Disclaimer: If i owned FVII or VIII, i wouldn't be writing this ;) This fic contains yaoi, violence and swearing. Not suitable to little kiddies (do i have to keep writing this?)
AN: Look! An update! Sorry its been a while. I finally got my computer fixed and then I had to go and pack my journals away. Took me forever to find them, but find them i did and i am now able to update my fics again.
A special thanks goes to my reviewers (and lurkers) who have been waiting patiently for me to update. Your reviews is what keeps me writting, even though its 2 in the morning and i have to work in the morning :)
Chapter 11
Barrett narrowed his eyes at the quivering nurse before him.
"I'm signing out."
"But, but sir, you're not…"
"NOW!"
The young nurse cringed as she raced to find the necessary paperwork. Normally he wouldn't of been so hard on the young thing, she looked barely old enough to of finished school and it was likely to be her first nursing job but at that time he was to pissed off to take pity on the poor girl. Reno. Cloud's little bitch. Barrett's fist clenched up as the smirking face of the red head Turk appeared, taunting him as it had done since he had woken up in the hospital, haunting his dreams as he laughed at the fallen man, night stick raining down with hard, uncaring thuds on the back of his head.
'That little faggot will pay, along with all that he cares for. He'll be screaming for mercy when I'm through with him.'
Rage burnt brightly in his eyes as he signed the release papers, slamming them onto the reception desk and sending the nurse scrambling for the scattered papers. Storming out of the hospital, Barrett flagged down a taxi as he dialled the number to his office.
"Hel…"
"Book me a flight to Earth asap."
"Ah, ok sir… how are you…."
Barrett hung up mid-sentence and hopped into the taxi. Giving the directions to Cloud's house, Barrett lent back in his seat and closed his eyes.
'That little bitch will pay.'
"Hey Reno, Cloud, where you going?" Both men sighed as Yuffie ran up and swung from their shoulders, smiling up at them.
"Nothing. What do you want?" Reno drawled as they picked their way through the crowd, narrowly avoiding a young kid playing chase with his older brothers, laughter ringing out as he dodged the reaching hands and crawled under a stall, causing his mother to shout and wave her soup ladle at the older boys. Yuffie glared and poked her tongue out at the red head.
"Don't be so rude. I just wanted to see what's so interesting about the commander's office that you two feel the need to stare at it all day." Yuffie paused and widen her eyes in humor.
"Spotted some nice young flesh you'd like to try? That Squall dude was hot if you're looking for some bedtime entertainment…"
"Yuffie! Enough! It's nothing like that at all!" Cloud exclaimed, blushing brightly as he scanned the crowds in case someone had overheard. Yuffie snickered.
"I know that. I was just having you on silly. Reno would be too jealous to share you with anyone."
"Damn right!" Reno agreed, smiling as he wrapped his arm around Cloud's shoulder, pulling the blonde in and nearly tripping him up in the process. " But if you're interested…"
"Reno! Yuffie!" Cloud pouted as the two laughed loudly, earning a glare from a passing delegate, muttering about rowdy personal and how unprofessional people were these days. Yuffie poked her tongue out at the balding man before returning her attention to the men beside her. "Stupid porker. Thinks he's god's gift to women. Kept on staring at me during Reeve's last meeting with him. Any way, if looking for a potential bedtime partner is not what you had in mind, what exactly are you doing?"
"Nothing much."
Yuffie snorted.
"Don't lie to me. You don't just stake out a place for the sake of it. You're up to something and I want in."
The two men exchanged looks. Cloud raised an eyebrow as if to ask 'well?'
Reno frowned.
'I guess it won't hurt to tell her. I can trust her not tell anyone with asking first and I get the feeling that we're going to need all the help we can get with this one'
Reno draped his other arm around the young ninja. "Yuffie, how about we find a quiet place to sit down for a while. This is going to be a long story."
"So this Seifer Alamsy kid is really Rufus' son that you hid on Earth when Shinra fell all those years ago? Wow. And no one else knows about this at all? Not even Reeve?"
Reno shook his head as he sipped slowly at his beer. Yuffie sighed as she glanced around the downtrodden pub. The random pub they had found was quiet, with only a few patrons about talking quietly among themselves and deliberately ignoring all those that entered. 'Trust Reno to pick a place like this,' Yuffie thought as she gazed from their position at the back of the pub, silently signalling the bartender to refill her drink. 'Reeve would kill him if he found out that he brought me to an unsavoury place like this'. Yuffie returned her attention to Reno as the bartender placed a fresh glass of beer in front of her and held out his hand for payment, slithering away as soon as the gil touched his hands. Reno watched the man walk away before focusing on his companions, leaning forward to speak again.
"The less who knew the better. I wanted him to have a fresh beginning so I destroyed most of the files that contained anything about Vince in them and told everyone that he had died along side his father when Diamond Weapon attacked Midgar. The fact that there was no body was explained away by saying that he had probably taken a direct hit and disintegrated. Everyone seemed happy with that explanation and he just faded away from everyone's mind."
"But know the trade routes that will be opening up between Gaia and Earth has gotten you worried that he will be found out."
Both men nodded in unison.
"We're trying to get a hold of him, but we can't seem to track him down without calling attention to ourselves," Cloud continued. "The Squall kid is already suspicious and has been digging up files on myself, Reno, Mako – anything that he can get his hands on. It makes trying to find any information about Vince much harder to do, considering that they have let very little out about him at all."
"That would be a good thing though, wouldn't it?"
"For now, but they can't keep him hidden away forever from the world. It's really to hard to tell at the moment. We don't even know what role he plays in Garden and SeeD. One slip and it could be all over for him. If we could find out where he's stationed, we could go from there."
"Well… I could try breaking into the commander's office and looking him up on the system. That's where all the details on the personals involved in this trade meeting are kept. I'll be able to snoop around the office as well and see what this Squall kid has on you guys while I'm at it."
Reno smiled.
"You sure? Security's pretty tight there."
Yuffie scoffed as she waved a hand in front of her, dismissing his concerns.
"I'm in. I'm going to need a distraction…"
The three huddled in close.
Barrett rubbed his hands together in anticipation as he gazed around the living room, nudging the glass door closed with his foot. Pocketing his picklocks (courtesy of Tifa from back when Avalanche had just began), he brushed the creases from his top as he took in his surroundings. He had never been to Cloud's house before, and he walked slowly through the house, fingering a random photo on the cream coloured walls. The photo looked to of been taken the day that Yuffie opened up her first shop, and she gazed excitedly at Barrett, arms wrapped around a smirking Cloud, who was ruffling her hair, just like a couple of kids. In another, Cid was placing his ring upon a beaming Shera, looking slightly out of place with a black tux and with no cigarette hanging from his lips. Reeve smiled as he held up a large barramundi and even Vincent grinned as he stood between Reeve and Reno on the day that Neo-Shinra officially opened its doors.
Barrett ran his gloved fingers across the frames as he walked down the hall.
'Not what I would of expected from these two.'
The end of the hallway brought a choice of 3 doors. The closest door hid the bathroom, the large wall mirror reflecting the shadowy figure of Barrett as he lent inside the darkened room, eyes flitting across the large bathtub and shelves with numerous bottles of lotion, shampoo and shaving cream. Closing the door silently, he reached for the polished wooden door handle in front of him, twisting it open as he gently pushed it open. The flicking of the light switched revealed a large king-size bed sitting in the middle of the room, covered with a dark coloured quilt and two matching pillows, flanked by two wooden bedside tables on each side. A large wooden dresser with an attached mirror sat facing the foot of the bed, a blue t-shirt hanging hazardly from the corner of the mirror and a sleek back phone being the only occupants on the top of the dresser. A built in wardrobe completed the room as Barrett stepped down the small step into Cloud's and Reno's bedroom.
'The bedroom. This is a good enough place as any to start. There must be something in here that I can use against that little punk.'
Making his way to the dresser, he pulled open the top drawer, only to find that it was empty. The second drawer gave the same result, while a quick rummage through the 3rd and 4th drawers revealed clothes that Cloud had deemed unfit to wear on his trip. Shoving a random top back into the draw and slamming it shut, Barrett slid the door on the wardrobe opened, only to be greeted with a similar sight. Barrett spun around and sat heavily on the bed.
'I thought that Reno lived here with Cloud. So where's his stuff?'
Reaching across, Barrett pulled the drawer from it's slot in the bedside table and rested it on his lap as he buried through the contents. A few weapons magazines dedicated to blades landed on the bed beside him, as did the lube (causing Barrett to shudder), and an empty notebook and pen. Barrett smiled as he pulled out the last item, a photo of the gang, taken just after they had defeated Sephiroth, back when they were still a team. Cloud stood in the middle, smiling wearily at the camera as Tifa lent against his shoulder. Yuffie flanked his other side, grinning broadly as she wrapped both her arms around Vincent's metal arm, whom was staring boredly at the camera. Smoke swirled faintly above Cid as he lent against his spear slapping Barrett on the back as Barrett rested his arm on Tifa's shoulder. The machine that made up Cait Sith stood behind Cloud, the toy cat resting his elbows on Cloud's free shoulder.
'Those were good times we had back then.'
Barrett smiled once more at the memory before replacing the items back into the drawer and closing it gently.
'That must be Cloud's side.'
Moving to the other side of the bed, he pulled open the drawer to find… nothing.
"FUCK!" Barrett threw the drawer roughly, sending it spiralling into the mirror, glass shards flying across the top of the dresser and falling onto the wooden floor.
"Fuckin' worthless hunk of crap, the whole lot of it! How the hell am I meant to find anything if there's NOTHING HERE!" Barrett kicked the broken drawer, sending it crashing into the step in front of the door, a white piece of paper fluttering to the ground in its wake.
'What's this? A photo?'
Barrett lent over and picked the photo up, turning it over to see the smiling faces of a younger Reno and Rufus, arms wrapped around a young blonde kid with bright green eyes and an identical smirk to the last president of Shinra.
'Who's the kid?'
Barrett sat back down on the bed, gazing at the photo in his hand.
'The kid, he looks just like the Shinra brat, but I don't recall Rufus ever having a kid from the top of my head. I wonder what happened to him?'
Pocketing the photo, Barrett stretched and quickly made his way out, locking the glass door behind him as he called for another taxi. Giving Shera's address to the smiling taxi driver, Barrett pulled out the photo again and gazed at it as if it could give him the answers to the questions floating in his mind.
Another chapter done! I think that this chapter went well, considering that it's been a while since I could type it out on the computer. Hopefully I shall be able to update quicker now that I've found all my notebooks, and finally got a new motherboard. Remember to read and review :)