Cosmo Canyon had very good scouts.
For such an isolated, remote colony, the village managed to be strangely up-to-date on seemingly obscure information about Planet, politics, and people. Anything, really. He never figured out how they did it, but Cloud secretly suspected that somewhere deep within the bowels of Bugenhagen's old observatory lay a huge, outdated supercomputer, hidden from the eyes of the rabid environmentalists and luddites that made up most of the population.
Whenever he thought of it, he mentally scolded himself for having such childish daydreams at the age of 31... but scouts only went to the borders, never beyond, and travelers didn't come often. Whoever was in charge no doubt had some highly restricted contact with Edge, or Healin... and Nanaki, of course, was in charge. That alone probably put the machine-fearing populous to rest. Nanaki was a being wise and capable enough to bend technology to his own needs, to use it for good. Though in all his self-extinguished fantasies, Cloud never did figure out how the lupine animal ran that computer with his paws.
Six years ago the ex-Soldier had sought out an education here... Five years as a guinea pig in the laboratories left him much less intellectually developed and mentally matured than he preferred, or anyone else even knew, and working as a delivery boy turned out to be a lifestyle far more demeaning than even his small sense of pride would allow him live. So Cloud had made the only somewhat conscious decision to 'retire' to Cosmo Canyon for hopefully the rest of his life. Learn a little, perhaps find some way to be useful again. A world not in crisis was a hard place for warriors.
He liked Nanaki alot, the creature was good-natured and sensible, and said that Cloud would probably be a valuable asset to the Canyon, as well as capable of reaping some of its finer, and more obscure benefits. This mention being, no doubt, mostly in reference to the absolutely gigantic library on Planetary information that the village housed. It easily rivaled ShinRa's from back in the 'glory days' of the old electric company, and was a common haunt for the blonde when he wasn't busy learning from the elders. Each one had a particular expertise, whether in knowledge or in skill, and Cloud was hungry for all of it.
He'd fallen into the cycles of Canyon life quicker than perhaps anyone expected... enjoyed the long, lazy days, the bizarre moonlight rituals and festivals often held, the red sunrise, the cool rock outcroppings that smelt of dust, paper, and old bound leather tomes...
...but when Nanaki had mentioned Cloud being a valuable asset, he probably should've asked how...
But because he hadn't, now he was finding out the hard way. It meant that one day he would be standing here, sword in hand, at the curving iron gates of the cliffside city, against his will and at the most inconvenient time...
The lights and the sounds were in back of him, a long line of girls dancing around a fire, the musicians playing out an enchanting tune. He'd been pulled from the midst of a festival by an urgently whispered alert, delivered to him by a young boy of the Canyon after his breathless flight up the entrance stairs. The boy hadn't told him much, but looked simply scared out of his wits, and scurried off soon after. With a sigh, Cloud embarked once he was given a solemn nod from the firetailed beast.
He felt ridiculous, wearing a bizarre mix of authentic Cosmo Canyon clothes, and his old fighting garb. There was a swirling, brown, patterned design drawn onto his cheeks that some cute girl had called 'henna' (for someone determined on knowing everything there was to know in Cosmo Canyon, Cloud found he actually knew very little about the place's culture), colored beads spotting his spiky hair, and ringed necklaces of feathers and stones slipping between the folds of his shirt. They felt cold, or tickled on his bare flesh, and these pants were way too wide for fighting.
He wondered for a moment exactly how the hell he'd gotten suckered into being 'border guardian' when that was Nanaki's job... Especially on this night, a celebration he'd been looking forward to for so long... Though Nanaki's uninvolvement was easily explainable by just that: the festival was in his honor.
Cloud thought that the animal looked quite surreal, decked out in a feathery headdress and painted leather skins draped over his body. There was something beautiful, primal, and regal about him as he sat there in the golden light of the fire. His single sulfur eye reflected the flickering Cosmo Candle, the sparks danced across his brazen jewelry, and smoldered in each glassy bead. But that sight lay away across the thick shadow, on the other side of the plateau. Cloud stood away from all this, isolated in the dark.
Squinted mako-blue eyes stared out over the dark horizon, segmented by plateaus and cliffs and crevasses of varying sizes. Somewhere out there was the 'shadow that ran like the sun from the night', as the scout's cryptic description dictated. Sometimes he dearly wished that these people could use useful words like: 'creepy', 'fast', and 'black'. Either that, or that they would simply pay no notice to that telltale movement in the corner of their vision.
But Cosmo Canyon had very good scouts.
Step by step, he descended the long stairwell, ancient and smooth, carved out from the canyon wall itself Shiva knows how long ago. Step by step the light faded behind him, and his eyes adjusted to the change as he was swallowed up, no... walked willingly into the dark abyss below, the gaping mouth of the beast. Step by step he came closer to whatever it was down here that the frightened boy had deemed to be a threat.
The canyon took a breath as his booted foot hit bottom, sucking in a deep, chilling night wind, and then blowing it back out in a gentle breeze that ruffled Cloud's golden hair, and made the small beads clack against one another too loudly, giving away his position. He winced, and hoped that the volume of the sound had simply been exaggerated by its proximity to his ear... the resulting echo of clicks bouncing back to him proved otherwise, though there wasn't anything he could do about it.
Passing nimbly over the well-known path, Cloud dodged between the rocks, bobbed and weaved around corners and obstacles, made distance between himself and the bright city he had left, then climbed.
With little more than a rustle of wind through his mismatched clothes, and the scratch of dust beneath his boots, he landed on the flat top of a small mesa and looked down and around. His scope widened by the height he had over most of the landscape, mako-cultured eyes scanned all up and down the picture laid out before him, seeking anomalies, discrepancies... a burrowed hole, a misplaced boulder, a slash on the side of the wall or any signs of movement.
He was on his second pass, and preparing to simply get up and leave, before he saw just that. It was nothing more than a glint of metal by moonlight, but it was enough of a sign for him. He unsheathed his blade from its holder on his back, and held the light weapon deftly in his hands. Newly wrought from the seldom used fire of the Cosmo Canyon smithy, the balance of the weapon was remarkably good, and despite its size, the enchanted mythril was remarkably light, making for much more agile movements. The iridescence of the metal shimmered before him: the only warning that thing beneath the cliff wall down there would ever get.
With only a slight shift of his stance, Cloud propelled himself forward, rocketing across the gap toward the cliffside below and across the valley. His sword was held, two-handed, high over his head. This would only take one strike...
Yet as he went careening toward his target, and as it became more and more visible... a shadowed figure took shape: hooking claw, crimson eyes, its body like a tattered dark shroud... yet it sat huddled on the ground, not preparing to attack nor to defend itself against Cloud's onslaught. So he second-guessed.
With an awkward twist midair, he brought his feet down, skidding across the ground, his sword still up in the air. He wasn't about to bring his guard down, but this thing deserved more checking out. Once he'd steadied himself, the swordsman peeked past his arm at the thing on the ground. What he saw nearly made him drop the blade.
The thing down there was completely undisturbed, and didn't even seem to have noticed him as he landed. It sat perfectly still, but perfectly straight under the outcropping of rock. The cliff's shadow had been pushed back, just behind him by the rising moon.
The muted tones of nighttime weren't enough to dull the vivid color scarlet of his cloak, but they accentuated the midnight of his long, tangled hair. The man, it was a man... no monster as had been described to him, was reaching a metal-encased arm up to the sky each of five sharp fingers closing lightly around the bluish orb that hung there as if it were as delicate as a bubble, floating compliantly in his grasp. A wistful smile twisted on his lips that looked afraid to be there... and slowly, slowly the clawed fingers unclasped, his hand grazing down the trails of starlight before coming to rest with its humanlike brother in his lap.
Dark lashes slipped closed, snuffing out the orange light of fragmented eyes as they touched down on his cheeks, pale and gaunt, smudged with dirt that hadn't been cared enough about to be removed. A shuddering sigh escaped him as his head bowed down, falling hopelessly to hang from his shoulders, as labored and as disturbing as a dying man's last breath.
With a hard swallow as he forced down the swell of unexplained urgency and pity in his throat, Cloud looked down at the man's hidden face reflected in the metal of his sword, and shakingly, disbelievingly called out, "Vincent...?"
xxx
Author's Ending Note Thingy: The better part of four days were put into this chapter... XD at first it wanted to come, but wasn't right, then it didn't want to come... and once I got it started, it didn't want to stop. My paragraphs in this one are freaking huge! Anyway, had alot of fun with it, have some ideas for later plot, which is good since I'm short of those! XD Hahah. Leave a review, and make me deliriously happy. Toodles.
More news. I did some editing… on things that seemed awkward to me. Also… people probably won't even see this update, but oh well. I have bad news.
My laptop, on which I was writing this fic, has died. The data on the harddrive was unsalvageable. I've lost three completed fanfic chapters, two from this very fic, one from my story 'Where Others Fail, Prevail'. This is a MAJOR setback… and with final exams looming on the horizon, there will be NO updates until summer begins… five weeks from now. I'm sorry, very, very sorry about this, but I AM NOT DONE. I WILL continue my stories, despite having lost key parts of them. Thanks for support/reviews/whatnot… yeah. That's it.
