[OOC] I.
Your Name: Fal. Taking the i out of fail since 1987. 8D
Your Age: 21.
Your LJ: falsiloquence.
E-Mail: falsiloquence@gmail.com
Instant Messenger: AIM: fire din fire.
Character: Professor Hojo. First name undisclosed; he prefers 'Professor' or 'Hojo' or both, but rarely anything else.
Series: Final Fantasy VII.
Timeline: Directly after his 'first' death, or the death he experiences in the first game and not in DoC.
Wiki Us a Bio/History:
http://www.hojo.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Hojo
Elaborate, if necessary: Hojo was the head of the Science Department at Shinra Inc. for a great many years, working on ethically questionable projects away from the public eye and under President Shinra Sr.'s scrutiny.
Approximately thirty two years prior to the game date, he was sent to Nibelheim on Gaia to assist Professor Gast and Lucrecia with the Jenova Project. The project was run under the mistaken belief that Jenova was a Cetra, and Gast intended to use her to create humans with the abilities of the Cetra. Lucrecia and Hojo's unborn child became the subject of experimentation, with both parents willing.
Vincent Valentine, the son of a man Lucrecia had once been very close to, objected to the experimentation. Hojo already had concerns for his closeness to Lucrecia, and it seemed that his protest was the last straw. Hojo consequently shot and experimented on him; curiosly, when he had the capability to simply leave him for dead, he went about creating an elaborate game within the ShinRa Mansion that would allow any curious participant to find Vincent's coffin if they could solve the puzzle. It may well be that Hojo's intention had in fact been to see Vincent freed at a later date, where they could settle the score once and for all.
Growing radically braver and more power-hungry, Hojo would also go on to experiment on others such as Cloud, Zack, Red XIII and Veld's daughter Felicia, with a later attempt to experiment on Aerith and create a new race of half-Cetra crossbreeds. He is also shown to have great engineering and mechanical skills, having replaced Veld's hand with a robotic one at some point.
With the success of the experiment on the child, Hojo later began to inject himself with the Jenova cells in an effort to become a super-being. However, Jenova overwhelmed him and he mutated into several increasingly powerful forms. Craving to see Sephiroth reach his final stage of development, he assisted him in trying to retrieve the power of Gaia. During his attempt, AVALANCHE mortally wounded him.
It's from this point he will be taken to Nuadoria, but this is as the canon continues:
Left for dead, Hojo in fact managed to upload his mind into the World Network as a backup before it could be destroyed; his body is also shown to have vanished when Vincent came to finish him, so it's very possible that this physical form actually was able to escape. However, the DoC implication conflicts with the game, which When Hojo died, his soul was unable to be assimilated by the Planet due to the experiments he had conducted on himself, and so instead the essence of his soul was absorbed into Sephiroth.
Due to Meteorfall the World Network was fractured; his mind was fragmented. He was able to reform after the World Network was restored, three years after his supposed death. Now whole again and eager to finish what he'd began, he possessed the body of the Deepground Soldier Weiss, using it to his own ends. However, Vincent was able to defeat him, and Nero came to merge with Weiss's body, making it uninhabitable for Hojo and forcing him out. This was what finally eliminated him.
Thanks to a hefty amount of his own genetic meddling, Hojo's body and blood is riddled with the final products of years of his research. It's likely that the majority of his advances can be pinned on the inclusion of Jenova cells in the mix, which strengthen his body's immune system, make him physically more powerful, and give him an advantage where the healing of wounds and endurance is concerned. It also makes Hojo capable of shifting or partially-shifting forms; in the game, he is shown to shapeshift into 'Heretic Hojo', and then into 'Lifeform Hojo'. Then there's his mind, which is, despite the guy being a total crackpot, still a wealth of very useful scientific information, primarily biological and genetic in nature. He probably also has a healthy amount of technological expertise, and some weapons training with basic handheld guns.
Appearance-wise, Hojo is a spindly-figured, heavily slouching man who, when standing straight, is 5'7". He is not a terribly imposing figure, but he makes up for it with his overall appearance. His face is gaunt, with a long forehead, deep frown lines and sharp features. His expression is ever-intense and studious, with wire-rimmed glasses propped on his nose and light wisps of dark hair framing his face. The rest is pulled back into a ponytail. He looks to be in his 50's, and has Wutaian features.
Personality-wise, Hojo is an ass Hojo is an arrogant madman, a scientist with a God Complex so great that, in life, there was nobody he wouldn't experiment on in his efforts to create the perfect being - including himself.
He is highly intelligent and, when it comes to upholding a conversation, he has little patience for those who don't show much potential.
For the most part, Hojo is calm and collected, though he communicates most things with snarkiness dry amusement. He's not without strong emotion, but he keeps those emotions in careful check; he's not impulsive or particularly sincere unless he feels it is particularly necessary, or he has something to gain from his honesty. When he does get excited, however, he can be manic and dangerous.
His history with Lucrecia indicates that he may have at least been capable of love at some point, though whether or not he possessed such feelings in the relationship, Hojo isn't telling.
Hojo would typically be considered a man who is cold-blooded and ruthless to the bitter end, and it's not likely that Nuadoria would see a great change in that. He's resourceful, and will no doubt take a scientific interest in what he sees - but he's also quite vulnerable, and he'll be acutely aware of it.
What are they bringing to Nuadoria?: Just a few things. The clothes on his back, his old pistol (I daresay he's carrying, given that he shot Vincent) and the pen and notepad in the breast pocket of his labcoat.
Third-Person Sample:
White.
Synapses firing off in the last death throes, he supposed, blasting blinding out from behind his eyes, brilliant and clean, and soon enough he couldn't see the console before him any more, familiar buttons red-smeared and new under slippery fingers. The blood across his palms had been mildly irritating. Blood was always mildly irritating. It had always gotten deep under his nails, felt unpleasant between the mountains and valleys of his fingerprints when he rubbed the digits together. It seemed to highlight the imperfections in his flesh, bringing the slightest inconsistency into sharp focus.
Thankfully, there was no more to be found. No more blood, or the cold spasms of shock seeping into his veins, numbing the pain. Just a very pleasant, very typical white.
Many would have romanticised the natural process, called it the light of something divine, the Lifestream reaching out to take the conscious mind down lovingly into the heart of the Planet to be one with everything again. A foolish notion, if he was feeling gracious. The Lifestream didn't reach out, certainly not with anything resembling love. It was a mind, a collection of minds, and mindless all the same. Machines, regardless of however much information they stored, could never be referred to as knowledgeable. Instead, Hojo had always thought it was the 'souls' that bled down like worms, squirming, writhing back towards the crude oil that constituted the veins of life for their wretched little world. Insignificant in the grand scheme of things, in her grand scheme of things.
This world was just a passage to other, greater goals for the likes of her, and they were just the coal she'd burn to get there. Even once he was gone, the path would not be steered away from what he had planned; he was confident in the perfection of his final and most precious specimen, the finely orchestrated masterpiece he'd left behind. Sephiroth would understand, and continue where he couldn't; Sephiroth would do him proud, a lasting testament to his brilliance. It left he, though no more than a sacrificial pawn, a content one all the same. Her influence had done well in that respect, lulling him, quieting reason until she was done with him, and even becoming aware of the fact now didn't change the strange attachment he felt to the glorious parasite. She was a perfect being. She did what instinct had her do, and there was no such thing as a victim.
He wondered. If she hadn't lulled him, would he have still complied? He was a different man now to the one she had seized, and he could no longer say.
He thought back. Valentine certainly looked different, these days. Still as great a fool as ever, but how the fool had grown, evolved, changed without him; a curious long-term specimen, and one he'd have liked to study further. Nevertheless, he was still so incredibly amusing. He made such a great pretense of the matter, brandishing his gun with such finality and certainty, such a dramatic air. He'd always been good at that, and it seemed to convince his group, but didn't he know that the haunting shadow of fear still crept into the red of his eyes? It had been almost startling, staring down the barrel and seeing it flinch with every smile he gave him, seeing the way Valentine's jaw trembled, cheeks damp with sweat. Some things never changed, and some wounds never completely closed over. So many years, and he still wouldn't make eye contact.
He swore he could see in him what he had seen in Crescent. They were made for each other, after all, brought together by vulnerability, humanity, and their own wayward idiocy.
It occurred to him, entirely from the blue, that he couldn't remember the day. The time from his digital watch was etched cleanly into his mind however, even in the painless, unending, almost tautological haze of death. 12:32. Lunch in an hour. It hadn't mattered to him when he was alive, and it certainly didn't matter now that he was dead. Towards the end, even sleep had eluded him; science, advancement, power, godhood, they had become single-minded goals, something he knew, knew still to be achievable - but never something he reached, and close just wasn't good enough.
He found himself dissatisfied with the train of thought. It meant to imply he had failed, which was incorrect. It was simply not the expected outcome for him, but the final results as a whole were sustained. Sufficient.
It came as a surprise when the sound-reduced air gave away to a soft, but notably biting breeze, a wintry chill and an atmosphere, a scent that was not consistent with the surroundings he was in. Had been in. This was outside. His fingers moved, and there was something behind them, something too solid and cold to gather in his fingers. His back rested on it, but his feet were too numb to give away whether it was a wall or a ground. Nothing beneath the soles of his shoes. Earth beneath the soles of his shoes. For a moment, the vertigo was nauseating. He wondered, if he were to throw up, did he roll to the side and hope the solidity at his back was a floor, or did he look down and hope it was a wall?
It took a minute or two for Professor Hojo, now ex-Head of the Shinra Science Department, to realise his eyes were already open. Given their dryness, they probably had been for quite some time already. The white wasn't as white as he thought it was, now that he focused on it; the more he stared, the more its contrast faded, and a texture began to appear before him, his sense of distance and perspective so skewed that he thought he was inches from a tapestry grain until he saw one lonely winged shadow circle overhead. Its cry was melancholy. His glasses, the thin metal rims, were a faint double-edged blur in his peripheral vision. They looked ghostly to him.
No, he thought. Because ghosts didn't exist, and his glasses did. And he did. Even when he was dead - and there was no guarantee of that, he did still exist in some form, and he would get to the bottom of this. It certainly wasn't what he expected of the Lifestream; the smell, for one, was not a great deal better than Midgar's. An intriguing situation, certainly, and it brought with it some interesting questions. Why here, where was here, and why wasn't he dead?
The sky was overcast, but strangely bright. Now, watching carefully, he could see the soft surge, the suck and pull of current-driven clouds of all light grey shades. Not white at all, in fact. Grey. So grey that he felt like the world had lost all colour. He raised his hand, and there wasn't a spot of blood to be seen on it - only smears of brown from the earth beneath. Good. Of course. Sky above, earth below, and all was in perfect order. Colour, too. His knuckles were swollen and red with rheumatism, the nails starting to go a little blue with the effects of Raynaud's disease. The distracting LED at his wrist alerted him to the fact that his watch had stopped. 12:32, it blinked, and yet that was unfathomable. A practical joke, presumably, by whoever had found the time to drag him from that building and lay him out here.
Time of death: 12:32. A doctor's work ended when a patient died. When a specimen died, a scientist's work picked up once again with the opportunity to dissect - presuming, of course, the cause of death wasn't a vivisection. Investigating organs, blood, brains, flesh, samples samples samples, reasons for everything. Yet, there was no reason for his watch to have stopped. That alone went against his sense of order, of familiarity, and so he puzzled for a while. Coincidence, then? It was unlikely, but not impossible; in fact, it was a great deal more plausible than anything else. It had been a long time since he had replaced the battery, or he might have been out for a day, perhaps even longer. 12:32, precisely twenty-four hours later. Another possibility was that he was simply recalling the time incorrectly, perhaps confusing things. Some false sense of deja vu that had never really occurred. He could have died at 3:45 for all he knew.
It was all so terribly irrelevant, though. He had better things to be thinking about.
Even with the strong sense that he was alone, he felt uncomfortable in his vulnerability, and slid his hand across the cool ground to find support. Up, up on his elbows, and the world rotated in a smooth, seamless ninety degrees. Gentle as it'd been, it still made him feel another thick wave of nausea roaring through his head, and his thoughts waited at the red light until it passed.
Not death. Not the Lifestream. Not Midgar, either. Now things were getting interesting, and all sense of numbness, soreness, pain was lost as Hojo dragged his legs beneath him, standing upright. He brushed at the labcoat that still hung open over his shoulders. The earth held no sign that he'd ever been lying there, and his body held no mark of having lain there, and that was for the best; who knew what might be lurking in this place, seeking such markers. Right now there were vastly more troublesome matters to consider, like how one could go careening from the brink of death (had it been death?) to find themselves in a place - a city - that was utterly unknown to one.