Mako Reactor

I respectfully credit all Original Creators, namely Squaresoft, which became SquareEnix,for these characters. In this way, I pay homage to my Fandom's Original Creator, and illustrate my Community's belief that Fan Fiction is "fair use". I do not claim to own these characters. I do not make money or gil from using these protected characters, nor do I wish to make money or gil from them. In other words, I am borrowing these characters to entertain the adult fanfiction community, but I am doing so with the highest degree of respect to the engineers, game designers, music makers, and voice actors.



“If you were messed up before, you’re a wreck now,” Strife said.

I felt like choking him, too. We were only ones awake. I could do it.

“Here, use some of this salve on your face,” he said, giving me a small jar. “It kills the pain.”

“I like my pain.” I gave the salve back.

“Then why won’t you let Vincent have his?”

Startled, I looked into Strife’s calm, blue eyes. They seemed as placid and bottomless as a lake. “He doesn’t have a right to feel pain,” I answered, not believing it for one second.

“Right.” Strife didn’t believe it either. “That’s why you hit him once for every three times he hit you.”

“Does it escape your notice that he outweighs me by seventy pounds and looms over me like a tree?” I dipped my razor and rinsed it. I still had half my face to shave and it was slow, painful going. “Or maybe you missed the fact that he’s stronger, faster and undead?”

“I didn’t miss the fact you avoided hitting his face all you could, or that it seemed to be the only real place on you he was interested in hitting.” Strife paused. “You aren’t so outmatched, Hojo. Yeah, he’s bigger and probably faster, but you’re tough and strong, too.”

“So what?” I grunted.

“Nothing.” Strife sat beside me. “Is he going to need any more mako?”

“We’ll see tomorrow,” I said. “Believe me, if he does need mako, I won’t care.”

“You’re a rotten liar.”

“You’re a rotten psychiatrist.”

Strife grinned. “Fair enough.”

I spared him a smile. The clone had charm. Too, he had brains. I’d always admired intelligence. It was a factor in how Valentine offended me. He was a smart man as well, he just covered it in a cloak of angst and masturbatory misery.

A few hours later we again began trekking the plains. The monsters sprung up thickly here. Because of my injuries I didn’t fight very well. Strife began covering me during battle, and I took back every nasty thought I’d ever had about him. He had as much nobility as my poor son, just without the pervasive poison of Jenova and misplaced directives.

To my ultimate dread, Valentine began to flag again. I took a bullet in my previously dislocated shoulder, not knowing if he’d shot me deliberately or by accident. It didn’t help my mood to stop and pick out a slug the width of a bottle cap. I saved the healing potions for those who really needed them, preferring to know we wouldn’t have our number reduced. I could heal more rapidly than the rest of the team anyway.

We camped well before dark this time. I accepted Strife’s help in setting up my tent, noticing that no one else these days seemed to talk to him.

“Your friends are getting sick of you talking to me,” I pointed out.

“They’ll get over it.” Strife shrugged. “Even when they’re mad, they’re united.” He strapped a corner down and hammered in a peg. “Your shoulder okay?”

“It hurts like a motherfucker,” I admitted. A bullet wound on top of a stressed joint and bruised muscle would make for agony every time I bedded down.

He nodded. “I noticed Vincent screwing up again today. Maybe it would be better if you two could come to some sort of arrangement.”

“You think making him blow me would be better than making him take me up the ass?” I sat down heavily, cradling my wound. “Sorry, Strife. I’m in no condition to wrestle with Prince Harming. He’d bite my dick off.”

Strife laughed, drawing the attention of his friends. They frowned and quickly looked away from us, except for the airship captain. He grinned, looking positively infernal with his puffing, perpetual cigarette and his casually-slung spear. I’d marked him an incredible fighter many days ago.

“Well, if you need it,” Strife said, tossing a tube in my lap. “I went back to the cave for it just before we left this morning.”

I looked at the lubricant. With that small, innocent looking tube I’d opened the biggest can of whoop-ass this side of Gongaga, unleashed a red-eyed fiend and invited my own, utter ruin.

Quite a bargain for only three ounces of slick stuff that one couldn’t wipe off even in a hurricane.

He got up and walked away. Valentine grabbed him by the arm. “You’re helping him,” he accused, his eyes flaring yellow.

“You’re being stupid,” Strife replied, wrenching free. “What if I let him fuck me, too? Would that make you feel better? I haven’t had a mako shot in years.”

“You wouldn’t.” Valentine’s voice almost seemed a dare.

“I would,” Strife countered quietly, making Lockhart, his lover, gasp. “He couldn’t be any worse than his son.”

I could have heard a feather hit the grass. Everyone, including myself, gaped at Strife. Throwing us all a cheery smile, he picked up his pack and entered his tent.

Well, of course.

He’d given me the lubricant, after all.

Good for you, Sephiroth.

***************************************************************************************

Scissor Woods attained its name by having briars that made your clothing look like you’d lost a fight with pinking shears. By the end of the afternoon I had more gashes in my clothing than what seemed modest. Valentine, wearing nearly solid leather from head to foot, suffered the least. His cape had so many tatters on the hem it hardly mattered anyway.

Strife, forced to use his sword like a machete, summed it up nicely. “We could bleed to death an inch at a time,” he complained. “What the fuck? Why put a resistance headquarters in this place?”

“You have to admit, it deters company,” the airship captain said, shedding what was left of his shirt. “Fuck this. I’m better off letting the briars slide off my skin than hang on my clothing. At this rate we’ll all be naked.”

I admired his back a back moment before following suit and shucking my ruined lab coat. I kept my shirt on, preferring to hide my collection of scars.

We walked on. At nightfall we found the resistance camp. Deserted, it boasted not a sign anyone had occupied the log building for months. I thanked Ifrit we could skip putting up tents for one night, anyway. I brought firewood inside, using from the stack on the front porch. My left sleeve caught a nail and ripped off in one pass.

Cursing, I ripped the other one off. No use in being lopsided.

I felt eyes upon me as I brought the next stack in. Most of Strife’s friends were looking at me; why I had no idea. I ignored them and finished the job.

“I’m not going to,” I heard Strife’s girlfriend say. “It will heal up.”

“Tif, it won’t,” Strife argued. “Look at it. It’s deep and long and you’ve been bleeding for hours.”

“Are you going to do it, then?”

I glanced over at them, temporarily abandoning a search through my pack for the smokes I knew I had. The pretty pugilist had a bandage on her upper arm, a bandage that seeped red.

“You know I’m no good at that,” Strife said, shaking his head. “But, it has to be closed up.”

“What do you care, Cloud Strife?” she demanded. “What do you care?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Strife frowned at her.

“You’re too busy reminiscing about the good old days with Hojo to give a shit about me!”

I took my turn at frowning. My hand closed around my smokes and also, my sewing kit. Surprised, I pulled both out. I’d believed the sewing kit lost in the water crash. Maybe I had disinfectant, too.

“The old days?” Strife threw his arms out to his sides. “Are you mental?”

“Oh, I’m crazy now?” Lockhart matched his stance, wincing when her bandage pulled tight. “You’ve been buddy-buddy with him for a week now, like he never did anything to you. Now I know it’s because you let his son fuck you up the ass!”

An awful silence descended.

I lit up and sat back for the show.

Strife’s face showed more disappointment and pain than anger now. He turned from her. “Fine, Tifa,” he said tightly. “Bleed to death if it puts you in control again.” He strode from the cabin.

Lockhart lowered her head. Her fists clenched. A stream of blood dripped down her arm. I saw Valentine sniffing the air. After a moment, he also left. The airship captain sighed. “Aw, shit,” he said, getting up. He took the door, looking left and right for someone to follow. Soon, the only other people in the room beside myself and Lockhart, was the one-armed gunner and the ninja.

“Let’s look at this,” Kisaragi said to Lockhart, approaching. “How bad can it be?”

Lockhart stood still as the younger girl un-wrapped her arm. The gash underneath needed sewing in a very bad way. “Oh dear,” the ninja said. “Tifa, he’s right. This is awful.”

“Can you sew?” Lockhart snapped. “Do you have a needle and thread?”

I pulled out the bottle of disinfectant and sat it on the dusty table beside me. “Ladies,” I said, watching them flinch at the sound of my voice.

“No,” Lockhart said flatly, not meeting my eyes. “You aren’t touching me.”

“Fine,” I said. “But, here is the equipment.”

“I’ll try,” Kisaragi said, walking toward me for the sewing kit and alcohol.

“Make sure you double up on the thread,” I advised. “It’s not for flesh and it will tear. As it is she’s going to have to contend with a painful removal of the stitches later; the thread is fibrous.”

The ninja looked me in the eyes. “Can we fix that somehow?”

“If we had a candle you could pass the thread in the melting wax,” I said after thinking about it a moment. “But, you’d have to pass the thread very close the flame to make sure the wax is sterile. That’s going to be difficult for you. Too close and you’ll burn it up. Additionally, you’ll need to keep the other end of the thread from trailing in dirt.”

“I have a candle.” The gunner started sifting through his pack.

Lockhart finally looked at me. She next examined her friend, who nervously twisted thread around and around her finger. “Never mind, Yuffie,” she said. “I’ll let the mad scientist to do it.”

I felt of a mind to tell her no after all that show, but I didn’t. I took the thread back, ran it through a capful of alcohol, and disinfected the needle. At least it was a curved needle. “Sit down,” I said.

She plopped down, her expression sullen and fearful. That look changed the moment I slopped alcohol into her wound. Her face turned white with pain. Breathing heavily through her nose, she closed her eyes.

“In through your nose, out through your mouth,” I instructed.

The gunner put the burning candle at my elbow. “No painkillers or nothing?” he asked.

“The only thing I can do is something she won’t allow,” I replied, ignoring Lockhart’s growing outrage.

“Like what?” The ninja washed her hands in alcohol and held the thread up for me so I could run it through wax. “You one of those mesmerizers or something? We have those in Wutai.”

“I’m from Wutai,” I told her. “But, the answer is yes.”

“You should let him,” Kisaragi said to Lockhart. “It’s going to hurt so bad if you don’t.”

“He’s not hypnotizing me,” she said.

“Then get something to bite beside your boyfriend’s head,” I said snidely. “It would be a shame to fuck up your teeth.”

She stared at me, agape.

I began to sew.

Her endurance impressed me. Her eyes rolled back a few times but she did not faint. I let her suffer through the first half of the procedure, then handed the needle to Kisaragi. “Hold this,” I said.

She obeyed. I leaned forward and pinched the nerve at the back of Lockhart’s neck, knocking her out. “Stubborn,” I commented, picking back up where I left off.

“Why didn’t you do that before now?” the gunner demanded.

“I thought she’d faint,” I admitted.

“That’s a laugh,” he said. “Tifa ain’t gonna pass out from pain.”

“Apparently.” I finished, using the candle to burn off the excess thread. “Anyone else need stitched?”

No one said anything. I put my supplies away and began to explore the cabin, feeling restless.