Author's Notes: Warning, you hav ejust entered the realm of a VERY AU fiction.Takes place in New York and some other places. Involves Nida from FF8 and maybe a few other characters later on.

Those of you that know much about me know I love Nida more than anything. So you may wonder why exactly I torment him so. The answer is that it is simple. There is no one better to torture because he has no past or present. One can test him under any fire that they want. And really, it's always IC because who knows what OOC is for him?

Special Thanks To: Atreylune/Grayout- who helped me plan out some major parts of this story. He is the bestest person EVER. Tess: Who helped me name the baddie and part of the MO of the killer.

Summary: For over twenty years, Nida Nomura has been haunted by the one person that he had ever trusted completely. When that trust was betrayed he was forced to deny himself the comforts of a life of peace and happiness. After a time he finds finally flees from his home in California to New York, sure that he is finally free. Yet after three years that fiend from his past resurfaces, leaving Nida in the worst situation yet… One that could leave him dead.

Disclaimer: I think the one thing here I don't own so far is Nida. And I intend to buy him someday Square, so just you wait. Better not sue me in the mean time.

Victimeyezed

He'd given up pleading innocent two hours ago, realizing just how pointless it was. Who would believe him? The description of the killer matched his closely enough except for the obvious flaw in eye color and hair length. The weapons that supposedly had been used to kill those young men matched a few of the swords that Nida collected and had displayed so proudly on his wall as a mark of his heritage. Even his mannerisms and chivalric tendencies had seemed to pin the series of murders on him. It probably hadn't helped that the real culprit had almost died at his hands.

So he sat here, on the cold, hard slab of metal that was so mockingly called a bunk. Steel bars, far from tempered or folded to make them strong and flawless like the metal of a fine sword, hedged him in on two sides. The other two sides of the cell were the same dank, cold, dull gray brick as the walls of the other cells. The perk of being such a 'notorious' criminal meant that he at least wasn't near the common criminals, and that his business was a little more private. Nida didn't want to know what would have been done to him had he been put in with the real criminals. He knew a cop would have let it slip out that he stood accused of being the New York Butcher, as all of the news papers were calling the true perpetrator. And then who knew what would happen to him.

Except he knew, didn't he? They'd kill him. Or try to at least. Who could blame them? The New York Butcher was such a gruesome killer. He would bind his young male victims to a bed, and then rape them. After that he slit their wrists and carve 'everything' in kanji on the boy's arms. Of course, everyone knew that the police held back some to most of the details, so it took a bit of imagination to say how they were found. Yet Nida knew. He didn't know because he had done it, but because he'd been told.

It flashed across his mind, the scene late last night. The memory of cold hands against his shoulders, the muzzle of a gun pressed against his stomach. The feeling of his breath against Nida's ear, and the whisper of the deranged killer sweeping across him, making him sick to his stomach, would not leave Nida's fragile mind.

And so the sick secret would not leave him. How the killer plucked the eyes from his victims, and cut open their chests so that he could touch their hearts. But the worst knowledge was that these victims, boys ranging in age from eleven to seventeen, all died because of him. They died because their eyes reminded the killer so much of Nida's own eyes. 'Eyes like hot coffee', the man had said, 'and so full of the pain of the soul before I had a chance to cause the pain.'

All of those boys had died because they had resembled Nida, and now he was going to die like they had.

--------

Nida Nomura had been born in Tokyo, Japan, to a happy couple that was not to be expected. His mother was a lawyer specializing in international laws, and she was far from a 'bombshell' as one could put it. His father was a businessman working for a major software company based in Tokyo. The two had met at a small birthday party thrown for one of their mutual friends. After several years of 'business dinners' and 'power lunches', the two had married, and brought Nida into the world.

For ten years the trio had enjoyed their life together, and life was very good indeed. Yet no peace can last forever. Nida's father had come home one day and informed his wife and son that the company was sending him overseas to head up a new branch in the American business divisions. Gladly Nida's mother had accepted this, easily getting a job working in a law firm. It had been a simple matter to put aside international law in favor of criminal law for a woman such as her.

Yet Nida had not been able to adjust as easily as his parents. While there was a large asian population in California and LA, even a Little Tokyo area with plenty of other Japanese people, he did not have the pleasure of knowing him. His parents, desiring the best for their son, had sent him to a private school just outside of the city, where there were few of asian descent. And for a year, Nida had thrived academically, but failed socially. The other children had shunned the quiet youth.

Then had come middle school. His parents, desiring for Nida to experience more diversity than he had found in the private school, had sent him to a public, sixth through eighth grade middle school. Already shell-shocked from the change in countries, spoken language and everything else, he had not been ready to handle American youth. The shunning was more complete. Nida was the invisible kid in school, and yet top of his class.

That was when he walked into Nida's life. An eighth grader and handsome teen named Rei Yamamoto. And it was this teen that had left Nida in jail, accused of killing ten young men.