(Green_Pig:- Hiyo! Thought I'd better dish out a new chapter! Aww, this is so sweet! Am writing next chapter right now!!! Byeeeeeeeeee!)
DISCLAIMER: All characters and settings belong to Squaresoft and all the rest of those who make Final Fantasy games! Man I'm obsessed, listening to the music all day, I have about 300 FF pictures on my pc and tonnes of files on memory card! Wow I love Final Fantasy and FFVII is my fave! I so love Vincent and Sephiroth they are the kewlest and Cloud is just plain cute and funny! lol! Oh lookie I'm babbling on again! See ya! Byeeeeeee! XD
Chapter Three
The next day was sunny and bright, but with it also came a chilling frost. Cid and Tifa both woke up shivering and chattering their teeth. It wasn't long before everyone else rose from their dreams and realised how terribly cold it had suddenly grown.
"Oh Cloud, hold me." Tifa sighed throwing herself into his arms. He blushed, clearly embarrassed by her behaviour in front of everyone.
"Damn it's freezing!"
"I'm @*~#'^ freezing my ass off! Anyone got a jumper or something?!"
"Calm down Cid!" Yuffie yelled so loud that everyone turned and stared at her. "What?! I'm COLD! I SHOUT WHEN I'M COLD!!!" She shouted throwing her arms around herself and hopping up and down.
"We should really try and find a cave or something for tonight, we gotta find some way of getting home, back to the main island before this place gets any colder. Does anyone remember what we saw of the island before we crashed? Like what it looked like? Where we were exactly?" Cloud said.
"It was just a large island surrounded by a wide mountain range on every side, we came hurtling in through a gap in the mountains and crashed somewhere in the centre of the island." Red replied swishing his tail and shivering, but only slightly because his fur coat was thick enough to keep him moderately warm in such conditions.
"Okay, so it's an island surrounded by a mountain range north-east of the world and quite small and out of the way…" Suddenly it seemed as if Cloud, Cid, Red, Yuffie and Tifa all discovered what they had wanted to know for the last few days. Vincent as usual was standing away from the group silently watching and listening, but he nodded in confirmation and spoke out all their beliefs:
"The Knight's Northern Realm."
"What?"
"'cuse me?"
"Pardon?"
"What the @*~#'^?!" Vincent sighed and spoke out again:
"It's what the Shinra have always called this place, because it has been popular belief that somewhere on this island is a legendary piece of materia holding the power of the summon 'Knights of the round'. It's strictly secret knowledge only revealed to those three ranks and up below the president of Shinra. I found out about this place from accidentally hacking into the Shinra Headquarters main control computer one night."
"You're a computer hacker?!" Yuffie blurted out. The stare Vincent gave her normally made people respect his own personal boundaries, but Yuffie kept in mind what she had seen the night before and kept telling herself that inside he was just as frail and afraid as an old man. Sad really.
"…Yes." Vincent subsided to Yuffie's unmoving questioning stare and everyone blinked in amazement.
"How good are you?" Cloud said. "Good enough to tell us all the information about Shinra and Sephiroth that you must have seen?"
"Not a very good one, just good enough to find out about the island." Vincent said hurriedly trying to end the conversation, but this was the perfect opportunity for Cloud and the others to find out more about their strange friend by keeping him talking for as long as they could get him to.
"How did you get into the mainframe? Did you have to unlock many codes to gain access?" Cloud said so quickly that Vincent wasn't quick enough to stop himself from blurting it all out.
"Many codes that took me ages to work out and then there was the individual passwords of each employee three ranks below the president, of course I had the access codes on a computer chip that I connected into the machine's hard drive and that gave me access to the mainframe where I could type in all twenty-four individual passwords, and then I had to crack the final code that really wasn't too hard to figure out seeing as it was the president's own password which was the name of Shinra's son's middle name that no one else I know, knows. Marvin." Everyone burst out laughing. Vincent didn't however.
"Fantastic!"
"Excellent!"
"Who'dve thought you'd be a computer hacker Vincent? Simply marvellous!" This kind of attention towards Vincent was all too much for him, he turned and walked away quickly disappearing into the bushes and out of sight.
"Aw what d'you have to do that for? He's very sensitive you know!" Yuffie whined accusingly at them.
"He's just unsociable." Cid grumbled lighting a cigarette.
"He's not! How do you know?"
"How do you?"
"Can't you see how deeply he's hurt on the inside? He's been trapped in a coffin for thirty years and turned into a monster by a man who stole his girlfriend and destroyed all their lives…" She suddenly realised what she had been saying. "I mean, I uh… well just think about it will ya?! Lay off him for God's sake!" And then she turned round and headed off in the direction Vincent had gone.
"Well." Tifa sniffed haughtily. "Something tells me she has a soft spot for a certain dark haired old man!" Cloud and everyone gasped in awe.
"No!"
"I don't reckon."
"He aint that old is he?" Cid asked.
"Well Duh." They all shook their heads and began to pack up what little things they had left from the crash and waited for Vincent and Yuffie to return.
~Final Fantasy VII~
"Vinny! VINNIEEEEEEEE! Oh WHERE are you VINNY?!" Yuffie stumbled and fell flat into a large area of wet sloppy mud. She slowly lifted her head with clenched teeth and angry eyes covered with mud to look up at the spiked shoes and then the long legs, past the sweeping red cape into the red eyes of Vincent. He seemed more ready to laugh than to shout at her.
"Why have you been following me?" He said casually. Yuffie pouted and held up her right hand, just to see if he would take it and help her up. He didn't. So she pushed herself up to kneel on the ground and continued to stare disgruntled at his intoxicating scarlet eyes. Those eyes she had secretly fallen in love with.
"'Cause you just left silly!"
"And why did you follow me?" She blushed unknowingly, Vincent noticed it and suddenly wondered of something he didn't think he wanted to know at all.
"'Cause you're being all quiet and mr-I-don't-wanna-talk-to-anyone again." Vincent smiled, but it was a tiny self-contented smirk and Yuffie instantly felt a pang of fear looking up at those eyes, so she looked down instead.
"Thank you for your concern Yuffie." Then he held out his right hand to her and she took it a little hesitantly telling him how very unusual it was to be offered something so simple and polite from him.
"I'm just being helpful, that's all. You should go back to the group."
"Where are you going off to now?" She asked as he turned to leave.
"I'm making my own way to the summon materia. Tell the others to not worry about me; I know we'll meet up again in a few days perhaps. Goodbye, Yuffie." She watched him swoop away through the trees, watching his red cape fly out behind him like a pair of wings and instantly remembered the form of his final limit break: Chaos. How alike he and that beast really were in some ways, by the way their red scarlet eyes bore into you like knives, how Chaos' wings held out behind him as impressively as how Vincent's stood with the gentle breeze blowing out his red cape behind him like he also had a pair of magnificent wings himself. Then Yuffie suddenly realised that she had been standing there looking blankly at the empty space he had been in for quite some time, thinking just about his eyes and how great he looked with that cool red cape over him. She gasped and blushed for no one to see but she still looked around for any of the others in case they were watching her.
"V…Vinny?" She whispered to herself. "Vin…cent?" She realised then the reason why she had always called him by the childish name of Vinny; because she had always liked him deep down and she never realised.
"Oh POO!" She stamped her feet into the mud splashing a lot onto her shoes then went off in search of a stream to wash in – the one she found yesterday whilst hunting – thinking that she'd rather not return to the camp looking like a swamp monster.