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Sink to the Bottom With You
Chapter Five
Vincent and Yuffie's Great Escape
"Oh my god!
I almost fell in the water with the sharks!" Yuffie Kisaragi
Action boy now
Action girl now
Be prepared to surf across the
ocean
Be prepared to take a hit
Be prepared to go for it
Be prepared for a sneak attack
Be prepared
Just don't look back
"Are You Ready?"
Devo
"Whoo-hoo!" Yuffie cheered even as seawater
sprayed her in the face and went up her nose.
"Having fun, Vinnie?"
"Loads," Vincent answered dryly, holding
onto her slender waist for dear life as the Black Stinger blasted its way across
the turbulent sea with a kamikaze Yuffie Kisaragi at the controls. Though she was seasick as a dog on ships of
any kind, driving the jet ski apparently didn't faze her the least bit. She had sailed out of the tunnel and into
the pouring rain going at break neck speed with a severely uncomfortable
Vincent hanging onto her. Now she was
squeezing every ounce of speed out of the engine as she skimmed and barreled
her way on the ocean's surface, oblivious to the angrily churning thunderclouds
and flashing lightening that seemed close enough that they could reach out and
touch them.
Vincent, however, was not having such a good
time. Though he could see perfectly at
night due to Hojo's twisted experiments, several factors, namely seawater,
raindrops, and Yuffie's flapping hair, kept flying into his eyes and obscuring
his vision a great deal. And he had
also been given the dubious honor of sniping out the small squadron of Faceless
Men that had obtained jet skis and were following them in the same relentless way
in which they had pursued the two travelers in the tunnels.
"Vinnie!" Yuffie suddenly yelled, trying to
spin around to look him in the face.
"Are you gonna shoot those faceless freaks or just let them catch up to
us?"
Instead of answering, Vincent twisted around
and took in the layout behind him. In
between the churning waves, he could catch glimpses of the Faceless Men riding
jet skis identical to the one Yuffie was piloting. Because of the abominable weather conditions, he couldn't tell
how many of them there were, but from what he could see of them, he didn't
like. They drove the jet skis quickly
but expertly, weaving around waves and sometimes even submerging for a few
minutes to reemerge much closer to the Black Stinger that Yuffie and Vincent were
fleeing on. Nevertheless, they were
closing the distance and closing it fast.
Vincent's only consolation was that the
Faceless Men hadn't used their submachine guns, which they had strapped to
their backs. A bullet wound now would
knock the two escapees into the water and leave them helpless prey for the
Faceless Men...if a shark didn't get them first.
If Vincent was going to shoot them, he would have to do it now before
they closed the gap.
"Yuffie!" he cried, removing his right hand
from her waist. "Hold this thing
steady!"
"Easier said than done!" she yelled back,
trying to be heard over the thunder and the roar of the Black Stinger's
engine. "Have you seen some of these
waves?!"
"Just do the best you can!"
Removing the Death Penalty from its holster,
he raised it and took aim along its long barrel. Vincent was an excellent shot even back when he was human, and
the Death Penalty was the most powerful gun he had ever handled, but he doubted
even the bullets it discharged could pierce a ten foot wave and kill a target
on the other side of it. Like Yuffie,
however, he was just going to have to do the best he could.
In a break between waves, he quickly
centered a Faceless Man in his sights and fired, but it was that instant that
the Black Stinger hit a wave, and the bullet went wild. Unfazed, Vincent reloaded the Death Penalty
and aimed again, blinking seawater out of his eyes. This time the bullet flew straight and true. But even though the Faceless Man had no
eyes, it somehow saw the bullet coming and suddenly veered to the left, the
metal slug sailing harmlessly past.
After attempting to take down the same
Faceless Man in five more shots and failing each time, Vincent began to realize
that his attempts were in vain. A
mixture of the bouncing jet ski, the tall waves, the needle sharp raindrops and
the preternatural reflexes of the Faceless Men kept him from getting off a
clear shot. The need to reload the
Death Penalty every time he fired was also slowing down his progress. Finally, after his tenth attempt, he managed
to strike one of the Faceless Men ? he no longer knew if it was the same one he
had been firing at all along ? in the chest, directly where its heart should
have been if it were human. But like
Yuffie's low blow in the Green Room, the injury seemed to have absolutely no
effect on it. The Faceless Man jerked
back from the force of the bullet, and a dark substance that Vincent assumed to
be blood flew from its chest and splattered the churning waves all around it,
but the monstrosity gripped the handlebars of its jet ski and just kept on
coming.
Tossing his hair out of his eyes, the dark
gunslinger grimly lowered his rifle.
Vincent's suspicions were finally confirmed. In the battle of the Green Room, he had managed to take down the Faceless
Men at close range with an almost point blank shot to the head or a surprise
attack from behind. Any other attacks
he had made had seemed to have no effect on them. And now shooting them from a long range gave the Faceless Men too
much time to sense the bullets coming, providing them with an opportunity to
evade the attack. Whatever these
creatures were or once were, he now knew that headshots were maybe the only way
to kill them.
This new information severely limited his
options. A headshot would be nearly
impossible to pull off in these conditions.
He could try using his materia, but he thought that if bullet wounds in
the chest didn't even slow them down, then magic might not have much of an
effect either. Besides, most of the
powerful materia had been distributed to the others under the belief that their
missions might be considerably more dangerous than the one he had Yuffie had
agreed to undertake. For a moment, he
entertained the notion of morphing Chaos and attacking them from above, but
with monstrous waves grabbing at him constantly and a torrent of rain
plummeting from the sky, he knew that such an assault would probably be in
vain.
Things were starting to look bleak.
"Hey Vinnie!" Yuffie suddenly called,
jerking the handlebars right to avoid taking the full brunt of a wave. "Did you get them all?"
"No," Vincent said, still watching and
waiting for one of the Faceless Men to emerge.
They had all disappeared behind the waves for a moment.
"How many are there left?" Yuffie demanded,
nervous that Vincent had fired so many shots and hadn't been able to get them
all. She knew from experience that even
when blinded, Vincent rarely missed his target.
"As many as there were to begin with," he
answered flatly.
Yuffie's mouth dropped open. "What?!" she echoed incredulously as the
Black Stinger crested over one of the smaller waves. "You mean you didn't even get a single one of them?!"
"You have to shoot these things in the
head."
"So shoot them in the head!" she exclaimed
shrilly, holding her breath as a wave washed over them. "Blow their nonexistent faces off!" she
continued, spitting water out of her mouth.
"They keep using the waves as cover."
Yuffie studied the watery terrain in front
of her and tossed her sea and rainwater sodden hair out of her face. "Well, they won't be able to do that any
longer. The wind is calming down. No more big, big waves to deal with."
Vincent didn't reply, only kept his eyes
focused on the waves he felt were hiding the Faceless Men. In a matter of seconds, the wind had died
down almost entirely, and the ocean stopped rolling so angrily and retracted
its towering waves sheepishly, exposing the Faceless Men's positions.
There were only five of them, spaced evenly
out in what was probably some sort of strategic formation. Vincent wondered dimly if these things had
some unseen way of communicating with one another or if they were being
manipulated by some other force greater than them. He didn't take long in his reverie, however, because the Faceless
Men suddenly did something that made the human part of him, the one that felt
fear and emotions, shudder and freeze with a sense of foreboding.
In unison, each of the five Faceless Men
reached behind themselves and took their submachine guns out of their holsters
while holding their jet skis completely steady with only one hand and little
effort. Vincent's heart began to pound
in apprehension as they all raised their guns in perfect timing with each
other, taking aim...
The stormy night was suddenly alive with a constant
barrage of gunfire. The dark waters all
around Vincent and Yuffie spat little exclamatory streams of seawater up into
the chill air as the bullets struck their raindrop battered surfaces. The bursts of yellow fire leaping from the
barrels of the Faceless Men's guns flashed like lamplights on the road to Hell,
intending to guide and deliver the two would-be escapees into damnation.
"Oh my god!" Yuffie exclaimed fearfully,
chancing a glance behind her. "Are they
shooting at us?!"
"Yes," Vincent said distractedly, crouching
down calmly and fumbling with something on the inside of his metal boot.
"What are you doing dragging your ass,
Vinnie?!" Yuffie demanded, watching fearfully as the explosions of water began
drawing eagerly closer. "Return fire! Return fire!"
Vincent straightened up again, and Yuffie
pivoted around to see that he had the Outsider clutched in his hand. "What the hell are you doing with that puny
ass gun?!" she yelled shrilly, thinking Vincent must have left his brain back in
the tunnels. "Use the Death Penalty,
you idiot!"
"Don't call me an idiot," he ordered flatly,
keeping his eyes trained on the Faceless Men with their submachine guns. "Keep this thing steady."
"No way!" Yuffie exclaimed. "We'll be easier targets that way!"
"If you want to live, Yuffie Kisaragi,
you'll do as I say."
Yuffie shut her mouth and did as he said,
holding the handlebars as steady as she could and trying to ignore the stream
of bullets that kept getting closer and closer. Seawater stung her eyes, temporarily blinding her, only to be
washed out by the blessed rain and her own tears of terror. Her heart thundered in her chest,
obliterating even the equally thunderous roars of the jet ski and the churning clouds
overhead, as she heard Vincent fire off several rapid shots into the night,
lone staccato sounds of hope that had their salvation riding on them.
Suddenly, there was a great explosion behind
her that lit up the night like the fires of Hell, blazing afterimage painting
the dark waters with new demonic shades of yellows and reds. For a moment, Yuffie's heart stopped in her
chest, as she was sure that the Faceless Men had started throwing bombs at
them. But the gunfire started to slack
off, and hope with its fragile wings began to flutter in her soul.
"Vincent!" she cried. "What the hell happened?! What are you doing?!"
"Blowing up their jet skis," he said
calmly. The Outsider barked twice more,
and another explosion rocked the night.
Yuffie resisted the urge to laugh at the
simple solution and the simple way he said it.
Leave it to Vincent to figure it out!
The Outsider may have been a puny gun but the shots it fired were
powerful ? though not nearly as powerful as the Death Penalty ? and more rapid
than most of Vincent's other guns. Good
thing she had let him come with her on this mission. She suddenly had the urge to spin around and
give him a good, hard kiss on the mouth for being so smart, but logic kicked in
at the last moment, making her keep her grip on the handlebars and keep her
eyes trained on the water in front of her.
She couldn't help smiling, however, when she thought of how Vincent
might have reacted to such a thing.
Two more well-placed shots and two
explosions later, Yuffie was daring to think that they were going to get away
after all. Then the inevitable
happened. There was, after all, still
at least one Faceless Man left, and that one Faceless Man still had his
submachine gun, and that one Faceless Man was still firing at them. It was only logical that he would hit
something at some time or the other.
Unfortunately, that something that he hit
was Yuffie Kisaragi.
White-hot pain suddenly exploded in her left
shoulder, quickly engulfing her entire arm like a hungry mouth that feeds off
of suffering. Red rainwater splattered
her face as she screamed and sagged to the side, the Black Stinger miming the
motion as she automatically released her grip on the left handlebar. Her head was feeling lightheaded and fuzzy,
and the night was rapidly getting darker than it should have been. Shades of yellow and red suddenly ran across
her vision as the ocean seemed to tremble underneath her. Her skin was briefly blasted with heat from
an unknown source, but was quickly vanquished by the needle sharp raindrops and
stinging saltwater that won the battle for domination. Somewhere in the background she dimly heard
Vincent calling her name, but she couldn't get her mouth working correctly to
tell him that she was alright. She
suddenly realized with a start that the rainwater that had hit her face wasn't
rainwater at all, but blood. Her
blood. She had been struck in the
shoulder by the Faceless Man's stream of bullets.
Vincent's claw suddenly tightened on her
stomach, producing sharp pains that didn't hold a hair next to the soaring agony
generated by the wound on her shoulder, but they brought her back from the
brink of unconsciousness with the strange sort of urgency that they
possessed. The world all around her
reemerged into sharp focus. Saltwater
stung her eyes. Blood ran down her
shoulder in rivulets. The Imps of Pain
were doing insane dances on her delicate nerve endings. Vincent Valentine was shaking her and
calling her name.
"Yuffie!" he cried in a voice so panicked
that she scarcely recognized it as his own.
"Are you alright?! Answer me!"
She gritted her teeth against the pain, and
managed to force out, "I'm fine. T-The
bullet just grazed the skin. No big
deal."
As if to prove her point, she ignored the
pain in her injured shoulder and reached up to grip the left handlebar once
again, determined to show Vincent that she was just fine. Halfway there, however, the pain suddenly
became so intense that she nearly blacked out again. With a short but loud cry, she dropped her arm back to her side.
Vincent's metal claw suddenly released its
somewhat painful grip on her waist and snaked out to grab the left handlebar,
steadying the Black Stinger.
"Hey!" Yuffie yelped, her voice coming out
harsher than she had intended. "I'm
driving here! You just focus on killing
the bastard that?"
"Hush now," Vincent said with surprising
gentleness, his deep voice a balm to her nerves. "All the Faceless Men are no longer a threat. I'll drive now."
"You got them all?" Yuffie asked, still
stubbornly keeping her grip on the right handlebar. She had been holding onto it so tightly that she had a feeling
that her fingers had locked into that position permanently.
"Yes," Vincent said calmly, his mouth next
to her ear. His gloved right hand
suddenly appeared in front of her, the dark Outsider replaced by his red
bandana, which was dangling from his pale fingers and flapping in the
wind. "Here," he explained. "Use this to bandage your wound. I don't have a Restore materia."
"I told you," she snapped, viciously
spitting saltwater out of her mouth.
"I'm perfectly fine. I'm not a
worthless baby made to be coddled every step of the way."
"Take my headband," he ordered calmly,
unperturbed by her unexpected angry outburst, which had come as a sort of
surprise to her as well as him.
"I don't want your damn headband!" she
yelled, as the Black Stinger hit a wave and more saltwater was flung into her
mouth and eyes. "And take that nasty
claw of yours off the handlebar! I said
that I'm driving, goddammit!"
It was just then that the Black Stinger struck
a wave in an awkward way, pitching violently to the right side. Saltwater found its way under Yuffie's
tightly clenched right hand, and it slipped off the handlebar completely. Her legs suddenly went limp as wet noodles,
the adrenaline from their great escape disappearing and leaving her as weak as
a newborn kitten. To her absolute
horror, she felt her feet loosing their already slippery traction on the floor
of the jet ski. Her body suddenly
sagged to the right side, heading straight towards the dark water that was
eagerly waiting for her...
Vincent's right arm fastened around her
slender waist with inhuman strength, yanking her back against him while
straightening the jet ski with his left arm.
In a matter of seconds, they were zipping smoothly across the gently
rolling sea with Vincent driving the Black Stinger one-handed and holding a
stunned Yuffie in the crook of his right arm.
The young ninja suddenly snapped out of her
shocked trance as a loud burst of thunder crackled overhead and lightening shot
across the sky, splitting into a million different branches and glinting off of
Vincent's metal arm.
"I-I-I almost fell off the jet ski!" she
shrieked, her voice sounding shrill and wavering.
"But you didn't," Vincent said clearly,
tightening his grip on her waist and resting his chin on the top of her head,
which was an easy thing to do, considering that she was nearly a foot shorter
than he was. If Yuffie hadn't been in a
major state of panic, she would have noticed that Vincent was hugging her.
"Oh my god!" she continued ranting even as
her hair, heavy with water, fell over her eyes. "I almost fell in the water with the sharks!"
"But you didn't," he repeated calmly.
She managed to twist around and stare up
into his face, which betrayed none of his emotions and was facing
forwards. "I almost died, Vinnie!" she
cried again, her gray eyes wide with some warped form of posttraumatic stress.
He glanced down at her, ruby red eyes taking
in every aspect of her terrified face that was so close to his. His midnight black hair, unbound by his
bandana and soaked with water, clung to the sides of his pale cheeks, a few
wayward strands snaking forwards to touch her face, as if seeking to offer her
the comfort that their owner couldn't because of his nature.
"But you didn't die, Yuffie," he said
softly, oblivious to the rain pounding against his head and the seawater
spraying his face. "You're safe
here...with me."
Yuffie was now experiencing a whole new type
of shock. She was suddenly aware that,
in spite of the fact that both of them were soaked to the bone with rain and
seawater, she could feel the warmth of his body pressed against hers. Raindrops clung to his long dark eyelashes,
and his face was suddenly very close to hers, his beautiful garnet eyes never leaving
hers.
Once again, it was Vincent who broke the
spell, turning his face away and back towards the open sea on all sides of
them. "Take my headband and bandage
your shoulder," he clipped shortly, without looking down at her. "It's not a deep wound; all we need to do is
stop the bleeding."
"Oh," Yuffie said, suddenly feeling a
profound sense of disappointment and incompletion. "Okay, Vincent."
Facing forwards again, she slipped his red
bandana out of his right hand, which was still locked around her waist, and
quickly tied it around her left shoulder.
Though she was sure that plenty of saltwater had gotten into the wound
by now, the skin around the cut had already gone numb, and she barely could
barely feel the pain as she wrapped the red headband around her shoulder with
her numb fingers.
With her job done, she sagged warily against
Vincent's body, her head resting against his chest. Satisfied that she wasn't going to fall off the jet ski anymore,
Vincent removed his hand from her waist and gripped the right handlebar, taking
full control of the Black Stinger as it continued across the dark sea, going
nowhere and getting there fast. It was
then that the full effect of the emotionally, mentally, and physically taxing
night caught up with her. Salty tears
flowed down her already dripping face, mingling with the rain and seawater on
her cold skin. She wrapped her arms
around herself, colder than she had ever been in her entire life. Vincent unconsciously scooted forward so
that his warm body was pressed more fully against her back, and Yuffie leaned
on him gratefully. She felt Vincent's
chin come to rest on the top of her dark head, a gesture that she found most
comforting even if it had been unconscious on his part.
Even though the thunder and engine of the
Black Stinger were still roaring in her ears, and rain and seawater were still
pelting her body, Yuffie, nestled against Vincent, felt her eyes grow
increasingly heavy. Soon, even given
the impossible conditions, she was drowsing against Vincent's tall figure with
Mother Nature raging around her.
The next thing she knew was that somewhere
in a world of raindrops and rolling thunder adding to the deadly countenance of
a murderous ocean mother with dozens of secrets long unspoken hidden in her womb,
a man whom tragedy had immediately taken as a lover was calling her name, and
the air smelled of salt and dead things.
Yuffie snapped out of her uncomfortable
drowsing state, greatly disturbed for some odd reason. She couldn't remember if she had been
dreaming or not. If she had, the
Sandman had been in a cruel mood and given her a nightmare instead of a vision
of euphoric bliss. That damn Sandman
could be a real bitch sometimes...
"Yuffie," Vincent said again, looking down
at the sleepy girl nestled in between his arms.
She blinked her gray eyes, now red and
irritated from the salt water. "Oh!"
she exclaimed. "Sorry Vinnie. Were you calling me?"
"Yes," he replied, reverting his attention
to the endless ocean that had finally shown an end, and to the recovering but
still diseased city in the distance.
"We'll be getting off soon."
"Okay," Yuffie said distractedly, rubbing
her eyes. Then she jerked violently in
surprise. "What?! We're still in the water!"
"Not for long," Vincent answered patiently. "We're coming up on Junon."
Yuffie leaned forward, wincing as her stiff
neck gave a loud protest, and squinted into the distance. She could just make out the now expanded
city of Junon Harbor in the near distance even through the pouring rain, which
had apparently refused to let up in the time she had been drowsing. The lights of "Upper Junon" pulsated
brightly like a beacon in the darkness for weary souls like Vincent Valentine
and Yuffie Kisaragi to latch onto. The
equally bright but fewer lights of "Lower Junon" hid humbly but respectfully
underneath their superior, a child prodigy that dreamed of grandeur and knew
that it would have it one day.
Yuffie had never seen a more beautiful sight
in her entire life...besides the little light bulb in that room in that deep sea
complex or whatever they called the place she had Vincent had just escaped from.
Ten minutes later, the jet ski named Black
Stinger plowed up on the sand of Junon's narrow beach, and the two world weary
travelers shakily disembarked, forsaking the vessel that hadn't failed or
betrayed them once in their strenuous journey overseas. Meekly and dejectedly it sat there on the
beach, watching wistfully as its passengers climbed up into the city of
lights. It sat there all alone until
the ocean mother, whose perfume Yuffie loved but whose waves and children
sickened her, extended its tendrils of tides and claimed the jet ski named
Black Stinger as one of her own, its boldly painted black and yellow surface
sinking meekly beneath the watery terrain of the ocean, never to be seen again.
Then the beach was deserted.
Author's Note: This was sort of hard chapter
to write. I'm not very good with battle
scenes. I always feel like I'm leaving
out something, but I guess this chapter turned out okay. Comments welcome, as always. Email catalina2717@go.com
