Vincent kept slumping against the window, until it turned into siding. He kept sliding until he landed on the floor. "I need help up."

"What the fuck?" Dr. Kaines said aloud, hearing some banging sounds from the ceiling. "They’re coming out of the woodwork—Ahhh!"

The ventilation panel fell from the ceiling with a crash. "Hey, there are sirens outside, hurry up!"

"The fuck?" Dr. Kaines yelled.

"Yuffie! What took you?" Cloud yelled. "Here, give us a hand." Cloud helped Vincent stand and Barret lifted him up into the duct. "Come on, guys."

"Since when can you do that?" the doctor yelled.

"Since always," Reeve said, climbing up. "I worked for the guys who invented these."

"Wait up, I’m not as young as I used to be," Cid yelled.

"This is fucking ridiculous!"

Cid’s feet disappeared into the ceiling and the doctor could hear them yelling about who was going which direction and stepped on who’s hand.

* * * * *

"Fucking hell, Vincent, what happened? You look like shit and you’re about to keel over."

"I’ll be fi—" Vincent said, interrupted as he slipped, falling face first on the floor of the duct. He pulled himself of and dragged himself forward. "Where’d the others go?"

"They’re getting’ themselves out and watching our backs."

"So where are we going?"

"Roof."

"Cid, I think we’re going in circles."

"Then we go this way. All we need to do is keep going up."

There was another thud as Vincent tripped again. He was beginning to wish that at least one of his friends could plan something more elaborate than ‘Run in circles,’ ‘Watch people,’ or ‘blow up/kill [insert noun here.]’

* * * * *

"You’re a doctor, I thought you’d be able to do this, yourself."

"I am a professor of mental health. Ow. Watch it!" Dr. Kaines yelled at the police flunkie bandaging his shoulder.

"Told you, Lenny," his friend said.

"Shut up Carl."

"Wait, lemme get this straight," a third guy said. "You’re a professor of mental health, and you say five people broke in and let an alien out through the ducts."

"Check the damn cameras! I can get the test results, a copy of the tape from the hospital he crashed into! I’ll prove to you what he is!"

"And that would be…?" Lenny asked.

"Well, technically, we haven’t really identified him as anything specific…"

"So they took off with your unidentified alien," Steve said.

"He’s a UFO?" Lenny asked.

"Dummy! That’s a spaceship!"

"Carl!" Steve yelled.

"A spaceship? Cool!"

"Lenny!" Steve yelled.

Dr. Kaines sighed and tapped his fingers on his forehead with his right hand. His left one was in a sling and useless. "Please tell me you have a superior officer I can talk to."

"So what’s so bad about him being a space… thingy?" Lenny asked.

"Didn’t you hear about the last two things? Were you born yesterday?"

"I heard one of them was hot," Lenny commented.

"She was not!" Carl said.

"She was too! Wait, shut up!" Steve said.

"So what did happen?" Lenny asked.

"You don’t know?" Carl asked.

"Hey, it’s not like I was there!" Lenny yelled.

"If you are through!" Dr. Kaines yelled. "One summoned Meteor and the other summoned the Weapons."

"Maybe we’re out of things to summon," Lenny said.

"Yeah, that’s gonna make everything safer," Carl said.

"I am surrounded by morons!" Dr. Kaines screamed.

"You work at a mental hospital, I thought you’d be used to it."

* * * * *

"Okay, so I took a shortcut, come on, we’re at the roof," Cid said.

After a few tries, Vincent managed to haul himself out of the duct. Standing was another thing entirely.

"Shit, don’t bother!" Cid hit the roof as a searchlight passed over them. "Fuck!"

Vincent stood up when the searchlight had passed, leaning heavily on the Death Penalty. He took a few wobbling steps and fell, catching himself on the side of some shed-like thing.

He leaned over and looked down at the streets. "I didn’t know it was night." All he could really see were a few flashing lights. He could hear yelling down on the streets. Vincent wondered what to do to the other voices in his head. The demons each gave a mental equivalent of a shrug and ran off to another part of his mind.

"Hey!" Cid yelled, running up to Vincent. He had noticed Vincent was slipping forward, and Vincent hadn’t.

He grabbed Vincent back so hard they both fell backwards on the roof, avoiding another searchlight.

"I could shoot someone if you held me up," Vincent said.

Cid was thankful he’d left Nanaki on the plane. First, he’d never had made it trying to carry both of them during the jump; second, he needed help to pry Vincent off. Vincent, once he’d grabbed onto Cid, refused to let go, despite Cid’s constant swearing and squirming.

In the end it took Nanaki, Cid, and two crewmen to pull Vincent—along with one of Cid’s shoes—off.

Nanaki had said he’d probably be more help with Vincent emotionally than with breaking him out and he’d been correct in his judgement, though the execution turned out not to be what he’d expected.

Vincent just watched the mental hospital disappear into blackness and then clouds. The two crewmembers watched him for a while, then decided he wasn’t going to jump—or talk—anytime soon, so they left to get out of the cold.

Vincent seemed to desire an electric blanket or a teddy bear more than someone to talk with and would understand what’d he’d been through. Not that Nanaki minded in the least; he was happy to be in Vincent’s lap and have his ears scratched.

Vincent was dealing with the sudden transition of not only ‘airplane’ from ‘plastic padded box’ but also ‘person’ from ‘thing,’ and needed the time to clear his head.

Eventually, after Nanaki had to drag him inside and away from the cold, Vincent was talking again.

He thanked Nanaki and any crewmember that walked by his little corner, and later started having a conversation.

Even the crewmembers had been informed of the demons in Vincent’s head. They all knew him well, but every time he spoke to someone who they couldn’t see, they found themselves hurrying to the door.

* * * * *

At first, Hojo had just tried to experiment on the affects of injecting him with Mako everyday to test the healing affects. Hojo had assumed Vincent would turn into some vegetable from it all, but since it was over a long period of time, Hojo found that his body merely got used to the stuff. Unfortunately, Hojo had been quite pleased with the healing process and Vincent had the bad luck of someone throwing away the remains of a robot in the professor’s trash. He’d been anesthetized on the operating table and woken up with the skin on his arm removed an ugly and crude metal casing in it’s place.

Dizzy from the drugs and having no idea what Hojo had in his twisted mind, he had started screaming and banging on it, trying to get it off. He soon learned three things: first, it didn’t come off, second, only his skin had been replaced. It moved the way he wanted it to, and he could feel it when he hit it. Third, banging on thick metal was painful on his hand.

Vincent was apparently in for a long streak of bad luck. The hand had given Hojo more ideas. Apparently, he had wanted Vincent to go insane in some way or another. Plus, he had been rather angry when he found Vincent kept himself busy by scratching thing all over the laboratory walls, including some profanity and limericks aimed at him.

Hojo would find out that experiments in possession or bodies with multiple minds, not mere schizophrenia, would be complete failures—much to Vincent’s misfortune. The demons refused to cooperate and Hojo never assumed better treatment of them or their host would improve relations. At first, Vincent would huddle in a corner every time he heard a voice in his head, but eventually, he got used to them. The demons weren’t too interested in using his body because they were connected to his limit breaks and they weren’t too happy to be bruised and injured just for five seconds, most of which consisted of smacking someone hard on the head. They strangely preferred the body they shared with Vincent to be well and not to be out at all.

They were content with experiencing things through Vincent’s senses and watching his feelings and any memories Vincent brought up.

Hojo was extremely pissed off at them and it was mutual. Hojo hated the fact that he’d gone through so much work and bothered not to kill Vincent in the first place to have creatures that weren’t interested in smashing their way through electric fences and eating the population of small villages. Chaos would give him the finger, Galian would sit there and scratch, everyone else would glare, and Hojo would take it out on Vincent by throwing things at him—the reason for the headband were the many scars from Hojo improving his aim.

* * * * *

"It’s cold," Vincent said, still petting Nanaki, who put his head in Vincent’s lap for both of their comfort.

"You were outside in thin clothes and no socks for two hours."

"It’s been cold for longer than that." Galian asked.

"I’m sorry, Vincent." Chaos said. He’d been saying that a lot lately.

"It’s okay. It’s not your fault," Vincent said, too shaken to realize he was talking out loud.

Nanaki was used to it. The way Vincent would zone out indicated when he was talking to the things in his head.

"You didn’t know this would happen when you took me there."

"Took you where?" Nanaki asked.

"I was fine until I got… I had… what was it?"

"Appendicitis." Vincent still had the occasional slip up by speaking out loud to the demons, but he never forgot that no one else could hear them. "It hurt so much I… I hit my limit break and I let Chaos take over. He flew me into the hospital. He’s always had a problem with doors, so he went through a window, he said."

Chaos shrugged. Doors were for when you want to be polite in his opinion and any time Vincent was in pain enough to morph, it wasn’t the time for being polite.

"I shifted and asked for help. I told them I’d even pay for the window. I passed out during the blood test and I woke up in… in quarantine and there were armed guards at the door. They wouldn’t explain anything to me for the longest time, and when they did, all they said was that I wasn’t human and that they couldn’t have me running around loose. They wouldn’t give me morphine for the pain; they wouldn’t let me out. They wouldn’t… They wouldn’t let me call anyone. They… They just acted like I was some sort of thing. They stuck me where they put the real dangerous people because they didn’t have anywhere else to put me."

"I hate boxes," Galian commented. "Especially that one. Too small. Smelled weird, too."

"No privacy." Hellmasker complained as Vincent remembered he had to ask to be escorted out of the room and to a tiny bathroom with a curtain instead of a door.

"Book was boring," Giga said, deciding to add his own comments.

"I never saw anyone except the doctors and the nurses and the armed guards."

"You’re out, Vincent," Nanaki said. "We’re going to keep you out as best we can. Yuffie’s going to send some clothes for you soon. The others went back home and are laying low."

"Thank you."

"Gratitude isn’t necessary."

Vincent kept petting Nanaki and didn’t say anything. Not to Nanaki. "I feel sick."

"We told you to eat," Galian said.

"They were about the force feed you with that syringe again," Hellmasker said.

"You’re out, though. What’s wrong?" Chaos asked.

"But I like Nanaki. He’s soft and warm," Galian said.

"You could talk to the crew, instead." Giga suggested immediately.

"He could talk to ONE of the crew," Hellmasker corrected.

"Why?" Chaos asked.

Before Vincent got into a mental debate on the protocol of being rescued from a mental institution, Nanaki licked his face. "You’re rather dirty. You’re covered in sweat and the ducts apparently haven’t been cleaned in years. I smell crayons on you, too."

"Don’t lick me."

"I was cleaning you. It’s affectionate in my species. There are showers on the ship if you want."

"That sounds like a good idea."

* * * * *

Vincent spent the entire plane ride in the shower. He loved warm showers. He could forget about anything and everything. He could forget about Hojo. He could forget about battles. He could forget about Sephiroth. He could forget about mental institutions. He could even forget about not being human—the doctors had verified his DNA didn’t match anything they’d ever seen before. There were only two things he couldn’t forget about: Lucrecia and Cid.

For those he needed cold showers.

His mind wasn’t ready to go there, though. He wasn’t ready to think of a lot of things, including why the plane was landing. He couldn’t stay in the shower forever and it would either get cold or turned off.

Almost regretfully, Vincent put his clothes on as he toweled his hair off. He wasn’t about to wander around naked, but he hated the clothes. The white clothes weren’t much for warmth and less for dignity. The shirt velcroed closed at the front and at the sleeves, the pants at the fly. The doctors and nurses needed to be able to strip his clothes off when they wanted, and they hadn’t even given him any underwear.

* * * * *

The crew stayed on the ship and went to sleep in their quarters and bid him good luck as Cid lead him out.

"Ya can’t stay in the plane. We can’t stay in the air forever and it’d look suspicious."

"But what if someone in Rocket… um, Town sees us."

"The crew is half the population, Vince. The other half sells them groceries or looks after their kids."

"Sounds inbred," Nanaki commented.

"But—" Vincent started.

"Cid, you could’ve called!" someone whispered.

Vincent turned to see Cid had half shoved, half dragged him all the way to the doorway of his house, which Shera was standing in.

"You forgot to take out the trash, too."

"Look, I kinda thought this was more important," Cid said, pulling Vincent into the house and shutting the door.

"Just take it out tomorrow. Do you know how worried I get when you go on these things without calling me?"

"Shera, you had better fucking not turn into my mom on me."

"Oh, and who’s this?" she asked, completely ignoring Cid and noticing Nanaki. She bent down and patted his head. "What a cute… not so little… uh…"

"My name’s Nanaki."

"What a cute little Nanaki. Would Nanaki like a biscuit?"

"Yes. And some tea, please."

"Oh, um, okay. Vincent, would you like anything?" she asked, standing up and preparing a kettle.

"Like…anything…?" Vincent asked, blinking in confusion. He hadn’t heard those words for six months. "I… it’s cold in here."

"How about some cocoa? Tea’ll keep you two up for hours."

"…I can’t remember what cocoa tastes like."

"Oh, you poor thing," Shera said, nearly stomping on Nanaki’s tail.

Vincent winced at the words.

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…Um, what do you like in your cocoa?"

* * * * *

"Hello? Hello? You called me here at one in the morning, this had better be good!" Dr. Kaines screamed down the hallway of the police station.

"Sir!" three people yelled, turning a corner and catching up with him.

"Oh, no. Look. I don’t have time for this. This place has the most indirect instructions I’ve ever heard of and I work at a hospital!"

"It’s about the UFO sir," Lenny said.

"It’s—great. Where is it?"

"We hate to tell you, but—"

"Then don’t. I’m tired. My wife is tired. I have work in the morning."

"This is morning," Steve said.

"This is work," Carl said.

"I meant my work!"

"This is your work sir," Steve said.

"Look, if this is why I’m here, I could’ve just rented The Three Stooges in the morning."

"We can’t find it," Carl said.

"Find what? Why am I here?"

"They all escaped, sir. We’re tracking them down as we speak, but we have yet to locate the terra—your alien. The police would like your help in tracking it down. We’ve seen the videos and none of us can really understand the test results. We’ve got a maximum security cell ready for it."

"Great. I’ve gone from professor of mental health to zookeeper. Technically, that means I’ve been promoted."

"Oh, and sir, you know those people who defeated the last alien?" Carl asked.

"I know of them. I don’t know any of them personally."

"I thought—" Lenny started.

"Don’t. You’ll hurt yourself."

"Seems these were the same people. Including your alien," Steve said. "It also appears they split up in the ducts and escaped several different ways, including the roof and the dumpster. We’re here at your service sir! We’ll inform you of any updates and are prepared to follow your orders."

"My orders? I’m a profess—"

"We know, sir. You told us," Lenny said.

"What am I going to do with just the three of you?"

"Oh, it’s not just us, sir," Steve said. "The other squads are searching the city as we speak. If we find anything we can transport you there immediately in a helicopter."

"Helicopter?"

"Yeah. You know, one of those things with the blades goin’ round and round," Lenny said.

"I know what it is, why would I be—wait, you mean I can use the equipment?"

"We’d rather you left the guns to us, but that’s the gist of it," Carl said.

"You mean I have a budget?"

"Actually, there were some companies interested in sponsoring this project, but they’d rather deal after the sun comes up."

"I’m an independent project?"

"I think he’d nuts," Lenny whispered.

"Sir, you don’t look too well," Steve said.

"Yeah, being half-strangled and shot in the arm’ll do that to you. One of you get me some coffee. I have work to do. Screw maximum security, I wouldn’t put a psychotic dog in there."

"But he shot you in the shoulder. I thought you’d want a trial and—" Carl started.

"Screw that. This is research, men!"

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