Aerith and Hojo Interlude

Aerith brooded as she walked through the old Figaro cemetery near the ruined mako reactor. She was unsure why, but since the Planet screamed, and her brief messaging with the Lady Yunalesca, she had grown use to darker thoughts. Sure she still loved flowers, and the Planet, and to an extent people, but her temper had been so short of late.

Hojo, for his part, had appeared, thanks to the abomination that was his new conscience, to view the graves of those who had died to express his sceintific ideals.

That was when he saw her, the flower girl. From the PHS network he was almost certain it was her, "Aerith?"

She twirled about, staff going into a ready defensive position she wouldn't have believed herself capable of only months ago in Midgar. Having one's life in constant peril was the best sharpener of reflexes that a girl could ask for, and she had certainly had enough of that. Her normally docile and doe-like eyes locked onto the spectacled eyes before her, "Hojo...you bastard. What are you doing here?"

"I'm here merely on business," replied the mad scientist, holding up his satchel with one hand, and gesturing to the graves with the other.

"You have no business here," she snarled in a tone usually reserved for Elmyra. Elmyra...by the Planet how she hated that woman she knew as her step mother. If their paths ever crossed again she might be tempted to...no..no. Aerith shook her head, despite what a bitch that woman was she could never commit Matricide.

"Are you quite alright," asked Hojo, noticing the distracted look that had crossed Aerith's face, and the shaking of her head.

"I'm fine," she snapped, staff still held at the ready in front of her, "But you won't be soon. You betrayed us, tried to earn our trust so you could cut us all up. Now we're supposed to trust you? I'll never do that."

"Yet it was I," said Hojo carefully, "That convinced you of the evils of Shinra Electric Company. It was I that convinced you they could be fought with violence. How foolish I was to not expect something like this to occur."

"Very," said Aerith, a dark look crossing her features. This man was an incarnation of all that was wrong in the world. Treason, lack of loyalty to friends and family, the striving desire of human pride and arrogance to play God in a way only the Planet and apparently Lady Yunalesca could. He probably even sought to pervert the Promised Land.

"I've seen that look before girl," warned Hojo, reaching into his labcoat for a pistol, "you're too innocent to give into your anger. But you're also an emotional powder keg ready to burst I see...a bad combination."

"Shut up," said Aerith menacingly, "Who are you to lecture me on ethics? You played God, and lost. How many died because of you? How many people's lives were ruined?"

"Too many," replied Hojo, withdrawing his pistol into view. In hindsight, he would realize how bad an idea this was, but at the moment it seemed prudent.

Aerith reacted on almost instinct that had been drilled into her in the past few months of fiend fighting and fleeing Shinra and threw herself behind the nearest headstone. After that she scurried to the next, more or less leapfrogging forward until finally she was within striking distance of the scientist.

Her staff swept up, knocking the pistol from his hand deftly, and twirled about to deliver a solid blow across the chest. Hojo stumbled backwards over a grave with an inscrutable name and date upon it.

Aerith did not relent, her staff connected with his jaw in a sickening thud, spittle and blood flying into the air and onto her pink dress. Then another blow, and another, followed by a dozen more landed across his ribs, breaking several as she zealously drunk up the image of him like that...helpless, bloody, and on the verge of death like so many of his test subjects had been before him.

It was so empowering, so addicting. She could see where his playing God had made him feel strng, because holding his life in her hands, as if it were putty to be shaped in the universe...ir caused her to shiver with delight.

One more well placed blow to the head and she could end it all. She could wipe Hojo from the face of the Planet, his diabolical machinations for the future with him. All he could ever accomplish, and all he could ever be would be lost forever into the Lifestream.

Pleasure ripped through her body, but then as the death blow seemed fated to connect she awoke skin glistening with sweat from her nightmare.