"Tseng!" Rufus exclaimed, seeing the man and his cohorts lounging on the deck.
It was work not to react for Vincent, but he kept himself still as Scarlet and Hiedeger threatened to tear his gilt limb apart if he tried anything. Reeve stood obediently and silently, knowing ignorance for the language would not keep him out of trouble this time.
"Be this mutiny?" Rufus said.
"No." Tseng said, calmly. "We bear you no loyalty, merely your pockets and what be in them."
Elena laughed at the remark, taking it for the euphemism Tseng did not mean.
"However," Tseng warned, more calmly than before, thought the pause was heavy and threatened to slit a throat. "We came to show that we will not be punished, and we came to see the infamous Black Valentine captured.
Reno stopped eyeing Starlet’s skirts. Elena stopped laughing. All Turks turned to watch Vincent, as well as all of Shinra.
A slight warbling could be heard from the man’s throat until it burst up and out his mouth as raucous laughter. He had been sentenced to be hanged and two trained fighters threatened to tear him limbless; yet he laughed like a man whose whore had sworn virginity.
Surprise immediately turned to disdain for laughing in their presence, and Rufus took it upon himself to silence Vincent by kicking him in the face.
The action did nothing to quiet the man in the slightest.
Rufus turned and glared at Tseng, whose expression had no changed, but the other Turks were paying close attention.
"Ah, good day to you," Rufus said, ignoring the disobedient half bloods.
Out of literally nowhere, Sephiroth, proud and casual appeared. At his appearance, Vincent quieted himself immediately.
First there was Vincent’s silence and Scarlet’s smirk and Heidegger’s mild interest in such wild and manic reactions. Then there were Vincent’s teeth, Scarlet’s scream and blood, and a pistol fired at Hiedegger's shin with Vincent’s free hand.
Rufus focused more on yelling at his subordinates than even standing, but it was Sephiroth who gave the command and threw Rufus from his balance.
Vincent was standing now, screaming over panic and pain and flames, screaming for a boy he hardly knew, throwing a thing he feared.
Lucretia had left him with gold, which he had given to another; it was Yuffie who gave him the silver doppelganger. The thing he hated, he wished never existed along with the thing it could call, sailed over the flames and he wished with a heart he no longer had in him, that it reached the boat on the other side.
The near-mutineers were about to run as the saw it, Rufus stopped in righting himself, as did Heidegger and Scarlet, who had fallen over from pain and surprise, staying where the were lest they be hit themselves; Vincent never noticed.
He managed to shout out the name of the sailor with whom he shared a curse, who had received a deceptive kiss as well, before he was struck.
Sephiroth had begun running as Vincent started such commotion as never seen on a Shinra ship, and he did not stop now. The man’s sword shot right through Vincent’s chest, just under the shoulder… right where his heart should be.
Vincent would have laughed, were he not too distracted with feeling such things without any blood to pour from his wounds as he hit the deck.
Four others were hit with similarly sudden, though immensely different, sensation. Their blood ran cold immediately, their hearts skipped simultaneously, and when it pumped again, the sudden rush scalded in their veins.
Vincent was on the floor, thinking too much and came to the conclusion he should stop thinking so much when a heeled shoe landed on his back and another kicked him in the face. It was only size that told him which was scarlet and which was Heidegger.
"Madre de Dios!" Reeve whispered, considering all players in the strange act that had been played out before him.
"Get him in the brig!" Rufus yelled, now standing, his arms empty of anything box or not.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Vincent’s earlier act had earned him not respect, but fear and apprehension of him, as well as the desire never to be in the same sea as him. Though mild, it was exactly what he had wanted; yet he disliked the chains that came with it.
Once the shackles were on him, a screech never heard before, never conceived before, piercing and inescapable and beyond imagination rent the very air and touched all. Even the rats stopped to look for a possible way to flee the horrid sound, for all who heard it knew, and knew it more strongly than they know of their particular god, that it was merely a herald. Whatever had created it was awake, and seeking a way out of its prison, like the howl that would begin Ragnarok from the lips of the wolf Fenrir.
There was a calm that swept over Vincent so strong that if it weren’t for the intense gaze of focused dreams that held not only escape, but certain captor’s death, he’d have been considered dead.
"You fear this not?" Heidegger yelled over the piercing screech.
"No."
One single word not accompanied by even a blink, made them forget the wailing. It is one thing to hear the cry of a hellhound that sounds he is at your heels and you are unable to run, but it is always another to find someone who laugh at its breath.
"I’ve heard it before."
The two backed out of the cell, having remembered to lock up the Spaniard, but not latch matching shackles around his wrists. The door slammed and Vincent wondered if they were afraid of him, of the creature from depths shallower than hell, but far more fearsome, or if they were going to wet their trousers and wished not to add salt to the wound by doing so in front of him.