The haircut hadn’t been what anyone had expected. Vincent had expected someone to give up on it as a lost cause. His mother expected a normal haircut.
It wasn’t’ for the lack of trying. It was more for the lack of combs—they had all eventually broken on Vincent’s tangles.
The stylist had been nice, but Vincent’s hair was the equivalent of quantum mechanics to a child just learning long division.
Vincent was thankful no one had tried fire on his hair.
He did wash he hair routinely, but that was mostly to keep it from being at the point where he’d find rare wildlife in it.
One machete three, heavy-duty gardening trowels, and some noxious black spray paint later, his hair was cut, clean, straight, shiny, and would probably give his bride breast cancer.
Now he was at the most prestigious clothing store. Not just in the city. Not just in the county. Not just on the continent or even hemisphere. It was the most expensive, fancy, snooty place in the world and he didn’t doubt it when they said it was the most expensive place in history.
Money needed to buy a tie could buy a large continent and still leave enough to clean up several environmental messes.
Somewhere during the whole fiasco Vincent started to think, which only added making Vincent forget that doing so is not a good idea around his mom to the long list of bad things Hojo did to him.
He was a TURK. He was one of the best. He beaten up giant robots—underwater even—he’d defeated Sephiroth. He’d seen stuff that could scare make the most devout horror movie fanatic wet their pants. He’d defeated Sephiroth and stopped a giant ball of fire that nearly wiped his mom off the earth—which he was beginning to regret at this moment.
Most importantly he was a grown man, already in love, and hated this family. He was going to make his own choice.
"Mom—" he started.
"That’s ‘Mother!’" she corrected. "What?"
"Nothing," he squeaked. Calling her once might have prevented the whole disaster with Hojo. Then again, knowing both of them, they’d probably have gotten along famously and joined up as an unstoppable team to genetically engineer the human race into carnivorous monsters with perfect manners.
Thankfully, his mother wandered off in search of some thing with more digits than she had on her hands and left Vincent alone.
He let out a sigh and quickly regretted it as he suddenly realized why his mother would turn hi back on him.
He wasn’t alone.
A man, who seemed to be giving physics a strain-- not just by making you wonder if he was wider than he was tall or vice versa, but also because everyone who saw him wondered why he hadn’t collapsed in on his own weight and burst into a long, fiery death from which not even light could escape—approached Vincent.
"I hear your Vincent Valentine," the man said, putting a giant arm around Vincent.
"Last I checked," Vincent said, swallowing his cough, and nausea. The man smelled like a sewer. Admittedly a very fancy and expensive sewer, something where people poured week-old caviar down and perfumed their toilets before using them. "Sir," Vincent hurriedly added. He wanted to get as few rich people mad at him as possible. Maybe he’d managed not to come back with any broken bones or brain tumors.
"Call me dad," the mad said.
"Why?" Vincent asked. His vision was starting to go and his stomach had decided to orbit his liver at a high speed. "Did my mom remarry?"
"Good sense of humor, I like that," the man said. "You remind me of me when I was younger."
Vincent was going blind from the chemicals but he’d seen enough—more than enough—of the man to doubt it.
"I just wanted to make sure my youngest daughter was in good hands, the man continued, not noticing that Vincent was going green around the gills, as well as other parts of him. "Now, I won’t lie to you, she definitely high-spirited and independent. She’s not what you’d call your most proper girl out there, but deep down she’s a gentle delicate flower, you follow?"
"Yes sir," Vincent said, hoping the man would leave.
"Now don’t go thinking I don’t have faith in you, young man, but let me get one thing clear. You’ll probably whip her into shape—and between you an me she needs it, what with her strange ideas and all—and teach her how to be a right young lady and get rid of a few unladylike habits—not that she’ anything you wouldn’t want in a wife—but if you so much as make my precious baby cry or hut a hair on her delicate little head, I’ll have you wish your father was never born, kapiche?"
"Huh?" Vincent asked. He really wondered if the last word was a threat or a type of fruit.
"She’s a bit rough around the edges—a few silly ideas she happened to pick up from the city, poor thing—but you treat her as you would your own mother and we’ll both be right as gold, understand?"
Vincent was getting some very weird images of his mother in a bride’s dress. It didn’t help that he already wanted to set his own mother on fire next chance he got. Nor did it help that the room was seemed to be spinning around itself and melting backwards at the same time.
"Not really," Vincent said, before fainting.