"VINCENT!"

Yuffie's cry seemed like it came from miles away. More immediate to Vincent was the nightmare come to life and attacking him.

Its tackle hit him hard, slamming him to the ground before he could get off any shots with Cerberus. The moment he hit and it reared back, he cocked the massive handgun and pumped three-round bursts into the monster's belly. The creature didn't flinch even as blood spurted and sizzled where it struck Vincent's clothing; its head shot back down at him, mouth open, the massive tongue opening at the tip to show the dozens of razor-sharp teeth within.

Briefly, Vincent wondered how it could possibly deploy those teeth. That, however, was before the creature literally turned its tongue inside out and tried to maul him with it.

Vincent jerked his head aside, noting with no amount of dismay how the teeth left marks on the steel catwalk. Then he felt the shooting pain of the thing jabbing him in the gut with a knife fist and animal instinct took over.

His gauntlet came up and broadsided the creature across what served for its face, leaving long, gushing slashes in its faux-flesh. It screeched and tried to hit him with the tongue again – he jerked Cerberus around and fired his last three-round burst into the fleshy appendage, blowing it to bloody shreds – the creature's scream was so hideous it made his teeth rattle – Yuffie was shouting incoherently, he couldn't understand – and the gauntlet moved with fluid grace into a puncturing stab at the creature's throat, burying golden talons deep in its arteries.

That shut up its screeching, though it hammered him in the gut twice more, lightning-fast jackhammer blows that bucked him against the catwalk beneath and blew dents into the metal. Vincent roared and pushed his gauntlet in further, closing it in an iron grip around the thing's spinal cord, and he squeezed.

It didn't like that – it thrashed and tried to get away, but Vincent narrowed his eyes against the black blood spurting everywhere in streams, and bared his teeth, and squeezed. He forced his arm to the side, flexing iron muscle, trying to snap bone that was more like steel cable.

What Yuffie was screaming finally got through to him – "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM IT, VINCENT, YOU'RE IN THE WAY" – but he was in too deep. He felt the roar ripping at his throat even as he ripped into the enemy's with his claws, it kept beating against his torso with sharp-knuckled fists of stone, its legs were thrashing, and Cerberus was emptied and useless and he started wildly beating it against the adamantine crown of bone that passed for a scalp on the thing. It belatedly occurred to him that he could make much better use of the weapon, so he switched targets to the numerous staring eyes that ringed the horrid head.

These went with a sick popping sound, spewing something other than blood that really hurt with an acidic sting, and the creature thrashed even harder. Vincent ran out of eyes to beat out, so he switched targets again to the side of the thing's head, hoping to amplify the pressure he was putting on its stubborn vertebrae to make it snap. Something shattered and sprayed; the strikes with the butt of his gun stopped making thumping sounds and switched to making squishing ones.

The vertebrae refused to snap.

"Fine, you bastard," Vincent growled, almost unintelligible with animal rage. He pulled his gauntlet out of the front of its throat and kicked the creature off of him with a great heave. Blind, bleeding and perhaps mortally wounded, it still gurgled and sprayed viscous fluid from its throat in what would have been another horrid scream before it charged.

Vincent was ready for the charge. He took it on his feet, whirling around on his heels and catching the thing by the head, tripping it as he did. Its torso tried to keep going forward, powered by its momentum and aided by a helping kick from Vincent as a follow-up to tripping it. The head, being pulled on, tried to go in completely the opposite direction. Still keeping his grip on the grisly thing, Vincent reversed his momentum, kicked off into the air, and delivered a pinpoint kick with the toe of his fearsome boot to the creature's exposed vertebrae.

With a horrid, wet snap, the head popped right off.

Vincent managed a landing of sorts, hitting the ground with both feet, though he stumbled and nearly fell before he caught himself. The head, for its part, smacked into a corner of the antechamber, rolled about a bit, and settled.

In the next moment Yuffie was in front of him, shining the flashlight into his face. "Vinnie! Holy shit, are you all right?"

"Far from," Vincent managed before he fell face-forward to the floor.

The next thing that came to him was her face, directly above his.

Vincent couldn't explain it. Maybe it was disorientation. Maybe it was the strangeness of it all, actually having to come awake from unconsciousness for the first time in a long time. Something in him thought it was years before, and for a moment he favored her with one of his rare genuine smiles.

"That thing hit you over your head, Vinnie?"

That snapped him out of it. It was years after the fact, there was too much between them now, and he hurt all over. "No," he said, "but it's the exception and not the rule."

"Let's go into the mako reactor, Yuffie," she sighed, sitting back. "Let's go and see the weirdos in the pods, Yuffie. What a great idea."

"You were really helpful back there," Vincent coughed, sitting up. They were outside the reactor now, and it was beginning to get dark. "'Get out of the way, you're in the way!' Of what, its fists?"

Yuffie stared at him balefully for a moment before replying, "My boomerang-shuriken. I didn't want to take off that swollen head of yours, thanks."

Quickly, Vincent assessed the extent of the damage. The creature had hit him at various points on his torso at least a dozen times, and the strikes had been hard enough to pulverize concrete. The last time Vincent had had a broken rib it had taken an accident with an industrial crane and a large amount of steel beams, so the creature's blows had been comparatively tame, but this still hurt like hell. It was likely that he had internal bleeding, which mattered little – he reabsorbed his own blood like he was a sponge.

When he tried to flex his fingers, he found he had trouble moving his gauntlet. "Great," he muttered, looking at it. The acidic blood pouring over it had congealed into some kind of thick, gooey substance that was only partially elastic. "How are we going to get this off?"

By way of reply, Yuffie produced a materia that she'd had bonded with herself: a moment's concentration was all it took for Vincent to determine that it was a Fire materia. He grimaced at what she was suggesting, but nodded for her to proceed.

Fifteen rather agonizing minutes later, Vincent was minus the congealed blood and owner of a large amount of third-degree burns on his arm, which normally took an hour or two to crust over and then heal. "Well done," he said. "I barely felt the searing pain at all."

"Bite me." Yuffie stood up and dusted herself off, returning the Fire materia to where she had it bonded with her arm. "So that was a nice detour, eh?"

"An informative detour, I'd say," Vincent countered. "The Silver-Haired Men obviously have some sort of interest in this reactor – to be more specific, its former inhabitants. They must be the ones that took the rest of the subjects, there's no other explanation."

"You stop to consider that the subjects might have broken out of their isolation chambers and gone out roaming? The mountain could be crawling with them."

"I doubt it. That corpse you tripped over was fresh, only a week old at most. It wasn't in an advanced enough state of decay to be older. I'm thinking the SHM took the rest of the subjects and happened to get to our friend last due to its placement. They obviously weren't expecting it to wake up when they popped the seal."

"That leads us back to the question of why the SHM would take these freaks."

"Curiosity, maybe. Maybe the fanatics at the top see these things as long-lost relatives or demigods due to their sharing close proximity with JENOVA for so long. After years and years of being in an unpowered reactor, I doubt they expected any of them to still be alive."

"Well, we can ask Cid to take a look when we get to Rocket Town," Yuffie said, stretching a bit. "Here, catch."

She lobbed something at him. Vincent caught it out of the air and realized a moment later she'd picked up the head. It was in sorry shape, still dripping bits of blood and other fluids he'd rather not think about. In the evening light it was even more hideous, the blasted tongue lolling horribly out of its maw, what was left of its eyes looking like popped blisters set into its bluish-green flesh.

"Yuffie," Vincent said calmly. "Why."

"I thought it'd be a nice souvenir. Maybe we can get it shrunk."

"Not amusing, Yuffie."

She made a face at him. "Cid has a whole lab now full of useless crap that he always goes out of his way to find an excuse to use. I figure this is probably the first thing he'll ever have the pleasure of making a useful analysis on."

"Bravo to that," Vincent groaned, holding the head at arm's length. Now that he had an opportunity to study it, he noted that it also had the most wonderful smell in the world, something that defied description beyond the fact that it made him want to throw up. "So why do I have to carry it?"

Yuffie looked innocently at him. "You don't expect a delicate flower like me to carry something as ugly as that, do you, Vinnie?"

By way of reply he tossed the head back at her. "Your idea, your baggage. All I did was kill the thing."

She caught it and stuck her tongue out at him before pulling her boomerang-shuriken from her back and sticking the head on one of the prongs. "Let's just hope it dries out. This really stinks."

It occurred to Vincent to reload Cerberus, so he did that and also checked the weapon for damage while Yuffie went on a rant about how horrible the head smelled. He listened with half an ear, catching graphic bits that he let slip in one ear and out the other lest his imagination pursue the imagery she suggested.

"…kind of musky, but not in a good way – like that zombie dragon we fought in the north cave. You remember that, Vinnie? Vinnie? Are you listening?"

"No," he said brusquely, completing the check of his gun and replacing it in his holster. Its grip was also coated in the same disgusting substance that had covered his gauntlet, but he wasn't about to ask Yuffie to burn it off. That would produce explosive and quite possibly unpleasant results. "Let's go."

Lex lowered his rifle as the black-haired man and his petite companion rounded a bend in the mountain path and disappeared. They hadn't noticed him or his partner watching them, which was fortuitous, because Lex was uninterested in unnecessary confrontations, regardless of how bloodthirsty all the indolent newcomers might be.

"Aibo," he said. "Let's go."

Aibo nodded and followed Lex's lead out of the niche they'd been hiding in. The man didn't have a proper name, or at least didn't remember it, so Lex had dubbed him Aibo when they'd been partnered. He also didn't talk; Lex was fairly sure that he was mute.

It was fine. They worked well together, and that was all that mattered.

The reactor was a mess. Their flashlights revealed years of neglect and disuse everywhere, even though the Silver-Haired Men had been making steady trips here until just eight days ago when the last dispatch failed to report back in. The teams could at least have made some effort to restore the hallowed site to the picture of working order.

The antechamber to JENOVA's Sanctuary was where Lex and Aibo found what was left of the last team – a bloody, torn-up corpse. There was no sign of the other three members; something must have eaten them completely. A local monster, no doubt, scavenging for food inside the reactor.

"Just like Command suspected," Lex sighed. "What a pain, eh, Aibo? You'd think they'd stop sending us on milk runs like these."

Aibo didn't reply, obviously, but he did tap his knuckles twice on something higher up in the room, his sign for "come here." Lex frowned and ascended the stairs to see what Aibo was shining his flashlight on.

He had to suppress a whistle after he saw what it was. From the bullet holes and the way the head had been ripped off, Lex had to conclude that the black-haired man had done this himself. No wonder the last team hadn't reported in; this thing had had them for dinner.

"Set up the signaler outside and get me Command," Lex told Aibo. "Tell them we have answers. Answers, and more questions to go with them."