by NightsDawne
Chapter 4: Connection
Seifer tried to tread as lightly as possible on the old floorboards, but he wasn't exactly used to stealth. It just wasn't his style to hide from anything. Still, he winced as the ancient wood let out a creak. He had eaten, and rested, but relaxing was out of the question. After napping as long as he could possibly stand, he had decided to set out and explore the house. Now, walking through the cobweb filled conservatory, he was beginning to wish he'd chosen to have a look around before sunset. Electricity seemed to work only randomly in most of the upstairs and the candle he was using to guide him only leant a more gothic air to the shadows. It was the kind of house that played tricks on one's mind. The word haunted came even more easily with no sunlight to chase it away.
Something rustled in the shadows and Seifer started, holding the candle out to get a look at whatever boogeyman was about to attack him. Tiny beady eyes twinkled at him from a bookcase shelf and he burst out laughing at his own fear, realizing he'd been scared by a mouse. "Get ahold of yourself, Almasy. It's just a creepy old house. No need to act like a chicken."
Seifer strode less cautiously towards the door on the other side of the room, letting the floors protest as loudly as they wished. He wasn't about to let the house get to him again. He made his way through a tangle of dead foilage in the arboretum, then back out to the balcony. He leaned over the railing a bit to see if he could locate Sephiroth or perhaps even his elusive father. After a moment of listening he glimpsed Sephiroth walking out of the library, a book in hand, engrossed in reading as he ate an apple. Seifer grinned to himself a bit. The more he got to see of him, the less he could believe that the silver-haired man was the multi-winged planet killer he had glimpsed in his vision. It was hard to even picture him as a warrior.
Seifer turned his attention back to the upstairs rooms, walking to a new door. He opened it, stepping into a small room. With little hope of success he tried the light switch on the wall. With a slight buzz of energy a single bare bulb flashed to life on the ceiling, forcing Seifer to squint as his eyes adjusted. The room was hardly interesting in and of itself, unfurnished, but something caught Seifer's attention in the fireplace. He crouched down and discovered that the back wall was slightly ajar, revealing a hidden passage. He pressed his hand to the brick and it slid open even further, a set of stairs revealed by the light from the room. Now here was something that might be of interest. Seifer crawled through without hesitating, standing up again in a small circular room, spiral stairs winding down the walls.
Seifer glanced back at the passage he had come through, then took a deep breath that he instantly regretted. The air reeked of bat droppings. "Pleasant," he muttered to himself before starting down the stairs. The lack of a rail or anything to keep him from plunging into the darkness if he made a misstep was the only thing that gave him caution in his descent.
After walking down enough stairs that he was convinced he must be at least fifty feet below ground, the stairs ended at a wooden door. It stood ajar, torchlight flickering from sconces on the walls of the rough hewn passage beyond it. The old man must be down here, Seifer thought. It took hardly a second for his curiosity to overcome any worries about intruding on his host. Seifer blew out his candle, sticking it in his pants pocket as he entered the passage. Whatever bats called this place home had already flown for the evening, but the floor was littered with skeletons of those who had perished over the years. He kicked a skeleton aside and continued on. A few uninteresting wooden doors led off to either side. He considered opening them, but when he tried one he found it locked, so he walked on to the open door at the end.
Stepping through, he found himself in a richly appointed library. Books filled not only the shelves, but most every available surface. Several were in disorganized stacks on the floor. He walked to the center of the room, but there was no sign of Sephiroth's mysterious father. Slightly disappointed, Seifer turned to a desk on one side of the room, an open tome laying on it. He glanced back at the door. If anyone came along the passage he would surely hear them. Nothing could make it thorugh there without some sort of echo. He ran his hand through his hair and leaned over to read from the book.
At first it seemed completely uninteresting. Some sort of scientific journal. Then he spotted the word Jenova and started to pay more attention.
I at last have my opportunity to expand the Jenova Project to more useful applications. The experiment with the monkey embryo showed such success that I am ready to proceed with a similar test with a human embryo. Lucy is pregnant and has agreed to be my test subject. Together we will advance the human race beyond anything it has been before. She will be the mother of the first superhuman child, and I will be its creator. The only difficulty, now that Gast has been taken out of the picture, will be that meddling Turk. What business a security officer has in science is beyond me. He refuses to simply do his job and keep us undisturbed, insisting on talking to Lucy daily about her work. His feelings for her are obvious. I would dispose of him if I thought he understood the least bit of what she tells him, but I am confident he only asks to have excuse to hear her voice, the romantic twit. So long as he doesn't distract her from her work and keeps her from becoming bored and requesting reassignment elsewhere, I suppose he shall
"What do you think you are doing?" Seifer spun around, having heard not a single whisper from the passage and knowing for certain that no doors had opened or closed, but the voice behind him had nothing of shock value compared to the speaker. He was the same height as Seifer, with a somewhat lighter build, but everything else about him made the hairs rise on the back of Seifer's neck. His skin was tinged with yellowish gray, almost like that of a wax figure or a corpse drained of blood. Black clothes fitted loosely to his body, the only color to his garb the dark red cloak that hung about his shoulders. Black hair hung in unkempt tangles around his face, several strands falling into it unheeded, poking through a carelessly wrapped red sash around the man's forehead. Where his left arm should have been was a monstrosity of a gauntlet, golden metal plates ending in a vicious looking talon. His eyes, however, sent chills down Seifer's spine. They glowed the same way his and Sephiroth's did, only their color was even more unnatural, crimson, like lit rubies. The man took note of Seifer's shocked silence by narrowing his gaze and repeating his question. "What do you think you are doing?"
Seifer cleared his throat, finding his voice. "I was reading. Shit, how did you get in here without me hearing you?"
"I didn't know I should announce my presence in my own home." The man took a silent step toward Seifer.
Seifer unconsciously pressed back against the desk. He didn't like being unnerved and this man was nothing if not unnerving. He clenched his teeth, determined to take charge of the situation. "What are you, some kind of vampire?"
The man stopped, raising one brow. "No."
Seifer paused, unsure if there was going to be anything further, but the man just stood there. "Well what then?!"
The man hesitated, then shrugged. "I am.. myself. I haven't cared for any of the labels others have fixed on me."
"You're fucking creepy."
A faint hint of a smile crossed the pale lips of the man. "At least you come out and say it. Most try to pretend I'm not."
"I'm not most people." Seifer forced himself to study the man's face, trying to overcome the shock of his appearance. He held out his hand. "I'm Seifer Almasy."
The man looked down at the hand, then took it in a surprisingly strong grip, his skin cool to the touch even through the leather palm of his shooting glove. "Vincent Valentine."
"Sephiroth's father? You don't look old enough."
"One shoudn't judge by appearances." Vincent reached into his shirt pocket to remove a pack of cigarrettes and a lighter. "Age, like reality, is a relative thing."
"Not where I'm from. We tend to be pretty linear about physical maturation."
Vincent chuckled softly as he lit his cigarrette, then offered one to Seifer, giving him the lighter as well when he accepted. "You've a quick mind for someone your age. How old are you? Twenty?"
Seifer lit his cigarrette and handed the lighter back. "Nineteen."
"And how old would you guess I am?"
Seifer shrugged. "If I didn't know you had a son older than I am? I'd guess maybe twenty-five to thirty."
Vincent nodded. "I was twenty-seven when Sephiroth was born. That was twenty-seven years ago."
"I'd say you look damn good for your age, but, frankly? You look dead."
Vincent broke into a dry laugh. "Not afraid of speaking your mind, are you. No wonder Chaos likes you."
Seifer leaned forward. "You know Chaos? You're the one who summoned him, aren't you. You're the reason I'm here. Where is he? I haven't heard from him since he pulled me out of the soup."
"I didn't necessarily summon him, no. He comes of his own free will, for his own protection as well as mine. He's here."
Seifer furrowed his brow. "Here where?"
Vincent tapped his temple. "He's joined to me, permanently inseperable."
"You're junctioned to him, too. Yeah, I know that."
Vincent frowned. "Junctioned?"
"You gave him space in your brain in return for him giving you magic and coming when you call. Same thing as me."
Vincent shook his head. "He doesn't give me magic and I don't call him. If I am about to die, he comes. They won't let me perish lest they perish themselves."
"Auto-summon. That's a skill I haven't ever heard of." Seifer scratched his jaw. "No magic, hmm?"
"Not from the demons. I cast from materia, the same as anyone else who uses magic here." Vincent unhooked his rifle from his belt, lifting it and turning it to expose a series of slotted holes in the stock, filled with small glowing stones. "It's formed from the same mako energy that almost killed you."
Seifer reached out his hand to touch the stones. "I can feel it. And this is how you cast spells?"
Vincent nodded. "How do you do it?"
"If you have a guardian force like Chaos, you just tell them to draw the spell from something else that has magic and they store it for you. You can use it to cast or for protection, add it to your weapon's attack, whatever you feel like doing. I guess it doesn't work that way here, just like I can't hear Chaos in my head now."
Vincent shrugged. "It's just as well. It's a rather disturbing thought that someone can just snap their fingers and summon one of my demons. I've become rather accustomed to having them all to myself. Perhaps it is simply that he cannot speak to you while he is trapped in me. He spoke to you when I transformed to him, didn't he?"
Seifer nodded. "Yeah. I guess it makes sense." He took a drag off his cigarrette. "Still, if I don't need him to cast magic..." He smiled slowly. "Since you brought me here, Valentine, how about you show me how to use that materia?"
Vincent raised a brow, then walked over to a bookcase, retrieving a thick volume. "Here."
Seifer held his hand out for the book. "What's this?"
"A text on materia. Read that and get back to me." Vincent strode from the room, his cloak falling around his shoulders, his steel encased feet offering not a hint of sound.
Seifer shook his head, not quite sure he hadn't imagined the strange encounter but for the book in his hands. "Okay. A little bedtime reading. Feels like being back in class again."
