Chapter 5
Disclaimer: No ownership is claimed here except for the plot that isn't the game's...and maybe those possible characters.
Note: The non-reviewedness of this story is really getting to me. And sorry I missed a usual update, but I had a good reason. See, the night before Saturday...I was up all night and slept Saturday afternoon from five to seven. Updating wasn't even in my mind untill Sunday. Here ya go, late, but it's here.
"That is Kimahri, Wakka, Lulu and Auron." She pointed to each in turn. "Everyone," faces were directed her way. "Harper will be joining us for a while." Turning back to Harper she asked, "Are you hungry?"
Harper took her eyes from Auron, who was simply standing there, watching. "No, thank you." Inwardly her heart collapsed as she greatly missed Cloud's obsession with food. He even gave up teasing her one time to go eat breakfast. Choking back a whimper, she realized for the first time that she was really attached to the people who had taken her in. Would she and Vincent ever...
"Are you alright?" Yuna had walked off almost as soon as Harper had declined her offer of food; Wakka stood before her now, as tall as Vincent.
Harper blinked, trying to figure something out. She didn't know what that something was though, and looked up at Wakka, giving him a broken smile she hoped passed as real. "Yep." Squinting her eyes shut, she smiled bigger and clasped her hands behind her back. "Just remembered something I had wanted to do in the shop. No big deal," she lied.
Wakka crossed his blitzball player arms and gave her a serious look as he considered her words. He didn't believe her, and he didn't believe he'd get the truth out of her, if she was anything like her companion, Vincent. Instead of badgering her, he simply asked, "You sure about that?"
Harper knew what he was doing. She hadn't pulled off the performance she had hoped to, so she admitted, "No, I'm not sure," gave him another half-hearted smile, and swung around to return to Vincent.
"What are we going to do when we run out of bullets?" she asked Vincent.
They sat against the warm face of a large boulder, away from the others ears and eyes. The sun was setting, bathing the horizon, and everything, in a pink and purple light. Puffy white clouds drifted on the winds, high in the atmosphere, their edges saturated by the same colors. Only their middles were the regular cloudy color, being darkened by tiny droplets of precipitation.
Vincent, who sat to Harper's left, took her hand in his. "You already know the sword," he commented, lacing his fingers through hers. "But how far is the next weapon's shop from here?"
Harper shook her head as if discarding the idea and gave his hand a squeeze. "Maybe Auron or Tidus would have an extra blade that they wouldn't mind my using. I have a feeling there won't be a chance to buy a sword, or anything, for a while. But what about you? You can't rely on Chaos all the time, can you?"
He bowed his head. Vincent couldn't think of anything. "No. I can't. I don't think materia will be worth anything here. I refuse to carry around a stuffed animal like Lulu does." That statement coaxed a laugh from the girl at his side. Her laughter lifted his spirits somewhat.
"No, that wouldn't do," Harper agreed. "Couldn't your gauntlet be outfitted as a weapon?"
Vincent uttered a throaty laugh and raised his left arm. Sunlight glinted off the tip of his thumb. He moved the fingers with expert ease, as if they were really fingers. He didn't know how it worked, how he could move fingers that weren't real, and not have to think about it. It was the one thing Shinra had done to him that he marveled at. Even though most of his left arm was crafted of metal, he said, "I'd rather no physical changes take place."
"I understand." She sighed, leaning her head against the rock. Vincent rubbed his thumb over the back of the hand he held. "We'll think of something, sooner or later."
"I'm sure we will."
Harper inched closer to him and put her head on his shoulder. In response Vincent traced the line of her jaw. She didn't mind the touch of the cold metal as, she assumed, others would. They were both tired, even though they had done nothing of great exertion over the course of the day. Tents were gutted and their contents packed away so that the only things left to pick up the next day were the tents themselves. Surprisingly enough, everything that had come out of the tents packed up rather nicely and ended up not being the huge amount they had thought it would.
"Do you miss Cloud?" Harper asked suddenly, the sun sinking lower.
A shudder went through his shoulder as Vincent laughed. "Oddly enough, I do. I miss everyone."
Harper's heart warmed at that. "That's good," she said, finally roused to a bit of happiness from some other source than Vincent's presence. "I didn't want to be the only one who did," she said finally.
"We will find a way home," he assured her in a distant tone. "We just don't know the path yet."
"Hm, I think we may already be on it, Vincent."
"What do you mean?"
"I think if we stay with these people, we may just find, or be led to, the way home. Isn't Tidus looking for the same thing with Zanarkand?"
"I see," Vincent agreed after a while. "That sounds like a plan."
"Maybe." Harper wasn't sure of anything at that moment, she only knew that she was watching the sun set at the end of an uneventful day. She was happy there, at Vincent's side, and he was happy to have her there.
"Would you grab that corner for me?" Yuna asked Vincent as he passed by.
Vincent passed a quick glance over her progress. "Have you never folded up a tent before?" The tent lay in a tangled heap on the ground in front of his feet. Yuna planted her hands on her hips. "Yes, I have. I just have a funny feeling. That's all."
Vincent bent to take the indicated corner and passed a glance over the summoner. "Feelings can betray you. But what kind of feeling?"
"Well," she said as she walked toward him to make the tent corners meet. "I can't help feeling like something is coming...I've never had this feeling before. Have you?"
"Many times." They folded the tent shortways.
"And...? How did those times turn out?"
Vincent absent mindedly kept on with folding as he recounted the times he'd had a feeling such as the one Yuna said she had then. "Ill, at first. In the end it worked out."
"All those times?" Yuna stood with the folded tent in her arms, ready to go, but she was curious.
Silently, Vincent recounted what he could, even the painful memories. Lucrecia and Hojo: Sephiroth's parents, depending on what one thought about the Jenova experiments. That had started out horribly. In the end, he had found Harper. As much as he hated to admit it, Harper was a wonderful product of an ill begun string of events. He nodded almost invisibly. "All." His reply was barely audible, for too many things were now running rampant in his mind. Not things about Lucrecia, but about Sephiroth. It wasn't that long ago... just how old could one consider Sephiroth, really?
"Sir Valentine?"
Vincent looked up. Yuna still stood there with compassionate eyes, and he avoided the implied inquiry. "Do you intend to continue to carry these tents with us?"
"No, of course not. When we're done with them, Lulu uses her magic to burn them. There's no way we could fold them as air tight as they originally come! Now they'd be way too bulky." With that she turned, sensing the tension crackle in the air around her newest guardian.
A plume of fire rose just above the tops of the few tents left standing, igniting Vincent's memory to the fact that his materia was probably useless in Spira, and he was eventually going to run out of ammunition. Maybe Lulu, the groups dark-mage, could teach him and Harper how to work this world's magic. As it turned out, Harper had had the same idea.
When he got to where the flame was, Harper was already standing next to Lulu, watching in awe as flame licked up the tent somehow suspended in the air. Each time the spell was cast, there was no green flash such as there would be were materia being used.
"Great minds think alike," Lulu said when she saw Vincent. He didn't reply. "We figured it would only be a little while until you showed up, too."
Vincent blinked and walked closer.
"I explained about everything I could," Harper explained. "Our materia is as useless as colored rocks in Spira."
"You tried it?" Vincent double checked.
She nodded in reply. "I tried summoning Ifrit...not even a puff of smoke resulted."
"She thought we should wait for you to arrive before we began today's 'lesson'," Lulu interrupted their conversation, not saying that Yuna had summoned Ifrit a few times. Vincent understood. She was going to teach them how to use magic, as he had thought they would need to. "Pay close attention: we don't have a lot of time for extensive training.
"You may already have enough 'streangth' to cast the spells effectively, but if not, then you'll just have to practice. You may have been magically 'strong' in Midgar, but perhaps not here. So don't push yourself. That can be a dangerous action: using what you don't even have can kill you. Also, how many times you can cast one or many diferant spells depends on your 'strength.' There comes a time, for me too, that you have to stop casting for a while to regain your 'strength.'"
Both Harper and Vincent blinked. The only thing deferant here was that you had to learn the spells instead of using materia. Everything about "strength" and stopping, except the "using what you don't have" part, were the same. What they were worried about was wether or not they had the "strength" needed for this.
Contrary to that simple fear, Harper was the first to speak up when Lulu had finished. "This should be a piece of cake."
Lulu looked to Vincent for his opinion. He nodded, "Let's get on with it, then."
The dark-mage nodded in turn and shepherded them into a circle in which she could speak to them easily. "We learn fire first so that you might help with today's, and future, camp cleanup."
The rest of that day, and there was a lot of it left, was spent with Lulu for Vincent and Harper. The two strangers had "amazing ability", even when stood against the mage herself. Harper, not suprising Vincent (for he knew her father had a knack for flames), managed to master the first fire spell almost instantly once she knew the mechanics of it. Vincent wasn't far behind. After they had both got that one down and helped with a fair share of tents, they moved on to the next most useful spell, water. That was an element completely alien to both Vincent and Harper and took longer to handle. Four elements were learned in that one day. Of course, "they were only the most basic ones and anyone could do it."
Lulu spent only a few minutes describing the diferant levels of spells possible to learn. It had taken her a while to get as far as she said she was, and she still had more to conquer.
At the end of the day, Lulu seemed more bored than before, and Vincent and Harper felt as though they had accomplished a great something, however little they showed that feeling. Everyone sat around the last campfire they would have at that spot.
"Yuna," Harper sat next to the summoner. Wakka was to her left. Vincent got stuck by Tidus and Auron; Kimahri was to Yuna's right. "Where are we going?" She knew that they would be on the Mushroom Rock road, and had exited the Mi'ihen Highroad, but after that?
High Summoner Yuna watched the fire's flames dance as she took on the visage of solemnity, gripping her staff, which lay across her knees. "After we reach Mushroom Rock, we will enter the Djose Highroad, and on it make our way to the temple at Djose, where I will speak to the Fayth." That confused Harper since no one had explained Yuna's pilgrimage in great detail, but she didn't say so. "After that, we'll continue to the moonflow, where we will have to cross a lake by way of shoopuf, to Guadosalam, home—"
"Seymore's home," Harper finished for her. It wasn't hard to infer from the place's name. Yuna nodded. "Great...What's a shoopuf?"
"A donation toward Operation Mi'ihen?" Harper heard Yuna ask the guard, a Crusader. Since they had started out that morning Harper had kept an eye out for Seymour and his guardians, but hadn't seen them. Yet here she was at the gates of Mushroom Rock, and Seymour wasn't there. Another summoner had been though. Her name was Dona and, from what Harper had seen, she was a real pain. Rude too.
Auron had given Harper his katana, which she handled with ease, to his complete surprise. He even admitted that he was surprised. Someone so skilled with firearms normally isn't so skilled with a blade. At least, he thought so. Harper had said that it just goes to show him that not all things are as they seem. With her new katana, she proceded to teach Vincent how to use a sword efectivly before he ran out of shots. He had found out that he rather like swordsmanship, and they decided that that would be his new weapon. A sword. As with the magic, he was a fast learner.
Ahead, Yuna settled on donating 1000 Gil to the Crusader's cause. What it was, Harper didn't pay attention to, but she knew that they weren't going to get past this person. Just as Summoner Dona didn't. Yuna thought so too, and turned her party around to return to Rin's Travel Agency and come up with a new plan.
They were just turning around when the fine hairs at the base of Harper's neck stood straight. Something, or someone, was coming from the opposite direction.
Two Guado were first, and behind them followed the master of Yevon, Seymour Guado.
Yuna and Harper were the first to speak, doing so at the same time...
"Maester Seymour!" Yuna bowed as she addressed the man in a reverant tone.
"Seymour!" Harper took a quick step that put her level with Yuna as she greeted her friend.
As he approached, Seymour stepped infront of his guardians and took in the group now before him. "High Summoner Yuna," he inclined his head in greeting. "...and... Harper?" She nodded at her name, unsure of what to do. Harper was happy to see him again, at last. "What happened? I thought you would come back, the night you left."
"When I left, I thought I was going to, too." Harper inched closer to him. "But I found out I was still missing a part of myself," she turned and indicated Vincent, who stood watching silently. "To sum it all up...I was missing the entirety of Vincent and three months. All of which he spent hunting me down to rescue me from danger I didn't know I was in. I was in danger because I was with my 'brothers.' They idolized my father and wanted another Sephiroth...or something like that..."
Seymour held up his hand, silencing her. "Don't explain. You never had to stay with us. You have a true companion, it would seem, with Vincent," his blue eyes moved to gently wash over Vincent. "I'm happy that you have found a place where you may be comfortable."
Harper blushed. Seymour was like Cloud in one way: it seemed he cared for others, not only himself. "Thank you, for everything," was all she could manage over the onslaught of a wave of homesickness. She didn't see the maester of Yevon before her, but Cloud. Seymour had taken her in, just as Cloud had, without asking much. She saw around her her old room on the day she found out about Sephiroth being her father, and a few weeks later when she wrote the note to Cloud that she was leaving with Kadaj. She had told him thank you then. Without thinking, she gave "Cloud" a gentle hug before returning to Vincent's side. Only after did she remember it was Seymour, and the world of Spira replaced her room in Midgar.
"You're welcome," Seymour replied. Then his attention moved to Yuna and their predicament. "What is this?"
"We are unable to proceed, Maester." Yuna answered. "Civilians, even summoners, aren't allowed past this point. They tell me that it is becoming too dangerous."
"Oh?" Maester Seymour took long strides to reach the gaurds. After speaking with them for a moment he turned back to the group watching him. He waved a hand toward the road beyond the gates, telling them that they were now permitted to pass.
Once through the gateway, Yuna told Maester Seymour "thank you." The two groups traveled side by side for a few moments, courtesies never ceasing to come from the summoner.
Note: Took my wracking my brain for hours to write this one. And an edit... Can anyone tell from my writing wether I'm a boy or girl? Just a random question. Good day all!