A Spectroscope-

Prologue - Further

Archive-able?: Yes, only if you email me first.

The cell was cold and the light was harsh, a stark and frozen look to match the feelings that hung in the air. There was no shadows to be found in the room, expect those cast by a figure who laid on her side and even those where faint under the intensity of the light. Still and deeply chilled, the woman made no attempt to curl her body to warm herself, all she did was lay in the position she landed after being hurdled into the wicked white room.

Her dark auburn hair shimmered as it moved gently from fans aerating the area as well as the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Laying upon her belly, her hair covered her tall and slender frame like a blanket, and her arms extended outward. Delicate fingers curled as if she had once entertained the idea of balling her hands into fists, as if once there was a fighting spirit in her instead of a broken one.

Time did not matter nor did she have means to track it. The lightning never changed and the schedule of her keepers were too erratic to track. Part of her was beginning to forget what it was like to be human; at least have the rights of one. All she was to them was an animal. They never spoke to her, fed her without utensils in a simple bowl with a plastic cup of water, and from the sheer lack of content made her slowly forget what some would consider normal human reactions.

Her left hand twitched, the muscles tightening and her nails lightly grazed the smooth floor.

Was she human?

She ran her fingers back against floor, barely recognizing the ability to feel.

Was she alive?

Part of her was curious. Had she these thoughts before? How many times had she, if she did? Did ever have an answer or was it just as the room was- a blank. A blankness and numbness. If she had been human, part of her being rationalized, she was becoming not so human. The ability to comprehend, to think, and to feel was slowly slipping away. Was this… a madness someone- who was it?- told her about?

Forcing her eyes to close, the woman tried to force herself into unconsciousness before a loud beep broke her silence. The bright emerald eyes opened and she peered curiously towards the flood of shadows and blue into her world. Moving to her knees as she saw two figures enter the room, she back peddled against a wall and stared at the new comers fearfully.

"I told you, Hojo, we should have added something more then the cell and tests to her routine." The kind one spoke in his soothing tone as he knelt by her. His hand was warm against her forehead and she leaned into the touch. He smelled of cinnamon and medicines.

There was a clear sneer and she almost stopped breathing before Hojo replied, "Gast, she is an experiment. She should be thankful we're keeping her alive. There is a reason why her kind died out."

"Hojo," snapped Gast, his hand stroking her back soothingly. "She is the last of her kind, the last of our hopes AND the President's!"

"Indeed. Indeed she is," the rumpled looking younger doctor gave her a chilling smile. "Shall we begin the introduction and observations now? She seems she gathered enough wits to pretend to be fairly human."

Standing to his feet again, Gast gave the woman a sad look and turned his attention back to his coworker. Looks were exchanged and Hojo merely shrugged at his senior while Gast gave a small snort. Gesturing then to someone behind Hojo, the older man turned to the woman again. "Ifalna, this is another one of your kind. However, he is just a child. We are hoping you will teach him about your kind."

Her eyes were huge and child-like as she stared at him. Ifalna's hair hung around her slender figure in a silken veil and it was one of the few times Gast could swear she was no more of a girl in her mid teens then a woman who had already lived and experienced centuries. Forcing himself to see the darkness in her eyes, the harden of an innocence, something seemed to lessen the wrongness of her detainment. Day by day, for him, it was getting harder to fixate himself on exotic and un-human of her. The doctor was beginning to view her as a person.

"A.. boy?"

"Yes, his name is Sephiroth. Would you like to meet him?" Inquired the scientist as a third doctor with a very young child entered the room.

Nodding suspiciously, Ifalna watched as the other man approached her with a child with silver hair. He was strikingly pretty and she could tell his beauty would be a haunting one once he got older. Extending a pale and cool hand towards him, she gave him a gentle smile. One of her own. Noticing the boy's own fear and uncertainty, she hummed soothingly and gave a small rhythm to her words, "Adeo mihi, exquisitus parvulus."

The boy froze and the woman offered both her hands as she repeated herself. "Adeo mihi, exquisitus parvulus."

Both of the fey people turned to the doctors for a moment, before going back to gaze at one another. Giving her tone more of a song quality, echoes of a her childhood's lullabies, she said more firmly in her kind voice, "Adeo mihi, exquisitus parvulus. . . Adeo mihi, Sephiroth, mihi exquisitus parvulus."

Responding to song tone, the child took several shy and unbalanced steps towards her. The long silver hair was almost the same shade as his skin and his teal-green eyes seemed desperate and feral. With a unlimited amount of sympathy she watched how much space the boy gave Hojo as he fumbled towards her, she continued to sing softly at him. It stirred her emotions as she could see tears lining those long lashes as his and when he was close enough, she jerked him into a tight embrace. She kissed his forehead, murmuring words of their language into his ear.

Like a mother reunited with a lost child, she rocked him in her arms against her chest. The thin material of her gown was soothing against his cheek and both found something they both craved in their first contact. A child, who until then knew not what affection was, and a woman who was forgetting what it was like to be a person. It was an emotionally charged moment and Gast moved to the doors with a sharp gesture to his comrades to follow. The eerie glow that returned to Ifalan's eyes spoke volumes that they were no longer welcomed in the room or her immediate presence. He knew Hojo would love to challenge that, just to see a reaction, but he did not want to risk a traumatizing ordeal with the child.

Moving to the observation deck, the scientists watch with rapid fascination as the woman assumed the role of a nurturing mother. The child, scared and confused, responded well to her affection and alien tongue. An iridescent glow returned to their female experiment's eyes and a soft glow made her skin not so pallid. To several men and women in the group, it made them happy while the others found it simply amazing she could respond so like a human. There was a strong division in the group, mostly between the head of the project- Senior Professor-Doctor Gast and his long time pupil, Doctor Hojo.

"I think I'd like to arrange for them to be kept together," Spoke Gast into the second hour of their observation. He was rapidly making notes, trying to decipher the strange tongue that their female spoke to the child. Sliding a filled paper to one of the many interns, he occasionally spied looks towards Hojo who seemed more fixated on what was occurring with the boy.

The black haired scientist paused in the middle of his writing, without looking up, he mused, "It seems it would be beneficial to Sephiroth. The more he could learn about the Promise Land, his heritage, and bond with a female of his own kind, the better. After all, it will be good to have the potential of possible breeding if we need another subject."

A woman gave Hojo a startled look. "Doctor Hojo, the role is that of a child and a parent between."

"Did I speak to you?" Hojo looked up, his brown eyes hard behind the thick frames of his glasses. "I do not believe I did, so shut up. We pay you to obey us, not to think."

"She does make a point, Hojo."

"Gast, we will overcome that hurdle when it arises." He gave his mentor a tight smile, a glimpse of the youth that Gast knew and tutored.

Days evolved into months, then a year past. Ifalna was aware of time again and watching the young boy grow under her care. With kind hands and sweet words, she taught him the basics of their tongue and what she could recall of their culture. Scientists rapidly jolted down what she said and sometimes they translated what she spoke of. Most of the younger scientists and assistants, who finally witnessed a spark in alien woman, were excited and almost humane in their treatment of the subjects. Gast, in seeing some semblance of joy in the woman's face, decided he would try to speak to the woman directly on her knowledge.

Hojo originally wanted to be the one to try one-on-one conversation with her to voice some of the differences of her and Sephiroth's abilities. But Gast knew his assistant had vastly changed since the discovery of a second alien female. Originally Gast had hoped when he gave the recovery of her to Hojo, he would make it something for him to launch into an independent study and they could swap their discoveries. But the bright, hopeful young man returned obsessive with his discovery. Once he began his independent research, Hojo slipped further into a strange darkness, and led to the maltreatment and death of two their fellow researchers as well as a bodyguard.

There was more to the story, the Genesis, of their ordeal. But the second female was locked away, kept from Hojo's grasps and under Gast's personal control. Only cells would be taken from her, the sample taken from a third party, and never from the same person would it come. But from the monstrous ordeal came Sephiroth. Hojo said the boy was a child of the alien female and a man on the staff of the research. Gast asked no questions, already horrified, and gave control of boy to Hojo with the stipulation that he would be monitoring research.

"The boy claims he is unable to feel the 'connection' that Ifalna speaks of, that he has no call from the Promise Land," muttered Hojo angrily to Gast while they reviewed their notes. "Make sure she answers this. I believe the true difference between their powers is just a matter of heritage and age… but with the mako therapy that Sephiroth is receiving, it should be rectified soon."

"I will." Assured Gast as he left the room towards the small interview area that he had put together. Opening the heavy door, he entered the small and blue room where Ifalna sat perched nervously upon her chair. She had her hair back in a ponytail and was clad a simple green dress. "Hello Ifalna."

"Hello."

"I have some questions for you."

Ifalna nodded, peering around the room as she began to answer some of his general questions. Most of the answers were ambiguous and she seemed content with leaving Gast frustrated and with even more questions. No matter how many times he asked for clarity, she would only smile at him and stare past him with a strange look in her eyes.

"And why does Sephiroth lack the ability to connect to the group conscious your race seems to comprise of?" Gast's tone held a thin note of frustration but question made Ifalna sit up straighter and turn her attention back to back to him. Her eyes met his as she bit her lower lip and he felt himself lean forward with curiosity of her reaction.

"There can be times when a child has problems learning it when there is so few about. I am the only other of his kind and there lacks many others of us to bring forth a community to connect to." Her grasp of their language was rough, but she was getting better. They had recovered her in Wutai. "Mostly the mama through parent bond teaches the child to expand themselves, to feel for others. Sephiroth did not have this. It makes me curious to hear what parent was of Cetra blood."

"So you know he is of mixed blood?"

Gesturing with her hand, Ifalna nodded once. "It is not hard." She hesitated, as if she knew something but lacked the ability to communicate what it was. "Most Cetra of full blood can commune with no teacher if the desire from another Cetra is strong and the projection willful. He lacks this and there is something much else that seems to be amiss."

It was strange hearing the woman so talkative. Her voice was low, hypnotic that kept to a rhythm that she seemed to pace her entire being to. Even after years of her captivity, she retained a strong Wutai accent and mannerism on how she spoke. But more so, there was apparent to him she looked more human then he realized. That silver of her eyes were more white, that the pupils were black and lacked a dark forest hue to them, and that her blood could almost be red instead of a dark maroon.

"Amiss?" Gast blinked and forced himself to return his attention to his notes. "And it was his mother who was the Cetra, according to Doctor Hojo."

"So strange is it then that he is unable to communicate then with me." The emerald eyes darkened and Ifalna reflected on her thoughts before humming loudly. Drumming her fingers across the desk, she stopped and gave Gast an intense look. "His mother's womb must have been tainted and that taint infected him. I… never mind, but yes. He has a taint within him."

"A taint? Are you implying the child is ill in some way?" Alarm was crisp in his voice and the doctor wondered what Hojo would due to the child to find out his specimen was imperfect, a failure of his hopes, and a waste of so many lives to bring him about in the world. "How will this effect him long term, Ifalna?"

"Sephiroth, mihi exquisitus parvulus," sharply replied the Cetra, with concern strong in her voice as her eyes gave off a flare of light. "Is healthy. The taint is many among those who lived after the Crisis, before they were killed off by your country's spread of population and pollution. Or hunted down to be killed as witches or monsters. Sephiroth, mihi exquisitus parvulus, is innocent of what flaws his genetics gave him, but will be strong in many other ways."

Gast knew she was hiding something. She had mentioned the Crisis and the taint. He himself as witnessed on just how far the taint had gone in areas around Mideel. There had been translations of Cetra lore he recovered from tribes around Cosmo Canyon. "There is more, Ifalna, you must tell me-"

She spat in his face. "I will give you no reason to kill an innocent since he imperfect. Your kind murdered my kind and keep me here like I am nothing but an animal. I owe you nothing, nequam vir. NOTHING. Now return me to my cell, to my phasmatis parvulus."

Slamming his hands into the table, Gast stood and gave a barking order for the woman to be taken from his presence. What she knew, she would not tell him now or perhaps ever. He understood, absolutely, in that moment with her. She hated him, hated mankind, and Gast… could not blame her. No matter how badly it was to interfere with his work, he could not bring himself to hate a woman that he and his company hunted down, captured, and kept as nothing more then as a specimen. Something twisted in him and such emotions flooded him as he stood there.

The hate was so clear in her eyes, the rage sharp in her voice, and silent cry for freedom so retching it broke his heart. For a the split second their eyes met towards the end, the very misery of her current existence sounded in his being and consumed him. He wanted to scream, to show her the sky then, to prove her wrong that not all men were evil. But… he was. Hojo was. Shinra Incorporated was ran by hundreds of them with the most vile soul on top. Her feelings should not be restricted or punished. Gast, himself, should accept his role as the villain.

"But why am I crying?"

The sins of the parents are often the legacy they leave for their children.

With that thought, Gast felt sick and allowed himself a scream.

Author's notes:

I am done editing all the chapters. Be WARNED that this has references to Crisis Core and may contain (semi)spoilers. That being said, most said spoilers are the easily googled ones as well and WILL be clearly marked. X.x Thank you again for your patience!