Enkida's Various Short Stories [DnD, FF4-12, Valkyrie Profile 2, InuYasha, Slayers, Original]

[Enkida]

Yeah... I guess this is the collection of fanfiction / fiction stories I've written over the years that were under 20,000 words long. I started when I was 17 so some of these are... not that great is a nice way of putting it mildly. But on the other hand, some of them have won writing contests, too. Didn't see a real reason to give any of the stories this short their own thread here, so in it goes to a thread dump compilation post! Hope you can find something you like in this word salad. There is exactly one story here with mature content in it (marked as such), but let's be safe rather than infracted, right?

DnD - The Adventures of Patrick Jayne Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
"Bard extraordinare Patrick Jayne finds his feet in Waterdeep."

FF4 - Hunter Part 1, Part 2
"Heroes aren't always automatically granted a happily ever after... sometimes, winning is only the start of the battle. Kain, Rydia, Edge and the aftermath of victory. "

FF5 - Rescue
"Faris, Galuf, insecurity, family. "

FF7 - Landslide Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
"Some time after the last battle, the gang gets together for a reunion vacation in Icicle Town. But Vincent doesn't want to share the holiday mood... " Songtitle theme challenge.

FF7 - Drunk
"Made for the livejournal FF100 community, which basically hands out a theme and asks participants to write 100-300 word responses to that theme. Intriguing and fun because it's fast, and for someone as verbose as me rather difficult to pare ideas down to their bare essentials. Almost like writing poetry!"

FF7 - Sum Total

FF7 - Oil and Water Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 *mature content
"Yuffie, Cloud, Land Worms and donuts. Oh, and of course the sex."

FF7: DoC - Circles Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
"The problem with running in circles is that you always end up where you start. Post DoC: Yuffie, Vincent, Shelke and their strange geometry."

FF8 - Élan Vital
"It's all about Seifer and redemption. "

FF8 - What's It Like?
"Zell wants to know what it feels like. Quistis just wants him to brush his teeth. "

FF8 - Carousel *mature content
"Theme Five times Seifer Almasy hooked up with somebody and the one time he wished he hadn't. It's more serious than it sounds. "

FF8 - 10 Minute Prompts
"10-minute prompt-driven drabble exercises."

FF12 - Balthier's Belt
"Everyone wants to get ahold of Balthier's belt, or so Balthier thinks. Balthier x Everybody, at least in his own mind. "

FF12 - Beginnings
"When Fran first met Balthier. "

InuYasha - Journey's End
"Sango and Koharu, and the invisible horse named Miroku between them."

InuYasha - Juwelenblüte
"Naraku considers Kagome and Kikyou."

InuYasha - Bone
"Sango reaches out to Kagome's mother."

Original - Subuki Gaiden
"Ikebana, the flower of the four kingdoms, blooms only once every hundred years. When it unexpectedly falls into young Subuki Matobo's possession, it's up to her to defend it, and the Earth Kingdom, from the power hungry grasp of the Water Kingdom God."

Original - Moonstruck
"A girl learns how to wish on the moon. "

Original - Passenger
"Just another passenger on the bus. Part of the Destination Unknown writing project. "

Slayers - Switch
"A chance encounter with a fae circle causes Lina and Zelgadis to switch bodies. "

Slayers - Lina, Gourry, and Zelgadis find a Reeses
"Oh my god, just don't read this fic. The title says it all."

Growing A Forest, Step By Step (The Demonic King Chases His Wife /一世倾城, 邪王追妻：废材逆天小姐 *abandoned
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
"Nangong Liuyun leaves Beichen Ying to watch over Su Luo while he cultivates. Beichen Ying chooses to court death, as usual. AU starting from chapter 675-676. "

Valkyrie Profile 2 - Memoria et Oblivio
"Living as a god with a mortal heart isn't all it's cracked up to be. Rufus, godhood, waiting and watching, always watching. "

Xyllomer - Hearts of Sand and Blood Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
"A pulp novella written in-character for a newspaper in a text-based MMORPG (MUD) named Xyllomer."

 

[Enkida]

RESCUE​

Wind blew across the deck of the ship, and Faris let out a small sigh. She stared at the ocean blankly, straining her ears for any sounds of life. It was a futile effort; with the wind, water and fire crystals destroyed, it was as if the world itself had fallen silent. The sea was unnaturally calm, the air was heavy and still and even the fires in the engine room of Cid and Mid's miracle ship sputtered and flailed as if struggling for life.

She sighed and shook a stray lock of hair out of her face. The silence was unnerving, yes; but what she truly missed was not the sound of the water lapping the hull or the sight of seagulls riding the ocean breeze - she missed the raucous banter of her loyal subordinates. She missed the bawdy sea shanties they'd sing together and the heady scent and bitter flavor that would accompany whatever swill they'd managed to pick up at their last port of call. She missed laughing at their bawdy jokes, and she missed tasting the sea salt on the evening breeze, but most of all she missed the quiet evenings she'd spend on the deck, alone but for -

Faris' face hardened, and she allowed the images of the dark sea to fade from her mind's eye. Her countenance turned completely stony when she realized what the moment of distraction had cost her. A muscle in her eyelid twitched in time with the grip on her posterior.

"Ye best be hopin' that it's not yer hand I feel down there, my friend." She moved her head fractionally, her eyes narrowed into slits. Sometimes being a woman was a veritable pain in the ass. Particularly when those times involved hanging around certain other Warriors of Light.

"Oh! What is that doing there? I swear, sometimes I think these things have a mind of their own," Galuf said mildly, flexing his wrist and peering at his fingers, the picture of innocence.

"If I weren't certain yer teeth were already false, I'd knock 'em clean from that mouth o' yours," Faris replied. She smiled toothily at Galuf's wince and turned as the sound of an opening door brought her attention away from the old man.

" - said we should be looking out for a Crescent-shaped island," Bartz was busily explaining. "The couldn't tell us exactly where, but it's somewhere to the east of here." He paused, taking a moment to suck in a breath while holding the door open for his companion. Lenna followed him slowly, shooting the young man a delicate smile that caused whatever words he'd been spewing forth to abruptly stop in a flurry of blushes and half-stutters.

Faris turned away in disgust and crossed her arms.

"Something bothering you?" Galuf asked mildly, mirroring her pose and studying the darkened expanse of water before them. Without the wind and the water crystals to bolster it, the sea was as flat and motionless as a polished stone. Lenna's soft, high giggle at one of Bartz's half-formed sentences pierced the stillness from somewhere behind them, and Faris clenched her jaw.

"'Tis nothing to be concernin' the likes of ye," she ground out.

Galuf cleared his throat carefully, but refused to remove himself from her side. "You know," he began, and Faris let out a low hiss in reply.

"Mayhap I wasn't bein' clear, mate, but ye'll be wantin' to skedaddle 'fore I make ye."

Galuf only let out a loud bark in reply. "Nice try," he replied easily, though she did notice him touching his chest. Faris automatically shut her eyes against the flare of light that burned red against the backs of her closed eyelids. When she opened them, she saw that he was now dressed comfortably in loose black pants and a thinly-woven shirt, a few tattered straps of cloth wrapped around his bare hands. Well, there was no getting rid of him now. He'd be able to dodge any attempts to throw him overboard, and if she socked him he'd most likely just punch her back. And this time it would hurt.

"Coward," she grumbled under her breath, briefly considering donning her Berserker outfit to counter Galuf's obvious ploy. She let that idea slide as easily as it had come; it was bad enough that he was would feel up her ass when she was wearing her full-length jacket; she wasn't going to encourage his wandering hands - especially given the ambidexterity of Martial Artists - by changing into an outfit that lacked pants. "What do ye want of me?"

"Well now, there's a question with a million different and equally wonderful answers," Galuf replied cheerfully. He held up his hands in submission at Faris' death glare. "But I'm not here to satisfy my own desires," he added with a lift of one bushy white eyebrow. "I think the question is what do you want?"

Faris bit down on her sharp reply and scowled as she heard Lenna's tinkling laugh float over the deck from yet another one of Bartz's terrible jokes. She shuddered to think of how sheltered Lenna's castle life must have been if she found their companion's brand of humor to be even remotely amusing. She was certain that if Bartz was ever to become privy to the bawdy jokes she shared with her own crew that his hair would either fall out or turn as white as Galuf's own.

"You're jealous, aren't you?" Galuf observed archly.

Faris coughed.

"I'll admit, while Lenna does have a certain... hrm, shall we say, delicacy that you're lacking, Bartz is a strapping young man. I'm sure he could handle the both of you. And besides - you're not so bad to look at yourself." With a blithe smile, Galuf ignored Faris' incredulous stare and continued talking. "You seem like a real go-getting type of girl. I really don't understand your problem, quite frankly. If you want his attention that badly, just get on over there yourself steal it. Isn't that what pirates do?"

"Shut yer pie-hole, ye dirty old man!" Faris yelled, her face scarlet. Bartz and Lenna's conversation died abruptly at the outburst, and the two stared across the bow at them. Face still red, Faris showed them an angry scowl and knocked Galuf across the back of the head for good measure. Martial arts be damned, but he had that one coming.

"Well well well!" Galuf was chuckling, even as he rubbed at the knock he'd received. "I didn't realize you felt that strongly about it! So you're in love -"

Faris hit him again, effectively silencing him, a murderous look in her eyes. "I'm not in love with him, ye old bastard!"

Galuf considered. "Well, if you were just looking for a short term fling -"

"I'd rather sleep with ye than that buffoon!" Faris spluttered, cutting him off. "At least ye'd know where to put it!"

"Oh, if that's the case, you should have said so sooner!" Galuf replied eagerly, reaching for the tie on his pants. Faris struck him once more, this time with her knee. When Galuf finally managed to right himself, wheezing heavily and leaning on the railing of the ship, he afforded her a cautious distance. "Well," he replied, his voice still a few octaves higher than normal, "if you're not in love with the boy, or lusting after him, then what exactly is your problem?"
Faris sighed; despite her best attempts to be prickly and her repeated physical assaults, Galuf hadn't actually left her side yet. Underneath it all, she knew he was worried about her; it brought a wry smile to her lips. Maybe sharing a little companionship with a friend wasn't necessarily a sign of weakness.

"Aye, ye had the right of it the first time. I suppose the green-eyed monster's been sharpenin' me tongue." She allowed herself a wary smile. "But don't be thinkin' that I'll be goin' all soft and girlie-like on ye now just for that. Least not 'till ye can keep yer sticky fingers to yerself."

Galuf stared at her for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he spoke, very carefully: "You're in love with your sister." He squinted at her. "As loathe as I am to say this, I don't think that's particularly healthy, Faris."

Faris shut her eyes and inhaled sharply. When she was certain her head had cleared, she blinked and focused on Galuf's face. Crocking a finger, she beckoned to him; he leaned in, his eyes widening.

The crack of her fist hitting his jaw reverberated across the deck. Once again Bartz and Lenna looked up from their whispered conversation; Faris just shrugged at them as she shook out her hand. With an eye roll and a soft sigh respectively, Bartz and Lenna resumed their conversation, unperturbed.

A low groan came from the ground. "What the hell was that for?" Galuf mumbled, clambering to his feet.

"I'm not in love with Lenna," Faris ground out, trying to remind herself that they were friends. Seeing Galuf's look of complete bemusement, she sighed and allowed herself to slump over the railing. "I miss Syldra." She sent another aimless scowl out over the water.

Faris jerked in surprise as she felt a warm arm descend around her shoulder; the stiffness faded from her posture as it remained carefully still, rather than wandering into inappropriate territory as Galuf's hands were wont to do.
"I'm sure Lenna misses you as much as you miss her," Galuf said quietly.

"And why should that be? She has Bartz, her own personal hero," Faris sneered faintly. "The princess don't be needin' another bodyguard to trip over her."

"You're her family," Galuf replied, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "No one else can ever take that place in her heart." He fell silent, his eyes growing misty and distant as he stared over the ocean, lost in his own thoughts.

"She don't need me," Faris answered, leaning in to the old man's embrace.

"Even if that were true," Galuf said after a moment's silence, "you need her."

Faris looked up, blinking suddenly at the unexpected burning behind her eyes. "But what... what if I can't be what she needs? I... I can't be a princess, Galuf," she said quietly. Bartz had left for the helm of the ship, and Lenna stood alone at the railing, the straight line of her back cutting a sharp image against the flat, dull horizon.

"Then don't be a princess," Galuf replied, releasing her shoulders and gently directing her towards Lenna. "Be a sister." He gave her back a gentle shove, and Faris stumbled, then brought herself to a stubborn halt. She stared at Lenna's back, feeling the lump grow in her throat.

"I just can't," she repeated, her voice cracking with uncertainty.

Galuf sighed. When he spoke, his voice was no longer gentle - it had turned hard and unyielding. Faris started; it was a King's voice. "You already know what it's like to lose a sister. Would you now put that burden on her shoulders as well?"

Faris' spine stiffened; sympathy and understanding were foreign emotions to her, but barked commands and sharp reprimands - these were familiar.

"You know that you're strong enough. Find it in yourself to do what you must." Galuf's voice was tinged with a note of sadness. "Take back your family - lest you lose them."

Straightening, Faris clenched her fists. She strode forward without a backwards glance; a few steps was all it took to place herself before Lenna's turned back. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath - paused, sweating - and then boldly reached out, her hand landing heavily on Lenna's delicate, exposed shoulder. A princess' shoulder. Faris' grip tightened as Lenna whirled in surprise; even caught off guard, she was the epitome of everything beautiful and soft and ethereal and so very, very painfully royal. Nothing at all like the salty sea dog that dared to mar that fairy-tale beauty, that perfect life with her touch.

Wincing internally, Faris steeled herself. Nothin' for it.

"Sister."

The moment of silence stretched into two as Lenna stared at her in obvious surprise, and Faris resisted the urge to twitch uncomfortably. A dull anger was beginning to fill her; curse that old fool, curse him putting these stupid ideas of love and family and precious things that were never meant to be hers into her head -

A feeling of warmth, a touch soft as silk and feather-light as a moth brushed over her fingertips. Faris' eyes were drawn instantly to the milk-white hand that now covered her own. Almost fearful, she looked up from that perfect hand.

The tension roiling in her breast was still there, but it was easing slightly as she soaked in the gentle, welcoming smile on Lenna's face.

"Sister," Lenna answered her, dipping her head in acknowledgement with an expression of quiet joy.

Faris' fingers flexed as a brash, crooked smile began to work its way onto her own face. Maybe she'd never be a princess after all. But this was a start.

 

[Enkida]

AN: This fiction was written for a Yuffie x Vincent challenge, and there you have just about all the warnings you need for this story. Standard disclaimers apply: All characters were created by and are property of Square Enix, and I am making a profit only from reader reviews. The snippets of poetry are actually from "Song of Childhood" by Peter Handke.
(The challenge was to write a fic based on a song, this one was "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac.)

Click to shrink...

LANDSLIDE
1: The Climb​

"Sweet Leviathan, it's freezing here!" Yuffie's teeth chattered together noisily as she hopped around, trying to warm herself in the cold winter air.

Beside her, Tifa laughed. "You're only cold because of the way you're dressed. You should have listened to Cloud, you know. He warned you that we were going to stop by Icicle Town."

Yuffie glared at her taller companion and rubbed her arms. "Yeah, yeah. But I thought he meant later, not like right after he said it!" she whined.

Tifa smirked. "It's been three days since he decided where to go for our vacation. And I did ask you to go shopping with me when we were still in Junon," she scolded Yuffie lightly. Both girls turned at the sound of a door opening.

Cid strolled onto the deck of the Highwind and did a double-take at what he saw. Grabbing the cigarette out of his mouth, his eyes wrinkled with amusement as he regarded the two women. "Lookin' good, Tifa," he said, giving a nod to the taller woman, who happened to be clad in a thick pair of pants and a long wool coat. "Can't say the same for you, brat."

Yuffie scowled and tried to stick her tongue out at Cid. She reconsidered the idea as another chill shook her body. "Gee, thanks, Cid. Hey, you don't really need that jacket of yours, do ya?" she asked him hopefully, hopping from foot to foot.

"Well, let me think about it…" Cid carefully brought his cigarette to his lips and took a very slow puff. The seconds ticked by. Finally, when the smoke threatened to burn through even his tar-coated lungs, he exhaled slowly. "Nope."

"CID!" Yuffie yelled angrily. "C'mon, at least gimmie the scarf!"

Cid ignored the hopping teenager and addressed Tifa. "So why's she still dressed for a tropical holiday?"

Tifa laughed and crossed her arms together. "My guess is that Yuffie thought she could convince Cloud to take us to Costa del Sol instead." Her eyebrows rose slightly as she looked at Yuffie. "She underestimated the power of the call of snowboarding."

"If he wanted to friggin' snowboard, we could've gone to the Gold Saucer!" Yuffie complained loudly. "What kind of a vacation spot is Icicle Town anyway? You can't even go to the bathroom here without making a pissicle!" she yelled.

"Watch your mouth," reprimanded a stern voice as Cloud stepped out onto the deck behind Cid. A brightly coloured snowboard was tucked under one arm and a pair of goggles hung around his neck. "Besides, nothing can compare with the real thing. I'm going to hit the slopes. Who's coming with me?"

Cid grunted and shook his head at Cloud. "Naw, I'm gonna join Barret at the bar. Nanaki's already on the slopes. &#, you know, for a fire cat, that thing sure loves the snow."

Cloud sighed. "Damn. Nanaki always throws my balance off. Having a two-legged partner would help, though…" He smiled and turned to Tifa, who immediately paled.

"Oh no," she said, raising her hands and shaking her head vigorously. "I was with you the last time you tried snowboarding, Cloud. You couldn't pay me!"

The young blonde looked disappointed. "But-"

"No buts!" Tifa said, crossing her arms and wearing a stern expression. "Ask Yuffie, I'm not going with you!"

Yuffie's eyes bulged as Cloud turned to her with a hopeful smile. "I'm freezing my shorts off just standing around, and you want me to go snowboarding?" she said with disbelief. "Nuh-uh, only if you're gonna shave Red and make me a coat outta his fur!" she screeched.

Cloud sighed and turned to the last remaining member of the group, who had been leaning silently on the railing for the entire time. "Vincent? You're dressed appropriately. You might even enjoy it."

The dark gunman looked up silently from the collar of his cloak. He said nothing, but his expression was more than enough of an answer for everyone.

A look of annoyance crossed over Cloud's face as he regarded their tall companion. "You know, Vincent-"

"You convinced me to come on this 'vacation' of yours. I think I've done enough," Vincent said levelly.

Cloud's brows drew together, and he exhaled slightly. "Fine." He turned on the gunman and faced the others, hefting his snowboard. "Let's mosey!"

Cid was already climbing down the rope ladder, and Cloud tossed his snowboard over the side of the airship. Tifa moved to follow him, and Yuffie's eyes widened. "H-hey, wait a second!" she yelled, running in place to keep her legs warm. "What about me?"

Only the top tuft of Cloud's spiky hair was visible as his voice rose over the side of the ship. "Get some clothes and join us on the slope afterwards."

Tifa's eyes lit up at the suggestion. "Shopping! Now that sounds perfect!" She whirled and clapped her hands together. "Come on, I'll help you pick out a new outfit."

Yuffie sighed and rolled her eyes. "Oh, alright, I guess anything is better than freezing here." She scurried over to the rope ladder and waited for Tifa to descend. A sudden thought struck the young ninja, and she whirled around. "Hey, what about you, Vince? Are you gonna come with us?"

Vincent remained motionless against the rail. He gave Yuffie a cursory glance and then turned his head away, ignoring her.

Yuffie scowled and huffed, causing a large plume of white breath to rise before her face. "You know, Cloud was only tryin' to help you out there. Geez, Vincent, you're colder than all of Icicle Town put together!" she chided. Then she smirked at him. "Heh, maybe when we get back, you'll be frozen and we can mount you on the bow of the Highwind like a trophy! So hold your gun out or something while you're hanging around, okay?" She pulled down her lower eyelid with a finger and stuck out her tongue, and then with a wild leap, slung herself over the ladder and climbed down.

After a while, the commotion of the other members of AVALANCHE leaving the ship died down, and Vincent was finally alone on the deck. A cold wind blew once more, and he pulled the edge of his cloak up. The merry, twinkling lights of Icicle Town beckoned to him with promises of warmth and company. He glared at them accusingly and turned his gaze towards the mountains surrounding the tiny village. The high peaks were dark, quiet and desolate. The perfect place to brood, in his opinion. Pushing himself off of the railing, the gunman leapt down from the airship and headed towards the mountain range.

- x – x – x -​

"It's too tight!"

"This one's too long."

"I don't really like this color."

"Gawd, this makes me look fat!"

"But it's itchy!"

Tifa rolled her eyes upwards and threw another pile of clothes onto the rack. The saleswoman in the small boutique gave her a nasty look as she sorted through the growing pile of costumes Yuffie had rejected. Tifa inwardly sighed with embarrassment and made her way to the dressing room. "I'm coming in, okay?" she called out.

The inside of the dressing room was not looking much better than the rack outside. Shirts, pants, hats, socks and gloves lined the floor. It looked as if a tornado had landed inside of the room and demolished its contents. And standing at the eye of the storm was Yuffie, her hair messy and barefoot amidst the piles.

"What is your problem, Yuffie?" Tifa said, planting her hands on her hips. "That saleswoman outside is getting ready to use a limit break on me! And look at this mess! Why can't you find anything to wear?" she said sternly.

Yuffie sighed uncomfortably and pulled at her collar. "It just doesn't look right, Tifa. This shop is full of stuff you'd wear, not me!"

Tifa raised an eyebrow and picked up one of the scattered pairs of pants lying on the floor. It was made of a stretchy lime-green fabric with odd purple and orange blobs printed across it. "Excuse me?" she said, throwing the pants at Yuffie with a meaningful look. "You're the one who's been picking out these things, not me. I think you just have a problem buying new clothes," she said dryly.

Yuffie sighed and hung her head dejectedly. "I've never been shopping before…" she mumbled quietly.

"WHAT?" Tifa yelled. She stuck her head out of the dressing room quickly and muttered a short apology as the saleswoman came running. When she was finished, she looked at Yuffie critically. "What do you mean you've never been shopping before? Don't tell me that's all you have to wear," she said, gesturing at Yuffie's rumpled shorts and tiny green top.

"Well, umm… see, women are supposed to wear kimonos," the ninja muttered as her cheeks flushed slightly. "Don't ask, it's a Wutai thing. I sorta had to 'borrow' my own clothes from the guys back home."

Tifa's eyebrow rose impossibly higher as she took a closer look at Yuffie. "So that's why your shirt's too small and your shorts are too big?" she said finally.

Yuffie scowled at the older girl. "Hey, I look fine!" she grumbled.

"You look like a tomboy," Tifa corrected her with a smile. "Here, I love shopping. Let me pick something out for you. I promise, you'll look good in it."

Yuffie gave Tifa a frightened stare. "I don't wanna wear a skirt as short as yours!" she panicked. "I don't know how you manage to sit!"

Tifa laughed and waved her hand at Yuffie. "Don't worry, it'll be modest. Besides, we're in Icicle Town now. You'd freeze in something like that!" A glint entered her eye as she appraised Yuffie's figure. "Just wait here, I'll be right back. And clean up this room!" she added, gesturing towards the floor as she left.

Some time later, Tifa finally returned to the dressing room, where a nervous Yuffie was picking at a stray thread on one of the mismatched costumes she had folded. "Well, I thought you might be comfortable with something that looked familiar, so I picked these out for you," Tifa said, depositing a pair of pants and a long-sleeved top on the chair. "You won't be able to go snowboarding in these, though," she added, hanging a jacket onto the rack.

Yuffie's eyes bulged as she examined the clothing the other woman had brought in. "Tifa… this is suede!" she said, fingering the creamy-coloured pants.

"I know, it's going to look fantastic on you," Tifa said proudly.

"Forget fantastic! How am I gonna afford all of this?" Yuffie moaned, eyeing the matching suede jacket hanging on the rack and the forest green turtleneck sweater on the chair beside her.

"That's simple. Cloud's footing the bill!" Tifa said with a smirk.

Yuffie squeaked as she looked at the price tags on the clothing. "He's not gonna spend his gil on this stuff, Tifa!"

Flames roared to life in Tifa's eyes. "You're not the only one who suggested we go to Costa del Sol instead, Yuffie. If Cloud wants to snowboard that badly during our vacation, he can pay for it. Literally." The flames died down and a mischievous smile spread over her face. "Now come on, try it on."

Some time and one very pleased saleswoman later, Yuffie and Tifa managed to exit the boutique. Yuffie was finally appropriately dressed, and Tifa was carry carrying a few bagfuls of "necessary accessories" that she had found along the way.

"I think we better drop these things off at the Highwind before we do anything else," Tifa said as she juggled around a few of her bags.

Yuffie snickered. "I wanna see Cloud's face when you show him all that," she said with a grin. As she spoke, Tifa tripped and one of the bags fell over, spilling out the contents of a box with a very notorious lingerie label printed on its top. Yuffie gawked while Tifa flushed and quickly collected the scattered package.

"Not for all of them," Tifa giggled as she hefted the packs together once more. "But the sooner we get back to the Highwind, the better," she mumbled, her cheeks still slightly red.

Yuffie laughed and nodded, grabbing a few of the bags from Tifa and skipping ahead. She paused suddenly and turned around, waiting for Tifa to catch up with her. "Hey, you think Vincent's still up there?" she said as they both resumed their walk towards the huge airship.

Tifa sighed slightly, glancing at Yuffie over the pile of bags she was carrying. "I really don't know, Yuff. I think it was lucky that we managed to get Vincent to come along for this reunion trip at all…"

Yuffie blinked. "You guys picked me up last. I mean, I thought Vincent was being a little quiet, but he's always quiet. You mean he didn't wanna come with us?" she asked sadly.

Tifa smiled half-heartedly. "Well, we had to pull him out of Nibelheim again. He went back to the coffin after we… after everything else." She sighed slightly. "Cloud was angry with him. I was the one who had to convince him to even bother inviting Vincent. And even now, Vincent's not making it easy. It's like he doesn't want to live…"

Yuffie scrunched up her nose thoughtfully. "That sucks!" she said finally. "I can't believe he went back to that stinky old coffin. I mean, gross! No wonder he has that dead person smell!"

Tifa choked back a giggle. "Yuffie!" she scolded. "Don't be mean!"

"Why not?" Yuffie said carelessly. "He's mean to the rest of us. I think we're allowed to mean right back!" She huffed loudly as they reached the base of the rope ladder leading up to the ship's deck. "Even if Mr. Vampire was still up there, I bet he wouldn't come down and help us carry these bags!" she yelled loudly.

Tifa glared at Yuffie, and then breathed a sigh of relief when they heard no movement from above. "He's probably not there, Yuffie. We're lucky he didn't hear you say that!"

Yuffie stuck out her lower lip and sulked. She began to struggle her way up the ladder, carrying a few of the bags with her. "I wish he had heard me," she mumbled. "I'd like to give him a piece of my mind!"

 

[Enkida]

LANDSLIDE
2: The Fall​

Vincent sneezed. He rubbed at his nose with surprise. "I thought Hojo's experiments would make me impervious to the cold. Don't tell me he failed even in that…" he muttered to himself. He paused and looked down the snowy mountainside. The tracks he had made with his heavy bronze-tipped boots were clearly visible, forming a lonely trail up to the rocky outcropping which he was perched upon. The lights of Icicle Town below were still visible, but thankfully much more distant. Vincent didn't want anything to do with the cheery mountain community. Though small, the village was bustling with life. It only made him feel more out of place than he already was.

Vincent frowned and returned to his brooding. The hours passed by slowly, but he remained motionless even as his thoughts marched relentlessly through his head. "Why am I here?" he muttered to himself. That question was not hard to puzzle out; Cloud would not take "no" for an answer. Vincent suspected the martial artist had put him up to it; Cloud's invitation had been more forceful than polite. The fact remained that Vincent was accompanying the small group unwillingly; if left on his own, he would have much rather returned to Nibelheim to sleep in his coffin.

"I have not yet atoned for my sins," he said softly, studying the moonlit sky above. "I have no right to celebrate among the living. Lucretia…" The name slipped from his lips before he realized it, and his already dark mood blackened.

Dwelling on the memory of his lost love only made the reminder of his failures more painful to bear. It was worse inside of the mansion; there, his mental anguish was compounded by the physical attacks he encountered from the strange creatures still prowling its haunted depths. The dark, dank walls of his self-imposed prison left no room for anything other than self-recrimination. Vincent could never truly sleep in the coffin, another one of Hojo's twisted little gifts. He could only suspend his body, controlling every function until he could be taken for dead by the less observant. But he could never slow down his mind; he was always aware, always trapped in his consciousness with his memories.

Before Cloud had first awakened him, the slumber had been agonizing. Memories of his own painful physical transformation were interspersed with memories of Lucretia, both during their time as lovers and afterwards. The thought of her distant, faded smile brought him more pain than even the worst of Hojo's experiments.

Recently, however, the slumber had become even worse. Vincent had assumed that he would be able to retire in peace after AVALANCHE saved the planet and put Sephiroth and Jenova to rest for all eternity. But instead, his sleep was even more tortured than before. This time, rather than being lost in memories of Lucretia when she was alive, he swum in memories of the ghostly spirit who had appeared to him in the waterfall cavern. That Lucretia watched him with pain in her eyes, suffering eternally not only from her own transformation through Jenova, but also the fate of her beloved son.

Were you right to kill him? Should you have told her? Could he not be saved?

Vincent's jaw clenched. At least within the safety of his coffin, he could let the memories wash over him in private, away from prying eyes. Cloud's "vacation" left him feeling raw and exposed. He knew his friends had only good intentions in their hearts, but it still rankled him to be scrutinized under their eyes. Cloud was full of anger at his withdrawal, Tifa with pity. Barret avoided him, always uncomfortable and embarrassed around the silent man. Cid regarded him with a detached disgust, but respectfully kept his opinions to himself. Nanaki would just gaze at him silently with his lone eye, making him feel as though the giant cat could pierce his innermost thoughts. The only two people who he felt comfortable around were Reeve and Yuffie. The former, because he had been unable to find the time to accompany the small group on their vacation, and the latter because she simply didn't care enough to direct any of her attention towards him.

"I just want to be alone," he finally concluded. At least he had managed to find solitude in the middle of the noisy reunion on the serene mountainside.

"#!"

Vincent's eyes shot open and he glanced over his shoulder. As he feared, more than a few meters away lay Yuffie, facedown in the snow. She was wearing some strange new outfit that he assumed Tifa had picked out for her; nothing the young ninja ever wore on her own ever remotely smacked of taste or dignity. Unfortunately, her new clothing was not very practical for scaling a mountainside. Practical considerations, however, had never stopped the headstrong girl before.

Yuffie picked herself up out of the snow and cursed again, shivering as she tried to brush off the snow from the soaking suede material. "Tifa's gonna kill me…" she mumbled, looking at the ruined pants.

"You should not be here," Vincent said, turning away from the girl after a moment.

"Well ha ha! Look who's the master of the obvious now!" Yuffie growled, struggling her way up the mountain and towards Vincent's rock. "I wouldn't have to be here, trashing my brand new clothes, if you weren't!"

Vincent closed his eyes and sighed inwardly, mentally erasing his last assessment of the young ninja and adding her to his list of irritations. "What do you want of me?" he said tonelessly.

Yuffie huffed and crouched down beside Vincent. She wrapped her arms around her knees and blew into the collar of her shirt for warmth. "Tifa told me 'bout where they picked you up while we were shopping," she said.

Vincent raised an eyebrow. She didn't know? He remained silent and waited for her to continue.

"Why'd you go back to Nibelheim, Vince? I mean, I thought you were happy an' all after we beat Sephiroth." She rocked back and forth on her heels and glanced at their surroundings. "But here you are, finding the next best place to a coffin to brood in this pimple on the butt of the world!"

Vincent smiled slightly underneath his cloak. Yuffie was never reserved about her opinions, and her language was only growing coarser the more she hung around Cid. If Cloud was there, they would have started another argument about her crude language.

Yuffie glanced at him and mistook his expression for annoyance. Her eyes darkened and she snorted loudly. "I don't care if you're upset! You're gonna listen to me now, 'cause you're not listening to anything else up here anyway." She unwrapped one of her arms from her knees and used it to stab her finger angrily into Vincent's cloak. "Why the hell are you so depressed, anyway? I mean, are you keepin' a stash of materia in that mansion all to yourself or something? Or do you just like hanging out with monsters better than your own friends?"

Vincent sighed and adjusted his cloak from where Yuffie had mangled it. "I simply prefer to be left in solitude," he said.

"You don't enjoy seeing us?" Yuffie said sceptically.

"That is not the reason…" Vincent began. He caught himself and turned a sharp gaze onto his young companion, who was humming to herself and curiously studying their surroundings. "Why did you come here? You're not even listening," he said irritably.

Yuffie turned back towards him with a look of surprise. "Huh? No, I'm listening!" she protested. "You're the one who's not talking. Besides, it's not like you're gonna spill your guts to someone like me. You'd need Tifa or somebody for that, right?" Yuffie gave him a smile and resumed her rocking.

Vincent sighed with annoyance. "You make too many assumptions, Yuffie."

Yuffie caught herself, her eyes growing wide. "Whoa! You mean you ARE gonna spill your guts? Cool!" She scooted closer to Vincent, a conspiratorial look in her eyes. "I promise not to tell anyone!" she whispered loudly. It was hard to miss the very obviously crossed fingers that were sticking out from the hand still wrapped around her knee.

Vincent groaned slightly. "Why am I even attempting to have a serious conversation with this child?" he muttered to himself.

"Because ya like me!" Yuffie answered for him with a broad smile. "Heck, I bet you like all of us. But I'm the only one annoying enough to get you to talk, right?" She blew her breath out into the cold night air and scrubbed at some frost forming on the leg of her pants. "Maybe I act too young for my age. But you act too old! So we balance out just right, see?" She turned another huge smile onto Vincent and reached out and tugged at a stray lock of his hair. He jerked back in surprise, and she giggled. "I'm not really all that interested in hearing about all the sad things you must be thinking about all the way up here," she admitted finally. "It's probably about a lotta dead people I don't know, and I bet it's depressing. I'd rather talk to you about fun stuff. Like what Tifa bought for Cloud today!" she said with a mischievous grin.

That derailed Vincent completely. "What Tifa bought for Cloud…" he started faintly. Then he caught himself once again and shook his head. "You are annoying," he said firmly, glaring at the goofily grinning ninja. "If you were not interested in talking to me, why did you even bother to come here?"

Yuffie smirked. "Because I like following tracks?" she offered. When Vincent refused to stop staring, she rolled her eyes. "I am interested in talking with you!" she said, slapping him on the arm. "I'd like you to talk back, too. That's why I came up here. I thought I'd give it a try." She quieted down and ceased with her incessant motion long enough to give Vincent a semi-serious stare. "You gotta treat other people the way you want them to treat you." She smiled at Vincent slightly. "You don't seem like the type to throw pity parties for yourself, and my shoulder's too bony to cry on anyway. Heck, I didn't think you were the type to go crawling back into a coffin after all we went through, so maybe I'm wrong." She stood up and dusted a few more crystals off of her pants. "But deep down, I bet you're tired of playing dead all the time. So I thought I'd give you a taste of what it's like to be alive."

Vincent regarded her with a puzzled expression. "I am alive," he said. "I don't see what this has to do with you climbing a mountain simply to insult me and act immaturely."

Yuffie rolled her eyes. "I'm only insulting you 'cause you deserve it," she said primly. "And I'm not acting immaturely! I'm showing you how other people talk. You know, living people," she said sarcastically.

Vincent narrowed his eyes and turned away from her. "I wish to be left alone," he said curtly.

Yuffie growled, her expression growing fierce. "You think you're the only one who's suffering? Do you really think Cloud spends every waking minute telling us how much he misses Aeris? How much he loved her?" She crossed her arms. "We all know about it. But look at him! He's here snowboarding and flirting with Tifa! He's alive, and he's doing exactly what Aeris would have wanted him to." She sniffed. "Not like you at all. No wonder you piss him off."

Vincent's temper flared. "You have no right to say that," he bit out harshly. "Don't try to lecture me about love when you don't even know what it is!"

A hurt expression flashed across Yuffie's face, which she quickly stamped down with a stormy look. "Vincent Valentine, you're the biggest poop head I know!" she yelled at him. "Fine, stew in your own juices. Remind me not to try and help you again in the future!" She turned and leapt off the rock, travelling down the mountain path at a run.

Vincent watched her leave with a measure of anger and confusion, then turned back towards the bleak, snowy landscape before him. "A mere child, she doesn't know what she's doing," he muttered to himself. He thought about what Yuffie had told him, and unbidden, words came to his mind. When the child was a child, it walked with its arms swinging, wanted the brook to be a river, the river to be a torrent, and this puddle to be the sea. "I must atone for my sins," he said out loud. "She is asking too much of me. I cannot be anything other than who I am. I am not ready... not worthy to join the rest of humanity, not yet."

When the child was a child, it didn't know that it was a child, everything was soulful, and all souls were one. Vincent frowned. "Why am I thinking of this now?" he said out loud, scraping his bronze claw across the rock. His gaze descended to the twinkling lights of Icicle Town below. He thought of Cloud's pinched brow and Tifa's worried gaze. Cid's long, sideways glances and Barret's short, nervous ones. Nanaki's direct, unblinking stare. And Yuffie… but no, Yuffie had never given him any special looks, not until today. He came to a realization as he thought about it. They cared about him. All of them. Except for Yuffie, who foolishly assumed there was nothing wrong with him in the first place that needed any attention at all.

"There is nothing wrong with me…" he said out loud with indignation. The wind blew and a few snowflakes began to drift down the lonely mountainside, as if to point out the absurdity of his declaration. He scowled at the desolate mountainside, suddenly uncomfortable with the solitude. "I only act this way because I have suffered," he said reasonably. "I must pay for my failures, and what I have lost." When the child was a child, it was time for these questions: Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? Yuffie's angry declaration came back to him. "Cloud loved Aeris as well…" he murmured. He leaned back, confused. "But how did Cloud move on?" It was a thought he had never bothered to ask himself before, being too absorbed in his own mourning for Lucretia.

The poem came back to him, line by line, each one gently mocking him. It was a poem about childhood, one he remembered from long ago. He had forgotten it, left it behind, along with his soiled innocence. "I am a grown man now," Vincent said to himself resolutely. "Yuffie's thoughts are those of a child. They mean nothing." The defiant words remained unspoken, but rang clearly across his thoughts, despite his best efforts to push them down. When the child was a child, it reached for cherries in the topmost branches of trees with an elation it still has today. It awaited the first snow, and waits that way even now.

Vincent sighed and directed his gaze towards the faintly glittering village below. The same cheery lights still held their beckoning promise. He turned away and bowed his head respectfully towards the darkness, allowing the breeze to whisper around him. "I will never stop loving you, Lucretia," he said softly. When he felt ready, he opened his eyes and stood up, facing the snowy trail. "But perhaps it is time to start listening to the wisdom of children."

When the child was a child, it threw a stick like a lance against a tree, and it quivers there still today.

 

[Enkida]

LANDSLIDE
3: The Flight​

Tifa raised an eyebrow at Yuffie's soggy appearance when she finally re-entered the Highwind. "Oh, Yuffie, we just bought that!" she said with disappointment.

The young girl didn't respond, instead listlessly pulling off the jacket and flopping onto the bed next to Tifa. "You were right," she mumbled, burying her head into the pillow with a moan. "It was a total waste of time!"

Tifa reached out and gently patted Yuffie on the back. "It's okay, Yuffie. At least you tried. The rest of us have just given up on him," she admitted sadly.

Yuffie rolled over and rolled her eyes at Tifa. "Yeah, that's just 'cause I'm the only one too stupid to notice Vincent was depressed!" she groaned.

"Well, lying in my bed, soaking it up and griping isn't going to make you feel better," Tifa chided her, digging through the many bags she had brought back from the shop. "I thought something like this might happen. Here, change into this," she said, throwing a dry set of clothes at Yuffie, who sat up and caught them easily.

"You got me spares?" Yuffie said, looking at the new clothing with surprise. Noticing the dark suede material, she looked up with a glint in her eye. "You better pray that Cloud really likes your underwear. He's going to have a chocobo when he finds out how much you spent!" she giggled, quickly getting changed.

"He won't mind once I explain it to him. Every girl deserves to have some new clothing every once in a while." Tifa smile reassuringly as Yuffie finished pulling on the last of her dry clothes. "They should be getting back soon, it's too dark to stay out on the slopes now."

The sound of footsteps ringing on the deck above confirmed Tifa's words, and the two girls moved out of the room to meet Cloud and Nanaki, who had returned.

"Hey guys!" Cloud called out, waving at the two girls with a smile as he deposited his snowboard in a corner. "Where's everybody else?" he asked.

Tifa tapped her chin. "Well, I guess Cid and Barret are still at the bar, and Vincent-"

Yuffie cut in quickly. "We don't know where Vincent went!" she yelled hurriedly. "I think he decided he'd go out and enjoy Icicle Town on his own after all!" Tifa shot Yuffie a questioning look, and she quickly leaned in. "Listen, I ragged on Vince a lot today. He doesn't need Cloud on his back right now," she whispered.

Cloud frowned and shook some snow out of his hair. "Huh. I bet climbed one of these mountains and spent the entire time brooding up there."

"Then you would only be partially correct," Vincent said as he entered the Highwind. Everyone turned and looked at him with surprise, particularly Yuffie, whose eyes were wide and nervous. He cleared his throat and hesitantly pulled the collar of his cloak down slightly. "Large gatherings of people do not appeal to me. I decided I would rather enjoy the natural scenery of the area."

This caused everyone in the room to stare. It was the most Vincent had said publicly during the entire course of the trip.

Cloud was the first to break the silence, his blue eyes hard. "So I was right. You call it hiking, I call it running away."

Yuffie cut in, sensing the rising tension between the two men. "Uh, no, Cloud. He really was hiking. I was with him for a while, see! We had fun, but I got cold and had to come back first," she said, squeezing her eyes shut and smiling so hard she thought her face would split in half. Oh-Leviathan-please-let-him-keep-his-mouth-shut, please-please-please! she prayed feverishly.

Cloud regarded the young ninja suspiciously and then turned to Vincent once more. "Is this true?" he said sternly.

"Of course it's true!" Yuffie protested, her eyes popping open and staring at Tifa pleadingly.

"Umm, yes…" Tifa began uncertainly. "Yes, it is. Yuffie and I went shopping earlier, but then she left with Vincent to go hiking. She completely ruined the new outfit you just bought her!" she added indignantly.

Cloud did a double take. "I just bought her? Never mind, I'll ask you about it later. Vincent?" he said, still watching the gunman warily.

Vincent stood on the doorstep, regarding Yuffie with the closest he could come to surprise. Finally, he looked at Cloud and gave the young blond a slight nod.

Cloud sighed and ran his fingers through his unruly hair. "Then I guess I owe you an apology, Vincent," he said slowly. He looked at the gunman and gave him a small grin. "Maybe I was wrong about you after all."

Vincent inclined his head slightly. "It is I who have been acting poorly towards the rest of you. There is no need to apologize."

Nanaki grunted and lifted his head from the floor, where he had sprawled to watch the mini-drama unfold. "While this reunion is touching, we still haven't answered the most important question." Seeing everyone's gaze turn to him, he flicked his tail lazily. "Cid and Barret must be sloshed by now. Who's going to pick them up?"

Cloud, Tifa and Yuffie let out a simultaneous groan. "I spent the entire day on the slopes," Cloud said, rubbing at his shoulder. "I don't think I could lift my sword right now. Would someone else like to volunteer?"

"Do you know how heavy Barret is?" Tifa complained. "He stinks when he drinks too much. And Cid always manages to put his hand on my butt when he's drunk!" she added, crossing her arms angrily. "Someone else is going to have to clean up after those two!"

Yuffie scowled. "Hey, I'm not even as tall as Tifa! I can't bring them back by myself!"

Nanaki rolled his good eye upwards. "I have no hands. Even if I could drag them through the street, someone else would still have to get them onto the Highwind." He yawned and stood up, padding towards his room. "As it is, I'm rather tired right now. I think I'll get some rest."

All eyes turned towards Vincent, who had remained silent during the entire exchange. He lifted one fine eyebrow, and then sighed slightly. "Very well." Everyone broke out into a chorus of cheers and thank-you's, which were silenced by his next words. "But only if Yuffie comes with me," he said ominously, staring at the young ninja.

"Huh? Me? Take Tifa!" Yuffie squeaked, panicking.

Vincent regarded her coolly. "Even if I do bring Barret back, someone still has to help Cid. And I believe Tifa has something she wants to show to Cloud. Isn't that what you said?" He smirked slightly.

"YUFFIE!" Tifa's face turned bright scarlet, and Yuffie suddenly decided that helping out Vincent would be a very good idea. There was a crash and a clatter, and the door slammed shut, leaving Tifa and Cloud standing alone in the room.

"There's something you wanted to show me, Tifa?" Cloud said cluelessly. "Why are you blushing?"

- x – x – x -​

Yuffie stared at the ground, kicking at the snow in her path petulantly. "It's cold, I'm freezing, and I don't wanna see either of those turkeys drunk," she muttered with annoyance.

"Why did you do it?" Vincent said, falling into step beside her.

"Because Tifa might've used Final Heaven on me after what you said!" Yuffie growled, glaring at Vincent with a large scowl. "It's called a tactical retreat!"

"I meant what you said to Cloud," Vincent said. "Why did you lie to him?"

Yuffie blushed slightly and patted her cheeks hurriedly. "Oh, that!" she said with a nervous laugh. "Well, I guess you didn't need Spike breathin' down your neck and all right now. You have enough problems, right?" She swung her arms around carelessly, spinning through the snowy street. "We're on vacation anyhow! That little white lie isn't gonna hurt anybody."

Vincent regarded her thoughtfully. "But you seemed upset when you left the mountain. And you have nothing to gain by doing this."

Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Damn straight! I'd call it a total loss, all I got for helping you out was drag-home-the-drunk duty!" she moaned, stopping at the door to the bar.

Vincent paused, and then after a moment of reflection, reached out and put a hand on Yuffie's shoulder. She fell still, meeting Vincent's gaze with genuine surprise.

"It was not a 'total loss,'" he said to her cryptically.

Yuffie blinked and opened her mouth to reply, but Vincent moved past her, pushing the door to the bar open. She remained outside, gaping like a fish, for once speechless as she stared after the tall gunman.

"Are you going to just stand there?" he called out with a hint of amusement.

"H-hey!" she yelled, charging into the bar after him. She stopped, the questions she was itching to ask of Vincent dying in her throat as she observed the two unmistakable figures seated at one of the tables. "Oh, great!" she moaned.

Barret was slumped over one side of the table, his heavy gun arm resting against the floor, snoring loudly. At the other end of the table, Cid was sitting with a dazed expression, still nursing an open bottle of beer. He hiccupped and turned his glassy blue eyes towards Yuffie and Vincent.

"Say, if t'ain't Yuffsters 'n Vincent," he slurred at them, raising his bottle. "Just 'n time t' join us for 'nother drink," he added, trying to push a stool out towards them. He missed and swore loudly, falling against the table.

"Umm, I'm not old enough to drink yet," Yuffie said with a smirk. "Hey, you get sleeping beauty, I'll handle Cid," she mumbled to Vincent, who gave her a short nod and moved towards the large black man.

"Aww, 'm sure they'd make 'n exception for such a pretty girl like you," Cid replied, giving Yuffie a dazed smile. "Say, ya look kinda like Tifa," he said, squinting at her dark pants. "Where're your shorts?"

Yuffie groaned and slung one of Cid's arms over her shoulder. "We're in Icicle Town, Cid. Remember? C'mon, it's time to go home," she said irately.

"Home? Yeah… you make sure 'n tell Shera to put the tea on," he mumbled, stumbling heavily to his feet.

Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Icicle Town, Cid! We're going to the High-EEP!" Her sentence ended in a shrill shriek as she felt a hand descend on her rear. "Cid Highwind, if you don't remove that hand right now, I'm gonna take it off for you!" she screamed at him.

"Pants fitcha real well," Cid mumbled with a grin as Yuffie dragged him towards the door.

"Stop." Vincent's quiet voice carried an edge of steel to it, and both Yuffie and Cid looked up with surprise. He directed an icy gaze at the drunken pilot. "Touch her again, and you will have more to worry about than simply your hand."

It was unusual for the gunman to speak at all, and his tone of voice was deadly. It had a sobering effect on the pilot, who straightened up slightly and gave Vincent a wobbly nod. "Sorry…" he mumbled with confusion. "!#, didn' mean nothin' by it… sorta do it to Tifa all the time…"

Yuffie recovered from her shock and pulled Cid out into the cold night air. "Yeah, well, guess what brainiac, she doesn't like it either!" she finally managed to stutter. A hot blush still graced her cheeks from Vincent's unusual outburst. What's he thinking? she wondered nervously. Behind them, she could feel Vincent's stare boring into their backs, watching their progress like a hawk. Despite the fact that he was grappling with a completely unconscious Barret, she had no doubt he would be able to carry out his threat with lightning efficiency if Cid's hand strayed again.

Cid, even in his inebriated state, was apparently considering the same thoughts. He turned his head towards her, and Yuffie winced away from the blast of stale fumes that came from his breath. "'sup with Vincent, Yuffie? He yer boyfriend now or somethin'?"

Yuffie felt her face explode into what she was sure was a new shade of red and quickened her pace. "Just shut up, Cid! You're drunk!" she grumbled over his loud protests.

- x – x – x -​

Everyone made it back to the Highwind without further incident, and both Cid and Barret were safely deposited in the chocobo stables at Yuffie's adamant refusal to drag them any further. Cloud and Tifa were nowhere to be found, and Nanaki was fast asleep. As Yuffie tiptoed through the quiet ship, she was acutely aware of Vincent's presence behind her. She turned her head slightly and squeaked when she noticed him following her.

"Eh heh, well, uh, guess we're done here, so I'm gonna go get some shut-eye now, 'kay?" she said quickly. She turned and began to move down the hall again, trying to kill the blush on her cheeks and praying that Vincent hadn't noticed it. To her dismay, she heard him following her once more. Finally, with a sigh, she turned around and put on an angry scowl. "What?" she hissed.

"You're blushing," Vincent noted.

This, of course, had the exactly the reaction Yuffie didn't want, which was to make her blush even more. "So what? It's cold. I'm just trying to keep my face warm!" she said. It feels more like I could provide central heating for the Highwind right now, she appended silently.

Vincent refused to be put off by her obvious discomfort. "Do I make you nervous?" he said, a hint of amusement briefly flashing through his eyes once more.

"No!" Yuffie clapped her hands over her mouth and looked around, her eyes wide as her yell echoed down the empty hall. "I mean yes," she whispered hotly. "You'd make anybody nervous, stalking her like that!" she added. "I bet you're doing it on purpose!"

Vincent inclined his head slightly. "It was intentional," he said simply. Yuffie began to reply, but he cut her off once more. "For Cid." He regarded her once again, leaning in closer. "Why do I make you nervous now?"

Yuffie watched Vincent with large eyes, having the distinct feeling of a mouse being played with by a very large cat. "H-hey, is this revenge for what I said to you on the mountain?" she stuttered, unable to break his gaze.

"You could say that," Vincent said, leaning in closer.

Yuffie groaned and rolled her eyes, the tension leaking out of her body. "Oh, gee, alright already, so maybe I was a little mean. But it's not like ya didn't deserve it. And look at you now, you're bein' social and everything! So I don't think it's fair to go on and tease me like that. You want me to say I'm sorry, right? Yeah, I bet that's it. Okay, I'm sorry for calling you a poop he—" Her babbling was cut short unexpectedly as Vincent leaned in and silenced her with a kiss. It was a very long and very demanding kiss, and through the fog of her shock, Yuffie's overworked brain finally came to one definite conclusion: Vincent was a very good kisser.

When he finally lifted his head, Yuffie remained staring blankly at him, her lips parted and her eyes slightly foggy. After a moment, she realized Vincent was regarding her with the same unfamiliar expression as before. After another moment, she realized it was laughter. Her brow lowered instantly. "Hey, what was that for?" she said, glaring at him.

"You said you wanted to give me a taste of what it's like to be alive," Vincent said. He leaned in closer, and Yuffie froze as his lips brushed against her ear. "It tastes very good," he whispered. Then he pushed away from her and continued his leisurely walk down the hall, stopping at the door to his room.

Yuffie finally recovered enough to stand up and face him, pointing a shaking finger towards the gunman. "T-that's not what I meant when I said it!" she quaked, her eyes wide.

Vincent smiled smugly at her, pushing the door open. "That's too bad. I'm looking forward to having seconds later on," he said, entering the room. The door closed behind him with a quiet click, leaving Yuffie standing in the hall with her arm still outstretched and a radiant flush.

After recovering from her second bout with shock, Yuffie finally managed to lower her arm. "You don't just kiss a girl and run away like that!" she muttered to herself. She considered his kiss, and his challenge, and a slow smile spread across her face. She skipped her way back to her room, her heart beating wildly in her chest. "Well, tomorrow's another day, and there's still six days of vacation left." She paused, and glanced back towards the gunman's closed door. "I hope you know this means war, Vincent Valentine." And with a grin, she shut the door.

- fin -​

For the curious, here are the challenge standards:
- Inspired by a song from a closed list of choices (mine was "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac, hence the title).
- A Vincent / Yuffie kiss.
- Tifa taking Yuffie to a store of some sort.
- Someone gets "bitch-slapped" (verbally) for starting a fight.
- The words "Don't ask, it's a (insert name) thing."

 

[Enkida]

Hey everyone. This is a series of drabbles that Seventhe actually inadvertently prompted me to start writing on a whim.
It's all for the livejournal FF100 community, which basically hands out a theme and asks participants to write 100-300 word responses to that theme. Intriguing and fun because it's fast, and for someone as verbose as me rather difficult to pare ideas down to their bare essentials. Almost like writing poetry!

CLOUD: White Noise​

"It's not your fault."

Those words undo him. How she can stand there with such forgiveness in her eyes? He tries to make her understand over the hiss of white noise that is blanketing his thoughts.

"I …" but it refuses to collate. I am not I. "I'm -"

A whisper of moisture across his knuckles provides a moment of clarity: ribbons of red against the pale of her skin, the green of her eyes.

What have I done?

When the nebulous haze surrounds him again, he accepts the retreat it offers.

I am not I.

His lips are moving. Are the words his own? Were they ever? He makes one last plea before he is consumed.

"If everything's a dream, don't wake me."

AERIS: Impuse​

"It feels like I'm being led by something."

She smiles absently at the canopy, shaking her bangs out of her eyes. His presence is confused, questioning, but for once he is not important. The call is what matters; the siren song which pulses through her veins, seeking release.

Here, it beckons. Here.

She begins to drift towards the melody, unable to ignore its pull. It tempts her with thoughts of warmth, of comfort, of no longer being alone -

His hesitation stops her abruptly. But this is more than simple curiosity; it is her destiny, her people. It is a chance for a new beginning. It is also a farewell. She turns to him one last time.

"Then, I'll be going now. I'll come back when it's all over."

TIFA: Hard​

"Give me something hard."

"Just a minute," she says, reaching for a bottle behind the counter. "I'll make one for you." Ice clatters noisily into a waiting glass.

He isn't looking at her. His eyes are bright but unfocused, always turned inwards. He is no longer the boy she once knew.

"You know," she tries, setting the cold drink before him, "I'm relieved you made it back safely." He brushes away her concern with a careless reply, and she polishes the already-spotless bar between them to hide her flinch.

"You were in SOLDIER," she says.

He sets his drink down and pushes away from the stool in response. Lightly she reminds him to collect his pay, but he's already drifted away. When the crown of his hair disappears beneath the floor, she releases her breath and leans heavily against the bar.

She didn't realize it would be this difficult; his feelings have changed. But her feelings have changed, too.

With a sigh, she reaches for his glass and tosses back its remains.

BARRET: Temptation​

She left the bottle out carelessly on the bar. It promises relief - amber ensconed by shining glass. Corel, Dyne, family. Let it go. Pass it on. It wasn't your fault. Just one taste, and you'll know paradise - or at least you'll forget.

He reaches for it -

"Papa!"

Only one voice could be sweeter than oblivion. The whiskey stands, forgotten for now - a small victory in his never-ending war. His phantom arm twitches as he smiles at his little girl. The siren call in his mind flares briefly in frustration, stumped once again - her voice is suspiciously similar to that of the owner of said bar. Only, she would never tempt him like this - not with drink, at least.

She loves Cloud.

And it reminds him of yet another reason to keep reaching for that bottle.

REEVE: Sweaty Palms​

Drunk. He has to be drunk. There's no other explanation for it.

Never before has the flash of her exposed midriff garnered his admittedly short attention span. Nor were her shorts ever so sinfully tight. Well, maybe that last bit wasn't exactly true. But never before did he notice.

He buries his hands back into the twining mess of wires lumped before him and tries to ignore the sound of her lips pressing together as she pops her gum. Cait squeaks in indignation when his sweaty palms short one of the cat's delicate circuits.

"Yeowch! Sounds like that hurt!" He hasn't turned around, but he knows she's smiling and it makes him sweat all the more. "Can't concentrate?" she asks.

She doesn't know the half of it. He wonders why she has to stand so close.

"Maybe you're getting old, eh, Reeve?"

He is not noticing the swell of her calf when he glances over his shoulder. His eyes did not just trace the inner line of that gently sloping thigh. He forces himself to look up at her face - youthful, familiar but so different now. He'd been hoping the promotion would bring her closer to his office - which it did, technically, but having her inside the WRO building is still an exceedingly rare occasion. Maybe he'll arrange another assassination attempt. That might force her to stick around more...

"Earth to Reeve," she calls in her singsong voice, waving a hand in front of his face.

"I just had too much to drink," he finally answers with a smile.

 

[Enkida]

Short piece done for demeter918 for the Meme of Five on the theme: "5 things Yuffie keeps with her at all times."

SUM TOTAL​

It was often said that parting Yuffie from her material possessions would be like trying to remove the fires of heaven from the Da Chao. It was possible, yes, but it would take the will of a God to accomplish, and generally wasn't worth the trouble.

Yuffie knew, however, that in reality it would be much easier than that. She wasn't actually all that attached to her material possessions, not even the materia she owned, if you wanted to split hairs about it. After all, material possessions were replaceable – almost anything could be easily bought for the right price – or stolen, for the right thrill.

There were, however, five small possessions which the ninja would never be caught without. These she treasured above all other things she owned, because to Yuffie they were something more than simple objects.

The casual bystander might have disagreed on the spiritual importance of a pack of tranquilizers, but to Yuffie, those little pills were Shinra's most important contribution to civilization, ever. After all, it was hard to uphold the ideals and behaviour of a true ninja of Wutai when one was too busy trying to expel her internal organs from her esophagus. No, those tranquilizers were precious, sacred things, blessed by Leviathan himself.

Yuffie knew this, because she carried Leviathan himself right next to them. She had earned Him, tamed the god fair and square after all, with her own sweat and blood. Leviathan was more than a simple piece of materia – He WAS Wutai embodied. Of course she could never part with Leviathan; He was the heart and soul of Wutai, and she was His child. What child could ever abandon her parent?

That was also why she was never without her headband. Leviathan might have been her spiritual father, but the late Lady Kisaragi was still her mother. Yuffie didn't remember very much of her mother; she didn't even know if her mother would have approved of Yuffie's carefree lifestyle. But that wasn't important; her mother had given Yuffie life, at the cost of her very own. The blood debt was only strengthened by their direct relation; there was no way she could not honour the memory of her mother, and still call herself a daughter of Wutai with any pride at all.

If the headband represented her family in Wutai, then the pink scrap of cloth that was wrapped around the handle of her weapon represented her family in AVALANCHE just as faithfully. Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Cid, Reeve, Nanaki and even Vincent – they had all earned a place in Yuffie's heart, one that went beyond the bonds of mere friendship. Maybe they didn't understand the way of the Ninja, but she owed each of them a life debt several hundred times over. They had saved not only Wutai, but the entire world. And they had done it at the cost of one of their own – of Aeris. And so, the ribbon stayed with her always – to remind her of the family she had lost, and those which she still had.

All those things, Yuffie kept, because they represented other people, other places that she found to be important. But her last, and most precious possession of all, was her four-point shuriken. It was old, and beaten, and certainly outclassed by several of her other newer, shiner throwing stars collected during the course of her wanderings. But the shuriken held a special value for Yuffie, despite its plain design and slightly rusting blade. It was dull, rough around the edges, and generally as plain and underappreciated as any weapon could possibly get. But, when wielded in the right hands, it could be deadly. It had helped save the world; it had tasted the blood of the planet itself. It had saved Vincent from the hands of a Tsviet; it had failed to save Aeris from the sword of a SOLDIER. It was damaged, but it was loved despite all of its failures. And occasionally, it managed to surprise people. It wasn't every ninja that was fortunate enough to be able to wield her life story as a weapon. What else could she do but keep it close?

She supposed it could be seen as pathetic – the sum of a life, contained in five brief, careworn items which lacked any real monetary value at all. But appearances had never bothered Yuffie, after all – these were the things which defined her existence. Scraps of cloth would invariably rip and tear, only to be replaced by fresh ones. Tranquilizers could be used and replenished, shuriken could break and even Leviathan himself would give birth and die with time. But the sum of these parts would remain, no matter how time changed them. For she was Yuffie Kisaragi, and these things were her heart, and her soul – so she knew she would carry them with her always.

 

[Enkida]

This was a birthday gift for seventhe. Woo! All the naughty bits are censored for SV (for now). This was done on request in under 24 hours. Reminder in case it wasn't obvious: this takes place well after the events of FF7, no one is underage here.

OIL AND WATER
1: Cloud's Introspection
​

Cloud hunched over the fire pit, rubbing his hands together for warmth. A chill breeze whipped across his ear, and he pulled his collar further up around his neck, cursing his bad luck. Of course Reeve would happen to have an urgent delivery that needed to get to the Gold Saucer "yesterday." Of course the lift would be out of commission, leaving the dusty, ill-used road that wound through Corel's desert as the only way into the famed resort casino. And of course Fenrir would have to choose today, of all days, to overheat while attempting to navigate through the shifting desert sands.

"Why me?" Cloud groaned into the cool night air. He shivered and drew even closer to the fire, trying to extract what warmth he could from it.

By day, Corel's desert was a nightmare of unbearable heat and haze. Most travellers weren't suicidal enough to try using it to gain entry to the Saucer. If the heat didn't fell hapless travellers first, the monsters that roamed the desert sands unchecked would be more than happy to.

Cloud Strife, however, wasn't most travellers. The monsters were hardly an issue - if he was honest, there wasn't much of anything that lived and breathed on the planet that could truly bother him - nor was the thought of a suicidal mission. The latter was more like an old friend that kept eluding his attempts at a greeting, no matter how much he chased after him. No - Cloud Strife's delivery service, no matter how harrowing or impossible the mission might seem, always managed to get the job done - and on time, too.

At least it had, until that afternoon. That was the moment that Cloud's business partner, otherwise known as Fenrir, decided that it was not quite as resilient to the desert's elements as its rider and died a slow, stuttering death to the unquenchable heat.

That had been more than three hours ago. The sun had set all too quickly, and Cloud finally had to abandon his attempt to ferry both himself and his recalcitrant motorcycle to the Golden Saucer, which loomed maddeningly near in the sky. He was settled now at the side of the road, trying to keep his extremities warm with the sorry excuse for a campfire that he was maintaining, with little more than a few tattered missives, some liberally splashed gasoline from said motorcycle, and a few irregularly cast fire spells.

No one had ever told him the desert was cold at night. Trying to still the chattering of his teeth, Cloud pulled the collar of his overcoat up a little higher and hunkered closer to the pathetic fire.

Can my life possibly get any worse than this? he thought to himself bitterly. He briefly toyed with the idea of settling down, making a home in Edge with Tifa, as she'd so obviously wanted - before discarding the idea almost immediately. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate his childhood "friend" - he hid a grimace at that - but her choice of occupation had left him wanting. No, not for drinks - even he wasn't so far gone as to turn down free access to alcohol when it appeared - rather, her unexpected stint acting as Edge's unofficial orphanage. Back at the Seventh Heaven the kids were all over the place, swarming in and out of the bar like clusters of gnats, always poking and prodding and asking questions with their wide, innocent eyes. They just never shut up. Tifa would remind him with her infinite patience that it was because he was a hero, that he'd saved the world twice over already, but really, sometimes, all he wanted was a little peace and quiet. A further moment of morose introspection - what else was there to do out in the middle of Corel desert, Nowhere - brought him to the conclusion that his bias might have been the result of his own stunted childhood.

Not that it really mattered in the end. He still couldn't stand being around the little punks for extended periods of time.

The chill evening breeze swirled violently, ruffling Cloud's hair. It almost felt like a cool, stinging slap against his skin. He winced, groaning. That was the other part of his so-called life that he would change if he could - his attachment to Aeris. Not that he didn't appreciate the lovely, pure-hearted Cetra - just, she was dead. It was more than a little strange to feel her spirit "tracking" him across the entire world, even four years after the fact. He'd really thought he'd loved her, at least at the beginning of their brief time together. That was before his world had been shattered, broken apart, and he'd learned that he was nothing more than a failure, a loser at his worst and a mere shadow of her former boyfriend at his best. Somehow he'd managed to pull it together, long enough to save the world multiple times over, at least, but it was getting progressively harder to feel comfortable with the feeling of being watched constantly. It was a little bit like having his mother looking over his shoulder all the time.

On the plus side of things, he could always attribute any aberrant behaviour on his part to Zack's poor upbringing.

Cloud let out a hollow laugh. He supposed he was one of the luckiest men in the world. There was a beautiful woman waiting for him back at Edge - surrounded by cheerful living memories of a time of his life, when it had been truly his own, that was so painful that he'd rather it remain forgotten. But he also had his rootless freedom as a vagrant, chained to the world only by the constant vigilance and concern of a woman long dead.

A distant roar shook Cloud out of his thoughts; the fire was dying, and absently he waved a hand at the pit, renewing the fire spell that kept away the chill of the night air. His brow furrowed; strange, that one of the desert's many creatures would be roaming the sands so late at night. Most of the things large enough to make a sound that would carry so far required the heat of the sun to function.

The roar echoed across the sands once more, definitely closer this time, and Cloud stood with a grim expression. It seemed like his charmed luck was holding out once more. Reaching over Fenrir, he quickly freed his sword from the motorcycle's confines and brandished it into the darkened night. He was rewarded with another echoing roar, this one near enough to cause the ground to shake as vibrations travelled across the sand dunes.

An unexpected streak of fire illuminated the desert, and Cloud squinted and winced as he recognized the source of the noise.

"A Land Worm? You've got to be kidding me," he groused to himself. "What the hell is it doing out this late at night?"

The answer came to him as another brilliant flash of light illuminated the desert, doing little to waylay the rampaging monster but providing an adequate beacon to silhouette the frantic figure that was its source.

"Why do I even ask?" Cloud groaned as he set out at a run towards the disturbance.

 

[Enkida]

OIL AND WATER
2: Yuffie's Mistake​

She didn't mean for it to happen. Honestly. She'd told the others that she was trying to reform, and she'd really meant it at the time. It wasn't that she lacked money, oh no - the WRO paid her handsomely enough, even if she didn't want the job - it was just that some impulses were too hard to curb. They were ingrained into the very fibre of her being. Tradition, even.

Yeah, that was it. It'd be dishonouring tradition to ignore such a ripe opportunity when it presented itself. Never mind that she'd been specifically warned against indulging. "Just a boring little vacation," she'd claimed it would be. Reeve had looked at her with the same amount of faith and conviction that he held when Reno had brazenly declared that he didn't use hair gel to style his coif.

"Public face of the WRO my butt!" Yuffie groused as she scrambled across the sand, panting. She was head of the Intelligence Division, for cryin' out loud! And for gawd's sake, you couldn't get much "intelligence" done if everyone knew what your job was. Still, she'd waved off Reeve's concerns as unnecessary and promised that she'd be good - relatively speaking - while haring off to the Gold Saucer for her much-needed vacation.

So she'd unexpectedly run out of tokens after losing track of how many she'd dropped on G-Biking. Was it her fault that the game was so addictive? Yuffie squinted enviously as visions of Fenrir sped through her head. Boy howdy, now there's something I'd like to steal, she thought with a dazed grin as a bit of drool pooled at the edge of her mouth. Still, even as head of the Intelligence Division, her salary wasn't nearly pulling in enough to be able to afford a custom job of Fenrir's quality for her own. Screw Fenrir, she thought absently as she sprinted her way across the darkened sands. I'd name mine Leviathan!

It had been with great reluctance that Yuffie had found herself forced to retire - not to her hotel room, as she'd forgotten to secure herself one of those - to the cafeteria for a bite to eat after a marathon 18-hour-session in Wonder Square. Penniless, and more importantly tokenless, she'd eyed the glazed donuts behind the glass-ensconced case with more than a little longing. Her stomach had quite emphatically agreed with the decision - after all, a bag of over-salted ChocoCrisps could only take a girl so far.

The proprietors of the establishment had been somewhat less understanding when they'd finally caught up to her, mouth stuffed with delicious, sugary, crisply-iced donuts as she tried to flee down one of the transportation tubes. So much for Dio's open-armed welcome; apparently that sort of star power was reserved only for Cloud. She'd been chuted down to the ruined remains of the mining town below, and told to not bother trying to find her way back inside.

Normally, such a thing would be considered a death sentence to gamblers foolish enough to cross the Gold Saucer's bouncers. Fortunately, Yuffie was not normal, nor was it her first (or second, or even twenty-fifth) time being condemned to a sure, but embarrassingly slow and indirect death. It was late afternoon when she'd been unceremoniously dumped outside, and the blistering heat of the day had died out to a more manageable warm Costa-del-Sol burn. She'd set out into the desert almost immediately with good spirits, relatively good health and a full stomach, thanks to the number of donuts she'd managed to snitch before she could be caught.

Unfortunately, twilight descended much more quickly than Yuffie had expected, and along with the twilight had come the mind-numbing cold. It was almost as bad as vacationing in Icicle Town when the sun set, and finally she'd admitted defeat, searching for the first available shelter she could find to warm up in.

Was it her fault that the only available shelter in the desert happened to be one lonely little rock formation jutting out of the shifting sands? Could she really have been expected to know that said rock formation was actually the nesting lair for a surly, hibernating Land Worm?

The indignant roar behind her assured her that it was. Yuffie let out a small yelp and picked up her speed. At least the cold was slowing the thing down, not that it mattered when it was nearly half the size of the Golden Saucer. Yuffie didn't think of herself as a pessimist, but this was beginning to border on ridiculous. She was on vacation. Ninjas didn't get eaten by sandworms in the middle of the desert while they were on vacation. Hell, ninjas didn't get eaten by sandworms, period.

The incensed worm behind her begged to differ, crashing its massive, gaping jaw into the sand near her feet with another screeching growl. Desperate, she called on her flame attack - she hadn't used that one since the days that she'd taken to camping in the forests of Junon. It wasn't a very powerful attack, but it was widespread, it was quick, and it would hopefully keep that worm from turning her into its own special version of a midnight snack.

The worm shook off the licking flames, only momentarily stunned, and then roared its disapproval before diving for her once more.

Damn those donuts, Yuffie cursed silently. May the fires of the Da Chao rain on their creators forever. Ooh, but I hope it leaves the production factories alone, because they really are quite delicious...

Another roar and another near-death-experience had Yuffie desperately blowing another flash of flames across the sand in the hopes that it would buy her some time. Boy, if this keeps up, I'm gonna have to get All-Creation on this thing, she thought absently as she scrambled over another dune. A flicker of light caught her attention; well, a flicker that she hadn't been causing, at least.

She squinted, her legs still pumping even as she slipped and slid down the sandy hill. Was that - it was! "A campfire! Praise Leviathan!" Yuffie yelled, filled with a sudden burst of energy. There seemed to be a small, dark figure moving away from the camp. Yuffie couldn't complain; more targets meant more chance for her to escape her fate as worm bait. She'd figure out who'd generously offered to get eaten in her place and send his or her family a plaque to honour their noble sacrifice when she got back to headquarters.

The figure, Yuffie noticed as she neared the fire, wasn't running away from the disturbance. In fact, if she squinted, it actually looked like it was coming closer to them. She thought she saw the flash of a blade, and she squinted again.

"Oh man, don't tell me..." she choked out as the figure broke into a run. But it was; if the massive size of the stranger's sword hadn't given it away, the unmistakable shape of spikes on his head would've.

"Thanks, Spike! I'll, uh -" she huffed, somewhat out of breath as the Land Worm burst out of the ground behind her and sent her tumbling head over heels - "... let you take it from here, okay?"

The figure in question didn't seem to pay her hollered greeting any attention; he was already airborne, his humongous sword flashing in an impossibly graceful whitish-blue arc as he whirled it through the air above his head.

Yuffie came to a stop, twisting around to watch the silent figure in action. It always was a bit of a rush to watch Cloud performing an Omnislash, so long as you weren't on the receiving end of it. His sword split apart, circling the writing Land Worm like a ring of malevolent falling stars. And then he was flying, for lack of a better word, streaking back and forth as he hacked at the impossibly huge worm, severing it into pieces with clean, clinical, precise strikes. He landed with a thump a few feet away from her, and Yuffie cringed and dodged as the pieces of his sword planted themselves into the ground around her.

Perfect, Yuffie thought with a little sigh, secretly jealous of Cloud's ability to cut his way through anything, anytime. There was a deafening silence, and then a low whistle of wind as the now-decapitated body of the Land Worm slowly collapsed, meeting the ground with a thunderous crack. Almost in slow motion, Yuffie watched as the tidal wave of sand, blood and more than a few worm guts rose up blast them. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away from the flying detritus. When the wind finally died out, she blinked and rubbed the crust from her eyes, peering cautiously into the dark night. The blast had extinguished Cloud's fire, and tentatively, she lit a small fire spell of her own, keeping the orb of flame whirling in her palm.

Cloud stood stock-still, surrounded by the multiple pieces of his sword. His eyes were on her, glowing faintly in the darkness, and he looked anything but happy to see her again.

This might have been due to the fact that he, his swords, and even his motorcycle were now covered by a good, fingernail-thick layer of sand, dirt and worm innards. Even his normally-blonde hair was looking a decided shade of pink in the firelight.

"Uhh... oops?" Yuffie offered cautiously with a cocky grin.

If anything, Cloud's dark glare turned black at her greeting.

 

[Enkida]

OIL AND WATER
3: Dinner and Conversation​

Cloud eyed the figure seated across the fire warily. She was puttering about, doing something, god knew what, to the bits of worm carcass near them. Whatever it was, it didn't sound pleasant. He was certain they were both going to smell even more wonderful in the morning than they did right now. As if that wasn't enough, Omnislashing said Land Worm and then maintaining his pathetic excuse for a campfire with a constant feed of magic energy was leaving him feeling more drained than usual. Exasperated, he let the fire, which had been burning on nothing but air, flicker out and glared at Yuffie. She let out a squawk of indignation at being dropped into darkness, but he could care less - with his mako-enhanced vision, he could see her just as clearly as if she'd been standing in broad daylight.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked quietly.

"Start the fire again! Come on, start it, start it!" Yuffie squealed.

Cloud's glare turned incredulous. "You're afraid of the dark?"

"No, I'm afraid I'm going trip on something squishy and land face-first in something even squishier! Now turn on the damn lights, Spike!" Yuffie glared furiously at what she thought was him, but was actually just a lump of segmented land worm dangling slightly off to his right. Cloud sighed and re-lit the fire spell. The cold had retreated, thankfully, due to the steaming quantities of flesh and blood surrounding them, but the latent heat of the slain worm wouldn't last them through the night. He'd been hoping to conserve at least a little of his magic energy for the morning - Cloud was under no illusions that Yuffie would offer to power the fire herself - but she insisted that he keep the fire burning.

"Start it up again yourself," he told her finally, relaxing into the slightly-moist, steaming sand surrounding them.

"Well I would if I could see anything," she hissed as she cautiously groped her way back towards the sound of his voice. Her arms were heavily laden with suspicious-looking chunks; with a sigh, Cloud relented and relit the fire-pit with a wave.

"Thanks!" Yuffie beamed at him, depositing her rather large pile of grisly pap next to their makeshift fire pit. Picking out a few fleshy pieces of fat and skin, she threw it into the magical fire, where it lit up with a sizzle. "Alright, you can let it go now," she said after a moment, satisfied that the fat had caught.

Mildly surprised, Cloud released the spell as the chunks of worm meat and fat began to burn, filling the air with a pungent and not particularly appetizing smell. Still, it was marginally better than holding the fire alight with force of will alone, and much better than shivering to death in the cold. "Why didn't I think of that?" he murmured as a piece of fat popped loudly in the fire.

"Simple! Three years of wilderness living!" Yuffie quipped with a grin. "Waste not, want not," she chanted. Then her nose wrinkled. "Or was it steal lot, want not...?"

Cloud ignored her rambling and half-heartedly kicked some sand at her to get her attention.

"Hey!" Yuffie yelled, scrubbing at her shins. "What was that for?"

"What are you doing out here?" he asked her.

"Getting chased by a Land Worm, duh!" she answered with a roll of her eyes. Cloud sighed; it was a soft sound, but it signalled the incipient end to his relatively good temper. Actually to be perfectly honest, he never had a good temper, ever, but at least it wasn't a bad temper at the current moment. From the calculating look on Yuffie's face, he could tell that she realized things could quickly change if she didn't start answering his questions seriously.

"Actually, I was at the Gold Saucer, enjoying my vacation from Reeve, that slave driver, but I sorta miscalculated and, well, spentallofmytokensplayingG-Bike," she finished in a rush.

Cloud blinked slowly and tried to piece together what she'd said, nodding to himself as he worked it out. "The real thing's better," he added after a moment of contemplation.

Yuffie's sheepish grin melted abruptly into a petulant scowl. "Well excuuuuuse me, but not everyone can afford that custom monster you call a bike!" She folded her arms and blew a chunk of hair out of her face huffily.

"Not my problem," Cloud said vaguely. "So then you tried to steal something and they kicked you out?" he concluded.

"Well, I was hungry, and they were really good donuts!" Yuffie's pout was telling; he really didn't need to know the details of her story and decided to leave it at that. Well, except for one thing that was bothering him...

"I thought ninjas weren't supposed to get caught."

Yuffie's face screwed together comically as she let out a stream of Wutainese expletives that probably meant something along the lines of a very descriptive version of "stuff it."

"I'm on my way to the Gold Saucer," Cloud told her when it seemed she'd exhausted her native vocabulary. Yuffie's face lit up with curiosity.

"Oh, so like, you got another job? What're you delivering this time?" she asked eagerly.

"Nothing you'd be interested in," Cloud told her abruptly, his danger sense jangling loudly at the look on her face. "I'm leaving first thing tomorrow morning." He paused, waiting until he was sure she was listening to him. "You're not coming with me."

Yuffie's mouth fell open. "Hey, who said I wanted to come with you anyhow?" she sputtered indignantly.

"Good, then we're clear," he answered, throwing himself onto the sand and rolling onto his stomach. It wasn't a particularly comfortable position, and he was sure he was getting sand up his nostrils, but his materia was securely tucked into the pouch below his belt. There was no way Yuffie was going to be able to make a grab for it without rolling him over and dropping his pants first. He squeezed his eyes shut and attempted to find sleep.

"Gee, thanks a bunch Mister Manners." Her voice wafted over his head, clearly annoyed, although that was most likely at her realization of where he'd hidden his materia.

Cloud resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Go to sleep, Yuffie."

There was a moment of blessed silence, and then he winced as she began talking. Again.

"I can't! I'm hungry!"

Cloud turned his head slightly and buried his nose into the sand. It smelled like stale blood and he winced and shifted uncomfortably. "So find something to eat," he mumbled, irritated. Just then, his stomach decided to pitch in and join their conversation. It gurgled loudly.

"See? You're hungry too!" Her whine was becoming a little shrill.

"I don't have anything to eat, Yuffie," Cloud finally said, cracking an eye open to give her an exasperated stare. "Besides, your stomach isn't my problem."

Yuffie glared at him, her eyebrows drawing together. "But your stomach is! You're just as hungry as me, c'mon, sit up and admit it!"

"You can't eat materia," was his muffled reply. He wasn't really expecting it to work; Yuffie was nothing if not annoyingly persistent. Still, he was surprised when she didn't reply; ears straining, he heard her shuffling around their makeshift camp. Curiosity began to gnaw at him; pushing it down, he resolved to ignore her and concentrated on catching what little sleep he could. There was a soft curse and a few muffled thumps. After a few further moments of quiet, a sizzling sound filled the air. Unable to help himself, Cloud cracked an eye open. "What're you doing?"

"Making dinner!" Yuffie said, grinning widely as she poked at the fire with her weapon.

Cloud frowned. Finally, with a sigh of defeat, he sat up. "You have food?" he asked cautiously, almost afraid of what she was going to demand in return for whatever edible thing she was hiding. His stomach gave another growl of encouragement, and he realized that he would probably willingly submit to blackmail at that point for a meal of any kind.

Yuffie gave him a quick nod, then withdrew her weapon from the fire and blew on it. His face contorted in disgust as he realized that she hadn't been poking at the fire, but rather cooking a piece of unfortunate Land Worm on the end of her shuriken.

"You've got to be joking," he said as she held it out to him.

"Hey, it's better than nothing, right?"

Cloud wasn't quite sure he agreed with that logic. Then again, he hadn't had anything but a strong cup of coffee for breakfast. The comforts of the small diner he'd stopped in that morning seemed a lifetime away at that moment. After a brief struggle, his shoulders dropped and he held out his hand. "Fine, give it here." He pulled the roasted chunk of flesh from the weapon, wincing a little as it coated his fingers in a thick layer of grease, and cautiously brought it to his mouth. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and bit into it, chewing slowly.

The texture of the meat was tough and rubbery. The aroma was also not particularly appetizing, but thanks to Yuffie's worm fat-fuel mixture for the fire he'd grown relatively inured to the smell. Still, it was solid food, and as long as he didn't dwell too much on the fact that he was eating a worm, it wasn't really all that bad. He chewed one final time and managed to swallow without gagging. Finally he opened his eyes and started as he found Yuffie on her hands and knees before him, scrutinizing his face with a look of disbelief.

"Oh my gawd, you actually ate it!" she blurted out.

Cloud felt his expression dropping into a scowl. "Glad to be your guinea pig," he grumbled.

Grinning apologetically, Yuffie backed off and speared another piece of meat onto the end of her shuriken. "Thanks for testing it out. You want any more?" She stuck a few more pieces onto the weapon at his curt nod before shoving it back into the fire. There were a few moments of comfortable silence, before Yuffie inevitably opened her mouth once more.

"You don't talk much, do you."

Cloud levelled her with a cool look, but decided to keep his mouth shut for the moment, as she was technically still the one holding onto their dinner.

"Y'know, you could at least pretend to make an effort here. I'm trying to be social." When he didn't answer her, her mild pout deepened into a real frown. "You do know that you don't have to be as prickly as your hair, right?"

To hell with dinner, Cloud was quickly remembering why exactly he didn't enjoy travelling with Yuffie. It was compounded by the fact that none of their other companions were there to distract her.

"You're a motor mouth," he told her tersely. "Maybe I don't want to be friendly with other people."

This statement was met with an eye roll and a loud snort. "Yeah, well it's not doing anything for your reputation, lemmie tell you. If you wanna be popular, you got to work at it like I do!"

"You're popular? Is that why you got thrown out of the Gold Saucer?" he shot back.

"Oh please, like anything in this desert could kill the White Rose of Wutai," Yuffie scoffed. She checked herself and waved a hand at him. "Present company excluded," she added insincerely. "Besides, you're missing the point here. We're talking about you, not me! Don't you want to improve your public image? I mean don't you get tired of using all those ellipsis's after a while?"

Cloud shrugged as she pulled her shuriken out of the fire and waved another piece of nearly-burnt meat at him. "I don't really care if I'm well-liked or not." He blew on the quivering piece of flesh and then directed a pointed look towards her. "As long as I can still manage to beat the crap out of anyone who annoys me, I'm satisfied with my life." Well, that wasn't exactly what he was thinking earlier that evening, but Yuffie's insistent heckling always brought out the best in him. He lifted an eyebrow, daring her to make a comment.

Yuffie huffed and shrugged, busying herself with her makeshift dinner instead of answering him, and Cloud felt a small surge of triumph at her implied capitulation. Maybe he'd make it out of this evening camping with Yuffie unscathed after all.