Chapter 5: Fangs
The next day:
Cloud had gotten up early to practise his fighting skills. He didn't know where Sephiroth had slept, but he had done so in the inn, after throwing out Vincent of course. The thought of sleeping in the same room as that wanna-be vampire made his skin crawl. The traitor had slept in one of the dead citizen's room. There were plenty of spare rooms about due to the number of people Sephiroth had killed on arrival, but Cloud had preferred to sleep in the inn.
Cloud walked outside and got into his fighting stance, is was quite warm so he was only practising in his pants and boots. He did a few warm up exercises first, involving a few good slashes and thrusts at imaginary monsters. His body felt weird, he hadn't been lying to Sephiroth when he said that he couldn't remember being a teenager, after all why would you want to remember being kept in an oversized test tube for five years? Tifa had called it selective amnesia, he didn't know if that was the correct term, but it sounded right, when you forgot things on purpose because you didn't like what happened. Cloud chuckled, sounded like his entire past, glossing over the ugly parts and painting something new over it to make it seem better. He started practising some of his special moves, like the Omnislash, where he repeatedly slashed at his opponents from seemingly all angles. It still needed work, but it was pretty good already, hell it was fantastic if he was going to tell the truth!
Sephiroth stood at the doorway to the item shop for a while, looking at Cloud practise his ultimate limit break, it was actually quite good, it could probably do quite a lot of damage once he had mastered it, 'but who knows how long that would take'. However, he was glad that it wasn't him who stood at the end of the blade in a real fight, he had a feeling that if he hadn't have stopped Cloud in crater, then his puppet would have performed that on him. It was getting boring here, he wanted to go look at Midgar where the life stream had stopped meteor, he hadn't been able to go earlier because the area would have had high amounts of Mako in the air, which would have been very poisonous, even for him. Sephiroth assumed it would be safe for them to go now; the life stream should have retreated completely into Planet in the last few days.
A few hours later:
Sephiroth wasn't able to ride the Highwind to the destroyed city because he had locked the crew inside, and then had quite simply forgotten about them. They hadn't been able to fly away because he had sabotaged the ship from the outside, so they had been stranded inside, with no food or water, and no escape. The crew had all died. Sephiroth felt like kicking himself, how could he have been so stupid? How was he supposed to get to Midgar now?
After some searching, Sephiroth had managed to find a helicopter in the canyon, he didn't know whom it had once belonged to, or how to fly it, but he knew that Vincent knew how too. Turks learned the basics in just about every mode of transport; he doubted that Vincent would have forgotten how to fly something like this over the years. Now all he had to do was get the puppet and Vincent into it, and then convince Vincent to fly the thing, 'but that shouldn't be hard'.
An hour later:
Vincent sat in the pilot's seat; Sephiroth and Cloud were stood behind him to make sure that he didn't do anything foolish, like crash the thing.
"We're going to Midgar, take us there as quick as you can." Ordered Sephiroth
"Yes Master." Said Vincent coolly, who still was not at all pleased about looking like a little kid, he was the oldest one there, but now looked like the youngest! 'Stuff like this is not supposed to happen in real life…'
Seven hours later, near Kalm:
"Vincent, land about 10 kilometres due east from Kalm, we'll spend the night there before heading to Midgar in the morning." Sephiroth said
"Will here do?" The ex-Turk said after a while
"Yes, land here and then you and Cloud can set up camp for the night."
"Yes, Master" both Cloud and Vincent said
Vincent landed the helicopter by a thick woodland area, and then helped Cloud take out the supplies for the night.
"Once you've finished here, go and find something for us to eat." Sephiorth said to Cloud.
"Yes, boss," said Cloud, "Shall I take Vincent with me? He can carry anything I find in the woods back."
Sephiroth nodded. Cloud and Vincent very quickly set up camp, after all if you've been living out on the field practically none stop for about a year, you get to know how to set up tents, and start a fire without using materia, quite easily.
Once Cloud and Vincent had finished they headed out into the forest. Monsters had killed most of the animals that would be good for eating, like rabbits and birds, so the teen look-a-likes had to collect fruits and berries instead. 'I hope Master is okay with this…' thought Cloud, 'I wouldn't be happy if I was a near-god and had to be forced to eat this healthy rubbish.'
Cloud and Vincent followed a mud trail through the dense woodland; it was hard to see over than a few metres to either side of them due to the closeness and width of the trees, so focused on the trail in front of them. The vegetation also blocked out a lot of the sunlight. But they could still see enough to collect fruit and walk without falling on their faces due to Mako-improved eyesight or razor sharp senses. After walking for a while Cloud noticed a large fallen tree in front of the trail ahead, it was huge! It completely covered the trail they were taking, he stopped in front of it; the trunk was about four times as wide as he was tall. Cloud didn't think he could easily climb over the trunk, and the woods were very thick at either end of fallen tree, so they couldn't really walk around it, who knew how long it was. 'I didn't know trees could get that big…'
"I suppose we better turn around, there's no point in climbing over this, it'd take too long."
Vincent nodded and turned around, facing the way they had come. Four men stood there sneering at them. "Cloud…?"
Cloud turned around too and looked at the men. Each was wearing plain black jeans, a brown and green camouflage type top, and dull, black boots. How they had managed to sneak up on them was beyond Cloud, he should have heard them long before this stage.
"What do we have here then?" Asked a large, ugly man with an axe in his belt, obviously the leader as he stood in front of the others.
"Looks to me like a couple of punk kids, Anderson." Answered a tall, muscled, man from behind the leader, cracking his knuckles at them.
'Kids!' thought Cloud, 'we're only a few years younger than them! Oh yeah, we look like teenagers now, don't we?'
"Look at that sword! I could do with that!" A man with a couple of long daggers about a foot long said, looking eagerly at Ultima Weapon on Cloud's back. The last man, dark skinned and lanky looking, held back from the others and watched them silently from the shadows of the forest, he held no visible weapon.
"Don't even think about it, I could destroy you where I stand, Ugly." Said a very annoyed Cloud. The four men laughed, like they were really afraid of a couple of teenagers!
The Anderson was actually quite surprised that the blonde haired boy was even standing with such a huge blade on his back; it looked over a foot wide! And was even more surprised when he easily pulled it off the magnet on his navy top and swung in round in a low arch. "Come on men, you know the drill; kill 'em, rob 'em, and then lets get the hell outta here!" The other three men grinned, they liked it when people put up a fight when they robbed them, it made it much more fun than just a simple slaughter. "It takes 32 muscles to frown, but only 4 to stick your middle finger up." Cloud quoted, which was exactly what he then did.
"Get him!"
Cloud got into his fighting stance and stepped in front of Vincent 'if he dies the I gonna have to carry all this food back myself.' He quickly lunged at the man with the knives slicing the blades in half and the back-slashed him with the bottom edge of the blade before the man could even defend himself. The man fell down, never to rise again 'awww, I thought this was gonna be fun!' Cloud turned to the other two men who had spoken, the quiet one had disappeared somewhere.
"Bolt 2!" The leader shouted at Cloud. Cloud easily dodged the magic, not that he really needed to since he was wearing his trusty Escort Guard that nullified all lighting attacks among others. Cloud ran up to the man as he was reaching for his axe and ran him through, instantly killing him. He turned to fight the muscled man, but too late as a large fist collided his the side of his head. A kick in the stomach brought Cloud to his knees, this guy was strong! As Cloud knelt down gasping for breath, the man started to kick and stomp on Cloud repeatedly, lucky none too hard landed on his head.
"YOU KILLED THEM! NO ONE GETS AWAY WITH THAT! DIE YOU SPAWN OF HELL!!!!!"
Cloud somehow managed to roll away, as the man brought his leg back to deliver another kick, and sprung up onto his feet. He wiped some blood away that was seeping from the corner of his mouth, "…and now you die..." he said calmly to the enraged man, it had been along time since another human had made him bleed, and Cloud was mad. The martial arts man had no chance against a true sword master like Cloud, and soon the man fell down too. Cloud felt his ribs carefully, 'are they broken?' they felt really sore after the kicking they had just received, he found it painful to turn around when he did so to see if Vincent was still okay. 'At least the Mako and Jenova cells in me help to keep the pain at bay' he thought, they worked together like a natural painkiller, helping to heal wounds quicker than an average man too, although mending broken bones would still take a while to do, he would still be able to fight, even if they were broken 'the wonders and science and nature combined' he thought. Cloud looked up to Vincent, his right hand still on his chest above his ribs, the silent man had returned, and had Vincent in his grasp. Vincent's left claw-like arm was twisted painfully behind his back, on verge of breaking; he had a revolver pointed to his head.
"Put down your sword, son, and back a way from it." The man said. Cloud thought for a moment about leaving Vincent behind, but something inside him wouldn't let him leave, he couldn't explain it. Slowly he put down Ultima Weapon and took a couple of steps back.
"Good boy."
Cloud scowled at the man, he might only look like a 17 year old, but had the brains and strength of someone older, he would not be patronised. "Now what your going to do is toss any valuables you have over here, once you have I'll let your buddy here go."
It looked like Cloud didn't have any options left; he dug around his pockets and threw a pouch of gil at the man. The dark-skinned gunman loosened his grip slighty on Vincent as he looked at the ground at the gil that had spilled out.
"There must be over four thousand gil in here!" he exclaimed. Vincent, feeling the grip on his arm slacken slightly, quickly ducked below the barrel of the gun, swung his body around and punched the man hard in the face with his normal hand. The man's eyes rolled up into the back of his head as he fell unconscious onto the ground. Cloud cheered "Go Vincent! I never knew you had it in you!" before he remembered that Vincent was the enemy…kind of, and stopped. Vincent grinned proudly at the man/teenager, when Cloud jumped back in shock, Vincent had two long fang-like things coming out of the side of his mouth were the canines were supposed to be. Vincent quickly understood why Cloud looked so surprised and closed his mouth, 'this is why I don't smile at people.'
"Come on, let's go." Cloud quickly said and almost ran out of the forest after picking up his sword and the money he had thrown at the unconscious man.
Cloud sat by the fire, on last watch; both Sephiroth and Vincent were sleeping in nearby tents till morning. 'How could I never have noticed that Vincent had fangs? I mean I've been with the guy for about a year now, am I that unobservant?' Cloud laid down on the grass and looked up at the stars scattered in the heavens above him slowing fading with the coming dawn, 'No, I don't think its that, Vincent never really ever smiles, come to think of it I think that was the first time I've ever seen him grin like that. But then again the guy always used to wear the cape with the high collar so you could never see his mouth, well at least that's one of life's mysteries solved. I wonder why he's like that? Maybe its to do with Hojo experimenting on him, it could be a side affect from transforming into monsters when he uses his limit brake.' Little did Cloud know that he was correct, years of experimentation and turning into monsters had left its marks on Vincent, it had turned his eyes from a deep green to a bright red colour, turned his canines into fangs, improved all of his senses, stopped him from ageing and had badly mangled his left arm until he had been forced to encase it into the gold claw. Cloud may have lost some of his memory in the experiments, but Vincent had lost himself.