It was very late when Chekhov finally came to see them, and her expression did not fill Yuffie with confidence. Without waiting to be invited, Chekhov sat down on the floor in front of them, and tried futilely to smile….but she didn't seem to be able to say anything.
"Don't leave us in suspense!" Yuffie's father insisted. "What happened at the meeting?!"
"Nothing's been decided for certain," Chekhov told him, shaking her head. "Everyone agreed with the elder's plan to hold an election next week on the matter."
"What sort of election?" Nanaki asked, tilting his head to the side curiously. "What are their choices?"
Chekhov shook her head sadly. "The choices are to create a new form of government, with Bakufu at its head—"
"There's a surprise," Yuffie muttered glumly. That creep was just taking advantage of the scandal her relationship was causing in order to enact a coup d'etat!
"The other choice is for you to remain as our ruler, Lord Godo," Chekhov continued, "but…even then…"
"Even then…what?" Yuffie's father prompted, when Chekhov didn't finish.
"Even then, you'll be expected to remarry," she said, with what struck Yuffie as an entirely false look of sadness. "No one wants Miss Yuffie to inherit now that she's…well…not quite what she used to be."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm not human anymore, you don't gotta pussyfoot around it. Just don't start callin' me a monster or an abomination or anything, okay?"
Nanaki suddenly chuckled. "You would be in good company even if you were to be called those things. Vincent and Cloud routinely call themselves such names."
"I'm not sure that's really what I'd call good company, personally," Yuffie said, shaking her head. Former Shinra stooges who only left the company after one of its employees turned on them violently? Okay, it could be worse, but…it could sure as heck be better, too!
"Remarry?" Yuffie's father repeated, sounding shell-shocked. "I…I've never…I've never even contemplated such a thing…"
"It wouldn't really be so bad, would it?" Chekhov asked, moving suddenly to sit beside him, and setting a comforting hand on his knee. Yuffie felt her tail start thrashing about violently. Could that old bag be any more transparent in hitting on Yuffie's father?! What was wrong with her?!
"I don't even know any eligible maidens," Yuffie's father continued, thankfully oblivious to the middle-aged woman currently putting the moves on him.
"You'd hardly need to find a 'maiden'," Chekhov said, with a light laugh. "Just an unmarried woman of any age. A war widow, for example," she added, apparently having realized that her prey had not yet picked up on her desires.
"It's not that simple," Yuffie pointed out, trying her best to remain civil. She knew if she started getting all up in arms about it, her father might do it just to tick her off. He got weirdly stubborn whenever his daughter pointed out that she knew better than he did… "If you're really gonna remarry, then the idea's to make a new heir, right? So you can't marry some menopausal hag, you know?"
"M-menopausal!?" Chekhov repeated, sounding infuriated, then she suddenly let out a long laugh, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, as if that could make her look refined. "Maybe you're still just a child, if you don't know how very old a woman has to be before menopause becomes a concern."
Yuffie smiled grimly. "In my case, I'll have to be, what, eight hundred?" she asked, glancing over at Nanaki.
"Ah…I have no idea," he admitted helplessly, his ears drooping slightly. "That might be about right, though…"
Yuffie's father let out a deep sigh. "What did the people sound like they favored?" he asked Chekhov, looking at her with worry written all over his face. It made him look even older than he already was.
"I think they'll probably vote in your favor, Lord Godo," she assured him. "Most of the people present at the meeting seemed quite put off by Bakufu's incendiary rhetoric."
He nodded, then sighed again. "Still, I should probably be planning a campaign to woo them to my side," he concluded. "Bakufu will spend the entirety of the next week trying to convince everyone he can that I am a menace—no, that my whole bloodline is!"
Chekhov nodded eagerly. "It's a good idea, my lord! I'll be overjoyed to help!"
"I'm sure all of the Five will want to help," Yuffie hurried to point out. "Obviously, Nanaki and I will help, too. If you lose your post, we probably won't even be welcome in Wutai at all anymore." As much as she didn't want to lose her position as the future ruler of Wutai to an as-yet unborn half-sibling, better that than to lose it to Shake's crazed father. At least if her father stayed leading Wutai, then Yuffie could stay there as long as she wanted, being a guardian of the nation, and a supporter to her father, her half-sibling, and then to a long succession of nieces, nephews and…actually, maybe it would be best to leave Wutai after a few generations. It might get too depressing to stay any longer than that….
"You should run along and get your rest now," Chekhov suddenly told her. "I know how cranky little girls get when they don't have enough sleep."
"It's old ladies that need sleep, not strong, healthy young women," Yuffie pointed out furiously.
Chekhov laughed again, but Yuffie could see a throbbing vein on the side of her forehead despite the otherwise seemingly genuine laughter. "Lord Godo, let me help you plan your campaign," she suggested in an altogether too provocative tone, as soon as she was done laughing.
But Yuffie's father shook his head, thankfully. "It's late," he said, "and I will need to be well rested if I'm going to enter into a public competition of wits starting in the morning. Yuffie, you should get some rest as well. You will be beleaguered with questions tomorrow, and I expect you to answer them with dignity and grace, if you don't want to dishonor all our ancestors!"
"Yeah, don't worry about me," Yuffie said, getting to her feet and hoping she didn't look worried. "I'll be fine. You just take care of yourself, old coot," she added, in a teasing way.
Her father grumbled a response, but then turned his back on everyone, moving to take a place in front of the family altar, where he lit up a stick of incense in front of the picture of Yuffie's mother. It should have made her feel relieved that he was still devoted to her mother…but instead it only reminded her of what Bakufu had told her, that it was her father, not the Shinra, who had started the war that had robbed her of her mother…!
Consequently, she was absolutely livid the whole way home, and she changed out of her clothes in a manner more befitting combat than getting ready for bed, despite that what she was changing into was only a thin nightgown. She hadn't been lying down on her futon for more than thirty seconds before she felt Nanaki's nose nudging up her nightgown, and his tongue furtively starting to lick her private parts.
Yuffie pushed his head away, turning her body aside as she did so. "I'm not in the mood," she muttered.
"But…I thought you could use some cheering up," Nanaki said plaintively.
"I don't want to be cheered up!" Yuffie snapped. "Didn't you hear Bakufu? My dad's the one who got my mom killed!"
For several minutes, there was only the sound of Yuffie's tail thrashing and burning to break the silence. "I don't understand," Nanaki finally said. "When did he say that…?"
"My mom died fighting in the war, like most of the population of Wutai," Yuffie explained. "So when my dad started the war…that means he's the one who got my mom killed."
"Oh. I see. I'm sorry," Nanaki said tenderly, then curled up beside her, resting his head against her shoulder. "I thought maybe you were upset because of the argument you were having with that woman…"
Yuffie grimaced. "Yeah, that, too," she agreed. "The nerve of her, goin' after my dad like that!"
"Going after him?" Nanaki repeated. "She…was trying to…she wants to be the one he marries?"
"You didn't think it was obvious?" Yuffie asked, incredulously. How could he have missed that?!
"I don't really know much about human mating practices," Nanaki reminded her. "Only what we've…ah...experienced together…"
Yuffie sighed sadly. It shouldn't have surprised her that her non-human lover didn't understand human women. In her experience, it was typical for human men not to understand a single thing about women, so why would Nanaki be any different? "Well, trust me, she was doin' everything other than use a megaphone. And if Cait Sith had been around, I'm sure she'd have swiped his megaphone to use it, too," she added, with a chuckle. "That stupid old bag…"
"Is she that old?" Nanaki asked curiously. "She didn't seem to be as old as your father…"
"Yeah, Chekhov's probably only about forty," Yuffie surmised, after a moment's thought. "So in a way I guess she's actually too young for him, but…ugh. I just don't think I can stand the thought of it! She's not even a proper Wutaian!"
"Huh? But…isn't she one of the people you fought in that pagoda three years ago?" Nanaki asked, sounding confused.
"Yeah, it's just…" Yuffie sighed, and shook her head. "Back when the Shinra were first starting up, like about a hundred years ago or something, one of the little countries they swallowed whole didn't wanna get swallowed up, right? So a bunch of its people fled here an' there an' everywhere, but mostly here. You can always tell them from proper Wutaians 'cause they've got different-sounding names. Chekhov, Gorky, Staniv, they're all descendents of those refugees who came here to get away from the Shinra. They're not really Wutaian."
"That sounds a bit racist, Yuffie," Nanaki reprimanded her.
"Th-that isn't what I meant! It's not that I think they're worse people or anything! It's just…one of them marryin' my dad…so that one of their kids will rule here…? It just seems so wrong!"
"Given what you're expecting the people to accept in our relationship, I don't think you have any right to object to that," Nanaki told her firmly.
Yuffie scowled. Was she really in the wrong here? Was it actually a terrible thing for her to be judging them as unworthy of ruling in Wutai because of their blood? Well…maybe…but maybe not…after all, what if there really was something to the belief that Leviathan favored their people? If that was true, then he probably wouldn't like them anymore if the royal bloodline got diluted with foreign blood. Then again, if Leviathan was just an ordinary summon after all, then that would be meaningless…
She continued turning the issue over and over in her mind until she finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep, filled mostly with Chekhov's annoying laugh, and horrifying images of her going further and further in attempts to seduce Yuffie's father, sometimes with the ghost of Yuffie's mother weeping in the background. That actually made it better, though; Yuffie's mother hadn't been the type to weep over anything, so it made the nightmares less convincing. Still, she did not wake feeling very rested, and she was still in a bad mood as she started getting dressed again.
"How are we going to handle this?" Nanaki asked tentatively, as they ate their breakfast, breaking the silence that had lingered in the room all morning. "I don't know much about political campaigns. Should we ask Reeve for help?"
"Not on that, no," Yuffie said, shaking her head. "I'll let my dad handle the politicking. It's the only thing he's good at anyway. I'm just gonna try an' put up the right kind of answers if anyone asks me any questions. That and there's a couple of things I want to do first."
Nanaki tilted his head to one side curiously, but didn't pry. He was probably still feeling a little stung that Yuffie hadn't let him make love to her last night. She did feel a little guilty about that—after all, it was the first time she had ever really refused him—but she didn't think she'd be able to make it up to him until after the elections were over. If anyone happened to see or hear them making love…it might sway them over to Bakufu's side.
After breakfast, they left Yuffie's place, and headed towards the outskirts of town, where Wutai's only television station was located, in an area blocked off from sight by an enormous line of trees. The television station had a plain, drab building that would have looked more appropriate in Midgar than in Wutai, which was why no one liked to come near it, or even see it. "I had no idea this was even here," Nanaki commented as they approached the building.
"That's the whole idea," Yuffie told him, pointing to the trees. "But right now, we need their help."
"We do?"
Yuffie didn't bother explaining, since she'd have to explain again once they got inside anyway. The lobby of the station was bustling and noisy, but as soon as the doors shut behind the young lovers, everything fell silent. Yuffie grimaced, and pretended not to notice the way everyone was staring at her. Instead, she plastered a fake smile on her face, and turned to the receptionist. "I'd like to talk to the head of programming, please," she told her.
"Wha—?! Oh! Um….let me check his schedule…" the receptionist stammered, then began frantically flipping through an appointment calendar. How typical that they hadn't gone digital with their schedules yet! Yet another case of Wutai clinging too tightly to the wrong customs. "Erm…he seems to be free right now…I'll…I'll just call up and—"
"Nah, don't bother. I'll announce myself," Yuffie told her, then headed for the elevator.
Nanaki ran after her, but he looked at her with worry as soon as the elevator doors closed behind them. "Yuffie, is it all right? We didn't really get permission…"
"Yeah, don't worry about it. I know him."
"Of course you do; Wutai is a small town…"
"That's not what I meant," Yuffie snapped irritably. She did not like being reminded that Wutai was now only a 'small town,' not considering that it had been a large and prosperous nation when she was born. "He's actually my cousin, but his father was a bastard, so everyone pretends not to know that he's part of the family."
"They ignore someone just because his parents weren't married?" Nanaki asked, sounding worried. "But…my species…we don't even have marriage. I know my parents didn't have anything like that…"
"As long as no one around here knows that, who cares? Besides, it's not usually a big deal. It's just that you can't have someone inheriting the whole country who was the product of an extramarital affair," Yuffie explained, shaking her head. "Though, actually, I don't really see what the big deal is, but…I'm not the wife who got cheated on, so maybe that's why?"
"You'll never find out what that's like, I promise!" Nanaki exclaimed, his yellow eye gleaming passionately. "You're the only one I'll ever mate with!"
"Oh, Nanaki, you're so sweet!" Yuffie exclaimed, giving her lover a brief kiss. It would have been a longer one, except that the elevator had finally arrived at its destination—from its slow speed, it seemed to pre-date the war—so they were forced to resume a less intimate pose quite quickly.
"The front desk told us you were coming," the secretary said, staring at Yuffie and Nanaki with wide eyes. "He…he said you can go on in…"
"Of course he did!" Yuffie laughed, and headed through the big double doors into the main office, where Kei awaited her. Although his official title was 'head of programming,' he was more like the owner of the television station…though technically he wasn't the one who actually owned it…
"Yuffie, sweetie! It's been so long!" Kei exclaimed, giving her a warm hug.
"Let go of her!" Nanaki growled angrily.
Yuffie laughed as she extricated herself from her cousin's arms, and then she crouched down in front of her lover. "It's okay, Nanaki. I told you, he's my cousin, remember?"
"I've heard lots of stories of human males having incestuous desires for their cousins," Nanaki replied, his one eye still glaring at Kei.
"Don't worry yourself so much," Kei said, smiling broadly. "I'd never cheat on my boyfriend."
"Boyfriend?" Nanaki repeated, his glare being replaced by a look of confusion. "But you're a male."
Kei just laughed.
"Some men are like that, Nanaki," Yuffie told him, ruffling his mane a little. "Just don't tell anyone, okay? It's supposed to be a secret." Not that Kei's behavior was likely to fool anyone into thinking he was straight, but…as a relation to the royal family, he didn't have the freedom to come out of the closet, either. Now that she was having to suffer through the way some of the people were reacting to her love affair with Nanaki, Yuffie could suddenly relate to everything Kei had been through.
"I'm always glad to see you, dear, but there's really nothing I can do," Kei told her, as Yuffie stood up and turned to look at him again. "If I try to run anything political in Lord Godo's favor, you know Bakufu will remind everyone about my father's standing as a royal bastard. And…sometimes people say that my father died fleeing the battle instead of fighting to the end. I don't want to risk that being said again."
"Yeah, an' I doubt Bakufu's fooled about your relationship with your 'employer,' either," Yuffie agreed, nodding. "I just need two things from you, that's all. And I doubt Bakufu's gonna be able to react to either of them."
"Oh? Well, if it's in my power, you know I'll help out!" Kei assured her.
"There've been years and years and years of historical dramas about our ancestors," Yuffie reminded him, "so I want you to run as many of them as you can in the next week. Without being too obvious, of course, but still, as many as you think you can run without Bakufu noticing. I doubt he's gonna be spending much time watchin' TV anyway," she added.
"That's no problem," Kei agreed, nodding, "and they're always popular, so it should be good for our ratings, but you do know that the foreign channels have a much larger audience here than we do, right?"
"Yeah, that's the other thing I want from you," Yuffie told him, with a self-satisfied grin. "I want copies of all the ones that are gonna be most easily appreciated by foreigners, an' I'm gonna get the foreign channels to run 'em. And that is something Bakufu can't do a damn thing about!" she crowed delightedly.
"That's true," Kei agreed, "but won't Bakufu counter that you and your father don't live up to our famous ancestors?"
"Hey, I helped save the whole world!" Yuffie pointed out. "Twice! How many of my ancestors can say that?!"
Kei shrugged. "None, I suppose, but…well, I guess all we can do is try it and see what happens, hmm?" He walked around behind his desk and sat down, taking out a book and beginning to flip through its pages. "I think you and Lord Godo should be prepared to face that attack, though," he added.
"Hey, I'm totally ready," Yuffie said, shaking her head. "I've done way cooler, more impressive things than my ancestors ever did. Dad's gonna look like a loser, but…there's not really any way around that, since he is one."
"Yuffie, that's a terrible thing to say about your own father!" Nanaki exclaimed. "It isn't his fault he couldn't win the war, surely."
"Yeah, it is!" Yuffie countered angrily. "All he hadda do was cheat a little! Those Shinra creeps were—" She stopped abruptly, sighing and shaking her head. "No, I shouldn't talk about stuff like that. If any of Bakufu's supporters heard me…"
"Anyway, can't he turn into some kind of god?" Nanaki added. "Wouldn't that impress people?"
"Well, yeah, but…I think he can only turn into Omni under certain circumstances," Yuffie answered, sighing. "Otherwise, why wouldn't he have done it during the war and scared off all the Shinra right off the bat?"
"Oh, yes, that's a good point," Nanaki agreed. "I'm sure that would have terrified the average human greatly." He laughed sadly. "If I recall correctly, a few of our number were rather frightened, for that matter."
"I'd think all of 'em except Vincent were," Yuffie said, laughing.
"If Cloud was frightened, he didn't admit it," Nanaki assured her, "but even Tifa seemed a little worried by the idea that you might be able to do that, too."
"I don't think I can," Yuffie said, looking down at her hands curiously. She had sometimes wondered what it felt like to have four of them…but then she felt her tail twitching, and sighed sadly. "Even if I could have, I bet I can't now," she concluded, perhaps a little glumly.
"All right, I think I've picked out the shows that will play best to a foreign audience," Kei suddenly announced, looking up from the book he had been consulting. "Where do you want me to deliver the canisters?"
"Canisters? They're not digital?" Nanaki asked, surprised.
Yuffie wasn't surprised, though. She knew Wutai was still using film. "Let me find out," she said, taking out her cell phone and quickly calling Reeve's number.
"Ah, Yuffie, I thought you might call," Reeve said as soon as he picked up. "But I don't think there's anything I can do to help you. The WRO can't interfere with internal political—"
"Don't worry, I'm not asking you to," Yuffie interrupted. She was actually a little surprised he already knew about what was going on, but she didn't want to waste time saying so. "I just wanted the foreign TV stations to run some old Wutaian historical dramas. Oh, they're called dramas, but they're more like action shows!" she quickly assured him. "Period pieces about my great ancestors kickin' butts and takin' names, mostly. I thought you'd be the person to talk to about getting that to happen."
"Oh, I see," Reeve said after a moment, and Yuffie had a feeling he was nodding. "Yes, I can help you there. I have connections at all the major television stations. Will the people who own the shows trust you to e-mail the episodes to the station managers?"
"Uh…we still use film stock here," Yuffie explained, feeling a little embarrassed. "Besides, some of these shows are older than I am!"
"Ah. That complicates matters a little, then…but I think we can still work something out. I'll send a courier to fetch them, then."
"Okay. Try an' keep it low profile, okay? Like, don't land an airship right in the middle of town," Yuffie pleaded. "I don't want to call any more attention to myself than I already have done."
"Don't worry," Reeve assured her. "It'll probably be a few hours, maybe more. Is that all right?"
"Yeah, it's fine," Yuffie said, then hung up the phone, and looked back at Kei. "Okay, so just collect the cans and have 'em ready for whenever the courier gets here."
Kei nodded. "I'll have the stock boys start pulling them right away," he assured her, with an unnerving smile that made Yuffie worry that the poor stock boys weren't allowed to wear much in the way of clothing. But she really didn't want to think of her kind cousin as having anything in common with Dio and his ilk, so she did her best to shove that idea right out of her brain and pretend it had never existed.
Yuffie and Nanaki quickly said their farewells to Kei, who began a lengthy phone conversation with his stock department even as they left the office. Given all the numbers he was rattling off, keeping track of film canisters was apparently a very tricky business. No wonder everyone else had gone digital! It was much easier to keep track of stuff that was stored on a computer.
The young lovers returned to the main part of town, where they were quickly beleagered by a posse of middle-aged women, most of whom had children trailing after them. The women seemed quite irate at Yuffie, but the children quickly began to make even more noise than their mothers, as they started playing with Yuffie's tail, and climbing all over poor Nanaki. It was a miserable experience that lasted at least an hour—though it felt like much longer—but Yuffie managed to keep her composure, and she was pretty sure she hadn't said anything that would upset her father's chances in the upcoming election.
In fact, considering that she managed to sway a couple of the mothers to see things from her point of view, Yuffie felt that she had actually done really well.
Still, after that ordeal, she wanted to have a little peace and quiet, so she and Nanaki headed over towards the Da Chao, and took a seat in a shady area near the base, where they sat and talked for some time, until Yuffie noticed a spot not far away where the stone seemed a bit darker than the surrounding rock. Looking around, she realized that that spot was directly beneath the flat hand…meaning that dark spot might have been the blood stain where Corneo had splattered all over the path.
Suddenly, Yuffie felt sick to her stomach, and decided that they needed to head back into town, much to Nanaki's confusion. They were headed back towards Yuffie's place when they were surprised to hear a voice calling Yuffie's name.
"Cloud? What are you doing here?" Yuffie asked, turning to look at him in confusion. He was still wearing that ugly black outfit, complete with the arm cape, even though he no longer had any geostigma to cover up.
"Reeve hired me to come get those TV shows from you," Cloud explained, sounding a little perplexed. "You'd totally forgotten I run a delivery business now, hadn't you?" he added, sounding annoyed and a little exasperated.
"Gawd, is that his idea of low profile?!" Yuffie exclaimed, deeply annoyed. What could be low profile about anything involving Cloud?!
Cloud sighed. "Yuffie…when someone does you a favor, you shouldn't complain about it."
"I'm not complaining, but…enh, never mind! C'mon, they're at the TV station," Yuffie told him, starting to lead the way. "I don't know how you're gonna carry 'em all, though."
"Don't worry, I can manage," Cloud assured her.
They hadn't gotten halfway across the town square before they were ambushed by a number of Wutaian citizens, all clamoring for Cloud's attention. Yuffie tried to growl a warning at him that he'd better not say anything stupid, but she wasn't sure she could make him understand without everyone thinking she was threatening him.
"You're not here to threaten Lord Bakufu, are you?!" one of them demanded of Cloud.
"Lord who?" Cloud repeated, his confusion sounding genuine. Surely he'd been told why she wanted those TV shows run on the foreign stations, hadn't he? Somehow, Yuffie had to admit that it wouldn't really be that surprising if he hadn't been. "I'm just here on delivery business. Picking up a package for the WRO."
"Why is a great hero running errands?" one of the women asked, gazing at Cloud so dreamily that Yuffie wanted to find an excuse to mention Cloud's long-standing relationship with Tifa…
"I'm not…really…a hero," Cloud said sadly, shaking his head. "And I run a delivery company. Reasonable rates!" he added, somewhat pathetically. Considering he only answered his phone like one time in twenty, his rates were definitely not the reason his business was floundering.
"Well, Mr. Not-Really-A-Hero, tell us the truth," Bakufu's supporter started in, with a sickening smile on his face, "what do you really think of Miss Yuffie here?"
Cloud scratched his head for a moment, then shrugged. "I think she looked better without the tail," he answered.
Yuffie kicked him in the shins. "That's not what they want to hear, you dumbass!" she shouted. She regretted it immediately, of course, but…what else was she going to say?!
"What?! What?! Are you still angry about what happened at the party?" Cloud asked, looking as though he genuinely didn't understand.
"What do you think of her personality and abilities?" Bakufu's supporter clarified, ignoring the argument. "She's rather a nuisance, isn't she?"
"Well, she can be annoying," Cloud admitted, "but she's a very skilled fighter. In some ways, she's more skilled than any of the rest of us were."
"In some ways?" the other man repeated. "You mean, in her ability to steal from her own companions, perhaps?"
Yuffie's fists clenched up, and her tail started thrashing so wildly that most of the other citizens backed away, looking frightened. But Cloud lifted up a hand in front of her, keeping her from retorting.
"If you don't think stealing materia from someone while they're fighting without them noticing is impressive, then there's something wrong with you," Cloud answered, shaking his head. "It was just a childish prank, but the skill involved was amazing. And it's not like she ever tried it again or anything," he added, making Yuffie feel just a little bit awful, considering she had, in fact, stolen about half the party's materia after the battle with Sephiroth was over, though no one had seemed to notice.
"I'm surprised you dismiss it so readily, considering your life was put in danger by it," Bakufu's supporter continued in an oily voice, making Yuffie wonder just who had been telling Bakufu what.
"The only people in danger were Yuffie and Elena," Cloud said, shaking his head. "It was annoying, but that's all. And it saved Wutai from the threat of Corneo, right? That was probably her reason for the whole thing," he added, in the most ludicrous claim Yuffie had ever heard. How did he think that would have even worked? She had had no idea Corneo even existed until his goons had grabbed her…
Bakufu's stooge didn't look convinced, but the rest of the people did, and started murmuring approvingly. "Surely you're not saying that you think your fight three years ago was actually aided by Miss Yuffie's involvement," he said in a very flat voice.
"Of course it was! We needed all the help we could get!" Cloud replied, almost angrily. "I mean, yeah, we probably still would have won without her," he then admitted, making Yuffie scowl, "but it would have been harder. And I don't think the world would have been saved from Omega Weapon if that had been the case."
"Wh-what?" Yuffie asked, feeling her cheeks heat up. Why would anyone think that? She had barely done anything in that fight.
"Well, Vincent said you saved his life in Nibelheim," Cloud told her, shrugging. "And if he'd died, then nothing could have stopped Omega Weapon, right? So you were indispensable in that fight."
Yuffie nodded, but she was too embarrassed to speak. After all her awkwardness and bad disposition towards Vincent since he had walked in on them having sex, he had still said something that nice about her? She really hadn't been expecting that…
"Do you really believe her claim to divine intervention on behalf of her perversions?" Bakufu's supporter asked, apparently having given up on trying to get Cloud to complain about Yuffie directly.
"What's perverted about falling in love with a friend?" Cloud asked back, sounding like he genuinely didn't understand the question. Did he really not get it, or was he better at acting than Yuffie had given him credit for?
"That thing isn't even human!" one of the other assembled citizens yelped, setting both Nanaki's and Yuffie's tails thrashing angrily.
"Nanaki is one of my greatest friends," Cloud replied coldly, "so I'll thank you not to call him a 'thing'."
"What concerns Lord Bakufu is the fact that this selfish she-beast has taken our great Water God's name in vain in her attempts to rationalize her behavior," the smarmy supporter oozed. However, as he was talking, Yuffie suddenly realized that she didn't know him. She'd never laid eyes on him before. How could there be anyone in Wutai that she didn't know? Wutai had been reduced to only a few thousand people since the war ended, and Yuffie knew all of them by sight, if not by name. And yet she'd never seen this guy before… "Surely you can appreciate why that upsets us."
"Well, it's Yuffie's god, too, right?" Cloud asked. "She wouldn't have said something about it if it wasn't true, would she?"
Bakufu's supporter scowled. "How do you think she grew that tail, then? You don't believe in Leviathan, so you can't think that Leviathan wants her to help this creature reproduce. So where do you think it came from?"
Cloud frowned. "I don't think it's any of my business," he finally answered, after a long pause. "It's there, ruining her cute little butt—"
"Hey!" Yuffie yelped, kicking him again.
"Keep your eyes off her!" Nanaki growled, glaring at Cloud.
"I wasn't—I didn't even look! I was just saying!" Cloud objected. "You have to admit that you looked better before!"
"I don't think so, no!" Yuffie retorted. Although, actually, in a way she knew she had looked better before, since at least her clothes had fit more properly back then.
"I think she looks better now," Nanaki added firmly.
"This is all very amusing," Bakufu's supporter said, "but it doesn't address the real issue. If that tail is the indication of a plague that continued contact with this furry being has caused, then we need to drive them out of Wutai before it spreads to anyone else."
"If that was the case, the people of Cosmo Canyon would all have tails by now," Cloud laughed.
"Only if they allowed the beast to mate with them," the other man replied smugly.
"Even if that were the case, it would only matter if one of us was cheating on the other," Yuffie pointed out. "But I have a question for you!" she added, poking the man in his chest. "Who the hell are you?! You're not a Wutai citizen."
"I am!" he objected weakly. "I've lived here all my life!"
"Oh, really? Anyone here ever seen him before?" Yuffie asked, looking at the other people clustered around them.
The people looked at each other helplessly, then one woman bit her lip a bit before speaking. "I saw him yesterday at Bakufu's place," she offered uneasily.
"Yeah, but before that?" Yuffie prompted, making the woman shake her head. "See? You're not really from around here. So who the hell are you?"
"He looks Wutaian, though," Cloud said, looking at the slightly panicky Bakufu supporter. "He's got those Wutaian eyes, you know? Like yours."
Yuffie sighed. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything. It's not like people never left here to settle elsewhere. It didn't happen often, but it did happen."
"You can't get out of this by attacking me!" the Bakufu supporter retorted weakly. "I have nothing to hide! You're just trying to get the spotlight off your own indefensible actions!"
"If you've got nothing to hide, then you have no reason not to explain why no one knows you, despite how small Wutai has become," Nanaki pointed out calmly.
Bakufu's supporter just shook his head repeatedly, backing away from them. "I'm not the one on trial here!" he squeaked.
"I didn't think anyone was on trial," Cloud said, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Is something more going on than Reeve told me about?"
"How should I know?" Yuffie retorted. "I don't know what he told you! But no one's on trial for anything," she assured him, though she realized that it was bending the truth a little, since the election was very close to a trial for herself and especially her father.
"Well, he said there was some kind of flap about you and Nanaki, and now someone wanted to usurp your father's position or something," Cloud said, scratching his head a little. "Honestly, I was still asleep when he called. Tifa's been experimenting with some new cocktails, so…I'm still a bit hung over…" Yuffie had to repress a scowl. Who admitted to being hung over while they were in the middle of an argument like this one? "Reeve didn't sound like he thought there was any danger of of Lord Godo losing, though," he added.
"You won't get away with this!" the mysterious man snarled, somewhat out of the blue, since everyone had been ignoring him for nearly a minute. Then he ran off at speeds that were fairly impressive, given his age and fairly out-of-shape appearance.
"I didn't know people still used lines that clichéd," Cloud laughed. "So he's not really from Wutai, then."
"Duh! If he was, I'd have recognized him!" Yuffie pointed out. "But I was hoping to find out who he was and where he came from, and why he's so worked up about Bakufu winning…"
"We should investigate," Nanaki agreed, nodding. "There might be something more going on than we thought."
"Yeah," Yuffie agreed. "Better tell my dad, too. Or maybe we shouldn't worry him until we have more information," she amended her own statement. "He's probably got enough on his mind already." She sighed, then turned to Cloud. "C'mon, let's get going so you can make your delivery as soon as possible."
Cloud nodded. "Works for me. It's too loud around here; it's hurting my head."
Grimacing, Yuffie led Cloud in the direction of the television studio, trying to ignore the way the other Wutaian citizens were now gossiping very loudly. Mostly, they just seemed to be appalled by Cloud's hangover, and his brazenness in admitting to it. However, that might mean they were going to place less stock in his opinion of Yuffie, so it was still a bit worrisome…