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Vash: (starts to cry) "My...my donut..."
GMHY: "Oh, sorry." (gives him another)
Vash: "This is really good! Dunkin dunkin! GMHY doesn't own FFVII!"
GMHY: "Good job!"
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Optional Characters
By Great Materia Hunter Yuffie
Chapter 1: "Materia Hunter"
The greatest ninja alive, aka Yuffie Kisaragi, had one mission and one mission only - to find and 'accumulate' (through various 'machinations') the most wonderful materia on the Planet. Once 'accumulated,' that materia would help Wutai overthrow the ShinRa Electric Power Company to become a great warring nation once again.
Unfortunately, Meteor and AVALANCHE already pretty much overthrew freaking ShinRa.
And after two years free of ShinRa, Wutai was still a freaking tourist trap.
Two years ago, Meteor fell on all of ShinRa's stuff in Midgar and the whole Planet went through a great depression. Gil was worth nil, or at least worth less than a peso. Without ShinRa to be their government, people went back to bartering for things. Wutai was taking advantage of things by supplying necessities to other countries for items and services. No one in Wutai except for Yuffie was even interested in abandoning the tourism trade or increasing the military because it didn't seem necessary. Everyone in the world was still just trying to rebuild their lives to some semblance of normalcy.
That wasn't good enough for Yuffie. She would never rest until she saw Wutai become the great nation it once was. Having powerful materia was the best way to go about it.
Everyone who knew anything knew that AVALANCHE had the best materia in the world. This was why Yuffie was going to steal AVALANCHE's Huge Materia from Cosmo Canyon!
Yuffie was a fun-loving eighteen-year-old materia hunter/thief/ninja who loved to fight. She wore a green turtleneck without sleeves, an armor piece on her left shoulder with a long sleeve/shield that ran down the length of her arm. She had tan shorts, armored leggings on her left leg and orange tennis shoes that screamed 'teenager.' She had short black hair and gray eyes and carried a shuriken with her at all times in case she came upon some hapless traveler with too much gil on his hands.
Yuffie Kisaragi was also short, which explains why she was perched on a giant tree south of Cosmo Canyon. She was staring at the town through binoculars with her legs folded nimbly around a thick branch, humming the latest pop song softly to herself.
The plan would be dangerous, but that was no problem for the Great Ninja Yuffie.
Yuffie made a face, scanning the perimeter of the town and spotting a great deal more guards than she'd envisioned.
Well, not too much of a problem. She was really, really good at sneaking around.
The real danger in infiltrating Cosmo Canyon, she knew after buying some bozos drinks at Gongaga, was not the guards. Leviathan knew that she was good enough to take down a bunch of crappy guards. Unfortunately Red XIII, a member of AVALANCHE, was guarding the canyon as well. She would have to avoid him at all costs if she wanted to get at the Huge Materia.
Yuffie had very little info on Red XIII. All she knew was that he was a giant lion or something that talked and used hair clips as weapons. Sounded easy enough to her, if she ever had to fight him, but the ninja was most afraid that the entire powerful AVALANCHE crew would come down on her butt if they ever figured out who stole their Huge Materia. Better to just remain anonymous.
"What they won't know won't hurt them..." she made up new words to the pop song that was stuck in her head.
She did a flip down to the ground, startling her blue chocobo, who warked uncomfortably.
"Sorry, Chubs," Yuffie cooed at him. She had stolen him from Choco Billy's a few years back, and he'd been her loyal companion ever since.
Chubs pecked a little at the ground as Yuffie petted him. "Well, are we gonna go steal the materia or what"
The chocobo merely stared at her for a second. Yuffie grinned, ruffling his cerulean feathers. "Why am I talking to a fatty like you, anyway"
She put the binoculars in a side pack and mounted swiftly, kicking her mount in the ribs and whooping a war cry. Chubs warked and slowly began to shuffle towards Cosmo Canyon.
"You always go so slow!" Yuffie complained. "Hurry up, you freaking chubby beast"
Chubs meandered into a more ground-eating gait and Yuffie settled back comfortably. Smirking, she rubbed her palms on her muddy boots and wiped her face with them. She wiped her boots the same way on her clothes and Chubs as well.
"Sorry I'm gettin' you all dirty, Chubs, but this is all a part of my master plan." Yuffie shifted her clothes around haphazardly and made her best 'sad and in bad straits' faces, then nodded happily.
"They don't know what they're in for."
The guard stationed at the opening of Cosmo Canyon was having a relatively uneventful evening when he heard a pitiful warking sound coming out of the darkness not pierced by the Cosmo Candle. He took a hesitant step forward and jumped when a blue chocobo with a large bundle on its back stumbled into the firelight. The bundle fell off his back with a heavy thump.
The warrior made his way toward the bundle and poked it with a spear butt. He jumped when a thin arm emerged from the bundle and clawed the air in a very dramatic way.
"Help...I need...help..." the bundle moaned plaintively.
"Who are you" the guard demanded, somewhat uncertainly.
A black-haired and dirt-covered face poked out of the bundle of wrappings along with the arm. "I'm just a traveler. Me and my chocobo haven't had food in days. Please, can we stay here"
The warrior shrugged. "That's fine. Cosmo Canyon is open to all peaceful visitors. If you'd just follow me, I'm sure that we can find you some room at an inn."
The man walked off, not looking back to see if she would follow. Yuffie sat up indignantly and looked at Chubs. "I didn't think they'd be so friendly."
Chubs didn't answer and looked mildly bored with the proceedings. He looked at a shrub, trying to decide whether it was enough like a mimmet green to eat. Yuffie glanced back and forth from the chocobo to the rather inviting bonfire in the center of the town.
"Well, whatever"
She jumped to her feet, grabbed the chocobo's reins, and followed the man toward the warmth of Cosmo Canyon.
The strange man felt himself come back to consciousness. He did not open his eyes, but he felt the awareness of extremities and attentiveness to his mental processes that were not present during his sleep.
He smelled decaying things, wood and bones, damp walls and insects. Things scuttled around the small room, probably rats, and water dripped steadily from some forgotten faucet.
Years and years locked in a coffin.
He thought about that for a moment.
Well, maybe not locked.
It probably wasn't locked. Hojo would have enjoyed that kind of irony. That the strange man could just kick open the lid of the coffin and walk out of the mansion forever without any kind of restraint. Quite ironic.
Of course, if that were that simple, he would have left years ago. But locks were not what kept him ensnared in the pit.
His thoughts shifted and he considered the dark patterns of his dreams. They were nightmares, but he had long since lost all fear of them. He knew what the real nightmare was...and it was not found during sleep.
Chaos seemed to stretch in his skull, clawing his frontal lobes comfortably like a cat. The strange man's right hand twitched.
Did you have a restful nap? it inquired, its inhuman voice rasping and sarcastic. We wouldn't want you to get sick.
The strange man tried for the thousandth time to ignore the demon.
Your dreams were interesting...they have been different lately, Chaos resumed, not troubled by the lack of conversation. It has been two years since the end of the world. I am so amused that you are still down in this godforsaken basement. Everyone that you've ever known is either senile or dead. Why do you continue this idiotic, dramatic penance of yours?
The strange man felt himself drifting back to sleep.
I do not know why. I cannot seem to make myself move, the strange man answered.
The strange man opened his eyes for the first time in years. There was no light to see with, nothing to prove that his eyes were open, except for the languid air drifting between his spread eyelashes.
I know why. The dark force seemed to grin inside the strange man's eye sockets.
This conversation between the two dread apparitions had ensued before, hundreds of times before. Chaos had always been a part of him, it seemed. The strange man remembered that first and horrible waking, and feeling Chaos inside his mind, toying with his brain. Where Hojo had found the essence of Chaos, why he had placed it inside the strange man's brain, and what it was meant to accomplish - these motivations of Hojo's were not to be exposed, or even thought about too often. What was left was the reality of the situation, or more the unreality - as was said before, he was more or less trapped inside a coffin in a secret laboratory in the basement of a haunted mansion.
And he had no way, or more precisely, no desire to attempt escape.
It might have been Hojo's doing, but there was something that kept the strange man inside the coffin, just as surely as if he were restrained by steel.
The memory of a weak-willed woman!
The strange man closed his eyes against Chaos' malignant laughter and let the nightmares take him once again.
AN: Well, thanks a lot for reading the first chapter! I appreciate it. If you could review and tell me what you think, I would appreciate that, too. But of course, you don't have to. Only on an "I must review!" sort of basis. I don't believe in commanding reviews out of people. Just remember that this story is supposed to be what would happen if Yuffie and Vincent were never found by Cloud and the gang during FFVII, so both of them don't know anyone from AVALANCHE. And have fun with the rest of it.