"I do not know... No hesitation, no heart of gold... Just flesh and blood... I do not know... From my heart and from my hand, why don't people understand my intentions?"
-Weird Science
Professor Gast discovered that small amounts of Mako energy, the life stream of glowing green and blue that makes up the core of the planet's being, could change a creature, empower it. This was the basis of the experiments that led to ShinRa's SOLDIER corps, and the creation of my nemesis and eventual slayer, Cloud Strife. However, most creatures exposed to large amounts Mako energy, while in its pure form, are mutated and warped beyond recognition. He also discovered that one creature, throughout time, had been exposed to pure Mako energy for extended periods without ill-natured physical effects. This creature was an alien that landed on the planet during the time of the Cetra, the Ancients, and nearly destroyed their entire race. They called it 'Jenova'.
Professor Gast developed a theory that a creature injected with Jenova cells while still in utero could be exposed to Mako energy and grow more powerful than anything else his genetic research could develop. He abandoned the idea; however, because he believed that what triggered the insanely destructive tendencies of the Jenova alien was along the same genetic strands that protected it from Mako radiation. Professor Hojo, who inherited Professor Gast's notes after the scientist's disappearance, became very intrigued by this theory, and set out on his quest to finish Professor Gast's "Jenova Project."
In his own research into the theory, Professor Hojo had a team of assistants: a young scientist, Lucrecia Winter, and her fiancé, Vincent Valentine, a ShinRa TURK who served as the Professor's bodyguard. Over the course of the project, the Professor slowly seduced Miss Winter, and drove her slightly mad with the ambition that she be the mother of the child who would inherit Jenova's power.
It's my unbiased opinion, having dealt with the man for the majority of my life, that he was quite thoroughly mad from the start of it.
Unknown to the Professor, but known to his two assistants, the child he chose as his specimen three weeks into its first trimester of existence was not his own son, but rather that of Vincent Valentine, his secondary project. Even if Vincent could eventually recover from Lucrecia's madness and tragic poisoning unto half-life, the mutilation of his beautiful body into a were-beast with a claw for an arm, and the two decades he spent locked in a coffin in a basement in Nibelhiem... The tragedy of his firstborn son’s fate might still have reduced him into utter depression.
Eventually one is forced to draw one's own conclusions about his creators. Gast was a genius and Hojo was a madman. They made me, from little pieces of Mako and Jenova and two broken lives, and ShinRa paid for it. My mother never even got to hold me; that was her lifelong lament. My father could not save me, even now, that is his personal hell.
At least, I like to think so. One does hope for such import in his father's life, after all.
Somewhere around the area of my twenty-fifth birthday, I discovered this entire story in the two Professors' notes in the basement library of the ShinRa mansion at Nibelhiem. I'm not too proud to admit that I went completely out of my mind for a while. Burned a small town to ashes, got impaled on my own sword, established an army of clones, released Jenova's headless, half-dead corpse on the world at large and dropped a flaming meteor on a major city... I'm a born megalomaniac, what else would I do in a tantrum?
I was stopped by a rag tag group of misfits who called themselves Avalanche. Their leader was a young, beautiful blond boy named Cloud… Twenty-one year old Cloud Strife of Nibelhiem and SOLDIER; Cloud, who was the most completely failed of the Sephiroth clones and my puppet, my obsession. Cloud… Married now, and expecting his second child, my father couldn’t bear to tell me. I guess it shows on my face, that sometimes I want him back under my fist again, so much so much so that I could almost go mad again…
Tifa Lockheart-Strife, the last surviving student of the Zangan school of martial arts, and my puppet’s bride. She’s a sweet girl, if a bit prone to self-delusion.
Barrett Wallace of North Corel and Midgar’s Sector Seven… He is, perhaps, the only true revolutionary in the group, dedicated to changing the world in the name of his dead family and surviving adopted daughter.
Cid Highwind, the world’s only astronaut and survivor of a powerful crush on my father… He has surprisingly good taste, for a greasemonkey.
Cait Sith, the giant mog-riding cat… Another puppet, only his master is Nicholas Reeve of ShinRa Incorporated, the last halfway ethical businessman in the world.
Which leaves us with two… My father, Vincent Valentine, now a transformation-prone vampire of fifty-something, and his beloved, the teenage Yuffie Kisaragi, heir to the Pagoda at Wutai and only child of Lord Godo, my most respected enemy from the war, before I discovered my past.
This unlikely group defeated both of my beastly forms and Cloud slew my only successful clone, Number One, in single combat. Its so hilarious, when I look back on it now. It makes me laugh, laugh with tears in my eyes. I must have been truly gone, if they were able to defeat me, with no more motivation than my control over Cloud’s mind and the death of that silly flower girl Cetra on my hands…
I awoke, after Number One’s death, in my little house… A girl was there… She called herself Midgar, after the city of millions my madness destroyed. She lead me to the friends I have now… My first friends, Kunzaito-sama, Zoicyte, Milliard, Nakago… I don’t know what she is, but I had the distinct feeling she might return for me someday…
And I will owe her any favor she asks of me, aijin, because she led me to you.