Categories > Games > Final Fantasy 7
A Puzzle Scattered
0 ReviewsHojo deals with responsibilities and makou hallucinations after Gast and Ifalna leave.
For the first time since Phineas Shinra has been president of his family's namesake power company, Hojo stormed into his office without knocking. Phineas looked up from his paperwork in surprise.
"Inconsiderate, immature, careless excuse for a son of a bitch," Hojo was muttering as he crossed the marble floor before the desk. He'd always thought Phineas's office looked more like a shrine to himself than a place to get work done, and today it was just one tiny annoyance on top of a much larger problem.
"What is it, Hojo?"
"He left," the scientist answered, flinging computer printouts onto the already crowded desk.
"Who? What?" Phineas hurried to decipher the pages. The tag on the first page showed it came from Nibelheim this morning. It seemed to be a pages-long diatribe about the evils of the work Shinra was doing. That was the sort of thing that Peace Preservation handled, though he could tell this one was better written than most.
"Gast left."
The president flipped ahead to the last page. "This is a resignation?" He stalked around the desk. "Where's the phone?"
"I just got off the phone with Pepper back at the mansion," Hojo continued, dropping into the now-empty leather executive chair. "Sephiroth's alright, though he said the boy's not talking or eating. It isn't unheard of, but it isn't good, either. But Gast took Ifalna with him, and of course their fetus."
Phineas awkwardly seated himself in one of the less comfortable chairs facing the desk from the other side. "Ifalna's pregnant?"
"Oh, did I forget to mention that? We just found out. Very unexpected, you understand." He ignored Phineas's glare and continued, "But the important thing is that the position of Science Department Head is vacant, because now there's no one to sign off on everything we've discussed the last two days."
He waved his hand at Hojo. "Oh, you'll be head and you know it, Hojo. I'll call an emergency board meeting and run it through. That's not the point. We need to get after them, we can't let all that knowledge escape! That knowledge is property of Shinra Inc! Gods know we paid enough for it."
"Oh hush, Phineas, I've been light years ahead of that man for years. The research isn't the issue. It's the Cetra I'm worried about."
"The Cetra?"
"Oh, yes, Ifalna is an almost pureblooded Ancient. I'm sure that was in one of the reports back when she joined the project. Probably got overlooked in all the fuss about Jenova. The point is that we need her."
"We do?"
"Of course. How can I find you your Promised Land without a bloody Ancient?"
"I thought Jenova was an Ancient."
"Oh, er, but Ifalna's alive. So she can lead us there, in theory."
"So I'll send the Turks after them."
"No!" Hojo shouted, leaning forward. "I think I know where they're going - Gast is friends with Bugenhagen, they'll go to Cosmo. We can watch them without spooking them. Someone can disappear for years in the passages out there. If they're trying to hide, you'll never find them. We should watch them. Wait until Ifalna has her baby, so we get our specimen. Then we can get rid of Gast, and Ifalna will be too worried about the child to risk her life on anything stupid."
"Ah," Phineas shook his head. "Remind me again why I argue with you?"
"So you can awe me with your great intellect, I'd imagine," Hojo answered dryly.
The president frowned. "Very funny. You'll have your approval by Monday. Go back to Nibelheim, take care of this mess, I'll sign off on your paperwork." He stood, musing, and shook his head. "And get the hell out of my chair."
It was cold when Hojo got back to Nibelheim. The board meeting had been a rush job, only half of them even showing up, and he wondered why the president had bothered. He picked up books for Sephiroth on the way to the train station. The ship to Costa made him ill for the first time in years. How could he explain this to the boy?
When Hojo got back to the mansion, Pepper said Sephiroth had been behaving normally. His assistant had sent the techs into town for the day, for which Hojo was grateful. He wondered if the Gasts had told Sephiroth anything, but he didn't ask. It was easier to let it go and give Sephiroth the benefit of the doubt. If he was acting, he was doing a wonderful job of it.
Sephiroth actually smiled a little when the professor gave him the books. Hojo had intentionally picked out a range of things, some he expected to be easy, others that would be a challenge to boys twice his age. He wanted to see what Sephiroth could do.
Hojo immediately went to work studying the charts and numbers they'd been collecting on him. He was progressing very well physically, that was obvious. Better than had been predicted. Gast had suggested a new physical program for him, but Hojo would have to do that himself now. They knew Sephiroth was smart, but they didn't know how smart. He needed better indicators than an intelligence test that topped out at "very bright". What was wrong with those psychologists anyway, using imprecise tests like that?
Of course, they were part of the science department. Hojo could correct them if he wanted to. Because he was in charge now. Because Gast was gone.
He spent the night at the desk in his room, pouring over the journals Gast had left behind. He was forced to admit he had some insights on the project Hojo hadn't expected. He would take them into account. No use in wasting good ideas. He wasn't quite sure when he'd gotten the bottle of wine out, or when the rum had followed, but he didn't really care. Just keep them out of the way.
Somewhere near dawn, Hojo looked up and saw Sephiroth standing quietly in the doorway. He wondered how long he'd been standing there. Hojo beckoned to him to come in.
"When's Ifalna coming back?" he asked quietly.
Hojo sighed. "I don't know. I wish I did."
He pouted at me. "You don't know anything."
"Don't I?"
"That's what William said," Sephiroth answered, finally coming forward into the room. "He didn't think I was listening."
"He was always good at underestimating people," Hojo grumbled. The boy looked up at him sadly, and then at his untouched bed.
"When I woke up, sometimes, Ifalna would let me sleep with her."
"Ah, so that's why you're in here. I'm actually rather busy, but if you're just going to sleep you may lay down on my bed." He looked like he wanted to say something, but he just went over to the bed, pulled down the covers, and climbed in. The scientist looked back at the paperwork.
"It's cold," he interrupted after a minute.
"What?"
"The bed's cold. Ifalna and William's bed was always warm."
Hojo sighed. "That's because it was slept in. Their body heat warmed it."
"Is your bed always cold?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I sleep alone."
"Oh. You shouldn't do that, then."
Just that once, it made sense. Hojo shut the folders and took off his shoes and turned off the lamp.
The bed was still cold, but it warmed faster with Sephiroth curled against his side.
The days that followed, the first few of Hojo's reign as head of the science department, were a rush of paperwork. Hojo never stopped thinking about Sephiroth, though, and what he needed to do for the boy. He needed training, education. William had said he would see to these things, that they were not Hojo's responsibility. Now everything was his responsibility, and so he was here in the basement looking down the solution. Hojo looked nervously at the syringe in his hand, its contents of nearly pure makou glowly softly.
"It's for Sephiroth," he mumbled, trying to convince himself. The lab was always quiet now, with William and Ifalna gone. He hated to admit it, but he missed the Gasts.
He was beginning to wish he hadn't suggested using Ifalna's child. As much good as it would do the project, it had cost him the closest people to friends he had left. Now it was just him and Sephiroth in the mansion at night... and Her, of course, though she wasn't physically there. Always Her.
"He's only five... Five, and already so good..." Somehow, Hojo had to raise a boy to become a god, and he had to do it by himself. The boy was already as strong as his father and nearly as fast. Education, training, all would be Hojo's responsibility now. How could a normal human hope to keep up with a boy like Sephiroth?
Hojo had injected himself with makou only a few times before. He'd been one of the original test subjects when Professor Gast began human testing of the SOLDIER treatments. That had only been a fraction of the final 'SOLDIERstandard' injection, since Gast was too careful to start with more than an eyedropper full.
The syringe in Hojo's hand now held twice as much mako as the first shot given to new SOLDIERs. Sephiroth was clearly going to be much stronger than the average SOLDIER, after all. While it would take years for Sephiroth to reach his full power, it would also take long term makou injections to allow Hojo to match him.
There were traces of Jenova's cells in the makou. Hojo knew this; in fact, he'd done that intentionally. He already had quite a bit of Jenova in his system from their brief, unrequited romance. He hoped that a bit of additional Jenova would smooth the transition for his system.
He thought about Her, alone in the reactor. Asleep again, as Gast had ordered. Her thoughts and instructions no longer played lightly over his mind. There was only the gentle hum of her singing, mindless, quiet, but always present in his mind.
Of course, now that Gast was gone, his orders were meaningless. Hojo knew he could order that Jenova be moved back to the mansion, placed in his basement lab, even woken up. He was in charge of the Project now.
Hojo didn't know what William and his wife had been thinking. "And I don't care," he reminded himself. Vincent and Lucrecia could leave him. William and Ifalna could leave him. All Hojo needed was Her, even if She was asleep.
"That's it," Hojo decided. "I'm going up to the reactor. I'll wake her up. Jenova will know what to do." He started to set the syringe down, then hesitated. Before he could lose his nerve, he jammed the needle into his arm and pushed the plunger down. A slow trickle of ice began to crawl up his arm as he rolled his sleeve back down and walked toward the stairs.
Hojo was just hopping up the first few stairs when the chill reached his head. In an instant, his brain seemed to go numb. He stumbled and tripped, bashing his knee against the edge of a step. Hojo tried tp push himself up, but his arms were shaking too badly. The best he could manage was a crawl, dragging himself up the narrow spiral stairs. He remembered Lucrecia joking about installing an elevator while she was pregnant. It seemed like such a little thing now, and such a strange thing to remember that Hojo couldn't help laughing.
"And she threatened to put in a fireman's pole so she could slide down..." He laughed so hard he collapsed again, while little orbs of light danced in front of his eyes. They looked like fireflies, only the color of makou. He followed the path of one, floating upward, and then noticed that he couldn't see the ceiling.
The mansion itself was gone from his perception. Hojo realized slowly that instead of stairs beneath him, there was a rock outcropping.
"What on..." His mouth seemed as frozen as his brain. Something about this reminded him of when Jenova had brought him inside the makou tank with her. The question gnawed at Hojo's brain, forcing him to wrack his memories until he found it.
"The smell." The sweet folmadehyde-and-grass smell of makou permeated the air. Hojo sat up stiffly and looked around. The rock he laid on was an island a little wider than he was tall. A quick glance over the side explained the smell - an ocean of makou surrounded him. Overhead, the sky was clear and dark, dotted with bright stars.
"You are sarcetrai?"
The feminine voice seemed confused. It echoed around Hojo.
"I'm what?" Hojo asked, still drugged.
"Sarcetrai. Of the Cetra."
Hojo laughed dismissively. "I'm no Cetra. If you're looking for Ifalna, she ran off the other day."
"No, Hojo of the Shinra. You are the one I'm looking for."
He blinked, suddenly scared.
"Sarshinrai, sarwutai, sarcosmai. You are of many peoples, Hojo, but you turn you back on all of them." The voice seemed to be wondering out loud.
Hojo glared off at nothing, wondering who was taunting him. "They turned their backs on me! All of them. Wutai gave me nothing, killed my mother. Cosmo only wanted me to use the ideas they thought were safe. Lucrecia left me. Gast left me."
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself." This time the voice had a definite direction, behind him. Hojo spun around.
The woman standing there resembled Ifalna when he'd first met her, when she was twenty and perky and idealistic. They were close enough to be sisters, with long brown hair and vivid green eyes.
"Who are you? What is this, some kind of bad drug trip? Makou isn't supposed to be hallucinogenic."
She clicked her toungue in disapproval. "So analytical. No wonder you're a scientist."
"Is that supposed to be a bad thing? I'm a very good scientist, and I enjoy my work, so I don't need and value judgements from hallucinations."
"I'm not a hallucination, Hojo. I'm the Planet."
Hojo laughed. "Sure. Why not? You're the Planet."
"Your system doesn't usually have enough lifestream in it for me to speak with you. Midgar drained it from you."
"Of course. And now that I injected myself?"
"I can speak to your briefly. Eventually it will disperse into your system. You'll need a lot more makou than that to regain what you've lost."
"How much would I need?"
"This much."
The woman stepped forward suddenly, surprising Hojo, and pushed him backwards. He stumbled, trying to regain his balance, but he couldn't move quickly enough. He fell off the edge of the island, into the ocean of makou that surrounded it.
"Welcome to the lifestream, Hojo." The woman smiled and jumped in after him.
"Won't I get makou poisoning?" Hojo shouted as he thrashed around, trying to stay above water.
The woman's mouth moved, but her voice was coming from all around him again. "No. You are sarcetrai. The lifestream is your blood."
Hojo found himself slipping underneath the surface. As he went down, his mouth filled with makou. It flowed down his throat despite his protests, filling his stomach and his lungs. It seeped into his eye sockets and ears, made its way up his nostrils. Everything was silent; sounds were swalled up by the makou as easily as Hojo himself had been. It was quieter than Hojo could remember.
Quiet? he thought slowly, the words seeming to drift beside him in the lifestream. So quiet... no noise... no talking... no singing... singing? Jenova?! Immediately, Hojo began thrashing about, panicked. He tried to swim to the surface, but he couldn't seem to find which direction that was. The makou became thicker around him, hampering his movements. Eventually Hojo was exhausted, and he let his arms and legs go limp. He couldn't fight the planet, he realized. The makou began to burn against his skin. In his detached state, Hojo didn't care that it was eating away his skin. Soon muscles, then tendons and bones and organs, were all being dissolved by the makou.
It occured to Hojo that he no longer had a brain or eyes, and yet he was still aware of himself, of being surrounded by the lifestream. It didn't make sense, scientifically speaking, but science seemed to have very little bearing on this. Hojo tried to remember if Bugenhagen had described anything like this.
The memory played out before him, little raised figures moving in the depthless mako. "Wow, I was a scrawny kid," Hojo reflected as he watched his thirteen-year-old self direct the planetarium under the old man's careful eye. He heard himself ask his teacher about the lifestream, wondering if all planets had one, and winced as his young voice broke.
"The Cetra wandered the worlds, and perhaps wander them still, in search of planets where life is just budding. When they find one, they stay there and use their magic to coax it into sentience. This Planet, Earth, was one such world. However, this Planet's life was unusually forceful. It began speaking to some of the Cetra and pulling them into it. Some of the Cetra wanted to stay and study this phenomenon, but the majority continued on in their search for the Promised Land. Those who stayed were taken by the Planet. That is, they were swallowed whole into the Lifestream, and then reborn by the will of the Planet. That is why our Earth is special, and why the Cetra did magic without materia. In a way, they were made of materia."
Hojo stared straight ahead, allowing Bugenhagen and his younger self to float away into the makou. That's what this is? he addressed his thoughts to the planet. You're "taking" me? The same girl he had seen earlier floated back into his view.
"Yes, Hojo. You have a mission now. You work for Shinra, who are destroying the Planet. Half of your heritage is of the humans, who are destroying the Planet. You will be our double agent, working with them while secretly putting forth Our goals."
...What? How?
"Your life's work will end with humanity. The Cetra, the pure ones, will survive."
What about Jenova?
"Even a death and a life cannot make you forget her? I can tell you that you will have your time with her. That's all."
Is that it? Am I done now?
"Yes, Hojo Sarcetrai. This is done."
There was a sudden wrench sideways, and then a sense of makou rushing past him. Hojo opened his eyes to find that he was still laying on the stairs, just a bit more than halfway up. He could feel bruises forming where the edges of the stairs had been pressed into his neck and back. Stiffly, Hojo stood and stretched. He realized that despite a nap on the stairs, he felt quite good.
For a minute, he reflected on the visions he'd seen. Then he listened for the sound of Jenova in his mind. Nothing. He nodded resolutely to himself and hurried upstairs, leaping three at a time.
"Sephiroth! Come downstairs, boy! We're going for a ride to the reactor."
Despite Sephiroth's insistance that he didn't need an overcoat or shoes, even if they were going up to the very top of Mt. Nibel, Hojo still managed to get him outside and into the truck in under fifteen minutes. The boy sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Hojo noticed that Sephiroth didn't wriggle or kick his legs like most small boys, and he smiled. Sephiroth was such a good boy... he'd make a fine soldier.
When they arrived at the reactor, Hojo brought Sephiroth inside and told him to wait in the former supervisor's office. Once Jenova had been placed in the reactor, its functions had been reduced to the bare minimum that could be performed by computer. There were no personnel in the reactor anymore.
Alone, Hojo climbed down the system of stairs, walkways and ladders that led to the heart of the reactor. As he walked up the stairs to her chamber, he looked at the empty space beneath the piping and made a mental note to use it for something more productive.
He entered the final chamber and brushed his hand along the wall, looking for the light button. In the harsh blue makou light, he admired the metallic casing for Jenova's chamber. He'd designed it himself, a silver angel hanging as a monument to her, and Gast hadn't been able to argue because it was fuctional as well. The computer to maintain the chamber's systems was housed in her head, the body held the complex circuitry, and the wings protected the wires and tubes from being dissoved by stray makou condensation. He flipped open a panel on her breast and keyed in the codes to raise the false angel and reveal the true one.
The metal was raised up on hydraulic arms, allowing Hojo to see Jenova for the first time in months. Despite knowing every inch of Her intimately, he found himself struck by Her beauty. She never ceased to amaze him.
On the chamber's keypad, he keyed in the codes to disable the sleep setting and begin waking Her. There was a red flash and Hojo glared at the tiny LCD screen. "Error?" he whispered to himself. "Not possible." He punched the codes in again, but the result was the same.
"Dammit, Gast... Your last revenge?" Hojo tried override after override, but nothing seemed to have an effect on the computer. Finally, Hojo found a 'mental recalibration' option. He tried to activate it, but got another error. However, this one read 'Specimen is not mentally recoverable'.
"What?!" Hojo switched quickly to the diagnostic menus, and discovered to his horror the about a week before leaving, Gast had removed the safety buffers from the sleep setting and drowned the tank in sedatives. When he went to double-check this on the main computer, he found a note stuck to the screen: "It's for your own good. You'll understand."
Slowly, Hojo took the note from the screen and crumpled it. He threw it towards the chamber, where it bounced and fell to the floor. Hojo fell to the floor too, tears beginning to form at the corners of his eyes. He thought about the day Lucrecia died, and how he'd only been able to cry when no one was looking. Well, no one was looking now. He lay there and allowed himself to sob until his lungs hurt. Then he stood and walked toward the door.
A few minutes later he stepped into the supervisor's office to find Sephiroth reading the manual on reactor maintenance.
"Sephiroth," he began, getting the boy's attention. "I want to tell you about your mother. Her name was Jenova, and she was what is known as an Ancient." Sephiroth looked at him with wide, green eyes. Hojo knew he was taking in every word, and he smiled.
The next thing Hojo knew, it was morning and every muscle in his body hurt. Rolling over in bed was a heroic act. So was opening his eyes.
The light from the windows was grey and dull, but it still made Hojo cringe. He reached for his glasses, but couldn't find them. They weren't on the nightstand. He didn't know how he'd gone to bed without them.
He looked around the room, spotting them on his desk. As he went to retrieve them, he noticed on of his lab notebooks lay open, letters in English and Cetran scrawled across its graph-lined pages in all directions.
It slowly occured to him that he was reading it without his glasses. He couldn't remember reading anything without his glasses in over a decade. He thought about the day before, slowly, as if the neurons didn't quite want to access each other in his brain. The reactor. Then back. The hallucinations. Back further. The makou injection.
Hojo shook his head slowly. It wasn't possible, of course. Even SOLDIERS who showed improvement of sensory analysis were seeing more, not better. He tried to remember where the writing came from, but even as he retrieved bits and scenes of memory, most of the day was a blur after he left the basement lab. He chalked it up to temporary makou poisoning.
Jenova was still dead. That much, he remembered.
For a minute he intensely regretted talking Phineas out of chasing Gast down now and killing him outright. The minute passed, however, and he knew there was still work to do. Checking on Sephiroth, reviewing Pepper's notes, and the process of tracking Gast without his knowledge all needed to be done. He needed to find another assistant or two to take over Gast's projects, and until then, the techs would pick up the slack. There were other research projects. He would keep himself busy.
After that, it was useless to stay in Nibelheim. Hojo made the arrangements swiftly, and in weeks the Project was planning to relocate to barely-used labs in the Shinra building. The news that they were leaving the quiet town made the few project assistants and techs relieved, but the wait between announcement and action seemed interminable.
It shouldn't have surprised Hojo that they got restless. And, he reminded himself, with restlessness came stupidity.
"We were just screwing around, professor. No harm done," the young man scuffed his shoe along the floor and refused to look Hojo in the eye.
"No harm?" He reached through the torn lid and pulled out a photo under shattered glass. "Did you fail to notice that the box was marked 'fragile'?"
"Well... yeah."
Hojo sighed. "Go. Just go."
"Go?"
"The lab must packed if you're horsing around in the hallways, correct?"
"Yeah."
"Then your work is done. Enjoy your last weekend in Nibelheim, or leave early. I don't care. Just get the rest of the techs and go." He was trying to refrain from sounding emotional, but he knew he would fail if this miserable excuse for a technician didn't start acting like an intelligent human being.
Thankfully, he got the hessage and hurried down the hall with his partner in packing-rugby.
"Poor excuses for scientists," Hojo muttered, making note to transfer them somewhere else - perhaps sanitation, that would be amusing - when he got to Midgar.
Hojo listened as they found the other technicians and spread his new instructions. He didn't have any concerns about kicking them out; he'd been been housing the technicians in town since Gast left. Wmen Hojo told them they were returning to Midgar, they'd grumbled bitterly about having to move twice in less than two months. That quieted as soon as he offered to let them stay in Nibelheim without benefit of employment.
Hojo picked up the box they'd been kicking around and set it on the desk in his office. Using a scalpel from the desk drawer, he slit open the packing tape and opened it properly. He removed two more frahed photos - one of Lucrecia with her sister, and one of her dressed as the maid of honor at Ifalna and William's wedding in Midgar, her pregnancy just begining to show. Hojo laid them on the desk next to the damaged wedding photo that had been at the top of the box. A spiderweb of cracks was spun over Lucrecia's face in the wedding photo, reminding him of the Cetran myth of the queen who'd been frozen in crystal and her face hidden behind a web of cracks so that her beauty could not bewitch future generations.
Below the photos was a wedding album. Hojo traced his hand down the ribbon decorating the cover, but didn't open it. He knew what all the photos looked like, and it was hard to imagine that he'd been the young smiling man in the photos. Under the album was a mishmash of small items; music disks, a journal, hair ties, small statues and a seashell from their honeymoon in Costa del Sol.
The last item in the box was a jewelry box. It was set against the side that had been most abused; the wood of the jewelry box had split along the top, and one hinge was flattened. Hojo had to pry the box open, but the three rings and the pendant inside were undamaged. Much as it had disturbed him to realize she'd kept it, Hojo had left the ruby Vincent had given her alongside the engagement and wedding rings. It was important to her; he couldn't put that aside.
Reassignment might be too kind for those sorry vandals. Hojo thought about how he'd been short on specimens lately; it wouldn't be too hard to suggest that one or two young men had decided to run off with young ladies from Nibelheim and desert the company. It was not a decision he had to make right now, though. He had all weekend. The company movers weren't due until Monday morning. He was physically as well as emotionally alone.
The decision to move the project to Midgar was really a simple one. Jenova was barely alive, and unresponsive. In the month since Gast left, Hojo had followed every path he could find to waking her, to no avail. He was awash in dead ends. The mansion itself was hard to care for, aging harshly in the cold winters and damp sumhers below Mt. Nibel. Without its primary specimen, and with Sephiroth in need of more resources than he could readily provide this far away from civilization, it was the only practical course.
Hojo's report hadn't mentioned the silence in the mansion, or the fact that he was diverting funds from other areas of the departhent to pay for rooms in town for all the lab techs. It didn't seem right to defile the tomb any more than was necessary. And it was a tomb, make no mistake - for the Turk who slept the sleep of the dead in the basement; for Lucrecia, though her body was elsewhere.
And for Hojo, though he still walked. He worried that if he stayed, it would take Sephiroth as well.
He looked around his office, surveying the work he had left. The filing cabinets had been secured, and would be transported whole. He had to sort through his notes, and take care of the clothes and effects in his bedroom as well. Still, he doubted it would take him all weekend.
Hojo left the remains of his marriage strewn across his desk and went upstairs to check on Sephiroth. He'd assigned one of the young men to make sure he got his packing done, but he thought it best to make sure that had gotten done.
"Sephiroth?" Hearing his name, the boy looked up from his book. "Are you done packing?"
"Yes, sir. This is everything."
Hojo surveyed the small stack of boxes. "This is all you have?" It seemed a great deal less than Hojo had imported for him.
"Clothes," he indicated, pointing to a single large box. "Books," was a pair of medium boxes, and "toys" was ridiculously small considering it belonged to a young man of five. Sephiroth was already outgrowing childish things.
"I know you had more books than that."
"Most of them were too basic. I took them down to the kids in the village."
"That was very clever of you." Clever, not kind. Getting rid of the books made moving easier, made the young families of the village view Shinra's workers as benevolent. Hojo wondered whether Sephiroth considered that in his actions.
"I told them I would ask you about Shinra sponsoring a library here," he continued. Perhaps Sephiroth understood more than he thought.
"That's an excellent idea, but it will take a while. Do you want to give them more books now?"
Sephiroth considered a moment before replying, probably wondering what the scientist was getting at. "More books would let them start a library now," he finally replied.
Hojo took him to the far end of the hall, to the room that had been Lucrecia's bedroom and then Ifalna's study. It had been closed since Ifalna left. Lu's harp still stood by the window, covered in dust and probably badly out of tune. The bookshelves in here were still full; he hadn't sent the techs to pack this room. Lucrecia's classic literature collection and poetry books were here, untouched. Ifalna had stacked her herbology and mythology and Cetran history books around them, giving the shelves a disorganized, schizophrenic look.
"Ifalna left these when she and William abandoned us," Hojo told Sephiroth. "I'd appreciate if you could go through them. You can keep anything you think is interesting, and we'll load the rest up and take them to the village tomorrow." Sephiroth nodded.
Hojo sighed and looked over the rows of shelves again. The room still smelled like her, after all those years of Ifalna dragging in flowers. Sephiroth's head turned slowly, scanning the titles on the shelves, and when his fine fingers reached up for one, Hojo saw echoes of Lucrecia in him.
Some day he would tell Sephiroth about her, but not today. He had too much to learn from Jenova first.
Hojo watched for another minute, until he was satisfied that Sephiroth was busy, and retreated back down the hallway to his office. The broken box lay on his desk where he had left it. He hadn't realized how many of Lucrecia's things were left around the mansion. If he had, he would have been more careful.
For a minute, Hojo eyed the journal, then set it aside. He flipped through her small stack of music disks. He'd never been terribly found of Lu's taste in music, but he pulled one out at random and clicked it into place in his small disk player.
Cetran-influenced folk music poured into the office. Hojo sighed and surveyed his office, deciding where to start. With Lucrecia, he decided. He unfolded a new box and pulled a sheet of padding from the stack near the door. The jars went first, wrapped tightly so they wouldn't break, and next to them he repacked the things from the broken box. He took the framed wedding picture from his wall and wrapped that too.
All that time, he did not think of her. Hojo was looking at her, after all. He was handling her memories. He didn't need to experience her at the sahe time. But after the box was sealed, he began pulling down his old notes and couldn't keep her spectre from his thoughts.
With a sigh, he put the notebook back on the shelf. Hojo realized that most of it was useless. There was no point in taking these to Midgar. He was going to have to start from square one without Jenova. But he no longer had Gast staring over his shoulder as well, and that opened up new realms of research for him. He still had Jenova's cells.
He still had Sephiroth, and the boy was the key to everything. Gast would suffer for betraying his work, just as Vincent had. Vincent. Lucrecia.
Bah, no angst. He would turn into the Turk if he wasn't careful.
"Inconsiderate, immature, careless excuse for a son of a bitch," Hojo was muttering as he crossed the marble floor before the desk. He'd always thought Phineas's office looked more like a shrine to himself than a place to get work done, and today it was just one tiny annoyance on top of a much larger problem.
"What is it, Hojo?"
"He left," the scientist answered, flinging computer printouts onto the already crowded desk.
"Who? What?" Phineas hurried to decipher the pages. The tag on the first page showed it came from Nibelheim this morning. It seemed to be a pages-long diatribe about the evils of the work Shinra was doing. That was the sort of thing that Peace Preservation handled, though he could tell this one was better written than most.
"Gast left."
The president flipped ahead to the last page. "This is a resignation?" He stalked around the desk. "Where's the phone?"
"I just got off the phone with Pepper back at the mansion," Hojo continued, dropping into the now-empty leather executive chair. "Sephiroth's alright, though he said the boy's not talking or eating. It isn't unheard of, but it isn't good, either. But Gast took Ifalna with him, and of course their fetus."
Phineas awkwardly seated himself in one of the less comfortable chairs facing the desk from the other side. "Ifalna's pregnant?"
"Oh, did I forget to mention that? We just found out. Very unexpected, you understand." He ignored Phineas's glare and continued, "But the important thing is that the position of Science Department Head is vacant, because now there's no one to sign off on everything we've discussed the last two days."
He waved his hand at Hojo. "Oh, you'll be head and you know it, Hojo. I'll call an emergency board meeting and run it through. That's not the point. We need to get after them, we can't let all that knowledge escape! That knowledge is property of Shinra Inc! Gods know we paid enough for it."
"Oh hush, Phineas, I've been light years ahead of that man for years. The research isn't the issue. It's the Cetra I'm worried about."
"The Cetra?"
"Oh, yes, Ifalna is an almost pureblooded Ancient. I'm sure that was in one of the reports back when she joined the project. Probably got overlooked in all the fuss about Jenova. The point is that we need her."
"We do?"
"Of course. How can I find you your Promised Land without a bloody Ancient?"
"I thought Jenova was an Ancient."
"Oh, er, but Ifalna's alive. So she can lead us there, in theory."
"So I'll send the Turks after them."
"No!" Hojo shouted, leaning forward. "I think I know where they're going - Gast is friends with Bugenhagen, they'll go to Cosmo. We can watch them without spooking them. Someone can disappear for years in the passages out there. If they're trying to hide, you'll never find them. We should watch them. Wait until Ifalna has her baby, so we get our specimen. Then we can get rid of Gast, and Ifalna will be too worried about the child to risk her life on anything stupid."
"Ah," Phineas shook his head. "Remind me again why I argue with you?"
"So you can awe me with your great intellect, I'd imagine," Hojo answered dryly.
The president frowned. "Very funny. You'll have your approval by Monday. Go back to Nibelheim, take care of this mess, I'll sign off on your paperwork." He stood, musing, and shook his head. "And get the hell out of my chair."
It was cold when Hojo got back to Nibelheim. The board meeting had been a rush job, only half of them even showing up, and he wondered why the president had bothered. He picked up books for Sephiroth on the way to the train station. The ship to Costa made him ill for the first time in years. How could he explain this to the boy?
When Hojo got back to the mansion, Pepper said Sephiroth had been behaving normally. His assistant had sent the techs into town for the day, for which Hojo was grateful. He wondered if the Gasts had told Sephiroth anything, but he didn't ask. It was easier to let it go and give Sephiroth the benefit of the doubt. If he was acting, he was doing a wonderful job of it.
Sephiroth actually smiled a little when the professor gave him the books. Hojo had intentionally picked out a range of things, some he expected to be easy, others that would be a challenge to boys twice his age. He wanted to see what Sephiroth could do.
Hojo immediately went to work studying the charts and numbers they'd been collecting on him. He was progressing very well physically, that was obvious. Better than had been predicted. Gast had suggested a new physical program for him, but Hojo would have to do that himself now. They knew Sephiroth was smart, but they didn't know how smart. He needed better indicators than an intelligence test that topped out at "very bright". What was wrong with those psychologists anyway, using imprecise tests like that?
Of course, they were part of the science department. Hojo could correct them if he wanted to. Because he was in charge now. Because Gast was gone.
He spent the night at the desk in his room, pouring over the journals Gast had left behind. He was forced to admit he had some insights on the project Hojo hadn't expected. He would take them into account. No use in wasting good ideas. He wasn't quite sure when he'd gotten the bottle of wine out, or when the rum had followed, but he didn't really care. Just keep them out of the way.
Somewhere near dawn, Hojo looked up and saw Sephiroth standing quietly in the doorway. He wondered how long he'd been standing there. Hojo beckoned to him to come in.
"When's Ifalna coming back?" he asked quietly.
Hojo sighed. "I don't know. I wish I did."
He pouted at me. "You don't know anything."
"Don't I?"
"That's what William said," Sephiroth answered, finally coming forward into the room. "He didn't think I was listening."
"He was always good at underestimating people," Hojo grumbled. The boy looked up at him sadly, and then at his untouched bed.
"When I woke up, sometimes, Ifalna would let me sleep with her."
"Ah, so that's why you're in here. I'm actually rather busy, but if you're just going to sleep you may lay down on my bed." He looked like he wanted to say something, but he just went over to the bed, pulled down the covers, and climbed in. The scientist looked back at the paperwork.
"It's cold," he interrupted after a minute.
"What?"
"The bed's cold. Ifalna and William's bed was always warm."
Hojo sighed. "That's because it was slept in. Their body heat warmed it."
"Is your bed always cold?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I sleep alone."
"Oh. You shouldn't do that, then."
Just that once, it made sense. Hojo shut the folders and took off his shoes and turned off the lamp.
The bed was still cold, but it warmed faster with Sephiroth curled against his side.
The days that followed, the first few of Hojo's reign as head of the science department, were a rush of paperwork. Hojo never stopped thinking about Sephiroth, though, and what he needed to do for the boy. He needed training, education. William had said he would see to these things, that they were not Hojo's responsibility. Now everything was his responsibility, and so he was here in the basement looking down the solution. Hojo looked nervously at the syringe in his hand, its contents of nearly pure makou glowly softly.
"It's for Sephiroth," he mumbled, trying to convince himself. The lab was always quiet now, with William and Ifalna gone. He hated to admit it, but he missed the Gasts.
He was beginning to wish he hadn't suggested using Ifalna's child. As much good as it would do the project, it had cost him the closest people to friends he had left. Now it was just him and Sephiroth in the mansion at night... and Her, of course, though she wasn't physically there. Always Her.
"He's only five... Five, and already so good..." Somehow, Hojo had to raise a boy to become a god, and he had to do it by himself. The boy was already as strong as his father and nearly as fast. Education, training, all would be Hojo's responsibility now. How could a normal human hope to keep up with a boy like Sephiroth?
Hojo had injected himself with makou only a few times before. He'd been one of the original test subjects when Professor Gast began human testing of the SOLDIER treatments. That had only been a fraction of the final 'SOLDIERstandard' injection, since Gast was too careful to start with more than an eyedropper full.
The syringe in Hojo's hand now held twice as much mako as the first shot given to new SOLDIERs. Sephiroth was clearly going to be much stronger than the average SOLDIER, after all. While it would take years for Sephiroth to reach his full power, it would also take long term makou injections to allow Hojo to match him.
There were traces of Jenova's cells in the makou. Hojo knew this; in fact, he'd done that intentionally. He already had quite a bit of Jenova in his system from their brief, unrequited romance. He hoped that a bit of additional Jenova would smooth the transition for his system.
He thought about Her, alone in the reactor. Asleep again, as Gast had ordered. Her thoughts and instructions no longer played lightly over his mind. There was only the gentle hum of her singing, mindless, quiet, but always present in his mind.
Of course, now that Gast was gone, his orders were meaningless. Hojo knew he could order that Jenova be moved back to the mansion, placed in his basement lab, even woken up. He was in charge of the Project now.
Hojo didn't know what William and his wife had been thinking. "And I don't care," he reminded himself. Vincent and Lucrecia could leave him. William and Ifalna could leave him. All Hojo needed was Her, even if She was asleep.
"That's it," Hojo decided. "I'm going up to the reactor. I'll wake her up. Jenova will know what to do." He started to set the syringe down, then hesitated. Before he could lose his nerve, he jammed the needle into his arm and pushed the plunger down. A slow trickle of ice began to crawl up his arm as he rolled his sleeve back down and walked toward the stairs.
Hojo was just hopping up the first few stairs when the chill reached his head. In an instant, his brain seemed to go numb. He stumbled and tripped, bashing his knee against the edge of a step. Hojo tried tp push himself up, but his arms were shaking too badly. The best he could manage was a crawl, dragging himself up the narrow spiral stairs. He remembered Lucrecia joking about installing an elevator while she was pregnant. It seemed like such a little thing now, and such a strange thing to remember that Hojo couldn't help laughing.
"And she threatened to put in a fireman's pole so she could slide down..." He laughed so hard he collapsed again, while little orbs of light danced in front of his eyes. They looked like fireflies, only the color of makou. He followed the path of one, floating upward, and then noticed that he couldn't see the ceiling.
The mansion itself was gone from his perception. Hojo realized slowly that instead of stairs beneath him, there was a rock outcropping.
"What on..." His mouth seemed as frozen as his brain. Something about this reminded him of when Jenova had brought him inside the makou tank with her. The question gnawed at Hojo's brain, forcing him to wrack his memories until he found it.
"The smell." The sweet folmadehyde-and-grass smell of makou permeated the air. Hojo sat up stiffly and looked around. The rock he laid on was an island a little wider than he was tall. A quick glance over the side explained the smell - an ocean of makou surrounded him. Overhead, the sky was clear and dark, dotted with bright stars.
"You are sarcetrai?"
The feminine voice seemed confused. It echoed around Hojo.
"I'm what?" Hojo asked, still drugged.
"Sarcetrai. Of the Cetra."
Hojo laughed dismissively. "I'm no Cetra. If you're looking for Ifalna, she ran off the other day."
"No, Hojo of the Shinra. You are the one I'm looking for."
He blinked, suddenly scared.
"Sarshinrai, sarwutai, sarcosmai. You are of many peoples, Hojo, but you turn you back on all of them." The voice seemed to be wondering out loud.
Hojo glared off at nothing, wondering who was taunting him. "They turned their backs on me! All of them. Wutai gave me nothing, killed my mother. Cosmo only wanted me to use the ideas they thought were safe. Lucrecia left me. Gast left me."
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself." This time the voice had a definite direction, behind him. Hojo spun around.
The woman standing there resembled Ifalna when he'd first met her, when she was twenty and perky and idealistic. They were close enough to be sisters, with long brown hair and vivid green eyes.
"Who are you? What is this, some kind of bad drug trip? Makou isn't supposed to be hallucinogenic."
She clicked her toungue in disapproval. "So analytical. No wonder you're a scientist."
"Is that supposed to be a bad thing? I'm a very good scientist, and I enjoy my work, so I don't need and value judgements from hallucinations."
"I'm not a hallucination, Hojo. I'm the Planet."
Hojo laughed. "Sure. Why not? You're the Planet."
"Your system doesn't usually have enough lifestream in it for me to speak with you. Midgar drained it from you."
"Of course. And now that I injected myself?"
"I can speak to your briefly. Eventually it will disperse into your system. You'll need a lot more makou than that to regain what you've lost."
"How much would I need?"
"This much."
The woman stepped forward suddenly, surprising Hojo, and pushed him backwards. He stumbled, trying to regain his balance, but he couldn't move quickly enough. He fell off the edge of the island, into the ocean of makou that surrounded it.
"Welcome to the lifestream, Hojo." The woman smiled and jumped in after him.
"Won't I get makou poisoning?" Hojo shouted as he thrashed around, trying to stay above water.
The woman's mouth moved, but her voice was coming from all around him again. "No. You are sarcetrai. The lifestream is your blood."
Hojo found himself slipping underneath the surface. As he went down, his mouth filled with makou. It flowed down his throat despite his protests, filling his stomach and his lungs. It seeped into his eye sockets and ears, made its way up his nostrils. Everything was silent; sounds were swalled up by the makou as easily as Hojo himself had been. It was quieter than Hojo could remember.
Quiet? he thought slowly, the words seeming to drift beside him in the lifestream. So quiet... no noise... no talking... no singing... singing? Jenova?! Immediately, Hojo began thrashing about, panicked. He tried to swim to the surface, but he couldn't seem to find which direction that was. The makou became thicker around him, hampering his movements. Eventually Hojo was exhausted, and he let his arms and legs go limp. He couldn't fight the planet, he realized. The makou began to burn against his skin. In his detached state, Hojo didn't care that it was eating away his skin. Soon muscles, then tendons and bones and organs, were all being dissolved by the makou.
It occured to Hojo that he no longer had a brain or eyes, and yet he was still aware of himself, of being surrounded by the lifestream. It didn't make sense, scientifically speaking, but science seemed to have very little bearing on this. Hojo tried to remember if Bugenhagen had described anything like this.
The memory played out before him, little raised figures moving in the depthless mako. "Wow, I was a scrawny kid," Hojo reflected as he watched his thirteen-year-old self direct the planetarium under the old man's careful eye. He heard himself ask his teacher about the lifestream, wondering if all planets had one, and winced as his young voice broke.
"The Cetra wandered the worlds, and perhaps wander them still, in search of planets where life is just budding. When they find one, they stay there and use their magic to coax it into sentience. This Planet, Earth, was one such world. However, this Planet's life was unusually forceful. It began speaking to some of the Cetra and pulling them into it. Some of the Cetra wanted to stay and study this phenomenon, but the majority continued on in their search for the Promised Land. Those who stayed were taken by the Planet. That is, they were swallowed whole into the Lifestream, and then reborn by the will of the Planet. That is why our Earth is special, and why the Cetra did magic without materia. In a way, they were made of materia."
Hojo stared straight ahead, allowing Bugenhagen and his younger self to float away into the makou. That's what this is? he addressed his thoughts to the planet. You're "taking" me? The same girl he had seen earlier floated back into his view.
"Yes, Hojo. You have a mission now. You work for Shinra, who are destroying the Planet. Half of your heritage is of the humans, who are destroying the Planet. You will be our double agent, working with them while secretly putting forth Our goals."
...What? How?
"Your life's work will end with humanity. The Cetra, the pure ones, will survive."
What about Jenova?
"Even a death and a life cannot make you forget her? I can tell you that you will have your time with her. That's all."
Is that it? Am I done now?
"Yes, Hojo Sarcetrai. This is done."
There was a sudden wrench sideways, and then a sense of makou rushing past him. Hojo opened his eyes to find that he was still laying on the stairs, just a bit more than halfway up. He could feel bruises forming where the edges of the stairs had been pressed into his neck and back. Stiffly, Hojo stood and stretched. He realized that despite a nap on the stairs, he felt quite good.
For a minute, he reflected on the visions he'd seen. Then he listened for the sound of Jenova in his mind. Nothing. He nodded resolutely to himself and hurried upstairs, leaping three at a time.
"Sephiroth! Come downstairs, boy! We're going for a ride to the reactor."
Despite Sephiroth's insistance that he didn't need an overcoat or shoes, even if they were going up to the very top of Mt. Nibel, Hojo still managed to get him outside and into the truck in under fifteen minutes. The boy sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window. Hojo noticed that Sephiroth didn't wriggle or kick his legs like most small boys, and he smiled. Sephiroth was such a good boy... he'd make a fine soldier.
When they arrived at the reactor, Hojo brought Sephiroth inside and told him to wait in the former supervisor's office. Once Jenova had been placed in the reactor, its functions had been reduced to the bare minimum that could be performed by computer. There were no personnel in the reactor anymore.
Alone, Hojo climbed down the system of stairs, walkways and ladders that led to the heart of the reactor. As he walked up the stairs to her chamber, he looked at the empty space beneath the piping and made a mental note to use it for something more productive.
He entered the final chamber and brushed his hand along the wall, looking for the light button. In the harsh blue makou light, he admired the metallic casing for Jenova's chamber. He'd designed it himself, a silver angel hanging as a monument to her, and Gast hadn't been able to argue because it was fuctional as well. The computer to maintain the chamber's systems was housed in her head, the body held the complex circuitry, and the wings protected the wires and tubes from being dissoved by stray makou condensation. He flipped open a panel on her breast and keyed in the codes to raise the false angel and reveal the true one.
The metal was raised up on hydraulic arms, allowing Hojo to see Jenova for the first time in months. Despite knowing every inch of Her intimately, he found himself struck by Her beauty. She never ceased to amaze him.
On the chamber's keypad, he keyed in the codes to disable the sleep setting and begin waking Her. There was a red flash and Hojo glared at the tiny LCD screen. "Error?" he whispered to himself. "Not possible." He punched the codes in again, but the result was the same.
"Dammit, Gast... Your last revenge?" Hojo tried override after override, but nothing seemed to have an effect on the computer. Finally, Hojo found a 'mental recalibration' option. He tried to activate it, but got another error. However, this one read 'Specimen is not mentally recoverable'.
"What?!" Hojo switched quickly to the diagnostic menus, and discovered to his horror the about a week before leaving, Gast had removed the safety buffers from the sleep setting and drowned the tank in sedatives. When he went to double-check this on the main computer, he found a note stuck to the screen: "It's for your own good. You'll understand."
Slowly, Hojo took the note from the screen and crumpled it. He threw it towards the chamber, where it bounced and fell to the floor. Hojo fell to the floor too, tears beginning to form at the corners of his eyes. He thought about the day Lucrecia died, and how he'd only been able to cry when no one was looking. Well, no one was looking now. He lay there and allowed himself to sob until his lungs hurt. Then he stood and walked toward the door.
A few minutes later he stepped into the supervisor's office to find Sephiroth reading the manual on reactor maintenance.
"Sephiroth," he began, getting the boy's attention. "I want to tell you about your mother. Her name was Jenova, and she was what is known as an Ancient." Sephiroth looked at him with wide, green eyes. Hojo knew he was taking in every word, and he smiled.
The next thing Hojo knew, it was morning and every muscle in his body hurt. Rolling over in bed was a heroic act. So was opening his eyes.
The light from the windows was grey and dull, but it still made Hojo cringe. He reached for his glasses, but couldn't find them. They weren't on the nightstand. He didn't know how he'd gone to bed without them.
He looked around the room, spotting them on his desk. As he went to retrieve them, he noticed on of his lab notebooks lay open, letters in English and Cetran scrawled across its graph-lined pages in all directions.
It slowly occured to him that he was reading it without his glasses. He couldn't remember reading anything without his glasses in over a decade. He thought about the day before, slowly, as if the neurons didn't quite want to access each other in his brain. The reactor. Then back. The hallucinations. Back further. The makou injection.
Hojo shook his head slowly. It wasn't possible, of course. Even SOLDIERS who showed improvement of sensory analysis were seeing more, not better. He tried to remember where the writing came from, but even as he retrieved bits and scenes of memory, most of the day was a blur after he left the basement lab. He chalked it up to temporary makou poisoning.
Jenova was still dead. That much, he remembered.
For a minute he intensely regretted talking Phineas out of chasing Gast down now and killing him outright. The minute passed, however, and he knew there was still work to do. Checking on Sephiroth, reviewing Pepper's notes, and the process of tracking Gast without his knowledge all needed to be done. He needed to find another assistant or two to take over Gast's projects, and until then, the techs would pick up the slack. There were other research projects. He would keep himself busy.
After that, it was useless to stay in Nibelheim. Hojo made the arrangements swiftly, and in weeks the Project was planning to relocate to barely-used labs in the Shinra building. The news that they were leaving the quiet town made the few project assistants and techs relieved, but the wait between announcement and action seemed interminable.
It shouldn't have surprised Hojo that they got restless. And, he reminded himself, with restlessness came stupidity.
"We were just screwing around, professor. No harm done," the young man scuffed his shoe along the floor and refused to look Hojo in the eye.
"No harm?" He reached through the torn lid and pulled out a photo under shattered glass. "Did you fail to notice that the box was marked 'fragile'?"
"Well... yeah."
Hojo sighed. "Go. Just go."
"Go?"
"The lab must packed if you're horsing around in the hallways, correct?"
"Yeah."
"Then your work is done. Enjoy your last weekend in Nibelheim, or leave early. I don't care. Just get the rest of the techs and go." He was trying to refrain from sounding emotional, but he knew he would fail if this miserable excuse for a technician didn't start acting like an intelligent human being.
Thankfully, he got the hessage and hurried down the hall with his partner in packing-rugby.
"Poor excuses for scientists," Hojo muttered, making note to transfer them somewhere else - perhaps sanitation, that would be amusing - when he got to Midgar.
Hojo listened as they found the other technicians and spread his new instructions. He didn't have any concerns about kicking them out; he'd been been housing the technicians in town since Gast left. Wmen Hojo told them they were returning to Midgar, they'd grumbled bitterly about having to move twice in less than two months. That quieted as soon as he offered to let them stay in Nibelheim without benefit of employment.
Hojo picked up the box they'd been kicking around and set it on the desk in his office. Using a scalpel from the desk drawer, he slit open the packing tape and opened it properly. He removed two more frahed photos - one of Lucrecia with her sister, and one of her dressed as the maid of honor at Ifalna and William's wedding in Midgar, her pregnancy just begining to show. Hojo laid them on the desk next to the damaged wedding photo that had been at the top of the box. A spiderweb of cracks was spun over Lucrecia's face in the wedding photo, reminding him of the Cetran myth of the queen who'd been frozen in crystal and her face hidden behind a web of cracks so that her beauty could not bewitch future generations.
Below the photos was a wedding album. Hojo traced his hand down the ribbon decorating the cover, but didn't open it. He knew what all the photos looked like, and it was hard to imagine that he'd been the young smiling man in the photos. Under the album was a mishmash of small items; music disks, a journal, hair ties, small statues and a seashell from their honeymoon in Costa del Sol.
The last item in the box was a jewelry box. It was set against the side that had been most abused; the wood of the jewelry box had split along the top, and one hinge was flattened. Hojo had to pry the box open, but the three rings and the pendant inside were undamaged. Much as it had disturbed him to realize she'd kept it, Hojo had left the ruby Vincent had given her alongside the engagement and wedding rings. It was important to her; he couldn't put that aside.
Reassignment might be too kind for those sorry vandals. Hojo thought about how he'd been short on specimens lately; it wouldn't be too hard to suggest that one or two young men had decided to run off with young ladies from Nibelheim and desert the company. It was not a decision he had to make right now, though. He had all weekend. The company movers weren't due until Monday morning. He was physically as well as emotionally alone.
The decision to move the project to Midgar was really a simple one. Jenova was barely alive, and unresponsive. In the month since Gast left, Hojo had followed every path he could find to waking her, to no avail. He was awash in dead ends. The mansion itself was hard to care for, aging harshly in the cold winters and damp sumhers below Mt. Nibel. Without its primary specimen, and with Sephiroth in need of more resources than he could readily provide this far away from civilization, it was the only practical course.
Hojo's report hadn't mentioned the silence in the mansion, or the fact that he was diverting funds from other areas of the departhent to pay for rooms in town for all the lab techs. It didn't seem right to defile the tomb any more than was necessary. And it was a tomb, make no mistake - for the Turk who slept the sleep of the dead in the basement; for Lucrecia, though her body was elsewhere.
And for Hojo, though he still walked. He worried that if he stayed, it would take Sephiroth as well.
He looked around his office, surveying the work he had left. The filing cabinets had been secured, and would be transported whole. He had to sort through his notes, and take care of the clothes and effects in his bedroom as well. Still, he doubted it would take him all weekend.
Hojo left the remains of his marriage strewn across his desk and went upstairs to check on Sephiroth. He'd assigned one of the young men to make sure he got his packing done, but he thought it best to make sure that had gotten done.
"Sephiroth?" Hearing his name, the boy looked up from his book. "Are you done packing?"
"Yes, sir. This is everything."
Hojo surveyed the small stack of boxes. "This is all you have?" It seemed a great deal less than Hojo had imported for him.
"Clothes," he indicated, pointing to a single large box. "Books," was a pair of medium boxes, and "toys" was ridiculously small considering it belonged to a young man of five. Sephiroth was already outgrowing childish things.
"I know you had more books than that."
"Most of them were too basic. I took them down to the kids in the village."
"That was very clever of you." Clever, not kind. Getting rid of the books made moving easier, made the young families of the village view Shinra's workers as benevolent. Hojo wondered whether Sephiroth considered that in his actions.
"I told them I would ask you about Shinra sponsoring a library here," he continued. Perhaps Sephiroth understood more than he thought.
"That's an excellent idea, but it will take a while. Do you want to give them more books now?"
Sephiroth considered a moment before replying, probably wondering what the scientist was getting at. "More books would let them start a library now," he finally replied.
Hojo took him to the far end of the hall, to the room that had been Lucrecia's bedroom and then Ifalna's study. It had been closed since Ifalna left. Lu's harp still stood by the window, covered in dust and probably badly out of tune. The bookshelves in here were still full; he hadn't sent the techs to pack this room. Lucrecia's classic literature collection and poetry books were here, untouched. Ifalna had stacked her herbology and mythology and Cetran history books around them, giving the shelves a disorganized, schizophrenic look.
"Ifalna left these when she and William abandoned us," Hojo told Sephiroth. "I'd appreciate if you could go through them. You can keep anything you think is interesting, and we'll load the rest up and take them to the village tomorrow." Sephiroth nodded.
Hojo sighed and looked over the rows of shelves again. The room still smelled like her, after all those years of Ifalna dragging in flowers. Sephiroth's head turned slowly, scanning the titles on the shelves, and when his fine fingers reached up for one, Hojo saw echoes of Lucrecia in him.
Some day he would tell Sephiroth about her, but not today. He had too much to learn from Jenova first.
Hojo watched for another minute, until he was satisfied that Sephiroth was busy, and retreated back down the hallway to his office. The broken box lay on his desk where he had left it. He hadn't realized how many of Lucrecia's things were left around the mansion. If he had, he would have been more careful.
For a minute, Hojo eyed the journal, then set it aside. He flipped through her small stack of music disks. He'd never been terribly found of Lu's taste in music, but he pulled one out at random and clicked it into place in his small disk player.
Cetran-influenced folk music poured into the office. Hojo sighed and surveyed his office, deciding where to start. With Lucrecia, he decided. He unfolded a new box and pulled a sheet of padding from the stack near the door. The jars went first, wrapped tightly so they wouldn't break, and next to them he repacked the things from the broken box. He took the framed wedding picture from his wall and wrapped that too.
All that time, he did not think of her. Hojo was looking at her, after all. He was handling her memories. He didn't need to experience her at the sahe time. But after the box was sealed, he began pulling down his old notes and couldn't keep her spectre from his thoughts.
With a sigh, he put the notebook back on the shelf. Hojo realized that most of it was useless. There was no point in taking these to Midgar. He was going to have to start from square one without Jenova. But he no longer had Gast staring over his shoulder as well, and that opened up new realms of research for him. He still had Jenova's cells.
He still had Sephiroth, and the boy was the key to everything. Gast would suffer for betraying his work, just as Vincent had. Vincent. Lucrecia.
Bah, no angst. He would turn into the Turk if he wasn't careful.
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