(Sephiroth walks out)

Sephiroth: Apparently I'm taking a break this chapter.

Kit Thespian (pops out of nowhere, grins evilly): Not quite…

Sephiroth (grumbles): Kit Thespian does not own Final Fantasy VII or the characters therein. And she is not making any money off of this.

Chapter Thirty-Five- Life Goes On, Doesn't It?

In Kalm…

Cloud Strife was not having a good day. Not at all. He'd woken up with a headache from being in the Highwind too long. And when they touched down at Kalm, he'd lost his balance stepping out of the airship and fell flat on his face in the grass. This would not have been so bad, however, if the first question to come out of his pregnant wife's mouth when the party returned to the Strife house had not been:

"Where are Yuffie and Sephiroth? And Hojo and Lucrecia?"

It could have been "How are you?" or "How was your trip?" But, nope, it had to be that. The explanation of their separation from Sephiroth and Yuffie had to come a lot sooner than later. He had been hoping it would be later. And Tifa's reaction to it had not been favorable.

"There's your pillow!" She threw his pillow on the couch, "There's your blanket!" A quilt followed, "Because that's your bed!"

"Aw, Tifa…!" Cloud didn't get any more out before Tifa stomped to her room and slammed the door behind her. He heard the lock click a few seconds later.

"That goes for you too!" Shera fumed at Cid as she dumped a pillow and quilt on the other couch and stormed to Yuffie's old room, shutting the door behind her as well. Thankfully Marlene had been sent up to her treehouse for the duration of Cloud's explanation and was playing with her toys, unaware of the unpleasantness going on in the living room.

That left Barret standing there with his arms crossed. Cloud and Cid both sputtered for a moment before turning to him.

"Don't look at me for support," Barret grumbled, "I don't really care what y'all do to Sephiroth, but Yuffie is another matter. You shoulda put up with it for her sake. Look on the bright side. Y'all really don't have to stay in here. Y'all can stay in the spare room with the twin beds. But if I were you, I'd promise to make it up."

Cloud sighed, "Look, Barret, we don't even know where they are right now. They could have gone anywhere."

"There aren't that many places on the other continent for them to go."

"In any case, they left town pretty quickly. I doubt they want to talk to us right now."

"An' whose fault is that, hmm?" Barret's grimace grew deeper. He turned towards the back door, "Enjoy the couches, boys."

Barret shut the back door behind him just as Cid was beginning a string of choice words. The big guy didn't give a darn how distressed they were. Those two had made their beds (er…couches) and now they could sleep in them. He would write a letter to Red XIII's house. Cloud had said that Hojo and Lucrecia were staying there. He could ask them to relay the letter to Yuffie and Sephiroth. Surely Sephiroth's parents (however odd the situation was) would know where they were.

He bit his lip went he walked in the backyard to find Marlene sitting on the edge of her treehouse with her legs swinging in the open air. She looked very sad. Apparently she was not as oblivious to the unpleasantness as he would have hoped. It gave him another reason to want to take Cloud by his spiky head and hurl him into the ocean.

"Hey, baby," he tried a smile, "You doin' okay?"

"Where are Auntie Yuffie and Uncle Sephy?"

"They…They're on the other continent, sweetie."

"Why?"

"…Well…" Barret spoke carefully, but what he considered to be truthfully, "They want to live their own lives, honey. They got married and they want to start a new life together. So do Mr. Hojo and Ms. Lucrecia. They can do that if they want."

"I want to see them."

"…Me too, honey," Well, he did want to see Yuffie. And seeing Sephiroth wouldn't be so bad either, if he was keeping up his good behavior, "And we will someday. You'll see."

Marlene sniffled, "They'll have lots of babies and I won't be there to see any of them!"

Barret put every effort into not wincing when he thought of that, and managed a strained smile, "Now, you don't know that, sweetie. We'll just wait an' see. Now, when's the last time you practiced your reading?"

"Aw, Papa…"

"Don't 'aw, Papa' me. Come on. Let's read about the white horse."

Marlene brightened up. Even though she was not too fond of her lessons, the one about the white horse was one of her favorites. She started climbing down the tree. Barret heaved a sign of relief that the subject of Yuffie and her new husband was put away…for now.

In Nibelheim, two weeks later…

"Eureka! Ha, ha, ha! I'm a genius…!"

Reeve sucked in his lips, stopping his exultant self-praise long enough to look around to see if anyone had heard him. But there wasn't a sound; he seemed to still be all alone in the Shinra mansion. But it wasn't like he didn't deserve to be a little proud of himself. The plumbing had been acting a little fishy. He had narrowed down the problem to the set of pipes in the wall beside the kitchen. Fortunately, there was a moveable fixture in the wall so he could get to them easily enough and fix them.

Once he was sure he was alone, he patted himself on the back, "Reeve, my good man, you've still got it…hey, what's that?"

He realized he was talking to himself, but so what? He spotted a couple of flimsy sheets of paper on the ground. He picked them up and read them.

"Oh…my…gosh…"

"I must get rid of all those that stand in the way of my research. Even that one from the Turks. I scientifically altered him and put him to sleep in the basement. If you want to find him, then search the area. But…this merely a game I thought of. It is not necessary for you to participate if you don't want to.

"Move the dial on the safe carefully, but quickly. You have 20 seconds. You cannot go past the numbers while turning. The 4 hints for the numbers are…The lid of the box with the most oxygen…Behind the ivory's short of tea and ray…The creek in the floor near the chair on the second floor…then to the left five steps, up nine steps, left two steps, and up six steps…"

And the fourth hint was written in invisible ink. Not that any of it mattered now.

It was the note the others had found when they came to Nibelheim searching for Sephiroth, the note supposedly left by Hojo. Reeve had still been with Shinra then, but he had controlled Cait Sith, so he remembered when they found it. He remembered thinking that it didn't sound like Hojo to leave a note like that. If he wanted Vincent to be shut away, he had a good reason to do so. But he could have left it in a spurt of Jenova-induced insanity. The leaving the key in a safe where a monster would attack did sound like something Hojo would do at his most sadistic moment.

The notes must have fallen through the cracks during the chaos when they battled the Lost Number creature. Funny how he was the only member of AVALANCHE who had never actually held the notes that had led them to Vincent, and now he had them.

Something was off, though. He couldn't put his finger on it. He'd have to corner Hojo when the scientist was in one of his better moods and ask him about why all this had happened. He folded the notes and stuffed them into his pocket.

After placing the wall fixture back he took a moment to look around the immense mansion. It was kind of lonely here, now that he wasn't busy. Sephiroth was off doing his job. Though the people in the village thought highly of him for taking on such dangerous work, they were still a little wary of a former SOLDIER. That likely suited Sephiroth just dandy. Yuffie was making a mission of going around the town every other day, getting groceries, looking for things to spruce up the house, all to establish the appearance of a nice, little wife. Reeve snorted at the thought of Yuffie being a "nice, little wife." She seemed happy with her situation, though. The townspeople were more open to her than they were to her husband, even with the orphans' "wild stories" that she was a ninja. Yuffie would come back home telling Sephiroth how grateful all the women in the town were to have someone watching over their husbands.

Yuffie also spent a lot of time with Mildree Gaither, learning various things to do around the house. And she would go outside and do her ninja exercises, out of sight of any of the more curious villagers. It would likely spoil her image.

Red XIII spent most of his time in the mountains. Sometimes he was gone for a couple of days at a time and would come back and sleep for hours and hours. When asked what he was doing, he would answer that he was searching. Reeve guessed that Red was looking for others like him, and perhaps a mate. Reeve grinned at the thought of Red with a female of his kind, with lots of little cubs running around.

As for Vincent, well…who knows how Vincent occupied his time? Even after living here for two weeks the guy was an inscrutable as ever.

And unpredictable, as Reeve discovered two seconds later when he turned to get a snack from the kitchen and Vincent was standing right there.

"GAH!" Reeve jumped about three feet in the air and back, "Geez louise, Vincent! You can't sneak up on a guy like that!"

"I only just walked in," Vincent spoke, without a note of apology.

Reeve grumbled, knowing it was no use to argue about it any further, "Where have you been, anyway?"

"I was exploring the mountains."

"Run into anything?"

"Nothing important."

"Okay…Seriously, though, couldn't you make, I dunno, stepping sounds when you walk through the house or something? You almost gave me a heart attack."

Vincent did not reply, but betrayed the slightest smirk and headed for the stairs. Reeve groaned and made his way into the kitchen. Just when he thought life could get boring around here. He had always wanted Vincent to loosen up, but if Vincent's idea of fun was to sneak up on people Reeve would have to check every day in the mirror for fresh gray hairs.

Outside the mansion…

Yuffie wiped the sweat off of her brow before taking another aim at the thick dead tree that used to grow (now, it only stood) in the vast woods behind the Shinra Mansion. She and Sephiroth had scoped the tree and decided it was far enough away from the mansion that it would not cause any damage should it decide to fall over one day. And it was thick enough to take hit after hit from Yuffie's Conformer, which was fine by her.

She enough time to get some more practice before having to get dinner started. She could barely believe the thought of starting dinner going through her head, but since she was the only woman in the house, that made her woman of the house, so to speak. She maintained enough of her Wutainese roots on the inside to know that much at least. And she really couldn't trust the men to cook anything without poisoning everybody, except maybe Reeve making waffles every once in a while. Yuffie was glad she had paid attention to Tifa's lessons while she still lived in Kalm, though she would never likely be as good as Tifa.

She wondered how Tifa took the news of their separation from AVALANCHE. They had been in Nibelheim for a couple of weeks now. it always made Yuffie sad whenever she thought of missing out on Cloud and Tifa having their first child. Perhaps they could be reconciled before then...but who knew? They were making a very good life here. On that first day hunting with Mayor Creel, they had managed to avoid the Mako reactor. Mayor Creel said only the bravest souls went there and he wouldn't endanger his new hunter's life by going there on the first day. Sephiroth had been relieved to keep away from the place, though he tried to hide as much from his wife, however unsuccessfully.

Why did she ever think she would get bored? Although they had fallen into a routine, it was a busy one. She still had not gotten Sephiroth off his cereal and toast for breakfast kick; she doubted she ever would, although she did get him to eat a biscuit she'd made the other day. Reeve, when not called upon by the villagers to fix something in somebody's house for a modest fee, would wander throughout the Shinra mansion looking to make improvements. Red was hardly at home, and Vincent had taken to sneaking off at all hours. That left cleaning the place to Yuffie for the most part, though Sephiroth would graciously lend a hand to help if he sensed his one-and-only was getting overwhelmed.

Who knew being a "woman of the house" could be so tiring? But then, Tifa had Yuffie to help her in those days in Kalm. This thought made finding a girlfriend for Vincent more imperative than ever. Yuffie grinned evilly as she thwacked the tree with her Conformer and the graceful weapon made its way towards her waiting hand. She had made several fellow female acquaintances in the village over the past couple of weeks. None of them came to mind immediately when thinking of a potential mate for Vincent, but there was plenty of time.

Inside the mansion…

After making sure his bedroom door was locked, Vincent sat down in his bed and took the claw armor off of his arm, letting the skin breathe for a while. He debated over and over in his mind telling the others who he had seen living like a hermit in the mountains. He supposed he should have killed her, but how could he kill someone who was no guiltier than he was? Working for Shinra seemed to automatically constitute selling one's soul to the devil. But she was alive, and what she would do with that life now that she had it was a mystery Vincent was curious to see worked out.

He would go to speak with her again, and soon. And no, for now he would not tell the others. They were not very concerned with prying into his affairs anyway.

He looked towards the wall that opened to the secret staircase. Of course, he would pick the bedroom that led to what used to be his "bedroom" for thirty years. But why shouldn't he? If any more monsters came from that passageway, he wanted to be the first to meet them. Let Sephiroth, Yuffie, Reeve, and Red sleep in relative peace. It was not as if he could sleep well anyway.

But yes, another visit to the person in the mountains was definitely in order. He could only hope she would be smart enough to stay out of anyone's sight, including Red XIII. No one would think twice of Vincent's going off into the mountains by himself. The nice thing about being unpredictable is no one expected him to act a certain way. He would use that to his every advantage.