A/N: This was originally going to be something different, until Szahara again mentioned wanting a Turk Vincent drabble. I changed my original plans because I immediately connected it with the prompt I was gonna use, so here it goes.
Disclaimer: No beer and no ownership of copyright license to fictional characters within a video-game setting make Homer something something.
A ten-gil piece glints between his fingers. He twists it over one knuckle and then the next, before flipping it back. Coin tricks impress no-one in this day and age, but he still does them. He has reasons. He always does.
He moves with an aggressive, laid-back kind of swagger, like a shark toying with a goldfish. One foot in front of the other, with a swing in the step that makes it hard to predict where he's going next. He makes no effort to conceal the pistol that bulges from the breast of his suit.
Here in the slums, there are people who would kill for the ten-gil piece in his hand. But here in the slums, he is king. King of the rats and the scum, but king nonetheless.
He idly considers going for a drink. He could get better booze above the plate, true, but then he'd have to sit with the other Shinra lackeys, the ones who did desk work and shuffled papers and looked at him with that sickening cross between fear and respect. Filthy looks sour his drink, he decides, and makes for his favourite bar. At least he can get rough with the filth there.
The barkeep looks at him and a smile creeps across the broken mouth adorning his face. Although it could just be that Turks are good for business (one Turk would usually have the money to outdrink three slum drunks), but Vincent gets the feeling that the barkeep likes him. He makes the usual joke about wanting a martini, and the barkeep laughs and places the usual whiskey on the rocks in front of him.
The barkeep wasn't always an ugly man. The cuts, scrapes and lumps that adorn his face have been bought over the years with many 'Midgar Credit Cards'. It was a trend in the more thuggish of barflies; if you can't give them money, give them a broken nose.
Vincent sips his whiskey. It's good whiskey, but that doesn't surprise him. The bars in this area keep one stock of booze for the punters and another for the Turks. There's a guy drinking the usual crappy whiskey three stools to the left, and Vincent considers swapping, just to see what it tastes like.
The lights are dim. Mako power was convenient and cheap, but not for the slums. They got charged about twice the over-plate rate for it, so most got those worthless generators that could supply about enough electricity to play the first few bars of the Shinra anthem on a low-energy radio. He actually likes it; his blue suit morphs and becomes black in the half-light, and fewer people spot the confident bearing that marks him out as one of Shinra's elite 'human trash' disposal service.
He's almost sad that this will almost certainly be the last time he drinks at this bar. He's getting a transfer to Nibelheim soon, to aid a rookie scientist called Hojo; something about a biological experiment that needed to be kept secret. He applied for the transfer because the stench of corruption in Midgar made his stomach turn.
It was better before he became a Turk, he decides. Then wonders if there's some correlation between him becoming a Turk and the corruption that seeps through the drains and the sewers of Midgar. Blaming himself for things he didn't do is a childhood foible he hasn't quite grown out of. But he can't quite remember what life was like before he became a Turk, come to think of it. There's something there, but it's fuzzy and broken and-
A glass breaks, and immediately the past is thrown away once more. Raised voices join in broken harmony, and someone shouts in pain.
He folds himself off the stool, one hip deliberately cocked in arrogance. The mini-brawl that's started near the door of the bar stops for a moment to take notice.
"Pfft. Look, Larry. Someone wants to be a hero." jeers one, a big, thuggish, potato-headed man.
Vincent picks his glass off the counter, and drains it. Then, carefully, he holds it at arm's length, one eye closed like an artist trying to appraise a piece of work. The man's face appears, refracted and warped in the glass.
With a twitch of his left hand, the man's face shatters, and Vincent is left holding the remains of the glass. A few half-hearted streams of blood trickle down his fingers. The man's expression changes, to show a terror that he does not yet understand.
"And to think", he murmurs, still holding the shattered glass with crushing pressure, "that I was going to drink somewhere else tonight. Bad luck for you, I guess."
His right hand flips the ten-gil piece into the air. It rings out as it tumbles head after tail after head through the air. When it hits the peak of its arc, he's already shooting.
A/N: That was just me exploring Turk Vincent a little. I might continue this little section some more later into the collection, because we just don't know enough about Vincent's Turk years. (Well, I don't, anyway).
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