Sorry this's so late. I think I make Yazoo slightly too coherent to fit his character, but...Enjoy.

Challenge 10:Yazoo vs Violet

After escaping Shinra, Kadaj had realized that he and his remnants needed a base from which to began their search, somewhere to interrogate prisoners where they would be relatively safe. Midgar was ideal. Now a ghost town, the huge desolate city was easy to hide in, and the wreckage littering the streets meant that it was ideal for ambushes if, say, Big Brother called down the whole W.R.O. army on their heads. Which was why Yazoo found himself wandering a gutted but serviceable building with much of the shell still intact. He was slightly uneasy about being here -it had been one of Hojo's research stations, but navigated the dust coated machines with reasonable confidence. Most of them were by this stage broken and smashed, and Yazoo mostly ignored the few that looked intact. But, finally, one caught his eye, positioned on a viewing station above a large, thickly reinforced room with huge mythril and gold doors on the opposite side.

The machine that caught his eye looked not dissimilar to a vertical coffin, but bulkier, bound shut with steel. His interest aroused, Yazoo stepped closer, blowing dust off the metal plate set into the front.

TIME MACHINE

-HIGHLY UNSTABLE!

DO NOT TOUCH UNDER

ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

For an instant, Yazoo found himself tempted. It would be much easier to find Mother if they were closer to her defeat. But then he came to his senses. Any time in which this would be any use to him might well be one where this research station was full of people. He had no desire to spend any more time any captivity, subject to Hojo's...games. This thought was powerful, and he backed away in a hurry-so fast, in fact, that his elbow triggered a lever on a console behind him. Light glowed behind the huge doors in the room below. Yazoo drew his guns and advanced to the edge of the platform just as the doors opened and a red robed woman fell out. Instantly scrambling to her feet, she had the rifle in hand and leveled before he could react.

"Where's the redhead?" the woman snarled, aim steady despite the weight of her weapon.

"Redhead?" Yazoo was genuinely mystified. He'd been expecting a 'Where am I?' Comments on hair colours were slightly disarming. But he didn't feel like contradicting someone pointing a gun at him.

"This place is abandoned?"

"Yes." He yawned. "It was a research station. What do you want?"

"Me? I was sucked through. High concentrations of Magicite do strange things. Got lost in the Lhusu mines, next thing I knew I was here." He had no clue what she was talking about and so didn't reply. There was a long silence. Then it occurred to him that he couldn't let her walk away and tell people where they were hiding –that would destroy any element of surprise they had, which Kadaj told him was very important. Dipping for his guns, he stepped off the ledge.

-

Elsewhere in the city, Loz and Kadaj –the brothers were never far apart- heard the shooting, too quick and urgent to be just their brother writing 'I was here' in bullet holes (even if Sephiroth clones did something so frivolous). If they had any doubts, these were crushed by the crack of the high powered rifle that followed. They started to run.

-

A rifle was a heavy and unwieldy weapon for aiming at a moving target at close range. Violet backed off, crouching behind one of the surviving steel tables and trying to get in a clear shot. Her first almost had him, but he was falling slightly too fast and the bullet sparked off the wall just above his head. And he was almost impossible to hit after that, moving far too fast, running along walls as well as ground and in general not making an easy target. She had to keep moving herself to avoid being shot by his bursts as he circled, and it was hard to fire accurately on the run.

Spinning in an effort to keep him in sight, she was caught by surprise when he suddenly closed the distance, jerking her head back as a bladed gun slashed her cheek. Too close to easily shoot, she lashed out instead with the barrel of her rifle, catching him across the temple and sending him tumbling to the side. Recovering immediately, he lunged at her again, directly into a Fira that sent him flying into the wall. Her bullet sparked off the barrel of the gun in his left hand without doing any damage, and, recovering, he fired a salvo forcing her to duck behind a table again.

"Where's your...materia?" he called, apparently confused, ducking behind a table himself as she re-emerged. "How can you use magic?" An Aero knocked him off his feet again, irrespective of the table he was behind, and she hit him with a Slow before he could rise which apparently he was completely unprepared for. It slowed him down, but only relatively speaking-he was still moving fast enough to be hard to target. She'd been lucky. He hadn't known about her magic. Now aware of it, he was more dangerous, even with the Slow. Rolling under the table, he escaped her Thundaga, emerging the other side to pepper her shoulders and head with bullets as she tried to drink what looked like a Hi-potion in the respite. One round hit the glass bottle, shattering it and slicing her hand to ribbons. As a consequence, she lost the rifle, and he closed, firing en route to keep her retreating, kicking the rifle into a corner as he reached it. But the Slow had robbed him of his best advantage –speed-and she hit him repeatedly with spells, backing away towards her rifle. He found the relative safety behind one of the tables and fired at her, forcing her away in order to seek cover. Ducking behind another table herself, she downed an Ether and tried to root him out. Most of her magic was absorbed by the table, leaving him relatively safe. A Bio got through, but only did minor damage. Meanwhile, he was shooting back, and a lucky ricochet lodged in her shoulder. Once the Slow wore off she'd be in big trouble.

Aware that time was on his side, she used precious Magic obliterating his cover with a Blizzaga. He escaped the worst, but couldn't escape being repeatedly cut by shards of ice that scattered all over the room. The table he hid behind was torn to pieces. But that had used up a lot of her magic. She couldn't do it again. A bullet hit her shin and she fell. Had he not clicked empty at that moment she'd probably have died. In the moment's respite, she hit him with a Blind. Fishing for Eye Drops with one hand, he fired with the other, gashing her forearm by sheer luck. Having healed himself, he dodged her desperate Water and raced for her as she dived for the rifle. He'd almost reached her when he slipped on a small shard of fast melting ice left over from the earlier Blizzaga. Successfully retrieving her weapon, she used the very last dregs of her magic to blast him back into the wall with an Aero, then sprinted in and brought the barrel of the rifle in up under his chin.

Yazoo opened his eyes. He wasn't much worried about his predicament. Partly because he almost never got excited about much, and partly because he didn't quite understand what was going on. But mostly because he could see Kadaj moving soundlessly up behind his aggressor, sword bared, while she had been talking to him.

"Who are you?"

"Me? I'm...a remnant."

"Of what? This lab? Where's the guy with the lightning rod?"

"Ramuh?" Kadaj's blade touched the woman's throat.

"Hello. Could you step away from my brother, please?" Violet glanced around. Two more silver haired people had arrived, one bearing a sword, the other some kind of wrist attachment she wasn't familiar with, but had no doubt it would hurt. If the first she'd met was any indication, they'd know how to use them. She stepped away from her captive, but kept her rifle trained as they backed her towards the glowing portal she'd emerged from. Then Loz hit her, sending her flying back into the light. The Huge doors slammed shut behind her.

There was silence for a time. Then:

"Hey, Kadaj?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't think I want to have our base here."

"We'll find somewhere else. Lost, forgotten..."