Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Crimson Curse ❯ Chapter 14 ( Chapter 14 )

 

Chapter 14

 

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Karin tosses and turns under her blankets, she kicks them off and pulls them back on, lays on one side and flops onto the other side, then flops onto her stomach burying her face into her pillow.

 

“What time is it…?”, she groans, lifting her head up enough to peek over her pillow at her alarm-clock; 1:36am, “Just great… I can't sleep…”, she moans, pushes herself up into a kneeling position on her bed.

 

She climbs out of bed, putting her bare-feet onto the carpet, walking from her bedroom-door into the living-room. The light from the lamp-posts along the street below illuminated the room through the sliding-glass door leading to the balcony, Vincent was still laying on his back safely tucked under a blanket on her couch.

 

Sweat thinly coated Vincent's face, his bangs plastered to his forehead. Karin reaches out to brush a stray clump of his mid-night black hair from his pain-stricken face, “Vincent…”, she whispers, tracing the flawless-skin of his cheek, “He's burning with a fever…”, she mutters to herself, cupping his cheek in her hand, `Is the poison spreading?', she thinks, tugging his kimono open, noticing that blood was slowly beginning to leak through the bandage and discolored-purple veins starting to creep around his body from underneath the bandage, `It it!'

 

Karin momentarily leaves his side to get a large-bowl from her kitchen and her first-aid kit from the bathroom, then she kneels beside his and gently begins to peel the gauze-pad off his injury; blood and pus with it. She starts to clean the pus away with a damp rag, after all the pus was cleared away, Karin brings her mouth to his wound and starts to suck out blood; the taste of copper filling her mouth along with a very bitter taste that was probably from the poison, spitting it into the bowl and repeats the process until the bitter taste of poison was absent from the coppery-blood taste.

 

“That should do…”, she sighs, wiping his blood from her lips with a rag and glances down at the half-full bowl, “I must have sucked out at least three quarts of blood and poison…”, she comments, applying a new gauze-pad onto his wound and fixes the kimono straight. She looks at the clock on her cable-box; 3:45am, “No sense in trying to sleep now… Dawn is in at least 3 hours…”, she yawns, heading to her room to grab herself a blanket, wrapping around herself and plops down on the floor in front of her T.V., leaning her back against the couch Vincent was asleep on, as she turns the T.V. on.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Next Day…

(Lunar-Eclipse: 8 Days Away)

 

 

 

 

Karin opens her honey-colored brown eyes and sits up on her floor blinking in confusion as she looks around her living-room, realizing she had fallen asleep watching television, “Morning already…”, she yawns, tears of sleepiness forming in her eyes before she focuses them onto the clock on her cable-box; 10:01am, “Aw shit…”, she curses, “Classes started 3 hours ago… I might as well call in sick now…”, she mutters, scratching her head as she stood up and tiredly stumbled over to her phone.

 

(Hello, you've reached the office of Dean Aeris's secretary; Jessica Saito, how may I help you?), a woman's voice asks on the other end of the line.

 

“Hello, Miss. Saito. This is Karin Hitodama, I'm sorry for calling in late, but I am calling out sick today. I have unfortunately come down with the flu…”, she says, faking a realistic-cough, “I would have called sooner but I was asleep…”

 

(I understand, Karin. You just get your rest and I hope you'll be feeling better soon), Jessica replies.

 

“Thank you, Miss. Saito. I appreciate your concern…”, Karin responds before hanging up the phone, “That takes care of that problem…”

 

She walks over to the couch and kneels by Vincent's side, “Why won't you wake up…?”, she whispers to him, brushing a stray hair from his face and then gently strokes his cheek with her fingertips, her thumb softly tracing his lips, `What remains of the poison in his body must be sapping his strength…', she thinks, standing up and walks into her room to get dressed, she had to pick up a few things for Vincent.

 

 

 

 

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-Vincent's Apartment-

An Hour Later…

 

 

 

 

Karin wander around from room to room searching out a change of clothes for Vincent, his supply of bullets for his gun, and a cooler for about 5-pints of blood from his stash-fridge, what she was looking for was the one item that had been with him since before he was cursed; his mythril katana.

 

“Where is it…?”, she asks herself, looking inside his closet and beneath his bed, her hand accidentally slides in between the mattress and the box-spring, coming in contact with something long, hard and smooth. Wrapping her fingers around it, she with draws her hand pulling the object out, it was Vincent's sheathed mythril katana, “There it is… Interesting place to keep it…”

 

She stuffs what she could fit into a duffle-bag, and walked around the apartment checking to see if she had forgotten something, she spots something on his kitchen-table. Upon closer inspection the item on the table was a map of Tokyo in 1717 back when it was still farm-lands and called; Edo. There was a small red mark on the location of a castle that had stood there centuries ago, “Why would he have a map with a castle marked…?”, she mutters, before her eyes widened, “Wait a minute…!”

 

“Three hundred years ago, Lucrecia and I stormed Sephiroth's castle… Unfortunately, I wasn't strong enough to kill him or protect Lucrecia…”, Vincent words from when he explained what had happened to him, echoes in her head.

 

“That must be the castle where his life went to Hell in a hand-basket…”, she gasps, lightly running her fingers in the aging paper and finds a old black and white picture of a blood-covered cell with; `1799 - Castle Cell', written clearly on the back and something else written underneath, but the writing was small and faded. She squints her eyes trying to read it, only able to make out; `My prison… tortured…raped in…'. The writing left her confused, `Who's prison? Who was tortured? Who was raped?', she wondered, still looking at the photo, `Was it Vincent who wrote this?'

 

As she stared at the photo, she could almost see Vincent sitting in the corner of the cell chained up to the wall, looking worst for ware. Then the image of Sephiroth forcefully having his way with Vincent fills her mind, “Poor Vincent…”, she whispers, closing her eyes to push the image from her mind, “We'll kill that bastard, I swear…”, she vows, tears building in her eyes, upset that had happened to Vincent.

 

“I don't have time to be crying…”, she sniffled, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, “I have to get back to my apartment to change Vincent's bandages…”, she says to herself, as she carefully rolls the map up and heads out the door, locking it behind herself.

 

 

 

 

 

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-Karin's Apartment-

 

 

 

 

 

Karin opens the front-door, rain-water dripping from every inch of her skin and hair, it had started raining on her way back and she didn't bring an umbrella with her.

 

“I hate the weather…”, she curses, kicking the door shut and throws the water-proof bag onto the carpet in front of her bathroom; luckily the contents inside being the only things to not get soak from the sudden downpour, before she peeled off her shoes and socks. But she didn't stop there as she started to strip off her pants and shirt, leaving herself in just her under-things as she picked up the wet items and walks into her bathroom to hang them up to dry, then wrings the excess water from her hair into the sink.

 

With a towel draped over her shoulders, she walks into her bed-room to put some dry clothes on. Slipping a tank-top style summer-dress over her head and straightens it, the maroon color with pink edging actually looking good with her complexion as she looked at herself in the mirror, “When the hell did I start worrying over my looks…?”, she wonders to herself aloud, as she walks back into her living-room and sees Vincent still laying on her couch peacefully, `It was when I met Vincent…', she thinks, answering her own question.

 

She walks over to him and leans over the back of her couch, reaching over it to brush a strand of hair from his face, her finger-tips brushing against his skin, “Good… his fever broke…”, she sighs in relief that his skin was cool to the touch.

 

Karin begins to putting the pints of blood into the air-tight container inside her fridge, and she woefully looks at one of the bags reading `Blood-Type: B', `It must be hard for him… Not being able to die…', she thinks, forcing herself not to cry, `And to go through what Sephiroth did to him…', she mentally adds, as she unrolls Vincent's map on top of her kitchen-table and lays a transparent-map of modern Tokyo on top of it, “Now let me see…”, she mutters to herself.

 

 

 

 

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An Hour Later…

 

 

 

 

“I see…”, she smirks, writing on her plastic map with a wet-erase marker and adjusts the maps to match up her marks to the historical land-marks on Vincent's map, “If my grandmother was right, Sephiroth's lair should be right here!”, she quietly exclaims, circling the location on her map around the area the castle was on Vincent's map, `Now we only need to wait for Vincent to recover', she thinks.

 

Buzz-Buzz!, the door-bell buzzed.

 

“Who is it?”, she calls out, walking towards the door.

 

“It's Cloud…”, came monotone response from the other side of the door, as Karin looks through the peep-hole and spots the familiar blonde hair and blue eyes of her friend.

 

She opens the door a crack, leaving the chain-lock in place, “Cloud, What are you doing here?”, she asks.

 

“I've come to check up on you, you didn't come to college…”, he replies, “Also, I came to see the damage I did to my bike”

 

“Sure… Just let me get my jacket…”, she says, closing the door.

 

Karin goes to her closet and takes out a dark grey trench-coat, and then slips on a pair of knee-high black boots. She quickly gathers some of her energy into her hand, `Good, my powers are back', she thinks, smiling before she unlocks her door and steps into the hall, “Ready?”

 

“Let's go…”, he says, holding out his left arm in a gesture to let her pass.

 

“Um, Cloud?”, she asks, noticing something about him, “Where's your cast?”

 

“I see you've noticing that…”, he chuckles, his voice taking on a sinister-tone, as he grabs her by the arm and pins her against the railing of the balcony-hallway, “Very observant, Banpaia Ten-Ki”, he hisses, as his blue-eyes become green-tinted and his pupils slit.

 

`Mind-Slave!', she gasps in her mind, seeing from underneath the edge of his rolled up sleeves two fang-like puncture-marks on his left arm where the cast was.

 

“Now come along quietly and your friend won't be hurt”, Cloud orders in a voice not belonging to him.

 

“What makes you think I'd obey?”, she mocks, charging up her energy.

 

“Because you don't know what would happen to your friend if you were to use your power on him”

 

“I may not know what will happen, but I'm willing to find out”, “I may not know what will happen, but I'm willing to find out”, Karin growls, firmly planting her knee into his gut causing him to back up, giving her some space, “And if my power kills him, I know Cloud would rather die than remain your slave!”, she continues, upward palm-thrusting him in the chin with her power-charged hand, sending Cloud flying backwards through the still open apartment-door, landing in her living-room.

 

“C-Cloud…?”, she stutters, hesitantly taking a step, peering into her apartment at the crumpled form of her friend, “Cloud…?”

 

She could see the undeniable movement of his chest as his lungs fill and expel air.

 

“Thank goodness…”, she sighs.

 

“Wonderful, my dear. It seems your power can free humans from being controlled”, a deep smooth male voice purrs from behind her.

 

Karin instantly tenses up, `That voice…!', she mentally panics, `It can't be…!', she thinks, as she turns around with a fear-stricken pounding-heart to find the silver-haired emerald-green eyed face from her nightmares there, `Sephiroth!'

 

“Oh you truly are a beauty, Banpaia Ten-Ki”, the vampire-Lord smirks, revealing his fangs, “Just like the last one I feasted on”

 

“You bastard…”, she growls under her breath, as she clenches her hand into a fist and charges her energy into it, “Your evil rein ends here, Sephiroth…”, she grinds out, raising fist to punch him with all her might.

 

As she pulls her arm back to deck the evil vampire and end his tyranny, someone from behind her grabs her by the wrist and twists it behind her back, and when she tries to struggle free a cloth is forced over her nose and mouth.

 

`Shit… Chloroform…', she thinks, as her vision begins to blur, `V-Vincent…', was the last thought to go through her mind before she blacks out and falls limp.

 

The one who had grabbed her, tilts her slumped head up by the chin, “It's hard to believe this little up-start is your worst fear”

 

“The most beautiful is the most dangerous, but this one has more spunk than the last one, it must be the era”, Sephiroth comments.

 

“Then why not end her threat to you now?”

 

“To simply kill the bait when you still need it is foolish", the vampire advises, “I need her to lure the immortal-guardian to me”

 

“Why not just let me go inside and drag him out of the apartment?”

 

“I'd rather him not come to me and my former slave is the calling-card to tell him where the precious little delicacy has vanished to”, he says, lifting Karin's face up to hungrily stare at her, “All the players of my feast will come to me, like they did 300 years ago…”

 

 

 

 

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