Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
Rufus probably.
He's the kind of ruthless asshole who can exploit a mass murder on the corporate ladder.
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 (Young Justice/Gamer/Multicross OC)
- Thread starter Mister Ficser
- Start date
He's the kind of ruthless asshole who can exploit a mass murder on the corporate ladder.
- Location
- Here
He should pick a spot and build a massive self sufficient city that has fabricated lore worshipping moogles. Then let it get discovered and watch the confusion!
- Location
- USA
Thanks for the chapter! Merry Christmas!
Reading that first part had me thinking 'Wait, doesn't Al basically have infinite wealth? Could he not perform a hostile takeover of the company?'
He'd then have to deal with running a company.
Plus his wealth is not in liquid funds, which would devalue everything if he were to sell.
- Location
- Spain
Been rereading the last few episodes:
While flying toward their destination:
"You know, dad; if we had a gil for every time we went to save Gaia, we would have two gil, which it is not a lot, but isn't it strange It happened twice?"
Alchemist, thinking of that incompetent Gaia goddess, couldn't help emit a deep, slow, gutural growl in anger.
Somewhere else, a green platypus wearing a tiny brown fedora felt a shiver travel his spine, and looked around suspiciously. He felt as if someone has intruded on his intelectual property, as if someone has stolen his skit. After checking that there was no one around, he removed the fedora, scratched his head, put it on again, and went on his way. After all, the tri-state area was not going to save itself from his nemesis.
A whistled tune crossed the room.
Ifalna stared, blank incomprehension on her face, while Alex eyes bugged out and looked around, completely flabbergasted.
While flying toward their destination:
"You know, dad; if we had a gil for every time we went to save Gaia, we would have two gil, which it is not a lot, but isn't it strange It happened twice?"
Alchemist, thinking of that incompetent Gaia goddess, couldn't help emit a deep, slow, gutural growl in anger.
Somewhere else, a green platypus wearing a tiny brown fedora felt a shiver travel his spine, and looked around suspiciously. He felt as if someone has intruded on his intelectual property, as if someone has stolen his skit. After checking that there was no one around, he removed the fedora, scratched his head, put it on again, and went on his way. After all, the tri-state area was not going to save itself from his nemesis.
A whistled tune crossed the room.
Ifalna stared, blank incomprehension on her face, while Alex eyes bugged out and looked around, completely flabbergasted.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Is Robin (or, for that matter, any of the other Titans) ever going to actually ask Alchemist about the nature of the goblins that he sacrificed and why it didn't actually bother him to do so? Al did say that they were near-mindless monsters whose only concerns were raping, killing, and devouring humans (and not necessarily in that order), but he never did say why he believed that, nor did he mention that they were literally homunculi made from plants that are literally programmed to be that way, without enough of anything approaching sapience to change.
Robin might see things differently if Al explains that they're basically magically encoded computer programs without enough intelligence or self-awareness to alter their behavior.
Robin might see things differently if Al explains that they're basically magically encoded computer programs without enough intelligence or self-awareness to alter their behavior.
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Definitely needs an L but it would be much more interesting of it was done like something straight out of a looney tunes skit. He won't unnecessarily lose progress but nobody is coming out of one of those without emotional damage from embarrassment and frustration
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Would the item customization from runefactory 4(one I remember best) overlap or overwrite the customization from Star ocean ? Because in runefactory crafting ."When using extra materials in the crafting process, the created item inherits a maximum of 3 of those items, gaining their upgrade effects and or abilities. This causes the name of the item to turn blue" (from the wiki) , there are a few other rules and ways to manipulate things but while very similar to star ocean crafting it's also different.
Chapter 336, FF7 Early Years
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 3.3.6
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of wot you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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Sitting in a sports bar named the 'Gilded Feather' on the Sector Five Plate of Midgar, Ifalna and Aerith were being bombarded by the uncomfortably loud music blasting through some speakers near the opposite end of the facility.
Alchemist, Alec Mist, was nearby helping his own daughter with a racing game of some sort. One that had a two-person booth where the players could sit on fake motorcycles to play the game. He wasn't playing the game with her, just helping her work out the controls before he left her a bag of gil.
The trip had been Ifalna's request. Alec was a wonderful cook, really, but Ifalna had spent the better part of the last decade feeling like a prisoner and she wanted out. She wanted to see the sky. She wanted to feel the wind.
She wanted to hear the planet.
Listening as Aerith sniffled and looked over the menu, Midgar carried a bevy of sounds. The city itself was a wound on the planet in a way wholly and horribly unlike Icicle Inn was and the planet groaned in perpetual discomfort as the parasitic Mako Reactors drank of Gaia's blood. Underneath of that, some great beast slumbered.
It... was a strange sound, truly. Whatever the entity was, it would toss and turn in its sleep. Grumbling and snoring. And each time it did, the power grid of Midgar would fluctuate. Surging and ebbing in tune with whatever the creature was.
Hojo had found it fascinating. He demanded an explanation from her for every fluctuation on a seismograph.
Ifalna was quietly but perpetually terrified. She didn't know what the creature was but she had her suspicions.
And Alchemist, somehow, inexplicably, sounded similar to the great beast below Midgar.
Aerith had confessed, one night as they were falling asleep, that she found it comforting that the madman reminded her of the sleepy friend from below.
The woman looked up as Alchemist returned to the table. He pulled out his chair and sat down before he pulled a menu over to himself.
She didn't know what to make of him. He was simple, direct and straightforward. But he had power, more than she could wrap her head around, and he was willing to flex it to get what he wanted.
"So," Ifalna began to ask, to test the waters. "What do you have planned after this?"
"My schedule is kind of up in the air," the man admitted as he flipped through the pages of the menu. "I'm waiting until Aerith finishes recovering before we start looking for a new home for you two. Then I need to talk with Yuffie's birth parents. I probably need to go talk with Gillian, a former ShinRa employee. I..." the man sighed as he flipped another page. "Need to go and do something about Lucrecia, too. Then there's Vincent, he has Chaos WEAPON crammed inside of him- Still no idea how that happened- And finally I need to have a talk with Minerva."
Ifalna's lips thinned into a line as she considered that. She didn't recognize any of the names except for Chaos WEAPON, which was a nebulous memory from her own childhood, listening to stories from her grandmother.
She assumed they were all former ShinRa employees, however, judging by the pattern.
"Something about the meeting from a few days back?" Ifalna asked, alluding to the deaths of the many executives that once ran the militaristically prosperous company.
"No, nothing of the sort," Alchemist denied before he twisted in his seat to look at Yuffie. Then he resumed his original pose. "Well, maybe with Minerva. Everyone else? Literally just need to talk."
That was... not what Ifalna expected.
"Hey there!" a new voice, far too chirpy and happy, asked as a waitress dressed in a ridiculous outfit called as she approached. The woman wore a pair of very tight shorts, a half-shirt that bared her midriff, wristlets that might have, possibly, been an imitation of a chocobo's wings and a little ball cap shaped like a beak. All of it in yellow or orange. "I'm ChocobocoLina and I'll be your server today! Today's special is the Chocoboco Boneless Wings! Have y'all decided on what you'd like or do y'all need a few minutes?"
Alec looked over to Ifalna, then down to Aerith before he shrugged.
"Can we start with two orders of the fried cheese?" the man asked, getting a nod as the skimpily dressed server wrote that down on a notepad. "And I'll have a large order of the boneless wings, sweet and spicy with the onion rings, please. Yuffie, the kid on the game over there, will take a... also a large order of the wings with authentic Wutaian seasoning and fries."
"Sure thing, sug, and for the ladies?"
"Can I get the chicken salad with vinegar dressing?" Ifalna asked.
Alec was a wonderful cook. He was. But Ifalna had noted that the man tended to cook foods that were both heavy and greasy. Which was fine for the level of activity that he and Yuffie engaged in but it left Ifalna feeling unpleasantly heavy later at night.
"Um... can I have the... cream and chicken pasta?" Aerith asked, sending an uncertain glance towards Alec. The man just nodded and smiled at her, drawing a smile back from the girl.
"'Course you can!" ChocobocoLina told the girl. "I'll get all of that right in and get that fried cheese started right up for ya!"
"Fantastic, thank you," Alec told the woman before she sauntered off, a surprisingly open smile on her face.
Ifalna watched her leave before quietly sighing.
Life in captivity had not been kind to Ifalna's body. The only reason she didn't have the waistline to compare with some of the scientists she'd seen in Hojo's lab had been due to the very, very strict diet that she'd been kept to.
"So," Ifalna started once she was sure that their server was out of earshot. "You were saying something about finding a place for Aerith and I?"
"Right," Alec said as he leaned forward over the table, his arms crossing over it. "Eventually I'll be heading home and it... wouldn't be a good place for you two. It has an abundance of warring elemental factions called Parliaments and... I think they'd probably try and draw the both of you into their fights. None of them take the word 'No' very well and all of them are very willing to kill for the slightest of slights."
A... war between the elements themselves?
It sounded utterly outlandish.
But Alchemist was an outlandish individual who'd backed up his claims with proof and action alike, so she took him at his word.
"I don't think I could return to Icicle Inn," Ifalna admitted as she tapped one finger against the table. "It was fine. Once. But..."
It was where she'd met Gast. It was where Aerith had been born.
It was where her husband had been murdered. Where she and her daughter had been taken prisoner as the townspeople stood by and did nothing.
"I was sort of thinking of a place called Nibelheim. At least, once I've dealt with things there," Alec admitted to her. "Quiet place, up in the mountains north of Cosmo Canyon. Also surprisingly close to a place called Gongaga, a village in a coastal jungle."
"And places with reactors," Ifalna quietly noted.
"Not too many places without reactors," Alec countered, though his voice lacked heat or hostility. "Pretty much limited to Wutai and they're the next warfront once ShinRa finishes their current battles."
Those... were some good points.
Ifalna didn't like recognizing them, no...
But she had no desire to try and raise Aerith in a war front.
Besides. Wutai did not like outsiders. Even Ifalna knew that.
"And if I want to go to Cosmo Canyon?" Ifalna asked.
"Then we can go and talk to Bugenhagen and get you set up in Cosmo Canyon," Alec said, as though someone could just waltz on in to Cosmo Canyon and demand an audience with their most secretive master.
Ifalna knew that couldn't be accomplished. Not easily. Hojo had complained, long and loud, about the dimwitted mystics denying his most genius self when he'd attempted to see them.
Still. Alec seemed to believe he could do it. She wasn't sure if she wanted to push the issue, wasn't sure if she wanted to raise Aerith in such an environment.
"What's special about Cozmo Canyon?" Aerith asked, her voice still nasally.
"It's a place where people go to learn," Alec explained. "But they don't do very much with what they learn, so they don't actually expand what they know very well. They're not wrong about what they do know but they're very insular and kind of cultish."
...Which was a very fair explanation but Ifalna had the feeling that she'd be explaining what a cult was to Aerith tonight.
"As for Gon-" Alec began to say before cutting himself off abruptly.
Ifalna felt confused for a moment before she noticed that the upbeat and chirpy music in the restaurant had cut off and the televisions around the large room had all changed from chocobo races to a podium upon a stage, the symbol of the ShinRa company on the podium as well as the background.
A young man, a very young man, stepped out from the left side of the stage towards the podium. He had short, messy blond hair and a pair of cruel, intense blue eyes that practically shone under the lights. Everything he wore was white, from his long coat to his shirt and even his pants. The only color upon him would be the black belts that seemed wholly unnecessary.
Behind him, another young man, though slightly older than the first, took up a position behind the first man and to his left. This one had slightly longer blond hair and a pair of tinted glasses that muddied his eyes. Unlike the first, he wore what appeared to be a normal, albeit fancy, business suit in dark blue.
"Greetings, Midgar," the boy onscreen said into the microphone of the podium. "My name is Rufus ShinRa, the newly instated president of the ShinRa Electric Power Company following the abrupt retirement of my father, Leopold ShinRa..."
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Alchemist watched the boy onscreen talk, sipping at his water all the while. The boy's speech talked on and on about the progress that ShinRa had made under his father's careful, guiding hand. He didn't mention the various directors or executives that were gone. He didn't mention the death of 'I was only following orders' Verdot.
No mention at all of the status of the SOLDIER project.
Though, he did mention bringing a swift end to the Rhadoran conflict. Which sounded nice.
No mention at all of using fear to control the populace.
A bit strange, Alchemist thought, but the little psychopath probably hadn't been juiced up on Jenova yet. And Lazard hadn't been guzzling Angeal's DNA at Hollander's orders yet, either.
They... might actually end up being productive members of society!
Probably not. Almost definitely not. But he wasn't going to worry about them at the moment.
They hadn't contributed to torturing people or murdering entire villages for corporate gain. They were, legitimately, beneath his notice for the moment.
Alchemist sipped his water and sighed.
Could he go back to healing people and trolling the heroes? He liked that. That was comfortable. Instead he'd put himself into enough harrowing situations that he'd gotten strong enough to manhandle societal issues with the oldest, most well-understood tool in the human toolbox.
Violence. It was the only language that a lot of people spoke, though many tried to put a funny accent on it as they tried corporate or bureaucratic violence instead of anything more honest.
On-screen, Rufus was finishing up his little bit as he introduced Lazard, his bastard half-brother. Alchemist had figured the two would be fighting for control over the company.
Maybe they were, outside the public eye.
Maybe they weren't and Alchemist has misjudged how the two would interact once they had the reins of power handed to them, dripping in crimson.
Alchemist sipped his water and sighed again as ChocobocoLina brought up two trays loaded with fried and breaded triangles made of cheese, along with a few little cups of dipping sauce. There'd been too much edge there, he needed to dial it back.
Might have had something to do with the fact that his Bilocation duplicate was all the way over in Nibelhheim, putting down the Makonoids that Hojo had left in the reactor there. It wasn't a hard process. The entities, former humans, were already in a state of extended torpor and he just deepened it with the Sleep spell.
Then a quick hit from Toad and they were... dissolving, inside of their pods.
A mercy killing. For whatever parts of them used to be human.
Alchemist didn't pay attention to the congratulatory messages, telling him how much experience or GP or whatever items he'd gotten. This... was not a situation that warranted such things. Mercy, as meager as it was, was not the same as victory.
Once Alchemist had finished the last of the Makonoids (Two sides. Three tiers. Two pods per tier. Twelve in total.) he turned his attention up to the door marked 'Jenova' and Knocked to let himself in.
Lights along the sides of the room lit up, filling the room with a dim glow as the light penetrated a thin mist that hovered above the metal floor. The room was cold, just barely above frigid, though Alchemist did not shiver or shake.
He'd wondered, at times, if the cold was one of the factors that led to ShinRa putting Jenova and the reactor high up in the mountains of Nibelheim. Or if, perhaps, it was just repurposed and modified after the fact. He'd skimmed through some of the books under the ShinRa mansion but they hadn't held any answers.
Just observations and journals written by madmen that were operating on a fundamentally flawed base of assumptions.
Largely useless.
Largely.
Stepping up next to a dated computer terminal, Alchemist pressed the power button on the monitor and waited for it to fade back into life. Once it had done so, he was met with a prompt for him to enter something into a command line.
Rather than immediately do so, he instead opened his inventory as, in the Gilded Feather, his other half began to enjoy a meal of sweet and spicy food with Yuffie and his guests. Alchemist did not remember the commands to siphon the Mako out of the Jenova Doll, nor did he remember the commands to empty the viral entity's tank.
But he did have a booklet, stolen from ShinRa's onsite archives. Handwritten by the computer technician that had helped put the whole mess together before the man disappeared from the company roster without a trace.
Sifting through the pages, he passed the portion detailing the emergency access code to get through the door to Jenova's chamber and held open the page explaining the different commands and what they did. Carefully, with one hand, Alchemist slowly pecked out-
slave_01_setstate_0
-and listened as the various pumps churned and gurgled, disconnecting and draining the tainted Mako and vitreous not-quite-blood from the Jenova Doll that hung menacingly in front of the tube where Jenova was actually suspended.
Once the doll was fully emptied, that left Alchemist with the task of removing it so he could actually get to the thing inside. He had the tools to remove it, he had the process to disconnect it right in hand...
But, instead, he simply pointed one finger at the metal facsimile and activated one of the myriad powers he'd kept from Earth Bet.
Salvage.
It started slowly. At first, just a few rivets popped out and a few nuts rolled themselves loose. Parts that hadn't been done properly in the first place. But it quickly picked up speed as wire busses pulled themselves loose from their connections and weld seams disconnected without any prompting. The room was filled with the sounds of pops and clacks and tings as metal fell away, as the Jenova Doll was disassembled until, with more of a messy clatter than any great crash, the collection and filtration machine's many components simply sat, useless, atop the thick, heavy pipes that ran Mako through the 'corpse' of Jenova.
And, in doing so, revealed the body of what the Cetra named 'Heaven's Dark Harbinger'.
Honestly? Alchemist found the entity disgusting. On multiple levels.
Jenova had the outward appearance of a human woman. At least, at first glance.
But looking more closely, it became apparent that it was... wrong. The humanoid body was, at Alchemist's guess, just an accessory organ. An appendage, not unlike an insect antennae or the light of an angler fish. It was an attempt at mimicry, made with only a bare hint of understanding.
Somehow, at some point, a gaping hole had been opened in Jenova's midsection and a massive, organic tube stretched out from where her stomach and womb would be that led down to a gigantic heart that lay at the bottom of her chamber. And some time during or after the process, Jenova had maneuvered a length of intestine out through the side of the hole. It had wound back behind the 'woman' and taken on an appearance like a pair of deformed wings or possibly a pair of lungs. A further stretch actually had an eyeball growing from it, rolling to stare directly at him in a way that the eyes on Jenova's head certainly did not do.
One of her breasts was just a featureless lump whilst the other had another eyeball growing out of it, clouded over and blind.
Alchemist shuddered involuntarily as the massive heart beat, once, and the eye upon Jenova's breast rolled about to blindly stare in his direction.
Jenova, Alchemist knew, was not truly sentient. The entity was aware, yes, but in a primitive manner that fit her true nature.
She- It- was a virus. An entity that had fallen from the heavens for the express purpose of infecting Gaia and converting it into a factory to create more of itself. The endgame, Alchemist assumed, was to infect the Lifestream itself, to infect Omega Weapon and to spread herself across the stars as Omega Weapon traveled the cosmos and seeded life among new planets.
The damned thing couldn't even be killed without using that as an infection vector! The Lifestream, the literal afterlife, was a physical component of Gaia!
Alchemist turned away from the abomination and back to the terminal, typing again-
slave_00_setstate_0
-and listening as the various pumps began to work, to empty out Jenova's tank as the system was put into maintenance mode.
This... was so much less dramatic compared to the last time Alchemist had dealt with Jenova. But that had involved an audience and this...
Was just him.
No Jinx. No Lucrecia. No Vincent.
No theatrics. No show of power.
Watching and waiting until the tank finished draining out, Alchemist kept his eyes on Jenova as the mimic sank and collapsed, no longer supported by the buoyancy of Mako. The entity couldn't even watch him, its various organs falling on top of the 'body' in a messy, squelching heap.
Elsewhere, in the Gilded Feather, Alchemist's other half helped Ifalna to her feet and, when his hand touched hers, he got the glimpse he needed-
And the Alchemist in the reactor cast Polymorph Any Object on Jenova, Locked into permanence and twisted with a hint of Entanglement. Turning Jenova's viral pseudo-DNA into Cetra DNA.
Elsewhere, beyond Alchemist's awareness, a woman cooking dinner in a small home in a little village named Banora, bent in half and screamed in pain, rousing her sick husband from his medicated daze. The man, a rare beacon of honor among ShinRa plants and retirees, forced himself to fight through the pain to make his way to his wife's side.
In a cave, filled with cloying, bitter darkness, a woman trapped within a crystal of her own making opened her eyes. Her mouth opened, a silent scream on her lips, and the crystal holding her cracked.
On a battlefield upon a small island, surrounded by corpses and flames, a silver-haired child dropped his bloody sword and fell to his knees. His arms clutched at his body, twisted around himself in a hug- from the only person he'd ever known to give him such comfort- as it felt like every cell in his body lit up in flames.
On a transport helicopter, two more young men, strapped into their own seats, went into convulsions. One, a red-headed youth, seized and struggled whilst across from him, a black-haired young man pulled his knees up to his chest and forced his resisting arms to hold on for dear life as pain beyond anything he'd ever known ripped through his body.
Countless beasts, more magic than flesh, died upon the Nibelheim mountains as the bare threads holding them together succumbed to their own power. In a lab, not very far away from the Gilded Feather, even more beasts died. Some were like those upon the mountain, held together by flesh that did not know how to die. Others, incubating in Mako, were no longer able to resist the caustic fluid that ate them from the outside in.
Alchemist, climbing the tubes to look upon Jenova, was only vaguely aware of some of these facts.
The empire he'd destroyed and the infection he'd neutralized were but small, minor steps to his goal.
And, looking upon the naked form of Ifalna-that-was-Jenova, Alchemist inhaled deeply before he cast Toad upon the insensate woman, and then he cast Break, turning the skyborne calamity to stone.
He couldn't kill Jenova, regardless of her form. Not on Gaia or any other planet that behaved in the same way.
But, he thought as he Teleported the toad into his hand and placed it into his inventory.
He could certainly remove her from the field.
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of wot you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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Sitting in a sports bar named the 'Gilded Feather' on the Sector Five Plate of Midgar, Ifalna and Aerith were being bombarded by the uncomfortably loud music blasting through some speakers near the opposite end of the facility.
Alchemist, Alec Mist, was nearby helping his own daughter with a racing game of some sort. One that had a two-person booth where the players could sit on fake motorcycles to play the game. He wasn't playing the game with her, just helping her work out the controls before he left her a bag of gil.
The trip had been Ifalna's request. Alec was a wonderful cook, really, but Ifalna had spent the better part of the last decade feeling like a prisoner and she wanted out. She wanted to see the sky. She wanted to feel the wind.
She wanted to hear the planet.
Listening as Aerith sniffled and looked over the menu, Midgar carried a bevy of sounds. The city itself was a wound on the planet in a way wholly and horribly unlike Icicle Inn was and the planet groaned in perpetual discomfort as the parasitic Mako Reactors drank of Gaia's blood. Underneath of that, some great beast slumbered.
It... was a strange sound, truly. Whatever the entity was, it would toss and turn in its sleep. Grumbling and snoring. And each time it did, the power grid of Midgar would fluctuate. Surging and ebbing in tune with whatever the creature was.
Hojo had found it fascinating. He demanded an explanation from her for every fluctuation on a seismograph.
Ifalna was quietly but perpetually terrified. She didn't know what the creature was but she had her suspicions.
And Alchemist, somehow, inexplicably, sounded similar to the great beast below Midgar.
Aerith had confessed, one night as they were falling asleep, that she found it comforting that the madman reminded her of the sleepy friend from below.
The woman looked up as Alchemist returned to the table. He pulled out his chair and sat down before he pulled a menu over to himself.
She didn't know what to make of him. He was simple, direct and straightforward. But he had power, more than she could wrap her head around, and he was willing to flex it to get what he wanted.
"So," Ifalna began to ask, to test the waters. "What do you have planned after this?"
"My schedule is kind of up in the air," the man admitted as he flipped through the pages of the menu. "I'm waiting until Aerith finishes recovering before we start looking for a new home for you two. Then I need to talk with Yuffie's birth parents. I probably need to go talk with Gillian, a former ShinRa employee. I..." the man sighed as he flipped another page. "Need to go and do something about Lucrecia, too. Then there's Vincent, he has Chaos WEAPON crammed inside of him- Still no idea how that happened- And finally I need to have a talk with Minerva."
Ifalna's lips thinned into a line as she considered that. She didn't recognize any of the names except for Chaos WEAPON, which was a nebulous memory from her own childhood, listening to stories from her grandmother.
She assumed they were all former ShinRa employees, however, judging by the pattern.
"Something about the meeting from a few days back?" Ifalna asked, alluding to the deaths of the many executives that once ran the militaristically prosperous company.
"No, nothing of the sort," Alchemist denied before he twisted in his seat to look at Yuffie. Then he resumed his original pose. "Well, maybe with Minerva. Everyone else? Literally just need to talk."
That was... not what Ifalna expected.
"Hey there!" a new voice, far too chirpy and happy, asked as a waitress dressed in a ridiculous outfit called as she approached. The woman wore a pair of very tight shorts, a half-shirt that bared her midriff, wristlets that might have, possibly, been an imitation of a chocobo's wings and a little ball cap shaped like a beak. All of it in yellow or orange. "I'm ChocobocoLina and I'll be your server today! Today's special is the Chocoboco Boneless Wings! Have y'all decided on what you'd like or do y'all need a few minutes?"
Alec looked over to Ifalna, then down to Aerith before he shrugged.
"Can we start with two orders of the fried cheese?" the man asked, getting a nod as the skimpily dressed server wrote that down on a notepad. "And I'll have a large order of the boneless wings, sweet and spicy with the onion rings, please. Yuffie, the kid on the game over there, will take a... also a large order of the wings with authentic Wutaian seasoning and fries."
"Sure thing, sug, and for the ladies?"
"Can I get the chicken salad with vinegar dressing?" Ifalna asked.
Alec was a wonderful cook. He was. But Ifalna had noted that the man tended to cook foods that were both heavy and greasy. Which was fine for the level of activity that he and Yuffie engaged in but it left Ifalna feeling unpleasantly heavy later at night.
"Um... can I have the... cream and chicken pasta?" Aerith asked, sending an uncertain glance towards Alec. The man just nodded and smiled at her, drawing a smile back from the girl.
"'Course you can!" ChocobocoLina told the girl. "I'll get all of that right in and get that fried cheese started right up for ya!"
"Fantastic, thank you," Alec told the woman before she sauntered off, a surprisingly open smile on her face.
Ifalna watched her leave before quietly sighing.
Life in captivity had not been kind to Ifalna's body. The only reason she didn't have the waistline to compare with some of the scientists she'd seen in Hojo's lab had been due to the very, very strict diet that she'd been kept to.
"So," Ifalna started once she was sure that their server was out of earshot. "You were saying something about finding a place for Aerith and I?"
"Right," Alec said as he leaned forward over the table, his arms crossing over it. "Eventually I'll be heading home and it... wouldn't be a good place for you two. It has an abundance of warring elemental factions called Parliaments and... I think they'd probably try and draw the both of you into their fights. None of them take the word 'No' very well and all of them are very willing to kill for the slightest of slights."
A... war between the elements themselves?
It sounded utterly outlandish.
But Alchemist was an outlandish individual who'd backed up his claims with proof and action alike, so she took him at his word.
"I don't think I could return to Icicle Inn," Ifalna admitted as she tapped one finger against the table. "It was fine. Once. But..."
It was where she'd met Gast. It was where Aerith had been born.
It was where her husband had been murdered. Where she and her daughter had been taken prisoner as the townspeople stood by and did nothing.
"I was sort of thinking of a place called Nibelheim. At least, once I've dealt with things there," Alec admitted to her. "Quiet place, up in the mountains north of Cosmo Canyon. Also surprisingly close to a place called Gongaga, a village in a coastal jungle."
"And places with reactors," Ifalna quietly noted.
"Not too many places without reactors," Alec countered, though his voice lacked heat or hostility. "Pretty much limited to Wutai and they're the next warfront once ShinRa finishes their current battles."
Those... were some good points.
Ifalna didn't like recognizing them, no...
But she had no desire to try and raise Aerith in a war front.
Besides. Wutai did not like outsiders. Even Ifalna knew that.
"And if I want to go to Cosmo Canyon?" Ifalna asked.
"Then we can go and talk to Bugenhagen and get you set up in Cosmo Canyon," Alec said, as though someone could just waltz on in to Cosmo Canyon and demand an audience with their most secretive master.
Ifalna knew that couldn't be accomplished. Not easily. Hojo had complained, long and loud, about the dimwitted mystics denying his most genius self when he'd attempted to see them.
Still. Alec seemed to believe he could do it. She wasn't sure if she wanted to push the issue, wasn't sure if she wanted to raise Aerith in such an environment.
"What's special about Cozmo Canyon?" Aerith asked, her voice still nasally.
"It's a place where people go to learn," Alec explained. "But they don't do very much with what they learn, so they don't actually expand what they know very well. They're not wrong about what they do know but they're very insular and kind of cultish."
...Which was a very fair explanation but Ifalna had the feeling that she'd be explaining what a cult was to Aerith tonight.
"As for Gon-" Alec began to say before cutting himself off abruptly.
Ifalna felt confused for a moment before she noticed that the upbeat and chirpy music in the restaurant had cut off and the televisions around the large room had all changed from chocobo races to a podium upon a stage, the symbol of the ShinRa company on the podium as well as the background.
A young man, a very young man, stepped out from the left side of the stage towards the podium. He had short, messy blond hair and a pair of cruel, intense blue eyes that practically shone under the lights. Everything he wore was white, from his long coat to his shirt and even his pants. The only color upon him would be the black belts that seemed wholly unnecessary.
Behind him, another young man, though slightly older than the first, took up a position behind the first man and to his left. This one had slightly longer blond hair and a pair of tinted glasses that muddied his eyes. Unlike the first, he wore what appeared to be a normal, albeit fancy, business suit in dark blue.
"Greetings, Midgar," the boy onscreen said into the microphone of the podium. "My name is Rufus ShinRa, the newly instated president of the ShinRa Electric Power Company following the abrupt retirement of my father, Leopold ShinRa..."
-----
Alchemist watched the boy onscreen talk, sipping at his water all the while. The boy's speech talked on and on about the progress that ShinRa had made under his father's careful, guiding hand. He didn't mention the various directors or executives that were gone. He didn't mention the death of 'I was only following orders' Verdot.
No mention at all of the status of the SOLDIER project.
Though, he did mention bringing a swift end to the Rhadoran conflict. Which sounded nice.
No mention at all of using fear to control the populace.
A bit strange, Alchemist thought, but the little psychopath probably hadn't been juiced up on Jenova yet. And Lazard hadn't been guzzling Angeal's DNA at Hollander's orders yet, either.
They... might actually end up being productive members of society!
Probably not. Almost definitely not. But he wasn't going to worry about them at the moment.
They hadn't contributed to torturing people or murdering entire villages for corporate gain. They were, legitimately, beneath his notice for the moment.
Alchemist sipped his water and sighed.
Could he go back to healing people and trolling the heroes? He liked that. That was comfortable. Instead he'd put himself into enough harrowing situations that he'd gotten strong enough to manhandle societal issues with the oldest, most well-understood tool in the human toolbox.
Violence. It was the only language that a lot of people spoke, though many tried to put a funny accent on it as they tried corporate or bureaucratic violence instead of anything more honest.
On-screen, Rufus was finishing up his little bit as he introduced Lazard, his bastard half-brother. Alchemist had figured the two would be fighting for control over the company.
Maybe they were, outside the public eye.
Maybe they weren't and Alchemist has misjudged how the two would interact once they had the reins of power handed to them, dripping in crimson.
Alchemist sipped his water and sighed again as ChocobocoLina brought up two trays loaded with fried and breaded triangles made of cheese, along with a few little cups of dipping sauce. There'd been too much edge there, he needed to dial it back.
Might have had something to do with the fact that his Bilocation duplicate was all the way over in Nibelhheim, putting down the Makonoids that Hojo had left in the reactor there. It wasn't a hard process. The entities, former humans, were already in a state of extended torpor and he just deepened it with the Sleep spell.
Then a quick hit from Toad and they were... dissolving, inside of their pods.
A mercy killing. For whatever parts of them used to be human.
Alchemist didn't pay attention to the congratulatory messages, telling him how much experience or GP or whatever items he'd gotten. This... was not a situation that warranted such things. Mercy, as meager as it was, was not the same as victory.
Once Alchemist had finished the last of the Makonoids (Two sides. Three tiers. Two pods per tier. Twelve in total.) he turned his attention up to the door marked 'Jenova' and Knocked to let himself in.
Lights along the sides of the room lit up, filling the room with a dim glow as the light penetrated a thin mist that hovered above the metal floor. The room was cold, just barely above frigid, though Alchemist did not shiver or shake.
He'd wondered, at times, if the cold was one of the factors that led to ShinRa putting Jenova and the reactor high up in the mountains of Nibelheim. Or if, perhaps, it was just repurposed and modified after the fact. He'd skimmed through some of the books under the ShinRa mansion but they hadn't held any answers.
Just observations and journals written by madmen that were operating on a fundamentally flawed base of assumptions.
Largely useless.
Largely.
Stepping up next to a dated computer terminal, Alchemist pressed the power button on the monitor and waited for it to fade back into life. Once it had done so, he was met with a prompt for him to enter something into a command line.
Rather than immediately do so, he instead opened his inventory as, in the Gilded Feather, his other half began to enjoy a meal of sweet and spicy food with Yuffie and his guests. Alchemist did not remember the commands to siphon the Mako out of the Jenova Doll, nor did he remember the commands to empty the viral entity's tank.
But he did have a booklet, stolen from ShinRa's onsite archives. Handwritten by the computer technician that had helped put the whole mess together before the man disappeared from the company roster without a trace.
Sifting through the pages, he passed the portion detailing the emergency access code to get through the door to Jenova's chamber and held open the page explaining the different commands and what they did. Carefully, with one hand, Alchemist slowly pecked out-
slave_01_setstate_0
-and listened as the various pumps churned and gurgled, disconnecting and draining the tainted Mako and vitreous not-quite-blood from the Jenova Doll that hung menacingly in front of the tube where Jenova was actually suspended.
Once the doll was fully emptied, that left Alchemist with the task of removing it so he could actually get to the thing inside. He had the tools to remove it, he had the process to disconnect it right in hand...
But, instead, he simply pointed one finger at the metal facsimile and activated one of the myriad powers he'd kept from Earth Bet.
Salvage.
It started slowly. At first, just a few rivets popped out and a few nuts rolled themselves loose. Parts that hadn't been done properly in the first place. But it quickly picked up speed as wire busses pulled themselves loose from their connections and weld seams disconnected without any prompting. The room was filled with the sounds of pops and clacks and tings as metal fell away, as the Jenova Doll was disassembled until, with more of a messy clatter than any great crash, the collection and filtration machine's many components simply sat, useless, atop the thick, heavy pipes that ran Mako through the 'corpse' of Jenova.
And, in doing so, revealed the body of what the Cetra named 'Heaven's Dark Harbinger'.
Honestly? Alchemist found the entity disgusting. On multiple levels.
Jenova had the outward appearance of a human woman. At least, at first glance.
But looking more closely, it became apparent that it was... wrong. The humanoid body was, at Alchemist's guess, just an accessory organ. An appendage, not unlike an insect antennae or the light of an angler fish. It was an attempt at mimicry, made with only a bare hint of understanding.
Somehow, at some point, a gaping hole had been opened in Jenova's midsection and a massive, organic tube stretched out from where her stomach and womb would be that led down to a gigantic heart that lay at the bottom of her chamber. And some time during or after the process, Jenova had maneuvered a length of intestine out through the side of the hole. It had wound back behind the 'woman' and taken on an appearance like a pair of deformed wings or possibly a pair of lungs. A further stretch actually had an eyeball growing from it, rolling to stare directly at him in a way that the eyes on Jenova's head certainly did not do.
One of her breasts was just a featureless lump whilst the other had another eyeball growing out of it, clouded over and blind.
Alchemist shuddered involuntarily as the massive heart beat, once, and the eye upon Jenova's breast rolled about to blindly stare in his direction.
Jenova, Alchemist knew, was not truly sentient. The entity was aware, yes, but in a primitive manner that fit her true nature.
She- It- was a virus. An entity that had fallen from the heavens for the express purpose of infecting Gaia and converting it into a factory to create more of itself. The endgame, Alchemist assumed, was to infect the Lifestream itself, to infect Omega Weapon and to spread herself across the stars as Omega Weapon traveled the cosmos and seeded life among new planets.
The damned thing couldn't even be killed without using that as an infection vector! The Lifestream, the literal afterlife, was a physical component of Gaia!
Alchemist turned away from the abomination and back to the terminal, typing again-
slave_00_setstate_0
-and listening as the various pumps began to work, to empty out Jenova's tank as the system was put into maintenance mode.
This... was so much less dramatic compared to the last time Alchemist had dealt with Jenova. But that had involved an audience and this...
Was just him.
No Jinx. No Lucrecia. No Vincent.
No theatrics. No show of power.
Watching and waiting until the tank finished draining out, Alchemist kept his eyes on Jenova as the mimic sank and collapsed, no longer supported by the buoyancy of Mako. The entity couldn't even watch him, its various organs falling on top of the 'body' in a messy, squelching heap.
Elsewhere, in the Gilded Feather, Alchemist's other half helped Ifalna to her feet and, when his hand touched hers, he got the glimpse he needed-
And the Alchemist in the reactor cast Polymorph Any Object on Jenova, Locked into permanence and twisted with a hint of Entanglement. Turning Jenova's viral pseudo-DNA into Cetra DNA.
Elsewhere, beyond Alchemist's awareness, a woman cooking dinner in a small home in a little village named Banora, bent in half and screamed in pain, rousing her sick husband from his medicated daze. The man, a rare beacon of honor among ShinRa plants and retirees, forced himself to fight through the pain to make his way to his wife's side.
In a cave, filled with cloying, bitter darkness, a woman trapped within a crystal of her own making opened her eyes. Her mouth opened, a silent scream on her lips, and the crystal holding her cracked.
On a battlefield upon a small island, surrounded by corpses and flames, a silver-haired child dropped his bloody sword and fell to his knees. His arms clutched at his body, twisted around himself in a hug- from the only person he'd ever known to give him such comfort- as it felt like every cell in his body lit up in flames.
On a transport helicopter, two more young men, strapped into their own seats, went into convulsions. One, a red-headed youth, seized and struggled whilst across from him, a black-haired young man pulled his knees up to his chest and forced his resisting arms to hold on for dear life as pain beyond anything he'd ever known ripped through his body.
Countless beasts, more magic than flesh, died upon the Nibelheim mountains as the bare threads holding them together succumbed to their own power. In a lab, not very far away from the Gilded Feather, even more beasts died. Some were like those upon the mountain, held together by flesh that did not know how to die. Others, incubating in Mako, were no longer able to resist the caustic fluid that ate them from the outside in.
Alchemist, climbing the tubes to look upon Jenova, was only vaguely aware of some of these facts.
The empire he'd destroyed and the infection he'd neutralized were but small, minor steps to his goal.
And, looking upon the naked form of Ifalna-that-was-Jenova, Alchemist inhaled deeply before he cast Toad upon the insensate woman, and then he cast Break, turning the skyborne calamity to stone.
He couldn't kill Jenova, regardless of her form. Not on Gaia or any other planet that behaved in the same way.
But, he thought as he Teleported the toad into his hand and placed it into his inventory.
He could certainly remove her from the field.
SiegfriedisOP
Calamity Demon King of Time
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Can Alec recreate the ending of evangelion by polymorphing humanity into tang?
I mean... If he got Polymorph Any Object to a high enough level, boosted it with Charge and Faith and such?
Yeah. It might miss a few specific groups, like the Hapsburgs or the Sentinalese people but, aside from a few outliers everyone is related if you go back far enough on the family tree.
"Oh, gods. The screaming! Why is it always screaming?!"
- Location
- Elsewhere
He's what, 18-ish now?
It doesn't take Jenova Juice to turn a spoiled teenager into a tyrant.
I'd say the suddent disappearance/death of a bunch of directors made him re-think his stance on terror, terrorism, and what that would mean for him personally.
"Oh wait, you mean I could be on the chopping block? Let's all give peace a chance!"
- Location
- United States
I am reiterating my vote for a visit to MLP. Or Owl House, post Belos. Fuck, Care Bears if needed. Alchemists need time in a place that was fully capable in fixing it's own apocolypse and the daily drama is just people being bad at communication.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
G4 MLP (and even more so, G1) could easily be a D&D crossover, if @Mister Ficser wanted to cut a few corners and have several different worlds collide into one campaign setting. MLP (G1 and G4, with the former being long ago history of the latter), Gummi Bears, lots of Disney movies, The Neverending Story, Labyrinth, and any number of other fantasy movies from the '30s to the '90s, all taking place in Golarion, or Faerun, or Eberron, or whatever. And that's not even including Planescape and the fact that all of the above exist in various Crystal Spheres there.
Lots of things he could collect there, if he wants, without spending quest tickets on them or even actual quests.
Polymorph into ooze and mental link. A pain in the ass to setup it to cover the whole planet but the tools are there. But for what purpose?
Evangelion idiots literally go out of their way to manage it and the result is, frankly, underwhelming. If someone else knew what's going on outside a few high placed dumbasses, that through some miracle managed to keep it hidden from everyone (which is impossible due to how many people they needed to setup their bullshit), the whole drama could be dealt with by killing certain four eyes and throwing the angel body into space. Much cheaper in effort, resources and lives.
Just to for the funny, I vote that he visit K6BD!
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
That reminds me. Our Earth is canonically part of the same multiverse as both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. All three of which are connected via both the Planescape and Spelljammer settings.
So if he has any unfinished business he has to take care of back in The Real World™...
[edit] Also, G1 MLP, because the main characters there are humans from our world.
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Yeah, this story started funny with dark overtures...
Now it seems to become too dark nearly on the level of grimderp...
In regards to the above, Yeah MLP, Given How Gen 4 Ends and Gen 5 Being a distant Sequel, I'd recommend that if Alec goes to Equastria to bring something along that can either induce Immortality, Or Tie Life-forces together(Twilight's Lesson to Luster becomes very tragic when you think about her existence and A New Generation)
Also I'm fairly sure he and Twilight would get along like a House on Fire with Research
Also I'm fairly sure he and Twilight would get along like a House on Fire with Research
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MLP sounds like it would be really fun, but I could see him doing Owl House/Gravity Falls as long as he doesn't connect directly to the Rick and Morty universe (though that is actually pretty beatable in terms of power levels)
I could see Alec tussling with Bill Cipher in a dream realm.
I could see Alec tussling with Bill Cipher in a dream realm.
Owl House is very fun, and I'd love to see Alec here. Honestly, he could also help Luz's desire for magic, because humans in The Owl House don't naturally have magic they can access, besides titan runes.