Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 7 belongs to Square-enix or is it squaresoft? Meh, all the same.

Hi there! How y'all doing? I love Arby. Don't ask. Not the restaurant, though, I really don't like that place. –shivers- LoL. Thanks for the reviews. My writer's block is starting to… hop away? Do square things hop? I mean like… they can't roll… well most of its gone I guess. … -tick tock- umm… well then… OH YEAH! If you're a Tifa/Cloud fan or Aeris/Cloud fan, go check out 'Question of Sanity' of mine. =) Or if you're a Sephiroth fan, go check out 'Ensnared'. =) =)

Meeting The Unacquainted.

People rushed by, many of them were in discourse with someone across the Planet. Speaking into small cell phones. But Nguyen was not there, standing by the stairs like she had said she would be.

"There you are! Where have you been?! You're over an hour late!" A shrill cry shrieked into Cid's right ear, some how, from some mystery-hiding place, Nguyen managed to get right behind him.

"Holy fuckers! How the hell you get there?!"

"I walked." Her innocent, naïve play was irritating but it wasn't exactly an act…

"Are we going to find it today? Or research?" Before a brawl could begin, Nanaki started business. Eagerness bubbled within him, such an adventure was exactly what he craved for the last collection of months.

"Um, no guarantees but we're going to the temple."

Tifa tried her best to ignore the continuous stare Vincent was inflicting on her. Mostly because of the feeling she was experiencing every time she thought of him looking at her.

"When are we fucking goin'?" Growled Cid.

"Well, first we need to research on booby-traps! Silly child." Swiftly and subtle, she bit away Cid's patience slowly. Nguyen turned around and headed towards the doors of the museum, leaving an angry pilot whom was about to pounce onto the arrogant woman if a pregnant wife had not held him back.

Once inside her office, she threw several heavy books at them, all having 'Chronos' or 'Hades' in its title. Nanaki skimmed the context briefly, stopping to question Nguyen on something he'd find. Cid sat with Shera at the table by the door, both reading slowly and joking at the absurd drawings. Vincent sat in a corner interpreting the written pages, not dark but a corner nonetheless. Tifa sat boringly in the chair in front of Professor Pham's desk. The hours crawled by with not much progress, there was next to nothing on the traps in the temple.

Though they had found that there was three temples in all; Chronos, the destruction Temple; Hades, the Death Temple, and Ares, the War Temple. All were found by mistake, all were hidden until they were hit during some dig. Nothing in history read of these Temples, making it almost impossible to enter it. Some were successful in entering but none were lucky enough to live very long. Myths of curses were aroused at the deaths of Eric Hirshbeck, Anita Lang, Randeep Kooner and Alisha Porter.

E. Hirshbeck had found and excavated the Chronos Temple but when he exited he had been mumbling of a curse, two days later, he was found aged over half a century. Scientists refused to believe in a curse and said that a materia had been used on him. He had pockets full of treasures when he had exited though.

A. Lang had gone into the Hades Temple after someone else found it though the name was not available. She didn't return so they sent a rescue team to find her, they had found her near the exit but she had entered a vegetable state. Again, scientists had insisted that she had been hit on the head or something however, there was no sign of anything hitting her. She also was found with clothing lined with jewels.

R. Kooner went inside the Ares Temple, leaving it with several artifacts in which she had sold on the black market. She was murdered mercilessly, her neighbors mentioned hearing horses and metal clanking the night she was supposedly killed. Her next door neighbor and friend had said there were several men, dressed in armor entering her home. Horrifying details were mentioned on upon her discovery. Her body was slashed and smeared on her walls, and the room was painted with blood markings, possibly a warning. But no one could decipher it. Some walls were knocked down, as if something obscenely large had moved through the house. Her expression was of true agony.

A. Porter had re-entered the Chronos Temple five years after E. Hirshbeck's death, she had noticed that all of the archeologists had taken something from the Temples. Deciding that might have been one of the reasons for the curse, she had left the Temple without anything and came out with no harm. She had written a book on its contents but with vague details. During work, she had become restless and childish, her doctors had unearthed the cause; her mind was reciprocating. She had passed away of normal causes at the age of 72 about twenty years ago. She was the most recent visitor of any of the Temples.

Fear had struck many lives at these signs, at the omens. Twenty years had whooshed by without a single disturbance touching the death-ridden Temples.

"So… I guess we're just going in then!" Nguyen smiled brightly after finding all there was, grabbing flashlights and such materials for the excavation. An hour later, they had driven out in the professor's car to a chilly tundra. Snow swept down on them but they continued moving until a mountain came into view through the blizzard.

"We're here!" Nguyen's voice yelled over the storm. She stood by the mountain as if waiting for it to open magically. "It should be right around here!"

"Are you sure?" Tifa wrapped her purple scarf around her neck tighter, the wind was nibbling her body heat away from her navy sweater and her jeans also did nothing to grasp the warmness the flew away from her legs. "I don't see anything!"

They began to walk around the area the map pointed to. A shrill scream sounded from Shera, she was on her knees, looking at a gaping hole that had swears booming from the bottom. Cid had fallen threw the entrance. Once everyone had jumped down, the air had become unsettlingly warm, like a summer day.

The stone corridor was long and dark, no torches or flames lit the way, making the flashlights come into use. They continued down until Nguyen, who led the way, stopped abruptly. A single tile stood higher than the rest, a trap. Carefully stepping over it, they continued. Several traps lay intact when they reached a large circular room. By Nanaki's calculations, the mountain had been hollowed out specifically for this chamber.

It had vines growing the walls, and an eerie blue glow emitted from them also. In the center lay the Aiya Dagger on a pedestal. Nguyen stepped into the blue luminescent towards the dagger, she clamped her hands onto it.

"Catch!" A swift snatch and she chucked in to Vincent. A rumbling began when Nguyen began to move back towards them, all of the sudden, more vines appeared and formed a wall shielding Vincent from Nguyen.

"Shit!" Cid pulled out a fire Materia and cast it but nothing happened. Not 'it had no effect' but nothing appeared. No energy drained from Cid and the Materia refused to glow. The ebony-haired fighter whipped out Death Penalty and shot at the green-plant wall; the bullet stopped in midair. Right in front of the wall.

"Ahhhh!" Tifa, who was standing beside Vincent began to fade; the ex-Turk grabbed her arm before she dissipated completely. In a second's time, they were both gone.

"Cid. I'm scared." Tears poured out of Shera's eyes as she held her husband's arm. The pilot looked into her eyes but only saw fear… then it started to wane. Her laugh-lines disappeared into her firming skin, her height began to shrink. Cid could do nothing as she slowly became a child. A baby.

"We've got to get out." Nanaki stated while Cid picked up a young Shera. They began their way back the way they came but dozens of tunnels had formed. They were in a Lybrith.

Vincent's eyes were shut tightly, in his metal claw, he held the Aiya Dagger; his human hand was holding Tifa's arm. Moan.

"Vin-Vince…?" She croaked out the words. Her right ankle throbbed, when she had dwindled in existence and reappeared, they'd fallen from a high altitude. Cracking an eye open, the martial artist saw Vincent lying face down beside her, with his hand holding her arm.

"Are you alright?" He sat up, balancing on his knees. He looked at Tifa, her hair a mess and her face stretched into a pained facial cast, but she still looked ravishing. What am I saying?

"… Yeah. I think I sprained my ankle…" Her flashlight had rolled down the rock hall slightly. Vincent helped her stand but it was definite that she couldn't walk.

"I can walk."

"No." Gracefully, he swept her up into his arms. She was light, amazingly light.

"Really! I can walk!"

"Just keep quiet." He hadn't meant to be so harsh…

He bent down so Tifa could retrieve the flashlight and hold it up for him; she also clutched the dagger. As they moved closer to the tunnels ahead, screams could be heard. They were Nguyen's.

"The Curse! The Curse! Let me out! Please, god!" They were heart wrenching. She was dying and she wasn't dying quietly. But neither Vincent nor Tifa could do anything to help the woman that had helped them. "Please! Anyone!"

"C-Can't we help her?" So kind-hearted. Tifa Lockheart, he would never understand how she could have bombed the reactors. Knowing that someone, at very least one, would be killed.

"… No." Her head lay on his shoulder as he carried her. She smells like fruit and … what is that other smell? Freesia? No. Lilacs. She smells like fruit and lilacs.

The decided on the center tunnel, Vince walked quietly, ignoring Tifa's attempts of small talk. He didn't want to be harsh or cold. Really. But he couldn't allow this odd lust he was feeling to grow. It was only lust and lust could be dangerous.

"…What's wrong?" Her tone had changed to a gentle one. "You don't usually talk but you usually talk more than this."

"Nothing."

"There's no such thing as 'nothing'."

"Of course there is. I am feeling nothing at this moment."

"No. You can feel my head on your shoulder right now."

"What if I was to say I didn't?"

"…Well, then you'd be feeling numb." The stoic shooter couldn't help but chuckle at her analogy. It was amusing.

"Tou-ché." He stopped walking; the screams had stopped. Nguyen was released from pain.

"They stopped." Tifa's words were not meant to be heard but were. She didn't know the weight that had been put onto Vincent's shoulders. Nguyen Pham had died for his cause, another sin to the list.