure no one would wonder if he takes after his totally-faithful, utterly-straight father.”

“Shut up, Dragoon, or I will shoot you.”

“You’ve been promising me that for thirty years, Valentine. I suppose it’s just one more thing you don’t follow through on.”

“Look, I told you, I can’t leave her, okay? Fuck.”

“Fucking always was your problem.”

“Get out!” Vincent shouted in frustration, and Veld shrugged and left, smirking.

After a minute, he reappeared in the doorway. “We still going out after work tonight?”

Vincent sighed. “Sure. Just don’t spread any stupid rumors.”

“Sure thing, chief,” and he was gone again.

The leader of the Turks frowned at his coffee. The coffee pot in the lounge was out of commission again, thanks to Reno’s little game of keepaway with the new girl’s handgun, and he didn’t feel like going back downstairs for another cup. With a sigh, he sipped it anyway.

He’d barely had time to put the argument with Veld out of his mind before his wife stepped in.

“Is Sephiroth back from his mission yet?” Lucrecia asked as she dropped into the chair opposite his desk.

“I don’t know. Nobody from SOLDIER ever tells me anything, you know that,” he snapped. She looked hurt and he apologized. “Sorry, I’m just on edge.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Sephiroth called me in the middle of the night the other day to ask if I was sure you were his father! Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?” she scoffed. “Of course, you’d know this if you were home when he called. Or at all.”

“You know I’m busy,” he said, spreading his hands on the desk. “It can’t be helped, Lu.”

“You’re not seeing another woman, are you?” she asked suddenly.

“Oh, gods, no!” Vincent answered immediately. “No, no women. Except for you.”

“Good,” she smiled. “If Sephiroth comes by, tell him I’m looking for him?”

“Of course,” he said as she leaned over the desk and pecked him on the cheek.

“Oh, I managed to schedule myself an evening off this week, Vinny. Do you think you can get Thursday night free?”

“Assuming the President doesn’t need anyone blown up on short notice, I think that could be arranged,” he grinned at her. “Thursday it is. Should I dress up, or will this be a quiet evening at home?”

“At home, definitely. Quiet is up to you.” She smiled as she left. The instant she set foot back in her lab (and she’d gotten quite fond of calling it “her” lab in the few years since Gast had retired) someone needed her attention on a project. Before she knew it, most of the day had passed.

“Mother!” she heard Sephiroth call across the lab before she caught sight of him.

“Oh, there you are!” she answered, hurrying over to him. “I thought you would be back today, but I didn’t know when.”

“Sorry if I kept you waiting,” Sephiroth told her, and after a moment he added, “or if I upset you the other night.”

“It’s fine,” she lied, “You just caught me off guard.”

Sephiroth nodded. “Can I talk to you about something important?”

Lucrecia frowned. “If it’s the same subject as the phone call, no amount of talking will change…”

“No, not that at all,” Sephiroth cut her off. “It’s something about me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Um, I’d rather not have this discussion in the open lab.”

“Fine, go in my office,” she said, worried and curious. Lucrecia didn’t like the sorts of questions her son had been asking lately.

As it turned out, however, Sephiroth wasn’t there to ask her a question at all. “Mother, I’ve been trying to think how to tell you for a while now, but… well…”

Before he could finish the sentence, Lucrecia’s secretary knocked and stepped inside without waiting for a response. “President’s on line one. He wants you in his office ten minutes ago, Sephiroth.” Sephiroth looked at his mother and sighed.

“You go ahead,” Lucrecia said, rubbing his back. “I’ll be here when you have time.”

“Thank you,” Sephiroth told her, then walked to the elevator. He hated riding all the way up to the president’s office; the city of midgar splayed out below the gass elevator windows. It was as if Shinra wanted to remind all of his visitors, that yes, all this belonged to him. The ride from the lab, however, was a merciful few floors.

President Andrew Shinra was waiting, sitting behind his large desk and smiling down on Sephiroth like a benevolent god. “So what have you brought me, Lieutenant?”

“There wasn’t much to find, sir. There were no notes belonging to my mother. I brought these for you, though. I couldn’t make much sense of it, but maybe you can.” Sephiroth handed the pair of books he’d brought to the President.

The President flipped through them briefly. “Hmm. Definitely not your mother’s, I agree. I’ll have to give these to her and see what she can make of them.”

“Was that all, sir?” Sephiroth asked, stepping back into an at-ease position in front of the desk.

The blonde man nodded. “I’m glad to know your mother can be trusted… at least in this matter. Good work finding these. Dismissed.” Sephiroth hurried out. Andrew watched him disappear into the left elevator shaft only moments before the right opened and his mother stepped out. Gods, he loved it when the universe saw fit to make things work smoothly around him.

“Good afternoon, Professor Lucrecia,” he stood to greet her, as he’d been taught a gentleman should. He gestured for her to sit, but he remained standing.

“What did you need to see me about, sir?” she asked, looking bored.

“To be frank, your work has been… disappointing lately,” Andrew said seriously. “I haven’t heard a single amazing idea since Gast retired.”

“What? Sir, I know we haven’t done anything groundbreaking, but we’ve been refining everything and–”

“Yes, yes, refining. Lucrecia, underlings can refine. That’s what they’re for. Board members are the backs upon which the glory and budget of Shinra Incorporated rest; I can’t have you sitting around on your laurels.”

“I’m not sitting on anything, sir!” Lucrecia said, her voice getting progressively higher as she became more upset.

Andrew shook his head. “I expect great things from you. Soon. If I don’t see results, I may have to put someone else in charge. That red-haired young man, Pepper? He seems like quite the clever upstart, maybe he has some new ideas.”

“Andrew, that boy is half my age! You can’t put him in charge of the department!” she snapped.

“I can do whatever I like, Professor,” the president said, banging his fist on the desk for emphasis. “Gast wasn’t much older than that when he took the department reigns.”

Lucrecia glared at him. “You want results? I can get you results, sir.” She took the notebooks he’d held out and stormed out of the office. She fumed all the way down to her office in the lab and flung the notebooks on the desk. How dare he? What did the President want? Exciting new things to study didn’t just turn up out of the blue.

She looked at the notebooks. They were Hojo’s, she recognized. She wondered where Shinra had gotten them. Was he sending men out to Nibelheim to snoop now, or had they gotten mislaid when she originally moved back to Midgar? It was impossible to know, but the possibility bothered her.

Lucrecia picked up one of the books and flipped through it. It was the same useless bable Hojo had always filled his notebooks with. This one was on… wait. These were the notes for the Break Limits Project.

Well, if there was one thing that could be said for Hojo, he did have very original ideas. This was the only project of his that she’d never touched, and for good reason. His name was still whispered around the labs as a warning to students who got too caught up in their work or became tempted to go too far in the name of science. Yet Lucrecia knew that Hojo’s work had been very close to correct: the result of his project was a number of the intended improvements in healing and reaction time, as well as the improved fighting ability implied by the monstrous form.

Not to mention the lack of aging. It was this last, disturbing side effect that had finally led her to stop visiting Hojo. “Your hair is going grey so fast, Lu,” he had said to her, apparently unaware that he’d been down there for fifteen years, while he still looked… Well, she couldn’t say that he looked the same as he had when she and Vincent put him in there, but he could definitely still pass for twenty nine, if he kept his mouth and eyes shut.

It would be easy enough, Lucrecia decided as she put aside thoughts of her own mortality and her former lover’s apparent lack thereof, to repeat the materia reclaimation process and create a second prototype shot. This time she would temper it, start with a much weaker elemental spirit than the one Hojo had used.

She sat down at her desk and pulled out the materials catalog, flipping ahead to the list of recovered red materia. Most of the high-rated ones had been requisitioned to field work in Wutai, and a dozen or so were in process for Weapons Development, but there was still a good selection for her to pick from.

“Let’s see, what’s on the low end of the star scale?” she murmured to herself as she flipped to the single star-rated reds. There were the very safe looking ones, small cute animal-spirits like the Chocobo and woman-spirits like Starlet who only healed, but Lucrecia doubted that being able to transform into a half-dressed woman who healed with a kiss would impress the President outside of his bedroom. No, she needed something that was rated low because it was young, not because it was weak.

Her eyes fell on Fenrir, a large wolf-spirit. The materia had been discovered in Gongaga after an accident in the mako reactor there, and was assumed to have been formed at that time. The spirit was very imposing, but in trials had been taken down by a single SOLDIER, one Zachary Kane.

The name sounded familiar, but it took Lucrecia a moment to place it. He was some friend of Sephiroth’s. She made a note to call him in and interview him about the spirit, then began the paperwork to requisition the materia. When she’d finished, she called for Pepper over the intercom.

“Do you need something, ma’am?” He asked, pushing his shaggy red hair out of his eyes as he stepped into her office.

“Not quite, Pepper. And haven’t I told you not to call me ma’am when we’re alone?”

Pepper blushed. “Sorry, Lucrecia. What is it?”

“Well, you know I saw the President today, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Your secretary mentioned something about that when I came by to bring your tea, yes.”

“Pepper, the President…” she looked down and stood up, walking over to the younger man. “He thinks I should let you go.”

“Fire me?” he asked, swallowing hard. “What’s wrong? Did I do something, or–”

“Shh,” Lucrecia said, laying her hand over his lips. “I told him to give you another chance, and he agreed. Are you willing to work hard to keep your job?”

“Of course!” Pepper told her, trying his best not to worry.

She handed him the notebooks. “This is an old, old project. You’ve heard the stories about Professor Hojo?”

Pepper nodded, looking pale at the thought of them. His lab partner in university had loved telling the sorts of stories that made Pepper squirm or feel ill.

“These are some of his last notebooks. He was quite thoroughly insane, and they’re hard to read, but I think in here you can distill the plans for the last project he worked on.”

“Is that,” Pepper hesistated, “the one he killed himself with?”

Lucrecia nodded. “I think you’re smart enough to make it work, Pepper, to take what he did and figure out what went wrong. I told Andrew you could do it. He didn’t believe me.”

She took Pepper’s empty hand in her own small ones. “Can you do it, Pepper?”

“Yes,” he sounded hesitant, but quickly convinced himself to sound sure. “Yes, I can do it. I’ll prove I’m worthy of you, Prof– Lucrecia.” He smiled, letting himself believe her.

Lucrecia smiled, her eyes sparkling at him. “Oh, good, Pepper. You’ll make me proud of you.” She leaned into him and pressed her lips against his, feeling him stiffen in surprise and then relax into it.

He was gasping for air when she let him go. “What… what about your husband?”

“He’s so very busy, Pepper, and this lab is my whole life. Sometimes I get carried away in the passion of an experiment. I shouldn’t have made you uncomfortable.” Lucrecia turned her head away but didn’t let go of Pepper and he was quick to reassure her.

“No! No, it’s okay, I’m not judging you,” he said, holding her hand. “I was just… I didn’t want you to be in trouble.”

“Leave trouble to me, Pepper, and I’ll leave these notes to you,” she said. He nodded.

“And Pepper?” she held him back when he tried to step toward the door. “Do me a favor?”

“Anything,” he said.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Lucrecia ordered him.

“Of course.”

“Take a couple days off if it will help you concentrate,” she suggested, smiling. “I think we can hold things down here without you.”

“Thank you,” he said, “thank you for standing up for me. I appreciate it a lot.” Pepper took the notebooks then and left. He was thoughtful on the ride to the first floor of the building, and on the train home. He disembarked in sector eight and spotted Sephiroth as the lieutenant climbed from the next car.

“Sephiroth!” Pepper called, “What are you up to?”

Sephiroth sighed. He hated when people from the Science Department acted familiar with him. The fact that his mother dragged him after her everywhere didn’t mean he knew or liked the people she introduced him to.

He hurried along the road to Gast’s house, eager to get back to work figuring out what had happened in the basement all those years ago.

“Your mother called,” Gast greeted him. He was seated in an oversized armchair, nearly dwared by the sheer loudness of the pattern.

Sephiroth blinked. “How did she know I was coming here?”

“She didn’t. She was calling to ask my advice with the revival of the Break Limits project,” Gast said offhandedly.

“Oh, that’s good… Or wait , is that not good?” Sephiroth asked as he sat down.

“Reviving that project strikes me as a very bad idea,” Gast said with a shrug. “But I’m not in a position to stop your mother, only to tell her what I think.”

“Shinra must have given her the notebooks,” Gast sighed. “Well, we tried.”

“‘We tried’? That’s it?” Sephiroth thought Gast was giving up far too quickly.

Gast frowned at him. “As you’ll recall, the reason you came to me had nothing to do with the project itself.”

Sephiroth frowned, but he couldn’t argue. Instead, he changed the subject.

“Where’s Zack? Did he go back to the barracks?”

“Aeris bullied him into going for ice cream,” Gast said with a grin. “She’s just getting interested in boys and he seemed flattered by the attention, so I thought–” Sephiroth stood up suddenly enough that his chair fell backwards.

“Are you alright?” Gast asked, alarmed.

“Fine. Thank you. I’ll be back,” Sephiroth called over his shoulder as he ran back out of the house and toward the small commercial square at the center of sector eight. There was only one cafe there and Sephiroth could see Zack and Aeris sitting at a table outside of it.

He thought about saying something, but he didn’t know what to say, so he found himself watching them… from behind the bushes next to the cafe. It certainly wasn’t eavesdropping, he told himself.

He just happened to be able to hear everything they said.

“…sounds exciting,” Aeris was saying. “I’d like to see Wutai one day, but not right now. Too many spirits, you know?”

“Spirits?” Zack asked.

“You know, like dead people whose souls can’t find their way back to the planet, elementals whose natural homes have been destroyed, stuff like that. Midgar’s pretty dead, so I don’t see much around here.”

“You see spirits?” Zack sounded incredulous. Good boy, Sephiroth thought at him. Stay rational.

“Sometimes. My mom was way better at it than I am, but she’s dead, so I have to do it now.”

“What do you have to do?” he asked. Sephiroth thought he sounded far more interested than simple politeness warranted. It slowly occurred to him that he might be jealous. Jealous of a teenage girl… his head really was messed up this week.

That did it. He was tired of pussying around, of playing sides, and of standing in those stupid bushes. They were prickly. He pushed them aside and stepped onto the cafe’s patio.

“Oh, hey, Sephiroth,” Zack waved to him. “You never told me you knew such an interesting girl!”

“I guess I didn’t realize she was so fascinating,” Sephiroth shrugged and pulled a chair over to join them. Under the table, Aeris kicked his shin.

“Aeris, you should run on home. We’ll be back later,” Zack told her. She pouted, but ran off.

“Zack, I think we need to talk,” Sephiroth said, but Zack held up a hand.

“I agree, Seph.”

“You do?”

“I don’t think we’re going to work out.”

“That’s — wait, what?” This wasn’t what Sephiroth had been expecting.

Zack leaned back in his chair. “I dunno, man. It just bothers me that you won’t talk about me, you know? Makes me feel like I’m your dirty little secret, not your boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry, Zack, but we talked about this. You said I could take my time.”

“Yeah, I thought you needed a couple months. It’s been a year and a half.”

“It’s not easy for me.”

“Congrats, Seph, welcome to the human race. Relationships aren’t easy.”

Sephiroth glared at him. “And it’s just coincidence that we’re having this conversation after you get done having a cute little date?”

Zack smiled nervously. “She just got me thinking, was all. Yeah, she’s cute, and I think I’ll see her again.”

“So that’s it, then? No second chances, no apologies?” Sephiroth asked, standing up.

“Fuck, Seph, you’re my friend and my superior officer, and I love you, but you have to admit, this just isn’t working.”

“I thought it was working,” he said, in a voice that sounded uncomfortably like a pout to his own ears.

“Which just shows how much it wasn’t.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Zack.”

“Sure it does,” the dark haired SOLDIER stood. “Now I’m going to go see Aeris. Whether you come back to the house or not is up to you.” He walked away. Sephiroth watched him go until he turned the corner, then put his head down on the cold metal cafe table and wondered if he could wake up and have his life go back to making sense.

When he opened his eyes again, he was still alone.

He stood and started in the direction of the train station.

Zack woke with sunlight in his eyes. He rolled over in bed looking for Sephiroth, but was disconcerted to find himself alone.

“Sephiroth?” he called. On the far side of their small room in the Nihelheim inn, Sephiroth was hunched over the small desk, reading.

“You said you were going to sleep, Sephiroth. You promised you would.”

“I tried,” the lieutenant answered. “I really did, Zack, but I just couldn’t stop thinking. You know how I get.”

Zack sighed as he pushed aside the blanket and stood up. “Yeah, Seph, I do know you. I know you too well. That’s part of the problem.”

“Problem?” Sephiroth asked.

“I knew you wouldn’t do anything as sensible as actually sleep. Why don’t you just ask your mom?” Zack asked as he pulled his uniform on, shivering a little in the morning chill. “You know, ‘Hey, Mom, the crazy guy in the basement was asking me all these weird questions. What’s up with that?’”

“Because I wasn’t supposed to go down there,” Sephiroth answered, his voice strained. “Mother drilled that into my head years ago, just like I’m not supposed to touch anything in the lab or call my father at work. I shouldn’t have even come to Nibelheim without telling her.”

“Seph, you’re twenty five years old and yet you sound like a fresh meat recruit whose mommy is threatening to come take him home because he forgot to call every day and wear fresh underwear. Are you a SOLDIER or a mama’s boy?” Zack crossed his arms. He didn’t often push Sephiroth.

“… Do I have to pick?” There was a minute of awkward silence before Sephiroth began to laugh, and Zack soon joined him. Laughter was good, the dark-haired man thought, even if Sephiroth’s laughter did sound a bit more forced than usual.

“Seriously, thought, you have to do something.”

“I am doing something, Zack. I’m trying to make sense of the guy’s notes, figure out what kind of person he was– is.” Sephiroth picked up the notebook he’d been writing in and handed it to Zack.

“You worked all night on this?” Zack asked.

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t look like you made much headway.”

Sephiroth sighed. “I didn’t. But when we get back to Midgar, I’m going to go see Professor Gast.”

“What about President Shinra?”

“Oh, we’ll give him something. I just want to see Gast first and make sure he gets the least useful notes.”

Zack began emptying the desk, putting all the notes back into the cardboard box. “I’ll go check on the recruits. You should get ready to go.” The shorter man laid his head on Sephiroth’s for a moment, then turned and strode into the hallway.

Sephiroth showered quickly and dressed in more casual clothes for the journey home instead of his uniform. Since this mission was technically off the books, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to take advantage of that. As he was throwing his other clothes into his duffel, he pulled the brass key from his pants pocket and stared at it.

“I should probably put it back in the mansion,” he said to himself, knowing full well he wouldn’t. He didn’t want it out of his reach until he had this sorted out. Instead he went downstairs with the box and the duffel and asked the innkeeper if he had some string or cord. The man handed him a length of leather and Sephiroth threaded it through the end of the key, tying it around his neck and slipping it under the collar of his shirt.

“Ready to go, sir?” Cloud asked behind him, almost causing Sephiroth to jump.

“Yes. Do you have the rest of the boxes, Cloud?”

“Xavier and I took them out to the truck already. Should I get this one?”

“Go ahead.” Cloud grunted as he lifted the box, bowing his legs under the weight as he shuffled outside. Sephiroth settled the bill and thanked the innkeeper, then stepped out into the morning sunlight.

He threw his duffel into the back of the truck and climbed inside where his men were waiting. “Everything ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Xavier nodded. Zack smiled, glad to be getting away from the mansion and the too-quiet town. Nibelheim was even smaller than the place he’d grown up in and run away from years ago.

“If you’re with me, men, we’ll be making a slight detour when we get back to Midgar,” Sephiroth began as the truck pulled away from the entrance to town and began the long drive back to the coast.

“A detour?” Xavier asked. Cloud was wondering the same thing, but he was already motion sick and using all his will to concentrate on what was being said.

“Just a brief one. I want to see Professor Gast about these books before I give them to Shinra.”

Xavier shrugged and smiled. “I’m just following orders, sir.”

“Cloud? You okay with that?” Zack asked, putting his hand on the sick young man’s shoulder. Cloud nodded.

“It’ll be good to see Gast. He was still overseeing the SOLDIER program when I enlisted,” Zack said, sitting on the floor and leaning back against his duffel. “No offense, Seph, but I liked him better than your mom.”

“Your opinion’s your own, Zack. I don’t care who you prefer getting your showers from,” Sephiroth frowned. “You have been a bit touchy about the subject of my mother lately, though.”

“I just wish you’d tell her.”

“Tell her?”

“You know. About us.”

Sephiroth dropped his voice and whispered angrilly at Zack. “I thought we weren’t discussing that in public.”

“This is public now?” Zack asked, gesturing at Cloud, who was leaning out the back of the truck, and Xavier, who was deeply immersed in reading a comic book. “You just told these kids that you’re lying to the president and pretty much asked them to assist you in insubordination, and they said sure, because the men always say sure. They fucking worship you. They’re not going to care.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve seen how rumors get.”

“Rumors are always about people nobody likes. Hell, I bet if you came out, half the army would decide they were fags so they could be like you.”

“For Bahamut’s sake, Zack, don’t call me that!”

“What, fag?”

“Yes,” Sephiroth hissed.

“Why not?” Zack asked with a hint of laughter in his voice, which only pissed Sephiroth off more.

“Because it’s an insult. Would you go around calling me a Wute?”

Zack shrugged. “I thought you weren’t a Wute.”

Sephiroth choked a little when he realized what he’d said. He didn’t really believe the crazy ghost in the basement of the old mansion, did he?

No, no, of course not. And he certainly hadn’t believed him enough to wake his mother up in the middle of the night to ask her stupid questions.

Sephiroth shook his head. “I don’t want to have this argument with you right now. I’m going to take a nap.”

“You do that. A nice, straight nap.”

“Stop it.” Sephiroth resolved to ignore anything else Zack said short of “holy shit, we’re under attack” and laid along one of the truck’s benches, closing his eyes and falling asleep much more easily than he had expected.

When they arrived in Midgar the next day, Sephiroth made sure that the men had unloaded the boxes before the driver from Shinra arrived.

“Need a ride?” the MP asked.

Sephiroth shook his head. “No need, we didn’t find much. I’ll go see the President myself later. You can give the boys a ride back to headquarters, though.” Cloud and Xavier looked surprised, but Sephiroth shooed them into the transport truck.

“So how are we getting all this stuff to Gast’s place without our bagboys?”

“We’re going to carry it,” Sephiroth announced.

“Oh, wonderful.”

Sephiroth stacked two boxes of books in Zack’s arms and then lifted both of their duffles over his shoulders and took the third box himself.

“He’s not far from here, right, Sephiroth? Please?” Zack asked from behind the boxes.

“No, not far. Only about half an hour’s walk.” Zack groaned and Sephiroth smiled.

When they arrived at Gast’s small house in Sector Eight, a teenaged girl in the garden spotted them coming and ran out to meet them. “Sephiroth! Hey! Dad said you were coming by.”

“Hi, Aeris,” Sephiroth smiled. “He’s waiting for us inside, then?”

She nodded as she walked backwards in front of them. “He told me I’m not supposed to bother you or get in your way. Who’s your friend?”

“This is Zachary. He’s a first class SOLDIER.”

“Nice to meet you, Zachary.”

“Call me Zack, please. Everybody does,” he told her, and Sephiroth could have sworn that he was blushing. Sephiroth hurried inside as much as his burden would allow and Zack followed with Aeris orbiting him.

“Ah, Sephiroth! How have you been? How’s your mother?” Gast greeted him, leaving his tea on the table to hug him. Sephiroth set the box on the table and dropped the bags on the floor before allowing the man to put his arms around him.

“My mother is fine, as usual,” Sephiroth said with a smile. Something about the Faremiss home always put him at ease. He assumed it was just the warm personality of the family themselves, which hadn’t changed even after Ifalna’s unfortunate death last year.

“What have you brought me? You sounded so worried on the phone,” the older scientist asked, opening the first box as Zack set two more down beside it.

“We found these in a secret lab in the basement of the Nibelheim mansion,” Sephiroth said as Gast pulled a few volumes out and flipped through them. “They’re not my mother’s handwriting.”

Gast nodded. “These must have been Hojo’s notebooks. I recognize his style, using Wutai as a shortcut when he thought writing an entire word would take too long.”

“‘Too long?’” Zack asked.

“The man was brilliant but, ah… not all there,” Gast said, shaking his head sadly. “He used to complain that his thoughts went faster than he could write, that he lost some of his best ideas because by the time he’d written the first half of a sentence, he’d forgotten the second half and moved onto a different problem. Such a shame that he killed himself, but I wasn’t terribly surprised.”

Sephiroth looked at the floor. “That’s, ah, part of what had me so upset, Gast. In the basement with the notebooks we also found… I think it was Hojo’s ghost.”

“Ghost? Pah, there’s no such thing as ghosts, Sephiroth. Souls return to the Planet when they die, what would remain to haunt something?” Gast answered without looking up from the notebook.

“Well, we saw something in the basement. Was your Hojo a Wutaian guy, about so tall,” Zack gestured with his hand a space slightly above Sephiroth’s head, “skinny as all heck, with long black hair and red eyes?”

“He had brown eyes, actually, very dark– wait, you both saw him?” Gast asked in surprise.

“Not just saw but nearly got eaten by. That was one scary motherfucker,” Zack said.

“Please watch your language in front of my daughter,” Gast admonished automatically, but Aeris was smiling.

“I hear language like that all the time, Daddy,” she told him.

Gast shook his head as what Sephiroth and Zack had told him sank in. “You mean the Break Limits Project succeeded?”

“Is that the experiment he tried on himself?” Sephiroth asked.

“Break Limits? Yes. It was theoretically quite brilliant, I was disappointed it didn’t work out. Last year your mother actually picked up some of the threads he dropped in that line of research. He was attempting to apply specialized, colored materia to the body in the same way we’d already succeeded in doing with normal mako for the SOLDIER program. When he died, we assumed that regressed materia was simply too toxic for the body.”

“Except that he didn’t die,” Sephiroth said slowly. “He’s just been down there for… since I was born. That’s a long time.”

“Why would your mom lie about that?” Zack asked quietly.

“Maybe she didn’t realize he was alive?” Gast offered.

Sephiroth shook his head. “He said she visited him. Hell, I remember her taking me out there, and how long she spent in that secret passage when we were there. She must have known.”

“Maybe she decided he was too dangerous to be let out?” Zack said.

Gast frowned. “That shouldn’t have been her decision to make. You don’t lock someone up like that without at least getting a second consultation.”

“He was really crazy,” Zack said. “You don’t need a second opinion to see that.”

“Twenty five years in a stone room eating rats would drive anyone crazy, Zack,” Sephiroth shook his head. “He might not have been as bad when he went in as he is now.”

Zack shrugged. “Well, it’s a moot point now.”

“But you said he spoke to you? What else did he tell you?” Gast asked.

“He mostly rambled. It was hard to follow. He kept asking me if my mother was sure about me. He laughed a lot,” Sephiroth frowned, trying to recall the conversation in his head. Something else was bothering him. “Professor, what was Break Limits supposed to do to a person?”

“Hojo was using regressed summoning materia — red materia forced back into a liquid state — to introduce the elemental intelligences from the materia into a human host, hoping to create a bond between the two.”

“Why would somebody want to do that?” Aeris spoke up. “The spirits go into the materia willingly so they can help anybody that needs them. If you put them in a body they’d be all… limited.”

“I’d just met your mother then, Aeris. We didn’t know a lot of the things that we know now.”

“So why was he doing that?” she asked.

“He theorized that it would give a human the ability to use the power of the summon whenever he wanted. To do magic without materia.”

“I didn’t see him use any magic,” Zack said.

“He didn’t seem any older than me, but he’s definitely not human anymore,” Sephiroth continued. “Zack mentioned the red eyes, but his hands were formed like claws, the left one in particular. His skin was white, almost translucent. And…” He hesitated.

“What is it?” Gast asked.

“I shot him before we fled. Twice, point blank, with my rifle. Once in the chest and once in the face.”

“So he’s dead,” Gast said sadly.

Sephiroth shook his head. “He was still shouting and roaring when we ran out. Nobody should still be breathing after a rifle shot between the eyes, let alone talking. And the way he was screaming? Didn’t sound human.”

“Are you sure?”

“Gast, I spent enough time in Wutai to know all the noises a man makes as he dies. That wasn’t one of them.”

Gast looked at Zack, who simply nodded, and he turned away. “Fair enough.”

“Now what, though? I need to take President Shinra something from the mansion so he’ll back off from my mother,” Sephiroth said.

Gast frowned and pulled another book out of the stack. “He won’t be able to make heads or tails of any of these.”

“I don’t care if he can read them. I just need to give him something.”

“Then take something. It will take me weeks to make sense of these, there’s no way I can tell you what’s valuable and what isn’t.”

“None of its valuable, Daddy. It’s all tainted,” Aeris said, wrinkling her nose.

“That’s just mildew, Aeris.”

“No, it’s not. I like mildew. He was doing wrong things, Daddy, like Mama had to tell you not to do.”

Gast shook his head. “Whatever he was working on is already done. Maybe, if we study it, we can learn how to fix what he did to himself.”

“You’re not listening!” Aeris shouted and ran outside.

Sephiroth started to go after her, but Gast stopped him. “I need to talk to you more about this.”

“Can I go after her?” Zack asked. Gast considered this for a moment and looked at Sephiroth.

“He’s good with people,” Sephiroth said. Gast nodded and Zack disappeared outside.

Sephiroth looked at Gast. “None of this makes any sense. It’s like a ghost story.”

“Hardly,” Gast shook his head. “It only appears nonsensical because we don’t have all the information yet. Now tell me again everything you remember him saying to you…”

“Hello, Mother.”

“Yes, I know what time it is.”

“I’m sorry for waking you, but I have to ask you something.”

“It is important.”

“Were you and Dad married yet when I was conceived?”

“I don’t need a lecture, Mother, I just need you to answer the question.”

“I see. And, ah… are you sure he’s my father?”

“Mother, don’t hang up! This is important!”

“No, I haven’t been listening to rumors. Are there rumors about me?”

“If it’s such a silly idea, why won’t you just answer me?”

“Thank you. I’m sorry if I hurt you, I just… I had to ask.”

“Yes, I’ll wait until dawn next time, I promise.”

“I’ll let you go back to bed. I love you, Mother.”