18: And the Fangs
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"Vince, you can't beat yourself up over what happened. You'll get another chance. There's always other chances."
"I know. This isn't over."
The burns were minimal thanks to Vincent's quick-thinking and preparedness with a handful of materia. He counted the survival of a summon's super-charged onslaught towards the greatest once-in-a-lifetime boon a person could ever hope to spend. It was also a blessing that paled in comparison to the release of Chaos's vicegrip on his soul. In the latter half of all his sixty years, he never dreamed of escaping the demon. Yet, when the unfeasible became feasible, no other event would top its precedence ever again.
An uncertain gloom descended upon the two, tailed by the shame of a forced retreat. Tifa tended to the burns on his pale cheeks, her touch quite motherly but hardly assuaging her companion's fog of self-deprecation. Vincent would not be swayed until he'd done what he set out to do.
The scene played over and over again in his mind:
The plane touching down beyond the rise of infernos. The scientists hastening their catch into its fuselage. The door closing. The craft rising back into the sky. The summon snuffing itself out like a light once its master had gone and all power expended for the instance. The plane vanishing into the night.
It headed east.
In time that detail would lead Vincent back onto the path of valor and victory.
"Looks like the renovations on Shinra Mansion will have to wait with this develop-"
"No, I'll handle this," he said.
"Wait Vincent, you have to tell me why you want to take those guys on all by yourself," Tifa voiced with exasperation. "I mean, granted they're brittle as twigs— brainy types usually are— but there's no telling what they're truly capable of. I mean, tonight, were you expecting them to have materia of that caliber?"
"Tifa-"
"C'mon, if you can't trust me with the truth, who can you trust? Answer me that." She folded her arms over each other and glared down at the raven-haired man. He nearly hadn't the heart to peer into her soft brown eyes. With a nod, he conceded defeat.
"For them."
"Them? Oh... them. Um, do you feel it's a responsibility only you can manage?" she asked. Then the woman gasped. "Oh, so you have a thing for Drana. Because…?"
Silence.
"Of Lucrecia. But how does she fit into the picture again? You see her in Drana somehow, something like that?"
"She has Lucrecia's spirit. Her energy. I can't say more than that." Vincent slouched heavily into his chair and out of the Tifa's medicating hands. He pressed a gloved finger to his burns, savoring the dull sting they exuded. He grimaced in such a bittersweet manner as to baffle the woman when she bent down to finish caring for his petty injuries. "If Drana were here, there'd be no need for the sprays, the ointments, the bandages."
"Vincent… It's almost like you've become a stranger all over again. I never had the guts to really say it before but... You've sort of changed. It's kind of scary," she noted, her voice pensive. Vincent's grimace faded away into nothing. He hadn't realized much change in himself apart from a slight verve for life not felt since decades ago as a Turk. And his love for Lucrecia reborn.
"I think Drana has that effect on people," he said a little less than brusquely. "There's something in her touch."
"Maybe that's what brought Sephiroth back? That's what got rid of Chaos?" Tifa pressed, falling into a hush thereafter. She stepped back from her companion, tapping her chin in deliberation. "I wonder if she touched Cloud... I don't think this hermit thing he's been doing is natural for him."
"Who knows?"
"Well, at any rate, Vincent," Tifa piped, "I can't let you do this alone. Now, I have no problem playing the hapless sidekick or the ditzy secretary for a little while, but we're still a team. There must be something I can do where I'm not stepping on your toes but I'm still a part of the action..."
"It's too soon to completely throw everything out of proportion." Vincent stretched to his feet, adjusted his cape and gloves and combed back his hair. He quickly devised plans, small ones, simple ones, as to his next course of action, but in spite of the urge to just run off and do everything on his own, he considerately mulled over Tifa's nimble shape. "Why don't you call Reeve and get him started on recon?"
"Is that all?" she asked, sounding disappointed.
"For the moment," he said. "I have to go."
--
A wave of fatigue struck Vincent just as his rear touched the seat of the bike. It was nearing dawn and he hadn't a true moment's rest since the morning before. He suddenly wasn't sure if he should rest or push himself further. With the scientists already an untold number of steps ahead, whether he rested or not, he had to wait until Reeve got a solid lead— if one at all— on their whereabouts.
He exhaled tiredly, briefly viewing the darkling, dawning sky. His eyes drifted to the east.
A prompt glitter flashed below his line of sight before he caught its source ripping across his shoulder. A wing of blood sprouted, staining his hair and left eye blind, driving him off-balance and onto one knee next to his bike. The glitter made its home cold and deep, the pain evinced now only comparable to the sting of his burnt face.
It was unlike him to be caught off guard like this. But the mounting agony excused his error.
"Tell me where Drana is. I can smell her on you. You did something."
"Whatever I've done is nothing against what you did to her," he spat, feeling the shimmer soon push him to his other knee. Though at the mercy of the previously unseen blade, Vincent refused to fully yield, not without good reason. But he'd also refused to pull out his weapon. In this position, it would've only ensured more pain for him, pain he hadn't the patience to deal with. "Sephiroth... what…"
"Mr. Valentine, I'll make sure you never interfere with us again," his assailant whispered.
"You can't kill me," growled Vincent.
"That almost sounded like an order... but I answer to no one," Sephiroth laughed lowly.
"If you kill me, you'll never find her until it's too late, do you want that?!"
"I don't need anyone's help." The declaration at first rolled out in a snicker, but quickly ebbed to the sharpest cold. "Most certainly not from you. From day one, you've been a threat to us, a nuisance. I won't let you get away with it. I can't. I'll carve you into the finest ribbons of meat for the worms."
"You're unbelievable," Vincent snarled. He reached up and grabbed the elongated blade flat between his gloved palms and lifted it as he got to his feet. Sephiroth had luckily not provided resistance against his rise, keeping the sword only safely wedged upon his collarbone and shoulder blade and in his flesh. Except radiate an extreme chill of malice, his assailant merely stood there, eyes glowing feral and green in the night. A quivering shadow dangled over one of his arms, trickling sluggish ooze down his side.
"Oh. Am I?"
Vincent chuckled and nodded. "I know what she did. And I know you'll be disgracing her by killing me. All her work gone down the drain. It didn't take a genius to figure out her plans for you. And it won't take a genius to find out where you'll go because you can't be a human again for once. Hear me, Sephiroth? In that thick gray head of yours? Understand what I'm getting at?
"No, of course you don't. Blinded by the same bloodlust and hunger for power that got you killed in the first place. I see now. You just want to die again. Sabotage the second life Drana gave you, that she assumed you'd put to good use. Yes, show her how much of a man you aren't by-"
"Shut up," Sephiroth hissed.
The gash in Vincent's shoulder throbbed more intensely now than when he'd first been cut, buckling his knees; the wound fought to retain its heat under the thrall of the razor-sharp offender. The lofty man's eyes had shrunk to mere glowing slits in the night all the while, focusing more on suspicion than controlled rage. Swiftly and soundlessly, his foot swung up to meet the gunman's jaw with a fresh snap and crack of teeth on teeth, skull on bike.
Sephiroth cleared his throat and unsheathed his sword from Vincent's flesh, snapping the thin shred of meat and cloth that kept it in place. Eventually he muttered, "What makes you think you know anything about me?"
"I… We chased Jenova to the ends of the earth. She was... a good medium for your ambitions, and all your words, your thoughts. It's what she did... right?" Breathing hard and cradling his shoulder, Vincent vied to sit upright against his bike. His mouth luckily nursed no pool of blood, but his jaws ached as if they'd been crushed by rocks.
"Just tell me where she is," Sephiroth intoned as he knelt before Vincent.
"I'll tell you— I'll even help you— if I go along, too," he bargained.
Mirth.
"Drana's mine, all mine. Why do I need the help of a dead man?"
"I'm your only lead on her kidnapping."
"... if I weren't experiencing a few... technical difficulties, I'd not have hesitated to dismember you right here and now. And she would already be back with me."
A pause.
"Technical dif-"
"One time and one time only, I'll let my judgment slide," Sephiroth stated in barefaced dismay. "I'll let you live and show me the way, but only because of her. Try anything, dead man. Anything at all. Not even the Planet will welcome you back when I'm done with you."
"... you don't make much an effort at all." Vincent smirked up at the gray-headed man, though amazingly enough his calm expression went unnoticed. He exhaled. Such a close call with death at the hands of Sephiroth amused him sorely. For Lucrecia's son, as he acted then and now, was nearly a Chaos unto himself but far more agreeable in the reasoning department. And sparingly merciful, to boot.
Sephiroth laid a hand on Vincent's wound, coating the whole left side of his face and shoulder with a soothing green-white light.
"Wh, what are you doing?"
"Drana isn't the only one who can heal, dead man," he said, pulling his bloodied hand away. "I just choose not to. I don't have the amount of good will she has."
"Obviously."
Sephiroth shuffled back on bare toes, allowing Vincent room to get to his feet. All the pain, even the burns that Tifa had spent time dressing so carefully that were now little more than blush on his cheeks, had died away. Refreshed, he could have challenged his healer to a final fight but he owed it to the other for sparing his life while at his mercy. He put a spot of distance between Sephiroth and himself by calmly strolling to the other side of his bike, thoughtlessly dusting off his cape and seat of his pants.
Still crouched on the ground like a cat watching its prey, Sephiroth uttered, "Now tell me where she is."
"Some men snatched her," Vincent replied. "Lab coats. They went somewhere east. I've already got recon in the works."
"The lead you have is trivial enough for me to kill you anyways."
-----
"What a hottie."
"She looks like Sephiroth, too!"
"Alright, back off, I need room."
Rufus mulled over the new happenings emailed to him by the incorrigible Saristis Noah. He'd hoped the man would have hit a dead end in the search for his ultimate being by now, but he couldn't have been more wrong. The mug shot attachment proved surprisingly enough that such a thing might exist in unanticipated human form. The Planet's beloved Weapons maintained the norm by appearing more beast than human; this pleasant breaking of the mold practically swept him off his feet.
Tseng gazed silently at the computer screen over his boss's head, then nodded. "So there's confirmation of General Sephiroth's existence."
"It's only verbal," Rufus shrugged. "I'll believe it when I see a picture or the genuine article."
"It'd be the real deal this time, right?" Elena asked. "Like, the real Sephiroth instead of Jenova? I wonder what he's like. I only ever saw him from afar when I was younger."
"I can bet ya he'll be damn pissed those science bitches took his lady," Reno said, jabbing a thumb at the onscreen image.
"I think it's strange for a zombie to have a lady," Elena mused, standing from her boss's side.
"I wonder if zombie is even an accurate term for our old general." Rufus closed the email and sat back in his chair. His eyes leisurely wafted to the open window on his left where a somewhat unobstructed view of the sunny yellow streets and bustling docks far beyond greeted him. It was a bit soon to be hanging out in yet another tropical setting but this was as close to Junon as he was willing to get without being outright noticed. From his villa there in Costa del Sol, he monitored WRO activity with near utmost safety as well as maintained awkward contact with Saristis.
"Boss, as far as the lab coats are concerned, I'm with ya on taking a backseat," Reno stated, taking a dive butt-first onto the sofa. "But... eh... Gotta admit I'm curious about this broad and Zombie Sephiroth."
"Me, too," the lady Turk chimed.
"So, birds of a feather really do flock together," Rufus murmured under his breath, turning back to his desktop. "But... I think the WRO is going to want in on this."
"You've misgivings, too?" Tseng asked from above.
"Anything to do with Sephiroth and old Shinra is worth a misgiving, if I do say so myself. I'll let Noah know I'm still curious but I'll also have my mole let Reeve know of their activity." Rufus casually laid his fingers on mouse and keyboard, smirking and uttering, "Ah gambits and espionage. I think this should have been my calling all along."