From Sixth: Ninja editing forever. And I wonder, will it read like two styles clashing? One and a half? I don't know...
Blood Feast
Chapter 2: Netherworld Delicacy
Vincent entered slumber full of new purpose: not to lock and hide himself away, but to hone his mind in quiet for the future that lay ahead, as well as potential betterment in his choice. And his sleep went uninterrupted for weeks, even when he heard his companions visit his coffin in the mansion's depths to try and rouse him, to no avail. Not yet, he thought softly, I won't wake until I know how to get on with this life. Until I'm sure. And so he drew his mind deeper into reflective sleep, where all possible paths could run their course, with whom, where, when. The upsides, the downs. The demons still nestled beneath his skin and curled around his bones, in his blood and every fleshy fiber, each one their own entities but also a part of him. How their continued existence would work into the equation.
But one day, his sleep went briefly disturbed by the distant manifestation of some unknown force there, in Nibelheim, unknown but… familiar. His blood chilled in his veins for mere seconds before it flitted elsewhere. Vincent felt the need to investigate but he promised himself. Not yet.
There came another presence, nowhere as strong as the other but nevertheless detectable. It came nearer, creeping closer and closer, advancing upon Vincent steadily, unhurriedly, like a stalker of rats in the shadows. But he did not move. He assumed it was nothing more than a rat or bat, seeking shelter here below. That was, until…
Thump, thump on the lid of his coffin.
Thump, thump, thump.
Thump, thump, scratch.
Scratch.
Did something want entry into his coffin? Fortunately, he always had Death Penalty at his side should he ever feel in jeopardy. Breaking with annoyance and regret from his sleep, Vincent slunk his fingers to the gun holstered against his right hip. Any movements he made inside the coffin were thankfully cushioned from prying ears by the red velvet lining. No one had ever a coffin as extravagant as his after 'death.'
Something dared a soft creatural twitter. So it was confirmed that his interloper was nothing of human ilk, but beast or vermin, and a persistent one at that. If this annoyance continued, then he could not get in the thinking he so needed. So, with gun ready, Vincent started to push the lid up very cautiously, then, at last, drove it aside in one swift motion, allowing him to rise up in a black and red haze, Death Penalty drawn. Hovering close to the roof of the basement tomb like a dragonfly- the precursor to a snake's death- Vincent looked down upon the intruder that pestered him so.
It was nothing more than a vagrant Ying Yang, its faces the masks of passion and sorrow. The monster drunkenly waddled beneath him, raising its cumbersome limbs up at Vincent as though begging for an embrace, although he knew full well any embrace from this brute promised a sure death. He aimed first at the head of Ying, pulled the trigger, blasting the skull to gooey bits, as well as ruining one of its arms in the process. Yang and the remainder of the body staggered back, dopily groaning in pain and anger of its lost half, its blue face then darkening in primal rage. Yang stamped and leapt up as high as it could, swiping at Vincent drawn back down by gravity's pull. His foot caught in the monster's claws, sending him tumbling. Shaken, the gunman sprang back to his feet. The enraged beast swung its single arm continuously, only successfully disarming Vincent of Death Penalty. In its place, he whipped Quicksliver from its secret holster and unleashed a rapid salvo at the awkward Yang. However, it hardly slowed as its body bloated larger and larger.
"Damn it," Vincent uttered under his breath. He had forgotten that after a certain amount of time, a Ying or Yang would self-destruct when removed of either twin. He had to move and fast. He backed up towards the door. The unstable Yang hurled itself at Vincent, sending them both crashing through the wooden door. It had him pinned to the floor; any longer and he would be caught in the blast of the burgeoning monster.
"Need help?" a voice offered kindly, a voice that would have stopped him cold if not for the situation at hand. He glimpsed a pair of black booted feet placed evenly apart. His eyes traveled up the long legs well hidden by a lengthy scarlet robe decorated with seemingly random symbols. Letting his eyes go up further, Vincent saw, finally, the face of the newcomer.
It was that same man that he had seen in Kalm some while ago. Those eyes glowed faint.
Still struggling with the expanding Yang, he curiously gazed on at the strangely smiling man.
"Can I take that as a yes?" he queried.
"No."
"Please, allow me," said the man. The Yang froze. As though lifted by an invisible chain, the monster raised off of Vincent, who shot upright once free. The still, floating form of the distended beast did the man approach and jab with a couple of frail looking fingers. The Yang popped like a balloon pregnant with fetid oil.
Vincent brought up his cape against the flying monster juice, more than a little nonplussed as to how he managed to dispatch the thing, and offended that he would offer his hand where it wasn't quite welcome. He watched the man retreat from the spreading puddle of filth and gore, and then beam at him a bewilderingly warm smile.
"Are you alright? I was passing by when I sensed that something might be amiss. And, it seems that my instinct proved correct," he explained. Vincent was again attacked by that pungent, inebriating smell of flowers, very much the same smell that he had endured the first time they crossed paths on the streets of nighttime Kalm. He thumbed his nose at the scent; he wouldn't let it get the better of him. Rather he'd only regard it as something of note for later. Much later, if at all.
He sneered and wiped away the heavy chunks of flesh from his arm.
"Oh." The man chuckled mildly and bowed his head. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Yatsui. May I ask your name, sir?"
Vincent declined to answer with an accusatory glance.
"Ah, I see. It is alright, I will not force you. Well, then, I bid you farewell and should we ever meet again, you will tell me your name? Pardon me." Yatsui gracefully turned on his left heel to the ascending spiral path that led back to the mansion's upper floors.
"Wait," Vincent called after him. The man ceased his departure and twisted back in the other's direction. He sighed and took one step forward. "… Vincent."
"Hmm?"
"Vincent Valentine," he managed.
"Oh, Vincent Valentine. I am not worthy," confessed the golden-eyed man in a subtle bow. Vincent noted Yatsui's low, stirring voice, one far too gentle for any common man. The only people he had known so far to sport such gentle timbres, though excluding the eloquence, were Aerith, and Lucrecia. But even they didn't sound… as downtrodden, as beaten down to humility, not by a long shot.
A curious observation, he had to admit.
"If… you do not mind my inquiry, might I ask why you occupy the bowels of this abandoned house? It seems to me the only ideal for vermin and their monstrous lot. Are… you not human?" Yatsui ventured to ask. Vincent smirked and soundlessly scoffed. Who wouldn't ask a question like that, he thought. His humanity had always been questionable ever since that day. Perhaps even long before, reaching into his heydays of Turkdom. But he hardly felt the need to dignify that question with a response.
"What about you?" he retorted. "I've never seen a man with golden eyes."
"Ah, touché," the pale man said. He closed his eyes and seemed to inhale. "I suppose we should run?"
"What?" Vincent's senses raised alarms at the suggestion. Run? What for?
"Hear that? That squeaking, so small yet countless, soon to overwhelm us at any minute? It would not do to brave them here in so confined a space."
Vincent knew that the mansion harbored a mutant species of black bat, sometimes clouds of them which trickled down from the Nibel mountains when warmer seasons called for them. Yatsui could only have meant those, and that they were coming to where both men stood right now. He heard them. At first, they sounded like a chorus of whistlers struggling for the perfect pitch, succeeded then by the beating of wings. The squeaking grew more echoic as the swarm of flying rodents would soon befall Vincent and Yatsui.
A dark rabid cloud burst from the doors of the abandoned lab at the crypt's end. Vincent lifted his gun, jerked the slide and cocked the hammer, staring down the sight as he also took to the air. Yatsui, however, made no attempt to move despite him being the first to cry wolf. The infernal black bats evaded him, barely grazing his fine threads, their wings stirring little gusts to toss about his ashen pink hair. Puzzled by the swarm's ignorance of the man, he decided to plow through. Arms crossed over his face, he launched his body through the toothy, screeching cloud. They ripped by him, smacking heavily into the shield he made with his limbs and cape.
Just as Vincent passed over Yatsui's head, he heard him distinctly against the roils of deafening screeches and flaps, "They do not seem taken by my presence. You, on the other hand…"
He made a sharp ninety degree turn upward into the shaft, scaling the wall at his quickest speed possible in such a narrow space. He pushed off from the wall at the very top of the shaft, casually catapulting his body out of the hidden passage, knees and feet skimming the hardwood floor. The bats remained in hot pursuit, chasing Vincent in and out of the dead and empty halls of decadent ShinRa Manor. He looped around from another hall over the mezzanine and down to the first floor. He could feel the time of day, the warmth of the surface world, against his face, the sun's rays sure to break through every crack and portal in the atrium.
Vincent flew at the front doors, one foot thrust out to drive them open. He burst into the open air, beneath the calm rays of sun shining down on Nibelheim's quiet foothills. The bats floundered and dispersed in his wake, save but a few. He brandished his Quicksilver once more and picked off the bats one by one, sometimes twos or threes, a lucky four.
"Nuisances," Vincent uttered beneath his breath.
"Vincent Valentine." Yatsui stood at the old wrought iron gate ingress of the mansion, waving a hand to garner what he could of the other's attention.
"Busy," he called back, driving off the remnant vermin.
"I request intervention."
"No thanks."
"Let me prove my usefulness."
"You've done enough."
Did he have some sort of hearing problem? Yatsui, out of the corner of his eye, pointed his hand at the sky, making a gesture not unlike a gun. Using the other hand to keep it steady, he aimed at the bats circling above in confusion. Was he mocking Vincent? At a time like this? Yet what baffled him were the pinpoints of light shooting out of the man's finger as if they were bullets. For the few he managed to take down, they sparked, crackled and fell in a convulsive puff of smoke and sometimes flame.
With the remnant bats dead, dying or in full retreat, Vincent relaxed. He took a moment to replace the magazine in his gun before returning it to his hidden holster.
"Huh."
The other man approached him steadily. Vincent fired a hard, narrow glare, which was returned with forever a sad smile on a radiant face. The gunman raised a halting hand.
"Who and what are you?"