Wow! It's been six years since I touched this story! Isn't that crazy? I'd like to thank Infamous Greed another guest who just recently asked me to continue this, and really everyone else who have asked over the years. So I made a deal with myself. I'll finish this, finish my Cloud/Lightning story before moving on to my more recent ones. Anyway, sorry everyone for the extremely long wait and I hope you enjoy! Forgive any grammatical mistakes.

Share your thoughts and feelings in the review section. It is seriously what helps us keep writing.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Fang had always actively avoided other people when she wandered the wastelands, knowing full well that a survivor could be even worse than a spawn.

Spawns, unlike people, were honest. Tearing other living beings in half and sucking their insides clean was a habit spawns never pretended to hide. Survivors, however, could smile and appear friendly, luring some idiot into a false sense of dream-like security before taking the nearest straight razor and playing surgeon with their windpipe.

For the first few nights after meeting Vincent, Fang waited for that straight razor to come and introduce itself. Sure, Vincent had washed and fed her, cleaned up after she puked her first real meal in years all over the floor, gave her a room and seemed an all around nice guy, but that didn't mean she trusted him.

Night after night, Fang would lay on her frilled blanket on the floor of her new room, staring up at the wooden church ceiling, trying to figure out just what it was Vincent Valentine could possibly want from her. Sure, he said he was lonely, but he could be lying.

"Well..." Fang said out loud to the folded red spear laying at her side, "he could have easily restrained me when I was drunk if he simply had wanted to harm me. What do you think?"

Her weapon remained silent. But Fang heard a reply in her head.

"I guess you might be right. If he is a mad scientist, than me showing up just provided him with a way to repopulate the planet that doesn't involve cloning. I would be the mother of a new mankind. That would be cool..." Fang Oerba rolled over to look at her spear. "Over course that would take a lot, a lot of work. Still, could be fun, I guess. He's a little too bleached for my taste, but end of the world and all..."

"Or maybe he's trying to fatten me up so that he can kill me and have his first real steak in years. Have you seen my rump? It's irresistible!" Fang gave a mischievous grin, which then turned into a frown. "Wait...is steak even from the rump?"

Again, the spear gave no reply.

"Speak for yourself! I don't think he's cute at all!" Fang turned over in a huff, giving the spear her back. "He's so pale he looks like a corpse and those red eyes of his makes him look like one of them..."

"Oh no..."Fang jolted upright as a horrible realization sprang into her mind. "He's a spawn."

Without even being aware of it, Fang began to tremble. "Think about it! How come other spawns never attack this place? Because they don't attack monsters who are more powerful then they are. Midgar has some of the most powerful spawns on the planet but none of them come anywhere near this church! It all makes sense! That ivory white skin, those blood red eyes! He's some kind of super spawn that looks like a human so that he can lure people into a trap! He must be getting some kind of sick kick from all this..."

It was all too easy for Fang to imagine Vincent, as he called himself, straddling her one night, his tongue hanging out of his mouth in animalistic glee as he clawed at her body with a deformed hand hidden beneath his gauntlet, her blood splattering about the room like a paint bomb. And then he would start to feast on her organs, starting with her still beating heart.

"Whoa..." Fang said to herself as she snapped out of her twisted fantasy. "That was vivid."

Her mind made up, Fang got out of bed, grabbed her spear and headed out the room. If she was correct, then it was high time she left and never looked back!

Seeing how it was the middle of the night, Fang moved about carefully, not wanting to bump into anything she couldn't see and accidentally make a noise. Every instinct in her body was screaming at her to rush the door and run out into the darkness, but the slightly less insane part of her brain told Fang the first thing she needed was provisions; food, water and medicine. Luckily the spawn-man Vincent had given her a tour of his lair and she knew exactly where to look. Vincent had several empty travel bags in storage, so Fang took a large one she would carry on her back and a smaller one she could carry on her shoulder..

Vincent had stored years of canned food in the basement and chemicals that could turn even the nastiest looking water into something that could be forced down. Grabbing a flashlight which Valentine kept next to the door, Fang knew that her plan came with one small little setback; Vincent Valentine slept in the basement too.

Praying that the stairs wouldn't creek beneath her weight, Fang slowly made her way down into what honestly looked like a dungeon. The church had been built upon a rock foundation and the basement was carved into that rock directly. It was cold, damp and smelled slightly of mold that grew on the wooden beams that held the structure up. The flashlight wasn't very bright, but did the job as Fang saw rows and rows of preserved goods stacked neatly on countless shelves.

"Just how big is this cellar?" Fang said in a hushed voice to her spear.

Vegetables, mushrooms, sauces, pickles, beets, hot peppers, ketchup for some reason, anything that could be stuffed into a jar was in that basement. Even some good old fashion booze.

Fang took a moment to look at a rack full of bottles of rum, whiskey and gin. Too bad. She would've loved getting to know all of them personally.

"We better not press our luck." She whispered to her red friend. "We'll take what we need and go."

Walking out of the alcohol row and into the next, Fang had to bite of a curse as she nearly stepped on the man himself.

Vincent was laying face up on the floor, his bed a wide board of wood, arms at his side, skin devoid of any color. He looked like he belonged in a casket. Aside from his tight, black leather pants he wore nothing and Fang's eyes widened at the sight of the countless surgical scars all along his body. It looked as though someone had come across a room full of people that had just been blown to bits and collected a whole bunch of pieces together and ended up with Vincent.

There was no doubt now; Vincent was a spawn.

"If I leave now, he'll either come after me or wait for the next person." Fang said so softly she could barely hear herself.

Putting the travel bags down quietly, Fang grabbed her spear, opened it up to its full length and stood over Vincent's motionless form. He didn't even seem to be breathing. All Fang needed was one strike. Like pinning a fly with a needle. The planet would be better off with one less monster on it.

But...was he?

Doubt crept into Fang's mind as she realized that she didn't have any real proof that Vincent was a stigma spawn, only her own paranoia. Maybe he was an indoor person and hated sunlight? That would explain his skin. And his red eyes? A simply infection or genetic defect.

Maybe Vincent was just what he appeared to be; another survivor, genuinely kindhearted enough to help her when no one else would.

"Better not chance it." Fang decided.

Thrusting the spear downward as hard as she could, Fang hit her unsuspecting host in the center of his chest, through the heart, severing the spine and digging several inches into the ground under him. Vincent's red eyes popped open and his face flash in pain for the briefest moment before his body relaxed as his life seeped away, his lungs exhaling their last breath, a pool of black blood forming on the stone floor beneath him.

It took less than three seconds for Vincent Valentine to die without a single sound.

"Well..." Fang said to her spear as it stood erect out of the dead man's body. "That was...easy."

For a moment Fang just stared down at the man...monster...she had just killed.

"It was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do." She said, over and over, nodding to herself. "Better safe than digested."

Fang pulled her friend free from the corpse and left the basement, heading back to her room. Stripping her clothes off, Fang leaned her weapon against the far wall and laid back down on her blanket, very ill at ease with herself. Had she seen straight through a spawn's elaborate charade and killed it, or had she just murdered an innocent man?

Exhausted from nearly a week without rest, Fang listened for what seemed like hours to the harsh winds outside blow against the window, sounding very much like a growling beast, distant clouds sailing high above the burnt world, sporadically blocking out the moonlight. Eventually, with doubt filling her mind, she drifted off into a troubled sleep.

Suddenly Fang was jarred awake as something crashed and broke through her door, jumping her before she had a chance to get to her feet!

Quick as though, strong hands wrapped long fingers around Fang's neck, squeezing without mercy, holding her down as she struggled. Eyes bulging and blurring with tears, Fang looked up at her attacker, choking for air. She felt a surge of panic as she saw the disheveled form of Vincent atop of her, his teeth bared and clenched in rage, dripping a mixture of blood and saliva.

The true horror was how the light from the storm swept moon outside the window was shining through the large, gaping hole in his chest where his heart was supposed to be.

But what terrified Fang the most were his bright, glowing red eyes. The eyes of a spawn!

I had a ton of fun writing this, though the original draft was way more horror, a little too much in my opinion. This story is inspired from a classic fairy tale that I won't give away now but I'm curious if anyone can guess what it is. I'll reveal it when we reach the final chapter.