out of a wall of solid rock inside of mountains. This wasn’t necessarily a pattern, this was
the first tunnel of that particular sort shed ever actually come into contact with, but she
didn’t like the look- or the feel of it. The look was fairly obvious- nothing, it was nearly
pitch dark inside, and the feeling was simply cold. Thus, it was with nagging reluctance
and a backwards glance, hoping to see her brother approaching, that Rory fell into place
entering the tunnel, gripping unconsciously onto the handle of the switch blade inside her
pocket.
They walked, not for long, but for longer than any of them would have liked, seeing no
end to the tunnel they were in. The curves and twists inside it made it impossible to turn
around and see how truly far they had come, but to everyone in side it definitely felt like
twice as much as it possibly could have been in that amount of time. Only a few minutes
after that feeling had hit them, Tseng signaled a stop to the Turks, and Avalanche- not
feeling like continuing alone- followed suit.
“Your brother picked these up where we stopped over in Wutai,” Tseng explained to
Rory, pulling two tightly bound packages from the walking pack he wore. “But I think
they’re for both of you.”
Cautiously but curiously, the two teenagers ripped open the string and pulled aside the
brown paper, revealing a pair of brand new, navy blue business jackets. Startled, they
looked up at Tseng, who had them both lined up with appraising looks. “Those aren’t
official, of course,” he explained, “the last thing I need is two kids getting killed on my
pay roll. But fuck it, they might bring some luck, huh?”
Nodding numbly, Rory and Gabriel hastily pulled the jackets on over top of their shirts, a
thin replacement for the winter wear they had abandoned as they traveled south down the
continent. Though not tailor fit, Reno had certainly done a good enough job at guessing
their sizes.
“Now that...” there was a collective jump as the travelers turned to see Reno rounding a
corner, his eyes gleaming, his smile stretched a little too wide to be real. “... is what I call
looking sharp.” He stepped diligently over Barret, who had sat down to take advantage of
the momentary pause, and walked up to Rory’s side. “Spitting fucking image,” he
grinned, “ ’cept you aren’t as pretty as me.”
“Yeah...” Rory said, her voice troubled. This wasn’t exactly uncommon for her brother, it
was just weird in a situation like this... must be nerves. Reno turned to Tseng, and gave
him an inexplicable little head nod. “Lead the way, captain,” he said, “we’ve got some
pencil neck to fry.”
And, despite the wording, they did just that.
***
They walked so long in a series of twists and turns that always led into simply more
winding rock, that when the path suddenly spilled out into an open room, it took all of
them a few seconds to notice. When they did, it was with a sudden shock of wonder that
rocked them all, and left their jaws firmly lowered.
“What the fuck...” Reno muttered, echoing the feelings of many, if not all.
The room, or cave, or whatever a hollowed out section of a mountain with perfectly
smooth walls was called, was absolutely massive, stretching for what seemed like miles
in every direction, whatever that may have been contained in the conclaves and sides
hidden by deep and dark shadows, and by a several dots of invisibility- branching from
the floor to the ceiling in long twisted spires were pillars of stone.
“What is it?” Rude asked, scanning the stones with his sunglasses, seeing the room in a
better light than anyone as the solids glew a dull shimmering green through his lens. He
turned his head to the side, the image shifting, and slowly ran his finger around the rims
on his glasses. On cue, the entire room lit up, but only to him, the by product of whatever
God given magic was inside the glasses. “Wait...”
“Its a web.” A voice said, hushed, and the group looked as one towards Rory, who was
staring around them with a look of abject horror on her face. “Its stones, but its... a spider
web.”
“OK, time to leave...” Reno said, his voice hinting at humor, but he backed up as he
spoke, drawing nearer towards the tunnel from whence they came. He continued to
retreat, feet slowly passing back over each other, one hand firmly on the handle of his
nightstick and the other clutching his gun. Something hit him, suddenly, between the
shoulders, and he whirled, expecting to face an ambush. Instead he saw... a blank wall of
stone.
“Ah shit...” he said, his voice quiet. The entrance into this room had disappeared as if it
had never been.
A sudden, ringing boom echoed through the room, and the people who had turned to see
Reno speak now spun around, facing once again the center of the room, where from the
shadows suddenly appeared a massive mechanical segmented leg. It jutted up from the
ground as if it grew from there, twisting back into the shadows and the darkness where it
disappeared. Then there was a second boom, a second leg, and a third, a fourth, a fifth...
and in one surging move, the creature that had once been Hojo stepped into their sight.
He was twisted, more so than he ever had been... his spider legs, which had appeared
smooth and seamless metal less than a week ago, were now amazingly intricate pillars of
intertwining steel and pipes, interlocking nuts and bolts that formed an incredible mish
mash of parts and segments. The body, which had been flawless and unadorned, was now
bulging with an unnatural amount of muscle, its stomach twisted with edges and rivets
like a cockroach. The face, which earlier had been featureless and plain, was perhaps the
least changed... the only altercation now was a wide split mouth that cut right down the
middle.
The beast stood, as frozen as the horrified adventurers staring at it, framed perfectly in
the shadows of the room. It radiated power, strength, and disturbingly enough a sense of
nobility as it stood in perfect poise, before slowly raising its hands, which now looked
curved, almost like hooks, up to its face. The eyeless skull stared at one hand, then the
other, before settling its gaze on Cloud Strife, who stepped forward with his silver sword
raised.
“Hojo,” it growled, “for every drop of blood you spilled in this city, we will make you
pay tenfold.”
There was a frozen second, a moment of complete stillness. Then a small pop, and Cloud
Strike was flung through the air, slamming into the stone wall with a thunderous clap.
“Cloud!” Tifa cried, sliding to the ground beside him. He lay still, nearly comatose, and
didn’t answer her as she cried his name. Stunned, it took the Turks roughly a second to
draw their pistols and level them at the creature, and open fire. Bullets spun through
spiraled chambers and burst into the open air, a split second killer bore from a barren
womb, and went with unerring accuracy directly towards the supposed head of the
creature... before simply blinking out of existence more than a yard from their target.
Entire clips emptied without a single bullet touching anything solid.
Hojo, for his part, simply regarded them with silence.
“Uh...” Tseng said slowly, his voice stalling for one of the few times Reno could
remember, ever. He subconsciously twirled the staff from the Wutai sacred lands in his
hand. “Fuck it. Were going in.”
Dropping his pistol freely to the ground, Tseng sprinted forward, quickly beginning to
cover the distance between them and the beast. Before he had reached the halfway point,
the others were in motion, cued by the uttered battle cry. While Tifa stayed behind,
frantically trying to shake some sort of coherence into Cloud, members of the Turks,
Shinra, and Avalanche alike sprinted towards a common enemy.
Tseng, though in motion first, was no match for the sprinting skills of a Wutain ninja, and
Yuffie outdistanced him right in the very end, pulling out her crystal chakram and
leaping into the air to strike a moment before Tseng reared back his staff to swing. This
essentially causes two things. First, it caused Hojo to casually twitch one massive leg,
striking Yuffie in the abdomen and sending her twirling to the ground. Second, it allowed
for Tsengs staff to strike a glancing blow off another leg, which while it didn’t show any
signs of actual damage, did instinctively jerk and knock the Turk leader five feet
backwards.
Stunned by the speed and viciousness of the counter attacks, the rest of the chargers
paused for but a second, and then redoubled their speed. Cid Highwind leapt over one
table sized foot and lashed out with both the Venus Gospel and the Neptune’s Whim,
drawing long, greasy streaks of oil across the makeshift skin of Hojo’s under belly. Metal
feet clamped and stomped all around the aging pilot, but he simply stuck beneath the
center of the beast, out of its range. Flexing his legs for another huge leap, Cid once again
buried the two spear points of his weapons into the underside of Hojo.
“That’s right spider boy... what now?” Cid growled in his aged and raspy voice, eyes
wide and wild. “What the fu-”
Cids mouth suddenly froze, along with the rest of him. He stood immobile for a brief
moment, the only thing moving was his eyes, which rolled upward to see one of Hojo’s
long and bulgy arms pointing directly at him. For a split second he realized that it
probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to taunt the monster, but that split second
disappeared as he went airborne, hurled off to the side like a record setting fast ball, the
old pilot slamming with full force into the advancing Gabriel, and then both of they were
flat on the ground.
Elsewhere, Hojo was busy. Electricity sparkled out him and raced up his metal leg, and
he was too preoccupied with the close range bullet shots of Rude to stop the flow of the
current. He was too distracted by Reeves shotgun, which peppered him across his
stomach, to stop those bullets, and he was too distracted by that damn irritating
mechanical bird that simply refused to stop flying at his face, too fast to strike at, to stop
the spray of shells from the shotgun barrel. And he was too distracted by all of this to do
anything at all as Rory popped the dark green blade out of her switchblade, and buried it
in one of the hundreds of pipes that ran through and around one of his eight legs.
He froze, absolutely still, all activity ceased- the message he was receiving far more
important than anything else that was happening-, as over ninety percent of his logical
systems informed him that he was about to die. He didn’t even need to look to realize
that turgid green fluid had worked its way up his leg with unbelievable speed, and that
the leg itself had been rendered immobile and useless because of it. Working fast, he
simply allowed the leg to detach, molecules separating and the numb limb simply falling
away... but it wasn’t fast enough.
The poison had entered Hojo’s main system, and terror stricken, absolutely baffled at this
sudden turn of events, he was forced to switch every ounce of energy he had into
combating the neuro toxin that was racing its way to his brain.
While he did that, Zack lined up his swing carefully. Something- he couldn’t explain
what it was- was flowing through his body, adrenaline concentrated, energy like he had
never experienced before in his life. He rose the rush like a wave and launched up,
twirling his Ultima Weapon in his sword, and then struck a single motion straight across
the breast of the beast. Oil spilled out on him like rain, but he didn’t stop moving, or even
slow down. The sword worked in his hands too fast to see, and even the tendrils Hojo’s
very skin sent out as a method of defense were simply batted away with ease as he
buried, twisted, and struck with his new weapon.
It was all over in a flash second- both the attack and the battle. Zack landed back on the
ground ungainly, almost allowing himself to fall, and the thing that Hojo had become fell
eviscerated to the ground, oil rushing out of it like a damaged tanker. The adventurers
who had been below it dove out of the way to safety, and were still coated with rivulets
of the sticky black goo. Reno, for his part, simply lay back as it washed over him, too
exhausted from the battle between his nightstick and one of Hojo’s legs to move.
“Well...” he whispered, “that was easy.”
“Yes.” A voice came, a new voice, but familiar. “Disappointingly so.”
Reno sat straight up as the rest of the men and women- or those who were still standing-
whirled on their feet. Stepping out of the shadows, feet padding lightly on the floor, and
looking very much like his old self- was Hojo Hiroshima.
***
“Every time...” Hojo was speaking fluently, despite the fact he was walking through a
half inch of oil with over a dozen weapons pointed at him. “I’ve built something in my
life time that’s truly remarkable, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. You either destroy it, or
its funding was cut. I’m sure there’s a theorem about it somewhere, probably on the
stupidity of humans.”
He continued walking, coming within an inch of Rudes pistol, seeming not to even notice
as the barrel swung with every step he took to stay level with his temple. “Sephiroth...
Gamma... in the end, my self, perhaps the greatest creation of all- but once again, you
showed up in my lab, and cut me down before the Jenova cells had time to fully register.
Tsk.”
On the ground, Cid slowly rolled over off to the fallen form of Gabriel, and cautiously
began to shake the boy awake, keeping his eyes trained on the rambling scientist. “And
then a miracle of science happens, the birth of man all over again, something worthy of a
thousand bibles of text... chemicals mixed with cells, which mixed with elements... and I
was born again, a modern day Lazarus. Or Lazarus’ raiser, the virgin born himself, the
master carpenter... because I was ready to build the greatest machine of all time.”
Several pairs of eyes twitched to the lying and shredded corpse of the spider monster they
had just felled. Hojo saw them, and followed their gaze, only to laugh contemptuously.
“No, not that... that was just my tank, the battering ram that would create the cracks the
genius would pour through. Built of flesh and bone, true, but nothing compared to what I
have... had... in the works. The ultimate computer, the ultimate machine, the ultimate
experiment- the world.”
Reno snorted from his crouching position in the oil. “I think God beat you to that, slick.”
Hojo’s eyes didn’t even move, but it suddenly became apparent that, for the moment, he
was fully focused on the red-haired Turk. “You don’t believe in God. And even if you
did, assassin, he wouldn’t help you now, so bide your tongue. Not this world, this flawed
imperfect place... but the ultimate world. A utopia, everyone working in perfect synergy,
with perfect precision. Everyone would have their place, everyone would have a task, and
things would be... perfect. Ultimate efficiency.”
“You’re insane,” said Reeve, phrasing the obvious for them all. “The world is a habitat,
not a bee hive!”
A momentary shudder ran through Hojo, and his fingers made the slightest of gestures
towards Reeve. The public relations director reared back as if a snake coiling his spine
for a strike, and was suddenly snapped maliciously into the rocky ground with a
sickening thud. The others went to rush to his side, but were stopped dead by an invisible
wall, some unseen force blocking the way.
“As I was saying...” said Hojo, oozing arrogance, “perfect efficiency that was destroyed
by you. You’ve killed my first wave of workers, the true breed of people I needed.
Everything from now on will be tilted a millidegree or two to the left of what perfection
truly is.”
“Criminals and psychopaths,” Reno snarled, still struggling against the unseen force, if
only as a sign of rebellion, “were your perfect breed of workers?”
“Wrong,” Hojo said simply, “just men and women without any natural conscience,
lacking that ever destructive little voice of simpering pathetisism in the back of the
mortal mind. Those willing to do whatever it took for the greater cause.”
“Greater fucking good!?” Reno cried, throwing his arms in the air in an act of
indignation, but really in an attempt to get his hand behind him, next to Rory. He
succeeded, and gestured for her knife, which she promptly handed him. “How is a world
full of slaves and deluded scientists good!?”
“I did not,” Hojo explained, “say anything about greater good. I said greater cause. The
cause of perfection, young fool, a world where everything is right, and everything that
ever happens is expected.”
“Really?” Reno asked, tightening his hand into a fist, “expect this?”
With those words he let the switchblade fly, dark green intertwining with black as the
weapon whirled towards the air towards Hojo face. Casually, as if batting aside a fly,
Hojo shrugged his shoulders, and the knife stopped dead in the air. It hovered for a
moment, then dropped uselessly to the ground with a clang.
“Yes. I did.” Hojo sneered. “Expect this?”
Another finger twitch, but Reno’s assault was not near as unexpected as Reeve’s had
been- just more violent. The Turk rocked backwards through the air as if struck by a
plane, only stopping when his foot brushed against an upraised rock and he went
somersaulting to the ground, landing limp and still as a rag doll. Rory screamed his name
and chased after, but Hojo twitched again, and a pillar of stone rose up beneath Rorys
feet, sending the teenager hard into the dirt.
“You know...” Rude said tersely, staring through his sun glasses. “It looks like he has a
microchip in his chest.”
They looked at him, stunned by his sudden sentence, and confused by the words
contained wherein. And then they perceived... and began to understand. As a whole,
Barret, Rude, and Zack, the sole standers, charged at the scientist, who merely gestured
towards the ground beneath their feet and pulled. The rock slid like a rug, and their legs
went out, sending them down to the ground, dazed but not out- that is, until the same
blanket of rock raised up above them like a tidal wave, and the force forming them
disappeared, sending the stones cascading down upon them like concrete rain. It had only
been a few violent moments, and Hojo stood alone.
“You!”
The scientist didn’t turn, too preoccupied to be bothered with it, instead simply reformed
himself so he was facing in the direction the voice had come from. Gabriel and Cid had
struggled to their feet, and beside the aging pilot the young mans eyes blazed with hatred.
“Gamma...” Hojo said, somewhere deep in his brain computing utter disbelief, “I
wondered what had happened to you. I never dreamed one of my own creations would be
put together in the doomed team sent to stop my efforts.”
“My name,” the one Hojo had called Gamma snarled, “is Gabriel.”
“Right, right...” Hojo said, a sickening smile twisting his face. “A twist on your projects
name, of course... phrased after one of the wonderful little altercations I gave you, wasn’t
it?”
“What the hell is he talking about?” Cid demanded, staring at Gabriel, but was easily
silenced with yet another twitch of Hojo’s gaze, and this time the pilot showed no signs
of getting up from his twisted spot ten feet to the left.
“Altercations?” Gabriel said, not even glancing at the fallen Cid. “I think so, though I’m
sure you know better than me that my memories a little spotty. This one, perhaps?”
Something about Gabriel’s transformations had always remained a mystery even to him.
On one of the rare occasions when he actually had the slightest want to change, all he had
to do was succumb to the urge that was building inside him and allowed the changes to
happen. He’d always wondered what would happen if he grabbed hold of that urge,
multiplied it in his mind, and then tried to force it with every fiber of his being. It was a
question he’d never need to worry about again.
To a normal person, it probably would have seemed instaneous, but Hojo was no normal
person. He could comprehend things faster than anything on the planet, and he saw every
millisecond crawl buy at a frozen pace the same necessary to take in the whole of
Gabriel’s change- the disappearance of the pupils, leaving blank white orbs for eyes, the
suddenly split open shoulders, and new muscle mass... and, of course, the pair of eight
foot wings that jutted out from the slits in the boys shoulders like spring snakes exiting a
can. In less than a heartbeat, Gabriel stood before Hojo, a new man- if you could call him
that- with a frenzied look on his face. “Yes,” he snapped, “I believe it was this one.”
“Give it up Hojo,” a voice came, breathless, from behind. Cloud stood wearily behind,
Excalibur drawn but limp in his palm, and the ex Soldier was propped uncerimounisouly
by Tifa Lockheart. “I think we all know this is the part where you get crushed.” In a surge
of energy, Cloud reared up, standing on his own, and hefted his silver weapon. Standing
beside her husband, Tifa sprouted the steel claws out from her gloves, and held them
threateningly in front of her.
Hojo stared at all of them at the same time, even though they were on his opposite sides,
his vision a perfect three hundred and sixty degrees. For a moment, he seemed nervous-
and then that moment disappeared, gone forever, and he barked out an arrogant laugh.
“I’m afraid you don’t realize,” he snorted, “pretty bird wings, shiny metal, and hopeless
optimism notwithstanding, none of you stand a chance of getting within a dozen yards of
me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” a voiced boom, quiet but all encompassing. From the
direction of the original tunnel two figures stepped, cloaked in shadows at first, but then
revealed utterly as Aerith and Sephiroth in the dull light of the cave. “After all, I have
quite a long sword.”
“You!” Cloud hissed, every joint in his body seeming to tighten up as his gaze fell upon
the walking, breathing visage of Sephiroth. “You-”
“Cloud.” Aeris’ voice was quiet, but absolute. “This will all be explained in due time.
For the moment, we all need to focus on... him.”
Straining with every fiber of his being, Cloud managed to perform the minutest part of
her request by shifting his eyes back to the scientist, who had yet to move since the two
had entered the room.
“Yes indeed...” Hojo said slowly, his smile gone, “focus on the scientist, the scholar, and
let the mass murderer stand free. I’m surprised you got mixed in this, son.”
Sephiroth blinked, as if slapped by the very word. “I wish I could say the same about
you,” he snarled, “but I always knew you were crazy.”
Hojo’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared, his demeanor the same as when Reeve had
called him insane, and his reaction similar, but more extreme. First he twitched a finger
in Sephiroth’s direction, and then lifted his entire arm, seeming to be trying to reach out
and strangle the Soldier with his bare hand. Whatever trick he was attempting, however,
had failed... and it was just then he noticed the glowing staff in Aeris hand, and realized
for a moment that he may have missed a few factors in his earlier calculations.
“You think that can stop me!?” he spit, his voice rising, “you think you can stop me!?”
“No,” Aeris answered, her voice just as calm as ever, “but with them we can.”
Four figures emerged behind the Cetra and the Soldier, apparently following at a close
but uneasy distance. Rufus came into focus first, and then Elena, her shoulder still caked
with blood but apparently healed utterly by the powers of Aeris. Behind them, a tall,
lanky figure, and a quadruped, who was signaled first by the flames flickering on his
mane and his tale- Vincent Valentine and Nanaki had appeared at last. Vincent’s eyes
literally glew red as he stared upon his torturer, the man who had turned him into what he
was.
“Fools!” Hojo said, his voice growing hysterical. “You think because your Cetra friends
little toy can keep me from striking you down, that you can destroy me? Be warned... I
know how I appear, simply because it is how I choose to, but if I seemed to you as living
stone the effect would still be far less imposing than my true self!”
Aeris merely shook her head. “I’m sorry, Hojo,” she whispered, “but the Planet has
spoken. Your time here is done.”
It was a flash of movement, before a second, third, or fourth- impossible to track- chaos
broke out, attacks closing in on the scientist from all sides. Silver swords ripped through
arms, only for the same arm to strike the wielder into unconsciousness while twisting in
the air. Angel wings beat the air as flames and ice worked in tandem, only for those
wings to be seized and used as a handle to hurl the wearer against a wall. Masanume and
staff struck simultaneously, only to be beaten back and beaten down with the sheer
strength of the stricken’s arms. Flamed mantles raged as teeth sunk into flesh, only for
that same flesh to melt away from the teeth, seize them, and bash their muzzle into stone.
Tifa fell before it even began, the first struck by the scientist. Cloud followed, then
Gabriel, Aeris and Sephiroth, Red, all over powered and hurled away like children.
Elena and Rufus, wielder of guns, lasted moments longer, but even as blood and flesh
sprayed from the assaults of their guns, the skin healed, organs re-knit themselves, and
Hojo advanced, and they too were soon beaten into the ground.
After that, a single pairing, metal claw against invulnerable hand, gleaming red eyes
against vision that saw all. Vincent Valentine moved faster than any human had a right
to, but Hojo moved even faster still, and Vincent lacked the ability to instantly heal that
Hojo possessed. In mere seconds both of them had taken more fatal wounds than
experienced in some wars, but both stood, fueled by powers far beyond mortal.
In the end, all that mattered was a simple duck. Reflexes increased, doubled, and
redoubled since he had been careless enough to be shot by the scientist, Vincent dodged a
single blow, and then came up with two clean hits, that snapped broke of Hojo’s arms
like toothpicks. The bones tried to fuse, but Vincent struck them again, and seized the
throat of the immobilized scientist with his brass claw.
“You’ve done a lot, Hojo,” Vincent spoke, fully aware that while he did it was possible
Hojo was returning to a state where he would be deadly, “you ripped out Lucrecia’s
heart, my own heart, and now you are attempting to the destroy the heart of the world. I
think its time you knew what it felt like.”
Sensing his intentions, Hojo’s newly whole arms flew forward to cover his chest, but
with one mighty backhand to the crest of the scientists jaw, Vincent rocked his entire
body back just the inch he needed. Claws pierced flesh, bone, and lung, until they came
across their attempted goal- metal, and then seized and pulled.
There was no final moment. No sudden realization of doom from the defeated monster.
Just the simple, instaneous disintegration, millions of cells sliding effortlessly apart from
each other as the only thing holding them together disappeared. In the end, all that there
was left was Vincent Valentine, a small microchip in his hand, and carnage everywhere
else.
Chapter 23
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