On the face of it, Professor Hojo was a philandering fudanshi. That is, he liked his fair share of women a lot, but he also liked ideas that made him "too rotten to be married".
Aerith added, that, basically, he was a horny pervert, in general.
Unfortunately, he was also a horny pervert with a lot of clout, who had stolen some very valuable scientific theories for himself, and killed the man who had pioneered them in the first place.
And his lab reeked. It was one part blood, one part bleach, one part animal excrement. Surely, to the right person, it was a zoological wonderland of specimens in tanks and holding cells. An opportunity for the right... or 'wrong' mind, as it were, to understand how something worked.
Aerith nudged me. "He's wrong, Avery. That's all you need to focus on."
He had... interfered in a relationship. He had turned a mother into an experiment. He had lied to the son, about the mother's identity, to make the son pursue a parasite, instead of his true mother.
Had he done all of these things knowingly?!
"How I should like to meet their offspring."
... I'd even shared enough curiosity, in common with the man, to carry that burden.
To put it mildly, the man raped any subject he touched with his own mind.
Aerith suggested... it hadn't always been that bad. But maybe that was Aerith's own innocence. She had a romantic frivolity and playfulness, that... didn't supplement Hojo's wickedness? But it was a mystery how she kept it. Maybe holding onto it was the one thing that allowed her to keep her sanity, or maybe she was just not of a mind curious enough to probe into ideas about organisms, with clinical detachment. She was no Moira O'Deorain--having opted for flowers, over centipedes and other creepy crawlies.
The Professor had tried to interbreed Aerith with a creature labeled "Red XIII".
Lupe gripped my other hand, firmly. "Is this... where I get involved?" she asked, timidly. Her eyes had already begun sweeping the place, scanning computer monitors and empty cages with bloodstains.
Maybe it was just me, fearing for her. She'd faced Julian's cruelty already. She'd fought mad science, before...
No comments yet. Be the first!