“I see,” Cloud said quietly, sitting back in his chair with a pensive look on his face.

Reeve nodded miserably, resisting the urge to lay his head down on his cluttered desk and zonk out then and there. Who cared if he drooled on a report or two? But being the responsible President that he was, he forced himself to stay awake and rack his brain for any additional information that might be useful in explaining the situation to Cloud and Tifa, who were seated across from him.

But he could come up with nothing. “That’s all the information I have to tell you,” he said with a sigh, rubbing his face. “The entire countryside surrounding Kalm is has been almost entirely reduced to ashes. No one knew what was going on because there had been no survivors until the Mayor of Kalm called me yesterday saying that a man had come tearing into town like a madmen, ranting and raving about the destruction of his village up in the mountains.”

“And he called you,” Tifa finished, her brown eyes sympathetic as they gazed at her weary friend. “Poor Reeve.”

Reeve laughed mirthlessly. “Everyone seems to think that just because I was a member of AVALANCHE and am now the President of Shinra that I have some kind of standing army ready and waiting for a situation like this to arise.”

“But you have us,” Tifa pointed out, ever the optimistic one. “Cid and Barret alone are scarier than any army I’ve ever seen.”

Reeve gave her a smile, albeit a weary one. “Especially when they’re grumpy.”

“What about the others?” Cloud asked, suddenly coming out of his brooding session.

“I called them on the PHS,” Reeve said, patting his jacket pocket where he kept the small cellular-phone device concealed. “Yuffie was fairly close by so she should be here soon. I either couldn’t get through to the others or they were too busy to come.”

Cloud lifted an eyebrow. “So all we’re getting for now is Yuffie?”

Reeve nodded. “Looks like it. Although Cid mentioned that he was going to try and bring the Highwind down here and pick up the others on the way, but he said chances were slim.”

“That might be a good thing, though,” Tifa spoke up, adjusting her fighting gloves absently. “We don’t even know if these four mysterious strangers will present much of a challenge yet. No use calling the whole team down here if it’s just going to be overkill.”

Cloud looked at his wife with a slightly amused expression on his face. “We’re the confident one today, aren’t we?” he teased. “Don’t go getting a swelled head now, Tifa.”

Tifa socked him lightly on the shoulder, unable to stop the grin that was spreading across her face. “Hey, I’m taking after someone I know,” she taunted him.

“Hey!” he exclaimed with a smile, gently punching her on the shoulder and prolonging their little play-fight.

“Earth to newlyweds!” Reeve exclaimed before they could get going. “We have a serious sit—”

“HEEELLLOOOO!!!!” a high-pitched voice suddenly called.

Cloud groaned, “Oh no. Everyone run for cover!”

The door to Reeve’s office suddenly flew open, nearly knocking a chunk out of the wall, and Yuffie Kisaragi waltzed in with a grin.

“I heard that, Cloud Strife!” she exclaimed, casually socking the blonde-haired swordsman in the back of his spiky head. “Hey Reeve! Hey Tifa!” she greeted as Cloud clutched the back of his head, muttering to himself.

“Yuffie,” Reeve said as Tifa got up to hug her friend. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Urgh, Tifa you’re choking me!” the girl said in a strangled voice, laughing as her friend hugged her enthusiastically.

“Sorry,” Tifa apologized immediately, stepping back with a sheepish smile. “I just forget how amazingly buff I am sometimes.”

“How did you get past my secretary?” Reeve asked in bafflement. “Usually she’s very good at keeping out unwanted visitors. I mean – that came out wrong! I just meant that…”

Yuffie waved her hand in dismissal; she was apparently in a rather jovial mood. “Don’t worry about it, Reeve! I scared the poor lady into letting me through.” Her face lit up. “And you’ll never guess who I found along the way over here! Just wait here! You’re going to love this!”

Reeve felt a sense of impending doom wash over him, and he saw that Cloud had a similar expression of anxiety on his face. Yuffie’s “surprises” were never what anyone expected them to be. He suddenly had a feeling that it wasn’t Yuffie who had scared his secretary…

Yuffie leaned out of Reeve’s door and peered out into the hallway beyond, her dark hair bouncing around her face as she apparently searched for something she had left outside of the office. She suddenly stamped her foot on the carpeted floor and stalked off down the hall, disappearing from view.

“What did I tell you?!” the trio in Reeve’s office suddenly heard her cry. “I told you to stay put! Now get over here!! Don’t make me get rough, now!”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Cloud muttered.

“Maybe I should tell her we don’t allow dangerous animals in the office,” Reeve said worriedly.

“Look who I brought along!” Yuffie announced, reentering the office with what looked to be the end of a red cape clutched in her hand. To everyone’s surprise, she was followed by none other than…

“It’s Vinnie!!!” she declared happily, sounding quite pleased with herself. Vincent Valentine just stared at everyone for a moment before gently extricating his cape from Yuffie’s fingers.

“No, I thought it was some other red-eyed man you had picked up walking around Midgar,” Cloud joked.

“Hey, Vincent,” Tifa greeted cheerfully, having a smile even for him as she walked up and hugged him around the chest, nearly a head shorter than the tall ex-Turk.

As expected, Vincent didn’t yield to her embrace. He stayed rigid and unyielding, only allowing his human hand to come to rest briefly on her slender back – the “Vincent” version of a hug.

“Good to see you again, Tifa,” he said politely as the young woman stepped away.

Reeve yawned widely, making a half-hearted attempt to cover his mouth, and said, “Hey, Vincent, you look great.”

Vincent blinked, his crimson eyes just barely visible in all their terrible glory under the shadow of his bandana. “I look the same,” he deadpanned.

Reeve floundered for words until Cloud came to his rescue.

“Exactly Reeve’s point! You always look great, Vincent!”

Yuffie made a face and looked up at her red-eyed companion. “Vinnie??” she echoed dubiously. “Look ‘great’? I don’t think so! He still looks pretty evil to me! You should loose the cape, Vinnie. It’s too…red. Does it ever fade? Do you ever wash it? Doesn’t it start to smell?”

Yuffie grabbed the end of his cape and started to lift it to her nose, but Vincent plucked it from her grasp and shifted the entire cape so that it was resting on one shoulder, safely out of her reach.

“I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t go around sniffing my clothes, Yuffie,” he said flatly before shifting his blood-red gaze to Reeve. “I was told by Yuffie that you had rather pressing matters and needed to reach all of the AVALANCHE members immediately.”

Reeve nodded, groaning inwardly at the thought of explaining the situation yet again.

Yuffie spoke before he could, though. “Whatever the situation is, I’m sure it’s boooorring,” she groaned. “Hey, Reeve, can I watch TV, pleeeeaaasse?” She pointed to a small television set that Reeve had against the right side of the room, collecting dust.

“Sure,” he sighed tiredly. “Knock yourself out.”

“Thanks Reeve!” Yuffie said cheerfully, skipping over to the television set and plopping herself down in front of it, arranging her long, tanned legs beneath her, heedless of the way the carpet scraped her skin as she did so.

After watching her flipping through the channels, envious of anyone who could just sit down and watch TV at a time like this, Reeve turned back to the three people who were still listening to him.

“Before you start explaining,” Vincent suddenly spoke up, quite uncharacteristically. “Does this current predicament have anything to do with the recent fires sprouting up on the Kalm countryside?”

Reeve jumped in his seat, brown eyes widening in surprise. “That’s exactly it!” he exclaimed. “You know about the burning villages?”

“A wanderer such as myself finds out many things,” Vincent replied vaguely. “I was up in the mountains when the fires began.”

All semblance of weariness gone except for the dark circles underneath his eyes, Reeve leaned forward. “And? What did you see? Did you actually get a glimpse of the person or persons who are causing these fires?”

To his surprise and excitement, Vincent nodded, dark hair tumbling around his face. “I got out of the mountains as quickly as possible, but I did glimpse these persons a few days ago, when the fires were just starting.”

“What can you tell us about them?” Cloud asked, his tone earnest as Reeve’s had been.

“‘Them’ is actually four to five young females.”

Tifa lifted an eyebrow. “Females?”

Vincent nodded and continued, “The fires were white-hot and didn’t burn very long, indicating that they were probably caused by magic, most likely from a powerful mage within their ranks. And not one that relies on materia, either.”

A mage that doesn’t need materia to cast magic? Reeve wondered, his heart sinking. I never knew such a thing was even possible…

“They also tended to attack at night,” Vincent continued. “Normal battle tactics when it is desirable to have one’s actions go unnoticed.”

“But wouldn’t the fires show up more brightly at night?” Tifa asked dubiously.

“Yes,” Vincent replied. “But these individuals were most careful to keep things under control. There is nothing left of the villages they burned, but apparently…” he suddenly looked at Reeve “…someone made it out alive.”

Reeve nodded grimly. “I was contacted last night by the Mayor of Kalm, saying that a man had escaped from one of the mountain villages and fled to Kalm seeking protection from his unseen enemies. He was the only one who made it out alive.”

“How sad,” Tifa murmured, bowing her dark head briefly, as if in respect for the dead villagers who probably never knew what had hit them.

“Do you know how many villages have been destroyed?” Cloud asked Vincent, blue eyes troubled.

Vincent shrugged his broad shoulders, the movement almost swallowed up by his cape. “I can only tell you that they started at the top and were working their way down, heading in the general direction of Kalm. Every village along the way met a certain doom.”

“So they’ve all been destroyed?” Reeve asked quietly, his heart sinking.

“Possibly,” Vincent replied in a monotone. “I got out of the mountains as quickly as I could since I wanted nothing to do with this dilemma.”

Tifa suddenly whirled to stare at him incredulously. “You didn’t bother to help the villagers?” she demanded, sounding slightly angry.

Vincent’s crimson gaze was completely devoid of emotion as he gazed down at her apathetically. “I do not meddle in the affairs of others,” he said flatly.

“But—” Tifa started to protest, her graceful brows snapping together in an obvious look of disapproval.

Sensing an impending battle, Reeve cut in, “Vincent, are you absolutely certain that all of the villages of have been destroyed?”

A frown suddenly crossed Vincent’s face. “As I told you before, it is possible. But I know for certain that there were still a one or two of them left when I was coming down out of the mountains earlier today.”

“Not anymore,” Yuffie suddenly said sadly.

Everyone turned to her in surprise, wondering at the uncharacteristic wistfulness in her voice until they saw that she was watching not cartoons like everyone had been thinking but instead an early morning news bulletin. On the screen was a video capture of what appeared to be a mountain village…only it was completely destroyed. Reeve and the others watched in shocked silence as the camera zoomed in on what must have been a house but was now only a bunch of blackened and broken boards lying in a lonely pile, faint wisps of smoke drifting off of the wartorn wood and dissipating into the morning air.

This is terrible, Reeve thought in horror, watching the camera pan around to reveal more and more charred remains of houses.

“Turn up the volume, Yuffie,” Cloud urged quietly.

In an act of uncharacteristic obedience, Yuffie simply nodded and reached up to turn up the volume on the television set before reseating herself on the floor. On the screen, a reporter woman dressed in a red pantsuit suddenly appeared, holding a microphone and speaking towards the camera in a grave voice.

“—report early this morning,” she was saying, absently holding at hand to her hair in order to keep the wind from tearing at it. “It appears as if the blaze only burned for a brief period of time, but so far, rescue crews have been unable to find any survivors in the remains of this village. Officials have released a statement saying that this fire and the others that have been sprouting out all over the Kalm countryside are no accidents, and an investigation will begin soon to resolve the matter. It will, however, be quite difficult, being that this was the last of the mountain villages to fall to these unseen criminals…”

“The last of the villages?” Tifa whispered, unconsciously raising a gloved hand to her mouth, ignoring the voice of the female reporter as she continued to drone on about rising death tolls.

“You all know where these assassins are heading next, do you not?” Vincent asked flatly.

“Of course,” Cloud replied grimly, eyes darkening with the sense of impending battle. “They’re going to head for Kalm.”

* * * * * * * *

Yawning widely, Elena patted her blond hair absently with one hand, trying to coax the yellow strands to reside closer to her head instead of sticking straight up in the air. Damn. Another bad hair day. But she would much rather her hair misbehave on her day off than a day when her charming presence was required for yet more long, needless hours protecting business men and women that no one would pay a penny to assassinate. But she supposed she should tip the good old cliché hat off to the paranoia of her employers…or maybe it was just their massive, turgid egos that had motivated the little business to employ the former Turks in the first place. Either way, Elena new she should be grateful that she at least had a job putting money in her hands and in turn keeping the roof over her and food in her stomach, but, hey, gratitude had never been one of her strong points.

Another loud yawn escaped her mouth as she removed her coffee cup from the cupboard and slipped it underneath the trickle of dark coffee flowing from the coffee maker. She adjusted her well-worn robe so that it would stop falling off of her narrow shoulders and smiled at the thought of doing absolutely nothing all day.

Maybe I’ll go shopping, she thought as she sipped on her still-steaming coffee and took a seat at the kitchen table. But then again, shopping is no fun unless someone goes with you. I wish Rude had the day off; at least, I would have been able to spend some more time with him.

Elena blushed. She and Rude already spent a lot of time together, even WITH work. She absolutely loved spending time with him. Once she got past the unsmiling face and the perpetually serious expression he always wore, Elena could easily see that Rude was one of the kindest, most polite men she was ever going to meet in her entire life. NOTHING like Reno at all. The thing with Rude was that most of his emotions were hidden behind his ever-present pair of sunglasses, silently forbidding anyone from intruding in on his life. Quite symbolic, those sunglasses.

A sigh slipped past her lips as she switched on the small television set resting on her kitchen countertop. Rude would probably be on his way to work at this very moment. Of course, if he had had to pick up Reno’s lazy-ass, then he would probably be a little behind schedule. Nothing he couldn’t handle, though. Another one of the many things that she admired about him.

Sipping contentedly on her coffee, Elena flicked through the channels, searching for something she would actually enjoy watching. After making a sour face at the sheer number of cartoons that were playing at this time in the morning, she finally settled a news bulletin. A female reporter was standing on a windblown hill somewhere in the world, talking about the burned wreck of a village that was sitting distance behind her, a charred shadow of its former self.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NOTE: THIS FIC HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED. IF YOU WANT AN EXPLANATION, GO HERE. THANKS AND SORRY TO ALL THE READERS WHO HAD BEEN KEEPING UP WITH THIS FIC AND HOPING FOR MORE CHAPTERS. I'M SO INCREDIBLY SORRY. ;_;

~* Catalina *~