Chapter 7
Vincent was sitting on a roof of a house in Gongaga, thinking about what had taken place just an hour ago. As far as he could tell Cait Sith is a machine, the temple was really a very large material called Black Materia, and to keep it from Sephiroth, Cloud had it shrunk to the size of a baseball. But instead of keeping it, Sephiroth forced Cloud to give it to him. And the sweetest woman on earth that he had ever known has gone missing. This does not bode well.
You're telling me. I think it is time to go get the Cerberus.
Sure, but I would rather have the Death Penalty.
So would I. I don't really exist in your terms and can't die, and I'm worried. If Sephiroth has a planet killer, I don't want to be here. And neither would Omega.
Things are that bad huh? Wait, who?
I'll tell you some other time. I'm bored, what about you three?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
The abominations have voiced their opinion. TIME TO FIND YUFFIE!
Whoa, wai.t a minute! Don't I get to make the choice?
No, answered Galian Beast.
And can't it be someone else besides Yuffie?
No. You see Valentine, whenever we're around her, we get in a fight and are able to come out and play, or we get to watch your thing for her develop into love while you stumble about trying not to feel guilty about Lucrecia. We're having a blast!
Quiet, you damn MUTT! Vincent said to Galian Beast as he laughed at the joke he didn't really mean: but was really true.
If he was going to see Yuffie or not, he never got the chance; Yuffie went to see him.
"Hey Vinnie, can we talk?"
He jumped down and said, "About what?"
"I need to do something important. Back at Wutai."
"And you don't want to ask the others to take you their," Vincent surmised.
"Yeah, that's right. And being that Sephiroth has the Black Materia, I think it's best to get it over with sooner rather than later."
"I understand. Do you have everything you might need?"
"Yes, I only need to do it."
"Then I'll go tell get someone to drive us. If Cloud wakes up before we're back, he'll likely want to go find Aeris and obviously he'll need the Bronco." He said as he went for the inn. Inside he found Barret and, unsurprisingly, Tifa waiting for Cloud to wake.
"Yuffie and I need to do a few things. They shouldn't take too long but they will require the use of the Tiny Bronco. I think Cid should drive us and return so as to not keep everyone else waiting. Is that okay?"
"Yeah, just call us when you want to be picked up," Tifa said, not looking up from Cloud.
Vincent had Cid stop at the beach near Nibelhiem. "Okay Cid, it should take about an hour, give or take ten minutes. I just need to get a few things from the mansion."
As he got off, so did the other two. "No way am I going to stay on that thing another minute!"
"Good brat, I don't want clean that shit up!" Cid said as a wave washed away the last of the bile off of the wing.
"Are you coming too, Cid?"
"Yeah, might as well use the trip to gather supplies."
Inside town, he went straight to the Shin-Ra Mansion, as did Yuffie, while Cid went to the general store. As he walked through the door, he felt the memories of how the place used to be a place for life, instead of death and decay, begin to surface.
"My possessions will either be in the storage room or in my room, up on the second floor, left side. Be careful." Vincent went upstairs and then down to the basement.
Yuffie went upstairs and to the left, as Vincent said. Inside the bedroom was… She couldn't tell; there was enough dust to cover Leviathan three times over. She went over to the wall and wiped the dust off a picture. It was a picture of two men. It took a moment to figure out that one of them was Vincent. He was younger than he appeared now, with one arm thrown around the neck of an older man, the other raised with the hand in a V. He was smiling and looked a wreck. It was funny actually.
The other man was also smiling and had his arm thrown around Vincent with the other risen to a V. And he looked allot like Vincent, just allot older.
At the bottom of the picture were the words, 'Vincent and Grimoire Valentine.'
Interested now at what the pictures held, she looked at the second of the three in the room. In this one was Vincent with five others, three men, two women, all of them younger and wearing the Turks uniform. Oddly enough, three of them looked familiar. The words at the bottom of this one were, 'Vincent Valentine and friends; New recruits Reno, Rude, Tseng, Elith, and Velve.'
Ah, that's why. What are they, fourteen, fifteen? The names were on their owner. Tseng, very surprisingly, looked nervous. Not from the fear of something hurting him but of not doing a good job and being fired. Rude looked, well, not as stoic as he does now. And Reno… looked like Reno. He had the same devil may care attitude and grin that yelled that he just did something that he shouldn't have. And he was wearing head phones! As for the women she didn't know, they seemed to look at Vincent with a mix of admiration and a slight bit of lust if she had to guess.
Smiling, Yuffie looked at the third picture and slowly the smile faded a little. This Vincent was the nervous one. He was standing all stiff and couldn't be more nervous even with a gun pointed to his head. The cause of that was the woman next to him. She was slightly looking at him and smiling at how nervous he was. To say she was beautiful would be the biggest understatement of her life. She knew before looking at the name at the bottom of the page that this was Lucrecia. She was right, 'Lucrecia Crescent and Vincent Valentine.'
She didn't know what to say or think. She was certain that she still held a large part of Vincent's heart. But she never had a face to go with that thought and… she thought her a fool for choosing Hojo over Vincent. Maybe towards the end of her life she thought the same.
But she had made Vincent happy and Yuffie thanked Lucrecia for that. Then damned her for what happed to him because of her. For that, Yuffie wouldn't forgive easily.
Putting the pictures in her bag, she started looking around the room for…What am I supposed to be looking for?
In the storage room, Vincent was sorting through the boxes looking for anything that might be his. But all he found were books and documents on failed experiments. He was about to leave when he found half a journal with a drawing of Vincent's left arm on a box by the door.
"…ent's left arm has decomposed beyond repair. I'll have to replace it if he's to live. God help me, how…" The rest of the page has been torn away. "…the cybernetic arm didn't work, will have to try the last theory I have.
"Chaos is uncontrollable, and can hardly be contained. But he has revived Vincent. Through some force, it has been able to take my nonworking fake arm and make it work. Most likely by through some means I could never understand. Even now, he tries to smash the container with it…
"God, I have condemned him to an eternity of torture." The rest of the journal was missing.
Vincent's claw was clenched into a fist. "Damn you Hojo! It wasn't enough, was it? You even left this here for me to find, you bastard!" Vincent left before he started trashing everything in sight. If he had only looked across the room, he would have found another journal piece.
"…Vincent, even as I lay here dieing, I can only think of how I failed you. If it wasn't for the Protomateria the planet gave me and I you, you and Chaos would be in a blood lust forever. More over, you died while trying to help me.
"I wasn't worth saving after all that I had done but you still tried. I can only apologize and ask you to forgive me. And when it comes time, my son too. I already know that the Jenova cells will destroy who he is and turn him into a monster.
"I've failed you, my son, I really am worthless. But if you're reading this then I succeeded in saving your life, the life of a man I truly love. So even if I'm damned for eternity, I will accept it with grace. Live well Vincent, live well and love someone as much as I loved you before I died. Lucrecia."
Author's notes: SPOILER ALERT! That's right ladies and gentlemen; Chaos, Galian Beast and the others were put there by Vincent's own Lucrecia. GOD the writers for this are great! I've been a fan of the game ever sense it came out and I never once put it together that Lucrecia had Chaos because she put him there! I bought Dirge of Cerberus the day it came out and played it until I beat it and my jaw hit the floor when that was said! Ahem, I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or any of its characters.
