Title: Everybody Loves Cloud
Author: CrisisChild
Summary: One happy, hapless day in Shinra, Cloud's hair falls into one of Hojo's concoctions - a vat of mako laced with a strong aphrodisiac meant for Sephiroth. The strangest day for the cadet ensues. Cloud x everyone in Shinra
Rated: T; rating will possibly rise
Disclaimer: I do not own Crisis Core or FF7. Enough said.
Warning: This story does not follow canon – obviously – and is most likely a very silly AU where all kinds of crazy mishaps happen and are generally blamed on Hojo. Because no one blames Hollander, because he's a hack. Moreso than Hojo.
Everybody Loves Cloud
Part the First
Hojo was not getting any younger, this he knew for a fact every time he deigned to look into a mirror – or in the reflection of a glass cell for one of his specimens. And neither was Sephiroth, his greatest achievement of all. He was in his prime and it wasn't sure if he would succumb to the woes of mortality like the rest of humanity would, however, the good doctor wanted to make sure that their legacy would be properly secured.
Hojo had Sephiroth was his living legacy – not that the silver-haired man knew this and would have had the mother of all conniptions, if he found out – but what was there for Sephiroth? Due to a slight miscalculation on his part, the SOLDIER did not take well to the company of others and, therefore, had stunted his ability to find a proper female in the vague hopes of procreation. There was no end to the amount of frivolous trollops willing to bare Sephiroth's children, which was not the problem…Sephiroth just didn't have the same kind of urges most males had to be with the fairer sex.
And that was a great problem in the larger scale of things.
A plan was quickly concocted; it was of pure genius, so Hojo thought. The monthly mako injections were coming soon and it was always up to the greasy-haired professor to mix the serum for their glorious Silver General. This time, he would add a little something else to get Sephiroth's biological clock ticking once more – or at least make the boy a little less inhibited. He was going to use an aphrodisiac; rather base an unscientific for a man like Hojo, but he also added in something extra like liquid pheromones from some of the most…'amorous' creatures in the animal kingdom. It might cause the man to become a little irrational in finding himself someone to mate with, but it really was for his own good that he had children to carry on his great genetic legacy.
Hojo would have preferred it if Sephiroth mated with an Ancient, but, sadly, that boat had already sailed. At this point any genetic material would work, but hopefully Sephiroth – in his eventual mating haze – would be discerning enough in choosing his partners. But, in the end, offspring was all that counted.
Yes, yes, Hojo thought to himself. By the end of the day, Sephiroth was going to fathering grandchildren for him.
- - c C c - -
It was that time of the month again that practically every SOLDIER dreaded: their monthly mako shots, or better known as 'face time with Professor Hojo'. Meeting with the good doctor only took five minutes and the injection itself was a little under twenty seconds, but it was as if a lifetime went by before any of the SOLDIERs were allowed to leave the 67th floor lab, veins burning with a mako surge.
It went in the order of First, Seconds and Thirds, with Sephiroth being tended to privately. It used to be the other way around, but many lab technicians found that things went a lot smoother when the officers went first to get their shots. Unfortunately, things usually got out of hand during the monthly treatments with so many SOLDIERs going in and out that the lab had to employ extra staff, mainly to deal with the paperwork and the heavy lifting (also as extra security). Sometimes, if they proved to be proficient enough, the 'lucky few' would also help during the injections.
Quite a few grunts from the army were being called to report to the laboratories, quickly put to work on making photocopies of the medical forms, sorting through medical files and setting up the examination rooms; menial labour that basically anyone could do.
This month there had been twelve infantrymen asked to lend a hand, among them a bright young man by the name of Cloud Strife.
Cloud had been a grunt for a little over a year now, having left his hometown of Nibelheim at the tender age of fourteen during winter. He had just celebrated his sixteenth birthday a few days prior, an event that slipped him by rather unfestively due to being assigned to patrol for twelve hours straight. But he didn't mind. Minerva only knew how grateful he was not to be in the barracks where several bullies were lying in wait to help him 'celebrate' reaching majority. Unlike in Nibelheim, where majority age was eighteen years old, in Midgar the bar had been lowered to sixteen.
No one could really blame him for happily celebrating it while strolling through Sector Eight in relative peace. And due to the extra help needed during preparations for the monthly injections, Cloud had been enlisted early on in the lab and managed to further escape possible harassment from his peers.
The young infantryman was assigned to handle the mako transfers from the main lab to the main medical examination rooms some floors down. The injections had to be mixed by the lab technicians before they could be used on the SOLDIERs and had to be handled carefully, for mako was always volatile no matter its current state. It was diluted enough to enter the human body, but not so much for anything else. In the large glass containers that Cloud carefully pushed on a cart, the mako glowed an eerie green and bubbled almost angrily.
This would be the last transfer and then he was expected to help with the sign-in tables and the medical forms.
Amongst the open vats – wasn't that a bit of a biohazard? Cloud mused to himself – was one special container that had to be carefully carried on the cart. It was the mako serum specifically engineered for Sephiroth and no one else. The quantity was larger than the necessary amount needed, but it was better to be safe than sorry, he supposed. He was to go last, so his was the only container that was left unmarked. Hojo would be the only one to handle the general at any rate.
The laboratory was a rush of activity as scientists and doctors – as well as the occasional grunt – ran back and forth trying to get everything ready in time. Sometimes poor Cloud would be jostled by someone who wasn't looking, shaking the push cart along with its precious cargo.
There was a tiny spill from Sephiroth's mako container that made Cloud's heart jump, but it was only a few drops that escaped. He breathed a sigh of relief and wondered at the lack of common sense in scientists to develop a way to transport diluted mako without the dangers of having them accidentally spill. Last month the grunts who did the mako transfer suffered greatly, because they had knocked over at least half of the containers, which resulted in the injections being delayed. The blond didn't particularly feel like getting flayed by Hojo, of all people. If he could get through this day with all body parts intact, he would be immensely happy.
However, his helmet was bothering him. Maybe it was the way his hair kept getting caught in the mesh or the small parts of his helmet, but he always felt uncomfortable wearing it, despite it being part of uniform; while they had the choice to wear it (or not) while on duty, it wasn't completely necessary and was more of a precaution against danger or injury.
Since he was not in a construction zone or out on a mission to eradicate a monster nest, Cloud decided it safe to remove his headgear.
Undoing the clasp that kept it on, the teenager put both hands on the helmet and pulled upwards, hissing when his hair got caught. Again. Knowing it was going to be a little while, he tried untangling his blond locks from the helmet, finding that it got caught in a little screw. He tugged at the trapped hair, wincing at the pain he felt with every pull at his scalp.
Going about things with the gentle approach wasn't working and the infantryman had no time to be wasting making an idiot of himself in the middle of a busy lab.
So, it was with great reluctance, that Cloud Strife yank the helmet off of his head, pulling not a few strands with him. He cursed softly as his loose hairs fell down, down to the glowing mako unbeknownst to him as he was too wrapped up in his own pain. Busy rubbing the sore spot on his head, the young man failed to notice how his hair made contact with the mako engineered specifically for Sephiroth, sizzling as the mako burned and assimilated it, changing the usual bright green to a sort of cerulean blue.
Unaware of the special chemical reaction between the aphrodisiac-laced mako and his lost hair, Cloud wheeled the containers to main examination room and left it there for the others to deal with. The transferral done, all Cloud had left to do now was run errands like photocopying release forms and then it was off to lunch!
As Cloud left the examination room, whistling a jaunty, merry tune to himself for a job well done, another grunt had made an appearance. One of the lab assistants had asked him to grab one of the containers so they could immediately prep for the first batch of SOLDIERs coming in. Shuffling around, unsure which one of the many glass vats he should take with him, he bumped into Cloud's cart, which knocked over the mako meant for Sephiroth. The already tainted contents mixed together with the larger container of mako, which the grunt thought would be a good choice in the end.
Lugging it towards the scientist, the nameless grunt had no idea that he had sealed the fate of many SOLDIERs as well as the unsuspecting infantryman who had only been legal for a little less than a week.
Author's Note: So! This will be something of a comedy as well as some kind of…romance, to stretch the term a little. Poor Cloud's gonna have quite a few SOLDIERs coming after him. I wonder who will suffer first? We have Angeal and Genesis in First class and we have Kunsel, Luxiere and Zack in Third class. Also, anyone else who happens to be around for the crazy – like Lazard. Or Rufus. Or Reno. XD Will eventually work up to Sephiroth.
So, who should be the 'lucky guy' to go first? And any requests? When I mean everyone in Shinra, I literally mean everyone in Shinra, so if you guys got some random crack (because this whole fanfic will be just crack and nothing else) pairing, don't hesitate to mention it!
Also, yes, not what I usually write, but I wanted to do something different from Three SOLDIERs and a Lady. Hopefully I don't offend anyone too badly.
Thank you for reading!