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The experiment is, it's a crossover of sorts. Try and guess what it's with. But use spoiler tags if you name it or what The Ark/Object06 really is...

Inspired by a story from the other source for the crossover which shares it's name with what Object 06 really is.

Final Fantasy Seven: New Threat

Three years before the outbreak of war between Midgar, her allies, and Wutai, farmers in Junon reported an unidentified object crashing to earth thirty three miles northeast of the capital city. Within hours, Shinra and Junonian Military troops had the area sealed, and the rumour mill went into overdrive. An experimental weapon, an asteroid, an alien spacecraft, Wutaian spy plane, Midgarian spy plane, or a stray missile.

Technically speaking, no rumour was true.

Either way, the rumours died down. The incident was forgotten except in the occasional book on UFO's or the ramblings of conspiracy theorists. Then came a terrorist attack in Midgar five years later. Over a hundred people were killed and billions of gil in property damage caused.

No one ever linked the two.

Revelation
Shinra Sector Four Weapons Research Facility, Midgar City, Lower Sector Four.

Two years after the outbreak of war

They called it Object Zero Six officially, but the scientists working here preferred to call it The Ark. It looked like a battered brass dustbin, with the lower half of the body covered in large spherical bumps. The middle section appeared to hold either two probes or weapons, one on the left likened to a sink plunger by one scientist. The name had stuck. The other protruding object on the right resembled a gun barrel, with a thin but sturdy metal wire cage consisting of four wires, attached to the front and rising for about two centimetres before then curving at almost a right angle back towards the main body. Another scientist joked it resembled a death ray from a science fiction movie, and that name too had stuck. If anything else, half of them though it probably was a death ray and the other half hoped it indeed was a potent weapon of some sort.

It's "head" section had two short, stubby protrusions suspected to be some sort of lights, and a single "scanner stalk" that the scientists believed was another probe or weapon.

For five years, many of the Shinra's brightest minds had tried to unlock it's secrets. Even Hojo had failed to deduce some way of opening it up, for the metal shell seemed indestructible. If they could ever get it open, even that metal would be a valuable asset to the Shinra, especially with the latest Tank armour designs failing miserably against captured Wutaian Antitank guns in tests.

Two men led the project here, and, in light of the failure to produce results in half a decade, would probably remain in this facility on this project until they retired. Professor Thomas Sorvad, a man regarded as one of the most brilliant physicists that Midgar University had ever produced and had been behind the invention of numerous mako-based car engines and had written the leading concepts that made up modern Mako extraction and Doctor David Baker, another brilliant mind, who had been trapped on this project for most of his career. From a staff of a hundred, they now had five workers assigned to them. However, their find remained top secret, and they held a whole wing of the research facility to themselves. Other projects were ongoing in other places on the base, water cooler urban legends flowing freely about what was in the restricted area of Wing Ten.

However, since the death of his son, Flight Sergeant Cloud Sorvad, a year ago at the outbreak of the war when his fighter was shot down by the enemy, the senior Sorvad had been acting strange.

'His behaviour remains consistent, Baker?' the man on the other end of the line said.

'Yes, Professor Hojo,' the doctor replied. Hojo had led the project for a year before moving up to control all of Research and Development. He had, however, demanded weekly updates on Object Zero Six despite the fact these updates consisted of nothing. Only in the last year had they changed to Baker reporting the mental health of his Professor to the Shinra's top scientist.

'I trust he still refers to it as his son?'

'Indeed sir, but I have something else to report,' Baker said.

'Oh?'

'I... I'm concerned the object is of more danger than it is worth, sir. I fear that to open it, we'll awaken it, and it will destroy before we can research it.'

'And what do you base this concern on?' Hojo said, not hiding his interest. Baker could picture the man's eyes lighting up upon the mention of destruction. Perhaps this had been a mistake.

'Well, sir, I have... I have dreams, sir.'

'Dreams?!' the professor said, incredulous.

'Yes sir. Nightmares. Hundreds of thousands of these things, floating across worlds laid waste, shwoing no mercy and no emotion but anger.'

Hojo laughed. Baker knew then he would never convince him.

'I'm possibly wondering if we need someone to do a weekly update on your mental health, man. Dreams! You've been working on that thing too long and reading too much science fiction, Doctor Baker. Perhaps you should lay off the cheese at suppertime as well.'

'Yes, sir,' Baker replied, defeated.

'So, that's all then. No change as usual, Sorvad's still bonkers, and you're having ham sandwiches for supper from now on?'

'Yes sir, that's all.'

'Good. I'll speak to you next week. Don't hesitate to call if there's any real development. '

The line went dead.

Baker placed the handset back down, and stared at the telephone for a long time. His dreams had been so vivid. The creatures (For he was sure this was no robot, but some war engine or armour) hovered across cities in ruins, forests that had been burnt clean of all life, across oceans that had been vaporised, over fields of skulls and rotting corpses. He had seen them in his dreams for months, a hundred times a hundred worlds had died in his nightmares. So real they seemed, but each morning, he awoke, and knew them as just dreams. Even though he recalled every minute detail

This morning had been different. The scene was Midgar. Sectors four and five had been knocked onto the burning slums below, and the upper city was ruined. The Shinra headquarters burned, every floor a wall of fire. From the mountains, he saw all of Midgar ablaze, from Port Midgar in the northeast, to Tragar in the southwest. All points in between were war zones. The village of Kalm was gone, vanished from the face of the earth. The city of Point Gar twenty seven miles northwest Midgar City's limits was below a mushroom cloud. The mountains were littered with bones and bodies, a massacre of those who had fled here to seek cover. Looking over the other side of the mountains changed nothing.

Upper Junon had collapsed entirely, smoke rising. Fires dotted the horizon, Costa Del Sol visible in the distance, just another pyre. Entire fleets of warships drifted in the sea, the crews dead. The world was dead.

He awoke screaming. He had felt somehow this was a prediction. As he stared at the phone, he knew he had to stop The Ark somehow. If only he could somehow destroy it.

His eyes drifted left to the fire materia his father had given him from his grandmother's possessions when she had died. A bauble, a trinket. It worked, but Baker had no need for it bar nostalgia. A more valued gift from his grandmother had been his sandwich toaster he had received when he first went to college, and still worked nearly twelve years on, which, contrary to Hojo's theory, he had not used at supper to make any cheese related snacks for some time. However, the fire materia still gave him the idea.


***

Sorvad's office was attached to the observation room, and the observation room was a large room filled with various instruments, and one large glass window with radiation shutters that could be activated in a few seconds. It looked down into the hangar-sized former test chamber where The Ark now sat, surrounded by mentoring computers and probes. It had once been used for dangerous experiments. Now, no one even bothered to clean the dust off the computers properly.

Baker entered the observation room, finding Sorvad as always staring down at the object.

'Professor, I may have an idea,' Baker began. Sorvad ignored him.

'Professor?'

The man finally turned.

'Yes? An idea? What for?'

'To awaken it,' Baker lied.

'Really? Well, can’t hurt to try I suppose, but I'm certain if we leave my son alone long enough, he’ll soon wake up at his own pace. What's the idea, man?'

'We shower it in mako. Perhaps, we can have it absorb the mako and the energy will refuel it. Or it might just run off like everything else we've tried. But we've never tried mako.'

'You have a point. Make the arrangements.'

***

A few hours later, watching through security cameras, the radiation shutters down, three junior scientists moved towards The Ark. The leader of them, a junior doctor called Davidson, directed the other two forward with devices resembling a flamethrower. Instead of flammable liquids, it instead held raw liquid mako waste. It had been an experimental weapon developed a few years ago deemed impractical in terms of cost and risk to a soldier, forcing them to wear thick, lead suits of sealed armour.

'Commencing the mako spray now, sirs,' Davidson told them by radio. The green/blue glowing waste shot out and soon was running down the sides of the object as the two sprayers coated it.

'There seems to be no visible effect so far,' Davidson reported. 'I think, sirs, this might be business as usual... Wait. The plunger twitched. Was that just the flow of the liquid? McGann, Hartnell, try to keep the flow away from the plunger.'

A few seconds later, Davidson almost screamed the next report.

'The plunger is moving on it's own! In addition, the end of the scanner stalk is glowing faintly. This is remarkable... We've awakened it!'

Tears of joy streamed down Sorvad's face as he too whooped for joy . Baker, however, had turned pale.

'We've awoken it...' he croaked.

'Yes, man, and it's all thanks to you!' Sorvad said joyfully. 'I'll contact Hojo immediately!' Sorvad said, picking up a telephone as Davidson kept his report going.

'All thanks to me,' Baker whispered, his mind filled with the images of his nightmare. He sprang to life as Sorvad dialled, slamming his finger on the cut off button of the phone.

'Baker! What the devil are you doing?' Sorvad hollered.

'We can’t contact Professor Hojo yet sir... We need to... Need to...'

'Need to what, man? Be sure it's waking up?' Just listen to Davidson!'

Baker swallowed, or tried to, his mouth suddenly dry and his stomach churning.

'The scanner stalk appears to indeed be some sort of eye, and the two other lights are blinking on and off. The plunger is moving erratically, but the other protrusion has... Ah, it just moved there. It's pointing right at me now.'

Then the communications link screamed.

This post has been edited by Del S on 2nd July 2007 06:07

--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Ressurrection

A beam of green light had shot Davidson in the chest, the green glow penetrating the suit and his flesh to expose the bones below for a second, before he fell backwards, the heavy protective suit slamming off the floor.

The gun stalk swivelled, aiming at the next man. The same occurred before he even had the chance to run, his mako sprayer exploding and igniting, showering burning mako over the walls behind the dead man.

The other technician tried to run, but the section of the body the gun was on simply span around, lining the death ray up and fired.

In the observation room, Baker was horrified. Sorvad, however, seemed to be grinning.

'We have to contact Hojo,' Sorvad whispered. Baker stared at him for a second.

'No! We have to... Have to contact the military! It's alive. It's just killed three people. We need to evacuate, we need to isolate this thing and we need to stop it now you bloody lunatic! We can't just let it roam about killing things until Hojo gets here!' he screamed.

'He won't escape the test chamber,' Sorvad said calmly. 'Those doors are ten feet thick. A mako bomb would have trouble penetrating them.'

'We still need to evacuate,' Baker hissed. Seconds later, the creature fired the ray again, and an explosion followed. Sorvad ran to the security console.

'Goodness. He's shot the cameras. He wants his privacy I suspect. Well, we might as well open the blast windows,' Sorvad said.

Baker screamed his opposition to that idea as the Professor pressed the button to do so. The shutters rolled up, revealing nothing below, and a gaping hole in the blast doors.

'Remarkable,' Sorvad whispered. The death ray echoed three more times. Baker slammed a fire alarm.

'We have to get out. We have to get everyone out, now!' Baker screamed.

***

In the corridor outside, three more technicians had fallen prey to the creature, the same green beam killing them in short order. The staff began to flee to the upper level, the fire evacuation point, as other technicians raced to the sector to fight the flames. One of them rounded a corner, and encountered the creature. His death alerted the next one.

***

'It's not a fire! We're under attack!' he screamed into his comms link.

In the main control room on the top floor, the site director, and the SOLDIER chief of security listened.

'Describe the attackers,' the director calmly said.

'Professor Van Statten, I didn't see them, but they used a laser. Or some advanced weapon. There was just a flash of light and Troughton was a skeleton for a second, then he was dead, not a mark on him.'

'Technican,' the SOLDIER officer said. 'Pull back. Do not attempt to engage. We're on our way.'

'Thank you Captain McCoy... Oh god, it's coming round the corner...'

A sound neither man had ever heard. A sound few heard and lived. A scream of agony.

The SOLDIER captain was already running out of the control room.

***

It patrolled the basement, killing all it found, and neared the stairs up to the ground level. Hovering, it ascended the stairs, and encountered two SOLDIER troopers. One dived at it, swiping his sword down at it's head. The sword disintegrated before striking, and the surprised trooper's gasp of surprise turned into a scream of agony as his hands and knees struck whatever had vaporised his sword, causing them to bloodily break apart, the blood evaporating in mid air. The momentum of his leap drove the rest of his body into the creature, that too disintegrating, but the blood and gore boiled in mid air, vanishing without trace, leaving only the bloody stumps of the man's lower legs behind.

The other SOLDIER drew his sidearm, and fired the pistol at the creature. The bullets vanished before they struck, and the creature responded in kind. It's single shot was deflected by nothing.

When it ascended the stairs, it found four more SOLDIER troopers with rifles. They opened fire on sight. So did it. One man, then the next, and another, then the last, cut down as their bullets went into nothingness. It kept moving, into a cargo holding bay

Captain McCoy and three more were around the room, as the last technicians filtered out the exit there to the fire assembly point. The four SOLDIER's opened up their fire, and the creature noted they were on a metal gantry. It shot the steel beam holding it up with a long blast, and the four men screamed in agony as they were electrocuted. The beam stopped, and they slumped down, dead.

It then followed the technicians, finding the other forty staff outside. It started firing...

***

Sorvad and Baker had by now reached the control room, where the Director was frantically screaming into a phone for reinforcements. He turned furiously on the two.

'You bloody madmen! You woke this thing up and now it's slaughtering everyone! It's wiped out the SOLDIER team, and it's killing the rest of the staff at the fire assembly point.'

'Dear god...' Baker exclaimed.

'That's almost what he's like, isn't he?' Srovad said. The director stared at him.

'What?'

'I said, he's like God. Oh, yes, he's killing the wrong people just now but I'll soon point him in the right direction.'

'What the bloody hell are you on about, man? It's a killing machine! It doesn't seem to care who or what it's killing. My god, if it escapes into the sector...'

'Wait! We can stop it!' Baker said. 'The mako gun in Doctor Hartnell's lab! That will destroy it!'

He ran off before either man could protest. Sorvad tried to run after him, but the director stopped him.

'No, you mad fool! If he wants to die, let him. We're staying here.'

***

The creature went back inside, and moved towards the main control room. The director watched it on security monitors in fear.

'How... How did it escape?' he asked Sorvad. The mad professor grinned.

'Oh, simple. He blew the door up.'

The director's head slumped down.

'So... He'll get in here easily.'

'Of course,' Sorvad said, almost gleefully.

'I wonder what they'll tell my wife... If they ever stop this thing...' The director whispered. The creature neared the door into the control room

'To thee, God,' the director said, simply. The door exploded, and the creature hovered in. It turned at the Director, and fired once. He did not scream, instead, staring at the creature in defiance.

Sorvad began clapping and whooping with joy. The creature's eye stared right at him

'I'm proud of you, Son! So proud,' he said, as the creature drew closer. 'So proud of you for this. Win the war for us, eh? Make your old dad happy, and save our people from the inferior scum!'

The creature fired once more, and Sorvad died, not with a scream of pain, but of joy.

It surveyed the room briefly. Nothing lived except it. It moved to the main console, and moved the plunger-like protrusion. It connected it to the console. It discovered that this world was at war, what it had been refuelled with, everything. It had the entire Midgarian Military Network cracked in seconds, and after that, began hacking every other network. In less than fifteen seconds, it had every scrap of information on a computer linked to a network in the world.

***

Baker had the mako gun, and was charging back to the control room when the creature turned the corner. He fired, the ball of mako energy crackling as it struck the creature, and exploded.

Smoke filled the corridor, and Baker hoped...

Run, a voice said from nowhere

It drifted out the smoke. Baker ran, the creature just missing.

Baker fled, hearing the voice. He tried to ignore it, tried to shut it out, but the whispering kept on.

'Who or what are you?!' he screamed, still running.

You know what I am, Cetra, the voice said.

'I'm not a Cetra! The Ancients are all dead!

Three survive, including you, it said. If you do not follow my instructions, only two will remain, and not for long. It will find them and kill them.

'Tell me what you are before I even think of believing you.'

I am the planet

'But... Only Cetra can hear the planet.'

Precisely.

'No, I'm just going mad. That's it. And you voices are going to lead me right into death,' he said, nearing a door. 'And that planet you said this thing comes from. I've studied countless books on astronomy and I've never heard of Sk...'

Don't open that door!

He did. He walked through, face to face with the creature. He uttered it's name. The creature paused.

'I know what you are. No one else does, nothing else on this planet can understand you, doesn't that count for something?'

It scanned him almost quizzically, then an electronic voice spoke in an alien language.

'What is it saying? I can't understand you. What are you saying?'

Lifeform is the inferior species known as the Cetra.

'What does that mean?'

The creature replied in apparently the only way it knew how.


--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Destiny

It went back to the body-littered assembly point, to find the police had arrived. Half a dozen squad cars with three officers, all of them pointing handguns at it.

'Freeze!' a Sergeant yelled.

The creature stopped, said something in it's mechanical voice, and then opened fire, hitting a car. It exploded. The creature began firing rapidly, destroying the cars as the surviving officers ran for cover. Then it floated up into the air, and aimed it's gun down at the police below. Seconds later, they were dead, and the creature tried to keep flying. It floated towards the nearest blocks of homes, most of Sector 4 being industrial. But it began to fall. It quickly dropped to ground level, and discovered it was unable to fly .

This was not an issue. It could simply keep moving on the ground and seek an alternative way to above the metal plates blocking it's transmission, and had a perfect spot from which to do so, the highest building in the area, and highest thing upon this side of this planet. But whilst here, there was still life to target. A factory with a large petroleum fuel drum was destroyed by a single blast, the oil within detonating and igniting vehicles parked nearby. Factory workers on the late shift that had not been killed ran out into the volleys of fire from the creature, and more bodies littered the area.

Another set of police cars raced towards the facility, as the creature destroyed the factory. It turned at them, and one shot into the first car caused it too to explode, the engine and fuel igniting. The two officers within scrambled free, but the creature shot them down as they tried to extinguish the flames coating them. The second car had two shots strike the driver and passenger, and the vehicle ploughed into the creature. The force field that had stopped the bullets and SOLDIER trooper before stopped the car in the same violent fashion, disintegrating the middle of the car and most of the occupants, leaving only two slivers of the sides of the vehicle, and twisted remains of flesh and bone. The third car braked, spinning ninety degrees. The creature simply floated right through the drivers side door, cutting the car in two and vaporising the police officers within.

Another police car approaching turned tail and ran. The creature fired pot shots after it, hitting some parked vehicles and destroying them in the same manner as the burning police car.

It neared housing, and detected life. This had been one of the areas of the old Midgar, before the construction of the city above. The creature detected the gas mains of each house, and opened fire, shooting through walls to strike and ignite them. It had incinerated an entire street in this manner before a half dozen armoured personnel carriers rolled up, and formed a barricade. Sixty soldiers leapt out, and former firing lines in front of the vehicles. The creature turned upon them and said something. They opened fire, to the same lack of effect everything else had. Even grenades simply detonated before hitting, but the soldiers kept on firing. The creature decided to start with the vehicles. First the one to the right, then the left, working left to right until all six had been hit, and their crews electrocuted. Some of the soldiers charged forward, bayonets mounted. One man ran straight in, suffering the same fate as the SOLDIER nearly half an hour earlier. Another swung with a sword, and found his hand vanish and blood begin spraying. The creature then started firing rapid bursts and the soldiers around it. The rest began to flee, and the creature pursued, slaying them all. It neared the border of Sector Five.

More and more military forces drove towards the area, and they had set up another blockade near a church. A missile team on top of that church fired on the creature, but the missile too failed to inflict damage. After it shot the launcher and detonated their missiles, the creature began tearing apart the assembled Midgarian troops.

***

Safe Jones was the leading news reporter for Midgar Television News, and upon hearing of the explosions below, had raced with his team to Sector Seven, the only place trains or cars could access the lower city. His newsvan was just tearing past the Shinra building to enter the tunnel down to the lower city.

'Do you have anything else on the explosions?' he frantically yelled to his produced through a cellular phone as the tunnel neared. The lower city, and tunnels, cut off all reception.

'Nothing except they're moving towards sector five,' the produced said, but the signal began breaking up at the end.

'Was that sector five? Hello? Dan? Shit, bloody tunnels,' the media man groused.

'Where to then?' the driver beside him asked.

'Sector Five lower. If we're lucky, we'll see it on the way... Hang on, what's this?'

Out the left hand wing mirror, Safe saw a fleet of black four by fours rolling down the highway behind them, blue lights flickering either side of the windshields.

'Bollocks! SOLDIER's in on it!'

'That's bad?' the cameraman shouted.

'Good and bad. If we get there, we see SOLDIER in action, but the odds are, the Shinra or the government make us pull the tape or edit it heavily. However, we still have exclusive rights to the tape after the ban is lifted in about five years and we can discuss it and replace it with illustrations. Plus, we're allowed to play audio. Censored, of course. Bad, however, is if they get there long before us and turn the story into torchwood,' Jones explained.

'Don't you mean charcoal? Or mincemeat?' the driver objected.

'Just shut up and drive.'

***

'Captain Tyler, what is the situation down there?' a SOLDIER captain asked from the lead vehicle.

'It's -ing us ----. We don------- the ability to----, our bulle----nish, we can--- with anything!' came the broken reply on the communications radio.

'So much for these damn things having good reception,' the lieutenant beside him complained.

'They do, but unfortunately, the Midgarian Army's comms are shit.'

'Well, how do we proceed, Captain Eccelston?' a SOLDIER in the back asked.

'Simple, Private. We proceed with speed. Find this damn thing, and put it down, five rounds rapid. Unit Zero Zero Two engages the creature, Unit Zero Zero Three holds Sector Four and cleans up.'

***

Amongst the twisted wreckage of the blockade at Sector Five, the creature was feeding. The APC's of the Midgarians were fuelled by Mako, and in it's haste before, it had ignored the last six. From these eight, it siphoned off the entire supplies of mako fuel in the vehicles. The replenishment of the fuel had let it fly once again, but it needed more. The nearest location with a high concentration was in the Sector Seven train yards. It made it's way there, firing on anything living on the way. Over Sectors Five and Six, it fired at random, houses exploding, people being slaughtered, and carnage being wrought. Wall Market, it blazed away, slaughtering the crowds at the Honey Bee Inn door with three volleys, the power of it's death ray having increased from the extra mako consumed. Instead of killing them without a mark, they burned. But it was near the target. It landed in the train yards, simply landing on a guard and disintegrating him. Two others were blasted down by the death ray.

Eccelston's unit found it there, drawing an entire tank of mako fuel dry. They took up positions, but one SOLDIER tripped. The creature turned, and fired. The entire pile of rubble the man was at disintegrated, along with him.

The creature was hovering about a foot off the ground now, and the concrete below had vanished, a crater of earth below it. The creature floated forth, the ground beneath it vanishing in a six foot circle around it. A hapless rat scurried across the path, and was messily destroyed.

'Hit it hard! Bolt magic! Level one!' the Captain yelled

Electrical energies shot out of the air, and struck the creature. It wobbled, and made a sound like a scream, and fell into the crater it had made. The magical energies were disrupting it's power.

'Keep it going! We're stopping it!'

Magic kept bouncing off it, and the creature kept screaming. Eccelston neared.

'How does it feel, eh? The great space dustbin that tore apart the lower city, humbled and helpless. You're going back to the labs, whatever you are.

The creature kept screaming, but managed to change the tone of what it said between screams.

'Was that you surrendering?'

Again, it spoke, two changes in tone between screams. Then it fired. Eccelston felt the beam strike him in the knee, and a slow, agonising sensation spread from the point of impact as the weakened death ray took slow effect, killing cells in a spreading wave. He screamed, and the magic stopped for a second. The creature took it's chance. One trooper was hit in the head , and he fell, his body twitching as his brain died before the rest of him. Another yelled in agony as his hand was killed, then his legs. A third was struck by a shot in the chest, his strangled gasps as his heart and lungs died drowned out by the yells of other troopers subjected to a slow, and fatal process. The captain had fallen over, his dead leg giving way as his pelvic region died. It spread, the agony never subsiding as his cells died. He could no longer feel his living leg, every nerve in between dead. Dead blood cells swam through him, and his heart neared the point of arrest. He let out one last gasp, then died. His troopers were now all dead, or on the way, as the creature returned to the fuelling points. It refuelled, and the ground again began to disintegrate.

Now, it merely needed to get up to the upper city.

***

The van roared past the entrance of the train graveyard, and saw the creature.

'Quick, get the camera ready!' Jones shouted. The creature swung and looked at the approaching van. It took aim.

The camera was pointed, and switched on, just as the creature fired. Then there was nothing but a white light, before the camera was utterly destroyed.



--------------------

"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Doomsday

Leaving a trail of devastation in it's wake, the creature floated onto the tracks, tearing through an abandoned carriage in the process. It fired upon the various train engines parked up, but discovered all of them empty of fuel. It moved towards the tunnel.

***

'Unit Zero Zero Two, this is Control. Come in.'

'Lieutenant Pertwee, here.'

'Pertwee. Your unit is to move into the tunnels and engage the target. We presume it's heading up. If you use the entrance at North Alverin Avenue in Sector 4, you should get ahead of it. Remember your orders are to subdue it,' control told him

'Very well control, we're on our way.'

Pertwee's team had already disembarked at the facility, and were clearing the bodies out of sight.

'Sergeant!'

A tall man with white hair and a long bladed sword came over. He saluted.

'Sephiroth, tell the men we're moving out. That creature seems to have thwarted Eccelston's men.'

'Yes sir.'

***

The creature was not the only thing in the tunnels. A train from the upper levels, carrying forty five passengers and staff was speeding down towards sector seven. The driver never even saw the creature as his train tore round the corner and into it's shields. Only those at the back of the three carriage train had a chance to scream before it was annihilated.

***

'Lieutenant Pertwee, come in.'

'Yes, Control?'

'Pertwee, a passenger train carrying forty five persons according to the ID card checkpoints has vanished. We suspect the creature is making it's way to your position.'

'Roger that sir. We'll be out of radio contact soon.'

It was true. SOLDIER's radio network only functioned via secondary transmitters on the bottom of the plates that allowed their radios to function flawlessly, though most police and standard military bands would suffer interference at the best of times. Inside the tunnels or catacombs of either city level, there was no signal at all.

A few minutes later, they were at a refuelling point and siding inside the tunnel, converted from an abandoned station that once had allowed entry to the upper city from sector four. Now, only Sector Seven was allowing access to the upper city following a terrorist attack on the tunnels of Sector Three a few years before that had led to the closure of Sector Four and Sector Eight's stations leading up as well as the installation of the ID check network.

The SOLDIER team took cover, six on the right side, six on the left. The Sergeant took command of six, Pertwee the rest.

It emerged, the tracks and ground below it vaporising.

'Hold your fire,' Pertwee whispered. 'Let it get in the middle of us.'

It saw the refuelling well. It moved towards it. Behind the nearby wall, Sephiroth's six men waited.

The creature paused. And Sephiroth heard the creature speak, a mechanical voice that stalled briefly at each syllable.

'Hostile parasitic inferior life form known as Jenova detected, exterminate, exterminate!'

It moved to fire. Sephiroth shouted for his team to move. The creature fired.

Two members of SOLDIER vanished along with a vast portion of the platform as the creature's ray, powered to insane levels, caused a massive explosion. Dust filled the corridor.

'Hit it hard, level three magic!' Pertwee yelled. Ten bolts of lighting struck the creature, and it screamed, convulsing. Then it flickered, electricity covering it's body.

And the electricity warped out from it's body, disintegrating everything in it's path for ten meters each way, including half of Pertwee's team. The lights exploded, and unknown to the men in the tunnel, their magical attack had overloaded the shield of the creature, and the resulting pulse of electromagnetic energy had just caused a power cut across all of Midgar, It fell down into the crater it had made, landing on it's side. Pertwee leapt in, sword drawn. The creature fired once, the weakened death ray hitting the captain's head. He hit the ground, his body twitching as his brain died. It fired two more times, two more troopers receiving fatal headshots. It tried to right itself as the four remaining soldiers lobbed grenades in the crater

'System overload, critical damage,' it said, as the grenades detonated harmlessly beside it. It tried to hover up to the refuelling point.

A SOLDIER leapt in front of him, swiping his sword. It struck the death ray, cutting it off. The creature's plunger arm came into use, and grabbed the trooper by the face. He screamed in agony as his face was torn off by the suction of the arm. Then he fell silent.

Sephiroth moved in now, cutting the plunger arm off, and the eye stalk.
'My vision is impaired! I cannot see!' it wailed.

'Can either of you understand that thing?' Sephiroth asked the two survivors.

'No, sarge. It's all Solian to me. Why, can you?'

'...No,' he lied. 'Just hoping someone might have

'You have not stopped us,' it said in the slowing mechanical voice. 'The inferior parasite in your blood cannot stop us. We will take the energy. This world and the universe are ours. '

'Just what the hell are you?' Sephiroth asked, wondering if it could even understand him. It could.

'We are your death. We are superior beings,' it said, it's electronic voice slowing even further.

'We... are... the...' It said, but before it could complete it's sentence, it expired, the bulbs of its dome dimming. It was dead. Or at least, dormant.

'Get out into a signal, Private. Get control, explain what's happened. Have them send other men to restrain this thing,' the sergeant ordered.

****

The electronic intelligence agencies worldwide, scanning the airwaves for any useful transmissions in this time of war, all suddenly found their signals jammed for a moment. What sounded like white noise or static roared across their speakers. Television signals and radios on the same hemisphere as Midgar also cut out, replaced by the same white noise and static.

It was sending a signal, on all wavelengths. It was trying to summon the rest of it's kind.

****

Four Years Later, One Year before the Nibelheim Incident.

'Professor, what exactly was the creature?' The President asked

'We are not sure, sir. It may very well have simply all been a Wutaian ruse, some sort of mechanised killing machine... But that technology is beyond them and the costs would be astronomical, plus if it was, they have managed to keep the entire thing secret and apparently built only one rather than using them to crush us during the war. In fact, I doubt we could ever create such power in our lifetimes without reverse engineering the machine,' Hojo replied

'And so far, that has proven almost impossible. I myself must confess, that this creature... What did we call it?'

'We called it Object Zero Six, and also, The Ark. We now call it the Devil's Engine, for obvious reasons.'

'Indeed. What was it, four hundred people, half of them military and amongst them almost thirty members of SOLDIER? That was thirty million gil down the toilet right there, they're expensive to train and the SOLDIER process itself is costly. Plus another two billion gil in direct damages and the power cut it caused. That cost almost four billion by the end of it all. As I was saying, I must confess, I really would like such power at our hands, but it's too dangerous, even for us. No, I don't think we're ever going to keep that project going at the costs it is draining and the risk it holds, especially since we had to scrap the space program. Tell me what you need for the other one. That one you put on standby in the war,'

'Well, sir, I need a Cosmoan Mountain Lion. They're a rare, long-lived species of jungle cat capable of speech in some tribes, and in fact they're often war leaders for the jungle tribes in their various intertribal conflicts with desert tribes.'

'What's it needed for?'

'I plan to harness the cells defining the long life of the creature with that of an Ancient, and create a hybrid. From there, the resulting offspring will be....'

'Half man, half lion. Hrm. Well, at least you're not going to throw the Ancient into a cell with it and try and get them to have sex,' the President said.

Hojo laughed at the suggestion.

'No sir. But you raise an interesting point. The subject, the Ancient, is on the run in the city somewhere. She's a girl of about... Fifteen? We may need a male Mountain Lion to ensure we can isolate the correct sexual chromosomes to help us make a breeding pair of the offspring.'

'Sounds like filth to me,' Scarlet interjected.

'Science often sounds like filth to those unfamiliar with it, Miss Scarlet,' Hojo replied.

'One last thing, Hojo,' Heidegger spoke up. 'Your next project... It won't escape and cost four billion gil, will it?'

The entire board laughed. Hojo replied in the negative.

The message sent at the end of that night four years before, to the planet's horror, was that this world was more than ripe for attack. It was weak, populated by inferior humans and even better, had barely begun to realise the power at it's fingertips. The life-energy this planet stored could make his race even more powerful. It could make us, it said, beyond superior. With it's apparent death, it sent the message to it's race. It could take a decade, or a century, or longer to reach, it knew, but this world would still stand no chance when they arrived. Assuming of course, the warlike inferior beings on it's surface had not annihilated themselves, or allowed themselves to be wiped out by the inferior parasite known as Jenova.

And it was still alive, transmitting a faint signal. It was drawing it's race right to this world. But in the stars, a great war raged, between the creatures and their mortal enemies. It would end in the annihilation of both sides. This planet was spared from them by the war, and the sacrifices of two great empires.





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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.