The Truth
By:
CHighwind
"Captain, why don’t they just keep
this damn girl locked up?", asked the obviously annoyed Shinra trooper.
"I just have direct orders to bring
the girl in, this is usually the Turks job.", said the Captain.
The Captain was pretty much telling the
truth. All he knew about this girl was that Hojo said she was
"special". From what he understood she was brought to Hojo many times
a month, against her own will, and was subjected to tests. What the tests were
however, he did not know, that was beyond his job.
"This is the fifth time this month,
I’m tired of capturing this girl and bringing her back every damn week.",
said the trooper with an increased amount of annoyance in his voice.
"I hate this as much as you do, but
if you want to join the Turks, you’ll have to do this kind of thing a
lot", replied the Captain.
"Fine then, lets just get this over
with".
They approached a small church in the
middle of the Sector 5 slums. The building was very old and falling apart,
there were many holes in the roof and walls, but that was usual for the
buildings in the Midgar slums. Many of the older buildings had been created
before Shinra had taken control of the city.
Nevertheless, it’s not as if Shinra would take care of the buildings
down here anyway.
"Ok, Private, you go around the back,
and I’ll go in the front, as usual".
"Yes Sir", replied the trooper,
with a less than enthusiastic salute.
The Captain looked in the front door, and
not to his surprise was the girl they were looking for. He did not know much
about her other than that her name was Aeris Gainsborough. She was a fairly
short young girl, could not have been any more than fifteen, but was remarkably
beautiful. She had long brown hair, and
the most beautiful emerald green eyes he had ever seen.
The Captain stepped into the doorway, and
in a deep, firm voice said, "Aeris, you must come with me".
Startled, the girl shot up from where she
was kneeling, tending her flowers, and started to run for the back door. She
knew exactly who they were. They were Shinra troopers, and would take her to
the
Going at full speed
she collided with the other Shinra Officer. She was knocked forcefully
backwards a few feet, and landed with a loud thump against the wall.
If it was a fight that they wanted, it was
a fight they were going to get.
After hours on hours of practice, she had
finally gained what she thought of as competence with her rod. Her mother hated the idea that she carried
the weapon with her, but in turn she also realized
that this was the Midgar slums.
The trooper who she ran
into bent down to handcuff her, however he failed to see her rod come whirling
straight for his head. Her blow hit home and sent him sprawling into
the side of the church. He pulled out
his sidearm but didn’t have a chance in hell to use
it, her next blow hit him squarely in the temple.
The other soldier however surprised her
from behind and took out her legs. She
fell to the floor with a thud as her head collided with the cold earth of the
church bottom.
She looked up to see the Captain staring
at her as she lost consciousness.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
She awoke to a terrible pain in her
head. She slowly sat up massaging her forehead, she could feel the enormous lump that had grown
there from her fall. She looked over to
see Hojo sitting in a black leather chair working at a desk directly across
from the examination table Aeris was laying on.
He was dressed in his usual lab coat and black dress pants looking
diligently as his notes.
Hojo looked up and saw that she had
awoken. "Hello Miss Gainsborough, I
am very pleased to see that you have regained consciousness so soon".
She just stared back at him as usual,
trying to hide her immense fear of what he was going to do with her. Hojo’s experiments
tended to be extremely painful to say the least.
"Relax Aeris, I am not here to
perform any experiments today, I am here to tell you why I have had you
subjected to these many tests these past years", said Hojo.
Aeris was not sure what to make of this.
She knew she could not trust him, he was a ruthless and dangerous man, he had no regard for anyone. Even members of the Shinra
organization regarded him as an evil man who could not be trusted. She knew
that he had killed her father, and was responsible for her real mothers death.
After a long pause he finally spoke.
"Aeris, you are a member of the Cetra race, well
actually a half Cetra."
She started at him, letting this statement
go through her mind. She just stared
back at him trying to fake a look of disbelief.
She knew she was a Cetra, the planet’s voice
almost constantly ran through her head.
"Cetra, I
thought that they were a myth", she said slowly in a questioning voice.
"So do many people, but that is not
so, your mother Ifalna was a Cetra.
But your father was just an ordinary human like me".
This bastard is no regular human, she
thought to herself. She had been brought
here many times before. Hojo would perform experiments on her, some had no
effect on her, but some would cause her massive headaches, sometimes for weeks.
She never did really know what he did to
her, he always put her to sleep.
In fact, this was actually the first time
she had been awake in this room. It was
a small room, probably just an ordinary laboratory high in the Shinra building.
It had no windows, and only one heavy looking steel door with many locks.
Hojo turned to talk to her again but he
could not be heard against the loud blare of the emergency alarms. The flashing
red emergency lights lit up Hojo’s face as he turned
to the phone on his desk and dialed up the security station on the 60th
floor. "What the hell is going on"? yelled
Hojo at the operator that picked up the phone.
"A large group of terrorists have
attacked the lower part of the building", replied the operator. What would
they want with that thought Hojo. There is nothing
important on the lower floors, all of the executives
are on the top floors, past the heavy security checkpoints. "We are
evacuating all floors through the emergency stairs in case of any other terrorists
in the building, you are advised to leave now”, continued the operator
He slammed the phone against the wall and
grabbed Aeris by the arm. "C’mon
Aeris lets go", barked Hojo in a strong commanding voice.
Aeris, already scared by the alarms jumped
when Hojo yelled at her. She hopped off
the examination table and they both ran out of the room to the stairs. Hojo unlocked the door with his keycard, and
the door flew open. They started running
down the stairs when Hojo looked down the stairwell, about 20 floors down he
could see at least three heavily armed men shooting at some Shinra troopers. Hojo seeing this pulled two small pistols out
of his lab coat.
"Aeris, do you know how to use a gun?",
asked Hojo in a very rushed voice.
"Yes, but, but …"said Aeris in a
very frightened voice. She could never kill someone she thought to herself. She
was as scared as she had ever been right then. Even when the Turks had captured her the first
time, she had never really been afraid for her life, but she was now.
"Take it anyway, it would be better
to use it than to die", said Hojo as he cut her off in a very annoyed
voice. He had expected her to say this. She did not seem to be a violent person. He had actually never seen her mad at anybody,
even after some of the things he did to her.
They started to run down the steps and saw
that all the terrorists were dead. Only one Shinra trooper was left alive.
"Professor, I am really glad to see
you, I was hop-
"I don’t care, I need to get this
girl out of here alive, she is my most important specimen", said Hojo as
he interrupted the Shinra trooper
Aeris looked at the trooper and realized
that he was the soldier who she had knocked out at the Church during her
capture.
"We think that may have been the last
of them, but the floors below us are definitely cleared out", reported the
Shinra soldier.
"Alright solider, guard this girl
like she was President Shinra", ordered Hojo
"Yes sir" yelled the soldier in
a very sharp voice. They started running
down the flights of the stairs, Aeris was kept behind
the two men. She was going slower than
the two men and Hojo was getting very pissed, but
ignored the urge to yell at her. She was
too important to lose now, not when he was so close to making his breakthrough.
As he reached the door to the main
lobby, it swung open knocking the Shinra trooper out cold.
Three heavily armed men ran through the
door and started firing at Hojo and Aeris who had ducked behind a metal beam
near the stairwell. Hojo jumped from his hiding spot and shot two of the
terrorists in the chest. He looked to find the other one, but saw him too late.
The terrorist shot him in the knee and
Hojo crumpled to the ground in pain.
Aeris saw him go down and looked around
for a weapon, Hojo had given the soldier her pistol
because he was out of ammunition. She looked to the left and saw a couple metal
pipes lying against the wall from the lobby renovations. She grabbed one and
held it against her chest. She jumped out from behind the pillar as the terrorist
was about to kill Hojo. She summoned up all of her strength and hit the
terrorist with a blow to the head causing him to fall to the ground knocked
unconscious.
She looked up to see Hojo laying on the floor in extreme pain. Even though she hated the monster, she knew
she had to help him, it would be wrong not to.
She bent over him and concentrated on his wound. A cool comforting wind surrounded them and
she watched his gunshot wound close.
She knew she had to leave now. He watched her just as she ran out the door
realizing this was her only chance to escape from the Shinra building. She ran to the door leading outside, leaving
Hojo inside the building.
Hojo watched her leave the building,
wishing that he could fully explain to her how important it was that she was an
ancient. The last thing he felt was a gentle wind blowing through the door from
the cold crisp morning as he lost consciousness due to his blood loss.
Note From The Author: This was my first
FF7 fanfic, just a short one. I hope you like it. Feel free to send any
comments (don’t be too harsh), or suggestions to [email protected].