Disclaimer: Game, not mine. Characters, not mine. Words, mine.

Reen's ramblings: First FF7 fic. XD Not a Vincent/Yuffie although I'm seriously starting to like the pairing. But it does feature the two of them, so…yeah.

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"HEY VINNIE! WAIT UP, WILL YA?!"

Vincent Valentine could feel his left eye give the slightest twitch at being called by such a ridiculous nickname. Before he joined this eccentric group of AVALANCHE, he was simply called Vincent, or Valentine more often. As of now, he was getting used to being addressed by anyone at all. Being locked up in a stuffy coffin, drifting in a fitful sleep for years had certainly rusted his social skills. (Not that he had any to begin with…)

Perhaps being asleep had rusted his other skills as well, particularly his skills in evading persons or objects he didn't like. Ever since he started traveling with Cloud and the others, he had not been able to shake off the noisy young ninja who seemed to be always following him at his heels.

"SHEESH VIN-VIN! ARE YOU DEAF? CAN'T YOU HEAR ME?! I SAID WAIT UP, YOU ARROGANT SON OF A—"

Her yell was thankfully cut off, and he heard a slight "oomph" as she probably tripped. Now the twitch seemed to be in his right eye. Going back to his earlier train of thought, he never had a nickname before. Not until he met Yuffie Kisaragi, that is. Now he had tons of them—from Vinnie, to Vin-vin, to Vince, Vincy, Vinch, Vampy, Vamp Boy, and his least favorite of all: Cupid.

"I gotta call you that once in a while you know, with a surname like that!" she told him mirthfully one time. She then proceeded to call him by that ludicrous nickname for the entire day.

"Like a regular ray of sunshine, eh?" Cid said to the seemingly unperturbed but extremely annoyed Vincent who sat brooding far away from the campfire (and from Yuffie) when the night fell.

Vincent was inclined to disagree strongly. Yuffie was not merely a ray of sunshine.

She was a windowful of eye-blinding sunlight that came into one's life because the blinds in your room fell off.

Her "oomph" was followed by an outraged shriek, and then a string of colorful words that made Vincent stop in his tracks. He shook his head. He just knew the ninja had been hanging out with the pilot too much sometimes. He watched as Yuffie dusted herself off and skipped—skipped—almost merrily towards him.

"About time you waited for me," she panted. "I knew you could hear me, you jerk. With the way I was yelling, heck, even Cloud an' Tifa and everyone else probably heard me and they're like miles away."

He sighed. "Tell me something, Kisaragi—"

"It's Yuffie!" she yelled, stomping her foot on the ground. "I DON'T like being called by my last name!"

As I do not like being called by a thousand absurd nicknames, Vincent countered in his mind.

"It sounds so formal and elderly, yeech," Yuffie continued. "I mean, I know you're old, but you're not THAT old y'know. And I NEVER call you Valentine."

But you call me Cupid instead.

"Anyway, you were gonna ask me something, Vinnie?"

Back to that nickname. Vincent sighed again, this time inwardly. He disliked it almost as much as he disliked being called Cupid. Make him sound like a poodle, why don't you. "Why do you insist on traveling with me if you constantly have to strive to catch up with my stride?"

"Do you really want to know?" Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and opted instead to rub the bridge of his nose with his human hand. Without answering her question, he resumed walking again. To his slight dismay, she seemed to have regained her energy back in…oh, five seconds, maybe, and was matching his pace with no problem at all.

"Do you reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally wanna know?" Yuffie persisted. "C'mon Vince! Do you wanna know? Do you do you do you?"

Vincent began walking faster. Unperturbed, Yuffie jogged to keep up with him. "HEY! Do you really really reaaaaaaaaally reallyreally want to know?"

He slowed down again, giving up with an audible sigh of exasperation. She took it as a sigh of resignation. "Okay, I'll tell you then!" she chirped.

By Jenova, this girl was absolutely unstoppable. He faced her and raised an eyebrow to show her he was listening. They may be wasting time, but for his peace of mind, maybe it would be better to let Yuffie say whatever she has to say right now and maybe earn him a few minutes of silence later than to have her continuously chattering at his ear as they went on their way.

"See, it's like this," she said, talking excitedly. "I get bored easily, and to keep myself from falling asleep on my feet from boredom while going with you guys is to annoy you all. Cloud is the worst to annoy because he takes everything I say seriously. Either that or he's real slow. Gawd, he wouldn't know what a joke was even if it was dancing in front of him disguised as Barret wearing a sailor suit. Tifa, I can't really annoy her 'cause we're both girls, and whenever I talk to her we end up sharing, you know, secret stuff, and I guess it'd be the same with Aeris if she's still here," here Yuffie paused for awhile, looking wistful, before plunging ahead again. "Although Tifa DOES get annoyed sometimes when I tease her 'bout Cloud too much. Barret gets annoyed easily, an' so does Cid, and then I sort of lose interest in annoying them because they're already annoyed so that's no fun plus they start cursing me to high heavens; and Red's a bit like Cloud 'cause he's so serious but he gets mad when I tease him about his age and his love life; and with Cait Sith, I'd feel pretty stupid trying to pick a fight with a stuffed animal and I guess I'd rather annoy the real person but Reeve is in Midgar so…" she stopped and took a deep breath. "There."

Vincent frowned. "That doesn't explain at all why you are always with me."

Yuffie waved a hand dismissively. "Oh well you, you know, YOU'RE the most interesting one because you're the hardest to annoy but I know you DO get annoyed but it takes me a long, long time to get you in your annoyed state so with you I'm never bored." She glanced at a glowing red orb fixed snugly at a slot of his Death Penalty with an almost hungry look in her eyes. "Of course, not to mention that you have the Knights of the Round materia with you. Hehehe."

He fixed her with a look. Which, being Vincent, didn't vary much from his usual stoic facial expression at all.

She gave him an innocent smile—which, being Yuffie, didn't look innocent at all. "Oh, I'm not gonna steal it from you, you know. I'll just wait until you master it before begging you for it. Isn't that nice of me?"

They had to cut through a forest, encountering several of those annoying frogs. Yuffie went on talking, not missing a beat, and barely even noticing her companion get turned into a frog and back again during the brief fight. "Y'know, I have another reason why I annoy you, but it's sort of silly."

Vincent merely grunted in reply as he shot the last of the frogs dead. He knew by now that whether he said anything or not, she would still go on talking anyway. Maybe the girl loves the sound of her voice. Or something.

"I was hoping I could make you smile, sort of."

He stopped and blinked. "What?"

"Yeah, you know, I don't think I've seen you smile before, even just a LITTLE. If your mouth isn't set in a line, it's formed into a frown instead. Y'know? You're kinda creepy that way. The others, I mean like Barret, they get mad at me but they laugh at me too." She paused. "Which makes me kinda mad, 'cause it's not my fault I have a poor sense of balance, but in a way it's okay because I made them laugh. Even though it's at my expense."

"That…" he seemed to be struggling with his words, "…is nice of you."

"WOW, a compliment?! From you? Stop, you're making me blush." She grinned sardonically.

His mouth turned downwards, brows furrowed.

She rolled her eyes. "It was a joke, Vinnie, a JOKE. Gawd, you're almost as bad as Cloud." They stared at each other, and Yuffie sighed. "Never mind."

It was her who resumed walking this time, surprisingly. "Lemme tell you something, Vampy," she went on as they walked. "I know you're still mooning over that Lucrecia-whatsherface." She missed his glare. Or maybe she chose to ignore it. "But y'know what…looking at Cloud, an' Cid, an' Barret an' Tifa and everyone, really, not just you, kinda makes me realize we all have majorly messed-up pasts. Yeah, even my childhood ain't so happy either y'know. I'm not saying we should forget our pasts or something like that, but I was just thinkin' we should turn our backs on 'em and face the future."

Now his mouth would've dropped open, but it had a reputation to keep. The ninja just never failed to surprise him. It made him…glad, to know that the young girl was not as shallow as he first thought she was after all. He turned away from her before she could see the small smile playingon his lips.

Vincent saw Yuffie move from the corner of his eye, and he jumped to one side to evade her hand.

"AAAAAAAAWWW!" she whined. "I thought you had your guard down. Darn, I almost got that stupid summon."

He raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. "And I thought you weren't going to steal anymore."

She gave him another "innocent" smile. "Yeah, well, just thought I'd try. My stealing skills are getting rusty."

"Try and try, you will never steal this from me," he muttered, placing a hand over the holster of his gun. He glanced at the sky. It was getting darker. This trip had been longer than he expected. He wondered if they will ever reach their destination on time.

"There are other ways to get that from you, y'know," she said cheekily. "I could seduce you and you'd fall for me and we'll get married and we'd go live in Wutai and we'll have a dozen brats and I'd be ordering you around by then and THEN I can get the materia from you…Vincent? Hey, Vinnie? Are you okay? Why is your face turning red? Okay now it's green…do you need a laxative or something?"

Fin.