There was no other way to describe it; it was just hot! Midgar
was caught in the middle of a scorcher of a summer heat wave.
Everyone was inside, whether at work or at home. Even the
practice field, normally crowded with members of SOLDIER, was
deserted. Outside the ShinRa's main building, a young woman stood,
smoking a cigarette. A cloud of smoke billowed from her lips,
obscuring her face.
As the smoke cleared, the girl's face was revealed. She had dark
blonde hair, blue-grey eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, and a
pale complexion. A second cloud of smoke billowed from her lips,
catching in a small breeze that began blowing. The girl closed
her eyes and leaned against the wall. That breeze feels good,
she thought. She took out a dingy white handkerchief from the
pocket of the lab coat she wore, wiped the sweat from her
forehead, then replaced the handkerchief back in her pocket. Damn,
it's hot! Why in Hell don't they put in some inside smoking rooms?
No smoking in the building, my arse! I've seen Reno light up more
times than I can count. 'Course, he is a TURK.
She blew out a third cloud of smoke. Squinting at the sun, the
girl thought, I can just see tomorrow's headline: Scientist
Melts Into a Puddle Outside ShinRa Building. Despite
herself, she smiled. Hearing footsteps to her left, she lazily
turned her head in the general direction of the sound.
General Sephiroth had just come back from yet another successful
mission, and was now going to his apartment in the ShinRa
building. He also had a report to turn in. He stopped a moment
outside the building and took a deep breath. By the Ancients,
he thought, this heat is nearly unbearable. No wonder there
is no one out here. Sephiroth wiped the sweat from his
forehead with the back of one gloved hand.
"Heat's about ta kill ya, ain't it?" a contralto voice
from his left queried. Sephiroth turned quickly, startled by the
voice. The girl smiled, then looked away.
"Why are you out in this heat?" Sephiroth asked. She
held up her cigarette, then flipped it into a nearby ashtray. He
nodded.
"They won't let me smoke inside." The girl extended her
hand, which Sephiroth politely took. Despite his gentlemanly
gesture, she retained her grip for a casual handshake. "My
name's Jessica. You're General Sephiroth, right?"
He nodded. "Yes, that is correct," he replied,
retrieving his hand from her vice-like grip. Noticing the long
white lab coat she wore over her denim overalls and T-shirt, he
inquired, "Are you a scientist for the ShinRa?"
Jessica returned, "Yes, General, I work under Professor Hojo,
our resident psycho." She chuckled.
Sephiroth, however, was not amused. "Insulting ShinRa
personel is a dangerous pasttime," he lectured. "The
wrong person could hear you, and then you would be . . . ."
"In deep shit, I know," she interrupted. "'Scuse
my language," she finished sheepishly.
She reminds me of Rude, Sephiroth thought dryly. Out
loud, he said, "Of course."
"But you gotta admit I'm right. Doin' all those weird
experiments with Mako energy. And on living creatures! That's
just . . . inhumane. Evil. But all that'll soon stop."
Sephiroth looked at her sharply. "How do you know? Have you
been going through your superior's notes?"
Jessica gave him a wicked smile, then reached into one of her
coat's deep pockets. She extracted a small, metal object and held
it up for him to see. His eyes widened when he realized what it
was. A gun?! he thought in shock and disbelief. Does
she intend to kill the Professor?!
The girl put a cigarette in her mouth and aimed the gun at the
end. She pulled the trigger . . . and a small, blue flame flared
from the barrel. Jessica lit her cigarette, and laughed when
Sephiroth let out a sigh. She replaced the gun-lighter in her
pocket. "What, you think I'm that dumb? Even if I was
planning something like that, which I wouldn't have the guts to
do, you really think I'd tell someone about it?"
The girl's militant attitude was beginning to unnerve Sephiroth.
"I should go. I must report my mission." Jessica
saluted Sephiroth, and he returned the salute.
He turned away, and she said, "See you later, General."
He turned back around to nod, then resumed his course. Jessica
stayed outside to finish her cigarette, wiping her forehead with
the handkerchief again. He's kinda cute. Shit! What
am I talking about? That was sensuality in its raw form! She
smiled, put her cigarette out, and went inside the building
herself.
When she reached the lab, Hojo was waiting for her. "Where
the devil have you been? You've been gone for over an hour!"
he fumed.
"Sorry, Professor," she apologized flippantly, "they
won't let me smoke in the building."
He grumbled, "All right, well, make preparations for the
next experiment."
"Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that,
Professor Hojo," Jessica replied, a trifle smugly.
"Oh?" Hojo inquired. "Did something go wrong?"
She shook her head. "Not exactly." Jessica removed a
switchblade from her pocket, then pushed the button, and the
blade clicked into the ready position. Hojo's eyes widened in
fear and . . . something else. Anger? "I want you to stop
this," Jessica concluded.
"W-what-what do you mean?" Hojo stammered.
"The experiments on animals," she clarified. "I
want them stopped--" she backed Hojo up against a table,
then placed the knife at his throat, and a shiver of fear ran
down his spine-- "or I'll kill you."
"Wait, wait. Can't we talk about this like mature,
intelligent adults?" She took the knife down from his throat
and he breathed a sigh of relief. "If you wanted me to stop
experimenting on animals, you should have just talked to me about
it. I know quite a few people in science that are appalled when
someone talks about experimentation on living creatures. The
death threat wasn't necessary." He extended a hand. "No
hard feelings, eh?"
Jessica looked at him suspiciously. Then she put away the knife
and took his hand, a smile breaking out on her face. But just as
she was about to withdraw her hand, Hojo stabbed her in the crook
of the elbow with a needle, injecting the syringe's contents into
her. Immediately, she began to feel weak and dizzy. "What .
. . did you . . . do to me, Hojo?" she demanded weakly as
she swayed, dangerously close to losing her balance.
He chuckled evilly. "Don't worry, Jessica, I've got a
special experiment planned for you. It worked so well on that
former TURK; let's see if I can alter the procedure enough to
duplicate the results on you." His evil smile confirmed what
she'd suspected all along: the man was crazy.
"You . . . bastard . . . ." she spat as she collapsed
on the floor.
* * *
Two weeks later, Sephiroth stepped outside his apartment to
collect his paper and received a shock: on the front page, a
banner headline proclamed, ShinRa Scientist Incinerated
in Lab Fire. And the picture on the page was--Jessica. I
told her not to insult ShinRa personel. He began to read the
story out loud, but to no one in particular. Yesterday,
Jessica Parker, Professor Hojo's brightest pupil, burned to death
in a fire that was . . .
. . . apparently started accidentally by herself when she
lit a ciagarette near some flammable laboratory chemicals.
Professor Hojo was heard to say, 'She was the brightest student I
ever trained. This is so unlike her. Perhaps she simply forgot
that the chemicals were flammable. I have never felt to
despondent in all my life . . .'
Yeah, I bet you're just absolutely crushed, you bastard.
A figure stood between two buildings in Midgar's Sector 7 slums,
reading the same paper that everyone else in Midgar had gotten.
The figure's glowing, blue-grey eyes raised and the face twisted
into an evil grin. "So I'm dead, huh?" the figure
softly inquired to the darkness as if it was a tangible thing and
could hear the words. The shadow moved, and the light revealed a
face--Jessica's. Now, let's see, she mused to herself, where
did he say that TURK was? Oh, yeah, Nibelheim.
She stepped back into the darkness to plan her route out of
Midgar. Geez, Professor, couldn't you have at least left me
with my own arm? She looked down at her right arm, or rather,
where her right arm used to be. In its place now was a claw. I
wonder why he did that to the TURK he was telling me about. Was
it revenge, like it was with me? With her left hand, her
normal hand, she touched the claw that she knew she would have
for the rest of her life. Ah, well, I guess I'd better start
getting used to it. I got a feelin' I'm gonna have this for a long
time.
"Okay, I know they're gonna be lookin' for me," Jessica
realized, remembering that she'd had to force her way out of the
lab. And her lab coat, overalls, and T-shirt showed the evidence
of the struggle, rips marring them from about five fights. She
actually frightened herself the last fight: she turned into a
monster of some kind. She shivered in renewed fear. I gotta
remember not to get that angry again.
An hour later, she was already on her way to Nibelheim. All
right, Hojo mentioned that this dude was in cryogenic sleep, so I'd
probably do best to start looking in the basement.
When Jessica arrived at Nibelheim, she noticed that people got
out of her way awful quickly. It's the claw, she thought,
gotta be the claw . . . . She marched up to the mansion
and entered. She looked around for several seconds, then wandered
about from room to room until she found a stone wall in one
bedroom. Hmm. There's something not quite right about this
wall . . . She pushed on the wall, and it opened.
Looking down, she noticed a spiral leading down under the mansion.
Jessica entered, and quickly made her way down the spiral.
Following that, she could herself in a hallway that appeared to
be carved into the ground. Several minutes of searching proved
futile, then she discovered a locked door. Taking out the keys
she'd stolen from Hojo when she left Midgar, she tried every key
until she found the one that unlocked it.
The room was filled with coffins, and the stench of death was
almost too much for her heightened senses. Something told her to
go straight to the coffin in the center of the room, and she did,
opening it just enough to see inside. There was a man asleep in
the coffin, his arms crossed over his chest. She was sure that
this was him, for, sure enough, he bore the same mark she did,
though his left arm was the claw.
Jessica was about to wake him, but an inexplicable tiredness
washed over her, and she closed the man's coffin. She didn't know
why she felt so tired, but knew she wouldn't make it out of the
mansion before she collapsed. Much as I hate to do this . . .
she thought, then climbed into one of the unoccupied coffins.
Actually, this doesn't seem as twisted as I guessed it would.
That was the last coherent thought before she dropped off into a
deep, dreamless sleep, as deep a sleep as the man she'd come to
see. All her hopes of revenge extinguished as she, too, succumbed
to the sleep brought on by Hojo's manipulation of her body.
Fin