Stilettos once again crossed the floor, stepping into the fresh pool of blood. Lifting one of her legs, she abruptly pressed her blood-stained shoe between Vincent's legs, yielding a greatly coveted groan and twitch from the gunslinger. But it still wasn't enough. She leaned in closely, allowing her skin to hike up her thigh, adding a pressure to the target below her foot while closing the distance between Vincent's and her face. It was slow and steady. After studying his strained expression, she grinned.
"Be grateful I didn't order your precious Lucrecia to be taken to the refinery [a place where there is a massive opening to the planet's core where all failed and wasted monsters are throw into to dissolve into the Lifestream]. So long as she remains useful, she will be spared. And if not... well, I know you Turks have excellent imagination." The four men in white lab coats approached as Scarlet returned to her seat. Orders were given, and two soldiers came to remove Vincent from the interrogation chair. Confused and still unwilling to yield, Vincent began to resist and thrash about, prompting the soldiers to try and strap him down. "Careful you fools! If he transforms we're all dead men!" Though weakened from loss of blood, Vincent managed to put up a fight, nearly wounding one of the doctors in the process. Vincent's eyes began to glow, which caused the doctor's face's to nearly lose all blood in their face. "He's going to transform. We can't risk it! Activate the injector, now!" Placed on the large metal operating table and barely being held down by all the men involved, one of the doctors operated the overhanging robotic arms that had a large vein of mako being fed into an equally large needle. It was then that the long buried sense of terror began to creep back. He began to panic. Suddenly, Vincent lashed out at one of the doctors, blood splattering across the room and sending everyone into a frenzy. “Now, damnit!” The injector was quickly inserted into the side of Vincent’s neck, allowing a quick flow of mako to overwhelm his system. Vincent growled loudly in a fit of frustration and turmoil, his arms held fast by several men on either side. In a matter of moments, Vincent felt his senses dampening, his resistance weaking against the men’s grip. But they noted the acute struggle that seemed to persist long after Vincent had begun to lose conscience. Another command was given, and Vincent suddenly felt a cold metal pierce his chest, causing him to momentarily convulse. He bled profusely, and a vial was produced to catch his blood. At this point, he could no longer see, but the mind-numbing pain in his chest sent his mind into a spiral—horrific memories that caused more pain than the incisions themselves. His mind kept coming in and out as if something was forcing him to stay awake, occasionally disrupted when he choked on blood. Through a blur of pain, he could barely make out the voices around him. ‘It’s not….” “…Where?” “Dr. Crescent said…” “…Who could have…”
Blackness crept over him, and the voices finally faded along with the pain. And then, suddenly, another voice…. The sweetest voice in the world. “…cent….incent… Vincent… Vincent, wake up.” Lucrecia appeared in her white garments, her hand extended to him with tears in her eyes. “Take Sephiroth… somewhere safe… please… don’t let him die. Leave me… I won’t let you die.” A flash of light. The room began to come into view as Vincent’s eyes slowly opened, his mind gradually collecting. He discovered he was lying on a cold metal floor, and a faint ambient glow of mako permeated through the room. Summoning all his strength, Vincent pushed himself up onto his arms. The wound on his chest had already become a scar. Looking around the room, he realized he was no longer in the interrogation room, but a holding chamber. Looking down at himself, he saw a smear of dried blood and followed it behind him. Following it with his eyes, it lead to the outer doors. A shudder went through him. Somehow, he had crawled all the way here unconscious. But where was ‘here'? Turning his eyes upward and following the glow of mako, he looked up towards what appeared to be a tank of concentrated mako. Something was inside it. Is that....?
@aonemanarmy
Agony. It was the only thing that persisted in Sephiroth's existence, haunting not only his every waking moment, but also his unconscious mind too. Quite frankly there never was a time in his entire life where the looming specter of pain didn't lurk in the shadows of his mind somewhere and the trauma of it had left ample room for his sanity's collapse.
Be that as it may, the pain that haunted him wasn't quite so...vivid as it was under Hojo's 'care', although the coward that was Kilmister was certainly putting in a valiant effort. The purpose of which continued to elude Sephiroth, but it hadn't really mattered to the madman in the first place as he didn't need a reason for people to hurt him. It was because people always hurt him and he'd come to expect it to the point it was jarring to him when it didn't happen.
Kilmister hadn't chosen to be that merciful to him though, since that went against the whole purpose behind the would be doctor's 'treatment' plan for him. As such, the pain that normally lurked beneath the surface of his unconscious mind was brought screaming to the forefront, urged on by a chemical cocktail that would've killed any ordinary human.
If only things were so easy for Sephiroth.
Time had ceased to exist for Sephiroth long ago, but what felt like an eternity of torment plagued his unconscious mind as the good 'doctor' sought to find the perfect way to extract the precious materials he sought. So far the research that Kilmister had indulged in had proven promising, but it had offered no immediate answer on the best way to reap his twisted harvest although the man had an inkling of future measures to be taken. As of right now though, the man wasn't eager to sacrifice his precious specimen, especially not when he'd just barely obtained the madman, but that didn't mean that he wasn't already devising ways to get what he wanted.
One of the more 'mild' test measures that Kilmister had chosen outside of the potent cocktail of drugs was through the use of the one substance he'd learned had any real effect on Sephiroth: mako. However the man hadn't been content merely to dose Sephiroth with large concentrations of the toxic substance, but thanks to the madman's known regenerative capabilities he'd sought to use it in a more...creative way.
Deadly as raw mako might've been to any living organism when exposed to it, the substance's damage was more psychological and the ill-effects that stemmed from it rather than truly physically damaging. There was however, a way that it could be physically devastating as well, and Shinra had perfected it via means the processing of mako into materia. In this process a constant stream of mako was pumped into the heart of the reactor where it would then be condensed through the use of extraordinary heat and pressure and it was this stream of mako that the corporation had learned early on to fear.
Were any poor soul unlucky enough to fall into the pools the toxicity would be the last thing on their mind, since the mako within would've been super-heated to the point of boiling and unlike water it was highly viscous. It meant that even if one were to swiftly be removed from the mako pool that the substance wasn't easily washed away and it continued to burn the entire time which swiftly made for a gruesome end no matter how short the duration of the exposure.
With easy access to this highly dangerous substance Kilmister had chosen to use it upon Sephiroth as a means of not only testing the madman's regenerative capabilities, but to see if it could potentially grant him a means of obtaining what he desired. It was why after the initial exposure of a patch of skin and seeing the result that the scientist had authorized submerging Sephiroth into a tank of the substance, eager to document the results and satisfy the same sort of perverted quest for knowledge that had proven Hojo's own downfall.
None of that reason had mattered to Sephiroth though, since all that registered in his maddened mind was the horrific burning that scalded and blistered his flesh and that he was helpless to stop in his unconscious state.
For how long he burned like that he had no means of knowing, but after what felt like an eternity consciousness had slowly returned to him and with it the agony registered on an entirely new level. Yet, even it wasn't enough to drive Jenova's influence from his being and the first intelligible thought that registered in his mind was only to pursue the missing piece of his mother with the sheer agony of his suffering coming a distant second.
With the liquid fire enveloping him he somehow managed to thrust his arm from the tank and grasp the edge of it even as his skin ruptured and split, the flesh of his limb already threatening to slough from the bone. None of it registered outside of the drive to find mother though, as it was only through sheer willpower and his unnatural resilience that he was able to pull his body up and heave himself over the edge of the tank and to the floor below, where he landed with a dull thud.
Several long moments passed where Sephiroth simply lay there on the floor, his body rendered into an image that was the thing of nightmares and that resembled a boiled corpse. Anyone none the wiser as to his true nature would've thought him dead in that moment, but even as he lay there his body was already knitting itself back together, blackened and melted flesh slowly smoothing and taking on a more natural appearance. But it was in this state he was dimly made aware of a familiar presence in the back of his mind, although it wasn't one he was entirely able to register just yet and his eyes had yet to fully restore themselves to allow himself to see for himself.
Still, he heard what sounded like a hushed breath and he managed to turn his head slightly toward it, the heavy collar that remained locked around his neck scraping against the cold tile floor as he did so.
@phantomyre
