Hidden Identity (Book Two)-Complete

Year Five, Day Seventeen

Cloud POV

Tifa, Barret, and I peek around the corner at the man in the white lab coat with long greasy black hair held back in a ponytail. He paces back in forth in front of the door to his lab for a few minutes, muttering to himself. Slimy bastard. He better not have hurt Aerith. If you did, Hojo, I'll send you to hell myself.

As soon as he opens the door and walks in, we rush in after him. Barret barely makes it through before the door slides shut again. Then, we follow Hojo until he reaches another door within his huge lab.

Barret points his gun arm at the bastard. "Don't move. I ain't bluffing."

"What is this?" Hojo demands irritably.

"A dozen bullets in your head unless you open that door right now."

The scientist does so, reluctantly. Inside, Barret practically frog-marches him down some stairs and into a wide open space in front of a huge mako-filled tank. A few smaller tanks line the walls.

"You must be the ones who've been stirring up trouble lately. The eco-terrorists? If so, I can't imagine what business you have with me. The president's upstairs," Hojo says, sounding annoyed.

"Shut up. Keep walking," Barret snaps back gruffly, nudging him with his gun-arm.

"Do stop pushing. Unlike you, I am less accustomed to physical violence."

"You'll get used to it."

"What is it that you want?" Hojo inquires, stopping in the middle of the room.

"Our friend. She's in your lab."

"Really?"

"Tell us where Aerith is!" our big friend demands.

Hojo smiles wickedly. "Oh, so she's your friend. Well, well, well, in that case...yes...that might do the trick."

"Mind speaking up some?"

"It's nothing. Just imagining how she might react if I were to show her your fresh corpses."

I watch his eyes glance briefly to the upper right hand corner of the room. Just in time, I draw my sword and block a kunai hurled at me from up there. A shadow flits around amongst the pipes along the ceiling.

"What is it?" Tifa asks me, following my gaze.

"He's got something or someone up there."

"I'll get it," Barret tells me. "Don't let this bastard get away."

Nodding, I point my sword at Hojo. "Make a move, and I'll run you through."

Barret fires a round up at the pipes. Forced out, a figure leaps down into the open not far from us. To all our surprise, it's a young woman with long, wavy silver hair that stands out against her bronze skin. She's dressed in black with a belt of kunai around her waist and two ninjato-style swords hanging at her hips. A metal band is wrapped around her left wrist like a shackle. Even from here, I can tell that her eyes are the bright blue of those infused with Mako, like me.

"Amazing, isn't she? One of my finer creations, I must say," Hojo says proudly. Then, he lets out a maniacal laugh. "The best part is that she's closer to her beloved boyfriend now than she ever was before! HAHAHAHAHA!"

"Barret, time to switch," I say. We move to change posistions, but the girl lunges forward, creating an opening for Hojo to escape to an elevator.

"We'll have to go after him once we beat her," Tifa says unhappily. "I really feel bad about having to hurt her."

"Saving Aerith is what matters right now," I tell her, though I feel the same.

Hoping to end this quick, I run at her and slash down hard and fast. With lighting-like reflexes, she positions herself so my blade cuts cleanly through the band around her arm, only slightly grazing her. The cuff clatters to the floor, sparking from the ends of live wires.

The young woman smiles. "Bout time I got that off."

She looks up at the ceiling. "See that, you bastard? I outsmarted you! Now I'm free to tear you limb from limb!"

I blink in confusion. "You don't work for Hojo?"

"Not by choice and not anymore," she replies, grinning. She gestures to the discarded cuff. "Every time I stepped out of line, that thing would shock me like those collars you can get for dogs." 

"Do you have a name?" Tifa asks her.

The girl taps a crescent-shaped tattoo on her right shoulder that I hadn't noticed before. "Crescent X, the designation that bastard gave me. Only name I know, unfortunately, so I prefer to just go by 'Cress'."