Chapter I: When in Wutai…
Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.
The midday sun was beating harshly on the palace of Emerald Island and Kisaragi Youfan was very grateful for the summer home of his family; as difficult as physical extortion was in the garden of the Summer Palace it would have been a hundred times worse in the stone city of Chang'ai where the very walls and streets would absorb and radiate the heat. Here she could practice in the shade of mulberry trees, in the beautiful water garden that the servants had wept for when she had converted it into her training ground. The song of a paradise bird and the tic toc of her target system were all that accompanied the thuds of her knives hitting wood.
"Princess Youfan, my dear," her tutor called with a long-suffering voice and she pretended not to hear anything. Youfan, daughter and only child of Emperor Kisaragi Godo of Wutai, was sulking. It was undignified and below her status, but what else could she do? Her father just insisted on listening to those old farts in his Council and they had been arguing about whether or not to declare Wutai independent nation once more for a whole week. If they procrastinated any more the window of opportunity would close, the Mako-Eyed Yāomó would secure his rule, and who knew if another such opportunity ever came?
"Why don't you take a break from your training and practice your calligraphy, my princess?" Youfan could tell that Xian Tianwei, her old wet nurse and current tutor, didn't approve of her practice of the art of ninja.
She huffed, brushing her recalcitrant locks from her face, wishing her father would just let her cut her hair short. Practicing calligraphy? As far as she was concerned that was a total waste of time. She knew how to write and people understood her handwriting, wasn't that enough? Anyhow, she had nothing to gain from it, calligraphy wouldn't help her country and she had no interest to gain scholars' compliments. Those who thought that princesses were delicate flowers, interested only in poems and embroidery and looking pretty in heavy silks, knew nothing of true royalty, but Youfan was rather more physical than most.
She knew that people thought her father had been too lenient with her since her mother had died. She thought that her father recognized a force of nature when he saw one.
"I plead with you, Your Highness; all you will accomplish with this is to scare your suitors away. A princess does not need to equip herself with skills in combat," Tianwei said, as she approached her charge, who was throwing knives into her moving targets, pushed on the hidden rails by a glockenspiel. "She needs to learn bureaucracy and the appreciation of arts and beauty."
Yeah, right, and what would Tianwei with her feet bound up small know of combat skills, and what had possessed the mad woman to practice that outdated, brutal tradition anyway? As far as Youfan was concerned, a person who didn't have a whisper of hope of fighting for her life, less so winning the fight, was not one to listen to in the new Wutai, conquered and humiliated by Shin-Ra. The war had been fought for a Mako reactor, but none had ever been built on Wutai's soil. She was grateful for that at least, but at the same time she knew that Mako had merely been an excuse to bring her nation to its knees and that made her blood boil.
"Who says I like any of my suitors anyway?" she asked and Tianwei cringed. The old argument was interrupted by her maid Mei, whom she had ordered to inform her when her father would be free from the meeting. Youfan picked her knives, set apart those that would need sharpening later and marched through the palace, determined to get some answers from her father at last.
The sun was about to reach its peak in the sky, and Kisaragi Godo had to shield his eyes to see the once rich steppe, west of the cliffs. The area had been hopelessly empty and grey, burned and stomped on, old battlefield that had also housed a Shin-Ra war camp. The greenery had returned and he wondered if the farmers would return anytime soon. Why would anyone want to live here in the first place, he mused as he looked at his wrecked surroundings, but he knew it was only his depression talking. The area was fertile and was well in the way to regain its former beauty. The war camp was long gone now.
So were the farms and the pagodas.
If only I could have killed that man, he thought. But he couldn't; he had barely escaped with his life, at the cost of many good men, and in the end Lord Godo Kisaragi had had to surrender to the invaders. To put his family name last! Did they have to insist mauling his name thus?
His thoughts were interrupted by someone walking towards him, and he turned to the captain of his Guard following his footsteps.
"Here again, Most Honoured Emperor? Your daughter is searching for you," Captain Shi informed him and glanced around. "Thinking about him again, am I correct?" Who else did he think of those days?
"Nothing lasts forever. As Wutai's time of greatness passed, this will pas also," he said with more conviction than he truly felt. Time and history passed in a circle, in a hoop that never ended, but was it their time again, so soon?
The Scourge of Wutai, the Yāomó who had crushed his army and taken his land, but who had done so under orders of another. This didn't mean that Godo hated him any less, but it might make all the difference for his nation now. How important was the occupation of Wutai to General Sephiroth, when no Mako reactor had ever been built on this land? When there were even rumours of plans to give up harvesting the Lifestream entirely? He had made his decision and he prayed it was the right one.
In the end Tianwei convinced Youfan to study while Captain Shi was searching for her father, but rather than calligraphy she chose to play komungo instead. Hers was a true masterpiece; the front plate of the instrument was made of paulownia wood, the back plate was of hard chestnut wood and its six strings were made of twisted silk. Youfan plucked it with a bamboo stick, singing with a well-trained voice. Ever mischievous, she had chosen the Ballad of Princess Nÿan.
"Click-clack, and click-clack, Princess Nÿan weaves at her window," she sang. "Now tell me princess, who's in your heart, and tell me princess, what's on your mind? There's no one in my heart at all, and the war is on my mind. Last night I saw conscription lists, the Emperor is calling troops everywhere." She ceased when she heard he door sliding open.
Kisaragi Godo was a very impressive man, even in his simple blue and white riding garments. His bearing was regal and his face solemn. He also had very impressive moustache that little Youfan had used to tug. She was still tempted, but resolved to valiantly resist, at least for a while.
"Captain Shi informed me that you have been searching for me, daughter," father told her.
"If Captain Shi says that I sassed back at him, it just means that he sassed first," Youfan defended herself hotly. From the frown that marred her father's forehead she understood that Shi hadn't mentioned that part. Oops.
"I know you have been anxious of late, but please don't take it out on my soldiers, or your poor tutor." Youfan knew that her wry, crooked smile unnerved her father.
"Don't worry, I intend to take it out on you. What exactly is your plan, that you can not allow me to find out about it?" It pained Youfan to doubt her father like this, but she couldn't help it.
The reason for the rift that had opened between her and her father wasn't because father, after putting up so much resistance, had surrendered to Shin-Ra the control of his homeland. Shin-Ra had held a clear advantage over Wutai from the beginning; its power already dominated the entire rest of the Planet. They also held the world's most advanced technology: planes, machine guns, robots and the genetically enhanced special forces unit, Soldier. They had General Sephiroth, the bane of Youfan's existence even if they had never met face to face. As much as it pained her to admit it they hadn't had much of a chance. But to show his surrender, Kisaragi Godo had banned the use of Materia. And so Wutai, once the last fortress of resistance against Shin-Ra Electric Power Company aka Enterprise from Hell, was reduced to a mere tourist trap. Youfan was disgusted with her father's capitulation.
"We will send a missive to President Sephiroth. Wutai will proclaim an independent nation once more," father said and a brief burst of joy flashed through Youfan's entire self, blinding and sweet. But her father's face was grim.
"And if he will not accept it? Will we go to a war again?" she asked and father's eyes hardened.
"To win a war blood must flow and Materia must be slotted. Wutai has neither blood nor Materia enough to match Shin-Ra." We will not fight.
"Because you banned it!" The words left a foul taste in her mouth. It was the big, pink elephant in the living room that no one spoke of, other than her.
Wutai had never had as much Materia as Shin-Ra, for the only Materia they used was crystallized naturally from Mako, which had also been condensed from Life stream naturally, and Shin-Ra used artificial Materia, created in their reactors. But their Materia was special, freely given by Gaia and full of the memories of the Ancients, wisdom and power. It leveled much faster than any other and no Summon Materia had ever been artificially created anyway. All this legacy had been thrown away, Leviathan given to Shin-Ra, along with so many others.
"You believe I did so with light heart? I had no choice, daughter!" The argument degenerated from there. Youfan demanded to be allowed to join the diplomatic envoy, her father denied her. It ended with both of them storming their way, the komungo abandoned it the middle of the study room.
"Then she went to the gate to see her companions in all her grace," Youfan whispered angrily the last verses of the song. She leaned against mulberry tree, enjoying the smell of water lilies and lotuses. It was a beautiful day. Her heart ached.
"And all her companions were struck with surprise. We marched together for twelve long weeks, and you never knew that Nÿan was a princess."
Youfan was in the habit of making split-second decisions and sticking to them much to her father's and his advisors' worry. There she made a decision and it made her calmer. Surely when she returned her father would eventually understand her and they could be as they used to, during those early years she could barely remember when everything was brighter and happier. Her very name, Youfan, meant "to flourish far away". It was practically her fate. She took a long lock of hair in her hand and nodded, satisfied if not entirely happy. She would cut her hair, she would disguise herself as ordinary ninja and she would join the envoy as a bodyguard. By hook or by crook, she would go to the city of Midgar and she would see her people free, one way or any other.
"Yuffie," she whispered the name that had haunted her dreams. It was so vulgar, but vulgar was often a lot more fun than dignified. "A kleptomaniac ninja, a commoner." It would be so much fun and no one would have the eyes to see, until after it was too late.
AN: Yāomó is a Chinese word for demon.
The characters of Yuffie's Wutaiian name: You = far, distant, remote. Fan = flourish.