Disclaimer – I don't own anything from FF7.
The actual first chapter, greatness, tell me how you like it .
Chapter 1 – Mansion of Nightmares-------------------------------------------
Vincent's crimson eyes flew open, his body stiff from that nightmare he'd just been exposed to. He always had nightmares, well, not always, not anymore. They weren't as frequent as they used to be, before he'd went on his little journey with AVALANCHE. He'd gotten his revenge on Hojo, and destroyed Sephiroth, therefore saving the planet. Two sins down, the rest of his list to go.
Oh, and he had many sins, so many that he must atone for, therefore making quite the long list. He'd murdered so many people, careless of the lives he took, and of the lives he destroyed. Life is a precious thing, he should have known that, everyone should know that. It was so fragile, like a glass figure, and if you didn't take care of it properly, if you were too careless with it, it would break. It would break and burst into millions of broken shards, and they would be lost forever. You couldn't fix a life once you destroyed it, it was gone, for eternity. He should have known that.
He closed his eyes, for a moment or two, and inhaled the musty scent of his coffin. He felt something strange inside his gut, it was poking at him, demanding for him to pay attention, and just to make it go away, he paid attention. Something was different, something was wrong, he felt it, clawing at him. Chaos felt it too, he always felt what Vincent did, and it was making him uneasy. Chaos being uneasy made Vincent uneasy, for very few things made that horrid demon feel as jittery as he did now.
He fidgeted slightly, though there was little extra room in his oddly scented coffin for movement. The planet was screaming, he could feel it, it was quivering beneath him, shuddering over and over, it was unmistakeable. Something was happening, something that was throwing the planet off balance, and it troubled Vincent. Troubled him enough that it gnawed at his insides, and he knew that he'd need to stop it from occurring, or at least tell Cloud that something was going on, just in case.
He easily pushed the coffin lid over, only to be barricaded with the smell of decaying bones and flesh. Unpleasant to say the least. He reached over to grab Death Penalty, lying lamely at the bottom of the coffin, while trying to avoid breathing through his nose.
He grasped hold of Death Penalty's cool handle, and exited the coffin. Once he was free of the tiny space he'd resided, he fled the room, his garnet cape trailing behind him, giving him an overdramatic flare. He continued down that incredibly old hallway which was composed of worn and broken bricks, until he came to the spiralled stairs. They were extremely rusted, and rickety, each step he took creaking dangerously, as if warning him that it could break at any moment.
Vincent ignored the warnings, and continued upwards, until he came to the room. It was painted with chipped blue paint, cobwebs and dust being the only decorations for the walls.
He stopped, and pulled his PHS out of his pocket. He flicked the machine open, and held it to his ear, checking to see if the ring tone was there. Unfortunately for him, there was no ring tone. The batteries were dead, and he obviously had no spares.
He sighed with disappointment when he realised he'd have to travel all the way to the Kalm by chocobo, something he really, really didn't want to do, but he knew it had to be done. Cloud had to know that something was wrong, and he knew that damned troubled feeling at the pit of his stomach, nibbling away at him, wouldn't go away until he did.
He exited his mansion, to find that the weather seemed nonexistent. It was neither warm nor cold, nor was it windy, nor were there clouds. The sky was simply grey, everything seemed to be frozen in time, paralysed in a state of neutrality.
When he looked out into the town, there was no one in the streets. It looked absolutely deserted. Vincent couldn't say that this didn't trouble him. Nibelheim was usually reasonably quiet, but not like this. He knew he wouldn't be helping anything if he just stood there dwelling on it, so he began to move. Perhaps whatever is affecting the planet, is affecting everything else as well, perhaps.
He walked around his mansion to where the chocobo stable lay. There his gold chocobo stood. Vincent idly wondered how the damned bird managed to stay alive, seeing as he hadn't left his coffin in over a year to feed the beast.
He pulled over the stable door, finding that the gold bird had managed to somehow undo the latch, which would explain why he wasn't laying in the corner of the stable, dead and rotting. He'd been clever enough to get out and get his own food. Why the bird had returned to this god-forsaken place was beyond Vincent.
"Come here… Sunshine," he said, muttering the bird's name, grabbing its attention almost immediately.
Sunshine, the name Yuffie had given it, despite Vincent's opposing glare. You can tell that she'd spent all day thinking on it, using all her wit to come up with such a clever name for the chocobo.
He pet the golden beast's head, ruffling its lovely feathers. They were surprisingly soft beneath his fingertips, and he would have been shocked, had he not already known that they were. Feathers usually held this somewhat rough texture to them, but not these feathers, these feathers were like pure silk.
He led the giant bird out of the stable, and saddled it up, so that he could ride it. Riding a chocobo bareback, which he had done before, was not a pleasant experience, and he wouldn't relive that experience if he had a choice in the matter.
He grasped hold of it's reins, and mounted himself atop it's back, giving it a little kick that told it to get going. The bird sped off, its speed damn near amazing. No other chocobo was a fast as a gold, they couldn't compete with it, despite how much it might want to.
He looked around, the scenery all a blur, and he knew he'd be at Costa del Sol in a little less than two hours. Once he got there, he would cross the water so that he could make his way to the Kalm, where Cloud and Tifa both lived. He'd tell them something was up, then he'd be on his merry way. Yes, that was a good plan.
The time passed, and the chocobo continued to race on, not so much as stopping for a breather. It raced across the water, ploughing through oncoming waves without so much as a second thought. The waves provided no trouble for the chocobo, the bird was quick enough that it cut through them with ease.
Another hour passed, before the gunslinger arrived at the Kalm, the chocobo slowing at a pull of the reins. He looked around, noting that the town was considerably less populated than it usually was. Normally there were many people walking through the town, walking from store to store and chatting along merrily with other townspeople. There was none of that this day. There were a few people who dared to walk around, sure, but it didn't even make a dent in how populated it usually was.
He neared Cloud's home, and slid off the chocobo, leading it behind the house to where he assumed a stable would be. True to his assumptions, a stable was waiting there and it was filled with six other golden chocobos. He pat the large bird on the head, earning a pleased squawk, before undoing the stable's latch, and placing it in with the other chocobos. He hoped Cloud didn't mind, well, not that it really mattered. He wouldn't be staying too long anyhow.
He walked back to the front of the house, before placing a polite knock on the door, waiting patiently for a response. A minute or two later, the door flung open, only to reveal the female warrior, Tifa, a kind smile on her lips.
"Oh Vincent, you're here. We tried to call you a few hours ago, but your PHS wasn't working or something, it wouldn't go through," she said, pausing for a moment as she motioned Vincent inside.
Vincent walked passed the femme fighter, and into the foyer of the house. He heard other voices, ones he knew only too well. Tifa walked past him and led him through the doorway to her right, which came to a large living room where every member of AVALANCHE had gathered.
"Who's here Tif---oh, hey Vince," said Cloud, a smile playing at his lips as his blue eyes narrowed on Vincent's sun deprived face.
"Hey there Vinnie-boy! We were just talking about you," said another voice, one that belonged to the ninja sitting at the other side of the room, grinning like the Cheshire cat.
"Joy," muttered Vincent, his voice filled with absolutely no emotion, as it usually was.
"Yeah, what tha hell? We tried ta call ya, vampy. Did you break yer PHS?" asked the big black man, arms crossed against his chest.
Before Vincent could say anything, Cid decided it was his turn to comment. "We didn't call you, so how'd you know we'd all be here? Eh? Speak up god dammit," he growled, before taking in one long drag of his half-finished cigarette.
Tifa snatched it out of the man's mouth, and Cid reached to grab it back, but Tifa's reflexes were too fast for the older man.
"What the hell, woman?" he growled, and Tifa shook her head.
"You know Shera told you to stop smoking," she retorted, and walked into the kitchen to throw the remainder of the cigarette into the sink, and drench it with water.
Cid muttered a long string of curses, none of which Tifa caught from her place in the kitchen, and as far as Cid was concerned, that was a good thing. The last thing he needed was to be beat to a pulp by her.
There was a momentary pause, and Vincent took it as the opportune moment for his explanation.
"I didn't know any of you would be here. I simply came here to tell you something, considering, as you've all have noticed, my PHS isn't quite working," he stated coolly, crossing his arms. "Why are you here?"
Cloud smiled faintly. "Probably the same reason you came to talk to us. Something incredibly strange is happening, something of which Yuffie first drew to our attention. She told us that something was wrong with the people, a few days ago, that they were changing. She mentioned how they got awful sick, as in to the point of near dying, and then suddenly, like magic, they were better. They may have been better physically, but they were different. They didn't act the same, and she mentioned how something about them didn't feel right.
"Now this doesn't sound like a big problem, but it's not happening in just one or two people, it's happening in masses of people. It's not even just happening in Wutai, once she brought it up, Tifa and I began to notice that the same thing is happening around here. The others have agreed with us when we called them via PHS," Cloud paused in his explanation, waiting for any questions of comments. When there were none, he continued.
"It's not just the people who seem to be going through something, it's the weather, which I'm sure you've all noticed. Cosmo Canyon and Wutai, both places where the temperatures are notably very warm, have dropped to this, this neutral temperature, the same as it is outside," he finished.
"Well, this sounds like a half-assed issue. You called us all here because a bunch of numb nuts are acting weird, and because the weather is different? Big damned deal," growled Cid, clearly annoyed, and the fact that he hadn't gotten to finish his cigarette wasn't making his attitude any better.
Yuffie shot him a death glare. "Shut up you old geezer, it's worst than it sounds. People aren't just acting a bit funky, it's like they're completely different people, and not in a good way. They're getting sick enough that they should be dead, but they're not. Then they're magically getting better, and as soon as they're better, they're, they're… I don't know, they're just creepy, and they look at you like they want to kill you or something. It's like they're possessed," she cried, her tone tainted with worry.
"Don't you be calling me an old geezer you good-for-nothing brat-" began Cid, raising himself from the couch.
"Both of you, stop your bickering. Honest to god, it's helping no one. Anyway, didn't Vincent come here to tell us something?" asked Tifa, her voice silencing the bickering pair.
Vincent nodded. "It may not seem that important, but this morning I woke up to this unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach. The planet is distraught, I can feel it down to the depths of my soul. Something is wrong, and it's making both Chaos and I very uneasy. There aren't many things that can make Chaos feel uneasy."
"Oh, well this is just fucking dandy. The vampire's now a Cetra and can talk to the earth," muttered Cid, intentionally being a smart-ass.
"I never said anything about being able to speak with the earth, nor about being a Cetra. Credits to Chaos, I know the general… state of the planet. The only reason I know that the planet is in a displeased state is because of Chaos," he said, his crimson eyes burning into Cid's face, causing the man to fidget uncomfortably.
"Stop stirring up trouble Cid, and just listen to us for two minutes, will you? Good, anyway, I was in my bar last night, cleaning up as I was about to close up, and Asher came in, erm, he's a friend. He'd just gotten over some sickness, so I'd heard, and he'd almost died, but miraculously had gotten better. Anyway, he came and sat at the bar. I thought nothing of it, and simply told him that I was about to close up. He didn't move, not at first. I turned around to look at him, and there was this look in his face, some sick hunger, and then he jumped over the bar, right at me. He'd pulled a butcher knife out from under his coat, and he tried to kill me. He tried to stab me. I had to knock him out to stop his attacks," she said, a look twisting on her face, revealing that she was clearly shaken.
"Where's he now?" asked Red, who had all but been silent through out the entire conversation.
Tifa looked over at the giant cat, slight grin on her face. "Strapped down to the bed in the guest room. It's strange, I've known Asher for a while, and I know he wouldn't have tried to hurt me, he just wasn't that way. That look in his face, it wasn't his. Something is terribly wrong with him."
"Well, maybe something is fucked up," muttered Cid, running his hand through his blond mane.
"Told you, you big moron," muttered Yuffie, stormy orbs fixating themselves upon his rugged face.
Cid glared at her. "I'll show you who's the god damned moron, c'mere you little-"
Yuffie snickered and leaned back against the lavender painted wall, feeling absolutely no worry that the blond man would harm her in any way.
"Moving on. I think that we should check this out, find out what's going on, and how we can stop it, if we can stop it," said Cloud, interrupting the bickering pair. Barret snorted.
"But we 'ave already done our damned duty. We kicked Sephiroth's ass, and saved the planet. Other people can worry 'bout this," he said, shooting the blond man a stubborn glare.
"You wouldn't feel the same if it were Marlene who was getting that sick, and then suddenly changing, now would you? Eh?" shot Yuffie, her stormy eyes travelling to the black man's face.
Barret looked over at her, his gaze softening slightly, realising that her words rang true. If Marlene was the one getting sick, he probably wouldn't be so careless on this matter.
"I guess," he muttered, then as he looked at the ninja, a question came to mind. "Why do ya care so much 'bout this anyway, brat?"
Yuffie's stormy eyes narrowed slightly, and she was annoyed that the answer wasn't obvious.
"The people of Wutai are getting sick, my people. I care about Wutai more than anything in the world, you should know that," she said, her voice filled with a sudden seriousness and maturity that made the group of them be taken aback with surprise.
"Alright, since everyone seems to agree that this is a matter that needs to be looked into, we should split up and go check out things. Tifa and I will go and find the Turks, see if they know anything, since they always seem to know something we don't-"
As soon as those words were spoken, there were a few mutters from various people of the group that went something along the lines of "-Those damned good-for-nothing flaming bastards-"
"-Cid and Barret, you two should go back to Rocket Town and fix up Cid's airship, since I assume we'll need it eventually, and as far as I'm told it's not exactly working," continued Cloud, pausing to see if there were any questions and comments.
"Hah! I knew that rust bucket would fall apart sooner or later," shrieked Yuffie, her amusement increasing as Cid's face turned a deep crimson shade.
"Oh, go to hell, brat," growled Cid, shooting her the death glare of all death glares. If looks could kill, Yuffie would have been dead at least a hundred times over.
"I'll see you there," she replied, topping off the comment with an arrogant wink.
"Anyway, Red, Yuffie, and Vincent, you three should go to Nibelheim and read through Hojo's old documents or something, since I imagine he knows something about this. Before any of you say anything," said Cloud, eyes fixated directly on Yuffie's face, "this is non negotiable."
Cid looked over at Vincent, mustering as much sympathy as he could into his gaze. "I feel so damned sorry for you Vince, really I do."
"Oh shove it, you old geezer," muttered Yuffie, clearly offended at the man's comment.
"Alright, we should all get going. The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better," said the blond leader, running a hand through his spiked mane.
The group drained out of the room until the only people left where Cloud and Tifa, both seated together on the same lavender loveseat. The brunette looked over at her companion, slight curiosity staining her features. He looked down at her quizzically, cocking an eyebrow slightly.
"Do you really think it was a good idea to put Yuffie with Red and Vincent?" she asked, her voice quiet enough so that only Cloud would be able to hear, even if, though the chance was very slight, someone was listening in.
A faint grin came upon the swordsman's lips. "Sure it was. Red and Vincent will be able to deal with her fine. She can't fix an airship to save her soul, so going with Cid and Barret would have done nothing other than drive them insane, and she definitely wouldn't be a help in negotiating information out of the Turks, so yeah, I think it was best to group her with them," he explained, eyes never once leaving Tifa's face.
"I guess you're right," she said with a faint shrug. "Anyway, we'd better get going. Finding those god forsaken Turks isn't going to be easy."
"What are we going to do about Asher?" he asked, and Tifa shrugged her shoulders in response.
"I don't know, we can't let him lose. Maybe I can ask Abby to come in once a day, and feed him, or something," she said, and paused thoughtfully, seriously considering it.
"Isn't that that old bat from the store across the street? Are you sure she'd be able to handle Asher's insanity?" asked Cloud, and Tifa grinned maliciously.
"She'll be fine, and don't call her an old bat," she replied reassuringly.
Cloud smiled softly as Tifa pushed herself off the couch, and began her way out of their home. He followed suit, and walked out with her, the door closing behind him with a reassuring click.
The pair made their way to the back of the house where the chocobo stables lay. He caught a glimpse of Barret and Cid ridding in the distance, their chocobos racing at full speed. Then his pale blue orbs found more interesting targets, Vincent and Yuffie on their chocobos, both looking down at the giant cat who looked completely bewildered.
"So… Vinnie, who's he going to ride with, me or you?" asked Yuffie, breaking the temporary silence that had fallen between them.
Vincent was silent for a moment, considering the options. It really didn't matter whom the large beast rode with, not to him anyway.
"I suppose he can ride with me," he replied, his voice quiet and filled with what seemed to be an unlimited source of calmness.
For as long as Yuffie had known the gunslinger, the man was always calm and cool. He never let his emotions take control of him, no matter what. Hell, sometimes she wasn't even sure that he had emotions. It was damned near amazing how he could shield his feelings so well, hide them beneath that well formed barrier he'd put up.
Sometimes the ninja just wanted to grab his shoulders, shake him, and simply scream at him to feel… anything. To let his emotions get to best of him, to act human. All humans had periods of time where their feelings got the best of them, overruled any rational thought, and they acted despite how foolish the action may have been. That never happened to Vincent. Vincent never overreacted, he was incapable of it, in Yuffie's point of view anyway.
She watched the larger man signal the beast up, and Red easily jumped onto the chocobos back, earning a wark of obvious discontent from the golden bird. Vincent gave the creature a quick reassuring pat on the head, before giving it a little kick. The bird took this as the signal to depart, and quickly sped off.
Yuffie followed his example and tapped her chocobo with the back of her heel, and it raced off after Sunshine. This chocobo had been graced with the name Goldie. Sunshine and Goldie, ah, the originality never seemed to cease.
Goldie quickly caught up with Sunshine, clearly faster because of the obvious fact that she had the considerably lighter load. Sunshine and Goldie managed to race at the same speed, so that they were running side to side.
Yuffie looked around boredly as the time slowly crept by, not that there was much to look at that wasn't blurred. It was almost like time was ticking by slowly just to spite her, and she was annoyed, very annoyed.
She boredly played with the chocobo's neck feathers, one hand holding loosely onto the reins. She took hold of a feather and gently pulled it, and when it didn't come out, she pulled harder. Again, it remained intact. She grinned faintly, and yanked, hard, pulling out the feather, earning a wark of severe displeasure from her chocobo. It bucked upwards, and she grasped onto the reins just in time to keep from falling onto the dry terrain.
"Holy hell, are you trying to kill me?!" she shrieked, earning a wark from the golden bird that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.
"Did you just laugh at me? Was that a laugh of mockery? Are you mocking me, you brainless bird? Keep this up and I'll be having fried chocobo drumsticks for dinner tonight, and don't you think for a minute that I wouldn't do it," she said, one hand releasing the reins long enough for her to poke the bird at the back of the head.
When the bird didn't wark in response, she continued. "I hear chocobo meat is good. I've never tried it myself, but hey, I'm always up to new experiences."
Vincent looked over at his other companion, eyebrow cocked as he realised she was talking to the uninterested golden bird. What she could possibly be talking about to a chocobo? Honest to god. That was proof that she never shut up.
Time passed, and the chocobos reached the ocean water, and didn't so much as hesitate before ploughing into it, easily slicing through the tiny waves that broke the ocean's surface. Yuffie's yammering came a cease when she began to feel sick to her stomach, nausea taking effect. Somehow, someway, she still managed to get seasick, despite the fact that she was riding a chocobo.
Nausea, in her opinion, was the worst sickness of them all, dear god, the worst! The chocobo came to a surprisingly difficult wave to break through, and the ride suddenly got rocky, well, rockier than it had been, and Yuffie was seconds away from tossing her cookies.
A hand clapped over her mouth, and she closed her eyes tightly, forcing her churning stomach to calm itself down. She wasn't about to puke up all over herself and the blasted chocobo if she could help it, she could restrain herself, she could. Dear lord, she hoped she could.
As soon as the chocobo stepped upon flat land, Yuffie's stomach stopped twisting and turning, and relief slowly returned to her, and she was grateful.
As the time continued to creep slowly by, she played with Goldie's feathers, brushing her fingers gently through them. She liked chocobo feathers, always had, she thought they were lovely, fascinating, for some reason or another. Of course, they weren't nearly as fascinating as materia. Of course not.
And speaking of materia… Yuffie pulled out a gleaming crimson materia, to be more specific, Vincent's mastered fire materia. She couldn't help but grin maliciously, for the gunslinger hadn't even noticed it, but that was to be expected, for she was Yuffie Kisaragi, princess of Wutai, master thief, and the greatest ninja on the planet. God, she was so, so good. It was overwhelming sometimes.
Finally, the chocobo's reached Nibelheim, and both Yuffie and Vincent pulled on the reins, forcing the giant birds to slow. Yuffie looked around the town, utterly bewildered as to why it looked to be completely abandoned. She'd never been a fan of Nibelheim, it was a creepy town that held even creepier memories, but this was full out weird.
"Holy materia, this place looks like a ghost town. What's up with this?" she asked, looking over to the pair on the chocobo.
Vincent glanced over at her, and gave her the response she knew so well. Silence.
She growled in irritation, the dreaded silence. Honest to god, she preferred it when he was being a smart-assed sarcastic jerk, because at least he talked.
She glanced over at Red as he jumped off the chocobo, deciding he was tired of riding on the giant bird, and walking seemed the more pleasurable option. He padded through the seemingly deserted town, looking around warily. Something didn't smell right, and he didn't like it. The smells of Nibelheim never particularly tickled his fancy, but this… this was merely horrid. It smelled faintly of sickness, and poison, and darkness. It smelled of evil.
Yuffie and Vincent followed the giant beast's example, and slid off their chocobos, walking ahead of the giant birds and leading them by the reins. The ninja looked over at Red, stormy orbs watching him curiously.
"Whatcha smell, Red?" she asked, and he looked over at her with his single golden eye. That single golden eye was filled with such intelligence and wisdom, that Yuffie couldn't help but partially admire the fiery beast, though she'd never admit it.
Nanaki flicked his burning tail. "Nothing pleasant, to say the least. But I don't sense any danger," he replied.
The three made their way over to the mansion, Yuffie hesitating slightly before entering the gates. However creepy the town of Nibelheim itself had been, it didn't even put a dent in how utterly disturbing this mansion was. It was so dark, always seemed to be bathing in the shadows. It didn't matter how bright the sun may have been that day, it was always wrapped in shadows. It was unnerving to her.
That mansion, it was a place of nightmares, where so many were created and moulded. She knew that, she also knew that Vincent had experienced some of these nightmares first hand. He had been shot, and then saved from death only to be experimented on. The terrifying experiments consisted of giving Vincent four demons that resided in the darkest corners of his mind, and took form and shape when he felt extreme emotions, most commonly anger. He also got, what Yuffie thought to be, a nifty golden claw, as well as his impressive crimson eyes. After the experiments, he had the luck to have been shoved in a dusty old coffin that barely fit him, and he chose to sleep there as his punishment for all his sins. What a way to punish oneself.
Yuffie felt a twinge of pity for the man. Her and Vincent may not have been best buddies, but she still felt for him. Being stuck in a coffin for thirty years is no one's idea of a good time… except some twisted sicko, but other than that.
The ninja believed that Vincent didn't deserve all what had happened to him, all the suffering he'd gone through, all the pain. He may have been a cranky, antisocial, smart ass, but he was her friend, in a way, and he didn't deserve it. Vincent was a good guy, a little too angsty for her taste, but underneath all that sadness, sorrow, and perhaps even anger, he had a heart, he had emotions just like everyone else, even though he denied it.
She was snapped out of her thoughts as she heard a crack of thunder snap through the sky. She gazed upwards, frowning slightly as she noticed the once neutral sky, darkening into a forbidding state.
Great, just great. Rain, and thunder, and lighting. Just what I wanted. I get to be in that freaky-deaky mansion with only Mr. Vampiro himself, and a giant cat for protection. Not like I need protection, I am the great ninja Yuffie! But still…
She walked around the mansion to the chocobo stable, trailing far behind her two other companions. The ninja took up a light jog, and caught up to them, slowing back down to a walk as the gap came to a close. They placed the two gold chocobos in the ragged old stable, which Yuffie assumed was barely holding up. It looked like if she gave it a little knock, it would come crashing down atop the golden bird's heads. Eh well, what can you do?
Sucks to be them.
They returned back to the front, and entered the mansion, Yuffie being the most hesitant to pass through the dirtied doorway. She hated the mansion, oh yes she did. Horrible place, absolutely horrible. Why'd they have to send her there? Why, oh why?
The floorboards creaked as the trio moved through the foyer towards the stairs, the ninja looking around warily, her muscles knotted five times over. The room had a dusty smell to it, an old smell. You could tell just by the smell that no one had actually lived in this house for a long time, aside from Vincent that is, not that Vincent generally counted, since all he did was sleep in that god forsaken coffin anyway.
Vincent led them up the stairs, and into the bedroom, looking around the cobweb filled room briefly, before leading them down those rickety, rusted stairs. With their three weights combined, the creaking was especially loud, crying to them that any more weight, it would simply collapse, and they would all come tumbling down.
They reached the bottom in one piece, and made their way down the extremely dark hall. There was no light, none aside from the flame a lit at the end of Nanaki's crimson tail. It was that single flame that stopped the room from being completely pitch black, and leaving them to fumble around and hope to god that they didn't run into anything dangerous before finding the correct room.
Vincent hit the light switch, and bright light came flooding into the room, taking any space it could get its greedy little hands on. The darkness was forced into corners, and other areas the light couldn't seem to access, and it would await there until the light source was cut off. Such a long time from then.
Yuffie observed with boundless curiosity, staring at the shelves which were overflowing with worn and torn books, binders, notepads, more books, various pieces of paper, and did I mention books? The desk was overflowing with loose sheets, as were the drawers, and heck, even the ground was covered in them.
"Uh, yeah, where do we start?" she asked, rubbing the back of her neck as she looked to the dark gunslinger with curiosity.
"This will take some time, I suppose we should skim through everything, find anything that's even remotely related to what's going on," he said, running his human hand through his ebon mane.
"We should perhaps start a pile of books we've been through," stated Nanaki, reasonably.
Vincent nodded his head, then looked over to the far corner of the room, "We'll put them all there."
They all nodded their heads in unison, and there was a slight hesitation before the three of them began their work. Yuffie pulled out a book, cover so worn and torn that any roughness once oh ever would tear it off. It was hanging on by its last string, literally.
She let herself drop to the floor, and she began boredly flipping through the pages. It wasn't long before she discovered that the book dealt with economy, and tossed it to the corner. Why he had a book about economy in his research room, was beyond her, but who was she to nitpick?
Hours passed, and evening was closing in, but despite how many books she skimmed through, there always seemed to be a hundred more waiting for her. The job seemed impossible, there was so much information, and none of it seemed to be useful at the given time.
It was storming, rain beating against the dark mansion, thunder booming mercilessly, lightning cracking against the sky. The ninja was nearly at her wits end, when she pulled out a thick novel that took her aback.
"What the hell? 'Gone With the Wind'. What does 'Gone With the Wind' have anything to do with anything he could have possibly been doing here?" she said, gripping onto the book with severe annoyance.
Vincent and Red both twisted around to look at the distraught 17-year-old, who looked like she was going to take her Conformer and slice and dice it until the pieces were barely recognizable.
"Yuffie, we've been at this since early afternoon, you're overtired, and stressed out. Put the book on the ground, and take a nap in the corner, or something of that matter. Oh, and before you say anything, yes you have to sleep in this room. If you're upstairs, we won't be around, and you'll be defenceless against anything that dared come into this mansion," said Red, calm and reason tainting his voice.
Yuffie nodded, and found that he was right, she was tired. Too tired to bother being stubborn and arguing just to argue, which, if you think about it, must have been extremely tired, to the point of being minutes away from passing out.
She let the book fall to the floor, and she laid down onto the cold ground, using her arms as a pillow for her head. Within seconds, she was out. Red watched her for a few moments, almost surprised that she had given in so easily.
He couldn't help but feel pity for the young woman, only a year since they had defeated Sephiroth, and they were already back to saving the planet. She was just a teenager, and from what he'd gathered, she'd been forced to grow up at a young age, never really experiencing a true childhood.
True, she still held the immaturity of a teenager, in some ways. The obnoxiousness, the arrogance, and the playfulness. Despite all that, there were times where there was a hardness on her face, a type of seriousness that he had never seen in a teenager before, only on older adults. She was a teenager in many ways, but in other ways, she was very grown up, though many didn't see that, because she seemed to hide it all under a mask, but then again, who didn't hide things under a mask?
He looked over at Vincent, who had restarted searching through one of the older notebooks. Vincent felt Red's gaze on him, and turned his head to look at him, waiting patiently for Red to say what he wanted.
"We should probably get some rest also, it's getting late, and there's no telling when we'll be on the move again," he said reasonably, as always.
Vincent sighed, not wanting to stop his search quite yet, but he knew that Red was right, that he would need rest, sooner or later, and the opportunity for him to do so wouldn't always be available. He placed the book on the ground, as well as Death Penalty, and walked over to Yuffie. He stepped over the ninja, Red watching him with his curious amber eyes, as he shut and locked the metal door with a click, insuring their safety.
He then flicked off the light, leaving Red's tail to be the only source of light, before he returned to the bookcase he had previously been at, next to the other metal door, and he took a seat. With that, he leaned against the bookcase, books roughly poking at his back, though he paid them little attention, and he closed his crimson eyes.
Red followed his lead, laid his head down onto his fiery red paws, and closed his amber orbs, letting sleep overtake him nearly as quickly as it had overtaken Yuffie. The three companions didn't dream that night, or at least, any dreams that they could remember, and maybe, it was better that way, for it seemed that in that kind of mansion, the only thing that one could dream was nightmares.
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