It took several seconds for Yuffie’s
eyes to adjust to the darkness, and even then, she probably couldn’t see
half as good
as Vincent. She found herself groping blindly in the darkness
with her hands and allowing her fingers to graze the rough, wooden surfaces
of crates on all sides of her while she kept her eyes locked on the dark
form of Vincent’s flapping cape just a few feet in front of her.
From what her hands touched, she speculated that they were in a maze of
crates and would probably have gotten hopelessly lost without Vincent’s
unnaturally acute eyes to guide them. All Yuffie could see was dark,
hulking shapes all around her that anything could have been hiding behind.
Anything at all…
The instant she starting thinking all
paranoid like that, she couldn’t stop the sudden influx of thoughts that
inundated her
mind. She had always been that way: make one crack in the dam
that held back her fear and the whole thing came flooding out
over her. But this time it was different. An unexpected
irrational feeling of terror and foreboding bloomed in her heart, obliterating
all other thoughts or emotions in its intensity. All of the shadows
seemed to grow eyes and a wide, cavernous mouth that was just waiting to
devour her should she venture too close. The concrete beneath her
feet suddenly developed holes that led into pits of seawater, pits so deep
that even Vincent wouldn’t be able to pull her out. She would be
trapped down there with only the amoebas and sea serpents to keep her company…
Yuffie suddenly noticed that in her terror, she had allowed Vincent to pull quite a distance in front of her.
“Vinnie!” she hissed, her heartbeat thudding in her ears as she hurried to catch up. “Don’t leave me back here!”
The moving shadow that was Vincent suddenly
stopped moving and faded into nothing in the darkness. She could
no
longer see which shadow was Vincent. Panic suddenly rose in her,
unbidden and uncharacteristic. She hadn’t even been this
scared when they had been in the North Crater waiting to fight Sephiroth!
What was wrong with her now?
“Vincent!” she whisper-screamed in a panic. “Where are you?! I can’t see you anymore!”
There was a loud crash behind her, and
if Yuffie had been thinking rationally, she probably would have realized
that the
sound was probably just a few crates collapsing, but in her panic,
she was being everything but rational and immediately realized that some
big sea monster had emerged from the depths of its watery grave to devour
her.
She let out a scream of terror and ran
forward, dropping the Conformer on the concrete floor. All she knew
was that she
had to get away; she just had to. There was no other thought
running through her panicked mind but escape, and since the
monster was behind her, she concluded that running forward would be
the most logical way of staying alive.
Unfortunately, she had only taken two
running strides before she ran into a different monster, one with red eyes,
a crimson
cape, and a claw of tarnished gold. It was this claw that immediately
flew around her slender shoulders and clasped her to its warm body.
Yuffie let out another terrified yelp and raised her fists to pound the
creature before she realized that her “monster” was none other than the
lovable, huggable…
“Vincent!” she gasped in a mixture of
terror and relief, flinging her trembling arms around his slender waist,
holding him
tightly to her as if she could disappear into his tall figure and be
rid of all her fear. Burying her face in his chest, she was ashamed
and angry to find herself on the verge of tears. Instead of giving
in to them, however, she gritted her teeth and clung to Vincent, her fingers
digging into the flesh of his shoulder blades. Her heart thundered
in her ears, and for a moment she was afraid she was going to faint.
Vincent’s claw tightened its grip around
her shoulders with surprising gentleness. Glancing around and seeing
no
immediate danger, he put the Death Penalty back in its holster and
rested his gloved right hand on the bare flesh of Yuffie’s lower back.
The young ninja was shaking so hard he almost expected to hear her bones
rattling.
“Yuffie, it’s okay,” he said in his soft,
deep voice, attempting to offer some kind of solace even though it was
out of
character for him to do so. He couldn’t recall the last time
he had held a female like this. All such emotions that were needed
to instigate such an embrace Lucrecia had taken with her to her watery
grave.
“What happened, Yuffie?” he tried again when the girl didn’t respond to his initial statement.
“I-I don’t know,” Yuffie said shakily,
unconsciously tightening her death grip on Vincent’s waist. For the
first time, she
noticed that she could hear Vincent’s heart racing in his chest, and
she realized that he had received quite a scare, too. That
comforted her somewhat to know that the unflappable Vincent Valentine
felt fear just like the rest of the little people.
She cautiously raised her head from the
folds of Vincent’s cloak and craned her neck backwards so she could look
into
his face. All she could see in the darkness were his red eyes
staring down at her impassively. “There’s something here, Vincent,”
she suddenly whispered, sweat rolling down her forehead in beads.
Vincent didn’t even blink. “Of course there’s something here,” he responded. “The Running Man. He went down below.”
Yuffie shook her head, dark brown hair
sticking to the trickles of sweat that covered her face. “No, not
just the Running
Man. There’s something else here. Something we can’t see.”
“There’s no one else here,” Vincent replied
calmly. “A bunch of crates fell over. That’s all that happened.
Now go get
your Conformer. We need to go after that man.”
He tried gently to disentangle himself
from Yuffie, but the girl suddenly clung to him with renewed vigor, hiding
her face in
his cloak and squeezing his waist with strength he hadn’t known she
possessed. She suddenly trembled so hard that she sent a
tremor through Vincent’s body as well.
“Don’t leave me, Vinnie!” she gasped in a panic, her voice muffled in the fabric of his cloak. “I’m scared!”
“I’m not going to leave you,” he said
without a flicker of emotion, but he had to admit that her fear was starting
to catch.
“Just go get your Conformer. I’ll be right here.”
“@#$& the Conformer!” Yuffie suddenly exclaimed vehemently, voice harsh in her terror. “I’ll just use my ninja skills!”
“You’re being irrational.”
“I’m scared shitless! I have a right to be irrational if I want to!”
“You’ll need your weapon,” Vincent insisted.
“I don’t want it!”
“Keep your voice down. What do you want then?”
“I want to go home.”
“Besides that.”
Yuffie paused. “I want you to hold me.”
That remark caused a pang in Vincent’s
heart for some reason, but he quickly shoved it away, telling himself that
Yuffie was
scared and not thinking clearly. “Very well,” he said.
“You can hold onto my hand and we’ll go get your weapon.”
Yuffie raised her head and stared at Vincent with her stormy gray eyes. “Together?” she asked softly.
That pang in his heart again. “Yes,” he replied. “Together.”
Yuffie nodded and slowly released her death grip on Vincent’s waist, only to grab his right hand in an equally tight clasp.
“Yuffie, I need that arm. That’s my gun arm.”
She squinted up at him in the darkness. “I have to hold onto your nasty claw?” she blurted before she could stop herself.
“Given the circumstances, I’m afraid so.”
She didn’t say anything, wondering if
she had hurt his feelings with her remark about his claw, but then she
realized that it
was Vincent she was talking to. Vincent wasn’t supposed to have
feelings, or at least he claimed he didn’t, which she thought was the biggest
crock of crap she had ever heard. She’d seen him show emotion several
times, not much emotion, but he had shown it. Anyhow, she didn’t
even think his claw was nasty. She thought it was actually kind of
cool looking, but she had always gotten the impression that if she grabbed
and yanked hard enough, it would pop right off like the arm on one of the
action figures she used to mutilate when she was a kid. That was
the last thing she wanted to happen when she was scared to even let him
out of her sight.
Moving quickly and making sure that one
part of her body was in contact with his at all times, she moved around
him and
grabbed onto his claw, but instead of gripping the hand portion of
it, she fastened her right hand up on his bicep, needing to feel
his skin and not cold metal underneath her fingertips. With her
other hand, she gripped his wrist tightly, the tarnished metal hard
and unyielding. She pressed the entire arm against her body and
looked up at Vincent’s shadowy figure in the darkness.
“Okay,” she managed to say through the lump in her throat. “Let’s go.”
Vincent nodded and began to lead her
through the darkness back to where the Conformer lay meekly on the concrete
floor. He instinctively unholstered the Death Penalty and looked
around for any intruders who may have heard Yuffie’s cries and come running.
The docking bay was silent except for the gentle lapping of the water that
the ghost ship rested in. Beside him, Yuffie was breathing heavily,
her big gray eyes darting left and right as she apparently searched for
whatever she thought was lurking in the darkness. He noticed with
some discomfort that she had pressed his arm in the crevasse between her
small breasts, and that the warmth from her skin was spreading to his own
body. His first instinct was to jerk his arm away before the unbidden
emotions started becoming too intense, but he knew that Yuffie wouldn’t
understand if he tried to explain his actions and would stubbornly refuse
to budge if he didn’t explain them, so he tried to ignore the flaming warmth
of her body and his for the time being.
When they reached the shuriken, Vincent
quickly dipped down and picked it up to prevent another argument with Yuffie
on
how she would have to let go of him to handle her weapon. He
held the Conformer out to her, which she took in her trembling left hand
while maintaining her grip on his bicep with her right. Vincent realized
belatedly that Yuffie was right-handed and now would be forced to throw
her weapon with her left, but with her clinging to him like this and not
showing any signs of letting go, it couldn’t really be helped.
Without a word, he led her to the stairwell
that the Running Man had disappeared down. The steps were metal and
almost
every inch of them was spotted with rust, as if they had some terrible
disease. They creaked under the weight of both of the
travelers, and Yuffie let out a whimper and huddled closer to Vincent
as the darkness all around them deepened. Though Vincent tried to
keep his footfalls from making any noise, something that he usually had
no trouble at all with, the creaking stairs apparently had other ideas
and let out a loud cry every time his metal boots contacted their rusty
surface. He just gave up after a while. Besides, Yuffie was making
enough noise for both of them.
It wasn’t long before they came upon
a door constructed out of the same gray metal as the stairs. Like
the stairs, it was
rusty and practically falling off of its hinges. It would have
been easy to simply knock the entire thing down, but Vincent wasn’t
willing to make that kind of noise yet. The Running Man knew
for sure that they were following him due to Yuffie’s ill-timed dip in
the pool, but he still had no idea where they were or how long it would
take them to find him. That gave them a little bit of an edge, not
much, but a little.
Examining the door in the darkness with
Yuffie practically glued to his side, he saw that it had no noticeable
lock. He didn’t
know whether that was a good or bad thing. Without the presence
of a lock, he and Yuffie would be able to get in easily, but the lack of
that extra security might mean that whoever occupied this port had nothing
to fear from strangers. And Vincent knew from experience that an
enemy that lacked fear was a formidable enemy indeed.
He turned to Yuffie and said as calmly
as he could, “We’ve come up to a door. It has no lock. I don’t
like this, but we’re
going in to investigate. Are you ready?”
Yuffie stared at him as if he was an
idiot, but the fear in her eyes was heartbreakingly obvious. “Of
course I’m not ready,
but let’s go ahead anyways.”
“Hold onto my belt,” he said firmly.
Yuffie balked and gripped his arm tighter. “No,” she whined. “Why do I have to?”
“Do you want to open the door and go in first then?” he retorted.
The girl paused, seriously thinking about
just flat out refusing to do as he asked, but she swallowed her fear and
gripped
his metal belt tightly, chastising herself for being a pansy.
She didn’t even know why she was so afraid; so far no one had attacked
them or made any threatening gestures. Hell, they hadn’t seen another
living soul besides the Running Man. Vincent was right; she was being
irrational. It’s all in your head, she told herself. It’s all
in your head.
But in the core of her heart, she knew it wasn’t.
Author’s Note: This was a fairly short chapter, right?
I’m trying to keep them as short and sweet as possible, but it’s not always
easy. Writing from Yuffie’s point of view is surprisingly fun, and
she’s not even my favorite character. Anyways, if you’re waiting
around to see something from Cloud and the others, you won’t have to wait
too long. I mean, come on. It’s just not a fic without the
rest of AVALANCHE and the Turks! They should be making an appearance
in the next chapter or two, but for now, on with Vincent and Yuffie’s deep
sea adventure! Thanks to anyone who is reading this! It means
a lot to me. Comments welcome. E-mail me (catalina2717@go.com)