Chapter 21

Despite her coat, the climbing, and all the monsters they'd been fighting, Yuffie was freezing. Her fingers were stiff from the cold, her teeth were chattering and she was pretty sure her nose was completely frozen. She didn't know how the pilot and the demon were enduring the cold so well, but neither Cid nor Chaos had so much as twitched a muscle in the last half hour, that she could tell.

"Guys, can we stop for a little while and make a fire?" She asked. "I'm freezing!"

"Quit your bitchin'," Cid replied. "That farm we saw from the Highwind can't be more than fifteen more minutes away."

"You said that an hour ago," Yuffie replied. She stopped walking and crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not moving until someone makes a fire."

Cid gave her an incredulous look and Chaos began laughing.

"What's so funny?" the ninja demanded.

"You are," Chaos said between chuckles. "You demand that we make a fire to get warm, but you ultimatum requires that you stay here and freeze if we decline."

"Gods! Sometimes I hate your stupid demon logic!" She stomped forward again in a huff.

"Sounded like good sound logic to me," Cid muttered conspiratorially to the demon. "She's just pissed that you figured her out."

"Indeed. She is much like my beloved Ilrya that way."

Cid glanced over at the demon as they followed the ninja. "Your girl, huh? What happened to her?"

"She died during a war with a human kingdom near my domain." The demon felt the urge to howl welling up inside him at the memory, and at the thought that the same thing could easily happen to Yuffie. And he might be as helpless to stop it now as he was then. "She was assassinated while I was on the front lines."

"Damn, I'm sorry," Cid said. "Hope I didn't hurt you by askin'."

"My beloved's memory is bittersweet. The pain is always there, but I remember the love as well. I appreciate your concern, but you did not hurt me, Highwind." Chaos was actually more surprised that Cid had even been moved to ask, then apologize. It had been his experience that most humans assumed that demons had no emotions. He decided to say as much.

"You surprise me, Cid. Most humans assume that my kind have no feelings, and act as though nothing they do could ever hurt us. It is an extraordinary person who can see past such pre-conceived notions."

"Well," Cid replied. "To be fair, you are the first demon I've ever met. And I didn't trust you at first. But you were always polite as hell to Aeris and Tifa. And the way to talk about Vincent, he'd have to be your best friend or your brother. And I've seen the way you look at the kid. If that ain't feelings, I don't have any fucking idea what is."

Chaos was surprised at the pilot's intuitiveness, but he was prevented from replying by a woman's scream and Yuffie shouting, "Hurry up, you two! We have to help!"

Cid and Chaos charged after the ninja, racing into the clearing around the farmhouse they'd been looking for a few steps behind her. Yuffie had Death Penalty drawn and pointed at one of the bandits swarming the place before the men really knew what was going on.

Most of the commotion in the front yard had stopped the moment Yuffie stepped into the clearing. The six bandits present—including the two who looked like they were about to joyfully rape the woman she'd heard screaming—had frozen and stared at her, obviously not expecting to be interrupted.

"The first one of you who breathes wrong gets shot," she told them. She didn't want to get into a shooting match with them if she didn't want to; if they were half as good as Vincent, she wouldn't stand a chance against them. And they were all armed with guns, in addition to knives, swords and axes.

One of them—the leader she assumed, from his cocky demeanor—smirked at her. "Lookie here, boys. The little girl thinks she's a hero!" He laughed for a moment, then his face paled and he stopped.

Yuffie assumed Chaos had arrived, but she didn't turn around to confirm.

"Let the woman go," Yuffie ordered.

The two bandits holding the woman shoved her towards them. The woman pulled her coat closed over the torn bodice of her dress and took hesitant steps toward the group. When Cid had her safely in hand, Chaos stepped up next to Yuffie and grinned.

"Now, all of you have fifteen seconds to run."

The bandits either didn't think the demon was serious, or they were all too afraid to run. The demon didn't really care why there were still there; he'd given them a chance to run and they'd stayed to die.

Cid and Yuffie had seen Chaos unleash his formidable magical abilities in combat before, but never on a human being. For the first time since she'd met him, Yuffie found herself being truly afraid of the demon as she watched his Satan Slam attack launch into the bandits. She clutched Death Penalty in trembling fingers as the flying skulls left only desiccated corpses in their wake.

Chaos felt his stomach lurch as Yuffie whispered Ilyra's last words to him. "You didn't have to kill them."


see? twice as long as the last chapter! sorry about feeding chaos the angstbiscuits. its going to get worse before it gets better.