Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy. Or Vincent. But at least I don't give him headaches (wait, I do, I'm writing this). (Sorry Vince.)

"I don't suppose you have a phone?" he asked Seri.

Seri blinked twice, mentally perusing through her small hip bag. "Actually, I do have my phone..." She fished out the small device that had been forgotten down at the bottom.

"I'm sure it's dead," she said, "There's no place to charge it in Bifröst."

Vincent took the phone and peered at its bottom end. Standard two-prong connector. He dug into his own pocket and pulled out the small box that had replaced his standard Turk techkit. It wasn't complete yet, but it held several small tools, one bug and receiver, miscellaneous electronic components, and one grape sized explosive, appropriate for distractions only. The small box flipped open in his clawed hand like an oversized cigarette case and Vincent pinched with the tips of his fingers one small curved wire with a slightly thickened middle. He snapped the kit shut and it disappeared into his pocket with a quick flick of his hand. He then fitted the small wire into the bottom of Seri's phone and moved the phone around, changing location and angle, as he squinted at the bulk of the temple behind him. The thing was massive and floating above Midgar. He was pretty sure it hadn't been here before, or if so it had been hidden in some physical way. They had to be swimming in a massive mako field. It wasn't hard to pull a low power voltage off a field, but most people had no idea how to do it, or didn't spend enough time around reactors or natural field sources to care. The phone beeped when it was nearly horizontal, indicating it was accepting a charge.

"Whoa," Seri said, smiling in clear admiration. "I guess you don't ever need to plug your phone in."

"I don't own one," Vincent said.

"You're kidding."

Vincent's deadpan face indicated he was not.

"As techy a guy as you are? No phone?" she asked.

"Phones are social devices."

"I see."

Vincent queried Death Gigas for a phone number and dialed, having to lean his head over at a severe angle to keep the device at the proper angle for his little mako field antennae. A gruff and irritated voice came over the other end.

"Yeah, who are you and what the hell do you want?"

Vincent had to pull his ear away from the phone a bit, not just from the coarse greeting but from the din of some kind of machinery in the background. Vincent waited a moment before speaking, suddenly not sure of what to say.

"Cid."

".... Vince? What the fuck, is that really you?"

"Yes, Cid, it is I." Vincent sighed. Something about Cid's abuse of the English language always made Vincent want to overcompensate with ridiculous correctness.

"Well I'll be a goddam sonofawhore. Where the hell have you been, Vince? You disappear for a whole fuckin' year, Tifa's been worrying her ass off and nobody can-

"Cid, I need some help."

There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. Vincent closed his eyes. On the one hand he was glad he was able to shock Cid into shutting up, but on the other he hated asking for help. His eyes scanned across the dark sea of dead Midgar. He wasn't asking for himself. And time was short.

«τώo dαyς, τhεε hoμrς, ƒiƒτy-oηε miημτες»

"What do you need, Vince?"

Cid and Gigas had spoken at the same time, and Vincent easily divided his brain to handle both. He could actually communicate with up to two of his demons and talk to an outside person all at the same time.

"I don't suppose you have a ship at your disposal?" Vincent asked.

"Well..." The machine sounds in Cid's background wound down into silence. "I got one piece of shit runnin', if you aint too far."

"I am currently floating about.."

«ƒoμr hμηdrεd αηd τώo ƒεεt. ςix iηchες»

"...four hundred feet above the surface of Midgar. Dead center, I believe, right above the old axle."

"... You just, what, hangin' out in the air?"

"I'm standing on the doorstep of an enormous, pyramid shaped structure that may not be visible. Try not to fly into it."

"Well, damn, Vince. I'll be there in about an hour, I'll just... fuckin' fly around lookin' for you, I guess."

"Thank-you, Cid." Vincent snapped the phone shut, then set it down on the ground with a pebble under one end to keep it at the charging angle.

"Now we wait," he said, sat down with one long leg stretched out, and proceeded to wait.

cccccc

Vincent stood when he heard a small airship, and within a few moments was able to pick out its marker lights. It sounded terrible; one of the rotors had a bad bearing and something was amiss with the cadence of the engine. Cid wasn't kidding when he said it was a piece of shit. Bright lights, the landing lights Vincent realized, suddenly blazed from the nose of the ship and then started a slow raster to and fro. Landing lights were normally not steerable; Cid was probably swinging the body of the ship to and fro in order to make the lamps sweep out a search pattern. And doing a nice job of it. Vincent saw the beam hit the side of the temple, but nothing reflected back. Then the ship flew right into the thing, and all three of them caught their breath before realizing the ship had passed right into the space without harm. In fact they could see the pyramid shape and the ship at the same time.

"It's not occupying the same physical space," Vincent said. "It's shifted from our reality somehow."

"What about us? Are we... in this reality? Will your friend see us? Or fly though us?"

Vincent frowned and shook his head to indicate he didn't know. He stepped out to the very brink of where the landing they stood on started to fade. He took one more step and a bit of it gave way like softened snow, causing him to catch himself.

"Careful!" Erik shouted in alarm and made to approach Vincent. Seri put a hand to his arm to stop him.

"I don't think we have to worry about this one falling," she said. For the last hour she had tried to jog Erik's memory regarding the last day and night, and some things seemed to be coming back to him. But he didn't seem to have any memory of Vincent being able to turn into a demon with wings and Seri didn't bring it up.

Vincent remained out on this precarious ledge while the ship flew through the temple, then back again, criss-crossing in a search pattern. Then, as a bit of the bright light caught the temple door, the ship abruptly backpedaled, moving out and more to the front of them and flooding all four in harsh white light that made them squint. Then it turned and slowly sidled up sideways until it was quite close, the motion jerking slightly with the periodic imbalance of the engine. Cid was probably working hard to keep the ship in any semblance of steady, and Vincent had to admit, not for the first time (to himself), that the man really was a stellar pilot.

A door on the side of the ship slid half way open, stuck fast with a grinding noise, closed, then opened halfway again and they could hear Cid's stentorian cussing over the din of engine and propellers. Vincent leapt lightly onto a tiny ledge near the stuck door and clung there like a spider to the outside of the ship. With a grunt and a forceful shove he sent the door all the way open where it stopped with a clunk, no longer quite straight in its tracks. Then with clawed hand hooked fast on the inside frame he reached out and helped his companions aboard, Erik looking too stunned to fully comprehend that his first flight ever in an airship was starting by jumping onto it as the thing hovered in the air above a city he'd never been to.

"Fuck, Vince!" a rough voice hollered from the front of the ship "Ya didn't tell me you had passengers with you! We'll be gaiadamn lucky to keep this thing in the air long enough to get back to the hangar!"

"I have complete confidence in your abilities," Vincent said dryly as the four passengers moved into the cockpit area to stand behind Cid, who looked as though he had his hands full keeping the beast aloft, rapidly flicking switches and adjusting levers while one muscular arm fought with some sort of attitude control that seemed to be fighting back.

"Yeah, right, you motherfu- Hellooo!" Cid had caught sight of Seri, in particular her broad features and brown skin. "Meriteen baaaaby!"

Seri's face contracted all at once in an angry look Vincent hadn't seen on her before. He had forgotten about that old stereotype, that Mariteen island women were supposed be exotic in some sexual way, partly because of a cultural dance that probably was no longer practiced. Leave it to Cid to dredge up some old, inappropriate idea like that.

"He doesn't mean anything by it," Vincent said. "He's just crude by nature."

Seri scowled, and looked like she would have hit Cid in the back of his sandy blond head were he not in charge of keeping them aloft and alive.

"Fine," she said, "but if he makes any cracks about grass skirts I am going to shoot him when we land."

"Yeah, fuck, whatever," Cid said, barely paying them any attention as the ship took a rather ominous feeling dip.

"So you can't see your shivaloving pyramid until you're right in front of the door, and then only just," Cid said. "I think I fucking flew through it."

"It certainly looked like you did," Vincent said. "It's some kind of doorway. The thing just transported us from almost 2000 miles to the east. What time is it here, anyway?"

"'Bout one in the morning."

«τώεlvε ƒifτy-ƒivε αm»

Vincent nodded, now understanding why Giga's time had seemed 'off' earlier. He wasn't off; he somehow knew they had skipped four time zones. "I'm afraid we aren't the only ones who arrived tonight. There's some... trouble."

Cid snorted. "Shit, wouldn't expect anything less from you, Vince. Anything to do with that, do you suppose?"

Cid had circled the ship around, and now they could see the ground under the temple, straight down the ruined "shaft" that had been at the center of the reactor and the center of Midgar. A bright green glow flooded the opening, almost 50 feet in diameter.

"Is that the... Lifestream tap? Powering Odin's machine?" Seri asked.

"I think so," Vincent said. "It's the right location. We need to get down there, but not tonight. I am too fatigued to be sure I'm making good decisions, and this is no place for the living to be at night." Vincent pointed out the numerous small greenish lights all throughout the ruined city. "The place is crawling with mako monsters, mutants, and cannibals that have sprung up after the collapse."

Seri and Erik shuddered.

"Not to mention Odin may be lurking nearby, protecting his power feed. I want to go in the morning. I think we have time."

«τώo dαyς, τώo hoμrς, τώεητy-ςix miημτες»

"Well, we're definitely not launching some assault in this cocksucking hunk of junk," Cid said, and turned the ship towards home.

ccccccccc

Home was a set of metal hangar buildings in an ugly, industrial area north of Edge. Cid set the ship down with two hard thumps and then maneuvered it slowly on its tiny wheels towards one of the buildings. They passed several hulking wrecks of not only airships but other vehicles, and two large, dangerous looking dogs ran along side them, yelping with eager happiness.

"I run a salvage and ship yard now," Cid explained. "I do pretty well, what with a whole city full of busted up junk and a whole 'nuther city looking to rebuild."

"You have to go into old Midgar to collect supplies," Vincent commented.

Cid grinned, a lopsided, and somehow childlike, toothy affair. "Fuck yeah. That's half the fun. The other half is putting the shit together."

Vincent grunted. He preferred equipment to work rather than have to futz around with it all day, but that kind of thing was just what Cid loved. As to sneaking into the ruins of the city, salvaging items, fighting off monsters and mutants- Vincent could identify with enjoying that. But still...

"You shouldn't be going into Midgar alone," he said as they disembarked. "Too many hostiles, one will eventually sneak up on you."

"Well I aint exactly alone."

Vincent was about to ask what he meant by that when a small and rather familiar figure came flying out at them. Or rather at him.

"Vinnie!"

Vincent sidestepped, half out of instinct and half out of mindful avoidance. He moved so quickly that the petite ninja-girl completely missed him and collided with Seri instead, sending them both to the dirty concrete floor.

"Oh, sorry," Yuffie said casually, as if she hadn't just flattened a complete stranger. Yuffie popped up quickly, leaving a dazed Seri to accept a free hand from Erik.

"I thought maybe Cid was just giving me shit-" she stopped abruptly and clapped a hand over her mouth "Oops! Gawd, Cid, you're rubbing off on me! But at least you're not a total big, fat liar. Vincent! You're actually here! That's good, because I already called Tifa and told her you were coming! Who are they?" Yuffie pointed abruptly at Seri, Erik, and a very sleepy Elias.

Vincent made introductions of the barest sort but they satisfied Yuffie as she seemed wholly uninterested in actual detailed information. A small pain was starting to throb in Vincent's forehead. Yuffie always gave him this pain. He suspected it was the wild pitch changes of her voice that characterized her speaking pattern. But it was milder now than he remembered, and Vincent noticed she was both taller and heavier than a year ago. Maybe her voice was calming down as she matured. Her figure was filling out as well, and Vincent gave Cid a suspicious look.

"Why is she here?"

Yuffie rolled her eyes in an exaggerated gesture. "Geeze, Vince, couldn't you start with a 'nice to see you, Yuffie' or something?"

Vincent ignored her and kept his attention on Cid.

"Yeah, yeah," Cid said with a grunt as he unbolted some massive chunk of machinery from the ship they just landed in. "I got the brat working for me. I needed some help and she needed a job."

"Only because Cloud made me stop more ninja-appropriate activities," Yuffie protested.

"You mean thievery." Vincent said.

Yuffie stuck a tongue out at him and went over to Cid, climbed up and over the section Cid was trying to free, got behind the thing and put her back against it so she might push with her legs against the far support while Cid pulled. Vincent rose an eyebrow at the pair. They had done this before. The dogs were no help at all, after sniffing the newcomers to their satisfaction they took to milling around Cid's feet.

"Get out of the way, you mangy mutts! I don't need any dog help here!" Cid growled.

The dogs ignored him. The scene might have been humorous, but Vincent was feeling rather impatient for sleep, because sleep had to come before they could work on their problem. He pulled up Death Gigas and used his enormous reach to grab the massive chunk of metal machinery around both ends so he could yank it free. He set it gently on the concrete floor while Yuffie fell with a yelp onto her bum in the sudden vacancy behind it. The dogs barked and snarled, but stopped when Vincent changed back, looking from him to their master, confused.

Cid reached over and scratched one of them on the head as he swore at a blackened smear coating one side of the removed module. Vincent leaned over to look. He could see it was some sort of hydraulic control that moved something heavy. Maybe for tilting the propeller units. It looked like it had been on fire and Vincent thought they were probably lucky to have landed.

"Well we sure as fuck aint going anywhere else in this tonight," Cid said.

"Cool!" Yuffie reappeared in their midst, a bundle of excitement. "We'll have to take the truck! Can I drive?"

During this last exchange Erik Snortland's eyes had rounded in wonder, shock probably the only think keeping him from outright terror.

"What kind of people are these?" He whispered to Seri.

"I don't know," she said. "People from Midgar?"

Erik nodded slowly. This was exactly why he never left Bifröst.