Disclaimer: Characters are not mine. However, putting them together like this, I proudly declare, was entirely my idea.
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Rosso the Crimson looked at the security screen, stroking the furry fabric which she had draped across her lap. She pondered the image of Vincent Valentine; he was surrounded by four Deepground Soldiers. He jumped up and slashed at them with his armored left hand, tearing town three effortlessly. The last he kicked across the chest with the brass-covered boots then shot through the head. Valentine walked off of the scene of carnage as though nothing had happened.
"Does he really have to be killed?" Rosso asked, "He causes so much destruction himself… if he were one of us…"
"I do not think that is possible," Nero the Sable said from where he stood behind Rosso, "Valentine is not one who can be persuaded easily."
Rosso turned to look at Nero now that Valentine had exited the screen. "Then I will try at least."
Nero glared at her. "Our mission is to retrieve the Protomateria. After that you will kill him. He is dangerous to us."
"Fine," she said, standing, "I will do as Weiss orders. Hail Weiss." She stalked out of the room.
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Rosso was bored. Weiss TV was over. She had already killed the WRO squad that had been sent into the warehouse. She was going to go find Vincent Valentine.
She leapt agilely from her perch on top of the stacked crates and stepped nonchalantly towards the door of the warehouse. She adjusted the fur hanging behind her. She checked her phone's track on the Keeper. He was approaching.
A grand Entrance, of course, that was the only way to impress him. She would ask reasonably for the Protomateria, and then convince him to join Deepground. He was such a powerful fighter… He would surely join the winning side!
Rosso was distracted by a drop of water unexpectedly hitting her face. She looked up into the sky. She could feel that Valentine was behind her. "You know, this is the first time I've ever felt the rain on my skin." She said, not even looking at Valentine in her amazement, "but then again, I hadn't even seen the sky until a few days ago." Rosso was disappointed that he made no response. "So you're Vincent Valentine, Keeper of the Protomateria."
Valentine was playing adorably clueless. "Proto… materia?"
She decided to humor him. "Yes, the key to controlling Omega. We know you have it." She stepped towards him. "Hand it over now, and I'll kill you quickly." Oops, so much for asking nicely.
The conversation was not going as Rosso had planned. After an awkward moment she laughed slightly, "Not one to bargain, are we? Then I'll make sure you suffer!" Rosso wondered how seriously Valentine would take her challenge. She darted around behind him, weapon in hand. "Time to die!"
Rosso made the first few blows, knowing that Valentine would easily dodge them. She stepped up her style, now sincerely trying to injure him. He dodged those blows too. She was not entirely surprised, but she was impressed. She unfolded the blades of her weapon revealing the gun at the center. She fired at Valentine who, again, nimbly moved aside. Now Rosso was angry. She channeled this into the punch which sent Valentine into a steel wall. She knew he was strong enough to survive, but that he would be at her mercy now. She took two steps towards the dust cloud where he had fallen, her heeled boots tapping the asphalt.
Valentine was crouched on one knee, and began to glow eerily red. Emerging from the obscuring dust in his place was a creature with torn double-jointed wings, fabric-like hair and glowing eyes.there was a light emanating from its chest.
So there is the Protomateria… Rosso thought as the creature roared, blasting her with red energy, forcing her to retreat.
From a distance, Rosso saw the beast turn back into Valentine and she watched as he fell backward in exhaustion.
Who is that? Rosso wondered as a woman walked towards Valentine, looking at him in a concerned way. The woman bent down and lifted Valentine into her arms, one of which was mechanical.
Rosso glared daggers at the woman as she left the scene carrying Valentine.
I will kill you for that, Rosso thought bitterly, I will kill you as painfully as I am capable…
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"Rosso the Crimson," Nero's monotone voice said over Rosso's cell phone, "Vincent Valentine is in Nebelheim."
Rosso's heart beat like she had killed something. "Shall I confront him again?"
"Yes. This time do not fail to find the Protomateria. He will be in the abandoned mansion."
"Hail Weiss." Rosso hung up. "I will not fail this time, do not worry, little Nero. I will not underestimate dear Valentine again…"
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Rosso had tired of waiting, so she was investigating the lower floor of the mansion. There were a lot of sharp and creepy looking instruments which intrigued her. She had earlier found a room with coffins in it and a room where there had been two teat subject hostages called "C" and "Z".
Rosso was looking now at several old life-support containers, one of which she had activated. She heard a noise from the other room.
"This… pain…" Valentine was crouched on the ground, hand to his chest where the Protomateria was. She looked at him, pityingly. It would be unfair to attack now, wouldn't it? Let him show his strength first.
"Well, well, we meet again." She smiled at him. "This is perfect. I so wanted to see you, my love." True, it was a pet name she often used in sarcastic jest, but this time it was sincere.
"Deepground," Valentine said, straight to business, of course, "What are they attempting to do with Omega?"
How had he found out even that? She hadn't even known about Omega until about a week ago. She didn't know much on the subject and said so. "I don't know," Valentine looked at her quizzically, "and to be honest, I don't care."
"What?" Valentine was so cute when he was being stupid.
Rosso played the nonchalant card again, ignoring Valentine's question. "But this is what Weiss desires… Hail Weiss… And what Weiss orders, we do." She noticed Valentine's confused look. "It is very simple. If he desires the awakening of Omega, then that is what all of Deepground desires. We could care less what happens to the planet…" She paused to let this all sink in effectively. "But all this matters little to me; it is not every day you are granted the chance to cleanse the world of all life!" The images of carnage and death momentarily distracted her from Valentine. "Just the thought sends a chill of excitement through my body…"
Valentine looked bored… time to try something different. "The Deepground soldiers were born and bred to kill," She said in a sharper tone, "we were chained to a destiny of servitude, but then three years ago, we were freed from our chains--but waiting for us was darkness lit only by the faint glow of mako... And what do you think we did when we gained our freedom? Hmm?" She laughed icily, the only way she knew how to, "We killed!" Valentine's expression was one of mild disgust. "That is how we were raised. That is all we knew," she explained, "and so I bathed in the blood of a thousand soldiers… and I enjoyed it. I reveled in it." She happily recalled those days. "And when I finally stepped out of the abyss, I craved for more…" Valentine looked disgusted again. "You understand, right?"
He raised the handgun so that it was pointed at Rosso's heart. "I don't think so…"
Rosso was taken aback. "How can you say that, darling?" He, the bestial killer she had been stalking for the past week, did not understand that she enjoyed killing? "We're one and the same!" She stepped backwards and out of the room, mentally begging Valentine to follow.
The mechanical creature dubbed Black Widow crawled forward to cover her exit. Good, Rosso thought, that can fight Valentine, while I watch…
She hid in a room off the main hallway. From there she watched as Valentine entered the hall, and was ambushed by the machine. They exchanged blows until Black Widow started climbing up a wall. Valentine stared at it for a moment, then raised his gun and shot a blast of fire at it. The Black widow fell onto the ground, upside down, helpless to defend against Valentine's vicious attacks.
Rosso was bored again. She had noticed an old yellowed piece of paper under the remains of what looked like a wood table. She picked it up and looked at it, very proud of herself for recognizing the symbols. As a high-ranking Deepground Soldier she had been taught to read.
"I must eliminate any who stand in my way, even that one from the Turks…"
Whoever had written the note, Rosso liked their way of thinking.
There was a sudden crash of machinery from behind her. Rosso abandoned the note and looked around to where Valentine was standing, triumphant over the mechanical beast. He was hardly injured at all.
She rushed forward at high speed, judging Valentine's reaction time perfectly. She sank the long, cruel, metal fingertips into Valentine's chest. She could feel his body's heat as he staggered slightly over her. "I'm sorry. Were you not expecting that?"
Valentine just gagged incoherently. Rosso removed the claw, relishing the feeling of tearing flesh. She held the materia in front of her face. This is what they're telling me to kill Valentine over?
She looked down at him. He was glowing the color of his blood. He twitched suddenly and violently before transforming into the creature, Chaos. Chaos snarled slightly at nothing, then glowed again, turning back into Valentine. "So… You cannot control the beast without this." Rosso weighed her options. If she tried to let Valentine live in this condition he would die anyway, and she couldn't exactly reason with chaos. And didn't she have orders to kill him? She'd forgotten about that one. "Well, there will be no need for it when I'm done with you." Rosso crouched, hand ready to strike.
She would kill him mercifully quickly, rather than let him suffer this. Leave the suffering for the weak and her enemies. But wasn't Valentine an enemy too? Rosso hesitated when she thought of this. She had begun to consider Valentine more of an ally than an enemy. Could he be convinced to think the same?
Rosso's instinctive sense of danger kicked in suddenly, she looked to her left to see a figure draped in brown fabric. The mysterious person raised a shruken, readying to strike. Rosso leapt backwards to dodge the flying piece of sharpened metal. She looked at the shruken embedded in the floor and it suddenly emitted a blinding light. Rosso shielded her eyes.
The light screen faded and Rosso's eyes readjusted to the gloom of the place. The ninja was gone. And so was Valentine.
"Wutai flea!" that was the second time Valentine had been carried off by another woman. Rosso stormed out the door of the mansion, hoping in vain to catch the ninja.
Rosso channeled all her rage into her fist and struck the ground in front of her. She breathed heavily for a moment. Weiss has ordered Valentine's termination, said the voice in her head which sounded annoyingly like Nero the Sable, and so, he must be terminated.
"If you manage to survive that wound…" Rosso glared into space, "I'll make sure you don't survive the next one!" She would be the one who would kill Vincent Valentine, she would fulfill her duty as a Tsviet. "…But no matter…. The End is upon us."
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Rosso stood high in the Shinra building, looking out at the full moon. The automatic door opened and she looked around, eyes blazing, expecting another lowly Deepground grunt here to give a message which was supposedly from Weiss.
But it wasn't a lowly grunt. Rosso's eyes brightened and she assumed a more dignified posture. It was Valentine. "Still alive, I see," She purred teasingly, "and you call yourself human?"
There was a pause as Valentine considered his next move. "More human than you." Simplistic, yet so clever.
"More human than I?" Rosso laughed. "Tell me something I don't already know, darling, I'm a Tsviet! I traded away my human weaknesses for power long ago." She hoped for the last time that she might convince Valentine to an alliance…
"It is the path I've chosen, and the path I'll tread until I've sucked all life from this pitiful world!" She would fulfill her duty as a Tsviet…
"And I'm not going to let you get in the way." But…
"You've lived long enough, Vincent Valentine." He would never agree to the destruction of the world. "And I'll make sure you don't come back this time by slicing you into pieces!" Rosso the Crimson was a Tsviet.
She lunged at him and he retaliated, as agile and powerful as ever. They exchanged blows, sometimes distanced gunfire; sometimes close range fighting.
After it seemed Valentine would win easily, but before he had harmed her very badly she paused. "Do you know why they call me 'the Crimson,' darling?" She smiled, switching her weapon into her dominant hand. "Let me show you!"
The battle raged on, fiercer than before. Rosso was summoning and using fire balls which she had perfected so that they would follow their target and rarely miss. Valentine, however, had also considerably heightened his fighting style. They were still well-matched, but Valentine had better endurance. Either that or he didn't know when to give up. Valentine shot ice summoned by a level three materia. Rosso fell back, stunned by the sudden use of an analogous element. She fell to the ground, surprised, now, by her own weakness. "Someone stronger... than…" Rosso gagged, attempting to regain a standing position, admitting defeat with dignity. "Absurd…" Rosso focused the last reserves of her strength, "Absurd!" She would not let Valentine see how weak she felt. She did not want his pity.
"Our time here together is done, but the mighty Azul awaits." She turned away, hoping Valentine would take her words as what they had been intended, a warning. A warning to turn back, to save his life. She ran towards the edge of the building and turned to see Valentine again. He stood firm, no, he would not turn back. He wanted to stop the end of the world. Fool. And yet, if he turned back now… would he not die anyway in the calamity of destruction? Was it better to die trying, or die with dignity? Rosso didn't know. Let her die her way, and leave him to die as he wished. "I shall not grant you the pleasure of killing Rosso the Crimson. No one shall ever stand above me!" If Deepground succeeded, everything would be destroyed, good and bad… "No one!" The strong and the weak… "No one!" Her enemies and her allies… "No one!" And Valentine.
For the first time in her life Rosso began to ask questions that were greater than herself, questions she could not answer. She was confused, but the conclusion she came to was simple.
I don't know… and to be honest… I don't care!
She laughed. She felt Valentine watching her fall, but she did not look at him. She looked up into the face of the full moon. And laughed.
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