Hunter: Chapter One (Yuffie)
By: M.Riddle AKA Raven-Chan
...
As Yuffie fell into silence, They all looked up, as if hearing her distant scream. They all looked in the direction of Wutia, as she fell into the dreaded silence. A shiver ran down Tifa's back, and goose bumps raised on her flesh, as if frightened of something she couldn't see. The same happened to the rest of the group, and although none of them would remember later, they all knew Yuffie had slipped into a place worse then death. She wasn't in the life stream. She was just dead...
...
It was 9:00 PM.
Yuffie was sitting at her home in Wutai when it started. She was sitting on her couch, watching an episode of her favorite television program.
Tifa had been in her home. She was half-heartedly eating some of the pie she had made for her and Cloud to share that night... on their second date.
Cloud was quickly running to Tifa's house, knowing he was already late because the roses he bought had not been delivered. He had dropped by the florists' shop to get them.
Barret had been tucking Marlene into her bed for the night. Both of them would have nightmares on this last night they slept.
Red XIII was tending to a small garden in front of the house where his Grandfather had lived, looking at the blossoming stars.
Vincent had been roaming the mazes under Shinra Mansion, looking for nothing, but wishing Lucrietia was with him.
Cait Sith had been powered down for a while, while Reeve was out in the town, walking into the Mall of Midgar.
Cid had been flying around in the Highwind, looking at the lay of the land.
They had all looked up when it started, too, although Cid was the only one to see it happen. When the Chain Reaction started, they all looked up, and cringed at the screams. The screams from the Life Stream, hundreds of souls in mortal pain. One that struck Cloud in particular was Aeris' scream, her voice high and shrill.
Cid saw all of it from his place in the Highwind. He was flying solo (something he rarely did). He had a sudden urge to take off into the wild blue yonder, to forget it all... or, he would think later, to see it all come crashing down.
He had been flying in no direct path to any one place, only flying, enjoying the views the open sky afforded him. He had decided to fly over the rubble that used to be the Temple of the Ancients before he headed home, wanting to see it again. He had no idea how bad his timing was.
As he passed over the site, he looked down, hoping to admire all of its beauty. As he got closer, his instruments began giving strange readings, the needles jumping back and forth, the digital displays going tucking off random shapes and numbers, some flashing on and off.
"What the fuck? " he muttered to himself, thinking he must have rebuilt the damned thing wrong after all. Then, as he reached the spot he thought most beautiful on the island, he saw something that shattered his previous good mood.
Where there had been the rubble of a mighty temple, glittering like gold, surrounded by beautiful green forest, was nothing but fire. A twisted, black fire, sweeping through the island and spawning off electric surges of evil black energy. Where the rubble of the temple used to be, a swirl of black and gray had burst through the ground, and in the middle, stood a dark temple. It wasn't a golden temple, something the Ancients would have made. Rather, it was a dark, twisted, morbid temple, a tower that reached for the sky and sought to polluter it with the darkness of death.
"What the fuck?!" Cid yelled into the emptiness of the cockpit.
As he ranted inside the otherwise silent cockpit, the winds outside grew violently fast and turbulent, the fire reaching heights that licked the belly of the Highwind. As it rose higher, so did the energy that sparked through it. It began to surge through the cockpit, burning out navigations and damaging every console in the cockpit. Relays popped, and the acrid smell of smoke hung thick in the cockpit.
"Fuck!" Cid screamed, struggling to gain more altitude, although his efforts were futile. The engines had been fried by the energy surge, and the only direction Cid was going was down.
As Cid fought for control, and actually thought he might make it out alive, something shot out of he whirl of black and gray, straight at the cockpit. Cid had enough time to swing the large ship around to avoid sudden death, but the thing sliced through the port side of the ship. Cid looked at the aft display monitor, and saw the thing turn back for another pass.
It was something pitch black, like a shadow, with only one other color in its whole mass: green. They were eyes, Cid realized, a startling green color that seemed somehow familiar.
Cid powered the engines as high as they could go, over loading the circuits that were not already fired. He hit the throttle hard, and the Highwind bucked and groaned in protest; the entire left side began to come off of its frame, the structure of the mighty ship falling apart. The metal began to peel away from the ship; the wiring and pipes began to hang out loosely, and then began peeling off as well, being sucked into the massive vortex made by the emerging tower.
The black creature didn't care to dodge the pieces; it just went through the. It was closing on the Highwind now, moving in on its paralyzed prey. Cid realized then exactly what was happening; it was a Hunter and he was the prey.
His burst of speed was slowly but surely rattling the Highwind apart. He was near Rocket Town when the though occurred to him that this Hunter may destroy his town, as well as his Highwind. He began to change course, and as he did the Hunter peeled off, shooting off and into the night. Cid tried to change course and make a smooth landing outside of Rocket Town, when he realized something else had been fried.
The steering.
"Oh, shit"
As he braced for an impact with the planet below, the Highwind pitched downward, into Rocket Town. Cid braced himself back into his chair, finally strapping himself in, as he should have done at the beginning of his flight. The left side of his ship was gone now, and the frame was badly and irreversibly warped. The lack of weight on its left side cause the ship to spin as it fell from the sky, and it hit the ground behind his house with a loud crash, the nose of the ship digging into the ground. The left side of the cockpit caved in, and the Highwind came to a rest in a standing position, and odd parody of the Shinra-26.
Cid's head flew forward, hitting the control panels. Blood squirted from his nose and mouth as he impacted the console. Water streamed from his eyes, mixing with the blood on the console. The pain felt like a comet crashing into his face. His head jerked back fast enough to cause whiplash, and when his head hit the seat he let out a grunt of pain.
Cid drift into the darkness of semi-consciousness, the pain dulling slightly and then dove into a pool of dark unconscious. The dark was filled with nightmares. It would be three hours before he awoke from the dreaded nightmares to the horrors of the real world.
...
Yuffie was sitting in her home, still watching her favorite television program (altough it was a rerun, and almost over) while Cid was going through the horrific experience of meeting an instruments panel head on. The program was almost over, and she was wondering whether to take a shower or get a snack fist, and decided the food should come first. She stood up and walked into the kitchen. The wind outside had picked up terrible, and the howling sounded almost human.
Yuffie had wished that the wind wasn't so damn loud. It seemed to scream at her, as if screaming a warning. She had quickly pushed that thought aside.
There was a loud crashing sound outside, and Yuffie stopped and looked up from the process of searching the fridge for food. Her father wasn't home, and at first she thought it might be him. She went back to looking through the fridge. She was interrupted again when the door in the front room began to rattle.
"Who's there?" she hollered, her voice edgy. She remembered slightly her father saying he was supposed to be out for at least tonight. He wouldn't be back until at least early morning. Despite the fact that all she was wearing was a pair of shorts and a bra, she ran to her room and grabbed her shuriken. This might be trouble.
"Who's there? Answer me!" She screamed at the door, but the hinges only rattled on, more and more, screeching with the wind. "Who the FUCK is there? Answer me! Who the fuck are you?"
With this final scream, the door shattered inward. Splinters flew across the room at high speed, one puncturing her left eye, causing it to quickly deflate. Screaming in her pain, and even though her was deflating, Yuffie realized that the door wasn't off its hinges; there was just a fist stuck six inches through the door. It was black like tar, and it had shattered a hole in the door. The fist left through the hole it had made, and Yuffie thought for a brief but hopeful moment that it was leaving. Then it shoved both its hands through the door and began to pull it apart from the inside. The door shattered, and Yuffie jumped backward, striking a fighting pose, ready to do battle. The pain in her eye was nearly forgotten in the red battle fog that fell over her conscious mind.
The creature stepped through the door, and Yuffie realized its full horror. The thing stood no less than seven foot tall. It was pure black, and made Yuffie think of a shadow. A shadow of death. It had two huge clawed hands, and a cape of total black. There were no lines where one part ended and another part began. The only feature that wasn't black was its eyes. Piercing green eyes that seemed distant and familiar.
Through her pain, Yuffie screamed, "I don't know what the hell you are, but I'm giving you fair warning to get out of my house!!!"
What happened next surprised Yuffie, yet made her strangly comfortable at the same time. And it somehow increased her already maxed out fear and pain. It spoke to her, not audible, but somehow with a thought and she somehow knew it had been directed from the creature toward her.
"I'm here for you," the things thoughts hissed, "I have come for your soul."
The last thing that it said surprised her more than scared her, and she changed footting for a better striking position. If wanted a piece of her, it had to go through her shuriken first.
"Fine then! Have it your way!" She said, a little to defiantly, trying to hide her elevated pain from the thing. "Your goin' to wished you'd never messed with the great Yuffie!"
Somehow, the Hunter smiled with its eyes. It held up one of its shadowy hands, two fingers up. Bring it on, he motioned with his fingers. So she did.
She jumped, flipped, and brought the shuriken straight through the Hunter. The weapon quite literally passed through it and made her body tingle all over, like her legs did when they often feel asleep, and her left eye socket burned with a more intense pain, making her grimace. She fell straight through the Hunter as if he wasn't even there. She caught herself from hitting the ground, flipped into the air, and landed on her feet. She turned to face the Hunter, thinking that she would have to use Materia to destroy it. It was probably a dark spirit.
But when she turned, it was gone. Before she could turn back around, the Hunter had grabbed the arm that held the shuriken, and twisted it backward. Yuffie felt the extreme pain as it dug its claws into her skin, ripping the flesh and muscle from her bone, her blood flowing from her arm. He forearm had an odd tickling sensation which she had the most insane urge to scratch. Then she realized the itching was the ribbons of her own flesh brushing against what was left of her arm. She dropped the shuriken, no longer able to feel her arm. She heard the bone and cartridge cracking, giving way. More flesh ripped away, blood spraying. The bone and cartridge finally gave way, and her arm gave free, a short stub hanging from a defunct socket.
More blood flowed out, and the pain hit her like hammer. She stumble, her one good eye blurred with pain that made her left eye socket feel like a scrapped knee in comparison. She seemed to be floating away from reality.
The Hunter transported behind her. It grabbed her roughly with its hands, thrusting its claws through her back and throwing her to the ground. She lay in her pain, clutching he now defunct right arm. She had nothing left in her to fight it. She rolled onto her back, her face tilted up toward the creature, and spit on it with all the energy she had. She then lay back, and resigned herself to whatever death it had in mind for her.
It put knee firmly against her rib cage, and put it huge claws under her head, firmly around her neck. It began to pull up against her head, pulling the neck and the body apart. She heard the cracking of her own spine, the ripping of her flesh, and welcomed it as relief from the pain of her missing eye, her missing arm, and the gaping holes in her back.
"Don't worry," the Hunter told her, "It will all be over soon... "
She realized she knew that voice. After a brief instant she realized it had spoken using her own voice.
And as if to give finality to the thought, the Hunter gave a firm jerk of his claws, ripping her head off of her shoulders. Some of her spine came out of her body as well, and blood began to stain the throw rug her body was lain on. The body twitched madly for a moment, the lay still, blood spewing from the gaping wound were a neck once was.
As Yuffie's soul exited her body, the Hunter summoned it to him, pulling her soul into his dark body of souls. Her soul let out a final scream, for she now realized her physical pain was only the beginning of her tormentm and now she had no body to fight it. The scream peeled away from her soul, and the scream was heard by all the other members of AVALANCHE.
With his work here done, and Yuffie's soul now in his possesion, the Hunter walked from the small shelter where empty shell lay dead, a shell that should have contained the soul of a celebrated heroine, the great Yuffie of Wutai.
He began to float in the air, and flew off in the direction of Rocket Town.
The night was still young and dark, and the harvest of souls was ripe for the picking. Cid Highwind seemed to make a good target for the second of the AVALANCHE prey.
...
As the night grew on, the process of events that Cid had seen earlier that night began again, this time localized around the Wutia area. The area became corrupt with evil, becoming new territory for the Hunter.
