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.




I jumped in the shower for an excuse to stay hidden in the bedroom. I couldn’t believe what I had initiated out there in the living room, in front of Hojo.

Sephiroth was a devil, not an angel. I really, really played with fire. If Hojo hadn’t awoken, reminding us of his presence…

Sephiroth might have had me on the ratty old settee.

As I soaped I imagined the feel of his hands upon me. Big, strong, long hands with the power to crush or caress… I felt curious over his claim to create good pain. I’d never heard of such a thing but I trusted he meant what he said. How would he show it to me? I intended to make him show me if he didn’t hurry up and decide we were ready.

Pitting my will against his, with pleasure for the ultimate outcome no mater who won, sounded like heaven to me. I loved watching him turn dominant. His masculinity could blister a woman, especially when he took control. I almost felt sorry for Sheila, because I understood her attraction to him. He was delightfully savage, smart, ruthless, powerful and proud, deadly in his combination. Add in that perfect body and beautiful, ethereal face; throw in his sensual hip movements and the sum equaled devastation.

He had to know he burned me up.

*************************************************************************************

“Sephiroth, I have documents and data stored at my apartment,” Hojo argued. “I have to retrieve it all.”

I watched Sephiroth fold his arms in a typical dictator-pose. “Tell me where it is and I’ll get it,” he said, surprisingly meeting his father halfway.

“For Shiva’s sake, I’ve been taking care of myself for eighty-six years!” Hojo threw his arms in the air. “Why are you so set against me venturing out alone? Havars made his move.”

“Havars will make other moves.” Sephiroth didn’t budge. “You’re certain of that or you wouldn’t be so adamant over limiting my contact with him.”

Hojo grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled, then winced and stopped. I felt supreme frustration coming from him, and fear. All the fear seemed to be directed toward Sephiroth…

Ah, but not fear of Sephiroth, fear for Sephiroth.

“Have you seen how Balefore cats are rounded up in the grasslands?” Hojo asked. “One expendable man runs through the pride. He collects a male, in other words he runs past it and becomes prey; a few other men jump up and use a net launcher. The Balefore cat is trapped.”

“You think your apartment is now a trap to collect me?” Sephiroth smiled. “I hope it is. I haven’t killed anybody in days.”

“Days,” Hojo repeated numbly.

“Yes, but a mugger doesn’t really count, and neither did Havars’ agent; I bled him out in my bathtub.”

I cringed.

“Yes, I was there,” Hojo said, taking his glasses off to wipe them. I felt him surrender. “The safe is in the kitchen floor. The combination is Right 36, Left 10, Right 59, Right 97. Just bring everything. While you’re there, check the automatic feeder for my goldfish.”

Sephiroth put on his coat and buckled it closed only at the waist, like he always did. He snapped on the white pauldrons, then clasped them shut under his arms. “You have goldfish,” he muttered.

Looking embarrassed, Hojo sank down on the couch and closed his eyes. “If you aren’t back here in thirty minutes I’m calling the Turks,” he grumbled.

“Call away, but use the cell.” Sephiroth threw his cell phone on top of Hojo’s stomach. “I don’t want any calls traced to my flower girl.”

His flower girl? I smiled to myself at his slip of the tongue. His flower girl.

“Damn it, I won’t get your Cetra in trouble!” Hojo clenched the phone so tightly I heard the case give an ominous creak. “Just bring yourself back here in one piece.”

I walked over to Hojo and put my hand on top of his. “He’ll be back,” I said. “Don’t worry. Sheila was a fluke.”

My subtle reminder worked. Sephiroth bristled. I knew he’d think of how easily Sheila had overcome him now, and he’d be more careful. I met his eyes, unable to resist seeing him indignant.

“See you both in a half hour,” he growled, vanishing through the ceiling. I turned back to Hojo.

“Really, don’t worry. He’s very capable.” I patted his hand, sitting down on the floor in front of him.

Hojo eyed me, curiosity and interest burning in his dark eyes. He didn’t understand me or my motives in the slightest. I was a complete mystery to him. “You shouldn’t want to come anywhere near me, Cetra,” he said. “You have nearly as much reason to hate me as Sephiroth does, but you clearly don’t. Why is that?”

“I’ve never hated you. I hate the things you do, but I don’t hate you,” I answered, keeping his penetrating gaze. “As for the coming near you part, I’ll admit to residual avoidance, because seeing you usually meant pain of some kind. Still, you have pain of your own and I’m going to help you with it.” I hadn’t lost my resolve to guide him into humanity.

“But why?” Hojo asked as I took his hand up for a healing session.

I smiled at him. “Because it’s how I am, how I’m made. Of all the things you discovered about me and my mother, couldn’t you see that part of us?” I focused on him, reached into his mind and began quieting the maelstrom before he could answer. “My people were benevolent, Hojo, too benevolent. That’s why they aren’t here anymore.”

Hojo said nothing while I worked at the cracks and fissures in his thought processes. When we had only ten minutes left before Sephiroth’s return, I let go of him. He sighed heavily. Guilt and sorrow flooded the air between us.

“I…will never feel empty again,” he said quietly.

He didn’t mean it in a good way. Hojo’s carefully constructed walls of madness and emotional distance crumbled each time I healed him. Yet, he continued to let me treat him. His soul sought my compassion and healing even as his learned processes avoided the perceived weakness.

“I’m not doing this to hurt you,” I told him softly. “But if you want to indulge in your darkness, Hojo, you’re going to have to take a path similar to your son’s. You have to be a balance.”

“So remorse and shame and sadness are healthy?” Hojo tried to chuckle and failed. “When will I become the strapping paragon of health, then?” His black, black eyes filled with uncertainty, with sadness and barely managed terror.

I sat back to look at him soberly. “When you decide to make restitution,” I answered. “When you can sleep with your sins and walk with your humanity. You wouldn’t have ever been an angel, Hojo; no human is, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a devil.”

Hojo stared into me. “Do you talk to Sephiroth this way?”

“More or less,” I admitted. “I remind him that large people make large mistakes.”

“I can’t ever atone,” Hojo shot back. “I don’t know that Sephiroth can.”

“The attempt is what saves your soul,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if you succeed or not.”

Hojo fell quiet a few minutes. Just as I heard Sephiroth returning upstairs, the scientist cracked an eye open. “You were wrong about one thing. The benevolence of the Cetra didn’t kill them. Jenova did.”

**************************************************************************************

I took a unique position. On one side of me, Aerith worked on her embroidery, her face happy and relaxed. On the other side I had Hojo, who worked on his papers, his expression strained and pissed off. “Crock of bullshit,” I heard him mutter. He threw a wad of papers in the gas fireplace.

“Oh, heat,” Aerith said dreamily. “I just love fire.”

I did too, but being an obvious point to my two companions, I let my affirmation slide. It amused me Hojo kept feeding the flames and Aerith kept enjoying it. I could see the pattern she sewed on now, but not well. Curiously, every time I managed to catch her holding it in my direction, the image blurred. It appeared to be a pinwheel one moment and a spiked wheel the next.

“Hand me that red file, if you would, Cetra,” Hojo said.

Aerith picked it up, handing it to him with a brilliant, sunny smile.

I felt my father weaken toward her despite himself. Even he couldn’t withstand Aerith’s eternally generous nature. He attempted distance with words but she wasn’t like me; words didn’t put my flower girl off. I knew Hojo’s attempt at resisting her died before birth. She wormed in on his initial surprise, used her presence to confound him, and then bombarded him with healing. He couldn’t recover from one shock before she gave him another.

She’d done that to me, actually.

Did I look like Hojo in the beginning, all snarly and sullen?

No, I still dwelt in the surprise stage, slowly creeping toward mystification.

“Do you know what my blood type is, Hojo?” Aerith asked suddenly.

“O-Negative, just like Sephiroth’s,” Hojo grunted immediately. “Highly unusual to have two O-Negative specimens.” He shot her a look under his eyelashes. “Three, actually. But your mother was O-Positive and so was your father.”

“And you are?” Aerith didn’t seem disturbed by the mention of her parents or her previous stint as one of my father’s experiments.

“O-Negative as well.” Hojo frowned. “Why?”

“I saw a brief thing on television about blood types and personality,” Aerith said easily. “I guess it’s worthless, like horoscopes?”

I watched Hojo grit his teeth. “Quite worthless,” he answered. “I’d like to find the person who started that foolishness and smash his head in. No science in it at all, none.”

“But don’t you find it interesting that the O group is more uncommon but there’s so many of us in a close group? Isn’t Cloud in the O group?” Aerith tilted her head. “I think Barett is too, now that I reflect on it.”

“The Law of Averages would normally point to it as an anomaly,” Hojo admitted. “But that’s no reason to assume blood types group together from some sort of personality connection.” Hojo tapped his lip while he thought, something I had seen him do a million times. It signified she’d caught his interest.

“Well, how much more uncommon is O in comparison to A and B?”

“It depends on demographics.” Hojo fixed her with a look I couldn’t begin to decipher. “O blood is the oldest type of blood and is forty five percent of blood in Mideel. Wutai is largely A. B blood is more common in this area, spreading to the totality of the south.” His sniffed as he really got into his lecture tone. “The advent of quick travel has merged many groups, making AB blood more common. I’m still studying that. AB and B-Negative used to be much more infrequent.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you following me?”

“Yes.” Aerith smiled at him. “Did you find any correlation between successes in the SOLDIER program and any one blood type?”

Hojo dropped his pencil. “Have you been reading these files?”

“No.” Aerith kept smiling her cheerful, disarming smile of innocence. “But it would make sense for you to track it.”

He stared at her for a moment. “As a matter of fact I did, and there is a correlation,” he admitted. “Mako seems to blend with O with fewer problems. Jenova cells aren’t as aggressive to a host with O blood, either.”

“I wonder why?” Aerith looked up at the ceiling a moment. “It’s not as if antigens are the only defense of the body. I suppose you were interested in the physiological differences my mother and I would exhibit in this area? Did you introduce Jenova or mako into Ifalnia?”

Hojo’s mouth dropped open. His eyes sought mine. Smiling, I lifted my eyebrows. You didn’t know she had a brain in that pretty head? I asked him mentally. My little flower girl is very smart.

Hojo forcibly closed his mouth and swallowed before turning back to Aerith. “You and your mother had the requisite T-Cells to accept Jenova, but I did not introduce J-Cells into either one of you,” he answered. “At first I hesitated because Jenova’s cells weren’t properly investigated enough, then I lost both of you. The second time, when I resurrected you from a matrix with living tissue, I hesitated because I knew what the J-Cells had done to Sephiroth.”

“You thought maybe an empath wouldn’t be the wisest choice for telepathic powers,” Aerith concluded.

“Yes, essentially,” Hojo agreed. “And my hesitance proved wise, for I can tell you already have a good idea what other people are thinking.”

“No, just what they’re feeling,” Aerith said. “But feelings and thoughts are much intertwined. I’m shielding from you and Sephiroth right now, but if I were to drop those shields a little bit, say for longer than a few minutes, I would quickly become overwhelmed. You and your son have extremely forceful personalities.”

“And your empathic levels are the same as before?” Hojo asked.

“No, the mako increased my abilities. Before, I could sense some things if they were strong enough, but now I sense everything and must shield.”

Hojo began tapping his pencil against his forehead, another sign of deep interest. “So, mako increased psi-gamma activity while we can only assume J-Cells would increase psi-kappa activity. Your human side and your Cetra side coexist peacefully enough, but…” He shook his head. “Too many variables.”

“Are you inducing him to drag you back to his lab or what?” I asked Aerith, butting into the conversation.

“There’s no harm in talking about it,’ she said back, her tone mild.

Hojo shot me an irritable look. “What could I find out in my lab other than what I know currently?” he posed. “Psionics are nearly impossible to measure with even sophisticated equipment; I could plug her into every machine and come up with negative results while she recited every feeling I had.”

“Then how did you measure it in me?” I asked, suddenly more interested.

“I didn’t.” Hojo looked faintly embarrassed at that assertion. “I merely noted what you could do.” He dug around in his pile, coming up with the familiar folder I’d stolen my EEG results from. “Here’s the basic list. Do fill it in if you have something to add.”

I scanned the pages, managing to be impressed with myself seeing everything written out.

-Mind reading
-Thought Communications
-Mental Attacks
-Mental Defenses
-Mind Control
-Projected Illusions
-Clairvoyance and/or Clairaudience
-Precognition and Premonitions
-Retrocognition
-Remote Viewing
-Telekinesis
-Pyrokinesis
-Electokinesis
-Psychoportive abilities
-Psycho-Metabolic abilities

“What is Psychoportive?” I asked.

“In you it is the manipulation of time and the ability to teleport,” Hojo grunted.

“And Psycho-Metabolic?”

“You heal yourself when you’ve been injured, and you also stop feeling pain when you wish.” Hojo hunched down a little. “Don’t you remember?”

“You should be glad I don’t,” I said.

“I’m grateful for every moment, thank you,” Hojo returned, looking as if he spoke the truth. Casting a quick glance at Aerith, he went back to sifting through his papers. I gave him the list back.

“I don’t think I can add to it,” I said. “If I think of something I’ll let you know.”

“Please do, as I’ll never have either of you in the clinical sense again,” Hojo said.

Aerith made a small noise. “I’d be willing to submit to testing if you’d only tell me what you intend to do and let me go and come as I please,” she said. “It’s all you ever had to ask of mother and I.”

“No,” I said. “You will not.”

Hojo looked between us. Looking distinctly uncomfortable, he hunched lower.

Aerith leveled her dark green eyes upon me. “I’m the last Cetra,” she said. “I’d like to know more about myself.”

I couldn’t deny she had an understandable urge, but I wouldn’t allow her to go under Hojo’s care ever again. What was she thinking? Until recently she’d been terrified by the thought of Hojo, but now she acted as if he were a crazy relative to dote upon.

Was her hold over him already so complete?

“He killed your father,” I reminded her. “He indirectly killed your mother and he almost killed you.”

“I know that.” Aerith continued to gaze at me. “I know more than perhaps I should, considering I speak to my mother and father whenever I want.”

Hojo and I were for once in complete accord. We gaped at her.

“I speak to a lot of dead people,” Aerith went on. “It’s all I did while a prisoner in the lab. Without their contact I might have gone mad.” She picked up her sewing, dismissing us both. “But I’ll do as you say, Sephiroth,” she added.

After a heartbeat of silence, Hojo looked at me. “You did kill her,” he pointed out, "I didn't have anything to do with that."