A/n: Well, it is official: My computer hates me. Completely. Like – the way Vincent hates Yuffie braiding his hair. And – being deprived of both VL and Deplora's stuff to read – I am back to writing. Though if this suckiness continues I will go play FF8 with the sole intention of looking at Squall's ass as much as is humanly possible.
Disclaimer: I wish that I owned Squall – of at least had a time share of him. But I'm not that fortunate. All I own is Juri, and anyone else you don't recognize.
There was an alarm going off somewhere. A steady Bbbtzz, bbbtzz, bbbtzz, threatening to drive her absolutely bat shit. Something pounds on the wall, and a slurred masculine voice growls through the plaster, "if someone doesn't turn that God damned contraption off, I am going to come over there and cram it up your collective asses!"
Yuffie sits bolt upright, looking around for either the owner of the voice, or the machine making the bbtzzing noise. She blinks, and looks around, disoriented. This certainly wasn't the bus that she had been on for who the hell knew how long, the springy bed and four walls could tell her that much. She kneads her eyes with her fists until her vision clears, and she can observe a rather groggy Aerith, hair falling out of last night's braid sit up and look around. "Morning, Aerith!"
Aerith looks up, "oh. G'morning, Yuffie. Just a sec." She rolls out of bed and crosses the room to a pile of laundry, clawing through it until she unearths a small black box, which she flicks a switch on and the noises stop. "Sorry about that, Kairi uses her alarm to wake everyone else up so she won't sleep through class."
A head and arms appear from under a blanket across the room. "'Time is it?"
Aerith blinks at a drowsy Juri, who was now residing on the floor. "Uh, seven oh seven. Time to get up!"
The dark haired teenager sits up slowly, pushing her long bangs out of her black eyes. There's a vaguely homicidal glint to them. "Classes start at nine. That is in one hour and fifty three minutes."
Aerith smiles, albeit slightly confused. "Yeah. But we need breakfast first, and there's only one person in the bathroom at a time." She smiles at Yuffie. "Why don't you go first today, seeing that I need to wake my friend up."
Yuffie shrugs, and grabs the first items of clothing she lays hands on, before darting to the shower. No doubt about it – this bathroom was made for midgets. She shakes her head and steps into pleasantly warm water, letting it spray down her shoulders and stomach. Entirely soaked, she soaps up, rinses, and steps out. A quick rub with her towel, pulling clothes on, and a run of her fingers through her dark hair and she's ready to face the morning.
She opens the door to be met by a Juri, no longer looking quite like a Wyvern. "Go help her." The unshowered girl jerks her head towards Aerith, trying to coax something bunched up ina ball at the foot of the bed out. She pushes past, leaving Yuffie running her fingers through still drying hair, trying and failing to not burst out laughing.
Aerith looks up, bushing her ruddy hair out of jewel like eyes. "Morning Yuffie. It's nice to see that someone here can wake up without biting my head off." She smiles and pokes the lump twice, eliciting a rustling from the person underneath. "Come on Kairi. Don't you want to see Sora Matsu?"
The lump erupts, sending blankets cascading everywhere, and wide purple eyes look around beneath a cloud of red hair. "Sora? Sora? Where?"
Aerith grins good naturedly. "Probably in the café by now." She steps to the side as the girl scrambles out of her nest, grabbing a few clothes and bowling over a freshly washed Juri in her haste.
Yuffie snickers, then offers her hand to the irate teen. "So, that's Kairi?"
Aerith smiles, and helps Yuffie pull the unresisting Juri to her feet. "Yeah. Let's go the café, Kairi will probably catch up with us in a couple minutes." She leads the two junior girls out of the room and down the hall to a small café crammed into a corner.
Yuffie follows Aerith eagerly to the counter, "French toast please!" She announces, copying Aerith, though Aerith had ordered a bowl of cereal instead. The trio makes their way down the line to where plates with their requests on it pop out, and find a table in a corner.
"Juri, aren't you going to eat something?" Aerith asks, sounding vaguely concerned. "You'll need fuel for today."
Yuffie shovels her French toast in her mouth, closing her eyes to savor the sweet toasty goodness. A peach pit thuds against her nose and she looks up, almost dropping a bite of French toast in her lap. She glares at an innocent looking teenager, eating the second half of her nectarine. "Juuuriii! What was that for?"
She shrugs, licking the last of the fruit juice off her fingers. "You'll give yourself diabetes if you keep eating like that. Then you'll go into shock or something equally unpleasant." A smile twitches at the corner of her mouth at this.
Yuffie finishes her breakfast in record time, and shrugs at Juri. "I'm not dead yet." She pulls a rather grotesque face and follows Aerith the a steel counter, sliding her dishes across to a woman in white mage robes.
Aerith walks quickly, and Yuffie, while able to keep up, certainly doesn't appreciate being made to jog everywhere on a full stomach. She pauses at the top of another flight of stairs, arms crossed over her stomach. "Ow."
Aerith looks over at the younger girl, concern shining in her big green eyes. "I'm sorry, Yuffie. I should have told you that it's a long walk to get anywhere here." She resumes walking, this time at a slower pace. A bell rings as they approach the destination that Aerith holds in mind. She smiles, good naturedly, albeit a little patronizingly as her charges jump at the sound. "The bells take some getting used to." She pulls a rather plain wooden door open, "welcome to morning weapons."
The bell clangs twice, and Aerith drags Yuffie and Juri into a set of empty folding chairs arranged in a semicircle in the middle of a gym sized room. Yuffie looks around, trying to push her bangs out of her eyes. There are about ten or so other students in the room, some obviously prefects, others just as obviously first years. People are chattering and laughing amongst themselves, and then there's a sudden hush.
Three figures walk to the front of the room, two tall, tall men, surrounding a slighter woman. The woman steps forward and all eyes snap onto her. "Good morning, class." Her voice is soft, sweet, and deadly. "My name is General Beatrix. These are my compatriots, Sir Auron and Mister Barret." She continues speaking in her steel and honey voice, but Yuffie's already off in la-la land. So. Weapons. How hard can this be? She's already proficient with her shurikens, thanks to excessive amounts of training, courtesy of her father.
"ALRIGHT, LADIES!" A black mountain of a man steps up, waving the machine gun attached to his arm around in the air. He seems, at least to Yuffie, to be talking to the two rowdy boys that had been on her bus, Matsu and Tamaki, though Aerith had called one Sora. The class jumps as a whole and stares at him he grins, revealing too many too white teeth. "So here's the drill, girls: We're doing summoning weapons today." A groan goes up from the upper classmen. "Shut the hell up. You second years'll be teaching the new children how to summon their weapons." He pulls a list out from under his vest. "Strife, you're working with Sora Matsu. Armarant, you're with Yuffie Kisaragi. Gainsborough – you're still working with Miss Kugyo. Keep up the good work." He continues in that vein of talk, and Yuffie looks around, trying to figure out who Armarant could be.
A sudden surge of movement signals the end of Barret's speech, and Yuffie looks around, trying to decide through a process of elimination, who this mystery student could be. The chairs are all empty, though, but when she stands to go on a quest for one of her teachers, a hulking boy, seven feet if he was an inch walks over to her. She looks up into a mass of red dreadlocks, completely covering his eyes.
"You're Kisaragi?" His voice is gruff, almost a growl.
"Yuffie, actually. Yuffie Kisaragi." She smiles up at the carved blue green features.
"Whatever."
Yuffie follows her partner over to a corner, wondering why on earth she had to be landed with a partner sporting the personality and charisma of a rock.
Juri is not altogether thrilled when Mister Barret does not bother calling her name. She walks up, pulling long striped red and white sleeves down over her hands. "'Scuse me, sir?" The big man turns, and looks down on her, flashing white teeth at her. Sunflasses would be nice for moments like these.
"Juri Synchratic, Squall Leonheart, and Vincent Valentine. You three'll be working together during this time." He gives the boy from the bus a very pointed look. "Now get to work!" He grabs Squall's shoulder as the small girl trails after the tall red caped figure.
She follows the boy, man rather, across the gym, trying to weave around the partners, all either sparing, or trying to summon a weapon. Blah. What did you need to summon weapons for? She carried one or two out of habit – not because she ever needed to use them, but because she liked the insurance of a butterfly tucked up her sleeve.
Red clothed man, Vincent, stops suddenly in a corner of the gym, looking around furtively. He relaxes, then jumps when Juri knocks into him. He whirls around, and she feels cold metal settle around her neck.
Red eyes stop a few inches from her own black ones. "Don't ever sneak up on me again." The man hisses, before releasing her and staring down at her impassively. "Summon weapons are basic." He pauses to tuck a strand of inky hair back into his headband before continuing. "Believing holds power here. By believing that I can call a weapon to my hand, it comes." There's a slender rifle in his hand now, and he smoothly locks it into place, brings it up and fires three times in sucession. Pin hole shots.
Juri blinks and wanders over to look at the target, really a red circle about an inch and a half in diameter, only two holes visible. She whistles between her teeth and jams her hands into her pockets, sauntering back over. "Cool beans."
Vincent shrugs, and gun disappears as easily as he had called it forth. "Try it."
She nods once, dark eyes focusing on a point about four inches from the tip of her nose. Huh. So, believe. She takes a deep breath, holding it and releasing it, trying to let all the tension just flow out of her. Believe. Her eyes close, but she can still feel the point she had been staring at. Something sparks inside of her. A memory of gunpowder, light, and magic. Something contracts very tightly in her chest, and there's an ice cold weight in her hand. She opens her eyes, looking to her teacher, only to find him paralyzed by something approaching from behind her shoulder. She spins on the toe of one black sneaker heavily patched with duct tape, as a man in a long leather coat brushes past her, giving her a shove. Before anyone can react, Vincent is swept up by the other man, a very blank look in blood colored eyes.
"It's good to see you again, Vincent." The voice is flat, almost emotionless, a verbal smirk. He brings his pale face closer to Vincents, lips part way open, and a burst of machine guns cuts through, causing everyone in the room, previously watching the drama unfold, to jump and stare at Barret.
"Cut that the fuck out Sephiroth." The big man growls, black eyes narrowing.
Sephiroth gives Barret a careless glance, swishing a few stray locks of silver hair over his shoulder. "As you wish, Professor." He turns his back, "bastard." He stares at Vincent, and even Juri, standing ten feet away can feel the testosterone radiating out of the taller male. He turns and walks away, making a very swishy sound as he passed.
As soon as the man had left, Vincent slumps over, wrapping his arms around his knees and staring straight ahead. For the second time in about thirty seconds, someone shoves past Juri and stops in front of Vincent. The boy from the bus, Squall. She growls something that may or may not have been unprintable, and watches, her guns melding back into her skin with a slight tingle.
Squall kneels in front of Vincent, forcing the other boy to look at him. "Vincent. Vincent! Are you alright." He gets a blink in reply. "You're going to be ok." He stands up and looks around the room. "Freya!"
A figure sporting a short red coat, top hat, and a tail walks over, butt of her spear clicking against the floor. "Squall?"
Squall nods to the boy on the floor, cutting out excess communication. Freya's spear disappears, and she pushes a lock of snow colored hair behind her shoulder and picks Vincent up easily, walking out of the gym with a practiced ease.
Squall doesn't turn to Juri immediately, and when he does, she can feel herself falling, falling, falling into those eyes. Eyes the color of the Maine Ocean at dawn. Cold, merciless, and beautiful enough to cause the viewer pain. But those eyes don't see her. They shoot right through her, past her and look at something on the far side of her skull. Scary.
"Summon your weapon." He says flatly, still focusing on something behind her, a most peculiar weapon appearing in his hands. The blade was that of a bastard sword, but had the helt of a six cylinder revolver. Peculiar to say the least.
Juri blinks. "What is that?" She asks, captivated by the oily reflections of the white lights on the blade.
"A gunblade. Summon your weapon." He growls something and shoves his bangs out of his eyes. Damn women.
Juri shakes her head, her waist long bangs sneaking past her shoulders again. She growls and holds her hands out, palms facing upward. Now what? There was none of that feeling, whatever the hell it had been when the black haired boy had been teaching her. She sneaks a furtive glance at her "mentor", the brunet was busy sparring with enemies that only he could see, silver blade dancing in and out. She shakes her head again, dark brown hair tickling the back of her neck.
Damn it girl, believe! She glares at her out stretched hands, fingers splayed outward. A hand, leather gloves icy against her skin forces her fingers to curl slightly, pointer fingers remaining strait. "It's stupid to summon a weapon if you'll drop it as soon as it comes."
The voice startles her out of her reverie of inward abuse, and she spins, adrenaline pumping, and her small fist spinning out and catching the older boy on the cheek. She stares at her hands, shocked. She had never been a boxing type. What she couldn't accomplish with fingernails, she accomplished with knives. What was more surprising to her was that there was a firearm in her grip. A firearm that had added a fair amount of power to her punch.
Squall stares at the short girl in front of him, not even bothering to check his cheekbone to see if she had really hit him. He had seen the fist fly, black handgun materializing in her first right before smooth knuckles thumped against his face.
Oh… oh my Gods. She stares at the sleek weapon clutched in her hand. It was large, but not clumsy, weighted, but not taxingly so. She doesn't even bother trying to suppress her blush reflex, heat spreading across her cheekbones.
"Practice summoning until you can call your weapon when you need it." He growls, sliding his Gunblade away with a hiss of metal on metal. He turns and walks away, acutely aware of dark eyes on his back.
A gong sounds and there's a flurry of movement, students grabbing bags and calling to their friends as they scurry onwards. Yuffie comes bounding up, good mood mostly untouched by her mentor's stoniness; Aerith following at a sedate pace.
The tiny brunette links arms with her two room mates. "Where do we go now Aerith?"
The older girl smiles, taking Yuffie's other arm. "We have fifteen minutes until the next class starts. So where ever you want, more or less."
Yuffie grins, "forward the ranks then!" And she skips off, dragging a vaguely perturbed Juri along behind her.