My first attempt at an AU with this pairing. If the first chapter goes well, I think I'll continue. I don't know how long this will be.
I.
Multiple data screens directly ahead glinted over the front of foggy glasses. They were removed and cleaned with the end of an over worn lab coat. Cold silence of the humming facility was filled with an inquisitive mumble, and then left to its own again. A pair of dark eyes squinted after the glasses were set in place over the bridge of the narrow nose between them.
He was well aware his time would come to an end, but his experiments would not. Could not. The data screen was filled to the outer edges in various indexes of his concepts and musings. Too much to be done. Too much to resist. He kept main creations in mind, but he also planned to initiate as many of his cataloged experiments as he could. Starting, with data he was never able to put to good use.
Pale fingers pecked over a dusty keyboard.
RED XIII |
The physical DNA of the creature was filed somewhere. What an insatiable curiosity. Shame this would have to wait until a proper test subject came along.
II.
Cid snorted cigarette smoke from his nostrils and glared ahead. The sun was too bright in his face; stinging his eyes. He was getting tired of waiting for Shera outside the corner store. His legs hurt like hell. All of him hurt like hell. Still. The meds the doc prescribed only served to make him loopy. Shera gave up on getting him to take them a long while ago.
"What the hell are they all goin' on about now?" The distorted rumble of chitter-chatter over Meteor's after events was just being to die down, only for some other nonsense to pop up again. Cid was actually hoping they'd be speaking well of him when he returned home. He saved the world goddammit! But nooo, they were all three feet down in ShinRa's abandoned asscrack. Exposed secrets. A more accurate report of the cause of Meteor. Blah blah blah. No one here had anything better to do now that they weren't scared shitless. It was slowly going back to the same-old-same-old.
"I'm not exactly sure." Shera answered him upon exiting Rocket Town's corner store. She adjusted the few bags under her arms and waited for Cid to find his footing before following him back down the block. "Some people are reporting accounts of suspicious activity." Shera watched her housemate's slight limp. She hoped he was getting better. Cid was pretty beat up when he returned home half a year ago.
"Suspicious activity? Now ain't that vague?" Cid plucked a cigarette butt from his mouth, smothered, and left it in a sand column they passed by. "S'far as I know, everyone in this town is pretty damn suspicious."
"I was talking to the cashier, and they mentioned that a few people have seen someone, or something stalking the town at night. Mrs .Debra's cat went missing...I think." Shera tried to accurately recall the gossip—information she was given.
"Probably a coyote, er' somethin'. Snatched up my mamma's dog once." Cid pulled open the front picket gate to their home. It groaned with protest, wheezed, and snapped shut behind them.
"I'm no stranger to coyotes either. Could be a bobcat. The mountains aren't too far from here." Shera agreed with Cid's hypothesis, took the mail from the box, and unlocked the door inside. Without using her hands, she chucked off her boots, and placed the paper bags in her arms on the kitchen table. "Are you feeling alright, Captain?" Shera placed her hands on her hips. She looked Cid up and down after he clicked on the dingy kitchen light.
"Yah? M' fine. I ain't takin' any more medicine, so don't even think about it." He grumbled after removing his own boots and tossing them off to the side of the mat.
"Are you sure?" She nibbled on her knuckle in deep thought. Shera had figured Cid would recover by now, and as much as he liked to hide it, she knew he was still in occasional pain.
"Didn't I say I was fine?!" Cid barked, but took a moment to retract his tone. He had to watch how he snapped at Shera. He had promised he would. "I mean…I'm fine, Shera. Alright?"
"If you're sure…" She nibbled the inside of her cheek, and began to put food away. Cid actually limped over to help her.
III.
"I saw it! Saw it with my own two eyes!" A neighbor's hysterical voice carried across the street. The old widow was out in her robe and slippers; clutching her dog, and clearly, quite shaken up on the ground. Others who were up early trotted over in their pajamas to see what her fuss was about. Some were crouched down at her side and fanning her face with their hands.
Shera rubbed her eyes and placed down the cup of tea she'd just brewed on the counter. She'd been glancing at the development through the window. Cid was half asleep at the kitchen table; legs crossed over the patchy, green floor rug while he drifted in and out of snoring.
"I'll be right back, Captain!" Shera stuffed on her boots near the door and trotted out after Cid had grunted a reply. It was probably best that she investigated. Besides, she was curious and concerned.
The morning air was thick and cool with moisture. She straightened her glasses over her nose and paused to listen with the rest of the small crowd that had gathered. Light was just beginning to rise from behind the empty launch pad; illuminating the sides of houses and dew drops in scruffy lawns.
"What did you see?!" Someone shoved forward and asked. "Did they rob you?!"
"I saw it! It!" It was all the little woman could say, because she had no clear idea what 'it' was. What was clear, though, was that it was far from human. "It came around my house, attacked, and tried to kill me!"
Straggling away from the group, Shera quietly followed some other nosy on lookers away from the verbal account, and to the other side of her neighbor's village home. She held a hand over her sharp gasp upon examining the evidence from afar. The side of the older woman's home was marred with deep gashes. Some of the wood was splintered, or completely ripped off and scattered in a mess across the dampened grass. Unnaturally large prints coupled with splatters of blood in the softened ground lead off to nowhere in particular. How odd…
IV.
"I felt sorry for her. Poor woman." Shera placed a pair of Cid's working gloves that she had borrowed away in a tool drawer. She chatted with him while he was finally awake enough to comprehend the information she had gathered this morning.
"Old bat ain't have a heart attack and keel over did she?" Cid ripped into a piece of toast; scarfing down some food while he was on lunch break. He had stayed up much longer than he intended while working on some repairs in the Tiny Bronco last night.
"No, but whatever it was, it did give her a bad fright. There's quite a bit of damage on the right side of her home, blood," Shera recalled "and there were enormous animal tracks. Like…paw prints."
" 'xactly," Cid thickly swallowed a mouth full of milk to wash down the bread in his mouth "how enormous is enormous?" His mug was slammed back down on the table. He wiped milk from his facial hair with the back of his wrist and leaned in his chair with narrowed, skeptical eyes. Cid didn't like the sound of all of this. Not one bit.
"Like this." Shera held her hands apart, and measured out an approximate foot of space between them.
"That ain't no coyote. We're talkin' about a monster here." He frowned. "Shera go back in the closet n' get my spear."
Shera washed her hands at the sink at a slower pace. "Please?" She inquired with a straight face over her shoulder.
Cid grumbled. "Could you please, go back in the closet n' get my spear."
"Captain, I would be happy to."
V.
The TV was clicked off using a tattered old remote. The absence of the static drenched the house in silence. Cid stretched out the kink in his neck and peeled himself with a low sigh from the couch. The rest of the beer in a lukewarm can was chugged, and then tossed in recycling. Cid had been up since earlier this evening. Hadn't heard a damn thing. It really irritated him. With another sigh, he shoved a sharpening rock away in a drawer, mounted one of his freshly polished spears back up on a wall in the downstairs closet, and figured it was probably best he got to bed.
VI.
The very next morning, Cid woke with a pounding migraine. He flipped over in bed (with a bit of difficulty) and yanked a pillow over his head to block out the bright light and sound. It was far too fuckin' early in the morning for someone to be complaining loud enough to be heard through the window. "Shut the fuck up!"
Frustrated, Cid flung off the covers and stopped across the room to the door. He back tracked for just a moment and muscled through his physical aches to yank on a pair of underwear and pants, and then continued his stomp down the stairs to the front door. He flung it open with Shera's name on the very tip of his tongue.
"We need to talk." Nanaki was sitting on the front steps instead.
"Red?"