Blood & Sympathy (FFVII: Vincent x OC)

Ch8 - Discoveries

4 Months Later

The music banged ruthlessly against her eardrums as she focused all her attention on the microscope, staring for hours and hours on another sample. That small experiment of hers led her to many interesting assumptions. Maybe an ability such as self-healing wasn't as impossible as everybody previously thought it was.

She took her gaze away from the microscope as she scribbled down another series of words. She looked at her notes after a few minutes. She wasn't planning to write an entire paragraph. But heck, she had a lot of data to keep on that notebook of hers. She had filled dozens of notebooks and she had stored them all somewhere in a box in this house's basement.

Her primary goal was to create a serum that would actually promote healing. Sure, she wanted to somehow genetically modify creatures, even humans, to give them the chance of self-healing. But she knew that was an ambition that would have to wait.

Although, JENOVA's body seemed to have some kind of immortality to it. Jocasta chuckled at herself. It sounded ridiculous. But heck, it was a 2000-year-old body and it was intact. Like time had not touched it at all.

Jocasta stopped staring at the sample as a realization hit her. Her eyes widened. She grabbed her notebook and tossed a few pages back. She'd written down a sequence of JENOVA's genome. She shook her head. JENOVA's genome was made of different sequences of six different nucleotides, instead of four that every living being on Gaia had, and that made things enough complicated. That was the reason why Dr. Gast stopped believing that this being was a Cetra. Jocasta shook her head. Too complex. A genome so complex would mean too many abilities. Too many possibilities.

If only she could find a way to relate those two. A human's genome, with JENOVA's genome. There must have been something similar these two would have. Something that could link them and she could finally solve that mystery of the weird creature's origins and abilities. Besides, JENOVA did look a lot like an actual woman, despite the fact that they still weren't sure of its sexuality.

Jocasta cut a single strand of her hair, and she set off immediately to take both genomes, and stare at them. Just stare at them on the computer she had on her desk. She had gathered a couple of JENOVA's cells as a sample. Jocasta just stared at the screen in front of her, for who knows how much time. An expression of determination spread over her features as she once again tucked her glasses up her nose and pushed a strand of her behind her ear. She needed to focus.

She magnified the two pictures as much as she could so she could take the clearest of looks of both of them. She knew that whatever she was searching for was definitely on the picture. A genome tells everything about an organism. Everything. She was sure the answer was right in front of her and she was just missing it.

"C'mon... show me what you're made of..." she mumbled. Her computer's screen's light flickered on her eyes as she desperately tried to find something. She wanted to decode it. She needed answers.

Then, something caught her eye. Her brows furrowed as she leaned closer to the screen. Her fingers skilfully danced on the keyboard as she magnified, and magnified the picture. She found a sequence of all six nucleotides of JENOVA. Her eyes bounced back and forth between the two pictures. A picture of her own genome, a normal human's genome, and a picture of JENOVA's genome.

There was something oddly familiar between the two, yet they were so different. Jocasta bit her thumb. C'mon, com' on... there must be something.

And then she saw it.

A link.

A similarity.

A single pixel on her screen that she knew it was gonna change everything. Jocasta's hand reached out to grab her notebook which she'd tossed somewhere on her messy desk. Her eyes unable to leave the screen as her blood ran hot in her ears and her heart beat so loud, she could practically hear nothing else than its rhythmic thump, thump, thump.