Chapter Nine : Gemini - Mothers Musings

Lillaeth Strife

Lillaeth Strife was sitting next to the bed of her sleeping son, watching and waiting. It had been a stressful year for her. First the strange girl-thing setting her village on fire, she had lost her home and many irreplaceable mementoes of her late husband that day. Shortly afterwards the kidnapping of her only son and his disappearance for about six months. She had gone to the shrine of the mountain spirits almost daily, lightening candles and incense. And after Cloud had finally been found, he had been at death's door for three weeks and she had not been allowed to see him. Even after his condition had stabilised, she had been unable to see much of him. Now, that he was due to be released in two weeks time, it was the first time she could see him truly, could see the things the mad, vengeful scientist had done to him.

Of course she had heard about it, had read the descriptions of what had been done to her little Cloud, but it was different to see it with her own eyes.

Hojo had tried to create Cetra/Jenova hybrids, using both the DNA of the Jenova creature and the halfcetra Aeris, but his first tries had been failures. More than a hundred of his unwilling testsubjects had died, driven into madness and finally death as the incompatible cells had raged in their bodies. Cetra and Jenova DNA were no compatible to each other. Then he found out, an accident helping him, that he could use the DNA of other creatures as a sort of buffer to stop the cells from destroying each other.

Of course there were side-effects but Hojo didn't care, in fact he encouraged them. He sent out his helpers to collect samples from different but mostly from strong creatures.

And still, most of his test-persons died, their bodies unable to deal with the changes.

Cloud was one of the lucky 25 that had made it. The changes the buffer-creatures DNA had wrought in him weren't as big as those of other survivors and still... Cloud's human ears were gone, replaced with round feline ears that were poking through his unruly hair. Soft, almost invisible whiskers had sprouted on his face, his fingernails had been replaced by retractable claws and... he had a tail. Covered in fur the same golden colour as his hair, it was twitching and twisting behind him in his sleep.

Her poor little Cloud, he would be different for the rest of his life. And yet, she was happy and thankful that he had survived the ordeal. He was all she had left of his father, Cirrus Strife.1

And no matter what, he was her son and she would love him, for the rest of her life.

Elmyra Grainsborough

She was looking into the crib again, looking at her miracles. Marius Kohabiel and Jessaia Teiaiel, two children of two different fathers. Two children she had never expected to have, but that she would never give up, not for anything.

After her husband had died in the Wutai war, she had given up her hopes of an own child. Then fate had dropped Aeris into her lap and she had thought the Planet had heard her pleas.

Aeris had been her daughter in all but blood, her little flowerchild, the gift of the planet had been stolen from the same type of people, that had already stolen her husband from her.

ShinRa had taken so much from her, the scientists had even taken her freedom. Against her will she had been used in an experiment. She had hated them.

Marius blinked sleepily and smiled a small baby-smile. She smiled back at him and gently lifted him out of his crib.

While she hated the scientists that had stolen her old life and her daughter, she couldn't hate the result of the experiment. No, she loved them. They were her little babies, her miracles. And thanks to a miracle of the Planet, they were hers.

Oh yes, hers. She remembered, it had been about a month after the Nibelheim-disaster, a month after she had been released into the custody of the two highest ShinRa generals, the two fathers of her little ones.

At first, it had been tense, very tense between the generals and the pregnant woman. The very angry pregnant woman.

The first time was hard, very hard for all of them. She had hated them. They were the symbol of all things ShinRa, they were the generals of the war had husband had died in, they were working for the company that had stolen her daughter and her freedom.

She had raged. She had thrown things at them and screamed words that made veteran SOLDIER's blush.

And then it had started. Her wrinkles had started to smooth over, had gotten smaller and vanished. She had felt stronger, more energised. Her eyes had gotten more intense and after two months her pupils had turned from her normal round forms into slits.

After that they had noticed that, the generals had asked her to go to the scientists for the next check up. Relunclantly she had agreed. If one of them went with her.

That had been an eye-opener. Obviously the generals didn't liked the scientists either. They had tensed up every time they had seen an injection needle, every time one of the white clothed scientists had gotten into their personal space. And yet, they had gone with her. One of them had held her hand while the other had glared at the doctor, when he drew her blood.

The results were world-shaking. The doctors found Jenova-cells in her blood, as well as traces of another DNA-strand. Something absolutely foreign in the absolutely human body of Elmyra Grainsborough.

She had felt like someone had pulled the ground out from under her feet, like her body was something foreign, something not-her, alien.

The answer had been a relief for her. The children growing inside of her carried Jenova-cells and the Cetragene. Through the umbilialcords and the placentas they were connected with her. The blood of her unborn children, the blood that carried the genes, were in contact with her own and slowly the foreign DNA-strands had migrated into her system. Then Jenova-cells had started to spread, not unlike the flu. And it was still happening. She was changing. She was becoming whatever her children were, was becoming truly related to them.

It had taken her time to truly realise this, to make her peace with it.

At first she had hated the thought, had feared to become a monster. But time living with the generals had tempered that fear and the first time she had felt her little ones kick inside of her, her fears had evaporated. Whatever it was, it was coming from her children and she couldn't feel anything else but love for them. She loved her children and slowly she learned to love the gift they were giving her.

Marius started to become loud and to search-suck at her breast. Hungry.

She sat down, opened her blouse and unhook the nursing bar. Her little one barely needed help guiding him to the 'milk bar'.

As he started to suck, she relaxed and stopped thinking about the past, about all that had happened.

Now she was a mother and for the moment, at peace. These feelings she had yearned for, for a long time.

Jenova

Her spiderweb was getting bigger, stronger, with every clone her deluded little scientist produced. She was pleased, tapping into the minds of her puppets as she healed in her tank.

Her firstborn had nearly killed her, when he blew up that reactor, but some of her parts had managed to survive and now she was regenerating, returning to her old glory.

It still angered her that the firstborns were out of her grasp, also, most of the Jenova/Cetra hybrids the scientist had experimented with had been failures. She was barley able to feel them. But his last avenue, the grafting of her firstborns DNA into living human creatures, had become a success. True, as soon as she tapped into their minds, as soon as she programmed them into her obedient puppets the personality of the humans was utterly destroyed and the clones became unable to survive in a human social environment, but she didn't care. It didn't matter to her, as long as her little puppets could fight.

But she needed more, more puppets, more power and more time to heal her injuries. She needed to become the Calamity from the skies once more and this time she would smite the planet.

The Planet

The Planet was worried. Their lifeblood was stolen by greedy short-sighted children and the influence of the Calamity of the skies was growing like a malignious cancer. They were sick and they knew that it all depended on two half-Jenovan men, who were working for the greedy ones. But they were their only hope, they and their friends.

They reached out, touching the minds of the two. The minds were calm, ordered and rational. And there was something else, a fierce determination to protect their friends and loved ones.

And the Planet could feel a tiny seed of hope taking roots and starting to grow.

tbc

1 Cirrus: latin for "curl of hair"

Cirrus Clouds

thin and wispy

The most common form of high-level clouds are thin and often wispy cirrus clouds. Typically found at heights greater than 20,000 feet (6,000 meters), cirrus clouds are composed of ice crystals that originate from the freezing of supercooled water droplets. Cirrus generally occur in fair weather and point in the direction of air movement at their elevation.