Disclaimer: By...Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance Series (es) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and…like 40 other authors!
GMHY: "Hey Raistlin! Does FFVII belong to me?"
Raist: (looks up in surprise) "I believe not. Do you know where it is?"
GMHY: "The game? Well, I'm not sure..."
Raist: (makes an evil villain pose) "Playing that game would give me the practice I need to defeat Takhisis and become a God!"
GMHY: Oo "If you weren't hot...I would say that you were crazy..."
Raist: "I'm not crazy...just manipulative."
GMHY: "Oh. Okay." (gives Raist a noogie)
Raist: "That hurt, you fool!" (starts to cough blood)
GMHY: (not apologetic) "Crap. I'm sorry, Raist..."
Raist: (writhes on the ground)
GMHY-makes peace sign with fingers as Raistlin claws at her feet and gasps for breath- "Neither I nor my white-haired bishonen Raistlin Majere own FFVII, a'ight?"
Optional Characters
By Great Materia Hunter Yuffie
Chapter 3: "Intruder Alert"
Darkness, and a never-ending staccato of droplets hitting the floor near the head of the coffin, woke him from his unhappy reverie.
He winced. The worst part by far of his bizarre existence was waking up. Just as soon as he began to believe the horrible reality he created for himself in his slumber, he was jerked back to reality. The waking world was the true nightmare. How he truly existed was much worse than any dream his mind could conjure up.
The strange man was stunned, then, to wake for once without pain. He was also shocked that he had only been asleep for the normal eight hours, as opposed to the years he usually slept.
He was also startled to understand that Chaos had been waiting for him to wake up.
Chaos was a very bored demon and was very seldom animated. But when the strange man came to consciousness, it was because the demon had woken him up, which it never did.
Chaos growled, sending an electric current through his legs. Wake up, mortal. There is news.
The strange man's eye twitched unconsciously. 'News' was never good, coming from Chaos. The last news had been three years ago, when Chaos had contemptuously informed him that Meteor was hurtling toward the Planet.
The strange man desperately wanted to go back to sleep and avoid whatever news was forthcoming. Instead, he waited patiently for an explanation.
There is someone in the mansion again.
The strange man could never figure out how Chaos could know that when it was trapped in a coffin just like he was, but he never questioned it.
The last people who came did nothing to bother us, the strange man answered dismissively.
Three years ago there had been a group of people who had found the secret laboratory underneath the mansion. He had heard them pass in front of the door, but they had never explored inside his room.
When Chaos didn't offer any more information, the strange man tried to go back to sleep, but there was a curious tension and excitement in him, a mixture of his own and Chaos' reactions to the news, that wouldn't let him rest.
Cloud was already awake and making breakfast in his villa in Costa del Sol when he received the call from Red XIII. He grabbed the PHS and his plate of pancakes and eggs and brought them all to the table simultaneously.
Sitting down, he answered the ringing instrument.
"Hello? Cloud here."
"Hello, Cloud. This is Nanaki."
Cloud grinned. "Hey, Red! What's going on?"
After the Meteor incident, the members of AVALANCHE returned to their homes all over the world. It was kind of rare treat for Cloud to receive any contact from the former members of his ragtag team besides Tifa, because they had gotten married soon after.
"Cloud, there's a problem." The gruff voice on the line hesitated.
Cloud ate a bite of pancake. "What do you mean?"
Red XIII sighed. "A ninja broke into my grandfather's house tonight. She stole the Huge Materia."
There was silence for a few seconds as Cloud choked on his pancake.
"Do you know where she went?"
"We think that she fled to the north, either Nibelheim or Rocket Town. I think we will catch her soon. She could not have gone very far."
"She's a ninja. She's probably heading for Wutai." Cloud's voice was contemplative.
"Red, those Huge Materia. We have to get them back as soon as possible. In the wrong hands, they could be as destructive as the Black Materia or Holy."
"We're searching right now." Red XIII's voice sounded slightly offended.
"I know. Since Cid's closer, maybe you should call him and ask if she went that way."
"I already did. He hasn't seen anyone matching her description."
"I see." Cloud exhaled, closing his eyes and eating a bite of eggs. "I'm going to Nibelheim, then."
"Cloud, I don't want to make you-"
"Too bad, Red. I'm really bored. I don't have anything to do. I think I'll go to Nibelheim. It would be better than sitting around here all the time. Besides, I'll have Tifa come along.
I know that she'd like to see you again, too."
"Alright, Cloud. I'll see you in Nibelheim."
"Bye, Red."
Cloud rested back in his chair with his arms behind his head. Finally, a little excitement for once.
A blinding ray of light fell on Yuffie's face, falling through an ancient cracked window and spilling over the dusty floor of the ShinRa Mansion. Her face muscles twitched spasmodically; her large gray eyes opened and adjusted to the room.
Her arm was in so much pain that all she could do for a few minutes was lay there feeling sorry for herself. Moaning, she sat up. Chubs was pecking at a floorboard toward the left of the front door. Dust motes floated in the air as the afternoon sunlight hit and played with them. There was a great staircase leading upstairs and four doors leading in all the cardinal directions.
"Chubs! Get over here!"
The blue chocobo warked guiltily and turned to look at her. Then he started to peck on the floor again.
Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Leviathan save me from fat chocobos!"
When that didn't get a response from her mount, she painfully climbed to her feet and limped over to him, even though her legs weren't injured.
Yuffie latched onto her chocobo with her good right arm, leaning into him as hard as she could. "Chubs, you got some 'splaining to do!"
Chubs merely readjusted his weight and never stopped pecking the floor. Yuffie sighed and rolled her eyes, rummaging through one of the packs until she found a hi-potion. She was comforted to find her weapons and the Huge Materia still among the items in the chocobo's pack.
"Man, I probably only have like thirty hit points left." She glanced at Chubs, who was ignoring her, then at her injured arm, which had bled completely through her armor sleeve.
"This should do it. Bottoms up!" The ninja drank half the potion and poured the rest of it directly on her arm, feeling pleased when the wound stopped bleeding and began to heal up.
She tested it out, giving it a few stretches. It was still painful, but the good healing kind of pain. If she used it, the wound would open again, but it would heal for now.
"Hey, what's so interesting?" Yuffie asked Chubs, feeling a little left out. She knelt by his face and reached to grab a piece of paper that he had been pecking at. It was a note, yellowed and covered in dust. She wiped at it and read:
"I must get rid of all those that stand in the way of my research. Even that one from the Turks. I scientifically altered him, and put him to sleep in the basement. If you want to find him, then search the area. But...this is merely a game I thought of. It is not necessary for you to participate if you don't want to."
Yuffie glanced at Chubs. "What the heck is this crap?"
Chubs didn't answer because he was busy with another piece of paper he found on the floor. She wrestled it away from him as well.
"Move the dial on the safe carefully, but quickly. You have 20 seconds. You can not go past the numbers while turning. The four hints for the numbers are:
1. Look for the lid of the box with the most oxygen.
2. Behind the ivory's short of tea and ray.
3. The creak on the floor near the chair on the second floor. Then to the left five steps, up nine steps, left two steps, and up six steps."
"Hah! It's like a treasure hunt! It says something about a safe, and that's got to mean money!" When she saw Chubs' blank expression, she became exasperated. "Oh, come on. It's not like we have anything better to do. We have to hide out here for a little while before we head back to Wutai, anyways."
Cheered for the first time since she got her hands on the Huge Materia the day before, Yuffie set out to unravel the puzzle that she was sure led to a great treasure in the safe upstairs.
After thinking about it a minute, she realized that the fourth clue was written with invisible ink. She held it up to a flashlight and read "Dial (4) is (Right 97)."
Yuffie shook her head. "If they're going to be this easy, I shouldn't even bother. Whatever's in the safe is probably not even worth it." (1)
She soon unraveled the other clues, finding the numbers hidden on a lid of a box upstairs, behind the grand piano, and on the specific floorboard after following the directions from the squeaky one. Chubs watched her come and go through the quiet, dusty mansion, settled down in the huge anteroom and occasionally warking. He was too busy eating his breakfast to assist her, not that he would have been much help, anyway.
Finally armed with the four combinations, Yuffie skillfully opened the safe upstairs. When she grasped the handle and opened it, an arm exploded out of it and hit her in the chest, knocking her back against the wall. When the black spots receded and her breath came back, she had barely enough time to dodge before a sword-like arm chopped into the wall behind her.
As the hulking monster tried to pry its arm out of the wall, Yuffie had an opportunity to realize what had emerged from the safe.
Lost Number!
The monster, its head a burly mask of teeth and eyes, finally dislodged its sword-arm. Turning toward the ninja, it raised its arm.
Yuffie crouched, preparing to dodge. The ninja reached in her tennis shoe for the materia she always kept there in case she was separated from her shuriken. Before she could reach it, though, the Lost Number seemed to change its mind. It slammed its hand on the ground, casting Quake2. The ninja back flipped out of the room, avoiding the attack and desperately trying to find Chubs, who had her weapons in his pack.
The Lost Number bullied its way through the walls by the door, beating a hole large enough to fit through. It roared hoarsely and took another swipe at her, but she was too agile to get hit a second time. Yuffie finally got a hold of the green materia in her shoe and brandished it triumphantly.
"Aha! Try to beat me now, sucker! Fire3!" An inferno engulfed the fiend and it howled in agony. The red side of its body seemed to slump and die, but its purple counterpart was not nearly as affected by the fire. It shook its head sharply and growled at Yuffie, casting Bolt2.
The electricity buckled through the ninja, shocking her off her feet and throwing her against the floor. Yuffie just sat there, looking blankly up at the towering Lost Number.
"Hey, that was just cheap!" she muttered, dazed.
The Lost Number didn't seem to care, and immediately tried to cast another spell.
She staggered to her feet and resumed her fighting stance. "You'll have to be faster than that!"
The ninja sprung backwards into the anteroom of the mansion, where her blue chocobo looked up in surprise, with a sort of chocobo bewildered expression when he saw the huge Lost Number at the top of the double staircase.
"Hey, Chubby!" Yuffie jumped on his back, rummaging desperately through his packs. She found her shuriken immediately and turned back to the monster and threw it, hard.
Lost Number cast a spell before the shuriken reached him, hurled so fast that it ripped through his head, completely dismembering it. The Lost Number's final spell engulfed the girl and chocobo completely in flames for long, agonizing moments. It happened so fast that they didn't have time to react.
The searing pain lasted long after the fire no longer burned them. Yuffie screamed in pain and fainted, falling off the chocobo to the floorboards and cracking her head so hard that stars spun in her vision before the world went blissfully dark.
A huge, explosive sound permeated through the weak and rotting floorboards to the strange man's sensitive ears. It was surreal; he had heard nothing but dripping water and the scurrying of unnamed rodents for three years.
His eyes flashed open.
The strange man was suddenly alert, all sense of lethargy gone in the sounding of that unexpected explosion. The adrenalin made him tense up uncomfortably. His ears strained for any other sound. His breath came quickly.
...what is happening? he demanded of Chaos, who was being very quiet.
The strange man thought he heard a girl's scream. Chaos was still for long moments before it spoke, its voice like a stretched and malicious grin.
Interesting.
The demon seemed to take a deep breath, and then let it go slowly, speculatively.
She has opened the safe.
The strange man could read nothing in the demon's words.
What safe? What was that sound..?
But the demon would not answer. It seemed to gather itself as far away from the strange man as it could, like a dark child crouched and considering in a corner.
...Chaos?
It was ignoring him. Or it wasn't hearing him.
Either way, the strange man heard nothing more but silence from the odd intruder upstairs. Slowly, the adrenalin faded and his muscles relaxed.
It would be better if you slept, Chaos' ghastly whisper skulked from the corner.
Under the weight of the demon's will and his own fatigue, the strange man fell asleep, the first deep sleep that he had experienced in years.
When Yuffie came to, she saw her outstretched arm right in front of her eyes. It was the injured one that Red XIII had sliced the day before and the wound had come open again.
The blood had spread around her on the floor and she felt very weak.
It was dusk. There was no electricity running through the mansion and the only light came through the wide windows from the lights of the town outside and the recently set sun. Everything was cut in different shades of gray in the gloomy half-light.
She focused her eyes beyond her arm and made out the large blue lump that was her chocobo. His face was turned to hers and his large eyes were shut. He was sleeping, his breath coming painfully. Yuffie saw immediately that he was badly burned.
"Chubs!" Yuffie sat up and the sudden rushing blood made her brace herself against the floor.
She cursed softly, tears coming to her eyes at the sad sight of her sleeping companion. "I didn't...mean...for you to get hurt..."
Yuffie crawled over to him, grabbing the first potion she found and pouring it over her Chubs, rubbing it into his charred feathers and everywhere else she could reach.
Soon the blue chocobo woke up. He warked softly and contented himself with staring at
Yuffie as she ministered to him.
After making sure her chocobo was recovering, she poured another potion over her misused arm, which healed, but less cleanly than the day before. She rubbed potion over her own burns, biting her lip at the stinging pain of touching them.
When she was done, she sighed and leaned her forehead against Chub's beak.
"I'm so sorry, buddy. It was all my fault. I know better than going anywhere without my weapons. I'm so stupid."
The chocobo responded with soft croons and closed his eyes again, falling asleep.
She stayed leaned against the big bird for long moments with her eyes closed. Tears leaked out of her eyes and she scrubbed at them sullenly. She hated seeing living things in pain. It only got worse when they were hurt because of her stupidity.
Yuffie desperately wished that one day she would wake up and no longer be so immature, so stupid and thoughtless and inconsiderate.
She stood up, fighting the pain in her limbs. The ninja walked up the stairs to the safe room, passing the spot where the Lost Number had evaporated after its decapitation and recovering her thrown shuriken before moving on.
The safe room was covered in splinters and the whole door to the room wasn't there anymore. Angrily, she jerked the door of the safe open.
There were two things inside, a red materia which made the materia hunter in Yuffie's soul start to drool and an old-fashioned key.
She grabbed the materia, pleased to find yet another summon spell to add to her collection. Not that it mattered. After all, she already owned the Huge Summon materia, but it was always nice to have back-ups.
Yuffie picked up the key and reached into her pocket for the yellowed notes.
"...Even that one from the Turks. I scientifically altered him, and put him to sleep in the basement. If you want to find him, then search the area..."
"The key has to go to something, or else it would have no purpose," Yuffie mused. "I wonder where the entrance to this secret basement is."
She looked around, going slowly and exploring every cranny of the house until she found the entrance, accidentally pressing a switch that moved a wall away.
"Oh, come on. That's so easy!" Yuffie shook her head at the ineptitude of certain hiders of certain secret notes, then ducked into the creepy room. It was a spiral staircase that went deep into the ground like an inverted tower.
Cautiously, she crept down the stairs. When she got so deep that there was no light, she went back up to get a flashlight from Chub's pack.
After descending to the basement floor, she walked down a long cave-like hallway until she came to a locked door on her left side. Yuffie saw that the corridor extended farther into a laboratory, but she decided to try the key in the door first.
The key fit; the door opened with a creak.
She coughed slightly. Dust covered every surface of the room. The ninja aimed her flashlight at the walls and floor, revolted at the sight of coffins and skeletons lining the walls. The room smelled like decay and must, water seepage making the air dank after years of disuse. Yuffie stepped farther into the room, scouring every surface for a treasure chest or something else worth her while.
There was a very large and decorated coffin in the very center of the black room.
"...and put him to sleep in the basement. If you want to find him, then..."
Yuffie had a flash of insight. Whatever the note was leading to was probably in that coffin. If there was any treasure besides the Odin Summon that she found in the safe, (which she knew was only chump change compared to what her trouble was worth) then it would be in this coffin.
Maybe the 'he' in the note was a big pile of gold and jewels. The note writer probably wrote about a guy in the basement so kids would be too scared to look for the treasure.
Since that Lost Number was guarding the key, she knew that it was something good in there. Just the thought of the forgotten riches made her grin.
If she was too scared to look, then it would prove that she was just a scared little kid. And Yuffie wasn't about to get scared by a little note.
The ninja stepped up to the lid of the elaborate black coffin and set her flashlight down on the floor. The light shone straight up at the ceiling. She pushed with both hands on the lid, shoving it onto the ground on the other side with a crash.
Trembling, she retrieved her flashlight and illuminated the contents of the ebony sarcophagus.
Gasping in horror, she dropped her flashlight in the coffin and fell back on her rear.
There was a man inside the coffin, after all!
Her nerves felt frayed and she was breathing hard; her eyes were wide open.
"No way. No way." She shook her head. The black room seemed oppressive. She could only see the ceiling where the light was coming out of the coffin from the flashlight.
She crept back on her hands and knees. Bracing herself, she peered over the edge once again. A man, swathed in a red cloak, lay peacefully at the heart of the box of death. His black hair spilled over the white cloth and pillow. His skin was translucent in the white light and his eyelashes and long hair were very black. His eyes were closed; either he was dead or dreaming.
Yuffie closed her own eyes tightly. When she opened them, the man was still there.
"...I scientifically altered him, and put him to sleep in the basement..."
She swallowed down her dry throat, dismayed, "I found a freaking vampire."
Immediately, Yuffie wished she hadn't spoken, because the strange man's eyes snapped open at the sound.
His eyes were red.
Yuffie yelled and jumped away, running to the door. When she reached it, she turned and faced the vampire with her shuriken ready and her limbs shaking.
He stood on the rim of the coffin, balanced perfectly. The light from the flashlight lit him from the back, making his cloak and face look black.
"...I've never seen you before. You must leave."
(1)Note: If you ever have the extreme luck of doing a scavenger hunt that leads to a sleepy Vincent Valentine, don't ever, ever say this. Cause I'd hate you.
Thanks, reviewers!
Hotaru170: Thanks for being the first reviewer and I hope you like this outlook!
Kikyos killer: Thanks! I will! And I have updated! Muahahaaa!
Mistress Delavaire: Thanks for the info on the materia. It's pretty complicated neh? I'm glad you liked it!
PerfectAbuse: You reviewed twice! Man, I love it when people do that!