And That's How They Died

Prologue

There was nothing but Vincent Valentine, no light or dark. No walls to lean up against and no ground to tap upon. Just Vincent, floating free in a space of nothingness. All he had was his thoughts which were worse than nightmares, which he also had plenty of. It reminded him of his slumber in the coffin, but that was gentle compared to this. This felt like a raging beast was playfully toying around with his insides and impish demons were poking his brain. Had he passed on? Was it…death?

'No,' he thought, trying to adjust so he could scratch a rather annoying itch. 'This isn't right at all…I'm forgetting something…something important…'

He started running names through his mind and he stopped on a name that burnt at his tongue so badly that he'd never speak it aloud. 'Hojo.'

Somehow, this had to be his fault, his doing. He was trapped in some kind of puzzle that Hojo must've set to go off randomly. 'That's it,' Vincent thought, feeling confident that he was getting closer to solving his mystery.

He was close, but sadly, so far away…

"How is he?" Cloud asked, sitting down on an old metallic chair.

"It's hard to say," the doctor responded, "the various lab work that's been done on him is cause for variable reactions. It won't be easy, not knowing what's been done with him."

"Well, you could give the #!# #!#! freak some light!" Cid loudly suggested, peering into a peephole of a large, rusted door.

"We tried…at first. He was very violent and volatile. Turning out the lights seems to subdue him to a settle, stable state," the doctor went on to explain.

"Who cares what state he's in!" Barret exclaimed. "#.#! Let's just ask him where he put her!"

"No, no, no, you can't do that…he'd lash out, possibly even break his restraints. Then you'd have to worry about your own life as well as hers!"

"I ain't afraid of no gun-slingin', vampire-wannabe! I got five bullets o' my own with his name on 'em! Just let me in!" Barret held his mechanical hand and motioned that he was going to barge in on the locked cell.

Cid Highwind was cheering him on, ready to follow Barret right into where the action would be. The doctor frantically tried to guard the door with his body, small in comparison to that of Barret's. Cloud, on the other hand, let the weight of his head fall on his hands as he contemplated the situation. 'Vincent isn't a killer,' Cloud thought. 'He never did anything like this before…what's happened to him? It's like he snapped, like Sephiroth did. Will I snap like this eventually?'

"Hey, hey, hey!" Tifa entered the room, throwing her leather jacket beside Cloud as she broke up the fight between Barret and the doctor. "What the heck are you doing!" She yelled, throwing a jab to Barret's stomach, causing him to fall back, breathless.

Cid was laughing at this point, which only infuriated the skillfully talented woman.

"This is not a time for laughing, Cid," she stated, ordering-like, quickly quieting the loudmouthed pilot. She turned to Cloud, calming herself down. "Why didn't you do anything?"

Cloud merely looked up at her, red hand marks stained on his face. He was filled with concern that was written all over his face. His Mako eyes burned through strands of fallen blonde hair into her solid brown eyes. She smiled consolingly and knelt down beside him.

Cloud had so much concern for his friends, it was almost unbelievable. It was usually so difficult to get any emotion out of him, but when somebody was in trouble, it poured out of him like a rift in the lifestream. Tifa knew of this grief, and although she hated seeing it in him, it was nice to see emotion stirring within him again.

She asked him very slowly and gently, "any word on Yuffie?"

Nothingness would change to everything in the flick of second. Images and objects of memories and illusions would sporadically take over his mind. Vincent wasn't the kind of man to veer away at a flash of thoughts, so he'd watch the concoctions and attempt to understand their meaning. Sometimes he'd get bored and wish he had his pistol, just so he could shoot something. He loved the way a gun felt in his hand. It was like holding the hilt of a sword that coiled and embraced your hand. A perfect evolution of weaponry, synching human with power.

But when was it too much power? When was reality lost and invincibility asserted? Vincent started knocking his head against the wall, glad that he could feel it. Obviously, it hurt his head, but pain was a nice substitution for complete numbness and he didn't know how long he had before he'd go back into that inevitable state.

'Curse that imprudent Hojo! He'll pay for this! I'll fire bullets into his rotting, Earthen grave, I will! Once I figure how the hell to get out of here!'

Author's Notes: Well, if you didn't notice, this is a setup chapter. Small and short, but I think ya'll should get the gist of it, eh? Guess I kind of got a Hannibal story started here…oh well, should be interesting. To those who've read my other stuff…yeah I keep throwing out new submissions of what seems to be the start of a long story and then I throw out something else like this. Well, I promise…I'm going to update everything as I feel. I have so many different stories now that I can always be writing, since each story goes with a different mood that I'm in. Anywho, hope you like it. :)

EDIT: I read my story and noticed that fanfic doesn't seem to like random strings of characters in place of naughty words (hehe). Well, I put the #'s in, so that what those mean...