Chapter 29.

Sunrise hit the shore near Bone Village a little less than gracefully, as by this time, she was more than completely worn out. Crossing entire continents and oceans multiple times in a single day was a ton of running around, and even made the hardy golden chocobo exhausted.

Sunrise fell to her knees in the grass soon after landing, panting heavily. Her eyes were crossed, and her head made little circles for a moment from dizziness. Once she was resting on the ground, it took her a moment to shake the dizziness out of her head, and the little gold chocobos running in a circle around her head disappeared.

Yuffie dismounted, and made sure the chocobo would be OK. After confirming that Sunrise just needed some rest, she gave the bird a soft pat on the head, now that she could reach it. "Thanks, cutie!" said the ninja girl, and the chocobo cooed warmly in response. "I usually get motion sickness something awful, but with you, I didn't feel a thing!" The girl ran towards the inn, waving a last "see ya!" at the bird, who fluffed her wings, and waited for the rest of her humans to arrive.

Yuffie sprinted quickly for the inn where Cloud and Tifa were housed.

Her eyes began to water thinking about facing Cloud and Tifa after what she had done. She began to sniff, and wiped her nose with a forearm, trying not to give in to the urge to tear up and break down. She could not allow herself to break down; she had to bring some honor to her father, her town, and herself, by fixing what she had sought to destroy.

Making her way towards the village, an awful smell caught her nose. She took a quick look at the Holy Torch she carried, and quickly came to the conclusion that the smell did not originate from that. It smelled kinda like...Cid...rather than pickled underwear...

Looking over to her right, she noticed a large figure looming over the horizon, with dark ribbon-like structures flowing out from it. The whole mass seemed to be moving around from its own power, and a toxic-looking dense cloud shrouded it.

When it turned toward her, she realized she was spotted by a Malboro.

Crap! thought Yuffie. Well, I have no time to fight with you now!

It slid toward her, hoping to catch her in its tentacles and blast her into submission with its horrid, negative-status-causing breath. Yuffie knew the thing was even more dangerous than ever, since no one carried materia or items to remove the bad statuses it could cause.

However, Yuffie's sheer speed was no match for the monster, and she flew by it before it could even catch her with a tentacle. She saw more monsters in the area, but was well on her way to the safety of the village before they even caught sight of her.

"Ok...so I was incredibly stupid...," she panted while running toward the inn at top speed. "So I tried to threaten two of the people who, in fact, helped save my hometown from getting whacked with a big ball of magical ego trip. So I tried to pit the dumb blonde against my town's guardian. I was stupid, and giving them this freakin' stinky torch'll hopefully not be so pissed off." Reaching the town, she looked up to the left, and began climbing the hill to the inn, ignoring the strange looks at her anxious hurry and the angry hollers she ilicited from running headlong into the passing excavators and townsfolk. "Not that they shouldn't be pissed off at me! But...still..."

She reached the door of the inn, and had to pause for a moment, not in sorrow, or regret...but in anger. "If I only woulda known there'd end up being no materia in the world...I probably wouldn't have done anything that I ever felt I had to do!"

Yuffie burst through the door, not quite knocking over yet another man, but certainly causing him to lose his grip on the many large scrolls of papers in his hands. "HEY!" he yelled at her angrily, shaking a fist as he watched her disappear into the inn. His precisely ordered drawings of artifacts and their locations littered the ground, and would take quite a while to reorder.

The ninja girl reached the front desk, and she slammed her open hand down on the dark wood. "Strife!" was the only word she shouted at the innkeeper.

She vaguely heard something about room 12.

All the innkeeper knew was that he felt a rush of air, and the short girl was gone.

Yuffie ran up the steps, looking at each numbered door for only an instant. She made it down the short hallway, and found the door marked "12". She used her fist to bang on the door a few times, and moments later, she heard the door unlock.

Cloud poked his head through the opening in the door, and did something Yuffie had rarely seen him do. Or, at least she had never seen him do it very well...glare.

And Yuffie noted that this time, his glare was menacing. It was full of rancor and disgust, and, she could tell, sheer hate.

Cloud held out an outstretched hand to her. "Hand it over." It was said with the most frigid coldness the ninja girl had ever heard Cloud muster. It was frightening.

Yuffie could only stare up inot his face, examining his cold glowing blue eyes for some hint of forgiveness, but finding none. She stumbled around for words for a moment, but, faced with the depths of Cloud's well-earned resent of her, she found herself rendered spechless, for the first time in her life. "Ah...uh..."

"HAND IT OVER!" His jaw was set, his teeth bared, and his glowing blue eyes flashed.

Yuffie took the Holy Torch, and was about to place it in his palm. It was meant to be a soft gesture, one that revealed her honest attempt to redeem herself. Cloud grabbed it from her hand, and disappeared into the room behind the door, still bearing that hateful, but well-earned scowl.

WHAM!

Cloud slammed the door practically on the girl's nose, the sheer force of his rage rattling the threshold, and causing the simple chandelier in the hallway to sway.

Yuffie lowered her head, and closed her eyes.

Barett, Phil, Vincent, and last but greatest, Cid Highwind, jumped off the clipper into the sandy water by Bone Village. They made a break for the shore, each bearing their own signature weapon, as they knew they would probably end up needing them before they got to the village proper. The calm-looking beach was looking a little too peaceful, and just because most magical items and materia had been shattered, didn't mean that magical monsters didn't exist anymore.

They pressed forward in hurried, disorganized formation, however, their faces clearly showed they meant business as they walked up from the sandy beach, to the grassy area right before the village.

Barett looked to his left, and there he spied the reflected sunlight glancing off Cloud's golden chocobo. She was seated on the ground, and casually picking at the ground for grass and seeds.

Barret waved his intact hand at the bird. "Hey!" he called out to his friends. Looking back at the others with him, the big guy called their attention to the chocobo, and they ran over to her.

Sunrise rose up from the ground, happy to see her humans. The four of them stopped around her momentarily, and she fluffed her feathers before fatigue forced her to return to sitting on the ground.

"Don't strain yourself," quietly advised Vincent. "You've done more than enough today." Sunrise warbled happily at the advice.

The men were about to continue on their way, when Sunrise gave a loud squawk that made them turn back at her.

The bird's pretty blue eyes were nailed menacingly on the man bearing the Venus Gospel.

Cid caught a glimpse of the bird's intent stare, and was the first to resume heading quickly toward the village. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know," he said, waving a gloved hand dismissively. Why does that fricking annoying ninja girl get a free ride when I have to wheel and deal! thought Cid.

"What does that bird want with you, Captain?" asked Phil tentatively.

Cid waved the hand holding his cigarette at his pupil again, dismissing his question, and the chocobo went back to pecking at the ground.

They hurried along, and were soon on the grassy plain right before the village. Their wariness paid off, because no further did they go when a disgusting smell hit their noses.

"A Malboro is near," warned Vincent.

Picking up their pace, the four of them could see Bone Village in the distance, when Barett flying up into the air with a cry made the rest of them spin around.

Barett returned to the ground with a hard thump, and the four men could see the shallow gouge in the ground from the Flare spell with which he was hit. They traced the gouge back, and saw that a King Behemoth was gaining on them quickly...along with an array of demonic cohorts.

"Shit!" yelled Cid, twirling his partisan around. Cid looked over to Barett, who had gotten back up on his feet with a couple colorful words of his own. Cid could see that Barett's clothes were definitely not smoking as much as his temper, so he seemed to be alright otherwise. The Flare spell the monster used wasn't very strong or reliable, and the three men built up quite a tolerance to such attacks on their travels.

However, the combination of enemies attacking together was now outright dangerous.

"They must be getting desperate and cooperating with each other, due to the lack of healing items they're finding. We must eliminate them now, or they'll insist on following us into the village," noted Vincent, unholstering the Cerberus.

"Sonofabitch," cursed Cid one last time, for good measure. "We gotta split up here. "I'll take the King Behemoth. Vincent, you handle the Death Dealers. Barett, blow away that stinkin' Malboro before it gets to ya."

Each nodded, except Barett, who raised his gun arm, yelling "You got it!" loudly. They each ran in the direction of their appropriate opponent.

Cid looked over at his pupil, who was the last one left to be told what to do. Phil fisted his hands, eagerly waiting for his orders. "Phil. You..." at a loss for words, Cid took a last drag of his ciggie, then pointed a finger at Phil. "You distract those two bandersnatches over there until we clear up our own damned messes."

Distract? Phil's face fell. "Gee...thanks for the vote of confidence, Captain," said Phil to himself disappointedly as Cid ran toward the monstrous King Behemoth.