Once the black-robed men realized they could not capture Aerith, the survivors stopped attacking and chose to retreat.
The Whispers also suddenly dispersed. It seemed that, after the monster-like Hojo was killed, everything had begun shifting in a better direction.
It looked as if fate had been completely changed. Truly broken.
"What the hell? He was screaming about becoming the god of fate earlier, and this is how he ends up?"
Yuffie looked at the desiccated, carbonizing corpse and spoke with open disgust.
"That wasn't Hojo. That was Weiss. Rufus, check the situation over at Wolfgang Weiss's laboratory."
Kain had a feeling Hojo was still alive. Weiss had likely been set up.
Before Weiss died, Kain had felt that intense rage and unwillingness from him.
It had not been directed at Kain. It felt more like Weiss had realized he had been tricked.
As for how Kain had reached this floor faster than Weiss, that was because he had asked Tifa to perform that operation.
He had immediately left this world, then accepted a new invitation. With Tifa designating the location, he appeared at Aerith's position in the Eight Gates Factory.
"Huh? That wasn't Hojo? It was Weiss? Who's that?"
Yuffie looked completely baffled.
The bizarre humanoid in front of her had clearly been Hojo after transforming. How could it not be him?
Something must have happened later in the battle. While dealing with the Whispers and the black-robed men, Yuffie had glanced at the surveillance window for the underground laboratory, only to find that it had turned to static.
Their fight must have damaged the cameras.
So something had happened that caused Hojo to become this so-called Weiss.
A moment later, after Vice President Rufus pulled up the footage, the laboratory contained only an empty chair.
Then the armed Shinra personnel nearby reported in. They had found a squad blocking the exit that had been killed.
The footage sent from the scene showed more than a dozen fully armed Shinra soldiers who appeared to have been cut down before they could even resist. The weapon used to kill them was probably a long sword.
After the personnel retrieved data from some of the dead soldiers' equipment and played the recorded footage, they saw a white-haired man holding a sword. He flashed through the squad like lightning, cutting them all down before they had time to react.
The white-haired man picked up the camera and aimed it at himself.
"Soon, you'll witness my true divine form."
Leaving those words behind, he gave a strange laugh and walked away.
"That's Hojo?"
Yuffie was not stupid, but her voice was filled with disbelief.
How had he suddenly become someone else?
Ten minutes later, they still had not found that figure.
"Mr. Kain, it's Mako Reactor No. 1! Hojo is there!"
Aerith's expression suddenly changed.
The instant she spoke, Yuffie's vision blurred. Kain, who had been standing beside her, vanished from the room in a heartbeat, leaping out through the shattered floor-to-ceiling window.
"Tseng, pull up the feed from Reactor No. 1."
Rufus was not especially familiar with the system, so he authorized Tseng to operate it.
A second later, surveillance feeds from multiple angles around Mako Reactor No. 1 popped up. The reactor looked very quiet, as if nothing had happened.
No—
"Zoom in on the mako pool."
As the camera zoomed in, they saw that the inside of the mako pool seemed to have been polluted. The liquid had turned somewhat murky.
Then, after one of the on-site machines submerged and descended more than ten meters, they saw a massive number of Whispers swimming within the pool. They circled around a figure, one after another, then continuously burrowed into that body.
That figure was Weiss.
No, it should be Hojo, who had stolen Weiss's body.
"Issue an evacuation order for the district around Mako Reactor No. 1 immediately!"
Rufus gave the order at once.
If something happened to the mako reactor, both the upper and lower levels tied to it would likely suffer a horrific disaster.
"Reeve, go command the evacuation on-site."
"Understood."
As the head of the Department of Urban Development, Reeve Tuesti was the best possible person to direct the evacuation.
"Aerith, what's wrong?"
Tifa noticed how uneasy Aerith looked.
"Aerith, are you worried Mr. Kain can't win?"
Thump!
"Ow! What did you hit me for?!"
Yuffie glared at the woman named Jessie, who had just knocked her on the head.
"Because you don't know how to talk!"
Jessie glared right back at her.
"I… I don't know. But I have a feeling Mr. Kain can't be allowed to get close to him."
After saying that, Aerith immediately closed her eyes. She needed to understand where this strange unease was coming from.
Seeing that, Tifa immediately used the Hyperdimensional Channel to send a message. Aerith's words could not be ignored. She might really have sensed something.
Tifa's gaze returned to the surveillance feed from Mako Reactor No. 1, and Hojo's transformation on the screen left her stunned.
She had only looked away for a moment, yet the man had already undergone an obvious change. Wings had grown from his back.
This time, however, they were not those strange, twisted wings, but wings covered in soft feathers.
The unsettling part was that the two wings were different colors. One seemed to be white—no, gray. The other was black.
Beyond that, ten orbs had grown inside his mouth.
The orbs seemed to be growing deeper and more profound. They had gone from transparent to a color resembling mako, but they were still changing.
That made Tifa think of one possibility. They might be materia. Hojo might be forcibly compressing mako and condensing it into powerful ultimate materia.
Then the mako pool suddenly turned into a vortex. Hojo's upper body rose out of it, while his lower half remained inside the center of the whirlpool. It looked as though Hojo had become a black hole, devouring the mako.
As if he had sensed something, he lifted his head and looked up at the sky.
At the same time, his wings spread wide. Some of the feathers detached, then transformed into what looked like glowing wings of light.
In the next instant, they shot into the sky like lasers, firing at Mr. Kain as he dove down from above.
At the same time, a massive number of Whispers surged upward, interfering with Mr. Kain's line of sight.
For a moment, no one could see what was actually happening.
"No! Tifa, tell Mr. Kain right now! It's a trap! He can't go down there!"
Aerith opened her eyes and spoke to Tifa with extreme urgency.
She had seen a precognitive vision. The body now exposed was Hojo's bait.
The mako reactor itself was actually Hojo's gaping maw, and the body in the center was nothing more than the lure.
"A trap?"
Tifa's expression changed, and she immediately tried to enter the channel again.
But the surveillance feed in front of them had already opened.
In the footage, Mr. Kain successfully broke through that dense attack. Although he was covered in wounds, he had already reached Hojo's side and driven his blade through the materia in Hojo's chest.
As the crystal shattered, Hojo's body began to break down and dissolve into the mako pool like a lump of mud.
On closer inspection, Hojo's body looked more like a snake's shed skin. The inside was hollow, and only the outer shell was dissolving.
Was that the trap?
Could Aerith have—
A sudden change erupted.
The mako pool seemed to come alive. Its vortex-like form instantly became a gaping mouth that snapped shut.
At the same time, the mako liquid touching Mr. Kain clung to him like an inescapable super-adhesive slime, trying to drown him.
Pshk, pshk, pshk, pshk…!
Tifa felt as if she could hear the sound, and a sharp pain stabbed through her chest in the same instant.
Hojo had appeared.
He seemed to have made himself transparent.
Now that he had revealed himself, the feathers on his back had separated, but they had not fully detached from his wings. Instead, they remained connected by tentacles.
The feathers transformed into blades, and dozens of those blades plunged into Mr. Kain's body.
In an instant, blood dyed the entire pool of mako red.
(End of Chapter)
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