Little Angel, Don't Cry

Little Angel, Don’t Cry

VVL69: I’m trying something new today, since I’m in the updating style right now. I’m on a Vivi kick, so here’s a new one: Vivi and a certain ex-Turk whose initials happen to be V.V.
Vivi: *Snuggling* On with the show!

~

Chapter One

~

The sun dipped down into the horizon, limning towering buildings--and the clouds they raped apart--with crimson light.

Crouching, a man in a long scarlet cloak looked over something he’d found. It was a boy…or at least, he thought it was a boy. He wasn’t quite sure. He lifted the small, pitiful figure into his arms and scanned his body for the death’s blow. What had killed him?

‘I want him,’ a demonic voice inside the man whispered. ‘I want to devour him.’

The man shook his head. “No, Chaos. You cannot have him,” he said softly.

‘Foolish manling. You cannot stop me from taking what I want.’

“I can stop you from taking this boy. He doesn’t look alive, but perhaps there is a chance I can revive him.” Vincent snarled. He looked down at the boy—clad in a long blue jacket, gauntlets, vertically striped pants, small red boots and gloves, he was like nothing Vincent had ever seen.

He was also headless.

“You poor thing,” Vincent sighed and set the boy into his lap. He stroked his fingers over the torn flaps of cloth encircling the boy’s neck, which looked as though it had been coated in oil, it was so black . . . “It looks as though I won’t be able to do a thing,” he regretted. “But where’s his head . . . ?”

“Here,” a voice said from behind him. “Sir, he’s dead . . . General Sephiroth killed him.” The young SOLDIER held out a large, floppy hat enclosing a small white head. From the hat he pulled numerous dressmaker’s pins, and the boy’s head sank to the ground of the scrap yard in a heap of blond hair.

Vincent reached out and lifted the head into his hands, gazing at the boy’s dull, blank eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry you had to suffer so much.” One of the elliptical eyes had been blown apart with little shards of amber . . . or had the eye been made of amber? The other one was closed, and Vincent pulled back the eyelid gently to see an oval of golden stone. “He reminds me of the myths I’ve heard about . . . the Black Mage . . . ”

Turning over the boy’s head, Vincent discovered an arcane symbol etched into the base of his skull, along with four Roman numerals. “Emet, and twelve . . . or, VIVI. This isn’t a boy, it’s a golem . . . so it looks like you won’t have anything to do with this,” he said to Chaos.

‘It appears not,’ Chaos agreed sulkily.

Vincent turned to the SOLDIER. “Help me transport him to the castle. I can repair him with Hojo’s equipment . . . and I’m sure I have a Materia orb I can use to revive him.”

~

“Now . . . ” Vincent opened the door to the basement laboratory, stepping in. The SOLDIER followed slowly, looking around, and set Vincent’s ward on the table.

“Can I go now?” he asked fearfully.

“Of course,” Vincent confirmed. He didn’t turn as the SOLDIER ran out of the room and up the stairs. “I wonder who made you,” he considered aloud, stroking the golem’s blond curls. It was probably some forgotten dollmaker who had decided he needed some company. A recluse, perhaps.

Vincent looked down at the golem, lying on what the ex-Turk remembered as Hojo’s table of pain. Now, however, it would be used for the purpose of good . . . “I don’t know what your name is . . . but you look like an angel . . . ” Gently, he stroked his fingers through the doll’s hair again. The amber eyes--or what remained of them--glistened with wetness . . .

“A doll that cries . . . It’s all right, little angel,” he soothed. “Don’t cry.” He noticed a glittering to his left, from the corner of his eye; turning, he knelt to lift the object into his hands. “Sense Materia. This will do for his eyes.”

The shards of the golem’s destroyed eye glimmered as he tried to remove them without success. “Damn. Are they stuck in there?” He turned the head over and peered at a fine row of black stitches. “Well, it looks like I’ll have to remove the top of his head to get these out.”

Holding the head in one hand, Vincent sat in a nearby chair and began clipping the small stitches open, then raveled them completely out, and the doll’s scalp slid to the floor. Vincent was left looking into its head, finding small tubes and wires inside, coiled around a central chamber. “Now,” Vincent said thoughtfully, “this is where I can put the Revive Materia . . . they say if you split a Materia in half, it will create energy around itself--like splitting an atom. And the Materia’s energy lasts longer than whatever he was made with . . . unless he’s a necrotic golem, in which case he was made with blood and flesh . . . ” He looked down into the chasm in the doll’s head and nodded, rising and setting the head down in the chair.

From faraway, he heard a voice crying, but clouded as if through water.

*Sniff . . . Sniff . . . *

“Wh . . . Who’s there?” Vincent whirled around. “And why are you in the same dimension as Chaos?”

‘There is a boy here, manling.’

Vincent nodded. “I thought as much.” Carefully, he lifted the doll’s head and stared into the cracked surface of its left eye. “Are you in there, little one? Can you hear me?”

*Sniff.* ‘Where am I? Who’s talking?’

“What can you remember?” Vincent asked the golem.

‘I r-remember . . . getting angry . . . and Kuja, he . . . he . . . ’ The small, shaky voice paused, gulped, and then began again. ‘Th-there’s a monster with me . . . lots of monsters . . . are they gonna eat me . . . ?’

“No,” Vincent assured. “You’re like them. They don’t eat each other, so they won’t eat you.” He reached into the doll’s head and pulled out two circular amber disks, one blown out through the middle. “There they are. I’m going to repair you,” he said with conviction. “But who is Kuja?”

‘He’s my m-master,’ the voice whispered. ‘I can help you fix me if you want. What are you going to use?’

“Materia,” Vincent said in response, “but I don’t know how to break it . . . I’m going to need help . . . ”

‘I can break it.’ From the table, the golem’s body rose and stretched out a hand. ‘Give it to me.’ As Vincent set the Sense Materia into its hand, the golem lifted its other hand and suddenly slammed the two together, shattering the air with a vicious crack and a burst of white light. ‘There . . . it’s done,’ the little voice said. ‘It hurts to be so strong . . . but Kuja said he had no one else to turn to now. Th-they took him away.’

Vincent gaped at the Materia halves, perfectly split apart. “Well . . . we’re going to find him,” he assured softly. “What does he look like? Do you know who took him?”

‘They were wearing blue. A man with a big sword took Kuja to . . . to the Plate . . . ’ The voice was puzzled. ‘Who are you?’ it wondered.

“My name is Vincent,” the ex-Turk responded. “And yours?”

‘My name’s Vivi . . . I miss my friends . . . And I remember sleeping for a long time, and then Kuja woke me up again . . . and he opened a portal and came here with his dragon, wherever here is . . . They killed his dragon . . . ’ Vivi’s voice was erratic. ‘I wish they hadn’t killed his dragon . . . we might have been able to get away . . . ’

“We’ll fix everything,” Vincent assured. “Right now, you need to rest. I’ll find Kuja . . . and then we can figure out how to repair you.”

‘Alright.’

~

VVL69: More to come.