By Kristen Gupton-Williams

Cid, Vincent, and Tifa sat in a booth in one of the small restaurants in Rocket. Vincent and Tifa were on one side, while Cid was opposite them, his son wrapped and reclining in his arms.

Tifa and Vincent had just completed telling him of all the details of the mission to Midgar and Cid sat nodding slowly. "You guys did all that shit without me, huh?"

"Well," Tifa smiled, "you did sort of have other things to attend to."

"Yeah, I guess." The days of action still at times did call out to the pilot. "I’m just glad that you two made it through all right."

"So are we." Tifa smiled. She then looked over at Cid. "After this, why don’t you two guys go out and get some time together. I’ll stay home with the baby."

Both Cid and Vincent looked at each other oddly. Asking the two of them to spend some quality time together was proof that at some point Tifa had, in fact lost her mind.

Tifa caught their expressions and sighed. "Cid, you’ve been with the baby non-stop since he was born and Vincent, you… well in any event, the two of you could benefit from getting out."

Cid slumped in his seat and pushed his plate back, suddenly getting an idea. He and Vincent did have some unfinished business to attend to. "Okay Tifa, we’ll humor you, won’t we Sunshine?"

Vincent regarded him with a smirk. He certainly wasn’t about to be shown up to his own wife by the pilot. "Sure."

"Good." Tifa slid from her seat, accepted the infant from Cid, and then looked back at them. "Take your time, me and the baby can take care of ourselves. We will be back at the house."

They remained where they sat as Tifa walked from view. Cid picked up the check that the waitress had left a few moments before and looked at it before pulling out his wallet and throwing some bills on the table. After, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Vincent. "So old man, whatcha think?"

Vincent cocked an eyebrow at his companion. "Nothing."

"Come on, you and I have some shit to take care of." Cid growled while getting up from his seat.

Vincent silently followed, not quite certain what the pilot had in store for him. When he realized that Cid was leading him back to the tavern that they had visited on their first trip to Rocket he sighed. "What are we doing here?"

Cid held open the door for Vincent. "Get your ass in here and try and win this time."

"What?" Vincent stopped and just stared.

"You think that just because you’re Mister Experiment Gone Awry that you can out drink me?" Cid reached out and pushed Vincent through the doors. "I’m gonna beat you this time like I should have done before."

Vincent trudged his way to a corner seat, not really feeling much like drinking and certainly not to the point that Cid intended.

Soon the heavyset barmaid whose life’s work was to taunt Cid made her way over. "All right, Mr. Highwind, what is it this time?"

"Me and my associate here have something to take care of." Cid smiled up at her. "Bring us a bottle of the strongest shit you have and two shot glasses."

"A drinking bet, huh?" The barmaid smiled. "Trying to blow out what’s left of the ol’ liver are you?"

"Yes Harriet, that’s exactly it." Cid scowled up at her. "Get to it."

"Fine." She turned and made her way to the bar.

"So what are we playing for?" Cid asked, leaning closer to Vincent.

He just stared back at the pilot for a long time before responding. There was something on Vincent’s mind that Cid could help him with and this might just prove the opportunity to ask. Vincent reached down and pulled out his wallet, pulling forth a debit card inside. He laid it on the table. "There."

"That don’t mean a damned thing, Sunshine. You’ve got to give me some numbers here." Cid scoffed.

"As you may or may not be aware of, I have over the past seven years taken over seventeen million gil in hit contracts from the Turks." Vincent’s face was expressionless. "That is the card to my bank account. You win, and I will give you three million gil."

Cid’s eyes went wide. He had been never offered such a fortune in a bet before. "Well that’s fucking great of you, but I don’t have that kind of money to screw around with."

"I’m not expecting you to." Vincent leaned back and smiled faintly. "If I win, I have just one small request for you."

"What’s that?" Cid was intrigued.

"You fly me on a trip to anywhere I want, no questions asked and you will tell no one about where we have been." Vincent’s voice was monotone.

Cid raised his eyebrows, thoroughly surprised. "Is it somewhere dangerous?"

"No." Vincent flipped a hand. "No where risky at all, just somewhere I’d rather not have anyone else know that I went. Including Tifa."

"Oh…" Cid nodded slowly. "All right, that’ll work. Your three mil for one trip. Deal."

At that moment, the barmaid brought their order and set it down on the table. She winked at Vincent. "Good luck to you, stranger. Beat the old bastard at his own game."

Cid picked up the bottle and looked at the label for a moment. "Holy shit, Junonian Vodka? I didn’t even know they still made this crap. I think they use it to strip paint or something."

Vincent was not deterred in the least by Cid’s little show. He picked up his tiny glass and handed it to Cid to be filled.

The pilot quickly had both shots poured and picked up his own. "All right, number one."

The two men tossed back their drinks. Cid made a slightly disgusted expression at the overwhelming strength of the alcohol but Vincent remained placid as the warm and familiar feel of this beverage ran through him.

Cid shook off the burn and picked up the bottle, soon having their glasses ready for the second round. "Two."

Again they both drank and showed about the same response as they had after the first shot. Underneath his calm veneer, Vincent was somewhat concerned at how his altered body would react internally to this insult. Without much living tissue left for the alcohol to effect he wondered what would happen. His train of thought was broken when Cid pushed the third drink over to him.

"Come on, Sunshine. Let’s take care of three." Cid said, raising his glass.

Vincent complied and the two of them soon had three shots packed away.

Several minutes had passed along with many more shots. The other patrons in the bar had now gathered around to watch the legendary pilot take on the stranger. Most present thoroughly hoped that Cid would be humbled by this man. Although everyone in town loved him dearly, they were all aware that when push came to shove, Cid was an arrogant bastard.

Twelve shots each and those gathered looked on in silent awe. Cid was flushed red at this point and had a definite sweat upon his skin. After pouring their next shots, his hands immediately grasped the edge of the table in some vain attempt to keep the room from spinning out of control. "All right Vince, you ready to give up yet?"

Vincent smiled slightly seeing that Cid was by far in worse shape than he was at the moment. While Vincent was feeling the effects of the alcohol, he was still in much more control than his opponent. The fact of the matter was, no longer having a human digestive tract Vincent’s body was preventing anymore alcohol to enter his system than had been introduced after five drinks. From that point on, Vincent hadn’t felt any worse. "Fine."

They each took up their glasses yet again and drank. As Vincent lowered his glass back to the table he noticed a very odd expression upon the pilot’s face. Despite himself, he became concerned. "Cid, are you all right?"

Trying to muster the last of his bravado, Cid tried to laugh Vincent’s comment off but no sooner had his retort been thought out was it cut off as he was forced to turn from the table and vomit onto the tavern floor. The onlookers seemed quite pleased to see Cid lose in such a humiliating manner. Cid finally managed to straighten back up in his seat, praying silently that he wasn’t going to throw up again. He glanced over at Vincent, his embarrassment obvious. "All right Sunshine, you win."

Vincent was clearly pleased with this outcome and got up from his seat, motioning for the onlookers to move along. The barmaid was already on her way over with a bucket of sawdust to cover the offending mess.

Turning back to look at Cid, Vincent smiled. "Come on, we have a trip to make."

Cid got up rather unsteadily from the booth and stepped over his purged alcohol. "You can’t seriously fucking expect me to fly now."

"I most certainly can." Vincent started to walk from the bar. "I’m fairly certain that this won’t be the first time you’ve flown drunk. Let’s go."

Unable to argue Cid followed meekly along. He knew he would never live this down. "You know I hate you, right?"

Vincent didn’t turn to respond. "Keep telling yourself that and I’m sure someday you’ll start to believe it."

Cid was feeling by far too poorly to protest any further and just trudged along obediently as Vincent led him to where his plane was sitting just a short ways from the house. Once close enough to the plane, Cid leaned on it heavily for support. "Look, Sunshine, maybe you’ve got some sort of death wish but I don’t."

"You are perfectly capable of flying. I know you." Vincent said as he pulled open the door on the side of the plane.

"I’m not worried about the flying bit." Cid scoffed. "I’m worried about what Tifa’s going to do to us when we fail to show up tonight."

"We will be back by then." Vincent thought for a moment. "This will not take long. I figure you can get us there and back in about three or four hours."

"Shit." Cid resolved that Vincent was in fact serious about this trip and grudgingly got into the plane, making his way to the pilot’s seat where he landed heavily.

Vincent also got in and took up the copilot’s seat. "Go southeast."

Cid looked over at him while popping a piece of nicotine gum into his mouth. "Where the hell we going?"

"Don’t worry about it, just follow my directions." Vincent said, hoping that Cid would get them into the air before Tifa happened to look out the window and see them in the plane.

Cid sighed and started the engines, also realizing that he needed to get the plane up and away from the house before Tifa bothered to look and see what was going on. He led the plane onto the grass runway just a few hundred yards from the house and gunned the engines, soon getting them into the air.