From Sixth: I can't remember what the hell that sword thing was inspired by. I'm going to assume anime. Maybe somebody else will recognize it.
Blood Feast
Chapter 11: Fury of the Occult Angel Part 1
Vincent and Yatsui stood against each other in grueling, absolute silence. Yatsui, the presiding master of listlessness, retained the perfect stillness of a statue he so demonstrated once before. The gunman bristled with disconcertion. The man went through motions like air, one moment a soft-spoken, slightly vibrant wraith, the next a fleshly statue with a gaze no less enticing than that of an Ahriman. He was still as death. The man had insinuated lacking a soul—yes, even when Vincent bemoaned listening to him prattle on about his nonsense, he'd paid enough attention, picked up on that comment and filed it away to glean its significance later. Now, it'd come back to him. Were soulless things ever truly alive? Could Yatsui have been undead? Was he anything at all? This nonexistence personified as he had alleged himself in the remnants of Aerith's church? Was this creature what was left when everything else—everything but remorse—was stripped away? He had to dismiss these thoughts. He didn't care about that, or he shouldn't have cared if he really did. That Yatsui preferred to remain a conundrum aggravated him. Now, he had to decide how to end this.
A request for a contest of strength, the stakes put forth, on either side an acceptance of suffering and defeat.
An urge came strong to slap himself in the face. Maybe this was just a bad dream from which he needed waking. But no dream lasted this long. Unless he was dead. Did that Yin-Yang, in reality, blow him to bits, along with all of Shinra Mansion, wiping yet another deplorable stain from the face of the Planet?
The gunman mulled over his state of affairs, meanwhile studying the effigy of questionable existence positioned just a few feet away. How would it end if Yatsui lost to him? That was more comforting to imagine than if he won, obviously. Yet there wasn't going to be any real victory here. Either Vincent would suffer losing a vital piece of his humanity or Yatsui would… What would happen to him?
Vincent drew his right shoulder back, in a pensive turn to Lucrecia's altar. Are you watching, Lucrecia? I wonder what you'd make of this guy. If it was you he came to instead, would you have accepted him with open arms? Or turned him away so you can continue wallowing? No. You wouldn't have fought at all, I bet. You were at the end, nothing else to lose.
But I… I still have a chance, don't I? Otherwise I wouldn't be walking around right now. I would have never woken up to help save the world from Sephiroth and ShinRa.
Vincent returned his gaze to the motionless Yatsui.
"Why don't we see what you can do?" Vincent uttered noncommittally. He saw Yatsui's eyes light up and widen at the other's affirmative challenge.
The pale man only bowed his head, replying with, "You honor me, Vincent Valentine. Now I can prove my mettle and strength to bear your suffering, and more."
"Be warned. I'm ready to win by any means necessary," his companion recited, gesturing his claw albeit limply against his hip. "That means no holding back on my end."
"I would not even think of having you withhold your strength. Use whatever you feel the need to. There are no holds… barred? To reiterate." Yatsui bowed his body forward as though recognizing a person of authority standing before him. "But I wonder if I should hold back, myself? In this form, my powers are less than limited, but…?"
"Change if you want. Doesn't matter to me. In fact, I'm curious of what you're capable," Vincent told him. He neglected to mention, however, the morbid curiosity in wondering whether or not he bled when struck. Would it run red, gray, or not at all? "Either way, I'm not going to lose." Yatsui had smirked considerately and brushed the hair from his cheeks with hardly a flit of his slender fingers.
"I see that you have kindled that flame within you, the flame of determination, the fires of competition. You may yet be a praiseworthy opponent, indeed," Yatsui voiced in clear fascination.
"Well. Can we get on with it?" Vincent asked, flexing his trigger finger.
"Yes, we can."
"Unarmed?" the gunman remarked, gesturing at Yatsui's empty hands.
"Ah. Yes, I need a weapon, of course. I am afraid I will have to go the way of the cliché."
Yatsui extended his left arm, open hand supine. Vincent winced imperceptibly when the other man's palm bulged up and out until the tip of a salt-white blade pierced the skin. Passing through the full length of his stiffened arm, the blade made its exit, dripping in seemingly liquefied flesh that evaporated before it ever touched the floor, like the hesitant pepper of quickly passing rain. At last did the end of the blade, a silver hilt with a guard molded into intricate little wisps like wings, eject from his palm where he was able to grip and wield it freely.
"Ah, my trusted foil and guardian, it has been quite some time," Yatsui whispered to his sword while tracing a finger along its trim four foot length. "Might this do? I promise to be careful. We are not fighting to the death, are we?"
"Debatable." Vincent turned Death Penalty over in the crook of his arm, checked his materia—before leaving Cloud in Kalm, he'd managed to get a few good pieces on loan, in case of emergency, so clearly this counted—and cocked and released the safety. Although he was not really one for hand to hand combat, should his gun fail clinching his side in battle, he wasn't going to hesitate over going toe-to-toe, and his claw was surprisingly sturdy enough that it could deflect small caliber edges and bullets before it cracked under pressure.
"Good enough?" uttered Yatsui in a curiously soft voice, lowering his sword towards the floor. He shrugged and sighed, wiping the grave expression from his radiant visage and grinned invisibly at Vincent. "Well, let us begin."
"Correction: Let us end this."
"If that is the way you see it."
In a sudden blur of black and red and gold, Yatsui glided forward, sword raised over his shoulder, initiating the fight with a single fluid swing at the gunman. Vincent jerked back, his cape flapping like a frantic red demon. He pulled on Death Penalty's trigger, releasing a materia-fused volley of blackened gravity. Yatsui bowed to the left, slicing at the dark spheres in a fanned motion, sending the energy out in a slow-moving arc, and lunged at Vincent once more. He leapt back again, surprised at the other's speed. Yatsui ducked in close, his blade flying through the air in a deeply sloping spiral, to which the other parried with his golden claw, forcing him back and launching yet another dark barrage. The pale man lifted his hand to the enticing, crackling globes, summoned forth a clear shield of will that deflected easily the other's attack, and called it back to nothingness.
"Ungh!" Yatsui's foil came down hard in the palm of Vincent's claw, so much that tiny sparks ignited in the clash between metal. Yatsui applied a struggling pressure, though his opponent had an amazing upper hand. Their noses almost touched, golden eyes amazed and amused, scarlet eyes cold and determined.
"I might have underestimated you, Vincent Valentine," he told him.
"Hmph," the gunman grunted. He swiftly hooked a pointy boot behind Yatsui's knee and drove him back, forcing him to slip and fall. He propelled another shot of crackling darkness, but the other dodged it easily, his body yanked across the floor and floating to his feet. The sphere sluggishly bounced off the empty spot on the translucent crystal, then dissolved into fluttering wisps, then nothing.
Vincent charged Yatsui, stopping short and spinning into a roundhouse but ending the motion with an axe kick instead. He bent far backward into a one-handed flip, executing a sword thrust succeeding his escape. Vincent parried once more with his claw, dropping to the floor and sweeping at Yatsui's legs. He sprang up in reaction then to the side to evade the gunman's second leg sweep.
"Hope you're prepared for this," Vincent said, pulling the trigger farther home than before.
A blinding stellar flash exploded from the long barrel of Death Penalty. Surprised, Yatsui staggered as though dazed, and aware of this brief opening, Vincent sprinted at the befuddled man. But his opponent was still lucid even in his dizziness. He backed a step and then somersaulted over the other's head, reminiscent of a diving corkscrew, and landed just behind Vincent. The pale man rushed an arm around his neck and locked him in a hold.
"You are a clever one, Vincent Valentine. I commend you for your adept skill," Yatsui whispered in his captive's ear.
The gunman only snorted in retort.
"Yes, you are very much a worthy opponent," he urged. "Beyond this gun of yours, I genuinely worry for my safety."
Vincent lowed in annoyance. So it wasn't the gun that he was worried about?
He quickly bent himself into a roll, dumping Yatsui on his knees, ending with what nearly sounded like an audible crack of something solid. In all his dexterity, Vincent snaked his claw around the pale man's neck and enforced his grip twofold with the other hand.
"You're toying with me," Vincent asserted, "aren't you?"
"I haven't the slightest idea what you could mean—"
"You're lying."
Yatsui huffed, squirming in his restraint. "I do not lie. I am only being careful. I know that something dark, too dark, rests within you. How would this play out were it to awaken?" Yatsui questioned, resting his hand against the cold surface of Vincent's claw held so firmly under his chin and against his throat. "I worry."
"Then you should realize that this game you've been playing—chasing me around like a sick puppy, is it?— is ridiculous. You should walk away before someone gets hurt. I can't be held accountable if that someone is you. You brought this on yourself."
Yatsui's head lolled forward as if he were falling asleep.
"Yes, I ask for it. It is what I want," he replied softly. "You have so much to gain and not much more to lose than your life. Your fate is more important than mine. All I can do is serve my sentence to eternity as a wayward thing, pondering my sins, mourning my beloved loss, and suffering in the stead of those who suffer. I bring this on myself. This is how I have chosen to live the rest of my days. My atonement remains incomplete. Never will it be complete until… So I must win, I must, I…" Yatsui's soft voice trailed off into silence. Vincent felt a strange force billow up from the man's restricted frame, a familiar force that he had experienced… where?
Midgar.
"Wait–"
Vincent flew clear across the crystalline cavern by that sheer force. He skidded along on his back until the pate of his head touched the carved, low steps of Lucrecia's altar. He swung his feet over his head and onto the ground, planted himself on his hands and knees with disbelief plastered on his respectively pale face as he watched Yatsui transform. The dull fog of his glowing otherworldly body pulsed and receded as he bent down to gingerly collect his sword at his stalk-like feet.
"You will not win. One way or the other, you will be liberated of your suffering."
"Starting to sound a little sinister there, eh?" Vincent asked. "Showing your true colors?"
"I shall go on as martyr. It is my only purpose until I am freed of this monotony which is the quick and I might rejoin with the Planet's lifeblood." His chiming voice reverberated in the gunman's ears. It was just like before, like listening through a tube, a tunnel. The distance between them deepened again, despite that they hadn't moved a foot. This wasn't a human he was dealing with.
"I wonder if you can hear yourself talk." Vincent rose to his feet, dusted off his knees.
"From time to time. You will be surprised how often I have said similar things in the past. Nowadays it may seem as if I speak on, what would you call it? Autopilot? Those whom had gladly relinquished themselves. Others whom had fought me, as you do now. But all of you, you are only human. Your species, it is so fragile. You can hardly bear what little pain you may incur. You cannot resist temptation. And you cannot resist power greater than you, though in numbers you may try and succeed but for a time. Hm, like insects, before that indifferent heel returns to crush you all in renewed force."
"Humans aren't as weak as you think," Vincent retorted.
"You may be correct, but I have yet to encounter one that could prove me otherwise of my conjecture… well, aside from the miraculous few that I had stumbled upon here or there," Yatsui admitted with a shrug of his single arm. "But they were too few, too far in between, above humanity in their own rights."
"Well, you can just add me to those miraculous few."
Vincent rushed forward, launching himself at the other in his altered state, claw first. Yatsui did not so much as flinch, only watching on with calm, not-quite-there eyes in that foggy, salt white face. Vincent, not daunted in the slightest, raged with all his might. His armored knuckles struck Yatsui point blank just beneath the sternum.
He tipped back like a weathered tree under a ripping gale. But he wouldn't be toppled. His body rippled and flickered as result of the impact but fast recovered. The fog that swaddled his narrow form distended like a gaseous balloon and locked Vincent in place, threatening to choke the energy out of him.
"That is…?" the voice whispered haltingly.
The fog shrank back as quickly as it had rolled in, letting Vincent free from his momentary suspension.
"Is it…? The chaos?"
From Sixth (so long ago): Oh, so tired, sorry if this chapter crap too. How do people get ulcers? Anyway…
ShiAne, if you see this, I was wondering…what did you think Yatsui was before you read chapter 8? I'm really curious as to your presumption cuz, I dunno…I like to hear what people think. Anyway, I dunno what I was thinking when I split this chapter in two. And the end? That just popped into my head. Not really, I was sorta planning for Chaos to fully appear sooner or later. So…
You'll have to wait until next chapter to see how things end. I hope it's good. And Neko-Yami, Yuffie's cool, it's just I don't know what to do with her. That fly in the eye came right off the top of my head. But now I have plans to star her in her own adventure sooner or later. Yes, Princess Yuffie meets a new unlikely friend or something or other…