Colors of Life
···Drops of Red···
Drops of red hit white paper, slowly dripping from the source, staining the fivers. The steady plop, plop, plop fascinated the azure-eyed child that watched.
With a delighted laugh, the boy pushed his fingers through the pile of red goop, smearing the paint in haphazard swirls across the paper. He looked up into the smiling face above him, into the pale, laughing blue eyes, the aristocratically-shaped face framed by curls of gold. His mother laughed.
"Blue!" the child said. His mother complied, and drops of blue began hitting the slickness of red. The boy squealed and attacked the paint, blue mixing with red and gradually turning purple.
"Mommy!" He reached up, his small hands red and blue and violet as he patterd her smooth, pale cheeks. She laughed again, dabbing a bit of the paint from her cheek onto his nose. He twitched it, trying to see the spot.
"Little Rufy," his mother said affectionately, ruffling his orange-tinted blond hair.
~
Rufus Shinra, almost seven years old now, hid in the spacious walk-in closet his parents shared.
"Krista..." His mother's name, his father's voice, sounded gravely from the other side of the closet door. The boy backed into a hanging rack of clothes on his mother's side of the closet, slipping into a white coat as he did so.
His parents' voices, low and angry, came through the door and clothes. None of the words could be made out, but the tones were enough to make the child want to cry.
A third voice joined the others, and the boy's curiosity perked. He crept to the closet door, pulling the coat tight around his underdeveloped form. He put his face to the crack between the doors and peered out.
His father stood next to a young woman--a girl of nineteen, although Krista could tell that better than her son could--with greenish yellow hair and wearing a vivid red dress.
"You've been--?" Krista stared incredulously at her husband.
"Yes. But it is no more than you have been doing, is it, you slut?"
The lady in red called to someone in the next room, then laughed. Rufus's eyes wided as two blue-uniformed guards entered, a man with tousled, light brown hair handcuffed between them.
"You," the president said, pointing at the girl in the red dress. "Get out."
She pouted, then stalked out.
"Rufus, boy, where are you?"
The child shrank away from the door. He didn't like the way his father had said his name.
"Krista..." A warning tone.
"Rufie..." She sounded as though she would cry. "Come here, baby."
Hesitantly, Rufus emerged from the closet and walked over to his mother. Before he could reach her, however, his father grabbed him, picked him up.
"Rufus, son, do you know who this man is?"
"No, Daddy."
"Your mommy has been doing bad things with this man."
"Mommy doesn't do bad things."
His father shook him, once, hard. "Yess, boy, she does! She does very bad things!"
Rufus looked at his mother. Tears were streaming down her face. He looked back to his father. "It must have been an accident, Daddy."
The president laughed. "Yes, Rufus, what she did was an accident. You are going to fix Mommy's accident."
There was a quiet click.
"No," Krista sobbed.
Rufus blinked at the gun his father had put into his small hand. He looked up as he was set on his feet.
"Krista, stand behind him," the president said, waving at the brown-haired man. Still crying, she complied. "Now, Rufus. Point your gun at that man's chest and pull the trigger."
"But, daddy--"
"DO IT!"
"You are a sick man, Shinra," the man between the guards spat. "Putting your sins on your son..."
"Do it, Rufus."
The child did as his father commanded, aiming the gun and pulling the trigger.
Several things happened in that quick instant.
Even as he pulled the trigger, the child's arms drooped from the weapon's weight, lowering the aim to the man's stomach...
The man twisted, grabbing the gun from the belt of one of his captors and shooting that guard...
Krista darted to the side...
The other guard, acting on a motion from the president, drew his gun to shoot the captive should the child's bullet miss...
Three bullets were fired at two targets in half a second.
Three of the six occupants in the room fell in the next half of that second.
The prisoner was nicked in the side by Rufus's shot. That bullet continued through the air to hit Krista's upper thigh. The bullet shot from the prisoner's hand killed the guard, blowing a chunk out of his skull. The other guard's shot pierced the brown-haired man's heart, killing him.
Rufus dropped the gun and ran to his mother, paying no attention to any of the others in the room. Her hands were pressed to the wound in her leg, and he put his over them. "Mommy..."
"I'm okay, Little Rufie..."
The boy looked at the red fluid on his small hands. "Mommy, you've got paint leaking out..."
Krista lovingly ruffled her son's hair, a sad smile on her face. A drop of blood rolled down his cheek to splatter on the coat as his father cam up behind him and pushed him roughly to the side.
Rufus looked at the guard who had just re-entered the room, having removed to the bodies, then looked back to his parents.
"I want you to get out of here," the president hissed to his wife. "I never want to see you again, and I never want to see that bastard child you are carrying." The orange-haired man backed away and looked to the guard. "get her out."
"Rufie..."
"No. Rufus stays with me." The man glared fiercely at the guard. "What are you waiting for!?"
The uniformed man moved forward and helped Krista to her feet, then picked her up when her leg started to give out. He carried her out of the room, leaving a trail of blood droplets, a revenged husband, and a distraught young boy in a blood-spattered white coat.
~
Um.. ew. I don't know what happened to my muse at the end there. Hey! Review, please. I have a part two and some ideas for a part three, but I need to know that you want them. Come on, people! (And stop voting on the first section of BotB! It's OVER!)