Vincent Valentine (foratonement) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2012-01-25 23:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | vincent valentine |
Who: Vincent Valentine and YOU. Yes, YOU. With the hair.
What: Vincent arrives.
Where: Random McRandomstreet!
When: Morning, January 26th. (No, this was never evening. >.>)
Warnings: Rated F for severe lack of facial expressions.
Celebrations were always strange things for Vincent Valentine. Once upon a time he might have been content to be part of them, but that was so long ago that sometimes he could scarcely remember it. The last real party he could recall being a part of was a small birthday celebration for his father, and even that was a relatively sober affair. These days, he would be out of place at even the quietest and most peaceful celebrations. While he could understand, on an intellectual level, what there was to celebrate in a thing like halting the cataclysmic end of the world by Meteor, or in defeating Sephiroth before he could accomplish his latest plan for hijacking the Planet and becoming a god, or even in a much smaller thing like the reopening of public access to the Worldwide Network, he could no longer be a part of such celebrations. The inherent waves of happiness and relief that generally flooded these things were wasted on him, as he could feel no real sense of it himself, not with his own sins still looming eternally large in his mind. He couldn’t allow himself to partake in the mood of the celebration, and as a result any celebration he actually attended would be awkward affairs where he stuck out like a sore thumb. That was why he simply hadn’t attended any of them, despite his involvement in no few things that people still celebrated. Why he was here now, in Kalm, attending the WRO’s celebration of the reopening of the Worldwide Network, he wasn’t entirely sure. It wasn’t because he’d been invited by a friend, because while Reeve would qualify as such, Vincent knew no one ever really expected him to RSVP to anything and only invited him out of courtesy. Truthfully, he just didn’t have much to do at the moment. With Geostigma an extinct disease thanks to Aerith’s Great Gospel of a year ago and no further avatars of Sephiroth sighted, there were few rumors Vincent deemed worthy of chasing down. While he still occasionally found someone in need enough for him to take a modicum of interest, nothing really seemed to hold his attention enough to last beyond the immediate problem. Without a catastrophe or hopeless cause to throw himself into, Vincent was becoming even more restless and bored with the world, or at least that’s how it felt sometimes. In reality, Reeve’s invitation came at a time when Vincent had nothing else to do, so he decided Kalm was as good a place as any other to be.
That didn’t mean he was planning on joining the celebration. The closest he would come to it was having a glass of red wine while watching the WRO and the citizens of Kalm through the second floor window of an abandoned house. On a purely intellectual level he could certainly empathize with the reasons for the celebration. One of the ways Shinra had gained such total control of the world was cutting off access to the Worldwide Network, effectively eliminating worldwide communication and severely limiting and controlling the flow of information around the world. While the network had, of course, remained open for Shinra employees, the public hadn’t seen much of it in years, and after Shinra’s collapse three years ago it was taken completely offline. Reopening it now, without Shinra’s restrictions, was certainly a tremendous event, and one that would go down in history. Still, such a thing meant very little to a man like Vincent. As an ex-Turk, he knew precisely how powerful information could be, but he’d long since stopped caring about the run of the mill, day-to-day data seepage that most people called the flow of information. Still, in his usual detached way, Vincent did find it nice to see the world slowly healing from the damage done to it by Shinra, and Sephiroth, and his own failure to prevent the rise of the latter. Maybe that was why he was here, as another act of penance for his great sin. Watching others move on and find happiness when he knew he never could.
He stood from his spot on the floor and went to the window, scooping his wine glass up in his left hand as he went. He didn’t intend to drink any of it yet, but he wanted it close in case he changed his mind. In the meantime, he simply held it at his side, the clawed tips of his golden gauntlet drumming a soft, idle rhythm on the fine crystal glass. His other hand, clad only in a glove the same black as the rest of his body suit, rose to his head to push his dark fringe out of his eyes and back behind the red bandanna he wore. His blood red eyes focused on the crowd below, searching for a familiar face and finding none. Reeve must have been elsewhere, and his little mechanical cat fairy must have been with him. Had Yuffie said she was going to be here? Vincent couldn’t remember, though to be fair, he found it hard to pay attention to Yuffie’s often overly energetic conversations. How anyone could understand the young girl’s mile-a-minute mouth, he wasn’t sure. As his eyes searched the faces on the ground, Vincent caught sight of a little boy smiling up at him and waving, and with a turn on his sabaton-clad heels, he stalked back into the shadows of his quiet room, his long red cape swishing behind him in a flash of long red fabric and tattered edges. Vincent sighed and, with his free hand, tugged his buckled cowl down with a black gloved finger to take a sip of wine.
Then his eyes flashed and the too-pale man released his cowl, instead going for the tri-barreled handgun holstered on the outside of his right thigh. He didn’t draw it out, but kept his hand there as he surveyed his suddenly changed surroundings, letting the wine glass fall from his gauntleted hand as if it no longer mattered. His first clue had been the sudden sharp change in the ambient light. In Kalm, there was only a little moonlight, with the celebration having to use electric lighting for its main streets. His own spot in the unlit room of the abandoned house had significantly less light than even that. So when suddenly the area was flooded with momentarily blinding daylight, Vincent knew something more significant than a light malfunction was going on. A second later, as the light faded and he felt the comforting feeling of the leather grip of the Cerberus against his palm, his suspicions were confirmed. It was daylight, and instead of an abandoned home in the small village of Kalm he was standing on a busy sidewalk in a seemingly modern city. A quick glance over the geography of the land indicated that wherever he was, it wasn’t a city he recognized, which ruled out just about everywhere in the world. He’d been all over, even to Wutai, so the fact that he didn’t recognize the city at first glance drastically narrowed down the possibilities of what was happening here. He also noted the strange looks and wide berth the people of this city were giving him, and correctly guessed that this was both because of the gun at his thigh and his style of dress. Since he hadn’t been attacked yet, and to avoid drawing any unnecessary trouble to him before he was prepared for it, Vincent moved his hand from the grip of his gun and instead crossed his arms over his chest as he contemplated his new situation.
It didn’t take him long to also correctly guess at least part of what was happening. I’m on another planet. Some might have struggled with the same conclusion, but in the Turks, they held to one saying above almost all others. Purported to have actually come from some doctor sometime far in the past, it basically stated that the simplest answer to a question, however unlikely, was usually the truth. Vincent had long since forgotten the name of the saying itself, but the principle still held true. The fact was, he’d been to just about everywhere on his planet, and this was clearly none of those places. While it was possible that a small village could have cropped up somewhere without his notice, it was absolutely impossible to believe that such a developed city could have sprung up in under a year. So, he was in a city he didn’t recognize and he knew it couldn’t be his planet, which only left one conclusion, however unbelievable it was. Somehow, without so much as a hint of magical effect, someone had transported him to an entirely other planet. “…Hm.” It was an intriguing mystery, and one he would certainly find the answer to, but right now his first priority was to try and determine precisely where he was in relation to this planet, and what that location meant. Glancing around again at the buildings, he realized that the architecture of this planet wasn’t entirely different from some of the buildings in his own world, so hopefully, he would be able to find a newspaper here as well. If traditions here were anything like they were on his planet, then the newspaper would likely have at least some indication of location on it. Within a few seconds, he was able to find a newspaper stand, and with his cape billowing behind him he glided over to it, speaking quietly with the man standing behind it. He was hoping he could get a free paper, considering all he had on him were Gil, but that wasn’t to be. He was at least able to glance at the front page of a stack of papers piled on the stand’s counter. The language and writing, it seemed, were similar enough to be of no concern. Vincent didn’t bother trying to run the odds of something like that. It didn’t matter how unlikely it was when it clearly was. “Lawrence…Kansas. Hm.” He didn’t exactly know what that meant, but for the moment, he didn’t want anyone here suspecting that he was anything but a simple, if oddly dressed, tourist. Turning from the stand, he began looking around at the street and the buildings on it, looking at signs for anything he might be able to parse some kind of meaning from.