The ninja's eyes darted around the room, searching desperately for any logical reason the paintings could fall. A roar came, so supernaturally deep it reverberated through the floorboards, rattling the bedframes, clattering the paintings across the hardwood, and obliterating any doubt that danger was imminent.
Yuffie shifted slowly. Her body moved on its own to swing her feet to the edge of the bed and silently place them on the floor. The quilt slid from her shoulders and flopped around her feet as she began to crouch. Time slowed to a crawl except for the ninja's racing heart.
"Yuffie," Nanaki said again, but quieter. The beast couldn't see that Yuffie was still holding the phone against her ear with her shoulder, but he could still hear her breathing. He could also hear loud, irregular banging. Footsteps?
The ninja crept toward the left side of the bedroom doorway, gracefully stepping around a painting's cracked and separated frame. She pressed her body hard against the wall. As whatever lurked on the floor below moved, she could feel the vibrations through her body, could hear it sniffing the stale air, tasting it. Still keeping the phone awkwardly pinned between her face and shoulder, she leaned out the doorway and into the hallway. There was still no visual on the enemy; it was on the first floor.
High ground was an advantage.
Yuffie twirled around the doorway and into the hallway, still gripping the wall.
Nanaki was in a difficult position; as a master of the hunt for survival's sake, he knew that maintaining control over all aspects of ambush was paramount to a successful hunt. The unanticipated snap of a twig would mean a hungry belly for the night-it could also be the downfall of a more powerful hunter, allowing you to live another day. He couldn't risk blowing his friend's cover by drawing attention to her, but he could no longer tolerate the suspense.
"I'm going to hang up and call Reeve," he said, nearly inaudibly.
"Don't go yet," Yuffie responded immediately; her words were even softer than a whisper, as if she exhaled them, like any normal breath. She couldn't risk anyone else coming into the situation blindly, getting caught up like her. She needed information, so her body and mind would know how to react; whether she could strike or slip into the shadows for retreat would depend upon the next few steps.
Delicately, she slipped across the opening to the room full of plants. There was a door to the right of that room that she hadn't opened due to immediately wanting the warmth of a bed upon her arrival. At the base of that side room's door frame, she gently settled her phone between her teeth and got down on all fours. Nanaki would have been proud of her form; she alternated her arms and legs as fluidly as a cat as she crept to the first step of the miniature staircase that led back to those glorious windows.
From this position she spotted movement.
The overall shape and size of the enemy was still obscured, but a giant green hand gripped at the banisters of the landing in investigation mere feet away from Yuffie. Attached to the hand was an arm of bulging, purple flesh. She took the phone out of her mouth with one hand and remained as a statue with the rest of her body.
"Big," the ninja exhaled, quietly but emphatically, hoping Nanaki would hear.
As the monster moved across the threshold, she caught a glimpse of what looked like red spikes visible upon half its body. The color and haphazard layout of the spikes seemed familiar, but she couldn't remember any spiked creature she'd seen get anywhere near this thing's size. Could it have been a Lifestream mutation from some small, native creature? …Or maybe some loose ShinRa experiment from the mansion's creepy scientist days?! The red extensions were slightly swaying, as if agitated by a breeze. Upon a more focused visual inspection, the ninja noticed the swaying spikes were actually tentacles and her stomach began to churn.
She took a moment to decide what to tell Red.
"Mutant," she whispered. Either way, that was true.
Nanaki waited with bated breath for the cue to call reinforcements.
Yuffie leaned her whole body as far over the staircase as she could to try and get a better look at the monster, but it had shifted out of sight. She needed to get closer.
She shifted her knees forward, toward the edge of the first step, unfolding her legs to let her feet touch the steps below it. She placed the phone back between her shoulder and face, allowing both her hands to touch the floor. Weakly, she tested a few locations on the steps with both her hands and feet, attempting to catch hollow locations that would shift under her weight. Once satisfied that she had found the optimal path, she scooted halfway down the stairs in an awkward crabwalk where she paused once more, attempting to catch a look at the beast that lurked below.
The clash of its footsteps was a lot more intimidating up close, the vibrations of each of its steps seems more intense than the last.
Yuffie gulped unconsciously. Nanaki heard it.
The ninja shifted her body to hug the wall again as she dared to creep a few more inches down the staircase. The beast's powerful breathing was all she could hear-it overpowered even her own heartbeat.
Yuffie's fingertips neared the edge of the wall, beyond which would leave only a decorative banister between her and her foe. As her fingers gently wrapped around the edge and she slowly rose, a fracture between her body and mind occurred. Within a simple blink she was suddenly a child again, running through the mountains and forests of Wutai, the breeze playing with her hair, the sweat on her body chilled in the evening air. The memory felt so real it seemed like if she just ran now, she could run into her mind and be free from this place, back in her home and playing with Yuri like nothing else mattered.
She opened her eyes. Dust filled her lungs again, the chilly wood against her skin gave her goosebumps, her muscles felt heavy with dread. For a moment there was silence; it nearly made her believe she'd imagined the danger. But like ripples across a pond, the echo of the beast sniffing the air once more-this time with purpose-lapped at her ears. She balanced her weight between both legs, making herself small against the wall as she leaned forward, the tip of her nose now nearing the safety of the wall's edge.
The ninja's grey eyes were unblinking as her cheek turned the corner.
The beast was nearly as tall as the second story even while crouched, and though its legs were slender its oversized torso made it appear sluggish. As it moved, thick muscles contorted uncomfortably under its flesh, as if the beast's skin was slipping around them. One side of the monster appeared to be humanoid, with its bulging arm and claw-footed leg, but the other just looked to be a mass of tentacles slipping around in the air. Yuffie lowered herself just slightly and continued to lean towards the banister, peering past the wall. The phone held against her shoulder and other cheek felt hot and slippery with sweat.
She gently clutched the wooden banister with both hands and crouched behind it, peeking at the monster between two carved support poles. Red tentacles, a hodgepodge of purple flesh and fur-the amalgamation didn't look like any combination of ShinRa creatures she'd ever had the misfortune of encountering before, though the sight of it awakened a primal fear.
Memories flashed before her, of insisting she wait outside while the rest of the party explore the old mansion, of being just as afraid outside the mansion as the idea of going in, of booking it like she was on fire to catch up to the group only to smack right into Cloud and nearly knock him over, of gripping the edge of his shirt in terror as they trudged through the halls. She saw Vincent in his coffin, unconcerned with being surrounded by weapon-wielding strangers, she asked him "are you a vampire?"
Deep in the recesses of fear, guarding a sleeping Vincent…
Realization and shock pierced her instincts and she gasped.
Nanaki's heart dropped into his stomach.
Mechanically, the hideous beast turned, its breathing slowed to silence.
As if its eyes were homing missiles, they locked onto the cowering ninja with the ease and certainty reserved for apex predators. It stomped, reared its mighty head back and roared once more, the airflow from its gaping maw so powerful she felt the heat from halfway across the room. The sound was akin to 10,000 grown men screaming as they're scorched by hellfire, and now unmuffled by a closed door and four walls, Yuffie unconsciously released the banister and used both hands to cover her ears.
The cell phone clattered to the floor.
With an unearthly speed for its lumbering size, the beast lunged and crashed into the pillars holding up the staircase. One of them splintered, causing the landing to shift from the force. Yuffie was knocked to her side and watched helplessly as her phone slipped between the spacing of the banister's support beams. She rolled back onto her feet and tried to get balanced, her movements devoid of strategy and fueled strictly by muscle memory.
From her position on the second story landing, she could see her phone waiting for her on the landing below, seemingly unharmed from the fall. While internally screaming, she hoisted herself over the higher banister, dropped, and scooped up her phone in a graceful roll across the floor of the first landing.
"RED," she screamed breathlessly, unsure if he was even still on the line. "ITS BACK."
"WHAT'S BACK?!" Nanaki snarled through the speaker.
"MONSTER," she squeaked, rolling away as it reached to crush her under its giant hand, gripping the phone in one of her tiny, sweaty hands. The whole staircase shook and groaned under the force of its fist. "DEAD," she screamed again, kicking off a supporting wall of the first landing to grip the floor of the second with her only free hand. "AAG—"
Another heavy crash came from below.
"YUFFIE," Nanaki called, his snout pressed up against the phone as if it was a gateway that could teleport him into the fray. "What do you mean dead?!"
A Lifestream occurrence was the only scenario that made sense, but what could have been mutated? What could have come back from death? The worst possible scenario bubbled up from the depths of his subconscious in the form of an image of Sephiroth that would not wane no matter how many times he blinked it away.
He heard the shriek of his friend-it sounded far away. He heard a series of cracks and crashes, then the line went dead.
Nanaki frantically pressed Yuffie's speed dial with his nose, but the call went to her voicemail. He redialed, then redialed again, but the voicemail blasted through his speaker each time:
Hi, this is Yuffie Kisaragi-master ninja, materia hunter, WRO intel exec. Too busy to answer the phone right now! Leave your info and I'll call you back-or I'll find you! Hahahaha. Beeeeeep.
Full of helpless adrenaline, Nanaki turned his attention to calling Reeve.
Yuffie braced herself for the next blow as the monster lifted its fist from the landing. It peeked between the bannister beams with a giant yellow eye and spied the ninja dangling from the floor of the second landing.
The beast bashed its own head into the banister-the vibrations shook loose Yuffie's grip and she scrambled with both hands to regain it, releasing the phone to its fate as she desperately clawed the slender support poles, pushing her feet against the wall as leverage to pull herself up to the next story. She wouldn't get the chance.
Yuffie glanced back for only a second to see her phone ricochet across the landing's floor, sliding directly under the beast's fist as it slammed beside her once more. Her sweaty fingers betrayed her and she crashed to the floor below, pinned between the giant fist and the wall.
Panicked, she wiggled Conformer free of its strap across her back, stretched it as high overhead as she could, and plunged the southern tip of the weapon into the bulging flesh just above the beast's thumb. Black ooze rushed from the puncture wound, but the beast appeared otherwise unfazed-there were no squeals of agony, and it didn't recoil in defense. Damn, Yuffie had just enough time to think before the beast lifted its mighty hand, taking the ninja and her weapon with it.
The monster swung its arm back over the bannister, sending Yuffie flying towards the first-floor entrance wall, with Conformer following behind. She heard its metal edges scraping across the ground as the weapon landed nearby, just before her back slammed hard against the sturdy wall, forcing the air from her lungs. Her vision blurred as she scrambled back to her knees, taking small desperate gasps of air that her aching lungs weren't yet ready to hold.