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.



Aerith had insisted on the backseat and I now knew why. Cloud drove like a maniac. He drove like Reno, only worse. Whereas Reno would have gone up onto the sidewalk to avoid a traffic jam, Cloud forced people out of his way. He tore past a construction zone so fast our wind sucked the hard hats off the men standing around. Throwing gears with a vengeance, he glanced over at me. “How much time?” he asked.

“Thirty minutes,” I said, focusing on the view. I wasn’t afraid of his driving but I felt the need to be alert. “We have plenty of time.”

He nodded, swerving past a cluster of early morning shoppers. We came up on two wheels, landed, and switched to the other two. In the backseat, Aerith groaned. “I think I’m going to throw up,” she muttered.

Cloud slammed on the brakes. We squealed to a stop right in front of a red light. “Hey, is that Hojo walking up ahead?”

I looked in between fighting my seatbelt and sitting farther back. My father limped along about a half meter in front of us. “Yes,” I said, confused. “Why did he walk?”

“Want to pick him up?” Cloud’s hands gripped the wheel in a spasm of uncertainty. He still didn’t have an easy time with Hojo and he probably never would.

“We might as well,” I answered.

Cloud looked both ways and ran the light. Seconds later we laid black rubber on the road as he hit the brakes again, coming up alongside Hojo so fast my father leaped to the side.

He had good reflexes for a man his age.

I rolled down the window. “Why are you walking?” I demanded.

A muscle jerked in Hojo’s cheek. His black eyes roamed the car and all of its passengers. “The train stalled,” he said simply. “And no, I’m not getting in that car unless I’m behind the wheel.”

“Suit yourself,” Cloud replied, getting out. A passing car almost clipped him and the door. He got in with Aerith, plopping down, his gangly limbs flopping. Aerith promptly smacked him across his spiky head.

“You drive like the devil,” she scolded. “I’m never, ever getting in a vehicle with you again, Cloud Strife!”

I ignored the squabble. “Looks like you get it your way,” I told my father.

Hojo got in and put his seatbelt on. He checked the mirrors and adjusted them, tilted the wheel just so, and pushed the seat back. I noticed he looked much more alert than earlier. He had white powder on the front of his tie. Reaching over, I brushed it off.

“No babbling during the trial,” I ordered.

“I don’t babble.” Hojo merged into traffic.

The contrast between my father and Cloud couldn’t have been clearer. Hojo drove like a professional chauffer, calmly and with patience. Aerith gave a big sigh from the back and put her head against her door glass. “Thank the Planet,” she muttered.

In ten minutes we parked. A large group of reporters rushed us, surrounding the car so quickly we couldn’t even open our doors. Bright camera flashes came from all sides, disorienting me. My pupils couldn’t adjust fast enough to the changes in light. And, seeing as how every single person in our vehicle had mako engineering, we all suffered.

“I’m claustrophobic,” Cloud said in a warning tone, his eyes darting back and forth.

“Well, I just want out,” Aerith told him.

My father said nothing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of tangled wires and lab gadgets.

“What do you have all that shit for?” I asked as he dumped an LED readout case into the floorboards.

“I was cleaning up after Havars,” he grunted. “He had monitoring devices all over my equipment, the interfering fuck.” He grabbed a little yellow box with a lightning bolt drawn on one side and twisted two wires free from the casing. “Hand me that metal probe.”

I found the object he wanted and gave it over. He tore a black wire in half, separating the red from the blue. “Stick that out the window, on the frame,” he commanded. “Don’t touch the metal on anything, just the coated wire.” His eyes went to the rearview mirror. “Cetra, pull closer to the center. Clone boy, get your arms off the door.”

Hojo jammed a wire into the car’s cigarette lighter. The sizzle of electricity passed through the car frame. Reporters fell to the pavement, cussing and jerking spasmodically. “We can get out now,” he said calmly, jerking the makeshift electrocution gadget free of the cigarette lighter.

Aerith tapped me on the shoulder. I leaned back. Her breathy giggle sent a shiver down my spine. “Still scary,” she whispered.

“He harnesses his powers for good,” I shot back, opening the door.

“I heard the two of you,” Hojo said, looking around. He stepped over a writhing reporter. “The case review section is this way.”

Cloud retrieved the keys, locked the doors and watched my father walk away. His eyes cut to me. “When I fought Hojo, he was nasty,” he announced. “That was actually pretty low-key for him.”

“I suppose,” I answered, collecting my flower girl. She seemed like she needed support to walk.

We caught up to my father, who muttered some nonsense about opiate distillates before focusing on me. “We, the accusers, sit in one section together by self-decided ranks of culpability. It’s a given you’ll be the first chair in the first section.” He looked at Aerith. “You and I will sit together, Cetra. Strife, Valentine and Eldon will sit with Sephiroth. The Turks will sit to our right and the other members of Avalanche will sit behind them. The children will sit in between them as a buffer.”

“Okay.” Aerith gripped my arm a little harder. “Is there any danger we’ll end up punished too, like Havars and Shin-Ra?”

“Not much of one, even with the footage of my son hacking and slashing his way through hundreds of men.” Hojo chuckled, putting his arm around her shoulder from her other side. “Don’t worry. The vote is left to the public, with the adjudicator either agreeing or holding another trial. This will be broadcast all over the planet. Do you think most people wouldn’t see the children and decide we’d acted rightly?”

Aerith’s face simultaneously relaxed and hardened with resolve. “No, I don’t think most people will be easy in their minds over what these poor kids have suffered,” she answered.

We entered the building. Instantaneous quiet gripped us. Quietly, we found the hearing room and filed in. Cloud’s prediction proved a good one. Most everyone already had their seats. I saw Aerith and Hojo to theirs before taking my own. Cloud sat beside me, Vincent beside him, then Eldon, as my father intuited. I took a deep breath, scanning the room for the cameras.

There, one each at the front, left and rear.

“I guess this sort of thing is pretty familiar to you, in a way,” Cloud muttered, one eye on the clock. “Not being on trial but being the focus of a million eyes.”

“Yes, I’m accustomed to being watched.” I smiled, my gaze roaming over the throng surging into the room.

“Well, I’m never good with it,” Cloud confessed. “And my hatred of enclosed spaces is really getting pressed right about now.”

“Breathe in through your nose,” Valentine advised in his low voice. “Breathe out through your mouth. Count to three each time and close your eyes.”

Cloud attempted compliance. I watched an armed team bring in the Shinra siblings and Lucas Havars. They wore standard lime green prisoner’s uniforms and tracker manacles. Sheila glared at me, making my smile widen. The thought of her getting abused in prison really titillated me.

The adjudicator strode in, a team of advisors at his left elbow. He climbed the dais to the High Table, spreading a number of papers out with calm, unhurried movements. A snap of his fingers prompted a hidden person to switch on the monitors. The screen behind the High Table suddenly filled with the image of Adjudicator Colin Laelin. What we would see, the planet would see, live and in brilliant color.

“First,” Laelin announced. “We introduce the accused and their accusers.”

“Sheila Shinra,” Sheila recited through compressed lips. “Second in command at Shin-Ra Corporation.”

“Rufus Shinra, president of Shin-Ra Corporation,” Rufus said, sounding bored.

“Lucas Havars, Head of Bioengineering and Science at Shin-Ra.” Havars smiled a little. He kept his bandaged hand behind his back.

Uniformed bailiffs escorted them to sit. An entire stage separated them from us, the accusers, with the adjudicator in the middle.

“Now, the accusers,” Laelin commanded.

I stood. “General Sephiroth, estranged from Shin-Ra Corporation.” My image filled the monitor, making me larger than life. “Chief accuser of the accused,” I finished, sitting down and ignoring the excited buzz of talk.

All of us completed our introductions in twenty minutes, down to the last Turk. The children, protected by their age, were not required to identify themselves.

I let my mind drift to thoughts of the upcoming night while Laelin banged his gavel for absolute quiet in the room. Soon, very soon I would have Aerith. I wouldn’t accept any other outcome.

“Opening statement by the lead accuser, please,” Adjudicator Laelin asked, sitting down.

I stood up. “My charges against Rufus Shinra and Lucas Havars are intertwined,” I began.

Laelin cut me off. “For the record, General Sephiroth, would you please state to the public the condition of your miraculous return to the living?”

I hadn’t expected this, but it hardly signified anything. “Certainly,” I replied. “I have been able to bring myself back from the dead twice before now. This last time my father, Professor Hojo, constructed a living form for my soul to inhabit.”

Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom. I watched in amazement as taser-armed bailiffs waded through the crowd, subduing people at discretion. Adjudicator Laelin pounded on the oak in front of him, shouting for immediate order. In moments the melee died down, and in another minute or two we had silence once more.

“I entered the service of Shin-Ra Corporation under the condition that I would…behave,” I went on. “Rufus Shinra had ideas of making me an example of reform during their endeavor to improve public relations.”

“Did you submit to this condition?” Laelin asked.

“Yes. For six months I did nothing more than any other decorated General in the Shin-Ra army would do.”

“And what happened to change your viewpoint?” Laelin’s eyes searched me carefully.

“I discovered my father had resurrected a previous victim of mine, Aerith Gainsborough. I stole her to prevent his use of her in experiments. Shin-Ra has always been obsessed with the Promised Land of the Ancients, and they felt Miss Gainsborough could help them find it.”

“Why is that?”

“Because she was and is the last Ancient.”

Again sheer chaos descended.

I waited five minutes before sitting back down, throwing my head over my shoulder to look at Hojo and Aerith. They held hands. Their frozen smiles betrayed their nerves.

Well, I supposed none of this looked very good. Hojo had definitely violated every moral code in existence just bringing Aerith and I back to life. We were living ghosts, scientific anomalies.

Seeing the bailiffs had everything under control again, I stood back up. “I took Miss Gainsborough back to my apartment to shield her from Shin-Ra,” I continued. “In the meantime, Sheila Shinra approached my father in an attempt to get Rohypnol and opiates; she wished to have sex with me and I refused her, which led her to believe she could use a date-rape drug on me.”

“Do you have witnesses for this accusation?” Laelin looked very interested in my answer, his dark eyes gleaming.

“My father, who refused her the drugs, Miss Gainsborough who witnessed their administration to me, and Turks Reno and Tseng, who responded to my call for assistance,” I answered. “My father discovered some of his drugs missing and filed a report with security previous to Sheila Shinra’s attack upon my person.”

“Sephiroth, you son of a bitch!” Sheila screamed, coming up out of her chair. “I knew you had another woman in that apartment! We didn’t find one scrap of evidence, but I knew!”

“She is referring to the illegal breaking and entering and search of my apartment,” I told Laelin, ignoring the bailiffs trying to hold Sheila down. “Shortly after I took Miss Gainsborough, Rufus and Sheila decided to look for traces of her in my home. They did not find her but they planted video cameras and listening devices all over the apartment building to track my whereabouts and to find Miss Gainsborough.”

“I see.” Laelin almost seemed to smile. “Stewart, did you get that down?” he asked one of his aides.

“Yes, sir,” the man answered.

“Go on, General Sephiroth,” Laelin commanded. “What happened next?”

“Shin-Ra hired Lucas Havars to replace my father, Professor Hojo, as head of science, due to my father’s refusal to carry the super SOLDIER program with children as subjects. As you may well know,” I said, “mako is not introduced into SOLDIER hopefuls until they complete a military training campaign between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. This has been my father’s stance in the use of mako for many, many years. Because Shin-Ra could not induce him to agree to younger subjects, they brought Havars.”

“You keep referring to him respectfully, as your father,” Laelin commented. “Yet, your relationship with Professor Hojo is well known for being antagonistic and combative. You admit you stole one of his projects, Miss Gainsborough.”

“Yes.” I faced the room, noticing it had the effect of facing the camera. “Until Havars attempted to murder Professor Hojo, I did not care for him. However, he had recently been making changes toward me, moves of a father to a son. I visited him in his apartment shortly after the incident with Sheila Shinra, and witnessed an assassin’s effort at ending his life. I brought him home with me, and Miss Gainsborough healed him of a mortal injury.”

Bedlam broke out a third time.