Chapter Twelve: Birds, Brains, and Automobikes

The sky looked like someone had cracked an egg in it when we left. Cloud the clod wanted to leave at dawn, which was the dumbest idea since Vinnie's training yesterday.

"What part of 'Yuffie Kisaragi is not a morning person' do you not understand, Choco-butt?" I asked him irritably, as he clicked on the light in Cid's awesomely tiny kitchen.

"Neither are your enemies, probably," he deadpanned, grabbing a carton of milk and proceeding to ( wait for it) make tea.

I threw off Vinnie's travelling cloak (it made an awesome duvet- duds with togs, gotta love 'em), and immediately marched to his grill to engage in some up-close-and-personal finger jabbing. A flit of doubt crossed his face, just before he turned around and bonked me on the head with the freakin' kettle.

"What in the name of hell, Clot?" I howled.

He shrugged. "Cid told me it was the contingency."

I hate it when men think they're clever.

"Oh, he did, did he? Well, I don't care how shiny and golden he is, I will still go up there and remove his 'nads." I muttered. Cloud looked at me blankly, then returned to making his goddamn tea.

Fifteen minutes, one cup of tea and half a pot of hair gel later (Cloud is so metro, I swear), we were ready to go. I'd decided very firmly that Vincent and me were not on speaking terms, so I wasn't about to go looking for him. Unfortunately, he was the one charged with collecting our choco-ho from outside Mount Nibel where Cloud had left it.

"Yuffie. Please be careful." he said with his stupid serious expression and his stupid emo hair and his stupid clown shoes. "Cloud cannot protect you if you will not protect yourself."

I ignored him. Regardless of whether I was a ninja or not, my ability to sulk was always first rate.

Without ceremony, Cloud hopped onto the emo-bo. Say what you like about the thing, it had strong legs; it held his weight without so much as a buckled knee. I hopped on afterwards, realising very quickly that chocobos, as a species, are built very much for one rider. I had to reach around and grope Cloud's man-boobs for support, which wasn't entirely unpleasant, but y'know. Standard taxi-cab etiquette says not to feel up the driver.

Vincent shot me another one of his weird, smouldering looks as we started to move off. It trickled down my spine like a drop of warm rain, and I shivered it off. Cloud finally managed to kick the chocobo into gear, and we started moving proper, but Vince kept his eyes glued to mine until he was out of sight.

The journey across Mount Nibel was actually pretty uneventful. I already knew that Vince's chocobo was pretty good on mountains, but I'd forgotten how good. It barely seemed to need any input from Cloud, picking its way across the crags easily with those massive clawed feet. My hands have gravitated down from Cloud's moobs to his waist; I couldn't let go entirely, because the chocobo didn't seem to realise that going up forty-five degree inclines is harder on the passengers than it is on the vehicle.

"Yuffie. We'll stop off in Gongaga on the way to Edge. Okay?" Cloud asked, as if going up mountains on the back of some spoony bird didn't bother him.

"Why? Isn't it better to just, y'know, get back to Boobs? She's probably missing you." I replied, holding on for dear life as the chocobo started a descent into one of Mt. Nibel's many crevices.

"Yes, but..." He looked uncomfortable.

"But what?"

"...I'd prefer it if you didn't throw up over my bike too much."

Wow. Just wow, Cloud. Way to make me feel better about my travel sickness.

"Ugh, fine. Wimp. You'll step in Behemoth guts in North Crater, but you won't clean a little puke off your bike." I groaned. Now that he'd mentioned travel sickness, I wasn't feeling too good.

"Well, if you throw up on the seats, you'll be the one sitting in it the rest of the way. So, we're taking rest stops."

"So I can go and puke."

"So you can go and puke."

After that de-lightful conversation, I wasn't looking forwards to riding on Fenrir too much. I mean, hell, it's a sweet bike, but the Highwind had been a sweet airship, and I still threw up all over that. Not only that, but Fenrir was designed for one even more than Vinnie's choco-ho, which meant that, whilst I was trying not to spew my guts, I'd probably be committing sexual assault on my old war-buddy. Not fun.

As we finally crested the last peak of Mount Nibel and started the descent, I was half tempted to ask if Cloud wanted to stop off at Nibelheim. But I thought better of it. After all, he'd been convinced it had burnt down- that his home was gone. Now that someone had burnt my house down, I guess I sympathised with him a little. Only a little.

Eventually (and after Vinnie's stupid emo-bo had stopped to fertilise Mount Nibel's indigenous vegetation), we reached the bottom, and the next leg of our journey: travel sickness heaven.

Luckily, Fenrir wasn't about to go over anything large and mountain shaped, so I didn't actually have to grope Cloud as much as I thought I would. All I had to be careful of, Cloud helpfully informed me, was the tiny and very well disguised button that would cause Fenrir's sides to pop open and bristle with lots of pointy swords. Which, considering our slightly ill designed seating arrangements, he thought might accidentally, y'know, stab me a little. Goody.

The second unfortunate thing was that, whilst Cloud was used to having something large vibrating between his legs, I certainly wasn't. I may have squeaked, just a little bit, when he turned the engine on. This led to what might have, just possibly, been the most awkward silence in the entire history of the world. After twenty seconds, he slowly turned around and said, "Don't worry. Tifa did the same thing."

I couldn't imagine how things could possibly get any worse.

Until we started moving, of course. Then I realised that Barret's tales of how freaking insane Cloud had been when he stole that motorbike from the Shinra building were not exaggerated. The man drives like a lunatic. A pretty damn skilful lunatic, but a lunatic. I mean, the driving in Edge is pretty bad, but you haven't seen anything until your driver decides to take a hundred-and-fifty miles per hour detour through a freaking forest.

The upshot of this was that I was so terrified I couldn't even do the decent thing and eject my lunch all over the back of his coat. I was too occupied with trying not to scream. I remembered something Cid had said aboard the Highwind: "Brat, you start screaming at this kind of speed, a fly'll hit the roof of your mouth and go straight through." And I was pretty keen to keep myself hole free, even if he was kidding.

Still, it wasn't that bad. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a thrill. I'll never be fazed by the Speed section of the Golden Saucer again. You get used to it, after a while (although, by the time I'd managed it, Cloud had already jumped the gorge in Cosmo Canyon and rattled our asses through three forests), and you start being able to pick out the obstacles that you'd hit if Cloud didn't move at exactly the last second and slingshot you into the path of another obstacle. And, again, my ride remained pleasantly vomit free...right up until the moment when Cloud decided he wanted to skid sideways to a halt.

The first thing I heard was a screech as the guts of the bike protested at the rough treatment. The second was the bite of the tires into gravel, just like when the dragon at Nibel was crushing the rocks. The third thing I heard was someone screaming. It was probably me.

Then, a jolt, and suddenly my fingers were crushing themselves into Cloud's coat. I could feel heat, like carpet burn, on my fingers. My nails sunk into the fabric and immediately began to ache. Then, another jolt (I could almost feel my stomach hit my windpipe), and my nails didn't ache, they screamed, like they were loose teeth without anaesthetic. I didn't even realise that I'd screwed my eyes shut until I felt the water trickling from them, eked out by the speed and the pain. And finally, finally, we stopped.

"Cloud, I hate you. So damn much," I hissed, tugging my fingers from his coat.

"That's nice. I suppose we're even for the Wutai Materia Affair, then," he mumbled. He started to get off the bike, which tilted and moved as his weight shifted. And after my ride, that was all it took.

Needless to say, whilst we're even for the Wutai Materia Affair, we've still not managed to patch up the Gongaga Vomit-Coat Palaver.

I have to say that, regardless of Cloud's driving or the loss of my lunch, Gongaga has to be one of my favourite places in the entire world. It's just so...raw. The people were tough, the trees were tough, the monsters were tough- put it all together, and it was something you couldn't see anywhere else in the entire world, especially not my Dad's version of Wutai. And it was properly raw, too, right down to the broken branches; so, not like pretty little Vinny, the guy who, despite basically renting his soul out to a pack of Halloween rejects, looks confused when he's given less than three spoons with which to eat an egg. Where he picked up such rod-in-the-ass table manners, I have no clue.

Of course, it isn't Cloud's favourite place. Tifa says it's the place where his dead friend's family live, or something like that. It's also the place he woke up after going completely apeshit and giving the Black Materia to Your Friendly Neighbourhood Nut-Job, only to find out that Aerith had snuck off whilst he was catching his forty. And that was a pretty black day for all of us.

This, obviously, did not improve his mood after the coat-splattering.

After yelling at me not to eat anything (and backing up his point by brandishing that big old butter-knife of his), he stalked off to the inn, presumably to see if low-temperature washing powder was one of the many innovations to have crept into Gongaga in the years after Sephiroth's war. I watched him go, pulling Vince's spare cloak closer around myself. Had it always been this cold in Gongaga? And in the summer, too. Weird.

Unfortunately, wearing Sir-Gimp-A-Lot's cloak reminded me of him, and how he'd wanted me to train up so I didn't, y'know, die. The Gongaga jungle was actually a pretty nice place to do just that, on account of it having lots of trees and bushes to hide in and make sneak attacks. Yup, I could probably do some good ninja-ing in Gongaga.

Doing my pre-battle inspection like a good little girl, I pulled the Waruitori out of my back pocket, and flicked it back into battle shape. It was actually more battered than when I last got it out, and some of the dragon blood had soaked into the paper. Ugh. The more I used it, the more I was beginning to realise that it wasn't exactly the Oritsuru. And if Cloud and Vinny's emo senses were tingling, I was probably going to want myself a good weapon. In fact, scratch the Vinny part. Even if it was just Cloud's emo senses, we were in trouble, and I didn't need to be relying on Vinny and his emo powers.

So, I took myself on a little wander to the Weapon Shop, which had actually been bought up by a big ol' chain store now, called Smitheys. Smitheys- because every civilian needs a weapon in their pocket. (Mind you, this was Gongaga. And they did basically live in a monster infested jungle.)

It was actually a pretty nice shop, for Gongaga. Nice, solid oak door, polished floors, fifty bazillion gigawatt lights on the ceiling- exactly the kind of place you didn't expect to see in a jungle. There were weapons of all kinds, arranged in glass shelves, just like butterflies in a museum. There was some weird stuff there even I hadn't seen, and you gotta remember that our group ran around regularly finding replacements for Barret's gun arm and Red's razor hairclips. They did a nice line in whips, so I made a mental note of Shera's birthday present. The guy at the counter, a young dude with more spots than teeth, looked at me like I was a piece of meat as I searched frantically for the shuriken section.

"Hey, you got any ninja stars?" I called, waving my arm behind me.

A beat or two, then a nasal reply. "Nope. But we've got some good pistols in rack seven."

I waved my arm again, irritated. "I didn't ask for pistols. Got any kunai, then?"

"Nope. You might wanna try Wutai if you're into that ninja junk."

I resisted the urge to snort.

"You got any knives, then? I could make do with a knife." I tried again.

"Sure. Rack eleven."

I went over to have a look, still concious that the guy was looking at me as if I were a million gil nailed to the back of a pot of spot cream. The selection of knives was actually pretty brilliant. I settled on one with a huge leaf-shaped blade and two materia slots in the handle. I pulled out my purse...

And remembered there was nothing in it. The lights (so damn bright! Like I was in a lab or something) beamed down on the fifty or so gil I'd found down the back of Cid's couch.

I wondered, momentarily, if Cloud would give me a loan. Until I realised that the knife I wanted had a 3500 gil price tag on it. And it was probably gonna take that much to get my lunch out of his coat.

I sighed, and pondered. I really was going to need a better weapon, no doubt about that. And Cloud wasn't gonna fork out 7000 gil to bail me out- he grimaced when he bought potions, for goodness' sake. So, it looked like there was no way I was getting myself shiny new knife for Christmas.

I left the shop, and filled my lungs with the good jungle air. It'd smelt way too sterile in Smitheys. The whole shop had felt weird. And the counter guy was a perv. Really, I wouldn't feel even the least bit guilty about what I was going to do. I wandered over to the inn, and waited for night to fall.

Yup, there was no way I was getting myself a shiny new knife for Christmas. Not without a light tread, a lockpick and some awfully sticky fingers.

A/N: Sorry this is so incredibly late. I was actually very stuck on how to continue it (and writing an entire 'wow, I'm on Cloud's bike' chapter didn't really agree with me). One of the reasons this is so late is because, unlike pretty much everything else I write, it has no schedule, not even a forgotten one. I've now amended that; I'm aiming to write it every three days, with an view to have a complete chapter every three weeks. Thanks to everyone for having patience with me, and sorry for the delays!