He was a liitle surprised when the door swung open slightly. "Sir?" the young man called.
No answer came, so he entered the house. The only sound he heard was silence.
"Sir?" he said again. There was no response, so the young pilot continued.
He checked in the kitchen, in the living room, and finally in the bedroom. It was in the last where he found what he was looking for.
Cid and Shera were sprawled across the bed, covered in blood, apparently killed right after they had awakened. A look of shock was on their faces.
The young man wasn't easy to panic, and realized the situation wasn't as bad as it seemed. He ran quickly to the medicine store in town and bought two phoenix downs.
He ran back to the house, knelt by Cid and Shera, and used the phoenix downs on them. It was only then, when they didn't work, that the young pilot began to panic.
An unusual amount of noise had drifted to them as they dressed and prepared for their trip to the Gold Saucer. It was a loud morning, even for Costa Del Sol, and Tifa wondered what was going on outside.
Tifa had dressed in a tank top and shorts. Cloud wore a white tee-shirt and shorts. They were truly prepared for another steaming day in Costa Del Sol.
Until, of course, they had opened the door and went outside. And discovered it was snowing.
Her daddy was sleeping still, so she had made herself breakfast. She had cold oatmeal; all she did to make it was add water. It was her favorite meal, maybe because she liked eating what she cooked herself.
She went back into her room and pulled the covers up on her bed, then smoothed them out so they weren't as lumpy. She went in her closet and got out her favorite purple shorts and the pink shirt with the flowers. She put them on and fixed them in the mirror.
She grabbed her brush and ran it through her hair, then took a scrunchy and tied it back. She'd let it grow; long hair was really pretty. At least, it was on Tifa.
Marlene skipped into the kithen and opened a cabinet. She reached down on the bottom shelf and grabbed the rag her and her daddy used for cleaning. She snatched it up and ran back to her room.
Then she used the rag to wipe down the sparse furnishings in her room. When she was done, she put the rag back in its place. She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She washed her face and behind her ears. Then she washed her hands.
She dashed into her father's room, where he lay, snoring softly. "I'm going out to play, daddy!" she told him, and gave him a quick kiss. Then she darted to the front door.
She reached up and turned the door knob and swung the door open. She stepped out into the slums and gasped.
In the sunlight created where part of the Plate had been removed, flowers had grown. Delicate little pink ones, blue ones that looked like bells, red snap-dragons, and great big yellow ones that looked like suns. Soft, fuzzy purple flowers with black spots, yellow-orange roses, and slender lavender ones. Tiny white flowers filled the spaces in between the colors.
Sitting in the middle of the field of flowers was a furry animal with huge yellow eyes. Then it dissolved into thin air, and Marlene forgot about it almost as quickly as it had gone.
She ran out into the flowers with a cry of joy. She grabbed them into her hands and brought them to her face, breathing them in. Then she threw them high into the air and gave a gleeful laugh.
She went on this way, running and playing in the flowers until she tired. Then, sighing, Marlene laid down in the flowers and stared up at the blue, blue sky.
He hastened his pace a little, lengthened his strides. He began to look for a place to rest for a while; the rain was really starting to come down.
It pounded down, driven by the harsh wind that had followed him with the rain. Vincent's clothes were now soaked completely, and the rain was still coming down in buckets. Up ahead, he saw a little house.
He began hurrying more, only slowing when he arrived at the house. Vincent knocked on the door and waited for an answer. None came, so he knocked again.
Vincent was getting wetter, and no answer came after he tried knocking a few more times. He tried the door and found it open.
He went inside. The 'house' was actually little more than a one-room shack; he had only mistaken it for bigger because of the rain. It was unoccupied and clearly had been for some time.
Vincent took his cape off and hung it on a rusted nail near the door. Then he sat in the corner and stretched his legs out. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. And tried not to think of Lucretia before he fell asleep.
They sat on the hill by the hotel. Yuffie let her legs dangle down and kicked them impatiently. Cait Sith sat cross-legged on the mog, elbows on knees, head in hands. Red sat in a typical dog style; front paws together, back legs folded under, head held high.
"Shinra," he finally said, breaking the silence. He shook his head. "If Reeve's little misfortune was Shinra's fault, as Yuffie suggested, we need to tell someone. Shinra's no small threat, especially since they have a reason to want to get even with us. I think we should let Cloud and Tifa know. Everyone else should know too, but I think we should tell them first."
Just then, Red's musings were interrupted by a low, rumbling sound. Red and Cait Sith's ears pricked up. Yuffie stopped swinging her legs.
"What is that?" Cait Sith asked. The rumbling grew louder, more intense.
The ground started shaking very slightly. It seemed to grow by the second, though, and soon you couldn't have stood still if your life depended on it. The part of the hill that Yuffie was sitting on crumbled and broke off.
She yelped in surprise and got the air knocked out of her when she hit the ground below. Red jumped down after her, and Cait Sith ordered the mog to. The thundering noise got louder.
"What in the name of Gawd...?!" Yuffie exclimed. She scrambled to her feet and watched as the residents of North Corel began to point in the direction of the noise. Some people shouted, but most of the words were lost, even to Red's superior hearing. One word did manage to reach him: 'houses'. The people seemed happy to comply; they ran in a flood to the houses. All around the three of them, doors slammed and, Red was relatively sure, locked.
"What's going on?" Yuffie looked in the direction the noise was coming from. "What the hell is happening?"
Red practically had to scream over the rumbling. "What is it?"
But, even had anyone known the answer, they wouldn't have gotten a chance to say it. A chocobo rounded the corner from behind a nearby house. Then a few more. Then a whole flood of them, a sea of yellow, green, blue, and black.
"Chocobos?!?" Cait Sith exclaimed. "What..."
He stopped talking when he realized that the chocobos were running towards them. And there were an awfully lot of them. Running really fast.
Cait Sith's eyes got very wide. He stood on the very, very top of the mog, but somehow didn't seem safe from the stampede.
Suddenly, an idea struck Red. "Jump on one of them!" he shouted.
"What?" asked Yuffie.
"Jump on one of them and hold on!" he screamed again.
To demonstrate, he drew his legs up under him and pounced on a passing chocobo. He held on tight, grabbing a mouthful of its yellow back feathers for extra security.
Without so much as a glance at Cait Sith, Yuffie turned away and grabbed a chocobo. She used the yellow feathers to pull herself onto it. It turned its head and warked irritably at her. She wrapped her arms around its neck while at the same time whispering urgently, "Don't mind me. You need to look where you're going." Apparently, it understood her, or at least got the same idea itself; it turned its head back around so it could steer properly.
Cait Sith stood for a moment, unsure of what to do. The feet running on either side of him were coming in larger amounts, though. He screamed into the Starlight Phone, "Jump onto a chocobo!" The mog obeyed, and Cait Sith clung to it.
He didn't hold tightly enough, though; a foot kicked him, and he went flying. By the time he scrambled to his feet, the mog was five feet away, still on the blue chocobo.
Just barely managing to avoid being trampled, Cait Sith grabbed one of the passing chocobo legs and held tight. Slowly, he managed to climb the moving leg and reached the stomach. He grabbed ahold of the green feathers with both hands and hung for a moment. Then he began to move, money-bar style, to the chocobo's side. After that, it was relatively easy to pull himself onto the bird's back.
They rode out the stampede; the birds came to a stop in a field. When it was finally over, Yuffie stayed on her chocobo. It didn't seem to like her, though, and kept warking at her.
Finally, she managed to get it to listen to her. Even so, it took her a long time to find Red and Cait Sith. And the search for the mog took even longer. Until, half an hour into their search, a thought struck Cait Sith and he just called it through the megaphone.
When they were all assembled, Yuffie dismounted her chocobo but everyone else stayed on theirs; Red had warned them that they might need a cheap means of travel.
"Okay," Yuffie said, "What the hell was that?"
"A stampede of chocobos," Cait Sith clarified.
"I think perhaps we have more problems than even just Shinra," Red said.
"No," said Yuffie, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "Haven't you heard? Shinra's new scheme is to control the wild chocobo population." She shook her head. "Duh, Red! Of course that wasn't Shinra. I didn't even know chocobos actually stampeded."
Red rolled his eyes. "No surprise there. Yuffie doesn't know something." This earned him a glare from Yuffie.
Cait Sith interupted quickly. "Seriously, though. Something isn't right...."
They all looked around at one another, their expressions perfectly serious. They sat in silence, unsure of how to resopond. Because they all knew that something was terribly amiss, but not one of them knew what.