Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Final Fantasy VII; Second Generation ❯ Chapter 18 ( Chapter 18 )

 

 

 

 

 

 

The morning sunlight streams into the cave through a crevice in the wall, onto Vincent's slumbering face, causing him slowly blink his eyes open only to wince against the offending light. As his eyes slowly focus, the sleeping face of Yoko becomes clear, the majority of her hair was still pulled back in the low-ponytail she had put it in, but the bangs that hung in her face were clumped and sticky from the salt-water, her skin was pale like she had over-exerted herself and all her energy had been drained.

 

It takes him a moment to realize that his head was resting on her lap, causing him to blush and bolt up-right, immediately making him clutch the side of his chest and he could feel the jagged-ends of his broken-ribs rubbing against each-other with every breath he took, he could also feel the cloth-bandages wrapped around his chest preventing the shattered-pieces from separating. Suddenly remembering the injury that rendered him unconscious, he touches his head and feels cloth wrapped around his forehead as well.

 

He glances back at the sleeping girl, her skin looked white like a porcelain-doll's and the sunlight streaming in through a crack in the cave-wall shining onto her face didn't seem to be bothering her slumber, made her skin glow with an ethereal-light making her appear like an angel who had landed on earth and taken shelter in the cave from the storm. But the look on her face wasn't a peaceful one and was scrunched-up in distress.

 

“N-no…S-stay away from me…”, she groans in her sleep.

 

“Yoko…”, Vincent whispers, gently cupping her cheek, “It's alright… You're having a nightmare…”

 

At the touch of his hand and his soothing words instantly causes her to fall into a completely peaceful sleep.

 

`She's like me… Haunted by nightmares that she can't do anything about…', he thinks, draping his cloak over her like a blanket because she wasn't wearing her white-shirt anymore, `She must have used the shirt to make my bandages…', he mentally notes, as he adds dry wood into the fire-pit and pokes at the hot-embers until the timber ignites.

 

 

 

 

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A young girl with midnight-black hair drawn-up in pig-tails and bright reddish-brown eyes that followed the ball she was bouncing.

 

“Yoko, don't go off too far. We don't know if the Deep-Ground Soldiers will come here or not!”, the child's foster-mother advises.

 

“I'll be careful, Saiyuki-san!”, a 4-year old Yoko replies, running further up the dirt-road carrying her ball, her pink-dress brushing against her knees as she ran up some stairs.

 

“That girl… I swear she has no fear…”, Saiyuki sighs, while shaking her head as she watches the girl vanish around the bend.

 

“She worries too much…”, Yoko mutters to herself, as she resumes bouncing her ball.

 

Suddenly, the ball bounces off of a rock in the dirt-road, sending it rolling and bounce further up the path away from the town.

 

“H-h-hey… Come back!”, she shouts, chasing after the fugitive-ball, finally catching it halfway up the road, “Got you!”

 

As she stood back up with ball in hand, she notices a large stone-wall with an iron-gate and beyond the gate was a huge stone & wood house that stood two-floors tall, the stones of the building appeared to have at one time been white, but age had darkened them to shade of tan/off-white.

 

“Is that a mansion…?”, she mutters in awe, as she walks closer to the gate, putting her ball into her backpack before she touches the bars of the gate, “It looks so old…”, she whispers, glancing back at the way she had come, `I sure Saiyuki-san wouldn't mind if I explore a little bit…', she thinks, opening the gate and listens as it's hinges creak and groan in protest.

 

Her shoes crunching on the loose gravel on the brick-paved walkway towards the front-door of the manor, she hesitantly approaches the double-doors and places her hand onto the handle, taking a deep-breath before she turns the knob and quietly sneaks inside, silently closing the door behind herself.

 

Yoko slowly walks through the foyer towards the door on the other-side, as she pushes the inner-door open a plume of dust surrounds her, causing her to start coughing violently and after she clears the last bit of the microscopic-debris from her lungs she glances around at the massive main-hall. A pair of stair-cases stood at the other side of the chamber rising from the ground-floor to a balcony leading to the second-floor, below the balcony was a set of doors, to the left and right of her was a hallway & room on each-side.

 

“Wow…!”, she whispers, as she continues to look around while walking towards the room to her right.

 

She crouches down to brush away dry-leaves and dirt off of some papers scattered on the floor, before picking them up, “The `SOLD-ER Project'…”, she confusingly reads, “What does that mean…?”, she whispers.

 

She suddenly jumps at the sound of an mini-explosion coming from upstairs followed by a male's voice shouting, “It's the Keeper! He's here!”

 

A tiny whimper of fear escapes from the girl's mouth, as she glances at the stairwell and sees two adults dressed in glowing blue-armor run across the balcony, only to quickly fall after 2 more explosions, which sends the child running further into the room and she scampers inside of a wooden-crate, closing the lid over herself.

 

The gun-fire explosions continued; some sounding far away and others close by, but what she heard next was even closer to her hiding-place. The noise of hydraulics and rapid gun-fire, it was even more frightening when a single bullet speared through the crate a mere-inch away from the side of her head causing her to silently-gasp with eyes glazed over in fright.

 

Suddenly all the explosions and noise stops, startling the young child back into awareness who in curiosity leaned forward bringing her eye up to the freshly-made bullet-hole in an attempt to see what was going on outside the box.

 

She could see a tall figure wearing a red tattered & torn cloak with long untamed black-hair over it standing in the middle of the main-hall holstering their gun while a four-legged robot lay clumped on the floor sparking and smoking; as if threatening to explode, in front of them.

 

“Wow…”, she quietly gasps, blinking in amazement, `They took down that robot single-handedly…! And with only a hand-gun…!'

 

But before the child could even more another muscle, she saw the figure quickly turn towards the left-side the hall and in the blink of her eyes, the figure of a woman with crimson-hair & clad in similar glowing-armor as the male-soldiers she had seen; except the female had a trail of long red-cloth extending from the back of it, appear in front of the other figure and plunge her right-hand into their chest. The sight causes the girl to clamp her hands tightly over her mouth to prevent herself from screaming as she watches the woman remove her hand from inside the cloaked-figure's chest, clutching a soft-ball sized glowing white-orb in her hand and the figure falls to their knees.

 

“Oh, I'm sorry… Were you not expecting that?”, the woman mockingly asks with a thick Russian-accent, as the figure completely collapses onto the ground and starts to convulse.

 

As the figure continued to convulse, their body begins to become surrounded by a sinister-feeling blood-red and black aura, and after one quick bright flare-up of aura the figure was no-more, all that laid on the ground twitching was a creature with huge red and black leathery-wings.

 

Young Yoko squeezes her eyes tightly shut and covers her ears with her hands, attempting to block out the savagely pained growls coming from the creature, as she curls her knees up against her chest.

 

 

 

 

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Yoko's reddish-brown eyes snap-open and she bolts forward, she could feel the layer of cold-sweat that coated her flesh as she shakily pants for breath, before she quickly closes her eyes and covers her ears as she could still hear the growls from her nightmare.

 

“Yoko… Yoko…!”, she heard someone say, as she slowly came out of the after-effects of her memories.

 

“Huh…?”, she gasps, slightly opening her eyes to see the familiar-face of Ex-Turk a few feet away from her, “V-Vincent…?”

 

“Are you alright?”, he asks.

 

“Y-yeah…”, she stammers, “Just an old terrifying memory from 17-years ago…”, she continues, hugging her shoulders.

 

“Deep-Ground encounter…?”

 

“Yeah…”, she replies, as she blankly stares into the fire Vincent had re-build.

 

“Where was it you encountered them?”, he asks, as he plants several fish on sticks near the fire before putting a few more sticks into the fire, poking the blaze gently to ignite the newly-added timber.

 

“It was inside an old mansion just outside of Nibelheim…”, she answers, causing Vincent to drop the stick he was using to poke the fire with.

 

“What…?”, he gasps.

 

“I had been exploring it at the time and heard gun-shots, so I quickly hid inside of a crate and when they stopped I peeked out through a hole and saw someone standing in front of a destroyed robot…”

 

`She was there while I was there?!', he thinks, as he continued to listen to her story in silence.

 

“But before I could even move to climb out of the box, a female Deep-Ground soldier dressed in red impaled the person's chest with her hand and pulled out a glowing orb, then the person collapsed and transformed into a…a…”, she hesitates, “I can't think of the right words… All I do know is that I waited about two-hours hiding inside that box to make sure that Deep-Ground wouldn't find me when I climbed out…”

 

“I see…”, he says, `So she saw me transform into Chaos…'

 

“So where did you learn to cook fish like that?”, she asks.

 

“Huh…?”, he mutters, snapping out of his thoughts and takes a moment to register what she had said, “It was during one of the rare camping-trips my father and I had gone on…”

 

“I see… Well, to be honest I've never cooked fish that way before…”, she states.

 

“It's a lot like cooking hot-dogs… Only these burn easily…”

 

“Okay…”, she nods, “I think they're done….', she says, noticing that they were starting to smoke.

 

“Good eye…”

 

“You've got to have a very keen eye to aim a gun just right for the shot”

 

“So tell me… What caused you to decide on using a gun?”, he asks.

 

“I don't really know… Probably because it allows me to attack my enemy from a distance, through Materia lets you do that as well…”, she mutters in reply, “I would have to say that the up close and personal approach isn't exactly my style, but I'd use it if it was my last resort…”

 

“Hm…”, he mumbles, as he hands her one of the fish on a stick and when she reaches out to take it from him, he notices something on her upper-arm, “How did you get those cuts?”, he asks.

 

She covers the wounds with her other hand, “I got them after I fell off the ship”, she answers, avoiding eye-contact with him as she begins to eat the fish.

 

`Those look more like claw-marks to me…', he thinks, continuing to stare at the injury.

 

“We should probably get going”, Yoko suddenly says, as she stands up, snapping him out of his stupor, “We've got to get to Costa Del Sol as soon as possible to prevent everyone else from waiting”

 

“Y-yeah…”, he stammers, realizing that he had been looking at her wounds without eating a bite of his fish the whole-time she was eating, and when he moves to stand up as well, the tiniest movement being enough to make him wince and clutch his broken-ribs.

 

“Hey, remember to take it slow, some of your broken-ribs tore through the skin”, she informs him, before offering him a hand to help him to his feet.

 

An offer he accepts, raising to his feet and follows her out of the cave.

 

 

 

 

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