Cure

I grin as the wind whistles through my hair, catching my cape and sending it flying out behind me, and give Reno a thumbs up. My cape, patterned loosely off Vincent's, a mottled green on one side and black on the other. It was great for camouflage, unlike Vinnie's bright red.

What am I doing up here? Well, we made the mistake of telling Reno about our...adventure... sledding down Mt. Nibel. This gave him a 'wicked idea' (his words, not mine) and now I'm standing at the top of one of the mountains around the lake, with a rope tied to a tree. Reno is tying off the other end at the bottom of the slope.

Yeah. You're starting to see where this is going.

I had spare fabric from my cape. It was dangling from the rope in a kind of handle. I placed my feet in the straps on the metal- where he got it, I don't know- closed my eyes, grabbed my little handhold-handle-thing, and at Reno's signal, I pushed off.

"Whoa!"

I all but flew down the mountain. The fabric was strong, but it was fraying on the rope and we'd have to find something else to use. But...The ground flying past beneath me, the wind, the exhilaration of being all that there was in the universe...it was the same as that long-ago ride down the mountain, only by myself.

I hadn't wanted to keep it at first, I thought it would detract from the original experience, but Cloud and Reno both thought it was fun, and anyway Vincent and I could fly if we really wanted to. If we really, really wanted to, since transforming hurts like hell. For me at least, it's worth it, but I don't know if Vincent thinks so. I know he didn't used to.

He has healed a lot. We think it's been at least two hundred years since the last AVALANCHE member died, many more since everything happened with Hojo. Vincent's told us a little bit about himself, but still not too much. Then there's some stuff I found out on my own, but that's another story, and a long one at that. There was this one conversation we had, when Cloud was swimming and Reno was cooking- unlike the rest of us, he knows how- when I think I finally got it into Vincent's thick skull that he wasn't a monster.

We were both just kinda leaning up against the cave wall, towards the back, staring at the waterfall. I was meditating, watching the water. I don't know what the hell he was doing.

"Yuffie."

It took me a moment to come out of my trance. When I did, I shifted to face him. "Yeah?"

"...Am I a monster?"

I blinked. That had kinda come out of nowhere, considering no one had brought up Hojo for a couple of decades. There hadn't even been need to transform. "No. You're not."

Red eyes glanced at me, then away. "I'm not human."

I laughed, without humor. "Depending on your definition, none of us are."

He held out his claw and stared at it. Before he could comment, I held out my own arm and let the change come over it. I grit my teeth in pain as bones shifted and reversed, scales trickling down my arm until it was Tiamat's claw. I looked at him. He looked away again, dropping his claw.

I dropped my arm as well, watching the scales recede and the bones twist back. It still hurt, but to me the pain was worth it for the ability to fly.

"You transform into animals, natural creatures. I transform into demons...I am less than human." Vincent's voice was low. I swatted him on the arm, making him look up at me in surprise.

"I would argue that would make you more human than I am," I said dryly. "Humans are unnatural creatures."

That got the barest of smiles. "You speak as if you weren't one."

"Am I?" I shrugged. "Are any of us? Not really. But that doesn't make us monsters." My arm twisted again, this time into the red-furred leg of the firecat Nanaki had named Silence. I placed my paw on his claw and smiled.

GuardianSaiyoko: I'm back! I'm all settled into my new apartment and I just got a cat, a lovely little black female named Onyx. She's friendly, thankfully, as she's also fully clawed. Updates should be a bit more often in the week I have before I start school; I'm attending a trade school year round and the curriculum is tough, so we'll see how the writing goes.

Thanks for wishing me luck, tenshiamanda1987, and hi Outfoxed. Later,

Sai