The Nightingale Three

Chapter Three.

I awoke with a terrible hangover and made my way to the bathroom down the hall, throwing up the contents of my stomach from the night before. What the hell was the alcohol content of that drink? I never had this problem with any other drink that I downed one right after another, not to mention I had only had one drink. I was going to have a bone to pick with Cloud once I wasn’t hunched over this toilet seat. There was a knock on the door, only moments later and the noise sounded ten million leagues louder than it really was.

“Jezz, you ok in there?” Mylene’s voice came through the door and she opened it to me sitting on the floor, hair matted to my face, clothes wrinkled and praying to the porcelain gods.

“Myl, could you be a dear and kill the spiky blonde man for me or better yet, bring him to me and I will throw up on him.” I growled, finally able to stand up without throwing up what remained in my stomach.

I could tell she was trying her best to keep from laughing and I rolled my eyes at her, trying to keep myself from laughing as well. She, Lyna and I had a very strange friendship that around others we stuck to our cold and hard demeanor, yet when we were alone that façade was quickly diminished.

“That drink really took it out of me… really knocked me on my ass more than anything else we have ever experienced.” I stated, washing my mouth out until I could go and grab my toothbrush.

“Well, apparently we are having a nice sized meal due to having more visitors in the night.” She explained and I raised an eyebrow in question. “From the sounds of their voices, there were about four males and one female other than Tifa and Marlene.”

“That would be odd, where is Lyna? We need to get this mission taken care of immediately.” I explained, worried that one of the new people who had arrived was thinking about taking our jobs. This would be bad news for assassins in our possessions would mean that we would be executed. Failure was not an option nor was disobedience, which we saw so much of in our unit alone. It is why we managed to make it this far, we didn’t question the higher ups even when it felt morally wrong.

“She is downstairs, talking with the Turks who are here without Rufus…Mr. Shinra.” There was an edge of disappointment in her voice and that little slip of his first name said it all. She had an attraction to the tall blonde hair, blue eyed business man, which could only bring trouble and again would lead to execution.

See an ongoing pattern to why there weren’t many of us around to accomplish these missions. While we are trained to keep on a straight and narrow path, to never deviate from it and to keep our eyes on the prize, certain female…issues get in the way. Execution could follow a female simply showing attraction around a higher up, let alone to bed the fellow man that the attraction had fallen on. There had been many a time where I found myself second guessing all that I had been taught when I spied an attractive man in a pub or across the street. I knew that we could never go any farther than that though, because as a NightinGale, we had to remain pure…alone and abstinent to keep our conscious clear.

So many couldn’t follow that and so many had met their death because of this terrible outcome. I couldn’t lose my best friends to this execution process because they fell in love, nor could I let them in turn lose the one they fell for in a terrible accident and then fall into the deepest of depressions.

I held my tongue for now, not wanting to bring her down seeing as though we had only just woke up and that’s never something you want to get lectured about the very first thing in the morning. I began brushing my teeth, keeping myself distracted from all the rules running through my head and she left, going back to her room.

~*~*~*~*~

I placed my dagger into place on my hip and looked at myself in the mirror, my red tank top and black cargo pants. This was my usual casual wear when I wasn’t in business attire and it normally freaked everyone out to see me like this. Making my way downstairs, I was greeted by the enticing aroma of pancakes and sausage, something I had not indulged in, in a very long time.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs to find the once vacant bar, now filled with about fourteen people, including Lyna and Mylene. A dark complexioned man had Marlene placed in his lap and looked like a very proud father. Denzel was busy talking to a tall blonde man with goggles on his head. Tifa was busy serving a giant red lion, a cat with a crown on his head and a girl with short brownish black hair. And lastly Cloud was talking to a man with really long, black hair that seemed to shoot out in different directions and he had been staring at me as if he had seen a ghost.

“Auntie Jezzine!” Marlene exclaimed as she hopped off the man’s, who I’m presuming to be her father, lap and ran up and hugged me. I tensed up, feeling myself go rigid as I was not used to such attention on a day to day basis. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around her short frame and hugged her back, trying my best not to make it awkward.

“Good morning everyone.” I said, feeling myself become self-conscious under black haired man’s stare. Something about him was familiar to me and I couldn’t quite put my find on it, which was causing me to get irritated. I sat down at the bar next to the giant red lion and he glanced over at me, causing fascination to light up in my eyes.

“You must be the famous Jezzine, Marlene was going on and on about non stop last night into this morning.” An accented voice came from the creature and my mouth dropped open in complete surprise, how was that even possible.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I wasn’t expecting you to speak.” I said, biting my lip as he chuckled at my reaction.

“It’s a common thing to happen for those that are not use to something like this. My name is Nanaki, formally Red XIII which is my slave name given to me by Professor Hojo.” He said, placing his paw on mine and I gently shook it.

“You were an experiment of Professor Hojo?” I asked, smiling at Tifa in thanks when she placed food in front of me.

“Yes, as was Vincent over there.” He motions his head to the man who had been staring at me and I feel even more familiarity from his name. I decide to ignore it as I begin to eat my lunch, feeling the man’s eyes on me once again.

Today was going to be an interesting day.

~*~*~*~*~

Reno and Rude dropped us off a few miles from Professor Hojo’s mansion, allowing us to make our way there through all of the woods and undetected by the guards. We found ourselves standing in front of a pure white structure that looked between a mansion and a castle. It had black trimmings all around it and the shingles and shutters were black as well.

“Time to scale the walls or want to fly up there?” Mylene asks, her nails extending and cracking her back a few times.

“Scaling the walls going in, we’ll fly out of here when we have found out what we need to know.” I state, looking at the plans from the inside of the building. “One of us will have to be a scientist, a maid and a guard.”

“I’ll be a guard.” Mylene said, ready to prove that she wasn’t just a small fragile girl any chance she got.

“I don’t mind being the maid; they get to find out all the dirt.” Lyna chuckled, always loving the idea of getting into something that she wasn’t supposed to.

“I will be the scientist then, I would say that we will be on the inside for about three or four hours, find out what we can and meet Reno and Rude in the spot they dropped us off.” I state, letting my nails extend and taking off my shoes. We began scaling the walls in order to get to the first ledge and entered an open window to find an office that no one was in. There were certificates on the back wall behind the deck that read Professor Sephiroth.

“Well, looks like he couldn’t come up with a better name when he regenerated.” Lyna scoffed and picked up some papers on the desk. “Chaos XIII Strife…what does that even mean?” I walked over and took the papers from her, studying them closely.

“Strife is Clouds last name, which would make sense since they were in S.O.L.D.I.E.R together, but the other stuff I’m not entirely sure of.”

“Let’s split up and see what we can find out, as fast as we can because this place if giving me the creeps.” Mylene stated, glancing out the door and knocking a maid out who had just so happen to be passing by. She brought the girl into the room and looked at Lyna, “Thankfully she is the same size as you, see you in about three hours and forty three minutes.”

It didn’t take any time at all to knock out people and disguise ourselves as someone else, the real task was to find out what and how we needed to act in order to seem normal. Thankfully I had a meeting with Professor Sephiroth in order to discuss the new case with him, which could be good or bad news depending on who is supposed to be doing most of the talking.

I found my way to the scientist station and began reading up what I could on this project, but even this wasn’t giving me much. I fought the urge to dive into someone’s mind for the information I needed, but my eyes tended to go different colors when I did that.

“Doctor Freesia is it?” a deep and wise voice far beyond his years said from behind me and I turned around, coming face to face with the man known as Professor Sephiroth. He looked just like the picture that had been taken of him and I hadn’t even heard him approach. “Would you come into my office?”

“Yes sir.” I said, following him in there and saw that Mylene was the one that was guarding the door. She winked at me as I passed and I smiled at her, closing the door behind me as he sat at his desk.

“So any more progress on how to unite the three souls as one?” he asked, crossing his ankles on the edge of the desk and I debated on what to say.

“Well, it really depends one which entity you would like to be the alpha strain.” I stated, shocked that I could come up with something like this, but I kept going. “There is no possible way for us to get an equal level between them all, two maybe but it seems with a third added that it complicates things.”

“Ahh, I see what you mean, hmm something I haven’t thought about…Cloud Strife and Vincent Valentine’s Chaos would be the best for the alpha strain while Red XII would make the perfect omega strain. Since I lost all my research from before my unfortunate death, I will have to find a way to gather the specimen once again and extract what I need from them.” He seemed to be staring deep into my soul and I tried to keep eye contact before looking away, my face burning under his stare.

“Sorry to interrupt sir, but I have brought you your afternoon tea.” Lyna in her maid uniform said, coming in and placing the tea down, looking over at me with a sinister look on her face. She wouldn’t dare...not while we are still on premises…she had better hope that poison takes a while to actually kick in.

“Is there anything more you need from me sir?” I asked, standing up and distracting him from taking a sip from the tea. He shook his head no and I bowed slightly, before leaving the room and finding a room with a balcony. Within minutes, I was joined by Mylene and Lyna and we shed our clothes, letting our inner beasts take over and the wings sprout from our backs. We took to the skies within minutes, making distance just as the alarms within the mansion started going off.

~*~*~*~*~

?’s P.O.V.

I watched as the girls made their way off of the balcony, their forms disfigured from their human forms and their wingspan much larger than that I have seen of many creatures. They must really be from NightinGale, the female organization that was depicted after Shinra and their S.O.L.D.I.E.R. program in order to show the world that females weren’t to be taken lightly.
They certainly were deadly that was for sure and I couldn’t wait to observe them more, I thought to myself as a chuckle left my body and they became but specks in the sky.