A Final Fantasy VII fan fic
Final Fantasy VII characters and locations from said game are owned by SquareSoft.
By Suzy Creamcheese
Rated R for nudity, language, and violence
Chapter Eight
"Lucrecia! What are you doing here?" Vincent couldn't help but ask stupidly, so amazed he was to find her here of all places.
After all, he had come here searching for Tifa and now he stumbled across the object of his long quest. It was truly remarkable how much she still resembled herself of old; her sparkling violet eyes, her beautiful long brown hair.
It was true that her once slender frame was now more fulsome, but Vincent thought she appeared more beautiful than he had ever seen her. He realized that with her standing there completely undressed he should at least have the consideration to turn his head although he was unable to tear his gaze away from her for even a second.
It was almost as if he were afraid if he did turn his head away from her, when he looked back she would have disappeared again.
"Vincent!" Lucrecia said in almost a shudder. "You have to leave here immediately and forget you ever saw me - for your's and my sake." And she began to push him away from her.
"Lucrecia, stop it! What are you doing?" her former lover demanded.
"Vincent, the people who I work for would kill you in a second if they discovered you here. You have been indiscreet in the last few years. They know you're abroad and you are not in favor of them. Now get out of here before they catch you!" Lucrecia said truly angry with him stamping her foot in frustration.
"I can't do that, Lucrecia," Vincent entreated in a serious tone. "I've just found you. I'm not going to turn around and lose you again."
"How long have you been looking for me, Vincent?"
Puzzled he answered, "Over two years."
"Where were you all those long years that I needed you?" the woman asked softly.
The words speared Vincent to the core of his heart. This was exactly the question he had been avoiding within himself. "I didn't think you would want to see me," he attempted to excuse himself.
"Vincent, spare me," Lucrecia responded sarcastically. "You went off to sulk and feel sorry for yourself. You had no thought of me."
When Vincent began to protest, Lucrecia held up her hand. "At least allow me the privilege of being dressed while we debate this. Turn your back like a gentleman and it will just take me a minute."
Vincent was stuck, there was nothing he could do except comply. After a few minutes had passed in which he heard nothing, Vincent asked, "Can I turn around now, Lu?"
When there was no answer Vincent turned around. Lucrecia had vanished. Vincent fell to his knees sobbing. Had she really been there or just a product of his overactive imagination? No, wait. He could still smell her perfume that was lingering in the air. She was real; she'd been there; but now she was gone again.
Cid rode with Bosley in his helicopter. It had been decided there was no use Cid piloting one to transport himself when he could just as well ride with someone else.
Once they had lifted up off the pad and left the official airspace over Midgar Bosley asked, "Who do you suppose Cloud went with?"
"Unless I miss my bet, he went with Jackie Jackson," Cid sighed.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because Jackie's so young Cloud can impress him with his bullshit."
"Man, what'd he do to you? Seduce your sister and then cast her aside? I've never seen you so down on anybody like this before."
"Huh? What're you talking about? I don't have anything against Cloud," Cid denied. "Except of course for this insane search of his to locate Aeris."
"Aeris?!" Bosley exclaimed in amazement. "The girl that Sephiroth killed?"
"The one and the same," Cid answered.
"He's looking for her?! He must be completely loony. She's long dead - right?"
"Yeah, right, but he ain't crazy. He just doesn't want to admit to himself that she's gone," Cid replied.
"Okay, Cid, so he's not crazy, just a bit delusional. Why does he make you so angry then?"
"Hey, lay off, what are you? A fucking shrink?" Cid responded angrily.
Bosley sat silent for a few seconds and then burst out laughing. "A fucking shrink? Haha! You're a riot, Cid. I'm your old friend Bosley who you can't put off when you don't want to answer something by pretending to be angry."
Cid threw up his hands in surrender. "Okay, ok. Cloud frustrates me because he has a perfectly fine young woman at home who loves him dearly and he neglects her and now look what happened because he's chasing around the North Cave - Tifa's disappeared. He doesn't know how lucky he is to have the love of a woman like Tifa."
You sound like you wish it was you," Bosley pointed out. Only an old friend could speak to Cid in that fashion, but he and Bosley went all the way back together to the Shin-Ra Space Program.
"No, of course not….well, who wouldn't want that?"
"Isn't that what you have with this Shera who's staying with you?" Bosley questioned.
"Shera! Hell no! Shera stays with me because she feels so guilty about messing up my one chance of going into space. She misguidedly thinks she has to be my servant for the rest of her life to make up for it. If she really wanted to help me out, she'd just leave," snorted Cid.
"So you say, Cid," Bosley retorted.
"What do you mean by that?"
Bosley just smirked at Cid and that was all that was said between the two of them for the rest of the trip to the North Cave.
Nanaki was just sitting in front of Tifa and Cloud's house, nodding and swishing his tail at flies when he suddenly heard, "What the hell ya doing sleeping in the street, Red? And where is Spike and Tifa? I was just over at that bar of theirs' and some guy said they ain't here and no one knows where they are. What kind of damn nonsense is that?"
It's Barret! Nanaki thought excitedly.
Granted the relationship between them was often thorny, Nanaki was nonetheless glad to see the huge black man at the present time. Barret was always great if it came to needing a hand in a fight and besides, right now, Nanaki was lonely.
Consequently he greeted Barret sensibly and quickly filled him in as to what had occurred.
"Now ain't that some shit? Well listen, why I came over to see Spike. I was over at Corel this week, you know they still have a ways to go with everything, even after all this time. And the Mayor sidles up to me when I get there and he won't tell me what, he just tells me to keep an eye open for anything that looks weird or strange."
"So I sez to him, sure. And sure enough the first thing I spot right off is a lot of these guys - the miners, ya know - are slipping off for a couple of days at a time without telling anybody and then they come back with a lot of gifts for their families and sporting some heavy Gil besides."
"So I sez to myself, what the fook is going on here? So then next, I'm in the Mayor's office the next morning rapping with him about it when I happen to look out the window and what do I see?"
Barret hesitated so long Nanaki thought he was waiting for an answer, so he ventured, "Snow?"
"Har! Har! You're still a trip, ain't ya Red? No, it wasn't no snow, it was Reno!"
"Reno?!! Are you certain?" Nanaki asked amazed at the news. No one even knew if any of the Turks were still alive, much less anywhere around.
"Of course I'm sure," Barret answered acting just a little put out. "I guess I know what the red-headed pecker head looks like by now. Well, let me tell ya, I busted out of there fast but he saw me coming and he dead split out of there. He was gone up in an helicopter before I was halfway out to him."
"Helicopter?!" Nanaki echoed.
"Am I gonna have to keep telling you everything twice or what?" demanded the huge black man.
"No," Nanaki apologized, "I'm sorry. I was just really surprised. I didn't even know there were any civilian helicopters left."
"Oh don't worry, this weren't civilian. It said Shin-Ra on the side."
It was then that Barret heard his old comrade curse for the first time ever. "Shit!" Nanaki exclaimed.
Vincent finally managed to pull himself together and stand up. No matter how badly he felt, he realized he had to continue on his more recent task of discovering where Tifa had disappeared to.
As much as it hurt him to admit, Vincent didn't even blame Lucrecia. He had copped out and for a long damn time too. In fact, Vincent had always realized if Cloud and Tifa hadn't happened along that day and opened up his casket bed and then refused to leave him alone to return to his sleep until he had been awake long enough to consider living again, he'd still be in that damn box copping out.
But still it hurt and doubly so because he had never once considered if he actually found Lucrecia that she wouldn't want to see him. Life can be damn cruel and it never seems to stop.
Vincent treaded lightly to the door and pulled it open very slowly while literally peering around it into the hallway to see if Lucrecia had either warned someone of his presence or someone had heard them.
Observing the stairway appeared clear, he crept down them as quietly as he could, although he was certainly big enough and a bizarre enough appearing figure to cause him to realize he had little hope to hide from sight for long.
Vincent had just breathed a short sigh of relief at having at least successfully reached the first floor when he heard to his dismay, "Hey you! What are you doing in here?"
Vincent turned quickly to see the huge doorman from before striding toward him. Great, just what I need. Oh well, it can't be helped. If it be done, then it should be done quickly.
Vincent didn't even waste his breath in attempting to talk sense to this huge animal but instead spent the time, before the man reached him, to regulate his breathing to an even state. When the man began to speak again he was standing approximately five feet from Vincent.
Vincent stepped forward quickly and raised his pointed right footed boot directly up into the man's crotch area very hard! He noticed besides making the doorman to move his hands to his crotch area, it also caused his eyes to look as though they were going to pop right out of his head.
Vincent took this opportunity to join his hands tightly together intertwining his fingers and then bringing them up almost from the floor and hitting the man right under the point of his chin knocking him up, back, and down and out.
Vincent quickly moved around to the top of his head and dragged him into a room that looked as if it were being used as a storage area for a lot of worn out mattresses. Vincent winced remembering he was here looking for Tifa. He now found himself hoping she wasn't here, because if she were, then fate probably hadn't been too kind to her. If that was that case, Vincent vowed he would burn this place to the ground.
Stepping back out of the room his luck held, because it wasn't more than a minute or two later that a head stuck itself out of the business office and glanced around. "Where's Tony?" the head asked.
Vincent took a chance that the young gentlemen he had just personally annihilated was Tony and answered, "I'm filling in for him. He was called away on some personal business."
"Oh, what was that?"
Shit! This guy is so nosy. "I think it was something to do with his grandmother."
"Oh? That's odd, I thought his grandmother died last year."
The silence that fell seemed fraught with peril as Vincent unsuccessfully racked his brain to come up with something to say.
"Oh yeah, that's right," the other man said. "He has two grandmothers, hehe. Well, keep things calm out there, will ya? We're having a big meeting in here."
"Will do," Vincent replied. A big meeting, I wonder what's going on?
Not only did the pilots make certain to land on the lip of the North Cave one at a time, they also made sure they were nowhere near each other. The winds that swirled out of the cave could be very unpredictable and combined with the crosswind that a couple of copters could cause might take a landing which was perilous enough as it was and turn it into a disaster.
After the three helicopters put down and shut off entirely, Cid and Bosley exited first. Then Cloud clambered out followed by Jackie Jackson. Jenkins Crowley was the last to exit his machine and the first to gather everyone together.
Nominally the tall thin, dark-haired man had been chosen by the President to be the leader of the group, but everyone involved realized unspokenly that Cid and Cloud were the actual leaders.
As Jackie Jackson asked Jenkins a question, Cid looked beyond them and down into the North Cave from which mist was escaping and he actually shuddered at the thought of re-entering that evilness. Cid felt as though someone was walking across his grave. He recalled the vow he made to himself to never return here no matter what and he hoped he didn't come to rue changing his decision.