(Cloud Strife x Reader x Rufus Shinra) A Bolt from the Blue

Chapter 33 - Mr President

He then gathers the top of the sheet and pulls it over your left shoulder while pulling the bottom of the sheet up under your right leg. He tightens both ends in a firm knot at the front of his chest and stands. He makes sure to hold your left leg up but his right hand is now free to look at the plans Tseng has just sent through on his phone.

"Ready?" Rufus asks you rhetorically, a little in jest as he knows you are unable to answer him. Your head lolls right next to his and he turns slightly to give you a cool reassuring smile as he cocks his gun with one hand and steps out of the detention cell.

Rufus makes his way cautiously down the monotonous corridors with you on his back. He checks each corner before turning down them as he refers to the plans on his phone from time to time. You lose track of how many turns he makes and you have a headache from the exertion and from Hojo's drugs, but you hear Rufus breathe a small sigh of relief when you reach a goods lift at the end of a particularly long corridor.

Rufus steps inside and pulls closed the secondary interlocked gates behind the lift car door. As the gates latch closed you hear the lift mechanism whirl into life as Rufus punches a button to the highest floor this lift goes to - the 68th floor.

"Shit. We don't have plans for this restricted level," He scoffs under his breath. "Can you believe I own this building but my father gives Hojo such a free rein that I'm pretty sure I'm going to get lost here because Hojo - and all the other Directors for that matter - just do what they like." Rufus chastises rhetorically.

He steps out of the lift onto a metal walkway that spans out in a circular shape around a central column made up of countless tubes of varying sizes. The large space is poorly illuminated. The main source of light is emitted from a single large specimen pod in the central column where all the tubes converge. The gloomy green light is peppered with small red guide lights among the metal balustrades creating a hauntingly mysterious atmosphere which makes you want to leave as soon as you enter.

Rufus carefully makes his way and follows the path around. He pauses at a broken bridgeway that connects the outer walkway to the centre column. He looks over the edge which allows you to see the rubble and metal scraps below, also lit in a ghostly green colour from specimen fermentation pods connected in concentric circles around the centre column. This piques yours and Rufus' interest and he squints towards the specimen pod which seems to be the heart of everything in here.

A pool of mako surrounding the pod like a moat bathes the bare female form within it in a phantasmally unnatural green light. It casts eerie shadows over the numerous tubes connecting from all over its body. The craterous grey skin gives a look of scales covering the form from head to toe. You hear Rufus take a sharp breath in when he notices something resembling a heart at its feet. The thickest tube protruding abnormally from its abdomen is like a synthetic umbilical cord among what appears to be an external biological system.

Various appendages extend out from the being's back, some resembling what were once potentially wings. The being's head is encased in a heavy looking metal headgear, again with numerous tubes linking the form to its experimentation pod. The word 'Jenova' and a smaller inscription that you and Rufus cannot read from a distance is engraved on a plaque on the headgear.

Rufus takes a step back on reflex from the horror inducing sight in front of him. You want to comfort him but are unable to and after a few moments, he collects himself and turns away from the form to power forwards.

The metal walkway comes to a dead-end and Rufus is forced to enter a strange room to the side in order to see if there is a way forward. Upon entering, Rufus stops suddenly, raising his gun before realising the two Zenenes - monstrous lion like mutated creatures - are lying lifeless on the ground. Rufus steps over a thick pipe that had collapsed from the ceiling, before exiting on the other side of the room and back out onto the central area walkway.