Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy or anything in it.
«ώαkε μρ!!!»
Vincent jolted awake, hand on his gun, heart rate spiking to an action-ready level. With a slow breath he released his body's tension. Gigas was an effective alarm clock, if a startling one.
«sεri ώαητ τo gετ μρ»
Vincent rose up on one elbow and looked down at Seri, still asleep and wrapped in the expanse of red. He wondered why Gigas hadn't hollered in her head. Maybe he couldn't, or just didn't want to. Vincent gave it a try, maybe he could yell in her head, somehow through the demon connection. He gave a tremendous mental holler to try it. All four demons roiled and hollered back, Chaos including a painful jab in his head that actually radiated down the back of his neck. Vincent blinked twice, his eyes watering a bit from the assault. His 'head voice' must have been much louder than he realized. But it seemed to be confined to his head, because Seri slept on, oblivious.
"Hey," Vincent said, his actual voice a gentle contrast to his mental attempt.
Seri's eyes fluttered open, unfocused and reluctant. She shut them again and moved a bit.
"Guess I fell asleep," she murmured.
Vincent didn't respond; it was against his principles to encourage idiot statements of the obvious.
"I was thinking, or dreaming, I guess," she said, her eyes still closed and her speech slurred a bit with sleep. "That I was in the computer lab back at school. Sometimes we'd stay up all night, not wanting to wait to analyze that evening's data until the next day, or couldn't because of classes.... There was only one couch in the adjacent lounge, and it could fit two if you lay close together. There were always people in the computer lab in the middle of the night, and they had this rule, you had to share the couch, even if the other person was some smelly grad student you didn't like."
"Are you comparing me to a smelly graduate student?" Vincent asked.
"Hardly," she said, rolling inward until her forehead again fell against Vincent's arm. Chaos moved a wing to re-wrap them both and Vincent stopped him, forcing his cloak back into the form of inanimate object. Despite being such an energetic and aggressive beast, Chaos liked to sleep. Vincent gathered that in his native form Chaos slept cocooned in those wings, like some sort of bat. The first few times Vincent had woken up ensconced so outside a coffin he had all but panicked for not being able move arms or legs.
"Up," he said sternly, nudging Seri again with his arm. He couldn't actually get up until she did, lying on his cloak as she was.
Seri rolled slowly up and slid smoothly into the chair without fully opening her eyes. She opened a computer folder that easily had hundreds of files in it. Vincent stretched his long legs until his feet, in two slightly different color socks (also borrowed from Cloud), bumped into a gray and slightly rusted filing cabinet. He stretched his arms over his head and hit the wall before he could get them all the way extended. Then he sat up and turned his nose to breakfast. Sausage. Toast, buttered. Something sharp, sour, probably a juice.
owrgh!
Vincent smiled a little at Galian's growling sounds for 'orange'. Galian liked oranges. And as enticing as all these smells were, there was one overpowering them all, the one that really made him want to get out of bed. Coffee. He hadn't had coffee in months. He stood abruptly, saw that Seri was sorting through file after file without opening anything that looked interesting, and slipped out to the tiny laundry. His clothes were still damp, so it looked like he was stuck in Cloud's jammies for a few more hours. With thoughts of coffee on his mind he went for the kitchen.
"Cuuuute, Vincent." Tifa smiled at him from the stove.
Vincent, mortified, realized he had forgotten to cover his less than dignified self with his cloak, and at the sight of Tifa in shorts and a T-shirt forgot himself again and almost auto-wrapped himself in the thing. He remembered just in time and grabbed the edges with his hands, like a normal human, and pulled them across his bare chest.
"Oh don't be so self conscious!" Tifa chided. "You're among friends here."
Vincent looked away, sure that he could feel Tifa trying hard to be patient with him, maybe getting frustrated with him.
"We're just happy you're here," she said, concentrating on the pan in front of her.
Vincent wanted to play nice, but those kinds of comments always made him uncomfortable. He never had any idea how to respond. So he skirted around the edge of her attention, as he always did, looking deliberately away from her. He stared instead at the plate she had filled and adroitly set on the table in front of him.
"Sit," she commanded.
He sat, but he didn't eat. She looked at him questioningly, but he didn't speak.
"Vincent? Is there something else I can get you?"
She had to wait another few seconds to get an answer.
"Fork?"
Tifa pulled a fork from a drawer, biting back a laugh because Vincent acted as though getting a fork was a huge favor. And for Vincent it did feel like asking for a favor. He hated asking for things, and he hated being waited on. He politely stabbed a forkful of food and chewed. Tifa gave him the orange juice and he was able to quiet Galian's incessant 'owrgh'ing. But he still wanted that coffee. The smell was about making him crazy, and he could see it, in a coffee maker next to the stove. He considered asking, rejected the idea, and instead slipped silently out of his chair. He opened a cupboard door, looking for a mug. He found plates. With one finger he snaked another door open, one closer to Tifa's head.
"Gah! Vincent!" Tifa, startled, dropped her spatula, then in a flash caught it before it hit the floor. She used to give it a good shake in his direction. "No sneaking!"
"Sorry." Vincent cringed a little. He hadn't meant to sneak; it was just hard for him not to. Especially while wearing Cloud's comfy socks.
Tifa's face softened into a sympathetic smile. She remembered the noise and commotion of the previous night, most of it focused on Vincent. Exactly the type of thing that tended to overwhelm him.
"What do you need?" Tifa asked gently.
"Mug?" Vincent said hopefully.
"Ohhh, your coffee!" Tifa brightened. "I forgot about you and your thing for coffee."
She reached up and towards him to a cupboard, and Vincent leaned away to make sure her arm didn't accidentally brush him.
"Still take it black?"
"Please."
She poured the coffee and passed it to him, and he retreated back to his chair. From somewhere outside the kitchen a commotion started.
"Oh no, me first! Cid's gonna eat all the freaking eggs!"
"Hey!"
"Ow!"
There was a rapid stomping of feet on the stair and Vincent sighed. So much for the quiet morning coffee. The children were up. Vincent shoveled down half his plate of food down in anticipation of the impending invasion, and stopped short to stare at the two figures who came in first. They were actual children. He had been thinking only of the often exuberant adults. He hadn't seen these yet; they must have been in bed when they arrived last night.
"Hi Tifa!" The little girl said brightly as both she and a small boy, neither older than eight, glommed onto Tifa's legs. "Who's that?" she asked pointing at Vincent.
"Don't point, Marlene, it's not polite. Marlene, Denzel, this is Vincent.
"Hi Vincent!" The little girl, Marlene, bounded over and wiggled herself up onto Vincent's lap. Vincent pressed himself hard into the back of the chair and tried to hold himself, and especially his precious coffee, away from the miniature human.
"Oh, Marlene, no honey, Vincent doesn't like to be... sat on. Sorry, Vincent," Tifa said with an apologetic smile as she gently pulled the girl from Vincent.
Vincent drew a breath, meaning to say 'it was alright' or some such nonsense, some untrue nonsense. The truth was he didn't like being sat on. Except maybe while he was wearing the Galian Beast. That had worked OK for him.
"Hey, Vincent." Cloud's sleepy frame filled the small doorway, shirtless and in a pair of pajama bottoms much like Vincent was wearing. Vincent had to admit he looked good, healthy, muscular. Well fed. He noticed Tifa give him an appraisal of a different nature, but a furtive one. So his feeling of last night seemed correct. For some ridiculous reason they were not together.
He nodded a greeting to Cloud and watched him a few more seconds as the blond moved in a jerky motion, side to side so as to block Yuffie's way. The smaller ninja was squawking and pinching and kicking from behind him, all to no avail. Finally she must have gotten a hold of something sensitive, or at least unacceptable to Cloud, because his hips jerked forward and away, leaving enough space for her to squeeze through. Vincent proactively slid himself forward until his ribcage hit the table. He didn't think Yuffie would try to sit on him, she was a bit old for that, but once in a morning was enough for him. He managed to down the rest of his breakfast before Yuffie got a plate and sat right next to him.
Cid came in next, a cigarette already in his mouth. Tifa gave him one stern look, noticed it wasn't lit and therefore not technically breaking the 'no smoking in the house' rule, and went back to getting plates for the kids. Erik came in last, holding the hand of his boy Elias. He released Elias, who instinctively ran to join his own kind, and with a little encouraging from Tifa the boy Denzel helped Elias with his plate and brought him to a smaller kid's table off to the side.
Vincent watched this whirlwind around him, thinking the kitchen would explode if it had to hold one more person, when he heard a door open and his name hollered from somewhere on the other side of the house.
"VINCENT!"
Vincent looked around the cramped kitchen. The arrival of Barrett completed them, but Barrett actually counted for two people. Kitchen explosion was immanent. With inhuman grace and speed, Vincent bussed his plate into the sink and snatched a full one from a mildly surprised Cloud who had relieved Tifa at the stove.
"Seri's working on your computer; I'm going to bring her a plate," Vincent explained, and in two long strides made his escape.
Cloud's office was only ten feet away from the busy kitchen, but the noise fell away exponentially as he walked down the hallway. By comparison the dim office was a dark, quiet, cocoon. The hum of the computer fan was audible, constant and soothing, and he could tell from the cadence in the kitchen that he wasn't missed.
"Breakfast," he said simply, setting the plate down next to her.
"Oh, thank-you," Seri said, and absently took his coffee cup from him and sipped gently, not noticing the scowl it produced on his face. But he sighed and let it go.
"Find anything interesting?" Vincent asked.
"Not exactly, just re-reading, reviewing, in case there's something that makes sense later. This whole puzzle we're unwinding is a lot like translating these old texts, you have to keep as much information in your head at once as you can so you can see the pattern, make the connection. But it's a little like juggling too many balls."
"Well don't let your head blow up," Vincent said, and sat back down on his makeshift bed and watched her drink his coffee while picking food off her plate without looking away from the screen.
"Sounds like quite a crowd out there," she commented.
"There is."
"More of your friends?"
Vincent hesitated. "They're good people."
Now Seri did stop and look at Vincent. "You didn't answer the question."
"I didn't want to speak for them."
Seri looked at him for a long moment, then with a shrug turned back to her screen. "You know, usually people let you know when it's OK to refer to them as a friend. Like they fly out in the middle of the night to pick you up, take you in and feed you, yell your name across the house at breakfast."
Vincent felt a moment of shagrin for his attitude. Put that way, it sounded like maybe he was the one not extending the courtesy of friendship.
"They are friends," he corrected.
Seri smiled and Chaos chuckled somewhere nearby. She got you on that one.
I'll get her on the next, Vincent replied.
"They are also an effective and talented team," he said. "We've worked together before and we'll start planning right after breakfast."
Seri's smile widened. "I knew you'd be on top of this."
"Vince! Where the fuck are ya?" Cid's yell cut into the office haven from down the hall.
Vincent and Seri exchanged and amused look.
"They are also fast eaters. Ready?"
ccccccccc
Seri and Vincent returned to the kitchen while the breakfast dishes were being put away, and Seri stopped in the doorway, a bit stunned. She had meant to offer her help in cleaning up, but honestly didn't know where she would fit in. Cid was tossing plates to Cloud who snatched them out of the air was scrubbing them with unnatural speed. She shouldn't have been surprised by that; she'd seen Soldiers move fast, too fast, too precise, too... everything. Too much of the Lifestream stuffed into their bodies through some monstrous process of ShinRa's. Vincent too, she knew he was enhanced in the same way. But Tifa was drying at nearly the same speed, and her eyes had no tell-tale glow. Yuffie was balancing tall stacks of freshly cleaned and dried glasses on each open palm, until she abruptly fell over. Tifa reached out and snatched one stack out of the air before a single glass separated, and on the other side of her was Vincent, standing with the second stack of glasses in one hand and Yuffie in the other. Seri turned briefly, her brain still unable to accept that he wasn't behind her instead of across the kitchen. She slowly shook her head at him as he deposited the glasses in the cupboard and Yuffie into a chair. With the table now clear, a black man with muscles bulging on top of muscles and what looked like an entire arsenal instead of one arm picked up the table while the pilot Cid grabbed a broom and with a flourish of rapid precision swept away what must have been every crumb in existence.
Seri looked across the small room to Erik, who was also pressed close to the wall as if he were desperate to stay out of the way. She scooted along the wall to get to him. The sound of several children playing came from the next room and she concluded Elias had found some playmates.
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
Erik stared at her, his face a mixture of confusion and inner struggle. "I remember everything," he finally said, his voice tight. "I remember what I did."
"Don't think about that now," Seri said. "You'll need your wits to concentrate on the job at hand. I think these people can help."
Erik nodded with as much control and determination as he could manage, and watched the strange cleanup display before him. Within another few seconds they were done, and Seri and Erik were motioned to sit at the table. Seri found herself seated next to the large black man. He stuck out one calloused, broad hand.
"Barett," he said, his hand swallowing hers.
"Seri," she said, "And I guess you met Erik. We came with Vincent."
"Yeah, yeah, Tifa told me. Good thing, Vincent's a rotten host." He shot Vincent a wolf like smile and Vincent scowled, sandwiched on the other side of the table between Yuffie and Tifa. The two women had found something funny to talk about and were chattering on and gesturing wildly on each side of him as though he were not there.
"Alright, pipe down," Cloud's said. His voice was quiet, but the group immediately quieted and turned their attention to him. "First, Vincent, um, welcome back."
There was a smattering of clapping and general positive comments, and one suggestive whistle. Vincent gave Yuffie an evil look.
"OK," Cloud continued, "Since we're all here now, could we get an update, Vincent?"
Vincent took one look around the table, the attention entirely focused on him. He took one breath to compose his report.
"Four days ago, in a small town on the eastern coast called Bifrost, I stumbled on a radical fringe group apparently led by the ex-avalanche member Fuhito Hori." Vincent paused to let that sink in.
"We believe their goal to be activation of an ancient machine, a machine made by a race that predates Cetra, a race more powerful than Cetra. A race that primarily resided in a world separate from ours but connected to it by some sort of doorways. The members of this race, or what's left of it, include our summon creatures- Ifrit, Odin, the Bahamuts. I've been to this other world and saw these beings held in stasis there. I entered through a door in Bifrost and was returned via another here to Midgar, or more precisely above the city, from where Cid was kind enough to collect me and my companions last night."
The group stared at him, Yuffie with her mouth hanging open. Cid looked his usual bored.
"While in this other world, the main city of which is called Asgaard, I saw this machine. It's real and the process to fire it up has already started."
"What does this machine do?" Barret asked.
"Motherfucker is s'posed to run time backwards," Cid answered. "That's what ya said last night, Vince. Do you really think it can do that?"
"Is Fuhito an idiot?" Vincent asked.
Those at the table who knew anything about Fuhito shook their heads somberly.
"Everything else gathered from the Cetra legends regarding Asgaard has been found to corroborate Fuhito's claim, as far as we can tell." Vincent looked at Seri, eyebrows raised to indicate she should take the floor.
"The Cetra data I've collected, poetry we often call it because it tends to be... less concrete than our modern communication," Seri said, looking around the group but avoiding Cloud's unnerving, mako gaze, "Refers to a threat residing in Asgaard that will 'erase all that is known' and mentions a 'machine of Odin's that is fed by a great green line'. The phrase... 'Lest against the past you would sin'," Seri looked up at Erik to get a positive nod, "Comes from a legend from the people in Bifrost, who have been doorkeeping one of these passages to Asgaard. All is consistent with the claims of Fuhito, that he was planning to back up time to a pre-ShinRa, pre industrialized time."
"While in Asgaard," Vincent continued, "we observed the machine accepting a line of mako flow through one of these doorways, a line that appears to be coming from the middle of the old reactor in Midgar. We've lost track of Odin, Fuhito, and a prisoner of Fuhito's, Erik's wife, Nyssa."
The group looked at Erik, who swallowed hard as he nodded his head.
"I think they're at the old reactor opening up this flow, feeding the machine until its reservoir is full enough to operate," Vincent said
"How much time?" Tifa asked. "Before the machine can start?"
Vincent prodded Gigas for an answer.
"One day, seventeen hours. And fourteen minutes."
Several eyebrows went up at the odd precision of Vincent's estimate, but nobody questioned him.
"I'd rather not take that to the wire," Vincent said, "I'd like to cut the feed well before that."
Vincent looked to Cloud, who nodded.
"Your baby," Cloud said, and Vincent nodded back.
Seri smiled a little at the two men as she watched the careful and skillful exchange. The ex-SOLDIER, or pseudo ex-SOLDIER, whatever he was, was clearly the standing leader of this group, and his quiet intensity and control impressed Seri. But he was giving his group to Vincent.
"We need reconnaissance before we can construct a plan." Vincent stood up as Cloud unfurled a large, ragged roll of paper on the kitchen table. It was an old map of Midgar that had been marked and reworked to represent the city as it now stood. Or, more correctly, didn't stand. The map was obviously heavily used, and everybody grabbed the edge in front of them to keep it from curling. Cloud took a pencil out of his back pocket as he and Vincent leaned over the thing.
"This zolom nest seems to have died out," Cloud said, erasing a mark on the south side of the city.
Cid took the pencil from Cloud. "Some new fucking muties here," he said, making a mark along the road they had driven last night from Cid's shop into Edge.
"Damn," Cloud muttered. "I've been using that road. I hate taking the bike through muties."
"Is there a road clear to the reactor?" Vincent asked, studying the preponderance of marks that increased in density toward the middle of the city.
Cloud shook his head. "Nobody goes there. It'll be thick with nasties."
"How are we going to sneak up on Odin while making a ruckus and fighting through monsters?" Yuffie asked.
"How are we going to sneak up on Odin period? Even to look at him?" Tifa asked "Doesn't he have precog, or perception?"
"Perception," Vincent said, and then thought to check. He knew Chaos didn't have precognition – an ability to feel an attack shortly before it occurred; that skill came to Vincent as part of his own mako enhancement. Chaos had perception, an ability to feel people or intelligent creatures that were observing or approaching.
He is the same as I. Only you mako poisoned have precog.
"No precog," Vincent repeated. "But the perception is a problem. We won't be able to observe his operation without his detection unless we could do it remotely. Unless we had a..."
Vincent stopped short with his eyes fixed on a small object near the floor. He had seen it earlier and dismissed it. It wasn't about to attack him, so it hadn't lit up his precog, and his perception hadn't lit up either, because it wasn't exactly an intelligent creature. It wasn't a creature at all, but it was observing them. He was out of his chair and had grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck before it could dart away. He knew once he touched it that it wasn't flesh and bones at all. It was mechanical.
"What is this doing here?" he demanded, giving the robotic cat a shake in the general direction of his companions, Just like a real cat, the tabby wriggled, clawed, and tried to bite him. The motion was good, but not perfectly convincing.
"Relax, Vincent," Cloud said, "It's a Cait Sith model."
"Is Reeve listening?"
"No," Cloud said, then gave a look to Tifa. "No way. It just has some reaction programs, to behave like a cat. Reeve gave him to us because Marlene is allergic to real cats. It's a really old model; his transmitter and receiver are shorter range. And right now they aren't even connected."
"But... it could transmit, and receive commands?" Vincent asked, giving the cat another little shake. It went through an identical clawing and biting fit, and went still after the same amount of time.
"Yeah," Cloud said. "There's a control box for him somewhere."
Tifa got up and rummaged through a junk drawer. After setting corks, rubber bands, a couple of cupboard knobs, a broken scissors, and four pens onto the counter she finally came out with a small plastic box the size of a pack of cigarettes. She used a fingernail to scrape a chunk of something red and sticky from one side before handing it to Cid.
"Should we call Reeve to help?" Tifa asked.
Vincent thought for a moment, staring at the fake cat. The fake cat stared back. "I expect between Cid and I we can get the cat to work for us. I don't think we want to bring ShinRa into this. The temptation to use this thing, to restore ShinRa to its former glory, might be too great."
"You mean they might set the machine just far enough back avoid the catastrophe? It could bring back Midgar." Barret said.
"Could bring back Nibelheim," Tifa mused.
"Go back before ShinRa ruined Wutai," Yuffie added.
The group became silent, each thought turning inward. The next idea was the obvious one; if they could back up time they could maybe try to prevent one thing, the thing that brought them all their ills. Maybe they could prevent Sephiroth from... being. Prevent his life, maybe even prevent his birth. Vincent's heart made an erratic jog in rhythm at the thought of having a second chance at that in particular.
"Stop it!" Cloud's voice, so abnormally sharp, focused all of their attention to him. "Quit thinking like that, all of you! We are not going to try and use this thing, some freaking time machine that's gonna screw everything up we fought for or maybe just make us relive the whole sequence again!" His voice caught, and face reddened just a bit as the group stared.
"I'm not doing that," he said, calming himself. "I can't do that."
The group broke into a collective murmur of support, agreement, and apologies as they returned their attention to finding clues on the map as to how they might deploy their anticipated robotic-cat spy. Vincent watched, sullen and silent, his gaze fixed on Cloud.
No guts, no glory, Strife he thought, and heard the sinister chuckling of many voices somewhere deep inside himself.