Monday

by DarkMutatedBrock

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Summary: A certain pilot discovers something strange in his attic and goes to lengths to figure out how it got there. Some certain people in blue suits have become temporary bounty hunters, and they're after mysterious murderer in the ruins of Midgar. And all the while, we learn about the events that came and went thirty years ago that led to all of this... (Dark and twisted.)

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Extra-Specially Special thanks to Blue9Tiger for her continued patience with my laziness! XD But seriously, you've been so amazingly supportive of my writing and tolerant of my stupidity and nitpicking and stuff that you deserve a medal or something. Hurrah! ^_^

A/N: You might notice some major plot similarities between my fanfictions and the ones authored by Blue9Tiger. Well, don't worry, we haven't copied each other illegally or anything. XD We RP together, co-write together and are basically big internet buddies, so we usually use plot theories/ideas that we come up with together in our fanfictions, although they're always a little bit different.

Oh, yes, one more thing. Weird plot twists galore. ::Grin:: Oh, how I love my convoluted plot theories... Characters who have large parts in this fic other than Cid are Vincent, Hojo, the Turks, Rufus, Shera, Lucrecia, Gast, and, um, people. And yes, Hojo is portrayed sympathetically for the most part!!! WOOHOO!!!

Do NOT read if you don't like characters portrayed in unorthodox ways... Although all people who seem out-of-character will have their actions explained by the end of the fic....

Oh, yeah, and one last thing, this fic is not CidxVincent although they're both main characters. There ARE, however, a couple of strange pairings...

Rated R due to lotsa profanity, some adult themes, and mebbe some gratuitous violence later on.

Now, on to the fic!

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Chapter 1: Morning Clouds

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Monday.

It was Monday again.

It always came this way when he fell asleep. His first awareness in his dreams... Monday. It was always Monday. He would lay there on his bed for a moment, staring up at the cracked, white ceiling with blue eyes that were dullened by years of ignorance and regret. And running. Always running, whether it be from his past, from his future, and now, from death. Hah. He never thought he'd be so close to death until it had stared him right in the face in the infernal pits of the Northern Crater, blasting his entire body full force with the power so rage-filled that it seemed to devour the solar system in a matter of minutes. He'd fallen then, though he didn't want to admit it--he'd fallen so hard from the first blow of energy that the pain of white-hot fire searing through his bones didn't register until a second later, when the damned angel of Hell had ceased its fury and waited mockingly for attacks against it that would only be used toothpicks being stabbed into its skin.

That's the way he remembered it anyway. And in a jumble, just like that, not knowing at the end of his whirling thoughts who was the spawn of Hell---him, or the angel---because he didn't even know his own name, really.

Round and round and round he went, tumbling to the ground that was suddenly a hundred feet away from his back until he hit it--then, it felt as if it was all around him, choking him, depriving his lungs of air as he slid backwards, scraping the exposed elbows of his arms on the rough terrain of the cavern they were fighting in. The cavern at the center of the planet, damnit.

He laid sprawled out on the ground, his eyes wide open as he stared with fierce intensity and yet saw nothing but spots of black and white. Momentarily, he would be pulled out of his nightmare and realize he was looking at the damned ceiling again. Then, he would blink, and he'd be back in Hell, wishing he was dead so that all the pain would go away. Pain that made him cry out, gasp, and then cause his left hand to spasm as he tried desperately to reach for his weapon. But his limbs--his limbs were numb as his brain seemed to shut down its senses, overwhelmed by the intense---the intense-----PAIN that was closing in on him.

His eyes jerked to the right and then to the left as he tried to see something through the spots, squinting his eyes but then widening them again as another wave of pain crashed into his spine and slowly infested every inch of his known body. There was another blast, a finishing blow directed at his two comrades at both his sides. He vaguely noticed the man to the left--the one with blonde, almost bleached hair that was completely saturated with hair gel--reach his limit break, but just as the swordsman lunged towards his opponent, the angel raised his one hand, a smirk upon his face as he waved his fingers and then pointed them toward its attacker. Spikey didn't stand a chance; he was thrown against the ground just as his companion had been, and even then, the sound of his skull cracking against the cold ground could only be barely discerned over the angel--Sephiroth the Seraph's--laughter.

It was becoming clearer now, and Cid wasn't enjoying it. Cid.... that was his name, wasn't it? Yeah, that's the name he always cursed himself by and wondered about, wondering why it sounded so wrong... So simple.... He could've changed it. He knew he could've. But what was the point? He'd used it so damn long that it was impossible to answer by anything else.... anymore....

The dream proceeded.

The blood from the back of Spikey's--Cloud's?--head seeped into the cracks in the stones on which he had fallen. The sword held in his hands--Ultima, one of the planet's gifts--fell from the grip of his gloves, devoid of energy and lifeless without the life force of its owner. His companion, frozen in horror and agony, was only able to stare at the supposed SOLDIER's eyes as they looked on into nothingness, dead and emotionless.

God, Cid remembered thinking as he looked with clouded eyes towards the pool of crimson liquid that was pooling around the back of the kid's head. We're not gonna make it out of here...

Then, a flash of red with a tinge of black. Cid instinctively jerked his head to the side, feeling even more pain shoot up his spine as he did so. Gothman.... Now, Gothman, maybe he stood a chance. Maybe. Depended on how far it was 'till he pulled his damn transformation trick....

Vincent dodged and ducked, jumped and crouched. He was everywhere at once at yet nowhere at all, as endless rounds of bullets were fired from his prided gun--the one that his goddamn dead girlfriend had given him. Sephiroth seemed somewhat annoyed that he hadn't pulverized the entire party in record time, and seemed even more irritated that this little bugger actually dared to dodge his physical attacks so well.

Vincent finally fell into a crouched position, and even though he had successfully avoided his opponents attacks thus far, he seemed a hell lot more tired out than the god he was fighting.

Cid vaguely noticed Sephiroth smile.

Oh, hell no, Gothman.... He saw the white, limestone walls of the cavern that they were trapped in suddenly turn a deep, dark shade of black. Don't let him take you out....

"Supernova," Sephiroth whispered in a voice that could crack a mountain.

Whoosh.

Bang.

Searing pain. Agony. Torment. Again. Cid nearly cried from the fire that he now felt eating at his flesh. Nearly. He wasn't that much of a chickenwuss, with everything else he'd been through. He had scars to prove it...

Scars.

Oh, God, don't think of the scars...

But.... but what if....

....I could... it could.... maybe....

DON'T THINK OF THE GOD_DAMN_SCARS.

Cid jerked to the side, groaning as he felt the fire of torn skin and muscle mixing with the warm sensation of blood running down his arm. It was a dream now and it had almost been a dream then--some kind of insane, pain-numbing nightmare--as he clutched the wound on his left arm with his right hand, dug the heels of his boots into the ground and pushed himself backwards against some kind of boulder. A boulder at the center of the planet. Heh.

He leaned back against it, closing his eyes, as if trying to ignore the numbness in the bottom half of his wounded arm. Damn cure materia... all in his fucking Venus Gospel which had been fucking thrown a few fucking feet away. He looked on with dull eyes as Vincent made a brave last stand, wounded to the max and without any time to summon Pheonix or use any other kind of insanely powerful materia.

He watched as Vincent twirled his gun twice and aimed.

Sephiroth grinned.

The man in red was thrown back against the ground with a loud crack before any shot broke the strange silence that had befallen them.

Fuck. Cid stared up at the one-winged angel, gritting his teeth. Oh, fuck, I knew we were goddamn idiots to think we could take on a fucking god.... SHIT! He looked towards Vincent. He was moving, but just barely enough to stagger to his knees and then fall again, his hands.... falling down to the ground in futility, about... about an inch away from the Venus Gospel.

Cid stared at Vincent's shuddering form, then towards Cloud's cold, dead body, then towards Sephiroth's one arm, which was making satanic signs of destruction in the air, about to cast a finishing spell upon them.... Then, he looked towards the spear, which seemed to glowing with its own light...

Slowly, involuntarily, his hands shuddering like the Tiny Bronco when the engine was busted, he brought his right hand to his left arm, and then down to his left glove.

Cid.... Are you...? NO.... WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!??! He yelled inwardly at himself as he gripped a loose fingertip of the brown glove, breathing so hard that his bruised ribs seemed as if they would break each time he shoved air down into his aching lungs.

He ripped it off.

Sometimes Shera would come into his room and wake him up at this point, with all the muttering and muffled yelling that he was letting him out during his sleep. However, she didn't this time, letting him suffer through the dream to the very end.

He stared down at his hand. His hand. No gloves, just a hand. His eyes were narrowed as he flexed it, grimacing at the pain that rushed from the wound on the arm and watching as the white scars that criss-crossed his palm, wrist, fingers--hell, everywhere--moved in time with his muscles.

He didn't dare to look at the back of his hand.

Not even a dare.

Finally, he looked up towards Vincent, who was still shuddering on the ground, staring up with narrowed eyes towards the visage of the one-winged angel, who seemed to be enjoying the prolongment of their torment.

"Hey...." Cid whispered in a hoarse voice towards Vincent. When he didn't get a response, he jerked forward and said in a louder voice: "HEY!!! Gothman!"

Vincent turned his face towards Cid, his teeth grit in pain and half of his black hair hanging in strands over his face. "Wh-what?"

Cid nodded towards his spear as his eyes darted up towards Sephiroth, who seemed too preoccupied in planning on which attack to use to finish them off to notice any kind of counterattack that might have been in motion. Cid looked back towards Vincent, grimacing and gulping down the nervousness that seemed to be gathering at back of his throat. "Throw it to me."

Vincent looked from the spear to Cid and frowned. "There's no possible way you can attack. You are far too weakened to---"

"For the love of Christ, Vincent, just THROW ME THE FUCKING SPEAR."

Cid imagined how he must have looked at that moment, his goggles hanging a lopsided angle off of his forehead, his hair full of crud from the Northern Crater and sticking out all over the place, and his dirt-streaked face contorted into a grimace as his exposed hand twitched at intervals from the pain of the gash in his upper arm.

Damn, he must have looked like hell warmed over.

And yet, he must have sounded convincing enough for Vincent to have suddenly narrowed those freaky-ass red eyes of his and picked up the spear with that even freakier golden claw. Again, he looked from the spear to Cid and then back again, but this time, it was with a strange sort of scrutiny...

He looked up at Cid one last time, his pupils boring into those of his comrade. Cid would have squirmed if he hadn't been in so much pain.

Damn, he thought as Vincent's gaze persisted. It's like.... those eyes... it's like... it's like he isn't human or something....

But then again, Cid cringed from a sudden burst of pain in his arm. Neither am I.

Vincent suddenly stopped with the stare, looking away as he tossed the huge spear into the air with surprising ease. Cid grimaced as he raised his wounded arm, his scarred fingers outstretched towards the shimmering weapon as it fell towards him, voices screaming in his ears that he still had a chance--he could still pull out--Gothman didn't need to know---

But Cid had a feeling he already did.

His bare fist closed around the Venus Gospel.

And in the corner of his eye, as he felt a thousand daggers of ice stab through his skin and pierce through his spine, he vaguely noticed Vincent do something that he wasn't supposed to be capable of.

He smirked.

And the last thing he heard was a whisper that made his hair stand on end and his hands jerk in shock.

"Buena suerte, Turk."

Then, darkness.

Sweet darkness.

*~*~*

Thirty-Two Years Ago

"Frankly, Professor Gast, that thing looks less like an Ancient and more like the spawn of Satan."

Gast smiled at his assistant's dry humor, his black eyes temporarily illuminated by the bright blue glow that was emanating from the Study Cell in front of him--the ten foot tall tube of aqua-hued liquid that housed the supposed Cetra that had been recovered from the Northern Crater.

"Satan is a biblical figure." Gast continued to stare at the humanoid as he made his statement. "However, Edward, I believe you're an atheiest."

Gast never asked questions and never gave comments; he only made statements. Even if he was inquiring about the status of an experiment, or telling a newcomer at the Shin-Ra mansion about how they should perform their research, he always talked in awkward, yet intelligent, informational sentences. It seemed as if he always had too much on his mind to string together his words with punctuation marks, and if the things on Gast's mind were scientific breakthroughs that would make the Shin-Ra executives happy and raise the science department's collective wages, then hell with it, everyone had better let Gast talk how he wanted to.

Incidentally, it was often joked that Gast's second-in-command, the small guy with the glasses and messy hair, never smiled. He'd gotten hired by Shin-Ra straight out of graduate school, quickly climbing up in the ranks of the science department until he was almost Gast's peer--almost, but not quite. His one downfall was that he was as antisocial as an isolated lab rat, preferring to perform his own experiments in his small, personal laboratory, where no one would interrupt his concentration. In fact, Professor Gast was one of the few Shin-Ra staff members who knew his first name. Everyone else referred to him as "Professor Valentine", a name which had soon been shortened to "PV", since any mention of his last name seemed to anger him immensely.

"I don't care about its religious implications," Edward sighed, shaking his head. He looked to Gast, whose eyes were still riveted on the creature. "That thing.... I don't care what our researchers say; it isn't one of the Cetra." He glanced at IT, and then back at Gast, straightening his normally hunched back and his voice taking on an advisory tone as he brought his left index finger up and pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. "From the sparse records and drawings of Cetras that we have found--including the ones at Point Maedretera--they've been described and depicted as human-like--more... aesthetically pleasing than humans, in fact, as most would say.

"But this...." Edward continued, looking in disgust at the creature in front of him, curling his lip slightly, "....is simply a monstrosity!!!"

"Now, now, Edward, no need to get excited." Gast smiled slightly at his colleague's righteous speech. The being recovered from the Northern Crater indeed looked like some kind of lifeless demon as it floated in the still, blue-hued liquid of the tank, with dead, pupiless eyes that somehow burned dimly with fire--but that could have just been a trick of the light. It had some kind of hard, whitish-blue hued skin which had proved to be extremely hard to penetrate, and it was obviously a female; it had a shapely body, two breasts, and a cruel, seductive smile frozen on her thin lips. Adding to the macabre sight, the humanoid figure was being monitored by a computer terminal at the foot of the tank through wires that had been meticulously drilled through its skull and which were currently monitoring its brain activity. Even the liquid had it's own purpose; it was charged with a slight--very slight--electrical current which also relayed external information about the creature to the same scientific equipment.

Gast smiled, shaking his head and finally tearing his gaze away from the humanoid being. Edward shuddered slightly at the cold, calculating look in his eyes. It was strangely chilling when Gast got that way--he took a determined, sometimes obsessive interest in certain projects, an interest which sometimes interfered with the actual objective of tests and caused Gast to become... how could you put it...?

"Well, sir...." Edward forced a stale laugh that seemed to get half-caught in his throat. Damnit, he always got soft when Gast got that look... "Just don't leave us in the dust with this one... I mean, you know how much it means to the company."

Gast returned an equally strange chuckle as he patted his assistant on the back a little more condescendingly than he should have.

"Don't worry, Edward." He sounded cool, suave, even, as he turned away and walked out of the lab. "I don't intend to."

The door shut tightly behind him.

*~*~*

Today

Cid grumbled something incoherent but undoubtedly profane as he rummaged through his attic. Shera had been bugging him to do it since last October, when he had returned from his adventures with AVALANCHE, but it hadn't been until February that Shera had employed verbal force on him.

February the fourteenth, to be exact.

"'Valentine's Day present' my ass......." Cid gave out a snort, pausing a moment to take a puff of his cigarette and dust off the top of an old trunk with his right glove. He squinted his blue eyes as he read the embossed label that was now visible.

"....Shera's Lelago Souvenirs?!?!" He shoved the trunk away and stormed farther into the bowels of the attic, kicking away the occasional turd from feral cats that had crept up into the rafters on rainy days. He continued to grumble as he trudged between even more piles of boxed knick-knacks which Shera couldn't fit in the house and yet couldn't bear to get rid of.

Cid paused again, his eyes narrowing as he bit down on the filter of his cig. "Yeah.... Why'm I the one who needs to clean out the friggin' attic?!? I got, like, what--? TWO damn boxes full of junk?! Most of this crap is Shera's!!!!"

But then he remembered that the reason that all of Shera's memoirs were in storage was because his own junk was strewn across the house--hell, even some of the cupboards in the kitchen housed his lesser-used power tools. In addition, it was Valentine's Day, and therefore, he was currently a slave to his underappreciated female roommate and co-worker. (He never admitted to anyone if she was anything more.)

With another inaudible mutter, he shoved his hands into his pant pockets and stepped backwards towards the wall opposite the attic stairs. He pulled his roll of nicotine from his mouth, dubiously surveying the haphazard mess that had manifested during nearly four years of accumulation, or however long they had been living in the house, anyway. Old furniture covered by moth-eaten sheets, unused suitcases half-encased in mildew, old cardboard boxes that were rotting at their edges, and the odds and ends left by small animals who had found a comfortable place to nest were just some of the things he saw. Cid clenched his jaw, suddenly kicking himself inwardly for not tarring up the small cracks in-between the slats of of the attic walls during the free time he had spent souping up the Tiny Bronco.

In any case, there was no way to reverse time, a fact about life which Cid decidedly hated.

"What's done is damn well done," Cid sighed, finally squashing the ember end of his cigarette between the gloved thumb and forefinger of his left hand, then dropping it to the floor and mashing it down automatically with the heel of his right boot. A funny thing about Cid was that he never took his gloves off--never--even if the sun was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk and the air was so saturated with liquid that it was possible to take a bath by just lying outside. Same went for his scarf--a strange eccentricity for someone as bold-spoken as Cid.

But no matter what the day, Shera never let him leave his little tobacco rolls inside the house, and had even started forcing him to sit on the porch when he smoked, which is why he delighted so much in doing it now. As soon as he was done, however, he turned his attention back to the task at hand and rubbed his hands together. He then took a deep breath, habitually using his left hand to flatten the blonde hair that fell over his forehead towards the back of his head, moving the hand to his neck and then scratching the hair there as he gulped, having second thoughts about the huge task ahead of him.

"Hell. ....I need a cig."

Cid felt for the pack of cancer-inducing chemicals that he usually kept in the flight-goggle strap behind his ear but grumbled yet again when he realized that he had left his pack, his goggles, and his flying jacket back in the closet, leaving himself with only his boots, his green cargo pants, a white wifebeater, his scarf, and of course, his gloves.

Pure irony, Cid thought in exasperation as he picked up the closest item--a crate full of unused yarn. It wasn't too heavy, and he easily lifted it up, pausing a moment before he set it down next to the wall. I'm wearing a wifebeater while I work like a dog for Shera. Yyyup.... I'm the one who gets all full of grease and oil and dirt and all that other shit from the engines every day, and how does she treat me on Valentine's? Why, she expects me to clean the FUCKIN' ATTIC!!!!!

At this point, he was too busy fuming to pay attention to what he was doing, and he picked up a rather old, rather corroded, rather heavy, and all around hazardous cardboard box. Cid twisted his torso towards the crate he had originally moved and predictably, the old box's bottom simply gave out.

Even more predictable was Cid's reaction.

"SHIT!!!!!!" He yelped as a rectangular, greyish-hued object fell straight onto his right foot. "OOOOWWWW!!!! Aw, fuckin' HELL!!!!!" The heavy smoker commenced in hopping on his good foot, clutching his injured limb with two hands as he grit his surprisingly white teeth and scrunched up his stubble-covered face. "Sheezus CHRIST, that hurts!!!!"

He hopped backwards into the wall, leaning against it as the biting pain slowly began to ebb away. He opened one eye, glaring wrathfully at the object that had caused him so much unspeakable torment. Then, he opened the other eye and blinked.

It was a metal box, which now didn't look so big as it had before; it was roughly the same size as a toolbox, although any handle that it had once had had long since been broken off. Luckily, the rest of it seemed to have been better made, and its clasps and lock seemed to still be holding together after God knew how many years of neglect. Parts of it were rusted and there seemed to be some kind of label on the front....

Cid's injury was momentarily forgotten as he took a step towards the box and kneeled down, his sky-blue eyes narrowed in puzzlement. He picked it up--it was pretty heavy--and stood up, using his left hand to wipe off the top layer of rust bits and dust around the clasps, lock, and finally, the label. He frowned. There was indeed some kind of lettering etched into the metal. When the wiping failed to help any more, Cid tried to gather air to blow the rest of the dust out from the letters, but found himself coughing and hacking instead, staggering under the weight of the box.

"One----aaack!---bad thing about bein' a smoker..." Cid grumbled to no one in particular, setting down the box on the ground as he rummaged through his cargo pants for a toothpick. "So many damn pockets..... Ah! Here we go...." He kneeled down once more, his gloved hands operating in a surprisingly dextrous manner with the slim sliver of wood. He began to carefully scratch out the dirt and mud and--clay?--that had embedded themselves into the metal.

"Damn strange..." Cid murmured to himself as he did the methodical work. (It was a good excuse for not cleaning up the attic, anyway.) "Almost looks as if some cretin filled 'em in on purpose...."

The letters could be read now, clearer and clearer. Cid was able to make out a P, an R.... and now an O.... a P.... He could now make out the first word--Property--and now a V, an I, an N...

Cid suddenly froze.

V, I, N, C...

He continued to work, but now he was forcing himself to do it quicker, in half-shocked, half-disbelieving strokes.

E.... N.... C, E, N...... T....

Then, the next word....

"No way...." Cid uttered in his gruff voice, his eyes widening as he uncovered the last letter.

He stared. Then he softly blew on the letters once more, just to make sure.

He was.

He stared some more.

"....The hell.....?"

But the name of Vincent Valentine just kept staring back at him.

Cid blinked at it for a moment, and then closed his eyes, sighing in defeat as he let himself slump back once more against the wall, allowing his hands drop to his lap and resting his elbows on his knees. He hung his head, muttering to himself.

"I hate Mondays...."

*~*~*

database://local.shin-ra.co/sciencedepartment/research/entries/members.php
LOGIN: edward_valentine
PASSWORD: hojo13
RESEARCH ID: 1286
TITLE: Remaining Cetra ("Ancients") (Background/Hypothesis/Personal Thoughts)
TYPE: VERBAL
INPUT: EXTERNAL MIC
ENTRY: Cetra. A word with so many different meanings that it is often interpreted wrongly by anyone who speaks it. Only the remaining Cetra of this planet can truly define it, and according to them, the sacred word means "warriors of the planet."

In this day and age, only three families strong in Cetra blood still exist, and even then, not many know of their existence. Most people assume that all of the "Ancients" died out some time ago, and that their only remains consist of the ruins at the north and south ends of Gaia. However, in reality, there are three Cetra left--or perhaps even four, if Gast's theory about the remaining Gainsborough is indeed correct. Other than that, some people still alive today can trace their lineage far back to Cetran roots, but even then, they are extremely hard to find. Not only that, but in recent times, surviving Cetra have become increasingly indifferent and ignorant to the importance of the potential which they hold within them, only choosing to learn enough about their lineage to control their power, but never about how it should be used. Additionally, the Cetra Weapons--legendary items, have all been either lost, destroyed, or returned to the planet, with only worsens the predicament of------Sherry? What are you doing in here, you little rascal?! Candy? Well, yes, I suppose you can have some... But go ask your mother first, all right? .....She wants me to go with you to the shop and get some sunlight?..... But you weren't supposed to tell...? Well.... Er--Yes, I suppose I could.... Yes, yes, I'll be right there....

Comments will be continued at a later----SHERRY!!!! DON'T EVEN THINK OF TOUCHING THA-----

ENTRY TERMINATED

*~*~*

Thirty Years Ago

"I hate Mondays..." The Turk known as Vincent Valentine grumbled under his breath. He gazed out at the miles of of green land that stretched out as far as the eye could see--land which was, at the moment, made dangerous by the threatening storm clouds that hovered overhead. Every so often, he could even hear the booming of thunder over the sound of the train he was riding on, but that only reminded him of his degrading mission. He sighed, putting his elbow on the table in front of him, resting his chin on the back of his hand and vaguely wondering why he and his "companion" had taken the train instead of just flying--it would have been faster and a much more enjoyable--but if Vincent had learned anything from being a Bluesuit, it was to never question your superiors. Not that Vincent always obeyed that rule...

Vincent sighed, his gaze lazily drifting from the window to the man that was seated across from him, who also happened to be the only other occupant in the first class carriage of the Corel Express. He looked a bit older than Vincent--probably thirty or so, with light, olive skin and a cleanshaven, smooth face; it was composed of thin lips, an unbroken nose, sharp, angular eyebrows, and relatively high cheekbones. All in all, a very good-looking specimen. Oh, yeah, and the S-shaped scar under his right ear helped too. He guessed that it wasn't only the man's power that made him attractive to gold-digging girls...

Another thing that Vincent had learned as a Bluesuit was how to roughly judge a person's character or vaguely predict their personality from just glancing at them. Many of the newer Turks struggled with the task, but Vincent had quickly learned the key to mastering it: You had to look at the person's hair... and then their eyes. Their hair showed the kind of lifestyle they lived and how much they cared about how they looked, or even the kind of hardships they had been through. And as for their eyes... Well, Vincent vaguely remembered that someone had once said that eyes were windows into the soul, and Vincent didn't take the saying lightly. His own blue eyes shone with a strange brilliance that made some people who spoke to him squirm in their seats. Had it not been for Vincent's coarse, rough-talking personality that made most of his comrades feel right at home, some of the Turks beneath him might have been apprehensive or even frightened of the experienced fighter.

Vincent now glanced at the man in front of him, blinking as he looked for tell-tale signs of a Shin-Ra president. However, Derrick Rufus Shin-Ra was more puzzling than most predictable, straightforward execs. First off, his blonde hair wasn't cropped or saturated with gel; quite the contrary, it had been let to grow down to his elbows, and was loosely tied behind his head with a small, blue band. Therefore, he must have been somewhat rebellious, or perhaps he was just making a fashion statement. Heh. You never could tell nowadays...

And his eyes..... They seemed icy. Cold. Dull, even. They were dark brown---but a strange sort of brown, the kind that seemed murky and lifeless until a beam of light hit it at a certain angle, and then a strange fire would flicker in it for a moment, and then die. It'd been a while since Vincent had seen eyes like that, and he didn't quite know what to make of them...

There.

A spark.

"You read much, Mr. Valentine?"

Vincent had the unsettling feeling that the man had felt his eyes on him for some time, even with half his head hidden behind his newspaper. Vincent shifted his weight, trying to sound cool and collected as he answered. "If you mean magazines and all that, then yes, Mr. President, sir, but if you're talking about books and encyclopedias and all that junk--then, no, I can't read for ja--"

"Derrick," President Shin-Ra interrupted suddenly, reaching out from behind his newspaper for a cup of tea that sat on the table.

"....Eh?" Vincent looked at his superior strangely, not quite catching the meaning of his words.

"Please," the President took a sip of tea, lowered it back onto the table, and folded his newspaper. He smiled slightly as he looked towards the Turk across from him and picked up the tea again. He closed his eyes. "Call me Derrick."

Vincent blinked. "Derrick?"

The man took a sip of his beverage and looked up. "Yes. I should hope that you would know the full name of your President, Mr. Valentine--especially when he calls you to be his personal bodyguard."

"Oh, riiiiight...." Vincent grinned, leaning back in his chair and feeling a bit more at ease as he closed his eyes and gave his suave response. "Derrick Rufus Shin-Ra the second. Son of Gerald Shin-Ra the third and older brother to Gerald Shin-Ra the fourth and Scarletta Shin-Ra, who, of course, has no hope of ever becoming the President due to her gender and the chauvenist ideals that you execs seem to be always spewing out." He looked away, cooly reaching for the pack of SAUROS cigs in his coat pocket and bringing it to his mouth. He opened his eyes and smirked at the President as he bit down on one of the cigs and pulled it out. He pocketed the rest of the pack. "Yeah, I'm smarter than I look."

"I doubt it, but I must admit, you seem to have done your homework," Vincent wasn't sure if he was supposed to take it as a compliment or an insult, but before he could respond, Derrick continued. "However, you do seem to have quite an attitude."

"Yeah, I know," Vincent brought out a lighter with the Shin-Ra, Inc. insignia on it. "I've got a pretty damn dirty mouth too when I'm not trying to impress someone with my good behavior." As if to purposely contradict what he had just said, he leaned back and brought his feet to the edge of the table, crossing them as he lit his cigarette and then put the lighter away. He suddenly looked up, pointedly taking a puff on his cig before pulling it out of his mouth and asking: "You mind if I smoke?"

Derrick waved his hand dismissively. "No, not at all--cancer doesn't bother me in the slightest. And.... you don't like authority much, do you?"

Vincent shrugged, looking away. "Nah, not really, and I really don't understand why you chose me as a bodyguard. I mean, I'll do my job, but if you really wanted someone who'd take a bullet for you, you should've chosen Vegas, and if you were looking for some freaky gay affair or something, you should've gone with Earl--now, he's got a track record."

Derrick looked up and nearly laughed. "Oh, no, no, I most definitely don't 'swing' that way, Mr. Valentine, and as for taking bullets... Well..." He smiled. "We'll just have to see, then, won't we?"

Vincent arched an eyebrow and then looked away, sighing as he took another smoke of his cig.

"Yeah, whatever."

*~*~*

Today

"Scarface El," Rude muttered, paging through the folder in his large hands. "That's the name they gave us. The guy's dangerous; he's murdered the contents of an entire bar in two minutes without leaving any kind of trace on the bodies or in the vicinity, and no one's ever lived long enough to know how he did it."

"What?" Reno snickered, leaning his elbow against the wall and pushing the back of his hand against his cheek. "Was he drunk or something?"

"No," Rude tightened his jaw at Reno's complete lack of seriousness as he answered. "But apparently, everyone else was. The only sober one was the bartender--the only survivor, too, predictably enough."

"Eh?" Elena arched an eyebrow, raising her head from her folded arms. She had been slumping forward on the kitchen table. "I thought you said no one had lived long enough to tell anything about him."

Rude glared at Elena through the pitch-black lenses of his sunglasses. He dropped his arms to his sides and then threw them up again in exasperation. "Why d'you think they'd call him 'Scarface El' if no one'd ever seen him, huh?!" He paused, taking a breath, and continued. "The guy was picked up by an ambulance--pulled out of the rubble of his own bar. He was able to give a vague sort of description of the guy who attacked him, but he died that same night in the hospital, so no one was really able to verify it."

"Awww, how sad," Reno mock-sighed. He immediately looked back to Rude and grinned, leaning forward and tapping the blunt side of his dinner knife into the palm of his left hand. "So, how much dough are they offering for us to take 'im out, huh?"

"Nothing," Rude answered with a voice as level as stone. He looked away, wiping sweat off the top of his bald head with his hand before continuing. "We're supposed to capture him."

Reno stopped playing with the knife arubtly, his eyes widening. "You mean... alive?!"

Elena looked towards Reno with an exasperated glare. "Well, duh. What else would he be? Undead or something?" She looked away and sighed before she blinked and shot up to her feet, slamming the palms of her hands down on the table. "WHAT?!?! They want us to bring some crazed, mass-murdering psycho to 'em alive?!?!?"

"Yes... that.... just about... sums it up," Rude answered haltingly, fiddling with the folder in his large hands until he finally scowled and threw it down on the table. "Oh, come on, guys! We were able to stand up to AVALANCHE just a year ago, and now we've all turned into cowards?!"

"Weeeellll, Rude," Reno drawled sarcastically as he crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and retorted. "A year ago, Tseng hadn't gone and gotten himself impaled on a sword of unspeakable doom, all right?!"

"Don't diss him, Reno," Elena growled dangerously, glaring at her unkempt teammate.

"Hm?" Reno opened one eye and then the other, smiling slightly. "Nah, I wasn't trying to diss the late Tseng-man, Elena." The smile turned into a frown as he turned around and glared at Rude. "However, I am questioning how and why Strong-'n'-Silent here suddenly turned into a full-fledged leader! I mean, c'mon, Rude, when Tseng was in charge, you barely said a damn word to anybody!!"

"Yeah, anybody except you guys, and it's still that way," Rude grumbled although he knew it was partially true. Since Tseng had... well, in, Reno's words, 'gotten himself impaled,' he had become more involved in planning and job offers and whatnot, especially after the fall of Shin-Ra. However, all that was beside the point. He scratched at an itchy spot behind his right ear. "Anyway, I don't want to force you guys to do anything that you don't want to do, although we do need to get more in shape after being paid all those times to be stand-around bouncers, and---H-hey, where are you guys going?!?"

"Lunch," Elena answered simply as she and Reno walked towards the exit of the messy apartment.

"Yeah, Rude," Reno sighed, carring his nightstick over his shoulder. "Talking to a wall will do more help to get us to do the job than talking to our faces will."

"But---they're offering over twenty million gil!" Rude ran after them as they neared the door. "We could be rich in a night!"

Reno didn't look back as he began opening the door. "Yeah, and why do they offer that much...?"

Elena stood, facing away from Rude as she answered the question for him. "Because they know you'll never come back to claim it. They just hope to learn something from you before they find your cold, dead body lying in an old, abandoned warehouse somwhere. Simple as that."

"But, I---" Rude faltered as Reno and Elena walked through the door.

"Give it up, Rude," Elena sighed, turning the corner down the hallway.

"Yeah, we'd have to be pretty damn desperate for something to take a job as crazy as that," Reno said as he walked away and waved a hand back towards Rude. "See ya later."

Rude walked out into the hallway, blinking and staring in shock as the two ex-Turks neared the elevator that led down to the exit of the old apartment complex.

Damnit, they really needed some out-in-the-field practice, even if they didn't get the reward.... But there wasn't a thing that Reno and Elena particularly cared about enough to put their lifes on the--

Unless....

Rude smirked.

"Hey, guys!" He didn't move as he called after them.

The elevator opened, and they both walked inside. Elena scowled. "We said that we wouldn't do it, all right?! Jeezus..."

"If we do the job and catch the guy, I'll...." He hesitated.

"What? Spill it!" Reno taunted, even though there was no way in hell that he would do something so dange--

"I'll take off my sunglasses."

Reno and Elena both froze, standing in shock a few moments until the elevator doors began to close. Rude crossed his arms and watched with satisfaction as they nearly ran each other over while trying to get out. By the time they had finally untangled themselves from each other, they were next to Rude and staring up into his smug face.

"You serious?!" Reno leaned on his nightstick, panting.

Rude smirked. "If you mean the kind of 'serious' that you talk about whenever you promise to stop drinking after Sunday morning hangover, then no. But if you're talking about the --"

"All right, good enough for me," Elena grinned. She narrowed her eyes wickedly, walking up to Rude and bringing up her index finger. "But you'd BETTER--" she poked Rude in the chest to emphasize her point. "--keep your word and take 'em off as soon as we have the guy under lock and key, or we're going to let him go."

"You're joking." Rude looked from Elena to Reno. "Even with the reward money?!"

Reno shrugged as a grin spread across his face. "Hey, desperation causes desperate people to do desperate things, right?"

"Yeah, well, we're all desperate to get some money in our wallets, so let's get started on this damn chase," Elena turned away from Rude and shoved her hands in her pockets. "We might as well split up---I'll go check out the word on the street, Reno, you go check out all the places that the guy has hit."

"Aye, aye, capitán," Reno mock-saluted as he sauntered over to the stairs and began to descend to the lower level of the building.

"And since you seem to be better friends with the cops then either of us..." Elena turned towards Rude, her hands on her hips. "You can go to the MSPD and sift through all their recent files for clues."

"............" Rude decided it would be best to not put up a fight and sighed. "All right, all right, as long as you two don't do a half-ass job on your parts...."

"Good boy," Elena grinned, patting Rude on the shoulder before she rushed down after Reno.

Rude stood there for at least a minute, thinking ominous thoughts about chaotic piles of paper to himself before he finally walked to the elevator and leaned against the wall as he pushed the "down" button.

Maybe this wasn't such an ingenius idea after all....

*~*~*

To be continued....

....in a while. School starts tommorrow, but I at least I FINALLY got something up on fanfiction.net that's recently written and doesn't consist of utter crap! :)

And yeah, I know the Rude-and-sunglasses gag is overused, but I still find it strangely amusing. So sue me. And yeah, the end of this chapter did seem rather weak..... Ah, well. My apologies for possible spelling/grammar/punctuation errors--damn spell check is broken on my computer. _

omg plz r&r or yur a basterd n i wont continuu THANKYES OMG KAWAIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!1111oneoneone

....Seriously though, given the non-main-character nature of this fic, I'll cherish the small amount of reviews that I'm doomed to get. :) Remember, writers love input, no matter how little or how much you have to say. Comments/constructive criticism/ideas/requests to continue/flames welcome!

I be goin' now.

*POOF*