Everyone's After Cloud's Ass

AN: As an intro to my first fanfic in about three years and first Final Fantasy fic ever, I'd like to say that it's good to be back and good to have discovered something new to write about in the interim. Also, I don't own any of the characters, as much as I'd like to.

Chapter 1: Vincent

A fire red dawn began as the sun glided triumphantly above the horizon around Midgar. Rays of the glorious new day streamed forth, opening eyes of the same crimson hue. Vincent Valentine hadn't really been asleep before; only closing his eyes to the dark but familiar surroundings and let his mind drift back to a happier time. A saying of old crossed his mind as he gazed upon the blood red orb of light rising above the distant mountains.

"Red in the morning, SOLDIER take warning."

Vincent had a bad habit of picking up on omens that he sometimes would rather have missed. He sighed, resenting that this signaled the dawning of another era of bloodshed in the planet's unusually violent recent history.

"I suppose I had better warn the others. It's better that we're prepared for the worst even if it means sacrificing what may be the last moments of peace that will ever be available to us", Vincent mused to himself as he gothed off down the road to central Midgar.

A breeze played across his face, sweeping the leaves ahead on the trail into impossibly lifelike silhouettes. The wind whispered from the mouth of the foremost of its three leaven figures before whisking them away into the thin air from which they had appeared.

"Show me your reunion and I'll show you mine."

Vincent could have taken this as confirmation that he had indeed seen an ominous foreshadowing of what was to come; most likely the fourth incarnation of Sephiroth. But he instead took it as a challenge. He was at a fork in the road after all and it made sense at the time to take the metaphorical route as well as the real one. Besides, this one had a much greater potential for pleasure. Taking the left hand and much less well maintained trail, Vincent gothed off into the sunrise. Today would be a day to be rued for very few except for him. For the reason that he continued onto Midgar was no longer to warn AVALANCHE of what he saw, but to show the world a reunion that it would remember until the very end of whatever imminent catastrophe awaited it.

"Today", he thought, "I am going to fuck Cloud Strife so hard that even those who dwell in the Promised Land will hear it."

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AN: Funny how the story's title doesn't become relevant until the very last sentence of the first chapter. For now it's getting so late that it's early, but seeing as I haven't much more time to finish the story, the first update shouldn't be far behind. The "gothed off" thing is sort of an inside joke, but if Lewis Carroll gets to make an entire poem out of made up words, then I can damn well make up words as well. XD