The Aurora Project Intro
By Seventh
I was never really anyone.
Born? I was born, if you call it that, in the labs of Shinra, in a small test tube beneath the misguided hands of a man called Hojo. Created, soul cleaved to a body that I never really owned. I was the composite of everything Hojo ever played with: through my human blood runs both the power of the Ancients and the knowledge of the cosmoe, that ancient race of animals residing in Cosmo Canyon. Anything Hojo ever touched eventually became a part of me: All sorts of magic and Materia, monsters and Mako - such things have been injected into my blood. I was just a dumping ground - a toy, yet the ultimate weapon of defense.
They called me simply the Aurora Project.
Hojo told me one night, reveling in both the success of a previous experiment and his victory in an ongoing battle with a large bottle of whisky, where the idea for my creation had come from. "Long ago," he said, "there was another mad scientist who took as his goal the manipulation and creation of powerful, magical beings. His name was Kaefka. One of his test subjects was a young girl, full of unbelievable powers running in her blood. It was this Kaefka’s experiments with this girl that eventually perfected the magic we now call Manipulate. I read about it in a history once." I sat very still. "This is why, my dear, dear, Aurora," he slurred now, his long fingers stroking my cheek, "this is why you wear my crown..." His hands glazed over the small silver band I had always worn, small crests of yellow Materia beads peering from inside its iron workings.
I remember little from those times. What I remember, I remember coldly, as if I were watching the body of someone else. I was never really anyone - just the Aurora Project. I remember briefly other subjects of Hojo’s - the great red beast, the man with the dark hair, the transfigured machines, the shrieking blond man, the lovely young woman with the green eyes. I remember receiving transfusions from some of them, howling in pain as magics mixed beneath my skin. Hojo’s glowing eyes beckoned me on. I was no one.
I did not know my fate. I had never been outside Hojo’s lab rooms - extensive as they were, it was a small world. Then one day, Hojo left - everyone left. The blue suits, the white coats. All gone. I roamed the Shinra labs like a ghost, doing for myself what I could, trying to gather the courage to open the door, the doors that had always been closed ...