Once they get inside she stands beside the helicopter with her arms draped to her sides. It looked like it had seen better days. She holds her breath only to sigh when he teases about it possibly not flying. "Right now is really not the time to be joking Rikelus." She grabs onto the frame and climbs in as well, strapping herself in. "I highly advise you don't stress me out right now. I don't exactly have anything to take the edge off." She didn't want to sound like some addict but it was so much easier to pretend her emotions didn't exist when she couldn't feel them.
Her mind wanders back to the labs they were headed to, wondering if any of the supplies there were even still good at this point. She leans her head back against the seat and stares up at the ceiling as the blades start to spin. "You think they have supplies there to make things still?" She asks, tapping against her thigh where her beloved syringes would have been.
“Absolutely—it’s one of the more modernized laboratories when it comes to advanced compounding and item synthesis. Not far in actuality since we don’t’ have to go through the mountains. I suppose a little over 45 minutes at worst. The access point is in upper Junon which is still ruled by the remnants of the ShinRa military.”
The old helicopter groaned around them as it cut through the morning sky. Junon sat somewhere ahead beyond the horizon steel and ocean waiting where blue sky met endless water. It wasn’t long before beneath them, sunlight rolled across waves in fractured sheets of gold while clouds drifted lazily around the aircraft. Despite the old ShinRa bird rattling every few minutes like it had unresolved personal issues he seemed relaxed with one hand resting loosely on the yoke the other tapped absently against his thigh.
Like he wasn't flying several thousand feet above the ocean in a retired ShinRa helicopter held together by aging bolts and optimism. He knew that Rayleigh wouldn’t leave behind seven layers of security, psychological warfare and some horrifying surprise because she got bored one afternoon. He’d seen her armor and sword there that abyssal stained black armor that seemed forged by the planet itself.
The helicopter’s descent into Junon’s lower airspace wasn’t terrible but it was loud. The wind howled off the ocean waves in violent bursts as the old ShinRa craft wobbled slightly on approach, its aging frame protesting every correction Rikelus made on the controls. Below them, the massive steel spine of Junon’s coastal fortress rose from the sea like a man-made cliff cannons, platforms, and industrial catwalks layered into a structure that never quite looked like it was meant to exist in nature.
Rikelus leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing as he guided the aircraft along a restricted descent corridor. The landing gear shuddered and a red warning light blinked and he slapped the panel twice before it turned yellow. The helipad on the lower maintenance tier came into view rusted markings barely visible beneath salt erosion and old paint. The old access codes still worked that was the important part. The helicopter touched down with a heavy metallic groan that echoed through the platform. The engine slowly powered down blades still spinning in tired uneven arcs before finally coming to a stop.
He unbuckled himself and stood, stretching his shoulders like he hadn’t just piloted a relic through restricted airspace with questionable legality. Then he glanced at Isrieal that wry smirk appearing on his face again before the helicopter backfired out of one of the engines. It wasn’t supposed to do that it seemed like it was shot and it would be a one way ticket.
They disembarked from the chopper to the air that was heavy with salt, oil, and old machinery. Junon never really slept it was like Midgar except instead of having bright lights it just shifted layers and people.
Rikelus led the way past a group of military officers who still acknowledged him and let him pass offering a slate to their once famous Commodore. He took her through a series of service corridors tucked beneath the outer structures. Most of it was old ShinRa infrastructure you’d find in Midgar reactors. Abandoned maintenance halls, faded warning signs, emergency lights flickering with intermittent life like they couldn’t decide whether to quit or not. Eventually they reached it a door to a reinforced elevator shaft.
Old designation plate still mounted beside it: SUBLEVEL ACCESS – RESTRICTED AUTHORIZATION ONLY
Rikelus stepped forward and placed his hand against the panel for a moment, nothing happened he tapped in a sequence paused and added final input. A faint hum filled the corridor and the panel flickered green before a low mechanical tone echoed as ancient systems reawakened, recognizing authorization that should have been dead for years.
The elevator doors groaned open slowly, revealing a dim, vertical shaft descending into darkness. Cold air rolled up from below it felt old, filtered, sterile, and clinical in a sense I suppose.
He stepped inside with her the elevator shuddering as it began its descent, metal cables creaking softly above them as they dropped deeper beneath Junon’s foundations. Level after level passed in flickering light. For once he leaned lightly against the wall of the elevator next to her his arms crossed for once, he wasn’t joking not fully at least.
They went far below the city, beneath the sea until finally with a mechanical shudder the elevator slowed then stopped before they pulsed open. The cold sterile light spilled into the elevator from the underground laboratory that stretched out like a forgotten world. Tempered glass corridors and active monitoring stations lined both hallways the outside lighting revealing a colorful display of sea creatures and fish. Rikelus stepped forward first, boots echoing softly as they hit the floor. A blue laser scanned him from top to bottom before it recognized him and an automated voice greeted him.
‘Welcome back Administrator’
Cold fluorescent strips flickered overhead in uneven intervals, casting long, fractured shadows across polished steel floors that hadn’t been walked on in a very long time. The air had a tinge of a unique mako residue not like the normal one but one that had been tainted by something long ago.
He moved with her deeper into the underground laboratory finding different corridors branching into eight different pathways. Glass observation panels lined the walls some fogged over, others cracked, all looking into empty experimental chambers.
He passed the first chamber finding a reinforced glass case anchored into the floor, stood something that gave him the chills it was a full body suit of abyssal-stained metal dark as if it had absorbed years of deep-sea pressure and something far worse. The plating wasn’t purely ceremonial it was fully functional layered segments designed to flex under impact, reinforced at the joints with a metallurgic compound that could smash through ShinRa military alloy as if it were butter. What was even more unique about it was the different heads of Fenrir that adorned the armor that seemed to leak miasma from their mouths.
The dark, uneven discoloration of abyss that spread across the armor looked like ink soaked into metal and refused to fade no matter how many purification cycles it had been subjected to. He felt drawn to it his reflection stared back at him from the glass, fractured by old cracks spidering along the surface. Beside the armor hung her sword, long, elegant and far too clean compared to everything else.
The blade was sealed in its own containment field, suspended horizontally like an artifact rather than a weapon. The edge shimmered faintly not reflecting light so much as swallowing it at certain angles.
He moved onto another hallway the atmosphere changing materia racks lined the far wall not neatly arranged like standard ShinRa issuance it seemed more curated, collected, and studied. Crimson colored summon materia pulsed faintly behind containment glass, but it wasn’t alone. Beside the summon materia were variations distorted growths of elemental crystals that didn’t match known classification patterns. Hybridization of different types of materia lay adorned next to them. “…That’s not normal synthesis.” He stepped closer his fingers hovered just short of the glass. “Some of these have been… combined.”
Another rack nearby held something far more unsettling genetic sampling tools, genetic modification equipment for gene splicing, and Micro-surgical arrays.
Labels still clung to some of the drawers:
LIFESTREAM INTERACTION STUDY
GENE ADAPTIVE RESPONSE TRIALS
CELLULAR RESONANCE MAPPING
Rikelus exhaled slowly through his nose before he continued deeper past observation windows, inactive containment pods, and diagnostic chambers where data still flickered faintly across broken monitors, looping old logs that refused to die completely.
And that’s when the tone of the lab shifted again a central chamber came into view through reinforced glass. This part of the laboratory was different not in design but in what it held. It held only a single containment pod that was far more dense than the others. Data conduits hung like dormant vines from the ceiling. The entire chamber looked like it had once held something that required constant monitoring just to ensure it didn’t evolve out of control.
His hand hovered near the console at his side, fingers flicking through dormant system layers on a handheld override pad. Static crackled. Old data nodes refused connection. Whatever was ahead hadn’t been accessed in a long time or had been deliberately locked away from anything that still remembered how to ask.
The pod was massive, reinforced glass layered with internal stabilizing rings, frost crawling along its interior like veins of frozen time. Within it, suspended in a deep, unnatural stillness, was Rayleigh ShinRa. She seemed preserved, not asleep, or dead but something in between. Dark fluid suspension half cryogenic medium, half something far more unstable shifted slowly inside the tube like a living atmosphere that refused to settle. A faint miasma clung within it, swirling in slow, deliberate currents that made no attempt to obey gravity. It moved like it remembered being alive and subconsciously he stepped forward without realizing it.
He was now close enough to see the subtle distortions around the chamber’s readings. Close enough to feel it pressure, not physical but instinctive. The kind of pressure that pressed against the back of the skull and whispered don’t stand here too long. He tried using an assessment materia
“…I can’t get an assessment reading,” he said quietly knowing full well his stats were higher than anyone else and it should theoretically be possible.
Another attempt yielded the same result then silence. The air around them felt colder now. Not from temperature shifts but from her mere presence. Like the chamber itself was reacting to what it contained. The faint miasma inside the tube shifted again.
For the first time since they entered the lab his expression wasn’t amused, curious, or even analytical. It was uncomfortably serious the kind of serious that made you feel a pressure behind your ribs. He felt the cold awareness crawling up the spine like instinct refusing to be ignored. A warning that didn’t come from sensors but from experience.
“…try not to let the sleeping apocalypse notice we’re here…” his voice was soft slightly above a whisper but he didn’t finish the sentence. Rikelus took a slow step back then another, tactically retreating and repositioning his eyes never leaving the pod reversing their positioning until they reached the items she would need for synthesis along with the equipment.
