Note: Chapter title comes from an American high school student's attempt at conjugating the German verb "babysitten" (to baby-sit) into the past tense. He came to me and asked me which sounded better: "Babygesitten", "Babygesatten", or "gebabysitten". I do not need to be a native German speaker (and I'm not) to be absolutely certain that all three of these are wrong.

Sundance

I: Babygesitten

He wonders briefly if she is listening to him. He doubts it. She doesn't seem to listen to anybody overmuch. She is too bright, too cheerful, too happy and chirping to listen to his morbid thoughts.

And even when she hears, she does not understand.

He wonders why he follows her— and it is him following her, not the other way around, it was never, could never be, the other way around. She is not a following type of person. She is a running person. She is a going-away person.

Going away and going away and maybe someday here to stay.

That is an old song, one from well over thirty-five years ago. So why is she humming it as she leads him through this godforsaken forest? How does she know it? It hasn't been popular since he was a boy, he is sure.

"Are you sure about this?" He asks.

"Come on, Vinnie!" She pauses only long enough to shoot him some sort of look. It is a very teenaged look. It says, what is your problem and are you kidding at the same time. It also says, ha-ha, you're stupid. "Spelunking is fun! You know that!"

He strongly suspects that she is an adrenaline junkie. He has known more than a few in his lifetime. Cloud shows similar symptoms, but at least Cloud is a grown man with a grown man's sense of self control. He doesn't rush off to go snowboarding willy-nilly, without contacting anybody.

If Godo hadn't hired him to make sure Yuffie didn't get herself killed in some ridiculous and embarrassing accident (andwhy him? Vincent wonders every night), Yuffie would likely be dead.

"This is unwise," Vincent tells her. "You have no idea what is in that cave. You're carrying Twin Viper instead of a decent weapon."

She says nothing. She never responds when he tries to warn her.

My life is a hollow lie, Vincent thinks. Of course, he has thought that his life was a hollow lie since he woke from the coffin, but this is even more ridiculously symptomatic of "hollow lie" than usual. He is nothing more than an overgrown babysitter for a bratty ninja he barely knows.

He used to be... Well, he used to be a man. Now he's a broken shell of a man who tails along after an idiot seventeen year old girl. A babysitter; and a bad one at that. After all, it's his fault that she's taken an interest in spelunking. And you could probably trace her burgeoning interest in bungee-jumping and parachuting back to him, as well.

Thank god she hasn't tried it yet. He'll follow her to the ends of the Planet, because he said he would, but he really, really does not want to follow her over a cliff with a cord tied to his ankle. Or out of an airship.

Not that he's afraid of heights. He likes heights. He's jumped out of airships before, and he's jumped off cliffs before. He's done these things both with and without parachutes or bungee cords.

He's supposed to be keeping her safe. And one could argue that jumping out of an airship is not a safe activity, no matter how sure you are that the parachute will open. Neither is jumping off a cliff— no matter how sturdy the bungee cord is.

"At least let me go first."

She says nothing. She is playing the "I've gone temporarily deaf and can't hear a word you say— and even if I could, I wouldn't care, nyuck-nyuck!" game again.

"Why do I bother?"

"Because I'm one hell of a foxy little kunoichi?" He can tell from her voice that she is grinning. "Plus, you promised my dad. And he's paying you."

And they have reached the cave, and she is setting up her cables, and he is making sure that everything is tied tight enough.

And then she rappels down into the darkness, shrieking with exhilaration as she goes. He follows her, wondering what prompted him to introduce her to this sport.