The wind picked up, rattling the shoji doors in the other room like a pack of children racing by, running their hands along the slats. The sound filled Yuffie with unease.
Ducking over her tiny flame, she hopped to the window and slid closed the oilpaper shutter. She was letting the atmosphere get to her. A whole pile of books, envelopes, loose papers, and scrolls by the empty weapon rack invited her closer, exuding a sort of importance into the room. She'd purposely saved it for last. Here, a pretty phantom thief might plunder a treasure.
Well, who was Yuffie Kisaragi to refuse an invitation like that?
She knelt, smoothing the shortened hem of her furisode over her bottom. She grabbed a six-inch stack of books and papers with one hand, cupping the green fire materia in the other, and shifted the stack to her lap. She balanced it on the rolled-up tops of her patterned stockings, one striped and the other splattered with flowers, colorful the way she liked them. Shadow could not fathom what Sephiroth could have discovered to send him off the planet like that, and frankly, neither could Yuffie. Perhaps he had been researching materia since he had gone to such trouble to secure the Black one, or maybe Jenova since he had stolen her head.
Yuffie studied the stack in her lap. They needed evidence. But would Tseng not have recognized something as obvious as this?
The back of Yuffie's neck tingled. Her hand touched the wooden cover of the topmost book. She slid her thumb under the cover. She began to lift it.
She whirled, sending scrolls unrolling toward the walls, ignoring the thumps of books hitting the tatami mats. She flung out her fist, clenched around the fire materia. A gout of flame whooshed toward a second intruder, one that had been hovering over her.
The intruder leaped back, far enough to avoid the flame but not far enough to avoid Yuffie. She launched into the air and swung down with her giant shuriken, wielding it like a sword.
The long blade struck with sparks, glancing off the intruder's arm. She gasped in surprise as she landed. The stranger's arm seemed encased in gold – but not real gold, which would have yielded to her mythril blade. Then she scooted sideways, dodging the golden arm and the wicked claw-tipped fingers as he took a retaliatory swipe at her.
Yuffie flung her shuriken. It whizzed through the air with a lethal whir. The stranger freed both arms from a long, tattered cloak. A ball of ghostly blue flames met the shuriken in midair.
The shuriken fell to the floor. It bounced on the mats, extinguishing the blue fire.
Where had she seen fire colored like that before?
"Hey!" she exclaimed in a strangled whisper, crouched on all fours. She glared up at the shadow that was the stranger's head. A long way up. "What do you think you're doing? Who are you? Why are you here? Do you want to die?"
"I did not mean to startle you," he answered in a smooth, low voice. "I only wanted to tell you –"
"Shh!" Yuffie sprang to her feet and clapped her hands over his mouth. Angrily, she whispered, "Do you want to wake the whole castle?"
"No one will hear," he said at the same daytime volume as before, his lips moving against her palm.
She jerked her hands away and wiped them on her furisode, glaring at him. "What are you talking about?"
He held out his golden arm, and blue fire crackled to life above it. The flickering light picked out a few features – a bandana, maybe red, holding unbrushed black hair, loose down the back, out of an almost vulpine face. He appeared to be about Prince Zack's age, ten years her senior. A sharp nose, high cheekbones, a chin and mouth sunken into the high, buckled collar of a dark red mantle.
He blinked, watching her watching him, and beneath the fringe of black lashes and the weird blue light of his fire, she realized that his eyes, large and liquid and slyly slanted, had red irises. Red and glowing like materia orbs.
"Demon!" she cried, no longer caring who heard her. Let them all hear and come help her. A demon, in the castle, wearing human form! Impossible!
Yet the proof was standing right in front of her. She could see him. She'd heard him speak perfect Gaian. She'd touched him! She scrubbed her hands harder against her clothes.
She'd heard of demons in human form. Some of the most powerful demons in all of Gaia, they were known to beguile humans with their demonic good looks, spirit them away, and then eat them.
"I am a demon," he agreed soberly. "I am not here to hurt you, Yuffie Kisaragi. I am here to help you."
"How do you know my name? Are you reading my mind?" Yuffie clutched her hair, backing away until she ran into the bodhisattva's table. The statuette rocked but did not fall, thankfully, though Yuffie's backside got a little wet. So much for luck.
He chuckled. "No. I do not read minds. We have met before."
"We have?" Yuffie racked her brain, sure she'd remember meeting someone this flamboyant, positive she never had.
He tilted his head, regarding her with quiet amusement. She squinted suspiciously at him. The way he was holding his head, his eyes brightening, the irises redder than ever, seemed familiar.
"Who are you?" she asked again. Although her shuriken lay on the floor a few feet away, out of her reach, she slid smaller throwing stars from their wrist sheaths, her hands hidden in her sleeves.
"Vincent," he said. "Vincent Valentine."
Yuffie almost dropped the throwing stars. "Vincent? Isn't that the name of the Lady Queen's . . . You're her pet?" Foxfire! That was where she'd seen that color blue before. "Shade said you couldn't speak! Never mind shapeshifting! You're a kitsune? But you're huge! And gorgeous!"
Yuffie choked before her traitorous mouth could vomit anything else. Heat flooded her face. Dear Grandmother in Heaven, why had she said that? She didn't mean it! He was creepy! Yeah, creepy! Dressed in a black leather suit that covered him from ankle to neck, the tattered cloak moving as though curling around a breeze, the arm. The golden one that had almost carved her epitaph in her skin.
He didn't laugh at her that time, but she could see his surprise, raising his eyebrows and widening his eyes, as well as part of a shy, pleased smile.
Dear Grandmother in Heaven, WHAT WAS HAPPENING.
"I'm not interested in anything you want to talk about," she warned him, edging around the little table toward the doorway. Why wasn't anybody coming? They'd been making a racket in here. Surely someone had heard the noise. "Don't get any ideas! I'm a Master Materia Hunter of Wutai, and I won't go quietly."
He only moved his expressive eyes to keep her in sight. The blue flame burned bright and steady. "No one will come," he said.
Yuffie pointed accusingly at him. "You can read my mind!"
"No. Just your face."
"My –" She touched her cheek, hot with embarrassment. "Stop that! I can't tell my face to be quiet!"
"I can't tell my eyes to stop working."
"Close them then!"
He did. Brought up short, Yuffie paused, lightly fingering the razor-sharp edge of a throwing star. His hands hung limp at his sides, the claw not as threatening when obscured by the fluttering cloak. The fire danced around him like gas-blue flowers on a pond.
"Okay," she said, poised to flee at the first hint of danger. "Why won't anyone come?"
"I cast a small spell to ensure peaceful dreams," he said. "No one will wake until morning. Don't worry. The sun will lift the spell."
"Wha – you can do that? Without a mystify materia?" This is not the time to be impressed, Yuffie! "All right, never mind. Nothing I can do about that now. You said you wanted to tell me something. Well, I'm listening."
"You won't find what you're looking for in those books," Vincent said, nodding toward them. "Not the whole story. Not the truths of the past that General Sephiroth managed to recreate. However, I can tell you."
"You can? Why?"
"I was there."
Yuffie's brain went into what magitek engineers referred to as "overdrive." He had been there. In a past probably before Sephiroth was even born. He was an old demon, which explained his current form. Old, and crafty as a fox. Yuffie wavered, telling herself furiously not to trust him, that he wasn't human, that kitsunes were notorious tricksters, that demons ate people.
But she was curious. And she needed information.
She groaned with indecision.
"May I open my eyes now?" he asked.
"No!" Yuffie dithered on the spot, squirming because of the diametrically-opposed factions of thought fighting for control in her head.
Trust him – demons may obfuscate, but they couldn't outright lie. He'd said he was there, so he must have been.
Don't trust him – he was only trying to catch her off guard so he could steal her and eat her!
Trust him – How many years had Queen Lucrecia kept him as a pet? He'd never hurt her, and he was using the name the queen had given him. Didn't that mean something? That perhaps, along with human speech, he had learned something of human loyalty? Of . . . love?
Don't trust him – He was a kitsune. Didn't kitsune do . . . something . . . inappropriate . . . to humans? Hadn't she heard of one who had married a man back in Wutai, and then betrayed and murdered him, like, a thousand years ago?
Trust him – This was exactly what Shadow has sent her out to do: learn the truth. And Vincent, if she could trust him, wanted to hand it to her.
Don't trust him – He's going to eat you.
Trust him – He knows the truth.
"All right, fine!" Noisily, she exhaled. She tucked her throwing stars away and put her fists on her hips. "You can open your eyes if you want. But you're going to tell me everything, do you understand?"
"Of course," he answered. The eyes opened, burning like Yuffie's cheeks. He was gorgeous, with that messy hair she was already longing to card her fingers into, and that serious mouth.
Yuffie felt like slapping herself awake. She was Godo Kisaragi's granddaughter, the Fifth Master Materia Hunter, and the pride of Wutai. She'd never looked at a man or woman or demon as anything other than target practice. Stupid demon wiles!
Well. Putting that aside. Nothing she could do about it short of tying a sack over her head. Resigned to her fate, she sat down on Sephiroth's tatami mats, tucking her legs beneath her.
Vincent sat as well, animal grace infusing every movement he made. Though he had ducked his head so that his high collar hid his face from the tip of his nose down, his eyes were steady, glowing red, and very, very human.
Yuffie scrunched up her nose. "Can you be a fox, though?" she asked.
"No." He lifted his head and grinned, revealing a pair of sharp teeth at the corners of his mouth. "A fox cannot speak."
"Oh," she said feebly. Fangs! Really? The sight of them made her heart flutter in a way that a general fear of demons hadn't accomplished. The alienness of them made her want to laugh even though death by exsanguination wasn't any funnier than death by ingestion. "Okay, then."
Without a word, he passed her shuriken to her. It seemed unharmed by its encounter with his foxfire, and it accepted the fire materia in its slotted grip.
"This might take a while," he said. He sounded apologetic and muffled, hidden behind his collar again as though aware of the effect he had on her, which was obviously enough to rumble the inexperience of fifteen.
Yuffie, sliding her shuriken into its harness beneath her obi, glanced at the shuttered window. Across the garden, Shadow was, apparently, asleep, her candle burning on unheeded.
Yuffie shot Vincent suspicious side-eye. He pretended not to notice. A kitsune with free access to the castle, disguised as a pet, here under their feet all this time, and fully capable of incapacitating them all at a thought. She sighed. Some bodyguard and spy she was. Her ancestors must be so proud. "Go right ahead. I've got time."
A/N: There, all caught up! I think I'm happier with the way things are flowing.
What do you think of Vincent? Changing him the way I did - I was playing with the idea of his Over Limit Beast Form - I think has changed his personality quite a bit, which I didn't intend, so I'm not sure if it's acceptable to keep it. Please review and give me your thoughts!
Reviewer Thanks! SageQuill, twice more! Your reviews make me very happy. Thank you. X3
I think that's it for now. Working on the next update, get ready for a POV and a style switch, okay?
Love you all,
Anne