"It's a complicated bit of gizmetry you're askin' me for there Vin," Cid said thoughtfully, and rubbed at his chin, then scratched at his cheek, before he finally moved to his drafting table. "A time machine, eh?"
"Indeed," Vincent agreed lowly. "I thought you would be the best person to ask," he added honestly.
"Yer not wrong there," Cid agreed with a slight smirk, even as he used thumb-tacks to secure a large bit of paper across his drafting table. He pulled a pencil out of the little cup full of them that was kept just to the right, and started making a list down one side of the page. "If anyone on the planet can do it, I'd put the money on me as well," he said, and took a moment to scratch his chin thoughtfully, already trying to figure out how it might be done. "This is gonna take a lot of tea," he added seriously.
"I'll make you a pot now, shall I?" Vincent offered, well aware that any tea made by Shera would be rejected out of hand after the first mouthful had been spat all over the walls – and that only if Cid was so preoccupied in his work that he didn't notice that the tea smelled burnt, in which case there wouldn't even be one mouthful taken before the whole lot was tossed out the window with a great deal of cursing.
"Appreciate it," Cid answered with a nod. "Oi, before you do, carrying how many?" he asked.
"Two," Vincent replied with a smile. "Me, and you."
Cid nodded and turned to his drawing board. Pencil in hand, he began to write out a list of materials and calculations, doodling sketches on the sides as he went. With no more than a grunt of acknowledgement, Cid accepted the cup of tea that was pressed into the hand that wasn't holding his pencil, and sipped from it absently as he continued with his planning.
~oOo~
Cid went through five cups of tea that first day, as he sketched possible designs, listed materials, wrote out calculations that he couldn't finish, and planned all the things he would need to trial – extensively – before he could actually get to building anything.
One thing he was going to need to tinker with (and Cid was always very considerate of Vincent in that he used words like 'trial', 'tinker', 'mess about', and such, rather than horrible, clinical words like 'test' and 'experiment' that brought back nightmare of Hojo) was materia.
"The obvious materia to try first would be the time materia, right?" Vincent guessed as Cid lay out his full collection of the shimmering, magical orbs.
Cid had quite an extensive collection of materia. This was because he'd taken to confiscating materia that Yuffie had stolen any time she was acting up enough to give him an excuse. A sort of punishment for bad behaviour. It didn't stop the girl of course. She just went out and stole more materia.
"A time materia's recognised spells were 'haste', 'slow' and 'stop'. None of those would let a person go back in time," Cid countered. "I'll get around to that one, I will, but I want to mess about with the healing-type materia first. Revive, restore, the ones that undo damage."
"Cid..." Vincent said, cautious hesitation in his voice.
"I'm not gonna kill or hurt anything just to run my materia skills up," the engineer promised with a dismissing wave. "I'm tryin' ta figure out what they can do that we haven't tried before, not interested in repeatin' results other people've got."
Vincent relaxed minutely. "What will you be using?" he asked.
"Scrap metal and offal," Cid answered. "The magic has to work on a contraption and us with no unfortunate side-effects," he pointed out. "Metal and inedible meat bits should cover both fairly well."
Vincent nodded in agreement. "Tea?" he asked.
"Please," Cid answered and plonked himself down on the picnic blanket he'd spread the many materia out on. "I'm gonna be just sittin' here gettin' crazy in tune with the ruddy things for hours before I even get around to tryin' out the new magic."
~oOo~
The magic and materia tinkering took five weeks. At the same time, Cid was also building the machine that would, theoretically, carry the two of them as they did their time travelling. It would be able to carry them in regular travel as well, if he could figure it out. Cid liked to be practical that way. After all, once they'd gone back in time – and, corny as the pun was given the circumstances, it was a matter of 'when' and not 'if' – they were going to need a way to get around that didn't involve leaving a time machine just lying around where anybody could hop on board and make a mess of history with it.
Then again, making a mess of history was exactly what Cid suspected Vincent had in mind, so... well, there was some saying about glass houses and throwing stones...
In true Cid Highwind style, the transport would be flight-capable. Provided he could get everything to work together.
"Our time machine looks a lot like one of your airships," Vincent commented with a slight smile as he pressed the latest cup of tea into Cid's hand.
"Infinitely more complicated," Cid countered. "But yes. Don't want just anybody taking off in our time machine, but we should be able to use it for regular transport around the planet in addition to time travel. Be able to take more than just our own persons with us as well. Clothes, motor bikes for ground travel, tea. All the important stuff," he finished with a smirk.
Vincent chuckled. "You've thought of everything."
"Still working on making sure that the time travel bit is capable of being turned on and off," Cid demurred. "It's a tricky bit of magic. I've gotta link a revive with a seal with a time with a barrier with an exit with a destruct with a pre-emptive with an added effect. It's crazy an' draining, and as much as I've improved at bein' able ta cast the 'mount of magic required ta send a steak on a metal dish back five seconds, I'm not gonna be able ta get the whole ship an' contents back, or forward, however far you want it. Gotta find an alternate magic source, an' I gotta be able to get every one a these goin' at the same time, or it dun work right," he explained.
"You'll figure it out," Vincent said softly, very sure of this. "You got this far."
Cid nodded in agreement. Of course he'd figure it out. He was tripping at the finish line, but damned if it wasn't going to keep on getting back up on his feet. He was the only one running this race, he was guaranteed first place however long it took him to get there.
And he would get there.
He drank down another mouthful of tea.
~oOo~
Vincent came down the stairs from his room in Cid's house to find the man himself grinning like a loon and pouring himself a glass of his best whiskey. There was also bacon, sausages, pancakes and waffles, and a fry-pan with scrambled eggs on the table. Normally, Cid went for three slices of toast with jam and a cup of tea for breakfast. It was quite the divergence.
Vincent smiled.
"Figured it out?" he asked as he sat down to take his share of the extravagant repast that the blonde had cooked up and laid out.
"Figured and finished with a few extra bells an' whistles that cropped up in the figurin'," Cid answered proudly. "Just gotta move in now!"
"Move in?" Vincent repeated, a little surprised.
Cid grinned. It was his best, most roguish grin. The grin that teased with surprises wrapped up in big red bows but didn't tell you what it was, that insisted you see for yourself so he could watch your face as you discovered everything he'd done.
"Move in," Cid repeated. "But breakfast first, then we gotta christen the ship before we go flyin' in 'er. Gotta think of a name too, for that matter. I was thinkin' maybe a, what's it, where you take the first letter from every word to make a new one?"
"An acronym," Vincent supplied.
"Yeah, one o' them. But somethin' that sounds like a ship name too," Cid agreed.
The two sat in relative silence as they ate their breakfasts and thought about names and acronyms.
"Time And Relative Dimensions On Gaia," Cid offered up as he contemplated a bit of sausage.
The two men looked at each other as they lined that up in their heads.
"No," they both said at once, and with a shake of their heads, returned to their meals.
"Space And Time Inclusive Regional Explorer," Vincent offered when they were doing the dishes some time later.
Cid stopped and looked up at the wall from the plate he was holding in the hot dishwater, lined that up in his head and considered how it would look painted on the side of the ship he'd built.
"Yeah," he said at last. "Yeah, I think that works," he said, a smile slowly growing (crooked) on his face. "Nice one Vin."
Vincent nodded in acceptance of the compliment, and moved to put away the cutlery he'd been drying.
Satire was painted on the side of the ship in curly letters and bright red paint, and the two men shared a glass of Cid's whiskey in the control room – to christen the ship – then Cid gave Vincent the tour.
"Shouldn't we have run into a wall by now?" Vincent asked an hour later, surprise and confusion colouring his tone.
Cid chuckled. "Shouda," he agreed with a smirk. "Exceptin' I learned some real nifty tricks when I was figuring out the calculations an' the magic an' all. This baby is bigger on the inside than the outside!" he proclaimed proudly. "You'll be able to fit your whole gun collection in here," he promised. "An' there'll still be room for more."
Vincent blinked. Twice. His jaw dropped. He blinked a third time. He shut his mouth and swallowed.
Cid preened.
Getting that sort of a reaction out of Vincent was damn hard to do. Then again, he was a Turk once, he probably had lessons in not showing emotion of any kind.
~oOo~
"So," Cid said once they were happily moved in and floating at a nice, steady, fifteen-thousand-feet, out over the open woods (that is to say, a flat area with large patches of trees and large patches of nothing but grass) that surrounded Rocket Town. "How far back do you want to go?" he asked.
"Roughly thirty-five years, perhaps a bit more," Vincent answered.
Cid nodded. "How's about to a couple years before Hojo got 'is scalpel into you?" he suggested thoughtfully, and started turning the appropriate knobs.
"No good," Vincent answered with a shake of his head. "If we interfered with my life, I'd be a paradox, or else I'd change to accommodate the changes we made."
"Huh," Cid grunted, then shrugged. "Well, if you're alright with that," he allowed. "Where'll we go back to then?"
"I thought we might save Sephiroth at Nibelheim, and Zack Fair when he was gunned down outside of Midgar," Vincent answered.
Cid raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Interestin' choices for savin'," he noted, then shrugged. "But whatever you say Vin," he agreed with a bemused expression.
Anybody who might have been looking up at Cid's latest airship at that moment would have seen it slowly fade away out of sight, and assumed (incorrectly) that he had figured out some strange new cloaking technique. In fact, it was the Satire fading out of the present time continuum, and drifting carefully into the past.
No one was.
No one was looking up at the sky above the open woods that surrounded Rocket Town when they appeared there a few decades previous of when they'd vanished from the exact same spot in the sky either. As such, the greatest engineering marvel of Gaia went completely unnoticed as it turned as though pinned through the middle, and then took off in the direction of Nibelheim.
~The End~