I luff my Yuffentine avatar
I've been super inactive on FF.net and regarding writing otherwise. I've been slowly adding to a multi-chapter FFVII story I'm working on, and while it's nowhere near ready, I've decided to avoid homework by posting up the first three pages of the first chapter. Exciting, right? You've lived your entire life for this moment, amirite? Of course I am!
This story is called Oceans Fall Into Skies (dreadful title, I know, it's a stand-in and I need to figure out a better one that more or less denotes the same weird meaning of the sea falling up... 'The Ocean Is Falling Up,' 'Seas Falling Up,' I'm terrible at this). It is told from Yuffie Kisaragi's point of view, focusing around her growing relationship with Vincent Valentine, both platonically and romantically, as they attempt to find a fix for Vincent's struggle for control of his own body with Chaos. The story is set around the basis that, when Omega left the Planet in Dirge of Cerberus, all of Vincent's demons were taken except for Chaos. Initially, when I thought up the idea I also wanted to write the story as a kind of throwback to the old school Final Fantasies, which have always intrigued me despite the fact I've never played them. When I found out that Chaos is from the original game, I decided I would like to incorporate elements from the original plotline that really started everything. Subsequently, enemes, names, and even the central plot and possibly theme all heavily draw from that original Final Fantasy.
Alright, I'll stop rambling - but only if I get some feedback. (Like on the title. Freaking title. It sounds unnatural, don't it? I'd like one that rolls off the tongue. Smooth-like. Real nice to listen to, y'know... with the same weird feeling of water falling upwards, which is, of course, impossible and I'll stop now, sorry. ;P)
Oceans Fall Into Skies
Excerpts from Chapter One: As Told by Yuffie Kisaragi
When Vincent disappeared, I honestly didn't think much of it. It isn't that I didn't care, it's just that he can take care of himself and I am sort-of talking about living in a coffin for a million years and a half because if you can get yourself through that I'd wager you can get yourself through Cid's soup or a freaking STD, or even killing the evil-psycho-son-of-your-long-lost-love. Oh, wait, that one did happen. Nevermind.
I mean, when Vincent disappeared, I figured that he would reappear, because I had figured out a while back that he was just a shell-type of person, and only on the outside. We had stuck together from the beginning and I don't know why and I don't know how but we did, and I knew that if anything he was bleeding on the inside - he was pouring it out his eyes and nose and ears and mouth and we just never noticed because it was like imaginary blood but it was real to him and that's all that matters, right?
I knew that he was pretty beat up all on the inside in his brain and in his heart, his shiny half-mechanical heart, and I knew that he needed us. He needed me, and Cloud and Tifa and Barret and Red and Reeve and Cid and Aeris, too, even Aeris - Aeris, Aeris friend mother sister, Aeris and I always sort of half-believed and half-hoped in a tiny little corner in the back of my brain that she had just disappeared and would reappear, too, because she loved us, all of us no matter what and we were a family and maybe a bit of a jumbled and awkward one at that but a family and the little girl in my head would half-believe and half-hope which is so damn incredibly stupid-
But he needed us, so I wasn't worried. If Vincent was anything, he was a survivor.
And I might know that best of all, because we had stuck together from the beginning without any idea as to why or how or... why, but that's maybe just how the groupings fell or just how we clashed because I like green and he likes red and Leviathan probably has a horribly messed up godawful sense of humor. (I still pray anyway because I am a good little ninja, yesiree.)
It's just, I wasn't expecting this. How was I supposed to know? I'm not - I'm not a psychic, I'm not the best people-reader, I'm just Yuffie and that's good enough anywhere out of Wutai and that's a little frightening sometimes, too.
I'm still - I'm still not really ready, you know?
But I can't just forget, because that would be worse and I can't do that to him, and-
Oh, gawd, Vincent, you horrible jerk. I can't do that to you. I could never do that to you.
You - you would know by now, though, wouldn't you? I didn't know how to answer that, my mama never answered that. Leviathan couldn't answer that. But you would know - you would know, wouldn't you, of course you would, Vinnie, Vinners, VinVin Valentino, Vincent.
You would know by now, wouldn't you?
-
"Heya?"
"Hey, Yuffie. Listen, you know how Vincent disappears for a while every so often-"
Something in my chest curled up like a little wood shaving off a twig, flaky and paper-thin like glass and rust on metal as Tifa talked, smooth and sweet and steel all wrapped up in the bright checkered napkins that go inside all the warm baskets full of bread and cookies and candy for Sunday picnics.
"-haven't been able to reach him, usually don't get worried but it’s been four months since-"
Some things just happen for a reason.
"-No contact so if - you could come - yes, that'd be great. Cloud says we're probably getting worried over nothing, but better safe than sorry, right?"
But usually, they don't, because things happen and that's just life.
Right?
-
Edge is a city.
Heard of it? I'd expect so. Biggest damn town outside of Midgar but nobody except the crooks live out there anymore, so when I got to the mainland I moseyed on in.
Edge had been fairly new. It was built when I was newly seventeen, only months after Meteor and Sephiroth and all sorts of things that still sort of get my panties in a bunch every now and then so I won't think on that, won't think on that right now-
Edge had still been fairly new, when I was nineteen. And had already been through so much. Complete homocide - the entire place, just gone. Sacrificied to puddles in the Lifestream for Omega, yunno, all that sort of crappy stuff. But we beat 'em, we beat 'em good and I had been barely nineteen and this time I was well into my age, nineteen and eight months, and the city had repopulated. It repopulated fast. Like monkeys. Or rabbits.
So I walked in, cool as you please, to a city full of people which was nice compared to the last time and I went ahead into Seventh Heaven. Seventh Heaven, Tifa's bar, and Tifa was inside with Marlene, sitting at the counter with what looked like too-many-sheets-of-paper, patiently explaining too-much-algebra. (Leviathan, algebra. At Marlene's age I knew addition, subtraction, and fourteen ways to break a neck clean to make it look natural. Must be a cultural thing.) Tifa saw me and stood up, flipping her phone from her pocket and punching in a number and a message, sending and flipping it closed just as easy, and then she smiled and greeted me.
Tifa is real pretty, you know. She's gorgeous. She could be wearing a fat-suit and she'd still be pretty, and I think some of that has to do with the outside of her and a pretty big area around her torso that's sort of the first thing you notice about her - I'm not being vulgar, I'm being blunt - but I think a lot of it has to do with this part of her that's inside. Like this pretty little sort of candle, all lit up. Real nice to look at, and it just makes you want to hold it in your hands and light up a fire to warm up with and swallow it because Tifa is just like that.
"So, what's the dealio?" I sat down next to Marlene and ruffled her bangs. There's just something about her that's very ruffle-able, just so innocent and cute like a little girl-puppy. She said hello with a gigantic smile and hugged me - ‘Auntie Yuffie, heya!’ gawd, I felt old as Chekhov at a grandma convention - and then obediently went back to the math. (I looked at it sneaky-like sideways, outta the corner of my eye, and it looked like freaking Cetra script. I, personally, blame Reeve. He probably started some horrible, dastardly law that makes little children do more math and science and take less time away from soccer or drawing or playing games by cleverly disguising it to look like a way to make them more successful in life - naaah... yeah, that wouldn't happen. That's just stupid, even Reeve would figure it as a waste of time, and this is the man who enjoys building miniature moogle dolls that do a multitude of mindless things like play a bongo-drum in his spare time. Yeah, that's completely illogical. And I'm crazy.)
"I'm sorry for calling you all the way from Wutai," Tiffs said very sincerely as she sat down next to me. "It's just, Vincent keeps a regular contact with Cloud but no one has heard from him in four and a half months. I'm sure it’s nothing to worry about, but it is a little irresponsible which-"
"Is out-of-character for Vincent like dancing the flim-in-gago in a kilt and a cactuar keychain on his gun," I finished for her, not that that was really what she was going to say in the first place because it’s Tifa, almost serious to a fault but anyway. I reached over absently towards a platter full of cookies to grab and devour one. Yum. (Marlene must have had some pretty crazy self-restraint skills. That or she wanted a scholarship as a basketball player to Gongaga Uni and took all the veggie-myths seriously. Eating carrots does not turn your hair orange.)
Tifa half-smiled. “We think you probably understand him better than most of us, and… we were hoping you’d be able to find where he went. Even Shelke doesn’t have any idea."
That actually wasn’t really surprising. I hadn’t seen her in a while - right then, she was probably out in the city with Denzel for errands - but I knew she had been really doing well. Growing on the inside. It was really hard to think that she was supposed to be my age, y’know? Smart girl, but… there was lots she didn’t understand. She was much more human than she was, though, and it was kind of inspiring. I mean, she was just doing what any person would want to do and move on, but she was really going and it was really something. She had been pretty busy experiencing life, so it wasn’t a surprise she had lost connection with Vincent, even if he was her first friend. I claimed second! Ugh, bested by Vinners. Now that was depressing.
At this point, I had raided the fridge and got myself a nice big glass of milk, ’cuz, yunno, it’s supposed to be good for kickass ninjas named Yuffie. I also wanted to grow by two-point-five inches which would put me at a whopping five-four-point-seven feet. I guess from Leviathan it was either, be normal height, or have an entire nation at ready command to massage your oh-so-lovely feet, so I obviously chose the one that would make my lovely oh-so-wonderful feet hurt less. Not that they really hurt a lot in the first place. I grew up pretty much bare-footed, so the nerve-endings on my dainty little pretty not-really feet are Deceased, AKA Permanently Expired. When I was ten I could run over rocks. Or nails. (Well, that was only once and it was just because Shake was being stupid, but I got a free All materia out of it which... really didn't make up for it. That was worth an Ice2 at least.)
"So, what, you want me to poke around for him?" said me, myself and I in one grand spectacle of cookie crumbs and dribbling milk. Marlene handed me a napkin without comment that I promptly shoved into my pocket as I wiped my arm across my mouth.
"No - well, maybe - just when you have time, or if maybe you could - I don't know - its just, we know you have higher duties," Tifa tried lamely. I shrugged it off.
"If old man Godo expects me to sit around all day in a kimono, drinking tea and signing papers then he is sorely lacking a correct assumption," which sounded pretty cool even though Staniv said it first, but that doesn't matter because was he the one in the big house with all the authority? No-siree! (Well, neither was I, but I was gonna be, which is more than Mr. Stuck-As-An-Advisor could say.) "We were getting ready to blow a fuse at each other, I was gonna leave anyway soon. Listen, if I can't find him in... gimme a month - nah, two, gimme two months and maybe a couple weeks after that, then we can freak out and go on a massive vampire-hunt."
"Thanks, Yuffie." Tifa smiled, relieved, but paused. "We... we were going to call Reeve in the first place, but..."
I waved it off absently, jumping off my barstool with a neat little shoe-squeak to the floor. "Duh. Embarrassing Vincent over a four month break? Not cool. Embarrassing Vincent for horribly, cruelly neglecting our oh-so-awesome-selves-who-pulled-his-bedsore-butt-out-of-the-coffin over six?" I hitched up the shuriken on my back. "I'm taking pictures."
Tifa laughed, silver like a chime, and then I walked away and she went to go explain quadratic equations to Marlene.
-
I think one of the loneliest places in the world is Nibelheim. Nibelheim, with its cold little houses and cold little roofs and cold gray little faces from the windows, Nibelheim with its rain and mountains and mansion, and its own personal skeleton-in-the-closet that wasn’t so much a skeleton as a vampire hiding in the resident creepy basement because, yunno, Vincent had to have been at least three-quarters blood-sucker. And besides, skeletons in coffins? Pshaw. That’s just lame.
I headed to the next place on the Vincent-rescue-team-hit-list which was Nibelheim, cold little Nibelheim with rain and mist and roofs and scary blank faces, like you could peel them back and there would just be slick wet nothing. I hate water on boats and ships but I grew up way close to the ocean with the salt in the air and my lungs, so I sucked it up and swam the short span of the river - only about eight meters wide, maybe - and came up gasping for air like I had never breathed before because I can swim but I don’t like it, and boy was I ready to open up that coffin and sucker punch Dr. Depress-o the moment I set eyes on him. Angry, flaming eyes with the hatred of a thousand burning suns? Check. Camera at the ready to document Yuffie’s victory? Check. (Well, no. But I was seriously considering investing in a cheap one just for the occasion.)
It was about midmorning when I pulled the amazing feat, because I didn’t drown and I bet I’m a better swimmer than the rest of AVALANCHE put together except for Cid because he’s too mean to die, even by drowning, so he’d probably learn way fast right there in the water and all but anyway. I dried off by doing what I will now dub The Amazitastic-Fantasmal Stunt of Win, which consists of me doing five million cartwheels and back handsprings and flips and other cool stuff that makes my body like a Ductile Rod of Awesome and also makes me dizzy enough to vomit violently upon the nearest fiend.
There’s never anybody out around Nibelheim, if you didn’t know. Just in case. There never is, never, because they were paid to live there for five years and five years leads to laziness for anyone and Shinra was gone and so was their pay, but they stayed there anyway, and I guess their thinking was ‘hey, free house!’ And I would probably totally be into that too if I had been paid for five years to live in Gloomsville. Yunno, if I was the sit-around-the-house-watch-the-bugs-eat-my-arm type. Which I am totally not. Because arm-eating-bugs? FYI, not cool. My arm is worth more than bug food. Behemoth food at least.
But anyway, there’s nothing ever there except for the wind and the well and the silence, deep like the well going straight down until it almost hits lifestream - it’s lonely, in a way, and I can see why Tifa and Cloud never really wanted to go back. They had their childhood home in their hearts, and that was the only place it was, because this place was not that place. And that makes sense, so I sauntered in like the hottest stuff to hit the town since the invention of the chili burrito to the big haunted mansion at the edge, right where the sidewalk ends.
You know what’s sort of funny? The last time I had been there was just that year, but it felt different, and I saw scattered debris and machine parts and that was weird. I had been there, I had seen Rosso and the mecha-bugs and Vincent, but I guess all I could think about was the first time I pushed through the warped oak doors behind Cloud and Barret, with Red next to me because I think he was a little spooked, too, even though he didn’t say anything. It was too quiet, like someone had clamped down on my ears with two freezing cold sheets of steel, or ripped out my eardrums or un-evolutionized hearing or something, and it was sort of like that steel had jammed itself into a crack in me that I didn’t even know was there.
And what’s sort of funny, too, is that we had never bothered to take the sheet with Hojo’s clues on it. It was still on the side of that house, all gross and crumpled up and yellow, and I found it on the floor where Aeris had seen it originally. I picked it up and smoothed it out as best I could, which was more than a little pathetic looking and crinkly at best, and I set it on the table, nice and neat like a tea set, the clues all carefully penned in the madman’s writing. A little part of our journey and a tiny little piece of Vincent to an extent, too. I wanted to sit and smell it until the acid from the ink addled my brain like Loco Weed on a hot summer day, so I turned around and left it there and didn’t look back and I wonder if its still there. Rotting, quiet and all crumply from the moisture, waiting for someone who isn’t there to play a game already won.
Anyway - getting off of Side-Track Train (next boarding: whenever the hell Yuffie feels like it! Now that’d be pretty great, because I’ve never actually been on one, but I bet trains aren’t barf-machines like planes), because I swear I could get lost there and completely forget how to get back - so, I figured Vinners was back in the coffin, being the incredibly clever and smart ninja I am. I cracked my knuckles to get ready to punch his face in.
Well, maybe not. Just sort of clip his chin or something - it was an awfully nice face. Now, hey - hey - I’m not being sensitive or girly, Leviathan-forbid, because kick-ass ninjas who will one day rule their country are not girly. It specifically says in the contract: ‘thou shalt not giggle over clothes of thine’s taste or men of the same category!’ Or something. (‘S true, Laff-oo. You can check. Not that you would, because only I know where the documents are so haha jokes on you.) I’m just being honest the way a not-girly-girl has to.
For example: Cloud is handsome, but would I want to kiss-eat-his-face? I don’t think so. You better not have. Tifa would have my head mounted up on her wall for display! Not that I would anyway. Cloud lost a liiiiiiitlle too many brain-cells for me. I can just see Cloud on a ladder, looking up at a burnt out light bulb with this blank look on his face, sort of wondering- nevermind. Back on the railway-of-thought-that-isn’t-overly-cruel-to-chocobo-heads-who-happen-to-be-named-Cloud.
I was going to hammer on the wood until the rotting bark cracked and splintered into a million pieces and clip his chin and then get a collar-full of Vincent and bodily throw him out of the mansion to watch him sizzle and burn and die in sunlight, like all vampires do. I was going to kick down the door like the movies and yell at him and then knock him out when he was least expecting it and drag him back to Edge and have him wake up with me, sitting in a chair by his bed, cool as you please, ready to shoot his brains out with my totally lethal shotgun (my fantasy, I am allowed to have a shotgun) if he didn’t have a good reason for going back to that smelly old place.
I was expecting Vincent to be there - it was a duh factor for me. He messed himself up again by thinking too much again, went out drinking with guilt like an old friend and next thing found himself all tied up in a bed by grief, woke up next to self-loathing with his claw stuck in a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, his foot in a lampshade and a killer hangover. Vincent was going to be there, and I was going to kick his ass for it.
An empty space, cold and lonely like holes in the mines and an abandoned house begged to differ.
Empty. It was empty.
I cussed it out in three different languages and seven different dialects, each of which I was going to give Cid a big, sloppy kiss right on the mouth for sometime. I kicked that stupid coffin so it rattled until it hit the floor from its place wedged in the wall with a bang, kicked that stupid coffin in that stupid room full of freaky-creepy skeletons and spiders and roaches, like Vincent was still in it somehow, like he accidentally left his arm there or something, and it was in crazy debt and interest was hell.
Vincent was supposed to be there. And he wasn’t, and my life was consequently made way harder because - something I hadn’t thought of before, stupid, silly me - I was actually going to have to drag myself around Gaia looking for his sorry ass. Points to Yuffie for being a complete genius. I should’ve made a science project of it so Marlene wouldn’t have to put baking soda and vinegar together or drop Mentos into a coke - ‘Yuffie’s Grand Experiment,’ in which the hypothesis would’ve been, ‘If Yuffie looks for Vincent, then Vincent will be in the coffin,’ and then I could’ve done all sorts of cool things like go there three times a week and plan a stake-out and then cheat and find him and put him in there and then have an insane ratio like, ‘1 time out of 12,463 Vincent will be in the coffin,’ and then I would’ve been awarded-
Veering off course again. Nevermind. Right then I wasn’t thinking about winning prizes, or being smart, or doing Marlene’s homework for her. Right then I was staring at the coffin, which looked pretty sorry with its door all broken off and the rusty hinges lying at my feet, and that was the end of something. I didn’t know what, and I don’t think I really know now - I just - it was the end of Vincent being Vincent, maybe. He was supposed to be wallowing.
And isn’t that supposed to be a good thing? I mean, Vincent moving on - now that was a legendary concept. We all wanted it for him, us, his big jumbled-patch-job family, just like it was mine, and Cloud’s and Barret’s and Nanaki’s and Tifa’s and Cid’s and Reeve’s and Aeris’s. But right then, him not being there wasn’t moving on. Maybe it was all those spiders or maybe it was the acid of the ink from that rotting paper seeping into my brain and killing brain cells like a drunk Sephiroth at a Nibelheim Doomsday party. It was something being up with Vincent, and I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Maybe - oh, gawd, I don’t even know. Nevermind. Even if I tried, I don’t think I’d be able to explain it very well anyway.
---tbc; fun hasn't even started yet, kiddos.