9. Suddenly, Ninjas Drop From the Sky!
Her face is a map of the world,
Is a map of the world.
You can see she's a beautiful girl,
She's a beautiful girl.
And everything around her is a silver pool of light;
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it,
It makes you calm.
She holds you captivated in her palm.
-- From Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall.
The townsfolk mourn. They mourn for the dead soldiers. They mourn for those soldiers' leader who brought them here to fight a demon. And they mourn for Angeal Hewley, a man who wasn't born in Hollow Bastion but who made it his own as they made him theirs. While somewhere distant the great Elite warrior Sephiroth is glorified, it can't compare to the ripples of sorrow and respect that convulse the little town between Barren Region and Dark Forest like it's been picked up and shaken.
A party of chocobo riders cross the wasteland and go into the mountains to fetch the bodies home. They return dragging far too many covered palettes.
Less than a day later more soldiers arrive to retrieve all of them except Angeal's. The commander in charge tries to remove him, too, and it takes several people to hold back Angeal's nephew. The commander is eventually convinced that, as Angeal retired from the military years before and entered into this mission of his own free will, the army has no claim over his sword or his remains. They Instead, they're interred next to his sister and brother-in-law in the town graveyard. Though the commander only grudgingly allows it, the sword is returned to its rightful owner and the military depart to recover their abandoned tanks.
Angeal's nephew stays in his house. He's almost seventeen, an adult by Hollow Bastion's standards, but there's some concern over leaving him alone in the house he shared with his uncle after losing the man so suddenly. He refuses to leave, however, shutting himself away where nobody can tell him how much they liked Angeal, how sad it all is, or how proud he must be that his uncle died defeating such a great threat. People knock the door with food but the boy stops answering, so they leave it on the step where it's either overturned by cats or taken in by the handful of visitors he does admit.
In other circumstances it might be frowned upon when the flower shop girl moves in with him. An unmarried boy and girl living under the same roof? Shameful. Even worse when the son of one of the barmaids – the unrespectable one with the chequered past that drove her to Hollow Bastion sixteen years ago – takes the number in the house up to three. Yet these are mitigating circumstances – which means there is gossip, but people keep it under their hats and don't shout rumours to each other across the market square on a busy afternoon.
It takes a while, but eventually the monsters return to Barren Region from wherever they fled to while Sephiroth made it too dangerous even for them. They prowl at night, not coming too close to town, but people can feel them there. They whisper to each other. Men who admired Angeal take up their old patrols, walking familiar paths and setting up defences along the ever-crumbling wall, but it's like stepping in footprints made in melted snow. Hollow Bastion hasn't forgotten what Angeal taught them, but still they whisper to each other. They feel vulnerable without him. Without his strong presence they remember that the wall is broken and that Bugganes once used the loose chunks to climb up and steal their children. Angeal was only one man, but he made them feel safe by teaching them to do more than just fear what lurked in the dark.
"What should we do?" is the most asked question. "What should we do?"
The nephew finally emerges from his house, but he's different. He wears his sword with pride and walks with his head held high, but his violet eyes are more complex than they used to be. Though he's learned to smile again there's always a grain of sadness in them now, no matter how much his mouth turns up at the corners. His hair, which has been dependably messy since he was a toddler, is slicked back. Unlike Angeal's hair, however, a single forelock refuses to be tamed, which would tell people a lot about the boy's character if they looked and stopped congratulating themselves on having another warrior to protect them and make their world right once again.
Aerith wrinkles her nose at the familiar stench. "Cloud!"
"What?"
"Leave your boots by the door."
"Aw, but-"
"By. The. Door."
Grumbling, he removes them. He's about to dump them next to hers when she holds out her ladle, not even looking in his direction. Droplets of soup fly through the air with the force of her straightened elbow.
"Outside the door until you clean them."
"You never make Zack do this."
"I do when he steps in dung and tries to bring it inside. Have you smelled what comes out of chimera? It's nearly as bad as what comes out of a chocobo."
Cloud sighs and dutifully does as she asks, going to the sink afterwards to wash his hands. It's an established rhythm, emphasised as Aerith turns and he practically presses his back to hers like warriors in battle, staying away from the hot saucepan and snatching dishes from the cupboard as he passes. One final spin and he's on the other side of the table, setting three places she didn't have to ask him to set.
"We need another two."
Cloud looks up. "We do?"
"Mm-hm, my mother and yours are coming over."
"They're checking up on us?"
"I'm saying nothing, but if my mom looks at you and Zack strangely, try and look as upstanding and respectable as possible."
Cloud isn't as innocent as he once was, though he still flushes scarlet at the mere thought of what people think they get up to behind closed doors. "My mom knows we're just friends," he protests.
"Mine too." Aerith shrugs. "But people talk, and you can't close your ears like you can your eyes. Could you fetch the bread? It's in the oven."
Cloud takes down the long wooden spatula and flicks open the door of the masonry oven set into the wall. The blast of heat hits him in the face, drying out his eyeballs and making him blink. "Ynf!"
"Did you forget to step out of the way to let the first blast pass?"
"… No."
When this house was rebuilt it was made sturdier, and could take such a thing as a masonry oven. When Cloud and Aerith first decided not to leave Zack living alone with only ghosts and memories for company, the whole house was cold as ice. These days they keep a fire in the grate and embers glowing inside the oven so the place is always pleasantly warm. It's homey, and for all Zack tried to send them away at the start, they both know he's glad of their company now.
However, when they sit down to their meal Zack is still notably absent. Elmyra exchanges a look with Dala Strife, which Cloud catches but doesn't understand. They make light conversation and it's all very agreeable, even if he does feel like he's being inspected. He, Aerith and Zack have been friends for so long he finds it hard to believe that anyone who knows them would squint the way his own mother does when she passes the butter.
"So," Elmyra says eventually, steepling her fingers over her food. "How is Zack?"
"He's better," Aerith tells her. "Things were bad for a while." She pauses. "Really bad. But they're a lot better now."
"He's coping all right?"
"Well, he's smiling again." So is Aerith. She barely smiled the whole time Zack's mouth remained a straight line, and it hurt Cloud more than he can say to see them feeding each other's pain. If anybody in the world was born to smile, it's those two.
"Uh-huh," he says emphatically.
"And it's not that horrible fake smile we had for a while, either."
Cloud winces. That was a bad time; when Zack went from room to room smiling with everything except his eyes, pretending he was fine while the sun was out. He even tried to laugh. It was terrible to hear. Then either Cloud or Aerith would wake in the night to find him in Angeal's room, or sitting halfway down the stairs running his hands over the carved banister. They spent long hours coaxing him back to bed, warming pans of hot milk, or just sitting beside him, doing nothing but being there and reminding him without words that he still has people who love him. They all miss Angeal. He was the only real father figure any of them had, and that shared experience helped Zack slowly come to terms with his death.
The townspeople have adopted Genesis as their second martyr. Angeal's wounds suggested Sephiroth killed him, and Genesis avenged his friend by killing Sephiroth, only to then die of his own fatal injuries. Neither Aerith nor Cloud could stop Zack going to see the bodies, and they'll never forget the look on his face when he came home. He acknowledges he was wrong about Genesis. The man was badly injured in the fight and had an ugly death. Sephiroth even burned off half his hands, which wouldn't have killed but would have put Genesis through an enormous amount of agony. Raw inside, Zack took on fresh guilt for doubting Genesis and added it to the grief that left him sleepless and aching.
But he's a lot better now. Everyone acknowledges it, including Zack himself. He's not completely healed, and perhaps he never will be, but ever since he took up the Buster Sword again and set out to continue Angeal's work, he's been much more at ease with himself and the world.
"It has been months." Elmyra's gaze flickers around the room, reminding Cloud that she used to sit here when they were all kids, at this table, maybe even in the very seat she's in now, and drink coffee with Angeal. The brief pinch of sadness in her eyes makes him wonder if perhaps Elmyra once hoped for more time with Angeal than she got, or that she'd spent that time in different ways.
"Nine of them," Dala puts in helpfully.
Aerith looks between them both, but it's Cloud who answers. "What's your point?"
Elmyra sighs. "When are you coming home?"
"This is home," Aerith says eventually. "It's not like we've moved away where you never see us. I still work in the flower shop all the time, and Cloud … okay, maybe he doesn't drink, but we're neither of us strangers to you."
"We just want what's best for you," Dala assures them. "You don't want to get a bad reputation. It's easy to get and difficult to lose. And some people never let go." Coming from her, this is sage advice.
Cloud shuffles his feet uncomfortably under the table. "We know what we're doing."
"Do you? Three of you living in the same house and not one wedding ring?"
"That's outmoded thinking -" Aerith starts.
"That's Hollow Bastion thinking," Elmyra cuts her off. "People were willing to look at the other way when Zack was in mourning, but it's been nine months. I understand that you three are close and you want to be there for him, but there's no point in making life more difficult than it has to be."
"We're not sleeping together!"
"We know that, but people need clear signals when they have thick heads. You're all of marriageable age – or close enough that it makes no difference."
Aerith's irritation is blooming into anger, though her face remains composed. Cloud recognises the signs, but before she can speak or he can pour reassurance on the situation, there's a scream from outside.
At once, everyone forgets what they're saying and bolts for the door. Cloud reaches it first. He has become a regular hand at the chocobo stables and working with the enormous birds has made him stronger and more muscular.
Outside on the street, a woman cowers away from a small black creature shaped like a sack toy. It's a tiny, ridiculous looking thing, but something about it causes ripples of revulsion to run through Cloud.
As they watch in horror, the creature's yellow eyes glow. It thrusts its hands into the woman's chest and yanks out what looks like a heart-shaped crystal. The creature scrabbles, but seems to lose its grip on it, and it rotates in the air before vanishing, leaving the woman's body to disintegrate into dust. Almost at once a second creature peels itself away from the first like the skin off a rancid and blackened banana.
"What in the world are those things?" Elmyra asks, hands flying to her mouth. "I've never seen monsters like that before."
Cloud is suddenly very aware that there are three women behind him, one of whom is his mother and one of whom is Aerith. Desire to protect them suffuses him, especially when the sack-toy creatures turn their eyes on them and shamble forward.
"Get back inside," Cloud orders, reaching for the wooden practise sword inside the umbrella stand. He's no master swordsman – not even close – but nine months of trying to cajole Zack back to himself has brought a fair amount of sparring. Zack works in physicality so much it's like a second language to him, and Cloud has tried to learn enough of the lexicon to say what his friend needed to hear. He's absorbed a lot more than he ever thought he would, though Zack can still hand him his ass in under a minute.
Cloud just hopes the creatures coming their way don't have his friend's skill.
Some people sneeze when they're in others' thoughts. Some people scratch their noses, or shiver. Zack careers around the corner and cuts the creatures in half with a swish of the Buster Sword. They don't make any noise as they fall to pieces and disappear.
"Hey, guys." Zack props the sword on one shoulder and grins at them. "Sorry I'm late for dinner."
"Zack!" Aerith claps her hands to see him.
"What was that thing?" Cloud asks, letting the tip of the practise sword drop to the ground.
Zack shakes his head. "No clue, but there were a whole bunch of them I found on patrol by Dark Forest. That's what held me up, but one of them got away from me – at least, I thought it was only one. I must've been mistaken."
"Th … they … killed that woman," Dala squeaks. Cloud immediately turns and wraps his mother in a comforting hug. She's never been so close to this sort of thing before and she's trembling. Instantly he berates himself for not telling her to run away so she wouldn't have to see. "They took her heart…"
"Shh, Mom, it's okay."
"Her heart!"
Zack's eyes narrow and his expression becomes dark. "They did?" It switches to confusion as he casts around for a body. "What woman?"
"She vanished," Aerith explains. "But it was weird. It wasn't a heart like a proper heart that sends blood around your body; it was more like those hearts we dangle from ribbons around bouquets on St. Valentine's Day."
There are people at the doors of other houses, all crowding and pointing. Zack raises his sword in a wave and a half-hearted cheer goes up. He looks back at the four faces at his own door. "I'll scout around; make sure there aren't any others. When I get back we'll talk – inside. I don't want a panic starting because of this."
Cloud's not looking at him, but from the corner of his eye he sees Aerith nod. "Please be careful," she says.
"Aren't I always?"
"No. You're a knucklehead about putting others' safety above your own. That's my point."
"You say that like it's a bad thing. All right, all right, don't look at me like that. I promise I'll be careful."
Cloud holds tight to his mother as she trembles like a newborn lamb finding its feet.
"They don't leave any bodies when they die," Zack says. "It's like they're not even really there – like I'm fighting phantoms."
"Except that we saw what happened to that woman," Aerith points out. "That wasn't the work of any phantom."
They're around the kitchen table, dinner dishes having been cleared away. Elmyra and Dala sit by the fire, leaving their children to talk and wondering how they raised them to be so calm in the face of … whatever just happened.
"They have a point," Cloud had pointed out when his mother was settled with a hot drink and had stopped quaking. Elmyra developed more of a tolerance for the extraordinary while Aerith learned about her powers, and her calming presence helped Dala to relax. "Since when did we become Hollow Bastion's defence council?"
"Since we live with its resident hero," Aerith replied, putting bread and cold cheese in front of Zack. The soup was a congealed paste and she deposited it in the slop bucket to take to the chocobos on the other side of town. Mix practically anything with grain and a hungry bird will eat it. "Here. You must be starving."
"Famished." Zack did his best impression of a hungry chicobo.
"Shouldn't we be discussing this with the others who patrol the borders?" Cloud asked.
There are quite a few of them now, though nobody's as dedicated as Zack. Mostly they're men and boys who have other jobs as well and fancy themselves as heroes on the side. They bring whatever weapons they have, which can range from swords bought specially from the travelling swordsmith, to an upturned bucket and a big stick with a nail in the end. Zack organises them, but they're not a militia, so he does most of the patrolling himself. Since 'hero' has become Zack's de facto profession he gets a lot of donations and can generally go to any shop or market stall and find himself with an armload of freebies. Whenever he does draw on the funds Angeal left behind he finds prices reduced and a blanket refusal to take the full amount when he tries to pay it. It's as if people are worried that he won't have as much time to defend them if he has to go out and earn a wage.
"I'd trust you two to make more sensible decisions than any of them," Zack replied. "They'll just want to run off with rakes and pitchforks or something. When it comes to fighting monsters most of them are heavily into hitting and yelling with a little space in between for logical thought. They don't seem bothered about challenging the stereotype of small-town fighters."
That was half a conversation ago. Since then Zack has explained about the pack of yellow-eyed creatures that tried to jump him when eh went to investigate rumours of Vetala in Dark Forest. Cloud and Aerith replied by describing in detail what happened to the woman on the street. They've established the woman's identity as Lula Weatherby, an old childless widow who sometimes wandered around looking for her dead goat, which is why nobody else in town is throwing up their arms and bewailing the sudden absence of a family member. Aerith will later put together a wreath for her, since nobody else will bother, and commemorate her passing even though Lula used to spit on her for 'living in sin'. But that's later, and this is now.
"I've never seen monsters that don't leave a body before," Zack says sombrely. "It's not natural. I felt my sword connect with something when I fought them. They were real. It just doesn't make any sense. Grah, I wish Angeal was here. He'd probably know what these things are and be sitting there pulling that I'm-not-smiling face while he waited for me to guess right."
Aerith and Cloud both wince, but Zack is past the stage where he can't even say Angeal's name without freezing into a little ball of pain.
"So what do we do?"
"You don't do anything," Zack tells Cloud. "I guess the only thing for me to do is keep on patrolling and hope no more of them turn up. It might be a temporary thing, like when that pack of imps tried to set up home in Dark Forest: dozens of imp attacks for a week, until they figured out it was less complicated to live someplace else and left. At least I know these new creatures aren't immune to the Buster Sword, so I can take care of them if and when they stick their noses in."
"That seems like a very unreliable strategy to me." Aerith rests her chin on one half-curled fist. "I don't know, something just doesn't feel right."
"Did you dream anything like this?"
"I haven't had any Green Dreams in a while, but I can't help feeling like we need to be doing more than just ignoring those things and hoping they go away. We don't even know what they're called." She has an old book in front of her with a hideous face on the cover. She bought it from a travelling book merchant when she was fourteen, and it's become well-thumbed with every monster Zack fights. When she moved in with him it was one of the first things she brought from her room above the flower shop, but there's nothing in it that even resembles what killed Lula Weatherby.
"Shadow monsters?" Cloud suggests. "Sack-toy monsters?"
"Pain-in-the-ass monsters?" Zack stands up. "I trust your feelings, Aerith. If you say there's more to this than meets the eye I believe it, but unless you can tell me what else to do there's nothing more to say right now."
Aerith frowns. "You're going out again?"
"You're not the only one with a bad feeling. I'm going to check where I found that group of them; see what I can find."
"I'm going with you." Aerith is firm. "Maybe I'll get a clearer idea of why my stomach's doing flip-flops if I see more than the inside of this house. Cloud, you stay here with my mom and yours."
"Hey!" Cloud protests, not liking the idea of them going to look for more of those dangerous creatures without him.
"Do you really want them to be alone right now, with more of those things possibly on the loose?"
"… No."
"That's that, then. Come on, Zack. I'll get my coat."
"Don't you want to change first?" Zack asks.
"What? Why?"
"It is a monster patrol. It'll involve going down the rocks. Which means sliding and climbing."
Aerith looks at her dress. She's never liked trousers or shorts, preferring the floaty femininity of a hemline. Maybe pants would be more practical, but she hasn't enough confidence in the shape of her hips and plane of her stomach to try. She compromises. "I'll put on some boots."
"So this is where you found them?" Aerith looks around. It isn't much to write home about; just a patch of what was once grass sloping into a gentle hollow. It's not even all that close to Dark Forest, instead edging more towards another shattered chunk of wall.
Beyond the wall of earth is whatever sits beneath the castle; dungeons or basements or whatever. There's a small gap in the soil there, no bigger than a rabbit hole, the edges worn smooth. Aerith might ponder it more, but her thoughts are already sliding away as she thinks these things, as if pushed in a different direction by invisible hands, and she turns them to the bulk of trees instead.
Dark Forest is a shadow of what it used to be, many trees withered and almost no flowers at all.
"No, this is where they found me." Zack inspects the area by walking around it. "It's like they were laying in wait to try and take me out. I swear one of them stuck its horrible little hands right inside my chest."
"Inside your chest?" Aerith thinks of Lula and the first shadow-creature.
"It sounds weird, but yeah. Went straight through me like it was a ghost, until I cut its legs off and it vanished. They were working on mob mentality, like a nest of disturbed ants. Not much finesse, just a big attack on one target – me – like they were clockwork toys someone wound up, pointed in the right direction and let go." He grunts. "I'm getting bupkiss out of this patrol. You?"
"I don't feel anything." Aerith is confused. The vague unease in her stomach is persistent but formless, as though it can't decide which of multiple dangers to warn her about, and so can do nothing but send her partial garbled messages about all of them.
"So I guess we head back." Zack sounds frustrated.
They've only taken a few steps when the air in front of them wobbles and darkens. Zack is instantly alert, Buster Sword out and body poised for battle. A yellow-eyed head pushes its way into view as though dragging itself out of a hole in mid-air. Zack lops it off, but the moment he does so a dozen more dark patches pop into being around him and spew out little bodies like rice pouring from sacks.
"Zack!" Aerith cries as he's submerged by a writhing mass of living shadow.
"Aerith, run!"
"I won't leave you!"
"I said run!"
Yellow eyes swivel to fix on her. Several creatures advance with their shuffly gait. Aerith takes a step back but stops, determined not to leave Zack. She flourishes the cast-iron frying pan she brought along in case she needed to defend herself, and takes grim satisfaction in the solid clang of it connecting with one creature's head. It doesn't dissolve into dust, but it does fly backward and seems a little stunned. They aren't ghost. She's not sure what they are, but they're not ghosts.
Buster Sword cutting around in a circle, Zack hacks his way towards her. "Aerith!" However, no matter how many are destroyed, more appear to take their place. He's forced backwards, away from Aerith.
Aerith's arms soon begin to ache. She fights to reach Zack regardless. Sweat runs down her back even though it's not warm. Gamely, she keeps on swinging her frying pan, until something worse than cold punches into her from behind. She gasps, back arching, as a softness in the centre of her chest suddenly constricts…
"Yaaah!"
Something large and noisy drops from the sky on top of the creature with its hands in Aerith's ribcage. Aerith gasps, toppling forward, but finds herself supported by someone too skinny and female to be Zack.
"Fly, foul demons! Fly from here or prepare to meet your maker at the hands of the greatest warrior who ever lived!"
The creatures don't even pause in their attack.
"Fine then. Be that way." Aerith is swivelled, forcibly bent forward at the waist and propelled to one side. "'Scuse me, Ponytail." A foot uses her as a step-up and the figure is back in the air again. "Eat shuriken, bastards!"
A series of spinning silver stars whirl in a circle around them, hitting shadow creatures with deadly accuracy. The creatures explode into puffs of black dust, but the stars keep on spinning around and around until there are barely any targets left to hit.
Zack chops at the remaining few and stands awkwardly, obviously wondering where the horde of insurmountable enemies went.
"Ha!" The figure drops to the ground, deftly catching the stars. "No applause, please. All in a day's work for the Great Ninja Yuffie." She makes a breathy noise in the back of her throat, like a distant crowd going wild. "Thank you, thank you, I know I'm brilliant. Hey there, lovebirds. How about some gratitude for the one who saved your scrawny backsides?"
Aerith, bewildered by the attack and the sudden strangeness of their rescuer, just stares. An unkind thought pops into her head and she roughly pushes it away. Who are you calling scrawny? It isn't like her to be so rude and she puts it down to the trauma of nearly having her heart ripped out of her ribcage.
"Uh, thanks. I guess." Zack replaces the Buster Sword on his back. "The name's Zack Fair. I take it you're Yuffie?"
"Cute and smart. Hold onto him, sister, or I might just sink my own teeth into his tight butt. Rowr!" The girl is obviously younger than them, but her grin is feral and her eyes as irreverent as her words. She grabs Zack's hand and enthusiastically pumps it up and down. "I am, indeed, the Great Ninja Yuffie. You've probably heard of me."
"Uh, no, we haven't."
"Really?" She looks shocked, but snaps out of it so fast it might be faked. "I'll have to fix that. You've already seen my intense skills in battle. By the way, I'm not greedy, so we'll leave payment for rescuing you at one square meal and a bed for the night. Yours or my own, cutie, I don't mind."
Zack looks completely flummoxed and Aerith draws herself up to her full height. "Now look here -"
"Hey, don't worry; I'm not a complete idiot who'd foist herself onto axe-wielding murderers or anything. I've heard of Zack Fair. You're pretty famous around these parts – a regular H-E-R-O and general symbol for all things noble and good and all that junk. A trustworthy guy like you wouldn't take advantage of a poor little innocent waif like me, would you?" She bats her eyelashes at him. "Well, not unless I asked you to, of course. C'mon, let's get inside and I can tell you all about my wild adventures so you can boast to all your friends you met the Great Ninja Yuffie!" She grabs Zack's hand and drags him away. "Which way to your house? Ah, never mind, I'll pick a direction and you can tell me left and right as we go."
For a moment Aerith is too stunned to move. Then she comes back to herself with a sharp, "Hey, wait!" and runs after them.
"You say you found her?"
"More like she found us." Aerith's arms are folded and she's broadcasting so many Not Happy vibes you can practically see them zigzagging around her. She keeps her face schooled into a neutral expression, and only those closest to her would be able to tell she's ticked off. "She says her name's Yuffie, that she's a ninja, and that she's on a mission from her clan to find out more about those creatures."
Cloud nervously spikes up the front of his hair. "And you believed her enough to bring her home with you?"
"She didn't exactly give us much of a choice."
Yuffie sits at the table, Zack sitting beside her – not because he wants to be, but because she refuses to let go of his hand and has a grip to put thumbscrews to shame. Only having one hand to eat with doesn't impede her progress. She's already devoured most of a loaf, all the cheese and part of the apple pie Aerith was keeping for later. It's a wonder she's still so spindly.
She turns to look at Cloud and Aerith in the doorway. "Wow, Ponytail, it's like hot and cold running water in this place – one dark-haired and one blondie. Do you alternate weekly or do they toss a coin?"
Cloud's cheeks flame.
"My name is Aerith. As I believe I've mentioned several times."
Yuffie waves a hand like this isn't important and gets back to the primary task of demolishing the pie. A few minutes later she sits back, sighing happily and licking the few remaining crumbs from around her mouth. "No wonder they both like you, if you can cook like that. Hell, I'll keep your feet warm if you can make a rhubarb version of that pie."
Aerith feels her own cheeks start to burn. "Right, so you've eaten. Now can you tell us what you know about those creatures? And while we're on the subject, more about yourself."
"I get you. You're threatened by me and want to make sure I'm not competition. Good call, I like you already." Yuffie smirks. In better light she's even younger than Aerith first thought, but somehow her smirk still manages to be vaguely filthy.
Cloud takes an imperceptible step backwards.
"Okay, so short version. Name's Yuffie Kisaragi, formerly of the Wutai Ninja Clan. You might've heard of them, might not; we tend to keep to ourselves a lot, but now and then we breed a champion who goes off and makes a name in the big wide world. That'd be me for this generation; though to hear my dad talk you wouldn't think it. He's all 'marriage-marriage-babies-rar' and I'm all, like, 'hel-lo, stuck in the dark ages much?' But I love the big lug, so I decided to prove to him I'm this generation's greatest ninja rather than just seeing which of us could shout the loudest in an argument. Got my opportunity when those Heartless thingies turned up. Heard some rumours about how they're the Next Big Thing on the monster charts, and how they're evil and inescapable and yadda-yadda-yadda. So off I jet on my own personal quest to gather information about the little cretins, 'cause my dad's also really 'information is a ninja's greatest weapon' as well, and maybe I'll impress him with my fabulous braininess as well as my kick-ass moves. Travelled a bit, learned a bit, ended up here and saved your asses from becoming Heartless chow, which brings us up to the present moment. Do you have a toothpick?"
Everyone's still catching up with her breakneck story.
Zack arrives first. "Wait, what did you call those things?"
"Hm? Oh, Heartless. Yeah, I didn't know what they were called at first, either, but some guy in a kingdom out west gave me the name. Really bad hair, lemme tell you, and a complexion like a wet Sunday. I'm all for functional-but-cute in the hairstyle department myself. He said some old coot scientist named the creatures a long time ago but never got around to showing them to anyone, and then he disappeared so everyone kind of forgot about them. He was pretty shocked when I said I'd not only seen some 'Heartless' but kicked their tails so hard they wagged their noses when they were happy. Apparently he only ever read about them in some research paper that disappeared not long afterwards, along with the town it was from. Luminous Gardens or something. You ever heard of that? No, me neither. Real hush-hush-mystery business, apparently."
"So … those things are monsters?"
Yuffie taps her chin with one finger. "In a manner of speaking. The guy's words (and this is a direct quote, 'cause I'm so kick-ass I remember it) were: 'Heartless were fabled to be hearts corrupted by darkness that no longer have a body to house them or a soul to temper them'. They're pretty much, like, heart zombies or something."
Aerith banishes the mental image of a pig's heart from the butcher's ambling along the street. "Those things were not hearts."
"Not your actual heart, but that place in you that contains your light and your darkness," Cloud says suddenly. "Your balance control. Everything is about balance." His eyes contain a faraway look and he speaks softly, like he's talking to himself more than them. When he realises all eyes are on him he stutters. "Uh … sorry, I was just … thinking out loud."
Zack nods, thoughtful. "I like the way you put that. It makes a whole lot more sense than imagining body parts wandering around."
"Like, when you say to someone 'I give you my heart' or 'You've stolen my heart'." Yuffie bobs her head up and down. "You're both of you smart and cute and oh so adorable when you blush. I'm going to like it here, I can tell."
"I thought you were only staying for a night." There is no strangled note in Aerith's voice. She makes sure of it. "One night."
Yuffie shrugs. "Night, week, month – what's the diff? You guys have got a Heartless problem and I'm on a Heartless mission. It all adds up. I'll give you the benefit of my awesome skills and knowledge and you get the pleasure of my company, and you can tell future generations that you met me. Plus you're the only people who've ever, y'know, actually let me into their home without trying to grope or kill me. Any chance of that toothpick now?"
"People have tried to hurt you before?" Cloud asks.
Another shrug. "Meh, occupational hazard. Nothing a good swift kick in the nuts couldn't cure. 'Course, it helped that I cleaned out their pantries before I pulled a midnight flit over the rooftops, but I call that justifiable payback. Or poetic justice, if I could get them to squeak high enough. You ever heard of eunuchs? I invented my own version: eu-shouldn't-underestimate-the-girl-just-because-she's-skinny-nuchs."
"You've been travelling alone? For how long?"
"Couple months, give or take."
"Across Barren Region?"
Aerith can understand the disbelief in Zack's voice. Yuffie's skinnier than a jockey's whip and there's something vulnerable about her that stops Aerith just short of outright offence every time she opens her mouth.
Yuffie snorts. "Across wherever. Thing about a big ol' quest is you go where the info takes you, and it takes you to some pretty skanky places."
Cloud shakes his head. "It sounds like you've been taking a lot of unnecessary risks in your quest."
"Ninja, remember? I can take care of myself, and it's not like it was a shock or anything. My clan's a bunch of noble mercenaries, but the problem with that is you can't pick your clients and some of them like to be paid with stuff other than money. Not that my dad ever let that happen to me, mind you, but you see what you see and you hear what you hear. And what I see is a surplus of tasties in a house with only one girl, and I hear the silent cries for some extra female company to balance out all the testosterone in this place. It'd be a crime for me not to correct that. Girl power! So what's your poison, Ponytail? Blond or black? I don't mind curling up with your cast-off."
Aerith doesn't choke, either. She doesn't. Not even when her mother and Ms. Strife come downstairs, having retreated up there against the whirlwind of Yuffie's initial inspection of the house. She doesn't choke even when she realises the two women have changed the sheets on all the beds and made up a fourth one on the floor of Aerith's own room.
"It seemed safer that way," Elmyra whispers conspiratorially as she leaves.
Aerith isn't sure whom it's supposed to be safer for when Yuffie slings an arm over her shoulder and chirrups, "So, roomie, mind if I take the bed?"
To Be Continued …