Paper Tiger Burning

I respectfully credit all Original Creators, namely Squaresoft, which became SquareEnix,for these characters. In this way, I pay homage to my Fandom's Original Creator, and illustrate my Community's belief that Fan Fiction is "fair use". I do not claim to own these characters. I do not make money or gil from using these protected characters, nor do I wish to make money or gil from them. In other words, I am borrowing these characters to entertain the adult fanfiction community, but I am doing so with the highest degree of respect to the engineers, game designers, music makers, and voice actors.



“General?”

I looked up from the monitor to see Eldon standing in my doorway. He shifted uncomfortably upon the receiving the full weight of my eyes. Like many others, he couldn’t seem to bear the attention of my glowing gaze. At least he had more nerve than the recruits; some of them forgot entirely what they were doing once I started watching them. “Yes, Eldon,” I murmured. “My appointment is in fifteen minutes.”

He sighed. “Sir, I know what he’s like,” he said. “Would you want accompaniment?”

Surprised at his offer, I sat back. “Did you go through the program, Eldon?” I asked. “You aren’t officially listed as a super soldier.”

“I failed, that’s why,” Eldon replied. “That’s the reason I’m in an office and not out there with the winners.” His dark brown eyes gleamed with remembered humiliation. “They didn’t start keeping track of the failures until you came. We weren’t worth remembering in any way whatsoever.” He put his hands behind his back and looked away from me. “No one asked me, but I thought that was stupid. I figure a lot of failed soldiers end up as resistance fighters.”

“You are most likely correct,” I answered, feeling a new sense of respect for my quiet, unassuming secretary. Taking a deep breath, I rose from the desk chair and put my jacket on. “I don’t require you to accompany me,” I said. “But I will remember that you offered.”

Eldon blinked. “Sir? If I may suggest something?”

I regarded him steadily, sensing I was about to hear something of importance. “You may speak freely to me, Eldon,” I said. “You are my secretary.”

Eldon sighed. “Thank you,” he breathed. “Look, out of all I went through trying to become a super soldier, I noticed something about Hojo. He isn’t quite so free handed when he has a witness. My presence might…tame him down a bit.”

Now very surprised, I looked at him hard. “To be blunt, Eldon, why would you care?”

“I need my job.” Eldon flushed red. “If you go, I go. This was the only position left to me. They were going to throw me out if you didn’t take me on.”

I relented. “Get your coat,” I ordered. “We have ten minutes to walk to the labs but I don’t care if I’m late.” Hojo wouldn’t kill me, no matter what Eldon thought, and I wondered just what the man had suffered that he would believe my life in danger from the scientist.

Eldon hurried to obey me. In five minutes we were strolling together across the hard packed dirt of the east training field and on our way to the parking lot of Shinra Labs. The moment we reached the lobby doors my companion began to sweat and breathe very hard. I beheld the way his hands shook and recognized it for psychological trauma. Well, he wouldn’t be the first man to find nightmares over the presence of Hojo. I had deeply buried issues myself. Sometimes I awoke in the night feeling the manacles around me, shivering though I kept my apartment warm.

A blast of air conditioning pushed our hair back. I strode to the main desk and stared down at the female receptionist. “General Sephiroth to see Professor Hojo for an appointment,” I said tonelessly, watching her eyes move over my body.

“Yes, General,” she said politely. “You’re marked down for three o’clock.” She tapped a few times on her keyboard. “Take the elevator to the basement. Professor Hojo is in the biogenetic lab this afternoon, area nineteen.” She began making a floor pass for me. Her eyes moved to Eldon, who looked nearly ready to faint. “Who is this?”

“This is Eldon Garchae, my secretary,” I informed her. “My appointment is at an inconvenient time and he must accompany me to answer calls and relay information. I hope this isn’t a problem?”

She hesitated. “Well, it’s irregular,” she admitted.

I sensed Eldon moving his arm. The beeping of his phone brought the secretary’s attention. He answered his phone with a self-important little flip of his wrist. “General Sephiroth’s office,” he intoned. “No, the General is at a previous appointment,” he went on a moment later. “Yes, I will tell him to call the president at his earliest convenience.” He hung up.

The secretary nodded to herself. “We’ll have to make a badge for you too, Mr. Garchae,” she said.

I smirked to myself. Eldon had set off his phone by himself; I had heard only silence on the other side of the line.

Level cards pinned to our suits, Eldon and I entered the elevator. His eyes traveled up the metal wall to stare at the camera in the high, far corner. Grimacing, he punched the button for us and we began to descend. I decided to take Eldon out to lunch someday soon. What better ally could I have than a man who needed his job so desperately that he would walk into hell to keep it?

“I’ve heard he has a lot of new test subjects,” Eldon said lowly. “We’re going to have to walk right by them to get to area nineteen.”

I took pity on him. “You don’t have to do this, Eldon,” I said. “Hojo isn’t going to kill me outright.”

“I understand that,” Eldon murmured, looking at the camera again. “But this is the decent thing to do. I know something about your history, General.”

“I suppose everyone does,’ I answered noncommittally, shoving my pass card into the security slot. All Shin-Ra buildings had security so tight one could only visit a floor they were assigned to for clearance. The elevator doors opened. We began to walk down the brightly lit hallway. Glass walled cells lined both sides of the very wide corridor. I remembered inhabiting one very similar in the old lab. It had been my home for thirteen years. I’d been available to everyone, easily seen even while attending to bodily functions, cold from the never-ceasing air conditioning and blinded by bright lights. My fists clenched.

I tried not to look at the pitiful specimens. Eldon made no pretense about viewing the various forms of life and half-life. He almost seemed to be committing them to memory.

“Ah, Number One,” Hojo said, looking up from his microscope as we came through his lab door. His brow furrowed. “And failed soldier number 24287; here for another round of tests? I remember giving you a thorough miss.”

”Eldon is here to answer my phone calls,” I said, stripping off my jacket and shirt. “Your appointment came at a most inconvenient time. I have maneuvers to oversee.”

Hojo passed this information off as factual but unimportant. He promptly ignored Eldon and turned to me, donning latex gloves with two, sharp snaps. “I won’t keep you long,” he said. “We’re going to test the theory that your blood is merely working overtime.” He took a fresh sample from my arm and slid a drop on a scope slide. “Hold your arm over the vat,” he commanded. “There’s no sense wasting your blood; I can do many tests with a large amount.”

I did as he said, my eyes traveling to Eldon. My secretary looked as if he might suddenly vomit. I gave him a hard look. He made his phone go off and produced another bogus conversation, this time to my stock broker. Hojo sneered at me, sliding the cover of a fresh scalpel off and poising it over my arm. “My, aren’t you important these days?” he asked rhetorically, slashing my wrist in one, short motion.

Blood arced. Eldon, his face pale, averted his eyes. I watched the vat begin to fill with red, knowing I could probably bleed like this for ten minutes before I became weakened. To hurry matters, I stretched the injury and held it open with my free hand. The sooner this was over the better.

“Close it off now, Number One,” Hojo said in a distracted tone a few minutes later. He moved the vat to a refrigerated storage unit and came back to me. I pressed the two rent pieces of my skin together and watched them seal up. Hojo nodded approvingly. “Your accelerated healing is unchanged,” he observed. “Sit down on the bench and wait ten minutes. I’ll need to take a cell count from a new sample then.”

Eldon’s phone went off. By his startled expression I knew this was a real call. I sat, leaning back, keeping one eye on my secretary and one eye on Hojo.

“No, the General is at an appointment right now,” Eldon said. His brown eyes went flat, a sign of his displeasure. Under the hum of machines I heard a feminine voice. Eldon shook his head. “Yes, he has it written in his day book. Of course I will inform him, Miss Shinra.”

Hojo cackled. “The slut has you in her sights, does she?” he asked, not bothering to lower his voice. I heard Sheila give a screech of anger. Eldon made a quick apology and hung up on her.

“She’s banged her way through every seven-star on base,” Hojo went on, scribbling something down on a clipboard. “You can’t fuck her, of course. You’d kill her, wouldn’t you?”

“She knows,” I answered.

“Well, if she’s nice to me I might give her a drug to slow you down for a tamer ride,” Hojo chuckled. “But she’d have to be really nice or you’d have to be really bad.”

“Do it and I’ll ask Rufus to pull funding,” I growled.

“Going to pit yourself against me?” Hojo tapped his pencil on his greasy forehead. “Interesting. I wonder which of us he’d want to placate more?”

“Considering the General is about to go on a recruitment drive,” Eldon said, “I’d put my money on him.”

“You have a point, but what will baby Shinra do with recruits if he can’t give them my special treatments?” Hojo smiled nastily at Eldon. “This doesn’t concern you anyway, 24287. “I’d advise you to keep your mouth shut. I could always use another lab animal around here.”

“Don’t threaten my secretary,” I said. “Unlike you, he’s useful to me.”

Hojo rolled his eyes. “Stand up.”

I stood. Hojo plunged a needle into my arm, making it more of a stab than anything else. Blood taken, he made another sample and compared the two under the scope. With a satisfied nod, he began writing again. “Well, that solves that,” he said. “You’re going to need a regular blood drawing unless you want to go supernova.”

“I’ll keep it under advisement,” I muttered, putting my shirt back on.

“You’ll heed what I say,” Hojo snapped. “A constant building of J-cells will make you highly unstable. It might even be the reason you went temporarily insane in Nibelheim.”

“I went insane in Nibelheim because of a certain alien that you nurtured,” I returned coldly. “An alien thankfully fully assimilated and digested by the planet.”

“I’ll order regular blood drawing,” Hojo went on as if I’d said nothing. “You will come here every month.”

“We’ll see,” I replied, putting my jacket back on.

“Yes, we will,” Hojo said. “We’ll see how well baby Shinra likes the idea of you losing control.”

We stared at each other.

I hated him. If I accomplished nothing else during the rest of my life, I would see him dead before me, I swore it.

Eldon and I walked out. I forced myself to go slowly, knowing my secretary couldn’t keep up if I allowed a full head of steam. We passed the specimens again. Suddenly, Eldon stiffened. “Sir?”

I stopped. Eldon had come to a full halt outside of a particular cell.

“Sir, he’s got a person in here,” Eldon went on. “He’s not supposed to have a real person, is he?”

“Who knows what he’s allowed to have?” I posed bitterly. “Shin-Ra has always allowed Hojo to have what he wanted.”

“But sir, she’s normal looking.” Eldon put his hand on the glass.

Curiosity overcame my anger. I walked to the cell and peered over Eldon’s slight frame to take my own view. I saw feminine legs first, long and shapely but bruised. Equally bruised arms lay limply over the mottled thighs. My eyes went upward, over the short hospital gown to a slender, delicate throat. The woman’s face was mostly concealed by a large blindfold. Almost unbelievably long, honey-brown hair hung in dirty strands and spilled to the floor.

I spied a frayed, almost bleached-out pink hair ribbon.

For a moment I didn’t believe it. My eyes searched the woman’s body for any clue that I could be wrong.

“What is she doing here?” Eldon asked, echoing my own thoughts. “He’s hurting her.”

It had to be her. The Cetra.

I saw her in my mind, her wide, green eyes staring up to heaven as I plunged the Masamune into her defenseless back.

Swallowing, I stepped back. “Let’s go,” I said sharply.