Science Fiction: Double Feature [One-shot/Completed]
Character(s): Hojo, Zack, Cloud
Content: Hojo finally gets around to doing his mad scientist thing. Hooray.
Setting: Hojo's lab in the ex-fortress of darkness.
Time: Opens Wednesday night, closes mid-Thursday
Warnings: Medical grossness. Needles. Blood. Cursing. Mad science. Also length.
Hojo had a bit of trouble locating all of the things needed for the procedure, namely basic medical equipment such as latex gloves and an anaesthesia machine. He was somewhat surprised that there was an anaesthesia machine at all, considering they were in a laboratory rather than a hospital and there was no equipment for keeping track of vital signs. Well, considering the procedure he intended to perform he doubted he'd need something like a heart moniter, but it would have been nice to have anyway. As it was, he had to put two tables together next to the pallet on the machine he intended to use. He could work on two people simultaneously, but there was only space for one to lie down, so he had to improvise.
Once he'd pulled together everything he could forsee needing, Hojo had Cloud help him get Zack's unconscious body up onto the tables, since SOLDIERS tended to be rather heavy and it wouldn't do to go bruising either of them up before the experiment even began. After anaesthetizing the both of them Hojo snipped off their shirts with a pair of long scissors, dropping the sliced fabric to the floor. He couldn't very well work through fabric, after all.
By the time he'd pushed his Cure materia into his chest(to close up incisions) and pulled on gloves and a surgical mask, he realized he was stalling. The reason why escaped him; what was the worst that could happen? If he messed up too badly it would be no difficult thing to simply kill the both of them and discard the bodies. He could try again on the girl if need be. With a sigh and a sharp shake of his head, to clear his thoughts, Hojo grabbed a scalpel and set to work on the unconscious Cloud.
It was simple work, really, to get to a heart. One incision between the ribs and two more perpendicular to the first; he simply peeled back the skin and held it down with pins, stuck through the skin flaps into Cloud's chest. After a bit of consideration, he decided that simply removing the bone that stood in his way would be the easiest way to deal with the troublesome rib, at least for now. His materia should be able to restore it, so long as he kept the removed piece. His motions were quick; two short swings of a small hammer, a short snap! snap! and he removed the bone, setting it on a tray and turning back to look at the twitching, yellow organ that was revealed.
Hojo then flipped up the top on Ansem's old journal, accessing the master computer with a few quick keystrokes, bringing up a diagram of the machine he intended to use. He had, of course, researched it beforehand but having the information right there was a comfort, helped assure him that he did know vaguely what he was doing, whether it was true or not. It seemed easy enough to use; Hojo just pulled down two needles that were attached to tubes and slipped them into Cloud's beating heart, hitting a few buttons and flipping a switch. The machine started to whir and, dispite a rather worrysome clunk sound it seemed to be in perfect working order. What was surprising, though, was what was being drawn into the machine.
Rather than blood, which Hojo almost expected, a strange bioluminescent yellow liquid was pulled up through the tubes and deposited in an airtight IV bag. It didn't fill halfway before Hojo turned the machine off, examining the bag with a completely baffled expression. It was hot to the touch, almost, and emitting an undeniable glow...
The realization of what exactly this was nearly slapped Hojo in the face. Light. This was light, pulled fresh out of a living heart, tangible and manipulatable and... and light! "Shit," he muttered, shaking his head and thinking, looking back at the now-dormant machine. The light, now that he thought about it, was almost dismissable -- light was mako, light was the Lifestream. What would really surprise him, then, would be, well... dark. Hojo turned his head, his glasses catching the light harshly, and looked at the dark-haired SOLDIER on the makeshift surgical table.
He made sure to close Cloud up, replacing and reconnecting the rib segment and healing the incisions, before he cut into Zack's chest, repeating the same slice-pin-snap that he'd done previously. This time, though, when he slid the needles under the twitching muscle of the heart, he activated the large machine in a slightly different way, watching the tubes intently. Sure enough, rather than the lumenescent glowing fluid from earlier, the substance that was removed was a sickly black-purple, the color of bad oil.
It all seemed to make sense now. Lumens, creatures of light, despising the darkness... And Heartless? Ansem had mentioned Heartless when he was explaining the experiment he intended to perform on Cloud. He'd read very little about them on the main computer, but he could make a good guess; he would assume that Heartless were simply the opposite of Lumens. Hojo let a second IV bag fill halfway before he removed the needles again, closing and healing Zack as he thought. The next question, then, was obvious.
What would happen if the light from one person was introduced to another? And, naturally, the other way around: what would happen to a person when given the darkness of another? Would the subjects become Lumen and Heartless, or would something different happen? There was really only one way to find out.
Hojo grinned a little as he took the bags and drew the contents into several syringes, dividing them up for each specimen. He didn't want to overwhelm either of the subjects, since he wasn't completely sure what the result of that would be, so rather than simply transplant each substance into the opposite specimen he kept a syringe or two of light and dark in reserve, to follow up the injections and hopefully stabilize the two. Well, he had no idea if it worked that way, but it sounded like a good plan to him.
So, that in mind, Hojo took the dosages and administered them. It was logical that the substances should be injected into the same place they'd been drawn from, so Hojo buried each needle between the third and fourth ribs, injecting several syringes of darkness directly into Cloud's heart, then following up with two of his original light. He then repeated the process on Zack, with the light from Cloud and the dark from himself.
The rumble of thunder cut through Hojo's thoughts and prompted him to check the little clock on Ansem's journal. He'd been working longer than he'd thought... it was Thursday morning already, though it hadn't seemed like that much time had passed. Though, come to think of it, his head was starting to hurt from lack of sleep, and his vision was getting more difficult to hold steady. Funny how he hadn't noticed before.
The effects, if there were any, couldn't be observed until later anyway, and to be honest Hojo wasn't sure he wanted to do anything else until he'd slept for a bit. So, that in mind, he tracked down a large quantity of sedative and pumped both specimens full of enough to keep them asleep long after the anaesthetic wore off. Then all he had to do was dump them into separate cages(gods, but SOLDIERS were heavy!) so they wouldn't run off when they woke up.
Hojo didn't even bother cleaning up the blood on the tables when he finally went into his room, dropping his gloves and mask on the floor and falling asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. It had been a long and tiring couple of days.
[tee hee, that was fun to write. :D The sedative should keep them under until Friday morning, though if you guys want to wake up later/earlier than that it's fine with me. also, you guys get to decide what sort of changes your characters undergo, since I'm sick of thinking about this post. XD]
Content: Hojo finally gets around to doing his mad scientist thing. Hooray.
Setting: Hojo's lab in the ex-fortress of darkness.
Time: Opens Wednesday night, closes mid-Thursday
Warnings: Medical grossness. Needles. Blood. Cursing. Mad science. Also length.
Hojo had a bit of trouble locating all of the things needed for the procedure, namely basic medical equipment such as latex gloves and an anaesthesia machine. He was somewhat surprised that there was an anaesthesia machine at all, considering they were in a laboratory rather than a hospital and there was no equipment for keeping track of vital signs. Well, considering the procedure he intended to perform he doubted he'd need something like a heart moniter, but it would have been nice to have anyway. As it was, he had to put two tables together next to the pallet on the machine he intended to use. He could work on two people simultaneously, but there was only space for one to lie down, so he had to improvise.
Once he'd pulled together everything he could forsee needing, Hojo had Cloud help him get Zack's unconscious body up onto the tables, since SOLDIERS tended to be rather heavy and it wouldn't do to go bruising either of them up before the experiment even began. After anaesthetizing the both of them Hojo snipped off their shirts with a pair of long scissors, dropping the sliced fabric to the floor. He couldn't very well work through fabric, after all.
By the time he'd pushed his Cure materia into his chest(to close up incisions) and pulled on gloves and a surgical mask, he realized he was stalling. The reason why escaped him; what was the worst that could happen? If he messed up too badly it would be no difficult thing to simply kill the both of them and discard the bodies. He could try again on the girl if need be. With a sigh and a sharp shake of his head, to clear his thoughts, Hojo grabbed a scalpel and set to work on the unconscious Cloud.
It was simple work, really, to get to a heart. One incision between the ribs and two more perpendicular to the first; he simply peeled back the skin and held it down with pins, stuck through the skin flaps into Cloud's chest. After a bit of consideration, he decided that simply removing the bone that stood in his way would be the easiest way to deal with the troublesome rib, at least for now. His materia should be able to restore it, so long as he kept the removed piece. His motions were quick; two short swings of a small hammer, a short snap! snap! and he removed the bone, setting it on a tray and turning back to look at the twitching, yellow organ that was revealed.
Hojo then flipped up the top on Ansem's old journal, accessing the master computer with a few quick keystrokes, bringing up a diagram of the machine he intended to use. He had, of course, researched it beforehand but having the information right there was a comfort, helped assure him that he did know vaguely what he was doing, whether it was true or not. It seemed easy enough to use; Hojo just pulled down two needles that were attached to tubes and slipped them into Cloud's beating heart, hitting a few buttons and flipping a switch. The machine started to whir and, dispite a rather worrysome clunk sound it seemed to be in perfect working order. What was surprising, though, was what was being drawn into the machine.
Rather than blood, which Hojo almost expected, a strange bioluminescent yellow liquid was pulled up through the tubes and deposited in an airtight IV bag. It didn't fill halfway before Hojo turned the machine off, examining the bag with a completely baffled expression. It was hot to the touch, almost, and emitting an undeniable glow...
The realization of what exactly this was nearly slapped Hojo in the face. Light. This was light, pulled fresh out of a living heart, tangible and manipulatable and... and light! "Shit," he muttered, shaking his head and thinking, looking back at the now-dormant machine. The light, now that he thought about it, was almost dismissable -- light was mako, light was the Lifestream. What would really surprise him, then, would be, well... dark. Hojo turned his head, his glasses catching the light harshly, and looked at the dark-haired SOLDIER on the makeshift surgical table.
He made sure to close Cloud up, replacing and reconnecting the rib segment and healing the incisions, before he cut into Zack's chest, repeating the same slice-pin-snap that he'd done previously. This time, though, when he slid the needles under the twitching muscle of the heart, he activated the large machine in a slightly different way, watching the tubes intently. Sure enough, rather than the lumenescent glowing fluid from earlier, the substance that was removed was a sickly black-purple, the color of bad oil.
It all seemed to make sense now. Lumens, creatures of light, despising the darkness... And Heartless? Ansem had mentioned Heartless when he was explaining the experiment he intended to perform on Cloud. He'd read very little about them on the main computer, but he could make a good guess; he would assume that Heartless were simply the opposite of Lumens. Hojo let a second IV bag fill halfway before he removed the needles again, closing and healing Zack as he thought. The next question, then, was obvious.
What would happen if the light from one person was introduced to another? And, naturally, the other way around: what would happen to a person when given the darkness of another? Would the subjects become Lumen and Heartless, or would something different happen? There was really only one way to find out.
Hojo grinned a little as he took the bags and drew the contents into several syringes, dividing them up for each specimen. He didn't want to overwhelm either of the subjects, since he wasn't completely sure what the result of that would be, so rather than simply transplant each substance into the opposite specimen he kept a syringe or two of light and dark in reserve, to follow up the injections and hopefully stabilize the two. Well, he had no idea if it worked that way, but it sounded like a good plan to him.
So, that in mind, Hojo took the dosages and administered them. It was logical that the substances should be injected into the same place they'd been drawn from, so Hojo buried each needle between the third and fourth ribs, injecting several syringes of darkness directly into Cloud's heart, then following up with two of his original light. He then repeated the process on Zack, with the light from Cloud and the dark from himself.
The rumble of thunder cut through Hojo's thoughts and prompted him to check the little clock on Ansem's journal. He'd been working longer than he'd thought... it was Thursday morning already, though it hadn't seemed like that much time had passed. Though, come to think of it, his head was starting to hurt from lack of sleep, and his vision was getting more difficult to hold steady. Funny how he hadn't noticed before.
The effects, if there were any, couldn't be observed until later anyway, and to be honest Hojo wasn't sure he wanted to do anything else until he'd slept for a bit. So, that in mind, he tracked down a large quantity of sedative and pumped both specimens full of enough to keep them asleep long after the anaesthetic wore off. Then all he had to do was dump them into separate cages(gods, but SOLDIERS were heavy!) so they wouldn't run off when they woke up.
Hojo didn't even bother cleaning up the blood on the tables when he finally went into his room, dropping his gloves and mask on the floor and falling asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. It had been a long and tiring couple of days.
[tee hee, that was fun to write. :D The sedative should keep them under until Friday morning, though if you guys want to wake up later/earlier than that it's fine with me. also, you guys get to decide what sort of changes your characters undergo, since I'm sick of thinking about this post. XD]