Angeal eased into the coffin as he snuggled against the other.  He hated being alone in the huge mansion.  His mind plagued by nightmares of what Zack went through there.  The mako fang resting his head against the other’s chest.

 

Vincent’s senses woke as the lid was lifted from his coffin, but as they registered the person he decided not to bother waking up fully. He sighed gently as Angeal snuggled into him and laid his head upon his chest. A small smile graced his lips and he couldn’t resist whispering, “Sweet dreams.”

 

Angeal heard the other comfort him.  He was slightly surprised, but glad the ex Turk didn’t mind him there against him.  He fell asleep at least in dreamless sleep.  The newly born vampire still sore from the grafts they put him through.  He felt reassured to rest there.

 

Vincent’s smile grew as Angeal drifted off to sleep. It was the first time in what seemed to be ages that he was warm. Having a living body next to his own warmed not only his icy skin that was now more dead than alive but the heart he thought would never feel again. He went back to sleep comforted that he was still capable of offering another person comfort.

 

Angeal awoke, finally rested.  He then eased over the coffin to settle in an upright seated position next to it.  Aware Vincent hadn’t mind the company.  He had no idea the Turk was even down here in the tunnels, until now.  The newly turned mako fang looked at his surroundings even though they were surrounded in darkness, Angeal could see clear as day.

 

Waking as Angeal moved Vincent slowly sat up and watched him as he looked around. “Are you alright?” His voice was gravelly from disuse and sleep. He had to wonder what brought a SOLDIER down to these tunnels, especially to sleep.

 

The SOLDIER turned to the ex Turk.  He never thought he would even see Vincent ever again.  Angeal tilted his head, noticing he looked different from when he recalled seeing him last in reports.  “You have been experimented on too I see.  Something took a bite out of me, I had been steadily changing from it.  Then, they grafted things to my body.”

 

Vincent blinked red eyes, that did not actually answer his question. “Why would they graft things to you because something bit you? And yes, Hojo decided it would be fun to kill me and then infuse me with demons.”

 

“Hojo might have made me vampire by forcing that female on me, but she was the one that grafted guard hound tentacles through my arms to my spine.”  Angeal still worn from the week.  Thirsting for SOLDIER blood.  He had been supplied up until now.  Locked now in the basement, he had been healing from his sire using him as an experiment.

 

Vincent wasn’t sure WHAT to make of that. It must have been a rather painful process. “So, why are down here? The door to the rest of the mansion is locked… and SOLDIER and me proof. How did you get here?”

 

He climbed from his coffin and knelt in front of Angeal, “Does that mean you need to drink blood to survive?”

 

Angeal looked downwards, thinking of what they had been doing to him and then locking him away in the other rooms in the basement.  He stumbled in here where he found the slumbering Turk.  He nervously shifted as Vincent knelt there.

 

“I-I don’t want this….  it goes against everything I am.  I am supposed to be SOLDIER.  I am supposed to protect the weak, not….  drink their blood.  What were they thinking making me into this??”

 

Vincent could sympathize with that, he turned sad red eyes to the SOLDIER 1st and then wrapped the large man in his arms. “You’ll be alright Angeal. Unless they send people down here to be food you won’t be able to hurt anyone. And if that happens…they would probably die down here from lack of food and water anyway.”

 

He cringed at his own words, he doubted he was helping at all, but comforting someone had never been his strong point. “Sorry, that’s probably not helpful at all.”

 

Angeal jolted upright instead of the slouch he had been in, looking shocked at the other.  They had been feeding him bags of a mixture of stuff, but now that had stopped a bit.  He swallowed at the thought of people coming down here.  His mako blue eyes ringed with a golden halo flew over the shadowy room in horror.  Had the Turk been used to this??  “Surely you are mistaken…  I would rather kill the makonoids they are breeding in the reactor.”

 

Vincent sat back at the SOLDIER’s stiff reaction a frown marring his face. “Honestly I hope that I am mistaken. It would be the most sick and twisted then Hojo’s done yet. That I know of.” He paused though, “What ‘makonoids’, in what reactor?”

 

He had been asleep in this coffin for who knew how long now. He wasn’t really sure what the other man was talking about. Though he knew of several Mako Reactors where such a thing could potentially take place.

 

“In the mountains, Nibel reactor.  There are SOLDIERs trapped there that were mutated with Mako to the point they are no longer human.  I guess I should be thankful I didn’t become one of them. It’s been going on a while now, that is where the monsters are coming from…  We are taught not to talk of the fallen among us.  The Turks usually dispatch us to take care of our own.  There is no amount of inhumanity Hojo has maintained without us all fully knowing the extent.  He was after all given full reign of all projects in the end.”  Angeal stared at the other in divulging the details of the changes that had been happening for the worst.

 

Vincent shuddered, what a horrible thing to do to people. The fact that Hojo had gained so much control was not something he liked knowing. “Whatever happened to Doctors Hollander and Gast?” He wondered aloud, “Though it would makes sense for SOLDIER to deal with their program’s fallout, Turk’s only way of doing so would be to bombard them with bombs and it would cause entirely too much destruction.”

 

He slumped back against his chosen coffin, “Using people for such things… is simply wrong. How could someone so insane be allowed to continue existing?”

 

Angeal could feel the unease from Vincent, and he knew what he thought.  After all, he had thought the same sort of things after trying to process how many SOLDIERs had in fact been ‘lost’ in the mountains themselves.  “I rather go out there to put them down humanely.”  The First was responsible for training the majority of SOLDIERs himself.  It broke his heart knowing what he knew now.  He had been the backbone of SOLDIER before it started…. revealing these things.  “Hollander and Gast I not seen or heard from in a while.  Hollander is still active, but no longer working for ShinRa it seems.  He and Hojo had a falling out.”

 

Vincent shook his head slowly, it was hard to process. “I would hope that everyone had a ‘falling out’ with Hojo. I would also hope that theirs did not end up the way my own did.”

 

He closed his eyes, “Yes, we should see about getting out of here. It would be best for us to take care of the,” he air quoted, ““SOLDIER” problem. It will go better for them from people who know and care about them than if it were done by others who simply see them as the monsters they have been turned into.”

 

He rose gracefully to his feet and held out a hand, “How recovered are you?”

 

He shifted and stood as he felt better within all his extra senses.  Angeal could not turn down they would go and hurry to stop the dishonorable thing that would happen here if those once human things got out.  “I am ready.”

 

The First then helped with breaking the reinforced door with both of their combined strengths.  Angeal looked stunned how the heavy door gave away like that.

 

“Well that was easier than expected with the two of us.” Vincent commented quietly. He stood still a moment listening to see if the heavy door banging to the floor had attracted any attention, but no one seemed to be there. He moved out into the library a hand to the hilt of his precious gun, he quickly shot every monster that showed its face when they moved past as Vincent headed for the front doors of the Manor.

 

Angeal gritted his fangs as they went through the manor and monsters shouldn’t have been over taking a building connected with ShinRa.  It was a sure sign the town would eventually fall to a cover up, or the thing that was Jenova awaken further.  Her cold siren cry of the universe was a wailing no one cared for.  Many of SOLDIER heard it when they were nearest to her.  (Later on it would be the crowning thing that pushed Sephiroth over the edge).

 

The raven vampire had heard of the wailing, and could not understand what the sound was.  “Vincent, the closer to the reactor we get…  something is making a horrible sound…”

 

Vincent glanced at him and then paused to listen. Other than the sounds of the wind and the occasional beast sounds from those nearby, he could hear nothing. “Does it sound like it is coming from outside of you, or like a screaming inside your head? Can you tell?”

 

He wondered if the SOLDIER were experiencing something like he did with Chaos, but wanted to be sure.

 

“Yes, it sound otherworldly a shrill high pitched song of death…”

 

Angeal had found Jenova it seemed, so she was within the reactor too.  He then hurried through the rocks as he plunged on.  He didn’t want to alarm the other, but he asked him to hurry.  “That thing is at the reactor still.  Something far worse than the makonoids in the holding tanks.  Which means Sephiroth hasn’t come here yet.”  Hearing the song of Jenova sent a unbalance harmony of a song of the death of the Planet if she wasn’t stopped.

 

Thing? Vincent wondered, but he kept pace with the other man. “Something that needs destroying more than the Mako transformed SOLDIER? And what has Sephiroth to do with it?”

 

The red eyed man thought about it a bit longer, he knew that ShinRa Mansion had been Hojo’s lab and that when Sephiroth was born...well even before the boy was born, he had been subjected to the Jenova project. But he wasn’t sure what that would have to do with Angeal. “Are you wanting to destroy Jenova?”

 

Angeal looked at the ex Turk when he said that.  He said what he didn’t want to hear or say.  His eyes hazed rather worried now.  “The lab said Sephiroth is supposed to join her and together the next phase of whatever plan would happen.  It says we will be taken to the Promised Land.  I got an uneasy feeling reading the books though. The thing is,  can that thing be destroyed?  She after all fell to the Planet.”

 

Vincent frowned, “I don’t know. But we can certainly try. Cutting off all of her ‘life support’ should help. But she had crashed to our planet eons ago, and she was still alive. We may have to get inventive.”

 

He didn’t like the idea of going to the ‘Promised Land’ since from what he understood of it, it was basically how the Cetra viewed the afterlife. And he certainly didn’t want Sephiroth to cause the deaths of every living being. If preventing that meant finally killing the monstrosity that had been injected into his veins then he would do it.

 

The vampire SOLDIER felt the need to try to help his friend before he got there.  After all he had grown up with Sephiroth.  He hurried through the cavern mazes to get to their objective.  The reactor itself on the highest point of Nibel itself.  ShinRa damn arrogant of locale.  He turned his head down towards the village and saw the state it had been in since ShinRa pulled out and hid a lot of it’s secrets there.

 

He now turned towards Vincent, hearing the rolling cosmic song of Jenova crest.  His eyes glazed with hate for the oddity of her pretending to be an angel.  The SOLDIER felt the need to be the part people desired of him.  “Let’s do this!”

 

Vincent nodded his head in confirmation as a determined look washed over Angeal’s face. The ex Turk wasn’t sure what was going through the SOLDIER’s head, but destroy Jenova was certainly a worthy cause. Finally reaching the Reactor they found the door unlocked and moved swiftly inside.

 

Angeal hurried in a hush, viewing the industrial shadowy corners of the reactor creeping as if from time itself.  Angeal had rarely ever been stationed there.  He now could see why.  There were a few containers set upon upon several of the stairs that lead upwards to the forsaken room.

 

His nails eased outwards as he crept along like death itself.  How many years before…  He stared at the carnage of the scene.  The nightmares weren’t nightmares, they had been flashes of what was actually happening.

 

He saw the Buster size gash against the mako tube and the shield Sephiroth had ripped away.  Staring there as he knew now, Jenova was in fact laughing at him in that musical tone.

 

Spying the wreckage that was now the Nibel Reactor Vincent’s frown deepened. He wasn’t at all sure what had transpired here, but he felt as though he were already too late for something very important. He carefully watched Angeal as the man moved about, he could see recognition in those eyes, but also anger and perhaps regret. It was what those eyes were staring at that finally caught the old man’s attention. “Jenova.”

 

Angeal let out a loud growling noise that rippled through the reactor’s core.  His talons striking blindly into chains that to him had no purpose.  They entangled him and he still went ballistic cause of all the pain and suffering had happen since they found this … this thing.  This immortal inhuman thing that stole planets away and then used them as vehicles.  Though he only knew what he knew from books even Sephiroth and or Genesis had read too.

 

Vincent watched as Angeal slashed his way through anything and everything that separated him from the being known as Jenova. He could see that the creature was still alive, even after all of the decimation that had already happened here, it was surprising the thing hadn’t been moved yet. Standing out of the way Vincent allowed the younger man his vengeance, deciding he would step in only if he was needed. He didn’t after all know who Jenova could affect Angeal or the other SOLDIER members. But he knew she couldn’t affect him, he sensed nothing but a vile energy from the pulpy mass that lay inside the many tubes before them.

 

He spun about, a yanked chain broken from the ceiling and dragging behind him.  The thick muscular SOLDIER slowly drawing up the chain and letting it spin in a slow rolling wrist  motion.  Flinging the damn thing right into her form.  The rest of the busted mako tank protesting as it shatter and emptied out of mako.  Angeal refusing to move an inch when it gushed.  Still drawing the chain back and striking at her repeatedly.  His fangs more predominate now.  Flying against the mess finally at the scent of her, he clamped downwards upon her broken form… drinking her blood in.

 

“Angeal!” Vincent really didn’t think drinking that monsters blood was a good idea. “What are you thinking?! I thought the point was to destroy Jenova, not potentially turn her or kill yourself on her alien blood!” He was hoping that he wouldn’t have to physically remove the man, though Chaos seemed to think that was a splendid idea.

 

The makofang turned as her blood was smeared across his face.  His mako blue eyes wild as the other said to stop.  Her laughter was a screech now.  The vampiric form standing over her dangerous.  The head though was far within the depths of the reactor itself right now.  Angeal swallowing the meal that they had been forbidding him.  “I can’t help myself, I was starving…”

 

“Then feed off of me! Eating that alien shit is dangerous! She could gain control over you through it, do you want that?” Vincent didn’t want anyone close to Sephiroth to be put in danger, especially if he could prevent it. And in a way, he was desperate to get the SOLDIER away from her.

 

Feeling the burning heat of her cells dying within him.  Apparently he been had made out of anti cells of the same manner of creature Jenova was.  Letting Vincent talk him away from there though.  He dropped her form, walking over nearest the Turk.  Angeal easing there knowing he meant well at the offering.  “No, I don’t…”

 

Vincent sighed in relief as the SOLDIER moved away from the monstrosity. He wasn’t sure how they were supposed to kill the extraterrestrial being, but he was certain that eating her wasn’t the answer. Moving his gaze from the problem at hand to the man now standing beside him he questioned him, “Are you going to be alright?” In the back of his mind he could hear Chaos chanting, ‘Taste him, taste him!’ But he wasn’t sure which of them he wanted to taste which, it was a rather odd thing for the weapon to say.

 

The vampire ex SOLDIER gave Vincent a very condemning look as if he heard the weapon.  He hadn’t but he was livid just as Sephiroth had been before diving into the depths of the reactor.

 

“I don’t look well?”  Angeal smiled slightly though it was darker than his usual self.  “Burn the body behind me…”

 

That sounded like a strong command, his eyes hard as steel as he refused to turn about and dive back into the feasting of her blood.

 

A small smile graced Vincent’s face, “You look just fine. I was asking if you can handle being here anymore.” He shook his head, “Exactly what am I supposed to burn it with? I wasn’t exactly given Materia when I was killed and then injected with monsters.” Though him saying something like that rang a bell in the back of his mind, something Lucrecia had said…