(This fanfics is for all of my buddies; big thanks to my own personal Vinnie, my friend Meg, Foxy who helped me with my up-and-coming story and who encouraged me to post this, and my pal Lyra who is at camp FOR SIX MORE WEEKS.

I suppose that you could sort of categorize this as a FFVII-FFX crossover, but it's mostly FFVII. So… eh.

If I owned them, it wouldn't be fanfiction!)

If there was one thing that Yuffie hated about her life, it was her job. Actually, there were many things that Yuffie hated about her life; her car, for instance. Her relationship with her father. Her social retardation that made it impossible for her to keep a steady boyfriend.

But if you had to ask, she would tell you that her job was the thing that she hated the most.

Now, you may wonder what is so wrong with her job that she hates it so much. In all honestly, it's not so much the job as the boss.

Working as a mechanic would probably be her dream job, actually. She loved tinkering around in the engines of cars and bikes, loved the thrill of knowing that it could probably spring to life any moment and chop off her hand, loved talking machines with the customers. No, Cid and Cid Mechanics might have been the best job ever.

….except for the Cid's.

One of them had a southern accent so thick she could hardly understand him past the "Yeehaws!" and the "Aw, shucks," and the slurring. That Cid was tolerable; he and Yuffie didn't know each other much because he mostly took care of the motorcycles and the rare airships, neither of which were Yuffie's forte. That was more of Cloud's cup of tea. This Cid, oddly, had no last name. It was something that she and Cloud speculated over often while drinking coffee on their break.

It was the other Cid that made her hate her job.

Cid Highwind was the most obnoxious, irritating, sarcastic, chain-smoking-est butthole of a boss this side of Staniv's Noodle stand back in Wutai. He adored making her professional life a living hell, and the problem was that she had to work with him everyday. While he was more adapt at airships, he was also better at fixing cars than the other Cid, and the fact was that they got more cars than airships. This, of course, meant that Yuffie was more often than not forced to work with him. And, thus, she was forced to put up with his brat jokes and his constant hack-hack-cough-spit of the endless amount of tar in his throat because he refused to quit smoking despite the warnings from his wife Shera.

And honestly! How could Shera even stand him! She was nice enough, and Yuffie knew that she wasn't mentally retarded… so how she agreed to marry to jerk was far beyond her.

Anyway, back to the crux of the matter.



Yuffie hated her job because she hated her boss because he made her stay at work late.

Again.

For the third time this week.

Somehow, he always found a way to criticize her repairs on the newest SUV that came in last Tuesday. She couldn't help it that the customer was so fat they had to change the shocks multiple times to fit his weight! The guy put freakin' lard in his tea for god's sake! Lard!

But according to Highwind she kept making mistakes that needed fixing.

"Yuffie! Did you check this?"

Check. Fix. Get ready to leave.

"Yuffie! Don't tell me that you're going to go with the brakes in this condition!"

Check. Don't have to fix. Get ready to leave.

"Yuffie! (hack cough cough choke) Erk!"

Whack on the back. Give a cigarette. Get ready to leave.

"Oh no you don't, brat! You ain't leavin' yet!"

Twitch. Eye spasm. Get ready to slave away.

Cid Highwind was going to drive her insane if she stayed there one more day! It was crazy! Like he was finding things randomly to annoy her! And the smoking jerk loved it!

But now, hah! She showed him! She left right in the middle of a rant at her inability to do anything right, and she damn well enjoyed it!

Never mind that she was probably going to get fired over it. That was something she hadn't really planned. It was also something that she was determined not to think about at she sped down the empty road on her way home, cursing her lack of awesome wheels and good money.

(Let me take this time to briefly describe Yuffie's jeep. It was, to coin a phrase, a piece of crap. Capable of going zero to twenty in ten seconds, the spawn of Car Satan was a gift from her mother two years ago as a divorce present. Essentially, her parents got divorced and she got a car that doesn't even warrant the title of transportation. Thanks, Ma. Your car-gram hurts worse than your impromptu abandonment. She was probably somewhere in Costa De Sol sipping fruity drinks under an umbrella surrounded by six or seven hunky men named Max or Rex or Brutus.

Anyways, the jeep had defiantly seen better days, even before she'd been blessed with it. It was covered in dents and bangs and scratches, most of which had been on there pre-Yuffie, and had multiple stains on the (what was once probably) felt interior.)

So there she was, speeding down the lonesome highway towards her lonesome apartment complex to her lonesome room with the rain pelting down around her poor hapless car. 

Admittedly not a very smart thing to do, but then again, I never actually said that Yuffie was smart. Besides, she figured that if there was a car coming she'd see the headlights in time to slow down. So she was in the clear!

And she thought that the entire time, until she felt something slam into the side of her jeep and heard a loud and painful yelp muffled by the steel of the door and the rain that pounded the road and hood of the car.

She slammed on the brake immediately, panicked, and cringed at the squealing of the brakes. Ironic, considering that she was a mechanic. As soon as she'd pulled to a stop she yanked on the emergency brake to assure that the jeep wouldn't roll away, and scrambled from the jeep and out into the driving rain. Shielding her eyes against the water and pulling her coat tighter against herself, she stumbled the fifteen feet back towards where she'd hit…. Whatever it was.

"Oh please god don't let it be a kid. I don't think I could live with myself if it was a kid," she mumbled to herself frantically as she knelt down to the dark figure in front of her, reaching out with a hand.

She hit wet and trembling fur.

In the darkness and against the rain she couldn't see how big it was, or what breed it was, but at the soft whimpering sound she knew that it was a dog. Not as bad a kid, but she was still wracked with guilt when she felt the cold fur turn warm with blood. Not enough blood to be fatal, but enough to hurt like hell.

She couldn't just leave it there. Not if she expected to sleep at all that night without a whole buttload of guilt on her conscience.

So, with a grunt, she hefted the whimpering dog up into her arms and stumbled back towards the car. But damn! She didn't expect the stupid mutt to weight this much!

She struggled to open the back door without dropping the dog and set it down as gently as she could in the seat. She grumbled when she had to reach up and stab at the light to make it turn on, and breathed a sigh of relief when she looked over the dog.

It had golden fur that was probably soft and fluffy when clean, but at the moment it was matted down with mud and blood and what she really hoped wasn't vomit. It was a fairly large dog with a thin girth that had probably been caused by lack of food, as its ribs were showing slightly. Its eyes were large, wide open and green and very, very frightened.

The wound itself wasn't as big as she had expected and was mostly on her front right paw. It hadn't it an artery, like she'd feared, and most of the blood was that gross black color that usually meant it had already dried. All but the freshest blood had already been in her coat. However, Yuffie couldn't find any other wound, closed or otherwise, and she really hoped that she wasn't going to be carting a rabid dog around with her.

The fear was extinguished when Yuffie reached out to check the dilation of its eyes and the dog gave a small lick to her hand as she pulled away. Well, it was friendly, at least. That was good to 

know. She took off her coat and laid it on top of the dog to hopefully warm it up; it seemed like the dog was cold when she picked it up.

Shivering against the rain, she hightailed it back into the drivers seat, cranked up the heat, and took off once more.

Thankfully for the dog that she had run over, Yuffie once owned cats. Many, many cats. Like… a lot. And then she was kicked out of her apartment and had to find a new one. Sadly for her and her many cats, though, the owner of this new apartment didn't allow cats. She allowed dogs, yes. But not cats. Allergic, you see.

So Yuffie knew where the veterinary clinic was, having had to go there several times to spay and neuter her cats which, somehow, despite the testicles being chopped off and the tubes being tied, continued to multiply like rabbits.

She pulled off the highway with a heavy sigh, trying to ignore the pained whimpers from the dog in the backseat. And the fact that the entire Jeep smelled like wet mud. Also, she'd have to actually clean her car after this, a thought which, frankly, terrified her. Pushing these thoughts to the back of her mind, and driving in relative silence for several minutes, she finally turned into the carport/car lot of the veterinary clinic creatively named, 'Midgar Vet.'

(Allow me to shed some light on the aforementioned vet clinic. Once upon a time it was owned by a man named Professor Gast. About five years after starting the clinic, Gast went missing without explanation. Speculation was cast that the clinic was a front for drug dealing; but seriously. A veterinary clinic? Bah. Besides, all the good dealers were smart enough to keep their business in the slums.

Anyways, after Gast randomly disappeared, it was bought by a 'scientist' named Hobo or Pogo or Coco or something like that. Less than two years after it came into the possession of Jojo, the good doctor was arrested for illegal animal testing. Also, he kind of stuck his preggo wife with Jenova cells and mutated his unborn child. Apparently he was just as much a shitty father as he was a doctor.

Momo's arrest forced the clinic out of an owner once more, and it carried on like that until it was bought by the guy who owned McShinra's. I guess Rufus wanted to try to branch out from fast food to helping animals. A big jump, but we all know he's done weirder stuff. Stupid rich tycoons. Grr.)

Unfortunately, it being about one in the morning (you see how hard Cid works her?! You see!?) nobody was there to help her out when she pulled up and threw on the brake. She grumbled when she was left to cart the dog inside alone.

Once inside, she had to resist the urge to vomit, like she usually did when she entered doctor-ish places like this. It was to… clean. To pristine and white and not icky. Yuffie thrived on icky. 

Thankfully, she was dripping rainwater and blood (from the dog) onto the otherwise clean tile floor, so she felt a little better to be able to dirty it up a bit.

Despite the fact that she'd slammed the door shut with her foot and that she was dripping everywhere, no one came to the front desk. So, heaving the shaking mutt into a better grip, she shimmy-shimmy-shaked her way over to the front and ping!'d the bell on the counter with her elbow. It took a minute, but eventually a pale-skinned man shuffled lazily into view.

He was thin, long and lanky, with black wild-looking hair that fluffed out everywhere. He probably should have been wearing some kind of scrubs or coat or uniform or something, but instead he was wearing a dark red dress shirt and tight black pants. Thankfully, not leather. She probably would have died if it was leather. He had a pale, angular face and red eyes that stood out against his skin tone. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and he looked at her, bored.

Until he saw the dog.

"Oh my god. What did you do."

He didn't even make it sound like a question. He disappeared from view for a moment before opening a door a few feet away. He waved her into a separate room down the hall, closing the door behind him. Yuffie gladly handed him the dog when he gestured for it, and he placed it gently on the metal table that was attached to the wall. In the light, the wound didn't seem that bad. The dog had even stopped whimpering and was looking at them curiously.

"I accidentally ran it over."

The man glared at her and she raised her hands to defend herself. "It's one in the morning and it's raining like crazy out there! I didn't even see it coming!"

He rolled his eyes at her and said dully, "You're lucky I'm here. Practically no one comes here after ten and I was about to clock out." He ran his hands over the sides of the dog, making a small noise when it whimpered as he felt its ribs. "Doesn't feel like the ribs are broken, probably just bruised." He inspected the leg that was bleeding and pushed back some of the fur to get a better look. "This isn't a car injury. This looks like it got caught on something and tried to bite its way out. Speaking of.." He lifted a hind leg. "It's a bitch."

Yuffie blinked.

"Well I know that dogs can be kind of irritating, but I think that's a little unnecessary..."

The man gave her an odd look as he pulled a roll of gauze from a drawer. "You don't know much about dogs, do you? A bitch is a female dog." She shrugged blankly and he rolled his eyes again. "Well it doesn't look like you hit her hard. You probably just clipped her. The leg was a preexisting injury so you shouldn't worry about that. Her side will be tender for a week or two because her ribs are probably bruised, but as long as you don't try to run her or anything she should be fine."

Yuffie blinked again. "Wait… what? It—she's not my dog! I just ran over her! I don't want a pet to take care of, I barely have time for myself!"



The man shrugged. "I dunno. You could put up posters; she might already have an owner. But she's a mutt, not a purebred, so I doubt it. Besides, she doesn't have tags. By all rights you should probably take her to the pound. But she seems friendly enough," he reached out to rub between her ears and she leaned back to try and lick his fingers. The dog, that is. Not Yuffie. That'd be kind of weird.

Yuffie stared down at the dog. The dog stared up at Yuffie. The man stared at the dog staring at Yuffie who stared at the dog. I think it's clear that there was much staring.

Finally, Yuffie crumbled and gave a small whine. "Fiiiiiiiine," she pouted, reaching out tentatively to pet the dog. The golden-furred mutt gave a small coo of approval at Yuffie scratched under her chin.

The man seemed pleased with himself. "You should probably bring her in in a few days, though. I'm going to put something on that wound on her paw, but it looks like it's been open for a while and it might get infected. I'm Vincent, by the way. Vincent Valentine."

One of Yuffie's eyebrows rose. Valentine? Pfft. Queer.

"There's a machine in the lobby that'll let you make your own dog tags for five bucks. If you intend on keeping the dog, you might want to get a collar for her." He looked at her smugly. Score. Saved another stray. One step closer to atonement or some shit like that. I don't have any idea how he thinks.

Yuffie turned with a snort and opened the door…

…to find a giant fluffy cat glaring up at her. Well, half glaring, really. It only had one eye. The other was tightly closed with a jagged scar cutting through it, which really only added to the effect of the glare.

It was big, roughly the size of a cocker spaniel, and had black medium-length fur that had traces of silver running near its nose and ears, with a tail that lashed violently as he stared up at her. One side of its whiskers twitched.

Vincent came up beside her and crossed his arms, staring down at the cat. "Oh," he said easily as he reached down and picked up the grumpy cat, who yowled at him angrily. "That's Auron. The last owner found him outside near the dumpsters and decided to cut out his eye for the hell of it. Uncool, I know, but for some reason the little guy won't leave the clinic now." He held the cat out for Yuffie to pet.

Yuffie blinked slowly. "….no. Sorry. I don't do evil furry incarnations of the devil, and I'm pretty sure that's what he is."

Vincent stared at her for a second, then said, "Whatever. Anyways. He's perfectly harmless, you probably just woke him up with all that banging you did coming in." He set Auron down on the floor and picked up the dog, setting her down to. "Anyways. I need to go in the back to get the stuff I need to put on her leg, so you go make a tag for this girl while I do that."

He sent her a smirk. "Then we can discuss your bill."



She stared at him blankly, then scowled. "You are an asshole."

--

Five minutes later, the mutt had a shiny new collar ("Only costs five dollars!" Vincent smirked. "The tag costs five dollars!!" Yuffie shrieked), and Yuffie and the irritating vet were off to 'negotiate' the cost of some gauze and snarky comments.

As the two humans walked off (meaning, Yuffie stomped and Vincent.. well... glided would be the only real way to say it. Men like Vincent glided.) the dog, newly dubbed 'Rikku,' as per the dog tag on her collar (and how did THAT get there? She certainly didn't remember that!), pranced as well as one can prance with a paw that has just said a rather personal hello to the tire of a jeep over to the dozing cat whom she faintly remembered tall, dark and crimson talking about.

"Bark," she said intelligently, and felt rather proud for introducing herself, because this feline screamed I Am Angry Hear Me Roar.

The cat, however, was not nearly so impressed; he showed his feelings quite bluntly by opening his remaining eye to blink lazily at her, then did that odd rolling motion that only cats can do to turn away from her.

Rikku was, obviously, quite insulted, and so reached out with her un-flattened paw to poke at him with a huff. "Bark!" she repeated, flopping down onto her hind legs.

Auron sent her an annoyed hiss and swatted blindly at her paw, to prideful not to defend himself and to tired (lazy) to get up and do it properly. "Reow," he grumbled, tail swatting against the floor.

She pawed at him again, and he turned to glare at her with a russet eye.

There is a common phrase thrown around casually that refers to the expression of a kicked puppy. This is to put sympathy into the hearts of others, and to imply exactly how cute the user of the expression is.

No one can pull off the look of a kicked puppy like a puppy that was run over by a jeep.

And not even cold-hearted Auron could resist the puppy that was run over by a jeep look.

So it was with an annoyed grumbled that he allowed the cheerfully yipping mutt to cuddle up to him (almost flattening him in the process).

It was the start of something beautiful and strange and what was probably the end of the natural order as we know it.