Greed
Time: Present day, 3 months after the defeat of Jenova and Sephiroth.
Location: abandoned test lab in unknown location.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
the scream echoed through out the hallowed, metal halls along with sound of crashing material. "Owwwwww my backside" she said, taking a sharp breath in as she climbed to her feet and brushed her self off of debris and dust.
"Hmmmm now where do I go now?" she thought out loud.
Still pondering on where to go she started to get worried that she was lost, the she clenched her fists, "come on Yufie you can do it" she thought to her self as she pointed down one of the two directions the hall led off to. Yufie walked calmly down the abandoned halls reinforcing her will to be here by her desire for materia, she giggled to her self as she celebrated in her head how she had accidently found the hidden labs of the rumours. As the rumour goes, long ago some scientists discovered a powerful materia and of course, Yufie wasn't going to give up a chance on a hunt for a rare and powerful materia. The corridor widened as she entered into a huge room; obviously this was where most of the testing had occurred as there were scarps of computers, broken beakers and test tubes, random liquids and containers littering the huge metal tables filling the room.
"Time to get to work" she thought to her self as she began to rummage through the long, forgotten filing cabinets that lined the walls behind the metal tables.
"Not here... Not here... NOT HERE ARRHHHGGGGGGGG, WHERE IS IT!" she yelled, throwing paper out of the filing cabinets not yet finding the rare materia, just then something caught her eye, a soothing green light was coming out from underneath two thick but buckled metal doors at the end of the corridor of tables. Yufie slowly walked towards it, almost entranced by it, she reached out to touch the door when sudden a crash of broken metal came from behind. It quickly snapped her back into her senses and even scared her a bit, but again something grabbed her eye. The same light, but a different colour, and felt a bit harsher on the senses. Sitting upon one of the metal practice tables was a small tube like container, with an orange liquid in it. It glowed magnificently as it swirled in the small glass tube. The liquid reminded her of something but that soon didn't matter to her as her face filled with over excitement as a small orange ball suspended in the liquid came into vision. "YES YES FINALLY" she cried as she jumped about excitedly "it's about time I got my prize and got out of here" she slowly twisted the lid off the container, constantly keeping her eye on the orange materia, that oddly enough looked like the surrounding liquid. She dipped her hand in reaching for it then suddenly stopped. Her eyes widened before falling to the floor clutching her head in pain. "ahhhhhh what the hell is going on!" Something was coming over her, almost as if it was taking over, all could hear in her heard was a deep grim voice repeating the words "more, I need more!".
She let out a final scream before the abandoned lab became deadly silent apart from the sound of a small, rare materia, rolling across the metallic floor and between a gap in the buckled metal, of the huge doors.
Beer bottles clanged together as cheering rang through out the bar in a drunken slur of words and song. Tifa helping yet another drunkard stumble toward to the exit, where they would stumble their way to their cosy homes, or a gutter somewhere depending how far in the small slum they could stay conscious for.
"You ok there Tifa?" Cloud asked responding to her wiping her forehead with her arm.
"Yeah I'm good thank you Cloud, I think it's him you need to be worrying about" nodding into the corner of the bar where a dark cloaked figure leaned against in the corner.
"I don't understand how you can enjoy being around so many people" he said in a deep voice glaring about the bar.
"You just do Vincent" the spiky haired man replied putting a bottle of beer in front an over grateful (and overly drunk) customer. Tifa giggled to herself at the accomplishment of making Cloud wear a white apron with frilly edges. Cloud had already gotten used to the hollers and howls of the drunken men to delusional to see he was a man, he let out a sigh but was happy that she didn't push him to go as far as aeries did when trying to save Tifa from that perverted bee club in the slums. Sometimes he even regretted joining Tifa in running the bar, with Sephiroth gone he didn't have much to do these days, so decided to help Tifa run the bar.
"Well I don't want to over stay my welcome" Vincent said adjusting his cloak.
"Vincent don't be silly you are welcome when ever and for how ever long you like" she smiled, tilting her head to the side.
"A breaking new report" suddenly came bursting out of the small bar TV. Tifa shhhhh'ed all the drunkards so she, Cloud and Vincent could hear what was going on. The TV showed a man in a uniform standing out side the town of calm with a microphone in his hand.
The man continued "Just moments ago the town of calm was raided by a mysterious young girl, she has stolen various things from various shops and even homes, She is showing very heavy resistance against the local police, who are being downed by the second..."
Cloud, Tifa and Vincent had heard enough, they gave each other a quick glance before Tifa giving a loud shout to get everybody out of the bar, which Cloud, Vincent and Tifa following them, going to try and stop the villain of calm.
An hour later they arrived at the disturbed village of calm. They looked about in horror at the scene of devastation that surrounded them, people running in fear, houses ablaze, wounded guards and civilians littering the streets, covered in slash and stab wounds, some even with burns and other odd wounds. Just then Tifa let out a scream of shock as she looked up onto of one of the lamp posts to see a familiar figure. Cloud looked up in disbelief before quietly uttering the name... "Yufie?"
Vincent stepped forward with his usual stern look on his face. "Yufie what the hell are you doing?"
She simply let out a mocking laugh before lifting up a weapon they had never seen before. The weapon was 4 blades roughly held together at the hilt by a bit of rope, each blade different from the other. With the blades tied together this way it slightly resembled the sorts of weapons she used before. One blade was long and thin, slightly resembling the sword sephiroth used to use, but shorter, on the opposite side of that was another blade, again long and thin but this time with a rough and jagged edge. Another blade curved shortly after leaving the hilt and the final one was a long knights sword. This explained all the different kinds of wounds on the people, but it was just her weapon that hand changed. Yufie now wore a small black pair of denim shorts (which could hardly even be called shorts), a small white tank top, which was covered by a loosely hanging denim biker jacket which had ripped and worn edges.
With a flick of a smile on her face the 4 blade came spiralling through the air, viciously cutting through it towards Vincent. He barely had enough time to dodge as he quickly moved his head to the side, but not completely unscathed. The jagged blade had caught his cheek to leave a grave gash in its wake.
"Vincent!" Tifa cried as she ran toward him to try and examine the wound. "Are you ok?"
"Yes" he replied, gritting his teeth as he found his feet again. Tifa lifted her hand to his cheek, and with a green warming glow coming from it, the gash began to retreat back to before it had ever occurred.
Cloud reached for his sword, and as he hand touched the hilt of the mighty blade he caught a glimpse of Yufie flying past him at amazing speed, just as he was able to turn 90 degrees to look behind him it was too late, she was already there with the strange weapon raised, spinning in her hand.
"I want more!" She shouted as she brought the curved blade down to slice across his chest. He jumped backwards making the wound not very deep and sustainable. He barely landed on his feet as he came back down to the ground.
"Why are you doing this?" Cloud questioned as he tried to think of possible explanations, but no answer came, she reached into the sack that was on her bag and retrieved a random hand full materia from it. A Red, a pink, a yellow and 2 green materia slowly sunk into her left arm. She lifted it up with a evil smile across her face as a green ball glowed in her left hand and suddenly a shot of lightning burst out of it with amazing velocity which blew Cloud right of his feet and into a wall of the stairs that led to the shops.
"CLOUD!" Tifa screamed as she got up and began to run at him to try and help. Yufie raised her hand once again but this time pointed it at Tifa, the smirk on her face ever growing with delight as the energy started to build in her hand again. All of a sudden a circle appeared beneath Yufie. She looked round in confusion to see Vincent holding a green materia in his hand. She looked up to see a clock appear above her head. The hands of the clock began to slow, and as they did, Yufie felt her body do the same. Vincent raised his rifle and let out a dead accurate shot for her knee to try and disable her, but before the shot made contact he noticed a green glow in her left leg as the hands of the clocks above her started to turn at a frightening speed. Shock crept along his face as he heard the bullet clang against the floor and the girl had disappeared.
She appeared in front of him with out warning, the strange weapon rising upwards toward him from by her leg. A Yellow glow came from her right hand that held the weapon which was followed by four slashes of blinding speed, each blade making contact with Vincent. He stumbled backwards, covered in 4 wounds of differing depths and severity. Bleeding heavily he collapsed onto his knees before crashing to the ground.
She began to laugh manically at the destruction she had just caused, but was quickly interrupted by a shout of rage. Yufie looked up to find Cloud coming down from the air with his giant blade raised high above his head, his wound also healed by the soothing light of Tifa's cure materia. Yufie was caught of guard and was just able to jump out of the way having it only graze her arm. The crash of the blade on the floor caused as huge dust cloud which gave Tifa the perfect cover for her to come lunging out of the smoke to land a heavy blow on the still recovering Yufie. It hit her dead in the left shoulder, her eyes opened wide with pain and the green materia in her left hand fell out, but before Tifa had even finished her attack the pink materia in Yufie's right arm glowed violently, and instinctively her body attack back catching Tifa's shoulder but not causing too much damage. Both the girls stand there, breathing heavy from exhaustion from battle and materia usage, in pain Yufie lifted her left arm and waited, confused at the absents of energy. A look of realisation came across her face as she looked behind her to see the lightning materia lying on the floor near by, she was quickly interrupted by another fierce blow from Tifa to the stomach this time the counter and quad slash materia erupted from her body and scattered across the blood stained floor, she skidded backwards on her feet before gaining balance and trying to regain some breath back.
"I won't... Let you... Stop me... from... Getting more!" Yufie said breathlessly before collecting her calm and putting her hands together.
"Oh no!" Cloud exclaimed, "Tifa be careful", but it was too later, the Red materia in her chest was already glowing. Cloud focused his energy into the green materia held in the socket in his blade, before letting out a mighty fire ball. Before the ball made contact a huge lump of earth came up to blocked it. Clouds eyes opened in fear as he looked up to see the clouds grow dark and thick, followed by a huge bolt of lightning hit he rock. Where the lightning had just struck stood an old man in a yellow robe.
"Behold the power of Ramuh" she cried as the old man stood tall.
"Tifa run!" but she already knew what to do, she ran towards Cloud gripping a materia tight, she skidded in quickly just as the old man brought down is staff to the rock and bombarded them with lightning. Yufie laughed with excitement with defeating her powerful opponents, as the dust cleared tho, her celebration was short lived, as in the dust stand a rather batter burnt but other ready to go duo of heroes, with the essence of a magic barrier flickering in it's last moments of life.
"This is it!" Tifa yelled starting to run towards her with Cloud in hot pursuit.
"Don't... don't get cocky" a nervous Yufie stammered "I still have this" her left leg glowed again and the clock reappeared above her head. In a quick movement she drew her weapon back with full force. Tifa had already seen this coming, and the materia embedded in her glove let off light, as the ground beneath Yufie began to shake. The ground moving underneath her threw her off balance causing her resulting throw to miss dreadfully, as it span at blinding speeds into a wall at the opposite side of the town. Tifa used this chance to run up to Yufie, putting one foot on her shoulder and starting to fall backwards, using her foot on Yufie's shoulder to propel her backward with great force, bringing her other foot to collide with Yufie's chin with ground shattering force, with this she was flung into the air where she was cut off by Cloud. He had blade drawn back ready, thinking about what she had done to Vincent he started to fill with rage and strength, causing him to grip the handle tightly, but seconds before swinging remembered who he was fighting, so as he was swinging turned the buster blade to it's flat side, contacting with Yufie and throwing her into the wall of a nearby house. The collision with the wall forced out a scream of pain along with her breath, and the rest of the materia, tho weirdest of all, was the strange orange liquid that flew out of her mouth and onto the cobbled streets below, where it slowly disappeared as it soaked into the floor.
Tifa sat on the ground exhausted from the constant used of materia and heavy hitting blows. Cloud walked up to her and caught her before her body hit the ground.
"You did well" he said to comfort her.
"Thank you Cloud" she replied before losing conscience.
Cloud took the cure materia that she clutched tightly in her hand and went to Vincent to patch him up, once that was taken care of he took out his phone, and called everyone to meet at the bar and for cid to pick him and the other two up in the high wind, and with that, he put his phone back in his pocket, and continued to treat Vincent's wounds.