The Good Life: All Because I'm Evil~ (ch. 102)

If the Lifestream was heaven, then Chaos would be hell. That was probably the best analogy I could find once I started digging into Hojo’s discarded science project, Vincent Valentine. 

He had been something of a proto-SOLDIER. Physically enhanced with ‘tainted’ Mako -- which begged the question of what tainted it? That I wasn’t entirely sure about. I had a couple theories, like it being the leftovers of the soul garbage disposal, where the Lifestream took the good bits of a soul and disposed of the bad bits. I also flirted with the idea that it was somehow related to Jenova, like maybe it was parts of the Lifestream she’d interacted with, which were then isolated by the Lifestream as a quarantine measure. 

Or it could be something I hadn't even thought of. I had no idea what it really was, but I found the substance fascinating. And Genesis was a perfect subject to be afflicted with it after Hojo and I harvested the tainted mako from Vincent’s still slumbering body. You know -- get what good out of him that I could while he was on his way out the door. 

And now that I was seeing the results? Oh, it was absolutely something I wanted to experiment with further. 

“Who doesn’t love a transformation?” I asked, leaning on the railing of a balcony at the old manor. The very same manor that I had sealed the deal with Hojo in and met Jenova for the first time. Off in the distance, despite the late hour, I saw a warm glow that didn’t come from the sun rising or setting. It was entirely manmade as Nibelheim was burning. 

I couldn’t see it with my eyes, but I saw it with my Room well enough. I could see Angeal battling against his former best friend in the middle of the burning town, the inhabitants slaughtered almost to a man. All except for a chosen few that I was able to discreetly shuffle around without raising too much suspicion. 

It had taken two years to set this particular stage. Carefully cultivating Genesis’ madness, infecting him with Chaos under the guise of treating the symptoms I afflicted him with in the first place. For two years, I had been acting as if I was pulling him from the brink he was ever inching towards. Sephiroth and Angeal knew that I was trying my best, that I was doing everything that I possibly could -- my treatments were working. 

But Genesis himself was the problem. I introduced paranoid delusions into him, making him accuse me or Hojo of making him worse, even. This contrasted harshly with his marked improvement when he did accept the treatments I prescribed. Neither of his friends believed him, but madness wouldn’t be madness if it could be reasoned with. He grew violent, withdrawn, curling into himself like the wounded animal that he was. 

He skipped treatments, and he lashed out. He grew more and more paranoid and irritable until… until a few months ago, when I gave him a moment of clarity for him to understand how far gone he was. He came to me, pleading for a cure, and I gave him a spark of hope.  

I put him on the trail of a potential treatment, but one of the ingredients needed was a fully mature dragon heart. Not easy to come by. Such a dragon appearing near Nibelheim was a real stroke of luck, as it meant I didn’t need to find and herd one of the damn things. He killed the dragon, got in contact with me… and in the time he waited for my arrival, he helped himself to the library. 

A library that I made sure was filled with information that stoked his paranoia into an inferno. Parts of the information were the very same experiments Hojo intended to drive Sephiroth into insanity with. Other parts were my own creation. Nothing that painted me in a bad light, of course, but enough about Shinra to validate every paranoid delusion he had been afflicted with. 

The end result? By the time I arrived at the manor with Angeal, Genesis was truly and utterly frothing at the mouth mad. I, naturally, did my best to help him, but Genesis had turned violent. Not much I could do there. 

The fight began with Genesis undergoing a transformation into a nifty looking monster before he went to slaughter the village that he was convinced was full of Shinra actors, as if the entire village was fake. He did a good job of burning the place down and slaughtering the population before Angeal, Zack, and Cloud Strife were able to catch up with him too. Since then, they had been engaged in a duel. 

Zack might be First Class, and Cloud was designed to be stronger than the average SOLDER, but there was a vast gap between them and Genesis under normal circumstances. With Genesis hopped up on Chaos juice? They were out of the fight a few minutes in, leaving Angeal to hold the line as Genesis rapidly burned himself out. Too much power in what was now the equivalent to a wet paper bag with a few holes in it. 

Genesis knew that he was dying, but he was so ensnared in the madness I gave him that he was beyond the point of caring. He alternated between laughing and weeping, begging for Angeal to help him and cursing his name with the same breath. Angeal, to his credit, understood that Genesis was well past the point of helping and was no more than a mad dog that needed to be put down. And, as his friend, it came down to him to do the job. 

So, they fought in a battle that everyone involved had already lost, and it was just a question of who would lose less. And, I had to say… 

“Goddamn, I’m good,” I remarked to myself with a small, cruel smirk as I watched the battle with my Room. It was better than television a hundred times over -- there was just this… satisfaction that came with a job well done. I’d toyed with it with Taylor, and I’d advanced my craft with Jinx, but both of them were already predisposed for Crazy with a capital C. Genesis, though? It took years of careful cultivation to create his particular madness, and I’d pulled it off without a hitch. 

Two years of effort culminating in a fateful clash in the middle of a burning village, blades clashing in showers of sparks, both sides determined to see the fight to its bitter end. Because no matter who won, it would be a bitter end.  

They clashed at speeds that eclipsed anything I ever saw from Homelander. They were blurs that darted around the village, showering sparks with every clash. Angeal was losing the fight, just barely. But it was enough. Genesis was pressing the attack, the two of them roaring wordlessly at each other in a fateful clash. 

My smile grew a fraction when I saw the move coming, but Genesis was too lost in his madness. 

The two made to clash once more, but Angeal dropped his guard a half an inch and Genesis pounced. His sword raced forward in a thrust that skewered Angeal in the chest, just below the sternum at an upward angle. He was dead the moment the sword would be pulled out, and he had about a minute left in him. 

“Zack! Cloud!” Angeal shouted, grabbing hold of Genesis, who roared in defiance and spite. The two fallen SOLDIERs stirred, and they had less than seconds to act. Through my Room, I saw a myriad of expressions flicked through Zack before he grit his teeth and raced forward. 

With an antagonized yell, he drove his sword into Genesis’ back -- the blade punched through his chest and into Angeal. Genesis staggered a half step, black blood oozing from his lips, but he was hardly defeated. Zack's decisiveness snapped Cloud out of his own hesitation and he darted forward, also skewering Genesis and Angeal. This time, skewering Genesis through the heart and Angeal through the stomach with the downward angle of the thrust. 

Genesis stumbled, gasping for breath and both he and Angeal collapsed to their sides. Zack was quick to start extracting the swords from Angeal, hitting him with a Heal Materia, but even with it mastered, there was only so much to be done.

“Thank you, Genesis. You played your role perfectly," I told him, very pleased with the outcome. Grabbing water from a prepared bottle, I gave the impression that I was tired and sweating before I brought myself to the edge of the burning village and started to run forward. Not a full on sprint, but the kind of exhausted run that came with running about fifteen miles without stretching first. 

Zack's head snapped up, his expression one of pure desperation, “Law! Help him!” Zack begged as I ran towards them. Angeal was fading fast with a pool of blood soaking the dirt. 

I didn't reply, half skidding to a halt next to him and throwing open a medical bag that I prepared to cement the image that I ran here to help who I could. I was quick to grab an IV bag and throw it to Zack and Cloud. “Both of you are matches in blood type -- find a vein and start filling. He needs to replace the blood that he's lost.” 

Both Zack and Cloud scrambled to obey as I used surgical scissors to cut open Angeal's shirt. Then I administered a few Stimpacks to take him away from the edge of death and to boost his own blood production, but even then, Angeal was more dead than alive. Luckily for him, I had devoured the knowledge of a couple dozen doctors and surgeons the past few years for the sake of this moment. 

He was in bad shape, but not so bad that I couldn't save his life. Wouldn't be easy, not exactly, but not so difficult that I couldn't multi-task. 

Genesis laid dead behind them, half forgotten by both Cloud and Zack in their rush to save Angeal. For that reason, they didn't notice the syringe that was floating behind them with a little gravity magic and my Room's fine control. With it, I began to extract the Chaos juice that I’d had infected Genesis with -- it was some nasty stuff. An angry black and red that swirled in the vials that were quickly filled as the tainted Mako was harvested once more. 

The result was that Genesis took his old appearance, though he still sported signs of its corruption. Neither Zack or Cloud noticed as I tucked the vials away, I was elbow deep in Angeal's guts, suturing his intestines back together so he would last long enough to get onto an actual operating table rather than the field surgery we were dealing with. Meanwhile, the two of them were weak from blood loss. Even with using Heal on each other to replenish themselves. 

I spent three hours in surgery with Angeal before I heard the sound of helicopters, one of them carrying the star of the evening. 

Sephiroth threw himself out of the helicopter a few hundred feet before it could land, and he dropped like a stone nearby. “What…” he started, his face stricken with disbelief as he didn't know where to look -- Genesis’ corpse or Angeal's emergency surgery. “What happened?” 

“Genesis went crazy,” Zack half spat, rising to his feet, only to lean far enough that Cloud had to catch him to stop him falling over. “I called Angeal- he wanted me to watch him, and when Genesis transformed into this… three faced demon angel thing, I called him in. Then I don't know what happened-” 

“He killed everyone,” Cloud said, and there was a raw note in his voice. One that was tightly clamped down on, but a few hours was enough time for the adrenaline to wear off and the reality to sink in. 

‘Not everyone,’ I corrected. None of them knew it, but Tifa, Cloud's mom, and Tifa's teacher had all escaped. Barely. I'm not sure how things went in canon from this point onwards, but I would steer things so that Tifa ended up joining Avalanche and owning 7th Heaven. 

Sephiroth's shock and revulsion were so intense that I didn't need to strengthen them further. The man looked ill as he looked to Genesis, grief and anger filling his eyes. 

“I thought-... the cure?” He grasped desperately, looking to me for a moment before he looked down at Angeal. 

“I was able to make it, but Genesis had a psychotic break. He destroyed it when Angeal and I tried to make him take it. And then he attacked everyone, Sephiroth. I'm sorry, but he's gone. And I need a proper surgery room or we'll lose Angeal too.” All technically true, just not the whole truth. Only leaving out the part where I was responsible for the whole mess, and adding that despite seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, Genesis had destroyed that hope with his own hands. 

I didn't need to use my Room to see that Sephiroth was blaming himself. The guilt he carried was smothering him, crushing him beneath the weight of a mountain. I could practically hear his thoughts: ‘I should have been here’ or ‘I could have helped Angeal’ and the tried and true ‘This is all my fault.’ 

None of them were true, of course. I specifically made sure that Sephiroth was well out of the way, but just close enough to arrive on scene to see the aftermath with his own eyes. 

Sephiroth had a lot of potential as a friend, but he needed a little tweak or twist here and there. Hojo's original plan would have sent Sephiroth in the wrong direction in terms of insanity. I was taking a more… surgical approach. 

Carefully eroding his base support network and connections, while fostering a fanatical loyalty rooted in how good of a friend I was. I’d tried to help Genesis. I saved Angeal's life. I was there to help. 

I was a tried and tested friend who was there every step of the way. 

“Of course,” Sephiroth said, and minutes later, we were all loaded up in a helicopter. I was still operating on Angeal as Cloud was looking out the window, thinking that he had lost everything. 

I couldn't wait for him to realize that he hadn't. I just needed to cultivate that particular reunion. I did know that they had been separate for a time, with the beginning of the game serving as the first time they had seen each other. And I wasn't exactly sure how Cloud had ended up with a bunch of Zack's memories. So, I was just going to nix that little plotline in the bud. 

I had other plans that would keep them separated for a while. 

The ride to the nearest hospital took a few hours, and once we were there, it was another five hours of surgery that pulled Angeal from the ledge. I nudged his healing factor along once or twice, but after ten hours of digging around in another man's guts, I didn't need to fake the tiredness when I walked out of the operating room. 

Cloud was missing from the group, but both Zack and Sephiroth were waiting outside with expressions of cautious hope. 

“Is he…?” Zack started, almost afraid of the answer. 

“He's stable,” I assured them and Zack all but doubled over with relief. “We'll need to watch him for a time, but provided that there are no complications, he'll make it. Not without some changes though -- his days as a fighter are done, I'm afraid.” 

“I don't care- so long as he's alive!” Zack blurted, grabbing my shoulders and bowing his head, nearly headbutting me. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” 

Zack seemed to take the words right out of Sephiroth's mouth as he half collapsed on a waiting chair, covering his face with his hands. And now to play the part of the chargrined doctor that was a little too hard on himself… 

“I'm afraid that I can't accept your gratitude -- not when this whole mess was caused by me,” I said, making both Zack and Sephiroth look up. “I knew it was a risk trying to give him a treatment without both Angeal and you, Sephiroth, but I didn’t think…!” God, I missed my calling as an actor.

Zack let go of me and shook his head, “That ain't your fault, doc.” He quickly reassured before his brow furrowed, “But, if you don't mind me asking… What exactly happened to Genesis?” 

“Mako corruption,” I answered, taking a seat across from Zack and Sephiroth. “His body was being consumed by the Mako in his body, and in my efforts to treat the degradation, the Mako became… toxic. Corrupted.” I lied like a lying liar. “If I had found a cure sooner, then that could have been avoided-” 

“No,” Sephiroth said, offering a small shake of his head. “Please, do not blame yourself for this,” he said to the person who was directly to blame for all of it, “you did all that you could. Angeal and I know that… as did Genesis.” 

There was a loud silence that came after that -- Sephiroth was visibly mourning his friend without quite knowing how to. Zack, however, looked between us, “What happens now?” 

“That's for Shinra to decide,” I answered with a small shrug. “But given everything I expect some changes to SOLDIER. More health checks. Maybe slowing down on recruitment while we figure out how the Mako gets corrupted or what caused his degeneration.” A task that I would be placed in charge of, and unfortunately, answers would never be found. “As for you? I don't know. Keep on carrying on?” 

“I'm not sure if Cloud is going to be up for that,” Zack admitted. Then he winced, “He just lost everyone, you know? His mom, his girl…” 

“I'll talk to the President,” I assured him. “Get him to take some time off, go on vacation -- something to unwind. I'll see to it that Cloud has the time to get his head on straight.” 

Zack collapsed into a chair next to a brooding Sephiroth, “You're the best, Doc. I mean it.” 

I offered a tired smile in response, “Just doing what anyone should, Zack. No more than that.” 

It really was a testament to my abilities as an actor that I didn't burst out laughing when I said that.

…

“I'm impressed,” Scarlet said, seated across from me as she gave me a considering gaze that told me she was completely reevaluating her opinion of me. “I didn't think you could pull it off. To reverse the decision of directing funding to SOLDIER and put it back in robotics?” She brought the wine glass to her lips but watched me over the rim as we sat in my home away from home back in Midgar. 

It had been a few weeks since Nibelheim had burnt to the ground. Tifa and the others went underground, and I managed to give Zack and Cloud plenty of time for a world tour of sorts. Angeal was in recovery, and Sephiroth threw himself into his work like a man possessed. 

On the corporate sides of things? 

“President Shinra chose the SOLDIER program because it was the cheaper option,” I replied with a small smile. “That stopped being the case when one of its poster boys went mad, slaughtered a town, and nearly killed another of the poster boys.” 

“I thought you would be on Hojo's side of things,” Scarlet admitted to me, returning the smile with a flirtatious bat of her eyes. “After all, you do specialize in Mako.” 

“Only my task is to create immortality with Mako. Not super soldiers,” I corrected. “With SOLDIER being shuttered, there's enough funding for your budget and mine. So, it's a win-win.” 

The reaction to Genesis was exactly what I wanted. Panic. Fear. The board questioning if they had made a bunch of time bombs that would either die with a whimper or a bang, likely with a lot of collateral damage. Not that Shinra cared about a bunch of dead civilians, but it was a PR issue. So, the result? 

SOLDIER was being closed. The ones that we had on hand were all the ones we would ever have, with their lives being extended quickly and quietly while robotic production got back online. And while it was something of a loss -- I could use an army of super soldiers – I could also use an army of killer robots. Both had their merits, but what clinched it for me was Scarlet herself. 

For the past few years, she had been operating on the black market to secure funds for her private research, skimming off the top, and committing significant amounts of fraud to avoid SOLDIERs fate while she worked to produce a cost effective model that could match SOLDIERs effectiveness without breaking the budget. Resurrecting the robotics division put me in her favor…

And it gave me a great deal of blackmail because, weeks later, she was still committing fraud and skimming funding from other divisions. Not to mention, she had just sold another batch of robotics to Jinx this morning. 

Scarlet had no plans to sacrifice what was now additional income to her. That gave me leverage if I ever needed to play hardball with her. 

Not to mention, I had my own plans for SOLDIER. Wasn't like the program was going to rest for good. Just put to sleep for a little bit. 

“And Hojo loses,” Scarlet said with a laugh, a twinkle in her eyes. “I like it. I like that quite a bit, Dr. Waterloo,” Scarlet said, standing up. She offered a hand that I shook politely before she leaned in and kissed my cheek, just close enough to the edge of my lips. She pulled back with a sultry smirk, “I think I'll enjoy working together with you.” 

With that, Scarlet left the room with a sway in her hips that invited me to watch her walk away. I chuckled once she was out of the room, knowing that she was someone I could work with. She just needed a little time and priming before I brought her in on everything, like with Hojo. 

That was another work in progress. One of several. 

Humming a tune, I Shambled myself over towards my secret lab -- this one built on Shinra’s dime, and it was so secret that not even they knew about it. I did have to leave the other lab that I found due to the ongoing refugee crisis in the city. The slums had gotten bad enough that people were willing to fight monsters with sticks if it meant having a roof over their heads at night. 

All the while, monster migrations nipped at the edges of Midgar as it was one of the few places with readily available food left. 

The past two years had been productive. Very productive. The President of Shinra still craved the immortality that I promised, and the result was a limitless budget, despite what I had told Scarlet. As I walked my lab, I could see the proof of his dedication to getting his hands on immortality -- lining my lab were Huge Materia. A dozen of them. 

The naturally formed ones were better than the artificial ones that were created in Mako reactors as a byproduct, but with a little refining, I was able to get them up to snuff. The President had shut down several reactors, including the one in Midgar, to extract them and hand them over to me with a blank cheque. It was frankly an absurd amount of trust to give me, even with his countermeasures to ensure that I didn’t betray him or something like that.

It was good to have them, all the more so as I had completed my collection of the known Summons in the world. All that was really left was to create the magic circuits with the Huge Materia, and one of my longest running projects, one that had lasted years by this point, would be complete. 

I was nearly ready. But it was the discovery of Chaos that stopped me at the eleventh hour. 

“Good morning, Jenova,” I said, walking near the tube that contained the alien. “My little experiment was quite a success. It’s a big step forward for both of us,” I said, taking out the vials full of Chaos juice and pressing a button. 

A thirteenth Huge Materia was revealed as it was taken out of its isolation chamber, just for a little bit. Chaos, as one would imagine, was quite volatile, and just being around the stuff had side effects. I could sense it trying to hum a frequency, like a tuning fork, to match with and affect the other Huge Materia in the room. No such luck there, as they were also in isolation chambers. 

The fluid flowed up from the vials before joining into a single glob that I pushed into the Chaos Materia. It readily accepted it, pulsating with a sense of power, and before it could go mad with it, I put the materia back in isolation. 

“I want a transformation,” I admitted readily as my sole reason for delaying even longer implementing the Magic Circuits. “What’s it going to take for you to help me with that? Come on, Jenova! Compromises mean we both get a little of what we want -- I get a cool transformation sequence, and you get a feast that lasts forever instead of five minutes. If you listen to me, then you’ll probably be eating more souls a second than you would if you consumed all the souls in the Lifestream on this planet.” 

I wasn’t talking to myself. It had taken about six months for me to reliably communicate with Jenova without needing to inject myself with some of her cells -- that had been a bad idea. Hearing Jenova directly in your head? It felt a lot like someone blasting a speaker by your ears with the volume cranked up to fifteen. 

It had been informative, though. Jenova’s ‘voice’ was… like a single voice made of a million whispers. Jenova, despite what her appearance might imply, wasn’t really a single entity. She was closer to a hive mind. 

In fact, she was quite similar to the Lifestream. Just itinerant. And carnivorous.

Hojo wouldn’t even consider the idea, sadly enough, so I didn’t have anyone to bounce my theories off of. However, the more I interacted with Jenova and the more insight I got into her general condition, the more convinced I became of the theory. Jenova was the Lifestream of another planet. One that had gone the way that this world was going -- with people overharvesting the Lifestream, or maybe the world had suffered a disaster that it couldn’t bounce back from. 

The Weapons were the Lifestream’s immune system. When they failed, and the Lifestream itself was in danger of being snuffed out like a flame? It had one final resort -- escape. 

And I think that’s what Jenova was. A Lifestream that left her planet for whatever reason and was looking for a new home. Her extermination of the Lifestream on this planet wasn’t an autoimmune response, like I had initially theorized. I’d thought that they were like different types of blood -- both were blood, but if you gave someone with A type blood AB? They were going to have a bad time. 

That wasn’t the case. It would be more accurate to say that Jenova and her equivalent in this Lifestream were two apex predators that weren’t willing to share the same hunting grounds. They could hold hands, sing songs, and get along, but they wanted the other dead so they could keep the planet to themselves.   

But there was a path forward that I wanted to walk. My plans for the Lifestream hadn’t changed, but getting Jenova on my side of things?

That had a lot of potential to make things interesting. 

The answer, however, was predictable. With my Room, I translated the psychic influence that she radiated as a very firm ‘No.’

So, I sighed with disappointment, “You’ll come around, Jenova.” I told her, tapping the glass to her tank, and ever so slightly, she seemed to stir at the noise. Even if it was a shift of her eyes under her eyelids. “I promise you that. I’m pretty convincing when I want to be…”

I reached out to a remote control before I turned on a monitor that displayed security footage of a holding area within the facility. Inside of it was a familiar face. 

Aerith Gainsborough. 

She was seated with her knees to her chest, her back in a corner as she kept eyes on the door across from her. She was clad in a simple medical gown, clutching the White Materia in her hands, like she was giving a silent prayer. Picking her up had been part of the deal with Hojo, but there wasn't a chance in hell I would let him get his hands on the genuine article. So, I printed off a Synth- technically a clone, given I didn't implement any Synth components that would give me control over her. 

The real Aerith was kept here, bored for the most part, but faring far better than the clone in Hojo's hands. I still wasn't sure what his entire deal was, but he was apparently a very big fan of interspecies breeding. So… yeah. Seemed like quite a waste, in my semi-professional opinion. 

Especially when I had such a better use for her and her connection to the Planet. Or, rather, how Jenova could use her connection to the Planet. 

“After all, don't you want a new body?”