Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Why Me? A Love Story For Manic Depressives ❯ Faster Kisaragi, Steal! Steal! ( Chapter 2 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: dusttraveller 
In which we meet our heroine, and discover that she suffers from a severe case of moral torpitude
Non Anime: Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Comedy / Romance | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 07.30.2004 | Pages: 6 | Words: 7.7K | Visits: 277 | Status: Completed
In which we meet our heroine, and discover that she suffers from a severe case of moral torpitude
Non Anime: Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Adventure / Comedy / Romance | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 07.30.2004 | Pages: 6 | Words: 7.7K | Visits: 277 | Status: Completed
"They target you with their eyes, and move with their lips, and it drags you in. She shuts you down with her voice again, and now, are you listening? This song, goes out ta girls though we haven't met just yet, this song's for stupid girls, who think that every boy is all about them. About them." -A Newfound Glory, These Girls Are Crazy
She was on the run again.
This statement begs clarification. Yuffie Kisaragi had spent a vast majority of her admittedly short life on the run from one thing or another. It wasn't that she was a coward... oh no, not that. Anyone who can spend four and a half hours suspended upside down by her crossed ankles over a drop that would have made Evil Knevil shout "are you fucking nuts!?" For two fire and an ice materia might be considered lacking in something, but whatever it was, it wasn't bravery.
They also had to have extremely strong ankles and a tolerance for blood rushing to one's head, but that's beside the point.
Yuffie Kisaragi does not make a habit of examining her feelings over much. Much the opposite in fact, she has a tendancy to blurt out what she's feeling before she even realizes she was feeling it, and if she analyzed it at all, it was purely in retrospect... a sort of reflexive, mental excuse me, like "Whoa... where the hell did that come from? Maybe I'm eating too much cheese."
Things that bothered her she ignored, simply put it in a filing cabinet in her mind labeled "icky" and let it slide past her. She had more important, less boring (the distinction between the two is hazy for Yuffie... yes saving the planet was important, but it was also never boring.) things to do.
A psychiatrist would have had a field day with her, had he not been driven into a homicidal rage by her inability to sit still.
Perhaps that was it, really. Perhaps, if one were to analyze the facts, if one were to look into her past and see it for what it was... a father who bent further and further under the anxieties of running a kingdom, never fully recovering from the grief of losing his wife... A mythical mother figure only dimly remembered, spoken of wistfully as a warrior woman who's battle prowess was legendary, until she let herself be tied down... The endless boring responsibilities lumped upon her... the freedom of being your own mistress... perhaps when one put all of this evidence together, one might realize that if she feared anything, it was being chained to one place for too long... being forced to grow up, and shoulder one's responsibilities, was one more step down the inevitable path of banality, one more nail in the coffin lid.
Yuffie's thoughts on the matter were amazingly simple, poignant, and alot less full of pretentious bullshit.
"You'll never take me alive coppers."
Admittedly, she is not the most philosophical of individuals.
Since she had spent a majority of her life on the run, it stands to reason that she was also very good at it. If Yuffie didn't want to be found, then she wouldn't be, it was a simple as that. If she was found, it was because she wanted you to find her.
Or because she was looking for you.
Or because she was flat friggin' broke, and she was after some cash to get stuff she needed.
Hey... even a ninja's gotta eat.
***
With Shinra out of the picture, and with the world still warily peeking its head out from under the covers, wondering if the end was here even after two years, it was a reasonable assumption to say that lawlessness was at an all time high. Countries who had once relied on Shinra for their protection (whether they wanted to or not) found themselves in the unenviable position of having to defend themselves, and most of them lacked the ability to coordinate their efforts to quell the rise of crime and disorder that came in the wake of Meteor. Looting had been commonplace during those terrible last days, when Meteor had loomed ever closer in the sky, and quite a few of those looters had devoloped a taste for the art of the five finger discount. It was a relatively easy thing to avoid capture. With the shut down and destruction of the Mako reactors, the world had become a primitive place forced to look to alternate, and inevitably crude, means of power.
Means that did not require the draining of the planet's lifeblood.
Computers were but a fond memory, and communication between law enforcement efforts from city to city, country to country, was nonexistant. Criminals wanted in one country had only to move to a different location and they were home free, at least, until they broke the law again. Bounty hunters alleviated this somewhat, but bounty hunters were expensive, unreliable, and sometimes as downright lawless as the criminals they sought... little better than hired killers.
Midgar, with its forward thinking mayor, had started a licensing and registration program for bounty hunters, but this practice, though wise, hadn't quite caught on yet. It was an unpredictable and strange time, a time when every country was a frontier again, along with the problems that any frontier inevitably generated, so it was not too uncommon to see semi-permanent "bandit camps", really crude fortresses, popping up in the most inaccessable, inconvieniently placed locations around the globe. They were generally armed to the teeth, there being a disturbing amount of displaced and disgruntled ex-Shinra service members, most of whom were somewhat deficient in the morality department. Additionally, Shinra equipment and war machines were everywhere... so common place that one could, in some poorer parts of the world, trade a Shinra rifle in for only a good meal... maybe a place to stay for the night if one were lucky. As such, no one had the requisite death wish needed to attack the well-defended, well hidden bases, much LESS steal from them.
No one SANE that is.
Enter Yuffie Kisaragi, the ninja, or as she is sometimes known, She Who Redefineth the Term, "What in the hell were you THINKING?!"
***
Deep in Gongaga jungle, in a place only recently invaded by man, one of the aforementioned fortresses sat peacefully in the gloom. Nightfall had come and gone, and now the fortress was at that dangerous time for any building defended since time immemorial, that time when the night watch has stopped being overly vigilant and started being overly sleepy. Men passed by on the high wooden palisade wall muttering to one another or themselves, following a path that had become routine in its boredom. Somewhere inside the fortress, the faint sounds of large animals settling themselves down to rest penetrated the tenebral gloom.
Just after the guard passed the midpoint on the wall, a shadow detached itself from its surroundings and crept up to the base of the palisade wall.
One might be asking oneself how a shadow can suddenly decide to move by itself.
One might also ask oneself how a shadow moves by itself and giggles quietly at its own sneakiness too, but we shall over look this little transgression, as by now you are probably quite aware of the fact that this is no ordinary shadow.
The shadow resolved itself into a short, lithe silouette crouching at the base of the wall. Waiting for several heartbeats, as though timing something, the figure suddenly exploded upward like a cork shot from a bottle, only soundlessly. It landed on the palisade wall, then immediately rolled forward off the wall and into the fortress courtyard (such as it was). Pausing for a moment as though scenting the air, it then made a beeline for a half dozen crude-looking shacks in the northwest corner of the grounds.
Several loud, crude male voices caused the figure to pause for a moment, as it braced up against one of the buildings. Sneaking a peek at a lit spot between two of the shacks, the figure quietly watched what appeared to be a poker game between four bandits.
More importantly, it watched the piles of 500 gil coins the bandits were using as chips.
-The ninja's greatest assets are stealth and trickery- the figure thought to itself, as it crouched so low an observer might have winced, then scrambled up to the table and impossibly, underneath it.
Bil grinned nastily behind his cards and glanced at each of his fellow players. He was pretty sure Macky was bluffing, and he knew Tom and Seth were holding nothing because of a strategically placed mirror. He was also pretty sure the other members of the game were cheating, but since he was too, and since he couldn't prove it, he played dumb.
He was still watching his opponents intently though, as he was sure they were watching him, and so he completely missed the small hand that quietly reached up and snatched his pile of gil.
Reaching down to pick up a 500 gil piece, never taking his eyes off his opponents, he reached around blindly for the pile he knew was there. Only... it wasn't there... or there... or... hey! He looked down and blinked several times, then back up, his face a sudden rictus of suspicion and anger.
"Alright! Who's the wise ass?" He roared.
The other players blinked and looked at him, faces paling. All of them HAD been cheating, and not noticing the gil on their opponent's pile was missing, they were each suddenly sure he was referring to them.
Macky blinked. "I-I got no idea what yer talkin' about, Bil." he chuckled uneasily.
Bil glowered at him. "Did you do it?"
Macky frowned. "Do what, Bil?"
"DID YOU TAKE MY GIL, YOU ASSHOLE!"
Macky blinked. "Uh... no way, Bil. It was right in front of you, and all my gil's right here, see-" He blinked.
His gil was not right there. It hadn't even left a note. His lower lip trembled.
"What the fuck!" he stood up, turning to his companions.
Bil followed him, glaring as well.
Their companions stared at them both as though they'd grown another head apiece.
Seth put his cards down and calmly looked up. "You were watching all of us like hawks, both of you. You KNOW we didn't take your stash."
Bil glowered. "Well who DID then?"
Seth shrugged. "Maybe you dropped it. Or maybe..." he let the statement hang.
Bil snarled. "You think I'm lying?!"
Seth narrowed his eyes. "All I'm sayin' is, you been losing all night... maybe you decided it was time to cut your losses... and Macky's too."
Macky was now staring at Bil suspiciously.
Bil slammed his hands on the table. "All I know is I've been playin' with a bunch of cheatin' bastards, and-" He stopped, staring at the table where his hand had just slammed.
The other bandits stared as well. Under his fist, as though it had fallen from his sleeve, a joker lie accusingly staring up at him.
He paled. Where the hell had that come from... he didn't have any Jokers up his sleeve...
Aces maybe, but jokers? hell no!
"Uh..." he started. The others were still staring at the joker.
Seth was the first to recover. "We're cheatin', huh?"
Macky didn't wait for an explanation. He grabbed Bil's throat and began throttling the life out of him. "Gimme back my gil you son of a bitch!"
The two struggled with one another, rolling over the table and onto the other side. Bil somehow managed to kick Seth in the face as he flailed in Macky's grasp, and they practically fell into the until now silent Tom's lap, who bellowed something to the effect of, "BRING IT OOOOOOOONNNNNN.", before jumping into the fray.
Tom had been in an Shinra squad that had tangled with the Avalanche group... he'd never quite been right in the head afterwards.
Somewhere in the middle of the four way brawl that started up, all of their gil as well as the few weak materia they had in their weapons disappeared, along with a certain shadow that vanished further into the clump of shacks beyond their light.
It was looking to be a profitable night.
***
The shack was larger, sturdier built than its fellows, and stood a distance apart. This lead Yuffie to believe it housed either something, or someone, of importance. Stopping a moment at the door, she waited, listening for a full thirty seconds before slowly opening the door and entering. So newly made, the door swung outward on well greased hinges, making not a single noise. Yuffie slipped inside and froze along the outer wall, having spotted someone... several someones (ewww) sleeping on the bed. Stacked in a pile, as thought thrown carelessly in the heat of passion, rested a belt pouch or bag attached to a belt. The glint of gil, and possibly more, peeked seductively out from under the flap, which bulged from the contents.
Yuffie grinned.
Slipping along side the wall, she made her way towards the pouch.
-I am a ninja... the ninja is unseen. To remain unseen, the ninja must not simply blend in with her surroundings, she must BE her surroundings.- She thought to herself.
Closer... pause as the male sleeper groaned and scratched himself, then continue closer.
-I am not hugging the wall, I am the wall.- she thought. This started a mantra.
-I am not under the table, I am the table. I am not behind the chair, I am the chair. I am not on top of the pile of dirty laundry, I am-
She paused.
-Wait a minute... Did I just...-
She made the possibly fatal mistake of looking down. Her sudden intake of breath didn't help matters.
"OH EWWW.... GROSSNESS!!"
The male figure snorted, sat up and growled. "What the HELL?!"
It's funny he asked that, because in the next four seconds, guess what broke loose.
***
The room suddenly became more chaotic than a Ministry inspired Moshpit. The male bandit exploded up from the bed in fury, grabbing up a pistol as he did so. This woke up the two females at his side, who blinked sleepily in surprise. The next second, a dirty pair of underwear caught the bandit dead face, causing his pistol, which he had been aiming in the general direction of Yuffie, to go off. Yuffie, who had been diving for the pouch, missed getting shot by about an inch. She continued her roll, cursing her bad luck, caught the belt and bounced off the wall up into a full sprint for the open door.
However, while this was happening, at the load report of the pistol, the two females had became extremely alert, if nothing else. Self preservation is an interesting instinct, as it causes different people to react in different ways. Here we see three seperate responses:
The first girl responded with option A) Indecision. She screamed and covered herself up fearfully, pulling a little two hard on the blanket and causing the bandit to fall flat on his back, underwear still stuck to his face, he reacted with option B) Fight. He waved the pistol about and fired blindly at all corners of the room, yelling loudly, but slightly muffled. The other girl, perhaps the smarter of the two, Attempted option C) Namely, get the fuck out of dodge, and she jumped off the bed completely naked and made a beeline for the door, but tripped over a chair and ended up tangled with it clutching her shin.
Yuffie hurdled over the stunned bimbo (heh... stunned bimbo hurdling, an olympic sport candidate if I've ever heard one) then out the door. She had made about halfway across the courtyard when the place lit up like a roman candle and alarms started sounding. Apparently they'd managed to figure out some way to get power into the facility, perhaps a mako battery or something, because all of the sudden, there was no longer anywhere to hide.
Yuffie blinked in the sudden light, cursed her luck (but being two inches from some guy's much abused jockey shorts was a little too much for her gross-shitometer to deal with, thank you very much) and prepared to do a little option B herself.
"Get the bitch!" A very loud, very angry voice sounded into the night, revealing the bandit leader, now clad in the much abused jockey shorts (ewwww) and a grunge covered long coat of some kind, pistol in hand. Several bandits milled about, confused as to who he was referring to, but a line of guards unshouldered their rifles and oriented on the running figure.
She never stopped running, her hand flashed out, and a streak of silver sliced the air like it was something palpable. It came in a perfect circular arc, passing each bandit guard in turn, neatly severed each rifle barrel, then returned to Yuffie's waiting hand.
God she loved Conformer.
They stared at the rifles in confusion and shock, too awed to do much of anything productive.
Well, much of anything productive but stand there like an impromptu wall. Yuffie skidded to a halt and changed directions back towards the bandit leader.
"GRRRRLLLLRRRWWWLLLL I SAID GET HER, YOU IDIOTS! CATCH HER!" He shook the empty, useless pistol in frustration and pointed.
Several bandits now chased the rapidly retreating Yuffie, forcing her towards the Bandit leader. The first one to reach her leapt at her in a sideways tackle move, and she ducked completely under him, never stopping her run. Another stepped in to bear hug her and she kicked him square in the jaw, flipping his body over so that he landed on his face, stunned.
Yuffie grinned. She had a plan. Like most of her plans, it involved a overwhelming large risk to sanity margin.
The next bandit swung his rifle like an impromptu club and she parried with Conformer, flashing the shuriken downward so fast it made a hissing noise. The bandit's pants, no longer being held up by his now severed belt, promptly said to hell with this and dropped, revealing his hairy legs and heart patterned jockey shorts. He tripped, and as he went down, Yuffie used his skull as a spring board to catapult herself at the Bandit leader.
Vex, the Bandit leader, was beginning to get a little vexxed himself. He had been rudely awakened from a deep, restful sleep after a night's carousing, had his dignity assaulted, and his possessions stolen, and he was out for blood. How dare this little bitch invade his home and take his stuff, that he'd taken fair and square from other people? How dare she make his men look like bumbling idiots. How dare she come flying at him like a bat outta-
Anything else going through his mind at that point immediately went in the opposite direction as Yuffie planted both feet into his face, bent her legs to absorb the shock and coil herself inward, then explode upward into the night like a bottle rocket. Vex impacted face first with the ground, his head being buried an inch or three by the force, his screams of pain and outrage muffled by several mouthfuls of topsoil. Yuffie flipped neatly at the apex of her leap like a master gymnist, landing tiptoe on the wall of the fortress. She smiled back at her pursuers, winked, then slapped her ass twice and dropped over the other side.
The small post she'd been standing on seconds before was immediately torn apart by gunfire.
Yuffie disappeared into the night.
The bandits stared at each other, uncertain what to do. One bandit leaned in close to Vex, who was still facedown in the dirt.
The bandit poked him concernedly.
He immediately became a bit more concerned when Vex's hand shot out and grabbed his throat. Vex picked himself up and spit dirt out of the side of his mouth, drug the hapless bandit to stare at him face to face, and snarled.
"Saddle up the Lizards. I want that girl's spleen for a trophy." His eyes glinted furiously.
The bandit gulped and hastened to do as he was asked.
Vex turned to his crew and growled, his lip twitching spasmodically. "5000 gil to the man who brings me that... that girl."
Half in the light, half out of it, his face took on an extremely fearsome quality.
At least, it would have been fearsome, had it not had a big red footprint visible on it.
***
Anyone who thinks a bounty hunter's job is easy has obviously never done it before.
First of all, you start off with only a description of your target and maybe, if you're lucky, a vague idea of where he's going. Unfortunately, people who skip town because of crimes committed very seldom leave a forwarding address, this being counterproductive to remaining in an unjailed state. Additionally, criminals that require a bounty are usually repeat offenders, so they know how to lie low for a while once they get where they are going, which further widens the search area. Once you find the bastard, then you have to apprehend them, and that's difficult as well. Very few bounties are for dead or alive, most require the villain to be brought in still alive, which meant you had to shoot very carefully.
The villain in question was under no such restraints, and if he was smart, he knew you were coming, and he probably had friends.
Add to this the fact that for all of her immaturity, Vincent was being tasked to hunt a NINJA, and it immediately becomes clear why most of the people Godo had sent previously had been unable to locate her.
However daunting his task might have been, Vincent was not completely in the dark. He knew her personally, and he was now intimately aware of her situation. This gave him an advantage.
He pondered this as he rested in the cargohold (Vincent had no need of creature comforts, and had been able to purchase a much cheaper ticket by offering to reside in the cargohold for the trip. The captain had stared at him like he was crazy, but truthfully, Vincent preferred it. No one else bothered to go down into the cargohold, and that left him alone with his thoughts) of the ship traveling from Wutai to Costa Del Sol, ironically, exactly 2 months to the day before Yuffie would attempt her desperate grab for cash in the Gongaga jungle. He considered the evidence, what he knew of Yuffie, combined with what he knew of her situation.
Point 1, Yuffie hated flying, and hated ships... pretty much hated anything that didn't move naturally. She was prone to motion sickness, which led Vincent to believe she'd grab a transport to the nearest port away from Wutai, and no further. The nearest actual port was Costa Del Sol, which also happened to be a port which none of her friends lived at, an added bonus, Vincent believed she'd have thought.
This led to point 2, what she was doing was reckless and irresponsible, she must have known how the other, older members of Avalanche would see that, at the very least they would try to talk her out of it, at worst, they'd contact Godo. So she would avoid towns where she might meet her friends, that marked Cosmo Canyon, Correl, and Rocket Town off the list. On that continent, that left only Nibelheim, the Gold Saucer, and Gongaga.
This led to point 3, Yuffie would probably avoid moving closer to Wutai. Additionally, if Vincent remembered correctly, Yuffie had found Nibelheim to be somewhat boring and spooky. That left only the Gold Saucer and Gongaga.
Vincent could only surmise that from what he knew of Yuffie, the Gold Saucer was the best bet.
He sighed. Vincent disliked that place intensely. It was too bright, too fake... and too full of noise... and people... there was almost no where one could go to get away from it all. The Gold Saucer was a place people went to to get away from their troubles, to forget about their problems.
Vincent could neither get away or forget, and so the place was useless to him.
Without the mako reactors that had powered them before, ships were forced to make use of old coal driven steam engines, inefficient and prone to breakdown. The trip, normally a scant five day voyage, took the small passenger ship two and a half weeks to accomplish.
None of the other passengers were aware of the odd passenger being carried, or his mission.
His face showed none of his misgivings as he methodically saddled his chocobo, a quiet, even tempered beast, who warked at him quietly as he went about his business. It shifted its feet on the cold deck, sensing this long wait was at an end, and glad of it. When the boat pulled up to the pier, he was on his way in less time then it took for the captain to wish him a pleasant stay.
He didn't want to deal with the Gold Saucer. Not in the least.
Still, to protect Yuffie from her mistake, and to prevent a civil war, Vincent would make that sacrifice.
Probably a few more on the way.
***
A month later, Vincent wearily concluded that Yuffie was not in the Gold Saucer.
At least, not now. There were rumours about some sort of confrontation between a large man and a small girl matching Yuffie's description in the arena. From what Vincent was able to surmise, Sung had caught up with Yuffie here, and tried to drag her bodily back to Wutai. This had ended with her kicking the stuffing out of him, giving him his unfortunate tattoo, and stealing his Chocobo. He knew this because there was a stolen property report in Sung's name, and Yuffie had been listed as the prime suspect.
Vincent sighed. It had taken him too long to scrounge out that information, and it was meager at best. One promising lead had her taking off in the direction of Gongaga, which fit in well with his guesswork up til now. There was just one fly in the ointment.
He wasn't the only one asking around for Yuffie's whereabouts.
Others had been asking, and they'd been paying quite a bit for the information too. Vincent surmised that Yuffie didn't have a whole lot of time left before these agents caught up with her.
He could only hope, as he left the Gold Saucer behind in a trail of dust, headed for Gongaga, that he was faster than they were.
***
It's funny how things work out. Coincidences pile up one atop the other, until one is almost forced to admit that perhaps there is some force out there, looking out for fools and madmen. Call it destiny, fate, or some fickle god. Call it what you will, but it was in full effect. Vincent arrived in Gongaga just as Yuffie was leaving after spending the last of the cash she had on a meal and a bed. He was able to confirm that she had been here, additionally that she'd sold Sung's chocobo about a week ago, and was actually quite a big spender here, up until yesterday.
Vincent considered the terrain thoughtfully. Her best bet would be to head into Gongaga jungle to pick up a few bounties on the local monsters... Vincent had done something similar during his own wanderings across the land. Since she would be on foot, she couldn't have gotten very far. Vincent doubted she'd go beyond the jungle, at least, not in the time it had taken him to get here. Vincent paused to pick up a few supplies then headed out into the jungle after her. An ordinary tracker would have been unable to find the meager signs that Yuffie had left behind her. Indeed, had she not been unused to the jungle, it was quite feasible that even Vincent wouldn't have been able to pick up her trail. Pick it up he did, however, and in the fading light that crept through the trees, he picked his way carefully through the dense foliage, following the small set of tracks that he had picked up.
He sensed he was close.
He had been searching for her exactly two months.
As it was mentioned earlier, kinda makes you think perhaps something *cough-author-cough* might a hand in this little coincidence, doesn't it?
***
Something was moving through the brush. Several somethings. Several... BIG somethings. Vincent reined in the chocobo and it warked at him, half in curiousity, half in nervousness. Vincent patted its head gently, calming it, then tied its reins to a nearby branch. He moved quietly through the pitch blackness. Well, pitch blackness for anyone else... there was a little bit of moonlight filtering in from the dense canopy, and this was enough light for Vincent to see quite well by.
There were some advantages to being a monster, after all.
He stopped when he saw a small blur burst through the nearby bushes and rush past him, so close he could have reached out to touch the running figure. He glanced down momentarily, caught sight of the small sneakerlike track left in the soft topsoil, then flattened himself against a nearby tree as the crashing and stomping noises got louder. Immediately out of the brush that Yuffie had burst through, the bushes exploded, disgorging four gigantic komodo dragons, crushing and hissing their way through the jungle. Two men sat on each lizard, one controlling the beast, the other armed with what appeared to be a Shinra squad light antipersonnel machine gun. Vincent sighed.
-What have you gotten yourself into, Yuffie?- He thought.
As last of the Lizards passed close by, he spotted a dangling side strap that attached to the saddle, probably to allow the mounting of supplies for easy transport. Yuffie's pursuers, in their haste to get to pursuing, had failed to properly stow the strap, and it flopped back and forth at the Lizard's side.
It was an easy matter to reach out, grab the thing, and allow himself to be dragged along with the lizard. He carefully, quietly climbed hand over hand up the strap, flipping himself lightly atop the reptile, immediately behind the machine gunner, who was so intent upon getting a shot at the fleeing girl he never noticed the dark passenger behind him. Vincent grabbed the man by the back of his collar with his clawed prosthesis and tossed him over the side so quickly the man didn't even get an opportunity to scream. The lizard, goaded on by the man saddled on its neck, walked right over the hapless bandit without even noticing him.
The hapless bandit in question, however, certainly noticed. For about a half a second.
Vincent took control of the machine gun and racked the slide, noting, at his feet, several grenades. Narrowing his eyes, he took note of the positions of each of the other three lizard teams. Swiveling the machine gun to orient at the one closest to him, he opened fire at its hind quarters. Stitching a staccato burst across its flank, he marched the tracer fire up to the machinegun nest on its back. After pumping rounds into it for a second or so, he was rewarded when the ammunition and explosives contained in the nest exploded messily, throwning bandit and bits of lizard all over the place. The lizard in question shrieked and ran off at a crazy angle into the jungle, taking its helpless controller with it.
The man who piloted the Komodo dragon that Vincent was on turned in the saddle to yell at his gunner.
"What the fuck are you doing, Gantz... you just-" He stopped, blinking at the sight in front of him.
A tall man, tattered red cloak streaming in the wind, set features hard to make out in the gloom, rose from his crouched position in the machinegun nest. Something that glittered weakly in the sparse moonlight made a pinging noise in his right hand. Part of the object, the reflective part, flipped into the night over the side of the lizard. The other, rounded, less reflective part, he dropped into the nest at his feet.
The pilot blinked. "Who the fuck are you?"
Vincent did not answer, he simply crouched and sprang upward, into the night.
If the pilot was upset by Vincent's rudeness, he quickly got over it as he realized belatedly what the object in Vincent's hand had been.
One of the thirty or so grenades stocked in the machine gun nest.
"Oh sh-"
Another explosion rocked the night.
***
Yuffie, her sides heaving with exertion, dodged around a tree and kept right on running, knowing that to falter or Leviathan forbid trip at this point would mean certain death.
"Geez," she groused to herself. "You'd think I pissed these guys off or somethin'."
Machine gun fire made Yuffie dive over a log and keep rolling, back up to her feet, until she realized the bullets weren't even coming close to her. An explosion lit up the night, followed by a horrendous bellowing roar of pain and anger.
"What the hell?!" She shouted.
Another explosion, this one a rattling bang like several smaller explosions rolling into one, followed by a horrendous crashing noise and a weak, gurgled hiss.
"Alright, what the heck is goin' on back there? Incompetent I figured, but terminally stupid?"
The lead Komodo Dragon crashed through the underbrush just behind Yuffie, spurring her to redouble her running efforts and set aside her thinking efforts, at least for now. She spun easily, tossing Conformer out behind her at an upward angle, and continuing her spin until she was reoriented forward, still running. The silvered, deadly bit of spinning metal flashed almost lazily upward, catching the rushing beast square between the eyes. All the laws of physics and ballistics stood up and clammered indignantly at once. A five ounce bit of metal tossed by an 18 year old girl, when colliding with a skull with a five inch plate of bone, by all rights should have no appreciable effect.
Reality told all those laws to shut up, because this was Conformer, the legendary weapon made especially for impossible situations, being thrown by a ninja who had taken part in the destruction of the most indestructible being ever to live.
The laws of physics and ballistics sat down and glared sullenly at the girl in question, muttering something to the effect of, "I'll get you yet."
Back in the real world, the deadly shuriken passed through the Lizard's skull like it was made of paper, slamming out an eighteen inch diameter hole in the back of the thing's skull, and splattering the hapless pilot with blood, brains and worse.
About a split second later the beast flipped end over end and crushed both him and the gunner beneath its several ton bulk.
"Hell yeah!" Yuffie pumped her fist.
Her victory dance was cut horrifically short.
The laws of physics and ballistics grinned predatorily.
For after having exsanguinated a five ton beast's skull, the deadly shuriken had somehow managed to get itself lodged in a fifteen foot diameter tree, and was not returning to Yuffie's grasp.
About that moment, the last Komodo Dragon broke into the clearing. Yuffie gulped, turned to run, and her foot caught a blasted root and she ended up flat on her ass staring up at five tons of hungry dragon, with a pilot grinning his ass off staring down at her.
"Goddamn it! The laws of physics must hate me!" She shouted, struggling to get her blasted foot loose.
Yup. The laws of ballistics too.
***
Vincent spent the next few seconds leaping from tree limb to tree limb, high above where the action was taking place. He witnessed Yuffie's magnicent throw, as well as her ignoble defeat at the hands of a tree root, and settled himself in the crook of the tree, snapping Death Penalty calmly but amazingly, inhumanly, quickly into a firing position. Wetting his finger, he slipped the gunsight up into position and gathered his breath.
-No time to gauge the distance. Going to have to guess-timate.- Vincent thought to himself. -About 75 yards. Slight bit of windage, too short a distance but the target is moving about 20 miles an hour... bullet drop should be negligable over that distance...-
All of these thoughts and a few more flickered by in less then a second as he took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and between breaths, squeezed the trigger.
Just as the beast began to charge, intent on trampling Yuffie into a more or less pancaked shape.
***
Yuffie had exhausted her options and was about to just ditch her damn shoe when the bandit got tired of playing with her and snapped his reins, forcing the beast into a charge. Yuffie blinked, paled and struggled with her shoe.
-NOO!! I don't wanna end up as Big Lizard toe jam! SHIIIII-
Her thoughts were cut short as a strangely familiar gunshot boomed through the night.
The pilot, intent on on urging his beast forward, never heard the shot. Of course, the heavy calibre long rifle's bullet traveled at supersonic speeds, and the distance was far too short for him to hear anything before the bullet reached the target.
Since the target was the back of his skull, it hardly mattered if he heard it anyway. The heavy calibre, armor piercing mythril jacketed bullet passed through his head, his face did an impression of the Mt. St. Helen's eruption, and the bullet continued through, burying itself deep in the spinal column of the charging beast.
The laws of ballistics may hate Yuffie, but they love Vincent Valentine like a brother.
The Komodo Dragon suddenly lost the ability to control its limbs and flopped suddenly, forward momentum causing it to slide forward until the build up of dirt around its wide skull created enough resistance to slow it to a stop.
Its bony crest rested a scant five inches from a startled young ninja's nose.
She blinked several times at it, staring cross-eyed.
"Hoo boy. Might need a change of shorts after that one." She muttered quietly to herself.
Amazingly, her sneaker choose that exact moment to come loose from its hiding place.
She stared at it irritably for a moment before standing up and brushing herself off.
Climbing atop the dead beasts head (it had snapped its own neck when it crashed) she walked its length from tip to tail, and peered into the gloom. Someone had been helping her out there.. someone who had fired that achingly familiar shot. She just couldn't place it though. Come to think of it, there had been four dinos after her... where were the rest of them?
A light flapping noise caught her attention and she jerked back, glancing upward. A tall figure dropped down on top of the beast about three feet in front of her, all menacing red eyes and red cloak. She yelped and swung a roundhouse kick at it in reflex.
"It", in an unamused fashion, caught her kick and stared down her leg at her.
She blinked, then amazement flooded her face. "Vinnie? I-Is... that you?"
Vincent closed his eyes and sighed, releasing her foot. He really hated that nickname.
Yuffie waved her arms a little, off balance from the way Vincent had suddenly released her foot and took a couple of steps back. Recovering her balance, she stared at him in shock. Of all the people she'd expected to see here, Vincent was about the last one. Even later then Rufus and the Pope, and that was saying something, because she wasn't even sure who the Pope was, just that it was more likely she'd see him here than Vincent.
Vincent, for his part, simply unholstered Peacemaker and stepped past her while her shocked brain struggled to come to terms with his sudden appearance.
He glanced over the side of the beast and noted the pilot slumped over, a large hole where his head should be. If he felt any satisfaction of the amazing display of his marksmanship, he showed no sign. He turned his gaze to the machinegunner. The man's pale, shock-ridden face came into view, his breathing labored. He had a bloody streak running from one temple, and he struggled to orient his hopelessly damaged machinegun at Vincent.
Yuffie caught none of this.
"Hey Vinnie... long time no see, yeah I'm doin' fine, so what brings you to Gongaga?"
He stared down at the bandit, lost in thought, apparently not listening to her.
"In the middle of the jungle?"
He appeared to come to a decision.
"At night?"
In one smooth motion he pointed the revolver at the downed bandit and pulled the trigger, sending the man into the afterlife.
Yuffie stared at him, openmouthed, her eyes wide. "Geez! Vinnie... that guy couldn't do anything to us. Why'd ja have ta-"
Vincent looked at her coldly. "Were we going to carry him, with two broken legs, and where exactly?"
She blinked. "Er.."
"Or leave him here... helpless... for the jungle frogs." He continued to stare at her, his face less expressive than a brick wall.
She frowned. This was the most she'd ever heard from Vincent. Ever. Period. He was right, in a coldly efficient, ultra-pragmatic sort of way. How very... Vincenty of him.
As with any argument she was destined to lose, she switched tactics.
"You haven't answered my question, Vinnie... What are you out here for?"
He holstered Peacemaker and stared at her fully.
"You." He said, calmly.
She blinked.
-Ok... that's not exactly the answer I was looking for. Why does this answer not suddenly fill me with confidence?- She thought warily.
Vincent waited for her to make the first move.
***
A/N: Doncha just HATE cliffhangers? I know I do. I hate them so much. I would apologize, but I am tired, and I figure anyone who's annoyed enough to quite reading because of a cliffhanger probably wasn't enjoying the story very much anyway. In retrospect, Mr. Zeta, if you are still out there, I decided to stick with the Peacemaker as Vincent's sidearm of choice. Its historical ramifications tickle me far too much, and it is a revolver that he uses. I appreciate your info though, so keep on tossing me curve balls.
4 day weekend! Woohoo! I sleep well this night, for on the morrow I play DnD! Oh frabulous day, galloo gallay!
A special bonus to the first person who can tell me where I lifted the title for chapter 1 from. By where I mean who, and what it was. Hopefully figuring it out will keep you busy until I come up with the next chapter.
Chris, DT
She was on the run again.
This statement begs clarification. Yuffie Kisaragi had spent a vast majority of her admittedly short life on the run from one thing or another. It wasn't that she was a coward... oh no, not that. Anyone who can spend four and a half hours suspended upside down by her crossed ankles over a drop that would have made Evil Knevil shout "are you fucking nuts!?" For two fire and an ice materia might be considered lacking in something, but whatever it was, it wasn't bravery.
They also had to have extremely strong ankles and a tolerance for blood rushing to one's head, but that's beside the point.
Yuffie Kisaragi does not make a habit of examining her feelings over much. Much the opposite in fact, she has a tendancy to blurt out what she's feeling before she even realizes she was feeling it, and if she analyzed it at all, it was purely in retrospect... a sort of reflexive, mental excuse me, like "Whoa... where the hell did that come from? Maybe I'm eating too much cheese."
Things that bothered her she ignored, simply put it in a filing cabinet in her mind labeled "icky" and let it slide past her. She had more important, less boring (the distinction between the two is hazy for Yuffie... yes saving the planet was important, but it was also never boring.) things to do.
A psychiatrist would have had a field day with her, had he not been driven into a homicidal rage by her inability to sit still.
Perhaps that was it, really. Perhaps, if one were to analyze the facts, if one were to look into her past and see it for what it was... a father who bent further and further under the anxieties of running a kingdom, never fully recovering from the grief of losing his wife... A mythical mother figure only dimly remembered, spoken of wistfully as a warrior woman who's battle prowess was legendary, until she let herself be tied down... The endless boring responsibilities lumped upon her... the freedom of being your own mistress... perhaps when one put all of this evidence together, one might realize that if she feared anything, it was being chained to one place for too long... being forced to grow up, and shoulder one's responsibilities, was one more step down the inevitable path of banality, one more nail in the coffin lid.
Yuffie's thoughts on the matter were amazingly simple, poignant, and alot less full of pretentious bullshit.
"You'll never take me alive coppers."
Admittedly, she is not the most philosophical of individuals.
Since she had spent a majority of her life on the run, it stands to reason that she was also very good at it. If Yuffie didn't want to be found, then she wouldn't be, it was a simple as that. If she was found, it was because she wanted you to find her.
Or because she was looking for you.
Or because she was flat friggin' broke, and she was after some cash to get stuff she needed.
Hey... even a ninja's gotta eat.
***
With Shinra out of the picture, and with the world still warily peeking its head out from under the covers, wondering if the end was here even after two years, it was a reasonable assumption to say that lawlessness was at an all time high. Countries who had once relied on Shinra for their protection (whether they wanted to or not) found themselves in the unenviable position of having to defend themselves, and most of them lacked the ability to coordinate their efforts to quell the rise of crime and disorder that came in the wake of Meteor. Looting had been commonplace during those terrible last days, when Meteor had loomed ever closer in the sky, and quite a few of those looters had devoloped a taste for the art of the five finger discount. It was a relatively easy thing to avoid capture. With the shut down and destruction of the Mako reactors, the world had become a primitive place forced to look to alternate, and inevitably crude, means of power.
Means that did not require the draining of the planet's lifeblood.
Computers were but a fond memory, and communication between law enforcement efforts from city to city, country to country, was nonexistant. Criminals wanted in one country had only to move to a different location and they were home free, at least, until they broke the law again. Bounty hunters alleviated this somewhat, but bounty hunters were expensive, unreliable, and sometimes as downright lawless as the criminals they sought... little better than hired killers.
Midgar, with its forward thinking mayor, had started a licensing and registration program for bounty hunters, but this practice, though wise, hadn't quite caught on yet. It was an unpredictable and strange time, a time when every country was a frontier again, along with the problems that any frontier inevitably generated, so it was not too uncommon to see semi-permanent "bandit camps", really crude fortresses, popping up in the most inaccessable, inconvieniently placed locations around the globe. They were generally armed to the teeth, there being a disturbing amount of displaced and disgruntled ex-Shinra service members, most of whom were somewhat deficient in the morality department. Additionally, Shinra equipment and war machines were everywhere... so common place that one could, in some poorer parts of the world, trade a Shinra rifle in for only a good meal... maybe a place to stay for the night if one were lucky. As such, no one had the requisite death wish needed to attack the well-defended, well hidden bases, much LESS steal from them.
No one SANE that is.
Enter Yuffie Kisaragi, the ninja, or as she is sometimes known, She Who Redefineth the Term, "What in the hell were you THINKING?!"
***
Deep in Gongaga jungle, in a place only recently invaded by man, one of the aforementioned fortresses sat peacefully in the gloom. Nightfall had come and gone, and now the fortress was at that dangerous time for any building defended since time immemorial, that time when the night watch has stopped being overly vigilant and started being overly sleepy. Men passed by on the high wooden palisade wall muttering to one another or themselves, following a path that had become routine in its boredom. Somewhere inside the fortress, the faint sounds of large animals settling themselves down to rest penetrated the tenebral gloom.
Just after the guard passed the midpoint on the wall, a shadow detached itself from its surroundings and crept up to the base of the palisade wall.
One might be asking oneself how a shadow can suddenly decide to move by itself.
One might also ask oneself how a shadow moves by itself and giggles quietly at its own sneakiness too, but we shall over look this little transgression, as by now you are probably quite aware of the fact that this is no ordinary shadow.
The shadow resolved itself into a short, lithe silouette crouching at the base of the wall. Waiting for several heartbeats, as though timing something, the figure suddenly exploded upward like a cork shot from a bottle, only soundlessly. It landed on the palisade wall, then immediately rolled forward off the wall and into the fortress courtyard (such as it was). Pausing for a moment as though scenting the air, it then made a beeline for a half dozen crude-looking shacks in the northwest corner of the grounds.
Several loud, crude male voices caused the figure to pause for a moment, as it braced up against one of the buildings. Sneaking a peek at a lit spot between two of the shacks, the figure quietly watched what appeared to be a poker game between four bandits.
More importantly, it watched the piles of 500 gil coins the bandits were using as chips.
-The ninja's greatest assets are stealth and trickery- the figure thought to itself, as it crouched so low an observer might have winced, then scrambled up to the table and impossibly, underneath it.
Bil grinned nastily behind his cards and glanced at each of his fellow players. He was pretty sure Macky was bluffing, and he knew Tom and Seth were holding nothing because of a strategically placed mirror. He was also pretty sure the other members of the game were cheating, but since he was too, and since he couldn't prove it, he played dumb.
He was still watching his opponents intently though, as he was sure they were watching him, and so he completely missed the small hand that quietly reached up and snatched his pile of gil.
Reaching down to pick up a 500 gil piece, never taking his eyes off his opponents, he reached around blindly for the pile he knew was there. Only... it wasn't there... or there... or... hey! He looked down and blinked several times, then back up, his face a sudden rictus of suspicion and anger.
"Alright! Who's the wise ass?" He roared.
The other players blinked and looked at him, faces paling. All of them HAD been cheating, and not noticing the gil on their opponent's pile was missing, they were each suddenly sure he was referring to them.
Macky blinked. "I-I got no idea what yer talkin' about, Bil." he chuckled uneasily.
Bil glowered at him. "Did you do it?"
Macky frowned. "Do what, Bil?"
"DID YOU TAKE MY GIL, YOU ASSHOLE!"
Macky blinked. "Uh... no way, Bil. It was right in front of you, and all my gil's right here, see-" He blinked.
His gil was not right there. It hadn't even left a note. His lower lip trembled.
"What the fuck!" he stood up, turning to his companions.
Bil followed him, glaring as well.
Their companions stared at them both as though they'd grown another head apiece.
Seth put his cards down and calmly looked up. "You were watching all of us like hawks, both of you. You KNOW we didn't take your stash."
Bil glowered. "Well who DID then?"
Seth shrugged. "Maybe you dropped it. Or maybe..." he let the statement hang.
Bil snarled. "You think I'm lying?!"
Seth narrowed his eyes. "All I'm sayin' is, you been losing all night... maybe you decided it was time to cut your losses... and Macky's too."
Macky was now staring at Bil suspiciously.
Bil slammed his hands on the table. "All I know is I've been playin' with a bunch of cheatin' bastards, and-" He stopped, staring at the table where his hand had just slammed.
The other bandits stared as well. Under his fist, as though it had fallen from his sleeve, a joker lie accusingly staring up at him.
He paled. Where the hell had that come from... he didn't have any Jokers up his sleeve...
Aces maybe, but jokers? hell no!
"Uh..." he started. The others were still staring at the joker.
Seth was the first to recover. "We're cheatin', huh?"
Macky didn't wait for an explanation. He grabbed Bil's throat and began throttling the life out of him. "Gimme back my gil you son of a bitch!"
The two struggled with one another, rolling over the table and onto the other side. Bil somehow managed to kick Seth in the face as he flailed in Macky's grasp, and they practically fell into the until now silent Tom's lap, who bellowed something to the effect of, "BRING IT OOOOOOOONNNNNN.", before jumping into the fray.
Tom had been in an Shinra squad that had tangled with the Avalanche group... he'd never quite been right in the head afterwards.
Somewhere in the middle of the four way brawl that started up, all of their gil as well as the few weak materia they had in their weapons disappeared, along with a certain shadow that vanished further into the clump of shacks beyond their light.
It was looking to be a profitable night.
***
The shack was larger, sturdier built than its fellows, and stood a distance apart. This lead Yuffie to believe it housed either something, or someone, of importance. Stopping a moment at the door, she waited, listening for a full thirty seconds before slowly opening the door and entering. So newly made, the door swung outward on well greased hinges, making not a single noise. Yuffie slipped inside and froze along the outer wall, having spotted someone... several someones (ewww) sleeping on the bed. Stacked in a pile, as thought thrown carelessly in the heat of passion, rested a belt pouch or bag attached to a belt. The glint of gil, and possibly more, peeked seductively out from under the flap, which bulged from the contents.
Yuffie grinned.
Slipping along side the wall, she made her way towards the pouch.
-I am a ninja... the ninja is unseen. To remain unseen, the ninja must not simply blend in with her surroundings, she must BE her surroundings.- She thought to herself.
Closer... pause as the male sleeper groaned and scratched himself, then continue closer.
-I am not hugging the wall, I am the wall.- she thought. This started a mantra.
-I am not under the table, I am the table. I am not behind the chair, I am the chair. I am not on top of the pile of dirty laundry, I am-
She paused.
-Wait a minute... Did I just...-
She made the possibly fatal mistake of looking down. Her sudden intake of breath didn't help matters.
"OH EWWW.... GROSSNESS!!"
The male figure snorted, sat up and growled. "What the HELL?!"
It's funny he asked that, because in the next four seconds, guess what broke loose.
***
The room suddenly became more chaotic than a Ministry inspired Moshpit. The male bandit exploded up from the bed in fury, grabbing up a pistol as he did so. This woke up the two females at his side, who blinked sleepily in surprise. The next second, a dirty pair of underwear caught the bandit dead face, causing his pistol, which he had been aiming in the general direction of Yuffie, to go off. Yuffie, who had been diving for the pouch, missed getting shot by about an inch. She continued her roll, cursing her bad luck, caught the belt and bounced off the wall up into a full sprint for the open door.
However, while this was happening, at the load report of the pistol, the two females had became extremely alert, if nothing else. Self preservation is an interesting instinct, as it causes different people to react in different ways. Here we see three seperate responses:
The first girl responded with option A) Indecision. She screamed and covered herself up fearfully, pulling a little two hard on the blanket and causing the bandit to fall flat on his back, underwear still stuck to his face, he reacted with option B) Fight. He waved the pistol about and fired blindly at all corners of the room, yelling loudly, but slightly muffled. The other girl, perhaps the smarter of the two, Attempted option C) Namely, get the fuck out of dodge, and she jumped off the bed completely naked and made a beeline for the door, but tripped over a chair and ended up tangled with it clutching her shin.
Yuffie hurdled over the stunned bimbo (heh... stunned bimbo hurdling, an olympic sport candidate if I've ever heard one) then out the door. She had made about halfway across the courtyard when the place lit up like a roman candle and alarms started sounding. Apparently they'd managed to figure out some way to get power into the facility, perhaps a mako battery or something, because all of the sudden, there was no longer anywhere to hide.
Yuffie blinked in the sudden light, cursed her luck (but being two inches from some guy's much abused jockey shorts was a little too much for her gross-shitometer to deal with, thank you very much) and prepared to do a little option B herself.
"Get the bitch!" A very loud, very angry voice sounded into the night, revealing the bandit leader, now clad in the much abused jockey shorts (ewwww) and a grunge covered long coat of some kind, pistol in hand. Several bandits milled about, confused as to who he was referring to, but a line of guards unshouldered their rifles and oriented on the running figure.
She never stopped running, her hand flashed out, and a streak of silver sliced the air like it was something palpable. It came in a perfect circular arc, passing each bandit guard in turn, neatly severed each rifle barrel, then returned to Yuffie's waiting hand.
God she loved Conformer.
They stared at the rifles in confusion and shock, too awed to do much of anything productive.
Well, much of anything productive but stand there like an impromptu wall. Yuffie skidded to a halt and changed directions back towards the bandit leader.
"GRRRRLLLLRRRWWWLLLL I SAID GET HER, YOU IDIOTS! CATCH HER!" He shook the empty, useless pistol in frustration and pointed.
Several bandits now chased the rapidly retreating Yuffie, forcing her towards the Bandit leader. The first one to reach her leapt at her in a sideways tackle move, and she ducked completely under him, never stopping her run. Another stepped in to bear hug her and she kicked him square in the jaw, flipping his body over so that he landed on his face, stunned.
Yuffie grinned. She had a plan. Like most of her plans, it involved a overwhelming large risk to sanity margin.
The next bandit swung his rifle like an impromptu club and she parried with Conformer, flashing the shuriken downward so fast it made a hissing noise. The bandit's pants, no longer being held up by his now severed belt, promptly said to hell with this and dropped, revealing his hairy legs and heart patterned jockey shorts. He tripped, and as he went down, Yuffie used his skull as a spring board to catapult herself at the Bandit leader.
Vex, the Bandit leader, was beginning to get a little vexxed himself. He had been rudely awakened from a deep, restful sleep after a night's carousing, had his dignity assaulted, and his possessions stolen, and he was out for blood. How dare this little bitch invade his home and take his stuff, that he'd taken fair and square from other people? How dare she make his men look like bumbling idiots. How dare she come flying at him like a bat outta-
Anything else going through his mind at that point immediately went in the opposite direction as Yuffie planted both feet into his face, bent her legs to absorb the shock and coil herself inward, then explode upward into the night like a bottle rocket. Vex impacted face first with the ground, his head being buried an inch or three by the force, his screams of pain and outrage muffled by several mouthfuls of topsoil. Yuffie flipped neatly at the apex of her leap like a master gymnist, landing tiptoe on the wall of the fortress. She smiled back at her pursuers, winked, then slapped her ass twice and dropped over the other side.
The small post she'd been standing on seconds before was immediately torn apart by gunfire.
Yuffie disappeared into the night.
The bandits stared at each other, uncertain what to do. One bandit leaned in close to Vex, who was still facedown in the dirt.
The bandit poked him concernedly.
He immediately became a bit more concerned when Vex's hand shot out and grabbed his throat. Vex picked himself up and spit dirt out of the side of his mouth, drug the hapless bandit to stare at him face to face, and snarled.
"Saddle up the Lizards. I want that girl's spleen for a trophy." His eyes glinted furiously.
The bandit gulped and hastened to do as he was asked.
Vex turned to his crew and growled, his lip twitching spasmodically. "5000 gil to the man who brings me that... that girl."
Half in the light, half out of it, his face took on an extremely fearsome quality.
At least, it would have been fearsome, had it not had a big red footprint visible on it.
***
Anyone who thinks a bounty hunter's job is easy has obviously never done it before.
First of all, you start off with only a description of your target and maybe, if you're lucky, a vague idea of where he's going. Unfortunately, people who skip town because of crimes committed very seldom leave a forwarding address, this being counterproductive to remaining in an unjailed state. Additionally, criminals that require a bounty are usually repeat offenders, so they know how to lie low for a while once they get where they are going, which further widens the search area. Once you find the bastard, then you have to apprehend them, and that's difficult as well. Very few bounties are for dead or alive, most require the villain to be brought in still alive, which meant you had to shoot very carefully.
The villain in question was under no such restraints, and if he was smart, he knew you were coming, and he probably had friends.
Add to this the fact that for all of her immaturity, Vincent was being tasked to hunt a NINJA, and it immediately becomes clear why most of the people Godo had sent previously had been unable to locate her.
However daunting his task might have been, Vincent was not completely in the dark. He knew her personally, and he was now intimately aware of her situation. This gave him an advantage.
He pondered this as he rested in the cargohold (Vincent had no need of creature comforts, and had been able to purchase a much cheaper ticket by offering to reside in the cargohold for the trip. The captain had stared at him like he was crazy, but truthfully, Vincent preferred it. No one else bothered to go down into the cargohold, and that left him alone with his thoughts) of the ship traveling from Wutai to Costa Del Sol, ironically, exactly 2 months to the day before Yuffie would attempt her desperate grab for cash in the Gongaga jungle. He considered the evidence, what he knew of Yuffie, combined with what he knew of her situation.
Point 1, Yuffie hated flying, and hated ships... pretty much hated anything that didn't move naturally. She was prone to motion sickness, which led Vincent to believe she'd grab a transport to the nearest port away from Wutai, and no further. The nearest actual port was Costa Del Sol, which also happened to be a port which none of her friends lived at, an added bonus, Vincent believed she'd have thought.
This led to point 2, what she was doing was reckless and irresponsible, she must have known how the other, older members of Avalanche would see that, at the very least they would try to talk her out of it, at worst, they'd contact Godo. So she would avoid towns where she might meet her friends, that marked Cosmo Canyon, Correl, and Rocket Town off the list. On that continent, that left only Nibelheim, the Gold Saucer, and Gongaga.
This led to point 3, Yuffie would probably avoid moving closer to Wutai. Additionally, if Vincent remembered correctly, Yuffie had found Nibelheim to be somewhat boring and spooky. That left only the Gold Saucer and Gongaga.
Vincent could only surmise that from what he knew of Yuffie, the Gold Saucer was the best bet.
He sighed. Vincent disliked that place intensely. It was too bright, too fake... and too full of noise... and people... there was almost no where one could go to get away from it all. The Gold Saucer was a place people went to to get away from their troubles, to forget about their problems.
Vincent could neither get away or forget, and so the place was useless to him.
Without the mako reactors that had powered them before, ships were forced to make use of old coal driven steam engines, inefficient and prone to breakdown. The trip, normally a scant five day voyage, took the small passenger ship two and a half weeks to accomplish.
None of the other passengers were aware of the odd passenger being carried, or his mission.
His face showed none of his misgivings as he methodically saddled his chocobo, a quiet, even tempered beast, who warked at him quietly as he went about his business. It shifted its feet on the cold deck, sensing this long wait was at an end, and glad of it. When the boat pulled up to the pier, he was on his way in less time then it took for the captain to wish him a pleasant stay.
He didn't want to deal with the Gold Saucer. Not in the least.
Still, to protect Yuffie from her mistake, and to prevent a civil war, Vincent would make that sacrifice.
Probably a few more on the way.
***
A month later, Vincent wearily concluded that Yuffie was not in the Gold Saucer.
At least, not now. There were rumours about some sort of confrontation between a large man and a small girl matching Yuffie's description in the arena. From what Vincent was able to surmise, Sung had caught up with Yuffie here, and tried to drag her bodily back to Wutai. This had ended with her kicking the stuffing out of him, giving him his unfortunate tattoo, and stealing his Chocobo. He knew this because there was a stolen property report in Sung's name, and Yuffie had been listed as the prime suspect.
Vincent sighed. It had taken him too long to scrounge out that information, and it was meager at best. One promising lead had her taking off in the direction of Gongaga, which fit in well with his guesswork up til now. There was just one fly in the ointment.
He wasn't the only one asking around for Yuffie's whereabouts.
Others had been asking, and they'd been paying quite a bit for the information too. Vincent surmised that Yuffie didn't have a whole lot of time left before these agents caught up with her.
He could only hope, as he left the Gold Saucer behind in a trail of dust, headed for Gongaga, that he was faster than they were.
***
It's funny how things work out. Coincidences pile up one atop the other, until one is almost forced to admit that perhaps there is some force out there, looking out for fools and madmen. Call it destiny, fate, or some fickle god. Call it what you will, but it was in full effect. Vincent arrived in Gongaga just as Yuffie was leaving after spending the last of the cash she had on a meal and a bed. He was able to confirm that she had been here, additionally that she'd sold Sung's chocobo about a week ago, and was actually quite a big spender here, up until yesterday.
Vincent considered the terrain thoughtfully. Her best bet would be to head into Gongaga jungle to pick up a few bounties on the local monsters... Vincent had done something similar during his own wanderings across the land. Since she would be on foot, she couldn't have gotten very far. Vincent doubted she'd go beyond the jungle, at least, not in the time it had taken him to get here. Vincent paused to pick up a few supplies then headed out into the jungle after her. An ordinary tracker would have been unable to find the meager signs that Yuffie had left behind her. Indeed, had she not been unused to the jungle, it was quite feasible that even Vincent wouldn't have been able to pick up her trail. Pick it up he did, however, and in the fading light that crept through the trees, he picked his way carefully through the dense foliage, following the small set of tracks that he had picked up.
He sensed he was close.
He had been searching for her exactly two months.
As it was mentioned earlier, kinda makes you think perhaps something *cough-author-cough* might a hand in this little coincidence, doesn't it?
***
Something was moving through the brush. Several somethings. Several... BIG somethings. Vincent reined in the chocobo and it warked at him, half in curiousity, half in nervousness. Vincent patted its head gently, calming it, then tied its reins to a nearby branch. He moved quietly through the pitch blackness. Well, pitch blackness for anyone else... there was a little bit of moonlight filtering in from the dense canopy, and this was enough light for Vincent to see quite well by.
There were some advantages to being a monster, after all.
He stopped when he saw a small blur burst through the nearby bushes and rush past him, so close he could have reached out to touch the running figure. He glanced down momentarily, caught sight of the small sneakerlike track left in the soft topsoil, then flattened himself against a nearby tree as the crashing and stomping noises got louder. Immediately out of the brush that Yuffie had burst through, the bushes exploded, disgorging four gigantic komodo dragons, crushing and hissing their way through the jungle. Two men sat on each lizard, one controlling the beast, the other armed with what appeared to be a Shinra squad light antipersonnel machine gun. Vincent sighed.
-What have you gotten yourself into, Yuffie?- He thought.
As last of the Lizards passed close by, he spotted a dangling side strap that attached to the saddle, probably to allow the mounting of supplies for easy transport. Yuffie's pursuers, in their haste to get to pursuing, had failed to properly stow the strap, and it flopped back and forth at the Lizard's side.
It was an easy matter to reach out, grab the thing, and allow himself to be dragged along with the lizard. He carefully, quietly climbed hand over hand up the strap, flipping himself lightly atop the reptile, immediately behind the machine gunner, who was so intent upon getting a shot at the fleeing girl he never noticed the dark passenger behind him. Vincent grabbed the man by the back of his collar with his clawed prosthesis and tossed him over the side so quickly the man didn't even get an opportunity to scream. The lizard, goaded on by the man saddled on its neck, walked right over the hapless bandit without even noticing him.
The hapless bandit in question, however, certainly noticed. For about a half a second.
Vincent took control of the machine gun and racked the slide, noting, at his feet, several grenades. Narrowing his eyes, he took note of the positions of each of the other three lizard teams. Swiveling the machine gun to orient at the one closest to him, he opened fire at its hind quarters. Stitching a staccato burst across its flank, he marched the tracer fire up to the machinegun nest on its back. After pumping rounds into it for a second or so, he was rewarded when the ammunition and explosives contained in the nest exploded messily, throwning bandit and bits of lizard all over the place. The lizard in question shrieked and ran off at a crazy angle into the jungle, taking its helpless controller with it.
The man who piloted the Komodo dragon that Vincent was on turned in the saddle to yell at his gunner.
"What the fuck are you doing, Gantz... you just-" He stopped, blinking at the sight in front of him.
A tall man, tattered red cloak streaming in the wind, set features hard to make out in the gloom, rose from his crouched position in the machinegun nest. Something that glittered weakly in the sparse moonlight made a pinging noise in his right hand. Part of the object, the reflective part, flipped into the night over the side of the lizard. The other, rounded, less reflective part, he dropped into the nest at his feet.
The pilot blinked. "Who the fuck are you?"
Vincent did not answer, he simply crouched and sprang upward, into the night.
If the pilot was upset by Vincent's rudeness, he quickly got over it as he realized belatedly what the object in Vincent's hand had been.
One of the thirty or so grenades stocked in the machine gun nest.
"Oh sh-"
Another explosion rocked the night.
***
Yuffie, her sides heaving with exertion, dodged around a tree and kept right on running, knowing that to falter or Leviathan forbid trip at this point would mean certain death.
"Geez," she groused to herself. "You'd think I pissed these guys off or somethin'."
Machine gun fire made Yuffie dive over a log and keep rolling, back up to her feet, until she realized the bullets weren't even coming close to her. An explosion lit up the night, followed by a horrendous bellowing roar of pain and anger.
"What the hell?!" She shouted.
Another explosion, this one a rattling bang like several smaller explosions rolling into one, followed by a horrendous crashing noise and a weak, gurgled hiss.
"Alright, what the heck is goin' on back there? Incompetent I figured, but terminally stupid?"
The lead Komodo Dragon crashed through the underbrush just behind Yuffie, spurring her to redouble her running efforts and set aside her thinking efforts, at least for now. She spun easily, tossing Conformer out behind her at an upward angle, and continuing her spin until she was reoriented forward, still running. The silvered, deadly bit of spinning metal flashed almost lazily upward, catching the rushing beast square between the eyes. All the laws of physics and ballistics stood up and clammered indignantly at once. A five ounce bit of metal tossed by an 18 year old girl, when colliding with a skull with a five inch plate of bone, by all rights should have no appreciable effect.
Reality told all those laws to shut up, because this was Conformer, the legendary weapon made especially for impossible situations, being thrown by a ninja who had taken part in the destruction of the most indestructible being ever to live.
The laws of physics and ballistics sat down and glared sullenly at the girl in question, muttering something to the effect of, "I'll get you yet."
Back in the real world, the deadly shuriken passed through the Lizard's skull like it was made of paper, slamming out an eighteen inch diameter hole in the back of the thing's skull, and splattering the hapless pilot with blood, brains and worse.
About a split second later the beast flipped end over end and crushed both him and the gunner beneath its several ton bulk.
"Hell yeah!" Yuffie pumped her fist.
Her victory dance was cut horrifically short.
The laws of physics and ballistics grinned predatorily.
For after having exsanguinated a five ton beast's skull, the deadly shuriken had somehow managed to get itself lodged in a fifteen foot diameter tree, and was not returning to Yuffie's grasp.
About that moment, the last Komodo Dragon broke into the clearing. Yuffie gulped, turned to run, and her foot caught a blasted root and she ended up flat on her ass staring up at five tons of hungry dragon, with a pilot grinning his ass off staring down at her.
"Goddamn it! The laws of physics must hate me!" She shouted, struggling to get her blasted foot loose.
Yup. The laws of ballistics too.
***
Vincent spent the next few seconds leaping from tree limb to tree limb, high above where the action was taking place. He witnessed Yuffie's magnicent throw, as well as her ignoble defeat at the hands of a tree root, and settled himself in the crook of the tree, snapping Death Penalty calmly but amazingly, inhumanly, quickly into a firing position. Wetting his finger, he slipped the gunsight up into position and gathered his breath.
-No time to gauge the distance. Going to have to guess-timate.- Vincent thought to himself. -About 75 yards. Slight bit of windage, too short a distance but the target is moving about 20 miles an hour... bullet drop should be negligable over that distance...-
All of these thoughts and a few more flickered by in less then a second as he took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and between breaths, squeezed the trigger.
Just as the beast began to charge, intent on trampling Yuffie into a more or less pancaked shape.
***
Yuffie had exhausted her options and was about to just ditch her damn shoe when the bandit got tired of playing with her and snapped his reins, forcing the beast into a charge. Yuffie blinked, paled and struggled with her shoe.
-NOO!! I don't wanna end up as Big Lizard toe jam! SHIIIII-
Her thoughts were cut short as a strangely familiar gunshot boomed through the night.
The pilot, intent on on urging his beast forward, never heard the shot. Of course, the heavy calibre long rifle's bullet traveled at supersonic speeds, and the distance was far too short for him to hear anything before the bullet reached the target.
Since the target was the back of his skull, it hardly mattered if he heard it anyway. The heavy calibre, armor piercing mythril jacketed bullet passed through his head, his face did an impression of the Mt. St. Helen's eruption, and the bullet continued through, burying itself deep in the spinal column of the charging beast.
The laws of ballistics may hate Yuffie, but they love Vincent Valentine like a brother.
The Komodo Dragon suddenly lost the ability to control its limbs and flopped suddenly, forward momentum causing it to slide forward until the build up of dirt around its wide skull created enough resistance to slow it to a stop.
Its bony crest rested a scant five inches from a startled young ninja's nose.
She blinked several times at it, staring cross-eyed.
"Hoo boy. Might need a change of shorts after that one." She muttered quietly to herself.
Amazingly, her sneaker choose that exact moment to come loose from its hiding place.
She stared at it irritably for a moment before standing up and brushing herself off.
Climbing atop the dead beasts head (it had snapped its own neck when it crashed) she walked its length from tip to tail, and peered into the gloom. Someone had been helping her out there.. someone who had fired that achingly familiar shot. She just couldn't place it though. Come to think of it, there had been four dinos after her... where were the rest of them?
A light flapping noise caught her attention and she jerked back, glancing upward. A tall figure dropped down on top of the beast about three feet in front of her, all menacing red eyes and red cloak. She yelped and swung a roundhouse kick at it in reflex.
"It", in an unamused fashion, caught her kick and stared down her leg at her.
She blinked, then amazement flooded her face. "Vinnie? I-Is... that you?"
Vincent closed his eyes and sighed, releasing her foot. He really hated that nickname.
Yuffie waved her arms a little, off balance from the way Vincent had suddenly released her foot and took a couple of steps back. Recovering her balance, she stared at him in shock. Of all the people she'd expected to see here, Vincent was about the last one. Even later then Rufus and the Pope, and that was saying something, because she wasn't even sure who the Pope was, just that it was more likely she'd see him here than Vincent.
Vincent, for his part, simply unholstered Peacemaker and stepped past her while her shocked brain struggled to come to terms with his sudden appearance.
He glanced over the side of the beast and noted the pilot slumped over, a large hole where his head should be. If he felt any satisfaction of the amazing display of his marksmanship, he showed no sign. He turned his gaze to the machinegunner. The man's pale, shock-ridden face came into view, his breathing labored. He had a bloody streak running from one temple, and he struggled to orient his hopelessly damaged machinegun at Vincent.
Yuffie caught none of this.
"Hey Vinnie... long time no see, yeah I'm doin' fine, so what brings you to Gongaga?"
He stared down at the bandit, lost in thought, apparently not listening to her.
"In the middle of the jungle?"
He appeared to come to a decision.
"At night?"
In one smooth motion he pointed the revolver at the downed bandit and pulled the trigger, sending the man into the afterlife.
Yuffie stared at him, openmouthed, her eyes wide. "Geez! Vinnie... that guy couldn't do anything to us. Why'd ja have ta-"
Vincent looked at her coldly. "Were we going to carry him, with two broken legs, and where exactly?"
She blinked. "Er.."
"Or leave him here... helpless... for the jungle frogs." He continued to stare at her, his face less expressive than a brick wall.
She frowned. This was the most she'd ever heard from Vincent. Ever. Period. He was right, in a coldly efficient, ultra-pragmatic sort of way. How very... Vincenty of him.
As with any argument she was destined to lose, she switched tactics.
"You haven't answered my question, Vinnie... What are you out here for?"
He holstered Peacemaker and stared at her fully.
"You." He said, calmly.
She blinked.
-Ok... that's not exactly the answer I was looking for. Why does this answer not suddenly fill me with confidence?- She thought warily.
Vincent waited for her to make the first move.
***
A/N: Doncha just HATE cliffhangers? I know I do. I hate them so much. I would apologize, but I am tired, and I figure anyone who's annoyed enough to quite reading because of a cliffhanger probably wasn't enjoying the story very much anyway. In retrospect, Mr. Zeta, if you are still out there, I decided to stick with the Peacemaker as Vincent's sidearm of choice. Its historical ramifications tickle me far too much, and it is a revolver that he uses. I appreciate your info though, so keep on tossing me curve balls.
4 day weekend! Woohoo! I sleep well this night, for on the morrow I play DnD! Oh frabulous day, galloo gallay!
A special bonus to the first person who can tell me where I lifted the title for chapter 1 from. By where I mean who, and what it was. Hopefully figuring it out will keep you busy until I come up with the next chapter.
Chris, DT